MERLIN TINKER RETIRES. The Mendocino Coast's go-to clock guy says 48 years repairing clocks and sewing machines is "more than enough. I quit. I retire." My experience with Merlin may have been unique. I inherited several faulty time pieces a few years ago, which I took to Merlin to get ticking again. Among them was a cuckoo-clock. Merlin, a true wizard, had no problem getting the clocks keeping regular time, but he tossed the cuckoo, explaining, "No one needs a cuckoo clock." I agreed that the thing was annoying as hell, and that was that. I've never trusted anybody else with my clocks.
WE WERE AMONG 28 persons watching the Supervisors on-line last week, being especially interested in the $50,000 consultant’s report on County homelessness. The consultant is Robert G. Marbut, PhD. We can argue if his conservative strategies are worth $50 grand because, at least in our view, most people looking at the Mendo homeless “problem,” however defined, would probably come to much the same conclusions.
MARBUT’S primary recommendation, with related sub-sets, is to identify and try to help people from Mendocino County, or at least who have been here for some time, while keeping career transients on the move. To do it effectively, the helping agencies must coordinate their efforts.
MARBUT was introduced by Anne “The Inevitable” Molgaard of Health and Human Services whose 630 County employees, many of whom are directly involved with the homeless on the services end of the social implosion continuum, as are the employees of the County’s privatized Mental Health services, hence the presence at today’s meeting of its local proprietor, Camille Schraeder. These two women by themselves are the dominant figures in the County’s array of private and public social services.
HOW MANY HOMELESS are we talking about? Marbut’s figure seemed to be around 300, the majority of them Mendo people. Supervisor McCowen pointed out that the annual “point in time” count, upon which local homeless programs get public funding, are inflated. McCowen didn’t say it but an inflated homeless count means more money for the usual suspects whose approaches to the victims of social implosion have been woefully deficient.
THE HOMELESS CONSULTANT was impressed by Willits’ homeless strategy, which is to separate out the transients, especially trimigrants, offering these travelers a couple of days food after which the pantry is bare — to them. Marbut mentioned that his neighbors in a Ukiah motel looked like they were homeless but the dope industry was paying them enough to pay a hundred bucks a night for shelter.
DR. MARBUT MADE USEFUL DISTINCTIONS: About 60 percent of the homeless are locals, meaning they either have roots here or have lived here for some years. Marbut said that “zero tolerance” for homeless “encampments” is a civic necessity because they only grow larger and, even when they’re small-ish they magnify civic dysfunction. He described the shopping cart people as “mobile encampments.” Car campers tend to be local and tend to be employed. The larger the vehicle, however, from camper vans to the larger Winnebagos, are more often than not moving crime scenes. Marbut pointed out that the homeless clustered around the Ukiah Safeway and at WalMart between WalMart and Jack In the Box, often harbor criminals. But, he said, “criminalization” of the homeless “doesn’t work” because they cost a lot to process through the justice system and are right back out as the cycle of petty misdemeanors repeats itself. Austere local screening processes for food, shelter and related help are more likely to keep transients in transit than the willy nilly dispensation of public largesse to the needy and the parasitical alike. Marbut strongly emphasized that the help extended to the local homeless must be focused and carefully tracked, which I took to mean that our homegrown drunks, drug addicted and the mentally incompetent have to be the recipients of effective strategies to keep them off the streets and more or less functioning.
WHAT CAN WE EXPECT from our helping pros re the Marbut report? Lots of meetings for a certainty, out of which will likely come nothing, but Marbut has at least outlined a starting point that appeals to liberals and conservatives alike.
NOTE: There's a fairly large hobo literature that goes back to the middle of the 19th century, but modern American hobos, lately extinct, always drew a firm line between them and bums. Hobos earned their way, never begged, always worked odd jobs to support themselves before they moved on. Bums did not work, were totally dependent on the kindness of strangers. Strangers are still kind but the bum population seems to have grown faster than the ability of the charitable to support them.
