Mendocino County Today: Monday 1/19/2026

DRY WEATHER and above average daytime temperatures will continue through much of this week. Overnight and morning temperatures will remain chilly with patchy dense fog along river valleys and around Humboldt Bay. Chances of precipitation return late in the week or weekend. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): The fog played touch & go with the coast yesterday, we will see it again today ? 41F under clear skies this MLK Day on the coast. Yep, more of the same for now, the next hints of rain are mid next week but they keep moving hence, we'll see.

A READER WRITES: In the spirit of protecting each other and resistance please make note that the number to report sightings of ICE go bots in our county is 707-621-8220. There are trained folks ready to answer your call so that collectively we can ensure that our community is safe from harassment.

RICHARD SHAW SR.

We are sad to announce the passing of Richard Shaw Sr., who passed away on January 14, 2026, in Potter Valley, California, United States. Born on July 17, 1950, Richard was the beloved son of Walter and Doretta Shaw.

Richard is survived by his wife, Rachelle Shaw; his five children, Nicole, Allison, Ricky, Matt and Marlus; and his ten grandchildren. He cherished his role as a father and grandfather.

Richard worked as a locksmith for many years, a profession that reflected his patience, problem-solving skills, and willingness to help others. He took pride in his work and was known for his reliability and dedication.

Outside of his career, Richard had a deep love for the outdoors and could often be found fishing at his favorite spot or working on woodworking projects in his workshop. He also had a green thumb and enjoyed spending time tending to his horticulture garden.

Richard will be remembered for his huge heart, his love for his family, and his passion for his hobbies. He will be deeply missed by all who knew him.

Rest in peace, Richard Shaw Sr. You will always hold a special place in our hearts.

SWIMMING IN THE WILD: THE BIG RIVER SWIM TEAM

by Justine Frederiksen

One of the worst things about the Covid-19 pandemic was how it uprooted people’s daily lives, forcing most of us to find new ways to get our basic needs met.

But that uprooting was also one of the best things about the pandemic, as some of those temporarily painful changes became permanent positives in many people’s lives.

Take the Big River Swim Team. It formed organically in 2020 when public facilities like city pools were first shuttered, sending people living in Mendocino and Fort Bragg searching for ways to get their daily fix of exercise and socialization that swimming provided.

“Back then we had like 25 people,” says Shanti Bischop, 55, standing on the shore of Big River just outside the village of Mendocino recently as two other members of the BRST completed that morning’s swim. “And we still do, but most days now it’s just the core four: Shanti, Eileen, Ann and Lisa.”

Lisa, 78, center, and Eileen, 64, exit the water after another swim in Big River. (Justine Frederiksen — Ukiah Daily Journal)

Leave a note with your shoes

One of the first things the women learned when starting their river swims is that if you leave your Crocs on the shore while you’re in the water, putting a note on them declaring “don’t take, owner swimming” will help make sure your shoes are still waiting on the sand when you get back.

Another early lesson for the swimmers was that the river is cold. So cold, in fact, that the women not only needed to wear wetsuits to be comfortable, but the right kind of wetsuit.

And after much trial and error, Bischop said, the women discovered a brand of thermal wetsuits that keeps them the warmest, allowing them to stay in the water much longer and swim much farther.

“We used to feel proud when we reached that bend,” said Eileen, 64, with a laugh, pointing to a distance of maybe a quarter of a mile. Now, she said, the group swims a “minimum” of about two miles each swim, and often completes three miles.

When asked one morning last December why they like to swim in the river so much, Lisa declared without hesitation: “Because I feel so good afterward,” said the 78-year-old, her face all smiles as she peeled off her wetsuit after her latest swim.

“It’s the only place where, as soon as I get in the water, I shut up,” said Eileen, explaining that swimming in the river forces you to not only focus on every stroke and monitor how your body is reacting to the water, but to pay attention to everything else in and around the water, especially the wildlife that call it home.

So Big River offers these swimmers not just daily exercise, but a daily mediation, keeping them completely absorbed in every moment of every swim. And unlike swimming in a pool, no two swims in the river are alike, because every minute you are joined by a different mix of birds like herons and gulls, or mammals like otters and seals.

Which that morning, Eileen saw with her nose long before her eyes.

“I was wondering what that smell was,” she said as a pair of Harbor seals popped their heads out of the water to watch the humans leaving the river. “They smell terrible!”

But despite the stinky seals and the rash that had Bischop forgoing a wetsuit and swimming a shorter distance that morning, the first thing the women did after toweling off was talk about what time they would be meeting back at the shore for the next day’s swim.

Not just because they want to exercise, but because these women formed a bond during their daily swims. Other than Eileen, who moved to the Mendocino Coast during the pandemic, Bischop said the core four knew each other before Covid, but it wasn’t until their river swims that they really connected.

And while Eileen explained that much of the Big River Swim Team’s members needed to return to their offices and other commitments once Covid restrictions eased, the core four keeps meeting at the river every day they can.

“Apart from family, they are the people I spend the most quality time with,” said Bischop. “The community that was created by the Big River Swim Team is exceptional: All ages, all walks of like, all with a similar love of swimming and the incredible Big River estuary.”

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

JEFF BURROUGHS (Boonville):

About 10 years ago, while enjoying a spring day walk through the creek behind our place, I found one of these egg shaped stones.

Because it did not represent any kind of stone you might find in my area, I took it home and spent the next 7 years trying to understand or explain this egg shaped stone. Finally, just a day or so ago, I was watching an antique appraiser show on you tube when low and behold there was a stone matching mine perfectly. These man made objects were used by people with chickens that weren't laying eggs. By slipping the stone egg under a hen it would fool the chicken into believing it had laid an egg and start laying its own eggs once again. AND, if a snake happened into the chicken coop and swallowed the stone egg it would choke the snake to death. These stone eggs were used in the early 1800's and by 1900, they were no longer used. COOL, RIGHT!?

