Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017

• Windy Morning
• Navarro Logjam
• Flood Forecast
• Weed-tax Lawsuit
• Linn Bottorf
• Boardman Case
• Lizbby's Opening
• Variety Show
• Village Movement
• AV Deputies
• Nature Notes
• Moon Dance
• Local Burgers
• GP Site
• Hare Creek
• Little Dog
• Luis Ferreyra
• Superbowl Fixed
• Police Reports
• Yesterday's Catch
• Retirement Party
• Healthy Mendocino
• Super Protests
• Donny Newton
• Prop 64
• Shaping Policy
• Muscle-bound Horses
• Trump Resonance
• Love Uncorked
• Super Callous
• Craig Resonates

WIND ADVISORY: The National Weather Service in Eureka has issued a Wind Advisory, which is in effect from 1 am to 11 am Tuesday.

Southwestern Humboldt, Southern Humboldt Interior, Southern Trinity, Mendocino Coast, Northwestern Mendocino Interior, Northeastern Mendocino Interior, Southwestern Mendocino Interior, Southeastern Mendocino Interior

* Winds...sustained south and southwest winds of 25 to 35 mph with locally higher gusts ranging from 40 to 50 mph.

* Locations include: Shelter Cove, Fort Bragg, Point Arena, Boonville, Hopland, Manchester, Mendocino, Gualala, and all ridges and exposed areas.

* Highways impacted: 1, 128, portions of 101 and Hwy 20, Mendocino Pass, Hwy 175.

* For a detailed view of the hazard area, visit http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/map

Precautionary/Preparedness Actions..

A wind advisory means that winds of 35 mph are expected. Winds this strong can make driving difficult, especially for high profile vehicles. Use extra caution.

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UPDATE: MENDO SCHOOLS CLOSED

Due to a wide spread power outage, all schools in the Mendocino Unified School District will be cancelled today. If you are able to pick up your student please check them out of the main office. The buses will leave to return students home at 10:15am. Please stay up to date with local radio stations, social media and school websites. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

IMPRESSIVE LOGJAM on the Navarro River at Highway 1 Bridge

NAVARRO RIVER LEVEL FORECAST shows heavy rains for Tuesday, perhaps reaching flood stage. (Windy, too.)

LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST MENDOCINO COUNTY for AI passage

AFTER YEARS of tax-free income while proclaiming marijuana’s miracle properties and all-round groove-o centrality to life in Mendocino County, a small group of persons who can justly be called ingrates are about to sue Mendocino County on a bogus claim essentially arguing that they shouldn’t be taxed but claiming the tax initiative statutes that apply to everyone else don’t apply to them.

AS THEY PUT IT:

A complaint against Mendocino County has been filed in Mendocino Superior Court. Plaintiffs challenging the notion, declared by the Board of Supervisors, that the "Marijuana Tax" (Measure AI) was approved by the voters, despite having received less than 2/3 of the vote, constitutionally required for special taxes. Under the California Constitution, Article XIIIC, all taxes are either general taxes or special taxes and require different percentages of the total vote. General taxes require a bare majority; special taxes require a super-majority, i.e., 66 2/3%. Measure AI is a special tax. It proposed a county wide tax on legal medical and non-medical cannabis but failed to achieve 66 2/3% required for special taxes.

Plaintiffs ask the Court for Declarations: 1) that the tax increase was a special tax subject to Article XIIIC's super-majority vote requirement and was defeated by receiving less than 2/3 voter approval. 2) that such measures as AI and AJ, as a scheme to circumvent a super-majority requirement, are prohibited by the California Constitution.

Plaintiffs, Mendocino County residents and voters, include Michael Johnson, Pebbles Trippet, Paula Deeter, Teri Johnson, Ron Edwards, Ralf Laguna, Noel Manners.

Defendant is Mendocino County.

LARRY ROSEN, attorney and Ukiah-area pot pharma, is drafting the suit.

LINN BOTTORF has died. A long-time resident of the Mendocino Coast, Linn slipped away last month without even an obituary in the Advocate-Beacon. He seems to have died a pauper with only a single devoted friend looking out for his interests and visiting him regularly at Sherwood Oaks in Fort Bragg. Linn was most fortunate in that sole remaining friend, the brilliant Eleanor Cooney of Mendocino whose wit, warmth and intelligence is equivalent to ten families. Linn’s family apparently disowned him, but Eleanor took care of everything a family would ordinarily be responsible for, and Linn was not an easy person as he became more and more estranged from his senses. I met him accidentally when he appeared years ago at a 4th of July party at my place in Boonville. He was a great story teller and a very funny man, truly the life of that party. He occasionally wrote a letter to the paper, which we always welcomed as a departure from the weekly political drear that preoccupies most of us. Linn would stop by the office as he passed through Boonville with his dog, Baxter, in tow. Then, suddenly, I heard he was sick, not physically ill but sick in the sense of losing himself to himself and the rest of us. Ms. Cooney invited me to join her in a visit to the patient at Sherwood Oaks. I almost wish I hadn’t gone because Linn, as I knew him, was not there. Senile dementia? I guess. He could shuffle around and make it to the bathroom and back, but he didn’t seem to recognize his sole devotee, Ms. Cooney, and he certainly didn’t know me. I understand he lingered like this for at least two years and at last, mercifully for him, has gone. But he was well known in Coast art circles, taught classes in Fort Bragg, was widely recognized in the communities of Mendocino and Fort Bragg. It insults his memory that there has been no formal announcement of his passing.

THE DENNIS BOARDMAN murder case is in court in Ukiah on the 27th of this month. The popular Fort Bragg and Boonville man was bludgeoned to death by Caleb Silver of Boonville, a young man Boardman had known from birth and had given much help to over the years.

LIZBBY’S opens this Saturday in central Boonville’s old Lodge complex under the auspices of the Gutierrez family. The widely anticipated restaurant and beer and wine bar will serve breakfasts, lunches and dinners every day from 10am to 3pm, then 5pm to 8pm.

The Gutierrezes are affiliated with the Favelas of the longtime, and enormously popular, Libby’s restaurant of Philo. The Favelas have retired, leaving their can’t miss recipes to the Guiterrezes.

YOU'VE BEEN THINKING of Variety Show acts for years and this is the time to bring them to life! What's on your mind, AV? This is your big chance to entertain your friends and neighbors with your surprising skills, unexpected antics, and dazzling wit. The Variety Show is March 3rd and 4th. Call Captain Rainbow at 895-3807 or Angela at 895-3362 and get your fantastic ideas on that stage!

A GROUP DISCUSSION of life and end-of-life.

Please join us on Sunday, February 12th at 4:00 p.m. at Lauren’s Restaurant, 14211 Highway 128, Boonville. Group discussion of “The Village Movement” whose principles are simple: instead of leaving their homes for senior housing or assisted living, a group of senior residents in a community form a non-profit membership organization to provide access to services which allow seniors to age in place in their own homes. Can we bring this to Anderson Valley? Please join other members of our community to talk about it. This is our first meeting of the New Year and your input is welcomed.

DEPUTY CRAIG WALKER, Anderson Valley’s popular lawman is pretty much confined to desk duty as he prepares for knee surgery. Deputy Walker was injured grappling with a Ukiah malefactor, and if you don’t think these guys earn every penny of their pay go for a ride with one of them some night for a clear picture of who and what they deal with.

IN THE ANDERSON VALLEY, we count our law enforcement blessings, with the affable Walker succeeding the legendary Deputy Squires, who is also battling physical problems stemming from his long years of physical encounters with people who choose not to go peacefully. Deputy Squires knew The Valley so thoroughly he knew who was doing what without leaving his Boonville home, and his home served as a 24-hour sub-station, in that locals felt free to take their problems straight to the deputy’s front door at all hours. Walker is comparably accessible, being free with his cell phone number, which puts him on round-the-clock duty, too.

