Mendocino County Today: Saturday, Sep. 29, 2018

• EMS Reductions
• Little Dog
• Millsite Plan
• Friday Market
• Navarro Flow
• Ed Notes
• Seasons
• Floriculture Idea
• MCDH Candidate Forum
• Yesterday's Catch
• National Psychodrama
• DMV Audit
• Past Assaults
• Angry Squirrels
• Facing Consequence
• Our Terrorist
• Hostile Environment
• Hypocrisy
• Too Late
• Prime Deal
• Marco Radio

MEMO OF THE WEEK

(From Jen Banks, Coastal Valley EMS Agency EMS coordinator and contact point for Mendocino County at the Sonoma County-based agency, date not specified but recent)

Good evening Mendocino County EMS partners,

Coastal Valleys EMS Agency (CVEMSA) received notification today from Verihealth/Falck regarding ambulance staffing levels. Effective 9/30/2018, Falck will be reducing unit deployment and staffing as follows:

Willits -- M9132 0800-0800 seven days per week

Willits M.9133 (brown out as a 24 hour unit)

Ukiah North M9134 (0800 to 0800) 7 days per week

Ukiah South M9131 (0800-0800) 7 days per week

Ukiah M9130 (browned out as a 12 hour unit)

It has also been brought to our attention that due to a paramedic staffing shortage in general, many of our agencies are down staffing units with the Howard Forest emergency command center but not notifying the EMS agency. This e-mail is to serve as a reminder that down staffing units from the 911 system should be reported to the EMS agency.

Until an approved policy is implemented agencies shall send an email to Coastal Valley EMS Agency at coastalvalleyemsagency@Sonoma County.org when down staffing ambulance units from our system.

Due to the recent staffing issues, Coastal Valley EMS agency is scheduling a Ukiah provider group meeting on Wednesday, October 30, 2018 at 10 AM (location TBD). Please send a representative from your agency if you are unable to attend. We will be reviewing the current system status management plan and discussing staffing and notification. If this time does not work for the majority of the group we can attempt a second day if needed.

Please provide me with any additional agenda items as well.

Thank you and I hope everyone has a good evening.

Jen Banks, Coastal Valley EMS Agency EMS coordinator

Santa Rosa

* * *

ms notes: It’s hard to know how much this reduction in service will affect the Ukiah Valley or Anderson Valley. It does show that giant corporate ambulance operations can just up and decide they’re cutting back service or hours if and whenever they feel like it, and is yet another reason to look very askance toward privatizing such an important emergency service. Apparently, the County and local emergency response agencies will discuss the situation further at a meeting in Ukiah next week. It may also make staffing air ambulances with paramedics more difficult. We’ll be following developments.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I asked Skrag what he thought about the Kavanaugh hearing. ‘After all these years, you moron, you ask me that? Write it down, mutt face: I care about exactly three things — breakfast, lunch and dinner!’”

FORT BRAGG City Council/Planning Commission to discuss Proposed Amendment to the Coastal General Plan for the Mill Site Reuse LCP Amendment on October 3

On October 3, 2018 the Fort Bragg City Council/Planning Commission will discuss Proposed Amendment to the Coastal General Plan for the Mill Site Reuse LCP Amendment. For further detail click here to view item 1A.

New Agenda 10/03/2018 for city.fortbragg.com

October 3, 2018 Joint City Council/Planning Commission Special Meeting… View in the Agenda Center

FIRST FRIDAY EVENING MARKET October 5th

Boonville Hotel Parking Lot, 4:00-7:00ish

As part of C’mon Home to Eat this October, AV Foodshed is organizing a First Friday Night Farmers’ Market on Friday October 5, 4:00-7:00ish. The Boonville Hotel has graciously offered the use of their parking lot for this one-time evening market.

