Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Apr 14, 2015

• Mendo TV
• Ab Deaths
• Death Chart
• Angry Nudist
• Cable Pleas
• Timber Tax
• Write Me
• Eduardo Galeano
• Goodbye Judy
• Water Cutback
• Enter Hillary
• Catch of the Day
• Ruination Day
• Human Beings
• Newspaper Pots
• Danby
• Creative Lying

THE FORT BRAGG CITY COUNCIL MET TONIGHT (Monday) 6:00 PM. Most of us can watch from home, thanks to Mendo TV, at

https://city.fortbragg.com/501/Council-Meeting-Live-Stream

THE AB DIVERS WHO PERISHED AT CASPAR COVE

On 04-12-2015 at approximately 3:09 P.M., Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies were dispatched to assist California State Parks Rangers in Caspar for multiple drowning victims. Sheriff’s Deputies arrived and learned that a group of five adult males from out of the area were abalone diving in the southern portion of Caspar Anchorage Bay. After entering the water, three of the men became trapped in the surf of a narrow channel between two rock outcroppings where the divers had entered the ocean water. Witnesses to the incident described the surf as being rough and dangerous for diving conditions with an estimated seven to eight foot swells. A nearby fisherman observed the men in distress and called 911. A joint water rescue operation ensued comprised of personnel from the Mendocino Volunteer Fire Department, California State Parks, United States Coast Guard and Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. During the rescue, two men were recovered from the water by boat and helicopter then brought to the shore of Caspar Beach. Live-saving measures were initiated, but unsuccessful, and both were pronounced dead at the scene. The third diver could not be located and a search continued throughout the day. At approximately 7pm the missing diver was located deceased in a small cove in the same general area. Mendocino Volunteer Fire Department launched a technical rope rescue and recovered the deceased man. A coroner’s investigation into the three deaths is ongoing. All three deceased divers have been identified by Sheriff’s Deputies but the next of kin for one of the divers is still pending. The identities of the divers that can be released at this time are Tae Won Oh (49-year-old male from Dublin, California) and Hyun Kook Shin (49-year-old male from Suwanee, Georgia). The other two surviving divers in the group were uninjured and treated and released at the scene.

MSP'S GRIM STATISTICS FROM THE 'DEADLIEST HARVEST' SEASON

by Paul McCarthy

MendocinoSportsPlus has kept, and updates, a rather grim chart on a wall here.

Since 2007, we've "added" the number of fatalities from abalone diving on an old Press Democrat article.
 According to these stats, we found there have been 152 deaths in the pursuit of abalone since 1987 (28 years). 
Ninety-one of those deaths happened since 2007. That number includes deaths by heart & shark attacks but not those swept out to sea or boating accidents. 
In 2011, four abalone divers died, in 2012 there were only two diving deaths. In 2013, six divers have died - three alone at Fisk Mill Cove off the Sonoma coast with an additional six dying in 2014. 
It took 12 days, but now the coast can claim another three victims. With more surely to come.

PHOTO [above]: The wall chart MSP keeps to update & record abalone diving fatalities on the Mendocino & Sonoma coast. The first paragraph from the Press Democrat article (from April 28, 2007) states: "Four people have died while abalone hunting this month making it the deadliest start to the season in at least 20 years."

(Courtesy, MendocinoSportsPlus)

AND DAN HAMBURG thinks he's got it tough:

http://blog.sfgate.com/matierandross/2015/04/13/supervisor-scott-wiener-gets-stalked-to-work-by-angry-nudist/

UKIAH SURGEON ENTERS NO CONTEST PLEAS IN PRESCRIPTION FRAUD CASE

A former Ukiah surgeon at the last minute on Monday avoided trial by entering no contest pleas in Mendocino County Superior Court to six felony charges of unlawfully prescribing controlled substances.

Brian Marcel Cable, 49, of Redwood Valley, was referred to the adult probation department for a background study and sentencing recommendation. He was ordered to appear at 9 o’clock on the morning of June 5^th in the courtroom of Judge Ann Moorman for pronouncement of sentence. Cable faces sentencing of up to six years and four months in prison. Alternatively, the Court may order Cable to serve up to five years on supervised probation, with a jail sentence of up to 365 days as a term of probation.

