Press "Enter" to skip to content

Off the Record (September 15, 2021)

FROM THE SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT a week ago Monday morning: “Evers was last known to be running toward the Salmon Creek drainage North to Northeast of the home.” 

EVERS again eluded the forces of law and order, one of whom grabbed the tail end of his shirt as the apparently fleet-footed Evers sprinted away as the police dog bit his handler instead of the fugitive!

“REDBEARD,” as we've dubbed the fugitive William Evers, has moved from the south side of the Navarro to the river's much more thickly settled north side where there are lots more homes from which to appropriate supplies. The Salmon Creek drainage includes everything from Navarro Ridge Road to Albion. In the latest sighting of the man fast becoming myth, the cops apparently ran in the front door while the fleet-footed Redbeard hastened out the back door.

WE'D like to know more about Evers beyond his criminal history. What's his back story? Parents? Town of origin?  High school running back? Anybody know the guy?

THE MORNING began with a provocation. A guy phoned up to say, “Check your e-mail. You'll be interested.” Click. I sped to ava@pacific.net where I was referred to a website called “Find the Lord's Avenger,” the ref being to the perp letter confessing to the Bari Bombing case of 1990, at the very mention of which ava people tend to groan and leave the room. But I went to find the Lord's Avenger. Who wasn't there. In fact the site, professionally done and carefully organized, contained nothing new about the case and lots of pure lunacy as it expanded to include everyone except the odds-on perp, Bari's ex-husband, Mike Sweeney. 

THE SITE is the work of a conspiracy guy named Bob Martell. I have a vague memory of Martell in Garberville. So I wrote to tell him that he seemed to be living in some alternate universe in which nothing relevant to the Lord's Avenger or Bari is included in his Bari website. He wrote back to say I was welcome to both call him to kick it around and to add my theory to his lonely website. I challenged him to go to our Bari archive where all the relevant material on the case is housed. He said I had to answer him first, and that's where I ceased communications.

THE HILLS of the Northcoast are filled with socially isolated old fools gnawing irrelevantly on grand conspiracies — the JFK assassination; Building 7; the Club of Rome… What's interesting about Martell, and another errant Bari sleuth in Fort Bragg named Josh Morsell, is how committed they are to Not Finding The Bomber.  Ditto for Bari’s alleged friends.

THAT WAS AN INTERESTING gathering Saturday in the parking lot of Ukiah's Redwood Health Club, where the county's health officer, Dr. Coren, took questions, plenty of comment and accusations that he represented the mark of the beast if the portly medico wasn't Beelzebub himself. The smallish gathering of small business owners hurt by covid but hanging on, had been organized by John Strangio of the health club who soon asked the 666 guy, living evidence that crazies often dress normal, to leave because Triple Six wouldn't stop shouting out his warnings of eternal doom. No one asked Coren why the county needed two health officers, but much of the questioning and comment rightly criticized the often confusing and contradictory covid messages coming out of the county. (A full account can be found on Matt LeFever's excellent website, Mendofever.com)

COREN has since backed off mandates of any kind. At better than a hundred grand a year, with an hundred grand assistant in San Diego named Dr. Doohan, all Coren has managed to create for his lavish salary is confusion. 

I KNOW I'm old and far beyond keeping up with the trendo-groove-o menus of music and television shows, but this wildly improbable headline grabbed my attention: "The 50 Fall TV Shows You Should Be excited about." "Should be." So judgmental.

THERE were a couple of anti-vaxx demo in front of the County Courthouse Tuesday morning. “Masks are useless,” read one placard clutched by a large female whose next stop could well be the emergency room. Not more than a dozen persons participated, and all were victims of the great misinformation cyber machine. I would have stopped to watch the entertainment if the mark of the beast guy was there, the man who disrupted Saturday's small business rally at the Redwood Health Club with tourette's-like 666 shouts.

