Mendocino County Today: Sunday 12/21/2025

RAINFALL (past 24 hours): Laytonville 3.04" - Willits 2.81" - Yorkville 2.24" - Boonville 1.58" - Ukiah 1.47" - Covelo 1.47" - Hopland 1.29"

HEAVY RAIN is expected to continue Sunday for much of the area. A short break in the heavier rain is expected Monday, although occasional light showers may continue. Minor flooding and river flooding impacts are possible this afternoon and again by the middle of the week. Strong winds and lower snow levels possible mid to late this week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 1.21" of new rainfall makes our 1 week total 4.33" with more on the way. Plus put on your party hats weather fans, winter officially starts at 7:03am today ! A rainy & warm 55F this Sunday morning on the coast. A lot more rain today then a break (sort of) on Monday then another good blast on Tuesday, & so on thru the week. Next weekend is looking dry currently, we'll see ?

PG&E BACKS OFF EFFORT TO PERMANENTLY CUT WATER FOR POTTER VALLEY RANCHERS

Utility tells federal regulators it will revise its proposal after farmers were blindsided by summer reductions in peak fire season.

by Keely Covello

Yesterday in a sudden reversal, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) withdrew its request to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to permanently impose water cuts on Potter Valley farmers and ranchers.

“Since the submission of the amendment application, further discussion with stakeholders and subsequent analysis in support of the upcoming 2026 temporary flow variance has highlighted that the amendment lacks adequate flexibility that has been included in previous annual temporary flow variances,” wrote Janet Walther, PG&E’s FERC License Management Director, in her notification.

Walther said PG&E plans to resubmit a revised proposal that provides more accommodation for agricultural users.

“PG&E’s supplemental filing for the License Amendment will include revisions to the requested flow requirements to provide a more flexible release strategy,” she wrote.

Potter Valley’s producers received national attention and support from federal officials after UNWON broke the story in August. In a series of videos, local farmers and ranchers described the impacts of losing water during peak season.

“This shuts us down,” cattle rancher Kay Eckel said when the cuts happened. “And there was no notice. It affects everything. It affects our well, it affects the grass for the cows.”

August water cuts blindsided agricultural community amid dam removal fight

PG&E owns the Potter Valley Project, a hydroelectric system in Northern California that includes Scott Dam and Lake Pillsbury, which hold back a portion of the Eel River during winter months to replenish Russian River flows during the dry summer season. Potter Valley farmers and ranchers are among over 600,000 customers who receive water from the project. This February, PG&E submitted a request to federal regulators to permanently reduce agricultural diversions to Potter Valley customers, citing environmental regulations. FERC approved the request in August.

The cuts blindsided farmers and ranchers, who pay for their water and rely on it for harvest operations and fire protection. Water deliveries dropped at a critical moment in the growing season, heightening wildfire risk in a region that has experienced two of the three largest wildfires in California history.

Many in the community believed the move was tied to PG&E’s effort to remove the dams. In July, PG&E submitted a dam surrender and decommissioning application to FERC.

“These water cuts are an end run,” a local rancher told UNWON. “Even if our efforts to save the dams are successful, with these water cuts we’d be out of business anyway.”

December 19 marked the deadline for public comment to FERC on both PG&E proposals—the dam removal application and the request to permanently reduce water deliveries. On that same day, PG&E notified FERC it would be revising its water cut proposal.

The letter from PG&E is available below.
https://www.americaunwon.com/api/v1/file/76598cd4-84e4-4849-9d4e-5a63c22e66bc.pdf

(americaunwon.com)

JUDY CAMPBELL

Judy Campbell passed away on Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after a brief illness. She was 86. Born on September 5, 1939, in Los Angeles, California, Judy moved as a young girl to Springfield, Missouri, with her mother following the passing of her father. She graduated from Ozark High School and went on to attend Southern Missouri State University, later completing her degree at Sonoma State College. Judy met her future husband, John “Jack” Campbell, while both were working a summer season at Yellowstone National Park in Montana. They married soon after, living briefly in Bozeman before settling in Ukiah, California, where Jack began his career as a teacher and school administrator. Together, they built a life rooted in education, community, and family. Judy and Jack raised two sons, Scott, born in Bozeman, Montana, and Jeff, born in Ukiah. Judy was a devoted and encouraging mother who deeply loved her children and took great pride in them. After her sons were teenagers, Judy pursued her own calling as an elementary school teacher, a career she embraced for nearly three decades. Teaching was more than a profession for Judy, it was a joy and a passion. She was an enthusiastic, warm, and creative educator, beloved by her students. She delighted in preparing for each school year, decorating her classroom, and finding innovative ways to engage young minds and foster a love of learning. Judy loved human connection and thrived in social settings, whether at curriculum meetings which she described as “something to live for” or informal gatherings with friends. Her presence was valued by all who knew her. She was loyal, generous, and deeply invested in the lives of those around her. She also had a profound love for the natural world, especially the animals that shared it. Living in the Ukiah Valley, Judy cherished every season the changing leaves of fall, the blossoms of spring, and the warmth of summer. She found joy in watching deer and fawns in her yard, flocks of wild turkeys, mourning doves, and robins, often sharing photos with her sons. She had a lifelong affection for cats, always keeping them close. In her final days, her black cat, Tinker, was a constant companion, sitting beside her on the windowsill as they looked out together. Judy had a nurturing spirit and would tenderly care for any creature in need, from injured birds to humming-birds stunned by a window. Judy was also part of a close-knit community of friends, many of them current or former teachers. They shared a long-standing book club and social circle, meeting faithfully every Monday morning for years at Schat’s Bakery in Ukiah tradition Judy held dear. This group celebrated life’s milestones together and supported one another through challenges. In Judy’s final weeks, they were a source of steadfast love and support for both her and Jack. Judy is survived by her beloved husband, Jack Campbell; her sons, Scott Campbell and Jeff Campbell; her daughter-in-law, Dawn Marie; her granddaughter, Lindsay; and her step-grandson, Chase. She will be deeply missed by her family, friends, former students, and all who were fortunate enough to know her.

GREAT REDWOOD TRAIL WEBINAR — An Update to the Draft Master Plan, December 16, 2025

by Monica Huettl

Background

The Draft Master Plan for the Great Redwood Trail was released to the public in April 2024. The entire rail trail is planned to run from Marin County to Humboldt County. Jeff Knowles, consultant for the GRTA, said “The Great Redwood Trail Agency is responsible for just the 231 miles of the 307 envisioned, in Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt Counties. The portion in Marin and Sonoma County is managed by SMART, which operates a train, along with a commuter path.”

The trail will connect people to recreational opportunities, including walking, biking, and camping. Trail towns along the way will provide businesses and services for trail users. The GRTA is committed to environmental restoration of the abandoned railway corridor. Conditions vary dramatically along the trail. Some areas will be paved where the trail passes through trail towns. Crushed stone paths will be used in more rural areas, and a backcountry trail is planned for remote portions.

New Laws Bring Changes to the Draft Master Plan

Legislative changes in California have impacted the Master Plan program. Coastal Conservancy Project Manager Hannah Bartee said, “There were specifically two key bills that were passed by state lawmakers this summer . . . Senate Bill 131 and Assembly Bill 105.” (The GRT project is connected with the California Coastal Conservancy.)

SB 131 exempts non-motorized trails and environmental restoration projects (such as the GRT) from CEQA. AB 105 includes funding appropriated from Proposition 4, the Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparedness and Clean Air Bond Act of 2024.

Elaine Hogan, Executive Director of the GRTA, said that the board adopted a resolution at the September 18 board meeting, that would provide Prop. 4 allocations of $3,000,000 for environmental restoration in the Eel River Canyon and $5,000,000 for the preservation of tribal cultural resources along the Great Redwood Trail.

From the September 18, 2025 GRTA Board meeting executive summary:

The GRT, as directed to be created by state law, is in very substantial part, an environmental restoration project.

and

Beyond providing transportation and recreational access, the trail corridor is also a landscape of sensitive ecological systems, and cultural and tribal cultural resources that require careful stewardship. The trail creates opportunities for environmental restoration, including removal of dilapidated railroad infrastructure, the restoration of native habitat, improvement of fish passage to the Eel and Russian Rivers from tributaries, and prevention of further erosion that desecrates sacred sites. These opportunities should be prioritized.

Financial Statements

Financial Statements presented at the November 20, 2025 board meeting show that most of the income received by the GRTA is from state grant funding.

Focus on Tribal Engagement

Hogan said the GRTA has been talking to tribes on a “government-to-government” basis. “Tribal communities have concerns about continued displacement from their ancestral lands that the railroad passes through. . . . Some tribal communities requested that the trail not be built across their ancestral lands. Some tribal communities believe that the GRT could offer potential opportunities for access to their sacred lands.” But there is interest from some tribes to “lead or participate in cultural and natural resource protection and land stewardship.” The GRTA is recruiting for someone with “deep experience working in close partnership with Northern California tribes, strong knowledge of tribal governance and cultural protocols, and demonstrated skill in multitribal facilitation and trust-based engagement.”

Neighbor Concerns

Photo from the GRTA 12/16/2025 Presentation

Many landowners adjacent to the trail are concerned about public access so close to their property. They worry about trail users starting wildfires or trespassing. The GRTA will hold public meetings to provide education based on the success of the Napa Wine Trail’s Ag Respect program, and the East Bay Regional Parks, where cattle roam on the hiking trails. Trail permits and reservations are planned for the Eel River Canyon areas, so that trail management will know who is using the backcountry portions.

The Trail is Planned in 43 Segments

When prioritizing which of the 43 sections to build next, three criteria are used: benefits, feasibility, and project readiness. The trail is divided into priority tiers. Community meetings will be scheduled during the design and building phases of each segment. Information on the status of trail sections is available at Great Redwood Trail Projects.

Q&A

I submitted a question that was not answered as part of the webinar Q&A, nor was my follow-up email answered by the time of this writing. During the August 15 webinar, we were told that the SMART train was not going to extend further north than Cloverdale. The reasons given were that it was unlikely that Mendocino County voters would approve a sales tax to support the train. Also, the instability of the soil makes it difficult to maintain the tracks. As reported last week by Frank Hartzell of the Mendocino Coast News, the California Appeals Court recently ruled that the Mendocino Railway Skunk Train is a common carrier railway, and not merely an excursion train. This leaves open a possibility that the Skunk Train could eventually run from Ft. Bragg to Willitts, as it used to. Has the SMART train board of directors considered the possibility of extending the SMART train to Willits, where it could connect with the Skunk? The unstable soils seem to be mostly north of Willits in the Eel River Canyon.

Here are the questions that were answered:

Q: Can the trail be re-routed to run alongside Highway 101, instead of going through the Eel River Canyon?

A: There are no plans to re-route the trail to the Avenue of the Giants. The trail will remain on the rail corridor.

Q: What is the status of the Annie and Mary trail between Arcata and Blue Lake?

A: There has been recent momentum in Arcata on this trail, which is on the old Arcata and Mad River rail lines. It was not rail banked as part of the GRT.

