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Mendocino County Today: Saturday, Sep. 29, 2018

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MEMO OF THE WEEK

(From Jen Banks, Coastal Valley EMS Agency EMS coordinator and contact point for Mendocino County at the Sonoma County-based agency, date not specified but recent)

Good evening Mendocino County EMS partners,

Coastal Valleys EMS Agency (CVEMSA) received notification today from Verihealth/Falck regarding ambulance staffing levels. Effective 9/30/2018, Falck will be reducing unit deployment and staffing as follows:

Willits -- M9132 0800-0800 seven days per week

Willits M.9133 (brown out as a 24 hour unit)

Ukiah North M9134 (0800 to 0800) 7 days per week

Ukiah South M9131 (0800-0800) 7 days per week

Ukiah M9130 (browned out as a 12 hour unit)

It has also been brought to our attention that due to a paramedic staffing shortage in general, many of our agencies are down staffing units with the Howard Forest emergency command center but not notifying the EMS agency. This e-mail is to serve as a reminder that down staffing units from the 911 system should be reported to the EMS agency.

Until an approved policy is implemented agencies shall send an email to Coastal Valley EMS Agency at coastalvalleyemsagency@Sonoma County.org when down staffing ambulance units from our system.

Due to the recent staffing issues, Coastal Valley EMS agency is scheduling a Ukiah provider group meeting on Wednesday, October 30, 2018 at 10 AM (location TBD). Please send a representative from your agency if you are unable to attend. We will be reviewing the current system status management plan and discussing staffing and notification. If this time does not work for the majority of the group we can attempt a second day if needed.

Please provide me with any additional agenda items as well.

Thank you and I hope everyone has a good evening.

Jen Banks, Coastal Valley EMS Agency EMS coordinator

Santa Rosa

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ms notes: It’s hard to know how much this reduction in service will affect the Ukiah Valley or Anderson Valley. It does show that giant corporate ambulance operations can just up and decide they’re cutting back service or hours if and whenever they feel like it, and is yet another reason to look very askance toward privatizing such an important emergency service. Apparently, the County and local emergency response agencies will discuss the situation further at a meeting in Ukiah next week. It may also make staffing air ambulances with paramedics more difficult. We’ll be following developments.

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LITTLE DOG SAYS, “I asked Skrag what he thought about the Kavanaugh hearing. ‘After all these years, you moron, you ask me that? Write it down, mutt face: I care about exactly three things — breakfast, lunch and dinner!’”

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FORT BRAGG City Council/Planning Commission to discuss Proposed Amendment to the Coastal General Plan for the Mill Site Reuse LCP Amendment on October 3

On October 3, 2018 the Fort Bragg City Council/Planning Commission will discuss Proposed Amendment to the Coastal General Plan for the Mill Site Reuse LCP Amendment. For further detail click here to view item 1A.

New Agenda 10/03/2018 for city.fortbragg.com

October 3, 2018 Joint City Council/Planning Commission Special Meeting… View in the Agenda Center

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FIRST FRIDAY EVENING MARKET October 5th

Boonville Hotel Parking Lot, 4:00-7:00ish

As part of C’mon Home to Eat this October, AV Foodshed is organizing a First Friday Night Farmers’ Market on Friday October 5, 4:00-7:00ish. The Boonville Hotel has graciously offered the use of their parking lot for this one-time evening market.

We're a week out from the market, but here's what we've heard so far from our vendors:

Renee Wilson - garlic, kale, cabbage, maybe tomatoes, maybe cukes, maybe some summer squash, and possibly leeks, if they don't bolt between now and then

AV Community Farm - meat (lamb, goat, beef), olive oil, veggies (butternut squash, onions, possibly others) and soap products The Forest People - some other produce along with our mushrooms

Angel's Innovations - soaps, shampoos, lotions and more

Wildeacre Medicinals - herbal tinctures and elderberry syrup

Joel Kies - soaps and shampoos

Chloe Stemler - chocolates

AV Foodshed will be selling Goat Fest t-shirts (if you missed getting one of this year's Antoinette von Gron original shirts at Goat Fest, this is your chance). We'll also be selling Boonville Farmers' Market products.

