MCT: Sunday, January 27, 2019

• Variety Show
• Adopt Leona
• PV Diversion
• Retroactive Approval
• Ed Notes
• Beard Waivers
• Yesterday's Catch
• John Bogle
• MAGA Expectations
• Chicken Nuggets
• Machine Stupidity
• Trust
• Library Events
• Two Things
• Coup Agent
• True Compassion
• Deep Adaptation
• Marco Radio

THE 27TH ANNUAL ANDERSON VALLEY VARIETY SHOW is just around the corner! The Show itself will be on Friday and Saturday nights, March 9th and 10th. We know you won't want to miss two full nights of unique local entertainment. Each night we will be showcasing one-of-a-kind performances, and we have spent years (27 in fact) perfecting our ticket selling skills so that everyone who wants to can see it all. We have some special performances by popular locals that can only be seen on Friday night, so you'll want to be sure to make it for both shows! We have some exciting acts coming up from the bay area, as well, so you will want to catch it all.

Here's the skinny on getting your tickets:

Tickets are $10/adults, $5/kids and seniors. They will be available starting Monday, March 5th, at Lemon's Market in Philo and the AV Market in Boonville until they sell out. If you don't manage to get the pre-sale tickets available next week, don't fret, because we will have no less than 100 tickets available each night at the door. if you need tickets, get to the Grange early enough to get in line. If you have a ticket, you will be guaranteed entry--but not necessarily a seat. The doors open at 6:30 and the show will start promptly at 7 pm both Friday and Saturday nights, March 9th and 10th. Anyone who has been to the show can tell you, people will be lining up at least an hour ahead of time to get tickets and good seats. It's always a fun party in the Grange parking lot before the show, and there will be tasty treats to buy from local chefs, as well.

There will be tickets available at the tech rehearsal this weekend, March 3rd and 4th, for the friends and family of the performers. We have seen some sad situations in the past where some parents weren't able to get tickets to see their kids onstage, so we have made sure to have tickets to sell during rehearsal. If you or your loved ones are performing, and you want to be sure to get your people in on the night of the show, please make sure to bring cash to the Grange when you come to rehearse your act.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the show goes late, and some of the younger performers and their families will leave early--so if you arrive late, you may still be able to get in. We are so excited to see you all there!

PET OF THE WEEK

Leona is a real stunner, a beautiful hound blend with a deep red coat and eyes that will melt your soul. In true hound fashion, she enjoys sniffing around, nose close to the ground. Leona is shy, but she likes being with people, and our intrepid volunteers have been working with her, letting her know she is safe and well loved. Leona did not have leash experience, but she is learning that the leash equals walks and fun. Leona is 10-11 months old and weighs in at a svelte 51 pounds. She's spayed and ready to go home with you today! For more about Leona, click here:

http://www.mendoanimalshelter.com/dogblog/leona

The Ukiah Animal Shelter is located at 298 Plant Road in Ukiah, and adoption hours are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday from 10 am to 4:30 pm and Wednesday from 10 am to 6:30 pm.

To see photos and bios of the shelter's adoptable animals, please visit us online at: http://www.mendoanimalshelter.com For more information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

NOW WHAT for the Potter Valley Diversion? An on-line comment:

"This just got real for Sonoma and Mendo on so many levels….

First is the water issue. With PG&E abandoning the license, that means whoever assumes the facility has to go through the FERC Relicensing process from the start ($$$). Plus, who ever assumes the facility, also has to install all the upgrades that were required of PG&E ($$$), in order to continue operating and keep water flowing. Also, a new license would affect water rights as well, particularly if no one assumes the facility and PG&E is required to decommission and tear down the site. No diversion, no water to Sonoma / Mendo.

That means that Sonoma and Mendo would want ownership of the facility, if they want their water rights guaranteed into the future. But with the recent announcement that PG&E was not responsible for the Tubbs fire, a lot of the cost Sonoma was banking on has now evaporated; so that puts a strain on any funding for purchasing the site. They would have to float bonds, which means huge rise in water rates for those folks ($$$).

