Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, May 15, 2018

• Help David
• Memorial Day
• Navarro Closed
• Open Studios
• Sham Radio
• Flynn Blackout
• Recreation Park
• Insurance Bills
• Ed Notes
• Little Dog
• STD Rampage
• Skyhawk Endorsement
• Yesterday's Catch
• Reckoning
• Great Disasters
• Civilization Collapse
• Running Naked
• Dumbing Down
• Foreign Policy
• Planning Agenda
• Thistle Removal
• MARC Transition
• Another War

SUPPORT FOR DAVID NORFLEET. A gofundme relief fund has been set up to help David Norfleet recover from unimaginable losses he suffered from the Signal Ridge fire that killed his long-time companion, Paula Kesenheimer.

VETERANS! ’TENNNN… SHUN! Memorial Day ceremonies commence at 10am at Evergreen Cemetery, Boonville, Sunday, May 27, at 10am.

JUST IN FROM MSP, where the redoubtable Paul McCarthy keeps a close eye on the Navarro. He reports that the river is silted over at its mouth as of Sunday, and will stay closed at the mouth, and to whatever fish may want to either access or depart their ancestral homes, until November.

2018 ANDERSON VALLEY OPEN STUDIOS, a free self-guided tour

Artists open their studios to the public on Memorial Day Weekend, May 26^th to May 28^th, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. along Highway 128 in Anderson Valley featuring: ceramics, jewelry, architecture, painting, photography, printmaking, textiles, mixed media and assemblage.

Phone: (707) 895-3053

Web: andersonvalley-artguild.org

Email: sstudio@wildblue.net

MY LIFE AT KZYX

Editor,

I stood up publicly and privately and loudly for over a decade about how poor the management was at KZYX and several recorded board meetings also show where I stood up and pointed out Illegal board and management behavior and I still kept my two radio shows, but I was the only one.

Everyone else who dared speak out was banned from KZYX, but I had the goods on them and they knew it, so they never acted and I was able to hang on to my shows despite multiple threats and harassment over the years.

During my time there I know of at least seven programmers who were kicked off the air due to personal conflicts with management, it had nothing to do with the person's show, it was made personal by the KZYX management, absolute B.S. moves by them.

Nothing changed in management because of my pointed comments though, because the cabal running KZYX consolidated too much power and supporters flocked to the meetings to YELL over those who were speaking during public comments in an attempt to let the public know the station management and board were acting illegally.

This was accepted behavior by the board, they never once made any attempt to stop the people out of order who were often KZYX programmers attempting to stifle any criticisms, even during the public comments, it was shocking. (Go to Mendocino TV and look at the recorded board meetings from 2+ years ago, see for yourself.)

Also, many of my pointed and accurate criticisms were posted to the private KZYX programmers listserv which management monitored, so the public never saw nor heard about them, as I attempted to initiate positive change behind the scenes, unfortunately to no avail.

All I ever got were rude insults from other co-opted programmers and threats of losing my radio shows, from Mary A. and the impotent manager, John Coate.

Unfortunately, a year and a half ago I had to leave KZYX of my own accord due to a serious health issue.

It was corrupt as hell there and a sham of a community radio station.

Ha, ha, ha, and they couldn't even find two specialty programmers to replace me, it's all canned programming during my two old show times as far as I know.

Derek Hoyle

Former programmer on KZYX for 13 years.

Former programmer on KMFB for 12 years.

Former programmer on KSAY for 5 years.

Former programmer on KFJC for 7 years.

THE WASHBURNE REPORT: AVA writer Flynn Washburne is out of prison after serving almost seven years for bank robbery. Word trickling into the AVA has it that Flynn made the trip back home from his SoCal prison cell last weekend to be enrolled in a drug rehab program in Ukiah, but due to some kind of bureaucratic mix-up Ford Street had never heard of him. So Flynn spent a few days with an old friend in Fort Bragg. After arranging for travel back to Ukiah, he made another attempt to enter Ford Street, and this time he made it. But no sooner had he walked through the door than the rehabbers put the talented Mr. W. on “30 day blackout” restriction, which apparently means no contact with the outside world for a month. We now expect to hear from him some time in early June. Stay tuned. Washburne in Mendo, The Reboot: He’s Back and This Time He’s Not Armed.

