Rain Soon | Low Sun | Lead Stories | Bomb Found | Marian Hoyle | Firefighters/Responders | Benavides Recognized | Road Tax | Club Coral | Skunk to MCOG | Mechanic Promotion | Buckhorn Saloon | 1914 News | Yesterday's Catch | Muscle Beach | Cute Inc | Death Hippie | Niners Win | Warlocks | Watching Basketball | Setting Out | Roadside | Road Deaths | Don't Believe | Pesky Regulations | HRC Says | Rebranding Genocide | Busting Kesey | Griffith Griffith | Regret It | Ancient Days
MODERATE to locally heavy rain will arrive for Del Norte and Humboldt Counties today into tonight. Rain is forecast to spread southward by Tuesday for Mendocino and Lake. More rain is forecast for the remainder of this week. Strong gusty winds will also be possible with each storm, especially late week and next weekend. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cloudy 47F this Monday morning on the coast. We have a 50% chance of rain today but no idea when exactly ? The 10 day forecast says it all, nice weather for ducks until Christmas it looks like.
LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT
Australian Police Plan to Charge Suspect in Bondi Massacre
Police Say They Are Still Searching for Brown University Gunman
Rob Reiner, Actor Who Went on to Direct Classic Films, Dies at 78
3 Americans Killed in ISIS Attack in Syria, Trump Says, Vowing to Retaliate
Islamic State Camps Pose a Dangerous Problem for Syria’s Leaders
Canadians Rush to Buy Stockpiles of Boycotted U.S. Liquor
WORLD WAR II-ERA PRACTICE BOMB FOUND IN GUALALA
U.S. Air Force sends trained disposal team to safely detonate it
by Elise Cox
Residents of Old Stage Road in Gualala got a first-hand lesson in military history on Tuesday, December 9, when a World War II–era practice bomb exploded at Ocean Ridge Airport.
The device was detonated by the Beale Air Force Base Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team, which responded after a possible explosive device was reported near 38000 Sedalia Drive.
According to an account published by Beale Air Force Base, the object was identified as a World War II AN-MK 23 practice bomb containing explosive material.
A document published by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers states that these bombs were used for low-altitude horizontal or dive-bombing practice.
The EOD team removed the device to a “remote location,” identified as Ocean Ridge Airport, where it was destroyed in a controlled detonation using C-4 explosives.
The Independent Coast Observer said the detonation was heard and felt on neighboring Old Stage Road.
South Coast Fire Protection District Chief Jason Warner told the Independent Coast Observer that the explosion caused no damage to buildings or property.
(Mendolocal.news)
MARIAN HOYLE
Marian Hoyle, 93 died 11/21/25 in Redwood Valley California. She was a former member of Mattole Grange No. 569 in Petrolia, California and served as Grange Master for many years. She was instrumental in revitalizing the grange which had fallen into a long period of stagnation and threatened closure.
She belonged to the Mattole Valley Women’s Club in its heyday and was the president and filled other offices. In 2004, the Women’s Club chose her to receive their Citizen-of-the-year award of which she was immensely proud. She also served on the Mattole Election Board and was a member of the Neighborhood Emergency Service Team. She and her husband, Bob, worked through Food for the People Eureka, and distributed monthly commodities to the people in Petrolia and Honeydew.
Marian grew up in New York State’s beautiful Hudson Valley. Freshly out of high school, she worked for Twentieth Century’s Fox in New York City and then later for the U.S. Air Forces as a civilian. She met Bob at West Point in 1952 and married a few months later. After their fifth and last son, Marian attended the University of Rhode Island but did not complete the requirements for a degree and regretted it all her life.
The family came to California in 1965 and lived in the Bay Area for twenty-five years. During that time Marian worked at the U.C. Berkeley library as a library assistant and volunteered at Berkeley Free Clinic as a paramedic. Her favorite job, however, was school secretary at MacGregor High School. She continued to hear from former students long after she left the area. She was committed to Bob’s long-term projects of raising money for his school’s athletic program and became of his dedication, was awarded a P.T.A. Life Membership for contributions to school and community.
Marian wrote regular columns for the Albany Community New, serving as editor for part of the time and also wrote and published a book of her own: “The Complete Garage Sale”. Which reflected her interest in attending and having garage sales in the Bay Area. In Petrolia she wrote a monthly column, reporting on grange activities and was also the Mattole Notes reporter for The Ferndale Enterprise for several years.
Marian continued her enjoyment of writing after she and Bob moved to Ferndale and became the secret “Ask Yenta” advice columnist for the Senior New and contributed articles to the paper. She was known for her enthusiasm, sense of fun and willingness to help. She was a voracious reader. She designed the home that she and Bob built in Mattole after retiring there in 1990. However, she did speak her mind, had no tolerance for fools and was only mediocre cook.
After Bob developed dementia and started fading, the pair moved to Redwood Valley to be closer to family. Bob died in 2013. They had been married for 61 years. Marian and Bob are preceded in death by their sons Murray and Mickey. She reluctantly leaves behind their sons, David, Peter and wife, Cindy whom Marian called her “daughter-on-loan”, Max and his wife Sherry. Their grandchildren Robert, Steven, Katie, Kaitlin and Emily. Also, her great grandchildren James, Remi, Maverick and Elsie. She also leaves her dear friends, Cindy Weber and Jan Anderson and many other friends from Mattole.
At Marian’s request there will be no funeral service. She hopes her friends and family will remember her with kindness and overlook her many faults.
A LARGE CROWD of Firefighters, families and supporters turned out at the Fairgrounds Apple Hall for Saturday night’s annual Firefighters/Responders Awards Dinner. Well deserved awards were given to:
- Christian Weiss, Rookie of the Year
- Wayne Howard, Ambulance Operator of the Year
- Fred Ehnow, Outstanding Leadership
- Tina Walter, EMT of the Year
- Silvano Osornio, Fire Fighter of the Year
Special Volunteer Response Recognition went to frequent responders:
- Wayne Howard, 158 calls.
- Gideon Burdick, 115 calls
- Antoinette VonGrone, 102 calls
- Steve Jahelka, 52 calls
- Clay Eubank, 142 calls
- Thom Elkjer, 81 calls
- Silvano Osornio, 47 calls
- Steve Jahelka, 71 calls
- Fred Ehnow, 99 calls
- Silvano Osornio, 61 calls
- Ben Glaus, 39 calls
- Angela DeWitt, 59 calls
- Olie Erickson, 35 calls
- Nat Corey-Moran, 47 calls
- Liam Campbell, 35 calls
- Mike Zaugg, 28 calls
And for coverage of a lot of 12-hour ambulance shifts:
- Wayne Howard, 256
- Tina Walter, 76
- Thom Elkjer, 140
- Logan Kraemer, 69
- Antoinette VonGrone, 122
- Steve Snyder, 57
- Clay Eubank, 122
- Sarah Bennett, 44
- Fred Ehnow, 98
- Josh Mathias, 43
This impressive cross-section of dedicated local volunteers deserves not only the annual recognition and the outstanding dinner prepared by Terry Rhodes and her crew, but the support of everyone in the Valley.
(Mark Scaramella)
NEWS OUT OF CLOVERDALE: Varsity Boys place 4th in the McMillan Tournament! Job well done. Shout out to Junior Arturo Benavides for getting All Tourney!
