Mendocino County Today: Monday 12/1/2025

Sneaker Waves | Lit Boat | Eloy's Assault | FBPD Story | Barbara Blattner | Coast Caregiver | Boonville Distillery | Sad Song | No Rain | Dry December | Local History | Redwood Classic | Yesterday's Catch | Machine Limits | Chinook Return | Plastic Bags | Local Events | Niners Win | Coast Rivers | Muffin Man | SJ Lynching | Crab Feed | Union Pacific | Second Graders | Affordability Issue | Seventh Graders | American Essence | Shipping Out | Dangerous Thinking | Lead Stories | Easy Swear | God Loves | Thanksgiving Salutation | Image USA | Craziest Thing | Hot Springs | Seventeen Minutes | Keel, Achill | Rapture | Dark Side | Woody Guthrie | Love Her | Loving One | Fallen Leaf

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HIGH RISK FOR SNEAKER WAVES Monday through Tuesday. King Tides return on Tuesday and then peak Thursday and Friday. Frost and freezing temperatures possible during the morning hours for the Humboldt Bay area Monday through Thursday. Dry weather expected to prevail for this week, followed by a chance for rain late Friday and next weekend.

* High risk of sneaker waves is expected along the Northwest California beaches from this morning through Tuesday morning.

* King Tides from December 2nd-7th, and may lead to minor coastal flooding in low-lying areas around Humboldt Bay, Crescent City and Arena Cove.

* Dry and seasonably cool weather expected through Friday, followed by a chance of rain over the weekend.

(NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A crisp 40F under mostly clear skies on the this Monday morning. Our forecast is for cloudy nights & sunny days thru Friday then a chance of rain for the weekend ? I'm watching ! 2.06" in October & 9.45" for a wet November gives us a season to date total of 11.51"

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THE LIGHTED BOAT PARADE was awesome!

Can’t wait till next year!

— Judy Valadao, Fort Bragg

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ELOY’S ASSAULT

On Sunday, November 30, 2025 at approximately 6:30 P.M., Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to the area of Lake Mendocino Drive and Highway 101 in Ukiah for a reported brandishing of a firearm. The reporting person and victim, a 38-year-old male from Ukiah, reported an unknown male subject approached him and pointed a firearm at him. The victim left the area in his vehicle, but was followed by the male suspect who intentionally used his vehicle to strike the victim’s vehicle as he tried to escape.

Sheriff’s Deputies and Officers from the California Highway Patrol (CHP) and Ukiah Police Department (UPD) responded to the area. The victim was contacted by law enforcement and provided additional investigative information. A CHP Officer located and attempted to stop the suspect’s vehicle, however it fled the area and eluded law enforcement. CHP Officers again located the involved suspect vehicle at an apartment complex in the 1700 block of Tanya Lane in Ukiah and monitored that location while additional information was obtained. A shelter-in-place Nixle alert was issued by the Sheriff’s Office for the Tanya Lane area as law enforcement investigated this incident.

Eloy Lopez Jr., 26, of Ukiah, exited an apartment on Tanya Lane and was detained while a search warrant for his apartment was obtained. Deputies ensured no one else was inside Lopez’s apartment and continued to investigate this incident which included obtaining additional statements from other involved subjects, processing of physical evidence, and searching Lopez’s apartment.

Based on the totality of their investigation, Deputies determined there was probable cause to arrest Lopez for Assault with a deadly weapon other than firearm, Brandishing an imitation firearm, and Possession of a controlled substance. Eloy was transported to the Mendocino County Jail where he is being held in lieu of $30,000 bail.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office would like to thank the California Highway Patrol and the Ukiah Police Department for their assistance during this investigation.

This incident is still actively being investigated and anyone with information regarding this incident is requested to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center at 707-463-4086 (option 1). Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the non-emergency tip-line at 707-234-2100.

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ELISE COX:

I was told, but didn’t get a call back from the alleged victim, that someone was arrested in Fort Bragg for blowing a .03 … Also. one of the stories I’m working on involves a drunken man getting asked to leave a local bar, he does, and then the bartender calls the police and reports a fight, even though there is no fight, and then the police show up, one comes up behind the drunken guy and takes him down, tases him, and charges him with resisting arrest (all conveniently out of sight of the cameras) …on the stand, I’m told the officer says the drunken people were first offered rides home … we are waiting to see if that is on the bodycam footage (I reviewed the footage already, so if it disappears that’s gonna be a problem) The alternative would have been to respond, observe the situation, notice that the drunk guy who had been asked to leave the bar was walking home (walking, not driving) … and leave everyone alone. The people of Fort Bragg and the County are paying for these “police services.” Public safety is at least 30% of the general fund. We have elders in this county who barely get enough to eat and police officers taking home elevated salaries based on these “services” -- while other crimes are minimized. I know a lot about this particular arrest but what about other arrests where the bodycam footage isn’t voluntarily shared with a reporter? There are good officers who work for the FBPD, this behavior hurts them.

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GRAVESIDE SERVICES will be held for Barbara Blattner, formerly of Philo, at the Evergreen Cemetery in Boonville on Wednesday, December 10 at 11pm. A Memorial Service will follow at 1pm at the Fairgrounds Apple Hall Dining Room. All are welcome to both services.

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CAREGIVING ON THE COAST

Are you a senior needing help?

Hi, my name is Micah Sanger, and I offer professional caregiving. I am currently providing caregiving services through IHSS (provider number 002637083) and am available through Senior Helpers.

My hourly rate is $25 per hr. if you are not enrolled in IHSS or Senior Helpers.

If you are interested, please email me at [email protected] or call or text at (505) 455-2867.

Micah Sanger
PO Box 497
Mendocino, CA 95460

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BOONVILLE DISTILLERY/BREWPUB: WINTER HOURS

Winter has officially arrived in Boonville

We’re cozying up, trimming lunch service, and shifting into our winter hours starting this week:

Winter Hours

• Sun–Mon: 12–7:30
• Tue–Thu (Fiesta Nights): 4–7:30
• Fri–Sat: 12–7:30

Shorter days, warm food, strong drinks, and good company. Come see us this winter — we’ll keep the lights on for you.

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IT’S THE SAME OLD SAD SONG

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

Let’s hope Ukiah is sufficiently heads-up to send out a few photographers to snap glamour shots before the trees on School Street get harvested.

When the call goes out to goose tourism numbers, the city will need pictures. Pictures will be the only bait in the Visit Ukiah! creel that could potentially persuade newcomers into thinking it’s a pretty little town in Northern California.

Just one tiny speck in the ever-sprawling beast we call Ukiah is pleasing to the eye: the 300 foot west side sliver of South School Street as yet unblighted by progress. But minus the glorious foliage of the doomed trees the pictures will suffer mightily, as will tourism for a decade.

Not that it’s ever robust.

But the bigger question is this: Aren’t the prettiest and most beloved parts of any town anywhere in America the old parts? Aren’t pictures of the grand old neighborhoods with the gaudy, solid homes built 100 or more years ago the ones that show up in magazine photo spreads and on real estate websites?