BEAT BACK BUSHANKSY-ISM!
[Inside joke between me and maybe one other person who knows that Bushansky is on the MCRPD board of directors. He's what I call an 'indicator species' — genus Mendo Wackus. Wherever he appears, bad things are certain to happen. In the recent KZYX elections, Bushansky was, of course, elected to the KZYX board. When I said the KZYX budget raised more questions than it answered, ol' Bushie said it was perfectly clear to him. Natch, KZYX has appointed him board treasurer.]

Saturday May 19th will be your only chance to vote on the future of the 586 acre Highway 20 property owned by the Mendocino Coast Recreation and Park District (MCRPD). Right now, the MCRPD board is pursuing Off Highway Vehicle Recreation grants and looking to develop an off-road vehicle park on the property. This meeting provides an opportunity to present alternative options.

The MCRPD 10-year planning meeting for Fort Bragg is from 10:00-12:00 on Saturday, May 19th, at the CV Starr Center. The MCPRD goals for the meeting are: a. Identify public recreational needs for the next 10 years. b. Identify ideas for potential partners and funding sources. c. Identify champions associated with goals. The question posed at the meeting is: What recreational activities would you like to see in Fort Bragg?  A list of suggestions is created and attendees vote by placing colored dots next to their preferences.

The Highway 20 property is home to pygmy forest, wetlands, rare plants, and many animal species. Part of Newman Gulch, which is a water source for Fort Bragg, is within its borders.  In 2006 the MCRPD purchased the property with an eye to developing it as a golf course. That project failed and MCRPD was placed in considerable debt. See the Grand Jury Report on the MCRPD: mendocinocounty.org/home/showdocument?id=9389

For years the property has been neglected, violated by off-highway vehicles, and used as a dumping ground. The MCRPD needs our help finding ways to develop and manage the property profitably. For instance: thoughts on best use, ideas for grants to restore and improve the property, volunteers from local groups that can take on creating and maintaining specific areas such as wildflower fields or horse trails, examples of operational models such as the Botanical Gardens where locals buy yearly memberships and visitors buy daily passes.

The May 19th meeting is about what WE WANT for Fort Bragg and for this resource. Email to Mary Heinrich for a flyer created by Highway 20 neighbors: APPROPRIATE RECREATIONAL USE AND DEVELOPMENT FOR THE MCRPD 586-ACRE PROPERTY — SUMMERS LANE AND HIGHWAY 20, FORT BRAGG.

Come to the May 19th meeting. Add your ideas and your voice. Vote.

Mary Heinrich

Fort Bragg

BILLS SEEK TO CORRECT INSURANCE COMPANIES BAD BEHAVIOR

by Jim Shields

While smoke was still smoldering in the aftermath of last autumn’s Wine Country wildfires in Mendocino, Napa and Sonoma Counties, I predicted that the new year would usher in an epic battle between and among the state’s Big Three (Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego gas & Electric) and the state legislature over liability arising from the fires.

That battle has been joined in Sacramento since January while investigations continue to determine whether PG&E equipment played a role in igniting early October Northcoast wildfires.

It’s estimated that PG&E to date has spent more than $4 million on media lobbying nationwide to rehabilitate the company’s image and to sway public opinion away from supporting legislative efforts to prohibit electric utilities found culpable in wildfires from passing the costs for claims not covered by insurance as well as fines or penalties onto customers.

While that fight is fully engaged, a new battlefront has opened.

State Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, who is also a candidate for Attorney General, described it this way.

“Imagine everything you own is destroyed by fire — your home, your pets, your car, and every piece of furniture, clothes, jewelry, and keepsake you have. Your entire life's possessions have gone up in flames. And then imagine that you have to fight with the same insurance company you have faithfully paid year after year, to get them to make good on the promises they made to pay for the rebuilding of your home and the replacement of your belongings. If you are one of the 6,500 Californians who lost everything in the 2017 fires, you don't have to imagine this. This is what you are experiencing right now. The rest of us are just one fire or other disaster away from having the same thing happen to us, losing everything and then having to fight the insurance company. Californians survived the fires only to face more emotional trauma, as they were required by the insurance companies to create detailed inventories before the insurers will pay for the contents of their homes or they discovered they were underinsured and do not have enough to rebuild their homes.”

