Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Jan 5, 2016

• Boardman Update
• Rain Rain
• AT&T Outages
• 2015 Review
• Chemtrail Day
• Housebreaking
• Privatization Terrorists
• 2016 Baby
• Betty Deutsch
• Bulwark
• Yesterday's Catch
• Invisible Hands
• Ladykiller
• Netflix Appeal
• Library Events
• Aqua Show
• Hiking Hopland

UPDATE ON THE MURDER OF DENNIS BOARDMAN: Sgt. Brandon Lee of the Fort Bragg Police Department said late Monday that the cause of death is "believed to blunt force trauma," and that Dennis had been dead in his home in the 100 block of Morrow Street "for at least six days" before his body was found Saturday.

IT’S RAINING. Accumulations approaching an inch for this week so far. Some local weather stations are reporting up to 0.2 inches per hour. Tuesday may bring another inch. Rain likely to continue most days through next Wednesday with totals expected to reach upwards of four inches. Roads are treacherous and wet — and some have started to fall away in spots. Watch for falling rocks near any slope above a road.

MENDO AT&T OUTAGES

This morning at 10:30 a.m. I received a phone call from AT&T informing us there are currently outages of phone and or internet services throughout Mendocino County. These outages they believe were caused from rain, wet lines. At this time AT&T did not have the total number of outages or how long before they will have service restored. They are aware of the problems and have additional crews working on the outages. They will notify us as new information comes in.

Thank you

Tami Bartolomei
Office of Emergency Services Coordinator
Mendocino County Sheriff's Office
951 Low Gap Road
Ukiah, CA 95482
Office 707-463-5667
Cell Phone 707-367-0222

MENDOCINO COUNTY 2015. THE YEAR THAT WAS.

AVA News Service

THE INTOXICANTS INDUSTRIES continue to employ more locals than any other form of Mendocino County enterprise. Government, including the County's far flung school systems, is the County's third largest employer. Although our many narco-entrepreneurs are prospering in a context of state confusion and federal illegality on which the narcos depend for profit, our government systems are badly run by wildly over-paid, often incompetent people who've collectively achieved a kind of Mendo entropy, meaning nothing can be improved short of firing most department heads and school superintendents, and starting all over again.

FOUR YEARS of drought has exacerbated water tensions. Both the Eel and Russian rivers are dangerously overdrawn while the dominant wine industry demands ever more of a finite resource and marijuana farmers add to shortages by stealing water, especially from the Eel and its tributaries. Water diversions and careless use of pesticides by pot growers are a problem everywhere in the County. Municipal water systems are precarious in Willits and Fort Bragg, but nothing much in long-term water saving and storage is occurring in either community. Ukiah is planning to dig two new deep-water wells, but water planning is complicated in the Ukiah Valley by seven, including the City of Ukiah's, often competing water districts.

OVER THE LONG YEAR of 2015, a new County Courthouse for the congested foot of West Perkins Street in Ukiah is proceeding outside any formal oversight process simply because our 9 Superior Court judges want it. The wacky owner of the derelict Palace Hotel in the center of Ukiah has just received another extension from a visiting judge to rehab the unrehabbable property. The Palace's rehab has been under discussion for a decade now.

ARGUABLY THE LEAST CAPABLE PERSON in the history of public education in the state, Paul Tichinin, Superintendent of Mendocino County Schools, has finally retired, but not before extorting a final pay raise from his captive board plus a pair of tax paid jaunts to distant educational confabs.

MARK SCARAMELLA of Boonville, acting in lieu of any help, let alone interest from his supervisor, sued three neighboring vineyards to get them to muffle their frost fans.

Scaramella finally negotiated, on his own, a settlement with those vineyards. Court hearings on the matter saw a large turnout from the wine industry whose collective stance is that their interests trump the general welfare. According to Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Richard Henderson, the loss of wine grapes by a few vineyard owners is somehow more damaging than the lost sleep of a thousand or so residents of the Anderson Valley.

FORT BRAGG plunked down a homeless center in the middle of the struggling tourist-oriented town. The town's government, with the usual over-compensated town manager leading a surreptitious charge, approved conversion of the Old Coast Hotel to a dubious, unevaluated, scheme aimed at reclaiming persons laid low by drug and drink.

DROP-FALL DRUNKS, free range drug addicts and a minority of mentally ill persons comprise almost all Mendocino County's homeless. This population continues to grow in the County despite some $20 million a year spent allegedly caring for it. Half that money goes to a private, for profit business called the Ortner Management Group. OMG "treats" only those persons who are reimbursable by state and federal agencies, meaning it's in Ortner's interest to provide as few services as possible.

