Press "Enter" to skip to content

MCT: Saturday, January 19, 2019

* * *

RAIN LIKELY SATURDAY, mainly before 4pm. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with highs in the low 60s. Light winds. Chance of precipitation is 60% during the day on Saturday. New precipitation amounts probably won’t amount to more than a tenth of an inch or so. More rain overnight Saturday with up to another quarter inch or so. Showers Sunday with gusty winds and rainfall up to another half inch continuing into Sunday night. Clearing Monday, MLK’s birthday observance followed by clearing and alternating cloudy/sunny days through mid-week.

A few isolated power outages remain in Anderson Valley which were being worked by repair crews on Friday. And a few more on the Coast and in the Willits area.

* * *

ELAINE HORN

I want to thank everyone for all the prayers and love that they have been sending to Elaine, and all of us. And I know a lot of people need closure. Many of you know that Elaine was a leukemia Survivor. She had been in remission for many years, but there are long-term effects from going through the amount of chemotherapy that cured her. We had many extra years with Elaine because she was "one tuff cookie". I know she is resting in peace and well-loved. We are having a small memorial for her here in California with just family.

Elaine loved animals and if you would like to contribute a donation to safehavenfarmsanctuary.org in her name as a tribute to her I know she would love that. Thank you all and take good care of yourselves.

Joanne Horn, her sister.

* * *

* * *

MENTAL HEALTH CITIZEN'S OVERSIGHT (MEASURE B) COMMITTEE AGENDA: January 23, 2019

www.theava.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/MeasureBAgenda01-23-19-1.pdf

ED Note: Old Howard Hospital didn’t make the Measure B agenda.

* * *

WAVES AT PUDDING CREEK

(Photo by Judy Valadao)

* * *

DR. RICHARD MILLER & CHE GUEVARA

by Dale Gieringer

On a New Year’s tour of Cuba, my wife and I visited Ché Guevara’s mausoleum and monument in Santa Clara, where his pipe is prominently displayed. I was reminded that years ago Dr. Richard Miller told me he had smoked marijuana with Che. Dr. Miller, a Ft. Bragg resident, is a clinical psychologist, founder and director of the Cokenders Alcohol and Drug Treatment Program, owner of the Wilbur Hot Springs Health Sanctuary, and host of the KZYX radio show, “Mind, Body, Health & Politics.”

Upon returning to California I phoned Dr. Miller to get the details of his toking with Che. He said, for the record:

"I was working in psychological research as an undergrad assistant with Dr. Raymond B Cattell, at the University of Illinois. It was the spring of 1959.

"As an idealistic student I decided, with some friends, to join Fidel, his brother Raoul, Che and the revolution against the dictator Batista.

“We flew to Havana, where the revolutionary leaders were surprisingly easy to get a hold of. We were brought to them in the Hotel Nacional. Fidel, Raoul, Che and many others were there.

"I started talking with Che mostly in English.

"At one point he said to me: 'You know what I did before this don't you? I was a medical doctor. Well, I am telling you, go back to school and get your doctorate and then become a revolutionary.’

"There were people everywhere in the room. It was chaos. Che took a checkbook from his pocket and told me it was for the Cuban treasury.*

"As we were talking, a young guy came along and passed a joint to Che. Che took a puff and passed it to me. We passed the joint around a few times. There were three of us. I got buzzed.

"I shook hands with Che and Fidel, looked at some bullet holes on the wall of the room and was escorted out. We were taken to a cock fight by some young revolutionary soldiers and then left alone. I still have a photo taken at the cock fight.

"I followed Che’s advice, went back to school and got my doctorate. My revolutionary activity has been within my field of clinical psychology and in the war against minority people mistakenly referred to as the war on drugs”.

(* Che was the Castro government’s first Secretary of the Treasury.)

Miller’s recollection raises some intriguing questions. How much marijuana did Che use, and when? He had asthma, and marijuana can relieve asthma attacks by dilating the passageways of the lungs. Whether or not Che got medical benefits from pot is unknown.

Che was famous for smoking cigars and tobacco (which couldn’t have helped his asthma). His image is ubiquitous on cigar cases, T-shirts and other souvenirs in Cuba. Here in the States, his image even appears on bongs, grinders, graffiti, and T-shirts as a revolutionary symbol of marijuana. One typical T-shirt features him smoking a joint with the slogan, “Viva la Cannabis.”

But Che’s revolution never tried to liberate marijuana. On the contrary, Castro moved quickly to clamp down on the drug trade that had flourished under Batista’s regime. Tough new anti-narcotics laws were enacted. Drug users were sent to re-education camps. Cuba’s marijuana laws remain among the toughest in the hemisphere today, with prison sentences for simple possession. Official Cuban propaganda still portrays marijuana as a deadly narcotic. Travelers to Cuba are strictly warned not to bring illegal drugs, though we spoke to two Canadian tourists who said they were offered marijuana for $60 a gram (!). Tobacco remains one of Cuba’s leading exports today, but most Cubans have no awareness of marijuana.

As for Che, to the end he was devoted to his tobacco pipe, carrying it with him on his guerrilla campaigns to the Congo and Bolivia.

“One has a right to smoke, even just a quiet and pleasant-tasting pipe, don’t you think?” he wrote to his wife, Aleida March.

Cuba is one of the few countries where smoking is allowed in restaurants and other establishments at the owner’s discretion. But don’t try lighting up a joint there. Call it a contradiction of the revolution.


Sources: Dr. Richard Miller, telephone interview, Jan 14, 2019.

Aleida March, “Remembering Che: My Life With Che Guevara”, (Ocean Press, N. Melbourne Australia, 2017) p. 168.

James McClure, “Why Is Che Guevara a Marijuana Icon?” Civilized Life, Jun 14 2016 https://www.civilized.life/articles/che-guevara/

* * *

NOYO BAY THURSDAY EVENING

(Photos by Dick Whetstone)

* * *

DR. MILLER REPLIES TO CEO EDWARDS

Dear Neighbors:

I am writing with regard to MCDH CEO Bob Edwards' reply to my letter which he sent through one of his hospital employees, the Public Relations officer. I have also seen the letters Edwards had some of his other hospital employees, medical doctors, publish in the local paper. These letters, attempting to support Edwards' 3 years of profoundly failing performance, are an embarrassment to the hospital and should have been vetted by the Board of Directors before being published.

I was a Senior Vice President, and President of my Division, Cokenders Alcohol and Drug Program, for Parkside Medical Services Corporation. We had 120 units nationwide with 2000 employees, grossing approximately $500,000,000/year. When we had a unit in financial trouble we would hire a CEO to go in and turn it around. If significant positive changes were not accomplished in 12-18 months, we replaced the CEO and sent in another to get the job done.

When CEOs command six figure salaries it is understood that they are in the big leagues and are expected to perform at certain levels. If they fail to perform they are replaced. That's just how it is in the big leagues.

Here at MCDH the CEO, Bob Edwards' compensation package is above $350,000/year. In the 3 years he has been at MCDH he has not only failed to turn the hospital finances around they have gotten worse. In the big leagues there is simply no excuse for a failing performance.

In addition:

Mr. Edwards is a defendant in a Federal law suit brought against him by the hospital's former Director of Human Resources. This fact alone is reason for replacement.

Mr. Edwards recently purposefully attempted to exclude a sitting Board member, Amy McColley, from attending a meeting in which his performance was being reviewed. This is the second time he attempted to exclude McColley from a meeting. This fact alone is reason for replacement. Can any of us even imagine attempting to exclude our boss from an important meeting, or two?

