Valley People (Jan. 2, 2019)

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.

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.

JARRED all the way awake Christmas morning by the Press Democrat's front page photo of Logo Tevaseu, the legendary Northcoast football player who graduated from Anderson Valley High School. The over-large booking photo was placed over the garbled story about Logo being found guilty of second degree murder for the drunk driving death of a young Sonoma State student named Paulette Quiba. Many of us in the Anderson Valley know Logo and are fond of him. We all hope he can somehow put this awful event behind him to resume the promising life he had enjoyed before November 5th, 2017. The tragedy occurred when Logo crossed a double-yellow line to pass vehicles on Lakeville Highway when his Dodge Ram pickup slammed head-on into a Toyota Corolla driven by the young woman, killing her and injuring five other people in the ensuing pile-up. Uninjured in the terrible collision, Logo was found by the CHP to have a 0.22 percent blood alcohol level, almost three times the legal limit of 0.08. And this was his second DUI. Logo will be sentenced in January to a maximum term of 15 years-to-life in state prison. We hope the judge will impose a much less severe penalty based on the totality of Logo Tevaseu's non-criminal life. It's clear to everyone who knows him that his remorse is deep and, given that he caused the death of a promising young woman, unending.

IF A TREE FALLS FROM THE FOREST....

Monday night around 11:30 pm, my son in law was on Highway 128 about 3 miles from Highway 1 when he turned a sharp curve and almost ran into a redwood tree fallen across the road. He turned back and took Flynn Creek, flashing his headlights to warn other cars speeding towards the tree. Any reports from others. We reported it. Thanks and Merry Christmas morning, to all and happy holidays to all as well.

— Ann Kyle Brown

Albion River Fire department volunteers responded to clear and make-safe. Thank you local heroes, for responding to this Mother-nature emergency in the middle of the night, 12/25/18.

— Kathy Wylie

AV FARMS & PRODUCTS!

• Blue Meadow Farm - at the base of Holmes Ranch Road - 895-2071
• Brock Farms - on Goodacre off the base of Peachland - 895-3407
• Velma's (Filigreen Farm) - on AV Way - 895-2111
• Gowan's Oak Tree - on Hwy 128 between Philo and Navarro - 895-3353
• Pennyroyal Creamery - on Hwy 128 in Boonville - 895-2410
• Petit Teton - on Hwy 128 between Boonville and Yorkville - 684-4146
• The Apple Farm - on Philo/Greenwood Road just before the bridge - 895-2333
• 4 Bar K Ranch (beef) - dkooyers@gmail.com, 895-2325
• Anderson Valley Community Farm CSA (variety of products) - andersonvalleycommunityfarm@gmail.com, (831) 332-5131
• Bramble Family Farm (olive oil) - sales@bramblefamilyfarms.net, 272-8487
• Bucket Ranch (variety of products) - 845-3851
• McEwen Family Farm (variety of products) - bebingmcewen@gmail.com - 472-9009
• Mendocino Sea Vegetable Company (seaweed) - kombuko@seaweed.net, 895-2996
• Natural Products of Boonville (mushrooms & more) - keepertrout@gmail.com, 684-0182
• Petit Teton (canned goods, pork, beef, squab & veggies) - farmer@petitteton.com, 684-4146
• Pomo Tierra Orchard (apple products) - bernie@mcn.org
• The Forest People - Radically Sustainable Mushroom Cultivation - 489-5034 
• Yorkville Olive Ranch (olive oil) - rhysolive@yahoo.com, 894-0530

ON BEHALF of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Boonville, California, I accept this heartfelt tribute:

New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square will be dedicated to freedom of the press. Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, will have the honor of initiating the ceremonial ball drop at midnight on Monday, the Times Square Alliance revealed last week.

BOONVILLE, EYES ONLY: Friend of mine said he did all his Christmas shopping at the Boonville Mall, that's the Rail Yard mini-mall next door to Boont Berry Farm that seems to just keep going east. You can buy a bike or a piece of property on the way in, proceed to AD Jones' fascinating collection of jewelry and interesting stuff, then on to Mrs. Ballantine's bookstore, Torrey Douglas's graphics, Debra's massages. This is probably a stretch, but the Rail Yard is vaguely reminiscent of one of those floating Indo-Asian villages where every home seems to be a specialty shop, each of them intriguing in its way. But Boonville’s own mini-all has it all over Coddingtown.

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.

IS HARD DOPE available in the bucolic Anderson Valley? Heroin no. Gotta go to Ukiah for that. Methamphetamine and the oxy drugs in pill form are expensive but can be had for a steep price. How do I know? Not being a consumer, I don't for sure, but I talk to people who do know and that's what they tell me. I also think that a lot of young people get sucked into harder drugs via the mythology that marijuana is harmlesss. Every single kid I've known, without exception, who started smoking dope as a young teenager wound up a mental cripple or straight up nuts as an adult. The only effective drug programs I've seen feature toothless addicts who plausibly warn the young, "Don't wind up like me." I also thought those scared straight programs that brought juvenile offenders face to face with prison lifers were effective, but objections from the candy ass lobby put an end to them on the grounds that the convicts were a little too real for the young. In Mendocino County, where dope is a way of life, and semi-legal with store front sales here and there, the confusion engendered in the young is understandable.