Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, May 30, 2018

• Political Contributions
• Vote Schiznack
• Hutchins Interview
• Police Reports
• Little Dog
• Ed Notes
• Marbut Advice
• Measure C
• Yesterday's Catch
• Save Landlines
• Calamity Nation
• Roth's Advisor
• Lefty Poems
• Pollinator Presentation
• Anthem Mess
• Sheena's Scumbag
• Defending Roseanne
• PA Fourth
• Stupid Americans
• Civil Rights
• Greenwood Pier
• Art Show
• Conspirator
• Hippie Exhibit

WHO'S PUTTING UP CASH MONEY FOR WHOM

FIFTH DISTRICT SUPERVISOR

Skyhawk Contributors:

Contributors: George Russell (Retired), Wendy Roberts, Even Horizon Technologies, North Bay Labor Council, Larry Knowles, Annie Lee, Steven Gray (Retired), Joe Ayres (Retired), Randy Burke, Leonard Lottau (Retired), Francesca and Arky Ciancotti (MD, substitue teacher), Bill Zimmer (Retired), Trevor Thomas (self-employed real estate investor), Judy Frank (Retired), Rita Quelette (self-employed landscaper), David Daly, Joe Wildman (Business Rep, Operating Engineers Local #3), Cheryl Mitover (Owner, Pacific School Massage Healing Arts), Chris Bennett (CB Tree), Ron Nadeau (Spiritual Advisor, Shaman’s Intenation), Jeanne Jackson (Retired), Vince Taylor (Retired), Zoe Batchelor (Events Coordinator, MacCallum House), Scott Ephrain (Owner, Frankie’s Pizza), John Comiskey (Retired), Tim Lum (Owner, 215 Main St., Point Arena). (Contributions range from $100 to $500; minimum required to report: $100.)

Roderick Contributors:

Paul Dolan (farmer), Bob Demple (farmer), Cox Vineyard, Joe Ayres, Megan Schmitt, Larry Tunzi, Karen Calvert, Bonnie Carter, Kent Porter, Richard Selzer, Charlie Reed, Christa Roderick, Colin Wilson, Alfred Lawrence, Tara Larwood. (Contributions range from $50 to $500; minimum required to report: $100.)

Williams Contributors:

Lee Edmundson, Jim & Diane Larson, Diana Wiedman, Karen Bowers, Midicel Issel, Ted Williams, Mark Funke Esq., Anthony Wade, Charlene McAllister, Charles Acker. (Contributions range from $100 to $500 except for Campaign Manager Lee Edmundson who contributed $1352; minimum required to report: $100.)

COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS

James Barrett Contributors:

James Richard Barrett (JR Barrett Planning, Development and real estate consultant), Kathy Barrett, Jim Graybeal, Jason Iversen, Amanda & Bradley Holstine (Husch Winery), G.A. Young (CTA Field Rep), James-John Ronco (Land use consultant), Robert & Donna Frassinello (Retired Educator UUSD). (Most of the several thousands of dollars in contributions came from people named Barrett; the rest were from $100 to $200.)

Hutchins Contributors:

Monique Leigh (Retired Teacher), Sabrina Donahue (Present Moment Practice LLC), Beverly Dutra, Todd Donahue (Homestead Helicopters), Rick Wiley (Wiley Grocery Store), Laurie Schaecher (Fundraising consultant), Dennis Schaecher (Principal BOS Acquisitions), Bernie Beaudoin (Retired), Damara Moore (Attorney, School and College Legal Services), Suzanne Cormier-Livesay (USN), Ed Cormier (USN retired) Daniel Reed (Wine salesman, Lula Cellars), Leslie Lind (Retired teacher). (Amounts were from $100 to $250. By far the most money was from Sabrina Donahue who donated $10,000, and Monique Leigh, $2000.

THE FOREST CLUB VOTER SURVEY

Just asked some regs at the pub who they liked for supervisor, and it was like... huh?

So I said, are you going to vote?

And they like said, like duh, dude. Voting is like all we have, dude.

So: who are you going to vote for for Fifth District Supervisor?

Whadda ya mean?

I mean the supervisors.

You mean it has nothing to do with the president?

No, sorry. Only locals.

Who are they?

Well, there’s Williams, Roderick, Juhl, and Skyhawk… for Fifth District – Who do you like?

Whoah, dude, Skyhawk sounds like the real schiznack, dude!

What about Roderick?

Who’s Rhoderick?

He’s the guy the retiring supervisor endorsed.

Who’s the retiring supervisor?

Dan Hamburg.

Never heard of him.

(— Bruce McEwen)

MICHELLE HUTCHINS, Candidate for Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools

Mendocino TV interviews Michelle Hutchins for Building Healthy Communities

In our contimuing series of election coverage we interviewed Michelle Hutchins about her job, her opinions and her candidacy for Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools. I invited Bryan Barrett to participate in our series of interviews via telephone and e-mail which he later denied recieving. I made them and could hear little children screaming in the background, so I assumed that I contacted his home number, the proper number to call a candidate. Instead of replying to our invitation, I received several calls about Michelle from members of Bryan Barrett’s campaign staff telling me negative information about Michelle Hutchins.

I find this behavior disturbing. In this tiny county, campaigning by rumor and innuendo may have been effective in the past, but Mendocino TV strives to rise above that with sticking to the issues. How does the candidate perform in real life experiences? What issues are important to them? Do they know and understand what is important to their constituency? We couldn’t care less who has endorsements or not. Like having PAC support, endorsements tell us nothing about the candidate, so we were eager to explore her candidacy. What resulted was refreshing, honest and somewhat raw. I learned that a Superintendent of County Schools is quite a task.

I hope you find this interview informative.

Terry Vaughn, Producer for Mendocino TV

https://mendocinotv.com/2018/05/28/michelle-hutchins-candidate-for-mendocino-county-superintendent-of-schools/

BYE-BYE BYRON

On 05-22-2018 at approximately 12:25 P.M., Mendocino County Probation Officers conducted a search at 124 Concow Boulevard in Covelo. Byron Peters, 39, of Covelo, reportedly lived at the location and was on active Post Release Community Supervision (PRCS) in Mendocino County with search and seizure terms.

During their search of Peters' residence, probation officers located ammunition and a handgun. Probation Officers took custody of the contraband, which was later provided to a Deputy Sheriff. As a part of this investigation, Peters' Probation Officer issued an order to arrest Peters for violating his PRCS terms. On 05-23-2018 at approximately 10:00 A.M., a Deputy with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office learned Peters was at the Round Valley Head Start Office (77826 Highway 162 in Covelo). The Deputy responded to the location, where he contacted Peters who was taken into custody without incident. Peters was advised and placed under arrest pursuant to the PRCS arrest order issued by his Probation Officer. Peters was subsequently booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held on a no-bail status due to the PRCS violation.

* * *

NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS AFTER MIDNIGHT (ESPECIALLY IN COVELO)

On 05-23-2018 at approximately 12:14 A.M., Deputies with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to a reported shooting incident in the area of Ledger Lane south of Hopper Lane in Covelo. Deputies responded and learned that two adult males were inside a vehicle and were attempting to leave the area of Ledger Lane when another vehicle approached. One of the subjects was able to identify the driver of the second vehicle as being Antone Downey, 28, of Covelo.