Under Mr Edward's leadership MCDH is out of compliance with the rules of the hospital's mortgage holder, Cal Mortgage. Failing to meet the terms of a mortgage holder can result in business closure.

Under Mr. Edwards leadership MCDH is out of compliance with some of the State of California's rules and regulations.

Sound business practices inform our community that it is imperative that we hire an outstanding CEO who has the skills, and will, to turn our hospital around. Such people are out there. It is our Board's job to bring one of them to us as soon as possible.

Respectfully,

Richard Louis Miller, M.A., Ph.D.

Clinical Psychology

Fort Bragg

* * *

MEET SHERIFF TOM ALLMAN

Program: Law and Order in Mendocino County

AV Unity Club, February 7, 2019, Fairgrounds Dining Room, 1:30pm. The community is invited to join the Unity Club for complimentary cookies and coffee during Sheriff Allman’s presentation. Questions: Val Hanelt, 895-3526.

* * *

DR. GRAHAM CLARIFIES

Thank you for printing my remarks.

However, you mixed in two different threads: 1. The financial state of Mendocino Coast District Hospital, 2. “Medical necessity” qualifications for hospital admission, so things become rather incomprehensible.

Below is the thread for #2. Thanks.


From: Daney Dawson

Subject: Re: [MCN-Announce]- [MCN-Discussion]- MCDH-Dr. Miller’s letter

To: A Community List for Discussion ,

Thanks for your letter, Dr. Graham. I’d like to add to the conversation about what is happening to our hospital by way
of describing an experience my family had recently. I’ll try to keep it short.

98 YO father, falls down and breaks an arm. To the ER, but instead of admitting him to the hospital to stabilize and immobilize him for a day or a few, he was sent home with his 98 YO spouse. Just like that. A 98 YO with a broken bone, unable to walk or care for himself. Arm put in a sling, and packed into the car. ?(Of course for an additional $600, he could have had a ride in the ambulance.) It was determined that it was not “medically necessary” to hospitalize him that in fact to be hospitalized, one has either to be in extreme pain, or at risk of death. He was neither, so off he went, after several hours in the ER, with phone calls to see if the all powerful insurance company would allow him to be admitted. No, because it wasn’t “medically necessary”. This is the buzzword. It is keeping insured people from getting the care they need, and KEEPING THE HOSPITAL BEDS EMPTY. The hospital is being underutilized. If you’ve been in the hospital lately, you’ll notice that there aren’t that many beds filled, and some wards completely shut down. Any business, to succeed, needs customers, turnover. But the insurance requirements are keeping people who need the care out of the hospital. They are banking the savings, but the hospitals are going under for lack of clientele.


Thanks for your letter, Daney.

I was a hospitalist for many years at MCDH, and what you describe is a common problem. Indeed, insurance companies will not pay for hospitalizations without ”medical necessity”, and there are written criteria for that. However, a clever and creative hospitalist who puts patients first often can find ways to deal with that. Frequently I would put IVs in patients and treat for ”dehydration.”

One tip: as a family member, you can refuse to take the patient home. It is important to state quietly and clearly that it is “unsafe.” Examples why are helpful. The fear of medical liability should the patient have trouble at home often prompts reevaluation, and doing the right thing.

Buz Graham, MD


On 1/17/19, 1:26 PM, “daneyd@mcn.org” wrote:

I wish I had known then what I know now. A 98 YO with a broken arm, unable to walk or care for himself should qualify. But since he wasn’t in extreme pain or at risk of death, they would not admit him. That is scandalous. I don’t know whow these parasites in the insurance industry sleep at night. (average salaries for the honchos are probably a million or more)

Anyway, had we refused to take him home, we’d have been liable for the costs of hospitalization which are, as you know, sky high and out of reach for most people. In this case, they also said there were “no beds available”, and he’d have to stay in the ER hallway. What about all those empty beds? They won’t fill them because they’d have to increase staff levels.
They won’t do that unless the traffic warrants. Insurance geeks are deciding who gets medical care, not doctors or patients. It’s criminal.


Yes, I should clarify my letter a bit.

If you refuse to take your relative home, they may indeed put the patient in the hospital, but make him/her responsible for the cost of care. Yes, necessity can be appealed to the insurance co, and the bill can be disputed with MCDH, but that’s a prolonged and unpleasant process.

There is also observation status-which is short term and does not require medical necessity screening. Problem is that insurance companies treat that different from a hospital admission. For example Medicare covers it not under part A, but part B—no deductible but a 20% co-pay.

Yes, insurance companies can be difficult, but I try to see all sides. Too many movie stars admitted for “exhaustion,” and other inappropriate utilization. In theory it’s reasonable to set standards for admission–in practice hard to do in a way fair for everyone. Seems to me 98 yo’s should get a free ticket, no matter what.

Buz Graham

* * *

SUPES CONSENT CALENDAR ITEM 4o on Tuesday, January 22, 2019

AGENDA TITLE: Adoption of Resolution Authorizing the Destruction of Various County Records Related to Previous Solid Waste Operations (Countywide)

PREVIOUS BOARD/BOARD COMMITTEE ACTIONS: By Resolution Number 09-238 (October 20, 2009), the Board approved and executed a memorandum of agreement with the Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority, for administration and management of County solid waste operations.

SUMMARY OF REQUEST:  The administration and management of County solid waste operations has been contracted with Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority since October 2009. Mendocino County Department of Transportation (MCDoT) continues to retain solid waste records from operations prior to that time. The storage of these records occupies a large amount of space which is needed to store other, more pertinent documents. MCDoT has researched record retention requirements and found all the records on the attached Exhibit A to be past the required retention time periods. MCDoT requests the Board authorize the destruction of these records. MCDoT will continue to retain any solid waste records which are found to be within the required retention time period or otherwise related to or necessary for current solid waste or landfill closure activities.

ED NOTE: Instead of destroying them they should turn them over to the DA.

* * *

PHYLLIS MERVINE WRITES:

To the Fifth District of Mendocino County:

Is this a place where we can request a safety barrier on the road? A month ago yet another vehicle went over the cliff near the 41 mile marker on Orr Springs Road near Ukiah. MDOT has finally put in 6 or 7 reflectors but we really need a barricade. 

Some years ago a neighbor of mine was driving his child to school and came across a bloody woman by the roadside. She had a broken leg, internal injuries, many lacerations and had taken hours to climb up to the road from her vehicle, which had gone over the edge around 2am. Her friend was still trapped in the car, luckily still alive. CHP, MCSD, Ukiah Fire, CDF and Reach Med Helicopter all responded. 

Other drivers on Orr Springs Rd have additional stories: one recalls a person in a Mazda Miata convertible distracted by changing his radio station, who ended up precariously balanced on the berm. He probably would have died if he had gone over. Another person remembers a girl that went off at that spot. Her car miraculously stopped only 20 ft down. She was not injured and her vehicle was recovered 

Can you get us a safety barricade? I'm sure there have been many more accidents at this spot. Imagine coming down the hill on a dark night in the fog. The last guy who went over was hauling a trailer and skidded on the gravel. The truck rolled multiple times but miraculously, both people lived.