We're a week out from the market, but here's what we've heard so far from our vendors:

Renee Wilson - garlic, kale, cabbage, maybe tomatoes, maybe cukes, maybe some summer squash, and possibly leeks, if they don't bolt between now and then

AV Community Farm - meat (lamb, goat, beef), olive oil, veggies (butternut squash, onions, possibly others) and soap products The Forest People - some other produce along with our mushrooms

Angel's Innovations - soaps, shampoos, lotions and more

Wildeacre Medicinals - herbal tinctures and elderberry syrup

Joel Kies - soaps and shampoos

Chloe Stemler - chocolates

AV Foodshed will be selling Goat Fest t-shirts (if you missed getting one of this year's Antoinette von Gron original shirts at Goat Fest, this is your chance). We'll also be selling Boonville Farmers' Market products.

Apple Pressing 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).

We hope to have a food vendor at market. In addition, several downtown businesses will stay open for shopping, which includes places to eat out locally that night. Paysanne will be open for ice cream!

We will also have a variety of local musical talent throughout the evening and a kids' area.

Stay tuned - more info next Thursday.

EXPECTED RAIN WON'T RAISE NAVARRO RIVER MUCH

Will the "Sacred Cow Sandbar" at the mouth of the Navarro River cause Highway 128 flooding & closures again this Fall? Probably. No measures have been taken to breach it - which was customary "back in the day."

But the expected rain coming won't do much to raise the river level - according to the latest reading of the (upstream) USGS Navarro River gauge (9:15 am) found the river level at 0.98' - and the rate of flow past the gauge was 2.36 cubic feet per second - or in understandable terms - 17.6 gallons per second.

NOAA predicts the river rise from the anticipated rainfall this weekend is only 1.8' at 1:00 am on Wednesday, October 3rd. The "discharge" rate - the amount of water headed towards the sandbar from the rain - is expected to peak at 37 cubic feet per second or 277 gallons per second from 1:00 to 8:00 am on October 3rd.

(Via MendoinoSportsPlus)

ED NOTES

I CAN'T REMEMBER the last time I saw Senator Grassley, maybe during the Clarence Thomas hearings, but he looked the same and still reminded me of the cranky old guy who storms out of his house and yells at the kids, "If that ball comes over here one more time, I'm keeping it." Rhetorically, Grassley's all over the place, and the last guy who ought to be chairing a meeting, let alone an important one. I think Dr. Ford was/is credible, but had to wonder how she got a PhD without knowing what "exculpatory" means, and I thought Kavanaugh came off as unhinged, like a guy on the edge of a crack-up. Of course, you can hardly be surprised at his anger and tears if he's being lied about. But if Kavanaugh's as smart and as "judicial" as he's advertised to be he wouldn't have blurted out that insult to Amy Klobuchar, the least offensive Democrat on the panel, "Do you have a drinking problem?" He apologized, but losing it like that translated to me that Kav might be the closet nutcase that Democrats apparently think he is. He also came off like a person being challenged for the first time, which would be psycho-consistent with his so far smooth career ride.

SO KAV gets another week on the grill while the FBI checks out his secret years as an alleged rapist. As, ahem, a person who once had his own FBI investigation, I can tell you these ace sleuths placed me at the famous Civil Rights March in Selma, 1965, an error I was very proud of, but… In living fact, I spent that entire year deep in the jungles of Borneo, about as far from Alabama as it was possible to get and remain on the globe. Why this agency, founded by a paranoid, blackmailing, closet case of a crackpot, who spent his off hours in a cocktail dress, is considered the last word in investigations beats me, but here we are. Seems obvious that the Republicans didn't sic the feds on Kavanaugh as soon as the Democrats first demanded it because they probably know their boy can't withstand a hard look at his adolescent years.

SENATOR WHITEHOUSE from Rhode Island gets the Dumbest Questions trophy for his cretinous, close textual analysis of Kavanaugh's high school yearbook. I sat there watching the hearing all the while thinking, "How much more screwed can we be by these people, our leaders?" Here's this guy trying to puzzle out high school fart jokes while.... Well, I'm sure all of you have your own lists of rolling, unaddressed catastrophes.

