Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 1/28/2026

Clearing | Naomi Gimple | Escalating Broadband | Crab Feed | Poll Workers | Demolitions Approved | Food Security | B Dollars | Unick Trial | Lucky Survivor | Spirit Bear | Babylon Outliers | Beach House | Loved Newspapers | Frenchman’s Creek | No Catch | SMART Tax | SF Puma | Super Cheer | Tucker Book | Hooters Vigil | Population Growth | Author Executed | Runnymede Reeds | Fish Meal | Old World Order | Join ICE | Masked Police | Lead Stories | Bad Trip | Except Lassie | Chicago 1968 | Oncoming Storm

---

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Yesterday's afternoon rain left a nice .46" in a short time. A partly cloudy 44F this Wednesday morning on the coast. A mix of cloud covers daily until our next rain expected on Sunday. Next week looks dry currently.

DRIER WEATHER conditions are expected for much of Northwest California Wednesday through Saturday. Widespread light to moderate rain is expected on Sunday. (NWS)

---

NAOMI PATRONELLA GIMPLE

Naomi Patronella Gimple 70, passed away on Dec. 21, 2025, in Willits, CA.

Naomi was born in Oakland, CA on April 1, 1955, to parents; Robert Shiflett and Patronella McCoy. She grew up in Cloverdale, CA and enjoyed playing sports, riding mini-bikes, snow-boarding, Biology, fishing, floating down the Russian River and hanging out with friends. She was the 1973 Cloverdale, CA “Citrus Fair Queen” and sang “Someday Soon” by Joan Collins to the crowd.

Naomi was a kind-hearted, Indian woman who loved to sing and play the guitar for people because it always made her happy. She enjoyed spending time with her elders and learning the old Pomo ways; how life was, basketweaving and the language. She was a fighter with whatever she was doing at any time in her life. Through her trials and tribulations, she always maintained perseverance in her life and then moved on to another day. She considered herself a spiritual person who believed in God’s love, kindness and forgiveness, and always seeking to better herself and try to live, “One day at a time.”

Naomi is survived by her sons, Chris Rose, Ryan Rose and Dakota Gimple; her grandchildren, Brianna Rose, Kaitlyn Rose, Kiley Rose, Isaac Rose, Amelia Gimple, and Shania Gimple; her great-grandchild, Alina Rodriguez; her sisters, Jacquelyn Falleri and Katherine Fields; her brothers, Robert Shiflett, Richard Shiflett and Curtis Shiflett.

A “Celebration of Life” will take place on Saturday, April 11th , 2026, at 190 Sherwood Hill Drive in Willits. 12PM – 4pm

---

FORT BRAGG FACES AN ESCALATING PRICE TAG FOR NEW MUNICIPAL BROADBAND NETWORK

Project lead reveals $3 million in cost overruns

by Elise Cox

What began as an ambitious vision to bridge the digital divide and invigorate Fort Bragg’s economy with a municipal fiber-optic broadband network is becoming a morass of construction challenges and public scrutiny.

Sarah McCormick, the city’s economic development manager, delivered a candid account of construction management failures and poor project scoping to the Fort Bragg City Council on Monday night.

McCormick requested and received approval to shift $1.97 million to construction activities from the operations of Mendocino Community Network, an internet service provider purchased by Fort Bragg from the Mendocino Unified School District in May. She also cautioned that “the problem isn’t solved.”

“It’s looking closer to $3 million,” she said.

A cornerstone of the city council’s 2024-2028 strategic plan, the Fort Bragg Municipal Utility Broadband Project aims to provide affordable, reliable high-speed internet to all residents, connecting them with online educational and employment opportunities. By offering assured and redundant connectivity, the city also hopes to attract diverse new businesses to the coast.

The initiative has its roots in 2019, when councilmembers began discussing the idea. It gained significant momentum in 2021 when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) awarded Fort Bragg $479,000 to develop a business plan, a financing strategy, and a construction bid packet. The CPUC then came through with an additional $10.3 million to support construction.

The initial cost estimate was $14.7 million. That ballooned to $17.3 last year and is now estimated at $18.9 million.

Construction began last spring — and so did the problems, as the work collided with the city’s underground infrastructure leading to sewer backups and at least one broken water main. “In July or June, it became obvious that the level of restoration in the streets was going to far exceed what we could afford,” McCormick said.

In response, the city began looking at investing in additional public works equipment and building up its own street crew.

“Another thing that happened that was a big deal was that in September I was told by the construction manager that the project was over budget in boring,” McCormick said. Boring is the most expensive part of the project. “Being over budget is a real big deal,” she added.

McCormick said the construction manager from GHD, which was awarded the $1.4 million contract to oversee the project, could not explain where the project deviated from plan. “We quickly terminated that part of the contract because that was his job — to track the project.”

McCormick said the increase appears to be related to a design change regarding the placement of “flower pots” — in-ground enclosures that provide access so that a main fiber optic trunk line can be spliced and extended to individual residences.

“When they made that change, they didn’t change the bill of materials for boring,” McCormick said. “That would have been like a real no-brainer thing to see if you were the construction manager and tracking the project.” She said the installation of conduit also exceeded design expectations.

City staff has since begun managing the project more directly. McCormick said that the simple move of replacing a GHD inspector with city personnel is saving the city an estimated $40,000 a month. The city also decreased the original scope of the project by $698,000, including $490,750 in ADA curb ramp improvements that won’t be needed.

Councilmember Tess Albin-Smith asked if any insurance exists to cover this kind of error.

McCormick said that the problem is that the city revised the design after the bid package was sent out. “It happened very quickly,” she said. “And I would say the city has just as much ‘at play’ in how those numbers weren’t vetted.”

Councilmember Lindy Peters pressed McCormick for an additional explanation. “It just seems like a lot of money for a small town to be that far off,” he said.

“It was really just an oversight,” McCormick said. After the bid package was sent out, city staff realized that the flower pots were going to be placed on private property, and they pulled them back to the edge of the sidewalks in the public right of way, she explained. This meant fiber had to be installed under the sidewalk.

Public reaction was mixed. Residents expressed concern about the budget overruns, the quality of the current construction work, the lack of clear communication, and ongoing liability issues.

“There’s subsidence everywhere,” Jacob Patterson said. “I’ve tripped myself. … this could easily be a class action lawsuit based on how poorly this project has been managed.”

“I believe that I’m speaking for many members of our community, when I say that I’m confused, concerned, and frustrated by this issue,” David Jensen said. “I feel like we’re headed for another C.V. Starr and that’s what makes me really nervous. We had a lot of money to build it. We went over, we covered the costs and now we’re living with a constant drain on the city budget.”

Councilmember Scott Hockett asked McCormick to begin providing regular updates on the project. “We are going to have to see this through,” he said. “But this is out of control. Let’s reel it in.”

(Mendolocal.news)

---

CRAB FEED: Last day to get those crabby tix. Lemons is sold out. Last time I checked AV Market had some left. I will be collecting the tickets and ordering the crab tomorrow so get ‘em now. You snooze, you lose!