Q: How will the project information be shared to the public on various segments?

A: A team of media consultants and experts will provide information.

Q: Have comments and concerns of neighboring landowners been addressed?

A: Landowners will be contacted when the segment near their property is in the planning phase. The GRTA encourages neighbors to reach out, as the agency wants to work with neighbors.

Q: Are you planning events around the trail to keep the public interested?

A: Yes, sign up for the email newsletter at this link.

Q: How will the public be deterred from using undeveloped segments that are not yet open?

A: Undeveloped segments will be posted with no trespassing signs and the GRTA will work with law enforcement. We realize that people are excited to start using the trail.

From the 12/16/2025 GRTA Presentation Slides

Q: How do you ensure safety for trail users passing by unauthorized encampments?

A: The GRTA works with property management contractors to keep the trails safe. Local authorities will be part of the safety system?

Q:What about management of invasive plant species?

A: Integrative Weed Management practices will be used for invasive plants.

Q: Will camping be available?

A: There will be developed campgrounds, accessible by vehicle, and backcountry campgrounds for backpackers who obtain a permit.

Q: Will there be opportunities for public art and interpretive exhibits?

A: Yes, art and interpretive opportunities are one of the most requested features of the trail.

Q: Where are the trailheads?

A: There will be different types of trailheads. In trail towns there will be community gateways, similar to a park with public art that morphs into the trail. In rural areas there will be trailheads with parking.

AV EVENTS (today)

Making the Best of the Rest
Sun 12 / 21 / 2025 at 3:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center , 14470 Highway 128, Boonville
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5086)

AV Village Monthly Gathering
Sun 12 / 21 / 2025 at 4:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center , 14470 Highway 128, Boonville
More Information (https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5085)

WINTER BREAK IS HERE FOR BOYS BASKETBALL!

Congrats to Nick Espinoza on earning All-Tournament honors at the Stokes Tournament. Happy Holidays, from AV Athletics to you!

IDENTITY THIEF CAUGHT AGAIN; SENTENCED TO PRISON — AGAIN.

A defendant who had set up a sophisticated identity theft “factory” in a local hotel room in January was sentenced this past Thursday to 48 months in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Defendant James Robert Arias, age 42, of Oakland, was convicted by plea in mid-November of felony identity theft with a prior El Dorado County conviction for felony identity theft. He also admitted having suffered a prior Strike conviction.

On the last day of January 2025 the Ukiah Police Department was notified by an out-of-county victim of a person using the victim’s personal credit information here in Ukiah to pay for a local hotel room.

When the UPD responded to investigate, the desk clerk identified defendant Arias as the man who checked in and rented a room using what turned out to be the Los Angeles man’s stolen credit card number and verifying information.

An ironic aspect to this case was that the Los Angeles victim was a private investigator who was experienced in crimes involving fraud. He was awakened by a cell phone alert around 3 o’clock in the morning saying his credit card was being used in Ukiah. He responded to the alert with a fraud reply, and then called the UPD to report the crime.

A search of the defendant’s hotel room after his arrest revealed that he had printers, laptops, computer tablets, credit card processing devices, information from the dark web and everyday mail that he was using to plan and commit identity theft crimes.

With what he had defendant Arias could produce counterfeit credit and debit cards, counterfeit checks, and digital payment wallets on a cell phone using stolen Social Security numbers and other stolen personal identifiers. He was in possession of personal information that would have allowed him to victimized at least 47 individuals, many living and working in Sonoma County.

It was concluded by local investigators and the DA that the defendant had been targeting unlocked residential mailboxes in an effort to add to his stash of stolen information. He was also mining the “dark web” to find information that had been uploaded by unsavory and criminal-minded individuals.

This was not defendant Arias’ first criminal justice rodeo. He was convicted in 2021 of the same identity theft conduct in the El Dorado County Superior Court. He also served a lengthy sentence in federal prison for conspiracy to distribute hard drugs. The defendant’s prior Strike conviction was out of the Yuba County Superior Court in 2020 for furnishing hard drugs in 2017 to a female minor.

The law enforcement agencies that developed the 2025 evidence used to convict the defendant this time around were the Ukiah Police Department and the DA’s own Bureau of Investigations.

The attorney who charged the defendant and handled his prosecution from arraignment, through heavy litigation, and finishing with this past week's sentencing hearing was District Attorney David Eyster.

Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder imposed sentence on the defendant this past week.

Strategies To Prevent Identity Theft

Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personal information -- such as your Social Security number, credit card details, or bank account info without permission -- to commit fraud, open accounts, or steal money. It's a common issue, with millions affected annually, but proactive steps can significantly reduce your risk.

Some effective prevention strategies to combat identity theft may be one or more of the following:

Freeze your credit. This is one of the strongest protections. A credit freeze prevents new accounts from being opened in your name by blocking access to your credit reports. It's free, and you can lift it temporarily when needed (e.g., for a loan application). Contact each of the three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
Monitor your credit reports regularly. Review them for unauthorized accounts, inquiries, or errors. Early detection may stop thieves faster.
Use strong, unique passwords and multi-factor authentication (MFA). Create complex passwords (mix of letters, numbers, symbols) and never reuse them across accounts. Enable MFA wherever possible - it adds an extra verification step (like a code sent to your phone).
Protect your Social Security number (SSN). Don't carry your SSN card in your wallet. Only share it when absolutely necessary, and ask if alternatives (like a different ID) can be used. For tax-related risks, get an Identity Protection PIN from the IRS.
Shred sensitive documents and secure your mail. Use a cross-cut shredder for anything with personal info (bills, statements, pre-approved credit offers). Collect mail promptly and consider a locked mailbox.
Be cautious online and with communications. Avoid public Wi-Fi for sensitive transactions. Don't click links or attachments in unsolicited emails/texts (phishing scams). Verify requests for info by contacting organizations directly using known numbers.
Review accounts and statements frequently. Check bank, credit card, and other accounts often for unauthorized activity. Set up alerts for transactions.
Consider fraud alerts if at higher risk. Place a fraud alert on your credit reports (free, lasts 1 year initially) to require extra verification for new credit applications.
Additional tips

Use antivirus software and keep devices updated.
Be wary of data breaches - monitor affected accounts closely.
For children or dependents, consider freezing their credit when available.

While paid identity theft protection services offer monitoring and alerts, many experts note you can handle most protections yourself for free (e.g., via credit freezes and reports). If theft occurs, report it immediately to local law enforcement.

Staying vigilant with these habits makes it much harder for thieves to succeed. Start with a credit freeze and regular report checks for the biggest impact.

UKIAH VALLEY WATER AUTHORITY MEMBER AGENCIES ADVANCE PROPOSED WATER RATE ADJUSTMENTS FOLLOWING COMPLETION OF REGIONAL RATE STUDY

Member agencies of the Ukiah Valley Water Authority (UVWA) are advancing proposed water rate increases to ensure they can continue to operate safe, reliable water systems and address years of deferred maintenance and underfunded infrastructure needs.

Each water district independently considered and proposed its own rate adjustments based on its unique system conditions, financial needs, and long-term capital requirements – those rate increases were reviewed and advanced by the UVWA Executive Committee on December 4th.

The proposed rate increases follow a financial study launched earlier this year by four of the five UVWA member agencies who all had expired rate studies and were due for updated analysis and rates. This includes the City of Ukiah, Millview County Water District, Redwood Valley County Water District, and Willow County Water District. The study was conducted by Hildebrand Consulting, an expert in utility financial plans; it analyzed revenue requirements and existing debts, and projected operating and capital costs.

Across the region and state, local water agencies are confronting a variety of challenges that require investment and action. These include:

Deferred maintenance and aging infrastructure that must be addressed;
Inflationary cost increases in materials needed for operation;
Rising capital improvement costs;
New regulatory requirements for water quality and reliability that require modernized operations;
Underfunded reserves, which are essential to preventing service disruptions and emergency rate spikes; and
Delayed action during COVID-19, when many agencies minimized or postponed needed rate adjustments.

Each district separately reviewed the rate study, evaluated its system needs, and will pursue adoption of its new rate schedules through the publicly noticed Proposition 218 process.

Millview proposes increasing water rates by 15% on March 1, 2026, followed by 14% increases on July 1 of 2027, 2028, and 2029. For a typical single-family home (using about 7,500 gallons per month), the monthly bill will rise $7.15 in 2026 and the monthly increase will be $9.91 in 2029. The last increase to Millview’s water rates was in 2011.

“Paying for regular maintenance and timely replacements is significantly more cost-effective than emergency repairs after something breaks,” said Tim Prince, Millview’s representative to UVWA. “These adjustments are about preventing catastrophic failures and ensuring long-term sustainability.”

Redwood Valley proposes a 30% increase on March 1, 2026, followed by 12% on July 1, 2026, 6% on July 1, 2027, and 3% on July 1 of 2028 and 2029. For an average customer that amounts to a monthly increase of $23.95 in 2026, but by 2029 the monthly increase is only $3.81.

“We have been underfunded for years, and our infrastructure needs are significant,” said Tom Schoeneman, Redwood Valley’s representative to UVWA. “This plan allows us to catch up on critical maintenance and prepare for the future.”

Willow proposes increasing rates by 19% on March 1, 2026, followed by 12% increases on July 1 of 2027, 2028, and 2029. For an average customer that amounts to a monthly increase of $8.08 in 2026 and a monthly increase of $7.61 in 2029.

“We must modernize our rate structures to address modern water supply and delivery needs,” said Gary Nevill, Willow County Water District’s representative to UVWA. “These increases are necessary to operate responsibly, replace outdated equipment, and maintain service reliability.”

The City of Ukiah proposes increasing water rates by 6% on March 1, 2026, followed by 4% increases on July 1 of 2027, 2028, and 2029. For an average single-family home that amounts to an increase in the monthly bill of $5.588 in 2026 and a monthly increase of $4.27 in 2029.

“The City of Ukiah has been a leader in responding responsibly to reduced water supplies and adopting solutions to strengthen reliability, implement recycled water systems, and improve regional coordination,” said Councilmember Juan Orozco, Ukiah’s representative to UVWA. “We will continue to invest strategically in our system to secure a long-term reliable water future for our community.”

Calpella County Water District, also a member of UVWA, is already implementing its own 5-year rate schedule adopted in 2023 and therefore did not participate in the current rate study.

Even with the proposed Year 1 adjustments, all UVWA member agencies’ water rates remain below those of nearby communities, including Calistoga, St. Helena, Healdsburg, Cloverdale, and Willits.

No changes are proposed for the rate structure design, therefore water users will continue to pay a fixed monthly service charge based on the size of their meter in addition to a usage rate based on actual monthly usage.

In compliance with Proposition 218 requirements, a public hearing is scheduled for February 9, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center. Under Proposition 218, water rates cannot exceed the actual cost of providing service, and customers must receive 45-days’ notice, an opportunity to protest, and a public hearing before any increase is adopted.

