Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Aug 26, 2015

• LakeCo Fires
• Weaverville Fire
• Abatement Alarm
• Winetrain Wrong
• First5's Letter
• Diver Drowned
• Suffering
• SF Homeless
• Less Trees
• Tiny Illegal
• Bucket Sale
• Trump's Polemics
• Market Swings
• Yesterday's Catch
• Insomnia
• Divorce Sale
• County Vacancies
• Museum Work
• Fructose Madness
• Pleasantly Disintegrating
• Library Events
• Real Radio
• Asylum Debate

UPDATE ON PETERSON FIRE, Lake County: By Tuesday evening CalFire reported more headway on the Peterson Fire outside of Kelseyville with 75% containment: “Firefighters improved containment lines and control during the day and will continue working on increasing containment lines through the evening and tomorrow. The area of the fire is rural country, which is steep, covered heavily in brush and with difficult access. The threat to structures in the area has been mitigated. There are no road closures or evacuation orders in place.” The neighboring Grade Fire was reported 100% contained at 22 acres.

FROM THE TRINITY COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE late Tuesday afternoon: There is currently a wildfire burning in the Democrat Gulch Area off of Oregon Street in Weaverville. There is a hard road closure on Oregon Street at Democrat Gulch to the top of Oregon Mountain. The west side of Oregon Mountain down to Highway 299 is under mandatory evacuation. More notices will be released as it is being assessed.

A FACEBOOK GUY who variously posts as the Willits Daily News, Ganja Farmer, Willits Tomorrow, and Emerald Triangle has reported that the City of Willits has put up a number of abatement orders on inside-city-limits properties with marijuana grows that don’t abide by the city’s code: no more than 6 plants per lot, no matter the number of authorized patients, in a “fully enclosed and secure structure” — that means a foundation, not just a plastic greenhouse, and a building that can be locked. Only one person has been abated, and that person had a large outdoor grow going in flagrant violation of Willits' generous rules. Willits' code enforcement officer, John Sherman, an entirely reasonable man, whose thankless task it is to deal with persons beyond reason, hasn't abated anyone except this one person. At ease, stoners. Willits is not on an anti-pot crusade.

REACTING TO A DELUGE of national outrage that 11 black women had been arbitrarily (to put it gently) removed from Napa's tourist attraction and had the police called on them, the Wine Train has gone into major damage control mode. “The Wine Train was 100 percent wrong in its handling of this issue,” said Wine Train CEO Anthony “Tony” Giaccio on Monday. “We accept full responsibility for our failures and for the chain of events that led to this regrettable treatment of our guests.” Giaccio also said he was requiring his staff to undergo "additional diversity training," and had offered the wronged women a free outing in a special train car for fifty persons.

FIRST 5 BLASTS PALS

From: Anne Molgaard <acmolgaard@mendochildren.org>

Date: August 25, 2015 at 4:36:45 PM PDT

To: Bryan Lowery <loweryb@co.mendocino.ca.us>, Dan Hamburg <vote@pacific.net>, <hamburgd@co.mendocino.ca.us>, Dr James Flaherty (jflaherty@cthp.org), Jeremy Mann (mann.jeremys@gmail.com), Jeremy Mann, MD (mannjs@ah.org), John Passalacqua <300law@att.net>, Lucresha Renteria (lrenteria@mccinc.org), Paul Tichinin (paul@mcn.org)"

Subject: FIRST 5 Mendocino on Grand Jury Report on HHSA FCS

Dear First 5 Commissioners,

Attached is our FIRST 5 Mendocino response to the Grand Jury’s report “Children at Risk” about HHSA Family and Children’s Services.

Thank you for your multiple readings and all your input.

It was quite a challenge to strike a tone of respect and helpfulness, while not undermining the serious nature of the discussion.

I’m sure some will find it too harsh, but others will say it is too soft.

(The difference of opinion is already present among the Commissioners!)

Please let me know if there is any specific feedback you receive from colleagues or the public.

Some things are uncomfortable—it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them.

Yours, Anne

* * *

First 5 Issues Critique Of County FCS

by KC Meadows

A local child development organization has taken the unusual step of adding its concerns about the county’s Family and Child Services to those expressed by the grand jury earlier this year.

Anne Molgaard, executive director of First 5 released the white paper Tuesday afternoon in time for a Wednesday meeting between the county’s Health and Human Services Agency and local children’s services providers.

In it, First 5 — which is funded through cigarette taxes to help keep children through 5 years of age healthy and safe — takes the county social services to task for many of the same problems the 2015 grand jury found.

The First 5 paper lists under-educated social service workers, unfilled positions in Family and Child Services, lack of transparency about where money is being spent, problems with the county’s recruiting system, the loss of federal and state funding through county penny-pinching, lack of training for workers in emergency situations and a deep morale problem in the social services department overall. The organization took the step of issuing its own critique of the county children’s services because it believes that the county’s services are the most critical to saving children from abuse and neglect.

“A child slipping through the cracks can result in life-long trauma or death. This is where we must pay attention,” said Lucresha Rentería, FIRST 5 Mendocino Commission Chair (also the Director of Administrative Services at the Mendocino Coast Clinics). “Recognizing problems and making recommendations is not treason, it is merely the first step to finding solutions. An issue can’t be solved if it is not first seen as a problem. FIRST 5 and HHSA have a close partnership – we share funding, goals, space. But as a partner agency we do not abdicate our right to speak out for children who are at risk.”

Renteria added that while the grand jury’s reports point to the problems they see in a given year, she feels First 5 can help make sure solutions move forward.

“The difference between FIRST 5 and the grand jury is that we are here to help over the long haul. The grand jury’s charge is to bring issues to light. FIRST 5 is committed to assist HHSA in making the changes that will keep more children safe,” she said.