---

POLL WORKERS NEEDED ON THE COAST

To Registered Voters on the Mendocino County Coast:

The Mendocino County Elections Office is looking to add a few “Election Day Workers” to our Polling Place Teams throughout the Mendocino Coast. While Election Day is busy and can be hectic, being an Election Day Worker is very rewarding to help serve your community. Polls are open from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. on election day. In 2026, elections will be held on June 2 and November 3.

At any point in time throughout election day, the Elections Office needs to have 4 Election Day Workers at each polling place to properly staff each polling place. We are looking for registered voters in the community to step up and help us out. We need an Inspector, a Judge and 2 clerks, at the County’s Point Arena polling place. We can split the day for the Judge and the clerks, but the Inspector should be there throughout the day. We have brief job descriptions for those interested. We are also in need of an Inspector at one of our polling places at the Little River Inn.

The Clerks greet voters and answer basic questions to assist the voters and the Inspector and Judge as needed.

The Judge issues ballots and determines if the voter can vote a regular or provisional ballot. Assists the Clerks and Inspector as needed.

The Inspector oversees the polling place, they are responsible for picking up poll supplies, contacting the Polling Location to pick up a key, arrange for set up the day before election with the workers and the location, assisting voters and other workers. Packs supplies and equipment at the end of the evening. Completes required paperwork.

If you are interested in working at a polling place, please call the Elections Office at 707 234-6808, or email us at [email protected] we would love to speak with you and send you some additional information. The County pays a small stipend to Election Day Workers.

The County would like to keep these polling places open. If we cannot find people willing to work at polling places, the County may be forced to close polling places with insufficient staff.

---

DEMOLITION APPROVED AGAIN

by Justine Frederiksen

At it last meeting, the Ukiah City Council again approved the demolition of the former Dragon’s Lair location at the corner of East Perkins and South Main streets, as well as the former home of Tom’s Glass next-door.

A demolition permit for both structures was again before the City Council because the properties at 101 and 105 S. Main St. are now owned by the Mendocino-Lake Community College District, which applied in November of 2025 for a permit in order to demolish the two buildings on the property that are both more than 50-years-old.

Staff described the new owners as “currently exploring funding, including applying for grants through the California Community College Affordable Student Housing Construction Program, which mandates that applications are evaluated based on metrics including ‘Project readiness to begin construction.’ This requirement necessitates that the site be demonstrably ‘shovel ready,’ meaning demolition must be completed before MLCCD can secure final funding and commence design/construction approval.”

The city’s Demolition Review Committee reviewed the updated request for demolition approval in November of 2025, and city staff report that the committee “affirmed the historic status of 101 S. Main St., (and) ultimately agreed to recommend the (modification) of the proposed mitigation measures,” which include incorporating an increased minimum of 850 square feet of “salvaged or visually similar new siding, and requiring the installation of a public-facing mural and durable interpretive signage that reflects the site’s historical significance.”

At the Jan. 21 meeting of the Ukiah City Council, City Planning Manager Katherine Schaefers explained that an addendum to the demolition request was needed after the property changed ownership, and the sole purpose of the additional text was to address the timing requirement of the mitigation measures, since that timing requirement is no longer feasible, or enforceable by the city, since funding for future development could come through the Department of the State Architect, but the addendum “does not result in any substantial changes to the project itself.”

However, to tell the story of the building’s role as a commercial hub, Schaefers noted that the new language would require “a mural and signage that tells the story of the 1917 fire, and the building’s role in the community… with the intent that the building’s history is permanently preserved and communicated to the public, even though the original building will be demolished.”

Julie McGovern, the executive director of the Mendocino College Foundation, then addressed the council to describe how much the new housing planned for the site of the two buildings was needed.

“The lack of affordable housing is the top barrier that students cite over, and over and over again: We have students who are homeless, (many) living in their cars or couch surfing with friends and family because they can’t find or afford a rental,” said McGovern, describing the “affordable housing units proposed for the South Main Street sites as transformational in these students’ lives, and in their ability to continue their education and career training.”

In addition to benefitting students, McGovern said the project would bring economic development, “help ease the pressure on the local rental market, and “remove a blighted structure to make way for a brand-new build on a very visible section (of Ukiah) that serves as a gateway for the historical downtown Ukiah.”

McGovern also described the Mendocino College Foundation as having “invested almost a million dollars” to purchase the properties, money she said was “raised from donors who live right here in our community (who) expect the college and the community to come up with solutions to make progress for a better future, not just for students but for all of us who live here. So I urge the City Council to approve the demolition permit, so that the progress that we promised can become a reality.”

“I agree that we need student housing, and I am so happy that the college is making an effort to produce that,” said Council member Mari Rodin, adding that she was also excited for the prospect of having “people living downtown, (which) is something that we’ve been trying to encourage and promote for a long time, and maybe this will spur more downtown living.”

Rodin also suggested “relaxing” some of the required mitigation measures attached to the demolition process, including the saving and reusing of the siding on the building at 101 S. Main St.

“I just don’t think there should be a requirement to reuse (the existing siding),” she said, describing it as “all in bad shape, and I just think that’s kind of a ridiculous thing that we should remove. Because I know that similar siding is available new, that would look fresher, and there’s no real reason, in my opinion, to re-use the old siding just to re-use it.”

Rodin also said she did not like the mural requirement, but liked the idea of having a “small, standard interpretive sign,” and did agree with having new siding incorporated into the new building.

“I think there is something to celebrate about Ukiah’s cultural heritage, and I don’t think it’s too onerous to ask the architect to incorporate the siding somehow,” she continued. “I think there are many creative architects who would have fun trying to do that.”

Fellow Council member Heather Criss said she agreed that new siding could be incorporated instead of saving the existing materials, but that she would prefer to retain the mural requirement.

“I think that the college is an educational institution, and so having some history there is in alignment with the purpose of the college,” said Criss, and that she was open to having it on a nearby wall as City Manager Sage Sangiacomo suggested, or perhaps having it inside the building “where it is more protected.”

“I think you are right about history being a part of education,” said Rodin, adding that she supported being more flexible about where and what size the mural should be, so “we can let the (college board) decide how they would like the mural to be.”

Noting that the flexibility the council members wanted was “already built into the existing” cultural mitigation measures, staff recommended that no modifications be made to the prepared resolution, which the council then passed unanimously by all three council members present. Mayor Susan Sher and Council member Doug Crane were both absent by prior arrangement.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

---

WILLITS RESIDENTS MAP OUT FOOD SECURITY SOLUTIONS FOR AN EQUITABLE FUTURE

by Savana Robinson

Willits community members gathered in the Little Lake Grange Saturday to work on a year-long action plan for food security. The meeting was café style — eight discussion tables, each with a different facilitator, worked on topics related to how to help secure food security sustainably.

After discussion sessions of 25 minutes, a handbell rang out, and participants were allowed to switch tables or stay at the same one. The end goal was to fill up posters with key points from each table. More than 30 community members attended.

To conclude the afternoon, facilitators from each table presented their posters with ideas and things that need to happen or change to support multiple aspects of food security in Willits and across Mendocino County.

The idea hub table’s presentation included the possibility of a mobile farmers market that could help close the gap for people, such as elderly or disabled folks, unable to travel to any of the current farmers market locations in the county. The idea hub table also suggested creating a way to share excess resources, such as extra produce or goods.

