Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, March 14, 2017

• Zip Ties Return
• PO Protest
• Lizbby's
• Real Sarahs
• Pardini Honored
• AV Footballers
• AVFD Fundraiser
• Whales Migrating
• Little Dog
• Scab Radio
• Death Spiral
• Save It
• Dysfunctional Disaster
• Local Artists
• Hopeful Palace
• Yesterday's Catch
• Perfect Fit
• Jay Lynch
• Car/Bed Needed
• Housekeeping Job
• GJ Recruiting
• Surreal Triangle
• Radioactive Boars

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT - SHERIFF'S OFFICE ZIP TIE PROGRAM

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office is pleased to announce that we
will resume sales of voluntary zip ties for Medical Marijuana immediately.

The zip ties are voluntary and serve the purpose of identifying legal
marijuana plants in the field saving Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies
time when they encounter these plants.

The program was temporarily halted while the Board of Supervisors worked
on the new county ordinance.  Although that ordinance is not completed it
will not affect those growing legitimate medical marijuana for personal
use.

To purchase voluntary zip ties you must come to the Mendocino County
Sheriff’s Office stations in Ukiah or Fort Bragg and present a valid
medical recommendation and current government photo ID.

The cost of the zip ties remains at $25.00 each.  This fee may be
discounted by fifty percent (50%) for Medi-Cal, SSI and CMSP recipients,
and equivalent income qualified veterans.

Approved by:
Captain Gregory L. Van Patten

PLAYING POST OFFICE

by Derek Hoyle

A minor kerfuffle occurred at the Post Office in Fort Bragg late Monday afternoon, when long time critic of KZYX board malfeasance, general activist, and crusader against public wrongdoing, Jeff Wright, was arrested while attempting to address an issue with the Post Office staff that he feels is unjust.

Apparently, Mr. Wright was collecting his mail and then requested to speak with Postmaster Denice Sisco about the recent and severe reduction of the lobby hours allowing access to the Post Office boxes, which has negatively affected many box holders.

He nearly avoided arrest only weeks ago, after staging what he referred to as a "one man protest" over the lobby hours, and that so-called protest only brought 3 officers, at that time he wasn’t arrested, he was instead invited by Post Office staff to come back during business hours and speak with the Postmaster about the issue.

I was tipped off to the incident by none other than Fort Bragg’s Paul Bunyan his own self, cleverly disguised as Mike Stephens, who witnessed the four police officers involved in the hoopla, as they arrested and packed up Mr. Wright and his bicycle to the police station.

After some research, I was unable to determine if Mr. Wright had been detained and released, or arrested and taken over the hill to the jail in Ukiah, until 11:40 PM, when I accepted a collect call from the Low Gap Detention Center, from one Jeff Wright.

He told me Postmaster Denice Sisco basically stonewalled his questions, and was quite rude while doing so, and that she insisted that the Police arrest Mr. Wright for trespassing, not even giving him a final chance to leave the premises.

Then Mr. Wright informed me that not only was Postmaster Sisco beyond brusque, she was also punitive, and had called the Federal Postmaster, who within hours, canceled his fully paid up Post Office Box, and barred him from the Fort Bragg Post Office, all with no due process.

Now Mr. Wright, an older Air Force Veteran, who rides a bicycle for transportation, has to find another Post Office to get his monthly check, which is at least 5 miles away, so that action appears to be swift and vindictive punishment for complaining and asking questions.

Mr. Wright hopes that he’ll be released in the morning, and can take a bus back to Fort Bragg, after that I believe he’ll be looking into legal recourse for his trouble, so the story continues.

A READER COMMENTS: “We went to Lizbby’s last night. Really great! Like Libby’s. Definitely will be successful if people try it out. A good number there for a Sunday night.” Everyone who has eaten at Lizbby’s has raved about Boonville’s newest restaurant. The verdict is in — it’s great, as little old Boonville becomes a veritable gourmet alley with more really, really good restaurants than any other town in the County.

I’VE HEARD for years that Sarah Larkin is a wonderful singer and, as a regular customer of Sarah’s essential Boonville nursery, Goodness Grows, I invested a few bucks in a recording called The Real Sarahs, “music and lyrics by Sarah Larkin and Sarah Ryan,” the second Sarah a pre-school teacher who also lives and works in Boonville. I’m happy I made the investment. The lyrics were affecting and affectingly sung. and I liked The Real Sarahs very much and look forward to seeing them when they perform again in the Valley.

TONY PARDINI JR. has been honored by being named to the All-Empire Small School Football team. A gifted three-sport athlete, young Pardini has ambitions of playing at the college level, and having watched him on the gridiron since his days in pee-wee football, we think he has a good shot at it.

NICE NOTE from SRJC football coach, Lenny Wagner:

“Good morning, Bruce, happy to talk with you about the boys. They are all doing very well. Logo Tevaseu works full time in our financial aid office in addition to coaching the D Line, and is also one of our strength coaches. Martin Tevaseu is teaching classes at the JC and coaching D Line. Also one of our strength coaches. Willie Lemons received the award for Defensive Scout Team Player of the Year. Very hard worker, going to be a guy for us this year. Just getting to know Cesar, but he is working hard and seems to be a very good kid. I have played games in that rodeo arena up there in Boonville for Coach Kuny, I know what kind of guys I am getting. Tough, hard-working, and love football.”

