Mendocino County Today: Thursday, May 17, 2018

• Jim Triplett
• Facebook Assault
• Pet Adoption
• River Landing
• Little Dog
• Blackie Expires
• Glowing Greenhouses
• Ed Notes
• Yesterday's Catch
• Clean House
• Funny Wolf
• Swamp Thing
• Improv Workshops
• Leaky Memo
• Medicinal Herbs
• Cannabis Hour
• Rotten Wood
• Self Checkout
• Quizless
• Caffrey Appreciation
• Wodo Revisions
• Tom Wolfe

JAMES ARTHUR TRIPLETT, 73, of Summertown, Tennessee, passed peacefully in his recliner while napping on April 21, 2018. "Jim" was born on June 13, 1944 to Marvin William Triplett and Mildred Olive (Hulbert) Triplett Gowan in Healdsburg.

In 1962, after graduating from Anderson Valley High School in Boonville, Jim served in the Army for five and a half years. Jim was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Over the years, Jim served in many capacities in the church and was always willing to help those in need. Jim's hobbies were reading, driving, singing, and whittling. Jim enjoyed spending time with his wife, grandson, family and friends. Jim was loved and will be missed by so many.

As a young child, Jim lived in St. Helens, Oregon, and Yorkville. Jim grew up near Philo. While in the Army, Jim lived in Augsburg, Germany and Corpus Christi, Texas. After being released from the Army, Jim moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana and Huntertown, Indiana where he raised his daughter, Christine and was a truck driver for many years.

Jim returned to California in 1983 and lived in Philo, Santa Rosa, and Chico. Following early retirement from working for the church for 16 years, Jim and Pat served a mission in 2008 and 2009 at Heber Valley Camp in Utah. In June, 2010, after living in Chico for 21 years, Jim and Pat traveled to Eastern Tennessee with their fifth-wheel trailer. They visited family, friends, and interesting sites along the way. From mid-August to mid-January, they stayed near Morristown, Tennessee. During their time there they were searching for a home to buy. By the end of January 2011, they purchased and moved to their new home in the country near Summertown.

In recent years, Jim's health had declined due to his sleep apnea affecting his heart, causing it to become enlarged and weak. He was not a fan of doctors and did not want to prolong his life with any extra measures. For all those who loved Jim, we will greatly miss his laughter and how friendly he was to everyone. The world was a better place because Jim lived, and we look forward to seeing him again someday.

Jim is survived by his wife of 30 years, Patricia (Cook) Triplett; daughter, Christine (Dan) Isaacs; stepson, Dave Bierman; sister, Mary Ellen (Ernest) Huff; grandson, Spencer Isaacs; and many nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends.

Jim was preceded in death by his parents; his brother, William (Bill) Triplett; Pat's oldest son, Ron Bierman; his stepfather, George Gowan; and 1st wife, Christiane (Chris) Schmid of Augsburg, Germany.

Jim was cremated on April 27, 2018. Per his wishes, no funeral services will be held and no donations requested. Home Teaching was always important to Jim. Recent changes made to home teaching have expanded and LDS members are encouraged to minister to others, especially to those families under their stewardship. The best way to honor and remember Jim would be to give service to others.

DA DROPS THE BALL

Re: Case SCTM-CRCR-2017-91950-1

District Attorney Eyster,

I’m not sure if you were in court yesterday in Fort Bragg, but I wasn’t because I wasn’t notified. I was told that I would receive a subpoena for the final court date regarding the charges against Mateo Ortiz-Cuesta and that I would have the opportunity to read my victim statement. I never received one.

I did get a phone call from Tim Stoen today apologizing for this oversight. I don’t blame Tim. I appreciated his honest apology. I respect him immensely. He’s drowning in cases, clearly. However, should a citizen not have justice because your office is short staffed?

Mr. Ortiz had his day in court without my being given the opportunity to give my victim witness statement. He pled no contest to PC 415 “disturbing the peace” with 6 months probation for shoving me into a wall and dislocating my shoulder, because I had liked a post he had made on Facebook. The only upside to this is that he was ordered to pay my medical bills.

I have attached my statement. (Below)

To say the least, I am disgusted by not only this gross miscarriage of justice, but also by the lack of respect to me as a victim of a crime by depriving me of my right to address the court and my attacker. However, there is another issue to address here.

I attempted to report this crime on seven separate occasions to two different Fort Bragg police officers, with no response. I left five voice mails and sent two emails. Eventually, I gave up. At the urging of a city council member I contacted the Chief of Police and asked him to come to my office and insisted that he send an officer. Only then was my report taken, six months after I was assaulted.

I expect your office to pursue the question of how it is possible that all of my inquiries to the police department were ignored, while the assailant himself is employed by the City of Fort Bragg as an IT Technician, and had full access to the Fort Bragg Police Department’s technology, databases and records.

Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.

