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Mendocino County Today: Monday, April 24, 2017

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JUST IN FROM CALTRANS

US 101 Closure Update – 4/23/17, 9:00 am

Reopening still on track for Tuesday or Wednesday, weather permitting.

Yesterday’s production, 7 AM to 7 PM, was 647 truckloads, and another 242 truckloads of slide material were removed during the night shift 7 PM to 7 AM this morning.

As you can see in these photos taken Sunday morning, a milestone was reached late yesterday: the excavators breached the band of slide material separating the excavations on the north and south. It is now possible to move equipment from one side to the other as needed.

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TRANSPARENCY ANYONE?

by Rex Gressett

The much touted openness and transparency in Fort Bragg's city government that has come out of the last few years of political wrath, general indignation and community opposition, is opened maybe a crack.

The City Council and all the committee meetings are online, which we wanted, but somehow it is not a great help to be able to see how government works when they are taking such pains to not to do anything. What things they actually are doing they are not doing openly. Certainly the arrangements that they make are not made at the meetings, so it all remains as opaque as ever.

I always go when I can to the mayor's open meeting on Monday morning. People come in with complaints about potholes and street lights and he writes it all down in his mayoral notebook. But frequently the same people, having dealt successfully with some aspect of city services, say something wistful about the impending Hare Creek development or about the GP mill site. They are wondering and waiting and hoping for a glimmer of leadership or for the hint of a plan or for any movement at all that could lead to a defined objective on the big opportunities that will define us as a city.

Mayor Lindy is breezy and politely unsure on all of that. You can’t expect too much. In my sight and hearing Lindy has been against, then for, then against and is now safely back on the fence again about Hare Creek. With Lindy it is not a single issue perplexity. It seems to be general.

When confronted with the Ruffing money grab of TOT (Transient Occupancy Tax / Bed Tax) money and the termination of the Visit Fort Bragg committee, he looked hurt and told me with feeling that the Committee was not going to be put out on the street for six more months. When I looked blank he explained that delay would give the City Council time to do something unexpected. I silently agreed that if they do anything it certainly will be unexpected.

Having the city council meetings and the committee meetings on-line is a great advantage to the people of the city, no question. The on-line direct to your home computer video is the stark record of what they do publicly, and it necessarily implies what they have done quietly behind closed doors to get where they are.

City Manager Linda Ruffing has shown great pride in the new transparency. She is actually strutting it. Rare indeed is the occasion where she does not mention how transparent we all are in Fort Bragg and in terms that make clear that it is all her own idea.

Ms. R has been city manager for 17 years. For most of that period the community council meetings were unattended. All we had was the official written minutes. Nobody knew anything. The Fort Bragg Advocate went right to Linda for the story, which she printed up for them every two weeks. There was no internet record of the meetings for her whole tenure.

The campaign to recall the mayor is almost two years old. The ballot initiative (Measure U) that was launched to throw a wrench in Linda's unique real estate manipulations was one year ago, followed by the overthrowing in two successive elections of every incumbent councilman except Turner who won re-election by 40 votes.

The city council meetings have been on line for a year, and in a truly accessible form for six months. Linda Ruffing claims to be pursuing transparency, I would say it seems to be pursuing her.

The abdication of our city council to the City Manager means you should understand that the important things will be swept under the rug. This is an essential element in the system. If Linda R were to bring before the council some item of consequence it would surely make them acutely uncomfortable and might kill the rest of us from surprise.

Not wanting to offend the council's fairly majestic complacency has meant in practice that the important things and the hard things and the problematic things are all systemically swept under the city hall rug. Linda Ruffing owns the rug and there is quite an accumulated pile of stuff under it by now. Most of the principle issues with which a responsible city council might concern itself live there permanently.

There is for example a $43 million unfunded liability for the desperately deteriorated sewer system. I am not talking about the waste treatment plant which is only a little over $10 million in completely unfunded but already spent public money. You would think it would worry them that they don’t actually have the money. That’s just it, they reason, it is because we don’t have it that someone will have to give it to us. Smart.

The $43 million unfunded liability is for the very pipes under your house, the pipes that bring you water and carry away waste. It is all basically gone. If you look with the unaided eye into the sewer grates on the street you will see toilet paper floating along down there. Not a good sign. Some of the main pipes that bring you water are made of hollowed out redwood logs. Kind of quaint, but the implication for effective city management is not so quaint and there is no plan or suggestion that the City Council knows or cares. City Manager Ruffing's rug is both comforting and useful, but it's getting crowded under there.

The mill site has been not stalled exactly but the City was participant in a multimillion dollar, 15-year long obstacle course extending across decades and somehow contriving to arrive as if by a divine intervention at the precise point from which it began. You don’t see that everyday. It would never have happened if key decisions were not swept under the rug.

Your own alley lives under the rug. If you are most folks you don’t have an actual alley, you have a mud track that bleeds water into the space under your house when it rains. Now there are alleys in our metropolis — fine ones — the ex-mayor has the best one. It cost $600,000 that the city got from the water control board. It is a model alley for sure and cost more than the projected cost of doing most of the alleys in town. Linda Ruffing has a nice new alley — not as nice as the ex-mayor’s — but very nice. The rest of the alleys: under the rug.

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KELISHA & ALESHIA

by Bruce McEwen

The Kelisha Alvarez prelim finally got underway last week. It had been dropped until the witness against Kelisha could be located to testify.

Kelisha, the legendary Ukiah street person, had done Aleshia Tuttle wrong, and Aleshia was downstairs in a holding cell waiting to testify against her sister of the streets.

Alvarez, Tuttle

The corrections officers rolled Ms. Tuttle to the witness stand in her wheelchair. Aleshia's lawyer, Al Kubanis, sat with her to advise her on the perilously delicate business of testifying against someone you share the streets with. Both Aleshia and Kelisha are homeless. Aleshia will be called a snitch now, but that won’t change anything: the creeps on the street will bully and rob her, either way. The pretense that there’s some code of decency involved in not being a snitch is a joke — but it’s not so funny when the bully is standing in front of the judge.

