Mendocino County Today: Sunday, May 7, 2017

• Robertson Paintings
• Mendo History
• Arrest Kings
• Addressing Homelessness
• Little Dog
• Hospitality Crackdown
• Illegal Homes
• Customer Appreciation
• Vampire System
• Grange Decision
• Manbeater Champ
• Cousins
• Babble On
• Patently Offensive
• Yesterday's Catch
• Lee Miller
• Socialized Medicine
• Hate Speech
• Star Lily
• Basic Income
• Attractive Vampire
• Mendocino Theatre
• Frog Count
• Library Events
• Park Insurrection
• Marco Radio

MARY ROBERTSON'S NEW PAINTINGS at Thomas Reynolds Gallery

We’re pleased to present new paintings by Mary Robertson

May 13 - June 10, 2017

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 13, from 5 to 7 p.m.

For more than 30 years, Mary Robertson has been capturing the reflected light of the Russian River, which flows by her Guerneville studio. Her intimate paintings explore the beaches, umbrellas, floats and canoes that surround her — and always the light. Said artist Wayne Thiebaud of Robertson's work: “These joyous and meditative paintings are colorful simulations of contentment and sacred play."

Preview The Exhibition

Video: “Shut Up and Paint!”

Thomas Reynolds Gallery, 1906 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, CA 94115, 415.676.7689, www.thomasreynolds.com

WRITING MENDOCINO COUNTY’S HISTORY…

Considering that it hasn’t been done in over 100 years it’s about time someone wrote a history of Mendocino County and your trusty historian here is going to do it. One hundred fifty years from 1852-2002 will be covered and I’m putting the word out to readers…”What Should I Include?”

Obviously all the standard stuff you’d expect will be in it…Exploration, early settlements, natural features, industry, health & education, transportation, agriculture & mining…but where it will get interesting is in the human interest part of the history. Like famous people…do we include criminals? Black Bart and Jim Jones were both criminals but they were imports, not county natives, so do we include them? I’m fascinated by Carl Purdy and Edith Van Allen Murphy, both botanists who worked in the county but were not natives?

How about the horse Seabiscuit who lived at Ridgewood Ranch? He’s not human but he was famous and a prize winner. Does he qualify for the book? Will people want to know about the hot springs and mineral springs of the county? And the herds of white fallow deer around the county…Do you want to know how they came to be here?

My research is just starting. For example I was looking at mineral resources of Mendocino County on the internet and found about 200 places that had for claims for specific minerals filed. And lo and behold…an answer to a question rose some months ago in the AVA about Little Penny, a location out Fish Rock Road. Seems there was a Redwood Copper Queen Mine near Fish Rock and Zeni Roads 25 miles west of Cloverdale and I’d bet that was where Little Penny was. Copper…pennies…see the connection?

How about a shoot out in Willits early years that killed more people in a few minutes than the gunfight at OK Corral that was made into a movie? Then there is the drama around Redwood Summer and the Whale Wars that both happened here. And the whole long story of going from a logging economy to a cannabis economy, that needs to be addressed. And when did wine grapes become the major agriculture product of the county?

Then there are our ethnic communities throughout the county…lots of Chinese, Finns, Portuguese and other groups…they’ll be there. Could the back-to-the-land hippies of the 1970’s be considered an intentional community? Was the Mendocino State Hospital outside Ukiah an industry? It employed hundreds of people for decades, or was it just a hospital? Did you even know the county grew great crops of tobacco during the Civil War because tobacco was unavailable from the South?

I am not planning on writing a tome of statistics that will cost a fortune; I’m projecting a fact filled paperback full of interesting history that will cost around $20 and be about 250 pages (and it may take me a few years to get it done). I promise lots of photographs will be included too. So the question to readers is: What do you want to read about?

And remember, it will stop at 2002. I am inviting folks to contact me by e-mail (ktahja@mcn.org) or snail mail (K. Tahja, P.O. Box 194, Comptche CA 95427) and let me know what you think is worthy of inclusion.

WE'RE TAKING BETS FOR 2017

Regarding "Thomas Sanders On A Record-Setting Pace For Most Arrests In 2017"…

Sanders racked up three quick arrests the beginning of May (1, 2 & 4) whereas John Bolton rang up five quick ones in February of this year (8, 10, 12, 14 & 19).

Streaky tipplers, both.

Searching back the past couple years, here's how these two heavyweights match up (edge to Sanders, but both seem to be slowing):

Thomas Sanders 2016 (19 arrests); Feb 2; Mar 10, 26, 27, 30; May 3, 11, 12, 23, 30; Jul 15, 22, 27; Aug 2, 7, 9, 12; Sep 2, 24

John Bolton 2016 (15 arrests): Jan 6, 8, 21, 23, 26; May 11; Jun 11, 16, 22; Aug 31; Nov 23; Dec 18, 20, 29, 31

Thomas Sanders 2015 (24 arrests): Jan 8, 11, 17, 19, 24, 31; Apr 26; Jun 9, 25, 29; Jul 8, 10, 11, 20, 22, 24; Oct 11, 13, 14, 16, 30; Dec 5, 9, 11

John Bolton 2015 (24 arrests); Jan 16; Feb 16, 20, 21, 23; Mar 8; Apr 29; May 28; Jun 3; Jul 18, 19, 30; Aug 2, 16, 21, 26; Sep 2, 30; Oct 5, 7; Nov 2, 30; Dec 16, 20

UKIAH POLICE DEPARTMENT EXPLORING WAYS TO ADDRESS HOMELESSNESS

by Justine Frederiksen

While presenting his annual report this week, Ukiah Police Chief Chris Dewey said his department is already doing a “phenomenal job” serving the city, but there are ways it could improve.

“If there’s one thing I hear over and over again, it is how frustrated people are with traffic,” said Dewey, telling the Ukiah City Council Wednesday that his department “needs a traffic enforcement officer if we really want to make a positive impact.”

Another challenging issue his department and the city have struggled with for many years is the human population living on the streets, both the chronically homeless and the transients passing through.

“People ask, ‘why don’t you do something about this?’” said Dewey, describing citizens who don’t understand why the campers they constantly see loitering and leaving trash near their homes and businesses can’t just be gotten rid of once and for all.

“Homelessness is really a challenge, because we are balancing someone’s human rights with a community’s expectations,” he said. “We want to make sure the community is safe, but also not violate an individual’s human rights.”

Another factor becoming increasingly restrictive on his officers is the lack of space at the Mendocino County Jail, which Dewey said was designed to house 300 inmates.

