Mendocino County Today: Thursday 1/1/2026

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 2025: Oct 2.06” - Nov 9.45” - Dec 9.87" — YTD 21.38”

A cloudy 51F with .75" of rainfall this News Years Day 2026. Our southern born system will move up the coast & to the east thru the day giving way to our next stronger & colder system arriving from the northwest. Here we go again with another wind advisory Friday afternoon & all day Saturday, hopefully not a bad as the last one. Our 10 day forecast is showing rain thru Monday then getting spotty after that, we'll see ?

LIGHT TO MODERATE RAIN will continue through the day today, followed by a frontal system with moderate to heavy rain, high mountain snow, and gusty winds on Friday into Friday night. Chances for moderate to perhaps locally major coastal flooding increase Friday through Saturday. Bouts of rain and gusty winds are forecast to continue into the weekend and likely early next week. (NWS)

JANUARY 2-3 KING TIDES

Arena Cove
Jan. 2, 2026 — high tide time / height: 8:59 AM / 7.50 ft.
Jan. 3, 2026 — high tide time / height: 9:51 AM / 7.49 ft.

Noyo Harbor
Jan. 2, 2026 — high tide time / height: 9:05 AM / 7.88 ft.
Jan. 3, 2026 — high tide time / height: 9:57 AM / 7.87 ft.

Mendocino Bay
Jan. 2, 2026 — high tide time / height: 9:06 AM / 7.35 ft.
Jan. 3, 2026 — high tide time / height: 9:58 AM / 7.34 ft.

Mendocino Bay, looking south (Elaine Kalantarian)

YEAR’S END AT THE AVA

A tribute to the AVA and its loyal denizens and commentators

by Chuck Dunbar

Daily comments in the AVA—
Astute, wise, smart, witty, hopeful—
Many comments pretty fair and fine,
A few fall short—less than divine.

There’s Comptche’s George H. ,
Practical and steady as he goes.
A believer in the good old ways—
The tried and true of our past days.

Norm T.— thoughtful and kind,
Reasonable and studied.
Knows the financial picture well and truly,
Helps out when we get lost and unruly!

Paul M. writes of his hippie life—
Loves, adventures, victories, setbacks.
Many brash stories and funny tales—
Beside his life, a more modest life pales.

Harvey R. lives way out in the wilds,
Far away from corrupt, crazy cities.
“Alert—we’re on our way to hell”—
He keeps a’ringing that alarm bell.

Marshall N.—a progressive posture
From another reasonable, thinking man.
Goes back in time recalling Mendo days,
That country living and ways.

Craig S. lives in DC, far away, too—
Lets us know daily just what’s up.
Prays for those who need the light,
Swears the Buddhists got it right.

Brave Ms. Mazie M. keeps
Treading on her caring path—
Speaking for those most in need,
Her ardent message her good deed.

Jim A., man of few words
From inland’s Potter Valley.
All he says comes off quite swell.
May there ever be water in his well!

Jim L., our muted, reticent,
Mendo coast poet.
Just a few words needed—
Musings to be heeded.

There’s Mike G, Mendo journalist, sage—
He knows quite well the lay of the land.
A crackling sharp reporter fella,
Informs us fully, does Mr. Geniella.

Bob A.’s a smart and reasonable
Kind of AVA progressive guy.
Knows what the modern world’s about—
Of mystifying digital world he’s our best scout.

Bruce Mc., of Irish bond and blood,
Sings his love for that old culture.
Poetry in his posts, of a kind,
Some wisdom there, we often find.

Betsy C., Lake County activist, avid overseer—
Watching always for the peoples’ needs.
Questioning taxes wasted, public goods squandered.
Calling out when truth gets laundered.

In sadness, finally, we pay our respects,
To a good soul who passed this year—
James M.—proud social worker guy.
At rest and in peace may he lie.

The Best for Last—AVA Guys Carry On

Tributes are due the varied, many artists—
Of words, photos, drawings, paintings.
Found daily in the AVA, they’re such graces,
Bringing smiles to readers’ faces.

Great tribute to the AVA staff—
Dedicated souls working without cease.
Readers give thanks, sing their praise,
As they craft works of art on many days.

There’s ever-present Mike K., who
Keeps it all from slipping off-kilter.
Ensuring always the digital stuff
Is good enough, right up to snuff.

Then there’s Mark S.—37 AVA years,
Astute and shrewd, rock-steady.
Critical reporter and analyst supreme—
Mendo County admin’s bad dream.

At last we salute Master Editor Bruce—
AVA elder and visionary of 42 years!
It’s his creation we readers abide in.
As such, we’re pretty close to being kin!

If I’ve missed any folks here,
Please forgive me.
Long-time folks for mention
Garnered my attention.

Blessings and good will
To all who gather here.
And, yes, let’s bravely carry on
For the whole of the New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

CEO DARCIE ANTLE, who is also the Clerk of the Board and has been since former CEO Carmel Angelo surreptiously snagged the function out from under the Supervisors back in 2010, is out for yet another incremental power grab. This time, she’s putting more restrictions on agenda items, as if the Board’s agenda is hers to control, not the Supervisors. A proposed change to the Board’s “Rules of Procedure” under consideration next Tuesday directs that “All items to be placed on the agenda shall be presented to the Clerk of the Board [Antle] not later than 12:00 noon on the Monday two weeks [sic] preceding the regular meeting for which the agenda is prepared and shall include a complete agenda summary, all supporting documentation, and a fiscal analysis if necessary. The Clerk of the Board [Antle] may require that items be submitted earlier than the Monday two weeks preceding the regular meeting, to account for holidays or other periods of limited staffing. The Clerk of the Board [Antle] may authorize limited exceptions to the above procedure on a case-by-case basis to accommodate time sensitive items.” Time sensitive in Antle’s opinion.

Notice that the Supervisors, who supposedly control their agenda and should be able to “authorize” their own exceptions, are not even mentioned. CEO Antle may mean to direct these instructions to her department heads, some of whom may occasionally be tardy or incomplete in submitting their agenda items. But if so, why is she putting it in the Board’s own Rules of Procedure and not simply a memo to staff?

ANOTHER of CEO Antle’s proposed Rules of Procedure changes would push more items onto the consent calendar to avoid board and public discussion. (Consent items are only discussed if a supervisor pulls an item; the public has no say, other than requesting that a supervisor pull an item.)

WE EXPECT these seemingly minor additional usurpations of the Board’s authority to go through as usual without a peep from our elected representatives who are happy to let the CEO take over the functions they were elected to perform — as they refuse to take even a small symbolic pay cut as suggested by outgoing Supervisor John Haschak.

SHERIFF KENDALL appears to be angling for as much federal money as he can get. A consent calendar item for next Tuesday calls for the Board to approve a Memorandum of Understanding that would enable the County to bill the US Capitol Police for “security” during “congressional events.” Why this wasn’t in place earlier isn’t mentioned. There’s no explanation of why Congressman Huffman’s poorly attended Mendo get-togethers need special security arrangements, unless he’s afraid of getting some angry feedback for his Potter Valley water policy or his defense of Netanyahu’s destruction of Gaza.

ON THE OTHER SIDE of the Sheriff’s financial ledger the Sheriff is asking the Supervisors to approve a $1.3 million “Food & Laundry” contract for Mendocino inmates in 2026. Last we heard the Jail was having selected inmates do most of this, so that inmates can earn some side money, get some extra credit for time served, possibly time off their sentence for good behavior, and to get some work experience. Not to mention saving the County some money in these tight budget times. This is one of those jail “services” that does not need 24-hour coverage so we’d expect that taxpayers should only have to pay for some basic admin and supervision, not the actual laundry and food services.

(Mark Scaramella)

(The vehicle in this photo appears to be a late-forties Studebaker.)

S.O.S. - NETWORKING FOR MENDOCINO COAST COMPANION ANIMALS

Dear Friends,

For those who do not know us, S.O.S. is a 501(c)3 dedicated to helping animals on the Coast.

The past several years have presented a host of challenges for us, from Covid, to closure of our County Animal Care Services on the Coast. Good news is that we have met those challenges head on.

Challenging times demand creative thinking and problem solving and I’m pleased to share that S.O.S. has been up to the challenge. With only two local veterinary practices and the Mendocino Coast Humane Society (MCHS), all doing their best to serve animals in need, not all animals can be served in a timely manner.

In addition to these challenges, the Coast rarely sees an important asset to our community, Care-a-Van, our county’s low coast spay/neuter and vaccine clinic. And here is where S.O.S. steps in. With help from Harvey Chess, author of “Functional and Funded,” we founded the Mendocino Coast Alliance for Animals (MCAfA), comprised of 4 organizations that give their all to help animals in our community.

Alliance members include Coast Cat Project (CCP), Eileen Hawthorne Fund (EHF), Mendocino Coast Humane Society (MCHS) and S.O.S.-Networking for Mendocino Coast Companion Animals (S.O.S.). You’ll hear more about MCAfA and all that we plan to accomplish, in the new year.

