Mendocino County Today: Monday, September 1, 2014

• Role Models
• Local Sports
• Lodge Fire
• Catch of the Day
• Deep Questions
• Coffee Plus
• Grand Refuge
• Cannabis Market
• She Left
• Police v Transients
• Passenger Pigeons
• Satanic Mill
• Puddle Folsom
• Hungry Deer
• Library Grant
• Indian Hike

JOCK NOTES: A 49er, Ray McDonald, defensive lineman, has been arrested for domestic violence and held for a few hours on bail of $25,000. The 49ers lead the NFL in after-hours arrests, most of them for drunk driving and other varieties of being from strapped backgrounds but suddenly young and rich in a uniquely decadent context — unique to high level athletics and the overall context of drug and sex-saturated America, 2014. Don't tell me you wouldn't have succumbed if you'd made a million bucks as a 21-year-old.

McDONALD was called in at 2:15am, which means he probably hadn't been playing scrabble. Since the Ray Rice debacle, Coach Harbaugh is on the record as saying something like, "I'm done with anyone who puts hands on a woman." Rice was videotaped knocking out his fiance in an elevator. The NFL suspended Rice for two games and his fiance married him.

THE WACKY NOTION that big time sports figures are role models is almost as wacky as the contemporary notion of role models. It used to be assumed that role models began with parents and branched out into community fixtures like teachers and random figures who seemed to have it together. There's a famous story about Babe Ruth, naked, being chased by a naked woman waving a butcher knife through the press car of a train, circa 1927. A sportswriter says, "Well, boys, there's another story we can't write." Up through the 1960s, the unseemly behavior of lofty public figures didn't get into print. Now it does, and there isn't a twelve-year-old in the country who doesn't know that their "role models" are often not what they seem.

WHEN THE GAME STANDS TALL is a hagiographic movie about the former football coach at De LaSalle High School in San Francisco Concord. Haven't seen it yet but I'm already bored because I don't think these Catholic high school sports powerhouses are interesting. High school sports are fun and interesting when they involve the kids from a specific town or neighborhood of that town who win big at the state level. The Catholic schools recruit athletes, especially football players, which gives them a huge advantage over the public schools they play. Cardinal Newman of Santa Rosa is a big power on the Northcoast; their recruiting reach is long, clear into Boonville for Jacob Gowan, a lineman who went on to play at Stanford. And Cardinal Newman almost always wins area championships and has been to the state championships a couple of times. The most exciting high school sports ever in this area was when Cloverdale not only got into the state basketball championships a couple of times, they won it, and they did it with kids strictly from Cloverdale.

LODGE COMPLEX FIRE UPDATE [8pm, Aug 31]: total number of acres unchanged at 12,535; now 97% contained; total personnel down to 26 (1 fire engine, 2 crews). "Current Situation: Crews continue mopping up and looking for hot spots within the containment lines; steep terrain hampers access and control efforts. Interior portions of the fire will continue to burn and may produce smoke for an extended period of time in the Laytonville & South Leggett area." Estimated cost: $41.3 million.

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 31, 2014

EDUARDO ALVAREZ, Ukiah. Theft of or driving of a stolen vehicle, receiving stolen

SUMALEE FOLGER, Ukiah. Theft of or driving of a stolen vehicle, receiving stolen property, burglary, probation revoked.

JAI KAMKE, Ukiah. Possession of toluene or similar substance with intent to inhale and become intoxicated.

NOEY JOHNSON, Ukiah. Dirk or dagger, probation violation.

TRAVIS MARESH, Ukiah. Possession of drug injection device, driving without a valid license.

JOSEPH MARTIN, Ukiah. Probation revoked.

TIMOTHY McCALL, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

EFREN MORA, Hopland. Misdemeanor domestic violence.

PHILIP J. VALLEY, JR., Redwood Valley. DUI.

PHILIP J. VALLEY, SR., Ukiah. DUI (drugs and alcohol).

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT is on a roll — lame headlines on lamer stories for five years. Today? "Want to own a B&B in Wine Country?" No, and here's the paper's resident deep thinker with the next question. Take it away, Pete Golis: "Will Facebook make us better citizens?" No, it won't, Pete, but Gullickson will certainly friend you.

FRONTIERS OF FREE ENTERPRISE: The owner of bikini coffee stands in, Everett, Washington state has banked more than $2 million in just three years because her baristas were also selling sex acts, according to local prosecutors.

