Mendocino County Today: Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018

• Complex Updates
• June Lemons
• Bank Robbery
• Water Theft
• Fair Entries
• FB Rodeo
• Little Dog
• Quiz Night
• Ed Notes
• Yesterday's Catch
• Manhattan 1975
• Planet School
• Steinbeck Novel
• Fun Home
• Climate Fires
• Kelseyville Academy
• Trade War
• Collins Indicted
• Viticulture Class
• Fire Evacuation
• Conspiracy Friendly

THE MENDOCINO COMPLEX was up to a record setting 300,000-plus acres as of 7:30 Wednesday. Containment continues to grow incrementally, now up to 81% for the smaller River Fire, and up to 46% on the much bigger Ranch fire with most of the containment to the south and southeast of the flames.

Calfire: "Wednesday on the Ranch Fire, fire crews focused on tying together the southeast corner near Indian Valley, successfully working towards holding the eastern section. Additionally, work progressed around Pine Mountain Project and towards the Snow Mountain Wilderness to the north. Fire crews were successful eliminating potential fire threat and decreasing spotting potential in the southern section of the fire. The containment line holding north of Highway 20 allowed evacuation orders to be reduced. The River Fire saw no growth and crews continued to patrol the fire boundary."

FACT-SHEET: cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/admin8327985/cdf/images/incidentfile2178_3939.pdf

REPOPULATING LAKE COUNTY: http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/pub/cdf/images/incidentfile2175_3929.pdf

LOCAL ASSISTANCE CENTER: http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/pub/cdf/images/incidentfile2175_3931.pdf

 

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CALFIRE'S MENDOCINO COMPLEX UPDATE (Thursday 7am): 304,402 acres; 51% containment; 2 firefighters injured; 256 structures damaged or destroyed.

"The northern side of the Ranch Fire had moderate fire activity overnight. Fire crews continued to improve conditions around the Pine Mountain Project with firing operations overnight. Throughout the day crews will continue to patrol the south-west boundaries of the Ranch Fire, and support dozer lines in the north. The River Fire had no movement overnight, and today fire crews will focus on patrolling and mopping up."

cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/admin8327985/cdf/images/incidentfile2175_3942.pdf

(click to enlarge)

 

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MENDOCINO COMPLEX VIDEO UPDATE: AUGUST 9

THE ANDERSON VALLEY is saddened by the death of June Lemons, matriarch of the well-known Valley family and owners of the Lemons Market complex. A quiet, modest, hard-working person who, with her late husband, Elmer, fled the Dust Bowl of the 1930s for a new life in Mendocino County where they were to prosper, Mrs. Lemons will be missed.

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JUNE LEMONS

Interviewed by Steve Sparks (2010)

As the rain came pouring down I drove to the outskirts of Boonville and met with June at her home on Ornbaun Road. She graciously offered me either a tuna or ham sandwich for lunch but I settled on some delicious homemade cookies along with a hot cup of coffee and we sat down to talk.

June was born in rural Lincoln County, Oklahoma in 1927. She grew up in the very small town of McLoud, with Shawnee being the nearest town of any size with the much larger Oklahoma City about thirty miles away. She had one older half-brother and four younger full siblings — three boys and a girl. Her father, Joe Basinger, was of German descent while her mother Maude Brown, who was Scottish/Irish with 1/32 Cherokee Indian blood, had come to Oklahoma from Texas around the turn of the century when she was eleven years old.

“During the 30s, there was the Depression of course and Oklahoma was among the worst affected States. We had no means of transport so my father moved the family wherever there was work to be had, mainly in the agricultural industry, and we would crowd into whatever living quarters were available near to the job, mainly simple little cabins. Years later he told me I had lived in sixteen different places by the time I was thirteen years old. We all had our chores to do and being the oldest girl I often cooked dinner — it wasn’t much but I could fry potatoes and cook beans, and we’d have cereal and eggs. We had no refrigeration and did not have meat very often in those days, except Sundays when we’d have chicken and that was a treat.”

From when she was thirteen to eighteen, June stayed in the same place. “My father found work in a grocery store, eventually becoming the manager, and we lived on the store owner’s property. My Dad played the violin and his brother the guitar and they would often perform at social gatherings, passing the hat round for a little income - every bit helped. I can say that we never went to bed hungry though. My par­ents made sure of that. We had a vegetable garden and my Mother would can things for use during the winter months. Although we moved often it was always within the same area, so apart from two different one-room schoolhouses for the 2nd and 3rd grades, I went to the same place in McLoud for both grammar and high school. I loved school so much that I was sorry when we were out for the summer. I went to school with some Indian kids — they were just a regular part of the community. It was Indian country when my maternal grandparents settled there and homesteaded in the early 1900’s. I don’t think Okla­homa became a State until 1907. I remember that the Indians celebrated July 4th separately though — they dressed up in their tribal dress and it was very color­ful... I was very studious and was the Valedictorian in my class, my favorite subjects being math and general business, plus typing and shorthand. I’d say I was a well-behaved child — I knew the rules and went by them. All of us were good kids and my four brothers were all in the military at one point. My oldest in World War II, the next fought in Korea, the next was in the Air Force for twenty-nine years, and the young­est served in Vietnam. There were twenty-two years between the oldest and the youngest and I remember that my youngest brother was just learning to walk when I was getting married.”

Growing up in the Depression years meant that the family social life was spent at home or at neigh­bors’ homes nearby or “as my Mother was one of 13 and my father one of ten, we’d see relatives. With the wood heater going, we would sit together in the eve­nings around the radio that had been ‘commandeered’ by my Dad and listen to music, comedy, and soaps. I remember the show ‘Finbar McGee and Molly’ and Dad loved the ‘Grand Ol’ Opry’. We also played cards a lot, plus in those days families just sat together and talked... My parents were Methodists but they were not particularly religious and did not put pressure on us to go to church. We lived by the Golden Rule — ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.’ However, I did go to both a Baptist Sunday School and a Quaker Sunday School at an Indian Mis­sion but these were both social occasions to me, not religious.”

During the summer between her sophomore and junior years, June got a job in the town’s department store in the ready-to-wear section. “That place sold everything, from lingerie (behind a curtained off area) to dry goods and groceries. I spent most of my earn­ings in the sewing department, getting materials for my mother to make us clothes — she made most of them for us kids. Women and we young girls always wore dresses whenever we went out in those days — no slacks, and shorts were out of the question, apart from at home. I earned $18 for a full week. I guess I did a good job because I distinctly remember my boss telling me one day that my cash register was the only one that balanced. The following summer I worked away from home, at the Navy base forty-five miles away in Norman where I was in the kitchen doing prep and clean-up. It was my first time away from home and I was terribly homesick, getting to go home about one weekend a month. This was 1943 and the War was raging but I was not really aware of it that much other than the scrap metal drives that took place to gather things for use in the war effort. My brother was in the Engineering Corps in Italy and he wrote and told us that he spent his time building bridges only to see them blown up again.”