This PG&E bankruptcy has had a huge trickle effect… ($$$)"

AT LAST TUESDAY SUPES MEETING, Supervisor John Haschak pulled the item on the consent calendar to retroactively hand $144k worth of Office of Traffic Safety money over to North Coast Opportunities (NCO) to “education” kids on how to walk and bike safely. The wasteful giveaway had been handed over to NCO last fall, but was just now appearing on the consent calendar. If the Board had wanted to change the way it was spent by giving some or all of it to another organization (like the County Office of Education) they had no chance because NCO already had it.

Haschak: "My understanding from my time on the other side of the panel was that the Board wasn't going to do retroactive agreements. So I wonder why this is coming up now? I'm totally supportive of the Walk and Bike Mendocino program. I'm just wondering why it's retroactive?”

Health and Human Services Director Tammy Moss Chandler: “This particular contract is with one of our state and federal partners that routinely provides agreements to us after the start date. We have a few of those. Those are beyond our control. So they have to be retroactive agreements. We bring forward all those possible within our control but this one we didn't receive from the State Agency until late. Therefore it's retroactive, but ongoing for years.”

Haschak: “Okay, I'm fine.”

Supervisor John McCowen: “Given that it is ongoing, it does cause me to wonder what took nearly four months from the contract award until now that the item is before us for approval? It says the agreement with NCO was drafted shortly after the grant award. So it seems like there has been quite a lag time in getting that to us. I think that's been an issue in some instances. So whoever was involved with that particular item, maybe a little review of, did it get stuck somewhere in the process or were there so many other things going on with higher priorities that it didn't get dealt with? We have been gradually updating our practices and our contracting and tightening them up and we didn't say no retroactive agreements will be approved but if they are retroactive they have to be noted as that and typically they would appear as a regular calendar unless it was due to some unavoidable circumstance.”

End of discussion. No complaint, No explanation for the delay. No discussion of alternate grant recipients. No follow up on “whoever was involved” who took so long. No explanation about why it was on the consent calendar. Just McCowen’s idle speculation on what may have happened.

Haschak moved to approve the item and it was approved unanimously. (Mark Scaramella)

ED NOTES

THE APOCALYPSE is on so many people's minds that an article in the New York Times Style section has detailed survivalist must-haves for the "swelling class of weekend paranoiacs." If you've got apocalypse on the brain, you're not alone. For company, just head over to Reddit and check into dozens of "prepper" threads. Getting ready for total social meltdown and the ensuing chaos depends, of course, on where we live and what we can afford. For the real preppers, stocking up on canned goods is only the beginning. You need to be seriously ready when the government fails and total anarchy ensues. Do you know how you will take care of yourself? For the wealthy, that can mean buying a renovated missile silo, land in New Zealand and perhaps a private plane to get you there. Some of the uber-rich in Silicon Valley are getting kind of obsessed with their doomsday prep.

FOR THE BOONVILLE PERSPECTIVE on the End Times, read on. So, what do you do when you run out of Spam? Nothing, because collapse won't come all at once, and things will go on until they can't or don't. And all the while, the natural world is being altered in lethal ways the scientists tell us can't be reversed. In the interim before chaos we'll get a liberal fascism, someone like the Clintons but much faster to use force, which will be necessary to protect Bill Gates, metaphorically speaking. A semblance of order will be achieved, but only a semblance, and the natural world will continue to crumble even if sensible people are at the controls.

OCASIO-CORTEZ, like most of us, is operating on the assumption that a fix here and there will straighten things out, make life better for people generally. For seeing the problem clearly, she has brought down all the opprobrium Fox News and most of the mainstream media on her head. For what? Optimism. She has suggested a return to a 1970's wealth tax of 70 percent. Roosevelt put it at 90 percent, and for a while capitalism never worked better. The return to a fair wealth tax would apply it to people with incomes of ten million a month and up, meaning it would apply to exactly no one in Mendocino County. The trillion raised would establish the social floor many of us say we want — housing, fully funded education, rapid transit, single payer, and the rest of civilized life. We don't have those amenities now because the money is moving steadily upwards where it's concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Mainstream economists all agree with O-C's diagnosis and her prescription for a cure. The millions of people feeling unease unto dread described above, intensified and sped up by Trump, are making futile doomer plans like building fortresses in places they think are inaccessible. There's no escape. It's too late. In the meantime, down with almost all the Democrats and double down with Republicans.

