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Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, June 12, 2018

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KIDNAPPING CHARGE DROPPED IN CASE OF MISSING COVELO WOMAN

Mendocino County prosecutors on Monday dropped the felony kidnapping charge against the lead suspect in the disappearance of 23-year-old Khadijah Britton, citing a lack of evidence.

Mendocino County District Attorney spokesman Mike Geniella said prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence to charge Negie Tony Fallis IV with kidnapping his girlfriend, Britton, who’s missing and feared dead.

Fallis, however, remained in Mendocino County Jail on Monday on two felony charges: possession of a firearm by a felon and prohibited person in possession of ammunition.

Britton, of Covelo, hasn’t been seen since Fallis, 37, pulled her from a friend’s home at gunpoint the night of Feb. 7, witnesses told police. It happened less than a week after she told domestic violence counselors Fallis attacked her with a hammer.

In an email, Geniella called the case against Fallis “frustrating.”

“No body, no victim,” he wrote. “Very frustrating case with a lot of time and energy put into it by family, friends, community and law enforcement.”

Fallis, whose bail was reduced from $400,000 to $35,000, is set to appear in court Wednesday on the two remaining charges.

His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

“We’re all devastated,” said Laura Betts, Britton’s aunt. “This isn’t over. We lost the battle, but we didn’t lose the war.”

Mendocino County Sheriff’s Lt. Shannon Barney, the lead investigator, said the case is still open and active, and that deputies are in the planning stages of a new search for Britton.

“We are definitely trying to encourage the public to, if they know something, call us,” he said. “That little piece to them might be a big piece to us.”

But progress on the case has been slow, with potential witnesses in the small Mendocino County community of Covelo, population 1,200, remaining tight-lipped, Barney said.

“We’re still hoping for a break in the case from somebody who knows something, and we also still have evidence that needs to come back from lab analysis, so we’re hoping we might get something there as well,” he said. “It is our hope that we can solve this case and find her, one way or another.”

(by Christi Warren, courtesy Press Democrat)

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WILLITS POLICE DEPARTMENT’S NEWEST OFFICER

Welcome Officer Raymond Brady & his family. Monday morning he was sworn in as Willits’ newest Peace Officer.

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FORMER UKIAH GUN CLUB MEMBERS TO BE ARRAIGNED NEXT WEEK

The former president of the Ukiah Gun Club and another former board member will be arraigned next week on theft charges, the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office reported.

DA Spokesman Mike Geniella said a preliminary hearing was held last month for former club president Audie L. Norbury and former club board member Pamela Mathis, both residents of Ukiah, and that both would be arraigned June 15 on charges of possession of an assault weapon, grand theft, and buying or receiving stolen property.

Last fall, Norbury was booked into Mendocino County Jail on suspicion of possession of an assault weapon, while Mathis was booked into jail the same day on suspicion of grand theft.

Earlier in 2017, law enforcement officers served a search warrant on the residence where both of the suspects live and reportedly seized “office equipment, tools, reloading supplies, firearms, ammunition, documents and many other items of property,” current club President Mike Whetzel had written in an e-mail to club members.

Background: www.theava.com/archives/82298

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IT’S INCUMBENT UPON…

AVA,

Your coverage on cannabis is tilted in an extremely negative direction, no pretense of objectivity, and you don't make up for the imbalance by including coverage from critics like me. Am I too radical? My work is as vital as the professor's.

I hope you'll print my piece on Year One of Cannabis Regs and my assessment of how well they're not going. Everyone knows it's a mess but who can make sense of it? My analysis is widely welcomed by the community as the BOS romps all over us. Managers of the Willits Grange decided to introduce it and push it out there, not me, hoping to shed clarity on mass confusion. The CEO is successfully protecting her annual $300,000 by keeping the unwieldy weed people in disarray.

That is why it's incumbent on the AVA to step in, to be fair and carry our point of view on a regular basis, instead of allowing us to be drowned out by the powers that be, which suppresses the much needed debate. With no Supervisor to raise our points, no AVA to give us meaningful coverage, no mic at the lame local radio 'alternative', prohibitionists win. You should not abandon your role as the press, just because you personally don't think much of our laidback way of life. This major population shift is happening, you are needed and you are not there.

As a community, I must say, our reaction to the end of prohibition has been clumsy. Our worst is being brought out in this prime time period, as we leave the hills and margins and try to adjust to daylight and a regulated reality.

As a community, our reaction has been confused and clumsy. Factor in clueless out of county people in a stupor running our community initiative as an example of everything turned on its head. With corporate cannabis biting at the bit to take over, the Class K/cannabis community will be reduced to 20% or fewer when it all shakes out. If my land wan't already paid for, allowing me a low ends life style, I could lose it all. Those with big mortgage payments are in trouble.

Back in the day we hippies dropped out of the television trap, shunned normal jobs, withdrew our skills from the mainstream and set out on our own, unimpressed by money and finery, fortunately so we could put our energy elsewhere. By taking on the cause of marijuana/hemp, we added significant risk and ridicule. Still it's worth it.