Downey was seated in the driver's seat of the vehicle and pointed a handgun at the two other subjects who were in a separate vehicle attempting to leave the area. Downey yelled profanities at the two subjects and fired one round from a handgun in the direction of the two adult males. Neither of the male subjects were struck by the gunfire. Downey left the area in his vehicle traveling towards Hopper Lane. The two adult males then left the area and were chased by Downey in his vehicle. Downey pursued the two male subjects and was reportedly waving the handgun while driving the vehicle. Downey eventually discontinued his pursuit of the two adult males and left the area. The two males were in fear for their lives so they returned to their home, which is when the incident was reported to the Sheriff's Office . The two male subjects were not injured during the incident with Downey. The Deputies and Round Valley Tribal Police responded to the 100 block of Concow Boulevard in an attempt to contact Downey regarding this incident. The Deputies learned Downey was contacted by family members and asked to respond to the house and meet with law enforcement. Downey arrived at the location in a vehicle and was contacted regarding this incident. During the contact, Deputies learned there was a handgun located in the glove box of Downey's vehicle. Deputies searched the vehicle and took custody of the handgun, a partially-loaded magazine for the gun, and a box of ammunition. Downey was subsequently advised and placed under arrest for Assault with a Firearm. Downey was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $40,000 bail.

* * *

WINTERHAWK CAGED

On 05-25-2018 at about 10:15 AM, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies stopped a vehicle for a vehicle code violation in the 76000 block of Highway 162 in Covelo. The driver of the vehicle was contacted and identified as Eugene WinterHawk Lincoln, 40, of Covelo.

Dispatch was contacted and asked to run a driver’s license check, warrants and probation check on Lincoln. Dispatch advised Lincoln had a Felony arrest warrant for 3453 PC (Violation of Post Release Community Supervision PRCS). Lincoln was subsequently placed under arrest and transported to the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held without bail.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Still no ac in my igloo, and it was 92 in the shade here yesterday. Yes sir, I got a lawyer and my beef is on its way to court. Mr. Frank Zotter is taking me on pro bono.”

ED NOTES

ORDINARILY, the election race for Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools is between a couple of human chloroform gags. Before restive audiences they say stuff like, "I love kids," which the other candidate rebuts with, "I love kids more better." And everyone goes home thinking to themselves, "No wonder the schools aren't teaching the little savages much of anything."

THIS ELECTION has been different, way different. We have a Ukiah-based guy, Barrett, whose campaign signs say, "Integrity," causing this reader an immediate flashback of Nixon saying, "I am not a crook." Anybody who advertises his integrity, well, read the fine print.

INTEGRITY? BARRETT is the guy who accused a union rep of racism because the teacher's rep described the Ukiah School District's pay offer to teachers as "niggardly." Then-Superintendent of Schools Paul Tichinin agreed that niggardly was a particularly foul ethnic insult.

SO we have this Barrett character, again backed up by Tichinin, via private facebook pages, passing along untrue slams against his opponent, Michelle Hutchins, the first woman to have a serious shot at becoming the county's Superintendent of Schools. At a recent candidate's night Tichinin even appeared for Barrett, reciting Barrett's sonorous positions, all of them recumbent, and including the dynamic promise, "I will lead from the middle."

THE ANTI-HUTCHINS libels are the work of handful of retired Boonville teachers, one of whom is clearly inspired by a personal landlord-tenant dispute with Mrs. Hutchins. The others seem motivated by pure malice, vaguely charging Mrs. Hutchins with such crimes as "Does not work well with others," i.e., them, and "bad leadership skills." None of the complaints are backed up with specifics.

THE UNFAIRLY MALIGNED HUTCHINS has demonstrated real leadership by apologizing for errant decisions she made in her first years in the Boonville's edu-hothouse, and still enjoys majority support from the Boonville school board.

WHAT'S most disturbing about the anti-Hutchins crusade is its unreasoning vehemence, and it's all coming from "educators." I know these people, and I can tell you I'm surprised that they could go as low as they have, and almost all of it in secret slanders, private cyber-communications, the kind of slimy tactics one would not expect from the people entrusted with the education of children.

VOTE HUTCHINS. She did a good job in the Anderson Valley schools, and she'll do a good job as Superintendent of the county's schools.

AND SOMEONE made off with our Hutchins For Superintendent sign, the second time the sign has disappeared with one apparently having been run over. Removing campaign signs is a misdemeanor, and the more my signs are missed, the meaner I'll get.

I'VE ALWAYS WONDERED how effective political advertising is. The logic of yard signs seems to be the more you see the candidate's name the likelier you are to vote for him or her. Which may be true of many voters overwhelmed by their ballots. "Darn. I forget. But I remember Hutchins. I saw that name in the front yard of the Boonville newspaper." But Cyber-world has changed everything. For the worse. Now the most vile libels are privately circulated with the candidate unaware of them, let alone given an opportunity to respond. Character assassins never had it so good.

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: I suggest that in any future debates with Mr. Barrett, Ms. Hutchins remind the voting public that Judge Leonard LeCasse, in his ruling on the Boaz v. Barrett in the Niggardly Case, concluded by saying, “The court also is distressed that there appears to be a need for adult supervision at the district offices.” Hutchins should then point her thumbs at herself and add: “And you are looking at her.”

* * *

ABC CANCELED its hit reboot of "Roseanne" on Tuesday following star Roseanne Barr's racist tweet that referred to former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett as a product of the Muslim Brotherhood and the "Planet of the Apes."

WATCH FOX pick it up. This is America after all. Where money meets principle, bet on money. I think all tv comedy is painfully unfunny, but I also think in this case of spectacular unfunny, if Roseanne has apologized she shouldn't be denied her livelihood. And she has apologized. Put any and all of us on tape and we'd all have a lot of explaining to do. But still, blurting out something like this is certainly a mental indicator of psychic viciousness.

* * *

BET YA don't know that Fiona Ma, candidate for State Treasurer, is an ex-Trotskyite, in this case the Socialist Workers Party. Kinda sad to see the old girl revert to political mindlessness as a Democrat, but her political history means she at least knows how money works. Or doesn't work in the public interest.

* * *

YOU CAN BARELY get odds on Warriors vs Cavs. They're something like a thousand-one Warriors, which seems about right.

DOING THE OPPOSITE

Letter to the Editor (based on Public Comments to Ukiah City Council 04/18/2018)

Dear Ukiah City Councilmembers,

Dear Ukiah City Councilmembers, in light of Mendocino County’s consultant Dr. Robert Marbut’s report, I have profound concerns about how your current plan “in concept” will help the homeless become productive citizens and decrease their impact on Ukiah.

In six months following receipt of a petition requesting a moratorium on all Ukiah homeless related planning matters with 780 signatures, you increased Ukiah’s homeless-serving day-use facilities from three to five. Per Dr. Marbut’s report, one is all we need. You have done the exact opposite of Ukiah petitioner’s request and Dr. Marbut’s expert recommendations.

