SINCE WE LAST MET, CalFire's Boonville stalag reports that the first storm last week brought us a little more than one inch of rain, bringing the season total to 4.12 inches. The second rain fell Saturday into Sunday bringing Boonville's season total up to 5.08 inches. Yet another "storm" is expected to arrive late Tuesday night, and will deliver a couple inches between then and Friday. With the soil now being fairly saturated, we should start seeing more active runoff in the ditches. The bigger question then becomes: how long will it take before the Navarro River is able to breach its sandbar and reach the ocean once again?
STORMS? Don't you need a little more than light rains to get to storm? The television chuckle buddies routinely refer to rains as storms, but to most people in the areas of the country where they have real storms, storms are Wizard of Oz-quality tornados, and hurricanes complete with golf ball hail. We have rain. Occasionally we have heavy rain with wind, which still aren't storms. What we have in the way of natural catastrophes are earthquakes, and they trump everything.
MENDOCINOSPORTSPLUS reports that most of Caltrans work to clear the accumulated debris at the footings of the Navarro River Bridge at Highway One and Highway 128 is complete. The river, however, remains closed at the mouth. It will take a lot more rain and runoff to blast it open.
DIANE HERON, a long-time resident of Boonville, has moved to Medford, Oregon, to live with family there. We all miss Diane. She's been a strong part of the vivid human tapestry of the Anderson Valley, and her departure is yet another reminder how transient this community is.
DENNIS WINCHESTER is another person suddenly gone. Mr. W provided steady support for high school sports specifically and was highly regarded generally.
FROM NOW ON, Anderson Valley, if you're leaving you must check out with your beloved community newspaper. You simply cannot pack up and disappear. We won't permit it. Here today gone tomorrow? Don't do it. Too unsettling in times already alarmingly unsettled.
DON'T MISS Rossi Hardware's wonderful Christmas window display. Many of us recall the days when all the merchants of businesses large and small lifted our spirits with holiday windows, and blessings on the Rossi family for their civic mindedness.
THE REDWOOD EMPIRE'S oldest high school hoops tournament — 58 consecutive — played out in Boonville over a very long basketball weekend just past with a team from San Francisco, Stuart Hall, emerging triumphant late Saturday night, defeating a tenacious Cloverdale quintet featuring the latest McMillan, scion of that town's famous basketball family.
FIRST COUPLA days of play featured serial mismatches with the winners triumphing by an average of thirty points. It was refreshing to see a local team, Cloverdale, make it into the championship game. The McMillan kid can really play, as can a couple of his teammates. And they're young. Cloverdale people remember when the boy's father, Craig, led Cloverdale to back-to-back state championships. Local sports fans were absolutely delighted when Cloverdale knocked perennial Marin powerhouse Branson clear into the loser's bracket.
A STRONG Anderson Valley team, ably coached by Detective Luis Espinoza of the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department, handily dispatched Tomales, 62-42 in their opening match. The good guys were lead by Abraham Sanchez with 17 points and Jared 'Three Point' Johnston with 10.
THRUST into the winner's bracket, Anderson Valley took on Pinewood of Los Altos, falling to the visitors, 61-47. AV fired up way too many low percentage shots and turned the ball over constantly. Athletically, I thought AV was superior to the visitors — a collection of smallish, pasty-faced urban waifs with one kid about 6'6" who could, as they say, "tread water in a test tube" — but the string bean was tough inside, reaching up and over the Boonville boys for unimpeded scores. Anderson Valley got a big game out of Alejandro Soto with 18 points but otherwise drew an offensive blank. Anderson Valley gave the city boys all they could handle, and will easily win league play, although Jim Young will certainly argue that his Mendocino Cardinals are a lock.
THE PANTHER'S cold-shooting good guys then lost to Head Royce, 48-29, but overall more than held their own over the weekend.
THREE CLOVERDALE players, Marcus Poe; Jayson McMillan; and Luke Pope were named to the all-tourney team.
CSD BOARD CHAIR VALERIE HANELT WRITES: “In the late spring of 2016 Caltrans will be replacing all the signage at the 128/253 junction with Type 11 super reflective signage. This will include the signs noting how many miles to various cities on both highways and on 128 approaching the T at 253 the stop sign and stop ahead sign. (The stop ahead will actually be moved to its correct location at the entrance to the brewery.) This is new technology that is slowly getting phased into all signs in the state, but because we asked for it, we will be the first in our neck of the woods. Look out, it’s been known to be extremely bright when your headlights hit it! Congratulations to Mary Darling for complaining, Neil Darling for following up and bringing it to the CSD's attention, and CSD Manager Joy Andrews, for the follow through and making it happen. Way to go, guys!”
A DISSENT. Caltrans "signage" tends not to be helpful and often confusing. A big, garish direction's sign at that junction will just be one more eyesore in a county with an over-abundance of eyesores. And destroy the night skies. Every time someone asks me how far it is to Mendocino, I point down 128 to Cloverdale and say, "About an hour that way."
JACK HAYWARD II, a long-term resident of Anderson Valley, has died in Seattle. Jack was one of the founding members of the famous Rainbow Commune once located on Greenwood Road in Philo.
A READER WRITES re the late communard: "I might be mistaken but several years back didn’t you publish a weekly pseudo-stream-of-consciousness column in the AVA by Hayward under the byline “the Rooster”? I could tell by three weeks into it (and so could you, I gather) that they were not the insightful free form musings of a Kerouac or Ginsberg (a generation of beat artists Hayward claimed kinship with) but merely the random and chaotic activations of meth saturated neurons. Anyone who knows something about the history of the Rainbow commune will probably concede that Hayward was a phony, a long-haired poseur, a racketeer in bohemian facade who would’ve been at home in 1920’s Chicago. May he repent in the paisley purgatory."
