Mendocino County Today: Friday 1/2/2026

Breezy Showers | Goodbye Porter | 2025 Deaths | Ukiah Streets | Election Irregularities | FB City Hall | Unity Club | Candidate Bourassa | Westport Archeologist | Y2K Memory | No Place | BOLO Haiku | Mendocino 1926 | Local Events | Yesterday's Catch | Sent By | Orange Lies | Year Review | New Generation | Winter Flowers | Duwaji Coat | Cold As | Quite Obvious | Kurshan Book | Wolf Memoir | Train Collection | Stopping By | Saloon Gag | Very Fond | Run Sometimes | Ignorance Cult | Lead Stories | Paying Taxes | Happy New Year | Fourth Turning | So Fine | Tinnitus January | Ravens' Tor

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STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A drizzly 53F with .48" more rainfall this Friday morning on the coast. While our macro forecast remains rain thru Monday our micro forecast is a moving target changing often. Currently we are looking at rain starting back up after lunch then becoming a strong storm with high winds advisories etc. overnight into Saturday. Moderate rain after that, but stay tuned.

AN OCCLUDED FRONTAL SYSTEM will bring moderate to locally heavy rain, high mountain snow, and gusty winds on this afternoon into tonight. Major coastal flooding will be possible today and Saturday during high tides. Bouts of rain and gusty winds are forecast to continue Sunday and likely next week. (NWS)

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KEITH FAULDER: The World lost this beautiful woman today. She gave so much of herself for others. What a strong woman! I will miss you Porter. You always made me smile.

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GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

Notable Valley & County Deaths in 2025

• Eva Johnson
• Jim Brink
• Wes Smoot
• Norma Combes
• Fred Sternkopf
• Kurt Smallcomb
• Patricia Beverly
• Charles Davison
• Bill Heil
• Joe Waggoner
• Theresa Bloyd
• Kenneth Stroh
• Eileen Pronsolino
• George Gaines
• Mary Hollifield
• Vera Ballew
• Marjorie Dunlap
• Luis Vasquez
• Robert Wolf
• Robert Lorentzen
• Avon Ray
• Amy Ballew Kelley
• Jacob Cody Waggoner
• Danny Johnson Sr.
• John Fox
• Silvano Quezada
• Agnes Gamble
• Jed Steele
• Barbara Blattner
• Kathleen McMain
• Harriet Dahlquist
• John Pinches
• Jack Haye
• Theresia Kobler
• Bradley Witherell
• Hank Cox
• Clifford Christen
• Stephen Muchowski
• Art Lemos
• Robert Sutherland
• Bob Vaughan
• Jim Eddie
• John Mark
• Jim Shields
• Berna Walker
• Neil Kephart

Pending:

• Mark Scaramella
• Bruce Anderson

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A READER WRITES: On the streets of Ukiah. Literally. Everything is graphics! Happy New Year — if that's possible.

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ELECTION IRREGULARITIES CLOUD SUPERVISOR MULHEREN’S MARCH 2024 ELECTION

by Mark Scaramella

But it’s too late to fix it now.

According to the final March 24 election results, incumbent Supervisor Maureen Mulheren won over challenger Jacob Brown by just 116 votes out of a total of 3282 votes, 1699 for Mulheren to 1583 for Brown.

Readers may recall that the March 4 election was botched twice, and both of those blunders affected the close Mulheren-Brown race. The first botch was when the ballot printing vendor wrongly sent misprinted fourth-district Republican ballots to everyone in the County, instead of ballots tailored for the particular races in each district. That error was belatedly fixed when replacement ballots were be re-issued, the vendor absorbing the cost of fixing it. The impact of this error on the Mulheren-Brown race may have been small, but the number of affected Second District ballots is not clear because the County elections office cannot be sure if every voter in the second district (mainly the City of Ukiah) ended up voting and voting correctly despite the ballot printing error.

The second botch is more complicated. It had to do with some voters being assigned to the wrong supervisorial district in the wake of the 2021 countywide redistricting. Some Mulheren-Brown voters received ballots for the wrong supervisorial district, some were not sent ballots because they were incorrectly assigned to the wrong district.

The Election Botches of March 2024 arose again last month because it became a major subject of the recently completed $800,000 State Audit.

The State Auditor described Botch #2 this way:

“In a Second Ballot Error, the Elections Office Assigned at Least 177 Voters to Incorrect Voting Precincts…”

“Shortly after the Elections Office resolved the ballot printing error, it discovered an additional error. The Elections Office told us [the State Auditor] it received phone calls on February 20, 2024, from a voter and a candidate running for office about voters being assigned to incorrect supervisorial districts. After looking further into these concerns, the county determined that it had assigned 177 voters to the wrong precincts and, because of that, the wrong supervisorial districts. Consequently, these voters either received ballots with incorrect information about the district supervisors for which they could vote or didn’t get a ballot with the Supervisors candidates on it.