Apple Pressing for anyone wanting to bring fruit for pressing (please be sure to bring your own jars for the juice, and a container for the refuse).

We hope to have a food vendor at market. In addition, several downtown businesses will stay open for shopping, which includes places to eat out locally that night. Paysanne will be open for ice cream!

We will also have a variety of local musical talent throughout the evening and a kids' area.

Stay tuned - more info next Thursday.

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EXPECTED RAIN WON'T RAISE NAVARRO RIVER MUCH

Will the "Sacred Cow Sandbar" at the mouth of the Navarro River cause Highway 128 flooding & closures again this Fall? Probably. No measures have been taken to breach it - which was customary "back in the day."

But the expected rain coming won't do much to raise the river level - according to the latest reading of the (upstream) USGS Navarro River gauge (9:15 am) found the river level at 0.98' - and the rate of flow past the gauge was 2.36 cubic feet per second - or in understandable terms - 17.6 gallons per second.

NOAA predicts the river rise from the anticipated rainfall this weekend is only 1.8' at 1:00 am on Wednesday, October 3rd. The "discharge" rate - the amount of water headed towards the sandbar from the rain - is expected to peak at 37 cubic feet per second or 277 gallons per second from 1:00 to 8:00 am on October 3rd.

(Via MendoinoSportsPlus)

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ED NOTES

I CAN'T REMEMBER the last time I saw Senator Grassley, maybe during the Clarence Thomas hearings, but he looked the same and still reminded me of the cranky old guy who storms out of his house and yells at the kids, "If that ball comes over here one more time, I'm keeping it." Rhetorically, Grassley's all over the place, and the last guy who ought to be chairing a meeting, let alone an important one. I think Dr. Ford was/is credible, but had to wonder how she got a PhD without knowing what "exculpatory" means, and I thought Kavanaugh came off as unhinged, like a guy on the edge of a crack-up. Of course, you can hardly be surprised at his anger and tears if he's being lied about. But if Kavanaugh's as smart and as "judicial" as he's advertised to be he wouldn't have blurted out that insult to Amy Klobuchar, the least offensive Democrat on the panel, "Do you have a drinking problem?" He apologized, but losing it like that translated to me that Kav might be the closet nutcase that Democrats apparently think he is. He also came off like a person being challenged for the first time, which would be psycho-consistent with his so far smooth career ride.

SO KAV gets another week on the grill while the FBI checks out his secret years as an alleged rapist. As, ahem, a person who once had his own FBI investigation, I can tell you these ace sleuths placed me at the famous Civil Rights March in Selma, 1965, an error I was very proud of, but… In living fact, I spent that entire year deep in the jungles of Borneo, about as far from Alabama as it was possible to get and remain on the globe. Why this agency, founded by a paranoid, blackmailing, closet case of a crackpot, who spent his off hours in a cocktail dress, is considered the last word in investigations beats me, but here we are. Seems obvious that the Republicans didn't sic the feds on Kavanaugh as soon as the Democrats first demanded it because they probably know their boy can't withstand a hard look at his adolescent years.

SENATOR WHITEHOUSE from Rhode Island gets the Dumbest Questions trophy for his cretinous, close textual analysis of Kavanaugh's high school yearbook. I sat there watching the hearing all the while thinking, "How much more screwed can we be by these people, our leaders?" Here's this guy trying to puzzle out high school fart jokes while.... Well, I'm sure all of you have your own lists of rolling, unaddressed catastrophes.

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ACCORDING to Blythe Post, via the Ukiah Daily Journal, 1,063 homeless Mendo children live such precarious lives that they need regular snacks to carry home with them after school, wherever home happens to be that day. School people determine which kids might need the extra nutrition, and bless the County Office of Education for organizing the program. I don't know how many Mendo County children get free and reduced school meals, but it's a depressingly high number, and one more sign that our society is crumbling faster than it can be repaired.

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I HAPPENED to be wondering at that very moment about how much more irritating Google could be when a new "service" finished a sentence for me as an on-screen message asked something like, "Finish your thought for you?" No! I know my thoughts tend overwhelmingly to the mundane when they aren't simply infantile, but they're mine, not the property of these extraterrestrial dweebos who run our lives these days. And will someone please murder the ginks who think emojis are a communications aid? Ditto for the crew who come up with the daily google graphic, invariably a cartoon figure waving out at us or somersaulting and otherwise just being vomitously cute.

