Max Romeo, who will appear at the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, live in Brazil in 2012. Courtesy Thiago Nascimento.

The Boonville fairground’s biggest annual event returns this weekend – the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival, starting Friday evening and running through Sunday night. The festival draws attendees of all ages from around the country and beyond. Warren Smith and Gretchen Franz live in the Sacramento delta most of the year and are longtime partners in in Epiphany Artists, a record label and production company which presents the show. They’re two of the nicest people one might meet, and know their stuff when it comes to both music and producing a big event like this. With Gretchen already in Boonville with some of their large crew and volunteer cadre getting ready for the event, we caught Warren at his home office for a pre-festival chat. Much more information is on the festival website, www.snwmf.com, including a schedule of all performances, artist biographies, lists of food and other vendors, and much more.

* * *

Last week the Santa Rosa Press Democrat ran a story titled, “Winegrowers facing labor hurdles as harvest season approaches.”

The story began, “Grape growers and farmers throughout the state are facing a range of challenges finding and holding on to laborers as they head into harvest.”

That was followed by this claim: “State enforcement agencies are cracking down on wage and labor violations, labor groups and activists are targeting farm companies with negative campaigns, and fewer workers are crossing the border from Mexico, grape growers were told Friday at the annual trade show held by Sonoma County Winegrowers.”

And: “Unions have been emboldened by recent changes to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act…”

Trouble is, there’s no evidence that any of that is true.

Harold Moore

Fifty years ago you put hands on Harold Moore at your peril. The old guy still has the Popeye forearms of a working man, but he’s 80 years old, a law abiding senior citizen who has raised children and employed people and paid taxes all his long life.

But this country is no respecter of age, and what happened to Harold Moore on August 20, 2012 should not have happened to anybody, let alone an 80-year-old.

After a long and successful career as a large-project contractor, Harold Moore semi-retired to Cleone in the early 1990s. He still puts in many long days on local jobs.

Moore’s home sits on Mill Creek Road, the county road that skirts Mackerricher State Park. From Moore’s house you can see Mackerricher’s visitor’s kiosk and the Purple Rose Mexican Restaurant.

In the spring of 2012, Moore told the County road yard supervisor (who Moore knows only as Carl), that a drainage ditch fronting Moore’s property wasn’t draining. Two weeks later Carl the County guy showed up with a truck and a crew to get the water flowing, and instantly the runoff from Moore’s and his neighbors’ properties was flowing like it should.

“But Ricochet Ridge Horse Ranch across Highway One came down,” Moore recalls. “They cross the ditch right at that spot to enter the park with their horses. The road crew had left a plug in the ditch about four feet wide right where the horse trail enters the park. I saw that the ditch was cleaned out but there was this plug about 100 feet down where they cross with their horses. I called Carl again and asked him what was going on with the ditch. He told me if I wanted to put a pipe in there, go ahead. So I put the pipe in, a 12-inch pipe for a culvert. It’s designed to hold 80,000 pounds. That would get the drain going. If that ditch is plugged the drainage backs up and fills up my yard. So I put in the culvert. The Parks maintenance guy, Jason, helped me put in the pipe. Jason saw me out there working and came over to help.”

Left plugged up with dirt, water backs up and the purpose of the culvert is defeated. You don’t have to be an engineer to figure that out.

But the Ricochet people were very unhappy. Why they were unhappy remains unclear because access for horses to the trail was not in any way impeded by the length of pipe placed neatly beneath the plug.

“With the gravel and dirt over it, the pipe stuck up above the ground maybe five or six inches,” Moore says. “It was in there for three or four months until a gal named Veda at Ricochet Ridge Ranch complained that the pipe was unsafe to her horses.”

Ricochet Ridge is the nearby stable. Horse people traverse Highway One to Mackerricher to ride the path past Moore’s property and on through the park to the ocean trails. The Ricochet Ridge people somehow thought that the six-foot length of dirt-covered drainage pipe represented a hazard to their animals.

Not that that a drainage pipe in the shallow ditch in front of Moore’s place was Ricochet’s to remove, but it was soon gone. The drainage ditch no longer drained. The portion of the ditch was again filled with nothing but earth. Moore would have filled in more dirt over the pipe to smooth it out if he’d known some picayunish person was complaining about a slight indentation, a tiny low spot in the ditch. But the Ricochet attitude, soon buttressed by State Parks, was that Moore and his neighbors could swim out of their houses in the big rains for all anybody but Moore and his neighbors seemed to care.

Moore won’t forget the events of August 20th, 2012:

“I noticed that the storm drain pipe was removed from the ditch which drains the four houses on Mill Creek Road. I saw the pipe sitting in the State Parks maintenance yard. I found Jason, the maintenance man in the park, and I gave him hell for removing the pipe. He informed me that his supervisor told him to do it. His supervisor said that he was told by Ricochet Ridge Ranch that it was unsafe. That pipe is designed to hold 80,000 pounds when properly installed. I hold a Class A General State Contractor’s License. I know what’s safe and not safe. Anyway, the State has no jurisdiction over a county road or ditch.”

“The situation could have been fixed easily if they just put some gravel or rock over it so that it was smoother, although it looked fine to me. Later they smoothed out that crossing in the ditch and made a 10 foot sloped ramp with no pipe. That’s not a good way to do it, but it will work that way until it plugs up again.

“So I went down to that spot and cleaned out the ditch and removed the rock so that it would flow. I told Jason the Mackerricher’s maintenance guy to leave the god damned ditch alone.

“I went home and ran some errands, and when I got back I found a card on my door from Paul Borg. I call him Rambo. He’s a park ranger and packs a gun. The card said ‘State Parks — give me a call,’ and there was a Sacramento number.”

Ranger Borg had recently transferred to MacKerricher from Napa County.

“I called Carl at the County maintenance yard and asked him what in the hell was going on? He said he had just finished talking to a woman with the state (State Parks). Carl said he was pissed off about that call and that he was going to have Ricochet Ridge Ranch get an encroachment permit (for the County road access to the riding trail leading to the beach). I told him about the note from Paul Borg on my door. He said, ‘Don’t worry about any of that. I’ll take care of it.’

“Not long after that I looked across the street at the park yard about 300 feet away and I saw Jason the Parks maintenance guy. So I got in my big Dodge truck and went over there where he was standing in the parking lot. He was talking to a woman in uniform who I don’t know. I motioned for Jason to come to the truck, which was about 30 feet away from him. I then explained my conversation with Carl the County road foreman and that we did not have to worry about the problem any longer as Carl would take care of it.

“While I was backing up and leaving the parking lot, I was approached by Paul Borg who I don’t know and have never had a conversation with. I was asked to step out of the truck. I complied, and as I turned to shut the door I was grabbed by the arms and with him on my back carried for 15-20 feet before I fell. During all this time he was yelling that I was resisting arrest. I did not know I was under arrest.”

A Park Ranger later identified as Emily Bertram had assumed an officious position of military parade rest as Borg wrestled Moore to the asphalt. She had apparently ordered the robotic Borg to place Moore under arrest.

Get the picture here? The old man is asked to step out of his truck by a uniformed Park ranger, and the next thing he knows this armed representative of state authority has jumped on his 80-year-old back and is trying to wrestle his 80-year-old bones to the asphalt.

From the bruising and scrapes in the photos Moore’s lady friend took of Moore’s injuries, it is clear the old man was worked over pretty good.

Jason, the Parks maintenance guy, and the officious woman in the Parks uniform, Emily Bertram, who’d unleashed Ranger Borg on Moore, were 30-40 feet away as Moore shouted, “Get this crazy man off me!”

Moore was soon handcuffed, stuck in a small compartment of a Parks vehicle driven by Ms. Bertram, the apparent architect of Moore’s arrest, a man old enough to be her grandfather, maybe her great grandfather. But Miss Emily was all sadistic business. The old man was handcuffed behind his back and strapped into his seat all the way to Ukiah, a journey of an hour-and-a-half. He was booked into the Mendocino County Jail on charges so vague they disappeared the next morning when Moore was freed without explanation. But not before Moore’s lady friend had had to scurry around two towns, Ukiah and Fort Bragg, to raise the $10,000 cash bail. “I have plenty of money in the bank, but wouldn’t you know when I needed it it was hard to get out.”

Moore had identified the female Parks automaton as Emily Bertram. “I felt there was animosity toward me. I did not know her. I know about her and I will go into greater detail when I talk to whoever is investigating this complaint.”

“It was kind of a hard day at the jail,” Moore recalls. “It was fun for the first few hours. I swapped stories with the kids in the drunk tank all waiting for booking. They treated me ok. I have no complaint about the Sheriff’s department. My problem is with how I got there. I have not been able to find out who ordered me arrested or why.

“In the process of making $10,000 bail I was given a court date of September 27, 2012. While being booked the next morning, the phone rang. After the conversation I learned that it was the district attorney. I was given back my $10,000 and was told the charges were dropped and I was released.”

There hasn’t always been intelligent life occupying the DA’s office. Prior to DA Eyster’s election, an 80-year-old man arrested for absolutely no reason might have been held for several days before anyone in the DA’s office even looked at the report, maybe another week before it occurred to someone the man in custody was a crime victim, not a criminal.

Back at his home only yards from the headquarters of his tormenters, Moore decided to file a formal complaint with State Parks, concluding his account of his adventure: “We have owned and lived for 30+ years next to MacKerricher. In a few months I will be 80 years of age. I do not feel safe in my home with these officers Paul Borg and Emily Bertram. I am looking forward to a response to this complaint. Yours truly, Harold Moore”

The response from State Parks at Duncan Mills is dated February 14, 2013

“Dear Mr. Moore: Recently the Mendocino District completed its investigation into the concerns discussed in your letter to the district. I would like to apprise you of our findings in this matter. The investigation focused on your concern that Ranger Borg arrested you without cause and that ranger Bertram ordered Ranger Borg to make that arrest. After a thorough and complete investigation, we were unable to substantiate your allegations. After giving equal weight to the versions of events provided by you, Ranger Borg and several witnesses, and given the lack of any other substantial evidence, findings for each Ranger were: exonerated. The California Department of Parks and Recreation maintains the highest expectations for our employee’s conduct. As such, I thank you for bringing this matter to my attention. In accordance with department policy, your perspective and concerns have been discussed with Rangers Borg and Bertram and the investigation will be retained on file for five years. Sincerely, L. Burko, District Superintendent, Russian River and Mendocino District.”

* * *

In other words, we have no choice but to defend the lamebrains we happen to employ, Mr. Moore. You can sue us, of course, but we get free attorneys and you’d have to pay one. Also, our people will lie to keep their jobs. PS. Don’t mess with us. We’re the government and you aren’t.

“This response is absolutely worthless,” said Moore. “But that’s the only response I got. They had no right to arrest me. I would like to get the investigator’s report. I want to know which witnesses they spoke to. I want to know who I have to look out for. The amount of force they used was completely unnecessary.

There might not be an investigator’s report. There might not have been an investigation other than a realization by someone at Parks that an old man had been manhandled and arrested for no reason at all. Parks wouldn’t want to write down what really happened, would they?

“I don’t want to sue anyone,” Moore insists, “but if someone wanted to take this case I wouldn’t want any money; I’d just like to know what happened. They should not let this kind of thing happen. That letter from the Parks Department is kind of a green light for excessive force. As long as they can say that it was just my word against theirs, who knows what they might want to do if they got mad at somebody? I have seen Park rangers give tickets in town. They get pretty chesty. I hear now that Ranger Borg lives at MacKerricher Park in the same Parks house that Emily Bertram was living in. Emily moved out to get married and transferred to the Monterrey area.”

Harold Moore is a man who means what he says. He only wants to know who ordered his arrest and why. He’s not interested in damages, but he would gladly accept the assistance of an attorney who would sue the Parks Department for a copy of the “thorough and complete” investigation the Parks Department said they did.

We’re only a year removed from Matt Cain’s perfect game. Certainly legions of Giants fans would say this was the finest performance ever by a major league pitcher. Older aficionados with a sense of the inherent tragedy built into our national pastime (even pennant winners lose four out of every ten games) might bring up the twelve perfect innings Harvey Haddix threw in 1959 before losing in the thirteenth.

I’ve lived in or just outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina, Annville, Pennsylvania, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, Clarksville, Tennessee, Geyserville, Yorkville, Boonville and, now, Prineville, Oregon. You figure the odds then tell me that doesn’t make me unique. What’s it worth? It’s worth a sentence, anyway. How’d it happen? Pure Serendipity.

Triple bunks in a California prison.

On February 22, 1998, Pete Gallagher arrived at Building 13 at Solano State Prison in Vacaville, California. It was Gallagher’s thirteenth year behind bars, and he’d already done time in Chino, Folsom, San Quentin and, most recently, the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility outside San Diego. Building 13 was large, open, fluorescent-lit and crammed with double bunks. Inmates were everywhere. It reminded Gallagher of a warehouse or a military barracks. He took one look, then found a corrections officer. “I’m not going to live like this,” he told him. “Take me to the hole.”

But for the next 14 years, Gallagher, who is on parole and did not want his real name used, did live like that, and he watched as conditions deteriorated further: triple bunks replaced doubles, and new bodies filled the new beds. No toilets or sinks were added. The law library became too cramped to use, and visiting hours were chaos. Men died from the miserable healthcare: one from an abscessed tooth, another from hepatitis C. “If you weren’t ambulatory, you didn’t go to the doctor,” Gallagher says.

By 2006, the California prison system had reached a crisis point: built to house 80,000 inmates, it held more than twice that number. “It was like the USSR,” says Jim Mayer, executive director of California Forward, a nonpartisan government reform group. “It was going to implode on itself.” A few years later, a three-judge panel handed down a dramatic ruling in response to two federal class-action lawsuits filed by inmates: the first, from 1990, claimed that mentally ill prisoners did not have access to minimal care; the second, filed eleven years later, described similar conditions for regular medical treatment. The panel found that inmates had been subject to cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The judges ordered California to shrink its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates. The state appealed, but on May 23, 2011, the US Supreme Court upheld the order in a landmark ruling, Brown v. Plata. By June 27, 2013, the Court ruled, California’s prisons would have to look very different.

So began “realignment,” an unprecedented overhaul of California’s thirty-three prisons, described as the largest criminal justice experiment ever conducted in America. Tens of thousands of low-level offenders would be kept in their hometowns instead of being shipped to state prisons. Law enforcement would seek smarter, cheaper justice models. That, at least, was the theory. And while the Court’s deadline has since been pushed from June to December, the question remains: Is California doing enough to reverse its prison crisis?

* * *

Five months before the Plata ruling, in December 2010, California Governor-elect Jerry Brown summoned law enforcement officials to a conference room in Sacramento. It was his last month as attorney general, and for the second time in his career—he was also governor from 1975 to 1983—he was preparing to be inaugurated. As police and probation chiefs, district attorneys and others crowded around a conference table, Brown laid out the state’s most urgent criminal justice problems: a $26 billion deficit and a looming Supreme Court decision that could have vast implications. Then he introduced the broad outlines of a plan that would transform the state’s prison system.

It was ironic that Brown was delivering this policy initiative. During his earlier terms as governor, he had overseen a very different kind of transformation of the prison system. Soon after his election in 1974 and into the next three decades, punishment flourished: the state passed a slew of tough sentencing measures, including, in 1994, the notorious three-strikes law (recently softened by a ballot measure). Rehabilitation programs were gutted. The prison guard union—and its political power—exploded, the “war on drugs” was declared, and as Berkeley law professor Jonathan Simon has pointed out, a new generation of parole officers with little interest in rehabilitation sent waves of offenders back to prison for so-called technical violations. Between 1984 and 2006, California built twenty-one new prisons and, in roughly the same period, increased its prison population from 34,000 to 173,000 prisoners. The racial composition of the inmate population shifted from largely white to largely black, and the number of people incarcerated for drug sales and possession charges tripled. Corrections dollars from the state’s general fund quadrupled. One study found that within three years, 66 percent of parolees had returned to prison. Even Brown, whose office did not respond to requests for an interview, called the system a “scandal.”

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor in 2003, he promised systemic changes. A panel of experts developed recommendations, beginning with a reduction in overcrowding, as well as a variety of rehabilitative programs. “Rehabilitation” was even added to the state corrections agency’s name.

But as Stanford University law professor Joan Petersilia has pointed out, Schwarzenegger largely failed. He signed a bill that funded one of the largest prison and jail construction programs in state history. The cost of housing inmates rose, as did the prison population. Meanwhile, investments that might eventually reduce incarceration—toward things like education or substance abuse treatment—remained pitifully low: just $2,000 of every $49,500 spent annually to house a single inmate funded rehabilitation.

On February 14, 2006, a district court judge appointed a federal receiver to take over the delivery of inmate healthcare. Behind the ruling was a startlingly bleak portrait of the prison system—one filled with feckless administrators, negligent doctors, and inmates who were dying at the alarming rate of one every six to seven days. One doctor refused to see a prisoner who was experiencing abdominal and chest pains. The inmate died two weeks later, and the physician, who was the subject of sixty-two grievances, later said that most prisoners with medical complaints were trying to take advantage of the system. “By all accounts, the California prison medical system is broken beyond repair,” the judge wrote. “The harm already done in this case to California’s prison inmate population could not be more grave, and the threat of future injury and death is virtually guaranteed in the absence of drastic action.”

A few years later, and just three months after Brown’s December 2010 meeting, his plan for such drastic action would become law. It acknowledged decades of failed prison policy, and though it didn’t roll back some of the state’s toughest sentencing laws, as prison reformers had advocated, it offered a vision that was in stark contrast to the tough-on-crime years. “The law set out a statement of findings and legislative intent that read as though, literally, the ACLU might have written them,” says Allen Hopper, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

***

By the fall of 2011, Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones was frustrated. He wasn’t necessarily opposed to Brown’s ideas, but everything had happened too fast. He feared that prisoners would be released with little supervision, and told a reporter, “You add to that the statistical certainty of our recidivism rate, I think you can fairly well…predict that the crime rate in Sacramento County is going to go up.” A little farther south, the Los Angeles district attorney, Steve Cooley, was less circumspect. “Like a lot of revolutions,” he told a radio reporter, “there might be a lot of blood in the streets.”

For all the fearmongering, realignment has proven to be a relatively peaceful experiment so far. There was a slight uptick in violent and property crimes in the first half of 2012 in most of California’s largest cities, according to the nonpartisan Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, yet an analysis earlier this year by the center found no connection between those numbers and realignment. Many counties that once sent felons to state prison en masse have dramatically scaled back those numbers. All told, the state’s prison population has shrunk by more than 25,000 inmates since 2011.

Like deinstitutionalization, the decades-long process that returned mentally ill people from psychiatric hospitals to communities, realignment was designed to keep thousands of thieves, addicts, and other “nonsexual, nonserious and nonviolent” inmates—as the state calls them—in their home counties. Instead of sending offenders to state prison, local law enforcement would figure out what to do with them: Should they be monitored with an ankle bracelet? Should they be in drug or alcohol treatment? Parolees would no longer be sent back to prison for technical violations, and judges and prosecutors would have more discretion in sentencing and charging low-level criminals.

Realignment called for “evidence-based” corrections practices that cost less than prison, but there were no mandates to prove such practices were working. Counties were given wide latitude to decide how to implement the law. “The counties know how to run their business” is how Terri McDonald, undersecretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, explains it.

In the months after the law passed, researchers at the ACLU of Northern California began reviewing every realignment plan from every county. While many of these counties professed a commitment to the principles laid out in the law, their plans contradicted its spirit: of the twenty-five counties that received the most state realignment funding, twenty-four planned to expand their jails or build new ones. “At its worst,” the ACLU warned a few months later, “realignment will reveal itself to be nothing more than a shell game, simply moving bodies out of California’s dangerously and unconstitutionally overcrowded prisons to local jail facilities.”

Was California’s county-empowering reform little more than the old mass incarceration model writ small?

* * *

One day last December, 45-year-old Bart Cantrell got up around 4 am and marched down a fluorescent-lit hallway, through the kitchen, and into a small room where a little black machine and a cylindrical magnet sat on a metal shelf. As he did every day, he swiped the magnet across a black monitor strapped to his ankle and watched for a green light. Seconds later, Cantrell’s blood-alcohol level was measured and the authorities notified.

Cantrell had been an oilfield worker, truck driver and commercial fisherman, and had once lived in a half-million-dollar home. By the time I met him, he lived in a small room in a former motel on the dusty edges of Bakersfield, an oil and agricultural city at the southern tip of the San Joaquin Valley. The facility had reopened as the New Life Recovery and Training Center last year. Cantrell was there because he had been using methamphetamine and other drugs since he was 14. After decades of cycling through county jail and state prison, he was done. His ex-wife was dead—killed by an overdose. He’d lost his house. “I’m to the point where I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” he told me.

Kern County, where Cantrell lived, is mostly rural and was once known for its lock-’em-up philosophy. The county jail, which holds about 2,700 people, is one of eighteen in the state now operating under a court-ordered population cap. Before realignment, it had a recidivism rate of 70 percent, and about three-quarters of the people sent to state prison were low-level felons. Kern County Sheriff Chief Deputy Francis Moore explains the old thinking this way: “We’re the cops—we put them in jail, we house them while they’re in jail, then we kick them out the door. What happens out the door… who cares?”