“For example, the county mistakenly sent a voter who resided in the 1st supervisorial district [Redwood/Potter Valley] a ballot that gave them the chance to vote only in the 2nd district supervisor race. Of the 177 voters the county identified, the most common error was that the county sent 5th district ballots to 89 voters who lived in the 1st district. These ballots did not present these 89 voters with an option for voting for supervisor, even though the voters should have been presented with an option to vote in the 1st district supervisor race. These incorrect ballots resulted from errors that the Elections Office made after the county’s 2021 redistricting effort. …

“The resulting supervisorial district boundary lines were different from those that had previously existed, meaning that some voters who had once been in one supervisorial district now lived in a new district. Because of this, the Elections Office needed to reassign the affected voters to new precincts [with different races].

“However, the Elections Office’s approach to assigning voters to new precincts proved to be incomplete. Elections Office staff described to us that they visually inspected maps of the county to determine when voters registered at specific addresses were now located in new districts. The Elections Office staff explained that they then inputted the corresponding adjustments to voter precinct assignments into the office’s elections management system and only later realized that the changes they had entered for some voters had not taken effect. This process left at least 177 voters in incorrect voting precincts. …

“At least”? How many more could there be? And how many voters just declined to vote or didn’t vote for Supervisor given the confusion and mistakes?

The State Auditor continued: “One race up for vote in the March 2024 primary election was potentially affected by the voters who cast ballots that did not include the proper races. The race was for the board of supervisor position in the 2nd district. [Mulheren vs. Brown] One hundred thirty-seven (137) 2nd district voters used a misprinted ballot to vote, meaning that they cast ballots that did not include the 2nd district supervisor race. The margin of victory in this race was 116 votes, 21 fewer than the number of 2nd district voters who used misprinted ballots. When the Elections Office remade the 137 incorrect ballots [by manually transferring votes from the misprinted ballots to correctly printed ballots], it generally would not have been able to transfer and count votes for the 2nd district supervisor race because that race did not appear on the misprinted ballots used by those voters.

“Instead, the Elections Office would have been dependent on whether the voters wrote in their vote for the 2nd district supervisor race. Because of our [the State Auditor’s] inability to know how the 137 voters would have voted if they had used the correct ballot, we do not make any conclusions about whether the error affected the outcome of that race.”

State election law puts a significant burden on any requester of an election recount. The recount request must be made within five days of the Elections office’s “certification” (typically 30 days after an election). And the requester is responsible for the cost of the recount — unless the recount shows that the requester won, at which time the requester’s money is refunded.

The State Auditor does not provide the timing of these ballot error disclosures as they apply to the March 2024 Second District race. So we don’t know if candidate Jacob Brown had the information necessary to consider requesting a recount in the time allowed, although the race was close. Given the confusion in the wake of the initial ballot printing error followed by the precinct/district assignment error, it may not have been clear what the problem was, how significant it was, what the effect was, or what the chances of success would have been in that limited five-day window after certification.

In any event, no recount was requested and Mulheren was certified as the winner.

For now Mr. Brown must settle for an unsatisfying consolation prize hoping that such ballot and district assignment errors won’t happen again.

County Elections Officer Katrina Bartolomie didn’t respond to our inquiry on the subject. But she told the State Auditor that:

“The Elections Office has contracted with a consultant who is assisting with redistricting for AB 604 – Congressional Redistricting, which is currently being processed…”

Figuring out how to implement Governor Newsom’s recent Anti-Trump Congressional Redistricting Proposition will be another unique challenge for the County’s elections and computer staff.

Bartolomie continued, “The Elections Office also intends to use this consultant to review all voting districts within the County to ensure that all voters are assigned the correct precincts.”

We understand that the 2021 redistricting also produced some “split precincts” making the voter precinct assignments even trickier.

“Additionally,” Bartolomie added, “Elections Office staff recently met with the County’s GIS Administrator to see what can be done to create a mapping system to use for responding to district boundary changes that will make it easier to identify changes in district boundary lines.”

“Seeing what can be done” does not inspire confidence. Creation of a new elections mapping system is a major and costly undertaking. We don’t know how much the consultant that the Elections office “intends” to use for reviewing ALL voting districts will cost. Further, just hiring a consultant will not address the deeper problems with the County’s outdated and error prone election and precinct mapping systems. But we doubt that Supervisor Mulheren will be asking any questions about it.

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FORT BRAGG - CITY HALL

The building at the northeast corner of Laurel and Franklin serves a straightforward purpose in Fort Bragg’s daily life. It houses city offices, but its larger footprint reflects its origins as a community gym—basketball courts, a rollerskating floor, and open space built for public use. The structure was designed for activity, not display, and it continues to function that way.

City business happens on one side; recreation happens on the other. Meetings, permits, and planning share the same roof as youth programs and local events. On rainy Wednesdays, the Fort Bragg Farmers Market moves indoors here, filling the hall with vendors who need shelter from the weather. It’s a practical solution, consistent with the building’s long-standing role as a flexible community space.

Nothing about the building is dramatic. It stands where it needs to, doing what it was built to do—serve the town in whatever form the day requires.

