Mendocino County Today: Sunday 11/23/2025

By AVA News Service on November 23, 2025

WINTER GREEN, 2017 Redwood Complex Fire Burn Scar.

Frey Vineyards, Redwood Valley (Martin Bradley)

ANOTHER COLD MORNING is in store as clear skies persist inland. A marine layer will likely build along the coast early today with coastal drizzle incoming by the evening. Cool and dry weather will return Monday and Tuesday. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 42F with mostly clear ( a little fog ? ) skies this Sunday morning on the coast. I am going with lovely weather as our forecast for the next 10 days. No really.

WANTED

The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office is actively investigating a homicide that occurred in the 300 block of Cloverdale Heights Way, Cloverdale, around 4:47 PM. Saturday. Detectives have identified 56-year-old Lawrence Cassidy, a Cloverdale resident, as the suspect in the case.

Cassidy is considered armed and dangerous. If you see him or have any information regarding his whereabouts, please call 9-1-1 immediately. Your assistance is vital in apprehending Cassidy.

ANONYMOUS THREAT PROMPTS CLOSURE OF ALL WILLITS SCHOOL CAMPUSES INCLUDING MENDOCINO COLLEGE [Update: Resolved]

by Kym Kemp

Families in Willits reported receiving alerts this morning stating that an anonymous threat had been made toward local schools. Posts on social media show messages from the Willits Unified School District and area charter schools forbidding anyone from entering school campuses while authorities investigate.

One of the messages. This one signed by John Baker, Superintendent of Willits Unified School District.

Screenshots shared with Redheaded Blackbelt show messages sent out Saturday by Willits Unified School District, Willits Charter School, and Willits Elementary Charter School. Each alert stated that the district had “received an anonymous threat directed towards Willits schools” and that no one would be permitted on any school campus until further notice.

The messages described the action as precautionary and said the district was working with law enforcement to determine the credibility of the threat.

The Mendocino College center in the 300 block of Commercial Street in Willits also was cleared out late Saturday morning.

Mendocino College student Jannie Longcrier said her psychology class was underway when the situation unfolded.

“We were in psychology… and the teacher gave us a break,” she said. “I had looked at my phone and saw… on the Facebook page, there was a threat to the school system in Willits.”

She said she stepped out briefly and saw staff beginning to secure the building.

“The secretary was locking the door,” Longcrier explained. After speaking with the instructor, she said that staff informed the class that the campus would close.

According to Longcrier, this happened at 11 a.m. Saturday. “[A staff member] just came in and said that we would like to shut down just out of precaution,” she told us. She said that the staff was calm and didn’t appear to be unduly frightened. “They were… not in hysteria or anything,” she explained

Redheaded Blackbelt has reached out to Willits Police for confirmation and clarification on when the campus will reopen and other details.

UPDATE: Readers are reporting that they received information from the schools that the threat is “resolved.” Here is one message from Willits Unified School District.

(Redheaded Blackbelt/KymKemp.com)

PHOTOS FROM SATURDAY PROTEST IN FORT BRAGG by Robert Dominy

https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCBzWq

PEGGY COTE:

I have rentals in Fort Bragg. They are being advertised by someone else looking to scam you. So far I know they scammed one person out of $3,000. I was contacted Friday by another person who questioned the ad and got my phone number from one of my tenants. The scammer knows my name and signs their responses with my name. The scammer is using the email [email protected]

They are advertising on Zillow, trulia, and Craigslist and probably others.

Please, please. If you see an ad for 113 S Harold Street, Fort Bragg, the contact should be me. [email protected].

Currently I do not have ads for rentals. Do not give money without seeing the property & meeting the landlord.

HELP BRING OUR BROTHER HOME FOR BURIAL

My name is Natalie, and my family is going through something we never expected. My brother passed away suddenly after a very fast and devastating battle with cancer. He was living in Washington State, and we are trying to bring him home to Willits, Ca. so he can be buried next to our father, who passed away three years ago this month from Covid. It would mean everything to us—especially to my mom—for them to be together again.

My brother was a veteran, a father, and a deeply loved part of our family. His passing has shaken us, and we were not prepared for the financial burden of transporting him across states and covering burial expenses.

Many people in Mendocino County know my mom and dad. They both grew up in Willits, and after my dad died, she moved here to Anderson Valley to be closer to me and rebuild her life. Now she is facing another loss no mother should ever have to endure, and she needs a little help to get through this.

Funds will help with:

Transporting my brother from Washington to Mendocino County
Burial expenses so he can rest beside our father
Final arrangements and associated costs
Any remaining funds will go directly to my mom as she navigates this grief

Any amount helps, even $5, and sharing this means the world to our family. Thank you for helping us bring him home.

(Natalie Matson)

https://www.gofundme.com/f/r9vmm8-help-bring-our-brother-home-for-burial

SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS EXPLAINS BOONVILLE VETS BUILDING PROGRESS

Supervisor Ted Williams:

“Mark Scaramella notes: ‘Substantial progress on clarifying possibilities’ is not progress.

It was explained to me that we could not transfer the building to a veterans (or any) nonprofit. Outside counsel has clarified a path that would allow just that. I see it as progress, having an acceptable direction and firm to perform the necessary steps.”

RENEE LEE:

Thank you to all that came out for the AV Senior Chili Cook Off! It was so close this year. Only one point between first and second place! Congratulations to Rebekah Toohey for first, Tony Pardini for second and Nichole Wyant for third. Outstanding chilis! Thanks for all of your support!

BUDGET (FANTASIES) VS. ACTUALS

by Mark Scaramella

Supervisor Ted Williams:

“Mark Scaramella wrote: ‘Which is it then? Is the County’s finance/budget computer system faulty? Is the ‘thinking’ faulty? Is the CEO incapable of using the accounting data to provide meaningful reports?’…

Mark, the county’s accounting system is not capable of producing the reports we expect today. When the county transitioned from the old workflow into the then-new software, the migration appears to have been done without fully considering what the new system could and could not produce using that legacy flow. At the end of the day, accounting software is just a database and a database can only generate meaningful reports if the underlying structure and inputs are sound.

This issue spans multiple departments, including those under the Board of Supervisors and those under independently elected officials. Addressing it would be a multimillion-dollar effort and would require coordinated collaboration across departments. Without that effort, we will continue to see the same outcomes.

While upgraded software might improve the workflow, it is also very likely that much of the workflow could be corrected within the current system if it were properly analyzed and reconfigured.

The solution costs are software licensing, support and staff time. The status quo costs are the outcomes we see today.”

Mark Scaramella replies:

As usual, Supervisor Williams avoids the necessary particulars to form the basis for a useful exchange. Somehow his individual departments are capable of managing their budgets reasonably well as we periodically but randomly see when department heads discuss their budgets. The Sheriff, the DA, the Planning Director, the Probation Chief, the Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector, the Clerk-Recorder-Assessor, the Transportation Director, the Library Director, etc. all seem to have a decent grasp of their budgets and actuals. We never hear them complain about the software during their budget presentations.

The Board, including Supervisor Williams, has never asked for a department by department monthly or quarterly budget breakdown, even though 1. We’re sure the Departments are generating them, and 2. Lately the CEO’s office has been including full department by department budget vs. actual (expense) snapshots with percentages for each line item. Surely, this could be the basis for adequate departmental budget reporting.

We recall the Williams-led drumbeat leading up to the entirely unjustified unpaid suspension of Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison during which Williams regularly berated Cubbison for not providing financial reports that Williams and McGourty said they wanted. In every case those complains arose prior to the suspension, Ms. Cubbison politely requested that Williams and McGourty provide examples from other counties of what they wanted. But Williams and McGourty weren’t listening, blindly repeating their misdirected Cubbison complaint over and over. Cubbison also correctly pointed out that she could provide revenue status reports, but that expense budgets vs. actuals are the responsibility of the departments and the CEO. Again, no response. To this day, we have yet to see Supervisor Williams tell us exactly what he thinks is missing from the existing budget tracking system/software that would magically make them “the reports we expect today.” (“We, of course, being Supervisor Williams; none of his colleagues seem to care.)

Therefore, the problem, such as it is, lies at the CEO and Board level, not with the software, and not with the departments. Nor is it likely that a “multimillion-dollar effort” would fix whatever reporting problem Williams is talking about.

For a small example, after reviewing the Sheriff’s budget status report buried deep in the CEO’s latest report the other day it appeared that the Sheriff’s extremely high workers comp expense for his patrol division was running much higher than the workers comp for the jail. When I asked the Sheriff why, he knew right off the bat that for some reason they pay workers comp for Patrol once a year and it was fully paid, but workers comp for the jail is paid quarterly. This raises an interesting question about the budget-busting workers comp cost (yet another overpriced insurance racket to begin with that the state should pick up, if it must be paid), but not about departmental budgeting.

If Williams and his colleagues were serious about budget tracking, as I have suggested time and again for years, they would invite each department head to submit monthly or at least quarterly budget reports based on the existing reports the CEO is now producing, and ask them to explain any significant variations and where they expect to be at the end of the fiscal year. (This would also have the salutary side-effect of giving the Board a better understanding of department operations and problems.)

Or take the County’s two soon-to-open new facilities — the Psychiatric Health Facility and the new wing of the jail. If they were serious, the Board would ask Behavioral Health Director Dr. Miller and Sheriff Kendall to submit staffing, scheduling and budget plans for these facilities.

But so far, despite these large and glaring info gaps with major budget and personnel implications, the Board has expressed zero interest. (Not only do these facilities require specialized staff which will be hard to train, employ, supervise and manage, but most of them will be high-salaried people, many of them paid out of the overdrawn General Fund.)

We suggest Supervisor Williams stop speaking about vague, grandiose “multi-million dollar” software fixes that he can’t define, and look in the mirror.

LOIS JEAN (DUKE) LEE

February 27, 1933 – September 12, 2025

Lois Jean Lee (née Duke) was born on February 27, 1933, in Lakeview, Oregon, to Myrtle and Ross Duke. She spent her early years on "the ranch" south of Lakeview with her parents and her older brother, Ross Jr. ("Skip"), who preceded her in death on July 31, 1976. Lois and Skip attended Crane Creek, a one-room schoolhouse, for their elementary education.