Ms. Tuttle has her own lengthy rap-sheet of petty thefts; she’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia; she’s paralyzed on one side of her hip and leg, and she does drugs — she has even gotten high with Kelisha a few times she said, but didn’t like it “because Kelisha always gets out of control.”

On February 12th Aleshia Tuttle had gotten out of the wheelchair and was lying either inattentive or under the influence on a blanket out in front of The Little Brown Bear toy store on South Orchard Avenue when Kelisha Alvarez came by and stole Aleshia's pack containing a bag of personal items including Aleshia's wallet, which had been hanging on the handlebars of her wheelchair.

“Did you see Kelisha do it?” Deputy DA Elizabeth Norman asked.

“Out of the periphery of my vision, yes.”

“Do you know Kelisha?”

“I didn’t know that was her name, but I had gotten high with her a few times and knew Scotty Willis was her boyfriend.”

“Do you see her in court today?”

“That’s Ms. Willis right there in the orange jumpsuit.”

“My name’s not Willis,” Kelisha shrieked triumphantly.

She apparently thought she’d won the case because Ms. Tuttle got her name wrong. Kelisha's lawyer, Macci Baldock, hushed Kelisha up.

For years, Kelisha had been a client of the Alternate Public Defender, but after Bert Schlosser died, Patricia Littlefield took over that office and used the opportunity of a change in command to fob off some of the more onerous clients on rookie lawyers like Ms. Baldock.

Deputy DA Norman asked Aleshia, “Did she threaten you?”

“Mentally, she did.”

“What do you mean?”

“She attacked me mentally in society.”

“How did she do that?”

“She growled and grunted like a bear.”

“And that made you afraid?”

“Well, yeah.”

“What was in your pack?”

“My cigarettes and lighter, some food, a bottle of water, a t-shirt.”

“Any money?”

“Yeah.”

“Did Kelisha physically touch you, at all?”

“No.”

“Did the police come back and show you what they found?”

“Yes, about half my things. No cigarettes or lighter, no food, no money, and only my t-shirt was left.”

On cross, Ms. Baldock asked, “Did Kelisha say anything to you?”

“She grunted and growled is all.”

“And how did you take that?”

“I took it as, ‘You better just lay there and play dead to protect yourself’.”

Short of a .44 magnum, this is indeed the best protection against bear attack, and Kelisha is the size of a teenage Griz and probably quicker and stronger than a young bear.

“You were familiar with her from before?”

“Yes, I’ve done drugs with her and she gets violent when she does, she gets out of control. And when she started growling I knew she was gonna get what she wanted, no matter what.”

“Were you under the influence of drugs that day?”

“No.”

“You’ve had some issues with stealing in the past, and on April 12th at Applebee’s…”

Judge Moorman stopped Baldock in mid-sentence and admonished her for asking about an open case. Baldock had nothing further to say for defendant Kelisha.

Officer Kevin Murray of the Ukiah Police Department was called. He responded to Aleshia Tuttle’s call. Ms. Tuttle described the defendant — who’s name she didn’t know — as a woman over 300 pounds with short red hair and a red beard. Officer Murray may have stifled a despairing groan when realized that Kelisha Alvarez who had been exiled to Oklahoma in a plea deal — was back in town.

Murray found Kelisha a short distance away, at the Chevron station on the corner of Perkins and Orchard. She was eating the last purloined cookie, and washing it down with Aleshia's water. The stolen pack was in a nearby trashcan. The rifled wallet had a single penny left in it.

Norman asked the officer, “Did you ask Ms. Alvarez what she’d been doing?”

“Yes, she said she’d been on the bridge with Scotty and went to get him some soup.”

“Did she have any money?”

“No, but she said she knew where to get some, so she was looking for ‘a friend’ to get money for the soup.”

Officer Brett Chapman was called. He had subsequently taken Kelisha to jail, and was filling out the booking paperwork while she was being searched. The six dollars missing from Tuttle’s wallet was found in Kelisha’s shoe. But the search failed to locate a meth pipe and lighter which Kelisha had hidden under a roll of flesh and had lit up as soon as she was put in a holding cell.

Ms. Baldock, speaking for Kelisha, thought the trifling worth of the goods stolen amounted to only petty theft, and that the witness had some credibility issues, but Deputy DA Norman said that wasn’t the point: It was a felony robbery because fear and the threat of violence had been used to take the pack.

Judge Moorman found the testimony credible, even though there were some inconsistencies, because Aleshia Tuttle knew Kelisha Alvarez was dangerous from past experience with her, and that her growling was definitely threatening. Kelisha was also found in violation of her probation, and the crime was committed while she was out on her own recognizance — unfortunately, she’s not a flight risk. (Oh, don’t we just wish!).

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CARE-A-VAN, COUNTY'S LOW COST SPAY/NEUTER & INNOCULATION MOBILE UNIT 4/28 FORT BRAGG

CARE-A-VAN, Mendocino County’s mobile low cost spay/neuter & inoculation unit will be in Fort Bragg at Fort Bragg Feed & Pet, 880 Stewart Street, Friday 4/28

Spay & neuter surgery by appointment only. Call now (707) 888-7698.

Appointments not needed for vaccines ($10-$13 ea)

For vaccines, heartworm testing, feline combo testing, microchips, please come between the hours of 10am-2pm

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UNSOLICITED PLUG: Mendocino Optical on School Street, about block south of Mendocino Books, Ukiah. Several bumbles, drops, crunches, and stomps had broken my glasses in three places. I taped a lens back, bent the frame more or less back to its original contour only to step on them again. I knew if I took my eyes back to where I bought them in Marin they'd talk me into a major cash outlay for new frames, maybe even a whole new set of peepers.

THE MAJOR to the rescue. My colleague is the very model of thrift. When I told him I hated to be ripped off for a new pair of glasses, he said he'd take my glasses to Mendocino Optical "to see what they could do."

WHAT THEY DID was save me a couple of hundred bucks. I was certain my glasses had been damaged beyond repair, and I know that's what the Marin crooks would tell me. But Mendo Optical, The Major reported, disappeared into their back room for a couple of minutes, re-emerging with what might as well be a brand new pair. Total charge? Ten bucks!

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LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I got this fan note the other day from a young friend in Ukiah.”

