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MCT: Wednesday, October 14, 2020

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OTHER THAN SOME COASTAL DRIZZLE early this morning, dry weather is expected across the region during the next seven days. In addition, warm conditions will be likely over much of northwest California, including the coast, as offshore winds strengthen in response to high pressure building over the Great Basin.

RED FLAG WARNING: High pressure building over the Great Basin will bring warmer temperatures and aid in increasing offshore winds across the ridges of NW California as well as much of southern Lake County from Wednesday afternoon through Friday morning. Fast moving wildfires will be possible as a result over Trinity, eastern Mendocino and much of Lake County as gusts increase to 20 to 40 mph during the overnight hours. Meanwhile, fuel dryness is more uncertain farther north across northern Humboldt into interior Del Norte County. However, decreasing humidity values and ongoing long-term drought support the potential for critical fire weather conditions despite wetting rainfall occurring during the last week.

(National Weather Service)

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MENDO CONTINUED WITH LIMITED increased covid cases in recent days with another day of single digit increases on Tuesday, bringing total to 1055.

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GET TESTED

We are adding an evening COVID-19 testing session this Wednesday October 14th at 4pm to accommodate more people who are working. Please come by the (Anderson Valley) High School after work. We will also be there Thursday morning 9-10.

Weds 10/14 COVID testing 4-5:30pm

Thursday 10/15 COVID testing 9-10am

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WHETSTONE STILL MISSING

James Whetstone

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office is actively investigating the reported disappearance of James Andrew Whetstone. He was last seen on Wednesday October 9, 2020 at 8:30 AM at the family residence located in the 1500 block of Valley Road in Willits.

He is believed to have either walked away or received a ride from someone in a vehicle, although that is not his usual behavior. He is a 69 year-old male, standing 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighing 250 pounds. He has blue eyes and shoulder length gray hair that he usually wears in a ponytail.

He was last seen wearing a gray jacket, blue jeans and black boots. He is reportedly in good physical health for his age.

Anyone with information about James Andrew Whetstone’s current whereabouts is urged to contact the Sheriff’s Office by calling 707-463-4086.

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‘LARGE QUANTITY OF MARIJUANA’ FOUND IN U-HAUL TRUCK STOPPED AT RIDGEWOOD SUMMIT

At approximately 10:05 this morning Marco Antonio Ochoa Sanchez, out of Stockton, California, was arrested at the California Highway Patrol Scales located at Mendocino County’s Ridgewood Summit off Hwy 101 for transportation of cannabis.

kymkemp.com/2020/10/13/large-quantity-of-marijuana-found-in-u-haul-truck-stopped-at-ridgewood-summit/

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THE OTHER SIDE

photo by Dick Whetstone

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THE SUPERVISORS SPENT THE DAY TUESDAY talking about — what else would they spend an entire special day on? — pot. All five Supes love to talk about pot in the abstract as “policy” as if pot growers can be neatly sliced and diced into neat little boxes and categories with oh-so accurate parcel sizes and plant counts and setbacks and zoning categories and sub-categories and so forth. And sycophantic staff enablers and their technical-ish points make it seem like the discussion — which always drifts off into all manner of irrelevant tangential crap — is reasonable and rational. So in that sense they made some ill-defined progress Tuesday by refining the zoning and associated permit restrictions for legal pot growing — in the future, someday. No dates certain, of course.

BUT, the proposed and long-overdue new zoning/use permit “policy,” generously assuming it can be implemented through all their time-consuming and ridiculous bureaucratic hoops, doesn’t apply to real pot growers, most of whom don’t care what the County’s or the state’s rules are. 

WE MUST KEEP IN MIND that these are the same people who brought us the current failed mess. So taking this latest policy discussion seriously is very hard, and whether it will result in any significally increased number of existing outlaw growers applying for permits is beyond pure speculation, and over into highly unlikely.

LEFT UNADDRESSED by Tuesday’s abstract discussion was what to do with the current 1100 or so applicants whose mostly paid-for provisional permits or applications will expire next year. Toward the end of the discussion Supervisor Haschak finally raised the question of what to do with the existing applicants, saying he wouldn’t vote for the new approach unless it addressed the current applicants and included a “work plan” to untangle them. Supervisor John McCowen called the staff-time-demanding processing requirements that Supervisors Williams and Haschak have worked up for current (Phases 1 and 2) applicants so far as “confusion” with lots of “unknowns” regarding the current applicants, adding that the Williams/Haschak ad committee’s preliminary approaches are “not proven,” and “daunting.” Describing the current system as “not functional,” Supervisor McCowen went on to suggest that he expected Supervisors Williams and Haschack and their two-Supervisor “ad hoc” committee to magically come up with a way to clean up the mess that Supervisor McCowen himself primarily created with his hyper-detailed, micro-managed approach to everything related to pot permits. 

SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS concluded by saying he expected the next round of “Phase 3” applicants to get permits before the existing applicants do because there’s no plan or funding for cleaning up the current mess, adding, “At this point we don’t have a functional program.”

AT ONE POINT in Tuesday’s discussion, Chair/Supervisor Haschak turned the standard hole-digging cliché upside-down, saying, “the last thing you want to do when you’re in a hole is keep digging.” But that’s basically what they’re doing.

(Mark Scaramella)

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THE AV SENIOR CENTER is looking to hire a Part time kitchen helper. Tuesdays and Thursdays, about 10-15 hours per week total. A great part time opportunity. Please contact Fal at fallen@avbc.com

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Old Big River

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EMERGENCY TIP, a reader writes: “When I was at Ukiah Costco 2 weeks ago they had Ready Wise emergency food buckets for less than $60. I did a quick online price check and the cheapest I saw was $80. I have seen several prepper articles that I believe ranks Ready Wise in the top 3 or 4 of emergency food brands. If you have to bug out in a hurry it may be much easier to grab a bucket vs pulling food out of your pantry. Just a thought...”

