Letters (June 13, 2018)

• Elder Home Appreciates Help
• It’s Incumbent Upon…
• No Respect
• Great Deceptions
• Or Whatever
• Growing Up Mendo
• My Two Cents
• Greenhouse Gas CO2 Hits New Record

ELDER HOME APPRECIATES HELP

Letter to the Editor:

The Anderson Valley Elder Home Board would like to thank everyone who made the Memorial Day Lions Club Barbecue an enjoyable event and a successfulfund-raiser for the Elder Home.

Every year, many community members and businesses donate items for the silent auction: wineries, restaurants, merchants, artists, and other communitymembers donate lovely items, gift certificates, classes, and interesting experiences. We had a wonderful collection of auction items.

A big thank you goes to the Anderson Valley Lions Club, which helps our own and other AV non-profits with their fundraising by arranging the site, cooking and serving the meal, and sellling tickets at the event.

Thank you to all who came out to make this a success. We are truly blessed to live in such an active and supportive community,

Sincerely,

Cynthia McMath

Boonville

IT’S INCUMBENT UPON…

AVA,

Your coverage on cannabis is tilted in an extremely negative direction, no pretense of objectivity, and you don't make up for the imbalance by including coverage from critics like me. Am I too radical? My work is as vital as the professor's.

I hope you'll print my piece on Year One of Cannabis Regs and my assessment of how well they're not going. Everyone knows it's a mess but who can make sense of it? My analysis is widely welcomed by the community as the BOS romps all over us. Managers of the Willits Grange decided to introduce it and push it out there, not me, hoping to shed clarity on mass confusion. The CEO is successfully protecting her annual $300,000 by keeping the unwieldy weed people in disarray.

That is why it's incumbent on the AVA to step in, to be fair and carry our point of view on a regular basis, instead of allowing us to be drowned out by the powers that be, which suppresses the much needed debate. With no Supervisor to raise our points, no AVA to give us meaningful coverage, no mic at the lame local radio 'alternative', prohibitionists win. You should not abandon your role as the press, just because you personally don't think much of our laidback way of life. This major population shift is happening, you are needed and you are not there.

As a community, I must say, our reaction to the end of prohibition has been clumsy. Our worst is being brought out in this prime time period, as we leave the hills and margins and try to adjust to daylight and a regulated reality.

As a community, our reaction has been confused and clumsy. Factor in clueless out of county people in a stupor running our community initiative as an example of everything turned on its head. With corporate cannabis biting at the bit to take over, the Class K/cannabis community will be reduced to 20% or fewer when it all shakes out. If my land wan't already paid for, allowing me a low ends life style, I could lose it all. Those with big mortgage payments are in trouble.

Back in the day we hippies dropped out of the television trap, shunned normal jobs, withdrew our skills from the mainstream and set out on our own, unimpressed by money and finery, fortunately so we could put our energy elsewhere. By taking on the cause of marijuana/hemp, we added significant risk and ridicule. Still it's worth it.

We've always been on the losing end with the exception of Prop 215. Prop 64's Netflix author didn't meaningfully consult with us any more than politicians do. And he's supposed to be on our side. Anything over 6 plants is deemed commercial. But what if it's not for sale? The law says abate or be penalized. If you don't like it, sell and go elsewhere. But most people don't want land with a cannabis cultivation ban, so it's a fire sale on 80%+ of total county acreage (Rangeland, Forestland, TPZ).

Whatever your opinion of marijuana may be, it's important that AVA not begrudge the cannabis community objective coverage, a voice in the debate. Readers would be grateful for the content as well as the opportunity to hash it out.

I have a proposal for an uncensored rotating cannabis column representing all points of view, each column from a different author (Trump could have his say as well), designed to foster debate on the emerging cannabis population shift taking place in the County under conditions of regulation rather than prohibition, how its playing out in the here and now after 40 years of underground cultivation and what can be done for the future. As editor, I would coordinate the original pieces followed by feedback; criticism welcome.

AVA is sure to perk up and become more relevant and rewarding.

Pebbles Trippet

Elk

ED NOTE: I think we've done the marijuana issue from all possible perspectives, including our own which, boiled down, is that legalization was a huge mistake for people in the industry, that dope  is bad for people, particularly young people. I know dope fascinates dopers, but to the rest of us the discussion is boring as hell, unless Sherry Glaser is presenting an argument before the Supervisors. I think the only interesting thing left to talk about is why do Americans feel compelled to anesthetisize themselves. But head of a pin elucidations of Mendo's hopelessly screwed-up dope policy? Oh no. We're not masochists, and I don't think our readers are either. Pinches said it all when he pointed out that the local legalization policy could have been written on a bar napkin. We post everything you send us Pebs where many more people are likely to see it, but there isn't room in the paper-paper. Frankly, if I weren't insult proof after all these years, I'd be annoyed that you feel our coverage of the issue has been "negative." Or otherwise deficient. We've faithfully relayed everything said about it at the Supe's level and lots more besides. Jeez.   

