Mendocino County Today: Monday, June 13, 2016

• Ortner Bills
• McCowen Resignations
• Editors
• Graduation Ceremony
• Yesterday's Catch
• Assault Weapons
• Draymond Suspended
• Socialist Enthusiasm
• War
• KZYX 990s
• Litigation Updates
• Antique
• Marco Radio
• Science Lesson

THE SUPERVISORS and County staff are either faking it or they're genuinely pleased at the otherwise invisible transition of Mental Health services from Yuba City-based Ortner Management Group to the Ukiah-based Redwood Quality Management Company, the former a private business, the latter also a private business run by Mr. and Mrs. Camiile Schraeder. Privatized mental health has been a disaster for Mendocino County's proliferating population of the mentally ill, but we live in hope that the Ukiah privateers will at least help a few lost souls as the County transitions back to public mental health services centralized at Sheriff Allman's proposed facility. Privatized mental health, with the mentally ill serving as funding units, is priced at about $7.5 annual million to the privateer, about twenty annual mil when the remaining (and also invisible) County mental health services are factored in. It's all a huge debacle.

DR. JANINE MILLER, the County’s recently promoted Director of Mental Health, appeared before the Board last week with her new boss, the impressively articulate and to-the-point brisk, Tammy Moss-Chandler, hired last month at nice money from Merced County.

RESPONDING to a question from Supervisor John McCowen, Ms. Miller said that Ortner had “about 400” clients in March based on a list she had and the March 2016 Ortner billings.

SUPERVISOR Dan Gjerde, referring to the agenda item to add another $400k to the Ortner contract, said, “This is getting considerable public interest. People on the Coast are asking why we’re giving Ortner an extra $400k if they’re just going away.”

MS.MOSS-CHANDLER explained that bills are still making their golden way through the service billing pipeline and the total amount will exceed the $7.2 million she was already authorized to give to Ortner. “So this is to pay for actual billable services,” insisted Moss-Chandler. “But it may not be that much. It’s just that we need this to be able to bill for the federal dollars for the mandated services provided.”

NOBODY asked why the $7.2 million had been exceeded for “services” in the first place, services that have been mostly invisible to local hospitals and physicians and the Sheriff’s Department who have all complained about their non-existence.

SUPERVISOR MCCOWEN asked why Ortner seemed to be slow in providing various documents that the County wanted, Ms. Miller explained that if Ortner had not been terminated prematurely, these documents would have been due in a matter of years, not right away, due to the long delays in billing and reimbursements. But since Ortner is being terminated, Ortner needs to provide the docs earlier than expected, and it’s taking time. So much time that Ortner needs an extra $64k (over the $400k) to maintain staff to provide the billing documents before Ortner becomes one more sad chapter in Mendocino County history, bunco division. Ms. Moss-Chandler added that “these items are being resolved and OMG is working cooperatively to deliver all the items called for.”

SUPERVISOR GJERDE asked if there was a 10% holdback provision in the Ortner contract “to make sure of performance.”

“All prepayments have been made already,” replied Ms. Moss-Chandler. “There’s no contract provision that states that.”

CEO Carmel Angelo added, “I am in communication with Mr. Ortner, so these questions are being asked. I have assurance for a successful closeout. What you will see on June 21 is the [$64k] four-month contract [extension] to cover staff to continue billing for rest of the contract.”

TRANSLATION: Mendo has to pay Ortner to bill the County, but apparently Mendo hasn’t paid enough. "Billing" is clearly the most important "service" Ortner provides.

SUPERVISOR CARRE BROWN, in full pollyanna mode, commended “everyone involved.” Supervisor Tom Woodhouse noted how bad the situation had become but added that Ms. Miller was doing “a good job in a challenging situation.” Supervisor Hamburg thought the transition “could have been worse. But it’s going better than I expected.” (You'd think Hamburg had walked up on a two-car collision, not the driver of one of the cars. He's always thought Ortner was a swell idea, probably because he personally benefitted from the arrangement.)

SUPERVISOR GJERDE said he would “reluctantly” vote for the additional $400k and the $64k, adding, “But staff should hold back additional funds to make sure documents are submitted in timely manner.”