Willits Mayor Tom Allman headed the emergency food table. He noted two major necessities that link with food and emergency preparedness: water and fuel. He said communication is key, and offered the idea of local media doing regular disaster preparedness articles. He also mentioned the importance of having an emergency stash of bottled water.

Allman also talked about countywide ham radio in case all other communication goes down. Allman mentioned the Willits Amateur Radio Society, which meets regularly and can teach anyone to use a ham radio.

He also said that sticking with your community in a time of crisis can be critical. “Each community should have a hub, whether it’s an open field or somebody’s house, someplace to go when something happens to where we know whether your neighbors are okay,” Allman said.

Local farmer Mike Adams led the discussion at the farmers table. His colleague Ryan FarPorte spoke about different aspects of farming that can create entrance barriers to the profession, like land and water access, as well as figuring out housing and a business model. FarPorte asked whether the community is willing to pay for locally grown, nutrient-dense food in a way that creates a sustainable local market for producers.

“Are people willing to pay for supply and demand of their food production?” FarPorte asked. “Are there restaurants, schools, other people willing to buy local food from the local farmers?” He emphasized that first people needed to demand local food, and then farmers needed the ability to provide it, which means having land, water and housing for affordable prices.

At the nutrition and medicinal table, naturopath Claudia Wenning mentioned the importance of having nutrient-dense food that can meet various diet needs. She suggested sharing healthy recipes and inviting chefs to do cooking demonstrations for the community. She also asked how we can create more spaces for public cooking and meal sharing, like the Grange, which she said is currently overbooked.

Wenning also mentioned the importance of teaching children where healthy food comes from.“Food does not grow on the shelf at Safeway, it grows somewhere else,” Wenning said. “Ideally it could grow in this geographical area. Then there is the seasonal aspect.”

The meeting was convened by a trio of Grange members; Little Lake Grange Vice President Annie Waters, Wenning and Adams. Waters and Wenning were two of four women who started the herb garden at the Little Lake Grange and put on a previous food security meeting in November. Waters also founded the local seed exchange that the Grange participates in, as do several other granges and libraries around the county. The next seed exchange at the Little Lake Grange will be Sunday, Feb. 22 from 10 a.m. to noon.

(Bay City News)

---

MAZIE MALONE:

Mark Scaramella is right [about the County’s failure to spend millions of Measure B dollars on required mental health and substance abuse recovery and treatment services]. There’s no data, and there’s money available for treatment.

Why and where this falls apart is what actually happens after people are arrested or assessed, and who we’re mostly talking about.

A lot of the people cycling through Prop 36 and CORE are homeless. Many also live with serious mental illness and addiction which means dual diagnosis. You can’t treat addiction without treating mental illness at the same time and expect anything to change.

What happens instead is a loop.

Arrest.

Assessment.

Release.

Repeat.

That’s likely why the data never shows up. Without treatment that addresses both mental illness and addiction, and without housing to stabilize people while that happens, there isn’t much to measure beyond repeat contact.

So the “lack of funding” excuse does not hold. Measure B money exists. Sorry but this isn’t mainly a crime problem; it’s homelessness and untreated serious mental illness being managed through law enforcement because there’s nowhere else for people to go.

If Prop 36 and CORE are working, show the outcomes.

If they aren’t, stop pretending they are.

Show us how many people have entered and completed Assisted outpatient treatment/Laura’s law.

The only info we seem to track is whom and how many times an individual is arrested.

---

CLOVERDALE MAN FACES JURY IN 1982 KILLING OF TEEN FOUND DEAD IN ALLEY

by Colin Atagi

Nearly 44 years after a 13-year-old Cloverdale girl’s body was discovered in an alley, her suspected killer is facing a jury in what is considered the city’s first-ever homicide.

The seven men and nine women, including alternates, heard opening statements and the first round of testimony Tuesday, Jan. 27, in the trial of James Unick. The 64-year-old is charged with murder in the death of Sara Ann Geer, whose body was discovered the morning of May 24, 1982.

Unick is being held at the Sonoma County jail without bail.

Arguments before Judge Laura Passaglia are expected to last into February and shed light on events that led to the July 2024 arrest of Unick in Willows, a small city in Glenn County. Prosecutors with the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office say DNA evidence was a key component in identifying Unick as a suspect. His defense attorney, Gabriel Quinnan, countered DNA is merely a “starting point” with little supporting evidence such as finger prints, footage or a confession.

“At the end of the trial, you’ll be left wondering how the DNA got there,” Quinnan told jurors Tuesday.

Geer was a Washington School seventh grader in 1982 and police at the time said her death was Cloverdale’s first homicide to their recollection, according to Press Democrat coverage from that year.

Investigators said Geer had spent a weekend with a friend before returning home Sunday, May 23, 1982. She briefly visited a friend, Cheryl Evans, before she walked downtown and was last seen at a video game arcade on Cloverdale Boulevard.

In recorded testimony played for jurors Tuesday, Evans said Geer was her best friend and she had stopped by around 11 p.m. that night four decades ago. She left about 30 minutes later and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“She was happy. She was always happy,” Evans said.

The next day, Evans said, she learned Geer’s body had been found.

Her partially clothed body was behind an apartment building on Main Street, in an alley between Second and Third streets. Two children made the grim discovery, including the 6-year-old granddaughter of a then-Cloverdale City Council member who lived in the building.

The alley ran beside the bedroom window of Norene Haberski, who now lives in New Jersey and also provided pre-recorded testimony. As she headed to bed around midnight, she heard the sound of shuffling feet coming from the alley, which was covered in gravel and packed dirt.

The next morning she found “flip-flops in disarray on the alleyway.” Haberski and her boyfriend placed the sandals aside before leaving, only to return to police activity later that day.

An autopsy found Geer died from “manual traumatic injuries,” consistent with strangulation or a beating. Sonoma County Deputy District Attorney Christina Stevens told jurors Geer had been sexually assaulted and the strangulation was so forceful that she bled from her mouth.

The killing stood out for a community that several of Geer’s friends and family members described Tuesday as a small, quiet town where everyone knew each other. Evans added it wasn’t unusual for her and Geer to walk around downtown Cloverdale at night.

But another common observation from Tuesday’s testimony: None of the witnesses knew Unick.

According to prosecutors, he lived on North Cloverdale Boulevard along the route Geer would’ve taken from her home to Evans’. Testimony from a preliminary hearing in January 2025 showed he’d been briefly interviewed by a Cloverdale police officer shortly after the killing and denied knowing Geer.

Exactly why he remained under the radar of authorities hasn’t been specified.

The case remained cold for nearly 40 years until Cloverdale police reopened it in 2021, working alongside a private investigator. Officials were still keeping tabs on Unick and used DNA from a discarded cigarette to link him to Geer’s death. He again denied killing her.

Additional testimony is expected from Cloverdale residents who were present in 1982 along with investigators and DNA evidence.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

---

AT 6, WHEN THERE WERE NO VACCINES, I SURVIVED MEASLES AND COMPLICATIONS

Editor:

I read that Dr. Kirk Milhoan, chair of the advisory committee on immunization practices, said vaccines for polio and measles should be a matter of choice, rather than mandated. I find this idea dangerous. When I was a child, the polio vaccine was not yet available. Several of my classmates were crippled. Countless others were paralyzed or spent years in iron lungs. Also, at that time there was no measles vaccine. One out of every 1,000 individuals who gets measles also gets encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, which can result in neurological damage or death. At age 6, I was that one in 1,000. After convulsions, a coma and isolation in the hospital I was lucky to survive. I strongly recommend that parents and caregivers have their children vaccinated against these two diseases, and that school districts continue their practice of mandatory vaccinations.