PS. “…I recall that during the last month of her reign as news director at KZYX Annie Esposito interviewed Hayward for his recollections and insights re. the ‘back to the land’ movement in Anderson Valley, and related topics concerning his participation in the ‘peace & love & back to the land’ movement, etc. It was a sincere attempt (on her part) at probing for the ‘raison d’être’ of the whole thing. The most frequent and forceful answers he gave were: everyone was ‘fucked.’ Alan Ginsberg was ‘fucked.’ Lawrence Ferlinghetti was ‘fucked.’ Everyone who had any kind of utopian vision was ‘fucked,’ and etc… Actually, the bright-eyed utopians who moved with him to ‘Rainbow’ were the real ‘fucked,’ for he was a Bohemian-garbed grifter who simply saw his bright-eyed brethren (and sisteren) as marks to be exploited. Every idealistic movement will attract bloodsuckers who take advantage of the moment. Let’s not delude ourselves that these swine don’t exist.”
I WOULDN'T be that hard on the old boy, but Jack was certainly a difficult person who exhausted all his friends and, so far as I know, his entire family. I saw him fairly often before he disappeared into the Northwest. Jack was down to me and Jimmy Humble as just about the last people who would deal with him at all, meaning he'd definitely hit Anderson Valley's social bottom. He was clearly speeding, and often incoherent, and sad and isolated, not the place one wants to be in one's Golden Years. The last time I saw him in a more or less functional state was at the Rainbow property as it was being converted to vineyard. Susan Faludi, of all people, was with me. She was curious about Rainbow and the hippie phenomenon as it played out here at Ground Zero, hip bop a rebop, and warn't them the days! Jack, instantly in monologue mode, lay on his back on a big bed in a rambling structure that the vineyard monolith has undoubtedly since bulldozed. Outside, the old Rainbow had been desert-ified. We walked through about fifty yards of pulverized earth, about to be poisoned to the depths of ten feet or so with methyl bromide to cleanse the new vineyard of all possible pests. (Caesar merely salted the earth. These people destroy it forever.) The dust to Jack's front door was at least six inches thick, and once through Jack's portal he commenced a long spiel on the general theme of walking lightly on the earth. On the way back to my house we remarked on the spectacular disconnect we'd just audited. Myself, as an extremely uptight, rigidly puritanical, hopelessly judgmental, binge-drinking, elderly white male, I never had any first hand experience with Rainbow; naked piles and days passed in narco hazes held zero appeal to me. Hippies generally annoyed me as deadbeats and, mostly, silly willies. And willettes. And despite a lot of rad talk they were Clintonian libs, heavily dependent on money from their appalled parents, and almost all wildly entitled. Sure enough, after a few years of naked grab ass in the hills, the hippies cleaned up and assumed the power positions in all the County's public jobs and non-profits, the latter scams that the lawyers among them had devised as no work, good pay slots for their friends. The scene was sex and drugs. And some outdoor warm weather ag. I mos def did not approve of their child rearing practices. I mean, what does a kid need? Structure and safety. Communes, that one certainly, provided the opposite, which probably accounts for a large preponderance of Mendo's children of chaos doing a 180 from their irresponsible parents, marching off in their suits and ties to careers in Free Enterprise as soon as they got away from whatever longhaired molesto was theoretically in charge of the feral flocks of little ones while their parents "did their own thing." (The infamous cho-mo Tree Frog Johnson was much in demand among counter-culturalists as a baby sitter.) The famous actress, Winona Ryder, spent part of her formative years at Rainbow. It would be interesting to hear what she has to say about the experience. Well, whatever, as the young people say. But poor old Jack. I hope he's landed in a heavenly collective more suited to whatever it was his troubled soul sought.
AV FIRE CHIEF ANDRES AVILA gave out a number of awards to the Valley's many dedicated volunteer firefighters and emergency responders at Saturday’s night’s 2015 Awards Dinner at River’s Bend (formerly Wellspring).
Specialists: Fleet mechanic Steve Weir, Communications/Radios: Terry Ferrelly, CalFire’s Dave Diggs.
2015 Retirees Rob Giuliani, Fred Woolley.
New recruits: Moy Perez, Abraham Sanchez, Christopher Starik, Cameron McKenzie-Chapter, Judy Diaz.
Medical Responders: Aaron Martin, Antoinette von Grone, Holly Newstead, Sara McCarter, Terry Gowan.
Firefighters: Olie Erickson, Scott Fraser, Fal Allen, Ben Glaus.
Engineers: Paul Soderman, John Keevan-Lynch, Colin Wilson, Kyle Clark.
MedStar Medic Tyler Miles, recently assigned to Valley, was introduced to the crew.
Lieutenants: Angela Dewitt, Carlos Espinoza, Tina Walter, Nick Schwartz, Charlie Paget-Seekins, Rusty Pronsolino.
Captains: Sarah Farber, Kris Kellem.
Battalion Chiefs: Jim Minton, Clay Eubanks, Roy Laird.
Also recognized District staff: Secretary Patty Liddy, GM Joy Andrews.
Rookie of the Year: Moi Perez.
Engineer of the Year: Fal Allen.
Medical Officer of the Year: Aaron Martin.
Officer of the Year: Angela Dewitt.
Firefighter of the Year: Ben Glaus.
SPEC MACQUAYDE will be opening for Sara Larkin at Lauren's Restaurant in Boonville this Saturday, December 12. Show starts at 9pm. Songs, stories and antics. Possibly some outlaw activity.
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