Showers | Panther Playoffs | Teacher Removed | Attorney Contracted | Linda Pacini Pitelka | DHS Watching | Palace Employees | Yesterday's Catch | Bore | Backward Glance | 49er Advice | Headin' West | Human Touch | Oil Protest | Robert Duvall | Perfect Shortstop | Wrong Time | Jesse Jackson | Epstein-Itis | Overuse Exclamations | Silencing Francesca | Vote | Shiny Object | Lead Stories | Individual/Freedom | Plain Interview | Copy Editor | Big Sur | Sugar River | Eating Alone | Alien Abduction | Abbey Interview | Helga
MAJOR WINTER WEATHER impacts with low elevation snowfall expected through Thursday. A warmer storm with significant impacts possible next weekend into next week.
* Through Tuesday night, heavy wet snow will result in dangerous travel conditions, downed trees and possible power outages. Heavy wet snow will impact travel on highways 199, 299, 36, 101 and 3.
* Small hail accumulation expected for lower elevations along the NW California Coast with heavy showers today.
* Additional periods of rain with low elevation snow are expected Wednesday through Thursday.
* Heavy rain with higher snow levels and strong gusty winds possible next weekend. (NWS)
STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Scattered showers & 46F with only .13" of new rainfall this Tuesday morning on the coast. The rest of the week will be an interesting mix of rain, maybe thunder, some sun?, cold overnight temps & who knows what else ? Only moderate winds forecast at times so far. The weather party looks to go well into next week.
AV PANTHERS VARSITY GIRLS ARE PLAYOFF BOUND!
We will host Brave Christian on Wednesday, February 18 at 7:00 PM.
Tickets must be purchased online…( we will update when the link is available)
Come pack the stands and support these amazing girls who have worked hard all season. Let’s bring the Panther pride and energy!
WHERE'S THE TEACHER?
Concerned Baechtel Grove Parents,
BGMS (Baechtel Grove Middle School) has abruptly removed a very well-liked and effective teacher and has not informed us families. My child informed me they had no sub Wednesday and Thursday and instead were sitting in the Library, not learning. From what my child knows and saw, the classroom has been completely cleared out and there is no plan in place for a teacher to teach our children for the remainder of T2 or Trimester 3. Students are sad, angry and confused. I have seen this teacher at countless sporting events where current and past students go up to this teacher to say hello and talk every time, multiple times. It's always the good students who suffer. Do better WUSD [Willits Unified School District]. Let us know what the plan in place is….if there is one!
If your child is without their teacher, who is very well-like and my child tells me, makes a positive impact, then call:
Superintendent Baker at 707-459-5314.
Mr. Lorenzo Sandoval - assistant vice-principal at 707-459-2417.
To express your concerns regarding our teachers and children and why we are the last to be informed of events. Like when the principal was removed earlier this year and families weren't informed for five weeks in a change in leadership.
MENDO SPENDS $160K FOR COUNTY COUNSEL ASSESSMENT
by Mark Scaramella
Here’s a wonderful expenditure by Mendocino County in a time of tight budgets and unknown bank balances. (We apologize for somehow missing this item back in December when it was buried on the consent calendar and approved with no discussion.)
The County Counsel’s office (i.e., the recently rehired as “interim” County Counsel Kit Elliott) has contracted with an attorney in South Lake Tahoe named Charles J. McKee to “provide Management and County Counsel Assessment Services,” from December 16, 2025 to March 31, 2026. The contract is for a whopping $160,000. Mr. McKee’s rate is $325 per hour. Again, that’s $160,000 for just over three months (almost 500 hours, equivalent to a full-time employee for 3.5 months) of “assessment services.” Mr. McKee is a former County Counsel/CAO (he held both positions simultaneously) for tiny Alpine County. According to the 2020 census, Alpine County is the smallest County in the state with a population just a little more than Boonville at 1,204, about 1,000 of whom are adults. About two-thirds of the homes in Alpine County are vacant, meaning mainly vacation rentals. Alpine County’s county seat is the town of Markleeville with a population of 191 in 2020.
Mr. McKee retired as CEO of Monterey County (Salinas) after 19 years prior to which he had been Monterey County Counsel for 16 years. He has also been president of the Monterey County Bar Association and “legal advisor” to the California State Association of Counties.
According to the terms of the contract Mr. McKee will perform “general services,” “executive management services,” an assessment of the County Counsel’s office and its “structure, workload, staffing, effectiveness, service delivery and intra-County relations.” He will also “collaborate with and assist the Acting and/or Interim County Counsel on office operations and County legal issues,” and, of course, “assist with the recruitment and hiring of the next County Counsel.” Mr. McKee will also receive $100 an hour for travel time to and from South Lake Tahoe and full reimbursement for travel costs (but not meals).
We hereby offer our own “assessment” of the County Counsel’s office and the County’s “executive management” at the bargain price of $0.00: Anyone who hires a $325/hour attorney to “assess” themselves has no business being interim County Counsel (especially one who presumably performed in the position for a couple of years in Mendocino County just recently). As far as we can tell no other bids were solicited or sought for this “service,” even though it is well above the contract value that the State Auditor recently said required competitive bids. The Supervisors’ approval of this contract on the consent calendar without discussion proves again, if any more proof was needed, that the Supervisors are not paying any attention to what’s going on right under their noses or how much their “staff” is spending.
Prediction, Mr. McKee will recommend, recruit and hire himself as either the next County Counsel or the next CEO.
LINDA PACINI PITELKA
Linda Pacini Pitelka, beloved spouse, mother, grandmother, historian, and lifelong reader, died peacefully of heart failure on February 11, 2026, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at age 78, surrounded by her family.
Born in Ukiah, Linda grew up in Mendocino County and was the first in her family to attend college. At Humboldt State, she discovered her love of theater and film and met her future husband, Vince, beginning a 57‑year partnership. She later managed the historic Minor and Arcata theatres, nurturing a family passion for cinema.
Linda earned a PhD in American history from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, specializing in late 19th- and early 20th‑century California. She taught American history at Maryville University in St. Louis from 1994 until her retirement in 2018. She is remembered as a rigorous, compassionate, and inspiring professor.
A devoted reader, feminist, and sharp conversationalist, Linda filled her life with books, ideas, gardening, and time with family. Her years in Chapel Hill brought her great joy, especially time spent with her grandsons.
She is survived by her husband, Vince; her son Morgan and daughter‑in‑law Brenda; her grandsons, Ravi and Luca; her sister, Debbie Schumaker Wismer; and many friends, colleagues, and former students.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the ACLU or the Immigrant Defense Project.
DHS MONITORING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ANTI-ICE STATEMENTS
The Department of Homeland Security is watching what you say on social media.
by Elise Cox
Editor Cox’s note: We don’t typically cover national news, but more than half our readers find us through Facebook, and it’s important for them to understand that the rules are changing.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has stepped up efforts to monitor social media posts about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, issuing hundreds of administrative subpoenas to major technology companies in recent months in an attempt to identify the people behind anonymous accounts.
According to an article published Friday in The New York Times, the department sent subpoenas to Meta, Google, Reddit and Discord seeking names, email addresses, phone numbers and IP data for users who posted about ICE operations or shared the locations of agents in the field. The Times reported that it reviewed two subpoenas sent to Meta.
The article cited four anonymous sources described as former government officials and tech employees who were not authorized to speak publicly. Officials told the Times that Meta, Google and Reddit complied with some of the requests.
Unlike traditional search warrants, administrative subpoenas do not require approval from a judge. They are issued directly by federal agencies under authority granted by Congress. In the past, their use was often associated with investigations involving serious crimes.
Administrative subpoenas are not self-enforcing. A company that receives one can challenge it in court by moving to quash the subpoena or by responding to an agency’s motion to compel, according to Jackson Lewis, a San Francisco–based employment law firm. If challenged, the agency must show that the subpoena was issued in good faith and for purposes authorized by law.
Earlier this month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Northern California sent a letter to Meta, Google, Amazon, Apple, Discord, Microsoft and Reddit urging the companies to challenge the subpoenas in court and to notify affected users.
“We urge you to use your immense resources to defend user privacy in court, if necessary,” the letter stated. “These steps are not only the right thing to do, they are in line with the existing promises you have made to defend user privacy.”
The use of administrative subpoenas more broadly has increased in recent years. During the first six months of 2025, Google received 28,622 subpoenas, an 84 percent increase from five years earlier. Meta received 14,520 subpoenas, up 42 percent over the same period.
In a statement on its website, Google said it “carefully review[s] each request to make sure it satisfies applicable laws. If a request asks for too much information, we try to narrow it, and in some cases we object to producing any information at all.”
Meta said it maintains a dedicated Law Enforcement Response Team that “reviews and evaluates every government request for user data individually, whether the request was submitted related to an emergency or through legal process obtained by law enforcement or national security authorities,” and ensures that requests are consistent with applicable law and company policies.
DHS officials have defended the use of administrative subpoenas as a lawful tool necessary to protect ICE personnel and prevent interference with enforcement operations.
(Mendolocal.news)
RON PARKER: Waitresses & Chinese Help (1-Lung, head cook; 2-Sam; 3-Cow), circa 1900, Palace Hotel, Ukiah
CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, February 16, 2026
JOHN EDWARDS, 34, Willits. Mail theft.
CASANDRA GUERRA, 34, Ukiah. Domestic violence protective order violation with prior, under influence.