Last year, Cantrell faced a maximum of fourteen years in prison on drug charges. But under realignment, after serving six months in jail, he started renting a room at New Life with the monitor strapped to one ankle and a GPS device strapped to the other. Cantrell was one of more than a thousand people who, by last December, were enrolled in the Kern County sheriff’s “virtual jail,” a combination of programs created or dramatically expanded under realignment. Today, the county jail is “almost like a re-entry center,” according to Lt. Gregory Gonzales of the sheriff’s office. “Everybody we’re talking to, we’re trying to figure out: How can we get you to not come back next year?”

As a result, the jail now offers classes on domestic violence and food safety. There’s a new drug program and an expanded GED course. Inmates found not to pose a risk to the community are released with monitors. A sheriff’s supervision program has more than quadrupled in size. Centers like New Life have received state funding to expand their services, and the probation department has doubled the size of a day reporting center that offers counseling, job training, parenting classes and more.

For people like Cantrell, effective rehabilitation programs can mean the difference between returning to a cell or not. Yet such spending in Kern County represents just a sliver of its realignment budget: only 15 percent of the county’s nearly $11 million in state funds for 2011 and 2012 were set aside for these programs, according to data collected by researchers at Stanford Law School’s Criminal Justice Center.

Moore argues that Kern County doesn’t need to spend more on rehabilitation. If prisoners “fail the programs and we have no jail beds to send them back to for failing, what’s their incentive to be successful?” he says. The county is expanding its jail system with a $120 million, 700-bed facility that is expected to open in 2017.

Kern County is far from unusual in its approach. Most counties set aside less than 20 percent of their new state money for rehabilitation, according to the Stanford data. Fifteen counties budgeted nothing. Instead, they retrofitted jails, refurbished beds and hired deputies to staff those jails, along with other traditional law enforcement expenditures, says Petersilia.

Do these numbers confirm the ACLU’s warning? Petersilia says they do—but only up to a point. “The sheriffs were the knee-jerk reaction,” she says. “When nobody else had a plan, they had built facilities. They were right there at the ready.” Despite that initial binge in jail spending, a closer look at Stanford’s research reveals a recent shift: counties are beginning to use the money as it was intended.

For Cantrell, that shift offered a bit of hope. He had seven months of sobriety, and he believed facilities like New Life were critical to keeping people like him out of a cell. “If a guy is serious and he wants to do something and wants to change, they provide an atmosphere for that,” he told me. Sadly, for Cantrell, that chance was fleeting. One morning in February, a few days before his birthday, a truck ran a stop sign and collided with his vehicle. Cantrell died at the scene.

***

Today in Sacramento, Jerry Brown insists that his state’s prison crisis is long gone. In January, state lawyers filed documents in federal court challenging the population reduction order, arguing that federal authorities should stop meddling with the prison system’s health services. “We’ve gone from serious constitutional problems to one of the finest prison systems in the United States,” Brown said at a press conference in January. He called the reduction goal “arbitrary,” dismissing federal oversight as benefiting “people who fly across the continent” to “denounce how bad everything is.”

But lawyers for the class-action plaintiffs say that lethally inadequate medical care is still a problem. Raymond Patterson, the court-appointed expert charged with evaluating suicides, points out that in 2012 the rate of inmate suicides was twenty-four per 100,000—considerably higher than the national average and on par with a decade ago. In his last annual report, filed in federal court in March, Patterson concluded that a large number of those deaths were preventable. He has written more than a dozen such reports, and virtually none of his recommendations have been followed. So he ended with a farewell: “It has become apparent that continued repetition of these recommendations would be a further waste of time and effort,” he wrote.

Then there are the nearly 9,000 prisoners who remain in five out-of-state facilities run by Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company. The cost of incarceration has continued to rise—to almost $52,000 per person annually—while rehabilitation funding has plummeted from the Schwarzenegger era, to just over $1,000 per year for 2011 and 2012.

Criminologist James Austin describes the effect of realignment thus far as “not insignificant.” Still, he says, to meet the reduction goal, the state must reckon with the tens of thousands of other inmates who likely pose little risk to their communities but remain incarcerated under harsh sentencing rules. These include many lifers and aging inmates convicted of violent crimes. “If you look at the prison system, that’s what’s wrong,” Austin says. “There are a lot of low-risk people in there.”

This story originally appeared in The Nation magazine.

“Marvelous things approach the gate door.” — Ling Ch’i Ching

One of my great pleasures is to look back over the course of events that brought me to my current relationship with a beloved place or person or thing, and to remember the coincidences and actions and interactions that were key steps in those journeys from there to here, then to now.

My relationship with the Ling Ch’i Ching began when I was living in Berkeley in the mid-1990’s. I was not yet hooked up to a futuristic new thing called the internet, and I still received lots of handwritten letters in the mail. No one I knew had a cell phone or a laptop or a digital camera or an app. I was a frequent visitor to Berkeley’s many marvelous used bookstores and I was also a customer of the overstock bookseller Daedalus Books, their colorful catalogues arriving in the mail every month. I enjoyed reading the pithy little Daedalus blurbs that made every book in the catalogue sound like a masterwork, and I was occasionally tempted to order a book or two in hope of finding something good to read. Once in a great while the pithy blurb turned out to be true and my hungry mind would feast on the masterful tome.

One such catalogue brought news of a book called Ling Ch’i Ching, a classic Chinese oracle translated by Ralph D. Sawyer. Daedalus was selling the esoteric tome for $5.98 and the pithy blurb said the Ling Ch’i Ching was kin to the I Ching only much easier to understand and every bit as poetic and mystical and groovacious. I was tempted, but didn’t bite until a few months later when the price dropped to $2.98.

“Your career has a path, do not rail at its slowness.” — Ling Ch’i Ching

I’ve known a lot of oracles in my time, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, but the Ling Ch’i Ching was really something special. To many of my friends and acquaintances this ancient oracle was little more than codified superstition and nonsense, otherwise known as hackneyed spiritual crap, but for me the Ling Ch’i Ching was thought-provoking, revelatory, and the gateway to a really neato art project: the creation of twelve disks to be cast by the querent to determine an oracular response.

“In the past, matters did not proceed as desired; now you will be able to follow your ambitions.” — Ling Ch’i Ching

One of the many things that appeals to me about the Ling Ch’i Ching is that the querent need only make a single throw of the twelve disks to create a pattern corresponding to a particular oracular response. Unlike the multiple throws of coins required to get a reading from the I Ching, this single release of Ling Ch’i Ching disks allows the querent to focus the entirety of her intention on that one action, rather than necessitating six separate gatherings of focus and intention. There is nothing to write down when consulting the Ling Ch’i Ching, and no moving lines to muddy the meaning of the initial oracular pronouncement.

I also like that the discs are made of wood, and that I chose that wood, cut the disks and drew the appropriate symbols upon them. Sawyer’s introductory text reads, “…these disks should preferably be fashioned from wood cut from a tree that has been struck by lightning. Obviously the lightning strike, being the essence of yang, is understood as empowering the wood (which is yin), making it receptive to the process of divination…” Lacking access to lightning-struck wood in downtown Berkeley, I made my disks from eucalyptus branches that fell from the very tall eucalyptus tree growing in my front yard, her branches imbued with the energies of the oceanic winds that blew night and day through our neighborhood situated directly across San Francisco Bay from the Golden Gate.

“Above and below both settled, the mind does not give birth to perversity. Contented, it has no worries. Do not believe rumors.” — Ling Ch’i Ching

All twelve of the disks are blank on one side. Four of the disks bear the symbol for Heaven, four bear the symbol for Man, four bear the symbol for Earth; and it is the particular interaction or lack of interaction between the forces animating these three realms that determine the nature of each of the 125 oracles and corresponding verses that make up the text of the Ling Ch’i Ching. Some of the oracles and verses are extremely baleful, some extremely auspicious, and all of them present both a literal response as well as a poetic symbolic one. The I Ching was a divinatory tool used for thousands of years by royalty and intellectuals in China, with an extremely symbolic and metaphorical text open to an infinite array of interpretations. By contrast, the Ling Ch’i Ching, also used for thousands of years, was a favorite of farmers, soldiers, bureaucrats and carnival fortunetellers catering to common folk—a much more straightforward and easily accessible divinatory tool than the I Ching.

“Ruler and subject, exchanging positions, are about to give rise to great profits.” — Ling Ch’i Ching

For Christmas gifts that first year of my enchantment with the Ling Ch’i Ching, I made several sets of disks and bought several more copies of Sawyer’s book to give to friends predisposed to enjoying this sort of inquiry. I developed the habit of consulting the oracle every week for a few years until one day I loaned my book and disks to someone and that someone never returned them. I intended to make a new set of disks, but the years passed and I did not make a new set. Eventually I forgot about the Ling Ch’i Ching, moved to Mendocino, married Marcia, and stumbled along as best I could without consulting an oracle.

“The minute again resurges like melon vines stretching and extending, gradually arising and ascending.” — Ling Ch’i Ching

Four years ago we were visiting some old friends in Richmond, and I was delighted to find that they had used the set of Ling Ch’i Ching disks I’d made for them as part of their Thanksgiving decorations—the symbols for Heaven, Man and Earth being quite beautiful. This prompted us to gather up the disks, get out the book, throw the disks, read aloud the provocative oracles and verses, and blab for hours about the year ahead and all we hoped to do with our lives.

“Spring comes, the myriad things are glorious.” — Ling Ch’i Ching

Upon our return to Mendocino, I ordered a used copy of the text from an online bookseller, made a new set of disks out of a branch of manzanita (having yet to locate any lightning-struck wood) and resumed my weekly consultations with the forces of universe as they manifest in this earth-based human realm and might be interpreted through seemingly random configurations of wooden disks.

Fast forward to about eight months ago when the inimitable Amanda Outten and her incomparable hubby Jamie Roberts were working on our new house, she a wizard with tile, he a most excellent carpenter. Somehow or other we got talking about the Ling Ch’i Ching and I mentioned that ideally the disks are to be made from lightning-struck wood, but that I lacked a source of such wood, and Amanda said, “We’ve got some lightning-struck redwood. I’ll bring you a couple hunks.”

Which she did, and the lightning-empowered hunks sat untouched in our workshop for some months as I not very diligently investigated ways to extract round plugs of wood from the hunks so I could cut those plugs into disks. The problem was that I did not want holes in the centers of the disks and the plug-grabbing drill bits that would work with my wimpy little electric drill made holes in the centers of the plugs and so were not appealing to me and…then we needed a new roof. Our first winter in our new house informed us that the very old roof not only allowed water into the house, but the roof was not at all insulated, so every bit of heat we generated went quickly out of the house.

To make a long story short, one of the carpenters on the roof job was rummaging around in our workshop one day, espied the lightning-struck hunks of wood, asked what they were, I told him about the disks I wanted to make and the problem with holes, and he said, “Cut those hunks into blocks, put those blocks on a lathe, create a round rod, and cut the rod up into disks.” Not having a lathe, I nevertheless liked his idea very much and made a note to ask around to see if anyone I knew could direct me to someone with a lathe. But then I got distracted with one thing or another and forgot about my quest until…

Two weeks ago, I went out to the workshop to fashion a wooden box for something or other, and there were those beautiful hunks of lightning-struck redwood sitting on the table and vibrating gently with their divinatory power. I impulsively placed my hands on the redwood hunks and proclaimed, “Let it be known I would like to connect with a master lathe person so I can finally transform this wonderful wood into disks. Amen.”

“You will receive Heaven’s blessings.” — Ling Ch’i Ching

Three days later a neighbor called to invite me over to meet a fellow who had made a beautiful piece of art she thought I would like to see. I went on over, met the fellow, and discerned that many of the pieces of his beautiful wooden creation had been crafted on a lathe. I mentioned this to the fellow and he admitted that he was, indeed, a master lathe person. I then told him about the hunks of lightning-struck wood and…

Today I took possession of eight magnifico rods (six to nine-inches long, and one-inch in diameter) of lightning-struck redwood from which many disks can be cut. From a ninth rod of this divine wood, the master lathe fellow used his band saw to cut twenty-four disks for me. Now I’m set. I need only sand those discs, carefully paint on the symbols, face north, focus my intention, cast the disks, and see what’s going on.

Todd Walton’s web site is UnderTheTableBooks.com.

Like an obnoxiously drunk, loudmouthed, long-winded, overly-pleased-with-himself, vacuously ostentatious guest who refuses to leave the party even though it’s long been over, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby lingers at the local multiplex, Scotch in one hand, cigar in the other, rapping away at the top of his lungs. The critics were the first to flee the loathsome fete, lambasting the film’s grandiosity and self-indulgence. But in spite of such huffy dismissals, this cinematic blowhard has raked in more than twice its estimated hundred million dollar price tag, with more revenues to come from the long-term revenue stream soon to be trickling down its gilded urinal.

Yet if one can endure an assault on the senses of D-Day-like proportions, the movie offers a weirdly illuminating, if scarily overblown, demonstration of form and content in perfect harmony.

Never before has the extreme profligacy of contemporary times, whose hedge fund and social network Gatsbies dwarf the budgets and pretensions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary prototype, been more bombastically mapped onto the excesses of the early twentieth century. The film is as wasteful and out of control as the America of today.

I was dragged — not exactly kicking and screaming, but dragged nonetheless — to a screening last week because of the appearance of an organ in the movie, as my kidnapper enthusiastically informed me. Even as I weakly resisted my abduction in the direction of the mall, I rationalized my contribution to the producers’ profits with the thought that I could at least deduct the price of the ticket as a research expense.

The organ served as the musical embodiment of pathological overabundance long before the advent of motion pictures, but the cinema consummated this tendency. In Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby we hear the strains of an organ near the beginning of the movie blaring through a scrim of digital effects as revelers pour into the Gatsby mansion, a computer-generated pile that looks so fake it’s almost laughable — a Robber Baron castle pumped up on steroid-laced saccharine. The pitches we hear are the first three notes of Bach’s Toccata in D Minor. These are probably the most universally recognized three notes in all of music, not just classical. Play them anywhere on anything — from Notre Dame’s mighty organ to your three-year-old’s kazoo — and millions, if not billions, of people will recognize the reference.

After conjuring the infamous Toccata, Luhrmann and soundtrack manager, composer Craig Armstrong, pause there and don’t give us the descending minor run that follows. It’s a rare moment of delayed gratification in a film that’s all about immediate surfeit and sensual over-stimulation—not to mention over-simulation.

The opening three notes of the Toccata hang in the computer-generated air for several coy seconds as we are ushered into the festive hall in the Gatsby Mansion in whose gallery the Art Deco organ looms in exaggerated geometric patterns, raining its Dionysian blessing down on the partiers. It’s a given that this instrument should look unrealistic: Luhrmann’s film is pure fantasy. As for the sound, if it’s a real organ, it’s a bad one. Once inside we get a fleeting continuation of the Toccata with mod-con digital updates, as Luhrmann unleashes exotic dancers and hip-hop odes to partying hard.

The filmmakers have invested much of their public relations capital congratulating themselves on the chronological disjunction between the music of Fitzgerald’s Roaring Twenties and what the soundtrack offers: hip-hop they claim gives modern audiences a truer sense of “Jazz Age Sensibility.” In reality the result is a revue of entertainment elites cranking things up and dumbing things down, from the immortal lines of executive producer Jay Z’s “one hundred million, bitch” to Beyoncé singing “I love blow.” When these and other invitees to Luhrmann’s sonic orgy aren’t pumping away, we are treated to palpitating ballads about love like Del Rey’s maudlin Young and Beautiful, songs whose enfeebled emotions wheeze breathily through the stranglehold of pitch-correction software.

In an attempt to lend his creation not only street-cred but also a touch of Golden Age class, Luhrmann allows his composer Armstrong a few grandiose orchestral stretches, as in the main theme that accompanies the emblematic green light at the end of Daisy’s dock across the bay from Gatsby’s mansion. This marquee moment elicits from Armstrong synth strings comforting a weepy solo violin in what amounts to an automated version of Samuel Barber’s Adagio — the superficial masquerading as the sumptuous. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is also impressed into service, a clichéd attempt to establish the catholic musical tastes of the filmmakers as they stagger between the then and the now.

Luhrmann’s irrepressible urge to overdo is symbolized most clearly in the image and sound of the Gatsby organ. It is true that the magnates of the Jazz Age liked to build organs into their mansions, though never as big as the fake one in the movie. The Frick house on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan has a rather discreet instrument on the landing of the main staircase, and it can still be heard drifting down to the inner court in weekly concerts. The effect is refined rather than bombastic. Luhrmann lusts after the latter. He’s both obvious and excessive, hence the Toccata in D minor.

There is no organ in the novel, but rather a piano, played by a “boarder” at the Gatsby mansion, a certain Ewing Klipspringer. He repeatedly protests that he’s out of practice, but is bullied into playing by Gatsby,

“Don’t talk so much, sport,” admonishes Gatsby. “Play!” Klipspringer relents and tries to make his way through the Tin Pan Alley tune Ain’t We Got Fun. Fitzgerald’s understated vignette captures brilliantly what many an on-and-off again pianist has had to suffer when forced into performing by a host.

The novel’s intimate music room scene, with Nick, Gatsby and Daisy listening to the piano is relocated in the movie to the organ hall and Klipspringer elevated from hapless keyboard fumbler to “symphonic genius” as DiCaprio’s Gatsby puts it. This new supercharged Klipspringer let’s loose in the film with an immoderate and unlikely fantasia. The telling awkwardness of the original scene becomes overblown parody in the new screen version. The Gatsbian ethos of bigger is better has birthed in Luhrmann’s Gatsby a chronicle of limitless excess and bottomless bad taste, a frightening Dolby 3D portrait of its own Age.

David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest book is Bach’s Feet. He can be reached at dgyearsley@gmail.com.

Greetings one and all. If you are sitting comfortably then I shall begin. Before we get into the ‘meat and carrion’ of the column, may I just remind you once again of a key guideline for a happy and healthy life in the country: “Be wary of strangers with more dogs than teeth.” Onward!

Public Service Announcements. Calendars and pens at the ready. #114. Due to staff shortages the Vets from the Mendocino Animal Hospital do not plan to be back in the Valley to check on our pets and animals until Thursday, July 11. If this changes I shall let you know. #115. If any Valley dwellers haven’t heard already, their cave being particularly high up in the hills, the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival (SNWMF) returns to the Valley for the its eighth successive year this coming weekend – June 21-23. Yes, it has been coming here since 2006! Thousands of reggae-loving visitors will be here and many locals will no doubt join them. Most of this particular crowd will be very nice and polite, and the ‘female of the species’ is often very pleasant on the eye, so let’s give them a big Valley Welcome, hope they support our locally-owned small businesses, and then wish them merrily on their way come Sunday night. For details go to www.snwmf.com. #116. The next in the series of Guest Chef Dinners that take place every two months to benefit the Senior Center is coming up later in the month. Usually a Friday night event, on this occasions it is a Saturday. Saturday, June 29 to be precise, with Happy Hour at 5pm followed by an Hawaiian-style pig roast cooked and then served by Chris Rossi and friends at 6pm. Tickets will certainly sell out so call Gina at 895-3609 to reserve yours. #117. Later that same evening, you can take a short stroll down the road and stop off at Lauren’s Restaurant for the monthly ‘Sing-along-a Liddy’ community singsong with Patty Liddy. It starts at 8.30pm and I defy anyone to show up and not join in. You’ll know most of the songs and will be unable to contain yourself!

Here is the menu for the next week at the Senior Center at the Veterans Hall in Boonville. The Center asks for a $5 donation from seniors and charges $7 for Non-Seniors for lunches and for the dinners it is $6 and $8, respectively. Tomorrow, Thursday, June 20 the lunch, served at 12.15pm, will be BBQ Ribs, Baked Beans, Roasted Veggies, Garlic Bread, Broccoli Salad, Mud Slide Dessert . Then next Tuesday, June 25 at 6pm, the dinner served by Marti Titus and her crew will be Chicken Diane, Potluck Potatoes, Peas, Orange Gelatin, Rolls, Kasha Salad, Lime Berry Cake. This is also Game Night so bring your favorite game to play or hang out and visit with friends. Hope to see you there.

The above-mentioned music festival almost a tradition around here at this point, although I realize that to some Valley folks it is not a tradition until is has been happening for 50 years; just like you are not a ‘local’ unless you arrived before World War II. How about a couple of Quotes of the Week on the topic of ‘tradition’?

First let’s turn to W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), the playwright and novelist, who observed that “Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.” So are we to assume that miserable Maugham probably wouldn’t see the benefit in having the festival every year? He probably wasn’t much of a reggae fan. And secondly let’s go with T.S. Elliot (1888-1965), the playwright, literary and social critic, who remarked wisely, “A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.” Perhaps a veiled comment on the demeanor of people in town who will clearly be under the mellow and, in many cases, the intelligence-altering influence of various substances. My response is, in the words of several young Valley folks of my acquaintance, “It’s all good.”

