MCT: Tuesday, January 1, 2019

• 2018 Deaths
• Dia Muertos
• La Catrina
• Midnight Revelry
• Cave Illumination
• Albion 1967
• Right Foot
• Raven Feeding
• Sunset
• Ed Notes
• Flight
• Imperial Troopers
• Police Reports
• Ignored Warnings
• Yesterday's Catch
• Disenfranchising Democrats
• Forecast 2019
• Corporate Miseducation
• Different Disciplines
• Art Walk
• Elbert Howard
• Spaceship Passengers
• Electric Avenue
• Comments
• Rummage Sale
• Avant-garde

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

Anderson Valley Deaths in 2018

• Sharon Sullivan
• Jerry Cox
• Beryl Thomasson
• Ken Montgomery
• Christine Lopiccolo
• Paula Kesenheimer
• Nick Rossi
• Jason Abbott
• Willis Tucker
• Michael Hibbeln
• Carolyn Hibbeln
• David Falleri
• Charley Swehla
• Pat Hulbert
• James Triplett
• James Gimblett
• Donald Hammond
• Jeff Hansen
• Kent Rogers
• Ernie Blattner
• June Lemons
• Bonni Davi
• Brian Mendoza 
• Daniel Woolley
• Billy Mckenzie
• Nicole Sawaya
• Maurice Turner
• Carl Collard Sr.
• Mike Howell
• Guadalupe ‘Lupe’ Becerra
• David Papke
• Gloria Walter

WE NEED a gringo version of the Mexican Day of the Dead. The Mexicans set aside an annual day to remember those who are gone. Thinking back over the recent past, it’s not only the deaths of people over the past year who were central to the life of the Anderson Valley that we miss, many of us still miss people we knew from our first years here. I still miss Burl Evans, the CHP officer assigned to Boonville in the early 1970s, a wonderful guy. And John Slotte who filled out our first basketball team when we didn’t know anybody else in town. And Mel Baker, school superintendent when school administrators still came with vivid personalities, and Frances Lytle, school secretary, the glue that kept the whole school show running. Homer and Bea Mannix. Bill Mannix. Peggy Bates. Indian Ed. Harold Perry. Cleo and Buck Clark, and old lady Zanoni at the Navarro Store. The legendary deputy Squires, fortunately still with us and still a legend. Cecil Self. Ruben and Marie Thomasson. I could go on and on, but if we were Mexicans we’d gather some central place to remember all the people who made the Anderson Valley the special place it is, and if our culture were more coherent we’d do that.

THE NEW YEAR BEGAN IN BOONVILLE WITH A FEW MUFFLED GUNSHOTS (OR CHERRY BOMBS?), all of which seemed to come from one die-hard location. Nothing like the massive gunshot barrages and firecracker explosions of the last century.

NORTH COAST NIGHT LIGHTS: HOUDA BEACH CAVE

Text and Photography by David Wilson

It was a low tide, a low moon, the cave and the Milky Way — long had I waited for this combination to come together. And when it did, somehow, I was there. All summer I’d watched the tides, waiting for a tide low enough for me to get to the cave safely sometime before midnight (hey, I get tired). But the idea had slipped from the forefront for a time and I hadn’t been watching the tides when the bug to go out hit me and I called my brother Seth for company on a photographic outing.

Checking the tide, I saw that it would be fairly low right after the crescent moon set. I decided on Houda Beach, anticipating that some interesting rocks would be exposed. I hadn’t realized that the tide would be low enough to reach the cave until we arrived, but it was. Not only that, the Milky Way was lined up outside of it, framed in the entrance, along with the silhouette of Camel Rock near the setting moon. I’d wanted this photo for months but only when I forgot to plan it did it come about. It’s interesting how that works. And I realized then that even if low tides had allowed me nighttime access to the cave during the summer months, the Milky Way would have been out of view to the left. It had to be this night. And I was there. I’m grateful for these opportunities. 

Leaving the cave, we were alerted by sirens behind us and turning found a large fire burning farther north up Scenic Drive, illuminating the entire area and throwing a great smoke plume across the waters. According to reports I read later, it was a vegetation fire. We watched the lights of first responders approaching it and it seemed to us by the diminished glow that they quickly had it under control.

ALBION, 1967

AVA,

My friend and major music maker Ira Rosenberg gave me a ride from the Albion Post Office. After listening to my lament about hitchhiking he forecast that I would achieve "enlightenment."

Having my driver’s license pulled because of my health issues means that mostly I depend on my thumb for travel which puts me in closer contact with my Albion Nation.

On the way to Mendo via Highway 1 near Albion we were picked up by 91-year-old "Rusty Gates," who didn't look a bit older than 65. A Stanford graduate and success at everything he ever did, we both agreed that the saddest part of getting old was losing our friends. The thought of the past brought me back to 1967.

In April of 1967 we got our first post office box in Mendocino. The post office then was a storefront overlooking the Pacific Ocean on Main Street.

Two of my best friends and mentors had moved up to Mendocino from Berkeley about 1962 — Paul and Nancy Kelly. Paul invented the philosophy of "dynamic indolence." He was the smartest person we've ever known. He was the inspiration of the Albion Nation, a superlative fisher of salmon and humans, innovator of the IWW/EF! challenge to destructive logging, a first-class poet and writer, played "lead jug" in the Casper Flats Jug Band, a great mentor to Norm De Vall, Bob Ross, Jack Sears, Jan Emo, et al. His wife Nancy, was a nurse, RN, and later supervisor of nurses at Coast Hospital, still later a Chinese doctor, mother of two of his very successful sons and a true gift to the planet. She still lives -- may she shine forever.

From Paul and Nancy we met Walter and "Hilly" Wells who was an excellent refrigeration repair person, great builder, owned a small farm and produced "the Illustrated Paper" of Mendocino, one of the first of the "underground" papers.

He rented me my first dwelling for $20 a month including utilities. He hired me to sell ads, sell and write for the paper and work with him so we could pay the rent. A landlord from heaven. We then met the "Yellow Kid," an art professor who turned me on to diving. We soon became addicted. Harold Braydon, a local pirate, took me under his wing and taught me the finer points of the shell game.

In late 1967 we met Jan Eno and David Isakson of Peerless Pipeworks of Casper. Phil Bianci, a community organizer, steered me over to Peerless where we were hired to market their fabulous herb smoking pipes. Over the next course of years we met the then new settlers including my diving instructor Jim MacMillan who named me Captain Fathom. His beautiful wife Valerie, Bill and Jerry Zacks, Bobby Markels, Bryon Randel and Emmylou Packard, Barbara Champion, Dr. Harold Robinson, Morris Boynoff, Dr. Peter Barg, life coach Victor, Kathy O'Grady, Susan Trieman, Nat and Kathy Bingham, Riva and Stephen Anapolsky, John and Judy Wester, Jack Sears, Jim Cummings, Jan Me, Sam Costa, Delbert Schaffer, Kent Allman, Charlie and Ken Crother and Jocko, and of course my number one ex, Tami-Diane.

Alan ‘Captain Fathom’ Graham

Albion

PS. Next up: Albion in 1970.

FRANK HARTZELL WRITES:

Something disturbing on our walk from Glass Beach to Noyo Bridge through the Old Millsite. A guy feeding ravens. Dozens of them on the ground while he fed them. Nearby are a bunch of signs about nesting birds in the offshore rocks. Don't disturb them, etc. Ravens will kill ALL those baby birds. Their favorite food is baby birds. They eradicated the kingfishers here, which nest on the ground and lived here for many years until the raven population grew too big. They killed ALL the wood ducklings year after year. NO wood ducks or kingfishers anymore. Far less of every bird here on the boundary with MacKerricher. They are a species grossly out of balance and they are killing off way more plovers and sea birds that nest near shore than anything else. The ravens love the bans on dogs and in effect people, so they can take over. NOBODY should be feeding them, especially on the ocean front. They are super, duper smart animals and can be discouraged. They are killed in other state parks around the Pacific Coast but not here. They should at least NOT be fed.

