Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Aug 30, 2016

• Clayton Relief
• Remembering Warren
• Murder Charge
• Fishy Concern
• Ukiah Unified
• Downtown Hopland
• On Fog
• Grape Harvester
• Shelter Rates
• Compost
• Flugelsearch
• Thirsty Ashikus
• Turner Camping
• Interesting Mayors
• Republican Arrears
• Practical Skills
• Kaep's Quandary
• Blue Meadow
• Dishwasher Needed
• Yesterday's Catch
• Big Things
• Organ Grinder
• Linked Up
• Library Events
• National Anthem
• Weiner Shot
• Duckhorn Acquisition
• Reggae Pap
• Hinckle Sendoff
• Art Walk
• Concert Series

CLAYTON FIRE Disaster Relief Services — The American Red Cross Disaster Relief services are now located at the Lake County Department of Social Services Adult Services office at 16170 Main Street, Lower Lake until 5pm Friday, September 2. Please sign up for assistance from this extended agency support while you can. The County of Lake will conduct its next Recovery Task Force meeting on September 8; if you would like to see the proceedings of the meeting conducted on August 24, go to: http://www.lakecountyrecovers.com/minutes/long-term-recovery-task-force-meeting-clayton-fire-2016-08-24.

Additional County-provided information is available from www.lakecountyrecovers.com

and the Lake County Resources & Services website: http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Behavioral_Health/resources.htm.

The Lower Lake Volunteer Firefighters Association and the Lower Lake Community Action Group are providing three meals a day (free), a calm and cool place to rest and relax, clean restrooms, refreshments and space to chill (they call it the Community Comfort Zone) totally supported by local volunteers and donated food supplies, right next door to Lake County Fire Protection District Station 65 (16354 Main Street and 16374 Main Street, Lower Lake). The Fire Station will open from 4 to 6 pm, Tuesday through Saturday, through September 12 for distribution of cleaning materials, animal feed, protective gear, and information on safe handling of hazardous materials (free). Help for cleaning up soot or smoke-damaged interiors is available from volunteers of the Grace Evangelical Free Church, at 279-8448. Rapid minor repairs necessary for re-inhabitation of damaged homes is available from Habitat for Humanity (at their new digs next door and part of the Foods Etc.-IGA grocery store on Lakeshore Drive, Clearlake), 707-994-1100, ext. 102. The Lower Lake Post Office is OPEN. Water services have been restored to most of the habitable area; PG&E has completed rewiring the main trunks, and one assumes both telephone and cable services will not be far behind. If you suffered any kind of loss from the Clayton Fire, you may be eligible for assistance from the California Victim Compensation Program. Contact them at 800-777-9229; calvcp.ca.gov. Remember, the Clayton Fire has been declared a crime, by the Lake County District Attorney’s office, and that means that anyone who experienced financial loss is potentially a victim of that crime. There are many additional resources — information is located at the Department of Social Services, and many other locations throughout Lower Lake and Clearlake. I’ll next provide you with a list of places where caregivers of all kinds are ready to assist you in their organizational capacities. And KPFZ, 88.1 FM (Lake County Community Radio) is providing as much continuous updating and outreach/inreach as possible from dedicated volunteer supporters through the entire programming week. Streaming live: www.kpfz.org with live call-in studio phone access at 707-263-3435. We’re here for everyone.

Betsy Cawn, The Essential Public Information Center, Upper Lake, CA. 707-275-9376. epi-center@sbcglobal.net

WARREN HINCKLE, FLAMBOYANT PUBLISHER

by Fred Gardner

I first met him 1966 or '67. I'd had a freelance job for Ramparts, editing a story about a Croatian fascist living in Southern California. I dropped my copy off at Hinckle's house on Castro Street, a comfortable Victorian. He and Denise had two young daughters, and the livingroom was dominated by a stuffed animal — an almost life-sized elephant. What wonderful parents, I thought. The elephant had been custom-made for the 1964 Republican Convention, which was held in San Francisco, with Barry Goldwater emerging as the nominee. According to Warren's sister Marianne, the elephant had been put on sale at I. Magnin's department store on Christmas Eve, and Warren snapped it up. It wouldn't fit into his car, so the manager, who had a convertible, drove him home.

I was surprised when Warren showed up at Dennis Peron's San Francisco Cannabis Buyer's Club on election night in 1996 to celebrate the passage of Proposition 215, the ballot measure that legalized marijuana for medical use in California. I had incorrectly made him for one of those heavy drinkers who has contempt for heavy pot smokers. "He didn't have any prejudice like that," Marianne reminded me. "We were fourth generation San Franciscans who knew all about the opium dens in Chinatown and were very accepting. Marijuana was nothing new."

