WE ARE SADDENED at the passing of Joyce Schreiner, a long-time resident of Boonville who'd been in failing health for some time. Our deepest condolences to Brian Schreiner and the Schreiner family.
CSD BOARD TRUSTEE and retired LA motorcycle cop Kirk Wilder, a man who has undoubtedly seen way more than his share of vehicular mayhem, reminded us that California law now requires that headlights be on while driving in rain.
ANDERSON VALLEY'S PANTHERS handily beat Technology High School (Rohnert Park) 11-5 behind Tony Pardini Jr.'s 11 strikeouts as Cesar Soto went 3 for 4 with 3 ribbies, Jared Johnston was also 3 for 4 with two runs driven in, Pardini helped himself out big time with three runs knocked in. JT Carlin contributed two hits and two runs batted in.
THE NEXT DAY on the Boonville field, AV knocked off Clearlake's JV's, 7-4. Jonas Lane was the winning pitcher, Cesar Soto, who must be hitting about .800, was 3 for 4 with a triple and 2 runs batted in. Isak Parra was 2 for 3 with an rbi. Jared Johnston whiffed 7 bewildered Clearlake players in relief of Lane.
THIS WEEK at Blue Meadow Farm, Pam Laird tells us, she is offering lettuce. "We couldn’t plant winter crops last fall due to lack of water, but spring onions, peas and strawberries are looking good and will be ready soon…" — Blue Meadow Farm, 3301 Holmes Ranch Rd, Philo 707-895-2071
MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Monday morning, 28 March, when frost fans roused South Boonville about 5am for the first time this frost season, but when we drove around looking for the source of the dread din the only fans we saw running at SoBo were in the Charles vineyard. Bennett's and Sattui's were off. Did it frost? Yes. Is there bud break? Yes. Are irrigation ponds full? Yes. In the immortal words of Ted Bennett, "What's more important, my grapes or your sleep?" Grapes, Ted. Clearly.
DOWN THE LINE, those of us who prefer sleep over grapes, might consider renting a frost fan of our own to set up 3am at Supervisor Hamburg's hilltop aerie. From there we could move on to the Westside of Ukiah where a lot of judges and DA Eyster are holed up. A blast of early morning frost fan noise at Ag Commissioner Chuck Morse's house would also be a priority.
(MORSE is a totally mute at wine industry wine offenses, Hamburg tends to zone out any subject that doesn't directly affect him, and the judges are a dependable legal stamp on whatever the industry cares to do. Can't really blame Eyster for not prosecuting noise ordinance violations because he hasn't, so far as we're aware, gotten a complaint that he can prosecute. But what the hay. Wake him up anyway so he understands Anderson Valley people have a serious beef here.)
HOT RUMORS say that Al Green has his pioneer Greenwood Ridge Winery up for sale; the KNEZ Winery with its 700 acres is also available, and two more wine ops are reeling, one from financial woes, the other from marital wars.
VOTE DEADLINE for the KZYX trustee election is Thursday, March 31st.
