Mendocino County Today: Monday 11/10/2025

Warm | Noyo Mural | Pebbles Birthday | Silverspot Butterfly | Terrible Trio | Spring Museum | Beardsley Booklist | Hendy Mushrooms | Socialism Tutorial | Be-Bops Veteran | Climate Change | Holiday Offerings | Horriballroom | Orchid | Yesterday's Catch | Shooting Swans | Boonquiz Returns | Bar Trans | Superconscious State | Noyo Amanitas | 49ers Lose | Unhappy | Shoeshine Stand | Farm Sale | Trump Booed | Speaker Johnson | This House | Leverage | Longest Shutdown | Lead Stories | Public Transport | Saudi Eyesore | Left Chill | Not Pretty | Forgotten Man | Wonderful Evening | November Night | Sufficient | Jewish Cowgirl

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ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES and dry conditions will persist through Tuesday with overnight valley and coastal fog. Wet and unsettled weather conditions will impact the area starting mid to late in the day on Wednesday. This will bring heavy rain and wind Wednesday night. Thursday, snow levels are expected to drop as low as 4,000 feet with potential additional precipitation. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A partly cloudy 48F this Monday morning on the coast. Our forecast is holding mostly the same with a mix of clouds today & tomorrow then rain arriving on Wednesday. The timing of the arrival keeps changing, so stay tuned. Maybe a break Saturday & early next week, we'll see ?

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PEBBLES TRIPPET 83RD BIRTHDAY PARTY

Monday Nov. 10th 12:45 pm (PST)

Join us tomorrow for Pebbles 83rd birthday. Doors open tomorrow at 12:45 pm. Pebbles will appear at 1:00pm. We’ll have a short film to show, and then we’ll go around the Zoom for people who would like to share their thoughts with Pebbles.

If for any reason there’s an issue, email pebblesbirthday@gmail.

Thanks for your participation,

Jack Rikess

Join Zoom Meeting
Date/Time: Nov 10, 2025 12:45 PM
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86580863866?pwd=NB8Gady5bBfgp4YCUpkix0SIjupknt.1
Meeting ID: 865 8086 3866
Passcode: 375939

Check out this video about Pebbles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5-pifn1QOg

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THE TERRIBLE TRIO

Dear Editor,

I commented by email and watched the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors meetings so far in November. 

Three supervisors are in support of destroying a beautiful lake, destroying the Russian River watershed and also allowing Lake Mendocino to dry up. Because how does a diversion work without water? Diversion is a delusion without water to divert. 

These supervisors didn’t listen to one fact. The only reason water exists now is because it was stored and filled by Lake Pillsbury. Without the storage, diversion will allow all water to flow away. Completely away. No water will exist, for northern or lower Eel or Russian, for maybe 60% of the hottest time of the year. Maybe more than that in a drought.

Water travels very quickly to the ocean. Water is a very destructive force given record rainfall and no holding it back. But instead of more storage, which both rivers need, the supervisors are destroying what storage there is to use. With new technologies, fish can have access, go-arounds, and ladders. But this wasn’t even offered. 

Only two supervisors get it. Only two are visionaries, seeing the water flow away without any benefit. Only two see the impact on their communities, their people’s dreams destroyed, from removing the water storage capabilities. 

Makes me sad to see a gorgeous pristine lake destroyed, sad for ranchers to lose livelihoods and sad three supervisors chose a huge corporation’s wants over their neighbors’ needs.

Catherine Lair
Ukiah

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FORT BRAGG’S LARRY SPRING MUSEUM SUPPORTERS HOPING TO PRESERVE HIS LEGACY

by Carole Brodsky

Unless you’ve been there, it’s almost impossible to describe the Larry Spring Museum of Common Sense.

Certainly, one of your first impressions is that one is walking back in time. Exhibits are displayed using Spring’s original sheets of typed paper - evoking the feeling of museums and art collections dating back to the 1950s.

The collection is an astonishing array of scientific experiments, wooden animals, geological samples, paintings, writings, ramblings, and personal objects that represent the life’s work of one of the county’s more unusual heroes: Larry Spring.

Spring, who was born in 1915 and died in 2009, was a man who was not confined to the ordinary. As a young person, he was exposed to scientific ideas, and when he discovered the burgeoning world of radio and television transmission, he found his passion and his vocation. This led to the opening of Fort Bragg’s first television and antenna shop, which afforded Spring the tools for a lifetime of exploration and creativity — what he encapsulated as “common sense physics.”

The museum, cared for and curated by executive director Anne Maureen McKeating and a devoted group of board members and volunteers, is in need of support, and McKeating hopes the community will come together to provide the resources necessary to preserve Spring’s legacy.

Following the death of Heather Brown, McKeating was given the torch of responsibility for the care and curation of the museum. “My friend Heather worked with Larry for about 10 years. She helped Larry with a variety of things - creating a website for him and doing some publishing. I started visiting Fort Bragg to help Heather, and following Larry’s death, we began ‘activating’ the museum. When Heather passed unexpectedly, I was the person who inherited the museum.”

McKeating notes that living in Canada — especially these days, when crossing the border can be fraught for citizens of either country — has made managing the museum more challenging. She has assembled a small, dedicated cadre of board members who are determined to keep the museum afloat. Mixed media artist, Nathan Maxwell Cann, Anne Beck - interdisciplinary artist and team member of The Rhinoceros Project, and fourth generation Fort Bragg native and social organizer, Megan Caron, handle much of the day-to-day operation of the museum, along with local volunteers.

“It’s important to celebrate our legends, and that is what the museum does,” McKeating continues. The museum was developed over the years, infused with Spring’s creative drive — starting out as the community’s humble television shop and morphing into a space that is representative of Spring’s boundless curiosity and devotion to experimentation.

Spring tinkered with a variety of experiments and ideas, and his methodology can be seen in the exhibits. Like many people in his generation, Spring didn’t waste a thing. He used everything and anything to help him model his ideas.

“The isolation in the Fort Bragg community at the time Larry was active was helpful to him,” McKeating continues. “This is not a university town, so Larry literally let the energy and the landscape be his teacher. That’s what we try to keep doing with our museum programming — we’re trying to channel that spirit of inquiry.” Anyone who had a TV connected to Larry at some point. He was also involved in real estate, so some folks knew Larry through the buying and selling of property. “He didn’t live extravagantly, but he had means, so when he wanted to pursue experimentation and convert the television shop to the Museum of Common Sense, he could do it. Like a lot of self-educated folks interested in art and science, Larry found the time to work on his passions following retirement.”

The walls of the museum are filled with Spring’s paintings, and to be brutally honest, they probably don’t represent the pinnacle of his creative genius. “We have heard anecdotally that Larry loved Bob Ross. From what we can tell, Larry painted mostly from photographs. In his archives, we have found photos that correspond pretty closely to some of his paintings.” Spring painted as a way of memorializing places that he had visited. His feather paintings are probably the most conventionally well-done pieces in terms of artistry.

What Spring was, says McKeating, was an excellent photographer. “Larry left us an extensive photo collection. His compositions are complex, especially the photos taken during his military service in North Africa. You can see that a lot of soldiers would go to these places and stay apart from the population because of their limited comfort level. Larry got right in there. We have a huge slide collection and beautiful images of his travels.”

In the museum’s back room, Spring’s mineral collection is displayed, and the cases are filled with his quirky and often amusing comments about the minerals and specimens he found. “Larry was a rockhound. He traveled around, largely in the American Southwest and California.” He was a member of the Mendocino Coast Gem and Mineral Society, and was particularly fond of picture stones, and named what he saw with whimsy and a practiced eye.