We've always been on the losing end with the exception of Prop 215. Prop 64's Netflix author didn't meaningfully consult with us any more than politicians do. And he's supposed to be on our side. Anything over 6 plants is deemed commercial. But what if it's not for sale? The law says abate or be penalized. If you don't like it, sell and go elsewhere. But most people don't want land with a cannabis cultivation ban, so it's a fire sale on 80%+ of total county acreage (Rangeland, Forestland, TPZ).

Whatever your opinion of marijuana may be, it's important that AVA not begrudge the cannabis community objective coverage, a voice in the debate. Readers would be grateful for the content as well as the opportunity to hash it out.

I have a proposal for an uncensored rotating cannabis column representing all points of view, each column from a different author (Trump could have his say as well), designed to foster debate on the emerging cannabis population shift taking place in the County under conditions of regulation rather than prohibition, how its playing out in the here and now after 40 years of underground cultivation and what can be done for the future. As editor, I would coordinate the original pieces followed by feedback; criticism welcome.

AVA is sure to perk up and become more relevant and rewarding.

Pebbles Trippet

Elk

ED NOTE: I think we've done the marijuana issue from all possible perspectives, including our own which, boiled down, is that legalization was a huge mistake for people in the industry, that dope is bad for people, particularly young people. I know dope fascinates dopers, but to the rest of us the discussion is boring as hell, unless Sherry Glaser is presenting an argument before the Supervisors. I think the only interesting thing left to talk about is why do Americans feel compelled to anesthetize themselves. But head of a pin elucidations of Mendo's hopelessly screwed-up dope policy? Oh no. We're not masochists, and I don't think our readers are either. Pinches said it all when he pointed out that the local legalization policy could have been written on a bar napkin. We post everything you send us Pebs where many more people are likely to see it, but there isn't room in the paper-paper. Frankly, if I weren't insult proof after all these years, I'd be annoyed that you feel our coverage of the issue has been "negative." Or otherwise deficient. We've faithfully relayed everything said about it at the Supe's level and lots more besides. Jeez.

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MRC V ALBION LITTLE RIVER FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT

A READER WRITES: Take a look at this. MRC's vp saying the company knew about Measure M before the filing deadline 18 months ago and chose not to oppose it, and now they're claiming a refund, and spending more on lawyers than the fire protection tax they should pay as a matter of neighborliness.

youtu.be/MgyvLCzy1CU

The trial is scheduled for later this month.

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LET'S EAT!

Mendocino County grand jury report on School Nutrition Programs is now available to the public on the grandjury website at:

mendocinocounty.org/government/grand-jury

Prior to publication, each grand jury report is reviewed and approved by the full panel of seated jurors and is reviewed by the Mendocino County Counsel and the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court.

The published summary of this report is attached. You may access the full report on the website. Please inform your readers/listeners/viewers that this new report has been published on the grand jury website and advise them of the website address.

It is a misdemeanor for individual jurors to discuss grand jury reports or the process through which a particular report was developed and published. Please address any inquiries to the grand jury foreperson, who serves as the jury's sole spokesperson.

Finley Williams

2017-18 Mendocino County Grand Jury

grandjury@mendocinocounty.org

(707) 463-4320

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Mendocino County School Nutrition Programs

May 29, 2018

SUMMARY

Federal and State reimbursements for school meal programs do not meet all costs for ten of the eleven Mendocino County school districts. Districts have to use unrestricted funds to pay for staff and program needs.

To address this problem, the 2017-18 Mendocino County Grand Jury recommends that Mendocino County Office of Education employ a Nutrition Services Director who is a registered dietician. A Nutrition Services Director would be an advisor and consultant to the County’s eleven school districts.

A Nutrition Services Director would reduce program costs to smaller districts. For example, the Director could contract for uniform computer software for student identification, nutrition education, and menu development. The development of joint food contracts and bulk ordering would reduce program costs and improve the quality of food served to county students. This staff member would also monitor state and federal legislation and alert districts to policy changes that may affect school nutrition programs.

Every three years the California Department of Education monitors meal programs in each school to insure conformity to the regulations. Irregularities and program non-compliance result in financial penalties that compound the financial burden on school districts’ unrestricted funds.

More that 60% of Mendocino County school children are eligible for free or reduced cost meals. Mendocino County school districts currently offer students breakfast, lunch, snacks and some may offer dinner each school day. The grand jury noted that all children eligible for free or reduced cost meals did not take a meal; some did not care for the menu offering on a particular day, and often eligible families did not complete the form to apply for free or reduced cost meals.

The grand jury visited the three largest school district meal programs, and two small school districts that offer free meals to all students. All districts the grand jury visited met the requirments of the current legislation, some better than others. All could be improved by over-sight and training. All meal program managers would benefit from sharing their most effective practices with each other.

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HOUSING

Lisa Locascio is the incoming director of the Writers' Conference and the college's new Creative Writing teacher. A great addition to our community. Please help Jasper and her find a place.