The analysis by First 5 begins by citing two horrendous failures of the county’s system: Missing — even after numerous reports to them — the 13 years of child sexual abuse and torture being carried out by a couple in Talmage, called “the most atrocious case of child sexual abuse in decades” by the Sheriff’s office; and the failure of the county to order a neurological study of a 5 month old on the coast who died of what was found to be swelling and bleeding in her brain, after the county had been alerted by local Early Start staff of a potential abuse problem.

Along with a critical analysis of the problems in county social services, the First 5 paper also provides specific and lengthy solutions to the problems it cites.

They include:

Having a clear county budget so that funding provided by the state for “realignment” (meaning tasks the state used to pay for but has shifted back to counties), shows if any of the money is being spent on children.

Rethinking the hiring process. The county’s recruiting system in their view has made the hiring process too complicated and may be preventing Family and Child Services from filling positions. It suggests a look at county human resources with an eye to finding efficiencies and regular reports tracking open positions and what is being done to fill them.

Improving morale by instituting independent investigations of employee complaints, having a fair and impartial hiring process and having annual surveys of employees about the workplace culture.

Noting that it is dangerous — and illegal — for the county to have underqualified staff working in emergency child welfare situations, First 5 recommends that while the county attempts to hire higher level staffers it insist that any underqualified staff must act only with mentorship of higher level staff or even retired qualified social workers.

The county ought to do more to use Family Maintenance services, where in cases of risk of abuse, a family would still have a formal case opened and the social worker would work with them to help prevent child abuse from happening.

Do more to work with other child welfare organizations. Family & Child Services, the report says “has become insular and opaque since Social Services merged with Mental Health and Public Health into the Health and Human Services Agency.”

Make public the results of the new Red Team in social services which was formed this year to review actions in emergency cases.

The First 5 report goes on to discuss the role of poverty in almost all child abuse situations and suggests the county explore solutions being tried in other states, including a program in Minnesota which targets the specific needs of families and customizes child care, financial, health care and other assistance to each family’s real needs. It saves money in the long run as well as helps the family recover from crises.

In conclusion the report urges the Board of Supervisors to reshape the county’s Family and Child Services and make children in the county a priority.

Anne Molgaard, executive director of First 5 will be attending a meeting at HHSA today initiated by HHSA Assistant Director Bryan Lowery (who also serves as a FIRST 5 Commissioner) to discuss the county’s ability to protect children from abuse and neglect regarding the recent findings and recommendations in the grand jury report.

“We hope that a spirit of openness sets the tone for a meeting focused on problem-solving, not blaming. FCS and all its workers have a very difficult, very important job; we support their efforts,” Molgaard said.

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

ON FRIDAY, August 21, 2015 at approximately 12:22 PM, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies were dispatched to Cobbler’s Point, located in the 8400 block of North Highway 1 in Little River, California to assist the California State Parks with the search for a missing person. Deputies arrived and learned the missing person (adult male) was visiting the Mendocino Coast with a friend. Both men entered the Pacific Ocean at Cobbler’s Point to dive for abalone. The friend became ill from the rough ocean conditions and exited the water. While exiting the water, the friend lost sight of the missing person and climbed to the top of the bluff. From the top of the bluff, only the missing person’s overturned flotation device was visible. The friend ran to Van Damme State Park and contacted emergency services. Mendocino Volunteer Fire Department launched water and ground rescue assets, United States Coast Guard responded with marine and aerial units and personnel with the California State Parks, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office and Mendocino County Search and Rescue responded to assist with the search. The search continued throughout the afternoon and was ultimately suspended at darkness, with arrangements made to resume the following morning.

ON SATURDAY, August 22, 2015 at approximately 12:01 PM, Mendocino Volunteer Fire Department Divers located the missing person near the spot he was last seen at a depth of approximately 15 feet and confirmed he was deceased. The cause of death was not obvious at the time the decedent’s body was recovered. A coroner’s investigation was initiated and the cause of death is pending completion of an autopsy and toxicology screening. The missing person was subsequently identified as being Yoshihiro Ohhashi, 57, from Pleasanton, California.

(Sheriff’s Press Release)

SUFFERING IN TRUE PERSPECTIVE

SAN FRANCISCAN REACTS to Mayor Lee's announcement that street people have to be outta sight for Super Bowl:

It's not hard. Put the crazy people under supervised medical care. Put the drug addicts in treatment. Deport the illegal aliens. Find halfway houses for the rest. SF has a yearly budget of over EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS, and it's only 7 miles on a side. This city should be a paradise, but our resources are squandered in constant bickering. Homeless people should not have the right to be off-meds and crazy. Sleeping in a public park is not a right you have. The problem isn't the crazy homeless people, the problem is the people who fight for their rights to be crazy homeless people.

‘TOO MANY TREES’

Dear Editor:

When the Fire Safe Council says there are “too many trees”, what they mean is the forest transpiration potential exceeds the forest soil moisture capacity. This condition is worsened during draught, and results in severe moisture stress for all trees in the forest, with some trees dying. Reducing the number of trees, from the level that is considered “too many”, to a more optimal number, reduces the transpiration potential, moisture stress, and mortality in the forest. Reducing the number of trees also reduces forest fire fuel continuity, which reduces the potential for a fire to rapidly travel through the forest.

George Hollister

Comptche

A LOS ANGELES CITY ATTORNEY SAID tiny homes on wheels used by some homeless people in the city are illegal, and may pose a legal liability if the city doesn’t remove them and someone gets injured. Valerie Flores also said at the Monday meeting that the homes don’t qualify as personal belongings — meaning that the city could immediately dispose of them. Advocates say the small one-room “houses” on wheels are safer for homeless people than sleeping on the street. Earlier this year, the city council passed two bills making it easier to remove homeless encampments, including one that allows police to confiscate “bulky items” without notice. “They’re stupid if they think I won’t file a lawsuit of my own,” said Elvis Summers, the man responsible for building most of the homes.