THAT’S US, all right. Logo and Martin are the memorable football players who developed their games right here in Boonville and went on in to Division One and, in Martin’s case, the NFL. Will Lemons, AVHS class of ’16, is a Little Abner look-alike who is poised to make the huge jump to big time football, and SRJC is certainly big-time. For pure grit, Cesar Soto can play any sport with the best. SRJC grads, year after year, are found on the starting teams of colleges around the country.

THE ANDERSON VALLEY VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTERS are holding their first annual Pancake Breakfast and Easter Egg Hunt on Sunday, March 16, at the Boonville Fairgrounds. 8am-11am for the breakfast and 12:00 noon for the Egg Hunt. The price for adults is $10; $5 for kids under 12 and seniors 65 and older.

NORM DE VALL: "Keep an eye to the ocean. Whales heading north."

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Boy, was the boss frosted today. He was out there doing his push-ups, showing off for Angela DeWitt who was over at the Redwood Drive-in gas pumps, like he isn't a hundred years old. Funny thing was, Angela was giving the old fool fist pumps and shouting encouragement. I couldn't stand the pure vanity of this most unseemly Senior Citizen display, so I walked up to him and barked this poem right in his face”:

‘You are old, Father William’ (1865)

by Lewis Carroll

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,

“And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head –

Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,

“I feared it might injure the brain;

But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

Why, I do it again and again.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,

And have grown most uncommonly fat;

Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door –

Pray, what is the reason of that?”

“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,

“I kept all my limbs very supple

By the use of this ointment – one shilling the box –

Allow me to sell you a couple?”

“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak

For anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak –

Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,

And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,

Has lasted the rest of my life.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose

That your eye was as steady as ever;

Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose –

What made you so awfully clever?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”

Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!

Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

Be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!”

KZYX — MENDO'S LONGEST-RUNNING DEBACLE

Mary Pat Palmer wrote:

Dear Marco:

I have a radio show.

This radio show allows me to popularize alternative and complementary medicine which I consider extremely important.

This radio show exposes me and my name to a far greater number of people than any other means I can achieve without buying advertisements.

We who have shows are not stupid Marco, however much you might like to insinuate that. I do not begrudge the payments to the hardworking staff. I wish everyone everywhere received $60,000/year. I see how hard the staff work, and, particularly after the several months preceding Diane & Rich's returns, what a very good job they do, and I know how hard we all work - I don't simply count the beans.

It is not about "no money to pay the airpeople", it is happiness that the staff are paid for their hard work. Nothing REQUIRES us, as airpeople, to raise money on air for the management. It is voluntary. All public radio stations do this. No, I am not a "little person". I am someone who uses my intelligence to promulgate issues I deem important and raise money, in the time honored way, for a public radio station of which I am a part. Although the concept seems to escape you, I consider myself part of a team and am regarded as such. I certainly don't feel I have "bosses" there. What I do have is people working hard to do tasks that I don't want to do.

I have opinions that sometimes counter those of the staff. I simply voice them. I certainly agree with Meg Courtney. I don't feel I "beg" for money for KZYX - I ask people to honor the station if they listen. I do beg that no one votes for Sakowitz.

(signed) Mary Pat Palmer, co-host Holistic Health Perspectives.

* * *

Marco here. Okay, Mary, you think of yourself as being part of a team, doing a service for the public, serving the greater good, and so you don't care if none of you are paid. How about teachers? Aren't they part of a team, serving the greater good, and so on? Do you think schoolteachers should show up for work day after day, year after year, and get paid nothing, while the administrator and the secretary and bookkeeper and school board trustees keep and somehow vanish all the money both public and private? That would be objectively nuts, and it's the same thing. Waitresses and nurses bring hungry people food and bandage their wounds and fluff their pillows and listen to their complaints and give them a shot. Valuable, arguably creative services. If the hospital administrator and the restaurant owner are being paid, shouldn't the waitress and nurse be paid? Newspaper reporters should be paid if the publisher is being paid. (Insert a catalog of public-serving occupations and the owners of means of production here.) Further: How would you feel about it if an autocratic administrator at KZYX were to kick you out and keep you out, and no-one on your wonderful team would take your side in this, because they're afraid they'd get kicked out too. Because that happened to Mitch Clogg in 1989 at KZYX, and then to me at the turn of 1990 for bringing Mitch on my show anyway, and we're both still banned, and nothing has changed in 27 years. This happened to plenty of others including, recently, four-or-five-term Mendocino County District Supervisor Norman De Vall, who was relieved of his airtime for merely starting a listserv forum for people to freely share information about KZYX unfiltered by management, because no-one was or is allowed to do that on the air or off, under penalty of losing their show. If someone starts talking about it on a call-in show they sabotage your call. Well, they pre-sabotage their weekly call-in show. Listen to just the first part of it and see. (Seven minutes of warnings and admonishments to be respectful and make no negative statements, and threats of being buttoned out by the delay system. In contrast, when someone calls and I'm doing my show at KNYO, I put aside what I'm reading, put them directly on the air and say, "You're on KNYO-LP Fort Bragg. How can I help you?" and that's all there is to it. Sometimes they talk for half an hour, and they say what they need to say, and that's radio.)

