- Dogs In Restaurants
- No Change Possible
- Extreme June Heat Linked To Climate Change
- Save Schooner Gulch Road
- Millions In Motion To Protect Social Security
DOGS IN RESTAURANTS
AVA,
Re: Dogs and their owners
Two items about dogs raised my hackles in the most recent AVA. The outrage about some dog owners declaring their animals service dogs when they are not.
Considering American society in general is going to hell in a handbasket, this in my opinion is a minor issue, if it needs to be an issue at all. Dog owners are trying to get around the stupid laws and restrictions on where the family pet is allowed to join them. I don't think most of them are trying to disrespect the true service animals that go thru lengthy training to become the amazing companions they are. Why, for example can I not bring my dog into a restaurant? I have been subjected to screaming infants and snot-nosed toddlers who chase each other around the dining room in many a restaurant. I have to tolerate that, but I can't bring my well behaved, leashed dog to lay quietly under my dinner table? As I say at the Bink wine tasting room, well behaved humans and their leashed pets are always welcome. I keep a water bowl and yummy treats at the ready.
Monika Fuchs, Boonville
NO CHANGE POSSIBLE
Editor,
KZYX:
I see in the MCN announce listserv that Janie Rezner – 80 years old now – is still needing a place to move to on less than $700 a month after doing radio at KZYX for, what, fifteen years, probably. If management had been paying airpeople even a pittance for their work, which they could always easily do but have chosen not to in favor of sucking out of the station for themselves two or three million dollars (!) over that same fifteen years, she might have $5,000-$10,000 saved up in her mattress to make this difficult transition.
Sunday Richard Karch wrote to announce that Anne Feeney, folk musician in the old tradition and champion of workers everywhere, would be on folksy drawlin' Fred Wooley's deejay show on KZYZ at 1pm that day. I missed the event, but I wonder if Anne at all addressed the horrendous injustice of just the manager paying himself all of $60,000 a year before paying any of the real workers, Fred Wooley included, even a penny out of the $600,000 that Mendocino County Public Broadcasting pisses away every year. That's five or six times what it actually costs to keep the station's paperwork in order, and keep it housed and fed with electricity and communications services, and keep the transmitters switched on, so airpeople can bring their material in and do radio.
In the real world radio is practically free. It's the monopoly of it that makes a commercial station worth a fortune to buy and sell, and a pumped-up podunk noncommercial station like KZYX, which should be even freer, relies on the public's false association of radio with great expense.
KZYX is constantly broke and constantly begging listeners and businesses for money, even with the $160,000-a-year tax-derived bailout they get from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and even though they have free use of three frequencies that together cover the whole County of Mendocino, and a high-power broadcast license is a license to coin money. That's how bad the board of MCPB and each new manager they hire for a hood ornament are at running KZYX. They are that bad at it. Or that crooked. You decide.
They're having another one of their pretend board meetings tonight (Monday). Like with all of their board meetings, it's an average round-trip drive of three hours to attend, for anyone who wants to and can afford to do that. They won't be putting the meeting on the air because, to them, why should they ever? And, in fairness, nothing ever comes of any of their meetings. No real discussion ever happens there. All votes among the board are unanimous. Nothing about the way they run the station or about the station itself ever changes or improves, and no-one even slightly clever and willing to take a chance and experiment is allowed to do radio there. It's like Kevin said to Randall in Time Bandits: "I don't understand you, Randall. You've got this brilliant thing and you're just wasting it." What's their motivation for just squatting dully on those three educational band FM broadcast frequencies? Why are they preventing them from being used for what they're for? It's truly baffling.
Marco McClean, Mendocino
EXTREME JUNE HEAT LINKED TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Dear Editor:
The Guardian reported that new research shows human caused climate change dramatically increased the likely of the extreme heatwave that saw deadly forest fires in Portugal and Spain. Also, the severe heat in England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland was made significantly more likely by global warning. These temperatures will become the norm by 2040, unless action is taken to rapidly cut carbon emissions. This analysis was conducted by World Weather Attribution (WAA), an international coalition of scientists that calculates the role of climate in extreme weather events. The scientists combine temperature records and latest observations with a series of computer models to determine how much the global rise in greenhouse gases had increased the odds of soaring temperatures.