Among June’s parents’ friends was a family who had a son called Elmer Lemons who was a couple of years older than June. He had left school early, much to his parents’ disappointment, but his father told him it would not be easy, as Elmer soon discovered when he began work in the sawmills at an early age. The Lemons eventually moved their family to California for work but the son did not like it and he returned to Oklahoma and stayed with his grandparents, finding work at the Tinker Air Force base in Oklahoma City. Elmer and June started to date in her senior year at high school. Meanwhile she had received a couple of offers for scholarships to college and also could have found work as a teacher, with many of them away at war. “I would probably have become a teacher but looking back I would not have made a good one - I do not have the patience. Anyway, before I made up my mind what to do, Elmer and I became engaged and soon after, when I graduated in 1945, I too found work at the Air Force base, traveling thirty miles to work each way on a bus. I was a secretary/typist and worked on the payroll in the Engine Repair Building where they worked on B29 bombers. Then when the War ended our jobs were terminated and Elmer asked my parents if he could marry me. I remember my mother saying, ‘Yes, but you must promise not to take her to California.’ Elmer said he could not make that promise. Nevertheless, we did get married soon after and my parents gave their blessing. I guess they had been reluctant because I was the first one to leave home apart from my older stepbrother who was in the War.”

By September 1945, even though some jobs were available in Oklahoma, (June’s father was now doing carpentry in Oklahoma City), Elmer and June moved to California, joining the Lemons family in Firebaugh, not far from Fresno in the Central Valley. Elmer was a mechanic by trade and he found work in the agricul­tural industry for Waldo Rohnert, a wholesale vegeta­ble seed company. By 1947 June and Elmer had started to raise a family of their own with the arrival of Wil­liam Thomas ‘Tom’ Lemons, followed by daughter Beverly a few years later.

In 1952, Elmer, June, and the young children, vis­ited friends in Anderson Valley for a week. Elmer had a friend who worked in the Sharp and Kirkwood sawmill located where the Fairgrounds parking lot now is. “Elmer was tired of living in the hot Central Valley and had already been looking around for work elsewhere, applying for a job at a sugar factory in Vallejo. Fortunately he did not hear back from them because as we stood in the sawmill yard in Boonville a man asked Elmer if he was looking for work and what could he do. Elmer replied, ‘I can do anything you have.’ He got a job on the spot and we moved into a mill cabin on the property. It was the time of the lumber boom in Anderson Valley with jobs for all and there were three mills on that site alone — ‘Hess’ and ‘Weeks’, as well as where Elmer worked — and between Cloverdale and the coast there were over 30 in total.” Elmer started as a millwright, working on the equipment on a shift that went from late after­noon into the night. With his skills as a mechanic and in welding he was never to be out of work in all their years in the Valley that followed.

June and Elmer soon began to make friends through their contacts at the mill - people such as Howard and Janie Morse, Wilma and Walter Brink, Carolyn and Jeff Short at the gas station, and Harold and Alma Perry. “Most of those we met were from Arkansas, not that many Okies were here in this part of California, despite what you may hear. The old-timers of the Valley slowly accepted the newcomers, although quite a few of these initially said they’d ‘be glad when we’d done what we came to do and moved on.’ I was never mistreated but I did hear some stories. Obviously over time many of them became my friends. That is what happened with all of the new­comers here — it takes time to be accepted.”

June and the family settled down and enjoyed life in the Valley. “I did not have family in either Fresno or here so I did not mind coming to the Valley. I must say that when we first drove into the Valley along those winding roads I did think that if we stayed here I’d be tied to the Valley. Around Fresno it’s all long straight roads, easy driving. I did get used to them, but the traffic has got too much and I no longer drive over the hill to Ukiah. With Elmer at the mill, I was a homemaker and raised the kids. He loved to hunt for deer and fish in the ocean and now he was so close to the sea, instead of having to leave at 2am from Fresno for the ocean. His parents were with us until 1958 when his father fell while working at the mill and was badly injured, returning to the Fresno area to recuperate and never coming back.”

On most weekends during those days of the 50s and early 60s, the family would head to the Coast for a picnic on the beach. “Elmer would catch his surf smelt and we’d fry them up right there. The kids would have a great time with their dune buggies and playing softball on Alder Beach — between Elk and Manchester. Sometimes it would get too foggy so we would come back to the Valley and go to the river by the bridge near to what later became Hendy Woods.”

The Sharp and Kirkwood Mill was not run very well so despite the timber boom it went out of business in 1953 and Elmer, his father, and another partner opened their own stud mill up in the hills behind Philo. They produced nothing but 2 x 4 x 8 studs and sold them to Barnes Lumber in Cloverdale. At that time the family moved to a property behind the Philo Market store, with young Tom, in the 3rd grade, attending the nearby school in the building now used by PG&E on Philo School Road. The stud mill was not a success and Elmer found work driving a lumber truck and then in 1955 he became the yard manager and maintenance man at Golden Lumber Company opposite Jack’s Valley Store, north of Philo.

The family continued to live in Philo for a few more years during which time, in 1958, Elmer moved once again. This time to work in the woods where he worked on a loader. The lumber industry remained fairly busy for a few more years until it started on a long slow decline that culminated in the final one closing in 2009. By 1960 the kids had finished school and Elmer and June moved into the house in Boon­ville where she continues to live to this day. Around that time, June found some part-time work in the apple sheds during the fall harvest for both the Schoenahl’s and Gowan’s. She did this for about five years but eventually settled into a job at Jack’s store, then owned by (and named after) Jack Clow, where she worked for eight years.

“Elmer was in the woods for 15 years, working for different logging companies such as Willie Tucker, Crowfoot Logging, Van Pelt, and equipment repair for the Hiatts. He much preferred this work to that at the mills and took great pride in his loading skills. It was tough work and he would say, ‘There is no job more dangerous than logging except crab fishing’ — something else he liked to do!”

In 1973, when Elmer retired from the woods, he and June bought the store in Philo from ailing widow Elsie Skrbek, and it became Lemons Philo Market. “I liked my years at the store very much but by the time I left I was burned out. We used to do longer hours than we do now — thirteen hour days, seven days a week, open until 9pm in the winter months. We felt we had to do it for the customers. Elmer did not enjoy the job. It was just not his cup of tea. He lasted about four months before we could afford to get an employee to replace him. Inventory was very small at first so that was fine. He did come in on Fridays and weekends but basically he became a freelance welder in the Valley and did a lot of fishing. We eventually bought the property too, in 1981, and our son Tom and his wife Connie, a local girl, joined us as partners. The family still owns the store; Tom, Connie and our grandchildren have done a great job and are still in­volved, with my grandson Matt’s wife, Erica, manag­ing it on a daily basis. Once Tom and Connie became involved they obviously helped out a lot, although Tom did work in the woods for a time at first. We finally got a meat and fish counter in 1985 and for years we caught our own fish. We still get our own crabs — thanks to my grandson Tom Jr.”

