Mendocino County Today: Sunday 11/9/2025

By AVA News Service on November 9, 2025

WARMER and drier conditions will build and persist through Tuesday with night and morning valley and coastal fog. 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): 46F with mostly clear skies this Sunday morning on the coast. A mix of cloud covers until Wednesday when rain returns. The timing & amounts of rain changes with each forecast so stay tuned weather fans.

WAI YAN LEAMON, 1977-2025

Wai Yan Leamon was born in British Hong Kong. From birth her mother was unable to care for her, so she lived in a children’s home in Hong Kong. When she was 10 years old, she was adopted by Richard and Sue Leamon and came to join her new sister and brother, Heather and Forrest, in rural Potter Valley, California. She quickly adapted to country life raising and showing animals in 4-H and playing soccer and baseball. She graduated from Potter Valley Elementary School and Ukiah High School. She also attended Mendocino Community College, where she studied history and anthropology.

Although she had a playful and sweet demeanor, most of her adult life was eclipsed by mental illness. Cancer took her life in Eureka.

Wai is survived by her mother Sue Leamon and her sister Heather Glaser (Ben), her niece Rayah and nephews William (Antonia), Alan, Andrew and Luke Leamon. She was predeceased by her father Richard and brother Forrest Leamon (Ana). A private family graveside service is pending.

AREA PREPS

Ukiah 42, Analy 13: The Ukiah High School Wildcats blitzed the visiting Analy Tigers (Sebastopol) on Friday to cap the regular season with a runaway win.

Ukiah (6-4, 4-1 REC-Bay) scored on its first five possessions of the game to build a 35-7 lead at halftime. Both teams decided to play the second half with a running clock.

Ukiah quarterback Beau David rushed for three touchdowns and passed for two. Dareon Dorsey and Ryan Todd both had long touchdown receptions and Chris Thompson added a rushing score.

Analy closed out the regular season at 6-4 overall and 2-3 in league and will now await its playoff seeding. The Tigers are projected to be a low seed in Division 5.

Based on some of the results from around the NCS on Friday night, the Wildcats may end up as a high seed in Division 4. They also own the REC-Bay tiebreaker for the league’s automatic qualifying spot if the league race ends in a three-way tie. Maria Carrillo can clinch the league title with a win over St. Vincent on Saturday.

IT LOOKS LIKE the Lambert Lane Bridge Replacement Project has been buttoned up and put on hold for the year.

(G)rumblings from the on-site crew last week indicated they half-expected a stop work order this week from Fish & Wildlife and the State Water Resources Board as a pro-forma attempt to avoid impacts to fish in Robinson Creek what with the rainy season upon us. A stop work order at this point makes no sense to us, especially since the work in the creek is done and every possible stream protection/precaution has been taken. (By the way, where was Fish and Wildlife when the wine industry was dewatering local creeks for irrigation and frost protection?) We have a call in to the County Transpo Department for confirmation that the project is on hold and an estimated re-start/completion date, and the cost implications of starting again in the spring. Meanwhile, locals will have to drive around the new bridge construction site for a few more months using the temporary one-lane one-way bridge.

(Mark Scaramella)

YOUR AV PANTHERS ARE ON FIRE! They’re headed to the SEMIFINALS! Let’s hear it for these boys who have battled all season long and earned their spot. Next showdown: Wednesday, November 12 at 7:00 pm at the Boonville Fairgrounds. Pack the stands, wear your Panther pride, and make some noise!!

JUDY VALADAO (Fort Bragg):

I don't consider myself a Democrat or Republican. I have a mind of my own and vote by what I feel is best for everyone as a whole.

While I try to keep politics off my page I simply cannot keep my mouth shut about the situation happening now. Feel free to disagree, it won't change my mind on this subject.

My guess is none of these people making decisions worry about how they are going to put food on the table for their families. Damn, their housekeepers, maids, butlers or private chef probably do their shopping for them. While the system may be abused by some the majority depend on the little bit they get in order to get by. Harming others in order to fix something you see as a problem is simply not ok. Yes, the elderly, disabled and working poor are being hurt by this heartless action. I know of people who grab anything being handed out even if they don't need it. On the other hand, I know people who desperately need a helping hand to get by each month. What kind of mind decides if someone is getting help that shouldn't then no one is going to get help? Politicians should live by the rule of "first do no harm" before making decisions that literally take food off the table of those in need. By the way, those I know of that grab everything just because they can even though they don't need it ARE NOT illegals or non-citizens… PLEASE, if you can… donate to the food bank. Clean out your cupboards or purchase an extra item or two when you shop. Right now, the Food Bank is all a lot of folks have. Before you ask, yes, I have donated and will be gathering up more in hopes that at the very least it helps someone in need.

Pt Arena Cove - Fall 2025 (Martin Bradley)

SUPPLEMENTAL FOOD GROUPS STRUGGLE TO MEET OBLIGATIONS IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

by Carole Brodsky

Holiday times are always fraught with anxiety for those on the humbler side of the economic spectrum. With the cost of food, arguably as high as anyone can remember; with many families facing under- or un-employment, and with the minute-to-minute confusion regarding the reissuance - or not - of SNAP benefits, it is the providers of supplemental food resources who find their organizations in the crosshairs. On the one hand, they are depended upon by thousands of hungry people to help provide necessary, nutritious food. On the other side of the coin, food banks and supplemental food providers are often accused of catering to “freeloaders” or undocumented persons, despite decades of data proving the contrary.

The Food Network is gathering supplies together to provide as many households as possible with a nutritious Thanksgiving dinner. Thousands of Mendocino County residents rely on supplemental food, including children, seniors, students, veterans and disabled people. (Carole Brodsky — Ukiah Daily Journal)

For this reason, your local county newspapers will be producing several stories on this issue - providing as many facts as possible about the nature of supplemental food - where it comes from, who qualifies for it, and, for those who need it, perhaps for the first time in their lives - how to access it.

We spoke with providers at the Mendo Food Network and the Ukiah Community Food Bank, and data was gathered from Healthy Mendocino, NBC Los Angeles and the State of California.

According to the latest data available from Healthy Mendocino, food insecurity in the county is generally high. Food insecurity is ranked by zip code and quantified by what is called an “index value,” a numerical ranking from one to five, with “one” representing the least need, and “five” the greatest. A whopping ten of the county’s seventeen zip codes are ranked between 3 and 5, meaning that food insecurity in these neighborhoods is a profound problem. Only three zip codes- 95468, 95459 and 95469 were rated with a “one.”

Additionally, zip code regions are rated between zero and 100, with zero indicating a food-secure region, and 100 essentially translating to a food disaster zone. Four zips in the county- 95427, 95466, 95595 and 95456 all scored above 90.

According to a 2023 survey published by NBC Los Angeles, 14.99% of Mendocino County residents live below the poverty level. 16.44% of the population receives SNAP benefits, with the county’s median income at slightly over $64,600. According to August, 2025 data produced by the California Department of Social Services, 16,632 individuals, or 10,419 households in Mendocino County are CalFresh (SNAP) recipients. In 2024, 5,325 enrollees were children under 18; 8,059 were between 18-59 years of age, and 3,501 were age 60 and over. A fraction of the total number of recipients - only 1,741 individuals identify English as their second language.

Sadly, 13.5% of veterans in Mendocino County, according to Healthy Mendocino, lived below the poverty level between 2019-2023. In 2023, 37.7% of county residents lived below 200% of the poverty level- significantly higher than both the state and US average. 2,526 people over the age of 65 live below the poverty level, with 27.1% of residents 65-plus living below 200% of the poverty level. In 2024, a staggering 52.1% of children lived below 200% of the poverty level- a sizable increase over the past 3 years.

“What these statistics bring home is that people coming to food banks, food pop-ups or community kitchens could very likely be your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers or your relatives,” notes Amanda Friscia, Executive Director of the Mendo Food Network.

Food insecurity has crept up on a larger section of the county’s population, according to Jacque Williams, executive director of the Ford Street Project/Ukiah Community Food Bank. “Last week, we were seeing an increase of 30 new clients at the Food Bank on every distribution day,” she noted.

Food policy advocates are bracing for a “double-whammy” situation that could lead to profound food insecurity throughout Mendocino County and beyond. “We have a situation where we don’t know what will happen with SNAP benefits- known in California as CalFresh,” Williams continues. “If benefits are returned, the money may take weeks or more to show up on a person’s CalFresh debit card.” That fact, she says, combined with the upcoming increases in premium costs for Covered California recipients makes it almost impossible for food security advocates to plan for how much food to purchase and how many new clients to expect in the coming weeks and months.

The SNAP crisis is going to affect the economy in other ways, Williams continues. “One of our partners recently told me that in Lake County, over 50% of shoppers at one major grocery chain are SNAP recipients. The loss of SNAP benefits is going to have a wide-ranging impact on nearly every sector of our local economy. Businesses of all kinds will suffer, and people wiill have to make serious choices about whether to eat, pick up a prescription, buy gas or pay the rent,” she continues.

The Mendo Food Network is the overarching supplier of a variety of food products to 29 food pop-ups, food banks, food pantries, community kitchens and other organizations. What started out 45 years ago as the Fort Bragg Food Bank has morphed into the county’s clearinghouse for food distribution. Food slated for distribution up and down the county arrives at the Mendo Food Network warehouse, located in Willits – a 4,800-square-foot space that was purchased and remodeled, with the doors opening earlier this summer. The new warehouse space has created a more robust, efficient and geographically accessible location for all of the Food Network partners. Coastal residents continue to receive food support at the Fort Bragg Food Bank. “The Fort Bragg Food Bank is definitely alive and well,” Friscia smiles.

“We are navigating an unprecedented landscape of budget cuts and soaring food costs,” Friscia continues. “While demand for services continues to rise, our ability to meet that demand is being severely tested.” Though every donated dollar translates to $5 in wholesale purchasing power, food banks can no longer depend upon federal grants and other funding sources that once formed the backbone of their operational budgets.

To date, 6,555 households- which translates to many thousands of individuals- have been served by the non-profit organization this year, with nearly 2 million pounds of food distributed. Some food is donated and some purchased, usually at a steep discount, from purveyors who service food banks. From there, food is distributed to partners such as food pantries, soup kitchens, other food banks, senior centers, school pantries, emergency food shelters and to individual community members.

The Mendo Food Network is the home base for a cornucopia of programs that address specific types of food insufficiency. Though requirements do vary in terms of who qualifies for food assistance, in general, the overarching philosophy of the Food Network is that staff will find a way to ensure people have access to food. Staff are always accommodating and ready to assist anyone with food-related needs.

Pantry Distributions are available to anyone in need of assistance, and take place in designated, high-need neighborhoods. People receive about 20-30 pounds of seasonally sourced fruits and veggies, along with other healthy staples. These distributions take place in community centers, health clinics, senior housing, low-income apartments and churches.

The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) provides USDA commodities to those needing food assistance. These commodities are distributed at food pantries throughout Mendocino County, and contain fresh produce, protein, canned fruits and vegetables, grains, dried goods, and other staples.

Pop-Up distributions are critical to the provision of food in the county’s most rural areas. Government commodities, fresh produce, bread and donated shelf-stable groceries are distributed on a monthly basis in locations like Leggett, Laytonville, Covelo and at the Food Network’s Willits warehouse.

Collaboration between 30-plus partners helps to move food into countywide pantries, schools, senior centers, childcare facilities and cultural support locations. Partners source food from the Mendo Food Network’s discounted wholesale market to support their own food programs.

CalFresh application assistance is available at the Food Network office. Applicants need to bring a photo ID, their Social Security number and verification of income. CalFresh benefits- once they are again funded- will be loaded onto an EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) card that can be used at grocers, farmers markets and other stores to purchase food in a dignified, confidential manner. Eligibility for CalFresh is based upon several factors, including citizenship or legal permanent resident status, income guidelines and individual circumstances, particularly for seniors and/or people with disabilities, students, and families with dependents.