(Courtesy, the Daily Beast)

SHAUNA ESPINOZA WRITES: Mendo Mill is doing a “bucket sale” on Saturday. The promo said that customers can buy a bucket for $5, get 20% off everything they put in the bucket and then $10 is donated to the high school sports program of our choice. I've already asked them for a flier, and they responded back saying they would post one on their Facebook page in the morning. I'm hoping we can mention it in the paper this week, the more money for our program the better! Thanks!

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

History could be about to repeat itself as farce and yes, Trump is at least as dangerous as Hitler in his potential to cause great harm to America and the rest of the world. Read and understand some history.

Words do have effect. Hitler’s polemics against the Jews led to Kristallnacht and where that went afterwards. All it took was hateful radio broadcasts to incite the slaughter of a half million to a million in Rwanda. Trump’s polemics against Hispanics could have the same effect. The recent attack in New York may just be the beginning.

To think America is immune is taking “American Exceptionalism” to its logical ridiculous conclusion. To think that Rwandans or Germans were less intelligent than your typical tattooed losers and followers of Fox News is wishful thinking.

This man should be considered a clear and present danger to America and the world, just like Fox News that created this monster and now the rest of the Republican leadership wannabes. The Republicans have clearly become a domestic terrorist group. Wake up, America, and deal with it before the Right’s worst nightmare (or wet dream?) comes to pass: a war with a force of U.N. “Allies” from the rest of the civilized world committed to putting down the rabid beast, just like democracies had to do with Germany, twice, in the last century. Oh, America would never let that happen ’cause we got nukes? Yeh, right, unleashing those will create a brighter future for us all.

The wishy washy politically correct media better wake up and deal with this guy properly before its too late.

SHARES FALL AGAIN after early hopes fade: Dow closes DOWN 200 POINTS after lingering fears over China undercut an impressive early rally

A strong rally evaporated on Tuesday and stocks ended with deep losses as concerns about China's economy outweighed lower valuations.

In a dramatic trading session, major indices turned negative in the final minutes of trading after previously climbing almost 3%.

While US stocks appeared relatively cheap to some investors, others were waiting for positive economic data from China before buying.

Wall Street rallied on Tuesday as investors bought beaten-down stocks a day after fears about China's economy sent the market into its worst slump in four years — only to drop, once again, 200 points below Monday's close.

Investors drove prices sharply higher from the opening bell but caution set in by the afternoon due to lingering concerns that a slowdown in China could hobble global growth, even after the country's central bank cut interest rates on Tuesday for the second time in two months.

“It's just investor confusion,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities in New York. “They are trying to figure out what the slowdown in China means to the global economy,” he said.

Monday's pummeling pushed the S&P 500's valuation down to about 15 times expected earnings, compared to around 17 for much of 2015 and just above a 10-year average of 14.7.

“We had a panic yesterday. As people get back in the market, they're questioning what everything is worth,” said Brian Battle, director of trading at Performance Trust Capital Partners in Chicago.

While US stocks appeared relatively cheap to some investors, others were waiting for positive economic data from China, said Xavier Smith, investment director at Centre Asset Management. “Only when we see that will the rallies be sustainable.”

The move by China's central bank came after Chinese stocks slumped 8% on Tuesday, on top of an 8.5% drop on Monday.

The Nasdaq composite index led stocks higher with a 2.49% rise, fueled by a 5.1% jump by Apple's.

The iPhone maker's stock had slumped as much as 13% on Monday, when the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 1,000 points in its biggest intraday fall ever and the S&P 500 recorded its worst day since 2011.

Even with Tuesday's gains, the Dow and the S&P were on track for the their worst monthly losses since February 2009 and the Nasdaq headed for its steepest drop since November 2008.

JPMorgan cut its forecast for its year-end target for the S&P 500 to 2,150, down from 2,250.

At 2:52 pm Tuesday, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 309.18 points, or 1.95%, at 16,180.53 and the S&P 500 was 1.81% higher at 1,927.48.

The Nasdaq Composite added 112.56 points to 4,638.81.

Earlier, the S&P rose as much 2.9%, the Dow as much as 2.8% and theNasdaq as much as 3.6%.

Data on Tuesday showed U.S. consumer confidence increased to a seven-month high in August. (Full Story)

Nine of the 10 major S&P sectors were higher in afternoon trading, with the consumer discretionary index's 2.3% rise leading the advancers, helped by Amazon's 4% rally.

New U.S. single-family home sales rebounded in July, adding to evidence of underlying strength in the economy that could allow the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this year.

Among the big gainers, Facebook was up 4.5% and Netflix jumped 8.6%.

Best Buy jumped 15.48% after the owner of the biggest US electronics chain reported an unexpected increase in quarterly sales.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 2,304 to 786. On the Nasdaq, 1,996 issues rose and 835 fell.

Underscoring the delicacy of Tuesday's rally, the S&P 500 index showed just one new 52-week high and 12 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded seven new highs and 83 new lows.

(Courtesy, Reuters)

* * *

Rebound Comes After China Slashes Rates For 2nd Time In 2 Months

Hours after China's Shanghai stock index slumped to close 7.6% lower - adding to Monday's 8.5% loss and taking the benchmark to its lowest level since Dec. 15 - the central bank swung into action.

It cut its interest rates for the fifth time in nine months in a renewed effort to shore up economic growth. The central bank lowered the benchmark rate for a one-year loan by 0.25 percentage points to 4.6% and the one-year rate for deposits by a similar margin to 1.75%.

The bank also increased the amount of money available for lending by reducing the minimum reserves banks are required to hold by 0.5 percentage points.

The move came as Beijing appeared to be abandoning a strategy of having a state-owned company buy shares to stem the market slide.

