AS MANY of the worst men in the world assemble at Bohemian Grove, and the 
Press Democrat gazes, awestruck, from the prone position the paper instinctively assumes in the presence of power, Cody 
Fincher accurately describes how the titans of free enterprise pass their hours beside the Russian River: “What activities take place at 
the grove? The grove is the site of a two week retreat every July (as well
 as other smaller get-togethers throughout the year). At these retreats,
 the members commune with nature in a truly original way. They drink
 heavily from morning through the night, bask in their freedom to urinate
 on the redwoods, and perform pagan rituals (including the ‘Cremation of 
Care,’ in which the members wearing red-hooded robes, cremate a coffin 
effigy of ‘Dull Care’ at the base of a 40-foot owl altar). Some (20%) 
engage in homosexual activity (but few of them support gay rights or AIDS
 research). They watch (and participate in) plays and comedy shows in which 
women are portrayed by male actors. Although women are not allowed in the
 Grove, members often leave at night to enjoy the company of the many 
prostitutes who canoe across the Russian River to service their majesties.”

CHRIS SMITH of the PD wrote: “The splitters at the Bohos’ gate
 — The funniest movie scene ever? Maybe in ‘Life of Brian,’ when insurgents
 with the People’s Front of Judea scoff at ‘Splitters!’ — their rivals within 
the Judean People’s Front and the Popular Front of Judea. It comes to 
mind because a group rallying a protest Saturday at the Bohemian Grove
 Encampment calls itself the Bohemian Grove Action and Resistance Network,
 and Mary Moore is not amused. She’s the veteran activist who three
 decades ago co-founded the Bohemian Grove Action Network (BGAN). It
 organized many demonstrations at the gate of the men-only midsummer
 retreat at the Bohemian Club of San Francisco’s vast redwood camp near 
Monte Rio. Moore’s point has been that the public should know who’s 
inside the grove and what’s said at the Lakeside Talks because many of the
 men of the encampment are influential and the talks can float ideas that 
become policy of national or global importance. Moore doesn’t know what 
the Bohemian Grove Action and Resistance Network believes or what the 
point of a demonstration Saturday, if it happens, will be. But she’s not 
protesting this year and she wouldn’t want anyone thinking BGARN is BGAN.”

MARY MOORE WRITES: “This is short but Smith makes the point in his column yesterday. 
Everyone has the right to protest anywhere for anything. They don’t have 
the right to appropriate the name of another group who has been around for
 33 years exposing the ‘good old boys’ network right here in our backyard.
 For the past decade when national nut case Alex Jones got inside Boho
 Grove. the right wing loony tunes have used our hard work and energy to 
latch onto any media attention garnered by our efforts. Our point has 
always been to expose the effect of these men’s actions (exposed by hard
 research and their daily Lakeside Talks) on the outside world (us), NOT 
what they are alleged to be doing inside their encampment. Many of these
 theories are just plain crazy and reflect badly on the intelligence of 
those making them. This is just the latest effort by an Alex Jones
 follower. BGAN is organizing no protests this year — that doesn’t mean 
people can’t do it on their own. But trying to latch on to the credibility 
of someone else’s name doesn’t show a lot of creativity, integrity or 
responsibility. Thanks to Steve for sending this and to Chris Smith for
 pointing it out.

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WE’RE RE-ASSESSING recent Hamburg-related events, specifically our
 assumption that the supervisor set in motion the transfer of his troubled
 son, Matthew, from the County Jail to a Yuba City psychiatric facility. It 
now seems clear that the County Counsel’s office and the County’s Mental
 Health Department made the move without Supervisor Hamburg’s knowledge.
 County Counsel and Mental Health, acting on their own authority, brought 
off the end-around the usual processes by which a person, any person, is
 found mentally incompetent to defend himself and is declared so by the 
court. County Counsel and Mental Health simply ignored the court part of 
the process. And because everyone involved was a Hamburg partisan we made
 the false assumption Hamburg had been the shot caller. We don’t think he was. At a minimum, this
 episode ought to earn County Counsel a big reprimand.

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

ENVISIONING DISASTER. We agree with all the people who consider the
 Willits Bypass a huge boondoggle that won’t even partially reduce through 
traffic in Willits. We also see the two-lane viaduct as an elevated
 version of “mile marker 22” on Highway 20, the busy two-lane obstacle
 course linking Willits and Fort Bragg. Every time there’s an accident of 20 many of us think of mm 22, where there’s been plenty of them on even the clearest of daylit days. Imagine one of those tule fog
 mornings in the Willits Valley, and imagine visibility on the viaduct with
 big rigs hurtling both directions with no lane divider between them. 
Highway 20 is thirty miles of Mojave runway in comparison.

