Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2018

• Cold Fronts
• River Watch
• Little Dog
• Dam Fees
• Gaskill School
• Crop Report
• Pot Circumlocutions
• Safe Location
• Inevitable
• KMUD GM
• Yesterday's Catch
• Mendocino Maps
• Trump Bingo
• Pure Stupidity
• Cecilia Payne
• Community Sing-along
• Rejecting Freud
• Open Studio
• Krampus
• Crab Feed
• Cashing In
• Invasion
• COP 24
• Dangerous Minority
• Past Remembrance

HIGH PRESSURE BUILDING across northern California will bring dry weather and some sunshine for Wednesday and Thursday. A cold front will send us a quick shot of rain, gusty winds, and modest mountain snows on Friday. Another cold front carrying a bit more moisture will pass through around Sunday. (National Weather Service)

NO HIGHWAY 128 FLOOD THREAT FROM RAIN THIS WEEK (YET)

A glance at the (upstream) USGS gauge Tuesday - as well as the forecast for the river level from NOAA - found no threat of Highway 128 flooding now the sandbar is back in place at the mouth.

The "normal" flood stage that will close the highway is 23.0' - but with the sandbar in place the roadway floods at 4.0'.

The current level (10:15 am) is 1.68' and the estimated flow past the gauge towards the sandbar is 11.1 cubic feet per second - or to put it in understandable terms: 82 gallons per second; 4,928 gallons per minute; or 295,704 gallons per second.

With rain expected tonight (60% chance) as well as later this week (Friday 60%), NOAA said the river should crest at 2.0' Saturday @ 2:00 am - but that forecast is constantly changed as the rain arrives.

(MendocinoSportsPlus)

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I'm thinking about retirement. Fame without the money part is just another hassle, like a basketful of Skrags, and all kinds of strange babes wanting to ‘hook up.’ Jeez, I'm not that kinda dawg.”

FAIR PLAY FOR SMALL DAMS

Editor,

I've been trying to find support for my view of fairness here, but the issue seems too obscure for politicians or nonprofits to care about. For local dam owners who are faced with crippling new fees, a bit of help now could save valuable natural resources and historical landmarks from an unknown fate and possible destruction. I'm submitting a public comment, and would like others to. But success would probably require a much more organized effort. Can you help me connect with someone who knows how to create that?

Thank You,

Loren Amelang, Philo

* * *

The California Division of Safety of Dams is proposing to adopt a new fee structure that is disastrously unfair to small but high rural dams. Owners of small dams that are invaluable to wildlife and firefighting helicopters may be forced to abandon or destroy them if they can't get relief from the new fees and flood preparedness requirements.

It is understandable that in the wake of the Oroville scare, the government is anxious to protect the public from floodwater. And it is reasonable that they demand 5% of their operating budget as equal administrative fees from each dam. But billing 95% of their budget according to the height of each dam ignores two important factors:

1. Height of a dam is not the threat, volume of potential flood water is the threat.

2. Dams in narrow upland canyons tend to be high, but narrow, and contain comparatively little water, while a low height dam in a broad flat valley can easily contain 100,000 times as much water.

For the smaller third of all jurisdictional dams, height is inversely related to capacity. Unfortunately for them, the largest one-fourth of dams include some very powerful entities who are paying as little as $0.03 per acre-foot of capacity instead of up to $3000.00 per acre-foot. I'm sure they know how to play the politics of this better than small and private rural dams.

I've illustrated this in the attached chart, which shows 1243 dams sorted by capacity, and the distributions of height, crest length, and proposed fee per acre-foot for each one.

The current law requires the fee to be based "in part" on height. But DSOD has full discretion to decide what part. We need to request that they allocate the fees more fairly, basing a much larger share on capacity — the real threat to public safety. And perhaps we need legislation to force them to bill by capacity.

Annual Fees Regulations - Regular Rulemaking

Currently Open for Public Comment before January 7, 2019

Hearing January 8, 2019, 10 AM, Sacramento

Details at https://water.ca.gov/Programs/All-Programs/Division-of-Safety-of-Dams/Statutes-and-Regulations

Specifically...

• Announcement
• Proposed Rules
• Justification

ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION

by Katy Tahja

Anyone living in Anderson Valley or on the coast has driven by this location a gazillion times and probably noticed a small sturdy stucco building on the north side of Highway 128 two miles before you get to Mountain House Road. You’d look at it and think “I wonder what its story is?”