WILL THE TRUE ORNBAUN SPRINGS PLEASE STAND UP

Merry Winslow:

Actually, I do think that that might be the Ornbaum Hot Springs on the Garcia River because I used to go up there by walking up the river from Point Arena and I seem to remember that there was access to get there from Fish Rock Road. I think I remember people who hiked in from Fish Rock Road at one point.

It’s a lot of rugged terrain, but there were the remains of an old resort when I went up there, dishes, plates and various debris from the resort that burned down.

There were several developed hot pools at the side of the river and we used to go up there and camp for a few days at a time in the 80s.

Caught crawfish and ate them with the wine and French bread we brought! it’s quite a sweet memory!

A READER WRITES: Years ago we had a child in a traveling soccer league. Our first experience with Rohnert Park was an eye opener. The parents there would not let us sit on the same side of the field with them. Had their officials physically move us. Everywhere else we traveled, all parents shared the same side. Then in the game, our girls stationed on the Rohnert Park side of the field had the PARENTS hurling horrible trash talk at them, including cuss words. These kids were like 12-13 years old. WHO does that? When our coach protested the behavior, the refs drew a chalk box on our side of the field and put our coach in it. If he stepped out, we got punished. WHO THE HELL does this? Rohnert Park does. HORRIBLE experience. I’m proud of our coach and kids, not one of them stooped to the level of their opponents. They played fair and hard despite how they were treated on and off the field. No skirmishes from our side at all, no police required. But we thought twice about playing in that city ever again. Horrible experience!

ASSIGNMENT: UKIAH - AROMATHERAPY, CANINE VERSION

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

I’ve started walking my dog down the middle of the street because otherwise I wouldn’t walk my dog at all.

Over the decades I’ve had half a dozen dogs, and this one, Sweetie, is the absolute easiest dog to walk, and also the most aggravating. She strolls along, leash a-dragging for the most part, and she stops faithfully at corners and intersections.

That’s the good stuff.

The bad stuff is one great big bad stuff: Sweetie can’t walk and elevate her nose at the same time. Like all dogs, but more so, Sweetie is nothing but four legs and a snout.

She can smell anything and everything at the same time, but only if her nostrils are a quarter-inch off the ground and buried in something other than pavement. Hence the “walking my dog down the middle of the street” opening line.

If we walk on the sidewalk we don’t. Walk on the sidewalk, I mean. Instead we (I) stand on the sidewalk while my dog inventories every scent, smell, stain, stink, fragrance and odor that has taken place within that square foot of earth over the past six weeks.

Meanwhile I’m still standing, leaning at a 45-degree angle away from her, with the leash straining between my tight fist and her tight collar, a pose she could hold for many minutes because less than two inches away is another aromatic adventure: a cigarette butt!

What would ordinarily be a 10 minute walk around the block turns into, if I allow it, a 10 minute walk to the next driveway unless there’s the unexpected delight of cat urine to inhale along the way. If so, please add six minutes to the average arrival time at the corner of South Hayne Street and Talleyrand Avenue. Arrival time is only an estimate; your time may vary depending on whether you are walking a Dachshund or a Golden Retriever.

(While on the topic of walking your pooch, why doesn’t somebody invent a dog bag that has little tab on the side? Once loaded with excrement, just pull the tab and the bag inflates with helium and floats away.)

Back to the story:

We live in a small town in North Carolina and there’s not much early traffic on neighborhood streets. I take Sweetie out every morning and follow a similar route every day. If I allowed her to set the pace we’d hit rush hour.

I can’t yell at her because it’s not nice and the neighbors would frown. I can’t pull her around the streets in a little red wagon because I don’t have one and she’s too big.

But if I walk her down the middle of the paved streets she cannot easily be distracted by the heavenly stench of one horrid stink or another. Or both. While a freshly mown lawn offers merely the tantalizing tang of newly cut grass, an unkempt, weedy old vacant lot yields an entire afternoon’s worth of sniffing. And sniffing and sniffing and sniffing.

Think of it: bird droppings next to a Taco Bell wrapper, not far from two empty beer cans and the rapturous reek of a long-dead possum that, with a little luck, Sweetie will roll in.

Next, an empty Doritos bag that Sweetie attacks with admirable zest. Ten seconds later she’s wearing it on her head while gnawing on a chicken bone that juts from her clenched teeth at a most fetching angle.

At this rate I’m going to have to shave again; I wish I’d packed a lunch.

Honesty, At A Minimum

The Ukiah Valley Water Authority (UVWA) is quietly planning to stun those of us who utilize “water” on a regular basis by increasing the price to it by a lot. A real lot.

A series of water hikes begins March 1. Ukiah’s will go up a “modest” 18% while other districts, (Hello there, Willow, Redwood Valley and Millview!) will take a 54% shot to both the jaw and wallet; Calpella’s will jump 36% on top of a 15% increase in 2025.

These numbers come courtesy of No Ukiah Annexation (NUA) a group of local volunteers who seem to have thwarted the city’s poorly conceived and mostly camouflaged plan(s) to annex a sizable percentage of Mendocino County.

But maybe not. As NUA warns “These (water increase) proposals do not exist in isolation. Over the past two years the city of Ukiah has repeatedly pursued strategies to expand its authority over surrounding communities, first through large scale annexation proposals … and now more quietly through the UVWA.

“There is a clear pattern of consolidating control over regional infrastructure and imposing disproportionate costs on unincorporated areas, creating financial pressure that makes annexation appear inevitable.”

For whom do city officials work? What are their plans? Why don’t these officials explain, in simple words for stupid citizens, their long term goal?