Analysts say that while Tuesday's actions by the central bank may calm the stock market turmoil for now, the country faces a long period of uncertainty that will create more volatility.

'The Chinese economy is going to be on this bumpy road for a while and it will have ebbs and flows that will no doubt have a serious impact on the global economy,' said Kamel Mellahi, professor at the Warwick Business School.

'What we are seeing now is a dress rehearsal of things to come.'

(Courtesy, Associated Press)

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 25, 2015

MARC ADAMS, Covelo. DUI.

JOSEPH BUCKINHAM, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

ROBERT COTNEY, Clearlake/Ukiah. Drunk in public.

KENNETH DEWITT, Fort Bragg. Parole violation.

PATRICK DUNN, Mendocino. Drunk in public.

BRENT HAAS, Ukiah. Criminal threats of death or bodily harm, trespassing, possession of meth, probation revocation.

AARON HIGGINS, Beaver, Ohio/Willits. Pot cultivation, processing, possession for sale, honey oil extraction.

DEAN HIRSCH, Ukiah. Failure to register.

ERIC KOOYERS, Willits. Pot cultivation, processing, possession for sale, armed with firearm, honey oil extraction, possession of ammo by prohibited person, ex-felon with firearm, failure to register.

CHAD MABERY, Willits. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, failure to appear.

JOSE MARTINEZ, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MARIO PANIAGUA, Willits. Domestic assault, false imprisonment, child endangerment.

DANIEL RYAN, Calpella. Probation revocation.

JACOB SELLMER, Redwood Valley. Stolen vehicle.

JARRED SKAGGS, Ukiah. DUI.

DOLORES SMITH, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

LUCAS TURNER, Ukiah. DUI.

STEPHANIE YEH, Redwood Valley. Domestic assault.

* * *

CORRECTION: Due to an administrative oversight, an error was made in yesterday’s (August 24) “CATCH OF THE DAY.” There was a small typo in the name of Mr. Ivan Vervolshavinivsky of Willits. In fact, the correct spelling is: Alexander Rusef. A further error involved the fact that Mr. Rusef was not arrested at all, much less in Willits: he’s a professional wrestler with Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment, and he’s paid handsomely to look menacing. To our knowledge he has not loitered, cultivated pot or been on Mendocino County searchable probation or broken any other laws, although one might argue that professional wrestling is itself a fraud. We apologize for the error, which, interestingly, was not commented on by our very close readers who usually can be relied upon to point out such minor errors.

SLEEPING AND WAKING

by F. Scott Fitzgerald (December, 1934)

When some years ago I read a piece by Ernest Hemingway called Now I Lay Me, I thought there was nothing further to be said about insomnia. I see now that that was because I had never had much; it appears that every man’s insomnia is as different from his neighbor’s as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.

Now if insomnia is going to be one of your naturals, it begins to appear in the late thirties. Those seven precious hours of sleep suddenly break in two. There is, if one is lucky, the “first sweet sleep of night” and the last deep sleep of morning, but between the two appears a sinister, ever widening interval. This is the time of which it is written in the Psalms: Scuto circumdabit te veritas eius: non timebis a timore nocturno, a sagitta volante in die, a negotio perambulante in tenebris.

With a man I knew the trouble commenced with a mouse; in my case I like to trace it to a single mosquito.

My friend was in course of opening up his country house unassisted, and after a fatiguing day discovered that the only practical bed was a child’s affair — long enough but scarcely wider than a crib. Into this he flopped and was presently deeply engrossed in rest but with one arm irrepressibly extending over the side of the crib. Hours later he was awakened by what seemed to be a pin-prick in his finger. He shifted his arm sleepily and dozed off again — to be again awakened by the same feeling.

This time he flipped on the bed-light — and there attached to the bleeding end of his finger was a small and avid mouse. My friend, to use his own words, “uttered an exclamation,” but probably he gave a wild scream.

The mouse let go. It had been about the business of devouring the man as thoroughly as if his sleep were permanent. From then on it threatened to be not even temporary. The victim sat shivering, and very, very tired. He considered how he would have a cage made to fit over the bed and sleep under it the rest of his life. But it was too late to have the cage made that night and finally he dozed, to wake in intermittent horrors from dreams of being a Pied Piper whose rats turned about and pursued him.

He has never since been able to sleep without a dog or cat in the room.

My own experience with night pests was at a time of utter exhaustion — too much work undertaken, interlocking circumstances that made the work twice as arduous, illness within and around — the old story of troubles never coming singly. And ah, how I had planned that sleep that was to crown the end of the struggle — how I had looked forward to the relaxation into a bed soft as a cloud and permanent as a grave. An invitation to dine a deux with Greta Garbo would have left me indifferent.

But had there been such an invitation I would have done well to accept it, for instead I dined alone, or rather was dined upon by one solitary mosquito.

It is astonishing how much worse one mosquito can be than a swarm. A swarm can be prepared against, but one mosquito takes on a personality — a hatefulness, a sinister quality of the struggle to the death. This personality appeared all by himself in September on the twentieth floor of a New York hotel, as out of place as an armadillo. He was the result of New Jersey’s decreased appropriation for swamp drainage, which had sent him and other younger sons into neighboring states for food.

The night was warm — but after the first encounter, the vague slappings of the air, the futile searches, the punishment of my own ears a split second too late, I followed the ancient formula and drew the sheet over my head.

And so there continued the old story, the bitings through the sheet, the sniping of exposed sections of hand holding the sheet in place, the pulling up of the blanket with ensuing suffocation — followed by the psychological change of attitude, increasing wakefulness, wild impotent anger — finally a second hunt.

This inaugurated the maniacal phase — the crawl under the bed with the standing lamp for torch, the tour of the room with final detection of the insect’s retreat on the ceiling and attack with knotted towels, the wounding of oneself — my God!

— After that there was a short convalescence that my opponent seemed aware of, for he perched insolently beside my head — but I missed again.