Here’s the answer.

There used to be a place called Hermitage, settled in 1858 by S.W.Knowles, that later became the Glen Johnson Ranch. This headwaters area of Dry Creek had stock raising and hops growing, a post office, hotel and other local ranches. Silas Gaskill, a settler, decided the little community needed a school.

In 1860 the first school was built about a mile away, not the abandoned schoolhouse you see now. The county paid $15 for a school site with one and a half acres and stock fencing midway between Hermitage and the foot of Haehl Hill. The little school we see now came along later. Records are vague over the 150 intervening years… but we know the teachers there in 1902 were earning $60 a month.

Kids with a note from home were allowed to go swimming… there was no bussing… there was no Phys Ed… There were long winter vacations and a piano. By 1948, though the school had functioned almost 90 years, it lacked one thing the county school system demanded: a flush toilet. Since that could not be provided and parents were interested in graded schools, not a one room school, the school closed and kids attended the Anderson Valley Schools in distant Boonville.

The old school was offered to the county as a museum in 1978 and the Board of Supervisors approved plans to move it and place it next to the old Anderson Valley School (now the Veterans Memorial Building) but there was a problem: CALTRANS said it was too wide to be moved on the road, and it would cost too much to dismantle and reassemble… So it just sits.

And Mr. Silas Gaskill had a bad end. A man considered at the time “one of our best citizens” in 1865 killed his neighbor with a blast from a double barreled shotgun. Let out of jail on $1,000 bail he promptly fled the county and was never heard of again.

Take a little look at the schoolhouse when next you pass it. It has six big windows on the far side of the building. I wondered if those windows faced away from the road to keep the kids from watching the road and daydreaming instead of studying.

POT CROP TALK AT THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

Casey of O'Neil, local pot grower/rep, speaking at last week’s Supervisors meeting: “We would love to see cannabis included in the crop report in future years if possible.”

Sara Reith, KZYX, this morning (Tuesday 11 December): "In 1979 Ag Commissioner Ted Erickson surveyed farm equipment companies, nurseries, car lots, and his own sources to conclude that marijuana was a $90 million a year business in Mendocino County. Before everything was electronic, the Board of Supervisors insisted that he remove the information from every single printed copy of the annual crop report. Last week supervisors Carre Brown and John McCowen expressed cautious receptiveness to giving it another try."

Supervisor Carre Brown: “Just for history, and you may have heard it, it was probably before you were born, we had an Ag Commissioner that did report — and that's all I will say at this point. [Giggles.] But definitely it would definitely be something that maybe this board can discuss. I don't know if it's appropriate or not even though it is being called an agricultural crop.”

Supervisor Brown neglected to mention that Ted Erickson, the Ag Commissioner at the time, and the man who boldly included a viable estimate of the value of the pot crop, was fired for doing it. The Farm Bureau led the charge against him. Subsequent Ag Commissioner Dave Bengston told us years ago that he had a minute order from the Supes explicitly ordering him not to include estimated pot stats in the annual Ag report. Bengston said if three Supervisors directed him to include the stats, he would. By giggling and being coy about the true history of the Ag Report and the firing of a good man, thus true local history is re-written.

Continuing, McCowen: “Frankly, times are changing and it is, the industry is coming above ground and it should be accounted for one way or another. So I'm sure that will be an item for discussion: what is the proper way to track and report on this industry?”

One might expect that since the County has a detailed cannabis taxing regimen which has been developed and discussed at length at several prior supervisor's meetings where they dealt with how to handle various circumstances for tax purposes, they could at least ask County Tax Collector Shari Schapmire to provide the gross receipts which she is supposedly collecting taxes on.

According to the County's most recent budget summary the "cannabis tax revenue" line item says that Mendo expected to receive about $1.7 million in revenue (which may or may not include permit fees; the budget doesn't breakdown permits and tax revenues separately) but had only received almost $750k through March of 2018. The auditor “projected” that the cannabis tax revenue would be $850,000 by the end of June of 2018 and somehow "estimated" that the amount the revenue would rise to a little over $1,000,000 by the end of June 2018. It’s now December of 2018 and we still have no information any later than nine months ago?

We don't understand why the County’s revenue data is so slow to be recorded (HumCo has much more current comparable data), but even if you accept the dubious $1 million “estimated” by the auditor based on absolutely nothing, the cannabis tax revenues are substantially below budget.