If you think of the benefit of having a show on KZYX as being to promote any part of your health business, as it looks like you're implying, that's absolutely unethical; KZYX is in the noncommercial educational FM band. I hope that's not what you're doing. Even if you don't promote quack homeopathic or other placebo treatments that you or your guests sell, if you're merely fortunate enough to be able to work for free, less and less of the world is. I have maintained a roller-coaster of between two and five part-time day-jobs all my life. I give my show and equipment and technical help for free to KNYO and KMEC now, but I don't feel bad about it because no-one, not even the manager is being paid at KNYO, and I think also KMEC's manager is getting little or nothing. KMEC's yearly budget is about $25,000. KNYO's is less than half that, and KNYO has a performance space/studio downtown in Fort Bragg for events both on the air and off, and has a growing number of remote studios to broadcast live events (they just did one earlier tonight from Eagles Hall) and in some cases broadcast from home (I do every other show live from my wife's apartment in the Bay Area, using a studio setup that cost less than $200 to assemble, where KZYX spent $15,000 and several years trying to put a single remote live studio in Ukiah and they still haven't done it), and KNYO has internet and phone lines, and a rather innovative system for interconnecting studios and the transmitter, and all the necessary fees get paid, and all the necessary paperwork gets filed. Bob Young, manager of KNYO, has to do everything the manager at KZYX does to maintain a radio station both legally and electronically, and Bob accomplishes these tasks in a lazy afternoon per month. He does this work for free, so there'll be a radio station for him do his show, and for the rest of us to do ours. The only reason KNYO can't broadcast to the whole county the way KZYX does is the terms of the low-power license. The difference in operating cost between a 100-watt transmitter and a 4,000-watt transmitter is about $15 a day. The rest of each radio station's expenses should be essentially equal. That they're so very unequal is due to a toxic combination of stupidity and incompetence on the part of the board and management of KZYX.

Why should the manager and other office people of KZYX, who for the most part have no apparent interest in doing radio themselves, get $250,000 a year for all the same easy jobs the manager of KNYO does by himself for nothing but the love of radio? If you feel the manager and the other superfluous people in the KZYX office really deserve to be paid, and maybe they do, why not pay them all by the hour for just the few hours they actually work at doing what needs doing, alongside paying the airpeople for doing the real work the radio station is there for in the first place?

Mary, when you work for no money, for people who are not only being paid quite well but are keeping all the money for themselves, where people who are good at radio and need to be fairly paid are unjustly kept from work, you're a scab. That's the word for that: scab. And I think it's worse at KZYX than at other workplaces because Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Corp. gets from the U.S. government the priceless gift of control of three frequencies in Mendocino County, one of them high-power, and also gets a six-figure grant of tax-derived money, totaling well over $4,000,000 over the course of KZYX' existence.

I'm gonna repeat that in all caps: OVER FOUR MILLION DOLLARS. When radio is nearly free to operate compared with any other collective human enterprise. Once the transmission system and studio equipment are in place, which was done and paid for at KZYX almost thirty years ago, and you have permission to switch on the transmitter, it costs just a few dollars an hour to run even the most complicated system. And even the most elaborate Rube Goldberg contraption of studio-transmitter links and translator stations is no more complicated nor expensive to maintain than the ordinary internet connection and wireless and wired home computer network in everyone's house. Broadcast equipment is rock-reliable. It's more reliable than a refrigerator. When's the last time you had to repair or replace your refrigerator? Transmitters typically go decades without maintenance; the only moving part is the cooling fan. The only thing a manager has to do to "keep the great shows on the air and keep the station strong" is to not lock the airpeople out and not stumble drunkenly into the transmitter shack and kick the plug out of the wall.

So a broadcast license is practically a license to coin money. Yet if it hadn't been for those fat undeserved grants, MCPB (KZYX) would have gone between $120,000 and $140,000 into the red and failed every year of its existence; this year, last year, the year before, the year before that, all the way back to 1989. KZYX has mysteriously pissed away well over half a million dollars every year. Not too long ago there was a single year where they blew $760,000. For that much money you could run thirty radio stations like KMEC, sixty like KNYO. That's not just a few beans to count or not count, Mary, that's how bad the people who run KZYX are at it, in addition to their having kicked out and kept out some of the best radio people anywhere, because they pissed them off by being who they were, instead of sucking up to the poobahs the way you do. And in some cases very talented and valuable paid people were shoved out the door, like Christina Aanestad. She was the news director when John Coate, who had no interest in radio at all and clearly hated creative airpeople, fired the entire news department so he could continue to be paid to, you know, cut expenses around here. K.C. Meadows, Facilitator One (Joanna Schultz), Els Cooperrider, Beth Bosk, Phaedra Savage, Sheila Tracy (a crackerjack reporter), Doug McKenty... more, there's quite a list. Of course I don't think there's anything wrong with shoving someone out the airlock if the crime warrants it. There was that 40-or-50-year-old guy in the middle 1990s who was fucking a fourteen year old girl on the chair in the main studio when her mother arrived at the station unannounced. I'm sure they got a new chair in there since then.