When Lois was 12, the family moved into town and later welcomed three more children: twin girls, Carol and Connie, and a son, William ("Bill") Duke. Lois graduated from Lakeview High School in June 1951.

She married her sweetheart, William ("Bill") Lee, on March 27, 1953, in Healdsburg, California. They shared 66 wonderful years of marriage.

Lois and Bill made their home in Lakeview and, for a short time, in Medford during the early years of their marriage. During that period, they welcomed their four children: Richard, Joseph, Cynthia, and Susan.

In 1964, the family moved to Northern California, where Bill pursued a career in law enforcement. Lois worked a variety of jobs, including positions with the Willits Police Department and Remco Hydraulics. When the family settled in Ukiah, she worked for Mendocino County Social Services for several years.

In 1975, Lois, Bill, and their daughters, Cindy and Suzy, moved back to Medford, where she and Bill operated a small family grocery store with Bill's brother and sister-in-law, Cloe and JoAnn Lee. Ten years later, they returned to California, where Lois resumed her career in Social Services until her retirement. Afterward, she and Bill moved to Eugene, Oregon, where Lois continued her service-minded work with a nonprofit organization providing after-school care for children.

In 2012, Lois and Bill settled in Medford, Oregon, where Bill passed away in 2019.

Lois, known as "Sosie" to friends and family, is survived by her four children and their spouses: Richard and Sondra Lee, Joe and Leslie Lee, Cindy and Don Hoskisson, and Susan Mathistad. She was the proud grandmother of Erik and Bronwyn Mathistad, Erika and Isaac Wine, Ross and Jill Lee, Katie and Chris Buich, Amanda and Casey O'Hara, Lily Lee, Gabriel Lee, Tristan Lee, Brittney and Ben Bailey, and Mya and Dallas Cluff. She also leaves behind 13 great-grandchildren, all of whom brought her great joy.

Lois is also survived by her sister, Carol Fullerton of Beaverton, Oregon, and her brother, Bill Duke of Grants Pass, Oregon. She was preceded in death by her beloved husband, Bill Lee; her parents, Myrtle and Ross Duke; her brother, Ross Jr. ("Skip") Duke; and her sister, Connie.

Lois will be remembered for her strong faith, warmth, generosity, and deep love for her family. Her strength, humor, and kind spirit touched everyone who knew her.

SKUNK BITES BACK

Peter McNamee recently submitted a letter to the Mendocino Council of Governments (MCOG) regarding the draft Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). While Mr. McNamee raises concerns about the inclusion of rail, his conclusions overlook key facts, mischaracterize the role of Mendocino Railway, and risk narrowing the county’s transportation vision at a time when flexibility, sustainability, and long-term resilience are more important than ever.

Mendocino Railway is a federally recognized Class III common carrier. MCOG’s RTP continues to mischaracterize Mendocino Railway and its operations. Since 2004, Mendocino Railway has operated under Surface Transportation Board (STB) jurisdiction as a legitimate Class III common carrier railroad. A recent STB Declaratory Order reaffirmed this status, underscoring its legal standing and potential to serve public transportation and freight needs—not merely as an “amusement ride,” as Mr. McNamee suggests.
Rail is among the most environmentally efficient modes of land transport. Mr. McNamee’s dismissal of rail’s environmental value is at odds with decades of data. Freight rail emits up to 75% less greenhouse gas per ton-mile than trucks. Mr. McNamee’s narrowly focused “point-to-point” fixation is the exact type of thinking that has caused our world’s emission problems.
Low-emission Mendocino Railway locomotives. Mr. McNamee wrote regarding Mendocino Railway’s Skunk Train, “The Skunk train relies upon the worst-polluting, most industry-inefficient fossil fueled locomotives in the rail industry.“ Mr. McNamee seems focused on our efforts to preserve historic steam locomotives. Had he researched this topic, he would have learned that we only use historic steam locomotives, however, on approximately 3% of our trips! And while our other locomotives are superior to most other forms of transportation, Mendocino Railway is now upgrading our three primary locomotives to Tier IV – the lowest emission in the nation for fuel-based locomotives! Rather than Mr. McNamee’s naïve characterization, Mendocino Railway is at our industry’s forefront of mixing economic efficiency with environmental sensitivity.
Rail supports economic diversification and rural resilience. While current ridership and freight volumes may be modest, the infrastructure itself is a long-term asset. Rail corridors can support commerce, tourism, emergency logistics, and future opportunities—especially as fuel prices, climate mandates, and supply chain vulnerabilities evolve. Dismissing rail in a 20-year long-range planning document based on present-day usage ignores its strategic potential and speaks to Mr. McNamee’s agenda-driven shortsightedness
Environmental concerns are being addressed through modernization. The Skunk Train’s legacy equipment is being phased out in favor of cleaner, more efficient technology. Moreover, railroads are subject to federal environmental oversight, and Mendocino Railway has initiated remediation and infrastructure upgrades to address any past impacts. These efforts deserve recognition, not blanket condemnation.
Multimodal planning is not contradictory, it’s essential. The draft plan’s inclusion of rail does not undermine its broader goals. On the contrary, a resilient transportation network must include multiple modes—especially in a geographically diverse county like Mendocino. Railway, walking, biking, buses, and cars each serve different needs. Mendocino Railway is working to provide transloads facilities that would facilitate the exchange of goods between trucks and trains, achieving the best advantages of each type of transportation. Excluding rail would artificially constrain future options and contradict the plan’s stated commitment to equity, sustainability, and access.
Road Crossings. Mr. McNamee complains about railroad crossing delays. Is he concerned that the daily fleet of Amazon delivery trucks will be delayed getting to his house on the coast? He also writes about life threatening delays, but doesn’t substantiate this claim. Our trains do not simultaneously shut down all crossings in town at the same time and we are not aware of any noteworthy delays.
Economic Benefit of the Skunk Train. Mendocino Railway’s Skunk Train is one of the region’s top economic drivers. While Mr. McNamee may be irritated at being delayed occasionally by one of our trains, please know that on average, that train delaying him is bringing $63,000 in local spending to our community.
Regional Success of Railroads. It does not require much effort to see the potential benefits of railroads. The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) railroad in neighboring Sonoma offers freight service and passenger service with record ridership. The demand for their service has motivated them to extend to Healdsburg in 2028 and then to Cloverdale, on the doorstep of Mendocino County. While our county has challenges, we hope regional success of railroads show MCOG the potential for rail in Mendocino County.

In closing, I urge MCOG to maintain a balanced, forward-looking approach. Mendocino County deserves a transportation plan that accurately reflects both current realities and future possibilities. MCOG’s Vision states, “Effective regional governance is about helping every community become more prosperous, equitable, and environmentally sustainable.” We believe Mendocino Railway is at the forefront of delivering on your vision. Rail is part of that vision—not as a nostalgic relic, but as a strategic tool for environmental stewardship, economic vitality, and regional connectivity.

Respectfully,

Robert Jason Pinoli

President & CEO – Mendocino Railway

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Buckshot is a fun-loving adult dog on the lookout for his new home. While he can be a bit shy at first meeting, after a minute of sniffing he will offer you his paw and get into the classic canine play-bow, and it’s off! — he’s your best friend and loyal companion! Buckshot is a curious guy and exploring and investigating is his thing. He’s intelligent and energetic — always ready for a game of fetch, a run around the yard, or some agility practice. This guy will need a family who can keep up with him, and in return, you will have a buddy at your side through all of life’s adventures. Buckshot is a 1 year old German Shepherd Dog weighing in at a very handsome 70 pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and the occasional goat, sheep, tortoise, horse, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com.

Join us the first Saturday of every month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event.

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. Our dog kennels are now open to the public Tuesday-Friday 1:30 to 4 pm, Saturday 10 am to 2:30 pm, closed for lunch Saturday from 1 to 1:30.

Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

ED NOTES: LOOKING BACK

“A TRUE REVOLUTION of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just.’… The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” (MLK, 1967)

I HAVE VIVID MEMORIES of the assassination of Martin Luther King. My daughter had just been born at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco. Her delivery doctor was barefoot and wore a flower behind his ear. I remember feeling that I should probably check his credentials. I was driving a cab, writing bad poetry and working to overthrow the government for all the reasons King himself perfectly articulated — the insane war on Vietnam at the expense of home front spending.

MY BROTHER ROB had just gotten out of the federal penitentiary at Lompoc for refusing to register for the draft. He was the first guy in the state to refuse to register. Just as he was leaving prison, my cousin, Jim Rowland, sentenced out of Arizona, was just entering Lompoc. He was the first guy in Arizona to get prison time for refusing to register. Keeping up my end, by '68 I was the proud owner of both a CIA and an FBI file, which I obtained via brand new FOIA requests in the mid-70s to brandish before Tom Hine, hoping to impress him that he was in the presence of not only a better-than-average fast pitch softball player but a certified subversive. (He seemed unimpressed.)

But that's us! A family of firsts!

I was watching the news when the announcements that King had been shot began. Later that night, Yellow Cab Dispatch warned us to stay out of Hunter's Point and the Fillmore District because men were shooting at cab toplights. I tried to find confirmation that this was true but never did. No driver I knew had had it happen to him.

It was a bad time generally in San Francisco with lots of street crime and hard drugs mowing down acres of flower children, hastening the “back-to-the-land” movement that formed the Mendocino County we see around us today, silly people in elected office.

I had a wife and two children and no money. But cab driving, in the San Francisco of 1968, could pay the bills out of the cash it generated and I managed the slum apartment building we lived in at 925 Sacramento at the mouth of the Stockton Tunnel, perhaps the noisiest residential address in the world, with horns honking and idiot shrieks emanating from the tunnel's echo chamber round-the-clock. We got a free apartment in return for my management, which consisted of doing absolutely nothing because rents were mailed directly to Coldwell Banker.