NATURE NOTES. Dave Severn writes: Early spring? Amidst this last series of rain storms it sure doesn't seem like spring, but two weeks ago I did see a first pair of mergansers on the River, a jackrabbit on the Shenoa road and pulled the first tick of the year out of my lower back. And then one day last week there was a road maintenance crew out mowing. The River is glorious, gradually changing color from a murky cafe latte to an opaque subtle brownish green to an almost translucent green — and then back again with a new storm. Saturday and Sunday the sight was bordering on surreal as a brilliant, sparkling, almost fluorescent forest green Indian Creek ribboned its way into the opaque olive flow of Rancheria Creek, taking its time to commingle then disperse. Some folks say this is the point the flow becomes the Navarro River. Others say the River starts a quarter mile upstream with the convergence of the very murky Anderson Creek. I call the flow all the way from Yorkville, The River. The few fishermen I've talked with claim there aren't many steelies (certainly not coho) biting, but on the few trips I've made to the mouth there have always been a couple of seals waiting for new arrivals, so the fish must be coming in. I don't think its seasonal, but a mountain lion took a lamb somewhere between Philo and Boonville this past week and the government trapper took the lion. I heard it was pregnant with three babies. Within the past couple of weeks a mountain lion took down a deer in a Philo meadow — no telling if it was the same animal. It’s not the lion but humanity that scares the bejesus out of me.

GYPSY JAZZ SWING PARTY AT LAUREN’S!

The Hot Club of Comptche — with Tom Brown on Violin/Cello, Ashley Harvie Vocals, Boonville’s own Pilar Duran on lead guitar, Navarro’s Kirk Vodopals on rhythm guitar and Nick Schwartz on bass — will perform at Lauren’s Restaurant in Boonville on Saturday, February 11, 2017 at a “pre-Valentine Full Moon Dance” starting at 9pm. $10 cover.

IN-N-OUT of Ukiah’s exciting new In ’N Out: Traffic overloads the turn lanes off North State Street in both directions. Two employees in the crowded parking lot doing nothing but directing traffic. Two or three more employees with headsets taking orders from people in cars in line for the drive-thru. Walking in: crowded, but fast moving order line. No my body my temple types tediously demanding if anything they might consume is GMO or gluten loaded, lying in wait for the unsuspecting hamburger eater. The menu is very simple: burgers (1 or 2 patties), cheese option; fries, shakes, drinks. That’s it. As they say on their website: “…when all you serve is burgers, fries and drinks, doing things the old-fashioned way is the freshest idea of all.” I ordered a basic burger with fries. $4.35. An unremarkable burger. Fries are supposedly fresh cut, but they look and taste like the pre-cut bagged fries that other fast-food chains shove down the American gullet. There’s a small army of mostly white 20-somethings in the kitchen, kinda Mormon-looking, 25-30 of them, all in white outfits with red aprons. No chit-chat. The red and white anthill was a blur of focused activity. Everybody seemed to have one simple task and they did it. No one appeared to be supervising, but unless these people are automatons, someone was. Not much chit-chat at the tables either as Ukiah downed their burgers and fries, a rite of citizenship you might say. Efficient indoor layout with built-in counters and stools. “In-n-out.” Pound down your burger and fries and get out. Or back in line for another round of life-abbreviating nutrition. Throughput is mos def the priority at In-N-Out. I found out from their website that there are a few options that are not clear in the overhead menu at the store, such as the “animal” (look it up) option and grilled onions instead of the regular sweet onion on the burger. Overall, a very basic, no-frills, unpretentious, mechanistic operation producing a decent burger at a low cost. Henry Ford would love it. A friend tells me a similar flurry of interest occurred a few years ago when Jack-in-the-Box opened in Ukiah next door to Walmart. “It’s Ukiah. Doesn’t take much to create excitement,” he said. We’ll see if the early crowds continue.

APPLES AND ORANGES HERE, but I much prefer Lauren’s burgers and beef-cut fries right here in Boonville. They cost about twice as much (plus tip), take a little longer to prepare and deliver, but they’re bigger, fresher and much more satisfying than any chain glob. (Nobody who wants to live past 60 wants any kind of burger with fries very often anyway.) And by walking down the street to Lauren’s, I don’t have to navigate the post-industrial wasteland of Ukiah to get one.

(— ms)

OLD MILL SITE: WETLANDS OR TOXIC DUMPS?

by Rex Gressett

The big news in Fort Bragg last week was of course the State of California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) presentation at town hall. It was videoed for all the world to see on the city website. The hall was full of the most informed, interested and serious people in town, there to hear what DTSC had to say about toxicity at the old GP mill site.

Sheila Simmons was there silently intent, rigorously processing one can be sure. Her Noyo Center was gifted from the mill site parcel 30 acres butt up to the most gorgeous coastline in California. Doug Hammerstrom was there and before the night was over I had a tiny bit of a new slant on our former councilman.

George Reinhardt was there and with considerable elegance, no speaking and little apparent energy, totally stole the show and set the agenda. Everybody was there.

It was a big night. So many things were coming together. A long history of mill site maneuvers, plans, delays, and frustrations spanning the last 20 years in Fort Bragg were focused here on what they would say tonight. The context for the evening was the entire period since the closing of the mill in 2002 and the city of Fort Bragg embarking into a whole new identity, comparative poverty and a very different way of life. All of that was implied and present in the discussion. Our future as a town might be poised to be transformed. People felt the opportunity, the old possibility of making something great. In Fort Bragg the mill site property is so important that however ignored and neglected by city hall, the wonder of this piece of surging coast and the nuclear potential of it just could not be missed. They packed town hall. But people were pretty quiet. Patience has improved us.

The mill has sat empty since closing in 2002, toxic, fenced, a 320 acre vacant lot.

The scientist team from DTSC was only there to explain that after all these years the property might be cleaned up at last, at least enough to use, depending on how strict your personal standards for acceptable carcinogenic toxicity are.

The city council was there to grill them, and the people were there to make comments. And get the update.

The DTSC folks were in a hell of spot. The mill site cleanup has been a project spanning a human professional lifetime. The geo-consultant from Arcata who consults for the city on this matter sadly shook his head over that.

On the other side of the coin were the expectations of the people of the city who have been toyed with and disappointed in a protracted decades-long farce. Volcanic pressures are also very great because they build up for extended periods.

Between these poles the scientists were there to make the best case possible for clearly bad news.

The whole mill site is ready to be used pretty soon they said. Under certain conditions and of course remembering that there were still a lot of deadly places. The big lake, (number 8 in their display) still had dioxins in it but not really that many. If an unsuspecting human were to visit that lake and roll around in the mud twelve times a year we were told, he would probably croke. The scientists all thought this was pretty funny. They knew nobody would roll around in the mud even once. Somehow they thought this carefully construed “logic” would make a positive impression on their audience.

One other lake, number 7, was just beyond the pale they did not even want to mention that lake. It was going to be eradicated. No more number seven.

We got to see a few pictures of the mill canals and trenches and pits where all the toxins had accumulated.

In another area of concern (E, I think it is) they had maps with little areas marked with the names of different poisons — lead, dioxin, arsenic — all the different poisons seemed to live in different areas like dwarfs and elves might. All these little areas would be dug up and trucked away.

In another area they pointed out that they had all that poison down to 8 and in some cases 10 to some giant number meaning not very much. Ten to the negative 26th I think it was, they had a slide to show these numbers. They showed it and nobody said anything.

The scientists all looked longer than seemed reasonable as if this slide held some obvious meaning, which it did not. Dave Turner in the midst of the silence asked what was a number you would recommend would it be 8, or even 10? Are we ok?