2015 BEGAN with the collapse of the Willits Bypass viaduct, or a 150-foot-long of formed-up viaduct ready for concrete. When the concrete was poured, down went the superstructure. 2015 ended with the mass slaughter of ordinary Americans and citizens of France by Mohammedan fanatics.

LAND AND REAL ESTATE prices held steady over the year. Vineyard land remains at a premium. Bare land costs forty to fifty thousand an acre to convert to vineyard. Four hundred thou will get you twenty bare acres in Anderson Valley. $600,000 will get you a doublewide trailer on a small lot.

PUBLIC RADIO MENDOCINO COUNTY, a perennial focus of County-wide unhappiness, said goodbye to long-time program manager Mary Aigner and its manager, John Coate. Lorraine Dechter has been named station manager. We predict Dechter's installation is your basic lateral managerial move and that KZYX will continue to lose memberships.

AMONG many local signs of the Apocalypse, the Sheriff's Office offers the use of video cameras to warring parents as they exchange custody of children in the Sheriff's parking lot.

USE of methamphetamine, with prescription opiates coming on strong, continues epidemic in Mendocino County.

IN SEPTEMBER of 2015, an attractive young woman named Asha Kreimer, 26, a native of Australia, went missing from a cafe near Point Arena. Her boy friend, Jamai Gayle, subsequently drove into a redwood near Navarro. He died in a Santa Rosa hospital from his injuries. Miss Kreimer remains missing.

THE LATE SUSAN KEEGAN'S killer remains unprosecuted for the fifth year since Mrs. Keegan's death by bludgeoning to her head. Dr. Peter Keegan, the only person in the home when his wife was murdered, remains the sole suspect in a case ruled homicide.

THE HISTORICALLY TROUBLED Mendocino County Animal Shelter, Ukiah, was coveted by Petaluma Animal Services Foundation, but the Supervisors voted unanimously to keep the Shelter under the shaky management of the County's Health Department.

TWO WILDFIRES DEVASTATED Lake County, but Mendocino County was again spared major summer blazes.

THE MUCH DESIRED Costco outlet in Ukiah remained mired in legal murk as the year came to an end.

NORTHCOAST CRAB was found unfit for human consumption and the ban on fishing it remained in effect as the year ended.

THE SUPERVISORS, on a 3-2 vote, refused to support a “hack-and-squirt” resolution that would have asked timber companies to voluntarily suspend the chemical destruction of unmarketable tree species. Even purely advisory measures aimed at the timber industry seem to terrify three of our supervisors — Brown, McCowen, Woodhouse.

MENDOCINO COUNTY received an A for having zero high ozone days between 2011 and 2013 in the American Lung Association’s 2015 State of the Air report. Ukiah's summer air remains highly unpleasant if not toxic.

AS ONE OF ONLY A FEW Superior Courts in California that require traffic citation fees to be paid-in-full before the fined can stand in front of a judge and dispute the allegations of a violation, our Superior Court dropped the practice.

THE GRAND JURY pointed out that the County's failure to require agricultural landowners (vineyards, mostly) to file regular reports may be leaving tax revenue on the table. The County, of course, took no steps towards remediation.

THE UKIAH CITY COUNCIL appointed Assistant City manager Sage Sangiacomo to replace exiting City Manager Jane Chambers. Sangiacomo, with fringes, rakes in about $250,000 a year to "manage" a "city" of 16,000.

MENDOCINO COUNTY'S burgeoning homeless population showed a decline in 2015, according to the numbers from January’s unintentionally hilarious "Point-In-Time count," during which many "aggressive homeless people" refused to be surveyed. The total number of homeless people in the County is estimated at around 1300.

IN EARLY JUNE, and hard on the heels of the sudden appearance of thriving pot plants in a gro-bag garden adjacent to Highway 101 at Pinoleville just north of Ukiah, Sheriff Allman announced he will enforce the 9.31 ordinance, saying that the Pinoleville tribe comes under the law. The gro-garden soon disappeared.

LITTLE MIKEY McGUIRE, our state senator from Healdsburg, introduced several showbiz marijuana bills to demonstrate his "concern" about environmental damage and contradictory pot policies generally. Meanwhile, Little Mikey's state assembly colleague, a dentist and also from Healdsburg, Jim Wood, introduced a bill that would make pharmaceutical opiates crush-resistant. The drug brigades, you see, powder-ize the pills to shoot them up. We all sleep better knowing the Healdsburg double play duo is on the job for us!