THE ONLY PERSON to address the Board during public expression was Dr. Mark Montgomery, Ortner’s local senior rep. “I listened to comments about lack of performance, lack of service,” grumbled Montgomery. “But the timing of this is per county staff. We want the transition to be as smooth as possible. If you look at the numbers — no one has looked at the numbers. [Oooh, yes they have, Doctor, that’s why you were asked to leave.] Our commitment is that the transition go smoothly. We are not trying to line our pockets. We expect that reports will be done in timely manner. The client count now is 562 in the system of care. ICMS [Integrated Crisis Management Services, an Ortner subcontractor in Ukiah] has 375, the others are in Manzanita [another Ornter Ukiah subcontractor for non-crisis cases] and rest are open clients on the coast. It’s amazing that you have not received that information. The total will rise to about 600. But it’s 562 right now. We will support the transition. It’s a fantastic system of care. It’s unfortunate that [Ortner’s critics] have not met with me or our organization. We want to leave the system better than it was.”

WHATEVER, DUDE, as the young people say,

NO RESPONSE from the Supes. What would be the point now? Something like $20 million (over three years) is long gone and nobody knows what the County or the mentally ill got for it — other than lots and lots of bills, many of which, of course, remain in the pipeline.

POSTSCRIPT to yesterday’s report about Supervisor John McCowen’s unhappiness about the transfer of the marijuana regulation preparation process from McCowen and Supervisor Woodhouse's marijuana ad hoc committee to the general government committee. Last week, Willits Weekly reporter Mike A'Dair reported on the situation. At the end of his report Mr. A'Dair provides a list of committees which McCowen has resigned from: the Criminal Justice Committee, the Tax Sharing Ad Hoc (a years-long seemingly futile attempt to share sales taxes in the Ukiah Valley between the City of Ukiah and the County), the Little River Airport Ad Hoc Committee, the Ad Hoc Committee trying to settle a legal dispute with Solid Waste Systems, and an Ad Hoc Committee attempting negotiate rate adjustments with Solid Wastes of Willits.

SUPERVISOR MCCOWEN may be on other committees that he has not yet resigned from. It’s very hard to navigate the County’s many layers of optional and required committees, boards, commissions, joint powers authorities, districts, etc. McCowen is probably still on a few statutorily-required board and commission appointments that he cannot resign from. But A’Dair’s list shows he’s resigned from all of his voluntary positions.

SOME UNEXPECTED good sense out of Chron movie reviewer, Mick LaSalle, as he begins a Sunday assessment of "Genius," a movie based on a famous editor, Max Perkins, and his work with the great American novelist-writer, Thomas Wolfe. I haven't seen "Genius" yet, but LaSalle's description of what editors do, or used to do, is the best I've seen:

"Of all the creative gifts, the ability to edit — that is, to edit text — is the least heralded and the least understood. Most people have never been edited, and of those who benefit from it most tend to forget that the editing ever happened. But the ability to see a shape within a mess, to recognize a structure before it’s in place, to understand on a first read what there is that doesn't belong and what belongs that isn't there — this is no casual talent."

AND A TALENT that Perkins brought to the gifted Wolfe. Perkins saw the shape within Wolfe's mountainous, handwritten manuscripts and made four truly great books out of Wolfe's piles of prose. Wolfe is often sneered at these days in the lit crit sectors of the faculty lounge, but his work holds up quite well, as does that of Ernest Hemingway, who Perkins also edited.

THERE ARE A FEW BOOK EDITORS still around, I guess, but they're as doomed as books and newspapers. Hundreds of lesser "editors" are still employed by newspapers, but they function more as gatekeepers than editors in the Perkins sense.  (Yes, yes, I know. The editor of this paper also functions as a kind of gatekeeper who sees his function as partly line editor for writers who need it, and partly as the guy who tries to keep the entire weekly production tight and bright, and as reflective of the life of Mendocino County as it is lived.)

TAKE THE PRESS DEMOCRAT'S posse of so-called editors. (And the Chron's for that matter.) Their primary task is to remove any comment likely to upset the wine industry. Second, they ensure that Santa Rosa's and Sonoma County's reps come off as the elected equivalents of Socrates, and not the corporate toadies we all know them to be. The daily result is the newspaper equivalent of Live At Five, a blandly errant collection of received opinion, barely re-written police reports, blonde babes babbling about the weather, and huzzahs for billionaires and their elected gofers. If you've ever wondered why print and television news media are so pathetic, look no farther/further than their editors. And owners, of course. Farther/further? Get me an editor, quick.