* * *

ED NOTES

COUPLA WEEKS AGO, George Hollister, the Comptche logger/rancher, philosopher, commented: "Mendocino County is tribal. Our tribal wars are at the heart of our dysfunction. We would rather use government as a weapon in our tribal wars, than see our roads fixed. A biggest part of our tribal conflicts are a result of a culture supported by the black market that was never able to integrate into the legitimate rural economy of Mendocino County. (Into tourism, they have.) Of course there were reasons for that. The only people black marketeers associated with were those who could be trusted, which meant other black marketeers. Very few from this black market marijuana culture, particularly in the 5th District, have been able to bridge the divide. Ted’s [Williams, newly elected 5th District supervisor] overt disdain for the timber industry, can only be interpreted as a reflection of that. Where did that disdain come from? That disdain can be seen strongest in the black market culture he grew up in. I take Ted’s word that he was never a participant in the black market, that does not mean he is not associated with, and influenced by it…"

THE TRIBAL WARFARE inspired by the clandestine marijuana industry ended years ago, right about the time the so-called rednecks realized there was big money in weed, and soon there were as many 'necks growing dope as there were hippie growers.  The 'necks smoked it, too, the first of them turned on by, of all people, the Manson girls, then enjoying a rural respite on Gschwend Road, Navarro, while just down Highway 128 at Anderson Valley Elementary, Jim Jones was teaching the 5th grade, to be followed by additional world class psychos who included Leonard Lake, Kenneth Parnell, Tree Frog Johnson, the Moonies. (Lake, Parnell and Frog were all enabled by clusters of naive hippies who preferred the risk of murder and child molestation to the justice system.)

THE 5th DISTRICT demographics have been in constant flux since the end of World War Two when the logging boom prompted a large influx of white Southerners to the Northcoast to work in the woods and mills. No sooner had these newcomers inter-married with the previously isolated old timers, so isolated they invented their own language called Boontling so they could insult outsiders with impunity, here came the hippies who have since inter-married with that first generation of north-south hybrids to produce that frightening new beast, the Hipneck. 

NO SOONER had these unions between hippie scions and the conventional families already ensconced in the Anderson Valley and the Northcoast generally, than the wine industry took over the local economy's number one spot, and with that industry came a large-scale Mexican immigration and, presently, many happy Gringo-Mexican unions.

WHILE THIS SPLENDID miscegenation was bubbling along, wealthy retirees were occupying the hills and the more scenic areas of the valleys, making for some tense neighborhoods every fall when the annual home invasions commenced. (A retired executive and Mrs. Executive were often startled to find that the nabes made their livings growing the love drug.)

WHILE IT'S TRUE the 5th District is overwhelmingly liberal in the corporate, conservative, Democratic Party sense, the old hippie-straight political split is long gone, George. The split now is between Trumpers, most of them silent but muttering revenge, and libs, most of them noisy. That split is much more ominous, much more irreconcilable than any hippie-straight split ever was. 

WHICH brings us to our new Supervisor, Mr. Williams. I haven't seen or heard one partisan word out of the guy. He seems, if it's possible, a pure pragmatist, which a Supervisor is supposed to be. It's not supposed to be a partisan position. Johnny Pinches was a conservative Republican but, as a Supervisor, he almost always looked at issues from the perspective of least expensive solution. I think Williams and, hopefully, Haschak, are going to revive a board that has been passively irresponsible for years.

I THINK the really, really big population changes occurred with the New Boonville Hotel, which I think of as a perfect metaphor for the ensuing dominance of wine, fancy restaurants and the tourism based on both. When the Rollinses arrived from San Francisco to re-do the Boonville Hotel as a high end restaurant, circa early 1980's, the dope brigades were pretty much still in Us and Them mode. Why, why, why… even a trendo-groove-o guy like me was regularly shunned by the culture-free counterculture as a "straight." Not that I was all that straight, having downed my share of mind altering substances and having gotten in trouble by eagerly associating with people who wanted to overthrow the government.

NO, SIR, I was unwelcome in the hippie world of disorder and sloth, and it wasn't only the full moon boogies and solstice celebrations I was happy to be excluded from, it was the entire mumbo jumbo hippie stew that I always found, well, funny. I could go on. But it seems to me that it was the Rollinses more than any single advent who ushered in the Big Change, the end to the Us-Them. Snobs that they were, they bought and hired local, and almost immediately the gastro-maniacs were arriving in force in Boonville, some of them even flying in to Boonville's primitive air strip. And a lot of those  monied people noticed that land around here was relatively cheap, and the Golden Horde bought in and simultaneously the wine industry took off and here we are with me publishing an English-language newspaper in a Spanish-language community!

* * *

CRUMPLED ROOFS, SLUMPING ROADS, WAVES BEATING ON HOUSES…Readers share images with Redheaded Blackbelt.

* * *

CATCH OF THE DAY, January 18, 2019

Anderson, Baker, Drinhouser

CHARLES ANDERSON, Arcata/Fort Bragg. Failure to appear.

ALBERT BAKER, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

MARY DRINHOUSER, Calpella. DUI.

Durazo, Ewing, Hurd

JESSICA DURAZO, Covelo. Burglary, armed with firearm in commission of felony, negligent discharge of firearm, criminal threats, probation revocation.

JESSICA EWING, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

JOSHUA HURD, Ukiah. Unpermitted campfire, failure to appear.

Langenderfer, Liberto, Maynard, Pontello

BRANDON LANGENDERFER, Laytonville. Controlled substance for sale, county parole violation.

MATTHEW LIBERTO, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

ANDREW MAYNARD, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol. (Frequent flyer.)

MARIO PONTELLO, Lucerne/Ukiah. Grand theft-money or property, probation revocation.

Rodriguez-Silva, Tuttle, Wallerman

JUAN RODRIGUEZ-SILVA, Willits. Gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.

ALESHIA TUTTLE, Ukiah. Petty theft-bicycle, shoplifting, disorderly conduct-solicitation of lewd act, battery on peace officer, probation revocation.

TROY WALLERMAN, Clearlake/Ukiah. Failure to appear.

* * *

TRAVEL NIGHTMARE

Editor,

Stranded at the airport--

I flew from San Diego to Santa Rosa, my first time using the local airport. Never again. While the flight and the airport itself were more than adequate, I had a difficult time getting from the airport to my home in Petaluma.

I had chosen the Alaska flight to allow a connection to the SMART train from the “airport” station. Several taxis were lined up in front, but none would take me to the station.

I tried Uber, but apparently it isn’t allowed on the airport grounds for pickups. I called seven taxi companies from a list from the Alaska agent; no one would take me to the station.

Last, I tried to get a taxi to my home. The Uber price was $125. I had to beg Yellow Cab to send a “friend” to take me to my home for $80. The driver seemed afraid that I was going to turn him in for driving me.

I am an experienced traveler, and nowhere have I experienced such nonsense. I sent an email to airport management, but no one responded. Can someone please tell me why there are, apparently, so many prohibitions about transportation from the airport?

James Pointer

Petaluma

* * *

HAIR!

Boonville, CA

House calls Haircuts $45 and up 

call Aurelia for more details

707/684-9724

* * *

BATTLE ROYALE

by James Kunstler

The effrontery of Ms. Pelosi, Speaker of the House, in cancelling Mr. Trump’s State of the Union address in the chamber she controls is perhaps the worst insult to institutional protocol since the spring day in 1856 when Congressman Preston Brooks (D-SC) skulked into the senate chamber and smashed Senator Charles Sumner (R-Mass) about the head within an inch of his life with a gold-headed walking stick. Brooks’s attack was launched after Sen. Sumner gave his “Bleeding Kansas” speech, arguing that the territory be let into the union as a “free” state, and denouncing “the harlot slavery,” whom he imputed was Rep. Brooks’s dearest consort.

Many of us — except perhaps students immersed in intersectional gender studies — know how that worked out: a little dust-up in the meadows and cornfields known as the Civil War.