With Connie having pretty much ran the business for a couple of years, June finally retired in 1993. “Elmer’s health had declined and he had heart surgery. He did recuperate but his arthritis was so bad at that point, most likely because he had been worked so hard in the sawmills at such a young age, I believe.” Elmer then became ill with leukemia and died in October 1999 since which time June has been greatly comforted by having family nearby, son Tom and Connie just down the road in fact, not to mention that three grandsons are all in town too — Tommy, Matt, and Wade, with Matt and wife Erica (Wallace) providing June with great grandchildren Will and Riley, while daughter Beverly and husband Steve Daniels (also of Boonville) have two daughters, Tanya and Tracey, who in turn have five more children between them, giving June seven great-grandchildren in total.

“This is a wonderful place to live. We moved here 65 years ago. Do you think that being here that long means I am an old-timer myself yet? I have gone back to Oklahoma to see family a few times, and after Elmer passed I went there with Tom and Connie; and to New Jersey to visit my sister. Oh, and to Alaska with my daughter and son-in-law; but overall I have done very little traveling since we came here. Apart from just a few doubts in the early times I always have known that I’d stay here. I have thought about joining various societies and groups here but at this point I am happy to just drive to the Senior Center twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday, and sit and talk with old friends and have some lunch. I met many people during my years at the store too - you don’t own a store, it owns you - and I still visit there and many people stop and talk to me. I go to some of the Valley events and enter my quilts in the County Fair. Talking of the Fair, my daughter Beverly once used my dill pickle recipe and won first prize even though it was the adult section. I don’t get involved with talking about politics or religion so don’t ask me. I vote but I don’t campaign, and even then I only vote on things I think I have a valid opinion on.”

Favorite hobby? “That would be my quilting. I enter my work at the Fair most years and normally come home with a blue ribbon or two. I make mostly quilts for Queen size beds and for wedding gifts. Now my great granddaughter Riley is beginning to show an interest. I do like some television also — drama, romance, and western films; plus one soap, The Bold and the Beautiful. I don’t know why. How can people live like they do on that show? I guess you get addicted to those programs. I have been watching the Winter Olympics, particularly the skating and ice dancing and I like to watch Giants baseball too. I would like to spend more time in the yard and with the garden but it’s hard these days.”

Happiest day or event in your life? “The birth of my first child. Not that I didn’t love the next one just as much of course. And the birth of my first grand­child too.”

What was the saddest? “Elmer’s passing in 1999, after 54 years of marriage.”

What is your favorite thing about yourself, physically/mentally/spiritually? “Oh, that is such a hard question. I really don’t know. I can say that people always seem pleased to see me so I guess I must have done something right.”

Finally, if Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? “That’s a question that for various reasons I just can’t answer.”

ON AUGUST 7, 2018 at 4:19 AM, Ukiah police officers were dispatched to the Chase Bank at 700 South State Street regarding a bank robbery. Officers learned that a white male had displayed a threatening note to a teller and robbed the bank. The suspect left the area on foot with an undisclosed amount of cash. No weapon was seen during the robbery. The suspect was a white male wearing a dark blue beanie, black sweatshirt with the number "3" on the front of it, a dark colored jacket, khaki pants, and black and white shoes. The suspect also wore large sunglasses and had multiple band aids partially covering his face. Officers are also interested in locating and identifying a female witness (right) who was in the bank at the time of the robbery.

The investigation continues. Anyone with additional information is urged to contact the Ukiah police at 463-6262.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES, add the lowlifes who steal water meant for firefighting so they can water their pot gardens:

AVFD Facebook page, Monday, August 6, 2018:

"In a rural area like ours, water sources are a rare and critical commodity. After finding the hydrant in front of our Rancho Navarro station empty from possible theft, captain Fal Allen checked the 10,000 gallon tank on Bald Hills which was also empty. Whether theft or leaks, please be vigilant on monitoring your water supply. A full tank is essential to our firefight!! Captain Allen also installed a new metal cover (yellow cap) to help protect against theft. Thanks Fal!"

STILL TIME TO SIGN UP YOUR COUNTY FAIR ENTRIES THIS FRIDAY!

Hi Fair Fans,

Three days left to sign up for your fair entries! The website for the fair entry forms is http://mendocountyfair.com/entry-forms/ and the page for fair information and schedule is http://mendocountyfair.com/county-fair/

See you at the fair!

Fair Boosters, Donna Pierson-Pugh

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “KZYX looking for reporters? I'm available. Heck, I can re-write a presser and lob a softie good as any dawg out there."

QUIZ TONIGHT: Yes Thursday, August 9th being the 2nd Thursday of the month means that there will be a General Knowledge and Trivia Quiz beginning at 7pm at Lauren’s Restaurant in Boonville featuring the return of the OQ/Original Quizmaster, yours truly. Now is the time to keep calm and exercise your grey matter… Cheers, Steve Sparks, The Quiz Master

ED NOTES

FOR THE STAT-MINDED: There are now nearly 4,000 people on the Mendocino Complex fires, with 441 engines, 93 water tenders, and 85 dozers. The whole show is headquartered at the site of the old Masonite, north of Ukiah.

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THE FIRST TIME I saw Alex Jones on a YouTube link someone sent me, I thought he was a comedian. I still think he is, although a lot of dummies out there apparently think Jones' Everything's A Conspiracy views reflect reality. Should he be banned? Of course not. Should the titans of Tech World decide who we can listen to and who we can't listen to? Of course not. But with the ban of Jones by all of them except Twitter… Well, we're on a slippery slope here. Jones today, Amy Goodman tomorrow. Count on it. Mark Zuckerburg making free speech decisions for all of us? Terrifying.

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AND HERE WE ARE, some of the more hysterical among us anyway, biting our nails about what the corporate media are selling as a fascist resurgence, as in Portland last weekend when a small-ish group of white yobbos, many of them wearing swastikas, exchanged insults with Antifa, a loose coalition of lib-leftists. I'll bet if an accurate head count was possible, media out-numbered both groups and the cops, the last suspiciously more eager to bash the Antifa people than the neo-nazis. Both Antifa and the nazis will be heavily infiltrated by police of various agencies. Any political group either advocating violence or implying it are certain to be infiltrated by undercover cops. Been this way forever, even here in Mendo during the Redwood Summer period. Are the neo-fascists a rolling threat? Doubt it, but fascism has always appealed to mean, stupid people… And big biz, as in the fascist countries of World War Two, were solidly behind their fascist governments. Fascism has always been a strong possibility in this country, but still short of probable. When and if it arrives it'll look like a militarized version of the Clintons. The other side doesn't yet have plausible leaders that anybody seems aware of. For sure it isn't Alex Jones.

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CLARITY AT LAST. "We can't fight big money with big money. We're going to beat money big with big organizing" — Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, just elected to Congress from New York, and already the corporate Democrats like, for instance, Willie Brown in San Francisco, are on her case as too extreme for most Hillary, Big Money Democrats like him, Pelosi, Huffman, and so on. But here on the Northcoast where something like 58 percent of Democrats were and are Bernie Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez is a breath of fresh air and, hopefully, the future of the moribund, stand-for-nothing party as mired in the stretch limo way of life.