The Nude Girl On A Swing was our immediate neighbor. She sailed out of the ceiling naked every night at a North Beach nightclub over a sea of upturned male faces. Her act was a big draw. Cynthia was a junkie whose junkie boyfriend threatened to kill me one night when I stopped him from beating her up.

The day after the King murder we, the “activists” of that place and time, gathered in a large room south of Market to organize a protest march. I took a stack of march leaflets up to Market Street where I was soon accosted by a man who screamed N-Lover at me and was so generally incensed I thought I was going to have to fight him. I'd known lots of racists, of course, but never any as unhinged as this guy, and I didn't travel in those circles anyway. I leafletted for a couple of hours. He was the only negative response I got, but it was so intensely negative I've never forgotten it.

You see all these memoirs by varsity hippies about how groovy SF was in the 60s that you could get the impression that it really was a super cool place to live. It was and it wasn't. What it was was the precursor of the collapse to come, a time when the restraints came all the way off and have stayed off.

BELL TOWER, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Redwood Valley.

It is open to visitors, most of whom come for the sung liturgy on Sunday morning. It is a popular place for retreats. The Abbott, Fr. Damian, gives icon workshops from time to time.

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE: List of Events

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, November 22, 2025

JOSHUA AGUILAR-CABRERA, (age not provided), Lakewood/Ukiah. Speed contest, reckless driving.

JORGE ALVAREZ, 41, Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, under influence, paraphernalia.

JUAN BERA, 45, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury, disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs.

CARLOS CRUZ, 24, Merced/Ukiah. DUI.

ROBERT GARDNER II, 38, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, county parole violation.

JUAN GARIBAY-VAZQUEZ, 29, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-under influence, paraphernalia, resisting.

ALEX HARZ, 47. Ukiah. DUI.

ANGELA MILLER, 46, Redwood Valley. Domestic battery.

“I THINK we are moving into extremely volatile and dangerous times, as modern electronic technologies give mankind almost unlimited powers to play with its own psychopathology as a game.”

– JG Ballard

AM I GOING DOWN?

by Paul Modic

I really need to get my affairs in order as I have an enlarged aorta and could go at any second! Hey, I’m seventy-one, didn’t that use to be considered old? Like the gravel pit banging away all day down the road from this paradise acre, there’s always something, right? (I really don’t like the official name for this condition: “Aortic Aneurism,” oh shit, that doesn’t sound good.)

Yeah, I gotta get that cat scan next week, write another will, leave Bruce Anderson (who da thunk the $2,000,000 man and counting would outlive me?) my most valuable possession: a sword from Borneo with elephants carved on the handle and eleven marks on the sheath, meaning what? Eleven aortic aneurisms? Eleven dead elephants? Eleven men? (Yup, gotta get my affairs in order, at least find out what those eleven marks etched on the sheath represent.)

Well, I did write my book this year, rather collated essays and stories I’ve been writing for years, but what about next year’s edition? Leave the files for someone to publish posthumously?

I only know about the aorta because I got pericarditis after taking the covid vaccine twice (the doctors assured me that wasn’t the cause, though even my most pro-vaccine friend said it probably was) and they took a good look inside, and oh shit, what if the vaccine caused the enlarged aorta also? I don’t mean to go all chem-traily on you, but…(Are you sure you want to look inside?)

Okay, what’s done is done, it’s just me and the cat scan and maybe, probably, a long life yet to come, or snap, just like that it’s over and I want to leave less of a mess for someone to clean up, but who?

With no kids what’s gonna happen to all my stuff? (Maybe Bruce can work for that sword.)

Petty Moments

So I’ve got a new thing going: when someone comes to see my gallery I let them pick out an item of folk art displayed on a table in front of the paintings, maybe fifty to sixty things. The first person who took me up on this was a very nice and intelligent young woman I’d talked to a few times in the park, she and her husband had sold their failing weed farm, twice, and moved with the kids to Redway. I invited her to follow me home to look at the gallery and was a little surprised she was familiar with Lichtenstein.

She scanned the table for about ten seconds and picked out the most beautiful and valuable item, a handmade wooden mirror with inlaid abalone. Wow, that made me think for a second. The next time I made that offer, last night, I said, Oh you can have any little box, some of which were ceramic and glass, and in about fifteen seconds she’d snagged the other Hildago Mexico piece, a little box from the same artisan with the inlaid abalone.

Thinking about it later, doesn’t that seem greedy, to take the best thing? I congratulate their artistic sensibility, but man, I feel petty just thinking about it and more so writing and sharing it. If I had offered them a piece of pie would they have taken the largest one? Now I’m going to have to go all over Mexico looking for the fifty dollar, in total, replacements, even though if I hadn’t noticed what they took, I never would have missed them.

If I showed them this vignette they’d probably say, “What? Do you want me to give it back?” and I’d say “Yes, yes I do!”

Oh, I probably won’t say anything, I guess I just have to smile with an idiotic grin.

This reminds me of a couple previous scenes:

One harvest I was paying the new trimmers $200 a pound and they were complaining how hard my weed was too clean, so I raised them to $250. They were rockin' happily along with the raise when my usual guy showed up and he was wide-eyed and excited about the new wage scale.

He ripped through the weed making bank, and I realized my weed wasn't bad, those trimmers were! I knew it would be bad form to try to change it back to $200 that year so I just thought of that rock anthem: “I won't be fooled again!”

The second scene reminded me of that W.C Fields line: “Never give a sucker an even break.” A good demonstration of that was when I was down in Mexico and didn’t realize that when I’d left my car in front of the motel I had shut the door with part of the seatbelt/safety harness hanging outside the door. When I went out there in the morning I found that someone had cut it off.

On the edge of the bluff (Dick Whetstone)

MEMO OF THE AIR: We know why the wind goes whew.

Marco here. Here's the recording of Friday night's (9pm PDT, 2025-11-21) 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. This was my 1440th all-night written-word show since early 1997 and I feel pretty good about it. 1440 is exactly the number of minutes in a day. If I had done all those shows monthly instead of weekly it would be the year 2117 AD now and I would be broadcasting from the bell jar that preserves my disembodied head. Your nose and ears keep growing as long as you're alive, so imagine that.

https://memo-of-the-air.s3.amazonaws.com/KNYO_0671_MOTA_2025-11-21.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:

This isn't happiness? I beg to differ. Scroll down and down. https://thisisnthappiness.com

"So what. No one said he was perfect! And it's not like the girls were eight!" No, that's right, the youngest was thirteen. That we know of. https://boingboing.net/2025/11/19/tom-the-dancing-bug-the-five-stages-of-maga-scandal-grief.html

Quorum Barbershop Quartet - I Love To Singa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHIunAokNaE

And our seething hairy enormous father in heaven. Or mother. In Latin, Irish and some others, the sun is male. In Swedish, Ukrainian, Japanese and Hindi, female. https://twitter.com/i/status/1991442265534001233

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

ROD JONES:

The chatter about a possible soft secession involving the gradual withdrawal of one or more states from cooperation with the federal government without a formal declaration of independence leaves a part of my anatomy twitching. Clara Jeffery recently wrote in Mother Jones magazine about the 2013 effort by Tim Draper to pitch a “Six Californias,” which, after 2016’s Trump 1.0, became a “simpler” proposal for “Cal 3.” The state high court blocked the measure as ballots were ready to print. Draper apparently gave up.

But the nightmare persists. As MJ’s writer Ari Berman said, “Today, California has 67 times the population of Wyoming. Fifteen small states with 41 million people combined now routinely elect 30 GOP senators; California, with 39 million residents, is represented by only two Democrats.” So, after already weathering nine months of Trump 2.0 abuses, suddenly even Governor Gavin Newsom is moving toward some kind of partnership with Oregon and Washington by way of a West Coast Health Alliance.

An honest rupture is needed. No pussy-footing. California’s Prop. 50 is such a step, a necessary evil to counter a greater one in D.C. Hard secession steps must be taken. And the timing is right.

Trump’s coterie would even welcome it, no matter its overall impact on the federal union. It would move at least three hellholes out of his jurisdiction, and Stephen Miller would be ecstatic to watch Santa Monica go away. Our red tie ruler would celebrate secession as a victory of his own doing.

While radical, this idea is not a crazy venture. The battle lines are already getting drawn by blue state attorney generals banding together to resist Trump’s creeping federalist de facto putsch. California has been here before with its Pico Act of 1859 that sought to divide California.

In 1939, Wyoming Republicans sought to go their own way with a new state called “Absaroka” that would pull in parts of Montana and South Dakota. Washington wanted to split itself into two states, one of which would be called Liberty. Less than ten years ago, eastern Oregon residents wanted to merge into a “Greater Idaho” independent state. A 2008 poll revealed that nearly a quarter of Americans supported a state’s or region’s right to peacefully secede from the United States in the highest rate since the American Civil War.

In 2019, Josh Levin wrote a Slate piece that began with, “In the American end times, our government will take one of two forms. One possibility is that federalism will give way to an all-powerful central government. The other option is decentralization — in the absence of a unifying national interest, the United States of America will fragment and be supplanted by regional governance. The United States will end when the equilibrium mandated by the Constitution no longer holds.”

It seems we’ve long since hit that point. Equilibrium has been lost. Trump and his minions could care less about the rule of law and constitutional compliance. Let’s get a move on.

(Rod Jones is a semi-retired criminal defense/environmental litigation lawyer who resides near the town of Mendocino.)

YES, that’s Rachel Maddow sitting between Anthony Fauci and James Carville at the memorial service for…Dick Cheney. And not just sitting there out of reportorial obligation, but looking, well, grief-stricken… (Jeffrey St. Clair)

MOVING BEYOND THE WITNESS

Warmest spiritual greetings,

Rotting in the quagmire of samsara continues in Washington, D.C. An evening of coughing and expectorating while taking throat lozenges and dextromethorphan, interrupted only by the 5 a.m. cereal, muffin, milk, fruit cup, and fruit juices, and finally crashed out for two hours of sleep. Awoke at 9 a.m.

