Mendocino County Today: Friday, Aug. 17, 2018

• Complex Growing
• Food Bank
• Tough Questions
• Nurse Letter
• Going Upscale
• Juvie Food
• Pet Day
• Seven Candidates
• Little Dog
• Homeless Watch
• Boonville Produce
• Gazpacho Evening
• Social Hoppner
• Garnish Hospitalized
• Philo Produce
• Biocore Dream
• Yesterday's Catch
• Aretha Franklin
• Democratic Socialism
• Tac Squad
• Carie Returns
• Dollar
• Putrid Conceits
• Riveted
• Plane Plan
• Garden Yoga
• Universal Healthcare
• Huff Hour
• Disaster Dollars

CALIFORNIA'S LARGEST FIRE EVER KEEPS GROWING AS WINDS FAN FLAMES

The largest fire in California history continued to grow Thursday while firefighters worked to protect threatened communities.

Crews are on especially high alert this week after a firefighter who traveled from Draper City, Utah, to help battle the blaze died Monday while working on an active stretch.

“We always talk about having our head on a swivel when we’re out on the fire line, because things could change — it could happen right there, in a snap of your fingers,” said Trevor Pappas, a firefighter with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “You have to have plan A, B, C, D — and sometimes E, F, G.”

Every five or 10 minutes, firefighters on the line are encouraged to “look up, look around and make a sound,” Pappas said.

Conditions have been ripe for the erratic fire behavior that has led to the explosive growth of the Ranch fire, which along with the River fire makes up the 364,145-acre Mendocino Complex fire. The days are so hot and dry that whatever gains firefighters see overnight when the humidity goes up quickly fade when the sun hits the fuels and sucks the moisture out. Lately, winds have started to pick up about 5 p.m., gusting to between 15 and 25 mph.

“That will really push a fire — no person on Earth runs 25 mph,” Pappas said. “We all want to go home at the end of the day, or the end of the shift, and make it back to our families.”

Residents around Clear Lake have been allowed to return home, but new evacuation orders were announced in the last few days for communities to the east and west of Mendocino National Forest, including Stonyford, Lodoga and Potter Valley.

That presents another challenge for firefighters. Unlike the Clear Lake area, which is fairly accessible by road, these communities are farther into the forest and surrounded by more rugged terrain, said Cary Wright, a Cal Fire spokesman.

Wright said the persistent low humidity has allowed the fires to continue growing — by 9,400 acres on Tuesday and 1,300 acres Monday. On Wednesday, firefighters were expecting to get a brief break in the hot weather.

Despite the good news, the fight is far from over.

“We’ve had numerous calls from residents, saying, ‘Why is it still smoky?’ or ‘Is there another fire?’” Wright said. Shifting winds blow smoke to different areas at different times, and many people mistakenly think that because they’ve been allowed to return home, the fires aren’t burning anymore, he explained.

“Lake County communities have experienced a lot of fires, so as you can imagine, those folks are still on edge,” he said.

Firefighters are still struggling with the terrain as the fire approaches Snow Mountain Wilderness. They are using natural and manmade barriers ahead of the fire to the north, and are placing most on-the-ground resources to the east and west where homes are threatened, Wright said.

The Mendocino Complex fire has now expanded to four counties — Mendocino, Lake, Glenn and Colusa — Wright said. And as of Aug. 11, the Ranch fire has surpassed last winter’s Thomas fire’s acreage, making it the largest single fire in California history.

(LA Times)

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THE RANCH FIRE, as of 7pm Thursday night was up to 322,000 acres with 72% containment.

Calfire: "The Ranch Fire continues to burn actively in steep and rugged terrain. Due to temperatures rising and relative humidity dropping, fire activity increased in the early afternoon. The fire continues to remain active in the Mendocino National Forest as well as threatening communities that reside north of the fire perimeter. Crews continued to construct control lines, tying together pre-existing containment barriers, especially north of the Snow Mountain Wilderness. Crews continued structure defense in the communities threatened by the Ranch Fire. Today’s operation focused on the northwest and northeast edges of the Ranch Fire, while conducting controlled firing operations to improve containment lines as conditions allowed. The south side of the fire has had no significant events and suppression repair crews are continuing with work in those areas. The southern area remains in patrol status. The River Fire had no movement. Suppression repair along with patrol will continue on the River Fire."

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CALFIRE'S MENDOCINO COMPLEX UPDATE (Friday 7am): 378,720 acres; 76% containment; 314 structures damaged or destroyed.

"Overnight, firefighters were able to reinforce containment lines, tying together pre-existing containment barriers, especially north of the Snow Mountain Wilderness. Crews continued structure defense in the communities threatened by the Ranch Fire.