During these years of Covid we’ve managed to help so many animals in need, as well as their guardians, and when we save the life of an animal whose owner can’t afford to do so, you are the hero because we couldn’t do it without you. S.O.S.:

Assists low-income folks, whose pets have been impounded by the county and redemption fees are beyond their ability to pay.
Assists low income pet guardians with lifesaving vet care. Without our help many would lose their beloved pets.
Helps seniors get their pets to the vet.
Assists the Cancer Resource Center in finding foster homes, vet care and new homes for pets of cancer patients, when needed.
Manages the “Ask the Vet” column which we created in 2017. This column is published in four newspapers through- out the county.
Provides toys, treats, pet food, bedding and medication for our local animal shelter.
Creates and posts flyers and uses social media to help lost animals find their way home.
Posts notices of abandoned and orphaned animals helping to find them forever, loving homes.
Helps find foster and permanent homes for animals in desperate situations.
Created an alliance to improve the lives of animals on the Mendocino Coast.

Our vision for the new year is exciting and thanks to your encouragement and financial support we’ve set our goals high. We hope you will consider a year end donation to help us accomplish all we’ve set out to do in the year ahead.

Please know that we are eternally grateful for the lives you save, the bones you mend and the spirits you restore.

We hope you will consider sending a year-end gift to help us continue this very important work. Please give what you can, and remember, no donation is too small.

Donations:

S.O.S.
P.O. Box 401
Albion, CA 95410

With heartfelt gratitude,

Carol Lillis, for S.O.S. and the animals we serve.

DA EYSTER and his hard-working staff wish you and yours a safe and healthy start to the New Year and continuing throughout the coming months.

THE LAST FORESTS PROJECT

by Holly Madrigal

Turquoise light filters through waving bull kelp fronds. The ocean rocks below are teeming with anemone, snails, and crabs. Turkish Towel and kombu kelp drift in the current. In the dappled light, fish dart as a sea lion swims in a ballet spiral through the sea canopy. On December 17th, 2025, these visions filled the silver screen at Coast Cinemas for a showing of The Last Forests Project.

The feature film—created by Marco Mazza, Steve Page, and Abbey Dias—begins with footage displaying the rich biodiversity of a healthy kelp forest. These forests used to thrive abundantly off of the Mendocino Coast, yet starting in 2014, a convergence of stressor events wiped out predators of purple urchin—abalone and sunflower stars—causing the urchin population to explode. Unchecked by predators, they devoured huge swaths of kelp, algae, and seaweed, causing the underwater moonscapes known as urchin barrens. Between 2014 and 2018, the north coast lost more than 90% of its kelp forests. The impacts are staggering, not just under the sea but also on the rural fishing economy and local community.

“The purple urchins are wildfire under water,” says Grant Downie, a local red urchin fisherman. “They are out of balance with the surrounding ecosystem. As our forests are being wiped out on land, the urchins are doing it under the water. The huge population of the purple urchin, the lack of the sunflower sea stars, and the kelp. We need to help these factors to restore balance.”

The film describes multiple efforts to restore the kelp forests by organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Reef Check, and the Noyo Center for Marine Science. It was fascinating to learn about the different strategies, from sprouting kelp to give it a head start, to culling purple urchin, and even growing sunflower stars (Pycnopodia helianthoides) in a lab with the hope of reintroducing them back into the sea one day. The film also shares how a handful of sunflower sea stars have been spotted in the wild along the coastline, scattering purple urchins in their path.

The loss of our kelp forests and subsequent restoration efforts are complex issues. This movie is a must-watch for anyone seeking to understand the diverse ocean habitat that once existed beneath the waves off of our coast and all the efforts seeking to recover this ocean Eden.

The Last Forests Project, thelastforestsproject.com

(WordOfMouthMendo.com)

MIKE WILLIAMS: I watched the Seymour Hersh documentary Cover Up. At risk of being “woke”, which really means getting at the truth, Hersh has exposed US abuses from Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, and support of abuses in Gaza. Given the things he uncovered and exposed it’s amazing that he still survives. Shameful behavior by our “leaders”, many would be classified as war criminals in a sane society. And now the current administration is even worse. A reckoning is needed to restore the values of decency.

ED NOTE: Also on Netflix is the latest Dave Chappelle, America's bravest comic.

LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

PROMINENT NATIVE AMERICAN THOUGHT LEADER on KMUD, Thursday, Jan. 1, at 9am, Pacific

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is a renowned Native American studies scholar and journalist, especially on the topics of environmental justice, Indigenous knowledge, and identity. She is lecturer faculty in American Indian Studies at California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center, and Program Director of the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM). Her most recent book is the award-winning "As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock", released in 2019 and her forthcoming book "Who Gets to be Indian: Ethnic Fraud and Other Difficult Conversations about Native American Identity" is scheduled for release in fall 2025 from Beacon Press.

As an as an award-winning journalist, Gilio-Whitaker has been widely published.

She has been involved in film projects both in front of the camera and behind in advisory and educational roles, including Raoul Peck's Peabody Award winning, HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes; Nia Tero's Reciprocity Project", and Thomas Rigler's Emmy Award winning "California Coast: Within Sight, Scent and Sound of the Ocean".

Gilio-Whitaker is also well known in the surfing community at the Surfrider Foundation where she was involved at the Living Shoreline Beach Restoration Project at San Onofre State Beach.

She is also an advisor for Indigenous community engagement at the World Surf League, California (work with Acjachemen, Chumash, Luiseno, and Kumeyaay communities).

She is Native American youth program advisor at Native Like Water.

— John Sakowicz

WORD OF MOUTH MENDO: HELLO, 2026!

Look at you! You made it to 2026, above ground and functional. Is functional a relative term? Yes, yes it is. No matter—we’ll count our collective survival and relative functionality as a win, regardless. It’s good to start off the new year on a win.

Even though solstice is behind us with each day bringing a little more light, winter is just getting into its stride. Those undaunted by the damp and cold can don some warm layers and head out to art walks, nature walks (lichen! mushrooms!), or one of the moon tours at the Point Arena Lighthouse. If you are more of an indoor human this time of year, there are crab feeds, Sips & Seafood events, and even line dancing!

The hibernation impulse might try to keep us all in our caves until spring comes, but that is a ways away, so don’t let winter stop you from getting out and enjoying what Mendocino County has to offer. Check out the community calendar below for some great options.

See you out there ~

Torrey & the team at Word of Mouth Mendo, www.wordofmouthmendo.com

THE NEW YEAR IN BOONVILLE (from the AVA Archive):

1997:

NEW YEAR’S DAY has come and gone, but Jared Carter, attorney of record for the Northcoast’s forces of destruction, hasn’t sued Fort Bragg’s Fire Board. Remember a couple of weeks ago Carter said if the Town’s Fire Marshal, Jim Rutherford, wasn’t gone by January 1st, Carter, acting on behalf of a tiny minority of Fort Bragg developers who think their money exempts them from the rules — in this case the fire code the town only recently adopted after hiring Rutherford to help write it and then enforce it — would sue to get him gone. So far no suit but it’s obvious that the Fire Board, a majority of whom are beholden one way or another to the bully boy developers, will move on the beleaguered fireman. Will the bully boys get him? Maybe, but it’s shaping up as a major battle with grassroots support growing for Rutherford. Lots of Fort Bragg people are fed up with the thuggish behavior of people like Affinito, Baxman, Milliman, Wisdom, and that master of neo-box architecture, Taubold — the people who think their status as big fish in Fort Bragg’s tiny (and nearly waterless) pond gives them ultimate authority.

1999:

Here at The Fort, where most of us are slowed by a persistent bronchial infection, me, the missus and Jackie Potter-Voll began celebrating the last day of ‘98 at 6:30pm, concluding the merriment by 7:30. Our party consisted of one sip each of champagne, Safeway shrimp, a can of Planter’s Mixed Nuts — without peanuts (it was a special occasion after all) — and a small cake from the Garden Bakery in Ukiah. (I didn’t get to Glad’s Café in time to buy one from her.) The one thing I missed New Year’s Eve was the sensation of being awakened by gunfire at midnight. O it’s a tame place these days, this Valley of ours.

2000:

Y2K CAME AND WENT in Anderson Valley so quietly it was as if it never happened. Deputy Squires says “about all I had to do was haul Squint off about ten. That was it. “Squint” is the well-known Dennis Boardman, downtown Boonville’s official greeter whose alcohol-fueled bonhomie occasionally becomes so intense it interferes with local commerce. On the occasions when Downtown Dennis’s homie overwhelms his bon, Deputy Squires, in a ritual the two have worked out over 20 years and is now as practiced as a Tuesday afternoon Mass at Elizabeth Seton’s, the deputy collects Dennis and drives him to 951 Low Gap for a time out. “The trip over the hill with Squint was it. Friday night was the quietist New Years I can remember and quiet even for a Friday night,” the deputy said, and he’s seen some memorable Friday nights.