WILLIAM HILLER, 67, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, failure to appear.
MATTHEW HOLBERG, 35, Ukiah. Domestic battery, domestic violence court order violation, probation revocation, attempted to remove firearm from peace officer, resisting.
NELSON IRIBE-BURGOS, 43, Covelo. Failure to appear.
ZACHARY LINDENBUSCH, 37, San Francisco/Ukiah. DUI.
TANYA MOORE, 75, Kelseyville/Ukiah. DUI.
JESUS MORA, 34, Castro Valley. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, parole violation.
CHERRI ROBERTS, 49, Ukiah. Controlled substance, under influence, paraphernalia. (Frequent flyer.)
LOGAN SCHULZE, 31, Willits. DUI, child endangerment.
TOBIAS WOOD, 32, Ukiah. County parole violation.
BORE: n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
— Ambrose Bierce
49ers OFFSEASON ADVICE: Trade Mac Jones, pass on Maxx Crosby, address EMF
by Eric Branch
Our first piece of offseason advice for San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan this year is, literally, a housekeeping note: Y’all need to relocate from your office at the team facility, move down the hall, out the door, beyond the locker rooms, over Tasman Drive and stop 2½ miles south of Milpitas.
That’s probably a safe distance from the Silicon Valley Power Northern Receiving Station.
That’s a joke. But Jon Hamm recently made a joke during the “NFL Honors” show about that now famous next-door electrical substation. The point? The ongoing discussion — are the nearby electromagnetic fields a reason the 49ers can’t stay healthy? — is going mainstream instead of going away. And that’s why the substation, in all seriousness, is included on the to-do list in the Chronicle’s annual offseason advice for Lynch and Shanahan.
As far as all those injuries, the good news for the guys is their team went 12-5 and reached the divisional playoffs in 2025 with their two best defensive players, pass rusher Nick Bosa and linebacker Fred Warner, combining to miss 25 games during what was expected to be a reset year.
That bodes well for 2026 — assuming the following gets done:
Trade Mac Jones; sign Zach Wilson
Sam Darnold was bad. He spent a season with the 49ers. He got good. And then he won a Super Bowl.
What the 49ers need to say to QB-needy teams: What can once bad, now good Mac Jones do for you?
Darnold’s 31-7 record (including playoffs) since his 2023 reset in Santa Clara makes Jones even more attractive after he was an above-average QB during last year’s eight fill-in starts. Like Darnold, Jones, 28, is still young and a first-round pick who showed he can reach his draft-day potential in a healthy environment.
Yes, the 49ers would have a bulletproof QB room if they kept Jones as the backup to Brock Purdy. But they could get a second-round pick in return for Jones that could be used to move up from No. 27 in the first round to grab a bluer-chip prospect. Or to trade for a wide receiver. Or an edge rusher.
Some might scoff: A second-round pick for Jones? But consider the offseason landscape, along with recent history. This year’s group of free-agent QBs is underwhelming, as is the 2026 QB draft class. Meanwhile, there appears to be a host of NFL teams that could be in the QB-trade market — looking at you, Dolphins and Jets, and maybe you, Browns and Steelers — that could view Jones like a desert oasis.
A QB predicament can inspire teams to make generous offers. In 2021, when Darnold was coming off a season in which he had a 2-10 record and ranked 33rd in the NFL in completion percentage (59.6), the Jets traded him to the Panthers for a 2021 sixth-round pick and 2022 second- and fourth-round picks. Jones is coming off a season in which he had a 5-3 record and ranked second in completion percentage (69.6).
My guess: Lynch and Shanahan plan to follow this advice. Since Shanahan said last month that he would be “very surprised” if the 49ers traded Jones, there have been national reporters who have helped the 49ers hammer home their message which, I think, is: We’ll surprise everyone by trading him if you give us a second-round pick. ESPN said the 49ers have “no plans” to trade Jones and “fully intend” to keep him. Breaking news: Plans and intentions can change.
What’s the plan for replacing Jones? The 49ers can sign Dolphins’ free-agent QB Zach Wilson, the No. 2 pick in 2021 who could join Darnold (No. 3, 2018) and Jones (No. 12, 2021) as presumed busts whom the 49ers successfully rebooted.
Don’t re-sign WR Jauan Jennings; sign WR Alec Pierce
Jauan Jennings is a ferocious blocker and a clutch, productive receiver who had eight touchdown catches in the final nine regular-season games in 2025. Jennings is also, well, sort of slow, and the 49ers need more offensive giddy-up.
Last season, the top speed by a 49ers ball carrier was reached by a defensive player, linebacker Dee Winters, who hit 20.15 mph on his pick-six in Indianapolis. The 49ers need to add speed and they aren’t going to replace running back Christian McCaffrey, who averaged 3.9 yards per carry and had one run over 20 yards in 2025. And they aren’t going to replace tight end George Kittle, who will turn 33 in October and is recovering from a torn Achilles.
But they can replace Jennings, a pending free agent, with Colts’ free-agent wide receiver Alec Pierce, who could reach the open market with Indianapolis needing to prioritize re-signing QB Daniel Jones.
Jennings has a plodding 40-yard dash time (4.72 seconds) and averaged 11.7 yards per catch last season. Pierce has a blazing 40 (4.41) and has led the NFL in yards per catch the past two seasons, averaging 21.3 and 22.3 yards, respectively, while collecting 1,827 receiving yards. Pierce, 25, has already introduced himself to the 49ers: He had touchdown catches of 20 and 16 yards in the 49ers’ 48-27 win in December.
Swapping Jennings for Pierce, financially, could be a wash. Per spotrac.com, Jennings is projected to sign a contract that averages $22.6 million annually. Pierce checks in at $20.2 million.
Improve the pass rush — not by trading for Maxx Crosby
Let’s be clear: Go right ahead and deal for Maxx Crosby if the price isn’t much more than the No. 27 pick. But it will likely take far more draft compensation to land the Raiders’ disgruntled All-Pro pass rusher, who is entering his age-29 season and has a $36 million salary cap charge in 2026 (49ers cap space: $42.9 million).
The 49ers made a commitment to get younger and cheaper though the draft last season. And the reality is that work isn’t over. Most of their best players are 30 or older because of their recent draft history. Purdy and safety Talanoa Hufanga are the only players from their past six drafts who have received All-Pro or Pro Bowl recognition, and only Purdy remains on the roster. The 49ers’ only foundational players under contract for 2026 who are under 29: Purdy, 26, and cornerback Deommodore Lenoir, 26.
Their roster complexion is partly a result of the 49ers’ 2021 decision to trade two first-round picks and a third-rounder to move up for QB Trey Lance. They can’t afford to make a similar investment in Crosby. Those picks, in theory, could net multiple quality young starters. And that cap space could be used on a free-agent splash such as Pierce, who will turn 26 in May.
If not Crosby, then what? After they had an NFL-worst 20 sacks, the 49ers need to address a lifeless pass rush that needs help beyond Bosa’s return. One possibility: Use that second-round pick the 49ers received for Jones (play along with us here) to move up in the first round for one of the top edge rushers. Texas A&M’s Cashius Howell, the SEC Defensive Player of the Year, could look good across from Bosa.
Address the substation issue
Lynch and Shanahan might think this EMF injury theory is poppycock. They might be right. And it doesn’t matter.
They are now clearly dealing with a perception issue after Hamm’s awards-show joke was part of a bit that included a shot of “Lynch” in the audience wearing a hazmat suit. Perhaps it won’t affect the 49ers in free agency, although I think it could break some ties after combining with colleague Noah Furtado for a recent story in which players from the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl talk about the theory. But it appears certain to have some impact in their locker room if the organization doesn’t take meaningful steps to investigate.
McCaffrey, Kittle and fullback Kyle Juszczyk, all team captains who double as health and fitness fanatics, have expressed at least mild reservations about the nearby substation. McCaffrey said he planned to “look into” the issue while adding the effects of EMF are “not nothing.” And Kittle invoked a discussion he had with Juszczyk, with whom he travels to Panama for stem-cell treatments twice each offseason, in which they had concerns about EMF even having a fractional negative impact on their performance.
“I think all we’re saying is, as players … we would just like to look into it to make sure it’s not something,” Kittle said in an interview last week with Complex’s Jordan Rose. “That’s what I would just appreciate. Like, ‘Hey, this isn’t going to affect you guys.’ And then if they come out and they do some research, like, ‘No, you guys are good,’ then I don’t think we’ll think about it.”
That is, Jed York’s stance won’t cut it. The 49ers owner recently seemed to dismiss the issue by saying it “didn’t seem to affect” legendary receiver Jerry Rice, who last played for the 49ers in 2000, more than a decade before the substation expanded when Levi’s Stadium was built.
Last month, Lynch said the 49ers “look into everything” and the health and safety of players was the “utmost priority.” They need to follow through by providing the locker room hard evidence that’s true.
If their investigation reveals the substation is a legitimate problem and not poppycock? Sorry, guys, our advice has its limits.
AI CAN'T DO IT
To the Editor:
Many years ago, I bled into my brain from a malformed blood vessel, an often fatal or disabling event. As I was being rolled into the operating room, the anesthesiologist intercepted what had every possibility of being my last ride.
He stopped the stretcher, sat down on the edge, took my hand in his, looked me in the eye and said: “Herb, I will stay with you until this operation is over. I will not leave you.”