Janet Greene

Cloverdale

---

---

OUTLIERS IN BABYLON

Intoxicated by the mystical marijuana plants,
rising from the heart of the earth,
so resinous on the inhaled joint.

Our DNA slowly turned to THC.
Like seed turning to flower,
On the fertile crescents of the Eel River, where we grew our first sinsemilla,
When totem salmon still spawned
Along the deep pools and gravel beds.

Yes, Those terraced Babylonian pot gardens of olden times,
Nourished by mountain springs.
How endearing were the Magical green tree frogs clinging to the swaying colas in September?

Cannabis farmers became rich, powerful,
as if the mighty bud made them immortal,
as if the outside world was forever locked out.

Upon the curtained land were the green matrixes,
blowing wind wafting dreamily with musky aromas.
The scents both skunky and fruity,
the flavors and strains unending.

All that easy money,
Everybody said,
All those 100-dollar bills.

A new commerce emerged in those chanticleer hills,
A plant that the richest and poorest in the cities revered.

Alas, it was a monoculture,
A lifestyle bought and paid for by the precious cannabis nuggets,
Remember when an ounce of herb was worth more than gold?

Then the Great Hellfire came via Huey Combat Helicopters raiding homesteads long sequestered into the green verdure.
Some say it was the fault of Green Rush hooligans coming next who breached the tipping point of decency and goodwill in those deep valleys and sequestered mountains.

When the end came, no one was prepared
Suddenly the pristine watersheds were
tainted with diesel dope,
and a 50 year back-to-the-land culture succumbed to the cartel called legalization

Thus, the Age of Anthropocene was thrust upon us:
Soon the Day-Star goddess became the Black Death of the forest.
A once sustainable Eden burned to piles of char by the carpetbaggers.

Yet Mom and Pop still search through the rubble,
For remnants and memories,
Of a world no more.

Pity our land once ruled by Gaia’s hidden world of Redwood Tree corridors, mighty Rivers, and the immense blue Pacific watching over it all.

Our bright star has lost its luminescence.
10,000 hours in the burning sun learning to grow the best Kush,
Raising our children in the emerald elysian—
A lucid cannabis dream deferred.

Mom and Pop watched in horror as the sweet exhaled homegrown smoke disappeared into the gossamer mist,
On the last day of living free in the Green Idyll.

— Ron Halvorson (2026)

---

WHO REMEMBERS the dome house that was on Caspar Beach in the 80’s? If anyone else has pictures or has more information, please share…

---

I'VE ALWAYS LOVED NEWSPAPERS. I come by this honestly. My mom and her friend Adele Saxe started and ran a newspaper in Park Forest, where we lived from 1948 to 1955. I published a newsletter for the local coop for a while. I published, edited, and sold ads for a newspaper called Big River News for a decade when we lived in Mendocino. It was Richard's pet project; we published his superb columns on the decline of the American empire. There were other faithful contributors too. Now I relish the local amalgam of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Las Vegas Sun, observing how the conservative Review-Journal is drifting to the left, while the Progressive Sun remains stalwart.

— Deborah White

---

MENDO IN THE MOVIES

In the spring and summer of 1943, the Mendocino Coast was transformed into a lively movie set when Paramount Pictures chose Albion River and nearby locations for the Technicolor film “Frenchman’s Creek.” What began as a tentative scouting trip, reported in the Beacon as a Hollywood representative seeking lodging for a troupe of around 100, quickly grew into a full-scale production. Little River Inn served as headquarters for cast and crew, with additional accommodations arranged throughout Fort Bragg and neighboring communities.

Albion soon filled with activity. Construction crews built docks, roads, cookhouses, and a large dining hall to serve meals to the company. Elaborate sets appeared almost overnight, including a castle facade, an old-world church, a bridge, and other period structures. Although many buildings were constructed only on the sides facing the camera, those visible surfaces were richly detailed with plaster walls, brick stairways, heavy shake roofs, ivy, and authentic period furnishings.

A full-sized pirate ship floated in the Albion River, hauled north by barge from Hollywood and outfitted to resemble a 17th-century galleon. Curious visitors came from across the county to tour the sets, watch the filming, and see for themselves how familiar redwoods, rivers, and coastline had been transformed into the England of a romantic adventure story.

Most memorable of all was the participation of local residents. Men from Mendocino and Fort Bragg were hired as boatmen, swimmers, and pirates for key scenes, and seventeen Mendocino men donned long coats, wigs, jabots, and knee breeches for the harbor battle sequences. The work paid well for the time: $35 (about $656 today) per day for swimmers, $16.50 (about $309 today) for pirate ship crew members, and $10.50 (about $197 today) for Cornishmen with muskets. Transportation and free meals were also provided, along with the less glamorous side effects of sunburned faces and blistered hands. Friends and neighbors gathered to watch the filming, snapping photos and cheering on familiar faces.

When “Frenchman’s Creek” premiered in late 1944, it drew packed movie houses along the coast. Audiences delighted in recognizing Albion and Big River scenes, even if local extras appeared only briefly. At a time when the community was still feeling the strain of mill closures, the Depression, and wartime uncertainty, the production brought much-needed income, excitement, and a lasting sense of pride in being part of Hollywood history.

"Mendocino and the Movies: Hollywood and TV Motion Pictures Filmed on the Mendocino Coast" by Bruce Levene. More than 50 films from 1904 to 2001 used local scenery and local actors. $20.

(Kelleyhousemuseum.org.)

---

CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, January 27, 2026

(Unavailable due to technical problems at Sheriff’s booking website.)

---

SMART TRAIN SHOULD NOT BE CALLED ‘CLEAN’ TRANSPORTATION

Editor,

I love trains. My dad worked for a railroad, so they were a large part of my upbringing. However, after reading the article published Jan. 11 with the headline “SMART tax renewal pitch heads to district board,” I don’t think the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District is very smart at all.

In the article, a supporter of the proposed ballot measure to extend the sales tax paying for SMART appears to misrepresent the service as “clean” public transportation. Those trains run on diesel fuel. SMART also causes daily backups of idling cars in places like downtown San Rafael every time it comes through. There are at least five busy streets with several blocks each of idling, gasoline-powered cars and trucks trying to get where they are headed. This happens especially at high-commute times but also randomly.

We need solid data to show the additional pollution we get that can be attributed to those backups. Also, the petitioners for this were good people, understandably working to get paid for signatures. What should have been made clear in the script they were given is the full truth: The petition allows supporters to put the measure on the ballot at a lower approval threshold. That means the tax proposal no longer requires a supermajority on Election Day.

So if this initiative does make it to the ballot, I suspect it will pass. Then we will all be paying for what sounded like a great idea (clean transportation and less congestion) but hasn’t proven to be so. It’s time to look for other solutions.