(TWK takes the credit, or else the blame, for the weekly “Assignment: Ukiah” columns. Tom Hine does nothing except cash the checks.)

THIS WEEK AT ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE

Preparation For the Rest of Our Lives Book Club
Mon 01 / 19 / 2026 at 1:00 PM
Where: Private Address
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/4607)

AV Village Chair Yoga
Tue 01 / 20 / 2026 at 11:15 AM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center, 14470 Highway 128, Boonville
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5113)

Senior Center Lunch
Tue 01 / 20 / 2026 at 12:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center, 14470 Highway 128, Boonville
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5145)

Moving to the Groove
Tue 01 / 20 / 2026 at 1:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center, 14470 Highway 128, Boonville
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5072)

AV Library Open:
Tue 01 / 20 / 2026 at 1:00 PM
Where: Mendocino County Fairgrounds, 14400 Highway 128, Boonville
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5124)

AV Foodbank
Wed 01 / 21 / 2026 at 2:30 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Grange , 9800 CA-128, Philo
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5106)

Matter of Balance Exercises
Thu 01 / 22 / 2026 at 11:30 AM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center, 14470 Highway 128, Boonville
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5101)

Senior Center Lunch
Thu 01 / 22 / 2026 at 12:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Senior Center, 14470 Highway 128, Boonville
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5150)

Music at the Anderson Valley Brewing Co.
Fri 01 / 23 / 2026 at 5:00 PM
Where: Anderson Valley Brewery, 17700 Boonville Rd, Boonville
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5122)

AV Library Open
Sat 01 / 24 / 2026 at 12:30 PM
Where: Mendocino County Fairgrounds, 14400 Highway 128, Boonville
(https://andersonvalley.helpfulvillage.com/events/5132)

ED NOTES:

THE ANNUAL hypocrisy defaming the memory of Martin Luther King kicks in Monday, an orgy of media self-congratulation on the reverence Americans now have, thanks to King, for non-violent political progress when in living fact King would be appalled at who and how his memory has been hijacked. I happened to be alive and more or less cognizant in 1968 when King was murdered, alive and more or less cognizant in what has since magically become synonymous with, of all delusions, “progressive” civic policy in that adult playground known as San Francisco.

I REMEMBER widespread jubilation among white people, men especially, at King's murder, and I remember most vividly that it was the national media that had whipped up public opinion against King, the bravest kind of man there is because he wasn't naturally courageous according to his biographers, the kind of guy who got up every morning not knowing if he'd be alive at the end of the day. Prominent as he was, King, most places, had no police protection. His house with his wife and kids in it was fire bombed with impunity and J. Edgar Hoover, arguably America's greatest nutball until Trump, a cop who spent his down time prancing around in a cocktail dress, bugged King's hotel rooms and passed the tapes of King's robust private life around to Washington big shots. When King started denouncing the Vietnam War and the U.S. as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” and saying “maybe there's something wrong with capitalism,” well, here was a man walking around with a neon bull's eye on his chest. And sure enough, King didn't live to be 40. A few people reading this will remember the lefty hall south of Market from where many Bay Area protests were launched beginning in the early 1960s. Something Alley. I've forgotten the address although I was a habitue. So, the night of King's murder I headed to Troublemaker Central to see what we were going to do about it, which turned out to be a big march, a very big march but not so large that it intimidated into silence a lot of race baiters shouting insults from the sidewalk. I wound up leafleting on Market Street near Powell in preparation for that event. A totally unhinged guy went at me verbally so intensely I had to warn him that I was not a non-violent person and bluster blah-blah mothafucka get away from me or I'll Gandhi your nose for you. That was the worst of it that day for me, and not any kind of a big deal over a lifetime of unpleasant political encounters. But I can still see that fool's red face screaming foul insults at me and MLK. And I can remember the tenor of the editorial comment in area papers that King, just prior to his assassination, had “gone too far” and ought to confine his efforts to civil rights, about which he'd also gone too far before he became too famous to go too far on that one. King was always going too far, and if he were around today he'd be going wayyyyyyy too far for the idiot cadres of the DNC with their wars on the poor, their giveaways to the banks, their phony healthcare reform, their eager support for mass murder in Gaza, their bland collaboration with everything gone terribly wrong in this doomed country. King’s real legacy has turned out to be an intensification of everything he gave up his life to prevent. King's birthday ought to be a national day of mourning for missed messages. (The best book on the man remains the little Penguin bio by Marshall Frady.)

CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, January 18, 2026

JOSEPH CEDILLO, 25, Ukiah. Misdemeanor hit&run with property damage.

PEDRO FLORES-PEREZ, 27, Ukiah. DUI, loaded firearm in vehicle.

SERJIO GONZALEZ, 49, Ukiah. Under influence, paraphernalia, false ID, parole violation, resisting.

SHANNAH GRIFFITH, 34, Ukiah. Burglary, petty theft with two or more priors, probation revocation.

JESSE HUGHES, 43, San Francisco/Fort Bragg. Cruelty to animals, trespassing, petty theft.

KEIYARALYN JOHNSON, 22, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

KYLE KENNEDY, 27, Ukiah. DUI.

JESSICA SANCHEZ, 35, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

CALIFORNIA DEFIES TRUMP, MAKES ADMISSION FREE FOR OVER 200 PARKS ON MLK DAY

by Madilynne Medina

After President Donald Trump slashed free admission to national parks on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, California state parks will offer free admission at more than 200 state parks over the upcoming holiday.

In a new conference held in San Francisco on Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state was able to raise private funds to offset the cost of granting free vehicle entry to the parks. The money came from the California State Parks Foundation, an independent, nonprofit advocacy group for the parks, Newsom’s office said in a news release.

