Mendocino County Today: Friday, Sep. 28, 2018

• Showers Ahead
• Library Reopening
• Doppelgangers
• 1935 Footballers
• Primary Resources
• Kemper Waived
• Vineyard Explorations
• C'mon Month
• The Deciders
• Yesterday's Catch
• Kavanaugh Circus
• Inflicting Pain
• Little Dog
• Misogynist Judges
• Horrorshow
• Different Reactions
• HostageCare
• New Allegations
• Post-truth
• Brett Stumbled
• ChildCrap
• Sentimentality
• Weekend
• Public Torture
• ERRP Events
• Broadband Survey
• Sham Philosophers
• Brazilian Music
• Zen Meditation
• Community Grants

MENDO AREA WEATHER: SHOWERS AHEAD

Temperatures will cool across the region during the remainder of the week as a storm system approaches from the west. Showers and a few thunderstorms will be possible during Saturday, with additional showers occurring Sunday into early next week. Warmer and drier conditions will then develop during the middle of next week. (National Weather Service)

ATTENTION BOOK DINOSAURS

Library Lines

The Unity Club’s A.V. Community Library reopens Tuesday, October 9th, at 1:00. We have changed our hours. We will be open Tuesday from 1:00 - 4:00 and Saturday our hours will be 12:30 - 2:30. We hope that people will find the new hours more accommodating. So bring back your books and check out the new books we have acquired over the summer.

Thanks, Elizabeth Dusenberry

ADD LOOK ALIKES:

 

AV FOOTBALL, 1935

Norm Clow Writes: In view of the loss of football at AV and around the county as you wrote in last week’s Valley People, for historical perspective here’s a yearbook photo of the first AVUHS football team, in the Fall of 1935. Oddly enough, that seems to have been a one-time event for several years, as there’s no further yearbook record of football until the 1947-48 school year, from whence it lumbered on for seventy years. And, yes, it’s a shame folks otherwise won’t get to see Round Valley in the autumn. You and I made the trip together more than once, and it was well worth the long drive

FINDING A HOME FOR HISTORY

by Katy M. Tahja

Primary resources, in a historian’s world, are original materials upon which researchers can study to begin writing books or articles about any person or subject. If someone collected my handwritten draft of this newspaper story and saved it they’d have a primary resource. Once the Anderson Valley Advertiser printed it that article would become a secondary resource.

Kelley House Museum in Mendocino had a docent named Marty Simpson who passed away this spring. Your correspondent came into possession of his library and in it was a mini treasure trove of important primary resources. Marty’s dad Seth Simpson had been the librarian of the Oakland Tribune for decades and somehow, somewhere, he was given a packet of 26 letters from the early 1870’s. In it was correspondence from the Peralta family, early settlers on the shores of the East Bay.

Marty Simpson looked forward to digging into these letters, written in Spanish with an English translation, and writing a story about them, but he never got the chance. He left it to me to decide what to do with them. While I have a wide range of interests the financial doings of a California rancho family is not one of them, so I went looking for a new home for them.

The history of this esteemed Peralta family is an interesting one. Don Luis Peralta served 40 years in the Spanish Army in California before the Mexican revolution and was awarded a 44,800-acre land grant, known as Rancho San Antonio, in 1820. It embraced the sites of the cities of San Leandro, Oakland, Alameda, Emeryville, Piedmont, Berkeley and Albany. That’s not a bad chunk of real estate.

Settling these lands were the four sons of Peralta, their families, Mexican laborers and native peoples. The hacienda became a social and commercial center of the East Bay with 8,000 head of cattle, 2,000 horses and a wharf into the bay for shipping. Over 50 years 16 houses were built and in 1842 the family started fighting over land splits and distribution and court battles continued for decades. While they had clear land titles they had problems with squatters over-running their lands, especially after the Gold Rush, and had to sell off lands to pay legal fees and newly imposed taxes.

I believe it was the grandsons of the Perlata dynasty that were writing back and forth in 1872-73 about the financial difficulties they were experiencing and legal entanglements. So what to do with these new found letters? Contact the nirvana of California State history, the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. Did they want these letters? You bet they did. What are the chances of finding 145 year old Peralta family primary resources in this day and age? Slim to none.

Librarian Peter Hanff welcomed me when I arrived with the papers and an 1848 Oakland Tribune newspaper that I found in the materials. I was given a tour of the Bancroft and assured there were researchers who would be thrilled to go over theses Peralta papers. So I was pleased, the Bancroft was delighted, and I think Marty’s spirit would approve. But this little adventure made me think about finding old documents and what to do with them.

Be it a city, town or village most every place has a library or museum. If you inherit your Great-Aunt Mable’s papers what are you going to do with them? As with the Peralta papers “one man’s trash is another man’s treasures…” they might mean something to someone. It’s just a matter of how much time you can dedicate to the project.

Say Great-Aunt Mable died here in California but she came from Nebraska and there’s lots of letters, photos and a land deed or two from home place. Check to see if there is a museum in her home town that would like the materials. Her high school yearbooks from the 1940’s could be sent back to her old high school to be enjoyed in the library there. Then Great-Aunt Mable moved west and settled in the Sierra foothills. She became locally famous for her variations of apple pie and you have all her recipes. What to do with them? There’s a lovely series of cookbooks done by the Apple Hill Grower’s Association in Camino of apple recipes. Send them Great-Aunt Mable’s recipe collection for the next edition of their book.

The possibilities are endless as to what group might like and use Great-Aunt Mable’s possessions and when all else fails there are always thrift stores. Ever seen an “Instant Ancestors” box of old photos of people in a thrift store? I have. Yes, all this is more work than walking to a dumpster and tossing the box of letters, books and photos away, but someone somewhere down the road may make use of those resources. Think before you toss! Your local museum may thank you.

THAT WAS A NEAT TRICK mental health consultant Lee Kemper pulled on Mendo. He accepted a contract to do a Needs Assessment of Mendo’s mental health system for $40k. He told the Measure B Committee he’d do it for $40k even if it took more than $40k. Then, when he submitted his bill, he included $28k more of additional expenses which he generously “waived.” Which more or less kept his part of the bargain. But Mendo didn’t want to accept Mr. Kemper’s supposed gift of $28k. Please take this public money, Mr. Kemper. Hell, it's not coming out of our pockets.

