Mendocino County Today: Sunday, Aug. 26, 2018

• Ranch Fire
• Pillsbury Return
• PD Aaron
• Pets
• Ed Notes
• Little Dog
• Yesterday's Catch
• Dem Relief
• Tough Times
• Pot Crusader
• High Horse
• Fire Meditation
• Pancake Breakfast
• Cognitive Impatience
• Liberal Globalization
• Dahlia Garden
• Limp Fillers
• Bison Genocide
• Acid Reflux
• Suing Man
• Marco Radio
• Library Workshops

THE RANCH FIRE (not counting the 48,000 acres burned by the River Fire) is up to almost 380,000 acres with containment still at 67% as the fire continues to burn into the wilderness area north of the core of the fire.

Calfire Saturday night: Weather conditions continue to be favorable on the Ranch Fire. Firefighters are making good progress on the northwestern portions and fire suppression repair efforts have begun. Crews continue to build and reinforce containment lines and mop up throughout the northern portions of the fire area. Firing operations are expected to continue Saturday evening, focusing on the northeastern areas of the fire as weather conditions permit. The southern portion of the fire remains in patrol status as crews continue with suppression repair and mop up.

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MENDOCINO COMPLEX NEWS RELEASE — MORNING OF AUGUST 25, 2018

Ranch Fire: On Friday, crews patrolled and mopped-up hot spots near containment lines in the Bloody Rock and Little Round Mountain areas. On Saturday, isolated firing operations on the north may be used to remove heavy concentrations of fuel near containment lines. Felling teams with chainsaws are cutting down hazardous trees to make conditions safer for crews working in the burned area. Chipping crews are removing vegetation that was cut to widen containment lines. This work will continue through the weekend. Firefighters are also mopping-up hot spots in the Pine Mountain area.

Fire suppression repair teams are working in burned areas where it is safe to do so. They are using heavy equipment to restore bulldozer lines to as natural conditions as possible, covering them with vegetation and creating water bars — berms made to divert water to prevent erosion.

Suppression repair teams work closely with resource advisors to help protect sensitive areas.

Fire engine crews are patrolling the Rice Fork Summer Homes and Pillsbury Lake areas. This area remains under a mandatory evacuation order. Firefighters are prepared to defend homes in Bonnie View/Happy Camp.

On the east, firing operations are progressing and will continue for the next several days as crews work to contain the fire. Helicopters using aerial ignition devices are helping to burn interior fuels that may pose a threat to containment lines. Increased smoke from this operation is likely to be visible east of the fire and along the I-5 Corridor.

The fire grew approximately 1,756 acres in the last twenty-four hours. The fire is now estimated at 377,257 acres and is 67 percent contained. There are 3,114 personnel assigned to the incident.

A mandatory evacuation has been reduced to an evacuation advisory for areas from Forest Road M10 Bear Creek Road south within the Mendocino National Forest and Lake County. This includes areas east of the forest’s west boundary, areas west of the Lake County line, and areas north of the forest’s southern boundary. The mandatory evacuation for the Eel River Road area has been canceled. This

includes all areas west of the Mendocino-Lake County Line, south and east of Eel River Road, and north of the 1600 block of Mid Mountain Road.

The advisory evacuation for the Potter Valley Area has been canceled, including all areas north of Pine Avenue, south of the 1600 block of Mid Mountain Road, west of the forest boundary, and east of eastside Potter Valley. County Road 301 from the forest boundary remains closed.

County Road 306 is open to north and south bound traffic. All roads west of County Road 306 to the Lake County Line remain closed. County Road 308 is open to east and west bound traffic from County Road 306 to the forest boundary. County Road 308 remains closed at the forest boundary going west.

Fire managers continually assess the status of fire operations as they relate to areas under mandatory and advisory evacuations. Changes in status are coordinated with the appropriate sheriff’s office and adjusted as conditions warrant.

The northern half of the Mendocino National Forest remains open and can be accessed via Forest Highway 7. The forest areas around Plaskett Meadows and Hammerhorn Lake are open for recreation activities. The Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness is also open for recreation.

Hunters are reminded that the fire area is closed to hunting. For a specific closure map, please see the forest’s web page at fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd591718.pdf

Fire Area Weather: A moderate marine influence persists over the fire area Saturday, creating cooler temperatures and higher than average relative humidity. Temperatures will be in the low 80s with light southwest winds.

Smoke: Hazy skies will persist again Saturday region-wide. Generally moderate air quality conditions are expected in areas to the west of the Ranch Fire including Ukiah and Willits. Higher impacts and periods of heavy smoke are expected during the day in communities closer to the fire, including Stonyford and Elk Creek, and in areas downwind including Willows and Colusa. Areas to the south and east of the fire, including communities surrounding Clear Lake, could have periods of increasing smoke midday as the inversion breaks up and mixes smoke to ground level.

(Photos by Mike Lindbery, US Forest Service)

* * *

CALFIRE'S MENDOCINO COMPLEX UPDATE (Sunday 7am): 441,687 acres; 78% contained.

"Firefighters continue to make good progress on the Ranch Fire. Increased acreage is due to completed firing operations in the northeastern areas. Firing operations are expected to continue on interior portions of the burned area focusing on reinforcing containment in the northeastern areas of the fire as weather conditions permit. Crews continue to build and reinforce containment lines and mop up throughout the north and northeastern portions of the fire area. Firefighters continue with fire suppression repair efforts in the northwestern portions of the fire. The southern portion of the fire remains in patrol status as crews continue with suppression repair and mop up."