At last, after another half hour that whipped the nerves into a frantic state of alertness came the Pyrrhic victory, and the small mangled spot of blood, my blood, on the headboard of the bed.

As I said, I think of that night, two years ago, as the beginning of my sleeplessness — because it gave me the sense of how sleep can be spoiled by one infinitesimal incalculable element. It made me, in the now archaic phraseology, “sleep-conscious.” I worried whether or not it was going to be allowed me. I was drinking, intermittently but generously, and on the nights when I took no liquor the problem of whether or not sleep was specified began to haunt me long before bedtime.

A typical night (and I wish I could say such nights were all in the past) comes after a particularly sedentary work-and-cigarette day. It ends, say without any relaxing interval, at the time for going to bed. All is prepared, the books, the glass of water, the extra pajamas lest I awake in rivulets of sweat, the luminol pills in the little round tube, the note book and pencil in case of a night thought worth recording. (Few have been — they generally seem thin in the morning, which does not diminish their force and urgency at night.)

I turn in, perhaps with a night-cap — I am doing some comparatively scholarly reading for a coincident work so I choose a lighter volume on the subject and read till drowsy on a last cigarette. At the yawning point I snap the book on a marker, the cigarette at the hearth, the button on the lamp. I turn first on the left side, for that, so I’ve heard, slows the heart, and then — coma.

So far so good. From midnight until two-thirty peace in the room. Then suddenly I am awake, harassed by one of the ills or functions of the body, a too vivid dream, a change in the weather for warm or cold.

The adjustment is made quickly, with the vain hope that the continuity of sleep can be preserved, but no — so with a sigh I flip on the light, take a minute pill of luminol and reopen my book. The real night, the darkest hour, has begun. I am too tired to read unless I get myself a drink and hence feel bad next day — so I get up and walk. I walk from my bedroom through the hall to my study, and then back again, and if it’s summer out to my back porch. There is a mist over Baltimore; I cannot count a single steeple. Once more to the study, where my eye is caught by a pile of unfinished business: letters, proofs, notes, etc. I start toward it, but No! this would be fatal. Now the luminol is having some slight effect, so I try bed again, this time half circling the pillow on edge about my neck.

“Once upon a time” (I tell myself) “they needed a quarterback at Princeton, and they had nobody and were in despair. The head coach noticed me kicking and passing on the side of the field, and he cried: ‘Who is that man — why haven’t we noticed him before?’ The under coach answered, ‘He hasn’t been out,’ and the response was: ‘Bring him to me.’”

“…we go to the day of the Yale game. I weigh only one hundred and thirty-five, so they save me until the third quarter, with the score—”

— But it’s no use — I have used that dream of a defeated dream to induce sleep for almost twenty years, but it has worn thin at last. I can no longer count on it — though even now on easier nights it has a certain lull…

The war dream then: the Japanese are everywhere victorious — my division is cut to rags and stands on the defensive in a part of Minnesota where I know every bit of the ground. The headquarters staff and the regimental battalion commanders who were in conference with them at the time have been killed by one shell. The command devolved upon Captain Fitzgerald. With superb presence…

— but enough; this also is worn thin with years of usage. The character who bears my name has become blurred. In the dead of the night I am only one of the dark millions riding forward in black buses toward the unknown.

Back again now to the rear porch, and conditioned by intense fatigue of mind and perverse alertness of the nervous system — like a broken-stringed bow upon a throbbing fiddle — I see the real horror develop over the roof-tops, and in the strident horns of night-owl taxis and the shrill monody of revelers’ arrival over the way. Horror and waste -

— Waste and horror — what I might have been and done that is lost, spent, gone, dissipated, unrecapturable. I could have acted thus, refrained from this, been bold where I was timid, cautious where I was rash.

I need not have hurt her like that.

Nor said this to him.

Nor broken myself trying to break what was unbreakable.

The horror has come now like a storm — what if this night prefigured the night after death — what if all thereafter was an eternal quivering on the edge of an abyss, with everything base and vicious in oneself urging one forward and the baseness and viciousness of the world just ahead. No choice, no road, no hope — only the endless repetition of the sordid and the semi-tragic. Or to stand forever, perhaps, on the threshold of life unable to pass it and return to it. I am a ghost now as the clock strikes four.

On the side of the bed I put my head in my hands. Then silence, silence — and suddenly — or so it seems in retrospect — suddenly I am asleep.

Sleep — real sleep, the dear, the cherished one, the lullaby. So deep and warm the bed and the pillow enfolding me, letting me sink into peace, nothingness — my dreams now, after the catharsis of the dark hours, are of young and lovely people doing young, lovely things, the girls I knew once, with bigbrown eyes, real yellow hair.

In the jail of ’16 in the cool of the afternoon

I met Caroline under a white moon

There was an orchestra—Bingo-Bango

Playing for us to dance the tango

And the people all clapped as we arose

For her sweet face and my new clothes –

Life was like that, after all; my spirit soars in the moment of its oblivion; then down, down deep into the pillow…

“… Yes, Essie, yes. — Oh, My God, all right, I’ll take the call myself.”

Irresistible, iridescent — here is Aurora — here is another day.

VACANCIES GALORE!

Supervisors, Community Partners, and Interested Parties:

The list of vacancies for County boards and commissions has been updated with new vacancies for the month of September. A complete list of all new and existing vacancies is available on the County website:

http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/bos/Forms.htm.