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EXACTLY NEXT DOOR to us yesterday a Kern County emergency services vehicle appeared, its brief flare of a siren alerting us to its presence. A three-year-old boy was "unable to breathe," the worst kind of emergency. These days in our community that hasn't been a community in any recognizable sense for probably thirty years, emergency calls are top secret for reasons having to do with, I guess, "liability" or “privacy” however vague, however determined by whatever remote legal shot callers. So the rumors circulate, the more exciting ones imputing evil to the parents. Used to be all you had to do was ask an ambulance volunteer and you'd know who to direct offers of help to, which member of the real community that existed then could use whatever his or her friends and neighbors might offer in the way of practical assistance. No more. Gone. Gone like the hand-stamped postmark from Boonville, Philo, Navarro, and Yorkville, gone like the justice courts in all the County's small towns with their elected non-lawyer judges, gone like the Anderson Valley 4-H Club, the slo-pitch softball league, and men's basketball, the Boonville women's softball team, little league basketball and baseball. Name it, it's gone. It's all affinity groups now. A shrinking population of old timers, transient wine people, people who talk about the South of France, rentals turned into AirBnB's, shoals of gastro-maniacs looking for the latest in ice cream cones. The three-year-old boy is going to be fine. Kern County got the save.

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 8, 2018

JOHN ALAMEDA, Lakeport/Ukiah. Vandalism.

ANTHONY BARBER, Ukiah. Controlled substance for sale, failure to appear.

JOSHUA BELL, Fort Bragg. Grand theft.

JERIMIE BURGER, Healdsburg/Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

BRADLEY CARR, Kelseyville/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

GEORGE DALSON, Willows/Covelo. Grand theft-firearm, controlled substance, possession of loaded stolen weapon, felon-addict with firearm, disobeying court order, failure to appear.

GEORGE FIGUEROA, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

HEIDI FONTANE-TUCKER, Willits. Domestic battery, probation revocation.

JOSHUA GUEVARA, Talmage. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, Probation revocation.

MELISSA HOPLOCK, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, Probation revocation.

WENDY MASSEY, Under influence, probation revocation.

CHAD MCCALLUM, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

JOHN MCCULLOUGH, Ukiah. Parole violation.

ELEVTERIO, MONTALVO-PEREZ, Willits. DUI, paraphernalia.

JULIO NAJERA, Ukiah. County parole violation.

JUSTIN PEACOCK, Cedar Hills, Utah/Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting, probation revocation.

MARCOS RODRIGUEZ-TURNER, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun, domestic abuse, probation revocation.

RODNEY TUCKER, Fort Bragg. Robbery, trespassing, resisting, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer)

ONE L AND THE DEUCE: MIDTOWN MANHATTAN IN THE MID–70S

by Stephen Elliott

I was starting my first year at Rutgers Law School in Newark, following a zigzag (should I say Zig Zag?) course that had taken me from a small hill farm in northern Vermont, to Harvard in 1967 where I declined to take a student draft deferment, federal prison for two years for refusing induction, a year working as a roofer in St. Johnsbury, and back to Harvard, graduating with a Latin major in 1974.

The summer after graduation, instead of productive activity, I wisely decided to roll west with my cousin Teddy and tour the Cascades, from Mt. Lassen to Glacier Peak. Our grueling treks including a long, unplanned night stuck on the east face of Mt. Jefferson, left us amazed, refreshed, and with barely enough gas money to get back to Vermont.

A couple of weeks before school, my cousin Mary and I dashed down to New York. With a fleeting glance, knowing and caring only that the monthly rent was a mere $175.00, and that it was convenient to Newark, I leased a tiny studio apartment on the 4^th floor of 305 West 45^th Street, between 8^th and 9^th Avenues. It was an old six-story building, across the street from the venerable Martin Beck Theater. I called my new home “my little Raskolnikov room.”

I came back to New York on a bus from St. Johnsbury, nearly broke, with my pack, sleeping bag, and a fat Black’s Law Dictionary. I bought a cheap alarm clock in a touristy gift shop in Port Authority and emerged into the evening carnival of 8^th Avenue, jumping with whores, pimps, and peep shows. Hungry Hilda’s, a topless bar and restaurant between 44^th and 45^th streets was so prominent a landmark that I find myself missing it in the wonderful streetscapes of the HBO series, The Deuce. The sex industry co-existed with good, diner-type restaurants, regular movie theaters, and little convenience stores. Hell’s Kitchen was the perfect and proper name for the neighborhood, bordered to the west by 9^th Avenue, a great, long cornucopia of food markets and restaurants, which existed somewhat apart from the prostitution, porn and peep shows. I never heard 42^nd Street called The Deuce.

The entry to my building, on the north side of 45^th Street, opened onto a dark, empty courtyard with elevators to the left, and a separate stairwell in back. I reached my room, made a mattress of the New York Times, unfolded my sleeping bag, set the alarm clock, and fell asleep wondering what law school was all about.

In those years Rutgers cultivated the reputation of a people’s law school, with many minority students, fabulously low tuition – after all, do you need an atom smasher to teach the Commerce Clause or the Rule Against Perpetuities? – and hosting publications like The Women’s Rights Law Reporter. Our first day keynote speaker was Professor Arthur Kinoy, a small, hunch-backed man then in his 50’s, seeming old to me at the time, with a booming voice, flashing eyes, passion, presence, humor, learning, and riveting stories from his career as a front line civil rights lawyer.

I’d usually get over to Newark on a bus that left Port Authority from up near its roof, which meant a long climb through the weird warmth of the bus station, by its snack bars and newsstands. There followed a ride through that wonderful swamp grass of New Jersey, and a walk of ten minutes or so from Newark’s Penn Station to the concrete bunker that then housed Rutgers Law School. I’d ride to Newark looking at one of those old contracts, tort, or property cases known to first year law students everywhere. If you’re in hot pursuit of a fox and someone else kills it, whose fox? If you buy an old chest and find a diamond ring in it, whose ring? My head was swimming with these new (to me) questions; fresh visions of the Cascades; tags of Latin and Greek poetry; the Celtics’ title defense – 1974 having brought the first post-Russell championship –; and I still wallowed joyfully in the dregs of Watergate. In spite of Ford’s recent pardon of Nixon, and the persistence of Kissinger, it seemed like the U.S. invasion of Vietnam was drawing to a close, and that regime change, of a sort, had happened.

