MCT: Saturday, April 13, 2019

• Pleasant Day
• B Diddle
• Gym Poll
• Pesky Questions
• Mental Forums
• PRA Fees
• Customer Appreciation
• Yesterday's Catch
• Insurance Hikes
• Assange Lynching
• Theatre Audition
• Gallery Reception
• Call Waiting
• Western Hegemony
• Coachella Baggage
• Trying Assange
• GG Opening
• Ending Homelessness
• Pigeons
• Creamed Possum
• Marco Radio
• Soul Hour
• Vacancies
• Extradited Hombre
• Corrupt Despotism
• Grandfathering
• Special Effects

DRY AND PLEASANT conditions will persist through this afternoon before the next chance for light rain returns this evening across the northern portion of the area. More widespread rain will impact the region Monday and Tuesday before another period of drier and warmer conditions return by the middle of next week. (National Weather Service)

MEASURE B: FOREVER & A DAY

by Mark Scaramella

YOU HAVE TO LISTEN HARD BETWEEN THE LINES to the confused and confusing discussion of the status of the Measure B project at last Tuesday's Supervisors meeting. It’s becoming clear that Mendo is going to lard up the project with so much process and back and forth and complicated assignments and responsibilities that the chance of any mental health facilities being built in the five-year lifespan of Measure B is more remote every time it's discussed, either by the Supervisors or the Measure B committee.

FOR EXAMPLE, this tedious exchange at last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisor's meeting (which we are providing here primarily for the record, because in spite of all the gibberish, the only take-away is that a lot more people have to be hired and confusion will reign as to who’s responsible for what, and the formal back and forth between the Measure B Committee, the Board of Supervisors, staff, Gypsy fortune tellers, and consultants, will take much longer than anyone thinks:

Sheriff Allman: "What we are dealing with with the new wing of the jail right now is we are trying to get the contractors in place and we are facing the national 3% cost of living. Just to give you an example, a $30 million project for mental health at 3% cost-of-living — our delay on this — and I'm not saying there has been delay — let me tell you that's $900,000 a year that the cost of this building is going to go up with the 3% escalation in building costs. So that's certainly one of the reasons that I'm pushing for an agreement as soon as possible because we are not going to have an extra $900,000, or for three years $2.7 million. We are certainly not going to have that. What's interesting is that the ad hoc (subcommittee of the Measure B committee] is specifically dealing with the Kemper report, for brick and mortar, not services. Right? [turns to Ace Barash, Measure B committee chairman]. That was your understanding too? That was the motion that was— Yeah. So the Measure B committee is working on brick and mortar the majority of our time, let's say 75% of the time and 75% of the taxes are for brick-and-mortar and 25% are for services. I'm certain that we are getting back on track of where to focus our energy to improve services.”

CEO Carmel Angelo: “We have County staff and consultants that are beginning to write the RFP. Under this board's direction and the recommendation of the Measure B committee we are starting to write the RFP that will allow us to move forward with finding those contractors that will actually give us the information on the best location. We are looking at three locations right now: Dora Street, Howard Hospital and Orchard Street. Evaluating those locations and the costs and timeframes as to what it would take to build all three of those services. We are not building a house. We are not building a $500,000 house. We are looking at a $30-million-something project that at this point, unless it's not feasible and this board and the Measure B committee determined otherwise, we are looking at three services. So there will be multiple people working on these projects. It's not going to be one project manager that does everything. What we discovered yesterday is that we will absolutely need an architect, so there will be multiple different disciplines that will be working on these different projects [Psychiatric Health Facility, Crisis Residential Treatment Facility, Crisis Stabilization Facility].”

Supervisor John Haschak: “Is there any kind of timeline that we can set for these three projects?”

Angelo: “We are looking at having an RFP on the street hopefully within two months. Once that RFP is out, usually with an RFP for something this large it's at least 30 days that it's out. Proposals, hopefully we will have multiple proposals. They will come back in, they will be evaluated and then we should be able to let a contract. We will know more about a timeline at that point. Right now, we don't know. But I can tell you for government I really do think that we are working quickly on this to get an RFP out and get a contractor and begin to evaluate what we actually can do and move forward.”