IN DISCUSSING KEMPER’S BILL at Tuesday Supes meeting, CEO Angelo told the Board of Supervisors:

“Mr. Kemper contracted for a mental health assessment for a total dollar amount of $40,000. On September 5 we received an invoice from Mr. Kemper and that was for $40,000 and it also included his waiving of approximately $28,000. I called him to try to get clarification on this particular invoice. He said that he had contracted with the county for $40,000 but given the additional meetings and the additional phone calls and that Measure B actually assigned a liaison and he was in contact with that liaison that took him longer than anticipated to gather data from staff and also the contractors to analyze that data and so he did expend more time and labor to the tune of just about $28,000 and if you include his travel here for additional meetings with this board it would be approximately $28,000. So the invoice came in on September 5 which was too late for the September 11 meeting. This was the soonest we could get this in front of the board, today, September 25. So I would respectfully ask us to compensate Mr. Kemper for his additional work. I think it's prudent for three reasons — really. One is the county pays its bills and in almost 12 years I have never known Mendocino County to not pay their bills. Secondly, Mr. Kemper did the work, we know he did the work, we know he did the additional work. I can tell you about phone calls I had with him after hours which added to the additional $28,000. Not only did he do the work but he presented us with an exemplary report and ideally that can take us through the next 5-10 years as far as not only a psychiatric facility but our whole mental health system. So I am bringing this forward because my recommendation to this board is that we do compensate Mr. Kemper. My hope is that we will have a long-standing relationship. If you look at what we have going forward we are still talking about whatever the system looks like, we are still talking about a psychiatric facility. We will need further assistance whether it's from Mr. Kemper or somebody else that is a mental health expert. So it is my recommendation that we pay him the additional dollars. Thank you.”

Supervisor Carre Brown: “I still think there are explanations needed and extra meetings. Would that cover it? Is Mr. Kemper going to come before the board and talk with us? Would this cover that?”

Angelo: “Yes. Mr. Kemper is scheduled to come to the second meeting in October I believe. So this will cover his travel and his presentation time to this board. It also did cover his time going to Measure B committee meetings as well.”

Brown: “If there are questions out there can we ask? If people are needing more clarification from Mr. Kemper can those be submitted previous to that October scheduled time so he's aware of them and informed?”

Angelo: “Yes. We can do that.”

Brown: “Thank you.”

Supervisor John McCowen: “I appreciate the CEO highlighting this item for some discussion because from the agenda summary it wasn't completely clear that this is primarily to pay for the services already rendered. To Mr. Kemper's credit he was intending not to submit an invoice for it. He was going to stick by the original $40,000 for the contract. I do believe he spent a lot more time on that. I think the Kemper report, not unexpectedly, was a great document that took an honest look at our current system. I did find it [presumably the mental health system, not the report] wanting in many ways, but that's why we hired him to get an honest look at it. So I don't have any issue with the additional amount and paying him for the work that he actually did.”

McCowen and his colleagues then launched into a tedious discussion about how the belated $28,000 (non-)bill should be processed and whether the Measure B committee should look at the additional amount before the Board approved it, even though it was clear the County was going to approve it. In the end they finally decided to postpone the final approval of the $68k until their next meeting after the Measure B committee meets. (Although the Measure B Committee’s agenda did not include an item about Kemper’s larger than contracted for bill.)

SUPERVISOR BROWN IS CORRECT to be worried about the cost of additional activity by Mr. Kemper. Because it’s now clear that he can provide as many services as he likes, list them on his bill as “waived,” and the County will pay them anyway.

THIS IS NOT A GOOD WAY to hire and pay consultants. If you’re going to hire them on a time and materials basis (as this appears to be) then you put in a specific mechanism to cover costs as they arise — in advance — and you have a clearly identfied contracting officer overseeing the activity to make sure the activity is in-scope and authorized and that the budget can cover it in advance.

BUT, HEY, this is Mendo. We do things differently.

YESTERDAY WE COMMENTED about the declining fortunes of the Vineyard Crossing housing proposal made by Chico developer Doug Guillon based on additional requirements that the County has imposed on Mr. Guillon as described in CEO Angelo’s CEO report.

GOING BACK over the Tuesday Supes discussion of that item we noted that Supervisor John McCowen had pursued the issue further.

McCowen: “Even though a member of the public may not have called out an issue, we are still going to explore that issue in depth, aren't we?”

FORMER Planning Director and current disaster recovery director Nash Gonzalez replied: “Correct. Correct. This is just an opportunity to give people an opportunity to provide their side or their views of what the EIR should contain. Supervisor Hamburg pointed out they are not required, but we went the extra step. We are saying, please [the public] tell us what you think, what you perceive as an issue? But the consultant will still study all of the issues that are pertinent. In fact there are already issues dealing with water, dealing with utilities, public services -- just about everything in the initial study has to be looked at. But in this case we bypassed the initial study knowing that all these issues need to be looked at.”

McCowen: “Thank you.”

Gonzalez: “You're welcome.”

Angelo: “The only other comment I would like to make on this is that before the Vineyard Crossing was actually called Vineyard Crossing, the developers, had a community meeting, and that was really to reach out to the people that really want -- who are not really supportive of this project. And no one showed up. Just a handful at best. That does not mean that everybody supported the project. It is interesting that there was very little turnout for this and I don't think it really can speak to what really is happening. But the greater concern that I have, Mr. Gonzalez and I both, we talked with this developer and they have attempted to really be on a fast track with this project. And so if their response now is that they are not going to have their information to us until winter I believe you said — I'm not sure when it is, are we talking December? January? I don't know. But I know that they are on a fast track for some very good reasons. I'm not quite sure really at this point why there's a bit of a delay."

ONE POSSIBLE ANSWER is that Mendo can be very hard to satisfy when it comes to permit and EIR paperwork. We wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the developer is starting to rethink the entire idea. If Mr. Guillon is being asked to spend who knows how much on more data or paperwork to be submitted to a demanding and nitpicky Planning Department and their equally demanding consultant on an ever-expanding list of “issues” with no idea how or when it will end, we can understand his reluctance — even if Guillon did at one time want the project on a “fast track.” (For example, Mr. Gonzalez mentioned water and utilities, so where is the water going to come from (including for fire protection)? What will Mr. Guillon have to submit as proof of water availability? And what is the developer’s situation with the Ukiah Valley Sanitation District whose capacity, legal status and rates are, to put it mildly, up in the air?)

COME ONE, COME ALL

AV Foodshed’s 13th annual C’mon Home To Eat in October 2018 is about to be in full swing.  While the harvest is at its height, C’mon is a month long celebration centered on eating local food at home and in town. For a preview, there will be a First Friday Farmers’ Market event (10/5/18) at the Boonville Hotel parking lot from 4-7 p.m. replete with music, local food/craft vendors, the apple press and fresh cider, food, and local businesses staying open (including wine tasting).  All during October our local eateries will be highlighted, creating a myriad of community celebrations and serving especially local food.  At each C’mon event there will be raffle tickets available (when you purchase an item or a meal) for a drawing at the Grange Holiday Dinner.  You can also enter a raffle ticket each time you shop at a local farm stand during the month. Raffle prizes will be dinners at the Bewildered Pig and the Boonville Hotel/Table 128 plus gift certificates to local farm stands. There will be “shelf talkers” at the grocery stores—little signs that indicate locally sourced food. And there will be two opportunities to go gleaning for your own consumption or to donate to the Food Bank. If there is time left after the gleaning, the fruit, veggies, nuts, olives, etc. gleaners will preserve it too. AV Feed and Grain will be giving a 20% discount on plants and packaged seeds on Saturdays during October. Our local grain purveyor, Mendocino Grain Project will be featured all month and you will also be able to purchase MGP flour from heritage grains at Boont Berry Store.  The real challenge is How Local Can You Go?