THE CHARTER PROJECT of Mendocino County is hosting a series of Town Hall meetings around the county to introduce people to Charter Commission candidates for the June 7th election, and also to canvass the public about what they would like to see in a county charter. What is a charter, anyway? What does home rule mean to Mendocino County? Get answers at… The 4th Town Hall meeting will be held on Monday, April 11, 2016 at the Anderson Valley Grange, 9800 Highway 128 in Philo from 4pm to 6pm. The Measure W question will be in the ballot in the June election, "Shall a Charter Commission be elected to propose a Mendocino County Charter?" There will also be candidates running for the post of Charter Commissioner. You will be able to vote for 15 of them in June. Meet 2 Charter Commission candidates: • Ellen Ann Rosser, Ph.D. - retired English professor, social justice activist and union rep. Publisher of her 1914 award-winning poetry magazine, Hard Pressed. After visiting Jerusalem, she helped initiate peace talks with a Judeo-Christian-Islamic Council authorized to rebuild the Temple of King Solomon. Ellen demonstrates every Friday against wars, the occupation of Palestine, for Black Lives Matter and ending the oligarchic control by the big banks and corporations. She helped pass Measure F (Overturn Citizens United) and is now running for Charter Commissioner in order to authorize a county public bank. Lynda McClure spent her childhood in Ukiah. After finishing a Masters in Social Work from CSU Sacramento, she worked most of her adult career as a labor organizer for SEIU. She has also worked at a battered women’s shelter, and sits on the boards of the Cloud Forest Institute and the Mendocino Women’s Political Coalition. She helps organize the annual Not So Simple Living Fair, co-hosts Corporations and Democracy on KZYX, and sings with the Raging Grannies and the Anderson Valley Chorus. Lynda is determined to strengthen Community Rights to protect our county from corporate rule. We are delighted to feature famed Community Rights advocate Paul Cienfuegos, longtime activist and community organizer. In 1994, POCLAD helped Paul realize the insidious impact of corporate rule. In 1995, he co-founded Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County, which began works to dismantle corporate political power. Paul now leads Democracy workshops and talks across the nation. He will speak about Community Rights and how the charter can secure our rights. Free admission. Refreshments by donation. Raffle fundraiser. Help us pay for these 9 Town Hall meetings with your financial support. All registered voters are welcome! More information is available on our website: http://mendocinocountycharter.org. You can also take the opportunity to donate money online there. We welcome all idea contributions for a county charter at our WindTunneling page: <http://join.windtunneling.com>. Create a login & password, and choose Project Code: MendoCountyCharter.
LET’S PAUSE HERE to note that the people putting in lots of time and effort advocating that Mendocino become a “charter” county apparently don’t know why Mendo should be a charter county beyond vague concepts of autonomy and local control, and must therefore “canvass the public” for real reasons.
ODD HULLABALOO at the Elementary School last week. One teacher thought another teacher, this one a substitute, not only smelled like booze but was behaving strangely. Police were called. The school lurched into a partial lockdown, whatever that means. The upshot? The guy wasn't drunk, hadn't been drinking and is at least as sane as any other adult on the premises.
SCHOOL SUPE Michelle Hutchins promptly explained:
"A Partial Lockdown is what we often call a 'soft lockdown'. Schools use this safety protocol when a threat is off campus that could come onto the campus or when we need to ensure the privacy of staff or student for multiple reasons. When a school is in a soft lockdown, instruction continues while teachers close their blinds, lock their doors and keep the kids inside. If students need to leave a classroom, they are escorted. This was the first time the elementary school used this safety protocol and as a District we learned a lot. I am very proud of all the staff and students in how they handled the situation that day. That is all I can legally comment on."
FOR A SMALL high school about the size of ours here in Boonville, Mendocino certainly offers a broad variety of after school sports, including track and field and lacrosse. I doubt there's much interest in lacrosse among our student body, but I'll bet we have some dynamite distance runners who could simply show up as walk-ons and do well in County track meets. (I'd like to time the amazing Cesar Soto over a mile.) Surely there's an old track star out there in the hills who could volunteer to coach high school track.
A PRODUCER from Latino USA called the other day to ask us if we could put her in touch with a Mexican pot grower. She said they were doing a story about Latinos in the cannabis industry. We passed the request on to knowledgeable gringos, explaining that people who derive lots of tax-free cash for doing something illegal are unlikely to talk about how they get their money. Anyhow, we're dope-fatigued. Not from smoking it, I hasten to add as a non-toker, but from hearing about it and reading about it. Mendocino County runs on intoxicants in lieu of the real economy we used to have. That economy was called timber, fishing, and farming. It's gone. Now we have booze and dope. And government. Of course lots of Mexicans grow dope, wouldn't you if the alternative is seasonal work in the vineyards? Lots of people of many ethnicities grow in Mendocino County. It's the economy we have.