Dear Friends,

Jasper and I are very excited to relocate to Fort Bragg this August. We are looking for a place to live in Fort Bragg or Mendocino. Our ideal home has 2 or 3 bedrooms, lots of natural light, and rents for $1500 or less a month. Also desired are a washer/dryer (or, at least, hookups), wood floors, outdoor space, walking distance to town--but, of course, every desire can be negotiated or adjusted for the right place.

So far, our housing search has taken the form of looking at Craigslist and reaching out to landlords, only one of whom reached back, seemed interested, and then stopped returning our calls. I will be very briefly (as in, for 24 hours) in Fort Bragg on Wednesday; Jasper will be there for the week of June 25 and can view properties. But otherwise we are conducting this search from afar, thankfully with local help from his family.

Lisa Locascio <lisa.locascio@gmail.com> “That Woman From Mississippi,” sequel to “The Last Resort;” both out in paperback. Currently reading: “Less” by Andrew Sean Greer

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LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Thank you, thank you to all you people who enjoyed and appreciated my graduation photo when I was a young pup. I made the mistake of showing my diploma to Skrag. ‘Big deal, LD. Us cats are born smart. You fool dogs have to be trained, taught stuff in obedience schools, walked around on leashes. Face it, short round, you're a natural born serf!’"

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BLACKBIRD FARM – YET AGAIN. Responding to a tip, the Mendocino Planning and Building Department’s Code Enforcement Division visited Blackbird Farm near Philo on Friday, June 8th. On arrival, it discovered Blackbird Farmusing an excavator and bulldozer to build a road on a steep, heavily forested slope without a permit. Code Enforcement immediately issued Blackbird Farm a “Stop Work” order. A Notice of Violation will be issued soon. CalFire and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife also will be notified. We expect to run a longer article detailing Blackbird Farm’s history of disregard for county regulations, and the local community, in the coming days.

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ED NOTES

ALWAYS get a laugh from the clean and sober people’s reassurance that you don’t have to be loaded to have a good time. Verily, verily, but the message is tiresome, especially in the concert context. The clean and sober concert was last weekend, which may account for all the sad faces around town Saturday.

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CALTRANS PLUS THE CITY OF UKIAH can only equal confusion and, in the case of Big Box Row on Ukiah's east border, vehicular chaos. I took a close look at the site prep underway to supposedly accommodate the new CostCo. Widening and re-paving access roads is nice but isn't going to make it easier to get in and out of the vast parking lots of the big stores. The area is already overcrowded, its access roads backed up at ill-timed lights and odd lane markings. When CostCo gets going next month expect all day traffic jams.

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MEASURE C, the bump in property taxes to support Coast Hospital, lost by less than a hundred votes than the two-thirds needed, the result of years of mis-management at the top. A few too many voters took the attitude that passage of an increase in the district's property tax would only encourage more of the same. But, as we go to press, Measure C is only short about a hundred votes. It may yet be voted into law.

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EXHIBIT A of why the Mendocino County Grand Jury has no bite: "Prior to publication, each grand jury report is reviewed and approved by the full panel of seated jurors and is reviewed by the Mendocino County Counsel and the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court." If this is meant to be reassuring, it isn’t.

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WORD DRIFTING over the hill from Pinoleville, is that the rez just north of Ukiah is looking at serious federal charges that include racketeering, which are scheduled to be sorted out in Federal court in Oakland in August.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, June 11, 2018

Alcala, Arreguin, Kaher, Moreno

ROBERT ALCALA III, Fort Bragg. DUI.

FIDEL ARREGUIN, Willits. Domestic battery.

ADAM KAHER, Cloverdale/Ukiah. DUI, suspended license, probation revocation.

SALVADOR MORENO, Ukiah. Allowing an unlicensed driver to drive, failure to appear.

Sellmer, Welch, Zazueta

JACOB SELLMER, Ukiah. Under influence, probation revocation.

RHONDA WELCH, Alderpoint/Ukiah. Misdemeanor hit&run.

GUSTAVO ZAZUETA, Redwood Valley. DUI, willful cruelty to child with possible injury or death, controlled substance, failure to appear, probation revocation.

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55 GALLONS A DAY EACH?

Editor:

On June 1, The Press Democrat published a difficult-to-find article informing us that Gov. Jerry Brown signed two laws limiting Californian’s personal water use.

These one-size-fits-all laws limit personal indoor water use to 55 gallons per-person per day by 2022, dropping to 50 gallons per-day by 2030. In typical legislative oversimplification, the bills fail to recognize California’s highly variable geography, which ranges from rainforest to desert.

So how will these draconian laws play out in our house? Despite our frequent use of public pool showers, once-a-week laundry, hand-washing dishes and low-flush toilets, we exceed the 55 gallons per-person per day limit. To comply with these new laws, will we be reduced to hand-to-hand combat at the shower door? We probably can’t shower and do laundry on the same day. Are holiday visits from extended family a thing of the past?

This most recent example of nanny-state intrusion stinks. Is this the governor’s way of thanking Californian’s for conserving water during the drought? What happened to the proceeds of the $7.5 billion water bond Californians generously gifted to the state in 2014? The dirt and stench of Sacramento politics just blew in through our front doors, literally.