Today, with increasing temperatures and relative humidity dropping, fire activity is expected to increase this afternoon. Firing operations are expected to occur as weather conditions permit. The south side of the fire has had no significant events and suppression repair crews are continuing with work in those areas. The southern area remains in patrol status.

The River Fire had no movement. Suppression repair along with patrol will continue on the River Fire."

SIGNS OF THE TIME: The Anderson Valley Food Bank has published an urgent request for donations of money and food. Demand has outstripped the Bank's ability to provide assistance.

The collection point is the Boonville Methodist Church in downtown Boonville at 13850 Highway 128.

Donations can be mailed to Anderson Valley Food Bank, PO Box 692, Boonville CA 95415.

QUESTIONNAIRE OF THE WEEK (registration form at health center)

WE HAVE an anon letter scorching Coast Hospital from, purportedly, a former traveling nurse alleging, among other damning things, that a fat doc urinates all over the staff bathroom: "He's so obese he can't urinate completely in the toilet in the operating room. The end result is the 30 to 40 milliliters that end up on the floor is walked in and then spread all through the OR office, hallways and operating rooms...." The complaint goes on to complain about several doctors by name and in convincing detail.

IF IT WAS SIGNED, we'd publish the indictment whole, but it isn't and, I'm sure you'll agree that if you're going to smack people by name you've also got to step up with your name.

IT'S HARDLY NEWS that Coast Hospital is deeply, perhaps fatally, in debt, a debt deeper by the day with, a nurse tells us, a record 41 traveling personnel presently employed at a lot more money than resident employees would cost, an imbalance likely to continue given the scarce availability of affordable housing.

ON THE SUBJECT of shelter, especially on the Mendocino Coast, the many otherwise permanent rental units gone over to Air B&B have intensified the housing shortage. And the neo-prevalence of haute bourgeoisie Sotheby for sale signs on even ordinary houses means the whole area is going upscale, pricing out working people like nurses. And only dithering from County leadership on the issue of the 'I feel your pain working stiffs' but blah blah blah.

IF THIS IS SO SIMPLE AND SAVES SO MUCH MONEY, WHY WASN’T IT DONE YEARS AGO? AND WHY DID IT TAKE AN AD HOC COMMITTEE TO FIGURE THIS OUT?

(Don’t ask.)

According to next Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors agenda packet at 1:30 the Board will discuss:

“Possible Action Including Approval of Juvenile Hall Ad Hoc Committee’s Recommendation to Eliminate All Food Service Activities in Juvenile Hall; Transfer All Food Service Responsibilities to Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office; and Approval to Lay Off 3.8 FTE (i.e., four) Positions

“Previous Board/Board Committee Actions: An Ad Hoc Committee was formed on June 5, 2018 regarding continued operations of Juvenile Hall. As part of the Board’s directive to explore opportunities for cost savings through efficiencies, Juvenile Hall functions to be evaluated by the Ad Hoc Committee included the operation of a full-time kitchen and to determine the fiscal impact of eliminating the food related activity currently performed by Juvenile Hall kitchen staff. Probation and MCSO conducted a joint fiscal analysis of operations. On July 30, 2018, Chief Locatelli presented to the Ad Hoc Committee a projection of the costs of retaining food services in Juvenile Hall versus transferring these responsibilities to the MCSO. Based on the information presented, the Committee unanimously recommends the transfer of food services to the MCSO, as this cost-saving measure helps to close the gap in general fund dollars available beyond this fiscal year for the regional juvenile hall located in Ukiah.

“Summary of Request: The budgeted cost for FY18-19 to continue the kitchen operations in the Juvenile Hall are projected at $275,462. This cost is based upon a staff level of 1.0 FTE Head Cook and 1.8 FTE Cook. The department currently employees 1.0 FTE Head Cook and 2.8 FTE Cooks; this is 1.0 FTE Cook over planned staff. In evaluating the costs of transferring this function to the Jail, it is projected the annual cost for the Jail to provide these services would be $47,500. This results in a projected annualized cost reduction of $227,962. The actual cost reduction for FY18-19 will depend on the date this transition is implemented, as well as the finalization of menus with nutritionist approval. The Probation Department will work with Human Resources in conducting all necessary requirements related to reductions in workforce in accordance with Civil Service Rules, County Code and Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the affected bargaining units.

SO MENDO with all its high-paid administrators and executive staffers was paying $275k per year for an unnecessary full-time kitchen at juvenile hall which could have been handled by a small increase in the jail kitchen staff. And they continued doing that even after being told that their cost per day had skyrocketed and after nearly closing the Hall — and still it took an ad hoc committee of two Supervisors and probation and sheriff’s staff to figure out that they could save $225k or so by letting the jail handle the juvenile hall meals.