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I SPOTTED THIS COMMENT somewhere that stuck in my craw: "It is laughable to say Kap's skills are excellent. No one who understands football would agree with you. Also, Kap's fight for justice and equality, which included wearing socks depicting cops as pigs, was short lived. His agent let every NFL team know that if they signed him to a contract, he would stand during the national anthem."

FIRST TIME I've heard that Kaepernick would sacrifice principle at this point for another shot at the NFL, and I don't believe it. The writer seems unaware that a whole bunch of defensive backs, including the great Richard Sherman, are on the record as saying that Kaepernick is better than at least half of the quarterbacks presently starting in the NFL.

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“Damn — hunting and flu season.”

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FLORICULTURE, BOONVILLE BRANCH

Editor,

The beautiful display we all enjoyed in the Floriculture Building at the fair this year, all started with a great idea. Jody Johnson, in charge of maintenance at the fairgrounds, approached Taunia Green and me, Robyn Harper, with a new floor plan for the gardens. Jody started the ball rolling. Our creative gardeners took it from there.

We all thank Jody for her inspiration to place gardens in the center of the building and the result was the best show in a long long time. Credit was given to the building managers for the great displays but Jody was the reason it came together. Thank you Jody!!

Robyn Harper

Navarro

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THE CANDIDATES!

Candidate Forum for Mendocino Coast Health Care District Board on Monday, October 1, Senior Center from 6:00-8:00pm

The League of Women Voters - Mendocino County has announced that a Candidate Forum for the Mendocino Coast Health Care District Board of Directors will be held at the Redwood Coast Senior Center, 490 North Harold Street, Fort Bragg, CA on Monday, October 1, 2018, from 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. All candidates have been invited and have agreed to participate.

Each candidate will be given up to two minutes for an opening statement, followed by the candidates answering written questions from the audience. There will be a one minute response time for each answer.

At the end of the forum, each candidate will have up to two minutes for a closing statement. Candidates may remain after the forum to answer any questions people may have. Please note that this is NOT a debate.

The League of Women Voters neither supports nor opposes candidates or parties for any public office, but one of their missions is voter education, hence their sponsorship of this candidate forum. This event is open to the public; a League member will be the moderator.

If you have any questions, please contact The League of Women Voters - Mendocino County at 707-937-4952.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, September 28, 2018

Campbell, Donaghue, Henderson, Johnson

ROBERT CAMPBELL, Ukiah. Parole violation.

MICHAEL DONAGHUE, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ACEA HENDERSON, Point Arena. Under influence, paraphernalia.

ASHLEE JOHNSON, Willits. Domestic battery.

Luchin, O'Connor, Powers, Walrath

ARTYON LUCHIN, Susanville/Ukiah. Controlled substance.

BERNARD O’CONNOR JR., San Francisco/Ukiah. Under influence, failure to appear.

GRADY POWERS, Healdsburg/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

MARK WALRATH, Ukiah. Manufacture, sale or possession of leaded cane or billy club.

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THE FOG OF BAD FAITH

by James Kunstler

There’s a lot to unpack in the national psychodrama that played out in the senate judiciary committee yesterday with Ford v. Kavanaugh. Dr. Ford laid out what The New York Times is calling the “appalling trauma” of her alleged treatment at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh 36 years ago. And Mr. Kavanaugh denied it in tears of rage.

Dr. Ford scored points for showing up and playing her assigned role. She didn’t add any validating evidence to her story, but she appeared sincere. Judge Kavanaugh seemed to express a weepy astonishment that the charge was ever laid on him, but unlike other questionably-charged men in the grim history of the #Metoo campaign he strayed from his assigned role of the groveling apologist offering his neck to the executioner, an unforgivable effrontery to his accusers.