After the publication of Dr. Marbut’s final report, your Planning Commission appointees oversaw a bizarre “variance process” forcing approval of the 150 Luce Avenue project. Many neighbors on Luce Avenue opposed this project, counter to what the public was told. Further, there was no public discussion of the site’s full commercial kitchen. You need not be clairvoyant to envision meals being served in the near future.

What “progress” has our community seen as a result? The 2017 Ukiah PD Performance Report Arrest Demographic shows 41% were transients (by far the largest category). Last week’s report (05/19/2018) shows transient arrests at 43%.

While approving Dr. Marbut’s report “in concept”, now you are waiting for Mendocino County officials to tell you what to do next. I can tell you what they will say – Keep doing the great job you have historically done! Look at Fort Bragg and Willits – they have shut down their homeless services and, presto, most of those folks magically reappear in Ukiah. Great for Mendocino County ‘in concept”, not so great for Ukiah…in practice.

Continuing policies counter to Dr. Marbut’s expert advice and enabling mendicants with more meals, more services, and more swag will not motivate them to become productive citizens. Not in practice, not even “in concept”. Such warped decisions are what has brought Ukiah to the forefront in per capita homeless in the nation.

Considering the facts above, please explain to your constituents how approving Dr. Marbut’s report “in concept” will actually help the homeless get back on their feet and decrease their impact on our community.

Ed Haynes

South Ukiah

MEASURE C & REALITY

Editor,

As election day approaches, here are two key points of reality you should think carefully about.

First, as a licensed Real Estate Broker, having started in the business in 1984 and who has done over 600 appraisals and thousands of loans, I want to state clearly the effect on all property values if Measure C is defeated. As each service is eliminated, your property value will decrease by at least 2%. That could go up to 8% if the emergency room were to close or limit its services. If the hospital were ever to close, your value would drop up to 20%. These are permanent drops, not market adjustments like a recession. Do the math on your property, $300,000. Value, 2% = $6,000. Loss of value.

Second, it is a sixty-six mile round trip to Howard Memorial in Willits. The actual cost to operate a vehicle is not just gas. On a basic car it is $1.00 per mile, therefore that round trip will cost $66.00, and who wants to drive Highway 20 when they or their family is sick. Do that trip twice and you will have spent $132.00, almost the cost of the property tax.

Reality clearly shows that Measure C to support MCDH makes sense. Remember to Vote.

Don Buckingham, Real Estate Broker

Fort Bragg

CATCH OF THE DAY, May 29, 2018

WILLIAM BARRY, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

MICHELLE BAUER, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

JENNIFER BLACK, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

KATHERYN BROWN, Ukiah. Pot cultivation, entering a closed disaster area.

HEATHER CHANEY, Fortuna/Piercy. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, receiving stolen property.

KANDI DELAPENA, Covelo. Failure to appear.

MICHAEL DONAHE SR., Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

LUCIO ESCOBEDO-FERNANDEZ, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JOSE GARCIA-GUTIERREZ, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

VIRGIL MASSEY, Ukiah. DUI.

SAVE THE LANDLINES

Editor:

The push by the wireless industry to end copper landlines is irresponsible. Copper landlines work when the power is out, fiber optic VOIP systems don’t. In an emergency, with no phone and no 911 services, people will be at risk for life threatening situations.

Who will pay the price? Seniors, businesses, people with electrical sensitivity, low-income people, rural residents, the hearing impaired and people who want a choice.

Cellphones aren’t safe substitutes for corded copper landline phones.

The California Department of Public Health issued a cellphone advisory stating research shows cellphone use may impact human health and children are more vulnerable. To reduce exposure, the department recommend:

Keeping cellphones away from the body.

Reducing cellphone use when the signal is weak

Reducing the use of cellphones to stream audio or video.

Keeping the phone away from the bed at night.

Removing headsets when not on a call.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer at the World Health Organization classifies cellphone radiation as a possible carcinogen. Cancer can take decades to develop. It’s important to reduce exposure to cellphones and other wireless devices. Saving landlines is an important solution for our future.

Sandi Maurer

Director, EMF Safety Network

Santa Rosa

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The rash of mass shootings are the sign-posts, they just point the way, as does the election of Trump and the rise of political movements all over the globe. And so no, it’s not all about guns. In the USA it’s about the demolition of the US economy, the resultant wreck of the American family, the vocal disdain not just for young men but for wide segments of the populace who were ruined. To say that you don’t destroy people’s lives and then insult them is just to state the obvious, that this is the road to hell.

In the interests of their own self-preservation and that of their social class, I would encourage Washington crocodilians, eminences of the self-glorifying academy and bi-coastal media, big-thinkers who constantly have their fat fucking faces on TV telling us what a dope Trump is, and the all-devouring greed-heads of the c-suites, to wake the fuck up and smell the coffee.

They’ve set in motion events that lead nowhere good and that won’t get better with the passage of time. As it is time is short, with every tick of the clock it gets shorter. If there were to be a concerted effort, maybe calamity could still be averted. But, as it is, there seems to be no notion that calamity is what they’ve asked for and what they’re likely to get.

PHILIP ROTH on the man who “straightened me out” about literature:

…Dick [Stern] played an important role, maybe the most important role, in straightening me out when I was first getting going in the mid-’50s. One noon shortly after we’d met as colleagues, we were having hamburgers together at the old University Tavern and, for no purpose other than to amuse him over lunch, I recounted my adventure a few summers back in Jewish suburbia with the dazzling daughter of a prosperous dealer in plate glass.

Because Dick was such an eager listener and so enjoyed laughing, I was encouraged to tell the story in all its fullness, embellishing along the way for comic effect.

When lunch was over and we were walking back to campus, Dick said, “Write that, for God’s sake. Write that story.” It hadn’t occurred to me. Write the story of an ephemeral summer romance in inconsequential Maplewood, New Jersey? I wanted to be morally serious like Joseph Conrad. I wanted to exhibit dark knowledge like Faulkner. I wanted to be deep like Dostoyevsky. I wanted to write literature. Instead I took Dick’s advice and wrote Goodbye, Columbus…

THE AMERICAN LEFT: SEVEN POEMS

by Paul Buhle

These poems follow from my fieldwork in oral history, both the Oral History of the American Left, which I founded at New York University in 1976, and an ongoing project in Rhode Island from the late 1970s through the 1990s. They are not a literal transcript but an attempt to condense meanings.

Irish American Patriot

My grandfather, he owned a funeral parlor

right near the downtown.

And when an IRA supporter died—

this would be in the 1910s, 1920s—

He sent the casket home to Ireland

It would be full of rifles.

Grizzled Bolshevik, Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Only two of us from the Lincoln Battalion are still around here.

The Spanish Civil War: we could have stopped fascism

if we’d been given the chance.

Then time passed.

We figured, in 1948, it was time for a

big political move.

I, myself, collected 634 signatures to get

Henry Wallace on the ballot.

But as I entered working class homes

I noted something very interesting.

Now they had new rugs and bedroom sets

and real refrigerators, for the first time!

We were going to get five millions votes?

I don’t think so. That started the downfall

of Leftwing America.

Italian radical and sub shop owner

I wanted to be a doctor, my parents

sent me back to Italy in 1925.

