MCT: Sunday, February 17, 2019

• Dry & Cold
• Tonto's Revenge
• Recommended Reading
• Pets
• Pena Acquitted
• Police Reports
• Bogart Weather
• Yesterday's Catch
• Arctic Warming
• Young Activism
• Kaepernick Prevails
• Film Showing
• Shooting Checklist
• Aging
• One Tree
• Farming Gig
• Bay Fog
• International Law
• Bridge Lights
• Eliza Continued
• Wall Explained
• Marco Radio

SCATTERED SHOWERS will taper off this afternoon. Dry but cold conditions are expected through Tuesday, with another round of light rain and mountain snow expected Wednesday. (National Weather Service)

TALES OF THE CITY, tale of the times. A friend lives on a normally sedate block of Hyde Street in San Francisco. The neighborhood consists of low-rise apartment buildings, conveniently arrayed on either side of the Hyde Street cable car line. The area boasts modest restaurants and mom and pop groceries, with commercially bustling Polk Street a short walk away. It's reminiscent of San Francisco before the dot.com gold rush made much of the city unaffordable for people of ordinary means, and seems apart from the homelessness and petty crime characteristic of many residential districts. Most of the people on this block have lived here for many years in family-owned buildings. They know each other and look out for each other. Bad things may happen elsewhere in the City but not here.

Until now. Many of the residents of this normally uneventful stretch of Hyde Street are feeling great anxiety lately because one building has been taken over by transient squatters led by a menacing, 32-year-old street person named Darien Black. Black says he is a Native American and, therefore, the rightful owner of not only the structure he apparently rents to other transients but deed holder for the entire American continent stolen from his ancestors.

Black's grand claim is unanimously rejected by the mostly Asian residents of the neighborhood, but Black has focused his ire on the only person on the block who has led the effort to get him to go away, my friend, a 75-year-old white man, and the only visible person on the block to negotiate the demagogic Black's exit.

The police have been called on Black and his tenants many times. They know him and his tenants have repeatedly broken into the seemingly abandoned building but, as in many other urban areas of our crumbling country, there is little the police, in triage mode for years now, can do beyond ordering him to leave. Black, to city cops, is merely a minor nuisance in the daily sea of petty criminality they spend their work days occupied with.

The elusive East Coast man who owns the neighborhood nuisance has stonewalled numerous pleas to either sell or rent his building. "Many of us have written to him, called him to do something with his building. He has never answered any of us."

By default, my friend has become the designated spokesman for the neighborhood. He has tried to talk with Black to get him to leave. Everyone else is afraid, doubly afraid because the police won't back them up. One man who took Black's picture was chased down the street by Black who clearly intended to harm him.

This chief of all he surveys has focused Hyde Street's lack of reverence for him on his only visible critic, camping out in front of my friend's apartment and arraying this display directly across the street.

Last week, five neighborhood residents agreed to go downtown to get a court order preventing Black from squatting on their block. Out of fear of retaliation, four of the five, at the last minute, said they couldn't make it.

My friend says he sympathizes with his tormenter in some ways and, like most of us, regrets the ongoing plight of Native Americans, a plight Black is adept at exploiting to make his own exploitive way in the world.

The city should condemn the problem building, but that's a long process conducted by comfortable people who live in bully-free neighborhoods, neighborhoods where effective police response is fast and effective. I hope this one ends well, but in the very mean time, an interval where a street thug has managed to make a whole neighborhood miserable, I hope my friend and his friends can somehow regain the tranquility they've lost to the City of San Francisco in February of 2019.

RECOMMENDED READING: "Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy," by James S. Hirsch. There's an oblique local angle to this appalling and, until fairly recently, unknown atrocity of 1921 during which white mobs destroyed the thriving black community of Tulsa, Oklahoma, murdering as many as 300 black Tulsans during the rampage. The local angle? Mendocino County's renowned Pebbles Trippet's father (uncle?) was mayor of Tulsa during the 1950s and one of many well-placed Tulsans instrumental in discouraging any mention of the riots as bad for the city's image. Only in the 1960s did the depressing story begin to be told in detail, and the details, awful as they are, make fascinating reading.