The committee majority’s choice to sub out the questioning to “sex crime prosecutor” Rachel Mitchell was a pitiful bust, shining a dim forensic light on the matter where hot halogen fog lamps might have cut through the emotional murk. But in today’s social climate of sexual hysteria, the “old white men” on the dais dared not engage with the fragile-looking Dr. Ford, lest her head blow up in the witness chair and splatter them with the guilt-of-the-ages. But Ms. Mitchell hardly illuminated Dr. Ford’s disposition as a teenager — like, what seemed to be her 15-year-old’s rush into an adult world of drinking and consort with older boys — or some big holes in her coming-forward decades later.

For instance, a detail in the original tale, the “locked door.” It’s a big deal when the two boys shoved her into the upstairs room, but she escaped the room easily when, as alleged, Mark Judge jumped on the bed bumping Mr. Kavanaugh off of her. It certainly sounds melodramatic to say “they locked the door,” but it didn’t really mean anything in the event.

Ms. Mitchell also never got to the question of Dr. Ford’s whereabouts in the late summer, when the judiciary committee was led to believe by her handlers that she was in California, though she was actually near Washington DC at her parent’s beach house in Delaware, and Mr. Grassley, the committee chair, could have easily dispatched investigators to meet with her there. Instead, the Democrats on the committee put out a cockamamie story about her fear of flying all the way from California — yet Ms. Mitchell established that Mrs. Ford routinely flew long distances, to Bali, for instance, on her surfing trips around the world.

Overall, it was impossible to believe that Dr. Ford had not experienced something with somebody — or else why submit to such a grotesque public spectacle — but the matter remains utterly unproved and probably unprovable. Please forgive me for saying I’m also not persuaded that the incident as described by Dr. Ford was such an “appalling trauma” as alleged. If the “party” actually happened, then one would have to assume that 15-year-old Chrissie Blasey, as she was known then, went there of her own volition looking for some kind of fun and excitement. She found more than she bargained for when a boy sprawled on top of her and tried to grope her breasts, grinding his hips against hers, working to un-clothe her, with his pal watching and guffawing on the sidelines — not exactly a suave approach, but a life-changing trauma? Sorry, it sounds conveniently hyperbolic to me. I suspect there is much more psychodrama in the life of Christine Blasey Ford than we know of at this time. She wasn’t raped and her story stops short of alleging an attempt at rape, whoever was on top of her, though it is apparently now established in the public mind (and the mainstream media) that it was a rape attempt. But according to #Metoo logic, every unhappy sexual incident is an “appalling trauma” that must be avenged by destroying careers and reputations.

The issues in the bigger picture concern a Democratic Party driven by immense bad faith to any means that justify the defeat of this Supreme Court nominee for reasons that everyone over nine-years-old understands: the fear that a majority conservative court will overturn Rowe v. Wade — despite Judge Kavanaugh’s statement many times that it is “settled law.” What one senses beyond that, though, is the malign spirit of the party’s last candidate for president in the 2016 election and a desperate crusade to continue litigating that outcome until the magic moment when a “blue tide” of midterm election victories seals the ultimate victory over the detested alien in the White House.

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

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CHEAP AUDIT

Editor:

So I just read that Gov. Jerry Brown ordered a performance audit of the state Department of Motor Vehicles at a cost of about $800,000. I believe I can make a suggestion that would save all of us taxpayers a lot of money: Fire whoever is running DMV and hire someone who can run it properly. I will send my bill to the state, guaranteed to be less than $800,000 for the same result.

Raleigh Chaix

Willits

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BARBARA EHRENREICH: “I experienced assaults like those reported by Ford and Ramirez decades ago and, except for crying on a friend’s shoulder, did not tell anyone at the time. But if any of my assailants were nominated for a position of power, I would come forward immediately. And loudly.”

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ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

The problem is that we are living in an age of decline, where people fight over the spoils like angry squirrels over acorns. It makes each political battle seem much more acute in importance and removes any desire to compromise, because people instinctively understand there is a shrinking pool of resources and wealth to access and it’s time to begin preparing for the long, long winter of our civilization ahead.

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YOU ARE FORGIVEN if you spent the entire day Thursday watching television. If you are an American citizen, it’s what you should have been doing, and if your work demanded your attention, I’m sorry.