NO RESPECT

Editor,

Parents back in the 40s and 50s and early 60s took better care of their children. Those children were not exposed to what happened in the late 60s and early 70s when all the liberalism took over — free love, take your bra off, drugs, defy law enforcement, stuff like that. The liberalism gained 500% in the early to mid 70s and on up. Children used to be taught a little respect, and how to be good citizens and respect the Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem, respect for their elders. Children had a lot better go in life than they do now. All parents want to do now is let them have video games, iPhones, all technology. Nothing manual. It’s sickening. And the liberal parents are the worst. They’re the ones who let the kids have all this technology. If you go through any town these and watch the sidewalks, 90% of the people will be watching iPhones. They won’t even pay attention to where they’re going. It’s no wonder the country has turned into what it is. I predict that if Gavin Newsom or some other liberal Democrat gets to be president, god forbid, this county is going to absolutely sink out of sight. Because technology and liberalism is going to wipe out this country. If Gavin Newsom gets to be Governor, this state can’t take four more years of that. I don’t know for sure. But it’s going to be a weird next few years. 

God Bless Donald Trump.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

GREAT DECEPTIONS

Editor,

Language used to communicate ideas? How novel! Over time, most professions have developed exclusionary language, designed purposely to keep most people out. Witness the medical profession. The political arena. Public safety. The trades. Lawyers. Now there’s a group, where the language even has a name: Legalese.

Why did this happen, so that language is used as a smokescreen, rather than as a way to communicate ideas in easily understood terms? Enter language’s place in the food chain, as a protective survival mechanism for group members. Only a closed membership can know what is being talked about, whereby ensuring continued employment for all members of any given group.

The rest of us get the residue, the fall out, the smokescreen, the babble.

Sandy White

Woodacre

OR WHATEVER

To the Editor:

I have been reading with an increasingly heavy heart news articles about the Trump administration’s separation of children from their parents at the border.

But I was stopped cold by a quote in Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column “ ‘My Babies Started Crying’ as ICE Took Them Away” (May 31): “White House Chief of Staff John Kelly hails family separation as a ‘tough deterrent’ and shrugs that ‘the children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever’.”

“Or whatever” — that most dismissive phrase! So, it has come to this: We have weaponized the callous traumatization of children in the name of the promised immigration reform. Children have become acceptable collateral damage in a policy war.

Are there no parents in this administration? Are there no parents in the Border Patrol? Are there no Trump supporters who are parents? How can anyone who has children justify this?

Anita Moran

San Francisco

GROWING UP MENDO

by Terra Gibson

As a native born son of Mendocino County as well as a resident at one point or another in nearly all of its boroughs, from attending high school in Mendocino Village where my mom lived, back and forth to Point Arena where my father (the late Raven B. Earlygrow) lived and worked, followed by Ukiah, Brooktrails, Navarro, Albion Ridge, Little River and finally just north of Fort Bragg, I believe I can say with a certain degree of confidence that I know the county better than most. At least from the perspective of a semi-nomadic product of tremendously permissive (perhaps overly) left-wing woods hippie parenting. Obviously there were drugs involved, although I was fortunate enough to escape being cooked through as a truly a tragically large percentage of my childhood friends seem to have been, many of whom with my own encouragement. I chose not to grow pot immediately after (and during) high school mostly just because that's what everybody else was doing and I have always had a need to swim against the current. I went from roofing at age 18 to building by 20 and was making great money, $20-$25 bucks per hour full time but still found I had to augment my income by trimming pot anytime I got the chance simply to pay rent, eat and cover transportation to and from work (often 50 miles a day one way). 

There was certainly no hope of saving money and someday owning land. I injured my back, badly, and I couldn't work for six months. My boss at the time was unlicensed and hence uninsured and I was not the type to sue. I got strung out on pain pills for sometime which led me to other less socially acceptable drugs. I had always been keen on firearms having been forbidden to so much as play with war toys as a young lad. It was only a matter of time before I was pulled over with a small amount of dope in my pocket and a pistol (registered and unloaded) in a box on the dashboard. That was back in 2004. The AVA ran several articles in which I was cast in a not too favorable light, but all is long since forgiven.