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"KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON," by David Grann is another tribute to the Sooner state in its formative early years, this one a detailed account of the systematic murders of wealthy Osage Indians to steal their valuable oil rights. Officially, the count of the murdered full-blood Osage reaches at least 20, but author Grann suspects that hundreds more may have been killed because of their ties to oil. The book indicts a cattleman named William Hale as the mastermind standing behind the murders who is finally brought to justice by J. Edgar Hoover's fledgling FBI, before J. Edgar went rogue himself. Corruption is nothing new in America, but Oklahoma's corruption included payoffs to cops, judges, legislators, and governors. Put the accounts of the Tulsa race war and the thefts and murders of Osage, all within a few years of each other in one state, and even by America's bloody standards Oklahoma stands out.

UKIAH SHELTER PETS OF THE WEEK

Come on down to the shelter and meet Pastry—a 5 year old, neutered, male, short hair tabby. Pastry is a very mellow, mature cat who is perfectly content to spend his days relaxing and napping. He is not much of a talker, but really enjoys getting scratched behind his ears. Looking for a snuggly couch companion? Pastry could be the perfect match!

Halle found herself at the shelter as a stray dog. She's friendly with people and she’s a talker! During her evaluation, she was not particularly interested in toys, but we noticed that she's had some training. Halle knows SIT and DOWN. This good looking girl is easy to handle and likes getting affection. Halle is a 3 year old, spayed, female German Shepherd who currently weighs a svelte 67 pounds. There’s more about beautiful Halle here: http://www.mendoanimalshelter.com/dogblog/halle-IOz4b

The Ukiah Animal Shelter is located at 298 Plant Road in Ukiah; 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: www.mendoanimalshelter.com For more information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

PENA: NOT GUILTY

UKIAH, Sat., February 16. — A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned late Friday afternoon — the day after Valentine's Day — with an acquittal of man previously charged with domestic violence. Hugo Alvarez Pena, age 34, of Redwood Valley, was found not guilty by jury of having committed a domestic battery against his spouse, a misdemeanor.

Reflecting on the result, District Attorney David Eyster admitted the case was made more difficult than some because — as is known to happen — the reporting wife recanted at trial her allegations of having been battered, allegations made to both a CHP officer and a Mendocino County Sheriff's deputy close in time to the alleged crime. "Given the available evidence at hand, this was a case that had to be decided by jurors selected from the community. If the Mr. Alvarez Pena was to be found not responsible for what we had charged, he needed to get that pass from a jury, which he ultimately did," said Eyster. The prosecutor who presented the People's evidence was Deputy District Attorney Jessica Guest. The law enforcement agencies that gathered the evidence used at trial in this matter were the California Highway Patrol and the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the multi-day trial.

DORIS, PLEASE

On February, 6, 2019 at approximately 1:30 p.m., Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies received a call for service for a domestic related argument at residence in the 29000 block of Highway 20 in Fort Bragg, California. Prior to arriving, Deputies received updated information that one of the involved parties was Doris Camp, 52, of Fort Bragg, and the situation possibly escalated into a physical altercation.

After Deputies arrived on scene they observed Camp acting hysterical and belligerent in front of her residence. Deputies were able to momentarily calm Camp and learned she was engaged in a verbal argument with her cohabiting partner over their relationship and that no physical assault took place. Deputies then contacted the other involved party after instructing Camp to remain at the front of a patrol vehicle. While speaking with Camp’s cohabiting partner, Camp’s behavior escalated to an aggressive and threatening state wherein she began advancing towards her cohabiting partner, while also failing to comply with Deputies verbal commands. As a Deputy moved to intervene and stop Camp, she intentionally struck the Deputy in the face with an open hand and caused visible injury. Camp was taken into custody immediately after a brief struggle. Camp was ultimately booked into the Mendocino County Jail on charges of Battery on Peace Officer and Resisting Peace Officer. She was to be held in lieu of $15,000 bail. Following Camp’s arrest, Deputies completed their investigation into the reported incident and determined no crime had occurred between the two parties.

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GENTLEMAN JIM

On February 15, 2019 at approximately 8:08 p.m., Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies received a call for service for an unwanted male subject inside a residence in the 18000 block of North Highway 1 in Fort Bragg, California. After Deputies arrived on scene they contacted a 54 year-old female and James Bray, 58, of Fort Bragg, inside the residence.