“Currently, clients visit us once a week to supplement weekly grocery shopping- usually amounting to anywhere from 25-30 pounds of food. Prior to the SNAP crisis, it would be typical to receive dairy products, a meat protein, vegetarian items, canned and dry goods, fresh produce, breads, beverages and even a dessert,” says Friscia. When extra produce is available, a produce cart at the Fort Bragg Food Bank is stocked and the public is invited to avail themselves of extra produce, Monday-Friday from 11:00-4:00.

The Commodity Supplemental Food Program provides 30-to-40-pound boxes of food to those in need once per month for income-eligible seniors 60 and older. Those services are provided in Fort Bragg, Leggett, Laytonville, Willits, Ukiah, Anderson Valley, Point Arena and Gualala. Seniors and homebound individuals who are clients of the Fort Bragg Food Bank may request a once-per-week delivery of food.

The “Grab and Go” program is focused on easy-to-eat food designed for people who don’t have cooking facilities. A typical offering includes things like canned proteins such as tuna or chicken, granola bars, cereal, dried fruit, ramen-type noodles, soups and electrolytes. This program takes place during regular curbside distribution or in the Choice Pantry at the Fort Bragg Food Bank.

The Kid’s Bag Program provides Mendocino Coast families with a weekly supplemental bag of food. For this program, families do not have to be clients of the Food Bank. Any family living on the Coast is eligible. The bags are full of family-friendly items like bread, peanut butter, eggs, milk, cheese, granola bars, tortillas, chips, crackers, dried fruit and nuts.

“Teacher Boxes” are available to Mendocino County teachers to help provide students with fresh, healthy snacks in their classrooms. They may be picked up at the Fort Bragg Food Bank on Wednesdays from 2:00-4:00 PM.

In 2024, the Mendo Food Network distributed 3.6 million pounds of food throughout the entirety of Mendocino County- from Gualala, up the coast to Westport, east and north to Covelo, Leggett and Laytonville and south through Willits, Ukiah, Hopland, Redwood and Potter Valleys. 172,650 meals were provided. 14,570 individuals in Mendocino County were fed, and 370,364 pounds of food was donated via grocery recovery. 168 volunteers provided 28,675 hours of service.

Our next article will list all the locations throughout Mendocino County where people can access supplemental food, and ways you can volunteer, donate or get involved. One immediate way to make the Thanksgiving holiday a bit brighter is to donate to the Mendo Food Network’s time-honored tradition: the “Turkey Challenge.”

“The Mendo Food Network purchases and distributes holiday meal ingredients to our network of partners throughout Mendocino County. Families in need will receive Thanksgiving-themed food boxes at their local food bank, pantry or pop-up location, and will have the joy of sitting down to a nutritious holiday meal. Local businesses and organizations provide matching funds through sponsorships,” Friscia explains. “Thanks to our community sponsors, all gifts to the 2025 Turkey Challenge will be matched up to $45,000, to provide everything a family needs for a wonderful holiday meal.”

This year’s Turkey Challenge sponsors include the Redwood Credit Union, Friedman’s Home Improvement, Sonoma Clean Power, Century 21 Fort Bragg Realty, Bicoastal Media, Harvest Market, 100 Women Strong, Grace Community Church, Team Insurance, Jenny’s Giant Burger, Seaside Electric, Ukiah Natural Foods Co-op, Grocery Outlet, Ledges Ocean Sports, Desiree and Terry Ramos, Stephen Gross, Mendocino Coast European, Beautiful Earth, Steven Gray, Mendocino Coast Produce, Kathleen Alexander and anonymous contributors.

To make a donation to the Turkey Challenge, visit the website at https://www.mendofood.org/turkey-challenge. For more information phone (707) 809-5669 or email [email protected]. The Mendo Food Network warehouse is located at 1250 Blosser Lane in Willits.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

Moonrise over Potter Valley (Leland Horneman)

AV EVENTS

Free Entry to Hendy Woods State Park for local residents
Sun 11 / 09 / 2025 at 8:00 AM
Where: Hendy Woods State Park
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4969)

AV Grange Pancake and Egg Breakfast
Sun 11 / 09 / 2025 at 8:30 AM
Where: Anderson Valley Grange , 9800 CA-128, Philo
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5022)

The Anderson Valley Museum Open
Sun 11 / 09 / 2025 at 1:00 PM
Where: The Anderson Valley Museum , 12340 Highway 128, Boonville
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4974)

AVVFFA Toy Drive
Mon 11 / 10 / 2025 at 10:00 AM
Where: The Anderson Valley Fire Dept., 14281 Hwy 128, Boonville
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5042)

Veterans Day Ceremony
Mon 11 / 10 / 2025 at 11:00 AM
Where: Boonville Evergreen Cemetery
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5030)

MAZIE MALONE:

Regarding PIT (Point In Time – Homeless) count…

Again the PIT data at first glance looks good on paper, but the same gaps keep showing up. There’s still no separate count for serious mental illness, just a broad “mental health disorder” label that hides how deep the need really goes. And we already have systems like HMIS (Homeless Management Information System)

(I have said this before) this system could track people’s outcomes all year long if the data was actually entered and cross-referenced.

So let’s ask some questions,

If the county already has a data system, why isn’t it being used to fill the gaps the PIT count can’t capture?

How many people with serious mental illness are actually identified and connected to support, treatment or benefits?

What does “progress” mean when chronic homelessness is rising?

Are the same people being counted year after year?

Are we tracking who disappears from the count or just who we find during the canvassing efforts?

And if the numbers look better on paper, is that progress for the people living it or just comfort for the people reporting it?

So if the Continuum of Care recognizes the system is imperfect, what steps are being taken to change that beyond the next PIT report? It will be time for the 2026 count shortly.

PEBBLES TRIPPET turns 83 on November 10. Although she has been recognized for advancing the medical-marijuana cause, Pebbles, like Dennis Peron, Tod Mikuriya, and Mary Rathbun, was much more than a "single-issue" activist. Thanks to Laura Costa for encouraging her to write this account of her remarkable life. (Fred Gardner)

Aside from agonizing migraine headaches that killed all life within me, my childhood was not exceptional. Catcher on the baseball team, swimming, standing broad jump, horseback riding and helping my younger sister develop her artistry, it wasn't until high school when I met Peaches Littlejohn, one of four Black people at Central High, who became my best friend. that something meaningful came into my life. Peaches approached me for help concerning her D in chemistry. I told her I had no such clout but that I could be her friend. We began by her climbing into the trunk of my 1950 Mercury Sedan to get into the segregated drive in theater and when the coast was clear, she joined me in the front seat as equals. I went on to help the NAACP integrate Tulsa OK lunchrooms in 1960 at 19.

I attended the University of Wisconsin, known as a liberal college but was expelled for violating rules about staying out at night and missing an appointment with the Dean, only to later be kicked out of the Memphis Cotton Carnival for raising a fuss about their whites-only discrimination. I went to Oklahoma University and started the OU Committee to End the War in VietNam by organizing a march on campus with 100 people led by a local minister and his wife. As a member of Students for a Democratic Society, I invited Paul Boutelle Vice Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Workers Party which caused a sensation and got the Human Rights Commissioner fired as co-sponsor of the event. Shortly after that, the Minutemen threw a bomb in my house which only singed the wall but didn't explode.

With one reference I left for New York City to start clean. I got clerk jobs at Sam Goody's Record Shop and Juilliard School of Music and waitressing on the side, I explored left wing politics and became a socialist revolutionary, having joined SWP, despite disagreements. I was expelled based on violating their anti-weed/psychedelics policy and became an independent activist.

I then moved to the Boston/Cambridge area where I drove a taxi to get by and raised funds for the anti-war movement by selling the Militant newspaper in Harvard Square during the revolutionary period in France when the Militant provided needed information. Being bisexual, I also linked up with Lesbian Tide for a short time.

By then, I moved to Venice California as an independent activist. Thinking creatively to get by, I placed a classified ad in the LA Free Press: 'Woman who loves being eaten seeking generous person who loves eating out.' This involved no fucking and attracted a unique type of person who put the woman's needs first which allowed for sexual experimentation with a minimum of hassle. At a time that was showing most women's orgasms to stem from the clitoris, men in general had no clue of it. It also coincided with the emergence of COYOTE /Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics, showing respect for women's labor and control of her own body, introducing the idea of prostitute's rights to the public.

1972, marijuana use was gaining momentum. I joined with 200 others to put the California Marijuana Initiative on the statewide ballot, winning 33% of the vote followed by a close vote in 1974. I moved to San Francisco where the initiative was centered and joined in with Brownie Mary, Dennis Peron, Dr. Tod Mikuriya and others promoting Cannabis Buyers' Clubs as a lead up to Prop 215 the Compassionate Use Act which passed by 56% and has grown in popular support up to 90%. Sparked by the AIDS epidemic, Prop 215 turned a negative into a positive benefiting the greater good.

My own case –10 busts in 10 years with prosecutions in 5 counties, also turned a negative into a positive based on appeal of my conviction, winning 2 things: transportation became an 'implicit right' of Prop 215 and the 'Trippet standard' introduced 'reasonably related' to one's medical condition as the quantity standard replacing the 6 plants/8 oz numbers game that 'the voters did not intend'. Winning on appeal benefited everybody, not just she who appealed. It is a lesson in the importance of losing for the greater good.

I forgot to add that I was an organizer in the first national march against the VietNam War organized by Students for a Democratic Society –the best thing SDS ever did. Also during the 70s, after Harvey Milk and George Moscone were assassinated, I along with my partner Geb started a petitioners' co-op to put initiatives on the local San Francisco ballot, which was relatively easy with only 13,000 signatures needed to earn the right to a vote (compared to a statewide vote which took half a million sigs). In 1967 we put several issues on the ballot and won them all: the Apartheid Consumers' Boycott to boycott the 'worst first' of businesses doing business with South Africa, the AIDS Research Initiative and the Nuclear Free Zone that stopped the Battleship Missouri from being homeported in SF for the purpose of attacking Nicaragua (Mayor Diane Feinstein's baby). We wrote the texts based on our instinct of how voters would vote and ran fledgling campaigns on a shoestring. We weren't taken seriously, so the opposition failed to adequately oppose us, which helped us win the Nuclear Free Zone, which we worded: 'Do you support financing a nuclear military installation in our midst?' without mentioning the Battleship Missouri as our target. Most people supported home-porting the ship but didn't want to fund it (our secret weapon).

HAYS V. WOOD*

You had to be there
To watch Barry pitching woo
At Chief Justice Bird.

‘Twas somethin’ to see.
But for the bench between them,
They’d have danced all night.

He won his case too,
On Equal Protection grounds.
Just like he’d forecast.

But strangely, somehow,
It wasn’t unanimous.
The Chief dissented (!?)

While the Gipsy Kings
Strummed and sang in the background
And we all went home.

— Jim Luther

*Randall A. Hays as Ukiah City Attorney v. Barry Wood as Ukiah City Councilman 25 Cal.3d 772 (1979)

ED NOTES

NOSTALGIC stories about Candlestick Park keep popping up. I miss it, too, especially for football. The 'Stick any day, baseball or football, especially football over that corporate hideosity in Santa Clara, a site about as related to San Francisco as Santa Rosa is to Paris.

I WAS AT THE 'STICK for the Giants against the Mets the day Ukiah's Kelvin Chapman started at second base for the Mets. There were a lot of Mendo people there that day because Chapman was, and is, a legendary local sports figure known personally to many of us who played men's league basketball against him in the 1970s. Boonville's Gene ‘Yewgene’ Waggoner one-on-one against Chapman was something to see. Both of them could have stepped into the NBA without embarrassing themselves.

