Press "Enter" to skip to content

Valley People (June 19, 2019)

THE COMPTCHE Father’s Day Fire Department fund raiser as described by Katy Tahja: “Take 1,400 pounds of chicken, hundreds of pounds of beans, potatoes and salad making, throw in 120 loaves of bread and 200 volunteers and you can pull off a great fundraising dinner for over 1,000 folks. Oh, and don't forget 200 homemade pies and Mother Nature cooperating with lovely weather...Hubby and I have done this for 42 consecutive years on Father's Day…”

ON-LINE COMMENT: “Notice to downtown Boonville businesses and residents. There is an obviously very, very mentally disturbed young man in downtown Boonville. He is wearing a red Angels shirt and black ball cap. He made his way into town Friday from the Ukiah Walmart and was apparently dropped off in front of Pic n Pay/Lizbby's by CHP earlier today. Not great for downtown business as he is scaring tourists. He obviously has no place to go, but if there are any suggestions on helping him move along to a better location in a humanitarian manner, I'm all ears.”

THE TRANSIENT mentally ill should be called in to the Sheriff’s Department. They respond quickly. A deputy will take the disturbed (and disturbing) person into custody and drive him or her to either the emergency room in Ukiah or Fort Bragg for an evaluation. If the patient is determined to be a danger to himself or others he will have to be held in the Mendocino County Jail until he regains possession of himself. The County Jail is not a mental health facility but it is humanely managed and a much less dangerous place for a disturbed person than permitting that person to simply wander around where he may be harmed by unsympathetic parties. 

MAGGIE VON VOGT alerts us to “Summer conversational Spanish classes at the Anderson Valley Adult School/ Escuela de Adultos de Anderson Valley start Tuesday 6/25 (Beginner and Intermediate levels.) This week is your last chance to sign up! Call 895-2953 or email adultschool@avpanthers.org. for more info or to register. Please spread the word. We have a great group of folks signed up already - the more the merrier!”

OTTO BLUE FRASER, son of Saffron and Scott Fraser of Philo, has graduated from basic training, USCG Juliet 197, on Friday June 8th 2019. Otto reports to duty in Kodiak Alaska, this week and will serve as Fireman Apprentice on United States Coast Guard Cutter Douglas Munro. Fair winds and following seas! Semper Peratus.

IF IT'S A HUNDRED DEGREES in Frisco, it's 105 most places in Mendo. Which it was last Tuesday and only a few degrees cooler in Fort Bragg and other communities up and down the Mendocino Coast. Temperatures in San Francisco reached 100 F on Monday, which was 3 degrees higher than the maximum temperature at Las Vegas and equaled the high at Sacramento, according to AccuWeather.

MONDAY, JUNE 17TH, is move day for the homeless camp on Airport Boulevard, Ukiah. Few, if any of the 70 or so campers have a place to re-locate to. But since Ukiah says it only needs the squatters outta there to mow the grass for fire protection, once the boulevard is fire-protected what's to prevent the homeless from re-occupying the site which, for all practical purposes, is the logical one for the Ukiah Valley since it can, with a few basic amenities, be humanely managed.

ELIZABETH JENSEN is certainly due an AttaGirl for her work in organizing work parties to maintain Anderson Valley’s Community Park in Boonville next to the AV Health Center. Ms. Jensen also serves on the Anderson Valley School Board.

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE has two volunteer trainings coming up – Join us for a short volunteer training - learn more about the Anderson Valley Village and how you can get involved. Volunteers are welcome to provide all manner of help, from basic chores, transportation and errands to check-in calls and visits to skilled services. It’s up to you how, and how often, to volunteer. Forms are available at the training, Senior Center, Health Center and/or our website https://www.andersonvalleyvillage.org/.  Please RSVP if you can attend one of the following trainings: 

Cell: 707-684-9829, Email: andersonvalleyvillage@gmail.com

Hope to see you there - they are both going to be at Lauren’s Restaurant in Boonville:

Sunday June 23rd 10 to 11 am

And 

Sunday July 14th 3 to 4 pm (right before our monthly gathering) 

BOONFIRE! Saturday, June 29 at 9 p.m. BoonFire will be playing at La Cantina! No cover! 21+ only. BTW, Dan Richert has done a terrific job in reviving the bar at La Cantina, a prefect venue for a beer and a fine Mexican meal only a few steps from the plank, by far the most beautiful bar in Mendocino County.

