Mendocino County Today: Saturday, March 8, 2014

• Goodbye Joyce Murray
• Wylie and Galletti to Challenge Tichinin
• Sako Attack
• KZYX's Night of Dysfunctional Tedium
• Operation Meat Axe
• McKnight's Night Out
• Crockett's Bad Plan
• What Teens are Reading
• No County for Young Men

JOYCE MURRAY OF BOONVILLE HAS DIED. Mrs. Murray's husband, Ross, said that Mrs. Murray passed away Thursday night. Joyce Murray had been a well-known professional singer with the Andrews Sisters. The following is a 2009 interview with Mrs. Murray by Steve Sparks in which she talks about her years in show business.

* * *

JOYCE MURRAY

Interviewed by Steve Sparks

Last Friday morning, I drove a couple of miles out of Boonville up Mountain View Road and then along a dirt road a further mile before arriving at the home of Joyce and Ross Murray deep in the redwoods on 40 heavily wooded acres. Joyce immediately offered me coffee and we sat down to chat at a lovely old dining table.

She was born, Joyce DeYoung, in 1926 in Beaver, Pennsylvania to a mother of German descent and a father who had come to the United States as a small boy from the Netherlands. Her parents both worked for the Kohler Company (of bathroom fittings fame) and her father’s skills as a factory manager were in great demand so as a small child the family moved a couple of times before settling in Baltimore, Maryland by which time two younger brothers had arrived — Jim and David. She attended Eastern High School in the Baltimore suburbs, an all-girls public school that had been founded in 1844. “In those days even in public schools the boys and girls were often educated separately as they might do who knows what! I received a good education and enjoyed school — there were no boys there to distract you or to throw spitballs etc. at you. I am still in touch with some of the girls from those days.”

From an early age music played a big part in Joyce’s life. Not only was she in the school Glee Club but her family was very musical too. Her father sang and directed choirs while her Mother “played the piano beautifully,” often being asked to accompany the talented singers in town. “There was always music and singing in our house. As a teenager, music, and particularly that by Frank Sinatra, was all I was interested in. It was the days of the Big Bands and Frank sang with the Tommy Dorsey Band — they were my favorites. On one occa­sion they played in Baltimore and I waited at the stage door with many other teenage girls when Frank and Buddy Rich the drummer appeared at a window above us. They came out and talked to us and I asked him if the rumors were true about him leaving the orchestra — I don’t know how I had the nerve! He smiled and said, ‘Well you never know — maybe I should try it out on my own.’ I wonder what ever happened to him!?”

“The war was going on, money was short, and my parents couldn’t afford to send me to college so when I graduated high school in 1944 I used the skills I had learned in typing and shorthand classes and went to work as a secretary for the Gates Rubber Company that made hoses, etc. Meanwhile, in my leisure time I joined an all-female concert group — The Phoenix Choir. The Director was Marie Meurer who became my friend and gave me voice lessons. A couple of years later when she went on a week’s course at the Fred Waring Music Workshop at a retreat in the Pocono Mountains she asked me to go with her.”

In the early 50s Fred Waring had a live television show on CBS every Sunday night at 9pm that featured a Glee Club and Orchestra and at the end of the week of classes and tuition he asked Joyce to come to New York for an audition. “I didn’t think he was serious and returned to Baltimore. Then a week or so later my mother called me at work and said that the Fred Waring Show had phoned and wanted me to go to New York and audition. I caught a train, had a great audition and got a job with Fred’s Glee Club. I was twenty-four years old, obsessed with singing and a deep love of music, and so this was a miracle to me. I was very, very lucky.” Joyce appeared on the show virtually every week for the next four years, accompanying many television stars of the day.

“Fred was very particular, everything had to be very precise. The Glee Club had a beautiful sound and as Fred Waring and The Pennsylvanians we made many albums and toured all over the country in between seasons on television. Mostly we were on a bus but to get to California we had a private plane and we performed in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.”

The show was cancelled in 1954 but not before they had performed at the Presidential Inauguration Ball for President Eisenhower in 1952, an act they were to repeat at the beginning of the President’s second term in 1956, when she was called back to rejoin the group specially for the event (she had left the Club when the show had been cancelled). “Once the show was taken off the air — as all shows are eventually — I realized that staying with Fred would mean endless tours and I didn’t want to be on a bus for the rest of my singing career. It could be very tiring and so I left.”