During the contacts, Deputies learned the adult female and Bray were married but did not currently reside together. Bray reportedly arrived at the adult female's residence intoxicated and physically assaulted her after she told him to leave. Deputies observed the adult female had minor visible injury consistent with the assault. Deputies determined Bray had an outstanding misdemeanor arrest warrant for violation of probation and was also on active summary probation with a term that he must obey all laws. Deputies arrested Bray for Felony Domestic Violence Battery and Violation of Probation. Bray was booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $35,000 bail.

BOGART WEATHER

by David Yearsley

Sunny California is dark and rainy, just like it so often was in the great film noirs Hollywood churned out in better cinematic times. The atmospheric river that has dispatched days and nights of storms across the state of California this past week and caused flooding in north and south, from mountains to sea, is like a rain-machine on a Warner Brothers soundstage or back lot. Sometimes the downpour is so heavy you can’t see three feet in front of you, but the next minute its bright and sunny—the deluge abating just in time for the closeup. So deftly managed are these sudden scene changes that you’d think it’s got to be a Howard Hawks of a weather god in his director’s chair who’s ordering up the effects as his shooting schedule demands them.

Timed perfectly to coincide with these portentous weather patterns is a series begun last weekend and running through March 3rd at the Stanford Theatre on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto: Humphrey Bogart’s films of the 1940s and 50s.

The movie house hosting the series was built in 1925 as an Orientalist fantasy—a roaring twenties mash-up of what looks to this untrained architectural eye like Greek, Moorish, and Egyptian elements: DeMille’s Ten Commandments (the first one from 1923) meets Valentino’s The Sheikh. This venerable, and now revived movie theatre has always promised escape: tourism to other places or just into other people’s lives—but without the carbon footprint.

The Stanford was restored in the 1980s with money from the Packard Foundation, and under the guidance of David Packard (son of the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, also called David). In another bit of fortuitous scheduling, the theatre opened for renewed business just as I arrived in Palo Alto to embark on a Ph.D. in musicology at Stanford University. I saw scores of films there over the next seven years. Packard himself even told me—and rightly so—to get my feet off the seat at a Sunday night screening of Greta Garbo’s “Queen Christina.” Just as memorable was something that happened a few minutes later during the scene in which Garbo, dressed incognito as a man, finds herself about to be put up for the night with another cavalier, who appears interested in her/him romantically. Before the innkeeper leaves the two alone, a wag in the front row shouted “Threesome!” That night at the Stanford Theatre taught me not only to keep me feet off the upholstery, but also that there’s a moment in every classic film when shouting “threesome!” is funny.

Still going, if not quite as vigorously as it did a couple of decades ago, Packard’s theatre remains one of the most important and most visited venues for Golden Age Hollywood movies in the country.

The Packard Humanities Institute of the younger David, now seventy-nine, has long supported the preservation of classic American films, and since 2016 houses and curates the vintage holdings of the UCLA archive in a facility in the hills of Santa Clarita farther south in the Silicon Valley. Not only does Packard’s Stanford Theatre show the films in stunning prints, but also projects them in their proper aspect—the so-called Academy ratio of 1.37 to 1—on a vast screen, bordered by lush curtains to each side, elaborate tapestry above, and a pair of six-foot high burial urns holding perhaps the ashes of some Hollywood pharaoh of a long-gone dynasty. These decorative frolics don’t distract, although I occasionally like to let my eyes wander to watch the silver light play off the sphinx’s wing and acanthus leaf and flicker against the rapt faces below before my attention returns to the screen.

The Stanford is in great condition, aging rather more gracefully than I have in the intervening years since we first made each other’s acquaintance. Tickets and concessions remain cheap, the interior clean and polished. And unlike many old Art Deco cinemas in this country in the Age of Netflix, the Stanford Theatre doesn’t leak.

But this week it has been raining on screen.

At the start of the rainiest film noir, Hawks’ “The Big Sleep” of 1946 (screened this past Wednesday and Thursday at the Stanford), Bogart’s Marlowe enters the Sternwood Mansion and meets the younger of its two daughters, Carmen (Martha Vickers). Wearing the shortest silk shorts possible, she looks him up and down and observes, “You’re not very tall, are you?” At 5’8” Bogart was no giant, and the reference to his relatively diminutive stature is funny, flirtatious, even risky. But we know the actor is big enough to take it. “I tried to be,” Bogart parries. It is impossible to imagine that Tom Cruise—one inch shorter than Bogart—would allow such a crack, even if it had been penned by a William Faulkner—one of three credited writers for the script from Raymond Chandler’s novel. Cruise is no Bogart, and even if the screen got wider, the movies got smaller, as we learn in another non-Bogart film noir, Sunset Boulevard. But from my vantage point, movie-going in this theatre is not an exercise in nostalgia. It’s vibrantly alive in the present. Which is to say, Bogart is immortal—but only on the big screen.