POOR OLD JOE, visiting New York and New Jersey today for photo ops with flood damage victims of Hurricane Ida that killed 52 people over the weekend. POJ was rudely heckled as he hugged survivors. Biden said global warming was here in “real time,”" suggesting his infrastructure plan was one way of combating the ravages of violent storms. Poor old Joe was met by jeers and profane signs. One red, white and blue flag said “Fuck Biden” with a sub-heading that read: “And Fuck You for voting For Him.” Several feral children flipped him off. Ignoring his reception or oblivious of it, POJ, his perfect big white teeth flashing in the late summer sun, grinned and grinned and grinned. 

SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS announces the beginning of water hauling to the Coast: “I'm hopeful that the first two water loads totaling 10,000 gallons will move from Ukiah to Fort Bragg today, enabling the drought-stricken to once again buy water. Capacity will grow as additional trucking firms sign agreements.”

FORT BRAGG’S water savior? The great Tino Luchetti of Hopland and Luchetti Construction. A man for all emergencies, Luchetti has been to the rescue on many a County disaster over the years, and deserves special recognition as one of the County’s absolutely crucial citizens.

SUPERVISOR HASCHAK ON PG&E funding allocations to fire departments: “With this funding, Long Valley Fire Dept. will acquire a new ambulance, Little Lake and Brooktrails Fire Depts. will purchase new Polaris UTV side by side rescue vehicles. All fire departments will receive an additional $20,000 for emergency medical supplies.”

ALSO: The referendum to rescind the new cannabis ordinance had more than 800 signatures over the required number. The Board has two options: either rescind the ordinance or put it to a ballot for the people to decide. A ballot would be costly, divisive, and probably not happen until June of next year. My hope is that the Board rescinds the ordinance and that we get to work on implementing the favorable components of the ordinance such as no water hauling, preservation of agricultural soils, and limiting hoop houses while supporting the small growers so that they can get state licensure.

AND: Water issues continue as we pray for early and abundant rains. The County will ship water from Ukiah to the Coast since the situation on the Coast is dire. The aquifers in Ukiah and the 3rd District are still producing. The Board discussed options on restricting water hauling since that is an ongoing concern for many people who rely on wells. We are looking at limiting water hauling to daylight hours, requiring detailed manifests of where water is delivered, quantity, etc., and regulating the sale of water from one’s well. 

A TENTATIVE KNOCK on my office door interrupted my vigil over the bird bath outside my window, where a blue jay had just driven off a pair of woodpeckers. It was my colleague, The Major. “I hate to do this to you, but…” 

County Museum - County Museum Sets Up Car Bombing Exhibit

by Jaclyn Luna

Mendocino County Museum staff and volunteers have been busy setting up the pop-up exhibit ‘The Car Bombing of Judi Bari: A Community Remembers’, which is set to open September 18.

Earth First! Activists Judi Bari was driving a car with Darryl Cherney as passenger in Oakland May 24, 1990 when it exploded. The pair was in the midst of organizing Redwood Summer, a non-violent civil protest intended to protect old growth redwood trees from logging in Mendocino County.

Museum Curator Karen Mattson explained the public has been requesting an exhibit on Bari for some time and they intended to have the exhibit on the 30-year anniversary of the bombing (May 2020), but Covid pushed the plans back. To make the exhibit happen, staff and volunteers have been organizing the collections area of the museum for years to make the car Bari and Cherney were bombed in accessible and be able to bring it into the museum. Mattson said, “It was a long process to get it from the back. So, we have been working really hard, all these volunteers have been working hard to organize our collections area so that we can actually physically get the car to the front. This represents a three-year achievement to be able to share all of our collections.”

Aside from the bombed car, photographs will be on display as well as evidence from the trial (on loan from Cherney) including parts of the bomb. A quilt that was made a fundraiser for Bari, to create a trust to support her and her daughters after the bombing left her severely injured will also be on display. When entering the museum, a giant puppet from event “Fiddle Down the FBI” introduces patrons to the story of the Car Bombing of Judi Bari.

