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STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A partly cloudy 45F on the coast this Sunday morning. A mix of clouds & sun remains our forecast thru this week. Hints of rain next week ? We'll see.
A MID PERIOD westerly swell will bring a moderate risk for hazardous beach conditions through Saturday afternoon. A much more energetic westerly swell will bring a high risk for sneaker waves Monday through Tuesday. King Tides return on Tuesday, and peak then on Thursday and Friday. Otherwise, dry and seasonably cool weather is forecast through next week. (NWS)
NAVARRO BEACH FRIENDS: The mouth of the Navarro River has been opened artificially by persons yesterday. I didn’t realize what they were doing until we walked over and saw why they had been digging. I am beyond saddened by this. It is not for us to interfere with nature.
Johnny Schmitt: I'll probably get in trouble for this, but sounds like it was pretty close to opening on its own if they could dig it out by hand. In Yelapa, Mexico, every afternoon the kids would dig open the lagoon and ride the rush of water, and everyone would gather around and watch. Maybe sometimes nature needs a little help? I understand it's a complex ecosystem, but it's constantly evolving on its own anyway, evidenced by the fact we lost 25% of our backyard behind the hotel over the last few years, nothing to do but watch.
SUPERVISOR MADELINE CLINE:
Have you submitted comments yet to FERC regarding the decommissioning of the Potter Valley Project?
PG&E submitted the Surrender Plan for the Potter Valley Project to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in July 2025. The window for submitting your comments, questions and concerns is open, and the deadline is Monday, December 1st, at 2pm PST.
PG&E requested to surrender its FERC license for the Potter Valley Project and to decommission and remove key infrastructure, specifically both dams that make up the project: Scott Dam (which forms Lake Pillsbury) and Cape Horn Dam.
At the same time, PG&E asked FERC to approve a “Non-Project Use of Project Lands” request. Under that, a newly formed entity, the Eel-Russian Project Authority (ERPA), would be allowed to build a new facility, the New Eel-Russian Facility (NERF), on project lands (at or near the Cape Horn Dam site). That facility would allow continued diversion of Eel River water into the Russian River watershed after dam removal.
PG&E is seeking approval in one final order that would grant both the surrender/decommissioning and the non-project-use request, so that dam removal and construction of the new diversion facility can proceed in a coordinated way.
Instructions to submit comments to FERC:
- Click on FERC Online (https://ferconline.ferc.gov/QuickComment.aspx); enter your information; click on “Authorize.”
- Draft your comments in a Word or text file, to later copy and paste to the eComment text box in FERC Online.
(If you would like assistance or suggestions with what to write, please message or email me, I am happy to help.)
- Check your email for your eComment link.
- Click the eComment link, enter docket number “P-77-332” and click “Search”
- When the docket appears, select the blue plus + symbol
- Copy your prepared comments and paste them into the eComment text box
- Click “Send Comment”.
AV VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTERS 2025 TOY DRIVE
Last few days to donate to the AVVFFA Annual Toy drive. Toys may be dropped off at Lemons’ Market, AV Market, Yorkville Post Office, or Boonville fire station. Checks may be sent to Box 414, Boonville, CA 95494. Hurry, the last day is Friday, December 5, 2025.
ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE List of Events
A MENDOCINO WEDDING GUIDED BY THE COMMUNITY — AND THE LANDSCAPE — THAT RAISED THEM
by Kevin Spencer
For Emily and Daniel, choosing Mendocino County for their late-summer celebration wasn’t just a logistical decision. It was a return to the landscape where their story first took shape. The pair met as teenagers at Camp Winnarainbow, a storied circus and performing arts sleepaway camp founded by Woodstock icon Wavy Gravy on the historic Hog Farm commune. Emily, who grew up just outside the ranch on a cannabis farm in rural Northern California, recalls being “taken with Daniel from the moment we met.” She described the young Daniel as “earnest, wholesome and someone who really listened. Talking to him felt like you’d already known him for years.”
Though their friendship was deep, the timing was never quite right. A teenage falling-out led to seven years without speaking until the pandemic nudged them back into each other’s lives. “When COVID hit, I finally had the courage to reach out and mend the bridge,” Emily says. “We started dating basically immediately and have been nearly inseparable since. Destiny, in my opinion!”…
The day, woven through with Mendocino roots, felt quintessentially Californian. It was a celebration shaped by community, sense of place and the long winding arc of a love story that began in the redwoods and came full circle beneath them.…
THE BROWN ACT SETS A MINIMUM STANDARD. GOOD GOVERNMENT EXCEEDS IT
by Jon Kennedy
(Jon Kennedy, founder and CEO of CivAssist, is an influential local government advocate with experience as a county supervisor, city manager, non-profit director and serial entrepreneur. He’s assisted dozens of small agencies with Brown Act and Public Records Request guidance.)
Anyone who has ever read the Brown Act — California’s 70-year-old love letter to local government transparency — knows it’s a strange beast. Half of it is common sense, and the other half reads like the final exam from a community-college class called Advanced Bureaucracy: Theory and Practice.
So it’s no surprise when agencies technically follow the law but still leave the public feeling like something is being hidden behind a velvet curtain. Take the recent Hopland Public Utility District situation. Their closed session was properly agendized under Government Code §54956.9(d)(2). On paper, that’s the correct citation for discussing anticipated litigation. Strictly by statute, the board met the legal threshold.
But here’s the rub:
Complying with the law and practicing good transparency are not the same thing. The law says that when a board goes into closed session under (d)(2), they don’t have to identify the claimant, the letter, the dispute, or the triggering event. They don’t have to say it was about a Cure and Correct letter. They don’t have to say much at all unless they take formal action. “Direction given to staff” is legally sufficient.
But legal sufficiency is the floor, not the ceiling. And for the public — the people paying the bills, attending meetings, and showing up with pitchforks (or at least the modern equivalent: Facebook comments) — the floor often feels like a trapdoor.
There’s nothing in the Brown Act that prevents a board from voluntarily saying something like: “Tonight’s closed session involved reviewing a Cure and Correct letter regarding our October 9 meeting. The board discussed the matter with legal counsel and provided direction to staff to prepare a response.”
That is perfectly legal.
It doesn’t give away attorney-client privilege.
It doesn’t undermine the agency’s position.
And it gives the public what they always want: context.
Good transparency isn’t about spilling secrets — it’s about reducing the mystery so people don’t assume the worst. Most frustration in local government doesn’t come from wrongdoing; it comes from silence that looks like wrongdoing.
Some boards understand this instinctively. Others cling so tightly to the minimum requirements that the public ends up imagining conspiracies where none exist. And that gap — between bare compliance and good behavior — is where trust erodes.
Ironically, misunderstandings like these are what pushed me to build CivAssist, the agenda and minutes platform I created years ago. I watched agencies get beat up for sloppy agenda language, vague closed session descriptions, and accidental omissions. Not malicious — just avoidable.
CivAssist forces clean noticing because it takes human error and accidental ambiguity out of the equation. But software aside, the real solution is cultural: Read the room.
If half the audience shows up asking about a Cure and Correct letter, and everyone knows that’s why closed session exists that night, then giving the bare-minimum statutory report isn’t caution — it’s gasoline on a fire.