That was the last thing I remember until I woke up many hours later. No computer, no matter how sophisticated, can do that.
Herbert Rakatansky
Providence, Rhode Island
SACRAMENTO KINGS FANS PROTEST TEAM'S FOSSIL FUEL SPONSORSHIPS
by Dan Bacher
Rally/protest is part of a simultaneous national sportswashing demonstration on Feb. 17.
The Kings are sponsored by Shell and AM/PM
Sacramento Kings fans will protest the team's sponsorship by Shell and AM/PM, joining environmentalists in nine other cities simultaneously demonstrating against professional teams sponsored by Big Oil, major banks that finance large fossil projects, or utilities heavy on fossil fuel generation.…
ROBERT DUVALL, DEAD AT AGE 95
Al Pacino, Francis Ford Coppola and others pay tribute…
Remembrances poured in Monday in honor of Robert Duvall, the Oscar-winning actor known for roles in “Apocalypse Now,” “Lonesome Dove,” Tender Mercies" and as the intrepid consigliere of the first two “Godfather” movies.
Duvall died Sunday at age 95 at his home in Virginia, according to an announcement from his publicist and a statement posted on his Facebook page by his wife, Luciana Duvall.
Francis Ford Coppola (the director of “The Godfather” and other Duvall movies, on Instagram): “What a blow to learn of the loss of Robert Duvall. Such a great actor and such an essential part of (the production company) American Zoetrope from its beginning: The Rain People, The Conversation, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, THX 1138, Assassination Tango."
Al Pacino: “It was an honor to have worked with Robert Duvall. He was a born actor as they say, his connection with it, his understanding and his phenomenal gift will always be remembered. I will miss him.”
Viola Davis: “I’ve always been in awe of your towering portrayals of men who were both quiet and dominating in their humanness. You were a giant … an icon … Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tender Mercies, The Apostle, Lonesome Dove … etc … Greatness never dies. It stays … as a gift. Rest well, sir. Your name will be spoken.”
Robert De Niro: “God bless Bobby. I hope i can live till I’m 95. May he Rest in Peace.”
Michael Keaton: “another friend goes down. acted with and became friends. shared a great afternoon on my front porch talking about horses. he was greatness personified as an actor.”
Robert Patrick (the actor, remembering a recent visit at Duvall's home in Virginia, on Facebook): “We talked horses, dogs, Clemson football, dancing the tango and Marlon Brando. At one point he told me to go find the letter Marlon had sent him after they worked together on The Godfather. It was typed and perfectly composed. Bobby was more proud of that letter than his Oscar. Marlon was the actor he looked up to.”
Jamie Lee Curtis: “The greatest consigliere the screen has ever seen. Bravo, Robert Duvall”
SAG-AFTRA (the union that represents actors and broadcasters, on X): “We celebrate the legacy of Robert Duvall, a true acting legend whose work shaped generations. Twice honored with SAG-AFTRA Actor Awards, his influence on the craft will endure. Our thoughts are with his wife, Luciana, and all who loved him.”
BILL KIMBERLIN:
Critic David Thomsonon on Duvall who passed recently age 95: “Stars and Italians alike depend on his efficiency, his tidying up around their grand gestures, his being the perfect shortstop on a team of personality sluggers. Was there ever a role better designed for its actor than that of Tom Hagen in both parts of ‘The Godfather’?”
RIGHT PLACE, WRONG TIME
I been in the right place
But it must have been the wrong time
I'd of said the right thing
But I must have used the wrong line
I been in the right trip
But I must have used the wrong car
My head was in a bad place
And I'm wondering what it's good for
I been the right place
But it must have been the wrong time
My head was in a bad place
But I'm having such a good time
I been running trying to get hung up in my mind
Got to give myself a little talking to this time
Just need a little brain salad surgery
Got to cure this insecurity
I been in the wrong place
But it must have been the right time
I been in the right place
But it must have been the wrong song
I been in the right vein
But it seems like the wrong arm
I been in the right world
But it seems wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong
Slipping, dodging, sneaking
Creeping hiding out down the street
See me life shaking with every who I meet
Refried confusion is making itself clear
Wonder which way do I go to get on out of here
I been in the right place
But it must have been the wrong time
I'd have said the right thing
But I must have used the wrong line
I'd a took the right road
But I must have took a wrong turn
Would have made the right move
But I made it at the wrong time
I been on the right road
But I must have used the wrong car
My head was in a good place
And I wonder what it's bad for
— Mac Rebennack, aka Dr. John (1973)
SEVEN PIVOTAL MOMENTS IN JESSE JACKSON’S LIFE
The Rev. Jesse Jackson entered the national spotlight during the civil rights movement and ran for president twice. He also courted controversy while in the public eye.
by Neil Vigdor
Millions of Democrats cast primary votes for him, envisioning him as America’s first Black president.
Along the way, there would be convention keynote speeches and, at times, self-inflicted controversy for the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died on Tuesday at 84. His life ran in parallel to the successes of the civil rights era, but it was at the movement’s lowest moment that he came to wider national attention: the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which he witnessed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
Here are seven key moments in his life.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination
On April 4, 1968, Mr. Jackson was in the motel parking lot, speaking with Dr. King, who was on the second-floor balcony above him, when Dr. King was shot by James Earl Ray.
“We hoped it was his arm, but the bullet hit him in the neck,” Mr. Jackson told reporters while visiting the motel, now a civil rights landmark, before Tennessee’s Democratic presidential primary in 1984.
At the time of the assassination, Mr. Jackson was 26 years old and a protégé of Dr. King.
“This is the scene of the crucifixion,” he said, taking reporters on a tour of Room 306, where the civil rights leader had been staying.
1984 presidential campaign
With his entry into the 1984 Democratic primary race, Mr. Jackson became the first Black candidate to seek a major party’s nomination for president since Shirley Chisholm, the trailblazing Brooklyn congresswoman who ran unsuccessfully in 1972.
At a campaign kickoff rally, Ms. Chisholm introduced Mr. Jackson, who was then 42 and had criticized Democrats for what he described as their lackluster opposition to President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Jackson viewed his candidacy as inspirational to a rainbow coalition — Black, white and Hispanic citizens, women, American Indians and “the voiceless and downtrodden.”.
He finished third to the eventual nominee, Walter Mondale, the former vice president, who lost the general election in a landslide.
The ‘Hymietown’ controversy
Just as Democrats were preparing to cast their primary votes for president in 1984, Mr. Jackson was swept up in a political maelstrom involving his use of an antisemitic slur.
On several occasions when speaking to reporters, he had referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York as “Hymietown,” according to The Washington Post.
“Hymie” is a shortened version of the name Hyman, which is relatively common among Jews, and many consider the term offensive.
After initially seeking to discredit the report, Mr. Jackson apologized.
But the controversy sowed further misgivings about Mr. Jackson’s candidacy among Jewish voters, as he had supported the creation of an independent Palestinian state and called for recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Jackson had also drawn criticism when he embraced Yasir Arafat, the P.L.O. leader, during a visit to the Middle East in 1979 and for his previous political ties with Louis Farrakhan, the Black Muslim leader who had called Hitler “a great man” and Judaism “a gutter religion.”
1984 D.N.C. keynote
Democrats entered their national convention in San Francisco a fractured party, with some divisions exacerbated by Mr. Jackson’s candidacy.
But on the second night of the gathering, Mr. Jackson called for unity and sought to put questions about his loyalty to the party behind him in a speech that was evangelical in its tone and filled with biblical references.
“If I have caused anyone discomfort, created pain or revived someone’s fears, that was not my truest self,” he said. “Charge it to my head, not to my heart.”
Mr. Jackson likened America to a quilt, a patchwork of disparate constituencies that deserved a voice.
1988 presidential campaign
Building on his name recognition and base of support in the South, Mr. Jackson returned to the campaign trail emboldened in 1988. The clergyman from Chicago and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition made inroads with white voters, winning three times as many votes from them as he did four years earlier.
Nearly seven million people voted for Mr. Jackson in the primaries and caucuses that year, delivering him victories in 13 contests.
He finished a solid second to Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor, who eventually lost the general election to George H.W. Bush, the vice president.
1988 D.N.C. keynote
In the spotlight of the Democratic National Convention, Mr. Jackson brought delegates to tears with his retelling of his upbringing in poverty and segregation in Greenville, S.C. He said he could identify with people watching his speech on television in poor neighborhoods.
“They don’t see the house I’m running from,” he said. “I have a story. I wasn’t always on television.”
He used his speech to press for social justice and action by Democrats in the general election, when he became a key surrogate for Mr. Dukakis, particularly with Black voters.
He closed his remarks with a sermon-like chant, one that would echo in future campaigns, including Barack Obama’s in 2008, when Americans elected him as the first Black president.
“Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive!”
An apology to Obama
Not long after Mr. Obama clinched the Democratic nomination in 2008, Mr. Jackson created an awkward distraction for the party’s next standard-bearer.
During a Fox News interview, Mr. Jackson criticized Mr. Obama for how he had been referring to African Americans and his singling out Black men for failing to uphold their responsibilities as fathers.
Mr. Jackson accused Mr. Obama, whom he had earlier endorsed, of “talking down to Black people.”
He later apologized for his remarks, which drew an unusually stern rebuke from Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democratic congressman from Illinois at the time who was a national co-chairman of Mr. Obama’s campaign.
“Reverend Jackson is my dad, and I’ll always love him,” he said. He added, “He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself.”