After graduating from adult drug court in 2006 which was no small feat I returned to the construction industry for a couple years but was still really just treading water financially and when some friends asked me if I would be interested in moving up to their place in southern Humboldt for the summer in the now infamous Rancho Sequoia subdivision (more commonly called "murder mountain") in order to grow (and split) a large crop of marijuana I jumped at the opportunity thinking it might finally allow me to come up with a down payment for a piece of the rock of my own.

Well, that didn't work out as is often the case, often enough to give rise to the term "Humboldt Hustle," where one person does all the work and then in the home stretch the landowner finds some trivial reason (or doesn't) to evict the help and keep all of the fruits of their labor. Fortunately the next door neighbors noticed I worked hard and conducted myself with honor and they offered me a job the following year. Everything was going splendidly until the law showed up and chopped down all the plants and arrest everybody they could find. I was lucky to have been at work at my day job down the hill at the tow yard in Redway when the heat came down and a friend called me at work to recommend I not home that evening. After that I moved in with some friends just outside of Garberville and tried to grow some pot with them but they were a two-fifths per day drinking couple (and I was no choirboy myself at this point) and it all ended in tears.

So I moved back to Mendocino County with my tail between my legs. I spent a while homeless, living in cars and eventually buses and constantly being told to move along by local law enforcement. Strung out on drugs, unable to find affordable housing or any consistent source of income I began eventually to get really angry, feeling as if the community I was raised in and was in a very real sense a product of had turned their back on me. I was in a fairly toxic relationship, both of us drinking heavily and in 2010 I wound up in county jail on a very questionable domestic violence beef — we were both drunk as hell arguing. She jumped in the car I sat behind the wheel of, I hit the gas and turned left, she went ass over tea kettle out the still open passenger door and broke her ankle. She explained the facts to the district attorney both in person and in writing. I never laid a finger on her other than to help her back into the car and offer to take her to the hospital. This is not to say that I did not accept full responsibility for her injury. Had I been sober or simply more mindful of the fact that she was as yet still unbuckled and her door had not completely shut, she would have not have been hurt and I felt terrible for my part in it. In a fair world I probably deserved a DUI, not a domestic violence charge. But such is life in Mendocino's laughably dysfunctional injustice system.

I was released on probation and proceeded to do over two years for probation violations like driving without a license and “misappropriation of found items" — no BS, that's the charge they give you if your friend leaves their wallet at your house so you toss it in your backpack to return it to them and the cops search you and find it. I did six months for that one.

Anyhow, the minute I discharged from probation I high-tailed it back to Humboldt County and immediately found work in the weed industry in the small town of Alderpoint. After a couple months my fiance and I found a rental I was able to afford and we were relatively happy and stable for the last five years, by far the longest time I've ever been able to keep a rental. Until the bottom dropped out of the weed market I was even consistently early with rent each month.

On March 6 of this year I turned 40 years old. The same day I sold a car to a murder suspect who also happens to be a personal friend. The car I sold them wasn't mine, it belonged to another friend who has been bringing me cars up from auctions in the Bay Area for me to sell for him for several years. I knew the friend from whom I bought it was wanted, I also knew the man he is wanted for killing was himself a killer and was armed at the time he was shot. Alderpoint has a well-deserved reputation as the last of the truly wild west. Such is life.

The next morning the SWAT team came calling. They were trying to put pressure on my friend Zach Harrison who purchased the car by putting the screws to anybody who had helped or sheltered him and my landlord’s son had told on me for selling him the car. I was on informal probation for being found in possession of a couple of morphine pills back in 2015 so the fuzz didn't need a warrant to ransack my house. They proceeded to pile up in my front yard what the newspaper chose to call an arsenal, one .44 caliber lever action rifle, one muzzleloading 50 caliber black powder rifle, one AK-47 (doesn't everybody have one these days?), a couple of .22 caliber guns with homemade silencers (so I could target shoot without pissing off the neighbors) and one big homemade firecracker they chose to call a "destructive device." They also pulled 45 pounds of processed marijuana out of my living room although only 10 pounds made the news. (Some things never change.)

All told I was looking at 14 weapons felonies but hey, we all have a bad day at work every now and then, right?

Fortunately for yours truly my arresting officer was both honest and kind in his assessment of me personally, telling the district attorney that I actually seemed to be a relatively decent guy and that he felt bad having to hit me with all those charges. Sergeant Taylor, my hat is off to you for saying whatever you said that caused the district attorney to recognize that I was not some domestic terrorist, just a crafty guy who enjoyed playing with cool toys. I was allowed to plead out to two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm and one count of possessing a "destructive device." I was fully prepared to have to swallow 10-15 years in federal prison. Instead, I was sentenced to four years state time. My dogs will still be alive and my two sons will still be kids when I get out. Perhaps my fiance will even wait for me, God willing.

