Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, April 4, 2017

• Rain Forecast
• KZYX Results
• Trial Updates
• Cannabis Cultivation
• Goat Festival
• Hooters Prank
• Senior Tamales
• Hendy Sundays
• Police Reports
• Little Dog
• Cold Cases
• Bank Charge
• Yesterday's Catch
• Busting Lincecum
• Musktopia
• Predictable
• Whiny Growers
• American Cockburn
• Ecology Action
• SF Exodus
• Blossom
• Bad Ahead
• Theatre Auditions
• Sanctuary Support
• Redneck Snack
• Creditcard Scam
• Oath
• Park Ruined
• Pereda Appearance
• Reading Series

WINTER REFUSES TO CALL IT QUITS: After a couple more days of nice spring weather, another round of rain is expected to land on the northcoast Thursday evening through Sunday. Over three inches is likely. Cool temps in the 40s at night and staying below 60 during the day will start on Thursday and continue for the next week.

KZYX ELECTION RETURNS

April 3, 2017
RE: KZYX Board Election Results
FROM: Meg Courtney, Board President, KZYX/MCPB
CONTACT: Meg Courtney, 707 961-6163

Mendocino County Public Broadcasting has completed its election for three open seats on the nine-person KZYX Board of Directors.

Members of the Philo-based community radio station elect board members, selecting from candidates who run for the three-years terms.

Jenness Hartley of Calpella, an appointed incumbent, won an At-Large seat. A schoolteacher and the KZYX board secretary and meeting facilitator, Hartley clinched her spot with 453 votes, defeating candidates John Sakowicz (171 votes), and Robert Vaughan (83 votes).

Larry Minson, who ran uncontested and won 491 votes, will be the new board member from District 3. Minson has been involved in media since contributing to “The Seed” magazine in Chicago in the 1960s and has worked on many productions at the Ukiah Players Theater.

Erica Harrold, who was running uncontested for the District 4 seat, dropped out after the ballots had been mailed but won 431 votes. Her seat will be filled by a board appointment.

“I am very grateful to everyone who participated in the election,” said Meg Courtney, President of MCPB/KZYX Board of Directors. “It is time for the board to roll up its sleeves and get to work on robust fundraising, future planning and updating bylaws and policies, meanwhile continuing efforts to collaborate with various academic and vocational programs at Mendocino Community College.”

Courtney is retiring from her 4^th District Seat on the KZYX Board; Board Vice President Jane Futcher, an At-Large member, is also retiring.

REYNOLDS TRIAL UPDATE: As Monday ended, no verdict in the Reynolds trial. Many people had been waiting since 2:20, but by 4:30 the bailiff said not a peep, no movement (of course his lips are sealed in any case), so nothing yet. Obviously, there will be no further info until tomorrow (Tuesday) at the earliest.

* * *

Downstairs, the trial for Mr. Godinez, the last of the pinche madres, was scheduled to begin trial, but after a long consultation with Linda Thompson, the jury was let go. I was unable to find out, at this point, whether the trial will proceed or no. Ms. Saxby was present and in fact she was a lawyer to a co-defendant, Mr. Contreres, who was reputedly going to turn State's evidence on his partners in crime — los pendeos who gut-shot him and left him to die in the dust of a Yorkville backroad. Mario Godinez-Gonzalez is one of three co-defendants — with Isidro Bernal-Lopez and a third man named Edgar Contreras — who are charged with the murder of guerilla pot grower, Marcos Bautista, of Cloverdale, back in the fall of 2015. Godinez was gut shot during the shoot-out in the Yorkville-area pot garden but survived to face murder charges. Godinez, Bernal and Contreras had traveled from Cloverdale to rip off the Yorkville dope patch and ambushed and killed Bautista in the process.

This reporter was severely chastised by Saxby for mentioning what the other lawyer in the case, Douglas Rhoades, had told me. She pretty much, to my mind, blamed me for putting her client's life on the line.

Spare me. Here's why. Mexico for the last ten years has been going through a pogrom of executions the world hasn't seen since the Nazis invaded Poland. And to sit mute, trembling under the fear of repercussions from these thugs is a little more than I think we should have to accept in California.

And as to the fear that these guys could be deported — oh, don't they just wish! — no-no, better keep 'em locked up here, for a good long time.

* * *

UKIAH, Monday, April 3. -- MURDER TRIAL UPDATE: Godinez Case.

The jury trial scheduled to begin today for a Cloverdale man accused of murder came to an abrupt end this morning when the defendant withdrew his not guilty pleas and denials and entered a no contest plea to murder involving his personal use of a firearm, and an additional no contest plea to second degree robbery.

Defendant Mario Alberto Godinez Gonzalez, age 27, formerly of Cloverdale, had been facing charges related to the death of a marijuana grower during an ill-fated armed marijuana rip-off in the hills outside of Yorkville in September 2015. The prosecution has maintained that Godinez is the individual who originally planned and recruited the others for the night time raid on the marijuana garden.

In entering his changes of plea and his admission before Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman, the defendant agreed to a stipulated sentence of 30 years to life in state prison, said sentence to be imposed at a formal sentencing hearing now calendared for June 1, 2017 in Department B of the Ukiah courthouse. Anyone interested in this matter is welcome to attend and watch the sentencing proceedings on that date.

As an aside, the two other co-defendants -- Edgar Fidel Contreras and Isidro Bernal Lopez -- were both sentenced on March 28th to 25 years to life in state prison.

The prosecutor who has been handling these matters from the beginning is District Attorney David Eyster. The lead law enforcement agency which investigated the death and surrounding circumstances is the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. The MCSO has been supported in its good work by the California Department of Justice forensic crime lab in Eureka, the California Department of Justice forensic crime lab (latent prints) in Sacramento, and the District Attorney's own Bureau of Investigations.

SUPES TUESDAY MORNING: CANNABIS REGS ENFORCEMENT PLANNING

Supervisors Agenda Item 5(f) — Discussion and Possible Action Regarding Presentation on Cannabis Cultivation Program Operational Readiness and Enforcement Planning

The Cannabis Cultivation Program will be launching in early May. In preparation, departments have been working on operational readiness and enforcement planning. The Executive brought together a cannabis working group to coordinate application processing, enforcement and department collaboration. The following departments will present on the implementation of the Cannabis Cultivation Program and enforcement:

Agriculture: Diane Curry

Planning and Building Services: Mary Lynn Hunt

Executive Office: Sarah Dukett

Treasurer-Tax Collector: Shari Schapmire

County Counsel: Michael Makdisi

Sheriff's Office: Randy Johnson

ATTENTION GOAT ROPERS! On Saturday, April 22, AV Foodshed will be hosting the 3rd Annual Anderson Valley Goat Festival—a day of family fun, food, and live music. For that day we will once again be sharing the Fairgrounds with The Unity Club's Spring Wildflower Show. You can check out <www.avfoodshed.com> for a schedule of events and workshops. As in previous years there will be a goat parade (best dressed goat wins a prize), a berria tasting contest, cheesemaking, and the celebrity goat milking competition, where local human celebrities will be participating in this udder challenge. Mark Devine says No experience necessary.