Madeline Schnapp

Sebastopol

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Huge public high schools are un-manageable, factories of peer pressure and bullying, a prison with chalkboards. The “feel like a number” aspect is real. Grade schools are small and human-scale at a neighborhood level, we knew each other. The best year of grade school I had was in a 4-room rural school where every kid new each other closely, a secure FAMILY existence. In the early 1950s our grade school had a nurse who cared about us, she had a dental chair in her office where a visiting dentist examined every child and sent home a list of dental items that needed attention. Lunches were hot, good and very cheap. They gave us Polio vaccines, too. No cost. Someone had our back, someone cared, we felt secure — priceless to a child. Moving on to increasingly larger middle and high schools was an experience in increasingly stronger peer pressure, bullying, anger, alienation, and a desire to get away from it. Many drop out to get away from it and doom themselves to the lower economic rungs, poverty, crime, addiction, etc.

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WORLD WRASSLIN’ DIPLOMACY

by James Kunstler

Why not war with Canada? That pissant “nation” is cluttering up the northern half of OUR Continent, which we struggled mightily to free from wicked Old Europe. What doesn’t Justin Trudeau get about that? And when we’re done with him, how about a few rounds with Frau Merkel and the wee frog, Monsieur Macron? I’d like to see the Golden Golem of Greatness in a leotard and one of those Mexican wrestling masks, tossing these peevish international dwarves out of the ring like so many sacks of potting soil.

And now it’s off to Singapore for a championship bout with the opponent known as “Little Rocket Man.” There’s an odd expectation that these two avatars of unreality will settle the hash that has been simmering for sixty years between the divided Korea and the USA. Mr. Trump will make a deal to turn North Korea into a golfer’s paradise and Mr. Kim will promise to beat his nuclear arsenal into nine irons and putters. And then they’ll celebrate on Air Force One with bags of Big Macs and Buckets o’Chicken. (Let the aides and advisors fight over the Singapore Noodles and squid beaks in garlic sauce.)

The New York Times lost its shit Monday morning with a lead editorial that hauled onstage the stock villain from The Times’ repertory of international bogeymen: Russia.

If a president of the United States were to sketch out a secret, detailed plan to break up the Atlantic alliance, that plan would bear a striking resemblance to Trump’s behavior. It would involve outward hostility to the leaders of Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Japan. Specifically, it would involve picking fights over artificial issues — not to win big concessions for the United States, but to create conflict for the sake of it. A secret plan to break up the West would also have the United States looking for new allies to replace the discarded ones. The most obvious would be Russia, the biggest rival within Europe to Germany, France and Britain. And just as Russia does, a United States intent on wrecking the Atlantic alliance would meddle in the domestic politics of other countries to install new governments that also rejected the old alliance.

Ah, so…. To The Times, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Japan are little more than a pain-in-the-ass-ex-wives-club, and North Korea is the irresistible porn star with a huge rack, proffered by that evil old pimp, Russia, in the never-ending game of Rope-a-Dope they’ve been running on Mr. Trump since even before he glided down that fateful escalator in his gilded Fifth Avenue tower. Surely, the wicked Putin has rigged up the Singapore hotel with the latest spy-ware and loaded the president’s closets with whores and real estate developers to tempt Mr. Trump into every sort of unnatural act dreamed up in the Kompromat labs of Yasenevo.

I’m all for world peace, and I would like to attempt to take the Kim-Trump meeting seriously, but it is hard to imagine two characters less prepared by the rigors of reality than this pair. Each has been dwelling in a magic kingdom of his own life-long. Both exhibit behaviors typical of children: sulking, threats, bluster, and mysterious mood shifts. The supposedly serious adults around Mr. Trump must be going through the Xanax like Tic-Tacs. The military attachés around the inscrutable Kim might recall the 2016 execution of two NK ministers shot to death with anti-aircraft guns for displeasing the boss — one of them for merely falling asleep during a Kim speech. Who cleaned up that mess, I wonder.

Maybe something good can come out of this improbable set-up. I expect a kind of vaudeville act: a few moments of the two principals pretending that they understand what each is saying… a hopeful communiqué announcing the blooming of a million flowers, and a fateful blowup a few hours into the honeymoon when Kim, Trump, and all the spear-carriers on both sides realize that they had no idea what they were talking about.

Then, on Thursday or thereabouts the long-awaited DOJ Inspector General’s report comes out, after a going-over by the very folks at the FBI whose conduct is the subject of that review. I expect a new layer in the mighty cake baked by the white knights of the Resistance. This one will be called Redacto-Gate.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page.)

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SEX & POLITICS IN THE 1970s:

How I Learned the Art of Sincerity.

by Jonah Raskin

Sex in Cotati was out in the open when I lived there in the 1970s. It was so open that when a theater company put on a production of Michael’s McClure’s play “The Beard” in which the man who took the part of Billy the Kid actually performed cunnilingus on the woman who took the part of Jean Harlow.

