FRIDAY was a wild weather day, with nearly six inches of rain in some areas of Mendocino County. This post by Nick Wilson of Little River about 3pm nicely summed up the rain's weekend impact: “Not only is Hwy. 128 closed west of Flynn Cr. Road, there was also blockage due to flooding near Navarro Vineyards between Philo and Flynn Creek. Travel by the usual detours on Comptche Rd. and Flynn Cr. Rd. is risky and not advised. There are numerous road blockages due to slides, downed trees, blocked culverts and so forth. Hwy 20 had at least one lane blocked earlier today, and so did Hwy 1 north of Fort Bragg. Basically if it is not urgent that you travel to or from the coast, it would be wise to stay home.”
128 WAS CLOSED but not because the mighty Navarro spilled its banks, but from landslides deep in the deepend.
NOTE TO CALTRANS: The road closed sign at the Cloverdale end of 128 is barely visible, and when it is visible it looks like it was written by a little kid with a crayon.
KEN HURST WRITES:
“HERE’S MERILEE! — Marilee Talkington, daughter of Dr. Robert ‘Bob’ Talkington and Lucinda Talkington will have a part on the popular TV series and NCIS on April 17 at 8 PM on CBS. Marilee is legally blind and will play a blind gal who witnesses a car wreck. Her father Bob is a 1960 Anderson Valley High School graduate. Bob taught Marilee to play basketball with a hoop he put up at home. Marilee, through many many extra at home hours of practice at shooting the ball from certain spots, made the all regional basketball team while living in Woodland near Sacramento. Lucinda, Marilee’s mom, is also legally blind. She taught Marilee to be independent. Many years ago I traveled to San Francisco to roll out cars from a showroom so Marilee could stage a play. Later she was the newcomer of the year in a New York off-Broadway show. She is a member of ACT. This will be her first screen role. She is terrific!
PS. From the CBS/NCIS website: “On the episode "Sight Unseen" — NCIS searches for a petty officer suspected of assault who escapes when the sheriff transporting him crashes into a lake. Also, Torres works closely with Annie Barth (Marilee Talkington), a key blind witness who heard vital evidence needed to solve the case, on the milestone 350th episode of NCIS, Tuesday, April 17 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.”
MARSHALL NEWMAN’S interesting piece on California nutmeg trees, drew this comment from Aaron Sawyer: "A nice large CA nutmeg can be found right along the South side of 128, close to where the redwoods start as you head in from the coast. Keep an eye out for the shiny green needles."
YEARS AGO, my late friend Helen Libeu told me that midnight rustlers had logged a full grown nutmeg on her place some three miles up the Peachland Road. She told me that the tree is highly prized by Chinese. As I recall, Helen put the value of her tree at about $40,000 and said she was certain the thieves had been commissioned by someone who knew how to sell it.
FAIR BOOSTERS lead by the popular and energetic Palma Toohey are preparing for a Fair Spring Cleaning Event Day. A date has not yet been set. The event is described as “a clean-up day and celebration of our fairground, an opportunity for the residents of Anderson Valley to show their appreciation of our fair.” For more info or to sign up call Palma at 489-1088.
THIS YEAR’S GOAT FEST is scheduled for Saturday, April 21. Organized by the local Foodshed group, the festival will be held held in the Big Grove at the Fairgrounds and offers demonstrations of using goats’ milk, music, food, games, a bike rodeo, a goat parade, and lots of fun! 10am to 4pm. No charge. For more information contact Cindy Wilder at 895-2949.
DAVID RODERICK, candidate for 5th District supervisor, a business owner out of Hopland, is a graduate of Anderson Valley High School. Dave’s folks are known to us all as long-time residents of Navarro now living, I believe, in Hawaii. A fine with the candidate by Skip Taube can be found at mendocinotv.com/2018/03/30/12744/
NO O.D. STATS YET for Mendo, but America’s Surgeon General, Jerome Adams, says he wants more Americans to start carrying an overdose antidote to help fight back against the nation’s spiraling opioid crisis. The doctors wants people at risk of overdosing, as well as their friends and family, to start carrying the naloxone (“Narcan”) antidote and learn how to use it to save lives. Adams says 42,000 Americans suffered fatal opioid overdoses in 2016. “Each day, we lose 115 Americans to an opioid overdose—that’s one person every 12.5 minutes. It is time to make sure more people have access to this lifesaving medication, because 77 percent of opioid overdose deaths occur outside of a medical setting and more than half occur at home.” Naloxone is available over-the-counter and can bring overdose victims back from near-death by restoring their breathing.
I WAS ALARMED one recent morning by a young-ish man hanging half out of his running vehicle near Lemons Market. I hustled up to him for a closer look just as he stirred to say, “I’m ok,” righting himself to a seated position behind the wheel and closing his car door. I’d had cursory dealings with him when I’d assumed he was under the influence of something or other. The morning I found him dangerously loaded in Philo, and reading all the stories about opioid addiction in the daily deluge of bad news, I wondered if Boonville’s first responders are prepared to revive our dopers when they conk out. The Major wrote for clarification to Chief Avila: “Chief, a while back you said that local first responders might be authorized to use narcan "soon." (End of Feb I think?) We were wondering if that happened. And if so, have any been used either in AV or in Mendo to your knowledge by first responders?
CHIEF AVILA forwarded the Major’s inquiry to Ambulance guy, Clay Eubanks: ”Clay, could you fill Mark in on the details of where we stand with this application process?”
AND THAT’S where our request languishes. Like a lot of people, part of me has zero sympathy for people whose drug fecklessness borders on suicidal, as they then become our responsibility to bring back to life so they can do it all over again. No idea how many heroin addicts there are in the Anderson Valley, but we all regularly encounter people who are suspiciously languid, that’s for sure.