For the 1st week in October C’mon Home To Eat features the KZYX Farm & Garden Show on October 1st with Ruthie; Mosswood a special local soup special on October 3rd; October 4th the Boonville Hotel/Table 128 community night (please make a reservation); on October 5th the First Friday Farmers’ Market; on October 6th Lauren’s community night, on October 8th the KZYX Farm & Garden Show with Gowan; and on the 9th the Senior Center dinner with pineapple pepper chicken (local peppers and mushrooms), local squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, and local apple cobbler for dessert. The Boonville General Store will have daily and weekly local specials all month. On Wednesdays Mosswood will have a special. Throughout October Boont Berry will feature local apple desserts, Paysanne hot apple cider, and the high school cafeteria will have its local salad bar. You can find the whole calendar and more information at http://www.avfoodshed.com

Boonville Hotel Parking Lot

4:00-7:00ish

As part of C’mon Home to Eat this October, the AV Foodshed is organizing a First Friday Night Farmers’ Market on Friday October 5, from 4:00-7:00ish.  The Boonville Hotel has graciously offered the use of their parking lot for this one-time market event, where you can come buy fresh produce, processed foods, and crafts from our local farmers and artisans, while enjoying live music and yummy bites from local food vendors.  To make for an even more festive evening, some downtown businesses plan to stay open later.

We will have the Apple Press at the market as well for anyone wanting to bring fruit for pressing (please be sure to bring your own jars for the juice, and a container for the refuse).

THE DECIDERS (Coast Listserve)

Liz: Also, opinions expressed via the KZ comment line (707-895-9619)  are noted by the deciders in Philo. They have been actively inviting  listener opinions re the recent schedule changes. Yielding to massive  public outcry, they switched Fresh Air back to noon.

* * *

Marco McClean: Oh, you mean the deciders in the KZYX office who suck $300,000 out of the station for themselves every year, who pay the local airpeople zero while requiring you and all the others to beg for their money for them in seasonal pledge drives, and whose abysmal incompetence at radio would have utterly sunk KZYX every single year going back to the beginning if not for a handful of rich controlling-interest secret donors and the annual six-figure federal CPB shot in the arm? Where all the transmitters and studios pumping at once cost less than a dollar an hour to run, while the high-power broadcast license, granted to Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Corporation's control for free, is a license to coin money, and still the station is constantly dead broke? Those deciders?

And whoop-de-doo, Fresh Air. Terry Gross is paid upwards of $250,000 a  year for doing her hour-long NPR Fresh Air show, to interview the  grandson of the inventor of the windshield wiper about his new gluten-free cake business or to chuckle with Henry Kissinger over tea and cigars. Just Ira Glass and the two producers of his one-hour-a-week NPR show get $500,000 a year. Liz, aren't you worth even ten dollars an  hour for your show, with all the prep you do and all the decades of  experiential oomph behind it, not to mention the literal ton of music  library you maintain? You do a two hour show, the decider there lounging around in his leather chair in his pin-stiped suit should peel you off a twenty from his clip, at least, on your way out, whether you or the boys let him slap yez on the ass or not.

CATCH OF THE DAY, September 27, 2018

JOSE CEJA-LOPEZ, Domestic abuse, failure to appear, probation revocation.

MATTHEW FAUST, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JOSEPHINE LOOMIS, Lakeport/Willits. Reckless driving, evasion, resisting.

BRADLEY MAXFIELD, Willits. Vehicle theft, taking vehicle without owner’s consent.

MICHAEL MILLER, Fort Bragg. Parole violation.

RANDY MILLER, Ukiah. Parole violation.

CRAIG SORBO, Fort Bragg. Assault with deadly weapon with great bodily injury.

MICHAEL STAGG, Disobeying court order.

YVETTE VASQUEZ, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

MICHAEL WILLIAMS, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

ANDREA WRIGHT, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

THE KAVANAUGH CIRCUS

Editor,

How do you find truth and reliability from any source in this milieu of hatred, lies and distortions? This used to be a land of freedoms where we could pursue our own way to contentment — a place where one was presumed innocent until proven guilty, where others’ opinions were heard, whether accepted or not.

Now everything promotes a march, a backlash, disruption, in-your-face obscenities. Witness the frenzy in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation in which Democrats stated their opposition before the first hearing.

They had ample time one on one and in open session to ask anything, but they turned the whole event into a circus. Allowing their minions to holler and rant and disrupt is a disgrace and erodes respect for them and the judicial system. Funded by their billionaire backers, their harassers trample on all. So truth doesn’t matter, fairness doesn’t matter. If someone decides to paint you with a tainted brush, just accept it.

We have the #MeToo movement, which outed some real predators but has evolved into bashing males. If females feel so threatened, why do they dress so provocatively?

Come November, I shall not squander my vote on those who show such disrespect for others.

Barbara Cuneo

Windsor

WHAT KAVANAUGH REALLY LEARNED IN HIGH SCHOOL: MAKE THE RULES, BREAK THE RULES, AND PROSPER

by Joann Wypijewski

Brett Kavanaugh cannot prove a negative, his supporters say, and should not be judged on something he may or may not have done when he was a youth. On those two points, they are correct. I might think they were also sincere if the right-wing powers behind him had ever cared about poor people, black and brown people, asylum-seekers, anyone who’s been in prison, any kid being tried as an adult, anyone branded a sex offender, anyone convicted by the press before trial, or by police on the side of the road, or by the architects of Guantanamo—that is, the multitude in the cross-hairs of suspicion, commonly denied equity, due process and the possibility of redemption.

Kavanaugh’s sexual inquisitors are similarly flippant about justice. They ignore the problem of proving a negative and simply declare him a liar; they then focus on the story of Christine Blasey Ford, declare it true and steam ahead, affirming that accusation equals guilt and the bad acts of youth should forever color the life chances of an adult—scourges that those in the cross-hairs mentioned above know intimately. The sophomoric cruelties of Kavanaugh’s partisans, belching from the internet and in live threats, only bolster their opposite number’s argument that man is forever an adolescent. The late-hour accusation by a former Yale classmate has the odor of pile-on, and its flimsiness, in The New Yorker’s new panting approach to reporting, could be used to subvert Ford. I’m tempted to say that when it comes to sexual politics, a lot of grown-ups are acting like high-schoolers, but that would be a slur on youth.

Virtually everything about this spectacle except the tentative, then stoic intervention of Ford reeks of bad faith. Wisdom crouches in the corner, silent. Yet wisdom—have we forgot?—is the fundamental and ancient criterion for a judge. Kavanaugh has failed the test of wisdom not by what he is accused of doing when he was 17 and drunk but by his adult neglect of reflection and his indifference to suffering, something this moment puts in a sharper light. He does not deserve to be on any court, much less the Supreme Court.

That does not get his unwise antagonists off the hook, though.