Mussolini made it impossible.

And I am stuck selling submarine sandwiches

to high school kids.

We call our hall the Matteotti Club

after the parliamentarian who was assassinated.

Carlo Tresca spoke here!

Our mentor, as far as I can remember as a kid

Was Luigi Galleani, editor of the supposedly

dangerous anarchist newspaper Cronoca Sovversiva.

Several times he came here, a distinguished looking man

and a fine speaker.

He was expelled from the US in 1921

and died in Mussolini’s prisons.

That’s what the old-timers told me, anyway.

What I remember best is Sacco-Vanzetti

I was a young actor, a natural ham.

Our plays were in Italian, to raise money

for the legal defense.

I remember the night of the execution.

Special trains took hundreds to Boston.

Here in Providence, there were people on the street crying.

Our martyrs had been electrocuted.

Hungarian-American avant-gardiste

I am the last Masses artist still around

but I wasn’t much like the others, personally.

My family was Hungarian, Left Socialists

They encouraged my art and I got a scholarship

to study in Paris! But I sat in class looking outside

And there was a giant Michelin ad.

It was so dynamic, I could not take my eyes off it.

I came back changed, we had great times

In Greenwich Village in those days.

Then it was 1919 and I returned to Hungary

and walked through the country for months.

That experience made me a Communist.

Pretty soon, my work became more realistic.

And the New Yorker wanted me to make Horthy a hero!

After that it was the Communist press and artistic

work on my own time, what I wanted to do.

There were murals, sculpture, whatever I had in front of my

interest and attention.

I still like my little book, Marx’s Capital in Lithographs.

Humorist of the Daily Worker

I had a column, light stuff

I used to say that I tortured them

for their pompousness, when they were pompous.

They tortured me back for my indiscipline

They were revolutionaries for sure

But too few of them had a sense of humor.

Hollywood Communist

William Z. Foster, the big leader, came out

to raise some money for a Party cause.

But he really wanted to meet cowboy movie stars.

We tried to say: these are not the people

On our side.

He was let down, disappointed.

Small town socialist in the Slovenian Hall

I have been waiting for you

or someone like you,

for many years.

I wrote a history of our group and here it is.

Your wife played her piano recitals as a kid

in the next room, thirty years ago?

She could have looked in the library:

Big portrait of Karl Marx.

We didn’t make socialism

but we had wonderful cooperatives

for twenty or thirty years.

The Finns delivered milk, we ran

the savings bank.

The Croats were our friends back then

Even if they were more Communistic

We all worshipped Tito

He led the Resistance!

And saved the country from bloodshed.

When he died, Yugoslavia died.

Soon the Hall will be closed

and our children won’t remember our socialism

out in the white suburbs, to the West.

(Paul Buhle is a retired historian, and co-founder, with Scott Molloy, of an oral history project on blue collar Rhode Islanders.)

THE EVOLUTIONARY DANCE:

Presentation on wildflowers and their pollinators notes delicate balance

by Roberta Werdinger

On Sunday, June 3rd, from 2 to 3:30 p.m., entomologist and retired University of California, Berkeley researcher Jan O. Washburn will give a multimedia presentation on native insects, the plants they pollinate, and the effects climate changes are having on these ancient relationships. The event is cosponsored by the Sanhedrin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, with further support from Exhibit Envoy, and is free with Museum admission. The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. The Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m.General admission is $4; $10 per family; $3 for students and seniors; free to all on the first Friday of the month; and always free to members. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

Jan O. Washburn has a simple message that runs throughout his personal and professional work: "Most insects are good." Now retired after 24 years on the UC Berkeley research faculty and 12 years teaching at UC Santa Cruz, Washburn attributes his early interest in insects to his free-range childhood raised in the West Virginia woods. He now lives part-time in Comptche, where he raises vegetables in an extensive organic garden and trains master gardeners in Mendocino County. He is also a docent at the UC Berkeley botanical gardens, among other volunteer activities.

Washburn's two-part presentation will first focus on pollination ecology, which he explains as "an evolutionary dance that has been going on for at least 200 million years." Plants cannot move; they produce chemicals to protect themselves and to reproduce. They have therefore needed to develop strategies to promote dispersal of their seeds to new places where they can germinate and grow. They have done so by producing elaborate floral structures containing pollen and nectars that are attractive to animals, primarily insects.

The shape, size and color of a flower is no accident, but rather reflects that plant's strategy for soliciting visitors. The columbine, for example, is orange, one of the colors attractive to hummingbirds; its nectar is located at the end of long spurs that extend well behind the bloom, limiting its access by other creatures but perfect for the hummingbird's long bill. Other plants such as fennel are generalists, allowing access to many types of insects. And the stripes we see on an iris flower are appealing not just to us: they are also visual guides "to let their pollinators know where their reward is."

"Without insects we would not have flowering plants," Washburn states. Thus the second part of his talk will focus on recent losses and threats to various plant and animal species due to climate change, as well as suggestions for turning the situation around. First, Washburn states, increasing levels of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere "are a major limiting factor for plant growth. As these levels increase some plants will thrive and others will not. Some will disappear while some will become more dominant," as insects begin to flourish in climates which had previously been too cold for them, or as their predators die off.

Second, the stressful weather patterns we now experience more frequently--extremes in hot and cold, flood and drought, and heavy storms--are predicted to grow even more severe. "This all will affect the pollinator and plant relationship," Washburn states, disrupting nature's ancient, exquisite and complex evolutionary dance including the life forms upon which human well-being depends. These events also disrupt our sense of beauty: the population of monarch butterflies, whose painterly wing patterns and heroic migration across the span of North America has long been admired, has been declining for some time. Washburn worries monarchs could die off completely if they encounter freezing temperatures, which are fatal to all their life stages.

Nevertheless, Washburn sees hope for the future, and in creative responses to climate change that are already happening. His enthusiasm for all matters bug-related continue: he is growing Asian leaf insects in his living room, and encourages everyone attending the event to bring pictures or actual samples of any insect they wish identified.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. The Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m. General admission is $4; $10 per family; $3 for students and seniors; free to all on the first Friday of the month; and always free to members. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

HOMELESSNESS, HIGHER EDUCATION AND HUMBOLDT

A January study found that 11 percent of students on the California State University’s 23-campuses reported being homeless during the past year. At Humboldt State nearly a fifth said they’d been homeless at one point during 2017.

capitalandmain.com/living-homeless-in-california-the-university-of-hunger-0529

THE NFL ANTHEM MESS: PUTTING OUT A FIRE WITH KEROSENE

Bijan Bayne, social commentator and author of the book Elgin Baylor: The Man Who Changed Basketball talks about the NFL, the new anthem policy, and the unholy mess created by unaccountable billionaires.

We have ‘Choice Words’ about the White House’s decision to pardon Jack Johnson. We also have ‘Just Stand Up’ and ‘Just Sit Down’ awards, to Sterling Brown and a recurring figure, Kaepernick watch and more!

I'm promoting my new book Jim Brown Last Man Standing.