The attached document contains a list of the vacancies that are new this month. Please note: if you are receiving this email and are the coordinator of a board or commission, there is a new vacancy on your board or commission. Please refer to the attached document for further information. Please contact the Executive Office at (707) 463-4441 if you have any questions regarding this message. Thank you. Mendocino County Board of Supervisors and

Executive Office

501 Low Gap Road, Room 1010

Phone: (707) 463-4441

Fax: (707) 463-7237

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Mendocino County Executive Office is accepting applications for anticipated vacancies on the following Board or Commission:

Alcohol and Drug Abuse Advisory Board: (1) General Member

Animal Care and Control Appeals and Advisory Board (5): Licensed Veterinarian; Livestock Industry Representative (two seats); Public-at-Large Representative, Recognized Animal Organization Representative.

Assessment Appeals Board (2): Board Member, Alternate Board Member

Gualala Municipal Advisory Council: (1) Member

In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) Advisory Council . (2) — Current or Former IHSS Recipients

Library Advisory Board: (1) 2nd District Representative —

Mental Health Board: (1) 1st District Public Interest Representative —

If you are interested in serving on this Board or Commission, contact your District Supervisor, or the Executive Office, at 501 Low Gap Road, Room 1010, Ukiah, CA 95482 (707) 463-4441. LAST DATE FOR FILING: September 2, 2015, or until filled. CARMEL J. ANGELO Clerk of the Board of Supervisors

MORE WORK APPROVED FOR GRACE HUDSON MUSEUM IN UKIAH

by Justine Frederiksen

The Ukiah City Council has awarded bids for work on the Grace Hudson Museum totaling more than $800,000.

Though both projects are part of the museum’s Nature Education Facility Project, which is being funded by a $2.4 million state grant, Project Analyst Katie Marsolan said the two projects were bid separately in the hope of “having greater competition and better cost controls.” Marsolan said that aim was achieved and overall, staff was “pleased to see the results of this bidding process.”

The first project is for improvements to the museum building itself, including the construction of “a new exhibit hallway and entry point ... to lead visitors from the reception area into the new Nature Education garden space.” It also includes “reconfiguring the existing restrooms to address ADA code” and other codes.

Purchasing Supervisor Mary Horger told the City Council at its Aug. 19 meeting that the lowest bid opened the day before was submitted by FRC, Inc., of Petaluma. Though there “were some irregularities that were identified,” Horger said she consulted with City Attorney David Rapport and he felt the irregularities could be waived and did not provide FRC an “unfair bidding advantage.”

Therefore, staff recommended awarding the bid of $340,000 to FRC, and the council approved.

The second project was estimated to cost at least twice as much at nearly $700,000, which includes improvements to the parking lot and stormwater drainage.

“The scope of work includes ... reorienting the parking lot, expanding the number of spaces, new ADA stalls and path of travel, new parking light poles, use of permeable paving and stormwater treatment with a center bio-swale,” the staff report states, noting that the project will be paid for through the “Habitat Conservation Fund Grant, which includes a 50 percent match from the Cleveland Lane Drainage Special Project Reserve Fund.”

The lowest bidder for that project was Gregg Simpson Trucking of Ukiah, which bidded about $475,000, for a project estimated to cost $698,000. The council approved that bid award as well.

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

THE CINDERELLA OF THE OPIATES

Editor,

Masters of DoubleUnderSpeak or is it UnderDoubleSpeak?

It’s been a big month for scratching the surface of the truth when it comes to Mendocino’s patron Saintesse, Mary Jane. About a week or more ago the new DEA Chief, Chuck Rosenberg, told reporters, “Heroin is clearly more dangerous than marijuana.” Rosenberg ‘clearly’ displays a courage beyond measure (as in too minuscule to measure) in putting this truism out there. If the ‘Chief’ wanted to say something less obvious, he could have said, jumping out of a plane without a parachute is ‘clearly’ more dangerous than with one.

Or this: alcohol is evidently (and scientifically proven to be) more harmful than marijuana. Or perhaps: cigarettes are certainly and patently more dangerous to everyone’s health than good ol’ mari-j. Or, on a lighter note, yet still true, a Dagwood sandwich with a quarter pound of less than lean ham, piled high with two cheeses, genetically engineered lettuce, tomato, onions and pickles, a bit of mustard and slathered in mayo is most likely worse for anyone over 35 than a few tokes of mJ. In fact, I think you could safely say, wearing a polyester shirt is more dangerous than smoking marijuana (of course this one is just my opinion).

OK, OK, know I’m overdoing it.

Chuck goes on to warn everyone that this doesn’t mean marijuana isn’t dangerous, it’s just not as harmful as previously and wholeheartedly believed. What is it with these guys? Always fomenting faux fears. Can’t they just speak the plain truth? Even when they try to right a wrong they’re compelled to add a false caveat. It would be nice if our DEA Guy could elucidate further. What exactly is so dangerous about marijuana? How did he come to realize that heroin is more harmful than ‘weed’? Where does he get his information? Where is the science? The data? What does the DEA Guy have a degree in? Does he have a degree? Business Admin doesn’t count.

Marijuana is the Cinderella of all the ‘opiates.’ She is badgered and maligned by frustrated and angry bureaucrats and bullies (district attorneys and police) who turn their backs on local farmers (who are a major constituency) and justice. The ‘authorities’ exploit the marijuana growers as they are the easy targets of their ire for everything. To make things worse (or easier depending which side you’re on), marijuana growers are relatively easy to bully as they’re really not the criminals the vigilantes would have others believe. And, the farmers are foolish in their own stead for not banding together and challenging their persecutors. The covetous and begrudging centurions are so vested in cigarettes and alcohol (not to mention polyester and ham) that they get dizzy with self righteous rage at the idea of a pretty stepsister harmless and happy with herself.

If you are familiar with the classification system of drugs, then you would be informed enough to know that designating marijuana as a Class I ‘drug’ is absurd. Even if you have a hard-on for weed, you know it is NOT a Class I substance.