At 7:30 one morning, two or three weeks after school started, I landed on the ground floor and two men rushed in and boxed me into a corner of the elevator. I drove a left jab into the first guy’s face and his nose spurted blood. I felt a knife biting into my leg, just below my butt, and the other guy removed my wallet, saying. “We could kill you.” They scooted away and I knocked on the superintendent’s door. He and his wife, an old, white couple – Jewish? Greek? Polish? – saw my pants soaked with blood, looking a lot worse than it really was. The super demanded, “Were they SPICS or NIGGERS?” I said, “One of each.” An ambulance took me to the old St. Clare’s Hospital on 51^st Street where they promptly stitched and bandaged me. I changed my pants, and got to school having missed only first period contracts. Later that morning the law school got a call from my Newark bank saying that two guys, who didn’t seem to fit, were trying to cash a check there. I’d left a blank check (along with about $6.00, a student ID, and a joint) in my wallet. I rushed to the bank, but they’d departed. From that day, I always had an open, locked and concealed Buck knife at the ready when I left my building.

Thank you, guys, for not killing me. You were players in the true generous spirit of The Deuce! I hope you enjoyed the $6.00, and I’m pretty sure you enjoyed the joint, which was decent. About the failed check cashing, as Curtis Mayfield said, “Don’t worry, worry, worry…” There couldn’t have been more than twenty dollars in my account.

I think I was the least favored customer of the Security National Bank, with my persistently tiny balance, and frequent, miniscule transactions. I’d gotten a job at the law school library and made enough to live hand to mouth. I’d buy a box of spaghetti and a can of clam sauce at little mini-mart on 8^th Avenue. The clerk there had a number tattooed on his arm. I’d get fresh vegetables and fruit on Ninth Avenue. I cooked on a little hotplate and in a toaster oven, my campfire and farmhouse cooking skills useful. For my bigger expenses, tuition, rent, the Lyndonville, Vermont Savings Bank was nice enough to make occasional unsecured loans of $1000 or $2000.

The basic courses were organized into large lecture classes, with one class broken into small sections. My small group, with about fifteen students, was in property. The first significant graded exercise was a paper in that section, something about New Jersey zoning law, and I was the only one to get an A. I was feeling good about myself. I was hanging out with a pretty Seven Sisters girl who sat next to me in contracts. I had my Ivy League “credentials”. I was healthy and strong from backpacking in the Cascades.

I settled into my neighborhood, enjoying an occasional meal at the newly re-opened Oyster Bar beneath Grand Central, or at a second story Brazilian restaurant a bit east on 45^th. One Saturday night I went to see the late screening of “Walking Tall” at a dark, crowded, cavernous old movie theater right in Times Square. A crazy old white lady in a platinum blonde wig wandered the aisles with a camera, at selected moments taking flash photographs of Joe Don Baker, an early version of screen shots, each blinding flash bringing curses on the head of the lady, who smiled sweetly and blandly.

I wondered off the tracks somewhere around Christmas, not even knowing it. Not that I didn’t work hard, but I was looking for gold in ancient tomes, and straining to be original and witty, not quite getting that I was neither called upon for – nor capable of – originality or wit in the first year law school curriculum. My grades at the end of the semester ranged from mediocre to miserable, and my social standing plunged right along with them. The Seven Sisters girl took up with a classmate in that small property section. We’d attended his New Year’s Eve party together, for God’s sake. He was a nice guy, but I wasn’t feeling it.

Frayed and flayed and trying to regroup, the city nurtured me. I’d head up to the Metropolitan on the odd, free weekday morning and gape at Chinese vases and Flemish paintings in near solitude, feeling like I owned the place. The reading room of the Public Library made you smarter just by being in it. Winter snows, briefly covering the rest of the city with clean white robes, tossed alluring negligees over the pulsating lights of Times Square.

With spring I found a nice run up 8^th Avenue from 45^th to Columbus Circle, where I’d then hang out in the sunny southwest corner of the park. Eighth Avenue wasn’t, and probably still isn’t, known as a classic New York running trail, but I’d get a good work-out, doing the 1000 yards as fast as I could, consistent with traffic lights. Nobody cared or stared. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1975 a young, dark-skinned black man was among the crowd enjoying the park, wearing an over-the-top, vivid green Irish outfit, complete with green Derby hat. Merriment reigned.

The sex trade on 8^th Avenue went at least into the high 40’s, maybe the lower 50’s. One lovely spring afternoon a bar up there had a door propped open and a nude dancer performed on a little stage, monetary and security considerations giving way to the sunshine and light breezes coming in off the Hudson.

I’d take a paperback copy of Middlemarch on my runs up to the park –- Yes, scholarly Abby! Yes, bookish Darlene! Middle – effing – march by George – effing – Eliot! Middlemarch soothed my soul. I loved Dorothea and Mary Garth, while creepy Casaubon and the Dead Hand’s malign influence helped me get my head around the Rule Against Perpetuities. Having found a cozy perch on one of the ledges in the park, I’d read until twilight and then dash back down to darkening, thumping Midtown and a long night with the books.

I decided to enter the moot court competition. This required the production of a proper, conforming, appellate brief and oral argument before a panel of upperclassmen judges in a hypothetical defamation case – a ton of extra work. I got the brief done nicely and when the day for oral argument came, I crushed a notorious, class-wrecking windbag, breaking a long, academic losing streak. In Barry Reed’s The Verdict, about the down and out Boston lawyer who scores big in a tort case, the hero’s wise old mentor says, “The very best are the lawyers who do their homework.”

Professor Kinoy worked us hard in Constitutional Law, breaking down the landmark cases; making us absorb majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions; always pounding away at the history; carrying it all off with classroom pyrotechnics. He insisted, for example, that we understood the Dred Scott case inside out, and on May 11, 1975 I took my photocopy of Dred Scott v. Sandford to the Sheep Meadow, arriving early for a celebration of the end of the Vietnam War. I tried to dissect Justice Taney’s murky prose as 75,000 others settled around me. Soon Tom Paxton, Joan Baez, Paul Simon, Patti Smith, and many others, sang joyfully. I put away Dred Scott v. Sandford for a while.

New York friends gave me love: from Jody, encouragement, dinners at her Upper East Side apartment, and once, with a sweetly apologetic smile, an all too welcome coupon for a free meal at Burger King; from Bob, welcome and work at a bustling cabinetry business in a loft on Wooster Street; from Dan, my old prison bridge partner, now living in the Bronx, the hope of an Upper West Side apartment we could share the following year when he’d be finishing his pre-med course at Columbia.

Brent and Debra, college friends from Boston, were visiting on Palm Sunday. We went to services at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin on 46^th Street, which we re-named and forever after knew as the Church of St. Mary the [Only] Virgin of Times Square. Dissipated looking acolytes strode the aisles, swinging huge, smoke billowing incense canisters. After church we cut over to 8^th Avenue where young prostitutes, clumsy, bedraggled free lancers, paraded in their short shorts, halter tops, and platforms, their outfits not really working. We walked by one “rap parlor” after another – by 1975 rap parlors were everywhere, sex talk on offer for short money in tiny little booths. We pictured the conversationalists as women invisible behind screens, like priests in confessionals. The very idea of rap parlors seemed like a wry goof on the signature psychobabble mindset of the 70s.