ANOTHER TIME at Candlestick, and we're going way back here, I saw Orlando Cepeda hit a batting practice pitch so hard it knuckle-balled all the way out to the left field fence. I'd never seen that before or since, although I'm told it happens. I also remember the first time I saw fans throwing stuff at the Giants' cornball mascot Krazy Krab, and I thought to myself, “I really love this city. Where else would people attack a minor irritant like a cartoon figure?”

WHERE AND HOW SF got the false rep as a kind of effete, wimped out town I don't know. Among ballplayers, the city has the reputation as the worst fans in sports, the most violent, the most foulmouthed, the craziest. But anybody who went out to the 'Stick for either a baseball or a football game knew out front to expect fights and various other forms of low rent behavior, male and female. It was part of the experience. The Giants have since made acceptable fan behavior a top priority out of fear of a return to Candlestick-ism. You can't shout out obscenities that turned the air blue at Candlestick and wrecked the ball game experience for young families, and you certainly can't fight. That's over.

AT THE 'Stick the left field bleachers was fight city, meaning everyone out there who wanted to watch the game wound up dodging the yobbos fists instead. It was so far out of control you wondered, for the umpty numty time: Why? How? Where am I?

I HAD LOCKED the gates and taken the phone off the hook, just settling in with a six pack of tall Buds to watch the World Series — the memorable Bay Series between the Giants and the A's in 1989 — when there was a sonic boom, a fairly big boom by Boonville standards. That's what I thought the sound was as it hit my house. The screen went dark for just a fraction of a second as the announcers interrupted their pre-game patter to say things like, “This isn't good. It must be an earthquake. The light standards are weaving.” Then the ballplayers and their families were standing on the infield, and the rest of the night we all watched as fires broke out in the Marina, cars fell off the collapsed stretch of the Bay Bridge into the bay and, we learned later, Joe DiMaggio hustled out of his damaged house in The Marina toting $600,000 in cash in a black garbage bag.

CANDLESTICK survived intact while the Bay Bridge partially collapsed and the freeway came down in West Oakland. The Stick was built to last, and it lasted. I've always been sorry to see it go.

MUCH TALK in the Frisco media about the proliferation of coyotes in the City. I've seen many myself, especially in the Presidio, and the intriguing critters have always been totally at ease in the presence of human-type people. In many years of Mendo life, I've only seen exactly two of the little beasts, one jogging across mid-day Flynn Creek Road, the other engaging me in a long stare down, me at one end of a large drain pipe, him at the other. The standoff made me understand why the Indians regarded the coyote as a highly sentient creature, and a creature with a sense of humor. I could have sworn the drainpipe coyote was laughing at me.

THERE'S A LOT of hysteria and coyote misinformation circulating in the city, such as one young mommy worrying that an unattended infant or small child could be carried off by a coyote. An unattended child under the age of 14 anywhere in NorCal is about as rare as a coyote sighting, what with the large numbers of free range pervs and unpredictable mental cases roaming the country. Mummsies and poppsies long ago gave up shoving the kid out the door after breakfast. “Be back by dark, kjddo.” Well, not quite, but there was a time when parents weren't as terrified of life outside their front doors as they rightly are now.

BUT MOST of the coyote hysteria, in SF anyway where there are far more dogs than there are children, has to do with those wildly indulged canines. It may be urban legend, but quite a few people are claiming they know of coyotes dashing out of park bushes to carry off Little Fluffems. Not to be too hard hearted about it, but given the choice between a coyote and a poodle, right-thinking people would certainly go with coyote.

THE FRISCO PEOPLE who track the city's wildlife claim the coyote population has doubled in a year, up from about 50 to a hundred or so. That figure seems improbable, but I find it positively exhilarating.

AN ON-LINE COMMENTER offered this sensible assessment of “God's dog,” as Ed Abbey called the coyote: “Coyotes definitely do eat small dogs and cats. Large dogs usually overcome any coyote attack and are able to kill the coyote. Coyotes should be considered a danger to small children but are not a match for, and very rarely attempt to attack adult people. Coyotes can only be domesticated for the first year of their life; when they mature they become wild and unmanageable. Coyote packs tend to be smaller than wolfpacks (5 or 6 is about normal). Like wolfpacks coyote packs can be joined by human participants who are researching their behavior, and after a while the humans will be accepted into the pack. Coyotes in a pack, like wolves, are monogamous, unlike dogs, as long as the alpha mates remain alive. When the alphas die, even an omega can become the new alpha and chooses his alpha mate. Only alphas mate and reproduce. No wolf or coyote has EVER killed a pack member. Coyotes are even more ‘intelligent’ than wolves. They tend to respond more to human language whereas wolves tend to respond more to facial and body expressions. This could be one reason why coyotes are such good colonizers of urban areas.”

HANK SIMS, editor of one of our favorite websites, LostCoastOutpost.com, once posted his “Top Ten Books Off The Top Of My Head” list:

Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Glue, Irvine Welsh (“Glue tells the stories of four Scottish boys over four decades, through the use of different perspectives and different voices. It addresses sex, drugs, violence, and other social issues in Scotland, mapping ‘the furious energies of working-class masculinity in the late 20th century, using a compulsive mixture of Lothians dialect, libertarian socialist theory, and an irresistible black humor.’ The title refers not to solvent abuse, but the metaphorical glue holding the four friends together through changing times.”)
War With the Newts, Karl Capek (“A 1936 satirical science fiction novel by Czech author Karel Čapek. It concerns the discovery in the Pacific of a sea-dwelling race, an intelligent breed of newts, who are initially enslaved and exploited. They acquire human knowledge and rebel, leading to a global war for supremacy.”)
Newspaper Days, HL Mencken (Mencken’s Autobiography of the years from 1899-1906.)
The 20-Volume Patrick O'Brien Serial Novel (“Beginning in 1969, O'Brian began writing what turned into the 20-volume Aubrey-Maturin ‘Master & Commander’ series of novels. The books are set in the early 19th century and describe the life and careers of Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend, naval physician Dr. Stephen Maturin. The books are distinguished by O'Brian's deliberate use and adaptation of actual historical events, either integrating his protagonists in the action without changing the outcome, or using adapted historical events as templates. In addition to this trait and to O'Brian's distinctive literary style, his sense of humor is prominent. Technical sailing terminology is employed throughout the series. The books are considered by critics to be a roman fleuve, which can be read as one long story; the books follow Aubrey and Maturin's professional and domestic lives continuously.”
Tinker Tailor Solider Spy/The Honorable Schoolboy/Smiley's People, John Le Carre
Already Dead, Denis Johnson (“A contemporary noir, Already Dead is the tangled story of Nelson Fairchild Jr., disenfranchised scion to a northern California land fortune. A relentless failure, Nelson has botched nearly every scheme he’s attempted to pull off. Now his future lies in a potentially profitable marijuana patch hidden in the lush old-growth redwoods on the family land. Nelson has some serious problems. His marriage has fallen apart, and he may lose his land, cash and crop in the divorce. What’s more, in need of some quick cash, he had foolishly agreed to smuggle $90,000 worth of cocaine through customs for Harry Lally, a major player in a drug syndicate. Chickening out just before bringing the drugs through, he flushed the powder. Now Lally wants him dead, and two goons are hot on his trail. Desperate, terrified and alone, for Nelson, there may be only one way out.”)
Unacknowledged Legislation, Christopher Hitchens “Described as 'A celebration of Percy Shelley's assertion that ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,’ the book contains 38 essays on writers such as Oscar Wilde, P.G. Wodehouse, George Orwell, Rudyard Kipling, Philip Larkin, H.L. Mencken, Anthony Powell, T.S. Eliot and Salman Rushdie, in which Hitchens attempts to ‘dispel the myth of politics as a stone tied to the neck of literature’.”
Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel ‘Bring Up the Bodies’ is a historical novel by Hilary Mantel and sequel to her award-winning ‘Wolf Hall.’ It is the second part of a planned trilogy charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, the powerful minister in the court of King Henry VIII. Bring Up the Bodies won the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the 2012 Costa Book of the Year. Preceded by Wolf Hall, it is to be followed by The Mirror and the Light.)
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy “The majority of the narrative follows a teenager referred to only as ‘the kid,’ with the bulk of the text devoted to his experiences with the Glanton gang, a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred Native Americans and others in the United States-Mexico borderlands from 1849 to 1850 for bounty, pleasure, and eventually out of sheer compulsion. The role of antagonist is gradually filled by Judge Holden, a large, intelligent man depicted as entirely devoid of body hair and philosophically emblematic of the eternal and all-encompassing nature of war.”

THE EDITOR can't resist throwing his top ten out there: Moby Dick; The Brothers Karamazov; David Copperfield; USA Trilogy; Miss LonelyHearts and Day of the Locust; Sentimental Education; Madam Bovary; Farewell To Arms and A Moveable Feast; Desperate Characters; The Way We Live Now (Trollope); Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Homage to Catalonia and the Collected Essays (Orwell). There's probably a generation gap in effect here. Sims is a lot younger. The young 'uns heads seem wired differently. The only really good contemporary fiction I've read lately has been by Roth, Edward P. Jones, Junot Diaz, Sherman Alexie, Gillian Flynn, and not just log rollin' here, but I also liked a couple of short stories from Carolyn Cooke's Amor and Psycho. With Cockburn gone, there's no first-rate political writing that manages the wit and erudition he did. I haven't read a single book on Sims' list, but a couple do sound intriguing.

MARK SCARAMELLA’S TOP TEN (plus) in no particular order:

Red Mutiny, Neal Bascomb
I Married A Communist, Philip Roth
A Civil Action, Jonathan Harr
Lush Life, Richard Price

5a,b,c. Shah of Shahs (Kapuscinski), All The Shah’s Men (Kinzer), Out of Control, Andrew & Leslie Cockburn

For Whom The Bell Tolls, Hemingway
The Captured, Scott Zesch
Legacy of Ashes, Tim Weiner
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Benito Cerino, Herman Melville
In The Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick
American Tempest, Harlow Unger
Tom Paine: A Political Life, John Keane; Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence, Harlow Unger
The Closing Circle, Barry Commoner
Blue Blood, Edward Conlon

FROM EBAY, A POSTCARD OF LOCAL INTEREST (via Marshall Newman)

The Navarro River at Ray's Resort, Philo, circa 1950.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, November 8, 2025

PATOR AVENDANO, 29, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI, suspended license for refusing DUI-chem test, false ID.

RICHARD FLORES, 39, Ukiah. DUI, criminal threats, resisting.

OMAR GOMEZ, 21, Gualala. Narcotics for sale.

JENNIFER HENRIKSON, 42, Santa Barbara/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-under influence, smoking-injecting device, bringing controlled substance into jail.

RONALD HIGGINS, 61, Ukiah. Petty theft with two or more priors, controlled substance, paraphernalia.

ARTHUR JUDICE JR., 70, Petty theft with two or more priors, paraphernalia.

ALEX RUIZ-AGUILAR, 29, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI.

DON’T BELIEVE WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS ABOUT DRUG TRAFFICKING

Editor:

The vast majority of cocaine and fentanyl arrives in the United Stats through the Mexican border, primarily through legal ports of entry, much of it smuggled by American citizens. So, please, let’s stop listening to and discussing the stories coming out of the White House about bombing boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific as fighting drug trafficking. The bombing of boats has clearly been against international law, is definitely murder, and is totally appalling. Just another lame but horrific excuse for military action in some form yet to be clarified. Please apply similar logic to any story coming out of the White House.

Karen Cooper

Hilo, Hawaii

IT'S GONE

To the Editor:

America is no longer teetering on the brink of a constitutional crisis. For all intents and purposes, the Constitution has already collapsed. At its core, this foundational document was designed to prevent tyranny, but under the weight of relentless assaults on our freedoms by President Trump, with the full backing of Republicans in Congress, that commitment to liberty has been rendered impotent.

