Letters (Aug. 1, 2018)

• Same Here In Mendo
• Delivery Delay Probs
• Petaluma’s Dada Bathtubs
• Voting For Regress
• Don’t Destroy Library
• Cooney: Spot On
• The Opposite Of Hope?
• Hands Off Trump
• The Cuckoo’s Nest

SAME HERE IN MENDO

Editor: 

I’ve returned to California after 35 years in Illinois. Maybe I have a different slant on observing your housing shortage. I notice it’s constantly discussed, but nothing really is done. Maybe building a few houses that cost “only” $500,000. Ha!

So I read that San Diego is legislating against short-term rentals for anything but your one own home. Well, hey, now that might just be the thing to solve the problem. No buying up all the houses for short-term profits. All of those extra houses would be available for long-term rentals.

I have a personal interest in this, as I’ve been looking for a rental for more than four months, while more than half the houses out here in Bodega Bay are empty or vacation rentals. It shouldn’t be so hard.

I suppose longtime Californians have adjusted to these conditions, but to the rest of the country, this is insane.

Jude Mayer

Bodega Bay

DELIVERY DELAY PROBS

Editor,

(Saturday, July 21) — This week’s (July 18) AVA has not yet arrived by mail (as of Saturday, July 21) at my address. I’ve noticed in the past that occasionally an issue will not arrive until the following week.

I’ve brought this up to you before and you’ve blamed the postal service which makes sense considering that the USPS can be quite lame. 

I’m guessing that the AVA pays a certain rate to the USPS to deliver the papers. Could the AVA pay the USPS a higher rate to ensure that issues won’t sometimes arrive until Saturday or the following week? Perhaps you could charge subscribers outside Mendocino County a higher subscription price? I know I’d be willing to pay a higher price for this reason.

Sincerely,

Keith Bramstedt

San Rafael

Mark Scaramella replies: We pay the going periodicals rate which is reasonable for in-county and already exorbitant for out-of-county (which goes up every year; the cost per paper is based on zipcode zones and varies depending on distance). Theoretically, we could send papers first-class, but that would require that the first class papers be separately handled for mailing which would take more time on this end for us (i.e., me) to keep track of and account for, further delaying all the papers. The last time we sent a paper first class to an out of county address it cost almost $2. Which also seems prohibitive. And in most cases wouldn’t be much faster than the periodical rate and delivery which is supposed to be “time value” material. 

PETALUMA’S DADA BATHTUBS

Editor: 

The Petaluma Public Art Committee chose neo-Dadaist art for downtown — 20 17-foot poles supporting five Victorian bathtubs. The majority of City Council members voted to accept the committee’s decision in order to honor the members’ time, rather than honoring the majority of Petalumans who don’t want Dadaist tubs. The council should be concerned about the effect on the Riverwalk and the community.

What is Dadaism? Art books and online sources say Dadaism is a nihilistic (destructive) and anti-aesthetic European art movement whose purpose was to criticize everyday people and mock beautiful artistic creations. One famous Dadaism piece is the ceramic urinal that Marcel Duchamp declared “art” in 1917.

Although there are many important issues facing us, art speaks to the essence of humanity. Water Street is the heart of downtown Petaluma — a place to walk and watch the egrets or the sunset, not poles and derivative common tubs. The Riverwalk is an exceptional place that needs beautification, amenities and art to enhance it, not diminish it.

A few people believe this narrow vision should become the icon of Petaluma. Does the City Council understand what Dadaism represents? Is this the new spirit of Petaluma?

Cheryl Coldiron

Petaluma

VOTING FOR REGRESS

Editor,

By now, it should be painfully obvious that the GOP cares little to nothing but satisfying the greedy interests of its ultra-rich donors, forcing us ordinary people to finally ask ourselves if we are going to continue to be politically suicidal and vote for anyone in the GOP in the next election. Oh, scratch that, I almost forgot: the GOP is really the Party Of God, and morality is firmly in its corner, as evidenced by: No taxing and spending in its agenda, especially for social programs. 

Ken Ellis

New Bedford, Mass.

DON’T DESTROY LIBRARY

To the Editor:

Dear Supervisors John McCowen and Carre Brown:

I am writing to both of you because I am marginally acquainted with both of you and have always respected you for all the good work you have done. As a person with moderately low income, I have nevertheless also voted for special taxes for good causes.

As time has passed I have become increasingly leery as I have seen the funds diverted for other purposes than what I voted for. It was with great joy that I have seen recent special taxes that included the provision that the funds collected would not be diverted to other causes. However, as true politicians, you think you have found a way to do just that! Any time money is involved, there is always dishonesty. People simply cannot keep their hands off it. I am becoming more and more likely to avoid voting for any more special taxes.