In struggle and sports,

Dave Zirin

soundcloud.com/edgeofsports/the-nfl-anthem-mess-putting-out-a-fire-with-kerosene

THE ALL-TIME POLITICAL SCUMBAG

by Deborah Friedell

“Have I told you about my old friend who’s married to the Republican governor of Missouri?”

Too often, the answer was yes, I had – sometimes more than once. My Sheena story was my best story, the anecdote that rarely failed, which was fortunate, because I couldn’t stop telling it, usually in the same way, even with the same pauses and hand gestures. At the end, I would play on my phone one of Eric Greitens’ earliest campaign ads, in which he shoots a machine gun into a field as he promises to take “dead aim at politics as usual.” “If you’re ready for a conservative outsider,” he says, “I’m ready to fire away.”

I would tell how Sheena and I came to England together, on a plane with all the other Americans who’d won a Marshall Scholarship. Some of them were politically ambitious: “No photos!” they’d say at parties. Sheena and I weren’t like that, but then I don’t remember going to many parties. Instead, we drove around Scotland, and went to a lot of plays – my first piece in the London Review of Books was about seeing Happy Days with her at the National. “In as much as I thought I could know someone, I thought I knew her,” I’d say, though when I Google her now, I still learn things about her. A few months before we met, she told her local paper that although one of her professors at Stanford had been Clinton’s defense secretary, William Perry, her “dream job” was to be national security adviser. She knew Korean and was studying Mandarin: as a student she had published articles about North Korean counterfeiters and smuggling networks. So on paper she fitted in with all the other prizewinners; what made her exceptional, I thought at the time, was her kindness. When she was growing up, her parents in Washington State – Presbyterian doctors – had adopted a girl from South Korea. Sheena had learned Korean for her.

After Oxford, Sheena got a PhD in political science at Harvard, with a focus on the “politics of democracy and dictatorship.” She met Eric Greitens when he spoke on a panel about political leadership, and it seemed that no sooner had they started dating than they were engaged. He was a Jewish Navy Seal Rhodes Scholar. How many of those are there in the world? He wrote his DPhil on how to protect children more effectively in war zones; he’d wanted to serve because he loved his country enough to risk dying for it:

“I walked into the rotunda at Rhodes House – a fancy mansion on the Oxford campus – and looked up at the names etched into the marble. Those were the names of scholars who left in World War One and World War Two to fight and die overseas. I stood there thinking that if they hadn’t made that choice I wouldn’t be here. I believed that everything in my life, everyone who invested in me along the way, had prepared me to serve and make a difference.”

After two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, he started a charity called the Mission Continues, which helped veterans adjust to civilian life. When he went on The Daily Show to talk about his book Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Leading a Better Life, he told Jon Stewart that he’d been inspired by his “buddy,” a war hero, who after returning home had become an unemployed alcoholic still afraid of sniper fire. “I started writing him a letter about resilience, about how you deal with hardship and become better, about how you deal with pain and become wiser, how you move through fear and build courage.” It became a bestseller, and also helped Eric get support for the Mission Continues, which has received donations from Bank of America, Disney, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, Starbucks, as well as thousands of people. (This becomes important later.)

I won’t go on about how wonderful he seemed. Not because there’s a lack of material. Here’s Eric talking to another talk-show host, Charlie Rose: “Oxford had these long breaks so I could leave Oxford and I could go to work with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. I could go to Cambodia and work with kids who lost limbs to landmines. I could go to Albania … ” Look him up in the New York Times archive and there’s someone complaining that he’s such a “paragon of virtue” that he scuttles Joe Klein’s book Charlie Mike: A True Story of Heroes Who Brought Their Mission Home– the “heroes” are Eric and a few others, but mostly Eric. It’s not that the reviewer doubted Eric’s wonderfulness, just that he seemed a little dull:

“Consider Eric Greitens, a former Rhodes scholar who ‘spent almost all of his school breaks working in refugee camps’. Later, while in the Navy Seals, he decided to redecorate the office cubicle he inherited, replacing ‘pictures of near-naked women on Harleys’ with quotations from Churchill, Patton and Thucydides.”

That’s the way I usually told the first half of the story. I didn’t mention that some friends had said that Eric had made them feel uncomfortable, or that I’d been disappointed when Sheena agreed to limit her job search to Missouri, because that’s where Eric wanted to live. Blaine Greteman, now an English professor at the University of Iowa, was in the Rhodes class after Eric; he wrote on Twitter that even then Eric was “talking about how he would be governor or president.” Greteman and another classmate had “found him so creepy we made him a villain in a screenplay we wrote … It was a pretty bad screenplay. But also maybe we were just ahead of our time?”

I didn’t go to the wedding: because of what I had heard about him, or because I didn’t want to fly out to the West Coast? A bit of both. I sent Sheena a couple of cake tins from her list.

And for a while, that was it. I got their Christmas cards; I cooed over pictures of Sheena’s baby on Facebook. When Sheena asked me to suggest potential reviewers for Eric’s memoir, The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy Seal, I sent names and addresses. In the first four years after their wedding, if his name came up, I’d say: “At least he’s a Democrat.” We all knew he would eventually run for office: why else had they moved to his home state? I had almost stopped thinking about him when he published an article on FoxNews.com in the summer of 2015 with the headline “Former Navy Seal: Why I am no longer a Democrat,” a prelude to his running for governor.

“I am a conservative Republican, but I didn’t start out that way. I was raised as a Democrat. I was taught that Harry Truman was the greatest president ever because he was strong, stood up to the communists, and most important, he was from Missouri. I was taught to stand up for the little guy, and that bigger government was the best way to do that … There was one rather large problem. As I got older, I no longer believed in their ideas. Even worse, I had concluded that liberals aren’t just wrong. All too often they are world-class hypocrites. They talk a great game about helping the most vulnerable, with ideas that feel good and fashionable. The problem is their ideas don’t work, and often hurt the exact people they claim to help.”

It might also have been the case that the Democrats were less keen on running Eric for higher office, at least right away. Obama spent seven years in the Illinois state senate before going to the US Senate – that’s how it usually works. The Democratic Party was drowning in ambitious Rhodes Scholars who wanted to work for Obama, or to be him; less so the Republicans.

One of Eric’s advisers would later testify that Eric wasn’t interested in running for anything less than governor; he said “he wasn’t somebody that ever climbed ladders. Indicating that he didn’t have to.” The incumbent, Jay Nixon, a Democrat, was term-limited, and it was more than time for the seat to change parties: Missouri is very white, and rural, and the state had voted against Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 elections, though it hadn’t been particularly keen on Mitt Romney either. (Google “undecided voters Missouri 2012,” and up comes the line: “Who are you going to vote for, the Muslim or the Mormon?”)

To secure the Republican nomination, Eric first had to see off all the Missouri state representatives – “crooked career politicians,” he called them – who had been waiting, some of them for their entire careers, for Jay Nixon to stand down. They tried to persuade the party faithful that Eric wasn’t nearly as conservative as he pretended. Then Eric released an ad:

“I knew that career politicians would lie about me. But Obama supporter? That’s not just false it’s offensive. So let me be clear, and I’ll say this slowly, so even the career politicians can understand. Barack Obama is the worst president of my lifetime, maybe ever. I’m Eric Greitens, I’m pro-life, pro-gun, conservative to the core.”