Transparency isn’t just a legal requirement. It’s a behavior. And the truth is: 95% of the time, boards can safely be more open than they think they can. The Brown Act protects attorney-client privilege and strategic discussions — not the secrecy of the topic itself. Agencies can be clearer, calmer, and more communicative without crossing any legal line.
If boards offered even a little more voluntary clarity, the public would be calmer, meetings would be shorter, and reporters wouldn’t have to play forensic detective with partial information.
Everyone wins.
Because at the end of the day, the Brown Act isn’t supposed to be a mystery thriller. If your residents have to hire a lawyer, a journalist, and a bloodhound just to figure out what happened in closed session, something has gone off the rails.
(Mendolocal.news)
UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK
At just 7 months old and a petite 7 pounds, Licorice is a happy, bouncy bundle of joy. She’s full of playful puppy energy, whether she’s zooming around the room, tossing her toys in the air, or gently pawing at you for attention, she’s guaranteed to make you smile. Licorice loves other small dogs and would be thrilled to have a furry friend to play and cuddle with. She’s social, affectionate, and always ready for fun. When she’s not busy being adorable, she’ll happily curl up next to you for some sweet snuggle time. If you’re a fan of little dogs, and if you’re looking for a loving, lively companion to brighten your days, Licorice is ready to be your new best friend!
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 every first Saturday of the month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event at the shelter.
We're on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/
For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!
ED NOTES
A READER WRITES: “I was walking into the Buckhorn in Boonville last weekend for an afternoon beer when I got an extremely strong whiff of skunkweed on the sidewalk area of your very nice bar and grill. I turned to see two skinny leather-clad bikers with long trains of dreadlocks streaming out of their helmets. As they removed their protective gear, I saw that they both had extra-large doobies hanging from their lips. I’m not sure what gender the two bikers were, but I kinda thought they might have been one of each. As I continued on up the steps to the Buckhorn, the pot-burners remounted their rice-burners and sped off in a haze of pot smoke and two-cycle engine fumes. Isn’t this Driving Under the Influence? And I wonder what was in those saddlebags they had flung across their rear fenders?”
WELL, SIR, in Boonville we tend not to obsess over pot smoke or gender identification, but you've got a point about driving under the influence. I stopped doing it (booze) when, many years ago, after much post-softball merriment in Cloverdale, I woke up in my Boonville home with no memory of the drive back.
LOTS OF AMERICAN controversies can't be talked about in realistic terms. If, for instance, you constantly describe all the people living on the streets as “homeless,” it ignores basic distinctions: Yes, there are major shortages of low-income housing. But a lot of the distressing public behavior attributed to the “homeless” don't have anything to do with shelter. It occurs because people are allowed to be helplessly drunk on the streets, or publicly nuts from drugs or are one of the large bloc of people living outside because they're crazy with or without drugs. Old-fashioned bums of the type who wander around without bothering anyone are a tiny minority of the “homeless.” All three groups of the drunk-drugged-crazed homeless need to be hospitalized, which is what we used to do with people incapable of or unwilling to care for themselves, but what we are unlikely to ever do again because the upper income people in this country don't tote their fair share of the social load.
A HOMELESS GUY explained his homelessness to me. “I get social security and some food stamps. The cheapest rental I can find in Mendocino County is about $900 a month, and that's in Willits but I'd probably get kicked out because I can be loud when I'm drunk. I can't drink and pay rent, both. And I'm not going to stop drinking. I either find a free place to stay or I live on the streets.”
SPEAKING as an extremely senior Senior Citizen, I get real tired of Senior whining for special consideration for this, that and the other thing. All the breaks ought to go to the other end of the age spectrum, the young people who will reap the consequences of the catastrophes us Seniors have wrought. Of course the young don't vote because they can't, and our spine-free office-holders know that Seniors do vote, hence the endless pandering to the elderly at all levels of government. I see the local Seniors pulling up in their SUV's for tax-subsidized lunches and note that lots of them are registered Republicans who've cast a thousand votes over their lives to squeeze everyone but themselves. Give me the name of one local Senior who can't buy his own lunch and I'll buy him or her a Boont Berry Bean Burrito. But only one.
FRISCO HIGH RISES. (An on-line reader writes re The Big One): “I was a field engineer in SF during the construction of 101 California St. and many lesser skyscrapers (always loved that word) constructed ca. 1976 to 1986. 101 Calif's foundation was about 1500 200 foot concrete piles sunk in bay mud and topped with 6 foot of concrete. No bedrock. Think toothpicks in jello. The building was designed to settle 2” into the mud when completed. It settled 1 7/8.” The ground level steel columns are 2 foot thick tapering in size as the reach the 48th floor. Column welds, independently inspected, every 2 floors. Every floor was designed to be an earthquake resistant steel and concrete diaphragm. Although I have some doubts about the piles in mud the rest of the structure was impressive to a young engineer. Then there's the marble fascia. Huge sheets of beautiful Italian marble 2 inches thick in 4' x 8' slabs. Heavy. Thousands of them. Each held on by a pair of little 1” thick steel clips that were epoxied and screwed on on site. Glue and little screws. I can really imagine these connectors failing in a quake and plummeting to the street in a hail of one ton stone missiles. Never mind the floor to ceiling glass windows. Have a nice day.”
FORT BRAGG'S TRASH, back in the day, was tossed into a long wooden chute that shot the trash into the sea off what is now Glass Beach. Glass Beach, in fact, became Glass Beach when the sea returned some of the battered bits of trash to the beach just north of the mill. That method of disposal became undesirable 60 or so years ago and the east end of Road 409 at Caspar became the area dump. But a neighborhood built up around the Caspar Dump, and the Coast's population of dedicated consumers grew ever larger until now, when Caspar is out-moded and the neighbors are threatening to sue to get the dump, which is now a transfer station, not merely a place where locals can heave whatever over the side. Jerry Ward former owner of Solid Waste of Willits owned the Caspar transfer concession as he owned most, if not all the outback trash transfer stations, including Boonville and Gualala before he sold his company to Ukiah-based Redwood Waste Solutions a couple years ago. Ward maintained a larger transfer station in Willits. He rightly enjoyed a reputation for keeping rates down while getting much of Mendocino County's trash Outtahere.
JOE SCARAMELLA was 5th District supervisor from 1952 until 1970. We interviewed him in 1996. Among the subjects we asked about was the Caspar Dump, now a “transfer station”:
AVA: The Caspar dump was Fort Bragg's idea originally wasn't it?
Joe Scaramella: No. Hell no! You're looking at the so-and-so who put that there.
AVA: Is that right? Because there weren't very many options?
Joe: Well, what was happening, what we had to deal with, was that you could no longer simply… Like everybody did including the city of Fort Bragg — they were dumping everything up there at Glass Beach. The whole damn thing. The sewer was running wide open into the ocean at that time, see. And Fort Bragg was not doing a damn thing about it. And I had the problem down on this end [The Fifth District from Mendocino south to the Sonoma County border]. Mendocino was dumping right over the bluff too. Right over it! All the stuff was going down there.
AVA: Sewage too?