After the Grand Jury reported that over the years and decades, the county has been charging the Library hundreds of thousands of dollars for what should never have been charged, the voters/taxpayers of this county passed a special tax to support the library that is not to be diverted for any other purpose. So now you have decided to come in through a side window and rob the library by creating a Cultural Services Agency, and divert staff time and resources to the museum and the parks.

The museum needs an educated, trained and experienced curator to run it. When the time your plan states will be provided by the ill-prepared library supervisor proves insufficient, then there will be more time taken, with very poor results, while the library suffers.

I have lost all the respect I ever had for you, and am determined not to vote for any more special taxes, regardless of the assurances that they will not be diverted. I will also be vocal in my opinions to friends and acquaintances. You are shooting yourselves in the foot.

Carol K. Gottfried

Ukiah

COONEY: SPOT ON

Editor,

Eleanor Cooney’s recently completd four-part series “No County for Old Women” is so spot on! She captures the harsh realities of memory loss and the difficult decisions family or caregivers have to make. There is usually no “happy” solution. Thank you, Eleanor, for so well articulating all of the emotions and guilt involved in it.

Billie Crowley

Trinidad

THE OPPOSITE OF HOPE?

Dear Editor:

Finally I’m good and sick of seeing Philbrick’s “open letters” to the editor as a permanent fixture in the AVA, your lassie-faire indulgence of the nasty old reactionary parrot becoming less and less defensible it seems to me. Like a while back I picked up the AVA, admired the portraits of Anderson Valley’s Class of 2018 and, noticing the surnames and complexions, I wondered if these kids think this Trump cabal is irrelevant to their futures. Are they familiar with Philbrick’s podium-pounding holy sermons God and Country back in the days of Beaver Cleaver. Have these kids received the kind of public education that makes them wise to the ways these blowhards who betray both? And what do these starry-eyed young Americans (?) think of these “Law and Order” Republicans illegally stealing Native American babies out of the arms of their mothers? Not much, I expect. Nobody likes going eyeball-to-eyeball with a toilet bowl.

“God bless Donald Trump” as Philbrick’s mantra? Mr. Philbrick, if you’re listening, what god you talking about? The God of Mammon? The God of the Almighty Yanqui Dollar? The God of the Imperial Marketplace in debased and dehumanized commuter consumers, their social consciences shrunk-wrapped in mass manufactured self-congratulations?

When our deranged Field Marshals wed sadism and “National Security” to prison camps for punishment and profit, we change the channel. Since it’s costing us taxpayers roughly $750 per day is to cage Madonna and her child, why not kidnap the child and ship it off to Stalag 666 outside Who Knows Where, North Dakota (Pop: Dead)? Why not set a baby down inside a drunk tank for future fucking freeloaders? With nobody looking, why not double your money by replacing the mini-cellmate with another grieving mother? Why not fatten your take even more by charging for all the child services you’ll be giving all these little ones? 

I’ve been writing for the AVA since 1984. For just as long as I’ve been reading, and enjoying, your stories and musings, Bruce. I know your writerly insights and blind spots, likes and dislikes, villains and heroes, etc. Yet, given your vast output over these last 34 years, I know remarkably little about you as the creature of your upbringing. Very rarely do you write about yourself, and when you open a door leading into autobiography, you never seem to walk through it.

Now that the Republican Congress has proven itself to be the Trump cabal’s cooks, waiters, bodyguards, door-openers, grease monkeys, surrogates, plumbers and fixers, I say the rules have changed. I never signed any Social Contract with any scum-sucking devil that asserts I’ve got to go along with stinking nasty demagogues picking the pockets of the blind, the deaf and the locknut-stubborn. 

While I have no idea what you did in the US Marines back in olden days, I do know you swore the same solemn oath I did (as did all these Republican Party apparatchiks although, obviously, they swore with their fingers crossed behind their backs). 

You also know the rules of evidence and the equalitarian ideals that (ideally) underpin American jurisprudence, as any real American should. It’s also fair to assume that you appreciate scientific method as the only surefire way to arrive at any quantifiable truth. So please tell us: Just what do you think your readers are getting out of reading/not reading Philbrick’s horseshit? What you see in this guy? Do you even read his stuff?

Also, seeing how Trump is a clear and present danger to American prosperity, world peace and the biosphere that birthed we as a species and all we know, I thought you’d be energized. Since Trump and his running dog surrogates have repeatedly called the American Free Press the Enemy of the American People, I expected you’d take great pleasure in, to quote Jefferson, reaffirming your “undying hostility to all forms of tyranny over the minds of men.”