(click to enlarge)

LAKE COUNTY - SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES, RIGHT?

In addition to the splendid reports* coming out of the Mendocino National Forest public affairs office (give that PIO a Pulitzer, willya?), we just heard that Lake Pillsbury residents are now “free” to go back home — after getting a pass from the Upper Lake Ranger Station. I’ll swing by there on my way home and get an update.

Friends in Pillsbury who needed food and supplies took two truckloads of goods from Lucerne Alpine Senior Center’s food bank remnants — they have been handing out free food for the past week, delivered by the truckload from the Redwood Empire Food Bank — and we raided the kitchen for every spare can, bottle, and carton of theoretically edible foodstuff on hand (does mustard count?).

Will be hosting FEMA’s DR-4382 Public Information Officer, Thomas Kempton, tomorrow on our Sunday edition (“Long-Term Recovery Hour” and “What’s Next?”) between 2 and 4 pm; streaming live from kpfz.org located at 149 N. Main Street, Lakeport, California. We’ll try to pin down the actual 60-day deadline for signing up with FEMA and the California Small Business Administration, since there is some confusion due to the delay in amending the original Presidential declaration — initiated by the Shasta County conflagration — as reflected this news report from CalOES: oesnews.com/lake-county-added-to-major-disaster-declaration-due-to-wildfires-federal-assistance-available-to-individuals-businesses/

Also joining us will be the USDA Rural Development, “Single Family Housing Program” director, Ron Tackett, who will describe the current efforts to assist homeowners up in the Redding area who lost their homes in the Carr fire. In the near future, we’ll try to learn more from the Mendo NF about this fascinating map, which indicates the proportion of privately owned “public lands” within the forest proper: lakeconews.com/index.php/news/57491-officials-compile-ranch-fire-soil-burn-severity-map

Keep your powder dry, it ain’t over yet.

Betsy Cawn, Upper Lake

HELLO SEVERITY, GOOD-BYE LENIENCY

by Bruce McEwen

Mendo’s new Public Defender Jeffery Aaron has yet to make his debut at the courthouse in Ukiah, but the place has been running smoothly without him, and the District Attorney told us that he, David Eyster, had already met Mr. Aaron and thoroughly approved of the choice.

Now, does this make a defendant shudder or what? Wouldn’t we rather see the District Attorney and Public Defender pawing the ground like a couple of bulls getting ready to charge, rather than pumping hands and clapping each other on the shoulder?

Mr. Aaron came to us from a position as a federal public defender.

Having never been in a federal courtroom we can’t say with authority if it’s true or not, but we’ve been told (by criminal defendants and friendly defense lawyers) that federal public defenders work so closely with federal prosecutors that they go hand-in-hand, like Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum to get the job done. Kinda like having two prosecutors.

“Federal Public Defenders in the Age of Inquisition,” a 2013 Yale Law Journal essay, concludes that Federal PDs are generally impotent against, if not complicit with prosecutors, in the adversarial system of our judiciary at the fed level, and have been getting steadily worse since 1963 when a case called Gideon v. Wainwright was decided, making sure the defense lawyers would get paid and could afford services like private investigators; and that they are absolutely powerless against the sentencing severity, which in federal courts is controlled by the prosecutors, not the judges. David E. Patton concludes that federal defendants were better off before Gideon v. Wainwright when they had either an unpaid, ill-equipped lawyer, or none at all. Mr. Patton says most of today’s defendants would gladly go back to pre-1963 standards if they could.

yalelawjournal.org/essay/federal-public-defense-in-an-age-of-inquisition

It would appear that federal defense lawyers know all too well where their money’s coming from, and who they’re really working for – which is to say not the defendant.

Reality Winner, the whistleblower from the NSA, must surely wish she could go back to such happy days when even if “The Fonz” and Eddie Haskell somehow got through law school on a cheap bribe or a rich name; well, even then, it’s hard to imagine such odious pricks as we have today dispensing “advocacy to the indigent” and other sentiments worthy of emolument… Winner’s federal prosecutors were bragging that the over five years she was sentenced to last week was the “stiffest in history” for her piddling transgression. (I’d hardly call it a crime, more like a lack of religious zealotry for the current status quo.)

cnn.com/2018/08/23/politics/reality-winner-nsa-leaker-sentenced/

The Gideon case also provided for training of federal public defenders– and again, this must make a criminal defendant shudder with apprehension. Would you want your adversaries to train your only hope of winning against them?

Another conclusion Patton makes is one we were already well aware of, and that is that only about 2.7% of all cases go to trial, and that, in essence, if not in fact, “reflects the sad acceptance of a system thoroughly unmoored from its adversarial foundation.”

Mr. Patton writes, “increased prosecutorial power” – and Patton gives the reader of his essay many examples – “disproportionately impacts poor people and minorities and greatly diminishes the egalitarian process [and] demonstrates how we have moved from an adversarial to an inquisitorial one.” Nothing would be more to DA Eyster’s liking than such an arrangement – nor any other prosecutor, for that matter – like at the federal courts; for the DA’s office to enjoy these advantages over the PD’s office. This may give us a hint as to why our excellent DA is so delighted with the appointment of Jeffery Aaron.

Nothing to do but wait and see.