* * *

ACCORDING to Blythe Post, via the Ukiah Daily Journal, 1,063 homeless Mendo children live such precarious lives that they need regular snacks to carry home with them after school, wherever home happens to be that day. School people determine which kids might need the extra nutrition, and bless the County Office of Education for organizing the program. I don't know how many Mendo County children get free and reduced school meals, but it's a depressingly high number, and one more sign that our society is crumbling faster than it can be repaired.

* * *

I HAPPENED to be wondering at that very moment about how much more irritating Google could be when a new "service" finished a sentence for me as an on-screen message asked something like, "Finish your thought for you?" No! I know my thoughts tend overwhelmingly to the mundane when they aren't simply infantile, but they're mine, not the property of these extraterrestrial dweebos who run our lives these days. And will someone please murder the ginks who think emojis are a communications aid? Ditto for the crew who come up with the daily google graphic, invariably a cartoon figure waving out at us or somersaulting and otherwise just being vomitously cute.

* * *

I SPOTTED THIS COMMENT somewhere that stuck in my craw: "It is laughable to say Kap's skills are excellent. No one who understands football would agree with you. Also, Kap's fight for justice and equality, which included wearing socks depicting cops as pigs, was short lived. His agent let every NFL team know that if they signed him to a contract, he would stand during the national anthem."

FIRST TIME I've heard that Kaepernick would sacrifice principle at this point for another shot at the NFL, and I don't believe it. The writer seems unaware that a whole bunch of defensive backs, including the great Richard Sherman, are on the record as saying that Kaepernick is better than at least half of the quarterbacks presently starting in the NFL.

“Damn — hunting and flu season.”

FLORICULTURE, BOONVILLE BRANCH

Editor,

The beautiful display we all enjoyed in the Floriculture Building at the fair this year, all started with a great idea. Jody Johnson, in charge of maintenance at the fairgrounds, approached Taunia Green and me, Robyn Harper, with a new floor plan for the gardens. Jody started the ball rolling. Our creative gardeners took it from there.

We all thank Jody for her inspiration to place gardens in the center of the building and the result was the best show in a long long time. Credit was given to the building managers for the great displays but Jody was the reason it came together. Thank you Jody!!

Robyn Harper

Navarro

THE CANDIDATES!

Candidate Forum for Mendocino Coast Health Care District Board on Monday, October 1, Senior Center from 6:00-8:00pm

The League of Women Voters - Mendocino County has announced that a Candidate Forum for the Mendocino Coast Health Care District Board of Directors will be held at the Redwood Coast Senior Center, 490 North Harold Street, Fort Bragg, CA on Monday, October 1, 2018, from 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. All candidates have been invited and have agreed to participate.

Each candidate will be given up to two minutes for an opening statement, followed by the candidates answering written questions from the audience. There will be a one minute response time for each answer.

At the end of the forum, each candidate will have up to two minutes for a closing statement. Candidates may remain after the forum to answer any questions people may have. Please note that this is NOT a debate.

The League of Women Voters neither supports nor opposes candidates or parties for any public office, but one of their missions is voter education, hence their sponsorship of this candidate forum. This event is open to the public; a League member will be the moderator.

If you have any questions, please contact The League of Women Voters - Mendocino County at 707-937-4952.

CATCH OF THE DAY, September 28, 2018

ROBERT CAMPBELL, Ukiah. Parole violation.

MICHAEL DONAGHUE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ACEA HENDERSON, Point Arena. Under influence, paraphernalia.

ASHLEE JOHNSON, Willits. Domestic battery.

ARTYON LUCHIN, Susanville/Ukiah. Controlled substance.

BERNARD O’CONNOR JR., San Francisco/Ukiah. Under influence, failure to appear.

GRADY POWERS, Healdsburg/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

MARK WALRATH, Ukiah. Manufacture, sale or possession of leaded cane or billy club.

