MCT: Tuesday, March 26, 2019

• Between Storms
• Navarro Watch
• Patricia Boudoures
• Adios
• Teddy Super
• Lambert Bridge
• Jazz Show
• Poleeko Dining
• 1953 Freeways
• PV Diversion
• Milky Way
• Blue Zones
• Deputy Awards
• Price Hikes
• Cannabis Workshop
• Planning Cancelled
• Burrows Suicide
• Baby Boomlet
• Other Coast
• Book Sale
• Yesterday's Catch
• HillaryGate
• RussiaGate
• Collusion Hoax
• Bidensanity
• UK/US
• Media Reckoning
• Political Deception
• Mea Culpa
• Bad Before
• Bern Movement
• Ferlinghetti 100
• Authenticity
• Mr Natural
• Comments
• Cancer Walk
• Neonic Ban
• Longevity
• My Brother
• Piano Concert
• Found Object

NORTHWEST CALIFORNIA WILL BE BETWEEN STORM SYSTEMS on Tuesday, with another front tracking through on Wednesday, followed by continued showery weather on Thursday. High pressure may bring a break in the showers along with some milder temperatures on Friday into Saturday. (National Weather Service)

MSP'S 'EYE ON THE NAVARRO RIVER'

Level Starting To Rise — No Flood Danger

The Navarro River watershed received around an inch of rain from this last system and the latest reading (12:15pm) from the (upstream) USGS river gauge found the level at 5.60 feet.

(Via MendocinoSportsPlus)

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PATRICIA BOUDOURES

Patricia Ann Ward Boudoures passed away at her home in Philo, in the loving embrace of her family who had the privilege to spend so much time with her. Born in Huron, South Dakota on April 12, 1925 to her parents, James and Beatrice Ward.

Her father, James was a brilliant and adventuresome engineer who established a small electrical company and brought power to many small towns throughout the West. He eventually settled his company in San Francisco, where Patsy attended Marina Junior High, and met her future husband, Peter, in the Junior High band. She then attended Hamlin’s Prep school, and Oregon State University.

After World War II, Peter returned to San Francisco where he found and soon married Patsy. Together they raised 5 children while Peter attended Medical school and established a surgical practice in San Francisco. They loved to travel and to work outdoors which eventually led them to find their “Ranch” in Philo where, after cleaning up the old sawmill and cabins, they built their dream home.

For many years they traveled between Peter’s work in San Francisco, then later Stockton, and their home in Philo. They gradually spent more and more time in Philo, until they were eventually able to retire, and live the life they dreamed. Patsy loved her children, Grandchildren, and Great-Grandchildren, and was happiest when surrounded by them in their loving home.

She was preceded in death by the love of her life, Peter C. Boudoures, and is survived by her children, Bea Ann Garrigues, Christine Goodwin, Jim & Linda Boudoures, Irene Bergman, Mark Boudoures, her 12 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and 3 great-great grandchildren.

A celebration of her life will be held at her home on Tumbling McD Road in Philo on April 20th at 2:00pm. All who wish to celebrate Patricia with us are welcome.

RELATIVES & FRIENDS wave goodbye to a train carrying 1,500 persons being deported from Los Angeles back to Mexico on August 20, 1931.

SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS said he had spent several hours with the County’s IT staff and wants to participate directly in the County’s “IT Master Plan.” Since Supervisor Williams is himself a techno wizard, and the first supervisor in years to ascend the position who came to the job with marketable skills, the Board decided to set up an ad hoc committee on the subject with Williams and Supervisor Dan Gjerde.

WILLIAMS also asked County staff to review hiring practices with an eye toward deleting positions that have gone unfilled for over two years. Nobody had the particulars on Tuesday, but it seems as though Mendo has upwards of 300 vacant positions, perhaps half of which have been vacant for more than two years. The County’s overburdened CEO will somehow find time to ask the Human Resources Department to provide a list for the Board to examine. Leaving the positions unfilled has the management advantage of making the budget look better than the accumulating disaster it it.

WILLIAMS placed an item on Tuesday’s Supes agenda meant to assist indoor pot growers on the Coast who, according to the County’s pot program “sunset clause,” will no longer be allowed to legally grow pot on the Coast in residential areas as of January 1, 2020, even if they've jumped through all the County hoops and paid all County fees and taxes. Williams proposed that a use permit process be developed to allow coastal indoor grows to apply to continue in business after December 31 of this year if they meet whatever conditions imposed on them in the use permit, including adequate responses to neighbor comments.

SUPERVISOR DAN GJERDE was strongly against Williams’ idea, saying the process is the process and the rules are the rules. Supervisor John McCowen said he was also opposed to any kind of countywide use permit process. Supervisor John Haschak said he sympathized with the fog belt mom and pops and suggested stretching the sunset deadline out for a couple more years.