Ricky Applebaum, or just “ Applebaum" as he was known, played Billy the Kid. He was the father of a small boy and he was a heroin addict. He claimed to have enacted a performance piece/circus act with a woman who was Richard Nixon’s niece. The niece leaned back against a wall. Applebaum outlined her body with knives that he threw at great speeds. Apparently he never even grazed her skin.

Most of Applebaum’s friends belong to an elastic group called “The Freestore Street Theater” who performed everywhere they went in Cotati, whether they were on stage or off. White haired Vitautus Alphonsus ("Vito") Paulekas was the nominal leader of the group. Already in his mid-sixties, he always had a young woman at his side, and the young woman, whoever she was, always had a baby on her hip.

A woman who called herself “Suzie Creamcheese” also belonged to The Freestore and there was also Carl Franzoni who was always seducing women, or trying to seduce them, or resting briefly before going out to seduce more women everywhere: on the street, in the natural food store, and at the Cotati branch of the Exchange Bank where all the female tellers had posed topless after work for a Korean War vet named David Roth who kept a scrap book with all the photos he had taken of them over the course of several years.

There were also plenty of free agents in town — Lenny, Danny and Peter — who were out to scam the system, along with millionaires like Hugh Codding of Coddingtown Mall fame. They were on SSI, which meant they received regular checks from the U.S. government and didn’t have to work to make money. They received food stamps, too, and they sold drugs and robbed drugs, too, from other drug dealers.

Danny also worked as a chef at a branch of Cattlemens where he purloined steaks, smuggled them out of the kitchen and came home at 11 p.m. or so and then grilled them and ate them ravenously. His hair, his clothes and his skin smelled of grilled beef. For a while, he had a girlfriend named Lisa who supported herself and paid her fees at Sonoma State University by stripping at “Everybody’s Talking” in Santa Rosa.

Danny, who spoke Yiddish as well as English, found another girlfriend who came from a military family and who had a steady job and would have done anything for him. She was that devoted and in love.

Lenny died young, but Peter went on to write and publish novels and to win acclaim in Europe as an anarchist.

I knew them all. I was part of the scene. I had recently arrived in Sonoma County from Mexico, where I worked for a year and met Mexican artists and millionaires. For the first year or so that I lived in Cotati, I did not have a nine to five job, but I had food stamps and I did odd jobs, like working in orchards and fields for farmers and ranchers, and in construction, too, when houses were going up like mad and contractors needed day labors like me.

I lived rent free in a large yellow house on Eucalyptus Avenue in Cotati, along with four women: the stripper; two nurses who commuted on 101 to Marin General Hospital where they worked at all times of day and night; and Susan, the woman whose bedroom I shared and who listened to KPFA all the time. KPFA shaped her view of the world and influenced much of her taste in music, which ran to the blues and rhythm and blues.

Susan was a student who had hitchhiked from Florida to Cotati and who was attending SSU in Rohnert Park where she studied political science. She was ten-years younger than I was, but she had had far more sex and drug experience than I had, though not all of it was enjoyable.

Susan introduced me to the members of the Society for the Study of Marxism, all of then undergraduates, all of them imbued with the belief that they were the first North Americans to discover Marx’s writings and that the revolution they were fomenting in Cotati was the wave of the future. This was in 1976 and 1977. They didn’t realize that they were at the tail end of an era of upheaval, not the start.

I was already too old to be associating with college undergraduates and latter-day hippies and freaks, but there I was drawn to the sex, the drugs and the music. Van Morrison would show up unannounced and perform at the Inn of the Beginning.

For the first time in my life, I met women who were prostitutes and the men who fell hopelessly in love with them. I met waitresses, bartenders, Irishmen who raised money for the IRA, and chicken farmers with thousands of chickens in thousands of tiny cages, all of them shitting and laying eggs until they could lay no more. Then a big truck with a big vacuum came and sucked them out of their cages and took them to a factory in Petaluma where they were made into chicken bullion cubes.

I went to lesbian dances and heard the singer and songwriter, Linda Tillery perform. On hot afternoons, I went swimming in a swimming hole in the woods with a group of lesbians, who wore the color purple before it was fashionable to wear purple and who would become fans of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.

A couple times a week, I hitchhiked from Cotati to Occidental in western Sonoma County where my parents were living in retirement. At the age of 67, my father was diagnosed with cancer. I took care of him for three months. On the day he died, I watched the undertakers carry his body out of the bedroom, while a black man who just happened to be washing the windows that day sang, “Swing low sweet chariot.”

In Cotati again, after my father’s death, I met veterans of the Spanish Civil War, and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), otherwise known as the Wobblies. I inebriated myself with revolutionary slogans, and became terribly nostalgic about the old, Old Left until a former British Communist Party member and novelist named Doris Lessing — who visited Cotati briefly — told me that I was “a revolutionary romantic.”

At the time, I wasn’t sure if she was praising me or criticizing me, though I soon realized that it took one to know one. Lessing had been a romantic revolutionary in the 1940s and 1950s, and then did her best to purge herself of her youthful dreams and illusions.

