Mendocino County Today: Friday 12/26/2025

BOONVILLE-ANDERSON VALLEY FFA: The crazy winds last night had branches blowing and power going out just about everywhere in Anderson Valley. The school farm came through the storm pretty well. The only issue was one of the rabbit barn carports blew over. Luckily, all the rabbits were in dry spots. A big THANK YOU to the Samantha Espinoza family and Katie Johnson and kids for helping set the carport back in place. All is well now. Merry Christmas!

TEX SAWYER (Philo): That was one hell of a wind storm! It moved our patio furniture around, pushed the BBQ into the table, blew the cover off the fire pit, flattened the grass below the deck & knocked trees down. Whew!

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): That was quite the thunder show last night eh' weather fans ? A rainy 48F this Friday morning on the coast with an even 1.00" in the rain gauge. More rain today then the show should wind down overnight. Dry skies for the weekend thru Wednesday then the new year starts off wet it looks like, we'll see.

SHOWER and isolated thunderstorm activity is forecast through Friday, then diminish Friday night. Drier and colder weather is forecast for the weekend and should last into early next week. (NWS)

GLADYS DELSOL

Gladys Olivia Delsol passed away on December 19, 2025, at the age of 95. Although born and raised in Fort Bragg, CA, Gladys (Ojanpera), grew up speaking only Finnish until she entered the first grade of a one-room schoolhouse at Company Ranch, a Finnish community on the Noyo River just east of Fort Bragg. Children at play have a way of teaching each other quickly, and Gladys became “Americanized” early, even while surrounded by Finnish-speaking relatives and neighbors.

After high school, Gladys married young (Kenneth Jackson) and began life as a mother in Mendocino. She worked hard, first as a grocery clerk, then as chief meat cutter at the venerable Mendosa’s Market. She also helped build a house on Jackson Street in Mendocino for her growing family. Eventually, she trained to be a dinner-house waitress at the renowned Heritage House, adding yet another chapter to a life defined by grit, competence, and steady humor.

During those early years of working and raising three children, Gladys also served her community. She became an elder in the Presbyterian Church, a District Officer of the American Legion Auxiliary, and took her turn as den mother for her sons and their scouting friends in Mendocino.

Later, she became a single parent and went to work at the also renowned Little River Inn, a fortuitous move, because it was there, she met her beloved husband, Lou, who stopped in for a quick bite and a beer. Things quickly got serious, courting followed, and the two families merged and settled together in Ukiah in 1969.

For sixteen years, as the wife of a minor politician (Lou served as Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools during this time), Gladys continued working and contributing wherever she was needed. Both eventually retired in the late 1980s, but retirement didn’t stick to Gladys the way it does for other people. Shortly thereafter, she joined Emblem and became its president in her second year (1994–95). Still not finished, she completed a demanding, but “most gratifying”, year as the First Lady of Rotary District 5130 (Northcoast counties) in 1998–99, a year full of duties, hostessing, and travel. Gladys remained active with the Red Hats until her final days.

Gladys loved to travel and brought curiosity with her wherever she went. She also loved something simpler and closer to home: a drive to “the coast”, Mendocino and Fort Bragg, where many of her ancestors are buried and where her roots always felt near. She loved the scenery, the quiet power of that stretch of Northern California, and the small, perfect details that make it unforgettable: the lady slippers, the huckleberries, and the feeling that the land itself still held her family’s story.

At home, she enjoyed a nightly glass of wine and was a gourmet cook, someone who didn’t just feed people, but took pride in doing it well. Her dining room table was always “set” correctly for friends and family to share a meal; intentional, welcoming, and done with care. Meals were meant to be shared: hands held, and a prayer offered for each one gathered around the table. And if the San Francisco Giants were playing, she was paying attention; she loved her Giants with the kind of loyalty that doesn’t require a winning season to stay committed.

Gladys ‘GAMMY’ as she was known by her family, loved her family, and her family loved her. She was stubborn and funny; an excellent philosophy for living well for 95 years.

Gladys is survived by her son, Walter Jackson (Barbara) of Boise, Idaho; her daughter, Diane Dallas of Ukiah, CA; and her step-daughter, Chris Delsol (Ken) of San Mateo, CA. She is also survived by her eight grandchildren, thirteen great-grandchildren, and six great-great-grandchildren, with another great-great-grandchild debuting in February.

Gammy is preceded in death by her beloved husband Louis “Lou” “Granpere” Delsol who passed away in August of 2004; her mother Sylvia; her brother Walt; and her son, Steve Jackson.

The family extends heartfelt thanks to the medical staff who provided compassionate care over the past month.

GAMMY’s (Gladys) celebration of life will be held late spring 2026.

MENDO JURY SELECTION:

Saffron Fraser (Philo): Whew. I think our jury selection process could be due for an overhaul.

Yoli Rose: It was very slow, time consuming, and crowded. I was willing to do my civic duty, but was delighted to be rejected. Good to see you there. … it was actually pretty awful. People sitting for hours on the floor. Yuck. I'm glad, too, that they sent me home "early." I was clearly not a good unbiased juror.

SHERIFF’S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

Editor,

I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to thank all of the residents of Mendocino County. Over the week leading up to the Christmas Holiday my deputies and I have again been overwhelmed from the outpouring of support we are receiving from our communities. Thank you for this support and for the kind words.

Our deputies, dispatchers and corrections deputies will be working through the holidays. They sacrifice time with their families and loved ones to serve our communities. This is much easier for them in our county because of the support our residents give them.

We also have many volunteers who serve over the holidays. Many of these folks lead religious services and gatherings for those incarcerated in our jail. I am very grateful to all of these people for their sacrifices and service to our community as well.

Please drive safely while traveling for the holidays and remember to look out for your neighbors, friends and family.

Merry Christmas and God bless America!

Sheriff Matt Kendall

AV ELDERHOME 2025 REVIEW

Editor,

Every December the Elder Home provides you with an update of the year's activities, and here is the roundup for 2025.

We are so grateful that our wonderful community continues to sustain our project and mission through its donations and volunteer support.

Our fundraising goal last year was to fund two important projects. First, to continue making the Elder Home as senior-friendly as possible, we wanted to upgrade and resurface the driveway, parking area and gravel paths at the House to eliminate possible trip-and-fall sites.

To honor our commitment to "hire local" we have contracted with Brian Schreiner to do the concrete work whenever the weather permits. Meanwhile, the site has been prepped by removing a tree with invasive roots and beginning the process of removing the old concrete.

Our second goal was to complete the task of scraping, priming and repainting both the House and Duplex. That is done, and we are extremely grateful to Jerry Bloyd for doing an excellent job and for agreeing to fit the project into his busy schedule. Thanks to you, our supporters, last year's donations did cover nearly all of the cost of both projects.

Other property upgrades in 2025: the House and both Duplex units had "split" heating/AC units installed, and at the House we replaced the deteriorated fiberglass roof over the back porch with a new metal one.

Our 2025-26 fundraising goal:

In 2026 the Elder Home will be focusing on working with Mendocino County to approve our plans and move forward toward creating up to five affordable one-bedroom Cottages for independent seniors. This year's contributions will grow our building fund.

We continue to honor our commitment to pay-as-we-build and keep the Cottages mortgage free, giving us the financial flexibility to keep rents low.

Fundraisers in 2025:

We had great fun as well as financial success at our two fundraising events this year. Together, these events brought $7,200 into our building fund. In May AV Elder Home again provided the volunteer "staff" at the AVBC Beer Fest's back gate. A big thank you to the loyal volunteers who helped us out. Thanks, too, to Jason McConnell the new owner of AV Brewing Co., for continuing the tradition of donating the Beer Fest profits to local non-profits. And again, for the 14th year, our wine and conversation niche at the Apple Fair offered generously-donated fine Valley vintages as well as a comfortable community gathering place.

More than a dozen generous wine growers have helped to support our booth since it began and their donations over the years have, along with our volunteers, helped the wine booth raise over $58,000 since 2009.

We would love to hear from anyone who would like to help us organize on-going or new events. If interested, please contact us at [email protected] and let's brainstorm.

AV Elder Home's positive financial picture:

With strong community support we continue to reduce our mortgage and increase the building fund.

Since last December, we've received contributions of $31,100 toward that fund. This generosity, combined with the net income from our rentals has increased the building fund to $240,000.