For anyone who still cares about principle, the Kavanaugh case is not a matter of belief, nor will it come down to proving or disproving Ford’s allegations. The Senate confirmation process is not a court of law. It is, however—in theory if not in fact—an arena for considering the problems and promise of justice, for taking the measure of a man, in this case, and his capacity to think deeply, to search bravely, to act humanely, beyond the limit of mere ambition. Ford’s intervention puts the hard stuff of humanity at the center of that arena, something that has been absent, most strikingly in the Senate’s challenge to Kavanaugh’s greatest ethical failure: his response to torture.

For reasons probably of racism (and partly the nature of sex scandal) torture has never raised the temperature of politics or the public to the same fever as sexual accusation. Ford’s entrance and her story, which is so particularly human, so simple yet complex, so weighty with moral dimension, call the profound questions on that subject. (Whether they will have that effect on the Senate is doubtful.)

We cannot know what happened one night in suburban Maryland in 1982. Pretending we can is dishonest, and the events Ford describes are no more or less believable because of the highly fishy Yale claim or the latest-breaking third accuser (I shall not address those.) So what do we know?

We know that Ford has suffered. We know that she is brave; like Anita Hill, she can gain nothing from coming out that compensates for the slings and arrows, the scandal-jacked press, the overwhelming din, whether of support or suspicion, that she is enduring. We know that as teenagers she and Kavanaugh occupied a social set where fun was fueled by getting blind drunk and being stupid. Maybe her story is true; maybe it became confused over time, in small ways, or consequential ones. Her lawyer has said she had one beer on the night at the center of the story. Maybe it hit her hard; maybe she had more and can’t remember, along with the other details that easily blur or slip away, especially in a culture where forgetting is often played for laughs.

I spent most of high school going to parties like this. Everyone was drunk, including the kids behind the wheel in the car home. Afterward—amazing that we lived—a standard line was “Oh my god, you were so wasted… I was so wasted… he was so wasted…” Everyone laughed, sometimes memorializing the events later in yearbook messages sprinkled with in-jokes. One time a girl woke me in the morning to check if the car was in the yard; she couldn’t remember driving home. Plenty of kids forgot making out, passing out, throwing up. In the time since, I have not heard of anyone from that crowd accusing another or being accused of assault, but an accuser’s years of silence would not be surprising—sexual honesty was not our strength—nor would dumbfounded blankness on the part of the accused. Why were we so insecure with one another? Longing for connection, attention, a kiss, why were all of us, girls and boys alike mustered in our single-sex schools, so afraid that we were willing to be foolish pretending not to be, pretending that we couldn’t hurt or be hurt?

What do we know?

Wasted is the title of a lightly veiled memoir about being stupid drunk at Georgetown Prepatory School and beyond by Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s high school friend, whom Ford says was in the room and involved on the night of the assault she alleges. In a letter, Judge has told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I have no memory of this alleged incident.” Blacking out, remembering nothing, were regular experiences for Judge, going by his book, so it is entirely possible this statement is true. Others whom Ford named as being at the party have said they had no memory or knowledge of it or of Kavanaugh, which proves nothing. That’s how memory works when nothing harrowing happens to you. A group of women, some who have known Kavanaugh since high school, have written that he was the sober boy on the side, eager for a chat about philosophy. Maybe, but it is hard to believe that the treasurer of the Keg City Club, accomplice in the blotto culture outside school and at Rehobeth beach in summer, where kids tore up houses without a care, was not more like Bart O’Kavanaugh in Wasted—drunk and passed out in a car—at least some of the time. That’s how high school works.

Kavanaugh says he never got so drunk as to pass out or not remember. And the truth is, even if he had, none of this proves he attacked Ford. Granting the accused the full benefit of the doubt, we will probably have to live with uncertainty. We don’t have to live with Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.

The past does impinge on the present; one should learn something from it. Kavanaugh has had thirty-five years to think about high school, specifically the formative culture of elite men. Thirty-five years to reflect on why so many felt the need to annihilate their personalities, why they were so careless and aggressive, how they thought about girls and sex and, especially, the privilege of breaking rules and getting away with it. It appears now that this former self-described member of the “Rehobeth Police Fan Club” had not thought about it a bit.

If his first statements after Ford went public were typically bland denials vetted by lawyers—variations on “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation”—he had a chance, in his Fox interview of September 23, to offer some insight on the culture that fortified him and anguished Ford. Martha MacCallum prodded him for any thoughts on women’s expressed experience, on memory, on competing versions of the past, on whether anyone (say, someone who might come before him in court) should forever be judged by youthful behavior. Kavanaugh was a robot. He ventured no ideas, no interest in the human condition, no sense of moral wrestling, even in the abstract. He had his talking points.

Ambition says, Stick to the script; play it safe even at the risk of appearing to be a depthless drone. Wisdom would say otherwise. Intellectual curiosity and a feeling for justice would say otherwise.

When Kavanaugh was assistant White House counsel from 2001-2003, his office was immersed in one of the most momentous debates in this country’s history. His boss, Alberto Gonzales, was seeking legal justifications for torture, for detention without trial, for ignoring the Geneva Conventions and pissing on habeas corpus, the ‘great writ’, legal obstacle to tyranny since the 12^th century. Put another way, the Bush administration was debating how to break the rules and get away with it. At issue was not the anodyne “power of the president” but the power to inflict pain.

Even before the confirmation hearings began there was much attention to Kavanaugh’s record over this period: the documents withheld or belatedly released, the secrets yet to know, the points to be scored as Spartacus. So many were so busy posturing that they forgot that the most important answers were not to be found in records, however illuminating, but in this nominee’s ability to address the question: Where is justice to be found in the contest between the mighty and the meanest, as Solomon put it; and how do the just respond in the face of suffering?

By simply entering the arena, a person in pain, Ford casts in shadow all the procedural wrangle and makes plain that which has been obfuscated on a host of issues but on torture most acutely, and aptly in Kavanaugh’s case: the human person and the exercise of power. The figure of the person—how many thousands gone? (and, no, I am not equating Ford’s experience with anyone else’s)—prompts a different consideration of the record, one grounded not in documents but in ethics, human sympathy, where the issue of torture always belonged but which has been obscured by two decades parsing the intricacies of cruelty: how much pain? to the point of organ failure? who was in charge? who authorized? who was in the loop? Shifting the focus lights up Kavanaugh’s deficits, though hardly his alone.

Kavanaugh has long repeated he “was not involved” in US torture policy, and technically he was not authorized even to know about it. “I don’t recall having any conversations with Brett about torture,” Gonzales has said. But of course he knew something about it; everyone knew something, if only by watching CNN in January of 2002 as masked US soldiers met prisoners from Afghanistan coming off a plane in Guantanamo—orange jumpsuits, manacles, turquoise hoods over their faces. The men had been chained to the plane for 8,000 miles. We know Kavanaugh was involved in at least one heated discussion about denying detainees legal representation. He is not reported to be among those who got heated, and years later on the federal bench, he would deny a habeas corpuspetition from a Guantanamo prisoner in Bihani v. Obama (flouting the Court on which he hopes to sit in the process by arguing that the US government has no obligations under international law that haven’t been codified by domestic statute).