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UNITY CLUB NEWS

Happy New Year!

I had a marvelous visit with family and friends. Hope you also enjoyed joy and fellowship this Holiday Season. Our January meeting is fast approaching. We will meet January 8th in the Fairgrounds Dining Room at 1:30. Our program will be the Head of Mendocino County's Environmental Health Dept. Marlayna Bourbonnaise. She's the person to talk to if you need to improve your septic system, among other things. Our hostess crew will be Jean Condon, Ann Wakeman, and Nancy Wood. They will provide snacks and beverages you will enjoy.

Thank you all for the work you have done to make the Holiday Bazaar a success. We truly made it a Community event. I loved the idea of the Scholarship donation buckets. The food was exceptional but we need a broader selection of beverages next year. Kudos to the Club! Well done.

Our Lending Library will be open in Tuesdays from 1 to 4 and on Saturdays from 12:30 to 2:30. I got a good selection of children’s books during my most recent visit. I also found an old Ellery Queen novel I hadn't read. Surprises abound at the Library.

January meeting is the 8th at 1:30 in the Dining Room, Boonville Fairgrounds.

— Miriam L. Martinez

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TOM ALLMAN:

I have known Buffy Wright Bourassa for approximately 20 years and consider her a very good friend. She has my 100% support and endorsement for the third district supervisor in Mendocino County. She was raised in Mendocino County and she understands the needs that our rural county has.

Improve our local economy

Improve our mental health services

Understands that public safety is a primary responsibility of local government.

I hope you will consider Team Buffy also!

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From Ms. Bourassa’s election facebook page:

“I’m Buffey Wright Bourassa—born and raised in Mendocino County, a proud member of the Sherwood Valley Rancheria of Pomo Indians, and a candidate for Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, District 3.

I currently work for the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office as the Restorative Justice Program Manager and bring more than 11 years of experience in county government, including Public Health, Human Resources, and labor advocacy. My work focuses on accountability, collaboration, and creating solutions that make government work better for the people it serves.

I’ve also served three terms on the Tribal Council for Sherwood Valley Rancheria, gaining over a decade of experience in tribal governance, program management, and fiscal responsibility.

I’m a wife, a mom of four, and a grandma to six amazing grandsons—raising my family here in Mendocino County and staying deeply rooted in the community I call home. I believe in community voice, transparency, and results—from better roads and responsible budgeting to public safety, emergency preparedness, and thoughtful land use.

This campaign is about listening, showing up, and working together to build a stronger future for our community.”

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Ms. Bourassa is listed as Mendo’s Restorative Justice Program Manager in the Sheriff’s office and a member of the Sherwood Valley Rancheria (Pomo). Apparently Julie Beardsley supports Ms. Bourassa as well.

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THE NOYO BIDA TRUTH PROJECT presents a special program on Sunday, January 18, at 2 p.m. in the Community Room of the Fort Bragg Library at 499 E Laurel St, Fort Bragg

Our Guest Speaker, will be Thad Van Bueren, an archeologist specializing in studies of the Indigenous peoples of the Mendocino Coast.

Van Bueren earned a B.A. in 1978 and M.A. in 1983 from San Francisco State University in the field of Anthropology. As a professional archaeologist he has worked to protect and mitigate impacts to prehistoric and historical resources in California for development projects that must comply with environmental laws. Thad has lived in Westport since 1994, conducting many local investigations as a private consultant, or while employed by Caltrans and State Parks. He has worked closely with descendants of the first people to inhabit California, as well as more recent immigrant communities.

The title of his talk will be: “First Nations in the Westport Area During the Historic Era.”

His talk will focus on his investigations of First Nation campsites surrounding the northern outpost of the Mendocino Reservation in the 1860s and early 1870s. A question and answer period will follow his talk.

The Noyo Bida Truth Project is a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit. We acknowledge the ecological diversity of our California Coast and encourage our true history to be preserved and acknowledged. To date the city of Fort Bragg is named for a Fort associated with the Mendocino Reservation where acts of genocide were committed against California tribal communities. The Fort was named for a general who had no connection to the Mendocino Coast, and we have chosen to cease the glorification of Confederate General Bragg and the erasure of the Tribal communities.

Our goals include holding healing ceremonies, supporting Land Back to Indigenous peoples, a memorial to the victims of the Mendocino Indian Reservation, a cultural center, truthful historical signage, and improvements to California history education in our local schools which are also named for this Confederate general.

Discussing controversial topics requires civility and respect for the opinions of others. This program is free and open to all.

For further information: http://thenoyobidatruthproject.org/

This program is neither sponsored by nor affiliated with the Fort Bragg Library.

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JADE TIPPETT: 25 years ago tonight, Jimmy and I flew back from Baltimore on New Year Eve. It was December 31, 1999. The world wasn't particularly sure everything would stay together. Picked up the car in Novato, drove him back to Laytonville and myself back to Ukiah by 8:30, Pacific time. Made myself a snack and turned on the TV in time to watch the ball drop in Times Square at 9:00. The lights stayed on, the TV still showed the broadcast, so I turned it off and went to bed. The world would still be there in the morning. Happy New Year, 25 years on!!