That aura is safe in eternity in no small measure thanks to many a musical score provided by Max Steiner, the Viennese émigré who virtually invented film music for the talkies. Godson of Richard Strauss, Steiner took the heroic and comic pictorialisms of the late-Romantic tone poem and used them to arm heroes and anti-heroes, from Bogart to King Kong to Scarlett O’Hara.

The cataclysmic brass salvo that opens Strauss’s 1903 opera Elektra echoes through decisive moments of films scored by Steiner and many other Europeans who sought refuge on Hollywood’s shores. Also born in the early years of cinema and deeding its idiom to the new art form, Strauss’s “Salome” premiered in 1905. It has a lyricism and violence that Steiner would draw on in his own work for motion pictures. Menace became a vital musical tool. As for the seven veils, they are of cigarette smoke.

Play it again, Sam: the Stanford Bogart series began with Casablanca, one of this theatre’s most popular movies. The cavernous place was nearly full last Sunday night. It doesn’t rain in the desert, but there is much moisture on screen in the form sweat, booze, and tears. Steiner is at his most virtuosic not in the thunderous opening of the title music or the slithering exoticisms (cf. Salomé) that follow, but in the scene in Rick’s bar where the German officers break into the Horst Wessel song which Steiner then brilliantly mobs with the Marseilles. The musical battle results in the humiliating defeat of the strains of the Nazi villains. It’s a Pyrrhic victory that causes Rick’s place to be immediately shut down, but Steiner’s winning mash-up remains one of the most celebrated in the history of the genre.

The California storms had not yet started for “Casablanca,” but by Wednesday’s “Big Sleep” they were at full tilt. Steiner’s music is elemental—orchestral forces at existential odds with one another, the bass often struggling in contrary motion with the upper parts like weather systems colliding, swirling brass and strings ripped through by gusts of harp and shudders of timpani. An Art Deco cinema, or even the multiplex of our time, can’t simulate an earthquake (if you feel one at the Stanford, it’s no simulation), but a Steiner soundtrack can make the ground shake.

The movie rain comes down in great sheets and so does the score. The comic chirps heard early on for bad little sister Carmen give way near the close to pleading romanticism as Bogart and the elder Sternwood daughter, Vivian (Lauren Bacall) declare their love in an oblique, noirish way as they drive through the back roads of still-unspoiled Los Angeles during a break in the weather. Again and again it is symphonic struggle that opens the heavens in the dead of night: atmospheric rivers of sound.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His recording of J. S. Bach’s organ trio sonatas is available from Musica Omnia. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.)

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 16, 2019

ABEL AGUADO, Ukiah. Burglary, controlled substance, conspiracy, probation revocation.

JEREMIE BAZOR, Redwood Valley. Fugitive from justice.

JAMES BRAY, Fort Bragg. Domestic assault, probation revocation.

DAVID CLEM, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

SEAN DAY, Fort Bragg. Community supervision violation.

JOSHUA DEPREE, Redwood Valley. Controlled substance, disobeying court order, failure to appear, probation revocation.

MICHELLE GEBBIE, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

CALVIN MAGPIE, Sacramento/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

TREVOR PARTIDA, Hopland. Domestic battery, probation revocation.

RANDY PIKE JR., Point Arena. Parole violation.

ANTHONY ROJAS, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

MARIYA SIDDONS, Ukiah. Failure to appear, failure to appear.

JOSHUA SMITH, Willits. Assault weapon, under influence and in possession of assault weapon.

KYLE STARK, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

THE SIMPLE EVIDENCE of global ambient temperature rise is undisputable. Seventeen of the 18 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001, and global temperatures have increased by 0.9°C since 1880. The most surprising warming is in the Arctic, where the 2016 land surface temperature was 2.0°C above the 1981-2010 average, breaking the previous records of 2007, 2011, and 2015 by 0.8°C, representing a 3.5°C increase since the record began in 1900.