Late one warm night, as finals loomed, I was beating the familiar pavement between 42^nd and 45^th when I saw a hideously disgusting, frighteningly large creature crawl out of the gutter on 8^th Avenue and lumber down the street. A water bug! Not water bug in the sense of the benign little surface scooters on a Vermont brook, but a horrible overgrown cockroach on steroids. I started to think I wasn’t having fun anymore. I ground through the finals and mended my grades somewhat, even getting an A in Constitutional Law, though, truth be told, Professor Kinoy wasn’t that hard a grader.

It was time to leave Midtown for summer in the good green woods of Vermont. In One L, the story of his first year at Harvard Law School, Scott Turow reflects on what had happened to him and his classmates that year: “Something exalted. Something fearful.” Whatevs, we’ll agree it’s intense.

My friend Dan did get that apartment on the Upper West Side, seven rooms (we called them the “Seven Rooms of Gloom”) on the seventh and top floor of 2647 Broadway, between 100^th and 101^st. After a year, my 2^nd at law school, Dan finished at Columbia and went off to medical school. A new roommate replaced him, and she and I have been married for 40 years.

RING, RING GOES THE BELL

A brief personal history of American high schools, 1957-2018

by Jonah Raskin

In the late 1960s, near the peak of my own revolutionary romanticism, when many of my comrades thought that the American Empire would soon implode, I joined a Weatherman action called “a jailbreak.” Most of us were college graduates, but we regarded schools as institutions that turned students into obedient citizens, eager consumers and agents of empire.

Some of us in Weatherman found plenty of ammunition for our actions, and others like it, in Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society in which he wrote that schools are the “worse places for getting an education” and that “school is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.” With arguments like those, many of us thought that we didn’t have to think for ourselves.

Chuck Berry’s 1957 anti-school anthem “School Days” had already planted the seeds of defiance in her heads and our bodies: “Close up your books,/get out of your seat/ Down the halls and into the street/ Up to the corner and ’round the bend/ Right to the juke joint, you go in.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuXz-Vbkg8A

With Chuck Berry’s lyrics rocking us out of the cold war mind-set, we began to believe that schools were dumb, streets were cool, and that the jukebox was a font of information and knowledge. Later, Pink Floyd added to our repertoire in lyrics like, “We don’t need no education,/we don’t need no thought control,” which borrowed from George Orwell’s 1984.

In the summer of 1969, before the Chicago protest called “The Days of Rage,” the big Weatherman idea was to case a school, invade a classroom and urge the students to escape from what we regarded as the educational prison in which they were incarcerated. Anti-authoritarian actions of this kind were staged in select cities around the country. The action I joined took place in Brooklyn, New York, where I was born, though not raised.

My parents brought me up in Huntington, Long Island where I went to grade school, junior high and high school. In the 1950s, I was a teenage rebel without a cause, but with a fierce dislike of rules and authorities. My classmates and I, and students around the country, had an end-of-the-school year mantra, “No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers dirty looks.”

I didn’t regard Huntington High School as a jail, but I felt confined by teachers and administrators, and irked by lectures in which no instructor talked about slavery, colonialism, the labor movement, or the genocidal wars against American Indians. Columbia College didn’t feel much better. As Columbia professor Ann Douglas once said, “The great thing about Columbia is that it’s in Manhattan.” In 1968, when I was 26, I joined students at Columbia who occupied five buildings. I was arrested and taken to jail, along with over 700 other protesters. From jail it was only a hop, skip and a jump to a Weatherman collective where I took part in what was called criticism-self-criticism sessions where participants were encouraged to “push it out,” and that felt to me, at the time, like psychological torture.

Still, I took part in the jailbreak at that Brooklyn high school, though I didn’t actually invade the school or occupy the classroom. My job was to drive the getaway car because I was the only person in the collective who owned a car. I used it to get to work at the State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island where I taught a class titled “Literature and Revolution” and another called “Pornography: from the Marquis de Sade to The Story of O.” My colleagues ridiculed the course as “Dirty Books 101.” Not surprisingly, the university didn’t renew my contract. In college all across the U.S. teachers like me were banished from academia, though some were savvy enough to survive the purges in “the ivory tower.”

I was reminded of the 1969 Weatherman jailbreak when I recently walked into Credo High School near my home in northern California. “Credo,” which means, “I believe,” is a tuition-free public high school, though it feels like a private school for the elite.

Going to Credo was in many ways a dream-come-true. Like journalist Cameron Crowe, who went undercover at a San Diego high school and wrote Fast Times at Ridgemont High, I’d long wanted to explore the world that fifteen-to-eighteen-year-olds experience in classrooms, hallways and playgrounds. Unlike Crowe, I didn’t go undercover and unlike him, I didn’t discover a world of seething teenage sexuality and rampant use of illegal substances. Rather, I met environmentally aware and politically savvy teens.

At Credo, the students are overwhelmingly white and middle class. If they had been alive in 1969, Weathermen and Weatherwomen would have said that they enjoyed “white skin privilege.” The Credo students don’t think of themselves as privileged, though they know that students from poor and working class families often have fewer opportunities than they do. The Credo students also see themselves as potential targets of madmen and assassins. Accordingly, they practice “shooter drills” in case an armed invader actually opens fire and aims to kill as many people as possible.

Many Credo students also have an intense feeling that they’ve inherited a world that’s in danger of an ecological melt down. Like student protesters in the 1960s and 1970s, they use the privileges they enjoy to do a lot – like marching, speaking out, registering their peers to vote, recycling and cleaning up garbage on the coast and in streams. Some have a dream in much the way that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream.

Information about ecological disaster depresses some of the Credo students. The best way to counteract it, they explained to me, wasn’t to take pills, but to become socially engaged. After the shooting that took place last April in Parkland, Florida that left 17 dead and 17 wounded, students at Credo walked out of classes. They marched with banners to city hall in Cotati where the boomer Vice Mayor, Mark Landman, greeted them with open arms and the words, “We’ve been waiting for a long time for your generation to make your voices heard.”

The Credo students are more polite than the Weathermen. They also have a sense of humor and laughed a lot at school. One woman who protested the shootings at Parkland carried a sign outside Cotati city hall that read, “Excuse the disturbance we’re trying to change the world.”

That woman and her classmates didn’t ask for permission to march to Cotati, and certainly not from the executive director, Chip Romer, 65, who told me “Rebellion is a healthy thing.” Educated at Notre Dame, where he majored in economics, Romer remembered that during his undergraduate days, college students knew about Rachel Carson and DDT, but didn’t make a personal connection to the earth itself.

“Now, more than ever before, we have to have a sustainable planet so today’s youth can do what they want and need to do,” Romer told me.

Students learn about sustainability from teachers such as Marika Ramsden, 31, who explained, “What links all our interests at Credo — sustainability, gun violence, climate change, and zero waste — is student empowerment and student voices.”

Ramsden was born in California and raised in England until she was 16 when she returned to the States. She graduated from the Summerfield Waldorf School in Santa Rosa and then attended St. Andrews University in Scotland where she studied sustainable development.