“But on a typical day now, it has 310 to 340 inmates, meaning our officers have to be more selective about who they arrest (particularly when it comes to less violent offenses like camping),” he said. “We are often forced to cite people out, and when we do that, the problem is more likely to re-occur.”

To find new ways to approach the problem and lessen its impacts, Dewey said he is having his Innovation Team, which was launched in conjunction with City Manager Sage Sangiacomo, focus on the homeless and transient population.

“Capt. Justin Wyatt volunteered to head that effort,” said Dewey, explaining that Wyatt is communicating with many other departments both nearby and across the state to find out what is working and how Ukiah might improve its approach.

“We are finding that the communities that are the most successful focus on trying to get people into services, and only using enforcement as a last resort,” he said. “As we move forward we’re tying to create relationships with the county, faith-based groups and other organizations in the community to explore new methods we can use.”

Dewey said he hoped soon to be able to present the City Council with evidence of the “impacts transients and homeless are having on the city and the surrounding county, then present ways we might be able to adjust our existing ordinances and use those tools to help our officers do a better job.”

Another approach his department is exploring is having its new crime analyst “tracking the calls to see what happens to the transients after they are arrested: are they cited for camping? Was it a mental health call?”

When Dewey asked the City Council for comments or questions after his report, Council member Steve Scalmanini said he was surprised to hear there were people camping outdoors while the homeless shelter was open, referring to the latest encampment the UPD plans to clean soon near the Mendocino Brewing Company at the end of Airport Park Boulevard.

However, that represents just one example of the campers officers consistently encounter. According to the daily logs published by the UPD, every day the shelter was open officers responded to calls about people camping near the Railroad Depot along East Perkins Street, downtown in the Alex R. Thomas Jr. plaza, near the former Sears location in the 100 block of South Orchard Avenue and just north of there near J.C. Penney and Chipotle, in the baseball fields in Riverside Park, in Orr Creek underneath the Orchard Bridge and the Orr Street Bridge, and countless other public spaces people are trying to make their private living spaces.

“There’s something going on that I don’t understand yet about people who don’t want to be in the shelter,” Scalmanini said.

“Regardless of how big of a homeless shelter we build, there’s going to be some people that won’t stay in it,” Dewey said. “They don’t want to follow the rules, or they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol. This is a very complicated issue, and there won’t be one solution. There will be a host of solutions to solve the problem.”

(Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I’m getting older now, but I still remember that wonderful advice my doguru gave me back in the 70s.”

NO OFFICIAL WORD yet on what it all means, but the City of Fort Bragg may be cracking down on the Hospitality Center and/or Hospitality House for violation of HC's use permit. And/or the Hospitality Center may be preparing to sue Fort Bragg for cracking down on them.

City of Fort Bragg - File #: 17-252

Title

Conference With Legal Counsel - Anticipated Litigation: Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to Paragraph (2) of Subdivision (d) of Section 54956.9: One (1) Potential Case

https://cityfortbragg.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3033923&GUID=67D570E9-1DF5-44C0-84DF-B5F819FD25DA

ENFORCEMENT OF BAN ON VACATION HOME RENTALS

The City of Fort Bragg will begin another round of enforcement on illegal vacation homes in Fort Bragg. The City Council’s policy is that vacation home rentals are not permitted in residential neighborhoods in Fort Bragg. People who operate illegal vacation home rentals will be subject to a fine and/or a misdemeanor citation for: 1) operating a business in violation of the City’s zoning ordinance; 2) operating a business without a business license; and 3) failure to pay Transient Occupancy Taxes. If you are operating an illegal vacation home rental, please be forewarned that the City enforcement efforts will cover all advertising on Airbnb, Craig’s List, VRBO and similar platforms. The City Council does not allow vacation home rentals in Fort Bragg neighborhoods because they decrease available housing, increase the cost of rental housing, and may impact neighborhoods with excess parking, noise and traffic.

(MendocinoSportsPlus)

ANDERSON VALLEY FARM SUPPLY’S big Customer Appreciation Day will be May 19th from 9:00am-6:00pm at their popular store in Philo. Food, drinks and Farm Supply vendors with samples. And a raffle!

JAMES MARMON quoting, I believe, from the Willits Weekly:

“Supervisors on Tuesday allocated money to two local agencies that will assist the county in implementing its new “differential response” policy. Differential response is a family-and-child welfare practice in which families judged to have a relatively low potential for dysfunction, but who still need counseling, will be directed to non-county personnel for counseling. To that end, supervisors approved a contract with First 5 Mendocino for $162,000 for services from May of this year to June 30 of next year. A second contract was approved with Redwood Community Services for $292,246 for the same term.”

THIS, in a nutshell, is how Mendocino County works. The Supervisors shovel public money to their friends and political allies in the helping professions, the seemingly endless non-profits allegedly doing good things for dependent people, especially children. If anybody from the County knocked on my door and said, "We think your family has the potential for dysfunction and we're here to see that you don't topple all the way into…" I would go immediately into full noncompliance mode.

THIS IS JUST straight-up racketeering, gifts of public funds to create more dependence not less. And no follow-up or even a mild inquiry if the half-million dollars is doing any good. You can count on that.

I THINK we need to eliminate First Five, Health and Human Services, and privateers like Redwood Community, and combine them into a single, round-the-clock daycare center staffed by these people — in other words, a place that is specifically helpful to specific people, especially children, who need it. As it works now, we fund a vampire system that preys on the defenseless, not helps them.

CHATTING with a local Grange guy: he says wants to stay with the National Grange because he doesn't think there's enough revenue to sustain a breakaway Grange/Guild. He was leaning pro-Guild until last weekend’s presentation by both sides at the Philo Grange. This guy doesn't like National's "pseudo-religious rituals" (based on its midwest roots) but the big revenue from the National’s Grange insurance program that many farmers have makes them pretty much sue-proof. He also thinks as a guild they'd be tied up in wasteful court fights over who owns the possible breakaway group's buildings. Given the court’s partiality to litigants with big money, there's a good chance the breakawayers would lose in the end after wasting lots of money on lawyers. This all in a context of dwindling membership.

OUR ALL-TIME man beater was selected after this incident: A young logger was pretty much immobilized and confined to his couch with a broken leg. The woman he thought was his girl friend appears to tell him she's pregnant with his best friend's baby. He tells her to leave. She doesn't and soon picks up his bedpan and dumps its contents on him. Then, as he tries to get up to defend himself, she grabs his crutch and swings it repeatedly into his broken leg. Family members finally separate them. He calls the cops, she's arrested for a felony-level domestic assault. Looking at her booking photo, you see a small, attractive young woman and say to yourself, "No way. This woman did all that?"