Dear Little Dog: You got room in your igloo for me? I’m one year old. Sweet. I like treats. Want to do my own blog some day. Taking classes in journalism.

“I replied, ‘Sure! But cute alone won’t hack it. Don’t forget to be funny’.”

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THE ALT RIGHT is playing Berkeley for saps, and who says college students get to say who can talk and who can't? Twenty thousand bucks for Ann Coulter? Banning these fascisti provocateurs is a serious tactical error. What libs should do is require that they appear in a debate format. There are still lots of left-libs in the Bay Area who can talk and who would have no problem intellectually swatting these repulsive characters like the bugs they are.

BTW, the notion kinda prevalent among the white working class that these people are standing against left bigotry on behalf of them is a huge delusion. Anybody who works for a check every two weeks and thinks the alt right is on his side is working against himself, much as he might enjoy race and fag bashing. The rightwing wants the permanent ascendency of white billionaires, that and the elimination of all government programs that make life a little easier for ordinary people, beginning with Social Security and right on down through food stamps. Single payer? Both parties are opposed because, of course, they're both funded by the same people pretty much.

AT THE MOMENT, the biggest obstacle to the interests and welfare of the working classes is the Democratic Party, currently stuck on issues irrelevant to most people. When Bernie popped up with a soft economic socialism he resonated with millions of people before he disappeared into the Demo swamp and we got the Liberace Hotel as president. It's a bad time for working people. They have nobody repping them.

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SHALL THE CIRCLE be unbroken! Noting former County Clerk Marsha Wharff in court every day for the trial of One Punch Charles Reynolds, we discovered that Reynolds is a nephew of Marsha's.

FOR THOSE WHO CAME IN LATE: Charles Reynolds is the tough guy who sucker punched Ken Fisher and killed him outside Boomer’s Bar in Laytonville in August of last year after an argument in the bar. He was found guilty earlier this month of assault with great bodily injury (i.e., death).

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NO SEGWAYS FOR FORT BRAGG

Hi,

We are surprised the City Council would seriously consider changing existing laws to allow Segways in city parks. It certainly seems like favoritism. Parks are supposed to provide a bit of peacefulness. Segways are a distraction at best, and judging from all the info available online, are so hazardous they have been banned in many cities, all over the world. Bainbridge park is too small for these tours, and Otis Johnson park has a very steep and winding trail. People go there to be immersed in nature, not buzzed by segways.

We have had guests at our home from all over the country, and none of them wanted to ride around on a segway, or be bothered by segway riders in parks or on the Coastal Trail. Judging from comments on local facebook pages, the majority of residents do not want these in town. Since motorized bikes and scooters, even regular bikes, are banned in City parks, Segways must also be banned.

Please vote NO to segways in City parks, including Rose Memorial Cemetery.

Alice & Douglas Chouteau

Fort Bragg

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BELOW is the cover slide for the Mendocino County Health & Human Services Agency’s presentation to the Board of Supervisors on April 18, 2017 in response to the latest critical study of Mendocino County’s Family & Children’s Services (aka CPS) department. (The title is not only an admission of failure, but the rest of the response was an info-free collection of empty promises, clichés and jargon-laden gibberish. The cover slide alone pretty much tells you all you need to know about the mawk mentality of this department of alleged “adults” and “professionals.”)

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GROWERS NEED TO GROW UP

We agree with the Mendocino County Superior Court judge who turned down an effort by local marijuana growers to nullify the tax on marijuana approved by 64 percent of county voters in November’s election.

Their legal argument over the technical reading of the measure is unimportant because at issue, really, is that they simply don’t want to start paying taxes on the tons of money they’ve making on illegal drug sales. They will appeal the decision of course and try to avoid paying those taxes for as long as possible.

Having to pay taxes and obey regulations is apparently a real problem for lots of local growers, many of whom attended a recent conference on the new world of legal marijuana growing. At the conference they complained about having to jump through too many hoops and how expensive it would be to be in the marijuana business.

Boo hoo.

Ask any business person how expensive it is to start a business or stay in business. This crowd in the marijuana industry who have been raking it in for decades tax free and ignoring all efforts to get them to be good neighbors and responsible operators are now seeing the writing on the wall: Not everyone will make it. Some may have to find other ways to make a living.

So be it.

Those who will succeed will be those - like the group setting up a processing facility in Redwood Valley - who have innovative ideas to streamline the industry, and want to do it above board, paying their share, and running professional operations.

(K.C. Meadows, Editor, Ukiah Daily Journal. Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal.)

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BOX CHANGES THE LOCKS

Redwood Valley Grange commits fraud to gain control.

After months of offers by the Guild of compromise, Jeff Box had all the locks changed and set up a security system in March 2017 in order to lock out the Guild members and force the legal owners to cede the property title to the Grange.

Jeff Box, the Master of the Redwood Valley Grange fraudulently changed the corporate ID of the Redwood Valley Community Guild, the current owners of the Hall at 8650 East Road. He filed in Sacramento that he is the Master of the Redwood Valley Community Guild even though he is not even a member.

The RV Grange is telling the community that they are paying all the utility bills, yet, so far, all utility companies serving the building at 8650 East Road state that all bills are being paid by the Redwood Valley Community Guild. The Grangers are using lies to persuade the community that they are in the right for what they have done.

It is only through fraud that the Grange can succeed in destroying the movement toward the Guild.

Robin Sunbeam
Treasurer of the Redwood Valley Community Guild

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CATCH OF THE DAY, April 23, 2017

Coker, Elizarraras, Foord, Guerrero

EDWARD COKER, Willits. False personation of another, probation revocation.

JESUS ELIZARRARAS, Ukiah. Drunk in public.

IAN FOORD, Pachuca, Mexico/Ukiah. DUI.

CHRIS GUERRERO, Willits. Receiving stolen property, suspended license, evasion, probation revocation.

Heger, Key, Mata-Verduzco, Rojas

MILTON HEGER, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

ALEC KEY, Las Vegas/Potter Valley. Vehicle theft, misdemeanor hit&run, disobeying a traffic officer, trespassing, resisting.

ANGELICA MATA-VERDUZCO, Talmage. DUI.