AS AN ANNUAL participant in Boonville High School's graduation — my function is to pass out scholarships awarded by the Miner-Anderson Foundation — I can't help but notice the changes over the past 17 years since these scholarships began. The graduates are as bright and handsome as they've ever been with the girls more like young women, the boys like boys, the age-old maturity gap. The spectators, sartorially considered, run the gamut from men in wife-beaters to women whose shrink-wraps are downright provocative. As one babe strutted across the gym floor with an inflammatory and perhaps illegal amount of breast and bun on full display, I thought to myself, "Look away, old horse! This is way too much excitement for you at your age."

A QUARTER OF A MIL later, my task was done. A friend approached. "I didn't know your newspaper made that kind of money," she said.

SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT Michele Hutchins is a gifted organizer. The three graduations she's been responsible for in the three years she's sat in the boss chair have been perfectly timed to be not too long, not too excruciating. Over the years, especially under the auspices of the non-thinking types now mercifully retired, graduation ceremonies have been more like torture contests — let's see how many people we can stuff into the gym on a 90-degree day with all the doors closed before people start screaming and passing out. Ms. Hutchins keeps things moving along, with the usual graduation uplift kept to a minimum. Not to be too cynical about graduation speeches, student and adult, I suppose it would be misunderstood as "negativity" if the adult speaker at least suggested the reality the young ones will face: "Good luck, young people. You're sure as hell going to need it in the minefield of the world you're stepping into. My advice? Learn to have a good time on no money."

APART from some fashion excess, the most striking part of the ceremony for me was the film produced by one of the students. It was an almost subliminally fast moving montage of their lives, from infancy through high school hijinks. The teen brain is apparently able to make sense of these fleeting images as evidenced by their laughter and pure enjoyment as the images sped along. To this old guy it seemed bewilderingly speeded up, and I wondered if their capacity to truly focus hasn't been permanently damaged.

CATCH OF THE DAY, June 12, 2016

SONYA ASH, Eureka/Ukiah. Drunk in public.

DYLAN BECK, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

NELSON COOK, Gualala. Failure to appear, probation revocation. (Photo not available.)

LEWIS DISHMAN, Ukiah. Under influence, paraphernalia.

ANGELA FURIA, Ukiah. Domestic assault.

JESUS GARCIA-RUIZ, Ukiah. DUI.

JAMES JOHNSON, Willits. Drunk in public.

JARED KIDD, Ukiah. Vehicle theft. (Frequent flyer.)

CARLOS LARIOS, Hyatt, Maryland/Ukiah. Pot possession for sale, proceeds from drug transactions, suspended license.

MONROY MENA, Hyatt, Maryland/Ukiah. Pot possession for sale, proceeds from drug transactions.

DANNY RAY, Ukiah. Probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

CRUZ REA, Ukiah. Drunk in public. (Frequent flyer.)

PEDRO REYNAGA, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

ZACHARIA ROZEK, Failure to appear, probation revocation.

SHAWN STARK JR., Ukiah. DUI.

JUSTIN SWINNEY, Clearlake. Trespassing.

THE LATEST MASSACRE

Dear Editor:

In Orlando, Florida once again a killer using an assault rifle to kill 50 people. Just one more massacre using a weapon which people have no business owning. The blood for these massacres is on the hands of the Supreme Court, Congress, gun manufacturers and the NRA. Members of the NRA should hang their heads in shame for supporting private ownership of assault rifles.

Now I realize for the macho types guns have a phallic symbolism but they should really get a life. Ideally to get a gun license the applicant should have an examination by a psychologist to assure they have the mental stability to own a gun.

The main blame lies with the Supreme Court for failing to understand where their ruling on the Second Amendment would go and Congress for not having the guts to deal with a critical health problem called death by guns. Just how many more innocent people have to die before we can achieve a gunless society?