—Jem Bendell

YOUNG PEOPLE LEAD THE CHARGE TO CHANGE THE WORLD

"Many feel frustrated at the state of the world they have been born into, are angry with inept politicians and unaccountable international institutions, and enraged at the environmental vandalism that is taking place throughout the world. Anger and disillusionment has led to committed engagement among large numbers of young people throughout the world; they swell the ranks of the global protest movement forming the vanguard at demonstrations for action on climate change, demanding social justice and freedom, rational changes in US gun law and an end to austerity and economic injustice."

counterpunch.org/2019/02/15/young-people-lead-the-charge-to-change-the-world/

https://theundefeated.com/features/colin-kaepernick-won-period/

MENDO FILM FEST presents "All the President's Men"

Citizens of the Northcoast! — join the Mendocino Film Festival's special President's Day screening of "All the President's Men" Sunday, Feb 17 at 2pm at the Matheson PAC near Mendocino High School. Political comic and analyst Will Durst will host the event, guiding us into the film and leading a Q & A afterwards. It's a great film with cogent commentary about a time of "presidential overreach". What could be more compelling? And only $12!

eventbrite.com/e/all-the-presidents-men-1976-special-screening-with-will-durst-tickets-54783640343

THERE OUGHT TO BE A WORD for that second-half-of-life sense of time accelerating out of one’s orbit. The feeling of never quite catching up, of being always slightly then and never quite now, and out of breath with it. Having difficulty putting your finger on the right word. But I haven’t found it so far, if you don’t include “aging.”

— Jenny Diski

FOR SOME SMALLER GROWERS, FARMERS MARKETS WORK BEST

"We have to sell at wholesale in order to keep our retail business. I don't want to do too much wholesale, so I just maintain my contacts to sell wholesale when I need to. Farming is awesome, but if you're thinking about doing it, ask around. When I started after college, I figured you could live outside in a tent and farming is easy. Now I've got four kids.

"Some growers who sell to direct markets find that the price of success can be an operation that grows so large they are thinking more about the business than they are about their farm.

"We started with four acres 24 years ago, got up to 60 acres, and then cut back to 20," said Stephen Pedersen, who owns High Ground Organics outside Watsonville with Jeanne Byrne. "In our heyday, we partnered with Mariquita Farms and delivered 1,600 boxes a week from San Francisco to Carmel.”

agalert.com/story/Default.aspx?id=12722#

FDR’s CAPACIOUS STYLE of leadership has vanished from the scene. In the shadow of the Pentagon, no one dares to reassert a skeptical perspective. This is a major loss. Despite his attraction to missionary diplomacy, FDR remained committed to a traditional notion of international law, which allowed nations to respond militarily only if their own or others’ territorial boundaries had been violated. Not even his most expansive formulations included “regime change.” How he would have responded to the militarist posturing that passes for foreign policy debate in Washington today, who can say? But I doubt he’d approve.

— Jackson Lears

THE ELIZA BOWMAN STORY, PART 2

by Malcolm Macdonald

In this space last time we covered the early life of Eliza Durbin Bowman. Additionally, the previous piece contained some history of the relations of Indians and whites in Humboldt County in the 1850s and 1860s as well as events in Hoopa Valley in the same time period.

Recently widowed, with a handful of children, Mrs. Bowman moved to a farm along the Eel River in 1867. During the first months of 1869 newspapers reported attacks on white settlers, including the death of a Mr. De Lassaux at Hydesville, thirty miles from the Bowman place.

In the pre-dawn hours of March 25, 1869, Mrs. Bowman noticed one of her cows acting in an agitated manner. The nervous cow mooed incessantly and turned its attention to a nearby hillside.

On that hill, Mrs. Bowman thought she could make out the figure of someone partially hidden behind a manzanita bush, but she couldn't be sure in the dim light. She allowed her oldest daughter, Malinda (known as Lindy), to walk to the muddy corral. There the girl completed milking chores and turned the milk cows out to pasture. They browsed and grazed calmly and quietly, but that one cow ran to her calf, bellowing all the way.

Eliza Bowman opened the front door and called to her daughter to run to the house of their nearest neighbor, David Ward, a distance of 2,000 feet or so. A rifle round hit Eliza just left of her navel, traveled through her, and fractured the top of her hip bone.

She slumped against the door jamb, but held tight to her shotgun, hollering to the five children to run for the upper trail to Ward's cabin. Those inside sprinted from the back door, joining Lindy who'd abandoned the milk buckets. Eliza headed out the front door, heading for their plowed field, intending to keep herself between the attackers and her children.