One wall of the museum’s front room holds a display case filled with his “Little Wooden Creatures,” animals made from found pieces of wood that he enhanced to make even more realistic. “We’ve seen photos of them in someone’s home from the 1950s. Larry had them on display in the television store. He had a brochure made that would invite people to come into the store to see the wood creatures free of charge. He was definitely a bit of a showman,” McKeating smiles. They were never offered for sale.

And then there are Spring’s experiments.

He used some of his television equipment to measure and verify the speed of light. He spent years verifying a wide variety of scientific theorems, including verifying the speed of electrical current in the television lead line, verifying Lenz’s Law — a new basis for understanding friction, verifying the Quantum Theory, and verifying that an electrical current produces a circular magnetic field around a wire.

He made even more “discoveries:” discovering the spherical shape of a quantum, which he labeled a Magnesphere. He conducted many experiments around the concept of the Magnesphere, which involved them producing alternating polarity, stating that they were affected by compression and expansion, and that they produced alternating polarity by alternating current. From there, he discovered what he called the non-orbiting “Spring Atom,” in which an electron is a neutron and proton pair. Magnetism fascinated Spring, and many of his experiments revolved around the use of magnets. He was an early proponent of solar energy and developed what he called “The Mendocino Brushless Levitating Solar Motor,” which demonstrated his interest in magnets and solar energy.

There’s been very little updating to the displays of the museum, which is by design, according to McKeating. “When younger people come in, they cannot believe what they’re looking at. They’re so used to second-hand experiences mediated by a screen. We kept it analog very deliberately, to preserve the feeling of nostalgia. I’ve always loved small collections. When you walk into these historic places, there’s even an aroma that you can sense. The museum works on all of the senses, and we keep it active by having new and different exhibitions.”

“Larry was known to freely welcome everyone to his place. He wasn’t just a traditional old-timer. He was expansive and generous,” says McKeating. That generosity has continued, with the museum being a gathering place for music, arts events, poetry, and workshops.

“Larry used to have classes in here. We’re trying to do the same thing, to support the culture of the commons by being collaborative and sharing resources.” Given the dwindling state of resources for projects like the museum, McKeating feels this generosity needs to be fostered between all like-minded organizations.

Currently, the museum is sharing space with Redwood Time, an ongoing community arts and science installation co-curated by Ann Beck. The project focuses on a creative rethinking, re-imagining, and re-visualization of the timeline suggested by the tree rings within Fort Bragg’s C.R. Johnson’s Memorial Redwood Tree.

“We will be continuing to work on stitching the Redwood Time fabric maquette over the winter.” The maquette is a 1:1 scale depiction of the iconic redwood round, but with new conceptions of time and place adorned on it. A loss of grant funding has forced the museum to pare down some of the original activities planned for this project. “We’ve been seeking funding to exhibit at the dry sheds at the Mill site. Our hope is to have the community version return to the dry shed and display it up there.”

The museum is reaching an inflection point. “We’ve always maintained that the museum was in a state of what I call ‘curated decay.’ It’s sort of a tip of the hat to the ever-changing nature of all things. I believe it would be Larry’s wish that some things were allowed to decay.” Some restoration projects are beyond the expertise of McKeating, the board, and volunteers. “I know enough to know that I’m not doing the right thing,” she smiles. The physical state of the building—and its impact upon the health of the collection has McKeating concerned.

“We painted the outside with a sealant to protect the building from dampness. We run dehumidifiers and read the relative humidity on a regular basis—not that there’s much we can do about the humidity.” Some of Spring’s real estate papers have been archived by the Fort Bragg/Mendocino Coast Historical Society. Because of all these different types of items in the museum’s collection, real conservation is impossible.”

“Keeping the museum afloat is not easy. We are in a crunch, trying to figure out how to keep it sustainable.” The loss of grant funding has hit the museum hard. “We’re at a point where we need donations and partnerships, or we’ll have to begin creating a succession plan for the collection. We’re putting together a membership and sponsorship program that will be launched soon. But we need sustainable cash flow to keep going.”

Norm De Vall knew Spring and had a perfect description of him. “Norm told me, ‘We were all coming up here from the Bay Area during the Cold War. All kinds of wacky stuff were going on. There was a television store where Larry worked. We just called it Larry’s Place, because no one was totally sure of its primary purpose.”

“That’s what we’re trying to continue,” McKeating explains. “Larry’s ashes are in the museum. That big lamp on his desk? That’s Larry,” she smiles.

School groups are always welcome to visit the museum. The museum is located at 225 E. Redwood Avenue in downtown Fort Bragg. The museum is open on Wednesdays through Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m., or by appointment.

For more information, visit https://larryspringmuseum.org.

(advocate-news.com)

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JULIE BEARDSLEY:

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.

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SO MUCH LIFE, Taken at Hendy Woods Wildcat Campground Loop (KB)

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SOCIALISM, A TUTORIAL, A PUBLIC SERVICE BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE BOONVILLE DAILY

MOST OF US know by now that the rightwing describes even the tamest liberal as, variously, "leftist" or "left-leaning" or "communist" or, among their heavy hitters , "Marxist." Of course the rightwing has conflated socialism and communism for years as, say, social security, in their dim eyes, becomes a “socialist” program devised by “communists” in the Roosevelt Administration, of which there were zero. I recently read a really dumb article by a black scholar named Deroy Murdock that began, “The sinister plan to fire teachers for being white is naked bigotry and Marxist.” He refers to a scheme by guilt-ridden libs in Minnesota to atone for the sins of the past in this crazy, color-coded manner is not a good idea and, as Professor Murdock writes, bigoted, clothed or unclothed but not even faintly “Marxist.”

MARX’S sociology was pegged to social class, not race, as in the working class creates the wealth stolen from them by the owning classes and, over the long haul, the owning classes wind up owning just about everything unless the working class takes it away from them, by force if it comes to it. Which has happened in Russia, China and Cuba led by Marxists. Russia and Cuba failed, China became more of a fascist state than anything approaching democracy.

NATURALLY, it's in the interest of today’s owning classes, who count media ownership among their most useful possessions, to describe any program or movement that might cost them money as “socialist” or “Marxist.” Their propaganda has worked to convince millions of Americans, mostly Trump followers but many others as well, and many of the duped of the working class, to vote against their own best interests, against themselves and against the welfare of their families.

THE PROB in this country is that both parties are funded by the wealthy. If you apply a Marxist class analysis to, say, Mendo Democrats, you'll find that the most enthusiastic of them, the Westside of Ukiah for instance and up in the hills for another instance, are drawn from the financially secure sectors of the middle and upper middle classes. Everyone else lives east of State Street and here and there in pockets of nearly Third World squalor with only dope and booze as succor.

THE DEMOCRATS pretend not to be class-based by faking concern for the interests of working people and the poor but become rich in office defending the interests of the wealthy, while Republicans make it clear they're organized to protect wealth and to keep back the poor. In the view of the Boonville daily both parties are utterly, irremediably corrupt with the two least capable people in our country — Trump and, before him, Biden —leading us to a likely violent dissolution.

IT ANNOYS hell outta me to hear socialism constantly linked to monsters at the head of monstrous states. If you're even going to get into the socialism conversation you ought to at least know the diff between it and other isms and something of its history. For instance the fact that many towns in the United States, including nearby Eureka in 1915, elected Debsian socialists as mayors and to city councils. (There were many socialists on the Northcoast in the early 20th century among loggers, millworkers and miners especially. And among loggers and mill workers, especially Finns, in pre-War Fort Bragg, there were many socialists and even a few communists. Finnish immigrants were split between Red Finns and White Finns, the latter committed to the Czar of Russia, the former to the Bolsheviks of Russia. The saddest photograph you will see is a group of Red Finns setting sail from Noyo Harbor in a boat they made themselves for the Red promised land of Bolshevik Russia, not one of them ever heard from again.)