Left the homeless shelter following morning ablutions, to check LOTTO tix, purchase more cough meds at CVS, then eat at Whole Foods, and finally go to the MLK Jr. public library. Will matriculate back to the homeless shelter for the 5 p.m. check-in soon.

Tomorrow is Sunday. Doing nothing particularly crucial in Washington, D.C. now. Even for postmodern America, this is weird! Waiting for membership cards to arrive in the mail, relevant to health, wealth, and food. Social security will be in by December 1st. Living conservatively at present, letting the checking account increase. Do not know where it's all going. This is weird.

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

“I WOULD SAY that the angriest critiques I get from people about shows are when I'm drinking whatever convenient cold beer is available in a particular place, and not drinking the best beer out there. You know, I haven't made the effort to walk down the street 10 blocks to the microbrewery where they're making some fucking Mumford and Sons IPA. People get all bent about it. But look, I like cold beer. And I like to have a good time. I don't like to talk about beer, honestly. I don't like to talk about wine. I like to drink beer. If you bring me a really good one, a good craft beer, I will enjoy it, and say so. But I'm not gonna analyze it.”

– Anthony Bourdain

BAY AREA BROTHERS SHOCKED AFTER DISCOVERING $9 MILLION COMIC IN MOTHER’S ATTIC

by Zara Irshad

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s the world’s most expensive comic book. And it was purchased in San Francisco.

A 1939 issue of Superman No. 1, which introduces the Man of Steel in his first solo title, sold for a record-breaking $9.12 million on Thursday, Nov. 20. The sale, handled by Texas-based Heritage Auctions, smashed the previous high set by a $6 million copy of Action Comics No. 1.

Prior to this week’s sale, the most expensive copy of Superman No. 1 had sold for $5.3 million in 2022.

“Superman No. 1 is a milestone in pop culture history,” Lon Allen, Heritage Auctions vice president, said in a statement. “This copy is not only in unprecedented condition, but it has a movie-worthy story behind it.”

The 86-year-old comic was in pristine condition and discovered by three brothers in the San Francisco attic of their late mother last Christmas. They said that she had purchased the book, and several others, when living in the city as a 9-year-old during the Great Depression.

While they recall their mother mentioning that she had “rare comics somewhere,” they never believed it until they uncovered the rare issue among a stack of old newspapers in a cardboard box.

The Bay Area climate helped to keep the issue in great condition. It received a 9 out of 10 rating by the Certified Guaranty Co., a leading third-party comic grader.

Pop culture fans who may not have millions to spend on ultra-rare comic books can still explore a variety of titles and meet the creators behind them at Fan Expo San Francisco next week. The annual convention, which will take over Moscone Center from Friday through Sunday, Nov. 28 through 30, celebrates everything from comics to gaming, anime and more.

(SF Chronicle)

“I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED A SWIMMING POOL, and never had one. When it became generally known a year or so ago that California was suffering severe drought, many people in water-rich parts of the country seemed obscurely gratified, and made frequent reference to Californians having to brick up their swimming pools. In fact a swimming pool requires, once it has been filled and the filter has begun its process of cleaning and recirculating the water, virtually no water, but the symbolic content of swimming pools has always been interesting: a pool is misapprehended as a trapping of affluence, real or pretended, and of a kind of hedonistic attention to the body. Actually a pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.” (— Joan Didion, The White Album, 1979)

WIGMORE WONDERS: THE DUNEDIN CONSORT IN PRAISE OF PURCELL

by David Yearsley

Wigmore Hall, London. Photo: Russ London.

A conductor waves his arms in front of other musicians. The audience usually sees the maestro (less often maestra, still) from the back. Hidden from the concertgoers during the performance, the conductor’s face can convey infinite—if also potentially ambiguous—expressive information for the musicians in front of him as they play or sing: the pursed lips, the pleading frown, the nodding cue, the warning of a sharp look, the reward of a radiant smile.

For the simulcast audience at home staring at screens large or small, or for those looking up from their picnic hampers at a jumbotron during an outdoor concert, however, the conductor’s face can intermittently dominate, becoming an emotional confidante or even a bully. Leonard Bernstein in a sweat-soaked close-up, tells you how he feels and how you should feel too.

The looks were less extreme—never egomaniacal—but instead graciously, sometimes joyously uplifting from Nicholas Mulroy, who directed the Dunedin Consort at London’s storied Wigmore Hall on Tuesday evening for a program of music from the last two decades of the 17th century. He faced the audience, sang solo and in the vocal quartet that was joined by strings, recorders, and continuo.

At the center of the Dunedin’s colorful musical canvas stood Henry Purcell, whose genius was recognized during his all-too-short life and ever after. His music never went out of fashion, has been emulated and revered since his demise in 1696 at thirty-six, felled by a fever after being locked out of his own house in the City of London by his wife after a night of carousing at the tavern—at least, that’s one oft-told cause of death, though it has the ring of urban myth.

Around him in this picture of the London scene circa 1690 were gathered Henry Hall, a boyhood friend who remained a professional colleague across Purcell’s all-too-short but prolific life; a student, Giovanni Draghi, who journeyed from Italy to England—against the general cultural flow in the other direction—to learn from this “very great master of music,” as Purcell was praised at his funeral; William Croft, an epigone and successor as organist at Westminster Abbey; and, behind Purcell in this group portrait, his beloved and admiring teacher, John Blow. He had trained Purcell at Westminster Abbey; recognizing that his protégé had surpassed him, Blow turned over his prestigious position to the younger man, but then resumed the post after Purcell’s premature death.

A renowned Scottish period-instrument ensemble now celebrating its thirtieth year, the Dunedin Consort came with a dozen instrumentalists and singers, a smaller contingent than the forces that, for example, won a Gramophone Award in 2007 for their recording of the first version of Handel’s Messiah, as premiered in Dublin in 1742.

Now the group’s associate director, Mulroy’s name and leadership role for the evening were listed not at the top of the program booklet’s first page, but halfway down among the other musicians. On stage, he was among them, too.

He did not turn his back on the audience. He did not wave his arms, though, as one of the two tenors in the group, he did often reach out imploringly with his right hand while his left held his score. At other times, he leaned forward, extending his forefinger to draw attention to poignant musical-poetic passages. His glowing countenance communicated and complemented his ardent, ever-communicative voice, one that filled this modest-sized auditorium, famed for its warmly enriching acoustic. In this “temple of music,” as Mulroy called it, his singing retained a rhetorical immediacy and an ever-meaningful connection to the music—and to his listeners. Director Mulroy’s motions and expressions seemed made more for himself than for the audience, though we followed the gestures of voice and body and took their meaning with rapt attention.

Instead of conducting, Mulroy had curated and prepared the collaborative music-making. In both halves of the concert he offered engaging remarks on the personal connections between the composers and highlighted telling features of the works to be heard, especially in relation to Purcell’s transcendent example, as when he likened the ample proportions of John Blow’s grief-stricken An Ode on the Death to a favorite pet that stretches out and takes up too much space on the sofa with you.

The evening began with Purcell’s Welcome to All the Pleasures, one of his three odes to St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music whose feast day is tomorrow: the calendar smiled on this concert, as did the crisp, clear skies outside and the green and gold beams radiating from the art nouveau mural in the cupola above the stage. The Ode begins with an instrumental “Symphony” that proceeds with poise and pomp—grand and graceful flourishes, harmonic feints that avoid the obvious to linger regally on gourmet dissonances. At every turn, Purcell’s incandescent imagination flares up. Violinists Matthew Truscott and Huw Daniel emitted a 1960s mod-rocker vibe in their black suit jackets and tousled Beatles haircuts, Glorious Revolution hipsters who knew their craft and knew how to send that skill out into the hall. They played with unerring accuracy and flair, energized by a sense of discovery that was shared by Thomas Kettle, stalwart and stylish in the middle of things on viola. This aura of surprise was supported and commented on by a trio of buoyant continuo colleagues: Stephen Farr providing the sonic backdrop at a box organ the size of a backyard barbecue; tasteful filigree decorated the proceedings from Toby Carr’s long-necked theorbo; Jonathan Manson’s cello was propulsive, leading from below. This instrumental introduction made wondrous Purcell’s welcome.

The chorus of four—Jessica Cale, quick yet calm at soprano; tenor Samuel Boden, a more contained foil to the imploring but never intrusive Mulroy; and bass Chris Webb, was rousingly ruddy—made Purcell’s pleasures irresistible.

St. Cecilia thus oded, the singers exited through the lustrous wooden doors directly at the back of the stage that, when opened, allowed a fleeting glance into the Green Room, whose walls are thick with photos of some of the legendary musicians who’ve played at the Wigmore across Hall the 125 years since it opened.

John Blow’s unstoppably optimistic and inventive Chaconne in G set up the program’s other repeated bass patterns; as Mulroy rightly and reverently pointed out, Purcell became the unsurpassed champion of this technique. A Draghi trio sonata showed that the Italian had learned his lessons well and lively.

After the intermission came another francophone Purcell Overture reeled off in a distinctive London accent. Recorder players László Rózsa and Olwen Foulkes joined to mourn the hero’s death in the pastoral elegy by Purcell’s pal Henry Hall. Never were shepherds sadder, the loveliness of the forlorn music overcoming the hackneyed, though heartfelt, poetry by Hall himself.

Yet another Purcell Overture—uncanny how this composer could make the generic always be an adventure—set the tone for Blow’s lament on the loss of his prized pupil. The poetry was penned by the deceased’s sometime librettist, John Dryden, his text sung by the two high tenors, apparently the range of the singing voice of their departed friend.

After the lively dialogues between the pair of violins and the pair of recorders in a sonata from William Croft, played like a game of doubles in Restoration real tennis, the program ended with Purcell’s anthem “Raise, raise the voice.” Toward the end of this magnificent piece, Purcell serves up and elaborates one of his greatest of repeating bass lines, a riff of many rapturous measures decorated and danced around by voices and instruments, as if anticipating the advent of jazz by two centuries. As this rollicking figure got going, Mulroy stood listening in the midst of his musicians, as soprano Cale flurried and piped:

Mark how readily each pliant string

prepares itself an off’ring;

the tribute of some gentle sounds does bring.