AND WE STILL (!) HAVE TO WAIT to save any money to make sure the delinquents' meals are approved by a "nutritionist."

ONE HAS TO WONDER how many other similar wasteful practices are going unnoticed by Mendo’s crack management team — the same overpaid team that’s been working on “leadership training” and “metrics” for two years now.

(Mark Scaramella)

SEVEN CANDIDATES WILL RUN FOR THREE SEATS ON FORT BRAGG CITY COUNCIL

The County Elections Office has certified to the sufficiency of nomination papers for seven candidates to fill three vacant seats on the Fort Bragg City Council this November. The candidates are Tess Albin-Smith, Ruben Alcalá, Bobby Burns, Dana Jess, Mary Rose Kaczorowski, Jessica Morsell-Haye and Lindy Peters. Incumbents Dave Turner and Michael Cimolino will not be seeking reelection.

Information on the seven candidates will be posted to the City’s official website on this page: http://city.fortbragg.com/140/City-Council-Elections.

The last day to register to vote in the November 2018 election is October 22, 2018. You can register to vote online with the Secretary of State, http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/, or in person at the Post Office and the Mendocino County Registrar of Voters office in Ukiah. Mail-in Voter Registration Application forms are also available at the Fort Bragg City Clerk’s office at City Hall and the Fort Bragg Public Library. Sample Ballots will begin to be mailed out on September 27, 2018.

The election will be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Polls will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

(Fort Bragg City Press Release)

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Sorry to see Aretha go. Remember that time she filled in for Pavarotti and sang some Puccini? Better than Pav! Best Pooch I ever heard.”

WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT ON COAST SOCIAL MEDIA

MendocinoSportsPlus read this exchange Wednesday:

“Is there any action being taken about the bare-ass homeless near pudding creek bridge? Just what I wanted to see coming back from lunch... a full moon and a dangling nutsack.

Same place, two homeless got into a fight over a shopping cart yesterday, now the contents of said cart are spread over the entire parking lot and spewing down the bank and the cart is now down in the water.

The newly repaired fence at the corner of Franklin St has already been ripped down and the orange netting stolen. I have transients rummaging through my recycling... is there actually anything being done about this issue in our town?”

(*) “I just drove past here a while ago with the still fully clothed person, thank goodness, sitting at the bridge railing and had noticed the trash and cart on the way out this morning. This is still in city limits, right? I sure would like to see a reasonable solution that included mental health and substance abuse assistance, as well as moving along people that are just transient troublemakers by enforcing what regulations are already in place. Seems like we could also differentiate between our ‘homegrown’ homeless and people that just choose to come here. For those, a bus ticket to their hometown when arrested for violations might be in order. I think most of us want to do what is right and see that people get the help they need while keeping our town safe and clean.”

(*) “Just came by, there is now a shopping cart full of garbage on the southeast side of the bridge. Northside cart and garbage over the bank and more garbage all over the parking lot. Town is crawling with new arrivals today.”

(*) “Go up the tracks there's a camper out there also on what I believe is Otis Johnson Park property. Think they may be staying a while they've even set up a toilet.”

(*) “There is a camper sitting in front of my place at 200 Oak. It has been there all day. Seems the last time I complained I was told enforcement was seasonal. Now its just unavailable.”

(*) “How about putting honeybuckets on the pedal cars to help keep things clean on the tracks? Discount for hauling them back?”

(*) “They have also moved up Pudding Creek Road just past John Hyman Rd. over the bank on Pudding Creek... they cleared them out of there last year but they are back... saw another pushing a cart up the road today. Heavy brush hope we do not end up with a fire!”

(*) “There was a fire out there last week. This is the smoke (photo attached) from my house near Redwood Ave. Thank God, the Fire Department got there in short order and put it out.”

(*) “I saw that woman with the stroller pushing it toward Hare Creek Bridge, she was in front of the gas station pushing that cart in the middle of the lane!! I had to go into the middle turn lane to get past her and she gave me a dirty look! Wish I had time to call the cops on her! Have not seen her since…”

(MendocinoSportsPlus)

THIS WEEK AT VELMA'S FARM STAND

Maiden's Blush Apples, Red Gravenstein Apples, Blueberries, Cherry, Early Girl, and Heirloom Tomatoes, Kohlrabi, Cucumbers and Lemon Cucumbers, Melons, Watermelons, Olive Oil

Velma's Farm Stand at Filigreen Farm
Certified Organic - Certified Biodynamic
11750 Anderson Valley Way,
Boonville, CA 95415

Open Friday-Monday from 10am till 4pm

POP-UP COMMUNITY GAZPACHO EVENING AT SEEBASS!