Highlighting the Community Garden at the Elder Home:

In 2015 AV Elder Home got a Community Benefit Fund grant from the County to partner with North Coast Opportunities to create a community garden on the west side of the Elder Home's property. It offers 20 raised garden beds and 13 in-ground beds to gardeners from throughout the Valley at a small annual fee. Compost and water are provided. It is at its most impressive in mid to late summer when the corn towers over some beds and the tomatoes glow in the sun. If you are interested in signing up or want more information, please email us at [email protected].

Moving into the future and hoping to expand our Board: AV Elder Home is on the verge of significant future expansion. We have an all-volunteer, hands-on Board, and we are actively seeking new members who want to support our mission and want to help realize it. If interested, please contact us.

AV Elder Home has been the beneficiary of amazing community generosity, and we hope you will contribute this year. If you would like your gift to be in memory of or in honor of someone, please note that along with your check or your online payment at www.avelderhome.net.

We wish everyone a happy and healthy 2026. And as always, we offer our heartfelt gratitude for your support.

— Arline Bloom, Susan Bridge-Mount, Jill Hannum, Cynthia McMath, Dennis Nord, Karen Ottoboni, Brian Snelling.

FIRST NOYO ECS UPDATE 12/24/2025

Salmonid Event at Camp One, in Jackson Demonstration State Forest this Sunday, December 28th.

Its that time of year again, the ECS (Egg Collecting Station) is up and running, flows have bumped up, the Coho Salmon are running through the station and I have exciting updates for you!

The focus of our updates is to provide weekly adult salmonid counts at the South Fork Noyo River ECS where we handle adult salmonids for a mark recapture estimate. It is an important component of our long-term monitoring program for the Mendocino Coast. In addition to ECS counts, we will also provide a brief update from our region wide spawning surveys. Please let me know if you would like to be removed from the distribution list or need any more information.

The spawning season was off to a good start with a series of fall rains that moderately bumped upriver flows. The monitoring team started spawning surveys in mid-November. These surveys cover the larger watersheds and a selection of smaller ones from Usal to the Garcia on the Mendocino Coast.

A long series of storms hit the coast starting on December 16th and river level increased to high flows with a peak of approximately 5800cfs on December 21st. These flows got the Coho Salmon that were milling low in the watershed moving upstream and through the ECS.

We started running the ECS on 11/12/2025

We captured our first Coho Salmon at the ECS on 12/17/2025 As of December 23rd 2025 we have captured and marked approximately 450 Coho Salmon! All these Coho Salmon have been caught in the ECS between the 17th and the 23rd with a daily high of 181 Coho Salmon on Friday the 19th!

We are excited to report that the Coho Salmon adult population estimate for the Mendocino Coast spawning season for 2024/2025 was 30,197, nearly doubling the largest return of 15,467 from last year and well above average (4,926) since monitoring began in 2009. Adult returns in the Ten Mile River, Noyo River, and Pudding Creek met the recovery target set by NOAA Fisheries.

Another notable finding from last spawning season was the wide distribution of Coho Salmon spawning, further upstream and within some watersheds where they have not been detected in many years. The adult steelhead population estimate was 4,530, which was above average (3,557) since our monitoring began. The Chinook Salmon estimate was 208, and we observed spawning adults in Ten Mile River, Noyo River, Big River, and Garica River.

One other exciting report from our office is from our long running (59 years) summer steelhead dive surveys. We conduct these surveys on the Middle Fork Eel River and we counted 1204 summer steelhead. This was our highest count of summer steelhead since 1987! It is also 475 individuals higher than our 59 year average!

You are all invited to our event at the ECS Sunday 12/28. Sign up here if you are interested: https://ucanr.edu/county/mendocino-county/event/salmon-spawning-soiree

You can visit the CDFW website that describes the coastwide California salmon and steelhead monitoring program and includes access to population estimates from previous years. https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Fishes/Salmonid-Monitoring/CMP

Additionally, here is a link to an article highlighting the habitat restoration being carried out by our partners in collaboration with our monitoring program. https://www.hcn.org/issues/57-11/in-mendocino-river-restoration-pays-off-for-salmon/

I am really excited to share all the good news that has been coming from our monitoring efforts over the last year with all of you! Hope everyone has a great holiday season!

Ryan Putt

Environmental Scientist

Coastal Fisheries Monitoring Program

Fort Bragg Field Office

32330 N Harbor Drive, Fort Bragg CA 95437

MIKE GENIELLA'S NEW SUBSTACK

Mike Geniella, the reporter who's been doing an AMAZING job of reporting on this whole incredibly complex Eyster/Cubbison/Antle disaster, has started a Substack. You can subscribe at mikegeniella.substack.com.

One of my very early jobs was making journalism contest entries for the SF Chronicle, and I have to say that his coverage bests anything that passed across my desk. It's been amazing to get his takes, and without his hard work, who knows whether we ever would have known about this mess. We're incredibly fortunate to have someone of his caliber writing about local issues.

I don't know him, but if you value his contribution to our local free press, I encourage you to support him.

Biggest fan, Mike!

Jean Arnold

Fort Bragg

Rixanne Wehren:

I second that. So glad that Mike Geniella took on reporting on Mendo County government even when his work was unfunded. A true journalist and committed commentator.

SUPERVISOR MAUREEN MULHEREN:

Good news on the Potter Valley Project.

PG&E notified FERC that it will be supplementing its pending license approvals. This step allows for more flexible river flows as the project moves through the decommissioning process.

This is important because it helps ensure flows can continue while long term decisions are still being worked on. It’s not the final step, but it’s a positive one that keeps coordination and water management moving in the right direction.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, December 24, 2025

ROSENDO HERNANDEZ-VALDOVINO, 45, Covelo. Controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm, felon-addict with firearm, ammo possession by prohibited person.

ALEJANDRO VEGA-BARRERA, 24, Ukiah. Domestic battery, domestic violence court order violation.

ANDREW WILEY, 34, Ukiah. Unlawful camping, storage of camping paraphernalia on public property, lodging without owner’s consent, dumping waste in public near state waters, public nuisance.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, December 25, 2025

JOSE CARRILLO-SANCHEZ, 23, Ukiah. DUI, controlled substance.

AARON MATTHEWS, 50. Mendocino. DUI, probation revocation.

JENNA RICHMOND, 37. Willits. DUI.

REMEMBERING SHARED HUMANITY IN DIFFICULT TIMES

Editor:

I recently attended the wonderful production of “All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914” at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park. Through songs and spoken words the stage production brought to life the accounts of British, French and German soldiers along the Western Front during World War I. Enemy soldiers put down their guns, climbed out of their trenches and gathered in No Man’s Land during an unofficial truce to celebrate Christmas 1914. Food and drinks were shared, gifts exchanged and songs sung. Christmas services were jointly celebrated, and the fallen were removed from the battlefield.

Even during the horrors of trench warfare, the soldiers who participated in the Christmas Truce of 1914 never lost their humanity or their empathy for those they opposed. It demonstrates that even during the darkest of times people are capable of finding an inner light that rekindles their humanity. Thankfully we are not experiencing the horrors of war, but for some people these are dark and uncertain times. At such times it will be our shared humanity and compassion for others that will see us through.

Kurt Dunphy

Santa Rosa

Frontispiece of The Other Californians. UC Press 1971. Heiser & Almquist (via Harry Williamson)

JEFF BLANKFORT:

The Jewish Community Relations Council of the East Bay, one of 157 of such institutions across the US, who see Israel as their true homeland and whose obvious job is suppressing domestic criticism of Israel in their respective communties and who have not uttered a word of empathy for the upwards of a hundred thousand Palestinians the army of their adopted homeland have murdered, want the citizens of Richmond, California, whom they care nothing about, to force the resignation of their popular mayor, Eduardo Martinez because of comments he made about the Bondi Beach slaying of 15 Jews in Sydney, Australia whose lives are, to the JCRCs, worth infinitely more than those of the Palestinians slain by their new "homeland."

On 6 pm, Thursday, January 6, at the next meeting of the Richmond City Council at the City Hall, there will be a speaker calling for Mayor Martinez's resignation and one in support of him and presumably public comment afterward. This is an important battle and those who support Palestine and freedom of speech when it comes to Israel and who live in the East Bay should try and be there and respectfully express their opinions about this controversy, the outcome of which will have national implications. See you there.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The Israeli Defense Force does assassinations, murders children for sport, spies on America, tortures prisoners, bombs residential neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals, starves people to death, poisons water supplies, murders journalists, engages in terrorism. Like cell phones that blow up, etc etc. And then they dance and sing to celebrate their atrocities. While those with a conscience end up committing suicide. Rates are very high.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY 2

One of the often overlooked attractions of anti-Semitism is the self-assured, self-righteous clarity it gives its most ardent adherents. I mean, if you lack the normal gag-reflex decent people feel about racist ideologies, anti-semitic ferver does provide morons a nice, clear, black-and-white view of the world to embrace. I’m sure that is refreshing for people with low-powered brains in a world where nuance and complexity require constant data processing, analysis and adjustments to one’s stances.