She spent a year or so appearing in choruses on vari­ous live T.V. shows produced by Max Liebman and then joined a female singing group called the De Marco Sisters — “three very highly strung Italian sisters and me with a dark rinse in my hair — a Dutch girl trying to look Italian.” The sisters were constantly bickering so Joyce moved on after about twelve months.

In early 1957, she joined the Ray Charles Singers (“not that Ray Charles — he came later”) and they were signed to be the regular singing group on the Perry Como Show. It was a very popular show and she appeared live on Saturday night television for three years. “He was a very nice man and had such a beautiful voice. I’d admired him for so long, even though Frank was my favorite, and there I was standing right next to him!” The show was of the variety-type very popular at that time with singers, dancers, comedians, jugglers, acrobats, opera singers, all kinds of entertainers, but when new sponsors took over in late 1959 they wanted a new look and all the singers were let go. “It was all about ratings. If the heads of the studio saw the numbers going down they would insist on drastic changes or simply cancel the show.”

As happens so often in the entertainment business apparently, job opportunity rumors were constantly making the rounds and Joyce heard through the grapevine that The Garry Moore Show was looking for singers. She made a phone call and got a job. She was to appear on that program from 1959 to 1964 and sang with many stars of the period such as Nat King Cole, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, and Robert Goulet, and appeared in musical sketches with the likes of the legendary Jack Benny and a young Bob Newhart. “What a marvelous time we had — it was a very sad day when the show was cancelled.”

During Joyce’s 15 years in New York City she had a wonderful time. “I loved New York at that time — everything was there.” She had many suitors and had boyfriends but singing remained her first love and she remained the single career girl. “When not at work on the weekly show, as a freelance singer I would often receive calls from various artist’s agents to ask if I could be at such-and-such a studio, say Colombia Records, from 7pm to 10pm to record a record. That is how I am on the Ray Charles recording of “Georgia On My Mind,” Frankie Avalon’s “Venus,” and many of Perry Como’s recordings of the sixties.

“In show business so often it’s all about timing. I had been out of work, sort of, for nearly a year when a friend told me that singers were needed for The Danny Kaye Show that was based in Los Angeles. Television was moving its business out west and there was not much work in New York so I thought it over for a few days before packing my bags, including sheets and silverware for some reason, and off I went to California. It was 1965 and I’ve been here ever since.”

She toured with Danny Kaye and over the next few years appeared in the singing and dancing choruses on several television programs such as The Dinah Shore Show, The Jim Neighbors Show, The Henry Mancini Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Joey Bishop Show, and in the singing group, The Skylarks, on The Jerry Lewis Show — “talk about a crazy guy!”

Then came another call. Wally Weschler, husband of Patty Andrews, youngest of The Andrews Sisters, wondered if she could come to their house and sing with Patty and sister Maxine. Joyce had met the sisters in Tahoe when she had been on tour with Jim Neighbors and also once when they had appeared on the Perry Como Show. “Apparently I sounded like the other sister, Laverne, who wasn’t there. It was strange. Nothing was said about her absence. Nobody knew she was ill at the time with cancer. They wanted it to be kept quiet. Shortly after we went to Laverne’s house and she appeared as we sat in the living room. I knew she was dying as soon as I saw her — my father died of cancer and I just knew. I was confused. Real fans of the Andrews Sisters would know I wasn’t Laverne but I went along with it and for the next couple of years I made appearances at many clubs and venues as the third member of the group. I just did my job, sang their songs, although I never recorded any records with them. I was in the group for two years and the highlight was probably when we appeared in Copenhagen, Denmark at the famous Tivoli Gardens — a beautiful place.”

By 1968 rock and roll was clearly here to stay and the style of music Joyce was interested in singing was no longer popular. She had remained friends with one of the singers from the Glee Club, Bob Wright, from her days on the Fred Waring Show in the early fifties and he was now the Associate Producer of the Carol Burnett Show. He needed an assistant and so she accepted his offer of work at CBS. “Nothing was happening in my singing world. I had to pay the rent and I wasn’t going to sing rock and roll, although even then I occasionally was asked to sing in the chorus on the show for any of its pre-recorded parts. I knew many of the people on that show from our days together on The Garry Moore Show and we all got along very well — Carol, the shows producer Joe Hamilton who was Carol’s husband, Harvey Korman, Vicky Lawrence, and of course. Tim Conway. Those were wonderful times.”