ROAD TAX ACCOUNTABILITY PROVISIONS
by Mark Scaramella
Back in 2018 when he was running for Fifth District Supervisor Hopland contractor David Roderick made road conditions a campaign priority, saying:
“People say that it's $1 million a mile to pave a road. But it depends on how you are going to repave. Are you going to redo the base? Basically if you do a 2 inch lift that comes out to 70 truck transfer loads of asphalt per mile. At about $150 a ton, that's about $225,000 in asphalt. And where are you trucking it from? Asphalt is the medium we make our roads out of today and I don't see a viable replacement at this point. The problem with asphalt is asphalt plants. No one wants an asphalt plant near them. Just today in Fort Bragg they are repaving the parking lot at Starbucks and that company is actually from Santa Rosa and the trucker is also from Santa Rosa. I'm not sure where the asphalt itself is coming from. How do you repair roads if you don't have asphalt? Asphalt has to be kept at a certain temperature and then you have to maintain a certain capacity to be able to do it for paving. We are talking about county roads now. There are county roads and there are state roads. The state roads are not our jurisdiction. If we want to pave or repair large sections maybe the county should invest in a mobile asphalt plant that we can break down and move so it is not erected in someone's neighborhood forever. And we wouldn't have people complaining about living next to an asphalt plant. I don't want to live next to one either. But if we can say it's going to be here for two weeks and we will bring in all the raw materials and pre-stage everything and get it done — come into an area, pave it or repair it, and move. And prioritize. It has to be cost-effective. But you would save on the trucking costs, you are not paying another company to sell you the asphalt at markup. With the number of miles of road we have in the county it might be a reasonable investment. It also depends on the specifications for fixing the road. Are you going to just put on a 2 inch asphalt layer or are you going to deal with a layer below it? Are you going to put down geo-fabric to support the pave? There are lots of ways to do it. But a 2 inch lift, two lanes wide a mile-long is about $350,000 that way compared to the $1 million people talk about.”
In September of 2023 at their only meeting on the Coast in recent years former Coast Supervisor Dan Gjerde mentioned the possibility of a road maintenance tax, but he said that he doubted such a tax measure would pass given the current economic climate and the low opinion the public has of the Supervisors. Gjerde pompously added that putting a road tax on the ballot would give the public the opportunity to “solve the problem or not solve the problem,” ignoring the fact that the voting public, such as it is, probably doubts that he and his colleagues, given more tax money, would solve anything, much less fix any roads. With the single exception of Measure P (the emergency services advisory tax), the Supervisors have not delivered on a single local ballot measure this century. By suggesting that the public wouldn’t support a road tax, Gjerde essentially wanted to be able to blame the public instead of the Supervisors for the poor road conditions.
In a previous column we noted that a recent survey by the Mendocino Council of Governments indicated that Mendo voters agree with Gjerde's low opinion of the County and the Supervisors, but they would be more likely to support a road tax if it included “accountability provisions.”
But what accountability provisions? As we noted previously, Measure B, the “Mental Health Treatment Act,” promised an “oversight committee” which turned out to be nearly useless. That’s was mainly because the Measure’s text didn’t spell out the oversight provisions and it was dominated by government employees and appointees.
First, any road tax proposal would have to specify that only County roads already identified as needing improvement by the Transportation Department would qualify. This would eliminate the need for long, drawn-out, money-draining transportation planning or permitting, and help to ensure that work begins quickly.
Since repairing or improving existing roads would not need much planning, the wasteful and time-consuming Transportation Debating Society, aka the Mendocino Council of Governments, should be specifically excluded from any funding.
To be truly independent, the oversight committee should be made up of only private citizens preferably with contracting experience, chosen by the County’s Director of Transportation, not the Supervisors. No government employees or supervisorial appointments. To the extent possible, the committee should be made up of two people from each of the four supervisorial districts with unincorporated roads (i.e., excluding the Second District (Ukiah).
At least one of the two members from each district should live on a road targeted for repair.
Oversight committee rules should specify that the committee review the Transportation Department’s existing road assessments and prepare a priority list of roads to be worked on and what kinds of repairs are recommended and why. The committee should also inventory the County’s road maintenance equipment and recommend equipment upgrades or purchases (such as the mobile asphalt plant mentioned by Mr. Roderick above) to increase the department’s on-going in-house road repair capability.
There should be a requirement that all road projects identified by the Transportation Department receive a 2/3 vote of the oversight committee before any work begins.
Annual audits should be conducted by an outside auditor with specific experience in transportation projects.
Meetings should be conducted at work sites when work is underway.
All contracts proposed to be awarded to private contractors should require what used to be called a “make or buy” analysis by the Transportation Department showing why it would be more cost effective to hire a contractor than to perform the improvement work with County road crews.
All contract payments must be approved by a majority vote of the committee.
At least three of the committee members should be contractors or contractor representatives from a construction trades contractor not doing business with the County or the committee.
A 2/3 vote should be required for any contract changes or additions of more than 10% of contract value.
The Mendocino Department of Transportation should designate one senior staffer as a non-voting liaison to the oversight committee.
With the assistance of the Transportation Department, the Committee should produce an Annual Report that includes a list of each project with a description and location, the status of the project, the amount of funds expended on the project, the projected or actual completion date, and the project’s estimated useful life. The committee alone (not the Supervisors) may withhold future project allocations if it determines program funds are not being appropriately spent.
Of course, this being Mendocino County, we doubt anything like these “accountability provisions” would ever find their way into a ballot measure. But if the voters ever approve a road tax measure without them, they shouldn’t expect their money to translate into visibly improved county roads.
SKUNK TO MCOG:
Dear Editor –
Peter McNamee recently submitted a letter to the Mendocino Council of Governments (MCOG) regarding the draft Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). While Mr. McNamee raises concerns about the inclusion of rail, his conclusions overlook key facts, mischaracterize the role of Mendocino Railway, and risk narrowing the county’s transportation vision at a time when flexibility, sustainability, and long-term resilience are more important than ever.
- Mendocino Railway is a federally recognized Class III common carrier.
MCOG’s RTP continues to mischaracterize Mendocino Railway and its operations. Since 2004, Mendocino Railway has operated under Surface Transportation Board (STB) jurisdiction as a legitimate Class III common carrier railroad. A recent STB Declaratory Order reaffirmed this status, underscoring its legal standing and potential to serve public transportation and freight needs—not merely as an “amusement ride,” as Mr. McNamee suggests.
- Rail is among the most environmentally efficient modes of land transport.
Mr. McNamee’s dismissal of rail’s environmental value is at odds with decades of data. Freight rail emits up to 75% less greenhouse gas per ton-mile than trucks. Mr. McNamee’s narrowly focused “point-to-point” fixation is the exact type of thinking that has caused our world’s emission problems.
- Low-emission Mendocino Railway locomotives. Mr. McNamee wrote regarding Mendocino Railway’s Skunk Train, “The Skunk train relies upon the worst-polluting, most industry-inefficient fossil fueled locomotives in the rail industry.“ Mr. McNamee seems focused on our efforts to preserve historic steam locomotives. Had he researched this topic, he would have learned that we only use historic steam locomotives, however, on approximately 3% of our trips! And while our other locomotives are superior to most other forms of transportation, Mendocino Railway is now upgrading our three primary locomotives to Tier IV – the lowest emission in the nation for fuel-based locomotives! Rather than Mr. McNamee’s naïve characterization, Mendocino Railway is at our industry’s forefront of mixing economic efficiency with environmental sensitivity.
- Rail supports economic diversification and rural resilience.