Separately from this rate adjustment process, the City of Ukiah is pursuing a state planning grant to fund engineering and design work needed to connect infrastructure across the UVWA member agencies – an effort that would improve system flexibility, drought preparedness, and long-term reliability. The SAFER Program, “Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience,” would fund infrastructure improvements to connect the agencies, including pipelines and interties, storage tanks, booster stations and wells. That will allow water to move throughout the regional system where and when it’s needed most and strengthen service for every community.

For more information about the Ukiah Valley Water Authority and ongoing regional water efforts, visit cityofukiah.com/uvwa.

FOOTBALL: PRESS DEMOCRAT OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR, ALL-PD TEAMS: BEAU DAVID, UKIAH

by Kienan O'Doherty and Gus Morris

Ukiah quarterback Beau David warms up Nov. 28 before the North Coast Section Division 3 championship game against El Cerrito in American Canyon. (Nicholas Vides - For The Press Democrat)

Over the past three seasons, few North Bay high school football players have had a trajectory quite like Beau David.

A quarterback who was thrust into a starting role as a sophomore under then-new head coach Paul Cronin, David has been perhaps the most vital part of Ukiah’s recent resurgence as he took command of the position — and the Wildcats’ offense.

Twice in his three years as the starting QB, David helped lead his team to a league title — once in the North Bay League Redwood division and then, after the formation of the Redwood Empire Conference, this past season in the REC’s Bay division.

On the heels of that league pennant this season, David and the Wildcats made their first section title-game appearance since 1999.

Along the way, he put up some of the best numbers in school history, leading the North Coast Section in passing yards and total yardage. He also ranked No. 6 in NCS Division 2 for total rushing yards.

For his outstanding senior campaign, David is more than deserving to be named The Press Democrat’s 2025 Offensive Player of the Year.

As mentioned, his passing-yardage mark of 2,809 yards was tops in the section. In 13 games played, he passed for more than 200 yards in eight of them — including a streak of six such games to start the season. He hit a career high of 367 yards in a 50-43 loss to Maria Carrillo, when he also threw for two touchdowns.

David’s legs were equally as effective as he rushed for 14 touchdowns on the year. He had four scores on the ground in a 42-13 win over Analy on just 12 carries in the game.

David finished his career at Ukiah with a 25-13 overall record. The 25-wins mark is among the best in the Redwood Empire for a three-year starting quarterback.

David has not yet detailed his college plans, but hopes to continue playing football after high school.

Ukiah quarterback Beau David leaves the pocket for a first down Aug. 29 against Rancho Cotate in Rohnert Park. (Kent Porter - The Press Democrat)

ALL-PRESS DEMOCRAT OFFENSE

Offensive player of the year:

Beau David, Sr., Ukiah

Finalists:

Estefan Ramirez, Sr., Maria Carrillo
Cayden Waldrop, Sr., Sonoma Valley
Malakai Pathoumnourack, Sr., Cardinal Newman
Gabe Casanovas, Sr., St. Vincent
Andre Lopez, Sr., American Canyon
Evan Clarke, Sr., Petaluma

First team:

QB: Gabe Casanovas, Sr., St. Vincent
QB: Carter Vose III, Jr., Windsor
RB: Cayden Waldrop, Sr., Sonoma Valley
RB: Malakai Pathoumnourack, Sr., Cardinal Newman
RB: Evan Clarke, Sr., Petaluma
WR: Estefan Ramirez, Sr., Maria Carrillo
WR: Blayke Ferronato, Jr., Windsor
WR: Dareon Dorsey, Sr., Ukiah
TE: Benicio Reyes, Sr., Sonoma Valley
OL: Devon Bertoli, Sr., Cardinal Newman
OL: Marcello McFarland, Sr., Windsor
OL: Lorenzo Webb, Sr., St. Vincent
OL: Caden James, Sr., American Canyon
OL: Kahlio Vaetoe, Jr., Cardinal Newman
OL: Franco Bernardini, Sr., Casa Grande
Specialist: Hunter Probst, Sr., Rancho Cotate

Second team:

QB: Cooper Bluestone, Sr., Maria Carrillo
QB: Dalan Lopata, Sr., Sonoma Valley
RB: Andre Lopez, Sr., American Canyon
RB: Christopher Thompson, Jr., Ukiah
RB: Mason Caturegli, Sr., St. Vincent
WR: Jonah Bertoli, Sr., Cardinal Newman
WR: Dean Sommer, Sr., St. Helena
WR: Ryan Todd, Sr., Ukiah
TE: Jack Ellis, Sr., St. Vincent
OL: Sam Escobar Montoya, Sr., American Canyon
OL: Connor Quigley, Jr., Ukiah
OL: Malakai Khaoone, Sr., Cardinal Newman
OL: Lance Wegman, Sr., St. Vincent
OL: Alex Southern, Sr., Maria Carrillo
OL: Wyatt O’Brien, Sr., Analy
Specialist: Henry Drozdowicz, Sr., Vintage

Honorable mention:

QB: Nicholas Lobato, Sr., Elsie Allen
QB: Jhony Covarrubias, Sr., St. Helena
RB: Brantz Jacobs, Sr., Analy
RB: Ronan Curley, Sr., Casa Grande
RB: Rashai Thompson, Sr., Santa Rosa
WR: Colin Buckley, Sr., Sonoma Valley
WR: Barrett Chaput, Jr., St. Vincent
WR: Zach Martinez, Sr., Ukiah
TE: Jerrek Buckley, Jr., Rancho Cotate
OL: Finnegan Dyck, Jr., Cardinal Newman
OL: Jaden Fata, So., Piner
OL: Samuel Ponce, Sr., Santa Rosa
OL: Max Kaufman, Sr., Vintage
OL: Brody Carrington, Sr., Maria Carrillo
OL: Charlie Renati, Sr., Petaluma
Specialist: Devon Taylor, Jr., Cardinal Newman

(The Press Democrat)

UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Meet Bandit, a bright and energetic young McNabb mix puppy who’s ready to steal your heart, and maybe your running shoes! This playful boy is full of life, enthusiasm, and smarts. He thrives on activity and mental stimulation, and he’s already showing how quickly he can learn. Bandit has begun mastering some basic commands and shows all the makings of an excellent working or sport dog. Bandit is not your typical couch-potato companion. He’ll be happiest with a family that enjoys the outdoors, daily exercise, and plenty of engaging activities. Whether it’s hiking, ranch work, agility, or just an active lifestyle, Bandit is eager to be part of the adventure. If you’re looking for a loyal, intelligent partner who’s always up for fun, and you’re committed to giving him the training and stimulation he needs, Bandit is ready to be your new best friend. Bandit is 4 months old and 25 smarty-pants pounds.

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

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

We're on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/mendoanimalshelter/ For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453. Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

GURNEY BANNED

They're doing it again.

The MLP Listerve Nazi's have suspended my account. I'm not sure what I said. Hopefully, it wasn't against you. But what I'm saying is, they are going to get sued, big time. You can't deprive anyone of their 1st Amendment Rights just because you don't like what they have to say. I didn't threaten to harm anyone. It's $10k in small claims court, last time I checked. Please ask them to Restore my account, or they will be served in court next week. And they aren't going to like the publicity.

David Gurney, Fort Bragg

UNITY CLUB NEWS

The AV Unity Club was happy to put on another joyous, successful Holiday Bazaar on December 6th at the Fairgrounds. There were lots of shoppers, children making crafts with the PTAV, and visits with Santa. Our generous donors provided silent auction items, the proceeds of which will provide scholarships for graduating seniors in the spring. The High School was well represented: the senior class sold delicious homemade posole and tamales for their senior trip, the FFA provided beautiful wreaths to raise money for their programs, and items sold from Service Learning students supported the community skatepark project.

Auction donors included The Boonville Hotel, Jeanne Eliades, Charlotte Triplett, Disco Ranch, Gowan's Oak Tree, Denisse Mattei, Handley Cellars, Evette LaPaille, Greenwood Ridge Vineyards, Jumbo's Win-Win, Husch Vineyards, Kathy Borst, Lemon's Philo Market, Kristen Walker, Lula Cellars, Navarro Vineyards & Winery, Rossi's Hardware, Pennyroyal Farm, Sun & Cricket, Roederer Estate, Anderson Valley Brewing Company, Farmhouse Mercantile, Mosswood Market, Cafe & Bakery, and several Unity members. A special thanks goes to Ray Langevin for making his long journey from the Far North!

We thank everyone for making this long-time community event special.

Alice Bonner and Elizabeth Wyant, Holiday Bazaar Co-Chairs

BOONVILLE HOLIDAY QUIZ, 2025

It's almost time for this fun-filled evening at The Boonville Distillery and Restaurant. We will 'kick-off' at 7pm on Tuesday 23rd and Libby's Mexican menu will be available. Hope to see you there.

Cheers,

Steve Sparks, Quizmaster.

JUST MISSED IT

ED NOTES

LISTENING to a recent KPFA fundraising pitch has convinced me to subscribe. I listen to it a lot down here in Marin and think the good stuff on the station outweighs the crackpots, so cracked one wonders who listens on an otherwise sane radio station. I was thinking about the media I'd really, really miss if it disappeared.

I WOULDN'T MISS television if it was gone today because I don't watch anything on it, only the 49ers.. Radio sportscasts are, for me, a superior way to take in a Giants or a Niners game because the play by play people are so much better at it than the tv drones. And I don't need the visuals because the Bay Area sports people are so good at describing what has happened. Like lots of people, I do watch those brilliant streaming series like The Wire, Breaking Bad and Deadwood, which are anyway obtainable through Netflix. I watch those on a tv screen, the only use I have for the thing.

AS AN ASIDE, I came late to The Wire. I watched the very first episode and wasn't grabbed by it. I was also reluctant to watch a drama pegged to black crime, because black people, in real life, are vilified every day as CRIME IN AMERICA, with Mexicans running a strong second these days. It isn't true, and it isn't fair. Now that I'm into The Wire, though, it seems beyond brilliant to me. And honest. And totally fair.

THERE'S NOTHING on the internet which, if it were suddenly gone, would cause me to slap on a mourning armband. Out of necessity anymore I have to do stuff on computers all day, and my eyes feel like they're bleeding. Just the other day, a little kid wandered in to my office and asked me why I was crying! Techno-tears, my dear. These things are like staring into the sun.

I'D MISS the Chronicle, partly because I've read it for 60 years, partly because a few times a week the reporting on the Bay Area is quite good, as is some of the commentary. I could live without The New Yorker and there are no literary mags that I'm aware of that are any good, certainly not at $8-$15 a pop. The New Yorker is consistently about one for four; one in four has something good in it. The old Grand Street was wonderful. The new Grand Street isn't. I've never much read the New York Times for the same reason I don't listen to NPR — they're both at severe odds with the reality I know, and I have no interest in that reality except its destruction. And the smug voices of the NPR announcers make me want to run out and garrotte my congressman.