He didn’t have to explain why he thought Obama was the worst president maybe ever. To his base, it was self-evident. This was all happening while Trump was running for president, and sometimes it seemed as though the two men shared the same campaign. Rather than drain the swamp, Eric swore to “blow up” Jefferson City, the state capital, while also promising – presumably this would happen first – to throw out all the lobbyists, “‘even if in sight of the statue of Thomas Jefferson I have to throw you down the steps of the Capitol myself.”

Around this time, I had been reading books about the Clintons for a piece I never wrote; Hillary had been told that if she didn’t change her last name from Rodham, her husband would never be re-elected governor of Arkansas. I wrote to Sheena that I had been thinking about “how difficult/gruelling/bonkers a gubernatorial race can be. I can’t tell you how much I wish you would just fly to London for a long weekend of anonymity, museuming & hot chocolate.”

Most of my notes were like that: telling her that I missed her, sympathizing with how busy she must be, but not mentioning Eric, or saying that I hoped he would win. They never asked me for money, which I thought was odd at the time. Every American I’ve known, however slightly, who’s run for office, even in places I’ve never visited, has asked me for money.

That year, the American husband of a South African Rhodes Scholar was running for the Executive Council of New Hampshire; I hadn’t seen them since we left Oxford, but they hit me up for $50. That’s just the way it works. But Eric was raising millions of dollars without, it seemed, having to stoop to ask. One of the political action committees that spent more than $2 million to support him was Seals for Truth; Eric claimed that this was being run by his fellow Navy Seals, although its lone donor was an entity called the American Policy Coalition Inc. – a non-profit that exists in name only, and was incorporated by a lawyer who has also helped the Koch brothers, Republican billionaires, funnel money to their favorite candidates. Meanwhile, actual Navy Seals put a video on YouTube criticizing Eric for exaggerating his service: he’d completed Seal training, but had never actually served in a Seal platoon. Also on YouTube, a waitress uploaded a short video: she wanted people to know that Eric had once grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around because he was angry that his food had taken too long to arrive. He had yelled at her and wouldn’t stop touching her after she asked him to stop. “I’m not a very political person,” she said, but she wanted people to know what he was like. I found the video after I typed “Eric Greitens” into the YouTube search box – something I did a lot – but I didn’t see it mentioned elsewhere.

After Eric won the Republican nomination, his campaign ads were more muted. To beat the Democratic nominee, the popular state attorney general Chris Koster, Eric would have to appeal to the college-educated suburban women that Ivanka was trying to win for her father.

A new ad showed him walking down a leafy street with Sheena, both pushing strollers: “If you want more government, higher taxes, billions in Obamacare expansion, and corrupt career politicians as usual,” Eric says, “then vote for Chris Koster. That’s what he’s been doing 22 years.” Sheena says nothing, but she shakes her head “no” when Eric mentions Obamacare. She’s not wearing a cross in this video, though she does in others. Did this placate anyone who worried about electing a Jewish governor? The state had never had one before.

The only charge that seemed to stick was that Eric was already looking beyond the state, with the domain ericgreitensforpresident.com already registered. A St Louis Magazine reporter was sent to interview “his brilliant young wife” who “looks a bit like Kate Middleton.” She asked Sheena “when it first occurred to her that she could wind up as the nation’s first lady”; Sheena said she’d never thought about it before – ‘“Not until this very moment,’ she says, blinking rapidly.” The reporter didn’t believe her. Sheena joined Eric’s Mission for Missouri bus tour, usually holding their new baby; Koster, single and childless, took to posing with one of his nieces. When Eric refused to release his tax returns, his campaign adviser said that it was because Eric had to make the decision “with Sheena, as a family,” whereas “Chris can make it for himself.”

On election night, while I waited for the returns to come in, I kept tweeting at the writer Curtis Sittenfeld – other than the Greitenses, she was the only person I could think of who lived in Missouri. What was she seeing on the ground? In Sittenfeld’s novel American Wife, the character modelled on Laura Bush decides she can’t be blamed for what her husband did in office: “All I did is marry him. You are the ones who gave him power.” But she also knows that he wouldn’t have won without her.

In his inaugural address, Eric spoke about government being “the wrong place to look if you’re seeking compassion. Caring comes from individual people.” It was time for Missourians to start doing more for themselves. The “most important anti-crime program ever known is a dad playing ball with his son.” Of course his vision for the state would mean great effort, even sacrifice, but weren’t they up to the challenge? The West was won in Missouri. The first mile of the Interstate was laid in Missouri. In Missouri they built steamships “that plied” the Mississippi. It was a Missourian who first flew solo across the Atlantic, and it was Missourians “who built the capsule in which an American first orbited the Earth.” He asked the people of Missouri to pray for him and his family. Two weeks later, he flew with Sheena to Washington to see Trump sworn in.

I cancelled my Google news alerts for “Eric Greitens” because suddenly there was too much news: Eric had changed the gun policy at the statehouse – any visitor or employee could now bring in a concealed firearm. He went to Washington to meet with Mike Pence, to Israel to meet with Netanyahu. He overturned a by-law forbidding landlords and employers to discriminate against women who used birth control. He lowered the minimum wage in St Louis. There was only a single abortion clinic in the state, and Eric tried to regulate it out of existence. He slashed funding for the state’s public universities, including the one at which Sheena taught. He signed a bill that made it almost impossible for anyone to sue successfully for racial discrimination. The NAACP warned black people to “exercise extreme caution” before entering Missouri, the first time they’d ever issued a travel warning for a specific state. Eric was now often referred to as Mike Pence’s favorite governor, very likely his future running mate, or his pick for vice-president if Trump didn’t complete his term.

I sat in London obsessing about what was happening back home, feeling furious and powerless. The day after Comey was fired, I went to Grosvenor Square to join the protest, but there was no one there. I read the news on my phone, then went to Selfridges. On the fundraising website DonorsChoose.org, Missouri teachers were begging for school supplies. I bought a set of books for one class and gave the website Sheena’s office address so that she would be sent the thank you notes. I didn’t criticize her more directly: a friend’s attempt to school her on reproductive freedom hadn’t gone well. Then, on August 17 last year, I linked to an article on Facebook from the Amnesty International website: a man called Marcellus Williams was scheduled to be executed in Missouri five days later.

Williams had been convicted of the murder of a St Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. He’d always maintained his innocence, and no physical evidence connected him to the crime. (An ex-girlfriend testified that he had confessed to her, and received a cash reward.) Civil rights activists were interested in the case because Williams was black, but had faced an almost all-white jury. There was a Twitter campaign to free him, and the nun from Dead Man Walking had made an appeal. Eric had already presided over one man’s execution, and I hadn’t said anything, but this time I tagged Sheena so that the post would appear on her Facebook page too – something I could do, because we were friends. I wrote: “I desperately hope that Eric Greitens won’t allow this man to be executed on Tuesday.” Friends posted beneath or emailed her. She was at the Missouri State Fair that day, and the post stayed up for several hours before she saw it and deleted it from her page. She was angry that I’d put a “political post” on her wall for everyone to see; I told her I wouldn’t do it again. Three hours before Williams was scheduled to be executed, Eric granted a stay. I sent Sheena a row of emoji kisses, as though she’d done me some small favor.