THE COMMENTERS WHO OPPOSED Coast grows mostly agreed with Gjerde, and also cited the crime the industry tends to attract. But the growers strongly argued that it wasn’t fair to force somebody out of legitimate business when they can’t find another place to grow (affordably) and have done everything the County wanted of them to get legal, including security provisions.

IN THE END, the Board decided to send the question to the McCowen-Haschak pot cultivation ad hoc committee to see if they can come up with anything to de-horn the dilemma posed by opposed neighbors vs. long-time growers. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on several dozen currently legal coastal pot growers who might be forced either into bankruptcy or back into the black market.

LAMBERT LANE is again fully accessible, and hats off to the County’s road crew for its fast work installing the temporary Bailey Bridge above a tricky bend in rampaging Robinson Creek. And major kudos to CalTrans for their remarkable work shoring up the roadbed at the foot of Highway 253 where it threatened to wash away.

THE HOT CLUB of Comptche swing jazz band's free live show at Anderson Valley Brewery in Boonville, Friday March 29.

SIX OF US enjoyed a fine dinner Saturday night at the Poleeko Road House, a first for me and my missus. How good is the food? I don’t see how it could be better. The chili I had was the best chili I’ve ever eaten, and I’ve downed literal tons over the years. Everything about this place is first-rate, from the food to the service to the remarkably low prices. The re-do of Poleeko’s venerable premises by Tommy Lemons and Sons is a work of art in itself. Anderson Valley has become a kind of gourmet alley where, from Yorkville to Navarro, it’s impossible to find a bad meal.

APPROACHING THE FOUR-LEVEL INTERCHANGE, 1953. Photo Automobile Club of Southern California.

PG&E's looming abandonment of the Potter Valley Diversion has understandably gotten much attention. A lot of entrenched interests are involved, so entrenched they will have to be somehow accommodated. I think Congressman Huffman's "two basin" idea probably represents the only fair and viable way to proceed. Gratifying as it might be to see downstream water hogs like Mendo and Sonoma grape growers die of thirst, there are also thousands of household water users south of us who don't deserve that fate. And those downstream households are probably unaware that their high-water costs subsidize practically free water for grape growers. Think of it all as a kind of aquatic Brexit. Returning the Eel to its original state means no Diversion of Eel River water to tens of thousands of households and "farmers" from Potter Valley south to Sausalito, a political move no living American politician, especially California's, would have the stones to do. But, like Brexit, it's hardly reasonable to bring ancient water arrangements crashing down, thus severely putting a million or so downstreamers with sand pouring out of their shower heads.

NIGHT LIGHT OF THE NORTH COAST: DAWN CHASES THE MILKY WAY

by David Wilson

I pulled into the turnout and shut off the engine and lights. The stars jumped out and I joined them. Above the horizon the core of our galaxy glowed in the last darkness of the night. I smiled. Hello, Darkness, my old friend, I thought. It seemed apt, though it was the sight of the Milky Way’s bright center in the sky for the first time in months that most excited me. It’s the largest cosmic structure we can see, a fascinating reminder of the unimaginable vastness and mystery beyond our world.

A bend in the road ahead beckoned. Beyond the turn lay… what? My imagination rose. Metaphor for many things, a road can hold unique feelings or meanings for each of us. To one person the road may lead outward toward places undiscovered, while to another it will bring one’s thoughts home to perhaps reveal a mystery within. It occurred to me that within and without are but two ends of a spectrum of awareness and existence.

The mysteries of road and cosmos coming together called to me. Metaphorically I didn’t know where the road led beyond that curve. How could I when I knew it would lead each of us to our own destinations? That was the fascination for me. This road led anywhere. Even if it takes one nowhere, then that is where one is. What is beyond the bend for you?

We live in the Milky Way galaxy. It’s a flattened pinwheel shape, and our solar system is out on one of the arms. Our galaxy gets its name from the brighter band of stars, called the Milky Way, which we can see stretching across the night sky. The band is an edge-on view from within the galaxy; it is what we see as we look through the thick part of the pinwheel comprising all of the stars, nebulae and everything else that lie between us and the other side of the galaxy. When one looks into the night sky to either side of the Milky Way’s band, we are looking outward from the galaxy’s plane. Here there are fewer stars, and beyond them lies the great space between galaxies.