No one seems interested in why that is, what the basis of the budget was in the first place, or what can be done to bring the cannabis program anywhere near to break even.

A cynic might well think that Official Mendo is avoiding the subject of how much pot is being brought under regulation, how much of it is taxable, how much is going untaxed, whether the initial taxing methodology is working, or whether the legal pot growers are properly reporting their taxable sales. (Har de har.)

After all, without these artificially inflated marijuana tax revenues (the program costs a lot more than it brings in and nobody’s interested in discussing that either), the board wouldn't be able to give themselves and their top officials the big raises they have been handing out lately.

If the board can't even include total legal cannabis sales value in their crop report like they do with all the other "crops," they certainly won't be able to come up with anything approaching the real total value of marijuana in Mendocino County — even if they employed the creative methodologies used by Commissioner Erickson back in 1979.

(Mark Scaramella)

SUPERVISOR GJERDE COMES ALIVE?

From the Cannabis meeting in the Mendocino Supervisors chamber today.

Gjerde: “Stop going in circles in pot talk...”

A RAINBOW AFTER LONG STORMS

by Zack Anderson

Wednesdays are paper days, which means I saddle up the creaking machine and roar north to pick up the weekly edition of sermons and secret maps from the printer in Healdsburg. From those wheezing, coughing presses the latest communiqués will begin their patient journey to the far-flung reaches of the AVA empire, for the wandering knights and pious scoundrels to contemplate and devour like the magic bones of a sacred beast.

Now, even in westernmost California, it is winter, and with the sun sleeping in, I rise in a web of shadows, whip my inchoate senses into a semblance of order with a double cup of fine Gold Rush coffee, and fire up the internet to confirm that planet earth (as the quaint natives call it) hasn't been bartered overnight to a distant galaxy and/or the ClintonFoundation in exchange for three Guatemalan maids kitted out in UN caravan chic and waving Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's dental records (hint: she's a single bicuspid short of a species thought long extinct: Swampus Rattus Giganticus). The headlines are a comforting cliché of poly-gender dance troupe bake sales, vintage famine, and jousting lawyers spewing lies, damned lies and the logistics of despair.

In other words, all systems are go!

At 6:45 A.M. I motor from my San Anselmo bunker down Sir Francis Drake, then veer left onto the Miracle Mile and into San Rafael, stopping as usual at the Arco. After refueling, it's east on 2nd Street, past the bus and smart train depot, then beneath the monstrous chunk of 101 overpass, the rain making the concrete blasphemy even more gloomy and brutish than usual. I hang a hard left on Irwin, four lanes leading to the holy north and one's small duty in the greater war for freedom and meaning. Ahead the traffic light has the audacity to turn red. With the Rodney King footage still lurking somewhere in my reptilian brain, I ease to a stop, and watch the blurry neon glow of tail lights pulling into a Shell station. The light turns green. I hit the gas, but nothing. Less than nothing. The engine has died. I turn the key again, only to be met with horrible CLICK. Another frantic turn of the key, another ominous CLICK. Angry horns hurl insults from behind. Someone machine-gun flashes their brights in futile belief that their malevolence can persuade my AWOL ignition to rise again like Lazarus. Hey, I'm all for anymiracles, especially ones that benefit me.

But my Bavarian Beast of a machine is as comatose as the patients in an Octoberfest drunk tent. In half a second we've gone from the Zen bliss of watching raindrops slide down the windshield to a triage situation.

I hit the dashboard's red EMERGENCY triangle, and my hazard lights flash on, only to be greeted by a toxic cloud of plaintive wails and beeps, as the endless river of outraged traffic is diverted by the impertinent rock of my bad luck. I keep turning the key, channeling my best Neville Chamberlain, hoping for a gentleman's handshake and a promise to be faithful in the future, but my usually reliable Machine-Beast ignores these desperate pleas for a rapprochement. It won't start, dead in the asphalt and water, and my morning plans likewise dragged into the abyss. A school bus lurches by, with a dozen tiny faces pressed to the glass. I want to shout, "You're next, you little bastards!" But who can begrudge their schadenfreude? I'd be laughing too, delirious with joy, if I were the one inching forward through the storm, instead of perched on this lonely outcrop of impolite failure.

After one more fruitless turn of the key, I fumble the AAA card from my wallet and dial the 800 number. A woman with a voice the sound of faraway ravens answers. "Are you in a safe place?"

Resisting the urge to say, "At this very moment or in general?", I say: "Not really."