FOR ALL THE SELF-DESCRIBED writers there are in the SF Bay Area and NorCal, the combined literary output isn't even as interesting as a newspaper — any newspaper. Bay Area journalism (and KPFA) peaked in the late 1960s, and it's rolled steadily downhill since. I picked up the Rolling Stone when Matt Taibbi was in it, but it's of zero interest to a non-rocker like me. (I subscribe to Racket News and I always profit from Glenn Greenwald's commentary.

THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS is my must read. I've subscribed to it and the New York Review of Books for many years, but prefer the London Review because it's politically more independent than the New York Review, which I think is way too Democrat-friendly in its coverage of economics and contemporary events, and American political figures. The London Review presents a much more eclectic collection of interesting stuff, much of it with real bite, although LRB's lit-crit is usually much too abstruse for this particular autodidact. For example the piece by O'Hagan called Ghosting Julian Assange would never appear in any American publication at the length the LRB presented it. And ditto for their withering contempt for Kissinger. But in every issue, even in the articles far beyond my intellectual ken, there will be some fascinating piece of information, some riveting vignette, such as this one from the current issue:

“…A PREGNANT WOMAN came to my clinic. She hadn't felt her baby move for a day or so, and wanted me to reassure her by listening for its heartbeat. Normal stethoscopes are no use for listening to the heartbeat of a baby in the womb; the sound is too fast, quiet and high-pitched. Midwives often use an electronic Doppler probe to find the fetal heart, but I used a modified tube called a Pinard stethoscope, like an old-fashioned ear trumpet, wedged between one ear and the swollen contour of the woman's belly. The best place to lay the trumpet end is where you think you've felt the convex curve of the baby's spine. Even with one finger in my other ear it took a while to find the heart — an agonizing couple of minutes for the mother. But there it was: a rhapsodic, syncopated interleaving of her heartbeat with her baby's. The fetal heartbeat was distinct, fluttering fast like a bird over the oceanic swell of the mother's pulse, an allegro played over an adagio. I paused for a moment listening to the two rhythms within one, two lives within one body.”

— Gavin Francis

CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, December 20, 2025

LIZBETH BARRALES-GONZALEZ, 31, Ukiah. Brandishing a weapon-not a gun in a threatening, rude, or angry manner, child neglect, controlled substance, paraphernalia, disobeying court order.

ALAIN BERNAL-CRUZ, 44, Gualala. Domestic battery.

JOSHUA FOLK JR., 19, Ukiah. DUI.

KYLE HUNTER, 38, Upper Lake/Ukiah. Parole violation.

ALEJANDRO NAJERA-ORTIZ, 26, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI-any drug, suspended license.

LILIAN SAYAD, 21, Willits. Failure to appear.

CALIFORNIA WILL FINALLY OPEN DUNGENESS CRAB SEASON, BUT WHEN?

by Tara Duggan

The California Dungeness crab commercial fishing will begin this year on Jan. 5, past its traditional holiday season opener but in time for Lunar New Year celebrations.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced the opening date Friday, which applies to commercial fishing along the coast from the Sonoma-Mendocino County line to Santa Barbara County. Fishing boats working in the Sonoma to Big Sur region will have to reduce the number of pots they use by 40% to protect endangered whales observed in the area that can be injured or killed by fishing gear.

“Setting the opening date of the Dungeness crab fishery is never easy. The commercial Dungeness crab fishery is inherently complex, and careful consideration is required to ensure we are supporting California’s fishing communities while also reducing risk of entanglement of whales and sea turtles off our coast,” Charlton H. Bonham, director of Fish and Wildlife, said in a statement.

North of the Sonoma-Mendocino County border, the commercial season will start no sooner than Jan. 15 because crabs in that area are testing for unhealthy levels of domoic acid, a potentially deadly toxin, according to the department. The department has allowed sport fishing for crab since Nov. 1 on most of the coast.

Rules designed to protect endangered humpback whales and Pacific leatherback sea turtles from getting entangled in crabbing gear have pushed back the start of the commercial season, formerly Nov. 15, in each of the past seven years.

Dick Ogg, a Bodega Bay crab fisherman and member of a working group that helps determine the timing of the seasons, said the outcome is what the fishing community expected, though they’d prefer to go earlier and to be able to use more fishing gear if they could.

(SF Chronicle)

*Approaching Storm, Coast Range, California* (1921) by Maynard Dixon

MEMO OF THE AIR: A Natalie Is Freezing Xmas.

"Sometimes I feel that the biggest threat to humanity is information collapse: Our collective epistemology (the way we know what's true) is fragmenting, eroding our capacity for shared understanding and coordinated action. Humanity is becoming like an ant colony that's lost its pheromone trails (or the pheromones are counterfeit). Each ant races with purpose, yet the colony itself no longer knows where it's going. Like ants in a disturbed nest, we scatter in every direction, mistaking noise and anger for signal, and mistaking frenzy for purpose." –Cliff Pickover

Marco here. Here's the recording of Friday night's (9pm PDT, 2025-12-19) almost eight-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO.org, on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and also, for the first three hours, on 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino, ready for you to re-enjoy in whole or in part. This time, Clifford Allen Sanders, 95 now, who's written a hundred stories, many of them collected in both published and yet-unpublished books, and all of them read on previous MOTA shows, phoned in from an assisted living facility in Oregon a little more than 50 minutes into the show and stayed for 45 minutes. He has led an amazing life. I don't know if you've seen the movie Zelig, but Cliff Sanders is kind of an Okie Zelig character in the real world. One of his sons just got him an apartment in Eureka and he'll be moving there soon. Oh, right, also I should say that the recording begins with a few minutes of what was on before it, Terrence McKenna explaining about the origins of the Santa Claus myth in Amanita muscaria mushrooms and consequent psychedelic reindeer urine, DMT elves, and childlike sense of wonder. https://memo-of-the-air.s3.amazonaws.com/KNYO_0675_MOTA_2025-12-19.mp3

Coming shows can feature your own story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

The Monkees - Riu Chiu. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2025/12/riu-chiu.html

"Look at you, living in filth! You Nazarethians are garbage!" https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2025/12/19

Space suits. About them. One of my favorite Robert Heinlein books is Have Space Suit, Will Travel. It's about a boy who earnestly wins a retired space suit in a soap ad jingle contest, fixes up the suit so it's airtight, plays with its radio outside at night, becomes kidnapped by human thugs in the employ of malevolent aliens, makes friends with a genius little girl and a kind of intelligent cat-deer creature (fellow captives), and ends up in a three-galaxy court of legitimate, serious, alien governments that are neither bad nor good but aloof. He has to speak on behalf of humanity, with the penalty, if they vote against us, of having Earth rotated out of spacetime to freeze in a pocket universe prison with no sun. He sees that that's likely, as it's just happened to another race of aliens as low on the totem pole as we are and, shaking and in despair, he says something to the entire assembly so defiant and stirring and heroic and perfect and /human/ that even thinking about it just now makes me burst out crying. https://theawesomer.com/how-a-nasa-spacesuit-works/791585

A big theater full of people all warmly and happily singing Creep. Look up covers of Creep on YouTube, they're all compelling. If they're done well, they work; if they're done poorly, they work better. "I'm a creep. I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here?" It is an anthem. https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2025/12/people-having-fun-singing-creep.html

Finally, Pillar of Garbage, by Natalie is Freezing, from Season 6, Episode 2 (S6E2) of Community. "The band and song make fun of 1990s Lilith Fair-era alt-pop. It became, even in its never-finished form, a metafictional hit." The concept brings the Monkees to mind. They were equally fictional as a band, at first. They developed, though. Natalie is Freezing stopped where they started. Too bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2wvfoHcz8k

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

HIGHWAY 101 CARPOOL HOURS TO CHANGE FOLLOWING COMMUTER UPROAR

by Rachel Swan

Pummeled by complaints from North Bay drivers, state and regional transportation officials say they will reduce the carpool lane hours on a recently overhauled stretch of Highway 101.

They have not yet decided on a new permanent schedule. Representatives of Caltrans said they are conducting a traffic analysis along the 52 miles of freeway from Windsor to the Richardson Bay Bridge. This fall, Caltrans completed a 30-year rebuild of that corridor, widening a notorious bottleneck between Petaluma and Novato, and creating a continuous carpool lane through Marin and Sonoma counties.

It got a warm reception and a well-attended ribbon-cutting, followed by weeks of tumult.

Now leaders at Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission are sitting down with their local counterparts at the Transportation Authority of Marin and the Sonoma Country Transportation and Climate Authorities. They will recommend a new permanent schedule, still undeviating across county borders, in late January. The change will take effect in February with new signs along the Highway 101 corridor.

Transportation planners had sought consistency when the new lanes opened in October. They settled on uniform carpool hours across two counties: 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. in the mornings and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the evenings, Monday through Friday. During those times the high-occupancy diamond lanes would be reserved for cars with two or more people inside.

Many motorists balked, saying that the hours extended past what could reasonably be considered rush hour, and that as a result, the HOV lanes would sit empty while the adjacent general-purpose traffic lanes remained packed.

“I can confirm that we at MTC, and I presume our partners at Caltrans and other agencies, got an earful from North Bay residents and North Bay commuters,” said John Goodwin, spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. “I myself responded to scores of emails and certainly answered dozens of phone calls.”

Carol Meyers, a Novato resident who is among the people disenchanted by the new carpool lane hours, said that since they were implemented, her 12-mile commute to San Rafael has swelled to an hour, on average.

Lately she’s seen more cars drift into the carpool lanes, which helps disperse traffic, she said. Meyers suspects many of these drivers may be cheating, though she usually doesn’t have clear sight lines to the passenger seats, since so many vehicles have tinted windows.

“But if they’re in the carpool lanes, and they’re out of my lanes, that’s fine with me,” she said.

Ideally, Meyers wants Caltrans to revert to Marin’s former carpool hours from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. southbound and 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. northbound, though she’d accept just about anything less restrictive than the current hours.

Although Caltrans said in its announcement Thursday afternoon that engineers would use traffic data to iron out the best and most efficient carpool lane hours, Goodwin cited at least one precedent for the agency tweaking a carpool lane “in response to public opinion.” A similar situation happened around 1990, when Caltrans shortened a carpool lane on Interstate 580 that was supposed to extend from the interchange near Golden Gate Fields race track to the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. Instead, the lane runs from the westbound approach, in Richmond, to the span’s toll plaza.

That segment of freeway will soon be renovated to allow more carpools once crews convert a general traffic lane into a toll lane for high-occupancy vehicles.

JACK LONDON, CELEBRITY SOCIALIST AT 150

by Jonah Raskin

For more than 100 years, his short story, “To Build a Fire,” was required reading for nearly every school kid in the US, most likely to teach them the necessity of survival, though the tale might also have been read as a paean to dying. The fictional nameless protagonist perishes alone in the cold and the snow, unable to build a fire. He’s a failure, not a success story. Now, on the anniversary of his birth in San Francisco, 150 years ago, Jack London, like his fictional protagonist, might be called another dead white male consigned to the slagheap of largely forgotten American authors. Maybe that’s where he should have landed decades ago, though the Russian-born anarchist Emma Goldman called him “the only revolutionary writer in America.” What was she thinking and what did she mean by revolutionary?