COUPLA other Bypass shots while we’re at it: Screaming obscenities at the
 cops is really, really stupid in the most infantile sense of “stupid.” And really, really counter-productive, not 
to mention a violation of the so-called vow to remain non-violent. It was
 bad enough for the opposition to the Bypass when that one psycho threw his bucket of
 waste at the CHP guys removing him from the tree, but if you’re trying to
 influence public opinion as to the folly of this demonstrably crazy
 Caltrans project by acting like mental patients yourself, you’re defeating your own hazy purpose.

AND WHAT’S with the rumor being circulated by some protesters that Caltrans is 
stockpiling dirt on East Side Road to give to the Sherwood Rancheria for 
their housing project in exchange for the Indians shutting up about tribal 
artifacts along the bypass route. Where’s the evidence for that? Caltrans
 says the soil will help restore the blitzed areas around the Bypass 
when (and if) the project is completed. We believe Caltrans on this one.

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ME ME ME ME MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

To the Editor:

I have a bittersweet announcement to make. I will be resigning from the 
city council. I have accepted a full time position in Monterey County
 working as an analyst for the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo). I 
plan to serve through August 16th.
It has been my privilege to sit on this dais on behalf of the residents of 
the City of Ukiah since 2002, 11 years. My work with the City of Ukiah has 
been a gift. It has changed my life, shaped my thinking, and caused me to 
grow in countless ways, both personally and professionally. My time in 
public service has expanded my appreciation for our system of government,
 especially at the local level. The range of services that Ukiah Valley
 residents enjoy and depend on as a result of the hard work and dedication 
of City staff goes largely unrecognized by the general public, and used to 
be a mystery to me as well, but it is expansive and impressive. In 
addition, my work on the city council has led me down paths that I never 
would have explored: I served on the boards of directors of the League of
 California Cities Mendocino Transit Authority, Mendocino Council of
 Governments, and LAFCo, and made personal connections with professionals 
in fields as diverse as green building, hydrology, and the arts, just to
 name a few. And now my work with city council is leading me down a new
 career path. I will be applying long-honed skills of researching and
 writing to problems at the intersection of land use and government, which
 I find very interesting. 
I want to acknowledge these countless gifts and thank the public for
 supporting me and enabling me to be forever enriched by the experience of 
serving you.

Mari Rodin, Councilmember, 
Ukiah

ED NOTE: Uh, excuse me, Ms. Rodin, but I think “dais” may be a clue here. Could it be that the narcissism you suffer has its roots in your (and Mendolib’s generally) conflation with yourself and royalty?

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

DEAR EDITOR,

I have recently begun to hear a number of rumors about a policy adopted by the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office which is referred to as the “Knock and Pay Policy”. I have been told that persons who are accused of certain crimes in Mendocino County are given an option of making a payment to the District Attorney’s office instead of or in lieu of having a prosecution commenced against that person. I spoke to Mr. Eyster about this policy after I began to hear rumors and he confirmed that the District Attorney’s Office is collecting funds from persons accused of some crimes and that his office has been disbursing those funds to school districts and law enforcement agencies in the county, but the occasion did not lend itself to further conversations about the matter. Therefore, I don’t know the details of this program.

I wrote to the District Attorney some months ago requesting more information about this policy but my letter went unanswered. I sent a follow up letter but it too went unanswered. I then called Mr. Eyster and Mr. Geniella, his public affairs officer, and neither of them returned my calls

As a citizen and lifelong resident of Mendocino County and as a person who is proud to call myself a Mendocinian I am concerned about this program. It is not clear to me if the persons who are making such payments have been prosecuted or if the payments are made before any prosecution occurs or if the payments are to prevent the prosecution from occurring or if the payments are to buy the payor’s freedom. If the payments are to purchase freedom I, as a concerned citizen, am interested to know what the price of freedom is in Mendocino County these days and whether a poor Mexican laborer can buy his freedom or if this program is available only to the wealthiest of miscreants.

I hear all kinds of rumors. I have spoken to local lawyers and to some law enforcement officers. Some know of this program some don’t. I have spoken to a member of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors who told me the Board doesn’t know the details of the program and don’t know where the money goes or how it is tracked.

I don’t know where the money goes, how it is tracked, how it is distributed, how the decisions to make a distribution is made, what statutory authority exists for the program or for the disbursal of the money received. I am concerned that an executive officer of our local government is exercising legislative authority in making the determinations about how to assess what appears to me to be a freedom tax, who is entitled to buy his freedom and who is not, when and to whom the money is to be disbursed and for what purposes. I am concerned that the citizens of Mendocino County seem to have no control over these sum, don’t know how much is being collected or any of the other important details of the program. I am concerned that the citizens of Mendocino County don’t seem to have any way of influencing this policy or the way the moneies derived from this policy are used.