A PAIR of sad incidents over the past week: the first a young man whose diminished capacity somehow resulted in his mother being carried by ambulance over the hill for medical treatment, but all of us were much relieved when Wanda Owens soon reappeared, and she and Bill were back on the job getting the Daily Journal delivered. And there was the total destruction by fire of Ms. Anyez’s barn at Nash Mill, her nearby home spared.

SUNSET FROM POINT CABRILLO LIGHTHOUSE

ED NOTES

JUDGE NADEL of the Mendo Superior Court is considering the odd case of the Anderson Valley Land Trust vs. CT Rowe of Peachland. Having read the Trust's complaints and CT's rebuttal, and being predisposed to CT's side of the dispute in the first place but trying mightily to put my bias aside, it seems clear that CT, and before him his mother, Briana, promptly met the Trust's claims that the Rowes were violating their agreement by getting into compliance. How this thing — essentially a beef between people who have known each other for years — got all the way into court is surprising, to me anyway. Check that: maybe it got all the way into court because the contending parties have known each other for years.

I REMEMBER BLOVIATING at the time the local Land Trust was formed that it was one more tax dodge for people fortunate enough to own tracts of Valley land, land heavily used for at least a century before the new gentry arrived with their lawyers, accountants, gentry-friendly tax laws and their smug assumption that it was all for preservation of the natural world as their pals in the wine industry simultaneously poisoned the land and erected signs claiming that their vineyards were "fish friendly" as the fish disappeared forever from the Navarro, not to mention the Valley's long gone frogs and much of its insect population. It remains unlikely that the less blessed will ever be invited to picnic on the "conservation easements" granted the gentry "in the public's interest," so it's no surprise here at Boonville's beloved weekly that the Trust would reach for the protection of the courts to run up an uppity member's legal bills. Hell, most of the judges, if not all of them, have their tidy little estates in land trusts.

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THE UKIAH BOWLING ALLEY is hanging on with a month-to-month lease. An important institution to many Mendo people beyond its host community of Ukiah, its loss will be felt far and wide. A recurrent rumor says the popular business will be razed for a big box store called Target

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THIS SOUND ‘PROGRESSIVE’ TO YOU? "Every two years, the CA Democrats elect 7 self-identified females and 7 other than self-identified females from each Assembly District in CA as delegates to the state party. Those who are elected will have a chance to vote for the new party chair and other leadership. The race is hotly contested and will determine how welcoming, grassroots-focused and innovative the party becomes or how beholden it will remain to big money interests."

KEY PHRASE HERE IS, "will have a chance." And, I guess, "self-identified females" means 7 transvestites offset "7 other than self-identified females," the whole of it adding up to more evidence that the Democrats, rather than represent everyday working people are furiously pedaling to keep up with the latest in sex fads. The above event is controlled by Demo Central — Bosco, McGuire, Wood, Huffman via Demo Central, Pelosi, Feinstein, Schumer etc. But as the following indicates a few people are fighting back:

THIS IS TRUMP IN IRAQ.

I'd like to fill the screen with this picture. The Defense Department lowered intelligence standards for the services in 2005, when they were not able to recruit enough soldiers for Iraq. They doubled the number of individuals with IQs lower than 92. 100 is average.

But the reason I'd like you to see this picture close up is that the faces in it are not the faces of dummies. They look attentive and thoughtful. Some look skeptical. Trump told them he got them their first raise in ten years, an assertion that had zero connection with fact. Media people are discussing what might've prompted the Liar-in-Chief to say a thing so obviously false. Soldiers don't look at their pay?

Hinting at his proposed draw-down of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said America is shuffling off the self-appointed task of World Policeman except where the people who benefit are willing to pay for our policing. He said we will stop being "suckers," implying that he was addressing suckers.

Frankly, I'd like to see us get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan (and a couple hundred other places), but Trump's abrupt, unadvised decision guarantees that we will leave those places as we entered them -- stupidly, with maximum cost, disruption, dysfunction and pain.

Anyway, that attractive-looking group (were they hand-picked?) in the picture are eligible for a lot of benefits -- free education and healthcare among them. 

Empires take care of their fighters. Imperial warriors are the people who (unknowingly) force the will of the empire onto its vassals, the "shithole countries," as Trump dubs them. An empire needs lots of shithole countries from which they can take stuff of value, like oil, aluminum ore and people who work cheap.

When I went into the army it was because I was sick of school and because the U.S., through our overseas propaganda media, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, the overarching agency called the United States Information Agency and the words of then-President Eisenhower, urged the people of Hungary to rise against the U.S.S.R. and Hungary's forced membership in that union.

Here's a paragraph from an article in the New York Times from September 28, 1996 by Jane Perlez:

"Newly released documents concerning Radio Free Europe broadcasts during the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Soviets confirm what many Hungarians remembered and others suspected: that commentators encouraged the Hungarians to battle on in the false understanding that they would receive reinforcements from the West."

I was a freshman at Haverford College, an all-male Quaker school near Philadelphia. We were of soldiering age, and we watched the whole debacle intently. The U.S. PROMISED reinforcements and other backup to the Hungarians if they stood up against Russia. 

They did; we didn't. 

It was the most abject double-cross I had ever seen. I was furious. Even as Russian tanks rolled over the streets and citizens of Hungary, our broadcasters were still promising that American aid was imminent.

It never arrived. What happened was a massacre. 722 Russians died. 6,000 Hungarians died.

This is now a dusty old snippet from history, but at the time it got me hot. I went into the army, hoping the U.S. would do some goddamn thing to redeem itself and I could be part of it. Again: nada.

I was young and dumb. The last thing on my mind was any thought of "veterans' benefits." I was ashamed of my country's cowardice. (What happened was the USSR dangled some attractive trade deals, producing a little thaw in U.S.-USSR relations, so Ike & Co. decided to renege on helping Hungary.) I became a paratrooper, jumped out of a few perfectly good airplanes, learned a score of ways to kill people, never went anywhere much besides stateside places, had a miserable time and got out. By then I was relieved that my hitch was between wars, because we of the most combat-ready divisions, like the 101st Airborne infantry, were scheduled to die first if the then-very-hot Cold War (despite the brief BS about "improved relations;" Russians have always beaten us at the BS game) -- in case that dangerous pas de deux suddenly got real. During those three army years, '56, '57 and '58, I wised up some. I discovered vets' benefits then, and used G.I. Bill assistance to go back to college and later to provide my healthcare.

This brings me back to the picture. I hope those people are as keen as they look and that they take full advantage of the thank-you-for-your-service bennies they will be offered.

It's an odd thing. We are so indoctrinated against socialized government, yet empires always look after their militaries. The many programs under the G.I. Bill are pure socialism, and those kids watching Trump will use them. High IQ or low, people in uniform today are much more attuned to post-service advancement than we were. Good on 'em!

"Thank you for your service" sometimes sounds glib and hollow, but the million bucks or so the Veterans Administration spent ridding me of throat cancer ain't hollow.

(Mitch Clogg)

CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED?

On Friday, December, 28, 2018 at approximately 5:36 p.m., Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies received a radio call for service for a domestic physical altercation at a residence in the 15000 block of Mitchell Creek Drive in Fort Bragg.