The bass is relentless in its good feeling. Purcell cuts against its groovy grain with sinuous chromaticism, colorful off-piste harmonies, and kindred melodic mischief—shimmering garlands of delightful deception.

Mulroy’s face shone its most radiant as he listened, as if he couldn’t help but conduct with the expressions of his face, not exaggerated but honest in his infectious inability to contain his rapturous admiration. The soprano threads wove through the fabulous instrumental fabric, repeated then renewed in kaleidoscopic variety, finally allowing the lower vocal parts to enter “altogether in harmonious lays” for a few celebratory passes through the ground bass and then a quick acclamatory close.

With a smile he [Apollo] does all our endeavours approve

And vows he ne’er heard such a consort above.

Here’s a gladsome voice raised that the Dunedin Consort and Director Mulroy were heard down below in the terrestrial realms of the Wigmore Hall, all their faces turned to a rejoicing audience, the music they made proof that Purcell lives on.

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

EPSTEIN, an on-line comment:

I can tell just how Trump is reacting that this is the new Russiagate. The fact that this stuff was buried for the past 4-6 years tells me there are a lot of uppercrusty a-holes who had a friendly relationship with Epstein and would be embarrassed by the release of his communications. Not that that are part of a pedophile ring, but rather they will be embarrassed by proximity and the fact they remained friends with him after he was in trouble for messing with young girls. And that will prove that they don’t care if a man messes with young girls. The reality is that Epstein was a NY democrat, as Trump was once a NY democrat. I’m sure he contributed to republicans as well as any smart business person would do, but his actual friendly connections will be democrats, media folks (same thing) and such. That’s why it was buried until they thought they could use it against Trump, who we know had some kind of relationship with Epstein. This has been known for a long time. They bet Trump wouldn’t release anything and they could hang it around his neck because they know his base wants the transparency. Trump just doesn’t want to feed meat into the new Russiagate until it became clear that he has way more to lose by holding back on the information. Now this will either be ignored again, or they will claim he is holding back anything that shows he’s a pedophile. It’s gross. But this is what the democrat party has become because it worked for them during his last administration and they don’t have a platform that is popular outside of blue enclaves.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY was assassinated 62 years ago today in Dallas, Texas. The evidence shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin who shot Kennedy from a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. Bullet fragments in Kennedy's limo and a bullet found at Parkland Hospital were conclusively matched to Oswald's rifle. That prove he was the assassin.

Oswald's rifle was found on the sixth floor after the shooting. Three spent shells from his rifle were found on the floor by the sixth floor window. The number of shells matches the number of shots that the vast majority of witnesses heard. No bullets or shells from any other gun were found. There's no physical evidence and no eyewitness sighting of another shooter.

Oswald had no alibi. He immediately fled the building. He went straight to his rooming house where he picked up his revolver that he used to shoot officer J.D. Tippit about 45 minutes after assassinating President Kennedy. Oswald tried to shoot the arresting officer in the Texas Theater. That shows Oswald's consciousness of guilt and his capacity for deadly violence.

After Oswald's arrest, he showed no concern about Kennedy's death. Oswald didn't want to talk about Kennedy, except to make the cold remark about the assassinaton that "people will forget that within a few days and there would be another President.” (Testimony Of J. W. Fritz, https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/testimony/fritz1.htm)

Conspiracy mongers have spent 60 years distorting the facts, spreading misinformation, ignoring the evidence and spinning wild theories out of thin air -- but they haven't found a conspiracy or proved a damn thing. The only thing they've accomplished is confusing the public and pretending the assassination is still unsolved.

Oswald killed two men on Nov. 22, 1963. He was a cold-blooded killer. Seven months before the assassination, his wife photographed him holding his rifle that he used to assassinate President Kennedy:

OLD TOWN ROAD

You know what? I'm done, done, done

Yeah, I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road
I'm gonna ride 'til I can't no more
I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road
I'm gonna ride 'til I can't no more
(Kio, Kio)

I got the horses in the back
Horse tack is attached
Hat is matte black
Got the boots that's black to match
Ridin' on a horse, ha
You can whip your Porsche
I been in the valley
You ain't been up off that porch, now

Can't nobody tell me nothin'
You can't tell me nothin'
Can't nobody tell me nothin'
You can't tell me nothin'

Ridin' on a tractor
Lean all in my bladder
Cheated on my baby
You can go and ask her
My life is a movie
Bull ridin' and boobies
Cowboy hat from Gucci
Wrangler on my booty

Can't nobody tell me nothin'
You can't tell me nothin'
Can't nobody tell me nothin'
You can't tell me nothin'

Yeah, I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road
I'm gonna ride 'til I can't no more
I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road
I'm gonna ride 'til I can't no more
I got the—

— Lil Nas X

PIGGY GETS POLITE

by Maureen Dowd

Step by slimy step, President Trump has made us numb to his crudeness and cruelty.

The solipsistic Trump, with the parasitic tech emperors and the internet itself, is degrading American values, making honor and integrity seem anachronistic.

Still, some moments shock as beyond the pale. Whatever the pale is anymore.

On Air Force One recently, Trump cut off Catherine Lucey, a Bloomberg News journalist pressing him about the release of Epstein files that could further implicate Trump in the lurid mess. Stabbing his finger at her face, the President of the United States snapped at Lucey: “Quiet! Quiet, piggy.”

The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, later preposterously explained, “The president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is, frankly, a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration.”

It was nauseating, if not surprising. Trump loves to call people who annoy him “pigs” and “dogs,” and in the case of his inamorata Stormy Daniels, “horseface.”

It was misogynistic, but Trump bullies both men and women, attacking their looks and character and hurling nasty, intensely personal epithets and nicknames. He mocked Chris Christie, once an ally, as “a fat pig,” “a slob” and “sloppy.”

When I interviewed him decades ago in his more appropriate incarnation as a flashy developer hogging attention in New York, he would rate the looks of supermodels and actresses, dropping snap judgments like, “Sadly, Heidi Klum is no longer a 10.” Sometimes, he sent me pictures of female journalists from newspapers, commenting with a Sharpie scrawl on who he thought looked good or bad.

Politicians were never insult comics before Trump. But in the 2016 primaries he learned sneering deflected from substance.

Trump followed up his “Quiet, piggy” moment by berating another female journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, who asked Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, during his appearance with the president, about his culpability in the dismemberment of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. U.S. intelligence concluded the prince gave the order.

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump chided Bruce. When she later asked why Trump was waiting for Congress to release the Epstein files when he could do it unilaterally, he called her question “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.” He added that Brendan Carr, the chairman of the F.C.C., should look into revoking ABC’s broadcast license.

Trump even defamed Khashoggi, saying that a lot of people didn’t like him and noting cavalierly that “things happen.”

Yes, Things Happen when you have no morals and your family is doing lucrative business deals with the Saudis.

By contrast, Trump was his most charming self on Friday in his “fascist vs. socialist” meeting with Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani of New York. He had blasted Mamdani earlier as a “Communist” and “JEW HATER” and threatened to withhold federal funding for New York and send in troops. But by the end of their Oval Office news conference, the two were so lovey-dovey, a Fox News anchor warned that JD Vance might have to move over for Mamdani. And Trump, who once warned that wealthy New Yorkers and businesses would flee if the democratic socialist were elected, dramatically flipped, saying he would feel very comfortable moving back to Gotham under this mayor.

(“It was a Great Honor meeting Zohran Mamdani, the new Mayor of New York City!” Trump gushed in a bromance-y Truth Social post featuring pictures of the pair on a colonnade and posing in front of F.D.R.’s portrait.)

It just proved that Trump admires charismatic winners more than he cares about ideology — or consistency. Mamdani was prepared, focusing on their common ground while flattering Trump by noting his election statistics and hometown roots, and avoiding Dear Leader fawning. He strategically embraced Trump as he touted the affordability issue, which the billionaire president loved. Seeing Americans restive at his fixation on foreign conflicts, Trump is feigning a newfound interest in grocery prices.

The president was so taken with Mamdani, he even jovially told him, in response to a Fox News reporter’s question, to go ahead and repeat his campaign claim that Trump is “a fascist.” The president also defended Mamdani from the incendiary falsehood of Elise Stefanik, the Republican who’s running for governor of New York, that the Muslim mayor-elect is a “jihadist.”

Stefanik, a Trump henchwoman, broke away from the president on this issue, doubling down and posting Friday evening that Mamdani is “Kathy Hochul’s jihadist.”

Unfortunately, we don’t get to see this genial Trump very much these days. He’s mean when he’s cornered, like the snapping turtle I had as a pet when I was a child. Republicans got creamed in the recent elections. To extend the porcine metaphor, Trump’s polls are dropping, to use a Dave Barry phrase, “like a pig out of a helicopter.”

The president, ordinarily a master at recasting reality, had to give up his ludicrous attempt to paint the Epstein files as a Democratic hoax. Labeling Marjorie Taylor Greene, his former acolyte who now says she identifies with the Epstein victims, a “traitor” backfired.

Friday night Greene announced in a social media post that she was leaving Congress and said she didn’t want to face a “hateful” primary stirred by Trump.

“Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men,” she wrote, “should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for.”

She added, “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.”

And Trump’s jeering post about Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the Republican cosponsor of the bill to get the files released, wasn’t well received. Trump mocked Massie, a widower, for marrying again 16 months after his wife died. “Boy, that was quick!” This coming from the man who went straight from cheating with Marla Maples during his Ivana marriage to marrying her at the Plaza a year later.

Maligning members of his own party raised questions about why he was so desperate to hide the files of a child molester who was once his pal; the two bonded over their leering predilection for young women.

In a rare show of rebellion, Republicans refused to bend the knee and pretend that it was OK to shield a sexual pervert and give his accomplice, Ghislane Maxwell, treats in prison and pardon dreams just because Trump didn’t want the details of his involvement with Epstein to surface.

In emails Democrats released, Epstein wrote that “Trump had spent hours at my house” with one of the victims and that he believed Trump knew more than he had acknowledged, and called Trump “evil beyond belief.” You know you’re in trouble when someone evil beyond belief calls you evil beyond belief.