Mattson said being able to share the collection related to Bari’s car bombing is an achievement for the museum. She explained, “People have seen a lot of these things, but the experience of seeing these things is definitely different from the photograph, and I think that is what the museum has to offer to the story. There has been movies and books, but coming and seeing these things in person is really different.”

Mattson said, “It’s a huge story, and we are just sharing the collection we have that supports it.” To accompany the exhibit, Cherney and Alicia Littletree are planning several weeks of programing including panel discussions, a live concert and firsthand accounts.

Mattson explained through organizing the collections area, the museum hopes to make the collection more accessible to the public by offering tours in the fall. The vast storage space is meticulously clean and impressively organized with a variety of artifacts showcasing the County’s rich and diverse history. Mattson said, “our volunteers have been at the heart of everything and making it possible.”

Museum Volunteers include; Scott Ferleman, Brent Walker, Steve Prochter, Claudia Prochter, Gail Yde, Karen Bishop, Carol Cox and Dean Durbin. Mattson said, “The museum has the most amazing volunteers. They are each uniquely talented and all are dedicated to the mission of our museum. We are proud to be able to make our collection accessible.”

The Judi Bari exhibit will open September 18. Mendocino County Museum is located on 400 East Commercial Street in Willits and is open Wednesday-Friday 10 a.m.-5p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Visit https://www.mendocinocounty.org/government/cultural-services-agency/museum for more information.

O YEAH. Want to get a rise out of me? Mention the criminals who have made literal millions promoting the deliberately false view of the Bari Bombing. The Major handed me a letter from Mendocino County's Cultural Services (sic) announcing an exhibit featuring the bombed Subaru belonging to the late Judi Bari. 

THE LETTER, as you can see, says “the community” wanted to see the scene of the crime, which I recall seeing on exhibit in the Museum twenty years ago when Russ and Sylvia Bartley were responsible for archiving the Museum's neglected archives. The “community” referred to in the exhibit announcement consists of Naomi Wagner, a seethingly violent woman who, Mendo being Mendo, teaches classes in non-violence. And Darryl Cherney, gifted with nearly a million tax dollars for allegedly being libeled by the FBI and the Oakland Police Department. Cherney, having promised to plants lots of trees if he won his non-case, took the money and bought a dope farm near Garberville. 

THE EXHIBIT is unlikely to allow dissenting views of the Bari interlude, which I am eternally prepared to present. (Have obsession, will travel!) But Mendo doesn't do dissent, doesn't approve of it, fears it. So what local taxpayers will get via Mendocino County's Cultural Services — pause here for hollow laughter — is a hagiographic version of Bari-related events which will vaguely identify the perp as a faux left dream list of villains — the FBI, Big Timber, heterosexual white men, Christian fanatics, or all of the above. Bari always aggressively squashed any mention of her ex-husband as her assassin, but privately confessed that he surely did it. The entire dissenting case can be found on the ava's website.

I COULD GO ON, as long time, long-suffering readers know and fear, but I also know I live in Mendocino County, where every day history starts all over again, and you are whatever you say you are, a perfect place to commit a nearly perfect crime, the fanciest case of domestic violence, I daresay, in the history of the Northcoast. See you in Willits on opening day! 

FRED GARDNER on the revived Giants: "All my references are ancient —Bryant looks like Dave Kingman at the plate, a lanky kid named Rogers throws exactly like Ewell Blackwell, who I saw pitch at Ebbets Field in 1947. It was Jackie Robinson's rookie season. I remember seeing your local hero Arky Vaughn because he was in the outfield with Dixie Walker, and my dad explained the odd nicknames to me. Either Arky or Dixie got beaned that day, which was also memorable. The third baseman was Spider Jorgenson. Billy Cox would come over in '48 (with Preacher Roe in a trade with Pittsburgh for Dixie Walker. Greatest trade Branch Rickey ever made). This is in my mind instead of music theory and the periodic table."