Jones announced this week that he is supporting a trio of bills in the state Senate that offer insurance help for those who lost everything due to the fires.

Needless to say, the insurance industry has mounted a prodigious lobbying effort to kill the proposed laws.

So far the bills have survived the lobbying onslaught.

The three bills are authored by NorCal Senators Bill Dodd and Mike McGuire, who represent the fire-damaged areas.

According to McGuire and Dodd, SB 894, SB 897 and SB 1291 would bring much needed relief for consumers and reforms to the insurance industry. Senator Dodd’s SB 894 protects families when disaster strikes by placing new requirements on insurance companies. It guarantees up to three years of coverage for living expenses and requires insurers to renew policies for up to two years following a disaster. Non-renewals must be reported to the Insurance Commissioner. It also allows families to combine coverage categories. For example, if the cost to rebuild a house exceeds limits of the plan, families can apply unused contents coverage. Senator McGuire’s SB 897 would waive inventory claim form requirements (an itemized contents list) during a governor-declared state of emergency, allowing homeowners the option of foregoing the itemization and instead automatically collecting at least 80 percent of the policy limit. Without the itemized lists, some insurance companies will provide as little as 30 percent payoff. A second bill by Senator Dodd, SB 1291, would ensure independent insurance adjusters demonstrate their competence through background reviews and passage of a pre-licensing education course. It comes in response to complaints from many wildfire victims about adjusters who misrepresented current law.

“Senator Dodd and I have heard from hundreds of our neighbors who lost everything in the fires and to make matters worse, are having to re-live the most horrific night of their lives and recall and attempt to put a price on their most priceless possessions via a cumbersome itemized list,” McGuire said. “SB 897 will ensure homeowners are able to collect what their due from their insurance company in a quick and efficient timeline and it will allow them to start rebuilding their lives and homes, which will benefit their family and our community for generations to come.

“Families who pay their insurance premiums year in and year out deserve to be covered when disaster strikes,” Senator Dodd said. “This legislation requires insurance companies to have our backs when we need it most and will benefit victims of future disasters.”

These bills appear to be reasonable remedies to what look like some patently abusive practices by the insurance industry.  I’ll track their legislative progress and keep you apprised.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, and is also the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)

ED NOTES

JUST SAYIN' re the deluge of abuse she's absorbing here in Boonville, but the Superintendent of the local schools may be interested to know that the teaching professions, all the way up to the university level, were the professionals who were Hitler's most enthusiastic followers.

I SEE that Coast teachers are on Facebook — libelers never had it so good prior to the internet — denouncing Mrs. Hutchins, basing their long distance opinions solely on untruths passed along to them by the claque at AV Elementary. That claque is working overtime to defame Hutchins.

THE STONING of school administrators for trying to do their supervisory jobs is nothing new in the County. Remember Matt Murray in Point Arena? He was hired to see if he could retrieve PA Elementary from a kind of state receivership, where the school had been placed because it has failed, and failed miserably. Murray accomplished miracles in a year but, because he'd demanded that the entrenched edu-blob do its job, he was soon fired by a combination of secret slander, the laughably gutless PA school board and the district's superintendent at the time, a babbling dunce named Iacuaniello. Murray sued, the dunce testified he couldn't remember anything, Murray, the best thing that had happened to educational Point Arena in years, left the state after losing his suit for wrongful termination. Which he should have won given the facts. But he had to prove that Iacuaniello acted with malice, a high bar for a man with such low intelligence.

Background: https://www.theava.com/archives/3659

* * *

IN MY MANY YEARS in Mendo — I arrived with the Class of 1970, the Back to the Landers, aka hippies — local elections have been lone wolf affairs, people running for this or that as individuals. But the only way to get the changes we all claim to want — among them low cost housing, for instance, and other socially desirable amenities — is for like-minded people to run as a slate. Three persons can control the Board of Supervisors and other elected boards. Unless a correct-thinking individual can get two other votes, all the Nice Thoughts in the world are just so much rhetoric. For example, when Johnny Pinches wanted a mere discussion of the preposterous (and costly) water deal Mendo made with Sonoma County pre-Elvis (’54) he couldn’t even get a second to talk about it. Most of the diverted Eel is owned by SoCo.