“While Trump works to erase Dr. King’s legacy, California will honor it,” Newsom’s office said in the release.

On Monday, vehicles with no more than nine passengers will be admitted to the participating parks for free. A list of these parks can be found on the California State Parks’ website.

Some parks are expected to still charge fees, though, including those with off-highway vehicle areas, per-person entry, operations run by partner organizations or guided tours, like Hearst Castle.

MLK Day is not the first federal holiday that Trump has targeted with an omission of free entry days.

The administration also canceled free admission to national parks on Juneteenth, a federal holiday on June 19 that commemorates the formal end of slavery in the U.S. Instead, Trump’s birthday, June 14, which also coincides with Flag Day, was added to the 2026 list of free entry days.

“MLK Day [has] now been shifted to Trump Day. Again, what more evidence do we need on what the hell is going on the United States of America?” Newsom said during Friday’s press conference.

The NAACP also condemed the administration’s decision in December, saying that scrapping MLK Day and Juneteenth from the free entry days list minimizes Black resilience and erases Black history.

The change comes amid ongoing controversies over the national parks under the Trump administration. Recently, new park passes were issued featuring Trump’s face, leading an environmental nonprofit to sue the Department of the Interior, alleging that the move is illegal. The department in turn cautioned that covering Trump’s image with stickers or other materials could invalidate the pass.

In May, the Trump administration ordered park officials to remove — and also asked visitors to report — park signs that portray the country’s history in a negative light.

LOSING CREDIBILITY

Editor:

Federal officials called Renee Good a domestic terrorist before they even knew her name. Further evidence indicates she was nothing of the sort but instead a U.S. citizen trying (right or wrong) to protect her neighborhood from what she believed was unwarranted action by ICE agents near her son’s school.

Now our federal government tells us the agent who shot Good was injured, suffered from internal bleeding and was hospitalized (though apparently he was released the same day). Perhaps he did suffer injuries in the incident. But the evidence we have seen shows him walking normally following the incident and then leaving in a car. The difference in the evidence we have seen and statements made by the federal government is substantial. The government says they alone, excluding local involvement, will investigate this incident. The result of these actions is an erosion of trust.

Now, even if the federal government is telling the truth (again, for example, perhaps the agent who shot Good was indeed injured), it is impossible to know if they can be believed. A large number of U.S. citizens no longer trust our government on even the most basic of issues. This lack of trust significantly undermines our democracy and the legitimacy of our government.

Chris Carpenter

Petaluma

THE GOLDEN RULE RESTATED

Regard each other
As we each regard ourselves
And that’s a fair start

— Jim Luther

MEMO OF THE AIR: Traish LaRue and the machine elves.

Marco here. Here's the recording of Friday night's (9pm PST, 2026-01-16) 7.6-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on KNYO.org, on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and also, for the first three hours, on 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino, ready for you to re-enjoy in whole or in part: https://memo-of-the-air.s3.amazonaws.com/KNYO_0679_MOTA_2026-01-16.mp3

Coming shows can feature your own story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air. That's what I'm here for.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

Antique motorcycles and their real sounds idling. (via Massimo) https://twitter.com/i/status/2012015559504978150

Stunningly cute rocketcycles. Even the helmets! And the headlights! Put a soft-top on and you could ride these in the rain at night to a noodle shop in a Japanese neon district, and there would remain nothing for you to accomplish. It would be the one item on your rocket list. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo_zXe2UWKw

And further Terrence McKenna on DMT elves. With time-lapse art. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tGPM7ZxgOM

Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

CHILE RELLENO Y TAMALE

by Paul Modic

After pulling into the Fortuna Mexican place a couple weeks ago, I parked and got out and a car rolled in behind me. A little old lady, with eyes shining with intelligence and a foofy little dog in her lap rolled down her window and with a big smile asked me what I liked to order? I told her chile relleno and tamale and went inside.

I found a table, got my chips and salsa and wondered about the woman? She hadn’t come in and when she did I was going to invite her to eat lunch with me. I was missing her already and after a few minutes went out and checked but didn’t see her, just one new-looking hybrid in the handicapped slot.

Finally she came in and I went over to her booth. She said she had walked up the stairs behind the restaurant by mistake and I invited myself to her table. She agreed and I got my chips and salsa, book and newspaper, lumbar support pillow and transferred it all over.

She had a lot of questions and so did I. I told her I was celebrating making a book and quitting sugar and the stock market a month ago, the former because of the negative effect excessive sugar has on sleep quality (according to the internet) and the latter because of my obsessive stock-price-checking, bordering on compulsive behavior if not fool-blown OCD.

When I said I was from Garberville she asked if I was a marijuana gardener and I confessed that I had been.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Oh they won’t let us grow any in Ferndale,” she said.

“Not even one plant?”

“I have a mean neighbor who might hassle me.”

She was a retired school teacher, having taught from K through College of the Redwoods, and now lived on the edge of the vast pastures which surround Ferndale. She also had a Victorian duplex in Eureka which she and her husband had worked years to fix up to its current rented-out glory. (She told me about a cabin on twenty-three acres she’d bought in Hoopa forty years ago, an in-holding in the tribal area, and I tried to guess the price, 35 K, more than I expected.)

We sat there eating our identical meals and peppering each other with questions about our lives. Her family had been a very dysfunctional one, growing up in Eureka, and mine similar in Indiana though I generally got along with my parents to the end while she had written hers off completely, no contact. Teaching was the project she had needed to overcome her childhood anxiety.

We talked about our current favorite Netflix shows (I don’t have a TV she said proudly) and when she asked why I was up there I told her about the C/T scan I’d just gotten at the hospital. (I also told her about Charlie, the other person I knew in Ferndale, who is a partner in a successful business called PV Cable, selling wire for solar projects around the world.