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Noyo Harbor, 1949

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FORT BRAGG CON CAMP On List Of State Fire Camp Cuts

California's corrections department is following through on a plan to close eight inmate firefighting camps, reflecting a steep decline in the state's inmate population since the coronavirus outbreak.

pressdemocrat.com/article/news/more-cuts-to-california-prisons-eight-inmate-fire-camps-to-close-this-year/

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CALLING ALL VIRTUE SIGNALLERS

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ED NOTES

MAUREEN 'MO' MULHEREN probably knows that Mendolib is circulating all manner of secret slanders about her. That's what this county's active Democrats do best, and by active Democrats I mean the middle-of-the-road extremists who show up for Inland and Coast Democrat meetings. They don't cluster-muster over real issues, serving mostly as conduits for whatever candidates and platitudes the state party and the DNC feed them, but they do come alive to stuff as many clones of themselves as they can into local public jobs. Mendolib runs Mendocino County. They also of course control the innumerable non-profits fastened to the necks of the dependent like mountain tics on dying elk. The local officeholders they've foisted off on the unsuspecting Mendo public have, with no exceptions, ranged from the overtly criminal to the grasping incompetent, and the insane. The slanders re Mulheren wafting out of Coast and Inland Lib have nothing to do with the supervisor's job, everything to do with the high school-ish, we're cool, she's not. With Mendolib — about fifty people — it's solely a matter of getting “our” people into every paid public job in the county. The irony, and these fifty are big time irony-challenged, is that the Democrats haven't stood for anything since Kennedy (and he was a wobbler), and local Democrats, in my memory, can't point to a single in-county or NorCal triumph. And don't say offshore oil. Everyone was opposed to that. 

LOCAL GROWERS — pot, silly, not grapes — are complaining that prices are already down to an average of a grand a pound for primo, off 500 bucks from what a lot of gardeners were expecting when this year's Green Rush kicked off last spring. And the harvest is just beginning, but the accompanying pot-driven home invasions are now year round, with crime generally so much more prevalent in the County post-covid that Sheriff Kendall has called for help.

THE POT BIZ, once it became truly lucrative in the early 1970s, has always come with fear and anxiety at this time of year, especially and naturally in areas remote from the pavement. A friend told me recently he'd been challenged by Mexican growers at the foot of his driveway in the hills west of Boonville, aggressively challenged, and this is a guy who's lived on the same parcel he developed in 1970. My late brother, on a morning walk with his wife in the Willits hills was only yards past his own property line when a guy with a shotgun emerged from the bushes to warn, “Far as you go, bub. Turn around and leave.” Everyone in the county can tell versions of these encounters. For non-growers, especially in rural developments like Ranch Navarro here in the Anderson Valley, the annual menace presented simply by the presence of their grower neighbors, represents a burden they didn't expect when they bought their few acres of paradise.

THE COUNTY OF MENDO, predictably, has added to the confusion around pot farming by attempting to establish a licensing program before the state weighed in with its own confusing and unworkable gro-rules, so Mendo finds itself with roughly 1100 license applications of which some 250 or so applicants are more or less legal with another 900 or so applications pending. Or dropped out, despairing at an absurdly complicated process. These total of 1100 growers trying to get legal, and people argue about this, represent somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the true number of growers in the county. 5 percent would mean 20,000 love drug farmers are out there, which seems awfully high, but ten thousand growers out there doesn't seem like an exaggeration. When former Supervisor Pinches said he could draw up a workable licensing program on a cocktail napkin, we agreed with him because we think we could, too. And given the numbers of real smart people in the pot business, especially those who've either successfully staggered through the licensing process or dropped out in frustration, any number of them could also draw up a simple, workable plan. Nobody in authority asks them, of course, and the Supes just spent another entire day Tuesday attempting to fine tune their laughably failed licensing process. (Haschak's finest hour? Board chair Haschak gaveled down his fellow supervisor, the garrulous McCowen, as McCowen tried to make yet another suggestion about the licensing process that he, McCowen, almost singlehandedly has screwed up in the first place. Haschak was trying to adjourn for lunch, and seemed to know once the sonorous McCowen has the floor, it might be dinner time before he's finished talking.)

AMY CONEY BARRETT has been more than a match for the pathetic Democrats trying to tie her to abortion, guns, racism, and her alleged desire to deny medical care to the indigent needy. If you didn't groan when each Demo interrogater recited his or her see-through phony sob story about what would happen if one more rightwing nut job managed to become a Supreme Court justice, you better check your bullshit detector batteries. Only a Democrat could make Republican senators seem smart, but that's what the Democrats have done so far. Amy slam dunked all of them, and the forces of reaction will soon have another ally on the court. I wish, though, that Amy would consult a speech therapist. Her nasal-routed voice is another of those fingernails-on-the-blackboard semi-screech jobs.

I DIDN'T KNOW that tigey tobe is Boontling for marijuana until I saw Ernie Pardini's recent post. Gratifying to see that Boontling lives on.

ANOTHER LOCAL wonders how she might safely eject a skunk from her Have-A-Heart trap. Several valley people suggested tarps and poles, which is what I've done many times with skunks, raccoons, feral cats, and possums, the last being the toughest ejection. Skunks take a few seconds to maneuver their rear ends into position to spray their adversaries. I caught so many of them I learned their moves, so I did away with the tarp, keeping only the pole to position the trap so the skunk sprayed where I'd been a second earlier. The spray, which easily exceeds twenty feet, is a striking lime-green which, as it sent its futile arc at Mr. Dance Away in the morning sun, can be one more rare, rural delight.

A CERTAIN prominent local official posted a photo of his “edged and mowed lawn,” obviously unaware that he teeters on the edge of full-blown suburban psychosis. 

But lawn guys seem mildly nuts to many of us, me certainly, because we know they lie awake worrying about their insane patch of chemically-soaked green, constantly battle botanical intruders, spend small fortunes on their weird little expanses of unnatural growth, and even in their dandelion-haunted dreams, the specter of the neighbor's rogue gophers gives the lawn guy no rest.

THE GREAT RE-WRITE made another giant stride towards national amnesia with the announcement that Eskimo Pies are now known among the good and the pure as Edy’s Pie, as the 100-year old company agrees to erase its “derogatory” brand name.

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Painted Barns, Now Harvest Market

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INUIT ART, LIVESTREAMING, OCT. 15

by Roberta Werdinger

On Thursday, Oct. 15, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., Leslie Saxon West will present a talk on the art of the Inuit communities of northern Canada as expressed through printmaking. The talk will focus on how the Inuits became involved in printmaking, how it has evolved, and how it expresses their unique culture and spirituality. Saxon West is Professor Emeritus of Native American Art at Mendocino College, and has made several visits to the Inuit community.