Job duties notwithstanding, everyone in the White House counsel’s office was confronted with a moral choice, which was also a choice about justice and humanity: Will you accommodate suffering? Will you be any part of the machinery that seeks to exact and justify it?

Kavanaugh was willing to accommodate suffering. How many additional meetings he may have been in is incidental. More, his “not involved” involvement is either gutless evasion or further evidence of an incurious mind, a profound apathy toward knowing, questioning, reasoning independently. In 2004, as the president’s staff secretary, he was copied on a White House email outlining a public relations strategy saying Bush “has never considered authorizing torture under any circumstances.” It was a lie, put about after an infamous “torture memo” was revealed in the press. Kavanaugh told the Senate in 2006 that he hadn’t known of the memo until it was leaked; maybe so, but once he did know he had a chance to intervene, to oppose the deception at least, and he did not. He accommodated deception.

Torture was officially an embarrassment by 2006 (though still in use). Ambitious for a judgeship, Kavanaugh was safe telling the Senate, “I do not agree with the legal analysis in the memorandum, including with respect to the definition of torture.” Ambitious for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court this year, he flattered Senator Dianne Feinstein for her report on the CIA torture program; then he declined to say what he thought about Trump’s advocacy of waterboarding and worse, danced around a question on the Bush torture policy and presented himself as a mere paper-pusher for a 2005 signing statement in which Bush declared that he could ignore the congressional prohibition of torture that he’d just autographed. “It would’ve crossed my desk,” Kavanaugh said of the statement, relying again on the benefits of playing the dimwit. Feinstein tired of the exchange, which Kavanaugh capped with a bow to the importance of “backbone.”

Except for a handful of low-level working-class soldiers, everyone who ordered, justified, implemented or looked the other way at the torture policy got away with it. The elite white men and women got a step up. George Bush got to paint all day at his ranch. Gina Haspel got to be CIA director. Jay Bybee, who signed the memos authorizing torture, got to be a federal judge, just like Kavanaugh. Harvard used to tell its students, “You are the best and the brightest,” the future ruling class. I don’t know what it tells them now or how Yale greeted Kavanaugh, but the vital lesson he seems to have taken from Georgetown Prep is a corollary to Harvard’s: the ruling class makes the rules and breaks them and prospers in blameless irresponsibility.

You could be cynical about it and joke that with Kavanaugh at least there’s truth in advertising, but again the figure in pain enters to cut the laughter. Titan and CACI, multimillion-dollar private security contractors, had translators and interrogators who tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib. They got away with it, too. Kavanaugh gave them the pass. He joined the opinion of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals that not only prevented Iraqi victims from suing the corporations in civil court but established sweeping immunity from liability for private contractors in battle arenas into the future. The language of the opinion is obtuse, antiseptic; the reader may be forgiven for forgetting what the case is about. It took Merrick Garland, in dissent, to recognize the suffering subject—the human person beaten, blinded, humiliated, strung up, shocked, raped, forced to watch his father die, extinguished. No one would be held to account. Kavanaugh washed his hands.

Now, pitying himself, he says he wants his dignity. He abdicated that long before anyone heard Christine Blasey Ford’s name.

(JoAnn Wypijewski is co-editor of Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence. She can be reached at jwyp@earthlink.net. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org)

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I never heard ONE person ridicule ANY men for coming forward with allegations about Catholic priest molestation after 35 years. Not one.”

A READER WRITES: Why on earth would these women come out??? They are not so stupid as to know they will only get death threats and be in danger from Trump's tribe. A dear friend of mine works at Palo Alto University and knows Ford. She said she’s a very unobtrusive, quiet, very smart woman. Very respected. She also had done a lot of work at Stanford in research on TRAUMA. Um... wonder why? And that they have security at the school because reporters are camped out. My son is Kavanaugh’s exact age and grew up in his neighborhood in Montgomery County and knew lots of people at his private school and her private school. He told me that at that time in this county on the outskirts of DC where the well-off lived, this kind of drunken party crazy was constant. "Kavanaugh’s school was known for the guys assaulting women, getting them drunk.” He said… "This is what was going on in Montgomery County in those years.” If the Republicans put him through, every sane woman in this country will vote for a Democrat in the midterms whether they are one or not. It’s a terrible affront to doubt these allegations like these women are liars. Look at Bill Cosby!!! He got away with a terrible kind of assault for years and years. And it doesn’t matter if they were in high school, what if this was your daughter? How would you feel? Girls that age would rarely tell their parents. When a man is aggressive and/or violent, a woman has no safety. And most women do not make claims that are lies, especially if they are educated. No doubt there are vile women who try to hurt men with accusations. But I know women. It’s just not the norm. With men, lying their way out of trouble is a norm. And most men are really good liars, those who have little integrity or a moral compass. For God’s sake, Trump has 15 women who have come out about him. But this guy will get a pass from the right wing nuts and it is beyond comprehension. Now we’ll have two clear male misogynists on the Court. Good luck America. And good luck to women. We will never live in the same country again after this if he goes on the Court and worse if Trump gets re-elected. "

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #2

I'd love to see the truth come out. I can only rely on what we know. There's no date or address. The four people named (by the accuser) as having been there have denied (under penalty of felony) having any knowledge of it happening, or even being at such a gathering. I believe that Dr. Ford believes that something happened to her. If true, I don't believe it happened in the way she claims it did, and I most certainly don't believe (with the evidence that's been presented or more correctly, the lack of) that it was Kavanaugh.

* * *

ANYONE who ever attended Catholic school or hung around rich frat boys will have known a Brett Kavanaugh or two: utterly amoral, habitually, compulsively dishonest, and so privileged and coddled that freedom from the consequences of his actions seems to him like the natural order of things.

— Larry Livermore

'I WILL NEVER FORGET': KAVANAUGH ACCUSER TESTIFIES AS NEW ALLEGATIONS EMERGE

Christine Blasey Ford prepares for committee hearing as Kavanaugh denies new claims in interview with Republicans

by Lauren Gambino (Thursday morning)

Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor who has accused the supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers, will tell the US Senate judiciary committee on Thursday that she will “never forget” what happened to her at a Maryland house party nearly 36 years ago.

Kavanaugh’s nomination to the supreme court hangs in the balance. He and Ford will deliver diametrically opposing accounts at the extraordinary televised hearing, as fresh accusations of sexual misconduct and contradictory charges swirl around a circus-like confirmation process that has been described as “surreal” and “political as hell”.

The committee – 11 Republicans, all men, and 10 Democrats – will each have five minutes to question Kavanaugh and Ford. It will be the first time the country sees and hears from Ford since she came forward with her contention less than two weeks ago.

“I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t remember as much as I would like to,” Ford will tell the panel, according to prepared remarks released on Wednesday. “But the details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget.”

In her testimony, Ford calls Kavanaugh “the boy who sexually assaulted me”, ruling out any suggestion that she may be confusing him with another person.