The investigation and prosecution of Cable has been for prescription fraud involving hydrocodone, a narcotic pain medication. He entered no contest pleas to writing out prescriptions to people who were not under his care, and securing the drug for his own use. The case was first uncovered in 2013 by Ukiah Valley Medical Center personnel. The medical center in turn tipped Ukiah police, who investigated the case before turning it over to the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office for review and prosecution.

District Attorney David Eyster said Monday that the successful prosecution of Cable was “essential for the protection of the health and well-being of patients in the greater Ukiah Valley.”

Eyster noted that Cable still faces action by the California Medical Board. Since his arrest in July 2013 Cable has not been allowed to practice medicine. The doctor lost his hospital privileges, and was forced to surrender his prescription certificate to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

Since his arrest, Cable has completed an inpatient drug treatment program and is participating in an outpatient treatment and monitoring program, according to his attorney, Keith Faulder. The prosecutor handling the case for the District Attorney is Deputy District Attorney Jon Hopkins.

While Cable entered no contest pleas on Monday, a no contest plea to a felony is identical in all aspects to a guilty plea, save for the words. He agreed to enter no contest pleas to six felony charges in return for dismissal of five counts charged under alternative theories for the same conduct covered by the six felonies.

A co-defendant, Kathryn Lynn Brown, 55, of Potter Valley, also entered a no contest plea on Monday to a misdemeanor charge of filing a fraudulent claim for health care benefits in connection with the Cable case. Brown was sentenced to two days in jail, and placed on two years court probation. Judge Moorman ordered Brown to also perform fifty hours of community service. As a term of probation, Brown is now subject to search on demand of any peace officer.

(District Attorney Press Release)

THE TIMBER TAX-DEAD TIMBER CONNECTION

http://www.masongaffney.org/workpapers/Token_Timber_Taxation_Mendocino_County_2000.pdf

BRIDGE UP, SHERIFF

Dear Editor of the AVA,

During the past year I have had much concern over seeking help from the Mendocino County Sheriff. The Deputies are sadly inappropriate and immature. They lack integrity and empathy. They ooze with discrimination and mockery of the public and their concerns.

They call situations “civil matters” and excuse themselves from taking reports (attempted arson, burglary, property damage, assault and vandalism, all Civil Matters!). They say I call too much or not enough!

But more than this is clear and convincing discrimination towards anyone they feel to be "less than," or easily dismissed for any other reason/excuse. In doing many phone calls to many people over the past several months, I have discovered this to be an epidemic in Mendocino County. Thus I have decided to seek out the stories from the citizens of Mendocino County of their situation. I have asked and been approved to submit a complaint to the FBI and certainly it is your time to bring the light of truth upon our Court's embarrassing failure to have the Sheriff's Department act with the highest of ideals when it comes to the law, due process and equal treatment under the law. Myself, being called a crazy old lady by Your Honor from the bench, and told further that he would not hear my issue or look at my documents in support, as I am a troublemaker annoying others. I have been told that should I write this and seek out letters from others as to their stories, and should I do so, I would literally be besieged, so let’s find out. I want to hear from you on this.

We The People, as this is our Country and our privilege to have Due Process, equal treatment and to not be made fun of and dismissed. I would like to add to this, that I was the Woman of the Year when I had a free legal clinic in Fort Bragg called The Gray Panthers of the Mendocino Coast Legal Center. I served over 7,000 people and their issues over three years, all for free. You might also like to know that I was the organizer of a chapter of the ACLU in Mendocino County and was the Chair for four years. I am a Paralegal and advocate of Seniors, Disabled and Veterans for 40 years, and have never taken a dime for this work. If anyone understands the law where the "rubber-meets-the-road," it is my clients I have heard their stories and shared in their solutions. Now, I want to crunch some numbers on the under served of Mendocino County and how the Sheriff's office is a part of that sad loss. The Sheriff is the bridge to the DA and thus this reporting by their deputies is important to that next step.

If I get one letter or one thousand, I will let you know. Maybe we can be heard and make a difference in our County. Lastly, to my dear Friend Ricky, always loved and remembered for your outstanding contributions to the lives of ordinary people. You were simply THE BEST. To Bruce for giving me this forum, may you always remain the man of high integrity who allows the People to speak out, using your wonderful newspaper.