I think there is a lot to worry about when it comes to this program. I may be wrong but I don’t have enough information to know that. Therefore, on July 11. 2013 I submitted a California Public Records Act Request pursuant to Government Code Section 6260 et. seq. seeking information about this policy. (I have copied that request below.) If you agree with me I would like you to send a letter to the District Attorney telling him you want all of the details of this program made public. His address is David Eyester, District Attorney of Mendocino County, Courthouse, 100 North State Street, Ukiah, CA 95482.

Thomas F. Johnson

California Public Records Act Request / Government Code Section 6250 et seq

From: Thomas F. Johnson, PO Box 828. Redwood Valley CA 95470. 707-485-1196

TO: DAVID EYSTER, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, MENDOCINO COUNTY COURTHOUSE, UKIAH CA 95482

Dave,

I would much prefer to have resolved my concerns by private conversations or correspondence with you but I sent the original request for this information months ago and I received no response. I then sent a follow up request and I received no response. Then I called and left a message on your telephone voice mail at your office and I received no response. I then called Mike Geniella and left a message on his voice mail and I received no response. Therefore,

Please accept this request for Public Records pursuant to Government Code Section 6250 et. seq. for the following public records:

As referred to in this request the phrase “the defined public offenses” shall mean any violation or alleged violation of any law relating to marijuana or any other illegal or legal drug, and shall include but shall not be limited to, the growing of, the cultivation of, the possession of, the possession for sale of, the transportation of, or the sale of or purchase of marijuana or any other illegal drug or legal drug in an illegal manner.

This request does not include a request for information about fines or penalties or court ordered restitution paid at the direction of the Superior Court as a consequence of a conviction for a public offense.

This request does include a request for the following:

1. All documents and records of payments during 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 paid by any person to the office of the District Attorney of Mendocino County when, at or about the time of the payment, such person was being investigated for a violation or an alleged violation of any of the defined public offenses and the payment was made by such person as a part of an agreement with the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office, including but not limited to, a agreement not to prosecute the person , or an agreement for diversion from prosecution, or as a part of a pre-plea agreement, or as a part of a plea agreement or as a part of a post-plea agreement.

2. All documents and records of payments during 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 paid by any person to the office of the District Attorney of Mendocino County when, at or about the time of the payment, such person was being prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office for a violation or alleged violation of any of the defined public offenses and the payment was made by such person as a part of an agreement with the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office, including but not limited to, an agreement not to continue the prosecution of the person , or an agreement for diversion from prosecution, or as a part of a pre-plea agreement, or as a part of a plea agreement or as a part of a post-plea agreement.

3. All documents and records of payments during 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and which were paid by any person to Mendocino County or any public agency other than the District Attorney’s Office when, at or about the time of the payment, such person was being investigated for a violation of or an alleged violation of any of the defined public offenses and the payment was made by such person as a part of an agreement with the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office, including but not limited to, a agreement not to prosecute the person , or an agreement for diversion from prosecution, or as a part of a pre-plea agreement, or as a part of a plea agreement or as a part of a post-plea agreement

4. All documents and records of such payments during 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 paid by any person to Mendocino County or any other public agency other than the District Attorney’s Office when, at or about the time of the payment, such person was being prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office for a violation of or an alleged violation of any of the defined public offenses and the payment was made by such person as a part of an agreement with the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office, including but not limited to, an agreement not to continue the prosecution of the person , or an agreement for diversion from prosecution, or as a part of a pre-plea agreement, or as a part of a plea agreement or as a part of a post-plea agreement.

5. All documents and records showing the deposit of those payments referred to above to a bank account and the name of the person or entity owning or controlling that account.

6. All documents and records showing disbursals of sums referred to above including but not limited to, the name of the person or entity to whom the disbursal was made, how much was so disbursed, when the disbursal was made, to which account the disbursal was deposited, for what purpose the disbursal was made.

7. All documents and records showing the policies and procedures of the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office relating to the process by which the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office obtains monetary payments from persons who have been accused of or any of the defined public offenses, but against whom a complaint or information or indictment has not been filed.

8. All documents and records showing the total amount collected by the District Attorney’s Office from persons referred to in request #7

9. All documents and records showing the policies and procedures of the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office relating to the process by which the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office obtains monetary payments from persons who have been prosecuted for any of the defined public offenses, and against whom a complaint or information or indictment has been filed.

10. All documents and records showing the total amount collected by the District Attorney’s Office from persons referred to in request #9 above.

11. All documents and records showing a) the names of people who have made such payments, b) the crimes they were being investigated for or charged with, c) disposition of their charges and d) the amounts they paid?