The brightest, most detailed area of the Milky Way is the galactic core. We can’t always see the core because as Earth moves around our sun in its year-long trek, each night of the year our dark side faces a slightly different view of the sky. As a result, some times of the year the core of Milky Way seen in these images isn’t always in view at night. In the northern hemisphere in winter Earth’s night side faces the fainter stretches of the Milky Way. As we leave winter and spring approaches, we begin to have a view of the core in the early pre-dawn hours. Toward the end of May the Milky Way’s position in the sky at 1:30 AM is similar to the predawn view in late March. In late June, the core will be low on the southeastern horizon when darkness falls, and it will be higher in the sky each night immediately after dark through the summer.

(To keep abreast of David Wilson’s most current photography or peer into its past, visit and contact him at his website mindscapefx.com or follow him on Instagram at @david_wilson_mfx.)

AV VILLAGE MONTHLY SUNDAYS. Planning Tomorrow, Enjoying Today! This month: Blue Zones — Exploring why people who live in them enjoy such long and healthy lives. Sunday, April 14th at Lauren’s Restaurant in Boonville. 4:00-5:30pm. Refreshments provided!

COVELO DEPUTY EARNS ‘DEPUTY OF THE YEAR’

Congratulations to the MCDSA employees who received this year’s annual awards. We're proud of all you and what you do for our community!

Covelo Resident Deputy Trent James received Deputy of the year.

Corrections Deputy Pablo Angulo received Corrections Deputy of the Year.

Sgt. Andy Porter received the Ricky Del Fiorentino Public Service Award.

Deputy Jason Logan (not pictured) received the Life Saving Award.

FROM KATHY WYLIE'S FIFTH DISTRICT BLOG:

I would really like a response from the board of supervisors as to the reason for the price hike in in standard permit issuance. This is a photo comparison for a temporary electrical permit (generator) for an annual public event. There have been no changes in the event. From 2018-2019 these are huge increases:

Electrical fee 2018- $83, 2019- $224???

Issuance fee 2018- $25, 2019- $164???

Records management fee 2018- $3, 2019- $127???

I understand the need to increase fees. We travel to multiple counties in California and beyond. These fees are the highest we have ever seen for this type of permit. What is going on here?

(David Jones)

OOPS! NO PLANNING.

The April 4, 2019 Planning Commission cancellation notice has been posted on the department website at:

mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

DOING THE RIGHT THING

UKIAH, Monday, March 25. -- A defendant scheduled to begin his jury trial this morning -- charged with sexually penetrating a nine-year old victim, a felony -- failed to appear in court for jury selection that had been scheduled to commence Monday. With the assistance of Butte County law enforcement, it was subsequently confirmed that Aaron Douglas Burrows, age 51, of the Paradise area, committed suicide in that area sometime Sunday night or early Monday morning.

Burrows had been represented by the Mendocino County Public Defender’s Office. If convicted, the defendant’s mandatory sentence would have been 15 years to life in state prison and lifetime sex registration. Assistant District Attorney Dale P. Trigg, the prosecutor who was prepared to present the People’s evidence against the defendant (evidence that was to include testimony from the young victim, as well as testimony from an earlier victim), worked collaboratively with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, the Butte County Sheriff’s Office, the Paradise Police Department, the Butte County District Attorney, and the Mendocino County District Attorney’s own investigators. Arrangements are now under way for further counseling for the defendant’s two victims.

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Previously:

PARADISE, Calif — A Butte County man is in jail, charged with sexually assaulting a nine-year-old child during a camping trip to the North Coast. Aaron Burrows, 50 of Paradise turned himself in to authorities this week. A warrant for his arrest had been issued after an investigation that lasted more than a month. The alleged incident happened in early September in Fort Bragg. According to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, the victim said the assault happened while on a camping trip with Burrows on September 2. After returning to Butte County, the child told a guardian about the incident. The guardian then contacted Paradise Police Department on September 6. Paradise police turned over the investigation to the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. Deputies from Mendocino County made several trips to Butte County to gather information. The case was submitted to the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office with one felony count of sexual assault filed against Burrows. The charge was for California Penal Code 288.7(b), sexual penetration of a child, 10 years old or younger. On Tuesday, October 30, Burrows surrendered to the Butte County Sheriff's Office and was booked. His bail was set at $250,000.

BABIES & COMMUNITY

by Anne Fashauer

Anderson Valley is experiencing a baby boomlet. If you attended the Friday evening of the last Variety Show you were treated to one of the most memorable skits - lots of pregnant bellies with faces painted upon them, dancing around the stage to a Liza Minelli song. The skit started with one belly, then another, then another and so forth, in many ways just like life; first I’d see or hear of someone who is pregnant, then another and another.

I was lucky enough to attend the baby shower for one of these women this past Saturday. I was reminded so well how much a part of community babies really are. The friend we were gathered to celebrate originally did not want a shower; fortunately, we all pressured her enough to have one. The room was mainly filled with younger women, many of them also expecting babies this year, but also some older women. Babies and celebrating their arrival is the other side of the coin to all of the recent deaths our community has experienced. They are the continuation of what has been before - of their families, of the work put into this community, of our country and our world.

