PEOPLE IN CITIES and suburbs must envy Anderson Valley’s annual head lice scare. how often does an urban have the opportunity to gossip about his neighbor’s personal hygiene? The urb doesn’t even know who his neighbor is, let alone have up to date information on his bathing habits. Up here, the discovery of one harmless little beast is occasion for an orgy of rumor and self-righteousness. “My child with head lice? You can’t be serious. Go ahead, inspect my house. Smell the lysol? See how we’ve stockpiled soap? The lice must have hopped off a hippie or a Mexican.”
THE PROBLEM with blaming it on hippies is there aren’t any. Except Rainbow who tells me he has actually considered reverting to his given name. Rainbow has also recently become a property owner. So the only hippies left in the County are up in Willits and Laytonville and they aren’t exactly hippies but a strange mutant sub-species of new-age nazis, joyless, humorless and boring.
HEAD LICE COULD BE BLAMED ON Mexicans up until three or four years ago because the Mexican community was unaware they were being blamed for anything and, then they were totally unorganized. this head lice scare, representatives of the Mexican community were quick to point out, their children are as squeaky clean as the next family’s.
WHAT IS LIFE in a small community without blame, without being able to look down on your friends and neighbors? So who can we blame for this year’s head lice? How about the staff? Has anybody taken a close look at their scalps?
THE SPATE OF RECENT articles in the Bay Area press having to do with County hippies changing their names back from Fire Feather to Joe Smith were meant, of course, to be light-hearted. None of the stories pointed out the pretentiousness and essential arrogance of monikers like “Morningstar” or “Larkin” and so forth. These names, derived from American Indians, actually mean “See what a warm, wonderful, sensitive human being I am, at one with my used Volvo while the rest of you insensitive slobs are bombing up and down the highways in your Pontiacs eating Big Macs.”
I WONDER HOW LONG the typical time-capsule County hippie would have lasted with a tribe of 19th century Apaches, as violent and barbarous a people as the world has known until, of course, American Republicans.
ANY PERSON over the age of twelve who calls himself Fire Feather should be quickly and quietly carted off. And kept off.
THE ANDERSON VALLEY GREENS are alive and well despite the constant din of propaganda put out by two Navarro “liberals” to the contrary. Don Lipmanson, the Sammy Glick of the Mendocino environmental movement, has a difficult time functioning in any group he can’t dominate. Eleanor Lewallen has so many objections to so many people and to so many of their personal habits that she should consider holding meetings by herself in a hall of mirrors where she would be assured of absolute unanimity of approved opinion and decorum. The Anderson Valley Greens and would-be Greens really don’t have any difficulty getting along amongst themselves. That we are unwilling to spend hours discussing “process” seems to me solid evidence of our collective mental health.
AN ALSO CONTRARY to attacks from the usual anonymous snipers, I support the County Greens and will do everything I can to help. The Apple Maggot Night in Willits, the L-P picket, the logger’s defense fundraiser, and the obvious panic of Congressman Boxcorp and the Arcata sell-out that their jobs could be in danger, are all due exclusively to the Mendocino Greens. We don’t have any problems, except for a masochistic tolerance of nuts, that can’t be worked out. Our various parts are bound to be different from the whole. But Anderson Valley will hold up its end.
ONE FINAL GREEN THING: The dues should be much more than a dollar a year. We need a war chest to bring suits and to support candidates. The Greens obviously are not a revolutionary group and should, therefore, take part in conventional politics in the conventional way which in America means money, lots of it. For a few thousand dollars, we could bring actions against local chemical company stooges like deGrassi and a variety of class action suits that would cause the forces of death and destruction second thought before they hosed us down with poisonous chemicals.
SPEAKING FOR MYSELF, deGrassi will rue the day he chooses to spray Imidan in Anderson Valley, if that’s what he decides to do in the spring. And while I’m serving up the threats, promises actually, the spring will also see periodic weekend leafletings of Valley wineries if there isn’t any movement by the wineries towards erecting housing for their workers.
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