- The Fixe Is In
- The Suggestion Box
- Ripped Out?
- Watch It Out There
- More High Cost Worker Housing
- Indian Housing Dictatorship
- Calling The Pardini Bros
- Lee Is The Guy In The Photo
THE FIXE IS IN
Dear AVA,
I consider you one of the standard bearers of the language in an age of near illiteracy and imogees. It bears mentioning however that a fixed price meal (for example at the Bewildered Pig) comes directly from the French (prix fixe or price fixed) and is pronounced pre-fix or pre-fixay, not to be confused with prefix. It makes some sense that you would assume prefix means fixed in advance, but it don't. I am an avid reader but I don't want you to have my name. Thanks for the otherwise excellent work!
Name withheld
Philo
THE SUGGESTION BOX
Esteemed Editor:
I am thinking that one morning shortly after the inevitable root beer schnapps drinking jag you will feel the urge to give the AVA masthead a makeover.
For your earnest consideration: "America is at last newspaper.” Retool the second line into "Peace to the Cottage Industries" and finally the sorely needed, "Fanning the flames of disenchantment."
Remember if you're not going forward you are going backward.
Since you are fanning some sort of flames, could you please explain why "flammable" and "inflammable" have the same meaning? A divided nation turns its lonely eyes to you — woo woo woo.
As I tip on out it could be noted that any poetry in "Ukiah" is more easily seen if read in reverse. So here's my 17 syllables in the required 5-7-5 beat:
Hiya Ukiah!
Haiku bass ackwards. Be you
A grape or a raison?
Your fan,
Russell Haber
Gualala/Ukiah
RIPPED OUT?
Dear Editor,
How are you doing today sir? My name is Daniel Montalvo. I am currently in the Mendocino County Jail. I am writing you because I enjoy reading your newspaper. I love how you don't leave anything out. You state the facts and tell it like it is so that people in our county know the facts on stuff that goes on in our county and in our courts. But I miss out on some of the stuff you put in the paper because some people here in the jail rip out the stuff about themselves because they are ashamed of their crimes, or they hoard the paper and I don't get a chance to see it all the time. So I want to ask you if you can send me a subscription to your newspaper so that while I’m doing my time I can stay up to date with what’s going on in the county.
Daniel Montalvo
County Jail, Ukiah
WATCH IT OUT THERE
To the Editor:
Tick flagging to prevent lyme.
This morning I went looking for ticks on the south end of Shakota trail at Lake Mendocino, and gathered 36 ticks in about an hour, along the trail. Last week I flagged for a bit at the north end and gathered about 32, between Pomo A and C.
During the worst of my years with Lyme disease, I lost the ability to walk, went blind, and could not spell my own name. You don’t want this, and especially you don’t want it for your children.
Tick flagging is a way to clear an area of the waiting ticks. I use a 3’ stick with a 2’ square of white flannel taped onto it, and brush it against the top of the grasses as I walk along, stopping frequently to remove the ticks with a piece of masking tape. And I found lots, mostly on the higher side of the trail. I think I could have gathered more except I was wearing tick repellent. Not willing to do this job without it!
I use permethrin spray, (ordered from Walmart, sometimes they have it in stock. Coleman Insect Treatment, blue can). Spray it on the clothing you plan to wear, let it dry for a couple days, and it protects you for months. Don’t spray it on your skin. I spray a few pair of pants early every spring, once a year. It lasts through 4 or 5 washings. When I hike with others who aren’t wearing sprayed clothes, they come home with tick on them, and I don’t.
We are at the peak of the tick season now. If you do get bit, be alert for any strange symptoms. A common one is coming home from the store and putting your shoes in the fridge and your groceries in the closet. Lyme really messes with your brain. Left untreated the lyme germs go inside the cells of your brain where antibiotics can’t easily reach. Some people get a bull’s eye rash, several days after getting infected. A rash that comes immediately after a bit however just means your body doesn’t like tick bites.