Linda Leahy, West Sacramento

EDUARDO GALEANO, AUTHOR & JOURNALIST, DEAD AT 74

by Carolyn Kellogg

Eduardo Galeano, the journalist and author who was born in Uruguay and wrote powerfully about the plight of Latin American peoples, died Monday. The 74-year-old had cancer.

Galeano's major works include the 1971 book "The Open Veins of Latin America," which became a surprise 2009 bestseller after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made headlines by giving a copy to President Obama, and the trilogy "Memory of Fire." That trilogy — "Genesis," "Faces and Masks" and "Century of the Wind" — told a sweeping history of the Americas in close-up vignettes. The books, which created an engaging, politically-loaded chronology of Latin America and its adjacent nations, were labeled history in some markets but sold as fiction in the United States.

"Reality is telling you beautiful things to remember and to write," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1988, on tour for the trilogy's concluding book. "If there is any justification for the profession of writing, it would be to help to unmask reality, to reveal the world as it is, as it was [and] as it may be if we change it."

Galeano was born in Uruguay in 1940. He started out as a journalist in the 1960s, becoming editor of Montevideo's daily newspaper. He published "The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" in 1971. After his country's 1973 military coup, he was forced into exile in Argentina. Political upheavals there, which included his name being added to a hit list, prompted him to move to Spain in 1976.

"I left Uruguay because I don't like to be a prisoner," he told The Times, "and I was obliged to leave Argentina because I don't like to be a corpse."

The time in Spain gave him access to the vast range of materials and historical archives that served as the starting point for "Memory of Fire."

In a book review for The Times, Raymond A. Paredes wrote: "'Memory of Fire' has been a hugely ambitious project, embracing vast cultural heterogeneity and complexity. That Galeano has managed to render his history of the Americas at once accessible, coherent and fascinating is a considerable achievement." He found the trilogy "tragic, sardonic, provocative and sharply insightful, often all at once."

A committed leftist, Galeano told The Times in 1988: "No richness is innocent. And each freedom, each humiliation, each poverty, each horror has its own roots deep into human history. The world is organized now in such unjust ways that the rich countries think about themselves as the result of a gift from God. They were chosen by God to be rich and free."

As for his writing style, "I was always looking for a language who could integrate everything that has been culturally divorced from, for instance, heart and mind," Galeano told Democracy Now in 2006. "So I was looking for a feel-thinking language, sentipensante, 'feel-thinking.' It’s a word. I didn’t invent the word. It’s a word I heard years ago in the Colombian coast. A fisherman told me, 'Hay gigrere en las palabras sentipensantes,' when I told him I was a writer. "Ah, you’re a writer." "Yes." "Oh." And he asked me if I was using a sentipensante language, a feel-thinking language. And so, he was a master. I mean, I learned a lot from this sentence forever. I am a sentipensante."

The writer John Berger once said of Galeano: "To publish Eduardo Galeano is to publish the enemy: the enemy of lies, indifference, above all of forgetfulness. Thanks to him, our crimes will be remembered. His tenderness is devastating, his truthfulness furious."

(Courtesy, The Los Angeles Times.)

* * *

THE DEBT OWED TO EDUARD GALEANO

by Dave Zirin

In Sunday night’s premiere of the HBO series Game of Thrones, two of the more admirable characters are speaking about the future and one says, “Perhaps we’ve grown so used to horror, we assume there’s no other way.” I mumbled to no one in particular, “Some screenwriter’s been reading their Galeano.”

The next day, the news broke that Eduardo Galeano, that master of written word who could integrate magical reality lyricism into to the all-too-real history of empire without breaking a sweat, had died of cancer at 74. No, I’m not a future-telling Warg, I don’t have a third eye, or the soul or a raven (or whatever the hell Game of Thrones reference is appropriate here). Galeano had been on my mind as news of his failing health had been well known, and I’d felt the weight of debt that we owe the Uruguayan legend. It’s a debt owed by anyone who refuses to “grow used to horror” as an act of conscious resistance. It’s a debt owed by those who choose to witness our sick world from the carnage in Gaza to the killing of Eric Harris and don’t become lost in the cynicism of a society that sometimes seems intoxicated by its own inhumanity. It is impossible to read Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America and leave not only distraught over the bloody legacy of US imperialism but also hopeful at the ways brave, if fruitless, resistance can resemble the lush vitality of epic poetry.