Respectfully,

Sharon Davis, C.E.O.
Mendocino Coast Chamber of Commerce

* * *

[attached statement]

To: Honorable Judge Clayton Brennan

Fr: Sharon Davis

Re: Victim Witness Statement

March 1, 2018

Thank you for the opportunity to submit this statement. It’s been nearly a year since I was assaulted. Even after all this time, it’s difficult for me to remember what it’s like to get a good night’s sleep. Every night, I am awakened several times by the pain in my shoulder. Once awake, I am again reminded of that night and how frightening it was. It still haunts me.

I’ve come to realize that the physical pain is simply a part of my life now. Since I didn’t have insurance at the time of the assault, I wasn’t able to receive any treatment for my injuries such as surgery or physical therapy. Simple tasks are still painful like putting on my bra, reaching for something, driving, washing my hair, hugging someone. I used to love to do pilates and run, but that’s been taken away from me now.

Worse than the physical pain is the emotional pain. It’s hard to describe how it feels to be physically hurt by someone that you love deeply. What makes it especially hurtful is the total lack of remorse, even immediately after the assault. My youngest daughter had to come to my house to take me to the hospital and see him screaming at me. She had to take me to the hospital and see me go through the ordeal of being sedated and have my shoulder put back in the socket.

Extreme stress has become a part of my daily life. I have over $10,000 in medical bills from that trip to the emergency room. I live with the constant fear that I will lose my house as I am not able to pay those bills. My job requires me to attend City Council meetings on a regular basis, but I find myself avoiding them as I know I will see the defendant there.

I have two daughters. The easier thing would have been just to let it go and not have to go through this whole legal process, which has been extremely stressful. But what kind of example would I be setting for my daughters if the defendant is not held accountable for what he did to me? The message has to be that there is no excuse for shoving me into a wall with enough force to dislocate my shoulder, an act that has changed my life forever.

Being that the defendant has a history of this kind of behavior, having been arrested previously for assault with a deadly weapon and corporal injury to a spouse, I can’t bear the thought of this happening to someone else. I don’t want that on my conscience. I thank you for your time and ask that you consider this statement when you decide on sentencing.

Respectfully,

Sharon Davis

PET ADOPTION EVENT in Anderson Valley:

DRIVER Makaela Dodes, 20, and passenger Aiden Harris, 21, both of Las Vegas, were traveling south on Highway 101 at a little before 4pm on Tuesday when Dodes’s 2008 Lexus mysteriously veered into the outside lane and down a 100-150 foot embankment into the Russian River. Injured, the two women exited their vehicle as it began to sink and crawled back up the embankment to Highway 101 where passersby called 911 and they were subsequently taken to Santa Rosa Memorial for treatment while the outside southbound lane was closed for about two hours.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “My old bud, Spot, died. These people were too cheap to pay for his nose reconstruction, and it went to gangrene. Just as we were saying our goodbyes to ol' Spot over his grave, Skrag walks by and says, ‘Hey! What's time dinner?’ "

MAN CONVICTED OF MURDERING FOR MARIJUANA DIES IN PRISON.

UKIAH, Wed., May 16. – News has been received from Lassen County that Isidro “Blackie” Lopez Bernal, age 30, died at High Desert State Prison in Susanville on March 15, 2018. The cause of death continues to be under investigation. The decedent is shown in the picture as the middle defendant.

Lopez Bernal was convicted by plea of second degree murder and gun use in February 2017 and sentenced in the Mendocino County Superior Court in March 2017 to state prison for 25 years to life.

In brief, in September 2015, Lopez Bernal, along with his two co-defendants, gathered and made plans in Cloverdale, traveled to Mendocino County, and carried out an armed robbery under cover of darkness of an illegal marijuana garden in the Yorkville area. The victim, a man watching over the garden, was murdered by the three would-be thieves. This is also the case where one of the co-defendants was shot by his associate and used his cell phone to call law enforcement for medical assistance after he was left behind to die by his "friends."

(District Attorney Press Release)

* * *

Background: https://www.theava.com/archives/53625

GLOWING GREENHOUSES LIGHT UP RURAL HILLS

by Kym Kemp

Once again spring brings light to the hills of the Emerald Counties–large industrial lights that flood valleys, glow into neighbors’ windows and possibly confuse wildlife disrupting natural cycles. Rural communities complain that greenhouses constructed specifically for growing marijuana bring unwanted light into rural areas usually only lit by the stars, the moon and an occasional pinpoint of light from a distant cabin.

Concerns about the lights vary. Many rural residents are worried about environmental issues ranging from the light creating problems for animals that are nocturnal hunters to the light impacting the night skies making it more difficult to view the stars. Others are concerned about lights shining in their homes and the generators that power them disturbing their quiet neighborhoods.