After Deputies arrived on scene they contacted an adult female outside the residence. Deputies learned Darrin Willett, 52, of Fort Bragg had fled the location on foot just prior to the Deputies arriving.

During their investigation, Deputies learned the adult female and Willett were married and had been involved in a verbal argument. The argument escalated when Willett began violently swinging a large knife at the adult female, in a slashing type motion and at close range.

In fear for her safety, the adult female had sprayed Willett with pepper spray in an effort to ward off his attack. After the adult female fled to another room and called 9-1-1, Willett pursued her and entered the room. Willett forcefully took possession of the adult female's pepper spray and sprayed her in the face before fleeing the location.

Deputies observed the adult female had symptoms caused by pepper spray exposure. After Deputies confirmed that Willett was on active felony probation with terms that he must submit to search and seizure, Deputies conducted a detailed search of the residence and surrounding grounds for Willett but were unable to locate him.

At approximately 7:55 p.m., Deputies received another radio call for service at the same location advising Willett had returned to and entered the residence. After Deputies arrived they observed Willett was inside the residence and observed him enter and lock himself in a bedroom to avoid arrest.

After Deputies entered the residence to arrest Willett, he refused to exit the room after repeatedly being verbally directed to do so. Deputies subsequently entered the room and arrested Willett without further incident.

Willett was transported to the Mendocino County Jail where he was booked on charges of Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Corporal Injury to Spouse, Unlawful Use of Tear Gas, Violation of Probation, and Resisting Arrest, and was to be held in lieu of $30,000 bail.

* * *

WHAT'S A NICE GIRL…

On Friday, December, 28, 2018, at about 12:30 am, a Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputy and his training officer were on routine patrol in Calpella. While patroling they observed a vehicle matching the description of a recently reported stolen vehicle from the City of Ukiah. A check of the license plate confirmed the vehicle was a late model Dodge Ram pick-up stolen from the City of Ukiah city limits the previous day, approximately 6 hours earlier. Deputies initiated a traffic stop in the 100 block of Moore Street. As the vehicle drove down an inclined driveway it became apparent the driver of the vehicle was considering running from the stop sign as the driver’s door opened. The driver, later identified as Mark Beardslee, 45, of Ukiah, abruptly stopped the vehicle and ran as one of the Deputies gave chase.

The other suspect in the passenger side of the vehicle, Laura Adams, 26, of Ukiah, was detained by the other Deputy when she exited the vehicle.

During the foot pursuit, Beardslee was observed making furtive movements described as reaching towards his front waistband indicating he was potentially reaching for a weapon. Beardslee was also making his way back towards the other Deputy who was distracted while detaining Adams at the stolen vehicle. The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputy deployed his issued “Taser” control device to prevent a perceived assault by Beardslee. The “Taser” proved ineffective in the bushy environment and Beardslee was taken to the ground by physical means. After a brief struggle, as Beardslee continued to reach for his waistband while on the ground, he was placed into handcuffs and taken into custody. Beardslee was subsequently arrested for Possession of a Stolen Vehicle, Resisting, and Driving while License Suspended. Beardslee was transported to the Ukiah Valley Medical Center for medical clearance following the “Taser” use and booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $25,500 bail.

Adams was identified as wanted for an outstanding Mendocino County Superior Court Bench Warrant for Violation of a Court Order. Adams was booked into the Mendocino County Jail for her outstanding bench warrant where she was to be held in lieu of $7,500 bail. Ukiah Police Department Officers arrived at the scene and assisted in the recovery of the stolen vehicle by returning it to the owner.

During the course of the evening from 12-27-2018 through the morning of 12-28-2018, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies, City of Ukiah Police Department Officers, California Highway Patrol Officers and a California Department of Fish and Wildlife Officer, working together, recovered three stolen vehicles in the greater Ukiah Valley. The other two stolen vehicle investigations were investigated by the City of Ukiah Police Department.

Please remember as the temperature falls when warming up your vehicle or making a quick run into a store, always lock your vehicle or never leave it unattended while running. It takes one brief moment for you to become the victim of auto theft.

Anyone with information concerning this investigation is asked to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Tip-Line at (707) 234-2100 or the WE-TIP anonymous crime reporting hotline at (800) 732-7463.

* * *

RUN EVERYONE!

On Monday, December 24, 2018 at about 4:15 AM, a Deputy with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office was patrolling in the 1300 block of North State Street in Ukiah. The Deputy noticed three subjects (two males and a female) running northbound behind a closed business. As the Deputy approached their location, the two male subjects turned and ran southbound into the Motel 6 (north) parking lot. The Deputy noticed the subjects were wearing gloves, had their faces covered, and black hooded sweatshirts. The Deputy attempted to contact the subjects. They refused to follow the Deputies verbal commands. The male subjects fled in separate directions but then met back up. The Deputy detained one subject, identified as Alejandro Guadarrama, 26, of Cloverdale.

In plain view in Guadarrama's rear pocket was a methamphetamine pipe, and a search of his person revealed a small baggie of methamphetamine, and a key with key fob to a Ford vehicle. Guadarrama was found to be on parole out of Sonoma County. Guadarrama was arrested for violation of parole, possession of methamphetamine, possession of paraphernalia, and resisting. Guadarrama was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held on a no bail status. Along with the Ukiah Police Department and the California Highway Patrol, deputies searched the area for the other two subjects, but were unable to locate them. The Deputy went to the location he last saw the second male subject jump a large fence. By the fence, the Deputy located a loaded semi automatic handgun with the serial numbers removed, and a small black pouch. In the pouch, the Deputy found about an ounce of methamphetamine, approximately 16 grams of suspected heroin, and Xanax pills. Deputies later located a 2002 Ford Escape parked in the area, which matched the key with fob found in Guadarrama's possession. Inside the Ford, Deputies found two small digital scales.

Anyone with information concerning this incident is encouraged to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Tip-Line at (707) 234-2100 or the WE-TIP anonymous crime reporting hotline at (800) 732-7463.

* * *

BOBBY BAD TEMPER

On December 27, 2018 at about 5:15 pm, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies were dispatched to an unknown disturbance involving the discharging of firearms in the Spy Rock Road area of Laytonville. The reporting party, a 28 year-old male, met with assisting officers from the California Highway Patrol at the intersection of Spy Rock Road and US Highway 101. Deputies arrived a short time later and learned from the 28 year-old male that he and another adult male (20 years-old) were working on a gate at a property located in the 57000 block of Registered Guest Road when they were confronted by an adult male, later identified as suspect Robert Williams, regarding his belief the pair were trespassing on a third person's property.

The pair were reportedly employees of the property owner and had legal right to be at their location. Williams made verbal and demonstrative threats with his hands advising the pair he intended to cause them physical harm if they did not leave. Williams left the area shortly thereafter in a silver Toyota 4runner SUV. While leaving, Williams struck a metal gate causing visible damage to his vehicle. Fearing for their lives, the pair got into their vehicle and left the area, heading towards Highway 101. As they approached the intersection of Registered Guest Road and Spy Rock Road, they met two parked vehicles, one of which was Williams’ vehicle seen at the Registered Guest Road address. Williams was observed standing next to his vehicle holding an unknown type of rifle. Seeing Williams holding a rifle, one of the adult males exited the vehicle and ran into the brush. This adult male was later contacted and provided a similar statement of the incident. Fearing for his life, the one adult male drove away from the area towards Highway 101 and could hear the distinctive sound of a firearm being discharged and observed Williams firing the weapon in an unknown direction. Physical evidence corroborating the reporting party's statements was collected at the scene along with eyewitness statements which were consistent with the reported events. At the time of the report, Williams was not identified and further investigation was conducted by MCSO Deputies. Williams was contacted during the preliminary investigation and provided a brief statement that was inconsistent with other involved people. During the course of the investigation, a 22 caliber pistol was recovered from Williams’s belongings. Williams was identified as being on summary probation with specific terms to include being prohibited from possessing firearms. Williams was subsequently identified by the pair of adult males through a photo line-up. Based on this specific case investigation, Deputies believed Williams had committed the following crimes: Grossly Negligent Discharge of a Firearm; Criminal Threats; Possession of a Firearm as a Prohibited Person; and Violation of Probation.