IN THAT ERA Bay Area baseball fans were into the San Francisco Seals and the Oakland Oaks, where Billy Martin got going and Tony Ponce once pitched both ends of a doubleheader. The Oaks also had a starting pitcher called Allan Two Gun Gettle. No idea what the gun ref was to. But I was a Seals fan when Arky Vaughan was a Seal. He owned property in Potter Valley, I believe, dying prematurely in a fishing accident. And there was Ferris Fain, busted in the 70's for growing dope in the Sierra foothills, Dario Lodigani, Roy Nicely who played semi-pro ball in Coos Bay into his sixties, Bobo Belinsky, Leo Righetti (Dave's father), Pumpsie Green. Even the names of the players were exciting and memorable. Bleacher seats went for a nickel for kids. I was sitting out there at about age 9 or so when Carlos Bernier of the Hollywood Stars went into the stands after a fan who'd insulted him. My other primary memory is Luke Easter, later of the Cleveland Indians, hitting ball after prodigious ball over the rightfield wall into the park across 16th Street. Seals Stadium, Hardly a stadium with seating for maybe 20,000 at 16th and Bryant, as it occurs to me I'm now one of only a few people who can say they've seen ballgames at Seals Stadium, Candlestick and AT&T or whatever corporate logo fouls the new stadium on the Embarcadero.

THERE ARE VIVID PERSONALITIES and then there's Oaky Joe Munson, a pot entrepreneur who has always somehow managed to emerge from numerous court appearances unscathed, although he's spent a night or two in various county jails. A natural raconteur, Joe, almost in passing, told me of his recent adventure in Roseland, the Mexican neighborhood in west Santa Rosa.

“I'd rather give my product away than be insulted by buyers offering me two hundred a pound,” Joe explained. “So I took a garbage bag of last year's down to Roseland to give it away to a group of homeless guys I saw standing on a corner. ‘Hey! Do you guys smoke pot?’ They all nodded yes. Just as I was giving them the goods, a cop rolls up. ‘What are you doing?’ I said I was giving these guys free marijuana. The cop was skeptical. ‘If you're selling it you're committing a crime.’ I repeated that I was giving it away. ‘Well, ok,’ the cop said. ‘Have a nice day,’ and away he went.” Joe concluded, “How times have changed. Twenty years ago that would have gotten me five years in the state pen.” 

SWINDLE WEEKS at the County Museum

Saturday, Sep 18, 1-3pm. Redwood Summer Retrospective with Naomi Wagner, Karen Pickett, Dave Walsh, Mickey Dulas, Tracey Kattleman, Darryl Cherney and Pam Davis.

Friday, Sep 24 5:30-7:30pm. Remembering Judi Bari with her friends and comrades, Alicia Littletree, Naomi Wagner, Daphne Martin, Larry Evans, Linda Perkins and Bill Heil.

Friday, Oct. 1, 6-8pm. Songs by and about Judi Bari: A live concert with Alicia Littletree, Francine Allen, Mokai, Rosebud Ireland, Bear Dyken and Darryl Cherney with Edie Morris.

Sunday, Oct. 10, 1-3pm. Judi Bari versus the FBI: Discussion with the legal team. Attorneys Dennis Cunningham and Ben Rosenfeld, Legal Assistants Josh Morcell and Alicia Littletree, Juror Mary Nunn and Plaintiff Darryl Cherney.

Wednesday, Oct. 20, 5:30-7:30pm The Day of the Car Bombing of Judi Bari: firsthand accounts with Darryl Cherney, Karen Pickett, and others.

Sunday, Oct. 24, 1-3pm: Building Bridges: with timberworkers, union organizing and Earth First! with timberworkers Ernie Pardini, Art Harwood, IWW union activist Steve Ongerth, and Darryl Cherney.

Wednesday, Oct. 27, 6-8pm. Book discussion of Timber Wars by Judi Bari with Cultural Services Agency Director Deb Fader via Zoom.

Friday, October 29, 6-7pm. Special Appearance by Mike Sweeney via zoom from New Zealand: “How I Almost Committed the Perfect Crime.”

