Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Apr 26, 2015

• Half Inch Plus
• Local Government
• Wind Machine Tips
• Catch of the Day
• Disciplines of Proust
• Solsbury Hill
• Carl Jensen
• Anarchist Book Fair
• Memo of the Air

MARSHALL NEWMAN'S rain gauge says Saturday night's “little rain totaled 0.58 inches in Boonville (and likely more in the hills and the ‘Deep End’).” Not huge, but more than predicted. A Deep Ender says .7 inches fell on his house.

FOLLOW THE BOUNCING BALL — Supervisor Dan Hamburg, as always on bended knee before corporate thrones, placed a purely advisory measure before his colleagues last Tuesday asking the Mendocino Redwood Company to voluntarily cease using chemicals to kill trees for six months while the issue was studied. It has been studied, of course, and the conclusion of those studies is that this method of eradicating non-commercial tree species presents a much increased fire hazard while compelling flora, fauna and nearby people to risk the effects of both enhanced forest fires and mass chemical applications.

WHAT'S TRULY PATHETIC about Hamburg's resolution, which apparently wasn't wimpy enough for supervisors McCowen, Woodhouse and Brown who voted against it, is that the supervisors of 1994, none of them hostile to big money goodness knows, forthrightly came out against the mass application of chemicals as a “forestry tool.”

NANCY MACLEOD of Philo puts the hack and squirt issue in clear perspective: “We are all paying the ‘Fire Prevention Fee’ to the State Board around now. I encourage everyone to do what we did, and enclose a note with your check to them along the lines of Make MRC stop using their dangerous ‘hack and squirt’ tree removal! It is dangerous in several ways: 1. It puts poison (more than 6,000 gallons during 2012-2014) into our environment; 2. It has created more than 30,000 acres of dead trees, over 5 million trees killed, just waiting there, a huge fire hazard. 3. When they burn, they release toxins into the air, putting firefighters at even greater risk!”

HOW IS IT that the supervisors of 20 years ago understood the insanity of poisoning huge swathes of forest but the supervisors of 2015 can't even bring themselves to endorse a toothless resolution?

A PARTIAL ANSWER lies in the impaired thought processes (and absence of even a semblance of political spine) of both Hamburg and Woodhouse. (The latter's inane ramblings are presented verbatim below.)

SUPERVISOR CARRE BROWN? Why does she always get a pass from you guys? Mrs. Brown has her blind spots, for a documented fact. In her world — Potter Valley, which intellectually is like a Tibetan village circa 1840, the lords of property are not to be interfered with. The supervisor also is unable to repress her visceral loathing for hippies, time capsule type or neo, hence her statement at the end of Tuesday's meeting that she knew how she was going to vote. So did we, Carre.

ALL-IN-ALL, Tuesday's meeting didn't do much to instill confidence in local government.