Joe Scaramella: In one case they were using the storm sewer as sewage drains; they were dumping down there, yeah. People are a problem. You get a million people in a square area and hell… I would tell people, “I can go behind a stump and relieve myself, but I can't do it on Fifth Avenue in New York. Why? Because the people are there. That's why you can't do it. So the idea was that these people were coming down here and we had to do something about it. Point Arena… I got the County to fix that up. We put up a garbage dump there so you couldn't back up into the ocean. But then the lady who owned it, the Stornetta Family, said that we had to cut it out. So we had to find another place. And I was stuck with the responsibility — well, I willingly assumed it — to find some places where people could get rid of their trash. From down here on the South Coast and on up to Fort Bragg. Mendocino was a case in point. Hell, I tried. I looked over heaven and earth. I went all over. Naturally nobody wanted it. Who wants a garbage dump nearby?
AVA: The options are always so limited?
Joe: Yeah. So I got the Health Department — they were the ones involved obviously, I got the person there, I can't remember her name, with me and we went out there where the Caspar dump is now. We bought these acres. I bought them. I went down to the Caspar Lumber Company in San Francisco — made two trips down there — they were going to hold me up on the price. I said, “Ok, fellas, we'll pay it, but the assessor will be involved and it will end up costing you more in the long run.” So I got it and I got the 20 acres out there at a good price. It was thought to be a huge area where nobody would ever want to live. Naturally Fort Bragg got into it. They had their trash problem. I said, “Well, this ought to be a joint enterprise.” So they created a joint venture and therefore Fort Bragg got into it. But I started the gol-darn thing. Fort Bragg hadn't done a thing. So that “cultural center” in Fort Bragg was just dumping everything into the ocean.
AVA: And as far as you’re concerned they still would be today?
Joe: You know something? They still have that attitude up there. It's just the same now.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: MENDOCINO COUNTY'S GRANDEST UNCAUGHT CRIMINAL (February 2014)
MIKE SWEENEY is paid over $100,000 a year as manager of the Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority, meaning he's boss of the county's trash removal processes. Sweeney is also one of Mendocino County's more interesting citizens, having emerged from a youth as a member of a murderous, Stanford-based political cult led by an English professor called H. Bruce Franklin, to become a well-paid garbage bureaucrat behind the green curtain, where every day history starts all over again.
MANY OF US led sketchy lives in the frenetic 1960s as part of the general estrangement unleashed by the Vietnam War. Few of us, however, killed people or planted bombs in public places like Sweeney and his crew did. And most of us drifted back into the system we'd spent our youths in opposition to, deluding ourselves that we were fighting it from within from internal exile.
SWEENEY, however, continued, post 60s, to be linked to violent events only tangentially tied to political protest. By 1980 he was divorced from his first wife, Cynthia Denenholz, also a former Stanford radical, and married to Judi Bari. (Denenholz, in a typical 60s person re-entry trajectory, remarried a Santa Rosa attorney named Paul Jamond and became a family court magistrate with the Sonoma County Superior Court.)
IN 1980, Bari and Sweeney were widely suspected of blowing up an airplane hangar near their West Santa Rosa neighborhood. At the time, they were leading opposition to development of the site. A young man asleep in the hangar was nearly killed when Sweeney’s firebombs detonated. (A more complete account of the airport episode can be found on our website in a long letter from Bob Williams, who managed the airport property.)
https://theava.com/archives/126181
ESTRANGED from Bari by 1990, Sweeney magically eluded prime suspect status when Bari was blown up and nearly killed by a car bomb that same year. Weakened by her injuries, Bari died in 1997, the same year journalist Steve Talbot announced on This Week In California, a KQED television news show, that Bari had told him that Sweeney had tried to kill her.
BUT BARI, via her attorney, the late Susan B. Jordan, and soon after the 1990 bombing, had petitioned the FBI for partial immunity from prosecution, certainly an indication that she knew who was responsible for the attempt on her life, if that's what it was.
THE FOLLOWING article is from PaloAltoHistory.com. It describes Professor Franklin's revolutionary band and the psycho-social-political gestalt that formed Mendocino County's lead garbage bureaucrat:
VENCEREMOS: ARMING FOR A FIGHT The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of awkward cultural juxtaposition, both in the nation at large and here in Palo Alto. Today, pop culture sometimes simplifies those years as a time when the whole society turned into LSD-dropping, free-love-making hippies. But in reality, most Americans — especially outside big cities — were living a life a lot closer to the 1950s. While the counterculture certainly had a large influence on mainstream life, most Americans were still living according to the rules of the “silent majority.”
In a small university town like Palo Alto, the juxtaposition could be even stranger. While hometown locals might be marching in the May Fete Parade on Saturday morning, campus radicals would be clashing with police on Saturday night — all on the same street. It was a time when two countries existed side-by-side, sometimes engaging in a cultural civil war, sometimes pretending the other didn’t exist.
One example of this odd Palo Alto political juxtaposition was Venceremos, the Communist radical group headquartered in and around Palo Alto in those years. Founded in 1966 by Aaron Manganiello, the originally Latino left-wing protest organization was named for Che Guevera’s battle cry, “We will prevail!” By 1970, Venceremos had evolved into a multicultural Maoist/Communist revolutionary brigade that was a mainstay at any mid-Peninsula protest in those years. Under the leadership of Stanford Professor and Melville scholar H. Bruce Franklin (fired in 1972 for leading a student takeover of the university’s computer lab), Venceremos took an active role in community issues and demonstrations.
H. Bruce Franklin in more recent years. After being fired from Stanford he became a professor at Rutgers.
And these guys weren’t fooling around. Venceremos believed that “an unarmed people are subject to slavery at any time” and held vast amounts of weaponry to back it up. They had secret stashes of rifles, grenades, pipe bombs, and other explosives and they urged members to stay armed at all times — advice that was apparently followed. With their rifle logo and violent rhetoric, Venceremos startled the local population and caught the eye of federal law enforcement. Many believed they were one of the largest revolutionary groups in the country and a 1972 House Internal Security Committee Report called the group “a potential threat to the United States.”
Venceremos’ ultimate stated goal was the overthrow of the government. On their way to armed insurrection, their platform called for (among many other things): “The firing of…profit-motivated murderers, like David Packard and Richard Nixon,” “an end to the Fascist court system and fascist judges,” and “an education which exposes the lies and oppression created by the corrupt court system and teaches us the true history of oppressed people.” Venceremos were also enemies of the police and were convinced that “the best pigs are always dead pigs.”
Venceremos stressed actions over rhetoric. In 1970, they opened a revolutionary community college in a Redwood City storefront that lasted until it ran out of money two years later. They were actively involved in an anti-drug campaign on the streets of Palo Alto in the summer of ’71 and later with the Palo Alto Drug Collective. They often showed up at City Council and School Board meetings in Palo Alto with a verbal aggressiveness never before seen in the city’s politics. At an August 1971 meeting, for instance, Jeffrey Youdelman shouted down school board members as “racist, fascist pigs.”
Venecermos members Sue Flores, Eleanor Kaplan, Gerry Foote and Mort Newman of Chester Street as photographed in their newsletter, Pamoja. They also tried to win elections. In May of ’71, Venceremos ran Jean Hobson for City Council; she only garnered 798 votes, some 7,000 short of victory. Undaunted, Youdelman ran as a candidate in 1973, but he fared no better. Venceremos member Doug Garrett also ran for Palo Alto School Board and Joan Dolly ran in the 1972 Menlo Park City Council elections. Venceremos was also part of the ever-present street protest scene that marked Palo Alto counterculture life in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.
