Mendocino County Today: Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018

• Camp Fire
• Ed Notes
• Little Dog
• Conspiracy Theorists
• Limbless
• St. Anthony's
• Yesterday's Catch
• Endangered Bees
• Fishcap
• Underground Lines
• Awareness
• Educated People
• Heading Out
• Quizless
• SF
• Surviving Wildfires
• Guatemalan Treasures
• First Day
• Big Bossman
• So-So Burger
• Humco Fines
• Sparking Powerlines
• Climate Denial
• Ride Offer
• Shrinking
• Buffalo Bill
• County Vacancies
• Pagan Commune
• Student Health
• World Ended
• Community Thanksgiving
• Improv Comedy
• Unraveling
• Herbal Energetics
• Cannabis Tax

CAMP FIRE UPDATE: Still growing, now up to 138,000 acres, with 35% containment. Destroyed structure count now up to almost 8,800 residences and 260 commercial structures. 56 confirmed fatalies so far. Almost 5500 firefighters on scene organized into 101 fire crews with 620 engines and 105 dozers. (So on average a crew has 54 firefighters and six or seven fire engines and a dozer, operating round the clock in shifts.)

CALFIRE, 7:30pm Wednesday: “The fire remained active throughout the day in various areas around the perimeter. Firefighters have been working diligently to attack the fire through direct and indirect methods. As weather and visibility allow, fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters have been working in coordination with ground crews to slow the fire’s progress. Firefighters continue to strengthen and improve containment lines around the fire. Firefighters remain deployed throughout the interior areas of the fire’s footprint to patrol, extinguish hot spots, and mitigate hazards.”

Camp Fire Perimeter, November 13, 2018 (click to see full map)

* * *

CAMPFIRE SMOKE Drifts to Detroit

wxyz.com/news/smoke-from-california-wildfires-reaches-metro-detroit-michigan

* * *

PHOTOS BY DICK WHETSTONE (click to enlarge)

ED NOTES

ROUGHLY 100 people, most in their 80s and 90s, are still missing in the aftermath of the catastrophic Camp Fire. According to AP reports, additional search crews have been deployed to comb through scorched areas, especially in the late town of Paradise. (About the size of Ukiah and Willits combined, and originally called, Poverty Ridge.) “We want to be able to cover as much ground as quickly as we possibly can,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said. “This is a very difficult task.” The AP reports that family members and concerned friends have taken to shelter message boards in attempts to find their loved ones, and some communities have started to compile their own lists of missing persons. The state’s deadliest wildfire has taken at least 56 lives thus far.

* * *

AS A MAJOR MEDIA CONSUMER, I don't read much fire fighting credit going to inmate crews. These guys are young, fit and do a lot of the really hot, heavy work on the fire front lines. And given their incarceration they're volunteers, but there they are in the toughest terrain getting it done, and often risking injury and death.

* * *

UKIAH HAS SEEN nearly two weeks of frigid temperatures but only yesterday did the doers of good get the winter shelter open. And even then persons seeking that shelter have to pass muster at Plowshares prior to getting a ticket to enter.

AS REPORTED by Justine Frederickson of the Ukiah Daily Journal, "For those given a bed, shelter staff advises them to be in it by 8 p.m. in order to keep it. If they want to stay in the bed another night, they need to alert staff the next morning. The shelter at 1045 S. State Street is focusing on serving adults only, and families with children will be directed to the Ford Street Project. Since the day center RCS (Redwood Community Services) plans to operate on the same property as the shelter is not open yet (it is expected to open in February of 2019) shelter guests are asked to leave the area by 9 a.m., and that “guests who loiter in the neighborhood risk losing their bed.”

TRANSLATION: Those most in danger of dying from hypothermia — the drop-fall drunks, the drug disoriented, the marginally sane — must be deemed acceptable by the helping pros before they can get in out of the cold.

* * *

HOMELESSNESS, A COMMENT: Churches do try to help the homeless. But shelters require supervision, and at my little church, the little ol’ ladies just are not quite up to the task. We have also run into problems with liability cost increases with our insurance company, an inability to safely handle some of the mentally ill folks, and damage done to the premises by people who are either high or just don’t care. What does seem to be effective is supporting – physically, monetarily, emotionally – those who are in a better position to provide services. Pooling our resources as a community is a good part of the solution.

HOMELESSNESS, ANOTHER COMMENT: Basically, we need more trailer parks. Cheapest low income housing that could ever be built IF people would get off their high horses over their real estate values and allow them. Tiny houses cost way more to build and are usually not as well designed - that I can see. The parks we have now were mostly built in the 1950’s. No new ones.

In the 1930’s and 40’s trailers were advertised as, you guessed it, “Tiny Houses”!!! Big selling point back then. And trailer parks advertised as tiny house communities. There is no real difference despite the fact some have paid 90K for 350 SqFt on wheels - with no earthly place to put it. The Low Income Housing we build right now is NOT a bargain. And we do end up paying for it.

Your real estate values are going to go down whether there is a park near you OR people are camping and shitting in your bushes. Or camping all over the downtown of the town you live in. We have to make a practical choice. This has nothing to do with false morality.

Your real estate values are going to go down anyway with pot legalization.