And in travel brochures? Travel any distance from home and you will wind up spending time in motel lobbies or highway rest stops.

These are among the locations where our friends in the tourist industry place racks holding scores of colorful folded pamphlets suggesting places and sights you ought to visit. The guides are intended to entice visitors to their little towns and cities, their festivals and shops. And what pictures appear in these miniature brochures?

Invariably they are the same:

1) The town square with a Civil War monument.

2) A church built in 1788 that continues to hold services and host weddings. Free tours Monday thru Friday.

3) Vintage shops along McFussel Street, including the original Henry Bros. Hardware store, a drinking fountain used by both President James Buchanan and singer Bob Dylan, and the oldest bakery in the state of Indiana.

4) Lovely old neighborhoods with three story Victorian houses, massive brick Colonial mansions, and six houses once part of the Underground Railroad.

These are the attractions tourists hope to see. They are the prettiest, most remarkable blocks and sights in any town. Yet in so many cities so much of the history and beauty that once graced downtown streets and gracious old boulevards has been destroyed.

Why are local leaders indifferent to the old churches and houses and classic post office buildings? Why are massive old big city landmarks and hotels left to wither and rot, then razed so a soulless shopping mall or office complex can take their place?

Detroit’s Grand Trunk Railway station, an astonishing and beautiful architectural marvel is now a brick and broken glass rubble. Cleveland’s Millionaires’ Row, a seemingly endless stretch of fabulous mansions (John D. Rockefeller’s home was among the more modest) is 100% gone.

In nearby Sonoma County the impressive Santa Rosa and Occidental Hotels were bulldozed off Fourth Street in the mid-1970s. Can you name what structures took their place?

Me neither. But I guarantee pictures of the (obviously anonymous and uninteresting) replacements will never appear in a Santa Rosa website or travel brochure.

Ukiah? We are busy erecting some of the least beautiful buildings I have ever seen. Artist renditions depict a new courthouse that would be ruinous on any cityscape and deadly on Ukiah’s. Our stately old Post Office was abandoned 15 years ago in favor of an appalling box on Orchard Street.

There is already talk of demolishing the (mostly old, mostly admirable) downtown courthouse in exchange for a patch of grass and some benches. Maybe a plaque.

So, again: We love old buildings, we value beautiful neighborhoods, we admire grand architecture, but we tear it all down in favor of Lego-like monstrosities.

Do you think our new courthouse will ever grace the pages of a “Visit Ukiah!” brochure? Or pictures of the “park” where the old courthouse once stood?

In the face of all this I am powerless to express the outrage mingled with disbelief that our society, in defiance of even its own limited comprehension, still barrels along on this path of ignorance and regret.

Instead we will wind up sending drones with cameras to take aerial photos of the Walmart parking lot, or a series of shots showcasing our beloved Redwood Rail Trail Homeless Hiking and Drug Encampment Excursion Tour Facilities.

Fun for the whole family. Reserve picnic spots now. Check our brochure.

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SOMETHING BIG IS BLOCKING CALIFORNIA’S WINTER STORMS — HERE’S WHAT THAT MEANS

by Anthony Edwards

San Francisco’s wettest month, climatologically, isn’t shaping up to follow the traditional script this year.

The city averages more rain in December than any other month, but California’s precipitation forecast to close out 2025 is grim.

Effects of a stratospheric disruption and hints of La Niña’s influence on the jet stream are likely to steer storms away from the West Coast for at least the first half of December. This would likely keep California drier than normal for the first two weeks of the month, especially in the northern half of the state.

Southern California may fare slightly better from a precipitation standpoint, but the region remains on a razor’s edge from a volatile storm track.

Temperature inversions are predicted to continue, too. That means many days that are warmer in Lake Tahoe than in Sacramento, as the valley remains shrouded in tule fog. The warm weather may continue to trouble Tahoe ski resorts as they try to supplement a low snowpack with artificial powder.

Storm Shields Up

California’s early December weather is predicted to be dominated by a large high-pressure system in the northeastern Pacific Ocean, just off the West Coast. High-pressure systems generally result in clear skies and tranquil weather beneath them.

This clockwise-spinning area of high pressure will prevent Pacific storms from forming along the West Coast, deflecting them into Canada before dropping southward inland. These types of systems are known as “inside sliders” and are characterized by their north-to-south route east of the Sierra Nevada.

Inside sliders aren’t prolific rain- or snowmakers because of their overland trajectory, but can bring light precipitation to eastern California. One of those inside sliders could generate flurries in Tahoe on Wednesday, Dec. 3. Rain is unlikely west of the Sierra crest.

Sometimes, inside sliders can cut off from the jet stream near the Southern California Bight and evaporate enough moisture from the Pacific Ocean to drop rain in Los Angeles and San Diego. One of those storms, known as a cutoff low-pressure system, is possible Thursday through Saturday, Dec. 4-6. But if the system goes slightly farther east, all of California will remain dry.

That cutoff low presents California with its best chance of rain in early December, but the northern half of the state probably wouldn’t pick up much. There’s an 80% chance of less than an inch of rain in San Francisco the first 12 days of December and a 40% chance the city remains dry, according to the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

San Francisco began the first 10 days of December 2024 without a drop of rain before a powerful storm just four days later led to the city’s first-ever tornado warning. That illustrates just how quickly weather patterns can change this time of year, so not all hope is lost for wet weather in December.

What About Temperatures?

With a high-pressure system near the West Coast, skies are expected to remain free of clouds.

Clear skies in winter tend to bring California warmer-than-normal days and cooler-than-normal nights. That’s because long, clear winter nights allow heat time to escape to space. Although the sun is low in the sky in December, it is still strong enough to warm the land around California into the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Bad news for the Sierra snowpack: Warm weather will probably continue to melt away snow that accumulated in November. Temperature inversions, where cold air sinks to the valleys at night while warm air lingers above, may keep temperatures above freezing in the middle elevations of ski resorts.

One exception to the pattern may come in the Central Valley. Winter high-pressure systems tend to lock in long stretches of foggy weather. That happened on Thanksgiving in Sacramento, where thick fog never burned off. Sacramento’s high temperature of 48 degrees that day was its coldest November day in three decades.

This December may end up as one of the Central Valley’s foggiest months in years.

What’s Driving The Dry Weather?

The mechanisms driving California’s dry forecast are complex. The high-pressure system off the West Coast is part of a wavy atmospheric pattern prevailing across the Northern Hemisphere, triggered by a disruption in the stratosphere.

High-amplitude, or wavy, atmospheric patterns tend to get stuck in place, which result in persistent stormy weather in some areas and stretches of tranquil conditions in others.

Wintertime high-pressure systems along the West Coast are becoming more common, scientists say. These patterns may also be linked to Arctic sea ice extent, which is currently at a record minimum for this time of year.

When Will The Rain Return?

Persistent winter high-pressure systems typically break down in one of two ways.