DOES IT EVEN NEED saying that these events deliberately exclude the alternative perspective? And this sad line-up of dupes and scammers is sponsored by the taxpayers of Mendocino County. Will Mendo give me, Diogenes himself, an hour some afternoon to present the proposition that the crime against Judi Bari was committed by her ex-husband?

MY COLLEAGUE reported that the County is spending, via the Supe's consent calendar, an additional $250,000 on top of the $50,000 previously allocated, on an outside law firm to defend the County of Mendo against two marijuana suits. The hurry-up allocation of more cash means the County is probably losing both matters. “Pay us more, quick! Or these people will take title to the County Courthouse!” (And watch the outside fast talkers settle after milking us outback rubes for as much as they can before the rubes even wake up.)

YOU'RE EXCUSED if you wonder why the CEO and her five rubber stamps spend so much money on distant lawyers when we already pay for an office full of lawyers just down the hall from the CEO, none of whom, apparently, can be trusted to take on a pair of basically uncomplicated allegations from two persons: (1) Mr. Flatten alleges Mendo law enforcement was involved in hijacking him and others as they drove down 101 with loads of marijuana. (2) The other, a married couple by the name of Gurr-Borges, registered with the County to grow marijuana on property they owned on the Boonville Road, allege that a neighbor, a County employee, unhappy with the Borges grow, arranged via then-Supervisors McCowen and Brown, and an employee with Fish and Wildlife, to raid the Borges property.

NEITHER of these cases is a brain surgery dispute where you'd have highly trained doctors debating the wisdom of an operation that killed the patient. These are cases of Did the County commit the crimes alleged or didn't they? If they did, how much can we pay the wronged parties to go away?

I'VE READ both suits. I'd say Flatten's suit lacks the specifics needed to implicate Mendo law enforcement in the documented robberies committed by the two Rohnert Park cops operating in Mendocino County, typically near Frog Woman rock. But I can't believe that the Rohnert Park cops operated in plain view on Highway 101 in Mendocino County without Mendocino County law enforcement knowing about it. If the two badged Rohnert Park bandits name names, dates and times.... Well, Flatten may have a case against Mendo, too, after beating Rohnert Park out of more money than he could make growing the love drug. 

THE GURR-BORGES CASE seems like a slam dunk for Borges. Prediction: The outside lawyers will recommend an expensive settlement with Borges and, as per ancient Mendo custom, the County will pay up after paying the outside lawyers a half-mil or so.

MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: According to the Mendocino County Counsel’s webpage, Mendo employs nine (9) attorneys in the office overseen by County Counsel Christian Curtis. Besides Curtis there’s Assistant County Counsel Charlotte Scott, plus Brina Blanton, Shannon Cox, Matthew Kiedrowski, Danika McClelland, Michael Makdisi, Jeremy Meltzer, and Nathaniel Raff. There are two other non-attorneys in Mr. Curtis’s office. For FY 2020-2021 the County Counsel’s office annually costs Mendo taxpayers almost $1.5 million. 

BY COMPARISON, the District Attorney’s office has 15 attorneys including DA Eyster. The DA’s office cost Mendo taxpayers a little over $5 million in 2020-2021. 

SPECULATION about Biden's fitness upsets the middle-of-the-road extremists no end, which is always deeply gratifying whatever the subject. But I have to say I agree with Biden's crackdown on unvaccinated public employees, and I think he's more the fall guy of the pell mell Afghanistan departure than the architect. The orange beast made the deal with the Taliban to leave, but it was Biden, Magoo-like in all matters, who happened to be nominally in charge as the Pentagon's and the CIA's masterminds specifically and totally screwed things up, right down to notifying the Taliban of the departure date. 