The youngest child, five-year-old Emma, raced back to her mother. Barely able to put weight on her left side, Mrs. Bowman clutched the gun in that fist and hurried Emma along with her right hand.

More yelling Indians appeared to her left side. Walking backward so she could keep an eye on them, Eliza cocked the shotgun. Not seeing the terrain she limped over, Eliza stumbled and fell. One of the Indians came near and spoke in clear English, “Damn you now, I've got you.”

He dropped to a knee, aiming a rifle at Eliza, but her finger on the trigger of the shotgun proved quicker. The blast of nine buckshot (a relatively light charge) hit him straight in the face, but the discharge came from far enough away that it did not kill the man. He stumbled away and the rest of his band also scattered into the brush.

Mrs. Bowman got to her feet. Bleeding and burdened by Emma clutching to her side, she managed to make her way to the trail leading to the Ward cabin. Eleven-year-old Andy had lingered behind the others with an enormous Russian pistol in hand to provide cover.

Another Indian rallied his allies into the open field once again, dodging from side to side to avoid being an easy target. From Mrs. Bowman's perspective, looking behind her, the Indian contorted his face as he broke into a chant, unintelligble to her. He zigzagged forward with a large Newfoundland dog at his side. The Newfoundland would later be identified as one who'd gone missing from the De Lassaux place earlier that month.

Mrs. Bowman could have emptied her other barrel into the chanting Indian, but she resolved to hold it back until she was sure all the children, including Emma, reached the Ward cabin. Andy and the others had moved up the trail, but Eliza could hear their steps. In front of her several other Indians reached the fence at the edge of the field. One rested a rifle on a wooden post and fired. The round passed nowhere near Eliza, but buzzed inches from the fleeing Lindy.

The lead Indian kept dodging from side to side and chanting as he followed Mrs. Bowman and Emma. Without looking over her shoulder, Eliza could hear nine-year-old Nellie calling to David Ward, so she knew they were nearing his cabin. The lead Indian drew so close he finally fired on her. Eliza flinched to one side, but the bullet had already passed by. A score of rifle and pistol rounds whizzed through the air without striking any of the fleeing Bowmans.

Nellie's yells brought Mr. Ward from his front door, gun in hand. He fired twice, wounding one of the Indians and precipitating a temporary retreat on their part.

Ward followed the Bowmans back into his two-story log house. It had been constructed with defense in mind, built of heavy logs, fitted together. There were no windows on the ground floor. The heavy doors had bars swung across them on the inside.

Eliza fell upon a bed where Andy had rested the Russian pistol. She loaded it with seven buckshot, to be used as a weapon of last resort at close quarters should the Indians breach the cabin doors. Bleeding and faint she fell into a brief sleep.

About nine o'clock, a gunshot outside roused everyone inside to full alert. One of the Ward's dogs yelped then crawled under the house, whimpering in fatal agony. What sounded like laughter from the Indians was followed by a fusillade, a dozen and a half shots struck the cabin wall. Only one or two penetrated. The remains of a bullet rolled to a stop next to Andy Bowman. Referring to the man who'd built the cabin, the boy whispered, “I do wish Milt had made these walls a little thicker.”

Those were the only words spoken inside for a prolonged period. The ground floor of the house contained but two rooms, connected by a crude hallway. The Bowmans and Wards had sheltered themselves into the bigger of the two rooms. Two Indians, male and female, stepped into the hallway just beyond a barred door, perhaps believing that the silence meant everyone inside was dead. One of the Indians jammed a knee against the outside of the door. Inside, Mrs. Bowman and Mr. Ward crept close to the door and fired their weapons. Six buckshot pellets wounded the female Indian while David Ward's rifle shot clipped a pants pocket and backside of the male Indian. A double handful of U.S. government caps, a pair of bullet molds, and a knife fell to the hallway floor as the wounded duo raced outside.

Afraid of further attack if they ventured outside the Bowmans and Wards stayed put in their one room fortress for the remainder of the day and on through the night. At noon the next day, with David Ward on guard on the porch, Lindy Bowman raced out to the well to fetch water for the besieged families.

Around four in the afternoon, eleven-year-old Andy volunteered to make a break for one of the Ward horses in an attempt to reach the cattle range where his older brother, Dick, was working. He bolted barefoot at dusk, catching and mounting a horse out back then racing it into the shadows.