* * *

THE SUPES CANDIDATES for the Third and Fifth Districts do not seem focused on specific proposals to address economic problems in their districts, most of them of the macro-variety beyond local solving. Ideas like Broadband and more trails are not only unlikely, but wouldn’t help much if they did suddenly appear. And although we do like candidate Roderick’s idea for a mobile asphalt plant, that also won’t make much of a dent in either road repair or employment in the near term, even if our uninspiring County officials tried to do something creative for a change.

ON TOP OF THAT, you have an overpaid Board of Supervisors and their similarly over-compensated top officials still assuming that property tax and sales tax revenues are going to keep going up, that more staff can be hired (and has been hired) without any awareness of the looming local depression. Costco, for better or worse, will not increase local tax revenues much if at all, just transfer some of them from local small businesses to Costco.

MEANWHILE, the oblivious supervisors, even after being reminded by a few speakers last Tuesday of some of the bad economic indicators, spent much of the day Tuesday simply trying to figure out when they will refine and tweak the already complicated pot rules, and adding some new ones for cannabis businesses on top of the overcomplicated rules they’ve already imposed. (Mark Scaramella)

* * *

ARTHUR JUHL commenting recently on the AVA’s website, wrote: “…I see that someone writes about accountability. To make it effective one has to have penalties or rewards. If the job is not accomplished you replace that person. As a county employee. they would be demoted. In my humble opinion there would be quite a few!”

THAT’S TRUE, I guess, Mr. Juhl. But replacing and demoting people feels too much like “Ready, Fire, Aim.” The real problem is the County’s lack of management reporting. They can’t even get the departments to provide monthly status reports on budgets, staffing, key cost drivers, current projects and problems. Without these basic management reports, you can’t make a case for demotion, much less replacement, because you don’t have a record to base it on. With reporting (and feedback and regular pressure to improve from management) you also build a file over time that either demonstrates good performance or justifies personnel action. Within reason, management should be dictating the kinds of reports they get, what they contain, how often, how detailed, etc. The approach that CEO Angelo has taken with her “leadership teams” is obviously designed to put off reporting as long as possible and allow staff to decide what “metrics” should be used to measure them. No, never. Management should tell staff how they will be measured and what the targets should be, not the other way around. But of course, they don’t even try. I still don’t understand why past boards, the current board and all the current candidates don’t understand this reporting process, the most basic management tool. You’ll hear an occasional and ignorant reference to “metrics,” “accountability,” and “transparency” — usually from people who have no experience or idea what they’re talking about — but none of them clearly call for proper management reporting.

And without it, none of the ideas being proposed or discussed in the campaign will go anywhere.

LET’S PICK a department at random, say County Counsel office. How many cases are they handling at the moment, by category? What is the status of these cases? How much outside consulting is being paid for?

OR THE PROBATION DEPARTMENT? How many people on probation? How many probation officers? How many unfilled positions? How many on leave, disability, etc.? How many in juvenile hall? And last month, and the month before, etc.?

EVERY MONTH, right here in Boonville, our small local fire department, the very model of civic functioning, recites budget and staffing status, the list of tasks and projects underway, the record of what is scheduled and whether it’s done, and how to improve the reporting process. Nobody complains about it because it helps keep the district in the fiscal black and on task. If Boonville can do it — without a “leadership team”! — why can’t Official Mendo? (Mark Scaramella)

* * *

THE SUPERVISORS Doing What They Do Best — Self-Congratulation With Side Excursions To Present Meaningless Awards To Staff Sillies.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I try to do my job. I was behind the gate the other night but I still saw a woman knock over the Hutchins election sign out front. The boss says, ‘The wind did it, Little Dog. Don't go all paranoid on me.’ But I saw what I saw.”

WE’RE NUMBER ONE!

LOS ANGELES — A state report finds the number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases in California reached a record high in 2017.

The Department of Public Health said Monday that more than 300,000 cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and early syphilis were reported last year.

That's a 45 percent increase compared to five years ago.

Officials say there were 30 stillbirths due to congenital syphilis last year — the highest number reported since 1995.