Supervisor John McCowen:" I think it would be beneficial to have a clear written description of the different experts that we might be engaging with in regard to the Measure B funding and projects. So we have a project manager, but it sounds like that individual is mainly making sure that we are in compliance with all the construction contracting requirements based on what you had said, keeping us— Okay. So this person, once the RFP is issued and someone is hired, will the person being described as the project manager oversee the construction?”

Angelo: “In my next CEO report I will give this board a list of what we know today. But the first thing is that nobody is hired on this project unless it goes to the Measure B committee first because they are accountable for the money and then come to this board for approval because this is the only body that approves. So we have those steps. We as staff or even the Measure B committee or the public, there is nothing we can do unless the Board approves it. The project manager is a staff person. They are the ones who— You know, when you do a $38 million project you really have to have it— We are looking at a project management tool, a database, that will keep us on task with every step and so that project manager will be the person that makes sure that we get all the steps done. Ms. Reilly right now is responsible for assuring that we are in compliance with state law with construction law as we move forward. The RFP that we are letting will be for a contractor or contractors and certainly it will be an architect first that will actually look at the designs that we would like to do, what we want to do, and come back and tell us the feasibility as far as location, cost, size— We have a mental health expert who is working on writing that RFP right now, who is going over our information that we already have as far as how many beds will be in whichever facility. So I guess what I'm saying is that this is a very complex project and one that this county is taking on with everything we are doing, whether it's the sheriff, whether it's my office, whether it's Health and Human Services, we can't do this without those construction experts that know how to build a $30 million building. So that's what we are doing and we will give you more information. If this board wants a full report I'm sure the Measure B committee could come back with a full report, or staff could come back with a full report. This is what I know today. I am not a contractor, I don't know building, and neither does my staff. If we don't have the experts I cannot guarantee, or no one can guarantee the type of product we are going to deliver.”

McCowen: “No one questions the need to have the appropriate expert assistance. In fact, that's why this board recommended to the Measure B committee that they recommend to us that we hire that expert assistance. But I will look forward to the concise description of who we are hiring and for what purpose in the CEO Report.”

Angelo: “When we bring people on, we will bring them in front of the board. We had had Sally Reilly speak to the Measure B committee by phone and this board does know Sally Reilly. As far as whoever we are bringing on, and actually a major contract has to come to this board anyway, so again there is nothing we can do without the approval of this board. I will have more information in my next CEO Report.”

---

NOTICE that 1. Ms. Angelo referred to the project as a $30 million project in one breath, and a $38 million project in another; 2. Ms Angelo emphasizes that “we have those steps”; 3. Ms. Angelo refused to give Supervisor Haschak anything like a timeline (and Haschak didn’t follow-up); 4. Ms. Angelo anticipates numerous “experts” to analyze things to death without which “no one can guarantee the type of product we are going to deliver.”

WE CAN GUARANTEE, however, that at this rate they won’t even have an architect on board by the end of 2019.

NOBODY on the Board questioned this endless bureaucratization of the process. And while CEO Angelo promised a list of experts in her next CEO report (which we seriously doubt will happen), she did not promise any kind of timeline, nor even a list of steps that could be tracked.

IN EFFECT, CEO ANGELO has taken over the Measure B project and in doing so she has virtually guaranteed that the process will take a very long time, perhaps until the end of her tenure as CEO.

EYES ONLY, BOONVILLE

A few years back I did a survey asking folks what they would like to see in the Valley. One of those most requested was a gym of some sort.

There is an opportunity to have one but it would require support from the community to make it happen. That support would require a certain number of people to have annual memberships in the range of $55-75/month. After that the gym could then take members on a sliding scale, with those who can paying more and those who can’t, less. It would be run by a non-profit. There would be costs such as insurance, staffing, rent and utilities.

I’m polling you all as community members and I’d love a response back, either for yourself or someone you know or who is in your family, if they think they could support this kind of monthly cost for at least a year.

Thank you,

Anne Fashauer

anne@annefashauer.com

CEO CARMEL ANGELO told the Supervisors on Tuesday that the Board is asking too much of her and her staff.