Every dilemma can be approached by the simple question, “Are there Jews involved?” If yes, then their side of the debate is “Evil” and the other side is “Good” and nothing else matters.

If you don’t actually care about being correct or joining one of the most loathsome groups in both modern and ancient human history: Jew haters and anti-semitics.

EVA CRYSANTHE:

On Christmas Eve day, one of my heroes, Fred Gardner, unceremoniously emailed what seems to me a treasure trove of notes and memories (even a song he recently recorded, which is excellent.)

Of the total package he sent, I think I can share this piece, since it is public information. I received it just as I was picking up my mail to find a card from Dr. Howard Levy, another great antiwar hero of mine.

Check out who took this photograph. The legendary photographer Jeff Blankfort, that's who!

So I got three unforgettable Christmas gifts, and they're all from Jewish men. I couldn't be happier or more grateful (unless I won the lottery.)

Please never be afraid to reach out and try to contact people you admire. These three men are such an important part of American history, and people need to know more of their stories in 2026.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Warmest Christmas Eve Greetings from Washington, D.C.,

On a cloudy 52 degree afternoon, I am sipping a ginseng drink at the Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library, while the homeless shelter is being deep cleaned today. Christmas at the shelter is reported to be a unique blend of church groups coming by to sing carols, lots of delivered food, free warm clothing, and the usual gaggle of stoners outside of the building carrying on. Plus the general disorientation of everything being closed in the district, and limited service from public transit. Obviously, the Basilica at Catholic University will be open, with the red hatted cardinal, Archbishop of Washington, as the main celebrant. And then there is the American spectacle of the season, with all of the decorations and advertised sales and pop Xmas songs everywhere, with the traditionalists reminding all that "Jesus is the Reason for the Season". Fa La La La La. Happy New Year Everybody! Let the real you, the Divine Absolute, work through the body-mind complex without interference. We have nothing left to achieve. Peaceout.

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

“LIKE MOST OTHERS, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going.”

― Hunter S. Thompson, ‘The Rum Diary’

I'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

I'll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree

Christmas Eve will find me
Where the lovelight gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

— Buck Ram (1922)

“I HAD BEEN SPENDING a quiet Christmas in the country, as I realized when we got back into the house and I saw the Christmas tree, the presents, and smelled the roasting turkey and listened to the talk of the relatives, but now the bug was on me again, and the bug's name was Dean Moriarty and I was off on another spurt around the road.”

— Jack Kerouac, On The Road

DREAM SONG 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

— John Berryman (1969)

ADAM RASKIN, MY BROTHER AND COMRADE, RIP

by Jonah Raskin

It never was easy to be Adam Raskin, an uncommon radical, and the youngest of four brothers born to Mildred and Sam who left the Communist Party in ’48—two years before he arrived in the world, which was in Huntington, Long Island. In 1950, my parents were still communists and remained communists until they died. As a kid, Adam urged them to move into the basement of our house on Rogues Path and to invite a Black family to live in the space they vacated. He often asked for the impossible and didn’t stop until cancer laid him low.

As a teenager, he threw pot parties and did drugs and had sex before I did, though I was born eight-years before him. I was an orphan of the Cold War, while he was a child of the Sixties who attended McGill in Montreal where he supported the taxi drivers’ strike there by tossing Molotov Cocktails at designated targets. He was never a notable New Leftist, and was not written about in lefty publications, but he attained a certain notoriety in 1970 in the wake of an explosion at a townhouse in Manhattan. When Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson escaped from the ruins, Boudin said to Wilkerson, “Where’s Adam?”

She meant Terry Robbins, who had taken the code name Adam. Some in the crowd on 11th Street heard the question and repeated it to a police officer investigating the explosion, which led to a manhunt for my brother Adam and to the surveillance of our parents. The FBI decided that my “Adam,” an American original, was the link between the Weather Underground and the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ). Not true. In fact, a total fabrication.

In 1970, two FBI agents went to the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where I was teaching and told Irving Ribner, the chair of the English Department, that I died in the blast at the townhouse explosion. When I showed up for work, Irving fainted. “I thought you were dead” he told me, when he revived. I’m not complaining about the FBI. Agents did far worse things in that era.

My brother was not intimidated by any cops, though he was stopped and detained by law enforcement on the New York State Freeway simply because he looked suspicious: he had long hair and a beard. He tried nearly every drug that was available, learned to speak Spanish by hanging out on Manhattan street corners and went on to learn French, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Yiddish and some Mandarin. How did he do it? I asked. He learned, he said, by memorizing and repeating words over and over again and by reading dictionaries, starting with the letter A and going through to Z.

As his older brother, I was supposed to mind him when our parents went away for weekends or longer. On those occasions, which were frequent, I learned more from him than he learned from me. I learned about Cuban cults, Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, the Seminoles of Florida and much more. He never graduated from McGill, but he earned a B.A. from an institution of higher learning created for wayward souls like himself.

In the late 1960s, he belonged to a group of activists who went on the road to search for the perfect city where they could make a revolution. Known as “The Lost Collective,” they never found what they were looking for, though they tried Cleveland, Albuquerque and Boston. A life-long searcher, he made his way to San Francisco and lived in the Mission, spoke Spanish with a Cuban accent, passed for Cuban, became a drummer and joined The TroubleMakers Union, an interracial group of musicians that made music and trouble.

In the 1970s, he was in the thick of the Bay Area’s movement for local, organic food, which my father, still a Stalinist, ridiculed. Then, partly by accident and partly because of his friendship with attorney Stuart Hanlon, who defended Black Panther Geronimo Pratt among other clients, my brother became a private investigator and learned the trade, he told me, by reading Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and Red Harvest. How appropriate that the novels of a Communist Party member who refused to name names inspired my brother, the son of Communists!

A dogged and persistent PI, he visited men on death row and on those occasions when I saw him he always emerged from under a dark cloud. It wasn’t easy to go into San Quentin and talk to condemned prisoners. But he did it for decades and helped them survive death row.

He met his son’s first-grade teacher, a Mexican national, fell in love with her, married her and moved from the Mission to the Outer Sunset, where he surfed, cycled, ran, jogged, and walked. He also played handball, swam in San Francisco Bay and hiked in the Sierras. Then cancer laid him low. He died at home, at age 75, in bed with his wife at his side, about six months after the doctors told him his chances of surviving a year were slim. He didn’t whine or moan.

The other day, I told my brother Daniel that they broke the mold after Adam was born. He said, “He broke it himself.” An iconoclast, he mellowed as he aged, grew more compassionate and never lost his indomitable sense of curiosity. Our father couldn’t see it or recognize it, but Adam was the best kind of communist, a communist who mostly steered clear of Communist parties, but who attended for decades every rally and every march for every good cause imaginable. The whole Bay Area will miss his revolutionary spirit. I do already.

Adam and Jonah in their Hood River caps.

CLOSE THE CORPORATE LOOPHOLE IN PROP 13

Editor,

It’s fantastic that we’re finally having a conversation surrounding reforming Proposition 13, but focusing on reforming the homeowner side misses the forest for the trees.

It is much more important to reform the commercial side of Prop 13. Big corporations like Disney and Chevron are still paying property tax levels based on what their hugely profitable properties were worth 50 years ago.

We could restore $17 billion every year to California’s local governments by making commercial entities pay market-rate property taxes, all without harming elderly homeowners or small businesses.

I agree that Prop. 13 needs to be reformed, but focusing only on homeowners will not restore nearly enough revenue to our schools and public services. In fact, commercial property does not change hands nearly as frequently as residential, if at all, which means that homeowners shoulder too large a portion of California’s tax burden.

Let’s put California on par with other states that tax commercial property by closing the corporate loophole in Prop 13.

Rhys Hedges

San Francisco

"TO ME, once a person enters the door, the first thing I think of is getting rid of them."