THERE was one other episode, a rather odd episode only tangentially related to celebrations of the dawn of the next thousand years, if we can realistically anticipate so much more time given the preponderance of contra-indicators. A state prison parolee, apparently stupefied by powerful combinations of chemicals and alcohol, fell asleep in the new vehicle of a Philo man. When he awoke, the parolee commenced to throw what a passerby described as a “conniption fit.” Unfortunately for both the interior of the vehicle and the conniptioner, both suffered heavy damage. As the parolee thrashed around inside the vehicle, punching out its windows and kicking dents in its shiny new dashboard, frustrated witnesses decided to subdue the man. In the restraining process the parolee sustained what appeared to be a broken nose and was hauled off to the emergency ward in Ukiah, his injuries being entirely his own fault.

The Night of the Apocalypse

by Bruce Anderson

I set out from Haight Street for a night’s walkabout anticipating end-of-the-world spectacles. It was New Year’s Eve, end of an even thousand years if you calculate things by Anglo ways of reckoning, the last night of high tech dot com bliss and the prosperity American ingenuity brings about two thirds of its citizens. Up at home base, the hill muffins were hunkered down on the ridgetops, a year’s worth of rice and beans buried out by the pot patch in waterproof containers. The muffs had their generators gassed up and their AK-47’s on lock and load. The old lady had perimeter duty while old man muff checked out fields of fire. At the more excitable and apocalyptic-oriented venues like KZYX and the Mendocino Environment Center where linear thought processes were long ago traded in for intuition and non-print input, the libs had been positively giddy at the prospect of world’s end for a solid year.

I kinda like the world myself and, like most old commies, have great respect for the resilience of capitalism. I knew in my bones that the boys with all the booty weren’t about to let the counting house fall down just because a gaggle of techno-nerds had forgotten to adjust the computer clocks.

But just in case the four horsemen rode in on January One, what better place to watch them do their thing than San Francisco?

But nothing happened.

I’ve never seen The City emptier or quieter. It was so quiet it was eerie. I started out from Haight and Ashbury, these days a fashion center for young people with stores selling two hundred dollar pairs of rubber shoes with two-foot heels — I’ve lived long enough to watch the area do five sociological flip-flops — up Ashbury, down 17th Street, right on past a deserted Castro, down Market to the Embarcadero where a sedate crowd had gathered to listen to singers I’d never heard of. And I felt nothing resembling deprivation at my ignorance.

There were cops of various kinds all the way down Market posted at each intersection. Critical Mass, at least 30,000 bicyclists short of achieving it, pedaled sedately up Market about a thousand strong. A phalanx of motorcycle cops followed them while a police helicopter rotor-whipped the night air above. At Van Ness and Market, Critical Mass stopped for the red light as the police saw them through to the other side as if they were grandmas on three-wheelers. At 9th and Market a couple of cops confiscated two cans of beer from two hat backwards oafs. (It’s one thing to be a moron, but why try to look like one too? Kids these days….) “But dude….” one of the hat backwards complained as the cop plucked the beer from his hand. “Sorry,” the cop said, “This is no alcohol night.”

At the Embarcadero a group of Chinese kids stood laughing and taking pictures of one another as each posed from behind a pair of oversized glasses. Of the dozen of them, about half wore their hair short and dyed in day-glo colors. An old guy said to another old guy, “Al, did you ever think you’d see a Jap with green hair?” Al replied, “Maybe, but I never thought I’d see two of ‘em.” The old guys chuckled.

I seemed to be the third oldest guy in the throng. Huge speakers pounded out the painfully loud rhythms of sexual intercourse and ya-ya lyrics. Young people danced as cops plucked beers out of startled but unresisting hands. I didn’t see any fights or even anything that resembled the usual free-floating hostility present in mob scenes. There were a few groups of tough guys who looked like they wanted to fight, but nobody seemed inclined to rumble.

There was no point — celebratory or otherwise — standing around listening to music played so loud I couldn’t listen in on conversations so I walked back up Market, then up Taylor for a bolito bowl at Original Joe’s. The waiter told me that “the Mayor wrecked the whole weekend for everybody. The no drinking rule, all the baloney about how the cops were going to crack down on people. The Y2K bullshit from the hippies. That’s why nobody’s out there.”

Lots of stores on Market were boarded up, lots weren’t. Old Navy and the Gap store windows were covered with three-quarter plywood. Between the cracks, I could see fat guys in rent-a-cop unis standing round. Some of them wore sidearms. Would they die for ten bucks an hour when the wealth redistributors hurtled through the plywood?

I walked on up to Union Square where some kind of mega-millennial ecumenical prayer and music event was supposed to come off at $10 a pop. The believers had stayed away in droves. Union Square is a lot more crowded on Christmas day than it was End Of The World Night.

There was nothing else to do so I stopped to listen to an unaffiliated evangelical do his thing at the corner of Geary and Stockton. He was a stocky guy about 40 who resembled a squat Elvis Presley, black hair swept back like fenders on a ‘55 Buick. Elvis the God Guy was dressed in a black leather-like, head-to-toe zippered jump suit with an American flag sewed into its chest. God Guy wore a ten gallon cowboy hat festooned with flag medallions and alternating “Praise God!” decals. Nike running shoes rounded out the millennial attire. If Elvis was wafted away, raptured right off the corner, he might have a tough time getting past the security check at Heaven’s Gate in this get-up, but none of us knows for sure if there’s a dress code on the other side till we get there.

Elvis was bellowing apocalyptic warnings through a small bullhorn. He put on a lot better show than anything happening at the Embarcadero. Bill Graham Presents and Willy Brown should have hired him to liven things up. “God is not pleased with the Pope,” Elvis hollered at me as I settled in for the show. “Pope rhymes with dope. There’s no hope with the Pope.” That vein of alliterative gold quickly exhausted, Elvis brought his bullhorn inches from my face. “You ask me how I was brought up?” he bellered as if I’d asked. “Doesn’t really matter; it’s where I’m going that counts.” With that do-it-yourself exchange completed, Elvis pivoted to shout anti-Clinton insults skyward. “Bill Clinton is a filthy, stinking sinner. Will I pray for this stinking, rotten, evil man? Why should I? He’s pro-queer, pro-abortion.”

It wasn’t hard to understand why the preacher was reduced to an open air Post Street pulpit. His wasn’t exactly a Frisco-friendly message, although Elvis did toss out a few sops to the libs, whether or not out of concern for Frisco sensibilities or out of mental illness could not be determined with any certainty. “All weapons should be buried. They are evil. Praise God.” All he drew was chuckles from me and a few fish eyes from the few passersby who even seemed aware of him.

A young Chinese guy soon appeared, a mischievous grin on his face and a violin case under his arm. I got the feeling the preacher and the violinist were old antagonists. The kid took out a small amplifier and plugged an electric string instrument into it and began sawing unmusically away a few feet from the rambunctious representative of the Prince of Peace. “The devil won’t drive me out!” the preacher shouted at the kid who promptly turned up the volume on his violin for a round of Waltzing Matilda. As I walked up Post the preacher and the electrified violinist were a foot apart, the kid laughing and hacking away with his bow at his amplified strings, the preacher screaming, “The devil hisself is knocking at my door but he sure is wrong if he thinks God will let him in!”

At the rear door of the St. Francis hotel a bunch of cops were assembled to launch a mini-motorcade. The very sight of big black cars and motorcades makes me yearn for hand grenades, but I lingered, joining 50 or so other gawkers. I wanted to see who gets tax-funded escorts these days. The last time I checked, we were paying for the cops to whisk senior sluts from the U.S. Senate out to SFO as the peons pulled over to the side to let the leadership pass. A guy asked me, “Who’s here?” Al Gore, I replied. The guy turned to the lady with him and said authoritatively, “Al Gore. Wonder what he’s doing here? Let’s stick around.”

“Al Gore Al Gore Al Gores” ripple excitedly through the crowd, passed from one person to the next like a beer at a ball game. The crowd waiting for Al Gore grows larger. I lament my little treachery until I remind myself that anybody who’d wait outside a hotel door for a glimpse of Al Gore on the last day of a thousand years or any other day deserves whomever eventually appears and I hope it’s the third secretary of Independent Yakataka or Dianne Feinstein.

At the Civic Center another music festival of some sort was tuning up, but it seemed lightly attended too. I think it was a second whoop de doo sponsored by The City. I walked on up a deserted Polk Street until I got to Sacramento where I hopped a free bus. the Muni is never entirely free, broadly considered to include the emotional toll it often takes, but it was free to riders on this, The Last Night.

The bus was empty except for four Mexicans just getting off work. Early in the morning, late at night, the Muni is a mobile Third World, ferrying the legions of underpaid people who do the real work of our latest economic miracle, the SUV-Dot Com decade where the dollars go up but fewer and fewer come down.

I get off at California and Masonic to catch the 33 back to the Haight. Two middle-aged women, one black one white and nicely done up and how good it is to see women looking after themselves again after the long visual drought years of no paint and no pain over appearances join me at the bus stop. The area is deserted. “Do you mind if we stand near you?” one asks. “It’s creepy out here.” Yes, I’m the only one, I say. They laugh. I don’t know if I should be insulted at their menace-free assumption or elated that I seem capable of serving as armor against the urban night.