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BILL KIMBERLIN:

My brother and I at my Aunt's "Ray's Resort" (now River's Bend") trying to pretend we are not standing in front of a cow. We were City kids who spent our summers in the country. I am still a City kid needing book stores, librarys, North Beach Cafe's, and bay front restaurants. Still, as I sit in front of the pop & crackle of my fireplace here in Boonville on New Year's Eve, there no place I would rather be.

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A UKIAH HAIKU called BOLO

It’s an APB.
It’s for a GMOB
with a machete!

— anon

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MENDOCINO, 100 YEARS AGO

by Averee McNear

On January 2, 1926, the Mendocino Beacon published its first edition of the New Year. New Years Day had landed on a Friday, and the Beacon included a small column on the town’s holiday celebrations. Most businesses were closed, and “the day was warm and delightful, and many took advantage of it to spend the greater part of it outdoors.”

There weren’t any great town-wide parties thrown, and many chose to gather with their families instead. The church bells did not even ring at the stroke of midnight. Perhaps to the annoyance of some (at least to the annoyance of the writers at the Beacon, it seems), some people chose to “raise a racket by discharging firearms” to ring in 1926. People with radios could listen into “the street racket and din” in San Francisco.

Despite the holiday, life continued, and news of New Year celebrations were largely overshadowed in the paper by regular news. Reports included three wedding announcements from the previous week: Grace Bean and John Mackey, Emilio Moretti and Agnes Eklund, and Jennie Dahl and R.F. Berndt. The Bean/Mackey union included a full column, which detailed Grace’s life before the marriage. She was born in Navarro and moved to Mendocino as a young girl. She trained as a nurse at Mount Zion Hospital, working there for five years after and rising to the position of night superintendent. When World War I erupted, Grace enrolled and served two years overseas.

Another article noted that a former teacher at Mendocino High School, Miss Clare Grubb, wrote a play titled “The Outlaw King,” an operetta based on the tales of Robin Hood. The Stauer Chevrolet Company in Fort Bragg reported its year-end sales: 104 new cars and 70 used cars sold in 1925.

In Caspar, Harry Bevans, Harry Day, George Finney, B.L. Elliott, and Sheriff Byrnes killed the fourth bear they came across in two weeks. Bears had been entering an apple orchard there and coming too close to residents for their comfort. Further north, Mr. and Mrs. Elkerton from Humboldt were visiting the Grants of Fort Bragg. They were sightseeing, sitting on a ledge 20 or so feet above the ocean. A swell rose up and pulled the couple into the ocean, where Mr. Elkerton unfortunately drowned. Mr. Grant saw the sad event and raced home to retrieve a rope. He was able to throw the rope out and pull Mrs. Elkerton to the shore, after she floated for over 30 minutes unable to swim back herself.

The Beacon reported on news outside of the coast as well. In Santa Monica, Professor A.A. Merrill successfully completed test flights of a tailless biplane. The plane weighed less than 600 pounds and had a wingspan of 22 feet. The headline read “New Craft May Revolutionize Art of Flying.”

January 1926 continued, and history continued to be made. Perhaps most notably in January, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated a mechanical television system, a “televisor,” on January 26th. His invention has significant impacts on our daily lives 100 years later. Who knows what may be newsworthy this January.

(The Kelley House Museum is now operating in our winter hours, open Friday-Sunday from 11am-3pm. Visit the Kelley House Event Calendar for a Walking Tour schedule.)

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LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Thursday, January 1, 2026

CHRISTOPHER ABSHIRE, 36, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-drugs&alcohol, controlled substance, failure to appear.

PETE GONZALES, 23, Fort Bragg. Attempted murder, robbery of transportation person-inhabited dwelings, mayhem, controlled substance, conspiracy.

COURTNEY HURT, 30, Covelo. DUI.

KEIYARALYN JOHNSON, 22, Ukiah. DUI-any drug, suspended license for refusing chem test, probation violation, resisting.

HANNAH KOLBBROWN, 30, Dos Rios. DUI.

CHARLES MAXFIELD JR., 51, Willits. Switchblade in vehicle, stolen property, controlled substance for sale with two or more priors, paraphernalia, contempt of court, habitual traffic offender, probation violation, offenses while on bail.

DAKOTA MILES, 31, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

ADAM SMITH, 23, Ukiah. Attempted murder.

SHAWMN SMITHHARJO, 31, Hopland. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

FRANKLIN WILLBURN, 53, Willits. Failure to appear.

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DELUSIONAL ORANGE MAN

Editor:

In his address to the nation, Donald Trump was, if nothing else, consistent with who he has always been: a man with little regard for honesty. His speech was so riddled with falsehoods that it bordered on an insult to the collective intelligence of the American people. He claimed, for example, that “drug prices will come down by 600%” — a mathematical impossibility. He asserted that while egg prices are up, everything else is “falling rapidly,” despite Consumer Price Index data showing that far more grocery items have increased than declined. He also asserted that gasoline now costs under $2.50 a gallon nationwide, when AAA data puts the national average closer to $2.90.