In peace and Love,

Jim Updegraff

Sacramento

DRAYMOND OUT FOR GAME 5

ED NOTE: Like everyone else watching the game Friday night, I saw that play from every conceivable replay angle and none of us at my house thought Draymond deliberately smacked LeBron in the pills. Yes, we're all Warriors fans, but we consciously made a collective effort to be objective about the play, and we all agreed if anything LeBron deliberately stepped over Draymond in a provocatively heedless way to, as LeBron put it after the game, "rejoin the play." The whole game was semi-outta control, with way more contact allowed than even the NBA ordinarily permits, but the play in question was really no more than an accidental tangle with LeBron much more the aggressor. That said, Draymond had a suspension coming two weeks ago when he obviously kicked Oklahoma's giant Maori, Adams, in the groin. The following is AP's account:

Oakland — Golden State star Draymond Green was suspended for Game 5 of the NBA Finals after the league assessed a Flagrant 1 foul from his scuffle with Cleveland’s LeBron James.

The NBA announced the retroactive decision Sunday, issuing James a technical on the play late in Golden State’s 108-97 victory Friday. A statement announcing the discipline said that Green “made unnecessary contact with a retaliatory swipe of his hand to the groin” of James.

“There’s no way you can say this is an acceptable act,” Kiki VanDeWeghe, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations, told the Associated Press in a phone interview.

Green has been on the cusp of trouble for much of the postseason. This is his fourth flagrant foul point, which resulted in the automatic suspension. He also has five technicals and was fined $25,000 for kicking Oklahoma City’s Steven Adams in the groin during the Western Conference final.

The Warriors lead the series 3-1 with a chance to clinch their second consecutive championship at home in Oracle Arena, but now they’ll have to do it without one of their most important players.

“You have to do what you think is right for the play,” VanDeWeghe said, “and unfortunately Draymond put himself in this position.”

Warriors coach Steve Kerr spoke to Green earlier in the postseason about keeping his emotions in check, and now Golden State will have a big hole to fill without him.

Green is averaging 15.3 points this postseason — third-most on the team behind Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson — and a team-leading 9.6 rebounds along with nearly six assists.

Green called Friday’s incident “stuff that’s said on the court.” Yet James considered it all inappropriate and said he and his teammates reviewed the sequence on video.

“Draymond just said something that I don’t agree with,” James said. “I’m all cool with the competition. I’m all fine with that, but some of the words that came out of his mouth were a little bit overboard, and being a guy with pride, a guy with three kids and a family, things of that nature, some things just go overboard.”

As his teammates went through shooting drills near the end of Sunday’s workout, Green could be seen off to the side speaking to Warriors general manager Bob Myers before returning to practice.

MORE:

http://espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2016/story/_/id/16151747/draymond-green-golden-state-warriors-suspended-game-5-nba-finals-cleveland-cavaliers

THE ONLY BRIGHT SPOT in the election race has been the public enthusiasm for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ “socialist” campaign. It’s a sign of society’s crisis that the Sanders primary campaign has exceeded almost everyone’s initial expectations. To have a major presidential candidate put the blame for society’s economic ills squarely on Wall Street, while calling for national health care, tuition-free college education, a $15 minimum wage and other progressive reforms appears near electrifying next to the tepid half-measures that pass for neoliberal reform in the Obama era.

— Mark Harris

WAR

by Jack London (1911)

He was a young man, not more than 24 or 25, and he might have sat his horse with the careless grace of his youth had he not been so catlike and tense. His black eyes roved everywhere, catching the movements of twigs and branches where small birds hopped, questing ever onward through the changing vistas of trees and brush, and returning always to the clumps of undergrowth on either side. And as he watched, so did he listen, though he rode on in silence, save for the boom of heavy guns from far to the west.

This had been sounding monotonously in his ears for hours, and only its cessation would have aroused his notice. For he had business closer to hand. Across his saddle-bow was balanced a carbine. So tensely was he strung, that a bunch of quail, exploding into flight from under his horse's nose, startled him to such an extent that automatically, instantly, he had reined in and fetched the carbine halfway to his shoulder. He grinned sheepishly, recovered himself, and rode on.

So tense was he, so bent upon the work he had to do, that the sweat stung his eyes unwiped, and unheeded rolled down his nose and spattered his saddle pommel. The band of his cavalryman’s hat was fresh-stained with sweat.

The roan horse under him was likewise wet. It was high noon of a breathless day of heat. Even the birds and squirrels did not dare the sun, but sheltered in shady hiding places among the trees.

Man and horse were littered with leaves and dusted with yellow pollen, for the open was ventured no more than was compulsory. They kept to the brush and trees, and invariably the man halted and peered out before crossing a dry glade or naked stretch of upland pasturage.