MY MEMORIES of 911 Day are too banal to foist off on the ava's muy sophistico readers, but I can’t resist plunging banally ahead. My wife had rousted me from Dreamland with the excited alarm that “an airplane had hit a big building in New York.” So what? I assumed it was just another of the daily disasters that come with industrial civ, and a neighborhood disaster at that, so remote from Boonville as to be a non-event. I wanted to resume my habitual sleep of the true and the just but roused myself for that crucial first cup just as the second plane flew into another big building. I heard a black kid say to a reporter, “They ain't playin'!” It was the latest in the seemingly accelerating volume and velocity of major jolts to the collective central nervous system of us Americanos that began with the Kennedy Assassination and just last January featured the Maga mob attack on Congress, along with an Old Testament-quality plague, huge fires, drought, the usual mass shootings and, of course, the daily civil disasters of everyday life in the United States. How fast have things unraveled since 911, probably the last nationally unifying event we're likely to see..

A READER NOTES: Coast real estate. Random, but kind of interesting, I was looking at loop.net commercial property for sale on the coast and multiple inns are for sale. I don't look at that site very often, so I'm not sure if this is normal or not.

https://www.loopnet.com/search/commercial-real-estate/for-sale/?sk=240f52aeb3c8f9320ccb1592db0ac56c&bb=lqrjthy_pP3159ln9B

Blackberry Inn

Inn At Schoolhouse Creek

Two unnamed inns in Little River

Glass Beach Inn

Brewery Gulch Inn

I TRIED to get my two cents in on this exchange about U.S. Grant, but am too technically maladroit to negotiate the Redheaded Blackbelt's comment line so I'll do it here. The discussion was prompted by an article about Grant's tour of duty at Fort Humboldt and the following comments:

(1) Too bad the old buzzard didn’t drown when he fell into the slough. As president he launched an illegal war against the Lakota Sioux. He personally approved the mission to send Col. Custer into the Black Hills of what is now South Dakota. All this was over gold. 

(2) Ernie Branscomb: Nowadays it would be all about cannabis. He sent Custer into the Black Hills and he lost the battle with the Lakota Sioux. What would have happened to history if he had sent someone that would have won the battle? Someone once said “Don’t mess with history.” If the “Old Buzzard” had drowned, the union may have lost the civil war and slavery would have been much harder to eliminate. Don’t mess with history, learn from it. 

I AGREE with the reliably sensible and informed Mr. Branscomb. If Grant had succeeded Lincoln instead of the foul drunk and racist Johnson, Reconstruction policies would undoubtedly been strictly enforced by and the suffering of Black people at least lessened. Grant was a truly great man and, I might add, a fine writer. He managed to come back from dire poverty after Humboldt when he was reduced to selling firewood on the streets of DC to lead the victory over the traitors of the slave states.   

FORMER PRESIDENT George W. Bush used his 9/11 anniversary speech in Shanksville, Pennsylvania to condemn “violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home,” calling them “children of the same foul spirit.” Which also fits Bush himself, Cheney, Rice, and the rest of his murderous crew who, in the wake of 911, proceeded to permanently destabilize the Middle East and cause millions of deaths and desperate migrations of millions more. Bush's remarks are almost a Mendo-quality re-write of recent history. Of course all the post-911 death and destruction was a bi-partisan effort all the way, with Obama in the basement of the White House personally authorizing drone strikes. How many innocent families and wedding parties did Obama annihilate? BTW, that's your basic invidious comparison of 911 terrorists and our homegrown camo buddies, the latter being a bunch of fantasizing romantics incapable of anything more than an occasional mob action. A plague on all of them. Oops. Check that. We've already got the plague. 

FROM LOST COAST OUTPOST: “A shadowy shell corporation is threatening our future with an apparent proposal to purchase the Northwestern Pacific rail line, kill the dream of the Great Redwood Trail, and ultimately export coal from the Midwest out of Humboldt Bay....”

PURE HYSTERIA. It would cost many millions of dollars to carve out a trail through the Eel River Canyon, and restoration of the rail line? Into a billion, at least.

LIKE SENATOR MCGUIRE'S chimerical Great Redwood Trail, this manufactured scare story about a coal train linking the Bay Area and Eureka's “deep water port” is also fronted by the senator.