In the Carter era which began in 1976, I slipped into a deep depression that led me to abuse cocaine, smoke weed all day, and stay home and write books about B. Traven, Abbie Hoffman and Puerto Rican nationalists like Pedro Albizu Campos. I only ventured out at night for a beer or two. I’d watch the old white men in their overalls and the young Mexican American guys with bandanas around their foreheads as they shot pool in the dark pool halls near the old railroad station in Santa Rosa, just north of Cotati.

I thought that I was a character in a book by John Fante, the novelist who romanticized the American West in Ask the Dust, Dago Red and others. I adopted an Italian last name and changed my appearance and my persona. I grew a long beard and shoulder-length hair.

I almost died when I was on my bicycle one day and shouted “fuck” in earshot of a beautiful blonde who had almost hit me with her Ford Mustang. She stepped on the brakes and stopped in the middle of the street. I stopped, too. Three cars stopped behind the Mustang. A dozen men jumped out, then reached for the empty soda bottles on the floor of the vehicles and smashed them on the pavement so they had jagged edges. One of the men approached me, scolded me for using an obscenity in front of a lady and asked me to apologize to her. I looked at the woman behind the steering wheel and I said, “I apologize. I’m sorry.” Then, I told myself that I was grateful to the men with the soda bottles in hand who had given me a lesson in the art of sincerity and sent me on my way to shop for tortillas, beans and cheese at the Mexican market on the corner.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman and other books.)

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“PLEASE LOOK AFTER THIS BEAR: PADDINGTON…”

Sixty years after he first arrived on children’s bookshelves, the duffle-coated bear from darkest Peru will set off on his final adventure next week with the publication of “Paddington at St Paul’s.” Late on Christmas Eve 1956, Michael Bond, a BBC cameraman who had dabbled in writing, spotted a lonely-looking teddy bear, the last on the shop shelf. Dozens of books later, more than 35 million copies of his exploits have been sold around the world, in 40 languages (including Latin). Having lost his parents in an earthquake and stowed away on a boat bound for London, Paddington became a hero for orphaned and immigrant children. Bond died last year, but not before giving his blessing to two remarkable films, winning the hearts of a new generation. The brave bear’s lessons for life are immortal: to be kind, to stand up to tyranny and, in case of emergencies, always to keep a marmalade sandwich under your hat.

(Steve Sparks)

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AS WE WAIT FOR SIGNS OF HOUSING CREATIVITY FROM MENDOCINO COUNTY...

Habitat for Humanity plans to build cottages for fire survivors in Fountaingrove

pressdemocrat.com/news/8402905-181/habitat-for-humanity-plans-to

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8TH ANNUAL PARDUCCI CONCERT SERIES

Parducci Wine Cellars kicks off its 8th Annual Parducci Concert Series, July 14th, with multi-talented cover band Decades, "farm-to-table" cuisine prepared by Chef Nicholas Petti and the Mendocino College Culinary Arts Program, and of course plenty of wine and our popular Parducci Sangria. Advance tickets are exclusively available online at parducci.com. General Admission is $25 in advance, $30 at the door, with special discounts available to Parducci Wine Club members. For more information, call (707) 467-3480 or contact info@parducci.com.

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK

There are some very real and dark forces in US society at the moment. Yesterday new suicide research revealed a very palpable uptick in suicide, amongst all demographic groups in the US. People in the US are literally being boiled to death by real economic pressure. The increasing stress on people will not last forever – something will explode. Whether it means civil instability, or an election of an authentic autocrat, I don’t know. However, there will be an equal and opposite reaction to the type of applied force occurring in the country. I also want to post the suicide hotline. We lost another very creative person today to suicide with the death of Anthony Bourdain. National Suicide Prevention Hotline. Call 1-800-273-8255. Available 24 hours everyday.

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CORRECTING AN ERROR in Saturday's post titled Far Babar, a Babar Noir.

It's the kind of mistake I make when I'm exhausted, but Saturday evening, when I sent out the notice of availability of the recording of Friday night's (2018-06-08) Memo of the Air on KNYO and KMEC, apparently I put up a link to the recorded show from two weeks before instead, dang it. They were right next to each other in the folder and I just grabbed the wrong one. I know it doesn't inspire confidence, but let me win some of that trust back by giving you the right show now.

Left click to instant-play or right-click to download: tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0284

It's a pretty good show for the Cynthia Frank poetry reading alone. I hope you like it.

Marco McClean

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THE DEAN OF WILDFLOWERS

Illustrated talk at Grace Hudson this weekend

A Passion For Plants: Illustrated Talk on Carl Purdy Concludes Wildflower Exhibit

by Roberta Werdinger

On Saturday, June 16, from 2 to 3:30 p.m., historian and writer Dot Brovarney will present "The Dean of Wildflowers," an illustrated talk on the life and career of Ukiah botanist and horticulturalist Carl Purdy (1861-1945). The event is cosponsored by the Sanhedrin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, with further support from Exhibit Envoy, and is free with Museum admission.