Although no longer a monthly event, please plan to join us on Friday August 24th from 5-7pm to share our summer bounty of all things delicious from the garden! Only $10 for a big bowl of our homemade, homegrown, chilled Gazpacho along with freshly baked breads and estate olive oil, along with specials on our wines, music and probably some freshly baked desserts. Hope we'll see you for our community evening - be well, be safe and be kind! (AV Land Trust)

HIGH RISK SEX OFFENDER PAROLE VIOLATION

On 08/15/2018 around 12:51 PM Detectives from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office responded to a residence in the 24100 Block of Birch Place in Willits California to conduct a parole search on a man who has been deemed a high risk sex offender. The suspect, Jonathan Hoppner, 25 years of age, had multiple sexual battery convictions in Sonoma County, and was paroled to Mendocino County in March of 2017. As a condition of Hoppner's supervised release, he is restricted from having access to social media sites that are frequently used by minors. In a search of Hoppner's residence Detectives located evidence that Hoppner had been accessing and engaging persons on social media sites, placing him in violation of the terms of his parole. The ages of the persons he interacted with are unknown. At the time of the search, Hoppner was not at home. Detectives returned to the residence about 4:05 PM and took Hoppner into custody for being in violation the terms of his parole. He was transported and booked into the Mendocino County Jail for a parole violation and is being held on a "no bail" status.

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Previously: https://www.theava.com/archives/68915

GARNISH DALY HOSPITALIZED in Santa Rosa (Coast ListServe)

Our dear friend Garnish (David) Daly of Mendocino has had some very serious health emergencies recently and is now recovering in Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. I just spoke with him by phone and he is the usual wisecracking Garnish that we know and love. Many know him as the Big Cheese (cutter) and cashier at Corners of the Mouth in Mendocino. Others know him as an ubiquitous volunteer and chef for many local organizations including the music festival, Mendo Community Center, Kate Wolf Music Festival, etc. etc. Garnish is dealing with kidney failure complicated by coronary factors. In fact his heart stopped when he was taken to MCDH last Friday evening, but he was resuscitated and helicoptered to SRMH, where his heart stopped again, and was resuscitated once more. He was on 24-hour dialysis after first arriving at SRMH. He was in the cardiac intensive care unit until yesterday, when he was moved to room 462, bed 2. He is able to make phone calls, and he has close friends and family members frequently with him. He is recovering and having additional testing done. He hopes to be able to return home to Mendocino next week. He says he will probably not be back to work at Corners for a month or so. This was his second health emergency in a month's time and his second helicopter ride to Santa Rosa. Fortunately he's a member of the air-ambulance deal. Garnish needs someone to bring him a package of clothing and shoes from Mendocino. So if anyone is heading to Santa Rosa in the next few days and is willing to help out and deliver a package to him at the hospital, please contact his family member Alayna at (707) 540-4425 to make arrangements. — NW

THIS WEEK AT BLUE MEADOW FARM

Loaded!

• Cherry, Early Girl & Heirloom Tomatoes
• Zucchini, Zappallito & Patty Pan Squash
• Corno di Toro, Gypsy, Bells, Pimiento Sweet Peppers
• Padron, Jalapeno, Anaheim, Poblano Chilis
• Rosa Bianca, Black & Asian Eggplant
• Basil, Parsley, Purslane, Garlic & Cucumbers
• Strawberries, Sunflowers & Zinnias

Blue Meadow Farm 3301 Holmes Ranch Road, Philo 707- 895-2071

COMIN' HOME

by Bruce Brady

Be wary of deceptively straightforward questions composed of simple, one syllable words. Like, 'Where do you live?' Plainly, an astrophysicist will respond much differently than a geologist, most economists would be unlikely to understand either of them, while your Aunt Elsie in West Bend would quite possibly define it as exactly coincident with the bounds of her kitchen and ask if she might freshen your coffee. The thing about place is that it will never, ever, hold still.

Sharp and, I imagine, accurate memories of my childhood form a subset that happened entirely in my grandfather's kitchen. Until I turned twelve, I spent my childhood in Portland, Oregon. I lived in what came to be the suburbs before little towns that used to be identifiable seperate places were obliterated by returning hordes of soldiers mid-forties, and then the new houses and the malls and intersections where dirt roads paralleled the old connecting paths. We visited my grandparents nearly every Sunday, and the cribbage games and the bottle of Jameson's and my aunts smoking cigarettes with Grandma in the living room. Had twelve year-old I ever been pressed to define it, home would have looked a lot like family.