THE UKIAH CITY COUNCIL has been incrementally improved by the departure of three sillies — Benj Thomas; Mary Ann Landes; Mari Rodin. And we are sorry to see Phil Baldwin's council tenure come to an end. Gratuitous observation: Certain names remind us of the recent ascendance in local politics of small round people — short, plump, busy, and faintly creepy testosterone-deficient males. Is there an undetected physiognomic political movement underway, perhaps the logical extension of unisex fashion combined with NPR wet brain?

BEST LOOKING political newcomer of 2015: Maureen Mulheren of the Ukiah City Council. And, unlike her predecessors, she's smart.

IN VAIN, Redwood Valley has fought to prevent a Dollar General store from establishing itself next door to the Savings Bank.

A SEEMINGLY ETERNAL discussion to bring broadband to Mendocino County continued to be eternally discussed, hopefully not unto death.

ALLEGED REFORMS of the state prison system has had the net local effect of decriminalizing hard drug use, and even some felonies and the felons who commit them, while at the same time releasing low-level criminals into their home communities, hence a county-wide uptick in burglaries, car break-ins and public mopery generally, a lot of it shoved into the general category of "homelessness."

THE MOTHER of all outlaw pot grows was raided in the Island Mountain area, a no man's land roughly equivalent to Asia's Golden Triangle where Trinity, Humboldt and Mendocino counties meet in deep northeastern Mendo. The largest water bladder most of us have either seen or heard of was also found. 86,578 plants were confiscated from gardens spread over 12 miles. No one has been arrested.

LOCAL DEVELOPMENTS in fine dining. The reopening of a Taco Bell in Fort Bragg saw lines out the door for two weeks. Meanwhile, Ukiah looks forward to a Chipotle restaurant. Why fake Mexican food is popular among Mendo gringos is a gourmet mystery.

A MALE ANTHROPMORPH broke into the Ukiah Animal Shelter to free some fifty dogs, most of them quickly re-sequestered. Mendocino County has a large surplus of abandoned pit bulls left behind by transient pot farmers and transient-transients who travel with this dangerous breed out of the mistaken notion the Pits can protect them.

THE BUDDHISTS bought the old Trinity School property in West Ukiah. Substituting the Great Wheel of Life for the old crucifix that hung on the wall of the school’s chapel, the Buddhists continue to be the only religious faith that continues to grow in Mendocino County. Old, old timers will remember when the property was an orphanage owned and run by an order of nuns. Among their graduates, state historian Kevin Starr.

COUNTY GOVERNMENT continued with lavish salaries for top bureaucrats little for line workers, as the County continues to hemorrhage employees who leave for better paying work in Sonoma County and points south. In another lateral personnel move, County Counsel Doug Losak left for private practice, and he's going to need plenty of private practice, as Kitty Elliot, a member of Supervisor Hamburg's cult, was appointed acting County Counsel. Losak ran private errands for Hamburg, Elliot will undoubtedly continue that corrupt practice.

IN A COUNTY where horrifying murders are unsettlingly common, Talen Clark Barton, 19, in a fiendish knife attack on the Laytonville family who'd taken him in, fatally stabbed two of his hosts and nearly killed two more.

MENDOCINO COAST residents are resisting installation of a new trash transfer station designed by reinvented Maoist maniac, Mike Sweeney, that would place the $5 million industrial facility in the endangered Pygmy Forest. (There's an existing and perfectly commodious existing transfer station at Pudding Creek.) Sweeney, of course, is Mendocino County's lead trash bureaucrat, and please join me for a chorus of..... Mendocino County! Where you are whatever you say you are, and history starts all over again every day.

FOULING the Eel River for 31 years now,  Reggae on the River, an outdoor musical mob scene in, on and around the battered river as it struggles to flow through Southern Humboldt County.

OPTIMISTS OF THE YEAR, 2015. Ukiah approved eight Tesla charging stations in the center of town on the deeply flawed assumption that the few people who can afford Teslas will tourist-visit our tawdry county seat. So far as we know there are no Teslas in the County.

UKIAH, with County support, tentatively approved funding for a tiny house project for the homeless in a desolate industrial area near the railroad tracks. The proposal would place perhaps as many as fifty waterproof wooden boxes around a common shower and kitchen in which the homeless would live. By the way, there are no "wet" shelters in Mendocino County, "wet" defined here as shelters that house persons who arrive under the influence. If you're drunk on a freezing night hypothermia is likely to carry you off.

LONG OVERDUE. The Mendocino-Lake Community College District has agreed to sponsor the Mendocino Coast Campus in Fort Bragg. The inland campus of the college north of Ukiah continues as a kind of jock rehab center, with athletes recruited from all over the country to play the major sports of football and basketball. The college does, however, run a valuable nurse's training program. This is the college, you may recall, that built its top-of-the-line sports facilities before its library.