He worked always to the north, though his way was devious, and it was from the north that he seemed most to apprehend that for which he was looking. He was no coward, but his courage was only that of the average civilized man, and he was looking to live, not die.

Up a small hillside he followed a cowpath through such dense scrub that he was forced to dismount and lead his horse. But when the path swung around to the west, he abandoned it and headed to the north again along the oak-covered top of the ridge. The ridge ended in a steep descent — so steep that he zigzagged back and forth across the face of the slope, sliding and stumbling among the dead leaves and matted vines and keeping a watchful eye on the horse above that threatened to fall down upon him.

The sweat ran from him, and the pollen-dust, settling pungently in mouth and nostrils, increased his thirst. Try as he would, nevertheless the descent was noisy, and frequently he stopped, panting in the dry heat and listening for any warning from beneath.

At the bottom he came out on a flat, so densely forested that he could not make out its extent. Here the character of the woods changed, and he was able to remount. Instead of the twisted hillside oaks, tall straight trees, big-trunked and prosperous, rose from the damp fat soil. Only here and there were thickets, easily avoided, while he encountered winding, park-like glades where the cattle had pastured in the days before war had run them off.

His progress was more rapid now, as he came down into the valley, and at the end of half an hour he halted at an ancient rail fence on the edge of a clearing. He did not like the openness of it, yet his path lay across to the fringe of trees that marked the banks of the stream. It was a mere quarter of a mile across that open, but the thought of venturing out in it was repugnant. A rifle, a score of them, a thousand, might lurk in that fringe by the stream. Twice he essayed to start, and twice he paused. He was appalled by his own loneliness.

The pulse of war that beat from the West suggested the companionship of battling thousands; here was naught but silence, and himself, and possible death-dealing bullets from a myriad ambushes. And yet his task was to find what he feared to find. He must go on, and on, till somewhere, some time, he encountered another man, or other men, from the other side, scouting, as he was scouting, to make report, as he must make report, of having come in touch.

Changing his mind, he skirted inside the woods for a distance, and again peeped forth.

This time, in the middle of the clearing, he saw a small farmhouse. There were no signs of life. No smoke curled from the chimney, not a barnyard fowl clucked and strutted. The kitchen door stood open, and he gazed so long and hard into the black aperture that it seemed almost that a farmer's wife must emerge at any moment. He licked the pollen and dust from his dry lips, stiffened himself, mind and body, and rode out into the blazing sunshine.

Nothing stirred.

He went on past the house, and approached the wall of trees and bushes by the river's bank. One thought persisted maddeningly. It was of the crash into his body of a high-velocity bullet. It made him feel very fragile and defenseless, and he crouched lower in the saddle.

Tethering his horse in the edge of the wood, he continued a hundred yards on foot till he came to the stream. Twenty feet wide it was, without perceptible current, cool and inviting, and he was very thirsty. But he waited inside his screen of leafage, his eyes fixed on the screen on the opposite side. To make the wait endurable, he sat down, his carbine resting on his knees.

The minutes passed, and slowly his tenseness relaxed. At last he decided there was no danger; but just as he prepared to part the bushes and bend down to the water, a movement among the opposite bushes caught his eye. It might be a bird. But he waited.

Again there was an agitation of the bushes, and then, so suddenly that it almost startled a cry from him, the bushes parted and a face peered out. It was a face covered with several weeks’ growth of ginger-colored beard. The eyes were blue and wide apart, with laughter-wrinkles in the corners that showed despite the tired and anxious expression of the whole face.

All this he could see with microscopic clearness, for the distance was no more than twenty feet. And all this he saw in such brief time, that he saw it as he lifted his carbine to his shoulder. He glanced along the sights, and knew that he was gazing upon a man who was as good as dead. It was impossible to miss at such point blank range. But he did not shoot.

Slowly he lowered the carbine and watched. A hand, clutching a water-bottle, became visible and the ginger beard bent downward to fill the bottle. He could hear the gurgle of the water. Then arm and bottle and ginger beard disappeared behind the closing bushes.

A long time he waited, when, with thirst unslaked, he crept back to his horse, rode slowly across the sun-washed clearing, and passed into the shelter of the woods beyond.