Sacramento became home in 1955. In my memory, pretty much the entire place was under construction, one among three or four epicenters of frenetic construction around the fastest growing place in the nation. The future was here, and blah, blah, blah. Just old enough for high school, in amongst the dates and first cigarettes, I first noticed how many of the tract-home developments were named after what had been destroyed to build them: Quail Run Acres, Deer Vista, and the like. The particular tract my parents bought into was much more prosaically named: Eastern Heights. Conjuring an image of distant vistas while retaining a whiff of blue-collar respectability, the streets in 'my' subdivision were all named after trees (Laurelwood, Baywood, and so on), but whatever heights there perhaps once had been had long ago been leveled and all the trees were new. Nothing but low-pitched or flat roofs, TV antennaes, power lines, and redwood fences, and in the distance, other streets named for critters and vistas no more to be had. But where none had, of course, been before, many of the one-eighth acre lots (like mine) now also sported turquoise smimming pools.

This is where I grew to manhood, a novelist might say, but at the time, I strained to escape to such an extent that I never really thought of it as home. It was just a place to grow up. Like a great many kids, I hated where I was. Commonly, the population of Sacramento was given as around a quarter-of-a-million in the early sixties, but it was expanding so quickly that it was hard to get a handle on whatever it really was. And not only me, but also most of my friends, left as soon as we could get it together enough to do it. And leaving the place where you grew up is a crucial piece of what used (with a straight and sober face suggesting deep and abiding wisdom) to be called the American Dream. Fresh graduates as input were, of course, critical. Over the decades, young people recently graduated -- or sometimes young people who looked old enough to have graduated -- had become many towns' largest and most non-controversial export.

Looking back now from what was then far in the future, moving at age twenty-six with a wife and three kids -- the last of them a couple of days more than a week old -- to the relative wilds of Mendocino County -- was, as they say in Picadilly, rather a scramble. But in ways never at all foreseen (and forgoing the orchestra which ought to be soaring in the background) the move of a couple of hundred miles defined much of what would be all our lives.

My own note in the melody here was (barely) hidden inside the next Russian doll: inscrutably enough, it was called the 'Bioregional Core'. I swear on all I hold close and dear that I will not descend to edubabble here, and I swear that I will keep it as short as possble. Please read that sentence again.

Bent on providing a working and achievable way to help students survive what we knew was coming, as a small (about a dozen most years, and not unanimous in any important decision) and fairly young faculty, we saw immediately that, as elsewhere, and as our own experiences had shown, young people were, next to trees, the town's major export. We designed for months and named what we came up with 'The Bioregional Core.' The idea was to define the place where we live not by the common measure of politics (the Third District, and so on), but rather by the extent of the local watershed, within which biology showed a fairly rigorous regularity -- it all looked remarably similar -- and placed people possessing roots and long traditions, their fluid territories rooted in the rhythms and long cycles of the Eel River. Honoring local native tradition in the mostly white schools was to yield more than a portrait of a lost-looking Mid-Western brave -- the school mascot -- painted on the polished floor of the gym.

Our simple theory was that if, for example, school kids learned their economics by studying the way the timber industry survived and prospered and their history and science by working to answer the (very good) question, 'What happened to the salmon?' that they might, in the end, come to love the place (or at least have some current and relevant understanding of what made it tick) and decide, in their separate ways and for their seperate reasons, to stay. Conceivably. Additionally, it would also recognize the crucial role of the schools in defining what it might mean to 'be' from Laytonville. We tried to instill community as a positive value.

The whole thing was audacious in the extreme, and it was partly, but not at all wholly, as it came to be because it was largely conceived and activated from the deck and the living room at Wild River. This happened, not due to any special talents or energies I possessed in excess of those possessed by anybody else, but because I had just (had) built a relatively huge deck overlooking one of the South Fork of the Eel River's most gorgeous swimming holes, the approximate size of an Olympic-sized pool, and fed by a seasonal waterfall. Seasonally, egrets, herons, bald and golden eages, peregrine falcons, pileated woodpeckers, ducks and geese made their ways up and down the canyon. Ravens, vultures, crows and red-tailed hawks had lived there far longer than had any of us on the Laytonville High faculty. Rattlesnakes. Lethal-looking, phlegm-colored scorpions and bright red millipedes, tuned the form and abundance to rotting vegetation. Otters and opossums live there with bears and bobcats and mountain lions and deer. Plainly and at least theoretically perfectly, a community. And so -- in a place very like Paradise -- for seventeen years did I, inhaling deeply every morning, every evening.

The birth of the Bioregional Curriculum was not, in other words, a difficult birth. A sizeable grant from the state, accompanied by resolute words from the school superintendent and, voila!, out it plopped, and there it was, all newborn and squirming and all. Please know that no reader possesses both the time and the patience (let alone the interest) to review how it was received in Laytonville. Somewhere lurks the writer who might put it all together in some Edward Albeean melange of deliberate misunderstanding, total poppycock, well-meaning naivete, all in a final loaf awkwardly called Shit Happens. But that writer [and here I bow deeply to the Great Spirit in thanks] is not me.