So please be so kind as to share your thoughts on these matters. Your musings are bound to be more entertaining than your movie reviews. What’s to lose? 

I just remembered a line from our old friend Alex Cockburn. One of the very, very few times I read something of his and knew he was mistaken. He wrote that fear is the opposite of hope. Fear is not the opposite of hope. The opposite is hope is death. 

Respectfully, 

Bruce Patterson

Prineville, Oregon

HANDS OFF TRUMP

Editor,

Regarding last week’s letters from Lee Simon from Virginia and Frank Graham from Navarro. They are lost souls who do not know what reality is. They are anti-American. So you really can't blame them. That's what most liberals are. If they don't like being in this country and my views on things they can stick it up there you know what and get out of the country..

There are so many fires now you really think maybe something is up. Maybe ISIS has figured out a way to get into the United States. They are everywhere. It's sad that all these people have to lose their property just because some idiot sets a fire.

It makes me sick to hear people cry and moan about guns being a big problem. They are not a problem until a human being touches it. Cars are not a problem until somebody drives it. Fires are not a problem until somebody lights it. Boats do nothing wrong until somebody drives it. These things are governed by human beings and their nature, not by the individual object that they blame. I could go on but I won't.

There could not be a stupider, rottener, more hypocritical person on the face of the earth than Jerry Moonbeam Brown.

God bless Donald Trump.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

PS. I don't mind people talking about me and my letters. I'm sure that's what happens when people have a different point of view. But to attack the President of the United States is a different story. It looks like its treasonous or maybe somebody who should be run out of the country. Attacking the President is not right. It's okay to attack the Governor though because he's just a little bit above us.

THE CUCKOO’S NEST

Editor,

Fear not! Rumor has it that the “Un-Presidential” comic opera will run for at least least two more seasons. Indeed, recent polling shows that it has a rating higher than Breaking Bad and The Sopranos. The difference? This soapy opera is real— very, very real. Viewers must never count on facts getting in the way of bombast, for that makes it all the more mesmerizing. Among its sponsors (FOX, NRA, GOP, and Bitter Business Bureau), the word is to batten down the hatches and keep twittering. The public is asked to Just sit back and relax, pop open those cans of brewski, and applaud on cue. For those who cannot bring themselves to watch, there is always the bi-carb, emotional counseling, and re-runs of The Twilight Zone to keep one sane. Real fans of “Un-Presidential” love their MAGA hats, believe that aliens are taking over the universe, and slavery was never as bad as it has been made out to be.

So, what are the producers of the show promising that will keep viewers on the edge of their seats? The Mini-Me-In-Chief will keep everyone in suspense from show to show as he fiddles on his twitter machine and the capital burns. Shifty Sanders will extoll the wonders of having a leader who can, at last, be counted upon to tell tall tales, while banishing those nattering-nabobs of press-dom who dare not to fawn over every pronouncement as ABSOLUT (as in Vodka) facts. In every episode, the toadies in $2,000 Armani suits can be seen at every turn hissing “Lock her up!”. The wonderous Pompus Pompeo will regularly provide his cameo appearances in toga attire as he scurries about ripping up whatever stray bits of diplomacy may yet be left over from former “weak and evil-doing” career diplomats—those fuzzy headed Lib Labs as he calls them. Good Old Uncle Ben Carson will thrall the audience with tearing down housing across the poverty-strewn landscape. Her Heinous Highness Betsy-de-Boss can be seen editing out dangerous words in textbooks and extolling the wonders of vouchers-for-profit schooling. Not to be outdone, Pruitt’s penurious spawn can be counted on to soar to new heights in deconstructing nature. Ah, what drama there is when Bolton-the Bomber counsels war on the weak non-believers, those threats to National Survival that lurk on yet-to-be acquired lands half a world away. Lovely Nielson of Homeland fame appears at every turn leading the starved “Walking Half-Dead” in hand cuffs across desert landscapes toward oblivion. Oh, what fun is in store!

Of course, there are the kinks still to be worked out in the plot. There must be a good reason cooked up if the economy tanks—blame must be rained down on those damned Dems, you know. If the nuclear option is invoked to lock up meddlesome journalists, an incident must be fomented that shows that they are a national security risk. Congress needs to get its act together and manufacture a fresh set of rubber stamps to keep the Mini-Me happy. And, why not suspend the rules of political engagement and simply install the Genius-in-Chief in the Ovaltine Office for Life? Stay tuned. 

Franklin Graham

Navarro