A Venceremos Rally at Lytton Plaza
Every Saturday night at 7pm, Venceremos held a rally with speakers and bands at Lytton Plaza, which was dubbed “The People’s Plaza.” This often led to clashes with police as the hour grew late and the music got louder.
The beginning of the end for Venceremos came in 1972, when a number of its members were involved in a headline-grabbing murder. The incident centered around a Venceremos recruit and prison inmate named Ronald Beaty. A habitual stick-up artist and con, Beaty was serving time for armed robbery and kidnapping at Chino Prison. He apparently had romantic ties to Jean Hobson —the former Venceremos candidate for Palo Alto City Council — that would lead to an attempt by the organization to help him escape.
Ronald Beaty became the star witness for the prosecution. Some Venceremos members later were a part of the SLA which famously kidnapped Patty Hearst.
On October 6, 1972, two unarmed prison guards were taking Beaty to a court appearance in San Bernardino when they were ambushed. According to police and Beaty, who would become the prosecution’s star witness, the government car was forced off a remote highway road near Chino. Four Venceremos members jumped out of two vehicles to set Beaty free. As they prepared to flee the scene, 23-year-old Venceremos member Robert Seabok shot both guards at point blank range, killing 24-year-old Jesus Sanchez and wounding his partner George Fitzgerald. Venceremos members Hobson, Seabok, Andrea Holman Burt and Benton Burt were named as the other ambushers. Both Hobson and Seabok were Palo Altans and neighbors, residing at 656 and 666 Channing Street.
Hobson and Beaty, possessing a trunkload of weapons, were arrested two months later on the Bay Bridge by San Francisco police without incident. Now wanted for murder on top of past convictions, prosecuting lawyers convinced Beaty to sing. He named the four members who helped him escape, fingered Robert Seabok as the gunman, and described how other members of Venceremos helped hide him in a rural San Mateo County mountain cabin for close to a month. Beaty pleaded guilty for his involvement in Sanchez’ death and received a life sentence.
All four Venceremos members would eventually be found guilty in subsequent trials. Jean Hobson, 19 year-old Andrea Holman Burt and 31 year-old Douglas Burt were all found guilty of second degree murder in 1973 and 1974, while Seabok got life imprisonment and a first degree murder conviction.
Following legal difficulties related to the incident at Chino, Venceremos began to come apart at the seams. Arguments erupted between various factions in the organization and members began to pull out and join other groups. Venceremos founder Aaron Manganiello also blamed a dope addict in the group’s central committee for stealing thousands of dollars from the treasury. By September of 1973, Venceremos had officially disbanded.
Many ex-Venceremos members went on to other organizations, including the Symbionese Liberation Army group that assassinated Oakland superintendent Dr. Marcus Foster at a School Board meeting in November 1973 and then kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst in February of 1974. While the SLA never operated in Palo Alto, law enforcement saw substantial links between the two groups.
Today Venceremos has either been forgotten by Palo Altans or is remembered as part of the city’s wacky early '70s counterculture. But at their height in 1971 and ’72, when they were leading weekly rallies, advocating violent action and shouting down School Board members, Venceremos had more than a few Palo Altans spooked.
(Courtesy, PaloAltoHistory.com)
CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, November 29, 2025
ALEJANDRO CHAVEZ-ANGUIANO, 39, Ukiah. Reckless driving, controlled substance.
HECTOR DIAZ, 56, Oroville/Fort Bragg. Trespassing, resisting.
LUIS GARCIA-RAMIREZ, 43, Ukiah. Failure to appear.
ELOY LOPEZ, 26, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, assault with firearm, brandishing, controlled substance.
EDWINA NIDEROST, 64, Ukiah. Elder abuse resulting in great bodily harm or death, domestic violence court order violation.
JEFFERY STURGES, 64, Ukiah. Annoying or molesting child under 18.
BRIAN WIEDEN, 53, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.
DRILLING OFF CALIFORNIA COAST WON’T BE VERY COST EFFECTIVE
Editor,
With respect to the announcement by the Trump administration that it plans to hold a lease sale offshore of the California coast in order to drill for oil, Governor Gavin Newsom has stated that this proposal is a nonstarter.
I believe that Newsom is correct. I say this as one who was involved in the permitting process for offshore platforms in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, and an onshore oil and gas treatment plant at Point Arguello in that region during the mid-1980s.
Based on my experience, there are many environmental issues that must be satisfactorily addressed — air impacts onshore, water quality and impacts to aquatic life, to name a few. Otherwise, the awarding of permits to construct, much less operate, will get tied up for so long that I expect it would take us well past the end of this administration.
Additionally, while the federal government has the authority to do lease sales in federal waters, they have no authority for anything in the 3 miles of offshore state waters.
Consequently, I don’t expect that there would be a way to bring any oil or gas onshore in California. That would certainly increase the cost as well as make it even more difficult. The only way to get the oil and gas out to refineries would be via transfer to a tanker for oil and companies most likely have to flare the gas. Those would be difficult permits to get.
All of these hurdles will significantly increase the cost of a project, especially since the oil most likely will not be easy to refine, given its composition. Compared to the cost of oil produced in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, I suspect this would be much more expensive to do. I doubt it would be justified economically.
It appears to me that either President Donald Trump is trolling us or he has no idea what he is talking about, and his energy secretary doesn’t seem to understand that either.
Steve Ziman
San Rafael
MORE HUMBOLDT CHARACTERS: “BEN”
by Paul Modic
My friend sold his house to a tribe for a lot more than he was asking, the real estate agent had wanted everything out before she showed the place, and he hauled all of it to his new house in town.
When I got out of my car in a regular neighborhood in Fortuna I said, “How can you live like this? When’s the last time you had neighbors around you?”
“It’s been decades,” he said. He had been living the last twenty years in an old Indian’s cabin next to the wildlife refuge across the Humboldt bay.
We walked around the backyard and he showed me the garage, full of stuff except for space for one car. “There used to be room for my truck too,” he said. His car was also packed with stuff, except for the driver’s seat.
We went in the house, took the tour, and every room was full of boxes and other stuff, including the kitchen. “I had to move out of the bedroom because it smelled bad,” he said. “The worst room is the bathroom, it’s too small.”
“Do you have anything valuable here?” I asked
“Yes, but I’m not going to tell you where it is!” he said.
“I have two valuable things,” I said. “A sword from Borneo and a fifteen watt FM radio transmitter.”
He moved some things around, we sat in the kitchen and talked, and after a while he made us a cup of tea. “You’re one of my last friends in Humboldt,” he said. I’d known him since ‘77 when he’d turned me on to Scrabble when a neighbor out in the hills.
We talked about “stuff” for awhile, a frequent topic these days. “Well, this is your life now,” I said, surveying the jumble of everything everywhere.
“I’m on it,” he said. He told me about taking photos of his great grandfather, who had lived in the area, to the historical society where they were photocopied. He had also started getting rid of unnecessary stuff, like his meditation pillows and his collection of women’s clothing, taking it to thrift stores and the dump as he was done with Zen and crossdressing.