While current ridership and freight volumes may be modest, the infrastructure itself is a long-term asset. Rail corridors can support commerce, tourism, emergency logistics, and future opportunities—especially as fuel prices, climate mandates, and supply chain vulnerabilities evolve. Dismissing rail in a 20-year long-range planning document based on present-day usage ignores its strategic potential and speaks to Mr. McNamee’s agenda-driven shortsightedness
- Environmental concerns are being addressed through modernization.
The Skunk Train’s legacy equipment is being phased out in favor of cleaner, more efficient technology. Moreover, railroads are subject to federal environmental oversight, and Mendocino Railway has initiated remediation and infrastructure upgrades to address any past impacts. These efforts deserve recognition, not blanket condemnation.
- Multimodal planning is not contradictory, it’s essential.
The draft plan’s inclusion of rail does not undermine its broader goals. On the contrary, a resilient transportation network must include multiple modes—especially in a geographically diverse county like Mendocino. Railway, walking, biking, buses, and cars each serve different needs. Mendocino Railway is working to provide transloads facilities that would facilitate the exchange of goods between trucks and trains, achieving the best advantages of each type of transportation. Excluding rail would artificially constrain future options and contradict the plan’s stated commitment to equity, sustainability, and access.
- Road Crossings. Mr. McNamee complains about railroad crossing delays. Is he concerned that the daily fleet of Amazon delivery trucks will be delayed getting to his house on the coast? He also writes about life threatening delays, but doesn’t substantiate this claim. Our trains do not simultaneously shut down all crossings in town at the same time and we are not aware of any noteworthy delays.
- Economic Benefit of the Skunk Train. Mendocino Railway’s Skunk Train is one of the region’s top economic drivers. While Mr. McNamee may be irritated at being delayed occasionally by one of our trains, please know that on average, that train delaying him is bringing $63,000 in local spending to our community.
- Regional Success of Railroads. It does not require much effort to see the potential benefits of railroads. The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) railroad in neighboring Sonoma offers freight service and passenger service with record ridership. The demand for their service has motivated them to extend to Healdsburg in 2028 and then to Cloverdale, on the doorstep of Mendocino County. While our county has challenges, we hope regional success of railroads show MCOG the potential for rail in Mendocino County.
In closing, I urge MCOG to maintain a balanced, forward-looking approach. Mendocino County deserves a transportation plan that accurately reflects both current realities and future possibilities. MCOG’s Vision states, “Effective regional governance is about helping every community become more prosperous, equitable, and environmentally sustainable.” We believe Mendocino Railway is at the forefront on delivering on your vision. Rail is part of that vision—not as a nostalgic relic, but as a strategic tool for environmental stewardship, economic vitality, and regional connectivity.
Respectfully,
Robert Jason Pinoli
President & CEO – Mendocino Railway
DANIEL’S MOBILE MECHANIC SERVICE (Boonville): Hello everyone I’m going to be running a promotion of over 50% off installing pads and rotors. $40 per axle plus parts!! Feel free to call or text me at (707) 391-8899 or on facebook messenger. Happy holidays!
LOCALS WORKING. LOCALS WATCHING.
Game on. Sound up.
Now offering food service!
Good brunch. Solid burgers. Cold beer.
Open today at noon at the Buckhorn Saloon - downstairs
No fuss. Just good eats and a good place to land.
— Boonville Distillery
WHAT TO DO WITH A DEAD WHALE AND A SEA EAGLE?
(From the May 2, 1914 Mendocino Beacon)
A good sized dead black whale drifted on to the beach at the foot of Main Street last week and has been an object of interest to sight-seers. It is said to be of the sulphur-bottom variety and is 29 feet long.
Mr. Chalmers at the nearby shipping point is considerably agitated about how to get rid of it. The smell of the strange ripe visitor is not appreciated. An attempt will be made to tow if off with a small boat and if that fails Mr. Chalmers is going to make a bonfire. Why? It is as dead as a mackerel, dead a long time, and the smell is BAD.
And what is a Sea Eagle? It may have been an Osprey. In a 1884 Mendocino Beacon story Mr. Fred Malman of Little River shot and captured a very Large Sea Eagle weighing 10 pounds and measuring 7 feet from wing tip to wing tip. It is a fine specimen of a falcon bird and the largest ever captured on the coast. Malman is an accomplished taxidermist and will prepare the bird for a fair to be held in Ukiah next fall.
(Contributed by Katy Tahja)
CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, December 14, 2025
DONALD BOWMAN, 53, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.
MAYRA BRAMBILA, 29, Hayward/Ukiah. Suspended license for DUI.
ROLAND ESKIND JR., 55, Ukiah. Battery with serious injury, robbery, vandalism, parole violation.
JAVIER GARCIA-HERNANDEZ, 23, Ukiah. DUI, no license.
ANDRES HERNANDEZ, 23, Willits. DUI, misdemeanor hit&run with property damage.
BRYAN LOCKWOOD, 34, Ukiah. Under influence, paraphernalia, parole violation.
TRISTAN MENDEZ, 29, Redwood Valley. DUI.
FRANK ONETO JR., 51, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more prior, stolen property, loitering.
DANIEL SOTO-ELIGIO, 40, Ukiah. DUI.
TONY STEPHENS, 47, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, failure to appear, resisting.
RAYMOND YSAGUIRRE, 50, Moreno/Ukiah. Fugitive from justice.
MUSCLE BEACH is etched into Santa Monica and Southern California history, from the time of its creation in the 1930s. The beach was born out of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), an effort to help dispel the effects of the Great Depression and put Americans back to work. Immediately, the beach became a gathering place for Hollywood’s stunt actors and celebrities, growing in fame around the world. As time passed, gymnasts, acrobats, and bodybuilders began to congregate at the beach, giving rise to the name “Muscle Beach.” While most beaches feature an assortment of activities, like chess or volleyball, Muscle Beach was unique for its focus on bodybuilding and other gymnastic activities. (Jason Kozma)
FROM HARD HEADED TO SOFT HEARTED
by Tommy Wayne Kramer
Do we get softer, more sentimental, less intelligent and less able to think clearly as we age? (Asking for a friend.)
Actually I’m asking for, or about, my wife. She was once hard-headed, tough-minded and decisive. As a lawyer facing a combative witness during cross examination her eyes narrowed to slits that would have done a rattlesnake proud.
But too many years of Hallmark TV specials and televised nonsense starring cuddly polar bears and giraffes tumbling about the open seas in a polka dot rowboat with baby donkeys and pink squirrels have taken a toll.
She once donated money to Judicial Watch and the ACLU; now she sends checks to “The Fuzzy Bunny Rescue Team” and “Help Stop Bulldozers Rolling in the General Direction of Animal Shelters” organizations.
TV ads are soaked in funereal, sentimental violin music, begging donations to a P.O. Box in the Cayman Islands. Trophy has writer’s cramp and a gluey tongue from sending checks and licking stamps.
Now, instead of viewing the world with a gimlet eye, she sees everything through rose-colored glasses lightly rinsed in rose-colored wine. Plus she’s getting older. She’ll be 39 next time around.
Why do old people fall prey to these preposterous pitches demanding they hurry to the aid of a cute kitten in Des Moines while their very own husband is in need of donations to cover expenses at the Forest Club?
I blame calendars. Calendars take a heavy toll, loaded as they are with a dozen annual photos of cuddly teddy bears, Koala bears, Panda bears, Meerkats, Siamese cats, cuddly kittens and Golden Retriever puppies romping through piles of autumn leaves and waves of tall grass.