So here I sit in San Quentin and one of my old friends happens to have a few AVAs for me to read. In the March 20 issue from this year there was an interview with John Pinches I found fascinatingly heartwarming. His statements about the dire need for lower income housing in Mendoland spoke so directly to my heart I felt compelled to send him my support. There are areas we might never see eye to eye on but none are as important in my opinion as the housing shortage and I would be happy to put any differences aside if there were anything I could do to help Mr. Pinches win the election and work towards solving this problem before Mendocino County becomes another bedroom community like Carmel or Pebble Beach.

I have felt for some time that a great source of funding for low income housing for locals could and indeed should be a hefty vacancy tax imposed on all dwellings that stand empty over three quarters of the year creating voids in our communities while still demanding fire and police protection year-round. These third and fourth homes are owned by those most able to spend more on taxes yet they are so rarely actually resident to spend money in local stores or donate to local charities or volunteer for local organizations or participate in any way with the things that actually make up the fabric of the community. There could be a possible exemption from the vacancy taxes were they to build either an addition or second dwelling which would be rented out as low income housing for locals perhaps on a sliding scale based on income.

I for one have hoped that the easy money in pot drying up will lead to a sort of thinning out of some of the laziest and more money-centric transplants who only came after Prop 215 — and only to profit from what should have remained at least to some extent our birthright. As I was growing up people still had real jobs and only supplemented their income with cannabis. I'm ashamed of what my own generation turned into and I've seen the easy money do far more harm than good. In the days of my youth neighbors would come together to help plant a vegetable garden or carpool to the bus stop or school. Sure, there was still some division between the hippies and the loggers, but over time both realized they had more in common than they had irreconcilable differences.

I look forward with hope to a time when everyone has a little less but they are happier for it. John Pinches seems genuine in his desire to help the county I will always consider home. If he is willing to take on an old outlaw’s support I would like to offer it.

From San Quentin with respect

Terra Gibson BG0140-B4-46

San Quentin

MY TWO CENTS

Editor,

My two cents of Measure C and the hospital's future

Pouring in more money to an institution that grossly mismanages its finances is analogous to pouring gasoline on a fire in an attempt to put it out. Measure C is not going to provide sound management and decision making on the part of the administration and the board. The final straw for me was awarding the incompetent Bob Edwards another 4 years as CEO at approximately 360K/year....that amounts to $1,000 a day. He has nothing to offer strategically to get the hospital on a path toward solvency. No one knows what he's talking about when he uses nothing but acronyms in his reports to community members invited to participate in planning meetings. There is not a shred of actual transparency, just a pretense of it. 

The solution: Encourage competent people to run for the 4 vacant board seats. Potential candidates have until June 30 to file. This is where the community can truly bring about the change needed for the hospital's survival. The new board should immediately fire Bob Edwards and begin a movement to recall Steve Lund, each having played a very significant role in the hospital's downfall. 

FYI: At an April MCDH board meeting, I had the opportunity to share my in depth research on Dr. Campos and his whereabouts, providing an impetus for his decision to resign. As a community, we need to regularly attend and participate in board meetings. That, however, can be tricky. I was told there would be no May board meeting, only to find out on May 31 that a meeting was scheduled that evening. This appears to be a Brown Act violation in that no notice was given in advance. Something I plan to look into. 

Margaret Paul

A MCDH supporter

Mendocino

GREENHOUSE GAS CO2 HITS NEW RECORD

Dear Editor:

I have not written any letters recently about climate change. It has been very distressing to watch that stupid fool we have for President and his running dogs dismantle all the steps our country has taken to reduce the effects of climate change. The other day my daughter who lives in Arizona and my three great grandchildren, ages 9, 7 and 4 stopped by on a short visit. In looking at great grandchildren I couldn't help thinking what a terrible world we will be leaving them. NOAA's Earth System Research Lab reported their Annual Gas Index, which tracks the warming influence of long-lived greenhouse gases , has increased by 41% from 1990 to 2017, up 1 percent from 2016 — with most of that attributable to rising carbon dioxide levels. Since 1750, the onset of the industrial revolution, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen 46%. The Greenhouse Gas Index is only one of numerous indicators tracked by NOAA. I do not want to discuss all of these indicators which could run several pages. Please note the globally average temperature during 2017 was third-warmest in NOAA's 138 year global temperature record, behind 2016 and 2015. Record warmth was observed in many parts of the world. This warming has resulted in dramatic effect on the two poles. The large releases of CO2 comes from fossil fuel burning. I would recommend those readers who have a concern about global warming read the complete report. 

Jim Updegraff

Sacramento