MCT: Thursday, March 7, 2019

• E-Woes
• Birthday Roy
• Springy Weather
• Little Dog
• Chaos Agent
• Emergency Services
• Driver ID
• GJ Recruiting
• Albion Poets
• Starving Abs
• Rib Dinner
• Yesterday's Catch
• Homeless Island
• Tracks
• Showbiz
• Mary & Mac
• Zero Cost
• Featherbedding
• Whole Person Care
• Kakistocracy
• Unfunny Orange
• Things Gone
• Prosecute Wealthy
• Electoral College
• Later Gator
• Destructive Life
• Barbarous Action
• Omar Attacks
• Sunrise Movement
• Wilderness Bill
• Indoor License
• Citizenship Question
• Feminism
• TS Cat
• Enough Already
• Circa 1958

OUR E-MAIL SERVICE IS DOWN, and has been down since early Wednesday morning, meaning we are behind on a variety of material we would have posted tonight. The like dude who answered the phone at pacific was, like, unable to tell us when we'd be restored to full contact with the outside world.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROY LAIRD

MAINLY DRY AND COOL WEATHER is expected today and Friday. Saturday some light rain and snow is expected with dry weather returning for Sunday and Monday. Another quick system is expected Monday night and Tuesday with dry weather returning after that. (National Weather Service)

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Hiya, folks. Thanks for thinking about me. I'm doing ok considering my age. Little arthritis here and there, and more than a little resentful of all the attention given the two deadbeat cats, but I keep a song in my heart and a gun handy and, all in all, no problemo as we say in Boonville.”

A READER ASKS regarding Michael Grunwald: “Could this be the same guy that's been arrested several times in Fort Bragg lately? And the same guy arrested in Ukiah and charged with: Aggravated battery: gassing by prisoner, injury or criminal threat to person based on race, religion, color, gender or sexual preference, use of offensive words in a public place which are likely to provoke a violent reaction, offenses while on bail.”

ED REPLY: Yes. The same guy, another freelance agent of chaos roaming the North Coast from San Francisco to Fort Bragg.

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From the 01/05/2015 SF Examiner

Man arrested in connection with burglary of SoMa pet-boarding business

Who let the dogs out?

A South of Market area pet-boarding business had a “ruff” start to the weekend after being burglarized early Friday morning, police said.

Police have made an arrest in the case and the suspect has been identified as 59-year-old Michael Grunwald, Officer Grace Gatpandan said. Grunwald has no known address.

Grunwald is alleged to have forcibly entered the K9 Playtime pet day care facility in the 500 block of Brannan Street about 6:24 a.m., K9 Playtime owner Marc Pearl said.

According to Pearl, Grunwald climbed on top of a barrel or drum outside the business and broke a window, gaining entry.

Once inside, Pearl said, he “engaged and played with the dogs” and then gave the dogs “free reign” of the place after he allegedly let them all out of their enclosures.

All of this was caught on surveillance cameras, Pearl said.

After letting the dogs out, Grunwald reportedly entered the retail sales area of the store and began filling up bags with dog food, dog treats and toys, while every now and then throwing a treat to the loose dogs, Pearl said.

About 6:30 a.m., two male employees, 25 and 38, showed up for work and were about to begin their daily feedings of the dogs when they noticed the dogs were loose, Pearl said.

When the employees went into the retail section of the store, they saw the burglar and detained him with a stun gun until police arrived, police said. The stun gun was not used on the suspect.

Thankfully, no dogs were injured during the ordeal and all were returned to their assigned enclosures.

Pearl said the burglar was destructive toward the store.

Besides opening up bags of treats and toys that now can’t be sold, he is also alleged to have thrown a store display across the store at a computer screen, he said. It took about two employees all day Friday to clean up after the incident.

Before police arrived, Pearl had a chance to have a few words with the suspect, who reportedly told him he was a federal agent and that he was in the store on federal business. He also told Pearl that he saw someone else break in to the business and that he was only trying to help catch that suspect.

Grunwald was charged with commercial burglary today by the District Attorney’s Office, spokesman Alex Bastian said. He is scheduled to return to court tomorrow for arraignment at 1:30 p.m.