He rode swiftly for eight miles without sighting an Indian, though he did spot many tracks he thought must belong to the same band that had attacked them. Waving a bandanna over his head, Andy rode into a camp containing his brother and three older men. One rode north for Hydesville to bring more help and a doctor for Eliza Bowman's wound. The other two men mounted up and rode with Andy and Dick Bowman toward the Ward cabin.

The Indians had vacated the premises around the Ward house after the wounds inflicted by Mrs. Bowman's buckshot and Mr. Ward's rifle. They did, however, plunder then burn the Bowman house, taking or destroying one ton of butter, ammunition, coal oil and other provisions. The latter included clothing, bedding, furniture, silver, jewelry, books, and a sizable amount of cash.

Dr. Raymond Felt reached the Ward house three days after Eliza Bowman was shot. By then she was already mending on her own. After news of the attack spread around Humboldt County, gifts of cloth and other needed goods arrived quite often for a month or more. One of those gifts was a brand new rifle. Eliza spent much of her time in bed at the Ward house into the summer, sewing new clothes for her children. The Ward family could not bear to stay in the bullet riddled cabin, so David Ward built a new home in open ground alongside the river. The walls were constructed double wide this time.

In the summer of 1869, Mrs. Bowman moved her brood south to Mendocino County. They settled nine miles from Laytonville. The Indians who were identified as Hoopa, were captured, but their punishment or ultimate fate was not reported, as was so often true in events concerning the people native to the land.

Eliza Bowman bore with the suffering that accompanied her hip wound up until her death in 1907. Her son Andy proved to be a renowned hunter and tracker. His tracking skills played a large factor in the successful posse that hunted down the “Mendocino Outlaws” in the autumn of 1879.

Andy's hunting skills didn't stop with the turn of the 20th century. He was employed as a county or state hunter well into his 60s and 70s. In 1936 the district superintendent for eight northern California counties of state hunters described Andy Bowman as the best man in his employ. “There is not a young man nor one of any age in the district who can hunt as Bowman can, who is as faithful, as untiring in the service, as reliable under any conditions as this pioneer ranger who is still a valuable employee in the state which has been his home all his life.”

It is likely that no person ever traversed more of Mendocino County than Andy Bowman. At 81 years young, in the line of his state hunter duty, he tracked down and killed a 450 pound bear that had wantonly destroyed domesticated pigs and sheep. A year later he got the best of a 350 pound predatory bear near Big River.

Andy married Ada Pinches in 1894. She was nearly 20 years his junior. They were the parents of ten children born between 1896 and 1918. The youngest, Andrew Bowman Jr., enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942. He attained the rank of Second Lieutenant and assistant field supervisor at the Mira Loma Flight Academy. In the first fatal mishap involving an Army Air Corps trainer since 1939, Lt. Andrew Bowman Jr. died instantly when his plane crashed into sand dunes west of Oxnard Airport in mid-October, 1942.

Andy Bowman lived until 1948, almost 80 years after his ride for help near the Eel River. Ada Pinches Bowman died the following year.

Many of the details about the March 25th incident were first chronicled in an article written for the San Francisco Call (Sunday, August 9, 1891 edition). The author was Anna Morrison Reed. More about her in the January 23, 2019 issue of the AVA.

(Bows and arrows, bears and Bowmans at malcolmmacdonaldoutlawford.com.)

MEMO OF THE AIR: GOOD NIGHT RADIO!

Friday, 9pm to 5am, I read Memo of the Air by live remote from Juanita's apartment, not from the back room of the KNYO performance space at 325 N. Franklin, next door to the Tip Top bar, so alter your plans to instead show-and-tell there Friday next week, Feb. 22, when I'll be there for you.

Deadline to get your writing on the air tonight is around 7pm. If you're still working on it after that, just email it whenever you're done and I'll read it on the show next time. Or save it yourself for next time and come in and read it in person, see above.

Every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg, and 105.1fm KMEC-LP Ukiah. And also there and anywhere else via http://knyo.org and click on Listen.

You can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's show, and shows before that. By Saturday night, tonight's MOTA will also be there, and right on top, too. And then of course there's the whole rest of the world underneath that; literally years of fractal digression down to the level of the festive quantum foam.