THE FOG OF BAD FAITH

by James Kunstler

There’s a lot to unpack in the national psychodrama that played out in the senate judiciary committee yesterday with Ford v. Kavanaugh. Dr. Ford laid out what The New York Times is calling the “appalling trauma” of her alleged treatment at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh 36 years ago. And Mr. Kavanaugh denied it in tears of rage.

Dr. Ford scored points for showing up and playing her assigned role. She didn’t add any validating evidence to her story, but she appeared sincere. Judge Kavanaugh seemed to express a weepy astonishment that the charge was ever laid on him, but unlike other questionably-charged men in the grim history of the #Metoo campaign he strayed from his assigned role of the groveling apologist offering his neck to the executioner, an unforgivable effrontery to his accusers.

The committee majority’s choice to sub out the questioning to “sex crime prosecutor” Rachel Mitchell was a pitiful bust, shining a dim forensic light on the matter where hot halogen fog lamps might have cut through the emotional murk. But in today’s social climate of sexual hysteria, the “old white men” on the dais dared not engage with the fragile-looking Dr. Ford, lest her head blow up in the witness chair and splatter them with the guilt-of-the-ages. But Ms. Mitchell hardly illuminated Dr. Ford’s disposition as a teenager — like, what seemed to be her 15-year-old’s rush into an adult world of drinking and consort with older boys — or some big holes in her coming-forward decades later.

For instance, a detail in the original tale, the “locked door.” It’s a big deal when the two boys shoved her into the upstairs room, but she escaped the room easily when, as alleged, Mark Judge jumped on the bed bumping Mr. Kavanaugh off of her. It certainly sounds melodramatic to say “they locked the door,” but it didn’t really mean anything in the event.

Ms. Mitchell also never got to the question of Dr. Ford’s whereabouts in the late summer, when the judiciary committee was led to believe by her handlers that she was in California, though she was actually near Washington DC at her parent’s beach house in Delaware, and Mr. Grassley, the committee chair, could have easily dispatched investigators to meet with her there. Instead, the Democrats on the committee put out a cockamamie story about her fear of flying all the way from California — yet Ms. Mitchell established that Mrs. Ford routinely flew long distances, to Bali, for instance, on her surfing trips around the world.

Overall, it was impossible to believe that Dr. Ford had not experienced something with somebody — or else why submit to such a grotesque public spectacle — but the matter remains utterly unproved and probably unprovable. Please forgive me for saying I’m also not persuaded that the incident as described by Dr. Ford was such an “appalling trauma” as alleged. If the “party” actually happened, then one would have to assume that 15-year-old Chrissie Blasey, as she was known then, went there of her own volition looking for some kind of fun and excitement. She found more than she bargained for when a boy sprawled on top of her and tried to grope her breasts, grinding his hips against hers, working to un-clothe her, with his pal watching and guffawing on the sidelines — not exactly a suave approach, but a life-changing trauma? Sorry, it sounds conveniently hyperbolic to me. I suspect there is much more psychodrama in the life of Christine Blasey Ford than we know of at this time. She wasn’t raped and her story stops short of alleging an attempt at rape, whoever was on top of her, though it is apparently now established in the public mind (and the mainstream media) that it was a rape attempt. But according to #Metoo logic, every unhappy sexual incident is an “appalling trauma” that must be avenged by destroying careers and reputations.

The issues in the bigger picture concern a Democratic Party driven by immense bad faith to any means that justify the defeat of this Supreme Court nominee for reasons that everyone over nine-years-old understands: the fear that a majority conservative court will overturn Rowe v. Wade — despite Judge Kavanaugh’s statement many times that it is “settled law.” What one senses beyond that, though, is the malign spirit of the party’s last candidate for president in the 2016 election and a desperate crusade to continue litigating that outcome until the magic moment when a “blue tide” of midterm election victories seals the ultimate victory over the detested alien in the White House.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

CHEAP AUDIT

Editor:

So I just read that Gov. Jerry Brown ordered a performance audit of the state Department of Motor Vehicles at a cost of about $800,000. I believe I can make a suggestion that would save all of us taxpayers a lot of money: Fire whoever is running DMV and hire someone who can run it properly. I will send my bill to the state, guaranteed to be less than $800,000 for the same result.