"The trip was through lovely country, at its loveliest in May," Carl Purdy wrote, of his first trip to Ukiah via Petaluma by stage at the age of nine. "Brush fires had kept the hillsides open, cultivation did not cover much of the land and we passed through a long succession of wildflower gardens. There were masses of a single flower covering acres, or even at times, hundreds of acres." Those flowers would have included lupines, California poppies, baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii) and more--a feast for the eyes and for young Purdy's soul. The young Michigan transplant was well on his way to achieving his later title of "The Dean of Wildflowers."

Carl Purdy, 1940

Purdy's interest in all things botanical continued to blossom, as he explored Mendocino County's magnificent landscape on foot while befriending local settlers, including the young Grace Hudson and her family. He also met and learned about land management and local native plants from Pomo peoples, watching as they dug into the earth with sticks to unearth lily bulbs which they then cooked and ate, while the motion of the stick helped propagate smaller bulbs. Unable to afford college, he taught himself what he needed to know about native plants and corresponded with experts, including a collaboration with Santa Rosa horticulturist Luther Burbank. In his long lifetime, he wrote articles for plant journals; landscaped estates for wealthy clients; helped assemble the horticultural component of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco; and named a number of flowers for science, including the yellow Diogenes' lantern, which he called calochortus amabilis, Latin for "loved one." Brovarney notes, "He was always trying something new," cultivating a variety of flowers on land he homesteaded on the slopes of Cow Mountain, two hours each way by horse and buggy to town.

Originally from the Bay Area, Brovarney is well known in the Ukiah Valley for her work as a regional historian. After serving as curator of the Mendocino County Museum in Willits from 1988 to 1990, she was curator of the Grace Hudson Museum from 1990 to 1996. Currently, she is working on a book about the natural and cultural history of Lake Leonard and Reeves Canyon. Brovarney describes the joys and rewards of working in local history, such as the time she reached into a secretary desk while doing research at the Purdy family homestead and discovered a spiral notebook. Browsing through it, she discovered valuable documentation by Purdy grandson Carl Mahurin on a 1938 bulb collecting trip to the Sierra with his grandfather--information that had likely been sitting undiscovered for decades.

This will also be the last weekend to visit the Museum's latest exhibit, "Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change," which closes on June 17. Featuring exquisite photos of wildflowers from a variety of ecosystems throughout the state by photographers Rob Badger and Nita Winter, along with information on the threats wildflowers face due to climate change, the photos are an apt update to Carl Purdy's earlier work to care for the area's wild as well as cultivated land.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. The Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m. General admission is $4; $10 per family; $3 for students and seniors; free to all on the first Friday of the month; and always free to members. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

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ANYBODY WHO SAYS WE DON'T HAVE PLANNING? CHECK COSTCO.

The Planning Commission meeting Agenda for June 21, 2018, is posted on the department website at: mendocinocounty.org/government/planning-building-services/meeting-agendas/planning-commission

Please contact staff with any questions.

Victoria Davis
Commission Services Supervisor
707-234-6664

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THE BIG RED TRUCK (PART 2)

by Jeff Costello

The guy next door with the Big Red Truck came by to inform me that the four video cameras, two on the phone pole across the street and the two on the four-by-four tower in his yard, all with lights fixed on the object of his obsession, have failed. Maybe it was the big rain, and hailstorm that came with it the other day. No one can complain that this end of the street is not well lit. He believes there is a "crime ring" operating in the general area, obviously intending by-hook-or-crook to get his fabulous Big Red Truck. Interesting, more or less because this is a multi-racial working class neighborhood. Other than the big red truck, the only visible things on the block worth stealing are the guy across the street's collection of vehicles, either hidden in a garage or behind a locked gate. I was also informed that the cops did not give much of a shit about potential vehicle thefts, that his problem is "way down the list" of police concerns, and that if the truck was stolen his chances of getting it back were pretty slim.

AVA comments: "Those trucks and the morons who drive them are everywhere. Trumpers to a man, and get ready for fascism when the assholes mobilize."

Neighbor with the Big Red Truck has something new to fear. Last night someone shot the windows out of a car quite near where he keeps the truck. Local pawn shop eliminated their music department to make room for more guns. It's still the Wild West. I had to wait until morning to learn that Big Truck guy had not been shooting at would-be thieves (my first thought).

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AIR AMBULANCE MAFIA

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-air-ambulance-cost-20180611-story.html

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THE 14TH ANNUAL GOLDENEYE WINEMAKER DINNER

Goldeneye Winery, Philo, California
Saturday, June 16, 5:30 p.m., $150 per person
Six Seats Left
Call: 937-3833

All proceeds benefit: Cancer Resource Centers of Mendocino County

Music provided by The Real Sarahs

This special evening includes a multi-course gourmet organic dinner prepared by Chef Olan Cox, served on the terrace at Goldeneye Winery in Philo. Price of $150 per person includes dinner, wines, and musical entertainment by The Real Sarahs. Please call the Cancer Resource Centers' Mendocino Office at 937-3833 to reserve your seats at this intimate event.

 

16 Comments

  1. james marmon June 12, 2018

    RE: SOCO JAIL DISTRACTION BLOWS

    THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
    June 11, 2018

    Sonoma County Jail ‘yard counseling’ case settles for $1.7 million

    “Sonoma County agreed to pay $1.7 million to settle a lawsuit filed by former Sonoma County Jail inmates who said they endured physical assaults and verbal abuse by correctional deputies, officials said Monday.