Well, said the scientist as a complete afterthought, we always want it to be one. The audience silently deduced that the areas that were dangerous had 800% to 1000% more poisons than would be safe. This occasioned a little scientific flustering and the comment cards started coming in. In the resulting interval the scientist consulted notes and reminded the council that it was still safe (in its way) to go to the area if you limited your visits to 200 days a year. Again the scientists thought that was a lot. Who would go to the beach that much? Ridiculous. Turner muttered something about his daughter going everyday.

Everybody was trying.

They wanted us to accept a plan for living in and by a toxic dump. They knew it was not going to go well but they made the case bravely and they were very amusing trying to talk to laymen.

The city council did not cave in, did not back up. They made no indication that they were going to accept the proposal to live with the toxins. The previous council under the old guard — Turner, Hammerstrom, Dietz, Courtney (does it go back that far?) — by following the advice of the city manager the city has avoided all taint of liability and now holds the high ground to force Georgia Pacific/the Koch Brothers to do the cleanup we want.

The plan that they presented to us Thursday was the compromise GP is offering. Fort Bragg won’t take it and the mill site clean up will continue for untold years. So much cheaper to stall and compromise than anything else.

George Reinhardt must have commented but I did not stay to see it. Before he ever spoke he had riveted the assembly with a little map. Everybody had one. It was like a token of sanity in a presentation very doubtfully sane. Really it was a very cool map, a pirate treasure map if there ever was one, done in just the right graphics for Captain Kid. It was a simple map, easy to grasp. Two creeks and an area marked “wetlands” right smack in the middle of where they think we should have toxic dumps.

HARE CREEK: LINDY HOPS

by Rex Gressett

In other Fort Bragg news, mayor Lindy Peters, having been pushed a bit in his new and innovative Monday morning pubic meetings to intervene in the Hare Creek shopping center deal, has changed his position on the project.

That doesn’t happen everyday.

Already these meetings with the mayor are enlarging and expanding our democratic process.

There have been quite a few direct suggestions brought to the new mayor by a diversity of folks. People want the streetlights brighter others want them dimmer. The massive flooding of the antiquated sewers was documented by iPhone for the meeting in impressive photos.

The meetings have been well attended. David Gurney, the bane of civil discourse wherever he goes has been in grumpy, intermittent attendance, snapping like a viper at all and sundry and infecting the meetings with his patented disruptive arrogance. He is hated at high altitudes in environmental circles and has earned and then some the permanent disdain of ex-mayor Turner who does not even dislike me after I have spent two years attacking him. Dave Turner is owned in some ways to agendas I find appalling, but no one can deny he is gentle and wise in his way. He hates Gurney.

Gurney is not infrequently wrong in his facts, but when corrected by irrefutable evidence would no more admit to a mistake than he would bark like a dog. It just isn’t him. But in his perverse irrascibility he does get results on occasion. He got the public comments part of the council meetings moved to the forefront of the meeting, which I personally find inconvenient since listening to the council make their individual reports can sometimes uncover an opportunity to make a response. But David Gurney thought it was important, and damn if he did not basically badger and insult the council into doing it his way. Progress in a sense. He also had a major impact on holding up the Hare Creek project for which the community owes him its gratitude. But dude…

It is amazing how little it takes to revive public participation. Our right to attend city council meetings or to call a councilman in a pinch have endured a long suspension, like heirlooms in a trunk. We kept them but we knew they were out of date and a little pointless in the Linda Ruffing era.

The election of candidates avowedly committed to the interests of the people of the city was supposed to be a revolution. So far, the results are majorly disappointing but the meetings of the mayor Mondays from eleven to twelve may actually be something new.

The Monday meetings have brought to the mayor a solid number of suggestions, but that is far from being the real value of the meeting. We could have sent him emails or notes about potholes. The meeting requires the mayor to speak, to respond, to react. Holy cow. The ritualistic political theater at a council meetings is structured to put the decision makers at a honorable and insulating distance from too familiar an interaction with the public. The little comments opportunity that we have is a challenge to coherence.

Of course in formal council meetings the council is precluded by law (in theory) from responding to what people say to them. The committee meetings are a lot smaller and a true opportunity for the community to make an impact on the process but they are esoteric and focused. Truth be said, a general familiarity with the business of the council is helpful if one is to understand the nuances of their committees. And they are not the forum for speaking to the community that council meetings are, which is what most people are mostly interested in doing.

The value of the Monday meetings with the mayor is not so much that they provide access to the mayor, but that they strip him of the insulation of political privilege and put him on the spot. That is to say they make him accessible but still on the record.

It is already working. When the people of the city (really of the region) got incensed about the Hare Creek shopping center in an incident of righteous indignation took the matter out of the hands of the planning commission and tossed it to the city council, the city council sat there like stuffed animals with half smiles and no doubt pounding pulses silently declining to do a damn thing. Because of their inaction the project was granted an afterlife and an EIR (environmental impact review) and will go before the council again after the development director Marie Jones (the exact opposite of everything you would want in a civil employee) has massaged it sufficiently and worked behind the scenes to make bad judgment a public policy. Our sneering development director makes a good living pushing a professional disdain of the inconsequence of public outrage.

Lindy, although not mayor then, was just as dimwitted, duplicitous and spineless as the rest of the council. Not one of them stood up to advocates against another shopping mall. But in these small Monday morning meetings where interaction is more free and personal things are a little different.

These meetings are small but directly accessible on facebook and damn sure covered by the AVA; they are therefore larger than they look and have teeth. It did not take long before Lindy revised his view of Hare Creek. Open space and a green area. Or another hole in our local economic bucket? It did not take too much thinking or evaluation. But an official change of position by a key member of the council is remarkable all the same. I am tempted to say unprecedented. The city council old and new has been ignoring their constituents for so long and so absolutely that a reversal of position to opposition of the development director is a matter of note. The lesson is, it does not take that much to break up their system. Lindy deserves a lot of credit.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Yeah, yeah, he's a dog person, and that's good, but this Wood guy always reminds me of that Black Bart poem about "fine-haired SOBs." Is that unfair? Can we help what our unconscious downloads?”

ON FEBRUARY 6, 2017 Luis Ferreyra, 30, of Gualala, was driving his Toyota Tacoma pickup westbound on Pacific Woods Road west of Friendly Avenue outside of Gualala at about 50mph. For unknown reasons Mr. Ferreyra allowed the Tacoma to leave the roadway to the south and it proceeded onto the south dirt shoulder. The Tacoma continued westbound on the shoulder for at least 100 feet before it turned sharply to the right. The Tacoma then returned to the Pacific Woods roadway with its rear tires sliding to the left. The Tacoma continued westerly across the roadway while heading towards a tree. The driver’s side of the Tacoma then collided with the tree. Mr. Ferreyra was transported to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. Mr. Ferreyra was not wearing his seatbelt at the time of the collision. There is no indication of drug or alcohol involvement. (CHP press release.)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I’m not sure where we are, but I know, generally speaking, it’s “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” The Fix was in on this last Super Bowl and perhaps the several before it, in the least. Pro Sports are tantamount to Professional Wrestling any more. Remember when Super Bowls were boring affairs that were always lopsided blowouts? Funny how that’s now changed. They have it down to a Science to extract every last ounce of revenue they can and The Pope had the nerve, the temerity, to blasphemously endorse this Spectacle as a Game that plays by The Rules. What Rules? If it’s the Official Rules, you have to be fucking kidding me. There are so many cheaters breaking all the rules in the NFL and beyond, there aren’t enough Refs to call all the infractions. And that’s how the games are fixed. The Refs instead call the infractions that change the tide of the game and help switch momentum, just as we saw last night. Nothing is as it seems or as it claims to be.

JUST OUT FOR A WALK, OFFICER

On February 5, 2017 at approximately 10:56 A.M., Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputies were on patrol when they contacted Christopher Ryan Brockway, 28, of Albion, who was walking along the roadway in the 3000 block of Albion Ridge B Road in Albion, California.