In flagrante delicto. That's the phrase I was looking for. Isn't that fun to say? In flagrante delicto. Say it.

KMFB was a commercial station that had the same reach KZYX has. KMFB got zero dollars in government grants. And it had a yearly budget of less than a third what MCPB mysteriously shreds, none of the old people at KMFB flagrante delicto'd any fourteen year old girls in the broadcast booth, as far as I know, but other than that everyone was free-er to do their art and their craft (and in some cases just to goof around and enjoy themselves) than anyone has ever been at KZYX, and KMFB paid all its airpeople. So it's clearly possible. When I was at KMFB from early 1997 to late 2011, Mary, if you had come in wanting to do your show there I would have helped make that happen. When I was doing my variety public-access teevee show in the middle-late 1980s in Fort Bragg, and later editing the Mendocino Commentary and then publishing Memo countywide, if my worst enemy were to want to do a segment of the show or have a regular column, all they had to do was show up and meet the deadline. Or call it in. All my life if I had any power at all over publishing or broadcasting I used that power to let people in and lift people up, give them the tools and get out of the way. I've built mixing boards and amplifiers and lighting systems from parts. I've made puppet theaters and musical instruments and microphones; I'm still using a powered microphone for a guest mic that I made 25 years ago. Remember Eduardo Smissen? Didn't he sound good on KZYX? I made the microphone he used in his home studio to prerecord his shows. I've built whole working radio stations; I put one of them in a trailer at the Albion Whale School for the kids to play with. One of those radio stations, in 1985, in Mendocino, was entirely automatic. You'd call the number on the phone, and a tape loop would identify the station and put you on the air, and you'd be on until you hung up, and then the next person could use it. Earlier than that I was teaching recording tech and radio production and writing and producing and staging live radio drama at the Community School. I make sound environments for theater shows. Whenever there was more money than a project of mine needed, which hardly ever happened but it happened, it was distributed among the people who helped make it possible. Right now I put 20+ hours of concentrated prep into every one of my weekly six-to-eight-hour written-word radio shows, and even so, I leave the door open when I do the show from the studio in Fort Bragg, so people can come in off the street and use the radio station for what they need to use it for. That's real radio. I am exactly the sort of radio person that KZYX should have been actively recruiting all along, and yet instead they have been maliciously shutting me and my ilk out.

The reason KZYX doesn't pay airpeople is not that it can't. It easily could if it were being managed properly. The reason is rather that the people who've been mismanaging KZYX all this time have got used to not paying the real workers. Management feels entitled to not pay you. Here, look: Somebody on the Announce listserv read what I wrote last week and sent me a creepily Donald Trump-sounding story about how, from his experience in business and as a landlord, nothing's wrong with paying yourself and not paying the workers, because, he said, "It never works to pay people you don't have to, that's how you go broke." Just take a moment and savor that. I wrote back, thanked him for the article and told him I'd read it on my show so he could listen, and he wrote to tell me not to do that nor publicize his writing in any way, because it was private. And when he writes for the listserv and puts his name on it, he's all sweet and warm and nice and loving-sounding and not at all like the Star Trek Ferengi he is in private. That's the low level of integrity a person like that has. Exactly like the people running KZYX. They are all sweet and warm and nice and loving-sounding in public, and in private, look out, and it's been like that since Sean Donovan set the tone for it. It interests me how many times someone has told me over the years that they think Sean Donovan's vile spirit somehow haunts the place. I feel it myself.

Maybe the new guy will be different. But Parker's the fifth manager they've had in just two years. None of the other ones, nor the ones before them, took a single step to reform the situation at the station, to free the system for real radiopeople to use it. Maybe he'll be an honorable man, go for the respect, change things now, shake things up. But how likely is that, Mary, do you think? He's had three months and nothing's rumbling yet. The water in the glass on the table is dead still. If the so-called directors of Mendocino County Public Broadcasting thought Jeffrey Parker was the sort of person who would change anything at all, he wouldn't be there now collecting over half of all the yearly membership money in his own bank account for just showing up and saying good morning, would he.

Oh, right, you mentioned John Sakowicz. He's currently doing world-class shows on KMEC, interviewing nationally prominent guests, fighting the good fight. He had a show on KZYX, but he was kicked out and banned. When he was treasurer, on the board of MCPB, the other boardmembers colluded with the manager to keep important corporate financial information secret from him. Everything that was complained about to the FCC and CPB, and more, was deserving of complaint. There are plenty of management problems deserving of complaint now. You don't like him for the board, fine, vote how you feel like voting, but he does good radio, better than many of you, and his show should be on KZYX, and there isn't a chance of that happening, either, because KZYX isn't at all a meritocracy; it's way more like a feudal state, which was the point I was trying to make in my last letter.

PS. I wanted to call Sean Donovan vile and venal, but I wasn't sure venal was the right word, so I went to http://thesaurus.com for the first time in a long while and I'm so glad I did. When you give it a word to find synonyms for, now there are slider bars to tweak the organization of the results. There's a slider for complexity, and one for length. And you can choose whether the results show up in alphabetical order or in order of relevance. What a useful tool! Venal is pretty close to the right word. But vile works fine by itself.