We’re about at that level of animosity today in the two federal houses of legislature, though it is very hard to imagine how Civil War Two might play out on the ground. Perhaps opposing mobs (not even armies) meet in the Walmart parking lots of Pennsylvania and go at it demolition derby style, with monster trucks bashing their enemies’ Teslas and Beemers. Throw in clown suits instead of blue and gray uniforms and we’ll really capture the spirit of the age.

Not to be outdone, days after the SOTU cancellation, the Golden Golem of Greatness cancelled a Democratic Party grandstanding junket to the Middle East, led by Ms. Pelosi. A US Air Force bus has just departed for Andrews Air Force Base, where an Air Force jet waited for the junketeers. But then, with impeccable timing, Mr. Trump cancelled the junket — denying the use of military aircraft as Commander-in-Chief — and forcing the bus back to town with its load of elected dignitaries and their luggage — making the reasonable suggestion that they fly a commercial airline instead.

The peevish media played the story as though Mr. Trump had acted like a vindictive child. In fact, he continues to play a familiar role that the adolescent Left just can’t abide: Daddy’s in da House. Nothing is more hateful to the Left these days as a large-ish white man telling them what to do. I don’t think Mr. Trump really relishes that role, especially when he has to bring the hammer down on the kids, but considering all the things he’s not good at, playing Daddy is perhaps a big exception. He is, after all, the father of at least five children, and there must have been opportunities a’plenty to straighten their asses out during those horrible teen years — especially in New York City of the 1990s, on fire with cocaine, AIDS, and nightclubbing gangstas with guns.

Interestingly, the quarrel du jour, is over boundaries — rather specifically the boundary between the USA and Mexico. The Left is against it. In fact, the Left’s mouthpiece, The New York Times ran an op-ed this week headlined: There’s Nothing Wrong With Open Borders. Well, you might ask, did they really mean it? Or was The Times just flopping the idea on the table like so much meat, to inflame the raging Beast of the Right?

Of course, the elected official cohort of the Left doesn’t believe it, but they are pretending to believe it as strenuously as possible just to oppose the wicked white Golem in the wickedly white White House, and, alas for them, they now own that stupid position.

The fabled wall is a symbol, we all know that, but it is at least an apt one for a firm boundary. And it is a boundary worth fighting over, just to establish for an hysterical mob that the world is not one big intersectional mishmash of sentimental fantasy where anything goes and nothing matters.

Ms. Pelosi and her Democratic Party House majority have been sent to their room now, awaiting a fateful conference with Daddy. A majority of the public actually does believe that the boundary-in-question with Mexico ought to be recognized in the way that normal nations recognize normal national boundaries: namely, that they are barriers to entry, and that rational procedures must be followed to go from one side to the other. Ms. Pelosi’s next step will probably be something like a few weeks of anorexia, or some other sort of self-destructive adolescent rebellion. Let’s hope she doesn’t try to burn the house down in her boundless rage.

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

* * *

REALLY USING THE WHOLE ANIMAL: NEW CALIFORNIA FOODWAYS AIRS TODAY!

Lisa Morehouse, California Foodways 
californiafoodways@gmail.com

Everybody eats, and food propels storytelling. In California Foodways, I'm going county by county reporting stories about California and Californians through the lens of food, and I want you to come along …

Story #35: At Prather Ranch, Cows Are Raised For Fine Steaks… and Biomedical Research 

Airing on The California Report Magazine today, in the Bay Area on KQED 88.5 at 4:30, 6:30, and 11 pm over the weekend, across the state on local NPR stations (and online)

Jim and Mary Rickert came together because of cows. They met and fell in love at Cal Poly in 1970. Within a decade, they were managing a ranch just below the Oregon border in Siskiyou County. It was a struggle. But I found out: their lives -- and the business -- changed when they got a really weird offer, and they said yes.

There are 58 counties in California, and with a grant from California Humanities, I'm reporting from them all! Subscribe to the podcast (at places like Apple Podcasts), and if you use social media, follow the series on Twitter and Facebook. Visit californiafoodways.com to explore all the stories in the series.

* * *

* * *

LISTEN UP, CANDIDATES: PRIMARY ELECTION CHANGES

Katrina Bartolomie, Mendocino County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder, Registrar of Voters would like to call attention to the new date for the Primary Election Date – MARCH 3, 2020. In 2017 Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill to move California’s primary election from June to March. It’s a move designed to increase the influence of the country’s most populous state in deciding presidential candidates. The legislation also consolidated and moved up the congressional primary elections to the same day in March.

This new primary election date changes our candidate filing dates. Local seats up for election in March are: 1st District Supervisor; 2nd District Supervisor; 4th District Supervisor and 3 Superior Court seats. With this change come changes to candidate filing dates. Important dates to remember:

SIGNATURES IN LIEU OF FILING FEES – September 12 through November 6, 2019;

JUDICIAL NOTICE OF INTENT – October 28 through November 6, 2019;

CANDIDATE FILING – November 11 through December 6, 2019

A candidate information packet will be produced and put on our website for those interested later in the spring. A detailed flyer with additional due dates can be viewed on our website:

mendocinocounty.org/government/assessor-county-clerk-recorder-elections/elections/election-candidate-information

For additional information, please contact the County Clerk / Election office at (707) 234-6819. Our office is located at 501 Low Gap Road, Room 1020 in Ukiah

KATRINA BARTOLOMIE

Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder

707 234-6819

* * *

* * *

SO EASY THEN, SO REGULAR

A friend helping me move was the first to notice. Toilet bowls, their length and their width, have become larger. This one was brand new, just installed. The increase is not dramatic, but really skinny posteriors must have to take care that they don't penetrate so far as to touch the still water, calling perhaps for fire department extraction.

Engineers and designers must need to pay attention to circumstances driving change like this. Relevant dimensions must come from some official source, the National Bureau of Standards, maybe, or some insurance adjuster's tables and charts. One network, undoubtedly, of many, most hidden.

So, standing there penis in hand, it is probably good to contemplate the evident fact that we are indeed not alone. Folks unseen are measuring, observing the numbers. This knowledge lends a sense of good cause and rationality to everything, the entire scene out there. It used to lend a sense of safety, even home. Mom in the kitchen, making dinner. Dad in his chair with the sports page. Of course there was the real threat of nuclear annihilation and all of that. But somehow, it all seemed so easy then, so regular.

(Bruce Brady)

* * *

“Servant, taste this for me. Many a rival would like me poisoned dead, and F.D.A. inspectors are working without pay.”

* * *

COMMUNITY HEALTH SURVEY

Survey seeks input to help improve the health of Mendocino County residents

Are you healthy? How often do you have to go outside of the county for care? What are the most important issues we need to address to make our community a great place to live? Residents of Mendocino County will have an opportunity to share their feedback and concerns in the Community Health Survey.

The short survey, which is both voluntary and anonymous, asks participants to answer questions about general health, availability of services, environment, physical and mental health, among others. These answers will create a snapshot of the health of Mendocino County and the results will guide many community organizations, including government entities and the hospitals, in their program planning over the next several years by identifying key health problems.

The results of the survey will be used as part of the final community health assessment report which will be published and shared publicly in the fall of 2019 at which time the results will be used to prioritize needs and create a community health improvement plan.

Barbara Howe, Public Health Director, emphasizes the importance of getting the community’s perspective. “We want to know how to best serve our citizens and improve the health of our communities. It helps us identify areas of concern, which we can work on ways to address, as well as identifies areas of success and ways we can build on those successes to improve community health.”

Jason Wells, president for Adventist Health Ukiah Valley and Howard Memorial, agrees. “As a healthcare organization, we realize it takes a village to build a healthy community. We know healthcare is more than just medical care, but also about having access to recreation, great schools and economic opportunities. By hearing from those we serve, we can find ways to work with our partners to better serve our county and identify ways that together we can improve the overall health of the population in Mendocino County.”