So cute.
Calendar peddlers prey on sentimental fools susceptible to 12 gooey reminders a year, each of which appeals to long-dormant maternal instincts.
These images tickle dopamine reserves in frontal cortex reservoirs producing exaggerated, elevated, dangerous levels of serotonin. Coupled with medicinal doses of wine and moderate amounts of CBD chewies, outcomes are predictable, nearly inevitable, and soon my wife is transferring more of our hard-earned lottery winnings to endangered Mosquito Habitats in the Rain Forests of southern Wyoming.
And now comes Christmas, highest on the sappy sloppy seasonal sentimental scale, which brings us directly to Christmas Cards that have gone from mangers and the Star of Bethlehem to happy holiday pix of dogs wearing Santa hats while hauling a sleigh through the skies.
Ho Ho Ho, my pink buttocks.
The rest of the year greeting cards come festooned with birthday cakes, balloons and streamers surrounded by Golden Retriever puppies wielding forks, eating cake and wearing silly caps. Also in the gift card rotation: cartoon penguins hoping you get well soon, flocks of flamingoes clinking martini glasses and saluting your big graduation, more puppies, more kittens, more cuteness and more of you, yourself, gasping “Awww!” right out loud.
Then, St. Patrick’s Day cards. Don’t ask.
It all converges in a hyper-sweetened brain-numbing, emotional overloading diet we are not meant to withstand. And we don’t.
So we give up and settle in to absorb more panda bears on ferris wheels, demands for money to save indoor goldfish habitats, more cowbell and more signs instructing us to “Live, Laugh, Love!” while holding three cuddly Black Widow spider cubs in our laps.
Going, Or Else Gone
1) Magazines with Jennifer Aniston on the cover.
2) Sneakers hanging by their laces over telephone wires.
3) The “Me Too!” movement.
4) Cannabis sativa and other semi-exotic strains.
5) Dewey Decimal system card catalogues.
6) Bulimia.
7) Nickels.
8) Robo Calls.
9) Gun racks in pickup trucks.
10) Packets of baseball cards, with gum.
49ERS FANS, IT’S SCOREBOARD-WATCHING SEASON! ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?
by Scott Ostler
Have the San Francisco 49ers become America’s Team?
The 49ers might not have vaulted to the very top of everyone’s NFL power rankings, but they are inching up, and they offer a ton of entertainment value. The 49ers’ clever offense and their Mystery Defense were on display Sunday, and they will be a must-watch team in the playoffs.
If they get there. The 49ers’ 37-24 win over the Tennessee Titans came close to assuring the 49ers a playoff spot. With three games left, they are the No. 6 seed in the NFC. The NFL.com computer gives the 49ers a 98% chance of making the playoffs.
How bright are the 49ers’ prospects? Even the sun saluted them Sunday, burning through the thick fog just before halftime to bathe the Levi’s Stadium crowd. “Crowd” might not be the wrong word, though. There were enough empty seats that, if this was an airline flight, you’d have a really good chance of having that middle seat open.
Maybe some fans are saving their energy for the final push, but the bandwagon is picking up steam. The 49ers’ four-game win streak is heady stuff for the team that seemed mired in mediocrity a month ago, and now has a shot at securing the NFC’s No. 1 spot and first-round playoff bye.
There are plenty of playoff variables, and their division rivals Rams and Seahawks both won Sunday to reach 11-3, but the 49ers could put all variables to rest by running the table the last three games. And next week they go up against the Colts and their 44-year-old quarterback, Philip Rivers.
Can’t let those heads get too big, though.
The Titans came in as one of the league’s three weakest teams, yet they gave the 49ers a game in the first half. Add that to the argument of the experts who say the 49ers’ 10-4 record is built on the backs of cupcake foes.
But there are no super teams in the league, so the 49ers and their fans aren’t crazy to harbor Super Bowl dreams.
And the rest of football should welcome the 49ers to the big dance, the playoffs. If they’re not the most fun team to watch, they’re in the mix.
The 49ers’ offense, now close to full strength, despite the jettisoning of lost soul and explosive wideout Brandon Aiyuk, put on a show.
Few NFL teams can match the combined star power of 49ers’ four best offensive skill position players — Brock Purdy, George Kittle, Christian McCaffrey and Ricky Pearsall — and they all showed up Sunday.
The 49ers scored on their first five possessions, extending through the third quarter, four touchdowns and a field goal. And no cheapies! The 49ers’ first four touchdowns came on drives of 70, 70, 67 and 95 yards.
The football world may still be debating the worth of Purdy and his $53 million annual contract, but the 49ers are happy with their investment.
Purdy is now 4-0 since returning from six games out with a turf toe. That toe apparently is not fully healed, but Purdy is dealing anyway. He connected on 23 of 30 passes for 295 yards and a 140.3 passer rating. An encouraging sign, he also scrambled for 44 yards on seven carries (one of them a designed keeper).
Purdy’s first touchdown pass was a short bullet to Jauan Jennings, who is more than holding his own recently in this star-studded cast, with two touchdown catches Sunday, giving him six TD grabs in his past six games.
Purdy kept the 49ers’ second drive alive, dodging and scrambling on 3rd-and-3 and finding the alertly improvising Demarcus Robinson for a 30-yard gain.
Pearsall has been a lonely guy in recent weeks, with just five receptions in the three games since he returned from a knee injury. On Sunday, Pearsall joined the party with six catches for 96 yards.
McCaffrey kept alive the possibility of becoming the league’s only player to ever gain 1,000 yards rushing and 1,000 yards passing in the same season twice in a career. He ran 22 times for 73 yards and caught one pass for 14 yards.
Kittle was Kittle, eight grabs for 88 yards and a touchdown.
So the 49ers’ offense is clicking, but keeping their playoff dreams from becoming too feverish was the performance of Robert Saleh’s defense. After holding two opponents to single-digit scoring, the 49ers gave up 24 to the Titans, who came into the game last in the league in net yards per game at 246.2, and racked up another 306 against the Niners.
The Titans might not be as offensively inept as advertised. They scored 31 against the Browns the previous week, and rookie quarterback Cam Ward is maturing before our eyes. Ward came in as the league’s co-leader in sacks taken, but the 49ers couldn’t get to him, even though he had to go into pass mode in the second half.
So the 49ers are no Super Bowl lock, not yet. They face stiffer tests ahead.
But so far, are you not entertained?
(SF Chronicle)
REGARDING: “… but I wouldn’t give up a basketball game for anything.”
It’s Friday night and I’m lyin around
watchin “Two for the Road”
I remember it being completely different
the first time it showed
And you call up, wanna know where I’m at
Well, obviously, here
And then you come by in 10 seconds flat
after all these years
Honey, if that really is your name
It was pure pleasure that you came
and I’d love to stay and have coffee with you
but it’s time for my Saturday game
You asked how I remember you
I told you straight away
The way you dressed, your pointed breasts
the twilight in LA
The prism-colored triangles
That we’d been two sides of
The candle melted we both felt it
getting late for love
Oh Honey, if that really is your name
Thank you for the pleasure with no blame
and I’d really love to have coffee with you
but it’s time for my Saturday game
— Fred Gardner, 1976 (approximately)
"I CAN’T TELL YOU the thrill I had when I hitchhiked to California to look at the Pacific. And then the same way with New York City. Our family had no money—there were five children—and I accumulated ninety dollars and my dad gave me a ride out to the highway. I had my favorite books and the typewriter he’d given me for my seventeenth birthday—one of those twenty-buck used typewriters—and my clothes, all in a cardboard box tied with a rope, and I was going off to live in “Greenwitch” Village. I was going to be a bohemian! I think I’d seen pictures of bohemians in Life magazine, and that’s what I wanted to be. Also the girls looked really pretty. They had straight black hair and they wore turtlenecks. And my dad thought it was all fine. He wasn’t insistent about me finishing college at the time. He knew that Hemingway and Faulkner didn’t go to college."