Brockway was known to have an active felony arrest warrant for vandalism and was arrested without incident. Deputies conducted a search of Brockway's clothing following his arrest and found live ammunition and approximately 3.5-grams (gross weight) of a controlled substance in his possession. Deputies determined Brockway was prohibited from possessing ammunition due to a prior criminal conviction. The controlled substance found in his possession field-tested presumptive positive for methamphetamine. Brockway, who was confirmed to be on active Post Release Community Supervision (Parole) was transport to the Mendocino County Jail where he was booked and be held without bail.

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YOU NEED A NEW MISTER, MRS. MITTS

On February 4, 2017 at 5:00 PM Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to a domestic disturbance at a residence in the 1500 block of North Bush Street in Ukiah, California. Upon arrival Deputies learned a 28 year old adult female had been talking on the phone just prior to the domestic disturbance. The adult female was talking on the phone when her husband, Kyle Allen Mitts, 26, of Ukiah, became upset and tried to get her off the phone.

The adult female continued to talk on the phone which upset Mitts. The adult female was subsequently grabbed and thrown to the ground by Mitts. While on the ground Mitts placed both hands around the adult female's throat and began to choke her. The adult female was able to kick Mitts off her and as she tried to go to the front room she was again assaulted by Mitts who placed his hands around her throat trying to choke her unconscious while they fell to the ground. The adult female was able to again get away from Mitts when Deputies arrived. At the conclusion of the investigation, Deputies arrested Mitts for felony domestic violence battery. Mitts was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $25,000.00 bail.

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 6, 2017

TODD ANDERSON, Laytonville. Using someone else’s ID, probation revocation.

KRISTIN BILLUPS, Ukiah. DUI.

CHRISTOPHER BROCKWAY, Albion. Vandalism, ammo possession by prohibited person, controlled substance, county parole violation.

CLORISSA DENNISON, San Jose/Ukiah. Shoplifting, probation revocation.

OSCAR JIMENEZ, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ANTONIA KOUTSOGIANNAKI, Ukiah. Driver with concealed weapon, paraphernalia, illegal entry.

MONROE LUCAS, Laytonville. Drunk in public.

MICHAEL PARKER, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

DANIEL PEREZ, Point Arena. DUI.

JASON PICKETT, Willits. Receiving stolen property.

COLIN ROACH, Fort Bragg. Community supervistion violation.

ISMAEL RODRIGUEZ JR., Point Arena. Probation revocation.

JONATHAN RODRIGUEZ, Ukiah. DUI causing injury, no license.

BRYAN STENCIL, Willits. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

JAMES WHEELER, Laytonville. Domestic battery.

KELLY WOOD, Willits. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun.

RETIREMENT PARTY!

Please join us as we thank Sara O'Donnell, CRCMC founder, for her amazing contribution to cancer care in our region for the past 20+ years. Saturday, February 18, 2017 5:00 - 9:00 pm - Caspar Community Center (15051 Caspar Road, Caspar) Enjoy a scrumptious polenta lasagna dinner; purchase delicious, local beer and wine for $5/glass; and dance to music by Soul Survivors. Donations to the Cancer Resource Centers will be gratefully accepted. For more information, call us! Coastal Office: 707-937-3833 Inland Office: 707-467-3828

SHAPE UP, YOU ANIMALS!

Healthy Mendocino: Feb 2017 Press Release

POLITICAL FERVOR THRUMS BENEATH SUPER BOWL’S SURFACE

by Dave Zirin

The New England Patriots won the Super Bowl 34-28, in the most gobsmacking, unfathomable comeback in Super Bowl history. Down 28-3, they came all the back to win in overtime. That will mean joy in the White House — as Donald Trump’s favorite team is victorious — and also joy for Patriots tight end Martellus Bennett, who won’t be joining the team upon their inevitable White House visit because of the man inhabiting that space.

But there was something else thrumming beneath the surface of this game: something far more meaningful than which billionaire ended up hoisting the Lombardi Trophy. It was something in the anthems, something in the commercials, something in the way people were watching the action.

It started with the Schuyler Sisters from the musical Hamilton—Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Jasmine Cephas Jones — singing America the Beautiful and adding the word “sisterhood” — as in “crown thy hood in brotherhood and sisterhood” — to the lyrics. Given the women’s marches that exploded after the Trump inauguration, given that Vice President Mike Pence was in a VIP box and given Pence’s own history of being rebuked at the musical Hamilton last November, it was difficult to see the performance as anything but a highly choreographed shot to the solar plexus of this White House. Then Lady Gaga’s halftime performance started with God Bless America and then, as if taking a hand-off from Soo, Goldsberry, and Jones, she transitioned to the Woody Guthrie anthem This Land is Your Land, an anthem being sung at protests around the country. There are many who wanted Lady Gaga to be more political, but when you choose a song not only organically connected to present day protests but one with lyrics that include, “As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.” But on the other side it didn’t say nothing, That side was made for you and me” — the significance is unmistakable.

Then she sang her rousing 2011 anthem Born This Way. Six years ago, this was a statement against bullying. It is difficult to hear it now as anything but an anthem against the biggest bully of them all. The verses Gaga chose to sing must have given Steve Bannon more heart palpitations than Falcons receiver Mohamed Sanu as she sang,

Don’t be a drag, just be a queen 
Whether you’re broke or evergreen
 You’re black, white, beige, chola descent
 You’re Lebanese, you’re orient
 Whether life’s disabilities
 Left you outcast, bullied, or teased Rejoice and love yourself today
 ’cause baby you were born this way

No matter gay, straight, or bi,
 Lesbian, transgendered life,
 I’m on the right track baby,
 I was born to survive.
 No matter black, white or beige
 Chola or orient made,
I’m on the right track baby, 
I was born to be brave.

This is what happened on the field. The commercials attempted to capture this mood as well, from a “proudly feminist” Audi ad to an Anheuser-Busch campaign celebrating the immigration story of the beer company’s founding family, much to the chagrin of online Nazis now calling for a boycott of the brewery. There was even a hair product commercial that started with the statement, “We are in for four years of bad hair.” This is might very well be seen as an effort to “commodify dissent” but it is stunning that the suits of Madison Avenue — after years of erectile disfunction and sexist godaddy.com ads — feel something in the air that they yearn to commodify.

This is just what took place around the Super Bowl. Outside the stadium, Houston saw a weekend of protests, culminating in more than 1,000 people on a Sunday march that stretched over one half a mile. It was for Black Lives and against the Muslim Ban, and decidedly against the aims of this White House. That’s what happens when the Super Bowl is staged in a city that takes in more refugees than anywhere in the United States.

There is no doubt that people who equated a Patriots victory with a victory of sorts for Trump will feel — um — deflated by the turn of events tonight. But the real world is more complicated than that. The Patriots will go home to a city that Trump would not even be able to enter without provoking mass protests, a city that just a week ago had hundreds of people clogging Logan airport to protest the Muslim Ban and two weeks ago shut down greater Boston with post-inauguration protests. The fight goes on, and the wind is at our back. The resistance continues and great comebacks should remind us that nothing is set in stone.

AN INFORMAL, ANTI-FAKE NEWS, COUNTERFACTURAL, REALITY-OPTIONAL BIOGRAPHY OF PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, AKA ‘WAYNE NEWTON.’

by James Kunstler

And so it happened years ago on the Trump family’s annual Christmas pilgrimage to Paraguay that Papa Fred and Mama Mary Anne fell in socially with the circle around Klaus Furtwänkler, Waffen-SS Gruppenführer (ret.) in the little resort village of Nueva Bavaria. The former commandant of the Flossenbürg work camp (granite quarries) introduced young Donald to the song “Danke Schoen” popularized by the vocalist Eva Braun at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Since earliest childhood, with his love for the “spotlight,” Donald had entertained the family with renditions of Disney’s beloved hits, “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,” “When I See an Elephant Fly,” and “Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee (an Actor’s Life for Me).” The next evening, on Furtwänkler’s 3,000-hectare estancia, before an audience of fifty “special guests” at the Heiliger Abend buffet (Arapaima snapper with red cabbage and potato salad), Donald performed “Danke Schoen” to wild applause, propelling him into a career in show business. Not a few of the frauleins present fainted.