"NO TO SOCIALISM IN AMERICA." That slogan pops up on placards wherever rightwingers assemble. I wish every person who brandished the S-word in public had to also present a brief essay demonstrating his or her knowledge of the difference between communism, socialism and fascism. I'd include anarchism but that would be asking a little too much homework for the average bluster-brains whose heads, if you had their contents on film, would look like ten movies played simultaneously upside down and backwards.

ONE MORE TIME: Socialism is not the same thing as communism, especially communism of the Lenin type. Bernie Sanders is not Pol Pot or Fidel Castro or Mao Tse Tung. Mendocino County's pioneer tweaker, Reverend Jones, was simply a nut with the gift of gab who called his robbery of dependent persons and exploitation of credulous lawyers “socialism” because, to the fashion-driven sectors of the population in those days, that made Jones much cooler, more sophisticated than the acquisitive faith healer and meth-fueled nut case he in fact was.

AS AMERICA CAREENS politically rightward with catastrophic results for everyday citizens — Trump every day — the opposition will be called socialists on the safe assumption that to millions of people socialism is what Fox News says it is.

WHAT IT IS, and what it has been in this country, is Medicare and Social Security and, hopefully, single payer health insurance for everyone. Socialist ideas have a long and honorable tradition in America and characterize all the governments of Western Europe and many in Asia and Africa.

IF YOU WORK for wages and you aren't a socialist you are politically in opposition to yourself.

WHENEVER I hear some blowhard blowing hard about the dangers of socialism, I wonder if the speaker knows anything at all about socialism in its many incarnations, from the Leninist variety as installed by Stalin in Russia to the tepid version as represented by the liberal Democrat, Bernie Sanders, not to mention the commonsense social insurance socialism practiced by Trump's favorite people, the Norwegians.

SANDERS said during the last campaign he wanted our oligarchs taxed at 36 percent. There were shocked gasps from the rightwing that such a suggestion was positively Bolshevikian, but the capitalist Depression-era president Franklin Roosevelt put the income tax at about 96 percent on the big incomes. Of course the super-rich, from whose class Roosevelt rose denounced Roosevelt as a “class traitor,” screaming that their money was being confiscated. Which it was, and put to useful social purpose, too, and, hopefully, will be again when Americans finally realize how badly the rich are ripping off the rest of us.

ROOSEVELT'S socialist programs saved capitalism from itself, re-distributing just enough wealth in the form of Social Security and federal jobs programs to stave off serious insurrection. World War Two employment also helped pull the US out of the Great Depression. Single Payer Healthcare (or MediCare for All), despite what the yobbos on Fox claim, would save millions and put an end to the current medical fraud dominated by the pharmaceutical companies, the medical insurance combines and the corporatized medical centers now feasting on America's cheeseburger-fattened flesh.

EVEN A NORMALLY sagacious ava reader recently described AOC and her three insurgent Democrat allies as “radical left.” Back when words still had meaning, “far left” were the Bolsheviks. A determined little fellow named Lenin added a new wrinkle to Marxism which, boiled down, was himself and his adherents as the vanguard of the revolution who would run the country on behalf of working people, working people being too goddam dumb and irresponsible to run things themselves. But what happened was the vanguardists were simply another ruling class, driving around in limos and enjoying the houses and summer houses of the aristocrats they'd murdered, banished and replaced.

THE VANGUARDISTS also murdered the Mensheviks (liberals), who comprised the Russian liberal-left. The Mensheviks believed people would peacefully opt for socialism in a mixed capitalist-social welfare context if given the choice.

SO, CLASS, we have "far left" with the Bolsheviks wherein the state owns everything right down to the neighborhood barbershop, and the lib-left with the Mensheviks who create a mixed capitalist-social welfare state and nobody gets killed creating it.

OUR CAPITALIST COUNTRY basically consists of four political groupings: The far right, more accurately called fascists anywhere else, and which always includes most of the Big Money, as it did with Hitler, as it does with Trump, although in the US some of it is liberal, at least until it's threatened. Second, you have country club Republicans of the small business type who are mildly liberal on social issues so long as they're left alone to make money; they go with the fascists in the crunch; third, there are the lib-labs of the Mendo type who think Democrats will make things better but are so comfortable inside the bubble themselves they are clinically delusional.

LOCALLY, the lib-labs are people who think our reps — Huffman, McGuire, etc. — are “progressive.” Finally, there is the lib-left, no farther left than Bernie and Liz and the four young women in Congress who the Trumpers and Fox News consider the “far left.” Much of the Northcoast electorate is lib-lab-ish but to the left of Pelosi-Huffman wing of the Democratic Party. Bottom line: we're absolutely politically screwed at the state and national level, and maybe a third of the way down the road to fascism.

THERE is no “far left” in America. It died in 1955 along with the old Moscow-oriented Communist Party USA. There were a few dwarf Lenins around in the 1960s but they generated even less enthusiasm than the Moonies and the Manson Family, and a hell of a lot less enthusiasm than sex, drugs and rock and roll. Bernie, Liz and the four young women constantly vilified by the hard right, and Pelosi-Huffman "liberals,” are no more threatening than Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. They are liberal reformers, not revolutionaries.

PS: Tommy Wayne Kramer has lately gone over to Maga-think while constantly recommending local socialist upgrades — adequate funding for Ukiah-area firefighting and hazard pay for food store clerks, for example. Kramer's a smart guy, and a very good writer. His Sunday columns enliven our intellectually entombed county like no other. I know he reads a lot so I'm recommending a crash course in the isms via Edmund Wilson's seminal primer, “To the Finland Station” where, if the columnist reads with the understanding he's capable of, he will conclude that Bernie, any other place in the world, would be a social democrat, placed comfortably in Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic Party and even more comfortably placed among the sensible sectors of today's Democrats. Which is why Bernie has again reverted to the tame precincts of mainstream liberalism as represented by Democrats.

FDR, some people still argue, saved American capitalism from real Bolsheviks of which Bernie is definitely not one. Comrade Kramer, if he reads with even half-attention, will learn the diff between a communist, a socialist, a fascist, a Bolshevik, a Menshevik and so on. A funnier version of basically the same primer is George Bernard Shaw's “The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism…” Bernie, in the Bolshie-Lenin-communist-socialist context, would be a Menshevik, the democratic socialist political party murdered unto oblivion by the Bolsheviks.

If You’re Going To Talk Socialism, and you have even a grain of integrity, you’ll study up at least enough to have some idea what you’re talking about. There’s also even simpler texts around like “The Idiot’s Guides” to the various isms. The idiot’s guides are funny, but even funnier is George Bernard Shaw's “The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism” which, as you can see from its title, assumes that women, being smarter than men, are also generally more educable.

THESE aren't distinctions without a real difference. They matter because, as our country descends into widespread chaos and the accompanying civil pain certain to ensue, life and death arguments over who gets what and how much will be back again with the same life and death intensity it was fought over during our Great Depression.

THE REPUBLICANS brandish the term “socialism” like everyday Americans should be afraid of gramp’s and gram’s social security and ought to be absolutely terrified of single-payer health insurance. As if the Democrats intend to bring US a few federal amenities to take some of the sting out of life, particularly life now, as crises multiply and intensify for most people. I wonder if “socialism” scares anyone other than millionaires and billionaires, and even the savvier plutocrats among them understand that if they don’t give up off a few bucks for life’s necessities for the rest of us, their heads could wind up on pikes, their perfect teeth grinning from their severed heads.

THE TRUMPS of the Roosevelt era also brandished socialism as a boogeyman that Americans should fear, that if Roosevelt, a plutocrat himself, guaranteed a few of the basics for his fellow Americans and taxed the rich 90 percent to pay for them, we’d be finished as a country. We got jobs and social security and hope, and the only people who complained were the very rich who were compelled to pay their fair share to support the country that made them rich.