Assistant DA Rick Welsh did not wait and see, though. His last day was Friday. The former Assistant DA said he was tired of waking up without his wife, who is a school teacher in Orange County, and chose not to give up her job to accommodate her husband’s career. No replacement yet, for that post, but the long-vacant job of Chief Deputy DA – last held by Jill Ravitch, who is currently in her third term as DA of Sonoma County – has been taken over by former Del Norte County DA Dale Trigg.

http://www.crescentcitytimes.com/breaking-news-district-attorney-dale-trigg-resigns/

Mr. Trigg is a big guy, he kind of reminds me of Hamilton Berger in the old black and white Perry Mason series on TV. Mr. Trigg strikes me as the kind of guy who can pin Mr. Aaron to the mat as soon as the referee blows the whistle – but, of course, courtroom brawlers are not wrestling celebrities: those guys all go into politics and run for the governor’s mansion, not some little out-of-the way public defender’s office.

Now, we are not condemning the new public defender without a trial.

That would hardly be just. We want to give him at least the same chance he would give his clients – that is, take a cursory look at the evidence against him, give our professional assurance that his case is hopeless, and advise him to plea to the sheet. As critics of the legal system, it’s the best we can offer.

PETS OF THE WEEK AT THE UKIAH SHELTER

This cute-as-a-button kitten is Felix. He and his siblings are the youngest kittens currently available for adoption at the shelter. Felix is a 2 month old, male, short hair tabby and white kitten. Felix, along with his brother and two sisters, returned to the shelter after several weeks in a foster home, where they received lots of love and attention. This litter is very socialized, active and a ton of fun to watch as they romp around playing and exploring.

It would be hard to find a more people-oriented, social dog than Ginger. She lived with a family but did not get along with the resident cat. Her past guardians felt Ginger would do best as an only pet in her next home, and had this to say about her: “Ginger is the most sweet, loving, and lovable dog you will ever meet. She enjoys playing catch with a ball or any type of toy. She loves pickles and spicy chips, water and going on walks.” Ginger is a 2 year old spayed female mixed breed dog who currently weighs 57 pounds. Lots more about Ginger here: mendoanimalshelter.com/dogblog/ginger

The Ukiah Animal Shelter is located at 298 Plant Road in Ukiah, and adoption hours are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday from 10 am to 4:30 pm and Wednesday from 10 am to 6:30 pm. To see photos and bios of the shelter's adoptable animals, please visit us online at: www.mendoanimalshelter.com or visit the shelter. Join us the second Saturday of every month for our "Empty the Shelter" pack walk and help us get every dog out for socialization and exercise! For more information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

ED NOTES

FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK! It's time for these guys to meet.

That's Lee Edmundson of Mendocino being pulled off the statue by a plainclothes cop, and it was Jeff Blankfort who took the iconic series of photographs memorializing the infamous Riot of the Chicago Police Department, 1968. Edmundson, a Coast-based actor and political activist, and Blankfort, best known locally for his Takes on the World radio program on KZYX, are undimmed by the years but remain strangers to one another.

LEE WRITES: "Alas, I'm the kid (18 years young) on the receiving end of justice. The guy in the light (police uniform) shirt, I later found out (at a pretrial hearing) was a cadet policeman at the time, also 18. Consequence? Broken arm, 10 days in Cook County Hospital, half of which leg ironed to the foot of my bed. Two and a half years on charges. I'm glad to hear Jeff's still plugging along. He and I have never met."

* * *

AN INTERESTING PROJECT is underway at the Anderson Valley Elementary School aimed at storing rain water, hence the construction site at the oval in front of the admin offices. The high school has installed a similar project both, I believe, under the capable direction of Linda McElwee, of the Navarro River Resource Center, with headquarters in Boonville.

WATER at the two school campuses is in perennially short and always problematical supply, as it is in many, much less thirsty places in the Anderson Valley.

THE WELLS at the Elementary School were found to be fouled by leaking fuel tanks adjacent to the school's bus barns, a discovery that kicked off a couple of decades of public agency blithering and threatened lawsuits from nearby property owners, one of whom, Michael Addison, was conveniently placed as a school trustee. The defunct tanks were excavated and literal tons of allegedly contaminated earth piled up behind the classrooms where it rested for years as Mount Fuma, the idea being that it would cleanse itself. The cleansing process went on for years, and was still being discussed a year ago. The fear seemed to be that if this multi-million dollar project wasn't undertaken, generations of local children would become inadvertent fire eaters.

THE WATER at the high school has never been quite enough to meet demand, but the storage of rain water should nicely increase the year-round supply of potable agua at both schools.

* * *

WE ALL KNOW it's simple coincidence that all the female tv newscasters are beautiful young women wrapped in tight-fitting outfits, and the men all look like the guy on the wedding cake. I always look for the homeliest people I can find if I'm in the mood for prime time fake news. And both sexes have great big white teeth the Donner Party would only envy. Not that anyone with any sense takes these people seriously, but what's with the buzzsaw voices on the women? So many of them talk through their noses, hence the audio-gnawing sound we get out of them. I remember me deal old mum hectoring my sisters to "talk from your diaphragm, not through your nose!" Pop would almost physically recoil at high nasal whinnies from females. He never failed to comment, "Jesus! How would you like to live with that voice?" (I'll take the barrage of sexist accusations off the air.)