‘MAGA-ING ALCATRAZ’: Crypto exec pitches Trump on Greek-god monument taller than Statue of Liberty for ex-prison island

Ross Calvin wants to bring a towering Prometheus to San Francisco Bay - and he thinks the president is just the man to green light the project, Josh Marcus reports

by Josh Marcus

It would be called the Great Colossus of Prometheus.

The $420 million, 450-foot statue - honoring the Greek mythological figure who rebelled against the gods and gave fire to humanity - would rise over San Francisco Bay with a gas-powered, flaming torch in hand.

The home for this colossus? Alcatraz Island — site of the crumbling, long-shuttered federal penitentiary — now one of America’s leading tourist destinations, attracting about 1.2 million people annually. Under this vision, an island which once housed infamous gangsters Al Capone and Whitey Bulger would instead attract visitors with lush gardens and a museum of breakthrough technologies, ranging from the telescope to gene-editing and AI.

And it would all be a gift, of sorts, to the American people from a crypto entrepreneur, just in time for President Donald Trump’s much-hyped celebrations of 250 years of American independence, the latest reminder of how Silicon Valley has increasingly blended with the MAGA world.

That is, if all goes according to the (very ambitious) plan.

And there’s the small matter of convincing the Trump administration to hand over a federally-controlled tourist gem that earns about $60 million a year in revenue.

The man behind this outlandish project is Ross Calvin, founder of crypto mining firm Parhelion Digital. Calvin, who lives in Denver, is a relatively obscure figure in the financial world, with a portfolio ranging from operating natural-gas powered Bitcoin mining rigs in the autonomous region of Kurdistan to working on a perfume line.

His politics are just as all over the map. From one angle, they’re very right-wing. He shares with Trump a love of bombastic monuments, an animosity towards identity politics and Black Lives Matter, a conspiratorial way of thinking, and a sense that many forms of immigration are an existential threat.

Then again, he’s also anti-authoritarian and has got positive things to say about American-style multiculturalism, the election of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York, and the tactics of freedom fighters ranging from first-wave feminists to Nat Turner, who led a famous slave revolt in the early 1800s.

Calvin first began dreaming of the monument in 2018 during a visit to San Francisco. As he drove across the Bay Bridge, he was struck by the splendor of the bay and its aesthetic potential. Just like the 305ft Statue of Liberty on the opposite coast, a monument at the mouth of this great ocean could trumpet American values to the wider world, he thought.

“This would be the most important scene of the ennoblement of man, and of our country, to put something triumphant and beautiful and redeeming there on Alcatraz,” he told The Independent. “How poetic to make it rhyme with the Statue of Liberty.”

The Prometheus statue is just a proposal for now, but Calvin thinks he can get the plans fast-tracked for a meeting with White House officials within the next six months.

Friends of friends have connections in the administration, he said, and Calvin hopes Trump could turn the island, part of the National Park Service’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area, into a protected National Monument to facilitate the statue. (Calvin is also working on a private, for-profit fund to support the project, composed of real estate and crypto assets, which he says is already getting interest from big name investors, including in the Middle East.)

Calvin says he got a letter to the president directly through a friend at Mar-a-Lago last December. Soon after, Trump posted on Truth Social: “America is going to start building monuments to our great heroes and heroines again!!!”

The Independent has contacted the White House and Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, for comment.

The president’s history as a developer of high-end hotels and luxury condo buildings before taking the White House may also help. “The president happens to be a real estate guy,” Calvin said. “He understands this kind of thing.”

Truly so.

Trump has demolished the White House’s East Wing to build a $300 million gilded ballroom, much of it funded by donations from big names in tech and crypto. He is considering plans to erect an Arc de Triomphe-style monument on the National Mall, while allotting millions to build a sculpture-filled “National Garden of American Heroes."

The administration has also restored historic statues and paintings of figures from the Confederacy, which were removed, and sometimes torn down, during the Black Lives Matter movement.

Even Trump’s slogans have an ornamental flavor these days, with the president frequently suggesting we are living through a new “Golden Age.”

Trump, however, has his own ideas about Alcatraz. The president has called for the government to reopen the decaying tourist attraction as a prison, going so far as to send Attorney General Pam Bondi and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to inspect the island in July.

Rebuilding the crumbling prison on Alcatraz Island, which ceased to house inmates in 1963, could take years of time and heaps of money. Trump’s prison proposal could cost $2 billion, an administration source told Axios in July.

A seismic remodeling project on the Main Prison Building, aimed merely at shoring up the property’s existing use as a historic site, is set to cost $63.6 million for work lasting through 2027.

‘It’s a message for everybody’

Calvin isn’t the only tech-world figure inspired by Prometheus. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a new AI start-up called Project Prometheus while Meta also plans to name one of its massive new AI data centers after the figure. The myth is clearly having a moment.

The crypto entrepreneur sees Prometheus — who steals fire from Zeus after the zealous king of the gods hides it from humans in anger — as an embodiment of the American ideal of the “pursuit of happiness.”

“It’s a very beautiful myth,” he said, calling Prometheus “the first freedom fighter” and a “regime-busting, no-kings guy.”

“It has all of this amazing meaning for an industrious, artistic, creative people like we pride ourselves on being,” he added.

The tech guys might love Prometheus, but many see the tale as one about the dangers of hubris. His treachery leads Zeus to unleash misery on the human race, and Prometheus is left chained to a mountain where an eagle devours his liver.

Nonetheless, Calvin feels that the story of Prometheus, who in some tellings teaches humans the arts and sciences, has “a message for everybody.”

Well, perhaps not everybody. America needs this monument in the first place, Calvin told The Independent across lengthy interviews, because a loose and at times unwitting network of elite financial interests, bought-off bureaucrats, nonprofits, the military-industrial-espionage complex, and activists groups have conspired to suppress the progress of the masses.

Some of these views are encapsulated on a blog, titled “American Colossus Foundation” - which serves as a manifesto for the Prometheus project - and has contributions from Calvin and other writers.

Calvin outlined an ideology behind the Prometheus project that was equal parts anti-woke, anti-authoritarian, and more than a little conspiratorial. He feels movements like modern feminism and Black Lives Matter have devolved into empty “struggle sessions” and “guilting” that don’t create change, while he claims shadowy forces are encouraging mass immigration that often results in people arriving from what he calls “incredibly incompatible cultures to what we value in the West with pluralism and tolerance.”

The entrepreneur insists, however, neither he nor his monument plans are racist, misogynist, or anti-immigrant. He has lived all over the world and sees the monument’s home turf of California as proof positive of the benefits of immigration, he told The Independent.

His argument with Black Lives Matter activists is not over the movement’s goal of ending inequality, but rather the riots and statue tear-downs that sometimes accompanied its protests.

Rather, he says the overall goal of the Great Colossus of Prometheus is to get people to look beyond much contemporary identity politics, which he feels have failed to served disadvantaged groups.

“It’s the anti-authoritarian thing that I want to provoke,” he said. “I want to provoke that conversation. I think that the authoritarian strain, which is against all of us, doesn’t care about your race. It will use it to target you. It causes more division among us than we ever know naturally.”

Calvin’s anti-authoritarian streak includes doubts about Trump, the man who could make or break this proposal, even though the project has also described its work as “MAGAing Alcatraz.” Calvin thinks the president’s penchant to talk about running for a third term, or calling himself a king, is just trolling, but he sees deeper reasons for concern.

“I feel very tired with the whole affair,” he said. “I feel tired of talking about the Trump family and then the Bush family and then the Clinton family and all this stuff. He might be the end of the gerontocracy, which is really what I’m hoping for. All of these cats are so old.”

Club Crypto

Calvin’s confidence his project will get a good hearing in Washington isn’t just a little Promethean self-confidence, though, or a matter of shared vibes spreading throughout the right-leaning corners of the tech space.

The crypto industry is finding plenty of doors open in Washington these days.

The sector was the largest corporate campaign donor during the 2024 elections, with the lion’s share going to Republicans. Top crypto entrepreneurs, like the Winklevoss twins, are Trump supporters, and the Republican got a 2024 endorsement from the influential venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, whose firm, a16z, has numerous crypto holdings.

And the Trumps love crypto right back. The president has promoted the idea of a national Bitcoin reserve, and his sons have launched a string of opaque, ethically-questionable crypto ventures that earned the Trump Organization at least $802 million so far this year, dwarfing the company’s other revenue sources, according to Reuters.

Last month, the president pardoned Changpeng Zhao, a crypto executive who pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering and has past business ties to the Trumps. Binance, which Zhao co-founded, built the technology that supports the Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial crypto venture. In May, an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm announced a $2 billion investment into Binance using World Liberty’s stablecoin.

The tech world is also in the midst of a surge in macho classicism. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has taken to wearing shirts with Latin slogans about Caesar and building a Roman-style statue of his wife. Top venture capital firms are backing Atlas, a project named after a different Greek titan to construct an autonomous defense-tech hub to “defend the west.”

A ‘Deranged Publicity Stunt’

While the Trump world and the tech scene have converged, some Bay Area critics don’t want to see Alcatraz Island become a monumental part of this movement.

Adrian Covert, a historian and senior vice president of public policy at the Bay Area Council, a policy nonprofit, has proposed a different kind of monument for Alcatraz, erecting a statue of Lady Justice instead of Prometheus.

“America's founding ideal is liberty and justice for all,” Covert told The Independent. “It’s part of the American ethos.”

“Prometheus is an odd choice,” he added. “It's a character from Greek mythology. The myth itself is a warning against hubris. Making a monument out of hubris is an interesting idea.”

Gil Duran, a Bay Area journalist who covers what he dubs the tech world’s right-wing “Nerd Reich,” was more scathing.

“It's a perfect mix of phallicism and fascism, and a great metaphor for the state of tech in 2025—burning ungodly amounts of money on a hype project designed to project godlike power and grandiosity,” Duran wrote in an email. “This deranged publicity stunt, which has no chance of being built, is a great symbol of Silicon Valley's failed imagination.”