“He and his partner were offered ten million for the company but turned it down,” I said.

“Why?” she asked, a common response.

“Because they would have probably moved it out of Ferndale and the employees would have lost their jobs.” When I mentioned that Charlie’s wife Ceitha Wilson has her paintings and drawings for sale in a gallery or two she said she’d look for them.

When we were done with the delicious meal she asked how she could get a copy of my book, well, I have one in the car I said. I autographed it for her in the parking lot where her car was parked by the stairs she had inadvertently climbed up finding stacks of restaurant supplies. (Now, I’m wondering about her cognition: how could she have thought the restaurant was up there? I saw the walker folded in the back of her car and imagined her getting up and down those steps.)

I asked her for some criticism of my book, she said she’d text me about it, and I drove south toward home.

"TRUE TERROR is to wake up one morning and realize that your high school class is running the country.”

― Kurt Vonnegut

ECO-REVOLUTION IS THE ONLY SOLUTION

Sitting here quietly on a cloudy Sunday afternoon at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, digesting the news that again "coal is king", Greenland is a possible U.S. military target, the District of Columbia is scheduled for an aesthetic upgrade, and anybody who does not support the current American presidential administration is branded a traitor.

Yesterday, I paid my United Healthcare--Medicare Advantage bill for two months, and now am awaiting the OTC membership card to arrive at the post office box. I have nothing else whatsoever to achieve insofar as getting my senior social benefits. The Department of Homeless Services assures me that I will be good for at least the next three years.

I am available on the planet earth for revolutionary ecological and attenuating peace & justice direct action. If anybody in the American experiment with freedom and democracy has a problem with that, then you are welcome to take up your complaint with God. For those who are confused about the identity of God, just look at the top of any Federal Reserve Note on the reverse side. It's all about trust, baby!

Contact Information:

Craig Louis Stehr

Adam's Place Homeless Shelter

2210 Adams Place NE #1

Washington, D.C. 20018

Telephone Messages: (202) 832-8317

Email: [email protected]

BILL KIMBERLIN: If you are a person who likes wine and have been curious why it is that younger folks seem to have little interest in wine, this may help to explain what is happening.

49ERS PLAYER DESTROYS SEAHAWKS FAN'S SIGN CALLING INJURED STARS 'CUPCAKES'

by Alex Simon

As the San Francisco 49ers waited to take the field for Saturday’s divisional round game, one Seahawks fan held up a sign calling three injured 49ers stars “cupcakes.” A teammate of those stars didn’t take kindly to the slight.

As the 49ers danced their way out to the locker room, Kendrick Bourne spotted a sign that a Seahawks fan was holding up, bashing Nick Bosa, Fred Warner and George Kittle. In three lines, the sign read:

“Bosa-Warner-Kittle

Buncha Cupcakes

Can’t Play Hurt”

As several cameras filming the tunnel walk-out captured, Bourne walked up to that fan, grabbed the sign before the fan could even react and walked back to the middle of the sea of Niners. Bourne then ripped the sign apart, flinging pieces into the air. Backup quarterback Mac Jones also grabbed a slice of the sign and threw it to the ground with disgust.

The trio are all suffering from major injuries. Bosa tore his ACL in Week 3, Warner fractured and dislocated his ankle in Week 6 and Kittle tore his Achilles in last week’s win over the Eagles. Warner has been recovering well ahead of schedule and was trying to get ready to play Saturday, though the 49ers ruled him out Thursday.

Still, Seahawks fans haven’t been shy in showing their disdain for their division rivals. Beyond this sign, another group of fans who work for a local vintage clothing store posted a video showing them torching a Warner jersey with a flamethrower.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I was raised in a Christian family.

Read the Bible every day and prayed to "God" every morning and night.

With as much humility as I could muster.

Went to Church every Sunday. Taught kids Sunday School.

Attended many adult Bible Classes. Went to Bible camps.

Betcha I know the New Testament better than 90% of Christians.

Looking over my shoulder, every day worrying I was pleasing God. Being forced to love someone I feared. The very essence of sadomasochism. And being aware as I got older that my "mentors" were sexually abusing little kids. And being forced to keep my mouth shut.

IMMIGRATION SONGS

by David Yearsley

With the New Cold War heating up, and American citizens under siege at home, it’s no small wonder that a Russian named Berlin can still claim to have composed this nation’s best-loved song. Born in the Russian Empire in 1888, the immigrant Irving Berlin wrote both the words and the music to “God Bless America.”

Berlin composed the song in the wartime year of 1918 in the only key he claimed to be able to play comfortably in: F-sharp. Noel Coward, a Brit, mistakenly thought that Berlin did everything in the typical beginner key of C major. Quite the contrary, said Berlin, who preferred to find his way mostly on the black notes, which are conveniently raised up like big braille buttons above the sameness of the ivories below.

A copy of Berlin’s song was among the sheet music left in my grandmother’s piano bench. She also had a “war edition” from 1917 of a sentimental love song entitled “K-K-K-Katy” that ventriloquized a stammering soldier’s suit of the eponymous soldier. It was composed by Army Song Leader Geoffrey O’Hara. Born in Canada and trained at the military academy there before abandoning it, he emigrated to the U.S. and the gold-paved streets of vaudeville. The Sensational Stammering Song Success Sung by the Soldiers and Sailors. O’Hara went on to teach at Columbia and, later, the University of South Dakota, which bestowed an honorary doctorate on him. Here’s O’Hara performing his most famous song on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1952.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FNFzhNX1o

The suave and self-effacing O’Hara delivers a charmingly nonchalant performance that combines the professorial and the vaudevillian. Many from more recent generations would surely condemn the lyric as a microaggression against stutterers. Some might also hear fear not just of love spurned but of likely death in a mad war. Others might allegorize the rat-a-tat-tat of the repeated consonants as the stammer of machine-gun fire across No Man’s Land.