Many greenhouses lighting up the night in Southern Humboldt this month. [Photo by a reader]

According to Kyle Keegan, a local resident who has studied the issue, “[A]n increasing body of scientific knowledge tells us that altering the day/night cycles of environments can have a profound effect on the physiology of human and nonhuman species, as well as ecological systems.”

Keegan said, “The whole phenomenon of light pollution was not taken seriously until the last decade.” But, he said, scientist have become increasingly concerned as they’ve looked into the situation.

Keegan particularly worries that the large number of greenhouses lighting up the dark will affect nighttime pollinators such as moths. He worries that the glow will attract moths and other insects. “If they are out there chasing that light, they are not being pollinators,” Keegan explained. This can disrupt natural processes and possibly change our local ecology.

Keegan says the number of greenhouses uncovered appear to have slightly decreased in his neighborhood this year. However, in March 2013, as the following light map shows, there were few lights showing beyond those found in towns.

Light map from March 2013 for Southern Humboldt. [Screengrab from here]

By last year, in 2017, light pollution had exploded.

One side effect of the uncovered greenhouse lights is that they are frequently confused with wildfires. Firefighters, most of them volunteers, are then roused from their beds and sent chasing the false fires wasting their time and their resources.

When low-lying fog hangs over a greenhouse, water droplets amplify the light. This can look like wildfire to observers and can trigger calls to bring in firefighters and inmate crews.

Possibly of the most importance to the actual grower is that having a light source provides a beacon to the greenhouse and the light itself is illegal. According to Humboldt County regulations “cultivators using artificial lighting for mixed-light cultivation shall shield greenhouses so that little to no light escapes. Light shall not escape at a level that is visible from neighboring properties between sunset and sunrise.”

According to a spokesperson for the Humboldt County Planning Department, “The Planning and Building Department line is the best contact for light complaints…”

A video taken in the Salmon Creek watershed in the last couple of weeks facing towards Bear Buttes and Miranda can be seen at:

http://kymkemp.com/2018/05/10/glowing-greenhouses-light-up-rural-hills/

The orange glow to the far right is Garberville. Most of the other large lights are greenhouses.

(Note: The creator of the video who doesn’t want to be named says that he attached a soundtrack that begins with the sound of an electric transformer and moves to Nasa’s Symphonies of the Planets.)

Many, if not most, greenhouse owners cover their lights but, the glow from the ones who don’t continues to frustrate rural neighborhoods.

* * *

Earlier Chapters about Greenhouse Lights:

In Defense of the Stars: The Use of “Mixed-light” Greenhouses Is Changing our Night Skies and May Be Altering our Nocturnal Ecology

Night Sky Lights Up During Spring in the Emerald Counties

(Courtesy, Kymkemp.com)

ED NOTES

MIKE HORGER is a candidate for 3rd District Supervisor. For pure candor he rivals former Supervisor Pinches. Here’s Horger in the Willits Weekly on the psych center tentatively proposed for the old Willits Hospital: “Some people just need to talk to somebody, and some people just need to be strapped to a bed. We need to see what facilities we need for each, and I think if we have the funding and if we have the availability — with the county as spread out as it is — it would be nice to have smaller services in different areas. But, if the Jail is building their mental health facility, that would be the place for people who need to be tied down.”

FAR AS I’M CONCERNED, Big Mike has won himself the head therapist job. “That guy weeping to himself over there in the corner? Kick him in the ass and tell him to stop sniveling and act like a man. The tweaker hopping up and down like a goddam kangaroo? Double strap his ass to the bed.”

KIDDING ASIDE, Horger’s on to something here: smaller units in the different areas of our far flung county would certainly be more convenient to law enforcement, our front line mental health workers. Horger’s also correct about the basic split in the mentally ill: the volatile mentally ill have to be restrained, the non-volatile needs his meds juggled until he’s again more or less functional. A lot of the street nuts wandering around Ukiah and the Mendocino Coast, are only temporarily nuts via street drugs. Or alcohol. But the sad fact is that there are more and more disturbed persons of all types all the time, and somehow, some way, these people have to be sequestered in safe places while they regain themselves, if they can or ever will.

* * *

NOTHING PERSONAL, but Chris Skyhawk’s slicko-spiffo Democrat mailer with names of supporters on it, is the first of its kind in a non-partisan local election. I guess it's a bid for the Fuzzy Warm votes but are there enough of them? The more clear-thinking sectors of local libs, most of whom supported Bernie, not Huffman and Hillary, are supporting Ted Williams, hence the in-house Democrat contretemps over Huffman’s intervention in non-partisan Mendo politics, which supervisor races are supposed to be. The official Democrats inland and the Coast endorsed Williams, a fact the Congressman was apparently unaware of.

AND THE HAWK’S statement on his and Huffman’s mailer?  “We live in a remarkably beautiful place with caring communities. There is no doubt that we can tackle the challenges we face if we set egos aside and work together….” (Egos? Translation. Agree with me, be like me, Albion’s ego-free Uriah Heep, and we will all pad up together to tackle head on beautiful places and caring communities.)