On 12-28-2018 at about 9:00 pm, while continuing the investigation surrounding the negligent discharge of firearms and criminal threats, MCSO Deputies were dispatched to meet with a third adult male regarding a separate incident that occurred on 12-27-2018 earlier in the day. The third adult male reported to Deputies he had been the victim of a violent assault by an unknown adult male near the 4000 block of Spy Rock Road, Laytonville. This third adult male had been in the area to visit friends when his car broke down on Spy Rock Road. After being given a ride to his friend’s house, he made his way down the mountain to call for assistance with his disabled vehicle. While walking along Spy Rock Road, at about 1:00 pm, he was confronted by an adult male who was identified as driving a gray Toyota 4Runner. The driver questioned the third adult male why he was in the area and was accused of being a thief. While attempting to reason with the driver, later identified as being Williams, the third adult male was struck and knocked to the ground by Williams. A significant assault was reported as occurring on the side of the road causing serious injury to the third adult male. In addition to physically assaulting the third adult male, Williams reportedly moved him from one side of the road to other and held him on the ground against his will for a significant period of time. During the assault, the third adult male was also assaulted with his own pepper spray. The assault ended when a third party arrived and interceded, identifying this third adult as being someone known to them. The third adult male was allowed to leave the Spy Rock Road area and made his way to Arcata where he sought medical treatment for multiple injuries constituting serious bodily injury. An initial report was made to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office which was subsequently referred to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. Williams was identified by the third adult male through a photo line-up. Based on this investigation MCSO Deputies believed Williams committed the following crimes: Battery with Serious Bodily Injury; Kidnapping; False Imprisonment and Criminal Threats. On 12-29-2018 at about 10:00 pm, MCSO Deputies met with Williams in Willits and placed him under arrest for the listed charges stemming from both investigations. Williams was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $125,000 bail.

Anyone with information concerning this investigation or other incidents similar in nature that may have occurred in the Spy Rock Road/Registered Guest Road area are asked to contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 463-4086 or the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Tip-Line at (707) 234-2100 or the WE-TIP anonymous crime reporting hotline at (800) 732-7463.

HERE'S HOW PARADISE IGNORED WARNINGS AND BECAME A DEATHTRAP

This article references a 2009 report by the Butte County Grand Jury warning about local government preparation to deal with the wildfire danger. This is the latest of several media reports throughout the state that have referenced the grand jury report in relation to the Camp fire.

cgja.blogspot.com/2018/12/butte-county-heres-how-paradise-ignored.html

CATCH OF THE DAY, December 31, 2018

JORDAN BRIGHT, Ukiah. Suspended license, evasion, probation revocation.

DARRELL CARADINE, Ukiah. Taking vehicle without owner’s consent, possession of stolen vehicle, probation revocation.

JOSE HERNANDEZ-REYES, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ANDREW MAYNARD, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

ALEXANDER POULIDES, Willits. Under influence, resisting, probation revocation.

WILLIAM RETZLOFF, Redwood Valley. Probation revocation.

MIKEL REXRODE, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

REBECCA RULKA, Clearlake/Ukiah. Petty theft-shoplifting, false personation of another, suspended license (for DUI), probation revocation.

DAVID SMITH, Ukiah. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

MARK SPITSEN, Incline Village/Ukiah. Controlled substance, disobeying court order.

ROBERT WILLIAMS JR., Willits. Kidnapping, battery with serious injury, false imprisonment, criminal threats, negligent discharge of firearm, probation violation-gun possession.

TAKE BACK THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!

Following months of appeals, petitions, and finally a formal challenge to the California Democratic Party’s Compliance Review Commission, local Democrats must drive to either Crescent City or Santa Rosa to vote for their delegates to the California Democratic Party Central Committee. The outcome of this and other Assembly District Election Meetings (ADEMs) will help decide the direction of the Party for years to come. At stake is the selection of a new Party Chair (the previous chair resigned under allegations of sexual harassment and bullying), drafting the Party Platform, and endorsement of the 2020 Presidential candidate.

AD2 ADEM date is January 12th, with doors opening at 10 am, speeches at 10:30, and registration / voting from 11 pm – 1 pm. Voters will select 14 delegates and one executive board member for a two-year term. All registered Democrats (on-site registration is available) from Assembly District 2 are eligible to vote. No proxies or vote-by-mail options are allowed. Past ADEMs have been held in Eureka and Ukiah. However the new Regional Chair first decided to relocate the election to Santa Rosa only; following the successful challenge to the Compliance Review Commission, she then added a second site in Crescent City rather than restore the Eureka location.

With the two sites at the extreme northern and southern boundaries of the 320 mile long district, voters in Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino counties will have to drive some distance to participate. This mirrors the very voter disenfranchisement decried by the Democratic National Party. This decision is even more suspicious given that Del Norte County has less than 4% of the registered Democrats in the district, while Humboldt has over 27% of those voters. Crescent City also does not appear to comply with the “centrally located” provision for ADEMs codified in Party bylaws and procedures.

Discontent is boiling over among Democrats who feel disenfranchised by this action, and who suspect that the progressive wing is being deliberately shut out of winning positions of power with a voice at the state level. Those re-entering politics with the Bernie movement effectively swept the ADEM elections in 2017 and have been working for change within the Party structure. This recent action is seen as but one tactic in the much anticipated push back from the establishment status quo of the Party.

Progressives throughout the district have organized a solid Progressive Labor slate of candidates. All eligible voters are strongly encouraged to attend this decisive upcoming ADEM; shared transportation to either the Crescent City and Santa Rosa location can be arranged. More information can be found at https://www.facebook.com/VoteAD2/ and https://www.adems.vote/ad2/

Helene Rouvier, AD-02 delegate

FORECAST 2019: DING DING! MARGIN CALL USA

by James Kunstler

Welcome to the American hall of mirrors… and mind the broken glass all over the floor. That’s Nature’s way of saying the country has run out room to punk itself. 2018 was the consolidation of bad faith in everything we do: politics, the news media, economics & finance, show biz, regular biz, jurisprudence, medicine, education, and relations between men and women — the year of peak dishonesty and self-deception. Of course, the trouble with dishonesty is that it doesn’t comport with Reality, and Reality being Mother Nature’s husband, bats in the cleanup position. Entering 2019, the bases are loaded with delusions, misdirections, and turpitudes. I shall get right to it without further throat-clearing.

Trumpology

The nation’s focus remains clamped to mercurial character in the White House. If you subscribe to Strauss and Howe’s theories about The Fourth Turning, then you might see president Donald J. Trump playing the archetypal role they call “The Gray Champion,” an elder figure of the “transcendental” Boomer generation sent by fate to rescue a floundering society at a grave moment in the seasons of history. Yes, I know: we might have been better off calling Ghostbusters. A cardinal precept at our Clusterfuck Nation series is that fate is a trickster. You order a Gray Champion and room service sends up a Golden Golem of Greatness.