Marco McClean

* * *

ED NOTE: Just got my KZYX ballot although I'm not enthusiastic about the enterprise, but do hope the new boss can achieve at least a plausible reputability. A vote for any of the incumbents is a vote against hope for any improvement. A vote for John 'Sako' Sakowicz is a vote for tumult, therefore I'm voting for Sako, because whatever his perceived deficiencies of personality Sako demands answers to all the right questions.

PS. Good one, Marco. As the Senior Banned Person at KZYX, I'm grateful you've acknowledged my lofty status as first among the many exiles. Donovan, may he writhe eternally with no company but Women's Voices, banned me and any and all mention of Boonville's beloved weekly, BEFORE the station went live, a ban that continues to this day. KC Meadows, for the record, was permitted to do a weekly LOCAL news chat show so long as I specifically was not included. Predictably, the morons, reinforced by the stoner community, fired her for, gasp! expressing an opinion as she deftly moderated a lively discussion on dope legislation. I'm not complaining, mind you. But over these long years, I've watched this and that person ostracized, but not one of those persons has gone to bat for any other non-personed person as that person was being non-personed, except, natch, the ava, without which most Mendo people would be unaware that another local had been offed by the cretins entrenched at Philo. To me, the greatest crime the station commits is its irrelevance to the lives of most people who live here, and this sad state of affairs exists while the station is tax-supported. Ever hear a conventional person, a logger say, or any other work-a-day citizen complain that the local public radio station had nothing for them? You won't, because it doesn't and, like most people they simply ignore it.

PPS. REASSURING that return ballots go to Dawn Ballantine of Dawn Ballantine Business Services of Boonville, an absolute rock who can be trusted to safeguard the KZYX board election. Was it ten, fifteen years ago that some of the lady pwogs at the station, unhappy with another programmer, managed to rig the vote to their liking? Major! You've got the key to the crypt. See if you can find the story on that one.

KZYX’S DEATH SPIRAL

Dear Friends,

My latest rant is an article about the local public radio station, what they should be doing and the cost of not doing it. You can find my new blog at Mendocino TV here: http://mendocinotv.com/2017/03/06/kzyx-board-meets-in-fort-bragg-on-march-6/ You can also listen to a reading of that article by Marco McClean here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9zHvxZUoag&feature=youtu.be Or find the complete article, links and all here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxf2TM2uxGxFMTN2bWdHMG1DMEE/view?usp=sharing

Cheers,

Scott M. Peterson

Mendocino

CAROLE FREEMAN WROTE TO JOHN SAKOWICZ:

I’m seriously curious why you are running for the board of a station which you frequently talk down? Are there people there you respect enough to work with?

* * *

John Sakowicz replied:

Carole,

It's very simple: Unless KZYX's financials are accurately stated, and filed, with the IRS, FCC, CPB, and KZYX's own Board of Directors and members, KZYX will fail. I repeat: KZYX, our beloved community radio station, will fail.

That's why I'm running for the Board — to save KZYX, not destroy it.

Years ago, when I was on the Board (2013-2016), I was aware of the station's problems with accountability and transparency. I saw management at that time — John Coate — first fire Christina Aanestad without cause, then misappropriate the money that King Collins, and others, collected and escrowed for the stipulated purpose of opening a Ukiah studio. That misappropriation was in the amount of $10,000. Coate used the money to meet payroll.

Emboldened by getting away with the misappropriation, in short order, I saw John Coate give himself a 10 per cent raise, even as membership numbers and underwriting revenues were falling.

I'll continue, Carole.

I saw KZYX's financials — the GM's annual report, the audit, and tax filings — fail to add up. Taken together, the financials were inconsistent, inaccurate, and incomplete, at best. They may have been fraudulent, at worst.

I saw our station offices left unattended by staff during business hours. Incidentally, the FCC substantiated this part of my complaint to the FCC.

I saw little to no investment in equipment and technology that would have improved our broadcast signal. KZYX often has dead air, fuzz-outs, and a scratchy signal.

I saw my friend, Board member and popular radio show host, Doug McKenty, lose his show for speaking up about the Board's own lack of enforcement of its own by-laws.

I saw Marco McClean stonewalled. Marco is perhaps the most talented radio show host ever to grace the airwaves in Mendocino County. If by some miracle, KZYX would give me my show back at KZYX, I would offer my slot on the schedule to Marco.

I saw another friend, esteemed former Mendocino County Supervisor, Norman De Vall, lose his annual show interviewing candidates for county office for creating the list serve known as KZYX Talk: kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org. Norman created the list serv for the simple reason that KZYX members might have a forum on which to communicate with one another and organize. This concept was an anathema to John Coate.

I lost my own highly regarded show for taking on Coate. As a Board member, I publicly challenged Coate on all of the above, and more. It may interest you to know that during the last Pledge Drive that I hosted on my show, I raised $2,500 in one hour. That's not bad for Friday at 9 am. Now, during current Pledge Drives, programmers have a hard time raising $1,000, or even $500. If members vote with their dollars, then you can infer that they loved my show.

I could continue. But I'll stop here.

