DEPUTY COUNTY CEO Kristi Furman today announced the following: "It is with great regret and sorrow that I announce to you that Ana Mahoney passed away yesterday. Many of you may have been aware that Ana was recently diagnosed with cancer. Ana was currently serving as the Executive Director of Plowshares, a position she dearly loved. Over the years Ana served in various positions in HHSA from 1997 to 2008. Ana was at the helm of HHSA as the Interim Director when the Agency was first formed. Ana was a wonderful advocate for health and human services and all social programs. She cared deeply for the community which she called home and all of its residents. Ana will be greatly missed. A memorial is being planned for September 29, 12 noon at Plowshares. As more information is available I will forward it on to you."
ALL THE RECENT fires in Lake and Mendocino County have been contained, CalFire reported Wednesday.
BETWEEN JANUARY AND SEPTEMBER of this year, CalFire has fought 4,775 wildfires, dispatching its 7,000 permanent and seasonal firefighters from fire to fire. Since July 1st, the agency has spent some $134 million in emergency funds on wildfires.
THIS NOT-SO-SUBTLE racism is plastered on the sides of San Francisco buses in the form of a large advertisement: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” Most people are not going to note the distinction between most Muslims and Jihadis, but the obvious point of the thing is to paint all Muslims with the Jihadi brush while, of course, ignoring the ongoing crimes against Palestinians.
A WOMAN'S HUSBAND has been sick. He's been slipping in and out of a coma for several months, but she's been staying by his bedside every single day. When he wakes up, he motions for her to come nearer. She comes over, sits next to him. His voice is weak. He holds her hand. “You know what?” he says. “You've been with me all through the bad times. When I got fired, you were there to support me. When my business went sour, you were there. When we lost the house, you gave me support. When my health started failing, you were still by my side. You know what?” “What, dear?” she asks gently. “I think you bring me bad luck.”
IF CRANK KILLED Deputy Dog, imagine what it does to you. Morgan, the 15-month-old German shepherd from the Czech Republic, only began his career with the Sheriff's Department on February 12th. Trained to sniff out drugs, the dog bit into a bag of crank during a recent training exercise and subsequently died from ingesting enough of it to kill him.
A READER identifying herself as “An Old Bag,” passes along this observation: “Yeah, my grandmother was born in England in 1888 and had to leave school at age twelve to go work in a hemp factory. Not what I would want for my twelve year old granddaughter. But it will likely be the fate of YOUR twelve-year-old great-granddaughter. My mother, born in Liverpool in 1923, left school at the equivalent of our eighth grade to work in a shop to help support her family. Was it any wonder that so many English girls were willing to trade England for life in America as war brides? Mom thought she had died and gone to heaven when she arrived here in 1947. I still remember her packing boxes full of candy and other luxuries to send to her family back home. We (the collective we of this special and highly limited era) have enjoyed a brief period of untold prosperity built on the back of cheap hydrocarbons. In less than a century we went from ten-year-olds working 12-hour days, six days a week, in the woolen factories of New England to fourth-graders complaining because their teacher took away their iPhone so they couldn't coordinate their piano lessons with their tennis coach. They'll be back in the factories in less than a century.”
IN A LENGTHY tribute to himself appearing in Wednesday's Ukiah Daily Journal, and undoubtedly written by his office staff, Congressman MikeThompson again trots out his old lie: “When Thompson left school he joined the Army and went to Vietnam where he served in combat with the US Army as a staff sergeant and platoon leader. Wounded, he was shocked when the ambulance bus he was on was rocked by protesters when he arrived in San Francisco at Letterman Army Hospital.”
NEVER HAPPENED. Millions of Americans opposed the Vietnam War, all of them making the obvious distinction that the people forced to fight it were also its victims. But here's this demagogue claiming people were throwing rocks at wounded veterans. The only demonstrations I remember having anything to do with soldiers at the Presidio occurred at the gates in support of soldiers who refused to go to Vietnam. (My friend Fred Gardner wrote a very good book about them called “The Unlawful Concert.”)
IN OTHER VERSIONS of this shameful (and sinister) lie, Thompson said he was spit at. That never happened either, a fact you can confirm for yourself in an excellent book called “The Spitting Image — Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam” by Jerry Lembke, in which Lembke is unable to confirm a single instance of a returning veteran being spat on.
I SUPPOSE Thompson keeps telling his Vietnam-era lies about how protesters spit on him and threw rocks at him to bully public opinion into supporting the wars in the Middle East and our preposterous military budget. He's been a consistent vote for these disasters.
THIS LATEST REVISION of Thompson's old lie is buried in another lie, that this so-called “tribute” to Thompson is some kind of spontaneous celebration of his all-round wonderfulness. It's not. It's a fundraiser for him, and if you want to join the “tribute” to Mike it'll cost you $45.
Naw, I won’t support Thompson here or anywhere. As a Viet Nam era (stateside) vet, I was there when my friends were being shuffled off to combat; I was there when they came back in bodybags; I was there when they came back still alive, but crippled and dismembered physically, mentally, and spiritually; I was there when Viet Nam vets made up some 80% of the homeless in American cities, standing around on corners, bereft, with that 1,000 click stare; I was there when we demonstrated against that unlawful war IN SUPPORT OF OUR PEOPLE IN UNIFORM, the opposite of spitting on, or throwing rocks at them; I was there when 4 of the 5 of my returning vet friends then died violent deaths in motorcycle crashes, fights, etc.; I’ve been here to see the next illegal war, and the next, and so on, always speaking and working against these repeated and growing warcrimes, TO KEEP OUR PEOPLE OUT OF HARM’S WAY, to say very little of others elsewhere whom we’ve not seen fit to remember by their numbers, by their names, or even by the pound…No, I won’t be supporting this Thompson or anything remotely like him. Quite sincerely, rw