COUSINS AT THE BALLPARK

BABBLE ON

Machtig Redaktor,

Krukow talks too much? He's a corpse compared to the bubbly babbler Miller! Jeez Louise man, are you deaf?

Jay Williamson

Santa Rosa

ED NOTE: Miller's witty, though.

ON THE OFF CHANCE you're wondering if painfully un-funny Colbert, and instant chloroform Bill Maher should be penalized for their stupid and vulgar Trump "jokes," here's the FCC standard: "It must appeal to an average person's prurient interest; depict or describe sexual conduct in a ‘patently offensive’ way; and, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." Both these guys meet the ‘patently offensive’ stipulation, Colbert for his "In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c**k holster.” Maher for this: “What do you make of Ivanka and her efforts to sort of humanize her father? We see all this misogyny at Fox News, we see it in Donald Trump himself. A lot of us thought: Ivanka is gonna be our saving grace. When he’s about to nuke Finland or something, she’s gonna walk into the bedroom and—‘Daddy, Daddy' mimicking Ivanka giving her father a handjob. ‘Don’t do it, Daddy’.”

THESE oafs are real laff riots.

CATCH OF THE DAY, May 6, 2017

JARNAILJASHAWN BAHIA, Fort Bragg. Battery.

JEFFREY BROSSARD, Fort Bragg. Paraphernalia.

JOSE CEJA-LOPEZ, Ukiah. DUI-drugs&alcohol.

MARCO DAVILA, Point Arena. Drunk in public.

RYAN ERTADO, Hopland. Arson.

CAMERON HAMMOND, Ukiah. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

RYAN LOCKWOOD, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

PATRICIA MOORE, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

DANIEL NICHOLAS, Hayward. Drunk in public, resisting.

NATHAN OHL, Laytonville. Drunk in public.

DAVID PIERCE III, Laytonville. DUI.

DESIREA RODARTE, Fort Bragg. Controlled substance, paraphernalia, probation revocation.

BRIAN SCHAT, Ukiah. Under influence.

DAYNICE SHILLINGS, Ukiah. Domestic battery, vandalism.

WILLIAM TAYLOR, Redwood Valley. DUI.

MIKAYLA THRILKILL, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

TODD WAGNER, Laytonville. Pot cultivation, pot possession for sale, armed with assault rifle, ex-felon with firearm, ammo possession by prohibited person, purchase/possession of stun gun by person convicted of a felony, probation revocation.

CHRYSTAL WILLIAMS, Redwood Valley. Drunk in public.

THE BODY OF LEE MILLER, FOUND OBJECT

by Manuel Vicent

Translated by Louis S. Bedrock

This is the story of a very beautiful woman who was a model, a muse, a photographer, and a war correspondent; whose splendid body was incessantly devoured by privileged men of their time while in turn she destroyed them with her diabolical innocence.

From the time she was eight years old when she was raped by a friend of her family, Lee Miller was unable to distinguish sex from love even though her parents sent her to a psychiatrist to explain it to her. That violation caused a severe case of gonorrhea and when her mother treated the infection with painful irrigations, the screams of the little girl in the bathroom could be heard on the street.

Later, she was just another adolescent who could not understand why the beauty of female flesh sometimes became an inferno that scorched the people downstairs, the neighborhood shopkeepers, the teachers in the classroom, and her own father, who was a photography enthusiast. With his camera, he imbibed her nude body in all imaginable positions without pausing at the borders of incest. In fact, Lee Miller was a great war correspondent: among all those in her profession, she was closest to the flying shrapnel during the landing at Normandy and she defied it. She did so with a suicidal audacity perhaps because her body had been her primary battleground since she was a little girl.

She was born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1907. At the age of 18, after being expelled from college, this blond haired American woman in all her youthful splendor, bearing a notebook filled with poems in her pocket, made her first trip to Paris with the intention of not depriving herself of any sensation. From the first moment, she knew that Paris would be her real motherland.

When she went back home, first she was a model for Vogue magazine in New York, where the photographer Edward Steichen had discovered her in the street. After possessing her, he taught her the fundamentals of photography. But it was in 1929, when Lee Miller returned to Paris, that she landed like an explosive device in the midst of the golden bohemians of Montparnasse and during the initial reconnoitering she moved from the arms of one man to those of another under multiple bed sheets until the American photographer Man Ray captured this wild woman and made her his in exchange for teaching her the ultimate secrets of photography.

The body of Lee Miller became the focus of creation for the camera of Man Ray. The artist dismembered it into diverse parts and every part became an icon. The lips of Lee Miller, an eye, her legs, her back, her buttocks, her neck, her torso, her face, were captured separately. When removed from context, according to the aesthetic theory of Duchamp, they were converted into found objects, in ready-mades—a concept that changed the form of art in the entire twentieth century up to our own day.

But at the same time that the body of Lee Miller was being taken apart, her soul was acquiring a perverse essence for one hero who attempted to explore what was beneath her skin. Jean Cocteau, who admired her but did not desire her, converted her into a statue.

From the bed of Man Ray, she moved to the bed of Picasso and there wasn’t an artist who deserved her who didn’t sample her; in exchange, these artists were quickly abandoned.

In Paris, between the two world wars, in addition to the Russian aristocrats who served as dapper doormen in the cabarets, there were always Arab princes walking along La Coupole stalking doe. In this particular case, the prince’s name was Aziz Eloui Bey and he was an Egyptian whose ears were inexhaustible fountains of gold coins. Lee Miller was one of his catches and she followed him to Cairo excited by the in-vogue exoticism. But in Egypt there was nothing but mummies. She got bored.

Bound by her marriage to the Arab, Lee Miller had only the desert as a refuge to nourish her imagination. But from the infinite stretches of sand, she remembered the parties of Paris, the trips to the island of Santa Margarita or The Antibes, where she was the queen of the golden army formed by Picabia, the art collector and critic Roland Penrose, Picasso himself, who had immortalized her in his paintings. Linens and flannels beneath pine trees, armchairs in which a state of ecstasy was shared by the nude bodies of ballerinas, writers, and painters amid alcohol and other drugs and where the highest level of fascination was achieved by knowing that your were inebriated within the rules of the avant-garde and not go over the cliff.

During an encounter in the Costa Azul, the English aesthete Roland Penrose and Lee Miller became lovers and settled in England where they shared a long secret affair. The Egyptian millionaire was left in the rearguard during this battle.