— Charles Bukowski

AMERICANS MUST CALL OUT ATTACKS ON OUR FREEDOMS

Editor:

I am an 84-year-old male with over 20 years military service, as an enlistee and an officer. I have lived under 16 presidents starting with Franklin Roosevelt and been aware of the impacts on my life by 13 presidents, starting with John F. Kennedy. I have voted for Democrats and Republicans and belonged to each party at some point.

I haven’t always agreed with the actions of these presidents or their administrations. However, I have never had as much disrespect for the actions of a president or an administration as I do now. President Donald Trump railed against weaponization of the government, yet this is what he is doing with the Justice and Defense departments. He calls media fake news and reporters liars, but he does this during public events and on social media. He says he is fighting the war on drugs, yet he pardons a drug trafficker.

Actions by the Education Department and Centers for Disease Control, among others, are harming our citizens and our future. We have attacks on free speech and the right to assembly. We have had citizens forcefully removed from their cars and homes without due process. We cannot stand by and accept this. We must stand up and call out these attacks on our freedoms.

Frank Bush

Santa Rosa

Mrs. Granger's storeroom. She has 500-600 quarts of canned food. "You never know what may happen." Yamhill farms. (FSA - Farm Security Administration). Yamhill County, Williamette Valley, Oregon (1939, Dorothea Lange)

SOLAR PANELS FOR RENTERS? CALIFORNIANS TEST PLUG-IN MODELS ALREADY POPULAR IN EUROPE

by Julie Johnson

Amanda Royal felt the thrill of freedom, and all she’d done was plug a new device into the wall at her East Bay home.

The cord ran from an outdoor outlet, under a picnic table and across the grass to a pair of solar panels — each about the size of a door, small enough to fit in a Subaru — tucked in a corner of her backyard.

“Why should solar be any harder than that?” Royal said.

Royal, a renter, bought the panels this fall for about $2,600 from BrightSaver, a Palo Alto nonprofit, to offset rising energy costs for her four-person household, including her elderly mother who needs additional heat to stay warm and medical equipment.

In just one week with backyard solar panels, a routine energy report from their utility said Royal’s family slashed the amount of energy they bought from PG&E by 22%. BrightSaver data showed the panels were shaded partly during the day in that part of the backyard, so Royal has moved the panels to sit atop the picnic table.

“I want to see that power bill in June,” Royal said.

Royal’s most recent utility bill was $109.94 — compared to $203.83 during the same time period last year. Rupert Mayer, co-founder and technical director at BrightSaver, who examined Royal’s data, said most of that savings cannot be attributed to the panels. The last month has been foggy, he said, and her panels were also shaded for part of the day (the bill was before they had moved). After examining the data from her system, Mayer estimated that between $10 and $15 of those savings were likely from the panels’ power production.

Offsetting a household’s energy use with solar typically requires tens of thousands of dollars in upfront costs including equipment, rooftop installers, contracts, inspections, a building permit and an approval from a utility company. Roughly 2 million California households have taken those steps, but it’s largely unattainable for renters and apartment dwellers.

But what if solar panels were more like a common household appliance rather than a costly investment with a gauntlet of bureaucratic red tape?

Already in Germany, at least 1 million households are saving on energy bills with solar panels that plug into standard electrical outlets and hang on balconies or sit in backyards, according to government sources. These panels are simpler to install than most IKEA furniture, but similar models aren’t yet available at U.S. hardware stores.

BrightSaver this year launched a pilot program to sell portable, plug-in solar panels to residents in California and Utah. So far, the company has sold 100 small units generating power to renters and others interested in a more affordable way to lower their electricity bills, said Kevin Chou, founder and executive director.

BrightSaver’s four-panel kits are rated at about 1 kilowatt, meaning that at any given moment it can produce up to 1 kilowatt of power (to compare, typical rooftop solar panels are rated at about 7 kilowatts, and most arrays have numerous panels). That’s roughly the equivalent of running a microwave or coffee maker. On a sunny day, the panels can generate between five and 10 kilowatt-hours of electricity, or enough to power most of an apartment’s daily energy use.

“Every American should be able to drive to a store, buy a system and start generating energy within minutes — that’s our mission,” Chou said.

The group estimated the two panels could help Royal’s four-person household save about $500 annually. Federal clean energy tax credits (which expire Jan. 1) will cover 30% of that upfront cost, and she expects it to pay off in less than four years. The panels and equipment have a 10-year warranty.

“If we move, we’ll just take them with us — that’s huge,” Royal said.

Mayer said the company’s solar panels do not send any energy back to the grid. Any excess energy is stored in a battery (Royal’s battery is about the same size as a car’s and is on the ground behind her panels) and “if the battery is full and the home isn’t using enough electricity, the system will throttle production.”

But plug-in solar panels are currently governed by the same rules written for larger rooftop solar systems that export energy back to the grid. Those solar customers receive compensation from utilities for that excess energy.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. told the Chronicle that even small plug-in solar panels require residents to apply for an interconnection agreement, which alerts the utility to the presence of panels that could potentially send excess energy back to the grid. Utilities must manage load on its system, including solar.

Terrie Prosper, spokesperson with the California Public Utilities Commission, said that interconnection regulations apply “even though the plug-in solar is non-export and for a customer’s self-consumption only.”

Plug-in solar, Prosper added, “requires application to the utility, payment of appropriate fees, obtaining necessary permits from local jurisdictions, and waiting for the utility’s permission to operate before physically connecting for safety and reliability.”

At least one state has so far made an exception to such rules for plug-in solar. Utah legislators in May passed a law exempting portable solar panels that plug into a standard 120-volt outlet from utility interconnection requirements, providing the models meet certain safety requirements.

Legislators have proposed similar bills in New York and Pennsylvania, and lawmakers are also discussing proposals in Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia and Oregon.

Bernadette Del Chiaro, senior vice president for California at the Environmental Working Group, said environmental and consumer groups are pushing for similar changes in California, where current regulations for plug-in solar “is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”

Del Chiaro said interconnection agreements make sense for rooftop solar customers selling power back to utilities, but have no purpose when it comes to a device that functions as simply “as plugging in a toaster oven,” Del Chiaro said.

Mayer said BrightSaver informs clients that state regulations appear to require households to seek utility permission, but Mayer said “many choose to not go through that process because it is too onerous.”

“We believe that the regulations requiring a system of this type to go through the same permitting and interconnection process as a much larger rooftop system are disproportionate and outdated,” Mayer said.

(SFGate.com)

HOW KYLE SHANAHAN’S SUBTLE MOVE SAVED THIS 49ERS SEASON BEFORE IT EVEN STARTED

by Ann Killion

What’s the biggest difference between the San Francisco 49ers’ 11 wins-and-counting season and last year’s 11-loss season? There are many factors, but one of them is Kyle Shanahan’s deft coaching touch — not just tactically but emotionally.

Shanahan is a brilliant X’s-and-O’s coach. But particularly this season, his talents have evolved and his best work may have come off the field. He knew he had to release the pressure valve on his team, and from the moment last season ended, he took deliberate steps to do that.

“You know, every time we’ve gone to OTAs, it’s been all about trying to get to a Super Bowl, trying to win a Super Bowl,” Shanahan said after his team throttled the Indianapolis Colts on Monday for the 11th win. “And I wanted to make sure that we didn’t really talk that way this year.

“We wanted to focus on being the best team we could be and see what happened.”

That wasn’t an easy decision for a coach who was an adolescent during the Eddie DeBartolo “Super Bowl or bust” days, was groomed with the same mentality in Denver with his father, and created a team good enough to resurrect that mindset with these 49ers.

Much of last year’s failure stemmed from the devastation of the crushing overtime loss in the February 2024 Super Bowl. The team tried to run it back and simply couldn’t. Shanahan knew he could not put that kind of pressure on the team again, especially with so much youth at so many positions.

Last spring, Shanahan invited his veteran players — the men who had been to a Super Bowl or two and multiple NFC Championship Games — to his house for a truth-telling dinner. He told them not to be obsessed with the Super Bowl or even making the playoffs. That what he wanted was his players to simply focus on being the best they could be, week in and week out.

“All I’ve heard since I’ve been here is we’ve got to make it to the Super Bowl,” Brock Purdy said. “And I’ve looked at that like, ‘Let’s go. We got a great team to go do it.’ … I’ll be on my game and we’ll roll.”

“So just hearing Kyle say that, early in the offseason, for me, it was like we‘ve got to find ways to win games … and it’s not always going to be pretty. Since I’ve been here, we were dominating teams and the game was basically over in the fourth quarter. Now we’ve got to find ways to win. … When he told us that, I started getting my mind wrapped around the type of season that we would have.”