IT ANNOYS me no end to hear the Trumpian yobbos scream “socialism” without the slightest notion of what they’re screaming about. And it’s simply sad to watch working people support Trump, a man who would do a George Floyd on them without a second thought if it were in his interests to do it.

BUT THIS IS WHAT we’re getting and what we’re going to get from the Trump Republicans — fear of socialism, a term most Americans would be hard pressed to distinguish from a peanut butter sandwich, and the fear of “socialist” civil disorder at a time when millions of people have the much more immediate fear of being out on the street, jobless, no income and now, food-less.

ONCE UPON a time in America there really were socialists organized as a Socialist Party of millions of registered voters. Their standard bearer was the great Eugene Debs, a railroad worker from Terre Haute. Debs once threatened to free the popular labor leader Big Bill Haywood, imprisoned on a false murder charge in Idaho, by bringing armed sympathizers to Idaho to free Haywood by force, and right there’s your contrast with the “socialist” Bernie Sanders.

A REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN named Matt Gaetz of Florida said of the Democrats: “They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door.”

GOT THAT AMERICA? All that stands between you and MS-13 next door is… the Democrats. (If that’s true, learn Spanish as fast as you can.)

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM, which is not communism, is a good thing, as a visit to one of the European countries quickly reveals. We should be so lucky to have a country with universal health care, affordable day care, and the ability to live without the fear of financial ruin if you contract a serious illness. Perhaps one day we'll join the rest of the civilized world.

CHURCHILL usually gets the credit for the old saw, “Any man who is not a socialist when he's twenty has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist at age forty has no head.” I've made it headless into my eighth decade, having been a socialist all my conscious days and, in my case, that consciousness light bulb fluttered on when I was about twenty from a combination of books and experience, inchoate as my great dawning was. It's surreal hearing ideas I've taken as obvious truth for sixty years being recited by Bernie Sanders on national television — not only being recited but resonating with millions of people, especially young people.

SANDERS gets derided by the hard left as merely a "nominal" socialist, more of an FDR liberal than whatever the hard left means by a real socialist. Well, there he is talking to millions, while the real socialists are still in the echo chamber checking each other's credentials. Bern's soft FDR-like socialism is much more workable here in our rapidly fraying country because Bern's socialism is based on nothing more radical than a fair system of taxation with the proceeds going to working people. FDR taxed the shit out of the rich, hitting the greedy bastards at 95% on the big incomes, of which there were then a lot fewer. Bern's proposals are at a positively wimpy 40%.

TO THIS SOCIALIST, almost all the left stuff I read is dependent on theoretical models that leave out the catastrophic damage that an industrial-based society has parlayed into an iffy future for the planet itself. Substituting the faculty socialists as bosses of smoke stack economies would be pretty much a lateral move, and simply continue the multiplying catastrophes. Which is why I'm drawn to James Kunstler, a libertarian doomer, who seems much more in touch with the social, eco-realities than, say, most contributors to CounterPunch. He's also a very lively, funny writer. The left hasn't had a lively, funny writer since Cockburn.

I SUSPECT that a lot of socialist thinkers would like to see themselves in the big black limos, meaning them as the ruling class in place of the present one. Which is what happened in the Leninist models of socialism that took power in Russia and China and Cuba. It said, “You people are obviously too goddamn dumb and irresponsible to rule yourselves so we're going to run everything for you.” To hold on to power these socialists murdered the opposition. Bernie is not that kind of socialist, hence his appeal to the millions of Americans shut out of Clintonia. I think he's this system's last hope, and I also know in my bones it's all poised to fall apart in unpredictable but predictably ugly ways.

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CLIMATE CHANGE’S EXISTENTIAL CRISIS

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

The wheels are coming off the Good Ship Climate Change, and crop yields from Wind Farms are expected to be low once again this year.

The sky continues not to fall, and predictions that Fort Bragg soon will be submerged beneath 16 feet of melted igloos are, once again, predicted to be predictably wrong.

Bill Gates is among the latest (and once among the loudest) of the Climate Change cheerleaders to commit apostasy; more to come. The gates are open, word is out, and the longest running hoax of our time is being shredded.

The entire climate change industry is, in fact, facing an existential crisis. If drastic steps are not taken immediately it’s certain to bring about social and economic horrors: lower gasoline prices, construction of nuclear power plants and curtailment of federal government mandates on the kind of car you are permitted to own. “Journalists” and columnists will be forced to shelve their climate stories along with the ones on the Russian collusion hoax and all the stories on Joe Biden being fit as a fiddle and sharp as a tack.

Also: unemployment checks for Michael Moore, Bill McKibben, Greta Thunberg and Al Gore.

It never made sense, in the same way it never made sense men could literally become women by donning a dress and telling nearby morons that He is now She. Or that Lives Mattered based on skin color.

Or that diverse viewpoints should be censored, which was the reality for opinions ruled unacceptable by climax czars on every campus and at every major media outlet.

And Global Warming never made sense in its own day-to-day operations. None of the hot predictions ever materialized.

How did all the (supposedly) brightest minds at universities and other government employment agencies go astray in their full-throated endorsements of Global Cooling? (next, Global Warming, then Climate Change.) How could several decades of “science” have tumbled into a face-plant in so inglorious a cul-de-sac?

Maybe it turned sour when it was decided the so-called “science” was settled and no further discussion, opinion or research need be considered. The New York Times, when it banned contrary theories about future climate shenanigans, led the way to closed minds on climate discourse since the 1990s.

The science-y experts had used computers, you see, that produced precise readings of how climate would manifest in coming months, years, decades and forever, despite these same experts being unable to tell us whether or not it would snow on December 15th. Or who will win the Super Bowl.

No one was allowed to dispute these fanciful ‘facts” nor the opinions of Los Climatistas when it came to guarantees of melting snowcaps, rising tides and a dismal future for you, me and spotted owls. Alternate viewpoints, they said, came from slow-witted sorts who didn’t work in important government and university labs, in and among the mooing herds in the science chorus.

In the parallel world of realistic evaluations, four years ago more than 1300 scientists, including 300 in the USA, signed off on a detailed statement refuting the climate change narrative; our friends in major media outlets ignored the story. But when President Lobotomy told us climate change was a greater threat to humanity than atomic warfare it was solemnly reported by, yes, the New York Times.

Ten years ago the Paris Accords were hailed as the biggest world news since the Magna Carta. They mandated limits on everything, all to save the delicate planet, if it isn’t already too late and if we spend all our money right now! Or next week by the latest. Today, those agreements everyone went dizzy over are mostly ignored.

Americans have been lied to for so long, the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf needs re-imagining: Al Gore staggering about the village shouting “Real big catastrophic climate emergency again today!”

We recall Gore’s apocalyptic and dishonest film “An Inconvenient Truth” that promised pterodactyls dying on melting sand dunes and frozen boiled whales in Lake Mendocino. Congenital liar Bill McKibben (hero to environuts everywhere) fudged climate statistics with “hockey stick” adjustments and 8-year old Greta scolded farmers in Nebraska for declining to plow fields with oxen.

I’m predicting the Global-Cooling-Global-Warming-Climate-Change game has entered its Sudden Death overtime period. Soon cheerleaders and propagandists from Big Media will quietly turn down the volume and dial back coverage of imaginary catastrophes.

The noise will die down, much the way delirium over safe spaces, Trump-is-Hitler, proper pronoun usage, Me Too! and yodeling have gone quiet.

Finally, TWK can quit wearing his propellor powered beanie and Tom Hine can resume burning tires in his back yard.

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HORRIBALLROOM

by John Arteaga

Oh my god! Who would have guessed that our great country could slip so quickly into what can only be described as an authoritarian dictatorship? What more proof of this fact could one require than the shockingly sudden demolition of the historic East Wing of the White House? This century-old structure, an historic building, besides providing offices for the First Lady ( I guess this one hardly used it), was where all tours of the White House go through. It had a 40-some seat movie theater much beloved by numerous presidents over the years, as well as the ‘Situation Room’ a bomb shelter type safe room underground.