At this time, Lee Miller sent her first work as a photographer to Vogue magazine and in the middle of her frenzied life, war arrived.

Lee Miller began photographing the bombing of London and although she continued to be Penrose’s lover, she was soon sharing the bed of the journalist David Scherman from Life magazine with whom she embarked on a new adventure that would take her back to Paris behind the tanks of the allies.

The myth of Lee Miller is conceived when she manages to transcend all the sophisticated frivolity of her days in Paris, which was not without its own perversity, and becomes the most daring witness of the barbarity of her time.

While her friends were running away from this barbarity amid the Nazi terror, Lee Miller in heavy trousers, a hard leather jacket, a camera dangling from her shoulder, and in the company of David Scherman, forgets the days of roses when her body was worshipped. She embeds her blond hair in a steel helmet so she can be the first one to walk among the dead bodies on Omaha Beach, to arrive in liberated Paris where Picasso greeted her without recognizing her at first because she was covered with mud, to photograph the concentration camp at Dachau, Berlin in flames, the lairs of the Gestapo, the field hospitals, and the piles of cadavers.

Later, the pair travels to the confines of Soviet Europe, until Penrose, burning from jealously, reclaims her. Lee returns to London. She divorces the Egyptian millionaire and marries the English collector and critic. The wild ride between beauty and bravery had ended and her life blurs amid the parties shared with Penrose’s new lovers until, through an irony of destiny, she becomes pregnant at the age of 39.

She gives birth to a son. She devotes herself to family life. She puts thousands of negatives in a drawer, forgets about her past, of her days in Paris, and of the concentration camps. She begins a period of her life as mistress of the kitchen. She devises recipes. She cleans spinach in the washing machine. She cooks a blue fish in front of the fireplace in honor of Miró with a toilet bowl lid on her head to protect her from the fat: vestiges of the surrealism her husband Roland imported to England.

In 1977, at the age of 70, Lee Miller died of cancer. Among her personal possessions, her son Anthony finds a forgotten box that contains thousands of negatives.

The myth of Lee Miller comes from the great beauty of her body cut up into pieces: her lips, her eyes, her legs—all arranged by the camera of Man Ray as a proposal for a new way of viewing art—along with the bicycle wheel on a stool, the small chocolate grinder, the urinal/fountain, and bottle rack of Duchamp. All these objects were contemplated outside their normal context, from new perspective that was not retinal, but mental. These elements turned aesthetics upside down and the revolution of the twentieth century was due more to them than it was to Matisse and Picasso.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

It’s interesting to see the reaction of republicans when socialized medicine is brought up. I remember back after “W” was reelected, he went on a campaign to have social security privatized. He appeared in front of many adoring audiences who, even though they loved him, did not want their social security privatized. His efforts went for naught. Social security is socialism plain & simple, and even though people don’t want to give it up, they can’t make the leap and see that socialized medicine would benefit them as much as SS. They get sold that same line from the Republicans that it’s a death trap. If the Republicans are to be believed, you can always spot a Canadian health care clinic by looking for the pile of bodies stacked outside which consists of people who died waiting for health care. It’s pure propaganda. It would be just as beneficial for people as Social Security is. When I have told Canadians how much I pay for health insurance and prescriptions, they have laughed right in my face. Every month when I go to pick up my prescriptions I have to prepare to get screwed. I’ve heard all the bullshit lines the Republicans spew on the subject, and all I can say is I guess if you’re stupid enough to believe them, maybe you deserve to be screwed.

FREE SPEECH

Editor,

I read with interest Nayvin Gordon's letter proposing hate speech laws in the United States in the February 22 edition.

https://www.theava.com/archives/65844#4

He proposes that "hate speech" leads to violence, therefore we need to criminalize it as dangerous, likening it to shouting fire in a crowded theater. He cites some dubious neuroscience and leaps to some unwarranted conclusions based on this. I seem to recall "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech."

First, we should note that the "fire in a crowded theater" concept comes from a US Supreme Court decision penned by Oliver Wendell Holmes in Schenck v. United States which upheld the conviction of Charles Schenk for distributing an anti-conscription pamphlet during World War I. This decision was nullified in 1969, so the "fire in a crowded theater" concept has had no legal validity for nearly 50 years. Also of note is that Holmes also said, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" in his decision in Buck v. Bell, which authorized the compulsory sterilization of Carrie Buck, her mother, and her daughter. A further 70,000 people in the United States were sterilized against their will in subsequent decades until 1974. These compulsory sterilization laws were the model on which Adolf Hitler based his "Law for the Prevention Of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring," the basis for the Holocaust. In the Nuremberg trials after World War II Nazi doctors cited Buck v. Bell in their defense.

Be careful who you get in bed with.

I encourage Nayvin to learn something about the history and philosophy of freedom of speech and why this is so important to maintaining human freedom as well as combating hate speech. Without freedom of speech we will be unable to hear and examine bad ideas and unable to refute them. If Nayvin is concerned about the harm that "hate speech" might cause, I would encourage him to consider the harm that would come from restricting speech.

So let me ask Nayvin some questions and try to walk him through this:

“Kill the niggers!”

“Kill the Jews!”

“Kill the queers!”

Do you consider these to be examples of hate speech that should be criminalized? They certainly target minorities and openly incite violence against them. Should those who say such things be arrested and jailed? Yes or no, Nayvin?

How about these:

“Kill Whitey!” (chant at a Black Lives Matter protest)

“Kill all men!” (Popular slogan among feminists).

“What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!" (Another popular BLM chant)

"I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig." — Andrea Dworkin, feminist.

Again, each of these targets a specific minority and encourages violence against them. Should these be criminalized? Should those who say such things be arrested and jailed? Yes or no? Why?

Let's dial it back a notch:

"Black people are inferior. They have lower IQs and have a propensity to violence." (Racist beliefs.)

"Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to black people." — Malcolm X., 1963.

"To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo." — Valerie Solanas, feminist.

"The Jews got a stranglehold on the Congress." — Lewis Farrakhan, black racist goofball.

"I feel that man-hating is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class hatred against a class that is oppressing them." — Robin Morgan, Editor, Ms. magazine.

"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it." — Barbara Jordan, former congresswoman.

Each of these targets a specific minority, calling them inferior or inciting hatred against them, yet none of them call for violence. Without the call for violence, should these also be criminalized? Should those who say such things be arrested and jailed? Yes or no? Why?