    As a result of the case, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office has retrained its jail staff on use-of-force procedures and is in the process of purchasing body-worn cameras for sworn corrections personnel and installing cameras in common areas of the jail, Sheriff Rob Giordano said.”

    http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/8422996-181/sonoma-county-jail-yard-counseling

    • Lazarus June 12, 2018

      Where’s the video of the sheriffs beating the man in 2014?
      As always,
      Laz

  2. George Hollister June 12, 2018

    Dale Roberts writes in the WSJ:
    “Venezuela is on the brink of creating the first completely successful socialist nation in the world, a country without any capitalists or businesses, with no income inequality or private property, absolutely no dissenters who haven’t emigrated to Columbia, Spain or Miami, and without money (or at least money that is worth anything). Even Cuba hasn’t been able to do away with money yet. Liberals everywhere are insanely jealous, especially in Europe and California.”

    • Bruce Anderson June 12, 2018

      Whoever Dale Roberts is he’s beyond wrong. Venezuela has a large capitalist class and free enterprise galore. The business people have a large and active opposition party. The economy has been mismanaged obviously but Venezuela has also been strangled by our economic blockade.

      • George Hollister June 12, 2018

        Here is what I suggest. Get a group of socialist experts, and true believers, to be invited to Venezuela, to lead the way, and straighten things out. There are a number of visible notables who should be on the list. Maybe even Bruce Anderson, and the Pope. Take the success when it is obtained, and not before, to the rest of South America, maybe starting with Nicaragua.

        Get the group together, and offer guidance. The current dictator might be willing to listen.

  3. BB Grace June 12, 2018

    My deplorable perspective on Mendocino marijuana: I believe Prop 215 was well intentioned but doomed to fail having many flaws, starting with the word, “marijuana”, being slang. I’m not a writer; However, I understand that the nuances in semantics is important especially when it comes to courts. I worked on the proposition previous to Prop 215. I did not vote for Prop 215 because it did not include hemp and I protested the word, “marijuana”. I give Jack Herer and Dr. Tim White credit for working to correct the errors in Prop 215 by forming the California Cannabis and Hemp Act. I’m sorry they both passed away and Dennis Kucinich dropped the ball. The saddest part of Prop 215 to me, was the trials and convictions of many good people, true compassionate warriors who lost everything, some lost their lives, in vain as there have never been any gatherings to remember them for their opening the first dispensaries issuing a quarter ounce of medication free to members that had medical doctors permission. There were no sales, just donations, remember? I know many people thought of the free medicine as compassionate, but the real reason it was free, is the whopping mistake today’s marijuana advocates completely fail to incorporate (and how the big corporations will take the industry), The Federal Reserve Bank and IRS. Until you have that, all you’ve been doing for the county is contributing to the development of a police state.

    Mendocino County CPA last BoS said that legal marijuana contributed $1 Million to the economy. No one asked for a breakdown. No one from the marijuana community challenged to say, “We contributed much more in these ways”. How can anyone say marijuana is the economy when Mendocino County claims that marijuana contributed $1M? It seems to me we the tax payer are paying more for the crimes associated with the marijuana community, abuse of much harder drugs, gun violence, gangs, and environmental damages, damages many of us hoped would be eliminated with legalization, but legalization didn’t make Mendocino better, it produced reasons to make law and order bigger and a far more lucrative industry.

    President Trump recently said that he’s open to state’s legalization, which means states that have laws approved by the Federal Reserve Bank and IRS. https://www.treasurer.ca.gov/cbwg/resources/reports/110717-cannabis-report.pdf

    I sincerely wish the upstanding hard working marijuana community well. Since Trump is in the mood to pardon folks, maybe this would be a good time to have imprisoned peers recognized? That would be a good AVA story.

  4. George Hollister June 12, 2018

    Interesting side note on Carl Purdy: He was a child living and going to school in Virginia City in 1865. That makes him another one of the notables in history who had a Virginia City connection.

  5. Jeff Costello June 12, 2018

    Legalized marijuana takes a lot of the fun away. If Trump is for it, that’s even worse. He stands to make money, obviously. Surely he wouldn’t use cannabis himself, but I’d like to see him dosed with LSD.

  6. Jim Updegraff June 12, 2018

    Giants: Bumgarner’s performance in losing the game with Miami indicated he clearly his not up to par.

  7. Jim Updegraff June 12, 2018

    Trump vs Kim Jong Uh: Trump was taken to the cleaners by Kim Jong Uh.A lot of vague promises in their agreement. Just look at what has happened in the past with agreements.

  8. john ignoffo June 12, 2018

    If our species is indeed doomed in the short term, why wouldn’t anesthetization be a rational choice? Stoners are tendentiously boring, but we are very likely living in end times. To paraphrase a favorite song of my departed mom’s: I’ll eat when I’m hungry, I’ll drink when I’m dry, and if reefer don’t kill me I’ll live til I die! Sincerely, Iggy.

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