These are not minor exaggerations; they are demonstrably false claims delivered from the occupant of the highest office in the country. They come from a president who also empowers officials such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose actions might constitute a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

When truth is treated as optional, accountability disappears. A democracy cannot function, much less survive, on falsehoods repeated often enough to sound convincing.

Richard Cardiff

Sebastopol

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THE YEAR IN REVIEW

by Dave Barry

The biggest story of 2025, to judge from the number of people who sent it to me, was this raccoon:

In case you somehow missed this story: In late November, this raccoon got into a state liquor store in Ashland, Va., by falling though the ceiling. Once inside, the raccoon ransacked the store, leaving a trail of broken bottles…

…and apparently consuming a large quantity of booze before passing out in the bathroom next to the toilet. That’s where the raccoon was found by a store employee, who called an animal-control officer, who took it to an animal shelter. When the raccoon finally sobered up, it was hired as director of security by the Louvre Museum.

No, seriously, it was released into the wild. But the photo went majorly viral, and the raccoon became a huge celebrity. We, the American people, LOVE this raccoon. And I think I know why: After the year we’ve been through, we can relate to it. We have had way too much of 2025; it has left us, as a nation, lying face-down on the floor of despair, between the wastebasket of stupidity and the commode of broken dreams.

How did we get here? Perhaps it will help (although I doubt it) if we look back on the events of this insane year, starting with…

https://substack.com/home/post/p-182456375

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STEVE TALBOT:

A new dawn, a new day -- and as Nina Simone sang, "I'm feeling good."

Zohran Mamdani, 34, and his stylish wife Rama Duwaji, are New York's new first couple.

My favorite joke of the day came from poet Cornelius Eady, who before reading a very moving poem "Proof," commented that many thought hell would freeze over before a young democratic socialist Muslim would ever get elected mayor of New York. Pausing to smile in the frigid 26 degree weather, Eady said, "Well…here we are."

It was a shining afternoon for the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and all the young people who mobilized to elect Mamdani. An Obama moment, I'd say. New York City's public advocate Jumaane Williams gave a very moving and personal speech. Mark Levine, the new city comptroller, was funny and reassuring. Mandy Patikin sang a heart-in-the throat "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." And I was very glad to hear a young Lucy Davis sing the beautiful, stirring old labor and women's rights song, "Bread and Roses."

Mamdani gave an inspiring "we won't back down" speech, promising to govern "audaciously" on behalf of all New Yorkers, but especially the working class and immigrants.

New York's greatest and most popular mayor, Fiorello Laguardia, would have been proud.

Way back in the 1970s I met and interviewed Mamdani's father, Mahmoud Mamdani, an African scholar and activist, who is an impressive man. And I've long enjoyed the movies directed by Zohran's mother, Mira Nair: Salaam Bombay! , Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, and Queen of Katwe. Now their son is mayor of America's most important city. The times they are a changin'.

In the words of JFK, the torch has been passed to a new generation. I wish young people, New Yorkers, and Mayor Mamdani all the luck in the world.

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WINTER FLOWERS

In fresh snow that fell on old snow
I see wild roses in bloom, springtime,
an orchard of apple and peach trees in bloom,
lovers of different preferences
walking naked in new snow, not shivering,
no illusion, no delusion, no bluebells.
Why should I live by reality that murders?
I wear a coat of hope and desire.
I follow fallen maple leaves abducted by the wind.
I declare I am a Not Quite, almost a nonentity.
I fought for that “almost.”
I lift up and button my collar of hope.
I simply refuse to leave the universe.
I’m all the aunts in my father’s house and all my uncles too.
I had fifty great-great-grand-grandmothers
who got to Paradise, like Enoch, without dying.
Once my friends and I went out in deep paradise snow
with Saint Bernards and Great Pyrenees
to find those lost in the blizzard that God made for Himself
because He prefers not seeing what happens on earth.
With touch He can hear, taste, smell, see,
and He has fourteen other senses there are no words for.
Memory, He said, is a sense, not a power.
Who am I to disagree with Him?

There are some vegetarians among you,
so I will tell you what He eats.
It’s green, and cows and sheep eat it too.
He picks His teeth. I think I heard Him say,
“Gentlemen don’t void in swimming pools or the ocean.
I like your dirty jokes, I prefer them in meter.”
He told me to carry on.
I thought “On” was a Norse god. He said, “No,
it’s just a burden that gets heavier,
the burden makes you stronger.”
“Isn’t on the Japanese debt to ancestors?” I countered.
He resents hearing the prayers and praise of sycophants.