Okay, let's get uncomfortable here:

"And kill them (unbelievers) wherever you find them." -- Koran (2:191)

"They (unbelievers) should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned." -- Koran (5:33)

"I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them." -- Koran (8:12)

"So, when you meet those who disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them, then bind a bond firmly (i.e., take them as captives)." -- Koran (47:3-4)

Again, each of these targets a specific group and encourages violence against them. These ideas have resulted in real violence throughout the world. The Pulse nightclub -- I rest my case. Should these be criminalized? Should those who say such things be arrested and jailed? Yes or no? Why?

Is the First Amendment protection of freedom of religion more important than freedom of speech? If we look at the numbers of deaths caused by Islam versus freedom of speech, Nayvin should be proposing shutting down mosques and banning the Koran. If "hate speech" trumps the First Amendment, can we ban Islam? Yes or no? Why?

I will be interested to hear how Nayvin deals with these. All are very simple examples and should pose no problems for Nayvin to explain to us which ones should or should not be criminalized and why.

I have no problem identifying all the quotes above as hateful and repellent. But would I criminalize them? Absolutely not! We need hate speech. How will we refute bad ideas if they are driven underground? I know it may be counterintuitive, but hate speech is essential to a free and egalitarian society. Allowing those with racist or sexist ideas to freely air them actually reduces hatred. The free exchange of ideas will ensure that good ideas will prevail.

Driving ideas underground gives them power. Bottling up such ideas can cause them to explode. "A riot is the language of the unheard." -- Martin Luther King. Accusing people of being racist or sexist, and wagging a finger at them will only increase polarization and hostility. When I speak with racista, feminists, Islamists, and others who expound ideologies of hatred I disagree with, I listen politely to them and actually find out what their ideas and concerns are. Then I can address their concerns, talk with them about factual inaccuracies, and perhaps they will listen to me in turn. A kind word turneth aside anger.

I've actually read quite a few racist writings, consequently I am familiar with their arguments and I can counter them with reasoned arguments of my own. I know very intelligent anti-racists who have been completely flummoxed by certain racist arguments because they have never been exposed to them. So they have no intellectual tools to refute them. One, after reading the Bell curve, worried that, "Gee, they make a pretty good case." (No they don't.) So they were snowed because they did not know the material. Will the racist books on my shelf which I use to understand their arguments and refute them become contraband? Yes or no? Why?

Nayvin mentioned the Ku Klux Klan. Where are they now? Good ideas won. The Klan has not had their freedom of speech limited, yet they are now just a tiny, irrelevant joke. We did not overcome the Klan by criminalizing their ideas or speech.

Nayvin mentions Canada, France, Germany, England and Australia as having enacted "hate speech" laws. These laws have been used in those countries to jail people who criticize government policies. And he forgot to mention China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Gaza, Turkey, Iran, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Singapore, and let's not forget ISIS. All of these have strong laws restricting what they consider harmful speech. Be careful what you wish for -- you might end up beheaded as in Saudi Arabia. If you get in bed with totalitarians, don't blame me if we don't respect you in the morning.

Nayvin believes that speech may lead to violence, therefore it can be restricted in order to prevent harm. So in order to prevent harm we can remove a fundamental human freedom? If this is so, would they then support mandatory weight loss for fat people? Obesity causes far more deaths in the US than "hate speech," and the costs to our medical system and in lost productivity are enormous. If taking away freedom is okay to prevent harm, then what argument do you have against arresting fat folks and putting them in "diet and exercise camps" until they reach a weight which you deem healthy? Yes or no?

The freedom to overeat is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, unlike the freedom of speech. So why not create "fat camps"? It's for their own good!

Alcohol use causes tens of thousands of deaths each year and contributes to interpersonal violence. Should we prohibit alcohol? Oh wait. We tried that, didn't we? And Prohibition increased alcohol related deaths and created huge organized crime syndicates which still plague us today. Cannabis? All of the harmful effects associated with cannabis -- crime, robbery, killings at grow sites, environmental degradation around large-scale illegal grows, associated gang crime -- all are the results of criminalization. Consider the massive violence caused by the narcocartels in Latin America, all entirely caused by prohibition.

Nayvin assumes his own views are correct and that his opinion on what is "hate speech" is what will be enforced. He should consider the possibility that others’ views might be enforced against him in turn. Beware -- the tools you create to fight your enemies may then be used against you. The United Nations has proposed criminalizing speech advocating drug decriminalization. There have been called in this country to criminalize "global warming denial," just as Holocaust denial is illegal in much of Europe. In New Zealand, there are calls for outlawing criticism of feminism. After the alar (pesticide) in apples scare there were attempts to criminalize "defaming food products." Some want to ban anti-vaccine speech, anti-GMO speech. Would you trust Trump to determine what ideas would be criminalized?

Many persons consider any criticism of Islam, its treatment of gays, women, and religious minorities, or its record on human rights, to be expressions of "Islamophobia," and therefore hate speech. The OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperration, 57 countries) is working through the United Nations to criminalize speech that criticizes Islam. Under this proposal, which would override the U.S. Constitution, any criticism of Islam, including factual statements, would be criminalized. Do you want to go there, Nayvin?

Nayvin, by proposing that hate speech be silenced, has therefore legitimized the violence that was committed by the thugs who rioted in Berkeley earlier this year. The thugs smashed windows, set fires and beat up "Nazis." You, Nayvin, have therefore participated in that crime by legitimizing it.

So let us now consider the basic argument -- speech that incites violence is "hate speech." What is a law? It is the threat of force -- if you do such and such, you will be fined or jailed. If you resist, armed men will come to your house and take you away at gunpoint and lock you in a cage. Ultimately, all law rests on violence. Therefore, Nayvin's letter is in fact hate speech directed at me -- he is inciting state violence against me if I express an opinion he does not approve of.

Please think through your ideas, and consider unintended consequences.

Nayvin states, "Brain activity in the emotional center is also strongly correlated with a person's commitment to social status, for example, strong belief in racial superiority and economic inequalities." Brain activity in the emotional center is also strongly correlated with other positive emotions so why the unjustified leap to racism? Perhaps he should consider the same effect working on him. His sentence, "Those who are committed to racist ideas of social superiority can also feel threatened during times of social unrest," can easily be changed to, "those who are committed to the latest ideas of social and moral superiority can also feel threatened during times of social unrest and instability, again activating emotional arousal in their primitive brain." Does Nayvin really believe he is immune, that his own concern with social standing and moral superiority does not affect him?