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Burglar Caught Red-Handed Releasing Dogs, Wreaking Havoc In San Francisco Kennel

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ANDERSON VALLEY FIRE OBJECTIVES with the pending Inland Ambulance Exclusive Operating Area

On February 19th 2019, the Mendocino County Chief Executive Office released a Request for Proposals, which solicits proposals from emergency ambulance service providers for an exclusive contract to operate in the Mendocino County Exclusive Operating Area (EOA). The EOA includes all of inland Mendocino County, and excludes the Hwy 1 [coast] corridor. The stated intent of the EOA is to improve the quality of emergency medical services in Mendocino County by implementing response time and performance standards while stabilizing the system. This will impact AVFD’s current emergency medical services to our residents and visitors.

Anderson Valley Fire Department is committed to bringing the highest possible quality of service to our community. Following the long-standing tradition of creating local solutions to local needs, as established by Anderson Valley Ambulance Service in 1955, AVFD continues to work to ensure that the specific, local needs of the Anderson Valley community are met in the final EOA agreement. Our objective is that the final EOA contract will meet these benchmarks:

• Maintain or increase quality of existing emergency medical services to our community
• Local autonomy to ensure long term stability of our ambulance service with or without the EOA
• Promote and retain the use of local EMS personnel
• Maintain AVFD ambulance membership program and reciprocity from the awarded contractor

Contact the Anderson Valley Fire Department at 707 895-2020 for further information.

(AV Fire Department Press Release)

RECRUITMENT FOR THE 2019/2020 MENDOCINO COUNTY CIVIL GRAND JURY

“All qualified citizens interested in serving on the 2019/2020 Mendocino County Civil Grand Jury are invited to submit their applications to the Superior Court for consideration,” announced the Honorable Jeanine B. Nadel, Chair of the Grand Jury Recruitment/Selection Committee. The deadline for application submission is Friday, April 26th, 2019. The 2019/2020 Grand Jury will be sworn in at the end of June, 2019 (date to be announced).

Service on the Civil Grand Jury is an excellent opportunity to learn about the inner workings of government, while providing a valuable service to the community. The 19 members of the Civil Grand Jury serve for one year and are empowered to investigate the operations of county, city and district governments; provide civil oversight of local government departments and agencies; and respond to citizen complaints. The Civil Grand Jury sets its own agenda and meeting schedule. Much of the work is performed in small committees allowing for considerable flexibility in the work schedule and meeting locations.

Grand Jurors are compensated $25 per full panel meeting, $10 per committee meeting and committee attendance at public meetings. Mileage is reimbursed at the current County of Mendocino rate. There is free onsite parking. Prior to being nominated, each qualifying applicant is interviewed by a Superior Court judge. Training for Grand Jurors will be provided on July 8 - 9, 2019 at the County offices.

To serve as a Civil Grand Juror, the following requirements must be met:

• At least 18 years of age
• United States citizen
• Resident of Mendocino County for at least one year
• Sufficiently fluent in written and spoken English
• Not currently serving on any other governmental board or commission during the term
• Not presently holding a public office
• Not personally active in any campaign of a candidate for elective office

Applications and related information are available on the Internet at: www.mendocino.courts.ca.gov/general_info/operations/grandjury.asp. The application may also be obtained in person at the Superior Court, 100 North State Street, Rm. 303, Ukiah or by calling the Grand Jury at (707) 463-4320.

For more information contact:

Kim Weston, Administrative Assistant

Superior Court of California, County of Mendocino

100 N. State Street, Room 303

Ukiah, CA 954825

(707) 467-6437

ruth weiss

She’s lived 40+ years on G Road South on Albion Ridge. We lived on G Road North. We had encountered her and her love on a pull-off high over the roaring Pacific Ocean a mile south of Albion a couple of weeks before they found the place. I was delighted knowing she was a North Beach, San Francisco poet. They were looking for a place to live. Funny, I remember them in a convertible, ruth at the wheel, he in the passenger seat, the hair of both blowing wildly. Now that seems unlikely. Convertibles were illegal then, and ruth’s hair, as I remember, has always been very short. And neon-blue, sometimes neon-green.