Even if he miraculously got rid of everything or organized it onto shelves the house is an ugly musty thing with nasty grey carpeting and a smelly bedroom he can’t even live in. He showed me an article about the number of foreclosures in Southern Humboldt.
“I’m still thinking about getting a place in Garberville,” he said. “I could take the bus down when I can’t drive anymore.”
(When his father died a few years ago he got a big inheritance although the deceased was a successful academic and didn’t respect him, as Ben had chosen to just be a janitor. Though they had unresolved anger issues, Ben was there for him his last years when his father lived in comfortable assisted living in Eureka.)
Ben went on a buying spree, getting the Fortuna place and another on the Trinity River a couple hours out of town. “I try to get out there whenever I can,” he said, and looking around at the chaos I could see why. (He probably has a few million dollars now, no direct heirs, and could live anywhere he wanted, though not too far away as he has a steady girlfriend in town.)
If I wanted to be bluntly honest I would say, “I don’t know why you bought this dump Ben, did you just take the first house you looked at? I don’t think you could even sell it, the bedroom stinks. After you get everything sorted or thrown away you could just give this place away and buy yourself a nice little place, maybe up the hill in the sun, instead of in this foggy bottom. Did you get this place so you could walk to Safeway? Hell, you’re loaded, dude! Why live like this? Just admit you made a mistake and move on.”
As I sat in his kitchen talking and drinking my tea I was grateful that I could leave soon, and realized that all my stuff isn’t so bad, mostly nice things I don’t need like twelve boxes of Mexican folk art and ten solar ovens. (My really disorganized stuff is ten boxes of memorabilia in my upstairs closet, from forty years of living.)
That night I made the mistake of reading a disturbing email just before bed from my sister telling about her health issues, multiple surgeries on her feet which weren’t helping. When I woke up at 4am I was kept awake thinking about her, my hoarder friend and Gaza. After a while I thought, “God, all these things I’m worried about and none are about me?”
(Six months later I finally gently told him what I thought, and six months after that I stopped by to visit him on the way back from Eureka. I found no one at his house and he texted me his new address. He had bought a sweet remodeled house up the hill near the park.
“Yeah, I had to get out of that hole,” he said.
“This is a great place,” I said. “I’m proud of you.”)
Another six month update: When he had been showing me around his empty new house I had joked to him about keeping the guest room clear of stuff. As the months passed I noticed more stuff had been transferred from the old house to the new but not in any organized way that I could see, just boxes lying around in the middle of the living room and in every other room and surface, including “my” guest room. Even the kitchen counter was messed up with items not related to cooking. He had done it again: cluttered up his nice new house.
It’s just not important to him or he’s not capable of keeping it together, though jeez, he could afford to pay a helper to come in every other day to straighten things up, though he values his privacy.
Is it mental illness? Neurosis? Or am I like the reformed drunk who thinks he’s now an addiction counselor for I’ve also been a slob for most of my life, and though things are relatively sorted out or put away now, it’s probably impossible to eradicate the slob within. Even these words I scribble every morning is a type of clutter to be dealt with, or not.
(Recently on my last visit he told me he finally walked into his doctor’s office, coincidentally mine also, with the pile of herbs and supplements he’d been taking, with which he’d been unsuccessfully dealing with insomnia, and asked, “Just give me a pill.”
So far that’s working well.)
NATURE WILL BOUNCE BACK IF WE JUST GIVE IT A CHANCE
by Emma Morris
When the last of four dams on the Klamath River in southern Oregon and Northern California was demolished in October 2024, everyone who knew the river well had a question: How long would it take for salmon to reclaim the upper reaches they’d been cut off from for more than 100 years?
About 10 months later, when they began their fall migration, Chinook salmon immediately took advantage of their new river access, looking for places upstream to lay or fertilize eggs. But the fish still faced two intact dams and no one was sure if the salmon would make it through the fish ladders, structures designed for trout, a smaller species, to bypass the dams.
Then in September, a video camera caught them leaping up the ladders like pros.
William E. Ray Jr., chairman of the Klamath tribes, whose people used to rely on salmon for about a third of their diet, told me he was stunned to see the fish make it all the way to Upper Klamath Lake in Oregon in October. And they are back in the hundreds. Mark Hereford, an Oregon state fish biologist, told me he didn’t expect this magnitude of fish to return for a decade.
Salmon are tough, and they’re a reminder that although nature is sometimes very fragile, decades of conservation rhetoric have perhaps overstated that fragility. Nature can bounce back, often quickly.
From “The Lion King” to nature documentaries, we’re told that when you remove one part of a delicate ecosystem, the whole thing can come crashing down. There’s also the seemingly endless series of scientific reports about the decline of species, from frogs to birds, and the message that we are in the perilous, hopeless “sixth mass extinction” in which species are perishing at rates far above average.
Though the extinction rate for the past few hundred years has indeed been far higher than the average, out of some 1.8 million described species, humans have been the primary cause of fewer than 1,000 known extinctions since the year 1500. Claiming we are already in the sixth mass extinction event suggests that the threatened species are already doomed and there’s no possibility for them to recover.
Some species do require extreme measures to be saved, like the kākāpō, a charming green flightless parrot from New Zealand that can survive only on islands that wildlife managers keep free of predators. And for the roughly 16 percent of threatened species whose central menace is climate change, it’s a complex, global fight.
But many species and ecosystems can rebound even when we take relatively simple actions to protect them: Look no further than the bison, elephants, humpback whales, egrets, bald eagles and many others that have shown that recovery is possible.
In all the hand-wringing over the reported declines in insect populations, I have never heard anyone point out that many insects lay thousands of eggs and produce at least one new generation per year. Careful pesticide management, restoration of habitat — perhaps via programs that compensate farmers for this important work — can help revive them.
Entire ecosystems can recover quickly, too. In 2009, the ecologists Holly Jones and Oswald Schmitz calculated that two-thirds of ecosystems recover at least partly from major disturbances, and of those that do, nearly all can recover in an average of about 10 years. When humans stop activities such as logging, trawling and polluting, the water ecosystems immediately start blooming with life, although they may never be exactly the same as they once were.
Take the vast forests of the northeastern United States, which were cut down for agriculture and logging, then eventually grew back after farmers expanded westward. Today’s forests aren’t quite the same as the ones that were lost. They are missing chestnut trees and are home to coyotes instead of wolves. But they are still full of life.
That’s in part because nature doesn’t simply repeat itself. As each organism makes choices about where to live and eat and with whom to mate, it adapts and changes. Landscape changes can be challenging for us nostalgic humans, but we should appreciate them as expressions of nature’s vitality and intelligence.
For many ecosystems and species like the Klamath Chinook, the actions required are straightforward: Don’t build over or plow under their homes, stop shooting or poisoning them, and, wherever you can, blow up the dams. The rewards are great. Not only have the Chinook salmon returned to the Klamath River Basin, they may soon return to the dinner plates of tribal members, restoring a central part of their culture lost for over a century.
We should not give up on any existing species, nor should we allow ourselves to slide into a facile despair that nature is “doomed.” We should always look for ways we can help or, even better, get out of the way and let nature come roaring back.
(Emma Marris is the author, most recently, of “Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World.” She lives in Portland, Oregon.)