“How come you are speaking to me?” I asked.
He speaks Silence, languages I call “Night” and “Day.”
His politics? “Nations” to Him are “a form of masturbation.”
Original blasphemy amuses Him, describes
His coitus with living creatures,
mothers, His self,
a whale, a male praying mantis dying to mate.
He likes to hear, “do unto others
what you would not want others to do unto you.”
Instead of a prayer rug,
I stitch Him a pillow of false proverbs:
“in the house of the hangman talk of rope.”
I asked Him if I ever did anything he liked.
“You planted eggplant too close to the cucumbers
and they married. I blessed that wedding,
sent roses by another name.”
“How come you speak to me?” I asked.
He said He was not speaking to me,
“Consult Coleridge on the Imagination.”
He waved, He did not say goodbye.

— Stanley Moss

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BILL KIMBERLIN:

"Rama Duwaji, a 28-year-old artist and the wife of the city’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani…Even in subzero weather, amid a sea of puffer and overcoats.

She wore a funnel-necked chocolate-brown princess-line coat trimmed in — presumably faux or shearling — fur at the cuffs and skirt, with matching high-heeled brown boots and dramatic earrings. She looked a little funky, a little vintage, a little Tolstoy, entirely proper and unlike anyone else on the stage.

Rather than leaning away from her youth and singular status or shrouding them in the primary-colored costumes of convention, she illustrated them. Ms. Duwaji might be new at the game of politics, but understanding the role of symbolism, detail and consistency in shaping perception is, after all, also part of her day job as an artist. She is as deft at it as is Mr. Mamdani, with his suits and social media savvy."

(N.Y. Times)

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COLD AS YOU

You have a way of coming easily to me
And when you take, you take the very best of me
So I start a fight 'cause I need to feel somethin'
And you do what you want 'cause I'm not what you wanted

Oh, what a shame
What a rainy ending given to a perfect day
Just walk away
Ain't no use defending words that you will never say
And now that I'm sittin' here thinkin' it through
I've never been anywhere cold as you

You put up the walls and paint them all a shade of gray
And I stood there loving you, and wished them all away
And you come away with a great little story
Of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you

Oh, what a shame
What a rainy ending given to a perfect day
Just walk away
Ain't no use defending words that you will never say
And now that I'm sittin' here thinkin' it through
I've never been anywhere cold as you

You never did give a damn thing, honey
But I cried, cried for you
And I know you wouldn't have told nobody if I died, died for you
Died for you

Oh, what a shame
What a rainy ending given to a perfect day
Oh, every smile you fake is so condescending
Countin' all the scars you've made
Now that I'm sittin' here thinkin' it through
I've never been anywhere cold as you

— Liz Rose & Taylor Swift (2006)

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‘LEVITATING THE PENTAGON, AND OTHER UPLIFTING STORIES: A LIFE OF ACTIVISM’ by Nancy Kurshan; Three Rooms Press; 2025

Review by Jonah Raskin

Nancy Kurshan might have carved out and published a big chunk of her own story soon after the dramatic protests at the Pentagon in 1967, and in the wake of the 1969-1970 Chicago Conspiracy Trial. If she had done that, her book would have appeared in print at about the same time that those two Yippie classics became best sellers: Jerry Rubin’s Do It! and We Are Everywhere and Abbie Hoffman’s Revolution for the Hell of it and Woodstock Nation.

Kurshan wisely waited decades to provide her account of the rambunctious Sixties and Seventies, a time when she was in the thick of the anti-war movement and a driving force in righteous causes against racism and injustice that afflicted Black, brown and Native American communities. She seemed to know intuitively which way political and cultural winds were blowing, how to ride ideological storms and keep her wits about her.

The first hundred or so pages of her memoir, Levitating the Pentagon and other Uplifting Stories — which has just been published by Three Rooms Press — describe her membership in Yippie, her relationships with Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and their ilk, along with her exhilarating moments in Hanoi, Moscow, and Havana. Plus her birth in 1944 to parents who belonged to the American Communist Party and who helped to shape her world view from an early age.

Three Rooms Press also published Judy Gumbo’s memoir Yippie Girl. The two books, Gumbo’s and Kurshan’s, compliment one another.

Kurshan’s memoir might have stopped at the end of the 1970s. After all, as she writes near the end of her story, “Born a Red Diaper Baby who morphed into a Yippie, and joined the Weather Underground, I love the life I’ve lived.” She wisely doesn‘t stop with her membership in the Weather Underground and its offshoot — The Prairie Fire Organizing Committee. With passion and clarity, Kurshan explores her participation in the 1990s in the movements that aided political prisoners and decried the inhumane conditions that existed behind bars. She also recounts her personal life: her romantic relationships with other radicals; marriage to fellow activist, Steve Whitman, their family life together and her children. Howie Emer, with whom she had a long, trusting relationship — and a largely unsung, longtime radical — is the father of her children.

In an interview with author Pat Thomas, who has written about Jerry Rubin, the Black Panthers, and Allen Ginsberg, Kurshan says, “I don’t think I was a natural Yippie.” (That interview with Thomas appears near the end of her memoir.) Granted, she didn’t appear before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC) as dramatically and as effectively as Abbie and Jerry did when they were in costume. Abbie in a shirt made from an American flag. Jerry dressed as an American patriot circa 1776 and later as a member of the Viet Cong and later still as Santa Claus.