To protect Papa’s real estate business interests in Queens, New York, Donald adopted the professional name “Wayne Newton” and was withdrawn from military school to perform on the county fair circuit across the states that would later self-identify by the color “red” — but which, given our adversarial relations with the USSR at the time, styled themselves red, white, and blue. Six month’s later, “Wayne” caught the eye of Las Vegas promoter Sal “Cukarach” Vaselino while playing the Refrigeration Engineers annual meet-up at the Sands Hotel, and then after a six-week smash engagement at the Golden Nugget in 1963, “Wayne” was inducted into the notorious Frank Sinatra / Dean Martin Rat-pack as its first underage member. (Rat-pack consigliere Peter Lawford introduced the talented lad to the concept of “sloppy seconds”).

“Wayne’s” membership in the Rat-pack was terminated in 1968 when he was photographed glad-handing Republican party nominee Richard Nixon after a speech to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Annual Defending Sex Crimes Conference. The years following that incident were his self-styled “lost-in-the-wilderness” period. The first of several bankruptcies forced him to live in an abandoned Paiute Indian sweat lodge on the USAF Tonopah Arms Range where prankish pilots sometimes strafed his rude habitation. There, in solitude and squalor, he reinvented his Vegas nightclub career as a ventriloquism act, performing “duets” of the old Disney favorites with his puppet sidekick Jules the Singing Jackrabbit. He debuted the new shtick at the National Cement producer’s World of Concrete show, where he met the showgirl and adventuress, Georgina “Chesty” de la Croix. Their nine-day marriage led to his second bankruptcy.

Broke again, and needing to avoid the Vietnam War draft, “Wayne” (Donald) moved into the Las Vegas palace of fellow Ed Sullivan Show alum Lee Liberace — though he claimed “rent paid” for his lodgings there on his 1968–1975 IRS filings, maintaining the polite fiction that he was merely “a room-mate.” The relationship ended when “Wayne” drove Liberace’s ivory-and-ebony inlaid Bentley T-1 into Lake Mead after a week of heavy ayahuasca intoxication. Extensive rehab followed, along with plastic surgery that restored the frontal and vertex regions of his scalp so grievously injured in the Bentley crash. The result is the now-renowned “golden helmet” of hair associated with the White House “star.” But we get ahead of ourselves.

Back on the convention circuit with Jules the Singing Jackrabbit, Wayne played the 1983 National Realtors Association Pump-and-Dump Expo and was influenced to get his first real estate license. “Why pay for milk when you can own the cash cow,” keynote speaker Ivan Boesky advised “Wayne,” prompting him to return to his New York City “roots” and resume his identity as “The Donald,” son of “The Fred” Trump. A carefully orchestrated life of public appearances at Gotham charity events and a lavish wedding to model Ivana Zelníková reestablished Donald Trump as a fixture on the glittering Manhattan scene — meanwhile, a Greyhound Bus mechanic and aspiring country crooner named Bud Gorch, a “dead-ringer” look-alike for the erstwhile “Wayne Newton,” was recruited by the Trump Organization to impersonate the once-again in-demand Las Vegas star. Gorch-as-Wayne successfully premiered his new act at National Colorectal Surgeons Association Chron’s and Colitis Congress and the “great switch” was achieved. The rest, as they say, is history!

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

DR. BILL SAYS...

To all the patients of Dr. Courtney,

Re: Proposition 64

This message was sent previously, but because of the large number of questions regarding California's Proposition 64, I have decided to send this one again. I am sorry for resending this to everybody, but it's the only way to be sure anyone who wants this information gets a copy of it. Please feel free to delete this message if you have already seen it before. Thanks.

California's Proposition 64, "The Adult Use of Marijuana Act", passed on November 8th, 2016. Many patients have had questions about what this will mean for medical cannabis patients. We are in the process of sorting through all the sections of the new law to determine how patients will be affected. Here are some points we have discovered so far:

First, 1996's Proposition 215, "The Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act", will NOT be affected by the new law. The new law only deals with recreational use of cannabis.

Second, the new law takes effect on January 1st, 2018 - so it's a just less than a year away. Mostly, this wait is to allow time for new licensing to be issued to dispensaries, and to put agencies in place to collect taxes on cannabis that is sold. However, recreational use is now legal in California. You are legally allowed to possess 28.5 grams (1 ounce) of "flowers" (buds), or 8 grams of processed cannabis (hash, oil, etc.). The law requires that if you have more than that amount, it must be kept in a secured area (like at home). The laws regarding the use of cannabis are pretty much the same as medical cannabis use, such as: do not smoke and drive (important!), not in your car (even parked), not in bars, not in public places like parks, not near schools or churches or businesses, etc.

It is not yet legal to purchase cannabis in a dispensary unless you are a medical marijuana patient. This will not change until January 1st, 2018.

The new tax laws affect, for the most part, growers, and then only if the cannabis is sold. Cannabis grown for your own personal use, or medical marijuana, will not be taxed.

The new law will allow people to grow up to 6 plants for recreational use. Medical marijuana patients will be allowed to grow up to the limit set by the county Sheriff of your county. If you do not know the limit in your county, please contact your local Sheriff. They will give you the guidelines for growing, transporting, etc.

The full text of Proposition 64 can be found here: https://www.oag.ca.gov/system/files/initiatives/pdfs/15-0103%20%28Marijuana%29_1.pdf?

If you have seen Dr. Courtney in the past, and would like to renew your Approval for Cannabis Use, please call our office at 707-961-1420. Dr. Courtney can renew you by phone, no driving required. We now take PayPal, and credit cards by phone.

Thank you,

Nick

for William Courtney MD, AACM

MENDO DA: ALWAYS HERE TO HELP

The role of three top Mendocino County law enforcement authorities have in helping shape statewide policies:

UKIAH - Mendocino County’s influence over statewide law enforcement policies are looming large this year despite its small population thanks to three local public officials’ roles in key state organizations.

District Attorney David Eyster, Sheriff Tom Allman and Ukiah Police Chief Chris Dewey are helping shape statewide policies because of their service as directors on statewide law enforcement and public safety boards.

Eyster is serving a two year term as director on the board of the California District Attorneys Association (CDAA). Eyster is regularly tapped as a speaker and seminar association for the district attorneys’ group. He is also recognized as a statewide expert on marijuana related laws.

“We are in a unique position to help tailor statewide law enforcement policies, and that is a big plus for all residents of Mendocino County and the North Coast,” said Eyster.

Since Eyster took office in 2011, the profile of the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office has steadily risen in professional circles. The office is now recognized at a go-to source of information for aggressive prosecution policies and marijuana-related enforcement in a changing regulatory environment.

CDAA was founded in 1974 as a non-profit statewide organization that serves as the source of continuing professional legal education and legislative advocacy for its working membership of district attorneys in California’s 58 counties. The organization also provides financial resources to support sensible and positive public safety propositions, specific legislation and other non-candidate related issues. In the late 1970s, former Mendocino County District Attorney Duncan James served as president of the group.

Sheriff Allman is currently serving in his third year as a board director for the California State Sheriff’s Association, which dates to 1894. The CSSA is a non-profit organization serving the state’s 58 county sheriffs. It serves as the single voice for sheriffs on statewide law enforcement and public safety issues.

Allman said his board position “…is good for Mendocino County because I can state abreast with statewide matters, and have the ability to air issues important to smaller, rural counties. “Allman’s aid he participates in weekly teleconference calls in addition to attending quarterly meetings of the CSAA.