Topics and Valley events this week at The Three-Dot Lounge. Yes it’s “Moans, Groans, Good Thoughts, and Rampant (and often Reliable) Rumors” from my favorite gathering place in the Valley.

…Several regulars in the Three-Dot expressed their great satisfaction when I informed them that Deputy Craig Walker had recently told me that his Sheriff’s Office dog, Zeke the German Shepherd, had passed his certification and was now accompanying Walker on patrol as our local deputy carried out his duties. Having met Zeke a few times I was also very gratified. He’s extremely smart and good-natured dog, unless of course you’re one of the ‘bad guys.’ Then he’s downright nasty. You have been warned.

…Speaking of ‘warnings,’ one regular, not against the big music festival itself but certainly not partial to uninvited guests camping on his property, already has a sign prepared: “Camp here and you’ll wish you’d kissed a wild Hog’s snout instead.” I guess that makes it pretty clear.

… Enquiring Minds at The Three-Dot want to know: Where can I get my sheep sheared? Well, this is one I have a good answer for. There is a young man from the coast who will certainly oblige. His name is Matt Gilbert and he has already done a fine job on many of the smaller flocks in the Valley during the past month or so, as he has been doing for the last few years around here. He is accommodating, very reasonably priced, and can be reached on his cell phone at 972-9144.

…School Newsflash. May I extend a warm welcome to the newly appointed AV High School Principal, Michelle Hutchins? Ms. Hutchins is coming here from Trinity County where she was the principal at Hayfork High School, a public school serving 98 students in the 2012-13 year. She was also the superintendent of the Mountain Valley School District. I hear, and I don’t think it’s just a rumor, that she may wish to get involved in the community’s events and social scene perhaps more than her predecessors, which is very encouraging. Personally speaking, as long as she supports school fundraising events such as the recent Drive-Thru Tri-Tip BBQ Dinner to benefit the FFA program then she has the support of the Valley’s premier meat and carrion eaters such as myself. If she also spends a leisurely weekend visiting our winery tasting rooms; exercises her brain with the Trivia Quiz at Lauren’s Restaurant; devours the Prime Rib Special at The Buckhorn, gobbles the Kale Caesar’s at Aquarelle, scarfs Libby’s carnitas plate, or even sips a few libations at the Lodge (Saloon) then any/all of those would be a bonus! Looking forward to seeing you around, Ms. Aitch.

I’m outtahere. Until we talk again, ‘Keep the Faith’; be careful out there; stay out of the ditches; think good thoughts; please remember to keep your windows cracked if you have pets in your vehicle; and may your god go with you. One final request, “Let us prey.” Humbly yours, Turkey Vulture. PS. You can contact me through the Letters Page or at turkeyvulture1@earthlink.net. PPS. On the sheep, Grace. PPPS. Skylark, read any good books lately?

The Fort Bragg Police Department has conducted a bogus investigation in response to formal complaints filed against Officer Craig Guydan; a whitewash investigation that could be interpreted as a cover-up. That’s the headline, here’s some background: Officer Guydan shot a dog outside of 501 Walnut Street last December 21st, pulled a gun on youths playing football by streetlight on January 7th and has been the subject of several informal complaints (meaning not filed in writing on FBPD complaint forms) by citizens.

Continued from last week’s AVA, the 1937 Congressional hearing at which marijuana prohibition was discussed prior to enactment. The witness is William WOODWARD, MD, representing the American Medical Association. The AMA, most of whose members were Republicans, had not supported Social Security when it was introduced. The Southern Democrats had made sure it excluded farm workers and domestic servants (mainly Black people). Fred VINSON  was from Kentucky. Robert DOUGHTON from North Carolina.

HUMBOLDT: Life on America’s Marijuana Frontier—A Book Destined to be a Classic Look at this County and Cannabis

by Kym Kemp (Courtesy LostCoastOutpost.com)

For those who have replaced copy after copy of Ray Raphael’s Cash Crop because volumes borrowed by friends never seem to be returned, you had better buy a few copies of Emily Brady’s new book, Humboldt: Life on America’s Marijuana Frontier.  The book is destined to be a local classic—a book that you will ‘lend out’ knowing that you’ll rarely see it returned. Nonetheless, you’ll give it out with the same passion that Gideonite’s pass out Bibles—this book gets Humboldt pot culture—particularly Southern Humboldt pot culture.

That means, of course, that both people who love the culture and hate it are going to read parts—different parts, of course–and nod their head knowingly while saying, “She really nailed that.” And, both are also going to exclaim in shock–about different things, of course—”Wait, that’s not the real face of pot growing. That’s just a rare exception.”

Brady (pictured above) weaves the lives of four people into an almost story-like exploration of the marijuana culture. Each has a separate tale that reveals an important part of what this community is like. Brady introduces a seventy-year-old woman known as Mare. This woman is the smallest of growers and pats only a half dozen young plants into the ground each spring. Crockett, his pseudonym fitting the wilder aspect of Humboldt growing, is part of a million dollar operation—if he can wrangle the weed to harvest and get it sold. Brady doesn’t forget law enforcement’s role. There is Deputy Bob Hamilton who after working in the county comes to believe the War on Drugs is totally lost. And, there’s the child of the marijuana culture, Emma Worldpeace, whose stepbrother Mikal is currently awaiting trial for murder and yet, she is getting a master’s degree in social work.

Brady’s interview on KQED and her attempt to find a venue to host her book signing in Humboldt reflect the controversy this book is arousing and is likely to continue to arouse. In the San Francisco based radio interview, callers repeated castigated Brady for whitewashing growers (She doesn’t. She just doesn’t hide the good aspects) and yet in Southern Humboldt, she is accused of painting too dark of a picture of the very unique world.

Cash Crop intimately describes marijuana growing as it takes off in Emerald Triangle. Humboldt: Life on America’s Marijuana Frontier is its sequel in the best sense of the word—expanding this county’s story into current times.

Thursday, June 27 at 5 P.M., Emily Brady will be at the King Range Books in Garberville to sign and read from her book.

Friday, June 28 at 7 P.M., Emily Brady will be at the Northtown Books in Arcata to sign and read from her book.

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ON-LINE COMMENTS RE SPY ROCK

• I used to live in Spy Rock 20 years ago for about 15 years. It was a lovely place with lots of nice community. There is still some good stuff about the place. The school is wonderful. But the last 10 years were really horrible. Greedy people moved in who care nothing for the land or the community. I have friends who have been run out of their own land due to Mexican mafia moving next door. Not just them are bad — bikers, Los Angeles Gangsters, New York gangsters, on and on These tough guys like to walk around with machine guns — for real. Really sad. It’s very hard core and screwed up and the nature is being ruined. A few nice people still hold out trying to make the place a community but they are losing. The place has wonderful land, fabulous views and wild nature. I miss it, but it’s just too scary. When I go see my friends up there just driving nowadays I am freaked out. I always make sure I make no eye contact with people I don’t not know so they don’t notice me. It’s very dangerous, just like many dirt roads around Humboldt and Mendo.

• The community needs to take the power back and somehow take these greedy land rapists out of here without getting killed. Tough, but the second hand info that got the cops up to find this dead person is a start. Someone spoke up and that’s good. But it’s not pot, it’s greedy people who care nothing for our community. Shit, these days there are too many scary people in our community. What the hell can we do to reclaim the land?

• I remember Spy Rock in the early 80s. It was very rough, some would say scary. It had a regional rep for stuff like this — murders and disappearances. What happened between then and the 90s nice time you speak of? CAMP hammered on that place. There were many days when three helicopters were all up on Spy Rock, Registered Guest, Iron Peak, etc. Then things got nice for the nice people for awhile. I don’t want to glorify CAMP because I didn’t like them, I fought them, followed them with cameras to document their abuses and resented having to grow in shade on north slopes. But — People! You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have unpoliced wide-open growing and not expect the real criminals to show up and take over. Either you take control of your neighborhood, let the cops do it, or expect the real criminals to do so. I’d say right now we have allowed the real criminals to run wild while providing cover for them under the “it’s all medical” and “weed is all good” and “growers are great people” arguments.

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WILLITS POLICE are investigating the death of Danny Lawrason, 77, found dead in his home on East San Francisco Avenue last Sunday (June 16th). A press release from the police was ambiguous. It said that Lawrason suffered “gunshot wounds” — plural — but his death “is being investigated to determine whether foul play was involved.” Foul play as speculation means the old man was either murdered or he shot himself. The forensics are expected to reveal which.

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AS EXPECTED, SAVE THE REDWOODS LEAGUE has announced it will bail out the ailing Skunk Railroad of Fort Bragg by paying the popular tourist attraction $300,000 for a conservation easement, which will both protect old redwoods along the line and assure public access to the trees. The Skunk has been stymied by a lack of funds to repair a tunnel cave-in at the Fort Bragg end of the popular tourist attraction. Robert Pinoli Jr., majority owner of the railroad, had been considering selling the now preserved trees to raise repair capital.

SAVE THE REDWOODS, two years ago, bought 426 acres in the Noyo Canyon in the same area traversed by train track. That acreage was the last old growth redwood stand still privately owned. Save the Redwoods sold to the Mendocino Land Trust.

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PHIL ROSSETTI of San Francisco writes: “Wasn’t it lovely to see Dick Cheney on TV mumbling about how 9/11 would not have happened if we had all of the privacy intrusions in place then as we have now? Funny as how we had 16 security agencies in place then with tens of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in budgets, and yet they somehow missed 9/11. Somehow as in Cheney deciding not to pay attention to the warnings those agencies were making. So how many more incompetent employees does Cheney recommend we hire this time around and how many more civil liberties would he like to trample?”

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SCOTLAND!

by Bruce Anderson

So this is civilization. It’s my first experience in one. Spent a memorable day in Edinburgh, concluding that if Americans were still teachable the Scots could teach us how to manage cities. For example, and by way of contrast, the center of San Francisco — and let’s call the center of our fairest city the cable car turnaround at Powell and Market — is a medieval spectacle of drunks, drug addicts, cruising criminals, lurks of all types, and the unsequestered insane. At Edinburgh’s civic center, a nexus of bus, cab, train, restaurants, and coffee shops in the shadow of the magnificent Edinburgh Castle, I counted exactly four bums in as many blocks, three of whom presented neatly printed messages asking for money. With a merry hands-across-the-waters, “Here ya go, pal,” I dropped some coins onto one man’s handkerchief-sized cloth, realizing too late I’d gifted him to the tune of about five bucks because I hadn’t mastered the money. “I’ll be fooked,” the bum exclaimed through a toothless grin. “A fookin’ Yank!” There were no visible mopes of the ubiquitous type menacing the public areas of every city and town of any size in America. Of course Scotland enjoys a national health service that treats the wounded rather than freeing them to die on the streets. But a national health care system would be “socialism,” and we can’t have that, can we?

As a Mendo-Frisco guy where an antiquity is a sagging wooden structure from 1850, Edinburgh, as all the towns I’ve seen, is aulde, as the splendid Princes Gardens in the town center bears constant reminder. “Christian worship continuously on this site for 13 centuries,” and at regular intervals are posted statues of some of Western Civ’s pivotal contributors. I paused before the monument to Sir James Young Simpson, inventor of anesthesia, sending up a prayer of gratitude before moving on to Thomas de Quincey, pioneer stoner. This is a very large garden, planted heavily in rhododendrons that made me think of my late friend Vern Piver of Fort Bragg who grew prize-winning rhodos. How Vern would have loved this place where I also marveled at its ecumenism at a plinth commemorating “Friends of the International Brigade Association to honor the memory of those who went from the Lothians and Fife to serve in the war in Spain — 1936-1939.” Denounced and hounded in the US as radicals and communists — “premature anti-fascists” — the International Brigades have been written out of American history. Here, they get a place of eternal honor.

Not to the fanfare of trumpets

Nor even the shirl of the pipes

Not for the offer of a shilling

Nor to see their names up in lights

Their call was a cry of anguish

From the hearts of people of Spain

Some paid with their lives it is true

Their sacrifice was not in vain

Cities and towns end abruptly in miles of green, sheep-studded open country. Similar landscapes here in Liberty Land would be festooned with No Trespassing signs, prison-quality fencing, armed owners. In Scotland, the population walks where it might, the national assumption being that people can be trusted not to violate unimpeded access, including fishing access which is carefully parceled out in between public and private lengths of stream. You pay to fish the private, the public are public.

America being a new country, and now home to a fragged people who don’t know their neighbors let alone honor anything resembling the community we once knew, ancient Selkirk is a reminder, to this American, of how much is gone. I’m old enough to remember when we had it, and now we don’t. Imagine Thanksgiving, the homecoming game, the 4th of July, the county fair, a commemorative Veteran’s Day honoring the fallen all the way back to the Vikings, and the American begins to grasp the significance of what community history is to Selkirk. Half of my family rose from this place, a hill town in an area called The Borders not far from England whose bandits the Scots fought off for hundreds of years. The men doing the fighting were (and are) typically described as “ferocious,” in a culture emphasizing hardi­ness, tenacity and courage. Twenty of us are here to celebrate all of the above.

In 1913 my grandfather, a native of Selkirk where his father had been a magistrate and the paternal side of our family goes way, way back, was standard bearer for an ongoing event commemorating both the Battle of Flodden some 400 years ago and the ancient practice of common riding.

Selkirk’s warriors had joined an invasion of England under their last king, James. They met the Brits at Flodden for a thorough defeat. Only one Selkirkian, a man named Fletcher, survived.

He staggered back into town with Selkirk’s battle flag, waving it in slow, sad flour­ishes to silently explain the catastrophe to the townspeople. And then he dropped dead.

The Common Riding was an annual mass horse patrol of the town’s grazing areas to ensure that the savages the next ridge over hadn’t intruded. “These hills are soaked in blood,” a local summed up the area’s history, “all the way back to the Romans and before them the Vikings. The Scots have fought off invaders for thousands of years.”

It’s a great honor to be selected standard bearer. The population from miles around gathers to remember the Battle of Flodden and recall the days of the Commons patrols. In 1913, my grandfather was a standard bearer representing the Colonial Society, which is not a collec­tion of nostalgic imperialists, but an association of men and women drawn from the vast Scots diaspora. Us returnees were acknowledged as “exiles” in a large ceremony featuring some witty speeches — “I won’t say why Mr. Anderson was exiled, but we are happy to have him back” — and quite moving songs celebrating the history and the beauty of the town. This year, my nephew, Robert Mailer Anderson, was standard bearer, a tense responsibility that culminates with the complicated flag ritual in which the standard bearers, in multi-step, choreographed moves set to a single bugle (I think), re-enact that surviving warrior’s return from the Battle of Flodden all those centuries years ago.

The Standard Bearer performs the flag ceremony before the whole town. Thousands of people assemble in the town square, all of them this year intently focused on the American to see if he could manage the physically taxing ritual. Nephew managed in fine style to huge applause.

Earlier in the day came the Common Riding of several hundred horsemen thundering down the hill, then galloping back up the hill, a stunningly beautiful panorama of charging horses like this guy has never seen.

Selkirk takes these events quite seriously. The whole town turns out, from small children to ancient crones in wheelchairs. As a citizen of a rootless country now characterized by soul-destroying visual uniformity and demoralized people, the presence of so many young persons at the week-long series of nostalgic events struck me particularly; these young people were not only growing up in a place architecturally unchanged for centuries, their pride in their beautiful place was evident when they joined in the hearty, commemorative sing-a-longs. The work of local poets, including Walter Scott, hung from many walls of the town center which, at every turn, presents vistas of meandering stone walls, gardens, tree-lined lanes, and formidable old houses, large and small, all made of stone. And everywhere large, florid men and women. My people. My people!

I was standing outside one event when there was a burst of applause to which a passing pedestrian responded, “Must have been another lie.” He didn’t laugh, but a mere visitor isn’t likely to understand the variety of local sentiment. Imagine a visiting Scot stumbling upon the Mendocino List Serve! He’d think he’d wandered into a back ward of The Bin, but certainly wouldn’t dare conclude he was reading prevalent American opinion.

Footnote: Flodden, battle of: In 1513 the Scots under their King James had invaded England where, on September 9th, they fought the English of Henry the 8th led by the Earl of Surrey. The English won such a decisive victory that was the end of kings and a kingdom for Scotland. Only one man from Selkirk’s contingent made it home. King James himself went down fighting. Many of the Scot troops were aristocrats, as were the Brit soldiers. Those were the days that the ruling classes were at the front themselves, reinforced, one supposes, by the toughest serfs from their vast estates whose grand manor houses hold the high ground to this day. Every sweeping green expanse is still dominated by a dignified stone mansion. Property, much of it anyway, seems to remain portioned as it was when the lairds expelled the crofters, or small farmers, and packed them off to the American South to become your basic Scotch-Irish immigrant — “long, lean, and prone to violence with large broods of grubby, insolent children,” as someone described what would have been the ancestral maternal side of my family. We landed in South Carolina sometime in the 17th century after being hounded out of our Scottish motherlands.

The question I was most frequently asked had to do with the incidence of gun violence in America. I’d known in theory that the world looks on aghast, but now I was in the world and being asked what the hell’s going on here? All part of the Great Unraveling, I would reply, explaining that when I was a kid only hunters kept rifles and no one except the police and a few crooks had handguns. Guns nuts, gun shows, gun worship was unknown. I almost laughed when an elderly woman warned me in a town of about twenty thousand called Hawick, “Don’t go up that hill. There are rough people there.” I walked up the hill through an orderly neighborhood of basic row houses, which weren’t the homes of gentry to be sure, but if they and their inhabitants constituted danger, Americans would trade them for ours no questions asked.

NO DETAILS as we went to press Tuesday, but a female pedestrian was struck by a car in downtown Boonville about 10am. She was taken by ambulance to Ukiah.

IN THE GRAND TRADITION of imperial fraud, American style, Obama will provide weapons to the Syrian rebels, many of whom are Taliban-oriented fanatics. Within our lifetimes, we’ve had the Gulf of Tonkin pretext to kick off the failed war on Vietnam; conjured weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that destroyed that society and helped bankrupt US, leaving Iraq in a permanent state of civil war; a war on Afghanistan that will return that country to the Taliban and warlords the instant we withdraw; and now we have the bogus pretext of chemical warfare to obligate US for years to people who hate US. Meanwhile, here at home, social chaos and an onrushing, full-on economic depression.

WHAT ARE THE ADVENTISTS DOING TO HOWARD HOSPITAL?

Editor,

What a difference a year makes!

Howard Hospital, what has happened to the patient/customer friendly small town hospital we had?

Back in 2011, I had the misfortune to be hospitalized FIVE times. Two for elective knee replacements, and three for emergency surgeries. As you can imagine, the hospital bills were staggering. By the grace of God I had purchased my own insurance the year before. Still, the amounts left over after insurance had paid were prohibitive. I received several statements and finally called to inquire about financial assistance. It was granted and the friendly people in the hospital’s finance department were a pleasure to work with.

Fast forward to 2012.

I had some Lab work done on two different occasions. Sept 2012 and Dec. 2012.

I received ONE statement on those accounts after my insurance had paid. Not able to pay at that time, I called and inquired about the same assistance program. Only now I was talking to someone in St. Helena. Something seemed very different! She barely seemed to comprehend the program I was asking about. Finally she understood and the paper work was sent. I filled it out and returned it on Jan. 22, 2013. (It was mailed to St. Helena). I did not hear back from them until Mar. 25, 2013. Assistance was denied.

I called to inquire why it had been denied since my wages had dropped drastically since 2012 when it was approved.

The woman I spoke with said, “Well your tax returns don’t show that.” I said, “Well the new returns would but I don’t have them yet.” They were basing their denial on information that was over a year old. She said I could reapply. The amount of paper work required was daunting. I then asked her if I could arrange to make payments. She said “Yes, you will receive another statement and you can go from there.”

That was the end of March 2013. I never received another statement from them on either account.

It should be noted that this is about the same time that Adventist Health consolidated its billing function for all five its hospitals in its newly formed “Adventists Health Northern Network.” The billing center would now be in Windsor, CA, and about a dozen HMH employees were affected. Patients at Howard Hospital no longer have a friendly, familiar voice to answer your billing questions.

I never heard another word from them until May 26, 2013 when I got a bill from a collection agency for the first bill. I immediately called the number listed at Adventist Financial Services and asked why? “Well, you didn’t pay”.

I asked why I hadn’t received a statement. I was told that the hospital no longer had a record of that account since it was sent to collections, and that I would have to contact that agency about the matter.

I asked about the other account and was told it was “in the chute” to go to collections this week.

I asked how I could stop that from happening. “Pay the bill right now.” she said.

“Can I make a payment on it?” I inquired. “No the whole thing has to be paid,” she said. “That is the only way.”

I asked her why I had not received any more statements after the original one. She had to ask her supervisor. “Well, if the client doesn’t pay after the first one, we assume they aren’t going to pay, so we save on postage by not mailing out multiple statements.” WHAT??

I asked, “Even if a payment has been made on the account?” (which I had made on this one.)

She said “Yes.”