They moved into the beautiful redwood house, in the redwoods at the end of G Road South just as we were moving out of the pygmy of G Road North. That was cool, the exchange of one poet for another. Actually there was another poet living on G Road North. Sandy Berrigan and her two children whose father was the well-known poet, Ted Berrigan. All this was a good omen for me, coincidental not an intentional community as were others on the alphabetized Ridge. I was trying to become a poet, was writing my first book, the book-length poem Hard Country. I wrote at the back window of the one-room cabin on a raised platform (with wheels!) in order to see out, a wooden plank for the top, the desk that Mark made me just before he split—the heartbreak that is chronicled in the poem. I had a glimpse of Sandy’s cabin across the meadow, an inspiration, though I didn’t know her well, or Ted’s poetry. Sandy was herself a poet who read at our ongoing open mics, as ruth did.

Years later I read an autobiographical piece by ruth telling how she escaped the Nazis on a train the day before the Nazis closed all escape routes out of Vienna. She and a 13 year old African girl escaped together. I still come upon myself on that train, though in a recent account of her family’s escape there’s no mention of that girl. Maybe that girl was the terrorized poet’s double.

When she finally got to Chicago, 1948, ruth dyed her hair blue. Blue yes! in 1948, fluorescent-blue though in an article of her Beat Museum 90th birthday celebration her hair is green. Somewhere I read of her roaming North Beach when she got here, her blue hair in a pixie cut.

Do I remember right? ruth was a nude dancer on Broadway in North Beach in the early 50s? That’s how she survived while she learned English and wrote her first poetry—where she learned English to be the interpreter of the poet she was inside. For her 90th birthday she performed with her fantastic jazz-rock band at the Beat Museum on Broadway. In the 80s at the Caspar (Mendocino) art gallery’s Open Mics she’d read from her epic poem Desert Journal by having someone call out a random page/poem number.

ruth called me here in North Beach when Blue died last November. It was night and I was in bed. I’ve never been able to talk easily on the phone. My brother can’t talk on it either, says it’s because our father put the timer at ten minutes and if we went a second over all hell broke loose. I was honored by both of them, Blue on her death bed asking ruth to call Sharon. I wish I could have talked with ruth more easily that night. There’s a reason I write, spoken words don’t come out of me easily, on the phone or anywhere.

Blue is dead. Sometime ruth. Sometime soon all of us. Sometimes it’s hard to say what you really mean. Merci, ruth for calling me for Blue. And for blessing G Road, North and South, all these years. Holding down the fort we used to say before it was a cliché, before we were poets. small case. danke schön

Sharon Doubiago, October 18, 2018

PS. March 2019: get well, get well!

PPS. My new book of poetry, Naked to the Earth, 348 pages, cloth, $24.95, is now available from Wild Ocean Press, www.wildoceanpress.com.

NEW: My Beard, Memoir Stories, (Spuyten Duvyil, 2018) Available on Amazon.com

sharondoubiago.com

(Photo by Judy Valadao)

Q: Why do abs wash up after a storm?

Comments:

[1] (Mike Owens) Because they are starving to death. Urchins are out competing them for food due to a population explosion related to ocean warming and a disease in the starfish predators. The abs in your pics have wasted away so much they don’t even fill their shells.

[2] (Braeden Rossich) They also get extremely stressed when exposed to heavy swells; they can get knocked off the rocks. They can't move fast. So they get tossed around. But starvation is also happening.

WINNER WINNER SMOKED RIB DINNER!

This Saturday Only hosted by Poleeko restaurant in Philo. Full plate dinners featuring oak smoked ribs, baked potato with all the fixings and organic micro greens with toasted seeds, beets and carrots. Limited vegetarian plate also available with BBQ portobello mushroom. Serving at 6pm in the parking lot at the grange. First come, first serve and rain or shine. $15 for one plate, $25 for two. This sells out so come early to get yours!

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 6, 2019

GARY BALMAIN JR., Willits. Domestic battery.

OMAR CHAVEZ-TAPIA, Ukiah. Suspended license.

BRANDON CLELAND, Willits. Probation revocation.

STEWART CONLEY, Ukiah. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun.

DAVIS HIGHTOWER, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

BRANDON HITE, Vacaville/Willits. Parole violation.

SAMANTHA MENDEZ, Ukiah. Domestic abuse.

ISSA NIAMBELE, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

MICHAEL RATLEY, Willits. Felon with firearm, controlled substance, armed with firearm in commission of or attempt at felony.

CHRISTINE SEIGLER, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

JESSICA STAMNESS, Laytonville. Domestic battery.