Raleigh Chaix

Willits

BARBARA EHRENREICH: “I experienced assaults like those reported by Ford and Ramirez decades ago and, except for crying on a friend’s shoulder, did not tell anyone at the time. But if any of my assailants were nominated for a position of power, I would come forward immediately. And loudly.”

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

The problem is that we are living in an age of decline, where people fight over the spoils like angry squirrels over acorns. It makes each political battle seem much more acute in importance and removes any desire to compromise, because people instinctively understand there is a shrinking pool of resources and wealth to access and it’s time to begin preparing for the long, long winter of our civilization ahead.

* * *

YOU ARE FORGIVEN if you spent the entire day Thursday watching television. If you are an American citizen, it’s what you should have been doing, and if your work demanded your attention, I’m sorry.

This is a day when Americans should have watched. It’s a day when the power players in this twenty-first century football game fought fiercely over a loose ball, and it was historic in that power players do not like uncertainty, have no appetite for loose balls. Congressional hearings are elaborately staged things where everybody knows the outcome, going in. Today, nobody did, and the product for us participant/consumers was hypnotizing. It gave a view of the workings of government that was beyond “unusual.” It verged on “unprecedented.”

The accuser here won the Believability competition, but the accused denied his opponent a clear win by putting up such a vigorous fight as to keep open the possibility that the two fingers held aloft are actually four. He spared his Republican supporters the shame of being on the side of an obvious and violent liar. His steadfast denials kept the question open: how is it possible they are both so adamant? How could anybody proclaim innocence in the face of such a credible victim, guilt in the person of such an upright man?

In the end, the Ford account has more force than the Kavanaugh denials because he could not answer straight to the question of whether he wanted an FBI investigation. Given that he was, as he said, “all in,” in this fight for his good name, only a definite “yes” to the FBI question was logical, and his clumsy tap dancing around the question, in lieu of answering it, was decisive. All the same, he did not melt and go away under the hot glare, and nothing short of that would convict him in this fraught public arena, with these incalculably high stakes.

So. Short-changing your other responsibilities today was not just forgivable—it was called for. You are a participant and witness in this process. Your attention to it or inattention to it is the reason the players on stage in front of you today were who they were and not others, that many of today’s cast were members of the cast of 1991, when Anita Hill claimed her boss was not a good POTUS choice.

The mess we watched today was democracy in action, not dressed up for the dumb public’s consumption but fresh and raw and a glimpse like few we ever get.

I hope this ruins Brett Kavanaugh’s life. I know too much about his life, too much about privilege and entitlement, too much about the fanatical loyalty of the upper classes for their own and how the advantages of class are necessarily at the expense of the other classes. I know how this works on the world stage, how Brett Kavanaugh is closer to a Saudi prince than to the janitors now cleaning the Capitol hallways. I see that he has designed his life for this great reward, this seat on the loftiest bench of all, and how mad he is at the approaching denouement, that it might go against him. I hear him describe his adolescence and know to my own satisfaction, that leading a faultless life (except for a few wild-oats moments that we can all agree to pass on) was to this end. I am satisfied that his faithful little religious heart is black and that he is, returning to the vernacular of D.C. suburbs and prep schools a few decades back, a giant dork.

THIS IS THE FACE of a rich white man facing consequences for his own choices for the first time at age 53

ROBIN SUNBEAM WRITES: The Red Cross received a request for volunteers a few years ago. Homeland Security were coming to train the Ukiah Police and they needed volunteers to be terrorists. I was assigned to go secretly photograph Grace Hudson Museum. During our orientation training, the guy from HS kept talking about Muslim terrorists. I pointed out to him that we have plenty of non-Muslim terrorists, i.e. Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City. The HS trainer's eyes misted up and he said, "Yes, he was one of ours." Everyone in the room saw this. A quiet shock wave passed around the circle from the Hispanic looking Ukiah Police Chief and around the room to the police officers and the other volunteers.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR: “The girl today can certainly go out alone, stroll in the Tuileries; but I have already said how hostile the street is: eyes everywhere, hands waiting: if she wanders absentmindedly, her thoughts elsewhere, if she lights a cigarette in a cafe, if she goes to the cinema alone, an unpleasant incident can quickly occur; she must inspire respect by the way she dresses and behaves: this concern rivets her to the ground and self. ‘Her wings are clipped'.”