The survey is available online at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XFZX8WS for English and at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CKD2RPL for Spanish.

All community members are encouraged to share their opinions. Hardcopies of the survey are available at local libraries, hospitals and clinics. For more information, contact Healthy Mendocino at healthymendocino@ncoinc.org or call 467-3228.

The Community Health Survey and the Community Health Needs Assessment process is a project of Healthy Mendocino, in collaboration with the Mendocino County Health and Human Services, Adventist Health Hospitals, FIRST 5 Mendocino, North Coast Opportunities, Redwood Coast Medical Services, Redwood Quality Management Company, and the community health clinics. To learn more about Healthy Mendocino, and how we’re working together to improve the health of our communities, visit www.healthymendocino.org.

* * *

I DO NOT WANT PEOPLE to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

— Jane Austen

* * *

JOE BIDEN, CRIME FIGHTER FROM HELL

by John Grant

I just listened to Joe Biden’s seventeen-and-a-half minute 2003 eulogy for his political friend Strom Thurmond, the former Dixiecrat segregationist from South Carolina who became a Republican in 1964. It’s clear Biden liked the man, who he worked closely with to pass crime bills in the early 1980s. As Thurmond’s replacement as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden went on to push the now-controversial bill he proudly touts as “the 1994 Biden Crime Bill.” This is the bill about which, in 2015, former President Bill Clinton told an NAACP convention concerned about the mass incarceration of African Americans: “I signed a bill that made the problem worse. And I want to admit it.” According to a 2015 NY Times story, “Today, about 2.2 million Americans are locked up in federal and state prisons and local jails, twice as many as when Mr. Clinton took office.”

Biden’s long eulogy is full of warmth and wit and, for a liberal like Biden, driven by a spirit of forgiveness and, more important, a pragmatic sense of political synthesis between the dead man’s racist past and what Biden claims as his political mission, the pursuit of civil rights. He had been asked by Thurmond himself to give it. The problem is, when we forgive past shortcomings or evils in order to get over hurdles to make change possible so we can move on to better things, there needs to be true atonement, or it can’t work. And even if one argues that Strom Thurmond in old age was ready to atone in some way and to really move on, it’s crystal clear from the current state of Thurmond’s chosen Republican Party — still notorious for its cynical Nixonian “southern strategy” — that honest atonement is far from the order of the day; that, in fact, a dishonest, dog-whistle reanimation of that racist past is still alive in the heart of Thurmond’s Republican Party.

In 1981, when Biden and Thurmond began to work together, Thurmond, who had been in politics since 1933, may have become a kindly old man with very real personal desires to atone. And the savvy, new Senator Joe Biden, 40 years his junior, may have figured out how to exploit those personal issues in order to accomplish legislation he found advantageous to his own and Democratic power needs. But this is 2019, and in the current political environment, Joe Biden’s clearly documented instincts for appeasing the conservative right to juice-up eroding Democratic power would be a coward’s way of regaining power. What’s needed is a new, courageous and pragmatic vision.

I don’t hate Joe Biden; he seems a very personable man, someone this nobody would have no problem sitting down with to have that proverbial beer — as long as I was able to speak my mind and candidly tell him why I feel he’d be a terrible choice for president of the United States right now.

I had a very memorable one-on-one exchange in the 1990s with Senator Biden when I worked as a staff photographer in the PR department of a university. One day, Biden came to speak about the Drug War. I took a half-dozen shots of him to fulfill my duties, then sat down to listen, since the topic was one I was interested in. I’d traveled in Central America as a documentary photographer during the Reagan wars; I’d worked for years feeding the homeless at night in the alleys of Philadelphia; I’d photographed a controversial needle exchange program in North Philly, and I’d read a lot about drug issues like harm reduction programs and other well-researched and documented alternatives to the Drug War. Like many others, I saw the issue in terms of supply and demand and questioned the focus of using our military, police, courts and prisons in places like Latin America to attack the supply — while failing miserably to address the demand at home. By the late 1980s, the Drug War seemed to be an abject failure. As I listened to Biden, all this rumbled around in my head. Given my role as PR photographer for the university, I hesitated. But then I raised my hand. I was sitting at the end of the second row in the middle section of seats in the auditorium. Biden pointed at me and walked slowly in my direction.

“Sir, I was wondering what you thought of the alternative options to our drug problem, things like harm reduction and the de-criminalization of drugs. Is there a better way to address the drug problem?”

His slow pace turned into a darting movement, and he was quickly right in front of me with that charming, slightly wry, wide Biden grin. He pointed right at my face as he looked out at the audience.

“This fellah thinks he’s smart!” he said, as if the remark was a left jab. “He cleverly uses the term to de-criminalize drugs — when what he really wants is to make the stuff legal.”

I forget the rest. All I remember was standing there like a jerk. A while back, I’d given Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz some lip at the Germantown Public Library for not answering my question and he’d threatened to have security throw me out. I’m sure Biden had figured out I was the university’s flak photographer and that he had me by the you-know-whats — which he did. I liked my job, so I took his crap and sat down with not one bit of my question addressed.

So, while I don’t hate Joe Biden, I do have a visceral disrespect for what seems his inclination to compromise with entrenched power at the expense of justice. The more I learned of Biden over the years, the more I began to understand his reaction to my question. I had unknowingly kicked his favorite pet schnauzer, and his nature was to make an ad-hominem attack.

It’s not news that Biden is vulnerable to criticism for his crime legislation and its impact on the US prison population that has risen 500% since he began his legislative efforts with Thurmond in 1981. According to The Sentencing Project, “Changes in sentencing law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase.” Also, as the senator from the corporate state of Delaware, his intimacy with the credit card industry is worth investigating; as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearing for Clarence Thomas, there are questions about his leadership; and there’s the fact he voted in 2002 to authorize the Bush invasion of Iraq.

Young Liberal Charms an Aging Segregationist

How did Joe Biden end up so close to Strom Thurmond? In Crime & Politics: Big Government’s Erratic Campaign for Law and Order, Ted Gest tells how an ambitious Senator Biden used crime, police and prison bills to get the Democrats back in the game after the election of Ronald Reagan devastated his party.

A too-decent President Carter goes down in ignominious defeat and Reagan is elected. Distressed Democrats face a bleak political future. According to Gest, this was in concert with “a broad conservative thrust to turn the criminal law to the right” that “ended up crystallizing into a highly debatable campaign to extend prison terms, especially for drug-law violations.” (In the end, Gest notes, this thrust did little to solve the nation’s crime problem, “which worsened during the decade, especially in its second half.”)

Biden had been on the Church Committee looking into the US intelligence apparatus. From this experience, according to Gest, he came up with the idea that “crime should be viewed as a form of domestic security.” In an “aggressive manner,” he began to “put crime in a defense context — getting the armed forces involved in drug interdiction,” a posture that repelled some liberal senators. “‘Give me the crime issue,’ Biden would plead repeatedly to Democratic Party caucuses, one staff member recalled, ‘and you’ll never have trouble with it in an election.’”

Senator Thurmond of South Carolina was the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Biden visited Thurmond and made him an offer: The South Carolina senator should work with Biden on issues they agreed on and ignore those they didn’t agree on. Based on an interview with Biden, Gest learned that Biden told Thurmond: “‘If you do that, I promise that I will never embarrass you by publicly taking you on.’” Thus, in 1981, a seed was planted that led to the birth and growth of nearly two decades of bipartisan crime bills.

