The end fast approaches, but oh what a ride! Any country that produces Walt Whitman, Nat King Cole and Groucho Marx must be doing something right. But for every I.F. Stone there is a United Fruit Company. For every amber wave of grain there is a Monsanto exec rewriting the Constitution. For every Emma Goldman there is a Hillary Clinton. For every Thomas Paine there is a Sacco and Vanzetti, a Bradley Manning, an Eric Holder prosecuting victims pulled from the smoking rubble because the wafting aroma of nano-thermite in the morning smells suspiciously like Albion Ridge sativa.

But speaking of Mendoland’s finest export since Jim Jones, who can bothered by the negative downer brigade when the Warriors are tied 2-2 against the San Antonio Spurs? Cynics may decry sport as the ultimate mass opiate, but as a friend puts it, “They should try smoking ten bowls of Chem-Dog x Jack Herer while watching Golden State in the fourth quarter.”

TYLER G. FIELDS, 19, of Ukiah drowned Tuesday in Lake Mendocino His body was recovered by Sheriff’s Department divers early Tuesday evening. Fields was reported missing a little after 3 Tuesday afternoon by the three other young men he’d been swimming with. All four had gone into the water at the South Boat Ramp, designated as a “swim at your own risk” area. The Lake is already quite low. The swimmers had apparently been trying to reach a small island that appears when the Lake drains early.

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THE SWINGIN’ BOONVILLE BIG BAND will perform at Lauren’s Cafe, Sat. night June 1. Show starts at 9 PM. Donation at door is $5. Proceeds to fund the Adult Ed Program in Anderson Valley. See you all there.

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FUGITIVE’S DOG FOUND, MILLER STILL BEING SOUGHT AS OF WEDNESDAY NIGHT:

Humboldt CO. Sheriff Press Release:

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and Shasta County Sheriff’s Office is seeking assistance from the public with the identity of two hikers who were on the beach at the end of Lighthouse Road, Petrolia on Wednesday May 8, 2013 during the late evening hours.

Investigators were aware on the night of the homicide that the Miller family pet “Gigi,” a tricolored Dachshund, was unaccounted for. On Monday May 13, 2013, Humboldt County Detectives learned that a woman from the Petrolia area was in possession of Gigi. This subject was contacted and it was confirmed the Dachshund she possessed was Gigi. The woman told detectives she was on the beach at the end of Lighthouse Road in Petrolia during the late evening hours of Wednesday May 8, 2013. Two hikers were walking off the beach and were carrying Gigi. The hikers said they found the dog and were not able to locate an owner. The woman offered to care for the dog and took possession of Gigi. Names were not exchanged with the hikers and their identity is not known. It would be greatly beneficial to this investigation and the search of Shane Miller, if the location Gigi was originally found was known.

The Humboldt and Shasta County Detectives are asking the persons who located Gigi call the following numbers to provide that information. Shasta County (530-245-6025) or Humboldt County (707-445-7251).

Gigi remains in the care of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and arrangements are being made for the safe return of Gigi to members of the Miller family. Gigi was in excellent health when she was found by the hikers and injury free. Attached are photographs of Gigi.

Update on Search for Miller

Miller

The search for triple homicide suspect Shane Miller continues this morning. Efforts are a continuation of yesterday’s tactics, consisting of foot searches in the King Range trails and door to door searches of residences and cabins in the Petrolia, Honeydew and Shelter Cove communities. As a reminder there is a 5:00 PM community meeting scheduled at the Honeydew School. The King Range Conservation Area remains temporarily closed to all recreational activities.

Agencies and Resources Assigned:

Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, Trinity County Sheriff’s Office, SWAT Teams from California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation at Pelican Bay and High Desert, Fortuna Police Department, Humboldt County Drug Task Force, California Highway Patrol, Humboldt State University, Eureka Police Department, helicopters from the California Highway Patrol and Homeland Security.

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AVA, MAY 14/15, 2013: FOR YOUR NO SHAME FILES. Darryl Cherney has broadcast this pathetic (and false) appeal, an appeal that leaves out the fact that he said his hagiographic movie was packing them in and not only packing them in but was up for an Academy Award. The appeal also ignores the fact that Cherney owns two valuable pieces of property in Humboldt County and he won nearly a million dollars in his successful libel suit. The guy’s loaded. Anybody who sends him money is even a bigger sap than the cult-brains who believe his phony Bari narrative.

“DARRYL CHERNEY/In Memory of Judi Bari – Who Bombed Judi Bari? is broke & has $5000 of upcoming expenses-music licensing, closed captioning, etc. in prep for digital, Netflix. etc. DVD’s are out and you can buy a signed one for $20 or a t-shirt or just make a nice donation through our paypal or via regular mail. And encourage libraries and schools to buy it!”

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SUPERVISOR DAN HAMBURG, MAY 15, 2013, on the Coast Listserve: “The AVA’s endless badgering of Darryl Cherney and Mike Sweeney, and the entire legacy of Judi Bari, is shameful. It is also demonstrative of the intrinsically flawed thinking of Bruce and Mark. These two men masquerade as ‘progressives’ while in fact being reactionaries. I found it interesting that when Darryl came to Boonville recently to show the film on Judi Bari at the Methodist Church (just across the street from the AVA offices), Bruce and Mark stayed away. They could have attended participated in the discussion of the film but apparently were too busy to ‘educate’ the locals with their ‘inside knowledge’ of the events surrounding the bombing.

* * *

HAMBURG knows nothing about the case and doesn’t bother to inform himself. And, of course, doesn’t cite any particulars here because he’s ignorant of it. Some time ago, I spent many nights at bookstores and any other venue that would invite me making, or attempting to make, the basic point that the case can be solved. In all the time I was on the road making the case that a handful of self-interested crooks were in the way of an honest investigation, there was never any sign of Hamburg. (Cherney either, for that matter. The Bari Cult tried to shut down those talks, and when they couldn’t, they sent people to attempt to shout me down.) Hamburg was also among the missing during Redwood Summer. And here he is weighing in on this dead controversy almost a quarter century after the fact, riding into Boonville to watch Cherney’s deliberate falsification of Bari-related events to call us ‘reactionaries.’ I know what Cherney does. I’m not going to pay my way into to watch him perform. Predictably, Hamburg, always the weasel, doesn’t even insult us in a forum we belong to. I wouldn’t even have known about his idiotic blast if someone hadn’t forwarded it to me. But anytime The Great Liberal and Cherney and, or his jive attorneys — any or all of them — would like to debate the subject I’d certainly be pleased to participate. But they won’t. Hamburg certainly won’t debate. The guy’s all hat, no horse. Always has been.

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RE: CALTRANS WILLITS BYPASS PROJECT and Ryan Creek Remediation Project, and Anadromous Fish in the Outlet Creek Watershed and Little Lake Valley

Dear Director Bonham,

On April 29, 2013, Keep the Code, a California non-profit public benefit corporation, submitted to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), through our attorney Rose M. Zoia, a request for a stop work order on California Department of Transportation’s (Caltrans) Willits Bypass project based in part on noncompliance with the Incidental Take Permit (No. 2081-2010-007-01) issued on July 14, 2010 (ITP). Subsequently, significant new information has come to light and a major decision has been made by Caltrans and the California Transportation Commission (CTC) in contradiction to the ITP and to the detriment of anadromous fish in the Outlet Creek Watershed and Little Lake Valley. Assessment and Recommendation

As you know, for the Outlet Creek Watershed that includes Little Lake Valley, Coho salmon are listed as Threatened by the State of California and are listed by the United States as Endangered; and for the same watershed Chinook salmon and Steelhead are listed by the United States as Threatened.

“Historically, Little Lake Valley was a large seasonal lake. In 1910, the lake was drained to repurpose the former lakebed for cattle grazing and potato production. During the same timeframe, the watercourses through Little Lake were connected via dredging to Outlet Creek and the creek and its tributaries underwent channelization. Subsequent Highway 101 construction precipitated Outlet Creek’s realignment. Records from the late 1980s found that coho salmon spawned in Long Valley, Reeves Canyon, Ryan, and Haehl creeks and several Outlet Creek tributaries, including Willits, Broaddus, and Baechtel creeks. Salmonid habitat conditions were most suitable in the Outlet Creek Basin for refugia on Ryan Creek. However, culverts on Ryan Creek are barriers to juvenile out-migration.” (Outlet Creek Basin Assessment Final Draft, December 2008, CDFG)

“The Middle Mainstem Eel River coho salmon population is at high risk of extinction given the extremely low population size and negative population growth rate. The Middle Mainstem Eel River coho salmon population is not viable and is at high risk of extinction because the estimated average spawner abundance over the past three years has been less than the depensation threshold.” (Public Draft SONCC Coho Salmon Recovery Plan, January 2012, NMFS)

When the fish population size declines below the depensation threshold, then the fish population is no longer able to sustain itself, it is said to be at critical depensation. Depensation is the effect on a fish population whereby a decrease in the breeding population leads to reduced survival and production of eggs or offspring. Ultimately this may lead to the fishery’s collapse, or even local extinction. The Middle Mainstem Eel River coho salmon population, which includes the Outlet Creek Watershed, is approaching local extinction. Page 2 of 3 Following is a map of the Outlet Creek Southern Subbasin (Little Lake Valley Watershed) showing the estimated current range of Coho and Chinook salmonids and Steelhead.

A major recommendation of the NMFS Coho Salmon Recovery Plan is to remove barriers at Ryan Creek and remediate the one county, one private, and two Caltrans culverts that have been identified as high priority for fish passage. (Public Draft SONCC Coho Salmon Recovery Plan January 2012, NMFS)

National Marine Fisheries Service – January 19, 2012, Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement

The NMFS Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement (BO/ITS) protect three anadromous fish species: Chinook and Coho salmon, and Steelhead. The BO/ITS includes the following measure to further minimize impacts to these anadromous fish:

“Fish passage on culverts located at the South Fork and North Fork of Ryan Creek will be improved for all three anadromous species. Both of these projects are required mitigation for the 2081 consultation for coho salmon with the DFG. The fish passage improvements at two culverts on Ryan Creek are expected to improve passage for adult and juvenile salmonids. The improvements will occur at large culverts on the two main Page 3 of 3 tributaries that form Ryan Creek, and will improve access and utilization on a substantial amount of habitat for spawning and rearing. An additional 2.7 miles of salmonid habitat on the South Fork Ryan Creek watershed, and 1.7 miles of fish habitat on the North Fork Ryan Creek will be available to anadromous species. Similar to Haehl and Upp creek, the increase in available habitat at Ryan Creek is expected to increase overall salmonid productivity in the Outlet Creek watershed.”

Caltrans Dam Failure Adjacent to Ryan Creek

In May of 2012, the enclosed Caltrans emails reveal that an overflow culvert at the bottom of a pond had “blown out” and taken out a couple of trees downstream in a Caltrans constructed dam and pond adjacent to Ryan Creek. Caltrans constructed the dam and siltation pond “in response to a Regional Water Quality Control Board violation and that the structure was to be temporary,” but Caltrans had failed to remove the “temporary” dam that was left to deteriorate and not maintained for about 30 years. Caltrans Willits Bypass project manager was notified of the dam failure “due to the proximity to Willits Bypass and Ryan Creek environmentally sensitive projects.” Caltrans responded in an email that, “I don’t think we need to fix the blow-out and restore the ponds for any wildlife concerns…” Since Caltrans determined that they no longer had an obligation to fix the “blow-out”, although there is no indication that the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board was notified of the “blowout” of the dam and consequent sedimentation of Ryan Creek, and CDFW, although they had been notified by the property owner, failed to require Caltrans to restore Ryan Creek. Furthermore, Caltrans chose to not do any remediation of the damage to Ryan Creek, even though Ryan Creek is rank by CDFW as the highest value refugia stream for anadromous fish in the Outlet Creek Watershed.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife – Incidental Take Permit – Coho

The ITP Conditions 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3 require that the Ryan Creek Fish Barrier Removal and Mitigation be planned and funded and the South Fork Ryan Creek culvert remediation project shall be completed no later than October 31, 2013. However, on April 25, 2012 in the enclosed Caltrans email CDFW requested that the remediation of both the South Fork and North Fork of Ryan Creek “be moved out two years from the date listed in Incidental Take Permit No. 2081-2010-007-01.” CDFW failed to require Caltrans to amend the ITP, then on Tuesday, May 7, 2013, the California Transportation Commission agenda #116 voted not to fund this remediation project and to delay the funding decision for two more years until Fiscal Year 2015-16. There has been no supplemental environmental assessment for this defacto amendment to the ITP for this delay in a vital remediation project that would provide offsite mitigation for the killing and harm to Coho and their habitat caused by the Willits Bypass project in Little Lake Valley.

This collective decision by the State of California places this required mitigation of both the South Fork and the North Fork of Ryan Creek culvert remediation project in jeopardy of not ever being funded, and places anadromous fish, especially Coho, which were already considered at high risk of local extinction, before the Caltrans dam “blow out” and the Caltrans Willits Bypass project, are now at a higher risk of local extinction.

Again, we urge for CDFW to issue a stop work order on Caltrans’ Willits Bypass project that is in violation of the ITP. Sincerely yours, Bob Whitney, Willits

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BOYS & GIRLS CLUB and Mayacama Services Begin Job Mentoring Program; Crush Italian Steakhouse Teaches Ukiah Youth Food Industry Job Skills. On May 14th Ukiah’s newest restaurant, Crush Italian Steakhouse, began a job training/mentoring program that has been a great success at their flagship location in Chico. Students from the Ukiah Boys & Girls Club and Mayacama Services will participate in a 10-week program working hand in hand with Crush staff learning how to cook, serve, buss and host in a fine-dining establishment. Every Monday from 5:30-8pm until July 15, 2013, dinners at Crush Italian Steakhouse & Bar will receive service from teenagers assisting staff in performing their various duties. A special menu item will be featured and Ukiah Crush will give $10 from each special menu directly to the Boys & Girls Club organization. Donations are also accepted. The teenagers involved are members of the Boys & Girls Club who have shown interest in learning about job opportunities in the local community and participants in Mayacama Services, part of the Ukiah Valley Association for Habilitation (UVAH). They Boys & Girls Club students participate regularly in the after school programs and have successfully completed the Club’s job curriculum program. Students were selected after an extensive interview process prior to acceptance into the mentoring program. Boys and Girls Club Chief Professional Officer, Liz Elmore is very excited about the program. “This is an innovative program offered to Boys &Girls Club of Ukiah teens. I am delighted about this partnership and working with Crush by expanding members’skills from giving them emotional support and encouragement needed to succeed while furthering their education or moving into the job market and adulthood. The significance of Crush’s mentoring program will benefit Ukiah Valley youth as well as businesses for years to come.” The participating youth gain experience four hours every Monday evening at Crush, located at 1180 Airport Park Blvd in Ukiah. On Monday, July 15th, mentored apprentices will perform their final dinner service and be acknowledged for their achievements by the Crush staff, community members, Boys & Girls Club and supporters at a graduation ceremony. Ukiah Crush principal Doug Guillon and his staff work closely to educate each teen in creating a strong work ethic and sense of responsibility. “The restaurant environment provides an excellent medium for young people to learn skills essential to being a valued employee. Emphasis is placed on accountability and creating communication skills so necessary in today’s workplace,” said Guillon. “This program has raised around $3,000 for the Boys and Girls Club in Chico and over time we intend to make a substantial impact in creating the sort of job opportunities the youth of Ukiah deserve.” For more information regarding this Boys & Girls Club of Ukiah program, please contact Liz Elmore, Chief Professional Officer at 467-4900.

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INDIAN GAMING Special Distribution Fund – Distribution of Grant Funds — Mendocino County is pleased to announce that a total of $140,772.33 has been awarded from the Indian Gaming Special Distribution Fund, which was funded by contributions made by the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians. Each year, funds are awarded to local government agencies impacted by tribal casinos. Awarded applicants from this year’s funding cycle include the Hopland, Little Lake, Redwood Valley/Calpella, and Long Valley Fire Districts, the Sheriff’s Office, District Attorney, Health and Human Services Agency, and the Hopland Public Utility District. The Indian Gaming Special Distribution Fund was established by the State Legislature to help mitigate the impacts of tribal casinos, funded by gaming fees. The Indian Gaming Local Community Benefit Committee was created to distribute these funds within Mendocino County. The Committee includes the following members: Shawn Padi and Pamela Espinoza of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians Tribal Council, Dan Hamburg and John McCowen of the County Board of Supervisors, Ron Orenstein and Larry Stranske of the Willits City Council, and Trevor Sanders of the Point Arena City Council. “We’re very pleased that funds will go toward a variety of activities to assist communities affected by gaming,” said Dan Hamburg, Committee Chair. “Awards will support law enforcement, victim’s witness assistance, a summer youth program, and water infrastructure improvements, in addition to fire protection and emergency medical equipment.” Mendocino County would like to thank the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians for its contributions to the Fund and cooperation throughout the award process, and to congratulate this year’s awardees. For more information, please contact the Executive Office at 463-4441.

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AFFORDABLE CARE ACT UPDATE: Budget Proposal Threatens County Health Care Safety Net: CSAC (California State Association of Counties) is leading an education and advocacy effort to ensure California implements federal health care reform in a way that maximizes opportunities to cover as many uninsured as possible by January 1, while also protecting the county healthcare safety net. That safety net is at risk because the current state budget proposal assumes counties will save $1.5 billion dollars when the ACA starts—when actual savings will be far less and won’t occur right away. Over the past two weeks, county officials have joined forces with public hospital systems, community clinics, public health and consumer advocates, labor, and other health care providers as part of the “Protect the Health Care Safety Net” Coalition. As CSAC moves forward as part of this coalition, the mission is three-fold: o To educate the administration, Legislature and public that counties will continue to provide indigent health care and critical public health services even after the ACA is implemented. Counties will also continue to need 1991 health care realignment funding to cover the cost of those services.

• To emphasize that rather than cutting into local health services, we should be investing in the county health system to protect the remaining uninsured and maintain the local health care safety net.

• To urge the Administration and Legislature to move quickly to set up a system so counties can begin enrolling people in Covered California and Medi-Cal and thus avoid missing the opportunity to receive 100% federal funding to expand health care services to this population by January.

CSAC is also actively engaged in ongoing discussions with the Administration and Legislature about how to rethink county health funding post-ACA implementation. However, there is a very real possibility that the May Revise Budget could include the Administration’s initial proposal to redirect up to $1.5 billion in current county health funding to other state obligations, including child care, would significantly erode county health care programs and services. CSAC will be calling on counties to act quickly to educate legislators and the Governor about the devastating impacts this could have on public health care services in our communities. Staff and our Board representative continue to participate in weekly working group and policy committee meetings to monitor developments related to implementation of federal health care reform and implications for Mendocino County;

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AB 5 (AMMIANO) – Homeless Person’s Bill of Rights and Fairness Act (RCRC: Oppose; CSAC: Oppose; Recommendation: Oppose): Assembly Bill 5, by Assembly Member Ammiano, would create the Homeless Person’s Bill of Rights and Fairness Act and establish certain protections against discrimination on the basis of homelessness, which the bill defines as “individuals or families who lack or are perceived to lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, or who have a primary nighttime residence in a shelter, on the street, in a vehicle, in an enclosure or structure that is not authorized or fit for human habitation and also means a person whose only residence is a residential hotel or who is residing anywhere without tenancy rights, and families with children staying in a residential hotel whether or not they have tenancy rights.” Additionally, AB 5 contains the following provisions:

• Provides rights to homeless to move freely, rest, eat and solicit donations in public places without being subject to criminal or civil sanctions, harassment, or arrest by law enforcement. (Public spaces is defined in the bill as those owned by any state or local government entity or upon which there is an easement for public use and is held open to the public, including plazas, courtyards, parking lots, sidewalks and public parks and buildings.

• Prohibits law enforcement from arresting individuals for violation of local ordinances (such as encampment, loitering, panhandling and residing in vehicles parked on public property)

unless the following conditions exist:

- The county maintains year-round Section 17000 nonmedical assistance.

- The locality is not an area of concentrated un- or underemployment or an area of labor surplus.

- The county-maintained public housing waiting list is <50 people.

• Requires every local government to have “health and hygiene centers” with 24/7 access to bathroom and shower facilities. The centers would be funded by the State Department of Public Health as part of the Neighborhood Health Center Program through the county agencies that oversee public health programs.

• Provides civil and criminal protections for local agency employees who make public property (such as first aid supplies, blankets, food, water) available for use or distribution to the homeless (without consent of the local agency).

• Requires local law enforcement to annually compile and review the number of citations, arrests, and other enforcement activities made pursuant to laws prohibiting: obstructing a sidewalk, loitering, sitting, lying down, camping, sleeping in a public place, soliciting donations, bathing in public places, sharing or receiving food, inhabiting a vehicle, violating public park closure laws or crossing streets or highways at particular locations. That information would be submitted to the Attorney General and made public.

AB 5 would create a private right of action against any person, public entity or public employer for violation of the rights provided in AB 5, and if a county chooses to move forward with judicial proceedings, the county where the citation was issued must provide counsel to the defendant. While the intent of helping to provide necessary services to homeless individuals and reduce harassment of those who are homeless is an overarching principle CSAC can support, the costs associated with increased reporting requirements, court costs associated with possible civil actions brought against public employers, law enforcement employees or public agencies as well as the usurping by the state of local authority by prohibiting local ordinance enforcement prompts CSAC to seek an oppose position on the bill. (— Mendocino County CEO’s Report, 5/14/2013)

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A LAYERED LIFE: “Points of Encounter” reveals paintings by two master artists Catherine Woskow and Larry Thomas offer shifting perspectives

by Roberta Werdinger

How do we know what we know? Is what we are seeing “out there,” or is it the result of processes that begin deep inside the brain? For more than a century, artists have been questioning the solidity and reality of the objects and people they encounter by painting new ways of perception. This has resulted in canvases covered with creative patterns, streaks, and arcs in place of buildings, mountains, and people. Painting movements such as Cubism and Abstract Expressionism are well known examples. Lately, scientists have documented how actively the human brain participates in molding its perceived environment. Maybe no one can figure out what is “out there” or “in here,” but when we stop trying to force a final meaning, we drop into a moment by moment presence arising from a rich and abiding interchange of body, earth, and mind.

These shifting perspectives are expressed in the Grace Hudson Museum’s upcoming exhibit, “Points of Encounter: Catherine Woskow and Larry Thomas,” which opens on May 25, 2013. A special preview reception on Friday, May 24, from 5 to 8 pm, is free with Museum admission. Refreshments by Jackie Lee and music by Will Siegel will be featured, along with an opportunity to meet the two artists.