GABRIEL ROJAS, Ukiah. Failure to appear.

Sanders, Warren, Worthy

JASON SANDERS, Willits. Failure to appear.

LINDA WARREN, Lakeport/Ukiah. DUI.

DAVID WORTHY, Ukiah. Domestic battery, probation revocation.

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MVP

Editor,

Jerry Philbrick Lifetime MVP Award Nomination

I'd like to nominate Jerry Philbrick for Mendocino County's Lifetime MVP Award.

In 1968, Jerry started showing up at Mendocino High School football games with a super eight movie camera. Not just for Varsity games, but for Junior Varsity games as well. At his own expense, Mr. Philbrick delivered those movies to MHS football coach Jim Miller who played them to all contestants. Sometimes during math and chemistry classes. I was one of them.

Even though Mr. Philbrick had a business to run, he never missed a game. To my recollection, he never had a 'dog in the fight' - so to speak. No kids with his surname on the squad whatsoever. But he was always there. Coach Miller ran those movies to highlight strengths and weaknesses of a team who eventually took the North Western League Championship in 1970.

That pennant can be seen today on the wall of the Mendocino High School gymnasium.

Sincerely,

Scott M. Peterson

Mendocino High School Class of 1971

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ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE DAY: SELFIES

(1) Was just hiking a mountain in northern WA state with a girl. Reached a number of beautiful vistas. Each time, she’d pull out the phone to shoot “selfies”. But she did say once, “Excuse me, I’m being vain.” So I’d want this narcissist to raise my children? I’d put my kids through that?

People can’t sit still and enjoy silence or beauty, immerse themselves. They pull themselves out of it, like you said.

A 2nd example on the most northern spot in New Zealand, a lighthouse where the Pacific and Tasman seas meet. Am sitting watching and listening to the wind. Up come 5 germans in their 20’s. Selfie sticks in hand for each one of them. They spend 15 minutes goofing around, photo after photo of themselves, being loud, and then leaving. I couldn’t believe the morons. There was one girl who came with them, and she looked slightly embarrassed. What the hell do you do with all these selfies?

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(2) Before the selfie thing I had noticed long ago that being on TV, somehow, even in the most passing way as in a crowd or a disaster, provided many people with supreme pride and joy. As if only when ones image was on the screen were you made real.

I think the selfie thing is akin to this. If your image is out there in the ether, often against some widely recognizable background then you are made real, or a real someone. Perhaps because it provides the illusion of some small bit of fame. This extends to Facebook as well I think. Images and records of you, the virtual you, are more important to many than the real you.

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FOR DIRT DAY AND SCIENCE

 “While transporting an arrogant, demanding princess for a political marriage, Captain Kirk must cope both with her biochemical ability to force him to love her and sabotage on his ship.” –IMDB

Here’s the recording of last night’s (2017-04-21) KNYO (and, three hours in, also KMEC) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show ready to download and enjoy.

Or, thanks to Hank Sims of Lost Coast Outpost, you can get it this other way, which you might like better because it offers an instant-play option and isn’t surrounded by confusing flashing ads.

I had to talk really fast the whole time to get everything done and squeeze in the hour-long very rare Firesign Theater project Anythynge You Want To. A Shakespeare Comedie (!) while KMEC still had the stream (meaning before 3am). And I forgot to play the clips from the recording of Mendocino Storytellers I made Monday night. But there’s still next week for that, as well as for the first chunk of Jay Frankston’s Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez-like book El Sereño. Jay just sent me the chapters I lost since serializing it on KMFB ten years ago. Also I’ll be in Fort Bragg again next week, so make plans to come in and play music live or talk about your project, or whatever. You’re never interrupting the show. I like it when people walk in off the street.

But besides all that, here are links to a few not necessarily radio-useful but otherwise worthwhile items that I set aside for you while putting the show together:

The landing gear well stowaway’s view, minus the freezing anoxia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2RoG9gjS1k

CHICKEN.

https://vimeo.com/205200163

Same thing.

http://imgur.com/6e2XRNM

Mercury. The white powder is only so you can see it moving. This works by eddy currents, like an old-fashioned electricity-use meter, or a strong magnet falling in slow motion down a conductive tube, though that’s a brake rather than a motor, I guess.

http://theawesomer.com/controlling-mercury-magnets/421519/

The fabled one-hour PBS Andy Kaufman parody nighttime desk-and guest teevee show. It was real, they really made it, that wasn’t just another thing they made up about Andy Kaufman, and here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2A988tFGfE

Crazy sheet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_fmYBa4t1c

Bow to him. Bow to your god of yarn and sticks.

http://boingboing.net/2017/04/21/liartown-forthcoming-book-fro.html

Two guys who hate each other. In the real world, though, somebody nearby would at least mumble, “Get a room.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xulht8vpRRM

Some interesting pictures of North Korea.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/04/along-the-north-korean-border/523404/

Moving pictures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbKbL2Ux_CM

Giraffes are jerks.

http://boingboing.net/2017/04/19/trump-to-america-giraffes-a.html

Scarred for life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2ke_i6paDw

Normal.

http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2017/04/normal.html

JOLENE. And this is even creepier and more wonderful played at three-quarters speed. Here’s how to do that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daJn8Va7ozA

How many dots?

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/04/18/now-you-see-them/

Too many dicks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T926HtmFikU

2 girls 3 harps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UV-2E8kEqg

A French juggler.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKTZJRBlKyM

And this sad event recalls Vita (say VEE-ta) in Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion (meaning the back-story incident at the train crossing where a man died of looking at her).

http://nypost.com/2017/04/19/twerking-girl-causes-major-accident/

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THAT'S AMORE!

Accordion Club

Any accordionist, aspiring accordionist, or just admirers of accordion music out there. Trying to see if there is enough interest to get a local Accordion Club together - nothing fancy, just a chance to get together and discuss, learn, play and enjoy. If interested please respond atwww.facebook.com/mendoaccordion

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* * *

WORKING IN THE GOVERNMENT: IT’S HARD!

TO START, there are all kinds of positions and appointments to worry about, a fact that weighed heavy on the heart of President Harry S. Truman. Choosing the staff for Departments of State and Defense wasn’t enough, so he went ahead and created a few new jobs for very specific kinds of people.