It’s true that he belonged to the Socialist Party for 20 years and that he resigned, he explained in a letter, “because of its lack of fire and fight, and its loss of emphasis on the class struggle.” The US Socialist Party was against the US entering World War I. London was for it. An odd sort of socialist, he wanted to be rich, live in a mansion on an estate with servants and in the manner of the robber barons he claimed were his enemies. With a democratic socialist newly elected the mayor of New York, it might be worthwhile to reexamine the political career of the radical Jack London who ran for mayor of Oakland twice and lost twice. Unlike Zohran Mamdani, he didn’t have a grassroots organization and local organizers with him.

True, he embraced genuine issues; he lobbied for the eight-hour-day and the end of child labor in factories. Also, to his credit, he defended Charles Moyer, William “Big Bill” Haywood and George Pettibone, the three members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) on trial in Idaho and falsely charged with the murder of governor Frank Steunenberg in 1905. That same year and in the wake of the abortive revolution in Russia, he gave rousing speeches from Berkeley to Harvard in which he called for violence and assassinations to overthrow the old order and usher in the new.

At the same time, he also supported the US invasion of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and argued that American Indians should abandon their ways and embrace the ways of the white man.

In a letter dated June 12, 1899, he wrote “The negro [sic] races, the mongrel races, the slavish races, the unprogressive races, are of bad blood – that is, of blood which is not qualified to permit them to successfully survive the selection by which the fittest survive.” Eleven days later he wrote about “the niggers of Africa,” as he called them, and insisted that socialism was “devised for the happiness of certain kindred races.” Twelve days before Christmas in 1899, London reiterated his white supremacist views and explained to a friend, “the black has stopped, just as the monkey has stopped. Never will even the highest anthropoid apes evolve into man; likewise the negro [sic] into a type of man higher than any existing.” Jay Craven, who directed the 2021 movie version of London’s autobiographical novel Martin Eden, was wise enough to cast Black actors in the roles of the fictional white characters and thereby forestall criticism.

London’s defenders have argued that he merely echoed the predominant views of his time. True, Jim Crow ruled much of the nation, but W. E. B. Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, the same year that The Call of the Wild was published, and in 1909, Du Bois and friends founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Oddly enough, though perhaps not, London was raised by a Black woman who he called “mammy” and described himself as her “white pickaninny,” surely knowing it was a racial slur.

While London was a socialist, he was also an imperialist, a jingoist and a racist; in short a man with contradictions galore that reflected the deep-seated social and political contradictions of American society in the aftermath of the Civil War and the run-up to World War I, a war he wanted the US to join and defeat the Germans. From 1896, when he joined the Socialist Party, until 1916 when he left it, London wasn’t a democratic socialist.

In the essay “How I Became a Socialist,” first published in Comrade in 1903, he wrote that fear of falling into the “Social Pit” pushed him into the Socialist Party. “The woman of the streets and the man of the gutter drew very close to me,” he explained. “I saw them, saw myself above them…and I confess a terror seized me.” As his daughter Joan London pointed out in her biography of her father, he was attracted to strong charismatic figures, not grassroots organizers and organizations. He had much in common, Joan argued, with Mussolini. George Orwell noted that he had “a fascist strain.” By his own admission, London never attended a Socialist Party meeting.

A celebrity socialist, a socialist with a famous name, as well as a dynamic speaker with an entourage that included Mother Jones and Emma Goldman, he was used by the movement to promote the cause of socialism. He rarely if ever made sacrifices for it. Celebrities can be a liability; they popularize causes but they also draw attention to themselves and their careers as they did in the Sixties. In fact, socialist publications promoted London’s work and helped to make him a best-selling author. On a rare occasion, he was called a fake socialist who lived a life of luxury on Beauty Ranch in Sonoma County, far from the political fray.

If teachers had assigned his work to explore his contractions, London would have been the perfect author to place on reading lists. But for decades London scholars ignored his white supremacist views, jingoism and his fear and abhorrence of miscegenation. There were exceptions, such as Philip Foner, the editor of Jack London: American Rebel, a collection of London’s writings on social issues. Foner pointed out that London never denounced the enslavement of indigenous peoples in the South Pacific, though on one occasion he joined enslavers and observed their expedition into the jungle.

For the most part, biographers and critics have defended London and his books. True, there were always some cracks in the crowd of worshippers, but what seems to have made a real difference in the world of London scholarship and pedagogy was Black Lives Matter. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, teachers could not continue to be uncritical apologists for the author of Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf. Students didn’t buy the accolades they were selling.

Now, with Trump in the White House, racism resurgent and the return of statues for generals of the Confederacy, London might be regarded in some circles as something of a cultural hero. But not so fast. London’s The Iron Heel, predicted the coming of an oligarchy in the US. In that prophetic work, he describes a sinister conspiracy to quash freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, imprison outspoken opponents and critics, control news and information, install a professional army of paid mercenaries, create a secret police force, and wage global warfare for economic hegemony. It has always sold far better around the world than in the US. Read The Iron Heel , of course, and then read his least racist books, The People of the Abyss, about the poverty at the heart of the British Empire, and The Road, about his experiences as a hobo traveling across the US, and his arrest and incarceration in Buffalo, New York.

Let’s hope that Mamdani isn’t sucked into the celebrity circuit and that his family, friends and the citizens of New York help to keep him honest in a city that gave birth to Trump and Giuliani.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.)

READ THE ROOM

by David Yearsley

Seen from within its courtyard off busy Euston Road in London, the British Library is meant to look like a stately ocean liner pulling out to sea against the gables, turrets, and clock tower of St. Pancras railway station. The single porthole cut into the long brick hull seals the reference to maritime splendor, that one round window a postmodern wink amidst the riot of Victorian whimsy behind.

St. Pancras was built as a grand railway hotel in the 1870s, and after its great days and those of the Empire were over, it spent many defunct decades in the mid-20th century. It’s now a Marriott. Together, the two structures might seem to evoke the glories and allure of travel to India or other colonies, the big red ship of research allowing intellectual journeys during which the mind moves even as the building doesn’t.

The seas His Majesty’s knowledge vessel cuts through of late have been stormy. If a building could enact the “pathetic fallacy,” the British Library would be listing badly to port, only kept from capsizing by the piers of St. Pancras.

Two years ago, the hacker collective known as Rhysida attacked the information systems of the library and gained access to hundreds of thousands of files. Since then, these tech banditos have amassed a diverse CV of mayhem, including actions against the Chilean army, the City of Columbus, Ohio, the schools of Rutherford County, Tennessee, and the Maryland Department of Transportation, among other targets.

The group’s method of ransoming their British Library booty was to auction it off with the opening bid set at 20 Bitcoin, then worth about $700,000. The British Library refused, and Rhysida dumped scans of passports and other vital personal information of employees onto the dark web. The library’s online catalog was taken down, and individual research and various initiatives and programs were severely hampered or suspended.

Lack of funding was blamed for the porous cyber defenses. Members of staff, already strained by overwork and low wages that force many to take second jobs elsewhere, were on the front lines of library-user anger, whereas managers and directors were largely insulated from the discontent. At the end of a two-week walkout by employees earlier this fall, the library’s CEO, Rebecca Lawrence, resigned from the post, which she had taken only in January of this year. The initial ransom price demanded by Rhysida has proved to be about a tenth of the estimated price tag for repairing the digital damage, never mind the cost to relations with staff and patrons.

Leading literary figures like the novelist Zadie Smith defended the strikes and decried the lack of support for staff and the insufficiency of funding for culture and research. Writing in The Guardian, Smith lamented that “in England one of the most famous libraries in the world is treated as an afterthought, an embarrassment.” She went on bitterly:

You can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word—but if you then chronically underfund your cultural institutions, and treat your cultural workers with contempt, many people will suspect you of being full of it.

The library happens to be located in Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Holborn & St Pancras constituency. The beleaguered Labour Party leader has shown rather vague support for the rights of lowercase labor, but he has faced increasing criticism for his failure to intervene, especially during last week’s second work stoppage at the library, which led to a shutdown not just of the reading rooms but of the whole building. Starmer now has a literally graver strike to deal with: National Health Service doctors have walked out just as the U.K. reports its highest rate of flu infection ever at this time of year.

When I arrived to work at the library last month, the newly constructed online catalog was not yet ready. Things limped along with a provisional system put in place after the cyberattacks. But no books or manuscripts could be ordered; only the reference items on the shelves running along the walls of the reading room were to hand. Users could work at numbered desks, equipped with elegant lights and pigskin writing surfaces, but no leatherbound volumes by the likes of Paracelsus or Gibbon or Rousseau were to be seen at these stations next to the MacBook Pros. Though writing with a pen in hand is a rare activity now in the library, the pigskin allows for a soft landing for laptops, and there are power sources at the tabletop level.

That no books were being pulled out of the stacks, the catalog was still down also meant that there was no line at the circulation desk of patrons waiting to get the materials they had ordered or respectfully holding items to be returned. That was often one of the most entertaining rituals—the spectacle of some grandstanding don commenting on the first editions some unsuspecting graduate students carefully held as they stood in line. In my memory, this glory hound was always a he, and always a he with an English accent.

There are long sightlines across the hundreds of workplaces in the cavernous Rare Books and Music Reading Room. Light pours in from windows tucked in below the high, raked ceiling. Maybe it’s supposed to be like being in the hold of a ship not yet filled with cargo.

If you were trying to avoid a colleague you’d tangled with at some previous academic conference, or who was in general worth evading, you could generally hunker down behind a folio volume or two and escape detection. But if you had ordered materials, you had to queue up at the desk, ready to be looked over and possibly surveyed by the quietly nosy, queried by the naturally curious, or interrogated by the extrovertedly inquisitive.

The new British Library catalog, worked on assiduously since the cyberattack, was due to go back online on Monday, December 8. I had hoped to inspect a copy of J. S. Bach’s Clavierübung III from 1731, his first publication of keyboard music. The volume in the British Library’s holdings had been personally corrected by the composer. It had come to the library thanks to Paul Hirsch, one of the greatest music collectors and bibliophiles of the 20th century. A refugee to England from Nazi Germany, he sold his holdings to the British Library in 1946, five years before his own death. Hirsch had wanted his beloved library to remain intact and therefore had resisted higher offers from the United States.

A talented amateur musician, gifted with considerable discernment, expertise, and a substantial fortune, he amassed important, unique materials from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, among many other composers and writers on music. He was fascinated by Renaissance music theory and also by the beauty of the books he bought, especially drawn to those rich in images—woodcuts, engravings, annotations. He acquired one of only three surviving copies of the first book published about the organ, Arnolt Schlick’s Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten (Mirror of Organ Builders and Organists) of 1511, which I have been lucky enough to hold in my hands, though that was in the Round Reading Room of the old British Library, then in the British Museum about a mile away from the current location. That was before the ocean-liner British Library was launched in 1998.