* * *

GOVERNOR BROWN'S WIFE, Ann Gust, was once an executive vice president for The Gap, which of course is owned by the Fisher Family which of course owns the Mendocino Redwood Company, which of course will benefit mightily from Governor Brown's last minute logging rule exemptions being force fed to the California legislature.

Kathy Bailey put it plainly: "According to an article in the San Jose Mercury News, "under Brown's proposal, private landowners would be able to cut trees up to 36 inches in diameter – up from the current 26 inches – on property of 300 acres or less without getting a timber harvest permit from the state, as long as their purpose was to thin forests to reduce fire risk. They also would be able to build roads of up to 600 feet long without getting a permit, as long as they repaired and replanted them." Although the proposed allowed tree cutting is alarming, it is the road building that is even worse. Un-reviewed road building will bring back the bad old days of random slides and crappy drainage sluicing mud into already sediment-laden streams. Goodbye remaining 4 salmon! Although there is a need for fire resilience thinning, the parameters need to be done carefully and not jammed through at the end of the legislative session. The stuff around here that desperately needs thinning does not have a single 36-inch tree on it, and is unlikely to have even a 24-inch tree either. What we really need is a non-polluting product for the thinned material. Sure hope I wake up tomorrow with a good idea on that! Please let your legislators know that this last minute effort will not provide a good result. Rather it will bring more big problems."

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “My old friend Stormy Daniels asked me if it was safe to jog in Boonville. 'Storm,' I sez, 'you're safe with me anywhere. Orange Man himself wouldn't try anything'."

CATCH OF THE DAY, August 25, 2018

JESUS DELGADO, Fort Bragg. Forgery, bad checks, prison prior.

ANTONIA GONZALEZ, Ukiah. Battery.

ROSEANN GONZALEZ, Willits. Domestic battery.

KELBY HENNES, Potter Valley. DUI.

PEGGY HERNANDEZ, Point Arena. Failure to appear.

TALBOT KEEFER, Point Arena. Probation revocation.

SHYLA LAIWA, Covelo. Ammo possession by prohibited person.

MIGUEL LOPEZ-CERECEDO, San Diego/Willits. Robbery, domestic abuse.

FRANK MACCHIANO, Redding/Ukiah. Parole violation, flash incarceration.

ROWAN MCMILLAN, Mendocino. DUI-drugs&alcohol.

DANNY MOORE, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

JOSE MORALES, Ukiah. Burglary, resisting.

GABRIEL RAMIREZ, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MARIA RAMIREZ, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

CHARLES RAWLS, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

LINDA REYNOLDS, Ukiah. Suspended license, failure to appear.

CORY SCARIONI, Ukiah. Parole violation.

KARLIE SEDER, Fort Bragg. Assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury failure to appear, probation revocation.

MICHAEL STAGG, Ukiah. Disturbing the peace by unreasonably loud noise.

BRADLEY WEBB, Redwood Valley. Vehicle registration forgery.

JOSHUA WEBB, Laytonville. Probation revocation.

DEMS WILL RESTORE ORDER

Editor,

It would be a great relief if Democrats retake the House in the midterm election, because checks and balances would be restored, and actual oversight would return to our government.

The Republican Party has been grossly derelict in its constitutional duty to serve as a check on the executive branch and has steadfastly refused to provide the oversight a thriving democracy requires. It is through congressional committee oversight that corruption, malfeasance and incompetence can be uncovered and remedied.

I have read two letters this week that excoriate the free press as biased and corrupt. These faulty and extreme views fail to acknowledge that, due to the GOP’s failure to fulfill its constitutional duties, only the free press has provided oversight of government action for the American people.

“Enemies of the people” they are not. Truly, they have been our eyes and ears. And, may I add, it will be the free press that will hold Democrats accountable should they fail in their duties as well. To believe the free press is biased toward one ideology or another is to misrepresent the job they do every day.

Patrick Nagel

Ukiah

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

It’s probably just as well that Trump won the presidency, since it just makes the corruption that exists even more quickly apparent than it would have under some of the other candidates, thus delaying the shitstorm and possibly making it worse. Anybody who just stands back and looks at the state of things in this country, can see that tough times are coming. If Trump winds up impeached, there will be hell to pay, and this will no longer be the country we thought it was. With the level of corruption that has taken over the government, chaos becomes inevitable. The current uproar is just the tip of the iceberg.

WILLIE NELSON’S CRUSADE TO STOP BIG POT

In what may be his last political act, he is trying to stop Corporate America

http://nymag.com/…/…/willie-nelson-crusade-stop-big-pot.html

SENIOR DOES NOTSEE MOLE

Editor,

Trumpet Philbrick gets thrown of his high horse after shooting at moles? W.T.F.? He can't be a real person, who'd be so stupid?

He's a perfect example of a notsee. Most good folks would see that shooting off a .357 magnum, while riding a horse is bad news. However, notsees do not see what is obvious to most of us, that actions have consequences.

This just confirms what I'd suspected about ol' Jerry, mainly that he has brain damage from years of being tossed from his high horse. Many notsees have extensive brain damage, and could use a good dose of quality health care.

Jerry thinks we should support Trump like he does, but look how wrong he is in the way that he deals with guns & horses.. Foolish!

However, I do enjoy laughing at his idiocy and ignorance, and he is a senior, so I wish him all all the best!