* * *

SUPERVISOR WOODHOUSE CLARIFIES, AND CLARIFIES, AND CLARIFIES SOME MORE

Woodhouse: “I would like to present a different point of view. Um, I guess I should say that I am learning a lot about this issue quickly and I have a lot more to learn. One thing I know for sure is that my wife and son and daughter and sister and friends are all against the use of herbicides and don't really listen to the other part of the argument that I give. Emotionally, I'm against it. We're going to be speaking about herbicides in our valley mitigation area and I will be advocating against that and possibly bringing that to the board for their consideration. That's government telling other government that they should not do something. This is telling private property owners what they should do. When you look at the dead standing trees, there's nobody that's going to say that's a beautiful picture. We don't have any pictures of dead standing trees on our walls. I live in the forest and I have been fighting tanoak for the last 30 years and I'm losing the battle because its sprouts up and it burns real hot with a lot of oil even when it's freshly cut. I think it's illegal, and I shouldn't say this when I'm around Calfire but I tend to cut it down and burn it right away so if you want to cite me for it, I do it all the time. I'll call you. [Laughs.] It really is dangerous and when you see it go up and it's raining and drizzling up there and you throw it on the burn pile, you have to run back from the heat, you turn back to the other trees that are around your house and you realize those are just fire torches beside my house and so we are thinning them out. The first 10 years we lived there we just didn't cut any trees. I think it's a miracle that trees grow. I love them. But then you realize you have to manage around your house and the more you become aware of fire danger it just scares the hell out of you and there's smoke in the air and the helicopters are coming over the hill. Nothing scares me — this doesn't scare me as much as that. I'd rather do this every day. This a bigger subject. I — the people who own the timber companies should hear what I say because I think it has value. I think most people in the room— Well I won't make that generalization — the people that own the timber have invested millions of dollars. It's very important that we keep them in the county, timber, and the harvesting of it and being neighbors with them is our future. I want more jobs for young people and training for them to use natural resources so I vote for things like logging and gravel extraction and asphalt because we need to have an economy and some people won't like the decisions I make but we have to have jobs and I want to talk about each issue with you all and absorb the anger because I— There are two or 10 sides to every argument and I definitely respect all of yours but I think you have to take into account the timber people who have had this what I think I can call is a stupid plan for 20 or 30 years to hack and squirt and when they do a logging plan to get the redwood and the fir out of there that they want they have to agree to get rid of this weed, the tanoak and financially this is the cheapest thing, I mean we all protest all this about hack and squirt 20 years ago and fought the timber wars and the timberlands are now devastated so a lot of our suspicions were correct. We do have good intuition. But if we tell them they can't treat those trees and they cannot log their property and complete plans they have in process now, if that was me that would bankrupt me. I don't want to send that message that the timber wars are back on and we are going to struggle and fight with the timber owners. We all have to work together and try a different model. What we have are devastated lands with this horrible consequence from destroying them of huge tanoak forests that are very dangerous even if we don't cut them down or kill them, I mean they are green and alive, they are equally dangerous for huge canopy fires, but I don't know the difference between the BTUs and the fire danger to our guys and women out there between the dead standing trees with the leaves off and the live green trees with the leaves on. I think those are very dangerous too. But I don't feel I have enough information to tell somebody, I don't believe government should tell me what to do or telling you what to do because just because it's a popular thing. I know that's kind of a fringe, like my predecessor Johnny Pinches felt that way about personal property rights, and the older I get, I'm getting like that too. So I'm not trying to engage in an argument with you but I have a different opinion than Supervisor Hamburg. I would like to get the study and get the intelligence and get the timber companies and the people doing that, giving them an opportunity to stand here and give us alternatives. I mean, they are the ones that are on the spot. It's not like you caught me killing all the trees on my land. They are the ones who have created this little PR problem to try to make a profit [laughter from audience] and we need to listen to them and see what they plan to do about it. I think digging them out is not financially viable and it probably tears up the land and makes more petrochemical mess than anything. I don't understand why they can't cut them down and provide firewood for poor people or jobs for young people or some kind of— give the wood to people that can make furniture or whatever. I know when I make firewood it takes all day, I destroy my equipment, my clothes, and I make a mess and all the gas, and we could just give it all away to poor people because selling it for $200 or $300, it's a waste of money, you can't make a living doing that, you're kind of working yourself out of a job, but I love the thinning out the wood and burning it in releasing the big trees and just making it look pretty and more fire safe. I want to hear from who we think are our enemies and let them be part of this conversation, I think that's how I would want to be treated if I was them and I appreciate your listening to me because I know it's not what you want to hear but I feel very clearly that it's just the way forward rather than to win or to stop somebody or tell somebody what to do, you have the at least have the courtesy to ask them what can you do to make this better? They are the ones that need to identify immediately the most dangerous parts on their land that say that were hacked in the last year or two and give us maps and work with the fire people to protect us so we know where the hotspots are to save their lives. I care more about the lives of the people than a little poison on the ground, but the long-term effects of this stuff is likely bad. I'm not stupid. But I think the effect of telling timber companies that we are back to this struggle with you, I know you won't like this part, I'm just a keep talking until I getted booed… [laughter grumbling], but there are different sides different segments, but we are really telling, this is what you won't like, and it's —”

Board Chair Carre Brown: “Supervisor Woodhouse?