A few educational amusements for while you wait for tonight:

I'm not sure, but I think this essay is really valuable. It's only ten minutes long. Okay, twelve minutes, you're right.

https://tinyurl.com/HowToReallyChangeIt

Superdog! Faster than a speeding bullet. Able to leap low limbo poles at a single bound. I see why they call this kind of dog a Papillon: the ears, face-on, make a butterfly.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/02/gabby-andrea-samuels-westminster-agility-tiny-dog.html

How to fly the B-25.

https://tinyurl.com/BillyMitchellInstructions

And, what if he did? What if he didn't? What if the world was made of pudding?

http://misscellania.blogspot.com/2019/02/story-from-north-america.html

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"By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split!" -Raymond Chandler

The recording of last night's (2019-02-15) 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, through the cold in my throat and in between blowing my nose like honking a clown horn, it's right here: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0320

Oh, and KMEC needs a chunk of money by the end of this month, and KNYO could always use a little money. Really, if you have any of that shiny jingly stuff to put into radio, and you've been tempted to support some bloated NPR station— KZYX, for example, because they have like three or four two-week-long pledge drives every year where they have all their airpeople lie to you that they need your money to keep the station going at all and keep the great shows on the air, you should consider that hardly any NPR station needs your money. They’re swimming in enough money at KZYX to sluice $300,000 a year to the handful of people in the office, who, as you know, don't pay any of it to the airpeople who they bamboozle into lying to you that they need it so much, so the nice corporate office people can just take it away from them and keep it for themselves so it isn't a heavy burden for the airpeople; here, we'll hold that, thanks, good job, get back to work. Just the manager and program director at KZYX, just those two people, pay themselves all the money from all the $25 and $50 yearly memberships KZYX takes in. I'm telling you in case you didn’t know it, which is easy to understand, why you didn’t know, because they don’t talk about that aspect of the situation much, do they?

On the other hand, real community radio stations like KNYO and KMEC have all the real expenses and responsibilities and technical challenges of a giant station but don't and can't get $160,000 a year in a government grant (that's almost two million tax-derived dollars in twelve years), and we don't have the advantage of the priceless government grant of control of a high-power license where a single transmitter the size of a suitcase can cover hundreds and hundreds of square miles of potential donors. Radio is cheap, so it's possible to do it on the cheap. But it's not free. Every penny you give to a station like KNYO or KMEC goes to pay for something actually needed: rent on a storefront performance space and studios, electricity, water, internet and phones, streaming fees, maintenance and equipment, and so on. None of it goes into the pocket of somebody in the office. I don't know exactly how much KMEC needs, but I know that it costs about $12,000 a year to keep KNYO in the black, and it's probably a little more for KMEC. It isn't such a terribly large amount of money, but it's needed, so please help. Maybe when you get your tax return.

To donate to KMEC: You can call 707-234-3236 and if nobody's there leave a message so a volunteer can take down your contact information and send you a membership form to return with your donation. Or go to KMECradio.org/donate. Or mail a check: KMEC, 106 W. Standley, Ukiah, or just walk in there, where the Mendocino Environment Center and the radio station is, across the street to the north from the Ukiah courthouse, and do it in person. The standard membership for KMEC is $40.

To donate to KNYO: You can go to KNYO.org and click on the big Donate button. And if that’s too technological for you or it doesn’t work for your browser, mail a check to KNYO, p.o. box 1651, Fort Bragg CA. If you’d like to underwrite a specific show, or you'd like your own show to play with, where nobody's breathing down your neck and they just turn you loose to do radio, contact Bob Young: bobb@poetworld.net

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:

This person does not exist. (Press F5 key or refresh button for new AI-generated realistic person.) But they're all attractive because, so far, the system generates perfectly left-right-symmetrical faces. They'll have that fixed in a couple of days, and the people will look a little more smooshed and lopsided and normal. Also an occasional demented tattoo or nose plug or zipper of earrings across an eyebrow would repel unwanted sexual attraction, as in real life.

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

The wheel of emotion. Wheels within wheels.

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions

Joanna Connor, genius slinky-finger bluesmaster, playing in somebody's side yard for an audience of like fourteen people.

https://tinyurl.com/JConnorBBQGig

And I don't think you’ll be surprised to learn that a great deal of this entire genre of art (dance in film) was fueled by amphetamine. It killed Carmen Miranda. Stopped her heart like a hammer.

https://tinyurl.com/thumpathumpa

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org, https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com