Either the jet stream strengthens on the west side of the Pacific Ocean and a breakthrough storm pushes the area of high pressure into the U.S. This sort of pattern can put the West Coast at risk of a warm rainstorm.

Or, a more possible outcome is that the high-pressure system moves eastward, or retrogrades.

This would open the door for storms to parallel the Pacific coastline and pick up moisture on their way to Northern California. Those storms would probably originate near Canada and bring colder air with them, favorable for Sierra snow. However, it’s a volatile pattern. A slight eastward shift in the position of the high-pressure system would keep California much drier.

If the pattern does change, it would likely happen around the Dec. 10-14 timeframe.

While the second half of December may offer California better storm chances, it’s important to note that long-range weather models still favor drier-than-normal conditions until at least New Year’s Day.

(SF Chronicle)

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LOCAL HISTORY

recalled by Bruce Anderson

THE OLD ALBERTINUM PROPERTY on Ukiah’s Westside was sold some years ago to the ever-larger Buddhist presence in the Mendocino County seat. The Buddhists own the 90-acre former state hospital site at Talmage, which they bought for a literal song some 30 years ago when the County of Mendocino declined to pick it up as surplus state property on the grounds that it might cost too much money to maintain.

THE BUDDHISTS have since put the Talmage property to productive use, converting it to schools, an excellent vegetarian restaurant and, of course, large set asides for the mystic mumbo jumbo that drives the Buddhist’s worldviews.

THE ALBERTINUM property on Ukiah’s Westside began life in 1895 as an orphanage and boarding school run by the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose. In the middle 1960s, as America’s social glue began to melt and more and more children were essentially orphaned by crazed, drug-addled or merely incompetent parents, the Greek Orthodox Church took over the five-acre property to operate an institution for disturbed children called Trinity School. (Prior to the 1960s, psychotic children were relatively uncommon and were placed in state hospitals.)

KEVIN STARR, the renowned California historian, is the Albertinum’s most prominent graduate.

TRINITY SCHOOL was run by a lugubrious Orthodox priest called Steve Katsaris who lost his daughter to the murderous cross-town charlatan, Jim Jones, then fleecing his flock in Redwood Valley and, for a time, serving as foreman of the Mendocino County Grand Jury. Miss Katsaris became Jones’ chief aide. She falsely denounced her father as a child molester, the ugliest accusation a child can make against a parent, but one that Jones, a mega-perv himself, often deployed against his enemies. That accusation, of course, is now common in child custody disputes as our disintegrating society further disintegrates.

THE GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH closed Trinity School for good in 2009 and the property, valued at around $4 million, was vacant until the Buddhists picked it up. The church maintained a single group home on Hazel Avenue, Ukiah after the main campus was closed.

ORPHANAGES seem to have somehow gotten a bad rap, but they were common in America and on the Northcoast through the early 1960s. There are many affectionate memoirs written by men and women whose parents either abandoned them or consigned them to orphanages, which were much more intelligently and humanely run than the unstable, mercenary system that dependent children suffer in today.

THE FOLLOWING TESTIMONIALS give us some idea of what the old Ukiah orphanage was like:

“YES, many people didn’t want to be in a residential school (including me). But, as such facilities run, the Albertinum was among the top 5% in the way they treated their students. I know, my mother put me in several others over the years (and didn’t pay the tuition after a few months). I knew my mother didn’t want me around, and she was so irresponsible that she wouldn’t even pay for the privilege of getting rid of me. At the Albertinum, I found love, affection and was encouraged for the very first time in my life to use my mind. I was introduced to Choral Music, Gregorian Chant, and I have been musically active ever since. They encouraged me to be creative in many ways, they encouraged reading virtually anything and everything (I devoured their library). They even gave me my first pair of roller skates, and I learned to skate there at the age of 9. I also learned to play chess there, something I have done ever since. Had it not been for my experiences in the 2nd half of the 4th grade, the summer between 4th and 5th grade (when I got to go to Camp St. Albert’s, the only summer camp I ever went to), the first half of the 5th grade, and then the entire 6th grade, I doubt if I would have maintained my sanity. Had it not been for those Dominican Nuns, I doubt very much if I would have my Doctorate today… Had I not learned, at the tender age of 9, that there was something in this world besides cruelty, abuse, lies, punishment, and virtual total rejection, I suspect I would have ended up in prison or in a mental hospital.””…

“TO GIVE YOU an idea just how tolerant those nuns were, I climbed up into the trees around the swimming pool, and hid there when the nuns were going to go swimming. They all filed in in full habit, and went into the changing rooms. When they came out, they were in somewhat severe plain black swim piece swimsuits. I was caught looking at them, and was held for Mother Superior to deal with me. She asked me why I had done such a thing. I told her that all of the boys said the nuns shaved their heads, and that they had their breasts removed when they became nuns. She laughed, told me that I now obviously knew that this was not true, and sentenced me to sweep the courtyard behind her office. Really mean, wasn’t she? (Needless to say, I was the hero of the dorm for a few days though.) I went there before Vatican II, under the rules of the old church. I was not a Catholic, but went to Mass and the first time, I went up to communion with everyone else. I had no idea what was going on, but I just did what everyone else did.

“IF YOU REMEMBER, the nuns always went into the front two rows of pews, right up by the communion rail. I got up front, knelt down when the guy next to me did, and waited. The priest came along, and because I had been watching, I stuck out my tongue. He put something hard and dry on it. I stood up, turned around and took the host out of my mouth and looked at it.

“IN THOSE DAYS, no one but a priest was allowed to touch the host, and you never, ever chewed it. I was right in front of Mother Superior when I took it out of my mouth. I heard a gasp all over the chapel, and then I put the host back in my mouth and chewed it. Another huge gasp. When I got back to my pew, the boys on either side moved as far away from me as they possibly could. I think they believed a lightning bolt was going to get me. I knew I had done something wrong, but I didn’t have a clue what it could possibly be.

“AS WE WERE LEAVING, one of our prefects pulled me out of line, and said that Mother would want to speak to me. Now I really knew I was in trouble. Mother came over, and asked me if I had made my first communion? I nodded yes, and then she asked me, How did you do it? For some reason I blurted out that I had said it twice. She laughed, and gently told me that Communion was reserved for Catholics that had made their first communion. I was more than welcome to attend Mass, but please don’t go up to communion again. That was that, and I went to breakfast. The other boys were amazed that I was not expelled, or at least flayed alive or something similar. Now, you tell me, if those nuns were so indifferent, so mean and uncaring, how did a non-Catholic kid get away with the kind of stuff I did? I was a good student, but not that good.

“I WENT BACK to visit that school numerous times after I went back home permanently. I was always welcomed by the staff, and by all of the Nuns. (And no, I did not come from a rich family, quite the opposite. In fact, my mother did not pay any of the tuition for the last five months I was there, and they never cut off my allowance, my store privileges, etc…”

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REDWOOD CLASSIC, 2025, DECEMBER 3-6

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, November 30, 2025

MICHAEL JOHNSON, 25, Fort Bragg. Vandalism.