To put it mildly, Mr. Trump has failed to charm at least half the country. They are embarrassed at his physical presence: his lumbering gait, like unto a behemoth land mammal of the Oligocene; that swaying bay window stomach half-concealed by the flaps of his suit-jacket and bisected by the oddly elongated necktie; the pained smile he puts on for the photo-ops; his man-spreading when seated with the world’s poohbahs, and that strange confection of sculpted hair, like the spun sugar on a Croquembouche, or the pouf on some horrifying plastic dashboard figurine. His manner of speech, the weird, palindromic repetitions, the childish artlessness of his casual utterances, the absence of Beltway focus-group cant, and of course the reviled Tweets — drive his opponents up a tree. The gilt-plastic trappings he surrounds himself with also offend them. For all I know, they hate his cologne, too.

His adversaries say he is “undermining institutions.” By this perhaps they mean the beloved DC gravy-train of regular institutionalized grift divvied up between elected officials, Wall Street, the War-and-Intel matrix, and the unholy infestation of lawyer-lobbyists slithering around the Swamp. Just look what happened when Mr. Trump threatened to end US military operations in Syria: apoplexy among the Neocons and Progs-for War — though none of them could coherently state what our strategy is there (is it to overthrow Assad so we can have another failed state in the Middle East?). Whatever Trump proposes in the way of policy is inadmissible because, according to the Resistance, Mr. Trump should not be allowed to propose policy, or order it, or direct it. Because he is… Trump….

Whatever you think of his agenda, Mr. Trump made the fateful mistake of bragging on the bubble economy that is now collapsing, and it will probably un-do him more effectively than all of the attempts to pin some actual crime on him by Robert Mueller. The Special Prosecutor has spent two years and has come up with little more than a handful of rinky-dink “process crimes” — mainly lying under oath, engineered by Mr. Mueller’s legal team and old friends in the FBI and DOJ after-the-fact. The Mueller investigation started with a false predicate — collusion with Russia — and entailed loads of prosecutorial mischief. We approach the climax of all that in early 2019. Mr. Mueller will issue his report before March. Maybe it will contain surprises, but the investigatory process involves so many people that it’s hard to believe no hints of any “bombshells” have leaked to the papers and cable news outfits. Rather, Mr. Mueller will depict a whole lot of nothing in the darkest possible light for the convenience of a house impeachment process, the holy grail of the Resistance, though the exercise is likely to fail if it gets to a senate trial.

But before that, there is the question of Mr. Mueller himself. My view is that Mr. Mueller has run a colossal cover-your-ass operation for the many documented misdeeds among the FBI and DOJ in cooking up this mess starting in the spring of 2016. His appointment in the first place was a gross error, considering his mentor relationship with James Comey and prior association with his putative supervisor, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. RR remains in that position despite being a witness in matters pending before Mr. Mueller (and other regulators such as federal prosecutor John Huber and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz), including the FISA warrant scandal, the Uranium One deal, and the tortured doings of the Hillary Clinton and her foundation.

January will kick off with the congressional extravaganza I’ll call Investi-Gate, as committees headed by Democratic chairs Gerald Nadler (Judiciary), Elijah Cummings (Oversight), and Adam Schiff (Intelligence) swarm the President and his associates like army ants on a drove of peccaries. They’ll haul in everybody and his uncle to keep the show going for their pals in the media. The star attraction will be Trump ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, though he will appear as a convicted liar. He may even defy the committee by not answering their subpoena before he has to report to federal prison in March. After all, Rod Rosenstein successfully defied more than one summons to congress for months on end. What will the House committee chairs do to Cohen? — threaten him with jail?

The house committee Investi-Gate circus is a sure thing, though, don’t forget, minority members can also call witnesses, and there is room for blowback on the venture. Republicans still chair the senate committees, and there may be a mud-fight between the two houses. Otherwise, expect a whole lot of grandstanding at the expense of paying attention to any of the nation’s serious business. Mr. Huber and Mr. Horowitz will also release reports in early 2019. Much of the recent criminal misbehavior in FBI / DOJ / Mueller orbit  lies within their commissions. Abundant evidence has already been published concerning the conspiracy to defeat Mr. Trump by subterfuge in the 2016 election, and further illegal attempts to injure him in the years following. Some of the characters in this horror show have already testified to grand juries.

Gen. Flynn was sent to the doghouse by Judge Emmet Sullivan at his December sentencing hearing for the purpose of rethinking his guilty plea. The idea is to persuade him to go to trial and force Mr. Mueller to go through a discovery process (of evidence) that could easily derail Mr. Mueller’s case and reflect poorly on the Special Counsel, perhaps even lead to legal problems for him in the way of malicious prosecution. Gen Flynn’s case also resolves one way or another in March.

Finally, Mr. Trump will be free to declassify a trove of documents in all these matters after Mr. Mueller reports. Doing so prior to that might set up the president on an obstruction of justice charge. If there’s anything germane in those docs, they could change the whole dramatic arc of the story that took over two years to develop. There’s plenty of chatter across the web about Mr. Trump invoking martial law or declaring some kinds of national emergency, plus loose talk about military tribunals and “thousands of sealed indictments,” but I’m not persuaded that there’s any reality to that.

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Politics That Maybe Matter

This country faces a lot of practical problems that are not likely to be addressed if congress is preoccupied with Investi-Gate, and depending on how ferocious the action gets in bear markets, currencies, and banking, which could alter the entire picture (more below).

The crisis in medicine is obvious. Whatever else you can say about ObamaCare, it just didn’t do enough and is now crippled by court decisions. Health Care is simply unaffordable for a growing demographic of the sinking middle class. Much of that is due to plain old racketeering, and I propose that it could be mitigated to some degree if a simple law were passed that required doctors, surgeons, hospitals, labs, and other players to publicly post prices for their services — to eliminate this ridiculous business of providers “negotiating” the price of every transaction in secret, according to deliberately incomprehensible guidelines. It may be too late to “solve” the health care problem in the way that much of the Left wishes: a single-payer system run by the government. True, other advanced nations ran single-payer systems with apparent success for decades, and still do, but they started these programs in an era of reliable economic growth based on industrial production and that era is over for reasons mostly having to do with dwindling cheap energy. The National Health Service in Britain is a shambles. France’s system still functions, but the high taxation needed to keep funding it is, ironically, a main beef of the Yellow Vest protesters. The deflating financial bubble will underscore a new order of austerity in the USA, and may usher in graver problems with the value of the dollar. One way or the other, congress will be stymied over health care reform in 2019.

The eventual result will be the disintegration of the current health care system and its eventual reorganization into local, clinic-based medicine at a much lower level of complexity and treatment. It was a tremendous blunder to consolidate hospitals and medical practices into gigantically-scaled conglomerates. The hallmark of The Long Emergency is that everything organized at the gigantic scale will fail one way or another. Get your mind right for that outcome and take care of yourself in the meantime.

The Left especially has no inclination to address immigration reform. As long as they mendaciously refuse to even make a distinction between legal and illegal immigration, nothing can be done. The Right is also dishonest and cowardly about it, fearing to alienate the ballooning Hispanic voter bloc. Still there is a better chance that some immigration reform may be possible because it doesn’t require the sort of titanic fiscal outlays that Health Care does — Mr. Trump’s wall aside. More likely, though, the current immigration impasse will continue and may provoke vigilante action along the border in 2019 that could be part of greater civil violence prompted by increasing economic disparities.