Hinckle's obituary in the New York Times was informative and respectful, but it made no mention of "War News," the newspaper he launched as the US invaded Iraq in the spring of 1991. Hinckle would recall in 1998:

“There was once in this fair and compassionate city an urgently topical publication called War News. Publication began on March 2, 1991 and ceased on March 16, 1991 with a circulation of 200,000. War News' purpose was to oppose the Gulf War, and, when the war ended, it ended.

“The antiwar newspaper was an instant product of San Francisco's antiwar culture that made the city the epicenter of Vietnam War protests. It was largely a creation of the city's famous underground-comics artists of the '70s — Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Dan O'Neil, Gilbert Shelton, Winston Smith, and Ron Turner of Last Gasp Books, and writers included Hunter Thompson, Daniel Ellsberg, Andrew Kopkind, Ishamel Reed, Barbara Ehrenreich, and novelist John Berger. I was the editor of War News, which was financed by the Mitchell Brothers from their porn profits; it was a very San Francisco thing.

“‘Bombs don't come from the stork; they come from the IRS, from personal income taxes.’ — Hunter S. Thompson in San Francisco's War News

“There were few Gulf War supporters in town — I seem to recall state senator Quentin Kopp and political consultant Jack Davis (when they were still speaking) waving little US flags dork-like at a military parade — but most city politicos denounced the war and there were massive street protests; being against the invasion of Iraq in 1991 was as natural to San Francisco as summer fog.”

Warren Hinckle will forever be remembered as the publisher of Ramparts, but he was also a prolific writer with an entertaining style, a radical point of view, and a treasure trove of anecdotes to spice up the stories he was reporting. The above recollection was written for the San Francisco Independent, a biweekly published by his admirer Ted Fang. It went on:

“Seven years later, in 1998, President Bill Clinton is trying to dodge the impeachment bullet and he drops more Tomahawk and Cruise missiles on Iraq than former president George Bush did during the entire Persian Gulf War and there is hardly a ripple of outrage on the city streets.

“Whatever has happened to the Frisco left? Seven years ago, it would have had Clinton's head on a pike for carpet-bombing Iraq. And San Francisco would have been the starting gate for a push to impeach Clinton — not from the right for lying but from the left for the seriously high crime of using the war power, without authorization from Congress, to inflict civilian casualties to create a diversion from an obsessed special prosecutor's investigation of his sex life and his lies about it.”

Hinckle edited War News from New York, phoning and faxing copy and instructions to an ad hoc staff. The full-folio-sized paper was laid out in San Francisco in a vacant restaurant/bar on Montgomery Street at Broadway recently acquired by the Mitchell Brothers. Jim Mitchell and Warren had been planning to launch a San Francisco newspaper later that year, but Warren felt impelled to respond immediately to Operation Desert Storm. I was working at UCSF medical center at the time, editing the internal weekly. Warren asked me to write something for War News and one evening after work — on February 26, to be precise — I delivered a piece to the Montgomery Street HQ. Someone with no experience was trying to set the type using a Macintosh and was being taught over the phone how to paste up columns with rubber cement. I told Jim Mitchell there was a program called Pagemaker that might be more efficient. He asked me to take over the whole production side then and there. I said I couldn't. He said let's go get some dinner and talk about it. I said I was a divorced dad, had to drive up to Sonoma and see my kids that night. Jim said he had a soccer-playing kid, too, let's take them all out someday soon. I said sounds good. But that night Jim Mitchell drove to Corte Madera and shot his brother Artie dead. There are people who think the shooting would have happened anyway, but I think it was the utter chaos of the "newsroom" and the stream of faxed scrawls from Warren in New York that put Jim over the edge.

Warren was a brilliant idea man who didn't need a focus group to tell him what would get people's attention. I saw him at his best in the spring of '68 when the idea for the Ramparts Wallposter sprang fullblown from his brain. I had gone into his office to ask for two-weeks leave from the magazine to put out a mimeographed map, at the request of Tom Hayden, with instructions for the antiwar demonstrators coming to Chicago to implore and confront delegates to the Democratic Party convention. Hinckle immediately said it should be on newsprint like the political wallposters then being whitewashed against walls in China — "One side covering the protests, one side with reports by delegates from inside the hall!" Many years later I had an idea for a monthly consisting of obituaries that I thought could be called something tasteful like "Who's Leaving Us Now?" Warren said, immediately, "We'll make it look like the old 'Life' and we'll call it 'Death'."