Everyone knows this, including the 4 people I know who say they have never smoked pot. Including the cops who really don’t care about weed and are only interested in the spoils and loot of their adventures. And of course, ‘young’ people know this, which is why in trying to sell the perils of marijuana to them, all credence is lost from the get-go. We all know how inaccurate marijuana’s reputation of being dangerously harmful to society-atlarge is.. and furthermore, we all understand the irony in the whitewashing of other sanctioned (legal) remedies that far exceed the threat of marijuana to the health and welfare of us all. Nonetheless, the politicians and the justice system continue to uphold the criminal fantasy surrounding marijuana. Why is this? Ignorance? Opportunism? Jealousy? Hardheaded mean-ness? Money? I am not being dramatic or disingenuous when asking, Why is this? (well, maybe a bit dramatic)

So… in taking (what seems to be) a long logical leap here. Mary Poppins once advised that, “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”. BUT, it seems that of all the medicinal amendments readily available, sugar may be one of the most insidiously damaging. Of all the ‘medicines’ that might warrant being typed as a Class I drug, sugar and all it’s cousins may be one of the better candidates. There is mounting evidence to strongly suggest sugar should be outlawed. At the very least it should require a prescription. It’s ills are well documented and growing. Though it may be good for quick calories and short energy boosts, in the end it will always let you down. It is the cause of many a good man’s demise in terms of health, welfare and waistline. Research is suggesting the more you consume, the less rational your reasoning (remember the Twinkies® that made the guy do it?). With sugar comes obesity, rotten teeth, diabetes and more ancillary ailments than we know. AND, don’t forget.. sugar is the all time gateway substance. You start out spooning an innocent dose onto your cereal and before you know it, you’re break-fasting on Wheaties® and whiskey. I know this seems a ludicrous way to end a Letter to the Editor. What a kook I must be, eh? Characterizing eating sugar as a criminal act is almost as irrational as, as, as.. ranking marijuana as a Class I drug. Science says, it may be that a pinch of marijuana is better than a shot of sugar. Watch out for Fructose Madness.

Thank you,

Robin Woulde

Ukiah

PLANLESS IN BALTIMORE

Editor:

Going "planless" now...

Good morning from Baltimore, Am going "planless" from now on, because there is nothing else to do! My laundry is drying in the HI-Baltimore laundry room, and I am going out to purchase more mango juice for the remaining five days here. My exit date is Sunday August 30th, and I have no idea what I will do then. Will sit silently in a pew in the Catholic basilica across the street today. Can no longer figure out the future, as my personality is pleasantly disintegrating. Please stay in touch with appropriate suggestions, Craig

Craig Louis Stehr

August 25, 2015

Hostelling International

Baltimore, Maryland

LIBRARY EVENTS

A FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK Event with Music by Stephen Winkle

Ukiah Library is celebrating September First Friday on September 4^th from 5:00 - 7:30 pm with two jewelry making crafts: shrink dink pendants and ribbon bracelets. Stephen Winkle will provide the music and enjoy the delicious snacks from Mama’s Café. The Friends of the Library’s book sale will be open from 4:00 – 8:00 pm on Friday evening and 10:00 - 3:30 pm on Saturday.

This is a family friendly event, sponsored by Mendocino County Library and the Friends of the Library, Ukiah Valley.

* * *

WINES & SPINES BOOK CLUB

Last Wednesdays of the Month – 6:30 pm at Enoteca Wine Bar, 106 W. Church Street

Adults 21 and over are invited to join our monthly book club Wines & Spines. We meet at Enoteca Wine Bar on the last Wednesday of each month. Studies show reading for pleasure reduces anxiety and increases our capacity for compassion. Join us in September for AMERICANAH by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: September 30^th at 6:30 pm. For a list of our titles and more information – please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us

THE WAY REAL RADIO SHOULD WORK

Editor,

A question of compliance.

— by Marco McClean

Re: Kzyxtalk / KNYO: The way real radio works. No dictatorial and superfluous program director required.

KZYX business underwriting coordinator David Steffen wrote:

Question for Marco.

Since you advise a potential programmer that using "swears" before 10:00pm is a problem, how do you resolve the problem if a programmer uses prohibited language before 10:00pm? What is the method used to bring the station back into compliance?

Marco here. Question for David Steffen.

I carefully and laboriously searched the KZYX website and also the FCC website and found no notice that KZYX's broadcast license has been properly renewed. It just isn't there. A couple of months ago I asked about this of John Sakowicz, the only MCPB boardmember who will respond to me anymore — imagine that — and suggested he pass my question along to the rest of the board and to the so-called news department, as an item to be investigated and reported on; Sakowicz sent my question to Stuart Campbell, who is the head of your politburo (president of the board, self-annointed CEO and general manager, elections fixer, definer of and appointer to all committees, and so on) and Stuart snipped that KZY/Z/ (no mention of KZYX) had been renewed so there's nothing to see here and certainly it isn't news (!) so the so-called news department won't be getting involved in this. (For general information, KZY/Z/ is a tiny transmitter about as powerful as a light bulb, that gets its signal from KZY/X/ and that rebroadcasts nothing but static if KZYX is out.)

On the KZYX website, the KZYX license is listed as having expired on 12/01/2013, twenty-one months ago.

Here: http://kzyx.org/Board/KZYX%20License.pdf

In addition to my nearly 35 years of overground teaching, publishing, radio and television work I have some experience with broadcasting illegally, having built and operated, for about a month in 1985, an automated truly public access radio station in Mendocino as a proof-of-concept project. It was less than a watt, and I paid a $400 fine for having done it, but the liability was listed as potentially $10,000 per day of the offense. That's something to think about regarding KZYX, whose transmitter is as powerful as three bathroom electric heat logs, and so the question of its legality is in fact newsworthy, as is the fatuous and Nixonian cartoon character Stuart Campbell.