After being out in pretty places, shake your clothes over the tub before you shower, and put them where any ticks can’t crawl off and come looking for you.
Have a safe and beautiful spring!
Marigold Klein
Ukiah
MORE HIGH COST WORKER HOUSING
To the Editor:
That which is scarce becomes dear. The Ukiah Valley is reaping what we have sown (or failed to sow) for the last several decades. For years we have made it clear that developers and their developments are not wanted ‘round these parts. As a community we have put ever more burdensome regulations and fees on new construction so little gets built and only the well heeled can afford to buy.
Available housing accommodations are actually negative if you count those folks forced to live in circumstances not of their choosing, i.e. the 30-somethings living with their parents because they can’t find any other place to live.
You know the situation is dire when the hospital struggles to recruit doctors because they can’t find a place they can afford. Think what it must be like for welders, teachers and hairdressers!
Barring some mass exodus, the only solution to the local housing shortage is an increase in supply but years of no production housing construction has left us short of folks that know how to build production housing units. We lack the developers and trades people that can make such a project happen.
Vineyard Crossing (proposed development on Lovers Lane) is such a project and Guillon Construction is such a developer. As a community we should welcome the developer and the development with open arms. That is the quickest and best path to breaking the housing log jamb we’ve spent decades creating.
Ross Liberty, Factory Pipe LLC
Ukiah
INDIAN HOUSING DICTATORSHIP
Dearest Editor:
My name is Eric Lincoln. I have come across a very important and dire issue that seriously needs to be addressed. A friend of mine who is also an elder in the Indian community brought to my attention during a recent conversation a seemingly biased choice concerning him. The choice had been made by the Covelo Indian housing authority here in Covelo.
Of course my friend was deeply offended by the Housing Board’s total disregard and overlooking of his and his family's needs.
The outcome of the way the Indian Housing Board chose to deal with my good friend, an elder? It strengthens the views which people have to say about the Covelo Indian Housing Authority.
There seems to be some truth in this. Because it has also come to my knowledge that a view of the Housing Board members are and have always been selective about who they think deserves assistance and who doesn't deserve the Housing Authority's assistance.
This sounds like a [bleep]ing "dictatorship"!
I mean, give me a god damn break! Any idiot and their dog should realize that special needs are a priority and must always come first — even before a family member or even a relative to anyone on the Housing Board who doesn't make it a [bleep]ing priority. But instead of the person who had come before the board with an honest heart, looking for some kind of help for himself and his family, getting help, it just gets refused and turned away while the friend, relative, family member of someone in charge gets all the assistance that he or she asked for.
Choices made in that manner are not only purely unprofessional but completely biased and totally immoral.
It is these kinds of cases which have to be checked into more thoroughly! For any and all of the sneaky under the table [bleep].
I'm glad my friend asked if I would write a letter about this scandalous stuff that people here in Covelo don't need to take. Stand up!
Eric Lincoln
Covelo
PS. Regarding Officer Quilt
I am writing about a tribal cop “big wig” wannabe here in Covelo who goes by the name of Quilt. I was in the tribal cop building finishing an important letter which I intended receptionist Laura Betts to document for me.
I have an ongoing file there. Whenever I feel it is necessary to write a letter Laura documents it for me.
So here comes Mr. Quilt in the front door of the building. He spotted me sitting at the table writing. He asked me if I made it to court? I said no, why do you ask?
Get this: This “Big Wig” wannabe said he cited me for panhandling! What the hell? Maybe he thinks if he hands out a few more of those kinds of citations he’ll be eligible for vacation or something.
Returning to my letterwriting, I uttered to myself, "What an Okie." Mr. Quilt’s ultrasensitive radar trained ears instantly picked up on that. So he flipped me a bitch. I said, "I'm going to cite you for that too!" Ha Ha! Like, give me a mother-bleeping break! Obviously this Quilt dude had a bad time being picked on in school as a kid.
But god damn it. I was not the bully! So now that Quilt is all grown up and maybe more mature, instead of toting around his school books and his lunch money, he now totes a badge and a gun. So it seems in his childhood mentality of being picked on, it’s now his turn to be the bully.