Purdy appreciated his hard-driven coach’s ability to find a different approach.

“I think it was really cool for him to understand our team, where we’re at, the turnover” on the roster, Purdy said. “He was being real with the older guys with the challenge of, ‘Hey, man, we’ve got to go win some gritty games.’

“That’s been our mindset. Just one week at a time. We haven’t been getting wrapped up in the playoff picture or anything like that. So it’s really good coaching on his part.”

Purdy’s mindset is different from older players. He’s in his fourth season, has already been to a Super Bowl, and he has many years ahead. It’s different for a player like Trent Williams, who is 37.

“You play the game to win a Super Bowl, right?” Williams said. “The goal is to compete for a Super Bowl.”

But, Williams added, “This year we just knew that we had the team that can compete, but we knew it wasn’t going to be like when we just walked through everybody how we did in ’23. We knew that we were going to have to ride together a little bit tighter, play a little harder.”

The 49ers have done that. They’ve also benefited greatly from a ridiculously forgiving schedule. But they took each game — tough or soft — as a separate challenge. The cliche of one game at a time carries deep truth.

Shanahan didn’t even want to talk about the playoffs until his team clinched a berth. The 49ers’ Sunday night team meeting took place shortly after they learned they were officially in, thanks to Detroit’s loss.

“I just told them how proud I was of them,” he said. “I congratulated them and now we can actually talk about the playoffs.”

The focus on getting better week by week rather than the big picture of another Super Bowl may seem obvious. But ever since Shanahan’s 49ers vaulted into the league’s elite, the Super Bowl noise has been relentless.

The switch in emphasis also may have helped his team be more resilient when it suffered debilitating injuries. When the team was without Christian McCaffrey for much of last season, the injury dealt a serious blow to dreams of a repeat trip to the Super Bowl, and the deflation was obvious on the field.

“Guys who have been to the Super Bowl and NFC Championship Games, that’s all you focus on … and then if things don’t go right it kind of crushes your team,” Shanahan said. “A couple of bad things happen and you can get very deflated.”

But this season, when the 49ers lost their two best players, they responded the next week with some of their better performances, beating the Rams after Nick Bosa’s injury and Atlanta after Fred Warner’s injury.

“Guys never changed how they worked, and that was so cool,” Shanahan said.

Shanahan’s teams have been so successful that he had to remind them that’s not the norm. That not everybody goes to the NFC Championship Game almost every year.

“I had to tell them the reality is that’s not always the case and get that out of your mind,” Shanahan said. “It doesn’t mean you can’t do it … but we have to earn the right to talk that way.”

The 49ers have earned the right to talk that way. As has their tactical genius, whose subtle emotional coaching has been the key to their success.

(SF Chronicle)

IS THERE A ‘PERFECT’ TIME TO WALK AFTER A BIG MEAL?

by Catherine Ho

You may be spending Christmas Day indulging in holiday favorites — and may spend the next few days indulging in leftovers.

But in between the grazing, drinking, big dinners and desserts, you may also be trying to squeeze in a walk or two to avoid being completely sedentary. And you may be wondering if there’s a best window of time, duration and pace to get the most benefit out of walking after a big meal.

While any activity — long or short, any time of the day — is beneficial for overall health, research and experts say the best way to moderate blood sugar spikes after a meal is to take a walk within 30 minutes after eating, and to go for 20 or 30 minutes or longer. This is true for people with and without diabetes.

It’s normal for blood sugar to rise after eating. But it’s important to moderate blood sugar levels, especially for people with prediabetes and diabetes, because frequent prolonged high blood sugar and big fluctuations in blood sugar can put you at higher risk of Type 2 diabetes or diabetes-related complications.

The reason exercising after meals helps moderate blood glucose is because muscles need glucose to function. So if you’re moving around and using your muscles, the glucose won’t be floating around in your bloodstream and will instead be taken up by keeping you in motion, said Dr. Linda Shiue, a San Francisco internist and director of lifestyle medicine at Kaiser Permanente.

The roughly 30-minute window is the amount of time it takes the body to convert carbohydrates to glucose that enters the bloodstream.

“Physical movement increases the uptake of glucose in the bloodstream into our muscle cells to use for energy, so there’s definite benefit after eating, when blood sugar is on the rise, to try to head that glucose rise off at the pass by engaging in some kind of activity,” said Kendra Blanchette, a dietician and diabetes care specialist at Sutter Health in Sacramento.

Shiue suggests a brisk walk after eating. For San Franciscans or others who live in hilly neighborhoods, “a slow hilly walk is a great way to help digest your meal and reduce blood sugar rise,” she said.

While any light activity should be beneficial, walking tends to be the most accessible type of exercise for most people because it’s low impact, free, and you can control the intensity and speed. It also requires you to move your whole body, and is safe to do right after a big meal.

“It doesn’t have to be a full workout,” Shiue said. “No one’s going to do a full workout after all that food.”

One 2023 review found that exercise, such as 20 minutes of walking, was associated with lower post-meal blood sugar when undertaken as soon as possible after a meal. The review analyzed eight clinical trials on the effects of pre- and post-meal exercise on blood sugar in people 16 and older with and without Type 2 diabetes.

“In summary, our evidence confirms that the optimal time for (physical activity) around food intake is right after the meal,” the review said.

A separate study, published in 2022, found that 30 minutes of brisk walking immediately after meals (which included various different quantities of carbohydrates) helped reduce the glucose peak in young, healthy adults.

“This constitutes a step forward for suggesting the implementation of a 30 (minute) postprandial moderate walk in daily life scenarios, where the meal content and composition may substantially vary,” the study said.

If you want to moderate your blood sugar over the course of the whole day, you can take a 10-15 minute walk after each meal, Shiue said.

If you can’t get outside or don’t have a treadmill, “any type of movement” will be beneficial, Blanchette said.

It’s also important to do some kind of muscle-building exercise at least two or three times a week, Blanchette said, because it helps build and maintain lean muscle — the part of the body that takes up glucose and uses it for energy.

(SF Chronicle)

THE 1964 CHRISTMAS FLOOD

When Rivers Rose and Towns Disappeared

by Basho Parks

Sixty-one years ago this week, the greatest natural disaster in the recorded history of the Pacific Northwest struck our North Coast region with a fury that still echoes through the stories our elders tell and the high-water marks that loom above Highways 101, 299, 96 and 36. Starting on December 21, 1964, intense downpours across Northern California caused numerous streams to flood at record-breaking levels. Governor Pat Brown declared it could “happen only once in 1,000 years.” For those who lived through it, once was more than enough.

By the start of December 1964, Humboldt was already wet. A series of storms in November had left the ground saturated and the rivers full. Higher elevations were experiencing a terriric amount of snow - especially so early in the season. The conditions were perfect for a disaster. Then came a phenomenon we now call an atmospheric river, what us not-so-old-timers knew as the “pineapple express.” A warm storm moved in from the south deluging the area with over 30 inches of rain in a week. Reportedly the rainfall was so intense that drivers had to pull over because even high-speed wipers were useless.

The warm storm raised the freezing level to 10,000 feet, meaning buckets of warm rainfall were coming down onto the record November snowpack. The frozen ground couldn’t absorb the deluge and sent fresh snowmelt rushing down into local waterways, with some rising 18 inches an hour in some places. Over 22 inches of rain fell on the Eel River basin in just two days. This all coincided with the highest ocean tide of the year so the sudden snow melt and torrents of rainwater couldn't drain out to sea over the surging tide.

For those living along the Trinity and Klamath corridors, the flood’s impacts were catastrophic but complicated by one saving grace: the newly constructed Trinity Dam. The Trinity River did not break the 1955 flood’s records because the dam stored 372,200 acre-feet of runoff from the storm. Nonetheless, 231,000 cubic feet per second of water rushed down the river at Hoopa.

In Willow Creek 10-year-old Marc Rowley watched the river transform before his eyes. “It was raining and we were having a fair amount of it. But then all of a sudden it just really seemed to pick up the tempo. And I think what most of us were realizing is that the river was getting bigger and bigger and bigger.” He recalled that at Lewiston, flows reached about 80,000 cubic feet per second during the peak, but in Willow Creek it was at 1.1 million - beyond anybody’s comprehension of how big that was.