But late on Wednesday night, the Senate judiciary committee released a timeline of all staff activity in response to the allegations against Kavanaugh. The summary disclosed that staff have interviewed two different men who each told investigators “he, not Judge Kavanaugh, had the encounter with Dr Ford in the summer of 1982 that is the basis of her allegation”. The committee did not identify the men.

In her testimony, Ford describes the night of the assault, stating: “I believed he was going to rape me.” She also explains the winding path that began with a letter to her congresswoman and an anonymous tip to the Washington Post and resulted in her stepping forward publicly and agreeing to testify on Capitol Hill.

“I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified,” she will say. “I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school.”

In his testimony, Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s second supreme court nominee, will acknowledge that he was “not perfect” in high school but will adamantly deny Ford’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her, declaring himself “innocent of this charge”. He has also unequivocally denied allegations of sexual misconduct made public by two other women this week.

“I drank beer with my friends, usually on weekends. Sometimes I had too many. In retrospect, I said and did things in high school that make me cringe now,” Kavanaugh will tell the committee, according to prepared remarks released by the committee on Wednesday. “But that’s not why we are here today. What I’ve been accused of is far more serious than juvenile misbehavior.”

A new accuser, Julie Swetnick, came forward on Wednesday, aided by the celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, to allege in a sworn declaration that she observed Kavanaugh at high school parties where women were verbally and physically abused, including being present at one in which she was the victim of a “gang rape”.

Kavanaugh dismissed the latest allegations as “ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone” as Trump stood by his embattled nominee, accusing Democrats of “bringing people out of the woods” in an 11th-hour attempt to block his confirmation.

The judge also denied two separate allegations against him in an interview with Republican investigators for the Senate judiciary committee, according to a transcript of the conference call released by the panel on Wednesday.

In the transcript, Kavanaugh denied assaulting a woman he was dating in 1998 while working for the independent counsel Ken Starr. The second incident he denied in the call related to an allegation made by an unidentified Rhode Island man “concerning a rape on a boat in August of 1985”.

Speaking on Wednesday, Trump said it was possible that he could change his mind on Kavanaugh.

“We’re giving the women a major chance to speak. It’s possible I’ll hear that and I’ll say: ‘Hey, I’m changing my mind.’ It’s possible,” he said.

But he otherwise stood by his nominee, calling the allegations against Kavanaugh a “big, fat con job”.

‘It has happened to me many times’

Speaking at length to reporters in New York, Trump said he viewed the accusations against Kavanaugh “differently” because he himself had “had a lot of false charges made against me”.

“You have a man who is great, outstanding, but he has charges against him,” Trump said, adding: “It has happened to me many times.”

Republicans had expected Kavanaugh to sail through his confirmation process, but it has deeply divided the country. Protesters have flooded the Capitol and staged walkouts while Kavanaugh’s supporters defend him as a lifelong champion of women and a distinguished jurist.

In light of the third accusation, the Democratic Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, has called on Kavanaugh to withdraw and another senator, Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to halt the hearing.

The Senate committee says it is making an effort to hold staff interviews with Swetnick and a third woman, Deborah Ramirez, who alleged in the New Yorker that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a drunken party when they were students at Yale.

Thursday’s hearing takes place against the backdrop of the #MeToo, a movement that has toppled powerful men across industries. Aware of the significance of the moment, the all-male Republican panel on the committee ceded their questions to the Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell in an effort, they say, to “depoliticize” the session.

Lawyers for Kavanaugh on Wednesday released to several news organizations five calendar pages from 1982 that will be presented to bolster his assertion that he was not at a house party with Ford decades ago.

At the same time, lawyers for Ford provided affidavits from four people – three from friends and one from her husband – who say that she told them in recent years she was assaulted by Kavanaugh when she was in high school. They also released a copy of a polygraph test she took in August, which concluded that her description of the account was “not indicative of deception”.

Republicans have scheduled a committee vote for Friday and many senators say they are eager to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination. But a handful of key Republican senators had said their vote hinges on Thursday’s hearing.

(theguardian.com)

BRETT KAVANAUGH'S CREDIBILITY HAS NOT SURVIVED THIS DEVASTATING HEARING

by Richard Wolffe

They say there are no heroes and no leaders left in Washington. Well one showed up in front of the Senate judiciary committee, and her name is Dr Christine Blasey Ford.

Victims are supposed to be many things: suffering creatures who struggle to withstand the klieg lights of a court, or a hearing. Dr Ford was something else entirely.

Her pain was clear each time her voice cracked and her eyes welled with tears. But her courage, decency and honesty was even clearer as she walked carefully over ground she plainly never wanted to revisit from her teenage years.

When Democratic senators were trying to score political points, she stuck to the facts as she remembered them, and the science behind why those memories are so vivid. When the Republican prosecutor was trying to poke holes in her credibility and memory, she offered her honest help in patiently answering an endless line of small-bore questions.

The contrast with the US supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, could not have been greater. He was hot and bothered from the outset, fiddling with his shirt cuffs, sniffing incessantly, anxiously unscrewing small bottles of water, spraying accusations across the political landscape.

He lapsed into his old role as a political hack, accusing a wide range of actors for his suffering: the media, the Democrats on the judiciary committee, a vast left-wing conspiracy, the Clintons. He predicted political Armageddon as sex was weaponized to destroy reputations, notably his own, as he was just on the verge of success.

“For decades to come I fear the country will reap the whirlwind,” he declared. “When I did at least okay enough at the hearings that it looked like I might actually get confirmed, a new tactic was needed. Some of you were lying in wait and had it ready.”

As a federal appeals court judge, Kavanaugh’s performance was jarringly unbalanced and at times unhinged.

As a former staffer to Ken Starr, the man who investigated Bill Clinton’s sexual scandals in excruciating and public detail, Kavanaugh seemed oblivious to his part in the very whirlwind that swept him up.

Republicans had two ways to defend Kavanaugh. One boiled down to mistaken identity: Dr Ford was assaulted, but she couldn’t be sure who. The other revolved around arcane process questions about committee letters and staffers, senators and protocol. The extended debate about process made the Republican chairman Chuck Grassley sound like the grumpy, batty octogenarian he really is.

But the questions about mistaken identity prompted two answers that were as explosive as they were definitive.

Dr Ford was asked about her strongest memory of the assault. The response was deeply moving to anyone with a living, beating heart. “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter, and their having fun at my expense,” Dr Ford said, as she turned her eyes down to her lap. “I was underneath one of them while the two of them laughed. Two friends having a really good time with one another.”

Another senator asked Dr Ford what was her degree of certainty about being assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh.

“100%” she said firmly.

In the silence that followed, you could hear Republicans gasping for air as they calculated the political cost of this nomination. What was larger? The number of votes they were losing among women versus the number of votes they would lose among Trump fanatics by putting this flatlining nomination out of its misery.