This is some serious mind game BS he is dealing with. Especially when a badge and a gun is involved — his.
Retaliation from past childhood problems? This Quilt dude is supposed to be in position of so-called "authority"! Shit! Who let the dogs out?
Unfortunately Mr. Blanket, oops, I mean Mr. Quilt isn't the only cop with this childhood payback mentality. Individuals like this believe that just because they carry a badge and a gun they can get away with murder.
Also it is totally screwed up when the justice system finds these obviously intentional murders justifiable. They are just protecting their own.
They make it seem like it's us against them and we are the bad ones. If these certain troubled cops didn't have their badges or their guns to enforce their over-abused authority, these guys would be on our own level.
That being said, some of the screwed up cops are in all reality no better than you or I.
So in conclusion I hope things will change for the better. That is a tall order to fill, I know, so we will see. But then again…
As such,
Eric Lincoln
Covelo
CALLING THE PARDINI BROS
Editor,
Where are the Republicans in this country? Why can't they stand up to these liberal Democrat scumbags? Isn’t it about time that we did something for our country? It just amazes me how they can get away with the stuff they do. Look at the 30% gas tax for instance. 30% of the gas tax that Jerry Brown raised for infrastructure is going towards a program to train criminals, felons, child molesters, ex-convicts — that's where 30% of that gas tax is going instead of infrastructure. That's Jerry Brown. That's kind of thing we got running our country. It's despicable.
Why don't the Republicans have a meeting in Boonville at the fairgrounds? I will pay for it. Let's see if there's anybody left in this country who can stand up for their rights. Where are people like Kay Hiatt, Smokey Blattner, Floyd Johnson, Julie Bates, Roger Tolman, Buster Hall Hollifield, Emil Rossi and so many more that I cannot name them all. There used to be good upstanding Americans who believed in law enforcement, the Constitution and things that we really based our pride on and the fundamentals of being a good American. It just makes me sick.
Take President Trump. He has done more than four months than all the rest of our presidents put together did in four years! Look at the congressional Democrats and how they are attacking him. They can't get over the fact that they lost, and they can't get over the fact that he is going to reveal how corrupt and miserable and shoddy the Democrats have been for the last eight years. It pisses a lot of these other countries off because we are not going to lay down for them like we used to do, like we did for Obama and others. We are going to stand up for our rights. It shocks them to death because they cannot understand why we are doing it. Do you know why we are doing it? Because who knows how many thousands of men and women and given their lives to keep this country free and make the United States a solid, outstanding country.
Where is Tony Pardini? Where's Ernie Pardini? They have the balls to say something.
And these lowlife scumbag cowardly people who enter a peaceful demonstration and cause all this damage like down in Berkeley. You know who's going to pay for that damage? You are. I am. And the rest of the people. Because Jerry Brown just loves it! He says he'll just take it out of the tax money, no problem. Yeah, that's Jerry Brown. It almost makes me sick to see those guys get away with that. I would like to take a busload of good ol’ boys from Mendocino County down there the next time they have a demonstration and see if those people show up who want to fight other people who want to peacefully demonstrate. I would love to do that.
Jerry Philbrick
Comptche
LEE IS THE GUY IN THE PHOTO
Editor,
Gods Of Irony Looking Down Aghast
Subconsciously, unconsciously (whatever): immediately after your discourses on courage (and a thorough delving into the life of Rena Lynn Moore), BETWEEN that fulsome segment and the brief blast of publicity for Jeff Blankfort's photo exhibit in SF, listing his illustrious past, you neglected to mention that Lee Edmundson, one of the Democrats you chose to dis, was in fact, a 21-year old college student from the South who drove all night to be in Chicago during the disruptions of the Democratic Convention of 1968, was the young braveheart clinging out of reach on the top of the bronze statute of that civil war general, cops with batons flailing at his feet in Jeff Blankfort's iconic photograph of the revolt in Chicago the summer of '68 that landed up on the cover of Life Magazine.