The dream, including Biocore, lives no more anywhere except in memory as far as I know. I am pretty sure that no trace of it remains in the placid, institutional face of recent basketball power Laytonville High. But while it lived, we gave it an honest go, but then the principal got fired (for being competent, I always thought), and the schoolboard spent much of the next decade trying to find someone who could last more than a year or two, the state grant expired, and the universe moved on. But that blip on the pondlike, quiet surface of Laytonville, in time produced precisely the change we envisioned.

As I have said, Biocore was very self-consciously, a way for the rural school to build a sense of community, to lessen the exports, as it were. As I write, schools are commencing their years. At Laytonville, two high school graduates will be with them as credentialed teachers. There are probably more on the way. The first of our now-credentialed graduates took my place when I retired, but was for some reason unsuccessful. Another of our graduates is now a practicing attorney in town. A young man (who later became my neighbor) who served as our student body president built a house next to where he grew up, and is now an important voice for the small farmer as the huge underground economy becomes grindingly integrated. This is how a stable (and sustainable!) community gets built.

It also amounts to vastly enlarging the very idea of 'home'. Now the place where we live became, in fact, many places. It was unnoticed rivulets of water, it was creeks, it was rivers, and the boundaries of where they came from marked the limits of the bioregion's influence. Study as much as possible the ways of the people who have lived their (as it happens, the Laytonville bioregion (roughly, the southern extreme of the course of the South Fork of the Eel River) is a living repository of remnant native tradition, now inhabited mostly by whites.

By the time it had evaporated, Biocore had become a mostly-forgotten force. But Biocore had finally broken the years-upon-years of export of Laytonville's students to an unpredictable somewhere where their lives might really start. Now and then, a few never got past the liquor store or the county jail. A couple, to my knowledge, saw the inside of San Quentin. But many who left went away (or far away) to college and sometimes graduate or professional school -- and then they came back! They started families and, in ways foundational to the ongoing story here, they became role models: some of the town's most successful and visible citizens used to be students in Laytonville's schools. I do not believe that such a thing had happened since there had been such a thing as the Laytonville schools.

When I retired in 2004, I moved, relatively, waaaay back in the boonies, but still in the area 'served' by the district. I now lived next door to what had been Laytonville's student body president's home at almost exactly 3,000 feet of elevation. (This is perhaps a bit misleading. 'Next door' in this context meant down a lengthy path, across a bridge, and up the other side. Their house was actually fairly close, but totally unseen.) This place, and the later post-cancer surgery move back to civilization, in the form of Eugene provided the perfect perch from which to regard the last few chapters of It All, to contemplate home.

I do not claim to know the universality of this, but life has broadened the concept of 'Home' from the first place of my childhood to, presumably, this, the last place of my age. But now it is pretty much the West Coast, from mid-California north to the southern Wilamette Valley, largely the same enlarged bioregion, the place of the same birds, the same salmon, now mostly gone.

And now mid-summer smoky, apparently the new normal, but still, for those lucky enough to find their futures in it, inexplicably good fortune. Thank you, eh?

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 16, 2018

NATHAN BEVENS, Willits. DUI, willful cruelty to child with possible injury or death.

TYLER DAVIS, Ukiah. Trespassing, probation revocation.

DREVEN DAWSON-VALENCIA, Talmage. Protective order violation.

GERMAN DOMINGUEZ-GALINDO, Lakeport/Covelo. Pot cultivation, illegal diversion of water, unlawful diversion of water flow, water pollution with petroleum, conspiracy.

LAUREN FOREST-KNOWLES, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. DUI.

ELIEZER GARCIA-GURRERO, Ukiah/Covelo. Pot cultivation, unlawful diversion of water flow, water pollution with petroleum, conspiracy.

BRIAN HURTADO, Willits. Parole violation.

JULIO NAJERA, Ukiah. County parole violation.

SOPHIA PICENO, Hopland. Disobeying court order.

RHONDA SANDERS, Willits. Under influence.

HENRY TORRES JR., Willits. Parole violation.

XELIN TUTTLE, Willits. Transient registration.

QUEEN OF SOUL, Aretha Franklin, Dies at 76

Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul and a music pioneer, has passed away at 76. The singer and songwriter passed away Thursday morning in her house in Detroit. Family had been with her this week.

Reports of Franklin being seriously ill first broke Monday morning. Franklin had been battling cancer and in the last two weeks, her health increasingly failed.