"Then I'm sorry, sir, you'll have to call 911."

"But I'm a preferred member!"

She hangs up without so much as a good luck.

Expecting at any second to get cornholed by a jack-knifed big rig, I take a deep breath and dial 911. "Hello, 911, what's your emergency?"

"Yes, I'm broken down and —" The line goes dead. It starts to rain harder. I turn off the windshield wipers in the naive hope it will help the engine start. No luck. I call 911 again.

"911, do you have an emergency?"

"I'm broken down in the middle left lane on Irwin, in San Rafael."

"San Rafael, California?"

"Yes. Between 2nd and Third."

"Not on the freeway?"

"No, ma'am."

"Are you in a safe location?"

"That probably depends on your idea of a safe location."

"Sir, this is no time for joking. Are you safe or not?"

"I'm inside my broken-down car in the rain, blocking one lane of traffic."

"That doesn't sound safe."

"I agree."

"Okay, I'm going to transfer you to the local 911 and San Rafael police. This line is for CHP issues only."

"I didn't know there was a difference."

"Big difference, sir... here you go..." I try to start the car again. Zilch.

"Hello, 911, what's the nature of your emergency?"

Oh, where to start?

"I'm broken down on Irwin, in San Rafael."

"Are you in a safe location?"

"Not really, no."

"Nearest cross street?"

"Between 2nd and 3rd, northbound."

"Closer to 2nd?"

"Actually, closer to the middle of the block, across from the Shell station."

"Are you off to one side at least?"

"No, I'm blocking the middle right lane."

"Right. Wow. That's definitely not good."

I don't know what to say. I'm beginning to feel like Michael Caine in ZULU.

"Sir, are you there?"

"Yes, I'm here."

"We'll send someone out right away."

"Thank you."

"You too, and have a nice day," she said, without a hint of sarcasm or irony.

I try to fire up the fickle machine again. And again and again. The rain arrives in sideways gusts now, as bouncing headlights and angry horns attack from all sides in a Mongol horde of disdain. Five minutes pass. As I begin to acclimate to the hate and emptiness of it all, the tragedy of my certain demise is tempered by the fact that at least my rain-smeared corpse will make the evening news. With any luck, committees and fact-finding missions will be launched into the Byzantine failures of AAA, 911, and the PAC-12 television schedule. Letters will be written to local papers demanding a better emergency system. Box lunches will be eaten beneath fluorescent lights as angry fingers are pointed and policy recommendations are tabled for further review.

Of course, my heroic sacrifice, as needless as it was reluctantly dispensed, will be swallowed sooner than later into oblivion, like a cute puppy by the bureaucratic python of Time and... But wait! Suddenly, in this unlikeliest of spots, I'm electrified by a jolt of understanding: I finally understand what Bartleby the Scrivener is about! Of course any sane person would respond, "I’d rather not" to the insults and deceptions of prevailing culture. What's the sentient being supposed to say? And of course Camus' Stranger can't weep at his mother's funeral; it's the only sane response to the rodent stranglehold on our soft throats by the diseased claws of international banking, political action committees, the combustion engine...

As my old football coach Jim Miller used to say, "It's no sin to get knocked down, but it's a sin to stay down!" Why aren't they teaching Coach Miller in our ivy halls? Too much truth, that's why. I fondly remember another of dear old coach's favorite koans: "I thought I got lucky, but it turned out to be a wrinkle!" Have the so-called French philosophers every drooled something half as a profound! Smoke on that pungent cheese, Malraux and de Gaulle!

I'm excited now, glimpsing through the rain-streaked windshield a glimmer of truth: the total and beautiful pointlessness of it all. Why didn't I think of this earlier? By golly, it's given me a reason to live. Glancing at my phone, wondering with whom to share the epiphany, I see it's been 13 minutes since the second 911 call. I'm still blocking traffic, the raindrops still fall. But in the east the orange silhouette of a battered by unbowed sun stabs through hyena-like shadows. I turn the key: the Beast starts! Cue the chorus in Beethoven's Ninth! Sartre me up! Movement, progress, we live to fight another day!

I stomp on the gas for you, Bartleby, liberated at last, free as a springtime foal dancing in a meadow carved with daisies. The Beast gallops in triumphant ecstasy, like horsemen from the north, unsaddled, unburdened, unchained...

At least until the next traffic light.