Chlamydia and gonorrhea rates are highest among people under age 30. Rates of chlamydia are highest among young women. Men account for the majority of syphilis and gonorrhea cases.

The department's director, Dr. Karen Smith, urges sexually active people to use condoms and get tested regularly. Many STDs can be cured with antibiotics.

SKYHAWK SOARS!

Editor,

I’ve known Chris Skyhawk since he worked on Dan (Hamburg)’s 2010 campaign for 5th District Supervisor. When Chris learned of Dan’s retirement and announced fairly early, I immediately expressed support.

Why? Chris is progressive AND practical. He is empathetic and professional. He is smart and innovative, but he also honors previous work and progress. (I’ve never once heard him say “I alone can fix it!” lol) He understands the powers and constraints on our county’s governing body and doesn’t over-promise. Chris appreciates the hard work of current county employees, and doesn't tear down the whole lot with claims of incompetence and greed.

Chris has experience in social services and understands how the strength of our safety net actually benefits us all, not just direct recipients. He is dedicated to solving the housing crisis, an area where the BOS can make a difference through zoning regulations. Chris is committed to keeping our beautiful environment healthy and to safeguarding sustainable natural resource activities (fishing, timber). I’m aligned with Chris in protecting our small agricultural operations, whether produce, cannabis or livestock.

In addition to our wealth of independent small businesses, organized labor is an important part of the economic fabric. Chris has been endorsed by SEIU Local 1021, Operating Engineers Local 3, North Bay Labor Council, plus the Inland Mendocino Democratic Club and Congressman Jared Huffman!

Chris has worked with families and youth from every ethnic group, and understands how supporting all parts of our community makes the whole cloth stronger. His working class upbringing and his parents’ fight for equal opportunity for their own disabled son gave Chris deep knowledge of what it’s like to face challenges. If elected, Chris will bring experience and compassion, as well as professionalism, respect for others, and a strong work ethic to the job.

Lauren Sinnott

Point Arena former mayor

Point Arena

CATCH OF THE DAY, May 13, 2018

DEBRA BAUER, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MARIA LOPEZ-MARTINEZ, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

JUSTIN MAXFIELD, Willits. First degree robbery, probation revocation.

MICHELLE PATIENT, Fort Bragg. Paraphernalia, failure to appear.

JOSHUA PETERSEN, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

ROBERT VIALE, Albion. Failure to appear.

JONATHAN YOUNG, Willits. Failure to appear.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

If it was only the news business that’s gone bat-shit that would be one thing but it’s not just them, the whole panoply of the American power structure appears to have lost its marbles with the election of 2016. This is the only way to see it IMO. They seemingly can’t conceive of the many roadways to hell with these paving stones of – cough – good intentions they’re laying down in their attempts to get rid of Trump. Is Trump a buffoon? Yeah, sure, that much is self-evident. But let’s not pretend that the intelligentsia pre-Trump hadn’t made itself a laughing stock with multiple disastrous failures of domestic policy and diplomacy and war-making leaving major areas of the globe in chaos, including and especially the United States. Is Trump a legitimate president? You bet he is. Trump came to power duly elected, with a base of power, with promises made to that electoral base. And, against all odds. he appears to be making good on some of those promises i.e. shit-canning the Iran nuclear deal, and appears to be giving the others the old college try. If the powers-that-be cannot abide Trump, they should try what they haven’t yet tried, to reflect on the sins of their own making that made Trump possible.

BY AND LARGE, I dislike Munich analogies. But in this instance the comparison may have some merit. In 1938, faced with a megalomaniac in charge of a fearsome military machine and surrounded by a coterie of fanatic militarists, the European democracies wilted, paving a way for a great disaster. Today another megalomaniac with a fearsome military machine at his command and responding to the counsel of the latter day equivalent of Goering and Goebbels is on a tear. History will not treat European leaders kindly if they repeat the mistakes of Neville Chamberlain and Eduard Daladier. As an American, I believe that Trump needs to be confronted, not indulged.

— Andrew Bacevich

LOUSY DEALS & TURNING WHEELS

by James Kunstler

In that long ago yesteryear of 1979, before blogging, tweeting, twerking, hacking, posting, ghosting, doxing, and all the other Internet-enabled compulsions of the present day, a gang of inflamed young men, said to be students, invaded the US embassy compound in Teheran and took fifty-two American embassy personnel hostage — crossing an age-old line of geopolitical conduct that kicked off the epic conflict between global Islam and a USA-led West, still on-going as you read.