Franklin leaves behind a six-decade long career in music—for which she was heavily awarded. Considered a child prodigy on the piano, she got her start performing in front of her minister/activist father's congregation before traveling to New York City in 1960 to sign with Columbia Records. She was just 18-years-old at the time.

Franklin went on to receive 44 Grammy nominations and 18 wins, was the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was honored with the Grammy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. Franklin was still performing up through last November 2017:

Franklin's powerful gospel voice inspired generations of artists; her songs such as "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Loved You)" endure as some of music's most highly-regarded classics.

Franklin was born in Memphis on March 25, 1942 to C.L. Franklin and Barbara Siggers Franklin. She is survived by her sons Ted White Jr., Kecalf Cunningham, Clarence Franklin, and Edward Franklin.

Aretha Franklin may have died Thursday but the music of “Lady Soul” will long be celebrated.

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THE MAJOR’S FAVORITE ARETHA PERFORMANCE (and composition)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYtouKwkXLI

Imagine any other woman trying to pull this off like this.

PS. Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy, a fine musician in his own right and the man being amusingly pushed around by Franklin in the video/movie, himself died just last June at the age of 88.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT8D_L2bBGQ

(ms)

SOCIALIST HELLS

Editor:

Having just returned from two weeks in Belgium, Finland, Germany, mostly Finland, I saw democratic socialism at its finest: well-maintained infrastructure, highly educated, happy.

Finns are provided first-class, free education from preschool through universities. They are known as the happiest people on our planet. Yes, they pay high taxes, but do you think there may be a connection between most highly educated and happiest?

Please, take a good luck at democratic socialism in practice elsewhere. You may change your opinion.

Donna Diehl

Sebastopol

AUGUST 16, 1968: The police Tactical Squad appeared destined for a drastic shakeup yesterday. James W. Mailliard III, president of the Police Commission, said he favors abolishing the Tactical Squad as a separate unit. Members of the squad would do routine police duties and be called together only in the case of a riot. While Mailliard was making his comments, Deputy Chief Al Nelder confirmed that Troy Dangerfield, a member of the Police Community Relations Bureau, had been in the Haight-Ashbury district on July 18 when the Tactical Squad made an anti-riot sweep. Officer Dangerfield informed his superiors that he was clubbed to the ground before he could identify himself. When he managed to explain that he was a policeman, one burly Tac Squad member was supposed to have snarled, “Well you shouldn’t be here,” while another sneered, “Hey, n—, what are you doing here?”

Already under investigation was the clubbing of a State narcotics agent by two Tac Squad members. One of the two policemen involved in that incident, Elbert Boyd, 32, was arraigned yesterday on other charges in Municipal Court. Boyd and his co-defendant Thomas Dougherty of the Tactical Squad were arrested after at least seven teenagers charged that they had been beaten by off-duty members of the squad. Boyd, who stands six-feet five inches tall and weighs 240 pounds, is charged with using karate chops on a 14-year-old boy who weighs 119 pounds.

— Birney Jarvis, SF Chronicle

CARIE AND THE SOULSHAKERS

At Caspar Community Center Friday night 7pm August 24.

You might remember Carie from Down Home Foods in the 1980s, and from all the plays she performed in. My favorite was a numinous, tragic and surprising Sam Shepard play about incest, that they put on in Crown Hall, that I think she also produced, where the other performers were Bob Boler, who had a voice like the lower register of a pipe organ, and Doug Warner, who Carie was in a tempestuous relationship with at the time in real life, so the tension was electric, like Burton and Taylor, or Taylor and Burton, depending on whose side you were on. Anyway, she's Carie Anne MacAlpine now and she's been traveling around with her roadhouse blues band (!), Carie and the Soulshakers, and they'll be at Caspar Community Center next Friday night (August 24) at 7pm. I think Johnny Bush and Tommy Brown will be playing with them. I wish I could go there then. Here's some more info about the band: http://www.carieandthesoulshakers.com

–Marco McClean

MY IMAGINATION

Dear Mr. Philbrick:

It’s good to know you read the AVA. I’ve been eyeballing your righteously loco plastic-flag-waving cracker Trumpkin letters to the AVA ever since Bruce the Editor wrote you a blank check so many long moons ago. In these pages I’ve denounced your Mobius strip of extreme rightwing bullshit more than once. Now you reply with gibberish.

You wear your “Christianity” like a Cub Scout merit badge and yet I’ve never caught even a whiff of Christian sensibility in anything you’ve written. “God bless Donald Trump” as your prayer for the USA? God as “your” God? God, like the syllogisms orbiting in the black hole of your mind, as just another item of private property, a marketable guardian angel, trustworthy oil company lobbyist and silver-tongued political advisor? Well, I’d like you to give us sinners even one reason why Jesus of Nazareth — he who walked on God’s Green Earth — would bless a lying sack of abominations like Emperor Trump the Magnificent and his ass-licking kennel of Pharisees.