ALVINO MIRANDA, 43, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

TALIYAH RABANO, 19, Covelo. Battery.

ALVARO SANTIAGO-CRUZ, 24, Salinas/Ukiah. DUI, suspended license, bringing controlled substance into jail.

TISHA SMITH, 30, Fort Bragg. DUI.

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TO BE OR NOT TO BE

To the Editor:

If A.I. encourages us to narrow our definition of consciousness to the spectrum of intelligence, then the machines will always win and our grand experiment of civilization will fail.

The facts are these: Machines lack the hardware of beingness, for “to be” one must live. Machines will never feel; they will never love; they will only manage to simulate these as affects.

One need look no further than the suicide of 14-year-old Sewell Garcia, who formed a “relationship” with an A.I. chatbot.

David Shuch

Augusta, New Jersey

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CHINOOK SALMON ARE POPULATING FARTHER UP A BAY AREA CREEK FOR THE FIRST TIME IN DECADES

by Sam Mauhauy-Moore

Chinook salmon are once again populating an upper part of the largest local tributary of the San Francisco Bay, thanks to the recent completion of a multiyear fish passage and restoration project.

Fish biologists and environmental consultants documented two Chinook salmon in the upper Alameda Creek watershed on Nov. 19, nonprofit California Trout announced on Tuesday. Earlier that week, volunteers photographed almost a dozen of the fish in lower Niles Canyon, the Alameda Creek Alliance wrote in a Nov. 18 news release.

According to CalTrout, this is the first time the fish have accessed this area of their own accord since the 1950s.

The salmon’s passage up Alameda Creek, which carves through Niles Canyon and the Sunol Wilderness Regional Preserve to the Diablo Range, was made possible this year through the relocation of a PG&E-owned gas pipeline near the Interstate 680 overpass, CalTrout wrote. A layer of concrete that had previously covered the pipeline had helped block the salmon’s passage through the stream. This month, PG&E and CalTrout wrapped up efforts to relocate the pipeline and bury it under the riverbed, allowing salmon to migrate upstream once more.

The pipeline was the last major barrier to fish migration in Alameda Creek, and its relocation marks the fruitful result of over two decades of fish passage restoration projects in the watershed. Two dozen restoration projects have been completed in the stream since 2001, according to the Alameda Creek Alliance — work that included constructing fish ladders, removing dams and restoring the area’s native riparian habitats.

“The continuing return of salmon heralds hope for more healthy ecosystems and these charismatic fish are excellent ambassadors for protecting and restoring our local watersheds,” Jeff Miller, director of the Alameda Creek Alliance, said in the organization’s news release. “We’re seeing results from two decades of restoration projects and we hope Alameda Creek will have an outsized impact on recovery of steelhead trout in the region. It’s profoundly gratifying to see watershed residents and the local water agencies taking pride in bringing back native fish and wildlife.”

The salmon in Alameda Creek likely migrated from hatcheries in the Central Valley, according to the Alliance, though it’s possible that they spawned in the Guadalupe River in San Jose. Salmon populated waterways in the region prior to industrialization, as evidenced by salmon remains found in Native American shell mounds, the Alliance wrote.

(sfgate.com)

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NEW CALIFORNIA LAW MEANS A BIG CHANGE FOR GROCERY SHOPPERS IN 2026

by Lucy Hodgman

Plastic grocery bags will start vanishing from California grocery stores after Jan. 1, when restrictions are set to tighten as part of the state’s campaign to keep the bags from clogging waterways and landfills.

California technically banned plastic grocery bags more than a decade ago, in 2014. But at the urging of plastic and grocery lobbyists, that law left an exception for thicker plastic bags that can theoretically be reused 125 times. It didn’t take long for the bulkier bags — which use more plastic and are still often thrown away after a single use — to become standard at grocery store registers.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law prohibiting the thicker bags last year. This time, lawmakers and environmental advocates are hopeful that the ban will stick.

“What people will experience on the first day of 2026 is not dissimilar from what people experienced when the law first went into effect, before the stores and the bag manufacturers began exploiting what became a loophole,” said Mark Murray, director of Californians Against Waste, which helped write the original law. “Instead of ‘paper or plastic’ the question is going to be, ‘Do you need to purchase a paper bag?’”

Paper bags will soon be the only option at grocery stores around the state. (By 2028, those bags will also be required to be made of at least 50% recycled paper.) Stores are required to charge customers at least 10 cents for the bags; they also cost more for grocers than their plastic counterparts.

Murray hopes that the change will encourage more people to make reusable bags their default or hand-carry their purchases. Some grocery stores, like Trader Joe’s, already sell canvas totes and insulated bags near the checkout counter.

It’s a win for environmentalists, who argue that the proliferation of thick plastic bags in the years since the ban has made the state’s plastic pollution worse. Murray said the heavy-duty bags “exploded” in California during the early months of the pandemic, when reusable bags were temporarily banned at some stores. In 2022, the tonnage of plastic grocery and merchandise bags discarded in California was 47% higher than the year the ban was passed, according to a CalPIRG report.

One reason for the jump is that very few of the theoretically reusable bags are actually brought back to grocery stores, said Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator who’s now the president of advocacy group Beyond Plastics.

”There must be one person” who regularly reuses their bags, Enck said. But “most people” discard them after a single trip to the grocery store.

“People just throw it in the garbage or the plastic recycling bin, and most of that plastic doesn’t get recycled.”

Plastic bags are harder to recycle than they are to reuse. They often get tangled in the machinery at recycling plants, where their complex chemical makeup makes it difficult to process them into new materials. Four plastic bag producers said they would stop selling bags in California last month, after Attorney General Rob Bonta alleged that they printed a “chasing arrows” symbol on their products without evidence that they could be recycled in the state.

Many plastic bags still clog the recycling stream. They’re the most common contaminant at Recology Central, the Pier 96 facility that processes San Francisco’s recycling. Even after Jan. 1, the bags won’t disappear from the city entirely. While they’ll be banned at groceries, liquor stores and pharmacies, they will remain a legal option at many retailers and restaurants around the state.

“We’re supportive of the legislation in that it would keep the bags out of the recycling,” said Recology San Francisco General Manager Maurice Quillen. “There’s still a lot of bags out there in the public realm.”

(SF Chronicle)

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LOCAL EVENTS (this week)

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WHY BEATING CLEVELAND PROVED SOMETHING IMPORTANT FOR 49ERS’ PLAYOFF PUSH

by Ann Killion

A year ago, any hopes the San Francisco 49ers harbored of making another playoff run vanished in the freezing cold in late November and early December. Their disastrous back-to-back trips, first to Green Bay and then to the eastern shore of Lake Erie to face the Buffalo Bills, sealed the 49ers’ dismal fate last season.

So there was plenty of reason for trepidation regarding a Nov. 30 trip to the frostbitten southern shore of Lake Erie, to play the Cleveland Browns. The 49ers faced a laundry list of challenges: short week, early start time, difficult weather conditions, a location where they have traditionally struggled and a 3-8 opponent that could easily be overlooked. Add it all up, and it was the definition of a trap game.