“It is our job to find out what this board wants and what your policy direction is. I am concerned about the Planning department because we know that we just transferred the cannabis program over there. We want that cannabis program to be successful and at this point it is their number one priority, upgrading that program, finding out what the glitches are and moving that program forward so we can get more permits out and we can really have a successful program. But the staff is not going to be able to do all of the priorities if every time they turn around there is another request from a board member for something to be done. I just want to be real clear. It's not about not wanting to do your directions, and it's not about not wanting to do the individual requests that each board member has. It's about how they stay on task getting the job done. That said, if there is a way, um— we had the IT [information technology] ad hoc [committee] with Supervisor Williams and Supervisor Gjerde. I would request that we look at that, that the ad hoc discuss this and we see how we can work to better have planning online without negatively impacting the staff. Thank you.”

SO TO RECAP:

After almost three years the County has assigned the pot permit program to the Planning Department and their number one priority is to “find out what the [unidentified, unspecified] glitches are” which, if fixed, maybe, someday, they can get more permits issued.

Also, apparently every time a put-upon staffer turns around they are bombarded with “another request from a board member for something to be done.” And somehow this causes the poor staffers to go into triage mode because they can’t do it all (“it” also unspecified) and they can’t stay on task.

And then, they don’t like being asked to try to get the planning and permit process automated and on-line, so they want Supervisor Williams to take that on himself since he’s the software guy and he seems to be the only person in the County who wants to automate the permit application process. But if Supervisor Williams doesn’t do it staff won’t be able to get back on task unless the board stops asking them to do stuff.

MOST of the administrators we see bumbling through presentations to the Board are lucky to be employed at the pay they're pulling down. We watch these rambling proceedings every two weeks and marvel at the imprecision, the inability to answer the most basic question. We also note here that the Supervisors seldom ask staff to do anything, but Supervisors, especially Williams who the whining is obviously aimed at, do ask questions whose answers should be readily at hand. Repeat: Angelo and Company finally have a Supervisor who is fully on task, they are seldom on task, and it's making them uncomfortable.

MENDOCINO COUNTY'S FIRST COMMUNITY FORUM to learn about our local efforts to reduce the number of people with mental illness in jails.

There will be two sessions, the first on May 8, 2019, at the Ukiah Veterans Hall, and the second session on May 9, 2019, at the Fort Bragg Veterans Hall. An educational session will be held each day, 1-5pm, with public forums following from 6-8pm, at both locations.

To RSVP, please visit www.surveymonkey.com/r/MendocinoSteppingUp

SOME OF MENDO’S PUBLIC RECORDS ACT REQUESTS are about to get a lot more expensive. According to last Tuesday’s CEO Report: “The Executive Office and County Counsel will also be bringing an item to the Board regarding a possible ordinance to address fees under the Public Records Act. Currently, those fees only capture direct costs of duplication and not staff time or other expenses incurred in responding. The Public Records Act requests involving large amounts of staff time, where we provide an electronic response with no cost recovery, are increasing. We will be asking the Board to consider an ordinance to increase fees to cover the expense of providing these materials.” The key words being “staff time” which the County will be able to determine both the hours and rates and overheads and timing of without fear of contradiction.

CUSTOMER APPRECIATION DAY AT AV FARM SUPPLY

“Once again, Libby’s will be cooking tacos for our annual Customer Appreciation Day! May 10th from 12:00pm - 5:00 pm.”

CATCH OF THE DAY, April 12, 2019

WILLIAM BARRY, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

WHITNEY CARROLL, Potter Valley. DUI.

RUTILIO ESCOBAR, Redwood Valley. Domestic abuse, destruction of communications device, disobeying court order, probation revocation.

DWIGHT HARRIS SR., Fort Bragg. DUI, resisting, probation revocation.

RONALD HIGGINS, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

GLENN JENKINS, Willits. Controlled substance, suspended license (for DUI), probation revocation.

ASHLEY KING, Clearlake. Probation revocation.

RAMON MACIEL, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

JUSTIN SCHAEFER, Eureka. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

JENNIFER SERR, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

CA HOMEOWNERS IN ‘FIRE HAZARD’ AREAS HAVE INSURANCE POLICIES DROPPED

Homeowners in some California towns considered "very high fire hazard" are receiving non-renewal letters for their insurance policies, as well as policies that have more than doubled in price.

Nevada City, CA — Nearly three million Californians live in areas considered “very high fire hazard” by Cal Fire, including entire communities such as Colfax, Nevada City, Yosemite Valley, Tahoe City and Twain Harte -- which could all be the next “Paradise.”

Fire data in California shows that they are all “very high fire hazards,” and homeowners in those towns are seeing their insurance policies being dropped left and right.