THE CHARGE IS MURDER

On August 28, 2016 around 8:42 PM the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office was advised of an assault that occurred in the parking lot of Boomers Bar in Laytonville. Deputies were advised that an adult male, Suspect Charles Reynolds, had assaulted another male, Victim Kenneth Fisher, 29, of Laytonville, in the parking lot of the establishment and the victim was unresponsive due to his injuries. Information provided indicated the suspect, Charles Reynolds, 32, of Laytonville was seen walking from the area towards another business in Laytonville. As Deputies responded they received reports that the victim's injuries were life threatening and cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was being administered at the scene. Laytonville Ambulance Service responded and transported the victim to Frank R. Howard Memorial Hospital in Willits where he succumbed to his injuries. The California Highway Patrol responded to assist the Sheriff’s Office with the call and observed the suspect near the Wheels Cafe in Laytonville and detained him until Deputies arrived. The Mendocino County Sheriff's Detective Unit responded to assist with the investigation. Witnesses indicated there did not appear to be any type of altercation between the two men, prior to the assault. Witnesses indicated the suspect struck the victim one time with his fist. Charles Reynolds was arrested and booked into the Mendocino County Jail on an open charge of murder. He is being held on a "no bail" status. Anyone with information regarding his incident is encouraged to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Detectives Unit at (707) 234-2100.

HOW TO NOT HARM STEELHEAD?

David Severn asks: What's absurd about this from the Ardzrooni website promotion?

"This wild female steelhead was caught and released unharmed by Winemaker Van Williamson on the Navarro River. Our natural resources and environment are of the highest concern in our day to day farming."

GOT ‘DEM OL’ BACK TO SCHOOL BLUES, OH YES I DO…

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

The words “It’s Back to School Week!” bring sadness and despair to the hearts of schoolchildren everywhere. I understand. They make me sad too. Sending children into a nine-month slog of tedium and psychic abuse as they march toward a meaningless diploma seems monstrous and unfair. We should all be embarrassed. We could do better. Think about an afternoon spent in a room being “instructed” by a poorly educated schoolteacher rambling away on a subject he knows less about than your next door neighbor. Think about another hour exposed to the gassy exhalations of someone who, when the school day is finished, goes off to a yoga class or a tai chi session with her dog.

On weekends she hurries to the Farmer’s Market where she prattles away with noisy friends about the latest bulletins on transgender innovations for second graders and the thrill that is Hillary Clinton. At night it’s time for an information-free “news” programs, consume a dinner of soybean paste, kale and some new fad substitute for rice. Then a sleep-inducing “Music of the Rain Forest” CD and a sleep-inducing book recommended on NPR. (Note: males and females are interchangeable within the teacher species.)

That’s a spot-on composite of a perfectly average local school teacher. This is your child’s mentor and guide. This is who interprets and provides shape and meaning to the world of your 12-year-old. This teacher is perhaps the second- or third-most important person in your kid’s life for the next nine months. I know a bunch of teachers. Few are candidates for MENSA and I’ve certainly never met one as smart as an auto mechanic. Most haul around the dull agenda of the dull Democrat and think of themselves as intellectuals.

Yet Ukiah schoolteachers make more money per year than any other profession in the area. Read that sentence again. Long-term Ukiah teachers are guaranteed more than $85,000 a year, and they work a scant nine months of that year. No one else—not lawyers or doctors, dentists or wine growers—are guaranteed so much money. What do we get in return? By any measure—and the State of California has a couple of ‘em—we don’t get much. Ukiah schools are lousy. If dentists and grape growers produced the kinds of results our educators do we’d all be toothless and drinking wine made from potatoes.

Kids today are stupider than ever and ill-prepared for the job market. Could one in a dozen find Wyoming on a map? Do any know whether Dwight Eisenhower was President before or after Abe Lincoln? If local students were educated enough to read and write they’d fill books with all the stuff they didn’t learn in their years in Ukiah. But it’s hard to blame them. They just attend the schools we make them attend, withstand the nonsense teachers blow toward them, and drop off the other end of the academic assembly line with no knowledge and few skills.

Way to go Ukiah Unified!

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

A READER WRITES: Widow Row & Go Go

On the Northwest side of Hopland along Highway 101 there sits a block of older homes. These homes appear to have been built in the early part of the 1900s. Victorian style homes with front porches, lots of ornate woodwork. This is the block that starts at the world famous Bluebird Café and goes north up to the concrete remains of the old Hopland Grammar school that burned down decades ago. The homes all had large lots probably due to the need for septic systems back in the years they were built. All of Hopland is now on a public water and septic system. Something Boonville is wrestling with now.

This group of beautiful homes was locally referred to when I grew up as Widows Row. Many if not all were occupied by widows. There was Mel Stutz(sp), a Mrs. Harmon, Anne Lucchetti (who ran my service station complex for 30 years), Dorothy Abert (who was my 4-H leader), and Julia Rosetti Proctor Massaro (who just died in July at 98.) Their husbands had died and these homes were ideal for them. You could walk to the post office, bank, grocery store, or even to the Pomo Inn (now Thatcher Inn or Hopland Inn or whatever they call it now) where owner/bartender Vince Lotti would slip a bottle into a plain brown paper bag (like sanitary napkins used to be packaged) and discreetly hand it to you for the exact amount of money and he did all of this with one hand. One of his biggest customers was a justice court’s wife. I never asked him how he lost one of his hands.