* * *

New Hires

I have appointed a Secretary of Semantics—a most important post. He is to furnish me forty- to fifty-dollar words. Tell me how to say yes and no in the same sentence without a contradiction. He is to tell me the combination of words that will put me against inflation in San Francisco and for it in New York. He is to show me how to keep silent—and say everything. You can very well see how he can save me an immense amount of worry.

Then I have appointed a Secretary of Reaction. I want him to abolish flying machines and tell me how to restore ox carts, oar boats, and sailing ships. What a load he can take off my mind if he will put the atom back together so it cannot be broken up. What a worry that will abolish for both me and Vyshinsky.

I have appointed a Secretary for Columnists. His duties are to listen to all radio commentators, read all columnists in the newspapers from ivory tower to lowest gossip, coordinate them, and give me the result so I can run the United States and the world as it should be. I have several able men in reserve besides the present holder of the job, because I think in a week or two, the present Secretary for Columnists will need the services of a psychiatrist and will in all probability end up in St. Elizabeth’s.

* * *

HARRY S. TRUMAN, from his notes. Truman assumed the presidency upon Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death in April 1945. In roughly the span of his first year in office—in which time he dropped atomic bombs on Japan and subsequently helped to conclude World War II—Truman’s approval rating dropped from 87 to 32 percent. He defeated Thomas Dewey in the election of 1948. On Truman’s desk he had two signs—one was a quote from Mark Twain, ALWAYS DO RIGHT. THIS WILL GRATIFY SOME PEOPLE AND ASTONISH THE REST, and the other was THE BUCK STOPS HERE

(Lapham’s Quarterly)

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BOOMERS, AGAIN

Jeff Costello

A lot of younger people are apparently under the impression that baby boomers are the selfish "me" generation, who became yuppies, stock brokers etc. I've read a number of angry articles by X and Y ("millennials") generation people that assert this. It may be true, but I don't know to what extent, because I don't know any of these people. If I and most everyone I know born in the late 40s are in a minority of this generally perceived notion of what/who baby boomers are, we are apparently living in a different world. I was there in Marin County to witness the birth of the "yuppie" phenomenon, but from the other side of the tracks. BMWs were "Basic Marin Wheels" for the "I want it all now" crowd, but I was thinking "Break My Windows." One great disappointment for me about the 60's was that so many of "us" were merely pretending, affecting the look, the clothes, hair, etc. There for the party, the chicks, or maybe some were narks. Underneath it all they were squares, did not get the implication, the potential of what was going on. My distinct suspicion is that some of today's wealthy CEOs and banksters were among the phonies in the hippie scene.

I naively believed that pot and acid were going to cause an evolutionary human leap. Now of course, acid is gone and pot is legal in Washington and Colorado, and on the way to being legal in other states. And damn if the drug didn't really change anything, in fact, the same guys who wanted to beat me up for having long hair then are now sporting ponytails, pot is just another drug to have with a beer, politicians smoke weed and still do the same old shit. Marijuana has been taken over by the squares and worse, and legality is going make a lot of money for them. I haven't smoked it since -- around 1981. A drinking buddy of mine in Hawaii smoked weed all the time and still loved football, had anger issues and got into fights... in other words he was unchanged by it. And a lot of the growers I knew had elephant-sized egos and guns to match. These people were not hip and groovy at all. It was all very enlightening for me and I grew to dislike the whole scene very much.

Thirty years ago a guy I knew from Sausalito moved up to Humboldt County to get rich growing. Stories went around about garbage cans full of hundred-dollar bills, buried in the hills. Way out on a wooded ridge somewhere, I found him sitting on the floor of the cabin, leaning against a wall with ten or fifteen guns of various types leaning next to him. He was drained of color, clearly highly stressed and paranoid. The man looked utterly miserable.

"Bear" Owsley, the acid chemist associated with the Grateful Dead, who became a celebrity figure in San Francisco in the 60's, spent his last days in Australia, thinking it was the place to evade global warming disaster, and died in a car wreck. He had converted to a meat-only diet, and had a website up "proving" that humans were not designed to eat any plant-sourced food. Things and people are not often what they seem...

And now marijuana is legal in Colorado, and with it has come a land rush and building boom. The peace and love drug has not mellowed anyone out in this very conservative, gun-crazed "red" state. This here place ain't no John Denver song. I found a copy of the NRA magazine in a medical clinic waiting room, alongside the usual golf and travel stuff, and read dangerous crackpot Wayne LaPierre's column. It almost could have been a campaign ad for Trump, the biggest and worst boomer of all, born six weeks before me, and no more than ten miles away.

So - Boomers continue getting bad press, but we are not all publicity hounds or wealth-and-power seeking business types, sucking more than a decent share of energy from life. Time will tell how millennials and such are regarded by history. The only question is whether it matters.

* * *

MANZANITA MUFFINS

Manzanita Fundraiser Breakfast

Manzanita Services Arts and Crafts Fair and Breakfast Fundraiser will be held on Saturday, May 13, 2017 at Ukiah United Methodist Church Social Hall. Breakfast will be from 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. Breakfast includes pancakes, eggs with bacon, sausage, fruit, orange juice and coffee. Tickets for breakfast are $8 for adults $4 for children under 12. All proceeds go directly to Manzanita Services. For tickets and more information please contact Manzanita Services @ 463-0405.

— Donna Moschetti

 

25 Comments

  1. Judy Valadao April 24, 2017

    There was no law banning Segway’s from the trail. The issue was the agreement with the Coastal Conservancy and not knowing if allowing them on the trail would be a violation of that agreement. Since that first meeting the Conservancy has left the decision of allowing or not allowing the Segway’s on the trail up to the City. At the last meeting when it was discussed and approved to allow the use of Segway’s on the trail I don’t believe anyone from the public spoke against it.
    There are rules that have to be followed by the tours. Once the trails are connected they would enter on one end and exit the other. They aren’t going to be ripping around back and forth. Nine will be allowed on each tour but Lynn said her plans are for six.
    Like it or not Fort Bragg’s economy is based on tourism and if you want tourists you have to have attractions to bring them here.
    The tours up to now have been around town and in the cemetery. I haven’t seen them around town and I’m at the cemetery two to three times a week and have never seen them there. I did see two in the cemetery while I was aboard The Skunk Train. Members of the Donner Party are buried there and that is why the tour takes that route.
    I plan to go on the tour to see for myself if walkers seem bothered by the Segway’s.