This presentation will be livestreaming on Go To Meeting. To join, paste this link into your browser: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/842102805 or dial in at (872) 240-3311, access code 842-102-805.

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Styrofoam Submarine in Mendo from the film ‘The Russians Are Coming’

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JAMES & THE GIANT ACID BOTTLE

On Monday, October 5, 2020 at approx. 2218 hours, Ukiah Police Officers were dispatched to the area of 200 Cherry Street for a report of a disturbance between neighbors. While responding to the call, UPD Officers learned that one of the involved parties may have been doused with a chemical agent.

Once on scene, Ukiah Police Officers began their investigation and learned that during the course of the neighbor argument, James Lee, 53, of Ukiah, became angry and doused his two neighbors with a gallon bottle of muriatic acid. 

James Lee

The acid was poured in the face and neck area of both victims.

UPD requested the assistance of Ukiah Valley Fire Authority and medical personnel. Medical personnel arrived on scene and began treating the victims for their injuries. Ukiah Firefighters began hazmat procedures to contain the acid which had been spilled on the sidewalk and concrete.

One of the victim’s injuries were so severe that she was transported to Adventist Health Ukiah Valley by ambulance and then transported by air ambulance to an out of county hospital for more specialized medical treatment.

Ukiah Police Officers contacted Lee and placed him under arrest for two counts of Using Caustic Chemical on another and Assault causing great bodily injury. Lee was transported to Mendocino County Jail where he was booked for the above offenses. Due to the severity of the crimes Lee had been alleged to have committed, Ukiah Police Officers contacted the on-call Superior Court Judge and requested a bail enhancement on Lee. A bail enhancement was granted and Lee’s bail was raised to $125,000.

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GRAY’S SPEED

On Thursday, October 10, 2020 at approximately 10am, an on duty Ukiah Police officer was conducting an investigation in the Safeway Parking Lot (653 S. State St.). As the officer was standing in the parking lot he observed a Honda CBR 1000RR motorcycle traveling at a high rate of speed northbound on So. State St. The officer observed the driver of the motorcycle (later identified as Michael David Gray) bring the front tire of his motorcycle off of the roadway and perform a “wheelie.”

Michael Gray

The officer responded to his patrol vehicle and attempted to catch up to Gray. The officer caught up to Gray at the intersection of Perkins St. and Orchard Ave. The officer activated his patrol vehicles overhead emergency lights and initiated a traffic enforcement stop. Gray failed to yield to the officer and continued to drive his motorcycle at a high rate of speed northbound on N. Orchard Ave. in an attempt to evade the officer.

As the officer pursued Gray he observed Gray travel at a high rate of speed, drive into oncoming traffic, and run one stop sign.

Gray came to the intersection of N. Orchard Ave. and Brush St. and continued driving northbound off the roadway and into the empty field that runs along the west side of Highway 101. The officer drove his patrol vehicle off the roadway and continued to pursue Gray through the field. A short distance later Gray’s motorcycle hit a hole and Gray was thrown from the motorcycle. The officer exited his patrol vehicle and placed Gray under arrest.

Gray was transported to the Ukiah Valley Medical Center for injuries he sustained when he fell off the motorcycle.

After receiving medical treatment, Gray was transported to the Mendocino County Jail. While at the Mendocino County Jail, Officers found Gray to be in possession of approximately 46 grams of methamphetamine that was packaged to be sold.

Gray was booked at the Mendocino County Jail for the above listed charges. Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, Gray was set to be released from jail with no bail required. Ukiah Police officers believed Gray displayed a blatant disregard for the safety of our community members by driving so recklessly on the streets of Ukiah, and requested a bail enhancement on Gray. A bail enhancement was granted and Gray is currently being held at the Mendocino County Jail on a $75,000.00 bail.

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Cows On Gray Day

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JOE MUNSON, LIL’ ROY & THE BIG BEAR HUNT 

(as told to Jonah Raskin)

I don’t mean to compete with William Faulkner, the great Southern novelist, who wrote a famous story about a bear hunt in Mississippi, but I think my story about a bear hunt in Mendo is pretty amazing. See if you don’t agree. First, some back story. Tom Allman was the sheriff and things were even wilder then than they are today. I was growing in the National Forest and didn’t like the idea that I had no locked gate and couldn’t do a whole lot to deter thieves. 

Then I met up with Warner and started to grow on his land, Cerrutti Mountain Ranch, which had been in his wife’s family for years. I made bank on that property. Once, there were miles of paved road, paid for by the logging companies, all the way to Warner’s, but the road fell into disrepair. By the time I arrived it was mostly dirt. In the 1930s, there was a hunting lodge on the property and a bar down at Lake Pillsbury. Big wigs from the city would come up to hunt, drink and party. 

Warner drove a tank in the army, chauffeured generals around and could fix any kind of vehicle, including cable cars in San Francisco when they broke down. He had 50 caliber rifles and huge military vehicles. He and I would do target practice together. We shot at a stuffed animal: Winnie the Pooh from 200-yards. One day at Warner’s, I had the first of several encounters with Roy Atraveno, known as Lil’ Roy because of his size. I thought he was a thief come to steal my crop. He had a high-powered rifle and a side arm. “What the fuck!” I said to myself. “He must be a ballsy mothrfucker.” He pulled a gun on me and said, “If I was gonna rob you, I’d tie you up, do what I wanted to do and then release you when I was finished.” He took a deep breath and added, “I’ve been huntin’ up here at Warner’s goin’ on thirty years. I don't give a fuck about you or your pot plants or any other growers.” On the second encounter with Lil’ Roy, he told me, “You’re better off with me here. So back the fuck off.” The third time, he asked nicely if he could borrow my all-terrain Yamaha Rhino 650, which had four-wheel drive and a mini-dump bed. 

A big brown bear, maybe 500 pounds, had poked its nose into Roy’s trailer, sniffed around, came up to the foot of his bed and woke him. That was too close for comfort. Up there the saying was, “a bad bear is a dead bear.” Roy was a weapons’ expert and a hunting guide. He taught cops how to deal with rogue growers who were running wild in the woods. 

I lent him my Yamaha. He went off to hunt the bear with a Winchester 300 mag. He found the den twenty feet off the ground in a humongous mountain oak. He sat there for hours and waited for the bear to come out. When I saw him the next day, he told me, “It got to be so dark I couldn't see my own hand in front of me. I told myself to leave and come back another time.” He returned to the den and did what he never should have done — took his wife and son with him. “I want to learn my son, Adam, how to kill a bad bear,” he said. 