Today the old houses are still there but the demographics have changed. Enterprising capitalists have built two-story box-like apartments behind these historic homes. I doubt there are any widows living is them. Especially on the second story of a box lookalike apartment

Right in the middle of this row of older homes is a new enterprise. I noticed a sign out front with trendy painted advertising Clinic Ananda, operated by Mary Lagorio, DO, Board Certified Internal Medicine. Her card that I had obtained previously indicates she also has an office in Mendocino. I called for an appointment the other day and was promptly scheduled to see Mary if I could get to the office by 1:30. I quickly finished my power bar (needed for octogenarians) and headed down to Hopland. First to the bank as this is a cash operation. Parked the car right in front. Up the old wooden stairs onto the porch and opened the wooden door that was probably installed when the house was built. That door opened into a hallway. A closed door on the left and an open door on the right which was now the waiting room. I think it was probably the living room in its previous life. A few feet into the hall was installed a waist-high counter. Behind it was a charming young lady, probably the one I had spoken to on the phone and had very nicely scheduled me into an already full afternoon for Mary. The room behind the counter was obviously the kitchen now converted to an office. I was asked to fill out some forms, return them and wait up front (all standard medical procedures we have accomplished many times).

Shortly the door across the hall on the left opened and my name was called by another charming young lady. She had my forms, reviewed them, and asked some questions, and bingo I was done. Returning to the counter I promptly paid the fee, asked if there was a bio on Mary I could have. I explained I have been known to write down some history about Hopland. Charming young lady was sorry, but no bio, and in a short two minutes I was out the door. The time was right at 2:15.

LAURIE YORK ON FOG: I think I have a love-hate relationship with this gray stuff that keeps hovering above us like a thick woolen blanket for what seems like an entire month. On one hand I’m thankful for the fog because our big trees need the moisture — especially during reoccurring drought years. I’m grateful that the fog lessens the chance of wildfire here on the coast and I’m glad it pulls moisture inland where things are so incredibly dry. At the same time I’m feeling the low-pressure, the oppressive quality of the uninterrupted gray-ness without wind or air current to blow it away. Have you noticed how incredibly still it is? Even the ocean is silent. I know when it’s hot inland the warm air out over the Pacific is drawn in over the cool current that runs along our coastline and voila — fog! What I don’t understand is why we have had previous summers with very little fog. What’s different this year? Why, this season, is the fog sitting above us like a big broody hen that refuses to leave the nest? Yesterday Carmen and I drove inland to get a little warmth and light. Not until 12 miles inland (at Navarro) did the fog begin to break. It was wonderful walking down the street in Boonville eating a cold popsicle and feeling the warm golden light against my skin. It was reassuring just to know the sun still exists. I realize September is just around the corner and that month usually brings us beautiful, clear weather - but today I just had to say the “F” word! Maybe if we all yelled “FOG!!!”- simultaneously - we’d stir up a little air current and break up this lingering cloud. Anybody game? So if anyone has any ideas why this year’s fog has been so tenacious I would love to hear what you thoughts on this.

HERE COMES THE MACHINE, there goes labor. This mechanical grape harvester was hauled in to the Goldeneye Vineyard this morning (Monday).

STRAIGHT from the boss, Mary Anne Montana as delivered to the Supervisors: Of the 1,298 animals, mostly dogs and cats, 94 percent got out alive, a figure Ms. Montana downsized to 90 percent later in the week. The figure covers January through the end of June, and seems to be bordering on the miraculous.

WHEN KAREN OTTOBONI dropped by the other day with the gift of excellent blackberry jam, I mentioned the phenomenal growth of the vegetable garden at the Elder Home. Karen has been instrumental in the creation of both the senior housing and the garden. “Cold Creek Compost,” Karen explained. “Potter Valley. They only deliver by the truckload.” Cold Creek arose in the face of serious opposition of its neighbors, but savvy management has not only cooled out its critics, its product is super.

WHERE'S THE FLUGLEHORN? Maestro Bob Ayers asks what happened to the classic and valuable flugelhorn stolen by Stephen Hunter after a Big Band concert at the Philo Grange.

BRUCE McEWEN looked into it, and all of us hope Hunter is investigated separately for stealing it: “Mr. Stephen Hunter was sentenced on Thursday as we were waiting for Bronwen Hanes to cut a deal with the DA, which she was unable to do because she seems to think she’s innocent. Hunter got six years in prison for his part in the head-on collision near Indian Creek bridge outside of Philo over a year ago when he got drunk and pilfered your flugelhorn at the Grange; he got six years for DUI resulting in great bodily injury but Judge Ann Moorman suspended execution of the sentence and put Hunter on probation for five years with a hint that if he stayed sober he could get off probation in 48 months. No mention of the flugelhorn was made, but a big fuss was made over Hunter’s pastor, who was allowed to come in the courtroom in shorts. Hunter has a wife and baby in Japan, and his mother-in-law was with him. I seemed to be the only one worried about the horn. I asked Detective Espinoza, but he didn’t know. My experience has been that these things disappear at the towing garages when the vehicle owner ends up in the hospital and unable to retrieve his personal property from a wrecked car. Hunter probably wouldn’t have claimed the instrument, anyhow, since it was stolen. My understanding was that it was an antique and worth a lot of money. The only possibility for recovery would be if it was taken as evidence, since it was stolen, and maybe it lays moldering in an evidence locker somewhere.”