Woskow and Thomas are both internationally known and widely exhibited painters who reside in Mendocino County but whose work is rarely shown locally. Both use the technique of layering multiple images over each other, rendering a simple subject to a high degree of abstraction which yet remains recognizable, sometimes barely so. While Thomas favors the natural landscapes that unfold outside his Fort Bragg home as his point of encounter, Woskow’s subject matter is the mysterious and ever-changing personality emanating from the head and face of a human being.

Catherine Woskow is a Ukiah native who has studied, lived, and exhibited nationally and internationally before returning to a quiet life of painting in Ukiah Valley on the banks of the Russian River. While previous works have focused on the human body and its energies, Woskow took up her brush to engage in a dialogue with the head, which she sees as the source of “chaotic thought, most often directed from violent contradiction.” The Museum will showcase 12 large paintings from this Head Series, in which multiple layers of colors, shapes and brushstrokes contend on a canvas that seems to literally shift before the viewer’s eyes. The familiar features of a human head may be interrupted by a streak running vertically down the face. A head turned to the side highlights bold apricot streaks around the forehead, eyes and nose. Another face, partially obliterated by a wash of white and ice blue, seems to swim up to the viewer’s sight out of a deep fog. These impressions converge to create portraits that are at once familiar and ghostly, respectful and confrontational, amusing and unsettling. Indeed, the viewer’s reaction to the paintings can be as layered as the process that went into making them, an effect very much intended by the artist. She states: “I make it a priority to continue to learn to trust the process—to get out of my own way and let the work guide and disclose. The outcome of my work is always unpredictable, though my process deliberate.”

Larry Thomas drew his early appreciation of nature from a childhood rambling in the woods and fields of his native Mississippi. After a career which included exhibits at Washington, D.C.’s National Museum and San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, international artist residencies, and teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he also served as Dean and Interim President, he retired to Fort Bragg. There he continues his daily walks, where the dramatic landscapes of sea, wind, fog, and forest inform paintings that pulse with a quiet delight. Thomas’s paintings are both playful and modest, allowing the personality of a place to emerge through fine-lined brush strokes, layered washes, and rich paint surfaces. Dune grass blown about by the strong coastal wind appears as squiggles that suggest Chinese calligraphy, while underneath broad strokes of tawny colors blend into a chiaroscuro resembling the paintings of J.M.W. Turner (one of Thomas’s influences). Like Woskow, Thomas uses painting not to define his subject but to create a field in which natural and human instincts come to play. He knows that “each encounter with a landscape is unique even if repeated on a regular basis.” He appreciates the coast as the “coming together of the earth with the water, where one becomes the other,” painting with an awareness of the Pomo people whose displaced culture and grounds lie close to his home.

“Points of Encounter” runs through July 28, 2013 and will include a docent and member tour led by exhibit curator Marvin Schenck on June 4, and a “Meet the Artists” tour on June 23. Catherine Woskow, a long-time supporter of the Museum, will donate 50 percent of the proceeds from all her paintings sold during this exhibit to the Museum’s Sun House Guild, which funded the exhibition.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah and is a part of the City of Ukiah’s Community Services Department. General admission to the Museum is $4, $10 per family, $3 for students and seniors, and free to members or on the first Friday of the month. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call 467-2836.

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EARTH FIRST! HUMBOLDT PRESS RELEASE: Trinidad,CA: 9:00 am. Earth First! Humboldt dropped a large banner 100 ft. up in trees that can be seen from Highway 101 just North of Trinidad. The banner reads in large print “Respect Strawberry Rock”, and below in smaller print, “Forest Stewardship Council and Sustainable Forestry Initiative Green-Wash Green Diamond’s Clear-Cuts.” Green Diamond is the first US based company that has received FSC certification while still practicing clear cut forestry methods, something that FSC is selling to the public as sustainable. For the SFI, industry created label, clear-cutting is status quo. Green Diamond holds both FSC and SFI certifications. Despite much vocal opposition from the community, including the mayor of Trinidad, as well as a few dedicated tree-sitters maintaining tree-sits, Green Diamond Resource Company is continuing its clear-cutting, aka “even aged management” around Strawberry Rock. These plans include logging stands of residual old-growth and old second growth redwoods. Included in the forest is a rare and little understood species, Bishop Pine. Green Diamond has a 45 year clear-cut rotation plan, including all of the land around Strawberry Rock. Earth! First Humboldt is calling for Green Diamond Resource Company to create a special management zone of the Strawberry Rock area in which restoration forestry practices are followed include but are not limited to: not taking more than a third of the annual growth of the forest, protecting rare and endangerd species such as the Bishop Pine, Spotted Owl, and Marbled Murelet, and restoring mature forest habitat. The group plans on continuing to support as well as engage in the resistance to Green Diamond’s destructive forestry practices, and will be hosting a skill building camp beginning June 14th called Redwood Coast Rendezvous.

MEMO OF THE WEEK: THE FAMILY BUSINESS

From: jtomlin@mcn.org

Date: May 8, 2013, 11:59:17 AM PDT

To: marthafbradford@gmail.com, jcollins@mcn.org

Cc: rpinoli@mcn.org, anderson2775@gmail.com

Marti & JR,

I had a troubling incident @ school yesterday. I know that Robert talked to JR about this and was able to give him a more complete story. I also know that I really can’t protect myself, let alone, a staff member, but I hope this will be addressed.

ESL Instructor and Softball Coach, Amber Mesa, came to me yesterday, very concerned about her firsthand witnessing of Board Member, Ben Anderson’s inappropriate, loud, rude, public behavior and his screaming/yelling at Athletic Director, Robert Pinoli in front of staff & kids, outside, in the front of the gym/cafeteria area.

She said that Ben was very insulting to Robert about Robert’s disability after his(Robert’s) surgery and was literally mocking him publicly. She thought Ben was very agitated and also heard Ben scream @ Robert that he(Robert) was a “liar”, even though Robert kept saying he(Robert) would like to talk to Ben.

One of our student office aides, who also personally witnessed this public and loud confrontation by Ben , came to the office, a bit upset, & gave the exact same account to a front office staff member.

I went out to ask Robert what was up. I had less than 2 minutes with him (Robert), as he was teaching a class. Hopefully, he(Robert) gave a more complete story to JR(who was subbing for me) yesterday afternoon.

The factual account is that several baseball players, who earn credit as aides/supervisors in one of Robert’s Junior High classes weren’t at a class at the appropriate time. Robert found out they were helping another staff member, and though they hadn’t asked Robert’s permission ahead of time, he felt that this was a very productive & helpful use of their time. He said that several Junior High students might have cut class & would have to do some lunch detention with him(Robert).

He also said that Ben mocked his disability and screamed at him(Robert) that he was a “liar.” Robert literally did not know what Ben was screaming about.

I do not have Ben’s “side”, if there is one, of this story. JR has counseled me to not communicate w/Ben.

There appear to be several issues here:

1.)Though there were NO consequences to any Baseball Players, staff must NOT be affected in their issuance of behavioral/discipline consequences, by whether someone is on a sport’s team. I did not allow Hank Logan, our former All-League” pitcher, to play in a home playoff game(which we lost), because of his failure to serve detentions that he owed. This is the #1 stipulation in the Student Handbook’s Athletic Policy under “Conduct.” It is totally inappropriate, and against policy, for any coach(or Board Member) to try to pressure staff to change a behavior consequence.

2.)Because of his irrational actions, if this had been a stranger on campus, instead of a Board Member, who should know better, talking to a staff member this way, I would have called the police. This public behavior is inappropriate on this campus, at least until June 30th. Ben should be asked to resign from both coaching and the Board after his incredible, clownish display of being out of control in front of both staff and children.

3.)As seems to often be the case in Boonville(where gossip & rumor seem to trump facts), instead of Ben just calling Robert to see if anything was up with his(Ben’s) ballplayers, he(Ben) instead believed a thrice told tale that was a lie, and then screamed publicly, in front of numerous witnesses that Robert was the liar. I have worked with Robert for over 2 decades, and we have disagreed on many issues. If anything Robert is brutally honest to me, staff, coaches, parents, community members, students, etc. I may not like what he says, but I can ALWAYS count on it to be accurate.

4.)I’m not sure what the process is for filing a grievance against a sitting Board Member, but I have suggested that Robert follow up on this. JR might have gotten the ball rolling on this after his conference with Robert yesterday.

— JT

PS. The irony of Ben Anderson calling anyone a “liar” is fascinating, given the fact that his family’s business has been based on and built on lies. Perhaps being raised in that culture, he assumes, in his strange and tiny world of make-believe, the rest of us also just “make it up” as we go along.

Ed reply: Granted, the family business isn’t exactly a fourth generation furniture store, but it’s a living. Seriously though, Jimbo, if you’re going to accuse us all when you’re talking about me you should at least cite a lie so we can group on it to see if it’s a lie or simply an opinion you and the rest of the cringing faculty at AV Unified don’t like. One might assume that “educators” are capable of distinguishing fact from opinion, but after years in this business I think that ability is increasingly rare generally among “educated” Americans. And, of course, it’s easier to whine privately about “lies” than have a public argument about them, and easier yet to simply make the assertion without identifying the “lie.” As for the episode you describe here, assuming it’s accurate, which I doubt because we haven’t heard the other side of it, it doesn’t sound like much, and at a minimum it entertained the student witnesses at a venue not offering much in the way of intentional humor. Anderson, of course, was one of three votes not to renew your lush contract, and Pinoli lives in fear that adult authority, should it ever occur at AV Unified, might wonder why every year some kid asks, “Yo, Pinoli! Do we have to sand this same block of wood the whole semester?” We can all understand the unhappiness you and Pinoli have with Anderson, but he was only one of three votes to sack you and, frankly, I don’t understand why Mrs. Bradford hasn’t asked you to re-apply for the position. You were a natch! By the way, Pinoli’s “disability” is in fact knee surgery he chose to have in the middle of the school year, which meant the district had to pay a sub and him. It’s not as if he’s The Little Match Girl forever hobbling around campus on a broken crutch. The traumatized hot house rose who coaches girl’s softball? We’re all praying for a speedy recovery.  But look on the bright side, Tomlin; with you outta there, there’s now at least a long shot — a very long shot given the usual insider hiring process under way to find your clone — that Mrs. Bradford, ol’ Shep, JR, Donna The Inevitable, the usual pair of stooge parents, and the high school’s reliably supine faculty reps — Boonville Unified’s version of an open hiring process — might accidentally settle on a smart, honest person as high school principal. Highly unlikely in the present context of school management, but mathematically possible. Heck, a smart, honest person at the top, replace the five or six teachers at the high school who never should have been hired in the first place, and we might have a pretty good little school again.

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BYPASS MAKES NO SENSE

Editor:

A sad and unnecessary chapter is unfolding before us in Little Lake Valley. [Mendocino Council of Governments Manager] Phil Dow’s attempt to fulfill his lifelong dream of a Caltrans bypass around Willits is grinding slowly ahead, slashing, mutilating and destroying a once glorious old-growth oak and madrone woodland. This first phase onslaught on the environment is almost complete at the south end of the proposed by bypass. Nesting birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals have already been sacrificed.

A commonsense approach to solving a minor traffic backup in Willits, created by Caltrans in 1994, would be to restripe Highway 101 from the hospital to the Highway 20 intersection. Caltrans said they would do this, but not until “next year.” They arranged a 20-year bottleneck and now offer to uncork it after they garnered public support for their bypass.

The next step of a commonsense approach is to connect Baechtel Road and Railroad Avenue so that locals can use the side streets, then, if necessary, put back on the table the railroad right-of-way truck route. Just the restriping and the Baechtel/Railroad Avenue connection would alleviate traffic backups considerably.

In a dialogue with Phil Frisbie, spokesperson for Caltrans, he acknowledged that if he were advising on this project 10 years ago he would recommend the above-listed steps be taken. He then said that this project is too far along with the environmental approvals and permits to stop it. I disagree. It is not too late to stop a huge waste of taxpayer dollars on a project that will forever destroy the character and ecosystem of Little Lake Valley. A 200-foot wide dead zone, swelling massively at both ends and consuming one quarter of the Valley’s arable farmland is not a good solution to a minor slow down of traffic.

An 8% decline in traffic volume at the Muir Mill Road intersection over the last four years is an indication that the Caltrans projections of a 59% increase in traffic volumes over 20 years is not likely to materialize. Stagnant growth, a weakening economy, localization, rising fuel costs, a timber industry in decline, and the legalization progress in the marijuana industry seem to point to lower traffic increases rather than a doubling of traffic over 40 years.

The $210 million figure for the first phase of the bypass is incorrect. The bulk of the funding for this project is $135.5 million in transportation bonds authorized by voters under Proposition 1B. These bonds carry a hefty price: depending on the interest rate at the time of the bond sale, the end cost of borrowing money through issuing bonds can be nearly double, according to the state legislative analyst’s office. Coupled with the standard 20% cost overruns that are usual for a project of this size, plus unknown millions in mitigation costs and the real figure will be closer to a half a billion, just for the first phase.

The waste of taxpayer money for this destructive swath through Little Lake Valley cannot be justified. Currently a mere 7400 vehicles a day (8% of them trucks) would use this two lane bypass which only reaches capacity at 40,000 vehicles a day.

John Wagenet

Willits

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SIGNS OF EDU-INCOMPETENCE

An open letter to Social Security Administration Representative Ms. Martha Sanchez, 521 South Orchard Avenue, Ukiah

Dear Ms. Sanchez,

This letter expresses my outrage at the reported refusal of Mendocino County Schools Superintendent Paul Tichinin’s refusal to move the sign showing that the Social Security office is behind the Board of Education’s new office. Construction of the new building has made it difficult for anyone driving by to discover where Social Security is located. In addition there is no building number outside. Apparently, the Board of Education’s bureaucratic structure is so stodgy that repeated requests to make the sign visible have been ignored.

This failure to respond to a reasonable request properly indicates the incompetence on the part of Mr. Tichinin and of his staff. Since so many bureaucracies are top-heavy with administrative staff and understaffed at the hard-working level, this failure to respond to a reasonable request indicates that administrative staff is overpaid and underqualified.

Sincerely,

Dorotheya M. Dorman

Redwood Valley

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FEES ARE FEES

Editor,

Recently, I got a copy of the new Anderson Valley Community Serivces District’s new schedual of revised and additional fees. There is a state law called the Brown Act. Though it is hard to understand, in essence it was enacted to make all California agencies from top to bottom more open about all their activities. This new ordinance does just the opposite. It raises all kinds of new and old fees, according to our Fire Chief only to those who travel through and not to our citizens which is a lie. It’s for these various services that we pay our taxes and a highly debatable benefit assessment for. First of all the tourists that travel through our valley and spend money here are entitled to the same government services of this Valley. Our local CSD gets their funds from the taxes of all the valley businesses, the wineries and all the beautiful vineyards, the restaurants, the lodging, all the food establishmemts, yes, and even the local hardware stores. It would be a pretty bland and dull valley without all this business. I am sure our local volunteer firefighters do their jobs to support the Valley, not hinder it and they have to pay these taxes and fees which have literally exploded from all governments. A fire department, like all government services, is essential, but like all of us they have to live within the funds they receive. I am sure our local CSD is swimming in debt but it’s all undercover and anything they put out is not understandable which to me is fraud. This ordinance is just another way to raise more money because of debt. But more money only makes it worse because instead of paying off the debt they only use it to create bigger government and bigger debt. If I am wrong don’t just tell me, put it here in this paper so everyone can see it. Like the Brown Act was really created for the money spent to publish the CSD finances would be small and well spent.

Emil Rossi

Boonville

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A CLIP & 2 LOOSE ROUNDS…

Editor,

Just saw your newspaper for the first time.

On December 19, 2012 some moron in an op-ed had several very imbecilic suggestions on guns. Registration is illegal under the Second Amendment. Gun ownership is an individual right like free speech under the First Amendment. We don’t need no monkey ass official permit. Even Joe Biden said registration is wrong and a step into Nazi Germany. The only purpose is to confiscate guns.

No rational reason can be given for limits on carrying capacity. Only a dozen or two dozen people are killed by so-called assault rifles in the United States every year. 27 in 2012.

Of the 30,000 deaths by guns, 20,000 are suicides and they have as much right to kill themselves as women do to abort. That leaves a little over 9000 murders compared to an estimated 2.1 million to 3 million defensive uses of firearms every year in the United States. See ‘More guns, less crime’ (1998) and ‘The Bias Against Guns’ (2003) by John R. Lott, University of Chicago. 98% of the time in these 3 million incidents the mere brandishing a firearm was enough to scare away a potential criminal.

“Any” felony? 99% of felonies it don’t involve crimes with guns, but things like income tax fraud, etc.. They are to lose their rights because some crackhead in Mendo so decrees? In Louisiana we have a saying, suck my duke! The Communist Nazi moron who wrote that up and can suck my duke! Capise [sic]?

Registration of ammo is as illegal as gun registration and required firearm identification. Same with your Taliban like penalties.

Finally, the only reason for the Second Amendment was fear of government tyranny, not shooting ducks. And personal self protection was taken for granted and not an issue. Your proposals are DOA, dead on arrival.

January 3, 2013, the same moron’s column misrepresents Marilyn Monroe’s strong ties with the with the Communist Party USA which were quoted in the story which the anonymous writer quotes. Monroe supported MLK, a communist party stooge AND Mao Zedong at a time when Mao’s policies were killing 50 million Chinese in three years, 1958-1961. Monroe was a bubble brain who couldn’t pronounce Marxism Leninism but who was guided by Frederick Vanderbilt Field, a scion of two wealthy US families and a major contributor to the Communist Party USA. If that’s good Americanism then I’m Michelle Obama’s black behind. So the asswipe who wrote this left out Mao’s mass murders and Monroe’s admiration of him, “Dr.” King’s CPUSA ties and Monroe’s ties with the CPUSA through Field.

Did the anonymous coward who wrote this think everyone else is too stupid to look up the original story?

You can publish this if you want to or or do the anatomically impossible, all the same to me.

Bart Hirshberger

San Francisco

PS. You ain’t getting my address because I’ve been warned by people more familiar with your paper that there are some graduates of modern chemistry affiliated with it.

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DO THE RIGHT THING, TED

Hey Ted Nugent —

You said, broadcast, for a huge audience in that tirade berating the president that in a year you’d either be in jail or you’d be dead”!

Since you are neither, why don’t you just do the honorable thing with any of your arsenal and commit suicide?

Fool on the Hill

Trinidad

PS. RSVP.

PPS. If something misfires (drat), they can put you in jail for attempting it. See? Win-win!

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SEVEN CARROTS OF LIGHT

Editor,

I have a recurring dream where I’m running for president again, and no, I have not gone off my meds.

Longtime readers of this paper may recall previous campaigns dating back to 1982. What they don’t know is that my 1982 effort wasn’t the first time I ran for president of the United States. No, that would be my 1972 run as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and student body president of Cañada Community College in Redwood City, California.

In that 1972 effort I simply borrowed Gary Snyder’s “Chofu-Four Changes” as my platform. I ran again in 1976, and in 1980 I joined the Citizens Party and campaigned for Barry Commoner and LaDonna Harris. In 1990 I was back at it changing my 1982 seven-point program to the “seven points of light” ala George H.W. Bush.

I want to keep this short but I would be remiss if I didn’t include the seven points for the edification of readers to whom this is all new, so here they are in their original form:

1. End all nuclear development and dismantle all existing weapons and clients. 2. Withdraw all support from military dictatorships. 3. Honor all treaties to which we are a party. 4. Provide jobs for all willing to work to solarize and re-green our land. 5. Cooperate in the decentralization of power and hold corporations responsible for their acts. 6. Turn the South Lawn of the White House into a community garden. 7. Ask God/ess for daily guidance.

When I say original form, I’m referring to what came out of my mouth in an interview with a reporter from the Willits News published in their July 28, 1982 edition under the heading “Willits’ first presidential candidate.”

So here we are in 2013 where I’ll turn 73 in November and I will be 76 by the time I take office in January 2017.

Dreaming? Of course. I told you that back in the first sentence.

I’m married now and I live on an acre north of Fort Bragg where with the help the couple of previously homeless friends I maintain two small vegetable gardens and a greenhouse which has been producing sugar snap peas and salad greens since March.

You want to do something revolutionary? Plant carrots and watch them grow.

I have absolutely no plans to leave his acre except to shop or keep appointments.

Peace,

Peter Sears

Fort Bragg

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LOVE IN TINYTOWN

Editor,

“The Liar.”

It was a beautiful, warm sunny day, not too long ago and I was totally lost in the hills south of Not So TinyTown looking for a friend’s house. Finally I turned around. I was heading back down the hill slowly when, to my relief, there was a pickup heading up the road. I waved my hands and stopped my car. I saw a very attractive guy quickly come to a stop and say, “Yes ma’am.” For couple of seconds, I was distracted. What were the chances of meeting a young attractive guy in the middle of the hills, far from anyone else? Let’s just say it’s been a while.

I started explaining that I was lost and he helped direct me back down the hill as best he could. He asked me where I was coming from and I said TinyTown. He said he knew one person from TinyTown, some guy named Leonard with a bunch of sheep dogs. He also said he lived up the road a ways with his family. We made small talk for a few more minutes and then as the conversation ended we let our eyes linger for a few seconds and he asked me if he could give me his number and maybe we’d hang out sometime. I got his number and that was that. It was a great story even if it was just that; after all, I never got a guy’s number while lost on a dirt road before.

So I wound up calling him and we set up a date. It turned out that he was nine years younger than me,. Red flags went up, but I wanted to give him a chance anyway. He met me for dinner. We had lots of introductory conversation — family, work, that kind of thing. I talked about living with siblings so much older than me, and he said he had two twin brothers 20 years older than him who lived in Oregon with their families. He also talked about owning his own business. At this point, red flags should have started to go off, but they didn’t. I remember him talking about living in the area for seven years. Before that, he said, he lived in Reno, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii. I remember saying, “Your parents moved around a lot, huh?” He answered, “Yeah, and my mom wants to take me back to visit Hawaii.”

I talked about my travels around the country after college, how I loved Oregon, hated Reno, and that I’d never been to Alaska or Hawaii yet. After dinner we went to a lookout point on a curvy mountain road and talked more. I remember him asking me what I hated most. I said, “Well, good question. Dishonesty and noncommunication, I guess.” He seemed to give a nod to that. At end of the night we both said we had a good night (and had a hot kiss) and I said that I’d give him a call soon. So the next week we set up a date and a few days later he canceled. He had a story about issues surrounding his job. Whatever. We set up another day for a date. He never confirmed and never called.