This is a day when Americans should have watched. It’s a day when the power players in this twenty-first century football game fought fiercely over a loose ball, and it was historic in that power players do not like uncertainty, have no appetite for loose balls. Congressional hearings are elaborately staged things where everybody knows the outcome, going in. Today, nobody did, and the product for us participant/consumers was hypnotizing. It gave a view of the workings of government that was beyond “unusual.” It verged on “unprecedented.”

The accuser here won the Believability competition, but the accused denied his opponent a clear win by putting up such a vigorous fight as to keep open the possibility that the two fingers held aloft are actually four. He spared his Republican supporters the shame of being on the side of an obvious and violent liar. His steadfast denials kept the question open: how is it possible they are both so adamant? How could anybody proclaim innocence in the face of such a credible victim, guilt in the person of such an upright man?

In the end, the Ford account has more force than the Kavanaugh denials because he could not answer straight to the question of whether he wanted an FBI investigation. Given that he was, as he said, “all in,” in this fight for his good name, only a definite “yes” to the FBI question was logical, and his clumsy tap dancing around the question, in lieu of answering it, was decisive. All the same, he did not melt and go away under the hot glare, and nothing short of that would convict him in this fraught public arena, with these incalculably high stakes.

So. Short-changing your other responsibilities today was not just forgivable—it was called for. You are a participant and witness in this process. Your attention to it or inattention to it is the reason the players on stage in front of you today were who they were and not others, that many of today’s cast were members of the cast of 1991, when Anita Hill claimed her boss was not a good POTUS choice.

The mess we watched today was democracy in action, not dressed up for the dumb public’s consumption but fresh and raw and a glimpse like few we ever get.

I hope this ruins Brett Kavanaugh’s life. I know too much about his life, too much about privilege and entitlement, too much about the fanatical loyalty of the upper classes for their own and how the advantages of class are necessarily at the expense of the other classes. I know how this works on the world stage, how Brett Kavanaugh is closer to a Saudi prince than to the janitors now cleaning the Capitol hallways. I see that he has designed his life for this great reward, this seat on the loftiest bench of all, and how mad he is at the approaching denouement, that it might go against him. I hear him describe his adolescence and know to my own satisfaction, that leading a faultless life (except for a few wild-oats moments that we can all agree to pass on) was to this end. I am satisfied that his faithful little religious heart is black and that he is, returning to the vernacular of D.C. suburbs and prep schools a few decades back, a giant dork.

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THIS IS THE FACE of a rich white man facing consequences for his own choices for the first time at age 53

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ROBIN SUNBEAM WRITES: The Red Cross received a request for volunteers a few years ago. Homeland Security were coming to train the Ukiah Police and they needed volunteers to be terrorists. I was assigned to go secretly photograph Grace Hudson Museum. During our orientation training, the guy from HS kept talking about Muslim terrorists. I pointed out to him that we have plenty of non-Muslim terrorists, i.e. Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City. The HS trainer's eyes misted up and he said, "Yes, he was one of ours." Everyone in the room saw this. A quiet shock wave passed around the circle from the Hispanic looking Ukiah Police Chief and around the room to the police officers and the other volunteers.

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SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR: “The girl today can certainly go out alone, stroll in the Tuileries; but I have already said how hostile the street is: eyes everywhere, hands waiting: if she wanders absentmindedly, her thoughts elsewhere, if she lights a cigarette in a cafe, if she goes to the cinema alone, an unpleasant incident can quickly occur; she must inspire respect by the way she dresses and behaves: this concern rivets her to the ground and self. ‘Her wings are clipped'.”

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I AM TERRIBLY SORRY to have to be the first to tell you that our poor Miss Brennan died. We have her head here at the office, at the top of the stairs, where she was always to be found, smiling right and left and drinking water out of her own little paper cup. She shot herself in the back with the aid of a small handmirror at the foot of the main altar in St. Patrick's Cathedral on Shrove Tuesday. Frank O'Connor was where he usually is in the afternoons, sitting in a confession but pretending to be a priest and giving penance to some poor old woman and he heard the shot and he ran out and saw our poor late author stretched out flat and he picked her up and fearing a scandal ran up to the front of the church and slipped her in the poor box. She was very small. He said she went in easy.... We will never know why she did what she did (shooting herself) but we think it was because she was drunk and heartsick. She was a very fine person, a very real person, two feet, hands, everything. But it's too late to do much about that now.