Police Chief Dewey is on the executive board of the California Police Chiefs Association (Cal Chiefs). The organization was founded in 1966. The association’s primary role is to promote the development of professional administrative practices statewide, and to foster police cooperation and the exchange of experience and information. Of special focus is encouraging all police officers to adhere to professional standards of conduct as outlined in the Law Enforcement Officer’s Code of Ethics?

Dewey said he’s “extremely honored to participate as a Cal Chief board member.” Dewey said he serves on the organization’s legislative committee, and he represents the state’s police chiefs on the League of California Cities Policy Committee.

“This work, I hope, gives our rural community a voice on statewide issues,” said Dewey.

MUSCLE-BOUND: An Impressive Disease

by Debra Keipp

“In my opinion, a horse is the animal to have. 1100 pounds of raw muscle, power, grace and sweat between your legs – it’s something you just can’t get from a hamster.” — Paula Poundstone, Comedian

While breeders were breeding for stockiness in Quarter Horses, humans like Arnold Schwarzenegger won trophies all over the world from 1965 to 1980 for that same muscular physique verging on the grotesque. How useful can being that muscle-bound be?

Muscle-bound: a fad in humans, horses and cattle. Genetics the precursor to steroid-use in the body-building of probably the biggest contractile organ of your body: muscle.

I have a palomino horse who was bred for mega-muscle – round, robust and rarin’ to go. He’s as large in the front end as his back end. In the summertime when horses usually look their shapely best, he glows, buffed out in all his dappled splendor; a horse of a different color. I’ve been asked if I feed him steroids, he’s so muscular. I wouldn’t do that. Imagining all that riled up roid-rage from a 1200 pound animal is frightening. But, I do have to admit, he is awfully strong and well-stacked proportionally; better than most horses.

The woman who traded the gelding to me, told me he was a blue-blood from championship bloodlines, born locally in Fort Bragg. I reviewed the web site on the breeder’s web page where they had pictures of “Cash” as a small colt, just before he sold as a 6-month natural weanling. On the website, Cash’s sire, who won three Palomino world championships, was all glossed up, reflecting in the picture like a piece of shiny Pyrex. Standing on a linoleum floor with a full-length velvet curtain behind him, the stallion posed like Arnold Schwarzenegger in full bloom, muscles poised and bulging, ears perked to an attentive point, modeling for the camera as world champion Palomino halter sire.

Talk about Mrs. Astor’s plush horse! Looking ostentatious, like his daddy, Cash has an imposing posture about him when he’s gingered up, and can be frightening when scared. He strikes an impressively smart profile in both situations, though. Stocky muscles, athletic, very friendly and playful, he looks good with his neck arched up, ears on point, and his full attention eye-balling something on the far horizon. He plays like a blonde Labrador: comes when I call him. No star-gazer, Cash has been ridden in at least half-a-dozen parades in Point Arena and Boonville. Curious, he’s stepped foot inside Point Arena’s Sign of the Whale Bar, but don’t hold that against him. He’s a social animal. Minds his manners. I prefer keeping him calmed down: A pleasure horse. As a full-blown game horse, he might be too muscularly machismo for me to handle. When he’s feeling his oats like that, I call him Casheeeesmo.

“A woman needs two animals – the horse of her dreams and the jackass to pay for it.” — Phyllis Diller, Comedian

Cash’s former owner finally ran out of pasturelands to keep him safe. No matter how galvanized, wire biodegrades to rust in the salty coastal air. As a result, there are fewer maintained fences remaining for keeping in horses and cattle in many of the former pasture lands along the Mendocino Coast. It’s called “open space”, but since domesticated horses endured for centuries as the world’s transportation, now horses are of a bygone age. Open space doesn’t lend itself to grazing livestock as it once did.

After a few years, Cash’s previous human could no longer procure pasture land, nor locate his registration papers. She finally wrote me a bill of sale for him about five years ago, after I’d helped care for him, grazing on collective pasture lands, reuniting with my mare, off and on since he was two. Horses are herd animals. A lone horse is a bored to tears horse. Cash often returned to me, sometimes a bit peppered up – and then, with blood on his saddle. They’d taken him deer hunting to see if he would stand for the rider shooting a rifle while mounted on his back. I think there might have also been some Jack Daniels involved, but I don’t know how much of it they gave to Cash! The owners weren’t ready to agree on giving him up yet, so when they’d run out of places to put him, they’d return him to me to keep, ride, feed and enjoy. It happened so redundantly, I almost named him Boomerang.

A few months ago, Cash’s breeder, the Lucas Ranch of Fort Bragg, sent me a copy of his registration papers. His registered name is “Designer’s Trademark”. (When researching Cash’s lineage, the famous racer, Man O War, appears.) On the registration papers I also noticed the genetic testing results in darker print stamp, which read, “HYPP-NN”, which is normal.

During the era of America’s beef industry after WWII – building educational breeding programs for beef and horses, Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace’s new ag-world melded with chemical sciences creating the birth of the farm-chem money-making agricultural industry we know today. A lot of freaks of nature occurred: mutations. Like Eisenhower’s concerned warning about the Military Industrial Complex, Wallace warned Americans back in 1944, saying, “What we must understand is that the industries, processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us.” He also added, “We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.”

Universities bedded with pharmaceutical companies in researching medicine and genetics, serving conflicted interests. For instance, do you know that today, the sales tax on pesticides and herbicides in California pays for the research on efficacy and safety of same? How conflicted is that? Aplenty.

Many scientists found ways to patent their money-making genetic “inventions”. In a mad dash for results in finding the origins of man through DNA, a lot of muscled Frankensteinian mistakes happened in the name of advancing medical science, but most of all, in making money.

I finally did a search on HYPP-NN and sat there slack-jawed at what I read. HYPP is “Hyperkalemic partial paralysis”. In humans it is called “hyperkalemia”. In horses, their muscles spasm and painfully lock; without the potassium to create the electrically enervated charge to release. It’s called “leaky” potassium. Muscles just contract to a complete palsy; in heart or lung muscle in many over-muscled American Quarter Horses causing fatal respiratory arrest or heart attack – and their immediate death. If a rider is engaged with the horse, it could kill them both. Gastric death takes a bit longer and is more painfully endured until their eventual death. It’s true that some lesser afflicted HYPP horses, can be managed on low potassium grain diets, high in carbohydrates.

I read on to see that my palomino, Cash, had dodged the bullet on that one, and was double negative (HYPP-NN) for having the disease.

The in-breeding that occurred during the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, in the name of experimenting with a certain muscle-bound “look” in horses of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, raised it’s ugly genetic head and can be traced back to that one exquisite Quarter/Thoroughbred specimen known as “Impressive”.

“HYPP, Impressive Disease”, is named after the great American Quarter Horse specimen from 1967. The owners tried to race Impressive, who was a Thoroughbred cross, but his owner, Fennel Brown, said of the horse, “he was much too stout and heavy to be a racehorse”. He was quick at the gate, but was not a race-winner, overall. I guess you could say he was muscle-bound. Because he was Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred, he had to earn show points to legally become AQHA registered for breeding purposes. As American as apple pie – horse registries. After pedal osteitis ended Impressive’s racing career, he became a show horse at halter, earning enough show points to become an appendix registered AQHA breeding sire, which meant his foals could be papered also.

As it turns out, Cash, is the great-grandson several generations removed of Impressive himself, who sired 30 world champions, and whose chiseled body-type Cash most resembles.

“Dog may be man’s best friend, but the horse wrote history.” – Mark Twain

Impressive lived a long, healthy life, well into his 27^th year during an era when muscle-bound was “in”. Arnold Schwarzenegger had just won his first Mr. Europe body-building title in “66, the year of Impressive’s conception. By most accounts, Impressive sired a sought-after 2250 foals bred for stocky muscles. My horse, Cash, as one of Impressive’s hereditary progeny, can be traced back to Man O War. Today it is estimated that there are well over 100,000 horses who are the off-spring of the Impressive line of sires and dams. That’s a lot of documentable at-risk horse flesh.