But the longshoremen and women, the bibliophilic pursers, shipwrights, went on strike the same day the new catalog went online. The library was mothballed for my remaining days in London.

My Bachian voyage would have to be postponed. Turns out I won’t be holding Hirsch’s Bach score when this ocean liner of the mind goes down—not in the freezing North Atlantic, but in the post-industrial, post-imperial maelstrom of malaise.

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

ON A QUIET EVENING in 1971, John List, a 46-year-old accountant from Westfield, New Jersey, committed a crime so calculated and chilling that it would haunt the nation for decades.

Having recently lost his job at a local bank, List was consumed by fear and despair, unable to face his family with the truth. He became convinced that without financial stability, his loved ones would stray from God and risk eternal damnation. In his distorted reasoning, he believed that killing them while their hearts were still devoted would secure their place in heaven. Over the course of a meticulously planned evening, List methodically murdered his mother, his wife, and two of his children, taking careful steps to ensure no one could escape.

After killing the four family members, List maintained the appearance of normalcy. He made himself a sandwich, balanced his finances, and even drove his only surviving son, John, to a high school soccer game. Upon returning home, he ended his son’s life in the same cold, calculated manner, completing the murders that would leave the family home silent and empty. List then spent the night in the house he had emptied of life, as if nothing had changed, before quietly walking out the next morning and vanishing without a trace.

For the next eighteen years, List lived under a new identity, Robert Clark, relocating to Colorado, remarrying, and blending into society as a seemingly ordinary man. His ability to evade capture for nearly two decades was aided by careful planning, minimal digital footprints, and his unassuming persona.

Ultimately, justice caught up with him in 1989 when authorities tracked him down, and he was arrested and brought to trial. Convicted of multiple counts of murder, List spent the remainder of his life in prison, where he eventually died. His story remains a chilling example of premeditated familial homicide, illustrating the terrifying extremes of obsession, delusion, and the lengths to which a person can go when driven by twisted convictions.

DOPAMINE

Dopamine
Dopamine

I know it's just dopamine
But it feels so real to me
I'm tripping on our chemistry
It's firing up inside of me
I just need to know
That I'm not alone
I know it's just dopamine
But it feels so real to me

Nothing's ever going to cut you as deep
As the very first time
Nothing's ever going to taste just as sweet
As when it is just out of reach
No one in this world was ever as free
Oh baby, there's no limit
Something here's opening deep inside of me
I can finally reach it

This is one of those ones where you've just gotta give in
I'm going to give it my all
This time, it's going to be whatever, and that's cool
I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve
I need to get out of this rubber coat
Baby, I can't hold it
Everything's bubbling 'round up side my mind
And when I let go, it's so easy

I know it's just dopamine (oh, oh)
But it feels so real to me (but it feels so real)
I know it's just dopamine
But it feels so real to me

– Robin Miriam Carlsson (2025)

*Ridge and Rillito, Arizona* (1943) by Maynard Dixon

FIVE CRAZIEST THINGS ABOUT THE EPSTEIN CASE, VOL. 1

On Jeffrey Epstein and the word, "pedophile."

by Michael Tracey

Saturday was the (presumed) statutory deadline for release of the so-called “Epstein Files” — although the common expectation that this means the full scope of relevant “files” will actually be released is extremely misguided, given the demands of purported victims and their lawyers to redact, withhold, or otherwise conceal what could turn out to be an enormous cross-section of records in the government’s possession. We’ll have to see what transpires. In any event, Matt Taibbi and I thought now would be a good time for a collaborative series examining some of most mind-bending, yet chronically ignored, aspects of this sprawling Epstein mega-drama — many of which drastically complicate popular assumptions around what the story actually entails. A miasma of jaw-dropping misconceptions have been allowed to proliferate almost entirely without challenge, and it’s had a cascade of awful consequences that get nowhere near enough attention: moral panic, mass hysteria, stunning media failures, infringement of civil liberties, widespread misdiagnosis of genuine political problems -- among others. So somebody’s got to provide an overdue corrective, even if it guarantees we’ll both be slimed for doing the basic journalistic inquiry that should’ve been done all along. I already have plenty of experience with the nasty blowback this undertaking will inevitably engender, and I commend Racket for having the gumption to follow suit. It’s very much needed. What follows is part one of my list of the five craziest parts of the Epstein story:

If there’s a single word the average news consumer calls to mind when they hear about some new micro-development in the interminable Jeffrey Epstein saga, it would have to be “pedophile” — that most fiercely radioactive of words, upon hearing which, approximately 99% of the population instantly de-activates whatever might be left of their critical faculties.

Media outlets from the Daily Beast, to TMZ, to the New York Post and Business Insider continue to eagerly plaster coinages like “pedophile island” in their unrelenting torrent of Epstein-related headlines; the term can also be routinely found in CNN segments, WIRED features, and God knows how many viral social media posts. Just this week, The Nation published an article matter-of-factly asserting that Epstein was the mastermind of a “global pedophile ring,” as author Greg Grandin tries to grapple with recent revelations that his legendary mensch Noam Chomsky once had a series of (supposedly) disturbing dalliances with Epstein. Nowhere is the slightest indication given that Grandin has ever actually examined the underlying evidentiary basis for this extraordinary assertion: that Chomsky, of all people, completely lost his mind and decided to consort with the villainous architect of a “global pedophile ring.” More likely, Grandin has simply absorbed the ambient assumptions swirling around the Epstein affair, and repeated them back in print. Which would be par for the course, as the topic seems uniquely exempt from any standard fact-checking requirements.

Since the renewed Epstein rancor really exploded last summer, fueled by a bombardment of accusations that some massive undelineated coverup was being orchestrated by the Trump Administration, Democrats in Congress have taken to charging that their Republican colleagues are afflicted with “Pedophile Protection Syndrome; that they’re running a “Pedophile Protection Program”; and even that the Grand Ol’ Party should formally change its name to the “Pedophile Protection Party.” As though systematically shielding pedophiles from punishment is now understood to be the core organizing principle of the GOP. These gleeful partisan excoriations were of course partly enabled by a sequence of “own goals” from top Republican officials: case in point, the infamous video of Kash Patel, as a private citizen on the podcast circuit, raging at then-FBI Director Christopher Wray to “put on your big boy pants and tell us who the pedophiles are!” Then, having not “told us who the pedophiles are” after Patel himself became FBI Director, it wasn’t exactly surprising that his political adversaries would eventually take notice of the outlandish contrast. And so back and forth the “pedophile” accusations are flung, like a cursed partisan ping pong ball, with the out-of-power party always seeming to newly discover the joy of encouraging everyone else to believe that the in-power party is letting their fugitive pedo pals off the hook.

In this sense, Epstein is only the current iteration of the morbid bipartisan fascination with Perpetual Pedo Panic — the gift that keeps on giving. Which is not to deny that the strange particularities of the Epstein story also supply a bottomless goldmine of material. Central to the story’s enduring appeal is an unwavering belief, repeated ad nauseum by politicians and journalists, that Epstein was a “convicted pedophile” — and thus the legal predicate has already been established for whatever sordid extrapolations people may care to make. From this presumed starting point, the ever-wilder and salacious theories freely spring. Hence why it’s now taken for granted that anyone who was ever in proximity to Epstein — no matter how peripherally — is forever tarnished by that wicked association. Even the Trump White House, in its cantankerous defensive crouch, has occasionally tried to parry Democratic attacks by retorting that it’s actually their party bigwigs who are most damningly implicated by past relations with this world-renowned “convicted pedophile.” Because if Epstein was a “convicted pedophile,” that’s the worst thing anyone can ever be — right? And an indiscriminate wrecking ball should therefore be taken to any institution or individual who can be found to have tolerated his rancid behavior, however passively or unwittingly. Right?

So then… was Jeffrey Epstein a “convicted pedophile”? Do the facts even matter anymore? Because what’s so weird about this whole thing is that the relevant facts are readily available — despite the near-universal lack of interest in actually examining them. Here’s what the facts show: the only time Jeffrey Epstein was ever convicted of a crime, on June 30, 2008, in the circuit court of Palm Beach County, Florida, he pleaded guilty to two state-level offenses. Conveniently, the full transcript of that plea hearing is accessible to all who wish to read it (and whose attention span is superior to that of a fruit fly.) Here’s the transcript, in all its glory — feel free to knock yourself out.

One of the first things attentive readers will notice is that the word “pedophile” (or “pedophila”) appears nowhere in this transcript. Rather, the statutes Epstein pleads guilty to violating are “Felony Solicitation of Prostitution” and “Procuring Person Under 18 for Prostitution.” Only the latter could even conceivably relate to “pedophila,” as the former contained no age-specific provisions.

In the plea hearing, Judge Deborah Pucillo asks the Palm Beach prosecutor, Lanna Belohlavek, if the “victims under age eighteen” are in agreement with the State’s disposition of charges against Epstein. “That victim is not under age 18 any more,” says Belohlavek, but reports she had conveyed her agreement through counsel. Note: only one “victim” — singular — is identified as having been under the age of 18 at the time she was allegedly victimized by Epstein. This representation is accepted by Judge Pucillo.

Who was this victim, you might ask, and what could that tell us about whether Epstein can be rightly described as a “convicted pedophile”? Massive volumes of investigatory records from the relevant time period (2005-2008) were finally released in 2024, pursuant to a law signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, but copious redactions still shroud much of the material bearing on purported victims. So it might be difficult for the average records-peruser to ascertain the identity of this one particular victim, despite how integral she ended up being to the wider Epstein legal odyssey — the reverberations of which continue today with such force. More dogged researchers among us, however, can decipher that the alleged victim in question was a female named Ashley Davis.

Why name Ashley Davis? Not because there’s anything especially remarkable about her — in fact, to the degree she stands out for anything, it’s only for her striking normalcy. Of course her sexual history should be of no special interest for any crude or gratuitous reasons. Ashley Davis happens to be relevant solely for one bizarre reason: that by a macabre accident of fate, she was thrust into a crucial yet largely unknown role in this epochal American mega-drama, which she could’ve had no possible reason to anticipate would still be convulsing the political and media landscape all these years later — with no sign of easing up. Furthermore, she was named in public records, even if the johnny-come-lately FOIA authorities were unsuccessful in fully obscuring her identifying details. So for as long as the Epstein story remains such a red-hot story, it behooves us all to know what actually happened with Ashley Davis.

Noticeably, she has not appeared in any of the Netflix specials, Hulu documentaries, glossy magazine treatises, cable news hits, “true crime” podcasts, or any other of the infinite entertainment products germinated by the Epstein saga. Nor has she attended any of the political rallies, PR campaigns, or press conferences. Based on what I can surmise, she doesn’t even seem to have ever filed a lawsuit. Which is certainly conspicuous, given how many other “victims” have chosen to make their purported Epstein victimhood a defining character trait.