AN ILLEGAL PUMP, long inactive, is now working overtime near the confluence of Anderson Creek, the Rancheria, and Indian Creek where they form the Navarro. All three feeder streams are battered and overdrawn, as is the Navarro. This particular draw is the work of the Ashiku family, whom we dubbed the Albanian bandits after the Albanian patriarch. The illegal pump was installed when the Ashikus were in their capital formation stage via dependent youth spread over two sites straddling 128 near Philo. Both sites lacked sufficient water for the needs of upwards of 70 court-placed teenagers. West of the Madrones, and up the hill, the barbarous clan built themselves a mansion alongside the barracks for their funding units, aka “the children,” at the mention of whom the old world matriarch and patriarch launched into mawkish, heavily accented declarations about how much they “loved these kids,” few of whom, if any, were lovable. But distant governments paid big unsupervised, unaccounted for bucks to get “the kids” out of juvenile halls where it cost even more to house them until they were old enough to move on into the state prison system. For water, and to hoodwink the local authorities, the Ashikus ran a hidden line up from the river and into their well casing. “You say we have no water up here? Watch this.” It worked, but to this day the Ashikus have no riparian rights and virtually no water on their dry hilltop, not that they’re alone in stealing what’s left of our fish-free streams. The younger bandits became dentists in Ukiah, and right there you have another Only In Mendo story in a County where history starts all over again every day, and you are whatever you say you are.

WE’VE TRIED to track down what happened on the Turner family camping trip a few weeks ago. Twice requested confirmation of emergency calls from the campsite have been ignored by the Sheriff’s Department. Turner, mayor of Fort Bragg, referred us to a facebook page maintained by his political foes, suggesting, we suppose, his foes made it up. We don't think so. We think Turner drove off some intruders, perhaps at gunpoint. And good for him if that's what happened.

ON THE SUBJECT of suddenly interesting mayors, former Point Arena mayor, Douglas Burkey, and his consort, Sheryl Smith, a former employee of Mendocino County’s smallest but most consistently in-the-news town, have, as previously reported here, been arrested for grand theft. Their arrest occurred in Point Arena on a warrant from Sonoma County.

BURKEY AND SMITH are in serious trouble, and have some serious 'splaining before them. The background for their arrest involves theft in the amount of $168,000 from a man named Aron Laventer, a former love interest of Ms. Smith’s. The 60-year old Laventer was found dead on his SoCo property in late 2012, conveniently and unaccountably dead it would appear if viewed from a larcenous perspective.

REPUBLICAN PARTY OF MENDOCINO COUNTY not paying its fines? Stan The Man Anderson as his fellow Repugs (three active at last count) owe the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission $2,090.00 in fines for not turning in accounting reports in a timely manner.

LOOKING BACK at my steady devolution over the years, I learned zero in so-called college, less in high school. I showed up for high school only so I could stay eligible to play sports after school. I went to college because I was convinced I could get easy work if I had that diploma, and I was still playing sports. College was a bigger time waster even than high school. I’d always read a lot so academic blue ribbons came easy — especially where I went to college, where anyone who could write a coherent paragraph was regarded as a full-on prodigy. Most of my classmates could not read with understanding and could not write at all. And this was college! Lots of people, pick up basic skills like reading and writing at an adult level as they go through life. We get lots of smart, sophisticated letters to the editor from formally unlettered people, and reams of tedious, unreadable bullshit from the formally lettered. Liberal arts are really about understanding and remembering what you read. A diploma in which makes you just like millions of other Americans but probably still less academically capable than half the people on the Indian sub-continent. But after 16 years of edu-seat time I still couldn’t do anything of any real use. I had zero practical skills. All I was good at was lying down and reading. Or sitting up and reading. Looking back, all I really needed after the sixth grade was a good reading list and an apprenticeship with someone with real skills. There are millions of people like me. I wish every day that I’d been jobbed out at about age 12 to, say, a working newspaper or landscape gardener or a librarian/archivist maybe. I’m not smart enough or patient enough for carpentry or car mechanics, but I finally drifted into the newspaper business where I could at least eke out a living.

THE FAKE LEFT, in Fred Gardner's handy phrase, has destroyed the meanings of lots of useful words. Oppression, for instance. Most people would agree that Black people are oppressed every which way, but the term has lost its sting because now all kinds of non-oppressed and self-oppressed people claim to be oppressed.