Regarding your phony version of American patriotism: who do you think you’re kidding? Your worship of the Stars and Stripes is idolatry. Real Christians — and real Americans — know they are humans first and last just as Jesus, and our Declaration of Independence, made absolutely clear. And your “sacred” Pledge of Allegiance and painfully outmoded and vainglorious National Anthem are just two of the putrid conceits the old and deluded use to delude the young and the gullible. As if living as self-serving, smallminded, bigoted and clueless as your great, great, great granddaddy makes you a patriot. Not even close, dude. Not here, not anywhere. Ancestor worship masquerading as patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.

If I was you, old man, I’d retire from proselytizing for scumbags. If you’re so determined to help your Emperor Trump, stop calling him right honorable in public and send him some money instead. Everybody paying attention knows Trump’s greatest pleasure is pocketing other people’s money. So put your money where your mouth is. Seal your lips and you just might wind up a whole lot better than just another sinner in the hands of an angry god.

Bruce Patterson

Prineville, Oregon

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Wildfires are here to stay. Using the resources that are on hand can reduce the tremendous loss of life and property. Here is the way to do it: Identify all government airplanes in the USA that can be modified to hold a container filled with water or retardant. Include planes mothballed and stored in the Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico deserts. Use National Guard and civilian pilots.

Using the Berlin Air-Lift Plan, maintain a continual deluge of water or retardant on the fire. The plan is one where the plane is loaded with water or retardant, flies to the wildfire, drops load, returns to base and repeats the drop. Many planes can make many drops.

There will be many reasons raised why this plan won’t work. Let’s have a better plan and I’ll be all for it.

Use the resources available.

VEGETABLE GARDEN YOGA THIS SUNDAY!

Vegetable Garden Vinyasa Flow (all-levels class)

Sunday, August 19, 10:00AM to 12:00PM in the MCBG Vegetable Garden

Join Alix Cooley of PathFinder Yoga Retreats in the morning splendor of the organic demonstration Vegetable Garden at Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens for an outdoor yoga class. Bring your own mat and allow plenty of time to reach the Vegetable Garden. Class fee paid upon entry to the Gardens - $15 for Gardens members; $25 for non-members (includes Gardens admission for the day). Dahlias will be in bloom, it is one of the most magical times to visit!

9:30AM - 9:45AM Check in at the Gardens' entrance
10:00AM - 11:00AM Vinyasa Flow in the Veggie Garden
11:00AM - 12:00PM Snacks and drinks provided by the instructor.

If you are interested in joining the vinyasa flow on Sunday, please RSVP to Alix at pathfinderyogaretreats@gmail.com.

SIGN UP TO LISTEN TO THE HUFF (and promise not to ask any real questions which, of course, will be screened before they're passed on to his majesty)

Congressman Jared Huffman -- Town Hall Meeting

Tuesday, August 21st, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM PDT

Eagles Hall, Fort Bragg

The event is free, but you must register to attend. Click link to register.

EVENTBRITE.COM: Fort Bragg Town Hall 8.21.18

JARED AND MIKE'S PRESSER

On Wednesday, the offices of Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson announced that California has been awarded $99.3 million for disaster recovery across the state, including Mendocino and Sonoma counties.

This federal funding was previously awarded through the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Relief program as part of an effort to provide long-term recovery from the 2017 wildfires.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development also issued guidance on Wednesday that counties and zip codes in Huffman and Thompson’s districts must receive that funding for unmet needs.

“While the still-raging wildfires continue to inflict catastrophic damage on our communities, I’m glad to see that this much-needed federal support is on its way,” said Huffman. “We will continue to work with local, state and federal partners to ensure that our districts have every resource needed during the long path to recovery.”

“Our district was and continues to be hit hard by fires, but together we are coming back even stronger. Together with local, state and federal partners, we are addressing the deep impact these fires left on our communities and I am so proud this funding will be provided to help those who need it most recover and rebuild,” Thompson said. “This work continues and I will keep fighting for every possible federal penny to help our district rebuild and be even stronger.”

The Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD awards CDBG-DR grants to flexibly support many different recovery efforts, including but not limited to housing needs, economic revitalization and improvements to infrastructure.

California received $212 million to go toward unmet needs and mitigation efforts and HUD has announced that no less than $99.324 million must go to areas most impacted by the fires including Sonoma County, Redwood Valley, the city of Napa, Ventura County and parts of Santa Barbara, Clearlake and Marysville.