John Sakowicz, Ukiah

FINANCIAL DISASTER

I wish I could say I was surprised by last Monday's board meeting in Ft. Bragg.

It has been five years since I began imploring the board to begin to function by voting transparently on policy. To my knowledge, there has not been one vote concerning a change to board policy, except to vote on the "board members responsibilities," in the last ten years.

The irony is that document did not mention the primary responsibility of a board member, to ensure board policy is maintained.

Five years ago I implored the board to follow it's policy concerning how programming is chosen at KZYX. That policy is specific. Programming should be chosen by consensus of the Programming Advisory Committee. While it is true that if consensus cannot be reached, the program director makes the final call, it is also true that if the PD refuses to follow consensus, the committee can make use of the grievance process. This is the system of checks and valences implemented by the board in 2008, to ensure the programming schedule was created in accordance with the will of the community.

A handful of board members and staff chose to ignore policy, and instead chose to relegate programming choices to the program director. Why? My guess is that a small group of NPR fanatics have chosen to implement the "NPR formula" on the rest of the community without due process. They have taken control, albeit passive aggressively.

As the host of Open Lines for seven years, I heard hundreds of times from community members that there is too much NPR programming, and not enough local alternative voices on KZYX. All the while KZYX was struggling financially, primarily as a result of debt to NPR. John Coate was able to keep the station afloat by eliminating the news department, and receiving nearly $100k a year more from the CPB. Well, KZYX now has a news department, and now receives less from the CPB, so it was no surprise when the board Treasurer last Monday reported that KZYX is back in debt to the tune of around $130k, most of which is to NPR. Same old story. Nothing has changed. Before the recent pledge drive, KZYX was within $2k of maxing out its line of credit. End of the line.

Once I realized that the board was not going to implement its programming policy, I asked them to vote to eliminate it. Nope. I asked them to follow their financial policies. No. I begged them to implement the committee system required by board policy. Just can't seem to do it. It would seem too many anti-NPR voices wanted in on those committees.

Passive aggressive control. Just pretend like you are listening to the community while you really ignore them and kick the can on down the road. Classic.

It is truly sad to see a community resource stolen from the community like this. Watching the same cycle happen all over again is mind boggling. Not being able to do anything about it is frustrating. But like with any other narcissist, the best thing to do is walk away.

Doug McKenty Elk

THIS WILL BE AN INTERESTING ONE

Saturday, March 25th.

Author Talk with Larry Wagner. Larry will be talking about and giving a slide show on his new book, Mendocino Coast Artists, a collection of sixty-five artists whose work is displayed in our coastal galleries.

6:30 pm to 7:30 pm

Free & open to the public

More information at 707.937.2665 or gallerybookshop.com

UKIAH HOPES DOWNTOWN HOTEL BECOMES A PALACE AGAIN

Initial rehabilitation plan for historic downtown Ukiah hotel submitted to court

by Glenda Anderson

Ukiah’s sprawling 125-year-old Palace Hotel was built in sections over several decades and is likely to be rehabilitated in pieces as well.

Mark Adams, a Los Angeles-based, court-appointed receiver, is charged with determining whether the decaying structure can be restored and, if so, overseeing the work needed to give it new life.

He’s optimistic the hotel, which has been shuttered and allowed to deteriorate for nearly three decades, can be saved, but said during a phone interview “it’s premature to know for sure.”

What is certain is that it’s not cost effective to demolish the structure, Adams stated in a report to the Mendocino County Superior Court, which appointed him in January to take over management of the Palace hotel after its owner failed to make adequate repairs to ensure public safety.

Tearing down the three-story, 60,000-square-foot structure would cost an estimated $400,000, well in excess of its 2006 assessed land value of $300,000. Adams said it’s “virtually impossible” to obtain financing for demolition under such conditions.

It’s also not feasible to repair the building all at once. He proposes rehabilitating sections of the structure over time in order to limit the immediate costs, for which he must find financing. A portion could be developed and turned into a revenue-generating venture while the rest of the project is pending, he said.

Adams has proposed developing a hotel, restaurant, bar and retail shops in the estimated 20,000-square-foot first floor. The upper two floors, built in 1891 and 1921, would need some limited seismic retrofitting for now, he said. Adams did not provide a cost estimate for the proposed retrofit in his report, but said modifying the upper two floors alone could cost $1 million.

Before proceeding, Adams said the building needs to be stabilized and further evaluated. He submitted a request to the Mendocino County Superior Court about 10 days ago seeking permission to spend $438,000 on the building, largely to protect it from further deterioration. The proposed work includes a fire alarm system, a temporary roof, ceiling supports, preliminary seismic retrofitting and an asbestos evaluation. The building’s owner, Marin County real estate agent Eladia Laines, has protested the asbestos work. She contends the building was cleared of asbestos before the court gave control of the building’s rehabilitation to Adams. But Adams said he’s received no confirmation such work was completed.

Under pressure from the city, Laines had made multiple efforts to rehab the building she and several partners bought at a bankruptcy sale in 1990 for $115,000. But the efforts fell short of what was necessary to halt the building’s deterioration and keep it from becoming a public safety issue, city officials said. The city threatened, cajoled and set deadlines before petitioning the court for a receivership in 2015. A judge requested additional negotiations before approving the request in January and appointing Adams.