II

Another day, hot and breathless. A deserted farmhouse, large, with many outbuildings and an orchard, standing in a clearing. From the woods, on a roan horse, carbine across pommel, rode the young man with the quick black eyes. He breathed with relief as he gained the house. That a fight had taken place here earlier in the season was evident. Clips and empty cartridges, tarnished with verdigris, lay on the ground, which, while wet, had been torn up by the hoofs of horses. Hard by the kitchen garden were graves, tagged and numbered. From the oak tree by the kitchen door, in tattered, weather-beaten garments, hung the bodies of two men. The faces, shriveled and defaced, bore no likeness to the faces of men. The roan horse snorted beneath them, and the rider caressed and soothed it and tied it farther away.

Entering the house, he found the interior a wreck. He trod on empty cartridges as he walked from room to room to reconnoiter from the windows. Men had camped and slept everywhere, and on the floor of one room he came upon stains unmistakable where the wounded had been laid down.

Again outside, he led the horse around behind the barn and invaded the orchard. A dozen trees were burdened with ripe apples. He filled his pockets, eating while he picked.

Then a thought came to him, and he glanced at the sun, calculating the time of his return to camp. He pulled off his shirt, tying the sleeves and making a bag. This he proceeded to fill with apples.

As he was about to mount his horse, the animal suddenly pricked up its ears. The man, too, listened, and heard, faintly, the thud of hoofs on soft earth. He crept to the corner of the barn and peered out. A dozen mounted men, strung out loosely, approaching from the opposite side of the clearing, were only a matter of a hundred yards or so away.

They rode on to the house. Some dismounted, while others remained in the saddle as an earnest that their stay would be short. They seemed to be holding a council, for he could hear them talking excitedly in the detested tongue of the alien invader. The time passed, but they seemed unable to reach a decision.

He put the carbine away in its boot, mounted, and waited impatiently, balancing the shirt of apples on the pommel. He heard footsteps approaching, and drove his spurs so fiercely into the roan as to force a surprised groan from the animal as it leaped forward.

At the corner of the barn he saw the intruder, a mere boy of nineteen or twenty for all of his uniform, jump back to escape being run down. At the same moment the roan swerved, and its rider caught a glimpse of the aroused men by the house. Some were springing from their horses, and he could see the rifles going to their shoulders. He passed the kitchen door and the dried corpses swinging in the shade, compelling his foes to run around the front of the house.

A rifle cracked, and a second, but he was going fast, leaning forward, low in the saddle, one hand clutching the shirt of apples, the other guiding the horse. The top bar of the fence was four feet high, but he knew his roan and leaped it at full career to the accompaniment of several scattered shots.

Eight hundred yards straight away were the woods, and the roan was covering the distance with mighty strides. Every man was now firing. They were pumping their guns so rapidly that he no longer heard individual shots. A bullet went through his hat, but he was unaware, though he did know when another tore through the apples on the pommel. And he winced and ducked even lower when a third bullet, fired low, struck a stone between his horse’s legs and ricochetted off through the air, buzzing and humming like some incredible insect.

The shots died down as the magazines were emptied, until, quickly, there was no more shooting. The young man was elated. Through that astonishing fusillade he had come unscathed. He glanced back. Yes, they had emptied their magazines. He could see several reloading. Others were running back behind the house for their horses.

As he looked, two already mounted, came back into view around the corner, riding hard. And at the same moment, he saw the man with the unmistakable ginger beard kneel down on the ground, level his gun, and coolly take his time for the long shot. The young man threw his spurs into the horse, crouched very low, and swerved in his flight in order to distract the other’s aim. And still the shot did not come.

With each jump of the horse, the woods sprang nearer. They were only two hundred yards away, and still the shot was delayed. And then he heard it, the last thing he was to hear, for he was dead ere he hit the ground in the long crashing fall from the saddle. And they, watching at the house, saw him fall, saw his body bounce when it struck the earth, and saw the burst of red-cheeked apples that rolled about him. They laughed at the unexpected eruption of apples, and clapped their hands in applause of the long shot by the man with the ginger beard.

WAZZUP, MEG?

To the Editor:

Meg Courtney’s 6/2 editorial is disturbing. It purports to be a statement from the entire KZYX board. Supporting Form 990s and audited financial statements filed over the past five years. And excoriating a former KZYX board member for saying there was something wrong with them. In fact, there is.