(nytimes.com)
EPSTEIN-ITIS
by James Kunstler
If you tolerate the intolerable, you’re communicating that it’s okay to mistreat you." —Aimee Terese on X
Did you think the American zeitgeist — our collective spirit plus our thinking — could not get crazier? Gird your loins. It’s getting worse by the hour. The Jeffrey Epstein files suggest that people will do anything and that people will believe anything. Pizza, hot dogs, white sharks…boys, girls, babies, teens, Russian whores…celebrities by the score…billionaires…cannibal orgies…vivisection parlors…adrenochrome…blood…dead bodies…demon worship…a depraved and insane global leadership…lemme outa here!
I don’t know what’s real in Epstein and what’s not — but neither do you. What you ought to know is that the colossal inventory of Epstein files is perhaps the greatest instrument of mass mind-fuckery ever seen in the history of Western Civ. How interesting, too, that the deluge of material coincides exactly with the critical capability emergence of Artificial Intelligence as a tool for the manipulation of documentary evidence. And also consider all the years since 2019 that interested parties have had to mess with, destroy, possibly fabricate, and catalog all this stuff.
Apparently, the Woke-Jacobin-Marxist eruption was not enough to destabilize the consensus about reality. The absurdities you were asked to swallow about all-women-are-women-including-men…the police killed George Floyd…mostly peaceful riots…the vaccine is safe and effective…the free-est, fairest elections ever…“Joe Biden” is president…the border is secure…speaking English is white supremacy — did not push America deeply enough into Crazyland. More was required to completely demolish your sense of an ordered world.
Donald Trump was correct, at least, that releasing the Epstein files would bring on more chaos than clarity and impede the effort to get our country back on the rails with an economic engine based on the production of goods instead of financialized hyper-casino voodoo. Well, now we’re in a maelstrom of innuendo, code-talk, gossip, and redaction, and you can hardly begin to sort it out. The Attorney General of the USA, bless her heart, has already botched the management of this monster.
Epstein’s relations with Israel and its Mossad intel blob, along with his connections to global banking interests, have aroused the zestiest breakout of antipathy to Jews since the SS busied itself loading the crematoriums of Europe. Hatred of Jews is a recurring symptom of civilization distress. But it is also possible that Israel has behaved badly — and it is certain that many political intellectuals are reevaluating the way that nation was established after World War Two. To some degree, Israel has become a paranoid state (though even paranoiacs have real enemies).
Where does that go from here? Thoughtful people are pessimistic. For sure, they resent the money and influence seeded by Israel in the US Congress. They might be concerned as well about all the other interests pounding money into American politics. Grift is everywhere, and everyone can see it now. The looming end of the grift orgy is probably behind the Democratic Party’s current psychotic disposition. Having lost its 20th century base of factory workers, the party has had to work the extreme margins of American life to build a coalition of the feckless, the reckless, the brainless, and the shameless. They have become the party’s wards in a reimagined patronage system even more pernicious than the old one under characters like Boss Tweed and Mayor Richard Daley-the-First of Chicago.
The Democratic Party can’t win elections without rigging them and it’s astonishing that they’ve gotten away with building such sturdy armature of ballot fraud in plain sight with next to zero objection from the supposed guardians in officialdom. The features of it are so arrant that a political class with any sense or dignity would have laughed it straight into the criminal courts — and its perps straight into the penitentiary. The fraud became especially acute with the 2020 and 2022 elections. It is about to be revealed in the troves of evidence extracted lately from Fulton County, GA, and presently from Maricopa County, AZ. These birds are cooked. Not a few people will eventually go to jail over these shenanigans. And meanwhile, the SAVE Act pulsates in the Senate like a lump of kryptonite.
Now, you may realize that a political party based entirely on socially marginal persons — many of them mentally ill — will adopt a roster of ideas and policies that are patently marginal, which is to say, crazy. The party elders are now straining to eliminate some of that. Last week, Barack Obama unloaded on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s botched handling of the state’s epic homeless crisis. “We should recognize that the average person doesn’t want to have to navigate around a tent city in the middle of downtown,” the ex-president said in an interview with progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen.
Hillary Clinton, dropping in on the Munich Security Conference, said, amazingly, “There is a legitimate reason to have a debate about things like migration. It went too far, it’s been disruptive and destabilizing…” before tossing in some Woke word-salad: “…and it needs to be fixed in a humane way with secure borders that don’t torture and kill people and how we’re going to have a strong family structure because it is at the base of civilization.” Say, what…?
But then, poor Hillary, who can’t help being a Cluster-B psycho, turned up moderating a panel at the same Munich meet-up to take up the issue: “Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights: Fighting the Global Pushback.“ To nail down her point, Hillary brought onstage as the featured speaker, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), known previously as Tim McBride, a man. The insanity is, of course, self-evident. The take-away from all this. They’re not trying hard enough to get their minds right.
And in the meantime, America and the other nations of Western Civ, must contend with the gigantic trip laid on them that is the Epstein files. We know the newspapers and cable news channels are hopeless. Is there anyone or any sense-making institution that can usher us through this nightmare back into the daylight?
(kunstler.com)
THE INCREASING ATTACKS ON FRANCESCA ALBANESE PRESAGE A NEW DARK AGE
by Chris Hedges
The viscous and sustained campaign mounted against Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, by Israel and the U.S. now includes the German, Italian, French, Austrian and Czech foreign ministers demanding her resignation. This campaign is part of an effort by industrial nations to at once sustain the genocide in Gaza — nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the sham ceasefire took effect — and silence all those who demand the international community abide by the rule of law.
The latest assault on Francesca, part of a concerted effort to discredit international bodies such as the U.N., is based on a deliberately truncated video of a talk Francesca gave in Doha on February 7 that distorts and misconstrues her words. But truth, of course, is irrelevant. The goal is to silence her and all who stand up for Palestinian rights.
Francesca was placed by the Trump administration on the Office of Foreign Assets Control list of the U.S. Treasury Department — normally used to sanction those accused of money laundering or being involved with terrorist organizations — six days after the release of her report, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,” which documented the global corporations that make billions of dollars from the genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestinians.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control list — weaponized by the Trump administration to persecute Francesca and in violation of the diplomatic immunity granted to U.N. officials — bans her from entering the U.S. It prohibits any financial institution from having her as a client. A bank engages in financial transactions with Francesca is banned from operating in dollars, faces multimillion-dollar fines and is blocked from international payment systems. This has cut her off from global banking, leaving her unable to use credit cards or book a hotel in her name. Her assets in the U.S. are frozen. It has seen her medical insurance refuse to reimburse her for medical expenses. It has resulted in institutions, including U.S. universities, human rights groups and NGOs that once collaborated with her severing ties, fearing onerous U.S. penalties. The sanctions followed those imposed in February and June of last year on The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan along with two judges for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
By making Francesca, who receives frequent death threats, the lightening rod, these governments seek to deflect attention from the ongoing slaughter and humanitarian disaster in Gaza. They seek to mask Israel’s system of apartheid and unlawful occupation of historic Palestine. They seek to hide, most of all, their complicity with their continuing weapons shipments that fuel Israel’s genocide.
The pace of the genocide has slowed, but it has not stopped. Israel has seized 60 percent of Gaza and blocks most humanitarian aid, including fuel, food and medicine. At the same time, Israel is accelerating its seizure of the occupied West Bank, where more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes since October 2023.
The campaign against Francesca presages a terrifying world where Western industrial nations exploit and prey upon the weak, where the law is whatever powerful nations say it is, where those who dare to speak the truth and stand up for the rule of law are relentlessly persecuted, where genocide is another tool in the arsenal to crush the aspirations and rights of the vulnerable. This is a fight we must win. If we lose, if we let voices like Francesca’s be silenced, we will usher in an age of blood and terror.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
I may be an outlier, but I look forward to the day when this whole Epstein Files imbroglio goes away. IMHO, it is the greatest "shiny object" known to mankind. It is hardly a revelation that many of the uber wealthy and political elites are largely corrupt, degenerate and venal. Can we move on to more pressing and relevant issues?
LEAD STORIES, TUESDAY'S NYT
U.S. and Iran Gear Up for Nuclear Talks Amid Rising Tensions
U.S. Deports Nine Migrants in Secret, Ignoring Legal Protections
Jesse Jackson, Civil Rights Leader Who Sought the Presidency, Dies at 84
Columbia Punishes 2 Who Helped Epstein’s Girlfriend Enter Dental College
Tom Pritzker, Citing Epstein Connection, Steps Down as Hyatt’s Executive Chairman
The Drone Games: Flying Cameras Are Everywhere at the Winter Olympics
“THE UNCEASING PROPAGANDA in our time for ‘the individual’ seems to me deeply suspect, as ‘individuality’ itself becomes more and more a synonym for selfishness.
A capitalist society comes to have a vested interest in praising ‘individuality’ and ‘freedom’ — which may mean little more than the right to the perpetual aggrandizement of the self, and the freedom to shop, to acquire, to use up, to consume, to render obsolete.
“I don’t believe there is any inherent value in the cultivation of the self. And I think there is no culture (using the term normatively) without a standard of altruism, of regard for others. I do believe there is an inherent value in extending our sense of what a human life can be. If literature has engaged me as a project, first as a reader and then as a writer, it is as an extension of my sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other words, other territories of concern.”