The Klamath reached flows of 557,000 cubic feet per second, submerging the town of Klamath under 15 feet of water. At Weitchpec where the Trinity meets the Klamath the water level was 13.7 feet higher than the 1861-62 flood and 19.5 feet higher than the 1955 flood. Much of this huge increase in height was believed to have been caused by an immense surge in the Salmon River. A massive 2-3 million-cubic-yard landslide six miles up the Salmon dammed the river then let loose, suddenly amplifying the already-disastrous flows of the Klamath, Trinity, and Scott rivers.

Highway 96 was among the most damaged. From Willow Creek to Yreka large sections of road and several bridges on the Trinity and Klamath rivers were completely gone, isolating Hoopa, Orleans, Happy Camp, and several native villages. In the Weitchpec-Orleans-Somes Bar vicinity, every single bridge was taken out, including the beautiful suspension bridge at Orleans and the little jewel-like US Forest Service suspension bridge at Ishi Pishi. The bridge at Willow Creek connecting Route 96 with 299 was also completely destroyed.

The Yurok People at the mouth of the Klamath River saw their community along with the Highway 101 bridge across the Klamath River destroyed. Riverside communities like Klamath, Orleans, Myers Flat, Weott, South Fork, Shively, Pepperwood, Stafford, and Ti-Bar were completely destroyed by flood waters; some of them never rebuilt and none regained their former economic or population status.

Further south the Eel River became a five-mile-wide swath of destruction. Daily discharge measurements taken at the mouth of the Eel River show flows increased from less than 10,000 cubic feet per second on December 19 to nearly 700,000 cubic feet per second the following week. At Miranda.the high-water mark reached 46 feet above normal. In Garberville and Redway between 2,500 and 3,000 people needed to be supplied as the communities sat isolated from the outside world.

Many communities of Del Norte and Humboldt counties suffered extensive power outages and were left isolated or cut off from the rest of the state for a period, including the region’s larger populated areas around Humboldt Bay, such as Eureka and Arcata, despite the fact that those cities were located on higher ground and not in the path of raging rivers. To get to work from Arcata people had to cross the Mad River in Blue Lake. The area from Orick to Rio Dell and east to Blue Lake became a huge island, cut off from the world.

The flood killed 19 people, heavily damaged or completely devastated at least 10 towns, destroyed all or portions of more than 20 major highway and county bridges, carried away millions of board feet of lumber and logs from mill sites, devastated thousands of acres of agricultural land, killed 4,000 head of livestock, and caused $100 million in damage in Humboldt County alone. Close to 7,900 families suffered losses in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.

Volunteers brought in short wave radios and helped direct pilots to the rescue calls flooding in from the Eel, Van Duzen, Klamath and Trinity river basins. One call, from the Hoopa or Orleans area, was so full of cuss words it won’t be repeated, but the message was clear: “Keep the politicians on the ground in Eureka. Send us milk for kids and medicine.” They were pretty desperate up there. There was no way getting in or out.

Every branch of the US military was involved, especially the Army Corps of Engineers. Construction workers dropped jobs in other regions to work in flood-stricken areas. San Quentin Prison sent 4,000 inmate workers. Many non-profit organizations in and outside the region contributed greatly, especially the Red Cross and Salvation Army.

Those small airports not destroyed were bustling with personnel, vehicles, helicopters and planes rescuing stranded people and delivering supplies such as medicine, food and water. With grasslands layered in silt and with much hay lost, animals also needed food and medical support. The USDA flew in free grain and tons of hay. Planes came from as far away as Georgia to assist. Local airports like Rohnerville Airport in Fortuna, Murray Field in Eureka, and Arcata Airport in McKinleyville were like beehives.

In Willow Creek the highway in all directions was washed out. The loggers were hired or they did it on their own. The very first few days, they weren’t building to engineering standards. They were just trying to re-establish communication and transportation. Communities were landlocked for about three to three and a half weeks.

Fortuna resident Kathy Hayes, 12 at the time, recalled how after her family was rescued and safely on dry ground, many Fortuna residents, some of whom they didn’t even know, donated clothing and Christmas gifts to her family and others. “Most of all the selfless volunteerism of everyone from Law Enforcement, Civil Defense, Coast Guard Staff, Red Cross at times of extreme personal risk can’t be stressed enough,” she said. “Those of us that survived owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude.”

In Garberville people didn’t panic. When the Army flew groceries in from Laytonville the community worked together until roads reopened.

In January 1965 the floodwaters peeled back to leave silt-covered farmlands and destroyed homes, seeing land strewn with dead livestock. The damage estimates eventually reached $450 million - equivalent to over $3.5 billion today.

Today over half a century later, few recognizable signs of the great Christmas Flood remain with the major exception being the high-water markers along the highways showing the almost unbelievable height that the 1964 flood waters reached. Drive by Miranda on Highway 101 and you have to look well above your head to see where the water crested at 46 feet. Highway 96 going downriver toward Hoopa also has a jaw-dropper river height as seen from a sign on the road.

Though a flood similar to 1964 can occur again, the result of improved technology should provide more time for planning and taking necessary actions to mitigate the impacts from damaging floods. Weather satellites, atmospheric and hydrological models, and communication capabilities have all improved dramatically since 1964.

As one researcher noted recently, “It’s not a surprising thing that ‘64 happened. It’s very possible that something worse than ’64 could happen.”

This week as we approach the 61st anniversary of the Christmas Flood, we remember the devastation and also the resilience. The way communities from Klamath to Garberville, from Willow Creek to Fortuna, from Hoopa to Blue Lake came together when the rivers rose. They rebuilt bridges, cleared logjams, dug out homes buried in four feet of mud, and carried on. That’s who we are out here and that's what we do.

For those interested in learning more, the Humboldt County Historical Society maintains an extensive archive of newspapers, photographs, slides, scrapbooks, and personal accounts from the 1964 flood.

CANDACE OWENS, GREAT AMERICAN BASKET CASE

With a set of boulders bigger than Brigitte Macron's, Candace Owens is single-handedly restoring pride in American conspiracy-theory craftsmanship

by Matt Taibbi

Steve Kornacki has a neat on-air vibe. If I owned NBC I’d up his airtime, but rename his segment Nerd on Speed or give him a stand-alone show, instead of shoehorning him into both Meet the Press and Sunday Night Football. The poor guy must worry all the time if he’s degrading political news by comparing it to sports, or vice versa. It’s gaslighting audiences who’ve already suffered.

Life was confusing enough when we only had to worry about advertisers and the government pressuring three networks. In the new Internet multiverse, Fox is seen as a proxy for Republicans, CNN/MSNOW are Democrats, CBS is the IDF, podcaster A a mouthpiece for billionaire Y, influencer B funded by Middle East country Z, and so on. No one believes anything, a problem because it’s in the nature of people to need to believe something. A vacuum of belief makes prime hunting ground for any voice that projects the right combination of suspicion and conviction, while selling stories tailored to audience fears.

No one tops podcaster Candace Owens at this game. She’s a force of nature. It’s rare for a pure pundit to have deep impact on international politics, and even rarer for one to trigger lasting change of the sort now taking place in the Republican Party. Fighting through this week, she’s turned the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk into an epic that makes QAnon seem small-time. An underrated South Park episode from 2003 tried to make fun of conspiracy theorists by inventing a story too ridiculous to believe. The Matt Stone/Trey Parker idea was metrosexuality as an attempt to control the world by “crab people.” That was a laugh, but how about real-world applause for the Owens theory, Charlie Kirk blown away by bee people:

Owens showed the text messages she sent to friends about an “underground related to bees” with a September 1st time stamp, to prove she had concerns about “imminent danger” involving schools nine days before Charlie Kirk was killed at a school. (This brand of conspiracy lunacy — “Israel is full of garages, while Jack Ruby was shot in one. Coincidence?” — was once parodied even by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, but Owens has few comics on her tail.) Her story involves cops, Egyptians, FBI personnel, the French Foreign Legion, mysterious rich people in Orem, an airline services company a few miles from my house in New Jersey, Bibi Netanyahu, and Erica Kirk all engaged in a “psychological war” of the utmost sophistication, only planned in bee-speak maybe.

If you gave me a thousand takes I couldn’t deliver that theory with a straight face, but Owens is the LeBron James of deadpan. Her certitude is blowing a hole in the hull of the Republican Party, and that’s probably just for starters. That ability to impact world events with sheer balls and 100% Grade-A All-American Bullshit will someday give her a place among national legends like P.T. Barnum and Colonel Tom Parker. Pausing to express awe for America’s Outpatient-in-Chief:

I’m aware there are people who subscribe to this site who take Owens seriously and were insulted when I laughed at a recent interview she gave to Piers Morgan, in which she admitted there was “no concrete evidence” behind her Kirk claims. There are people who similarly become furious if I question her assertion that French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife put a “hit” out on her, wanting her “executed upon.” That little piece of business has been viewed 45 million times, yet people still plead as if she were a lost waif, demanding to know why I don’t offer to “help” her uncover the truth instead of chuckling on the sidelines.