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Markets and Money

The jig is really up. The big bad bear market is already underway, even if it rallies in January. The debt bubble engineered by the Federal Reserve is blowing up and thundering through the system. The epic market instability of December 2018 on the heels of persistent Fed rate hikes points to major credit problems and especially an inability to roll over old debt into new loans at higher interest rates — in particular loans to zombie enterprises that need to borrow to keep paying interest on previous loans (a lot of that among the shale oil companies). The US government can’t take higher interest rates either. It’s already paying about as much in annual interest on US debt as we pay for our war machine. There are only two ways out, both of them nasty. Either suck up debt defaults, which will induce an impoverishing disappearance of money; or provoke high inflation, by injecting more Central Bank QE “money” into the system, which can destroy the value of money. Inflation is typically the choice of governments because it reduces the face value of debts while it allows government to pretend that it is taking action. In the end, you may have plenty of worthless money, which is no different from having not enough money that retains value. The latter was the main feature of the Great Depression.

So, inflation is the usual choice, but it also typically leads to incendiary resentment among the citizenry when they realize they’ve been played and it takes a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. I suppose that Fed chief Jerome Powell knows all too well he’s popped the Mother-of-All-Bubbles. He can blame it on Mr. Trump. Everybody else will, of course. Sometime in the second quarter of 2019, the Fed will resume the money-for-nothing gambit of “quantitative easing” in the hope of arresting the damage, but this time the dollar will lose value uncontrollably and catastrophically. Many people will be ruined, especially retirees at the mercy of insolvent pension funds.

Before 2019 is out, the US could find itself in a situation worse than the Great Depression. Supply lines are much longer now than they were then. If suppliers can’t get paid because trust has collapsed in the short-term corporate paper system, they won’t deliver supplies, which means you may not eat, or fill your gas tank, or heat your house, or get whatever else you need. Also, the USA in 1931 had not yet transformed itself into the fiasco-waiting-to-happen called suburban sprawl. How is Dallas going to work for people who spend a substantial chunk of their income on mandatory motoring (if there’s little or no income)?

Stock market activity may appear to stabilize in January, but it will go south again later on in the first quarter and the Bear will growl louder for the rest of the year.

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Civil Disorder

Be prepared for it in 2019. There are going to be a lot of pissed-off people around the country. They are liable to attack Federal property and their fellow citizens (and their property). The hungrier they are, the worse it will be. They will not understand the forces that are destroying the money system. There are a gazillion small arms out there and the government will not be able to control them or confiscate them. Any attempt to do that will only inflame the situation. A major principle of The Long Emergency is that government becomes increasingly impotent and ineffectual as it rolls out. We’re already seeing that in Washington, and it is not at all just because Mr. Trump has inspired such an impasse between the branches. The states, too, will be hard-pressed to do anything useful. Many of them, like Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut, and California, are already technically insolvent. The federal government may have to pretend to rescue them financially, which will only make the national predicament worse.

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Oil

The shale oil “miracle” was an impressive stunt. For a while, it goosed US production way above the former all-time production peak of 1970, and it achieved that with astounding speed — about a decade. But this is oil that is very expensive and complex to produce. It was made possible by massive borrowing at artificial low interest rates, which are now rising. Something like three-quarters of the shale operators never made a red cent in net profit, and many of these companies will find it hard or impossible to roll over their existing debt, especially with oil under $50-a-barrel. But the price is a deceptive metric. If it zoomed up to $100-a-barrel tomorrow, the effect would only be to crush economic activity, because industry requires cheaper oil to pencil out its operations and citizens can barely afford to drive when gasoline hits $4-a-gallon at the pump. At the lower $45-a-barrel, the price crushes the oil producers. Take your pick. There’s no “Goldilocks” price.

The other problems with shale oil have to do with the nature of the shale plays. The Permian Basin in Texas is very large, but the best plays are developed in the so-called “sweet spots” and there’s a limited amount of them. They are the places that the producers developed first, and when they are played out, the next round of plays will be in spots not-so-sweet (or productive) — possibly not worth drilling. The character of the shale oil wells is also way different from the old conventional classic oil wells. The old wells cost about $400,000 (in current dollars). It involved just sinking a pipe into the permeable source rock. The oil came out under its own pressure at the rate of thousands of barrels a day.  Eventually, you put a simple pump-jack on the well (the “nodding donkey”) and it produced for decades, like running a cash register. Shale oil wells cost between $6- 12 million. They require technically demanding horizontal drilling and fracking, with additional costs in highly technical labor, water for fracking, sand to hold open the fracks, chemicals to aid the process, and a gazillion truck trips to deliver all the water and sand (and take the oil away). Shale wells produce maybe a few hundred barrels a day for one year, after which they typically deplete by over 60 percent. After four years, they’re done. The oil is also different. Shale oil is typically ultra-light. It contains little-to-none of the heavier diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, and heating oil distillates, making it less valuable.

Trouble in the credit markets could shut down shale production for a period of time and create dire problems for the American economy. That could happen in 2019 as poorer-performing companies fail to get new financing. As mighty as it seems to be, the industry is fraught with fragility. Meanwhile, discovery of new, producible oil has fallen to the lowest level since the 1940s, after three recent previous record low years. Current low oil prices at around $45-a-barrel may give Americans a false sense of security. Low prices are mostly indicative of the collapse of the demand for oil at the global margins and among the large US demographic that cannot afford it anymore — that is, the impoverished former middle class. As the damage becomes more obvious, we could hear calls to nationalize the oil industry. The attempt to do that would collide with the aforementioned trend for government to become more strapped  for revenue, more impotent, and more incompetent.

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Geopolitical

The Golden Golem has gone an extra mile to antagonize Russia the past two years. Is it to demonstrate how not Putin’s puppet he is? If so, it’s pathetic. For instance, heaping ever more sanctions on Russia, tossing Russian diplomatic staff out of the country because of the laughable Novichok poisoning of the Skripal father-and-daughter in Britain. Nobody believed that set up — who recovers from the world’s supposedly most potent, high-tech military toxin? The larger Russia hysteria, ginned up by the US “Intel Community” to cover the embarrassment of Hillary Clinton’s election loss, has destroyed the brains of thousands of Washington insiders and infected whole sectors of the educated coastal elites who really ought to know better. Meddling in elections? Is that something the US has never entertained? Recall that 1996 Time Magazine cover with the headline that bragged, “Yanks to the Rescue: the Secret Story of How American Advisors Helped Yeltsin Win.” And now we’re wetting our pants over a baker’s dozen Russian Internet trolls on Facebook? Yes, this is what the brightest people in the room have been doing for two years. The net result is a new cold war, pushing Russia into the arms of China, giving both of those countries an incentive to construct a new framework for global relations that excludes the toxic US as much as possible.

That new framework, by the way, will not be the same as the late, unwinding Globalism Release 2.0 (Release 1.0 was 1870 – 1914) that allowed America to exchange IOUs for flatscreen TVs lo these many years. Let’s call that Tom Friedman Globalism, after the pundit who said it would last forever. The world will become a wider place again as the Great Powers are increasingly bound to their own regions for trade relations in a world growing short of energy and capital resources. The exception to that is in weaponry, now that Russia has demonstrated its ability to launch hypersonic rockets that can reach the US in little more than a few Noo Yawk minutes. Do we have anything like that? I suppose we wish we did. The media is not even talking about it, the implications are so dreadful.

Has Mr. Trump actually accomplished anything with his deal-seeking in China while beating it on the snout with his tariff stick?  Well, he got a lot of US companies loading up on inventory of goods they feared will carry costly duties a year hence, so they’re all stocked up just in time for a vicious bear market and the recession / depression that it entails. A lot of that stuff may end up being distributed by the bankruptcy judges.