On October 3rd, 1971, while she was in her office in Studio 33 at CBS Television City in Hollywood, a dash­ing and handsome man introduced himself. He was doing the sound on the show, as he did on many CBS shows of the time, and she was quite taken by him. He was equally as taken with her, so much so that in 1973, in Van Nuys, California they were married — the fellow’s name was Ross Murray and they’ve been happily togeth­er ever since. Certainly unusual at the time was the fact that she did not want to move in with him. She wanted to stay at the house she had bought in Sherman Oaks and asked Ross to leave his place in Marina Del Ray and move into her house. “I told him I’d never been married before and would feel far more comfortable if he came to my house. He agreed and it worked out very well.”

They worked on the Burnett show for a few years until the late seventies but knew they didn’t want to live in the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles when they retired. They both wanted to live in the countryside somewhere. A friend of Ross had bought property in Elk and invited them up to look at the area. “When we had time off from the show we came up here and fell in love with the area. We were just gaga with the area’s beauty. Mike Shapiro showed us four or five properties including this one. In 1979 we bought this forty acres, although we only really wanted a couple, and moved up in 1980, living in the garage as the house that Ross had designed was being built. Bill and Nancy Charles were our neighbors and they were very welcoming; very kind and helpful.”

Over the next few years they got to know many Valley people, thanks in part to Joyce joining the Independent Career Women (ICW) and Ross becoming a member of the Chamber of Commerce. “I love the calmness and scenery of the Valley. The people are so nice too. There’s nothing I don’t like about our life here. We go to many of the Valley’s community events and particularly like the Variety Show — as you might expect.”

I then asked Joyce for her responses to various key topics of conversation in the Valley.

The Wineries? “Well, we love having them here and we take our friends out on wine tours when they visit. To have Diane Feinstein mention Anderson Valley wines at the Inauguration the other day was quite something.”

The local public radio station, KZYX&Z? “I’m all for it as my husband has his five minute show on the air every Wednesday. I think the station does a good job.”

The AVA? “It’s difficult to comment as we no longer subscribe to it and haven’t done so for years. We used to always get it but it became meaner and meaner. I hear that it’s changed for the better so perhaps we’ll start getting it once again.”

The modernization of the Valley? “I don’t think it’s bad at this point but I hope it doesn’t change too much. I want it to stay as rural as possible.”

I then asked Joyce whom she would vote for as Mayor of the Valley if such a position were to exist. “Well, perhaps Kirk Wilder would be a good choice. He’s smart and knows his way around.”

And if you were Mayor, Joyce? “I wouldn’t want to have such a position; too much responsibility at my time of life.”

To end the interview, I posed the usual few questions to Joyce from a list originally devised by French Interviewer and Culture “Expert,” Bernard Pivot, fea­tured on television’s “Inside the Actors Studio with James Lipton.”

What is your favorite word or phrase? “Be happy.”

What is your least favorite word or phrase? “Drop dead.”

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? “Beautiful music — anything from Sinatra to Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto — all kinds of music inspire me.”

What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotion­ally? “Nasty people speaking ill of others.”

What sound or noise do you love? “Choral singing.”

What sound or noise do you hate? “A jackhammer pounding — something we heard a lot in Los Angeles it seemed.”

What is your favorite curse word or phrase? “I don’t curse”

What is your favorite hobby? “I love to read all sorts of things. Read, read, read. It’s strange perhaps but one thing I love to read are cookery books and to study recipes.”

What profession other than your own would you like to have attempted? “To work at an art gallery. To be the person that displays the art and tells people about it.”

What profession would you not like to do? “Accountant.”

Do you have any words to live by? “I suppose it would be to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.”

Finally, if Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? “Hello, Joyce. Welcome.”

AT LAST AN OPTION — two of them — to entrenched County Schools superintendent, Paul Tichinin. Kathy Wylie and Warren Galletti have signed up to run against Tichinin, among the highest paid, least worked, of Mendocino County's public bureaucrats. Tichinin is best known for accusing a union rep of racism for characterizing proposed pay raises as “niggardly.” Oddly, or not so oddly given the standards of public ed, Tichinin's lawyers, also paid out of public ed funds, signed off on the “niggardly” letter, which was also signed by every independent school administrator in the County. The whole affair was both a spectacular demonstration of ignorance and shameless ass kissing, and more evidence that Mendocino County's public schools are run by cretins.