I also owe a very particular, specific debt to Galeano. Yes, Galeano is known for his writings on empire. But he also penned what for my money is the finest book that sits at the intersection of sports and politics, Soccer in Sun and Shadow. In just 300 pages, Galeano spins a social history of the sport in achingly artistic sketch lines, some broad others exact. It’s like a rollicking but incisive freestyle rhyme expressed through a massive quill pen. The art of his writing allows him to explain just what makes the beautiful game so endlessly alluring in spite of the ugliness that surrounds it. He writes, “I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’ And when good soccer happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.” That’s Galeano: he made you believe it was not only possible to be both an internationalist and fan, but also a necessity if you hope to have your feet planted in this world with your mind on the next.

Last summer, a dream came true, when my hero, the sports/politics writer Mike Marqusee reviewed my World Cup/Olympics book Brazil’s Dance with the Devil and immediately “got” that “Eduardo Galeano is the book’s presiding spirit.” Throughout the book I started almost every chapter with a Galeano quote mainly because there is no one more quotable. Anytime you can write a book and frame chapters with phrases like “There are no right angles in Brazilian soccer just as there are none in the Rio Mountains” or “In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison” or “Where opulence is most opulent… misery is most miserable”, you do it.

Quoting Galeano to frame chapters was a method to allow for just a little of his diamond dust to grace my own pages. There was a thrill in bringing Galeano’s ability to make words dance to my own pages, which upon rereading still makes me feel as light-headed as a clod-footed student being taken for a whirl by Josephine Baker. But that wasn’t all. As Mike Marqusee wrote, he was also meant to be the book’s “presiding spirit,” the person who could embrace how sports can express the best and worst angels of our nature: how it can be used as an instrument of exploitation while also wielded as a weapon of hope.

Now it is just nine months later, and both Marqusee and Galeano are dead, both killed by cancer. The obvious instinctive takeaway from this is “fuck cancer” and fuck all in this world that is turning our bodies into wars of competing poisons. But when you exhale and look at the contributions of both writers, there is a different legacy: it’s the dare. They dared in a world of sound bites to compose graceful sentences plump with metaphors so thick you could get lost and found between the capital letter and the period. They taught us that it’s better to fail at writing something indelible than to be like everyone else. And most of all, they taught that no one should ever make you feel ashamed or embarrassed for refusing to acclimate yourself to the horrors of the present. That, above all else, is the debt we owe the memory of Eduardo Galeano. Whether you see yourself as writing history or making history, fortune favors the bold. And if you want to find a place in the collective memory, always strive to be memorable.

(Dave Zirin is the author of Brazil’s Dance with the Devil. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com)

JUDITH MILLER of the New York Times has written a memoir. Many AVA readers will remember Miller as the Bush regime's lead propagandist for the war on Iraq, blithely repeating Bush's lies that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction.” We are pleased to present AVA staffer Fred Gardner's tribute to Miller:

https://fredgardner.bandcamp.com/track/goodbye-judy-goodbye

* * *

Judith Miller's false reports in the New York Times about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq "justified" the invasion in 2003 by the Bush-Cheney Administration. Bush would soon declare "Mission Accomplished," but it was not and never can be.

lyrics

(con exuberanza irrazionale)

Goodbye Judy goodbye

Goodbye Judy goodbye

Chalabi says thanks

all the way to the bank

Goodbye, Judy

and

Goodbye Scooter goodbye

Goodbye Scooter goodbye

Your lies to the Times

Were little white crimes

Goodbye Scooter

and

Goodbye, Scotty, goodbye

Goodbye, Scotty, goodbye

You played the blame game

You went down in plames

Goodbye, Scotty

And

Goodbye Rover goodbye

Goodbye Rover goodbye

No more need you strain

To be your master's brain

Goodbye, Rover

and

Goodbye Gonzo goodbye

Goodbye Gonzo goodbye

Turn out the lights,

leave the Bill of Rights

Goodbye Gonzo

and

Goodbye Rummy goodbye

Goodbye ol' Rummy, goodbye

You came and you saw

You privatized war

And

Goodbye Big Dick, goodbye

Goodbye Big Dick, goodbye

The check's in the mail

Go shoot some helpless quail

Goodbye Big Dick goodbye

and

Goodbye Preppy, goodbye

Goodbye Preppy, goodbye

The cheers that you led

Fall silent and dead

Goodbye Preppy

and

Goodbye Judy goodbye

Goodbye Judy goodbye

You're queen of the town

They all followed you down

Goodbye Judy goodbye

* * *

credits
released 12 April 2015
words and music: Fred Gardner
drums: Nick Fishman
production and instrumentation: Camilo Landau