I AM TERRIBLY SORRY to have to be the first to tell you that our poor Miss Brennan died. We have her head here at the office, at the top of the stairs, where she was always to be found, smiling right and left and drinking water out of her own little paper cup. She shot herself in the back with the aid of a small handmirror at the foot of the main altar in St. Patrick's Cathedral on Shrove Tuesday. Frank O'Connor was where he usually is in the afternoons, sitting in a confession but pretending to be a priest and giving penance to some poor old woman and he heard the shot and he ran out and saw our poor late author stretched out flat and he picked her up and fearing a scandal ran up to the front of the church and slipped her in the poor box. She was very small. He said she went in easy.... We will never know why she did what she did (shooting herself) but we think it was because she was drunk and heartsick. She was a very fine person, a very real person, two feet, hands, everything. But it's too late to do much about that now.

— Maeve Brennan

A PRIME DEAL...

This Saturday, September 29th is a PRIME time to go to the theatre...and we are offering a PRIME deal! Two tickets to see the Mendocino Theatre Company's production of MARJORIE PRIME for just $29...an amazing savings! So grab a friend and snag your PRIME tickets to MARJORIE PRIME!

Purchase your tickets at by calling the box office, 707-937-4477, or online at mendocinotheatre.org <http://mendocinotheatre.org/single-tickets/> and enter code "PRIME" at checkout to redeem. Limit one discount per customer. Offer expires on 9/29 at 6 pm.

Mendocino Theatre Company" <mendotheatreco@gmail.com>

MEMO OF THE AIR: GOOD NIGHT RADIO FRIDAY NIGHT!

On wonderful KNYO Fort Bragg and KMEC Ukiah.

Cindy Swan wrote: Jesuits Reverse Position On Kavanaugh And Say No

Cindy, in the corner of my eye I read it as something with Kavanaugh and Jesus and reverse cowgirl position. And then read it right and, you know: Oh. Never mind.

In Other News: Tonight, Friday, 9pm to 5am, I'm reading Memo of the Air by live remote from the typing table next to the bed in Juanita's apartment, not from the back room of the KNYO performance space at 325 N. Franklin, next door to the Tip Top bar, so make plans to show-and-tell there next week, the first Friday in October, when I'll be there for you. When the rain starts to pour. I'll be there for you. Like I've been there before.

Deadline to get your writing on the air tonight is like 6 or 7pm. If you're still working on it then, just email it when you're done and I'll read it on the show next time. Or save it and come in and read it yourself in person next week (or sing and dance or otherwise express it), see above.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio: Every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg, and 105.1fm KMEC-LP Ukiah. And also there and anywhere else via http://knyo.org and click on Listen Live.

Also you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's show, and shows before that, and read and watch and fiddle with all sorts of other quirkily educational materials. By Saturday night, tonight's show becomes last week's show, so if you wait till Saturday night then you'll find that too. It'll be right on top.

Meanwhile, Porfirio Jiminez makes art, provides self-commentary, and then happily sets things on fire and blows it out.

https://theawesomer.com/super-saiyan-blue-spray-paint-art/465805/

Best bad lip reading ever. Hillary Clinton stories. http://www.blameitonthevoices.com/2018/09/bad-lip-reading-hillary-stories.html

And here's 7-year-old Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja (say chon-druh-w'd-JY-yuh) singing Think.

https://maleaemma.com/2018/08/23/cover-think-aretha-franklin/

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org