WHY WE LOVE UKIAH. In August, the Ukiah Theater began checking customer’ bags for weapons in the wake of recent movie theater shootings.

THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, without demur, and without reminding themselves that the County is broke from millions in pension obligations that can never be paid, blithely signed off on another annual budget, complete with a half-privatized (and utterly failed) mental health "system."

IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, tweekers, presumably, operating on the tweeked assumption that AT&T's fiber optic line near Hopland contained marketable copper, severed all of Mendocino County from the electronic outside world. Cell phones, internet the whole cyber-shebang was out for 24 hours everywhere in the County.

SUPERVISOR McCOWEN gets major atta boys for his after hours work cleaning up after the homeless camps in the Russian River drainage. For his efforts, McCowen had to scurry from a homeless man brandishing a club.

PACE McCOWEN, some 80 volunteers spent a Saturday picking trash out of Gibson and Doolin creeks, filling up 35 bags of trash from those two Ukiah streambeds alone.

BOTH the Russian and the Eel rivers became so toxic at the end of the summer that two dogs died from cavorting in their depleted waters.

A CONSTANT undercurrent of violent crime related to drugs plagues Mendocino County. Home invasions are common (and mostly unreported) and pot field murders are equally commonplace. Two men were arrested in connection with a shooting that killed one and injured another at trespass marijuana grow near Yorkville on Sunday morning. Gang punks continue to plague Ukiah and Fort Bragg.

SUPERIOR COURT Judge David Nelson announced he will not seek re-election to a court term as judge and will retire at the end of his term in January 2017. Two attorneys, Patrick Pekin of Fort Bragg, and Keith Faulder of Ukiah are running for a seat on the Superior Court.

A GROUP of local investors led by Ross Liberty is negotiating to acquire 65 acres of the long-abandoned Masonite plant north of Ukiah. Liberty and Company "envision," as we say in this county of visionaries and free range Madam Blavatskys, an industrial park.

HOW CAN WE MISS YOU if you won't stay gone. "Retired" MTA manager Bruce Richards is back at the helm of the heavily subsidized and lightly patronized County bus system. MTA is, of course, launching the "nationwide search for excellence" that commences whenever a County bureaucrat shuffles off to Deerwood or West Ukiah. MTA had a guy in place, Dan Baxter, who was purged for unstated reasons, hence the re-emergence of the inert Richards.

JULIENNE WATERS, 59, was arrested with 381 pounds of pot in Navajo County, Arizona.  Her bail was set at $2 million for a load of the miracle drug valued at $1.2 million. Ms. Waters is the third Ukiah matron over the past five years to be nailed for transporting mega-quantities of bud.

EDWARD STARSKI of Lake County, convicted of passing himself off as a sanctioned lawyer, and despite the testimony of his mom whom he called as his primary character witness, Starski was convicted of trying to scam Mendo Mill for $4400 for a non-existent slip and fall.

SLEAZE BAG sanctioned attorney Jack Silver of the bogus environmental non-profit RiverWatch, sleazy even by the legal standards of our sleazy times, goes around suing heavily insured municipalities for alleged water quality deficiencies. "You send me thousands of dollars and I won't sue you." Most towns cough up rather than engage Silver in expensive litigation. He's presently suing Fort Bragg. Of all the crooks chronicled over 2015, including the killers, this guy is the worst of the worst.

JAIL CORRESPONDENT OF THE YEAR:

Michael Jay Overholt. An excerpt from “Willits After Dark”

“… After a few drinks we headed across the street to another bar called Diggers. After we left Diggers I was completely smashed. So Tim (I think) wanted to walk towards the Chevron. At this point I was so drunk that I blacked out. But apparently the following went down: According to what Tim told me a few days later in court, we ran into three 18- or 19-year-old kids. The kids apparently asked me to buy them some beer. So I took the money and we all proceeded to walk to the Chevron. Then I went into the gas station and bought a sandwich and I think a milk or something. When I came out the three kids asked, "Where's our beer?" To which I replied, "It's right here — in sandwich form." I proceeded to laugh in their face. Which, if that is what I really did, I was of course in the wrong. Then the three kids tried to jump me. I started fighting with them when Tim came out of the store and helped me win the fight. When I came to we were down at the north end of town and my retarded drunk ass was throwing rocks through windows. My bad. Very stupid. We made it almost all the way to Elaine's when Jake Donahue, a Willits cop, pulled us over. He said that we had committed a robbery. The kids said that when we were in the fight that Tim demanded their money and reached his hand into their pocket and stole their pack of cigarettes. The cops in fact found a pack of cigarettes into Tim's pocket. Then the kids identified us and we were sent to jail for strong-armed robbery over the cigarettes. I was charged with accessory to the robbery. The court date arrived and I still couldn't remember the details of what happened that night. To this day all I know is what Tim told me.”

CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED AWARD, 2015, to Michael France v. Ashley Tolles, as read out in court:

Michael France: “I’m gonna knock all your fucking teeth out, and my homeboy from LA will have no trouble selling you as a sex slave.”

Ashley Tolles: “Do it, motherfucker! You are a piece of shit and a coward! Come on over, motherfucker, you can sit and wait for the police… I have a door that will withstand a zombie apocalypse… I don’t give a fuck what you say, it doesn’t mean a fuck to me; go and smoke some more dope, you stupid fuck.”

HAPPY NEW YEAR. Enjoy it while you can. 2016 may be the last we recognize.

PERILOUS TIMES FOR PARANOIDS

Editor

What are they doing up there? Couldn't be chemtrails could it?

At about 3:45 p.m. I was walking back to the house after feeding and watering the chickens when I saw a vertical "halo" around the sun. Only it wasn't the sun. It wasn't until I had run inside then returned with my cameras that I realized the sun was to the left of the "reflection" on its right. Its brightness had dimmed considerably in the meantime, and, as I tried to line up a shot hiding the sun behind a tree limb, waves formed in the artificial cloud surrounding it (a dead give away of HAARP or whatever atmospheric heater is active today). It goes without saying that today was another massive chemtrail day — blue skies in the morning followed by increasing fake clouds as the day wore on. The sun is behind the tree limb in one photo. I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for this phenomenon, and I'm equally sure it's probably wrong.

David Ellison, Mendocino

THE BUNDY MILITIA RAID ON BURNS:

What the Media Left Out

by John Borowski

Public lands are some of our most treasured lands in the nation. Opal Creek, Crater Lake, the Siuslaw National Forest here in Oregon to name just a few. The truth behind the Bundy influenced takeover of the Malheur refuge HQ should be exposed for what it is.

I spend numerous days camping, hiking and photographing wildlife in Malheur Refuge. The place is heaven. The community people are friendly and the refuge staff is dedicated to the protection of wildlife as they accommodate the needs of the local community. I say: what are the facts?

Ammond Bundy’s false narrative should be exposed. He is the son of a rancher that grazes on your public lands: at a reduced cost. He has avoided paying his fees. I am older: I call those types….dead beats or true welfare queens. They are not patriots: they are acting like thugs and bringing in outside influences who don’t give a damn about Oregon.

They are breaking onto our land and our tax payer funded building in Malheur. Their excuse? The Cliven Bundy crew is defending the conviction of the Hammond family (a father and son). They destroyed OUR PUBLIC PROPERTY to cover up their illegal hunting/killing deer. FACTS MATTER. Witnesses at trial, including a relative of the Hammonds, testified the arson occurred shortly after Steven Hammond and his hunting party illegally slaughtered several deer on BLM property. Jurors were told that Steven Hammond handed out “Strike Anywhere” matches with instructions that they be lit and dropped on the ground because they were going to “light up the whole country on fire.” One witness testified that he barely escaped the eight to ten foot high flames caused by the arson. The fire consumed 139 acres of public land and destroyed all evidence of the game violations.

The Bundy crew is being manipulated by powerful interests who want to privatize public lands. This is not new. In the 1970s: it was called the Sagebrush Rebellion. In the 1990s: the Wise Use Movement. These are efforts by mining, timber, grazing, oil and gas interests to privatize your public lands.

Our public lands are crucial for wildlife, purifying water and air, providing recreation and tourist dollars for local economies. Know this: more and more extraction is occurring ON OUR PUBLIC lands. Time to stop this.

The false narrative here is that big, bad government types are trying to stir up trouble. In reality: from Ted Cruz to powerful extractive industries: they are desperately seeking ways to give these lands, our lands: back to the states. Then: let the extraction begin with sales of our prized lands to the highest bidder.

Contact your Congressperson. Contact the White House. Write letters to the editor.

Don’t be duped by the Bundy narrative. We are a nation of laws. Those public lands belong to your children and grandchildren. If they want change: use the democratic process. I wonder: if I went to Malheur and cut fences of private land owners to help mustangs: I would be a criminal. I would be labeled an “environmental terrorist,” Let’s call this action by Bundy and ilk for what it is: an act of terrorism. Peaceful protests don’t include bringing assault weapons and threatening to harm federal police for doing their jobs?

Enough is enough. Get off our public land and follow the laws like most of us do.

(John Borowski is an environmental educator in Oregon. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

UKIAH'S FIRST BABY OF 2016: IT'S A GIRL!