Perhaps a week after that, I was walking through town and saw someone who looked like him walking out of the hotel. He was looking at his phone, then he put it in his pocket and crossed the road. It was him! Somehow he didn’t notice me until he got to the other side of the road. We nearly walked right into each other. I really just wanted to tell him off, but also I knew he wasn’t worth it. He looked up, saw me, and said, “Hi, how are you?” and just kept walking.

Wow. I was lost again somewhere between repulsion and mysterty as I saw him walk behind the pub and grub restaurant in TinyTown. For someone who knows one person in the hills outside of TinyTown, he seemed to be pretty familiar with it. Next, I saw him at two local social gatherings with some chick. He got up, got her drinks, opened doors for her… She reminded me of the stereotypical rich girl: made up like a Barbie doll, and paired with a butler boy. He told me he was single, and he just met this girl? Maybe she lives here in TinyTown, I never saw her before though. She also wore a long white coat which made me think she was not familiar with the dust and mud of Mendocino County.

The final place I saw him at the social hub-health food store in TinyTown. As he was walking out, I whispered to a friend, “That’s the guy who stood me up,” and my friend went into hysterics. He had known the doofus since he was little, not only had the guy lied about knowing one person in TinyTown, he lied about the fact that he was a local, born here to a well-known family who had roots here. He lied about his name and he never owned his own business. He did have a girlfriend and he was actually 11 years younger than me, not nine years younger than me. He didn’t have two twin brothers 20 years older than him who live in Oregon, nor did he ever live in Oregon, Reno, Hawaii or Alaska. Does he know a guy named Leonard with a bunch of sheep dogs? Probably not. (Leonard, if you’re out there, I stand corrected.) My friend’s take on the whole fiasco was that he was bored, nothing much going on in his life. I feel bad for Barbie.

How could someone just go on a date with someone else, disrespect them so significantly with lies, live in the same TinyLittleTown and expect the other person not to find out the truth? Well, like many negative situations, there is a silver lining: this experience made a good story to write. Just a note of advice to Clueless Joe Blo: The TinyTown you’ve grown up in is a great place to find the truth, not a great place to hide it.

What’s a good woman got to do to find a good man to go on a date with around here?

B.E.

Boonville

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THE HAZARDS OF AB DIVING

Editor,

I thought I’d take a stab at trying to explain why ab divers die abalone diving.

I’ve been abalone diving for over 50 years in both Southern California and here on the north coast. It can be a very dangerous sport if not done with proper training, conditioning and knowledge of the ocean. Let me explain why.

From what I have observed most of the deaths come as a result of what the newspapers call a “medical emergency.” In other words, the deaths occurred not directly from drowning, but from some other medical problem (usually a heart problem) that may lead to drowning.

Think about it this way: a person who dives once or twice a year comes to the coast with his/her family and friends for a little diving and a lot of fun. If they have dived before, they begin to get excited about the prospects of diving and getting abalone for a meal or to take home.

If they haven’t dived in a while or have not kept swimming over the winter, they may not be in very good condition — many divers are older, over 50 years old. In any case, anyone will have anxiety and apprehension on their first dive of the season. (It still happens to me and every diver I know.) They look at the ocean, but they don’t have enough experience to know if the conditions are within their personal capabilities and they see other people and their friends diving so they think it must be okay. It’s difficult to say you don’t feel comfortable going into the water when your dive buddies all say they want to go. Who is going to be the one who backs out first? Ten years ago it was not going to be me. Anxiety probably causes most of the so-called “medical emergencies.”

Here’s what happens. You put on a wetsuit that may have gotten a little smaller over the years and it is very constricted. It’s tight on your chest and gives you that claustrophobic feeling of confinement. As you start to suit up, you start thinking about sharks. Even though the chances of being bitten are extremely rare, you can’t stop thinking about how it would be to be attacked by an 800-pound great white shark.

Once you’ve struggled to get into your wetsuit, you put a 20-30 pound weight belt around your waist, grab all your other gear (float tube, mask, fins, snorkel, ab iron, etc.) and start walking to the beach (maybe down a cliff with a rope). By the time you get to the water you are sweating profusely from hiking in your wetsuit. After putting on the rest of your gear you jump into 47-degree water and all of a sudden the cold water starts to seep into your wetsuit and you begin to swim, hard, to get out beyond the breakers.

Maybe there’s a current. Maybe there are waves. Maybe you start getting sucked out to sea and try to swim against the current. Or, maybe you just get knocked down by a wave and are washed into the beach or the rocks. But, let’s assume you are successful in getting out to the area where you want to dive and the visibility is only two or three feet underwater.

You can’t see the bottom, so you get out your underwater light. Since you can’t see the bottom from the surface, you dive down 15 or 20 feet and finally see the bottom, but it is covered with palm kelp so you have to go another 2-3 feet and get under the palm kelp.

Once there it is even darker, so you shine your light to go into the rocky crevices and under the rocky ledges where the abalones live. Now you’ve successfully gotten to the bottom and have looked for abalone — maybe even found one — and you want to go back to the surface. You can’t use any type of underwater breathing apparatus, so you have to be constantly going down and up as you look for abalone.

When you decide to return to the surface, you look up and the surface is covered with matted bull kelp, so you look for the light shining through the kelp and head for a clearing, hoping not to get tangled in the long strands on your way to the surface. Let’s say you dive for 45 minutes to an hour. You’re getting tired and now it’s time to head back to shore, but the wind has picked up during that hour and there is a current running in the opposite direction from the direction you want to swim.

Maybe the waves have picked up too. Maybe the tide is lower and the exit is more rocky. What do you do? Hopefully you are in good enough shape that you can swim against the current, or you have a “bailout” location down current where you can safely get out of the water. If you’re lucky or experienced and have planned right, you will get back to shore safely.

I am trying not to exaggerate, but I have had all of these things happen to me at one time or another. Now imagine thousands of divers, many of whom are not very knowledgeable or experienced and you can understand how some of them become overly anxious and why three or four people die every year.

If you are lucky or if you are well trained and experienced, you can avoid these hazards of abalone diving and get safely back to the beach with an abalone or two to enjoy with your friends and family. If not, from what I have described, you can understand how the sport can be deadly. Personally, I would not want to stake my life on luck. I’d rather base my life on knowledge and experience.

My advice: the best way to prevent these hazards is to avoid them altogether. In other words, don’t dive if you don’t feel comfortable with the ocean conditions, even if your dive buddies want to dive. If you dive or have friends who dive, the best advice you can give them is: “Don’t go into the water when the conditions are beyond your capabilities.” To be able to judge ocean conditions, you must have the knowledge to “read” the ocean and the experience to understand your own capabilities. To me, this is what the buddy system is all about. If you are a new or inexperienced diver, find an experienced buddy who can help you gain the knowledge and experience, both in and out of the water, and one who won’t push you beyond your comfort level.

Having said all this, if you pick the right day with the right conditions and don’t push beyond your ability, conditioning and knowledge, then abalone diving can be a wonderful, eye-opening experience.

Most of the time when I go abalone diving, I don’t even take an abalone, although I see hundreds of them. What’s most rewarding to me is the experience and the wonders of the ocean that I see every time I dive. More often than not, I will see something that I’ve never seen before. The ocean is an amazing environment and one that has only begun to be explored and understood by man.

Jack Likins

Gualala

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UKIAH V. INTERVENTION

Editor,

(For Wed, May 15th, first item of Ukiah City Council new business.)

Fellow Councilmembers,

At a time when Ukiah struggles to fund critical local services and many Ukiahans still lack health insurance and economic security, our national government has spent several trillion dollars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, leaving behind in all three little more than devastation, chaos, and sectarian violence. Today, America’s top officials are on the verge of initiating another war, this one aimed at Syria. Are they kidding us? If this likelihood were not so sad and scary it would be a bad joke. While Ukiah’s voice in American foreign policy may not be heard, the ethics taught to us by our parents, teachers, and every good book tell us we must resist this move to another American war.

As Lloyd Green notes in an attached article “How many Middle East quagmires does America want? How many can it afford? After our so-called triumphs in Iraq and Libya — and our not-so-triumphant 12-year experience in Afghanistan- the siren song of Syria now beckons. Mr. President, resist that call. We are not wanted there; America has no need to go there.”

Ninety-nine years ago, Senator Robert LaFollette (R-Wisconsin) challenged Woodrow Wilson’s call for war on Germany, but he might have been speaking to President Obama about war on Syria when he asked: “Will the President and the supporters of this war bill submit it to a vote of the people before the declaration of war goes into effect?” Of course not then and not now.

We know some Ukiahans will argue that war is not a local issue and that any discussion about national foreign policy at this level is a “waste of time” and “none of our business.” These critics will imply that those in Washington are the experts and that Ukiahans lack the awareness to weigh in on the threat of a new war. Ironically, many who will lambast us for discussing an issue of war and peace hate big government, yet they so quickly about face and applaud massive new spending for war.

Others who in their youth sought any forum to oppose the war in Vietnam or who marched in the streets when Republican Presidents waged war on Iraq remain unbearably quiet today about U.S. military interventions, destabilizations, and proxy wars abroad. Is it that these, like those who faced The Plague of Camus, have decided “there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable.”

If nothing can be done about endless war, so much for American ideals, so much for American democracy. Let’s pack it up. If war is inevitable, no need to care about its victims and its cost.

$2 trillion to date for our Mideast wars since 9/11 — imagine investing that at home or providing a corresponding reduction in our taxes. We simply cannot afford another war. We cannot allow ourselves to be bamboozled by national officials and the mainstream media as we were with Iraq ten years ago and with Libya in 2011.

George Orwell would appreciate that Wall Street funded think tanks, media pundits, and federal government insiders now refer to our regime change wars as “humanitarian” military intervention. Those planning to bombard Syria and remove or kill its current president tell us that national sovereignty is overridden by the “humanitarian” need to defend civilians from evil despots. When the Syrian armed rebellion is financed by American allies and when all mainstream media reports of atrocities come from unsubstantiated claims of anonymous “activists” and the rebels themselves, let’s admit that the maxim “Right To Protect” brings us ever closer to Orwell’s “War is Peace.”

Ukiah can resist the drums of war pounded at us daily by the CNN, FOX, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. We can demand that our mainstream media begin to provide verification of accusations and sincere public debate including viewpoints questioning the push toward another cruel war counterproductive for all except arms dealers. We can let others know that U.S. allies – despotic monarchies of Qatar and Saudi Arabia – have instigated, financed, and fanned the ever worsening flames of sectarian war in Syria since 2011. We can support international law respecting the sovereignty of nations and that mandate for peaceful, negotiated settlement of crises. We can lead sensibly.

In facing The Plague “Tarrou, Rieux, and their friends might give one answer or another, but its conclusion was always the same, their certitude that a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be no bowing down… There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical.”

Let’s put the Ukiah City Council on record opposing U.S. military intervention in Syria. The attached resolution, whose wording you may want to amend, is one way to do that. A letter of war opposition addressed to federal officials and neighboring cities is another option. Our unified voice might gain the attention of other local leaders wondering how to challenge America’s endless wars. And just possibly this City Council’s unified voice will encourage our new Representative in Congress to stand up against a new Mideast war.

Thank you for considering this issue.

Respectfully,

Phil Baldwin, Councilman

City of Ukiah

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WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP?

Editor,

Some Reflexions on “Terrorism”:

The word is bogus — like “obligated” instead of “obliged”, or “scientism” as used by defenders of obscurantism against the science that exposes religion, astrology, spiritualism, or homeopathy as the nonsense they are.

“Terror” is a tool used by governments, empires, and armies to oblige compliance from rebellious citizens, subjects, slaves, and soldiers; the colonized, and the involuntarily converted, who are governed and controlled without their consent.

The Romans employed terror in the vast areas they conquered. One is not likely to read about their abominations in Latin class translations of Caesar’s diaries; however, the late Alexander Cockburn informs us in Corruptions of Empire,

“Wilding left it in no doubt, in his simplified and polite version of Tacitus, that the Roman victory at Mons Graupius was a good thing. Ten thousand Scots fell that day, the blood of kerns flowing in the heather near Inverness, not so far from where I was born. The Romans slaughtered till their arms were tired. Night, as Tacitus put it, was jubilant with triumph and plunder.”

The Catholic Church used the ritual burnings of books and people, torture, and murder to impose their bizarre belief system. In the case of the Cathars, Pope Innocent III murdered half of the population of France during the Albigensian Crusade for daring to challenge the hierarchy of Rome. According to Leonard George in his book, The Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics, when someone asked how the soldiers of Pope Innocent and the King could distinguish between the Cathars and the citizens of southern France loyal to the Catholic Church, the Pope’s representative responded, “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”

Bartholomé de las Casas graphically portrays the use of terror by the Conquistadors in his Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias. Indians were roasted alive, fed to dogs, tortured on the rack, hung, drawn and quartered, or cut to pieces.

The Nazi destruction of the entire Czech town of Lidice has been immortalized in at least three films. Malicious mischief by the French is depicted in The Battle of Algiers. Good movies and books about the British treatment of rebellious populations abound, but one must make detours around bad ones that paint as villains the Mau-Mau, the IRA, and the entire population of India.

And as for the American government, my discovery of what the word “terror” means came when I read John Hershey’s Hiroshima. My understanding was expanded and refined by the Vietnam War — I was too young to follow the devastation of North Korea by American air power. The support of the Contras, and of the brutal governments in Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, and Indonesia refined my understanding of “terror”. Yugoslavia and Iraq were graduate school.

Forgive my omission of small matters like the African Slave Trade and the treatment of slaves in the United States.

What the government and the MSM call “terrorism” are often the desperate, futile efforts of the oppressed to strike back at those who use terror to keep them in their place. Deliberately excluded from the official definition is state sanctioned violence —destruction of public education, support of the insurance industry instead of health care, the subsidy of the private prison industry, and the construction of a security state that is more intrusive every day.

The threat of “Terrorism” is one more weapon in the arsenal of terror to keep us in line.

Louis Bedrock

Roselle, New Jersey

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BOB SIMON! MAY HIS PUCKER NEVER FAIL HIM

Dear Comrade Anderson,

I’ll bet you a nickel that I’m not the only one who likes the AVA and NPR for the same reason: both are like when you are invited to dinner by a good cook you don’t have to worry about what’s on the menu because whatever it is you know it will be good. Heck, make it a dime. I’ll also bet that on most days of the week you listen to those “twits” on NPR too.

Aloha,

Bill Brundage

Kurtistown, Hawaii

PS. A good recent example of the eye-opening fare to be found in the AVA is Jeff Costello’s “Law Abiding Citizen” in the 4/24/13 edition. I had never thought of the legislative/insurance industry/law enforcement complex as a “protection racket” before, but that is exactly what it is. Automobile insurance is mandatory precisely to protect the public from impecunious fellows like me who, if at fault for an accident, would otherwise be unable to pay damages the victims would otherwise deserve. And we wouldn’t want the taxpayers or anyone else to have to pay for our mistakes, would we? Law-abiding, socially responsible citizens complain about the high cost of insurance too, but they know that, just like in poker, if you don’t ante up like everybody else, you’re cheating.

Ed note: Jonathan Winters said once that he never went on the Carson Show because he couldn’t stand that ass-kisser Ed McMahon. We don’t have celebs like him any more. Yeah, NPR is ass-kissing developed to a high art. Painful as it is, I listen to it more than is healthy, but it’s a convenient means of keeping up with what The Enemy is thinking.

_______________________________________

BULLYING AT MENDOCINO K-8

Editor,

Stand Up and Speak Out.

I can’t bear to hold this in any longer! The Mendocino K-8 school is not just heartless, but also vindictive! My child was bullied so badly for three years (3rd through 5th grade) that we took her from the school and began homeschooling. This, despite going through the school’s “zero tolerance for bullying” and getting zero results. My daughter began therapy because the damage to her self-esteem was so dangerously low.

A year into homeschooling she built up enough courage to attend a school dance. I contacted the principal at the time, Jason Morse, and he gave permission for my daughter to attend dances. She went with her head held high. Her bravery brought me to tears. Fast forward two years and, having attended eight dances, my daughter now has the desire to go back to a brick and mortar school — High School!

Let me just get to the point: At the April 26th, 2013, dance, my daughter was assaulted by another student due to my daughter’s religious views. I felt it necessary to make an incident report with the Mendocino K-8 Principal Kim Humrichouse. I spoke with Kim on May 10th 2013. Instead of responding with “Is she OK? … I?m sorry this happened?” — to my surprise, Kim responded with “Your daughter can no longer come to school dances because she is home schooled.”

What?! I told her that this call was regarding an assault on my daughter. Kim’s response was to ban my daughter from her 8th grade Graduation Dance — the last dance at Mendocino K-8.

Hoping to have Kim’s decision reversed, we made phone calls to Jason Morse (now the Superintendent of the K-8 school) pleading for permission. I was told by Mr. Morse that he spoke with their “Legal Department” and their decision was that my daughter could not attend the Graduation Dance!!! I’m not sure about you, but my heart hurts!

I stand with my daughter in the fight against bullying.

Lynette Short

Caspar

Tubbs

FOLLOWING THREE HOURS of grisly testimony Wednesday, Wilson L. “Josh” Tubbs III, 38, of Fort Bragg, was bound over for trial on charges of “child abuse resulting in death.” A-month-old infant, Emerald Herriet, was carried unconscious by Tubbs, her foster father, to Coast Hospital December 2nd of 2012. Tubbs said the baby had fallen from her changing table, but the baby, as subsequently determined at Oakland Children’s Hospital where Baby Emerald died, had suffered extensive head and brain injuries over “a period of several weeks to several months.”

TUBBS told DA investigator Kevin Bailey that he had “slapped the child upside the head” to stop the child from crying, but Dr. Rachel Gilgoff, a pediatrician specializing in child abuse, testified that the autopsy revealed that the baby had been severely beaten on more than one occasion.

DR. GILGOFF SAID, “This was one of the worst cases I have seen so far in my career, and definitely evidence of a violent physical assault that happened around December 1st. But I think what also makes it horrific for me is that it probably could have been prevented if people had identified something happening probably around November 2nd.”

WHY THE CHILD was placed in Tubbs’ home by the Mendocino County office of Children’s Protective Services is not known. He has at least one methamphetamine-related arrest and was in no way capable of caring for an infant.

========================================================

Draper

ON MAY 13, 2013, deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office were detailed to investigate the report of an indecent exposure incident which had occurred on 05/12/13 near the Eel River in Leggett, California. Deputies contacted an adult female who advised she had been at the river swimming with some adult aged friends and their children (pre-teenagers & teenagers) when they noticed a white male adult above them in the bushes. The adult female advised the suspect had his pants down with exposed genitals and appeared to be masturbating while watching the group of swimmers. The swimmers were able to locate the suspect’s vehicle and provided the license plate number to Deputies. Further investigation revealed the vehicle was registered to Carlton Lawrence Draper, 53, lately of Geyserville. Through investigative efforts deputies discovered Draper was a registered sex offender and was currently on probation in Mendocino County for a similar offense. One of the swimmers was able to positively identify Draper in a photographic line up. A stop and arrest Be-On-The-Look-Out was issued by Deputies for Draper in regards to the incident. On On May 14, Draper was contacted by Deputies from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office and arrested for the violations. Draper was subsequently booked into the Mendocino County Jail where he was to be held in lieu of $15,000 bail on charges of indecent exposure and violation of probation.

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Miller

THE MANHUNT for Shane Miller, presumed killer of his wife and two little girls, has been scaled back. No sign of Miller has been found in the Petrolia area of Humboldt County where Miller was last seen.

LAST TUESDAY Sheriff Allman told the Board of supervisors about Mendocino County’s limited role in the manhunt: We have received a request and we have accepted the mutual aid request from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office regarding the triple homicide suspect who was last seen in the Mattole-Petrolia area. Our SWAT team has been activated. We have responded to the area. We will be there through tomorrow night (Wednesday night, May 15). It’s a 48-hour commitment. We responded yesterday. Sheriff Mike Downey and I have been in contact every day with this. The suspect was last seen in an area close to the northern part of our county — the Whale Gulch area and part of the Lost Coast Wilderness area. Our SWAT team is there. It is similar to the unfortunate Bassler situation. Humboldt County was one of the first sheriff’s office to respond to our request for mutual aid in the Bassler case. So we made a decision to work with them closely and hopefully resolve this as soon as possible, not just for public safety but for the quality of life in the Petrolia-Mattole area.

Pinches: His pickup was found in Petrolia but he has not been sighted in that area. He could be anyplace.

Allman: He could be anywhere. But he could be there too.

Pinches: He got he could have gotten in league with somebody else or others or something.

Allman: He used to live in your area, the Laytonville area. He’s been arrested in our county before so he certainly knows our area.

It’s the north end of the county.

McCowen: They did locate his truck in the Petrolia area.

Allman: Right. Our SWAT team consists of members of the Willits Police Department also. Willits has members up there. It’s a joint venture and it saves us money as a joint operation.

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NO SHAME, TAKE TWO. Darryl Cherney’s fake pursuit of the truth of the 1990 car bombing of Earth First!er Judi Bari continues. Cherney, as we learn in the above press release (released in the yawning face of NorCal media) that Cherney and the Bari Cult will appear at the San Francisco offices of Myth Busters to lobby them to take on the case. Cherney just might get his own myth busted if Myth Busters takes even a cursory look at the alleged “mystery.”

TAKE THIS PRESS RELEASE he’s presenting to Myth Busters, for instance. As always, Cherney wants it both ways. For the sake of fundraising he suggests the FBI did the bombing, an implication always certain to get the money flowing his way from the reliably credulous sectors of the “left.” But to solve the case, he says, the G-Men can be relied upon to over materials with pristine dna on it.

THEN CHERNEY LAUNCHES a tired and thoroughly discredited spiel about the FBI’s bomb guy, Doyle, and “Bomb School.”