COMMENT OF THE DAY: I’ve thought about all the grandparents who are their grandchildren’s caregivers, some only during the day, and others with grandchildren living with them. For many, this is the only option. There could be tragic reasons why — war, any variation of war, any conflict, like domestic abuse. Or illness, death from disease, drug addiction. Here, see this — 7 million: the number of grandparents whose grandchildren lived with them in 2010. And that’s just in the U.S. — Missy Beattie

A VISIT TO MENDOCINO’S MARIJUANA FARMERS’ MARKET

by Emily Hobelmann

On Saturday I went down to Area 101 for the first-ever Healing Harvest Farms medical cannabis farmers’ market. We’re on the verge of September, and it was a warm, breezy, dry day out there. Perfect day to experience some bounty.

Area 101 is that colorful collection of buildings on the east side of the 101 freeway, about 10 miles north of Laytonville. There’s that billboard that says “Welcome to Area 101,” the one with the flying saucer. And the buildings are painted with oms and eyes and Ganesh-like figures. That’s what I’m talking about.

It’s actually a sweet venue. There is a building with a full kitchen, nice bathrooms and lots of cute little zen nooks and crannies all over the place. There are well-maintained grassy areas, there’s a stage and a teepee. The Emerald Cup crew is based there.

The farmers’ market was back away from the freeway, in a fenced off area. Entry requirements were an ID and a valid medical marijuana recommendation. You had to join the Healing Harvest Farm medical marijuana collective to enter the market area too.

On the inside, cannabis farmers shared their products with attendees. You could find dabs, soil amendments, clones, seeds, glass, weed flowers, weed salves, tinctures, edibles and a bunch of local weed peeps.

One group in particular — the Happy Day Farms people out of Mendocino — had an impressive spread with hella produce and cannabis too. I saw it with my own eyes. Cannabis right there on the table, next to the other fruits and flowers, no big deal.

Everything was fine. Cannabis doesn’t bite. It may give you a rash, paranoia or a wicked case of the munchies, depending on how you interact with it. But no adult human should be denied access to it. People shouldn’t have to sneak around to get cannabis. Drop the taboo. “Add it up. It all spells duh.” (That line’s from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’m a fan.)

So there was some produce there, but the other vendors mostly just kept it to the niche cannabis products. Although, there was another produce vendor and BBQ for sale outside the restricted area.

The friendly people at the Gage Green Group showed off big jars of weed flowers. And the 3rd Gen Family showed off their bomb diggy hash. The Bud Sisters had samples of their salve. The Mendocino Cannabis Policy Council had informative brochures.

All told, I saw squash and apples and pears and peppers and world-class cannabis flowers. I saw leeks and tomatoes, peaches and dab rigs. I saw picked beans and marijuana clones, carrots and cold water hash.

There was the cannabis, all up in this sort of farmers’ market setting. But this is still a far cry from something like, say, the Arcata Farmers’ Market, where people can come and go as they please (but you can’t smoke anything). This event required paperwork and ID (and you could smoke of the ganja).

I did not see piles of pounds nor did I see piles of cash. In fact, I don’t recall money being exchanged at all. And this was not an environment where people were buying wholesale. It was more like a vendors fair with some fresh produce thrown up in the mix.

Overall, the vibe at Area 101 is laid back, although I did see some bro trying to start a brawl with another guy twice his size in the parking area. Fisticuffs averted. At least while I was still there. The event ran all day, from 2-10 p.m. I bailed at about 5 p.m.

I thought the coolest thing was seeing cannabis treated as another agricultural product at the Happy Day Farms table. Total highlight. That definitely wouldn’t fly at the Arcata Farmers’ Market though. You can bring produce to the cannabis events, but you can’t bring cannabis to the longstanding produce events. At least not yet.

But I do look forward to more cannabis farmers’ markets, even if they have to be restricted access like this (the whole 215 thing). Eventually, Humboldt or Mendo could become home to the cannabis version of the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle.

You know, maybe once a month, in a big spot, like Francheschi Hall at Redwood Acres in Eureka. Just farmers with pounds and pounds, and buyers with cash, ready to go. A big, open market atmosphere. Go buy an 1/8th, an ounce or five pounds kinda thing. Grab a gram of shatter or a whole sheet of it.

Humboldt would be a good place for this.

* * *

There was a meeting at the Laytonville Garden Club Sunday from 4-6 pm about the rumor (or not-rumor) that private military company folks are raiding private marijuana gardens in Mendo. I heard that Sheriff Allman will be there to address community concerns. Kerry Reynolds from KMUD news is going to cover the action. Stay tuned to KMUD for her reporting. (The AVA expects to have coverage soon as well.)

(Courtesy, LostCoastOutpost.com.)