In each of those Form 990s, filed under penalty of perjury, a KZYX manager swore that no audited financial statements had been prepared. Identical declarations were made on annual Registration Renewal Fee forms filed with the State of California. Also under penalty of perjury. The same manager swore that, under KZYX policy, Form 990s had not, and would not be reviewed by the board of directors. Leaving this reader with a question: What’s the reason for this policy?

I asked that question of Ms. Courtney back in February. She reacted by denying the existence of that policy. And that everything was on the up-and-up. But never answered the question. Then I directed her to the Form 990s and State filings, swearing that no audited financial statements had been prepared. And five years of KZYX meeting minutes that mentioned nothing about Form 990s or audited financial statements. The word ‘policy’ was only mentioned by members of the public, who were derided for uttering the word.

The irony of Ms. Courtney’s editorial is this. I’d just gotten off the phone with board member Jonathan Middlebrook, who agreed with my assessment. In Mr. Middlebrook’s own words, keeping Form 990s from KZYX’s board of directors is ‘weird.’ And that the question was legitimate: What’s the reason for this policy? Mr. Middlebrook went on to say that he had no intention of being a rubber-stamp board member, and that he’d get to the bottom of it.

At the exact same time he was being used as a rubber-stamp board member.

— Scott M. Peterson, Mendocino

LOOK OUT KZYX BOARD

Editor,

Litigation Update—

The KZYX Board of Directors requested three weeks to respond to the demand that they restore the Member-elected Director in place of the Programmer-selected Director. There has been no response. I have informed them that I will begin drafting the court complaint tomorrow and will file it when completed, likely before the end of the week.

However, it appears that a second point of contention, the elimination of the Safe Harbor hours, has been resolved. You can expect a formal announcement in a day or two that the Safe Harbor has been restored. There will be no need to litigate the improper decision by the former Program Director.

Dennis O’Brien

Ukiah

LOOK WHAT I FOUND at the Antique Market!

THE BOTTOM LINE.

"The bottom line is, never impede urination or ejaculation by obstructing the urethra." —Dr. Keith D. Newman

The recording of last night's (2016-06-10) 107.7fm KNYO (and 105.1 KMEC) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show is available to download and listen to via

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

Also at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a great honking wad of links to not necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile things to see and do and learn about, such as:

The Hat. With Maurice (say MAW-riss) Merleau-Ponty, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and the volatile Simone de Beauvoir.

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/135

This is not a wolf— it's three naked women. Likewise this frog and this chameleon. Wait, no, the frog is five naked women, and the chameleon is only two, but it's literally skin-crawlingly creepy.

http://boingboing.net/2016/06/09/this-is-not-a-wolf-its-thre.html

Demo video of a stock electric eel sensually tazing —and tazing and tazing— a bebulbed plastic alligator puppet head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-EgG7eS9wk

And a thought leader.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZBKX-6Gz6A

Marco McClean

memo@mcn.org

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

TODAY'S SCIENCE LESSON

The Shikimate Pathway

On 6/12/2016 3:30 PM, alan haack wrote:

The Shikimate Pathway is the process plants use to make some of the amino acids that are necessary for their growth. When the pathway gets interrupted, the plants die. Glyphosate/RoundUp/Agent Orange is a chemical that interrupts the Shikimate Pathway in order to kill plants.

There are bacteria in our digestive track that are plants. They are called plant bacteria. These plant bacteria help digest food. If the Shikimate Pathway of those bacteria gets interrupted, they also die. They are plants. The health of our digestion depends on healthy plant bacteria.

I think that the Shikimate Pathway is one of those natural processes we need to know more about now, because Glyphosate/RoundUp/Agent Orange is designed to kill plants by interrupting that pathway. Our bodies contain plants whose health is essential to our life. We rely on plant bacteria to digest our food.

Alan, that's all interesting, but arsenic is a potent neurotoxin and also causes cancer. Everyone who drinks well water is dosed daily with arsenic, because that's where it comes from.

Aluminum has been implicated in Alzheimer's. It's the most common metal in the Earth's crust, so everything we eat contains aluminum, which is so reactive that it's used in fireworks-- it explodes! Also sodium explodes on contact with water. Go to YouTube and look up sodium. That's in all our food. There is no food that doesn't have sodium in it.