Much of the afternoon was simply spent visiting one another while enjoying some food and drink. Toward the end of the event we were led outside into the sunshine for a more “formal” ritual. We all stood in a circle as a ball of yarn was passed, like a football, across to each other. Each recipient of the yarn placed it securely around her wrist, then listed her name, her mother’s name and her grandmothers’ names, then the names of any children they have. It was so beautiful to hear the names ring out, to feel that continuity, to bring my own ancestors into this circle of women.

The afternoon ended with each of us receiving a candle to be lit when we were told that the guest of honor had gone into labor. A phone tree is being created to notify all of us so that we can continue to hold her in the circle we had created.

Anderson Valley has one of the best communities I know of. I have written about it before and will do so again. I am so pleased to call this place home and these women friends. Here’s to all the babies and their families, may they increase the bonds of our community long into the future.

BIG SPRING BOOK SALE in Willits

The Willits Library will be holding its big Spring Book Sale April 11th thru 14th at the Willits Community Center, 111 East Commercial St., Willits. Thursday April 11th 6 - 9 pm (members only); Friday April 12th 10 am to 6 pm; Saturday April 13th 10 am to 4 pm; Sunday April 14th 10 am to 3 pm. Sunday is $5-a-bag day.

CATCH OF THE DAY, March 25, 2019

MYLEE BORECKY, Redwood Valley. DUI.

ROCKY DUMAN, Ukiah. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

ANDREW GREEN, Lakeport/Willits. Ammo possession by prohibited person.

AARON MASSEY, Ukiah. Protective order violation.

DENA MORRIS, Redwood Valley. Parole violation. (Frequent flyer.)

JAMES STRICKLIN JR., Nice/Willits. Registration tampering.

HENRY SUTHERLAND, Leggett. Failure to appear.

ASAHEL WEAVER JR., Willits. Under influence, mandatory supervision sentencing.

BUYER’S REMORSE

by James Kunstler

The Narrative is dead! Long live The Narrative!

That’s what played on CNN, NBC, and The New York Times yesterday as they struggled to digest the parting meal Robert Mueller served to the RussiaGate lynch mob: a nothingburger with a side of crow-flavored fries. Mr. Mueller was careful, though, to leave a nice red poison cherry on top with his statement that “…while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Mr. Mueller, who ought to know better, could not be more in error on that too-fine-a-point. The official finding that no crime was committed is, ipso facto, an exoneration, and to impute otherwise is a serious breach of his role in this legal melodrama. Prosecutors are expressly forbidden to traffic in defamation, aspersion, and innuendo in the absence of formal charges. So, it will be interesting to hear what Mr. Mueller has to say when Jerrold Nadler reels him into the House Judiciary Committee, as inevitably he will, to do to some ‘splainin.’

What actually happened with RussiaGate? A cabal of government officials colluded with the Hillary Clinton campaign to interfere in the 2016 election and, failing to achieve their desired outcome, engineered a two-years-plus formal inquisition to deflect attention from their own misconduct and attempt to overthrow the election result.

The Cable News characters, quite a few of them lawyers, were litigating the living shit out of the story on Sunday night in their usual spirit of obdurate rank dishonesty.

For instance, Jeffrey Toobin, who plays Attorney General on CNN, went off on the infamous 2016 Trump Tower Meeting in which the president’s son, Donald, Jr., met with Russian lawyer Natalia V. Veselnitskaya. Toobin omitted to mention that Ms. Veselnitskaya was, at that very time, on the payroll of Fusion GPS, Hillary Clinton’s “oppo” research contractor. In other words, Trump Junior was set up.

That was characteristic of the collusion that actually occurred between the Hillary campaign, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, the UK’s MI6 intel agency, and the Obama White House, striving to prevent the election of a TV reality show star, and to disable him afterwards — also of the news media’s role in the whole interminable scam of RussiaGate. Their fury and despair were as vivid the night of March 24, 2019, as on November 8, 2016. And now they will attempt to spark off a sequel.

Rachel Maddow, for instance, struggling to maintain her dignity after two years playing Madame DeFarge on MSNBC, tried to console her fans with the prospect of Mr. Trump getting raked over the coals by the DOJ’s Southern District of NY prosecutors for crimes as yet unpredicted — really, whatever they might find if they turn over enough rocks in Manhattan. Perhaps she doesn’t know how the justice system actually works in this country: we prosecute crimes not persons. In places like Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany, you first choose a person to eliminate and then fit them to a crime. If no crime can be found, one is easily manufactured. In the USA, a predicate crime is required before you can launch a prosecution. Perhaps the actual Attorney General, Mr. Barr, will advise the avid staff of the Southern District of NY how this works.