The 33 eventually appears. My wards and I are the only passengers until Hayes Street where an odd guy in white bucks trips and sprawls onto the bus, lying on the steps like he’s dead drunk or has just dropped dead from the exertion of climbing onto the 33. But he’s neither, just clumsy. “Are you going to ask me if I’m alright, driver?” Mr. Prat Fall asks. No, the driver says without even looking at the guy as he pulls out into a uniquely vehicle-free Masonic. “How about you folks? Are you going to ask me if I’m alright?” Mr. Prat Fall ask us. Are you alright I and my two wards chorus. “Yes, I am, thank you,” PF says and, apparently gratified at our mannerly response to his inquiry, sits down without saying another word.

The Muni is endlessly fascinating. San Francisco is endlessly fascinating. The libs are lamenting The City’s alleged loss of its “diversity,” but I’ve never seen it more diverse, and I’ve been living there and going there for 55 years.

At Haight and Masonic I alight. One of the two ladies I was selflessly accompanying point to point or at least until a visible threat materialized, wished me happy new year as the other said, “Thank you for guarding us.”

Shucks, ma’am, happy to put your mind to ease.

Haight Street was deserted. Ben and Jerry’s was the only place open. Even the bums, and the winos and the tax-funded dopers had disappeared. Excuse me. Even the homeless seem to have packed it in for the night. Maybe the people who refuse to consider the revival of the state hospital system took them home to welcome in the new year or the end of all years, whichever came first, but nobody was out anywhere in San Francisco. Only a few thousand suburbanites were massed at the Embarcadero, gaping at the Ferry Building and massing at rows of Porta Potties for easily the most chaste New Year’s Eve in the history of the Golden Gate.

The next day the paper said that there were fewer police and fire calls on New Year’s Eve than there are on any Friday night of the year. People stayed home for the end of the world, but it didn’t end anywhere, even the places where it was supposed to.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, December 31, 2025

DAMIAN FEAGAN, 20, Ukiah. Robbery, probation revocation.

JAMES FORBESS, 39, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

LUCY LINCOLN, 43, Covelo. Burglary, petty theft with two or more priors, burglary tools, vandalism, stolen property, controlled substance, conspiracy, parole violation.

BYRON PETERS, 47, Covelo. Burglary, burglary tools, vandalism, stolen property, controlled substance, conspiracy.

DANIEL YEOMANS, 54, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

DEBORAH WHITE:

Pride goeth before a fall--literally:

Rock Star status revoked.

I did my business at the library, then went to take the bus back. I went to the wrong one. (I see what I did wrong.) The bus went in a totally wrong direction, and I got off after a couple of stops. I decided to walk back home (~ 3+ miles). I made several wrong turns. Then my phone died. I'd put it in Battery Saving mode. The map lady still announced when I needed to turn. This worked for a while. Then I fell, landing face down, crushing my glasses against my eye sockets, among other injuries. I got up and kept going until I was thoroughly confused. I stopped at a salon, where a stylist and a customer were having a chat. I said I needed help, so the customer looked on her phone. They both told me my nose was bleeding and gave me a tissue. They were so sweet, almost refusing to let me leave. But I persisted and made quite a bit of progress, finally stopping at a Thai boba place, where I got another piece of information, which took me to Whitney Ranch Dr. I knew where I was now, but it was about 1 1/2 miles from home. I kept walking, repeating the mantra "Don't fall!" I was beat. Then, about two blocks from home, Ollie drove past and saw me. He'd thought I was dead.

I have never been happier to get into my bed.

Silver lining: I think it cured my ARFID! Being without food and water for 4 hours did it. Ollie made me a berry and banana smoothie. (I'll post about bananas later.) And I already ate frozen waffles this morning.

Saving grace: I can laugh at myself (and did, copiously).

Except for black eyes and abrasions, I'm in a lot better shape this morning than I had any right to expect.

Older but wiser.

ATTENTION MURALISTS!

A new state law, SB 456 is called, “License exemption for muralists.”

As of Jan. 1, 2026, artists who draw, paint, restore or conserve a mural under a contract don’t need to follow the Contractors State License Law. SB 456 defines “mural” as a unique, copyrighted piece of fine art done by hand directly on walls, ceilings, etc., but it doesn’t count painted wall signs.

Right now, cities have been slowing mural projects because of confusion about the licensing rule, according to legislative analysts. Previously, muralists had to have four years of experience, pass an exam and pay fees. That was a roadblock for public art and could lead to fines for artists and city staff, the Legislative report said.

Supporters, led by California Arts Advocates, say the license requirement is totally unnecessary and stifles creativity.

“Furthermore, artistic works are protected under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution and the 1976 Copyright Act. Additionally, the California Arts Preservation Act (CAPA) and the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) protect an artist’s moral rights, distinguishing their work from commercial painting,” the group wrote to the Legislature.

Getting this exemption will let artists keep sprucing up communities and helping local economies, the group said.

An opponent, the group Fight Back in Sac, worried in a submitted comment that the term “muralist” is too vague and could let artists who do things like pressure-washing or applying stucco or other texture (if the job is over $1,000) skip out on the licenses meant to protect the public regarding contracts, liens, payment and liability.

(North Bay Business Journal)

DOMINICA

by Michael Nolan

I'm back from Dominica and Grenada and the trip was easy and fun. I flew LA-NYC-San Juan, Puerto Rico-Dominica. On the flight down the two-engine propeller plane ran low on fuel and we had to land on the island of Guadeloupe, the country north of Dominica. I was feeling mighty disappointed. It looked just like Oahu — every opening crowded with houses, every well-paved road lined with development. Well, that's what I had been afraid of — so near the East Coast of the US and western Europe. How could the Caribbean have escaped the fate of popularity and mass tourism?

We take off and continue south over a sapphire sea. After a while we are over a mountainous green wilderness. The plane banks dramatically then drops swiftly into a deep gulch and brakes hard on a new asphalt runway hacked out of the jungle and ending abruptly at the beach. No hangars. No airplanes. No town. No visible roads. Welcome to just-opened Melville Hall Airport, Dominica. You walk to Customs & Immigration. It is painted a nice bright yellow, some of the plywood counters still unpainted. It looks endearingly amateur. The Customs people are nice; the inspector asks what is in my oddly-shaped bag and I tell him snorkeling gear and he smiles and says, "Welcome to Dominica."

I rent a little Suzuki jeep and head out into the jungle on a narrow and very potholed road which is the highway to town, about 30 miles and a one and a half hour drive. I don't know which way to turn at the first ",T" but a guy waiting there says he is going to town and will show me the way. His name is Michael Christopher. We talk about the jungle we are passing through, food prices, politics, cooking, farming… I mention ganja and he says, Want to taste some of ours? I say, Heck yes, and off we go to his village and climb up to a very rustic cabin entwined in birds and flowers, the home of a Rastaman my age named Michael Joseph.

The Michaels are soon at all-men-are-brothers. Eating grapefruits off the tree. I have been in Dominica a little over an hour.

So about then Squashie climbs up. He knows where the guesthouse I've booked is. It is just a bit south of Portsmouth, Dominica's second-largest city. He tells me the best way through the city, the rivers I'll have to cross. I figure I'd better get moving because this far south it gets dark about 6pm and it sounds like a long way. But this is a small world and everything is relevant. The City turns out to be about 5 miles away and is about half the size of Fort Bragg. The guesthouse is a few minutes south of the city right where Squashie said it would be, just a couple of hours sooner.

A single cabin. Very spartan, mosquito net, at the beach, $35. The cannonballs falling intermittently on my corrugated metal roof during the windy night turned out in the morning to be ripe mangoes which made a splendid breakfast. I drove left-side on a terrifying road to a cove where some guys were building small boats near an easy-access reef.

Safe, clear water, lots of corals that I have never seen. Dominica is said to be one of the top ten dive sites in the world and I headed south for more.

The road south is cut into cliffs like Big Sur, but maybe 12 feet wide, deeply potholed, sometimes very steep and tightly wound around obstacles. Few people can afford cars so the light traffic is mostly trucks, buses and taxis driven by pro drivers who make crazy moves work out. Usually. Although the burned-out wrecks pushed off the road into the jungle every so often are hard to ignore.

On the sea side villages appear in coves and on the flats of river mouths. On the land side is a wall of rampant vegetation over vertical rock. It takes a long time for me to get down to the southeast and the capital city, Roseau. It's about a 6 by 8 foot block walk, maybe 15 minutes to walk across.

Roseau is vibrant and picturesque beyond my description but I'm on a mission so l pass through and continue south to Scott's Head Marine Reserve. The road gets very rural, ever more lush, narrower, then scary steep down to an aquamarine bay and tiny, gorgeous Soufriereits' church steeple rising through coconut palms. Then a long climb around the next headland and: The Caribbean I had hoped for, but never really believed would still exist.