Woodhouse: “Yes?”

Brown: “You've actually broken the rules of procedure.”

Woodhouse: “Oh! I'm sorry about that!”

Brown: “You have spoken too long. Please wind up your remarks, please.” [Laughter]

Woodhouse: “Thank you very much.”

Brown: “Oh! You're through? Okay.” [Laughter]

* * *

THE FINAL FEW PARAGRAPHS of Mike A'dair's report of the hack and squirt Supervisors meeting on April 21 in the April 23 edition of the Willits Weekly:

At about 6pm the public ended its comments and the issue was returned to the board for a vote. Dan Hamburg and Fourth District Supervisor Dan Gjerde said they would support Hamburg's resolution. Third District Supervisor Tom Woodhouse said he would oppose it. "We have a serious fire hazard all over the county, not just on the MRC property," Woodhouse said. "The use of these herbicides is not a long-term solution or an acceptable practice. I think we can all agree on that. And while this motion is a good talking point, it is not in a form I can support. I agree with where we want to go. How we get there is the problem," Woodhouse said.

Second District Supervisor John McCowen agreed with Woodhouse. According to Woodhouse, who spoke to this reporter later by telephone, after McCowen announced his opposition to Hamburg's motion, the audience became upset. "There were groans and yells, people began yelling 'Traitor!' and stuff like that," Woodhouse said. "Then Carre Brown told the audience their behavior had convinced her that she could not vote yes."

Brown voted no, and Hamburg's resolution to temporarily and voluntarily halt the use of herbicides on private timberlands was defeated.

During the post-meeting phone conversation, Woodhouse was asked, If he did not like the form of Hamburg's approach to a solution, what would be a form he could support? Woodhouse said he favored a form of community dialogue. "I am looking at a kind of forum or committee that would include community members, people from the timber companies and people from government to get together and find a new policy. I am going to keep working on this issue," Woodhouse said.

* * *

WHEN BETH BOSK TOOK THE PODIUM, she began by reading a letter from an Albion Ridge resident, sister of a former (now dead) logger. The letter emphasized that the fire danger was bad. And that herbicdes are bad, pointing out that the best way to handle tanoaks is to simply cut a notch into them and tip them over. Bosk finished reading the first letter and moved on to the second "by a mycologist" when Chair Brown interrupted and things quickly deteriorated in Mendo-chaos:

Brown: “You only have a few more seconds.”

Bosk: “I'm standing here for two people who could not leave their work site.”

Brown: “I'm sorry Ms. Bosk, but I thought you understood that it's three minutes. We need to move forward.”

Bosk: “I submitted two orange cards, one for the two of them and one for myself, my own presentation. It's very clear.”

Brown: “Ms. Bosk, let's not argue, you have a few seconds, give her a few seconds longer.”

Bosk: “This is from Alison Gardner, she is a mycologist, we were told, Allison and I, by John Anderson who is in charge, who is the chief forester of a landscape that at this point is near a half-million acres large. Dear supervisors, says Allison, I have a lot of concerns about the intention of MRC to apply herbicides to the tanoaks on their property. As an adjacent landowner in my primary concerns are contamination of the water table and increased fire hazard from the dead trees. As a naturalist I am also concerned about loss of forest diversity, however I realize this meeting is to address solely the fire hazard aspect. I understand that MRC claims that the trees will fall within three years from decomposition by turkey tail mushrooms, that's what John Anderson told us both. Are they inoculating these trees with the turkey tails? I have personally seen dead tanoaks and chinquapin stand for over 10 years without obvious signs of habitation by turkey tails or other decomposing fungi. I also have a tanoak turkey tail log which is down which I have been collecting off of for over five years and the log is nowhere near close to being decomposed. I also understand that there are stands of dead tanoak on MRC land from previous hack and squirt efforts which have not fallen and decomposed. I suspect that they are using data from farmed turkey tails where the medium is inoculated and kept moist in the appropriate temperature range rather than from wild West Coast dry timber environment — Alison Gardner a mechanical consultant, mushroom tour guide and author of the wild mushroom cookbook recipes for Mendocino. And then I would like to —”

Brown: “You are through, Ms. Bosk. Please, or I will have to escort you out of the room.”