— James Wright

HUMBOLDT CO. SHERIFF’S DEPUTY CONFRONTED by Group of Angry Transients in Garberville, 911 Call Needed to Bring the Officer Assistance

by Kym Kemp

On Tuesday, August 26, a Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputy and a large number of transients became embroiled in a loud and hostile altercation that made several citizens fear for the officer’s safety. 911 was called to bring him assistance.

Southern Humboldt is a community increasingly divided about the large population of transients who camp near towns and frequent the streets. Some residents and business owners, citing anti-social behavior on the part of the homeless, have been trying to keep large groups of the homeless from congregating in clumps on the sidewalks and near the shops. According to Lt. Steve Knight of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, Ray’s Food Place in Garberville has “an ongoing request to move people who loiter in their lot.”

In the late afternoon on Tuesday, a sheriff’s deputy, seeing a number of men with what he described as large backpacks and a possible open container of alcohol on Ray’s Food Place’s property, requested they move along. According to Knight, some of the men refused.

One, Knight said, “became agitated and did not do what he was told.” According to Knight, the officer detained that man in handcuffs. Then he detained another.

One person who provided the photo (see right) and preferred to be anonymous wrote, “[The] guy in [the] white hat didn’t speak English and got whooped by the cop…, so did another that yelled police brutality.”

According to Knight, eight to ten other transients “started yelling, became hostile and refused to back up.”

“Passing motorists and pedestrians, several citizens got involved and came to the officer’s aid,” said Knight.

One of those who came to help the officer is Garberville firefighter, Alfred Williams.

Williams described what he saw to the Lost Coast Outpost. “We were just clearing a smoke check at the transient camp on Sprowel Creek Rd.” Williams said he heard “the officer call for back up code 3 … [I] saw him in front of Ray’s with 20+ [transients] yelling, photographing and videoing him.” Williams continued to describe the scene:

When l stopped there were 2 males detained and [the officer] was taking down a male he had directed multiple times to leave. I asked if he needed any assistance and he told me to watch one male who wasn’t detained and to try to keep the public at a safe distance until CHP arrived to assist.

People were yelling that he can’t do that to people and were mad at him taking the guy down but l personally didn’t see the officer do anything wrong or excessive.

Williams said that he saw three CHP units arrive to assist the beleaguered deputy. Later, he believes, another sheriff’s vehicle arrived.

Sai McCrady, who works nearby, explained that when he arrived around 5:30 p.m. reinforcements for the officer had arrived. He said he saw multiple law enforcement on the scene. According to McCrady, there were many “police vehicles, mostly cruisers with at least one truck.” He described the scene looking like the “OK Corral standoff between a small force of Police and Transients.”

Then, McCrady said that he also saw “many transients either being questioned or bystanding.”

According to Williams, the tense standoff calmed down after the officer explained “his actions to some of the people complaining and l think they then understood his actions, or at least saw his point of view.”

Lt. Knight stated, “People were detained, but there were no arrests.”

(Courtesy, LostCoastOutpost.com.)

A READER WRITES: Passenger Pigeons — As this piece points out, tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the death of the last passenger pigeon. It and/or the essay by Aldo Leopold, linked in the last paragraph, might fit on Mendocino County Today.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/25611-a-century-of-extinction

SATANIC MILL

by Robert Southey

1802 / Manchester — Mr. ___ ___ remarked that nothing could be so beneficial to a country as manufactures. “You see these children, sir,” said he. “In most parts of England, poor children are a burden to their parents and to the parish; here the parish, which would else have to support them, is rid of all expense; they get their bread almost as soon as they can run about, and by the time they are seven or eight years old bring in money. There is no idleness among us — they come at five in the morning; we allow them half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner; they leave work at six and another set relieves them for the night; the wheels never stand still.”

I was looking while he spoke at the unnatural dexterity with which the fingers of these little creatures were playing in the machinery, half-giddy myself with the noise and the endless motion: and when he told me there was no rest in these walls, day or night, I thought that if Dante had peopled one of his hells with children, here was a scene worthy to have supplied him with new images of torment.

“These children, then,” said I, “have no time to receive instruction.” “That, sir,” he replied, “is the evil which we have found. Girls are employed here from the age you see them till they marry, and then they know nothing about domestic work, not even how to mend a stocking or boil a potato. But we are remedying this now and send the children to school for an hour after they have done work.” I asked if so much confinement did not injure their health. “No,” he replied, “they are as healthy as any children in the world could be. To be sure, many of them as they grew up went off in consumptions, but consumptions was the disease of the English.” I ventured to inquire afterward concerning the morals of the people who were trained up in this monstrous manner and found what was to be expected—that in consequence of herding together such numbers of both sexes, who are utterly uninstructed in the commonest principles of religion and morality, they were as debauched and profligate as human beings under the influence of such circumstances must inevitably be: the men drunken, the women dissolute—that however high the wages they earned, they were too improvident ever to lay by for a time of need—and that, though the parish was not at the expense of maintaining them when children, it had to provide for them in diseases induced by their mode of life and in premature debility and old age.