As anyone who has ever tried to build anything in compliance with building codes knows, you’re not even allowed to break ground on a project before the building, zoning, planning and fire departments sign off on your detailed plans, but, as with so many things… unless you are Donald Trump. This was surely a significant benchmark on the transition from being a nation of laws and not men, to one of a cult of personality, where the Dear Leader feels free to act in a way completely unconstrained by any of the laws and norms that rule over everyone else in our society. What better illustration could he have made of it his presumed freedom to trample over, crush and annihilate anything he feels like without any fear of consequences or accountability, than to order up heavy equipment to demolish the east wing as if it were a dilapidated outhouse on his personal McMansion property?

How could this have happened to this historic piece of our nation’s capital, co-owned by every one of us American citizens!? Where were all the planning, zoning, and all the other agencies who normally have complete say over what you are I may or may not do with our property, especially in such an important historical location?! Were ALL of them too cowed by the fear of the Orange One’s retribution?

Did you see the concrete chewing excavator taking it down? The amount of rebar exposed? Clearly this building was designed and built to last basically forever; it hurt my heart to see that beautiful slate roof being crushed up like so much trash.

And, oh my God, have you seen the mockups of the soulless gigantic warehouse (albeit festooned with all manner of faux classical adornments applied like the kitschy gold crap with which he has defaced the Oval Office) it is HORRIBLE! And ENORMOUS! With a footprint of 2 acres (!) and absolutely no architectural distinction of any kind, it will have all the aesthetic value of a Costco warehouse. If it’s allowed to go ahead, god forefend!

It will absolutely dominate the grounds and turn the central symbol of our democracy, the White House, into what looks like a pool house in the backyard of a garish mega-mansion. Apparently there have not even been any plans submitted for this disgusting defacement of our nation’s capital. Should sanity ever return to the White House, this eyesore will HAVE to be TORN DOWN! I don’t care how much it costs! A perfect example of government corruption; taking ‘private’ money for a public project; illegal influence of what should be done by the will of the people, and no one else! Hello!

Normally, this plan would have been stopped dead in its tracks before the first piece of equipment was hauled out to the demolition project, but when it comes to Trump, apparently laws don’t apply; judges and all manner of bureaucrats cower in fear of his vengeance, afraid that their families will be harassed or worse, afraid that they will lose their job, even if the law may forthrightly state that he has no authority to fire them. I am absolutely sickened by the performance of our judicial system; even where the law could not be more clear that what he is doing is illegal, time and again judges will issue a ‘stay’, if they even dare to do that much, and kick the can down the road for some other court to make a final decision.

Take the matter of blowing all those boats and their passengers away, down in international waters, murdering 40 some probably completely innocent people in a nauseating bit of political theater, not even proffering some kind of legal rationale, but blathering about narco terrorists bringing death to our innocent drug consuming public. Never mind that no evidence of narco trafficking has been presented in any of these mass murders, and even if they were guilty of the worst that the Trump White House and all of its captive institutions say, in civilized countries there is a thing called due process; summary execution on the high seas in international waters is not a legitimate sentence for ANY crime. Yet no court or other check or balance ever seems to find the visceral fortitude to do anything about it!

So, with the ongoing month long government shutdown, where the Rs are trying their best to blame the Ds for it, even though any day they could call Congress back into session and pass a continuing resolution so that government employees would still get their paychecks, apparently they don’t dare to because they will have to seat that new Congress lady Grijalva, who would make the one more needed vote to open the Epstein files, which are apparently political kryptonite for this serial misogynistic abuser of women and girls.

What I don’t get is how so many people still support their Orange Jesus while he’s shutting down our whole society in order to take money away from the 80 percent of us who get our health care subsidized by the government, a move which will raise most people’s premiums by 100 percent! Not to mention the stopping of SNAP food help that is crucial to many millions of our fellow Americans. All to give unwarranted tax breaks to those who need them the least! What is it going to take to shake his clueless devotees?!

(On my blog https://inarationalworld2.blogspot.com/2025/11/horriballroom.html)

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BILL KIMBERLIN:

After watching, "The Orchid Thief" and then seeing a gorgeous one delivered to a lady in Anderson Valley by her dutiful son, I had to have one. Phalaenopsis amabilis has entered my life. It is the Marilyn Monroe of plants and can live up to 25 years. Will have to modify my estate plan. One of course can't leave them alone as they are like a pet. Do they have in home gardeners?

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, November 9, 2025

JAMES COLYAR, 46, Willits. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

ALVIN GARCIA, 20, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, undetectable firearm.

DEVIN GIBSON, 31, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JESUS GONZALES, 50, Ukiah. Under influence, parole violation.

JOSEPH JACKSON, 30, Seal Beach/Ukiah. DUI.

JORGE MARTINEZ, 29, Ukiah. Controlled substance, unspecified offense.

BRENDA MASSEY, 57, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ALBERT OLIVA, 32, Ukiah. Parole violation.

EDUARDO SANCHEZ, 28, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, failure to appear.

KEVIN STORDAHL, 36, Ukiah. DUI-any drug.

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HUNTING MUTE SWANS

Editor:

It’s sad that the Legislature seeks to hunt mute swans. Everyone who sees these beautiful birds loves them. Did the legislators know that mute swans feed primarily on hydrilla, an invasive weed other birds will not eat? Did they realize that licenses to shoot these swans will no doubt result in shooting tundra and trumpeter swans due to mistaken identity?

Rod Hug

Santa Rosa

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BAR TRANSGENDER ATHLETES FROM WOMEN’S SPORTS

Editor:

In volleyball, the net is higher for men’s games, recognizing the difference in average height between males and females. Such basic common sense, reflected in the rules of the game, has been thrown out when the topic is transgender athletes.

British biologist Richard Dawkins recently said: “You could make a case (I wouldn’t) for abolishing the women’s category in a competitive sport, opening it to all humans. But there is no case for a separate women’s category if men such as Lia Thomas & Imane Khelif are allowed to gatecrash it. You cannot have it both ways.”

If there is no reason to limit women’s sports to female athletes, there is no reason to have women’s sports. Just make sports unisex and give medals to the strongest and fastest athletes.

This has already begun in Minnesota. USA Fencing announced it will not hold mixed-sex women’s competitions, and Minnesota state law will not allow them to exclude males, so all competitions in the state will be co-ed. Women’s fencing has ended in Minnesota.

That’s a kick in the teeth to women from trans activists and Democratic politicians.

If there were reasons to create competitions for women, there are reasons to limit them to female participants. Democrats need to find another solution.

Sharon Tremble

Occidental

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CONTINUOUS SUPERCONSCIOUS STATE

Warmest spiritual greetings,

Continuous Superconscious State — Sitting quietly downstairs at the MLK Jr. Public Library in Washington, D.C., tapping this out and watching the Ravens-Vikings football game on the big sports screen. The ongoing housing situation at the Adams Place Homeless Shelter underscores the necessity of maintaining one's inner spiritual life, amidst the worldly downward spiral. Many are doing well at the shelter, by the way. Others, not so much. Catholic Charities is doing the best that they can to provide a survival base. Since the current presidential administration is dedicated to 'making America great again", I suggest that it begin by supporting effective groups which are providing critical services.

I am ready to roll out of the shelter. I have no place to go at the moment, and nothing to make a commitment about particularly. Nevertheless, my physical circumstances have improved so dramatically that I may move on with certainty. Feel free to contact me. Thank you.

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

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49ers CAN’T KEEP PACE WITH MATTHEW STAFFORD-LED RAMS, ARE BLOWN OUT BY L.A.

by Noah Furtado

At the end of their parking lot tailgates, fans leisurely trickled into Levi’s Stadium for America’s Game of the Week, only to find themselves hoping for a four-quarter refund. The San Francisco 49ers trailed by three touchdowns Sunday with many ticketed seats yet to be claimed. Considered the clear favorites on paper, the Los Angeles Rams played like it.