CALL ME SENTIMENTAL, but I still look nostalgically back to the days when words had meaning, but his statements on the mailer have none, other than as a rhetorical heads-up that the vague Albion candidate will be a reliable contributor to ongoing County management dysfunction.

VAL MUCHOWSKI is chief adjutant to the Democrat’s local herd bull, Rachel Binah. The other day, Val shrugged off 5th District Supe’s candidate Dave Roderick as, gasp! “a conservative Republican.” Roderick is a registered Republican running for the non-partisan Mendo Board of Supervisors. From his statements at candidate forums, any other place Roderick would be considered a liberal, but then he’s confined himself at these forums, as he should, to purely local issues. In any case, how would Val know what kind of Republican the guy is? The only real standard is this: Is the candidate likely to be good at steering the Good Ship Mendo? His party registration is irrelevant.

I’M A REGISTERED DEMOCRAT which, at his point, is only slightly less embarrassing than being a registered sex offender but, like most people, whatever their political registration, I’m an inconsistent mix of political opinions. Most Big Think issues I’m wayyyyyyy to the left of most Democrats, including Bernie. But on County management, especially the blithely irresponsible spending of the Supervisors, and the palsy-walsy management style of the CEO and her department heads, I’m with Republican Art Juhl — it’s not supportable.

* * *

AS ISRAELI snipers are again picking off unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, bulldozing their family homes, persecuting everyone confined to apartheid Gaza where two million Palestinians are confined to an area the size of the Ukiah Valley, permit this Palestinian partisan to say, that given that lots of reporting makes it seem like Palestinians are angry for no real reason at all and the bigger lie that Israeli’s are a united front for Netanyahu’s murderous policies, the truth is closer to this:

Israelis, let alone Jews everywhere else, aren’t of one opinion on the Palestinian question. There’s a very good documentary film around (“The Gatekeepers”) featuring a half-dozen former chiefs of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, all of whom say the present hard-line approach to Palestinians is, in the long run, self-defeating given the neighborhood. Intelligent Israeli opinion wants a decent accommodation with the Palestinians, which used to be the two-state approach before the fanatics and racists took over the Israeli government. Trump, natch, has made everything worse. Uncritical support for Israel helps move the Doomsday Clock closer to the final noon. (BTW, to get a real feel for what the true state of Israel is, read Robert Stone’s excellent novel, Damascus Gate.)

CATCH OF THE DAY, May 16, 2018

JIMMY DYKES, Willits. Criminal threats, resisting.

ANDREW JAMES, Hopland. Domestic abuse, probation revocation.

TIMOTHY KING, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

MATTHEW MCCANN, Covelo. DUI.

SEAN MILLER, Ukiah. Battery, elder abuse, criminal threats, resisting.

TODD WILKINS, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Like I said, Americans don’t learn, especially “experts”, especially foreign policy “experts”. If, in general, there’s nobody as full of shit as an “expert”, especially an expert in some ‘ology or other, it goes double at the State Department. Tillerson was on the right track in depleting the ranks of State Department pseudo-intellectuals, psychopaths, fast-talkers, nitwits, and chair warmers.

But how could the US do better? How about by disbanding the whole fucking thing, banishing everyone from top officials on down leaving only the janitorial and maintenance staff to keep the buildings clean and running until they can be put to better use.

Then start over, hire afresh, from receptionists on up, maybe doing some cold-calling in the telephone book (does such a thing even exist anymore) and asking people at random, hey, you wanna go to Korea and be our ambassador? No? How about the UK? No? How about Russia? This is no joke, all expenses paid, a new career, learn a new language, meet new people. Just use some common sense and try to not fuck up too much.

It’s tough to see how you’d get worse results that way than by leaving things as they are.

MICHELLE WOLF IS NOT FUNNY

Jayne Thomas writes:

OK, Bruce. Because I am so very fond of you I let your May 2nd critique of Michelle Wolf slide. But then you followed up May 9th and I can’t be quiet. Must defend her.

First off, you do know this is a “roast,” yes? And if you watched it, most we saw were laughing at her (even the black token Democrat on “The Five”) and those who weren’t, must have “gotten the barbs.” She was brilliant. She wasn’t “cruel,” never attacked the appearance of anyone. Her eyeshadow joke merely said S.H. Sanders used the burnt ashes of facts to attain that appearance. No comment on whether or not it was attractive. And her Handmaiden comment called out the Trump women for their support of a mendacious, misogynistic administration. True, no?

And she criticized the press for Trump even being in office. Teodose Fikre (Truth Dig):

One of the most powerful statements she made was when she spoke of corporate journalists’ love/hate relationship with Trump.

"You pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him.”