IN THE GOOD NEWS on the week, the Ukiah Unified School District has taken the first tentative steps toward a re-zone of the Redwood Valley Elementary School campus for the purpose of selling it for a housing development of some type. The school has long been abandoned.
STATE SENATOR MIKE McGUIRE is talking up Rails To Trails for the long defunct stretches of track around Humboldt Bay and, hopefully, the track north of Cloverdale to Dos Rios, although the latter stretch could, conceivably, some day see a revived rail line if SMART eventually goes smart. SMART's propagandists are forever assuring the easily assured that its trains will eventually chug into Cloverdale. It was on that promise that Cloverdale, anticipating a great influx of rail tourism, got that attractive but deserted little depot erected that we see east of 101.
FOR YOUR BLIND LEADING THE BLIND FILES: Ukiah Unified Superintendent, Deb Kubin, and high school principal Gordon Oslund, tried to keep the press off campus last week for Ukiah High School's gun protest. When the Ukiah Daily Journal's reporter and photographer arrived on campus this morning they met a KZYX reporter who said she'd just been asked to leave. The Journal team plunged on. Superintendent Kubin told the paper's photographer that he needed school permission to be on the premises. Kubin was correctly ignored. Kubin and Oslund are apparently unaware that California law specifically allows the media onto any public school campus to cover news without "signing in." Moreover, students' and teachers are also protected by the First Amendment to talk to the press on campus. And Kubin and Oslund are doing what? Preparing the young to function in a political democracy?
INTERIM COUNTY AG COMMISSIONER, Diane Curry, resigned a week ago Tuesday but got the patented Mendo Perp Walk anyway. Curry, a long-time County employee, called the County's Human Resources Department to say that she'd had enough and was retiring, and a few minutes later security appeared in her office, took her keys, and escorted her off the premises. We understand that Curry is now on paid administrative leave, but her precise status is unclear, and nobody's talking.
THE SMART, CAPABLE administrator was put in an impossible position. She was handed a preposterously complicated marijuana licensing scheme, large parts of it out of her hands, devised and constantly re-written by the bumbling Board of Supervisors and their erratic and bad tempered CEO, Carmel Angelo, and told to make it all work. Curry subsequently informed the Supervisors in open session the pot licensing program was an impossibly unworkable scheme, but she soldiered on trying to make it work despite constant additions of confusion by the Supervisors and Angelo and state agencies.
A PERMANENT Ag Commissioner named Joe Moreo of Modoc County was hired just days ago to assume the reins of the pot scheme from Ms. Curry, only to get himself perp-walked outta there after only a week in the impossible job of somehow making marijuana a major income source for the perennially broke County.
DIANE CURRY was again in charge of the office. And also lasted a week. She got her perp walk on Tuesday, as her many friends and colleagues are left wondering at the final insult she gets as reward for her years of service.
THE SUPERVISORS and Angelo have always had marijuana-like hallucinations that pot production would magically add untapped millions to the County's coffers. But only an estimated ten percent of local farmers have attempted to negotiate the County's cockamamie licensing process, and among the first persons to sign up was a Ukiah man promptly raided by the County's Drug Task Force operating on a "tip" from a Sheriff's Department employee who lives next door.
AS IT HAPPENED, a large number of marijuana people were standing around in the parking lot when Curry was marched out of her Low Gap Road office, some of whom were so upset at the spectacle of her being escorted off the premises like she was a criminal, they burst into tears. Curry was very popular with the farmers who were conscientiously trying to get themselves legal because Curry was just as conscientiously trying to help get them legal.
SODDEN THOUGHT: Thanks to Curry, the County has collected upwards of a half million in licensing fees, although very few people have managed to leap state hurdles standing between them and full legality, and all of the pot people, licensed or not, still face “interdiction” by police when they transport their product. “Legalization” has a long way to go.