There remains also, the rather sweeping panorama of misconduct and probable crime among the government (and former government) players in the agencies mentioned above. Does the full Mueller Report mention, for instance, that the animating document claiming that Trump colluded with Russia was manufactured by Mrs. Clinton’s employees? And that this document was used time and again improperly and illegally to prolong the inquisition? How could Mr. Mueller not acknowledge that? And if not, what sort of investigation was this?

You are forced to ask: did Mr. Mueller play an honorable role in this epic, multilayered scandal? And is Mr. Mueller himself an honorable character, or something less than that? I believe we’ll find out. The other team is coming to bat now — and just in time for MLB’s opening day, too. The Mueller report has been a shocking disappointment to the so-called “resistance,” but what about the as-yet-unreleased DOJ Inspector General’s report on these very matters? Or the parallel investigation of federal prosecutor John Huber, who is charged specifically with looking into the malfeasance of the RussiaGate investigators? Or whatever action the Attorney General himself launches in the wake of all this? Or whether Mr. Trump finally declassifies the mountains of documents behind the simple failure to find him guilty of any crime?

My favorite college professor and mentor, David Hamilton, once put a curious question to us when we were vexing him for some reason now forgotten: “Why,” he asked, “Did Achilles drag Hector around the city of Troy three times?”

We twiddled our cigarettes and pulled our chins.

“Because he was just that pissed,” he said.

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

THE RUSSIA COLLUSION HOAX was a disgraceful fake news witch-hunt that shames all of Trump’s deranged enemies in the media, the FBI and Hollywood and has probably ensured their worst nightmare - his re-election.

—Piers Morgan

JOE BIDEN — DEMOCRATS WOULD BE MAD TO NOMINATE HIM

"Have the Democrats gone mad? Are they really planning on putting up the same type of candidate against Donald Trump in 2020 that they put up against him in 2016? Is the party bent on nominating Hillary 2.0? How else to describe Joe Biden, the former vice president and ex-senator from Delaware, who is leading in the polls and has hinted that he’d reveal whether he’s running for president in “a few weeks” and might select a running mate early in the process.

https://interc.pt/2UPQ39M

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Okeydokey, the letter is delivered and Mueller sez nobody colluded. Two years wasted on nonsense with the press having discredited itself utterly and completely. What a joke.

As to jokes, I’m reading that another is brewing over in old blighty. They’re saying that the cabinet is plotting to toss Theresa overboard.

Incompetence on a truly grand scale on both sides of the Atlantic so what does this portend? You can see the generation-by-generation degradation in Brit leadership, but it seems to me that on this side of the water the plunge is much faster.

What’s next? Barr has to make a decision on “obstruction”, the southern district of NY apparently has who knows what work yet to do in its campaign to up-end 2016.

This changes the cultural and political landscape of the country. It makes the previously unthinkable eminently thinkable. Stupidity knows no bounds especially among those that think of themselves as “intellectuals”.

MATT TAIBBI put it best: “It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD

The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it. "There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn’t. If he isn’t, news outlets once again swallowed a massive disinformation campaign, only this error is many orders of magnitude more stupid than any in the recent past, WMD included. Honest reporters like ABC’s Terry Moran understand: Mueller coming back empty-handed on collusion means a “reckoning for the media.” Of course, there won’t be such a reckoning. (There never is). But there should be. We broke every written and unwritten rule in pursuit of this story, starting with the prohibition on reporting things we can’t confirm." …

THE LEFT NEVER HAD A DOG IN THIS RACE. This was always an in-house squabble between different wings of the establishment. Late-stage capitalism is in terminal crisis, and the biggest problem facing our corporate elites is how to emerge from this crisis with their power intact. One wing wants to make sure the pig’s face remains painted, the other is happy simply getting its snout deeper into the trough while the food lasts.

Russiagate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged, self-harming neoliberal capitalism.

The leaders of the Democratic party are less terrified of Trump and what he represents than they are of us and what we might do if we understood how they have rigged the political and economic system to their permanent advantage.