  2. Marco McClean April 24, 2017

    I don’t know why you use my web page post instead of the condensed bit I sent, but that’s okay; I appreciate it. Something’s wrong with one of the links, though. If you have a minute, and if it’s not too much trouble, highlight “This works by Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.,” and replace it with “This works by eddy currents,” The link was just to Wikipedia on eddy currents.

    Thanks again for all your hard work. About half an hour of every one of my shows is just reading from the AVA. You’re a tremendous resource for local topics.

  3. Eric Sunswheat April 24, 2017

    ‘Acid’ is unnecessary to reprogram dominant paradigm, as Psilocybin mushrooms can be cultivated and have natural mechanism against chronic overuse more than once a week. Dispensaries that mix up cannabis with junk food ingredients and vend soda drinks, got it wrong. Inappropriate preventative dental care treatment, is a root of the problem, along with six figures dentist income, for four days per week work offset with investment of accumulated private capital for the robotics crown manufacture, and other equipment. More dental patient advocates are needed, because of ethical and critical chronic health implication circumstances involved.

    • Bruce Anderson April 24, 2017

      As a health conscious person, Eric, please serve your word salads with a simple vinegar and oil. No bottled dressings for me! Or should I try reading your comment upside down to make some sense out of it?

      • heilig April 24, 2017

        It appears Mr. Sunswheat missed some important vaccinations.

  4. Lazarus April 24, 2017

    “A lot of younger people are apparently under the impression that baby boomers are the selfish “me” generation, who became yuppies, stock brokers etc. ”

    Ya think…? Most realistic and intelligent ones did, excluding the “selfish” part of course, the rest of the so called “boomers” were doomed to the meaningless of back to the land, communal living, LSD, etc is good, and all government is bad…to name a few. And then there were those who, didn’t make it through…Suicides, prison or drug death..! The boomers were the natural extension of the previous after the filter, a comfortable life somewhere safe…
    As always.
    Laz

    • Harvey Reading April 24, 2017

      Nonsense, so-called boomers were about like every other generation. Most of us got Working Class or middle class jobs, just like the folks preceding us did. Generations are defined arbitrarily, to fit groups of people to particular political “notions” pushed by the wealthy rulers of the country. Truth is, every birth starts a new generation.

      • Lazarus April 24, 2017

        Yea…Go for it Harv, them booms broke every moral and code of the previous generation straight up, them WW2 folks, that greatest gen.
        Lets see, anti-war, (one of my favs), music, sex, art, speech, the church, drugs, out folks. It was a renaissance Harv… they only come along once every 400 years, and you say’n they like everybody else…NONSENSE all over your self…that fancy talk ain’t work’n on me.
        As always,
        Laz

        • Harvey Reading April 24, 2017

          Lazzie, boy, you live in a dream world. Human nature remains constant. Do a little reading about your so-called greatest generation (so named by a propagandist news reader from the Midwest), and those that preceded it.

          Even in revolutionary times, houses of prostitution were common, as was homosexuality. And, boys and girls regularly had sex without marriage, too–oh, my! They also carried on affairs outside their marriages (even that epitome of conservatism, Alex Hamilton). I’ve heard enough unsubstantiated, wishful-thinking babble like yours to last a lifetime.

          Next you’ll be peddling the myth that Vietnam vets were spit on by protestors, when the truth is, the only ones who treated them badly were the war hawks and the service organizations who wouldn’t let them join until the press got hold of the latter in the early 70s and rubbed their noses in it.

          Finally, if you consider my language “fancy”, then obviously you haven’t done much reading … or listening. Try both. They’ll open up a whole new world you for, if you’re not afraid of having your preconceived notions toppled into the manure pile, where they belong.

          • Lazarus April 24, 2017

            Harv, be careful, your insecurity is showing. And don’t call me boy…it’s buay…Now run along and play…what a jerk.
            As always,
            Laz

            • Bruce McEwen April 24, 2017

              Gentlemen, Gentlemen, Gentlemen.

              Please pause to consider:

              I know how to fix fights.

              But, I must insist, we must sell enough tickets for this bout to make it worthwhile?

              Correct me if I’m wrong…

              Gents:–. wadda-ya say?

  5. BB Grace April 24, 2017

    GThe first time I met past California State Grange Master Bob McFarland was at our first collective State Grange convention 2006 standing in line to collect our materials. McFarland introduced himself as a MSM guy who found the Grange as fascinating as me, but in a different way. While I took the convention as an opportunity to develop my understanding of what is this thing called Grange, McFarland busied himself taking pictures and interviewing people. What McFarlan liked about me was like sitting next to the A student who would help him cheat giving him freely the information I had gleaned in the two previous years of practical experience because Fort Bragg Grange #672 meetings had been full rites under past Master Bob Caulkwell. Bruce Brunell from Redwood Valley Grange was Mendocino’s Pomona Master for years and passed away a few weeks ago (and I don’t think he even got his Grange rites and draped charter), and while he was lax in his own Grange rites, he respected the Granges of Mendocino who believed in full rites. McFarland’s Grange had dropped rites, so McFarland didn’t know that much about rites and order. He wasn’t interested. That was his mistake.

    McFarland charmed the Grangers at the State with the idea that he could make us a magazine and web page to share with California the wonderful history, charity, accomplishments of it’s hundreds of grange halls, and to top it off, he was friends with PBS California Gold show’s Huell Howser, who McFarland arranged to bring to the next state convention as star speaker. Grangers were ecstatic!