Best Regards,

Rob Mahon

Covelo

FIRE

by Bruce Brady

As I intended to be writing, I ran a glass of water and grabbed a couple of caramels, turned on the i-pod (Errol Garner), and sat down. Looking first to responsible research, I tossed 'fire meditation' to Google, and within a second or two there were pages of listings and whole subsections of U-Tube videos. With an unexpected flourish, I closed the page after scanning it and laughed (laughter I regard as almost-always a good thing, regardless of its cause). In spite of the Buddhists and their New Age friends who all seemed to be oozing enlightenment, I was unmoved. So here we are (I am). Also, I will readily admit to a well-earned, fairly pissy attitude the New Age in all of its known manifestations. My only research here is my lived experience.

Fire as a subject of thought begs metaphorical treatment to a ridiculous degree. It is cleansing and it can easily kill you, sometimes in the same event. We cook our food and warm our living spaces with it. The fire of life, and all . . . One of the Catholic Church's early schismatic heresies (and one that nearly destroyed it early on) was called the Manichean Heresy. I have kept in a commonplace book the standard-issue phone message sheet once beloved of secretaries everywhere, informing me that my son had phoned an hour earlier to tell me that my house had burned down while I was trying to explain the concept of irony to my third-period ninth-graders. (Another story, perhaps for another time. Not now.)

For now, divorce will have to do as an excuse to stare into the fire as if one were a few hundred pounds of inanimate stone, seeking wisdom. The turn of the millenium, as I recall, or near it, in the fall. Odd remembrance: by the time the sitting was finished, I had burned almost six chords of firewood. Cut, split, loaded in the truck, unloaded, stacked. Heats you six times by the time you finally feed it to the fire. That, at least, was firmly true.

I, of course, accomplished other things while sitting. Like going to work every day. I may certainly be misremembering here, but not grossly. I imagine that the gossip might have been hot, but I can recall no way in which the emotional tsunami affected my teaching.

But my most useful work began each day the moment I returned and opened the front door. As the weather cooled along the river, I would lay whatever work I brought with me aside to assemble the fire. By late spring, I would happily rip off my left testicle for a working thermostat on the wall. A graceful (if a bit rickety) bent-wood rocker sat on the rug, closeby. Facing it toward the fire there, it was perfectly located, not only in front of the woodstove, but not more than a step or two from the night's wood, stacked and ready from the morning's routine. I mean, this operation was smooth.

The woodstove was only a couple of years old, and crucially (for it made everything possible) its front-loading door had a window. Sometimes, I'd play music, sometimes not. It was here that I think I learned to trust my intuition and, not least, to tamp down my predictably surging will and trust the universe. This, of course, was a conclusion born of the understanding that -- like it or stuff it -- no sensible alternative could be found. Trust the universe.

I was (mostly) doing my very level best to snuff out any attempt to think of some way to understand, to logically follow a train of thought and make sense of it all. As one may readily imagine, logical trains of thought in this context tend strongly toward the labyrinthine. As tonight's fire catches and begins to build its glowing bed, it, of course, demands more wood. Somewhere in here would doubtless be dinner (or something passing for it), and probably coffee, although all I remember doing is feeding the fire (the deep essence of my role here on Planet Earth) and sometimes fiddling with the music. And always in the background, a kind of white noise behind it all, the sound of the river. And sometimes no music. Just the quiet sound of the river.

As for the thoughts, the labyrinths themselves, well, turn up the country music, although the precision of chamber music, especially, for me, quartets are also sublime. One's thoughts here do not require a dreary recounting; they are, as luck and fate would have it, at the same time so common that they are the stuff of popular culture. Faux cowboys (and -girls) of often middling talent detail its slings and arrows expertly and endlessly. She said. I said. I thought she was going to . . . She said she thought I was going to . . . I imagine that most of us of a certain age could probably continue in this vein for at least an hour or so, quoting in the process every Hank Williams song ever written. With a sound unique in all my world, a wedge of wood suddenly slumps deeper into the now white-hot ash. The fire is drawing well, so I reach over and twist the stove damper counter-clockwise.

In the few months that passed like this, the cold descended as usual, and the approximately tidy cords of stacked wood, diminished with the lengthening days. By full-on spring, the ashes got hauled. Clearly, instead of what had been planned, the young American family in the beautiful place, the future was now being settled by lawyers in Ukiah. As I sit here and type twenty years later, I can see my mother clearly. She is sitting on the back porch of my childhood, in Portland. She is nearing forty. Her arms clasp her knees, which she has drawn up under her chin. "Oh, Lordy, oh Lordy." This fictional glipse backward is fantasy, and I don't know why it occured to me just now, but the events of the past year or so are summarized perfectly by the ongoing fires, which would likely have brought forth the words if only my mother had magically lived forty years later. My mother, rolling her eyes. "Oh, Lordy . . ."