---

SORRY TO HEAR that the well known Beat poet, ruth weiss, has been hospitalized. She has suffered strokes and complications therefrom. The Albion artist goes all the way back to the halcyon days of North Beach when poetry first began to break loose from the academic strait jacket.

---

THE-JAPAN-NEWS.COM: New Shinkansen model to roll out in time for Tokyo 2020

MEANWHILE, Cloverdale expects a train to roll into its station erected forty years ago in anticipation of rail restoration some time around the 12th of never, ever.

BILOXI DAYS: PSEUDO-FOLLICULITIS

by Mark Scaramella

In 1974 an Okinawa-based dermatologist and Army Major named Alvin Alexander and his co-author, a physician at Montefiore Hospital in New York, wrote a paper entitled “Pseudofolliculitis Barbae (PFB) in the Military.”

Some excerpts:

"Pseudofolliculitis Barbae, colloquially known as ‘razor bumps’ or ‘shaving bumps,’ undoubtedly has been with us for centuries, but it was not accurately described and named until 1956 when Strauss and Clinton delineated the pathogenesis of the disorder Pseudofolliculitis Barbae that caused the problem.

"This condition is far more common and much more severe among black males, and is facilitated by the natural curvature of the hair and hair follicle in this race. … They noted regular shaving to be the precipitating stimulus." …

"The most effective treatment is the beard. Not only has this been our experience but the experience of most dermatologists. By allowing the beard to grow, the hairs are ultimately freed from their pseudo-follicles by a combination of physical force that results in the upward movement of the hair so that the embedded hairs in the skin are dislodged. The net effect of this is the healing of the lesions with or without scarring."

The paper goes on at embarrassing length to debunk and argue against the plethora of reasons devised by the military at the time for the prohibition of beards, especially in the Army and the Air Force.

“Managing PFB in the Air Force is particularly frustrating,” Major Alexander wrote. “Discrepancies arise because no practical guideline is given for PFB or other specific dermatologic problems, therefore, local bases are allowed to ‘invent’ policy dependent upon the opinion of area commanders. To validate these policies, the Air Force draws on its career medical officers who, too often, find it easy to go along with the commander's opinion. These validations, highly susceptible to challenge, are used exclusively to override previous medical data based on unbiased scientific investigation. This unfortunate sequence of events is being used in the Air Force to justify the continual harassment of black airmen.” …

“One of the guidelines for treatment implies that with proper care and adherence to a given shaving procedure PFB will not recur; and it goes so far as to state, ‘If the disease recurs after resumption of shaving, the patient (typically a black airman) is doing something wrong’.”

“Prevailing military attitudes as to why blacks primarily have PFB completely negate the facts that have already been documented in existing medical literature. Commanders and supervisors instead insist on making purely racist allegations such as that servicemen deliberately have placed gasoline, lighter fluid or jet fuel on their face to ‘create’ the condition. While it is true that these agents may cause damage to the skin, they cannot produce PFB.” …

" ‘Only militants and radicals wear beards’ is the cry by many in leadership positions. As a result of these judgments, fines and harassment have plagued numerous blacks who have refused to submit themselves to the existing regulations which spawn intimidation and smack of ignorance." …

"Existing Air Force regulations do not permit the treatment that is required (a beard). But it has already been demonstrated that there is no shaving method that can be relied upon to properly or satisfactorily controlled yet be. Therefore men with the problem are authorized by physicians to wear beards. This medical recommendation is met by the Air Force with constant administrative surveillance of the treatment. Every two weeks the patient is reevaluated and may be ordered to shave at any time. The fact that the condition will simply recur has no credibility in this kind of system. The fact that it is decidedly uncomfortable and some cases painful to allow the beard to grow out again is of no issue. The fact that thousands of men must report to the dispensary to receive this evaluation periodically instead of being constructive in their career fields is meaningless and insignificant. And the fact that increasing resentment is developing among the ranks of black servicemen because of unjust treatment is and will continue to be denied until a major confrontation occurs. American history is full of such ex post facto remedial maneuvers that, because of their tardiness, are only partially effective and of highly questionable sincerity." …