If you only own the house you live in it does NOT matter what your house is worth, in fact you are better off if it’s worth less - less taxes. If you sell your home to buy another home and prices are low - that home’s price will be low as well. It’s about percentages.

The exception to all this are real estate investors. Investors, BTW, made up the largest percentage of foreclosed homes after 2007 - NOT home owners. Do most of us care if RE investors make less money? Mom and Pops - sure, but in general - not really. We’d rather have a secure roof over our heads. And less shit in our neighborhoods and downtown.

At some point the ever rising housing costs are going to lead to a boiling point. Costs of housing have risen faster than slow boiling frogs at this point. Resentment can become dangerous. In fact I think it already is.

* * *

THE SUPERVISORS won't give fire victims a break on rebuild fees but, as Marilyn Davin has found "in Napa the Supes looked at potential conflict with state standards and, finding none, reduced building fees by an average of 30%. Lots of good quotes from the building director on supporting the community and keeping folks in the community. Trinity County gives a big discount. Somebody must have made the determination that Mendo can't reduce the fees - which is clearly a crock."

* * *

SAN FRANCISCO will retroactively apply California’s marijuana-legalization laws to past criminal cases, SF District Attorney George Gascón said this week, expunging or reducing misdemeanor and felony convictions going back decades. The unprecedented move will affect thousands of people whose marijuana convictions brand them with criminal histories that can hurt chances of finding jobs and obtaining some government benefits. Here in Mendo, the DA, according to spokesman Mike Geniella, "doesn't have the manpower" to do a Frisco mass expunge, "but we routinely process applications" [to expunge].

* * *

NEW HOTEL COMPLEX PROPOSED FOR FORT BRAGG HAUL ROAD north of Fort Bragg

Wynn Coastal Planning & Biology is pleased to announce that we have submitted a proposal to the City of Fort Bragg for the creation of:

• The Avalon Hotel – 65 guest rooms (comprised of three 3-story buildings, max heights of 35’)
• Restaurant and Cocktail Bar/Lounge
• 3,064sf Event Center (1-story)
• Parking for all uses, including 15 bicycle spaces
• Climate-specific landscaping with walkways with educational signage, connecting to Haul Road
• Highlighting green-building methods and Low-Impact Design features
• Use of on-site water well for landscape irrigation

Owner/Applicant: Robert Hunt, Hunt InnVestments (Fort Bragg native; owner of Beachcomber Motel, Surf & Sand Lodge, Beach House Inn)

The applicant is planning to build between the Haul Road and Highway 1 near where Airport Road intersects Highway 1. Four buildings in a triangular layout, three of them three-story (up to 35 feet high), plus the one-story “event center.” The project would appear to involve removal of an existing smaller motel on the parcel. The lot to the north is the old Baxman Sand & Gravel site, now GeoAggregates.

* * *

ATTENTION SUPERVISOR-ELECT, Ted Williams. Time to take your signs down, dude. They're large and, nothing personal, unsightly against the back drop of Anderson Valley's splendid visuals.

* * *

SCROLL ON PAST the following if you don't care for rants, and here goes. The only presser I can recall turning down was from a nurse, a registered nurse at that, meaning she had been trained to understand that vaccination was necessary to prevent the reoccurrence of deadly diseases. The nurse was giving a talk out on the Mendocino Coast, a hotbed of anti-vaxx opinion and, it seems, a concomitant inability to decode our common tongue, let alone medical history and basic principles of science. She'd called to ensure I'd gotten her presser, and when I said I wouldn't run her announcement because I thought the anti-vaxx movement was a dangerous delusion and didn't want to encourage it she said, "Well, I can see you're not an open kind of person" and hung up. In other words, agree with me or you're… pick an insult. The Building 7 nuts (911 was an inside job, you see), the contrails paranoids, and the rest of the many millions unhinged by our unsettled times, thanks to the internet, can talk exclusively and unchallenged with other lunatics, which is how the anti-vaxx movement has spread among young parents, and now we see the re-emergence of diseases like, for instance, measles that were extinct.

INTRA-SPECIES PEACE TALKS UNDERWAY IN BOONVILLE

A READER WRITES:

OMG, the #CampFire Twitter thread (probably other fire threads too) is now infested with Q Anon idiots and MAGA Trump cultists/conspiracy theorists sharing their "internet research": this video PROVES Gov. Brown started the fires (the fires exactly MATCH his bullet train route!!!), DEW (direct energy weapons), HAARP, smart meters set targeted houses on fire, Deep State did it as part of Agenda 21, Town of Paradise turned off water on purpose, “PG&E was lurking around acting suspicious, I KNEW something was going on,” etc. etc. etc.

I read the #CarrFire Twitter feed earlier this year regularly - it was nothing like this. I mean the occasional tinfoil hatter, but this was a serious infestation this morning.

And the thing is, they think they are clever. They think they are “smarter” than you and I – and smarter than the meteorologists and the CalFire fire behavior analysts, and all the trained experts, who are all too stupid to realize that there really WASN’T any wind, it was all “fake news,” and in some blocks only selected homes burned which proves it wasn’t natural, and look at that!!! Trees still standing in a neighborhood where houses burned, which of course PROVES it was smart meters deliberately burning down targeted homes, etc. etc. etc. OMG I even saw one MAGA post blaming Hilary Clinton, I swear to god.