— Susan Sontag
PLAIN OLD INTERVIEWS
by Alfred Nunney
I recently applied for a job at a large publishing house and was pleased to clear the first hurdle. They sent me an email:
“We were impressed with your application for our Editorial Assistant role, and would like to invite you to our Hirevue stage. You may have already used this virtual platform before, but it may be useful anyway to hear the info below.”
I had to film myself answering three questions, each with a three-minute time limit and two minutes preparation, at a time of my choosing within the next week. They recommended I download the Hirevue software, dress professionally and retain eye contact: “Even virtually this is incredibly important!”
Hirevue was founded in Salt Lake City in 2004 by a 20-year-old undergraduate, Mark Newman. In its infancy, the company sent webcams to candidates for jobs, allowing them to record interviews from anywhere in the world. As it grew, Hirevue was integrated into the hiring process of many large companies and evolved into an AI-driven biometric software platform. In a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019, Hirevue was accused of bias, deceptive use of facial recognition technology and a lack of transparency and accountability in its use of AI for ranking candidates’ employability.
On the day of my interview I shaved, closed the window to muffle the roadworks and buttoned up my shirt. The first question appeared on the screen next to my face. I was interviewing myself. The question on problem-solving was straightforward. Though there was nothing to smile about, I smiled hard. Yes, I am that good at working intuitively, but boy, you should see me in a team! The next question had my hands waving about, which though unrehearsed felt expressive in a good way. I glanced away thoughtfully as I embarked on my final answer. Returning to the screen, I saw I had ten seconds to go and I’d not quite finished my anecdote about good timekeeping.
Consigned to the before world is the interviewer’s reminder to “ask us questions,” which was disappointing because I did have a couple: Was that the interview? Is anyone out there? I ended the recording and went about my day with the carefree relief that usually comes from having cheated death.
I later discovered that Hirevue responded to the official complaints by announcing a plan to drop its facial recognition technology. Companies that use Hirevue for recruitment have the option to use its AI assessment features or to use the software with no algorithm, which is referred to as “just plain old interviews.” I don’t know if my potential employer was using AI or not, or whether I was chosen or rejected for a longlist, or indeed whether a human being ever saw my smiling face, the panic in my eyes or my lucky white shirt. In any case, I didn’t get the job.
(London Review of Books)
BIG SUR: THE TROPIC OF HENRY MILLER
by Hunter S. Thompson
"If half the stories about Big Sur were true the vibrations of all the orgies would have collapsed the entire Santa Lucia mountain range, making the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah seem like the work of a piker. And, if justice were done, a whole army of tourists and curiosity-seekers would perish, too.
It's not likely to happen, however, because almost everything you hear about Big Sur is rumor, legend or an outright lie. This place is a myth-maker's paradise, so vast and so varied and so beautiful that the imagination of the visitor is tempted to run wild at the sight of it.
In reality, Big Sur is very like Valhalla—a place that a lot of people have heard of, and that very few can tell you anything about. In New York you might hear it's an art colony, in San Francisco they'll tell you it's a nudist colony, and when you finally roll into Big Sur with your eyes peeled for naked artists you are likely to be very disappointed.
Every weekend Dick Hartford, owner of the local Village Store, is plagued by people looking for “sex orgies,” “wild drinking brawls,” or “the road to Henry Miller's house”—as if once they found Miller everything else would be taken care of. Some of them will stay as long as a week, just wandering around, asking questions, forever popping up where you least expect them—finally wandering off, complaining bitterly that Big Sur is “nothing but a damn wilderness.”
Most of it is. The geographical boundaries of Big Sur are so vague that Lillian Bos Ross, one of the first writers to live here, once described it as “not a place at all, but a state of mind.” The Big Sur country is roughly eighty miles long and twenty wide, with a population of some three hundred souls spread out across the hills and along the coast. The “town” itself is nothing but a post office, village store, gas station, garage and restaurnt, located a hundred and fifty miles south of San Francisco on California Highway One.
Time was when this place was as lonely and isolated as any spot in America. But no longer. Inevitably, Big Sur has been “discovered.” Life called it a “Rugged, Romantic World Apart" and presented nine pages of pictures to prove it. After that there was no hope. Not that Henry Luce has anything against solitude—he just wants to tell his seven million readers about it. And on some weekends it seems like all seven million of them are right here, bubbling over with questions:
“Where's the art colony, man? I’ve come all the way from Tennessee to join it.”
“Say, fella, where do I find this nudist colony?”
“Hello there. My wife and I want to rent a cheap ten-room house for weekends. Could you tell me where to look?”
Or the one that drove Miller half-crazy: “Ah ha! So you're Henry Miller! Well my name is Claude Fink and I've come to join the cult of sex and anarchy.”
Most of the people who've heard of Big Sur know nothing about it except that Miller lives here. There is no doubt in their minds that any place Miller lives is bound to be some sort of sexual mecca. Ironically enough, Miller came here looking for peace and solitude. When he arrived in 1946 he was relatively unknown. His major works (Tropics of Cancer & Capricorn, The Rosy Crucifixion, and Black Spring) were banned in this country. And all but the first of these still are. In Europe, where he had lived since the early Thirties, he had a reputation as one of the few honest and uncompromising American writers. But when the Nazis overran Paris his income was cut off and he came back to the United States.
His contempt for this country was manifest in everything he wrote, and his vision of America’s future was a hairy thing, at best. In “The World of Sex,” a banned and little-known book he wrote in 1940, he put it like this:
“What will happen when this world of neuters who make up the great bulk of the population collapses is this— they will discover sex. In the period of darkness which will ensue they will lie up in the dark like snakes or toads and chew each other alive during the endless fornication carnival.”
These are the words that came back to haunt him when he moved to Big Sur. No sooner had he settled here, hoping to separate himself from what he called “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare,” than thousands of people sought him out. When all Miller wanted was a little privacy, they struggled up the steep dirt road to his house on Partington Ridge; if there was a fornication carnival going on up there, they were damn well going to be in on it. At times it seemed like half the population of Greenwich Village was camping on his lawn.
Miller did his best to stem the tide, but it was no use. As his fame spread, his volume of visitors mounted steadily. Many of them had not even read his books. They weren't interested in literature, they wanted orgies. And they were shocked to find him a quiet, fastidious and very moral man, instead of the raving sexual beast they’d heard stories about. When no orgies materialized cultists drifted on to Los Angeles or San Francisco, or stayed in Big Sur, trying to drum up orgies of their own. Some of them lived in hollow trees, others found abandoned shacks, and a few simply roamed the hills with sleeping bags, living on nuts, berries and wild mustard greens. Miller tried to drive his visitors away but nothing worked. They finally overwhelmed him, and in the process they put Big Sur squarely on the map of national curiosities. Today they are still coming, even though Miller has packed his bags and fled to Europe for what may be a permanent vacation.
The special irony of all this is that Miller has written more about Big Sur —and praised it more—than any other writer in the world. In 1946 he wrote an essay called “This Is My Answer,” which eventually appeared in his book, “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch,” published in 1958, long after the first invasion.
“Peace and solitude!” he says. “I have had a taste of it even in America Mornings on Partington Ridge I would often go to the cabin door on rising, look out over the rolling velvety hills, filled with such contentment, such gratitude, that instinctively my hand went up in a benediction.”
The steamroller of progress has made slow headway in Big Sur. In some spots, in fact, it has bogged down altogether.
To read a New York Times in Big Sur can be a traumatic experience. After living here a few months you find it increasingly difficult to take that mass of threatening, complicated information very seriously. There are people here without the vaguest idea of what is happening in the rest of the world. They haven’t read a newspaper in years, don’t listen to the radio, and see a television set perhaps once a month when they go into town.
Here they didn’t even have electricity until 1947, or telephones until 1958. Compared to the rest of California, Big Sur seems brutally primitive. No subdivisions mar these rugged hills, no supermarkets, no billboards, no crowded commercial wharfs jutting into the sea. In the entire eighty mile stretch of coastline there are only five gas stations and two grocery stores. A fifty mile stretch of the coast is still without electricity. The people who live there—and some of them own whole mountains of virgin land—are still using gas lanterns and Coleman stoves.
It is still possible to roam these hills for days at a time without seeing anything but deer, wolves, mountain lions and wild boar. Parts of Big Sur remain as wild and lonely as they were when Jack London used to come down on horseback from San Francisco. The house he stayed in is still here, high on a ridge a few miles south of the post office.
With a little luck a man can still come here and live entirely by himself, but most of the people who arrive don’t have that in mind. These are the transients—the “orphans” and the “weekend ramblers.” The orphans are the spiritually homeless, the disinherited souls of a complex and nerve-wracked society. They can be lawyers, laborers, beatniks or wealthy dilettantes, but they are all looking for a place where they can settle and “feel at home.” Some of them stay, finding in Big Sur the freedom and relaxation they couldn’t find anywhere else. But most of them move on, finding it “too dull” or “too lonely” for their tastes.
The highway alone is enough to give a man pause. It climbs and twists along the cliffs like a huge asphalt roller-coaster; in some spots you can look eight-hundred feet straight down to the booming surf. The coast from Carmel to San Simeon, with the green slopes of the Santa Lucia mountains plunging down to the sea, is nothing short of awesome. Nepenthe, open from April to November, is one of the most beautiful restaurants anywhere in America; and Chaco, the lecherous old Tsarist writer who, in his words, “hustles liquor” on the Nepenthe terrace, is as colorful a character as a man could hope to meet.