— Jim Harrison, Born, December 11, 1937; Grayling, Michigan
40,000 PEOPLE DIED ON CALIFORNIA ROADS. State leaders looked away
‘If these people’s children had been killed by a drunk driver, there is no way they would be objecting to this.’
by Lauren Hepler & Robert Lewis
At a California State Senate committee hearing this year, the director of CalTrans, Tony Tavares, showed a simple chart that might have caused the assembled lawmakers some alarm.
It was a series of black bars representing the death toll on California’s roads in each of the past 20 years.
Fatalities had been falling until 2010, when the bars started getting longer and longer. A blood-red arrow shot up over the growing lines, charting their rise, as if to make sure nobody could miss the more than 60% increase in deaths.
“We are working to reverse the overall trend,” Tavares said.
No legislators asked about the chart. No one asked the director what, exactly, his agency was doing about it.
Over the next three hours, the Senate Transportation Committee members asked instead about homeless encampments along roads, gas tax revenue, gender identity on ID’s and planning for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
The committee chair said it was the legislature’s first informational hearing on the state’s transportation system in more than a decade. Yet only two senators — both Republicans with little legislative power in a state controlled by Democrats — even asked about dangerous driving, one following up with questions about a deadly stretch of road in her district and the other about a small California Highway Patrol program to target egregious behavior behind the wheel.
Over the past decade, nearly 40,000 people have died and more than 2 million have been injured on California roads. As an ongoing CalMatters investigation has shown this year, time and again those crashes were caused by repeat drunk drivers, chronic speeders and motorists with well-documented histories of recklessness behind the wheel. Year after year, officials with the power to do something about it — the governor, legislators, the courts, the Department of Motor Vehicles — have failed to act. The silence, in the face of a threat that endangers nearly every Californian, is damning.
California has some of the weakest DUI laws in the nation. Here, DUI-related deaths have been rising more than twice as fast as the rest of the country. But this fall, a state bill to strengthen DUI penalties was gutted at the last minute.
When it comes to speeding — one of the biggest causes of fatal crashes — again the legislature has done little. For two years in a row, bills that would have required the use of speed-limiting technology on vehicles have failed.
Lawmakers did pass legislation a couple years ago that allows the use of speed cameras. But it’s just a pilot project in a handful of jurisdictions.
Marc T. Vukcevich, director of state policy for advocacy group Streets For All, considers it a win — but a modest one.
“This shit is not enough to deal with the size and severity and the complexity of the problem we have when it comes to violence on our roadways,” Vukcevich said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declined an interview request. Last year, he vetoed a bill that would have required technology that alerts drivers when they’re speeding.
The state DMV, which is under his authority, has wide latitude to take dangerous drivers off the road. But it routinely allows drivers with extreme histories of dangerous driving to continue to operate on our roadways, where many go on to kill.
Steve Gordon, whom Newsom chose to run the agency in 2019, won’t talk about it. He has declined or ignored CalMatters requests for an interview. The agency simply released a statement from him in March, after our first interview request, touting modernization efforts that reflect an “ongoing commitment to enhancing accountability and transparency while continually refining our processes to ensure California’s roads are safer for everyone.”
Neither Newsom nor Gordon has announced any major changes since then.
How a bill to fight DUIs fails in Sacramento
For a brief moment earlier this year, Colin Campbell thought the state might finally do something about the scourge that changed his life one night in 2019.
A repeat drunk driver slammed into his Prius on the way to the family’s new home in Joshua Tree, killing his 17-year-old daughter, Ruby, and 14-year-old son, Hart.
Campbell, a writer and director from Los Angeles, began advocating for California to join most other states and create a law requiring in-car breathalyzers for anyone convicted of a DUI.
At first he was encouraged when the bill coasted through two legislative committees. But then came the roadblocks. The ACLU opposed the measure, calling it “a form of racialized wealth extraction,” according to a Senate Public Safety Committee report from July. In California, people forced to use the devices have to pay about $100 a month to a private company to rent them, though there’s supposed to be a sliding fee scale based on income.
Then the DMV told lawmakers that it could not “complete the necessary programming” for the law, citing possible technology delays and costs of $15 million or more. The bill was gutted. California couldn’t do something that nearly three dozen other states could.
Campbell called the sudden reversal a shameful example of forsaking public safety for bureaucracy.
“Our lives were destroyed that night,” he said. “If these people’s children had been killed by a drunk driver, there is no way they would be objecting to this.”
Even if the law had passed, DMV data suggests that California judges would have mostly ignored it. State law says judges have to require in-car breathalyzers for people convicted of repeat DUIs. Last month, the DMV issued a report reinforcing what a similar report laid out two years earlier. Judges across the state ordered the devices just one-third of the time for repeat offenders. In 14 counties, they ordered the devices less than 10% of the time for second-time DUI offenders. The counties are: Alameda, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Los Angeles, Madera, Mono, Plumas, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Sierra, Tulare and Yuba.
DMV officials did not answer questions about what, if anything, the agency was doing about it.
We reached out to all 14 counties’ courts. Only eight responded to questions.
Chris Ruhl, executive officer for the Glenn County Superior Court, said the court is looking at local changes.
“Given the light CalMatters is bringing to this issue … the Glenn Court will review its current DUI sentencing practices,” according to a statement.
Glenn was one of a number of counties — including LA, Alameda and San Luis Obispo — that also suggested it wasn’t their judges’ responsibility to issue a court order. They said they only needed to notify the DMV of the convictions.
However, the law is clear: It’s the judge’s job to order the offender to use the device, said Jerry Hill, the retired Bay Area Democrat who wrote the bill.
When he worked in the Capitol, Hill said he also saw little urgency to rein in intoxicated driving.
“If you ask any legislator, they are going to say it’s a terrible, terrible thing,” he said.
But he said committee chairs and staff members who set the tone and write analyses often shied away from increasing criminal penalties.
“That’s where we see a lack of understanding, in my view, of the devastating effect of drunk driving in California,” he said.
Lawmakers say next session could bring change
A number of lawmakers said they are aware of the carnage on our roadways and plan to do something about it this coming legislative session, maybe.
Sen. Bob Archuleta, a Democrat from Norwalk who sits on the Transportation Committee, lost his granddaughter to a drunk driver just before Christmas last year. He said he recently met with representatives from Mothers Against Drunk Driving and is considering possible bills.
“This is not a Republican issue, a Democrat issue, an independent issue — or political issue. This is a life-saving issue,” he said. “We should all take it as seriously as the family that lost a loved one.”
Democratic Assemblymember Nick Schultz of Burbank said he is considering introducing at least one measure next year to address loopholes and weaknesses in state law.
Schultz, who started his career prosecuting DUI cases in Oregon and now chairs the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, said he is weighing several potential measures that would address issues CalMatters highlighted in its reporting this year, including lengthening license suspensions after fatal crashes, lowering the bar to charge repeat drunk drivers with a felony, strengthening breathalyzer requirements and making sure vehicular manslaughter convictions get reported to the DMV.