* * *

FROM: DARRYL CHERNEY chernmaster@gmail.com Date: Tue, May 14, 2013 at 1:12 PM Subject: Earth First! vs. Mythbusters — Cast member on hot seat for Oakland Bomb case To: dc@asis.com Mythbusters Challenged by Who Bombed Judi Bari? Cast member/bombmaker Ret. FBI Frank Doyle–found liable for lying about bomb in Judi Bari’s car–now proposed subject of a Myth to bust Press conference: May 23, 1pm @ Mythbusters, SF. Contact: Darryl Cherney 707/223-3788 & dc@asis.com; Ben Rosenfeld, Esq. 415/285-8091; Mary Liz Thomson 213/595-1155; Mike Roselle, Earth First! 215/999-8391. Documentation available. Website for upcoming Bay Area screenings, trailer: http://whobombedjudibari.com/ Mythbusters is being challenged to bust a myth about one of its own cast, bomb-maker Frank Doyle, who along with other law enforcement officers, lost a $4.4 million federal lawsuit court for lying and violating the U.S. Constitution around the 1990 Oakland bombing of Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney (Bari v. Doyle C-91 1057CW). A press conference will be held on Thursday, May 23 at Mythbusters’ M5 Industries, 1268 Missouri, San Francisco to challenge Mythbusters to confirm or bust a chilling statement that Doyle presumably made at the scene of the bombing that has a mythology of its own. Cherney produced a feature documentary with Director Mary Liz Thomson, Who Bombed Judi Bari? that will screen five times in the Bay Area May 20-25 around the 23rd anniversary of the bombing and the Official Judi Bari Day in Oakland. The film asserts that Frank Doyle can be heard on the FBI’s own bomb scene footage saying, “This is it, go to it. This is the Final Exam. Right here.” Doyle denied–under oath–making the statement. The statement is important to the case because Doyle taught a bomb school on Louisiana-Pacific Lumber Company property near Eureka just 30 days before the bombing. One of Doyle’s students, who testified that the insides of cars were blown up with pipe bombs at bomb school, was also present with Doyle at the bombing of the inside of Judi Bari’s car. In essence, Doyle created the very unusual crime scene at bomb school that he would take charge of 30 days later in Oakland. Cherney penned a letter that was received on May 8 by both Mythbusters attorney Joel Behr of Beverly Hills and its star Jamie Hyneman in San Francisco that states, “Mythbusters may have accidently shot a cannonball through the home and car of a Bay area resident, but Frank Doyle deliberately blew a hole through the civil rights of two American citizens.” Cherney wrote, “We challenge Mythbusters to confirm or bust a long-held assertion that Frank Doyle can be heard on FBI video footage taken at the scene of the car bombing, chuckling and making the chilling statement, ‘This is the final exam.’ We know that Doyle, de facto, at minimum covered up the tracks of someone who tried to assassinate one of the most prominent, rising environmental stars in our nation’s history.” Why try to bust this myth and why now? “It’s the 23rd anniversary of the bombing and it’s time to solve this case,” Cherney said. The production company of Who Bombed Judi Bari? is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest, conviction and incarceration of the bomber. Recently, Cherney won a court order requiring the FBI to preserve bombing evidence for testing, after the FBI announced it planned to destroy it. The evidence is now with a Bay area forensic laboratory in an attempt to identify the bomber through fingerprint or DNA analysis. “Nothing screams FBI cover-up louder than the fact that it tried to destroy the critical evidence it never even properly examined,” said case attorney Ben Rosenfeld. The letter to Mythbusters continues: “So two of the principle adversaries of Earth First!—LP and the FBI—coordinated an event where the insides of cars were blown up with pipe bombs, thirty days before the bombing of the inside of Judi Bari’s car…. To thicken the plot, an additional bomb went off two weeks after bomb school at an L-P sawmill in Cloverdale, CA. This bomb was manufactured by the same individual(s) who bombed Judi Bari’s car, as revealed in a letter taking credit for both bombs…. “Mythbusters is uniquely situated to utilize available technologies and expertise to compare the voice on the recording, which we have provided, to exemplars of Mr. Doyle’s voice, including from at least a dozen appearances he has made on the show…. Evidence shows that the FBI was aware on the scene that the car bomb was triggered by a motion detection device and was filled with nails for shrapnel effect, making it ludicrously impossible to think we were carrying the device, especially under the driver’s seat. Is Doyle protecting the identity of the bomber(s), and if so, why?… In these days of increased awareness of domestic terrorism, we should vigilantly leave no stone unturned.”

* * *

THE FACTS: The College of the Redwoods offers police training courses. Maybe the College still does. As part of these courses the College offered basic training in backyard explosive devices because today’s cops often deal with them. Doyle gave the class in 1990.

RIGHT HERE Cherney expects you to suspend your critical faculties. You’re supposed to believe that Doyle gave the class on car bombs for a large group of cops and would-be cops then went out and car-bombed Judi Bari. Nobody present said anything of course because The Blue Meanies always lie.

ALL THIS BARI-RELATED STUFF is discussed in exhaustive detail on our website at theava.com. Compare the case that Cherney and the Cult people put out there, including his phony movie, with the known facts and our counter-case we’ve stored on our website. Also, on the off chance someone out there is interested, I can loan that person a copy of Steve Talbot’s honest look at the case called ‘Who Bombed Judi Bari,’ which includes Talbot’s subsequent appearance on This Week In California (after Judi Bari died) where he says that Bari told him she was certain her husband tried to kill her.

BTW, SUPERVISOR HAMBURG’S quarter-century tardy entrance to the Bari Bombing discussion, an entrance he confines to the shut-ins and assorted wackos of the Mendo list serve, naturally doesn’t mention his own cult background as an adherent of the Adi Da sect, a kind of upscale Manson Family. Hamburg’s a natch for the Bari Cult. He doesn’t have to suspend disbelief, he lives there.

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HITCHHIKER And Former Web Hero Wanted For Murder Of Lawyer, 73, Arrested In Philadelphia After Drifter Claimed On Facebook He’d Been Assaulted—

A homeless man known as ‘Kai the hatchet-welding hitchhiker’ who has been wanted for the murder of a New Jersey attorney after claiming he had been sexually assaulted has been arrested in Pennsylvania, authorities have announced.

Caleb Lawrence McGillvary, 34, who became an internet sensation after saving three people from a crazed driver with his famous hatchet, was arrested on Thursday Glassboro Police Chief Alex Fanfarillo tells NJ.com.

Galfy

An arrest warrant had been issued for McGillvary in connection to the murder of 73-year-old Joseph Galfy Jr in Clark whose body was found in his home on Tuesday.

Authorities had been looking for McGillvary in Haddonfield and Glassboro, New Jersey after staying at a home there. Those tips lead to his eventual capture across state lines.

McGillvary will be processed in Philadelphia and sent to back to New Jersey in the coming days, Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow said. His bail is set at $3 million.

‘I believe that everyone is a little safer with this person off the streets,’ the prosecutor said. Philadelphia police could not immediately be reached for comment.

On Tuesday, when police officers discovered Galf’s body, McGillvary wrote a rambling post on his Facebook page describing in graphic detail how he woke up in a strange house and discovered that he had been sexually assaulted by a man.

McGillvary, better known on YouTube and Facebook as Kai Lawrence, Caleb Kai Lawrence and Kai Nicodemus, became an instant Internet celebrity in February when he was featured on a California news report for saving three people from 54-year-old Jett Simmons McBride by hitting him on the head with a hatchet.

The homeless hitchhiker, who describes himself as ‘homefree,’ was riding in a passenger seat with McBride when he said the man started making racist comments and calling himself Jesus Christ.

The incident culminated with the out-of-control driver slamming into a black utility worker and pinning him against his truck. He then allegedly attacked two women who came to the aid of the victim, at which point McGillvary jumped into action and hit the assailant over the head with a hatchet he had on him.

McGillvary, sporting long shaggy hair tied with a bandanna, later described his heroics in a hilarious, profanity-laced stream-of-consciousness interview that instantly went viral online.

Since the February incident, the 34-year-old self-described surfer dude has been regularly writing about his adventures on the road on his Facebook page under the user name ‘Caleb Kai Lawrence Yodhehwawheh.

Prosecutors revealed on Thursday that Galfy met up with McGillvary at Times Square last Sunday and took him to his house in New Jersey that night.

McGillvary spent at least two nights in Galfy’s brick home on a cul-de-sac in Clark, 20 miles west of New York, Romankow said.

Prosecutors said Galfy drove McGillvary to the train station on Sunday and McGillvary boarded a train to Asbury Park to meet a fan before returning and being picked up by Galfy later in the day.

Later that night, McGillvary called the fan again asking her for a ride, Romankow said. She couldn’t pick him up, and McGillvary’s phone went dead after that.

According to a police reconstruction of his travels after leaving Clark, the suspect somehow got back to the train station Monday and returned to Asbury Park to meet the fan. The two traveled to Philadelphia.

After lunch, they traveled to Glassboro, in southern New Jersey, and he stayed with another fan there. On Tuesday he boarded a train to Philadelphia where he was eventually arrested.

McGillvary had mentioned at one point heading to Georgia to visit a girlfriend, police said.

Union County Crime Stoppers had offered a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to his arrest.

Romankow said that on Monday, officers who were called by Galfy’s relatives to check up on him after failing to reach him by phone for several days discovered his partially naked body bearing evidence of violence.

The official said the 73-year-old attorney appeared to have been beaten severely and was clothed only in pair of underwear and a shirt.

His current home is listed as Eureka, California, but McGillvary was locked up in jail for four days last December and wrote in Febraury about ‘sleeping in a hay field off the I99 in Lathrop.’

The victim, 73-year-old Galfy, was found dead in his home on Starlite Drive in Clark at around 2pm May 13 when officers arrived for a welfare check.

An autopsy performed Tuesday revealed that the elderly man died from a blunt force trauma, said Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow.

According to his Facebook page, Galfy was a founding partner at the Rahway law firm Kochanski, Baron Galfy, P.C.

Galfy’s neighbors said the 73-year-old had been living alone since his long-time partner died five years prior.

According to Galfy’s obituary, he served in the Army from 1965 to 1970 as a major, and got his Juris Doctor degree from Seton Hall University.

Galfy served as the attorney for the Planning Board in Green Brook, and in his free time played in a wedding band for 25 years.

According to the prosecutor, Galfy’s accused killer had cut his hair to change his appearance, and he is considered armed and dangerous.

‘We have learned that in the past he has demonstrated his ability to use the backend of a hatchet,’ Romankow said. ’It’s very possible he might be carrying that. If people see him, we ask them to please contact local police and tell them.’

A look at his Facebook page revealed that McGillvary posted an unsettling message on Tuesday, one day after the murder, describing what appears to be a sexual assault on him committed by a man.

‘What would you do if you woke up with a groggy head, metallic taste in your mouth, in a strangers house… walked to the mirror and seen come [sic] dripping from the side of your face from your mouth, and started wretching [sic], realizing that someone had drugged, raped, and blown their f***** load in you? what would you do?’ he wrote.

Just after 1.20pm Tuesday, the 34-year-old wrote a comment on his post: ‘raped for social justice woo f***** hoo.’

Last Friday, McGillvary wrote a lengthy ‘thank you’ note to all the strangers who have been kind and generous toward him.

‘Hey id like to express my gratitude to all the gnarly awesome people whove invited me in, partied hardy with me, and brought me to such cool places to meet such cool people,’ he wrote in the post. ‘ive met some of the greatest people in my life in these last three months and i wouldnt trade these experiences with you for all the money in hollywood.”

‘i realize now how crazy fame can be in flippin ones life upside down but you showed me some awesome support in tryin to affect social change through this and in havin fun in places ive never been to or seen before. thank you.’

Earlier that same day, the surfer hitchhiker offered some insight into his early childhood, describing how his ‘family would get sexual’ with him as he lay in the crib, and being told as a toddler by his relatives that he has ‘demons’ in him.

The lengthy, often disturbing tirade goes on to detail instances of alleged abuse, beatings and starvation that the man had allegedly suffered at the hands of his caretakers as a young boy.

McGillvary wrote that he would get locked in a room for 20 hours day, get hit with broom handles and spoons for making a noise, and would have his moth stuffed with hot pepper for cursing.

He also claimed that his ‘parents’ would give him ice-cold showers and have sex in front of him.

Several law enforcement agencies are now on the hunt for McGillvary. He is charged with murder in Union County and bail has been set at $3million.

McGillvary became an instant Internet celebrity when he was featured on a local news report for saving three people from a crazed driver ranting that he was Jesus Christ.

In the breathless, expletive-ridden interview he explained how he used his own hatchet to subdue the racist assailant after he attacked a utility worker and then two female bystanders in Fresno, California.

Kai’s stream of consciousness delivery – a mixture of Bill and Ted and The Big Lebowski – meant footage of his interview was watched more than one million times and it made him a star.

Under the name Caleb Kai Lawrence Yodhehwawheh, his Facebook page gives more of an insight into his character which seems by turns free-spirited, proud and warm-hearted.

It also details some of his daily travails which include fighting off a knife-wielding attacker and an unending quest for his next high, be it marijuana or magic mushrooms.

Kai lists himself a ‘self employed and loving it!’ and confirms as he did in the interview that he is from Sophia, West Virginia.

Kai wrote on Facebook about his encounter with the knife maniac on December 1.

He writes that was looking for the belt buckle for his backpack under a skate ramp when a man came towards him with a knife.

Kai writes that the man was ‘all psyched until I say, “I come in peace” then he whips out his knife and yells out “DID LYNN SEND YOU? I’LL STAB YOU M*********** YOU BETTER RUN”, so I ran halfway across the parking lot, dropped my sack, whipped out my knife, and yelled back “YOU WANNA F*** WITH ME? I’LL MAKE YOU A BODY YOU PUNK ASS BITCH. STEP UP MOTHER F*****’M A STICK YOU”

Later that day a kindly stranger bought Kai some drinks and gave him $20 which he used to buy some liquor which he downed outside a Taco Bell.

But he then got into another fight when he tried to help a man who was lying sprawled on the ground and was jumped by four men.

Kai writes: ‘I’m all up for scrapping this fool but I couldn’t get him separated from the others so I took a couple shots to the head trying to lure him out.

‘He hits like an ostrich, but without as much force. So I got jumped by 4 guys but made it out on my feet, AND I stood up to them like motherf***** cisco kid.

‘I felt like a million bucks wasn’t anywhere near my infinite worth. then I went and smoked some kine herbs and went to bed in a shed well fed. I’m lovin this life, locationally here in Santa Cruz and otherwise. Thanks people. What an adventure.’

There are few pictures of Kai uploaded although they include one of him with a group of friends partying on top of a car. Kai stands in the foreground with his shirt off and his thumb in the air.

One of more animated posts reads: ‘now, you! and me! and everyone! and everytwo! and everythree…! no more borders! pleasin to the eye! destroy the prisons and hunt down the NSOR! ninja training with vets on the street! [M]IA crooked cops! Free Haiti! Free all black lands!! Bring down the House of Wettin and share the wealth of those rothschild/bilderberg/whoever “rich” peeps with those who actually LABOR for it! REPOST IF YOU LIKE!!! SAY ITS FROM ME!!!’

Another post reads: ‘Please, if you’re going to bother capitalizing on this (his heroics) AT LEAST refer to me as homefree, not “homeless”. that pisses me off, cowardly f****** businessmen referring to REAL men as “homeless”. have they ever actually SUNG the national anthem? S***’

His most heartwarming post seems to suggest he is more accepting of others than they have been to him in the past.

It reads: ‘I don’t look to anyone for validation. I am valid. Your [dis]agreement does not affect me. Fulla respect, your opinion is still worthwhile. Acceptance ♥’

His disclosure that his family think he is already ‘dead’ came at the end of the TV interview when he was asked what happens to him now.

Kai also said that he would always put his own life before that of another – and take the selfless option.

Kai’s story began February 2 when he hitched a ride with the deranged driver, 54-year-old Jett Simmons McBride.

In the interview he said that that he was in the passenger seat after being picked up, when 300 pound, 6-foot-plus McBride began to make wild and racist comments.

Describing himself as ‘straight out of Dogtown’, he said: ‘The driver’s like, ‘You know what? I’ve come to realize I’m Jesus Christ and I can do anything I f*****g want to and, watch this! and then drove his Oldsmobile straight into a Pacific Gas and Electric worker who was Africa American.’

Pinning the man against his truck, McBride then exited his car and began to pull the injured man away from the bind, risking further injury.

Kai witnessed two women, Tanya Baker and her daughter, Ginger Miller Parraza rush over to help.

He said: ‘These two women are trying to help him, and this guy runs up and tries to grab one of them, man.

‘A guy that big can snap a woman’s neck like a pencil stick.’

‘So I f*****g ran up behind him with a hatchet. Smash, smash, smash!’

Kai speaks in a similar fashion on his Facebook page where he writes: ‘Btw just because I show respect with and value the time of hard drug users, does NOT mean that I use hard drugs. List of what I work with:

‘-Coffee -Cigarettes -Marijuana -occasional trips with cacti/mushrooms (last one was Dec 21/2012 with “zion-essence”) So if you ever make it out of a ride with a racist rapist wannabe mass murderer, expect to be wired for sound with adrenaline. THANKS (for what you’ve given me -.^)’

His longest post is a section of The Declaration of Independence, which seems appropriate for somebody who says they are a free spirit.

A Twitter account has also been set up in Kai’s name under the tag ‘@dogtownkai’ but the Tweets only go back to February 4, suggesting it may have been set up by somebody else after the story broke.

Among the Tweets is a quote from his TV interview: ‘It doesn’t matter your looks, skills, age, size or anything. You’re worthwhile, and no one can ever take that away from you.’

Kai’s fans include the two women who they say he saved from the maniac who he kept occupied until the sheriff arrived.

In the interview Ginger said: ‘My mom ran over to the driver to make sure he was OK because we thought maybe it was just an accident or something, and I ran straight to the PG&E man,’ said Ginger.

Tonya said: ”The guy just went crazy and was trying to pull the guy from the car and the truck. Then he gets in the car and tries to move the car and that. And we weren’t going to let him do it.

‘He just kept saying he’s Jesus Christ and he’s going to save all of us, but we have to get… he used the ‘N,’ word meaning the black people, and he said we need to get them off the Earth.’

‘Then he put me in a bear hug and started beating the crap out of me, for what reason? We still don’t know.’

Despite his heroic actions, Kai was modest in the interview about what he did.

He said: ‘That woman was in danger, he had just finished what looked like at the time, killing somebody, and if I hadn’t of done that he would have killed more people.’

‘I was like bro, if you are Jesus Christ, I will be the anti-Christ then’

‘It was like the biggest wave I have ever ridden in my life.’

The PG&E worker was rushed to the hospital with two broken legs; the driver was also removed from the scene with non-life-threatening injuries. He is currently in police custody and has been charged with attempted murder.

Asked what he was going to do next, Kai replied that he would like to go surfing.

(Daniel Bates, James Nye and Snejana Farberov. Courtesy, the London Daily Mail.)

* * *

Ed note: As the photo with the North Coast Journal shows, Hitchhiker Kai was living in Arcata for a while earlier this year.

LAST TUESDAY, Supervisor Dan Hamburg reminded his colleagues about the upcoming meeting at the Apple Farm in Philo regarding the pending replacement of the Philo-Greenwood Road bridge over the Navarro River outside of Philo. Along the way, Hamburg managed to insult at least half of the people interested in the subject, maybe more depending on how you interpret Hamburg’s sense of humor.

Hamburg: “There is a community workshop coming up on May 29 and it will be held at the Apple Farm which is on Greenwood Ridge Road and this is with regard to the bridge replacement at the Navarro River, the so-called ‘River Rest Bridge,’ and that meeting is going to convene at 5:30. Actually we are going to meet on the bridge, then have a public regular sit down public meeting at the Apple Farm. So all of you in Anderson Valley, there’s a lot of interest over there. Everybody wants a new bridge, but they want it to look exactly like the existing bridge! [Laughs.] They don’t know why we can’t just go over there with some trowels and cement, and, you know, some new 4x4s, and just, — rebuild it! Just like it is! Quincy Engineering will also be on hand to answer questions for local residents. This will be our second workshop on the bridge.”

Supervisor John Pinches: “The public needs to realize that when it goes to bridge replacement, when you are getting about 96% of the money from the federal government, you’ve got to go by their standards.”

Hamburg: “Damn. It just pisses me off.”

OBVIOUSLY, NOT “EVERYBODY” wants what Hamburg said “everybody wants.” And nobody proposed having volunteers rebuild it with 4x4s and trowels, as if Anderson Valley is a bunch of silly rubes with silly opinions. Several people were unconvinced that the bridge needs replacement (it’s over 60 years old and is deteriorating, especially at the base) saying they liked the rural look of the old bridge. Others were against widening it on the grounds that a wider bridge would encourage unsafe speeding. Many attendees at the last meeting were in favor of bridge replacement for one reason or another, all of them legitimate. And indeed it was made clear that federal money means federal standards, but which hopefully will not leave Philo with a new bridge that is just another concrete monstrosity.

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A FORENSICS EXPERT, and lots of non-experts, including cops, can tell at a glance if the bones are human or not. These must at least be ‘tweeners:

ON MAY 16, 2013 at 12:23pm the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office was notified of a suspicious circumstance in a secluded area adjacent to Highway 162 near the 1.04 mile post marker outside of Willits.  The reporting person stated they were in the area when they noticed the remnants of burnt ground.  Upon closer inspection the reporting person observed what appeared to be bones among the burnt ground.  Based upon the information, Sheriff’s Detectives responded to the location and initiated an investigation.  Upon arrival the Detectives located several badly charred bones, which investigators believe to be of human origin at this time.  Detectives will be enlisting the assistance of a forensic odontologist and forensic anthropologist in attempting to identify if the bones are human.  Anyone that has information that could assist with this investigation is urged to contact the Sheriff’s Office Tip-Line by calling 707-234-2100. (Sheriff’s Office Press Release)

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POINT ARENA HIGH SCHOOL has hired a new principal with almost no visible School Board or public involvement. Point Arena Superintendent Colleen Cross made the surprise announcement on Thursday that a Mr. Matt Strahl will replace Warren Galletti who quit a couple of months ago to take a position in Ukiah. There was no explanation why Galletti quit and no explanation of how or why Mr. Strahl was hired, just that there would be a meet and greet for him on May 29. Mr. Strahl will come to Point Arena from Calaveras County (about 80 miles southeast of Sacramento) where he was principal of John Vierra High School and Vallecito High School, both of which are Alternative/Continuing Education Schools (kind of like the whole Point Arena high school is now, in fact). According to a recent report in the Sonora Union Democrat, that district’s off-site continuation school headed by Strahl was closed for budgetary reasons and the principal and teachers were laid off as the students were brought back to a remodeled science building in Angel’s Camp. The total enrollment at the continuation schools formerly headed by Strahl was about 50 students, and of those 50 students there were just two Hispanic students. In March, when the budget cuts were announced, Strahl was quoted in the Calaveras Enterprise saying, “Due to budget cuts and declining enrollment, the district needs to cut about $440,000 from their budget. My job will be one of the cuts made. It is not something I like, but it is the reality of life and business. I know they (the district) would like to keep me, but someone has to go. No one needs to be mad or upset about the situation and go talk to people (board members or other administrators) or accuse people of doing something wrong. … All I ask for is your support during this time and if you hear of an administrative job in California education, please let me know or put in a good word for me.”