But the 49ers overcame the cold and their own history of futility in Cleveland to beat the Browns 26-8 on Sunday. It was their first victory in Cleveland since November 1984, back when Joe Montana was directing Bill Walsh’s offense and Roger Craig — his era’s Christian McCaffrey — scored two touchdowns.

With the win, the 49ers head into their long-awaited bye week with a 9-4 record. With the Rams’ stunning loss at Carolina on Sunday, the 49ers are now only a half-game behind the Rams in the NFC West.

“It’s been a long wait for a bye week,” 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said. “Mentally and physically it will be awesome to rest and come back with four games to get ready for the playoffs.

Sunday’s victory not only kept the 49ers firmly in the playoff picture, it also should give them confidence when they look ahead to the postseason. The 49ers’ playoff path will almost certainly start on the road, possibly in some very cold location like Chicago. The 49ers have won such games in the past, and Sunday’s victory in Cleveland should remind them of that ability.

Two years ago, in a frustrating visit to Cleveland, the far-superior 49ers let the Browns hang around and then finally lost the game on a missed Jake Moody field goal.

Coming into Sunday’s game, the 49ers’ superiority over the Browns wasn’t nearly so obvious, despite the stark difference in the team’s records. The Browns are a bottom feeder once again, but their roster is loaded with good young players, the draft bounty from their usual seasons of futility. The defense is stellar and their running game is stout.

In the first half, the 49ers seemed willing to let the Browns hang around again. Aside from a touchdown set up by a 66-yard punt return, the 49ers offense couldn’t get going and their defense had trouble getting a stop. The Browns’ running game was having its way against the 49ers. Cleveland’s lone touchdown came on a 10-play drive, when the Browns ran nine times before Shedeur Sanders threw for the touchdown.

The momentum flipped in the second half, mostly thanks to special team gaffes by the Browns. It wasn’t a particularly easy day for 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy. Though he did not have to deal with precipitation, which has given him trouble in the past, Purdy did have to contend with swirling winds and bone-chilling cold, both of which got worse as the game progressed. Television cameras showed Purdy on the sideline wearing a large, battery-operated heating pad on his surgically repaired elbow, trying to keep his arm warm.

But Purdy’s signature moment wasn’t due to his toasted elbow. It came with his feet, when he scored the 49ers’ second touchdown. It was his first rushing touchdown of the season and was an indication of his increased comfort with his feet, after battling a turf toe injury all season.

Overall, Purdy moved in the pocket much more effectively than he had in previous games and not only because he was trying to elude Myles Garrett. The likely Defensive Player of the Year only got to Purdy for one sack, bringing his league-leading total to 19, but he put steady pressure on the 49ers’ quarterback.

Purdy finished 16-for-29 for 168 yards, one touchdown pass, one touchdown run and no interceptions. His numbers were actually worse than Sanders, though Sanders wasn’t nearly as nimble with his feet, sacked three times.

Shanahan took the unusual step of winning the opening coin toss and opting for the ball, a departure from his usual pattern and an indication of his concerns that the weather would get worse in the second half. The cold did get worse with the wind whipping through the official’s microphone and making every pass and punt an adventure.

But when the game was over, the 49ers pulled on their wool beanies, thawed out their bodies and celebrated. They overcame the cold. They overcame their history. And now they head into their bye week ready for to make a playoff push.

It’s everything they could have asked for.

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ED NOTE: All the Chron’s sports writers had picked the Browns.

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MUFFIN MAN

The Muffin Man is seated at the table
In the laboratory of the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen . . .
Reaching for an oversized chrome spoon
He gathers an intimate quantity of dried muffin remnants
And, brushing his scapular aside,
Proceeds to dump these inside of his shirt . . .
He turns to us and speaks:
"Some people like cupcakes better. I, for one,
Care LESS for them!"
Arrogantly twisting the sterile canvas snoot of a fully charged icing-anointment utensil,
He poots forth a quarter-ounce green rosetta
Near . . .
(Let's try that again . . . )
He poots forth a quarter-ounce green rosetta
Near the summit of a dense-but-radiant muffin of his own design
Later he says:
"Some people . . . some people like cupcakes exclusively,
While I myself say there is naught, nor ought there be,
Nothing so exalted on the face of God's grey earth
As that Prince of Foods . . . The Muffin!"

Girl, you thought he was a man
But he was a muffin
He hung around till you found
That he didn't know nuthin'

Girl, you thought he was a man
But he only was a-puffin'
No cries is heard in the night
As a result of him stuffin'

Girl, you thought he was a man
But he was a muffin
No cries is heard in the night
As a result of him stuffin'

— Frank Zappa (1975)

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A SAN JOSE LYNCHING THAT’S STILL SHOCKING

by Tim O’Rourke

Mob rule and blood thirst took control in the Valley of Heart’s Delight that night.

The Chronicle’s front page from Nov. 27, 1933, covers the lynching of two kidnapping and murder suspects in San Jose.

“Lynch law wrote the last grim chapter in the Brooke Hart kidnapping here tonight,” the story read. “Twelve hours after the mutilated body of the son of Alex J. Hart, wealthy San Jose merchant, was recovered from San Francisco Bay a mob of 10,000 infuriated men and women stormed the Santa Clara County Jail, dragged John M. Holmes and Thomas H. Thurmond from their cells and hanged them in historic St. James Park.”

It was a shocking scene, even 83 years ago. The Chronicle’s Royce Brier was there, and he would win the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting that night. The headline read “Kidnapers lynched!” using the accepted spelling of the time, and the size of the headline reflected the hangings’ impact in the Bay Area and beyond.

“Swift, and terrible to behold, was the retribution meted out to the confessed kidnappers and slayers,” Brier wrote. “As the pair were drawn up, thrashing in the throes of death, a mob of thousands of men and women and children screamed anathemas at them.

“The siege of the County Jail, a three-hour whirling, howling drama of lynch law, was accomplished without serious injury either to the seizers of the 35 officers who vainly sought to defend the citadel.

“The defense of the jail failed because Sheriff Emig and his forces ran out of tear gas bombs,” Brier continued. “Bombs kept the determined mob off for several hours.

“Help from San Francisco and Oakland officers arrived too late to save the Hart slayers.”

(SF Chronicle)

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HELL ON WHEELS

by Stephen Ambrose

As the end of track moved west during the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad in the 1860s after the Civil War, it was accompanied by a scene that greatly pleased the workingmen and would later excite Hollywood and the book writers who made epics out of the Union Pacific, led by Cecil B. DeMille. Hell On Wheels — the man who came up with the phrase, which was universally adopted, is unknown — began at North Platte, Nebraska. The village had grown from almost nothing to 5,000 inhabitants since the track stopped there for the winter of 1866-67. Most of the residents were workers waiting for warm weather. The village bulged with gambling dens, houses of prostitution, taverns, music halls, hotels, and an occasional restaurant. These establishments were run by sharks, from Chicago mainly, who had put up a small investment — canvas for a tent or for some split lumber, a bar full of liquor, some money for dancers and dealers, a little more here and there.