James Madison, considered the principal architect of the Constitution, recognized the role that human shortcomings would play in effective governance when he wrote in the Federalist Papers, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

This sober view of human nature was key to providing safeguards in the form of checks and balances to ensure that no single individual or branch of government becomes too powerful. Now, nearly 240 years later, with Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, and the support of MAGA loyalists, the guardrails separating democracy and autocracy have begun to collapse.

Jim Paladino

Tampa, Florida

MEMO OF THE AIR: That's it, kid. Give 'em the ol' razzmatazz.

Marco here. Here's the recording of Friday night's (9pm PDT, 2025-11-07) eight-hours-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO.org, on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and also, for the first three hours, on 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino, ready for you to re-enjoy in whole or in part. https://memo-of-the-air.s3.amazonaws.com/KNYO_0669_MOTA_2025-11-07.mp3

Coming shows can feature your own story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

A site of simple, video-enhanced explanations for complicated things. How the human eye works, for example. How a hard drive and a record player and a jet airliner work. How to moonwalk. Much more. https://animagraffs.com

The sound of tattoos. Pickle Rick! https://theawesomer.com/the-sound-of-tattoos-short-film/787322/

Liquid behavior from dry sand and air. Unlike everywhere else lately that someone said enthusiastically to me, "This is the coolest thing ever," this in fact is. It reminded me instantly of a movie I saw on teevee at my Uncle Jack's and Aunt Wanda's house when I was a little boy, that made a profound impression on me, about a boy interested in astronomy (as I was), who witnesses from his window a spaceship crash in the sand dunes near his house on the edge of town. It turns out to be a /trap of boiling, down-funneling sand/ that catches people, including his parents and the police, and the aliens do something that turns people into bad-dream robots of themselves that talk softly, gently, menacingly weirdly. You can tell someone's been taken over, by a tiny mark on the skin at the base of the neck (the camera moves to show you this, and the music does something tingly but also low). The boy saves the world by avoiding capture himself, while getting the U.S. Army to come and go down through the sand to the ship and break the glass around an alien octopus/brain creature, which kills it and so releases everyone from its control. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2017/11/making-liquid-out-of-sand-and-air.html

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

'GET THE F—K OUT MY PHONE': RAMS-49ERS REMATCH IS GETTING TESTY

by Grant Marek

The San Francisco 49ers have owned the Los Angeles Rams for the better part of the last half-decade. They’ve gone 8-4 in the 2020s at Levi’s Stadium (South and North), won the first-ever rivalry game at SoFi Stadium and already delivered the Rams their worst loss this season: a 26-23 overtime backbreaker in Week 5 on a short week without Brock Purdy, Nick Bosa, George Kittle or any of the 49ers’ top-three wide receivers in the lineup.

Second-year Rams linebacker Jared Verse seems a bit over it at this point.

“I got teammates — me and [Braden] Fiske — both have teammates from Florida State. You know Renardo Green and Tatum Bethune that, you know, they went to Florida State with us, they was like my brothers and everything like that. You know, they play for the 49ers,” he said on Thursday. “They text me Monday or Tuesday, ‘Happy birthday.’ I said, ‘Thank you, now get the f—k out my phone, you’re my opp. Like, I’m not messing with you this week.’

“… Even your best friends, even your brothers, like, it’s just different this week.”

Especially when you take a peek at the NFC West standings.

The Rams and Seahawks sit tied at 6-2 atop the West, but the Niners are just a half game back at 6-3. A win Sunday in San Francisco could help them leapfrog Los Angeles with eight games to go.

“Any time it’s a division game, it’s a major, major factor,” 49ers defensive end Clelin Ferrell told reporters this week. “Especially teams like this because you’ve had players on both teams that have been here for a long time and that have [been] very familiar with each other.”

In the case of Verse, that familiarity goes all the way back to college. Verse, Green, Bethune and Fiske played on 2022 and 2023 Florida State teams that went a combined 23-4, including a 13-1 final campaign together where the Seminoles were shockingly left out of the College Football Playoff because of an injury to their quarterback.

Asked if he thinks his postgame birthday wishes from his former teammates will be any different, Verse didn’t let up.

“It’s gonna be different post game,” he said with a laugh. “I want them to have sad eyes.”

Kickoff at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday is set for 1:25 p.m.

(sfgate.com)

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Mac Jones passes against the Los Angeles Rams during the first half of an NFL football game, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025, in Inglewood, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

‘THIS IS NOT NORMAL’: BAY AREA AVIATION EXPERT WARNS OF RISING RISKS OF FLYING DURING SHUTDOWN

“Aviation is very, very safe,” said Ross Sagun, “but when there’s variability, stress and confusion, you are inherently making it more unsafe.”

by Mathias Gafni

Ross Sagun flew commercial jets for more than four decades, was an air traffic controller for four years and now runs an aviation safety company in the East Bay.

Would he be worried at all about flying as air traffic controller staffing issues force flight cutbacks?

You bet.

“Yes, I’m very concerned, and if I go flying this weekend it’d be weighing on my mind,” said Sagun, who operates Benicia-based Sagun Aviation Consulting. “Aviation is very, very safe, but when there’s variability, stress and confusion, you are inherently making it more unsafe.”

The longest-ever federal government shutdown has kept air traffic controllers from getting paid for more than a month. While required to report to work, many controllers have taken second jobs, called in sick or changed occupations entirely, causing shortages.

The Trump administration has reacted by ordering airports to cut 4% of flights — and up to 10% later this month — essentially metering the traffic in the manner of a signalized freeway entrance.

“It’s safe to fly,” President Donald Trump said Thursday.

Sagun said the mandated reductions indicate an acknowledgement of safety concerns, as the feds artificially lower the flying numbers to safeguard plane-to-controller ratios at airports. But the consultant said 4% would do little to reduce workloads in short-staffed towers.

“Given that reduction, it would still overstress the system,” Sagun said. “I’m concerned something is going to be missed.”

Of particular concern are incursions in which planes could possibly strike one another on busy runways during departures and arrivals.

“We know controllers now are taking on other jobs. They work full shifts and then drive for Uber or DoorDash. How rested can they be when they go back to work?” Sagun asked. “We know from a human factors standpoint, if you add stressors, it makes the system less safe.”

Pilots have strict rules governing work hours and fatigue to keep them attentive in the cockpit, Sagun said. While air traffic controllers are not flying 500 mph, they sit in a control tower essentially juggling balls in the air, with each ball flying 500 mph with hundreds of passengers on board. Sagun compared it to a game of Tetris.

“They keep coming, they don’t slow down,” he said. “There’s no room for error.”

While the current staffing issues surround air traffic controllers, Sagun said, reducing flights could begin to affect pilot availability and safety. He offered the example of Bay Area-based pilots who don’t live in the expensive region and instead commute by plane to work. If they start missing flights, airlines might face pilot shortages, as well as captains with added stressors in their lives.

“If I was going to fly a jet today, I’d be on super high-risk alert,” Sagun said. “This is not normal and that’s when big mistakes are made.”

(SF Chronicle)

PROP. 50 PASSAGE SETS OFF A CHAIN OF POLITICAL AND LEGAL MANEUVERS

by Dan Walters

When California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50 on Tuesday, they set in motion political and possibly legal maneuvers that will ultimately determine whether its overt purpose, increasing Democratic congressional members by five or more seats, becomes reality.

The first is a political scramble among politicians in both parties to determine who will run where in next year’s congressional elections.

Ambitious Democrats are lining up to run in the newly gerrymandered districts, some of which have been tailored to favor particular candidates.

The most obvious example is a district that stretches from the heavily Republican northeastern corner of the state to the northern suburbs of San Francisco, seemingly made to order for Mike McGuire, the outgoing president pro tem of the state Senate. In creating that district, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature aim to unseat Republican Doug LaMalfa, who now represents northeastern California in Congress.

The plan would, if successful, shrink Republican districts from nine to four, meaning that in some areas, such as in inland Southern California, current GOP incumbents would be compelled to either retire or joust among themselves for survival.

Prop. 50’s political impacts hinge on the assumption that maps ratified by the ballot measure actually are in effect for next year’s elections. While it’s likely they will be used, there’s a possibility that courts will intervene.

By happenstance, Prop. 50’s pro-Democrat gerrymander and the recent pro-Republican gerrymander in Texas are occurring just as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs a major case involving the federal Voting Rights Act. Its outcome could impact both.

The Voting Rights Act, passed by Congress in 1965 to bolster the civil rights of minorities, particularly Black people in Southern states, prohibits any voting procedure “which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”

While the law bars exclusionary voting laws, it has been widely interpreted to require creation of districts specifically to increase chances for racial groups to elect representatives from their communities.

California’s independent redistricting commission, in plans drawn after the 2010 and 2020 censuses, adopted that interpretation, and the newly gerrymandered districts do as well.

However, the interpretation is being challenged before the Supreme Court in a case out of Louisiana, and its conservative members, a majority, have indicated both during arguments and in past rulings that they may consider it to be racial discrimination against white voters.

“This court held that race-based affirmative action in higher education must come to an end,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his brief in the Louisiana case. The same is true, he said, for using the Voting Rights Act to draw legislative districts that are likely to elect Black or Latino candidates.

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department monitored Tuesday’s voting and could contend that California’s new congressional maps are discriminatory and should be suspended until the Supreme Court renders its decision.

Trump seemed to hint about intervention in a Truth Social post Tuesday denouncing Prop. 50 as a “GIANT SCAM” and said that mailed ballots, by far the most prominent form of voting, disenfranchise Republicans and are “under very serious legal and criminal review.” He closed with “STAY TUNED!”

In 2001, the threat of intervention by Republican President George W. Bush’s administration thwarted plans by California’s Legislature for a gerrymander favoring Democrats, forcing them to make a deal with Republicans on maps that maintained the partisan status quo.

Even a brief interruption could undermine what Newsom and the Legislature seek in Prop. 50 because candidate filing for congressional districts opens on Dec. 19, and if the new maps are in legal limbo, current districts would be used for the 2026 elections.

(CalMatters.org)

THESE ENDANGERED PREDATORS HAVE FINALLY RETURNED. SHOULD CALIFORNIA BE KILLING THEM?

by Kurtis Alexander

A gray wolf from the Beyem Seyo pack is photographed in Northern California in January. (Axel Hunnicutt/California Department of Fish and Wildlife)

This summer, dozens of state and federal wildlife agents arrived in a remote mountain basin, about an hour north of Lake Tahoe, with an unusual mission: to scare off the rising number of wolves.

The first-of-its-kind strike team shot bean bags at the predators. It rushed them with all-terrain vehicles. It buzzed them with drones, often blasting loud AC/DC music.

The wildlife officials didn’t want to hurt the endangered carnivores — there are only an estimated 50 to 70 gray wolves in California. They just wanted to keep them off the sprawling ranches of California’s Sierra Valley, where they have killed scores of cattle.

But nearly four months later and with more than 18,000 staff hours logged, the state-run crackdown on wolves in this pocket of Plumas and Sierra counties wrapped up with little success. Almost every morning brought the sight of another dead cow.

In a sudden shift in policy, which is now being widely debated, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife broke from its strict adherence to non-lethal wolf deterrence and began killing the animals. State wildlife officials have now killed four wolves in Sierra Valley, and they continue to search for at least two more, which they plan to capture and ship to wildlife sanctuaries.

They say it’s the only way to keep the predators from eating cows.

While many wildlife experts agree that killing wolves is sometimes necessary, the state’s actions are drawing criticism from all corners. Conservation groups say the killings could have been avoided with better deterrence measures. Ranchers say the slayings should have come sooner. The state also has been chided for missteps: wildlife officials, for example, mistakenly shot and killed a juvenile wolf, thinking it was an adult.

At the heart of the backlash is an enduring tension about the place for wolves in modern-day California. The apex predator was wiped out of the state by hunters and trappers a century ago, only to begin returning last decade. While the comeback is an ecological marvel, California today is not the wilderness it once was, and conflict between wolves and people has predictably emerged.