— Maeve Brennan

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A PRIME DEAL...

This Saturday, September 29th is a PRIME time to go to the theatre...and we are offering a PRIME deal! Two tickets to see the Mendocino Theatre Company's production of MARJORIE PRIME for just $29...an amazing savings! So grab a friend and snag your PRIME tickets to MARJORIE PRIME!

Purchase your tickets at by calling the box office, 707-937-4477, or online at mendocinotheatre.org <http://mendocinotheatre.org/single-tickets/> and enter code "PRIME" at checkout to redeem. Limit one discount per customer. Offer expires on 9/29 at 6 pm.

Mendocino Theatre Company" <mendotheatreco@gmail.com>

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MEMO OF THE AIR: GOOD NIGHT RADIO FRIDAY NIGHT!

On wonderful KNYO Fort Bragg and KMEC Ukiah.

Cindy Swan wrote: Jesuits Reverse Position On Kavanaugh And Say No

Cindy, in the corner of my eye I read it as something with Kavanaugh and Jesus and reverse cowgirl position. And then read it right and, you know: Oh. Never mind.

In Other News: Tonight, Friday, 9pm to 5am, I'm reading Memo of the Air by live remote from the typing table next to the bed in Juanita's apartment, not from the back room of the KNYO performance space at 325 N. Franklin, next door to the Tip Top bar, so make plans to show-and-tell there next week, the first Friday in October, when I'll be there for you. When the rain starts to pour. I'll be there for you. Like I've been there before.

Deadline to get your writing on the air tonight is like 6 or 7pm. If you're still working on it then, just email it when you're done and I'll read it on the show next time. Or save it and come in and read it yourself in person next week (or sing and dance or otherwise express it), see above.

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio: Every Friday, 9pm to 5am on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg, and 105.1fm KMEC-LP Ukiah. And also there and anywhere else via http://knyo.org and click on Listen Live.

Also you can always go to https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com and hear last week's show, and shows before that, and read and watch and fiddle with all sorts of other quirkily educational materials. By Saturday night, tonight's show becomes last week's show, so if you wait till Saturday night then you'll find that too. It'll be right on top.

Meanwhile, Porfirio Jiminez makes art, provides self-commentary, and then happily sets things on fire and blows it out.

https://theawesomer.com/super-saiyan-blue-spray-paint-art/465805/

Best bad lip reading ever. Hillary Clinton stories. http://www.blameitonthevoices.com/2018/09/bad-lip-reading-hillary-stories.html

And here's 7-year-old Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja (say chon-druh-w'd-JY-yuh) singing Think.

https://maleaemma.com/2018/08/23/cover-think-aretha-franklin/

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org

20 Comments

  1. Craig Stehr September 29, 2018

    Spent September 28th celebrating my 69th birthday in Honolulu, by refusing to identify with the physical and the mental at all! The entire day was spent as the Brahmanas (Knowers of Brahman) in India spend their days: holding back upchucking whilst walking past news kiosks blaring the vulgar degenerate “faecal matter of a pig” front page stories of politicians, and the even worse reportings of the beahviour of the “worms in excretia” karmis (ordinary individuals who have not cultivated a spiritual life), as the Brahmanas make their way to the temple for afternoon tea. Yes, I had a fantastic cup of tea and halvah at Krishna Temple underneath the huge banyan trees in the back yard area, happily served to me by a world-renounced Vaishnava sannyasin who is administratively in charge. Nobody here could care less about the ongoing soap opera in Washington, D.C. As the monk said to me: “Why would we??!?” As ever, mind absorbed in the Absolute, no place to go. ~Mahalo~

    • Lazarus September 29, 2018

      hauʻoli lā hānau
      E like me nā manawa mau,
      Laz

  2. George Hollister September 29, 2018

    We all get set in our ways. But I am wondering how long our set ways will continue to believe that all power should eminate from Washington? The only institution that seems to be functional there is the one that prints money.

    • Harvey Reading September 29, 2018

      Give it up, George. You’re NEVER going to be a local “lord of the land”, ruling over your petty “realm” with platitudes and sanctimony; no matter how much you think and dream that you are entitled to be one.