WE GULLED a coupla April Fools with our mandatory government registration gag, but the April Fool’s prank in San Anselmo had the phones at city hall ringing off the hook. On a prominent vacant building at crossroads known as The Hub, an anonymous wag had erected a professionally-rendered banner that read, “Hooters! Coming Soon!”

THE UKIAH CO-OP has so mightily prospered that it dispenses grants for this and that good local cause, including $3500 to the Anderson Valley Senior Center “to provide food for local seniors.” They all look pretty well fed to me, but a few more tamales won’t hurt.

SECOND SUNDAY NEXT WEEK AT HENDY WOODS

Now that the park is open again after all the storms, Hendy Woods Community will begin paying the Day Use fee for local people on the Second Sunday of every month, beginning next Sunday, April 9. This offer covers folks from Yorkville, Boonville, Philo, Navarro, Comptche, and Elk. The Day Use Area is completely cleaned up and looks great. Some of the trails in Big Hendy Grove are closed or using a bit of a work around but wildflowers and trees are blooming and it¹s glorious. If it's rainy or windy it would probably be best to stay out of the groves until things stabilize. The term "widow-maker" exists for a reason!

— Kathy Bailey

TWO-IN-ONE

On 04-01-2017 at about 11:16 PM, Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputies were patrolling in Covelo. While patrolling the area they responded to a residence at 40 Agency Road to attempt to serve two no bail felony warrants on Monalisa Durazo, 47, of Covelo. When the Deputies attempted to contact Durazo she attempted to flee on foot but was apprehended without incident before she could flee the property.

While Deputies were still at the residence they contacted Manuel Frease, resulting in a records check on him for warrants or probation status. The Deputies were advised by Sheriff's Office dispatch that Frease also had an outstanding no bail felony warrant for his arrest and was also taken into custody without incident. Both Durazo and Frease where booked into the Mendocino County Jail where they were to be held without bail.

* * *

SHOULDA JUST COHABITED AND LEFT IT AT THAT

On 04-02-2017 at approximately 1:50 P.M., Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputies responded to a call for service for an in-progress domestic physical altercation at a residence in the 29700 block of Highway 20 in Fort Bragg, California. After Deputies arrived at the aforementioned location they contacted an adult male. Deputies learned the 30-year old adult male and Chloe Ludi, 28, of Fort Bragg, were presently involved in an intimate cohabitating relationship and had a verbal argument. The verbal argument escalated when Ludi struck the adult male in the face multiple times. The adult male sustained minor visible injury as a result of the assault. Deputies departed the scene after being unable to locate Ludi, who reportedly fled into the nearby wooded area just prior to the Deputies arrival. At approximately 4:00 P.M., Deputies returned to the location and contacted Ludi at the residence. Deputies arrested Ludi without incident and she was transported to the Mendocino County Jail where she was to be booked on a charge of felony domestic violence battery. Ludi was to be held in lieu of $25,000 bail.

* * *

DEPUTY DAWG GETS HIS MAN

On 03-31-2017 at about 11:41 PM Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputies were patrolling the area of the 25000 block of Barnes Lane in Covelo, California. While in the area, Deputies attempted to contact a male subject identified as Cort Miller, 22, of Covelo. Miller was wanted on a no bail felony warrant for 211 PC (Armed Robbery), and a misdemeanor warrant for 1203.2 PC (Violation of Probation). When the Deputies attempted to stop Miller he fled on foot and refused commands to stop. Mendocino County Sheriff's Office K9 "DOC" arrived approximately 15 minutes later with his handler and they tracked Miller to a wooded area southwest of a residence in 25000 block of Barnes Lane. Miller was subsequently located by K9 DOC and taken into custody without incident. Miller was arrested for the above listed warrants, Resist/Delay a Peace Officer and Violation of Probation. Miller was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held without bail.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I read about these cop dogs chasing down bad guys and I get to wondering if I could be a police dog. Don't tell me I'm too small, either. I'm fast on my feet and I've got big teeth. Know a little karate, too.”

COLD CASES (Revised/Updated/Reposted)

A READER WRITES: “Cold cases. Katlyn Long. If Matson supplied the drug, at the very least, manslaughter is the charge. How hard is that to prove that with a known druggie?

Susan Keegan. What does the autopsy report show? Have you seen it? Where is or are the position or positions of the wounds to the head? Is the doc right or left handed? My friend Joe Kenda (Homicide Hunter) could figure this out in ten minutes. The doc was not particularly remorseful. Guilty, unless proven otherwise. Baumeister. Has anyone looked into the killing of that young man up and around Westport in the mid 80s. (Sutherland?) Did Baumeister live there at that time?

ED REPLY: What all these cases have in common is the connected status of the presumed perps: Matson is the scion of a successful Fort Bragg family; Peter Keegan is a medical doctor with deep roots among liberals in the Ukiah area. Baumeister, however, was never a suspect in the two Westport disappearances or in the murder of the young geologist, Todd Sutherland. The Sutherland murder was the work of a homeless ex-con roaming the Westport area robbing tourist’s cars. Sutherland was looking at some rock formation near the beach when the scumdog walked up on him and shot him to death for the cameras Sutherland was carrying. The killer, locked up for another crime, confessed to the murder.

BAUMEISTER was an employee of a man named James ‘Jimmy’ Denoyer who disappeared the two "missing" Westport men who also worked for him, one of whom was his uncle, the other a long-time resident of the Northcoast. I keep mentioning Baumeister as a likely source of information about Denoyer's activities at the time of the disappearances. Baumeister, born and raised in Comptche, is often arrested for drunk in public. Whether or not the cops have talked to him about his time with Denoyer while he’s in custody or otherwise, I don’t know. If they haven’t, well….

ALL OF THESE CASES occurred during the haphazard reign of DA Meredith Lintott. Let's say Lintott's office did not take on tough cases and leave it at that. DA Eyster does take on tough cases and the prosecution of Keegan, for one, is long overdue.