    McFarland offered me a position with his California Granger paper idea as the reporter for Del Norte, Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino Granges. He and his wife Wendy came to Fort Bragg twice to meet me, have a Fort Bragg Grange breakfast and make a deal. As readers know, I am not a writer. I practice heavy self censorship and have never known freedom of speech when it comes to honestly expressing critical thoughts, it doesn’t sell product or sustain an agenda. I went to Sacramento once to meet McFarland and then State Master Randy Lewis, who gave me and McFarland our 6th degree rites. McFarland wasn’t interested in rites. He was most interested in the 11 story Grange building on prime Washington D. C. property; He told me. And that’s when I thought that McFarland had a far different interest in the Grange than I did. I have a thing for old California which each Grange sits like treasure. McFarland and I last saw each other at the National Grange convention in Sparks, NV where we became national, 7th degreed members together.

    I introduced McFarland to his lobbyist Mike Green who I had met at a Hopland Real Goods Sol Fest as my environmental work was based on hemp food which I earned the first medals ever awarded by the American Culinary Federation in 1999. I know McFarland better than anyone in Mendocino. Had I not been diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of ’09, McFarland would not had become Master of the CA State Grange because I would have exposed him. As life can happen it did happen that 2009 – 2013 were low years for me, illness and death dominated my life and I could not participate in Grange work as vigilant as I had.

    After my nadir I decided to return to my Grange #672 to reconnect with the wisdom, grace, and friendship I had enjoyed as part of my healing process, yet the people who I had invited into MY Grange, decided I wasn’t their kind of person. Some AVA readers can relate with that. They had decided that any Granger that knew anything about the Grange wasn’t their type. I wasn’t welcome. It was not a Grange, but had become a collective for local non-profit organizations. It took awhile to convince many the smell of conservatives within the Grange had been smudged out, but once that was achieved, we have what is the Guild operating Grange halls in Mendocino today, illegally. Many of us conservatives joined Whitesboro and we are happy, and we have stayed out of the McFarland Fort Bragg, Redwood Valley Granges mess because we respect a community has a right to self determination. But we now find ourselves being victims of the Guild’s Grange haters.

    Patrons love their grange which is each other. The halls are a lot of work and cost a lot of money to keep up. Fort Bragg Grange stopped doing rituals and became more a non profit organization convention hall with monthly breakfast for non government, state parks folks and honestly, though I live near the Fort Bragg Grange, bought my property to be near my Fort Bragg Grange, the true Grangers had died or gone, so it became a nothing to me, but I understand how important it is to the community of Fort Bragg non profits and NGOs. If a Grange wants to be a Guild, be a Guild, just do it correctly and not with McFarland.

    McFarland is a con artist. He conned the CA State Grange and every member who took rites under him from 2011 – 2015 have no idea what is a Grange because he didn’t give them their rites or knowledge to what is the charter and how it works or how to become a Master, or even what master menas (it’s a trigger word on the left). McFarland couldn’t pull off his crime had he given new Grange members their proper rites.

    Grangers see Guilders as victims of McFarland. The Guilders love the Grange halls and the communities they’ve developed, but they don’t like Grangers, they don’t want rites, think the whole Grange thing is crap and are accusing Grangers of crimes against our own communities. It’s a shame because it’s lies that make us all lose.

    While there are Granges across the US getting national recognition for preserving their halls and hundreds of members operate co ops and fairs, fighting to be free of GMO, which McFarland let down every state fighting that good fight when he pulled out as a protest.. that’s not how the Grange works.. Monsanto won. CA was hurt tremendously by McFarland who I think he had no idea what he was doing at the national convention being he didn’t care about rites and exposed himself as a fraud.

    Grangers are sad to know many people who love working Grange halls breakfasts would rather be like McFarland, and do it their way. But we also understand from 165 years of history that communities change. Fort Bragg better serves non profits that work in the city. There is a proper way to legally take a Grange building and that’s not what McFarland is doing.

    Mendocino has National Grangers. I am one. And I belong to the State and I’m an Associate of Fort Bragg Grange #672, which the Guild applying for a title change to the County on the building is only snagging oneself into the McFarland crime group. He hasn’t won a case. He owes $144,000.00 and he’s going to owe much more. The recent Guild lock outs to Granger Halls are federally court backed. Legal documents are available on the CA State Grange web page. Pinch your nose and brave reality for a change.

    I also want to say, these harsh words against State Master Komski are out of place; it’s slander. Another shame because McFarland’s slander against Master Komski is a distraction from the real issue, “How does a community that doesn’t want to be a Grange take the property and be what they want to be?”

    Clue: Do it properly. Caspar was a Grange hall. How did they do it? Not with McFarland. Maybe they were brave enough to pinch their nose? Isn’t the hall worth it? Or is this antifa related crap?

    We had a wonderful breakfast at MY Whitesboro Grange yesterday where I made sure everyone knew our breakfasts are GMO. I had a picture taken of me serving Vice President of the Fort Bragg Guild our GMO pancakes. I asked if anything could be done to stop the grange haters of the Guild to stop sending hate mail and threats to our secretary. It’s not appreciated or deserved. The fact Grangers who were born and raised in Mendocino County, in their 80s and 90s are being threatened by “anti-GMO” Guilders who also serve GMO breakfasts isn’t winning the Mendocino Guild friends.

    It’s not about the property in the big picture for Grangers. It’s about ORDER. We have order and rites long before we ever had a hall. Guild rejects our Order and doesn’t care about rites, rather they care about owning the Grange halls and wiping the Grange off the map because they bought into McFarland’s fraud. Grangers see Guilders as victims, for now.

    and BTW, none of the active Mendocino Grangers grow any GMO products, we serve less GMO than Fort Bragg Guild, but boy oh boy are the GMO hash browns fried crispy in GMO oil good?

    Grangers are stealing their own halls. You have to be insane to believe that.

    • Bruce McEwen April 24, 2017

      He* was at the annual Jonathan Ott “lecture” in Eureka! — me too!

      *My Grandson, Eric.

  6. james marmon April 24, 2017

    Regarding HHSA “Tiny Humans”

    There is absolutely no information in that report that the Agency and Board of Supervisors didn’t already know. Its what I’ve been telling them for 10 years now. Just a look at my extremely large “Personnel File” will prove my claim, not to mention the countless comments I’ve made in the AVA and Ukiah Daily Journal over the last 5 years, after the County fired me for questioning authority and breaking the chain of command by going to the Board of Supervisors.

    This is an Agency that cares so much about “Tiny Humans” that they only employ a Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline Screener 40 hours a week, Monday thru Thursday.