There are plenty of artists here, and most of them exhibit at the Coast Gallery, about halfway between Nepenthe and Hot Springs. Like artists everywhere, many do odd jobs to keep eating and pay the rent. Others, like Bennett Bradbury, drive new Cadillac convertibles and live in “fashionable” Coastlands or Partington Ridge.
On any given day you might walk into the Village Store and find three Frenchmen and two bearded Greeks arguing the fine points of Dada poetry —and on the day after that you'll find nobody there but a local rancher, muttering to himself about the dangers of hoof-and-mouth disease.
The local poets outnumber the wild boars, but Eric Barker is the only “name”, and he looks too much like a farmer to cause any stir among the tourists. For that matter almost everyone in Big Sur looks like either a farmer or a woodsy poet. People are always taking Emil White, publisher of the Big Sur Guide, for a hermit or a sex fiend; and Helmuth Deetjen, owner of the Big Sur Inn, looks more like a junkie than a lot of real hopheads. If you saw Nicholas Roosevelt, of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts, walking along the highway you might expect him to flag you down, wipe your windshield with an old handkerchief, and ask for a quarter, but he won't.
To see Big Sur is one thing, and to live here is quite another. The little man who comes down from the city to “get away from it all”—runs amok on wine two weeks later because there is nobody to talk to and the silence is driving him crazy. Big Sur is full of loneliness.
Today the population of Big Sur is smaller than it was in 1900, and just about the same as it was in 1945. Hundreds of people have tried to settle here since the end of the war, and hundreds have failed. Those who come from the cities, hoping to join a merry band of hard-drinking exiles from an over-organized society, are soon disappointed. The exiles are hard to locate, and even harder to drink with. Soon the silence becomes ominous; the pounding sea is too hostile and the nights are full of strange sounds. On some days the only thing to do, besides eat and sleep, is walk up to your mailbox and meet the postman, who drives down from Monterey six days a week in a Volkswagen bus, bringing newspapers, groceries and beer along with your mail.
If you come here looking for something to join or to lean on for support, you are in for a bad time.
In his book on Big Sur, Miller describes the people he found here when he came. Some of them, depressed by the influx of tourists, have left for other, more isolated spots—Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, or the Greek Islands. But many are still living here the same way they were before.
“These young men, usually in their late twenties or early thirties . . . are not concerned with undermining a vicious system, but with leading their own lives—on the fringe of society. It is only natural to find them gravitating towards such places as Big Sur.”
These are the expatriates, the ones who have come from all over the world to make a stab at The Good Life. But there are others, too. Some are ranchers whose families have lived here for generations. Others are out-and-out bastards, who live in isolation because they can’t live anywhere else. And a few are genuine deviates, who live here because nobody cares what they do as long as they keep to themselves.
In some respects Big Sur is closer to New York and Paris than to Monterey and San Francisco. To the writers and photographers who live here just a few months of the year, New York is the axis of the earth— where the publishers are, where assignments originate and where all the checks are signed. And once the checks are cashed, Paris is the next stop. After that, it’s keep moving until the money runs out, then back to Big Sur. In their minds, San Francisco is a bar, Monterey is a grocery store, and L. A. is a circus a few hundred miles down the road.
Others, primarily the painters and sculptors, look north to Carmel, with its many art galleries, craft-centers and wallet-heavy tourists.
Visitors in Big Sur—those who are actually invited—are more likely to be artists, foreign journalists or world travelers than ordinary vacationers. ‘There are no hotels here, the motels are small and devoid of entertainment, and the only night-life revolves around Nepenthe, which is closed five months of the year.
This is the way life goes in Big Sur: waiting for the mail, watching the sea-lions in the surf or the dim lights of a ship far out at sea, sitting in the tubs at Hot Springs, once in a while a bit of drink—and, most of the time, working at whatever it is that you came here to work on, whether it be painting, writing, gardening or the simple art of living your own life.
What—and whom—you find here depends largely on where you look. Partington Ridge, for instance, is Big Sur's answer to Park Avenue. Nicholas Roosevelt lives there; so does Sam Hopkins, of the Top 0’ The Mark (Hopkins Hotel) clan. Visiting luminaries are usually quartered on Partington, and when they sit down to eat they are not likely to be served wild mustard greens.
On the Murphy property, including Hot Springs, the combined rental on nine dwellings is $176 a month. This place is a real menagerie, flavored with everything from bestiality to touch football. The barn rents for $15, the farmhouse for $40, and a shack in the canyon goes for $5. The list of tenants reads something like this: one photographer, one bartender, one publisher, one carpenter, one writer, one fugitive, one metal sculptor, one Zen Buddhist, one physical culturist, one lawyer, and three people who simply defy description—sexually, socially or any other way. There are two legitimate wives on the property; the other females are either mistresses, “companions,” or hopeless losers. Until recently the shining light of this community was Dennis Murphy, the novelist, whose grandmother owns the whole shebang. But when his book, “The Sergeant,” became a best-seller, he was hounded by people who would drive hundreds of miles to jabber at him and drink his liquor. After a few months of this, he moved up the coast to Monterey.
Old Mrs. Murphy lives across the mountains in Salinas, and, luckily, gets to Big Sur only two or three times a year. Her husband, the late Dr. Murphy, conceived of this place as a great health spa, a virtual bastion of decency and clean living.
Miller, in one of his rosier moods, said this coast would one day be the Riviera of America. Maybe so, but it will take quite a while. And in the meantime it is one of the finest places in the world to sit naked in the sun and read the New York Times.
OLD MAN EATING ALONE IN A CHINESE RESTAURANT
I am glad I resisted the temptation,
if it was a temptation when I was young,
to write a poem about an old man
eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.
I would have gotten it all wrong
thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world
and with only a book for a companion.
He'll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.
So glad I waited all these decades
to record how hot and sour the hot and sour
soup is here at Chang's this afternoon
and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.
And my book—José Saramago's Blindness
as it turns out—is so absorbing that I look up
from its escalating horrors only
when I am stunned by one of his gleaming sentences.
And I should mention the light
that falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches—
the plates and teapots, the immaculate tablecloths,
as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress
in the white blouse and short black skirt,
the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice
and shredded beef with garlic to my favorite table in the corner.
— Billy Collins (2007)
CONCLUSION OF JACK LOEFFLER'S 1983 INTERVIEW WITH EDWARD ABBEY
LOEFFLER: It’s clear what motivates those without any sense of environmental integrity, those motivated by the desire for power and money. But what about the Joe Six-Packs of the world who operate the bulldozers? Do you think it’s possible to define a characteristic in the human animal that causes this blind pillaging? Where do you think the problem lies?
ABBEY: I do not think it lies with the Joe Six-Packs. I’ve been a Joe Six-Pack for much of my life — had to work various jobs, most of them rather tedious, simply to get by, make a living. No, I certainly don’t blame working people. They, too, are victimized by this process. Most of them have their lives and their health threatened directly and constantly, simply by the work they do.
But where, how, did this process begin? It began when we gave up the traditional hunting and gathering way of life, and made the terrible mistake of settling down to agriculture. The plow may have done more damage to human life on the planet than the sword.
Agriculture was followed by industrialism, which began only about two hundred years ago. We discovered the means, the ability, to achieve mastery over nature. Once we discover we have the ability to push things around, or to push other people around, most humans can’t refrain from using such power. Science and technology give us absolute power over the rest of life, including human life. Power not only corrupts, it attracts the worst elements of the human herd.
Humans have always wanted some control over their environment. Not only the moderns, but the most ancient tribes practiced magic and ritual in the effort to bring things under control for the perfectly honorable purpose of surviving. But somehow, in the last five thousand years, this natural, healthy, wholesome desire to survive and continue human life and raise a family and pass your genes on to succeeding generations has been corrupted by the desire to dominate. And we began by enslaving one another.
The first industrial systems, really, were those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and ancient China, where thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions, were conscripted into work gangs to build huge monuments to the glory of some tyrant — the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China. Society itself became a kind of machine, as Lewis Mumford has pointed out. The original megamachines were made of human bodies — flesh and bone. Human slavery was the true original sin. For thousands of years, our society has depended on the enslavement of humans: either simple chattel slavery like that of the blacks in America; or the slightly more subtle form of serfdom in Europe, the peasants and the lords, and that new form of slavery we call wage slavery, chaining people to routine tasks, whether in a factory, a store, or an office, and compelling them to perform tedious, stupid, repetitious work in order to eat. And even when the slaves are well paid, living in suburban houses with thousands of dollars worth of gadgets and a car and a pickup truck and a motorboat, they are still slaves. Most of us are slaves. We are dependent upon the industrial machine. We cannot break free from it. We have to support it and work for it or be cut off and starve. That is slavery.
So it began: we enslaved the horse; we created the mule; we made slaves of dogs. Soon afterward we learned to enslave human beings. Now, today, our social machine is trying to enslave the whole of nature — put everything to work for the sake of human greed and human power. That, I think, is the great evil, the ultimate evil, of the modern age. By “modern” I mean, of course, the last five thousand years, when the nightmare of history began.
LOEFFLER: Such domination has had a tremendous effect on the last of the so-called traditional peoples, the indigenous peoples who still inhabit the Southwestern landscape — specifically the Pueblos and the Navajos and the Papagos and the Pimas.