The question I never get an answer to (just like with the 9/11 truthers) is: OK, so it sounds like many people were involved in the 9/11 inside job / deliberate setting of fires by the Deep State sort of conspiracies you allege. Sure is odd that nobody involved with all these alleged secret programs or secret actions ever actually leaks any information about their personal involvement, isn’t it? Everything leaks. But you attribute super-human anti-leak powers to the government that you also allege in every other area is too incompetent to get anything done properly. Can it really be both at the same time?

I think these people crave simple answers – not only because it’s hard for them to understand complex issues – but also because if there are “simple” answers, that means the conspiracists are smarter than the experts, because obviously, if the experts were as smart (as “woke”) as the conspiracy theorists – and their cult leader Trump – they too would understand how simple it is to fix problems if only the experts didn’t have a malignant agenda.

Just one of many threads: twitter.com/walkw_christ/status/1062032967952809984

Lefty and Green Party conspiracists got nuthin’ on the MAGAs, that’s for sure.

NEW BOONVILLE LANDMARK — THE BOONT SALUTE

ORGANIZE ONE IN MENDO

St. Anthony’s Farm near Petaluma fed the hungry and fought substance abuse for 53 years.

petaluma360.com/news/8915914-181/st-anthonys-farm-near-petaluma

CATCH OF THE DAY, November 14, 2018

TRISHA BURRIS, Eureka/Ukiah. Paraphernalia, disobeying court order.

VICTORIA CAMPBELL, Ajax, Ontario, Canada/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

NICHOLAS CARLOZZI-DONATO, Rough & Ready/Ukiah. Suspended license.

CHRISTOPHER FAVELA, Boonville. DUI, misdemeanor hit&run.

CHARLES HENSLEY, Ukiah. Assault, probation revocation. (Frequent Flyer)

JONATHAN HOUSE, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

TIAHNA MCGOVERN, Laytonville. Battery with serious injury.

BRANDON MITCHELL, Laytonville. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

AARON RATHBLOTT, Mendocino. Probation revocation.

ANTARRA ROBINSON, Sacramento/Ukiah. Resisting.

SHAWN SPILLER, Fort Bragg. Trespassing, failure to appear, probation revocation.

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, parole violation.

SEBASTIAN WOLF, Berlin, Germany/Ukiah. DUI.

SAVE THE BEES!

A notice of receipt of petition to list Crotch bumble bee (Bombus crotchii), Franklin's bumble bee (Bombus franklini), Suckley cuckoo bumble bee (Bombus suckleyi), and western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis occidentalis) as endangered species under the California Endangered Species Act has been posted to the commission's website and is available at fgc.ca.gov/CESA/index.aspx#bb Please refer to the notice for additional information.

Sincerely,

Sheri Tiemann, California Fish and Game Commission

SEA GULL CELLAR BAR NAPKIN ART, Roy Hoggard artist

(via Susie de Castro)

UNDERGROUND POWER LINES

Editor,

When I was growing up, PG&E constantly advertised how, in the not-so-distant future, all electricity would be underground. I never thought about the danger; I just assumed they would do it to hide the ugly wires. However, as a firefighter for 25 years, I have seen how insane it is to have high-voltage wires strung from pole to pole along our county roads. I have responded to an untold number of vegetation fires caused by cars crashing into poles or winds causing branches and trees to fall on wires.

Then, instead of dumping limited resources into the soul-destroying work of moving encampments, we could reallocate existing police, fire and health services personnel to support the new community.

We would all benefit from a more humanitarian response.

June Gerron

Santa Rosa

“EDUCATED” here is a reference to those young people who are presently in some part of the college/university system, or who have been through this system in the last ten years or so. In other words, it’s more praise for the always-needing-of-praise middle-class Millennial generation. (And isn’t it the case when people talk about Millennials, they mean middle class, or perhaps a few scholarship students from the working class, perhaps minority students, who are taken—rightly or wrongly—to aspire to the middle class?) What, however, is the relationship between having a university degree and being “educated” these days? To put it succinctly, and I’m sorry that this is not very nice, most people receiving college degrees are not what one ought to call “educated.” The “hard” sciences, or some of them, and the humanities (or some of them), may be a little different, but, for the most part students have come out of colleges and universities for years now not having been and not having become good readers. In fact, the “trick” that so many students in recent years are trying to achieve is to get through college without reading a single book, and many of them are able to “achieve” this. Clearly this includes a great deal of today’s “educated” liberals, who, if they “know” anything, it is simply how to put certain terms in play in order to defeat the white cis-male or whatever. I’m sure those who support that model of “education” will not rest until every college is made over into the Title IX/SJW paradise that is Palo Alto University, where Christine Blasey Ford teaches.

— Bill Martin

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Let’s assume for argument’s sake that the fictional “wealth” conjured by the Fed through its counterfeiting operation is actually real, with a solid footing in the real world. Let’s then consider California, one of those blue states that really shove it in people’s faces, standing tall and smirky and superior every day and every way. Well, maybe they ought to put some of this money where their mouth is, because after all, they’ve got Silicon Valley with its uncountable trillions, they’ve got Hollywood and its bursting bags of loot, they’ve got the inordinately wealthy in mansions (some of which are burning fiercely as we speak, but no big deal, they’ll get re-built) along the Pacific. And they’ve got the Kardashians.