I can't find the notes I made at the time, so this will be an imperfect accounting as it comes solely from my undeniably imperfect memory. One morning, doubtless, I was listening, sort of, the national news coming from the living room as I brewed coffee in the kitchen. There was something about a hurricane stalling over Texas. As I recall, it rained over Gulf Coast Texas for the next few days as though the very fact of its existence truly and deeply pissed God off, so he decided to drown it. This was plainly Biblical to many. The rain fell about as hard as it physically could. Then another hurricane hit Atlantic Florida and made its way up the East Coast. The dictator of North Korea was thought to possess weapons, and the means to deliver them, which could vaporize my cozy apartment in Eugene within twenty minutes of launch. Lightning started fires flared suddenly two hours south of where I used to teach, near Santa Rosa, fueled by long drought and way too many people. Others forced major evacuations in southern California. Some kid playing with firecrackers ignited much of the Columbia Gorge. Many people in Eugene walked around wearing facemasks, spooky and recalling zombies wearing yoga pants or shorts, all the Caucasions sporting seriously white legs. Folks in Hawaii were treated to a civil defense emergency warning of incoming missles. Families of folks who had been my students lost everything to the fires. I went with a long-time friend to the coast, to Florence and Yachats and Newport and a relationship of nearly twenty years ended in some anonymous tourist cafe when we both stared across across the booth and decided that we were really not much interested anymore. And along with everything else, the Orange Imbecile loomed always, fucking up, it seemed, everything worth fucking.

I learned the term 'gaslight' as part of what might fairly be called 'research', I even watched the movie (8+, with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman). Expressed in a range of ways, it is a transitive verb meaning 'to deny another's experience'. It is a form of psychological manipulation potentially leading to, perhaps fatally, questioning one's own memory, one's own perception of events, and finally, one's own values and one's own sanity. Coming perfectly to stand-in for everything, the fires most finally announce the sudden news that 'Son, it's a new world now.'

As do, I imagine, many old folks, I sometimes fanasize an easy-chair-sipping-a-beer conversation with my long-deceased father about what he has missed. My father never struck me as the heroic type, but he returned at the end of the war with a Purple Heart, his troop ship a Sunday morning target for a Kamikazi attack in the Philippines as the troops were amassing for an expected attack on Japan. I honestly think he would quickly be stunned into speechlessnes by the present state of things, but twenty years after earning the medal and regaining his voice, he bought his first Toyota, and the America he was rewarded with defending is gone, an apalling proportion of our 'leaders' denying that any of it ever was, that pigs, in fact, could fly.

And then I see, again, my mother, sitting on the porch. "Lordy, oh Lordy…"

PANCAKE B'FAST WHITESBORO GRANGE SUNDAY

A traditional pancake breakfast will be served at the Whitesboro Grange on Sunday, August 26th .Breakfast includes orange juice, pancakes with maple and homemade berry syrups, ham, eggs your way, and coffee, tea or hot cocoa. The public and visitors are invited to join neighbors and community for a hearty pancake breakfast. Adults $8, ages 6-12 half price, children under 6 eat FREE. Breakfast is served from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Whitesboro Grange is located 1.5 miles east on Navarro Ridge Road. Watch for signs south of the Albion Bridge.

SKIM READING IS THE NEW NORMAL. The effect on society is profound—

Increasing reports from educators and from researchers in psychology and the humanities bear this out. English literature scholar and teacher Mark Edmundson describes how many college students actively avoid the classic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries because they no longer have the patience to read longer, denser, more difficult texts. We should be less concerned with students’ “cognitive impatience,” however, than by what may underlie it: the potential inability of large numbers of students to read with a level of critical analysis sufficient to comprehend the complexity of thought and argument found in more demanding texts, whether in literature and science in college, or in wills, contracts and the deliberately confusing public referendum questions citizens encounter in the voting booth.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/25/skim-reading-new-normal-maryanne-wolf

DEMOCRAT STRATEGISTS FEAR CHANGE

This phenomenon is the micro version of a much larger trend. Liberal globalization, as promoted by the party 'elites', promises but does not deliver what the real people need and want. Liberal globalization turned out to be a class war in which only the rich can win. A revolt, locally on the level of voters, and globally on the level of nations, is underway to regain a different view.

moonofalabama.org/2018/08/what-the-party-strategists-say-is-not-what-the-voters-want.html

DAHLIA GARDEN, EUREKA

VIVIFY YOUR FILLERS

Editor,

Hi guys. It's me. Last time I wrote I urged you to embrace a makeover -- modest ones in the masthead: like change it to "America’s at last newspaper," and "peace to the cottage industries."

While you're mulling that over, I got something else for you. I've noticed -- no, it's painfully obvious really -- that the italicized bumpers sprinkled throughout the paper are at best anemic, pointless and forgettable. You want just the opposite. A quote should inspire, be deeply relevant, an ear-worm that whispers to you all day for months, even years.

I'm here to help. May I?

Brevity is the soul of wit. —Noel Coward

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh. —Voltaire.

(All the heavy hitters have only one name.)

If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands? —Milton Berle

The best mind altering drug is the truth. —Lily Tomlin

But where is what I started for so long ago and why is it yet unfound? —Walt Whitman

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions. —Grace Hopper

Dream as if you will live forever, live as if you'll die today. —James Dean.

History teaches us that man learned nothing from history. —Hegel

Oh human tenderness where are you to be found? Perhaps in books alone? —Izet Sarajlic

You can't direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails. —Unknown

We believe whatever we want to believe. —Demosthenes

(That was for you Jerry Philbrick you dithering myopic ass-clown)

Life isn't about what you were dealt, it's how you play your hand. —Unknown, again

Children see magic because they look for it. —Christopher Moore

It doesn't matter how far you go in life; it matters how we got here. —Brendan Frasier

If you want to be somebody else, change your mind. —Noah Idea, again.