Bruce, perhaps because of your hearing you missed some of the jokes. Here’s a summery from Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs:

Wolf’s jokes were classic examples of “punching up” at the powerful rather than “punching down” at the weak, which is why the Washington elites she targeted were so scandalized. A sample of some lines:

“Like a porn star says when she’s about to have sex with a Trump, let’s get this over with.”

“It’s 2018 and I am a woman, so you cannot shut me up — unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000.”

“I know there’s a lot of people that want me to talk about Russia and Putin and collusion, but I’m not going to do that because there’s also a lot of liberal media here. And I’ve never really wanted to know what any of you look like when you orgasm.”

“It is kind of crazy that the Trump campaign was in contact with Russia when the Hillary campaign wasn’t even in contact with Michigan.”

“[Trump] wants to give teachers guns, and I support that, ’cause then they can sell them for things they need, like supplies.”

“I’m 32 years old, which is an odd age: 10 years too young to host this event and 20 years too old for Roy Moore. I know, he almost got elected.”

“Fox News is here. So, you know what that means, ladies: Cover your drinks.”

“Is it Auntie Huckabee Sanders? Like, what’s Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women?”

“You guys are going through Cabinet members quicker than Starbucks throws out black people.”

“All right, like an immigrant who was brought here by his parents and didn’t do anything wrong, I gotta get the fuck out of here. Good night. Flint still doesn’t have clean water.”

Wolf said a lot of things that made people gasp, because they couldn’t believe she had the gall to go there. She called Trump “the only pussy you’re not allowed to grab” and called Mike Pence a “weird little guy” who is “what happens when Anderson Cooper isn’t gay.” But notice, too, that her jokes had strong underlying politics. Her closing line about Flint pointed out how grotesque it is that the political class can sit congratulating itself while the people failed by that class continue to suffer. The previous joke about immigration highlights the human….

So, there you have it. Thank god (?) for comedians who will take on the political elite. Our press won’t.

* * *

ED NOTE: She wouldn't have dared if it was Hillary.

THE SWAMP: HIS NATURAL HABITAT

HIT AND RUN THEATER WORKSHOPS

Starting Wednesday, May 30, Hit and Run Theater begins a series of four improvisation workshops running Wednesdays, May 30, June 6, June 13, and June 20. The workshops will take place from 6:30 to 8:30pm at the Community Center of Mendocino, 998 School St., Mendocino, CA 95460. Hit and Run’s newest workshop series is open to all interested students. The course will include basic improvisational games and acting exercises. No previous theatrical or improvising experience is required and mature teens are welcome as well as adults and seniors. A workshop contribution of $15 will cover the evening’s fun. What a deal! To register or to get further information, please call 937-0360 or email Doug Nunn <dnunn@mcn.org> or connect with me on Facebook.

“We already got the memo about the leaks. It was leaked.”

ATTENTION HYPOS!

Medicinal Herbs for your Garden! The Nursery at Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens has a great selection of medicinal herbs for your home garden. We have burdock, sweet grass, hyssop, curry plant to name a few. Stop in and get your healing garden growing! Follow the Nursery on Facebook for updates on what’s in stock: www.facebook.com/MCBGNursery

MARIJUANA HARVEST authors Ed Rosenthal and David Downs on Cannabis Hour Thursday, May 24, 9 a.m.

Maximizing Quality & Yield in Your Cannabis Garden Cannabis gurus Ed Rosenthal and David Downs, authors of Marijuana Harvest, will be Jane Futcher’s guests on the special Pledge Drive edition of The Cannabis Hour, at 9 a.m., Thursday, May 24 on KZYX. They’ll talk about how to maximize quality and yield of your cannabis crop while reducing expenses and will have copies of their book to give away to lucky pledge-drive donors.

KNOCK ON WOOD. HARD!

Letter to the Editor,

To me, single-payer health insurance is the moral issue of our time: do we as a society want to collectively invest billions of our healthcare dollars into making a few insurance company magnates filthy rich, or do we want to invest in providing quality healthcare-for-all that enriches the lives’ of everyone?

Our California Assemblyman, Jim Wood, boasts in his campaign literature that as Chair of the Assembly Health Committee he is working on “expanding the Affordable Care Act [ACA]”, (aka ObamaCare). What he doesn’t tell us is that the ACA leaves health insurance in the hands of greedy for profit insurance corporations, and also leaves millions of people either under-insured or uninsured.

Wood offers up lots of lame excuses for why he doesn’t support single-payer health insurance that would cover all Californians, but the bottom line is that he has taken tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to make sure that our collective healthcare dollars keep flowing into corporate coffers.

Therefore, I would argue that Jim Wood lacks the moral fiber necessary to represent the people of our Assembly District, and I would urge all caring Democrats to send him a message of disapproval in the upcoming June 5th primary by denying him your vote.

Sincerely,

Jon Spitz

Laytonville

NEVER SELF CHECKOUT

(via MendocinoSportsPlus)

NO QUIZ TODAY

Rest your brains - sipping Pinot Noir all weekend will help with that...