Nayvin adds, "Hate, fear and anger are a primitive brain response which cloud the mind's ability to see how much more alike we are than different." Exactly, Nathan. Your fear of current political changes has clouded your abilities to see how much you are like the racists you fear. Yours is just a different brand of bigotry, intolerance and authoritarianism.

You are either for freedom or you are the enemy of freedom...

Schoolmarmish moral busybodies have plagued humanity for ages. We need to stand up to them. Remember "freedom of the press"? Bruce Anderson, they will come for you next.

Best wishes,

David Thedoropoulos

La Honda

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: A LAISSEZ-FAIR FUTURE?

by Scott Ferguson

There is growing excitement on the contemporary Left about the so-called Universal Basic Income (UBI) or, what is alternatively known as the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG). Under this scheme, government is supposed to provide every person with a regular stipend and do so without requiring one to engage in any particular form of social work.

The idea, as Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams argue in their forthcoming book, Inventing the Future: Post-capitalism and a World without Work (Verso, 2015), is to create a new “redistribution mechanism” that will “transform precarity,” “recognize social labor,” “make class power easier to organize,” and “extend the space in which to experiment with how we organize communities and families.” With these admirable and deliberately far-reaching aims, Srnicek and Williams position the UBI at the center of what they see as a bold, systemic and forward-looking critical project: one that would move from critique to praxis and replace a crumbling neoliberal infrastructure with a more just and sustainable order. The final aim of this new order? The end of paid work and the beginning of the post-capitalist era. In response to the scourge of jobless recoveries and the onslaught of new automation technologies, Srnicek and Williams conclude that all signs point to an oncoming “post-work society” and that “the classic social democratic demand for full employment should be replaced with the demand for full unemployment.”

In Srnicek and Williams’s hands, the Universal Basic Income ascends from its middling status in think tanks and social media to the heights of intellectual rigor and savvy associated with critical theory. Theorists such as Steven Shaviro have already begun to debate the possibilities and limits of Srnicek and Williams’s UBI revolution, and will no doubt continue to do so for some time. Yet before diving headlong into this UBI future, I offer a few words of caution that are likely to throw a wrench in the works.

My claim, here, is that Srnicek and Williams’s Inventing the Future errs in the way it poses the problem of unemployment under neoliberalism and that this confused formulation generates a desire for UBI that is not only politically wrongheaded, but also contradicts the book’s professed goal of systemic transformation. The UBI may provide relief from some contemporary ills. But I suggest that it cannot bear the weight of the total transformation Srnicek and Williams are after.

At the heart of Srnicek and Williams’s analytical misstep, I argue, lies an unreflected Liberal vision of money and unemployment. According to this Liberal imaginary, money appears as a finite thing-cum-process, which belongs to the volatile domain of private capital and finance. Upon the basis of this conventional image of money, Srnicek and Williams then presume Liberalism’s other great myth: that unemployment is a direct result of market vagaries and increased automation. To be fair, most critical theorists indebted to Marxist political-economy subordinate the money relation to a totality they term “capitalism” and, from here, envision unemployment as a necessary effect of this totality’s unruly transformations. The difference is that Srnicek and Williams seek a fresh and transformative solution to this seemingly intractable problem; to them, the Universal Basic Income is just what the doctor ordered. Leaving collapsing labor markets behind, while looking forward to a fully automated tomorrow, these authors surmise that UBI is the best solution on offer.

Yet when one turns to the heterodox school of economic thought known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), we discover that there is, in fact, nothing necessary about the Liberal vision of money and unemployment upon which Srnicek and Williams predicate their analysis, and that their call for a Universal Basic Income not only misapprehends money’s nature and purpose, but also betrays their wish for a thoroughgoing social transformation.

Contrary to economic orthodoxies on both the Left and Right, MMT economists show that the money relation is irreducible to capitalist production and private finance. Instead, they contend, money is a boundless public instrument that can be made to serve every person and environment it encompasses. More important, MMT insists that money is first and foremost a government technology for provisioning labor for the public sector. Or, as MMTer Warren Mosler puts it, “The currency, the money, is a tool to provision the state.”

To accomplish such provisioning, however, is no simple endeavor. Government must first socialize labor by creating unemployment as a generalized condition and thereby turn remunerated employment into a basic social need. It does so, Mosler explains, by simultaneously imposing and enforcing taxes in a currency that the state alone supplies. Such is the primary purpose of taxation, according to MMT. In place of the conventional view that imagines taxation as a source of revenue for the state, MMT shows that, as the currency-issuer, government requires no monetary revenue in order to spend. Instead, taxation is the essential tool whereby government establishes a currency, disemploys a population, and ensures workers are available to serve the public’s social and material aims.

Now, because at base it is the state that is responsible for engendering unemployment in a modern money economy, MMT submits that it is ultimately government’s responsibility to furnish everyone its currency disemploys with a meaningful and adequately-compensated opportunity to participate in the provisioning of public life. Unemployment is a consequence of neither markets nor automation, on MMT’s view. Rather, unemployment results from the regular operations of a currency-issuing government. For this reason, concludes the Modern Money Network’s Raúl Carillo in The Nation: “Your government owes you a job.”

With this, Carillo reveals the alternative answer to neoliberal devastation that MMT’s unorthodox conception of money and employment brings into view. MMT’s solution: (1) implement a living-wage public Job Guarantee (JG), which sets just minimum standards for social labor and ensures everyone’s right to meaningfully participate in shaping the social and environmental totality; and (2) expand the public sector via the JG and other public programs in order to meet urgent social and environmental needs. “The answer to the unemployment problem is more jobs,” writes MMTer Randall L. Wray. And since a currency-issuing government can never go broke, says Wray, it can always afford to hire everyone who is willing and able to participate in building a better world.

Approached from this perspective, the problem of unemployment outlined by Srnicek and Williams shifts from a capitalist crisis signaling the end of work and requiring a Universal Basic Income to a crisis of governance and a potentially broad-scale socialist project. That project stands to put the means of production in communal hands, to actively transvalue the nature and meaning of paid work, and to ultimately transform the social and ecological totality. In fact, from this point of view, the contraction of the private sector may turn out to be a boon for the public purpose. The more markets and automation technologies dispense with human labor, the more government can directly employ persons to serve public and environmental ends.