The California Department of Insurance does not track when insurance companies decide not to renew policies, and many homeowners in these areas are receiving nonrenewal letters followed by a much more expensive policy.

Nevada City resident Charlie Potts has lived in the same area for 40 years, and was recently dropped by her insurance company. After being rejected by several other insurance companies, she and her husband were able to find another company that would cover them for more than double what they were paying previously.

"Before it was under $1,000 a year, just under a $1,000. It covered everything. And now our new homeowners is a little over $2,000 a year,” Potts said.

She says that nearly all her neighbors are going through similar circumstances, and many blame the insurance losses from the wildfires in Paradise and Santa Rosa.

Potts said she and her neighbors understand the risk of living in the woods.

"All of our neighbors try to take care of their property. We deal with our trees. If there is bad trees, we take them down,” Potts said.

The State Department of Insurance said that they don’t have a role in whether companies decide whether or not to renew policies, but Potts believes if the state does not step in, insurance policies alone could force people out of their homes.

"I just think that they ought to look at the insurance companies and figure out something that is fair for everybody because this is getting out of hand," Potts said.

The American Property Casualty Insurance Association said the higher rates are based on risk and have to be approved by the state insurance commissioner.

(KCRA.com)

CASCADING CAT LITTER

by James Kunstler

And so now Julian Assange of Wikileaks has been dragged out of his sanctuary in the London embassy of Ecuador for failing to clean his cat’s litter box. Have you ever cleaned a litter box? The way we always did it was to spread some newspaper — say, The New York Times — on the floor, transfer the used cat litter onto it, wrap it into a compact package, and put it in the trash.

It was interesting to scan the Comments section of The Times’s stories about the Assange arrest: Times readers uniformly presented themselves as a lynch mob out for Mr. Assange’s blood. So much for the spirit of liberalism and The Old Gray Lady who had published The Pentagon Papers purloined by Daniel Ellsberg lo so many years ago. Reading between the lines in that once-venerable newspaper — by which I mean gleaning their slant on the news — one surmises that The Times has actually come out against freedom of the press, a curious attitude, but consistent with the neo-Jacobin zeitgeist in “blue” America these days.

Anyway, how could anyone expect Mr. Assange to clean his cat’s litter box when he was unable to go outside his sanctuary to buy a fresh bag of litter, and was denied newspapers this past year, as well as any other contact with the outside world?

US government prosecutors had better tread lightly in bringing Mr. Assange to the sort of justice demanded by readers of The New York Times — which is to say: lock him up in some SuperMax solitary hellhole and throw away the key. The show trial of Julian Assange on US soil, when it comes to pass, may end up being the straw that stirs America’s Mickey Finn as a legitimate republic.

The bloodthirsty hysteria among New York Times readers is a symptom of the mass confusion sown by agencies of the US government itself when its own agents ventured to meddle in the national election of 2016 and then blame it on “the Russians.” As you will learn in the months ahead, it was The Times itself, and other corporate news organizations, who colluded with officers of the FBI, the Department of Justice, the CIA, and the Obama White House to concoct a phony narrative about Mr. Trump being in cahoots with Vladimir Putin, thus depriving Hillary Clinton of her “turn” in the White House; and then to join those agencies, and the grotesquely dishonest two-year investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in a cover-your-ass operation to hide their nefarious and criminal acts.

The USA has a lot of sorting to do and, of course, the new Democratic-led congress is already trying as hard as possible to prevent that from happening, the latest being their piling on Attorney General William Barr for testifying under oath that he believed the government ran a spying operation on candidate Donald Trump. The existence of FISA warrants establishes that as a fact, as does the million dollar payment by the CIA and US Defense Department to international man of mystery Stephan Halper, the secret agent man (posing as an Oxford professor) commissioned to entrap Trump campaign associate Carter Page. The ugly cascade of truth about that ploy, and many other seditious subterfuges run by US officials, will eventually bury the Jacobin “resistance” under more used cat litter than the Ecuadorian embassy staff could ever dream of.