I’ve reached out. I fought through the forest of studio portraits on her site and the ads for her “supercharged skincare” products and links to her book and merch store and found a contact button that led to a note from an employee directing me to send questions for comment to an email address, which I’ve done more than once, of course getting no answer. Meanwhile bystanders like Duncan Aviation, the Morristown-based aviation company that rented cars for visiting Egyptians whose license plates Candace read over the air as if they were the secret to the International Communist Conspiracy, was more than happy to finally get a chance to comment.

“Duncan Aviation is a business aircraft service provider that performs maintenance, refurbishment and upgrades for business aircraft operators worldwide,” they said. “As part of its services, the company provides access to hotels and rental cars for aircraft crew, who often stay near the facility while major maintenance is being performed. All international crew members apply for entry to the country and are screened through the US Customs and Border Patrol prior to entry…”

The cars Candace implied were here for sinister reasons (her initial suspicions about a Kirk plot were tied to the presence of an Egyptian plane in Utah, whose passengers rented cars) were, according to the U.S. partner, really for “aircraft crew” performing maintenance on business aircraft. Why not explore that boring possibility before running with “Operation Mocking-Plane” videos? That’s what I’d do, which is why the last thing Candace Owens wants is someone like me “helping” with anything (I’m also way too low-profile for her). If she wanted help with her Macron situation she’d similarly have listed a source less vague than “a high-ranking employee of the French government” (read: “According to myself”), and she wouldn’t subsequently have sent a packet about the plot to “both the White House and our counterterrorism agencies,” claiming it was proof of sorts when they “confirmed receipt.”

That’s an old trick. Short-sellers will send a packet about a company they’ve bet against to the FBI or SEC, then call a pal at a New York paper as soon as they accept the letter, allowing media to then claim the firm is “under investigation,” which tanks the stock. Another old media trick is luring a high-profile target into a humiliating self-defense, which she’s done by claiming Brigitte Macron is a man. “I want you to know that Brigitte Macron probably stands peeing up [sic]… pees standing up… Brigitte Macron has a penis,” she recently told Piers Morgan, who in an otherwise excellent interview missed a chance to seize on the word “probably”:

Whether or not Morgan is right and Owens loses the lawsuit the Macrons filed against her, she’s already scored a massive accomplishment in the annals of online provocateurs, securing headlines like “Brigitte Macron to show court ‘scientific proof’ she is a woman” and “The ‘Transvestigation of Brigitte Macron.” The Macrons should read a few books about American gamesmanship and specifically that of Lyndon Johnson, who (the story goes) once instructed an aide to spread a rumor that a campaign opponent had sex with pigs. We can’t get away with that, the aide supposedly said, and many Americans know LBJ’s famed punchline: “I know, but let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

Owens is a great believer in the PR stunt, and often takes the nasty shortcut of repeatedly leveling reputation-mangling accusations without foundation, pushing targets to eventually take the bait and try to talk to her out of desperation. After spending most of the last few months implying that Erika Kirk somehow had guilty knowledge of the plot to kill her husband, a four-hour meeting with the widow was arranged, after which some expected a cessation of hostilities.

No luck. Last Thursday she ran a show interviewing a man named “Mitch” who claimed to have seen Erika at an Army base called Fort Huachuca the day before her husband died. Afterward, Ben Shapiro gave a speech blasting her, which of course led to a) a tweet saying Shapiro is “invested in Charlie’s murder,” and b) an Owens video the next day titled, “What does Ben Shapiro know about Erica Kirk and Fort Huachuca?” (Note the cross-marketing of the new theory with the Shapiro news. This person is a content machine.)

She began by saying, “Ben Shapiro is terrified,” then explained that “Personally, I think he knows something about her. That is what I am sensing, that he knows something about Erica Kirk. And every time he speaks, I grow more certain that Israel might be involved with 9/10,” referencing the date of Kirk’s murder.

I reached out to Candace to confirm the neat sourcing, that she “is sensing” that Ben Shapiro is part of a murderous plot. Again, no comment. “I sense” is a thing with her, she used it in her “underground related to bees” speech. Not to overdo the cultural references, but “I’m sensing” was such a constant trope of post-WWII comics of the X-Men type and sixties/seventies entertainments that the Stone/Parker duo went after it again in Team America, World Police, through the character Sarah, a telepath whose superpower is “sensing” whatever’s in her head. Owens echoes the same schtick:

She also occasionally dresses in a shawl, recalling another satirical broadcast empath (“Sybil the Soothsayer” from Network), and frequently intuits about things that don’t “add up,” another storied tactic in this world. She uses them all, from “History suggests it could happen” to “Person X lacks an alibi for my unsourced accusation” to “I’m just asking questions.” That’s not what she’s doing, by the way: “I believe Charlie Kirk was betrayed by the leadership of Turning Point USA and some of the very people who eulogized him on stage” is a smear, not a question. Every media person knows what this is — in every mania there’s always a person whose willingness to spread the unconfirmable theories is silently embraced on the fringes — but it usually comes with mainstream condemnation.

That’s not happening in this case, or at least not much, surely a reflection of the current unpopularity of Israel. She’s always been giddy on this topic (one video that stood out involved her belief that the Georgian author of the anti-cosmopolitan purges, Josef Stalin, was Jewish), but now finding Israel under every manhole is eminently retweetable, and so is she. As such, her ruminations find many supporters to stand behind her against Shapiro, “Tel-Aviv Mark Levin,” and other pro-Israel villains. There’s also quasi-endorsement among left-leaning commentators who’ve begun siding with what they call the “America First” side of the MAGA movement over the “Israel First” crowd. I get criticizing Israel, but I don’t understand letting a parody of a conspiracy theorist lead the charge, especially one that blows off the fig leaf terminology about Zionists and just blasts “the Jews” instead. She direct-tweets the whole religion, demanding “you” apologize not just for the slave trade, but the clever historical frame-job on white men.

Simultaneously bonkers and one of the most-followed voices on earth! May we find find our way back to duller times.

A TAIBBI READER COMMENTS:

This is the worst piece you have ever written, Taibbi….i have enjoyed your writing for years, and I find you one of the few worth following these days.

Having said said, what the fuck was that you just wrote? Ridiculing a podcaster who is raising legitimate questions about a sketchy FBI non-investigation into the biggest political assassination of our century is really below you. All of a sudden, we are supposed to trust the same organizations that gave us the 9-11 bullshit, COVID bullshit, JFK murder bullshit? You trust Kash et al. to tell us the truth? Really? The only reason Candace has hunches and guesses and dreams and what not is because every single piece of relevant information regarding the alleged assassin has been buried, disappeared and so on. I sure as hell don’t know what happened, but I, and every sane rational person on the planet know what did NOT happen, and what did not happen is what the authorities are peddling.

If Candace interests you enough to write an article, how about you examine, critically, some of her theories and questions and compare what she is doing against the crap that the Feds and TPUSA are dishing out? How about going back to real journalism instead of piling on one of the few honest people left on the public sphere? Candace may be wrong about every single one of her theories and guesses and hunches, but at least she is asking the questions, and is sincere in trying to get to the bottom of who murdered her friend. Why don’t you do the same?

TAIBBI RESPONDS:

I'm going to answer at length, so people understand why I'm laughing at Candace Owens instead of engaging with her “questions” or comparing her work to "the crap that the Feds and TPUSA are dishing out," as you put it.

Like a million other older reporters I was raised to follow certain rules. The rules are there to protect both the public (from unfounded, irreversibly damaging accusations) and the reporters (from making mistakes). The number one rule is you can't make serious claims without evidence, especially when the reputations of people are involved.

If I wrote an article in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or even in Racket saying the FBI, the French Foreign Legion, and Erika Kirk were somehow involved in Charlie Kirk's assassination, and then admitted on national television as she did that this was done without "concrete evidence," I'd be sued into oblivion.

It was once understood that the penalties for this behavior, called "actual malice" in the landmark NYT v. Sullivan case (which made "reckless disregard" for the truth the standard for punishment) should be so high that it would cripple the career of anyone who engaged in it.