With the state now opening the door to killing wolves, those on all sides of the issue are waiting to see how the practice evolves. Will there be more lethal actions in Sierra Valley? Will the tactics extend to other parts of the state? And what will this mean for the future of the canine in California, where wolf recovery remains fragile?

“Even though we’ve had these animals for a while now, they were in places where there was much less pressure to figure out a management paradigm,” said Arthur Middleton, professor of wildlife management at UC Berkeley, who has been studying the carnivores and consulting with state officials. “People are living with wolves and wolves are living with people. That’s why we’re talking about what mix of tools we’re going to use now.”

The question of policy is urgent. With three adult wolves dead in Sierra Valley, the area’s dominant pack, called the Beyem Seyo pack, is essentially gone, leaving a vacuum to fill. Any of three nearby packs, or their members, could move in, and attacks on cattle could resume. Also, ranchers in other parts of the state have been demanding lethal intervention.

“Personally, I think if there was a wolf or two in California it would be OK,” said Annie Tipton, who runs a ranch in Sierraville, a small outpost on the southern edge of Sierra Valley. “But we’re not Yellowstone National Park. We’re not in a place with an abundance of prey. It’s unfair to the wolves. It’s unfair to the agriculturalists.”

State and federal endangered species laws prohibit people from shooting wolves, even when they eat livestock. While ranchers generally oppose the protections, state and federal wildlife managers say the re-establishment of wolves depends on them. The laws provide exemptions for government agencies.

Officials at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife have said that nonlethal management remains their preference, but they’ve offered few details about when they will and won’t kill wolves going forward.

In a statement provided to the Chronicle, the agency said, “As the gray wolf population in California continues to grow, CDFW staff will focus on utilizing the best available science, a strong understanding of wolf biology, and successful adaptive wildlife management practices to ensure both gray wolves and California’s communities can thrive together.”

‘These wolves are smart as hell’

The vast, sparsely populated meadows and marshes of Sierra Valley, where thousands of cows are brought to pasture between spring and fall, provide easy pickings for wolves. The carnivores generally stayed in the forested mountains during the day, then descended upon the open range to feed at night.

Ranchers often used lights, electrified fences, dogs and watchmen to try to keep the predators at bay but reported limited success.

Outcry from the ranchers, alongside a handful of rural counties that have declared emergencies because of wolves, put pressure on the state to do something. Wolves had already attacked dozens of cattle in Sierra Valley during the first few months of this year’s grazing season.

Then came the strike force in early June.

State officials hoped the blitz of heavy-handed “hazing” measures would help drive the animals out — and keep them from coming back.

Each day, 18 wardens and technicians with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, sometimes joined by staff at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, began rotating in and out of around-the-clock shifts. They patrolled for wolves on nearly 20 ranches and tried to run them off.

The operation, which cost the state an estimated $1.4 million, proved challenging. Across such a large area, the wolves were too hard to find and keep away, according to numerous people involved with the initiative.

Although state wildlife officials have trapped several wolves and fitted them with tracking collars over the years, including members of the Beyem Seyo pack, most wolves aren’t collared. Also, those with collars can go undetected because of dead zones and delays in transmitting locations. Sometimes, they simply move so quickly that they’re hard to catch up to.

The wolves, mostly the Beyem Seyo pack, often attacked in places where the strike team wasn’t present or at times when it wasn’t around. Some even appeared to figure out when the staff were changing shifts, one person said, and timed their kills accordingly.

At one point, instead of trying to drive the wolves away, state officials tried to wean them off beef, by offering them roadkill, mostly deer. That didn’t work either.

“We were losing cattle (almost) every night with the strike force,” said Paul Roen, a rancher in the valley, who also works as a supervisor in Sierra County. “There just weren’t enough people here to effect change. These wolves are smart as hell. They figured things out quickly.”

Witnessing one attack on a calf during the state’s intervention, Roen recounted, “They tore it in pieces in 30 seconds.”

Roen and his brother, who run a ranching business together, have lost 42 cattle to wolves, they say, though not all have been confirmed by state or federal officials.

A dead cow typically sets a rancher back a few thousand dollars. More worrisome, many say, is the stress that herds experience when the carnivore is present. This can cause weight loss and infertility in cows and lead to a much bigger financial hit.

A drone campaign

The hazing campaign, according to ranchers, showed promise on at least one front: drones.

For five weeks, a crew led by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, based in Oregon, flew as many as four drones with thermal imaging cameras nightly, each nudging wolves along with various noises.

“The wolves start running and they keep running,” said Lori McCurdy, a master’s student at Utah State University who has been evaluating drone deterrence work in California and elsewhere.

The USDA-led crew typically broadcasted one of four pre-recorded audio clips on the flights: fireworks, gunshots, AC/DC’s hard-rock anthem “Thunderstruck” and a heated conversation between actress Scarlett Johansson and actor Adam Driver, from the movie “Marriage Story.”

The movie soundtrack, McCurdy said, appeared to be the most effective: “It’s the human voice, essentially, that scares them. Wolves have feared humans as long as we’ve known them.”

While the drones consistently repelled the wolves, the ultimate goal was to push the animals someplace else — for good — preferably a spot where they can feed on their natural prey of elk and deer.

This didn’t happen in Sierra Valley.

In total this year, the area has counted more than 90 confirmed or probable livestock kills by wolves, nearly double the number killed across the entire state last year, according to the UC Cooperative Extension program. State officials say it’s the most wolf attacks at any spot in California and likely anywhere in the West.

About 60 of the kills occurred while the strike team was present between Jun. 9 and Sept. 30. Ranchers say the real number of dead, accounting for unconfirmed kills, is much higher.

A secret plan

The plan to kill wolves, state officials would later say, came with the realization that the hazing campaign had failed to break the Beyem Seyo’s taste for beef.

The unexpected decision followed years of insistence by state officials that the wolf population was too small for lethal controls. Until this fall, California was the only state with wolves that hadn’t pursued a kill.

State wildlife managers kept the policy shift quiet. They feared pushback and even legal challenges, which could have threatened their plan: to first capture the Beyem Seyo pack’s five or six juveniles and move them to wildlife care facilities, then wipe out the pack’s three adults.

After getting consent from the federal government, state officials set out in mid-September to capture the juveniles.The roughly 6-month-old wolves would struggle to survive on their own, and they don’t have tracking collars, which makes them tough to find if a collared adult isn’t around. But state wildlife officials couldn’t find the juveniles, and after two weeks of searching, they shifted their attention to the older wolves.

On Sept. 26, wildlife officials spotted what they thought was an adult wolf during a helicopter flight. They fired a shot and hit their target.

But the dead wolf turned out to be a juvenile, a mistake that officials say was due to the young wolf’s similarity, in size and color, to the Beyem Seyo pack’s breeding male. Two other juveniles were found dead, likely of natural causes. The search for the others, which officials say may be two or three, continues.

Even after the shooting, state officials remained mum about their actions. Rumors about sharpshooters taking to the sky were never confirmed. Officials responded vaguely to inquiries from the Chronicle about what was happening in Sierra Valley, saying that their strike team had been largely successful with its non-lethal tactics.

Following the accidental killing, wildlife officials changed tactics. They decided to use tranquilizer guns to subdue the adults, then follow up with lethal injections. On Oct. 14, the breeding male was darted and euthanized. The next day, the breeding female and another adult female were similarly put down.

In a press release that disclosed the kills, California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham said the choice to take up lethal action “was not made lightly nor was it easy.”

The decision, the agency said, came after determining that the Beyem Seyo pack’s habituation to cattle as a food source was a threat to “both livestock and the ecological integrity of wolf recovery.”

‘Harassed into non-existence? ’

Rick Roberti, President of the California Cattlemen’s Association

Not everyone in cattle country welcomed the killings.

Environmentalists in the small towns of the northern Sierra, including many Bay Area transplants drawn to the region’s raw splendor, had celebrated the arrival of wolves. Some are now calling for an end to efforts to remove them.

“The wolves are being harassed into non-existence,” said Josh Hart, with the nonprofit Feather River Action! , who addressed the Plumas County Board of Supervisors this week in Quincy. “If wolves cannot survive even in one of California’s most wild areas, what chance do they have in our state?”

State and national conservation groups also are weighing in.

“We don’t support killing wolves as a means to resolve livestock conflicts,” said Amaroq Weiss, a biologist and senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, adding that wolves are still a “long way” from recovery.

While state officials and ranchers have said that the unprecedented number of attacks on cows justifies lethal action, wildlife supporters say the large toll was a result of earlier inaction. They believe the state and cattle producers should have anticipated wolves coming to Sierra Valley and been prepared to fend them off.

The wolf advocates urge more comprehensive non-lethal measures: for example, quickly removing livestock carcasses and bone piles that draw predators to the ranches and adopting more innovative cattle practices, such as training cows to herd up as a defense mechanism. Some also say that drone tactics can be improved for better hazing.

Beyond taking measures in the field, wildlife experts support expanding the state’s compensation fund for ranchers, which provides money for deterrence work, such as fencing, as well as reimbursement for lost cows.

Boosting deer and elk populations, by restoring natural habitats, is a longer-term strategy that many think could reduce the carnivore’s interest in cattle.

One of the biggest concerns that Weiss has about the recent wolf killings, beyond diluting the wolf population, is that they’ll fuel public perception that the animal is a problem. This, she says, could lead to premature rollbacks in protections.

The number of cows killed by wolves in the state, even with the spike in Sierra Valley, remains just a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of beef cows in California. This year is the first with more than 100 confirmed or probable kills statewide. Many more cattle die of non-predator issues, which include weather, injuries and poor health.

The wolf attacks, though, tend to be concentrated in specific areas, such as Sierra Valley, creating big problems for a small number of people.

Tipton, in Sierraville, like other local ranchers, isn’t happy to see the wolves die, but she’s relieved.

She and her husband, Joe, are still exhausted from sleeping in their fields for several months, guarding their cattle, at least until the Beyem Seyo pack was severed. Tipton teaches third grade during the day, so the all-nighters were especially hard. On top of that, there’s the financial blow of losing 10 calves to wolves.

“This is really different than just your normal cost of business,” Tipton said. “It’s just not sustainable for ranchers.”

The couple, who took over Tipton’s grandfather’s cattle operation six years ago, knew they had signed up for a challenge, with mountain lions and bears, and droughts and wildfires, Tipton said. But they hadn’t anticipated the surge in wolf attacks.

Now that she’s catching up on sleep, she says she hopes the wolves don’t return to Sierra Valley anytime soon.

“We’re all animal lovers,” Tipton said. “It’s what we do for a living. It’s nothing against the wolves. We just don’t think we will be protected from this animal.”

(SF Chronicle)

DOWN TO $1.18: HOW FAMILIES ARE COPING WITH SNAP CUTS

By Eric Adelson, Mary Beth Gahan, Sean Keenan, Lourdes Medrano, Christina Morales, Sonia A. Rao, Dan Simmons and Kevin Williams

In New Jersey, a single mother struggled to figure out how to feed her two young sons with $50.

In Oklahoma, a 61-year-old woman questioned whether driving to a food pantry was worth the gas money.

And in Colorado, a woman grabbed food from a Walmart dumpster.

For the 42 million people who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the country’s largest anti-hunger program, it has been a chaotic, nerve-racking week.

Because of the government shutdown, the Trump administration initially sought to stop supplying benefits. Lawsuits and court rulings and a Trump appeals created further confusion. By Friday, the Supreme Court paused an order from a federal judge that would have required the White House to fully fund the program.

For many recipients, the legal battle meant one thing: a search for sustenance.

The New York Times asked dozens of SNAP recipients over the past week how they were coping. In interviews, they talked about the confusion and anxiety, as well as the hard choices. Here are some of their stories.

Her Customers Depend on SNAP. She Does, Too.