The sharks took in large amounts of cash. Their customers consisted of young men with whatever they had saved from their wages, whether last year’s or last week’s, with nothing to do, far from home and family constraints. Their chief entertainment came from getting drunk, getting laid, and losing all their money to the gamblers. What the hell, there was nothing else to spend money on, and anyway they had a place to sleep and eat, and during the working season they would make more money the next morning.

Many of them, perhaps most, where young Irishmen. Stephen Vincent Benét wrote about them in his 1935 fable “O’Halloran’s Luck.” He opened, “They were strong men built the big road and it was the Irish did it.” The grandfather of the protagonist was “a young man then, and wild. He could swing a pick all day and dance all night, if there was a fiddler handy.” He and his buddies “have left famine and England’s rule behind.” He “liked the strength and the wildness of it — he’d drink with the thirstiest and fight with the wildest — and that he knew how to do. It was all meat and drink to him — the bare tracks pushing ahead across the bare prairie and the fussy cough of the wood-burning locomotives and the cold blind eyes of murdered man.”

They had served in the Union Army, for the most part, and were accustomed to the life. Whether many of them, or only a few, or none suffered from shellshock or other forms of post combat trauma is not known, but for certain they were accustomed to pistols and rifles and artillery going off, to losing everything on one roll of the dice, to wounds and death.

Henry Stanley wrote of North Platte when it was at the end of track: “Every gambler in the union seems to have steered his course here, where every known game under the sun is played. Every house is a saloon and every saloon is a gambling den. Revolvers are in great requisition. Beardless youth try their hands at the ‘Mexican monte,’ ‘high-low,’ ‘chuck-a-luck,’ and lose their all.”

Sometimes they protested about being cheated. When they did, they were shot. One a day, or more. Hell On Wheels moved as the end of track moved. It could be taken down and set up again in a day. Its population numbered 2,000 or so. By June, Hell On Wheels was in Julesburg, a town that, according to Samuel Reed, “continues to grow with magic rapidity. Vice and crime stalk unblushingly in the midday sun.” It had grown from 40 men and one woman to 4,000. Stanley visited the place and was amazed at what he saw: “I walked onto a dance house. Gorgeously decorated and brilliantly lighted. I was almost blinded by the glare and stunned by the clatter. The ground floor was as crowded as it could well be. Mostly everyone seemed bent on debauchery and dissipation. The women were the most reckless, and expensive. They come in for a large share of the money wasted. Soldiers, herdsmen, teamsters, women, railroadmen, are dancing, singing or gambling. There are men here who would murder a fellow creature for $5. Nay, there are men who have already done it. Not a day passes but a dead body is found somewhere in the vicinity with pockets rifled of their contents.”

These places were built of the “most perishable materials,” Samuel Bowles wrote. They consisted of “canvas tents, plain and board shanties, and turf hovels.” The population was scum. “One to two thousand men, and a dozen or two women were encamped on the alkali plain. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a blade of grass was visible; and the dust ankle deep as we walked through it, and so fine it irritated every sense and poisoned half of them.” Hell On Wheels was “a village of a few variety stores and shops, and many grog shops; by day disgusting, by night dangerous; almost everybody dirty, many filthy, and with the marks of lowest vice; averaging a murder a day; gambling and drinking, hurdy-gurdy dancing and the vilest of sexual commerce the chief business and pastime of the hours.”

Where these people came from, where they went to later, “were both puzzles too intricate for me,” Bowles confessed. “Hell would appear to have been raked to furnish them; and into it they must have naturally returned after graduating here, fitted for its highest seats and most diabolical service.”

The so-called “big tent” was a hundred feet long and 40 feet wide, covered with canvas but with a wood floor for dancing. The right side was lined by a splendid bar with every variety of liquors and cigars, with cut glass goblets, ice pitchers, splendid mirrors and pictures. A full band played, apparently day and night. Gambling tables surrounded the dance floor. Fair women, in light and airy garments, mingled with the throng. Men paid 50¢ for a drink for their girl, 50¢ for themselves, with a dance thrown in. The whiskey for the men was watered, and it was tea for the girls, but no matter. Down it went.

One reporter noted that in such places “Madam rumor has full sway. It reminds one of Washington during the war. There are as many reporters as then. Every stage driver, every passenger, every ranchman, every railroad employee, has his little legend to tell.”

The Union Pacific officials tried to hold things down, however they could. Occasionally they would send out a Catholic priest named Father Ryan, who would put up a tent and ties for the congregation to sit on. According to the reporter who witnessed the scene, they listened devoutly to the sermon and shared in communion, and sang a hymn or two. Then Father Ryan “talked to them about their profanity, their drunkenness, and their general waste of money. He urged them to be true to their faith, and to their employers, and to take a pride in their work on the great railroad.”

Julesburg got so bad that former Union Army General Grenville Dodge, who was in charge of the railroad’s construction for the Union Pacific, and who had seen a lot of young Americans downing a lot of drinks during the Civil War, had to step in. He heard that gamblers had taken over and refused to obey the local Union Pacific officials. What bothered Dodge the most was that they had taken up lands he had set aside as belonging to the Union Pacific and refused to pay for them. He called Julesburg “a much harder place then North Platte.” Dodge told his chief track layer, another former Army General named Jack Casement, to take his train force into town and clean the place up.

Casement, a muscular, tough teetotaler, was ready. He marched into town that night with 200 men. They met with the gamblers, who spat contempt at him and refused to pay up. With a quiet voice, Casement ordered his men to open fire, “not caring whom they hit.” When Dodge came to town a couple of days later and asked what had happened, Casement led him to a nearby hill full of fresh graves. “General,” he told Dodge, “they all died, but bought peace. Julesburg has been quiet ever since.”

(‘Nothing Like It In The World,’ Stephen Ambrose, 2001)

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‘THE NEW PRICE OF EGGS.’ The Political Shocks of Data Centers and Electric Bills

Democrats zeroed in on utilities and affordability to win Republican support in upset elections in Georgia and Virginia. Can the same playbook work in 2026?

by David W. Chen

Data centers have been a prominent issue in Atlanta’s rural exurbs. Mr. Trump wants to accelerate their growth in the battle for A.I. supremacy. At least 26 are under construction within 60 miles of Atlanta, and another 52 are planned.

But some Georgia Republicans — including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is resigning her seat in January — have questioned the facilities’ use of resources. Some residents say local wells have been damaged, and the cost of municipal water has climbed.

Good Jobs First, a liberal group that tracks tax breaks for corporations, has said the state has done a poor job disclosing subsidies for data centers. The public service commission’s own staff has also warned that monthly residential bills could climb by $20 a month or more (a figure disputed by the utility) if the commission approves Georgia Power’s proposal to add almost 10,000 megawatts of power to accommodate data centers — the equivalent of nine nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.