Well then, how the heck is a person to know how much more they owe? What is happening here? This has all taken place in the last six months! Not a year. Not two. SIX MONTHS!!!!

Is Adventists Health that hard up for cash?

Frank R. Howard Hospital has a reputation for being a treasured gem in our small community. The physicians and nurses and staff provide patient care that is unequaled in most places. And for us to have this in Willits is such a blessing.

In the years before I had insurance, the staff in the back offices of financial services were people we knew. Friendly people who were on your side and eager to help you work through the maze of higher and higher hospital bills. They cared as much about the patient as the doctors and nurses at Howard.

Now, a year later, that is not the case. My impression of the Adventist Health System Finance Dept is that they could care less about the people they are tossing to the proverbial wolves.

I should note that I have taken care of those bills. But, what about the people who don’t have any recourse but to be at their mercy?

What has happened to our friendly little small town hospital?

Nothing good has come from the ever growing list of changes that Adventist has implemented so far. Is this the price we have to pay for the new hospital?

Please, Howard Hospital, bring back our friendly, small town, superior service. We don’t want you to be “Just like all the others.”

Roni McFadden

Willits

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STATUTE RUNS

Editor,

I can’t tell you how to run your paper, but gee, Wouldn’t it be appropriate to demand that Moore come clean on the Bari bombing, before she is allowed to take up space for whining about how no one wants to follow her ‘leadership?’

My understanding is that the statute of limitations has passed on any possible charges, so why not come clean on what really happened?

Mark Richie

San Francisco

Ed reply: The statute doesn’t run on murder or attempted murder which, in this case, is an either/or since Bari, in perfect health before she was bombed, probably died of the injuries she sustained. I’m sure Mary would like to see the case solved, but there’s not much chance of that what with the Pacifica Network Gang and Cherney’s Norcal idiot posse still running interference for the myths. Cherney continues to make a ghoulish living off the myths, while Pacifica’s great speakers-of-truth-to-power maintain a herd of sacred cows less plausible than those of outback Hindus.

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THE OPPOSITE OF SANCTIMONIOUS

Dear AVA,

Life is not fair, and death should be more bio-degradable.

About 20 years ago a teenage family member died and we explored options for organic internment. One option we investigated was to have home burial for the body and a ceremony in memory. The Burial Project from the Russian River area came to our home to consult on the subject, although I can no longer find them on the Internet.

If we applied for a burial permit, we would be submitting a formal request creating sanctified land on our property — forevermore. This burial plot on private sanctimonious land would be properly designated as a family gravesite, formal or informal, and attached to the description on the deed of trust. Naturally, some people with long illnesses have plenty of time to prepare for the permit. Others, not.

The pitfalls of even legal burial on family land is that if the property ever goes outside of the family, someone unrelated may own your loved-one’s bones and gravesite — unless you move the remains and take them with you for reburial elsewhere. Ghoulish, but true, this happens. The legal wrangling can be tedious and hideous. Expect one or the other. They all require permits to be legal.

One thing some familiesdo when they take such chances and don’t have time for or don’t want to apply for a permit, is to pay for a regular gravesite in a cemetery plot; secretly weight a “closed” casket to the body weight of the deceased at the time of death; and have a closed casket funeral ceremony with following burial of the mock weighted coffin (sans body) in a regular cemetery. Then hope attendees and authorities believe what they think they’ve seen.

In actuality, you have a small closed-lip private funeral wherever you’ve chosen as your family plot on your private land. Some mourners like the idea of hiding the gravesite in plain sight, rendering it totally biodegradable, site unseen. Others make formal fences, a park or orchard, designating the gravesite in that protected way.

The Burial Project introduced sturdy enough corrugated cardboard coffins which were bio-degradable and would go dust to dust back to the earth with the cadaver, most easily. Today I notice that mushrooms are used to help the body decompose even faster. No cost for embalming, viewing hall, formal coffin and especially, the vault — which are all meant to strangely preserve the deceased’s body. Buddhists cremate the body to help the spirit of the person go on to their next best good. Body preservation is anathema to Buddhist belief.

Preservation of the dead is unnatural. Unless you’re planning on moving the remains around as many times as Lincoln’s well-traveled corpse (which, is reported to still look marvelous after several exhumations); why would you need preservation of the remains?

Some folks choose the secret funeral on private land without a permit, so they don’t get hassled. However, it is almost impossible to keep those attending the private ceremony silent about the nature of the organic funeral located on family land — for all the obvious reasons the Hamburg family is unpleasantly experiencing presently after releasing information about the burial of their beloved on family land without a permit.

Like everything else in life, choice is usually preferred, but there are sensible reasons to not let the burial of human remains happen in watersheds, flood zones, and many other obvious preserved “zones.”

Sanctimonious: Humble, meek, modest, holy.

Dan Hamburg: Pecksniffian, deceiving, false, goody-goody, holier than thou, hypocritical, insincere, pious, self-satisfied, smug, stuffy, unctuous.

The exact opposite of sanctimonious.

No wonder he didn’t know about it.

Later,

Name withheld

The Mendocino Coast

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GOOD REPORTING, EXCEPT…

Dear AVA,

Thank you for your reporting of the Board of Supervisors meetings. I particularly appreciate the long verbatim quotes and conversations and exchanges because along with your personal commentary I feel I get a more accurate view than I could get anywhere else.

In particular, your May 22 article was satisfyingly informative.

This latest board sounds pretty good inasmuch as the members are putting energy, thought, time, conviction, curiosity, and opinion into the somewhat morass-y job they have. I am less worried about whether or not the Board of Supervisors can handle our county business than I have been in a long, long time. That may be because it’s all less of a mystery thanks to your reportage. Or maybe the board’s makeup is finally a good balance of good people. Or, or…

I also like the article not being in two places. It was all on page 10. It’s easy to cut out and send off or xerox. (I’m from the old school.)

Could you do me a favor? Whoever does the manbeater thing — it’s really not helping anyone, especially women. Think about it. Pass on my feelings of alarm to the person who does it. (Is it Bruce Anderson?) I think that it will just rile guys up even more. Thanks!

Also, keep the print edition up! I have no computer and lots of other people don’t either, believe it or not.

Name withheld,

Ukiah

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HIGHER & HIGHER

Warm spiritual greetings,

A friend of mine sent me a critical email, suggesting that my present homelessness and inactivity in the world is possibly due to my own flaws, and that society does not appreciate my past efforts as much as I would otherwise like to believe. For the sake of clarity, please appreciate the fact that my only serious desire is to be a willing instrument in the hands of the Divine Spiritual Absolute. I am open to joining a spiritual community and living as a monk, or else being in society doing whatever I am spiritually called to do. Regardless, I look forward to moving on from homelessness in California, and going in whatever spiritual direction is deemed best by the Higher Power. Thank you for listening.

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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FINCH PREVAILS

To the Editor:

As a longtime admirer of Bruce McEwen’s work, it is with heavy heart I write to correct some recent assertions made in the June 12 AVA.

In his front page article (“The Slungshot/Rope Lock”) detailing the week’s courthouse goings-on, McEwen describes a hearing held in Judge Henderson’s court in which DA Dave Eyster sought to violate Craig Barnett’s probation. Much of the information written was incorrect, starting with the misspelling of Mr. Barnett’s lawyer’s name, Lewis Finch.

The article then seeks to illustrate how inept the attorney is by pointing out that Finch was not hired as the Alternate Defender when a co-worker, Bert Schlosser, departed the office. The story says former Public Defender Patricia Littlefield was then appointed. Little of this is true.

Finch did not apply for a job which Schlosser did not hold, and did not step down from. The job was vacated by Berry Robinson 18 months ago and Patricia Littlefield was appointed. Ms. Littlefield has never, in her 26 years as a Mendocino County lawyer, been employed in the public defender’s office, always having been an associate of Richard Petersen’s law firm

Lewis Finch is described as a “piss poor lawyer” but no survey of local lawyers and judges would agree with this defamation, and in fact I’d bet most would say Finch ranks among the best criminal lawyers in the county. McEwen’s notion that Littlefield came to be the Alternate Defender “to handle all the serious cases” is unsupportable. In the past quarter century Finch has represented hundreds — perhaps thousands — of clients charged with everything in the penal code, from rape and murder to shoplifting and probation violations.

It should be emphasized that violating a defendant’s probation involves the lowest standard of proof in the entire criminal justice system. Think about it: The defendant is a convicted criminal and he agrees, as part of his probation, to obey all laws, including not dropping a gum wrapper on the sidewalk. A “preponderance” (a scant 51%) of the evidence is sufficient to violate, which makes it the lowest threshold in the business. For a DA to violate someone’s probation is equivalent to shotgunning fat trout in a small birdbath.

Yet Finch prevails. Eyster loses. McEwen cannot believe what he sees, and cannot believe it again when he writes the story, so he attributes the judge’s decision to a shady allegation that “something must be up.” He then thinks the DA’s “Maybe were just trying to show that the (Alternate Defender attorneys) are something more than welfare recipients after all.”

Well, OK, but I suspect McEwen’s ongoing and nonstop criticism of public defender lawyers coupled with his relentless admiration for prosecutors suggests something other than disdain for those on welfare.

Thomas Hine (Alternate Defender Investigator)

Ukiah

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25 TO LIFE = LIFE?

Editor,

Why put a minimum on a prison term if you are going to put “life” on it too? The odds that you will get out even if you’re a saint are slim to none — closer to none. I give props to the people who come in jumping through hoops from day one knowing this yet they still do their best, all for what? To go sit in front of a group of people called “the parole board” so they can be told it’s not good enough even though the lifer is well over his minimum and has done everything the board asked of him and more but it’s still not good enough? WTF?

Imagine this. Or, wait, know this: A 57-year-old man got a 10 year denial because the board said he was arrogant for going to the board without a lawyer and he got written up for tobacco, refusing a cell move, and betting a few bucks on a game. He has done 32 years on a 15 to life sentence for second-degree murder which he lost at trial. 32 years in here and they just gave him ten more. His health is poor and he has major heart issues.

How do you feel California? Do you like paying for that? No? Then speak up. There are thousands of lifers who never got any write-ups and are way past their minimum time and have done all they can to rehabilitate themselves. No wonder the prisons are full. They never let anyone out. I hope this gives you just a little insight on things here in prison.

Also, you think your taxes are high now? Let the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation keep this up for 10 more years. You should really look at the price of prisons. Stop being brainwashed by the media to vote for more time for more crimes because as I see it there’s still crime and if you keep people locked away long enough it really makes them worse because they get stuck with prison mentalities and can’t readjust.

Shayne Wrede, CDCR AB3900

CSP Solano 13-3-1

PO Box 4000

Vacaville, CA 95696

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SUPPORT THE AMBULANCE

Editor,

The Anderson Valley Ambulance Service and Calstar, the medical air evacuation helicopter outfit in Ukiah, are nonprofit, non-tax supported services. The Ambulance Service in particular exists because of the commitment of many volunteers to respond day or night to help our community. When you become a member or make a donation you are supporting our incredible volunteers and investing in the quality of life in Anderson Valley. We need your support, so become a member, make a donation or volunteer.

The ambulance service annual tri-tip barbecue will be Sunday, August 18 from 4-7pm at the Mendocino County Fairgrounds. To volunteer call Art Hatcher at 895-3123. For questions about the membership program called Martha Hyde at 895-3795. Combined memberships for Calstar and the Ambulance Service are $80 per year for you and your family. Membership in the Ambulance Service only is $50 per year.

We thank Ron Jester who is retiring from his ambulance work after 30 years. On behalf of the crew and the board of the Anderson Valley Ambulance service, thank you for your ongoing support.

Jim Taul, Board Member, Membership Coordinator

Anderson Valley Ambulance Service

PO Box 144, Boonville CA 95415.

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JANIE TATE, R.I.P.

Editor,

The Mendocino coast lost a valuable emergency asset on Wednesday afternoon, that’s when Janie Tate went to sleep for the last time never to hear another emergency call on her Ham radio. Silent Key, as we Hams say.

Many of you knew Janie through her long musical career and other pursuits, but behind the scenes she was quite active in emergency Ham radio communications, using the FCC assigned call sign, KI6CHA, while she was on the air.

Janie along with Erif Thunen, KI6GGD, were the founders of the weekly Monday Noon, Albion emergency Ham radio net that meets on the 2 Meter frequency band on 147.570 MHz, and Janie was also instrumental in starting the countywide simplex emergency net called “Walking Repeaters” that meets about 8 Pm every Wednesday evening on 145.555 MHz.

Both of these nets will be able to provide local and long distance emergency communications even if the whole State is without power, and some of us will be able to continue for well over a week if need be, because we prepare for a disaster and test our systems on a regular basis, and Janie was was always there to help out a new Ham with any kind of technical or other problem so they could also be ready to serve if needed.

The nets continue to be active and ready to provide emergency communications during an emergency or disaster, local or large scale. Anyone can listen in to the nets with a radio scanner tuned to the frequencies listed above, and we could always use new Hams, young to old, so think about becoming a Ham radio operator, it’s actually quite easy as Janie would have told you herself, because she we a big promoter of Ham radio and the value to her community performing this valuable public service.

Janie will be missed, on the air, and at our club meetings and yearly holiday party, she was always a welcome presence.

Thanks to Erif for posting the notice to us Hams.

I have no other information about Janie, as I just got the message yesterday afternoon, but I did want to write something about the “invisible” public service she provided for the safety and well being of us all here on the Mendocino coast.

73, Janie, you Rock, we miss you.

Derek – KE6EBZ

Mendocino

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CAN’T KEEP UP

Editor,

My retro problem. Excuse me brother, I’m lost. Could you please return me to the 20th century? I tried to learn computers but the mouse bit me. I’m looking to buy a car without electric windows. My priest told me I’d have to go to Cuba. Like Merle Haggard I wish a buck was still silver. I’ve never gone online, downloaded, or owned a cell phone. Al and me — we’re displaced persons. Too old to adapt and too young to die. It’s quite a dilemma.

Captain Fathom

Albion

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ARTWALK REMINDER!

Editor,

AVArts, AV Chamber of Commerce and Boonville businesses are currently organizing the 16th annual Boonville ArtWalk for Saturday, July 6th from noon-6pm.

Participating artists and craftspeople this year include: Peggy Dart, Paula Gray, Sony Hatcher, Rainbow Hill, Charlie Hochberg, Dennis Hudson, Tom McFadden, Cathleen Michaels & Anderson Valley Students, Alan Porter, Terry Ryder, Ismael Sanchez, Colleen Schenck, Susan Spencer & Michael Wilson, Dan Sitts, Denver Tuttle, Xenia King, Jan Wax & Chris Bing and others.

Tara Lane will be offering a special kids’ art activity on the lawn at Rookie-To, from noon-2pm. The gallery will be hosting a “meet the artists” reception, with music by Wild Oats, from 4-6pm. Lauren’s will also be hosting a reception, from 3-6pm, is featuring a special show of “Wildflowers of Ernest Clayton” (the grandfather Gene Herr and Nancy Praetzel). Aquarelle will have its wine bar open, and appetizers available, throughout the event.

There are still venues available for local artists and craftspeople who would like to participate in this fun event. Send an email to contact@av-arts.org, or call 895-2204, for more information.

Anderson Valley Arts

Boonville

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REMEMBERING CHARLOTTE

Editor,

In 1967, when I was an 8th grader at Redwood Valley Junior High, I attended 8th grade outdoor science camp at El Rancho Navarro. This was in the days before the environmental movement took over what has now become “environmental education” (logger bad – hippie good). Of course, the “environmentalists” never say anything about the thousands of acres of clear cuts by the wine/booze industry. Clear cuts in the manner of complete stripping of the land right down to bare mineral soil. Even the worst of the loggers managed to leave some duff on the ground.

But I digress. Our science camp was run by teachers from RVJH, for better or worse.

I won’t speak to the worse, but the best was a great teacher by the name of Charlotte Campbell, who actually taught us about the workings of nature while on the trail. And there was a cute little art teacher who taught us how to make plaster masks of our faces along the sandy banks of the river. Of course we fine young gentlemen managed to remove her panties from the clothes line behind her cabin. We didn’t know what to do with them once we had them, but at least we had them.

Name Withheld

Redwood Valley

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FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, WE AGREE WITH JARED CARTER

(Of course if Charles Hurwitz wanted to do it…)

To the Editor:

I’ve been following, with sympathy for the parties involved, the issues presented by Dan Hamburg’s decision to bury his wife, Carrie, on their rural property without required governmental approval. Dan’s and Tom Allman’s positions are the easiest to understand. Dan loved his wife; she wanted to be buried there. Tom doesn’t want to precipitate a problem over an issue that will be around for awhile; in the short term nothing turns on the answers, so he wants to sit back an see if and how it works out. Barry Vogel is the guy I’m sorry for. His best pal of many years has done some thing blatantly illegal that is now being publicized, and Barry is expected to come up with a solution.

But once the wave of sympathy passes, I’m left with the belief there are a couple of issues pre- sented by these events that are too important to push under the rug. The first is that a modern society, even a small rural society like ours in Mendocino County, won’t work well if either(i) just a few self-selected people like Dan Hamburg, or the rich client Doug Bosco wrote about a few days ago in the Press Democrat, can decide what rules will apply to the use of scarce resources like real estate, or (ii) every property owner can decide for themselves what rules will apply to the use of real estate.

The second issue implicates Barry Vogel’s argument that the State constitutional right of privacy allows a surviving husband to bury his wife on a piece of property without regard to State and Local laws governing burials and land use.

Probably, or at least possibly, Dan and Barry believe the County Counsel and Board of Supervisors, along with the Sheriff, will want to avoid appearing heavy handed with Dan and will reach a compromise that will allow this grave site to remain where it is and resolve the lawsuit in a manner that even provides Barry with a legal fee, paid by the County, for reaching a successful resolution to a novel and difficult constitutional law question. I think either result would be a serious mistake.

It is, and always has been, a basic tenant of State and Federal law that property – real and personal – should be used and usable over time consistently with the rules governing its use. Even an “owner” can’t create a nuisance, pollute, or waste property, thereby taking it out of the economy, because later on its proper use will be important to the viability of the area of its location. Allowing a current owner to devote a parcel of real estate to use as a cemetery is contrary to these concepts, at least without clear rules governing parcel size, additional or future grave sites, maintenance, closure, etc. Obviously, no one would argue that every owner of a city lot can decide by themself to create a permanent grave site on the lot; so, the question arises: how large does the parcel have to be, and what other characteristics must it have, before its owner can unilaterally turn it into a cemetery; does the owner have to accept for burial anyone who applies, or can he/she control access? These questions are too important to let Dan decide by himself. When he became a supervisor he swore to uphold the laws and constitution of the State. He should back off his current stand and do so.

But, that’s not the end of the matter. Barry’s constitutional argument should also be expressly rejected, not just left unanswered. The “right of privacy” protects living individuals – that is not Carrie, only Dan – from certain governmental, or governmentally supported, intrusions. It does not provide an individual with authority to overturn or ignore existing, well established rules in order to carry out private desires that can be attained only by violating existing law. The County Counsel and the Sheriff need to make that clear, not back away from the issue.

Jared G. Carter

Ukiah

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SOUTH COAST BOON

Editor,

The Stornetta Public Lands have been a great boon to the south coast, and indeed to the whole county. Congressman Jared Huffman’s bill, HR 1411, would make the Stornetta Public Lands part of the California Coastal National Monument, bringing greater environmental protection while allowing continued low-level livestock grazing.

This bill is especially important in the light of ongoing efforts to add a large parcel to the existing Stornetta Lands. If the south coast ends up with miles of scenic Coastal Trail, it will be a good for our lifestyle, our economy and our children!

A threat to this dream has arisen in a set of amendments to the bill authored by Congressman Bishop of Utah. One amendment would block use of the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to purchase additional Monument lands, effectively killing the land acquisition projects now in the works.

Another amendment would make grazing an actual purpose of the National Monument. It would reduce the BLM’s discretionary authority while adding a pointless administrative burden. The Stornetta Lands already support livestock, and there is absolutely no need for this amendment.

Please contact Senators Boxer and Feinstein via their websites and ask them to work to get the Bishop amendments stripped from Huffman’s HR 1411:

https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me

http://www.boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfm

Sincerely,

Lori Hubbart

Point Arena

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STICK IT TO SKOLL

Editor,

You guys should take a nice little snapshot of that pipe sucking up our water and delivering it to Skoll’s “estate,” and file an official complaint with the County. It’s in violation of code, and the County could act on it if they had an official complaint and evidence. That’s if you actually want to stick it to ol’ Jeffrey. I’m not one for letting rich people do as they damn well please.

Name Withheld

San Francisco

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PEAK OIL BLUES

To the Editor of the Mighty AVA,

A response to Sheri Cronin’s letter to the editor in the June 5, AVA.

In a nation completely enthralled with the internal combustion engine in its many mobile forms no approval is needed to allow a gang of 500 yahoo dirt bikes to terrorize our streets and byways.