This year, the only desire the Shillings-Davis family has in the world is that their new baby girl will continue to be the happy, healthy bundle of joy that she is. That is the simple wish of the new parents of Ukiah's first baby of the year. Weighing 7 lbs. and 3 ounces, and 19 inches long, baby Noel Emma Geraldine Davis made her entrance at 6:20 a.m. on New Year's Day in the Family Birth Center at Ukiah Valley Medical Center. Baby Noel is welcomed as the first child of mom, Dayniece Shillings and dad, Charles Davis Jr. Dayniece and Charles checked in at the Family Birth Center at 4:35 a.m. on January 1st and had the baby at lightning speed, only an hour and forty-five minutes later. The New Year's baby is a highly anticipated event at the Family Birth Center each year. It was a collaborative effort of the expert nurses at UVMC working in tandem with Dr. Crabtree from Care for Her and delivering midwife, Paige McIntyre. Dayneice extends a special thank you to the nurses who helped deliver Baby Noel. Despite her nervousness as a new mom, Dayneice was so impressed with the great care she received from the nursing staff at UVMC. "The nurses were very understanding, with this being my first baby. They were great," says Dayneice. As the first baby of the year, Baby Noel received a gift basket full of newborn necessities from the UVMC staff. She also received new baby clothes, a case of diapers, a case of baby wipes and a beautiful handmade quilt made by an award winning quilter, Cecil Gowan, who is also one of UVMC's talented ICU nurses. The Birthing Center at UVMC feels that this kind of group effort will start Baby Noel off on the right foot, as it really does take a village of caring individuals to raise a child. The New Year has been busy for the Family Birth Center staff with four babies already delivered. The Family Birth Center delivered 866 babies in 2015 and, with the updates to the facility and caring staff, more moms are choosing to deliver at the Family Birth Center. The Family Birth Center offers a state-of-the art facility, with large private birthing suites and a Special Care Nursery. The birth center also offers a variety of educational and support classes for expectant moms and caregivers. The Family Birth Center is located at Ukiah Valley Medical Center, 275 Hospital Drive in Ukiah. For more information about classes provided, please call 707-463-7550. -- UVMC

BETTY DEUTSCH MEMORIAL this Saturday, Jan 9

Join us for a Celebration of Betty Deutsch’s Life at the Casper Community Center this Saturday, January 9th, 12-4. Bring your stories, pictures, memories and food to share. For further information contact Gail Deutsch at gyelsed@gmail.com or 928-322-5742.

BULWARK

by Manuel Vicent

Right now in France it’s possible that if someone knocks on your door at four in the morning, it’s not the milkman but a cop without a search warrant who is ready to kick in the door if you don’t open it.

More than 2,000 years of a tenacious struggle for liberty were necessary so that this would never happen. Are we going to renounce that struggle for fear of another terrorist attack?

European civilization began with the victory of the Greeks in Salamis against the Persians in the fifth century before Christ. Our culture is nourished by the philosophy of the Greeks, the law of the Romans, humanism, the values of reason brandished by the French Revolution, the victory of science over obscurantism, the resistance against fascism and Nazi barbarism.

Are a few explosive vests and a dozen Kalashnikov rifles sufficient for us to throw our history overboard? Is it comprehensible that a simple alarm left Brussels, the capital of Europe, paralyzed for four days?

You can bombard here and you can bombard there and you can use up the entire arsenal produced by the arms industry, but ultimately you can only defend liberty by exercising it. Giving up your individual rights to the police is the fastest way to lose them.

Mrs. Miniver was the heroine of the famous film of William Wyler. In 1942, during World War II, in a town north of London, despite having her two sons mobilized, she was determined to celebrate as usual the annual tournament of flowers while German bombs fell all around.

Churchill said that if England had won the war, more than to the planes of the RAF, it was due to people like Mrs. Miniver who continued exercising, without fear, their way of life--like a bulwark in defense of rights won over the course of 2,000 years.

CATCH OF THE DAY, January 4, 2016

DAVID COUTTS JR., Redwood Valley. Pot cultivation, possession for sale, conspiracy.

JAMES DAVIS, Albuquerque/Redwood Valley. Pot possession for sale, conspiracy.

MANUEL FREASE JR., Covelo. Meth sale.

STEVEN GREEN, Ukiah. Drunk in public, controlled substance.

RICK HORTON, Colfax./Ukiah. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, injection device, failure to appear, probation revocation.

BRIANNE MCCAIN, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

TIMOTHY MCCOSKER, Ukiah. Shoplifting, trespassing, probation revocation.