TICHININ goes back to the days of Lou Delsol when the Superintendent's office consisted of Delsol and a small cadre of associates modestly housed on Low Gap Road where County offices sit today. As money flowed from Sacramento and the federal government for nebulous (and failed) educational strategies rather than directly to the individual school districts of the County, the County Office of Education grew ever larger by taking a big whack of the money for themselves on the pretext of “administration.” Soon the apparatus, now consisting of a couple of hundred people, moved into quarters at Talmage, re-done at huge public expense out of an old dairy at what was once part of the State Hospital. Very few County residents outside the educational community, which is of course quite large when you consider how many people are employed in it County-wide, have the faintest idea that the County Office of Education exists, let alone know what it does with the over $36 million annually flowing through the office.

THERE WAS A PERIOD of scandal in the middle 1980s revealed by Boonville's beloved community newspaper during which two of Tichinin's colleagues went to jail, another unseated from the superintendent's job.

WARREN GALLETTI is best known as the long-time basketball coach at Point Arena High School. He also served as high school principal. Galletti's contract was not renewed and he moved over to a job with the Ukiah School District.

MS. WYLIE tried to run against Tichinin in 2010 but apparently wasn't fully credentialed. (Edu-credentials! Don't get me started. But let's say anyone who can afford to pay for the qualifying classes and then sit through them all, eventually emerges with one.)

In 2009 when the MCOE Board was about to vote on their budget, Ms. Wylie singled out management costs as comprising of 44% of the overall personnel costs at the office. “This comes to light after the union and management agreed to five furlough days for classified and certificated staff,” said Ms. Wylie, adding, “While the union executives understand that 80% of the budget is comprised of personnel costs, I wish to remind the school board that the union has foregone cost-of-living raises for the past two years and endured successive annual 8% and 7.8% increases to employee health insurance premiums, thereby squeezing those at the bottom of the salary schedules the hardest. The union is quite aware that Ed Code section 42120 makes it illegal for the board to neglect or refuse the budget. But there is still time to direct the superintendent back to the business office with a request to reduce management overhead, and keep the budget cuts as far away from the classroom as possible.”

MS. WYLIE now represents Albion on the Mendocino School Board, having been appointed to the board in November. She also is the director of the Three Rivers Charter School located on the Fort Bragg campus of the imperiled Fort Bragg branch of the College of the Redwoods.

(From the current ThreeRivers Charter School website. It appears that the Charter School is operating in a vacant building at College of the Redwoods)

Katharine Wylie - Director (Principal) (of the Three Rivers Charter School in Fort Bragg)

“Katharine's educational experience includes over a decade of experience as a classroom teacher at Mendocino High School, five years as the elected President of the Mendocino County Federation of School Employees union, a degree in Strategic Business Planning and Management, and the near-completion of a Master of Science degree in 4-12 Special Education. She also possess State of California School Administrative services credential. She served on the leadership and WASC teams at Mendocino High School as well as a traveling WASC team, and established a county-wide leadership team for technology instructors. Katharine worked on a new charter-school proposal for an online credit-recovery program for the students in Mendocino County, and most recently she completed her Master's Degree in Special Education. She has become intimately involved with the school budgetary, legal, administrative and personnel matters and procedures in her capacity as union President. She also served on the bargaining team, negotiating successor contracts on behalf of credentialed and classified employees countywide, for the past seven years. Katharine is very familiar with course-content curriculum standards for Math, Science, English, Social Studies and Career and Technical education. She regularly reviews the common core standards, and has recently served on statewide committees to adopt Career and Technical education standards for the Graphics/Animation and Business industry sectors. She has also completed the required training to provide services to English learners in specially designed content instruction delivered in English. Katharine has always endeavored to maintain and improve her professional competence by all available means, including subscription to and reading of appropriate educational and legal periodicals and membership in appropriate professional associations and the continued quest for higher education through the Master’s program. She has a demonstrated ability to establish and maintain positive community, staff and Board relations and has the capacity to serve as liaison to the Board with respect to all matters of employer-employee relations and make recommendations to the Board concerning those matters. She believes that the school’s leader(s) must recommend District goals and objectives to the Board and establish and maintain a school-wide culture of learning and respect, which supports students and staff as well as the larger school community.”

AS FRANK HARTZELL points out in his story on Monday's KZYX board meeting for the Fort Bragg Advocate News, John Sakowicz's fellow board members whined long and loud about him without citing much of anything in the way of specifics. Sako's FCC complaint was and is entirely justified solely on his being denied access to the station's financial records, and he's the treasurer! A reputable organization doesn't break out the weeping and wailing if they're on the up and up. Good for Sako, we say.