HUGE CALIFORNIA WATER SUPPLIER TO REDUCE DELIVERIES

Metropolitan Water District of S. California, which imports water from N. California to supplement local supplies, plans to cut regional water deliveries by 15 percent beginning in July.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/home/3796954-181/huge-california-water-supplier-plans

SHE’S BACK!

by James Kunstler

And so, from the dormant volcano that is American politics, out flies Hillary, like Rodan the Flying Reptile pretending to be Granny Goose.

Now that she is officially flapping around the electorate, the excitable mainstream press reports the initial caw-caw-cawing of her campaign: it will be “based on diversity, discipline and humbleness.” These are endearing qualities in any giant flying reptile, and reassuring to voters who might otherwise fear something a bit darker on the wing.

The Elmer Fudd in the piece at the moment, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, did get off a clever first shot at the flying behemoth when he cracked that “the presidency of the United States is not some crown to be passed between two families,” but it seems to have only provoked a deeper show of humility from the target. She’ll be starting a “listening campaign” to detect rustles of discontent as she banks over the cornfields of Iowa cawing platitudes across the sky, e.g. “Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times.”

Point of fact: no they haven’t. They are still strewn over the landscape with the economic equivalent of sucking chest wounds, but perhaps a few of them have noticed with vicarious satisfaction the astounding rise of the S&P stock index as they lie in a roadside ditch scanning the skies. It must give them some comfort as their lights go out. Just maybe, their children will also have the chance to become Goldman Sachs employees as history marches on. The flying reptile wants to be their champion! She wants to earn their votes — the old fashioned way, by purchasing as much TV air-time as possible to put across the illusion of sincerity. On such campaigns is the decline of empire propelled.

More to the point, what does the flight of Hillary say about party politics in this land? That a more corrupt and sclerotic dominion has hardly been glimpsed since the last Bourbons cavorted in the halls of Versailles? Hence, my view that America will witness a very peculiar spectacle leading up to and perhaps beyond the 2016 election: the disintegration of seeming normality against a background of mounting disorder and insurrection. Hillary will go on caw-cawing platitudes about togetherness, diversity, and recovery while the economy sinks to new extremes of unravelment, and the anger of a swindled people finally boils over.

Neither party shows even minimal competence for understanding the actual crises facing this land, and indeed the project of techno-industrial civilization itself. If the people don’t overthrow them, and grind their pretenses underfoot, then events surely will. In the trying months leading up to the presidential election of 2016, Americans will witness the death of their “energy independence” fantasy — actually a meme concocted by professional propagandists. The shale oil “miracle” will go up in a vapor of defaulting junk bonds. Violence will escalate through North Africa and the Middle East, threatening the world oil supply more generally. I would give a low-percentage chance of survival to King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and to the Saud part of Arabia more particularly as civil war among the rival clans breaks out there, with an overlay of Islamic State mischief seeding even greater chaos, and the very likely prospect of sabotage to the gigantic oil terminal at Ras Tanura on the Persian Gulf. In comparison, the fiasco of Benghazi will look like a mere Three Stooges episode.

If a third party were to arise in all this turmoil, it might not be savior brigade, either. In 1856 the Republicans welled up as the Whigs expired in sheer purposelessness and the Democrats romanced slavery. The nation had to endure the greatest convulsion in its lifetime to get to the other side of that. This time, I’m not at all sure we’ll get to the other side in one piece.

(Kunstler’s new World Made By Hand novel is now available! “Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist)

CATCH OF THE DAY, April 13, 2015

THOMAS BOETTCHER, Fort Bragg. Parole violation.

ERAINA DAVIS, Covelo. Drunk in public, probation revocation.

MIGUEL GONZALEZ, Redwood Valley. Domestic assault, possession of drug paraphernalia.

JESSE HUGHES, San Francisco/Willits. Probation revocation.

ROBERT JAMES, Ukiah. Probation revocaiton.