Ashley Davis was interviewed by Detective Joe Recarey of the Palm Beach police department on November 8, 2005. She was 18 years old at the time. Ashley acknowledged traveling to Epstein’s house in Palm Beach on approximately 15 occasions, for the purpose of providing a “massage,” and that she was 17 years old when this all went down — though she did tell Recarey, and later the Grand Jury, that she wasn’t 100% sure about the timing of her first visit, and it was possible it could’ve been just before her 17th birthday. No overt sexual contact occurred during that first visit — she simply performed an amateur massage in her underwear. In subsequent visits, she would’ve been 17.

Asked by Recarey to describe her interactions with Epstein, Ashley volunteered the following: “He never asked me to touch him in any sort of inappropriate way.” She received cash, usually $200, for each “massage” session, during which she would be in various stages of undress. Sometimes she would bring along a female friend, earning her an extra $150. Not bad for an hour’s work for a 17-year-old. She also received gifts from Epstein, like a photography book and a digital camera. Anyone who’s had the misfortune of studying Epstein’s “massage” proclivities in any great depth will know that Ashley’s account so far is banally common; many other similar-aged females reported virtually identical experiences. But there were two key ways in which Ashley was importantly unusual.

First: she said on one occasion, she had full-blown intercourse with Epstein. Again, if you’ve been burdened with learning the intricacies of Epstein’s sexual gratification preferences, you’ll know this was relatively rare for him. Epstein would typically service himself during the dubious massage sessions, and even when some sexual activity would be initiated, seldom did it rise to the level of intercourse. But according to Ashley — and for the record, she seemed entirely credible — there came a time when Epstein sought to have intercourse with her, and she obliged. “It was the day before my 18th birthday,” she said. Asked by Recarey if the intercourse had been consensual, she said it was.

Another way in which Ashley’s account was unique among the sea of other “victims” in this Palm Beach “massage” cohort: many confessed to lying about their ages to Epstein if they were not yet 18, and advising their friends/acquaintances to do the same. As one “victim” recounted, the instructions they’d give each other were as follows: “Make sure you tell him you’re 18… Jeffrey doesn’t want any underage girls.” Ashley, on the other hand, consistently said Epstein was fully aware of her true age (17) at the time of their sexual contact. In other words, she did not lie to him about her age, as others did. This could explain why Ashley ended up being the one person whom Epstein ultimately pleaded guilty to “procuring as a minor for prostitution.” Also, with other purported victims, Epstein’s lawyers pulled out all the stops to dissect and discredit their stories. But not Ashley. In fact, it’s difficult to find any record of Ashley’s veracity ever being challenged. Numerous females in the Palm Beach fiasco had drug problems, erratic personal lives, or were already “dancers” in local strip joints. By comparison, Ashley seemed articulate, well-adjusted, intelligent, and “normal.”

Ashley received a subpoena to appear before the Grand Jury in Palm Beach County on July 19, 2006. In that compulsory appearance, which she only complied with under duress, she emphasized that she did not wish to testify against Epstein. “I would like to put it behind me for the most part,” Ashley said. “I was successful until about two days ago.” (That is, when she’d been served with the subpoena two days earlier.) She came across as far more troubled by the investigation itself — and her involuntary ensnarement in it — than by anything that went on between her and Epstein. If there was any harm she claimed to be enduring, it was because of worry that friends or family could end up hearing about the embarrassing ordeal. “You understand that you in effect were committing prostitution yourself?” a grand juror asked her. “Yes,” she replied.

After the testimony that day, Ashley essentially vanished from the public record. And with that, the only Epstein “victim” below the legal age of consent to actually be adjudicated as such in a bonafide court proceeding really did “move on” — rather than turn her onetime Epstein entanglement into a lifelong personal and professional endeavor, as innumerable other “victims” have done.

So that’s it. That’s the lone person Jeffrey Epstein was ever convicted of engaging in unlawful sexual activity with, when that person was below the age of 18. Of course, countless other accusations against Epstein have been made over the years, especially through avalanches of lucrative civil litigation. He was also charged with additional crimes in 2019, but died in federal custody, so those were never adjudicated. When all was said and done, in terms of any proceeding with the requisite affordances for due process, Ashley was the sole “victim” whom Epstein was ever convicted of having non-adult sexual contact with. And the gravamen of that contact was one instance of consensual intercourse — literally a day before her 18th birthday.

Before anyone asks: yeah, of course Epstein was reckless and impulsive. He was pathologically obsessed with receiving these nonstop “massages,” and had a constant procession of girls coming in and out of his house to perform them, often multiple times a day, with varying degrees of sexualization. No doubt that was a disaster waiting to happen, whether or not the girls were just above or just below the legal age of consent, and even if some had misrepresented their ages so they could swing by and get the easy cash. It was an insane situation for Epstein to put himself in, and especially insane behavior for a wealthy man in his 50s, as anyone of sounder mind would have presumably recognized. (For what it’s worth, Ghislaine Maxwell said in her July 2025 proffer interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that Epstein was ingesting disturbingly high doses of testosterone around this time, and Maxwell had observed concerning personality changes in him. Which would make a lot of sense physiologically.)

No one’s being asked to condone Epstein’s overall behavior, or act like it’s a good idea for 50-year-old men to be seeking transactional sexual encounters with 17-year-olds. But seriously — in the grand scheme of things, is the conduct for which Epstein was convicted in 2008 really a sufficient basis for the entire political and media class to be frantically proclaiming, day after day, that the United States circa 2025 is in the throes of a giant “pedophila” crisis? Because this deceased “convicted pedophile” had consensual sex with a girl in Palm Beach on the literal eve of her 18th birthday, twenty years ago? And as a result, anyone who ever so much as chortled with Epstein in an email thread must now be permanently banished from polite society? Figures as varied as Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, Ehud Barak, and Larry Summers are to be reviled as craven pedo enablers — merely for having socialized with Epstein, a decade after he completed his criminal sentence?

Come on people: this is pure hysteria. Again, no one has to endorse Epstein’s skeevy lifestyle to observe that if the intercourse with Ashley Davis had taken place in New York, or Massachusetts, or one state north in Georgia, she would have been above the legal age of consent in those jurisdictions, and the entire legal trajectory of this debacle would have been drastically different. But as fate would have it, the intercourse took place in Florida, which has the highest legal age of consent (18) virtually anywhere in the world. So we’re all obliged to babble like maniacs about the unpunished “pedophilia” catastrophe supposedly ravaging our nation. None of it makes any sense logically, legally, factually, or otherwise — but then again, could that be the whole point? Because the Epstein phenomenon has long ago entered the realm of post-rational myth, immune from ordinary modes of empirical reasoning. The myth-making prevails even in places where one might have at least hoped more of a premium would be put on rational thought. In a court order this month relating to deliberations over the forthcoming release of “Epstein Files,” federal judge Paul Engelmayer conclusorily describes Epstein as a “notorious pedophile” — as though that were a matter of uncontested legal fact. But at least he didn’t say “convicted pedophile.” Because it’s true enough that mindless applications of the word “pedophile” have become, let’s say, “notorious.”

THE HOUSE WITH NOBODY IN IT

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do,
a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

— Joyce Kilmer (1914)

*Hill Street #3* (2012) by Virginia Hein

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

99% of people aren't going to like what I have to say about this, but it's the truth. When I was a teenager, almost every girl I know was trying to have sex with and date someone older. And if they had money???? Pshh. Forget about it. The 14 year old? Fine if you want but before the new puritan age, we were all having sex at 13 and 14 and 15. I'm not saying it was a great choice but we grew up faster back then. And, that's why I know that maybe not all, but some of these ladies knew exactly what they were doing and they absolutely loved doing it. They shouldn't have been recruited and the adult should still know better but I know too much about how women operate to not make the distinction. (Brandy)

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DAVE CHAPPELLE’S CODE

https://youtube.com/shorts/EGVz1eXTMV0?si=TEE9fi_KdjLbZr6F

IF YOU’RE NOT FREE TO OPPOSE A GENOCIDE, Your Society Is Not Free

by Caitlin Johnstone

If the right to free speech does not include the right to oppose an active genocide using strong and unmitigated language, then there is no freedom of speech.

This is exactly the sort of thing that freedom of speech is intended for: times when the government is doing something wrong which needs to be ferociously opposed. That’s the primary reason it’s an enshrined value in our society. Freedom of speech is for holding the powerful to account.

If you only have freedom of speech when you’re agreeing with your government and saying nothing which inconveniences the powerful, then Saudi Arabia has free speech. Every tyrannical regime that has ever existed has had freedom of speech by those standards. You don’t measure a society’s freedom by how much its citizenry are allowed to agree with their government, you measure it by how much they’re allowed to disagree.

And right now we are being told we’re not allowed to disagree. We’re being told the protests need to stop, the anti-genocide chants need to be criminalized, and everyone needs to shut up and obey — all justified by the completely baseless narrative that the words and actions of pro-Palestinian activists were somehow responsible a terrible massacre that was committed in Sydney last week.

And these policies just so happen to serve the interests of the very same western powers whose genocide-enabling actions were being forcefully opposed these last two years. Government officials constantly being protested and questioned about their facilitation of Israel’s genocidal atrocities. Politicians who are consistently confronted by anti-genocide demonstrators during their public appearances. Wealthy arms manufacturers whose profit margins are being harmed by direct action from activist groups. Plutocratic media institutions who are becoming more and more discredited in the public eye as the Gaza holocaust exposes them all. Billionaires whose empires are built upon the political status quo that gave rise to the genocide in question.

If the powerful are shutting down speech rights to advance their own interests in your society, then your society is not meaningfully different than the dictatorships the western world tries to contrast itself with. All our stories about living in a free society have been just that: stories. Fairy tales.

That’s what they’re telling us with this mad rush to stomp out freedom of speech this past week. They are telling us that we do not live in the kind of society we were taught about in school. They are telling us that the only reason we were allowed to speak as we pleased in the years leading up to the Gaza genocide is because we were a bunch of compliant sheep who were not meaningfully challenging the interests of the powerful, and now that we are meaningfully challenging them the facade of freedom and democracy is falling away.

As Frank Zappa once said, “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

(caitlinjohnstone.com.au)

RAJA SHEHADEH BELIEVES ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS CAN STILL FIND PEACE

by David Marchese

The writer, lawyer and human rights activist Raja Shehadeh, who is 74, has spent most of his life living in Ramallah, a city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. This is where his Palestinian Christian family ended up after fleeing Jaffa, now part of greater Tel Aviv, in 1948, as Jewish paramilitary forces bombed the city. Since he was a much younger man, Shehadeh has been doggedly documenting the experience of living under Israeli occupation — recording what has been lost and what remains.

That work, defined by precise description and delicately deployed emotion, has won him widespread acclaim. Shehadeh’s 2007 book, “Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape,” won Britain’s Orwell Prize for political writing. Here in the United States, his book “We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I” was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award. He’s also a co-founder of Al-Haq, a human rights organization — recently sanctioned by the United States government — that has documented abuses against Palestinians in the occupied territories for over 45 years.