KICKING the coal train nonsense around at halftime of Sunday's Niner game, The Major suddenly blurted, “I smell Bosco!” Bosco is our shorthand for the utter ethical bankruptcy of the Northcoast Democrats, a dull collection of unprincipled career officeholders and miscellaneous opportunists, who, with the advent of former congressman Bosco, somehow wound up with the former Northwestern Pacific Railroad.

LIKE there isn't the Port of Oakland to ship coal outtahere? Like it isn't known exactly who is floating this preposterous scheme? There's something else at work here, and it already smells. Stay tuned.

RECOMMENDED READING: “The Decadent Society: How We Became a Victim of Our Own Success” by Ross Douthat. The old joke has it that America is the first country in history to move directly from barbarism to decadence without an intervening civilization. The author seems to agree.

DOUTHAT was a new name to this outback decadent. I found his analysis riveting. And true. And examined from a Christian perspective, also a departure for this sinner who hasn't read anything from a religious perspective since the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, circa 1960.

I WAS DEEP into The Decadent Society, a copy of which I found at the excellent San Anselmo Friends of the Library sale before I read the jacket identifying the author as a conservative columnist for the New York Times. 

POLITICAL BIGOT that I am if I'd seen that before I started reading I probably would have put the book aside, wrongly anticipating some rightwing nut raving about liberals as communist dopehead subversives. 

NOPE, far from the usual Trumpian distortions and straight up lies. Douthat is a good writer and, seems to me, a true statement of where we're at, which isn't a healthy place either spiritually or physically. Only in his very last para does Douthat recommend we get down on our knees, lift our eyes to the skies and pray for the deliverance only You Know Who might arrange, since he set the grand whirligig in motion in the first place.

THE AUTHOR is a versatile scholar who means by “decadence” the ennui he (and millions of us) feel that appears “to be sustainable rather than a prelude to collapse.” This malaise derives from large, sclerotic, seemingly irreversible, entropic forces — economic, institutional, technological, cultural, biological — that keep on keeping on short of the collapse doomer-thinkers anticipate. Best overall statement of The Problem I've read.

DEB SILVA WRITES:

Slow Mail

I have relatives in Texas, mostly in the Houston area. I read a FB post from a cousin complaining about her mail delivery. A couple of people who also live in Texas commented that their mail has been dribbling in.

I found an article telling about a plan by DeJoy that is supposed to streamline the mail. It's set to start Oct. 1.

https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/usps-slowing-some-mail-delivery-starting-oct-1-south-texas-may-see-some-delays/

I hadn't heard about this plan to slow the mail down. I think it's unusual that South Texas would be the first to notice that their mail is being slow and that they have already seen a difference in their delivery services considering that the plan isn't supposed to start until Oct. 1. No doubt, something is afoot, probably politically motivated. 

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Happy Labor Day to all who still have to labor and haven’t found a path to free money. You’re just not trying hard enough!

Speaking of destruction and work, I don’t know how many may have seen the segment on 60 Minutes where self-driving 18 wheelers were being aggressively tested and raising lots of cash investment. AI is used to drive them and they’re being touted as “very safe”. So there goes not only trucking jobs but an entire way of life destroyed all in the name of greater profit. Robots don’t go on strike, stop at coffee shops or need health insurance. Nor will they build any kind of trucking culture or solidarity. And the people (who would be all of us) who rely on goods and food to be delivered will be inadvertently supporting it, like it or not.

When the house of cards falls over or what the precipitating event will be, I don’t know. Kids were out of school for 18 months in a lot of places, health care is a racket on every level and the government has been shocked to discover if you pay people to sit at home then they’ll sit at home especially if rent is free, possibly forever.