MMT’s Job Guarantee, meanwhile, is more than a targeted remedy for today’s un – and underemployed. It stands to reconfigure all social relations by actively defining the minimum terms for compensation, health-care, working conditions, working hours, paid leave, etc. In empowering the disenfranchised, it will involve working people in shaping the values that drive economic production and distribution on the whole. But above all, MMT’s JG promises to become a foundational social institution from which others can be demanded and developed. Socialized child and elderly care; affordable education for all ages; low-cost postal banking; community land trusts; ecological cleanup, maintenance, and retrofitting; a public arts infrastructure: such institutions can be more readily fought for and won when launched from the place of empowerment, solidarity, and reciprocity the Job Guarantee promises to create.

For these reasons, I argue that is it Modern Monetary Theory’s Job Guarantee, rather than the Universal Basic Income, that is the key to all political goals.

In the end, I find that Srnicek and Williams’s call for a Universal Basic Income society looks a lot like the piecemeal and localist solutions their book expressly warns against. An UBI would no doubt be an improvement upon the neoliberal order. It may very well help to transform precarity, recognize social labor, make class power easier to organize, and extend the space in which to experiment with how we organize communities and families, as Srnicek and Williams suggest. However, given the fact that UBI is set up to be an unplanned, decentralized, and un-involving institution, I fear that it dovetails too readily with neoliberal fantasies of immanent self-organization and that it alone is structurally incapable of carrying out the type of broad and lasting transformations Srnicek and Williams desire.

Without an associated public Job Guarantee, the Universal Basic Income is merely welfare by another name: a laissez-faire solution to contemporary social and ecological crises. UBI says: opt out, care for your own, and let the gods of self-organization take care of the totality. Direct communitarianism is vital to any social order. But the old dream of Gemeinshaft will be inadequate for enacting, and then maintaining, the total transformation we so desperately need.

(Scott Ferguson holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Film Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently an assistant professor of Film & New Media Studies in the Department of Humanities & Cultural Studies at the University of South Florida.)

AFTER THE HOUSE PASSED THE AHCA bill Thursday, I stood up and walked outside. I took Women Who Work with me. It was when the sunlight hit the cover of the book at a certain angle, causing Ivanka’s pale skin to sparkle, that I realized who she reminded me of. That dewy parasitism, like Dracula after a meal—America’s first daughter belongs to the Twilight phenomenon, to the pop culture vogue for attractive vampires. The core fantasy of the series was that creatures born to prey on us might come to love and protect us instead. That a glamorous and sophisticated child of darkness, decked in ancestral riches, could float down from the tower and, seeing our potential, remake us in her image. Some blood might be spilled (ours, even!), but would that not be a small price to pay for “architecting a life you love—a full, multidimensional life”?

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the fabled Ivanka voter hails from the same demographic—white, middle class, female—that devours romance novels in general and snapped up Stephenie Meyer’s in particular. Or perhaps this administration has rewritten so many rules and unraveled so many norms that I’m mistaking fiction for truth. The Trumps are right about one thing, though: We can occasionally be authoring our destinies even when we believe ourselves to be fortune’s fools. After all, we invited them in.

— Katy Waldman

WITTY. SEXY. HILARIOUS.

Don't miss the Mendocino Theatre Company's production of Liz Duffy Adam's outrageous comedy "OR,"! It's a sexy, modern account of one night in the life of Aphra Behn who, in addition to being an important playwright, was an international spy, a libertine, and a friend of King Charles II. As she struggles to complete her script, she is interrupted by friends, lovers and the king himself. The show plays weekends through May 28th.

Purchase your tickets here: http://mendocinotheatre.org/single-tickets/, or call the box office, 707-937-4477.

CAST: Nicole Traber as Aphra Behn; Kerel Rennacker as King Charles II/ William Scott/Jailer; Pamela W. Allen as Nell Gwynne/Lady Davenant/ Maria

CREW: Alice Williams, Stage Manager; Diane Larson, Set Design; Ann Woodhead, Costume Design; Dave Gealey, Light Design; Susan Juhl, Sound Design

EEL RIVER RECOVERY PROJECT HOLDING ANNUAL FROG EGG COUNT AT BENBOW MAY 13

The Eel River is dropping and warming and the yellow-legged frogs are getting ready to reproduce in the margins of the river. Dr. Sarah Kupferberg will be conducting her annual census of the South Fork Eel River at Benbow where she has baseline data dating back more than a decade. The Eel River Recovery Project (ERRP) welcomes volunteers to come learn how to count yellow-legged frog egg masses. Those interested should come to Benbow on Saturday, May 13 at 10 AM.

There are several species of yellow-legged frogs in California and most have protected status and their populations are in decline. The causes of decline are numerous, but flow diversion and pesticide runoff are major factors. The Eel River basin, however, does not have wide-spread pesticide use and yellow-legged frogs are quite abundant in many locations, although distribution is not uniform. Over all, yellow-legged frogs experienced a major population upsurge after the 1964 flood, as the Eel River went from narrow deep and cold to wide and warm.

The reason Dr. Kupferberg focuses on counting egg masses is because the other yellow-legged frog life history phases are difficult to census. Tadpoles are too numerous and adults are too cryptic and secretive. As air temperatures rise and the edges of the main river channels warm, yellow-legged frogs come out of tributaries to spawn. Males stake out positions they instinctively know are good for egg deposition and also will attract females. Yellow-legged frogs make no noise while in the air, but the male croaks under water to attract the female. She swims by, he hops on her back and they glide downstream. Males are equipped with adhesive thumbs and strong fore-legs. The female is fertilized and then deposits her eggs in the margin.

Eggs look like a golf ball of caviar, immediately after being deposited and then take on a dusty look and expand to the size of a tennis ball over ten days before tadpoles hatch. Eggs are on the downstream side of cobbles and boulders out of the current and in relatively shallow water to avoid predation by fish. Counting frog eggs is done while walking upstream on the edge of the stream or while wading in shallow water near it. The index Dr. Kupferberg has developed is the number of yellow-legged frog eggs per kilometer. ERRP hopes to eventually get volunteers involved in similar counts Eel River basin-wide. Baseline data collected by Dr. Kupferberg and ERRP volunteers are already ecologically revealing.