“People are tired of seeing the needless loss of life on our roadways,” Schultz said. “There’s no way to legislatively make someone make the right choice. But what we can do is create an incentive structure where there are consequences for bad decisions.”
In the absence of more leadership at the state level, road safety advocates — many of whom joined the cause after losing a loved one to a preventable car crash — are taking it on themselves to try to force change. They’re meeting with lawmakers and officials, holding public events, telling their stories.
Jennifer Levi started working with MADD after her son, Braun, was killed in May while he was out walking with friends in Manhattan Beach. She said they’d only recently relocated to the area after the family home burned down in the Palisades fire, destroying “all of Braun’s pictures, videos from when he was born.”
The driver who killed her son was allegedly intoxicated and had a prior DUI arrest.
“The worst day of my life is now my life’s work. I will not stop until California changes,” Levi said.
In the months since her son’s death, Levi said, she’s met with any officials or influential people she could — current and former lawmakers, district attorneys, local council members, a lobbyist, and members of the media. Among the changes she wants: to make it easier to charge repeat DUI offenders with murder when they kill someone, to make fatal DUIs a violent felony and to increase penalties for hit-and-run fatalities. As CalMatters reported in October, California law often treats drunken vehicular manslaughter as a nonviolent crime with minimal time behind bars.
Levi calls her push to reform the system “Braun’s Bill.”
Many grieving families share a similar goal: for those they lost to be remembered by a state and society that seem indifferent. That desire was on display last month during an event in Sacramento to mark the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.
On a cold Sunday evening in mid-November, after a break in the rain, dozens of relatives of people killed in car crashes gathered on the dark steps of the state Capitol for a candlelight vigil. They fought to keep photos on posterboards upright in the gale-force winds. Family by family, they ascended the steps, stood above a display of orange cones lit with strands of white lights and addressed the onlookers, talking about their loved ones and what was lost — children left without their mother, mothers without their children, a wife left without the love of her life.
“Every day I live and I wake up and I pretend like I’m happy. Every day I wish my stairs would make noise. I miss being called mom,” said Angel Dela Cruz, whose 17-year-old son Edward Alvidrez Jr. was hit by a truck while riding a dirt bike in Madera County in 2022.
“I hope we all get justice,” she said.
The event ended with a moment of quiet reflection and a prayer before the families put away their pictures and walked off, the Capitol behind them locked, silent.
(calmatters.org)
“I DON’T BELIEVE IN HEALTH FOODS or diets either. I have probably been eating all of the wrong things all of my life — and I have thrived on it. I eat to enjoy my food. Whatever I do I do first for enjoyment.
I don’t believe in regular check-ups. If there is something wrong with me, I’d rather not know about it, because then I could only worry about it and aggravate the condition.
Nature often remedies our ills better than the doctor can.
I don’t believe there is a prescription for a long life. Besides, who wants to live to be a hundred? What’s the point of it?
A short life and a merry one is far better than a long life sustained by fear, caution and perpetual medical surveillance. With all the progress medicine has made over the years we still have a pantheon of incurable diseases. The germs and microbes seem to have the last word always.
When all else fails the surgeon steps in, cuts us to pieces, and clears us out of our last penny. And that’s progress for you.”
— Henry Miller
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Except that climate change, like diseases from cigarettes, is something we can prevent.
But, yeah, those pesky government regulations – getting rid of lead in both gasoline AND paint!? Not allowing contamination in food products!?
Preventing the dumping of raw sewage into waterways!?
Why do those darn government regulators hate freedom so much?
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, CounterPunch:
77% of Democratic voters say Israel is committing genocide and 75% want to cut off weapons to Israel. But HRC is out on the road claiming that TikTok and “totally made up” videos are to blame for young people’s opposition to genocide.
Here’s Hillary Clinton (at a summit in NYC hosted by the Israeli daily Israel Hayom on US/Israeli relations) once again blaming social media for perverting the minds of American youth about the genocide in Gaza:
“Our own students, smart young people, from our own country, from around the world. Where were they getting their information? They were getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok. That is where they were learning about what happened on October 7th. What happened in the days, weeks and months to follow. That’s a serious problem. It’s a serious problem for democracy, whether it’s Israel or the United States. I was shocked about how little students knew about the history and the context…When you think about how to tell Israel’s story, it’s important. It’s not just looking internally. It’s looking externally and particularly at young people. Because it’s not just the USUAL SUSPECTS; it’s a lot of young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand.”
REBRANDING GENOCIDE
The Genocide in Gaza has not stopped. It has been rebranded. And that is enough of a linguistic subterfuge to get the world to ignore it.
by Chris Hedges
First, it was Israel’s right to defend itself. Then it was a war, even though, by Israel’s own military intelligence database, 83 percent of the casualties were civilians. The 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, living under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade, have no army, air force, no mechanized units, no tanks, no navy, no missiles, no heavy artillery, no fleets of killer drones, no sophisticated tracking systems to map all movements, or an ally like the United States, which has given Israel at least $21.7 billion in military aid since Oct. 7, 2023.
Now, it is a “ceasefire.” Except of course, as usual, Israel only abided by the first of the 20 stipulations. It freed around 2,000 Palestinian captives held in Israeli prisons — 1700 of whom were detained after Oct. 7 — as well as around 300 bodies of Palestinians, in exchange for the return of the 20 remaining Israeli captives.
Israel has violated every other condition. It has tossed the agreement — brokered by the Trump administration without Palestinian participation — into the bonfire with all the other agreements and peace accords concerning Palestinians. Israel’s extensive and blatant flouting of international agreements and international law — Israel and its allies refuse to abide by three sets of legally binding orders by the International Cout of Justice (ICJ) and two ICJ advisory opinions, as well as the Genocide Convention and international humanitarian law — presage a world where the law is whatever the most militarily advanced countries say it is.
The sham peace plan — “President Donald J. Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” — in an act of stunning betrayal of the Palestinian people, was endorsed by most of the U.N. Security Council in November, with China and Russia abstaining. Member states washed their hands of Gaza and turned their backs on the genocide.
The adoption of resolution 2803 (2025), as the Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein writes, “was simultaneously a revelation of moral insolvency and a declaration of war against Gaza. By proclaiming international law null and void, the Security Council proclaimed itself null and void. Vis-à-vis Gaza, the Council transmuted into a criminal conspiracy.”
The next phase is supposed to see Hamas surrender its weapons and Israel withdraw from Gaza. But these two steps will never happen. Hamas — along with other Palestinian factions — reject the Security Council resolution. They say they will disarm only when the occupation ends and a Palestinian state is created. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that if Hamas does not disarm, it will be done “the hard way.”
The “Board of Peace,” headed by Trump, will ostensibly govern Gaza along with armed mercenaries from the Israel-allied International Stabilization Force, although no country seems anxious to commit their troops. Trump promises a Gaza Riviera that will function as a “special economic zone” — a territory operating outside of state law governed entirely by private investors, such as the Peter Thiel-backed charter city in Honduras. This will be achieved through the “voluntary” relocation of Palestinians — with those fortunate enough to own land offered digital tokens in exchange. Trump declares that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip” and “own it.” It is a return to the rule of viceroys — though apparently not the odious Tony Blair. Palestinians, in one of the most laughable points in the plan, will be “deradicalized” by their new colonial masters.
But these fantasies will never come to fruition. Israel knows what it wants to do in Gaza and it knows no nation will intercede. Palestinians will struggle to survive in primitive and dehumanizing conditions. They will, as they have so many times in the past, be betrayed.