KZYX CANDIDATES NIGHT NOTES

assembled by Mark Scaramella

Very high level of abstraction from all candidates. Process, committees, reviews, evaluations, input, membership involvement, outreach, etc. But none of them really seemed to know what they were talking about, at least as the blah-blah might apply to Public Radio, Mendocino County.

Question: What do you do for a living?

None of them work for a living, all but two have never worked for a living. Two of them worked for a living decades ago. Lambert was once a financial somethingyst in LA before re-locating to Willits but hasn't done anything in years other than being the KZYX news guy for a year and a half as he delivered a few minutes of weather reports and press releases. Courtney makes jewelry, but “it’s not a living.”

Melcher is a writer of some kind who recently moved here from Vermont and doesn’t know much about KZYX history. Kovner does something in the medical marijuana area. Collins is a “journalist” and “KZYX archivist.” McKenty helps his wife with an organic garden. Futcher is a writer.

Futcher and Courtney expressed absolute devotion to KZYX's stumbling management as if they were under some kind of mind-control. “I support management 100%.” Etc. Ms. Courtney said Mr. Coate has been subjected to “vicious attacks,” a phrase Ms. Courtney used repeatedly. Once adding, “I’m afraid he might quit!”

When asked about John Sakowicz, the hardcore Coate-ists (Futcher, Courtney) said he was trying to destroy “our” station. The above-it-all-middle-of-the-road-extremists (Melcher, Lambert) said Sako might have had some legit beefs but he hadn't apparently basted them in Mendo Blather and group exchanges of huggie bears. Sako's complaint to the FCC was, gosh and golly, totally total.

The Change-ists (McKenty, Kovner, Collins) distanced themselves from Sako, saying some of his complaints were valid and should be explored in a more “appropriate” manner. But nobody even tried to address the specifics of what Sako actually said. Kovner admitted she had no idea what Sako’s complaints were, never saw them, never read them, had no opinion of them.

They all seem to want some kind of return to Esposito-style “community news,” a few wanted the aimless and infrequent “open lines” show back on the air, but nobody even mentioned increasing local public affairs programming hours.

Obviously, the Coate-ists — Futcher, Courtney, Lambert — will be elected (the worst of them, Courtney, is running unopposed) and KZYX will continue to be irrelevant to most of Mendocino County.

PS: The Board member who replaced McKenty as programmers’ rep is a part-time Santa Rosa Junior College “philosophy” instructor named Stuart Campbell. On his KZYX webpage for his entirely non-Mendo big-think show “Consider This,” Campbell describes himself: “I am committed to promoting critical living, by which I mean engaged, discerning and creative living that fulfills life. I am an educator, having taught courses in comparative religion, critical reasoning, introduction to philosophy, ethics, & communication.” I.e., a perfect KZYX board member.

According to many of his students in Santa Rosa —

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=511833

— he has another important KZYX board qualification: He’s really, really boring.

But don’t take our word for it. Here’s the opening of Campbell’s Feb. 14, 2014 program:

PPS. Sako’s most intense critic is Board member Robert Page. According to KZYX’s listing of Board members Page is: “Managing partner at the Airport Health Club in Santa Rosa.” I.e., another perfect KZYX board member who doesn't know anything about the validity of the complaints about station management and doesn't want to hear them, let alone intelligently address them. Nobody wondered how two Board members from Sonoma County with no apparent roots or interest in Mendocino County managed to somehow get on the Board of Mendocino Public Radio.

We recommend No Votes on the whole tedious bunch.

FORMER FIFTH DISTRICT SUPERVISOR JOE SCARAMELLA on the conditions surrounding his first election to the Board in 1952:

“In 1952 when I came onto the board there was an operation the Ukiah Daily Journal called a ‘meat axe operation.’ Four incumbent supervisors were wiped out. [One of whom, the man Scaramella replaced, had died. — ms] The only reason the other fella was left was because his term wasn't up. I became part of a new wave of Supervisors in a special election that year. The other three were Joe Hartley from Hopland who succeeded Ed Haehl. There was Harold Bainbridge, who succeeded a drunk, pardon the expression, from Fort Bragg. Then from Ukiah, Paul Poulos defeated Guy Redwine, also a man who was inclined to tilt the bottle. So that was the four. The first thing I did was prepare a set of rules so that the Board could operate with some degree of responsibility. So we adopted the first set of rules. Because I was responsible for the rules and was more or less familiar with them, I often prevailed because I knew the rules. But I never abused it. We met once a month in the County Courthouse. With a huge salary by the way. We were getting $200 a month.