DAVID MEUNIOT, Potter Valley. Pot possession for sale, obstruction.

SHAWN MILLER, Ukiah. Parole violation.

LUIS MONJARAZ-RIVERA, Redwood Valley. Pot possession for sale, conspiracy.

KASSANDRA PHILLIPS, Covelo. Robbery, conspiracy.

ALFONSO SANDOVAL, Ukiah. Pot possession for sale, obstruction, failure to appear.

SHAUN STRINGFELLOW, Garberville. Controlled substance.

Q: HOW MANY ECONOMISTS does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A1: None. The darkness will cause the light bulb to change by itself.

A2: None. If it really needed changing, market forces would have caused it to happen.

A3: None. If the government would just leave it alone it would screw itself in.

A4: None. Because, look! It's getting brighter! It's definitely getting brighter!

BILL CLINTON TALKS ABOUT WOMEN’S RIGHTS while skeptical women look on.

NEARLY 200,000 SIGN PETITIONS calling on Obama to pardon subjects of Making a Murderer, the real-life mystery on Netflix that is taking the U.S. by storm

Two online petitions demanding the pardon of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, the subjects of the new Netflix series Making a Murderer, have received close to 200,000 signatures.

The 10-episode documentary revolving around Avery and Dassey's murder trial for a 25-year-old woman's murder in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, has become a sensation over the holidays.

Both petitions directly appeal to President Obama to pardon the two men, who were both convicted in March 2007 in the death of freelance photographer Teresa Halbach.

A formal petition to the White House, which had received more than 19,000 signatures by lunctime on Monday January 4, writes that evidence on the Netflix series proves the justice system 'embarrassingly failed both men, completely ruining their entire lives.'

'There is clear evidence that the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department used improper methods to convict both Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey', the petition continues.

'This is a black mark on the justice system as a whole, and should be recognized as much, while also giving these men the ability to live as normal a life as possible.'

The Change.org petition, which had received more than 170,000 signatures in the same time, was created by a Colorado resident who said he was 'outraged' after viewing the documentary.

'Avery's unconstitutional mistreatment at the hands of corrupt local law enforcement officers is completely unacceptable and is an abomination of due process,' Michael Seyedian Arvada writes.

'Steven Avery should be exonerated at once by presidential pardon, and the Manitowoc County officials complicit in his two false imprisonments should be held accountable to the highest extent of the US criminal justice system.

Avery had been in prison for 18 years when DNA evidence exonerated him of a sexual assault conviction in 1985.

He was released in 2003 and, two years later, sought $36m from Manitowoc County for the wrongful conviction.

Less than a month after the federal lawsuit was filed, Avery was charged with first-degree intentional homicide for the murder of Halbach.

Avery's defense argued that Manitowoc officers who were in the middle of being deposed in his lawsuit were also involved in the gathering of evidence for the Halbach murder and may have framed him.

Brendan Dassey, Avery's 16-year-old nephew, then confessed to sexually assaulting Halbach and cutting her throat on his uncle's orders. He later said the confession was coerced.

None of Halbach's DNA was ever discovered inside of Avery's home, where the prosecution claimed she was raped and shot in the head.

Avery was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Dassey was also given a life sentence but has a chance for early release in 2048.

Netflix's Making a Murderer became an instant hit when it was released December 18.

It received glowing reviews from critics and celebrities alike, who took to Twitter to share the number of hours they had binged and to beg their followers to watch.

'I can't stop watching,' wrote Mandy Moore. 'It's crushing but utterly spellbinding.'

'Never mind an Emmy or an Oscar...Making a Murderer deserves a Nobel Prize,' tweeted Ricky Gervais.

'The greatest documentary I have ever seen.'

(Courtesy, the Daily Mail On-Line)

LIBRARY EVENTS

PBS/POV Documentary, Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case.

On Wednesday, December 6^th, at 5:30 pm, the Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch, in partnership with KZYX, is hosting a screening of Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case, by Andreas Johnsen, The film will be followed by an open community discussion that will be recorded by KZYX for later broadcasting.

Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case shows how the Chinese government's attempts to silence Ai Weiwei have turned him into China's most powerful artist and an international voice for free speech and human rights." (PBS film summary).

Filmgoers are welcome to bring snacks or take-out dinners. This event is most suitable for adults.

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Live streaming visit from internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen, on Wednesday, January 20^th at 6:30 pm.

Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch, is proud to welcome a live streaming visit by New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen on Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 6:30 PM. Tess will join us via live video chat for a conversation about her bestselling novels, including her thrilling Rizzoli & Isles series, which inspired TNT’s popular television show. There will also be an opportunity for a Q&A from the audience.

