KATHY BAILEY:
Hendy Woods State Park Is Now Open, but caution is required. The road to Day Use is currently flooded but you can park at the Visitor Center and walk down if you want to.
Most trails are open. Pay attention to wind predictions and avoid being hit by a "widow maker." There are So Many trees hung up across each other. We are happy to report that no ancient trees toppled in this event! So yay!
The Visitor Center did suffer significant damage but no displays were harmed due to quick action by park maintenance staff. The river photos are from Sunday. It rose even further by Monday evening.
JIM ARMSTRONG: The recent fairly heavy rainfall has introduced conditions that are going to be a big part of the "Two Basin Solution." The East Fork of the Russian River at Highway 20 was running at 6000 CFS yesterday filling Lake Mendocino. Lake Pillsbury was over the top of the dam and the Eel at Van Arsdale was running at running at 9,000 CFS. Can any proponents of dam removal here tell us what will happen under these conditions under the plan? This is when Sonoma and Marin are supposed to be saved.
TERESE BRENDLEN: The highest I've ever seen the Navarro! On 1/5/2026 at 4 pm…
ANDERSON VALLEY FOODBANK:
For 2026 we have changed the days for our food distribution to the first and third Wednesdays each month:
January 7th and 21st will be the dates for this month.
Many thanks to volunteers and all others who have been helping with donations and distribution.
One imprtant note: Please only bring donations during the distribution hours; 11am to 5pm on these Wednesdays.
Food that is not handed directly to our volunteers may have to be discarded, due to health regulations.
Hoping for a happy and healthy 2026 for all.
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.
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