I gleaned through Biden’s 2007 memoir, Promises To Keep, looking for references to any of this. He writes of being named in 1977 to the Senate Judiciary Committee and how “I wanted to start working up legislation to make our streets safer and the criminal justice system fairer.” He writes that there had been “so many mistakes” that “started in the best of intentions” stretching back to the Progressive era. He writes that, “In the summer of 1983 I was trying to fashion a message to reinvigorate the Democratic Party, not so I could run for president but to push back at the ungenerous policies of the current [Reagan] administration.”

In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander calls Biden, “one of the Senate’s most strident drug warriors.” In a televised response to a Bush Senior speech in 1989, Biden said: “Quite frankly, the President’s plan is not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough to meet the crisis at hand. In a nutshell, the President’s plan does not include enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, enough prosecutors to convict them, enough judges to sentence them, or enough prison cells to put them away for a long time.” While President Clinton made an effort to atone for his contribution to mass incarceration, Biden continues to play the tough guy on crime — still often taking pride in being tougher than Republicans on the issue.

In a highly critical piece titled “Joe Biden, Mass Incarceration Zealot” in Jacobin magazine, Branko Marcetic writes this: “It’s not as if Biden didn’t know what he was doing. He had criticized Reagan in 1981 for insisting on harsher sentences, arguing that prisons were already overcrowded and calling for alternative sentencing for non-violent offenders. He just didn’t care. Biden had made a calculated decision that the elections he would win were worth the damage he inflicted.” Marcetic writes about what must be the epitome of Drug War craziness, the RAVE Act — or the Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002 that Biden pushed hard. According to Marcetic, “It held concert promoters responsible for any drug use at events and treated objects like water bottles and glow sticks as drug paraphernalia. To get the bill passed, Biden re-introduced it numerous times, including once by slipping it into an unrelated bill that created the Amber Alert system. The years that followed saw heavily armed SWAT teams storming raves filled with bewildered, dancing kids — or sometimes DEA agents simply shutting down events that were neither raves nor involved any drug use.” (As a parenthetical note, like marijuana, studies have shown that ecstasy can be effective with combat soldiers wracked with PTSD.)

Joe Reaches For Bipartisan Nirvana

The final chapter of my saga of Joe Biden occurred in the evening on Veterans Day, November 11, when Biden agreed to award George W. and Laura Bush something called the Liberty Medal in a large tent outside the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. I was with a group of disgruntled Americans outside the tent using their First Amendment rights to holler, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as loud as they could. There were a number of Iraq combat veterans. My wife, Lou Ann Merkle, was moved to be there because she served seven days in federal prison for protesting Mr. Bush’s decision outside the federal courthouse in Philadelphia on the day of his shock-and-awe bombing of the highly populated city of Baghdad. And my good friend Celeste Zappala was there; her son Sherwood Baker was killed searching for Mr. Bush’s weapons-of-mass-destruction that didn’t exist. At a Washington Press Corp dinner Bush had memorably turned his misguided search for WMD into a joke video in which he’s seen looking under desks and saying, “Hmm. No WMD here!” Since I had come with my press pass, I was allowed into the event, where, as it turned out, I did some coaching by cell phone with my colleagues outside so they could be heard better. RT, formerly Russia Today, a Russian government-paid TV news channel, did a fantastic story on the event. (To watch the entire shameful hour honoring Bush click here.) As a Vietnam veteran and journalist who made two crazy trips by SUV into Baghdad during Bush’s war and who knows a number of antiwar Iraq veterans, some living with serious PTSD, part of the shame of an event like this is that it takes a foreign TV unit to extend credibility to responsible citizens in a supposed democracy who find this kind of power worshiping event obnoxious.

But there was Joe Biden praising George W. Bush for all the great things he’s done for wounded Iraq War veterans, things like holding BBQs and a book of primitive paintings of wounded vets he’d met, though, as a believer in the cathartic power of art, I would not discount the personal atonement aspect of making those paintings, even the one of his toes in the bathtub. As I pointed out in passing to the Action News anchor prepping to do his story, the wounded vets Bush was touted for working so hard for would not have been wounded if Bush (with Dick Cheney whispering in his ear) hadn’t chosen to blunder into Iraq. For anyone with any sense of honesty or compassion who has thought about the 2003 decision to go to war in Iraq, how can it be possible to award George W. Bush something called The Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center — a medal designed to recognize “men and women of courage and conviction who have strived to secure the blessings of liberty to people around the globe”? Others who got the medal include Muhammad Ali, Malala Yousalza, John Lewis and the Dalai Lama. I mean, really! I wouldn’t “lock him up” for what is now seen across party lines as an unnecessary and destructive foreign policy debacle or for the suffering his decision caused — and is still causing — so many Americans and Iraqis. But if justice matters at all, I damn sure wouldn’t give him a medal on Veterans Day.

So what was Joe Biden doing there? Why would Joe Biden honor the man who gave us the debacle in Iraq, which in Anbar Province west of Baghdad contributed to the rise of ISIS, a psychopathic reaction force with the come-back potential of a Frankenstein sequel? It’s a no-brainer for me: I submit Joe Biden was just being Joe Biden, following what has been for him a very successful pattern. It worked back in 1981 when Reagan sucked all the oxygen out of the room; why can’t it work now when Democrats are on the ropes again? I imagine Biden (who, by the way, is chairman of the National Constitution Center’s Board of Trustees) would argue that to defeat Trump (let’s not forget he has said he’s the man to do it) it’s smart politics to make a friend of someone like George W. Bush. Like an aging racist with power might be open for some easy public atonement, Biden may have calculated that a scorned George W. Bush might be in need of some gentle, loving public resurrection. Why not help him out? And at the same time raise his national bipartisan cred.

It’s pure Biden.

Finally, there’s Joe Biden, the fictional crime-fighter. A writer named Andrew Shaffer has penned a crime novel called Hope Never Dies, in which Joe joins up with his pal Barrack to solve the murder of Joe’s favorite Amtrak conductor. I’ve read a few pages and it’s a well-written example of the light and fluffy crime genre. The following is from page 81: “I didn’t need a gun. I wanted a gun. Instead I pulled out my presidential Medal of Freedom.” I’m not aware of any connections between Shaffer and the Biden campaign or if Shaffer is writing a sequel. Maybe we’ll soon see Joe Biden, Vampire Hunter in which he teams up with Bush. Donald Trump has shown the overlap of pop culture and politics, so these days you never know.

Joe Biden is a very personable, very savvy politician who has suffered a number of family tragedies. But so have too many African American families caught on the wrong side of his drive for power via crime-bills. The same goes for Americans and Iraqi families and his voting for the Iraq War. This might be forgivable with the proper atonement, but publicly sucking up to the man who gave us that needless, cruel war is a bad sign. Too often when a reform wave comes along those of poor and modest means who were caught in the vice that led to the need for reform don’t get the relief they deserve or what’s implied in the reformist rhetoric. The legacy of the vice’s grip still retains a hold on them, while the powerful find a way to repackage themselves and go on to bigger and better things. I’ve worked on prison issues for 20 years and I feel this in my gut all the time.

So please, Joe, don’t turn the 2020 presidential campaign into race for the safe center. Find the guts to write an honest book that tells us the hard truths about American politics. Then support someone ready and able to lead America to a better place.

(John Grant is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper. Courtesy, CounterPunch.org.)

