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Valley People (May 30, 2018)

RAINFALL TOTAL for Boonville 2017/2018 season: 24 inches, as verified by the National Weather Service.

THE RATTLERS are out. The Anderson Valley Fire Department, CalFire & the REACH 18 air ambulance were dispatched (4:15 pm) to the Yorkville Post Office last week for the report of a “snake bite.” The patient drove himself in from the hills in a GMC Yukon.

JIM SNYDER, Anderson Valley High School principal, reminds us that the high school's annual Spring Exposition of Student Work will be next Tuesday (May 29th) from 3:30-6pm in the high school cafeteria, complete with Paco's Tacos. "Students will be displaying a wide range of projects such as 3D printed models, string quartet compositions, student produced videos, a cultural time capsule, outdoor human graphing, and a Cenozoic organism evolution research project. Admission is free!"

YOU'RE AN OLD TIMER IF YOU…

Read the Mendocino Robin or Ridge Review, both local publications.

Dined at the ridgetop restaurant on Highway 175 between Hopland and Lakeport.

Went to a concert or dinner at the Music Box in Mendocino.

Remember when Highway 128 was Route 28.

(Marshall Newman)

GEORGE HOLLISTER CHIPS IN. You might be an old timer if you…

Remember when the Ukiah Road was a county road, and not State Hwy 253.

Remember Jerry Philbrick riding bulls at the county fair rodeo in Boonville.

Remember the Philbrick Mill in a tributary of the N Fork of the Navarro River.

Had the best Italian food ever at the Navarro Inn in Navarro. Rena Nicoli owned the restaurant and also owned two restaurants in San Francisco; The La Pantera, and Giovanis. Remember Jack Macdonald, from Navarro, with cane in hand, hunting for fresh chicken eggs in the bushes around the Navarro Store. Remember when Navarro had a dump, and it was really a dump where everything was tossed over the bank. Remember when Tony and Gretchen Husch planted their vineyard.

YOU’RE GETTING to be an old timer if you swam in Doc Marsh’s Indian Creek swimming hole. (That marvelous public amenity was ruined when bad people started hanging out there, breaking beer bottles in the water and generally making the pond unusable by women and children, and anyone else who’d rather not watch stupid people at play.)

“YOU’RE AN OLD TIMER IF YOU… Went to a concert or dinner at the Music Box in Mendocino. Lots of untold, or buried history there. Don Fry was the owner of the Music Box. He was part of the gay scene on the Coast, for what it was, pre-hippy. How many remember, Israeli Folk Dancing on the Coast? That was Don Fry, too. Another gay guy was Ted Watkins, someone who did many people’s taxes, and got many people in trouble with the IRS. Ted built, and operated the Pine Ridge Lodge, later to become Toad Hall. There are lots of Ted Watkins stories, and they are all true. For a period, Don Fry worked at the Pine Beach Lodge as a musician. Don passed about 15 years ago, living in Ukiah, and spending time at Burger King where he was a fixture. It was in his obituary. Go figure. — George Hollister

MICHELLE HUTCHINS, Superintendent of Anderson Valley School District.

Public expression comment at Board of Supervisors Meeting, Tuesday, May 22, 2018:

“I represent the school district in Anderson Valley and I am a candidate for County Superintendent of Schools. Today I am speaking to you representing all superintendents in Mendocino County. We ask that next month you vote to leave juvenile hall open. As our mental health services are being brought back into the community, the county, we believe that juvenile hall services need to also remain in the county. To ship our youth outside the county to receive those services could potentially expose our youth to a much more serious population than what we have currently in our county. The school district superintendents spoke last Friday on this item. We are asking for some time to be able to explore alternatives to juvenile hall programs that are small. There are some innovative programs in the state and we would like to have the time to look at those programs and present you with a different format for how we feel deal with our juvenile probation students today.”

FOR $600 a night, two-night minimum, you can rent, via Air B'nB, the AVA's old headquarters on Anderson Valley Way, accumulated vibes absolutely free. For $20 a night, half-night minimum, when I’m not there, you can rent my bedroom at my new place next door to the Redwood Drive-In. Call for details.

GRO GROWING. Community Garden update The Community Garden at the AV Elder Home has all 24 raised beds and in-ground plots adopted for this season and things are growing well! The Mendocino College Agriculture Program generously donated a tray of plant starts to the Community Garden, which was appreciated by the gardeners. —Donna Pierson-Pugh

THE UKIAH PAPER says Jerry Karp, a Boonville guy, and a good guy wherever he happens to be, is selling his Ukiah used book store where some 80,000 tomes are for sale. In its prior incarnations, and it’s had several before Jerry, Village Books was, uh, disorderly you could say, although if you asked the lady at the counter she could point you to your general area of interest. Jerry brought order to what had been an intimidating clutter to establish a nice business of a type fast disappearing, disappearing expect for Boonville people; Dawn Ballantine of Boonville has just opened a used book store in the rail yards next to Boont Berry Farm called Hedgehog Books, and thank the goddess for retro people, people who like old stuff, the people of Boonville, Mendocino County's most happening community.

INGRESS? Some kinda international computer game. A whole bunch of Ingressers, some from as far away as Russia and Indonesia, were ingressing at Camp Navarro over the Memorial Day Weekend, which accounts for the puzzled caller who asked, "What's the deal with all the nerdy-looking people wandering around the Navarro Store last coupla days?"

TUNED IN KZYX news last Wednesday morning unaware it was fundraising time, meaning double the audio irritation ordinarily served up by the station. Also noted the beyond dumb return to endless weather and road "reporting" which, the last time I tuned in, had been delivered with a succinct "Cool and windy on the Northcoast today.” And then it was on to three minutes of road work descriptions covering the whole County! I also noted that the station's fundraising team failed to advertise $25 memberships supposedly available to those rare NPR listeners who work hard for a living. Even in mostly rural Mendo these days the media din is considerable, and highly competitive. If KZYX were intelligently managed, the Philo audio club would “reach out,” as the conciliatory put it, to the station’s ever more lengthy enemies list to at least try to get all of them back aboard. And then they’d at least try to organize a smart morning news show that would lure locals as a must listen every day. And so on. Won’t happen. The insiders will sit around wondering why they were twenty thou short during their recent fund drive, and Mendocino County’s stumbling experiment in public radio will continue its slow fade.

JEEZ, MR. NEGATIVE, don't you like anything about Public Radio, Mendocino County? Ahem. As a paid up station member, I assume I have a right to air my opinions about the Philo operation. I also think anyone and everyone, member or not, has the right to full access since the thing is mostly publicly-funded. If it had to compete in the free enterprise jungle unsubsidized it would have gone under long ago. It's mostly an audio pacifier for comfortable people.

I LISTEN for three or four hours on Wednesday mornings as I deliver Boonville's beloved weekly. Jeff Blankfort and Patti Lipmanson represent a consistent learning experience, although Ms. L sounds like she's speaking through a garden hose. And I enjoy Patrick Gomes classical music every Wednesday. Gomes backs up his claim that he brings us lots of music seldom heard — in my case, never heard. I have also heard irregular broadcasts by Dr. Richard Miller and Jane Futcher that I thought were interesting but, as per ancient station custom, there's no real news, no real discussion of local issues.

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