THOMAS TICE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

CITY NOTES

There's a large, government-surplus building near "Crab Cove," a unique stretch of beach in Alameda adjoined by a small, kid-oriented museum that displays the plant and animal species seen along the shore. The self-styled progressives who run the city are pushing a special election in April (at a cost of c. $700,000) that will enable the purveyors of "Homeless Services" to operate a regional facility at this site. Their catchment area will be all of Alameda County. Most of the homeless are in Oakland; the only reason the services will be provided on this island is the free real estate. Kaiser and Sutter are heavily invested in the initiative to make the building a "Homeless Services" center because they'll be able to redirect people from their hospitals to the helping pros in Alameda.

The AVA has run some great riffs debunking the practical value of "Homeless Services" in Fort Bragg (and maybe SF). If you can find same without too much trouble, please forward to

East Bay Fred

The business of America is show business.
— P.T. Barnum

MARY FULLER: KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR

by Jonah Raskin

One day before too long, a journalist will craft an obit about the artist known as Mary Fuller who lived much of her life on Sonoma Mountain with her husband and fellow artist Robert (Mac) McChesney, an abstract expressionist, a printmaker and lots more. Also, one day a wordsmith will write a biography of Mary Fuller McChesney, who called herself a “sculptor – writer,” married Mac in 1949, and three-years later joined her muscle to his muscle and built the house they called home for decades.

The house is still there, though the McChesney’s don’t live there anymore. Mac died in 2008 at the age of 95. He was still making art in his 90s. Mary is 96 and lives in one of those institutions where men and women go when they’re near the end of their lives and need extensive medical help. The place where Mary now occupies a bed in a small room is called “a skilled nursing facility.”

On the walls there are several of her recent drawings, one of which says, “Take it easy, but take it.” Another says, “Don't Get Mad, Get Even.” No one at the nursing facility seems to know anything about the McChesneys, their radicalism, their bohemian lifestyle or their commitment to art and community that lasted all though the Depression, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the madness of the Nixon years, the Bush years, and the Clinton years.

This essay doesn’t pretend to be a capsule biography of Fuller or an obit, either. After all, Mary is still alive. I know that because I recently spent part of a morning with her in Petaluma. Mary could barely hear me, even when I bent down and spoke directly into her ear. I’m not sure how clearly she saw me, either, but I sat down on the edge of her bed and read some of my poems to her, while she held my “free” hand and listened attentively. “Are these your poems?” she wanted to know. “Well, yes,” I said. She smiled and added, “They’ve very good.” Then we talked about Sonoma Mountain and about Mac, who loved to hunt. For years, Mary and Mac ate a lot of venison.

That’s when Sonoma Mountain was a wild place. It still is a wild place, especially on the higher grounds above the dairy farms. At 96, Mary is still wild at heart, as the sketches on the wall suggest. When she was a young woman, she read lefty books by authors like George Bernard Shaw and got in trouble with teachers at school. In the 1970s, she lambasted Christo’s so-called ”Running Fence” that stretched across Sonoma County farmland and all the way to the 101.

Mary told my friend and fellow reporter, Charles Schultz, that Christo’s fence was “just European bullshit.” That’s when many art critics thought it was one of the wonders of the civilized world. Mary also told Schultz that pre-Colombian art, some of which she saw during a sojourn in Mexico, inspired her “more than anything contemporary.”

Schultz’s interview with Mary was published in the Point Reyes Light in August 2016. In a recent phone conversation with me, Schultz reminded me that Mary and Mac refused to sign the infamous loyalty oaths of the anti-communist era and lost their jobs as public school teachers in Richmond, California. Mary wrote pulp fiction with titles like Asking for Trouble. Those words might be carved on her tombstone. She’s never been reluctant to look or ask for trouble.

According to Karen Petersen, a longtime librarian and an art historian who helped curate a show of her work, Mary wanted to shock the bourgeoisie and also to be accepted by the bourgeoisie, though Karen added, “that was more true of Mac than it was of Mary.” No one did more to promote Mac than Mary. She wrote a whole book about him titled, Robert McChesney: An American Painter. Mary was Mac’s muse, wife, biggest fan and near constant companion. When she had to, she went downhill and worked in the Petaluma poultry industry to make money and keep her and Mac afloat. In World War II she took a job as a welder in the Richmond shipyards. She liked to work with her hands, which led her to clay, ceramics and sculpture.