In January, Eric delivered the annual “state of the state” address in Jefferson City. He promised to continue cutting taxes and to repeal regulations. He thanked his kindergarten teacher for being in the room, and thanked Sheena for her great work helping Missouri children in foster care. At Christmas, she had decorated the governor’s mansion with gold stars, each one representing a child in the system. I didn’t watch the speech at the time, and when I watch it now I’m not sure whether it’s only because I know what’s going to happen later that night – Eric knew the story was about to break – that I think he appears less commanding than usual.

A woman – her name protected – had been Eric’s hairdresser. She said that during the campaign, when Sheena was out of town, she’d gone to the basement of his house, where he kept his exercise equipment: Eric had offered to teach her “how to do a proper pull up.” Instead, he had tied her up, blindfolded her, pulled off her clothes and taken her photograph with his phone. She had been sobbing when he put his penis in her mouth. Eric told her that if she told anyone, he’d send the photograph of her “everywhere.” He has said that there was “no blackmail, there was no violence, there was no threat of violence.” He claims they had a consensual sexual affair, which he calls a “personal mistake.” Sheena released a statement: “We have a loving marriage and an awesome family; anything beyond that is between us and God. I want the media and those who wish to peddle gossip to stay away from me and my children.” She and Eric spent a few days away from the cameras, in the office of Eric’s political action committee, reassuring their donors and state legislators that there wouldn’t be any further scandals, and that Sheena was sticking by her husband. She said she’d already known that Eric had had an affair, and had long since forgiven him.

Eric was indicted for “criminal invasion of privacy.” The Missouri Republican Party issued a statement accusing the St. Louis prosecutor who brought the charges, a black woman, of being a puppet of George Soros: the governor was the victim of a liberal globalist conspiracy. “Missourians should see this for what it is: a political hit job.” Two months later, Eric was indicted on another felony charge: he’s accused of having stolen lists from the Mission Continues containing the names and addresses of everyone who had donated more than $1000 to the charity, to use for his own campaign fundraising purposes. It’s not nearly as sensational as the rape allegation – Missourians, inevitably, are calling that ‘Fifty Shades of Greitens’ – but there’s an overwhelming paper trail, and it’s probably the easier case for prosecutors to make. A special session of the state legislature will consider whether to proceed with an impeachment trial.

Eric says that he’s been the victim of a “political witch hunt,” just like the president. “This is exactly like what’s happening with the witch hunts in Washington, DC.” A jury is being selected for his first trial. He refuses to resign: in the age of Trump, why should he?

(Courtesy, London Review of Books)

* * *

UPDATE: Greitens resigned Tuesday.

HOW THE RIGHT IS DEFENDING ROSEANNE BARR'S RACIST TWEETS

Shortly after ABC cancelled the show, rightwing commentators were engaged in false equivalences and ‘mental gymnastics’

theguardian.com/culture/2018/may/29/how-the-right-is-defending-roseanne-barrs-racist-tweets

WHOO HOO!

Independence Weekend June 30-July 1

City of Point Arena

Independence Weekend Celebration 2018

Fireworks: June 30

Parade: July 1

The most highly anticipated event on the South Coast — the Point Arena Independence Celebration — will occur the weekend of June 30 & July 1, 2018! Join us for food, fun and the largest display of fireworks in the region in beautiful Arena Cove! Saturday, June 30 — Street Fair & Fireworks Extravaganza Festivities kick off at 4:00 pm with food, bands, arts and crafts and entertainment. The Fireworks Extravaganza will explode into the night sky starting at dark. Food and craft vendor spots are available for the Street Fair on June 30. Download our Vendor Application Form (https://drive.google.com/open?id=12kc9xiS8hG3cpj6j_jsKncYqOjRrQ9sw)

or contact Point Arena City Hall at 707-882-2122. Sunday, July 1— Downtown Parade The Annual Downtown Parade steps off at noon on Main Street. Groups are welcomed to join the parade. Since this is a family-friendly parade, we ask you to keep things classy, safe, and fun.

Download our Parade Entry Form (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EcowbzBBFe68utUvRr5GI-cuHyUp_1gj)

or contact Point Arena City Hall at 882-2122.

How You Can Help!

This spectacular event doesn’t just happen out of the blue — it takes many hours of planning and lots of work by a dedicated group of volunteers and City staff. An event of this size runs on volunteers. Please consider helping make this event a success. Volunteers will receive free admission and a special t-shirt. Please contact Barbara Burkey at 882-2683 for more information.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=X8TW29DFA7AEY

We are also seeking sponsorships and donations for the event. If you would like to help sponsor or donate to the Celebration or volunteer please contact City Hall at 882-2122.

Please Note

Admission to the street fair and fireworks is $10 for adults and $5 for kids aged 12- 17. Kids under 12 are free. A family of four is $20. Parking for the street fair and fireworks will be available at City Hall and in parking lot locations on Port Road. No on-street parking is available on Port Road. A shuttle bus will run from City Hall to the Cove from 4:00 P.M. until 11:00 P.M. Please leave pets at home! More information at:

http://www.pointarena.net/events-festivals/4th-of-july-fest.html

or the City’s Website at: www.cityofpointarena.net or call City Hall at 882-2122. We look forward to seeing you at Arena Cove for fireworks on Saturday and downtown for the Parade on Sunday!

LEE HOWARD GETS HIS CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATED

Grand Jury members, FYI Please take the time to read!

Lee Howard

* * *

Extremely Serious Civil Rights Violation Concerning County and Cal OES: Over Excavation Remediation Program

Greetings,

I am an attorney for Mr. Lee Howard. I am writing to expose an extremely serious and disturbing violation of Mr. Howard's constitutional rights that was recently brought to my attention.

I believe when you look at the facts and circumstances described below, you will be equally shocked. Specifically, I believe you will be stunned to see how a citizen performing services on behalf of his fellow citizens had his constitutional rights violated for nothing more than being a good citizen.

It is even more astonishing that Mr. Howard's efforts have brought almost universal accolades for his willingness to be one of a very small handful of people who stood up for the protection of his fellow citizens.

As a direct result of Mr. Howard's activities, citizens of the State of California and the County of Mendocino, have been able to obtain restitution for the wrongs imposed upon them by other governmental actors.

Yet, despite these actions, some individuals involved in this process have a great disdain for citizen participation in government. In fact, their disdain goes so far as to actually document in writing their efforts to interfere with Mr. Howard's constitutional rights.

By this letter we are demanding an immediate and full investigation into this matter and requesting that those individuals who actively participated in this matter be subject to appropriate discipline, and if appropriate, termination.