No Quiz tomorrow - 3rd Thursday…

We shall return on the 4th Thursday - May 24th - 7pm at Lauren’s Restaurant.

Cheers, Steve Sparks / The Quiz Master

THANK YOU FOR AVA ENDORSEMENT

Hi AVA,

Thank you very much for the AVA endorsement. I know you have a deep aversion to loons...I'll be sure to send you my Loon Views as they develop. Got a big one coming next week!

For the People, For the Planet,

Andy Caffrey

http://andycaffrey.org/andy-gets-the-districts-biggest-progressive-political-endorsement-mendocino-countys-ava-says-huffman-kind-of-dem-who-got-trump-elected-enemy-of-even-the-hope-for-progress/

WODETSKI'S REVISIONS

Voting Recommendations- 2 changes

Hello again. After posting my voting recommendations (copied below) I received helpful feedback that convinced me to make these two changes: for Governor, Delaine Eastin instead of Gavin Newsom; and for County Superintendent of School, Bryan Barrett instead of Michelle Hutchins.

At the bottom are some of the feedback I received that convinced me to make these changes. Thanks to all who better educated me!

Tom

Since several folks asked me for my voting recommendations, here they are. I hope they are of some use to you. Tom Wodetzki, past co-chair of the Alliance for Democracy and Move To Amend and past co-host of the Corporations & Democracy KZYX radio show. Albion, May 12th, 2018

Governor: CHANGED TO Delaine Eastin, endorsed by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Mendocino Women”s Political Coalition, NorCal4OurRevolution, East Bay Our Revolution. Second choice: Gavin Newsom, also endorsed by the Sierra Club and National Nurses Union.

Lieutenant Governor: Gayle McLaughlin, also endorsed by Bernie”s Our Revolution, Green Party, Democratic Socialist of America and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Secretary of State: Alex Padilla, endorsed by the Sierra Club, National Nurses Union, Democratic Party and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

State Controller: Betty T, Yee, endorsed by the Sierra Club, National Nurses Union, Democratic Party and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

State Treasurer: no recommendation. Even tho Fiona Ma was endorsed by the National Nurses Union and the Democratic Party, the SF Bay Guardian wrote, "Fiona Ma, who will almost certainly win this office, was a bad SF supervisor, a bad state Legislator, and will be a state treasurer who caters to the rich and powerful. We can”t back her, and there”s nobody else remotely qualified who is running. The League of Pissed-Off Voters went with Kevin Akin, who is running on a platform of creating a public bank, but he has no experience in finance and no chance of winning."

Attorney General: Xavier Becerra, endorsed by the National Nurses Union and the Sierra Club.

Insurance Commissioner: Ricardo Lara, endorsed by the National Nurses Union, Democratic Party and the Sierra Club.

State Board of Equalization, 2nd District: no recommendation. The SF Bay Guardian wrote, "This board, thanks to a history of screw-ups and corruption, now has almost no real power. It”s just a high-paid sinecure for politicians who have statewide ambitions. San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen is running; based on her record, we can”t support her. Catherine Gagliani, A San Joaquin County state senator, isn”t much better. This office ought to be abolished anyway.”

United States Senator: Kevin de Leon, the progressive alternative to current Senator Diane Feinstein, endorsed by the SF Bay Guardian.

US House of Representative, 2nd District: Jared Huffman.

State Senator, 2nd District: Mike McGuire, endorsed by the Sierra Club and the Mendocino Coast Democratic Club.

Member of the State Assembly, 2nd District: Jim Wood, endorsed by the Sierra Club and the Mendocino Coast Democratic Club.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony K. Thurmond, endorsed by the Sierra Club, National Nurses Union, Democratic Party and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

County Superintendent of Schools: CHANGED TO Bryan Barrett, recommended by the California Teachers Association, instead of Michelle Hutchins.

Supervisor, 5th District: Ted Williams, endorsed by the Mendocino Coast Democratic Club.

Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder: Katrina Bartolomie.

Auditor-Controller: Lloyd B. Weer.

District Attorney: C. David Eyster.

Sheriff-Coroner: Tom Allman.

Treasurer-Tax Collector: Shari L. Schapmire.

Measures Submitter to the Voters (State Propositions) as unanimously agreed upon by the League of Women Voters, SF Bay Guardian, Green and Democratic Parties— 68 YES, 69 YES, 70 NO, 71 YES, 72 YES.

Mendocino Coast Health Care District Measure C: YES. Save our hospital!

County of Mendocino Measure C: YES.

One local's reasons to switch from Gavin Newsom to Delaine Eastin for Governor: “Gavin is the worst of the Democratic Party. I have watched him since the big Dems came in to help him beat Green Matt Gonzalez in the runoff for mayor. He did ONE courageous thing with gay marriage and it was significant and not to be disrespected. But the rest...geez. I watched him ridicule the soda tax, ridicule the old taxi industry and praise Uber and much more corporatist stuff.”