The skeleton Niners, with quarterback Brock Purdy in street clothes, linebacker Fred Warner confined to his suite, and defensive end Nick Bosa reduced to a limp, strained to fight back.

Perhaps the Rams broke a sweat, but they ultimately prevailed 42-26, and left the Niners to settle for a moral victory that dropped them to 6-4. First place in the NFC West remains a tie between the Rams and the Seahawks, deadlocked with 7-2 records.

“It’s a really tough” division, 49ers quarterback Mac Jones said. “At this point, we got to try and win every game we play in. Our backs are going to be against the wall.”

A segment of the second half sufficed as a quarterback duel. Jones held his own, but Matthew Stafford showed why he has emerged as a legitimate MVP candidate. The Rams’ quarterback threw four touchdown passes and zero interceptions, dodging a few close calls that have been characteristic of a 49ers defense with only one pick this season.

The Niners cut their deficit to a touchdown and two-point conversion, 28-20, due to a blocked PAT, before the Rams shut the door with their fastest touchdown drive of the game. Two minutes and 25 seconds was all Stafford needed to set up running back Kyren Williams for his second rushing touchdown of the day.

An interception in traffic by Jones on the following drive proved to be the final nail.

“He diced us up pretty good today,” 49ers defensive end Bryce Huff, who played after two weeks out with a hamstring injury, said of Stafford. “He was getting the ball out quick. It was hard to affect him in the pocket.”

Little more than two minutes into the second quarter, the Rams led 21-0 with three touchdowns in as many drives and 14 first downs. The Niners were fortunate enough to run eight plays by then.

Jones, in his eighth start of the season, pieced together completions to get them back within striking distance. His three touchdown passes included a back-foot dime to Jauan Jennings and a dump-off to tight end Luke Farrell, who waited for Jones to shimmy in and out of danger from within the pocket on two bum knees. The third, to All-Pro tight end George Kittle, padded Jones’ 115.7 passer rating but was largely meaningless in the midst of garbage time.

Asked of the 49ers’ inability to string together wins since their 3-0 start, Kittle joked, “Win, loss, win, loss, is significantly better than last year when it was like, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss,” a reference to the team’s 6-11 record a season ago.

Already with a lack of talent and depth due to injury, the Niners did not help themselves with several procedural lapses, tagged with seven penalties before game’s end. The Rams finished with none.

Not to mention the turnover battle, which the 49ers have struggled to tilt in their favor this season. In addition to Jones’ interception, Jennings lost a fumble as they neared the red zone in search of their first score.

“I told them I believe that we can find a way to win any game that we’re in,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said, “but if we hurt ourselves like that, seven penalties to zero, not getting off on third down … and then the offense having two turnovers and (the Rams) having zero, you make that pretty tough on yourself.”

(SF Chronicle)

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49ers GAME GRADES: Banged-up defense to blame as Rams craft a rout

The San Francisco 49ers were handed their first division loss by the Rams on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium as a good showing by their offense wasn’t nearly enough to offset a dreadful one by the defense.

Offense: B-

If this was Mac Jones’ last start ahead of Brock Purdy’s return, he made it a great one. Jones completed 33 of 39 passes for 319 yards and three TDs and managed to avoid being sacked by a team that came in with 27 (tied for third most in the NFL). George Kittle re-ignited memories of his prime (nine catches, 84 yards and a TD) and after having only two first downs in the opening quarter, the 49ers finished with 24. On the other hand, Christian McCaffrey managed 96 yards from scrimmage, but only 30 of that was rushing and he wasn’t the 49ers’ leading carrier (Brian Robinson: eight carries, 41 yards).

Defense: F

That dip in the efficiency of the injury-decimated defense everyone had been expecting? It arrived Sunday, in glaring fashion. Aside from possessions to end the first half and the game, the Rams had the ball eight times — six of those possessions resulted in touchdowns. Matthew Stafford added another line to his Hall of Fame-to-be résumé by completing 24 of 36 for 280 yards and four TDs, including the 400th of his career. And since he was playing the 49ers, his streak of TDs without an interception was never really at risk, as he upped it to 22. L.A. also ran for two TDs and 126 yards, averaging 4.2 yards per carry while doing so.

Special Teams: B-

For a moment, it looked as though Skyy Moore might have been a rally igniter as his career-best 27-yard punt return set up the 49ers’ first touchdown. But that was just about the only highlight for this unit. Eddy Piñeiro didn’t try a field goal and saw an extra point blocked. Thomas Morstead averaged 43.5 yards on his two punts, which landed at the Rams' 9- and 8-yard lines, respectively.

Coaching: C+

You can only play the cards you’re dealt and the 49ers — most notably on defense — are playing with a short deck. Down 21-0 just 79 seconds into the second quarter, Kyle Shanahan was essentially forced to go for it on fourth down twice. The first failed as McCaffrey was unable to gain a yard on a 4th-and-1 at the L.A. 11. The second — on 4th-and-2 and the Rams' 17 — was successful and was followed on the next play by the Niners’ first TD.

Overall: C-

A 6-4 record considering all the injuries is still impressive, but it seems clear the 49ers — even with a 3-1 division record — are the third best team in the NFC West. There are still a handful of winnable games remaining (Cardinals, Panthers, Browns, Titans), but a push for the postseason might be scuttled should they slip in any of them.

(SF Chronicle)

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ONCE A COMMON STREET PRESENCE, THEY’RE ALMOST GONE FROM S.F.: ‘I BELIEVE I’M THE LAST ONE’

by Carl Nolte

A city like San Francisco is a thousand things — buildings, streets, seasons, parks, neighborhoods — but mostly people that you see and do not know. The man down the street who walks his dog every morning, the usher at the ballpark, the driver you see on the bus from time to time, the mail carrier who is there every afternoon, the couple who run a sandwich shop, the bartender who remembers your name, the UPS driver who came by twice in the same week, the lady at the dry cleaners, the guy at the butcher shop who always has a pencil behind his ear, the man who sold poems near the Embarcadero BART Station. They are all people you know and don’t know — part of the fabric of the city.

I remember a street guy I used to see nearly every morning on my way to work, back when I went to the office every day. He’d sit on a little box he had on Fifth Street near the Old Mint and say something most every morning, “Good morning,” mostly, or “How are you?” Something small. He never asked for money, but seemed pleased for an occasional donation. One day he was not there. And the next few days, too. Just gone. I asked around. “Oh, him,” the Fifth Street types said. “He passed away, we heard.” I never knew his name or his story.

They are city people you can never quite recall, as the song goes, but when they are gone, you notice. It’s a change, a difference, a piece of the city that has faded away, like an old photograph.

All these San Franciscans have names and stories. One of the pieces of the city citizens began to notice was the gradual disappearance of small sidewalk businesses — flower stands, street drummers, artists and shoeshine stands. Those stands used to be part of life downtown and in the Financial District. The owners shined shoes, gave advice, told stories and were fixtures of the city scene.

Not that long ago, when San Francisco was a different city, all the big hotels had shoeshine stands and so did some of the department stores. Some San Franciscans remember the big old Emporium store on Market Street had banks of shoeshine chairs; in later years Nordstrom, famous in its day for its high-quality shoe department, also had an in-store stand. One could buy a gift card for discerning gentlemen who believed, in the words of fashion guru Diana Vreeland, “unshined shoes are the end of civilization.” Vreeland was also the editor of Vogue and invented the word “youthquake” to describe fashion changes.