It may look like Russiagate was a failure, but it was actually a success. It deflected the left’s attention from endemic corruption within the leadership of the Democratic party, which supposedly represents the left. It rechannelled the left’s political energies instead towards the convenient bogeymen targets of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

— Jonathan Cook

APOLOGIES TO PRESIDENT TRUMP

With the conclusions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe now known to a significant degree, it seems apologies are in order. However, judging by the recent past, apologies are not likely forthcoming from the responsible parties.

thehill.com/opinion/white-house/435552-apologies-to-president-trump

BERNIE IS NOT A WIND SOCK

by Norman Solomon

Bernie Sanders wrapped up a weekend campaign swing through California with a Sunday afternoon speech to 16,000 of us a few miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. News coverage seemed unlikely to convey much about the event. The multiracial crowd reflected the latest polling that shows great diversity of support for Bernie, contrary to corporate media spin. High energy for basic social change was in the air.

Speaking from the podium, Bernie 2020 co-chair Nina Turner asked and answered a question about the campaign: “What’s love got to do with it? Everything.”

Those words made me think of a little-known statement by Martin Luther King Jr., as vitally true in 2019 as in 1967. “Now, we got to get this thing right,” he said. “What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

And so, Dr. King was saying, love and power need each other. Just one or the other just won’t do. Combining the two is essential. That’s a way to understand what Turner said at the rally in San Francisco: “This is a moment of transcendence.”

The Sanders campaign is a nationwide struggle for the kind of power that Dr. King extolled as “love implementing the demands of justice.” In his words, “Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose.”

The Sanders campaign is a political opportunity unlike any we’ve seen in our lifetimes. With profound purpose, it raises the stakes to fit the magnitude of what is at stake; it challenges in national electoral terms the kind of destructive domination that has ruled with dispiriting and deadly results. “We’re going to have to fight Wall Street, neoliberals, those who don’t want the change to come,” Turner said.

Alone among the candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders has always been part of progressive movements. The only way that the campaign can overcome corporate media, Wall Street and other power centers of the establishment will be with massive bottom-up mobilization in communities across the country. As Bernie said on Sunday, “We are going to put together an unprecedented grassroots campaign.”

A current media meme -- ignoring the importance of Bernie’s longstanding record -- assumes that he is likely to lose many votes to other candidates who’ve recently endorsed his 2016 campaign proposals.

But it matters greatly that Bernie has unique credibility as someone who has been part of progressive social movements during the last several decades -- and who hasn’t waited for opinions to become fashionable before expressing them.

“It’s hard not to be a bit wary of people who know how the wind is blowing and now are blowing with it,” I told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter who quoted me in an article that appeared hours before the rally. “Bernie is part of movements that create the wind. Bernie is not a wind sock.”

For decades, Bernie has been tirelessly advocating for Medicare for All single-payer healthcare. In the last few years or months, some of his opponents have come around to voice often-equivocal support. The credibility of commitment is vastly different. When Sanders declared for the umpteenth time at the San Francisco rally that “healthcare is a human right,” no one could doubt that he really meant it.

Similarly, Bernie has long been calling for drastic new policies to push back against climate change. He voiced concerns about a warming planet as early as the 1980s.

Overall, a vast number of issues fall under a clear approach that Bernie has long stated, as he did on Sunday: “We say no to oligarchy, yes to democracy.”

Bernie’s speech in San Francisco included clarity on some issues that has become sharper than ever, as in his denunciations of the prison-industrial complex, the cruel injustice of cash bail and systemic racism. And at last, as a presidential candidate, he is calling out by name “the military-industrial complex.”

Declaring that he aims for a presidency to challenge the bloated military budget, Bernie said: “We are not going to invest in never-ending wars.” It was a statement that caused some of the loudest cheering of the afternoon, along with chants of “No more wars!” As those chants subsided, he said: “I know it’s not easy, but our job is to lead the world away from war and invest in human needs.”

Bernie called for breaking up the big banks. And he addressed the power of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries: “When we talk about lowering prescription drug costs and moving to Medicare for All, we have got to recognize, we have a battle in front of us. These guys will spend endless amounts of money. Will you stand with me and take on the drug companies and the insurance companies?”

And he went on: “If we’re going to protect family-based agriculture from Vermont to California, we have got to stand up to agribusiness. We have got to stand up to the prison-industrial complex. We’ve got to stand up to the fossil fuel industry. In other words, it’s easy enough for somebody to give you a speech about all the things he or she wants to do. But those changes do not take place unless people stand up and fight back. And that is what this campaign is about.”

When Bernie finished his speech, a woman stepped to the microphone with a guitar and began to play some familiar chords. Bernie returned to the mic to quickly say: “This is Sarah Guthrie, granddaughter of Woody Guthrie.”

And she began to sing:

As I was walking that ribbon of highway

I saw above me that endless skyway

I saw below me the golden valley

This land was made for you and me

Moments later, Sarah Guthrie sang a version of a verse that has been rarely heard:

There was a great high wall

That tried to stop me

And on the wall said “No Trespassing”

But on the other side

It didn’t say nothing

That side was made for you and me

And:

Oh nobody living could ever stop us

As we go walking on freedom highway

Nobody living can make us turn back

This land was made for you and me

MONDAY was Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 100 birthday! Here Lawrence looks down from the kitchen window of his flat in North Beach as he listens to the Conspiracy of Beards sing Happy Birthday to him.