COMPARE & CONTRAST

The GM position at KMUD, where I now broadcast my show, is open (job description is below). And the job pays $42,000 a year. At KZYX, the same job pays $60,000.

Why the difference? 

Why does KZYX pay 33% more than KMUD?

Same job. Same market. 

Actually, the GM at KMUD has more duties.

Go figure.

-- John Sakowicz, Ukiah

* * *

Published in NEWS ABOUT KMUD

Read more...

Job posting: Station Manager 

KMUD STATION MANAGER JOB DESCRIPTION

BASIC FUNCTION: The Station Manager is responsible for the overall management of the station and is expected to work in collaboration and cooperation with the staff, independent contractors, the Board of Directors, volunteers and membership.

SUPERVISED BY AND REPORTS TO: Redwood Community Radio Board of Directors

SUPERVISES: All paid and contract staff.

Salaried full time (40 hours per week) position. 

RESPONSIBILITIES INCLUDE:

Management:

•Emphasize teamwork and consensus building in decision making and all aspects of staff coordination.

•Make and implement decisions regarding the operation of the station including personnel, contracts, legal requirements, finance, and maintenance.

•Implement hiring and firing, training and evaluation of paid staff. Create, modify or eliminate positions, job descriptions or contracts, within the expenditure limits established by the Board for total staff costs and total contractor costs. 

•Participate as an advisor to the Board of Directors and its Executive Committee. Submit written reports and recommendations to the Board at the monthly board meetings.

•Participate in other committees, including Finance, Development, Pledge Drive and Policy.

•Hold regular meetings with staff and contractors as well as plan board/staff meetings, board trainings, and board/staff retreats including strategic planning.

•Help mediate and resolve disputes between staff members, staff and public and listen to/respond to complaints from all.

•Perform other duties as assigned by the Board of Directors.

Operations:

The priority for the Station Manager is oversight of operations with delegation of tasks to the Staff, Volunteers and Programmers whenever possible.

•Oversee the maintenance of buildings, equipment and grounds. 

•Responsible for outreach for and promotion of KMUD, its programs and events, including: public speaking, press releases and advertising in all appropriate media, and production of program guides, newsletters (internal and external), and website.

•Merchandising, creation of KMUD Merchandise for sale or promotions.

•Oversee and supervise staff with responsibilities for station daily operations.

Finance:

•Responsible for the financial affairs of the station, including oversight of development, grants, book-keeping, underwriting, budgeting, purchasing, sales and other relevant financial matters. The Board will decide issues of extraordinary circumstance; for example, land sales. 

•Recommend auditor candidate(s) to the Board; work with Board on auditor’s contract.

•Work collaboratively with financial staff to:

- prepare timely and accurate financial reports required by the Board of Directors, local, state and federal agencies, and by lending and grant-making institutions.

- facilitate the completion of the annual audit required by CPB.

- prepare a draft annual budget along with the Finance Committee.

•Provide a monthly narrative report analyzing the financial situation for the Board.

•Oversee the public posting of designated financial reports one week before the monthly Board meeting. 

Development:

•Oversee the coordination of all fundraising and outreach activities.

•As part of the Development Committee, plan yearly calendar of fundraising events.

•Oversee pledge drives in coordination with the Pledge Drive Subcommittee.

•Search for and secure public and private grants.

SALARY: $42,000 per year

To apply send resume to smhiring@kmud.org

CATCH OF THE DAY, December 11, 2018

MARCO ALARCON, Philo. Pot for sale, willful cruelty to child with possible injury or death.

MAKAYLA CROSS-STURGES, Ukiah. Domestic abuse, probation revocation.

JEFFREY KOSTICK, Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation. (Frequent Flyer)

MICHAEL LOCKETT, Laytonville. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.

JESSICA NORTON, Ukiah. Stolen vehicle, controlled substance, probation revocation.

JESSE VINCENT, Willits. Protective order violation.