And with all that money, they still have Blacks and Hispanics among them in a seriously degraded state, there’s homeless crapping everywhere and addicts leaving diseased syringes all over. How can it be this way in a state that tells us that they’ll have sanctuary cities for the world’s woebegone? What about all these people right there already that they aren’t helping?

Where I’m going with this is that Democrats and progressives in general are all talk. They couldn’t give a shit, least of all for those already living in dire straights right underfoot.

So, what comes of it? It’s like Herb Stein said, if something can’t go on it won’t. It stops. And when it stops, what comes of it are new ways of doing things.

It might start with eccentric long-beards who start saying hokay, enough of this, this is hopeless, so we’re headin’ out into them thar hills. And so they pack up the hound and the missus and the ankle-biters and they make the trek out. It’s not as if it would be the first time we’ve seen this, it’s happened before in history when civilizations collapse, the folk in no longer tenable towns and cities move into the hinterlands, settling around water sources or defensible hill-tops.

Can you picture it? Family-groups abandoning messed up coastal places like LA and San Fran and heading out and forming go-it-alone communities in the boonies, maybe leaving the state altogether?

NO QUIZ TONIGHT

After a finely played Quiz last week, won by three local gentlemen of surprising intelligence, we are off this week as it is the 3rd Thursday.

We normally do the 2nd and 4th Thursdays, but next week, the 4th, is something called Thanksgiving, so for reasons beyond me people will not be able to attend.

Whatever it is you are all doing, I hope you find time for some brain exercises at some point during the day.

Cheers,

Steve / The Quiz Master

SF, looking south from Market and Van Ness, 11/09/18.

HOW TO SURVIVE WILDFIRES: let’s do as nature does

"As fire scientists, we argue that communities should look to the natural world to help identify ways to make our homes more resilient to wildfire."

theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/14/wildfire-survival-california-nature-trees

FESTIVATE! SALE OF GUATEMALAN TREASURES

Festivate Your Holidays with a Guatemalan Touch! Astonish your guests with a colorful new tablecloth or table runner, serviettas for bread and tortillas, fresh touches for your home décor, and maybe even a bag, scarf, ornament, or other gift item, including jewelry, men’s shirts, blouses and skirts, pants, girls’ dresses, backpacks and jackets for kids, bibs, booties, overalls, and small quilts for babies. Sunday, November 25, at the Caspar Community Center, 9 to 2. Caspar Community’s Fabulous Fourth Sunday Breakfast starts at 9; the sale will be open until 2. For more information, please call 964-0321.

ON HER FIRST DAY OF ORIENTATION ON CAPITOL HILL, ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ PROTESTS IN PELOSI'S OFFICE

Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday kicked off her first day of new-member orientation by participating in a climate change protest at House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's office.

usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/11/13/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-nancy-pelosi/1987514002/

BIG BOSSMAN by Chuck Dunbar

 

Old Roy Cohn, he taught me well:

Be real mean, be hella tough,

Give not a one a bit of slack--

Treat 'em like crap, it's never enough.

 

Learned my best firing moves

On my Oh So Famous TV show.

You know, it's easy being the president,

Not really so much to know.

 

Good old Sean, Price, McMaster,

Cohen, Pruitt, Tillerson, all the rest-

They're gone-gone--just history now.

Couldn't keep 'em, not the best!

 

And Jeff Sessions, he's gone, too--

The dirty little, recused rat!

Should have done it sooner,

Finally told him get out—just scat!

 

General Kelly, maybe he's next--

Tough guy, tried his darndest to boss me.

But, so sad, time for him to go away.

March him out, return his key.

 

I'll get Mueller soon--you'll see.

Fire him right out, no need to coax.

Oh yeah, and by the way,

That Russian thing--it's a hoax!

 

The whole lot, simple dolts and peons--

Not so great, just left the place a mess.

We'll find better, know it's true.

We must have the beautiful and the best.

 

Bless surly Sarah and pious Pence,

They're just as good as gold.

Never fail to bend a knee and obey,

Always do as they're told.

 

All I want is loyalty, subservience, obeisance--

No need to think, analyze or ponder--

Simple stuff, not too much to ask.

So, toady to me—lest you go off yonder.

 

Well, I'll just go on--firing 'em right and left.

Just you watch closely and you'll see.

Thing is, you know—it's quite a lot of fun.

Keep that quiet—just between thee and me!

IN-N-OUT IS AS SOCAL AS IT GETS, so why does the Bay Area love it?

https://altaonline.com/innout-review/

HUMCO ASSESSES $4.5M IN PENALTIES FOR ILLEGAL WEED CULTIVATION, BUT THEY DON’T EXPECT ANYONE TO PAY UP

by Ryan Burns

The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday assessed more than $4.5 million in civil penalties against five properties where people have been growing cannabis without permits.

On paper this may look like a massive windfall for county government, but John Ford, director of the county’s Planning & Building Department, told the board today that he considers it “improbable” that anyone will actually pay those fines.

The owners of these five properties, which are scattered across the remote and densely forested regions of southern and eastern Humboldt, haven’t responded to numerous attempts to contact them, including official notices to abate and notices of violation sent via certified mail.