IF I HAD TOLD YOU five years ago that I’d just invented a product which ends the careers of professional artists and makes it impossible to tell what’s real on the internet, would you have said I should be given billions of dollars immediately, or would you have said I should be fed to crocodiles?
The debate about generative AI is interesting because it’s all the brilliant, creative people who value truth and the human intellect on one side and all the uncreative, intellectually sluggish people who can’t write a paragraph on the other, and the latter group is winning because they’ve got capital on their side.
— Caitlin Johnstone
DON’T CRIMINALIZE PAIN
To the Editor:
The most overlooked truth in the national conversation about drug use — including fentanyl — is this: People turn to drugs because they want to feel better. Whether they want to escape pain, numb trauma or quiet anxiety, substance use is often a desperate solution to unmet emotional needs.
Criminalizing that pain doesn’t heal it. While accountability matters, it will never be enough on its own. Sustainable solutions must begin with compassion and continue with access to real tools for emotional resilience, connection and recovery. That includes relationship education, mental health support and community-based models that treat the whole person — not just the addiction.
If we keep approaching the crisis with fear, blame and sound bites, we will continue to lose people who might have been helped if only we’d asked what they were hurting from in the first place.
Seth Eisenberg
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
JUST FINISHED READING David McCullough’s fascinating 1983 account of the 15 years of construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, in many significant ways a forerunner of the Golden Gate Bridge: ‘Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge.’
Probably the most interesting (and previously unknown to me) part of the story was the underwater construction of the two “caissons” on either end of the bridge which are — like their counterparts under the Golden Gate — invisible and extremely difficult to construct, yet which form the basis of the giant towers from which the suspension cables (bundles of wires, actually — another story of its own).
Back in the late 1800s when the Brooklyn Bridge was built nobody had ever done a steel-wire suspension bridge near as large. The Brooklyn Bridge was conceived, designed and planned by an old-fashioned German-born engineer named John Roebling who died before construction began. His son Washington Roebling took over, but he became severely ill from his time underwater working on the caissons, contracting what was later called “the bends” from rising from the underwater pressure chamber too often too fast. (By the time the Golden Gate was built, bridge builders knew about the bends and took interesting precautions to prevent workers from suffering from it.) He went into seclusion to recover and his wife Emily Roebling took over as chief engineer for the next ten years to complete the project with Washington Roebling acting as a silent advisor from his home. 27 workers died. (11 died during the Golden Gate construction.) A major underwater fire broke out and had to be flooded to be put out, setting the project back for months. Financing was precarious… Highly recommended. Right up there with Steven Ambrose’s ‘Nothing Like It In the World,’ another epic story: the construction of the transcontinental railroad.
— Mark Scaramella
MEMO OF THE AIR: Thorgellen 2025: Whistling Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
Marco here. Here's the recording of Friday night's (9pm PDT, 2025-11-28) 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. Alex Bosworth, who single-handedly revived widespread observance of the ancient festival of Thorgellen, surprised me with a rare call, this time from the curb outside the homeless shelter. Good news and bad news. Good news: he's finally in line for housing, it's really gonna happen. Bad news: his replacement liver is on its last legs. Bad news: When he was in jail his venge-a-matic brother burned all his story notebooks and threw out his laptop. Good news: everyone who ever got any material from Alex rallied and poured it back to him.
https://memo-of-the-air.s3.amazonaws.com/KNYO_0672_MOTA_2025-11-28.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:
Shakily whistled but catchy Brazil. Theme of the fine film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HtHEgINHO0
What's really going on out there over the eons. Our flapjack sea ray galaxy, a hundred thousand light years side to side. https://twitter.com/i/status/1993537700251812136
And down in relatively microscopic here (Earth). Time's top 100 photos of the year. https://time.com/7336112/top-100-photos-2025
Sir Ian McKellen. Thomas More 500 years ago on the treatment of immigrants. (Sound is not synchronized with picture, but ignore that and it's a wrecking ball of a message.) You might have to click the sound on. https://fb.watch/DzJQlsVQgO
Rerun: Alex Bosworth's Thorgellen. He did more than a dozen projects like this in the 1990s, illustrating his stories with crayon on butcher paper, using the VHS video equipment from his wedding video job. They're not all available anymore. I remember Hardball, Galactic Popsicle, The Shirt Elvis Died In, and some others, one about a Halloween costume that reminded an old woman of her dead son. I don't think he made a Crayon Productions video about Children Of All Ages; I'd remember the circus animals he described, and I only remember the animals from Chip Chip Chaw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kccw_2uHKjQ
Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
This morning I was out walking off my turkey hangover when I noticed a man sitting on a park bench next to a cardboard box.
He looked quite dejected, so I thought I’d go strike up a conversation to cheer him up.
As I got near I heard music coming from the box, so I figured this would make a good conversation starter.
”Hey Buddy, what’s in the box?” I asked.
He opened it up and inside was an old timey lamp and a tiny man playing a piano.
“Wow! That’s pretty neat.” I told him. “What’s the story here?”
“Well, I found this old lamp and when I rubbed it, a genie came out and granted me one wish. I guess I blew it, so it’s no use to me now. You might as well have it. But be careful – the genie is hard of hearing.”
“How do you know the genie is hard of hearing?” I asked.
The man looked at me and said, “Do you really think I would have wished for a ten-inch pianist?”
ON-LINE COMMENT: “Froot Loops, man. Froot Loops. There's your gateway drug. Think about it. Froot? Loops? They are all the same flavor! Leaves kids wanting more…MORE!”
AN AMERICAN
The American Spirit speaks:
"If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, my Avatar."
Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve.
His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.
Calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown,
Or panic-blinded stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;
Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.
His hands are black with blood -- his heart
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.
But, through the shift of mood and mood,
Mine ancient humour saves him whole --
The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;
That bids him flout the Law he makes,
That bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that -- have no doubts;
That checks him foolish -- hot and fond,
That chuckles through his deepest ire,
That gilds the slough of his despond
But dims the goal of his desire;
Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him, careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.
How shall he clear himself, how reach
Your bar or weighed defence prefer?
A brother hedged with alien speech
And lacking all interpreter.
Which knowledge vexes him a space;
But while Reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
Home, to the instant need of things.
Enslaved, illogical, elate,
He greets th' embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.
Lo, imperturbable he rules,
Unkempt, disreputable, vast --
And, in the teeth of all the schools,
I -- I shall save him at the last!
—Rudyard Kipling (1894)
“AS LONG AS WE'RE YOUNG, we manage to find excuses for the stoniest indifference, the most blatant caddishness, we put them down to emotional eccentricity or some sort of romantic inexperience. But later on, when life shows us how much cunning, cruelty, and malice are required just to keep the body at ninety-eight point six, we catch on, we know the scene, we begin to understand how much swinishness it takes to make up a past. Just take a close look at yourself and the degree of rottenness you've come to. There's no mystery about it, no more room for fairy tales; if you've lived this long, it's because you've squashed any poetry you had in you.”