On the day I visited Mary in the hills above Petaluma, a mutual friend lent me a copy of one of her books, A Period of Exploration: San Francisco 1945-1950, which was published by the Oakland Museum, and that emerged from interviews she did with artists such as Joan Brown, Alfred Frankenstein, William Morehouse, Hassel Smith and Jean Varda. Mary knew all of them and many more.

In a note at the front of the book, she explains that “spontaneity and candor” are advantages of “the interview technique,” but that “there is a great deal of inequality of ability among people to express themselves verbally.” Mary never had trouble expressing herself verbally. Starting as a teenager, she said whatever she wanted to say, wherever and whenever. On the topic of exhibiting her work along with Mac’s, she told reporter and art critic, Gretchen Giles, "We showed together at Bolles Gallery and there was a big write-up about it and it was all about Mac, and in the last paragraph there was a sentence like, 'And Mary was in the show, too.'”

“A period of exploration,” could serve as a major theme for Mary’s life, though she didn’t have any one single period of exploration. For nearly nine decades, she explored, expounded and expressed herself emphatically. These days, art critics tend to say that Mac is more famous than Mary. But it remains to be seen whether that view will obtain in five, ten or in 20-years from now. When there is a major retrospective of Mary’s work, the curators will have to go to the McChesney’s property near the top of Sonoma Mountain. More than one hundred pieces of Mary’s work dot the landscape. Indeed, some of them seem to spring from the mountain itself. Two sculptors, Ilana Spector and Mark Grieve, carry on the McChesney’s legacy. For 13 years they lived next door to Mac and Mary. They still live and work on the property that’s adjacent to the land that Mary owns. Spector is a lawyer as well as an artist; Grieve is a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute and a veteran of Burning Man.

Mary’s work, which is outside the house that she and Mac built, is in bronze and in cement. It’s both abstract and representational: mythological, erotic, and almost always pushing boundaries, and challenging received ideas about what art should or shouldn’t be. My favorites are two large lionesses, one fierce and the other gentle that express two sides of Mary. Some of her pieces have moss growing on them. The moss seems to enhance their power.

Ilana Spector gave me a guided tour and told me, “Mary wanted big and bold. She’d take mythological figures like Leda and like the Minotaur and put her own twist on them. She turned the Minotaur, who was depicted by the ancient Greeks as a half-man and half-bull, into a cow.” Spector added, “Mary challenged gender stereotypes.” Mark Grieve also talked about Mary’s work and added that, “she could be very eloquent and at the same time curse like a sailor. She was very tough and she was all about public art.“

Grieve installed one of Mary’s works, “Leda and her Friend,” at the nursing facility in Petaluma. It was too erotic, too explicitly sexual. Someone covered it up and then Grieve was forced to removed it. Not surprisingly, Mary’s work still has the power to shock. One wonders what St. Peter might say to her at the Pearly Gates of Heaven, and what she’ll say to him.

FEATHERBEDDING

Editor:

Does anyone wonder why Santa Rosa is having budget problems? Perhaps the retirement of Santa Rosa Police Chief Hank Schreeder holds a clue. Now that he has reached the ripe old age of 53, we will pay him nearly $200,000 a year to travel to Hawaii and to toy with the idea of taking another job to add to his cash flow.

Meanwhile the rest of us (public employees aside) are slogging along toward age 65, hoping to be able to scrape by during our own golden years. Schreeder isn’t even one of our much-worshipped first responders. He is a bureaucrat, plain and simple.

It would go a long way toward bringing our budget under control (and helping flood and fire victims instead of white-collar fat cats) if we would simply make all government retirement benefits payable starting at age 65, the same as most of the rest of us.

Michael Sherrell

Sebastopol

NOT A BAD IDEA BUT MENDO'S HELPING PROS…

“Whole Person Care”

/caph.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/mendocino-wpc-pilot-7.12.2018.pdf

THE BRIT VIEW OF TRUMP

Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.

—Nate White, in response to the question "Why do many British people not like Donald Trump?"

THE MEMORY of things gone is important to a jazz musician.

— Louis Armstrong

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I’ve paid attention all these years and knew Michael Jackson was a perv. I have not and will not watch this show, it’s just voyeurism to me and as H. L. Mencken said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people.” They’ll watch every lurid moment of this crap.