Local’s reasons to switch from Michelle Hutchins to Bryan Barrett: "Please reconsider endorsing Michelle Hutchins for Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools. She has a terrible history as superintendent of the Boonville schools. The unions of the teachers and aides have published information about her unfairness and also about how she contracted out - and had paid by the school district to private entities work that was part of her job responsibility. Please do not recommend or vote for Michelle Hutchins. Bryan Barrett is recommended by the California Teachers Association."

"i also want to voice disagreement with tom re michelle hutchins. superintendent of schools is an important post. my not wanting her is based on reports from citizens and teachers who actually worked with her. bryan barrett is a better choice. thank you”

"I served 'under' Michelle Huggins as AV Superintendent...She is sharp, BUT, definitely NOT a team player. She received a 90% vote of 'no confidence’ from both the teacher's union and the classified association including the high school and elementary sites. She really ruffled and rattled many including her Board"

"I too was going to vote for Michelle Hutchins, till I spoke with several teachers in Anderson Valley. She has a 90% vote of no confidence from the teachers there, based on the fact that she has run the budget into the ground by making seriously bad decisions. Her interpersonal skills don’t seem to be the best either, if you listen to teachers. She does talk a good line and knows how to present herself publicly, backing positions that seem important. Apparently a contingent of teachers went to the County Democratic Party meeting after finding out about their endorsement to ask them to reconsider. They were unwilling to change their endorsement but agreed not to give her any funding. At the same meeting Paul Tichinin, our ex county superintendent was willing to say that “making the kinds of serious budget mistakes that Michelle has made should be looked at seriously.”

"Re: Michelle Hutchens. Well I experienced her as a Superintendent who was out to prove her way was THE way. She instituted a program at the Elementary School that totally affected a lot of people-kids and staff, without any input from staff. When facing an outcry from staff and parents, no humble pie was served. She is autocratic. Smart but cold. Confident and forward thinking but lacks compassion for those who think different from her. 90% of the classified-workers and teachers have given her a NO confidence vote. I won't vote for her. I think she'd be great in an environment that developed cutting edge policy - a freudian slip - emphasis on the 'cutting’. Sharp."

A GREAT DANDY, in elaborate dress and neon-lit prose

Journalist and author who won a name as a brilliant satirist with the ‘novel of the 1980s’, The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Stanley Reynolds

Thomas Kennerly Wolfe, journalist and novelist, born March 2, 1930; died May 14, 2018.

The writer Tom Wolfe, who has died aged 88, was a great dandy, both in his elaborate dress and his neon-lit prose. Although he was in his late 50s when he became a bestselling novelist, with The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), some 30 years before that he was already famous as a journalist, was indeed that extremely rare thing, the journalist as international celebrity.

It was a part Wolfe played up to, wearing showy tailor-made white suits, summer and winter, as well as fancy headgear and shirts with detachable collars. The overall impression was of a fashionplate from a bygone age. The sartorial fireworks fitted in very well with the highly eccentric literary style Wolfe used and which made such a name for him when he published The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965), which brought the world the first news of the 1960s counterculture in California.

The curious style came about by chance. In 1963, commissioned to write about custom cars for Esquire magazine, Wolfe got as far as writing hurried notes and told his editor, Byron Dobell, to give them to someone else because he could not produce the finished piece. Dobell read the notes and printed them as they were.

The peculiar style, full of exclamation marks, words elongated for special effect, and words in capital letters, gave the impression of news that was too hot for the simple declarative sentence; also that it was highly complicated to explain but that Wolfe himself knew all there was to know about it, and from the inside. As the news was from the counterculture or, later on, from the world of the New York new rich, the prose seemed to fit the passion.

The Bonfire of the Vanities, the tale of the fall of a young Wall Street trader, one of the self-styled “masters of the universe”, was called the “novel of the 1980s” and won Wolfe a name as a brilliant satirist. The one dark cloud in its success was that the 1990 film of the book, directed by Brian De Palma, failed both critically and at the box office, in spite of Tom Hanks playing the lead. The other Wolfe book turned into a movie fared much better. This was The Right Stuff (1979), a non-fiction account of the first astronauts. The 1983 film was made by Philip Kaufman and won four Oscars.

Fans had to wait 11 years for the next novel, A Man in Full (1998), a rather disjointed and over-long look at the new south of the 90s. This was attacked by John Updike, Norman Mailer and John Irving. Updike said it was not literature but entertainment; Mailer described it as like being made love to by a 300lb woman (“Fall in love or be asphyxiated”) and Irving said simply: “He can’t fucking write.” Wolfe had a good time counter-attacking. He called them “my three stooges”. He could afford to be offhand with his critics, for A Man in Full had received an advance of $7.5m.