THE LAST STRAW for Curry seems to have been CEO Angelo's order that Curry move her office to the CEO’s office, away from the AG Department and her staff. Angelo's order seems to have been calculated to drive Curry out.
AND TO THINK, 40 or so years ago the County's then-Ag Commissioner, Ted Erickson, was fired by the Supervisors for including marijuana in the County's annual crop report. Erickson, made it clear that pot was the County's number one export, but the County's leadership preferred to ignore the obvious.
ATTENTION ATHEISTS: Science’s eternal problem has always been trying to explain first causes, what happened to create the vast whirlygig of which planet earth is an infinitesimal outback speck. The Big Bang started from a singularity, ie 0 dimension, infinite mass. Where did that come from? And if you explain that, where did that come from? Somewhere, sometime, something had to go poof! That poof is God in whatever form you want to conceive.
ELECTION NOTES: With the entry of Dave Roderick into the 5th District Supe's race, the sprawling jurisdiction, for the first time in many years, if ever, is seeing candidates from each of its antipodes. Historically, the Mendocino Coast has elected the Fifth's supervisor. Even prior to the dominance of the conservative liberals based in Albion and Mendocino and the Anderson Valley, the Mendocino Coast sent Joe Scaramella of Point Arena and Ted Galletti of Elk over the hill to Ukiah to represent the far flung Fifth.
FROM his public statements it's clear that Hopland's Roderick is more in the tradition of Scaramella and Galletti than he is, say, Norman deVall, Charles Peterson or Dan Hamburg. Ditto for candidates Rodier and Juhl. Rodier, 74, lives in Upper Hopland at Russian River estates between Hopland and Ukiah, and farms grapes and olives in the Alexander Valley. Juhl, 75, is retired in Gualala from a varied and highly successful employed life in the great outside world.
CANDIDATES Williams and Skyhawk live in Mendocino and Albion which, along with Anderson Valley, is Mendolib's ground zero. They are more in the tradition of deVall and current 5th District supervisor, Dan Hamburg, although Skyhawk is more in the conservative liberal tradition of deVall and Hamburg than the younger Williams.
WILLIAMS' statements run more to the practical than the global big think common among Mendolib. From our Boonville bunker we would say Williams is the guy to beat in the 5th, although the libs seem split between him and Skyhawk.
NONE of the Fifth's candidates are well known, or known at all, outside their home areas, although Williams, Skyhawk and Roderick are known by their work or affiliations with the county-wide firefighting companies. All five are running hard; there are no recreational or vanity politicos in this one.
THE THIRD DISTRICT is the wild, heavily outlaw country that includes Willits but runs deep into the outbacks of Covelo and Laytonville. The 3rd has also drawn a crowded field of candidates dominated by the popular former supervisor, John Pinches.
OUR WILLITS' sources tell us that Cyndee Logan, a Willits realtor, "has her signs up everywhere and has a lot of support, at least in Willits." Two Willits teachers, John Haschak and Shawna Jeavons seem to be popular with lots of libs, while Suzy Barsotti and Pam Elizondo of Laytonville, and Tony Tucker of Covelo, have not yet made much or any impression on the scattered public's consciousness.
CLARIFICATION. We’d written on-line that “…although Williams, Skyhawk and Roderick are known by their work as firefighters to the county-wide firefighting companies…” But candidate Ted Williams notes: “Roderick is a director on the board of Hopland Fire District. Skyhawk was appointed to the board of Albion-Little River Fire Protection District. He has never volunteered as a firefighter. Williams and Juhl have volunteered in the sense of training and responding to emergencies. Juhl’s time was short, about nine months, but given his age and the arduous nature of firefighting, I have respect for the guy.”