Kraemer Winslow

San Rafael

---

SAN FRANCISCO’S MOUNTAIN LION WAS ALREADY KNOWN TO AUTHORITIES.

by Megan Fan Munce

San Francisco’s mountain lion has a name — and a past.

After a 30-hour search for the animal seen lurking around Lafayette Park, city and wildlife officials finally tracked it down to a slim green space between two Pacific Heights apartment complexes. It was there that wildlife researchers realized it was the same animal they had once lost track of as a kitten.

157M, as he was originally named, was born in April 2024 near Rancho San Antonio County Park and Open Preserve on the Peninsula, according to Chris Wilmers, a professor in UC Santa Cruz’s Environmental Studies Department. Wilmers is the principal investigator on the Santa Cruz Puma Project, a collaboration between UC Santa Cruz and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to track and study mountain lions, also known as pumas. The group has been tracking the animals since 2008.

The Puma Project first encountered 157M when he was a kitten and placed a collar on him to track his movement. But because these kitten collars are designed to be lightweight and expandable, they often fall off, Wilmers said.

That’s what happened to 157M, leaving researchers without the ability to say exactly how the mountain lion got from his forested habitat on the Peninsula to a park on the north side of the city.

At just under 2 years old, 157M is in his “dispersal phase,” Wilmers said — the period at which a young mountain lion leaves his mother and seeks out new territory of his own. That’s likely what led him to venture far north.

“Males will often travel far out. They’re essentially trying to find a vacant territory, and the Santa Cruz Mountains are pretty trapped in by development on all sides,” Wilmers said. “They wander, and they keep going, and they end up in one of those places — San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Highway 101.”

Wilmers said the Puma Project has previously tracked collared mountain lions that have wandered all the way to the San Francisco Zoo. Assuming 157M took the same route, he might have then followed along the coast, passing by Ocean Beach before detouring into Golden Gate Park and then the Presidio, Wilmers speculated. There have been reports of uncollared pumas reaching the Presidio, he said.

From there, the hunt for more green space could have led 157M to end up in Lafayette Park, where residents spotted him Monday morning.

“They’re tending to look for things that feel comfortable, vegetative cover being the main thing,” Wilmers said.

On Tuesday, officials with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the San Francisco fire and police departments and the San Francisco Zoo finally located 157M not far from where he was originally spotted. There he was tranquilized and placed in a cage to be taken out of the city. A tag on his ear helped researchers identify that this wasn’t the first time they’d come across this particular cat.

Wilmers confirmed that 157M will be re-collared and released back into the wild in the Peninsula where he was born.

After that, the lion’s future is unknown. Wilmers said it’s possible that he may find himself wandering back into an urban area or a highway.

This time, 157M was lucky. But the next time he could find himself being struck and killed by a car, as are many mountain lions who wander outside of their habitat.

In 2022, Caltrans constructed a wildlife crossing pathway underneath Highway 17 at Laurel Curve in Santa Cruz County. The location was partially informed by the Puma Project’s research on mountain lions’ pathways. The project took more than $20 million in combined funding from Caltrans, a local tax measure and the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. In 2024, the Peninsula Open Space Trust paid $15.65 million to preserve an open space southwest of Gilroy to protect it as a corridor for local wildlife — including mountain lions.

More wildlife crossings like this could help mountain lions and other animals safely navigate around human development, Wilmers noted.

Once 157M is re-released, San Franciscans will be able to keep up with his movements on the Puma Project website. Wilmers noted that the location data lags eight weeks for animal safety.

If all goes well, he’ll find a new territory for himself far from human development, and his location data will help researchers at the Puma Project further their understanding of mountain lions’ movement and behavior.

Or it may turn out that 157M was never lost at all — just seeking a shady spot in a beautiful park, as all San Franciscans are wont to do.

(sfchronicle.com)

---

---

HOW DID TUCKER CARLSON GET THIS WAY? How Did America?

In “Hated by All the Right People,” the journalist Jason Zengerle looks at the conservative pundit’s many transformations.

by Jennifer Burns

‘Hated By All The Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind,’ by Jason Zengerle

If you’re looking for an answer to the question “How did we get here?” — from 1990s multiculturalism and free market globalism to ICE raids and Venezuela — you could do worse than using the arc of Tucker Carlson’s career as your lens. And if you’re looking for insight into the right-wing pundit’s transformations, you’ll definitely want to read Jason Zengerle’s breezy, entertaining and ultimately disquieting “Hated by All the Right People,” a biography of Carlson that tracks his turn from bow-tied beau ideal of the Washington establishment into the MAGA conspiracy theorist in chief.

A veteran journalist, Zengerle fills in some aspects on Carlson’s checkered childhood — material privilege offset by his mother’s stunning abandonment when he was 8 — but most of the book concentrates on Carlson’s professional life, taking detailed forays into media history and the various ideological cul-de-sacs of the pre-Trump era.

As an intern for the progressive magazine The New Republic in the late ’90s, Zengerle first encountered a 20-something Carlson when he would stop in for lunch with the now-disgraced liberal journalist Stephen Glass. Back then, Carlson drew the admiration of progressives, including Zengerle, for his crackling, witty magazine articles on subjects like the businessman Ross Perot’s dodgy dealings with the Nixon White House.

Some of that awe-struck reaction to Carlson remains in “Hated by All the Right People,” especially as Zengerle follows his subject through his youth. Carlson’s successful romance of the headmaster’s daughter at his Episcopal boarding school in 1980s Rhode Island is depicted as almost heroic. Zengerle also plays down a moment in which Carlson raised his hand when a Black classmate, giving a presentation on an elderly Black woman killed by N.Y.P.D. officers, asked, “Does anyone think that woman deserved to die?” At the time, Zengerle writes, “it was viewed less as racist than puckish.”

A mediocre student — Zengerle uncovers his 1.9 G.P.A. at Trinity College, which prevented him from graduating — Carlson still managed to talk himself into an early post at The Weekly Standard, becoming a protégé of its founder, Bill Kristol. It was the heyday and the last golden era, it turned out, of the little magazine.

Nothing much in these early years distinguished Carlson from mainstream conservatism. Along with colleagues at The Weekly Standard — where he was known more for his narrative craft than his opinions — Carlson defended legal immigration against influential eugenicists who wanted to close the border. He also criticized the race-baiting politician Pat Buchanan for his overheated populism.

There were occasional defections from the Republican Party line. After relentlessly cheerleading the Iraq war, Carlson traveled to Baghdad himself to assess the situation, concluding afterward he’d been duped. He publicly declared that the war had been a mistake in 2004, a position almost singular among conservative pundits. Still, to outward appearances, Carlson seemed to be the embodiment of the establishment.

What ultimately shifted Carlson’s trajectory was his move into TV. In Zengerle’s telling, when Carlson joined the debate show “Crossfire” as its resident conservative in 2001, he found it impossible to maintain either nuance or his contrarian instincts. Instead, he became the sneering partisan hack the show’s format demanded.

Then, in 2004, the comedian Jon Stewart appeared as a guest on the show and accused Carlson of “hurting America.” Clips of the comment circulated widely. Shortly thereafter, Carlson lost his position at CNN, where Stewart’s critique evidently struck a chord, and the show itself was canceled.