SUSAN KEEGAN'S forearms were terribly bruised, "defensive bruising," as it's called. The wound(s) to the top of her head that killed her could not have been sustained from a "bathroom fall," as Dr. Keegan calmly explained his wife's death to the two cops who appeared at his door when he called 911 the morning after, long after all traces of Mrs. Keegan's last blood were cleaned up. There is more than enough evidence to indict the doctor, as anyone who watches crime shows will know. We see tough cases worked out all the time by tough, relentless investigators. (Keegan hired a criminal defense attorney within a week of his wife's death and continues to keep one on retainer. Innocent persons don't ordinarily feel a need for a criminal defense lawyer.)

DA EYSTER has put a huge effort into the Keegan case, including a successful subpoena for the Keegan file lied about by Ukiah attorney Norman Rosen. Rosen had claimed he acted as attorney in his dealings with the Keegans and, therefore, whatever information he had about them was protected by the attorney-client privilege laws.

IN FACT, as the subpoenaed file has apparently revealed or it would not have been successfully subpoenaed, Rosen had functioned as family counselor to the Keegans, which is not protected. The file apparently confirms what Mrs. Keegan's friends have known all along, that Peter Keegan had flipped out in the presence of counselor Rosen when Keegan learned that his wife, upon their divorce, would get half of the couple's property, as per California divorce law.

WHY ROSEN did not report Keegan's behavior to the police goes to his character, I suppose, but one would think an officer of the court, let alone a long-time friend of Mrs. Keegan, would want justice for her and would have volunteered the sought-after evidence without forcing the DA to go to a judge for a subpoena.

THE KATLYN LONG CASE was never investigated after Matson lawyered-up with the late Richard Petersen. How did methadone find its way into the body of a non-drug using young woman? Where did it come from? And so on. A cop told me he was certain that Matson "would screw-up again, and we'll get him." Matson remains un-got.

UNFORTUNATELY for the victims and their families, here in Amnesia County, where history starts all over again every morning, there isn't sustained public pressure on the authorities to solve these cases.

SAVINGS BANK'S LITTLE SWINDLE

If you have a checking account at Savings Bank of Mendocino County, you may or may not have noticed that they have instituted a $3.00 monthly charge for a paper statement. I may be alone in this, but I feel it is WRONG. I have been banking for well over 60 years and have never had such a charge before. Then again, I have never received an interest rate of .05% (one twentieth of 1%) before. They have a de facto monopoly on "live" banks in this area. There is no minimum balance that one can maintain to avoid this charge. I have asked my local branch to file a formal complaint on my behalf. Perhaps if everyone affected by this charge, requiring us to have internet and computers and electricity to receive an account statement were to file a formal complaint, they might reconsider this charge. Then again, with a government of business, for business and by business, maybe not.

(MCN-Listserve)

CATCH OF THE DAY, April 3, 2017

NICOLE BRITTON, Covelo. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

JARED CARLSEN, Ukiah. DUI.

ALICIA DAVIS, Kansas City, Mo./Ukiah. Fugitive from justice.

IAN FREEMAN, Fort Bragg. DUI-fourth or more offense, taillamp out, failure to obey traffic officer, suspended license, resisting, probation revocation.

CHRIS HUDDLESTON, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

JOSEPH JACKSON, Fort Bragg. Camping, vandalism.

VIOLET MCALISTER, Ukiah. Controlled substance, felony warrant, probation revocation.

MATHEW PEAK, Fort Bragg. Criminal threats.

NICOLE SANDERSON, Laytonville. Probation revocation.

ROGER SCHOENAHL, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

ERIC WILLIAMS, Redwood Valley. Drunk in public.

TIM LINCECUM’S POT BUST

by Fred Gardner

Only in the San Francisco Bay Area did the story cross over from the sports pages to the news pages: on October 30, 2009, Tim Lincecum, the Giants' ace pitcher, was stopped by a Washington State Highway Patrol officer for driving 74 MPH on Interstate 5, a few miles north of the Oregon border. Lincecum was on his way home to a suburb of Seattle.

The highway patrolman smelled marijuana and Lincecum acknowledged that he had a pipe in the car, and 3.3 grams of bud — about four joints' worth. Lincecum denied that he had been smoking while driving. The officer wrote him up for speeding and misdemeanor drug possession. A Clark County prosecutor reduced the charge to possession of paraphernalia — an infraction which, unlike drug possession, does not require a mandatory-minimum one day in jail.

A sensible prosecutor named Grant Hansen said that Lincecum had gotten the standard deal offered to cooperative first-time offenders. Henry Shulman of the Chronicle wrote, "Hansen said typically there are 15 to 20 similar cases in his county each week, mostly from young people from the area, and all are treated this way." The prosecutor put the episode in proper perspective: Tim Lincecum is a young person who did what young people often do.

Lincecum was supposed to pay a $250 fine for possessing the pipe, and $122 more for speeding. But a publicity-seeking judge insisted that he appear in person for sentencing Dec. 22, so that he, the judge, could deliver a lecture and get his 15 minutes of fame.

Lincecum's pot bust did not generate one-tenth the media attention inspired by a photo of Michael Phelps holding a bong earlier that year. Given the relative popularity of baseball and swimming in the US, Lincecum is arguably as big a star as Phelps. (He had won two consecutive Cy Young awards, an unprecedented honor.) Unlike Phelps, who was just passing the bong at someone else's party, Lincecum owned the pipe and the marijuana, and he was driving over the speed limit. So why the drastically reduced media interest? What happened in the 10 months between Phelps's exposure and Lincecum's?

Evidently, the stigma of marijuana use was diminishing fast.

Lincecum's pot bust created unbearable cognitive dissonance for Scott Ostler, the Official Hall Monitor of the Sporting Green, (Cognitive dissonance is "uncomfortable tension caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously"). Ostler was then writing a regular feature called "Knucklehead(s) of the Week," ridiculing athletes whose foibles had become known to the public. He expressed 30-inches of uncomfortable tension over the Lincecum bust in a column headed "High crime? Nope, just stupid."

Ostler is supposed to be some kind of humorist. If jokes were hits, he'd bat about .173. He assumes that disdaining marijuana is a marker for "character." It's actually a marker for obedience.

Recognizing that his readers tend to be tolerant, Ostler wrote: "Lincecum will get off easy in the Bay Area court of public opinion. In fact, his moment of reefer madness might even enhance his stature as a free-spirited goofball."

Lincecum's stature is based on his curveball and his fastball, not being a “goofball.” AJ Liebling, the great press critic, hated psycholgizing by sportswriters (a trend that began in the pages of th New York Post in the early 1950s). If I knew where my copy of Libling’s Wayward Press was, I'd find the apt quote. Instead, we return to Ostler's column:

"Sifting through the reader responses on our Web site, my eyes grew weary looking for even one demand for Lincecum to be punished by MLB or the Giants."