IF BOONVILLE is a harbinger of what's to come for high school football, the sport may be doomed. Coach John Toohey, a Boonville guy from birth, and himself an accomplished athlete who played the game at the college level, posted this forlorn message today: "Due to a lack of interest and insufficient numbers, the AV Panther Cubs will not be fielding football teams this upcoming season." Not that long ago the game thrived in the Anderson Valley.

A BOONVILLE MAN driving an All-Terrain Vehicle pulling a trailer somehow got pulled down a 40-foot embankment Wednesday afternoon when the trailer slipped off the road surface and pulled the man and his ATV down with him. First responders, recently having upgraded their rescue training and equipment, arrived on scene and used block and tackle and backboards to bring the man up the slope, package him and turn him over to a Ukiah ambulance, which took him to the Boonville Airport where he was air-evac'd to Santa Rosa Memorial with non-life-threatening, but "traumatic" injuries.

A DISASTER earlier in the week saw a "29-year-old female, head injury" in the Elementary School library. The patient was being transported to the Boonville Airport landing zone to await the air ambulance.  Neither the name of the injured woman or her present condition has been revealed. 

MENDOCINO ANIMAL HOSPITAL at Anderson Valley Farm Supply

Dr. Burns from Mendocino Animal Hospital will be at the Anderson Valley Farm Supply seeing patients twice in July. 

Thursday, July 11th AND Thursday, July 25th

She's there between 2:00 and 4:00 pm. People can always check our Facebook page in the events section for more information - it's always posted when we're going to be there. 

Michelle Fetzer, Mendocino Animal Hospital.

DIMMICK STATE PARK is open again after an 8-year hiatus. Also known as Navarro Redwoods State Park, Dimmick's 12 acres of redwoods is located on the banks of the Navarro around mile marker 8 just off Highway 128, and is named after Paul Dimmick, a long ago mill superintendent for the Albion Lumber Company. 

I ALWAYS ASSOCIATE the park with what used to be called Iron Bridge, a swimming hole a little farther west and not associated with Dimmick. And I make both associations because of a weird incident reported to me years ago by an Elk woman. She said she and several other young mothers were at the swimming hole with their children when a naked man with an eye-slitted paper bag over his head charged out of the bushes and sprinted past them before disappearing back into the brush and on out to his vehicle on 128. The moms chased the sprinting perv out to the road and were able to get his license plate number. He turned out to be a guy from Fort Bragg who was duly slapped on the wrist by Ten Miles' notoriously indulgent court (Judge Heeb?) and.... probably did it again.

"DEAR MR. ANDERSON: I saw you last night in the gym. Did you notice that at last night's high school awards that the school staff awarded the Mexican kids lots of scholarships but the white people giving scholarships awarded scholarships to white kids? Please don't print my name. I'm just asking."

SEEMED like a color blind event to me. Speaking as a pinkish gray and white senior citizen tending to floridity, I can say the scholarships I distributed were granted without ethnic consideration as were, I’m sure, all others. I couldn't help noticing, however, the great preponderance of female award winners over males which, as I dimly recall, was also true in 1957 when I graduated from high school by the skin of my pearly whites, having no interest in what I was theoretically being taught. I did the bare minimum to stay eligible for sports, and all that was in my future was a tour with the Marines, an experience that focused my attentions for sure. The gym was stuffy but not all that uncomfortable last Thursday night given the blast furnace heat outside. And high school principal Jim Snyder deserves high marks for organizing the annual event.

THE REMOVAL of a stand of trees on a hill northeast of Boonville appears to be the handiwork of V. Sattui winery, owned by the wealthy Napa grape grower Darryl ‘Dario’ Sattui. Sattui bought out the Dennison vineyard, and has cut down the privacy screen of eucalyptus that shielded the house overlooking the existing winery on the property. Sattui owns several other vineyard properties in Anderson Valley; he was one of the targets of Mark Scaramella’s wind machine noise-nuisance lawsuit a few years ago. The Fairfax native makes his headquarters in the Napa Valley at “Castello de Amarosa.” 