Scott's Head village curves around a shingle beach which ends at a big rock, the southernmost point of Dominica. The village had no functional tourist facilities and dusk was upon me so l ask a guy if he knows someone who might rent me a room. He takes me to see "Big A." Big A sits like a budha in his substantial-for-the-community home wearing a gold earring, clearly The Man. He offers me a whole house. We agree on 60 Eastern Caribbean dollars, about 20 of ours. He instructs Mrs. Big A to show me the place — a spotless two-bedroom home, fully furnished. Except. There are no towels, or washcloths, or soap. Or toilet paper. But I, ex-Boy Scout and budget traveler, have one of each.

Happiness. In the village, at one with the People.

Next morning, after a good breakfast at clean and orderly Roger's Restaurant — the only restaurant — I snorkel the Marine Reserve, a nowhere site (of course hyped in all the guidebooks and dive mags).

Rule #1: Don't locate a marine reserve 200 yards from a remote fishing village. But the village! My god, it is one of the most beautiful places that I've ever been in. Brightly painted wooden boats. maybe 14-16 footers. made right there on the beach. Guys hanging out in sheds and under palapas talking story, repairing nets, dicking around with outboard motors. I wander the road. The beach side is coconut palms and boat stuff, the land side a jumble of textures and colors — ancient slave cabins next to pastel bungalows. An old lady wearing a man's hat stylishly, as do most women in Dominica, greets me as we pass, as does almost every person that I've encountered in this nation. Heaven.

I had read about a place called Champagne Beach. Columns of warm bubbles rise from the seafloor, supposed to be a great dive site. I looked for it when driving south from Roseau but couldn't find it. Now driving back up the coast looking carefully, but nothing yet. I found a rare place to pull off the road for a break. I forgot to mention that the Michaels had insisted that I take two grapefruits and a generous handful of weed.

The weed, their name for it, was time travel: narrow brownish green leaves, seeds, sweet musty smell. Mexican, circa 1968. So I had packed appropriately, had a nice little beater jeep, things were going well. Just over the edge whilst leaving a pee I see a paved trail, invisible from the road, with a sign: Champagne Beach.

The way has been made so easy. Maybe a quarter of a mile of boardwalk and gravel to a slip-in site. No people. I swim out into the shoals of bubbles delighting in the sensation. The reef fish like the warm active water as much as I do and are at their flashiest best. I drift out into deeper water in that trance you can get in when conditions are perfect: warm water, no waves, 100 foot visibility.

I'm down to about six breaths a minute in 20 to 40 foot deep water. It feels like flying over a submerged landscape of cliffs and gorges covered in the fantastic shapes and colors of hard and soft corals. Vivid yellow tubes, lavender seafans, gorgonians, staghorns, barrels — things which look brittle and static are actually swaying, beckoning, enchanting me in the undersea wind. Then I sense the presence of large animals, a wave of primordial fear as I turn to encounter aliens in black spacesuits with dials and gauges. They swim to the bubbles, they look at the fish. But they are walled off from the experience by their gear. I used to imagine taking up diving but now I feel so free, light, intimate. This is the best snorkeling of the trip and I come back again in a few days and it is just as fun.

TRUMP IS NO TRUMAN

Editor:

My political awareness began with the Truman administration. I remember the Joseph McCarthy and Douglas MacArthur challenges to the Constitution. Thank God I have never experienced another president like Donald Trump. No chief executive has been as self-centered, cruel, vindictive, crude (OK, maybe LBJ was) and partisan as Trump. He decrees a problem to be a national security threat and seizes extraordinary powers. He has been allowed to concentrate power due to the acquiescence of the Supreme Court and the Republican Congress.

Trump is the only president I can recall who puts his name on government-issued checks. He names government facilities for himself. Normally naming is voted on by a separate body to honor someone deceased. Finally, Trump has the thinnest skin of any president during my lifetime. Harry Truman famously said to get out of the kitchen (politics) if you can’t stand the heat (scrutiny, criticism). Trump’s angry response is to tear down the metaphorical kitchen. He fires, or has fired, persons who dare to criticize him. Clearly, Truman was a lot tougher political figure than Trump.

Phil Weil

Santa Rosa

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT 2026

Editor:

Since 1907 the Times Square ball has dropped to celebrate the incoming year. This year will be a big celebration of a red, white and blue ball and a yearlong celebration of patriotism and love for our great country. As always, Democrats have negative feelings about this, mainly because it was planned by President Donald Trump. Americans voted for Trump because we love our country. We want border security, we want safe and clean streets, and we want law and order. This is why we elected Trump, and so far he has accomplished all of it. If you do not like the red, white and blue ball at Times Square, oh well. You can always move to another country, and we will help you pack.

Gayle Kozlowski

Santa Rosa

*Midnight and Nobody to Kiss* (1949) by Constantin Alajalov

CRACKDOWNS, FLAMEOUTS AND COMEBACKS: THE 10 BIGGEST BAY AREA STORIES OF 2025

by Jennifer Gollan

This past year in the Bay Area will be remembered for a series of stories and events that were important and captivating. But the uniting theme was clear: politics.

Political battles. Political scandals. Political collapses and comebacks.

Perhaps this shouldn’t have been a surprise in the wake of the seismic election of a president who promised to fight Californians on issues many hold dear, declaring global warming a hoax and initiating a mass deportation campaign.

But some of the political tensions were also intensely local, animated by cities’ continued efforts to emerge from the pandemic and by internecine jousting for control of the Democratic party.

There was a sprawling federal corruption probe on one side of the bay and yet another recall election on the other side — this one over the closure of a stretch of oceanfront highway.

Counting down from 10 to 1, here are the most memorable stories of the year, ranked by a vote of Chronicle staff members:

A record shutdown

The effects of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history — driven by a deadlock over health care funding — rippled across the Bay Area.

Federal workers missed paychecks, air traffic snarled and parks closed, including Muir Woods. Bay Area food banks scrambled to meet a surge in demand from new customers as SNAP funding lapsed for 700,000 low-income residents in the region.

In November, after 43 days, some Senate Democrats broke ranks and joined Republicans in bringing the shutdown to an end.

Farewell to Engardio — and his replacement

When Sunset District residents recalled San Francisco Supervisor Joel Engardio in September, they punished him for a November 2024 ballot initiative he championed that banned cars on the Upper Great Highway and created a new park. For better or worse, the vote represented a broader warning to city pols about getting on the wrong side of neighborhood sentiment.

That was a big enough story on its own, but then Engardio’s replacement lasted just one week in office. Mayor Daniel Lurie appointed Beya Alcaraz, a 29-year-old with no political experience, only to seek her resignation following revelations about her management of a pet store.

That Alcaraz didn’t last a single “Scaramucci” embarrassed Lurie, who promised to “thoroughly review” his office’s vetting process. The mayor’s second appointee to the seat, Alan Wong, will run for election in June.

Liberal lion’s new challenge

Talk about tough timing. When Barbara Lee took office as Oakland’s mayor in May, she replaced the recalled and indicted Sheng Thao and took the reins of a city beset with crises, including a historic budget shortfall and ongoing concerns about crime and homelessness.

Lee, who represented Oakland for nearly 30 years in Congress, surprised many with her run for mayor. Among her early accomplishments: working with the City Council to pass a balanced budget that avoided layoffs and kept fire stations open and streamlining business permits.

Despite substantial drops in reported crime over the past year, many challenges remain. Oakland’s $188 million in COVID-era federal assistance is set to expire. Federal cuts to Medicaid and Supplementary Security Income will also hurt Oakland, particularly low-income and homeless residents.

Bitter winds blow through vines

Wine consumption continued to slide in 2025, reshaping the industry across California. After decades of growth beginning in the early 1990s, enthusiasm started to slip around 2019, then sharply declined after the pandemic. Other forms of booze including seltzer and canned cocktails grabbed market share even as people generally drank less alcohol, some concerned about their health.

Several notable Bay Area tasting rooms closed this year, from Sonoma-Cutrer in Windsor to Twomey in Calistoga, and other wineries, including Napa Valley’s Newton Vineyards, shut down entirely. Across the state, growers ripped out nearly 40,000 acres of vines, and even with those removals, many vineyard owners could not find winemakers willing to buy their fruit, leaving grapes hanging on the vine at the end of harvest season. One silver lining: According to one report, the downturn could usher in a “golden era” of good prices due to an oversupply of wine.

Retirement of a pioneer

In a November announcement that was historic if not surprising, Nancy Pelosi, the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said she would retire from Congress, kicking off a battle for the San Francisco seat she has held for nearly four decades.

The contest to replace Pelosi had already started, and now includes state Sen. Scott Wiener; Connie Chan, a twice-elected city supervisor; and Saikat Chakrabarti, a software engineer and former top aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The race raises a key question for a fractured left: What is the Democratic Party’s best path forward to stop an ascendant right?

More history may also be made. If Wiener wins, he would be the first openly gay person to represent San Francisco in Congress, while Chan or Chakrabarti would be the first person of Asian descent to do so.

AI boom

Exuberance over the potential of artificial intelligence to reshape industries — and cut costs for human labor — helped fill millions of square feet of San Francisco office space and juiced the housing market. As tech giants leaned into AI to bolster multitrillion-dollar valuations, investors bet on newer companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, and Gov. Gavin Newsom backed the gold rush, striking partnerships with AI firms and vetoing regulations the industry opposed.