Bosk: “[Throws her hands up.] You know what? Ah! “

Brown: “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Pebbles Trippet shouted something illegible at Brown from the audience.

Bosk: “You will have to escort me out of the room. I have [loudly] two sets of science that addresses some of the inform-- You know what? I agree with Mike Jani that you should be appointing —”

Brown: “Ms. Bosk.”

Bosk: “A committee…”

Brown: “Look, you are being improper. Please, let everybody speak. Sit down please.”

Bosk: “You know what? Go ahead and have me dragged out of the room, Ms. Brown, I encourage you to augment the science that you have on hand because you asked for some more. One! [holds up papers]”

Shouting from audience.

Bosk: “Global warming may increase.”

[Audience crosstalk, shouting]

[More shouting from audience.]

Audience: “This is what — (illegible)”

Bosk: “This is my — this is —”

Audience member: “You are annoying the supervisors. That is nonsense. As a landowner, the same amount of time as a big landowner —”

Bosk: “This is, Global warming may increase lightning strikes. There are an ever-growing list of projected effects from global warming that had an alarming prediction, a major increase in lightning strikes.”

McCowen: “Madam Chair [to Bosk]: “If you would submit the information we are capable of reading it.”

Bosk: “All right. Second piece.”

Audience member: “Nobody wants to hear it!”

Brown: “She's just, [turning] Supervisor McCowen, she's letting other people go without speaking that have sat here and she's being very rude and taking their time.”

Bosk: “My point is that, that…”

Brown conferred sotte voce with a large man who had walked up to stand behind the chair's chair.

Bosk: [Shouting] “There's going to be a 12% increase in lightning strikes which cause 50% of the wildfires in the United States every, with every level of, with every additional degree of Celsius. That's this paper. The second one is answering the question, Are dead trees more combustible than live ones? The modeling in the past said dead trees were not as combustible, more combustible than live ones, because the foliage, the crown, the crown fires were, were what you had to worry about and when you have foliage they are going to be hotter, but when they actually went there to check what they found was that they were creating a solar cooker when the leaves fell.”

Brown: [Whispers exchanged between the chair the man behind her.]

Bosk: “It was creating a solar cooker.”

Hamburg: “Beth, you really need to sit down.”

Bosk: “I am.”

Hamburg: “You really need to sit down. Because you are trying to become the story here instead of the issue that we are trying to deal with.”

Bosk: “I am not!”

Hamburg: “You need to sit down, Beth.”

Bosk: “I am!”

Hamburg: “Maybe we should call the next person.”

Brown: “Ok, the next person is Bill Mack.”

Woman in audience: “Wait! I was — “

Brown: “Oh, sorry, Judy, you can come forward. Bill, you have to wait a second. Over all the excitement I forgot Judy.

[Bosk walked back to her seat without further comment.]

WIND MACHINE INFO

“Best Management Practices for Operating Wind Machines for Vineyard Frost Abatement and Water Conservation” (published by the AV Winegrowers Association)

. . .

Noise:

Locate wind machines as far as practical from neighboring homes within agricultural areas, but not closer than 300 feet unless best management practices are used

Contact neighbors living within 300 feet of a machine and explain how and why wind machines operate

Create a system whereby residents can receive daily e-mail notification of the frost forecast and thereby anticipate possible wind machine use

Maintain a 24-hour hotline or cellphone number to contact growers using specific machines.

Set the machines closest to neighbors to be the last on and first off

Be diligent operating wind machines on farms where you do not live, as you are not always there to hear if and how they operate.

Install mufflers on all wind machines

Use a decibel meter to actively monitor and manage noise levels from each machine (a free app can be downloaded for smart phones or tablets)

Keep up-to-date on new technology that may help reduce noise from your machine.

(Note: No one knows how many AV grape growers have signed up to comply with these “best practices.”)