I followed the Iran Hostage Crisis avidly… the gibbering mullahs, the blindfolded captives, the rotating cast of double-talking prime ministers who lectured Jimmy Carter on the Nightly News, the rescue attempt fiasco that killed eight American soldiers out in the Persian desert. Oddly, what I remember most after all these years was the fact that the hostages ran out of dental floss and had to swap around between them the same recycled last strand for weeks on end — a ticket to periodontal hell, if ever there was one.

And then, as if by magic, Iran released the hostages on Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day and our splendiferous “morning in America” commenced. What really began that day, of course, was the asset-stripping of this land and its people, leading to the political disorders of the moment. Forty years later it’s hard to say which nation is a bigger pain-in-the-ass on the world stage, Iran or the USA. But the net effect of all that mutual antagonism is a vast region from North Africa to Central Asia of failed states, ruined cities, and dead bodies.

I’m rather skeptical that President Trump will manage to get a new-and-improved “deal” with Iran after tearing up the old one put together by Mr. Obama, which may have not been of much value anyway. I don’t believe that anything in it would have really deterred Iranian technicians from developing a serviceable nuclear weapon. It’s just not that hard to do anymore, given the number of physicists trained all over the world since 1945.

Until recently, the Obama agreement gave the appearance of some cover in the long-running feud, an impression, at least, that the two sides could talk to each other, which has now been erased. What’s changed is a recognition that the agreement did nothing to stop Iran’s intervention in three of the current hot-spots of the region: Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, where various contingents of Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah, Houthis, and even Iranian military regulars have carried the Shia battle flag in the ancient struggle to displace their Sunni adversaries, sponsored by Iran’s arch-enemy, Saudi Arabia — leaving wreckage everywhere. And, of course, let’s remember the Sunni factions include the savage ISIS and al-Qaeda gangs.

Which points to the elephant in the room with the 900-pound gorilla on its back: the fact that underlying all this terrible destructive action in that part of the world is a religious disagreement. (While, of course, underlying even that is a long emergency of human population overshoot and a desperate struggle for dwindling resources of all kinds.) It has surely been the dream of that aggressive American faction known as the Neocons, to up-end the entrenched mullahs who run Iran. The theory, I think, is that religious maniacs are always and everywhere more dangerous than secular maniacs and, if we could only get rid of these apocalyptic whack-jobs, a country like Iran might be made a “normal” nation again. The Neocons also assume that a majority of Iran’s younger generations are good-and-goddam sick of the ruling mullahs, and eager for their own regime change. And so now the Trumpsters, apparently, are determined to squeeze Iran until something over there gives.

Is it too obvious to say that our previous efforts at re-engineering the various governments of the region have all ended in failed states? “Normality” may just be a mirage in the desert these days. What happened in the Islamic oil states was an historic anomaly, short-lived and catastrophic. What we’re witnessing is the slow-motion collapse of civilization at the margins. A corner of the world that was once emptier and quieter is on its way to being empty and quiet again, but not without a tragic convulsion of violence on the journey there. What’s happening on the margins these days will shortly move toward the center.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