A youthquake in fact seems to have shaken the world of shoes, especially men’s leather shoes polished to a mirror finish. Part of it is the decline of standards in business wear, and part is remote work. “People are working three days a week in the office, and the style is casual,” said Rachel Leamy, who owns the Shoeshine Guild, a full-service leather and shoe operation at One Embarcadero Center. Leamy used to have four locations. Now there are just two. The pandemic killed foot traffic, but it’s more than that, it’s tennis shoes at work. “It’s part of a cultural shift,” she said.

The Shoeshine Guild operation is a bit different — the original name was A Shine & Co. It went through what Lemy calls “a post-pandemic reboot” to include swing dancing, jazz and entertainment packages, not to mention shoe repair.

In the public mind, the real shoeshining business is a single chair, staffed by a shoeshine man on a public sidewalk. I stopped by the stand run by Christopher Mitchell at Market and California streets. Mitchell has been in the business for 40 years, the last few in a sidewalk stand between the Hyatt Regency and the end of the California Street cable car. The last few years have been tough, with the changes in footwear style and the Financial District. He has a big chair, a bit like a sidewalk throne, an assortment of brushes and soft cloths, music and a stick of incense. He’s 62 and lives in San Francisco. He has an assortment of clients, mostly from the Financial District. He seems to know most people who pass by.

“He gives great service,” said Jeremy Kamras, an attorney who works nearby. Mitchell also knows that getting a shoeshine is like a social occasion; he polishes words as well. “He knows sports and politics, and you also get pearls of wisdom,” Kamras said.

Mitchell has a collection of sports autographs he likes to show, including Dwight Clark, Joe Morgan and particularly Ronnie Lott. On special days, he wears Lott’s No. 42 jersey. Not a replica, he points out, but a real one from a game. Life has not been easy for him. He had a stand in a building on Battery Street for many years, but the building was sold, and the new owners kicked him out of his stand in the lobby, moved him to the back of the building, then evicted him. He’s bitter about that; he’d worked hard and didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

He had a hard time during the pandemic when everything was closed; he got by with some help from clients and by helping homeless people with food he cooked himself.

When he opened up a stand again after the end of the pandemic, he found a changed world. Some of the old time shoeshine operations were gone. Some of the older operators had died or just quit.

One of the biggest was Kenny Wayne Bowens, who operated a shoeshine stand on Market at the end of California. He called himself “Famous Wayne” and always dressed to the nines. “I’m the shoeshine king of the world,” he told the Chronicle’s Mike Kepka in 2015. Wayne was a showman, a San Francisco character with a flair for publicity, but he developed cancer and died in 2020. His death notice was a paper sign posted on a pole.

Another major loss came on a summer day in 2016 when a taxicab roaring down Market Street at high speed jumped the curb where Sansome and Sutter run into Market and smashed into an advertising kiosk and the shoeshine stand where Saleem Bey and his assistant, Jaz Cameron, were working. Both men were thrown in the air and badly injured. The cabdriver had had a medical emergency and lost control.

Saleem and his assistant were well known in the neighborhood and highly regarded. Sophia Chang, an Oakland commercial kitchen operator, had met Bey only once but was so impressed with him she started a GoFundMe campaign hoping to raise $10,000 to pay Bey’s medical bills; she got twice as much. But Bey, who loved his work, never went back.

“It’s a very sad story, “ Chang said. Bey died of an unrelated diabetic shock two years later. Cameron — Jazz to his friends — never went back to the shoe business either. He is a street artist on Second Street.

That leaves Mitchell. “I believe I’m the last one left,” he said. A walking tour of Market Street and the Financial District on two days last week didn’t turn up another classic stand. Mitchell is proud of his work. “I put my daughter through college with this,” he said. “I did 50,000 shoeshines to put her through college. As long as I can keep working, I’m going to keep doing this,’’ he said.

But time moves on, and one of these days, another piece of street life in San Francisco will be gone. Better to remember it now because these are the good old days.

(SF Chronicle)

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DONALD TRUMP BOOED AS THE 1ST SITTING US PRESIDENT AT A REGULAR-SEASON NFL GAME SINCE CARTER IN 1978

by Howard Fendrich

LANDOVER, Md. (AP) — Donald Trump became the first sitting president in nearly a half-century at a regular-season NFL game, attending the Washington Commanders' contest against the Detroit Lions on Sunday.

There were loud boos from some spectators in the stands when Trump was shown on the videoboard late in the first half — standing in a suite with House Speaker Mike Johnson — and again when the president was introduced by the stadium announcer at halftime.

The jeering continued while Trump read an oath for members of the military to recite as part of an on-field enlistment ceremony during the break in the game.

"I’m a little bit late,” Trump told reporters earlier when he got off Air Force One after landing at Joint Base Andrews, following a flyover of Northwest Stadium during the game. He then got in his armored car for the drive to the arena.

“We’re gonna have a good game. Things are going along very well. The country’s doing well. The Democrats have to open it up,” he said — a reference to the government shutdown.

In the first quarter Sunday, before the president arrived, Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown celebrated a touchdown catch by pointing into the stands and moving his arms a la the “Trump dance” that several athletes began doing last year.

During the third quarter, Trump joined Fox broadcasters Kenny Albert and Jonathan Vilma for about eight minutes of lighthearted chat. Albert opened by asking Trump about his time playing high school football at New York Military Academy.

“I played tight end, but it was not quite football like this. It was a little bit easier. It wasn’t so tough,” Trump said.

Only two other times did a president go to an NFL game during the regular season while in office, according to the league: Richard Nixon in 1969 and Jimmy Carter in 1978. Trump became the first president at a Super Bowl while residing in the White House when he watched the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in February.

According to a report by ESPN on Saturday, an intermediary for the White House has told the Commanders’ ownership group that Trump wants the club’s new stadium — part of a nearly $4 billion project in the nation’s capital at the site of what was known as RFK Stadium — to bear his name.

In Sunday's TV appearance, Trump spoke about the team’s plans to return to Washington.

“They’re going to build a beautiful stadium. That’s what I’m involved in, we’re getting all the approvals and everything else,” he said. “And you have a wonderful owner, Josh (Harris) and his group. And you’re going to see some very good things.”

Sunday’s visit was the latest in a series of high-profile appearances at sporting events by Trump, including golf’s Ryder Cup, auto racing’s Daytona 500 and tennis’ U.S. Open.

“I just love it. It’s a microcosm of life," Trump said about sports during Sunday's broadcast. “It’s sort of like life -- the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Before the game, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth chatted with Harris — the leader of the group that purchased the Commanders from Daniel Snyder for about $6 billion in 2023 — and took part in an on-field ceremony with members of the military.

Hegseth was among those watching the game with Trump, along with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana.

There was friction between Trump and the NFL during his first presidential term, when he objected to players kneeling during the national anthem to protest social or racial injustice. That movement began in 2016 with then-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

Via social media and other public comments, Trump insisted that players should stand for the national anthem and called on team owners to fire anyone taking a knee.

(AP)

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THIS OLE HOUSE

This ole house once knew his children
This ole house once knew his wife
This ole house was home and comfort
As they fought the storms of life
This old house once rang with laughter
This old house heard many shouts
Now he trembles in the darkness
When the lightnin' walks about

Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer
Ain't a-gonna need this house no more
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't got time to fix the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend the window-pane
Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer
He's a-gettin' ready to meet the saints

This ole house is a-gettin' shaky
This ole house is a-gettin' old
This ole house lets in the rain
This ole house lets in the cold
Oh his knees are-a gettin' chilly
But he feel no fear or pain
'Cause he sees an angel peekin'
Through a broken window-pane

This ole house is afraid of thunder
This ole house is afraid of storms
This ole house just groans and trembles
When the night wind flings its arms
This ole house is a-gettin' feeble
This old house is a-needin' paint
Just like him it's tuckered out
But he's a-gettin' ready to meet the saints

Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer
Ain't a-gonna need this house no more
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't got time to fix the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend the window-pane
Ain't a-gonna need this house no longer
He's a-gettin' ready to meet the saints

— Stuart Hamblen (1954)

Hamblen was supposedly out on a hunting expedition in the Sierra with guide Monte Wolfe, when his fellow hunter, actor John Wayne, and he came across a hut in the mountains. Inside was the body of a man, and the man's dog was still there, guarding the building. This inspired Hamblen to write "This Ole House". (Wikipedia)

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SHUT DOWN APPEARS TO BE ENDING

The Senate on Sunday night took the first step toward ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history, after a group of Democrats broke their party’s blockade and voted with Republicans to advance legislation to reopen the government.