* * *

AND THIS from the New Zealand manufacturer (Sprint Aero) of a five-bladed fan sold as a “frost protection fan ‘hush-kit’ ” — “Onsite testing of the two major competitors frost fan blade systems found some interesting results. The two bladed system was noisiest and produced an overall airflow of approx 211 kg/m/sec while consuming around 90 hp to do so. The four bladed system was somewhat quieter and produced approx 290 kg/m/sec but for the consumption of over 125 horsepower. So the result is 37.5% more air but for 42% more power, so being 4.5% less efficient and therefore drinking more fuel. SprintAero’s HushKit upgrade has been tested by independent and industry recognized companies and proven to be quiet enough to pass all the regulations and have improved airflow as well!”

CATCH OF THE DAY, April 25, 2015

NICHOLAS AFFINITO, Fort Bragg. DUI, probation revocation.

CHERYL COLVIN, Fort Bragg. Drunk in public, probation revocation.

CASSANDRA DEANDA, Windsor/Ukiah. DUI.

KENNETH DEWITT JR., Fort Bragg. Parole violation.

JOSEPH HOAGLIN, Ukiah. Drunk in public, probation revocation.

JEREMIAH LUNA, Ukiah. Probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

TASHA ORNELAS, Ukiah. Petty theft, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

MICHELLE TRAVIS, Sacramento/Ukiah. Possession of meth.

JAVIER TUN-NAAL, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery.

EVA VILLA-ESPINOZA, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI.

MARK WALRATH, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

SCOTT MONCRIEFF'S MONUMENTAL TRANSLATION of Proust's "A la Recherche du Temps perdu" is both sensitive and accurate; it has been unreservedly praised by the best judges, and if I do not altogether concur it is because I was hoping to find Proust easier in English than in French, and do not. All the difficulties of the original are here faithfully reproduced. A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case. These, however, are the disciplines of Proust. No earnest sportsman would forgo them. And perhaps Mr Scott Moncrieff is right in insisting that the English audience shall also participate, and shall train, through the ardours of each single sentence, for the mastery of the work as a whole.

— E.M. Forster, 1929

SOLSBURY HILL

Climbing up on Solsbury Hill

I could see the city light

Wind was blowing, time stood still

Eagle flew out of the night

He was something to observe

Came in close, I heard a voice

Standing, stretching every nerve

I had to listen had no choice

I did not believe the information

I just had to trust imagination

My heart going boom, boom, boom

Son, he said, grab your things I've come to take you home

 

To keep in silence I resigned

My friends would think I was a nut

Turning water into wine

Open doors would soon be shut

So I went from day to day

Though my life was in a rut

Till I thought of what I'd say

And which connection I should cut

I was feeling part of the scenery

I walked right out of the machinery

My heart going boom, boom, boom

Son, he said, grab your things I've come to take you home

 

When illusion spin her net

I'm never where I want to be

And liberty she pirouette

When I think that I am free

Watched by empty silhouettes

Close their eyes but still can see

No one taught them etiquette

So I will show another me

Today I don't need a replacement

I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant

My heart going boom, boom, boom

Hey, I said, you can keep my things they've come to take me home

— Peter Gabriel

PROJECT CENSORED FOUNDER CARL JENSEN DIES AT 85

Carl Jensen, a retired Sonoma State University sociology professor and media watchdog who founded a nonprofit group that publishes stories it claims are underreported or ignored by mainstream media, has died. He was 85.

Jensen founded Project Censored in 1976 and was its leader for 20 years, publishing an annual list of the top 25 most-censored stories. He was embraced by the alternative press and took aim at newspapers such as the the New York Times and The Press Democrat, accusing them of overlooking the most important subjects.

“He was ahead of his time as far as media criticism goes,” said Mickey Huff, who became director of Project Censored in 2010. “He was a pioneer in terms of questioning the efficacy of corporate media.”

Jensen died Thursday at his Cotati home of complications from Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia, said his wife of 38 years, Sandra Jensen. Memorial services are pending, she said.

“He was a gentle and caring person who truly cared about what was going on with the poor and things politically,” his wife said. “He had a huge, warm heart for people and animals.”

Jensen was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1929, the only child of Danish and Swedish immigrants. His family moved to Northern California at the outbreak of World War II, settling in Arcata in Humboldt County.