A HAPPY subscriber writes: "Pleased to renew subscription for one more year — before the End Times ring their final chimes, heralded by Trump bloviating now in the big tent as the latest in the bread and circuses crowd…"
ON THE SUBJECT of Trump, Mendocino County's sole public Trump supporter, the dependably unflinching Jerry Philbrick of Comptche, knows, and doesn't hesitate saying, why he's "a hundred percent for Trump." In a Sunday afternoon conversation with the famous logger, Philbrick said he first wanted to commend Sheriff Allman. "What a wonderful job Tom has done keeping our county safe, especially being short-handed, and I hope he knows there's a lot of us citizens out here who would help him out in a jam. Back to my reason for talking with you. Hillary is responsible for the disaster in Benghazi even though dictators like Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were very bad they kept the lid on their countries. We took them out with the net result being the whole Middle East is out of control. Here at home we've got kids without parents shooting up the cities because law enforcement's hands are tied. Obama almost leaves me speechless the way he cozies up to communist Cuba and that guy in Argentina, and there's Obama dancing and watching baseball games while Belgium gets blown up. Obama, in my opinion, has been the worst president we've ever had. We've got judges, school teachers, college professors just like teaching our kids to be radical liberals. What to do about all this? Donald Trump is the only guy out there who can get things back the way they should be. He might be a little bit coarse, but he sees it all clearly. The liberals destroyed the timber industry, the fishing industry, the trucking industry with all this air pollution crap — yeah, air pollution is bad in the cities but not out here in the country — All the bad stuff started in the sixties. I saw it happen right here in Comptche when dope started, and then all these people became the government of Mendocino County! PS. I agree that everywhere in the Middle East where there's Isis and Taliban we should carpet bomb then send in the troops to clean up."
THE EDITOR SPEAKING: I think Trump is correct that NATO is finished and we ought to get out, that the Middle East is an ongoing catastrophe, that Social Security should be beefed up, that the pharmaceutical industry is overdue for a major crackdown, that the trade agreements wrought by the Clintons have killed millions of real jobs, that the Department of Education should be abolished (along with County offices of education in California), that the mainstream media are a gang of whoring clowns, that Wall Street should be re-regulated. I also think Trump is right about the candy-assed whining laid on US via "political correctness.") Trump, then, is way better on the BIG issues than Billery, and to the left of The Bern on several of those big issues. Where he goes dangerously wrong is his scapegoating Mexicans and indicting, or at least implying, that all Muslims are maniacs. As a pathetic lib lab myself, and more pathetic by the day, I'm for Bernie simply because I think he's correct that in this kind of system we need a national jobs program funded by the re-introduction of fair taxation. Bern would tax the really big incomes, the ones that start at $500,000 at about 55 percent to fund the jobs program. Roosevelt taxed the rich at 95 percent. The Bern's economic ideas are mini-Rooseveltian, but I think he's right about what needs to be done and how to fund it.
TO VOTE in the June 7th Democratic primary, people need to be registered by May 23 as "No Party Preference" or Democrat. This is what is required for Greens, Libertarians, and Independents to support Bernie Sanders. Voter registration forms are at the Post Office or at the County Assessor/Clerk/Registrar of Voter's Office
'BABY' 2.2 TEMBLOR NEAR NAVARRO
The USGS reported a 2.2 magnitude earthquake @ 7:21 pm last Thursday evening 14 miles northwest of Boonville (11 miles ESE of Navarro Head and to the southwest of the town of Navarro). The minor shaker was 2.7 miles deep and there was one report of a person "feeling it" and that was from Philo - 4.3 miles east of the epicenter.
AMONG THE LEDE stories from the PD on Friday: "100-PLUS THINGS FOR YOUR TEENAGER'S EASTER BASKET." The day your beloved hometown paper so much as mentions an Easter basket in anything but an ironic context is the day you are directed, nay ordered, to shoot me.
BACKYARD BUZZ — The second of a two-part series on the lives of native bees will be hosted by Anderson Valley Land Trust on Sunday, April 10th from 12:30-3:30 in the afternoon. Sara Leon-Guerrero, from AV and now a scientist at the Urban Bee Lab at UC Berkeley; Chris Bing, local potter and teacher; and Linda MacElwee, a native plant specialist will lead a native bee and wildflower interpretive walk. The first venue will be a mature garden designed and planted with bee-friendly plants and the second in a more natural setting. There is no charge charge for the event, but reservations are requested. To RSVP or for more information, contact AVLT at avlt@mcn.org or call 895-3150. (Please note that April 10th is a change in date from the previously announced April 23rd) (Barbara Goodell)
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