We all have time machines, the ones that take you backward are memories, the ones that take you forward are dreams. —H.G. Wells

Sacred cows make the best hamburgers. —Abbie Hoffman

A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. —Anonymous

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing your secrets to the trees. —Khalil Gibran

95% of statistics are made up on the spot. —Donald Trump

Just because there's a picture and it’s on the Internet doesn't mean it's true. —Abe Lincoln

I hope I've illustrated the beauty, power and veracity in a finely tuned quote, fellows.

Your fan,

Russell E. Haber

Gualala/Low Gap Jail

PS. Any errors are solely the responsibility of the editor — he has a computer, I don't!

ED NOTE: I agree with you that our fillers have gone stale. Electronic paste-up doesn't leave room for many and anymore they're simply an afterthought. In the days of hand paste-up fillers were a much anticipated part of our weekly, and we went to an extra effort to get the liveliest ones into the paper. Most of us in what's left of the print business recognize that the cyber-revolution is fast making dinosaurs of us.

In 1873 the American government killed 1.5 Million buffalo in that one year alone to starve the native Americans so they would be come more dependent on the American government to survive.

ACID IN THEIR BRAINS

Editor,

Environmentalists have ruined this country. No burning. No herbicide. No logging. Clinton killed timber. He put $275 million in an environmental slush fund when he got out of office so they could start doing their nasty work. Environmentalists got going in 1968 on Redwood Summer and other crap like that. And the Democrats let them get away with it. They have ruined this country. That plus political correctness, anti-Americanism, socialism, crap on the Constitution, second amendment, freedom of speech, liberal wackos in the teachers union brainwashing our children, no respect for law enforcement, hate the military, open borders, sanctuary cities.

We are so lucky to have President drop straightening this country out and making it great again. The environmental liberals have sucked this country dry in the last 24 years. He will fix it in a couple of years.

People should say Molly Tibbetts name over and over until they puke with disgust about how people are responding to it. The Democrats just say, oh that girl. They don't give a damn about how she got killed or who did it. Americans have had enough. Time to storm the jail, take him out into a field and publicly execute him. It's time to take the law into our own hands, get rid of the rotten liberal judges. That man will get better care than any one of us citizens. He'll get everything he needs -- medical, TV, workout room, they can't touch them. Political correctness won't allow them to even touch him in any way. He has more rights than we do. And yet he ran down and killed and murdered this beautiful girl. Isn't that something to be proud of, America?

We need President Putin in over a year to help President Trump straighten this country out. It wouldn't take long. Rotten child molesters, people who kill women jogging, people who feast on old people -- it wouldn't take long before they would think twice before they commit a crime if they were publicly executed. Or dragged down the street to death. Or something like that.

To the people who have written letters against me, you sound like people who still have acid in your bloodstream when you took it back in your 20s when everybody in that category were doing drugs and stuff. That's how they sound. They make as much sense as -- I'm afraid to say. It.

God bless Donald Trump.

Jerry Philbrick

Comptche

BURNING MAN THREATENS TO SUE OVER UNCONSTITUTIIONAL TRAFFIC STOPS, SEARCHES

Burning Man organizers are threatening to sue federal officials over a dramatic increase in traffic stops of vehicles bound for the annual counter-culture festival in the Nevada desert 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Reno.

pressdemocrat.com/news/8668391-181/burning-man-threatens-suit-over

SECTS AND VIOLINS. A RIPPING YARN.

The recording of last night's (2018-08-24) KNYO Fort Bragg and KMEC Ukiah Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show is available by one or two clicks, depending on whether you want to listen to it now or download it and keep it for later and, speaking of which, it's right here: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0295

This time I started out reading very fast and kept it up, reacting to how things went last week when half a dozen people showed up and called on the phone, which didn't happen this week, resulting in finishing a little early, at about twenty to five, so that I'd already signed off when Lucky arrived back from San Francisco. I gave him the Leroy and Skillet collection for his car, the equivalent of our home game. You kids don’t know, but in the old days when somebody got on a game show on the radio or teevee and they were disappointed, chose the wrong curtain or door, and didn't win the new Chevrolet or spacious G.E. refrigerator or magnificent console hi-fi from Magnavox (the First Name in Hi-Fi), they were given a copy of the show's home game, an actual boxed board game, which might have been just as good as the show. In fact, you'll hear more than half an hour of the iconic Leroy and Skillet in the above show itself. They're dead now, or dayd, as they would say it if they weren’t dayd. Let's see if I can do this with typing: [growl-shouting] Leroy, Skillet, Reetha, we all us dayd now, goddammit. Hoddaya like thet?

Scott Peterson's story, The Vermillions, is a ripping yarn, the sort of thing where you have to control yourself not to keep stopping and going wow! in the middle of it. I broke it into two parts, though, because Tom showed up after his gig at Mendocino Theater Company's production of Becky's New Car, and after I got some Cadbury's caramel chocolate into him he began to tell the most amazing stories about his life in theater. A flying accident during the nightmare scene in Fiddler on the Roof. An exercise in expressing one's inner tomato. Naked solo sailing a borrowed 35-footer directly into the sun, balanced on the bowsprit, eyes closed, steering by psychokinesis. And so on.