It caused quite a stir in the hinterlands last year when the Planning & Building Department started issuing letters threatening property owners with fines of $10,000 per day, per violation if they failed to remedy their code violations or enter into a “compliance agreement” with the county within 10 days of receiving an abatement notice.

Today’s actions represent the first times fines have actually been assessed as threatened, and Ford characterized it as a last resort. His department staff had used satellite imagery to identify 19 parcels where illegal growing appeared to be taking place. Abatement notices were sent out in the fall of 2017, and the violations were posted in the newspaper.

More letters were sent out this past summer, and where possible staff tracked down phone numbers and called the property owners. Most of them responded in one way or another and agreed to fix their code violations, which included un-permitted structures, clearing and grading.

“These five have been absolutely unresponsive to all efforts to try to prevent this,” Ford said, adding that he couldn’t overstate how hard staff worked trying to track them down.

Below is a list of the five property owners, who have all been fined for violating the county’s Commercial Medical Marijuana Land Use Ordinance, violating the county’s building, plumbing and/or electrical codes, and grading without permits. The amounts are all roughly equal and include $900,000 in civil penalties plus another $700 to $900 to compensate for staff time.

• David Couch (not to be confused with the man of the same name who serves as president of the McKinleyville Community Services District)
• Divan Dimitrov
• Immortal Sunshine, LLC (Manager: Conan Cavanaugh of Blue Lake)
• Jim Shinn
• Financial Fitness, LLC (Corporate organizer: Ward Hanigan of San Diego)

That satellite image at the top of the post is associated with 1551 Doreen Drive in Honeydew, the address of Couch’s property. The Dimitrov property is in the remote southeastern corner of the county. The Immortal Sunshine parcel is off Old 3 Creeks Road northwest of Willow Creek. Shinn’s parcel is near the Upper North Fork Mattole River. And the parcel owned by Financial Fitness, LLC, is near Telegraph Ridge, between Ettersurg and Briceland.

While the fees may never be collected in full, Ford said the county can now place liens on the properties, which could lead to foreclosures. That would require the county to demonstrate in court that the rights of the property owners have been maintained and there was no other resolution for the code violations, he explained.

Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson speculated that the abatement costs might be higher than the property values, and First District Supervisor Rex Bohn noted that the county might not be first in line to collect liens during foreclosure.

Wilson suggested that if the cost of mitigating or developing these properties is higher than their value then the county should investigate ways to return such properties to their natural state, perhaps by partnering with land trust agencies. He also suggested asking the state for financial help in cleaning up the properties.

Second District Supervisor Estelle Fennell said these properties are “the poster children for what the community has been asking us to address.” The violations are “egregious,” she said.

Board Chair Ryan Sundberg theorized that the whole process might wind up costing the county money, and he suggested that revenues from Measure S, the county’s cannabis cultivation tax, could go toward remediating the properties.

No one from the public showed up to comment on the agenda item, and the board passed it unanimously.

(Courtesy, LostCoastOutpost.com)

PG&E KNEW THE DAY BEFORE

Betsy Ann Cowley, who lives on 64 acres in Pulga right next to the junction with Camp Creek Road, said PG&E emailed her the day before the fire began and said it needed to investigate power lines on the land. The email said the company was sending employees to work on the high-power lines because 'they were having problems with sparks'. And, two days before the fire started, PG&E told customers in nine counties that it might shut off their power on November 8 because of extreme fire danger. One of the counties included was Butte County, where Paradise is located. But the utility company called off the shutdown, telling customers nine hours after the Camp Fire began that the weather conditions 'did not warrant this safety measure'. Mike Danko, a lawyer representing the Camp Fire victims, claims that PG&E did not go through with the planned shutdown because company bonuses are tied to customer complaints.

(Daily Mail)

GRANTS PASS EXPRESS

Ride Offered - Southern Oregon - T'day

I have room for one or two riders and their personal luggage to southern Oregon on Thanksgiving Day. Leaving Fort Bragg between 7-8am. I am headed to Applegate but can take you to Grants Pass for a little extra fuel money. (Adds about 40 minutes to my drive back to Applegate). This trip takes me 7 - 8 hours. I would like for you to be clean, non-smoking (of any kind). Just to be clear: Non-smoking means You Do Not Smoke. It does not mean you cannot smoke in the car or on the trip, it means I do not want someone that smells like smoke in the car) and able to share the fuel costs, probably around $26-30.  You will need to get yourself to Fort Bragg or live north of town.

YOU AND ME AND THE TEN-THOUSAND THINGS, SOME OF THEM

by Bruce Brady

Not counting my mother and my father, which seem so utterly average for their time that they're a plain given here, as I imagine they are in most elsewheres, I have loved many things. More things, in fact, than people. Nope, in my little slice of life's pie, a good deal started with that green Raleigh three-speed bike. The year was, I think, 1952 or '53, and my father was pissed. Actually, more than pissed: he was almost personally offended. I must have been about nine or ten.

The war had ended a few years earlier. Although by all reports (both of them) I was a bit of a precocious little boy in those days, and whatever traces of memory there may be are apparently in deep hibernation. So I imagine the air in America was thick with righteous patriotism. So when your innocent kid buys an English bicycle (which cost way more than a Schwinn) it must have seemed somehow unpatriotic. That's a rather massive moral weight to pile on a kid's first new bike.