Only one-third of that proposal should be approved, the staff recommended.

In Troup County on the Alabama border, the victorious Democratic utility candidates whittled 24-point romps enjoyed by the Republican candidates in 2020 and 2018 down to 10, thanks to voters like the Paytons.

The Paytons had never been to a Hogansville City Council meeting before they heard about a proposal to build a data center on 437 acres next to their ranch, and across from their Georgia Untamed Zoo, which houses animals like sloths and capybaras and is popular with school field trips. Now they’ve been to two, and counting.

Mr. Payton and his wife, Tina, stressed that they didn’t mind data centers, as long as they were placed in industrial areas, and the public had input. But in nearby LaGrange, Ga., he noted, residents were blindsided by an $8 billion project now under construction.

So when a Democratic candidate for Congress recently posted on the Troup County Anti-Data Center Coalition’s Facebook page pledging to be “an ally in this fight,” Tina Payton urged her to attend an upcoming Hogansville forum on the issue.

“I blame Trump for what’s happening here, because Trump is pushing the data center,” Mr. Payton said. “Kemp jumped on the bandwagon, and these guys that were in there were doing nothing more than what Kemp was telling them.”

Also attending the council meeting was Chance Williams, 56, who owns an auto repair business a half mile down the road from the Paytons, within earshot of the zoo’s cackling lemurs.

During a tour of the data center’s footprint in his truck, Mr. Williams described himself and his wife Barbara, 58, as common-sense conservatives who treasure rural rhythms.

“I want to hear the crickets when I go to bed, not the hum of a fan up the road,” Ms. Williams said.

When voting for the utility races started on Oct. 14, she automatically chose the Republicans. Then she and her husband learned about the data center.

“We probably voted wrong,” she said.

(NY Times)

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OUR AMERICAN ESSENCE

It began only
With printed words that told us
Just the gist of it.

Later came the sense
That maybe this could be it.
The feeling of it.

I mean some sweet spot
We surmised might be in it
(We hoped was in it).

Some poetry in it.
Some hell yes damn sure you bet
We Can Do in it.

And some music too
We could sing along with it
And sing it real loud.

And set it in stone
To prove our commitment. Keep
Us moving a bit

Toward the goal of it.
The not quite yet but by God
We’ll get there of it.

— Jim Luther

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RFK JR. STILL SAYING DANGEROUS THINGS ABOUT SAFE VACCINES

Editor,

As a retired doctor, I am writing in response to the Nov. 22 article with the headline “RFK Jr. says he personally directed CDC’s new guidance on vaccines and autism.”

I think U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a single-issue guy. To me, that means he has no business holding authority over our nation’s health leadership. He appears to only care about the perceived tragedy of having a child with autism, and he associates it with vaccines.

Kennedy seemingly doesn’t care about the devastation of a child becoming infected with tetanus, pertussis, measles, rubella, diphtheria or COVID-19, to name a few serious life-threatening infections avoided with vaccines. Research shows that any side-effects from vaccines are minimal, compared to the death and destruction wielded by these terrible preventable diseases.

Vaccine refusal should not be about “personal choice.” I think viewing that way is selfish and puts us all at increased risk of devastating health consequences and early death.

Dr. Debra Bright

San Rafael

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LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT

Trump Pauses All Asylum Applications and Halts Visas for Afghans

Lawmakers Suggest Follow-Up Boat Strike Could Be a War Crime

In Announcing Pardon of Drug Trafficker While Threatening Venezuela, Trump Displays Contradictions

Officials Had Been Warned for Over a Year Before Hong Kong Fire

A Smartphone Before Age 12 Could Carry Health Risks, Study Says

Get Ready, America: Here Come China’s Food and Drink Chains

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“I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER,” swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. “I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday” - Is that still as easy?

― W.H. Auden

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OUR PRESIDENT’S THANKSGIVING MESSAGE

A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being “Politically Correct,” and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration. The official United States Foreign population stands at 53 million people (Census), most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels. They and their children are supported through massive payments from Patriotic American Citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape, or form. They put up with what has happened to our Country, but it’s eating them alive to do so! A migrant earning $30,000 with a green card will get roughly $50,000 in yearly benefits for their family. The real migrant population is much higher. This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (Failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc.). As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota. Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for “prey” as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone. The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst “Congressman/woman” in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how “badly” she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc. Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization. These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process. Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!

— Donald J. Trump, @realDonaldTrump

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THE CRAZIEST THING IN THE WORLD Is That We Could End Poverty, But We Don’t

by Caitlin Johnstone

It’s the craziest thing in the world that we already have the technological ability to provide a decent standard of living for everyone on earth, but it doesn’t happen because it’s not profitable. We attained the greatest scientific achievement of all time and then did nothing with it. Our society is completely uninterested in it because capitalism is completely uninterested in it.

It’s just so insane how this doesn’t sit front and center in our attention all the time. There are people dying of starvation, exposure and preventable illnesses every single day for no good reason. Humanity became more than capable of ensuring that this never happened to anyone ever again, and just rode right past that stunning moment in history without even glancing up from its smartphone.

Can you imagine if we did that with any other major technological development?

“Oh yeah humans can fly now… but let’s not.”

“Hey humans now have the ability to share ideas and information in real time with anyone in the world, but whatever, let’s keep mailing letters instead.”

And I would argue that the ability to eliminate poverty and needless human suffering is a far more significant development than flight or the internet. But because it doesn’t generate value for shareholders, we cruised right past it going “Let’s make a chatbot that can generate an Alvin and the Chipmunks version of any song!”

This happened because caring for everyone was never the goal of capitalism. The goal of capitalism is to extract labor from the working class and resources from the global south to sell goods and services at a rate that generates profit for the owners of the means of production. That’s it.

Capitalism has no wisdom. It will start wars to generate profit. It will have impoverished populations toiling in mines and sweatshops for pennies in order to generate profit. It will burn up critical drinking water supplies for AI data centers in order to generate profit. It will cut down the last acre of old-growth rainforest in order to generate profit. It will pollute the air, fill the oceans with plastic and kill all the insects if offloading the cost of industry onto the ecosystem helps generate profit.

The entire world is being consumed by an artificially imposed system which holds as its foundational premise that mass-scale human behavior should be driven by the pursuit of profit for its own sake. It’s a mindless, planet-devouring machine of our own making. It is creating unfathomable destruction and suffering for terrestrial organisms of every species.

And it doesn’t have to be this way. There is nothing inscribed upon the fabric of the universe which says that we need to live under a system which causes us to feed our biosphere into the woodchipper so that billionaires can become trillionaires. Nowhere is it written in adamantine that that the many must always toil and suffer for the benefit of the few. Things are the way they are because of systems that were put in place by human beings, and human beings can replace those systems with different ones.