The official charges so far against Julian Assange include skipping bail in the UK and supposedly attempting to assist the US soldier then known as Bradley Manning to find a password for entering certain US government computer data bases. The UK bail matter revolved around Assange’s extradition to Sweden on a bullshit rape charge that was subsequently dropped as having no merit by Swedish authorities. The US supposedly reserves the authority to lob additional charges at Mr. Assange, though they may face a lengthy extradition battle with his attorneys to lever him out of the UK and into US custody. In the meantime, Mr. Assange may receive a Nobel Prize as a symbol of a lone conscience standing up against the despotic deceits of the world’s deep states. Wouldn’t that gum up the works nicely? I’d like to see The New York Times’s front page headline on that story: Russian Colluder Wins Nobel Prize, Put on Trial in Federal Court. By then, the United States of America will be so completely gaslighted that it will pulsate in the darkness like a death star about to explode.

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

MAMMA MIA AUDITIONS!

Audition for Gloriana's production of Mamma Mia! ABBA’s hits tell the hilarious story of a young woman’s search for her birth father. On the eve of her wedding, a daughter’s quest to discover the identity of her father brings three men from her mother’s past back to the island they last visited 20 years ago. Auditions will be held on April 12th from 5pm-7pm and April 13th from 10am-12pm at Eagles Hall in Fort Bragg.

For more information and to sign up go togloriana.org/mammamia-auditions

Gloriana Musical Theatre info@gloriana.org

SECOND SATURDAY GALLERY RECEPTION

Saturday, April 13, 5pm-8pm • Free admission

The Mendocino Art Center hosts a free Second Saturday Gallery Reception each month. See the new exhibits, enjoy snacks and wine, and meet the exhibiting artists.

On exhibit through April 28, 11am-4pm daily…

Artists In Residence Exhibit Mendocino Art Center’s Artists in Residence (AIR) Exhibit features a wide spectrum of new artwork – including ceramics, paintings, printmaking, textiles and sculptural works – created by eleven artists during their residencies at the Mendocino Art Center.

And, during the reception, check out the Open AIR Tent for even more works created by the resident artists during their residencies.

http://www.mendocinoartcenter.org/MyLasso/MainGallery.lasso

Sarah Logan

Sarah Logan, a Mendocino Art Center Artist in Residence from 2006 to 2008, exhibits her small-scale ceramic sculptures and mixed media drawings.

http://www.mendocinoartcenter.org/MyLasso/GalleryTen.lasso

Mendocino Art Center

45200 Little Lake Street at Kasten Street, Mendocino

707.937.5818

http://www.MendocinoArtCenter.org

GOD'S LONELY MAN.

We are all Julian Assange

For the army of smug liberals, many of them leading columnists in newspapers such as the Guardian in the UK, which exploited Assange when he first came to prominence before ruthlessly turning on and abandoning him, that noise they hear right now is the death rattle of their moral conscience. For such people, ideological footsoldiers of a machine that wears the cloak of democracy while practicing tyranny, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden are agents of truth in a time of untruth.

Their courage and fidelity stands out in bold relief in a lilliputian mainstream media landscape, populated by moral and ethical midgets more concerned with making it to their next hot yoga class or shopping in Knightsbridge in London, location of the Ecuadorian Embassy, than agitating and protesting the cause of someone who’s done more to reveal the war crimes, high crimes and base savagery carried out in the name not of Western democracy but Western hegemony than any of them ever have, or would.

rt.com/op-ed/456239-assange-arrest-police-extradition/

WHY THE ASSANGE ARREST SHOULD SCARE REPORTERS

by Matt Taibbi

The WikiLeaks founder will be tried in a real court for one thing, but for something else in the court of public opinion

rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/assange-arrest-charges-taibbi-821107/

THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE is photographed on its opening day in San Francisco, California, 1937

IT WOULD COST $12.7 billion to end homelessness in the San Francisco Bay region, a new report says

cnbc.com/2019/04/10/cost-to-end-san-francisco-bay-area-homelessness-would-be-12point7-billion-report.html

OPERATION COLUMBA

by Jon Day

There are 290 species of pigeon in the world, but only one has adapted to live in cities. Feral pigeons are synanthropes: they thrive in human environments where they can skim a living off our excess, nesting in the nooks and crannies of tall buildings that mimic the cliff faces on which their genetic ancestors – Columba livia, the rock dove – once lived. We think of pigeons as grey but they are composed of an oceanic palette: deep blues and greens flecked with white, like the crest of a wave. When not mangled or amputated by wire and string, their feet – which the poet Mina Loy described as their ‘coral landing gear’ – are strong, elegant and reptilian. They can see far further and with greater clarity than we can. In the 1970s and 1980s, the US Coastguard trained pigeons to recognise people lost at sea as part of Project Sea Hunt. The birds were placed in observation bubbles mounted on the bottom of helicopters and trained to peck at buttons when they spotted a scrap of coloured fabric floating in the sea. Pigeons were able to find the fabric 93 per cent of the time. Human subjects managed the same task 38 per cent of the time.