Israel has committed 738 violations of the ceasefire agreement between Oct. 10 and Dec. 12, including 358 land and air bombardments, the killing of at least 383 Palestinians and the injuring of 1,002 others, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Palestinian Health Ministry. That’s an average of six Palestinians killed daily in Gaza — down from an average of 250 a day before the “ceasefire.” Israel said it killed a senior Hamas commander, Raed Saad, on Saturday, in a missile strike on a car on Gaza’s coastal road. Three others were also apparently killed in the strike.
The genocide is not over. Yes, the pace has slowed. But the intent remains unchanged. It is slow motion killing. The daily numbers of dead and wounded — with increasing numbers falling sick and dying from the cold and rain — are not in the hundreds but the dozens.
December saw an average of 140 aid trucks allowed into Gaza each day — instead of the promised 600 — to keep Palestinians on the edge of famine and ensure widespread malnutrition. In October, some 9,300 children in Gaza under five were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, according to UNICEF. Israel has opened the border crossing into Egypt at Rafah, but only for Palestinians leaving Gaza. It is not open for those who want to return to Gaza, as stipulated in the agreement. Israel has seized some 58 percent of Gaza and is steadily moving its demarcation line — known as “the yellow line” — to expand its occupation. Palestinians who cross this arbitrary line — which constantly shifts and is poorly marked when it is marked at all — are shot dead or blown up — even if they are children.
Palestinians are being crammed into a shrinking, fetid, overcrowded concentration camp until they can be deported. Ninety-two percent of Gaza’s residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed and around 81 percent of all structures are damaged, according to UN estimates. The Strip, only 25 miles long and seven-and-a-half miles wide, has been reduced to 61 million tons of rubble, including nine million tons of hazardous waste that includes asbestos, industrial waste, and heavy metals, in addition to unexploded ordnance and an estimated 10,000 decaying corpses. There is almost no clean water, electricity or sewage treatment. Israel blocks shipments of construction supplies, including cement and steel, shelter materials, water infrastructure and fuel, so nothing can be rebuilt.
Eighty-two percent of Israeli Jews support the ethnic cleansing of the entire population of Gaza and 47 percent support killing all civilians in cities captured by the Israeli military. Fifty-nine percent support doing the same to Palestinian citizens of Israel. Seventy-nine percent of Israeli Jews say they are “not so troubled” or “not troubled at all” by reports of famine and suffering among the population in Gaza, according to a survey conducted in July. The words “Erase Gaza” appeared more than 18,000 times in Hebrew-language Facebook posts in 2024 alone, according to a new report on hate speech and incitement against Palestinians.
The newest form of genocidal celebration in Israel — where social media and news channels routinely chortle over the suffering of Palestinians — is the sprouting of golden nooses on the lapels of members of the far-right political party Otzma Yehudit, Israel’s version of the Ku Klux Klan, including one worn by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
They are pushing a bill through the Knesset which seeks to mandate the death penalty for Palestinians who “intentionally or indifferently causes the death of an Israeli citizen,” if they are said to be motivated by “racism or hostility toward a public,” and with the purpose of harming the Israeli state or “the rebirth of the Jewish people in its land,” the Israeli human rights group Adalah explains. More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli jails since Oct. 7. If the new bill becomes law — it has been cleared through its first reading — it will join the wave of more than 30 anti-Palestinian laws enacted since October 7.
The message the genocide sends to the rest of the world, more than a billion of whom live on less than a dollar a day, is unequivocable: We have everything and if you try and take it away from us, we will kill you.
This is the new world order. It will look like Gaza. Concentration camps. Starvation. Obliteration of infrastructure and civil society. Mass killing. Wholesale surveillance. Executions. Torture, including the beatings, electrocutions, waterboarding, rape, public humiliation, deprivation of food and denial of medical care routinely used on Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Epidemics. Disease. Mass graves where corpses are bulldozed into unmarked pits and where bodies, as in Gaza, are dug up and torn apart by packs of ravenous wild dogs.
We are not destined for the Shangri-La sold to a gullible public by fatuous academics such as Stephen Pinker. We are destined for extinction. Not only individual extinction — which our consumer society furiously attempts to hide by peddling the fantasy of eternal youth — but wholesale extinction as temperatures rise to make the globe uninhabitable. If you think the human species will respond rationally to the ecocide, you are woefully out of touch with human nature. You need to study Gaza. And history.
If you live in the Global North, you will get to peer out at the horror, but slowly this horror, as the climate breaks down, will migrate home, turning most of us into Palestinians. Given our complicity in the genocide, it is what we deserve.
Empires, when they feel threatened, always embrace the instrument of genocide. Ask the victims of the Spanish conquistadors. Ask Native Americans. Ask the Herero and Nama. Ask the Armenians. Ask the survivors of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Ask the Indians who survived the Bengal famine or the Kikuyu who rose against their British colonizers in Kenya. Climate refugees will get their turn.
This is not the end of the nightmare. It is the beginning.
(chrishedges.substack.com)
DECEMBER 13, 1965 – Novelist Ken Kesey (pictured) was found guilty today in San Mateo Superior Court of felony possession of marijuana.
His friend John Browning, 26, was also found guilty on the same charge. Judge Louis De Matteis set Jan. 17 for probation reports and sentencing. The maximum penalty is 10 years in prison. Both men remain free on bail.
Kesey, 29, and Browning were among 15 people arrested at Kesey’s La Honda home on Apr. 24 during what police described as a marijuana party. Charges against the other 13 were dismissed in Municipal Court for insufficient evidence. Kesey and Browning were bound over to Superior Court on the transcript of those proceedings.
“I have looked over the transcript and find there is ample evidence to uphold the charge,” the judge said.
Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Sometimes a Great Notion,” showed no emotion as attorneys for both men requested probation.
From PEOPLE v. KESEY (1967):
Acting under a search warrant, officers entered defendant Kesey's residence, located in a wooded area in La Honda. Many visitors were present. One officer entered the bathroom. As another approached, the door was slammed in his face, and he heard sounds of a scuffle. He entered the room, and saw appellant Browning choking the first officer, while appellant Kesey was on his knees attempting to dump the contents of a jar into the toilet. The jar contained marijuana, and quantities of that substance were found elsewhere in the premises. It is apparent that the evidence fully sustains the conviction, and no contrary contention is made here.
Rather, appellants attack the validity of the search warrant. They contend, in part, that the affidavit for the warrant is insufficient on its face. We cannot agree. The affidavit states that: the officer making it had participated in surveillance of the Kesey residence on 6 occasions from October 1964 to April 1965; on the night of April 17, the officers saw some 15 vehicles parked in front of the residence, and observed six persons who appeared to be under the influence of a narcotic leaving it; on April 20, a like number of cars was parked, and the officers saw two men, both apparently under the influence of narcotics, one of whom had just left the Kesey residence, and another who was pushing an automobile registered to Kesey; on the same night, they saw on the premises 4 other persons who either appeared to be under such influence or were known users or possessors of narcotics.…
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-court-of-appeal/1820027.html
HE GIFTED CALIFORNIA ONE OF ITS LARGEST CITY PARKS. THEN HE SHOT HIS WIFE.
One of LA's most important benefactors also spent time in San Quentin
by Erin Rode
To get a sense of what Griffith J. Griffith achieved for Los Angeles, all you have to do is hike up to the summit of Mount Hollywood, the second-highest point in the 4,210-acre urban wilderness park that bears his name.