IN OTHER NEWS: Also at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not necessarily radio-useful but nonetheless worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, things where just hearing it wouldn't be enough. Such as:

Wind-tunnel aerial dancing. http://bitsandpieces.us/2018/08/wind-tunnel-dancing/

Matrimonio Interplanetario. https://vimeo.com/102827380

Ai-yi-yi. Watch this before you just blindly let your kids go to one of those crazy parks or fairs and assume they'll be fine. They will not be fine; they will fall right out of the sky and bounce off metal things on their way down and be decapitated and die. http://www.amyoops.com/2018/08/amusement-park-fails.html

And a sheep stuck in a swing. https://laughingsquid.com/sheep-stuck-in-tire-swing/

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org

FREE MONTHLY WRITING WORKSHOPS FOR TEENS & ADULTS

(June – October 2018)

THE ART and CRAFT of WRITING for YOUNG READERS

The Ukiah Public Library and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators are delighted to offer a series of presentations on the art and craft of writing for young readers by Mendocino County authors. The series features Rena Rockford, David Weitzman, Natasha Yim, and Jody Gehrman. Each presentation in the series will be held on the last Thursday of the month from July through October from 5:30-7:30 in the Ukiah Public Library.

Thursday, August 30 Natasha Yim: REINVENTING FOLK AND FAIRY TALES: WRITING INSPIRATION FROM STORIES YOU ALREADY KNOW

Thursday, September 27 Jody Gehrman: TEN TIPS TO MAKE YOUR DIALOGUE SING

Thursday, October 25 WRITING FOR YOUNG READERS: A PANEL DISCUSSION

Rena Rockford, David Weitzman, Natasha Yim and Jody Gehrman.

REINVENTING FOLK AND FAIRY TALES:

WRITING INSPIRATION FROM STORIES YOU KNOW

with Natasha Yim

Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018, 5:30 – 7:30 pm

The Ukiah Public Library

Through guided exercises and prompts, picture book author, Natasha Yim, will help workshop participants explore the rich world of fairy tales, folk tales and legends for story ideas, and ways to re-write them into different yet familiar tales. This works for middle grade and young adult novels as well. Using her re-envisioned fairy/folk tales, Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas and The Rock Maiden, Natasha will share her revision process, the story “twists” that made it and those that didn’t (and why), and elements to consider to give your story a unique angle. We will also explore other titles in the genre.

About Natasha

Natasha Yim is a children’s author, playwright, and freelance writer and editor. She has published three fiction and two nonfiction picture books. Her book Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas (Charlesbridge Publishing, Jan. 2014) was a Junior Library Guild and Scholastic Book Club selection and was nominated for the 2017 Illinois Monarch Readers’ Choice Award. Her latest book, The Rock Maiden, was released by Wisdom Tales Press in March, 2017, and was a finalist for the 2017 Foreword Reviews Best Book of the Year award. Her recently completed picture book project for Disney Publishing Worldwide, Mulan’s Lunar New Year, will be released in October 2018.

TEN TIPS TO MAKE YOUR DIALOGUE SING

Jody Gehrman:

Thursday, September 27, 2018 5:30-7:30

Ukiah Public Library

Many writers struggle with dialogue, from the technical rules that govern its execution to the bigger questions of authenticity and voice. Join playwright, screenwriter and novelist Jody Gehrman as she shares her love of dialogue and her top ten tips for making yours come alive.

About Jody

Jody Gehrman has authored eleven published novels and numerous plays for stage and screen. Her first suspense novel, Watch Me, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2018. Jody’s plays have been produced or had staged readings in Ashland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and L.A. Her newest full-length, Tribal Life in America, won the Ebell Playwrights Prize. She is a professor of Communications at Mendocino College.

IDEA SETS: HOW TO CREATE IDEAS OUT OF THIN AIR

Rena Rockford

Rena Rockford presented the basic components of stories and the structure of stories in three acts. She also talked about idea sets, and how to use them to determine good story ideas from not so good story ideas.

About Rena

Like most mad scientists, Rena Rocford has made an art form of living as a muggle. Today the bills, tomorrow the world. She writes science fiction and fantasy for all ages from her secret base in wine country. When she isn’t planning for world domination, Rena creates nerdy art and enjoys spending time with her family and friends. She unleashed her first book Acne, Asthma, And Other Signs You Might Be Half Dragon on the world. The companion novel, Prom, Magic, and Other Man-Made Disasters has been released on the world with more to follow.

If you are interested in the program or want to find out more, please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434 or carrm@mendocinocounty.org

Out of the Ashes: Writing Stories & Poems from the Fires

Writing Workshops with Linda Noel, Michael Riedell, & Theresa Whitehill

If you were affected by the 2017 Mendocino County wildfires, we invite you to tell your story or express your experience in poetry with us in a series of writing workshops presented by three Ukiah Poets Laureate.

Introductory Writing Workshop Informational Meeting & Sign-Up: Sunday, August 19, 2018 at 1:30pm

Writing Workshop Schedule (attend one or more, there is no requirement to attend all three)

- Sunday, August 26, 2018 1:30-3:30pm with Linda Noel

- Sunday, September 9, 2018 1:30-3:30pm with Theresa Whitehill

- Sunday, September 16, 2018 1:30-3:30pm with Michael Riedell

Participants will have the opportunity to share their writings developed at these workshops at events planned for October in participation with Out of the Ashes, a community project organized by local artists, fire survivors, and other individuals who have come together to respond to the wildfires with community arts projects. They will also be invited to contribute their works to the Mendo Fire Storybook if they so choose.