To read Shehadeh’s work — including his essays for The Times’s Opinion section — is to be exposed to a thinker with a long and stubbornly optimistic view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is a man who believes that peace remains possible. But he also maintains that for peace to have any chance of prevailing, there’s so much — the stories told about the region, even the basic facts — that needs to be fundamentally reconsidered.

At the end of another brutal year of strife and suffering, with a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas holding but a plan for what’s next still unclear, I thought it might be useful to speak with a writer who has a firsthand sense of the ways in which the past need not portend the future — and the ways in which it should.

The pursuit of justice is one of the great themes of your work. Given that politics based in raw power are so ascendant now, what is the role of a justice-driven writer?

The first thing is to document, make the situation clear and avoid mystification. Colonization works by mystifying, by making people lose a sense of who they are and how they got to the point that they got to. The people who are younger than me never knew the land as it was before, never knew what the hills looked like before the settlements were built all over them, never knew the roads before they were distorted and full of checkpoints. So one of the objects of my writing has been to describe the landscape as it was before. Then also, they might not be aware of how we got into the legal situation that we are in now. It’s important to remove the mystery and explain that it was a slow process, which was deliberate.

When you talk about the process, you’re specifically referring to the building of settlements in the West Bank?

That’s a big part of it. Other parts are how the present generation of Palestinians have never met an Israeli who is not a settler or a soldier. There were times when Israelis came over to Ramallah and to other places in the West Bank and Gaza, and went to restaurants and had businesses with Palestinians. There was interaction on many levels. Now none of this is possible because of the apartheid wall, and because of the checkpoints. Many Palestinians have never been to Jerusalem from Ramallah, which is 15 kilometers away, and never met a normal Israeli civilian. So they have a distorted picture of what Israelis are. And likewise, the Israelis of the Palestinians.

This connects to an illusion that I think is pervasive: the illusion of collective responsibility; the illusion that all Israelis are in some way responsible for the actions of Netanyahu’s government or the I.D.F., or the illusion that all Palestinians are supporters of Hamas or might be terrorists. What might we do with that illusion?

The illusion is very dangerous, because it led to the genocide in Gaza. The Israelis became convinced, because their leaders said that all the Palestinians are responsible for the murders that took place on Oct. 7. So they went about killing civilians without thinking about it. Likewise, in the West Bank. I used to be able to speak to the settlers or to the army and ask them, Why are they doing this? And now it’s impossible. Now they would shoot. So it’s very dangerous, this illusion. It’s the leaders who indoctrinate their people that this is the case, and that’s where the problem comes.

How might we break the illusion?

Start teaching about the other, teaching the literature of the other, teaching that there were times in Palestine when the Jews and the Arabs lived together amicably and peacefully, and they were important times. They could concentrate on these issues rather than concentrate on the massacres that took place, which were not so frequent. They did take place. But rather than concentrate on these, concentrate on the brighter spots. But that means that the state would have to be pursuing peaceful resolution. That’s not the case now.

People can often conceive of the conflict as being thousands of years old, when the reality is it’s a little over 100 years old. And there’s a long history of what you just described: a different kind of living in that region than is often assumed to be the case.

That’s absolutely true. Palestine has always been a place for three religions, and the three religions lived side by side and enriched life, because it’s enriching to have the differences. And now one religion is trying to dominate and say it’s the only one that is going to be allowed in that land, and that’s perverse.

What you’re describing is Zionism. Can you talk about your personal experience of Zionism as a political project?

Zionism has made my life impossible. First they tried to create a state in ’48 and forced people in Palestine to leave, and they didn’t allow them to return. Then in ’67, they continued with the policy of trying to build settlements and encourage people to leave. [The Israeli right-wing politician] Rehavam Ze’evi called it a “negative magnet” — that they will make life so difficult for us in the West Bank that we will leave. So our life has been complicated by the Zionist aim of emptying Palestine of Palestinians. We are subject to so many rules and regulations that make life rather impossible. But people have persisted in staying and refused to leave, and I think that’s been the most important tactic and strategy. Much more important than armed resistance, because armed resistance only causes more arms, which Israel has.

There is a lot of debate about the extent to which Zionism and Judaism are intertwined, which ends up getting into questions of whether criticism of Zionism is de facto antisemitic. My sense is that it’s not that difficult for you to separate the political project of Zionism from feelings about the Jewish people.

I’ve never had that problem, because I’ve always felt that Jews are just members of a religion and it has nothing negative about it and nothing in enmity with me. But Zionism, which is trying to use the religion to promote a certain political project, is an enemy to me. The two are separate in my mind entirely. I find it very strange when people say that criticism of Zionism is antisemitic. I understand that it’s a political device in order to scare people into not attacking Zionism and calling them antisemitic if they do.

You’ve written at length about your friendship with a Jewish Israeli, Henry Abramovitch. Are there aspects of your friendship with Henry that might serve as a model for larger groups of people in their political relationships?

I have several very good friends among Israelis, and their friendship is very important to me. The important thing is openness and clarity and attention to the suffering of the other. So I would not accept somebody as a friend who doesn’t understand that the right of return is a right that should be upheld. Because to deny that the Palestinians exist is so profound and painful that a friendship based on a denial of that would not be a good friendship and would not endure.

When have your friendships with Jewish Israelis been most severely tested?

With the genocide, it’s a very big challenge, because I expect the Israeli friend to speak out and condemn and be attentive to my suffering as a Palestinian, seeing that part of my people are being murdered wholesale in Gaza.

In your book “What Does Israel Fear From Palestine?” you wrote about a conversation you had with an Israeli friend. You wrote: “Every time I mentioned an atrocity committed against Palestinian civilians by the Israeli Army in Gaza, he brought up a criminal act committed by Hamas on Oct. 7. Then with a sad voice he assured me that the Israelis are suffering from trauma and are grieving.” It’s completely understandable to me that people have a strong desire, maybe even a need, to have their suffering recognized. But is there a way to address that need on both sides without invoking an unproductive, endless competition of suffering?

Yes, I think that is true, because also the suffering at the time of the Holocaust is always used as We have suffered most, and nobody can suffer as much. Every suffering is a suffering, and it shouldn’t be underestimated. But to use that as a justification for causing more suffering is untenable, wrong, immoral. That is why when this friend was justifying what was happening in Gaza because of trauma, I did not accept it. I thought it was very disappointing. But there’s a lot of it in Israel, and there’s this double consciousness of knowing and not knowing.

Can you tell me more about that double consciousness?

Well, on the one hand, they know what they’re doing in Gaza, and on the other hand, they’re blocking it and pretending not to know. That’s how they can live with themselves: by blocking the knowledge that is there, that they cannot deny, that is obvious, that the whole world knows about. It’s the same with the refugees. They knew about the fact that they threw out the Palestinians from their homes [in 1948] and yet didn’t really know it and didn’t accept it. They blocked it. That was why they were able to live in the houses of the Palestinians who left and not feel guilt.

The writer Edward Said famously wrote that Palestinians lack the permission to narrate. Is that still the case?

There has been almost a revolutionary change since the Gaza genocide. The Palestinians now are much more able to tell their story. I think Edward was referring to the fact that they could not speak about the Nakba at that time. Now it’s possible to speak about Nakba, and the word Nakba has become well known, and you don’t even have to explain what it is. There has been an opening to writers and filmmakers and playwrights to create works of art and literature and be published by establishment press and be distributed by those who in the past refused to distribute Palestinian literature. So there has been a big change and much more knowledge about the Palestinians and much more openness to listen to the Palestinians.

There have been calls from Palestinians and advocates of the Palestinian cause to boycott The New York Times and other publications because of their coverage of the conflict in Gaza. But for you, how and why do you decide to engage with the media?

I think that the criticism about The Times is right, because The Times has not been very forthright in calling the genocide a genocide and giving full coverage to the Palestinians, although this has changed in recent weeks and months. So there has been a change, and we should always work for change rather than give up, because The Times is a very important newspaper and has many important readers. So it’s important to keep the lines open and to try and bring it into more sympathy and understanding of the Palestinians. This is an ongoing issue, because it can be changed and then revert back to the old ways. It’s an ongoing battle.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/magazine/raja-shehadeh-interview.html

*The Pool at Sundown* (1923) by John Frost

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Harvey Reading December 21, 2025

PG&E BACKS OFF EFFORT TO PERMANENTLY CUT WATER FOR POTTER VALLEY RANCHERS

Another step backward for California water management…bidness as usual in the golden state…

Marshall Newman December 21, 2025

Love the two Dixon paintings.

- Me December 21, 2025
  
  Yes! And Thomas Hart Benton.
  
Paul Modic December 21, 2025

Late yesterday afternoon on the eve of the beginning of winter I had to get out of the house and went up to the organic store a mile away to buy some supplies for xmas turkey and mainly for the social contact within. First I talked to Robert on the walkway leaving the store for a couple minutes and the 49ers were mentioned, next to the avocados Tanya and I talked for about five about various personal topics, talked to stocker Brenda about the string beans selection for a minute, Martha came up the aisle and alluded to me being possibly overdressed with hat and sports jacket and we talked about her enchiladas I ate a couple years ago, a woman in line about her very large kale purchase, my abundant kale garden and slugs, a woman from Shelter Cove behind me in line about her bad luck with the pests who ate her broccoli plants and my inability to grow them, and then I headed out the door with my cart of veggies and gave a whoop! which someone coming into the store wearing a mask heard and I said, I’m whooping about the six people I just talked to, we talked a minute about coming to the store for that social appeal, and as I rolled to my car I shouted back, “Seven!”
Happy Solstice and more…

Chuck Dunbar December 21, 2025

Two things:

The obituaries in the AVA—They are so diverse, so interesting, often so moving. Folks live their lives, they die, and we learn about them—their gifts, their loves, their work, their dreams, pursuits and joys, indeed, their essence. I often find these memorials a comfort. They remind us of the good in people and the good in this world, as in the obituary for good soul Judy Campbell today. Thank you, AVA, for this important part of your newspaper.

The Wire—Yes, Bruce, a great story told so well. Fine script, truly wonderful actors—a visionary piece perfectly executed. A bit slow to get going, as you note, and one wonders for a short bit, “where’s this thing going?” Then it begins to come clear, and you are grabbed and entranced. I’ve watched it twice, ready to do it again. You nailed it— “Beyond brilliant.”

- Kimberlin December 21, 2025
  
  Obituaries
  Like to see these same life stories before people pass. I call them, “lifeuaries”.
  
  Jack London
  I made a documentary on the black boxer, Jack Johnson that exposed Jack London as a racist.
  
  Jeffrey Epstein and the word, “pedophile.”
  Not surprised to see the AVA defending, however gingerly, Epstein.
  
Julie Beardsley December 21, 2025

Happy Solstice! May the returning brightness banish the darkness and bring light to our hearts.

- Matt Kendall December 21, 2025
  
  Amen! Can’t wait for longer days
  Some of us are slightly solar powered

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