The wonderful early pieces received nothing but praise. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) was called an American classic, “a DayGlo book”, the Washington Post said. It was the story of a cross-country trip in a bus by Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and his spaced-out young followers, the Merry Pranksters, all high on LSD and passing it out free in glasses of Kool-Aid.

Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970) comprised more first-rate pieces of comic sociology, particularly the title story about wealthy New York liberals making fools of themselves throwing parties for the Black Panthers. The Pump House Gang (1968) and The Mid-Atlantic Man (1969) were collections of articles; The New Journalism (1973) an anthology; The Painted Word (1975) art criticism; From Bauhaus to Our House (1981) architecture criticism; Ambush at Fort Bragg (1997) a novella, a Rolling Stone magazine serialization then in an audio-only version.

At the age of 73 and after suffering a heart attack and a quintuple bypass, Wolfe surprised everyone with I Am Charlotte Simmons (2004), a brilliantly funny and hard-hitting demolition job on American higher education set in a fictional Ivy League university in Pennsylvania. Back to Blood (2012), set in Miami and with a Cuban-American cop as its lead character, was described by the Guardian’s reviewer as “like a novel for the hard of hearing, megaphone meets ear trumpet”; The Kingdom of Speech (2016) challenged theories of evolution and speech development.

Wolfe was born in Richmond, Virginia. In later years he described his father, Thomas, as an agronomist, but in the early years he had called him “a gentleman farmer”. Wolfe was encouraged to write by his mother, Louise, and at nine, he tried his hand at biographies of Napoleon and Mozart.

He went to a private day school, St Christopher’s, in Richmond, and then to Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia, where he played baseball and edited the literary magazine Shenandoah. He told me that he was very serious about being a baseball pitcher and once put on a tremendous amount of weight in order to throw the ball harder. This was a failure, because the weight slowed him up in the field.

After Washington and Lee, he went to Yale and got a PhD in 1957 in American studies. He then found a job in journalism on the Springfield Union in Massachusetts. That is where I first met him. It would be pleasant to think that his colleagues all saw what a success he would be, but this is not true. We only saw that he was different. This we put down to his being a southerner, and at that time in New England we were suspicious of southerners, thinking they might have a slave or two stashed away in a backyard shed. His southern ways were in fact sometimes shocking: he told jokes about black people without taking in the pained expressions of his audience – or perhaps he was doing it on purpose to annoy us.

Early on, he demonstrated his unusual angle on stories, and it was not always appreciated. Once he was sent to cover an outdoor concert of classical music in the Berkshire mountains and wrote a long piece about the way people sat on the grass listening to it. This confused his editor at the Springfield Union newspaper. Another time he was covering an event at Mount Holyoke College in nearby South Hadley and wrote mainly about how the president of the college held his chin in a jut-jawed fashion while speaking. The college was furious and demanded an apology.

At this period he was spending most of his free weekends in New York, taking drawing lessons from a New Yorker artist. This interest in cartooning remained all his life; he published many of them and held one-man shows. Wolfe left the Springfield Union for the Washington Post in 1959; he then joined the old New York Herald Tribune in 1962 and there his real career began.

He was surprisingly shy, and when The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby was published in the UK in 1966, he insisted that I make the trip down from Liverpool to be with him in London. He put me up in Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair. Nervous about the launch party being given by his publishers, Jonathan Cape, we went out drinking all day long and for some reason he started imitating WC Fields and could not stop it. It was amusing to read, in the newspapers reporting the launch, about his extraordinary accent.

Although the book was picked for the American Book of the Month Club and earned him $600,000, he was still very much a working journalist. The Herald Tribune called him from New York and said he must send them a story. He told me next day how lucky he was to have seen a man hit by a taxi in London. The man was sitting in the street nursing a broken leg and saying over and over again: “What a bore.” This, Wolfe thought, would show New York what a strange use of language the English had.

Wolfe came to stay with me in Liverpool and while there wrote much of what became The Mid-Atlantic Man. Every morning he went out in a suit and tie with a packet of ginger nut biscuits to sit in the Sefton Park palm house writing. He wrote everything in longhand first, using a fancy style of calligraphy so that sometimes he was getting only 14 words to a page. Afterwards he would rewrite on a typewriter, and never really took to computers.

Wolfe was mistaken for a liberal when he first started out, but his ultra-conservatism later became obvious. He not only supported Ronald Reagan, calling him “one of the greatest presidents ever” but, much worse to the east coast liberal mind, he praised George W Bush. When people said they would leave the country if Bush was elected, Wolfe said he might go to Kennedy airport to wave them goodbye. He thought Donald Trump “a lovable megalomaniac”, and, comparing him to Reagan, concluded that “brilliance is really not a requirement for politicians”.

In 1978 he married Sheila Berger, the art director at Harper’s magazine. She survives him, along with their two children, Alexandra and Tommy.

(Theguardian.com)