* * *

* * *

SEND A BRICK TO CONGRESS | Donald J. Trump

https://www.buildtheborderwall.com/

* * *

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

DC is the best show going and with fewer commercials than crap tv. At last it is revealed how dumb our national leadership really is and how shallow their thinking can be. What a hoot! The elites have never cared about “the little guy”. Don’t expect it. The newbies in congress will be sucked into the elite machine and become them. We all want to be in the VIP line wherever there is one. We all want to ride in the front of the damn plane. But who knew that the real national problem is toxic masculinity. Or femininity for that matter. Some grown ups better show up soon.

From the Associated Press: "When the Clemson football players entered the White House's opulent State Dining Room during their Monday visit with President Donald Trump, they were greeted by a sight many likely had never laid eyes on before.

In the center of the historic room that has hosted royalty, foreign dignitaries and celebrities, a long mahogany table gleamed under the glow of an enormous golden chandelier. Ornate candelabra holding tapered whitecandles sat on the table amid numerous silver serving platters piled high with what Trump described as 'Great American food.'

Boxes of McDonald's Quarter Pounders, Big Macs and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches were stacked in neat rows next to pyramids of packaged salads. Silver gravy boats overflowed with packets of dipping sauce for Chicken McNuggets. On a separate table, Domino's pizzas and french fries repackaged in cups bearing the presidential seal basked under what appeared to be heat lamps.

'I thought it was a joke,' one Clemson player could be overheard saying in a video shared on Twitter, accurately capturing many people's reaction to the president's earlier promise to serve college football's national champions items found on various dollar menus."

* * *

* * *

CALL FOR ARTISTS - ART IN THE GARDENS - AUG 3

We are now accepting applications for Art in the Gardens 2019! This celebration of creative expression, gorgeous gardens, music, beer, wine, and food attracts as many as 1,500 visitors each year. Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens invites artists (open to all art mediums) to submit an application to exhibit their original work at the 27th Art in the Gardens held on Saturday, August 3 from 11AM to 5PM. Applications for this juried fine arts event will be accepted now through March 15, 2019. Jurying will take place following the deadline and we will send notifications by mid-April. While there is a non-refundable jury fee of $30, there is no booth fee. We work with a central cashiering system freeing you from having to handle cash and compute tax. A 25% commission will be taken from all artists’ sales. The commission will directly benefit the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens and our mission to engage and enrich lives by displaying and conserving plants in harmony with our Northern California coastal ecosystems. To be considered in the jury process please complete and submit the application by March 15, 2019.

Complete the 2019 Artist Application online HERE:

https://www.gardenbythesea.org/calendar/call-for-artists-aig/

Roxanne Perkins (Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens)

marketing@gardenbythesea.org

* * *

* * *

OUTTA MY WAY, LIBS! OH, AND SEND ME MONEY.

Dear Friend and Supporter:

Democrats have illegitimately “disinvited” me from making my scheduled and VERY important State of the Union Address.

THE STATE OF THE UNION IS NOT FOR LIBERAL OBSTRUCTIONISTS, IT IS FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!

Nancy Pelosi asked me to reschedule the State of the Union Address given the “security concerns” regarding the government shutdown. What about the REAL security concerns at our Southern Border? What about the REAL security concerns of American Citizens and their loved ones?

The only reason Democrats and Nancy Pelosi want to “reschedule” my State of the Union Address is because they know I will say what I’ve always said about our Southern Border….THE TRUTH.

It’s clear that Nancy Pelosi would rather ignore our American Constitution than allow me to speak directly to YOU.

Democrats PANICKED when I became President

Democrats PANICKED when I gave my Presidential Address last week

And now they are PANICKING at the thought of me speaking to you and your family in two short weeks

The reason for all of this Liberal Hysteria is because they are finally being exposed for hiding the truth for DECADES, DAVID.

Americans DEMAND the truth, so we need to make a CLEAR STATEMENT and raise $1,OOO,OOO by Midnight TONIGHT to show your support for Border Security (the REAL security concern).

Please make an emergency contribution of at least $5 by 11:59 PM TONIGHT to have your gift TRIPLE-MATCHED.

Trump-Pence Make America Great Again Committee

Thank you,

Donald J. Trump

President of the United States

* * *

* * *

MEMO OF THE AIR: GOOD NIGHT RADIO!

Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio, 9pm tonight (Friday, Jan. 18) on KNYO Fort Bragg (and KMEC), live from 325 N. Franklin, next door to the Tip Top bar. The heater will be on the whole time in case you want to come by and show-and-tell in comfort and a pleasant buzzing sound that clicks on and off on its own schedule vaguely related to the thermostat setting, like bees on a warm summer day.

Deadline to email your writing to be read on the air tonight is a tad after 6pm. If you're not done by then, send it whenever it's ready and I'll read it next week. Or call in and read it on the air yourself: 962-3022.

And tell your friends about 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. Also there and anywhere else via http://knyo.org

While you wait for tonight, now that everyone's electricity is back on, here's a little something to occupy your restless fingers (unless you're already typing frantically to get in under the wire, in which case carry on):

"Select any volume you want!" Imagine that.

https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2019/01/remote-control.html

A woman left cameras running in her house to see what her dog and cat do while she's away at work. It turns out, they cuddle in serene bliss.

Some examples:

https://www.neatorama.com/2019/01/16/Their-Secret-Love/

And instructive math dances. My favorite is the queen placement, followed by the flamenco sort. (Several of the dances illustrate sorting.)

Marco McClean, memo@mcn.org,

https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

16 Comments

  1. George Hollister January 19, 2019

    The divide in this county is between people who work the land, and those who distain that activity. This distain is reflected in how people raise their children. How many back to landers cultivated working the land in their children? Next to none. Growing pot doesn’t count, either. Where are these children today, and what are they doing? The irony, those who distain working the land, are the most vocal about how that land should be worked. This is not a problem unique to Mendocino County. It is a national problem. But Mendocino County is an interface point, with an added take no prisoners urban political activism overlaying a rural economy. I have mentioned Aldo Leopold, and his land ethic in the past. That was a land ethic of people who worked the land, not of those who despise that activity. In fact Leopold had some very critical opinions of people with urban values imposing themselves on the land.

    Yes, we have urban retirees with the same distain toward getting dirty, and they have a bigger and growing presence. But they are here today, gone tomorrow, and don’t tend to be the leaders.

    • Harvey Reading January 19, 2019

      C’mon, George, that is a stretch, even for an old propagandist like you. LOL. And you’re no philosopher, either …

      • james marmon January 19, 2019

        I thought you would be out marching today Harv?

        How far are you from Laramie, and the University of Wyoming?

        • Harvey Reading January 19, 2019

          Feeling left out, James? Poor boy.

    • Bruce Anderson January 19, 2019

      In living fact, George, I could name a dozen fairly young people from counterculture backgrounds who are eking out livings or partial livings from small farms unrelated to marijuana. They are all around us here in the Emerald Triangle. And even the first wave hippie dope growers typically had big summer gardens, chickens, goats and so on. The Back to the Land movement arrived here, after all, with small farms in mind until they realized they’d need a dependable cash crop to make their mortgage payments, and that crop was the one they’d smoked in the city. The Back to the Landers who weren’t getting money from mom and pop quickly reclaimed their privileges that came with college educations and took over the public jobs of Mendocino County, finding work as lawyers, social workers, teachers and so on. The plethora of non-profits ubiquitous in Mendo came out of
      hip-hustles.

      • George Hollister January 19, 2019

        A land ethic starts with economics. Having chickens? Really. The difference between gardening and farming is that with farming you have to turn a profit. I garden tomatoes, and I farm redwood trees. Got to love it. Only an urban dweller would call gardening farming. Bruce, you are an urbanite. Which is fine. You are forgiven for that. And you have much more in common with your urban back to lander critics than you can admit, too.