Dr. Kupferberg’s Benbow data indicated a relatively low density of frog eggs shortly after Benbow Lake stopped being filled. Yellow-legged frog egg masses increased along with riparian succession after the South Fork Eel River bed was no longer submerged for several years. As an experimental control and to broaden baseline data, Sarah also conducted a survey at the mouth of Fish Creek a few miles upstream

As the Benbow reach increased in egg mass densities over time, the Fish Creek reach saw a dramatic drop. ERRP has framed a hypothesis that sediment impacts in Fish Creek are having ripple impacts on the yellow-legged frog egg mass numbers in the South Fork nearby. The reverse appears to be the case near the mouth of Sproul Creek, where ERRP volunteers Darcy and Larry Bruckenstein yellow-legged frog egg counts in the last two years are higher than any Dr. Kupferberg has seen anywhere in California. There has been concern over the decreasing flows in Sproul Creek and associated warming and impacts on salmonids. Dr. Kupferberg noted that yellow-legged frogs might be benefitting from the warming, which could account for very high egg mass numbers nearby.

In spring 2016, ERRP assisted Sarah in moving yellow-legged frog egg masses so that they would not be harmed by the removal of Benbow Dam by California State Parks. Egg masses, along with the rock to which they were adhered, were moved a sufficient distance upstream or downstream of the area disturbed in tubs and kayaks. Hundreds of egg clusters averaging 2000 eggs per cluster translated into hundreds of thousands of frog eggs being moved out of harm’s way. Most of the foundation of the dam was removed in 2016, but a small portion remains. Due to high flows this year, State Parks is likely to hold off on the removal of the last dam remnants. Therefore, the Saturday, May 13 event will be a frog egg census and no egg masses need to be rescued or moved.

Those attending should wear river shoes and be prepared to walk on the cobble bar and to wade, if necessary. Polarized sunglasses are optimal for cutting glare when counting yellow-legged frog egg masses. The ERRP Board of Directors is hosting a picnic lunch and people are welcome to sit in ERRP Board meeting following at 2 PM. Willits residents wishing to attend the training should convene at the Willits Hub at 630 S Main Street in Willits at 8:30 AM. See the ERRP Facebook page or EelRiverRecovery.org for more information or call 223-7200. No charge for participation.

See drone video of SF Eel at Benbow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PbgfCphYvE&authuser=0

UKIAH LIBRARY EVENTS

Exciting New Screenings from PBS, Lincoln Center & Independent Filmmakers coming to Ukiah Library on Sunday Afternoons

Ukiah Library is introducing a new series of film screenings beginning on May 7th at 2 pm. The series, Sunday Movies at Your Library will include a weekly rotation of PBS documentaries, Indie films, Lincoln Center performances, and, beginning in June, kids’ movies newly released on DVD.

The films for May:

May 7^th – Seven Songs for a Long Life. At Scotland’s Strathcarron Hospice, patients face pain, uncertainty and the possibility of life's end with song and humor. This event is a collaboration with the award-winning documentary series POV (www.pbs.org/pov).

May 14^th – The Fits,--“While training at the gym 11-year-old tomboy Toni becomes entranced with a dance troupe. As she struggles to fit in she finds herself caught up in…”(Indie)

May 21^st – The New York Philharmonic Opening Gala With Lang Lang-- Grieg’s Piano Concerto and Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. (Lincoln Center).

Major Support for Lincoln Center Local: Free Screenings is provided by the Oak Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Booth Ferris Foundation and the Altman Foundation.

For more information, call 463-4490.

* * *

LOBA: a Poetry Reading Series

featuring Ukiah Poet Laureate Michael Riedell

& Creative Writing students from Ukiah High School!

(Open Mic follows)

Friday, May 19^th 5 pm

Join us for a reading with Michael Riedell, Poet Laureate of Ukiah & his awesome Creative Writing students from Ukiah High School! Open mic follows. Teens & adults are invited to share poems in any form or style.

A feminist epic by Diane di Prima, LOBA is a visionary epic quest for the reintegration of the feminine, hailed by many as the great female counterpart to Allen Ginsberg's Howl when the first half appeared in 1978. Loba, "she-wolf" in Spanish explores the wilderness at the heart of experience, through the archetype of the wolf goddess, elemental symbol of complete self-acceptance.

Michael Riedell's first experience reading poetry in public was as a first place award winner in the inaugural ukiaHaiku Festival. In the many years since then, this teacher of English and Creative Writing has been very active in the local poetry community and has been a featured reader throughout the county. He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Way of Water (2014) and Small Talk & Long Silences (2016). He is proud to be serving as the Poet Laureate of Ukiah for 2016-2018.

Light refreshments will be served. For more information – please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us

* * *

How to Protect Your Privacy Online & Elsewhere

Friday, May 12^th 5:30-7:30 pm

Privacy is integral to intellectual freedom - we do not live in a post-privacy era. Join us for a presentation & hands-on tech help with navigating the murky waters of online privacy. Learn “best practices” & helpful tools for how to best protect your privacy online – from managing location-based services on your mobile to installing special plug-ins & virtual private networks (VPN). Guests are invited to bring their own devices for hands-on tech help.

Refreshments will be provided, though outside food and drinks will be allowed at that time. This class will be co-facilitated by Justin Rhinehart.

Space is limited. Please call 463-4490 to sign-up. For more information – please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434

THOSE WERE THE DAYS

The best Revolutionary Ecological Composition EVER!

Many, many, many years ago, I was permitted to be a guest at the Umbrella Haus collective at 3rd & C on the lower east side of Manhattan, for the purpose of my plastering the Wall Street area with radical environmental wheatpasted posters which I'd made, explaining a certain disagreement with the illegal takeover of a certain lumber company in northern California, and the subsequent war which developed between environmental activists and corporate pirate entities. During that time period, I had the extraordinary opportunity to meet the Missing Foundation band, who were instrumental with the provocation of the Tompkins Square Park insurrections. As many of us pounded ash can lids loudly on the sidewalk to keep the beat, the Missing Foundation band performed their pro-ecological composition entitled "Take Take Take". It appears at 33:47 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCR6vqXsZA

Goddess bless every totally committed revolutionary ecological peace & justice participant worldwide! We are the liberated ones.

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: CraigStehr@inbox.com

THE TRIAL OF CHOOCHIE “DUCK CALL” PAVACCINO

The recording of last night's (2017-05-05) KNYO Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show is ready to download for free and enjoy, via

http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

Besides that, also there you'll find a fresh batch of links to material that I waded among while putting the show together that, for being mostly visual or requiring too much explanation, might not work well on radio, but are worthwhile, fascinating, even. Such as:

A-bomb test films improved with sound.

http://tinyurl.com/analogsynthbombtestfilms

The apprehension engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzk-l8Gm0MY

A trebuchet throwing a car, a piano, and an incendiary drum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQLYHt-DM0Q

300 odd musical instruments complete with sound samples.

http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/index.html

And Felix Colgrave's latest animated short.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_MSFkZHNi4

–Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org