The moms deserve to be charged for aiding and abetting or for depraved indifference. Maybe the movie will impart to parents to not trust kids to celebs — or to priests for that matter.

I focus on the apparent concept that wealth is allowed to do anything, no matter how awful, that somehow they’re entitled, that they get a pass for their behavior and crimes. Screw the rich, their money makes NO difference, stop demurring to them, if they’re guilty LOCK THEM UP.

Why does Trump get a pass on the Stormy Daniels matter — because he’s rich? Because he’s white? If Obama paid off a hooker the yahoos in the GOP base would’ve marched on DC with pitchforks, nooses and flamethrowers.

If they can put Martha Stewart in prison a year for insider trading they can damned well put priests and celebrity pedophiles in the pokey for playing the hokey pokey with those too helpless to fight back.

KEEP IT

Editor:

Would we even be talking about the Electoral College if Hillary Clinton received more electoral votes and Donald Trump won the popular vote? No, it wouldn’t be an issue.

There are some who wish to abolish the Electoral College. The say it is archaic and unfair. But what is fair?

Do we really want to turn over our choice for president to the six largest cities in America? Los Angeles County alone has more people than 43 states.

The Electoral College worked in 2016 as the founders intended. Just because Clinton lost doesn’t mean you get to change the rules.

Matthew Corbett

Santa Rosa

FINALLY, THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS

Everything on this planet is where and what and how it is because of what amounts to most of our wealth and attention. Almost none of it would exist as it is if these investments ceased. Or if the burdens became too hard to bear. The evidence is there in everything we know and much of what we see.

The first object I see when I look up from typing is a major league baseball my son gave to me when bringing me home from the hospital. All major league baseballs used to be manufactured in Haiti. They may be still. They are manufactured by the gazillions daily. Possibly (probably) in China. They sell for thirty dollars. Many, maybe most making them go slowly blind from the specifications they must adhere to. Some few commit suicide or try to emigrate.

The point of all of this is that we must be amused so that we keep working, earning money to buy baseball's and rubber ducks and caramels and trips to Cancun so that we can buy endless drinks from little brown people whose civilization we destroyed to built that resort hotel. With the entire travel industry there to convince us it's fun.

See how easy it is? Anyone can play. Look around. It's fun.

(Bruce Brady)

ONE CANNOT ENGAGE in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian.

— U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY ATTACKS ON ILHAN OMAR ARE A TRAVESTY

I’m Jewish and have worked against anti-Semitism for decades. I was sitting a few feet from Omar at Busboys & Poets and I heard nothing—nothing—that smacked of anti-Semitism, overt or coded or otherwise.

by Phyllis Bennis

thenation.com/article/ilhan-omar-anti-semitism-democratic-party-aipac/

THE SUNRISE MOVEMENT

To the Editor:

While the children of the Sunrise Movement, who are working to stop climate change, may not understand how the Senate functions, they do correctly understand that if the world keeps functioning under business as usual rules, their lives will be fraught with one climate catastrophe after the next.

And it is not just children in states with Democratic senators who know this: Middle and high school students in Kentucky were out in force all week, even camping overnight in front of Mitch McConnell’s Senate office for the chance to make their case.

The Green New Deal may be expensive, but what would you pay to save your child’s life? Multiply that by millions.

Helena Birecki

San Francisco

National parks, wilderness areas in California could expand under sweeping new bill

WEDNESDAY, HUMBOLDT RECEIVED ITS FIRST STATE LICENSED INDOOR CANNABIS GROW

A Humboldt cultivator managed to successfully navigate the system and has the county's first State license for an indoor grow.

kymkemp.com/2019/03/06/today-humboldt-received-its-first-state-licensed-indoor-cannabis-grow/

NO CITIZENSHIP QUESTIONS

In today's news from the SacBee:

The U.S. District Court of Northern California has ruled that the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 U.S. Census violates federal law, handing California a victory in one of its 47 lawsuits against the Trump administration. U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg said the citizenship question “threatens the very foundation of our democratic system — and does so based on a self-defeating rationale.” He ruled that the proposed census question violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Enumeration Clause. Evidence shows that the question would deter immigrants and Latinos from responding, resulting in an undercount, he said. The case stems from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ March 2018 announcement that the 2020 U.S. Census would include a question asking respondents about their citizenship status, arguing that it would help them enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Kathy Wylie, M.S. Ed.

gglgrl@gmail.com

Well, I used to go on college campuses 25 years ago and announce that I was a feminist, and people thought it meant I believed in free love and was available for a quick hop in the sack with anyone who asked. Now, I go on college campuses and say I’m a feminist, and half of them think it means I’m a lesbian. What I’d like to know is, how’d we get from there to here without ever passing “Go”?