Outside the bear’s den, he put the rifle on the ground and lifted his son up on a big log. Next thing, he heard his wife say, ”Oh, he’s beautiful,” and knew that she’d seen the bear. Lil’ Roy reached for his gun, aimed and shot the bear in his right shoulder. The bear fell to the ground with his back legs churning. Roy shot him again, in the left shoulder, and watched the bear tumble off an old loading dock for loggers. Roy followed the trail of blood through the woods and found him. The bear was alive. Roy shot it five more times. Made sure it was dead, winched it onto the back of the Yamaha and dragged it out. He told me, “I didn’t like that one bit,” and gave me one bear claw, though I didn’t especially want it. I asked Roy, “Were you really gonna kill me when we first met?” He said “Nawh, but I would have shot you in the leg.”

That’s my Mendo bear story, Mr. Faulkner. I haven’t seen Warner for years. Lil’ Roy is raising hell in Redwood Valley and in the mountains. I’m told there are still big bears in the forest.

(Jonah Raskin co-authored Oaky Joe Munson's Marijuana Adventures and Misadventures.)

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CATCH OF THE DAY, October 13, 2020

Cadle, Cohn, Deh

JAMES CADLE, Ukiah. Disobeying court order.

KYLE COHN, Willits. Failure to appear.

DANIEL DEH, Redondo Beach/Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, suspended license for DUI, probation revocation.

Hamilton, Magdaleno, Norton

ELIJAH HAMILTON, Fort Bragg. Elder abuse without great bodily harm or death.

JORDAN MAGDALENO, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs.

JESSICA NORTON, Ukiah. Disobeying court order, failure to appear, probation revocation.

Prickett, Warner, Williams

CONSTANCE PRICKETT, Redwood Valley. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

MALISSA WARNER, Ex-felon/Unlawful possession or use of tear gas as weapon.

JENNIFER WILLIAMS, Ukiah. Burglarly, contempt of court, probation revocation.

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OCTOBER IS BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH

Miller Report for the Week of October 12, 2020

by William Miller, MD – Chief of Staff at Adventist Health – Mendocino Coast Hospital

As we move forward with normalizing life, I am going to focus less and less on COVID in the Miller Report and more on broader health issues relevant to folks on the Coast. I envision it to continue as a regular health column. Hopefully, you all see fit to have it continue to appear in your various venues.

Breast cancer is the leading cancer in women in the United States; second to skin cancers which except for melanoma are usually not invasive. It comprises 1/3 of cancers in women. About 1 in 8 women (12%) in the US will develop breast cancer at some point in her lifetime. The rate of new cases in the US per year is about 275,000 resulting in over 42,000 deaths annually.

Thinking about breast cancer is important because, if detected early enough, it is curable. Surgically removing a malignant lump before it spreads is the best way to cure it. If it has already spread, then it is more difficult to treat and cure which often involves chemotherapy and radiation. The challenge is that a tumor can start spreading to other parts of the body when about the size of a marble or even smaller and therefore too small to easily find by simply doing a self-breast examination. 

Annual mammograms have been shown to be the best and most reliable way to detect lumps early. The American Cancer Society recommends that all women between the ages of 45 and 55 get a mammogram every year and that women over the age of 55 get a mammogram every other year. If a woman has first degree relatives (mother or sister) who had breast cancer, then the recommendation is to start annual mammograms earlier at age 30. While a family history of breast cancer does increase one’s chance of getting it, an absence of such a history is not protective as 85% of all breast cancers occur in women with no previous family history.

Another benefit of early detection is that surgery to remove the tumor can be less disfiguring. A small lump that does not show any sign of local invasion or distant spread can be usually removed with a lumpectomy that can preserve the breast with minimal scarring. However, if the tumor has invaded surrounding breast tissue, then a larger surgery may be needed including sometimes removing the breast, known as a simple mastectomy. We do not do radical mastectomies anymore which included removing the muscles under the breast and often led to serious difficulties in using the arm on the affected side.

Fortunately for most women who need to have a simple mastectomy, plastic surgery techniques for breast reconstruction have greatly improved. 

While rare, breast cancer can occur in men as well. The rate is about 1 in 800 men will get breast cancer. Therefore, if a man notices changes in his breast it is important to see a doctor.

Despite the COVID pandemic, it is very safe to get your health care during this time. The hospital and all the clinics and doctor’s offices on the Coast take special precautions to ensure that your visit is a safe one. In fact, putting off essential health care such as cancer screening is potentially more risky than possible exposures to COVID or other infections.

Every Woman Counts is a California program that provides free breast and cervical cancer screening for any woman of low income or uninsured. Most community clinics participate in this program and can help you enroll. You can find out more at www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/cancer/EWC .

Adventist Health Mendocino Coast Hospital has full mammogram services. To schedule an appointment for the mammogram, call the hospital’s Diagnostic Imaging Department at 707-961-4665. Please, call your healthcare provider today for a referral to get your mammogram: 

AH Medical Offices (formally North Coast Family Practice), Ft. Bragg: 707-961-4631

  • AH Ft Bragg Rural Health Center, Ft Bragg: 707-964-0259
  • Anderson Valley Medical Clinic, Boonville: 707-895-3477
  • Long Valley Health Center, Laytonville: 707-984-6131
  • Mendocino Coast Clinics, Ft. Bragg: 707-964-1251
  • North Coast Medical Associates, Mendocino: 707-937-1055
  • Redwood Coast Medical Clinic, Gualala: 707-884-4005
  • Dr. Sandy Brown, Ft. Bragg: 707-964-9168

More information on breast cancer can be found at the following websites:

  • American Cancer Society: www.cancer.org 
  • BreastCancer.ORG: www.breastcancer.org 

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The Bluffs

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LITTLE DORRITT VISITS COUNTY GOVERNMENT

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.

Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; and the public condition had risen to be — what it was.

It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective chambers, and discuss, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such session, virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering with great loyalty and patriotism, How not to do it, and you have found out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the harvest (natural, not political), I now dismiss you. All this is true, but the Circumlocution Office went beyond it.

Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians, natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists, people with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who couldn't get rewarded for merit, and people who couldn't get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution Office.

Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office. Unfortunates with wrongs, or with projects for the general welfare (and they had better have had wrongs at first, than have taken that bitter English recipe for certainly getting them), who in slow lapse of time and agony had passed safely through other public departments; who, according to rule, had been bullied in this, over-reached by that, and evaded by the other; got referred at last to the Circumlocution Office, and never reappeared in the light of day. Boards sat upon them, secretaries minuted upon them, commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered, entered, checked, and ticked them off, and they melted away. In short, all the business of the country went through the Circumlocution Office, except the business that never came out of it; and its name was Legion.

Sometimes, angry spirits attacked the Circumlocution Office. Sometimes, parliamentary questions were asked about it, and even parliamentary motions made or threatened about it by demagogues so low and ignorant as to hold that the real recipe of government was, How to do it. Then would the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, in whose department it was to defend the Circumlocution Office, put an orange in his pocket, and make a regular field-day of the occasion. Then would he come down to that house with a slap upon the table, and meet the honourable gentleman foot to foot. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that the Circumlocution Office not only was blameless in this matter, but was commendable in this matter, was extollable to the skies in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that, although the Circumlocution Office was invariably right and wholly right, it never was so right as in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that it would have been more to his honour, more to his credit, more to his good taste, more to his good sense, more to half the dictionary of commonplaces, if he had left the Circumlocution Office alone, and never approached this matter. Then would he keep one eye upon a coach or crammer from the Circumlocution Office sitting below the bar, and smash the honourable gentleman with the Circumlocution Office account of this matter. And although one of two things always happened; namely, either that the Circumlocution Office had nothing to say and said it, or that it had something to say of which the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, blundered one half and forgot the other; the Circumlocution Office was always voted immaculate by an accommodating majority. Such a nursery of statesmen had the Department become in virtue of a long career of this nature, that several solemn lords had attained the reputation of being quite unearthly prodigies of business, solely from having practised, How not to do it, as the head of the Circumlocution Office. As to the minor priests and acolytes of that temple, the result of all this was that they stood divided into two classes, and, down to the junior messenger, either believed in the Circumlocution Office as a heaven-born institution that had an absolute right to do whatever it liked; or took refuge in total infidelity, and considered it a flagrant nuisance.

(from Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens)

* * *

Coast Hospital Signage, 1961

* * *

SINCE REDWOODS can live to be three thousand or so years old, give or take 500 years, it stands to reason that Native Americans had the opportunity to create, steward or manage at least four iterations of the types of forests that Europeans encountered when first exploring California. How did their land ethic and management techniques evolve over the millennia? How did that evolution alter the structure and composition of the forests? Were their goals, and the techniques used to achieve them, relatively static, given that fire was the basic landscape-level management tool available to them? Or were they evolving as climate and cultures changed?

If we’re amazed by a tree, or stand of trees, being two or three millennia old, what about a culture that managed and lived in/with those forest for the three thousand years during which they grew and at least ten thousand more before that? As romantic as it is, the idea that the old growth forests, as we know them, sprouted in a time before time; when people lacked the understanding or agency to effect landscape-level changes, gives too little credit to the cultures and peoples who had an active hand in creating or maintaining some of the greatest forests our history can remember.

Control fire and one controls the vegetation. Control the vegetation and one controls fire. Exclusion of fire without controlling vegetation is not control of fire. We are dealing with ecosystems that were managed under multi-thousand year old management regimes that were based on putting fire on the ground; regimes that we simply cast aside in a matter of decades. It seems likely, to this observer, that we’re not getting out of this situation by letting the land go back to “nature” unless nature includes humans putting fire on the ground in a controlled manner in order to achieve specific goals. 

— Aaron Sawyer

* * *

Redwood Survivor

* * *

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF LOGIC:

  1. Thou shalt not attack the person’s character, but the argument. (Ad hominem)
  2. Thou shalt not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make them easier to attack. (Straw man fallacy)
  3. Thou shalt not use small numbers to represent the whole. (Hasty generalizations)
  4. Thou shalt not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (Begging the question)
  5. Thou shalt not claim that because something occurred before, it must be the cause. (Post hoc/False cause)
  6. Thou shalt not reduce the argument down to two possibilities. (False dichotomy)
  7. Thou shalt not argue that because of our ignorance, a claim must be true or false. (Ad ignorantum)
  8. Thou shalt not lay the burden of proof onto him that is questioning the claim. (Burden of proof reversal)
  9. Thou shalt not assume “this” follows “that” when it has no logical connection. (Non sequitir)
  10. Thou shalt not argue that because a premise is popular, therefore it must be true. (Bandwagon fallacy)

* * *

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Women adopting double barreled married names is an affliction, a standard feature of feminist dumbness and inconvenience.

What happens in the next generations when smith-jones marries campbell-graham?

And in the next generation after that a four barreled name marries another four barreled name?

Stupid. And worsened by the trend of giving children as first names what were formerly – except among wasps announcing their pedigrees – surnames. So now it is boys called MacArthur and girls called Madison. Why the fuck?

And let’s compound that absurdity with people demanding bespoke pronunciations for otherwise perfectly standard names:

My brother taking me aside, “It is spelled Anna but she pronounces it Arna.”

Well, she may but I won’t. For me from now on she can be “Hey, you!”

These tidal waves of madness are apparently made up of millions of drops of idiocy.

* * *

MENDO LOGGING LOCOMOTIVE

* * *

THE BOHEMIAN CLUB

by Joan Dideon

The Bohemian Club of San Francisco was founded in 1872 by members of the city’s working press who saw it both as a declaration of unconventional or “artistic” interests and as a place to get a beer and a sandwich after the bulldog closed. Frank Norris was a member as was Henry George who had not yet published ‘Progress and Poverty.’ There were poets: Joaquin Miller, George Sterling. There were writers: Samuel Clemens, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Jack London who only a few months before his death managed to spend a week at Bohemian Grove, the clubs encampment in the redwoods north of San Francisco. John Muir belong to the Bohemian Club, and so did Joseph LeConte. For a few years the members appear to have remained resolute in their determination not to admit the merely rich (they had refused membership to William C. Ralston, the president of the Bank of California), but they're over ambitious spending both on the club in town and on its periodic encampments quite soon overwhelmed this intention. According to a memoir of the period written by Edward Bosqui, San Francisco's most prominent publisher during the late 19th century and a charter member of the Bohemian Club, it was at this point decided to “invite an element to join the club which the majority of the members held in contempt, namely men who had money as well as brains, but who were not, strictly speaking, bohemians.”