His birthday celebration lasted all day and into the night in North Beach, around SF and indeed around the world. LF began receiving Happy Birthday calls this morning at 5am!

(Photos by Lou Dematteis)

THE BEST AND TRUEST THING in "On The Road" is Kerouac's description of his hero’s experience of the same longing as he studies the red band of Route 10 winding from Bear Mountain Bridge to Sacramento.

Naively Sal sets out to follow it and the real America. For Sal it resides in the person of Dean Moriarty -- that is, Neal Cassidy. From the West Side I knew authenticity was approachable by way of the bus station in the Hotel Dixie, then under the river and beyond the Palisades where its lights might be visible on summer nights from Riverside Park. Scott Fitzgerald and young Truman Capote might dream of Manhattan but that was a dream denied me. The fact that I was there and always had been meant the treasure was buried on a different island.

Drifting through the rich, strange, brutal fever dream that was New Orleans 50 years ago, I was astonished to learn some things I hadn't known. As married kids in the middle of the French quarter, our new baby hidden from the insect wars under an old prom night crinoline of Janice’s, we found ourselves surviving. No more was our poverty a game of la vie boheme; there were no well-off parents to save our skins, no prospect of refugee status and rescue to call on. I doubt either of us then knew what a trust fund was; we might have guessed it was the value of the quarter you owed someone for your most recent slice of white bread and redeye gravy. The city of New Orleans had not required us, neither of us nor our new daughter, born with the grudging assistance of Huey Long’s Charity Hospital.

It's so long ago now that I have only fragments of recollection, river mists, magnolia, gardens enclosed in old stone. Also police sirens, and shouts in the street, tambourines and the notes of a clarinet in the twilight at the end of a blazing day. Recently, the scenes of the city under the fist of hurricane Katrina brought it all back.

It turned out there is nothing like parenthood and a dose of starvation to still youth’s craving for authenticity. Without intending to, we had placed ourselves in a strange, profoundly self-reverential place at a time when history had come to sweep away its revered past. A year there had given me something like a sense of life lived in time, and I began to imagine something like a novel.

— Robert Stone, ‘Remembering the Sixties’

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] I was an engineer in oil & gas. I recently got laid off when prices sank and stayed down. When prices fell, what was once the best job I ever had quickly became the worst job I ever had. At the local bar I hung out at there was a guy who needed help with his blind business. He had once been an auto repair shop manager at the big local dealerships, but he had soured on it and quit. He picked up an Entrepreneur Magazine and looked for the business with the least capital outlay. He picked blinds. All you needed was a good drill, a measuring tape, a piece of paper and a pen, and a ladder and you were in business. Ten years later he’s making nearly twice what he made managing the repair shop, he works from 8 -12 noon, has lunch and is through for the day. Needless to say he made more than I did without a college degree, and he worked half the time. A college degree is bullshit. An engineering degree is one of the worst today, because everything is outsourced. Examine the market, fulfill a need, establish a reputation for quality work and solid work ethic, stand behind your work, and you will get rich. A college degree today is often a path to ruin, not to riches. It is the professional equivalent of “Save your money.” When I was a kid if you had $1 million dollars, you put it in CDs and earned 7%. Today you are lucky to get 1%, maybe 1.5%

[2] The word “fascism,” like everything else in our inverted totalitarianism society today, has flipped its traditional meaning since the last go round 75 years ago. The radical right doesn’t own it anymore, although I will allow for the fact that the right continues to harbor latent, always nearly tangible, fascist tendencies of its own. In the sense that fascism represents a total coagulation of public (corporate) and private entities into one homogenous malignant political and economic mass, then the current western left and right march in jack-booted lockstep. Hardly surprising. Relying on 20th century definitions for 21st century concepts is bound to lead you astray. Words – especially THIS one – have meanings, and we shouldn’t throw them around recklessly.

CANCER RESOURCE CENTER NEWS

20th Annual Big River Walk and Paddle, May 18, 2019

https://crcmendocino.org

FRANCE HAS BANNED ALL PESTICIDES RESPONSIBLE FOR BEE DEATH

In a decisive move, France has become the first country to ban all five of the top pesticides blamed for bee die-off around the world. The phenomenon dubbed “colony collapse disorder” has seen bees dying in record numbers, and scientists are pointing fingers as neonicotinoid pesticides as the primary suspect.

inhabitat.com/france-is-the-first-country-to-ban-all-five-pesticides-linked-to-bee-deaths/

HEY, BRO

If he hadn't died in his sleep thirty years ago, my brother would be sixty-nine. I am seventy-five. Should we meet over coffee or dinner or pipes, we would have a good deal to talk about. Being brothers, to reminisce. To compare notes, as it were. Our personal aches and strains. The parts wearing out. Some being replaced.