Senate hearings are political theater: a strange spectacle with legal trappings designed to showcase the leading actors, the senators themselves. So it was doubly strange to see one half of the actors step off stage and surrender their time to a career prosecutor.

They wanted to avoid the scene of a group of men badgering a woman about sexual assault. Sure enough, they managed to avoid looking like they were staging a witch trial. But by choosing silence they looked worse: like cowards.

While Democratic senators could express sympathy for Dr Ford and the searing memories of her sexual assault, their Republican counterparts gave their time to a technical deposition. The questions by Rachel Mitchell, a sex crimes prosecutor from Arizona, were cold and calculating.

At best the questions were tone deaf. At worst they were uncaring and self-defeating. Far from undermining the credibility of Dr Ford, the prosecutor made the professor look more credible, more human, and more sympathetic.

The same could not be said for the prosecutor’s questions of Kavanaugh. The more he was grilled about sex and alcohol, the worse he sounded. Did he drink to the point where he blacked out, or woke up in a different place, or found his clothes somewhere else? The questions themselves were tarnishing Kavanaugh even as they were intended to clear him.

“We drank beer. And sometimes we probably had too many beers,” Kavanaugh said, clinging to the only talking point that made him seem comfortable. “We drank beer. We liked beer.”

Did he drink too many beers?

“What are too many beers? I don’t know,” he said, seeming totally unprepared to talk about his favorite subject. “Whatever the chart says. The blood alcohol chart.”

The Republican senators soon abandoned the prosecutor and her pesky questions about penis-waving and gang rape, resorting instead to angry finger-wagging and complaints about the Democrats.

Aside from his impassioned denials, Kavanaugh’s defense hinged on one claim: that Dr Ford’s friend, Leland Ingham Keyser, didn’t recall the party or Kavanaugh. The judge claimed that meant Dr Ford’s accusations were not just uncorroborated but refuted. But they weren’t refuted, and Keyser also said she believed her friend.

In any case, the judge himself undermined Keyser’s blanket amnesia when he said that actually he knew her, probably at high school.

It was a pattern repeated throughout Kavanaugh’s many angry outbursts and interruptions. He claimed he had no calendar record of the party in question, so it didn’t take place. He even claimed he never attended any gathering of that kind.

But he also said he liked hanging out with his friends, drinking beers, and talking about girls. Which sounded remarkably like the night Dr Ford described.

For a guy who claimed to have busted his butt on his academics, it wasn’t clear that Kavanaugh busted his butt preparing for a hearing that will define his career and reputation. He had no coherent response for why he couldn’t support an FBI investigation into Dr Ford’s account.

When asked what he personally thought about an investigation, Kavanaugh sat in silence before blurting out something about the FBI not coming to conclusions.

Instead, Kavanaugh interrupted Democratic senators to press them on whether they liked to drink, and what they liked to drink. He teared up at strange moments, about his yearbook, his calendars, and his workouts with his football buddies.

The longer the questioning went on, the more he interrupted, the more evasive he sounded. He claimed his yearbook references to throwing up was just because of his weak stomach. It could have been spicy food, or could have been beer. Either way, he really loved beer and still does.

Kavanaugh’s nomination may, or may not, survive the Senate hearing on Thursday. But his credibility, testifying under oath for a lifetime job on the highest court in the land, did not.

Brett Kavanaugh’s former boss might have put it best. “You cannot defile the temple of justice,” Ken Starr intoned to reporters as he was carrying out the trash from his home.

That was back in the late 1990s, when Kavanaugh was, um, defiling the temple of justice by leaking confidential tidbits to those same reporters on behalf of Starr.

Two decades later, he and his Republican senator friends were shocked (shocked!) that confidential tidbits were getting leaked to reporters. The media was outrageously misreading his yearbook to concoct references to sex and beer. It was a sham, a con, that couldn’t possibly be subject to an FBI investigation because the Democrats were so political.

Nobody should suffer the public whirlwind that has swept up two families, the Fords and the Kavanaughs. No senators should bluster and rage when considering a supreme court nominee.

But more than anyone else in Washington, Brett Kavanaugh should know that he stumbled badly just as he believed he was striding towards his rightful place on the supreme court. You cannot defile the temple of justice when you want your own seat in the inner sanctum of the high temple itself.

(TheGuardian.com)

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Everyone is certainly entitled to their feelings, but this transgresses mere conscience. This involved the right to one’s own body. And the foetus is one with the mother’s body.

Remember, even Charles Manson’s mother loved him - they all stared adoringly into the ultrasound. What came next? For the rest, a lifetime of utter banality. You’re born, celebrated, and usually downgraded for the rest of your life. Before that, a cossetting form of baby-worship. A full blown Ego explosion in anticipation of self-realization, and pleasure. Many mothers are monsters, as are fathers. The community? A bunch of raving cult members clamoring to be involved in every intimate moment.

Our society, which consumes the world, surely consumes its own children. Infanticide in the old days was straightforward. Now, it is merely a medical and biological issue - scientific. There is simply no place for sentimentalism in the operating room as there is none in the Core of a Nuclear Reactor.

There is no place that sentimentality leads which is not darkness. In its dim embrace, come demonic faux morality, epic blindness, boundless hubris and unimaginable cruelty.

There can be no morality without logic, no ethics without reason.

“The weekend can’t come fast enough.”

THE DAY DC SHOULD HAVE DIED OF SHAME as it watched two broken souls be publicly tortured over their pasts in a viciously partisan bear-pit

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6216409/PIERS-day-DC-died-shame-Tears-rage-two-broken-souls-publicly-tortured.html

PARTY AT WILLITS HUB FOR WILD AND SCENIC RIVERS ACT 50TH BIRTHDAY AND LITTLE DARBY FIELD DAY

The Eel River Recovery Project (ERRP) is celebrating 50 years of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act on the evening of Friday, October 5 at the Willits Hub with a BBQ and presentations. On Saturday, October 6 there will be a walk and work day at the Little Darby Recreation Area.

The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was passed by Congress on October 2, 1968 and was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. A total of 394 miles of the Eel River has been designated Wild and Scenic, which means no additional dams can be built. Our celebration will include an albacore BBQ on Friday at 5 PM, followed by presentations. The featured speaker, Greg Israel, operates the Rubicon Adventures and will present a slide show entitled “Rafting the Wild and Scenic Eel River”. ERRP Wilderness Coordinator Phill Hosking will be on hand to talk about volunteer opportunities that include trail improvement and clean-up of trespass grows in Wilderness Areas.

Camping spot on Wild and Scenic walk to Elk Creek on September 15.

The celebration of the 50^th Anniversary of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act is sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The agency’s Arcata Office manages tracts in the Eel River watershed, including the Little Darby Recreation Area where Saturday’s walk and trail project will take place.

The Little Darby Recreation Area is located 5 miles east of Willits on Canyon Road and has outstanding natural values that include old growth Douglas fir. The intact understory of this old forest is rare in the region and the site is rich in biodiversity, including diverse mosses and bryophytes.