ABBEY: I think the best thing we could do for the traditional people is to let them bloody well alone — keep our greedy hands off their land and off their lives. If only that were possible. But most of them now are shut up in little enclaves within industrial society, and most of them have become dependent upon it. There are very few genuinely traditional cultures left — perhaps a few tribes down in the Amazonian jungle, maybe in New Guinea and the distant hills of the Philippines. But the American Indians have been almost totally assimilated into our culture. I realize there are a few pockets of traditional culture still left on the reservations, but they are a small and diminishing minority, not likely to survive much longer.
Ideally, I would say we should declare the Papago Reservation and the Navajo Reservation, for example, fully independent nations and simply let them alone. But it’s too late for that. It couldn’t possibly work. The world has become too interdependent now. Somehow the Papagos and the Navajos and the other tribes are going to have to work out a decent life for themselves within American society. The majority of them are facing the same difficulties that the rest of us white Americans are facing, and the blacks and the Hispanics: how to survive in a crackpot economy, a crazy industrial empire that the managers cannot manage and the economists cannot comprehend.
I would love to see the traditional cultures survive, but unless our industrial economy collapses in the near future, I don’t think they will. Take the Tarahumara in the Sierra Madres of Mexico. I was last down there about ten years ago, and even then the Tarahumara way of life was clearly being threatened, constricted, closed in by massive road-building schemes, by heavy logging in the mountains that’s bound to erode those tiny little milpas, those little corn patches down in the canyons that the Tarahumaras used to depend on. Even then a lot of them had been reduced to the role of pandering to tourists, selling trinkets. They’re in a bad situation. Their chances for survival as a culture are not good. No doubt they’ll survive as human beings — their chances to keep on living and reproducing are about as good as they are for the rest of us. But as tribes — coherent cultures — they don’t seem able to compete very well in this mad rat race to which most of us are dedicated. In order to compete successfully, they would have to abandon their traditional culture. They would have to become ambitious, pushing to get their kids into college and see to it that they graduate and take up the dreary trades of computer taping and programming and manufacturing to which most Americans are already condemned. I don’t think a traditional culture can survive when it’s surrounded by a modern, aggressive, expanding industrial culture. I wish it could.
Much has been written about this, of course — tons of books. And most of us lament the passing of the old American Indian way of life. We romanticize it and glorify it, now that it’s mostly gone. Myself, I think I would love to have been an early nineteenth-century Sioux or Arapaho or Cheyenne, part of that great, magnificent horse-taming, buffalo-hunting way of life. The Indians of the plains, for a brief two or three centuries, had a wonderful way of life, based on the horse and the buffalo; self-reliant tribes living in a self-sustaining way. It could have continued for thousands of years, if European culture had not come along and destroyed it.
LOEFFLER: How would you compare the deities of the American Indians with those that have guided white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture?
ABBEY: I regard the invention of monotheism and the other-worldly God as a great setback for human life. Maybe even worse than the invention of agriculture. Once we took the gods out of nature, out of the hills and forests around us and made all those little gods into one great god up in the sky, somewhere in outer space, then human beings, particularly Europeans, began to focus their attention on transcendental values, a transcendental deity, which led to a corresponding contempt for nature and the world which feeds and supports us. From that point of view, I think the Indians and most traditional cultures had a much wiser worldview, in that they invested every aspect of the world around them — all of nature, animal life, plant life, the landscape itself — with gods, with deity. Everything was divine in some way or another. Pantheism led to a wiser way of life, capable of surviving over long periods of time. The American Indian culture lasted at least twenty thousand years before the Europeans destroyed it. Although it supported only a relatively small population — maybe five million, maybe ten million, nobody really knows — it lasted a long time. Our European-American-Japanese industrial culture is now about two hundred years old, and it’s supporting huge populations — billions — but it seems doubtful that it can survive for more than another century or two, unless there’s a drastic change in our way of life.
More and more, we try to solve our problems by submitting to some sort of technological rationalization, which includes the expansion of the industrial system onto the moon and the rest of the galaxy and God knows where. No wonder all the bodies in the heavenly universe seem to be flying away from planet earth, according to some astronomers. They’re trying to flee this plague of domination and greed. Which is also, paradoxically, the glory of our race. I admire the adventure of it. I’m in favor of space exploration, for example. I admire science and scientists, insofar as their purpose is to advance knowledge, to learn about the world we live in. If somehow we could keep our knowledge separated from our itch to dominate and tyrannize and enslave, I think science would be almost entirely a good thing. But science has been misapplied for war and industrialism and done far more harm than good. Even so, I respect and admire the intellectual adventure of science: one of the great achievements of European-American humankind. Where were we? What were we talking about?
LOEFFLER: We just finished off the local deity.
ABBEY: Call me a pantheist. If there is such a thing as divinity, and the holiness is all, then it must exist in everything, and not simply be localized in one supernatural figure beyond time and space. Either everything is divine, or nothing is. All partake of the universal divinity — the scorpion and the pack rat, the June bug and the pismire, and even human beings.
LOEFFLER: From a political point of view . . .
ABBEY: I’m a registered anarchist.
LOEFFLER: How long have you been a registered anarchist?
ABBEY: Five thousand years. In practical politics, day-to-day politics, I consider myself a liberal democrat. But in the realm of ideal politics, I’m some sort of agrarian, barefoot, wilderness, eco-freak anarchist. One of my favorite thinkers is Prince Kropotkin. Another is Henry Thoreau.
LOEFFLER: About ten years ago, you gave me a copy of George Woodcock’s Anarchism. You actually wrote your thesis on it. When did you write that?
ABBEY: Oh, back in the mid-fifties at the University of New Mexico, after I flunked out of school in Edinburgh, Scotland, and got kicked out of Yale. I crawled back to New Mexico and humbly wrote a little master’s thesis for the philosophy department there. It started out as an ambitious project — it was going to be a general theory of anarchism. The thesis committee and professors soon condensed it to a tiny little historical study of a few nineteenth-century anarchist writers, like Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Bakunin, so it ended up, like most master’s theses, being nothing but a monograph on a very limited subject — namely, the ethics and morality of violence as a political method. Everything phrased in a circumspect manner, bristling with footnotes, half of it consisting of bibliography and notes. And thus I became a Master of Arts, a degree which means absolutely nothing.
LOEFFLER: Could you talk about the stages of life in a man, and the way you have regarded your own life as a way to live them?
ABBEY: I wish I could quote for you the seven stages of life as described by Shakespeare. He summed it up pretty well, from mewling, puking infant to beslippered, slobbering, senile old man. That’s the course most of us are foredoomed to follow. Ideally, a man’s life should progress from a wild, crazy, adventurous youth through a sedate and domesticated middle age, in which we perform our biological functions of reproducing (though these days none of us should have more than one child); then from middle age into a free, liberated, and contemplative old age in which we should have something to teach the younger generations — but only if they come around and ask. Teach, not preach.
Nothing’s sorrier than an old man who has nothing to say, nothing to tell us, no advice or wisdom to offer. A young man should be an adventurer. A middle-aged man should be a producer of useful goods for his fellow humans, a good husband to a wife, and father of children. And an old man should again be an adventurer, an adventurer in ideas. If he learns anything from life he should be willing and able to teach what he’s learned to those who have sense enough to want to learn, the way traditional cultures got by for about a million years. That’s something we seem in danger of losing; the old folks are simply discarded, kicked aside into nursing homes or Airstream trailers. They’re well supported, most of them, but largely neglected. Must I add that what I said of men, young men, middle-aged men, and old men, applies with equal force to women? They, too, must go through the three great stages in order to live a full human life. If you can live a full human life, it should be sufficient.
An adventurous human life should free us from the childish hankering for personal immortality. Which of us is worthy to live forever, eternally? Nobody I know. And what’s the point of it anyway? If this life here and now on this splendid planet we call earth is not good enough for us, then what possible pleasure or satisfaction or happiness could we find in some sort of transcendental, eternal existence beyond time and space? Eternity, in that sense, beyond time, could be nothing but a moment, a flash, and we probably experience that brilliant flash of eternity at the moment of death. Then we should get the hell out of the way, with our bodies decently planted in the earth to nourish other forms of life — weeds, flowers, shrubs, trees, which support still other forms of life, which support the ongoing human pageant, the lives of our children. That seems good enough to me.
Now, maybe when I become a terrified old man, I will dig out the Bible again and start babbling about a life beyond the grave. I think the desire for immortality is based on fear. On a terrible fear of dying, which comes from not having fully lived. If your life has been wasted, then naturally you’re going to hate giving it up. If you’ve led a cowardly or paltry or tedious or uneventful life, then as you near the end of it, you’re going to cling like a drowning man to whatever kind of semi-life medical technology can offer you, and you’re going to end up in a hospital with a dozen tubes sticking in your body, machines keeping your organs going. Which is the worst possible way to die. Better by far to fall off a rock while climbing a cliff, or to die in battle.
I look forward to the day when somebody with a terminal disease straps a load of TNT around his waist and goes down in the bowels of Glen Canyon dam and blows that ugly thing to smithereens. That would be a good way to go.