CONFIRMATION FROM SKYHAWK: “I was reading in Valley People about my being a Firefighter- not quite. I have served on the Board of the Albion Little-River Fire Protection District, but not as a firefighter. Still, it is interesting how many candidates bring emergency service background to the race. Thanks. Chris Skyhawk Candidate for 5th District Supervisor Mendocino County www.skyhawk5.com”
THE LOCAL CONNECTION. Pebs Trippet writes: Fort Bragg native Patrick "Packie" Turner, "nondescript white guy" and son of former Mayor Dave Turner, has made a sensational name for himself as workout partner to elite NBA basketball stars — Festus Ezeli, Skal Labissiere, Aaron Gordon, Draymond Green — running them thru paces, known for attacking their weaknesses to improve their game, giving honest feedback. In 2015, Warriors' ace Steph Curry was won over and asked Packie to join his team of NBA trainers.
This improbable situation got rolling when a Bay Area 9-year old attending Steph's hoops camp in North Carolina already knew the drills camp trainers were teaching, and referred them to Packie Turner of Fort Bragg, as his workout buddy with the "knowledge base… He knows what you're talking about and he has your best interests at heart," according to Ezeli.
"Unlimited Potential Basketball" is the name of Pack's new gym space and business in Millbrae, where he runs drills with everyone from 6 years and up. He teaches kids in gratitude to "a 9-year old who created this path for me. If I were to shut all that down and just work with pros, I'd be turning away what brought me this whole opportunity. You never know who's going to be your referral."
Next question: Who taught Pack? His family owns FloBeds in Fort Bragg. Perhaps they can reveal the answer to the ultimate question.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING ON NETFLIX: "Collateral" is a Brit thriller made for tv, and you sit there watching why America with the abundance of creative talent we can't manage intelligent television like this cop drama pegged to people-smuggling. By Brit standards, even our tv is going backwards! Old timers will remember when live dramas on adult subjects by first-rate writers appeared weekly on American television. The good stuff now comes mostly from furriners and HBO and NetFlix. (Coupla caveats re "Collateral": the socialist mp is played as a twit verging on nutcase, and too many gratuitous f-bombs are dropped. Lots of contempo drama is over-heavy of profanity because, I guess, the producers think it adds realism. We are spared the cannibal kissing of American productions, though, that lots of American directors seem to think are necessary to demonstrate "passion,” in case there's anyone left in the country over the age of ten who hasn't already seen the full monte and then some.
ALSO HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, and also on Netflix, is "Wild Wild Country," a documentary film about the Rajneesh cult of the 1970s that landed in (on) Wasco County, Oregon, where the cult, based on sex, quack therapies and fortune cookie platitudes from its guru, quickly erected their own city on a former cattle ranch and, in the process, alienated everyone for miles around with the insufferable arrogance only zealots seem capable of mustering. (cf the ruling clique at Mendo Public Radio). Until I watched this fascinating film I'd assumed the Rajneeshee's "city" in the Oregon outback was the usual dusty collection of shacks, grimy stoners, hepatitis, with a forceful lunatic herding his zombo-ized flock, kinda like some of the Manson-esque collectives we saw at Mendo communes of the same period. Nope, these weirdos were highly skilled, and the town they built was no Willits. It was beautiful and fully modern, with all the amenities. It was also a felony factory, which eventually brought it down. Locals rightly came to hate the communards, the communards armed themselves, and it all looked like it was headed for Jonestown by many multiples when....well, watch this riveting doc. (Leo Ryan's daughter was a Rajneeshee, and one would think the daughter of the Congressman murdered at Jonestown would have more sense, but there she is like a big orange popsicle explaining the diff between her phony "master" and Rev Jim.) Oh, and the film is more than fair to the cultists; they get a lot of face time, as does the bhagwan's chief executive, a brilliant shrew called Shiela (anglicized).
TOM STIENSTRA ON SALMON: "The most likely scenario for this year's salmon season is an opener delayed to June 11 for the Bay Area coast. The season would run June 11-17, August 1-29 and September 1-30. Other options, as announced by the Pacific Fishery Managment Council, would delay opening day to August 1, and another to September 1. The goal, the Council said, is to allocate more salmon to commercial trollers and less for recreational anglers, to even out what many thought was an imbalance last summer."