As a subscribing member and so part owner of the station I wrote a three-minute statement on a number of matters to be read into the record by a boardmember — any boardmember — at the June board meeting and also to be inserted into the station's public inspection file. I stated this in no uncertain terms. Stuart Campbell spoke for the full board in several private emails, probably devoting an hour to this, refusing to read the statement, and I have no confidence it was ever placed into the public inspection file as the law requires. (Every communication a member of the public sends to the station intended for the public inspection file must be filed. That's the law.) That's a huge FCC issue, a license-threatening issue — that is, an issue threatening translator station KZYZ, which actually has a license on file to be threatened by Stuart's pouty refusal to act according to the law.

Okay, here's my question, David: What have you or the so-called program director or the various managers or the other superfluous bureaucrats at KZYX done — in return for the millions of dollars of tax grant money you've sucked out of the station for yourselves over the years — to bring KZYX back into compliance on terms that the real-world FCC actually cares a great deal about?

People who write for my show are not "programmers" under my or anyone's thumb. They are writers, and their work gets on the air as-is because this is America not Communist China. The FCC explicitly states on its website that it isn't even slightly interested in hearing complaints about profanity and blasphemy aired during the Safe Harbor Hours — Mary Aigner's ongoing coyly prudish chilling of free expression at KZYX notwithstanding.

People who do radio shows on KNYO are not "programmers" doing programs assigned to and prescribed for them by a mother hen program director ready to yank them off the air and banish them forever at any moment if they don't kowtow acceptably to her. They are radiopeople doing their shows their way. I don't expect you to understand that, David, but I'm holding it right up in front of your face; try to grasp it.

KNYO and the Federal Communications Commission, unlike Mary Aigner, are willing to allow actual radiopeople a reasonable amount of slack because, again, the United States of America, not Communist China.

As regards the time outside Safe Harbor hours, no U.S. radio station has ever lost its broadcast license because of a few swear words here and there. Nearly ninety years ago the Goat Gland doctor's permission to broadcast (at 100,000 watts) was revoked when the Federal Radio Commission (the FCC of the time) "found that Brinkley's broadcasts were mostly advertising, which violated international treaties, that he broadcast obscene material [medical advice, including the Latin terms for organs and appendages], and that his Medical Question Box series was 'contrary to the public interest.'" [wikipedia] The main point against him was the blatant advertising which, face it, we've all heard a lot of on KZYX though, even so, barely enough to cover the station's paying you to find ever more weaselly ways to fib that it's not really advertising.

Speaking of which, David, I'd like to hear you explain how what you do is not unwarranted advertising, when insurance companies and alcohol factories and banks and multinational chemical agribusiness giants and the Koch Brothers pay for long ad-agency-prerecorded spots on the air, and keeping in mind that, despite the poor-mouthing script Stuart has the (unpaid) airpeople repeat ad nauseam about how the station needs $10,000 a week* to "keep the great shows on the air", on top of another, what, $25,000 just this coming Friday the 28th in a "mini pledge day" to "augment the news department's capabilities", in fact all the real operating costs of the station, including enough to pay the airpeople (though you don't, and why is that?), has always been covered by the ample Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant of, I repeat, tax money we, members or not, have already paid and continue to pay.

Jesus Christ on a waffle: $10,000 a week! Here's how much it really costs to run a 5000-watt transmitter: at 12 cents per kWh, $100 a week. That's a ten thousand percent markup you've got going on there, to provide a public service, yet. They don't even let Pentagon contractors get away with that.

David, the purpose of an educational-band radio station is not to pay a handful of people at the top — that would be you, and Mary Aigner, and whoever Stuart will manipulate the board into selecting as the next manager now that John Coate has scuttled away — to write disingenuous sniping emails to defend your indefensible jobs. The purpose of a radio station is to maintain the machinery of a medium for people like me to do our art and work on the air. You have failed and you continue to fail to justify yourself in any capacity. By any objective measure the whole bunch of you in the KZYX office are a pack of contemptible crooks, a closed club, a self-interested gang, a corrupt priesthood, a racket.

Just the underwriters of my weekly late night show currently pay for about a sixth of KNYO's entire budget. Here's how they're underwriters: They pay the station's real bills, not any management salaries or perks or fluff, just the bills, and I mention them twice in seven hours: name, brief matter-of-fact description of service, address, telephone number; that's it. That's unambiguously underwriting, not advertising. Speaking of compliance.

I'd be willing to bet that I put more concentrated time and effort every week just into preparing for my live KNYO show than anyone at KZYX puts into whatever they and you imagine you're doing there. Just for comparison with KZYX, look: at KNYO Bob Young alone does the work of everyone in KZYX' entire office, and he accomplishes this in one afternoon per month. And we stay in compliance with both the letter and the spirit of the law in every way noticeably better than KZYX does or ever has. And no need for days or weeks of unlistenable chuckleheaded pledge drives. And no bureaucratic aristocracy or their hangers-on or barking dogs keeping people out who want access to the natural resource everyone has a right to use. A radio frequency is a natural resource. It doesn't belong to you. It belongs to everyone.

*KZYX ran through $575,000 last year, when the entire operation and maintenance and overhead of the station, even as poorly managed as it is, cost about a tenth of that. The other nine-tenths of that, and the reason for your endless fundraising and interference with airpeople's work, and the firings, and the blackballing and ostracizing of good people who should be on the air there but aren't, is that people like you, David, are running the place for your own transparently selfish benefit. And that's why you all fly into a spitting rage at the "haters" when anyone points this out in public, like at a board meeting, say, or in the newspaper, because you and your co-conspirators have the undeserved power to prevent honest and open discussion of these issues on the air. Or do you have that power anymore, technically? Is KZYX properly licensed? Inquiring minds want to know.

Marco McClean memo@mcn.org

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

A DEBATE ON TREATING MENTAL ILLNESS: Should We Bring Back Asylums? (Commonwealth Club)

http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2015-07-22/debate-treating-mental-illness-should-we-bring-back-asylums