“We are well-off for hands in Manchester,” said Mr. ——. “Manufactures are favorable to population, the poor are not afraid of having a family here; the parishes therefore have always plenty to apprentice, and we take them as fast as they can supply us. In new manufacturing towns they find it difficult to get a supply. Their only method is to send people round the country to get children from their parents. Women usually undertake this business; they promise the parents to provide for the children; one party is glad to be eased of a burden, and it answers well to the other to find the young ones in food, lodging, and clothes, and receive their wages.” “But if these children should be ill-used!” said I. “Sir,” he replied, “it can never be in the interests of the women to use them ill, nor of the manufacturers to permit it.”

It would have been in vain to argue had I been disposed to it. Mr. —— was a man of humane and kindly nature, who would not himself use anything cruelly, and judged of others by his own feelings. I thought of the cities in Arabian romance, where all the inhabitants were enchanted: here commerce is the queen witch, and I had no talisman strong enough to disenchant those who were daily drinking of the golden cup of her charms.

LAKE FOLSOM, PUDDLE FOLSOM

AN ANDERSON VALLEY READER WRITES: “Mom took some pictures of a Deer and her fawn this morning, about 10. In hard times, which is now, the deer forage in the full light of day and even eat cracked corn. Until the rains come, they are hard pressed to survive. We put corn cobs, immature corn that will not fully make, and corn stalks out for them to eat on at night. Yes, they did find a way last week to CRAWL under the fence wire and ravage my flowers. They favor the taste of Madera geraniums, fuscias, nasturtiums, squash blossoms, snapdragons, potato vines, tomatoes, gladiola stalks, malvia flowers, eggplant, and basil. Oh, of course I have left out some goodies. But, you get the idea of how varied a deer's diet can be — under the right conditions. Like finding a hole at ground level in the fence.

THE MENDOCINO COUNTY LIBRARY, Ukiah Branch is pleased to announce that we are a recipient of a 2014 California Reads Grant.

California Reads (CA Reads) is a grant and resource program of Cal Humanities, conducted in partnership with the California Center for the Book (CCFB). This year’s initiative, War Comes Home, seeks to bring people in communities together to think and talk about what it means to come home from war, and what it is like to be a veteran.

We will be hosting three (3) CA Reads events this year. They are:

Tuesday, September 23, 2014, 6 pm

Book Discussion of “What It Is Like To Go To War” by Karl Marlantes

Tuesday, October 28, 2014, 6 pm
Screening of documentary film, “Ground Operations”

Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 6 pm
Round table discussion about what it is like to be a veteran in Mendocino County. Lead by Dr. Kevin Mack, head of Mental Health services for the VA in Ukiah.

All CA Reads events will be held at the Ukiah Library, 105 N. Main St., in Ukiah.

For more information contact Eliza Wingate, Branch Librarian, at 463-4580.

California Reads is a program of Cal Humanities in partnership with the California Center for the Book. It is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian

(Courtesy, Michael Kisslinger)

PLEASE JOIN SANCTUARY FOREST on Saturday, September 6^th for the Sinkyone Indian Land, Water and Culture hike! The hike will be led by representatives of the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council and will be held in the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park. The Sinkyone Council, founded in 1986, is a nonprofit conservation consortium of 10 federally recognized California Indian Tribes that established the first InterTribal Wilderness area in 1997 on the Lost Coast. Hike leaders will discuss the cultural history of the Sinkyone Indian people and contemporary efforts by the Sinkyone Council and local Tribes to protect and restore their cultural environment, especially along the coast. Please meet at the Sanctuary Forest office in Whitethorn at 10 a.m. Hikers are asked to bring high-clearance, four-wheel drive vehicles to help with car-pooling down to the Needle Rock Visitors Center. This moderate, 2-mile hike will return to the Sanctuary Forest office at 3:30 p.m. Bring a lunch and water and wear sturdy hiking shoes. This is a group excursion, and participants are asked to stay together at all times. The hike is free of charge, though donations are gladly accepted and help Sanctuary Forest offer this program year after year. For questions or clarifications, contact Marisa at marisa@sanctuaryforest.org, or call 986-1087 x 1#. Hope to see you there!