In 2012, she bicycled a thousand miles from Land’s End in Southwest England to John o’ Groats in Northeast Scotland, handed out cameras to students along the way and invited them to tell the story of sustainability in their schools.

At Credo, Ramsden teaches the “One Planet” class — which emphasizes ecological thought and action — and anchors the academic program. She also guides the One Planet “student captains” who play leadership roles on campus.

Almost everywhere she goes, Ramsden talks about One Planet’s principles that call for sustainability in transportation, water, food, materials, cultures and communities, plus zero carbon and zero waste, which is a huge challenge at Credo and elsewhere because, as Romer explained, “Our culture is all about waste.”

Bioregional, the international nonprofit organization that gave birth to the One Planet concept, envisions a world in which “people enjoy happy, healthy lives within their fair share of the earth’s resources” and also leave “space for wildlife and wilderness.”

Sue Riddlestone and her husband, Pooran Desai, founded Bioregional in 1992 in large part because they were alarmed by the specter of overconsumption and the proliferation of waste. Ramsden fell in love with their program. She also recognized the role that schools and students could play when it came to the creation of local solutions to global problems. And then brought the One Planet program to Credo.

“We’re finding out what works and what doesn’t through trial and error,” Ramsden told me. She explained that students at Credo “learn that if everyone in the world were to use the resources that people in the U.S. use, it would take five planets to fulfill their wants and needs.” She added, “We have to live within our means.”

If it were up to Ramsden every school and every community would adopt the One Planet principles. Berkeley, Oakland and San Mateo are already moving in that direction; other cities are beginning to do much the same.

Rohnert Park’s SOMO Village, where Credo is housed, was the very first One Planet community in North America. Geof Syphers, the first Chief Sustainability Officer at what was originally called Sonoma Mountain Village, remembered that he “worked very hard” to help bring Credo to the site. He had help from Chip Romer and a whole team of educators.

Credo student smarts are apparent to visitors who observe them as they arrive at the school on foot and by bicycle, and then head for classrooms—or not. Some stay outdoors to create a habitat and pollinator garden, as they did in the spring 2018 semester with help from farm teacher, Kelley McNeal. Beginning in the fall 2018 semester, they’ll cultivate a two-acre parcel at SOMO Village, learn the principles of biodynamic agriculture and grow vegetables.

In some ways, Credo students are outliers in their generation. Still, as Romer points out, “They also have many of the same cultural traits of typical American teenagers: they love music, they’re competitive in sports and they’re invested in social media.”

They’re better informed about sustainability, zero waste and zero carbon than Romer was when he was a student. In their own way, they’re revolutionaries, though they aim to make changes by voting in national and local elections not by going underground or rioting in the streets. As they know, getting members of their own generation to vote won’t be easy. Americans aged 17-25 are less likely to send in a ballot or go to a polling booth than any other demographic group.

“We’re the worst at voting,” student Jonah Gottlieb told me. “We need legislative change on a whole lot of issues, including homelessness.” He’s been registering voters for a year.

Caitlyn Thomasson, 21, isn’t a teacher or a student at Credo. She attends Santa Rosa Junior College, and works with some of the Credo students and faculty members on environmental issues.

“I looked at the world and saw a host of problems,” Thomasson told me. “Species decline, deforestation, glaciers melting, oceans rising, loss of land, over-population and over consumption.”

She added, “the only thing that stopped me from total depression was action.” Much the same could be said for protesters during the Vietnam War when the nightly news bombarded viewers with images of carnage, brutality and torture. Radicals discovered ways to nurture themselves when, as the romantic poet, John Keats, observed, “The misery of the world makes me miserable.”

The bestselling American author, Jack London, who was bi-polar and suicidal, expressed much the same idea about action as therapy a hundred years ago. “I meditated suicide,” he wrote in his memoir, John Barleycorn in which he describes his addiction to alcohol and his struggles to free himself.

“I threw myself with fierce zeal into the fight for socialism,” he exclaimed. The students at Credo aren’t socialists, but they, and students like them, have what’s needed to start the process that might lead to radical change in the world. Indeed, they have “zeal.”

At the entrance to Credo, where a dozen skateboards were lined-up against a wall, it struck me that history does repeat itself. It also occurred to me that we ought to rethink the idea that history repeats itself. We need a new figure of speech and a new paradigm that reflects the experience of Marika Ramsden, who learned a lot in schools and also on her thousand-mile-bike ride across Britain, much as Che Guevara blossomed as a medical student at the University of Buenos Aires — though he rejected a career as a doctor — and on his epic motorcycle journeys across South America. More American high schools should be like Credo; if they were I’d go back to school.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of For The Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman and American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ and the Making of the Beat Generation.)

DAY 7 OF THE COVER CHALLENGE....

First edition, first printing, Steinbeck's first true classic.

He wrote Tortilla Flat before this, along with some goofy books like his first, Cup of Gold and others I really like such as Pastures of Heaven. But Of MIce and Men, along with East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath were his Classics for the ages on the subjects of family..man versus machine, man versus man, human depravity and human decency. The names of the latter two, taken from the Bible, worked with his somewhat preachey, good and evil tone. Of Mice and Men's title comes from a poem by the greatest Scottish poet...

(Frank Hartzell)

FINAL WEEKEND FOR FUN HOME!

Don't miss your chance to see Fun Home! This beautiful, heart gripping show is one not to be missed. After her father dies unexpectedly, graphic novelist Alison dives deep into her past to tell the story of the volatile, brilliant, one-of-a-kind man whose temperament and secrets defined her family and her life. When memories of her 1970s childhood in a funeral home merge with her burgeoning college love life they help her discover she had more in common with her father than she ever knew. Running at Eagles Hall through August 12 with performances at 7:30 p.m on Thursday-Saturday and Sunday matinees beginning at 3 p.m. Admission is $22 for the general public, $20 for Seniors and $12 for youth (17 and under). Fun Home is recommended for ages 13 and up. Tickets may be purchased online at gloriana.org, at Harvest Market in Fort Bragg or at the door of Eagles Hall Theatre prior to each performance. For more information, visit Gloriana.org.

TRAILER: https://youtu.be/Xaj6YdDWZHE

YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT FIRES & CLIMATE

As California firefighters battle historic wildfires across the state, New York Times readers have reached out with questions about the role climate change plays in the intensity and frequency of these blazes. Others have expressed confusion over tweets by President Trump laying the blame on the state’s forestry and water management policies.

nytimes.com/2018/08/08/us/california-today-fires-and-climate.html

KELSEYVILLE LEARNING ACADEMY OFFERS ALTERNATIVE TO TRADITIONAL K-12 EDUCATION

Kelseyville, CA — For those interested in homeschooling and independent study, Kelseyville Unified School District (KVUSD) now offers the Kelseyville Learning Academy (KLA) for grades K-12. The new school works with families to create a tailored schedule and curriculum for each student that can be completed online or via a home-classroom environment—or a blend of the two. KLA high school students who want to participate in extracurricular activities or select classes at Kelseyville High School are free to do so, including sports, career technical education, band, and more. KVUSD Director of Student Support Services Tim Gill said, “At the Kelseyville Learning Academy, families get the support of a credentialled teacher who can develop coursework and help students stay on track.”