But concern also grew that AI won’t be as sustainable — or profitable — as the hype suggests. Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai acknowledged in a recent interview with the BBC that there was some “irrationality through a moment like this.” If the AI bubble bursts, it could stoke extensive layoffs and blow a hole in the state’s budget, according to the Legislature’s fiscal analyst’s office. That could make the $18 billion shortfall the office predicts even worse.

Newsom and state lawmakers have also expressed concern about an executive order Trump signed in December seeking to preempt state-level regulation of the technology. That could imperil AI regulations Newsom has approved, including safety requirements for chatbots and rules prohibiting AI-generated revenge porn. Some state lawmakers have said his order violates states’ rights and have promised California will fight it in court.

Lurie’s long honeymoon

Call it deft leadership or impeccable timing, but Daniel Lurie enjoyed strong support in his first year as San Francisco’s 46th mayor.

Lurie styled himself as an omnipresent cheerleader for San Francisco, frequently posting on social media to highlight his work and tout what he’s described as the city’s comeback. He got the Board of Supervisors to pass a law designed to let his administration take faster action on projects that address homelessness and drug addiction. He also began to overhaul San Francisco’s notoriously complex permitting system, and he notched his biggest legislative victory of the year when supervisors passed his plan to allow taller and denser housing on the north and west sides of the city. A Chronicle poll in July found that 73% of registered voters in the city approved of his job performance.

Though he notched a few high-profile flubs (see above), he tallied another win with President Donald Trump’s about-face on staging an immigration sweep in San Francisco — after talking with Lurie and tech industry leaders by phone. Some credited the mayor’s approach of eschewing sharp criticism in favor of compromise. “I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night,” Trump wrote in a social media post, “and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around.”

The fight to gerrymander

When California voters approved new congressional maps to favor Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections, they exacted revenge against Republicans in Texas and handed Newsom a win in his battle with Trump.

Proposition 50 replaces the state’s congressional maps, drawn by an independent commission, with revised maps drawn by Democrats aimed at flipping five GOP seats. The measure is intended to help Democrats capture control of the U.S. House and thwart efforts by Republican-controlled states that are also redrawing their maps. The new maps will be in effect for 2026, 2028 and 2030, after which the independent commission will resume drawing them.

‘Pay to play’ in Oakland

Mayor Sheng Thao had already been recalled from office when the real hammer came down.

In January, Thao, along with her boyfriend, Andre Jones, and David and Andy Duong, the father-and-son leaders of Oakland’s curbside recycling contractor, California Waste Solutions, were indicted on bribery-related charges. Prosecutors said Thao agreed to help the Duongs secure a city contract for a company that sought to build modular housing units for the homeless out of shipping containers.

All four pleaded not guilty as the case headed toward trial. Then in October, another bomb dropped: Federal officials charged San Leandro City Council Member Bryan Azevedo with conspiring to accept kickbacks — again involving the modular housing startup.

Year of fear for immigrants

The Bay Area’s biggest story was the biggest story in a lot of places. Stepped-up arrests of immigrants delighted Trump’s supporters and spread fear in many communities, from San Francisco to Richmond to the agricultural fields of Wine Country and the Central Valley.

In May, the Department of Homeland Security directed its attorneys to seek immediate dismissal of immigrants’ court cases, permitting ICE agents to arrest and quickly deport them. Immigrants with active asylum cases and others applying for legal status suddenly faced ICE officers who turned up at courthouses to whisk them away in handcuffs.

In October, federal agents arrived in the Bay Area for a planned immigration “surge” in San Francisco before Trump called it off. But the impact on local residents was still substantial. In Oakland, a man close to obtaining asylum spent two months in detention for no apparent reason — before a judge ordered him released.

Noted in Ukiah, an idea whose time will never come.

DEMS HAVE LOST THEIR WAY

To the Editor,

I was dismayed to read about the Democratic National Committee deciding not to release its report on 2024, the latest in a string of decisions that demonstrate how it has lost its connection to actual voters, common sense and upholding the democratic norms it claimed were important when criticizing the MAGA movement for destroying them.

The party no longer champions a clear brand “for” anything — having spent the last nine years being “against” President Trump — and it employs the same dirty tactics that it vilifies the Republicans for, such as redistricting.

How does the Democratic Party plan to gain back voter confidence if it is not willing to publicly assess its mistakes, admit where it went wrong and develop a plan to adapt as it moves forward? Isn’t this what we teach our children?

Shoving the report in a drawer and hoping that President Trump has finally screwed up so badly that people will come back to the party is not a strategy to move the party or the country forward. I’m not naïve enough to believe the report was unbiased and exhaustive, but it was at least a step toward reckoning.

Let’s be brave and honest, and come together to be a party for the people and the next phase of America.

Becky Daniel

Raleigh, North Carolina

IT IS TOO DEPRESSING

It is too depressing
To talk about death
I don't want to hear anything about
Death
It is too depressing
To talk about the war
It is too depressing to talk
About violence
It is too depressing
Too talk about the homeless
Sleeping in the street
During the Winter
Because the days are shorter
And it gets dark by 5:00 pm
It is too depressing
To talk about the left overs
That we throw in the garbage
That could have gone
To feed the homeless that are
Starving
We should put our selves in the
Shoes of the homeless
Just to feel what is like to be
Homeless
It is too depressing to
Talk about the people that
Have died of Aids
Also we have to remember
That they are gone but not
Forgotten
It is too depressing to talk about
Elder abuse
It is too depressing to talk about
The young women who
Are single mothers trying to raise their
Child own their own
We must understand that it is very hard to be
A single mother

— Aldo Kraas (2025)

GEORGE ORWELL slept in Paris flop houses, washed dishes in filthy hotel basements, and begged on London streets all to tell the truth about poverty.

In the early 1930s, he had every reason to stay comfortable. Educated at Eton, born Eric Arthur Blair, he could have lived a quiet life teaching or writing polite essays. Instead, he threw himself into the gutter to understand what Britain tried not to see. The result was Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), a raw chronicle of hunger, humiliation, and survival that exposed the myth of class dignity.

Orwell didn’t just write about the oppressed; he lived among them. He pawned his clothes for food, slept in hostels beside the destitute, and earned pennies scrubbing greasy plates twelve hours a day. “You have talked so often of going to the dogs,” he wrote, “and—well, here are the dogs.” That experience burned into him a lifelong hatred of hypocrisy and totalitarianism, a fire that would later ignite Animal Farm and 1984.

When Animal Farm was published in 1945, its attack on Soviet tyranny made him a target from both left and right. The British government kept him under surveillance, Soviet sympathizers called him a traitor, and publishers feared his next book would be banned. But Orwell refused to soften his convictions. “In a time of universal deceit,” he wrote, “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

By the late 1940s, he was coughing blood from tuberculosis, writing 1984 in a freezing Scottish farmhouse. His health collapsed, but his focus didn’t. He typed through fever and night sweats, insisting that freedom’s greatest enemy was comfort. When the book was released in 1949, it stunned the world and gave English the vocabulary of oppression: Big Brother, Thought Police, doublethink.

He died six months later, only 46 years old, broke but unbowed.

George Orwell, the privileged man who chose the gutter to tell the truth, didn’t die rich — he died right.

He proved that real courage isn’t rebellion for fame; it’s suffering for honesty in a world that rewards silence.

ANGRY PATRIOTS: New England Patriots defensive tackle Christian Barmore faces misdemeanor assault and battery charges against his former girlfriend. Another Patriots player, wide receiver Stefon Diggs, is separately facing a felony strangulation charge involving his private chef. (nytimes.com)

LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

Mamdani Is First New York Mayor to Use the Quran at His Swearing-In

Dozens Believed Dead After Fire at New Year’s Party in Switzerland

How Russia’s War Machine Brutalizes and Exploits Its Own Soldiers

Ukraine Did Not Target Putin’s Home, C.I.A. Finds

Another New Year at War: Ukraine’s Troops Doubt It Will Be the Last

“IN MY PARENTS' DAY and age, it used to be the person who fell short. Now it's the discipline. Reading the classics is too difficult, therefore it's the classics that are to blame. Today the student asserts his incapacity as a privilege. I can't learn it, so there is something wrong with it. And there is something especially wrong with the bad teacher who wants to teach it. There are no more criteria, Mr. Zuckerman, only opinions.”

― Philip Roth, ‘The Human Stain’

THE MINNESOTA CHILDCARE SCANDAL

…and who will pay the ultimate price

by Mark Halperin

What's now known simply as 'the Minnesota scandal' began with a jaw-dropping allegation: that billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded childcare and social-service payments — some estimates placing the exposure as high as $9 billion — may have been siphoned off, misdirected or fraudulently claimed through networks of providers operating with shockingly little state oversight.

Under Governor Tim Walz's administration, critics say, the system intended to help working families instead became a playground for grifters, middlemen and opportunists who spotted a loophole the size of Lake Superior.

The questions at the heart of the mess are brutally simple: who profited, how much money is gone and why did the state fail to notice until Washington and the press forced the matter into the open?