[2] Yep when I was at one of my court dates many years ago to see if I would be spending 3 years in Quentin or not, there was a man ahead of me who was charged with DUI, reckless endangerment, and two counts of involuntary manslaughter. He was about 40, had been driving through Eureka with a 19 year old and 17 year old girl in his vehicle, when he wrecked and both girls died. Both of the young girl’s families were there to see justice served. The man got convicted and sentenced to all of 7 years in prison, with the possibility of parole in 3 1/2 years. That’s when I realized that our system is a complete joke. Dude killed two young women and was eligible for parole, I was looking at 3 years without the possibility of parole due to some special allegations, for having some weed and a few firearms (before you get all in a tizzy, they were two hunting rifles and a benelli, which I used for hunting). Stupid on my part? Absolutely. But what I had could cause harm to nobody, unless you were a deer or a duck. That man killed two young girls, and it was his 3rd DUI. California has its priorities wrong.

[3] Most pathological personalities act entirely rationally, other than the fact that they have exactly zero empathy for anyone else. They objectify everyone and everything and reduce things to cold hard calculations of net value. The business and political worlds are chock full of these characters, with Wall St and DC being their heaven. And the best are utter chameleons as well, able to alter their colors according to their environment at will. I’m sure they view the current scamdemic as one of the more humane ways to go about their little project and would readily say so behind closed doors. Personally, I think total nuclear war would be a lot more fun, but then that wouldn’t leave much for big boys to enjoy after the dust settled.

[4] The newsreaders demeanor and delivery has become more stilted and serious with an earnestness that borders on farce. The all seem to be convinced of their intelligence and virtue.

The overriding message I get from watching the news is — “Listen to US!!! We have the inside story!” And most importantly, “we tell you everything you need to know so do not think for yourself.”

On Inauguration Day last year I had it tuned to ABC and the newsreader said over and over as the Trumps were leaving — “this feels like an exorcism” . There was no moderating commentary from the other two mediocrities sharing the desk.

[5] Morality starts before conception. Call it ‘reincarnation’ if you like, or call it divine grace by an indifferent cosmic consciousness, it doesn’t really matter for the purposes of this discussion. It’s starkly apparent to the mother, either by overt kicks or deep intuition, that each child is different during those mysterious nine months.

Then right after birth! Doris Lessing wrote a frightening short novel, “The Fifth Child”, about an evil kid, also right after conception but also into his (I believe) eighth year if I recall, from the terrified mother’s perspective. One of the reasons the novel was so chilling was that it offered no solace as to what she might have done wrong. Lessing took great pains to show that the mother and father and the other four kids were normal, and to a degree, even boring.

Then there’s the more mundane, but extremely important factor of raising kids the right way. This is where young people’s morality is often going to be shaped, during the first six years of life. If inferior blood lines don’t doom the kid, an absent father or hectoring mother can finish them off. The opposite, of course, is true. Children brought up in a house where the parents value Art, show love to all other members of the family, and give them a spiritual direction (mostly by example), means the kid will have a much better chance of being that “different kind of Man”.

All this is to say that by the time an 18 year-old reaches university, he or she already has their morality largely in place. Students who’ve already passed these prior tests shouldn’t be overprotected as if they were fragile and weak and incapable of resisting (e.g) pornography and mind fucks. They’re going to meet those challenges in ‘the real world’ sooner than later, anyway.

Students, however, DO need excellent pedagogical direction, which, automatically right there, invalidates almost all university classes.

2 Comments

  1. Rye N Flint September 15, 2021

    RE: the apparently fleet-footed Evers sprinted away as the police dog bit his handler instead of the fugitive!

    “So… animals can sense evil” -Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.

  2. Rye N Flint September 15, 2021

    RE: So there goes not only trucking jobs but an entire way of life destroyed all in the name of greater profit.

    Do we really need to save a “Way of life” that require throwing gallon jugs of piss out of the window and blowing through Hopland doing 70 MPH? Me thinks NO… Bring on the robots. Give Truckers a better life operating heavy equipment for building houses or High Speed rail. What good does delivering cheap chinese goods to Walmart do for me anyway?

Leave a Reply to Rye N Flint Cancel reply

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

-