"It's because the existing military system of monitoring shaving profiles (providing waivers) stimulates the development of an adversary relationship between the black serviceman and his supervisor and/or commander, who is usually white, a large number of blacks feel they are victims of unfair discrimination. In fact, when asked if they felt they were being unfairly harassed because they wore beards, only 50% of black servicemen said no. Of those who felt they had been unfairly harassed, 72% were of the opinion that the harassment was racially motivated." …

"We can find no justification for prolonging the continual denial of the medical nature of PFB. We can no longer stand idly by and allow the military to think that black personnel wearing beards as treatment for PFB can be hidden from public view, harassed by bigoted, narrow-minded commanders and supervisors blind to any form of reason and deprived of promotion or continuation in the military because this dermatological condition is best and often treated by not shaving." …

"We submit that the entire problem of Pseudofolliculitis Barbae in the military, its medical, administrative and social ramifications, can be best and most effectively dealt with by the servicewide acceptance of a voluntary growth of a beard by any service member."

---

Four years before this paper was written, I might have been one of those "bigoted, narrow-minded commanders" the Army major was talking about, "blind to any form of reason."

One afternoon in late 1969, my Field Maintenance Squadron First Sergeant, Sergeant Johnson, white, said that a black airman wanted to speak to me about his beard.

"Of course, send him in," I loftily replied, a shavetail lieutenant age 24 shoved into the position of Squadron Commander that called for an experienced Lieutenant Colonel that I had no real experience for because most experienced aircraft maintenance officers were in Vietnam at the time, not at a Keesler AFB overseeing a pilot training maintenance organization.

The airman proceeded to show me how frequent shaving was irritating his skin. He said he needed to stop shaving in order to solve the problem but that Air Force regulations prohibited beards. This, of course, was the first I'd heard of the problem, so I told the airman I’d get back to him.

As far as I was concerned, as long as the beard didn't interfere with his duties or the good order and discipline of the squadron, I didn't care whether he wore a beard or not. But could I simply say Go ahead in defiance of USAF regs?

Sergeant Johnson came in the office and told me that if I authorized the airman to wear a beard, it wouldn't be long before all the black airmen would want to wear beards even though the skin problem didn't seem prevalent. Surely Sergeant Johnson was exaggerating.

"Well, can we require him to get a doctor’s diagnosis from the base hospital?"

"Sure, but everybody gets those. They're easy to get. The doctors just hand out waiver forms to anyone who wants one."

I called up the hospital’s presiding physician who emphatically stated that his staff did not just give them out, but did issue waivers when they diagnosed the actual condition. That seemed reasonable to me so that's what we decided to do — waivers as needed.

It turned out Sergeant Johnson was right, that almost all the black airmen in the squadron wanted beard waivers. And it was almost impossible to turn anyone down once the waiver policy was established.

This was in the late 60s and early 70s when longer hair and beards were common in the civilian population, and many airmen of whatever ethnicity believed that long hair and beards were essential to their general grooviness and all-round appeal to the opposite sex. Skin condition was not the primary consideration.

And so it was not surprising to learn that as more and more black airmen started growing beards, the whining commenced among white airmen that black airmen were getting favorable treatment by being allowed to grow beards.

I continued to tell anyone who asked that as long as it didn't affect job performance, what the hell?

Fortunately, I was transferred to a non-command staff position in late 1972, and as far as I know, the problem, such as it is, has not reached the levels that Major Alexander was worried about. In fact, race relations in the military were and are probably better than in the general civilian population.

The last report I’ve seen on the issue was from a USAF press release from Beale AFB (near Yuba City) last March: “The goal of the shaving waiver is to allow the skin to heal and prevent the recurrence of PFB. In accordance with Air Force Instruction 36-2903, Dress and Appearance, the length of facial hair cannot exceed one-quarter of an inch. Facial hair must be grown out naturally, any shaping or styling of facial hair is not allowed, and facial hair cannot interfere with the wearing of any personal protective gear, such as a gas mask or performance of duties. If this should happen, the member's ability to perform duties safely is compromised and they may require an evaluation to determine fitness for particular military duties.”

CATCH OF THE DAY, January 26, 2019

ESTEBAN AVILES-ARMENTA, Vacaville/Ukiah. DUI.

TRAVIS BONSON, Kelseyville/Ukiah. Parole violation.