Phosphorus dissolves bones from within. Bananas are loaded with the stuff. Not only that, but a great deal of the phosphorus in all organically grown food is radioactive, so much so that a common unit of radiation exposure is the banana.

Glyphosate is probably poisonous; no-one is disputing that. But it's no more poisonous, based on how little gets into your belly, no matter where you buy your food, than nearly everything else you're eating. In fact, if you subscribe to any value in homeopathy, the glyphosate you ingest is in vanishingly small doses and so should proof you against any disease you claim it causes. I don't believe in homeopathy because there's no good evidence for it and plenty of evidence and sound reason against it, but there's /that little/ glyphosate in your diet, and the dose makes the poison, meaning it's so far below the threshold of harm that worrying about it without also applying a sense of humor to the problem is nuts. When your environment is saturated with Agent Orange, as it was forty years ago in Vietnam, then that's bad. Our environment is not. Tiny amounts are used on crops. Sure, they mount up to tons spread over thousands of square miles, but it's milligrams per square yard of farm and plantspace, and only picograms of it end up in finished food. And the common cry of, "Let's see /you/ drink a quart of glyphosate if it's so safe!) proves nothing. Organic food (whatever organic even means at the moment; it's a very nebulous term) is grown in mud and fresh horseshit and kitchen garbage. "Let's see /you/ drink a quart of that, if it's so safe." See how dumb that sounds? Because nobody is going to deliberately drink any horseshit mud, especially people who conveniently refuse to notice that they're eating it all the time, in quantities you can actually see on the food even after it's been washed.

A lot of the Roundup is used by homeowners in their yards, and everyone overdoes it. Maybe they're poisoning themselves by absorbing it through their skin or spraying it into their own eyes and noses. I don't know. We're not seeing a national health problem from it. I think it would be noticeable.

Speaking of nuts: arsenic, aluminum, sodium, lead, mercury, selenium, nano-diamonds, adamantium... Nuts, man, they're a science-fiction chemical soup.

Here's what I ate all yesterday and so far today (and enjoyed every bite): spaghetti and meatballs and tomato sauce with lots of cayenne pepper and garlic and spinach and parmesan cheese; vegetable salad with crisp iceberg lettuce and peppers and several different kinds of beans in it, with oil and vinegar (1/2 olive 1/2 canola oil) (cheap-by-the-gallon distilled vinegar); oatmeal with half-and-half and brown sugar; three different kinds of oranges from a thousand miles away; a genetically improved (and wonderfully sweet) apple; some soda crackers; a bite of Juanita's sherbet; two pieces of sour-apple bubble gum and a cheap multivitamin pill, the kind that doesn't 20-times-overdose you with this or that currently popular whatever, and a Mason jar of hot water with one green tea bag, a pinch of Aspartame and a slice of lemon in it. That's a little more than two dollars a day for food, except that on my way home to Albion tonight I might stop at Pick's in Cloverdale for a $1.75 ice cream cone.

I'd say my diet is pretty varied and healthy. Where my health regimen falls down is, the amount of exercise I get is uneven. Sometimes at work I have to do a lot of heavy lifting and moving things for a week -- or digging, and then weeks will go by where the most exercise I get is carrying a few crates of things into and out of the radio station or the theater company. I walk around a bit, though, and talking all night is exhausting, so I'm gonna count that, and I'm not gonna count about an hour-and-a-half of typing per day, even though I'm also tapping my feet and singing along with The Bobs or Frank Zappa or Sophie Madeleine or Gogol Bordello.

I'll tell you what worried me lately: I gave up on getting the tree sap off my car by the recommended ice-cube-and-fingernails method; it really doesn't work. I went to the car parts store and asked the guy there. He said into his phone, "Clean sap off a car," and the phone said to get a five-dollar bottle of Turtle Wax Bug Remover and apply three to five drops (!) to the sap, let it sit a minute, then wipe it off with a rag. I did that, but used the spray bottle like a spray bottle rather than q-tip the drops on (this is the same problem as selling people Roundup in a spray bottle; the natural tendency is to just use it up), then went ahead and washed the car, and my forearms were itchy afterward. I wonder if it's the dollar-store car soap, or the bug remover, or what. Maybe I'm allergic to washing a car. Anyway, I took a shower with regular soap and the problem went away, so.

Marco McClean
memo@mcn.org
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com