STANLEY CROUCH, author of last week’s “Stop The Sob Squad” is a staff writer for the Village Voice. We failed to acknowledge Mr. Crouch’s employer, but do so here.
THE PIECE REFERRED to in Editor’s Desk last week having to do with the demise of Ukiah’s Palace Hotel, appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, not the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Gaye LeBaron, eagle-eyed columnist for the PD pointed out the error in her column last week. Ms. LeBaron, in case you missed it, also suggested that residents of Anderson Valley might want to consider changing the name of dear old AV to prevent confusion of my views with those of the citizens of the area. Gosh, Gaye, we just might consider it if you begin a campaign to change the name of Santa Rosa to Coddingsqualor in honor of its chief architect and spiritual leader, Hugh Codding, whose activities your paper relentlessly promotes as if he were some kind of philanthropist and not just another greedhead developer.
WHILE WE’RE IN THE PRESS DEMOCRAT, we must admit to getting an on-going kick out of the way that unusually delusional newspaper clings pathetically to the myth of a rural Sonoma County like a drowning rat scrambling for a plank of mid-ocean wreckage. If Sonoma County is rural, what does urban mean.
HOPE YOU DON’T MISS Anna Taylor’s article on Head Start which is of more than local significance. Anna’s story is an excellent account of how the Ukiah poverty pimps can screw-up a functioning, viable program. We’ve all noticed there are never any screw-ups in these public programs when it comes to the honchos getting THEIR dough.
A few years ago, when the Head Start program was housed at the Philo Methodist Church and run by Charmian Blattner, Buster Pinoli and Nora Park with C.R. Bass piloting the Head Start bus, it was an inexpensive, effective outfit that did a wonderful job with pre-schoolers. That having been the case, the federal government assigned a platoon of “experts” to see that Head Start became expensive and ineffective. Whenever we have something in this country that is cheap and works well, the bureaucratic instinct is to move in and kill it. The break-up of Bell Telephone is the most recent example of wrecking something that worked.
WE NOTE DOUG “NERVE GAS” BOSCO’S party late Sunday in Sebastopol to raise money for
Walter “White Bread” Mondale at a thousand bucks a head. The white wine and brie liberals were positively giddy with excitement.
WE WONDER WHEN the Hauser, Bosco and Keene axis will throw a thousand dollar per head benefit for the striking mill workers of Humboldt County who have been jobless now for a year.
HAD AN INTERESTING CHAT with Jay Allen recently, the manager of the Ukiah Theater for 32 years. Jay is 72 now and says he won’t even consider retirement. Jay Allen has worked for the same movie distributor for 50 years. And what does he think of contemporary films? Not much. Jay says he doesn’t even watch them since they stopped making Westerns. Even after a lifetime of Saturday matinees, Jay is a kind, charming man, yet another of that vanishing breed, the gentleman.
IF HIS DENTURES FIT, George McGovern would make a great president. Here’s what George says he wants: Stop all military operations in Central America now. Get out of Lebanon now. Begin a nuclear freeze now. Put the unemployed to work building railroads and repairing roads now. Give everyone who wants a home a government-backed mortgage at not more than 10-percent interest now. Reform the tax code now. Give a low-cost education loan to everyone who wants one now. Stop paying the farmers not to produce, and start giving them a fair price for what they produce now. Have the federal government take over welfare and Medicaid programs now. Enact the Equal Rights Amendment now.
JESSE JACKSON AND GEORGE McGOVERN are the only candidates with a genuine, liberal commitment. But can anyone defeat the smarmy fraud presently occupying the White House? Looks like yet another lesser-of-two-evils campaign shaping up.
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