BLAKE BORGES, Laytonville. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

ANTONIO CANEVARI, Potter Valley. DUI.

OMAR CHAVEZ-TAPIA, Ukiah. DUI, suspended license (for DUI).

JESUS DELGADO JR., Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

DREW ERSLAND, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, probation revocation.

JACK HAYWARD, Boonville. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

SHAWN LANE, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

GABRIEL OLVERA, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

DONOVAN PARTRIDGE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

JASON PICKETT, Willits. Disobeying court order.

DWAYNE RASLER, Ukiah. Controlled substance in area where prisoners are kept.

MARIO REYNOSO, Ukiah. Domestic abuse, damaging communications device.

JOHN C. BOGLE: RENAISSANCE MONEY MANAGER FOR THE PEOPLE & MORE

by Ralph Nader

The accolades were uniformly respectful for the honest, innovative, and unyielding defender of shareholder/investor rights – the late John C. Bogle – the founder of the now giant Vanguard Group of mutual funds. Writers took note of his pioneering low-cost, low-fee investing and mutual funds tied to stock-market indices. Index funds, tied to such indices as the S&P 500, now total trillions of dollars.

Bogle abhorred gouging by the money managers. He would add up their fees – seemingly small at less than 1% a year – and show how over time they could cut the cumulative return by 50% or more. That’s why he set up Vanguard in 1974, which by holding down costs and fees has begun to push the rest of the smug industry to be more reasonable. Vanguard now has over $5 trillion in managed assets.

He could have become as rich as Edward Johnson III– his counterpart at Fidelity Investments, who is worth over $7 billion. Instead, Bogle organized Vanguard as a mutual firm, not a stock firm, owned by its investors. Bogle’s fortune, at the time of his passing last week, was estimated at $80 million after a lifetime of giving away half of his annual adjusted gross income to charitable and educational groups.

In the admiring words of Warren Buffett, Bogle’s work “helped millions of investors realize far better returns on their savings than they otherwise would have earned. He is a hero to them and to me.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer described the Malvern, Pennsylvania-based local giant of the investing world as “motivated by a mix of pragmatism and idealism. Mr. Bogle was regarded by friends and foes alike as the conscience of the industry and the sheriff of Wall Street.” It was hard to be his foe. Bogle, a father of six children, was calm, gregarious, and amicable. He connected his irrefutable rhetoric with unassailable evidence. He was Mr. Fair Play, the go-to wise man for his judgment on whether the torrent of financial services and offerings were, as he put it, “all hat and no cattle.” He unraveled the sweet talk and complex camouflage of the financial services industry with analytic precision and explained it with clear language.

He would call out the corporatists whenever he saw “rank speculation” reckless debt, “obscene” executive pay, or the disgraceful, unearned golden parachutes handed to bosses who tanked their own companies. For Bogle, there were serious economic differences between “speculation” and “investment” with “other peoples’ money.”

His admirers were so numerous they organized themselves as “Bogleheads,” two of whom wrote the book The Bogleheads ‘Guide to Investing. Right up to his passing at the age of 89, after surviving 6 heart attacks and a heart transplant, Bogle, was still humble, approachable, and writing memorable articles.

He was responsive and kind. In May and September of 2016, we held 4 days of the Super Bowl of civic activities in Washington, D.C. I invited Mr. Bogle to speak on the topic of “Fiduciary Duties as if Shareholders Mattered.” His voice sounded weary from being over scheduled and other responsibilities. Yet he said “yes, I’ll take the train down from Philadelphia.” (You can watch his presentation here).

We were fellow Princetonians and he often told me about his 1951 Princeton senior thesis where he laid the basis for his career emphasizing a “reduction of sales loads and management fees.”

His family business – American Can – crashed in the Depression, so he grew up poor, working as a newspaper delivery boy, waiter, ticket seller, mail clerk, cub reporter and a pinsetter in a bowling alley, and as he described “growing up the best possible way.” The cheerful champion of the fiduciary rule between sellers of financial advice and their client pension funds, insurance policyholders and other buyers/investors wanted fiduciary responsibility to be the law, not just a principle. He urged the large institutional investors – mutual, pension and university endowment funds – to end their passivity and exercise their ownership rights as shareholders in giant companies (Exxon/Mobile, Bank of America, Pfizer, GM etc.), including specifically challenging their political activities and campaign contributions.