THE LAST TIME Point Arena hired a principal from out of the area (who also happened to be named Matt — Matt Murray, a former Harvard English professor with idealistic views on elementary education and serious standards for teachers which he tried to uphold) he was quickly undermined by both Point Arena’s lazy elementary teachers that he was supposed to supervise and the extremely dumb then-Superintendent Mark Iacuaniello. Murray was unceremoniously fired after less than two years without explanation or hearing, then he sued Iacuaniello for breach of promise (failure to back him up when the predictable teacher gripes arose) and narrowly lost in a civil trial against Iacuaniello. Murray then took a Principal job in Idaho where, we hear, he’s back on his feet after spending a lot of money on lawyers and taking a bath on the house he bought in Point Arena in the naïve belief that he could bring Point Arena elementary school out of state probation.

WE WISH MR. STRAHL the best of luck and hope he knows what he’s getting into and doesn’t suffer the same fate as Mr. Murray.

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White

LIFE SENTENCES Imposed On Christmas Robber — A Crescent City man who attempted to rob two women at knifepoint in Ukiah five days before last Christmas has been sentenced to state prison for a cumulative 98 years to life. The heavily tattooed, 50-year old Robert Lee White, also known as Robert Lee Stanley, Tracy Lee Mark, and “Gypsy,” [also known as “The Illustrated Man” — see http://theava.com/archives/21342] appeared Friday afternoon to listen as Mendocino County Superior Court Judge John Behnke rendered his judgment and imposed final sentencing. White has been represented by Deputy Public Defender Dan Haehl. At the conclusion of a trial held on April 3, 2013, Judge Behnke entered guilty verdicts against White on two counts of attempted robbery and one count of threatening the husband of one of the victims. The court also found as true that White used a knife in each of the three crimes and that he had previously been convicted of four prior “Strike” convictions. According to the background investigation conducted by the Mendocino County Probation Office, White began his first prison commitment in 1982 at the age of 18 years for first-degree burglary and false imprisonment. He was paroled on those convictions in 1985. White was then convicted of misdemeanor drug use in 1994 and 1996. However, later in 1996 White was sent back to state prison by the Del Norte County Superior Court for criminal threats. He was paroled on that conviction in 1997. In 1999, White was returned to state prison for two new and separate robberies – one he committed in Alameda County and another in Humboldt County. He was paroled on those cases in 2012. White was on state parole supervision when he was arrested on the current crimes by the Ukiah Police Department. District Attorney David Eyster has personally handled the local prosecution of White from the beginning. “Some individuals are too dangerous to be allowed to live amongst us,” said Eyster. “My goal in prosecuting Mr. White was to achieve a final result that promises the community that Mr. White will never again be given the freedom to pull a knife on, threaten, and victimize people in Mendocino County. In light of the sentence imposed by the court today, that goal has been achieved.” It is noted by courthouse historians that White’s sentence of 98 years to life is the second longest Three Strikes sentence imposed on any defendant in Mendocino County since voters approved Proposition 184 (the original Three Strikes law) in 1994. The longest Three Strikes sentence earned by a defendant in Mendocino County – 105 years to life – was imposed on William Newport in 1996 by then-Superior Court Judge James King. Newport was the so-called Mendocino arsonist who terrorized the village of Mendocino by setting fire to multiple buildings and other property. Eyster, a Deputy District Attorney at the time, also successfully prosecuted Newport, a case in which the defense attempted an unsuccessful insanity defense. A listing of all defendants from Mendocino County currently serving life sentences can be accessed through the District Attorney’s website at http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/da/liferInventory.htm. (District Attorney Press Release)

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SHERIFF ALLMAN appeared before the Board of Supervisors last Tuesday to explain why it is expected to cost $150,000 to paint the inside of the jail. First up was General Services Director Kristin McMenomey.

McMenomey: “The Jail has not been painted in over 28 years. The jail is not in the capital improvement plan budget because it is such a high cost at $150,000 to paint the inside of the facility.”

Supervisor John Pinches: “Why can’t the inmates paint the inside of the jail? Maybe they’d care more about it if they painted it themselves.”

McMenomey: “There are a couple of reasons why the inmates cannot paint the jail. We’ve had discussions with County Counsel on this.”

Pinches: “I want to hear the reason why they can.”

McMenomey: “Why they can?”

Pinches: “I want to hear the Sheriff’s response.”

Sheriff Tom Allman: “That was my very first question. How could we get the inmates to do this? First of all, of course, we have the contractors. We have an obligation. We can’t do large projects when there are contractors who do it. We learned that through the Employers’ Council. In addition, this is not regular latex paint. The jail has not been painted since it was built in 1985. The graffiti inside, the racial graffiti, the very strong graffiti which is not conducive for what we are trying to achieve with AB-109 [prison realignment] has to be covered up. It’s strictly epoxy paint. And epoxy paint has to be administered by a licensed contractor for epoxy paint. It’s a huge process. There’s going to be clearing out certain parts of the jail, wings of the jail. It’s one week for each wing to paint with the epoxy paint and the rest of dealing with it. We are trying to work with it. I wish we could say, Let’s get a sprayer there and spray it with a new coat of latex paint and walk away. But that’s not what the state will allow us to do. It’s not going to last. The paint that we have there now from 1985 for the most part has lasted much longer than it was intended. It’s expensive, but at this point it’s worth it and it’s something that we have to do. If you want to tour the jail as you and I have done before, I welcome it. But to put inmates into a cell which has extremely racial graffiti that people — for 24 hours a day, they think about it: “how can we damage the jail? And they do a pretty good job of it. We are trying to improve what we have through this kind of attention inside the jail. But it’s a good question and it’s a question we all ask.”

Pinches: “So it can be paid for with AB-109 money?”

Allman: “(Pauses) That has not been brought up. AB-109 funds — you will hopefully be hearing about funding a deputy sheriff very soon. I didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag but you asked.”

Superivsor John McCowen: “The graffiti that you speak of, is this generalized throughout the entire facility or is it primarily in cells, or the holding cells?”

Allman: “Well it’s not throughout the jail; it’s only the cells where the inmates are not monitored 24 hours a day with any kind of videocamera and so forth. It’s somewhat derogatory, but it’s also just for the overall maintenance. If you remember, our jail was built in 1985 and it was literally trucked in. These were portable units. We were told it would be a 20 year jail and that was a long time ago. Now we are in the process of trying to get some maintenance done that has been deferred. We have pipes that have rusted through. We have hinges that no longer work, roller bearings on doors that are way obsolete. The inventor and owner of the patent of some of this has died and his family has not released the equipment yet. These are some of the challenges we are up against. So we are working with GSA and repairing some of these things at the lowest cost. But getting the jail painted is a priority for the general well-being of the county, not just for the appearance, but for the maintenance. We have rust problems in the jail which you don’t even want to know about.”

McCowen: “I’ve seen some of the graffiti in the holding cells and the booking area and I absolutely agree that it is a priority to paint that over. But in terms of painting the entire jail when we have another item we’re looking at — the extensive remodel or replacement, I’m not sure. We need to balance the need to do the painting with, Are we then going to be ripping things out in two years?”

Allman: “No. The project you speak of is not for jail replacement. I would welcome a jail replacement. But in the world of other priorities I’m not going to advocate for a jail replacement right now. My guess is the paint that we put on this jail at the very minimum will last for 10-15 years or more.”

McCowen: “And the $20 million that we would potentially receive — it would actually be for a jail remodel?”

Allman: “Well, it’s for a jail extension for maximum security and I’m hoping that the Sheriff’s Office will work with mental health and we can work on some mental health beds that are non-criminal mental health beds. This is a big discussion and I welcome you, Supervisor McCowen, to be part of that because there is no discussion of replacing the 304-bed facility that we have right now. We need maximum security because of AB-109 and criminals who are coming in that are hardball criminals, these are not softballs. These are major crooks that the state is sending us.”

Hamburg: “Except they are all the three nons.”

Allman: “I guess that all depends on — non-sex, non-violent, non-serious — the state and counties cannot agree on what non-serious means because someone who manufactures methamphetamine in my opinion is a serious offender, but the state says he will never go to state prison for manufacturing methamphetamine. They will only go to county jails. So the definitions are —”

Hamburg: “I just remember when we were talking about AB-109. We kept coming up with and talking about the three nons.”

Allman: “The three nons.”

Hamburg: “But now we are finding out that the three nons are up for interpretation.”

Allman: “We agree on the two nons, but the third non, the non-serious, is not something we agree with the state on.”

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MENDOCINO FILM FESTIVAL Welcomes You — The Mendocino Film Festival (MFF), May 31 – June 2, has become a world-class film festival with the kind of intimacy and quality that provides a unique audience experience. New this year for Take 8 are film screening venues that include a 300-seat Festival Tent adjacent to the Hill House Inn in Mendocino, the Noyo Theatre in Willits, and Balo Vineyards in Philo, Anderson Valley. The Festival continues again this year to show films in Mendocino, Point Arena, and Fort Bragg. MFF has carefully selected films from around the country and around the world to enrich and entertain our coastal and inland communities. They include stories from Japan, Belgium, South Africa, China, Uganda, and France and include Oscar-winning films, upbeat shorts, award-winning narratives, and inspirational documentaries. A highlight this year includes the screening of silent films featuring Buster Keaton and “Fatty” Arbuckle with live musical accompaniment and sound effects by Alloy Orchestra and their “wall of junk.” Roger Ebert called Alloy, “The best in the world at accompanying silent films.” And since Mendocino County is Wine Country, what better place to screen the award-winning film, SOMM – a documentary that follows four friends’ quest to pass one of the most difficult and secretive tests on the planet – the Master Sommelier exam. Special Wine Tasting events to benefit the Festival will take place at two venues: Glendeven Inn, just south of Mendocino plus Balo Vineyards and The Madrones in gorgeous Anderson Valley. There are many other films not to miss, including the 2013 Best Documentary Oscar winner, Searching for Sugar Man, Mixed Messages – a program of charming short films on communication, Chasing Ice – a dramatic film about climate change, Rebels With A Cause – the inspiring story about saving Point Reyes and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and Sweet Dreams – a heart-warming story of healing through women’s enterprise in Rwanda. Filmmakers will attend the Festival for a Q & A following each presentation, giving the audience up close and personal insight into the process of bringing their stories to completion. The film, The Intouchables, has sold out one screening and MFF has added another at Matheson Performing Arts Center, so purchase your tickets early, $11 in advance and $12 at the door. For details and to view the film’s trailers visit MendocinoFilmFestival.org. And “Like Us” on Facebook.com/MendocinoFilmFestival

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JACKSON DEMONSTRATION STATE FOREST ADVISORY GROUP MEETING — The Jackson Demonstration State Forest Advisory Group meeting will be held on Thursday, May 23, 2013 at the Fort Bragg Senior Center at 490 North Harold Street in Fort Bragg. The meeting will start at 9:30 A.M. The meeting agenda is posted on the CAL FIRE website: (CAL FIRE – Jackson Demonstration State Forest)

http://www.fire.ca.gov/resource_mgt_stateforest_jackson.php.

This meeting is open to the public and public attendance is encouraged. If anyone has any questions about Jackson Demonstration State Forest, please call (707) 964-5674. (CalFire Press Release.)

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CONTRACTING FOR MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES — Mendocino County Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) will bring two proposed contracts for the delivery of mental health services in Mendocino County to the Board of Supervisors at their May 21, 2013 meeting. For decades, mental health services have been provided by Mendocino County Behavioral Health (formerly known as Mental Health Department). In an effort to provide better services to our clients tomorrow than we do today through an enhanced delivery system, a Request for Proposal of services was initiated. Mendocino County General Services Agency issued the Request for Proposal (RFP) #24-12 on October 2, 2012 on behalf of HHSA Behavioral Health (BH) to explore how current mental health services may be delivered in an alternate way from the County providing mandated mental health services. A mandatory bidders conference was held to answer questions prior to bids being submitted. The County accepted proposals from organizations to deliver all or any part of the services delineated in the Mental Health Plan (MHP). The RFP closed on January 15, 2013. Negotiations were pursued and as a result two contracts will be presented to the Board of Supervisors for approval. Ortner Management Group is proposed to provide adult mental health services (ages 21 and over), and Redwood Management Company is proposed to provide children and youth mental health services (ages under 21). Services are aimed at assisting adults, children and youth with serious mental illness and severe emotional disorders to live as contributing and successful members of their families and communities. Services will be delivered through community based treatment, including outpatient clinics in Ukiah, Willits and Fort Bragg. The County will maintain a comprehensive Mental Health Plan and ensure each contractor complies with applicable laws, rules and regulations and in conformance with guidelines issued by the State Department of Health Care Services. HHSA has worked diligently to minimize any and all impacts to existing County staff. The result is no lay offs of existing staff. Some staff will be reassigned within their current classifications to positions within HHSA to fulfill new mandated programs. Additionally, there will be BH administrative staff assigned to management of the contracts and oversight of mandates and regulations. The staff transition will occur over time as current mental health services are assumed by the two contractors. HHSA is committed to working with the selected vendors to design and implement a service delivery system that will meet the unique needs of Mendocino County’s clients; comply with regulatory provisions and fulfill new program mandates; and ensure accountability through collaborative team-based practices and regular reporting, including quarterly system re-evaluation to ensure program mandates and goals are met. Each piece of the partnership fits together to provide a comprehensive coverage plan that will provide improved mental health services. This has been supported by the Mental Health Board and other stakeholders. The Board of Supervisors, the Health and Human Services Agency, the County Executive Office, Mental Health Board, community partners, providers, and clients have steadfastly advocated for enhanced mental health services in Mendocino County to better serve the needs of our communities. By approving the recommended contracts, the county will not only be enhancing a vital public service to clients that serves a social need, but it will be realizing a model of collaborative partnership to strengthen our community mental health safety net. The presentation is scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m., and will be broadcast live on inland Public Access Television Channels (and available in recorded format for online viewing via Mendocino Access TV). For more information, please visit: www.mendocinoaccess.org The agenda and presentation materials are available online at: http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/bos/meetings/PublishedMeetings.htm. The public is encouraged to attend all Board of Supervisors meetings. The Board of Supervisors Chambers is located at 501 Low Gap Road, Ukiah, CA. For additional information, please contact the Mendocino County Executive Office at 707.463.4441.

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‘APPROVED SOURCE’ STAKEHOLDER MEETINGS TO BE HELD AROUND THE COUNTY. Food Safety Program Affects Local Produce Farmers and Commercial Buyers. The Mendocino County Agricultural Commissioner, the Director of Environmental Health, and the Food Policy Council invite local farmers, retail food buyers, and local food advocates to the second round of public meetings to give input into the design and development of an “Approved Source” program for Mendocino County. The California Retail Food Code requires retail food establishments to purchase food from an “Approved Source,” which is currently undefined for the sales of fresh, raw produce from local farmers to restaurants, schools, grocery stores, caterers, and other commercial buyers. The County Departments of Agriculture and Environmental Health, in partnership with the Mendocino County Food Policy Council, are working together with stakeholders to develop guidelines that facilitate sales of safe and healthy local food. The meetings will include an overview of recent on-farm food safety developments at the state and federal levels, provide answers to questions raised at the first meetings and give ample time to review and give input on the draft Best Management Practices that will later become the guidelines for Approved Source status. Farmers, chefs, produce managers, school food service directors and caterers are encouraged to attend. These public meetings will be held on Monday, June 3 from 3-4:30 at the Fort Bragg Library Community Room; Tuesday, June 4 from 3-4:30 at the Little Lake Grange in Willits; and Tuesday, June 11 from 3-4:30 at the Anderson Valley Fire Department’s Training Room. Contact Susan Lightfoot, Farm2Fork Coordinator, for more information at (707)467-3238 or slightfoot@ncoinc.org.

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DEAREST FRIENDS AND FAMILY, I have been invited to hang my art at the Gallery Opening for What’s Afoot Gallery in Caspar. I know how busy you are but if you could make it to the reception on Friday evening 5-9pm, May 24th it would sure mean a great deal to me. Attached is a digital image of the poster I designed for the event, I took 100 photos and picked this one. Sure hope you can attend. — Ralf Laguna, Fort Bragg

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THE AGE OF CORPORATE TREASON

Patriotic Yardsticks for Unpatriotic Giant Corporations

By Ralph Nader

Why are big, global US corporations so unpatriotic? After all, they were created in the USA, rose to immense profit because of the toil of American workers, are bailed out by American taxpayers whenever they’re in trouble, and are safeguarded abroad by the US military.

Yet these corporate goliaths work their tax lawyers overtime to escape US taxes. Many pay less than you do in federal income taxes. Imagine corporations, like General Electric, have not paid federal income taxes on US profits for years.

Mega corporations have abandoned US workers by entrenching “pull-down” trade agreements that make it easier than ever to ship jobs and whole industries to fascist and communist regimes abroad which keep their workers near serfdom. Remember, the US has run large trade deficits for the past 30 years as a result of anti-American trade deals pushed by these global companies. These goliaths are pressing for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that will further pull down our economy. (See http://www.citizen.org/page.aspx?pid=1328.)

Corporate CEOs are raiding and draining traditional pension plans for millions of workers who are left without their expected and earned pension payments on retirement. (For more information see Ellen E. Schultz’s book Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers.)

They are freezing the federal minimum wage, for low income service jobs that they cannot export, at $7.25 per hour, leaving thirty million workers today making less than workers made in 1968, inflation adjusted. Having wages that go backwards into the future means workers cannot afford the basic necessities of life for themselves and their children.

Giant companies hire legions of lobbyists to weaken or abolish consumer, worker and environmental safety and health laws, to stop our country from joining all other Western Nations with full Medicare for all. Corporate campaign cash increasingly flows to indentured politicians, who in turn do the bidding of the corporate paymasters at your expense.

We’ve yet to find a CEO of a US global corporation who will even go through the motions at their annual shareholders meeting standing up and, in the name of the company, pledging “allegiance to the United States…with liberty and justice for all.” When asked, as was General Motors, the CEO refused.

Charge companies with unpatriotic behavior and you’ll tap a nerve or two. The munitions companies, like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, put ads on television and radio asserting how their modern weapons back up our troops who are sent to expand the Empire. Of course, defense contractors never mention their huge profits, cost over-runs and their staffing the higher echelons of the Pentagon with their own appointees. Nor do these arms merchants ever raise a patriotic objection to the criminal wars of aggression conducted by Bush/Cheney against the defenseless people of Iraq, whose tottering dictator, formerly a US ally, was not a threat to America.

Other companies are trying softer promotions of their claimed care for America. Have you seen the lengthy ad campaign by Chevron that starts with some bold demand by a pictured ordinary person? One such ad begins “Oil companies SHOULD support the communities they’re a PART OF” (Chevron’s emphasis) and, invariably, Chevron answers “we agree,” and lists their charities here and abroad. Evaluating corporation philanthropy is for another time; suffice it to say that not one giant corporation exceeds one percent of their pre-tax profits, when the law allows them to give up to five percent, deductible.

Do you think that all of the above only comes from consumer/worker advocates? Then read a new, paperback book by Robert A.G. Monks, titled Citizens Disunited: the Corporate Capture of the American Dream.

Monks, a former corporate lawyer, corporate CEO, founder of companies, bank chairman, and investor-advocate extraordinaire, writes memorably about corporate excesses.

He quotes an Apple executive who told The New York Times: “We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries. We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.” Monks responds: “This is what greed looks like in the global epoch of corporatism: plunder the Treasury, to be sure, but then deny all sense of responsibility to your country of domicile, outsource all obligations, and, like maggots, set to work destroying the host from inside by exporting its jobs and depleting its revenue sources.”

He then cites Clyde Prestowitz, founder of the Economic Strategy Institute, who wrote that, as a top US government trade negotiator, he went to great lengths to open up the Japanese market for Apple in the early nineteen eighties, adding: “We did all we could and in doing so came to learn that virtually everything Apple had for sale, from the memory chips to the cute pointer mouse, had had its origins in some program wholly or partially supported by US government money.”

Monks sums up: “Henry Ford’s great success was built in part on his decision to pay his workers a high enough wage so that they could afford the products they were producing. No more. The shrinking middle class, the widening gap between the rich and the poor – these are some of those American ‘problems’ that American-born-and-bred corporations like Apple really have no time for.” For more galvanized specifics, please read and absorb this book!

Other high, former corporate officials are speaking out. Former general counsel of USAir, Lawrence Stentzel, called on reluctant federal prosecutors to hold corporate wrongdoers’ feet to the fire and force them to admit to their wrongdoing. He also demanded that the Justice Department create a user friendly database of corporate wrong doing. (See corporatecrimereporter.com.)

Big US corporations have long demanded a legal system where they are defined as “people,” so as to get all of our constitutional rights while they expand their privileged powers and immunities. Well, why don’t we measure them by the many patriotic standards that we apply to ourselves, the real American people.

Getting these giant firms on the defensive is the first step for the resurgence of the people so that corporations become our servants and do not remain our masters.

(Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition.)

A 40-FOOT cave in at the east end of the Skunk Train’s Tunnel One will prevent the popular tourist line from chugging on through to Willits until the tracks can be cleared and the tunnel shored up, an effort that will cost an estimated $300,000 the Skunk doesn’t have but is in the process of raising. Tunnel One, about a quarter mile long and more than a hundred years old, is about three miles from the Fort Bragg terminal. For now, the Skunk is running tourists out the three miles and back again to Fort Bragg.

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MENDOCINO COAST TELEVISION has got to move out of the Footlighters building at 248 E. Laurel, Fort Bragg. The two groups (Footlighters is a theater group) have shared the space for years, but newly appointed Superior Court Judge Jeanine Nadel, as reported by Frank Hartzell of the Fort Bragg Advocate, “has ruled that MCTV must give back the Footlighters building at 248 E. Laurel St. in Fort Bragg and pay $36,315. The tentative ruling stems from the 2007 transfer of the building from then-Footlighters president Bud Farley to MCTV, a transaction the judge found to be illegal. The suit dragged on for three years, while MCTV continued to spend on the building and Footlighters operated in other venues.”

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HMMM. I WONDERED why he didn’t file last week. Woke up Saturday morning and there was a big color photograph in the Press Democrat of my star environmental reporter staring down from an oak tree a little north of Willits High School. Will Parrish, as close to the story of the Willits Bypass as a reporter can get, has begun a tree sit to draw attention to the pure destructive folly of the project. Red Tail Hawk, aka Parrish, hauled a large banner up in the tree with him that reads, “Save Our Water. Stop CalTrans Now.”