DANIEL YEOMANS, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting, probation revocation. (Frequent Flyer)

KUDO FOR THE MENDO VOICE

The Mendocino Maps & Gears of Democracy

The variety and utility of single-purpose, locally self-funded “special districts” in Mendocino, as illustrated (but not explained — no idea what those colors and geographical areas mean, but haven’t explored the whole websection) is typical of counties across the country. These public health and safety entities are wholly accountable to the funders, whose assessments and fees provide the backbone of emergency services (first responders to fires and medical crises, in the home, on the road, everywhere they’re needed) and the oversight provided by locally elected directors offers community members many opportunities to engage in the civic process at the root of “democratic” practices. Which all sounds good, except that the intricate operations of management and implementation of highly technical skill sets occupy a realm of understanding that is beyond most of our experience, requiring reliance on the “old hands” and well-oiled machinery of public service administrations. You can get a PhD in public administration, join an international association of public administrators, and hook up to “municipal” operations where juggling the books and warding off public inquiries is derigeur — or you can contribute your civic energies to supporting the front-line organizations that protect our lives and property, work on shoestring budgets, and maintain a civic decorum at all times, under stressful and potentially chaotic circumstances that exceed our wildest imaginations and worst fears. Kudos to the authors and publishers, and thanks to all who recognize the importance of the “gears of democracy."

https://www.mendovoice.com/2018/12/presenting-our-latest-projects-the-mendocino-maps-gears-of-democracy/

Betsy Cawn

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

So…this is it huh? This is the state of the “leadership” in the most exceptional country ever, huh? And, we still have people wondering when collapse/decline is going to happen. Looks like all of the opiod, alcohol, porn, TeeVee and sports addictions/distractions coupled with shitty, meaningless wage slavery have created a whole nobody gives a shit anymore environment. The fact that the distracted, overly propagandized patriots of freedom in this country consider the military one of their most trustworthy institutions while they can’t pass an audit and always need more money even though having an open checkbook under the current idiot in office is one more sign of major decline. In my younger days it never occurred to me that this country could kill itself off due to pure stupidity, but here we are. It’s those things you don’t even expect that get you.

“SINCE HER DEATH IN 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.”

— Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate)

OH WAIT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE.

Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge.

Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because she was a woman, so she said to heck with that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard.

Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”

Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne—after telling her not to publish).

Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates). Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work.

Cecilia Payne was the firstwoman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science.

Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her.

(Matthew Gardner)

COMMUNITY SING-ALONG

I HAVE RANSACKED my oldest dreams for keys and clues, and let me say at once that I reject completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally medieval world of Freud, with its crankish quest for sexual symbols (something like searching for Baconian acrostics in Shakespeare's work) and its bitter little embryos spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love life of their parents.

— Nabakov

C'MON BY

Holiday Open Studio, Dec 15

Looking for something to do this Saturday? Or maybe a bit of local Christmas shopping? Come take a look at Chris' ceramics, mugs, bowls, sponge holders, sculptural pieces, and Jacquelyn's paintings, hand-painted cards, upcycled clothing and handbags, etc Also we'll have some snacks and time to visit, so come on by to say hello and see our studios even if you don't want to purchase anything!

Jacquelyn & Christopher Cisper

Saturday December 15, 11am-5pm

250 N Harrison, Fort Bragg

MANCHESTER ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT ANNUAL CRAB FEED DINNER

The Garcia Guild/Manchester Community Center will be having its annual New Years Crab Feed Dinner on Saturday, December 29th starting at 4 pm. The funds raised help make improvements to the hall and to keep it open for the community to use and enjoy. There is also a silent and a live auction. Tickets are $40 in advance and $45 at the door. For advance tickets call Susan or Gary 882-1750. Also, if you have any donations for the live or silent auction, please call us regarding that as well. Thank you Mendocino Coast communities for your ongoing support.

THE RICH GET RICHER.

Eric Sklar, former Fish and Game Commissioner up until 2017 (a Jerry Brown appointee) who helped write many of today’s regulations and oversaw Fish and Wildlife’s Law Enforcement Division as President of the Commission is getting richer. Since he has left his government post he has started at least 6 marijuana businesses.

https://cdfgnews.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/2016-wildlife-prosecutor-of-the-year-announced/

https://www.corporationwiki.com/California/Saint-Helena/eric-sklar/44193838.aspx

Clearlake approves first commercial cannabis business

https://napavalleyregister.com/community/star/news/local/napa-valley-fume-delivers-marijuana-to-your-door/article_a55ebe0b-db87-526c-96f7-70b60ebfb53e.html

https://ktla.com/2018/12/07/weed-can-be-delivered-anywhere-in-california-even-areas-where-cannabis-is-banned-regulators/

Do you see where I’m going with this.

James Marmon MSW

P.S. About 3 weeks ago non-permitted growers all over lake county got a letter in their mail boxes from Fish and Wildlife that they knew they grew this season and if they continue to grow they will be raided and face prosecution.