By 1927, a year after George Sterling committed suicide during a Club dinner for H.L. Mencken by going upstairs to bed and swallowing cyanide (he had been depressed, he had been drinking, Frank Norris’s brother had replaced him as toastmaster for the Mencken dinner), the Bohemian Club was banning from its annual art exhibit any entry deemed by the club “in radical and unreasonable departure from laws of art.” By 1974 when G. William Domhoff, then a professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, wrote ‘The Bohemian Grove And Other Retreats: A Study In The Ruling Class Cohesiveness,’ one in five resident members and one in three nonresident members of the Bohemian Club was listed in ‘Standard & Poor's Register Of Corporations, Executives And Directors.’ Among those attending the summer encampment at Bohemian Grove in 1970, the year for which Dohoff obtained a list, “at least one officer or director from 40 of the 50 largest industrial corporations in America was present. … Similarly, we found that officers and directors from 20 of the top 25 commercial banks (including all of the 15 largest) were on our lists. Men from 12 of the first 25 life insurance companies were in attendance (eight of the 12 were from the top 10).”

The summer encampment then had evolved into a special kind of enchanted circle, one in which these captains of American finance and industry could entertain in what was to most of them an attractively remote setting, the temporary management of that political structure on which their own fortunes ultimately depended. 

When Dwight Eisenhower visited the Grove in 1950, 11 years before he made public his concern about the military industrial complex, he traveled on a train arranged by the president of the Santa Fe Railroad. Domhoff noted that both Henry Kissinger and Melvin Laird, then Secretary of Defense, were present at the 1970 encampment as were David M. Kennedy, then Secretary of the Treasury, and Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. John Ehrlichman as the guest of Leonard Firestone represented the White House. Walter J. Hickle, at the time Secretary of the Interior, was the guest of Fred L. Hartley, the President of the Union oil.

The rituals of the summer encampment were fixed. There were every day at 12:30 “Lakeside Talks,” informal speeches and briefings, off the record. Kissinger, Laird, and William P. Rogers, then Secretary of State, gave Lakeside Talks in 1970; Colin Powell and the chairman of Dow Chemical were scheduled for 1999. Local color was measured: the fight songs sung remained those of the traditional California schools, Berkeley (or in this venue “Cal”) and Stanford, yet it was a rule of the Bohemian Club that no Californian unless he was a member could be asked as a guest during the two-week midsummer encampment. (As opposed to the May “Spring Jinx” weekend to which California nonmembers could be invited.) 

The list for the 1985 encampment, the most recent complete roster I have seen, shows the members and their “camps,” the hundred-some self-selected groupings situated back through the hills and canyons and off the road to the Russian River. Each camp has a name, for example Stowaway or Pink Onion or Silverado Squatters or Lost Angels.

For the 1985 encampment Caspar Weinberger was due at Isle of Aves, James Baker III at Woof. “George H.W. Bush” appeared on the list for Hillbillies (his son George W. Bush seems not to have been present in 1985 but he was on the list along with his father and Newt Gingrich for 1999), as did among others Frank Borman, William F. Buckley Jr., and his son Christopher, Walter Cronkite, A.W. Clauson of the Bank of America and the World Bank, and Frank A. Sprole of Bristol-Myers. George Schultz was on the list for Mandalay along with William French Smith, Thomas Watson Jr., Nicholas Brady, Leonard J. Firestone, Peter Flanagan, Gerald Ford, Najeeb Halaby, Philip M. Hawley, J.K. Horton, Edgar F. Kaiser, Jr., Henry Kissinger, John McCone, and two of the Bechtels. 

This virtual personification of Eisenhower's military industrial complex notwithstanding, the spirit of Bohemia or California could still be seen in the traditional tableau performed at every Grove encampment to triumph over Mammon, God of Gold, and all his gnomes and promises and bags of treasure:

Spirit: Nay, Mammon. For one thing you cannot buy.

Mammon: What cannot it buy?

Spirit: A happy heart!

* * *

“Thanks so much for coming to vote in person! Please, step right up!”

* * *

MENDOCINO’S HAZARD MITIGATION PLAN

Post Date: 10/13/2020 4:01 PM

Mendocino County is seeking public input on the Mendocino Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan as part of natural hazard risk reduction efforts throughout the County. This is the community’s chance to review and provide feedback on information regarding natural hazards in the area. We are also asking the public to review the mitigation strategy developed by the County and participating jurisdictions. Our strategy focuses on mitigating the effects of natural hazards through proposed actions that protect lives and property across the county.

Public input will ensure the priorities of the Hazard Mitigation Plan match those of Mendocino County residents.

The Mendocino Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan (MJHMP) provides a formal explanation of prevalent hazards within the County and how hazards may affect communities differently. Most importantly, the mitigation strategy presented in the Plan responds to the known vulnerabilities within each community and provides prescriptions or actions to achieve the greatest reduction of natural hazard risk. The end result of this planning effort could result in saved lives, reduced injuries, reduced property damage, and protection for the environment in the event of a natural hazard within the County.

Along with the MJHMP umbrella plan, Volume 1, the following jurisdictions have completed draft annexes that are also available for public review:

City of Ukiah 

City of Point Arena

City of Fort Bragg

City of Willits 

Mendocino County Office of Education

The County and participating jurisdictions are accepting comments on the draft Mendocino Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan through Monday, October 26.

To view and comment on the draft plan, please http://mitigatehazards.com/mendocino-county/public-review/. More information about the plan update process is available at http://mitigatehazards.com/mendocino-county/. 

* * *

VIA JEFF BLANKFORT: “The U.S. commander of troops in Afghanistan said that American intelligence officials have not been able to confirm the existence of a Russian bounty program offering Taliban militants rewards for targeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“It just has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me,” General Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, told NBC News.”

Former prosecutor Kamala Harris didn't need any evidence when in her debate with Pence last Wednesday, she charged Trump with having done nothing to counter Putin over what was truly a “fake news” story promulgated by the Democrats.