Mary Schiely, 49, Middletown, Ohio

Mary Schiely can’t escape SNAP. It consumes her at home and follows her to the grocery store, where she has worked for almost 15 years. Most of the store’s customers depend on SNAP, she said, and so does she.

Decades ago in Middletown, Ohio, where Vice President JD Vance grew up, families worked in factories and earned a steady paycheck. But now, Ms. Schiely can measure the town’s pain through the store’s sales. This week, candy purchases were way down. Pizzas, chips and energy drinks were not moving off the shelves as quickly as usual.

“Thanksgiving is coming,” she said, “and no one is sure how they’re going to handle it.”

Ms. Schiely also depends on SNAP benefits, almost $500 a month, which augment her $12-an-hour job. Her pay vanishes quickly on rent, electricity, cellphone and Wi-Fi.

SNAP, she said, “is what puts food on the table.”

Her Baby Needs Special Formula. It Costs $75.

Latrica Williams, 26, Milwaukee

Latrica Williams has not received SNAP funds since early October.

Her baby, 4 months old, was born with a heart defect and needs a special formula that does not trigger his allergies. Ms. Williams had paid for it with a combination of federal programs, including SNAP.

“Formula is really expensive,” Ms. Williams said. “It’s like $75 a can, and I don’t have $75 to get him a can of milk.”

In Desperation, a Dumpster

Arianna Payton, 25, Granada, Colo.

On Tuesday night, Arianna Payton sneaked into a Walmart parking lot and climbed into a dumpster.

“I grabbed as much as I could,” she said. “I wasn’t even looking to make sure that it was safe.”

When she got home, she inspected everything. She retrieved a few bags of frozen vegetables, meal replacement shakes, cheese and fruit. She also found some loaves of moldy bread that she thought she could salvage.

Last week, Ms. Payton, who has had health issues for years and lives on disability insurance, tried the only nearby food bank.

“Everything was gone,” she said.

The Federal Government Fired Her

Andrea Grimaldi, 55, Alexandria, Va.

A year ago, Andrea Grimaldi was the one donating to those in need.

This year, she is the one receiving donations. Ms. Grimaldi was fired in February from a new job as a Head Start specialist at the Department of Health and Human Services. She received her last paycheck in May.

Although Virginia will subsidize SNAP benefits through November, she has started to ration just in case. She still has $176 of her $292 monthly SNAP benefits left from October. Family and friends have also organized food and gift card deliveries.

She has cut her expenses, including streaming services and ride shares. But she has been forced to dip into her savings.

Ms. Grimaldi has applied to jobs for months without success. She never expected to rely on government benefits, including SNAP.

“It could happen to anyone in the blink of an eye,” she said.

Working, but It’s Not Enough

Jennifer Lunn, 55, Lewisville, Texas

Jennifer Lunn went to a food pantry for the first time last Saturday. She’s a customer service agent with four children. For the past two years, she has been able to feed her children because of SNAP.

Without it, she found herself this week at the Heart of the City Lewisville, a pantry near her house, north of Dallas-Fort Worth. Ms. Lunn received a box with chicken, canned goods and salad ingredients.

“This is something I never thought I’d have to do,” she said.

With SNAP, she usually buys noodles, potatoes, vegetables, chicken and ground beef, anything to keep her teenagers fuller for longer.

But, she said, they plow through the food. “Two and a half weeks, we’re done,” she said.

Will His SNAP Benefits Come?

Larry Robinson, 61, Orlando, Fla.

Larry Robinson clutched his shopping bag. He was on his way to get some fruit. He’s been on SNAP since he retired as a mental health counselor in 2019.

He pulled down his Under Armour shirt, revealing a scar on his chest from triple bypass surgery. He said he has had to “double down” on his health concerns since then.

His SNAP benefits are supposed to arrive on Nov. 9. But he is unsure whether he can count on it.

“I financially put some stuff away,” he said, “but it will definitely provide hardship for me, because I wouldn’t have that meal that I’m used to having.”

Two Sons and a SNAP balance of $50

Rosy Hernandez, 32, Passaic, N.J.

When Rosy Hernandez, a single mother, called SNAP for assistance, an automated message said that her November payment, usually $748, was not yet available and might be late or not issued at all.

Her current balance: $50.

“It’s going to look a little bit different for me, restocking my fridge this month,” she said.

Ms. Hernandez, who has relied on SNAP for two years, cares for her sons, Xavier, 7, and Adrian, 4. She does not work because Xavier, who has autism, needs constant supervision. His needs make keeping a job difficult, although she is looking for part-time work.

She is nervous about relying on a food pantry. Xavier has sensory issues and demands specific food.

“His diet might have to be forcefully changed,” she said. “And there’s just no telling how he will react.”

Off the List: Turkey Sandwiches

Jeanne Nihart, 44, Anoka, Minn.

At the grocery store, Jeanne Nihart, a single mother, picked up some deli meat, cheese and French bread for her 12-year-old daughter, who loves turkey sandwiches.

Then she remembered that her next SNAP payment was at risk.

“I can’t justify buying meat right now,” she recalled thinking at the time.

Ms. Nihart stopped working in 2010 because of health issues, including fibromyalgia, a chronic disorder that comes with pain and fatigue.

She receives a monthly $1,060 disability payment and relies on subsidized housing, Medicaid and a SNAP benefit of $436 a month.

She expects her next SNAP payment will be half the full amount. “It’s better than nothing,” she said. “But half doesn’t keep us fed for the whole month.”

A Farmer’s SNAP Economy

Julia Asherman, 39, Jeffersonville, Ga.

Julia Asherman runs a farm, selling fruits and vegetables to small grocers and green markets. Her customers are often SNAP recipients.

She’s bracing for slower sales and a financial hit.

Late fall, Ms. Asherman said, is the worst time to take SNAP benefits away from farmers’ customers. That’s when little money is coming in, but farmers must spend money to prepare for spring planting.

In her town, half the people who buy her produce are on SNAP.

And she needs it, too, for her and her 3-year-old son.

“My take-home at the end of the year already hovers around zero, like many farmers around this country,” she said.

Homeless and Dreaming of Food

Wesley Peake Jr., 51, Tucson, Ariz.

Around noon on Sunday, Wesley Peake Jr. sat on his wheeled walker outside a grocery store. For breakfast, he ate crackers and cheese, and now, with his hunger slowly building, his mind conjured images of his favorite foods. Chicken, yogurt, bananas.

But Mr. Peake, who is homeless, had no money. And his monthly SNAP benefit, $57, may not come as usual on Nov. 8.

The food that SNAP provides usually lasts him about four days. That is a big help because it means fewer trips to a soup kitchen. His osteoporosis has weakened his bones. “I can’t walk that well,” he said, “because my hip sockets are deteriorating.”

He sits outside the grocery store, hoping that passers-by will drop some change in his hands. These days he is reluctant to ask people outright for help. They, too, may be losing SNAP.

Food Is Low, and the Car Needs Gas, Deana Pearson, 61, Chouteau, Okla.

The grocery store is 12 miles from Deana Pearson’s trailer. The closest food bank is 10 miles away; the closest gas station is nine.

Which trip is worth the gas money?

Ms. Pearson, whose jewelry business closed during the coronavirus pandemic, is running low on food. Without her usual SNAP payment, around $287, she must rely on what she has left. On Tuesday, that was $1.18.

A gallon of gas is $2.50.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she said. “I’m hoping that maybe someone will give me a ride to the food bank.”

One Thing After Another

Jessica Mayne, 34, Denver

Jessica Mayne began receiving SNAP in 2019, after tumbling misfortunes.

Just before the pandemic, she and her husband lost their jobs. Then there was an accident that totaled her car. After she and her family moved in with her mother, her husband was diagnosed with kidney failure, which requires dialysis and a special diet.

“We were just trying to make it, and every single time something happened,” she said.

They have made progress: Ms. Mayne works full time as a behavioral health technician, while her husband works part time in construction management.

They had hoped to get their own place. But Ms. Mayne must now handle the loss of her SNAP benefits, $650, for their family of eight.

“We’re stretching all of our meals,” she said. “Everyone hates me for it, but it’s necessary.”

For dinner recently, she used one pound of ground beef, instead of three, mixing in rice and beans for added protein. She also took on more credit card debt to pay for groceries.

“It’s just shameful. I feel bad about it,” she said of her situation. “I feel like I’m failing as an adult.”

(NY Times)

THE WOLF IS AT YOUR DOOR

Walkin' past the kids comin' back from the party
Smiles on their faces you remember so well how it was
Nights in the back of that Buick you got runnin'
Your baby by your side told the whole world you're comin'

Work so hard to do what is right
Believed in what you're doin' but so many fights
Trusted too many, believed too much
Workin' your life to the bone

There's a wolf at your door
He wants your money, wants your soul
A wolf at your door
You give it all, he wants more
There's a wolf at your door

He says he's playin' for keeps
Breathin' down your neck
Boy, it's sure hard to sleep
With a wolf at your door

They'll take it away when you're not lookin'
Look you in the eyes tell you how good they're doin'
Smiles on their faces are lies to keep you from knowin'
You're not guilty you are the victim
But you still pay for the crime
Don't look for trouble, it'll always find you in time

You work so hard to do what is right
Believed in what you're doin' but so many fights
Trusted too many, believed too much
Workin' your life to the bone

There's a wolf at your door
He says he's playin' for keeps
Breathin' down your neck
Boy, it's sure hard to sleep
With a wolf at your door

I won't be broken, I'll fight 'til I drop
Blood runnin' hot in my veins
But they won't be satisfied
Until they take everything

You work so hard to do what is right
Believed in what you're doin' but so many fights
Trusted too many, believed too much
Workin' your life to the bone

There's a wolf at your door
He wants your money, wants your soul
A wolf at your door
You give it all, he wants more
A wolf at your door

He says he's playin' for keeps
Breathin' down your neck
Boy, it's sure hard to sleep
With a wolf at your door

He wants your money, wants your soul
A wolf at your door
You give it all, he wants more
A wolf at your door

He says he's playin' for keeps
Breathin' down your neck
Boy, it's sure hard to sleep
With a wolf at your door

There's a wolf at your door
He wants your money, wants your soul
A wolf at your door
You give it all, he wants more

There's a wolf at your door
He says he's playin' for keeps
Breathin' down your neck
Boy, it's sure hard to sleep

Wolf at your door
He wants your money, wants your soul
Wolf at your door

Walkin' past the kids comin' back from the party
Smiles on their faces you remember so well how it was

— Chester Burnett (1952)

TAIBBI & KIRN

Matt Taibbi: We had big news this week. Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, and there is a great exaltation in the land. Walter, what was your first reaction to the news?

Walter Kirn: So I decided to test all the good will I’ve gotten by making predictions that come true by making one that was very far-fetched and based on, I’m going to say, faulty polling information. Because from what I gathered on Monday between Sliwa and Cuomo, there were enough votes to beat Mamdani, but it turned out that even combined, their votes didn’t equal his.

Walter Kirn: So anyway, I said I’d eat crow, and here I am doing it. But what did I think, first of all? Well, I thought New York City is, in a way, even deeper in the bubble that it has blown for itself. It’s looked at as a place that is in advance of the rest of the country, that’s somehow ahead of the rest of the country, but for many years now, I felt it was way behind, frankly. And because it has a sealed media environment and listens only to its own radio stations and it reads its local paper and so on, I think it might be one of the least in-touch places in America.

Walter Kirn: So when I saw that Seattle had retained a mayor, it appears, less progressive than Mamdani, a mayor who then fought off for a progressive challenge where I thought, “Wow, New York’s going off into space by itself.” It has the money to do that. It has the geographical isolation and the self-confidence to do that. But that’s basically what I felt like I was doing. I was watching a rocket launch.