  3. Bruce Anderson September 29, 2018

    Happy birthday, Craig.

  4. MarshallNewman September 29, 2018

    The first rain of the season almost never moves the Navarro River. Typically three decent rains are needed before runoff occurs.

  5. Harvey Reading September 29, 2018

    Re: ms notes

    Privatization of public services sucks.

    PG&E and its likes should have been socialized decades ago. Sacramento County had the right idea with SMUD. Next it will be toll roads, everywhere.

  6. michael turner September 29, 2018

    Kunstler never fails to remind us that his writing needs our “support” and deservedly so because, you know, he’s kind of omniscient:

    “but a life-changing trauma? Sorry, it sounds conveniently hyperbolic to me. I suspect there is much more psychodrama in the life of Christine Blasey Ford than we know of at this time.”

  7. Bruce McEwen September 29, 2018

    The part that got me about Brett Kavanaugh was when he said he bought all the tickets for the ball game at Fenway Park. When I was working as editor at Guns Magazine in those days (36 years ago) I could afford to go to exactly three games a year at Jack Murphy Stadium, which I could see from my office on the second floor of the Security Pacific building in Mission Valley.

    I couldn’t get my mind around how somebody still in college could pay for a whole frat house full of guys to go to a game, and all these years later, still be boasting about the “camaraderie” he remembered so fondly, and repeating twice how he paid for everything.

    It was probably the only time anyone ever showed him anything resembling camaraderie in his entire life, even though the other guys in the frat house must have had plenty of ready pocket money themselves.

    Having all those guys clapping him on the back and telling him what a swell guy he was could have gone to his head enough to make him feel like he really was such a great guy he could hardly go wrong “jumping her bones” (as the popular phrase went in those days) when a 15-year-old girl showed up.

    Another point that grated on my sense of resentment was his boasting about his fairness as a judge and how he even found once in favor of defense — once?

    Then he said a Federal Public Defender thought him a very fair-minded judge. A lawyer of any kind would be highly unlikely to say anything else about a judge (publicly), but having recently learned how awful federal public defenders are …well, that’s not much of character witness, to my mind.

    Now I hear both his parents are judges, and so there you have it: A lifetime spent enjoying the privileges of wealth and prestige, and the resulting tears of rage when accused of something he is used to deciding the outcome of; in other words, for the first time in his life — for at least two generations — now he knows how it feels to be the accused, rather than the judge.

    It would be productive of a better judiciary, I think, “adversity being the touchstone of character,” as Balzac says, if all our judges could routinely go through this kind of thing at least once a year.

    • Bruce McEwen September 29, 2018

      Oh, what a devastating rebuke! And I thought I was so close — No, seriously, Ms. de Castro: What gave you the idea I would aspire to being anything like that Little Lord Fontleroy pantywaste? Are you nuts? Or in love?

      • George Hollister September 29, 2018

        Bruce, come on, you’re really jealous. If you weren’t, you would feel sorry for him instead, right? Or do his shortcomings, as a result of heritage, make Kavanaugh a person with special needs? If that is the case, no one should be making fun of him, right?

        • Bruce McEwen September 29, 2018

          In the 1780-90s the French Republicans took power (Robespierre & Danton)

          In the 1980-90s the American Republicans took power (Reagan & Bush)

          A back and forth ensues in both the French Political History of 200 years ago, and the American Political History of the same 36 year-span, up to the present; at which time we have a parallel situation:

          Louis XVIII c. 1818 The Second Restoration of the Monarchy, après Emperor Napoleon.

          President Trump c. 2018 The Second Restoration of the Republicans, après President Obama.

          You will say that Reagan is no Robespierre and that Bush is no Danton, Obama no Napoleon, McEwen no Kavanaugh, imitating the rhetorical device with which Senator Lloyd Bensten used on Senator Dan Quayle to such devastating effect in ‘88, but whether Dan Quayle was a Jack Kennedy or no, is no more to the point than if former Secretary Kissinger is a reincarnation of Cardinal Richelieu, all of which only begs the question “are we going to sit idly by and watch all the power women have attained since 1982 thrown under the heel of the American Republican Party”– which I personally find synonymous with the French Aristocracy, and as insufferable a bunch of bluestockings as ever flaunted their wealth and vaunted their self-ordained prestige over the filthy tides of starving ragamuffins, cripples, whores and beggars that thronged the Champs Èlysées in Balzac’s day –?