The 60-to-40 vote paved the way for the spending agreement to begin making its way through Congress, where it would still need to be debated and passed by the Senate, win approval in the House and be signed by President Trump to bring the shutdown to a close.

(NY Times)

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LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT

Senate Moves Toward Ending Shutdown After Democratic Defectors Relent

Airport Disruptions May Get Worse This Week

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

Two Top BBC Leaders Quit Over Editing of Trump Documentary

As Aquifers Dry Up, Tehran Rations Water and Calls for Rain Prayers

Stinking, Spongy, Dark, Huge: A Spider Web Unlike Any Seen Before

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MARK KENNEDY:

“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.”

Well, that's the norm in Europe. Unfortunately, that's where the comparison ends: European cities largely work, including their transportation networks and welcoming, crime-free public spaces. Like Paris, New York is essentially a mini-state; but whereas Paris can be said to accentuate what's best in French life, America's biggest urban agglomerations—New York, Los Angeles, Chicago—accentuate the worst aspects of American life. Could it be that young Americans aren't so much embracing Mamdani as rejecting Cuomo and everything he stands for?

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NOVEMBER 2025 EYESORE

by James Kunstler

Behold, the “Sky Stadium” announced by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the latest jazzy edition to their utopian “smart city” project known as The Line or NEOM — an $8-trillion, 105-mile-long megastructure composed of two 1640-foot-high mirrored slabs that enclose a creamy nougat center of jungly foliage and water features integrated with apartments, offices, schools, and (of course) shopping. It’s completely insane, you understand. The Line was first featured on this site in August 2022. Three years on, the project is buckling under the weight of its psychotic grandiosity. Here’s a cross-section of the The Line’s beginning at the Persian Gulf:

Here’s another schematic angle on The Line to appreciate how it shoots straight out into the Arabian Desert:

The 46,000-seat Sky Stadium will be perched 1,150-feet up and is slated to be completed in time for the 2034 Fifa football (soccer) World Cup. The initial A-I generated renderings at the top of the page show it suspended on a skyscraper above a sprawling city, but it is actually designed to be “nested” somewhere between the two slabs of The Line.

First announced in 2017 as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 diversification push, The Line was envisioned as a futuristic “cognitive city” with vertical urbanism, AI integration, 100-percent renewable energy (solar power), and 95-percent land preservation of its barren surroundings in the Tabuk province, “for nature.”

Dunno about you, but I’d be a little nervous about watching a soccer game 1,150-feet above the desert floor. Sounds like a super-gigantic version of one of those Sky Bridge” failures of the 1990s, where a mere hundred drunken people swilling margaritas collapse a hanging architectural folly in a Shopping Mall. We’ll stand by for the halftime show there.

Shout out to Warren McEwan for nominating this humdinger!

(kunstler.com)

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IN MY ENTIRE LIFE as a writer, only one bookstore has ever asked me not to go, not to come, rescinded an invitation. And it was a left wing bookstore that hangs signs saying “All are welcome” and making long lists of the people that are welcome. This isn’t a debate for me. I can tell you right now that the speech and expression chill that you might get some cold breezes from the right, but you’re going to get some Arctic fricking storm fronts from the left.

— Walter Kirn

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Young people today barely know of any history before WWII, and that’s being generous! Universities have so corrupted education they don’t stand a chance when faced with all kinds of charlatans, con men and truly evil intentioned people.

These young people today have been brainwashed into hating their own country, thus susceptible to every dangerous and false notion about what else might be better, so they’ll fall for anything that confirms these biases and feel righteous about it in the process.

If you don’t know history, you’re bound to repeat never rang more true than it does today with a myriad of these radical interlopers, and their mind-numbingly stupid devotees cross-crossing the country.

It’s all coming to a head, and it will not be pretty.

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"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I'm afraid this wasn't it.”
— Groucho Marx

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NOVEMBER NIGHT

Listen …
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.

— Adelaide Crapsey

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ADELAIDE CRAPSEY (1878 – 1915)

Adelaide Crapsey was born on September 9, 1878, in Brooklyn Heights, New York. She was the third child of the Reverend Algernon Sidney Crapsey and Adelaide Trowbridge Crapsey. Within the first year after Crapsey was born, her father became rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Parish in Rochester, New York, where the family then moved.

Crapsey went to public schools in Rochester before enrolling at Kemper Hall, an Episcopalian college preparatory school in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1893. She graduated four years later as valedictorian of her class, then enrolled at Vassar College, where she became close friends with fellow writer Jean Webster, who later based many of her spirited and colorful female characters on Crapsey. While at Vassar, Crapsey also served as the class poet for three years.

After graduating from Vassar in 1901, Crapsey spent a year at home in Rochester, then moved back to Wisconsin, where she taught literature and history at Kemper Hall from 1902 to 1904. It was during this time that Crapsey started feeling the first symptoms of the illness that would eventually take her life. Suffering from chronic fatigue (an early sign of tuberculosis), Crapsey left Kemper Hall in 1904 and traveled to Italy to study at the School of Classical Studies of the American Academy in Rome. She returned to Rochester near the end of 1905 in time to attend her father’s heresy trial, after which he was deposed from the Episcopal Church—an event that no doubt affected Crapsey, who maintained a close relationship with her father.

In 1906, Crapsey accepted another teaching position, this time at a preparatory school in Stamford, Connecticut, but her health worsened, and she returned to Europe to recuperate in December of 1908. For the next three years, she lived in Italy, England, and France, during which time she underwent intensive study of meter and rhythm in English poems. In 1910 she continued her studies of prosody at the British Museum and began considering the possibility of publishing her work.

Despite her continued poor health, she returned to the United States in 1911 to take a post at Smith College as an instructor of poetics. That same year, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Hiding the news from her family, Crapsey continued teaching until she collapsed in July 1913. Crapsey was then sent to a private sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York, where she remained until August 1914. It was here that she composed her best poems and invented a new poetic form, the cinquain: a twenty-two-syllable, five-line poem.

Crapsey soon returned to her family’s home in Rochester, but her health quickly worsened, and she died on October 8, 1914, at the age of thirty-six.

Her first book of poems, Verse (Manas Press, 1915), was published posthumously. Three years later, her work on prosody, A Study in English Metrics, was published as well.

(poets.org)

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SUFFICIENT

Citron, pomegranate,
     Apricot, and peach,
  Flutter of apple-blows
     Whiter than the snow,
  Filling the silence
     With their leafy speech,
  Budding and blooming
     Down row after row.

Breaths of blown spices,
     Which the meadows yield,
  Blossoms broad-petaled,
     Starry buds and small;
  Gold of the hill-sides,
     Purple of the field,
  Waft to my nostrils
     Their fragrance, one and all.

Birds in the tree-tops,
     Birds that fill the air,
  Trilling, piping, singing,
     In their merry moods, —
  Gold wing and brown wing,
     Flitting here and here,
  To the coo and chirrup
     Of their downy broods.

What grace has summer
     Better that can suit?
  What gift can autumn
     Bring us more to please?
  Red of blown roses,
     Mellow tints of fruit,
  Never can be fairer,
     Sweeter than are these.

— Ina Coolbrith (1895)

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