Walter Kirn: I was watching a society or a miniature society launch itself into unknown dark space while the rest of the country backed off a little bit and said, “What have we wrought?” So I’ll be interesting to watch, interesting to watch it land on its own planet and carry out its own separate destiny, frankly, because I think it is a parallel universe now, for better or for worse.

Matt Taibbi: Well, the question is, I was at a medic convention here in New Orleans, and a lot of people are asking, is this a burgeoning phenomenon that’s going to spread across the nation, or is this just an isolated thing that’s only going to happen in New York? And I think the answer to that question is that it’s a phenomenon that’s going to spread because a lot of the ideas that Mamdani is propagating are in line with pretty much everything that people are taught in schools.

Matt Taibbi: There are 85,000 DSA chapters across the country. It’s a large number of people, and it has a lot of traction with young people. Can we see the graph on the demographic results for the exit polls? Because this is fascinating, some of the results. So the largest demographic is Gen Z women. And what’s the number there? I can’t even read it on my screen.

Walter Kirn: 84%, it says. 18 to 29 blue.

Matt Taibbi: Okay, yeah. 84% versus 12%.

Walter Kirn: Those are Soviet numbers. 84% of an age cohort and gender cohort for one candidate. My goodness. Because 12% of people are functionally illiterate and don’t know their own names. So that might be everybody actually.

Matt Taibbi: It’s a significant, notable number. We were talking before the show about how you were joking that, and I’ve seen this, people joking about this all over the internet, that if you want to get a date in New York from now on, you’re going to have to know the rap. And I don’t know if that’s reflected in these numbers. The Gen Z numbers for men were 68%, which weren’t that far off from the 30 to 44 group. I guess we call those millennials?

Walter Kirn: Right. I’m losing track of the boundaries between generations and the supposedly stereotypical characteristics of each generation.

Matt Taibbi: Me too.

Walter Kirn: I’m also wondering exactly how these numbers were gathered, but let’s just stipulate that they might be roughly accurate.

Matt Taibbi: Either way though, I think it continues a trend that we’ve seen nationwide, which is that there’s a couple of them. Number one, there’s a huge gender gap in voting. Trump took advantage of it nationally with the gender gap for men. In this race, you see there’s an enormous gender gap when it came to Mamdani versus Cuomo. And also that younger voters versus older voters, the farther you go down the spectrum, the less likely they are to have a firm attachment to one of the two traditional parties. So I think it is a snapshot of things to come, but New York is unique.

Walter Kirn: New York is not only unique, it’s singular in America. Where else do people not have cars? New York City. Where else do people really depend on public transport in a fundamental way to get back and forth to work? There aren’t many cities.

Matt Taibbi: Where else does less than 3% of the population know anything about wrestling?

Walter Kirn: Right. Yes. Or bowling. And there are brief vogues for bowling that sweep through New York. They have rock and roll bowling, or they make it sexy in some way. But the fact is that the real estate costs and bowling alleys don’t pencil out. But also, where else do people live in tiny apartments of aging and decrepit natures that are incredibly expensive? That’s the thing that I find most interesting here, this promise to basically keep rents down. And wasn’t there a guy who ran on that a couple of years ago, The Rent Is Too High Party?

Walter Kirn: Why didn’t The Rent Is Too High Party get traction when I found him incredibly authentic and probably someone who worries about the rent? Whereas I don’t find Mamdani as someone who is likely to be all that worried about rent increases. The other thing that I didn’t see reflected in that bar graph was voting by class or by income. And from what I gathered, the richer you were, the more likely you were to vote for Mamdani.

Matt Taibbi: Well, yeah.

Walter Kirn: Okay? And the poorer you were… There he is, Rent Is Too Damn High Party. Talk about racism. Hey, you good democratic socialist. Jimmy McMillan gets kicked to the curb as some kind of a joke candidate, and then you repackage his message, put it in the mouth of the Columbia professor’s child who is a rapper. By the way, he also stole the rap stuff, okay? And you appropriate everything about this, and then you package it again for Vassar graduates.

Walter Kirn: Okay, got it. Anyway, I find that the more I look at this, the more it seems to be a revolution from above by somewhat underemployed college graduates or people who I think are younger, and I have kids in exactly this demographic, so I have a right to speak here, and who are trying to get started in life and having less success perhaps than they might’ve imagined because everything’s going to rent and $5 and $6 coffees, which that’s what I would’ve capped. I would’ve capped the cappuccino prices.

Matt Taibbi: Coffee cups.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. And I would’ve made them larger, frankly. I would’ve made cortados and flat whites, I don’t know, 30% larger. Anyway, so that’s what’s happening. The working class out there in the Bronx and Queens and Brooklyn, in those neighborhoods that you pass through on your way back and forth to the airport and so on, the ones you don’t pass through, are being led along a certain path by more educated, and I don’t mean smarter, affluent people…..

*Those Folks on the Colorado* (2014) by Samuel Denoncour

MAMDANI AT THE CROSSROADS

by Niela Orr

On election night on Tuesday, as the talk of percentage points and reporting precincts updated on my screens in minute-by-minute increments, I was ready to go to bed early, as I’d done last November, once those election results started rolling in. This time, I hadn’t allowed myself to prepare to celebrate. My nervous system could only take so much. Like Bill Clinton, I wouldn’t inhale.

Then the Associated Press made the call, announcing Zohran Mamdani as the winner of the New York City mayoral race. My partner videocalled me from Steinway Street, a main thoroughfare of Astoria, where Mamdani lives and which he has represented as an assemblyman in the New York state legislature since 2020. A group of people spilling out of Moka & Co cheered and embraced each other.

Soon enough, the percolating instrumentation of ‘New York,’ Ja Rule’s piercing 2004 posse cut, was playing on my TV, and Mamdani strolled out to deliver a rousing victory speech:

“New York City, breathe this moment in. We have held our breath for longer than we know.” It sounded as if he was talking directly to me. “We have held it in anticipation of defeat. Held it because the air has been knocked out of our lungs too many times to count. Held it because we can not afford to exhale.”

Later that night, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post shared its next day’s front page, which depicted the mayor-elect wearing an all-red outfit, clutching a hammer and sickle overhead. “The Red Apple,” was the headline. The subhead: “On your Marx, get set, Zo! Socialist Mamdani wins race for mayor.”

Mamdani, used to being misrepresented by his detractors, anticipated the caricature, opening his speech by quoting the onetime leader of the Socialist Party of America: “The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity’.”

Van Jones, the Obama-centrist/CNN political commentator, tone-policing the speech, described Mamdani’s onstage persona as evincing a “character switch” and said he was “almost yelling.” But I heard someone projecting his voice to be audible over a roaring crowd, managing what sounded like slight nerves and unabashed happiness. And by the time he told Donald Trump to “turn up the volume,” I was used to his own rising tone.

The speech was both sweeping and precise, by turns tender and truculent. Mamdani positioned himself once again as both an equity-minded reformer and an anti-establishment crusader. There were invocations of “hope,” and it was hard not to hear the echo of one of the slogans for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign. “Tonight we have spoken in a clear voice: hope is alive,” Mamdani said. “While we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible.”

He stayed on message, and repeated once again his three campaign promises of fast and free buses, universal childcare, and a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments. He called this triptych of initiatives “the most ambitious agenda to tackle the cost-of-living crisis that this city has seen since the days of Fiorello La Guardia” – the pathbreaking leftist politician who governed the city from 1934 to 1946, in Mamdani’s view the best mayor New York has ever had.

The speech was full of shout-outs, as victory speeches tend to be: to the more than 100,000 volunteers who helped him to get elected, to his campaign team, to his parents (the filmmaker Mira Nair and the political scientist Mahmood Mamdani), to his wife, the artist Rama Duwaji.

Mamdani once released a hip-hop song under the moniker Young Cardamom, and his campaign – which came out of nowhere, and seemingly required him to be everywhere, hitting every stop, from SubwayTakes to TikTok to ‘The View’ to local news – at times resembled that of a rapper on a mixtape run in the early 2000s, surprising everyone but himself.

His victory speech wasn’t a diss track, though he mentioned Trump eight times and of his main opponent said: “I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let tonight be the final time I utter his name.” He also referred (without naming him) to Cuomo’s father, Mario, governor of New York from 1983 to 1994: “A great New Yorker once said that while you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose. If that must be true, let the prose we write still rhyme, and let us build a shining city for all” – alluding to Cuomo’s 1984 “Tale of Two Cities” rebuke to Ronald Reagan.

But the most interesting portions of Mamdani’s speech, to me, were the impressionistic lists, which conjured in more detail “every New Yorker, whether you voted for me, for one of my opponents, or felt too disappointed by politics to vote at all”:

“For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery-bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns. These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet over the last twelve months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands.”

And then he moved from this cinematic montage of laboring hands to a series of medium shots of city residents, and added in a very tiny borough check:

“I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas, Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses, Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties. Yes, ‘aunties.’ ’To every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point, know that this city is your city, and this democracy is yours, too.”

He nodded to an 1199 organizer he met outside Elmhurst Hospital who is forced to commute into the city because rent is too expensive, and a disappointed woman he met on the BX33 bus, and Richard Chow, the taxi driver he joined on a 15-day hunger strike outside City Hall in 2021, when cabbies were protesting for debt forgiveness, “who still has to drive his cab seven days a week.” “My brother,” he said, “we are in City Hall now.”

He promised a new age of “relentless improvement” in which the city “will hire thousands more teachers. We will cut waste from a bloated bureaucracy. We will work tirelessly to make lights shine again, in the hallways of NYCHA developments where they have long flickered.” This busted-windows imagery also managed to evoke damn near every beautifully grimy lyric by a 1990s New York rapper, from Jay-Z to Ghostface Killah to Nas and Mobb Deep, who grew up in the Queensbridge Houses, one of the many public housing projects planned by La Guardia’s administration. Where Nas and the Mobb shot videos at Queensbridge, or referenced its signage on their album covers, Mamdani went for the deep-cut lyrical allusions (perhaps too lyrical; some things are better not romanticized). He continued:

“Here, we believe in standing up for those we love, whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many Black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall. Your struggle is ours, too.”

These moments of parataxis, in which people in a list are positioned on the same plane, are politically suggestive. Where Mikie Sherill, the Democrat who won the New Jersey governor’s race, quoted Emma Lazarus, the author of ‘The New Colossus,’ the poem inscribed in the Statue of Liberty, Mamdani’s speech was reminiscent of Walt Whitman’s ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,’ with its passionate evocations of commuting New Yorkers, or even Woody Guthrie’s ’This Land is Your Land.’

The tableau of workers conjured in Mamdani’s victory speech also brought to mind the mural by Diego Rivera for the ground-floor wall of Rockefeller Center, which was partly installed there in 1933. ‘Man at the Crossroads’ showed a worker manning machinery at the center of a scene contrasting capitalism and socialism. Rivera later said he had been given the theme “Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future.”

The painting, with its dense imagery and bold colors, was filled with groups of people, representative of different social strata, including: soldiers on the battlefield; girls exercising in a stadium; unemployed laborers protesting on the street, attacked by the police; wealthy New Yorkers playing cards and dancing in a nightclub, oblivious or indifferent to everything else. The Rockefellers approved Rivera’s plans – but in April 1933, a conservative writer complained that the work was anti-capitalist propaganda.

In response, Rivera doubled down, adding a portrait of Lenin holding hands with a multiracial cohort of workers at a May Day parade. Nelson Rockefeller tried to get Rivera to censor the painting. The artist wouldn’t relent, but offered to add a countervailing force on the capitalist side of the painting, either Abraham Lincoln “surrounded by John Brown, Nat Turner, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Harriet Beecher Stowe” or “a scientific figure like Cyrus McCormick, whose reaping machine had contributed to the victory of the Union forces by facilitating the harvesting of wheat in the fields depleted of men.” The design consultancy that commissioned the mural on the Rockefellers’ behalf declined, and the mural was destroyed the next year before it could be completed. (Later, Rivera used photos to reproduce a new version of the painting for the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, called ‘Man, Controller of the Universe.’) E.B. White in the New Yorker described Rivera’s stance as “a ballad of artistic integrity.”