“Ozymandias would be a more fitting name,” he added, a reference to the ironic Percy Bysshe Shelley poem about a long-abandoned monument to a pharaoh’s eternal greatness.

Even without a Prometheus monument, Alcatraz Island already holds a monumental place in U.S. history, from its decades housing infamous criminals, to the legacy of Native American protesters who occupied the site in the late Sixties amid the Civil Rights Era, helping kick off the Red Power movement.

Much like Lady Liberty in New York Harbor, Alcatraz stands at the entrance to a port city through which millions of people have immigrated to the U.S. More than half of the companies created in Silicon Valley between 1995 and 2005, for example, had at least one foreign-born founder.

Covert said he’d love to get his Lady Justice idea off the ground, but being from the non-profit sector, he described raising money to build it as “11 out of 10” on the difficulty scale.

Or, as he joked: “Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill, to keep with the Greek mythology.”

(independent.co.uk)

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Trump, after realizing he couldn't stop the release of the files and realizing as well that the Epstein matter has damaged his standing with his base, decided to heavily redact the files and then "release" them. I'm sick of hearing that Trump plays 4-dimensional chess. He just flounders from day to day and what he says one day often contradicts what he said the day before. He has street smarts, but no intellectual depth. He doesn't read or study. When the files finally come out, perhaps after the midterm elections, we will likely see the names of Trump’s political enemies on the list, but not the names of his friends or his own name. The purge has begun.

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“I DECLINE TO ACCEPT the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

― William Faulkner, Nobel Prize in Literature Acceptance Speech, 1949

Hindenburg airship as it crashes to the ground (1937) by Murray Becker

PULLMAN PORTER

The porter in the Pullman car
Was charming, as they sometimes are.
He scanned my baggage tags: “Are you
The man who wrote of Lady Lou?”
When I said “yes” he made a fuss —
Oh, he was most assiduous;
And I was pleased to think that he
Enjoyed my brand of poetry.

He was forever at my call,
So when we got to Montreal
And he had brushed me off, I said:
“I’m glad my poems you have read,
I feel quite flattered, I confess,
And if you give me your address
I’ll send you (autographed, of course)
One of my little books of verse.”

He smiled — his teeth were white as milk;
He spoke — his voice was soft as silk.
I recognized, despite his skin,
The perfect gentleman within.
Then courteously he made reply:
“I thank you kindly, Sir, but I
With many other cherished tome
Have all your books of verse at home.

“When I was quite a little boy
I used to savour them with joy;
And now my daughter, aged three,
Can tell the tale of Sam McGee;
While Tom, my son, that’s only two,
Has heard the yarn of Dan McGrew ….
Don’t think your stuff I’m not applaudin’ —
My taste is Eliot and Auden.”

So as we gravely bade adieu
I felt quite snubbed — and so would you.
And yet I shook him by the hand,
Impressed that he could understand
The works of those two tops I mention,
So far beyond my comprehension —
A humble bard of boys and barmen,
Disdained, alas! by Pullman carmen.

— Robert W. Service (1953)

THANKSGIVING

by Mark Twain

This talk about Mr. Whittier’s seventieth birthday reminds me that my own seventieth arrived recently — that is to say, it arrived on the 30th of November, but Colonel Harvey was not able to celebrate it on that date because that date had been preempted by the President to be used as Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for — annually, not oftener — if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors the Indians.

Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side, consequently it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.

The original reason for a Thanksgiving Day has long ago ceased to exist — the Indians have long ago been comprehensively and satisfactorily exterminated and their account closed with Heaven, with the thanks due. But, from old habit, Thanksgiving Day has remained with us, and every year the President of the United States and the Governors of all the several States and the territories set themselves the task, every November, to advertise for something to be thankful for, and then they put those thanks into a few crisp and reverent phrases, in the form of a Proclamation, and this is read from all the pulpits in the land, the national conscience is wiped clean with one swipe, and sin is resumed at the old stand.

The President and the Governors had to have my birthday — the 30th — for Thanksgiving Day, and this was a great inconvenience to Colonel Harvey, who had made much preparation for a banquet to be given to me on that day in celebration of the fact that it marked my seventieth escape from the gallows, according to his idea — a fact which he regarded with favor and contemplated with pleasure, because he is my publisher and commercially interested. He went to Washington to try to get the President to select another day for the national Thanksgiving, and I furnished him with arguments to use which I thought persuasive and convincing, arguments which ought to persuade him even to put off Thanksgiving Day a whole year on the ground that nothing had happened during the previous twelvemonth except several vicious and inexcusable wars, and King Leopold of Belgium’s usual annual slaughters and robberies in the Congo State, together with the Insurance revelations in New York, which seemed to establish the fact that if there was an honest man left in the United States, there was only one, and we wanted to celebrate his seventieth birthday.

But the Colonel came back unsuccessful, and put my birthday celebration off to the 5th of December.

ORDINARY PEOPLE

In a dusty town a clock struck high noon, two men stood face to face
One wore black and one wore white, but of fear there wasn't a trace
Two hundred years later two hot rods drag through the very same place
And a half a million people
Moved in to pick up the pace, a factory full of people
Makin' parts to go to outer space, a train load of people
They were aimin' for another place, out of town people

There's a man in the window with a big cigar, says everything's for sale
The house and the boat and the railroad car, the owner's gotta go to jail
He acquired these things from a life of crime, now he's selling them to raise his bail
He was rippin' off the people
Sellin' guns to the underground, tryin' to help the people
Lose their ass for a piece of ground, rippin' off the people
Skimmin' the top when there was no one around, tryin' to help the people

He was dealing antiques in a hardware store but he sure had a lot to hide
He had a back-room full of the guns of war and a ton of ammunition besides
Well, he walked with a cane, kept a bolt on the door with five pit bulls inside
Just a warning to the people
Who might try to break in at night, protection from the people
Selling safety in the darkest night, tryin' to help the people
Get the drugs to the street all right, ordinary people

Well, it's hard to say where a man goes wrong, might be here and it might be there
What starts out weak might get too strong, if you can't tell foul from fair
But it's hard to judge from an angry throng of hands stretched into the air
The vigilante people
Takin' law into their own hands, conscientious people
Crackin' down on the drug-lord's land, government people
Confiscatin' all the dealer's land, patch-of-ground people

Down at the factory, they're puttin' new windows in
The vandals made a mess of things, and the homeless just walked right in
Well, they worked here once, and they live here now, but they might work here again
They're ordinary people
And they're livin' in a nightmare, hard workin' people
And they don't know how they go there, ordinary people
And they think that you don't care, hard workin' people

Down on the assembly line, they keep puttin' the same thing out
But the people today, they just ain't buyin', nobody can figure it out
Well, they try like hell to build a quality end, they're workin' hard without a doubt
They're ordinary people
And the dollar's what it's all about, hard workin' people
But the customers are walkin' out, lee iacocca people
Yeah, they look but they just don't buy, hard workin' people

Two out of work models and a fashion slave try to dance away the Michelob Night
The bartender poured himself another drink, while two drunks sat watchin' the fight
The champ went down, then he got up again, and then he went out like a light
He was fightin' for the people
But his timing wasn't right, for las vegas people
Who came to see a las vegas fight, high rollin' people
Takin' limos though the neon night, fightin' for the people

And then a new Rolls Royce and a company car they went flyin' down the street
Each one tryin' to make it to the gate before employees manned the fleet
The trucks full of products for the modern home, set to roll out into the street
Of downtown people
Tryin' to make their way to work, nose-to-the-stone people
Some are saints, and some are jerks, hard workin' people
Stoppin' for a drink on the way to work, alcoholic people
Yeah yeah, they're takin' it one day, one day at a time

Out on the railroad track, they're cleanin' up number nine
They're scrubbin' the boiler down, well, she really is lookin' fine
Awe, she's lookin' so good, they're gonna bring her back on line
Ordinary people
They're gonna bring the good things back, nose-to-the stone people
Put the business back on track, ordinary people
I got faith in the regular kind, hard workin' people
Patch-of-ground people

— Neil Young (1988)

*Legend of Sleepy Hollow* by Edward Hull

23 Comments

Kirk Vodopals November 23, 2025

The Skunk Train managers are just as delusional as the judges who deemed their rail line an essential service for freight and passengers.
Did anyone think of inviting the judicial wizards out for the quick ride out to dead end party stop where the tunnel collapsed?

Reply
- Chris Hart November 23, 2025
  
  Representatives of the STB have inspected the railroad.
  
  Reply
Chuck Artigues November 23, 2025

The Mendocino Railway may well be a Class III Common Carrier, but that is just a front. It is really is and acts like, is a real estate development organization. Why else did it try to weasel some property from some poor guy in Willits. Why else did it use eminent domain to seize a house in Fort Bragg? Why else is it trying to build a giant development on the Coast?

Running freight in and out of Fort Bragg by train will never be cheaper than trucks, you might get a few loads here and there but the labor of loading and unloading overwhelms any saving. What they have is an abandoned, damaged line with massive deferred maintenance (think of all the rotten rail ties and creek crossings, let alone the tunnel problem) that will in all probability never connect to Willits again. And if they do spend the millions required to do all this work, it will never repay that expense by selling tickets. The only way they can make this kind of money is by their real estate sales.

So what ever they say, remember what their true motivation is and hold them accountable.

Reply
- Chuck Wilcher November 23, 2025
  
  “Why else did it use eminent domain to seize a house in Fort Bragg? Why else is it trying to build a giant development on the Coast?”
  
  Here’s Chris Hart stating his reason(s) for going into the railroad biz:
  
  https://savenoyoheadlands.org/mrcorp/Hart%20on%20Eminent%20Domain.mp4
  
  Reply
  - Chris Hart November 23, 2025
    
    That video isn’t me. That is a video of my brother from over a decade ago. It was a casual discussion at a bar with young professionals or college students as I recall. We have never hidden the fact that we are real estate developers and railroads since the two go hand in hand.
    