Ever the contrarian, in a November 29, 2018 Wall Street Journal article, Bogle warned about the index mutual funds – an industry he started – having too much power! The big three – Vanguard, Black Rock, and State Street Global dominate the field with a collective 81% share of index fund assets. He wrote: “if historical trends continue, a handful of giant institutional investors will one day hold voting control of virtually every large U.S corporation… I do not believe that such concentration would serve the national interest.”

Rick Stengel, former managing editor of Time magazine and former president of the National Constitution Center, when Jack Bogle was the Board chair, described him as “the last honorable man, a complete straight-shooter.” In his 2008 book, Enough: True Measures of Money, Business and Life, Bogle ranged far beyond index funds and shareholders.

The Philadelphia Inquirer put it well: he was “less interested in counting than in what counts. … He revered language, history, poetry, and classical wisdom, and frequently amazed and delighted people by reciting long passages of verse …a social critic, civic leader, mentor, and philanthropist.” He was also very courteous – striving to return calls and respond to letters, which makes him unique these days.

A devoted father and husband, Jack Bogle declared that the “essential message is, stop focusing on self and start thinking about service to others.”

Now is the time for his family, friends, and Bogleheads to plan a series of living memorials to this great and resourceful man, so that his legacy is more than a memory but an ongoing foray into the future that he so fervently wanted to become realities.

(Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!)

WE'LL SEE, ALWAYS WE'LL SEE

In amongst trips to the mall and dinners, sometimes, with the family and visits to the dentist and all the rest, we watch and we listen and we inevitably measure against what we know. And those whose life does not extend quite to the mall are watched too, by we who remain. And as we add it all up, it all looks new. Life has taken a suddenly threatening turn, as though the family dog just growled and bared her teeth at us.

The sum of all this adding up is, of course, our life and whatever its work has turned out to be. Its measure often makes us wince. The marriage that didn't work. The job that went nowhere and perhaps did real harm. People hurt, even injured. Parties crashed. Unseen, unwept. How it all goes. The stuff of tragedy for anyone still inclined to write it.

Working to try new things and thus, somehow, effect the ending, I ate some chicken nuggets yesterday for the first time ever and topped it off with a scoop or two of buttered maple pancake ice cream, a treat never imagined. The nuggets looked nothing like a chicken, and their texture in the mouth suggested perhaps something like a banana slug.

Products like chicken nuggets are, in their way, perhaps the whole golden hoop of capitalism and world trade that we hear so much about and that we are expected to worship. That they are as near as your Safeway implies a web connecting all of us that is as unseen as the web connecting the sea off Hawaii to Moab.

Whatever we do or forgo makes its difference, whether noted or not. Noting these, we do our part. We hold that sign, we go to the march. We write that letter, make that call. And even when we don't make the meeting, someone is watching and thinking, what if?

(Bruce Brady)

WHEN I DID "NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND," I stayed at the Pavilion Hotel in Bournemouth. It was a pleasant, old-fashioned place and I thought I would stay there again, but it turns out that the Pavilion was torn down in 2005. I took me some time to work this out, because when I googled "Pavilion Hotel, Bournemouth," I got responses from seventeen hotel-booking companies all faithfully promising to get me a room at the Pavilion Hotel at a very attractive rate. The first one turned out to be for the Pavilion Hotel in Avalon, California. As usual I am left staggered by the Internet. How can anything be so useful and so stupid at the same time? Does somebody somewhere in the Google universe really think that I am looking for any hotel in the world called The Pavilion and that one in California will do me as well as one in Bournemouth? I know these things are managed by an algorithm, but somebody still has to give it parameters. But then, I suppose, that is the thing about the Internet. It is just an accumulation of digital information, with no brains and no feelings --- just like an I.T. person, in fact.

— Bill Bryson, 2015; from "The Road to Little Dribbling"

WHO DO YOU TRUST?

FEBRUARY EVENTS AT THE UKIAH LIBRARY

Elise Ficarra!