RUNNING NAKED down the state highway

Runnin’ naked in the middle of the day

Runnin’ naked like a tom cat’s behind

Runnin’ naked, but the cat don’t seem to mind

Give me your heart

I’ll give you mine first

Give me your time

I’ll give you my trust

And we’re buck naked now

Like when we were born

When will we find out

Why does it take so long

And we’re buck naked now

And we’re buck naked now

And we’re buck naked now

In the eyes of the lord

Running naked like the day when I was born

We’re all naked in the land where I come from

I’m a long long way from New York City now

We’re all naked if you turn us inside out

And we’re buck naked now

We ain’t got no clothes

Bare assed for sure

In the eyes of God

Naked in my heart

Naked in my soul

Well, how does it feel

Does anybody know

(Well we’re) naked inside

You’re naked too

Well there’s nothing to fear

And there’s nothing we can do

(And we’re) buck naked now

Buck naked now

Buck naked now

In the eyes of the Lord

– David Byrne

THE OLD BUZZARD offers another in his insightful series — “Signs that the Apocalypse is Approaching". Buzzard reports, “These days, and for some time now, television beats the movies in telling diverse stories, due mostly to the best writers now working for television channels such as HBO, AMC, BBC, PBS, etc. Who can blame them? Writing screenplays must be so dull when most films are dominated by car chases, bombs exploding, super-human feats, a complete lack of character development, a plot line that six-year olds can follow, and where the ‘good guys’ will obviously come out on top no matter how much ‘suspenseful’ peril they may find themselves in. I guess it’s all part of the dumbing down of America, an insulting trend that has been hoisted upon the masses and one for which there seems no answer at this point. Oh dear, the Apocalypse is approaching faster than I had thought.”

—Steve Sparks

“Everybody hates us—THAT’S our foreign policy.”

AMENDED!

Planning Commission meeting

AMENDED Agenda for May 17, 2018, is posted on the department website at:

https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff with any questions.

Victoria Davis
Commission Services Supervisor
707-234-6664

THE ETERNAL STRUGGLE

Navarro Point thistle-removing THIS WEDNESDAY 10am-noon. You are invited to join us as we remove thistles at Navarro Point this Wednesday, May 16th, from 10am until noon. We’re at the peak of spring wildflower blooming so it’s a great time to be out on the headlands there even if you’re not removing thistles. You can find us in the parking lot on the west side of Highway 1 a half mile south of the Navarro Ridge Road turn-off at 10am. No tools or previous experience are necessary, altho gloves and clippers would be helpful. We hope to see you there this Wednesday at 10am. Contact me if you have questions.

Tom, 937-1113, tw@mcn.org

HAT’S OFF FOR THE ROPES COURSE

Editor:

With a very appreciative tip of the hat to all who created, maintained, used and enjoyed Mendocino Adventure Ropes Course since its inception in 1995, as outgoing director, I would like to alert you, in the various regional communities, to a need and an opportunity. MARC has entered a six month transition period to renew, re-energize and rethink itself, if need be. All input is encouraged. Virtual and face-to-face conversation to coalesce ideas and implement a strategy created by those interested in transitioning MARC has begun and will be ongoing. With so much change currently in the air, this should be favorable timing to re-populate the advisory board, enlarge the facilitator pool, review the infrastructure, line out fulfillment of director role tasks, align with partners, etc. A ropes or challenge course has many potential applications — recreation, education, health, environment, conflict management and resolution, resource management, exploring the interplay between personal and group perspectives — all arenas and skills our region is rich in and needs to continue embodying and supporting. To participate in MARC’s Coalition Co-creating Community, use mendoadventure@yahoo.com, the website, Facebook page, network locally and create a Friends of MARC chapter. We will convene mid-August in Leggett for a tour and sampler course, as desired, to steward MARC into its next era as a regional resource.

Nonae Sears, Director MARC 2008-2018

Mendocino Adventure Ropes Course

Leggett

Committed to developing self-esteem in our community!

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Iran has been an imperial pain-in-the-ass for going on three millennia. It’s in their civilizational DNA. Maybe what we have here is Mark Twain’s rhyming conception of history. Or, with Trump on stage, maybe we get the Marxian version with history re-written this time as farce.

But even if Trump was as canny as LBJ, even if he could cook up rhetoric for the ages like the Gettysburg Address, the swamp he talks about draining makes the one outside Mordor look like a road-side ditch. The all-devouring crocodilians lurking in the Washington version are monstrous, they have their turf, they are jealous of their prerogatives, and woe betide any mere politician who jostles them.

Maybe the Iran nuclear deal slows down the Iranians but it wouldn’t stop them. It might not even slow them down. This religious rivalry is just the latest dusting of animosity on a layer cake of hate that’s millennia deep. And all this deal does is give a fig-leaf of cover to the US to ignore the Middle East for a while as it tries to shore up its deteriorating status as shot-caller further east.

Still there’s the question, will we be treated to the spectacle of another Middle East war, maybe one with the added zest of radioactive fallout? Given the predisposition of the Swamp-mired Deep State to fuck things up, I give it decent odds.