— Louis-Ferdinand Céline
AMAZON EMPLOYS OR SUBCONTRACTS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF WAREHOUSE WORKERS, with seasonal variation, often building its fulfillment centers in areas with high unemployment and low wages. Accounts from inside the centers described the work of picking, boxing, and shipping books and dog food and beard trimmers as a high-tech version of the dehumanized factory floor satirized in Chaplin's “Modern Times.” Pickers holding computerized handsets are perpetually timed and measured as they fast walk up to eleven miles per shift around a one-million square-foot warehouse, expected to collect orders in as little as 33 seconds. After watching footage taken by an undercover BBC reporter, a stress expert said, “The evidence shows increased risk of mental illness and physical illness.” The company says that its warehouse jobs are “similar to jobs in many other industries.” Last September, lawyers brought a class action lawsuit against Amazon on behalf of a warehouse worker in Pennsylvania named Neil Heimbach for unpaid wages: employees at the fulfillment center outside Allentown must wait in line to pass through metal detectors and submit their belongings to be searched when they leave for lunch and at the end of their shifts. The process takes 10-20 minutes each time. Theft is a common concern in Amazon warehouses — no doubt the knock-on effects of the absence of bonds between the company and the ever shifting roster of low-paid employees. None of Amazon's US workers belong to unions because the customer would suffer. A company executive told the New York Times that Amazon considers unions to be obstacles that would impede its ability to improve customer service. In 2011 the Allentown Morning Call published an investigative series with accounts of multiple ambulances being parked outside a warehouse during a heat wave to ferry overcome workers to emergency rooms. Afterward, Amazon installed air-conditioners although their arrival coincided with the expansion of grocery services. In any case, Amazon's warehouse jobs are gradually being taken over by robots. Jeff Bezos recently predicted to a gobsmacked Charlie Rose that in five years packages will be delivered by small drones. Then Amazon will have eliminated the human factor from shopping and we will finally be all alone with our purchases.
— George Packer
BOURGEOIS BLUES
Me and my wife went all over town
And everywhere we went people turned us down
Lord, in a bourgeois town
It's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say'n I don't want no niggers up there
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Home of the brave, land of the free
I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a nigger just to see him bow
Lord, it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
I tell all the colored folks to listen to me
Don't try to find you no home in Washington, DC
'Cause it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
— Lead Belly (1939)
THE MORAL CLARITY OF HUGH THOMPSON
On the morning of March 16, 1968, Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. took off in his Hiller OH-23 Raven observation helicopter with his crew—door gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta. They were supporting a search-and-destroy operation in Sơn Mỹ, a cluster of hamlets in Quảng Ngãi Province, South Vietnam. Intelligence reports said Viet Cong forces were hiding in the area.
But as Thompson flew low over the village of Mỹ Lai, he realized something was terribly wrong.
He saw bodies everywhere. Women. Children. Elderly villagers. Infants. No military-age males. No weapons. No enemy fire.
And he saw American soldiers—his fellow troops—shooting them.
Thompson and his crew had been trained to draw enemy fire, to spot threats, to protect ground forces. But the only threat he saw was coming from the Americans themselves.
He spotted a wounded woman lying in a field and marked her position with a smoke grenade, then radioed for ground troops to help her. He watched from the air as an American officer—Captain Ernest Medina—walked up to her, prodded her with his foot, and shot her dead.
Thompson was shaking with rage.
He flew over an irrigation ditch and saw it was filled with bodies—maybe a hundred people piled on top of each other. Then he saw movement. There were survivors down there. People still alive.
He landed and confronted a sergeant, asking if they could help the people in the ditch. The sergeant replied that the only way to help them was to “put them out of their misery.”
Then Lieutenant William Calley approached. Thompson, though outranked, tried to reason with him:
“These are human beings, unarmed civilians, sir.”
Calley's response: “This is my show. I'm in charge here. It ain't your concern.”
Thompson said, “Yeah, great job,” and as he walked back to his helicopter, he told Calley: “You ain't heard the last of this!”
He took off, and as he circled overhead, he watched in horror as soldiers began firing into the ditch to kill the survivors.
Thompson flew toward the northeast corner of the village. Below, he saw about ten civilians—including children—running toward a homemade bomb shelter. Pursuing them were soldiers from Charlie Company's 2nd Platoon.
Thompson knew exactly what was about to happen. And he made a decision that could have ended his career or his life.
He landed his helicopter directly between the American soldiers and the fleeing civilians.
Then he turned to Colburn and Andreotta and gave an order that no one had ever given in the history of the U.S. military: “Y'all cover me! If these bastards open up on me or these people, you open up on them. Promise me!”
Colburn turned his M60 machine gun toward the American soldiers.
Thompson stepped out of the helicopter—unarmed except for a sidearm he never drew—and walked toward the Americans. He confronted the platoon leader, Stephen Brooks.
The standoff lasted minutes, but it must have felt like hours. Thompson was placing himself in the line of fire. His crew was aiming weapons at fellow Americans. The civilians huddled behind them, terrified.
Finally, Thompson convinced the soldiers to hold their fire. He then radioed for help. Two UH-1 Huey gunships—helicopters that would never normally land in a combat zone—came down. Thompson coaxed 11 Vietnamese civilians out of the bunker: women, children, and one elderly man. In two trips, the helicopters evacuated them all to safety.
Thompson flew back toward the irrigation ditch. Andreotta spotted movement among the bodies. They landed again.
Andreotta waded into the ditch—through the remains of perhaps 100 dead and dying men, women, and children—and pulled out a small boy, Do Ba, miraculously alive but covered in blood. Thompson flew the child to a hospital in Quảng Ngãi, leaving him in the care of a nun.
Then Thompson returned to his base and filed an angry report to his superiors. His report quickly reached Lieutenant Colonel Frank Barker, the operation's overall commander.
Barker immediately radioed ground forces: cease fire. The massacre ended.
By that point, between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians had been killed. Thompson and his crew had directly rescued 12 people. His cease-fire order may have saved countless others who would have been killed if the operation had continued.
For his actions that day, Thompson was initially awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. But the citation was a lie. It praised him for rescuing a Vietnamese child “caught in intense crossfire” and said his actions “greatly enhanced Vietnamese-American relations.”
Thompson threw the medal away.
What followed was nearly as nightmarish as the massacre itself.
In 1970, Thompson testified before Congress. Congressman Mendel Rivers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, declared that Thompson was the only one who should be punished at Mỹ Lai—because he had threatened to shoot American troops. Rivers tried to have Thompson court-martialed.
Thompson received death threats. Mutilated animals appeared on his porch. He was called a traitor. He went by a nickname to avoid being recognized. Some in the military protected him by keeping his name out of reports, but others made his life hell.
“I do not like death threats,” Thompson later said. “I don't like mutilated animals on my porch in the morning, so I just kind of went away, went invisible.”
He continued flying missions until his helicopter was shot down and he broke his back in the crash. He was evacuated to a hospital in Japan, ending his combat service in Vietnam.
Twenty-six soldiers were eventually charged with crimes related to Mỹ Lai. Most were acquitted or pardoned. Calley was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but served only three-and-a-half years under house arrest.
For decades, Thompson's story remained largely unknown. He didn't talk about it publicly. He just wanted to forget.
But in the late 1980s, a Clemson University professor named David Egan saw Thompson in a documentary and launched a letter-writing campaign. He spent nine years pushing for Thompson to be properly recognized.