Introduction

On May 11, 2018, Mr. Howard received the following email from officials of the County of Mendocino:

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject: County and Cal OES: Over Excavation Remediation Program

Date: Fri, 11 May 2018 17:49:51 -0700

From: Tammy Moss Chandler <chandlert@mendocinocounty.org>

To: Lee Howard <lohoward@sonic.net>

CC: Carmel Angelo <angeloc@mendocinocounty.org>, Christian Curtis <curtisc@mendocinocounty.org>, Steve Dunnicliff <dunnicls@mendocinocounty.org>, Katharine L. Elliott <elliottk@mendocinocounty.org>

Lee,

The County has been informed that you have made repeated calls to Sukut Construction, the contractor that Cal OES has engaged for remediation of over-excavated properties. As a State contractor, Sukut receives all direction, work orders, and other communication directly from appropriately designated Cal OES employees, and it is important to avoid any inappropriate interference in that relationship. For that reason, we ask that you refrain from direct requests or other communications to the contractor about this project, as these create a significant risk of confusion, uncertainty, mistake, and delay.

To avoid jeopardizing the operation of this program, it is important that you direct any communication about this project's contractor operations in the field to the Cal OES Operations Chief, Tim Smith or his designee. Tim Smith can be reached directly at 916-825-5605. The State's contractors and their crews should not be impeded, distracted or interfered with in the performance of their jobs.

While property owners and/or their representatives may be present while work is being performed, it is imperative that they stay outside of the designated work area. We understand that you are functioning as a representative for the Phelps, as well as potentially other property owners impacted by the October 2017 wildfires. However, please refrain from attempting to direct, control, interrogate, manage, impede, distract, or interface directly with any State contractors performing work on this project. Any and all issues should be directed to Cal OES, through their Operations Chief, as only Cal OES has authority to issue any appropriate directives to the contractor.

Additionally, I have been temporarily assigned to the over excavation remediation mission and Steve Dunnicliff is serving as the Interim Recovery Director for the County of Mendocino. My current duties require me to be in the field or obligated with other time sensitive and mission critical duties on a frequent basis. Therefore Steve Dunnicliff is your best contact for anything recovery related, particularly if you are requesting a time sensitive response, until I resume my regular duties overseeing all recovery functions. Steve can be reached by cell phone at 707-391-6375.

Thank you,

Tammy

Tammy Moss Chandler
Mendocino County Executive Office
Office: (707) 234-6042
Cell: (707) 671-3610
Email: chandlert@co.mendocino.ca.us

Understandably, Mr. Howard was confused as to why he would receive such an email. All he had done was attempted to assist his clients whose property had been damaged due to over excavation in connection with the recent Northern California fires.

While it was true that the US Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors resented Mr. Howard exposing their malfeasance, there was no doubt but that the malfeasance occurred and that people were harmed as a result of the misconduct.

Curious as to what might have motivated this attack on Mr. Howard, he made a public records act request and was shocked to receive the attached May 4, 2018 letter from Alex J Pal, Acting Chief Counsel of Cal OES. (See attachment)

In the May 4, 2018 letter from the Acting OES Chief Counsel, writing to Christian Curtis, the Assistant County Counsel for the County of Mendocino, Pal states:

"I have recently learned unauthorized individuals or entities that are unaffiliated with Mendocino County may be attempting to insert themselves into this process. It is imperative that the state, its contractors, and Mendocino County engage in this effort in a coordinated manner. However, it is improper for any unauthorized individuals or entities to attempt to influence or in any way be involved in this government operation. This will result in delaying resolution and could impede our ability to complete this work, ultimately jeopardizing the state's assistance in this manner. It is critical that you ensure only authorized representatives of Mendocino County participate in this endeavor so that we can successfully conclude this critical mission thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter."

Again, shocking as it is, here is a letter from one lawyer at the State, to another lawyer at the County suggesting they actively participate in violating the civil and constitutional rights of Mr. Howard!

Mr. Howard's Civil and Constitutional Rights were Clearly and Unquestionably Violated

Mr. Howard is a citizen of a constitutional democracy with certain inalienable rights. Among his rights are those found in the Constitution, including the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What the state and county were doing was clearly violating my client’s constitutional right to peaceably assemble and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.

In that regard, your attention is also directed to the following:

42 U.S.C. Section 1983:

“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress*, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.”

I also direct your attention to the Mendocino County Right of Entry Agreement which states:

7. County’s Agents. Any person, firm, or corporation authorized in writing to work upon the Property by the County shall be deemed to be County’s agent, including but not limited to the State of California, Cal OES, CalEPA, CalRecycle, the Federal Government, contractors and subcontractors and shall be subject to all applicable terms hereof.

Requested Action

By this letter we request an immediate and full investigation into those individuals who were involved in this most egregious effort to violate a citizen’s civil rights while acting under the color of authority.

To the extent these allegations and supporting documentation can be appropriately verified, we also request those involved to be removed from their position of trust and responsibility in our constitutional democracy.

While I have seen other examples of governmental misconduct in other matters, I do not ever recall seeing such a blatant, flagrant, and well documented violation of a citizens First Amendment rights as those described above.

Hopefully, these violators can be removed from their role in our democracy before other citizens face similar violations.

Please let me know what actions will be taken to address this violation.

Hans W. Herb

LAW OFFICES OF HANS W. HERB
P.O. Box 970
Santa Rosa, CA 95402
707 576-0757
707 575-0364 Fax
hans@tankman.com

GREENWOOD PIER

(via MendocinoSportsPlus)

TELL TALE: Gallery Route One’s Artist Members’ Show Friday, July 6th through Sunday, August 12th, Point Reyes Station, CA

Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Saturday, July 7th, 2:30; 5 PM

Closing Party: Sunday, August 12th, 3 &ndash; 5 PM

A peek into private worlds, the power of concentration, and the mystery of imagination. 26 Artists, 26 approaches to art-making. Gallery Route One’s 35th anniversary members show is an opportunity to meet founding gallery. Member Artists along with the two new Artist Fellows who are selected annually to participate in the running of the gallery and to exhibit their work. This year’s show includes conceptual art, collage, mixed media, artist books, photography, and sculpture. Photograph of each artists’ studio or of the artist at work displayed next to their piece give visitors a peek into the private world of each artist. These include images of a painting on cardboard clamped to a table covered with palette knives, paint cans and paint brushes, and of an artist lying on top of sheets of calligraphy, preparing for an installation and performance. For more information, email Vickisa at <vickisa@aceweb.com >

Gallery Route One is open 11 AM &ndash; 5 PM every day except Tuesday.

“If you didn’t want to be part of the conspiracy board, you shouldn’t have voted for him.”

HIPPIE! THE BEAST THAT WON'T DIE!

On the evening of Friday, June 1, Grace Hudson Museum will host a very special First Friday celebration that includes the launch of a major new initiative. "Promise of Paradise," a collaboration between the Museum, radio station KZYX, and theatre producer Kate Magruder focuses on the beginnings of the Back to Land movement in Mendocino County that occurred almost 50 years ago. Popular duo Midas Well will play 60s and 70s music; snacks of the time period will be served; and visitors are encouraged to dress in clothes of that era. The project is seeking interviews with anyone who was part of the movement and has a story to tell. Forty-five minute interview slots are available between 3 and 7 p.m., and can be scheduled by emailing Sara Reith at news@KZYX.org Music, drink and music begin at 5. Visitors can also view "Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change," on view until June 17.

Roberta Werdinger, Writer, Publicist, Editor <RWerdinger@Yahoo.com>