Jensen served as an Air Force intelligence officer in Puerto Rico during the Korean War and afterward moved to the Miami area, where he worked on a newspaper, his wife said. He wrote political exposés that angered local mobsters and was forced to leave Florida along with his second wife, who also was a journalist.

“They basically had to pack their bags in the middle of the night and get the hell out of there,” Sandra Jensen said. “Their porch lights were shot out as a warning.”

The couple bounced around after that, living in San Francisco and parts of Europe before moving to Los Angeles, where Jensen worked in advertising. He was employed by a large agency and lived like a character on the TV show “Mad Men,” his wife said.

But a serious car crash near Palm Springs in 1969 prompted Jensen to reconsider what he was doing and “get out of the horrible advertising business,” his wife said.

He quit his high-paying job, sold his Malibu home and enrolled in UC Santa Barbara, where he earned a doctorate in sociology. Jensen was hired as a professor at Sonoma State University in 1973. He divorced three years later and married Sandra Jensen, a former student.

Project Censored was born out of his early journalism experience and a frustration with what he saw as the self-censoring of news by the networks and news outlets, his wife said. Jensen’s work was recognized by Walter Cronkite and Ralph Nader, and received numerous awards, Huff said.

He also had critics, some who claimed he had a left-wing bias. In recent years, Project Censored was jabbed for highlighting 9/11 conspiracy theories. But Jensen never took the negative remarks seriously, his wife said.

“He could laugh it off,” she said. “He had documented cases of things going on.”

Jensen and his successor, former Project Censored director Peter Phillips, formed the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation in 2000. The group expanded its teachings to other campuses and made a documentary of its work in 2013.

Jensen wrote three books: “Censored — The News That Didn’t Make the News and Why,” “20 Years of Censored News” and “Stories That Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century.”

He loved cats and Great Danes and had been a vegetarian for 30 years. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease about five years ago.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Sherman Jackson of Crescent City and John Jensen of Lucerne, and two daughters, Lisa Jensen of Monterey and Pia Jensen, former Cotati councilwoman, who lives in Uruguay.

— Paul Payne (courtesy, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

CRAIG AT THE ANARCHIST BOOK FAIR

Just left the annual SF bay area anarchist book fair, held at The Crucible in Oakland this year. Many of the radical regulars from near and far were there...a sense of deeper solidarity I'd not seen in previous years was palpable. And it is clear that what we've all been philosophically opposed to over the decades, has baldly revealed its moral bankruptcy and downright insanity; our own collective opposition, and recommendations, look wise by comparison. The Earth First! table had updates on current campaigns against fracking, Rising Tide's direct action reports, and a call out for constant uncompromising opposition against anything which exacerbates global climate destabilization. In addition, many established anarchist peace & justice groups were tabling with countless current publications on every important issue of these times, while Food Not Bombs served free food all day long. Forward we go!

Craig Louis Stehr, Oakland, California

Email: CraigStehr@inbox.com

Blog: http://craiglstehr.blogspot.com

TRIGGER WARNING: CWM FJORD BANK GLYPHS VEXT QUIZ.

Huzzah! The recording of last night's (2015-04-24) KNYO Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show is ready to download and keep or just play with one click at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com A nice show. I wouldn’t be too unhappy if future AI versions of me were to find it in a corner of ancient cyberspace. They might think, How giddy my meat ancestor used to sound. I’m not sure why I was talking so fast the whole time –- maybe there was extra caffeine this time in the teabag in my mason jar of hot water. Non-synthetic food products vary widely in nutritional value. Also at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find thousands and thousands of links to not-necessarily-radio-useful things to see and do and learn about, such as:

How to pick a lock with two hairpins and a transparent lock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuT_63Ioig

An improved giant bubbles recipe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TwVFOzrwzI

And an auction of thousands of historical pinup images.

http://fineart.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?N=50+793+794+792+2088+4294950950

I send this sort of email out to a unique list of special people one or two times a week. If you ever don't want to be all unique and special anymore, reply and say so and I'll take you off the list.