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Vine Watch (March 10, 2004)

The big rig rollover that happened just as I sat down to write this and only 45 minutes ago will probably be slowing traffic for some time. Spread across both lanes on 128 about a quarter of a mile east of the CDF station, it is both lucky that the driver is OK and that a wide shoulder allows for one-way traffic passage. The load is scrap metal in large unmovable-by-hand sections and the tractor is so large that equipment from out of the area will most likely be needed to right the situation. Other than that it is an exquisitely beautiful Monday morning and the local volunteers out at the scene are doing a great job.

Yesterday was equally gorgeous and the grandkids and I spent a wonderful four hours down at the river. The youngest, Angus, at three years, is often in a world apart. At one point he excitedly came running up to me and declared, “I'm 6 and I'm going to help the Chinese.” Later dashing at full speed he tripped and plowed face first into the damp, hard packed sand. As I moaned and bent to pick him up, he popped up like a boiling oatmeal bubble and exploded past hollering, “I'm George of the Jungle, Aahhhaahhhhhrrrrraahhhh!”

Two love birds, in this case ducks, the guy pure white with a black/green iridescent head and the gal a speckled brown, hung out upstream, eyeing us and preening, waiting, I suppose, for the right time to start their family.

A Turkey Vulture with a gimp, hanging leg circled for some time low overhead. The river was chalky green and too cold for the kids to get more than their feet wet. A piercing screech snapped my head looking for a hawk but a second screech revealed the source to be more earth bound, Angus on another flight of whim.


A 911 call Friday evening about 7:00 had police, Anderson Valley Ambulance and Fire volunteers scrambling around downtown Philo looking for a vehicle crash but none could be found. The caller had only heard screeching tires and then a thud.

CHP has gotten nowhere with the identity of the red Ford F-150 driver who caused the accident reported last week and then fled. All they know is that it wasn't the owner of the vehicle. Local reports indicate that the owner of the truck is in Mexico and that the uncle has said that a family relative took it out for a spin, but of course the name of that family relative won't be uncovered by anyone with any authority. The story goes that the guy staggered east on 128 to about KZYX before collapsing beside the road. Friends or acquaintances who found him offered to take the obviously battered scapegrace to the hospital but when he refused they took him to his home somewhere on Vista Ranch.


Billowing black smoke poured from Shorty Adams’ garage as it burned to the ground Saturday afternoon along with three classic cars he had parked in or beside it. It seemed as if half of Boonville turned out to fight the demon, even the editor was spied wielding a garden hose in the neighbor’s yard, doing his best with minimum pressure to help put out the blaze.


Everybody likes to cap on George Bush (he does make it so easy) but what does it say about us when his image makers keep him from going to one single funeral of a soldier killed in action in Iraq? What must our psyches be like if it is determined that his status in our eyes is enhanced by him not honoring those who died fighting his war? Personally I feel that Bush is more representative of the American Way than a lot of us would like to admit. After all, so far it is oner 500 American troops and maybe 15,000 or 16,000 Iraqi troops and civilians who have died in Iraq during Bush’s reign. Under Clinton, what's the figure?, three million Iraqi children due to sanctions? And how many of us were screaming impeachment over that? We seem to have cared more for what Clinton did with his weenie than what he did to American ideals of morality and compassion.

Part of what I'm trying to suggest is that the line between the Repug hims and the Dem thems is not really as grand a chasm, as black and lily white hearted we the people want it to be and is more of an issue clouder. That the reputed functional part of America is in truth dysfunctional as heck and that we are all at cause of the escalating global horrors is a hard mirror image to view. From an only slightly different perspective might we not seem to have bloated egos, bloated pocketbooks and bloated bellies, a severe addiction to drugs, alcohol and medications, an insatiable appetite for more junky toys and a deep cowardice predicated on the fear that if we really do take a stand for fundamental change we might lose it all? And in truth aren't we all as pliable as hell in the hands of the corporate and power mongering image makers that will sell us the next president of the United States?

Just a different point of view for contemplation. Ralph Nader for president.

3 Comments

  1. Mark Laszlo March 6, 2021

    I think escalating global horrors are due to the runaway military industrial etcetera complex and international capital. The government of the People was subverted in stages. They have made DU, micronukes and other genetic weapons standard for use, with help from our capital consolodated major press to keep it quiet they started WWIII. Nukes of any size are not “thinkable”. God is just. Nuclear war will come home. Everybody needs a Geiger counter and a fallout shelter. We need a socialist populist like Bernie or Ralph. Neither party controlled by crazy generals and billionaires is going to stop WWIII.
    Search youtube: “nuke baghdad…syria…yemen…”

  2. Mark Laszlo March 6, 2021

    I think, under the George the 2nd of the Skull and Bones Illuminati lodge #322 and GOP more like a half million Iraqis were killed. Brits started counting but were stopped. We lucked out or God intervened. We got the least evil 2ce in a row. I can only say that because The Goldwater Girl consulted with “Depopulation” Henry. She was all over him! Then went on to be Sec of state for Obama, in a deal she could run foreign policy. She prosecuted PNAC’s wars. So is Biden, but he’s the best the system will allow us domestically and diplomatically. Trump was the least evil because Clinton would have started nuclear war with Russia directly w a no fly zone over Syria but Trump took more time to cash in on nuclear proliferation and of all dictators Putin is Trump’s favorite, after Hitler, whose speeches he read and method he used. Putin extorted half his oligarch’s income and became the richest man in the world. He could give Trump little bags of uncut Russian diamonds when they met alone or bribe him via Paradise Papers Appleby links. I think the Goldwater Girl and the Hitler Boy are both pill heads. One likes opiods, the other, amphetamines. Why doesn’t everyone vote Green or Socialist? Capital consolodated media makes sure we hear the least about them. So why not read green and socialist media instead, in fallout shelters? The govt and the billionaires are best prepped already and plan to let us die, since they caused immanent world destruction. PREP!

  3. Mark Laszlo March 6, 2021

    I think the People aren’t so much to blame. The military industrial etcetera capitol complex stole the government, as Ike warned. Get back to the land, as far from govt and cities as you can and install fallout shelters. Get away from microwave and other electrosmog devices, underground. Avoid big food products. Avoid big pharma products. Most (but not all) billionaires are for “depopulation” so the “Pitchforks” don’t get them before they weaken and cull us enough. Switzerland and parts of the S. Hemisphere may be safest, but parts of N. Mendo may be among places least affected by fallout in the USA. Don’t let govt know more than you can help. Get ready to take care of yourselves w allies and PREP!

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