A GUY LIKE COLIN KAEPERNICK is not, in himself, oppressed. He's a bi-racial multi-millionaire who grew up in a secure, white middleclass home in Turlock. He's a latecomer to the wonderful world of black oppression.

BUT KAEPERNICK HAS an authenticity problem. To be wholly credible, Kaepernick would have to do a lot more than sit down symbolically on behalf of black people. But it doesn't appear he's thought out the contradictions here. He's got to do concrete things to help out, otherwise he's just one more marginally credible voice shouting out the obvious.

OUR BLACK PRESIDENT has managed to make everything worse for most people, including black people, and you can be sure that Hillary, because she's already said so, "will continue Barack Obama's legacy." Kap might look into opposing the Democratic side of the duopoly.

I KINDA FEEL for Kap. He's not doing well on the field. He lost his mojo along the way, his confidence. His demo might also get him unemployed. The Trumpian worldview of NFL owners is strictly flag and country and military pageantry, although there isn't a veteran among them. But the kids who make them richer than rich are almost all black. The bloated fucks have to tread carefully with black sentiments. With the whole world falling on his head right now, I think Kap is about to become a victim, if not fully oppressed.

THIS WEEK AT BLUE MEADOW FARM this rainbow time of year: Heirloom, Early Girl, Paste & Cherry Tomatoes; Corno di Toro, Gypsy, Bell, Pimento Sweet Peppers; Padrons, Jalapenos, Anaheim, Ancho, Criola Silla Chilis; Italian & Asian Eggplant, Zucchini & Patty Pan Squash; Armenian, Lemon & Mideast Cucumbers, Asian Pears,; Onions, Garlic, Basil, Parsley, Purslane; Sunflowers, Zinnias & Bright Lights Cosmos.

Blue Meadow Farm, 3301 Holmes Ranch Rd, Philo 707-895-2071

DISHWASHER SOUGHT

Queenie’s Roadhouse Cafe in Elk is still in need of a dishwasher. Asap. Please do you know anyone? Call me at home, 937 2060. Work, 877 3285. Email queenie@mcn.org.

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 29, 2016

AUSTIN BARNETT, Redway/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

NICOLE BIVIN, Ukiah. Attempted murder, assault with deadly weapon not a gun.

BILLY DOAK, Willits. Domestic battery.

ROCKY DUMAN, Ukiah. No license, parole revocation, resisting.

ROBERT FLEMING, Westport/Ukiah. DUI-drugs, probation revocation.

REFUGIO GANDARILLA, Willits. Fugitive from justice.

WANA MATTHIAS, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

DEVIN SMITH, Ukiah. Paraphernali, county parole violation.

DAVID TATE, Ukiah. DUI.

NATHAN TUPPER, Fort Bragg. Domestic assault.

MARK WRIGHT, San Francisco/Ukiah. Drunk in public.

TRENDING

by James Kunstler

Would fate permit it, the election of Hillary Clinton will be the supreme and perhaps terminal act in an Anything-Goes-And-Nothing-Matters society. Yet, even with the fabulous luck of running against a consummate political oaf, she struggles to get the upper hand, and she may land in the White House with the lowest voter turnout in modern history. And then her reward in office may be to dodge indictment for four years while the nation crumbles around her. This is the way the world ends: not with a bang or a whimper but with a cackle.

Imagine the scene following Hillary’s election. In order to salvage the last shred of its credibility, the Federal Reserve raises its overnight funds rate another quarter percent and crashes the last Potemkin semblance of a “recovering” economy, that is, the levitated stock markets. Tens of millions of retired individuals previously driven into them by zero interest rate policy are wiped out. Even more gravely, pension funds and insurance companies are destroyed, but not before their troubles trigger derivative contracts with big banks which then explode and expose the inability of counterparties to make good on their ends of the bet.

In a blind panic, the Federal Reserve reverses its policy in December, drops the Fed Funds interest rate back to 25 basis points and announces the grandest new round of “quantitative easing” (money printing) ever, while congress is coerced into voting for the greatest bailout of institutions the world has ever seen, along with a “one time” helicopter drop of a cool trillion dollars in the form of combined tax cuts and “shovel-ready infrastructure projects.” The media rejoices. The US Dollar tanks. Absolutely nobody wants US Treasury bonds, bills, and notes. The pathetic remnant of the American middle class stares into the abyss. (If it looks hard enough, it sees the US government down there.)

We’re now living in the setup for this, treating the election shenanigans so far as just another sordid television entertainment. It’s more than that. It’s an engraved invitation to the worst crisis since the Civil War. The crisis may even feature events like a civil war with identity groups skirmishing around our already-ruined “flyover” cities just like the factions in Aleppo and Fallujah. Thank the “Progressive” Left for that. Believe me, history will blame them for chucking the idea of a unifying common culture onto the garbage barge.