MEANWHILE, CALTRANS now has a pile driving apparatus on-site they’ll use to pound hundreds of huge steel piles (poles) and 55,000 (count ‘em) wick drains into the wetlands route of the Bypass with which to withdraw the wet from the wetlands and keep it out (they tell us) doing huge and lasting damage to the area as they go.

SATURDAY, THE RUCKUS SOCIETY, held a training in aggressive non-violent protest at the Willits Grange. The RS is funded by liberal foundations such as Ben and Jerry’s and has a long history of helping mobilize direct action protests.

DIRECT ACTION RESISTANCE could only stop construction of the Willits Bypass if many, many (pick a number) people were willing to go to jail to stop the machines. I’d say about 500 people could clog the works if that many people could be found with the commitment (and the time) to put themselves through the catch and release arrest process. So far, only a handful of mostly Senior Citizens have been willing.

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Oslund

GORDON OSLUND has been hired as principal at Ukiah High School. Oslund’s wife, Karen, who previously sat on the Willits City Council. Oslund had worked at Willits High School under Deb Kubin, who is now superintendent of the Ukiah School District. Blithely denying that Oslund’s hiring was the usual inside Mendo edu-job as she confirmed suspicions that it was, Ukiah school board trustee Anne Molgaard said, “I just want it to be known that he didn’t get the job because he was from Willits. The search was very competitive.” Oslund himself said (of course), “I am super-excited to be coming to Ukiah,” the first person in years to express more than tepid enthusiasm for the big-boxed, fast-fooded, paved-over County seat.

PATRICIA JOHNSON of San Berdoo has been named the new superintendent of the Willits schools. She, too, is “excited” at her “new challenges” and on into the usual auto-blab we get from our school administrators, a dreary and unintelligent bunch in Mendocino County whose captive school populations must suffer these fools because the leadership is too “super-excited” to teach them anything.

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IDIOT’S GUIDE to the Big Picture:

ONE: THE IRS scandal? The scandal is that many corporations park their vast profits and pay no taxes at all. The very rich pay nowhere near their fair share and are seldom if ever audited, and most non-profits are phony and shouldn’t have non-profit, tax-exempt status in the first place.

TWO: BENGHAZI: The scandal is that our government plunked diplomatic people down in the middle of what is basically a war zone with inadequate security.

THREE: The Obama government’s spying on Associated Press will make the corporate media even more timid than it is now. Surveillance tech grows in sophistication by the day, and pretty soon even the paranoids will have legitimate cause for concern.

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THE ORDINARY PERSON. I’d been thinking about a mythological individual, the hero of modern democracy, Ordinary Person. Sometimes known as Ordinary Hardworking Person, he is the opponent to mythological villains like Fat Cat Banker, Workshy Scrounger and Faceless Bureaucrat. He obeys the law, pays taxes, puts money by and raises a family. He’s one of us. The trouble is that in real life you don’t meet ordinary people. Who’s one of us? I know I’m not. (—James Meek)

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LOOKING BACK: “I was an American soldier in Occupied Germany after the Second World War. We GIs lived in a former SS barracks in Frankfurt am Main. We were comfortable and happy, free to loot the fine wine cellar the Nazi elite had stored in the basement. Our ‘shit work’ — cleaning toilets, sewing uniforms — was done mainly by Polish, Russian or Balkan Jews, some of them Displaced Persons from the murder camps, others tossed into western Germany by the chaos of war. Gerard Daniel Cohen is correct when he writes that ‘contrary to the collective invisibility and silence of Holocaust survivors elsewhere in Europe, Jewish DPs loudly asserted their identity.’ The key word is ‘loudly.’ On the whole we GIs preferred the compliant, smiling deferential, defeated Germans to these spiky, sallow, sullen, often angry Jews who looked like ghosts from another world. German mothers offered their daughters to us in exchange for a bar of soap of Lucky Strike cigarettes (coin of the realm then). The DPs had to keep their lips zipped as we, their recent liberators, fraternized with the former enemy who had killed their families. DPs I spoke to were desperate to get out of Europe’s ‘bloodlands’ and somehow make it to Mandate Palestine. They begged me to sell or smuggle them guns to take on their escape route to Bari and thence to the eastern Mediterranean. There was no talk from them of Zionism; that came later. These were people who, based on their experience with American soldiers who didn’t much like them, felt they had no choice.” (Clancy Sigal, LRB, May 2013. Sigal is the author of the wonderful novel, ‘Going Away.’)

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Tree

MURDER IN ARCATA. Arcata Police Department press release chronicling the day’s events:  On May 18, 2013, at about 2am, the Arcata Police Department responded to the 2400 block of Eye Street on the report of gunshot victims inside the residence. A female victim was pronounced dead at the scene, the male victim was pronounced dead at Mad River Community Hospital.  The Arcata Police Department conducted an extensive investigation with a suspect being developed. The investigation led officers to a residence located in the 200 block of Marilyn Avenue, located in the Sunny Brae area of Arcata. Upon initial contact with the occupants of the residence, the suspect was not located. A short time later, citizens in the area notified police of a suspicious subject in the 1700 block of Shirley Blvd, a short distance away from the Marilyn Avenue residence. Officers responded and located Bodhi Tree, 28 years old of Arcata. Tree was the homicide suspect sought by the police department and he was arrested.  Tree was transported to the Humboldt County Jail and booked for two counts of PC 187 — Murder.

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DOUBLE HOMICIDE ON EYE STREET

By Kevin Hoover (Courtesy, the Arcata Eye)

EYE STREET – Two people, a male and a female, were killed in a house on Eye Street early this morning. People staying at the house said that a suspect, another houseguest, shot the two with a revolver. Victims have not been identified. The houseguests said the female was an 18-year-old high school student. Peterson said the female was pronounced dead at the scene. The male died shortly thereafter at Mad River Community Hospital. Arcata Police have the house cordoned off and are processing the scene. Another team is pursuing leads and tracking down witnesses.

Saturday morning, nearly a dozen individuals milled about outside, some lying and sitting about in the street eating donuts and tending to pets. Several said that they had been staying at the house. “People crash here,” said one of the guests. Some said they had been staying at the house for two days.

About 2am, the houseguests said, three to five shots rang out and the guests discovered the victims in the living room. They applied pressure to the victims’ bleeding wounds while 911 was called.

Police arrived, the guests were told to leave the home, and were interviewed by officers outside. They left all their possessions inside.

The suspect was described by the houseguests as an African-American man in his twenties who went by the name of “C Nasty.” He was dressed in gray sweat pants, with a “wife beater” sleeveless t-shirt and an Oakland Raiders cap.

He has a tattoo of a tree on his upper arm, and what was described as an “all-seeing eye.” All in all, said witnesses, the man had a “thuggish look.”

The houseguests characterized the man as unpleasant and sexually aggressive towards the women staying at the house. “He was drunk all the time,” said one. “He hit on every girl here.”

“He tried to feel up on me,” said a young woman sitting in the street holding a cat. “He was into terrible music.” The guests described the music as abrasive, with the term “thirsty-ass hoes” repeatedly used.

“He was really fucked up,” said a man. “He talked about Garberville, about the Bloods accepting him. Gang and drug talk.” The suspect was armed with some sort of baton, in addition to the firearm.

“We think he was trying to get with the girl,” said a man who had been in the house when the homicides occurred. The consensus scenario was that the suspect had solicited sex from the female, and that the male victim had tried to defend her.

The man apparently went by the name “Sunshine.” The female victim  just turned 18 years old, the guests said. They described her a “sweet and nice,” and still in high school. “She was a bubbly young lady, full of life,” one guest said.

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WATER WARS: Eel River Diversion-Potter Valley Project Theater

From the Potter Valley Irrigation District website:

Prior to the construction of the Potter Valley Project by Snow Mountain Water and Power (SMWP) and even until after the construction of Scott Dam forming Lake Pillsbury on the Eel River, the farmers in Potter Valley had little water for irrigating crops during the late summer and fall. Potter Valley, seven miles long and two miles wide, has a very small watershed with a few tributaries to the East Branch of the Russian River which runs, from north to south, through the center of the valley. On normal years of rainfall the small creeks, such as Busch, Hawn and Mewhinney stop flowing by midsummer and on dry years the creeks no longer have surface flow as early as April. At first, after the Potter Valley Project was built in 1906, water was only diverted from the Eel River through the tunnel during high winter and spring flows because the natural late spring, summer and fall flows on the Eel River drop to levels so low that it was impossible to divert water through the Potter Valley Project. Scott Dam was completed in 1922 allowing winter runoff water to be stored in the, newly-formed, Lake Pillsbury and to be released in the summer for power production. It soon became clear to the farmers of Potter Valley that there was a new source of summer water and dry farming crops could be a thing of the past.

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Supervisor John McCowen reported on the early stages of another upcoming legal battle over whether Eel River water should stay in the Eel or be partially diverted through the Potter Valley Tunnel into the Headwaters of the Russian River to water grapes in Potter Valley, add water to Lake Mendocino and so that Sonoma County can make millions of dollars by selling lots of it to Marin County.

McCowen: “I attended the all-boards meeting called by the Inland Water and Power Commission (IWPC). The initial portion was an informational presentation on the relicensing of the Potter Valley Project. That process will begin in April of 2017. It’s expected to be a five-year process. Going right along with that, there was a presentation regarding the creation of yet another agency with the term Russian River in its name. It is currently proposed to be the Russian River Preservation Alliance although Supervisor Brown and I might think it should be the Russian River Water Alliance. It is intended to bring together all of the entities that currently do benefit from the Potter Valley Project to the downstream use of water that is conveyed via the Potter Valley Project. There are groups who would like to block the re-licensing of the Potter Valley Project and tear out the dams and cut off that flow of water. They are very intent. They have a ten-year plan that they have launched to raise funds and advocate for their cause. So the main purpose of this meeting and of this proposed new group is to create a counterbalance that can first of all educate people who currently benefit from the Potter Valley Project who may not really understand that that is a fact and who probably have no idea that the continued flow of that water is potentially at risk so this will be an effort to outreach to those communities to educate them, to see their their participation to support the relicensing of the Potter Valley Project. There was an initial ask of the modest amount of $5,000, $1000 from each member agency of the IWPC to help fund of this new organization. There were questions about governance and accountability and so I’m sure there will be more discussion of that going forward.”

Supervisor John Pinches: “Was there any discussion as to what would be Plan B if PG&E decides not to apply for a relicensing agreement-permit?”

McCowen: “There was some discussion of PG&E’s intentions and at this time it is believed that PG&E does intend to go forward with the relicensing. The hydroelectric power does give them a plus in terms of renewable and green energy so there is value to them in maintaining that. Supervisor Brown may be able to expand on that if PG&E were not to go forward.”

Supervisor Carre Brown: “The process really starts in 2017. We just all felt that a communication plan was so badly needed so the facts are there. Most people don’t even realize how important the Eel river water is to the livelihood of the entire Russian River watershed and beyond even. What’s more important is the fact that you have a Lake Sonoma that could possibly serve northern Sonoma County. We do not have that. We do not have a lake as big. And other important points I do not need to go forward with. But Lake Mendocino and the Eel River water that is diverted is extremely important even though 46% since the last relicensing has been cut of what can go through the tunnel. But it is very important to our very livelihood and the environment within the Mendocino-Russian River watershed. So that’s — we just feel there has to be an educational program. I don’t want to call it educational, I think it’s communications, so that everyone can go to a site and this is the initial setup and it will go to a nonprofit because local government or other entities just do not have the financial ability to continue the program so we will be looking— in fact we should hear soon that it will go under a nonprofit that already carries a website so the expenses and oversight and administration doesn’t have to come from any one entity that sits on the IWPC board. But they are asking for $1000 from each member in order to start the tool.”

Hamburg: “Is this still the project that Paige is heading up?” [“Paige” was unexplained. Presumably Paige Poulos, former president of the Mendocino Wine & Grape Commission.]

Brown: “Yes, but this is how it’s evolved. Yes.”

Hamburg: “Ok. So it’s evolved from Paige doing it to —”

Brown: “Because we just don’t see financially how the entities belonging to IWPC could carry forth on the project so once the original tool is set up we hope to place it with a nonprofit so they, part of that group, the advisory group, can go out and collect funds in order to support a website.”

Pinches: “The reason I bring up the question about PG&E’s ability to apply for the relicensing, in the early 90s, you know, after they had the fish screen problem at Scott Dam and whatnot, PG&E basically said they were either going to abandon the project or sell it. That was before the reduction in the water coming through so they could generate a lot more power. I realize the argument is that people say, Oh they can’t do it because it keeps their portfolio good as far as green energy goes, but they have other sources of green energy that they can use. What I’m fearful of is some PG&E executive — you know, they’ve had a lot of financial problems within PG&E here in the last couple years, and probably from what we see there’s more to come — but, as they look for the bottom line some of these, they could you say, you know what, we were thinking about getting rid of it before this last relicensing and now that they lost 40% of their ability to generate power, it probably looks more like a financial plus for PG&E if they abandon the project. That’s my biggest worry. You’re in this issue basically with, if you look regionally, Humboldt, Marin, the Potter Valley Project support is probably lagging way behind what the opposition is putting out there as information. But my most concern at this point is that one executive on one given day could say, you know what, we’re just not going to file for relicensing. So I think there should be at least a little bit of a plan or thought about what would be Plan B if that happened because that would just, that could happen with just one executive making a decision, no political pressure or power or nothing involved. Just one executive could make that decision.”

Brown: “That’s how Inland Water & Power Commission actually got formed was when PG&E started going through their bankruptcy process and they looked at every hydro project in the entire state and put them together in blocks and were going to auction them off. This particular hydro plant and its assets were coupled with the Sierras which was a real weird thing to have happen. I will also say that IWPC did form because they also looked at the alternative of maybe the Sonoma County Water Agency buying it. Mendocino County just felt, the entities that make up the IWPC, really felt that Mendocino County and its entities had to be players this time, we couldn’t just sit back. I think PG&E’s commitment is very strong at this point because of the green energy component and elements that they must have. There is worry that if they get into the wind farms and solar farms that maybe the hydro projects would be something that they may well walk away from, but I just can’t quite see that. The old valve that broke within the tunnel this last year that caused not even a trickle coming through for over a month of diversion water into Lake Mendocino during the winter, they went in there, they built a diversion from the tunnel so they could bring water around. It wasn’t enough, I don’t think, to power their hydro plant, but it was going through Potter Valley for instance and into Lake Mendocino or Lake Mendocino would even be shallower than we see it today.”

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THE GREAT ONE on ink-stained wretches:

1. “…there is no accurate portrait  (in American fiction)  of the journalist as a whole, from his beginnings as a romantic young reporter to his finish as a Leader of Opinion, correct in every idea and hollow as a jug. Here, I believe, is genuine tragedy. Here is human character in disintegration–the primary theme of every sound novelist ever heard of, from Fielding to Zola and from Turgeniev to Joseph Conrad.  I know of no American who starts from a higher aspiration than the journalist. He is, in his first phase, genuinely romantic. He plans to be both an artist and a moralist–a master of lovely words and a merchant of sound ideas.  He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass in his community–that is, if his career goes on to what is called success. He becomes the repository of all the worst delusions and superstitions. He becomes the darling of all its frauds and idiots, and the despair of honest men.” (— H.L. Mencken)

2. “…I do not say that all journalists go that route. Far from it. Many escape by failing; some even escape by succeeding. But the majority who get into the upper brackets succumb. They begin with high hopes. The end with safe jobs.  In the career of any such man, it seems to me, there are materials for fiction of the highest order. He is interesting intrinsically, for his early ambition is at least not ignoble–he is not born an earthworm.  And he is interesting as a figure in drama, for he falls gradually, resisting all the while, to forces that are beyond his strength. Here is tragedy–and here is America.  For the curse of this country, as of all democracies, is precisely that it treats its best men as enemies.  The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in every public sense, is a respectable vacuum.” (— H.L. Mencken)

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LINDA WILLIAMS of the Willits News has done the best reporting on the Mendo-Kansas dope ring story. Her latest report can be read at

http://www.willitsnews.com/twnnews/ci_23267987/guilty-pleas-piling-up-kansas-federal-drug-case

RECOMMENDED VIEWING: THE ICEMAN co-starring Anderson Valley’s very own, Winona Ryder, raised deep in the hills of west Philo.

Children under the age of 50, especially Pollyanna’s kids, won’t care much for this one, which is based on the true story of a legendary hitman for organized crime named Richard “The Polack” Kuklinski. When he isn’t knocking off other criminals, Kuklinski, a devoted family man, is at his suburban home with his wife and two daughters. Winona Ryder, “Nonie” as she was known as a child, plays Kuklinski’s unsuspecting wife. She thinks her husband is a currency trader. His two girls attend a Catholic school. The only laugh comes when the hitman, seeing his daughters off to school, tells them, “Don’t take any crap from the nuns.” Michael Shannon is excellent as the Iceman.

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THIEVES after the copper wiring, cut the phone and DSL lines out of the Sea Ranch-Timber Cove area of the South Coast almost two weeks ago (Friday, May 10th). Ham radio operators picked up the slack while the lines were under repair. DSL lines belonging to SuddenLink have several times been vandalized in Humboldt County, not for copper wiring but, it seems, in retaliation for some unstated grievance.

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SUPERVISOR HAMBURG last Tuesday told his Board colleagues about a Friday, May 17 meeting in Fort Bragg to discuss internet broadband service in the county. “The focus will be broadband planning in the city of Fort Bragg. And of course Fort Bragg is on that fiber-optic so-called Route 1 Corridor project which I’ve mentioned several times before. That’s the one that goes from Branscomb to Westport and down to Bodega Bay and back over to Petaluma, which is actually part of that Golden Bear Broadband application which is currently before the PUC. We are getting a lot of pushback from the big telecoms — Verizon, Frontier, AT&T, Comcast. Essentially, there is a lot of maneuvering going on in Sacramento around broadband. Included in that is this bill by Senator Padilla, AB-740, which this board has supported, but now the big telecoms are coming down against AB-740. … Basically the big telecoms don’t want money to be allocated to organizations like ours who are trying to bring broadband to the rural communities; they don’t want the competition. They are very happy to not serve these areas until they’re damn well ready to serve them. They are calling our Golden Bear project — they say we are getting into areas where private operators or themselves as private corporations should be able to operate. The only hole in that argument is that they are not serving these areas. Unless you are on a major core highway like Highway 5 or Highway 101 you do not have service in Northern California and that situation exists in Mendocino County. And it exists in all these 16 or 17 counties that are part of the Golden Bear Broadband network. So it’s kind of a battle royal that’s going on in Sacramento right now over AB-740 and also over our application to the CPUC. We are lobbying hard. … The telecom lobbyists in Sacramento are trying to squelch our efforts. But we have some good political support on our side and we are fighting the battle.”

BUT LATER IN THE WEEK, news out of Sacramento reported that funding for Padilla’s broadband infrastructure bill (via the California Public Utillities Commission) had been cut by $100 million, and the bill was amended to substantially restrict the definition of “underserved” to include language that would limit funding to areas where no big telecom company had not applied for a permit which isn’t very many areas in California.

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KNOW YOUR NEIGHBOR DAY? From the Agenda for the May 21, 2013, Board of Supervisors meeting: “Summary Of Request: As a participant in Leadership Class XX, Potter Valley resident Freeda Burnstad proposes that the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors proclaim a ‘Know Your Neighbor Day’ on June 15th 2013. Ms. Burnstad notes in her initiative that in this rural decentralized county we often associate with our geographically spread peer groups more than the people who live closest to our residence. In times of emergency though, we may not be able to reach our closest friends to receive or provide help. It would behoove communities striving for sustainability to come together in small regionally based groups of neighbors to support each other. These gatherings provide a forum for neighbors to discuss common interests and issues. By passing the Proclamation, County government can support local residences to increase friendship, safety and economic collaboration. Ms. Burnstad will plan a gathering in her own neighborhood of Pine Avenue in Potter Valley and encourage other communities to do the same by suggesting a model. This template will be disseminated through distribution of a tri-fold brochure and by spreading information regarding the Board of Supervisors proclamation through local media outlets. Together we make Mendocino County the wonderful and unique place that it is; recognized for its friendly and sustainability minded local communities. Let’s celebrate and reinforce these qualities on ‘Know Your Neighbor Day,’ June 15th 2013.”

MS. BURNSTEAD has a point, of course, as far as it goes. But not all neighbors are as “sustainability-minded” as she may think. Knock on the wrong neighbor’s door and you just might be sustaining the nabe’s pitbull. We agree that Mendocino County can be “tight-knit” but tight-knit in the sense of affinity groups, not in the old fashioned sense of community. Looking around Anderson Valley what you find is like-minded people associating solely with each other. Communities are now so fractured that they’re not communities but collections of affinity groups plus lots of isolated individuals who happen to share the same geographical area. Also, “mutual economic support” is likely only among small groups of like-minded individuals drawn from the same social class. The only cross-class occasions in the Anderson Valley, for instance, occur at annual crab feeds and a few other popular sports or community events after which everyone goes their separate ways. If, however, if your worldview tends to the apocalyptic, and you assume our vandalized and looted economy will continue to implode, we may soon all be compelled out of necessity into old fashioned community.

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ALSO ON TUESDAY’S AGENDA is a dog license amnesty proposal — for one (1) day: “In October 2012, the Board approved a 60-day dog license amnesty program, which resulted in the licensing of approximately 900 dogs whose license had expired or who had never been licensed. In an effort to encourage dog owners who may have failed to license their pet, or may have failed to renew a previously issued license before it expired, the Mendocino County HHSA Animal Care Services is asking permission to offer a one-day dog license amnesty program. The amnesty program would occur on Saturday, June 15, in conjunction with a scheduled low-cost rabies vaccination clinic. State law requires owners obtain a license for all dogs, and the license can only be issued if the dog is currently vaccinated for the rabies virus. This amnesty opportunity will give dog owners an opportunity to establish a current license for their pet without facing any penalties, if they do not have outstanding citations.”

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Miller

HUMBOLDT COUNTY is reducing their search efforts for triple-murder suspect Shane Miller according to a recent Associated Press report. Humboldt County Sheriff’s Lt. Wayne Hanson told the Eureka Times-Standard on Friday that with no new leads or information to report, the other dozen outside agencies that had joined the manhunt for Shane Miller have returned to their jurisdictions. Authorities have been searching for Miller in the Petrolia area of Humboldt County after his wife and two daughters were discovered slain on May 7 at their home in Shasta County, about 200 miles away. Deputies will still continue road patrols for the next several days, but the command post in Petrolia has been shut down. Humboldt County Sheriff Mike Downey said at a community meeting Wednesday that Miller has most likely killed himself or left the area.