Nor did Nancy take part, as Jerry and Abbie did, in guerrilla theater inside Judge Julius Hoffman’s Chicago courtroom. But she exhibited a natural affinity for the theatrical and the dramatic. She and Anita Hoffman, Abbie’s second wife, set fire to black judicial robes outside the federal building in Chicago with a banner in the background that read “We Are All Outlaws in the Eyes of Amerika.” Using the German spelling was essential in those days when the U.S. seemed to be on the cusp of Nixon-style fascism.

Along with three other Yippie women — Robin Morgan, Roz Payne and Sharon Krebs — Kurshan created the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH). In Washington, D.C., they wore witch hats, and armed with brooms, burned incense, and cast “evil hexes on HUAC.” In Moscow she and Judy Gumbo and Genie Plumondon of the White Panthers donned costumes and staged what she calls a “spunky” protest. “We are the Ameri-Cong!” the Yippie women chanted. “End the war in Vietnam!” and “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is Gonna Win.”

Nancy also wrote and published articles in Dragonfire under the alias, “Wanda The Wippie Witch.” She has panhandled, hitchhiked, gone on rent strike, and on International Women’s Day a long time ago, she and her comrades dipped their hands in red paint and left their prints on the federal building in Chicago. They also went into the Chicago River in canoes and dyed it red “to represent the blood of the Central American people.” Kurshan adds, “we made sure the dye was biodegradable.” If all the above doesn’t show that she was a dyed-in-the-wool Yippie I don’t know what would.

In the Foreword to Levitating the Pentagon, Bernardine Dohrn aptly calls Kurshan “a born internationalist.” Dohrn adds, “Buy or borrow or Steal this Book.” She has a sense of humor. In a preface, Jose E. Lopez, the Executive Director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago, quotes Che Guevara who noted that “the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” Lopez adds, “this is Nancy’s life.”

Levitating is infused with love, generosity, and kindness. Kurshan doesn’t say that she loved Jerry Rubin, but she was definitely devoted to him even though he abused and mistreated her. Of Jerry she writes, “I felt my identity being expropriated.” She knows too that she participated in that process and was no innocent bystander. “I was the one actively oppressing myself,” she writes. Her candor and truth-telling is admirable. “Jerry had some serious personal work to do,” she adds. Indeed, he did.

Kurshan does not withhold self-criticism and revelations about her inner self. During the Chicago Conspiracy Trial she says that she sometimes felt “dreadful and paralyzed” and later that she could be ”nervous and cautious.” At times in this memoir she has a tendency to belittle herself. Her style, she says, was a “general frumpiness.” If so, she made frumpiness fashionable.

She also idealizes activists she writes about. Bernardine, she writes, was “exotic.” Fiery yes, defiant yes, exotic no, at least not in my experience. The young woman from Whitefish Bay who became the figurehead of the Weather Underground and later a professor of law with a husband and three boys to raise, Bernardine was not exotic. Not as a fan of her boys when she watched them play softball or when she made them matzo ball soup. Nancy points out that Bernardine’s appearance and her whole “demeanor” changed when she went underground. As a fugitive who had to evade law enforcement, the Weatherwoman who was “strikingly different” lost much of her conspicuous strikingness.

Nancy is critical of some aspects of the political movements of the Sixties, which she says were “shot through with male supremacy.” Levitating the Pentagon describes her evolution as a feminist and her recognition of the destructive factionalism in the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) and its “offshoots” which “suffered from macho bravado.” That was also my experience. Growing up in a family of independent-minded women — Fanny, Clara, Francine and her mother, Charlotte — she had a sturdy feminist foundation to build on.

A psychology major in college, she turns to Freud not to Lenin — the author of Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder — when she writes about the splits in the WUO. “Sigmund Freud’s ‘narcissism of small differences’ comes to mind when I think of how we suffered from a sectarianism that made us less attractive to people outside the organization,” she writes. Through the splits, the animosities, the police agents, and the “sexism and the homophobia,” Nancy persevered with her eyes wide open.

Unlike some former comrades — Bill Ayers for example — she says that she doesn’t think there will be a revolution in her lifetime, though she adds “revolution is still something I aspire to.” Perhaps what’s most surprising, given her years of prison activism, is that she does not believe “that we can abolish police or prisons completely.” So, she wants to “fight for a more just system” that does not harbor “terrible inequities.” In an email to me she wrote, “I believe in fighting hard to shrink the footprint of the criminal justice system, fighting against its most egregious aspects and for whatever ameliorations we can achieve.”

A realist and an authentic survivor, she belongs in the pantheon of the American left along with Emma Goldman and Mother Jones. She is wrong when she writes, “I am not exceptional.” You are exceptional, Nancy; your memoir is also exceptional and outstanding.