The scandal's combustible politics were supercharged early by the insertion — or, as some note, the inevitable arrival — of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar into the narrative.

Omar represents a Minneapolis district with one of the largest Somali-American populations in the country and many of the childcare centers, nonprofits and community organizations now under scrutiny operate squarely within her political and cultural orbit.

While she is not accused of wrongdoing directly tied to the scandal, her critics point to a long record of defending immigrant-run service providers against previous fraud allegations, often framing such scrutiny as racially motivated or rooted in Islamophobia. Omar's more recent condemnation of the scandal is, simply, that it has been overblown.

There's also been scrutiny of her personal wealth, accumulating in the millions at an eye-catching pace by her and her husband while she's been in office.

To conservatives, these patterns form a mosaic — not necessarily of criminal conduct, but of ideological complicity.

To liberals, she is being scapegoated for the failures of a bureaucracy she does not run. But politically, none of the nuance matters. Omar is Omar: polarizing, quotable, unyielding and already one of the most caricatured figures in American public life. The moment her district and community were woven into the scandal's narrative, the story's trajectory changed overnight.

In the eyes of the right, she is the embodiment of everything they believe ails progressive governance: ideological rigidity, identity-politics defensiveness, bureaucratic hypocrisy and a refusal to confront wrongdoing within favored networks or communities.

Even liberal operatives admit privately that if one were designing a scandal tailor-made for right-wing outrage, the end result would look a lot like this one — not least because of the major role in the scandal played by her fellow members of the Somali-American community, a ripe and frequent target for President Trump himself.

Eight weeks into the scandal, the story has both stayed the same and changed dramatically.

It has evolved from a Minnesota policy breakdown into a full-blown national spectacle — a government accountability crisis, a partisan morality play and, increasingly, a test of how much institutional rot Americans are prepared to tolerate.

[Spoiler alert: definitely not this much.]

That the flames turned into a wildfire this week owes much to a widely shared video investigation by YouTuber Nick Shirley, the announcement of investigations by ICE, the FBI and Homeland Security and the extraordinary step by the US Department of Health and Human Services to cut off childcare payments to the state.

That's the kind of viral moment and substantive federal intervention combo that converts a local problem into a campaign-cycle storyline.

Democrat Walz, seeking a third term, insists he is taking the allegations seriously, but his slow reaction and hedged rhetoric have left many constituents furious and fed up. His team has moved from denial to damage control, yet the pace has not matched the scale of the crisis nor the growing outrage. Even now, state and national conventional media coverage is carrying the faint whiff of an effort to downplay the magnitude - an instinct that has only added fuel to the fire in the Red quadrants of social and digital media.

And then there is Donald Trump — who has found in this scandal a political piñata decorated, dangling and begging to be whacked.

Trump thrives with villains to leverage and, in this case, he has Walz as well as Omar, a charter member of 'The Squad,' a phrase that sets MAGA hearts a-racing.

To Trump World, the affair is a perfectly gift-wrapped narrative: liberal mismanagement, progressive ideology run amok, a cast of characters their base already knows by heart, COVID-era profligate spending and an epic failure of blindness by the Dominant Media.

One Republican strategist joked that the only thing missing is a cameo by Hunter Biden.

At its core, this is a story about government accountability — an American classic as old as the founding of the Republic. But the way it has unfolded reflects the current era: in a media environment where a single YouTube exposé can generate more heat than a month of legislative hearings and where every audit and affidavit instantly becomes chum for partisans across the spectrum.

Information doesn't just emerge anymore; it is monetized, weaponized, and churned into fifty competing narratives before the ink on the original report is dry.

Democrats argue the system is working because audits are underway and bad actors are being rooted out, tried and convicted.

Republicans see a fiasco that confirms every suspicion they have about blue-state governance.

Walz, with his Midwestern earnestness and instinctive evasiveness, finds himself cast opposite Trump's theatrical bombast. Walz speaks the language of 'process improvements,' while Trump charges ahead with blunt declarations about 'corruption' and 'chaos,' making the contrast almost absurdly vivid.

Media coverage, unsurprisingly, has been a circus. Left-leaning outlets frame the scandal as regrettable but exaggerated. Right-leaning outlets describe it as the Hindenburg of progressive governance.

National reporters ping-pong between policy detail and political intrigue. And always, lurking beneath, is the unmistakable tension: journalists know this is a huge story but fear amplifying it in ways that could benefit Trump politically.

That hesitance becomes its own political act and its own source of outrage.

Yet what ultimately keeps the scandal alive is not the politics but the people. Families who depended on childcare support have been thrown into chaos. Communities feel blindsided.

The ramifications are unambiguously sad and awful. Minnesotans across the spectrum are asking the same painful question: how did the state lose control of a system so essential to daily life?

All of this plays into the country's increasingly dark view of its institutions. Americans of all ideological stripes believe government is struggling to manage even basic responsibilities. The Minnesota scandal confirms those fears for Republicans, complicates messaging for Democrats and deepens the cynicism of independents who see dysfunction everywhere.

In the end, the scandal is no longer just a Minnesota story. It is a national parable — a story about trust, competence, political opportunism and the speed with which a local oversight failure can become a campaign-year battleground.

Messy. Emotional. Televised. Weaponized.

And nowhere near over.

Expect more of these storylines out of Minnesota in 2026, with tears real and spurious — so keep an eye on those lachrymose crocodiles.

(DailyMail.uk)

ABOVE AVERAGE

by James Kunstler

“The left can act with an insane decentralized unanimity typically seen only in the insect kingdom.” —Curtis Yarvin

All winters are winters of discontent, but some winters are more discontented than others, and this one is like being stuck in a smoke-filled sod hut on the lonely prairie, with lice crawling under your hair-shirt, while a sleet-storm rages outside. . . . And it was only just Christmas days ago!

Immigrants, legal and otherwise, are the gifts that keep on giving. Minnesota is acting all indignant now over the discovery that its many thousands of Somali guests made a major industry of looting the government. What is it with Garrison Keillor’s upright descendants of the pioneers? I guess they’re not as “above average” as he used to tell us.

The fellow in charge, for instance, was one Tim Walz, recently a candidate for Veep, if you can believe it. He seemed oblivious to the scam-o-rama going on, though the “Little Mogadishu” neighborhood in Minneapolis is only a couple of miles from the governor’s mansion across the Mississippi River in St. Paul. You must wonder: does he know any of these people? Does he consort with their representative in Congress, Ms. Ilhan Omar who, just this year happened to come into a $30-million fortune. (Did Nancy Pelosi tutor Rep. Omar on stock-picking?)

The Somali racketeering network is alleged to have stolen billions of tax dollars for empathy-dripping social services programs such as “Feeding Our Future,” housing stabilization, autism therapy services, day-care, and Covid-19 relief measures. These were a mix of state and federal funds funneled through Medicaid, with the feds covering roughly 50-60 percent of costs, all administered by the state government. The fraud proceeds were primarily spent on personal luxury items (cars, homes, travel), real estate (including overseas), or transferred abroad to Somali terror groups such as al-Shabaab associated with al Qaeda.

Governor Walz declared, “Minnesotans have no tolerance for fraud. That’s why we created a state law enforcement unit to investigate and hold people accountable for these crimes, and why I’m calling on the legislature to pass our comprehensive anti-fraud package.” Another son of the prairie, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois (d. 1969) once cracked, “. . . a billion here, a billion there, sooner or later you’re talking about real money.” FBI Director Kash Patel “surged” a big unit of his agents to the Land o’ Lakes to have a closer look at the situation. So far, federal prosecutors have secured convictions (many through guilty pleas) of over sixty Somalis and the American who ran the non-profit org Feeding Our Future, Aimee Bock, described as “the ringleader.”

Prosecutors say those associated with the org defrauded the Federal Child Nutrition Program of nearly $250 million through Minnesota’s Department of Education. The feds identified millions of dollars in several bank accounts associated with Bock, as well as more than $13,000 in cash found in her home. KSTP-TV Eyewitness News, Minneapolis said, “Bock was also convicted of accepting kickback payments, or bribes, and funneling money to her boyfriend at the time, one Empress Watson.” Say, what. . . ? A boyfriend named. . . Empress? Is it possible that Governor Walz is not personally acquainted with Aimee Bock?

The New York Times apparently decided that the Minnesota scandal was not worth reporting. Islamophobia, you understand. Instead, the Sunday edition carried this story:

Perhaps the most interesting twist in the Great Minnesota Grift is how money bounced out of the various social service fraud operations into the coffers of Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party politicians. State Attorney General Keith Ellison collected donations totaling around $10,000–$15,000 from multiple defendants or affiliates shortly after a 2021 meeting where future fraudsters discussed state oversight issues. His son, Minneapolis City Council Member Jeremiah Ellison, pulled in up to $9,000 at a 2021 fundraiser from multiple future defendants. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey accepted roughly $9,000 from nine defendants or affiliates. (His office later vowed to return or donate the funds.) Rep. Ilhan Omar got her beak wet for $7,000. There may be much more “smurf” donation grifting behind those via the political action committee ActBlue’s straw donor schemes. Stand by on that one.