On the back page of the single-fold half-folio of “K-K-K-Katy”—a small format adopted, says the publisher, “to co-operate with the Government and to conserve paper during the War, since “Save! Save! Save is the watchword today”—is an advertisement for some other wartime numbers. Among my favorite titles are the catchy “Just Like Washington Crossed the Delaware General Pershing Will Cross the Rhine,” the forthright “We Stopped Them at the Marne,” and “It’s a Long Way to Berlin, But We’ll Get There,” which turned out to be something of a hit when recorded by baritone Arthur Fields in 1917..

To judge from these songs, 1917 was an optimistic year in the United States, far from the realities of Europe: no lyrics about No-Man’s Land, mustard gas, or trench warfare. And no, they didn’t get to Berlin.

My grandmother also had a copy of one of the Second World War’s most popular anthems, at least as far as the U.S. was concerned: “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition and We’ll All Be Free”—words and music by Frank Loesser. The text was based on a phrase shouted by a chaplain named Howell Forgy aboard the U.S.S. New Orleans at Pearl Harbor. This song may be more hard-hitting than its World War I predecessors, but it, too, seems hopelessly quaint now.

One is tempted to think of those as simpler times, to imagine that if my grandparents were alive today, they would expect similarly upbeat songs like “Baghdad and Back by Christmas,” “Tango in Tehran,” “Daddy’s a Delta Force Hero,” “Dronesome Dove,” “I Only Have ICE for You.”

It’s a grimly fun parlor game to play, updating the words and melodies of 1917: “Rollover Mullah Omar, Uncle Sam’s Got Some News / The Donald’s Got a Daisy Cutter That’s Gonna Give the Taliban the Blues.”

The Department of Homeland Security also plays the game with heartless, gloating cruelty. In September, the agency posted on social media a horrifying video montage of shock troops storming houses and shackling people to the Pokémon theme song of “Gotta Catch ’Em All.”

In the old days, before the rise of such unapologetic sadism in song and image, a mixture of naïve optimism, patriotism, and bad taste was the go-to recipe for propagandistic war music, the grisly business ahead heralded by light, pattering melodies, imminently danceable rhythms, and bolstering harmonies.

This is what America had come to expect from the music that accompanies us to wars. Tin Pan Alley would hardly have welcomed a lyric such as Wilfred Owen’s “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” set by Benjamin Britten in his War Requiem of 1962. The military has long recognized the destabilizing power of song. The Army of the Potomac banned the singing of the popular “When This Cruel War Is Over” midway through the American Civil War.

Although there have been only very occasional eruptions of the worldwide War on Terror on American soil, the surge in nativist fury over the past twenty-five years has meant that Berlin’s “God Bless America” has infiltrated every corner of civic musical life since September 11, 2001. Already in that year, the song was heard in the seventh-inning stretch of Game 7 of the World Series; Madonna did it on her Drowned World Tour; and aged British rock stars got into the act as they staggered around Madison Square Garden. The song has secured a sacred place in the Super Bowl’s pre-kickoff ritual.

Berlin first concocted “God Bless America” in 1918 as a chorus to one of his musicals, then exhumed it for Kate Smith in 1938 in advance of the Second World War. It is a song whose harmonic and melodic profile—particularly the goose-stepping bass line of the chorus—has always reminded me of the marginally more dreadful “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” a hymn extruded from Arthur Sullivan on a day off from the Savoy Theatre. Yet the opening of “God Bless America” was apparently lifted by Berlin from a Jewish tune circulating on the Lower East Side during his youth.

It has to be admitted that “God Bless America” is more singable than the ungainly “Star-Spangled Banner,” whose melody has never shaken its origins as a reeling English drinking song. Many prefer Berlin’s nationalist hymn to the similarly derivative “America,” which takes its melody from the British national anthem “God Save the King.”

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, the U.S. Army bands were already busy with Berlin’s anthem, and it has become a patriotic, anti-terror warhorse. On October 4 and 5 of 2001, the Army’s marquee band traveled to New York, where the group received a rapturous reception at their Lincoln Center concert. The Army Chorus, with soloist tenor Staff Sgt. Steve Cramer, sang “A Hero for Today” on the Today Show, with the audience in Rockefeller Center Plaza breaking into a chant of “U.S.A., U.S.A.” before the last of these rousing strains had faded. Later that day, Sergeant First Class Bob McDonald sang “God Bless America” at Ground Zero, describing how “the whole place had a sacred feel to it. It’s a burial ground with an element of otherworldliness. There was also an element of humanity that was so strong.”

Donald Trump and J.D. Vance did a bizarre duet on the song this past Veterans Day, the vice president exhaling his way through the hymn, while the president managed the title salvo, then opened his mouth just few times through the rest of the number, like a guppy low on oxygen.

The early phases of war are often filled with musical bluster and banality. A lone tenor emitting the strains of “God Bless America” over the hallowed hole in Lower Manhattan was yet more proof of the centrality of kitsch in propaganda, the remarkable tale of a penny sheet pulled up by its bootstraps from Tin Pan Alley to the National Mall and a central position in the American liturgy.

A veteran of the armed services, Berlin was thrilled that his song bolstered spirits in World War II. He also helped to engineer the weaponization of “God Bless America” over the long span of his life, as can be seen and heard during his 1968 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, six days before the composer’s eightieth birthday. Berlin would live on for another twenty years, making it to 101.