U.S. Afghanistan Commander Says Intel Has Not Confirmed Russian Bounties on American Troops

* * *

* * *

VOLUNTEER BOARDS are Key to the Success of Essential Community Services 

by Kendyl Saxby

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing fear and heartbreak, wildfires threatening homes and businesses, students trying to attend school via video conferencing, and a polarizing presidential race, it is no wonder that people are looking for activities where they can have a positive impact. One such opportunity is volunteering as a board member for a local non-profit organization.

In Mendocino and Lake Counties, many people depend on non-profit healthcare and other community-benefit organizations to provide services that keep them healthy and allow them to preserve their self-reliance and independence. MCHC Health Centers (MCHC) is just such an organization. MCHC provides primary medical, dental, and behavioral healthcare as well as support services such as health education, translation, patient advocacy and transportation.

MCHC is a special type of community health center called a federally qualified health center, and as such, more than half of its board members are also be patients. This ensures that MCHC remains responsive to the changing needs of the communities it serves, including the unique demographic groups within them, and aware of perceptions about its level of service.

Right now, MCHC is seeking individuals with skills and knowledge that complement the expertise of current board members. CEO Scott McFarland explained, “We’re looking for community members who value healthcare but who work in other industries such as finance, law, and local government—people who can provide another perspective and help us make sound strategic decisions. We are also looking for someone who can be a voice for young Latino families to help us better serve that demographic.” Board member Bill Mergener has served on the board since 2003 and prior to that, as a part-time consultant since the organization’s inception in the early 1990s. He joined other visionary leaders who dedicated their time and energy to creating an organization that would care for the entire community when local government services shifted away from direct patient care. For the past 30 years, MCHC board members have stayed true to that original vision while expanding coverage to everyone who needs healthcare.

“I have a great deal of respect and affection for my fellow board members and MCHC staff,” Mergener said. Mergener brings a wealth of healthcare experience to the board. After finishing graduate school and a stint in the Peace Corps, he served as a health policy analyst and consultant to the World Health Organization and for the California Department of Health Services where he helped draft the State’s Emergency Services Plan to include a statewide 9-1-1 call system among other recommendations.

Why does he continue to stay on the board? “I love it,” he said, “because there is real satisfaction in working with good people doing good work while facing compelling challenges together.”

Karen Oslund, a fellow board member, echoed Mergener’s enthusiasm for serving on such a high-functioning board. She encouraged young people to join as a way of gaining valuable experience. She said, “If you are just getting started in the professional world, volunteering to serve as a board member can be a great way to learn about business—and to build your network of people.” She explained that MCHC’s board is “very welcoming” and provides board members with significant education about the organization’s governance, funding, and compliance requirements. She encouraged board members interested in gaining leadership experience to join and eventually become subcommittee chairs or board officers.

Oslund is the executive director of the Cancer Resource Centers of Mendocino County, an organization with a lot of potential synergy with community health centers. One of the opportunities for collaboration between CRC and MCHC has been to support a grant-funded project to increase the utilization of the HPV vaccine in partnership with UCSF. This project has the potential to reduce the incidence of several types of cancer, a common goal of her organization, MCHC and UCSF.

A third board member, Jacque Williams, is the executive director of the Ford Street Project, an organization dedicated to assisting people in Mendocino County with substance use disorder and who are homeless to attain sobriety and improve self-sufficiency.

Williams said, “Ford Street are MCHC share a common goal of improving the health of our community. Our young families who have experienced homelessness and are new in recovery appreciate the understanding and care provided at MCHC. When community agencies like MCHC and Ford Street work together to help those in need, both the local healthcare system and families are strengthened. Serving on the MCHC Board has been an enriching experience for me. It is inspirational to see the commitment that exits in support of healthcare.”

For those who might be interested in serving on the MCHC board, McFarland thought it important to share information about the time commitment and fundraising expectations. At MCHC, most board members spend about an hour or two per month unless they volunteer on a subcommittee; then the time can increase a little. And MCHC does not ask its board members to request donations on behalf of the organization.

He said, “If you are interested in joining a great board that’s doing important work, let us know.” For more information about becoming a board member, call Kathy MacDougal at (707) 468-1010.

* * *

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CALIFORNIA SMUDGE POTS

by Janis Cash, CA History

Southern California's climate is famous for its mildness, but in many areas of the citrus empire the groves of orange and lemon trees - tropical migrants - were planted at their climatic margin. For the empire's growers, windless, clear, winter nights brought the “great white terror” of freezing temperatures. Five hours below 26 degrees in the groves could destroy a year's crop. A week of cold nights would mean the loss of the delicate citrus trees themselves. Replanted at great cost, new trees took as long as seven years to be profitable.

Wrapping trunks and limbs in burlap and straw might hold in some of the tree's latent heat, saving the tree, but wrapping did nothing to save the fruit. Running irrigation water transferred some heat to the grove, but that tactic was inconsistent. Canvas or wood shelters might be put over the trees to hold in the warmth that radiated up from the ground. These actually worked, but only for growers who could afford the enormous cost of their upkeep.

In Florida, unusually cold nights in the orange groves were met with bonfires spaced among the trees. The bonfires combined some science (heated air kept temperatures above 26 degrees) and some folklore (the sooty smoke from the fires was supposed to hang over the trees like a blanket to keep the heat in).

Growers in Southern California had to adapt the Florida solution. At the turn of the 20th century there was a critical shortage of firewood, not enough to heat thousands of acres of citrus groves night after cold night.

But Southern California by 1900 had an alternative source of fuel - oil and lots of it. Growers bought up low-grade petroleum in tanker lots, mixed the fuel with anything else that would burn in wash tubs and garbage cans and set them alight in the groves.

These burners were the original smudge pots, so called because they produced the dense clouds of sooty smoke - smudge - that growers thought would protect their crop from frost. There were at least a million smudge pots in the groves by 1915.

Nothing was as fouly incongruous as smudge pots belching smoke amidst oranges in Southern California. From the 1910's through the 1950's, the proximity of citrus groves to oil wells and refineries encouraged widespread use of crude for orchard heating (smudging) for nighttime winter freezes. The resulting air pollution could obscure the mountains and exacerbate respiratory ailments. 

As the citrus industry largely abandoned Southern California for the Central Valley, the once-hated smudge pots became relegated to the annals of California nostalgia. When smog and air pollution became a problem these were banned, but by then much of the citrus empire had been reduced in Southern California.