Was this a win for American politics? Looking back, Zengerle writes, one can almost feel nostalgia for a show that featured opposing points of view instead of an echo chamber. Even at the time, Carlson was appreciated for his happy warrior vibe. “Tucker isn’t tainted by Republican rage,” the journalist Michael Wolff wrote in 2001 at the beginning of his cable news tenure, while the Rev. Al Sharpton, of all people, thanked Carlson publicly a few years later for keeping “the dialogue alive.”

It was this reputation Carlson tried to lean into when he started his next venture, the website The Daily Caller, co-founded in 2010 with the aim, as Zengerle puts it, to focus on “accuracy rather than bombast.” In the headiest days of Web 2.0 outrage cycles, that attitude didn’t last.

The Daily Caller made a splash, but not as much as provocative right-wing websites like The Drudge Report or Breitbart News. Watching their success and obsessively monitoring his own online traffic numbers, Carlson observed that readers wanted attacks upon liberals, not informed opinion. The site’s young writers trended toward alt-right ideas on race and immigration, which Carlson slowly absorbed in his pursuit of clicks, hoping to outflank Breitbart and Drudge by tacking even further to the right.

This pursuit of online eyeballs made Carlson receptive, somewhat, to Donald Trump’s unlikely candidacy in 2016. It also made him an ideal bridge between the old and new styles of conservatism. Desperate to attract Trump’s fan base, Fox News turned Carlson into a headliner with a show that would be called “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” which Fox announced five days before Trump won the 2016 election.

For all his ambivalence about Trump — earlier in 2016, he had reportedly told an acquaintance that the Republican front-runner was “not evil,” but “mentally ill” — Carlson realized that the president’s fixation on the show gave him enormous power. Carlson and his guests’ tirades sank the appointments of State Department and U.N. hopefuls; an interview with the conservative activist Christopher Rufo triggered the White House crusade against critical race theory.

By the 2022 primaries, Carlson had become a veritable movement leader who staged his own “Tucker primary” by offering political candidates airtime. He had also become, in Zengerle’s judgment, the source of “a populist-nationalist ideology that was far more coherent than anything being offered by Trump himself.”

Ultimately, not even Fox could kill the monster it had created. Dumped by the network in 2023 as controversies inside and outside the studio mounted, Carlson followed the trade winds once again. He created his own digital media company, set aside his qualms and fully embraced Trump. As the next election approached, both men would rely on the other as they sought restoration and retribution.

By the dawn of the second Trump term, Carlson’s influence had only increased: He was a key backer of JD Vance for vice president and pivotal to the appointments of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to health secretary and Tulsi Gabbard to director of national intelligence. Although the book was written before Carlson’s interview with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes set off a firestorm across the right, Zengerle does catch Carlson’s unmistakable turn to antisemitism, the mother of all conspiracy theories.

So what happened to this guy, the bow-tied brawler once untainted by Republican rage? The whole story resembles a Greek tragedy, with Carlson struggling against a deep-seated character flaw — the desire for attention and fame — and eventually sacrificing everything to that. Along the way, his darkest impulses are nurtured and fanned by a rapidly evolving media landscape. Character meets technology, one might summarize.

Yet it’s not so much a Greek tragedy as a particularly American one. After all, we’re the ones watching, clicking, bingeing on outrage. There was something troubling about “Crossfire”’s pantomime debates. The audience was left out of the joke: When the combat was over, Carlson and his liberal adversaries, in reality the best of friends, usually went out for a bite afterward. But the alternative, it turns out, is far worse. Carlson may not have been hurting America then, but surely he is hurting it now.

(Jennifer Burns is the Edgar E. Robinson professor in United States history at Stanford and the author of “Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative.”)

---

---

ATTN: HARV READING

The United States population grew last year at one of the slowest rates in its history, according to new numbers released on Tuesday from the Census Bureau. The immigration numbers plunged by more than 50 percent from the previous year, under the aggressive anti-immigration policies of President Trump.

The nation’s population increased by about 1.8 million over the year, and stood at 341.8 million on July 1, the estimates say. That is a growth rate of about 0.5 percent, the lowest since 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic caused deaths to soar and borders to close, shutting the door to international migration. That year saw the slowest growth since the nation’s founding.

The new census estimates measure changes in the population from June 30, 2024 to July 1, 2025, capturing the last months of the Biden administration, when it tightened border policies, and the early months of the Trump administration.

Over that time, net immigration added 1.26 million people to the U.S. population. That number is considerably lower than 2024, when under President Biden, immigration reached a record high of 2.73 million.

---

RUSSIAN JEWISH AUTHOR Isaac Babel was executed on Jan. 27, 1940 after a twenty minute trial for supposed espionage and treason against the USSR.

The author of "Red Cavalry" and "Odessa Stories," Babel was rehabilitated by Khrushchev in 1954.

---

THE REEDS OF RUNNYMEDE

At Runnymede, at Runnymede
What say the reeds at Runnymede?
The lissom reeds that give and take,
That bend so far, but never break,
They keep the sleepy Thames awake
With tales of John at Runnymede.

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Oh, hear the reeds at Runnymede:–
"You mustn't sell, delay, deny,
A freeman's right or liberty.
It wakes the stubborn Englishry,
We saw 'em roused at Runnymede!

"When through our ranks the Barons came,
With little thought of praise or blame,
But resolute to play the game,
They lumbered up to Runnymede;
And there they launched in solid time
The first attack on Right Divine–
The curt, uncompromising 'Sign!'
That settled John at Runnymede.

"At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Your rights were won at Runnymede!
No freeman shall be fined or bound,
Or dispossessed of freehold ground,
Except by lawful judgment found
And passed upon him by his peers.
Forget not, after all these years,
The Charter Signed at Runnymede."

And still when Mob or Monarch lays
Too rude a hand on English ways,
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,
Across the reeds at Runnymede.
And Thames, that knows the moods of kings,
And crowds and priests and suchlike things,
Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings
Their warning down from Runnymede!

— Rudyard Kipling (1911)

---

---

IS THE 'NEW WORLD ORDER' REALLY NEW?

Trump’s Board of Peace is an intricate play to maintain hegemony in the face of China’s rise, sparking talk of "a new world order" — but is the rules-based international order really worth saving?

by Chris Hedges

As U.S. hegemony continues to dwindle, Donald Trump and his international allies are making preparations to maintain some grip on world power. One of these methods includes the “Board of Peace,” which was ostensibly created to reconstruct Gaza, but has demonstrated yet another attempt by Trump to undermine international law.

Yanis Varoufakis, the Secretary-General of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), the former Finance Minister of Greece and author of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism joins host Chris Hedges to discuss what the Board of Peace really means and how it relates to Trump’s larger geopolitical goals, including one seeking to curb China’s rising influence on the world stage.

When it comes to the European Union, Varoufakis explains that European nations are “freaking out about the Board of Peace not only replacing the United Nations, but also targeting them. And this is what they get for ignoring the very clear signs that Trump was sending their way, that he’s out to get them, that he’s no longer interested in having vassals that think that they are part of a Western multilateral design… it seems to me that the Donald Trump policy is forcing his allies, so to speak, firstly to accept that the genocide will continue. Secondly, not to dare say anything about it. And third, go into these spasms of quasi-autonomy.”