Ostler must have finally found one because he put a harsh ttsk-tsker's comment on the front page of the sports section in bold type to accompany his column.

"...Remember how, not so many years ago, Warriors' fans would convene at halftime on the 'dope ramp,' turning the Oakland Area into the world's largest bong?"

It was the early-to-mid 1970s, and no one ever called it anything but "the doobie section." Management cracked down right after the Warriors championship season, and it was downhill for decades thereafter. Many athletes consider marijuana the ideal relaxant, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and alternative to alcohol. The San Francisco Chronicle should have started evaluating this question in the '90s. Or earlier — maybe when Robert Parrish got busted, or Kareem, or Chris Weber, or Rasheed Wallace, or...

"There will be no attempt here to minimize what Lincecum did. I have a 14-year-old son who admires Lincecum, and I will have the obligatory talk about how Timmy is cool but not everything he does is. There's dumb, then there's speeding while carrying weed and a pipe, giving the world the impression that you might be dumb enough to fire up while driving. One of the great mysteries of sports is why so many athletes load their cars with a mixture of drugs, handguns and expired drivers' licenses, then ask themselves, 'Dude, how fast do you think this baby will go in a hospital zone?'"

In his obligatory talk with the offspring, did Ostler equate Lincecum’s marijuana possession with guns and dangerous driving? To paraphrase the man himself, there's dumb and then there's crude sophistry.

"We've all gotten to know him [Lincecum] well enough to realize that behind the garage-band hair and the cartwheels in the clubhouse is an intelligent young man who approaches his job in a professional manner and spares himself the self-importance and lack of accountability embraced by many ball stars."

This is the source of Ostler's cognitive dissonance: Lincecum is both a pot smoker and an admirable young man — likeable, intelligent, fully-functional.

"Too bad when Timmy placed the pot and the pipe in his care, his events-memory didn't set off alarms. Michael Phelps! Michael Phelps! Michael Phelps! Oooogah! Or, on a much, much more somber note: Nick Adenhart. He's the Angels pitcher who was killed in April when his friend's car was struck by a drunk driver. Both drivers had been drinking."

Adenhart might be alive today if he and the other driver had been smoking marijuana instead of drinking booze. Equating the effects of alcohol and marijuana is ignorant or duplicitous.

"Even we zonked-out Bay Area hipsters hope the Franchise plays it smarter next time."

That's how Ostler ended his Nov.7 column — claiming to speak for and, in the same breath, insulting his readers. He did the same thing in a Nov. 22 column headed, "Let the Freak's flag fly."

"We've got May 20 in this office pool to guess the date on which an opposing batter first registers an official complaint that Lincecum's flying hair is a distraction. Hey, maybe he shoud dye his hair white. Find the baseball, suckuh... His hair, in fact, seems predestined. David Crosby (of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) wrote and sang about Lincecum's hair 40 years ago... 'Almost cut my hair / Happened just the other day... But I didn't and I wonder why / Feel like letting my freak flag fly."

Some nonconformists in the '60s called themselves "freaks" in the same way that some gay people call themselves "queers" — claiming and negating the insult. Crosby, in the context of his lyric, was identifying with his fellow freaks. Ostler, in his Nov. 22 tag, was insulting Tim Lincecum (while ostensibly cutting him some slack). It's one thing to call yourself a freak or a queer or a nigger or a yid or a spick. It's another thing when some disapproving square calls you one.

I once got pulled over in about the same spot, going about 70 MPH, hauling 2,000 copies of O'Shaughnessy's to the Hempfest. The moral of this story is, watch out for that speed trap around Walnut Grove.

MUSKTOPIA, HERE WE COME!

by James Kunstler

It ought to be sign of just how delusional the nation is these days that Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X is taken seriously. Musk continues to dangle his fantasy of travel to Mars before a country that can barely get its shit together on Planet Earth, and the Tesla car represents one of the main reasons for it — namely, that we’ll do anything to preserve, maintain, and defend our addiction to incessant and pointless motoring (and nothing to devise a saner living arrangement).

Even people with Ivy League educations believe that the electric car is a “solution” to our basic economic quandary, which is to keep all the accessories and furnishings of suburbia running at all costs in the face of problems with fossil fuels, especially climate change. First, understand how the Tesla car and electric motoring are bound up in our culture of virtue signaling, the main motivational feature of political correctness. Virtue signaling is a status acquisition racket. In this case, you get social brownie points for indicating that you’re on-board with “clean energy,” you’re “green,” “an environmentalist,” “Earth–friendly.” Ordinary schmoes can drive a Prius for their brownie points. But the Tesla driver gets all that and much more: the envy of the Prius drivers!

This is all horse shit, of course, because there’s nothing green or Earth-friendly about Tesla cars, or electric cars in general. Evidently, many Americans think these cars run on batteries. No they don’t. Not really. The battery is just a storage unit for electricity that comes from power plants that burn something, or from hydroelectric installations like Hoover Dam, with its problems of declining reservoir levels and aging re-bar concrete construction. A lot of what gets burned for electric power is coal. Connect the dots. Also consider the embedded energy that it takes to just manufacture the cars. That had to come from somewhere, too.

The Silicon Valley executive who drives a Tesla gets to feel good about him/her/zheself without doing anything to change him/her/zhe’s way of life. All it requires is the $101,500 entry price for the cheapest model. For many Silicon Valley execs, this might be walking-around money. For the masses of Flyover Deplorables that’s just another impossible dream in a growing list of dissolving comforts and conveniences.

In fact, the mass motoring paradigm in the USA is already failing not on the basis of what kind of fuel the car runs on but on the financing end. Americans are used to buying cars on installment loans and, as the middle class implosion continues, there are fewer and fewer Americans who qualify to borrow. The regular car industry (gasoline branch) has been trying to work around this reality for years by enabling sketchier loans for ever-sketchier customers — like, seven years for a used car. The borrower in such a deal is sure to be “underwater” with collateral (the car) that is close to worthless well before the loan can be extinguished. We’re beginning to see the fruits of this racket just now, as these longer-termed loans start to age out. On top of that, a lot of these janky loans were bundled into tradable securities just like the janky mortgage loans that set off the banking fiasco of 2008. Wait for that to blow.

What much of America refuses to consider in the face of all this is that there’s another way to inhabit the landscape: walkable neighborhoods, towns, and cities with some kind of public transit. Some Millennials gravitate to places designed along these lines because they grew up in the ‘burbs and they know full well the social nullity induced there. But the rest of America is still committed to the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world: suburban living. And tragically, of course, we’re kind of stuck with all that “infrastructure” for daily life. It’s already built out! Part of Donald Trump’s appeal was his promise to keep its furnishings in working order.