    HHSA claims they get about 300 referrals a month. If they had a 24/7 Hotline Screener on duty that number would be cut in half. Instead On-call social workers are responding to phone calls that have not been screened and many that don’t meet the criteria for actual abuse of neglect, but they go out anyway. Then 2 or 3 days later they manipulate the Structured Decision Making (SDM)Hotline Tool to justify their already made decisions.

    UC Davis was really nice to HHSA in this report, you have to read between the lines to really understand what has transpired over the years in Mendocino County.

    Many years ago, before I got there in 2007, the Agency made a Paradigm Shift from the “Social Worker Recommends” to the “Agency Recommends.” “All decisions became Agency decisions not individual social worker decisions”.

    Structured Decision Making (SDM) tools are designed for guiding social workers decisions, and does not work well for Agency. The agency factors in things that the tool doesn’t, such as fiscal matters. Mendocino County can capitalize more on State and Federal dollars if a child is removed the parents, its better for everyone.

    CEO Carmel Angelo was aware of this from the beginning. SEIU Representative Lynda McClure and I met with her in 2008 on this very issue. I had transferred in from Del Norte County and we had been using the SDM Tools for 4 years before I brought my skills to Mendo. While in Del Norte I received 6 months training and technical support for the SDM people themselves. A look at the tools success statewide since 2003 goes without question, it reduced the number of children in foster care and their length of stay.

    So now Angelo returns from her vacation in Bali all sun tanned and smiley like nothing really happened the last 10 years, she is mistaken, I have an army of parents who are pissed and “without justice there will be no peace.”

    Here’s a link to that Report, try to read between the lines, a lot of bad things have happened to hundreds of Mendocino families because Angelo refused to listen to me as far back as 10 years.

    https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/edd66077-4cc9-4184-947b-2427fb861f12

    James Marmon MSW
    Former Social Worker V
    Mendocino County Family and Children’s Services.

    • james marmon April 24, 2017

      The meeting with Angelo and Lynda McClure was about retention of qualified staff and why the Agency was losing Master level Social Workers, the above explains it all. So now they are going to pay a bunch of uneducated people a whole bunch of money to do the job. Master level social workers ask questions, that is prohibited in Mendo, you will be written up for “questioning authority”.

      • james marmon April 24, 2017

        What do you think it did to me to be exiled from my hometown and county while terrible things were happening to young mothers, fathers and their children? Life in the new Redwood Community, don’t forget to donate.

    • james marmon April 24, 2017

      I was the SEIU 1021 Mendocino County Chapter President 2008-2009. That was before they told everyone I was crazy.

      • james marmon April 24, 2017

        The County has been dinged on numerous occasions by CDSS for not using the Structured Decision Making (SDM) tools. Audit after audit, there’s long paper trail on this subject. There’s nothing new here; except for it has now been made “pubic”.

        By the way, I still have that bridge for sale.

  7. Jim Updegraff April 24, 2017

    MLB report today: Giants: Sarmardzija gave up 7 runs and and the Giants lost 8-0 and now at bottom of their division with a 6-13 record. And going no where fast.
    A’s lost 11-1 and Triggs who had a 3-0, 0.00 ERA record gave up 6 runs Relief pitcher Alcantara gave up 5 runs The plus for the A’s they are 2nd in their division with a 10-9 record.

    • George Hollister April 24, 2017

      The Giants starting pitching has the highest ERA in MLB. Of the Giants starters, Matt Cain, has the lowest ERA. Who would have ever guessed? Jeff Samardzija has the highest, which is no surprise. Also notice, few great defensive plays by the Giants so far this year. Quite a few pivotal defensive screw-ups, though. This Giants team is not playing the way they were designed to play. They also lack an up and coming star, which in the recent past they have always had.

      • Stephen Rosenthal April 24, 2017

        While the players are performing at below average levels, I lay most of the blame for this team at the feet of GM Bobby Evans. He signed an aging, coming off a serious hip injury Denard Span to an inflated multiyear contract last year; he signed Samardjiza, one of the most overrated pitchers in baseball, to a contract that may prove to be worse than Cain’s and Zito’s; he did not address left field, a glaring hole that everyone saw except apparently Evans; he did not fortify the bench, a weakness carried over from last year, nor rectify the lack of power throughout this lineup. When 18 home runs leads the team, there is a serious problem and it’s not the expanses of AT&T Park. The current makeup of the Giants includes at least 5 players that should be in the minors or outright released.

        George, I agree with your entire assessment except for one thing. Christian Arroyo is hitting .446 at AAA Sacramento and from all reports playing brilliantly. He also starred in spring training. He’s been in the Minors for 4 years and performed very well at each level, but there is widespread speculation that the Giants won’t bring him up until June when he passes a “team control” condition similar to what the Cubs initially did with Kris Bryant, last year’s NL MVP. In 2015, the Cubs decided to bring him up before that loophole kicked in and he was voted NL Rookie of the Year. I’m not saying that Arroyo will follow in Bryant’s footsteps, but with all the money the Giants are making, I say screw an extra year of team control and bring the kid up already. While the season hasn’t even passed the furlong pole, unless a major shakeup occurs this lifeless team is going nowhere but down.

        • George Hollister April 24, 2017

          Good, and possibly hopeful assessment. I look forward to seeing Arroyo.

          • Stephen Rosenthal April 24, 2017

            Just saw that they called him up and he is in the starting lineup tonight playing 3rd base! Drew Stubbs in center, Nunez in left, Pence leading off.

  8. Alice Chouteau April 24, 2017

    I think segway tours will appeal to a minority of our tourists. Do a little online research, and you will find numerous serious injuries of riders and of bystanders too. Remember what happened to the British millionaire who bought the company???
    Lost control of his Sebway, went off a cliff into a river below…died. My out of town visitors think segway tours are tacky and unappealing, preferring to walk.
    Google Segway lawsuits, Segway Accidents, Segways Banned…

    • Harvey Reading April 24, 2017

      Might be an interesting, if minor, means of controlling the populations of upper middle class and wealthy people. Anyone riding one those things near a cliff is not what I would call “bright”.

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