(Open Mic follows)

Saturday, February 2nd at 3 pm

A poetry reading with San Francisco poet, Elise Ficarra! Open mic follows. Teens & adults are invited to share poems in any form or style.

Elise Ficarra grew up in Northern California and resides in San Francisco. She is associate director of The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University and teaches writing and critical thinking at Chabot College. She has published variously in online and print magazines including: 26, Dusie, Eleven Eleven, 14 Hills, Minor American, Octopus, Open Space SF MOMA, as well as Hinge, A BOAS anthology of eight experimental women writers. Swelter, her volume of poetry, was selected as winner of the Michael Rubin Book Award by Brian Henry, who says of her work "exploratory in form yet ultimately grounded in, and devoted to, every day experience, Swelter seeks to rescue the lyric during the latest war's assault on our senses." And, from Benjamin Hollander, "Here, then, is a poetry of possibility and fact - - no - - of possibility as fact."

Light refreshments will be served. For more information – please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 234-2862 or carrm@mendocinocounty.org

---

Who’s in Our Backyard?

It’s Birding Time at the Ukiah Library!

Saturday, February 2nd from 10-11:30 A.M.

A guest visit from Maureen Taylor “Mother West Wind” of RVOEP for a morning exploration about who is flying around our neighborhoods. Enjoy stories, crafts, and games all about our fine-feathered friends!

This event is for families, part of our continued Citizen Scientist Program Series, and is sponsored by the Ukiah Valley Friends of the Library, Mendocino County Library, and The Redwood Valley Outdoor Education Project.

---

More at: www.mendolibrary.org

TRUMP APPOINTS ELLIOT ABRAMS (WHAT??) TO OVERSEE THE COUP IN VENEZUELA

independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/venezuela-latest-elliott-abrams-trump-pompeo-maduro-juan-guaido-a8747306.html

TRUE COMPASSION is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

THE TRUE STATE OF THE NATION (ALL NATIONS)

http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf

MEMO OF THE AIR: The Delicious.

The recording of last night's (2019-01-25) KNYO Fort Bragg and KMEC Ukiah world-class Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show is available by one or two clicks, depending on whether you want to listen to it now or download it and keep it for later and, speaking of which, it's right here: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0317

Besides that, also at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you can find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not necessarily radio-useful but nonetheless worthwhile educational items I set aside for you while gathering the show together. Such as:

The Delicious. (2002, 15 min.) I'd forgotten about this and just found it again with its parts stitched together so it plays from beginning to end without interruption, and it's delightful. I especially like how, when he tries to explain and can't, it's clear there's something wonderful to explain but it's just /really hard to/. You don’t get the impression that he's only a broken machine. Everyone else, though.

https://tinyurl.com/TheDeliciousComplete

The rear view from a toy camera drone flying past and through all the Utah Natural History Museum's dinosaur skeletons in one long Touch-Of-Evil/Russian-Ark take. Or the front view but played backward. https://theawesomer.com/saur/510834/

Fabricated.

Fabricated

And Vaseline for your hair. This reminds me of when I was cooking in Brannon's Restaurant in the early 1980s, and one of the waiters had hair that was like the kid's in this ad. It was literally dripping with some kind of hair product. He came back into the kitchen once and complained bitterly that some customers, an old couple, had told him to go wash his hair and get them another waiter because they came here to eat and his hair was, you know, disgusting; they were afraid it would flick drops of whatever that was onto their food. It hurt his feelings that someone could be so cruel. About 15 years earlier than that, in 1967, my mother married Roland, who had two boys of his own, and suddenly we all had to put Brylcreem in our hair all the time to go to church and that was weird. The singing ads on the radio all went on and on about how not greasy it was, and the teevee ads showed women throwing themselves at men who use it, in an effort to run their fingers through their hair and grab them and kiss them silly, but I think they might've been paying them to sing and do that, because it was greasy and disgusting, and they still sell it. Maybe they've changed the formula. I associate hair grease with needlessly complicated fountain pens and thin four-buttoned gray sweaters useless against the freezing fog of winter Fresno in the grim yard of St. Helen’s Catholic school. It was like adjusting to another planet, and we all do what we have to do, I guess, until we either stick that way and forget or develop our own Delicious to have to try to explain.

http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/follies_of_the_madmen_408

—Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com