Elegantly clad in a tuxedo, Berlin sings his most famous creation with only a gentle piano accompanying him. The composer’s voice is quiet, grainy, and full of air. Fragile but resolute, this old man’s voice does not surrender to age. When Berlin goes high in his range at the close, the power recedes still further from his voice, wafted aloft and away by nostalgia. It’s as if he’s caressing his child—or the memory of that child. His voice rises up as his poetry takes in the glorious expanse of America, Berlin’s adopted land, “From the mountains to the prairies …” At the apex of the melody, his voice mists into thin air in a stirring evocation of the “oceans white with the foam.”

One could almost be brought to tears, and doubtless many were, as the afterglow of the song lingers in Berlin’s throat, his head cocked prayerfully to one side. The audience applauds as a trumpet call is heard, and the curtain (chiffon rather than iron) behind Berlin opens to reveal two choral battalions of crisply uniformed Boy and Girl Scouts on steep risers. As visual and musical symbols, these children serve the same purpose as communist Young Pioneers or members of a fascist youth group. At the rousing choral conclusion—the embodiment of martial might, especially coming directly after Berlin’s sentimental solo—the composer extends his arms in a kind of benediction. On the other side of the world, the Tet Offensive had kicked into high gear that very day.

The teetering American empire has started again into its foreign misadventures even as it sacks its own cities. In the battle against Berlin’s hymn and the ranks of propagandistic song that surround it, truthful music will be a vital weapon of dissent in the endless, borderless War on Kitsch.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)

TRUCKIN’

Truckin' got my chips cashed in
Keep truckin' like the doodah man
Together, more or less in line
Just keep truckin' on

Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street
Chicago, New York, Detroit and it's all the same street
Your typical city involved in a typical daydream
Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings

Dallas got a soft machine
Houston too close to New Orleans
New York got the ways and means
But just won't let you be

Most of the cats that you meet on the street speak of true love
Most of the time they're sitting and crying at home
One of these days they know they gotta get going
Out of the door and down to the street all alone

Truckin' like the doodah man
Once told me "Gotta play your hand
Sometimes the cards ain't worth a dime
If you don't lay them down"

Sometimes the lights all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been

What in the world ever became of sweet Jane?
She lost her sparkle you know she isn't the same
Living on reds and vitamin C and cocaine
All her friends can say is ain't it a shame

Truckin' up to Buffalo
Been thinking you got to mellow slow
Takes time, you pick a place to go
Just keep truckin' on

Sitting and staring out of the hotel window
Got a tip they're gonna kick the door in again
Like to get some sleep before I travel
But if you got a warrant I guess you're gonna come in

Busted down on Bourbon Street
Set up like a bowling pin
Knocked down, it gets to wearing thin
They just won't let you be

You're sick of hanging around, you'd like to travel
Get tired of travelling you want to settle down
I guess they can't revoke your soul for trying
Get out of the door, light out and look all around

Sometimes the lights all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been

Truckin' I'm a going home
Whoa, whoa, baby, back where I belong
Back home, sit down and patch my bones
And get back truckin' on

— Robert Hunter (1970)

“MY FAITH is whatever makes me feel good about being alive. If your religion doesn't make you feel good to be alive, what the hell is the point of it?”

— Tom Robbins

"STOP MAKING YOURSELF OUT TO BE A GLOBAL JUDGE," — Russia Slams U.S. Interference in Iran

“The Russian Federation addresses the UN Security Council on the Iran protests, condemning what it calls U.S. interference and escalation. Moscow accuses Washington of exploiting internal Iranian unrest to justify potential military strikes and regime change, while defending Iran’s sovereignty and criticizing Western sanctions and rhetoric. Russia stresses the need for diplomacy, respect for international law, and warns against actions that could trigger regional chaos."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfWs_-NCSYg

(via Betsy Cawn)

LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT

European Union Officials Lean Toward Negotiating, Not Retaliating, Over Trump Tariff Threat

In Minneapolis, a Pattern of Misconduct Toward Protesters

$1 Billion in Cash Buys a Permanent Seat on Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’

China’s Birthrate Plunges to Lowest Level Since 1949

Why London’s Chimney Sweeps Are Enjoying a Resurgence

"COMING OF AGE in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.

Ho ho ho. Let's not get carried away here. Freedom was yesterday in this country. Its value has been discounted. The only freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness. Nothing else matters."

— Hunter S. Thompson, ‘Kingdom of Fear’

THIS HEMISPHERE BELONGS TO ALL OF US

by Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva

The United States’ bombings in Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president on Jan. 3 are yet another regrettable chapter in the continuous erosion of international law and the multilateral order established after World War II.

Year after year, major powers have intensified attacks on the authority of the United Nations and its Security Council. When the use of force to resolve disputes ceases to be the exception and becomes the rule, global peace, security and stability are jeopardized. If norms are followed only selectively, anomie sets in and weakens not only individual states but the international system as a whole. Without collectively agreed-on rules, it is impossible to build free, inclusive and democratic societies.

Heads of state or government — from any country — can be held accountable for actions that undermine democracy and fundamental rights. No leaders have monopolies over the suffering of their peoples. But it is not legitimate for another state to arrogate to itself the right to deliver justice. Unilateral actions threaten stability around the world, disrupt trade and investment, increase refugee flow and further weaken the capacity of states to confront organized crime and other transnational challenges.

It is particularly worrying that such practices are being visited on Latin America and the Caribbean. They bring violence and instability to a part of the world that strives for peace through the sovereign equality of nations, the rejection of the use of force and the defense of the self-determination of peoples. In more than 200 years of independent history, this is the first time that South America has come under direct military attack by the United States, though American forces previously intervened in the region.

Latin America and the Caribbean are home to more than 660 million people. We have our own interests and dreams to defend. In a multipolar world, no country should have its foreign relations questioned for seeking universality. We will not be subservient to hegemonic endeavors. Building a prosperous, peaceful and pluralistic region is the only doctrine that suits us.