Teacher Rena Roush has 17 years’ experience teaching independent study and says she looks forward to working with students and families to create the educational experience that works best for them. Gill continued, “Kelseyville Learning Academy is not a watered-down version of school. Students must complete the same number of credits to graduate as they would attending Kelseyville High School. However, it does provide families with the flexibility to design their child’s educational experience.” He noted that KLA will provide students with the rigorous academic foundation they need to attend University of California or California State University schools, if that is their goal. Although a traditional classroom education works well for many students, it does not work well for all, according to Roush. “A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t always provide the best fit. Parents know their children better th­an anyone, so I listen to their needs and concerns and help them build a program that’s right for them,” she said. Roush meets with students and families at the new KLA building adjacent to the KVUSD Office on Konocti Road in Kelseyville. Like everything else about the program, the meeting schedule is based on the needs of students and their families. During those meetings, Roush supports homeschool parents and independent study students in many ways. She partners with parents to develop individualized learning plans; assists with teaching strategies, coaching and assessment; and offers guidance on curriculum choices and planning. With students, she provides academic support as well as assistance in goal-setting and planning for the future. “With parents, we mostly collaborate on ideas, strategies, and planning. Parents of elementary school students often have fantastic ideas for learning activities, for example, and I can help align those activities with academic standards,” she said. “I worry that some homeschool parents think I’ll judge their efforts. Not at all. The homeschool parents I’ve met are deeply committed to their children and want to be involved in their children’s academic pursuits. I’m just here to help and provide resources.” For high school students interested in pursuing a career, KLA offers a hybrid academic/work-study program. Several local businesses in the trades and other industries have expressed a willingness to work with students to provide real-world experience in their areas of interest. For high school students interested in attending college, KLA recommends a dual-enrollment approach that includes high school and college courses. This allows KLA students to earn an associate’s degree for transfer so they can take advantage of agreements like the one between Mendocino College and Sonoma State University (SSU), whereby students with an associate’s degree are automatically accepted at SSU. Roush said, “The associate’s degree doesn’t require students to adhere to the strict A-G requirements set forth by the College Board. It shows they’ve gained the knowledge a different way.” Students who live in Lake County or any adjacent county can enroll in KLA, including Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa, Colusa, Yolo, and Glenn Counties. Those who reside outside the Kelseyville Unified School District simply need to apply for an inter-district transfer. Roush said, “There are many ways to achieve a goal. At Kelseyville Unified, we are committed to making sure that all students have a chance to succeed.” For more information about KLA, contact Tim Gill, KVUSD Director of Student Support Services at (707) 279-1511 or via email at: tgill@kvusd.org.

HOW TRUMP’S TRADE WAR HURTS WORKING-CLASS AMERICANS

President Donald Trump justifies tariffs on imports by arguing that “unfair trade policies” have harmed American workers. This has led to a trade war in which the U.S. and China have placed tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s products. Most recently, China said it’s ready to slap tariffs on US$60 billion in U.S. imports if Trump goes ahead with his threat to tax another $200 billion of Chinese goods. Since the president claims to be acting on behalf of working-class Americans, it’s fair to ask: How do tariffs actually affect them?

juancole.com/2018/08/trumps-working-americans.html

'NOT SURPRISING': REP. CHRIS COLLINS, TRUMP'S VERY FIRST CONGRESSIONAL BACKER, INDICTED FOR INSIDER TRADING

Noting that ethics groups have called for investigations into Collins for more than a year, Public Citizen tweeted that the case highlights how members of Congress "sit in unique positions of power to manipulate the market for personal gain."

commondreams.org/news/2018/08/08/not-surprising-rep-chris-collins-trumps-very-first-congressional-backer-indicted

VITICULTURE SKILLS CERTIFICATE OFFERED THROUGH MENDOCINO COLLEGE

Introduction to Viticulture: Winegrowing for Mendocino and Lake Counties will be offered this Fall 2018 semester by Mendocino College Agriculture Department as part of the new Viticulture certificate program. Sustainable winegrowing principles and practices covered include crop and canopy management, harvesting, winegrape economics and history, vine physiology, vine nutrition, cover crop and floor management, habitat conservation & enhancement, vine balance metrics and key practices affecting winegrape quality.

The Introduction to Viticulture course is three-hour of classroom lecture and includes field trips to nearby vineyard and wineries meeting vineyard managers, winemakers and owners. The course will make extensive use its own on-campus demonstration vineyard to enhance student learning with hands-on experiences. The vineyard was established the summer of 2015 through the generosity of the Mendocino College Foundation, Inc.

The viticulture instructor is Paul Zellman, BS Viticulture UC Davis and MS Soil Science UC Riverside, who brings over 25 years of vineyard and winery experience in northern and southern California to the classroom and lab.

Viticulture Practices, offered in the Spring, and Introduction to Viticulture, form the core curriculum of the Viticulture Skill Certificate program designed to prepare students for careers in the North Coast wine industry. The Viticulture program develops students with: 1 – practical hands-on winegrowing skills; 2 – basic knowledge of the science involved in the growing of grapes; and, 3 – initial understanding of winegrowing business aspects. The knowledge and skills gained from the Viticulture Skill Certificate program, together with job experience, will give individuals a competitive edge when applying for entry-level positions, and for current employees, the skills to advance to better paying vineyard and winery jobs.

The course (# AGR111) runs August 23 through December 13 and is held on Thursdays from 6:00pm to 8:50pm, in Agriculture Department Room 6340. For additional viticulture course or certificate program information, please contact either Jim Xerogeanes at 707-468-3218, jxerogea@mendocino.edu or Paul Zellman at 707-621-2668, pzellman@mendocino.edu.

Students review sustainable north coast winegrowing practices taught as part of Mendocino College's new Viticulture Skills Certificate. This Fall 2018 course, Introduction to Viticulture, will cover: crop and canopy management, harvesting, winegrape economics and history, vine physiology and other key practices affecting winegrape quality and production.

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE DAY

(1) When you are told to leave, leave. By not leaving you are delaying the effectiveness of the firefighters and are wasting resources while they deal with you. Same exact concept when a cop tells you to stop, or put your hands up. Failure to comply is ridiculous.

* * *

(2) Wrong.

The only thing that saves homes in a fire is someone with water who gives a shit.

Many citizens homes in Redding were saved by neighbors with hoses. Same in Santa Rosa.

Earlier this year in a fire started just north of trinity but was halted at 300 acres because of citizens that WERE PREPARED.

California citizens might not always have an evac notice, like in Santa Rosa last year. Better to BE PREPARED to fight a fire than not be.

By all means leave of you want, but don’t be angry at those of us who are more ready than you.

“Don’t worry, you’re still welcome on conspiracist-friendly platforms like Twitter and the subway.”