The gearhead culture is allowed to run amok with rallies and races, noise pollution and resource wasting with herd mania because these juvenile events help lay a very necessary a smokescreen over the looming facts of post-peak oil reality. The further into oil depletion we get, the louder and ruder all this horsepower denial will get.

Every year starting on Memorial Day the assault begins with the rude asshole loudpipe Harley morons. One of the ugly sounds of summer in Touristaville. Also the idiot oversized-tire small-mind loudpipe illiterates with the hog diesel pickups pulling big fat trailers for their big fat wives and kids. Off-road exhaust on a turbodiesel V8. Freedom of speech at its finest! Welcome to the nightmare of antisocial powerless gottabecool fools wielding rude motor vehicles in a last-ditch effort to kick back the stench of the dead horse that the internal combustion engine is.

Honestly, what future do these hoodwinked fools have to forge a new identity outside the prison of the crankshaft? Automania with its manifold destinies of interstates and highways, suburbs and parking malls, total incursions into public spaces, is a very convincing organization of personal motion for the juvenile, the nostalgic and the consumer as identity slave. What a pathetic and costly display these pimped out idiots in their chumpmobiles expressing themnonselves in carcult socializing rolling toward hell. Carbon fashion show. Oil war cheerleaders. Personal doom factories.

The main reason our county is open to gearhead invasion is that we live in a country totally hoodwinked on private engine tyranny. A country with criminally degenerate public transportation. A culture of narcissism is the collateral damage required to sell cars while undermining a sane and civilized public transportation system.

The main reason vehicle code violations such as mufflerless Harleys, off-road mufflers on diesels and 4×4 rock-throwing idiot tires hanging out of fenders will never be enforced is a lack of concern for the quality of life for us common folk by federal and state governments.

Another very local reason is that regardless of vehicle codes and the great potential for violation revenue, enforcement isn’t going to happen because too many of the officers responsible for keeping idiot morons in compliance are themselves macho giantruck jerks and juvenile in your face types.

Rather than open our County up to dipshit movies and rude chump tourism, wouldn’t intelligent county supervision enforce noise pollution laws and put us on the map as a place to come for civilized people who actually want to get away from asshole rude-is-cool fools in their egomania machines?

Or maybe I’m waxing idealistic delusion here. Maybe tourism in Mendocino would collapse if word got out that rude is not welcome here. Of course, we have more than enough rude humans here already, don’t we? Maybe as a society the majority of people are already so abused by constant noise and ugly that there simply are not enough of us left to practice civility who don’t already live out here for that very reason.

If Mendocino were a progressive county, noise pollution and moron culture would be unwelcome here. From billionaire Lear-jets to petty loudpipe illiterates: Go somewhere else! Dream on and good luck!

Marvin Blake

Albion

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A LITTLE MORE TRUTH

Dear AVA,

First of all I’d like to thank you for your honest editorials and your commitment to honoring the truth. I wish more media sources were as dedicated to realism. My name is R. Hollis Bullard and I am currently a prisoner in California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s CTF Soledad institution. I am attending college and I have found my new passion in life — writing. It’s like my eyes have been opened for the first time and clarity is at an all-time high. I must be honest with you, I am a little nervous to share my poetry, but I would like to see if it can help anyone or maybe inspire someone like I have been. Also, I would like the AVA’s honest input on my writing. Being judged by literary professionals would let me know where I stand. This poem is called “Khonsu.” It means moon in Egyptian and I hope you like it.

* * *

She speaks, she speaks to me from outside my window

She speaks of majestic peace and a promise tomorrow

Of beauty so pleasantly remarkable that I could never fully receive it

She speaks all the mysteries of the breathtaking blue Venus

She says it’s all right to cry even at the death of a flower

Because that too deserves all the tears of life

She speaks of reflection and says, “one who seeks himself

must first objectively and completely lose himself”

I hang nervously on the twilight of her every blessed word

Like a small child at bedtime in awe of her, she that speaks to me

She tells me I’m an “old soul” yet I feel like an infant

In her extraordinary presence with her all knowing gaze

I tell her I haven’t seen near enough and she whispers in my ear,

“You will give it time and you will see it all…”

— R. Hollis Bullard

* * *

That’s pretty much it for now him. I have a bunch more if you’re interested and if not, I understand. I would still really appreciate your input and I’m open to all mail! If anyone would like to share poetry with me feel free to print my address. Thank you once again for your time and your commitment to the moral side of media!

Sincerely,

Ralph Hollis Bullard AM4454

CTF North WB 302-U

PO Box 705

Soledad, CA 93960

PS. If by some miracle you decide to print my poem please send me a copy of the issue.

Ed note: A little hackneyed, too unreflective of contemporary male-female relationships. But not bad for a beginner, and poetry like most things, gets better the more you do it. Try writing exactly what you’re seeing there. The closer you get to the truth of things, the better your creative work will be. Get an anthology of modern American poetry out of the prison library. You’ll see what the standards are.

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DEBT’S WORSE THAN NUKES

Editor,

This letter of mine is about our country’s obsession with North Korea and Iran in that they are a threat to us by building nuclear weapons. North Korea is surrounded by China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, among other close by Asian nations. Nobody wants to see any other country build nuclear weapons, but these surrounding countries being close have more disputes with each other, but they don’t seem to be that worried of anybody starting a nuclear war.

Then we have Iran surrounded by Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and all of Europe not far away and they all seem to be not that worried.

When one considers that we spend more money than all the rest of the world combined on military, since World War II we have not had a major war. Why? Since for years we had a Cold War with our major adversary Russia. The great difference is that the head honchos of all countries realize that in a nuclear war there is no place to hide and they would disappear like the rest of us. With our arsenal of nuclear weapons we would obliterate a country and maybe the world.

The point of all this is that we have spent ourselves into a hole. We could have a big defense force for one quarter of the amount we are spending and probably still be the biggest military establishment in the world. This is one big way we could cut down our national debt. We are a huge powerful nation, but nobody or country can pile on debt like we are and have been doing without a financial holocaust.

It all boils down to out of control campaign contributions, and the demands that those who give the money expect and get their demands. If you’ve read the newspapers recently several of our big cities have joined the financial holocaust.

Emil Rossi

Boonville

THE MENDOCINO COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE has formally identified the victim of a shooting near a Spy Rock Road pot garden as Upper Lake resident Hugo Olea-Lopez, 23. Olea-Lopez was found dead of a single gunshot wound to the torso on Monday, June 17. The Sheriff’s department believes he had been camping and tending about 300 budding pot plants being grown in two temporary greenhouses. It remains unclear why or by whom he was killed, although an anonymous someone connected to the incident called a family member to report the slaying, leading to the discovery of his death. The pot plants in the vicinity appeared to have been cut prior to the arrival of investigators.

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A PROTESTER CALLING HIMSELF “Red Tail Hawk” climbed a huge construction crane on Wednesday to hang a banner saying “NO BYPASS.” The crane is the primary piece of equipment which is installing the incomprehensible 55,000 “wick drains” up to 150 feet deep which are supposed to somehow keep the earth under the bypass kinda dry by soaking up moisture and evaporating it. The process is experimental and hazardous to the general flow of water in Little Lake Valley. Red Tail Hawk’s crane occupation was part of a larger protest to block the wick-drain equipment comprising some 50 people, five of whom were arrested for trespassing. (Note: “Red Tail Hawk” is the nom de guerre of AVA contributor Will Parrish.) Among those arrested Wednesday was Naomi (not Namoi) Wagner.

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SAME OLD HAL. Hal Titen once rode high as a program director at the Mendocino Office of Education. In his off hours, which then and now is most of the time at MCOE for its laughably overlarge cadre of administrators, Titen ran a bar on North State Street, Ukiah. He was tardily arrested when an underage girl revealed that Titen was using school video equipment to make pornographic films featuring her in the back room of his bar. The video equipment had been purchased by MCOE for instructional use and for public television broadcasting for inland Mendocino County, which was also run by Titen. MCOE had glommed on to public tv and, as we now know, Titen, whose idea of dynamic viewing was NASA weather photos, killed it at inception.

TITEN was subsequently packed off to the State Pen on a chomo conviction, a condition of which is mandatory registration as a sex offender. A month ago, Titen was arrested and booked into the County Jail for failing to register. And here he is again in and out of jail for failing to register or a related offense. It will be interesting to see if the judge lets him slide. Again.

MCOE has been a sleazy operation for many years, having veered from the paths of righteousness in the early 1970s under the late Lou Delsol. Delsol hired Titen, another crook named Jack Ward, and present superintendent, Paul Tichinin, who worked under Titen. These people, of course, hire people like themselves, and their net effect on the Mendo educational effort has been baleful, as versions of Tichinin occupy the high-pay edu-slots everywhere in the County. You don’t have to look farther than Mendoland to understand why California’s public schools are among the worst in the nation.

ALLOW ME to break this particular record one more time: The Mendocino County Office of Education doesn’t do a single thing that the individual school districts of Mendocino County could not do better and cheaper — for those things that really need to be done. MCOE is a relic of the 19th century when it served as a hiring hall for vast Mendocino’s one-room schoolhouses. Then it did payroll for the County’s individual school districts, but remained small with the Superintendent and the usual several intelligent women doing the real work of paymaster. But then, when all kinds of nebulously aimed (and unsupervised) state and federal dough rolled out to MCOE headquarters in Talmage beginning in the early 1970s, MCOE metatasized to the massive scam we see out there today.

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Chesbro

MEANWHILE IN SACRAMENTO, Wes Chesbro et al, from the governor through all the state’s officeholders, will get 5% pay raises beginning in December, putting most of them at an average take of $95,000 a year.

They also get $141 per diem which some selfless souls choose not to take.

And nice health insurance policies covering them and their families.

State legislators, however, don’t get retirement.

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DEBBIE L. HOLMER, archivist of the Fort Bragg Advocate, remembers that 102 years ago, June 20th, 1911, “Jack London, the celebrated novelist, accompanied by his wife and a Japanese servant, drove into town behind four little ponies. The North Bay Counties Association has engaged this prominent writer to write an article for Sunset Magazine, boosting the resources of the seven counties. After a short visit, Mr. London left for Eureka Tuesday afternoon and intends to make a complete tour of the seven counties collecting data for his articles. This makes Jack’s second visit to Fort Bragg. He passed through here on horseback for the first time shortly after the great earthquake and states that he is surprised to see the rapid strides of improvement our little city has made in the last few years.”

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IS THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT FAILING TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS? Anabel Hernandez Thinks So, And Fears For Her Life

By Jason McGahan

Hernandez

Anabel Hernandez is one of the most decorated journalists in Mexico, and currently reports for the weekly news magazine Proceso and the online magazine Reporte Indigo. She’s been on the radar of the most powerful corrupt law enforcement officials in the country since at least 2008, when she published her first expose on Genaro Garcia Luna, the head of Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI and then-president Felipe Calderone’s right-hand man in the drug war. She revealed he owned lavish homes and vast amounts of property that far exceeded what could be bought with the salary of a humble public servant.

She followed that up, in 2010, with Los Senores del Narco, a 588-page history of the Mexican drug mafia that exposed, in exhaustive detail, the crimes of Garcia Luna and his inner circle of corrupt officials. (That book is being translated into English by Verso Press and will be available in September under the title Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers.) Sources in the federal police warned her soon afterward that Mexico’s top cop was plotting to have her murdered and make it look like an accident.

Anabel alerted the authorities in Mexico City, and they’ve been providing her and her two children with 24-hour armed protection ever since—until now, that is. On April 26, she received a letter from the government of Mexico City informing her that her armed escort would be revoked at some point in June (no date was specified in the letter). Her protection, she was told, will become the responsibility of the same federal police whose top officials she believes are the ones behind the death threats and attacks against her life, not to mention the jailing, intimidation, and in some cases even assassination of her sources.

I recently reached her by telephone in Los Angeles, where she was on tour to promote her newest book, Mexico en Llamas: El Legado de Calderon (“Mexico in Flames: The Legacy of Felipe Calderon”), and asked her about the danger she’s in and the Mexican government’s total lack of effort to protect journalists like her. [Interview has been translated from Spanish.]

VICE: Could you tell me about the threats made against you because of your work?


Anabel Hernandez: In 2008 I began investigating a clique of Mexican police officers, all with more than 20 years of service, who are deeply implicated in criminal activities like kidnapping and drug trafficking. Since then, I’ve been targeted by this group of cops headed by Genaro Garci Luna, Luis Cardenas Palomino, and Facundo Rosas Rosas.

The first thing they did was threaten to kill me and incarcerate those who were my sources of information. I was publishing, for example, investigations into the criminal past of Luis Cardenas Palomino, who was one of the main chiefs of police in Felipe Calderon’s government. I also published stories about the homes and properties that Genaro Garcia Luna owned and how far beyond his policeman’s salary they were. Plenty of people say that that money came to him from organized crime. I also published items about how federal police officers, on orders from Garcia Luna, carried out kidnappings, like in the well-known case of Fernando Marti, the [14-year-old] hostage who was murdered in 2008. The policemen who kidnapped him were very close to Garcia Luna. They worked for the federal police directly, in the anti-kidnapping unit. Only instead of preventing kidnappings, they carried them out.

All of those investigations that I published over the course of five years made these corrupt policemen very angry. Then in 2010 I published Los Senores del Narco. In December 2010, I got a tip from police sources of mine who warned me of a plot being hatched to have me killed. One of my sources told me that he had just come from a meeting in which Garcia Luna tried assigning members of a federal police unit to carry out my assassination and faking an accident or kidnapping or robbery—they’d kill me and in exchange he was going to give them better salaries and higher posts in the government. Thanks to that tip I had enough time to protect myself—if I hadn’t found out from the policeman, I certainly wouldn’t be here now. I’d be just another journalist executed in Mexico. When I got that tip, I immediately brought a complaint to the National Commission on Human Rights, and the human rights commission went with me to the office of the district attorney in Mexico City, which opened a case file and quickly assigned me an armed security detail.

I’ve lived with bodyguards 24 hours a day for the past two years. It’s what has allowed me to keep working and remain safe.

In January 2011, two men aimed pistols at my daughters. They threatened my family with guns—not stealing anything, mind you, because the only purpose was to terrorize them. The message became clear to me after that night. It was: we can do whatever we want, whenever we want, to whatever it is you care about the most. My family has lived under armed guard ever since that attack to protect their lives.

Over the past two years I myself have also been physically threatened. For example, at a restaurant in January 2010 I was accosted by a man wearing a hoodie. My bodyguards had to rush in and get me out of there. I managed to take a photo of the man who threatened me and chased after me, but the authorities didn’t investigate it any further.

In May of 2012 a source of mine was kidnapped and tortured by the federal authorities in order to force him to make false accusations against me. Other sources of mine have been jailed, still others have been murdered. And I get word from people who are close to Garcia Luna that he hasn’t given up his plan to have me killed. I’ve been informed that Garcia Luna has commented to more than one person that I was his worst enemy, that he was going to get rid of me. And to be honest, it’s not a fair fight. I’m just a journalist. This man is one of the most powerful men in Mexico—because he is so corrupt, because he is the leader of a group of corrupt police that has been around for 20 years. And basically I’ve gone beyond trying to comprehend it. I am incapable of understanding how a public servant can think that a journalist and her pen are more dangerous than all of the cartels he’s supposedly combating.

What’s your opinion on the procedures that are in place to protect journalists in Mexico?


My experience with the whole process has been terrible. Now I understand why they keep killing journalists in Mexico, and why others choose to flee the country. The money spent on paying for it is money wasted. On April 26, I went to a meeting with the Secretary of the Interior and I criticized the process for its lack of commitment. [The government seems to think] that the law enforces itself, without any effort necessary from the men and women sworn to enforce it. It has become clear to me that the [Journalist Protection Program] is being used simply to put on a show for the outside world. It’s a means to save face internationally. Keeping up international relations is more important than addressing freedom of expression.

It’s obvious to me that these government institutions are only good for simulating a concern for journalists’ lives. But the truth is that my case put them to the test, and now I have a better understanding of what the rest of my colleagues are facing. The procedures in place for protecting journalists are nothing more than the appearance of concern, because this government—not the outgoing government of Felipe Calderon, not the incoming government of Enrique Pena Nieto—has no interest in either solving the murders of journalists or protecting them while they continue working in the country. I’m worried because they know that my life is in danger and even so they want to take away my security detail. I’m worried that the real objective is to force me to flee the country—because how convenient would it be for everyone if a journalist who asks tough questions, who won’t shut her mouth, were forced to run away crying to another country instead of continuing the struggle for freedom of expression and continuing to publish in Mexico?

I’m not leaving Mexico. If something happens to me and I become another name on the long list of murdered journalists, it won’t be because of any failure of mine, but the failure of the Mexican government that refused to protect me. It’s an institution, a whole government, that can’t even protect its journalists—it’s not that it can’t, but that it doesn’t want to.

What is the extent of the security provided to you by the Journalist Protection Program? 


The bodyguards I have are from the district attorney’s office in Mexico City. That is the only tangible, real, concrete benefit I’ve received from any ministry in the Mexican government. That’s why I was requesting that they please not take them away from me, because that’s the only thing that has kept me in Mexico in recent years in spite of the death threats. I’ve been physically targeted in the past two years, my family has been attacked, and more threats have come recently. I think the plots to harm me establish there is a clear danger in removing my police protection. That’s why it’s important that I keep it. As for the agency headed run the federal government, they haven’t followed up on any leads. The only thing they’ve given me is a so-called panic button that is nothing more than a telephone number to call if someone is trying to kidnap me or shooting at me. It does nothing to aid in the pursuit of the attackers, it does nothing to protect me, and nothing to prevent the attack. The panic button’s only purpose is that if I’m being attacked, killed, or kidnapped, snatched off the street like so many thousands have been in Mexico, I can call that phone number if I have the chance—though of course if [the attackers] take the phone out of my hands I won’t have anything to call with. What I mean to say is that the protection program is a joke, and the whole world might as well know it.

Why are they removing your security detail?


I should say that I entered into the Journalist Protection Program last March at the suggestion of the Secretary of the Interior, which came after the district attorney’s office in Mexico City recused itself, after two years, from the investigation into the threats and the assassination plots against my life. So my case ended up in the hands of the [federal] office of the attorney general.

I should also point out that by then I had already filed a criminal complaint against Genaro Garcia Luna as the culprit in the threats made against my family in 2011, independently of the complaint I’d brought to Mexico City authorities in 2010. When the Mexico City authorities recused themselves from my case, and the whole investigation shifted over to the federal authorities, I asked the attorney general’s office to show me my file for the first time. That was how I learned firsthand that the attorney general’s office hadn’t lifted a finger to investigate my case in a year and a half. Nothing. They hadn’t investigated a thing, hadn’t interviewed a single person, hadn’t even followed up on the leads that I had given them about people who had harassed me. So to enroll in the Journalist Protection Program was my only option.

If the Mexico City authorities take away my security detail, all that the federal government has to offer me is protection from the federal police, which is stupid, illogical, and absurd in the extreme—these are the same federal police who are under the command of Garcia Luna. They’re delivering my head into the hands of those that most want me dead. To me, protection from the federal police is not an option. So I’m asking for the Mexico City police to continue providing for my protection.

The Journalist Protection Program was supposed to clear up this situation. At a meeting on April 26 attended by the Secretary of the Interior, the Mexico City government, the UN, the office of the attorney general, and the protection program itself, they vowed to continue providing for my protection, leaving only the investigation in the hands of the federal authorities. However, the protection program informed me a week ago by mail that it was going to withdraw my security detail in June, without telling me what day or time. And this in spite of the fact that the same protection program acknowledged—this was told to me over the phone by its director, Juan Carlos Gutierrez—“Anabel, your level of risk, according to our assessment, is high.”

To me it indicates one of two things: either the federal government wants me dead or wants me gone. And of course neither of those options is viable to me.

What conclusions should we draw from your experience with the Journalist Protection Program?


I know based on what I have lived through that the federal government doesn’t care about punishing those who make threats against journalists. The government has no interest in putting in prison the assassins who murder journalists. The government that allows this to happen is as guilty as whoever ends up pulling the trigger. I’m not sure I’m making myself clear: The government, if it wanted to, could lock up every murderer of every one of the 90 journalists killed in the past 12 years. The government, if it wanted to, could scare Garcia Luna, put him in jail for all the threats and for all the harm he’s caused in the past five years. It doesn’t do so because it doesn’t want to. It prefers a dead journalist to a corrupt policeman in prison. (Courtesy, vice.com)

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A READER WRITES: “I got this notice from Blue Shield last week and don’t really know what to make of it, other than giggle nervously. Obviously, it does not apply to me. The notice is from Jeff Smith, VP & General Manager of Individual and Family Plans, Blue Shield of California, 50 Beale Street, San Francisco, CA 94105, and is dated April 22, 2013: ‘I am writing to provide you with information about a change to the Policy for your health plan effective July 1, 2013. Due to a mandate from the California Department of Insurance, coverage for medical services related to gender transition will not be denied if coverage is available for those services when not related to gender transition. Health services that are ordinarily available to individuals of only one sex will not be denied solely due to the fact the person is enrolled as the other sex. Enclosed is an endorsement to your policy which clarifies this change. For future reference, please keep this endorsement with the Policy that was in the Blue Shield plan updates book we recently mailed to you. If you have questions, please contact our Customer Service representative at the number listed on your member ID card’.”