As for China, Varoufakis says that Trump understands that the U.S. will have to coexist with the East Asian nation but must also to rein in the Europeans while maintaining control of the Western hemisphere, likening the tentacles of the American empire to a bicycle wheel. “The bicycle wheel has a hub in the middle and it’s got spokes… you can break one or two or three spokes and the wheel still works,” Varoufakis says. “As long as you are the hub and you negotiate with each spoke separately, you keep them separate and you don’t allow them to get together and negotiate with you collectively, then you can extend your hegemony and make a lot of money in the process.”

While the context Trump faces with China rising on the world stage has pushed the United States into a new paradigm, Varoufakis casts doubt on the idea that Trump’s colonialism is much different than that conducted within the liberal international world order. “Well, I don’t want to mythologize the world we’re exiting,” he says. “Because you see, this is what liberal centrists do, radical centrists. They say, everything was so good until this man [Trump] came and destroyed it. I’m sorry, it wasn’t good. You know…I grew up in a NATO country that was a fascist dictatorship. So when people say, NATO is democracy. No, I’m sorry. It’s not for me.”…

https://youtu.be/7eNpw99cRS0?si=2Erj2X4fAYvyqyH1

---

---

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Masked police are definitely a problem.

The problem exists because the protesters are trying to identity the ICE agents in order to find their home addresses and retaliate against them and their families.

After the assassination attempts on Donald Trump and on members of the Supreme Court, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, we can't pretend ICE agents are not putting themselves and their families at risk just because they are executing the laws passed by our democratically elected Congress.

So yes, masked law enforcement is bad, but the alternative, law enforcement and their families attacked, is worse.

Come up with a way to protect unmasked law enforcement and I'm listening.

---

LEAD STORIES, WEDNESDAY'S NYT

Representative Ilhan Omar Is Attacked at Town Hall in Minneapolis

Democrats Push to Impeach and Investigate Noem

U.S. Population Growth Slows Sharply as Immigration Numbers Plunge

Trump Hobbled the I.R.S. This C.E.O. Now Has to Make It Work.

Troop Casualties in Ukraine War Near 2 Million, Study Finds

Gladys West, Unsung Figure in Development of GPS, Dies at 95

---

A BAD TRIP

it is not lsd that causes the bad trip– it was your mother, your President, the little girl next door, the icecream man with dirty hands, a course in algebra or Spanish superimposed, it was the stench of a crapper in 1926, it was a man with a nose too long when you were told long noses were ugly; it was laxative, it was the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, it was tootsie rolls and Toots and Casper, it was the face of FDR, it was lemon drops, it was working in a factory for ten years and getting fired because you were five minutes late, it was that old bag who taught you American history in the 6th grade, it was your dog run over and nobody to properly draw you the map afterwards, it was a list 30 pages long and 3 miles tall. a bad trip? this whole country, this whole world is on a bad trip, friend. but they’ll arrest you for swallowing a tablet.

— Charles Bukowski

---

---

THE 1968 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION IN CHICAGO

by Hunter S. Thompson

Ed Note: After the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago Hunter Thompson wrote this “wild flashback” about the tumultuous event. It is the first time he uses the character Raoul Duke as his alter ego

August 29, 1968

Woody Creek, CO — Sometime after midnight on Wednesday I was standing in Grant Park about ten feet in front of the National Guard’s bayonet picket fence and talking to some Digger-types from Berkeley. There were three of them, wearing those Milwaukee truck-driver hats with mustaches instead of beards, and their demeanor—their vibes, as it were—made it clear that I was talking to some veteran counter-punchers. They were smelling around for a fight, but they weren’t about to start one; they had a whole park to kill time in, but for their own reasons they’d chosen to stand on the front line of the Mob, facing the Guardsmen across ten feet of empty sidewalk. Behind the line of bayonets, Michigan Avenue was a crowded no-man’s land full of cops, TV cameras and barbed-wire covered jeeps … and on the other side of that moat was the Conrad Hilton, its entrance surrounded by a wall of blue police helmets and big sheets of plywood covering the windows of the street-level Haymarket Bar—where, several hours earlier, the plate glass had been shattered by human bodies pushed completely into the bar by the crazed police-charge.

The Berkeley digger-types were convinced that the earlier action was only a preview of a clash that would probably come before dawn. “The bastards are getting ready to finish us off,” said one. I nodded, thinking he was probably right and not even wondering—as I do now—why he included me.

I was, after all, a member of the official, total-access press. I had that prized magnetic badge around my neck—the same one that, earlier that day, had earned me a billy-club shot in the stomach when I tried to cross a police line: I’d showed the badge and kept on walking, but one of the cops grabbed my arm. “That’s not a press pass,” he said. I held it under his face. “What the hell do you think it is?” I asked … and I was still looking at the snarl on his face when I felt my stomach punched back against my spine; he used his club like a spear, holding it with both hands and hitting me right above the belt.

That was the moment, in Chicago, when I decided to vote for Nixon.

The Berkeley trio had noticed the press tag at once, and asked who I worked for. “Nobody.” I said. “I’m just sort of getting the feel of things; I’m writing a book.” They were curious, and after a jangled conversation of bluffs, evasions, challenges and general bullshit, I introduced myself and we shook hands. “Thompson,” said one of them. “Yeah … you’re the guy who wrote that book on the Hell’s Angels, aren’t you?” I nodded. The one closest to me grinned and reached into his jacket, pulling out a messy-looking cigarette. “Here,” he said, “have a joint.”

He held it out to me, and suddenly, with no warning, I was into one of those definitive instants, a moment of the Great Fork. Here I was in Chicago, in a scene that had all the makings of a total Armageddon, with my adrenaline up so high for so long that I knew I’d collapse when I came down … ten feet in front of a row of gleaming bayonets and with plain-clothes cops all around me and cameras popping every few seconds at almost everybody … and suddenly this grinning, hairy-faced little bugger from Berkeley offers me a joint.

I wonder now, looking back on it, if McGovern would have accepted a joint from McCarthy on the podium at the Ampitheatre … because I felt, at that moment, a weird mixture of panic and anticipation. For two days and nights I’d been running around the streets of Chicago, writing longhand notebook wisdom about all the people who were being forced, by the drama of this convention, to take sides in a very basic way … (“once again,” I had written on Monday night, “We’re back to that root-question: Which Side are You on?”) And now, with this joint in front of my face, it was my turn … and I knew, when I saw the thing, that I was going to smoke it; I was going to smoke a goddamned lumpy little marijuana cigarette in front of the National Guard, the Chicago police and all three television networks—with an Associated Press photographer standing a few feet away.

By the time I lit the joint I was already so high on adrenaline that I thought I would probably levitate with the first puff. I was sure, as I looked across that sidewalk at all those soldiers staring back at me, that I was about to get busted, bayoneted and crippled forever. As always, I could see the headlines: “Writer Arrested on Marijuana Charges at Grant Park Protest.”

Yet the atmosphere in the Grant Park that night was so tense, so emotionally-hyped and flatly convinced that we would all be dead or maimed by morning … that it never occurred to me not to smoke that joint in a totally public and super-menacing scene where, as the demonstrators had chanted earlier, “The Whole World is Watching.”