All of this remains to be sorted out. The political disorder currently roiling America is there because the contradictions in our national life have become so starkly obvious, and the first thing to crack is the political consensus that allows business-as-usual to keep chugging along. The political turmoil will only accelerate the accompanying economic turmoil that drives it in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. That dynamic has a long way to go before any of these issues resolved satisfactorily.

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

DRUG DEALERS SAY THE DUMBEST THINGS

by John Hardin

The War on Drugs is a horrible crime against humanity, and if we ever manage to bring this bloody chapter in American History to a close we should make sure that it never happens again, but there’s one thing I miss about the whole police-state, lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the-key attitude of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Back when you could still go to jail for growing weed, drug dealers used to keep a low profile and they kept their mouths shut. I miss that.

These days drug dealers never shut up, and the more they talk, the dumber they sound and the uglier they look. I realize that they’re just trying to organize, raise their profile and lobby on their own behalf, but the more they do it, the creepier it gets. They can’t help it. They have an untenable position. War profiteers hate to see wars end, but they should know better than to complain about it in a room full of veterans, widows and orphans.

I didn’t realize just how dumb and repulsive drug dealers really were until I heard them complain about the falling price of marijuana. Really, you should keep that to yourselves. The people out there forking over large sums of cash for paltry quantities of cannabis don’t feel your pain. They probably don’t even like you, and only tolerate your company because you have weed. If they could get it somewhere else, for even a dollar less, they’d do it in a heartbeat.

Complaining about the falling price of cannabis and lobbying politicians to keep prices high didn’t win “The Humboldt Brand” any friends among cannabis consumers. We want the price of cannabis to fall further, much further. We want the price of cannabis to fall below what it costs to produce it in the forests of Humboldt County. We don’t care that this long overdue price correction will affect growers negatively. In fact, that’s what we want.

Putting dangerous drug dealers out of business has always been half the reason to legalize marijuana in the first place. Black market drug dealers earned their reputation for violence. Black market drug dealers earned their reputation for destroying communities, and black market drug dealers earned their reputation for destroying the environment. In one way, you could say that black market drug dealers helped the cause of legalization by creating more social and environmental problems than legal marijuana possibly could.

If Humboldt County growers want to convince us that they are anything but dangerous drug dealers who should be driven out of business, complaining about the falling price of marijuana and lobbying to keep pot prices high doesn’t really help their cause. Complaining about the bad press they get every time another grower gets caught doing something horrendous to the forest, or someone gets killed at a grow scene, or in a drug deal, or another hash lab blows up, doesn’t really help their image either.

It doesn’t look good to be more concerned with how a problem affects your image than you are with the problem itself. We ignore sex trafficking, hard drugs and violent criminal gangs in our community, as well as way too much environmental damage and worker exploitation, just to protect the wholesome fiction of “Mom and Pop Grower,” and the “Small Farmer,” that we so desperately want to project to the world. We dismiss anyone who doesn’t fit into that happy, mythical stereotype as “a few bad apples,” no matter how many of them we find.

Now they want us to call them “farmers” instead of “drug dealers.” They like the term “farmers” because farmers have political clout. Farmers also do a lot of environmental damage, but people cut farmers slack, because farmers produce food, and everyone needs food. Dope yuppies think we should treat them with the same deference and respect as we do farmers. Of course, real farmers, working flat, fertile land with a tractor, could put Humboldt County’s so-called “farmers” out of business overnight, if it weren’t for the law. If the value of your product depends upon an army of law enforcement officers, courts and prisons to prevent honest businesspeople from competing with you, you’re a black market drug dealer, not a farmer.

Humboldt County growers know that they cannot compete with real farmers on a level playing field. They know that their income depends on the War on Drugs. They don’t care. They know that they have blood on their hands. They know that prohibition makes their operations profitable, and they don’t care who it hurts. They just want the money, so now they dismiss our concerns about the environmental damage they cause by claiming that they’re not as bad as the timber industry or the wine industry. That’s one more unbelievably stupid thing that growers say all of the time now.

Growers tell us: “The marijuana industry hasn’t done nearly as much damage to the environment as the timber and wine industries, so give us a chance.” That’s like saying “Compared to Charlie Manson and Jeffery Dahmer, I’m a pretty nice guy.” The timber industry took 96 percent of all the old growth forest and practically drove the Humboldt Martin to extinction. The wine industry decimated native salmon populations. Thanks to the brilliant, government-sanctioned land use practices of those two industries, we can’t afford to lose any more wildlife habitat to blind greed. Sorry, folks. Cannabis is a beautiful plant, but what’s going on here is ugly and unnecessary. Without prohibition and the black market, no one would ever dream of wasting so many resources to produce cannabis flowers as we do here in Humboldt County.

When it comes down to it, what’s good for the environment is also good for cannabis consumers and the economy. Legalization should bring large-scale production of commercial cannabis out of the forest and on to farmland, and into places where it can be grown most economically. Legalization should bring down the price of marijuana and eliminate the black market. This will hurt black market drug dealers in Humboldt County, who would, clearly, rather devour the forest like locusts, leaving mountains of grow garbage and useless consumer crap in their wake, than face a world in which selling weed at inflated, black market prices was no longer an option for them.

I think Humboldt County growers realize they face a perception problem, but they haven’t quite figured out that the problem lies not so much with changing the way the world sees them, but rather with changing the way they see the world.

I BECOME AN AMERICAN

by Alexander Cockburn

June 19, 2009 — We’ll come momentarily to Obama’s discovery that it’s not all fun being president, but first a bulletin on regime-change for co-editor Cockburn. Though the U.S. Constitution seemingly blocks my path at this time, I have taken the first necessary step in my own quest for the White House by becoming a citizen of the United States at approximately 10 am, Pacific time, last Wednesday, June 17, in the Paramount Theater in Oakland, California.

To my immediate left in the vast and splendid deco theater was a Moroccan, to my right a Salvadoran and around us 956 other candidates for citizenship from 98 countries, each holding a small specimen of the flag that was about to become our standard. All of us had sworn early that day that since our final, successful interview with immigration officials we had not become prostitutes or members of the Communist Party. Inductees to U.S. nation-hood were downstairs; relatives and friends were up in the balcony, including CounterPuncher and friend Scott Handleman, attorney at law. I was determined to start out on the right path. What is more American than to have a lawyer nearby?