Why should the penalty be so high? Because when you print or say things about real people, it can have a devastating impact on their lives. If you’re in the media business you should want to be careful, you should want to be right, because you should fear having a mistake on your conscience. If you lack that fear, there’s something wrong with you, and you shouldn’t have a big audience.

Many years ago I wrote a jokey little sports column for alt-weeklies about crimes committed by athletes. It wasn’t investigative and most of the entries were just 300-400 words based on published items. Once, I ran a bit about a sports figure caught up in a sex scandal, based on someone else’s published report. That other story turned out to be wrong, which meant I was wrong.

The victimized person arranged through lawyers to speak to me on the phone. The agreement was, no lawsuit, but I had to listen to a comprehensive description of all the pain and damage that story had caused this person. I was devastated as I listened to the story of what just this one little wrong story had done to a marriage, a family, a career, the questions it inspired from kids, and so on. This person’s idea was that maybe I would learn something and be more careful in the future.

Thinking of that, I get extremely pissed off when I see “influencers” accusing people not of infidelity but complicity in murder based on “I’m sensing.” That is not the behavior of someone who cares about the truth.

This leads to your comment, “Candace may be wrong about every single one of her theories and guesses and hunches, but at least she is asking the questions, and is sincere in trying to get to the bottom of who murdered her friend. Why don’t you do the same?”

This “asking the questions” trope is just plain wrong. There is a right way and a wrong way to “ask questions.” If you suspect someone of a crime you have to dig, dig, dig until you find something concrete, and if you don’t find that thing, you have to walk away. You can’t just say, “A weird thing happened over here, therefore this person over here is suspect…”

That’s malice. We don’t do that for the same reason grand jury proceedings are secret (another thing people seem not to care about anymore). We’re supposed to care about whether or not we’re hurting people with accusations. If a person is innocent, if there isn’t enough evidence to indict someone, it’s better that no one know they were ever suspected, because in the mass media age, you can convict on suspicion alone.

Then there’s the trope, “If you criticize X, you must believe the ‘official story.’” As you put it, “All of a sudden, we are supposed to trust the same organizations that gave us the 9-11 bullshit, COVID bullshit, JFK murder bullshit?”

Anyone who reads this site knows I look critically at official statements. On the Covid front, I had a lot of questions about what happened, but I didn’t proceed by just lobbing accusations. I worked with people like Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag to put out the texts of the scientists who wrote the seminal Nature article asserting zoonotic origin, showing even they thought a lab leak was “so friggin’ likely.”

Later I worked for months with a CIA whistleblower who was unfortunately constrained for a variety of reasons in being able to speak freely, but still was able to show (again with Michael and Alex) that even CIA investigators were pressured away from the lab-leak story. We did other stories, including some about early Covid patients at Wuhan, but always we printed only what we could back up. It is an agonizing, time-consuming, frustrating process, and one other reason I get frustrated by people like Candace – they make it seem like “investigating” can be an instant procedure.

It isn’t, if you care to avoid getting things wrong about people. If your investigative method is casually defaming people to the point where they publicly beg you to stop, you’re not interested in what’s true, you’re up to something else.

That person deserves ridicule. Responding in any other way tends to legitimize the activity.

I hope that answers your question.

MISSILES AWAY! 

The United States launched a number of strikes against the Islamic State in northwestern Nigeria, Trump announced on Thursday, the latest American military campaign against a nonstate adversary — in this case, Islamic jihadis who the president asserts have been slaughtering Christians.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that “the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!”

The strike involved more than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles fired off a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea, hitting insurgents in two ISIS camps in northwest Nigeria’s Sokoto State, according to a U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The operation was done in coordination with the Nigerian military, the official said.

In a statement, U.S. Africa Command said its initial assessment concluded that “multiple” ISIS terrorists were killed in the strike.

(NY Times)

LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT

U.S. Strikes ISIS in Nigeria After Trump Warned of Attacks on Christians

Zelensky Says He’ll Meet With Trump in the ‘Near Future’

Administration Emphasizes Religion in Official Christmas Messages

TODAY (Christmas) we all share one dream. And we make one wish together. "May he [Putin] perish". Each of us may think privately, but when we turn to God, of course, we ask for more. We ask for peace for Ukraine. We fight for it. And we pray for it.

— Zelensky

I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.

— Richard Brautigan, ‘Trout Fishing in America’

GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE: THE YEAR IN TRUMPSPEAK

by Jeffrey St. Clair

Donald Trump often doesn’t know what he’s talking about and no one else does either. But when he talks, people still listen, trying to make sense out of streams of nonsense. Like Homer’s sirens, it’s impossible to tune him out. He lures you, sentence fragment by sentence fragment, into his maelstrom of mystification.…

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/25/goodbye-to-language-the-year-in-trumpspeak/

“PATRIOTISM means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

“IT’S NEVER TOO LATE to become who you want to be. I hope you live a life that you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

“THERE’S AN INEVITABLE gravitational pull, a predestined quality to even the perfect holiday, I guess. But, what is perfect anyway? What is normal? And what does the perfect American family even look like these days? Do any of us look like Leave It To Beaver or even want to? Maybe the most important thing about the holidays is just putting aside our differences for a while and try to enjoy the people who matter most. And besides, the whole thing will be over before you know it. And there will always be leftovers.”

– Bourdain

SMALL TALK

All right, while we are gently celebrating tonight
and while crazy classical music leaps at me from
my small radio, I light a fresh cigar
and realize that I am still very much alive and that
the 21st century is almost upon me!

I walk softly now toward 5 a.m. this dark night.
my 5 cats have been in and out, looking after
me, I have petted them, spoken to them, they
are full of their own private fears wrought by previous
centuries of cruelty and abuse
but I think that they love me as much as they
can, anyhow, what I am trying to say here
is that writing is just as exciting and mad and
just as big a gamble for me as it ever was, because Death
after all these years
walks around in the room with me now and speaks softly,
asking, do you still think that you are a genuine
writer? are you pleased with what you’ve done?
listen, let me have one of those
cigars.

help yourself, motherfucker, I say.

Death lights up and we sit quietly for a time.
I can feel him here with me.

don’t you long for the ferocity
of youth? He finally asks.

not so much, I say.

but don’t you regret those things
that have been lost?

not at all, I say.

don’t you miss, He asks slyly, the young girls
climbing through your window?

all they brought was bad news, I tell him.

but the illusion, He says, don’t you miss the
illusion?

hell yes, don’t you? I ask.

I have no illusions, He says sadly.

sorry, I forgot about that, I say, then walk
to the window
unafraid and strangely satisifed
to watch the warm dawn
unfold.

— Charles Bukowski (1990)

5 Comments

Mike Geniella December 26, 2025

Jean Arnold and Rixanne Wehren, my gratitude.

Harvey Reading December 26, 2025

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY 2

Opposing genocide is quite different from the “antisemitism” you’re peddling. People have a right to protest genocide, or other heinous crimes, no matter what group inflicts it. What’s been happening in this country, with its one hundred percent support of anything Israelis do is pathetic and pitiful. Protesting Israeli actions is NOT antisemitism. That’s just a shameless excuse.

Marshall Newman December 26, 2025

Re: The Flood of 1964. When the rains began on December 21, we Newmans were in Petaluma, but a couple of days later we drove to El Rancho Navarro, my parent’s summer camp in Philo. Camp, for those who don’t know, was located at the Confluence, where Rancheria, Anderson and Indian Creeks meet to form the Navarro River. We arrived in Philo just in time to experience 12 inches of rain in 24 hours. The Navarro was rising by the minute. My older brother and I walked down the hill from the house to watch it rise. At its peak, the Navarro must have been more than 200 feet wide and more than 20 feet deep, running medium brown where Indian Creek joined it (Indian Creek was a lighter brown). Big logs – at least a few from some logging operation – were floating in the current. The power went out, but we had wood heat and a propane stove. However, a big – maybe three feet in diameter – bay tree came down across our road. Maybe two days later, after the rainfall finally slowed, we cleared the trunk from the road using a two-man long saw (my brother’s choice). It took us three or four hours.

Paul Modic December 26, 2025

Wow, I’m starting to read the 49ers articles featured here.
Damn, getting verrrrrry interesting…
(I thought it was a mirage for weeks, but the league is
so balanced now, quien sabe?)
Good edition today, printing off 12 pages to read later…

dale carey December 26, 2025

in ref. to how mark and bruce combined their talents in the late 80s:
it sounds like providence to me

5 Comments

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