INDIGENOUS AND FRONTLINE LEADERS DISRUPT TRUMP’S FOSSIL FUEL PANEL AT COP 24

by Daniel Bacher

Katowice, Poland -- For the second year in a row, indigenous and frontline youth and community leaders from the U.S. today disrupted a pro-fossil fuels event hosted by the Trump Administration at the annual U.N. climate talks, COP 24.

Just like they did last year at the climate talks in Bonn, Germany, the Trump administration held an event today promoting fossil fuels and nuclear energy as a “solution” to the climate crisis. Wells Griffith, President Donald Trump’s Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the Department of Energy (DOE), hosted the panel discussion, entitled “U.S. Innovative Technologies Spur Economic Dynamism.”

“The United States has an abundance of natural resources and is not going to keep them in the ground,”  Griffith claimed. “We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice their economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability.” 

Ten minutes into the panel discussion, over 100 people in the audience started chanting ‘Keep It In the Ground,” then stood up and blocked the panel from view, according to a statement from the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. Many there broke into laughter right after the Trump administration moderator said "fossil fuels will continue to play a role" in the world. 

You can see Democracy Now’s coverage of the event here: www.democracynow.org/…

Four representatives from Indigenous, youth and Global South communities took the microphone and shared their stories about the growing movement in the U.S. to stop fossil fuel and uranium extraction and advance a “just transition” to 100 percent renewable energy. 

“There are over 15,000 abandoned uranium mines on the stolen lands of the so-called ‘United States,’ with most of that uranium used for nuclear weapons. said Leona Morgan (Diné, “Navajo”) Diné No Nukes, Indigenous Environmental Network. “Uranium Mining today is just as dirty and radioactive as it has always been, but now nuclear power is being pushed as a clean solution for climate change by the same colonial forces that failed in their attempts of genocide.”

“On my people’s ancestral homelands, we have coal, oil, natural gas, and we have uranium. Diné people are actively making changes in our own communities, stepping up to our own political structures, and demanding that the federal government stop developing fossils fuels, stop allowing radioactive colonialism and transport, and start to clean up the mines and the mess they left. We will no longer allow racism and imperialism to destroy our lands, kill our brothers and sisters, and alter our future,” Morgan said. 

“Trump's presence here is a joke,” said Aneesa Khan, 23, Sustain US youth delegation leader. “His only priority is ensuring fossil fuel CEOs squeeze every last dollar out of our communities. I remember listening to my mother’s voice over the phone saying that our home in Chennai, India was flooded from a hurricane. The next year we didn’t have water because of a drought. I’ve seen my aunt and uncle breathe in some of the world’s most polluted air in New Delhi.”

“No one should see loved ones suffer from a crisis that can be prevented. The U.S. elite has profited off fossil fuels for decades. It’s time for them to pay up and support to the world transition away from dirty energy,” Khan stated.  

"Our Communities, whose very survival is most directly impacted by climate change, have become a living red line,” said José Bravo, Just Transition Alliance, It Takes Roots Delegation.“ Our air and water are being poisoned by fossil fuel extraction, our livelihoods are threatened by floods and drought, our communities are the hardest hit and the least protected in extreme weather events—and our demands for our survival and for the rights of future generations are pushing local, national, and global leaders towards real solutions to the climate, economic, and social crises." 

“My mother sacrificed everything when she migrated to the United States from Honduras,” said Vic Barrett, 19, youth plaintiff in Juliana v. U.S. “I’m suing the U.S. government for delaying action on climate change because I don’t want my mother’s sacrifice to be in vain. The U.S. government is risking my future by continuing to promote fossil fuels while our climate is under threat. Young people are at the forefront of leading solutions to address the climate crises and we won’t back down. We won’t stop fighting.” 

This event took place just days after Trump rejected the federal climate report that documents the risk and urgency of the climate crisis in every single part of the U.S. The Trump administration, along with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait refused to allow a collective statement that would “welcome” the report that, ironically, was issued by his own administration 

The activists said the U.S. has “for decades, delayed, obstructed, and weakened progress on international climate action, promoting the agenda of fossil fuel CEO’s over the demands of everyday people. Just this weekend, the U.S. blocked consensus to include mention of the IPCC’s report on 1.5 C at the U.N. climate talks, preventing the groundbreaking findings to be addressed by world leaders. The U.S. has also failed to contribute $2 billion to fill the Green Climate Fund and help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change.”   