Master of ceremonies was US Citizenship and Immigration Service agent Randy Ricks. The amiable Ricks actually conducted my final interview in USCIS’s San Francisco hq. At the Paramount he pulled off the rather showy feat of making short welcoming speeches to the cheerful throng in French, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Russian and I think Hindi. After various preliminaries, including uplifting videos about Ellis Island that tactfully omitted the darker moments in the island’s past, Ricks issued instructions. Each time, starting with Afghanistan, he announced a country the cohort from that nation stood up and it was easy to see that China, India, the Philippines and Salvador were very strongly represented.

A handful of Zambians brought us to the end of the roster and we were all on our feet. We raised our right hands and collectively swore that we “absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty” and that that we would “bear arms on behalf of the United States”, or perform “work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law.” The phrase rang a bell. In the Second World War in Britain, so my mother Patricia would recall from time to time, cats patrolling warehouses where food was stored would get extra rations for performing work of national importance.

Minutes later I was outside on the sidewalk, registering to vote, albeit declining to state which party I would favor.

My own path to citizenship began with a green card in 1973, allowing me to work for the Village Voice in New York and to be a legal resident. The man who helped me get that card was Ed Koch, at that time a supposedly liberal US congressman living, then as now, in Greenwich Village. A few years later, in 1977, he ran for mayor of New York City i and I wrote about him harshly. Koch was heavily backed by Rupert Murdoch and the New York Post, running on a law and order platform. Ed was always a petty man, and this trait was well displayed the night he won. A PBS interviewer asked him what his “worst moment” on the race had been and he promptly said in his trade-mark squeaky whine, “the attack by ALEXANDER COCKBURN in the Voice… To think I got him his green card!” In that race there had been slurs a lot nastier than any I made. If you walked around Queens in that campaign you’d see “Vote for Cuomo, not the homo,” scrawled on plenty of walls.

There were others with thin skins. In my Voice column I made fun of a New Yorker writer, a woman dispensing lethal doses of tedium on an almost weekly basis. I didn’t know that her lover was a New Jersey congressman powerful on the Immigration and Naturalization subcommittee. Within days I was the object of a probe by the INS.

A resident alien perches on a frail branch. That New Jersey congressman could have pressured the INS to put me on the watch list, meaning the next time I returned to the US I could have found the door slammed in my face. In the mid 1980s a nutball colonel called Oliver North, working in the White House for Ronald Reagan, began to re-activate a national system of prison camps for lefties from a blueprint that had sat in government filing cabinets ever since the Palmer raids in the Red Scare following World War One. Dick Cheney most certainly dusted it off after 2001. On North’s plan it was safe to assume, as with Cheney’s, that potentially troublesome legal residents would have been locked up, then kicked out.

These are negative reasons, of the sort that guided me in earlier years to elect to be Irish when I got my first passport. I had the choice between the UK and Eire, as it was then called. I was pondering this when our school radios announced in 1956 that the RAF had bombed Ismailia as a first blow in the Suez invasion. The lads in our Patchell’s house room in Glenalmond rose to their feet cheering. My sympathies were with the Egyptians. I remained seated and listened to a heated debate as to whether I should be tried and hanged as a traitor. Plenty of my schoolfellows in this Scotch school had fathers serving in the British armed forces and the mood in Patchell’s was very ugly. Looking at the choleric supporters of the Union Jack it seemed better to be Irish. My brothers Andrew and Patrick made the same decision about Irish citizenship a few years later. Patrick was vindicated in 2005 when Shia fighters at a roadblock in southern Iraq asked to look at his papers and when they saw his passport was Irish let him pass. Patrick reckons that if he had been carrying a UK passport they would have shot him on the spot.

So much for the negative reasons. But I have plenty of positive thoughts about America and am very happy to be stepping aboard what CounterPunch writers describe in unsparing detail each day as a sinking ship. After three and a half decades, why be a non-voting (albeit tax-paying) visitor, particularly if you’ve been dispensing measured counsel for many years on how the country should be run? I’ve lived in every quadrant of the United States and driven across it maybe forty times – not hard when you live in the west and buy old cars from a friend in the southeast. I know the place as well if not better than many.

And though on conventional reckoning it might seem late to start that long journey to the White House, the lure is strong.

Now it’s true that Article 2 of the US Constitution states that “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.” But if we are to believe a flourishing conspiracy movement, Obama has successfully nullified that provision. A substantial number of Americans argue strongly that his father’s Kenyan citizenship, not to mention the refusal of the state of Hawai’i to release his original birth certificate, throw Obama’s eligibility into question. But since Obama will obviously not step down from the presidency even if every allegation is proved true, then Article 2 will be on its way to becoming a dead letter, encouraged in that process by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his supporters.

Mysteries of the sort swirling around Obama’s entry into the world also attended my birth. I was born on June 6 – so my handwritten birth certificate states – in a large house owned by an American woman, a friend of my parents, outside Bonar Bridge, near Inverness. It was wartime and my father, befitting his status as a noted Commie, wasn’t allowed into the Scottish highlands on national security grounds. They wanted to draft him into military service and send him off to be shot by the Germans. Then they worried he would foment mutiny and cancelled his call-up papers. They hoped he would be killed in the blitz, which he nearly was — by the V-2 that blew up our house. He was out buying the paper.

For years my mother claimed I was born on a Sunday and delivered by a doctor in a kilt summoned from a nearby river bank where he was fishing. I looked up June 6, 1941 on my computer recently and it was a Friday, not a Sunday. Three missing days – a gap big enough to drive a presidential bid through.

But who’d want to be president?, you ask. Look at Obama. He talked of change, of hope, of persuading America to sink its differences and move on. Five months later he’s hitting roadblocks manned by forces rougher by far than the Shia who spared Patrick: the insurance industry, the drug companies and the American Medical Association – all of them implacably opposed to his hopes of edging towards some sort of universal health coverage; the Israel lobby and, prime minister Netanyahu, all furious at the idea of curbing Israeli settlements and giving Palestinians a state in fragments of their former land; the arms companies and their sales reps in Congress, who have had free rein for sixty years; the banks whose errand boy Obama has become.

It’ll be eight more impasse-ridden years, and then… it will be time for the man on the white horse, or in my case Agnes, a chestnut mare, half Arab, half thorough-bred, – getting along in years, but a worthy successor to the steed bearing my ancestor, Admiral Sir George Cockburn who entered Washington and torched the White House in 1814. He sent soldiers to the print foundry of the local paper and instructed them to destroy all the Cs , “so that the rascals cannot spell my name.” Running against Washington is always the default option for an American politician. I’m on my way.