And yes, for all our tribulations here in America, the rest of the world will be struggling with its own epic disorders. It remains to be seen whether they will lead to war as, say, the Chinese ruling party attempts to evade the crash of its own rickety banking system, and the inflamed millions of ruined “investors,” by starting a brawl with Japan over a few meaningless islands in the Pacific. Could happen. And, oh, is North Korea for real with its right out front nuclear bomb-and-missile program? What does the rest of the world plan to do about that?

You don’t even want to look at the Middle East. The grisly conflicts there of recent decades are just a prelude to what happens when the House of Saud loses its grip on the government. That will happen, and then the big question is whether Aramco can continue to function, or whether the critical parts of it end up damaged beyond repair as competing tribes fight over it. In any case, the world will begin to notice the salient fact of life in that part of the world: namely, that the Arabian desert, and much of the great band of arid territory on either side of it, cannot support the populations that mushroomed in the nutrient bath of the 20th century oil economy. And they won’t all be able to self-export to Europe either.

Speaking of that interesting region, around the same time Hillary sets up for intensive care in the third floor of the White House, the old order will be swept away across Europe. Farewell Merkel and Monsieur Hollandaise. Farewell to the squishy Left all over the place. Enter the hard-asses. You’d think if anything might unite that continent it might be the wish to defend secular freedom under the rule of law, but even that remains to be seen.

Yes, the world following 3Q 2016 is looking like one hot mess. If you remember anything, let it be this: the primary mission of your cohort of the human race is managing contraction. The world is getting wider and poorer again and the outcome everywhere will be determined by the success of people to manage their lives locally. The big things of this world — governments, corporations, institutions — are losing their traction and whatever we manage to rebuild will get done locally. In victory, Hillary may utterly cease to matter.

Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting is Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/JamesHowardKunstler?ty=h

STILL HASN’T FOUND WHAT HE’S LOOKING FOR

I don’t understand why the task of unearthing Hillary’s emails has fallen to the scrappy rightwing outfit Judicial Watch and not to the New York Times or the ACLU. Don’t liberals care about preserving the integrity of the Freedom of Information Act? Perhaps they’re numbed from listening to the “Joshua Tree” album on endless loop.

One of the most ludicrous emails to be excavated from the latest dump of missives involving fat cats donors to the Clinton Foundation seeking favors from Hillary and the State Department concerns the sad case of Bono, the puerile frontman for U2.

On May 27, 2009, just a few months after Hillary took office as Secretary of State, Ben Schwerin, a Bill Clinton aide, wrote an email to Huma Abedeen at the State Department on behalf of Bono, a donor to the Clinton Foundation. “Bono wants to do a linkup with the International Space Station on every show during the tour this year,” Schwerin wrote. “I’m trying to figure out who the best contact is to talk to at NASA or the congressional committee on science and technology. Any ideas? Thks.”

Abedeen responded quickly, “No clue.” But within a few weeks Bono had his “link up” from NASA for one of the most banal rock tours of the decade. NASA could have done the world a favor by simply launching Bono into deep space.

UPCOMING EVENTS AT THE UKIAH LIBRARY.

www.mendolibrary.org

COLIN KAEPERNICK IS RIGHTER THAN YOU KNOW: The National Anthem Is A Celebration Of Slavery

https://theintercept.com/2016/08/28/colin-kaepernick-is-righter-than-you-know-the-national-anthem-is-a-celebration-of-slavery/

CONSOLIDATION OF THE CALIFORNIA WINE BUSINESS INTO CONGLOMERATES CONTINUES APACE...

http://www.winebusiness.com/news/?go=getArticle&dataid=173721

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I’ve never understood the local fascination with Reggae Music. I love Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. I’ve heard some other reggae music that I liked a lot, but I’ve heard more insipid, preachy, banal and just plain lame reggae music since I’ve moved to Humboldt County than I’ve ever heard before. Listening to the radio around here often reminds me that the global reggae music machine produces plenty of pap that’s every bit as vapid as the American Top 40, as well as religiously themed music. — John Hardin

CRAIG'S THERE

Headed tonight for SS Peter & Paul Catholic Church across the street from Washington Square Park in North Beach, to attend a 6 P.M. vigil and 7 P.M. rosary for Warren Hinckle. The funeral is at 10:30 A.M. Tuesday morning. Properly got into the spirit of this last night by visiting Vesuvio's, hoisted two pints and enjoyed a shot of Laphroaig scotch on the rocks. Will always be appreciative of his publishing Ramparts, condemning the criminal bastards in South Viet Nam and the crazies in Washington D.C. who tried to force their stupidity of an hegemony-based foreign policy on everyone. Otherwise, am keeping the mind centered at its Source.