I think one should live honorably and die honorably. One’s death should mean something. One should try to have a good death, just as one tries to have a good life. If it’s necessary to die fighting, then that’s what we should do. If we’re lucky, we can die peacefully. But few of us will ever live in such a world. There always will be something worth fighting for and something worth fighting against. That’s the drama of the human condition. That’s what makes human life so interesting, and so entertaining, so full of laughs — the fighting, the struggling, the friction. I don’t want to live in a peaceful utopia. From a personal point of view, the world we live in is just fine with me. Because there are so many things to laugh at and laugh about, so many things to admire and to love, and so many things to despise. It’s the ideal world for a writer, for anybody whose emotions are alive, for anybody who wants something to think about and talk about.
“Prediction, Mr. McKee will recommend, recruit and hire himself as either the next County Counsel or the next CEO.”
Absolutely probably true. The timing is right. Current CEO announces retirement in December, Contract for the new guy begins in December. Current CEO retires before April, new guy contract expires end of March. BINGO!
Based on his experience and qualifications, I doubt he is interested in becoming Mendocino’s next County Counsel.
Or the next CEO, understand it’s a great job…
+1
The current board has an opportunity to make some significant changes for the better. Let’s see if they do that.
Hear, hear George. BoS should 86 the CEO model and (re)adapt the CAO (Chief Accounting Officer) model, as virtually all the County’s woes are fiscal/financial in origin.
Will the BoS muster the gumption to pivot? Dollars against donuts, absolutely not. Too chicken. Too wussed. Pity.
DHS MONITORING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ANTI-ICE STATEMENTS
Welcome to the authoritarian state. The MAGAts must be beside themselves with joy. It was bound to happen, even though I remember an old saying: “It can’t happen here…” The hell it can’t; it has! And, don’t get your hopes up that the democraps will save us all…they sold their souls to kaputalists and warmongers long ago.
I’m not surprised. If you know me personally, you know that I have said for years that posting anything on social media of a personal or political nature will inevitably come back to haunt you. That time is now. If you’re doing anything political, please, please don’t do it on Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, WeChat, Messenger, Telegram, LinkedIn, SnapChat, Reedit, Pinterest, X, Teams, Discord, Twitch, Vevo, Tumbler, etc., etc. All of these outfits will sell you out when served with an administrative subpoena. That’s because they’re too frightened for their bottom lines and their ability to continue to operate to do otherwise.
For what it’s worth, I have never had any inclination whatsoever in “joining” any of the “social media” outfits. Commenting here, and on a few other news media outlets is a whole different activity, as I see it.
Good for you. I’ve never joined a social network, either. I don’t harbor any illusions that that makes me safe. Every outfit I listed above likely has a shadow profile for me based on activity gleaned from postings made by their active users.
Is posting to the AVA different? Probably not. Everything posted anywhere gets scraped, collected, packaged, and sold. That goes for e-mail traffic, too. It’s likely that Palantir can produce an extensive dossier on me on demand, including an analysis of all of my AVA posts. I’ll posit that that’s not much of a risk to me right now, mostly because I’m no longer in the job market. Who knows what the future holds? OK, that’s a rhetorical question. The answer is, of course, nothing good.
ROBERT DUVALL, DEAD AT AGE 95
I remember seeing those movies, but most of the details have faded from my memory over the years. I gave up on TV (Dish satellite) and DVD years ago and have no desire to go back to them. I do remember Duvall being good, but then, so was Sam Elliott.
A film that I’m still thinking about of Robert Duvall’s is called The Apostle, which none of the articles I’ve read about his death mention at all. And Sam Elliot: The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot. Writers always leave that one out. Why?
And re: Robert Abeles, just above. I get a notice from Google whenever my name appears in the AVA, because I asked Google for this; it’s keeping track anyway whether you ask for it or not, and I’d like to be able to find these things later. I’m still hoping for all the pre-web AVAs to be not just photographed and archived but also saved as searchable text. I’d like to see some articles I wrote way back then that I didn’t keep copies of, such as Who Bombed Bill Bixby, and one titled Folding Yourself In Half that was a father’s solemn goofy talk about the importance of growing up respecting the sanctity of the line across your belly, that we all have, where you will eventually be folding yourself in half with somebody you love, and it’s a beautiful thing, Son. I know this is embarrassing to think about and talk about, but you’re growing up, and it’s time, and your mother and I want you to hear it from us and not from somebody out on the street. (It was something like that. Maybe 600 words.)
Assuming an archive of print editions of the AVA exists, individual issues could be photographed page by page on a evenly lit table with a good camera. The images could then be scanned with OCR (optical character recognition) software. OCR accuracy is high, but does require proofing and editing. Articles that are split across multiple pages would need to be manually reassembled. The equipment (hardware and software) to undertake this project would not be too expensive or hard to come by.
It would take a large amount of time to carry this process out. Maybe it would be a good project for group of students?
THE INCREASING ATTACKS ON FRANCESCA ALBANESE PRESAGE A NEW DARK AGE
Beware criticizing Israhell in any way. Do so, and you’ll be painted as an anti-semite, possibly arrested (or deported, or kicked out of college as well). Aint life grand here in freedomlandia? Remember, too, the “chosen ones” created a mean god, one to whom we all must bow in reverence…he wasn’t much on genetics with that hokum story of how the human species got started with a married couple having two male offspring. Wake up, people!
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
It seems to me the Epstein “affair” is relevant now, more relevant than it ever has been. If handled carefully, its revelations may, once and for all, rid us of trump and his lies and boorish behavior. Always keep in mind, 58 percent of the voting public, a majority of voters, did NOT vote for the lying, murderous scumball.
I just finished an impressive non-fiction book, just out in paperback— “Challenger,” by Adam Higginbotham. The main topic, per the title, is the long view of the Challenger disaster, traced in great detail through the years before and after. The author is a masterful writer and researcher, telling his tale much like a novel of suspense. Lots of engineering detail, told so that a non-expert can grasp it. It’s shocking in its detailed narrative of the engineering failures and of course the human egos, deceptions and failures that led to this disaster. And there were some heroes, too, who saw what was coming and tried to catch the falling ball. This book got glowing reviews, worth the read.
“Feynman is becoming a real pain,” said by William P. Rogers, former US Secretary of State and US Attorney General, now chairman of the Roger’s Commission. The Feynman he’s referring to was Dr. Richard P. Feynman, Nobel laureate, and one of the finest minds this nation has produced. Feynman had been named to the commission to lend gravitas to the proceedings. To Roger’s dismay, he took his role seriously, refused to follow the script, and laid bare the failings that had led to the Challenger disaster. Metaphorically, he rubbed the commission members’ noses in it, most of whom, including Rogers himself, would have been pleased to simply rubber stamp NASA’s flawed findings.
Yes, Feynman was a hero.
Don’t forget my old boss Maj. Gen. Don Kutyna. When I worked for him at Hanscom AFB in the 70s he was a bird colonel. A former USAF test pilot at Edwards AFB and wannabe astronaut. Like other test pilots and combat pilots he was a little more willing to take chances than other pilots. I believe he was the only ally Feynman had on the Commission at first. Among other things, Kutyna was also willing to butt heads with then-Maj. Gen. Richard Second later of Iran-Contra fame.
Feynman wrote about his partnership with Kutyna on the Commission, and the friendship that they formed, in his book Do You Care What People Think? (entertaining, and well worth reading, in my opinion). It was Kutyna who clued Feynman into the problems with flexible seals by describing an incident he’d had with his car on a cold morning.
Secord.
(Tell ’em about the time you “briefed” the Shah of Iran}.
I’m afraid that any attempt to describe that “briefing” would put most AVA readers as fast asleep as it did the Shah. I’m good at putting people to sleep and count it among my “very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career…”
Mark, here’s one instance about your former boss that was noted in the book: General Kutyna in a post-explosion commission hearing, was questioning a manager who was part of the cover-up that occurred both before and after the Challenger disaster. The manager, Larry Mulloy, had admitted that the debate about some of the known space shuttle safety risks had not been made known to the Challenger—and other—astronauts. The General, blunt and plain-spoken, asserted: “Larry, if this were an airplane, an airliner, and I just had a two-hour argument with Boeing on whether the wing was going to fall off or not, I think I would tell the pilot.”
Warmest spiritual greetings from Washington, D.C. Am sitting here on a public computer at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library, and watching the last of the only snowfall melt away outside. I’ve got nothing to do any further in the District of Columbia. Continuing to sleep at the homeless shelter, letting the bank account increase with social security deposits at the beginning of the month, eating sumptuously with the EBT benefit, and feeling secure with enough health insurance for a family of four. There’s enough money for a beer, including a steak dinner. Sending out networking emails to postmodern America, in order to continue being involved in revolutionary ecological efforts and also attenuating peace & justice concerns when appropriate. Otherwise, it is quiet near the White House and on Capitol Hill. Except for the occasional large flash protest, usually organized by some outside group which disappears right afterwards, there is nothing significant happening. There is sufficient money in the bank, so leaving the shelter and going forth is an intelligent possibility. Awaiting the Cherry Blossom Festival beginning March 20th. Identifying with the nameless formless Absolute, which works through the body-mind complex without interference. If anybody wants to do anything, let me know. Soon. Email: [email protected] February 17th, 2026 A.D.
Hello, Everybody, Is this Social Media? I hope so because I’ll be able to tell my grandkids that I do Social Media so they won’t think I’m totally decrepit, just nearly. It appears that most of us are in the Anderson Valley area. Would it be fun to get together sometime to see the faces behind the words? I am frequently amused or annoyed or enlightened by what You write. I know some of us (like George and Eli ) are interesting smart guys so I thought it might be fun. Cheers, Michael