Pigeons are more intelligent than we give them credit for, one of the few animals – along with great apes, dolphins and elephants – able to pass the mirror self-recognition test. If you mark a pigeon’s wing and let it look in a mirror it will try to remove the mark, realising that what it sees is a reflected image of its own body. Pigeons can recognise video footage of themselves shown with a five-second delay (three-year-old children find it difficult to comprehend a two-second delay). They are able to recognise individuals from photographs, and a neuroscientist at Keio University in Japan has trained them to distinguish between the paintings of Matisse and Picasso. ‘Modesty,’ Marianne Moore wrote, ‘cannot dull the lustre of the pigeon.’

Pigeons move through a human world. They stay close to the land, often flying at street level, below the height of the rooftops. Recent studies have suggested that they navigate using human structures as well as natural ones: they follow roads and canals, and have been observed going round roundabouts before taking the appropriate exit. They can fly extremely fast – up to 110 miles per hour – and with a following wind can cover 700 miles in a single uninterrupted flight (pigeons don’t like to fly at night but can be trained to do so). There are faster birds – peregrine falcons, the pigeon’s main predator, can reach 200 miles per hour on the stoop – but none can fly horizontally, under its own power, as quickly as a pigeon.

Feral pigeons are close cousins of the hundreds of varieties of fancy pigeon that have been bred since their domestication by the Sumerians four thousand years ago. The most celebrated, and familiar, of these is the racing homer, a breed selected for its unrivalled navigational abilities. Once their enclosure, or loft, has been imprinted on them – something that happens when a bird is around six weeks old – homing pigeons will return to it for the rest of their lives, even after many years away. They can fly thousands of miles and cross oceans in order to get home. One of the longest homing flights ever recorded was made by a bird owned by the Duke of Wellington, which was liberated from Ichaboe Island, off the coast of Namibia, on 1 June 1845. It took 55 days to fly the 5400 miles back to Nine Elms, where it was found dead in a gutter a mile from its loft.

Just how pigeons navigate is much disputed. Darwin believed that they found their way by keeping track of the twists and turns of the outward journey to calculate the route back. But placing pigeons in darkened revolving drums before removing them from their lofts in an attempt to disrupt their impression of the journey doesn’t seem to affect their ability to home. In the 1950s the biologist Gustav Kramer found that pigeons, like all migratory birds, possess an incredibly accurate internal chronometer which allows them to use the sun as a compass, but even when released under cloud cover they can still successfully return home. It seems most likely that pigeons use a range of little understood sensory abilities to navigate. Vision plays a part, especially when they are flying over the area around their lofts, but birds given opaque contact lenses can still fly home with little difficulty, though they can’t find their way into their lofts once they get there. Researchers have fitted pigeons with devices that change the magnetic fields around their heads to see if, like many sea creatures, they use the poles to locate themselves. In the 1970s Italian scientists discovered that cutting the olfactory nerve prevented pigeons from finding their way home and subsequent studies have suggested they use scents carried on the wind to form an ‘olfactory map’.

(London Review of Books)

MEMO OF THE AIR: Good Night Radio all night long tonight!

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio, 9pm to 5am tonight (Friday, April 12) on KNYO Fort Bragg (and KMEC Ukiah, and via KNYO.org), live from 325 N. Franklin, next door to the Tip Top bar of stage and screen fame.

Deadline to email your writing to be read on the air tonight is 6pm or so. If you're not done by then, just send it when it's ready and I'll read it next week. Or call and read it on the air yourself: 962-3022. Or visit, if you're in town. Waltz right in and head for the well-lit room at the back. Bring your sousaphone, sob story, salacious sculpture and/or magical power to show off, describe, fib about or perform upon, whichever applies.

I already have the usual vast folder of little bits of whatever I've been reading all week ready to ASMR into the transmitter: astounding science, political nauseata, tangy snark, tidbits of arguably life-saving lore on literally thousands of subjects, et al.