JOHN JEAVONS & ECOLOGY ACTION OF THE MIDPENINSULA

“Another world is possible. It is a call to return to the farm, to manual work in dialogue with the mountains, the harvests, the weeds, the animals, the sound of the stream and the whisper of the wind among the pines, the full moon and the waning, the constellations and brother sun. That is to say, it is the manual work of the gardener or farmer with spirituality, a call to the alchemical language of the gardener who understands the language of the birds, the continuation of the work of God: to live in harmony with neighbor and nature.”

— Mario Mejia Gutierrez, National University of Columbia, Palmira

Since 1972 Ecology Action, a 501(c)(3) non-profit has been researching, demonstrating and teaching the GROW BIOINTENSIVE (GB) Method: a biologically-intensive form of agriculture that uses simple, low-tech methods based on a best-practices approach of sustainable food production. The method is designed to be simple and accessible, easy to put into practice and is low-cost, non-polluting, maximizes agricultural yields, builds soil fertility and minimizes inputs of water, energy and fertilizers.

In the four-and-a-half decades since its inception, Ecology Action has initiated programs worldwide to help secure food sovereignty on a local-global level. We have worked with people in over 150 countries in virtually all climates and soils where food can be grown. Our programs are creating a new paradigm where individuals are trained and supported to empower themselves to increase their own health, as well as that of their families and their communities while protecting the environment and creating a “close-loop” organic approach to sustainability.

More than ever, the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Method is proving that a new future is possible when communities are united in peace and sustainability, through our training in simple and accessible sustainable food production techniques.

We are hosting 2 summer programs that run concurrent with our 8-Month International Internship:

• 2-Month Summer Internship for students, farmers and gardeners interested in full-immersion in the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Technique. Our interns live on-site at one of our 3 Northern California research gardens and experience day-to-day life on a mini-farm, gaining practical hands-on experience as well as classroom instruction in sustainable agriculture.
• 9-Part Summer Course Series for those local to Northern California taking place on Saturdays from June 3rd-July 29th from 9am-3PM. Learn all aspects of the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Method through hands-on, guided practice from our expert mini-farmers and certified teachers. 
We invite you to join us this summer to explore the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Method at our research, education and demonstration mini-farms in Northern California. We are each a vital part of the solution and together we can change the world! 
Application Materials and Information can be found at www.growbiointensive.org. The application deadline is May 15th, 2017.

Here is a recent story run on PRI.Org about our work:https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-08-24/small-farmers-around-world-learn-how-they-can-grow-far-more-food

WE'RE OUTTAHERE!

http://www.ktvu.com/news/245185506-story

APPLE BLOSSOM

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I live in New Jersey where the Residents of my Township are walking away from their underwater mega-mortgages to go live with Granny or wherever or get taken away by the authorities (our county has a HUGE heroin “problem” with parents as well as the kiddies) the vacated homes, the blooming house for sale signs and the growing number of working age males putting Johnny on the bus in the morning in the sweatpants are growing signs of bad things ahead. It is all starting to have serious implications on our tax base which is what allows our Township to continue to pay it’s accumulated interest bearing debts (rates are doubling every year now). Those of us that are fighting it are probably too late, but as those who saw it coming, the least we can do is give it our best effort. Wish me luck, I am going to need it.

AUDITIONS FOR CHICAGO!

Gloriana Musical Theatre announces auditions for Chicago! A dazzling and satirical look at fame, justice, and the media machine by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse. Directed by David Strock; Music Director: Marie Claire Dizin; Where: Eagles Hall - 210 N Corry, Fort Bragg, CA; When: Saturday, April 15 - 11:00 am; Call: Please arrive at 11:00 am.

There will be no individual scheduled audition times. Auditions will consist of singing, reading from the script and dancing. Please prepare a song that shows off your vocal range. Pianist will be provided. Everyone will be asked to dance and should bring character shoes for the dance portion of the audition. All parts are open and everyone auditioning will be considered. If you cannot attend auditions please send an email to the director at darnfinedave@gmail.com to arrange a different date or video audition.

Show dates: Performances will run July 27 - August 13. Thur, Friday, Saturday at 7:30 and Sundays at 3:00 (must be available for all performance dates). Rehearsals begin late May. Rehearsal schedule TBA based on the availability of cast and crew. Will likely be on weekends and 3 weeknights. Sign up at http://www.gloriana.org/chicago-auditions

NICOLL PALLINI GROUP RAISING $20,000 FOR ABUSED WOMEN AND CHILDREN

Referral Program Launched to Benefit Project Sanctuary

Ukiah, CA - Women’s issues are at the forefront of national news of late. With potentially huge cuts to funding for health and social programs, women and children may be most impacted. The Nicoll Pallini Group is a local real estate team that is taking action right here in our community to support the needs of women and children in crisis. This year, they are striving to raise $20,000 to support Mendocino County non-profit Project Sanctuary, a rape crisis, domestic violence and shelter program.

Drew Nicoll and Debra Pallini have a combined 36 years of experience in real estate. They have teamed up as the Nicoll Pallini Group (NPG) to innovate in their field and ultimately to give back to their community. They have charitable giving built directly into their business plan.

NPG needs help spreading the word, in order to reach their goal. They are calling on the community to participate in making referrals. As the referral program grows, the more opportunity NPG will have to donate to Project Sanctuary. This program supports the mission of Project Sanctuary, to “prevent domestic violence and sexual assault in Mendocino County through advocacy, crisis response, community collaboration, education and shelter”. It is as easy as spreading the word.

In addition to this fundraising goal NPG will be participating in frequent volunteer and awareness activities to support Project Sanctuary’s. In April, our office, located at 101 North State Street, Ukiah, will be a drop off location for book donations. Donations of new or used children’s books in good condition for all levels are welcome! They will be given to families with children living in emergency and transitional housing. Trained Project Sanctuary volunteers will also use the books for reading groups at the shelter. The office is open M-F from 8am to 5pm.

GOING AROUND THE NORTHCOAST, BEWARE

Credit Card SCAM - Very Clever

This is a heads up for everyone regarding the latest in Visa fraud. Royal Bank received this communication about the newest scam. This is happening in the Midwest right now and moving across the country.   This one is pretty slick, since they provide YOU with all the information, except the one piece they want.   Note, the callers do not ask for your card number; they already have it.   The scam works like this:   Person calling says - 'This is (name) and I'm calling from the Security and Fraud Department at VISA. My Badge number is 12460, your card has been flagged for an unusual purchase pattern, and I'm calling to verify. This would be on your VISA card which was issued by (name of bank). Did you purchase an Anti-Telemarketing Device for $497.99 from a marketing company based in Arizona ?' When you say 'No', the caller continues with, 'Then we will be issuing a credit to your account. This is a company we have been watching, and the charges range from $297 to $497, just under the $500 purchase pattern that flags most cards. Before your next statement, the credit will be sent to (gives you your address). Is that correct?' You say 'yes'.