I LOST a bet with a friend that the Golden Golem of Greatness, in Kunstler's perfect description of our vivid president, would be out months ago. At this point he's even more like a rat on a tiny island as the rising water laps inexorably at his feet, but seems oblivious of his impending doom. The GGofG has started more fights with significant power sectors of our fine, fat population than he can possibly fend off. I think Trump will get the 25th. He will be removed from office under the 25th amendment, which authorizes the removal of the prez for unfitness which, in his case, can be anything from mental instability to a diagnosis of clinically established Alzheimer’s. Then there's Stormy Daniels, and whatever the FBI cooks up via the endless Mueller investigation of the phony Russian associations, and there are any number of financial crimes. Finally, Trump just might wig completely out on national television in a way that makes it obvious even to Idaho and Alabama that he's crazy. Anything’s possible with this guy.
I HAVEN'T FOLLOWED the Russian stuff closely, especially since its chief proponents are diehard Clintonoids like Rachel Maddow and her clones at the Democrat's television arm, MSNBC, or the CNN comedians lead by Wolf Blitzer. The Russian connection will turn out to be loans to Trump from Russian criminals, but since that whole country is a criminal operation the crooks affiliated with Trump will of course also be fully sanctioned by Putin, the head crook. That will be the link Mueller comes up with, assuming Trump doesn't off Mueller prior to Mueller's bogus findings, and the connection will be laughably tenuous, not what Maddow's hoped for, "The Russians jobbed our Hillary, and now look at US." Hillary and the Democrats jobbed themselves, hence the election of the most spectacularly unfit person ever, to hold down the White House, but also the person most reflective of our culture at this point.
GENERATIONS AGO, it was the Eel River dams and old growth logging boom that brought local salmon and steelhead runs to the brink of extinction. Today, it is largely an unchecked weed industry that is pushing them over the edge. I know it, you probably know it, and our local governing bodies definitely know it. The problem is that few are willing to do anything about it. The black market weed industry has been the engine of the North Coast economy for so long that turning a blind eye to its negative impacts is deeply ingrained in the culture – even, or perhaps, especially, in local government. —Stephanie Tidwell, Friends of the Eel
ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK: How many times have you seen young couples walking together or intertwined on public transit, each grinning not at one another but rather at their own smartphone-devise. Think of it. The young guy has his inamorata right beside him and he’s paying NO attention to HER. And vice-versa. We’ve given up kin-clan-tribe for the rugged-individualist model. While you can say that this is a result of wide historical forces or maybe claim that the individual freely makes choices for himself, and while the choices might seem rational for him alone, they have wide-spread societal consequences when taken in aggregate. So you can say that the process of social atomization started a long time ago. And you can say that it was sped up with the onset of radio broadcasts. While you can say that the broadcasts brought the family into close proximity to listen, their attention was focused on the broadcast, not one another. You can say the same about the widespread adoption of TV sets. But then you add in social media. And now you have people in close proximity and they’re not even paying attention to the same thing ie the same radio or TV program, never mind to one another. The logical result? Social echo-chambers, a multitude of closed off head-spaces. Not only does the young fella have no discernible life-path aside maybe from minimum-wage, part-time shifts at the coffee shop, but now he’s not even a member of a wider society, he exists on his own or maybe attached to an on-line subculture, the individual members maybe never even meeting face-to-face. People were not evolved in this environment. There’s consequences to de-personalization and societal atomization so maybe it’s no wonder that natural selection is keeping apace with a proliferation of people with Asperger’s, especially working in the tech business. After all what do social skills and social interactions matter if you’re not interacting? Decisions are made with one thing in mind and that’s the bottom line and with no other thought as to what these decisions might threaten.
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