        The model Aldo Leopold used for a land ethic was European farming at his time. Today we would call that sustainable farming. He took issue with the economics of resource depletion and exploitation. Which in my opinion is not a sin, but it certainly is not sustainable. Sustainable means a farmer is committed to staying in business as a farmer, and is successful at doing that. Take away all the urban bells and whistles that have been added to that.

        You know, I do know some back to the landers whose children have embraced rural living. I know one who is forester. I know another who does tree work. And a third who is now working for CalFire. In these young people I see some hope.

        • Harvey Reading January 19, 2019

          Sustainable means, most of all, keeping the human population within its carrying capacity. What you’re peddling is infinite growth and expansion, which is impossible, though your words strive at their utmost to cover that real meaning of them. Your past comments have shown your dedication to kaputalism and its ravages of working people, even to the point of suggesting that what would have been minimum wage in 1970 is great money now.

          Foresters are as sold out to timber company interests as range managers are to publicly subsidized livestock farming interests. We need fewer of all four.

          • George Hollister January 19, 2019

            “Foresters are as sold out to timber company interests as range managers are to publicly subsidized livestock farming interests. We need fewer of all four.”

            Harv, you have some part truths there, and that is mostly by accident. Even a blind sow finds an acorn everyone once in a while. Most foresters became interested in what they do because they had experiences when young that had them outdoors working the land, or doing something close to it. If they “sold out”, it was to landowners, big and small, who in general have no interest in their forests. Most landowners don’t care. If I said, all, I would be about 90% correct.

            They don’t care to know, or to get beyond, “Well it looks good, unless it’s in the way, which means take it out” The idea of working in their forest is a foreign concept. That changes, of course, when they find out their trees are worth money. This is no stronger seen than in the redwood forests of Mendocino County. It’s not some timber company that decides to strip the value of a landowners forest for short term gain. It is not a timber company who does the same, but only over a longer period of time. It is not a timber company who makes a forest landowner lack enough gumption to at least walk out in the forest after a timber harvest and make sure erosion control structures are in place. I could go on. Going after a timber company is pure scapegoating.

            Many of these forest landowners are back to the land, black market pot growers who have no problem pointing fingers at others. But those virtues they demand of others, they are unwilling to live up to themselves. Gee, what a surprise. Foresters usually play the role of nursemaids, for people who don’t care. So foresters implement “substitutes” for a land ethic, which include Timber Harvest Plans, or NTMPs; licensing; certifications; appeasing regulatory agencies that are as clueless as their clients; etc. Another substitute for a land ethic is government ownership. No attempt at husbandry there. In fact that means throw in the towel entirely. East of the redwoods, that means let it burn.

            One would think, that if you owned 5 acres, or 50 acres, or 50,000 acres of redwood forest land you should feel blessed. But that is clearly not the case. The interest by the private owner of his/her redwood forest seldom goes beyond the superficial, and is usually only perked when money is involved. That fact is hard for me to understand, but it is the way it is. That is not the fault of some timber company. In fact the timber companies, in general, do a better job with their lands. Of course better, in the context here, doesn’t mean a lot.

            When it comes to rangeland management, I think I would say you are uninformed. And we have abandoned rangeland to catastrophic fires as well. That is not surprising, either.

            • Harvey Reading January 20, 2019

              George, all one has to do take a look around to realize that it is you, you old propagandist, who is uninformed. Your defense of two of the more sold-out “sciences” is simply absurd. The only reason they even exist is to promote and support timber and livestock farming interests, usually with the public paying for their efforts.

              How are your “indicator species” treefrogs doing down in the mudhole by McDonalds, by the way?

      • George Hollister January 19, 2019

        “The Back to the Landers who weren’t getting money from mom and pop quickly reclaimed their privileges that came with college educations and took over the public jobs of Mendocino County, finding work as lawyers, social workers, teachers and so on. The plethora of non-profits ubiquitous in Mendo came out of hip-hustles.”

        That has been my observation as well. But these people are not all hucksters. Some are doing honorable work. But what they are doing is not rural based. It’s urban based. It has nothing to do with a real “getting back to the land” movement. The ones I have known that took the mentioned route, were disillusioned with the back to land movement and did not want to have anything to do with growing black market pot. Most of this disillusioned group, left Mendocino County all together. Some abundant the movement right away, others hung on to the virtue in the fantasies longer, before finally giving in to some form of reality. With the black market pot group, the reality never did set in. It didn’t have to. And that black market group created the largest economy, probably, in Mendocino County history.

        They have no real influence now? Who are you trying to kid? This black market, back to the land group is the single most powerful political group on the Mendocino Coast, and will be for a while.

  2. michael turner January 19, 2019

    In today’s typically fuzzy Kunstler piece he says that a New York Times editorial called for open borders. Actually it was an opinion piece and it generated thousands of comments the great majority of which were in disagreement. Kunstler is a sloppy, slippery writer.

    • Harvey Reading January 19, 2019

      I’m not surprised at the response. This country has a lot of racists and has had them since before its beginning. Being pro-border wall gives them cover enough to express that racism openly, while giving them what they view as a small degree of deniability. The rest of us see through it, though.

  3. james marmon January 19, 2019

    RE: ED Note: “Old Howard Hospital didn’t make the Measure B agenda.”

    Don’t worry Mr. AVA, it will make itself to the center stage anyway, just like it has in all the last 13 or 14 meetings, Someone needs to just come out and say it, “first we need to deal with the Elephant in the Room, the ole Howard”. Until they deal with that Elephant the Measure B meetings will continue to be nothing more than big circle jerks!

    Will it go round in circles?

    James Marmon MSW
    Group Dynamic’s Expert.

    P.S. Kit Elliott needs to address the committee’s request for legal issues around the ole Howard, the one’s she said she wouldn’t address until the committee actually recommended it the BoS.

  4. Lazarus January 19, 2019

    “ED Note: Old Howard Hospital didn’t make the Measure B agenda.”

    I don’t believe that means much Boss, since the Measure B committee formed ole Howard has been kick’n, wanting them Measure B people to spend all that money on a winner take all deal.

    I think most with the exception of the obvious few have realized the rest of the counties cities need a place too.

    Mr. Kemper said it very clearly, the county needs to focus on helping folks before they get to the institutionalization stage. And make no mistake, that’s exactly what ole Howard would be, a straight up mental institution…heavy drugs, straight jackets, you name it.

    The idea of a huge “Snake Pit” for all the poor souls who struggle has hopefully seen its day.
    As always,
    Laz

    • james marmon January 19, 2019

      Yeah, and what happens after the 3 day and 14 day holds expire? just put them out on the street and then 5150 them again the next day? PHF Units are time limited.

      “If you’re just going to do crisis, then you’re just going to do crisis”
      -Lee Kemper

  5. chuck dunbar January 19, 2019

    “Kunstler is a sloppy, slippery writer.” You are right, Michael Turner. I usually read his pieces and just move on in moderate disgust. He alleges much in his portentous way and is so adamant about his opinions, but fails mostly to link his opinions to fact. A few weeks ago, writing just before General Flynn’s sentencing hearing, Kunstler forecast the judge would come down hard on Mueller and the prosecution. Instead the judge in reality berated Flynn, going a bit too far, even, and musing about whether the general had committed treason (later in the hearing apologizing for that comment). Did Kunstler come back to that hearing and apologize for his wildly incorrect forecast? I watched his next few comments and saw none.That’s just one example. He specializes in hyped-up theories meant to excite and outrage, like lots of folks these days. Perhaps one day some of what he forecasts about the economy may come true, though…

Leave a Reply to chuck dunbar Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

-