When I’m asked to recommend a book about the American left over the past 60 or so years, I will suggest readers turn to Levitating the Pentagon which is indeed packed with “uplifting stories” and doesn’t sink into nostalgia, sentimentality, and movement jargon. That’s a feat worth celebrating. Yippie!

(Jonah Raskin is the author of For The Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman. He is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog.)

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IN DEFERENCE to the cult of star buffs, I was born a Sagittarian deep in the unusually nasty winter of 1937; my childhood was pleasant and completely unremarkable and will barely be touched upon again.

Anyway, here is the story, the fiction, the romance—"My frame was wrenched by a woeful agony which forced me to tell my tale,” someone said a long time ago. I've never seen a wolf—zoo beasts are not to be counted; they are ultimately no more interesting than dead carp, sullen, furtive, morose. Perhaps I'll never see a wolf. And I don't offer this little problem as central to anyone but myself.

Excerpt from Thomas Wolf: A False Memoir.

Simon and Schuster, NY (1971)

Photo Credit: LaVerne Harrell Clark (1929-2008)

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BILL KIMBERLIN: In this new year I have been thinking about how the things I collect are just items passing through my hands. Others will eventually own them for awhile as well. Most contain no record of their history before me, however an old catalog sometimes has a note from a child. One I have has a train set circled in pencil with, “I want this one” written on the page. The following paragraph is not about trains or strictly collecting, it is about finding old “logbooks” in places like cabins where this fellow hikes. Happy New Year…bill

“Our appreciation for logbooks runs deep. They feel adventure-y. Nautical. Scientific, yet nearly treasure map-adjacent. Totems to a pre-digital era when records didn’t risk deletion from a power surge. There’s something about hand-written notes and the yesteryear necessity of recording happenings and chronological observations for the next visitor to one’s post. Logbooks harken to fire-watch lookouts and ranger stations and lighthouses—remote outposts where communication was stowed for whomever next found it, then dusted off and examined as a sort of antiquity. They’re just… so fucking romantic.” — Jeff Waldman

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STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

— Robert Frost (1923)

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"YOU HAVE TO BE very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they're simply unbearable."

— Marguerite Duras, Practicalities

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'ONE DAY where I was in Korea was worse than all the ring fighting I ever did. There ain't nothing like it, never. There ain't nothing like the front-line troopers. You just can't tell people about it. The rain and the slime and the bombs. It was horrible. You wished you had a thousand years to serve in a penitentiary. It would have been easy just to sit down and die. Sure, I bugged off, or ran, when they laid down that artillery. If you're under water you've got sense enough to come up, ain't you? You have to run sometimes to win wars.'

— Lew Jenkins

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“THERE IS A CULT OF IGNORANCE in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

― Isaac Asimov

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LEAD STORIES, FRIDAY'S NYT

How a Fire Ripped Through a Swiss Bar and Broke a Village’s Heart

Trump Abandons Efforts to Deploy National Guard to 3 Major Cities

With Obamacare’s Higher Premiums Come Difficult Decisions

Tech Giants Are Racing to Embed A.I. in Schools Around the Globe

Welcome to the Office. Now Take Off Your Shoes

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I’m going to keep saying this. Every time. I am done paying taxes. Have you not figured out where the money originated? The taxes we pay is what funds every one of these multi-billion dollar scams. And here’s a thought - if billions of dollars aren’t really doing anything but lining the pockets of fraudsters, those same billions of dollars are not needed in the first place. Why the hell are we giving it to them? Why do we continue to give our own money to the government who does not track where it goes, does not use it in ways that I approve of, and never punishes the wide spread abuse when it discovers, much to its amazement, that people are STEALING it. The only answer is to not give them money in the first place. Anyone who disagrees can keep on being ripped off.

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BETH NICOLAIDES:

I tend to base what I say in the Fourth Turning theory of generational and historical cycles that notes a pattern of four predictable cycles that play out in a human lifespan. Right now, we are cresting on this century's Fourth Turning, and nothing is looking predictable or orderly at the moment.

I'm not saying that this theory is a hard and fast thing, and it should not be taken as gospel—just as a template that can help guess what happens next.

It could be looking a lot more chaotic before we emerge out of the squall, but it will suddenly be apparent that the worst is over and a new order is materializing.

The last time this emergence from the Fourth Turning into the First happened was during the Truman years. We are now in the last decay-scented gasps of that postwar order that worked well for decades.

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"THE AIR WAS SOFT, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream."

— Jack Kerouac, ‘On The Road’

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TINNITUS: JANUARY, THIN RAIN BECOMING ICE

Now footsteps on shingle. Make of it what you will. Seabirds roost
on the breakwaters, accustomed, of course, to twilight.
The spirit lamp in that house on the headland could easily fall and spill
and the fire burn all night. Some time later a subtle ghost,
yourself in memory perhaps, might well set foot
up there amid clinker and smoke, the whole place silent and still
except you bring in the tic of cooling timbers, and then the birds in flight.

Now chains through gravel. Make of it what you will.

— David Harsent (2014)

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