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PUBLICLY FINANCED HEALTHCARE IN CANADA:

Who Pays & Who Benefits Over a Lifetime?

A new study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), Lifetime Distributional Effects of Publicly Financed Health Care in Canada, looks at who pays for and who uses publicly financed health care and how this affects the distribution of income in the country. Understanding these issues is important when discussing how best to address health care financing and income inequality in Canada.

About 70% of Canadian health care services are publicly financed, and taxation is the main revenue- generating mechanism used to pay for these services. All Canadian taxpayers contribute financially, regardless of their use of the health care system. This approach ensures universal access to most health care services, regardless of income and without financial hardship.

Taxation is not the only way to raise money for health care. Numerous jurisdictions around the world use alternative revenue-generating mechanisms such as user fees, medical savings plans and different insurance models. In Canada, debates are ongoing regarding the merits of various health care financing options, prompted by concerns related to the affordability and sustainability of the health system; these concerns include the aging population, changing illness patterns and technological innovations. These debates have also included discussions of fairness and equity related to the potential impacts of these options on the financial burden of health service costs and health care accessibility.1

There is another aspect of health care financing in Canada that is not often examined: who pays for and who uses health care and the resulting effect on the distribution of income. In this study, we look at what happens to the distribution of income across five income groups when tax contributions and the value of benefits received from publicly financed health services are taken into account, with a focus on physician and hospital services and some drug costs. This involves estimating the health care payments made through taxes for each group, as well as the value of health care benefits received. Group 1 has the lowest income, group 5 the highest. Each income group represents 20% of the population.

In the Canadian health care system, there will be people who pay more than the value of the services they receive, while others will use services that cost more than the contributions they make. In other words, the essence of our health system involves transfers from the healthy to the sick. When taxation is progressive, such that those with higher incomes pay a relatively higher portion of their income in taxes than those with lower incomes, there is the potential for health system financing to bring about a transfer from the affluent to the less affluent. Those with higher incomes contribute more—both absolutely and relatively—than those with lower incomes, while those with greater need use more than those who are healthier.

There are other important factors to consider when looking at who pays for and who uses health care. First, people tend to pay more in taxes when they are middle-aged and to use more health care services when they are older. Second, although lower-income groups have generally poorer health, they also have shorter average life expectancies than higher-income groups. This means that they live for a shorter amount of time in the periods of life when healthcare costs are higher and tax payments are lower. As a result, we get a more complete picture of who pays for and who uses health care when we measure over a lifetime.

Key Findings

Over a lifetime, tax payments made to finance healthcare are modestly progressive in that the most affluent pay relatively more of their income (about $8700 per year on average), although not by a substantive amount. For example, the highest income group in the study contributed 8% of their total income toward publicly financed healthcare, while the lowest income group paid close to 6%.

Only in the highest-income group were tax payments much higher than the cost of health care received. Payments to healthcare made by income groups 3 and 4 (middle and upper middle) were very close to the actual healthcare costs for these groups.

Healthcare costs for the highest-income group were 3% of average income for that group. Health care costs for the lowest-income group were 24% of average income for the group. Without access to publicly funded healthcare, individuals in this group could face hardship when attempting to pay for their healthcare costs.

Before taking into consideration the value of publicly funded healthcare, average income in the highest-income group was 5.1 times the income of the lowest-income group. After adding the value of health costs, the gap was reduced to 4.3 times. This represents a 16% reduction in this measure of income inequality.

Conclusion

All Canadian taxpayers contribute to publicly financed healthcare, regardless of their use of the system. Publicly funded health care services are available to all on the basis of need, regardless of ability to pay. When we look at the relationship over a lifetime, only the most affluent (the top 20%) contribute significantly more to health care than they receive. For other income groups, the value received from publicly funded healthcare is approximately the same as or more than the value of taxes paid to fund those services. The redistributive effect of publicly funded healthcare in Canada is a 16% reduction in the income gap between the highest- and lowest-income groups. Without the publicly financed health system, the lowest-income Canadians would be at risk of going without needed healthcare or of being impoverished by paying for it. (Courtesy, the Canadian Institute for Health Information.)

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SQUEAKY WHEELS PROTEST at Bohemian Grove:

by Mary Moore

The concept for the Squeaky Wheels movement was born from the experience of just one person, in his painful attempt to find his way through the maze of contradictions and dead ends — -already difficult even before the recent sequester cuts. Barry is an almost 62 year old man now in an advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease which he may have contracted back in the early ’80s when he went to Nicaragua to help pick cotton and was exposed to paraquot. A social justice activist for over 30 years, Barry now resides in an “assisted care” facility in Petaluma, CA. in a small shared room within a very depressing place that is slowly driving him insane.

He communicates with difficulty through a computer as his voice no longer works even though his mind is sharp as ever and he is imprisoned in a body that no longer functions. Many friends from his early activist struggles organized to visit him on a regular basis to get him out of this crushing environment but at best it’s only a temporary fix. With the help of his circle of friends he jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops to apply for alternative housing and get a section 8 voucher from HUD so he could move to a more independent living situation. He had interviewed and found someone to assist him and was ready to finally escape this soul killing situation when he was suddenly informed that he did not have the Section 8 voucher that he had been told he had.

At that point we called the office of our local congressperson since HUD is a federal program. We were then told that because it is administered by the county we needed to call our local supervisor. It was through David Rabbit’s office that a meeting was set up with James Hackett, head of the Sonoma County Housing Authority. This man, obviously frustrated by his job, broke the news (way too long to recount here) that it could be up to five years for Barry to work his way up the list which had already been cut back even before the recent sequester cuts demolished it even more. After filling out all the forms, answering all the questions, this long journey ended with him right where he’d started…on a very long waiting list for a section 8 voucher.

How many other stories are out there like Barry’s? How many others will die before they ever get to the end of this list, many of them already homeless or about to be?? How many confined to wheelchairs, blind, disabled and in dire need are being affected daily and no one is noticing or caring?? But it seems that for SOME of our population the sequester is flexible! In fact, when regular air travelers (including Congressmen heading home for vacation) were temporarily inconvenienced due to the layoffs of some air controllers, it took only a week to get a fix through Congress for them!! The fact that this will not surprise anyone paying attention does not make it right!! It is clearly wrong.. And thus the Squeaky Wheel movement will be born, like every other civil rights movement was born — from the outrage that finally boils over when the voiceless finally organize itself and a critical mass movement happens.

You do not need to be in a wheelchair to be a Squeaky Wheel but we will put these folks up front as a visual message to a public weary of wars abroad and ready to take on the War at Home….finally because Barry is not alone in his search for some basic justice. In fact he represents all of us… disabled, aging, hungry, homeless, mentally ill, desperately in need of help from our government. We hope to speak truth to power this July with a march to Bohemian Grove led by those who were taking the brunt even before the Sequester. We need to give a voice to the voiceless. Imagine the image of wheelchairs, walkers, canes, lined up at the gates to the annual retreat of the ruling elite on Saturday, July 20, 2013.

Please come to a meeting next Saturday, May 25 at 1PM at the Peace and Justice Center in Santa Rosa (467 Sebastopol Rd) to see if we can pull this off in a two month time frame. If enough people show up to cover all the needed bases we will go ahead. If you can gather the names & contact info for those already in the disability community please share that with us. Please spread the word to all your Squeaky Wheel friends and put May 25 on your calendar. You are needed to make this happen.

BREAKING NEWS

Allman

SHERIFF ALLMAN confirmed late Monday afternoon that an investigation by the Sheriff’s office is underway to determine if Carrie Hamburg, the late wife of 5th District supervisor Dan Hamburg, was illegally buried on the Hamburg family’s property southwest of Ukiah. “It’s under investigation but I’m not prepared to publicly discuss it right now,” the Sheriff said. But we’ve learned that the Hamburg family is not denying that Mrs. Hamburg is buried at their home, and that Supervisor Hamburg has hired Ukiah attorney Barry Vogel to contest the Sheriff’s implicit mandate to, if necessary, seize Mrs. Hamburg’s remains.

Hamburg

MRS. HAMBURG died from cancer at home on March 5th of this year. She was apparently buried by her family soon after. At least two, and sometimes three, legal signatures are required verifying that the deceased died from the causes asserted by an attending physician. The Mendocino County Department of Public Health did not sign off on the disposal of Mrs. Hamburg’s remains.

CALIFORNIA law says “Every person who deposits or disposes of any human remains in any place, except in a cemetery, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

THE FALLOUT from this grisly and growing affair will be huge in Mendocino County. Hamburg inspires a cult-like devotion among his liberal supporters, who remain numerous up and down the Northcoast, so numerous Hamburg was elected to Congress where he served one term.

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LAST AUGUST, a 79-year-old retired contractor from Fort Bragg named Howard Moore was arrested by a Mackerricher State Park ranger for (allegedly) arguing with State Parks rangers over a drainage pipe that apparently served Moore’s home near the park. Its installation had been approved by the County, but for some reason Parks staff removed it even though it was not on Parks property. A few hours after Moore complained to a ranger about the pipe’s removal, Moore went to the Parks office at Mackerricher to explain his objections. At the office, Moore says, he was ordered out of his truck, manhandled to the ground by three rangers, arrested for disturbing the peace and resisting arrest, taken to the County Jail, held overnight, booked, paid his $10,000 bail which his wife raised in cash, given his bail money back and released.

No charges were filed against him. Moore has formally complained to State Parks. We hope to have a full account of the Moore Affair soon, but we can say preliminarily that we don’t think force is necessary on a guy that old.

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ON THURSDAY, May 16, Presiding Juvenile Court Judge David Nelson officially announced the selection of Jail Division (and Juvenile Hall) Manager, Buck Ganter, as the new Chief Probation Officer. Chief Ganter succeeds former Chief Probation Officer Jim Brown, who retired this year after more than 30 years of service to the County. Judge David Nelson stated, “The judges chose to appoint Buck Ganter due to his strong leadership skills and his ability to carry on the good work of former Chief Probation Officer Jim Brown. We were lucky to have a highly qualified candidate within the office who we can trust to meet the difficult challenges facing Probation in these times when they are taking on new duties due to realignment.” The Executive Office congratulates Buck on this new professional opportunity. — CEO Carmel Angelo report to the Board of Supervisors, 5/21/2013

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CRAIG AT THE CROSSROADS

Warm greetings of bliss and transcendental joy, Please know that I sent out over 300 email invitations asking others to join with me, to form a caravan to go around the Washington D.C. beltway, to deliver a strong spiritual message in response to the bogus political atmosphere in DC which is permeating the earth plane with its stench. Invitations were sent to the entire Earth First! international directory, the east coast Rising Tide groups, two spiritual groupings: Amma centers on the east coast, and the entire national directory of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. I have thus far received no replies from anyone. One friend in Oakland suggests that my peeps are now retired with family obligations, and that I need to get a job.  Maybe she is correct about this.  The Harrison House shelter that I am at in Berkeley believes so too.  What do you think?  Am I all done in postmodern America in terms of radical activism/organizing, and writin’ about it?      Give it to me straight. I want you to send me an email response, because if it’s over for me in postmodern America, I need to know.  Otherwise, I get my social security retirement check on Wednesday, and I will have enough money to travel; do you want to get anything more from me or not?  The shelter in Berkeley wants to know what my “future plans” are.  What do I tell them?I am game to return to the New York City/Washington D.C. region, and will consider other possibilities as well, but you’ve gotta give me indoor space; you know, to sleep and shower.  That’s sane, right? I am thanking you in advance for your taking the time to consider this, and for giving me the courtesy of your reply.  I look forward to hearing from you soon, Craig Louis Stehr  P.S. Please do not send me something stupid like suggesting that I be an activist part-time; I am not interested in doing anything that ridiculous. After all, I could concentrate on getting more money and returning to spiritual India, which would be a lot more intelligent than some sort of jackass effort on my part here.

Craig Louis Stehr, Email: craigstehr@hushmail.com. Mailing address: c/o NOSCW, P.O. Box 11406, Berkeley, CA 94712-2406. Blog: http://craiglstehr.blogspot.com

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SMOKING MARIJUANA can help ease the pain of social exclusion and low self-esteem but it won’t fix your problems, claims new research Tests by researchers at the University of Kentucky found cannabis can act as a buffer against feelings of  negative self-worth and poor mental health

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Newly published research suggests that one of the main reasons people enjoy smoking marijuana is because it helps them combat intense feelings of social exclusion. Rather than simply getting high for the heck of it, a research team led by University of Kentucky psychologist Timothy Deckman has found that cannabis relieves not only physical pain but also emotional pain. As their starting point, Deckman and his team used two recent pieces of research. One that found the pain of social exclusion is more intense than previously thought, and another that revealed physical and emotional pain travel similar pathways in the brain.

New research has found that cannabis relieves not only physical pain but also emotional pain This second piece of research was uncovered after tests found the pain killer Tylenol had helped reduce the pain of social rejection and existential angst in test studies. Since marijuana works through similar brain receptors, Deckman’s researchers wondered whether pot could similarly soften the pain of exclusion, reports Pacific Standard.

More… Forget coffee, now you can get caffeine in your Toothbrush Gymnophobics: The real-life ‘never-nudes’ who live in fear of being seen naked (even in private) Pictured: Moment singer George Michael is airlifted to hospital following rush-hour crash on the M1 One experiment that helped prove their theory involved surveying more than 5,000 Americans about their level of loneliness, their marijuana usage (if any), and assessed their mental health and feelings of self-worth. Unsurprisingly the researchers found a relationship between loneliness and feelings of self-worth, but that it was significantly weaker for those people that regularly smoked pot.

Tests found that people who regularly smoked pot didn’t suffer as much from feelings of social exclusion as those who didn’t smoke or did so only very rarely ‘Marijuana use buffered the lonely from both negative self-worth and poor mental health,’ the researchers wrote in the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal. Another experiment found people who were experiencing social pain were less likely to have suffered a major depression in the past year if they were regular pot smokers. A third experiment was based around the Cyberball computer game, half the participants in the three-person game received the ball twice early on, and then never again during for the remainder. Afterwards they were asked to react to a series of statements designed to assess whether their need for self-esteem and belonging felt threatened using statements such as, ‘I had the feeling that the other players did not like me.’

Smoking pot can help temporarily alleviate feelings of insecurity, low self-esteem and social awkwardness, but the real cure is learning and dealing with the underlying issues that make someone feel like that The results found that those who frequently smoked marijuana felt less threatened than the others. Deckman and his colleagues have concluded that these studies show ‘marijuana use consistently buffered people from the negative consequences associated with loneliness and social exclusion’. They also warned that while marijuana isn’t an adequate cure to solving these problems. ‘Humans have a fundamental need to belong,’ the researchers noted. ‘Hurt feelings motivate us to fix our relationships and re-establish social connection.’ So while smoking pot can help temporarily alleviate feelings of insecurity, low self-esteem and social awkwardness, the real cure is learning and dealing with the underlying issues that make someone feel like that. (Courtesy, the London Daily Mail.)

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FISHING GROUPS OPPOSE FINAL DELTA PLAN

By Dan Bacher

Representatives of fishing groups united with family farmers, environmentalists and elected officials on May 16 to oppose the Final Delta Plan adopted by the Delta Stewardship Council because of the big threat the plan poses to Central Valley Chinook salmon and Delta fish populations.

In spite of overwhelming opposition to the plan, the Council voted 7-0 to approve the plan and the accompanying environmental impact report and regulations.

“State law told us to develop a legally enforceable Delta Plan that will guide state and local agency actions on water use and the Delta environment,” said Delta Stewardship Council Chair Phil Isenberg.

“We will now be able to focus on implementing the policies and recommendations that will help achieve the State’s coequal goals of providing a more reliable water supply for California and protecting, restoring, and enhancing the Delta ecosystem while protecting the unique values of the Delta as an evolving place.”

A press release from the DSC revealed how the Delta Plan is intimately tied to the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels. “The Plan will eventually include the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) when the BDCP is completed and successfully permitted,” the release stated.

Delta advocates, who held a protest before the meeting in West Sacramento, disagreed strongly with Isenberg’s contention that the plan would protect, restore and enhance the Delta ecosystem. They said the flawed plan would instead “drain the Delta and doom salmon and other Pacific fisheries.”

Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and board member of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), began his address to the Council by saying, “Good morning, welcome to the resumption of California’s water wars.”

“The Delta Plan fails to comply with the law, and perpetuates an unsustainable status quo that enriches a few powerful water brokers at the expense of reliable water supplies and healthy fisheries,” said Jennings. “It is a classic shell game to benefit special interests and, if implemented, would represent a death sentence for one of the world’s great estuaries.”

“The Council has squandered a marvelous and unique opportunity,” emphasized Jennings. “Because the Council failed to identify and analyze the root causes of California’s water crisis – over-appropriation, unreasonable use, failure to balance the public trust – the Delta Plan and EIR largely recommends that agencies should continue to do the same things that created the crisis in the first place. The Plan and EIR ignore history and are predicated on an artificial reality. They’re little more than omelets of half-truth and distortion to justify predetermined conclusions.”

The peripheral tunnel opponents said the real purpose of the Delta Plan is to get around the court “biological opinions” that restrict water exports in order to protect Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta smelt, green sturgeon and the southern resident population of killer whales (orcas) from extinction.

“The courts have found that water exporters have threatened the very survival of several fish species,” said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta. “Now, instead of reducing water exports, the Delta Plan endorses simply moving the point of export to a different spot in the Delta.”

Independent scientists have found that the diversion of more Delta flows through the peripheral tunnels would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River winter Chinook salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other fish species. “Yet, that is what the Delta Plan endorses,” said Jennings.

“We have urged the Council to analyze and incorporate the findings of the legislatively mandated flow reports by the Water Board and Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Delta Protection Commission’s Economic Sustainability Plan,” said Jennings. “Following an extensive proceeding involving agencies, academia and non-governmental organizations, the Water Board concluded that a substantial increase in Delta outflow and a return to a more natural hydrograph were necessary to protect public trust resources. The Delta Plan EIR didn’t even consider that report as a major source of information.”

Dick Pool, Secretary of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, criticized the failure of the plan to address the recovery needs of Central Valley salmon.

“The salmon cannot be restored with only habitat changes in the Delta,” said Pool. “There is a large body of science including the state and federal agencies that recognize that only a combination of both upriver habitat and Delta actions can restore the salmon populations. Delta operations, specifically the pumps in the South Delta, with their strong impact on upstream water movements and reservoir operations, severely impact the survival of juvenile salmon above the Delta. The Delta Plan fails to address these issues.”

Nicky Suard, owner of Snug Harbor Resorts on Steamboat Slough in the Delta, summed up the lack of credible science in the Delta Plan when she described it as “Salad Bowl Science,” where the plan officials “pick and choose” the science to justify their pre-determined goals.

“Don’t pass this plan,” Suard urged the Council. “It will destroy the Delta and everything in it.”

THE MENDOCINO Major Crimes Task Force, led by the legendary Peter Hoyle, was busy in Point Arena this week. Seems that someone with the initials P.R., living on Schooner Gulch Road South of Point Arena, had either dispatched or received a hunk of dope or dope-related cash by Fed Ex, still one of the most convenient delivery systems for marijuana from the Mendocino Coast. On the hunt for the mysterious “P.R.”, Hoyle and his commandos rushed up Schooner Gulch Road, first arriving at Pete Rose’s property. (Mr. Rose is not the famous ballplayer.) The Fed Ex package wasn’t Pete’s, but Hoyle nevertheless confiscated Pete’s computer, records and miscellaneous other pieces of Rose’s property.

ROSE has been tossed before, big time. Thanks to intervention by the Innocence Project, Rose was released from prison some years ago after DNA proved he was not guilty of the rape he’d been falsely convicted of. Rose was well compensated for the 8 years taken from him by the false accusation and bought himself a place on Schooner Gulch. Rose may be in for another cash payout if the invasion of his home was unwarranted.

WHEN HOYLE didn’t find what he wanted at Pete Rose’s place, and working his way through the P.R.s in the neighborhood, Hoyle and Company moved on to Peter Reimuller’s home deeper in Schooner Gulch where Hoyle again came up empty.

ABOUT HERE Point Arenans were remembering the infamous Mendo raid on Billy Hay’s Point Arena ranch some years ago that made Hay rich. In that one, a Mendo-led posse ran into Hay’s house early one morning yelling the usual TV-derived obscenities and waving guns at the Hay family. The cops proceeded to keep Mom, Pop and the Hay kids in handcuffs and pj’s all day while they ransacked the premises. No dope, no dope-related cash. Hay sued and won $8 million tax dollars.

FINDING NADA at Reimuller’s place, Hoyle proceeded on to carpenter and boar hunter extraordinaire, Bob Nobles’ property. There’s nothing PR about Bob’s name – not one “P”; not one “R”, unless you call him Robert. And Nobles was clean.

FOG EATERS are still grumbling about a Hoyle-led raid on a rental home on Port Road in Point Arena in March 2012. In that one, the tenants of a guy previously busted for growing at that address were jacked up simply because of the owner’s bust. The owner, (who wants to remain nameless because he says, “The DA still has my left nut in a vice until I’m off probation the end of 2013.”)… This guy had moved out and rented the place to a couple of guys from Hawaii who liked to surf. The home was only a hop, skip and jump from the waves at Arena Cove. The surfer dudes were rarely home and paid their rent on time.

SO HERE COMES HOYLE and his Task Force along with a couple of Fish and Game wardens. Guns drawn, the dope hunters asked for the owner of the home who, of course, wasn’t there because he’d rented the place to the surfers. “Where’s (the owner), I have a warrant for his arrest. Hoyle demanded. The surfer dude explained that the owner didn’t live there under their lease, and so on and a safe on the premises was empty.