    As far as eminent domain, when that video was taken we had never used it. The first time was the aforementioned Fort Bragg situation that we did because we were asked by a former city manager if we could help out with a drug house by a middle school. We did as we were asked and fixed the situation, with the gratitude of the family.
    
    Reply
  - David Gurney November 24, 2025
    
    The video show Pinoli and the Hart Bros. for what they are – slimy, greedy real estate developers in the guise of railroad men. Yeah, I’ve been into railroads too, for 50 years – ever since Daddy gave me that HO set when I was five.
    
    Reply
    - Chris Hart November 24, 2025
      
      David,
      Is there any public figure you’re aren’t accusing of something? Your hate list seems pretty long nowadays.
      
      Sure my brother made some frank comments, and I’m here openly chatting back & forth. I don’t hide behind closed sessions or have some talking head throw out blather without substance. I stand by our record here. We have saved three California railroads and are working on another in SoCal. We have been an economic engine in multiple communities throughout the State, receiving numerous awards in recognition of our efforts. One of our operations was just presented with a City of West Sacramento Civic Leadership Award stating that we are “the type of company we want here, and we look forward to supporting its continued efforts.”
      
      If you’re okay with the North Coast complacently giving up transportation like McNamee seeks, ignoring economic development, and becoming an overpriced retirement community for the Bay Area, it is well on its way. We have invested in this region for over 2 decades and I think we can – and should – strive for more.
      
      Reply
      - David Gurney November 24, 2025
        
        Mr. Hart,
        I don’t hate anyone, so hold on to your hypocrisy.
        The fact is, you haven’t repaired the tunnel or maintained the tracks, you have falsely claimed the (aptly named) Skunk Train (a tourist attraction) is a freight, passenger or commercial carrier when it is not, stolen peoples’ property with baseless “eminent domain” claims, and ripped off the entire Fort Bragg Headlands for you own corrupt and idiotic schemes. Shall we go on? You should be pitied, not hated.
        
        Reply
        
        Chris Hart November 24, 2025
        
        Yes, it is a fact that we have not reopened the tunnel. It is also a fact that our efforts have been delayed by the City of Fort Bragg and Coastal Commission who wrote a half dozen letters of opposition, traveled to DC in opposition, hired lobbyists and worked together to block our project and funding. It is hard enough doing major projects, but very difficult when government agencies target you for questionable reasons.
        
        It is a fact that the railroad has deferred maintenance, but it is also a fact that the track and bridges are in better shape than when we arrived.
        
        It is a fact that we are a common carrier railroad. You may feel it isn’t, but there is a big difference between people’s feelings and the law.
        
        It is a fact that we purchased 77 acres in June 2019. It was a normal transaction and anyone else could have purchased it. It is also a fact that in January 2021 we completed a second purchase of 14.2 acres of land, which again anyone else could have done. The final big piece did include eminent domain, but it with a willing buyer, with a price set by an appraiser, and the transaction reviewed by the courts. You may have wanted the land to go to someone else, but was 2 decades not enough time for them to make a transaction?
        
        Reply
        
        David Gurney November 24, 2025
        
        Your lawyers go “choo-choo” all the way to the bank.
        
        Reply
        
        Chris Hart November 24, 2025
        
        Sure that is a fact too. We’re spending a fortune in these legal fights. I would much rather be spending these funds on track improvements. But when you have the City and Coastal Commission coming after you, you need to spend money to defend yourself. Makes you wonder what the cash-strapped City could have done with the $500k they spent on lawyer bills on a case they will lose. And who knows how much they might end up paying in damages. And the ironic thing is that we’re one of the primary sources of the taxpayer funds that the City is wasting against us.
        
        Reply
        
        David Gurney November 24, 2025
        
        —> “Makes you wonder what the cash-strapped City could have done with the $500k they spent on lawyer bills on a case they will lose.”
        
        Maybe they could’ve fixed-up Bainbridge Park, to keep out the homeless? Oh, that’s right, they done that.
- Chris Hart November 23, 2025
  
  Railroad and real estate development have always been related. The Willits situation is still be reviewed by the courts. As for the Fort Bragg situation, that was fully supported by the family – happy to provide details if you like.
  
  I’ve been involved with railroads for 26 years and disagree that freight traffic is not viable on the line. And while there is some deferred maintenance the entire line, other than the tunnel, the rest is in service. We operate freight operations throughout California and have saved many lines. We are trying hard to keep Mendocino railroad operations going and to see them restored to the rest of the interstate railroad network.
  
  Reply
Kimberlin November 23, 2025

AM I GOING DOWN?

Get yourself to SF’s UCMed. Center. Do what they say. Probably they will order some meds. for you. Then, change your diet. Do four weeks of Oatmeal and fruit for breakfast, brown rice and vegitables for lunch/dinner. You will lose 30 pounds, drop your cholesterol level 30 % and also your PSA. Yes, it is difficult but dieing is also difficult. After four weeks you can return to a more inclusive diet. That will buy you just short of 10 years so you can finish the writing.

Reply
- Paul Modic November 23, 2025
  
  Well, I just discovered I’m a sugar freak!
  All day long for months I’ve been reaching mindlessly
  for the bottles of muesli on the counter and munching it down.
  (Lots of sweet dried fruit inside)
  More for dessert in the evening.
  Then I read about a link of too much sugar to insomnia,
  and that is the current experiment, so far so good off sugar,
  averaged seven hours of sleep the last two weeks, vast improvement…
  
  Reply
Julie Beardsley November 23, 2025

It’s outrageous that some judge decided the Skunk Train is a Class III Common Carrier. The Skunk Train is a tourist attraction and nothing more. It should not be accorded the rights of an actual carrier. I think the City of Fort Bragg should challenge this ruling, and if necessary have the Appellate Courts weigh in. Was the judge paid off in some way? Was there a quid pro quo? It seems that anyone with half a brain can see the reality of the situation and this ruling is very suspicious

Reply
- Marshall Newman November 23, 2025
  
  Agreed.
  
  Reply
- Chris Hart November 23, 2025
  
  Julie,
  The ruling was not by a judge, but rather the Surface Transportation Board. The board decided the issue. They are the industry’s experts and generally have the final say in railroad matters in the nation.
  
  While you are entitled to you opinion, the highest railroad authority in the land disagrees with you.
  
  Finally, I find your accusations about the STB and my company to be insulting.
  
  Reply
Cello November 23, 2025

“Legend of Sleepy Hollow” written by Washington Irving

I worked at ‘Sunnyside’ …Washington Irving’s house.

Sunnyside is a historic house built in 1835 on 10 acres (4 ha) along the Hudson River, in Tarrytown, New York.
Sunnyside (Tarrytown, New York) – Wikipedia https://share.google/9tmXRNQR2RGeaRsLy home of American author Washington Irving, best known for his short stories, such as “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820).

I see in my ‘treasure trove’ a small, dark, low to the ground shed where food was kept ‘iced’ (pre-refrigerator times), the dresses worn by those who worked there, the thin clay pipes, and the danish cookies.

Reply
Lee Edmundson November 23, 2025

‘Anonymous’ commentary on JFK’s assassination is propagandist bluster. I suggest the author view the documentary, “Parkland: What the Doctors Saw” via UTube and Paramount Plus. Neck wound — according to the doctors who treated JFK in Trauma Room One that afternoon — was an entrance wound. Hence, a second shooter from the front. Again, these are reports from the doctors who actually treated the mortally wounded President that afternoon. They also suggest the head-wound came from the front. Case of the “Lone Assassin” closed, as far as the Facts are Concerned.
Further reading: “Six Seconds in Dallas”, by Josiah Thompson.
Finally, Oswald did have an alibi. A Warren Commission witness testified she saw him having a Coca Cola in a downstairs employee lounge at the time of the shooting. Her testimony was ignored by the Commission.
Oswald proclaimed himself “a Patsy”. He was, as were all those who fell for the “lone assassin” and “magic bullet’ theories.
“Let those with eyes, see. Let those with ears, hear”.
RIP: JFK.

Reply
- gary smith November 23, 2025
  
  There are two movies on the subject that I think you are lumping into one title, Lee. One is called “JFK: What the Doctors Saw” and the other is called “Parkland”.
  
  Reply
Cellist November 24, 2025

Paul Modic

Elevators go up, and down.

Go up.

Reply
- Paul Modic November 24, 2025
  
  Once again I have to trash myself to get a comment,
  I guess it’s worth it…
  I used to think exposing my flaws would get me points for
  honesty, nope…
  Reminds me of this one from 20 years ago which i injudiciously
  sent to a woman I’d just met on the personals, then spent some fruitless time
  trying to explain that I’m not like that anymore, to no avail…
  
  Pissing Everyone Off (2006)
  
  dear neighbors
  i want to apologize for being a jerk. this winter i was alone in the rain with no phone calls, emails, or visitors, just completely alone, miserable and so depressed i was pressing the inbox button over and over hoping for a message. i had alienated most of my friends and asked the last one to give me another chance and he did. he helped me to realize that maybe i was in this situation because i’ve spent the last few decades out here annoying and pissing people off.
  the next day i was driving into town and as an exercise i visualized each member of my village of about 100 people and i noticed i had pissed off practically everyone at one time or another. could that be why i’m alone, miserable, unloved, and untouched today? at that point, traveling along the winding mattole river road, i smiled and laughed through my tears…did i finally get it?
  then i did a little test driving from redway to garberville: i counted the people who i’d annoyed and pissed off (mostly because of my mouth) driving the other way and in five minutes identified six. oh shit, i may be the most annoying person in SoHum!
  i want to be a better person, not just say everything i think, unedited. i used to think that the highest value was to be totally open and honest but that last friend convinced me that the honesty thing is a crock, that’s not the way to get along in society, so should i learn how to lie?
  i stopped crying and started laughing, at who i am, the truth was setting me free and though it was not a happy truth it seemed enlightening…and then i went out and immediately annoyed three more people, including my doctor– oh well, old habits are hard to break?
  anyway i am sorry i’ve been annoying and pissing you off all these years.
  
  Reply

Mendocino County Today: Sunday 11/23/2025

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