How does our antagonism against China work with the campaign to “normalize” the behavior of North Korea. I doubt it helps. In 2019, North Korea will be the whoopie cushion that China places under America’s seat at the negotiating table. Mr. Trump defied the conventional State Department wisdom by meeting face-to-face with Kim. It got the two Koreas actually speaking with each other for the first time in 60 years, with some concrete steps toward ending the de facto state-of-war. Will Li’l Kim play the role China assigns to him? I think so. They can squash him like bug. And, of course, everything that the US congress and Mr. Mueller do to injure and weaken Mr. Trump will make further progress in Korea unlikely.

How about the second greatest economy in the world? That would be the European Union. The EU’s financial system is way more dysfunctional than even ours, with no mechanism or provision for regulating each country’s spending vis-à-vis the debt generation of the Union as a whole. There’s no way it can continue and no prospect for debugging the set-up. What’s more, decades-long shenanigans of the European Central Bank have created imbalances that will never be corrected. Even the attempt to normalize operations — as the ECB ceases its debt monetization routines staring in the first quarter of 2019 — is guaranteed to crack up the EU economy, which is a horror show of zombie companies and zombie banks. They will suffer particularly in the recession / depression to come. The next domino to fall, theoretically Italy, will take the EU down, whatever happens with the dithering over Brexit. Without the ECB vacuuming up unwanted EU paper, nothing really pencils out over there. In 2019, expect a substantial fall in the value of the Euro, and possibly its demise as a currency.

In fact, expect wholesale disintegration of many structural arrangements all over Europe beginning in 2019, along with more political violence that exceeds the simple street actions of the Yellow Vests in France. NATO has been staging war games on Russia’s border for two years, apparently with no awareness that the NATO members are deeply dependent on Russian oil and natural gas to remain advanced nations with comforts and conveniences, like heating their homes. Perhaps that recognition will hit in 2019. But there will be plenty of noise for that signal to cut through.

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Climate Change

Something’s going on ‘out there,’ though the picture is deeply non-linear and is being confused for the moment by an extraordinary low level of cyclical sunspot activity. Not being a scientist, I have only two salient points worth considering about the issue:

The first is, we’re not going to do anything about it — because nothing can be done about it. Whatever’s happening, we’re going to have to roll with it. I’m also not persuaded that many of the proposed mitigations — carbon taxes, seeding the upper atmosphere with reflective particles — will accomplish anything.

The second thought is this: the civilized world has experienced many many instances of climate change over the past several thousand years. Civilizations rise and fall with these changes, but the human project as a more general matter continues, with periods of history that appear to be restful time-outs. The Roman Optimum (warming period) segued into the Dark Age Cooling, and then the Medieval Warming (viniculture in England!), and eventually the Little Ice Age comes along with Isaac Newton and skaters on the Dutch canals. The difference this time is that our civilization is so deeply complex that successful adaptation to new conditions is a low percentage outcome, at least in the form of salvaging many of our current arrangements. In other climate disruptions, people adapted, sometimes with very severe changes in customs, practices, political arrangements, and life-styles.

It will be especially stark this time, and the broad pop culture of Collapse suggests that we intuit this — everything from Game of Thrones to The Road, to my own World Made By Hand novels. It begins with the wobbling of the most abstract and fragile of our systemic arrangements, finance, which is mostly based on ephemeral trust (that the other fellow will pay you). From there, the trouble proceeds to politics and culture.

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A few concluding words on the latter:

Culture

2018 was a low point for American culture, such as it is. The idiotic drivel emanating from the university campuses has infected the entire nation like a toxic shock disease. Most damaging, of course is the umbrella ideology of “multiculture” in a society that formerly thrived precisely because of the opposite of that: a common culture composed of ethics, customs, norms, and standards of decent behavior that people not insane could subscribe to. Remove the common culture of a nation and you will not have a nation — it’s that simple. Hence Americans are divided foolishly into battling identity groups who do not believe in a common culture and are doing everything possible to defeat it. They have no idea what E Pluribus Unum used to mean and they have no desire or intention to rediscover it. I return to the cardinal theme of The Long Emergency: that we can’t construct a coherent consensus about what is happening to us, and therefore we can’t make any coherent plans about what to do.

The financial hardships of 2019 provide an opportunity for some overdue mind-cleaning on these matters. There may even be a significant number of survivors among the brain-damaged former thinking classes who refuse to go along with the emperors-new-clothes ideas of recent years any longer. The main thing to understand about the so-called Progressive Left behind this toxic shock is that the whole crusade has been less about ideas of justice or fairness than the sheer joy of coercing others, of pushing people around and punishing them because its fun! The ideologies around that behavior are just window dressing.

The response to it so far has been surprisingly mild. If the financial unwind shapes up as harshly as it looks from here, the response will get more severe. The universities themselves will suffer hugely as their budgets crash through the floor and all, of a sudden, they have to issue pink slips to a half dozen Diversity deans on six-figure salaries. Many colleges will begin the process of shutting down in 2019 as their student loan racket disintegrates.

Well, you’ve suffered long enough for today, and I’ll leave it at that.

Happy 2019 everybody!

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

MISEDUCATION

via Carol Mattessich

Whether designing biased educational videos, constricting course content or promoting curricula that smear movements like Occupy, US corporations help miseducate students.

Read the entire article-

US Corporations Are Micromanaging Curricula to Miseducate Students

JANUARY 2019 FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK

Jan 4, 2019 at 05:00 pm - 07:30 pm

Art Center Ukiah 201 S School Street: “Deep Winter” exhibits local artist response to our winter season, January the chilly, dark season, rain, maybe snow. A celebration or putting energy into hoping for warmer weather?

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Enoteca Wine Bar 206 W Church Street will feature new art by Chat Ko

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Moonstone Holistic Living 304 N State Street: 7 year old Emma Reed has a passion for art and animals. She will be combining the two with an incredible display of her animal and unicorn themed art work. The proceeds will go to the Humane Society to help the animals that are looking for homes.

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Museum of Encountered Objects 110 W Clay St: Visit the Museum to see the featured one of a kind art pieces.

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Corner Gallery 201 S State St: Deborah Hunter, started as the featured artist for the Corner Gallery in January with a show “Endangered Planet.” She soon found like-minded artists who felt a resonance with the theme which resulted in a group show including Virginia Sharkey, Margo Frank, Laura Fogg, Larain Matheson, and Nicole Paisley Martensen.

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Bona Marketplace 116 W Standley Street: Bona will be hosting local photographer Molly Huddleston. Molly has just returned from trips abroad and will be sharing her amazing photos from the past year. Molly has the ability to see and capture extraordinary images in the ordinary.

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Ukiah Library 105 N Main Street: Join the Ukiah Library in celebrating January’s First Friday Art Walk Enjoy felted art pieces by Tim Easterbrook and Manzanita Services Artists, participate in a tea mixology hands-on program, be entertained by live music, savor pizza bites and browse a book sale by the Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library. This event is for all ages, open to the public, free of charge and is sponsored by the Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library.

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ExperienceTinyHomes.org is having it's first official Tiny Home Grand Opening during the January 4th First Fridays Art Walk. Located on the corner of Seminary and School street, "Sierra" the amazing 33' luxury Tiny Home will feature two artists, tasty snacks, local DJ music flowing through silent sound headsets, slideshow of the Tiny Home build and bouncy house for kids (weather permitting).

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https://www.etsy.com/shop/RobHassettDesignShop

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If you have questions or want more information you can call Mo Mulheren at 707-391-3664 or email ukiahvalleynetworking@gmail.com

THE LEGACIES THEY LEFT BEHIND

Elbert "Big Man" Howard acknowledged

pressdemocrat.com/specialsections/inmemoriam/9071478-181/the-legacies-they-left-behind

WE TRAVEL TOGETHER, passengers on a little spaceship dependent upon its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed for our safety to its security and place, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of mankind and half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew, can travel with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the security of us all.