The caller continues - 'I will be starting a Fraud Investigation. If you have any questions, you should call the 1- 800 number listed on the back of your card (1-800-VISA) and ask for Security. You will need to refer to this Control Number. The caller then gives you a 6 digit number. 'Do you need me to read it again?'   Here's the IMPORTANT part on how the scam works - The caller then says, 'I need to verify you are in possession of your card'. He'll ask you to 'turn your card over and look for some numbers'. There are 7 numbers; the first 4 are part of your card number, the last 3 are the Security Numbers that verify you are the possessor of the card. These are the numbers you sometimes use to make Internet purchases to prove you have the card. The caller will ask you to read the last 3 numbers to him. After you tell the caller the 3 numbers, he'll say, 'That is correct, I just needed to verify that the card has not been lost or stolen, and that you still have your card. Do you have any other questions?'

After you say no, the caller then thanks you and states, 'Don't hesitate to call back if you do', and hangs up. You actually say very little, and they never ask for or tell you the card number. But after we were called on Wednesday, we called back within 20 minutes to ask a question. We were glad we did! The REAL VISA Security Department told us it was a scam and in the last 15 minutes a new purchase of $497.99 was charged to our card. We made a real fraud report and closed the VISA account. VISA is reissuing us a new number. What the Scammer wants is the 3-digit PIN number on the back of the card. Don't give it to them. Instead, tell them you'll call VISA or Master Card directly for verification of their conversation.   The real VISA told us that they will never ask for anything on the card, as they already know the information, since they issued the card! If you give the Scammer your 3 Digit PIN Number, you think you're receiving a credit. However, by the time you get your statement you'll see charges for purchases you didn't make, and by then it's almost too late and/or more difficult to actually file a fraud report.   What makes this more remarkable is that on Thursday, I got a call from a 'Jason Richardson of MasterCard' with a word-for-word repeat of the VISA Scam. This time I didn't let him finish. I hung up! We filed a police report, as instructed by VISA. The police said they are taking several of these reports daily! They also urged us to tell everybody we know that this scam is happening. I dealt with a similar situation this morning, with the caller telling me that $3,097 had been charged to my account for plane tickets to Spain, and so on through the above routine.   It appears that this is a very active scam, and evidently quite successful....   You might consider passing this on to your clients, family and friends.

BIGGER AND BIGGER

AOL and Yahoo will merge their services into a company called "Oath," Business Insider reported on Monday. The two former internet giants are uniting under Verizon, which purchased AOL in 2015, and is expected to finish purchasing Yahoo this month. AOL spokespersons told Business Insider that the company would be launching in summer 2017. It is unclear which services will be combined under the Oath name, and whether Yahoo will continue to exist in any meaningful sense. In January, Yahoo announced that it would change part of the company's name to “Altaba.”

EVERYTHING GOOD MUST BE RUINED

No fan of changes

Editor,

Regarding “All-new South park beckons to everyone” (SF Chronicle, March 26): The first rule of the 21st century is that everything good must be ruined. My partner and I have owned a loft on South Park going on 24 years. I liked South Park the way it was: a nice little park, humble and of a different time. I especially liked the trees and grass. For me, that’s rule one for an urban park: Bring nature into the city. Now its just a giant slab of concrete. I particularly despise the single ambling path. I don’t want to amble. I want to get where I’m going.

I also don’t like the kids park — it looks like a futuristic art sculpture rather than a fun place for kids to play.

Also heartbreaking is the removal of the Academy Award-winning bench. Cate Blanchett won her 2014 best actress Academy Award for her gut-wrenching “Blue Jasmine” closing scene on the bench in the old South Park. Woody Allen never would have filmed in the new South Park.

Second rule of the 21st century: You have to learn to live with the changes you hate. At least President Trump will go away in four years or less.

David Fink

San Francisco

‘UNTIL LOVE DECIDES’:

Marcos Pereda plays at Grace Hudson First Friday event

by Roberta Werdinger

Until love decides to return me to the sun
I have a silence to sculpt and a heart to sail...
— Marcos Pereda, "Hasta que el Amor," from the CD Cositas de Mar

On Friday, April 7, at Ukiah’s First Friday Artwalk, the Grace Hudson Museum will play host to singer and songwriter Marcos Pereda from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The event is free and refreshments will be served.

Cuban-born Marcos Pereda was immersed in the multifaceted Cuban musical tradition, where influences from Europe, Africa, and the Americas all come into play. His grandmother, a choir director, taught him to sing; his mother managed a salsa band. Naturally, artists and musicians surrounded Pereda. He was influenced by a Cuban movement known as nueva trova (which can be translated as "New Troubadour" or "New Ballad"), whose main proponents include fellow Cubans Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés. Similar to the "folkie" scene of Greenwich Village in the 50s and 60s, nueva trova emphasizes poetic lyrics that turn inward to create reflective moods and outward to critique the social order.

While in Cuba, Pereda met Mary Paffard, a Mendocino County resident and yoga teacher who travels regularly to Cuba to create cultural interchanges and give yoga classes. Adding the contemplative practices of yoga and meditation to his repertoire deepened Pereda's relationship with the music he'd grown up with even more, resulting in an exquisite blend of passion, technical precision, and spiritual insight. Paffard invited him to California to play a concert; discovering Mendocino County through her, he has made it his home since 1999. He now plays widely throughout Northern California, teaches at the Lake Tahoe Spanish Immersion Program, and has just released his second CD, Cositas de Mar, recorded with guitar whiz Alex de Grassi. Copies of the CD will be on sale at the event.

Visitors to the Museum can also take in the current exhibit, Wild Fabrications, a juried art quilt show that celebrates a world of animals--both real and fantastical--in which worldwide members of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) let their imaginations run wild.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

2017 READING SERIES BEGINS THIS WEDNESDAY!

The Mendocino Theatre Company opens its 2017 Reading Series this Wednesday, April 5th at 7pm with a reading of The Goosefoot Tango: A Love Story, written and performed by Susan Maeder. This reading is part of the "Almost Fringe Festival". Readings will be presented on selected Wednesdays throughout the year at the theatre, 45200 Little Lake Rd., Mendocino, on the campus of the Mendocino Art Center. Please check our calendar <http://mendocinotheatre.org/events/> for dates. Admission and seating is on a first-come basis; suggested donation is $10.