DAVID JOAQUIN, Covelo. Robbery.

JEREMIAH LUNA, Ukiah. Drunk in public, probation revocation.

ABEL MADUENO-ASTORGA, Delano/Ukiah. Vehicle theft, burglary, receiving stolen property, resisting arret, probation revocation.

ALEXANDER POULIDES, Willits. Suspended license, probation revocation.

APRIL THE 14TH (PART 1)

When the iceberg hit

Oh they must have known

God moves on the water

Like Casey Jones

 

So I walked downtown

On my telephone

Took a lazy turn

Through the redeye zone

 

Was a five-band bill

Two-dollar show

Saw the van out in front

From Idaho

 

And the girl passed out

In the backseat trash

There were no way they'd make

Even half a tank of gas

 

They looked sick and stoned

And strangely dressed

No one showed

From the local press

 

But I watched 'em walk

Through the bottom land

And I wished I played

In a rock 'n' roll band

 

Hey, hey

It was the fourteenth day

Of April

 

Then they closed it down

With the sails in rags

And they swept up the fags

And the local rags

 

Threw the plastic cups

In the plastic bags

And the cooks cleaned the kitchen

With the staggers and the jags

 

Ruination day

And the sky was red

I went back to work

And back to bed

 

And the iceberg broke

And the Okies fled

And the Great Emancipator

Took a bullet in the back of the head

— Gillian Welch

EXPLOITATION CONTROL

Editor,

We Selfish Humans…

Population control is a reactionary proposition, whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head.

Do you mean to tell me that all of the systems of human exploitation have the moral high ground over human beings?

According to some, human beings are apparently making too many of us, those too many of us of course making all of us possible… The systems of exploitation in the modern world are unable to deal with the human mass so we must now according to their wisdom downsize.

These are the ways of thinking that have brought us such widespread successes as the California Department of Corrections. How about this? How about as ever many humans we make, that we all collectively take responsibility for at least the "decent" treatment of the whole lot. We can do better.

Why aim low at the treatment of the whole mess of humanity?

People don't bow out yet.

What irks me the most is that people will do things like buy more pets who they must by good impulse indulge with food, space and scarce resources to occupy a starving world.

All the while proposing that it is humans, and mostly "those other people" if we are honest, who need to control their procreation. Well that's textbook old-school hardcore racism in my book.

For all you pet owners investing all of your resources into pets instead of humans, a literal cultural phenomena where peoples pets in 2015 are now regularly addressed as their "children", this question is for you.

Riddle me this, will your pets one day run the world? Have you no consideration beyond your own little self? Why not invest in humans?

This society’s best writers are in prison. Its beneficiaries are a bunch of marshmallow ass economic fascists whose preoccupation being commodity fetishism obviously don't have even enough time to read simple shit like books. Books being the consensus modern fountainhead of human empathy in an era of cloistered suburbanism, if they are left behind well, here we are.

With the proliferation of gadgets, marketing, commodification, "connectedness" and the like all of the space for real people is being squeezed out… For many reasons I say that the "human being" is being left out in society’s new equations, the "human being" is the real endangered species.

Nate Collins, Oakland

FRIDAY MAKER SPACE/EARTH DAY CELEBRATION AT THE LIBRARY

On Friday, April 24th, 3:00-4:30 PM the Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch is hosting a Maker Space celebrating Earth Day. We will be making recycled newspaper pots and planting them with sunflower seeds for our spring gardens. Come grow with us. (Hosted by: Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch)

CHOOSING THE RIGHT WORDS

by Dennis Smith

Politicians don't lie. They are creative.

A politician had a wife and 12 children and needed to move as his rental agreement was coming to an end for the home where he lived but was having difficulty in finding a new home.

When he said he had 12 children, no one would rent a home to him because they knew that the children would destroy the home.

He could not say that he had no children, he could not lie, after all, politicians cannot and do not lie.

So, he had an idea: he sent his wife for a walk to the cemetery with 11 children.

He took the remaining one with him to see homes with the Real Estate Agent.

He liked one of the homes and the agent asked: "How many children do you have?"

He answered: "12 children."

The agent asked, "Where are the others?

The politician answered, with a sad look, "They are in the cemetery with their mother." And that's the way he was able to rent a home for his family without lying.

MORAL: It is not necessary to lie, one only has to choose the right words.