One special outrage that flew under the radar this holiday season surfaced after Christmas: In November, Minnesota Judge Sarah West (DFL Party) tossed out a jury’s unanimous guilty verdict against one Abdifatah Yusuf of Promise Health Services, convicted of masterminding a $7.2-million Medicaid fraud. She based her reversal on the prosecution failing to exclude other reasonable, rational inferences inconsistent with Yusuf’s guilt. That’s rich. Is the prosecution obliged to provide alibis for the guy they’re prosecuting? Maybe in Minnesota, with its above average legal code. Anyway, Yusuf just walked. End of story. Maybe.

Tune in Friday, readers, for the annual forecast of the year-to-come. Making predictions is a mugg’s game, I admit, but a necessary ceremony nonetheless. I will do my level best.

(kunstler.com)

ISRAEL has banned 37 aid groups from working in the Palestinian territories, citing plainly spurious reasons. Among the aid groups banned are Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and Oxfam.

Israel banned the aid groups from Gaza for the same reason it continues to ban journalists. Of course it’s about eliminating aid itself, but it’s also about eliminating witnesses. Doctors and aid workers largely became the de facto journalists on the ground in Gaza when Israel banned international news media and began systematically assassinating Gaza-based Palestinian journalists. So Israel wants to get rid of those de facto reporters to hide its crimes.

Doctors Without Borders was one of the top humanitarian groups publicly accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in 2025. A lot of what we learned about the Israeli massacres of starving civilians at “Gaza Humanitarian Fund” sites came from MSF doctors describing the gunshot wounds they’d been seeing at medical facilities. MSF were the first to report the horrifying story of IDF soldiers entering hospitals they’d attacked in Gaza and destroying individual pieces of medical equipment to make them unusable, providing unassailable proof that Israel was actually targeting Gaza’s healthcare system itself rather than “Hamas bases in hospitals” as Israel falsely claimed. Doctors Without Borders were constantly putting out reports condemning Israel’s attacks on medical facilities where it had staff, and its doctors often spoke to the western press about the horrors they’d seen in Gaza.

And now they’ve been taken out, one of dozens of aid groups who Israel will no longer allow to operate in the occupied Palestinian territories. They took them out for the same reason they took out the journalists, and for the same reason Israel and its supporters try to stomp out speech that is critical of the Gaza holocaust throughout the western world, and for the same reason witnesses who try to tell law enforcement about the crimes of the Mafia tend to go missing.

They want to keep their crimes in the dark.

ANTIWAR’S Dave DeCamp has a new article out titled “US Bombed Seven Countries in 2025 as Trump Dramatically Expanded Airstrikes”.

Is there anything more embarrassing or self-debasing than continuing to be a Trump supporter in 2026? It’s just degrading and cucky at this point. Trotting alongside Netanyahu and promising to help him bomb Iran while lying and claiming Israel has been “100 percent” abiding by the ceasefire in Gaza. Bombing Venezuela, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and all those boats off Latin America in a single year after campaigning as the “anti-war” candidate. Stomping out free speech that’s critical of Israel and shoveling money into the Israeli war machine after campaigning on a free speech and America First platform while repeatedly publicly admitting to being bought and owned by Miriam Adelson. Releasing Epstein files so full of redactions the pages look like black slate tiles.

If you supported Trump’s campaign platform in 2024, you should hate Donald Trump after 2025. If you don’t you’re just letting him defecate on your face and then saying “Thank you Daddy may I have another?”

— Caitlin Johnstone

THE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR MACHINE

The military-industrial-complex has grown into a monster so powerful that even its earliest critics likely never foresaw its evolution. In the age of Big Tech's rising power, can anything stop it?

by Chris Hedges

The military-industrial-complex (MIC) is unique in its ability to pull untold flows of tax revenue into “defensive” infrastructure that benefits no one other than the private sector manufacturing and investing in it. The machine, which perpetuates itself through an incestuous milieu that lobbies for war and defense spending, wages psychological warfare on citizens and engages in corrupt backroom deals, has risen to once unthinkable heights of influence and power since Dwight D. Eisenhower first warned Americans of its growing presence in 1961.

Political scientist William D. Hartung joins this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his and Ben Freeman’s new book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, which contextualizes the growth of the MIC behind the backdrop of Silicon Valley’s increasing radicalism and integration into American military infrastructure, as well as the Trump administration’s chaotic and unabashed foreign policy.

These tech elites push for automated warfare, domestic surveillance, and the full diffusion of any line still separating the corporate and public sectors. In essence, they symbolize how significantly Western capital has grown since Eisenhower’s warning — bolstering a corporate state bent on maximizing profit through warfare and manufacturing reliance on its often faulty products both in the public and private sector.

Empowered by the Trump administration, the trillion dollar war machine only looks to grow — and Hartung says that it will harm the entire nation in its endless quest for domination.…

https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-trillion-dollar-war-machine-w

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

1.
I am resolved throughout the year
To lay my vices on the shelf;
A godly, sober course to steer
And love my neighbours as myself-
Excepting always two or three
Whom I detest as they hate me.

2.
I am resolved – that whist is low –
Especially with cards like mine –
It guts a healthy Bank-book – so
These earthly pleasures I resign,
Except – and here I see no sin –
When asked by others to “cut in.”

3.
I am resolved – no more o’ dance
With ingenues – so help me Venus!
It gives the Chaperone her chance
For hinting Heaven knows what between us.
The Ballroom and the Altar stand
Too close in this suspicious land.
(N.B.) But will I (here ten names) abandon?
No, while I have a leg to stand on!

4.
I am resolved – to sell my horses.
They cannot stay, they will not go;
They lead me into evil courses
Wherefore I mean to part with – No!
Cut out that resolution – I’ll
Try Jilt to-morrow on the mile.

5.
I am resolved – to flirt no more,
It leads to strife and tribulation;
Not that I used to flirt before,
But as a bar against temptation.
Here I except (cut out the names)
Perfectly Platonic flames.

6.
I am resolved – to drop my smokes,
The Trichi has an evil taste;
I cannot buy the brands of Oakes,
But, lest I take a step in haste,
And so upset my health, I choose a
“More perfect way” in pipes and Poona.

7.
I am resolved – that vows like these,
Though lightly made, are hard to keep;
Wherefore I’ll take them by degrees,
Lest my back-slidings make me weep.
One vow a year will see me through;
And I’ll begin with Number Two.

— Rudyard Kipling (1887)

*After Party Clean-Up* (1959) by Ben Kimberly Prins

11 Comments

Norm Thurston January 1, 2026

I write in praise to Mr. Chuck D.
A kind and caring soul has he
He reads daily the comments of our herd
And in response, never a bad word

- Chuck Wilcher January 1, 2026
  
  Agreed, Norm. His participation here in the comments section are always a good read.
  
- Bob Abeles January 1, 2026
  
  Indeed. I raise a New Year’s libation to the kind and humane Chuck D.
  
George Hollister January 1, 2026

George Orwell died un monied, but rich.

- Harvey Reading January 1, 2026
  
  I see your sanctimony is working overtime on this first day of 2026.
  
George Hollister January 1, 2026

It is an enigma to me why one of the jobs of being chairperson of the Board Of Supervisors is not to set the agenda. Yes, there needs to be input from the CEO, and other board members, but in the end the chairperson finalizes the agenda. If the chairperson is doing an unsatisfactory job, the other Board members should elect someone else.

- Ted Stephens January 1, 2026
  
  Agreed. The CEO, and secretary, has input and a role of bringing items to the board chairman, but it should be the chairman’s responsibility to set the agenda. Then a majority of the board approves the agenda at the start of the meeting. This is the way we do it in business for control, oversight and efficiency. I think the board chairman having control and the board approving is most important for the oversight function and for the ability to discuss things that may be embarrassing for the CEO, but the board has a fiduciary responsibility to discuss. But it has been pretty clear to me that our county (and state) governance doesn’t have much interest in oversight, efficiency or running like a business. I think it would be very helpful to bring this discipline back to our county and state operations. We, the shareholders/stakeholders, should probably demand it (unless I am missing something here).
  
Harvey Reading January 1, 2026

I have lived here in central Wyoming for 23 years. Last night (12/31/25) was the first time I heard nary a a firecracker go off in town. Apparently even the MAGAts can find nothing to celebrate, as we enter second year of idiot trump’s reign. You know, the idiot who claimed to win his election with a majority of the vote, when, in fact, he lost it 58 to 42 percent of the vote…

Harvey Reading January 1, 2026

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT 2026

Then why did the moron lose the election by a 58-42 percent majority? Most voters voted against his overweight ego and lack of a brain. Harris would have won if she hadn’t supported the Zionist slaughter of Palestinians.

Marshall Newman January 1, 2026

Love it or Leave it 2026. That is an seriously imperial “we”, Ms. Kowslowski. You do not speak for me and you do not speak for a lot of people.

Bob Abeles January 1, 2026

Re: Message from the leaf writers

On second look, MK’s photo takes me back to the Fillmore posters of my youth.

11 Comments

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