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ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTS: A panel of federal judges on Thursday rejected Gov. Jerry Brown‘s attempt to circumvent its long-standing order for reducing California’s prison population, the latest step in an ongoing legal drama over how to improve inmates’ medical and mental health care inmates.

Brown quickly announced that he will ask the courts to stay what he called an “unprecedented order to release almost 10,000 inmates by the end of this year.” The governor already filed notice that he intends to appeal the latest order to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The judges stopped just short of citing the Democratic governor for contempt of court, but again threatened to do so if he does not immediately comply with their latest order.

The plan submitted by the Brown administration in May to further reduce the inmate population failed to meet the judges’ mandate because it fell short of the court-ordered population cap by 2,300 inmates, the judges said in their 51-page order. That previous population reduction order has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The judges reiterated in their sharply worded ruling that the governor must comply with the original order to reduce the population to 110,000 inmates by the end of the year. They ordered Brown to take all the steps he outlined in May, as well as one more step — the expansion of good-time credits leading to early release. Brown had offered that as an option, but it was not one he was willing to embrace.

The governor’s plan for getting closer to the required level called for sending more inmates to firefighting camps, leasing cells at county jails, slowing the return of thousands of inmates now housed in private prisons in other states, increasing early release credits for nonviolent inmates and paroling elderly felons.

The judges ordered the administration to implement all the measures regardless of whether they conflict with state or local laws.

At issue is how far the state must go in reducing its inmate population to meet a previous court order to improve medical and mental health treatment. The courts have said that prison overcrowding is the main cause of care that fails to meet the constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.

The order leaves Brown with no more excuses, said Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office and one of the lead attorneys representing inmates’ welfare.

“The court’s order is absolutely essential to maintaining prison conditions that protect prisoners from serious illness and death due to inadequate health care,” Specter said. The court had no choice because Brown and Democrats who control the state Legislature were refusing to comply with its previous orders, he said.

However, the judges offered the state some flexibility in how it complies.

The administration can revise the expanded good-time credit program, so long as the changes still result in the required population reduction. It can also pick and choose among inmates, substituting those who are deemed less likely to commit new crimes for riskier convicts who would otherwise be released early. Or, it can pick any other measure that was previously on the administration’s list of options.

But if the population goal is not met through other means by Dec. 31, “defendants shall release the necessary number of prisoners to reach that goal” by using a list of lower-risk inmates that the state has previously said it could develop.

Though Brown argues otherwise, the court has found that “there is no public safety issue” with the earlier releases, said Michael Bien, the lead attorney representing mentally ill inmates.

The state has reduced its prison population by more than 46,000 inmates since 2006, with more than half the decrease due to a 2-year-old state law that is sentencing lower-level criminals to county jails instead of state prisons. But the population remains about 9,400 inmates over the level required by the courts.

The state has said it can whittle the population further by the end of the year but would remain 2,300 inmates over the court-ordered number.

The administration said it is doing everything it can under California law, but that Brown’s reluctantly adopted plan had little support from state lawmakers. Specter said Thursday’s ruling removes that obstacle.

The judges warned Brown in April that he could no longer ignore its orders. They opted in their latest order not to cite Brown for contempt, though they said they would be well justified if they were to “institute contempt proceedings immediately.”

They decided to delay a contempt citation until they see if the state complies with their new order. However, they warned that failing to comply now with the latest order “shall constitute an act of contempt.” (Courtesy, the Associated Press)

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MENDOCINO COUNTY’S DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH IS WARNING that anyone “who may have consumed berry smoothies from A Frame Espresso in Fort Bragg, which, until a June 4 recall, had been making blended drinks with a berry mix linked to an outbreak of hepatitis A,” that they may be in danger of Hepatitis A. A fruit-blend sold by Costco has been identified as contaminated. A Frame Espresso had bought the recalled Organic Antioxidant Blend frozen berry mix produced by Townsend Farms and sold at Costco stores around the west. A Frame had immediately stopped using the blend when its recall was announced. Hepatitis A has a long incubation period. Anyone who bought an A Frame smoothie between March 4 and June 8 of this year, County Health warns, “should watch for jaundiced, or yellowing, skin or eyes, fatigue, abdominal pain, abnormal liver tests, dark urine and pale stool.

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STATE LAW PRESENTLY says that requests for public records  must be responded to within 10 days, and the requestor must get a response if the government agency needs more time or is rejecting the request. AB76 would make compliance optional.

WHICH MEANS to us media people, especially those of us regarded as enemy aliens, that local government agencies would simply either ignore our requests or reject them without explanation.

THERE’S BEEN A HUGE hullabaloo rightly raised by media that the present access regs not be tampered with. Assembly Speaker John Perez said last Wednesday he will see to it that this sneak attack on public access would not succeed. “To be clear,” Perez said, “this means that the California Public Records Act will remain intact without any changes…”

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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 to 8:00 p.m. 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.

ABOUT 50 BYPASS PROTESTERS began to impede wick drain installation in a field (aka former wetland) along the northern end of the bypass construction zone on Wednesday. The California Highway Patrol called for their usual battalions of reinforcements after observing the obstructing protesters for awhile. Five of them — Danielle Fristoe, 24, and Patricia Kovner, 72, of Laytonville; Naomi Wagner, 67, and Freddie Long, 67, of Willits; and Chad A. Kemp, 21, of Eureka, were arrested for trespassing.

ON THURSDAY, AVA Contributor Will Parrish (aka Red Tail Hawk) climbed more than halfway up the 100-foot metal scaffolding of one the “stitchers,” aka a wick-drain installer, stopping wick drain installation. CHP was unable to get the Hawk down on the spot after they noticed that he had locked himself to the machine with a cable protected by a pipe.

PHIL FRISBIE, Caltrans spokesman, tells Glenda Anderson of the Press Democrat that the Willits Bypass protests “have cost taxpayers about $1.2 million since April.” Faithfully regurgitating Frisbie’s unsupported statements, Glenda writes that “the protests have cost the state $100,000 for paying workers sidelined by the protests, $160,000 for building a temporary access road to remove tree sitters and about $935,000 for law enforcement to remove tree sitters.”

ON THE OFF CHANCE that the ineffable Frisbie’s figures are more or less accurate, and although the handful of protesters prompted the police response, were so many cops really necessary to deal with less than fifty harmless demonstrators? What if the security masterminds had decided to call out the National Guard? Would that cost be the responsibility of the protesters too?

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THE DREADS HAVE LANDED. The Sierra Nevada World Music Festival packs them in every year, and Mendocino County’s most happening venue, Boonville, is radiating peace, love and good vibrations as Mendo’s very own rasta-groover, Sister Yasmin would say. Our fair town will be so crowded with fans of Bob Marley’s son(s) on Saturday and Sunday that lots of people will be parking (and camping) beyond our civic center at Boonville High School. Pedicabs are expected to be much in evidence, and second hand smoke from the holy herb the dominant scent. Many locals will be able to enjoy the music, whether they want to or not, as the reggae sounds accompanied by congas and cowbells intermingle with the mind-altering fumes long into the night.

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COASTAL REPORTER FRANK HARTZELL deserves some credit for getting some action taken to clean up a petroleum spewing wall owned by Caltrans near the Navarro River estuary. Hartzell got Mendocino County’s Environmental Health department to issue an abatement order to Caltrans based on a finding that the leaky wall was a public nuisance. Trey Strickland, a County Environmental Health supervisor wrote to Caltrans, “I’m writing to inform Caltrans that the abandoned asphalt emulsion oil present at Hwy 128 Post Mile 0.16 constitutes a public nuisance that requires additional mitigation to be considered fully abated. Per Mendocino County Code, it is a public nuisance to maintain property in such a manner … To abate this violation of Mendocino County Code, remove and properly dispose of the remaining asphalt emulsion oil no later than August 2, 2013.” It’s very likely that when Caltrans is seen to have done nothing when August 2 rolls around Hartzell will be right back on the case.

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PERVS ALWAYS FIND A WAY. A Fort Bragg man was arrested Tuesday for allegedly touching a woman inappropriately during a pedicure, the Fort Bragg Police Department reported. According to the FBPD, a 23-year-old Fort Bragg woman reported shortly before 1pm on June 18 that she was groped by a man giving her a pedicure at the “My Beautiful Nails” salon on East Redwood Avenue. The woman told responding officers the suspect, identified as Anhtuan Nguyen, 24, of Fort Bragg, had slid his hand under her pants and rubbed the inside of her thigh during her pedicure. She reported the incident to the owner of the business, then called the police. When officers spoke with Nguyen, he reportedly admitted touching the woman in a sexual manner. He was arrested on suspicion of sexual battery and later cited and released.

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THE COUNTY’S RETIREMENT BOARD continues to refuse to lower their highly optimistic expected rate of return on their investments. On Wednesday Board member and investment maverick Ted Stephens suggested lowering the currently projected 7.75% to a more realistic 7.5% or lower (to a rate that more accurately reflects what the future revenues and value stock market values will be. The problem with lowering the expected rate of return is that the County and the pensioners would have to pony up more in the short run to make up whatever difference might result from the lower return assumptions. The current retirement board is mostly made up of representatives of the County and the pensioners who are not inclined to bump up their contributions in the wake of a lower revenue projection. The green-eyeshaders point out that not lowering the revenue projections will just postpone the inevitable as the “unfunded pension liability” grows larger and larger. But the County and the pensioners all say they need the money now and can’t afford to put more into the pension fund via lowering the projected revenues.

STUDIES HAVE SHOWN that most county pensions are modest and reasonable considering the time most pensioners put in. But a small percentage of higher paid pensioners (and some current employees in the same high pay range) have skewed their own pension levels artificially high by not only engineering high pay raises for themselves while on the government payroll, but also by various well-documented salary and benefit tricks to bump up their own pensions at the end of their careers. It’s not fair to harp simply on interest rates and make everybody pay more now simply because a few high paid pensioners have gamed the system to their advantage. But since the high pensions were obtained legally, the only solution, if a solution is even possible, may be to take more money from County coffers and current employees at all pay grades. It’s an upside-down formula favoring high paid insiders that seems to dominate almost all financial problems these days.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES published a story Friday on the environmental damage caused by marijuana growers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/us/marijuana-crops-in-california-threaten-forests-and-wildlife.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

In it, Gary Graham Hughes of EPIC says, “There is an identity crisis going on right now…The people who are really involved with [the marijuana] industry are trying to understand what their responsibilities are.” The article looks into many marijuana growing issues that have been covered locally — rodenticide, erosion, and water diversion. Interestingly though the piece leans heavily on the problems associated with marijuana growing, it does end with the idea that the industry has “begun to police itself.” The conclusion notes the Best Management Practices manual and the program that works with people to install water storage. According to the Times, law enforcement hasn’t been very effective against the worst offenders. The article states, “Federal environmental agents, including Mr. Roy and Mr. Job, have brought two cases to the United States Attorney’s office in San Francisco. The office declined to prosecute a case last year, they said. A new one is under review. But, they said, manpower for enforcement is limited.” With articles like this happening more frequently, will the increasing notice the wider world is taking of the environmental impacts of growing marijuana cause the government to take more notice also? (— Kym Kemp, Courtesy LostCoastOutpost.com)

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: Regarding the ongoing heat wave in Alaska, “The melt in Greenland and the high temperatures in Alaska may be more signs—like we needed more—of the reality of climate change. Even scarier is the fact that the climate models used before didn’t predict this sort of thing. The climate is very complex, and it’s hard to model it accurately. This is well-known and is why it’s so hard to make long-term predictions. But before the deniers crow that climatologists don’t know what they’re doing, note this well: The predictions made using these models almost always seem to underestimate the effects of climate change. That’s true in this case, too. So it’s not that the models are wrong and therefore climate change doesn’t exist. It’s that the models aren’t perfect, and it’s looking like things are worse than we thought.” (Slate, on-line magazine)

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CORPORATIZING NATIONAL SECURITY

What It Means

by Ralph Nader

Privacy is a sacred word to many Americans, as demonstrated by the recent uproar over the brazen invasion of it by the Patriot Act-enabled National Security Agency (NSA). The information about dragnet data-collecting of telephone and internet records leaked by Edward Snowden has opened the door to another pressing conversation—one about privatization, or corporatization of this governmental function.

In addition to potentially having access to the private electronic correspondence of American citizens, what does it mean that Mr. Snowden—a low-level contractor—had access to critical national security information not available to the general public? Author James Bamford, an expert on intelligence agencies, recently wrote: “The Snowden case demonstrates the potential risks involved when the nation turns its spying and eavesdropping over to companies with lax security and inadequate personnel policies. The risks increase exponentially when those same people must make critical decisions involving choices that may lead to war, cyber or otherwise.”

This is a stark example of the blurring of the line between corporate and governmental functions. Booz Allen Hamilton, the company that employed Mr. Snowden, earned over $5 billion in revenues in the last fiscal year, according to The Washington Post. The Carlyle Group, the majority owner of Booz Allen Hamilton, has made nearly $2 billion on its $910 million investment in “government consulting.” It is clear that “national security” is big business.

Given the value and importance of privacy to American ideals, it is disturbing how the terms “privatization” and “private sector” are deceptively used. Many Americans have been led to believe that corporations can and will do a better job handling certain vital tasks than the government can. Such is the ideology of privatization. But in practice, there is very little evidence to prove this notion. Instead, the term “privatization” has become a clever euphemism to draw attention away from a harsh truth. Public functions are being handed over to corporations in sweetheart deals while publicly owned assets such as minerals on public lands and research development breakthroughs are being given away at bargain basement prices.

These functions and assets—which belong to or are the responsibility of the taxpayers—are being used to make an increasingly small pool of top corporate executives very wealthy. And taxpayers are left footing the cleanup bill when corporate greed does not align with the public need.

With this in mind, let us not mince words. “Privatization” is a soft term. Let us call the practice what it really is—corporatization.

There’s big money to be made in moving government-owned functions and assets into corporate hands. Public highways, prisons, drinking water systems, school management, trash collection, libraries, the military and now even national security matters are all being outsourced to corporations. But what happens when such vital government functions are performed for big profit rather than the public good?

Look to the many reports of waste, fraud, and abuse that arose out of the over-use of corporate contractors in Iraq. At one point, there were more contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than U.S. soldiers. Look to the private prisons, which make their money by incarcerating as many people as they can for as long as they can. Look to privatized water systems, the majority of which deliver poorer service at higher costs than public utility alternatives. Visit privatizationwatch.org for many more examples of the perils, pitfalls and excesses of rampant, unaccountable corporatization.

In short, corporatizing public functions does not work well for the public, consumers and taxpayers who are paying through the nose.

Some right-wing critics might view government providing essential public services as “socialism,” but as it now stands, we live in a nation increasingly comprised of corporate socialism. There is great value in having public assets and functions that are already owned by the people, to be performed for the public benefit, and not at high profit margins and prices for big corporations. By allowing corporate entities to assume control of such functions, it makes profiteering the central determinant in what, how, and why vital services are rendered.

Just look at the price of medicines given to drug companies by taxpayer-funded government agencies that discovered them.

(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.)

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THE ALBION LITTLE RIVER FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT & the Albion Little River Fire Auxiliary present our 52nd annual BBQ and fundraiser.  Come join us at the Little River fairgrounds by the airport Saturday, July 13, 12-5 pm. $15 Adult, $10 ages 6-11, under 6 free.  We will be serving beef tri-tip, smoked chicken and vegan tamales. Enjoy good food and live music throughout the afternoon. We’ve got lots of new firefighters – come meet us! Spend the day with family and friends and support your Local Fire Department.  Featuring Music with the: The Groovenators Stellar Baby including Jon Faurot, Butch Kwan, Buddy Stubbs, John Smith, & Steven Bates Solos by Jon and possibly Steven Three on the Tree  Additionally: – Display of classic cars and hot rods! – Display of CalStar & REACH air service vehicles, including the newest EC135 REACH helicopter  There will be children’s activities, so bring the kids!  Kids’ area with games, prizes, bounce house, & Smokey! Save the date!  Mark your calendars now! If you would like to donate baked goods, please contact Susy Kitahara at 937-3714. If you can’t attend but still want to support us, consider joining the Fire Auxiliary. Monthly meetings are held the third Tuesday of every month at 7 pm at the fire station behind the Albion Grocery. We look forward to seeing you. — Scott Roat, Mendocino

WHO SAYS we don’t benefit from the casinos? The Indian Gaming Special Distribution Fund, with a committee comprised of local elected officials looking on, has awarded $140,772.33 to all eight Mendocino County agencies that applied. According to Mr. Grim of the delighted Mendo CEO’s office, fire districts usually get the money, but this year the money’s spread around a little more.

THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE and the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office each received $39,637.06; the Hopland Fire Protection District received $13,795.69; the Long Valley Fire Protection District and the Redwood Valley-Calpella Fire Department each received $12,395.68; the Mendocino County Health and Human Services Agency received $3,500; and the Little Lake Fire Protection District received $2,800.

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FOR YEARS the soporific PBS NewsHour often perked up with some fine reporting on NorCal from Spencer Michaels, an excellent reporter with 30 years at PBS and KQED-TV.

But PBS has announced the end of its San Francisco-based bureau and Michaels is outtathere.

We all hope he’ll continue to report from this area somehow.

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CONTROVERSIAL LAKE COUNTY Sheriff Frank Rivero didn’t like the way the Lake County News was reporting on his serial, high profile hijinks so he stopped talking to them, even refusing to include Lake County News among his press release recipients. Lake County News sued, and now Lake County’s taxpayers are on the hook for $110,990 in attorney’s fees for the on-line newspaper. Visiting judge J. Michael Byrne, ruling for Lake County News, stated the obvious: “It’s a reporter’s right to report the news without retaliation.”

THE AVA lost a similar suit some years ago when the “liberals” on the Mendo Board of Supervisors retaliated against us for rightly pointing out their many deficiencies. We won a jury trial with the jury finding in less than an hour that we’d been the victims of lib thuggery, and leave it to the libs to use public cover and public money to do their dirty work for them. But we lost on appeal, which I believe was due to, well, it’s over, we got screwed, and that was that.

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PEOPLE WITH PILES OF MONEY that they don’t know what to do with because ordinary bank interest rates are essentially zero these days, mainly think that loaning it to someone at as high an interest rate as they can is the easiest way to make more money. And there are lots of middlemen and middlewomen out there who are always looking at creative, not to say very complicated and risky, ways of lending it out. At the same time, these monied people don’t want to take any risk; they know that the already fragile economy could tank at any minute and borrowers, who are only now starting to recover from the 2008 crash, could start defaulting in droves again.

LOCALLY there are several piles of money looking for people to loan it to. “Public banking” has become a popular idea among some local liberals and the remnant of the local “occupiers.” Others occasionally suggest that Mendo should do some local lending with the County’s “local agency investment fund.” And on June 11, the Board of Supervisors considered implementing a “PACE” (Property Assessed Clean Energy) program. A PACE program involves a homeowner borrowing money from a bank or other lending institution for energy or water conservation or solar energy upgrades and then paying it back through a special tax administrated by a specialty PACE contractor overseen by the County. In theory, the PACE program has lots of obvious benefits: It would create jobs for energy saving and solar companies, it would save some energy and money for homeowners, and it would reduce risks of loan defaults by enforcing the loan repayment with tax laws.

THE STICKLER in all of these programs is that Mendocino County would be burdened with administering something that is much more complicated than they seem. And if they’re such a great idea — local jobs, energy saving, money saving, low risk — why does the County have to be involved at all? Mendo already has more than it can handle with its outdated and obsolete parcel tax computer program and the PACE program would add a whole new layer of complication to it, even if the PACE contractor handles the tax assessments for the individual property owners who might apply. In particular the PACE program would have to carefully navigate the extremely complicated tax and bank loan system that’s already in place because most home and business owners already have outstanding loans from whoever for whatever and local property-parcel taxes are imposed under a conflicting layer of overlapping fire, school, water, cemetery, hospital, and other special districts that have built up over the years making keeping track of who owes what to whom for what into near-nightmares, not to mention delinquencies, late payments, bankruptcies, foreclosures, deaths, relatives, probate court, ownership disputes, inheritance disputes, etc.

THE UPSHOT? Mendo shouldn’t try to get into the banking business or the PACE program until and unless the program can be simplified and properly and fairly administered by an independent board and competent staff. Since that’s not likely to happen, we think Mendo should stay out of the money/banking/loan business, and instead put pressure on the local banks and credit unions to come up with ways to do what they already should do: make decent low interest loans to promising startups or small-business expansions (for example, by requesting regular status reports on their commercial loan programs to the Board).

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Daly

HERE’S A STATEMENT OF REALITY we’ll never hear from any elected person in this country. This is a question from Clare Daly, member of the Irish Parliament who represents Dublin North (Independent/No party affiliation) during Leaders’ Questions last week to Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny while President Obama was visiting Ireland for the G-8 conference.