Our countries must strive for a positive regional agenda that is capable of overcoming ideological differences in favor of pragmatic results. We want to attract investment in physical and digital infrastructure, promote quality jobs, generate income and expand trade within the region and with nations outside it. Cooperation is fundamental to mobilizing the resources that we so desperately need to combat hunger, poverty, drug trafficking and climate change.

History has shown that the use of force will never move us closer to these goals. The division of the world into zones of influence and neocolonial incursions for strategic resources are outdated and damaging.

It is crucial that the leaders of the major powers understand that a world of permanent hostility is not viable. However strong those powers may be, they cannot rely simply on fear and coercion.

The future of Venezuela, and of any other country, must remain in the hands of its people. Only an inclusive political process, led by Venezuelans, will lead to a democratic and sustainable future. This is an essential condition for the millions of Venezuelan nationals, many of whom are temporarily sheltered in Brazil, to be able to safely return home. Brazil will continue working with the Venezuelan government and people to protect the more than 1,300 miles of border that we share and to deepen our cooperation.

It is in this spirit that my government has engaged in constructive dialogue with the United States. We are the two most populous democracies on the American continents. We in Brazil are convinced that uniting our efforts around concrete plans for investment, trade and combating organized crime is the way forward. Only together can we overcome the challenges that afflict a hemisphere that belongs to all of us.

(Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is the president of Brazil.)

HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED who gets assassinated? It’s always people who tell us to live together in harmony and try to love one another. Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, John Lennon… They all basically said, Try to live together peacefully. Bam! Right in the head. Apparently we’re not ready for that.
 
— George Carlin

ZUR BERUHIGUNG by Heinrich Heine

https://allpoetry.com/poem/16737060-Zur-Beruhigung-by-Heinrich-Heine

(via Bruce McEwen)

LIFE CANNOT BE EXPLAINED in intellectual terms. As Confucius said long ago: “When we are so ignorant of life, can we know death?” And ignorant of life we truly are when we cannot explain it in terms of the understanding. We know life only phenomenally, as a savage may know a dynamo; but we know nothing of life noumenonally, nothing of the nature of the intrinsic stuff of life.

― Jack London, The Star Rover

SUDDENLY

(Ruth Stone, June 8, 1915–November 19, 2011)

And suddenly, it’s today, it’s this morning
they are putting Ruth into the earth,
her breasts going down, under the hill,
like the moon and sun going down together.
O I know, it’s not Ruth—what was Ruth
went out, slowly, but this was her form,
beautiful and powerful
as the old, gorgeous goddesses who were
terrible, too, not telling a lie
for anyone—and she'd been left here so long, among
mortals, by her mate—who could not,
one hour, bear to go on being human.
And I've gone a little crazy myself
with her going, which seems to go against logic,
the way she has always been there, with her wonder, and her
generousness, her breasts like two
voluptuous external hearts.
I am so glad she kept them, all
her life, and she got to be buried in them—
she 96, and they
maybe 82, each, which is
164 years
of pleasure and longing. And think of all
the poets who have suckled at her riskiness, her
risque, her body politic, her
outlaw grace! What she came into this world with,
with a mew and cry, she gave us. In her red
sweater and her red hair and her raw
melodious Virginia crackle,
she emptied herself fully out
into her songs and our song-making,
we would not have made our songs without her.
O dear one, what is this? You are not a child,
though you dwindled, you have not retraced your path,
but continued to move straight forward to where
we will follow you, radiant mother. Red Rover, cross over.

— Sharon Olds (2011)

Thomas Hart Benton family portrait in their Missouri home garden

9 Comments

Cellist January 19, 2026

“I DON’T GET IT”

I don’t get it.

- Cellist January 19, 2026
  
  Is it that he loves his shoes?
  
  - Chuck Dunbar January 19, 2026
    
    Same here–what’s the deep meaning?
    
    - Paul Modic January 19, 2026
      
      Now that Flaky Foont is 100, he can find meaning even in the most banal things.
      Actually, good shoes are just about the most important article of clothing, so he
      may be on to something…
      
      New Shoes
      There’s something about a new pair of shoes
      they cuddle my toes like little jewels
      With good support they were scammed for free
      Keen gave great customer service to me
      These sandals mean everything as my walks are so healthy
      with good blood test results next week I’ll be wealthy
      After measuring the sugar and fat that I ate
      the lab analysis usually scares me straight
      Then eat more veggies and cut out treats
      don’t forget carrots, parsley and beets
      After a few months I’ll begin to backslide
      then start again, but with nothing fried
      When it’s time to check prostate the doc will say
      just back slowly into my finger, okay?
      Once they put a camera right up my butt
      and took a pretty picture of my pink lower gut
      But it all depends on these daily hikes
      and very comfortable shoes I really like
      Soft and beautiful, grey and black Keens
      gliding along trails by cool forest streams
      
      - Chuck Dunbar January 19, 2026
        
        There we go–thanks, Paul.
        
Fred Gardner January 19, 2026

Saul Landau was surprised that “God Bless America” wasn’t deemed sacreligious because “It’s giving God a direct order.”

Marshall Newman January 19, 2026

The Russian Federation statement reeks of irony. Ukraine, anyone?

Chuck Dunbar January 19, 2026

THIS HEMISPHERE BELONGS TO ALL OF US

Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, in the most civil of terms, calls out the United States–D. Trump– to be clearer–to behave itself, abide by the important norms of international behavior established over decades, and leave the Latin American countries in sovereign peace. It’s a foolish, surreal event, bound to end in folly and waste, that prompts him to have to do so.

- Marshall Newman January 19, 2026
  
  +1

9 Comments

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