“In line with my nature I tend to be critical. I suppose some would perhaps say revolutionary. I thought reform was a part of the job that needed to be done. One of the things that motivated me was that I wanted to prove these people wrong — the people who had me sized up wrong who were calling me a ‘troublemaker.’

“In 1952 it was a fluke that I was elected. After the first two years of the term, people recognized that I wasn't the pain in the butt that they figured I was going to be. Mr. Ornbaun's friends got Jim to run against me again in 1954. They still opposed me. The first time, in the 1952 special election, I defeated him narrowly. The second time, in 1954, I defeated him handsomely. Then in 1958 I had no opposition. That was the only free ride I ever had. In 1962 my friend Ted Galetti ran against me and again in 1966. Some people still thought I was a troublemaker and wanted to get me out of office. There will always be people who are unhappy with you for one reason or another, sometimes more than unhappy. Oh yes, and how. This is a small community. There were family relationships and business relationships. All of those played a part in it. In 1962, why, hell, I beat Ted Galetti damn near two to one. But after that the Fifth district was enlarged and went up damn near to Fort Bragg, up to Highway 20 and Ted had a lot of friends and relatives up there. In 1996, hell — I carried Mendocino by only three or four votes, it turned out. When the votes were being counted, my wife and I were over in Ukiah and things were going badly. She said, ‘Let's go home. You've had it.’ I said, ‘Let's wait a minute.’ Pretty soon the lady came out and she said, ‘Well, you may find this hard to believe, but the south coast came in and you made it.’ The south coast never cared much for Ted Galetti ever since he was on the high school board here [in Point Arena]. For some reason he offended somebody. Anyway, when that vote came in, instead of trailing by a few, I was leading by about 40, so that was the last time I defeated him — but narrowly. So when I went to the supervisors convention they used to refer to me as ‘Landslide Joe’ because I beat him by so few votes.”

ON FEBRUARY 27th at about 8:20am Ukiah Police responded to a residence in the 200 block of Irvington Drive for a stolen vehicle. Officers learned the owner had left the vehicle running to warm it up, and from their house the owner saw the suspect enter and leave in their vehicle. While officers were taking the report, they learned a Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputy had located the vehicle in Hopland, and had detained the driver.

The vehicle owner was eventually taken to the scene and identified the suspect, 27 year old William Francis McKnight of Elko, Nevada, as the subject seen stealing the vehicle. Officers learned McKnight became separated the night prior from two other subjects from Elko, who had initially been identified as suspects in a robbery and eventually arrested for possessing stolen property by Ukiah Police. McKnight claimed he wandered the streets for several hours then found the vehicle running, and stole it intending to return to Elko. McKnight also had a warrant for his arrest from Elko for violating probation, and was arrested for that warrant and for stealing the vehicle.

ON MARCH 2nd at about 8:10 PM Ukiah Police responded to the lobby of the Ukiah Police Department, at 300 Seminary Avenue, for a subject requesting to speak to an officer. Officers spoke with 30 year old Lee Dale Crockett, of Rancho Cordova, who had been drinking heavily, and who tried to convey to the officer an issue he claimed he was having with his ex-wife, who also lived out of the area. Crockett was unable to communicate sensibly, and was arrested for public intoxication.

SAD BUT TRUE

A READER WRITES: I only know about Eyster's dope procedures and profits from what I read in your paper, but to me there is larger story behind this bare breasted activist Mama with her — you got to love it — illegal, pharmaceutical business. I know the kid (age 19) arrested with her; a sweet boy and recent graduate of Mendo High School. Now what? He's got a record for the rest of his life? This county is so destructive to young men. You've seen it as much as I have. Glaser will undoubtedly turn her arrest into some grand, breast-baring campaign for the legalization of marijuana, instead of what it really was: an organized, criminal enterprise in an attempt to get rich. Look at Hamburg's son; look at the young men I've seen grow up on the Coast who moved on to the mind-numbing dead end job of growing pot, the so-called people's drug. A significant portion of young, Mendocino males have gone to hell following these hypocritical, pied pipers of liberal-land. Then there are the ones who are dead. The next fool who says to me “just legalize it” as a way of turning their back on the dark consequences marijuana cultivation has reeked on the young of this county, the next fool who tells me that, is a fool who can go to fucking hell. And, as good a guy as he is, I include Pinches in my opinion. I don't care what it is. If it's illegal, the cops are waiting; the courts are waiting, the state and national government are waiting, and the rest of your ruined life is waiting. Sorry, but this one really pisses me off.