Finally, on March 6, 1998—thirty years after Mỹ Lai—Thompson and Colburn were awarded the Soldier's Medal, the highest military decoration for bravery not involving conflict with an enemy. Andreotta received the medal posthumously; he'd been killed in combat three weeks after Mỹ Lai.
Army Major General Michael Ackerman said at the ceremony: “It was the ability to do the right thing even at the risk of their personal safety that guided these soldiers to do what they did. They set the standard for all soldiers to follow.”
Ten days later, Thompson and Colburn returned to Vietnam for the 30th anniversary commemoration at Mỹ Lai. They met some of the people they had saved, including two women who had hidden in the bunker that day.
One Vietnamese woman said something that stunned Thompson. She wished that the soldiers who had shot at them could have attended the ceremony—so she could forgive them.
Thompson later told a reporter: “I'm not man enough to do that. I'm sorry. I wish I was, but I won't lie to anybody. I'm not that much of a man.”
Thompson died of cancer on January 6, 2006, at age 62. Lawrence Colburn was by his side.
Today, Thompson's story is taught at military academies as the ultimate example of moral courage. His actions are studied in ethics classes around the world. A foundation bears his name. Residents of Mỹ Lai maintain a museum where his name appears alongside the names of the victims.
Hugh Thompson Jr. didn't stop the Mỹ Lai massacre with superior firepower or battlefield tactics. He stopped it by doing something infinitely harder:
He stood between evil and the innocent, knowing it might cost him everything.
He proved that real courage isn't always about charging the enemy. Sometimes it's about confronting your own side when they've lost their way.
And he showed the world that in the midst of unthinkable horror, one person with moral clarity can save lives.
TRUMP HAS BIZARRELY ANNOUNCED that the airspace over Venezuela is “closed”, posting the following on Truth Social on Saturday:
“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”
It isn’t even clear what precisely the president means by this. Are they about to start shooting down Venezuelan aircraft like they’ve been blowing up boats? Are they preparing for a ground invasion? Whatever it is, things are looking ugly.
Washington is banging the war drums trying to justify regime change interventionism in Venezuela under the ridiculous claim that it’s about fighting drug trafficking just as Trump announces that he will pardon former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, who the US convicted of drug trafficking charges just last year.
Drugs come into the United States from numerous nations in Latin America, and it sure is an awfully interesting coincidence that the one they’re focused on regime changing to stop the drug flow just so happens to be the socialist country with the largest proven oil reserves on the entire planet.
Americans who’ve been rejecting the propaganda for wars in the middle east but now fully buy into it for regime change in Venezuela are the weirdest. That’s like managing to pull your head out of your ass, taking a deep breath, and then shoving it right back in there.
US regime change interventionism is reliably disastrous, and is always justified based on lies. This would be true even if Venezuela really was a major drug trafficking threat and even if Maduro really was the world’s most evil dictator, neither of which are the case. Only idiots and sociopaths are clapping along with the war drums.
— Caitlin Johnstone
LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT
As Trump Threatens Cartels, He Vows to Free a Convicted Cocaine Trafficker
The Ex-President Whom Trump Plans to Pardon Flooded America With Cocaine
Trump Says Venezuelan Airspace Should Be Considered Closed
Several Arrested as Protesters Block Federal Agents in Manhattan Garage
F.D.A. Seeks More Oversight of Vaccine Trials and Approvals
Trump Frees Fraudster Just Days Into Seven-Year Prison Sentence
Top Trump Aides to Meet With Ukrainians in Florida
Inside Trump’s Push to Make the White House Ballroom as Big as Possible
STATE PROSECUTORS are reportedly handling more than 300,000 desertion-related cases in Ukraine because nobody wants to fight and die in this stupid, pointless war anymore.
Desertion rates say Ukrainian soldiers don’t want this war. Polls say Ukrainian civilians don’t want this war. Yet the war keeps going, because the western power structure which actively provoked it wants it to continue.
— Caitlin Johnstone
“PERHAPS we were looking strained in our manner, because I noticed we had attracted the attention of a little man who sat on a sofa not far off. I tried to outstare him and that was easy. He had a long moustache and fawn-like eyes and he looked hurriedly away: his elbow caught his glass of beer and spun it on to the floor, so that he was overcome with confusion. I was sorry then because it occurred to me that he might have recognized me from my photographs: he might even be one of my few readers. He had a small boy sitting with him, and what a cruel thing it is to humiliate a father in the presence of his son. The boy blushed scarlet when the waiter hurried forward, and his father began to apologize with unnecessary vehemence.”
― Graham Greene, ‘The End of the Affair’
OH MY PAPA
Oh, my pa-pa, to me he was so wonderful
Oh, my pa-pa, to me he was so good
No one could be, so gentle and so lovable
Oh, my pa-pa, he always understood
Gone are the days when he could take me on his knee
And with a smile he'd change my tears to laughter
Oh, my pa-pa, so funny, so adorable
Always the clown so funny in his way
Gone are the days when he could take me on his knee
And with a smile he'd change my tears to laughter
Oh, my pa-pa, to me he was so wonderful
Deep in my heart I love him so today
Oh, my pa-pa
Oh, my pa-pa!
— Paul Burkhard (1939)
IT OUGHT TO BE LOVELY to be old to be full of the peace that comes of experience and wrinkled ripe fulfillment. The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins in their old age. Soothing, old people should be, like apples when one is tired of love. Fragrant like yellowing leaves, and dim with the soft stillness and satisfaction of autumn. And a girl should say: It must be wonderful to live and grow old. Look at my mother, how rich and still she is! And a young man should think: By Jove my father has faced all weathers, but it's been a life!
— D.H. Lawrence
Re: THE BROWN ACT SETS A MINIMUM STANDARD…
The City of Fort Bragg Corruption Cult
has been operating in gross violation of California Government Code 1099
“Incompatible Offices” for close to two years.
Yawn
TRUMP HAS BIZARRELY ANNOUNCED that the airspace over Venezuela is “closed”, posting the following on Truth Social on Saturday:
Just another nut case with too damned much power. Situation normal for the US.
Again, thank you for including art in your paper!
Yes, thank you! Enjoying the art, many I’ve not seen before!
Ditto. The AVA has very good taste in art. Not to mention R. Crumb.
Caitlin Johnstone asks: “IF I HAD TOLD YOU five years ago that I’d just invented a product which ends the careers of professional artists and makes it impossible to tell what’s real on the internet, would you have said I should be given billions of dollars immediately, or would you have said I should be fed to crocodiles?
Good question and so indicative of the craziness that is our world now. The answer–“Fed to the crocodiles, and some alligators, too!”
another incredible issue today… from the brooklyn bridge to
my lai.. an intellectual feast..(and so very relevant to our
present political situation). thank you crew
If anyone would like to know more about Emily Warren Roebling, check out “Silent Builder: Emily Warren Roebling And The Brooklyn Bridge,” by Marilyn Weigold, a biography that details Emily Roebling’s critical role in the bridge’s construction after her husband became ill. And for readers who enjoy historical fiction, there’s, “The Engineer’s Wife” by Tracey Enerson Wood.
CWO Hugh Thompson Jr.: Genuine Human Hero.
Thanks, again, to the editor for correcting the homeless narrative provided by the non-profit government grant funded profiteers of the “homeless” industry.