(JAMES MARMON: I remember, we used to have a pear orchard in Potter Valley on Busch Lane. I hated it when the frost siren would go off in the middle of the night and we had to go out and light these smudgepots.)

* * *

* * *

A COUPLE, both age 78, went to a sex therapist's office. The doctor asked, “What can I do for you?”

The man said, “Will you watch us have sex?”

The doctor looked puzzled, but agreed.

When the couple finished, the doctor said, “There's nothing wrong with the way you have sex,” and charged them $50.

This happened several weeks in a row. The couple would make an appointment, have sex with no problems, pay the doctor, then leave.

Finally, the doctor asked, “Just exactly what are you trying to find out?”

“We're not trying to find out anything,” the husband replied.

“She's married and we can't go to her house. I'm married and we can't go to my house. The Holiday Inn charges $90. The Hilton charges $108. We do it here for $50 — and I get $43 back from Medicare.

* * *

FOUND OBJECT

7 Comments

  1. George Hollister October 14, 2020

    If AMY CONEY BARRETT is confirmed, that would be a good thing. She will not “legislate from the bench”. Legislating from the bench is at the heart of much of what divides this country today. Sticking to the intent of the Constitution is what has allowed people with very different perspectives to exist united in America, from it’s beginning. Legislation in Congress that is in violation of the intent of the Constitution is the other half of what divides us. Hopefully Barrett will rule to strike down laws that are Unconstitutional, and divisive. If we want a united America, Congress needs to stop trying to make everyone the same by shoving unpopular laws, to many, down everyone’s throat. With a dose of some national mutual respect, we might find we are more united than we thought.

    • Harvey Reading October 14, 2020

      George, you are even more gullible than I thought. She’ll do whatever her conservathug controllers tell her to do, just like Roberts and the other conservathugs do. The obummer appointees are no better.

  2. Harvey Reading October 14, 2020

    POT

    Clearcut Triangle, rest in peace. No one misses you. Plenty of dope, just as good, grown elsewhere. LOL.

  3. Lazarus October 14, 2020

    FOUND OBJECT

    Harris Wins…whoop·ee!

    Be Swell,
    Laz

  4. Ted Williams October 14, 2020

    “AT ONE POINT in Tuesday’s discussion, Chair/Supervisor Haschak turned the standard hole-digging cliché upside-down, saying, ‘the last thing you want to do when you’re in a hole is keep digging.’ But that’s basically what they’re doing.”

    I have a different take. There are two basic requirements for cultivating cannabis: 1) county permit, 2) state annual license.

    We have a solution to the county license: follow the ordinance, process permits. The pace is purely the result of organization and staffing, both of which are improving.

    The state license is more problematic, but it’s not a county obligation. The state requires site specific CEQA. There has been an attempt to characterize elements of the county issued permit as meeting the discretionary review required by state regulation. We are unsure whether this will ultimately work. If it does, it’s a shortcut. If it does not, cultivators will need to perform site specific CEQA analysis, direct to CDFA, with the county playing no role.

    No matter what happens with phase 1, the majority of cultivation is stuck in the illicit market. Phase 3 is about furthering the transition to legal market. Phase 3 is based on a model compatible with state licensing requirements. It’s where the county should have started. Doing nothing until the last applicant in phase 1 is fully resolved is not good policy. It would be like holding up all new construction county wide until fire recovery rebuild permits are finalized.

  5. Betsy Cawn October 14, 2020

    Trying to square your description of the political swingers over your way with what we see from this dusty remove:

    “Mendolib runs Mendocino County. They also of course control the innumerable non-profits fastened to the necks of the dependent like mountain tics on dying elk. The local officeholders they’ve foisted off on the unsuspecting Mendo public have, with no exceptions, ranged from the overtly criminal to the grasping incompetent, and the insane.” And, “With Mendolib — about fifty people — it’s solely a matter of getting “our” people into every paid public job in the county. The irony, and these fifty are big time irony-challenged, is that the Democrats haven’t stood for anything since Kennedy (and he was a wobbler), and local Democrats, in my memory, can’t point to a single in-county or NorCal triumph.”

    On this side of the Cow, Mendo politics seems dominated by the conservative core represented by District 1 Supervisor Carrie Brown (she sits on our Area Agency on Aging Governing Board — which gives the Older Americans Act short shrift but is legally allowed to do so because our Joint Powers Authority votes to allow the absolute minimum services required (and then neglects its promises in state-approved local plans).

    Darling Carrie endorsed Glen McGourty for her seat, and Glen’s voters are the whitey-tighty “leadership” of exploitative agriculture (e.g., the Mayfield enterprises) and water sellers. Brown herself is the patron saint of the new Mendocino Inland Power & Water Commission, which supports the removal of the Scott Dam at Lake Pillsbury — and demonstrates no cognitive capacity in allowing the Humboldt County officials and enviro-whiners to define the dam removal as a sane idea (when that is how the Russian River is continually replenished in the summer, the source of Inland Mendocino and southerly vineyard plantation supplies.

    I guess I can agree that they’re all pretty cuckoo, one way or another, but politically powerful? Maybe at sneering and sniping at their emotional “enemies” — and to be sure putting their pet pals into lesser official positions (Richard Shoemaker comes to mind). Somewhere on the outskirts of Mendolib and Mendowrong politics, the misfits and community activists that regularly come to the aid of their neighbors (thinking of all the fire and medical service workers and volunteers) quietly get the work done.

    Whereas, over here in flailing Lake County, at least our cannabis permitting process has been well accepted (with obvious renegades and nasty boys, of course). But the booze industry took over a long time ago, because it funds the Chamber of Commerce and dozens of promotional outfits; and our implacable Congressman from Napa humbly serves ravioli at his annual fundraising event.

    Maybe I’m out of touch with the scene (as usual, not generally associated with clubs of any kind), but it seems to me that the Redneck Republicans and right-religious frontmen pretty much run this place on both sides of the hill, and they have both county Administrations feathering their beds at every turn.

  6. Craig Stehr October 14, 2020

    Return to the root and attain principle;
    Pursue illumination and you lose it.
    One moment of reversing the light
    Is greater than the previous emptiness.
    The previous emptiness is transformed.
    It was all a product of deluded views.
    No need to seek the real;
    Just extinguish your views.
    – Seng Ts’an (Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen, author of the Hsin Hsin Ming)

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