A few amusements for while you wait for tonight:

The entire universe in time-lapse. theawesomer.com/timelapse-entire-universe/469205/

A clever ad for baked beans. In real life, though, the astronaut would be perfectly safe from the monster, because… say it with me… In space, no-one can hear you fart. bitsandpieces.us/2019/04/baked-beans/

And the 1950s space-age bullet brassiere revisited.vintag.es/2017/06/bullet-bra-indispensable-underwear-for.html

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

"A CLEAR MIDNIGHT" by Walt Whitman

"This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.

Night, sleep, death and the stars."

THERE ARE VACANCIES on the following Board(s) and/or Commission(s):

• Area Agency on Aging Governing Board (1) -- Mendocino County Supervisor or Designee--
• Laytonville Municipal Advisory Council . (1) -- Member--
• Mendocino Historical Review Board (1) -- Member--
• Potter Valley Cemetery District . (1) -- Trustee--

Please note: Anticipated vacancies include expiring terms: the incumbent of the expiring term may apply for reappointment and/or may continue to serve in their capacity until replaced. California Government Code requires public noticing for all expiring terms regardless of the incumbent’s intention to apply for reappointment.

If you are interested in serving on this Board, contact your Supervisor, or the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors, at 501 Low Gap Road, Room 1010, Ukiah, CA 95482 or (707) 463-4441.

Last Date For Filing: May 6th, 2019, or until filled.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Never mind what people say, judge them by what they do. “Progressives” portray American workers as under-educated bigots and proponents of intolerance and division. They say that fascism is ascendant out there in the sticks, where civilized people don’t want to venture.

But aren’t “progressives” the ones hurling the insults and using inflammatory rhetoric? Who is it enforcing class division and hindering social mobility? Who advocates public policy that helps the oligarch and hurts ordinary people? Who insists on ideological conformity, punishing those that step out of line? Who polices speech codes? So where is this fascism really brewing?

What you can count on is redaction to the point of futility, logic-twisting to the point of incoherence. To use Scalia’s phrase, words will lose their meaning, you will have officialdom standing in front of microphones giving accounts that utterly defy the visually obvious and objective truth. In other words, they will lie like hell. Bullshit will be the order of the day.

What we saw from the American established order with the 2016 election is what you’d expect in a corrupt despotism, you know, like Russia. They must have looked at the Kremlin and asked themselves why can’t we do what Putin does?

So, tell me, why not? Looks to me like they’re well on their way. What’s next? Rub-outs? Oh, already done that. Yeah, but what about the unaccountable fall from a tall building? Or maybe something a tetch more Putin-esque? Maybe a dab of this or that from a nuclear reactor. Ain’t done that yet. But stay tuned.

What’s ironic is that the – cough – free press, the main-stream press, which is supposed to be a pillar of democracy, telling like it is, reporting events and verifiable facts, becoming the opposite. Well, maybe not so ironic. Who controls the press after all?

“BEING A GRANDFATHER is quite different. It’s much looser than being a parent. I don’t have to always worry about providing patterns of behavior. I just get to give her little kisses. I was allowed to borrow her this morning so we are walking through the park. It’s our personal pastime. She likes to look at the dogs and birds. Today we saw some blackbirds which was quite exciting.”

(Santiago, Chile)

SPECIAL EFFECTS

The first oddity of this morning I saw in my email. A Laytonville student had written a story called "Special Effects". She sent it. Unbidden. She lives in New Orleans. In a house previously flooded. She makes dolls. She loves parades. She plays the violin, sometimes in public. She is a goth. She works in a mortuary. She intends to form Her own company. Her favorite station is WWOZ.

I phoned her and she answered. We talked for damned near an hour. Reminisced. Dumb but interesting questions. She makes dolls. Loves parades. Plays the violin. Carries it around in a fooled leather case. She plays in win parades and in bars. Wears glasses. Says she's been to Wild River. She's been in my dreams, playing her violin the best live music she ever saw was Sleater-Kennedy, the creators and stars of Portlandia. She's a writer. And once again I have tears in my eyes. And a matching rashes which appeared overnight, one on each hand. And I just ate the last of the corn flakes. A writer. And the soundtrack is great.

(Bruce Brady)