I’ll tell you exactly what it means to be a feminist, and I know because I was there from the beginning of the second wave: It means you believe that women should get equal pay for doing equal work. This is not a real exclusive club. We don’t have a lot of entrance requirements. You don’t even have to be female.

I can already hear a bunch of people muttering: “Oh, it can’t be that simple; I’ve heard you have to have hairy legs or no bra or think all sex is rape.” Nope, you just have to think women should get paid the same as men for doing the same job.

— Molly Ivins

As our plane banked after takeoff, we caught one last glimpse of the Front Range shining to the west. Viewed from the air, Denver seemed to be blundering outward in every direction. No doubt many who lived there felt the city was already large enough. But more people were eagerly joining the sprawl, and who was going to stop them? Like other American cities, Denver swells on a blind faith that there will always be enough water, land, metal, wood, and oil that is cheap. I realize that nothing will prevent us from extending our sway over every last inch of earth — nothing except outward disaster or inward conversion. Since I couldn’t root for disaster, I’d have to work for a change of heart and mind. If we hope to survive on this planet, we must learn restraint. We need to say “Enough!” with relish and conviction.
— Scott Russell Sanders

THE CITY DESIGNED FOR LIVING

by Tom Reier

It's nothing new. I was in junior high graduating classes of 1958-60 in Santa Rosa California, then promoting itself as "The City Designed For Living".

Kids committed suicide back then. Often you'd barely know a kid, even in small town Santa Rosa in the fifties, because there was just a little too much age difference.  I maintain that in youth, in school, once you cross that three year age difference, it's often like you're from different worlds. 

I was just a kid in grade school when a young guy who attended Santa Rosa High School committed suicide. I didn't know him at all beyond seeing him once in a while, being I was probably in 3rd grade (1952-53), and he was in high school. He lived with his parents just three doors down from us on Belmont Court. The day he ended his life, he came home from school, did his chores, set the table, then went out back of the yard and shot himself. There were no grief counselors offered or available. It was LIFE in Santa Rosa, California, first half of the 1950's.

Kids killed back then. I had a classmate in 7th grade. I can't remember his name, but he was a lean kid with slick black hair. I only knew him from gym class. I think his name was Wayne. One day, this kid, barely 13, lay in wait for a girl on or near her back porch. When she came home, he surprised her and killed her with a sharp instrument. I was told it was a broken bottle, best as I remember. There was no grief counseling. It was LIFE in 1958 in Santa Rosa, California.

But sadly, there's more. A well respected educator, Dr. Evatt, tragically lost his wife around this same time. He was so stricken with grief that he shot both his children to death in their beds, then went out behind the garage and did himself in with the same shotgun. The daughter was the oldest, just into high school. Her younger brother, Bill was close to my age and was just a super nice kid, but he too was a victim of his father's grief.

I learned of this tragedy from KJAX, the local top 40 teen station at 1150 on the AM dial, as I was attempting to slumber to a rock and roll beat on a school night. I'm nearly asleep when the announcer broke in with a bulletin. I was shocked, and stumbled out to the den only to blurt out to my parents, "Dr. Evatt shot himself and his kids!", my dad sternly told me not to joke around, but soon realized I was serious.  I recall a dear friend's father, on returning from helping to clean up the house, "I can understand him, but WHY the children?" Those were his words. No grief counselors were available or offered to the adults or the children. It was LIFE in Santa Rosa, California, circa 1958.

Years later, around 1968, a friend of mine from junior high got into some trouble with weed, and did a little time. He reported seeing Wayne at this time. He said Wayne was a white zombie in appearance, who appeared heavily medicated and being handled by a couple of guards in restraints. That was TEN YEARS out from his murder conviction. A murderer, yes, and he surely paid with his life, every day. I bet HE got some counseling.