          If you really think I’m envious, you’ve both misread me by ascribing to moi your own pecuniary interests.

          • Bruce McEwen September 29, 2018

            The Asterisk is missing from the “–?*” at the end of the above comment, and the footnote is appended here:

            *Going back, that is, to letting the patriarchy decide what is good for feminine honor and what defines feminine virtue, and how it should be ever-so chivalrously legislated by the aristocracy, not by women’s movements like #Me Too.

        • Bruce McEwen September 29, 2018

          You must forgive George, he thinks all the sins are synonymous.

          How do I know what he thinks?

          I use the same method you do in reading my mind.

          I can also read your heart, by the same method, and now I’m convinced, you are in love with Brett.

          This is what George may have been suggesting, because he’s a deep old file and can see into your heart, Susie, or thinks he can, and he supposes, in his grandfatherly way, you were trying to make me jealous by taking Brett’s side.

          Now, correct me if George is mistaken — either of you!

          • George Hollister September 29, 2018

            Here is what I would ask, in terms of your life and happiness, what the heck difference does any of this make? I knew people in school, like the version of Brett Kavanaugh presented. Fancy apartment, disco shoes, expensive stereo, new Mustang, etc, all paid for by their parents. My guess is those people are somewhere in well placed positions in the Bay Area.

            Do they control your or my happiness? Do you or I want their money? Do you or I want their $Xmillion house? Their Yacht Club, or Golf Club membership? Do you or I only have friends we need to buy? Do you or I want to have children who we merge into this same lifestyle? Do we want spouses whose only concern is money, style, and social position? I think the answer to all that is, no. So as long as these people don’t control our lives, and our happiness it seems to me the best thing to do is let it be. And be thankful you and I are not them.

            Supreme Court? How many people on the US Supreme Court have any idea what I am talking about? None.

            And no, there is no comparison between the US today, and France before the revolution. None.

            • Bruce McEwen September 29, 2018

              You ask: “…in terms of your life and happiness, what the heck difference does it make…?”

              Only that you will not, you rich little prick, lay your filthy goddamn hands on my daughter, sister, mother, aunt, niece, cousin, wife or girlfriend — even if I’m not there, personally to slap the flat of my blade across your wrist and run you through for the offense — that’s what! Get it?

              • George Hollister September 29, 2018

                And a good father would say that about anyone dating his daughter, and he would also make sure she didn’t get drunk at age fifteen while going to parties unattended. That is a policy that applies anywhere, including Mendocino County. Drunk teenagers, of both sexes, have a tendency to get into trouble, including getting pregnant. The best outcome in all these cases is hopefully no one is killed. Do they “get away with it”? They did when I was in school. If someone got pregnant, there were “shotgun weddings.”. And how much money you had didn’t seem to matter.

                • Bruce McEwen September 29, 2018

                  As my daughter, the issue of a shotgun wedding, between a marine recruit and what Navy Secretary Admiral Zumwalt called, “a WESTPAC widow” would say, “You can either agree with me or be wrong.”

                  *WESTPAC, was militariese for Western Pacific Fleet Marine Force, a code that meant, for all intents and purposes, you were going to Viet Nam.

                  **WESTPAC “widows” was Adm. “ZOOMY” (an allusion to the air-wing) Zumwalt’s version of California “welfare queens,” in those days much reviled, on the evidence of their poverty, gals who married young marines and sailors, and hoped (in Admiral Zumwalt’s and Marine Corps Commandant General Walt’s estimation), to be laying snares to snag onto the $10-15,000 life insurance policy every military man (or woman) was worth should he or she meet their fate in Viet Nam.

        • George Hollister September 29, 2018

          OK, envious.

    • Bruce McEwen September 29, 2018

      Please allow some last-minute editing:

      “…you will say Reagan was no Robespierre, Bush no Danton, Obama no Napoleon, McEwen no Kavanagauh,” and so on, but if you say “Trump is no Louis XVIII,” you’ll get a quarrel out of me, by George!

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