A spokesman for WAA said "This extreme event attribution analysis makes clear that European heatwaves have become more frequent, and in the South of Europe at least 10 times more frequent". Earlier in June, research showed that a third of the world's population already faces deadly heatwaves as a result of climate change. Robert Vautard, at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences in France, commented "Hot months are no longer rare in our current climate, by the middle of the century, this kind of extreme heat in June will become the norm in western Europe unless we take immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions".
As a sidebar, I note that during June parts of Iran had a temperature of 129 degrees. I doubt if many countries are willing to undertake the critical steps necessary to reduce greenhouse emissions. That is certainly true of President Trump and his supporters
In peace and love,
Jim Updegraff
Sacramento
SAVE SCHOONER GULCH ROAD
Editor:
I feel somewhat sympathetic to the folks on Fish Rock Road about their desire to have it repaved. But only somewhat sympathetic because of "repaved." I, and many other folks, live on Schooner Gulch Road (County Road 504). We would love to be in the situation of Fish Rock. Specifically, a paved road with potholes in it.
County Road 504 is not now, and never has been, paved. It is a busy dirt road. The traffic is not just the folks who live on it. You get to recognize your neighbors’ cars and trucks. We see vehicles that do not belong to our neighbors.
Schooner Gulch is the first county road south of Point Arena that connects Highway 1 with Ten Mile Road and the ridge. I think a lot of the GPS routed traffic through Point Arena to locations on the ridge and eastward is sent up Schooner Gulch.
It would be expensive to pave the 2.64 miles of County Road 504, but the county spends thousands and thousands of dollars every year to keep it in a more or less usable form. Perhaps it would be economical to pave it and save some of that annual expense? Does the County even have any idea just how busy traffic can get on County Road 504?
Like I said, only somewhat sympathetic.
And this is for everyone who ever drives on our local dirt road. Especially Schooner Gulch Road! The faster you drive on a dirt road, the more you damage it. If you have a lot of "washboarding" on a dirt road (frequent rippling bumps that are at a right angle to the direction of traffic), the average speed on that road is too fast. Rapidly accelerating up a hill can be just as damaging. Please slow down! Help keep our dirt roads smoother longer.
Larry Riddle
Point Arena
MILLIONS IN MOTION TO PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY
Editor,
Don’t buy the “national deficit/debt” scam that steals from working people. For decades the politicians have refused to tax the rich, the corporations and the banks. They choose instead to borrow to run the government. They borrow money from the rich, whom they refused to tax, and then pay them interest. Politicians keep telling us that the national debt is too high; they say we can’t afford to spend money on social services, healthcare and education. They want us to spend our money for interest on the national debt. They want us to spend half of the national budget on weapons of war. According to The New York Times, 3/10/17, “We have a rigged tax code that has essentially legalized tax dodging for large corporations.” Exxon, one of the largest corporations in the world, did not pay $12.9 billion in taxes over the last eight years. Twelve of the largest corporations in America avoided paying $200 billion in taxes over the last eight years. The politicians tax the working people not the rich and then want to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Don’t buy the national debt scam. Make the selfish rich pay their taxes, cut the military budget and pay for social services for working people.
The national deficit/debt is made up of two parts; Intragovernmental debt and Public debt. Intragovernmental debt is only 30% of the total, it is $5.4 trillion now and $2.8 trillion is owed to Social Security, this is money already collected over the years from working people paying their taxes to Social Security, the excess every month has been borrowed and used for other purposes by the government. The Public debt is 70% of the total at $14.5 trillion which is primarily owed to foreign countries such as China and Japan, Great Britain along with banks and financial institutions of the rich.
Don’t buy the politicians scam; the working people are NOT responsible for the crisis of the capitalist economic system. We can’t and won’t pay for the crisis! Make the greedy rich pay for the crisis they caused!!
Dr. Nayvin Gordon
Oakland
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