I think it’s important to take this opportunity to bring a bit of balance into the discussion surrounding the business of the US president and his wife here in Ireland, given the almost unprecedented slobbering over them that the nation has been exposed to over the last number of days. It’s very hard to know which is worse, whether it’s the outpouring of the Obamists themselves or the sycophantic falling over them by sections of the media and the political establishment. We’ve had separate and special news bulletins by the state broadcasting agency telling us what Michelle Obama and her daughters had for lunch in Dublin, but very little questioning of the fact that she was having lunch with Mr. Tax Exile himself. We had very little challenging of the fact that she’s glad to be home, calling a country that she’d been in for less than a week “home” and that her husband has very tenuous links to. And of course the biggest irony of all, the protestations of Obama himself in his speech to children in Northern Ireland about peace. He said, “Those who choose the path of peace, I promise you that the United States of America will support you every step of the way. We will be the wind at your back.” Now I ask you, is this person going for the Hypocrite of the Century Award? Because we have to call things by their right names. The reality is that by any serious examination this man is a war criminal. He has just announced his decision to supply arms to the Syrian opposition including the jihadists fueling the destabilization of that region and continuing to undermine secularism and better conditions for women. This is the man who is in essence stalling the Geneva peace talks by trying to broker enhanced leverage for the Syrian opposition by giving them arms and to hell with the thousands more who daily lose their lives or the tens of thousands more who are being displaced as this war goes on. This is the man who has facilitated a 200% increase in the use of drones which have killed thousands of people including hundreds of children. And you Taoiseach [Irish Prime Minister] are the one who has turned a blind eye on these activities. You have talked about the G-8 being an opportunity to showcase Ireland. But is it not a reality that you have showcased us as a nation of pimps, prostituting ourselves in return for a pat on the head? To be honest with you, we don’t need you speculating this morning on whether you were going to deck the cabinet out in leprechaun hats decorated with a bit of styrofoam stars and stripes to really demonstrate our abject humiliation here. My question to you, Taoiseach, is as follows: What steps are you going to take to follow in the correct statements and the correct decisions of your colleagues who voted against the lifting of the arms embargo in relation to Syria? What steps are you going to take to ensure that no weapons for Syria are going to go through Shannon Airport in breach of our international laws of neutrality? What steps are you going to take to showcase this country not as a lap dog of US imperialism, but as an independent nation with an independent foreign policy which takes a lead in international diplomacy to outlaw the use of drones, the favorite method of extermination of your friend, Mr. Obama?”

Kenny & Obama

The Irish Prime Minister didn’t respond directly but expressed his displeasure with Daly’s comments, saying, “I think your comments are disgraceful. I think they do down the pride of Irish people all over the world who are more than happy to see this island being host to the G8.”

Daly replied:

And of course, I said nothing about the Northern Ireland peace process which Mr. Obama mentioned, a process which everybody supports but which is not one which gives you a license to do whatever you like anywhere else around the globe. There isn’t much peace in Iraq where 26 people lost their lives yesterday. There isn’t much peace in Afghanistan. There isn’t much peace in Pakistan. And there certainly isn’t much peace in Syria. The side I am on in Syria and the one I agree with is a statement by Oxfam. Oxfam said: Sending arms to the Syrian opposition will not create a level playing field. Instead, it further risks fueling an arms free for all where the victims are the civilians of Syria. Our experience tells us that the crisis will only drag on far longer and longer if arms are poured in. And that in essence is what the Americans have done here. I can only take from your non-answer to the question that you were asked, that you will take no steps to ensure that those arms will not be sent through Shannon in breach of our neutrality. You said here last week that no arms ever came through Shannon. How do you know that? No investigation has taken place. The reality is that in 2012 548 US planes landed in Shannon. How do you know what was on them if you have not examined them? Your Minister for Transport revealed in a parliamentary question that 239 civilian planes landed in Shannon where they sought permission because they were carrying munitions of war or dangerous goods on a civilian aircraft. What steps are you going to take to intervene in this situation? And the last point I will make is that people in this country are very fond of our American brothers and sisters. I think we stand far more shoulder to shoulder with them by making valid criticisms of their president who has broken his election promises, rather than just pimping this nation as a tax haven for their corporations. I’m sure the Americans would far prefer that their multinational corporations pay their taxes at home rather than offshore here so that they could develop their health care and so they would not be wasting money on arms being sent to slaughter people in other countries.

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STATEMENT OF THE DAY: The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. — Edward Bernays, 1925

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A READER SENDS ALONG an April article from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette noting, “If you think it’s nuts in Northern California, look at this incident in Arkansas.”

Article appalls GOP leader; 2 quit posts. By Sarah D. Wire

The secretary of the Benton County Republican Party and her husband, a county GOP committee member, resigned Monday, days after placing an article in the organization’s newsletter calling for Arkansans to make “examples” of “turncoats” and “traitors” in the state Legislature who have “placed Arkansas firmly on the path to Socialism.” The article discusses the feasibility of shooting certain lawmakers and envisioned some as “bullet backstops.” The head of the County committee called the statements “abhorrent.”

The Arkansas State police reviewed the matter but determined Monday that the newsletter article and a series of purportedly threatening emails written by Chris Nogy of Lowell to state lawmakers were not serious enough to warrant an investigation, nor did a social media message from a different person that referred to shooting House speaker Davy Carter that was also sent over the weekend.

The Republican Party of Benton County’s April newsletter included an article that discussed shooting lawmakers who “step out of line.”

The article was written by Nogy, husband of the party’s secretary, Leigh Nogy. In the article, titled “Scathing,” Chris Nogy wrote that he is frustrated by some Republican members who voted on a plan to use federal MedicAid money to purchase private health insurance for 250,000 poor people. He said approving the bill helped implement the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

“The Second Amendment means nothing unless those in power believe you would have no problem simply walking up and shooting them if they got too far out of line and stopped responding as representatives,” Nogy wrote. “If we can’t shoot them, we have to at least be firm in our threat to take immediate action against them politically, socially and civically if they screw up on something this big. Personally, I think a gun is quicker and more merciful, but hey, we can’t.”

Known at the Capitol as the “private option” for Medicaid, the concept was one of the most contentious issues of the legislative session, pitting Republican legislators against one another over whether the state should willingly participate in the 2010 federal healthcare law that has remained divisive among Arkansans.

Benton County Party Chairman Tim Summers said by phone Monday that he asked for, and received, Chris and Leigh’s resignations. A number listed for the Nogys in the phone book was no longer in service. “It reflected poorly on our county for that to come out,” Summers, a former lawmaker, said.

He said Chris Nogy did not have permission to insert the article in the newsletter. Summers said that as county chairman he should have reviewed the content of the newsletter before it was sent.

Summers called the article offensive and said “to suggest violence as a response to a vote of our elected legislators is simply abhorrent.”

Representative Sue Scott, R-Rogers, said Nogy also sent her two emails beyond the newsletter that referred to harming her and other legislators from Northwest Arkansas.

Scott was one of about 15 lawmakers who voted against legislation to create a framework for the private option but then voted to give the state Department of Human Services authority to spend money implementing the program.

She would not provide a reporter with a copy of the emails from Nogy. “I was scared, I’ll be very honest with you. I’m just not used to this kind of response from anyone,” Scott said. “I had no idea someone would threaten me in such a manner and threaten my friends, my fellow legislators. We don’t threaten to line people up and shoot them, it’s not an adult way — it’s not a Christian way — to handle our differences.”

Scott said she knew Nogy and his wife through the County party. “It was a big surprise, I couldn’t believe it,” Scott said. “I was very surprised that he continued to write more.”

In a statement Monday, Arkansas State police spokesman Bill Sadler said state police had looked into the matter and didn’t think it warranted further investigation.

“The state police has not developed any evidence that would substantiate a criminal investigation being opened,” Sadler said. “State police have also been in contact with the state representatives who were the subject of the comments and at this time there is no reason to believe their safety is presently compromised.”

Scott said she is satisfied with the reaction from state police. “If there was any need for me to continue to be concerned, I would think they would let me know about it. I trust that they would do that,” she said.

Also over the weekend a person who calls himself Seanonymous, using the micro-blogging website Twitter, referred to shooting Carter of Cabot. He called Carter “a very persuasive gun advocate. I’d like to buy a gun and shoot him with it.”

State police learned of the message when someone asked if the agency was investigating him. The man does not provide his real name.

Carter said he lost his temper in his response to the man on Twitter, “I’d rather him come here for an ass-kicking.”

He said Monday that he didn’t feel threatened by the message. “I regret popping off like I did, but that’s human nature,” Carter said. “I worry more about the members than I do myself. It just has no place in politics or society in general. That sort of bullying, intimidation, threatening nature has no place, and my instincts are to get angry about it and to get mad about it.”

Carter said he was told by police that the man is in California. He said they had no previous contact. The message sender later posted to Twitter that he meant to address the message toward Representative Nate Bell, R-Mena. He did not respond to messages seeking comment Monday.

Bell has received more than 10,000 comments on his Twitter account since he made a reference to the hunt for suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing last week. “I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a high-capacity magazine? #2A,” he wrote. Bell later apologized for the timing of his comment. Sadler said state police have not looked into messages sent to Bell nor have they been asked.

RASTAFARIANS here, Rastafarians there, Rastafarians everywhere in Boonville this weekend. Overall impression is of shuffling, listless people, most of them young but enervated-seeming. Thanatoids. The weather has been rain-cloudy, muggy-warm but only a few sprinkles of actual precipitation. The Rasta brigades seem to bring seasonally odd weather with them. They were in town five years ago for the big lightning storm. Sunday noon, a drunk was passed out in the flowerbed of the Boonville Post Office. A group of street people was stretched out on the grass strip at the fairgrounds parking lot. A shopkeeper said she would be “glad when they’re gone. They steal stuff, they camp out in the bathroom, they’re stoned so they’ll stand there staring at the menu like they’re the only one in line.” Saturday night, a frantic male voice crackled out of the scanner demanding to know what to do with the garbage piling up, an inquiry he concluded by repeatedly screaming the full version of “WTF!” Inside the Fairgrounds, it all seemed well organized, including a tent called Jah-Med, an emergency medical group. Off Lambert Lane, a scruffy, youngish man sat with several jars of marijuana bud. “I’m not selling it, I’m donating it. I give you some, you make a donation to me.” A Sheriff’s deputy commented on the numbers of “unsupervised juveniles,” remarking that he didn’t think the festival was “appropriate for kids.” It’s not Sesame Street, for sure, but given that somewhere between seven and eight thousand people are in town for this thing, the only arrests so far have been a few drunks-in-public and “juveniles in possession,” which we tend to get anyway even when there are only five people in town.

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RED-TAILED HAWK SPENT A SECOND DAY on Friday aboard the contraption called a “wick drain stitcher,” perched about half-way up the crane on which the stitching mechanism is hung. At one point, operators moved the stitcher several feet, letting the crane come to rest on a steel plate. The intent seemed to be to make way for the second stitcher, which was in operation all day. To their credit contractors notified Hawk and onlookers in advance of the move. The night was illuminated by generator-driven floodlights, and the toplights and floods of the CHP cars surrounding Red-Tailed Hawk’s perch. Loud sounds broadcast from the cars and honking in the early hours of the morning were evidently the CHP’s version of the strategy used by U.S. troops surrounding the Vatican Embassy in Panama when Manuel Noriega took refuge there. In that instance, blaring rock ‘n roll at deafening levels was employed to persuade Vatican personnel to dis-invite Noriega. Low-grade torture evidently has its advocates even among the CHP, who are apparently determined to wait out Red-Tailed Hawk’s machine-sit, while making his stay as uncomfortable as possible. There was no attempt Friday, in fact, to dislodge our Hawk, who spent the day adjusting his platform and using occasions of relative quiet to exchange words with supporters on the ground. Supporters coming in met no opposition, as the private security guards hired by NCRA to harass protesters were nowhere in evidence today, their claims to enforcing a bogus ban on “trespassing” having been challenged by at least one walker on Thursday. Please walk on out to the sight via the train tracks on the north side of town and spend some time over the next couple of days in support of Red-Tailed Hawk. Besides the moral support, he’ll need witnesses should the CHP try to dislodge him.

RED-TAIL HAWK’S THIRD DAY IN THE STITCHER. Supporters make dramatic bid to resupply. Saturday evening around 45 supporters of Red-Tailed Hawk’s occupation of a wick drain “stitching machine” converged on the site of what was precious wetlands in the path of CalTrans’ freeway project. Supporters walked onto the site unopposed until they reached CHP squad cars, when two officers emerged and tried to call a halt to the march. Supporters from Willits, Ukiah and beyond proceeded on to the stitcher in which Red-Tailed Hawk is perched. When he lowered a supply rope, they tried to attach bundles of food and water. CHP officers repelled the attempt three times, cutting the rope in the process. With press on hand protestors quietly sat and reasoned with the officers to allow resupply to Red-Tailed Hawk, who has no food and very little water left. The officers refused and refused as well to reveal whether they were under orders to starve him until he descends. When CHP reinforcements arrived, Sgt A. Mesa ordered protesters to leave the site and immediately grabbed Sara Grusky as she was complying with the order. Her daughter Thea Grusky-Foley and Naomi Wagner allowed themselves to be arrested in solidarity. Matt Caldwell was also forcibly arrested. The evening ended at Willits Police Station, where Sara and Thea, who had walked away after being handcuffed, talked by phone to press and Sheriff Tom Allman amidst a crowd of supporters. They surrendered to an angry Sgt. Mesa after calling in their whereabouts to the CHP. All four arrestees were in Mendocino County Jail awaiting booking on Sunday. (Courtesy, SaveLittleLakeValley.com)

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: Two dangerous runaway processes have taken root in the last decade, with fatal consequences for democracy. Government secrecy has been expanding on a terrific scale. Simultaneously, human privacy has been secretly eradicated. The US government is spying on each and every one of us, but it is Edward Snowden who is charged with espionage for tipping us off. Let’s be very careful about who we call “traitor.” Edward Snowden is one of us. — Julian Assange

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BOOK REVIEW: Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South’s Most Compelling Pennant Race. By Larry Colton

1964 was a pivotal year in the Civil Rights movement, and in Birmingham, Alabama — perhaps the epicenter of American racial conflict — a remarkable grand experiment was about to take place: Alabama’s first-ever integrated team, the Barons of baseball’s Southern League. Johnny “Blue Moon” Odom, a talented pitcher and Tommie Reynolds, an outfielder — both young black ballplayers with dreams of playing someday in the big leagues, along with Bert Campaneris, an escapee from Cuba, all found themselves in this simmering cauldron of a minor league town, all playing for manager Haywood Sullivan, a white former major leaguer who had grown up surrounded by the ways of Jim Crow just down the road in Dothan, Alabama. Critically-acclaimed and best-selling author Larry Colton — himself a former professional pitcher who played in the Southern League — traces the entire 1964 season, writing about the extraordinary relationships among the Barons players and their charismatic manager Sullivan. Colton captures the heat of Birmingham and its citizens during this tumultuous year. The infamous Bull Connor, for example, who ordered the notorious Birmingham police to pummel civil rights marchers with blasts from powerful water hoses, was a fervent follower of the Barons. (He had leveraged his fame as a long-time broadcaster of Baron games to launch his political career.) Famed Alabama head football coach Bear Bryant was a regular at the Barons’ games. And the flamboyant Charlie Finley, who hailed from Birmingham, was the owner of the Kansas City (and later the Oakland) Athletics, the major league team that controlled the Barons’ players and the team’s fate. More than a story about baseball, this is a true accounting of a pivotal moment in the transformation of American society. Colton takes us on the road with the players as they stay in separate but unequal hotels; he introduces their girlfriends and young wives; he follows a desperate pennant race down to the wire; he takes us inside the culture of our great American sport in an era when players worked off-season jobs in warehouses for a buck-fifty an hour; and he gets us to root for a courageous team owner regularly facing threats from the KKK. Seventeen years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color line in the major leagues, official Birmingham was resisting the end of segregation with bombs and terror. But Birmingham’s citizens, black and white, were finally going to go to the ballpark to watch their very first integrated sports team. Around the Southern League, the racial jeers and taunts that rained down upon these Birmingham players echoed the abuse Jackie Robinson had faced, but these young athletes were forged into a team capable of winning in spite of the hostility. Their story is told here for the first time.

(http://www.larrycolton.com/books/southern-league/)

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NSA WHISTLEBLOWER Edward Snowden is set to fly from Moscow to the Republic of Ecuador where he will seek asylum, WikiLeaks has revealed. Snowden flew into the Russian capital just after 5pm local time on Sunday after fleeing Hong Kong, where he had been hiding out since leaking explosive details of the US government’s widespread surveillance programs. Unable to leave Moscow’s Sheremtyevo airport without a Russian visa, the former National Security Agency contractor is reportedly booked into a $15-an-hour capsule hotel on the airport premises where he will stay before he flies out to Ecuador tomorrow via a “safe route” — presumably Cuba. In a statement on Sunday afternoon, WikiLeaks said Snowden was bound for Ecuador, a country which has been harboring the anti-secrecy agency’s founder Julian Assange for the past year — “for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks.”

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NEIGHBORS RAISE MONEY for burial of deceased husband of cash-strapped woman who buried him in own backyard. According to police, Yvonne Winn, 59, buried her husband Thomas Winn, 63, in the couple’s backyard. Yvonne Winn told police she buried her husband because she couldn’t afford the costs of a funeral. Police arrived at the Winn residence to do a welfare check on Thomas Winn, when Yvonne Winn told them her husband had died of natural causes in late May, and she had buried him. Neighbors are helping Yvonne Winn by raising money so she can have an official burial for her husband.

A 59-year-old woman buried her husband behind the porch in their backyard in San Bernadino, California because she couldn’t afford funeral costs, police reports say.

Yvonne Winn of Apple Valley dug a four- to five-foot hole in the yard of the couple’s home and buried her husband Thomas Winn, 63, after he died in late May.

Neighbors who heard of Yvonne Winn’s plight have been raising money to help her pay for a proper burial for her husband.

“She seems like such a nice, hard-working, older lady,” neighbor Colin Wilson told the LA Times. “I could imagine how difficult it might be, just the whole situation. I feel for her.”

According to NBC4, authorities showed up to the home on Wednesday to do a welfare check on Thomas Winn. Yvonne Winn told them she had buried Thomas in the backyard after he died last month.

The body was wrapped in two garbage bags when officials dug it out of the hole in the home’s yard Thursday.

According to neighbors, the police spent three hours digging in the backyard of the Winns before exhuming a plastic-wrapped body.

Wilson says Yvonne Winn was visibly upset as police dug up her husband’s body. “She appeared frantic, frustrated. She was definitely bawling, she was crying. Just very out of sorts,” Wilson told NBC4, describing the smell after the body was dug up as “rancid.”

After burying her husband, Yvonne Winn attempted to sell the house.

A prospective buyer of the house told NBC4 that he was set to move into the house on July 31st but was now having second thoughts.

Yvonne Winn told the buyer that her husband had died after hitting his head. He’d gone to bed that night but in the morning, she hadn’t been able to wake him, the buyer told NBC4.

A spokeswoman for the San Bernadino sheriff’s department said there was no suspicion of foul play in the death of Thomas Winn, and a spokesperson for the town said authorities had decided not to penalize Yvonne Winn for the illegal burial.

Neighbors have rallied around Winn in her time of need to raise the money needed to have a proper burial for Thomas Winn.

“It’s a terrible feeling to know that just across your backyard there’s someone that was so financially strapped that they felt like they couldn’t bury their own family properly,” said Colin Wilson, who along with his sister has been fundraising through Fundrazr.com for the Winns. So far, they’ve raised $2723 of a $3000 goal.

“Resident of Apple Valley, Yvonne Winn recently suffered the tragic loss of her husband, Thomas Winn. In her time of immense grief and with no money for a casket, she desperately buried him in their backyard. Thomas Winn was a beloved man and an upstanding member of the High Desert Community. Please help Yvonne and her family give Thomas the proper burial he deserves,” says the page. “I just feel terrible for her,” Wilson said. “I can’t imagine what she went through.”

(— Alex Greig. Courtesy, the London Daily Mail)

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FAMILY SEEKS ANSWERS in disappearance of SoCal man headed to ‘Murder Mountain.’ Private investigator: His truck was found in Garberville area.

by Colleen Chalmers

Private detectives investigating the disappearance of a Southern California man — who went missing after reportedly heading to work at a marijuana grow near what he called “Murder Mountain” — said this week that his pickup truck was found broken down on private property in southern Humboldt.

Cook & Associates Private Investigation owner and licensed investigator Chris Cook said she’s notified the Humboldt County Sheriff’s office about the latest information related to 30-year-old Garret Rodriguez’s disappearance.

“I believe there’s a strong connection,” Cook said.

No one has heard from Rodriguez since Christmas time, officials and private investigators said. He was last heard from while en route from his home in the San Diego enclave of Ocean Beach to the mountains of southern Humboldt, where he was reportedly going to work at a marijuana ranch.

Rodriguez’s father, who lives in central Mexico, said he believes some of his son’s friends must know something.