AND DARNED IF CLAY didn't show up just in time to inform us, "The Narcan protocols were posted and approved by Coastal Valley for use April 2nd. All of our EMT's were trained in the use of Narcan in February. The next step is for Coastal Valley EMS to give our organization (AVFD) approval to use all of the of the new EMT skills. They have not finalized an approval process for us to start this next step. I spoke to them today and they were still working on it. Our target date in Anderson Valley is to be up and running with all the new EMT skills by July 1st, 2018. State law does not require us to be there until July 1st, 2019. We hope to be well ahead of their deadline."
KZYX RE-ELECTS ITSELF
Meg Courtney Declares "Appropriateness Won"
Anderson Claims Russian Interference
The Board of Directors is pleased to announce the results of the 2018 board election and the new board members who will fill the six available seats on the nine-member board—
Two at-large seats were up for election” with seats going to the top two vote-getters—
● Bob Bushansky -- elected to board with 439 votes
● Renee Vinyard -- elected to board with 430 votes
● Bob Vaughan -- 263 votes
● Bruce Anderson -- 116 votes
Supervisorial District 2 “Ukiah” had one candidate running uncontested—
● Dina Polkinghorne -- elected to board with 591 votes
Supervisorial District 3 “Willits” Laytonville— had two candidates—
● David Hulse-Stephens -- elected to board with 500 votes
● Pat Kovner -- 171 votes
Supervisorial District 5 “Anderson Valley” Mid- and South Coast” Hopland— had two candidates—
● Tom Dow -- elected to board with 319 votes
● Len Tischler -- 287 votes
The Programmer seat” elected from among KZYX programmers” had one candidate running uncontested—
● Jerry Karp -- elected to board
Once the newly elected members are seated, the full board will comprise the following:
● John Azzaro “ at-large member and current acting president
● Jonathan Middlebrook “ District 1 member “Redwood Valley” Potter Valley—
● Dina Polkinghorne “ District 2 member “Ukiah—
● David Hulse-Stephens “ District 3 member “Willits” Laytonville—
● Aspen Logan “ District 4 member “Fort Bragg” North Coast—
● Tom Dow “ District 5 member “Anderson Valley” Mid- and South Coast” Hopland—
● Bob Bushansky “ at-large member
● Renee Vinyard “ at-large member
● Jerry Karp “ programmer member
COUPLA THINGS about the KZYX election: Not that their candidates — Hulse- Stephens, Bushy Bushansky and Ms. Vinyard — were in any danger of losing, but my spies tell me the three board incumbents, reinforced by Bushy's love interest, the fearsome Meg Courtney, and the station's Moonie-like staff, hit the membership list hard with "our" recommendations. I'm surprised Pat Kovner and I got as many votes as we did, and doubly surprised that there are that many paid-up maverick station members.
I THINK newly elected station trustees, Dina Polkinghorne and Tom Dow, are likely to disappoint the KZYX cabal. Neither one strikes me as stooge material. Dow nosed out Len Tischler for the 5th District seat. I was pulling for Tischler because of his impressive financial background. I thought it would be impossible for the penny ante budget thieves to get over on him, just as it turned out to be impossible for the ruling claque to get over on the positively heroic former trustee, Larry Minson, who blew the whistle from the inside on all the crooked stuff shadow station boss Stuart Campbell has been pulling off.
OPTIMISTIC about the CPB audit of KZYX this May? No. The government's annual grant goes right back into the annual purchase of government programming, i.e, NPR. Pulling funding because of "financial irregularities" would be one less customer for NPR. It's like me telling ava subscribers, "Buy a sub and I'll send you the money back so you can renew next year." The feds will take a look and conclude, “Who really cares what these fagged out old hippies and cult brains do in their little outback playpen? All our stations are run like this."
FROM THE ELECTION ANNOUNCEMENT: The newly elected board members will be seated at the board meeting and the annual festive celebration.... "Festive celebration?" Well, yes, this lugubrious crew probably needs reminders.
FORMER KZYX TRUSTEE, Larry Minson, writes:
When I was on the board, there were 4 employees assigned to local news as their only duties, which produces less than 5 minutes a day in on-air news, most of which are Caltrans alerts about traffic and weather which anyone could read off of press releases. The general manager and programming director should be combined into one position, and maintaining a full-time employee whose only duty is to secure underwriters is insanely wasteful, considering that he has failed to secure any new underwriters in many, many years. This position needs to be eliminated, or at least replaced by a private contractor on commission. While these and other examples of malfeasance and bad habits eat up the CPB funding, the station has ignored upgrading a very dilapidated broadcasting network, resulting in down time and poor reception, if there's any reception at all. Money properly managed and spent should have enabled KZYX to maintain a state of the art broadcasting network throughout the county. Once the station becomes compliant, this upgrade can happen quickly.
There's a whole other area of malfeasance that I haven't previously touched upon with you: The board maintains no records at all, other than minutes that show how nothing is accomplished from month to month. The KZYX Board of Directors has no file cabinet, locked or otherwise, at the station and maintains no records off-site either. When you meet with the board, you will find that they don't know what their duties are, and that they ignore all requirements concerning record keeping. Board members have no knowledge of how many employees there are, what their salaries are, and they never conduct reviews of the staff, including General Manager Parker who is their direct employee, as required. Neither are they given any access to records that would determine these facts. When a question arose concerning the general manager's contract with the station, it was learned that the board had no record of this employment contract or the hiring protocol followed or anything else for that matter. Mr. Parker was asked to give the board a copy of his employee agreement / contract, but he refused to comply. When I asked what records were maintained, the answer was none. When I asked, as a member of the board, to review payroll records and job descriptions and regular performance reviews, I was told to mind my own business.
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