On Saturday, October 6 the Willits Goes Wild van will leave the Willits Hub at 9:30 AM. If you drive to the site, plan to convene at Little Darby at 10 AM. A walk will be led by ERRP Managing Director and fish biologist Pat Higgins. The trail is somewhat steep, so wear appropriate shoes. Those wishing to get some exercise can help with trail maintenance, which will include restoring small side trails and short cuts that can cause erosion. Equipment will be provided.

For more information on Wild and Scenic celebration and field day, please see the ERRP website at www.eelriverrecovery.org, follow ERRP on Facebook, or call 707 223-7200. There is no charge for the BBQ or the event, but donations will be accepted. More information on the national Wild and Scenic Celebration is at https://rivers.gov/wsr50/index.php.

BROADBAND: ANOTHER SURVEY

“EDFC takes on Broadband Coordination, starts with opportunity to win $50”

Ukiah, CA - With the departure of Trish Steel, the Economic Development and Financing Corporation (EDFC), is now serving as the County of Mendocino’s Broadband Coordinator.

“It was a natural fit for EDFC,” said Heather Gurewitz, Executive Director, “As an organization that coordinates economic development in Mendocino County, we know that high speed internet is essential for existing and future businesses in our county. This isn’t about Netflix or Twitter, access to reliable high speed internet is essential for our schools, hospitals, and especially local businesses.”

As the broadband coordinator, EDFC will be taking on a number of responsibilities including developing a strategic plan for internet connectivity and serving as Mendocino County’s representative in the North Bay North Coast Broadband Consortium.

EDFC is kicking off its new role by releasing an internet access survey. “The last needs assessment for our county was done more than 5 years ago and we know a lot has changed. This survey is critical for helping plan for the future,” explained Gurewitz.

Mendocino County locals who take the survey will have a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to their favorite local business (restrictions apply). The survey takes less than 5 minutes and can be found at www.edfc.org/Broadband. Those without internet can participate by calling EDFC at (707) 234-5705 or by picking up a copy of the survey at their local library. The survey will be open until October 24, 2018.

As EDFC takes on this new role, the Broadband Alliance of Mendocino County, the original grassroots organization formed to advocate for improved broadband access continues its work with Community Foundation Board Member Kathy Wylie, as its new Chairperson. The group is supported by funds from the Community Foundation’s Broadband Development Fund for Mendocino County.

If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact EDFC at (707) 234-5705 or via email at diann@edfc.org.

THE ART OF DESPAIR

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence? or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood. I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy is comfortless—because I speak the truth; and people prefer to be assured that everything the Lord has made is good. Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers in peace! At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to the lessons you have been taught. That is what those rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please, and you will get it. Your University professors are bound to preach optimism; and it is an easy and agreeable task to upset their theories.

—Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism

Rembrandt harmenszoon van rijn.

BRAZIL COMES TO CASPAR

Choro das 3 concert in Caspar tomorrow
Friday, September 28, 8 pm
Caspar Community Center
964-4997 casparcommons.org

The Caspar Community is pleased to present Choro das 3 from Brazil in concert on Friday, September 28. The band is composed of three sisters­—Corina (flutes), Lia (7-string acoustic guitar) and Elisa (mandolin, clarinet, banjo and piano)—and their father Eduardo (pandeiro). Choro is a spirited traditional instrumental genre that emerged in Brazil in the 19th century, incorporating elements of jazz, melodic composition, and Brazilian rhythms to create an infectious, playful blend of harmony and virtuosity. This concert will be an opportunity to experience a true taste of Brazil here on the Mendocino coast.

Doors open at 7:30 and the concert starts at 8. Tickets are $20 in advance at brownpapertickets.com or $25 at the door.

ZEN INSTRUCTION IN FT BRAGG

Evergreen Church is sponsoring beginning Zen Meditation instruction on the 4th Thursday of each month at 7pm. Deanna Hopper is our instructor. Her home sangha is CityZen, of Santa Rosa, whose Roshi is Rachel Mansfield Howlett. No prior experience is necessary. Deanna is a seasoned, compassionate teacher who explains clearly and with humor. A free will offering is accepted, and no one is turned away for lack of funds. Those interested are invited to attend the class at the corner of Laurel and N. Corry Sts in Ft Bragg. For more info please call Diana at 964-5497 or 813-1635

dhunter@mcn.org

FEED'S ON!

The Community Foundation of Mendocino County is pleased to announce that the 2019 Community Enrichment and Field-of-Interest grant guidelines and online applications are now available. Up to $197,500 in total funding is available between these two programs this year. Individual grant awards range from $3,000-$8,000 for Community Enrichment and $500-$10,000 for the Field-of-Interest grant programs. Organizations are invited to apply at www.communityfound.org by December 20, 2018.

Applicants are *strongly* encouraged to attend one of the Grant Information Workshops. Director of Grants & Programs Michelle Rich will offer an interactive opportunity to learn about the online platform and answer questions. Participants are encouraged to bring laptops.  - *Ukiah: Thursday, October 18th, ** 12:00-1:00 * (brown-bag lunches welcome), Community Foundation of Mendocino County Community Room, 204 S. Oak St., Ukiah. -

*North Coast: Friday, October 26th, 12:00-1:00 * (brown-bag lunches welcome) Mendocino Coast Clinics, 205 South Street, Fort Bragg  - *Willits:** Tuesday, October 30th, 12:00-1:00 * (brown-bag lunches welcome), Willits Center for the Arts, 71 E. Commercial St., Willits. Workshops are offered at no cost to participants. RSVP appreciated but notrequired.

Applicants may contact Michelle Rich at michelle@communityfound.org or (707)-468-9882 if they have remaining questions or would like feedback on their individual proposals after attending one of the grant workshops and/or carefully reading the grant guidelines.

The Community Enrichment grant program is made possible through the Community Foundation's Community Endowment Fund. The Field-of-Interest grant program is a collection of funds established to make grants in specified areas of interest (e.g., the environment or human services), or specific geographical areas, or both. Not every Field-of-Interest fund is offered through the competitive grant program every year. The 2019 grant program is made possible thanks to the following Field-of-Interest funds:  - Blood Bank of the Redwoods Legacy Fund - Charles F. Flinn and Walker B. Tilley Fund for Sustainable Forestry - Community Resiliency and Preparedness Fund - Environmental Education & Conservation Fund - Environmental Education & Conservation Fund: Releaf Tree Planting - Fraeda Dubin & Pat Denny Endowment Funds - Fund for Trails and Open Space - Haigh-Scatena Youth Leadership, Empowerment, and Advocacy Fund - Jane Anderson Developmental Disability Fund - John and Sandra Mayfield Family Economic Development Fund - Judy Pruden Historical Preservation Fund - Textile and Fiber Arts Endowment Fund - Ukiah Saturday Afternoon Club Endowment Fund For more information about applying to the Community Enrichment or Field-of-Interest grant programs or about how you can make a gift to the Community Endowment Fund or one of the Field-of-Interest funds visit www.communityfound.org.

Kathy Wylie, M.S. Ed., gglgrl@gmail.com