Not only that, but I bought it (at Montgomery Wards, I think -- or maybe Sears) with the dribble of money I'd saved from a summer of meeting an old schoolbus at the nearby corner and travelling somewhere within an hour or so to pick strawberries, first, and then green and wax beans later in the summer. This sort of child labor is now, of course, illegal, but the doing of it was my introduction to working to earn what you want. It was at the same time my first remembered introduction to the foundational fantasy that getting that thing that you want will Voila! will make you happy, be it a Raleigh bike or that girl named Jenny at work or a 52 inch flatscreen.

A few years later, I bought my first car, a 1953 MG-TD, this time with money saved from my first 'real' job, this time as a dishwasher at a nearby shopping mall restaurant. It was now 1960 or '61. The little sportscar was, so one might say today, badass. Somewhere around the same time, my father stopped buying Studebakers and brought home, of all things, a shiny black 1961 Peugeot. I can't be sure, but I imagine that it and my MG have been the only foreign cars in the Sacramento subdivision. My father must have possessed a reclusive gene for being different, a quality expressed nowhere else in his life, so far as I recall.

Being different was the way it worked for me, though. I recently came upon a trove of family snapshots, among which are two that are relevant here. Thet are both black and white photos with the old crinkley edges, and both are of me wearing graduation robes, the first at my high school graduation in 1961, and the second when I recieved my bachelor's degree in 1968. My parents look fairly noncomittal, my father sort of bored. No one in my family, as far as I know, had ever graduated, let alone attended, college before. Not only this, but I was determined to become a teacher. I didn't attend the graduation ceremony to recieve my Masters Degree a year later. It was my (easy) way to protest the war.

Variously, the next few years brought, not love exactly, but a succession of major affairs: community theater, backgammon, baseball coaching, writing an unpublished novel, six years as an EMT with Leggett's volunteer fire department, self-publishing a book of poetry -- none of which, as I recall, brought the slightest praise from the rest of my family. According to each of them, they just thought I was gone most of the time, which I was.

Then came Wild River, where (as divorce did its first lame minuet) I was fortunate to live for seventeen years, on the South Fork of the Eel, and in a reasonable earthly approximation of Paradise, although it took about six cords of firewood to avoid freezing every winter. At school, we read Thoreau and Abbey and Lewis and Clark. I lived (sort of) with otters and eagles and bobcats and mountain lions and possums and bullfrogs which sounded like they were the size of cocker spaniels. Nothing particularly specialI. I cut firewood and worked on the water system and began to experience the deep meaning of community.

Seventeen years later, what turned out to be four years before 'my' heart attack, I was forced to sell Wild River. I was at the same time fortunate enough to sell it to a young man who had been one of my students at Laytonville. I moved up the Bell Springs Road, where I was able to be nearly as solitary as I had been on the river. From my deck, I could not see another human or road or any evidence of civilization nearby (not that I have all that much against civilization, mind you), although most mornings when it wasn't raining I could hear coughing from a near neighbor's deck across the creek as the Evil Weed was passed around.

During the five years I lived up there, at almost exactly three-thousand feet, incessant reading brought me to a book titled The Destruction of the California Indians. The naming of Bell Springs was a small matter, incidental to the larger story. A small band of Indians were fleeing a band of pursuers. Starving and scared utterly shitless, they came upon a few sheep and continued on, hoping somehow to escape and make a meal of them later. One of them wore a bell which there was no time to remove. Your imagination can easily provide the missing details about how Bell Springs got its name. This morning brings the news from one of those regularly in the coughing circle that the springs his family have relied on for decades are drying up, along with their pond. Local indian killers, it is rumored, used surviving natives for target practice on what is now Laytonville High School's football/soccer field well into the early twentieth century. To the east, the Butte Fire is twenty-five percent contained.

The naming of Bell Springs brought me to a interest in what I could gather of the world that was destroyed as, one by one, the once-powerful nations were physically and culturally exterminated, not only in northern California, but in every square inch of America. Research indicates, for example, that at the time of 'first contact' (the time when the first non-native, probably a Frenchman in 1803) surprised someone at whatever his business was), and unaware that his world was about to change. As in disappear. Somewhere around 20,000-200,000 lived from what is now Hood River, Oregon, through yet-to-be Portland, and down to the southern end of the Willamette Valley, what is now Eugene. And sadly, surely a result of cultural genocide, a person -- a non-native, me -- must look very, very closely to see the slightest remaining evidence outside of a scattering of museums. This as hordes of happy white folks (mostly) appropriate feathers and headbands and semblances of claws to sign a sham and stolen (and utterly preposterous) commonality.

For a white boy from Portland in the early twenty-first century this amounts to a kind of gaslighting on a scale encompassing one's entire experience. Pre-1803 inhabitants of what is now called the southern Willamette Valley (along, in fact, with most of their compatriots elsewhere) found themselves in a veritable paradise. The world made sense. Now only that, but it was, on the whole, a friendly and welcoming and known place. Every time I pause from whatever I am doing and find my mind wandering into the news of today, what has been lost brings tears. Then anger. Then, a kind of heartbreak.