Ukiah Mayor Jim Brown said Adams’ report buoys the city’s outlook on the hotel’s future, which has become an eyesore in the heart of the historic downtown district.

“I’m all jazzed it might be salvageable,” Brown said.

City Councilman Doug Crane, a building contractor, said he had some questions about construction details in the report, but added it was “a step in the right direction.”

A court hearing on the report is scheduled for March 13.

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

ED NOTE: The Palace, at long last in receivership, is Ukiah's great white whale, sightings of restoration and new days dawning forever out of reach until one day the generations of bankruptcies, consultants, fire sales, indecision, receiverships, the usual Mendo incompetence in high places, and forty years of promises suddenly turns and slays all these Ahabs.

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 11, 2017

ERIN BLACKWELL, Ukiah. Probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

DAKOTA HENNIGAN, Willits. Controlled substance, paraphernalia.

MONTY HULBERT, Boonville. Drunk in public.

BARRY KIRKPATRICK, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

THERON NELSON, Fort Bragg. Domestic battery, probation revocation.

MARY SCHAEFER, Ukiah. Petty theft, paraphernalia, failure to appear.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Trump's audacity and bombastic vision of reality has worked for him for more than forty years. This leopard will not be changing his spots. His delusional vision works for him and any victims of his megalomania he simply tells ‘your fired‘ too with a flourish of his little hands. He was too crazy to have ever been president before now but since America went bonkers and lost its collective mind, having Trump in the oval office with next to no detectable mind at all becomes a perfect fit.

JAY LYNCH / RIP

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/arts/design/jay-lynch-underground-comics-creator-dies-at-72.html

CAR & BED FOR CANCER PATIENT

I am writing on behalf of a community member who is a client of the Cancer Resource Center. She has been in long term treatment for cancer. She does not have much money and cannot afford a car and has been taking the local bus to get to treatment. However, now she must travel to Ukiah for treatment indefinitely on a regular basis. The donation of a car would not take away her diagnosis, but it certainly would have a great impact on solving many of the daily struggles that she faces. Do you have a reliable vehicle that you can donate?

This client also is in need of a bed. Do you have a queen size mattress and box spring that’s in decent condition, which could be donated?

If you can help, please call the Cancer Resource Centers of Mendocino County 937-3833 or reply to this email.

Thank you for caring.

Rita Martinez

Client Services Manager, Coast Office

Cancer Resource Centers of Mendocino County

AN OPPORTUNITY TO WAIT HAND AND FOOT ON OVERPRIVILIGED YOBBOS FOR MIN WAGE

Mendo Campground Seeking Housekeeping Staff

Come join the housekeeping team at our luxury campground overlooking Mendocino bay. Our resort consists of safari canvas tents that are fully furnished, and several refurbished vintage Airstream suites. The housekeeping shift will include: assisting with the service of the continental breakfast, cleaning the bathhouses and showers, housekeeping the tents and airstreams, and laundry room shifts. Pay is competitive.

Qualifications:

• Must have existing house cleaning or hotel housekeeping experience
• Be in good physical shape and energetic
• Work well with others
• Honest and Reliable
• Must be friendly and able to interact with guests
• English preferred, but we speak Spanish as well

Please reply with a copy of your resume or list of work experience and your phone number. Thank you!

YOU, TOO, CAN BE IGNORED & DENIED SUBPOENA POWER

Recruitment for the 2017/2018 Mendocino County Grand Jury

“All qualified citizens interested in serving on the 2017/2018 Mendocino County Grand Jury are invited to submit their applications to the Superior Court for consideration,” announced the Honorable Jeanine B. Nadel, Chair of the Grand Jury Recruitment/Selection Committee. The deadline for application submission is April 14th, 2017. The 2017/2018 Grand Jury will be sworn in at the end of June, 2017 (date to be announced).

Service on the Civil Grand Jury is an excellent opportunity to learn about the inner workings of government, while providing a valuable service to the community. The 19 members of the Grand Jury serve for one year and are empowered to investigate the operations of county, city and district governments; provide civil oversight of local government departments and agencies; and respond to citizen complaints. The Grand Jury sets its own agenda and meeting schedule. Much of the work is performed in small committees allowing for considerable flexibility in the work schedule and meeting locations.

Grand Jurors are compensated $25 per full panel meeting, $10 per committee meeting and committee attendance at public meetings. Mileage is reimbursed at the current County of Mendocino rate. There is free onsite parking. Prior to being nominated, each qualifying applicant is interviewed by a Superior Court judge. Training for Grand Jurors will be provided.

To serve as a Grand Juror, the following requirements must be met:

• At least 18 years of age
• United States citizen
• Resident of Mendocino County for at least one year
• Sufficiently fluent in written and spoken English
• Not currently serving on any other governmental board or commission during the term
• Not presently holding a public office
• Not personally active in any campaign of a candidate for elective office

Applications and related information are available on the Internet at: www.mendocino.courts.ca.gov/general_info/operations/grandjury.asp. The application may also be obtained in person at the Superior Court, 100 North State Street, Rm. 303, Ukiah or by calling the Grand Jury at (707) 463-4320. 
For more information contact:

Kim Weston, Administrative Assistant, 
Superior Court of California
(707) 467-6437

SURREALISM CEASED TO BE A GAME

Written by Manuel Vicent

Translated by Louis S. Bedrock

The triangle formed by three great figures, Dali, Garcia Lorca, and Buñuel, has constituted a kind of nightmare from which contemporary Spanish culture has not been able to awake since the beginning of the 20th century. The three men lived life as if it were a game.