— Adlai Stevenson

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] HOMELESS IN SOHUM, an on-line comment:

Homeless folks are the bane of SoHum. Them and dope dealers!

In San Francisco, the Tech Industry is taxed at a higher rate and the proceeds are used to support the thousands of persons who can no longer afford to live in SF, and those persons who ended up homeless, due to whatever personal drama.

SoHum dope farms, where millionaires live, but don’t winter, should also have a tax to support the detritus and fallout of the drug-dealing industry!

An income based tax on pot farming profits, say 15-20%, should help to support the indigent, who currently camp in the Redwood Forests around Redway, and down by the river, outside Garberville. It is estimated, that the average homeless person, is responsible for the expenditure of $100,000/year in public services, welfare, general assistance, medicare etc. It seems only fair that the main contributors to the problem, dope growers, should foot the bill for the human wrecks that dope dealing produces.

Bleeding heart, but also, lame, do-gooders, like Ordonez, who also serves on the board at SoHum health, have apparently had it with the chronic homeless around Garberville/Redway, and now, with all the Motels full of permanent residents who also have nowhere else to go, there is no physical location to temporarily house anyone at all! (SoHum Health is another example of an organization where they talk about serving the public, but back away from it, again and again.)

SoHum, where the few tend to control the many, is a good example of the attitudes which are exhibited by the homeless themselves! The homeless have the attitude that the population of the community should just see to their needs, give them a place to shelter, but allow dogs and smoking, showers, etc. Everyone wants something, but nobody has perspective, sensibility, or a sense of responsibility, personal or community!

In SF, they passed a tax. In SoHum, a tax will also be necessary, and, someone will have to contribute a space, or a good location, to accommodate the highly valuable section of society discussed here, since no church or public agency wants the responsibility or the exposure attendant with operating a homeless shelter.

Until the dope dealers are held responsible for the social costs of using their products, this never-ending problem without a solution, will continue. Taxing all Cannabis Industry Operations to support the homeless is an idea whose time has arrived, in SoHum, and elsewhere…

Or, just hand the homeless person a bus ticket to Mexicali. That will work!

[2] As I get older I have increasing problems dealing with complexity. I believe the same is true for most elderly people. The population generally is aging. So why do they keep making health insurance more and more complex? Do we really need to have the choice of 50 slightly differing plans? I just sent in an application for medicaid for my wife – a 3 inch thick sheaf of paperwork that cost me 4 days of work to find and photocopy. Computers have made it possible for government and corporations to make everything mind-numbingly complex and totally beyond understanding. At the same time, computer makers and programmers can’t standardize the simplest things. As was mentioned above, you can’t call a business and talk to a person without spending 15 minutes wading through a phone tree, and if you do they are in India reading off a script and you can’t understand them or get a useful answer. But at the same time, every telemarketer and robocaller on the planet can call you continually even though you have a cell and are also on the do not call list. Leading to the present situation where I seldom answer my phone unless the person is on my call list and their name pops up. Unfortunately, corporate callers like in health care are always calling from different numbers, so I miss a number of important calls. The lack of interest by phone companies and governments about doing anything at all about this situation is making telephones totally useless. If I wasn’t married I likely wouldn’t even own one.

[3] A few weeks ago I got a cell phone call, guy started shouting, telling me to stop calling him, he knows where I live, he’ll find me and so on. i didn’t know who he was, I rarely call anybody, and I certainly didn’t call his number. So I told him to fuck off and hung up. About 10 minutes later the phone rang again, from a different number, and a chirpy voice on the other end asked me if I was ready to buy an electronic home security system, which would allay all fears and counter all threats. I told her I already have a system — 3 layers — shotgun, carbine, revolver. That ended the conversation.

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #1

The 2019 ejaculations of the Democrat controlled House and Republican controlled Senate will signify maybe even less than the hysterics of wild chimps at the appearance of a stuffed leopard on their equatorial hunting grounds, placed there by animal behaviorists in order to observe simian capabilities, you know, maybe like throwing rocks, and tool use, like jabbing the ersatz predator with a sharp stick. 

What about the Washington Swamplands and its own denizens? What are their capabilities? What if the object in question, unlike the “leopard”, is ambulatory and vocalizes? What then? Will its true nature be recognizable despite its orange coloration? 

The point I’m making is that events have got a trajectory and momentum behind them, propelled mostly by natural laws, that the simians-in-charge in the Washington Bog apparently have no conception of, something like chimps contemplating a fake leopard. Did it eventually occur to the elder chimps that the leopard wasn’t real? Will it occur to the elder legislators that they’re similarly wasting time and energy dealing with fake leopards, all the while ignoring real threats?

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY #2

If I am to summarize how to handle the current imploding world situation:

1. Learn to grow a large garden. For example, see the many No-dig gardening videos on youtube by Charles Dowding. An outstanding learning series on what to plant, and how to do it easily.

Also check out books on Medicinal Herbs and Veggies from Chelsea Green and New Society. I’ve learned a lot from their authors.

1. Somehow invest in your community. Share the wealth of your garden, have weekly/monthly potlucks. See what old ladies are having a hard time with their lousy pensions not keeping up with inflation.
2. Cut out GMO grains, get back to basic simple foods. Think of what your ancestors ate 150 years ago, and eat that. They weren’t munching on Cheez Dooooodles, and they didn’t weigh 250 pounds. That also means there’s less chance to end up in the sick-care industry. Remember, every person who gets cancer raises the GDP of America! The doctors and 6-figure admins can keep paying for their Mercedes! All is good, MAGA!
3. Turn off the electronic media, of every type. Learn to hear nature again. It will stabilize your hormone system, and you’ll become calmer and wiser, able to navigate this new terrain more easily, bringing confidence into your group. That means tv, sports, music, internet videos, political forums on the net, almost all the news. Throw it all out. As a wise lady once said: Once the alarm goes off, you don’t need to keep setting it again. Move on with life.

This means: you know what’s coming, you know it ain’t going to be good, so invest your life energy into what’s healthy and productive, and quit obsessing over all these news trends and stupid internet stories. They suck the life out of you. You’re awake. Good. Now drop all the news and videos, and get something done.

FORT BRAGG-INGLENOOK COMMUNITY CENTER RUMMAGE SALE AND BREAKFAST

This Sunday, the first Sunday in 2019!

January 6

8 am - 11:30 am

Fort Bragg–Inglenook Community Center

26500 North Highway 1

Six miles north of Fort Bragg, the first left after the Inglenook sign (watch for signs) for a hearty breakfast. Menu includes eggs, any way you want them, potatoes, ham, pancakes, coffee, all for $8 for adults; $4 for children six years or younger. Orange juice or freshly squeezed carrot juice and fresh fruit cup are also available. Enjoy the rummage sale and find new treasures: homemade pies, plants, books, puzzles, DVDs, CDs, jewelry, kitchenware, and much more. Free books to any young person attending. Don’t miss the only monthly indoor rummage sale on the coast, rain or shine. And bring us your donated items in good shape. Everything is welcome, except for clothing, broken or chipped glassware or porcelain, and broken or nonworking equipment and electronics. Want a free breakfast? We need extra servers and dishwashers. Contact Debbie Baron at 707-961-0717 to volunteer at the Sunday breakfast. Hope to see you on Sunday at the Guild,

Sincerely,

Linda Jupiter jupiter@mcn.org

EVERYTHING CHANGES, with the possible exception of the avant-garde theater.

— Gore Vidal