These days, as much of California burns and mid-November approaches, the range of possibilities has necessarly shrunk. Now, at seventy-five, it seems fitting and sufficient just to watch it all go by, as from the window of some cosmic vista-dome car. This certainly feels right, largely because very little more seems now doable. Inevitably, the shrinking continues, apace, as it were. Even welcome, as it were…

BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS VACANCIES - November 14, 2018

11-14-18 Appointments Web

11-14-18 Vacancy Notice

CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE...ISO (In Search Of)

Like Minded Families and Individuals for Pagan Commune Land

My husband and I are looking to joint purchase a few acres of property close to Mendocino, CA with other families and individuals wanting to create a sort of commune for pagan/heathen/animists. We each would contribute about $25,000 or so for a lot, help each other homestead, create a common great hall/amphitheater like space for celebrations and merrymaking, playing music, crafts, workshop, etc While we do want to have all contribute and share some resoures, we plan on continuing our regular jobs and lives, but with a fantastic likeminded community. Feel free to call/text. Looking forward to hearing from you! My name is Sarah, my husband's name is Kala. 808.430.8972 and 808.430.8469 Ad on CL: https://mendocino.craigslist.org/reo/6749259802.html

Sarah Stevenson, Wolf-Mother Midwifery, Well-Woman Rites from Womb to Tomb

ENSURING THE SAFETY OF OUR STUDENTS DURING NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

Student & Staff Safety During Wildfires

The Mendocino County Office of Education in partnership with our Mendocino County School Districts, have established guidelines for school cancellations or suspension of school-related activities due to poor air quality. This protocol has been established in order to protect student and staff health in light of ongoing smokey conditions caused by wildfires throughout the Pacific Northwest. We are currently in the process of installing air quality monitors in all our school district sites. However, in the meantime, we are asking our school districts to perform a visual test, as well as refer to purpleair.com or airnow.gov to determine air quality conditions for their schools. The following guidelines utilize the Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index (AQI) numbers as well as guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Under these guidelines, districts will:

• Consult the website purpleair.com (airnow.gov or visual guide will be used until sensors are installed) at 5:00 am on the day of the suspected closure
• Consider canceling classes at an AQI of 275 or higher
• Report closures to affected families through pre-established channels

These guidelines are effective immediately and apply to all Mendocino County public school districts.

Why the level 275? Although an AQI level of 301 is the threshold for “Hazardous” air quality for adults, since students are ages 4-18, a lower level was considered appropriate. This came with guidance from the CDC with the understanding that air quality tends to worsen as the day progresses.

Why decide at 5:00 am? It is difficult to make an accurate prediction of the AQI the night before. These major decisions must be made with the best information available and that information is typically not available until the morning.

Generally, we believe students are in a safer air quality environment when they are in school. This is because schools typically use filtered air systems while many homes may not have this capability. Additionally, students at school have greater opportunities for indoor activity. While these standards provide a baseline for districts when considering the cancellation of classes, it is ultimately each district’s decision to determine what is best for their students and staff.

MCOE will continue to work alongside our school districts as well as state and local public health agencies to ensure that all students and staff within Mendocino County are kept safe and healthy.

"EVER SINCE THE WORLD ENDED" by Mose Allison

youtube.com/watch?v=KKwCCLIXhUM

COMMUNITY THANKSGIVING DINNER UPDATE

Just a little more than a week until Thanksgiving, and there are still opportunities to participate and needs to fill for the Community Thanksgiving Dinner, put on by the Fort Bragg Presbyterian Church:

Some extra hands to help with prep in the kitchen on Tuesday (11/20) and Wednesday (11/21) are greatly needed. So if you have some time on either of those days to slice, dice, stir, peel or otherwise help whip up a meal that will be enjoyed by hundreds of your neighbors, you would be very warmly welcomed! Visit the Community Thanksgiving Dinner website to see what shifts and tasks are still open (http://www.fortbraggpresbyterian.org/events/community-thanksgiving-dinner/).

Sign up by emailing Volunteers@FortBraggPresbyterian.org or by calling the church office (964-2316) or Printha (707-357-5480).

A few more delivery drivers for Thursday, starting at 12:30, would help to get those meals out to community members who can’t make it to the church for dinner. Sign up by emailing Volunteers@FortBraggPresbyterian.org or by calling the church office (964-2316) or Printha (707-357-5480).

And some more pie/dessert donations that can be easily sliced and plated would help ensure that everyone ends their Thanksgiving on a sweet note. If you have a dessert to donate, please bring it to the church, at 367 S. Sanderson Way, between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday (11/21) so that they can be sliced/plated in time for the Thanksgiving meal.

Reminder: If you or a friend, neighbor or family member needs a Thanksgiving meal delivered to your home, your request has to be received by noon on Wednesday the 21st (the day before Thanksgiving).

Sign uponline (English:http://www.fortbraggpresbyterian.org/wp-content/uploads/2018-Delivery-Request-Form-English.pdfor call the church office (964-2316) or Printha (707-357-5480).Visit the event website athttp://www.fortbraggpresbyterian.org/events/community-thanksgiving-dinner/for more information.Thank you to everyone who has already signed up, and to everyone who will!

Monica

HIT & RUN THEATER--Improv Comedy--Friday & Saturday, November 16 & 17!

Dear Citizens of Mendocino!