“I believe that some of them know what happened to him, but they’re afraid to come forward and say anything,” Val ‘Buzz’ Rodriguez said. “I know that for a fact.”

His mother, who lives in Georgia, said she knows her son was going to work at an indoor grow in the Rancho Sequoia area near Alderpoint for the winter. She questions why the two people her son worked with have been silent about the case.

“It’s important for people to know who he was working with,” said Pamela McGinnis, who believes the two business associates were the last to be with her son.

Sheriff’s Office Detective Todd Fulton said the names of the two men Rodriguez worked with are not being released at this time.

“We don’t have any reason to release the names of his associates,” he said. “As far as I know, his last known location was in San Diego.”

Fulton said the office is investigating Rodriguez’s disappearance as a missing person’s case, but it is unclear if Rodriguez was in the county.

Cook & Associates investigator Jeremy Yanopoulos said Rodriguez had been involved with growing marijuana since high school, and had also been working with marijuana trafficking and sales between Humboldt County and San Diego for a couple years.

“He wasn’t the top guy,” Yanopoulos said. “It doesn’t sound like it was paying particularly well.”

McGinnis said her son never seemed to make much money in the marijuana business.

“I know a lot of young guys go up to Humboldt to try and make a lot of money. His goal was to save money, but there was always some reason why he didn’t have any,” she said.

His family said Rodriguez was in the marijuana business to save enough money to eventually fulfill his dream of having a home in Mexico.

“It was just the allure of money that got him involved, so he could build his home in Mexico,” McGinnis said.

Rodriguez’s family said he loved water sports, fishing and cooking — mostly with fish and anything wrapped in bacon — and he made a mean ahi poke sushi roll.

“He also had a famous crab dip that I know his friends liked. He’d cook anything, but he loved being in the ocean, so he always had tons of lobsters and fish on hand,” McGinnis said.

His family said he won trophies for fishing and was once offered a full scholarship to a culinary school and apprenticeship program at a five-star restaurant in Colorado after he went through chef training in San Diego. Rodriguez turned down the opportunity because he did not want to leave his friends in California, family members said.

His aunt Bonnie Taylor, who lives in the Chico area, said she was the last family member to see him before he went missing. She said Rodriguez’s friends were his family.

“He was sweet, loving, caring and good-hearted. He had a love of life,” she said. “This guy wasn’t somebody who just goes missing.”

Rodriguez is described as being 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighing 180 pounds, with brown hair.

”He has the most gorgeous green eyes and a beautiful smile,” Taylor said.

Rodriguez also has a tattoo of a colored ocean scene on his right shoulder.

“He actually knew how to swim before he was walking,” McGinnis said. “I never thought he would leave the ocean.”

Taylor said the family tried to talk Rodriguez out of going to Humboldt County for work.

“We tried as best we could. He didn’t always make really good choices,” she said. “Choice of certain friends. Choice of going up to Humboldt.”

McGinnis said there have been hundreds of friends posting photos and memories of her son on a Facebook page dedicated to bringing him home, saying how much they miss him. “Everybody’s really concerned,” she said.

Yanopoulos said Cook & Associates is investigating rumors about what has happened to Rodriguez and speculation on why he disappeared.

It was not until April that Rodriguez was officially reported missing. Yanopoulos said it was not uncommon for friends and family members to go short periods of time without hearing from Rodriguez while he was working in southern Humboldt.

“But this went way beyond just business as usual,” he said.

His father reported him missing on April 25 after one of his son’s ex-girlfriends told him no one had heard from Rodriguez in months.

Taylor said the family knows in their hearts that Rodriguez made it to southern Humboldt and would have contacted them if he could. “There’s no way Garret could be alive,” she said. “He was a really sweet kid. I call him a kid; he was a man. But to me, he was a kid.”

McGinnis said some people might look at her son’s case and think, “Oh look, just more druggies.”

”But he had a lot of people who loved him and thought the world of him,” she said.

Anyone with information regarding Garret Rodriguez is asked to contact Cook & Associates Private Investigations at 839-7422 or call Chris Cook at 616-4507. You may also contact the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at 445-7251. (Courtesy, the Eureka Times-Standard)

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ALWAYS APPEAR in feminine attire when not actively engaged in practice or playing ball. This regulation continues through the playoffs for all, even though your team is not participating. At no time may a player appear in the stands in her uniform or wear slacks or shorts in public.

Boyish bobs are not permissible, and in general your hair should be well groomed at all times with longer hair preferable to short haircuts. Lipstick should always be on.

Smoking or drinking is not permissible in public places. Liquor drinking will not be permissible under any circumstances. Other intoxicating drinks in limited portions with after-game meal only will be allowed. Obscene language will not be allowed at any time.

All social engagements must be approved by chaperone. Legitimate requests for dates can be allowed by chaperones.

Jewelry must not be worn during game or practice, regardless of type.

Due to shortage of equipment, baseballs must not be given as souvenirs without permission from the management.

Baseball-uniform skirts shall not be shorter than six inches above the kneecap.

In order to sustain the complete spirit of rivalry between clubs, the members of different clubs must not fraternize at any time during the season. After the opening day of the season, fraternizing will be subject to heavy penalties. This means, in particular, room parties, auto trips to out-of-the-way eating places, etc. However, friendly discussions in lobbies with opposing players are permissible.

Fines of five dollars for first offense, ten dollars for second, and suspension for third, will automatically be imposed for breaking any of the above rules.

(— From the League Rules of Conduct for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, established in 1943.)

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WE HESITATE to get into the middle of what should be a personal family problem. But when an elected official flouts the law and then sues the taxpayers for it, we feel it’s time to weigh in.

Supervisor Dan Hamburg’s wife, Carrie, was, by all accounts, much admired. Her last wishes, made known as she was facing death from a long bout with cancer, were certainly worth doing one’s utmost to fulfill.

She wanted to be buried on the property she and her husband had shared for many years. The problem was, it is illegal in California to be buried on your own – or any – private property without special permission.

Mr. Hamburg ignored that law and simply buried his wife at home without asking anyone’s permission.

The county rightly refused to release a death certificate for Mrs. Hamburg without the proper paperwork showing he had permission to do so.

Then someone alerted the Sheriff that the burial had taken place unlawfully and the Sheriff was forced to take action. He could not ignore a patently illegal act – especially one carried out by an elected official.

Once the Sheriff got involved, the burial became public knowledge and, in the end, to prevent the Sheriff from doing his duty – exhuming Mrs. Hamburg – Mr. Hamburg went to court and filed a lawsuit. Not only does Mr. Hamburg want the court to forgive his transgression after the fact, he wants the taxpayers to foot the bill.

Mr. Hamburg has many devoted followers in this county. They have rushed to his defense, decrying the unfair treatment of the man and insisting that anyone should be able to bury someone on their private property no questions asked.

We disagree. We think there are good reasons burying a loved one at home should be generally prohibited. For one thing, when human bones are found buried somewhere other than a cemetery they spark necessary investigations that can be lengthy and expensive. We also need to have specific rules about where and how a human body is buried to protect the environment.

Having said that, however, we get to the most important point of Mr. Hamburg’s situation. Did he have to go through this or put his family and supporters (or any of us) through it?

No.

All he had to do was ask a judge to approve the burial before hand. Mr. Hamburg’s wife did not die suddenly. There was no need to secretly grant her wishes. As Mr. Hamburg’s own suit points out, local judges have approved these requests twice in recent years.

Why did he not simply do as others have done as ask permission? Is that so hard to do?

We hope whatever judge ends up with this case will grant Mr. Hamburg’s request to leave his wife buried where she is – with the stipulation that county health officials are allowed to visit the site and make sure environmental rules were followed.

But we hope the judges will require Mr. Hamburg to pay his own legal bills. The taxpayers should not have to pick up the tab for his legal activism. (— K.C. Meadows. Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

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THE CHRON POSES the question, “Are techies good for The City?” An anon on-line response speaks for lots of us: “The gays and hippies (as mentioned in another comment) did not come to SF to make money. And they did not displace tens of thousands of people by unleashing a wave of legal and illegal evictions. And they enhanced the culture, created culture, made the city a more interesting place. I hate to generalize, but I meet tech people every day on my job and there are certain commonalities. The average ones seem to have been here for two months, have ADD, have no curiosity about the culture of their adoptive city, are completely humorless, dismissive of others not of their kind, have their face buried in a device, are poorly read, and demonstrate no political awareness other than a knee-jerk libertarianism bestowed upon them by their corporation. The ‘hipster’ tag is just silly. There’s nothing hip about a corporate gig or rabid money-seeking. Recently, a Zynga employee talked my ear off about the ‘artistry’ of the ‘creatives’ at her firm. These were mass-produced computer games she was referring to. Puh-leeze! And buying high-priced tickets to Burning Man so you can go wild once a year does not make you hip, it makes you look like a sucker.”

WILLITS POLICE are investigating the death of Danny Lawrason, 77, found dead in his home on East San Francisco Avenue on Sunday June 16th. A press release from the police was ambiguous. It said that Lawrason suffered “gunshot wounds” — plural — but his death “is being investigated to determine whether foul play was involved.” Foul play as speculation means the old man was either murdered or he shot himself. Forensics are expected to reveal which.

SO, a likely homicide of an old man in Willits, a definite homicide on Spy Rock of a Mexican man found dead at a pot op, an LA kid missing out of Southern Humboldt who said he was going to work on “Murder Mountain,” which sounds like Spy Rock but could be any ridgetop between Spy Rock and Arcata, the likely homicide of Fort Bragg’s Katlyn Long, and the adjudicated but unprosecuted homicide of Ukiah’s Susan Keegan.

Dr. & Mrs. Keegan

NOT THAT DRUG murders are less serious than the bludgeoning of Mrs. Keegan by Doctor Keegan, and not that the shooting death of an old man in his home is easy to unravel, but we don’t know who committed these crimes. How about prosecuting the crimes where we do know who did it. If Doctor Keegan and Mrs. Keegan are the only people on the premises and the death certificate says that Mrs. Keegan was murdered, where is the prosecution, Mr. DA? It’s past time to get the doctor on the stand. Of course, if the professional classes of Mendocino County get free passes to bludgeon their mates to death and generally skate on major felonies, maybe the DA’s office should update its policy manual to indicate official reality.

Long & Matson

WORSE, IN ITS WAY, is the death of young Katlyn Long of Fort Bragg. She spends her last night among us with her estranged boy friend at his request. He, Garrett Matson, scion of Fort Bragg’s prominent Matson family, wakes up the next morning, Katlyn doesn’t. She is dead from a drug overdose, but she’s not a drug person. Matson hires ace criminal defense attorney Richard Petersen. Petersen tells the cops, in this case the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department, that if they’ll submit the questions they want to ask to Petersen, the cops can eventually, perhaps, quiz his “client.”

FIRST OFF, a dead girl with one other person in the room obviously constitutes probable cause that the alive person is responsible for the dead person. Why wasn’t Matson arrested on the spot? His lawyer can sit in on any subsequent questioning, of course, but that questioning should have occurred at the County Jail. But it never took place at all either in or out of jail.

ANY OTHER PLACE than this bumbling jurisdiction, Matson would have been run through the system. As it stands, we’ve got two male killers running around loose because law enforcement, all the way up to the DA, haven’t done their jobs.

BUT DOCTOR KEEGAN is the more egregious of the two perps. He was married to Susan Keegan for 30 years, but wasted no time hooking up with a new girlfriend only weeks after his wife died at his hands. And Mrs. Keegan’s death certificate was changed to “homicide.” Again, two persons in the house, one of them is murdered, and it wasn’t the doctor. Why hasn’t he been arrested and charged?

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RASTA FEST’S organizers know what they’re doing. By Monday night you’d never know 7-8,000 people had been in town over the weekend. Clean-up crews were already at work Sunday night, and by daylight Monday our very own Arlene Guest, the under-sung heroine who voluntarily keeps Boonville litter-free year-round, had launched her own second-wave clean-up.

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NINE YEARS AGO, cameras on the Golden Gate Bridge recorded a lone coyote jogging across the bridge from the Marin Headlands south to the Presidio. That pioneer apparently founded the Frisco coyotes who now number about 20, having established themselves in most of the substantially wooded areas of the city. Two coyotes were shot in Golden Gate Park a few years ago after they allegedly attacked two big, aggressive dogs — off leash dogs — an attack that seemed more like mutual combat when the dogs rushed a den containing coyote pups. Coyotes aren’t stupid. They don’t look for fights with larger animals, and there was no real reason to shoot the two in Golden Gate Park. I’ve seen the same coyote (I think) twice in the dunes near Lobo Creek at the western edge of the Presidio not far from Baker Beach, an exciting discovery both times for me, a coyote guy from way back off odd encounters with the animals in Mendocino County. Those encounters both involved stare downs that went on for several minutes until the coyote got tired of laughing at me. They made me understand why the Indians regarded the coyote so highly — the animal is intelligent and has a sense of fun. The more hysterical dog people want the SF coyotes exterminated as ongoing hazards to little Woofie and Floofie, the obese housecat. One nut even said she was afraid her infant might be carried off by unchecked coyotes! The coyotes may pick off a feral cat once in a while but they’ve never been seen roaming the neighborhoods in search of larger meals. I hope the city isn’t stampeded into killing this least menacing of all the wildlife roaming San Francisco.

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: If real fame is a mask that eats into the face, then pseudo-fame, the current kind, might be a decoy that eats into the brain. You often meet those people in California, people who have forgotten that you are real, that you watch the news, that you know who they really are, that you know where the money is coming from. They begin to lie to journalists and themselves with the same grim hope: if I say this and no one contradicts me it might be true. A sense of entitlement stands in for personal values. They don’t mind if they’re fooling you and fooling themselves, so long as they can keep the show on the road. — Andrew O’Hagan

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THE PURSUIT OF EDWARD SNOWDEN: Washington in a Rage, Striving to Run the World

By Norman Solomon

Rarely has any American provoked such fury in Washington’s high places. So far, Edward Snowden has outsmarted the smartest guys in the echo chamber — and he has proceeded with the kind of moral clarity that U.S. officials seem to find unfathomable.

Bipartisan condemnations of Snowden are escalating from Capitol Hill and the Obama administration. More of the NSA’s massive surveillance program is now visible in the light of day — which is exactly what it can’t stand.

The central issue is our dire shortage of democracy. How can we have real consent of the governed when the government is entrenched with extreme secrecy, surveillance and contempt for privacy?

The same government that continues to expand its invasive dragnet of surveillance, all over the United States and the rest of the world, is now asserting its prerogative to drag Snowden back to the USA from anywhere on the planet. It’s not only about punishing him and discouraging other potential whistleblowers. Top U.S. officials are also determined to — quite literally — silence Snowden’s voice, as Bradley Manning’s voice has been nearly silenced behind prison walls.

The sunshine of information, the beacon of principled risk-takers, the illumination of government actions that can’t stand the light of day — these correctives are anathema to U.S. authorities who insist that really informative whistleblowers belong in solitary confinement. A big problem for those authorities is that so many people crave the sunny beacons of illumination.

On Sunday night, more than 15,000 Americans took action to send a clear message to the White House. The subject line said “Mr. President, hands off Edward Snowden,” and the email message read: “I urge you in the strongest terms to do nothing to interfere with the travels or political asylum process of Edward Snowden. The U.S. government must not engage in abduction or any other form of foul play against Mr. Snowden.”

As the Obama White House weighs its options, the limits are practical and political. Surveillance and military capacities are inseparable, and they’re certainly huge, but constraints may cause major frustration. Sunday on CNN, anchor Don Lemon cited the fabled Navy Seals and said such commandos ought to be able to capture Snowden, pronto.

The state of surveillance and perpetual war are one and the same. The U.S. government’s rationale for pervasive snooping is the “war on terror,” the warfare state under whatever name.

Too rarely mentioned is the combination of nonviolence and idealism that has been integral to the courageous whistleblowing by Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. Right now, one is on a perilous journey across the globe in search of political asylum, while the other is locked up in a prison and confined to a military trial excluding the human dimensions of the case. At a time of Big Brother and endless war, Snowden and Manning have bravely insisted that a truly better world is possible.

Meanwhile, top policymakers in Washington seem bent on running as much of the world as possible. Their pursuit of Edward Snowden has evolved into a frenzied rage.

Those at the top of the U.S. government insist that Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning have betrayed it. But that’s backward. Putting its money on vast secrecy and military violence instead of democracy, the government has betrayed Snowden and Manning and the rest of us.

Trying to put a stop to all that secrecy and violence, we have no assurance of success. But continuing to try is a prerequisite for realistic hope.

A few months before the invasion of Iraq, looking out at Baghdad from an upper story of a hotel, I thought of something Albert Camus once wrote. “And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions.”

Edward Snowden’s honorable course has led him to this historic moment. The U.S. government is eager to pay him back with retribution and solitary. But many people in the United States and around the world are responding with love and solidarity.

(Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”)

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U.S. DISTRICT COURT JUDGE THELTON HENDERSON has granted preliminary approval to a $1.025 million settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by the National Lawyers Guild on behalf of 150 people who were arrested by Oakland Police during a Nov. 5, 2010, demonstration. The civil rights lawsuit, Spalding et al. v. City of Oakland, CAND No. C11-2867 TEH, challenged OPD’s unlawful kettling and mass arrest of the 150, and their detention by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, following a march protesting the light sentence given Johannes Mehserle for killing Oscar Grant. (http://wecopwatch.org/nlg-victory-for-oscar-grant-protesters/)

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AGENCY BUSY SPYING ON 300 MILLION PEOPLE FAILED TO NOTICE ONE DUDE WORKING FOR THEM

By Andy Borowitz

Washington (The Borowitz Report)— A US intelligence agency was so busy spying on 300 million Americans that it failed to notice one dude who was working for it, a spokesman for the agency acknowledged today. “I guess we were so busy monitoring the everyday communications of every man, woman, and child in the nation that we didn’t notice that a contractor working for us was downloading tons of classified documents,” the agency spokesman said. “It’s definitely embarrassing, for sure.” Despite having an annual budget in the neighborhood of tens of billions of dollars, the agency had no idea that a dude who was working for it five days a week was getting ready to send those classified documents to a journalist who would then tell everybody in the world. “Maybe if we hadn’t been so busy keeping our eye on those other 300 million people, we would have noticed that this one guy who was working right under our noses was up to something totally fishy,” the spokesman said. “But you know what they say about hindsight.” As for where that guy who leaked the documents was planning to go next, the spokesman admitted, “We don’t have a clue.” … “I know what you’re thinking — an intelligence agency probably should know that Hong Kong has an international airport and that its departures board lists flights to Moscow and whatnot,” the spokesman said. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe we need a bigger budget or something.” — Andy Borowitz. Courtesy, the Borowitz Report

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NANCY PELOSI BOOED at Conference for Saying Snowden Broke the Law — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was challenged over her criticism of Edward Snowden and defense of the Obama administration’s surveillance policies during the Netroots Nation conference in California. As she spoke about the need to balance security with privacy rights, activist Marc Perkel interrupted, shouting, “It’s not a balance! It makes us less safe!” Pelosi was later booed when she mentioned Snowden.

Pelosi: “As far as Snowden, he did — you know, I may be in disagreement with you. He did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents. We don’t know…”

Audience members: “Boo! Boo!”

Pelosi: “I understand. I understand.”

Audience members: “Boo! Boo!”

Pelosi: “I understand. But it did violate the law. And the fact is — and the fact is that, again, we have to have the balance between — between security and privacy.”

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WANTED. ROOM TO RENT IN UKIAH. CAN PAY $300 A MONTH. BRUCE MCEWEN C/O AVA AT 895-3016 OR AVA@PACIFIC.NET

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ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY: I do not understand why all these “homeless” ding dongs are allowed to drag these dogs and puppies around with no collars, no tags, no vaccination tags, yet under penalty of having a lien placed on my property, I have to license my pets every year. I went to Garberville today with my granddaughter and she pointed out a guy dragging by that had absolutely no seat in his pants. Bare butt. Nice. The bank has to steam clean the stairs behind their building to get out the stink. Virtually every single “homeless” person here has a dog. I saw a woman the other day with a chicken. We don’t walk down the streets of Garberville anymore. I’ll move my car around town rather than expose my granddaughter to possibly being bitten or worse by these dogs. I feel sorry for the animals. Most of them are full of fleas and ticks, not neutered and often get dumped when they aren’t cute anymore. It’s a shame.

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THE MENDOCINO TOWN PLAN UPDATE, after maybe 20 years since its last update, will again be reviewed and considered and public comments will be taken by the County Planning Commission on July 11 at some time after 9am (the second item on the agenda) at the Board of Supervisors Chambers, 501 Low Gap Road, Ukiah. The Planning Commission will then comment on the Local Coastal Program Amendment/General Plan Amendment Draft Mendocino Town Plan and Ordinance Amendment to Town Zoning Code, making recommendation to the Board of Supervisors. Should the Board of Supervisors adopt the Mendocino Town Plan and Zoning Code, the Local Coastal Program/Ordinance Amendments will be submitted to the California Coastal Commission for certification. For more information go to http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/planning  Or call 463-4281