Livestream and photos are available from: @ittakesroots @ienearth @ggjalliance @CJAOurPower

On Sunday, December 9, the Los Angeles Times published an excellent op-ed by Investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz about about Trump’s energy policies, “Trump's pursuit of 'American energy dominance' threatens the entire planet.”  The article is available here: www.latimes.com/...

“Trump has unleashed a massive, untethered expansion of oil, natural gas and coal production, designed to make this country the world’s foremost dirty energy powerhouse. The policy not only worsens catastrophic climate change, it pushes the U.S. into a small and increasingly isolated club of autocratic regimes intent on maintaining a global commitment to fossil fuels,” Antonia Juhasz wrote. 

Last year at the UN Climate Conference in Bonn, Germany, Californians, including indigenous and frontline water protectors, disrupted Governor Jerry Brown’s speech at the “American’s Pledge” event on November 11 to challenge his support of the fossil fuel industry while he poses as a “climate leader.” The Brown administration has approved 21,000 new oil and gas drilling permits, including 238 new offshore wells in state waters, since 2011.

The banner-carrying protesters yelled, “Keep it in the ground” and other chants, referring to the governor’s strong support of expanded offshore and onshore drilling and cap-and-trade policies that could prove catastrophic to the Huni Kui People of Acre, Brazil and other indigenous communities around the globe.

“I wish we have could have no pollution, but we have to have our automobiles,” said Brown as the activists began disrupting his talk.

“In the ground, I agree with you,” Brown said. “In the ground. Let’s put you in the ground so we can get on with the show here.”

“This is very California. Thanks for bringing the diversity of dissent here,” the visibly disturbed Brown continued.

A video of Brown’s reaction to the protest is available at the Sacramento Bee.

You can read my interview with Daniel Illario, the Bay Area Idle No More activist that Brown focused on when he said, “Let’s put you ground,” here: www.dailykos.com/...

I WANT TO LIVE as long as I can. I plan to stop when it's evident I'm a ruin or soon to be one. There's no afterlife -- not in this corner of the universes, anyway. I celebrate this unlikely shot I have at life, consciousness, self-awareness and so on. It is an amazing spark, life, and I won't let it go out too easily. Being is way more fascinating than nothingness.

And there's another reason. I become more useful as I age. What we call wisdom might also be called "connecting the dots." Information necessary to life is spattered on our blank slates in careless ways. It's for us to organize them. We get memory storage of everything we perceive, whether we can remember it or not. It is, to me, a thrill when something I learn also connects some of those dots. Just like a drawing, those connected dots start to form new pictures, pictures that reflect a growing understanding of things, and it's a multiplying phenomenon. The more connections and clarity happens in the brain, the more you're capable of adding. Y'all know this.

At eighty, I got lotsa dots and lotsa connections. I have memories that precede World War 2. I remember the excellent days in America when the war was over. The corporate guys were scared to death that the end to all the war production would necessarily slow our economy to a stall or stop. How wrong they were! War production excluded things we wanted, like cars and refrigerators -- BUTTER, fer Pete's sake. (I remember margerine in a sturdy plastic bag. It was white, and there was a little bead with red dye that you popped and kneaded through all the white margerine to turn it yellow.) We wanted all the stuff we did without during the war, and the U.S. economy BOOMED!

I remember Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Mao Tse Tung (however we spell it now), FDR and Babe Ruth. Our sort've skimpy bookshelves had Churchill's six fat books about the war (and books by America's favorite curmudgeon, my hometown native son H.L. Mencken).

I don't mean this as a boast. These memories are merely accidents of time. What I DO mean is I know stuff a younger person, even if s(he) is ten times smarter than me doesn't, because I have more dots and more lines between them. Every day of my life, the Big Picture is slightly better focused. I feel an obligation to make the most of it, and that's what this is. I constantly see stuff I can make informed comment on BECAUSE I'VE SEEN IT BEFORE.

This has its limits. I've never seen anything remotely like this period in American and world affairs. They're terrifying and fascinating at the same time, and I have neither dots nor lines that address them.

BUT all around today's events are other things I do know about, and that's also why I write. I'm 80, and as much as I can, I wanna bring people who haven't been around since the glory days of newspapers and hot type, up to speed. That's what this page and all my pages are about -- (that and ventilating my agitation over America's supposed chief executive).

Yesterday, in conversation that went on here, I quoted the Spanish philosopher Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana. This is what he said:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

(Mitch Clogg)