Tess Gerritsen left a successful practice as an internist to raise her children and concentrate on her writing. She gained nationwide acclaim for her first novel of medical suspense, the New York Times bestseller Harvest, and followed her debut with the bestsellers Life Support and Gravity. Her other novels includes Body Double, The Sinner, The Apprentice, and The Surgeon. Tess Gerritsen will be joining us from her home in Maine.

The Library Talks is a grant funded project open to all California libraries, with funding provided by the Pacific Library Partnership and proudly sponsored by the Mountain View Public Library and the Santa Clara City Library.

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STEM Event for Kids: “The Sky’s the Limit”

On Saturday, January 16^th, from 10:30 to 11:30 am, Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch is hosting a STEM engineering class, “The Sky’s the Limit,” for kids, ages 7-11. Who can build the tallest skyscraper with just two materials?

“The Lunch Bunch,” Ukiah Library’s new Cook Book Club on Friday, January 15^th at Noon.

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On Friday, January 15^th, at noon, the Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch is hosting a planning meeting for The Lunch Bunch, a new cook book club.

During our first meeting, we’ll be discussing and choosing recipes from popular cookbooks, then preparing them for our next meeting in February. Join us in the Meeting Space in the Northeast corner of the library at noon to pick your recipe.

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The Snow Queen Cometh

On Saturday, January 9^th at 10:00am – 11:30am the Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch is hosting The Snow Queen Cometh, part of Sweet Saturdays @ the Ukiah Library.

The Snow Queen will be coming to the Library with stories, a puppet play, snow picture collages, and sweet treats. All are welcome to attend this free, family-friendly event! Sponsored by the Mendocino County Library and River Oak Charter School.

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Ukiah Library is located at `105 N Main Street, Ukiah California.

Link: http://mendolibrary.org

GALLERY ROUTE ONE’S 31ST ANNUAL JURIED SHOW 2016 “AQUA”

Exhibition Dates: January 22 - February 14, 2016

Point Reyes Station, CA – Exhibition Dates: January 22 – February 14, 2016

Opening Reception Sunday, January 24, 3-5 pm Artist Talks 2:30 pm Awards of Merit and Best of Show will be announced at the Opening Salon: Sunday, February 24, 4-5 pm Artists were invited to interpret Aqua in any way that resonated with them. California is in a severe drought and water is on the minds of many these days in many ways. Aqua is a lovely color as well and many chose an abstract approach to the concept. Juror Susan Snyder of the Caldwell Snyder Gallery in San Francisco as our Juror this year. She has selected the work of the following artists: Barbara Aliza, Mark Aronoff, Marie Bergstedt, Nancy Brown, Owen Brown, Shanna Bruschi, Thomas Bullard, Tim Burns, Marna Clarke, Laura Culver, Hedi B. Desuyo, Suzanne Engelbert, Judith Feins, Wendy Goldberg, Daniel Good, Daniel Grant, Timothy Graveson, Jason Green, Steven Hurwitz, Joanna Kidd, Candace Loheed, Linda MacDonald, Barbara Maricle, Darla McKenna, Leslie Morgan, Katie Morton, Dawn Nakashima, Dorothy Nissen, Cindy Ostroff, Kathleen Piscioneri, Anna Rybat, Francesca Saveri, Kathryn Stotler, Colleen Sullivan, Rab Terry, Will Thoms, Bette Trono, Victoria Veedell, Xiao Wang, Vera Ximenes, Karyn Yandow Gallery Route One (GRO) is open 11 am to 5 pm, Closed Tuesdays Gallery Route One, 11101 Highway One, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956,

415. 663.1347, www.galleryrouteone.org

HOPLAND HIKES 2016

The UC Hopland Research and Extension center is thrilled to announce it's new hiking series "Hiking Hopland" every second Saturday in 2016. Hikes for all abilities are available from short family friendly visits with our newborn lambs to 7 mile hikes for the more intrepid explorer including over 1000 feet of elevation gain! All hikes allow our visitors to learn more about exactly what goes on at a Research and Extension Center including: Why we have dogs with our sheep? What our wildlife cameras have been detecting? Why one researcher spends her time catching Western fence lizards? Please take a look at the attached pdf poster for our hikes, we would love to share this information with the public especially since the hikes are FREE! We do ask people to register in advance and attendance is limited to ensure a great experience for all.

Hannah Bird
Community Educator
Hopland Research & Extension Center
4070 University Road
Hopland, CA 95449
hbird@ucanr.edu<mailto:hbird@ucanr.edu>
707.744.1424 x 105

To stay informed about "Happenings At Hopland":

Please visit our website: http://hrec.ucanr.edu/