THE HOMEOWNER: “So I called my lawyer, and he called Tom Allman, DA Eyster… who all said there was NO warrant for my arrest. My lawyer tells them they have a cop over on the coast saying they have a warrant out for my arrest. We want to find out what’s going on. It ended with the Task Force pulling the few plants the renters had growing, and went home without any arrests or confiscations. The renters had posted the medical marijuana script documentation but it was ignored by the federally-funded Task Force who tossed the place. My renters moved because they were told by Hoyle of the Task Force to ‘leave here and never come back again’. So that’s what they did. They went back to Hawaii.” ( – Debra Keipp reporting)

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THE COUNTY IS POISED to privatize its mental health services. Today (Tuesday the 21st) the Supervisors will hire a pair of contractors to provide mental health services for the mentally ill among Mendocino County’s children and adults. Redwood Management Company will get $8.8 million annually to provide children’s mental health services, and Ortner Management Group (OMG!) will get $6.7 million to handle adult mental cases.The contracts would cover the 2013-14 fiscal year “with five additional renewals through 2019,” according to the staff report. Adults younger than 21 will get emergency services “24/7 Access Centers … inland and on the coast.” “PERSONS with a psychiatric or addiction disorder may not show visible signs of injury or illness; they often suffer extreme waiting times when competing for the attention of emergency room staff treating other critically ill patients or waiting for a bed,” according to the OMG contract. OMG assures us that they will provide an “access center” from where they will dispatch patients to North Valley Behavioral Health, Saint Helena Hospital, Woodland Memorial Hospital, Aurora Behavioral Healthcare and Marin General Hospital, “where stays could last three to seven days.” The Sequoia Psychiatric Treatment Center, a locked facility in Yuba City, would provide rehabilitation services as “an alternative to some inpatient admissions … a court-ordered placement site for persons incompetent to stand trial, a short-term placement for difficult to place clients and a moderate-term placement for clients with persistent behavioral problems,” according to the contract with OMG.

TWENTY-FOUR HOUR, intensive residential care would be available to clients “who are low functioning, difficult to place or have mild to moderate behavioral problems,” and would aim to “prepare clients for personal responsibility and a return to community-based living,” the contract states. Stays could last three to 12 months. Community living centers will be established in Ukiah and Fort Bragg where mental health patients could stay from one to six months.

THIS IS A HECKUVA lot of money for “services” that are basically stop-gap, but Mendocino County or any other place hasn’t been able to provide long-term care for the dependent mentally ill, relying for years on the County Jail to house the severe cases. What to do with the increasing numbers of crazy people roaming the land should be resolved at the state and federal levels of government, but it is now the responsibility of individual counties. How long can Mendocino County afford to pay out annual millions to temporarily house a growing population of permanently crippled individuals? ========================================================

Titen

HAL TITEN, 79, of Redwood Valley, was arrested Monday for failing to register as a sex offender. We’ve long considered Titen emblematic of public education in Mendocino County, then and now. A long time administrator with the County Office of Education, Titen, back in 1999, had relocated video equipment from the County’s education headquarters at Talmage to the back room of a bar he operated on North State Street, Ukiah, where Titen used the educational equipment to make pornographic films starring underage Ukiah girls, an enterprise that proved even a little too much for the authorities of the time and Titen was arrested and packed off to the state pen. Another MCOE crook, Jack Ward, also did some County time for helping himself to tax-funded property from the educational efforts he allegedly supervised. MCOE, at the time, was a nest of thieves and incompetents, among them Paul Tichinin, presently functioning as the County’s Superintendent of Schools. Tichinin, and the rest of the gang at Talmage, naturally claimed they had no idea what their pal Titen was up to, and Tichinin not only went on to become tuti di capo of the entire redundant apparatus, distinguishing himself a few years ago with a public attack on a teacher’s rep as a racist for describing Ukiah High School’s administration as niggardly during union negotiations. These characters set the edu-tone for all of Mendocino County where versions of them preside over all of our individual school districts.

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SAVE OUR LITTLE LAKE VALLEY reports Tuesday from the Willits Bypass Project: CalTrans contractors were prepared to install wick drains today in the wetlands meadow designated as the northern interchange area of the Bypass. The installation was previously delayed because the machinery is so big that Caltrans had trouble transporting it to the Bypass construction site.

WHEN CALTRANS ARRIVED this morning, two Little Lake Valley defenders had locked themselves in metal lockboxes to the wick drain augur, halting all work in the area beginning just before seven a.m. Wick drains are poles that are engineered to wick water out of the ground. CalTrans plans to install an estimated 55,000 of them at an average depth of eighty feet to drain portions of the Little Lake Valley wetlands. The wetlands have already been cleared of vegetation and graded. (see pictures below, photos by Steve Eberhard and Recon)

NEITHER CALTRANS’ CONTRACTOR, FlatIron (a subsidiary of one of the world’s largest construction firms, HOCHTIEF of Germany) nor the California Highway Patrol knew how to handle the situation. All work in the area, including ongoing grading activities, stopped when the CHP arrived.

MENDOCINO COUNTY SHERIFF arrived to negotiate with the two individuals in lockboxes. In exchange for FlatIron’s agreeing to call off wick draining and other work for the day, the protesters agreed to be taken to Mendocino County jail to be cited and released.

CLOSE TO 11am, after stopping work for nearly four hours, courageously and with great discomfort by putting their bodies on the line, the two protestors allowed themselves to be removed by the CHP. All in all, it was a great victory for the Valley! The protestors were drawing attention to the violence and absurdity of there being 55,000 wickdrains 80 feet deep plummeted into Little Lake (the ecological feature of the valley after which it is named), as well as to Caltrans’ many permit and legal violations that continue to go unenforced by regulating agencies. To see some examples of these violations, read the SOLLV Legal Team’s letter to California Department of Fish and Wildlife. AS OF 1:30

THIS AFTERNOON, there were only a handful of construction workers on the scene. Earlier in the day, there had been roughly two dozen who were standing on the outskirts of the area, many of them alternately watching the lockdown and pacing about. CHP COSTS FOR POLICING THE BYPASS are approaching one million dollars.

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PURE MENDOCINO: Saturday, August 24, 2013. A benefit for the Cancer Resource Centers of Mendocino County. Join us for the 9th Annual Organic Dining and Wine Tasting at Dark Horse Vineyard in Ukiah. It’s the perfect blend of the bounty of Mendocino County and organic farmers and producers in the cool shadows of giant firs, with beautiful hilltop views of the valley. Enjoy this unique celebration, the premier organic food and wine adventure in the known world. Silent Auction: 5:00 – 8:30 pm. Biodynamic Farm Tour: 4:00 pm. Learn the basics of biodynamic farming and see first-hand the diversity of this family farm. Tours led by the Dolan family. ($25 per person, limited availability, RSVP required). Farm to Table Dinner: 6:00 pm. Chef Olan Cox and friends will showcase the finest organically grown produce, meats and wine in Mendocino County. Meet folks who grew and gathered the food, raised the animals, and made the wine and beer that contribute to this farm-to-table experience. Live Music: 7:30 – 10:00 pm. $135 per person – reservations required. Make reservations online at www.puremendocino.org or call us at (707) 937-3833.

Last October, toward the end of the month, I made one of several trips to Ukiah from Clearlake, where I was living at the time. Several of the local Ukiah businesses had Halloween window displays, but the one that really caught my eye was the one at Dig! Music on State Street, which featured a graveyard, with headstones displaying the names of prominent musicians of the “past,” who had “passed” on far before their time. I couldn’t help but commend the proprietors on this sincere tribute to the late, great musical artists of the past who have contributed so much to the roots of modern music, as well as making their own indelible marks on the social and political evolution of our American culture over almost the past five decades.

Continued from last week’s AVA: the 1937 Congressional hearing on marijuana prohibition.

NARRATOR: The next witness, also from the hemp industry, was introduced prior to adjournment on April 29th and testified on Friday, the 30th.

SCARLETT: My name is Raymond G. Scarlett, representing William G. Scarlett & company, seed merchants of Baltimore. We represent the interest of the feed manufacturers on this subject, which is a little different angle from that which has been presented heretofore.

Four thieves went to prison last week. The first thief, Fernando Joaquin, got two years and eight months; the second thief, Dustin Cook, got four years; the next thief, Alfred Dominiak, got eight years and eight months; and the fourth thief, Robert White, got 98 years. Three of the robberies involved force and violence or the threat of it.

All four robbers blamed drugs or alcohol.

Supervisor Hamburg last Tuesday told his Board colleagues about a Friday, May 17 meeting in Fort Bragg to discuss internet broadband service in the county. “The focus will be broadband planning in the city of Fort Bragg. And of course Fort Bragg is on that fiber-optic so-called Route 1 Corridor project which I’ve mentioned several times before. That’s the one that goes from Branscomb to Westport and down to Bodega Bay and back over to Petaluma, which is actually part of that Golden Bear Broadband application which is currently before the PUC. We are getting a lot of pushback from the big telecoms — Verizon, Frontier, AT&T, Comcast. Essentially, there is a lot of maneuvering going on in Sacramento around broadband. Included in that is this bill by Senator Padilla, AB-740, which this board has supported, but now the big telecoms are coming down against AB-740. … Basically the big telecoms don’t want money to be allocated to organizations like ours who are trying to bring broadband to the rural communities; they don’t want the competition. They are very happy to not serve these areas until they’re damn well ready to serve them. They are calling our Golden Bear project — they say we are getting into areas where private operators or themselves as private corporations should be able to operate. The only hole in that argument is that they are not serving these areas. Unless you are on a major core highway like Highway 5 or Highway 101 you do not have service in Northern California and that situation exists in Mendocino County. And it exists in all these 16 or 17 counties that are part of the Golden Bear Broadband network. So it’s kind of a battle royal that’s going on in Sacramento right now over AB-740 and also over our application to the CPUC. We are lobbying hard. … The telecom lobbyists in Sacramento are trying to squelch our efforts. But we have some good political support on our side and we are fighting the battle.”

But later in the week, news out of Sacramento reported that funding for Padilla’s broadband infrastructure bill (via the California Public Utillities Commission) had been cut by $100 million, and the bill was amended to substantially restrict the definition of “underserved” to include language that would limit funding to areas where no big telecom company had applied for a permit which isn’t very many areas in California.

Sheriff Allman appeared before the Board of Supervisors last Tuesday to explain why it is expected to cost $150,000 to paint the inside of the jail.

First up was General Services Director Kristin McMenomey.

McMenomey: “The Jail has not been painted in over 28 years. The jail is not in the capital improvement plan budget because it is such a high cost at $150,000 to paint the inside of the facility.”

Supervisor John Pinches: “Why can’t the inmates paint the inside of the jail? Maybe they’d care more about it if they painted it themselves.”

McMenomey: “There are a couple of reasons why the inmates cannot paint the jail. We’ve had discussions with County Counsel on this.”

Pinches: “I want to hear the reason why they can.”

McMenomey: “Why they can?”

Pinches: “I want to hear the Sheriff’s response.”

Allman & Hamburg

Sheriff Allman confirmed late Monday afternoon that an investigation by the Sheriff’s office is underway to determine if Carrie Hamburg, the late wife of 5th District supervisor Dan Hamburg, was illegally buried on the Hamburg family’s property southwest of Ukiah. “It’s under investigation but I’m not prepared to publicly discuss it right now,” the Sheriff said.

The Hamburg family is not denying that Mrs. Hamburg is buried at their home. Supervisor Hamburg has hired Ukiah attorney Barry Vogel to contest the Sheriff’s implicit mandate to, if necessary, seize Mrs. Hamburg’s remains.

The author, 70 feet up a valley oak.

On May 14th, I ascended roughly 70 feet into a 100-foot tall valley oak that stands in the path of the California Department of Transportation’s proposed six-mile freeway (“The Willits Bypass”) through Little Lake Valley. This tree, which has a nearly six-foot trunk and is covered from top to bottom with an intricate tapestry of lichens and moss, stands amid hundreds of ash trees in a lustrous grove in the north Little Lake Valley wetlands. The tree is certainly older than the State of California. It may be older than the United States of America.

I can’t bear to hold this in any longer! The Mendocino K-8 school is not just heartless but also vindictive! My child was bullied so badly for 3 years (3rd through 5th grade) that we took her from the school and began homeschooling. This, despite going through the school’s “zero tolerance for bulling” and getting zero results. My daughter began therapy because the damage to her self esteem was so dangerously low.

A year into homeschooling she built up enough courage to attend a school dance. I contacted the principal at the time, Jason Morse, and he gave permission for my daughter to attend dances. She went with her head held high. Her bravery brought me to tears. Fast forward 2 years and, having attended 8 dances, my daughter now has the desire to go back to a brick and mortar school – High School!

Let me just get to the point – At the April 26th, 2013 dance, my daughter was assaulted by another student due to my daughter’s religious views. I felt it necessary to make an incident report with the Mendocino K-8 Principal Kim Humrichouse. I spoke with Kim on May 10th 2013. Instead of responding with “Is she OK?”, “I’m sorry this happened…” To my surprise, Kim responded with “Your daughter can no longer come to school dances because she is home schooled.” What?! I told her that this call was regarding an assault on my daughter. Kim’s response was to ban my daughter from her 8th grade Graduation Dance – the last dance at Mendocino K-8.

Hoping to have Kim’s decision reversed, we made phone calls to Jason Morse (now the Superintendent of the K-8 school) pleading for permission. I was told by Mr Morse, he spoke with their “Legal Department” and their decision was that my daughter could not attend the Graduation Dance!!! I’m not sure about you but my heart hurts!

I stand with my daughter in the fight against bullying.

Lynette Short

Caspar, California

WE’VE BEEN HOUNDING Deputy Squires to submit to a debrief in the form of an interview, but the Deputy says No. We had a title all ready to go: “A Great Cop Hangs Up His Cuffs.” But the Deputy said No, even after we tried to bribe him into it with Giants tickets. And when Deputy Squires says No he means No, as many dismayed miscreants have discovered over the three-plus decades that the Deputy has maintained order in the Anderson Valley. Nobody will ever dare confirm, least of all him, that Squires was originally assigned to The Valley because he could handle the tough guys. And there was a legendary load of tough guys in the 1970s before The Valley’s blanding down into its present stoned passivity. The Deputy, and this is pure rumor, handled certain people informally, and ‘handled’ might be the operative word here, but it wasn’t long before the tough guys knew that when The Deputy said No it definitely meant No. For many years, Squires was a central figure in the life of this place. He was never off duty. Everyone knew where he lived, everyone had his home telephone number. If you needed him at 3am he would be there. He knew who needed to go to jail and who needed an emphatic warning to “Go home and stay there.” And he knew everyone, and he knew exactly who was doing what. It’s no exaggeration to say that Deputy Squires saved the County many thousands of dollars by resolving matters before they involved arrests and the courts. When he wasn’t in uniform he was coaching youth sports. Put a cop like this guy in every neighborhood in the country and the crime rate would be a third what it is now. I don’t want this to sound like an obituary, but it is unlikely The Deputy will be back on duty. He’s got back problems, shoulder problems, leg problems that haven’t quite immobilized him but he’s considerably slowed down. At a minimum he ought to be Grand Marshall for this year’s Fair parade. We all owe him, and owe him big.

THE MENDOCINO Major Crimes Task Force, led by the legendary Peter Hoyle, was busy in Point Arena this week. Seems that someone with the initials P.R., living on Schooner Gulch Road South of Point Arena, had either dispatched or received a hunk of dope or dope-related cash by Fed Ex, still one of the most convenient delivery systems for marijuana from the Mendocino Coast. On the hunt for the mysterious “P.R.”, Hoyle and his commandos rushed up Schooner Gulch Road, first arriving at Pete Rose’s property. (Mr. Rose is not the famous ballplayer.) The Fed Ex package wasn’t Pete’s, but Hoyle nevertheless confiscated Pete’s computer, records and miscellaneous other pieces of Rose’s property.

“We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” — Winston Churchill

You have no doubt heard the sobering news that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million, a concentration last seen on earth three million years ago. This means that widespread climatic disasters of heretofore unimaginable magnitude are now a virtual certainty and there is little hope of keeping global temperatures from rising to deathly levels, and soon. Indeed, many scientists think there is no hope of keeping earthly temperatures below those deathly heights.

But if there is any hope of turning things around, only a concerted global effort will do the trick, with everyone on earth doing his and her part to help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. However, as of this writing most people and governments and corporations have shown little or no interest in working to reduce the production of greenhouse gases by swiftly and dramatically reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, which entirely underpin our systems of energy production and transportation and agriculture and manufacturing and just about everything that goes on in the so-called civilized world.

Why not? Why aren’t people and governments and corporations working day and night to turn things around when our very existence depends on such a turnaround? I think it is because the imminent threat to our very existence has not been made clear in terms we, all of us, both understand and resonate with. Saying that some invisible gas has reached 400 parts per million doesn’t mean anything to most people, just as saying the bankers and Wall Street crooks recently stole trillions of dollars from the American people doesn’t mean anything to most people. Parts per million of what? How could people steal trillions of dollars and not get caught?

“Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet.” — Terence McKenna

As a watcher of movie trailers on my computer, I have noticed over the last few years that nearly all the new huge budget movies are about people with super powers or super weaponry fighting super dark forces threatening to destroy the earth. In Harry Potter, Star Trek, Avatar, Star Wars, Oblivion, After Earth, Superman, Iron Man, Spider Man, Thor, The Avengers, Transformers, GI Joe, on and on, the super violent good guys battle super violent bad guys, with the fate of earth literally hanging in the balance. I have zero interest in seeing these movies, but isn’t it fascinating that they are by far the most popular movies of our time? I visited a web site that ranks the most successful movies ever made, and with few exceptions the top one hundred movies are all about super people fighting super forces of evil.

I was complaining to my brother about the virtual non-existence of any American movie made in the last many years that I care to see (not counting documentaries) and in my complaint I mentioned the overwhelming redundancy of these good versus evil super hero war movies. To which my brother replied, “Well, that’s the dominant myth that has been running the world, so to speak, for thousands of years — wars of good versus evil fought by larger-than-life male heroes and anti-heroes. We have been entrained for thousands of years to look at everything through the mythic lens of war, which is why we are so easily manipulated into supporting the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism, the War on…”

And then it hit me: the way to get people to actively participate in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to declare a War on Global Warming. We must change the terminology, anthropomorphize global warming and climate change and make them our enemies. Remember the millions of victory gardens Americans planted to help win World War II? Why not revive the victory garden concept and add to it victory solar power cooperatives, victory car pools, victory mass transit, victory city planning, victory insulation, victory everything. The War on Global Warming could be the next big thing in American and global politics.

“Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.” — Gary Snyder

My fellow Americans, I am here to tell you that the enemies of the American way of life, of life itself, need carbon to fuel their anti-life forces and super heat the planet to kill us all. But if we can cut off their carbon supply, they are doomed. Don’t you see? Those evil forces feed on carbon. If we deny them their food, they will be powerless against us. And if you elect me to Congress, I will make sure that the War on Global Warming is fully funded. Heck, we spent at least six trillion dollars fighting useless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The least we can do is spend that much to defeat the anti-life forces threatening our existence today.

How much is a trillion dollars in terms of our War on Global Warming? For a trillion dollars we could put twenty-thousand-dollar solar energy systems on fifty million houses, and for three trillion dollars we could solarize the entire nation and reduce the cost of electricity to such a low level that electric vehicles and electric transportation systems and electric heating and cooling systems would render the use of fossil fuels obsolete in America. We gave the too-big-to-fail banks several trillion dollars to bail them out in 2008-2009, so don’t tell me we can’t find the do-re-mi to solarize the nation and completely revolutionize the economy.

“What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” — Henry David Thoreau

I pitched my War on Global Warming idea to my savvy friend Rico and he said, “Several problems. First, in all those popular super hero war movies and in all media driven real wars we see our enemies. Your global warming anti-life forces are invisible. That’s a big problem. Second, in all those movies and in real wars, the main thing we do is kill each other. That’s what excites people, men especially. Men love weaponry, firepower, jets, tanks, explosions; and all those things require fossil fuels that cause global warming. Hate to burst your bubble, pal, but solar panels and car pools and vegetable gardens and walking to town and riding bikes and insulation and recycling and buying less and buying local just aren’t very sexy. Know what I mean?”

“I do. But what if we characterize the anti-life forces as carbon-sucking vampires? Young people would love that.”

“Can we see the carbon-sucking vampires? Can they kill us directly or only by sucking on our tailpipes and furnaces? Can they be killed with some sort of death ray or light saber or by muscular men blowing things to smithereens?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Then it won’t work. People need to see the enemy, or think they see them. And they need simple solutions. Kill bad guys before bad guys kill us.”

“So how do you think we can make the War on Global Warming work?”

“It has to be sexy,” said Rico. “And in America sexy means lucrative. Can people strike it rich fighting global warming?”

“Well, in Germany the government makes it easy for regular people to sell surplus solar energy for nice profits, and some solar and wind cooperatives…”

“I’m yawning,” said Rico. “This is not sexy. I’m losing interest.”

“What have they done to the earth? What have they done to our fair sister? Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her.” — Jim Morrison

I still think it’s a good idea, the War on Global Warming, but perhaps women will have to take the lead on this one. Remember how in Lysistrata the heroine convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers until the men agree to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the big war raging at that time? Perhaps if we could persuade millions of American and Chinese and European women not to have sex with their husbands or lovers unless those men take an active role in the war on global warming and…

But the problem there is that women consume as much energy as men and are just as reluctant as men to make changes in their lifestyles and to actively work to reverse…

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” — Walt Kelly

How about this? What if we create a volunteer army of people dedicated to reducing the emission of greenhouse gases? An army of global coolers with a motto — It’s so cool to be a Cooler — displayed on T-shirts, bumper stickers, billboards, and featured in the catchy chorus of the Global Coolers theme song. Weekly meetings and educational forums and potlucks and tree plantings and solar barbecues and acoustic dances and parades and solar panel installation work parties will be held to making cooling the planet enjoyable and exciting, and to bring Coolers up to speed on the latest technological, political and economic strategies available to accelerate both personal and societal actions to combat global warming.

And here’s the really cool part about this volunteer army: members will wear totally cool turquoise and burgundy pants and long-sleeved shirts and windbreakers, and totally groovy sun hats with fabulous insignias that identify wearers of such clothing as Coolers, soldiers in the local national global army dedicated to reducing the emission of greenhouse gases pronto. The army will be funded by every Cooler and Cooler-friendly business tithing ten per cent of his or her or their income to the cause, along with generous grants from Google, Microsoft, Oracle, myriad movie stars, groovy billionaires, and eventually the governments of the world.

Indeed, being an active Cooler will be so sexy that women will feel silly being with any man who is not a Cooler, and men will feel weird being with any woman who is not a Cooler. And, of course, nobody in his or her right mind is going to run for elected office if he or she isn’t a renowned and heroic Cooler with the requisite groovy clothes and hat, a totally solar home, an electric car or no car, and so on. Thus the Coolers will take over local state national and global governments, enact appropriate legislation and…voila, just like that we turn things around.

Todd Walton’s web site is UnderTheTableBooks.com.