In the international arena, Dali was the first to realize that mass media had subverted the scale of values in art. He was the first to realize that the life of the artist, exposed in perennial sacrifice to the cameras, was not only an inseparable part of his creations, but was the most important part, and he invested the greatest part of his talent in making imposture the source of his inspiration.

Today the controversy surrounding this genius or clown has lost the political charge it once had, but one fact is beyond discussion: Dali would not have been Dali without the perverse excitement to which he was submitted by Gala, his wife, his lover—Lernaean Hydra or Medusa, which eliminated his provincial air of someone from Ampurdán, converted his ambiguous sexuality into a form of snobbism and his eccentricities into a source of dollars—My dear, if you pretend to be mad or outlandish, you should maintain the fiction until you die. It will be this scheme that will nourish your work.

Salvador Dali began to impose his personality at the tender age of three when he would defecate behind the curtains of his house to oblige his parents to look for his excrement in a different part of the house every day and distinguish it from that of his dead brother, who had borne the same name. These were his first authentic signatures.

When Dali arrived at the Residence of Students in 1922, he was eighteen years old, able to count only to ten, and hardly spoke any Castilian. From the window of the second floor, Luis Buñuel and Federico García Lorca saw him crossing the garden with his cravat and his long hair of a modernist bohemian and both fell in love with that being who looked like an archangel. From that moment, there was a silent competition between the two to mutually snatch that prey and who, in turn, seemed pleased to play one against the other to arouse jealously.

For his part, Federico García Lorca had managed to get a degree in law from the faculty of the University of Granada without opening a single book thanks to the protection of Fernando de los Ríos, head of the department of Politics, a friend of the family, who would later mobilize his influence to see that Lorca was received prematurely, and merely as a musician or poet in the Residence of Students, which was a center for science students.

Nor did Dali have any other reason for winding up at the university apart from the concern of his father, a respected notary of Figueres, who wished to find a secure bourgeois situation for his son in Madrid.

On the other hand, Buñuel wound up enrolling as a student of agricultural science perhaps because his father, who returned from the Indies a rich man, had invested in land before marrying the prettiest girl in his village.

—Whom have you sent me? —complained the director of The Residence of Students, Alberto Jiménez Fraud, to Fernando de los Ríos— Young Lorca runs around here all day inventing games with his friends and doesn’t let anyone study.

While the majority of the residents were going to become engineers, biologists, and chemists, which obliged them to put a great effort into their studies, the poet, the painter, and the filmmaker, all three as yet without a future, incited by another idle rich kid, Pepin Bello, lived in a state of innocence, playing at inventing infantile surrealist capers that today would not be the least bit funny.

In some obscure way, they entangled and disentangled until the Spanish Civil War undid the triangle and real surrealism, not the plastic or literary kind, devoured them—each one in a different manner.

After slicing an eyeball with a razor blade in Un perro andaluz, fame struck Buñuel during the premiere of La edad de oro in a theater in Montmartre in 1930, during which Buñuel had to mount his own scandal by hiring make-believe angry bourgeois to throw stones at the screen.

Later, he was inspired by Catholic surrealism, sex as an activity practiced in the shadows, processions, drums, crowns of thorns, hearts of virgins pierced by seven daggers, and seamed stockings.

On the other hand, does there exist a more intense form of surrealism than a violent north wind that occurs during a week in Ampurdán? Caught in this mad wind, peasants release cries of outrage and anguish. Dali began to repeat in the surrealist circles of Paris those funny, paranoiac, nonsensical phrases he had heard emitted by farmers in the bars of Figueres.

The evil Medusa, Gala, understood that plastic and literary surrealism was impossible since the time required to produce a poem or a painting killed the spontaneity of the subconscious and ruptured the principle of psychic automatism.

Surrealism only works when in action, through berserk, unforeseeable events, realized amid the media circus at the margin of the painting or poem; thus, Gala grabbed the whip and didn’t stop flagellating the buttocks of her child, forcing him to come up with a new and even more outlandish act every day.

But the bloody explosion of the Civil War was the macabre collective experience that made it possible to experience real surrealism. What verse of Poet in New York could reach a more unfathomable metaphor than the discharge of a rifle at dawn in a ravine in Viznar with the valley of Granada at one’s feet?

Upon learning of the death of Lorca, Dali shouted from the barrier, “Olé”, as if Lorca’s martyrdom had been a bullfighting event. Later, he recommended that the Caudillo of Spain continue signing death warrants because it would greatly rejuvenate him.

André Breton never imagined that the only possible surrealism was that which was composed of real blood. The rest was mere clowning around.

AND THEY GLOW IN THE DARK

Radioactive Boars Rule Over Fukushima Towns

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/03/radioactive-boars-rule-over-fukushima-towns/