Hit and Run Theater climbs back on stage for another weekend of improv comedy shows on Friday and Saturday, November 16 & 17 at 7:30pm at the Matheson Performing Arts Center at Mendocino High School, 45096 Cahto St., Mendocino, CA 95460. The show will include Jill Jahelka, Ken Krauss, Doug Nunn, Kathy O’Grady, Christine Samas, Dan Sullivan, and Steve Weingarten. The team will return to the boards for this weekend of comic scenes and songs—all based on audience suggestions. Backing them up will be famed San Francisco keyboard star, Joshua Raoul Brody of Bay Area Theatresports. General Admission tickets will be $18, with a special admission price of $12 for Seniors over 65 and kids under 18. To reserve tickets or for more information, please call Doug Nunn at 937-0360 or write dnunn@mcn.org or on Facebook.

Thanks very much! We hope to see you there!

Doug Nunn

KEEPIN' IT REAL

Message from Honolulu, Hawaii

I'm sharing with you my email exchange with Washington, DC. Photojournalist John Zangas of dcmedia group.

* * *

I can’t say what’s best for anyone. Each must make their own decisions and find their own path. But DC has grown toxic over the last few years Trump has been in office. There were issues before but now it is on full display out in the open and it resembles the final years of the Great Fall of the Roman Empire. It is a reflection of the oncoming breakdowns of systems put into place over hundreds of years, seen all across our nation. Whether one looks and sees it is due to wide corruption, ethics violations in government, economic deprivation of the under class, removal of regulations providing environmental protections, accelerated climate change, an administration concerned with image not accomplishment, and a population pitted against itself by a barrage of half truths and fake news all over the networks, one can’t avoid the realization that things are unraveling fairly quickly. This is not a place one can make any progress. I’ll continue reporting what I can until it is time to go. That may be sooner than later.

John Zangas, Photo Journalist and Videographer, DCMediaGroup and Popular Resistance

* * *

On Nov 14, 2018, at 3:31 AM, Craig Stehr <craiglouisstehr@gmail.com> wrote:

Warmest spiritual greetings, Please know that I am continuing to pay weekly for a room at the Plumeria Alternative Hostel in Honolulu. I have no particular reason to be in Hawaii any further, yet remain here because no other option has presented itself, in spite of continuous networking with peace & justice and radical environmental individuals and groups on the mainland.  My days are spent identifying with that which is "prior to consciousness", and not with the body nor the mind. Indeed, whereas my true nature is Bliss Divine, the underlying reality is quite pleasant, as I continue to send out emails to the Washington, D.C. region. I would leave Hawaii and return to Washington, D.C. for the 15th time if I had any cooperation. I have money. What is lacking is any significant solidarity. This is VERY strange, at a time when general activism and organizing is crucial. We know that the global ecological situation is dire.   It has been suggested to me that I take a risk and just get on an airplane and return to Washington, D.C. Perhaps I will. Then again, perhaps I won't. You might send this out to all of your friends. Maybe post it online. Hey, let's make my networking message go viral. Please do whatever you can to further my effort to get based on a longer term basis to "intervene in history". So much depends on it. There is so little time. Thank you very much. ~Mahalo~

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

MATTHEW WOOD TEACHING CELL SALTS, MINERALS AND HERBS 11/17 & 18

Matthew Wood is finally back at the Philo School - although this class will be held in Navarro. Classes are from 10 - 5 both Saturday and Sunday with a potluck lunch each day. Please register at http://herbalenergetics.com/?page_id=19. Upon registration I will send driving directions to the class site. Give me a call at 707-895-3007 for further information.

Green Blessings,

Mary Pat Palmer, M.A. Registered Herbalist, Cannabis Therapy Consultant, The Philo School of Herbal Energetics, www.herbalenergetics.com

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF TAX AND FEE ADMINISTRATION REPORTS

CANNABIS TAX REVENUE INCREASES IN THIRD QUARTER OF 2018

The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) reported increased revenue numbers today for cannabis sales for the 3rd quarter of 2018. Tax revenue reported by the cannabis industry totaled $93.1 million for 3^rd quarter returns received through October 31, 2018, which includes state cultivation, excise and sales taxes. It does not include tax revenue collected by each jurisdiction.

California’s cannabis excise tax generated $52.4 million in revenue reported on 3^rd quarter returns received through October 31, 2018. The cultivation tax generated $12 million, and the sales tax generated $28.7 million in reported revenue. Retail sales of medicinal cannabis and medicinal cannabis products are exempt from sales and use taxes if the purchaser provides a valid Medical Marijuana Identification card and valid government-issued identification card.

Previously reported revenue for 2^nd quarter returns was revised to $80.2 million, which included $42.3 million in excise tax, $4.7 million in cultivation tax, and $33.2 million in sales tax. Revisions to quarterly data in prior periods are the result of amended and late returns, and other tax return adjustments.

In November 2016, California voters approved Proposition 64, the Control, Regulate and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Act. Beginning on January 1, 2018, two new cannabis taxes went into effect: a cultivation tax on all harvested cannabis that enters the commercial market and a 15 percent excise tax upon purchasers of cannabis and cannabis products. In addition, retail sales of cannabis and cannabis products are subject to state and local sales tax.

To learn more, visit the Tax Guide for Cannabis Businesses on the CDTFA website.