It seemed, at the time, like a thing that had to be done. I didn’t want to be busted; I didn’t even agree with these people—but if the choice was between them or those across the street, I knew which side I was on, and to refuse that joint would have been—in my own mind—a fatal equivocation. As I lit the thing I realized that I’d lost the protection of the press pass, or at least whatever small immunity it carried in Chicago, if any. That billy-club jolt in the stomach had altered my notions of press-leverage.

With the joint in my hand, glowing in the night as I inhaled, I figured, well, I may as well get as numb as I can. Then, in a moment of fine inspiration, I took a nice lungfull and handed the joint to the AP photographer standing next to me. His face turned to putty; I might as well have given him a live hand grenade … and then … then … like a man stepping up on the gallows, he put the thing to his lips and inhaled …

I knew I was home free, or at least I wasn’t going to be busted. He’d been standing there very cool and observant waiting for something to happen on the front lines while he stayed on the balls of his feet ready to run when the bayonets came; I could almost feel him over there, a heady presence, vaguely amused at this flagrant felony being committed under the eyes of the National Guard and taking sides, himself, by declining to photograph us … it would have been a fine Chicago Tribune-style photo: “Drug-Crazed Hippies Defy the Flag” … and then, it was his turn. When he put the joint to his lips and drew on it very skillfully I knew he had measured the balance of terror and decided that it was safe, under the circumstance, to smoke a joint in public.

I admired the man, and liked him even better than I had the night before when he’d bought me a drink out on Wells street. We had both been caught in a police charge, and instead of running with the mob we had both ducked into a bar, letting the cops sweep on by. Now, 24 hours later, he was sitting on another flash point, smoking a joint—a strange gig for a press photographer. They are a weird breed, estranged in every way from pointy-headed reporters and editorial writers. If reporters are generally liberal in their thinking, photographers are massively conservative. They are the true professionals of journalism: the End, the photo, justifies anything they have to say, do or think in order to get it. Police brutality, to a good press photographer, is nothing more or less than a lucky chance for some action shots. Later, when his prints are drying in the darkroom, he’ll defend the same cops he earlier condemned with his lens.

All this was running through my head as the joint came back to me and my sense of humor returned along with my sense of taste and I realized, after three or four tokes, that I was smoking really retrograde shit. “Jesus,” I said, “this is awful stuff, where did you get it. Lake Michigan?”

The fellow who’d given it to me laughed and said “Hell, that’s THC. What you’re tasting is old Bull Durham. It’s chemical grass synthetic stuff. We soaked it in THC and dried it out.”

Bull Durham! Synthetic grass! I was tempted to jam the butt of the thing into the little bastard’s eye … all those terrible charges and I wasn’t even smoking grass, but some kind of neo-legal bastardised Bull Durham that tasted like swamp corn.

It was just about then I got the first rush. THC, DMZ, OJT—the letters didn’t matter, I was stoned. Those bayonets suddenly looked nine feet tall and the trees above the park seemed to press down on us; the lights across the street grew brighter, and bluer, and they seemed to track me as I wandered off to see what was happening in the rest of the park.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I’d blown my keen-eyed observer thing for that night, and that I should get the hell out of the park while I could still walk … The scene was bad enough with a perfectly straight head; peripheral vision was the key to survival—you had to know what was happening all around you and never get out of range of at least one opening to run through when the attack came. Which was no place to be with a fuzzy head …

I aimed for the stoplight at Balboa street and lurched across to the Hilton bar. A 500 pound cop with blue fangs stopped me at the hotel entrance and demanded to see my neon magnetic hotel press pass. It was all I could manage to find the thing and show it to him, then I aimed myself across the lobby toward the bar, where it suddenly occurred to me—I had promised to meet Duke at midnight.

Now, as closing time neared, the bar was three-deep with last minute drinkers. The desperate scene outside seemed light-years away; only the plywood windows reminded those of us inside that the American Dream was clubbing itself to death just a few feet away.

Duke was sitting with Susan at a table across from the bar. They didn’t see me and I stopped for a moment around a corner, standing in a dark spot near a table full of Humphrey delegates with their badges and straw boaters and noisy homefolks chatter … waiting for my head to clear; “nobody gets stoned on Bull Durham,” I muttered. “What’s that?” said one of the men at the Humphrey table. “Bull Durham,” I replied … and he turned away.

Duke was hunched down on the table, with both hands on his drink and talking very easily. She—Susan—the girl with that electric memory, was sitting next to him, watching his hands as he talked … smiling that same vague smile I remembered from … what? Five years ago? Yes—almost six now—in San Juan.

She looked thinner, not much older but her eyes were bigger and her cheekbones were sharp … a woman’s face, no more of that wistful virgin thing. I gave my head a quick snap—an acrobat’s trick, they say, to stop the whirling fluids that keep us balanced in those little horseshoes of the inner ear … and then I advanced on the table, feeling perfectly balanced.

Duke looked up, and for an instant I thought he didn’t recognize me. Then he smiled: “Goddamn,” he said. “It’s about time.” I nodded and sat down in the booth, with words piling up in my head and saying nothing, looking across the table at Susan and smiling, or at least trying to. I felt very obvious—as if everybody in the place was watching me, waiting to hear what I’d say. Susan smiled, “Hello,” and I nodded, croaking out an echo, then looking away and calling for a drink. “Some dope fiend from Berkeley just got me stoned,” I muttered. “I’ll get my head straight in a minute—just ignore me.”

She laughed, reaching across the table to touch my wrist—and I jumped, just as the waitress arrived and I ordered a beer. “What kind?” she asked, but I waved her off: “Any goddamn kind, just a beer, a large bottle, terrible thirst … ”

Duke was watching me with a flat, undecided sort of half-stare; I could see it without looking at him, but when I leaned back and faced him he smiled instantly. “You’re a traitor to your class,” he said, “sneaking in here to drink with the over-thirty generation.”

“I’m thirty,” I said. “This is my time, my perfect moment … ” And I suddenly felt straight; the THC fog was gone, a bottle of beer appeared in front of me and my world came together again. I looked at Susan and smiled. “I saw you at the Fillmore last year,” I said. “But when I tried to get backstage they threw me out.”

“Oh … ” her face was confused. “You should have called me, or told them you were … or something … ” Her eyes flicked up at me, then away, looking down at her drink … confused, like me, by five years of living in different worlds. The last time I’d talked to her, in San Juan, she was hysterical at the airport, waiting for the plane that would take her back home to Connecticut for a rest, a hideout, a refuge—away from that nightmare scene of the beach house and the Carnival and Duke, and even me … I felt like touching her, to say hello in a better way than I had—but it seemed like the wrong thing to do. Duke was curling down on the table like a cold wire, sipping his drink without lifting it off the formica. The scene was too weird, too heavy—none of us could handle it, too much had happened, and too far apart.

“Well … ” Duke shrugged and sat up straight in the booth. “What the hell is wrong with us? Can’t we talk like human beings?” He looked at Susan: “Let’s do it like an interview, sweetie. You’re famous now, and we’re just a couple of rude journalists … where’s your public manner?”

She looked at him, not quite smiling, then turned to me: “Are you as uptight as he is?”

I shrugged, fishing in my pockets for a match. “Yeah,” I said.

---