Craig Louis Stehr, San Francisco

SEPTEMBER 2ND 'FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK'

Join artists and their hosts for an evening of art, music and refreshments as you stroll from one venue to the next; each showcasing local art and artistry. Held in Historic Downtown Ukiah on the first Friday of each month, the First Friday Art Walk is the perfect way to relax your body, mind and soul. This enjoyable evening begins at 5:00 p.m. and promises to delight your senses; all while enjoying the company of others.

For more information contact (707) 462-1400

Featured Artists and their Host.

The Art Center Ukiah will be featuring "Planes, Trains & Automobiles", and Boats and Motorcycles - Original art work from paintings, watercolor, photographs, mixed media to sculptures of transportation themed artwork. The Art Center is located at 201 South State Street.

Bona Market Place will be featuring the large wine country canvas paintings of artist Willow Laland-Yielding. You'll find Bona Market Place at 116 West Standley Street. (707) 468-1113

Connect Insurance and Ukiah Massage is proud to host Chris Pugh. He is an editorial and commercial photographer based in Ukiah, California. He is the Chief Photographer at the Ukiah Daily Journal where he is focused on day-to-day reportage, current affairs, and community portraits. In 2010 he founded the Ukiah Photography Club and currently serves as club president. Outside of photography, he is known for his love of loose leaf tea, locally brewed craft beer, 80's heavy metal music, and useless trivia knowledge. Come and join Mo and Andrea at 304 N State Street.

The Corner Gallery will be featuring the photographic works of the Ukiah Photography Club; to include the works of Rob Beckstrom, Jack Booth, Adel Clark, Judy Judd, Chris Pugh, Bev Rae, Tom Raymondson, Lillian Rubie, Park Steiner, Volkhard Sturzbecher, Julie Thornton, and Manya Wik. You'll find the Corner Gallery on the corner of State and Church Street.

Enoteca is pleased to be featuring an art show by Chat Ko entitled "Meditation Imagery"; exploring the correlation between the mind and the automatic. The Enoteca Wine Bar is located at 106 West Church Street.

On view at the Grace Hudson Museum will be their new exhibit - "Instinct Extinct; The Great Pacific Flyway." This contemporary art installation by Valerie Constantino, Glenda Drew & Ann Savageau explores and celebrates the biology, bounty and beauty of the a major north-south path for migratory birds.

Paradigm will be showcasing the acrylic paintings of Stephanie Imholt. Stephanie's totem animal themed works of art are wonderful and mystical; capturing her heart and vision on canvas. Come and enjoy Paradigm's lovely garden space and their unique shop, located at 312 North School Street.

The Ukiah Library is always a fun and informative stop during our monthly First Friday Art Walks; for both young and old alike. They always feature some sort of hands-on art project, and often have live music and refreshments. The Ukiah Library is located at 105 North Main Street.

New to the First Friday Art Walk is VFW Post 1900, located at 293 Seminary Avenue. The VFW is pleased to showcase four artists. The paintings of Robin Thompson and sculptures by Patrick Saterlee. Artist Vercinia Vinzant will be on hand, and Sonja Miller will feature her amazing Native American beadwork.

Acoustic Café 6th Annual Summer Concert Series

Parducci Acoustic Café Swinging with Local Faves Dgiin

S’wine Country BBQ Provides S’tellar Eats

PARDUCCI WINE CELLARS 6TH ANNUAL SUMMER CONCERT SERIES, SEPTEMBER 10th, with the slinky international beats of DGIIN, and food from top local caterer S’wine [sic] Country BBQ. Tickets are exclusively available online at www.parducci.com. General Admission is $20 with special discounts available to Parducci Wine Club members. For more information, call (707) 467-3480 or contact orders@parducci.com.

The Parducci Wine Cellars Patio and Wine Bar open at 5:30. Opening music and food sales start at 6:00. DGINN plays at 7:00. Featured food vendor is S’wine Country BBQ. Non-alcoholic beverages and water stations will be available at venue, as well as the popular new Parducci Signature Sangria. No outside beverages permitted. For security, the contents of all bags will be checked at the door.

DGINN’s highly-danceable blend of European influences and Caribbean beats have made them an Acoustic Café crowd favorite,” said Rochelle Loren Enzler, Parducci Wine Cellars Director of Events. "Prepare to kick off your shoes for some great, funk-driven dancing!”

All shows feature general festival seating. Ticket sales close at noon day of event. Additional tickets may be available at the door. Performances take place weather permitting. Please print tickets or present on device at the door; no will calls.

Parducci Wine Cellars is located at 501 Parducci Road in Ukiah. For more information or directions visit us online www.parducci.com.

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2016 Parducci Wine Cellars Acoustic Café Summer Concert Schedule:

Dgiin, French Gypsy Swing, Saturday, September 10.

Tommy Castro & The Painkillers, www.tommycastro, Rhythm, Rock & Blues, Saturday, September 24.

Top Shelf, www.reverbnation.com/topshelf, Reggae Rock. Saturday, October 8