If we are to continue to survive on this planet, we’re going to have to move from systems which drive us to compete against our fellow humans and our fellow terrestrial organisms to systems that are driven by collaboration toward the good of all beings. Such systems would be entirely unprecedented by their nature, because unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. It would be unlike anything that’s ever been done before, but it is now a matter of existential importance that it be done.

We’re going to have to change. We’re going to have to become kinder. Gentler. Emotionally intelligent. Driven by the desire for the greater good instead of by fear and insecurity. We’re going to have to wake up. We’re going to have to become unlike anything we’ve ever been before.

Every species eventually hits an adapt-or-die juncture in its existence. This is ours. We must become a compassionate animal, or we will go the way of the dinosaur.

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

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SEVENTEEN MINUTES OF RAIN

by Hassan Ayman Herzallah

In the first week of November I was sitting with my mother in the tent in al-Mawasi in southern Gaza. It was 9 a.m. on one of the most beautiful mornings I had experienced in a long time. I was used to waking up early to light the fire and prepare a cup of tea for myself and my family, a simple task that could take up most of the morning. But now we had received cooking gas, after more than eight months without, and I made a hot cup of tea with a piece of bread for myself, my father and my mother.

“We can’t stay here through the winter,” my mother said. “Our tents are worn out.” I had no answer for her. Even if we had been allowed to cross the Yellow Line to get to Rafah, our home there had been destroyed months ago. I went down to the sea to meet my friends Abboud and Yusuf and asked them about the possibility of finding an apartment for the winter. Yusuf was thinking along similar lines. He was living in a university building, but with the war officially “over” the university had announced that the building would have to be vacated to prepare for the resumption of classes.

The next day Yusuf and I headed to Khan Younis to look for somewhere to live. More than half of Gaza’s buildings have been reduced to rubble and a further third have been damaged. Our search was exhausting. After a week of looking, the lowest rent we found for an apartment was over $500, without any services. Access to water, the internet or charging points for phones was extremely limited. Every day I returned to the tents where my family were waiting for me to bring good news, but there was none.

Towards the end of November, Yusuf called to say he had found an apartment at a reasonable price in a devastated area of Khan Younis that was too small for his family of ten but might be suitable for the six of us.

The next day, Yusuf and I went to see the apartment. I recognized the street it was on from before the war. No one was around. I could hear the echo of my footsteps. Memories of the street before it was destroyed flooded back: how the neighborhood used to be, the people, children playing football, the streets lit up … Yusuf interrupted my reverie: “Here’s the apartment.”

It was abandoned. The door was made of tattered fabric. We stepped through it into the hallway, which was partially destroyed. There was a large room with a crumbling ceiling, a small bathroom and a simple kitchen. Yusuf was keen for me to take the apartment but I couldn’t: I couldn’t live there with all my memories of what the neighborhood had been like before. I returned to the tents to tell my father.

That night there was a change in the weather. Rain seemed likely. Cold seeped through the tents. My father went outside to prepare them as best he could against a possible storm.

At 11 o’clock there was no light in the camp. I was about to fall asleep when I heard raindrops hitting the tent roof. I hoped I was imagining it, until my little brother Muhammad called out: “Hassan, water is coming in here!” I jumped up. Rain was pouring into the tent. I tried to block the gap but the entire tent was worn and fragile. The rain grew heavier. I could hear other people in the camp struggling to protect their tents from the rain and wind.

My father came out of his tent and called for me. Water had started coming into his tent from below. My little sister Malak and I hurried to salvage the important belongings before they got soaked. I could hear our neighbor Abu Adam shouting in despair as the rain tore through his tent and flooded it. My friend Wasim was carrying his brother, who cannot walk, out of their flooded tent.

After seventeen minutes the sky cleared. Seventeen minutes of rain was enough to flood the tens of thousands of families. Months of winter lie ahead.

(London Review of Books)

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JACK MAHONEY:

Man, am I tired of reading about the Rapture, one of the all-time great scams pulled regularly on the proudly ignorant. Believe me, if there were anything I could do to prevent saps from falling for the next proclamation, I would do it, but like Robert Kennedy’s healthcare scam, the religious one enticingly praises people for their smarts while they do dumb things. And the less sane the activity (like the various Crusades), the more the sap is praised. I expect that if we had the Rapture in September, by October the country would have been once again fighting disease and making more windmills and solar panels. It’s funny that the same people who believe in an omnipotent, omniscient being who loves all of us would be simultaneously taking actions guaranteed to shorten the life of human activity on the planet while praying for a Golden Ticket that will take them to a heaven from which they can continue disparaging those of us who have dispensed with theological mumbo jumbo, at least in part because clinging to ideas conceived when the Earth was flat and could be destroyed by a Great Flood is just a sign of ego-enabled ignorance. I detected a similar smugness that listed possible threats to humanity. Some, like nuclear war, are beyond the control of us normal humans, but some, like the choices we make that either foul the planet or try to heal it, are within our reach. Climate destruction is probably inevitable, but it can take a lot longer to happen.

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DARK SIDE OF TOWN

He was the black sheep of the family
How did mama's pride and joy
Go from such a precious baby
To the devil's poster boy
I'm gonna slick my hair like Elvis
Roll my cuffs like Jerry Lee
If the backbeat's born in hell
Then that's the place I want to be

Gonna be a midnight rider
Gonna burn my candle down
Followin that drivin' beat
To the dark side of town

From the barrooms of Deep Ellum
To the crashpads on the bay
He spiraled slow and steady
Down a lonely blue hiway

I'm gonna chase my beer with whiskey
Stick a needle in my skin
Gonna celebrate the mystery
Of the hole I've fallen in

'Cause I'm a midnite rider
Gonna burn my candle down
Followin' that drivin' beat
To the dark side of town

He loved that funky music
He knew the backroad scenes
Every barbeque and blues band
Between here and New Orleans

He put down the bottle
October '89
Eased up on the throttle
Bought him a little time

But he was a midnite rider
He burned that candle down
Hangin' out on easy does it street
On the dark side of town

Big Al settled down
Along the banks of Onion creek
With a pickup and a hound dog
And a little lucky streak

He nursed that fragile frame
Through the hurricanes and drought
It was a summer wind that came
And blew the candle out

But he was a midnite rider
He burned that candle down
Followin that drivin' beat

To the dark side of town

Oh you midnite rider
I know you're still around
Hangin' out on easy street
On the dark side of town

— Eliza Gilkyson (2003)

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

A close friend suffered what was almost certainly a major heart attack, yet insisted it was “sternal irritation.” By the time she arrived to visit me, she was pale, breathless, and holding on to the walls as she walked. A devoted Christian Scientist, she refused any medical care. Desperate, I called a physician friend for guidance. He said, simply: All you can do is love her. That is the raft she’s holding on to. You can’t take it away. For two days, that is what I did. When she drove the 800 miles home, I knew she was dying. She passed away five days later. I thought her choice was tragic, even irrational, but I remain grateful for that advice. Sometimes presence is the only care left, and it matters.

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THE MORE LOVING ONE

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime
Though this might take me a little time.

― W.H. Auden (1957)

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