Horse trading being what it’s always been, horse owners don’t always know about breeding, and some Trojan horse surprises have surfaced in the equine world as far as deadly genetics are concerned. Impressive Disease is one of those.

Those muscles for which they were genetically breeding horses back in the late ‘60’s to obtain a muscle-bound breed of horse? Credited to the genetic in-breeding to one Thoroughbred sire named, “Three-Bar”, bred back three of five generations, before producing Impressive, himself in 1967. Also, “Percentage”, was bred back three times out of six in Impressive’s pedigree. Both sires were Thoroughbreds to get a longer breed of stocky muscular taller horse than the classic AQHA. I call that flat-out in-breeding… twice. Might have in-breeding over and over again with the same muscle-bound stud, in the name of creating a more muscular “look”, begat the HYPP genetic monster, which raised its ugly head with, not Impressive himself, but his offspring? Impressive Disease does not “dilute out” in foals from breeding to horses without it: The Impressive gene being absolutely dominant.

But as W. C. Fields said often, “Horse sense is a thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.” Even so, Dr. Sharon J. Spier, DVM, PhD, UC-Davis researcher and paper-writing expert on Impressive Disease, says it cannot be medically proven that the mutation was created out of the intense in-breeding in Impressive’s pedigree, but still cannot say what caused it. I’d say in this case, muscle-bound in-breeding is like the elephant in the room. A heated issue, what to do with the defectively affected offspring? They might drop dead from under you when riding, or worse, running: Double deadly for the horse and rider.

King Ranch in Texas has always been the premier breeding ranch in stocky, gorgeously fine American Quarter Horses and, they bred horses for muscles in the ‘60’s, ‘70’s, and ‘80’s. Popular King Ranch “Old Sorrel” lineage at the time included the registration of many sires whose names included, “Bar”. So many horses were bred out of one “Bar” sire line or another, that countless Quarter Horses are now genetically related to the “Bar” sire-line. And so it went with Impressive, …but to the fantastic extreme in equine genetics.

Impressive was an appendix registered Quarter Horse (not a full-blood AQHA), which meant his breeding was crossed with Thoroughbred bloodlines for length and stamina in distance racing in order to achieve the more streamlined longer, stronger, racer.

DNA testing is often done on horses. When stepping outside the Quarter Horse breed, to register as with Thoroughbreds, it is necessary to receive an appendix registration, which means that the breeder shows the horse in the ring to earn points toward full registration. Until enough championship points are earned to achieve registration, the horse is kind of considered a bastard child of sorts in the eyes of AQHA when it comes to registration of his progeny.

“There are three things in America that are categorized by the government according to a pedigree: dogs, horses and indigenous peoples of this land.” - Walt Longmire Mysteries

The first papers written on HYPP, Impressive Disease, were by U.C. Davis’ Dr. Sharon J. Spier in 1990, ’91, and ’92, who is credited with outing the disease and breeding issue. Legislation was enacted in 2006 and ever after making horses who test positive, ineligible for registry if they are descendants of the stallion Impressive. After 2010 this was amended, adding HYPP-NH horses only eligible for registry as geldings, or non-brood mares, as not to create any new at-risk equine from Impressive’s beautifully muscled, but deadly bloodline.

Out of what breeding fiasco came this “Impressive” nightmare of a full-blown genetic disease? In fact, the muscularly-built horses created out of this pedigree, had to do nothing but stand there to build good muscle. The muscles over-fire more frequently, making better-toned muscles without having to exercise as much as other normally muscled horses. It is capricious.

(Wikipedia describes it, “In the case of the horse, Impressive, the muscles were always contracting which was the equivalent to a constant work-out. Thus the development of an “Impressive” musculature.”)

And, hyperkalemia also appears, in humans.

The potassium (K) is affected in the muscle cell. It’s deadly when it stops involuntary heart and lung muscle responses from firing. It’s pretty simple science if you think about it in terms of charging a battery. In the normal horse and human, the cell fills with potassium, then empties, as sodium spills into the cell. When this happens, the elemental change in the cell creates an 80 mega Volt charge – enough to fire the muscle response. It’s a normal involuntary reflex in horses and humans. However, if the potassium is “leaky”, which appears to be the equine problem in Impressive Disease, the chemical change doesn’t transpire, because the mega Volt = zero, as the potassium has already leaked out of the cell, and the sodium alone, cannot then, create a charge, elementally speaking. The muscle remains contracted… in spasm… arrested. Fascinating, or freaky science? More like “leaky” science.

The approximately thirty head of AQHA horses on our 400 acres were stocky little muscular suckers made for herding cattle: sorrels with white blazes, sox, and light main and tail hairs.

In Iowa, we bred most of our five registered American Quarter Horse mares to sires out of Kansas City, via the King Ranch in Texas. The “Bar” line of sire is benchmark American Quarter Horse. This was during the late “60’s and ‘70’s, when muscles and stockiness were “in” style in horse breeding of AQHA mostly, …and humans. “Big body; small wheels.” Quarter horses are not usually known to have large feet.

We had one “Bar” ancestor named Corky whom the breeder feigned was “kept at stud too long”, as the excuse for his over-muscled, too-broad-chested stockiness: A breeding experiment gone wrong. He was absolutely inflexible, mentally as well as physically. Muscle-bound, is what my dad and the breeder called him. He was eye-candy, just standing there, bulging. But couldn’t run the barrels, poles, or do western equitation classes, either, which are pretty relaxed walk, trot, lope classes. He was “the only rough ride on the place”, my dad used to complain. Even though Corky had no supposed hitch in his get-a-long, it always felt like Corky was trying to change leads when cantering, which is a sort of skipping motion a horse takes to change his lead leg. Dad gave Corky to my brother, who was about to lose interest in horses altogether, and Corky was almost immediately sold to make room for a ’64 Ford Falcon.

“If the world were a truly rational place, men would ride side-saddle.” — Rita Mae Brown, author.

These days, Impressive-related Paints, Tabianos and Appaloosas are in great numbers, appearing in present-day breeds, having tested positive for HYPP in one regard or another, as these “clown colored” horses were also thought in the show-horse world, to be quite attractive with bulging Impressive-like muscles under their one of a kind coat designs, a departure from the long, sleek, long distance runners of the Thoroughbred and Arabian-bred body-style of high-stamina fleet of feet horse.

Out of every few horses sired in Impressive’s lineage, there’d be one that turned out to be HYPP-HH positive, or carrying the genetic trait: HYPP-NH. My horse, Cassius, is negative (HYPP-NN). He’s also a gelding, so won’t be a breeder, anyway. He is the best built Quarter Horse I’ve ever owned, and probably the finest of all the best of breed horses I’ve ridden.

As I sat there looking at the Internet story of Impressive, I became aware that, these were quite fine horses when not genetically positive for the muscularly dominant Impressive Disease. I had been considering selling my sweet gelding to someone who could use him on trails, in parades, or for their rodeo queen daughter’s ride. He’s too young, buff and healthy to put out to pasture. He’s a real Palomino looker, of course, with all those protuberant muscles just flexing and growing while he stands in his paddock. When he’s shined and geared up, the palo-dappling really accentuates all those bulging muscles.

The main thing that’s impressive about any of this, is that I can trace and name my horse’s ancestry back further than my own. As Jerry Springer once found out, it’s better documented when sex is a paid proposition. Especially with an Impressive pedigree.

(All clichés used in the making of this article are horse-related idioms from the bygone age of horses, before travelers quit buying horses and hay for their rides, and switched to petroleum fuel and automotives.)

WHAT WE HAVE HERE....

Daney Dawson wrote: you are attempting to discredit the one person that calls you to the carpet. Very Trumpesque, I might say.