A COMPLAINT HAS BEEN FILED with the Planning Department regarding Sattui’s steep slope stripping, which is occurring in the Mendo context that prohibits marijuana growers from cutting down trees to grow pot plants. 

YORKVILLE SHAKIN': Two quakes just north of Yorkville Friday morning, a 3.1 and a 2.6, at 10:43 and 10:47 am, respectively, and as reported by Marshall Newman. The quakes were later downgraded to negligible earth rumblings.

THE AVA TELEPHONE was out of service for three days last week. We apologize to all you people who were not able to reach us telephonically. I called AT&T's service number yesterday only to be told the earliest a "technician" could get to Boonville was Wednesday, June 19th "by 5pm." Then Bill Ray, the Willits writer and poet, e-mailed me to suggest I play the age card, although Bill didn't put it that bluntly. He told me that AT&T must act pronto when an elderly customer's phone is down. If the elderly customer's phone is not restored as soon as reasonable, the elderly customer can file a claim against the notoriously....well, probably not wise to insult them overtly or they'll hand me a spool of thread and a couple of coffee cans. "Here ya go, Pops. Communicate with this." 

SO, TUESDAY MORNING, Day Two of no phones in the very nerve and news center of Mendocino County, I played the elderly card. Big time. When someone named Aaron in whatever or wherever place far, far away finally came on the line after endless bilingual "menus," I did my best Elderly Act, complete with wavering, confused voice.

"I'm 80 years old, son, and I live alone in a remote town called Boonville, the center of a drug region called the Emerald Triangle where I'm surrounded by menace, and I'm 80 years old and alone and people try to sneak up on me late at night to steal my geraniums and I can't call for help and the other night I heard them out there but I couldn't find my shotgun....." At this point the guy broke in, understandably exasperated, "What number are you calling from, sir?" I said, "I, I, I....I think I have it written down here somewhere...." I could hear the guy sigh. I began to recite," 707 895 uh, wait a minute...." Louder sigh from the AT&T guy. "Oh, here it is — 3016." The AT&T guy, and rather snappishly I thought, and can we have a little more professionalism out of these boiler room slaves?, said, "Because you are elderly, sir, it is AT&T's policy to have someone out to you by 5pm today." It's 4:59 as I write this, and I'm still waiting. I'll try again in the morning, Day Three of pure treachery and ageism from AT&T.

OUR PHONE SERVICE was restored Wednesday morning after two full days out of service. I called AT&T's service line first thing Wednesday morning, 35-minutes out of the only life I'll live, as I again listened to "menus" and robotic voices assuring me, "We value your call" as I waited for the next disembodied voice to tell me what to do. Finally, after minutes of elevator music, and as I moved to other tasks as I waited, my hand fell asleep around my cell phone, one of those big numeral jobs designed for slo-mo old people. Finally, a human female voice suddenly identified herself as "Justine," and I launched into my old guy woe about no land line and me elderly alone in a sea of rural wickedness and lurking predators. Then I started to cough, possibly a karmic punishment for laying so much bullshit on the poor lady when Justine, and bless her all her days, said, "Take your time, Mr. Anderson. If you need some water I can wait." Sounding totally slobbery senile, I told Justine she was "a very good person," and "in a just world, Justine, you would be in charge of your awful corporation." She laughed. "We will have someone out there before five," which is what 'Karen' had told me the day before. But darned if a harried young man didn't appear at 10:30am and straight away found the prob — a defunct wire. He apologized to me "for not getting here sooner, but I cover a big area and...." These conglomerates squeeze their line people, ruthlessly exploit them by giving them more to do for less pay. This kid, climbing telephone poles all day in hundred degree heat for one of the worst corporations in the country, had nothing to apologize for. 

OYSTER BOB SITES won the Veterans big Flag Day Chili Cook-off $200 prize on Saturday. A three-person panel of local veterans picked Sites’s recipe over the other twelve entries in the blind tasting. After receiving his award, Sites confessed to us what his “secret ingredient” was, chosen specifically for the veteran crowd: “Meat! Extra Meat!” — plus New Mexico Chilis, a full bottle of Deni Dudzik's Yorkville Pinot Noir, Brown Sugar, chopped canned tomatoes, and seasonings.

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

-