“I find it a miracle that you look out over the basin and then you turn around and you look over the San Fernando Valley, and there is all of this urban and suburban sprawl, and some way, somehow, in the middle of it, there is this 4,000 acres for all of us,” said Mike Eberts, a professor of mass communications at Glendale Community College and author of a 1996 history book on Griffith Park published for the park’s centennial. “And Col. Griffith made that happen.”
“If there’s a list of people who’ve really made Los Angeles a great place to live, Griffith would be very high on that list,” Eberts, a board member of the Griffith Charitable Trust, continued.
In 1896, Griffith donated a massive piece of land to the city to be used as a public park, which today remains both a key city landmark and one of the largest municipal parks with urban wilderness in the United States. (For context, it is more than four times the size of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.) The park likely wouldn’t exist today if it weren’t for Griffith’s foresight to set aside the land as green space in the city’s booming early days; he declared it “a place of recreation and rest for the plain people.” But while Griffith’s name is now emblazoned on the park, an observatory and a major boulevard, his legacy is complicated.
In 1903, Griffith shot his wife in the face in a jealous rage and spent two years at San Quentin.
“He was a flawed man,” Eberts said, adding, “I like to think of him as someone who rose above his flaws.”
Col. Griffith J. Griffith was born in Wales in 1850 and moved to the United States as a teenager, later starting a career as a journalist covering mining in California. He started working for mining companies as a side gig while still reporting on them (if you’re unfamiliar with journalism, that’s what’s called a conflict of interest) and eventually dropped the writing gig to manage mines full time. In 1882, he moved to Los Angeles and purchased Rancho Los Feliz, 4,071 acres of a former land grant, all while dabbling in real estate and ranching and generally moving up into the city’s more elite circles.
Col. Griffith J. Griffith was also, notably, not a colonel. While he’d served as a major of riflery practice in the California National Guard, the colonel title was “apparently self-bestowed,” according to Eberts.
In 1887, then-36-year-old Griffith married 23-year-old Mary Agnes Christina (“Tina”) Mesmer, daughter of an elite and wealthy Los Angeles family; “Union of Two Very Wealthy Los Angeles Families,” a headline proclaimed at the time. Their relationship had developed while Tina was set to receive a large inheritance, something Griffith would have been aware of when the two first met, according to “Enlightened Egomaniac: The Life, Times & Crime of Griffith Jenkins Griffith,” a book by Miguel Llanos.
Griffith donated most of his rancho to the city in December 1896 (the press dubbed it a Christmas gift to Los Angeles) with much pomp and circumstance. “Recognizing the duty which one who has acquired some little wealth owes to the community in which he has prospered … I am impelled to make an offer, the acceptance of which by yourselves, acting for the people, I believe will be a source of enjoyment and pride to my fellows and add a charm to our beloved city,” Griffith wrote in a letter to the mayor and city council.
At the time, the land “wasn’t really recognized as anything significant,” because it was so far away from downtown Los Angeles, according to Marian Dodge, board member at Friends of Griffith Park. To sweeten the deal, Griffith threw in land along the Los Angeles River, including the water rights.
Back then and in the years since, allegations and rumors have swirled that Griffith had other motives when making his generous donation — perhaps because previous business ventures at the rancho hadn’t panned out as planned, or to stop paying taxes on a huge piece of undevelopable property. But regardless of motives, the giant parkland was set aside for generations of Angelenos, a slice of wilderness that dwarfs New York City’s Central Park several times over, set right in the middle of what became the nation’s second-largest city.
That massive swath of protected land means a chunk of the Santa Monica Mountains has been left undeveloped for over a century, while in other parts of the mountain range, conservation groups have had to fight to protect small pieces of habitat bit by bit, Dodge said.
“Griffith spoke of ‘taking time by the forelock, err it be too late,’ and so he really did see that this kind of frontier town, which we were when he donated the land in 1896, he envisioned it growing into a great city all around this park,” Eberts said.
Then, amid his peak of local celebrity and reverie, Griffith committed a violent crime. Griffith and Tina were staying at a hotel in Santa Monica with their teenage son when an inebriated Griffith became paranoid and suspicious of Tina, accusing her of infidelity and asking if she was poisoning him (accusations she denied). As the fight escalated, Griffith asked Tina to kneel, place a hand on a prayer book and answer his questions.
“His (last) question was: ‘Have you always been faithful to your marriage vows?’ I said: ‘As God is my judge, I have.’ As I answered the last question, he shot me,” according to a 1903 statement from Tina.
Tina survived but lost an eye and was disfigured by her injuries. She swiftly moved to divorce Griffith, and the judge granted the divorce in less than five minutes. The day after the shooting, Griffith went right back to business around Los Angeles, including stops at his downtown office and a luncheon at the Jonathan Club. When confronted by reporters about his wife’s injuries less than 24 hours prior, Griffith said that “the whole thing was purely accidental” and that Tina’s injuries were more from a fall out of the window than from the shot (Tina had jumped out of the hotel window to escape Griffith after he shot her).
Griffith was ultimately found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to two years in San Quentin. When he emerged, he became an outspoken advocate for prison reform. Griffith J. Griffith “tells horrors of prison life” and “wages humanitarian crusade throughout country,” proclaimed one Los Angeles Herald headline in 1908 after Griffith’s release.
He also doubled down on securing his legacy as a wealthy yet generous member of the Los Angeles elite by offering $100,000 to the city to build a new observatory in Griffith Park. Some city officials balked at taking more money from a man convicted of such a crime, and the efforts were slowed by litigation and debate for years. “The city still wanted his land, they still wanted his money, but they’re keeping him a little at arm’s length,” Eberts said.
Ultimately, Griffith left money to the city in his will for the construction of what became the Griffith Observatory and the nearby Greek Theatre, both of which opened in the 1930s, over a decade after Griffith’s death.
Griffith’s large donations appear to have memorialized him as a generous benefactor for the city, mostly overshadowing his violent crime. In 1996, as part of Griffith Park’s centennial anniversary celebrations, a 14-foot bronze statue of Griffith was erected near the park entrance at the corner of Los Feliz Boulevard and Crystal Springs Drive. The statue came after members of the Griffith Charitable Trust realized that “there was no dedication to the man who’d given the city this extraordinary gift,” according to nonprofit Friends of Griffith Park.
So the controversial figure now looms large over a busy intersection just outside the park, with a quote from Griffith that reads, “Public parks are a safety valve of great cities and should be made accessible and attractive where neither race, creed nor color could be excluded.”
The quote is attributed to Colonel Griffith, permanently cementing Griffith’s long con in stone.
(LA Outdoors/SFGate.com)
“MARRY, and you will regret it; do not marry, and you will also regret it; marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it; weep over them, you will also regret it; laugh at the world’s follies or weep over them, you will regret it either way. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will also regret it. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
— Søren Kierkegaard
Mr. Kierkegaard:
“Je ne regrette rien!”
Mark – Regarding a road tax: Does your proposal that the 2d supervisorial district be excluded from representation on the oversight committee also propose that the 2d district be excluded from the tax?
Since including them probably would double the revenue, then ok. They’re on. If the second district gets to vote on the tax, then they should be represented on the oversight committee. But of course we’re talking pure abstractions here. The odds of even half of this proposal making it into ballot language are about the same as the Warriors winning the NBA championship this year.
Yes, but we can still pretend these discussions are useful. ;-)