* * *

Marco McClean Replies:

Even as often as twice a day -- like a broken clock -- Alan [Haack] can be entirely right, and when he is, and I'm not, and he calls me on the carpet, that's great. But when he merely pisses on the carpet and calls it a shaft of golden light, as in advocating kidnapping people and dosing them with God juice, and you not only go along with this but further suggest doping millions of people to bring them around to your current point of view, whatever that is, then I'm not going to the carpet until it's properly aired and dried out a little bit, and instead I'll be pointing out where he and you are wrong, and where not to step, because it's wet there with several demented people's piss. That's right up there at the top of the definition of demented: pissing on the carpet.

Unless you're just kidding, Daney, in which case, fine. But you don't strike me as much of a kidder; you hardly ever get irony and you often see simple disagreement as some kind of unwarranted personal attack, which is, as you might say, Trumpesque.

Speaking of whom, I've seen a few explanations of Trump's behavior, but none as perfectly to the point as the following one, which I read on my show last Friday. It's in Quora.com, and I don't know if you can read it there without signing up, so I'm inserting the full text here:

(quora.com)

Q: Has Donald Trump been caught lying?

(Answer by Andrew Gumperz, LMS Administrator at John Muir Medical Center)

Trump uses language in a different way from most people. Most people use language to communicate. Distinguishing truth from untruth is important when your goal is to exchange information since untruth threatens the effectiveness of communication.

Instead, Trump uses language to get what he wants. For his purpose, the distinction between truth and untruth is meaningless. If he got what he wanted, the communication was terrific and if he didn't it was terrible. This is why he sometimes seems baffled when people question his veracity. To Trump, only a fool would expect his words to be true; that is not what words are for.

This utilitarian approach to rhetoric also explains why Trump is so prone to reversing his positions. If he thinks his audience wants him to call Mexicans rapists and criminals, he does it. While if he holds a press conference with President Nieto, he instead says Mexicans are beyond reproach and describes his respect for Mexican-Americans. For most of us, the contradictory statements are confusing and enraging, but Trump sees no contradiction. In his utilitarian calculation, it makes good sense to show respect to Mexicans in front of President Nieto, so that is what he does, while a different message resonates for a xenophobic audience, so the rhetoric changes.

His primary communication tactic is to building emotional resonance. He constantly speaks in metaphor to elicit a feeling response from his audience. The truth of his statements do not matter when evoking an emotional response -- That is why he will claim he saw Muslims celebrating in New Jersey after the Twin Towers came down. If you read the statement literally, it is a blatant lie because the events described simply did not happen. But to his audience the statement feels true because it accurately reflects how they feel about Muslim-American immigrants.

Some Muslims really do resent how they have been treated by this country and his audience has seen them on TV so even if his statement isn’t literally true, it does reflect his audience’s belief that Muslims hate and despise the United States.

His audience adopts a simplified world view where “Muslims” is a thing, not a group of diverse individuals with billions of different opinions. His audience acts as if a feeling held by one Muslim is held by all Muslims.

Much of his audience fears and despises Muslims, which isn’t surprising for a person thinking all Muslims are as hateful as the tiny minority of nut jobs.

His audience has a profound anti-immigrant bias. By claiming American Muslims celebrated the fall of the towers, he sends a message that immigrants are dangerous which matches their pre-existing anti-immigrant feelings.

For that reason, they go nuts when he makes such statements. They have felt repressed by liberals who call them racists for giving voice to what to them seems an obvious truth: immigrants are dangerous. So they love him for “telling the truth” by giving voice to their feelings without judgment.

Whether you think he speaks the truth or lies depends on how you personally process communication. If your internal truth function is based on literal meanings, almost everything he says is a lie. You can prove it to yourself. Go find any Trump speech online and pick the first fact he asserts. Then google that fact. It won’t take long to find evidence disproving it. But if your truth function is emotional, you’ll hear his statement another way. You’ll ask if his statement describes feelings similar to your own. If you are in his audience, you’ll resonate to his words like a tuning fork. And if you are not, you will feel visceral disgust.

Several commenters have misinterpreted this answer as supportive towards Mr. Trump. It isn’t. I am as disgusted as anyone else by Mr. Trump’s dishonesty and I disagree with every public policy position he stands for.

You may have noticed how Trump and his proxies have frequently flummoxed interviewers with their use of “alternative facts” and faux-outraged denials when confronted with real facts contradicting their statements. When that happens, they win. Their audience has heard their message loud and clear while their opponent wasted his time arguing over “facts” -- something their audience does not care about -- and missed the opportunity to counter the emotional resonance they achieved. And that is exactly why I want everyone to see his methods exposed. So all of us can confront his supporters with words that resonate and have impact, not just factual arguments they tune out.

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

GET READY FOR "LOVE UNCORKED," PARDUCCI WINE CELLARS' VALENTINE'S DAY CELEBRATION

Parducci Wine Cellars invites the public to attend “Love Uncorked,” Friday, February 10th, 5-9 p.m. at the Parducci Tasting Room in Ukiah. This fun, Valentine's Day-themed event features sensuous wines, music, and exquisite chocolates. Up to 4 tickets are included with each Club Membership, please sign-in and add the tickets to your cart. 100% discount will be applied at checkout. The general public may purchase tickets online here, for $5 per person through February 8th, the price will then increase to $10 on February 9th. For directions or more information, please email tasting@parducci.com or call (707) 463-5357. 21 & Over.

Love is in the Air — 
Get ready for corks to pop and wine to flow! Admission includes five tasting tickets, which guests may redeem at five stations each featuring a unique wine and chocolate pairing. Wines by the glass are also available for $5-$8.

During the "Love Uncorked" event, music will be serenading the party and each guest is invited to select a mystery gift or special discount."'Love Uncorked' is the perfect way to start your Valentine's Day weekend," said Rochelle Loren-Enzler, Director of Hospitality and Events at Parducci, "Don't have a date? Bring a friend or two!"

Parducci Wine Cellars is located at 501 Parducci Road just off of the Lake Mendocino Exit in Ukiah. For more information or directions visit us online www.parducci.com.

Rochelle Loren-Enzler, Director of Hospitality & Events
Parducci Wine Cellars
(707) 463-5358 – rochellel@mendocinowineco.com
www.parducci.com

SUPER CALLOUS FASCIST RACIST SEXIST BRAGGADOCIOUS

His hair is bad, his facts are wrong and he’s got halitosis

If you say it loud enough he’s bound to sound atrocious.

Super callous fascist racist sexist braggadocious!

(MCN listserve excerpt)

AND VISHNU WITH YOU?

The Counter Narrative

Warmest spiritual greetings, Please know that amidst the extreme confusion of American national politics, and a postmodern society which has no collective vision and is now losing sleep in regard to its survival, I am forging ahead with a counter narrative to this wholly stupid situation. I have rented until June 1st a room in the lower Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. I have initiated Shaivite yoga tantric practices, which include regular visits to Shiva-Murugan Temple in Concord, CA in which my request for divine intervention is included in the pujas conducted by three well-trained South Indian priests. My requests for support of radical environmental campaigns, and the wholesale destruction of the demonic forces which we are opposed to, goes straight to Murugan (who wields the vel spear and is head of Shiva's army). Additionally, I have been making evening trips to Ocean Beach for chanting at sunset, facing east, and directly laying our collective petition for divine intervention at the feet of the god Shiva who lives on Mount Kailash in Tibet. And lastly, nightly listening to the Shiva Chalisa on You Tube (two hours of powerful Sanskrit chanting from South India) is happening. All sadhana merit is being dedicated toward the success of radical environmentalism, and toward the destruction of the demonic forces. I am sending out this update because I wish it to be known that direct action of a profoundly spiritual nature is being conducted! I am, as always, available for more, and more, and more. This is what we are called to do on the earth plane. I await your replies,

Craig Louis Stehr
CraigStehr@inbox.com
@ Eudemonia in Berkeley