When he was not yet an adolescent he had a terrible stutter. Later, with much therapy, he overcame it. It never recurred. He also possessed a smooth and authoritative, a friendly, radio voice. He introduced me to rock-and-roll. Surrealistic Pillow. The world of music. Eighteen years on KMUD. The symphony with the kids. The family. Stretch your ears. Hear new things. New Orleans. Leadership. A good example of how to be a parent. All of them have passed this on. I have a grandson who has so internalized the Grateful Dead that I gave him all my tie-die when I moved here.

What a joy it would be to be with him as we approach our common end. Savor your brothers and sisters. They are as fragile and as unique as you. Hold their hand. Love them and tell them. Inhale them. They are one of the Great Spirit's most precious gifts.

That kid in the carseat is the promise of life, right at your side. You have probably eaten thousands of meals together. Laughed at the same jokes. Had the same dog. Remembering his or her life, we experience the here and now as brighter. We are siblings. The Buddha smiles. Like the song says, You Can't Take That Away From Me. Eh?

(Bruce Brady)

CRYSTALLINE CHARISMA: Pianist Ilya Yakushev brings classical flair to Ukiah

by Roberta Werdinger

The Ukiah Community Concert Association welcomes the internationally recognized and award-winning Russian concert pianist Ilya Yakushev to the Mendocino College Center Theatre in Ukiah on Saturday, April 13 at 7:30 p.m. Yakushev will be playing a varied and exciting program that reflects his own Russian background, his American education, and his broad Classical repertoire, featuring Russian composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Modest Mussorgsky, German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, and American George Gershwin.

Yakushev received his first award for his playing at age 12 at the Young Artists Concerto Competition in St. Petersburg, Russia. He has been garnering awards in Russia, Europe and Asia ever since. Educated at the Rimsky-Korsakov College of Music in St. Petersburg, he subsequently came to New York City to attend Mannes College of Music, studying with legendary pianist Vladimir Feltsman. His international tours have included performances at San Francisco's Davies Hall and New York City's Carnegie Hall, and with symphonies such as the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Boston Pops. Recent tours have taken him to many parts of the U.S. and Canada, where he has performed with the Edmonton (Canada) Symphony, the Las Cruces (New Mexico) Symphony, and the Reading (Pennsylvania) Symphony.

Yakushev employs a crystalline style that impresses experts and a sparkling presence that engages audiences. His concerts feature multimedia imaging that brings time-honored music to life. The San Jose Mercury News wrote that he gave "an exuberantly outsized performance," while The Telegram of Worcester, Mass. noted that "Yakushev generated clouds of notes at a stunning rate, yet each run, cascade, torrent seemed perfectly articulated." The San Francisco Classical Voice reported that his playing was "energetic, witty and playful," and was accompanied with "good-natured showmanship and enviable ease."

The concert will include a series of suites known as "Pictures At an Exhibition," by Modest Mussorgsky. Mussorgsky (1839-1881) wrote this extended piece after the sudden death of his friend, the artist Viktor Hartmann (1834-1873). Both Hartmann and Mussorgsky sought to create a uniquely Russian art and sensibility; "Pictures" features many themes from Russian folklore and daily life.

Ukiah Community Concert Association has been presenting nationally acclaimed talent since 1947. This all-volunteer nonprofit’s mission is to build and maintain a permanent concert audience and cultivate an interest in fine music among the citizens of the community and surrounding area. It is also their goal to encourage music appreciation in the schools of the community.

Yakushev will be giving a private master class at the College on the afternoon before the concert (April 13). Interested piano students can call 463-2738 to find out details after April 1st.

Advance tickets are available at Mendocino Book Company in Ukiah, Mazahar in Willits, and online. Single tickets for this concert are $30 (adult) and $10 (youth) in advance or $35 at the door. Free tickets are available at the door to Mendocino College students with ID, space providing. For more information call 707-463-2738, or visit UCCA on Facebook or at www.ukiahconcerts.org.

UCCA thanks Schat’s Bakery, Black Oak Coffee, and Rivino Winery for donating treats to be served pre-concert and during intermission. Special thanks to the Mendocino College Foundation, the Mendocino Arts Club and Mendocino College Recording Arts & Technology as well as the Mendocino College Art Gallery for their ongoing support.

FOUND OBJECT (you supply the caption)