Lee Edmundson became one of the Chicago 6 or 7. And he is still alive and kicking. A very small-d democrat, indeed. Known locally for his vigorous contributions to our wholesome culture.
Beth Bosk
Mendocino
Details please, Mr. Philbrick, specifically “what Trump has done” in the first four months. I’m eager to know.
Save your breath and your ink, Jeff.
This guy is a more vulgar Grace–and in drag:
An absolute imbecile.
Zeke wrote a hilarious response to this moron a couple of weeks ago. He congratulated Philbrick on his brilliant parody of a right wing nut.
Zeke obviously wrote in jest, but I wish the missives of people like Koepf, Grace, and Philbrick were mere satire. California and New Jersey are two of the states with the greatest number of John Birchers.
This country has elected Nixon twice, Reagan twice, and W twice. Trump’s re-election is not a farfetched possibility. Too many ignoramuses believe that the Navy Seals, Green Berets, and Blackwater are fighting for democracy and not for the American Empire. They are convinced of the truth of American Exceptionalism.
The existence of so many people like Grace and Philbrick is in itself a rebuttal of the fantasy that there are loving gods watching over us. And it recalls a quote by Isaac Asimov that appeared in the margin of the AVA a few weeks ago:
—There is a cult of ignorance in the United States and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
CA, supposedly liberal, not only voted for Nixon and Reagan both times each ran for the presidency, but they (“we” at the time) voted in Reagan for two terms as governor, starting with the election of 1966.
CA was also one of the states that failed to lower the voting age to 18, because the initiative to lower the voting age to 18 failed. I couldn’t vote in a general election until 1972, when I turned 22 (1971 was an off-year), after the federal constitutional amendment was ratified. And at that, all I then believed I could do was to hold my nose and punch out the hole for George “I’m a thousand percent behind Tom Eagleton” McGovern. It’s been all downhill since. After Brown the second’s first reign of two terms we had 16 straight years of republican governors in the land of fruits and nuts.
I forgot to mention the Rumford Fair Housing Act that the supposedly non-racist phonies called Californians overturned in a referendum in 1964. At least that was set straight by the California Supreme Court in 1966. Even so, as of 2001 at least, the high-priced subdivision “community” of El Dorado Hills still had within its Codes, Covenants, and Restrictions, wording that prevented housing sales to non-pink people, though the office folks were quick to let me know that the wording no longer applied. Gee, I wonder why the governing officials kept the wording decades later … Duh.
People here in WY occasionally ask me what I think of the politics in the state. I generally respond by saying they’re a lot like those of rural CA. That tends to disappoint them, since they consider themselves to be very special, and unique in their backward political leanings.
The fact Trump makes MSM and the corrupt establishment croak is the best.
I’m happy HRC (or her placebo Stein) is not president!
Your response confirms everything that Louis asserted. Placebo?
Ms. Malaprop probably meant “clone”, but was confused because she had taken real Zoloft instead of her placebo.
James Marmon, with whom I am usually inclined to agree on most things, is so wrong in his view of local demographics and housing; in fact he has this reality turned on its head.
The overwhelming majority of Latinos in the Ukiah Valley are not on any form of public assistance, but rather are highly motivated workers, being the backbone of our local agricultural economy and increasingly the service and construction sectors as well. That’s why they come to the US: to work, something they have succeeded at notably based on the strong work ethic and ambition for a better life they have, which is conditioned by the adversity they came from.
In stark contrast to that, the meth addled underclass or lumpen proletariat of Clearlake, an increasingly notorious white trash ghetto with a per capita crime rate that rivals Oakland’s, is heavily reliant on public assistance with many second and third generation welfare families.
So Bruce is right, but it’s not just a lack of class consciousness that is behind this scapegoating of undocumented workers, it’s a fictional view of social reality that too often also represents a form of denial about themselves and their own lack of responsibility by those who buy into it, an outlook that outfits like Fox News pander to and enable.