Mamdani, like Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads, finds himself at a crucial intersection, between his Democratic Socialist beliefs and the world financial capital’s commitment to profit. He made a concession to centrist New Yorkers in the last days before the election, by agreeing to keep Jessica Tisch on as police commissioner. She’s no Abraham Lincoln, but her presence in the administration is evidence of compromise by a man who has said that he would prefer not to hire new police officers and to cut the NYPD’s overtime budget, and that homelessness and mental health crises should be dealt with not by the police but by a new office of community safety.

But Mamdani is a politician, not an artist. Who knows what will happen from here on out? But his speech, with its denunciation of corruption and calls for inclusion, sounded something like a ballad of political integrity.

(London Review of Books)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

"So yes, billionaires should start paying their fair share. For example, why is Social Security capped at 200 grand, and above that number, no more contributions from the wealthy?" That's right in principle. The trouble is, Daddy Warbucks and his team of lawyers and grateful politicians will see that it never comes to pass. At worst, your billionaire will shift house to his fifth residence in Zurich and renounce his US citizenship."

LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT

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With a Mayor From Queens, the Borough Is Having a Moment

Newsom, Eyeing 2028, Tries to Mess With Texas: ‘Don’t Poke the Bear’

Trump Loyalists Push ‘Grand Conspiracy’ as New Subpoenas Land

Airport Disruptions May Get Worse This Week

A Timeline of the Legal Saga Surrounding SNAP Payments

A Two-Headed Coin That Always Comes Up ‘Trump’

FAMILIES IN LIMBO AFTER SUPREME COURT ORDER INTERRUPTS FOOD STAMP PAYMENTS

In many states, it remained unclear how the Supreme Court’s Friday night order might immediately affect low-income residents.

by Tony Romm, Miles G. Cohen, Chris Hippensteel & Taylor Robinson

Millions of low-income families around the country confronted new delays and disruptions to their food stamp benefits on Saturday, after a late-night Supreme Court order allowed the Trump administration to continue withholding some funding for the nation’s largest anti-hunger program.

Only one day earlier, states including Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Oregon had started sending full benefits to the roughly one in eight Americans who receive aid each month, seeking to put an end to weeks of uncertainty and spare the poorest Americans from severe financial hardship.

But the process appeared to grind to a halt on Friday night. The Supreme Court granted an emergency request by the Trump administration to pause an order issued by a federal judge, who had required the White House to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The decision once again upended food stamps, which are funded by the federal government and administered by states. It marked the latest turn in a weekslong legal battle waged by local leaders and nonprofits, which have filed multiple lawsuits to ensure that about 42 million low-income Americans would not lose their ability to buy groceries during the federal shutdown.

(NY Times)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it.”

— Moses Hadas

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

— Robert Frost (1912)

19 Comments

George Hollister November 9, 2025

The founders framed the US Constitution with the big power hungry egos, partisan or otherwise, that dominate Washington today. The founders did not put constraints on national debt that could threaten to bring the ship down sooner than we know. What a mess.

Reply
- Harvey Reading November 9, 2025
  
  National debt is money we owe ourselves. Tax the wealthy scum, like we did in the 50s. You wingnuts get all upset over anything that is simple, and works. This country, except for brief interludes, was created by, and for, the wealthy who took it as a matter of fact that they would call the shots…to enforce what would benefit themselves…the rest of us for the most part, except for brief interludes, bowed down to their greed
  
  Reply
- Bob Abeles November 9, 2025
  
  Huh?
  
  Reply
  - George Hollister November 9, 2025
    
    Do I really need to explain? People like Trump, et.al have always been around, including here in the USA. Right now the action is in the courts. Trump will be gone in 3 years, and made impotent in less than that. What’s up next? A Democratic Party power grab.
    
    But looming in our near future is a currency crisis because of uncontrolled government deficit spending. There is no solution to fix this for those who choose to stay, except tighten your belt. There will be much complaining, and blaming. It will be difficult for government to even make things better, since what government has done for the last 90 years is all government knows how to do and that is what created the problem in the first place. This will be a mess. Europe may end up worse off than us, since they have Putin on their door, and have been depending on the USA to provide their national defense so they have been able to afford their much championed welfare state.
    
    Reply
Nobody November 9, 2025

Public Service Announcement: “The AVA all the way”!!!

Reply
Chuck Dunbar November 9, 2025

Hope

There are signs of hope here and there:

The Dutch—reasonable, good people, overcoming a strong right-wing movement in their recent election. The right went too far for them, got too radical, outdid themselves and did themselves in. If the Dutch can do it, so can Americans.

The recent elections back east, especially Mamdani’s. His victory, and his victory speech, reminds us of what passion and straight talk and charisma look like. A man of the people, who truly cares for the people.

Nancy Pelosi announcing her retirement. A good job she did for so long, time to leave now and make way for younger blood to meet the times. New blood for the Dems. Schumer needs to go also. Kamala Harris needs to go away. We need winners, not losers.

Then there’s Trump’s continuing actions and related events that dare Americans to say: ‘That’s too far, that’s not right.” “That’s not America.” Too many to count, but here are some: That Ballroom, the shutdown, SNAP crisis, ICE on the streets, the job market heading down, fancy Florida parties for the rich in a fancy home, federal troops in our cities, the world-wide tariff fiasco, planning for the Venezuela military intrusion. These actions and events are all too much—way too chaotic and disruptive— for an America that tends, usually, toward the middle ground and the reasonable way.

There’s the American people standing up for the country—The massive “No Kings” protests, the largest seen in American history. They will continue and they will grow.

And there’s our old anthem from years ago, Dylan’s masterpiece. My wife and I attended a small coast concert this week. Two fine musicians, one from Newfoundland, one from Quebec, both immigrants now living in Vermont. They played, as an encore, in French, “The Times They Are A’Changin.” It was moving, beautiful, the same song we all loved back then, in another language than our’s. A powerful song still, one of hope. Time to bring that one back, make it the truth again.

Reply
- Norm Thurston November 9, 2025
  
  The song has never gone away, Chuck. It’s always relevant. That’s the beauty of it. :-)
  
  Reply
Me November 9, 2025

I’ve always been told that someday America will fail but not by invasion from an outside force, but from within we will implode. Then another force will enter in and take over without having to lift a finger. Always made me fearful and sad, and now I can see how it might just well happen.

Reply
Too Too November 9, 2025

“There’s a wolf at your door…”

Not a positive situation, but rather a dangerous situation, for our fellow sentient beings, the wolves.

People are going to equate their presence with doom.

Reply
- Chuck Dunbar November 9, 2025
  
  “There’s a wolf at your door…”
  
  For sure: Here’s excerpts from David Brookes, writing this week on the “authoritarian wolves” —like Putin and Trump—who are all too common in the world’s governments:
  
  “…In the minds of the authoritarian wolves, history is a Manichaean struggle. It’s not between left and right or rich and poor; it’s between the warriors and the weenies. The warriors see themselves as the strong ones, the men and women of steel, the masters of aggression. They are the kinds of men you saw at the Republican National Convention — Dana White, Hulk Hogan — the kinds of men Pete Hegseth and JD Vance are playacting at. The warriors recognize one another — the AfD in Germany; Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. There’s a hint of the wild animal to them: no rules, no limits, just the law of the jungle…
  
  The wolf centralizes power and generates fear among those around him. He plays endless dominance games. His acolytes rise and fall on his whim. He never admits error. He is unpredictable because nothing reduces people to submission as quickly as the threat of random punishment. Any technocrat can do the expected thing, but the wolf is the master of reckless action: Putin invades Ukraine. Trump declares a trade war on the world. The wolf has inherited systems with procedures and norms, but the wolf operates on manual overdrive. The human brain is programmed to focus on the unexpected, so you can never turn away.
  
  The wolf needs to show he is the great protector. That means he needs to show himself savagely destroying the forces of evil, and if the forces aren’t big enough or threatening enough, he has to exaggerate them. Putin built his power by attacking Islamic terrorists from Chechnya. Trump goes after immigrants and alleged drug smugglers from Venezuela.
  
  There is always a high level of anger and resentment in any society. The wolf needs to find the right scapegoats in order to manage and direct that anger. Putin turned on the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky because the people resented the oligarchs. Trump turned on Musk because who really likes a guy who just got a $1 trillion dollar pay package? Scapegoats can range from elite universities to Democratic prosecutors to the corrupt generals in the Chinese or Saudi regimes, but they will be found. Large portions of the public want the high to be brought low…
  
  Throughout this column I’ve been calling the authoritarians wolves. I mean it as an insult — predators who are ravaging the world. But the authoritarians take it as a compliment. They know they are wolves! But they believe the world needs wolves to protect the good, decent people from the ruthless fancy people who are their actual enemies. And here’s how authoritarianism feeds on itself: The more wolves there are in the world, the more each nation needs to find its own.”
  
  Reply
  - Chuck Dunbar November 9, 2025
    
    So, of course the wolf is not just at the door, he’s actually made his way inside and it trying to take over…
    
    Reply
    - George Hollister November 10, 2025
      
      There are always wolves waiting to be at the door, if not at the door. Always. It is a matter of the question of how vulnerable do individuals want to be? If handouts are expected, and demanded from the government, then all the wolves have to do is take power in government. The life line of handouts then becomes a leash.
      
      Reply
      - Chuck Dunbar November 10, 2025
        
        George, I think you’ve missed Brookes’ point. He’s talking about whole governments taken over by evil people–the wolves who then become more and more monstrous, and can, at worst, destroy lawful rule and civil society. That’s much, much more consequential than just interrupting benefit programs–“handouts” in your lingo.
        
        Reply
        
        Chuck Dunbar November 10, 2025
        
        One more brief comment, then I will shut-up. In fact the wolves of whatever persuasion would throw you in jail, George, along with Bruce–both free thinkers, anathema to the rules the wolves lay out and enforce with their brutal militias.
        
        Reply
        
        George Hollister November 10, 2025
        
        The power of government in the hands of wolves is always where societies are in danger. That is a lesson we should have learned from the 20th century. The only immunity is to limit the power of government, and limit the potential power of wolves.
        
        Reply
        
        Harvey Reading November 10, 2025
        
        Government is always under control of the wealthy scum, and long before the 21st Century. For brief periods we commoners are allowed to think we are in charge in the US, but that is only because they want us to think that. I anticipate their control over us will increase ever faster with AI, which will be programmed for ever-increasing and subtle mind control over us, and we will cheer…and blabber about its wonders on “social media”.
        
        Reply
Kimberlin November 9, 2025

Lambert Lane Bridge Replacement

I wonder if it is possible that since Veterans Day is tomorrow, that this could have something to do with this project being on hold? Once a Marine always a Marine.

Reply
Julie Beardsley November 9, 2025

Here’s a short list of books I’ve loved that are more recent:
“Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver
“The Secret History of Bigfoot” by John O’Connor
“The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, A Novel” by Steven Sherrill (a really fun book)
“Lionel Asbo, State of England” by Martin Amis (very funny)
“The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber” by Julian Rubinstein
“Foreskin’s Lament” by Shalom Auslander
“Empire of the Summer Moon” by S.C. Gwynne
“On Bullshit” by Harry G. Frankfurt
“The Crimson Pearl and the White” by Michel Faber
And anything by Anthony Bourdain, Diana Gabaldon, Irvine Welsh, David Seddaris and Bill Bryson.

Reply
gary smith November 9, 2025

That alien invasion movie Marco spoke of is called Invaders From Mars, from 1953. It scared the hell out of me as a kid. I’m going to have to revisit it to see how it holds up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invaders_from_Mars_(1953_film)

Reply

Mendocino County Today: Sunday 11/9/2025

19 Comments

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