11. All documents and records relied upon by the District Attorney’s Office as statutory authority, case law authority or other authority which authorizes the District Attorney’s Office to collect such payments,

12. All documents and records relied upon by the District Attorney’s Office as statutory authority, case law authority or other authority which authorizes the District Attorney’s Office to disburse those funds.

13. All documents and records that show how the District Attorney’s Office determines the amounts of such payments.

14. All documents and records that show how the District Attorney’s Office determines who is eligible and who is not eligible to participate in such programs.

15. All documents and records that show how persons without the financial ability to make such payments can participate is such programs.

I look forward to your response in ten days as required by the Public Records Act.

Thomas F. Johnson, July 11, 2013

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

PRISONER HUNGER STRIKE CONTINUES AT MASSIVE SCALE,

CDCR Lashes Out, Governor Remains Silent, Activists Plan Statewide Rally

Press Contact:   Isaac Ontiveros

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition

Ph.  510.444.0484

Oakland—The CDCR declared the hunger strike of California prisoners to be a “mass disturbance” and a violation of state law on Thursday as hundreds across the state plan a large mobilization at Corcoran State Prison on Saturday, site of the one the state’s Security Housing Units (SHU) where prisoners are currently on strike. Advocates have expressed concern that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) reaction to the strike will be to escalate the punishment and threats against the prisoners’ peaceful protest.   Prisoners and their supporters are urging the CDCR and Governor Jerry Brown to enter into honest and binding negation of their demands.  Limited contact with hunger strikers has found them to be in high spirits and aware of the strikes scale and outside support. Earlier this week Pelican Bay strike spokes people stated:  *We are grateful for your support of our peaceful protest against the state-sanctioned torture that happens not only here at Pelican Bay but in prisons everywhere.  We have taken up this hunger strike and work stoppage, which has included 30,000 prisoners in California so far, not only to improve our own conditions but also an act of solidarity with all prisoners and oppressed people around the world.*  “The prisoners are fighting for a restoration of their human rights by demanding an end to prolonged isolation, an end to group punishment, and the draconian policies that land them in isolation with little hope of getting out—along with access to programs and adequate food. “ Says Kamau Walton of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. “These are the most basic demands and yet the CDCR continues to make threats. This is the response from a prison system that is on notice from the federal courts for an unconstitutional level of crowding and for inadequate medical care, a system that is now being investigated for sterilizing women prisoners against their will.  Change is inevitable, the question is whether the CDCR and governor are going to prolong needless suffering.”  CDCR has recognized 12,500 prisoners as hunger strikers.  While this number is lower than those reported earlier in the week, many have noted more prisoners are taking action than in 2011, and are prepared to risk retribution for maintaining their protest.  “People aren’t buying the vilification of the strikers,” says Dolores Canales, of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, whose son is on strike in the Pelican Bay SHU. “These same prisoners have also called for an end to hostilities among racial groups inside.  They are also inspiring powerful activism outside the prisons. The strikers recognize that their unity will lead to successfully challenging their conditions. This unity, too, is feared by Gov. Brown and the CDCR.”  The strike has received widespread international news coverage, with both the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle printing editorials critical of the CDCR. Assembly member Tom Ammiano, chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, stated on Wednesday: “I join the protesters in urging prison officials to make more progress in establishing fair and humane policies in the prisons.” Governor Jerry Brown has remained completely silent on the issue.  *The Corcoran Rally will begin at 3pm on Saturday afternoon.  Loved ones of prisoners, advocates, lawyers, and former prisoners will be available for interviews throughout the day.

For more information visit: www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com

LETTER OF THE DAY.

DAVID BELDEN WRITES: “About the hunger strike at prisons, it has long been recognized that extensive solitary confinement is as destructive to a human being as many types of physical torture, and in some cases more so. Keron Fletcher, a former British military psychiatrist who was on the receiving team for many hostages returned to the UK after solitary confinement and who followed them for years afterward, said that most survived their ordeal, though relationships, marriages and careers were often lost, but none saw solitary confinement as anything less than torture. So, if we call it torture when foreigners do it, please give it its proper name when Americans do it to Americans. The situation is even worse than this: It is primarily Americans of color who are suffering this torture.”

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

ON JULY 6, we posted a note from John Sakowicz of Ukiah which read: “The City of Ukiah has noticed a Special Meeting on July 10, which will be a closed session with City Manager Jane Chambers and all department heads, presumably to talk about labor contract negotiations. Let us hope this will be the time that the City Council begins to deal with its $1 million structural deficit by cutting some of the 18 positions that were funded, in whole or in part, by the now-dissolved RDA.”

ON JULY 11, Ukiah City Councilman Doug Crane responded: “John, the closed session meeting was not with the department heads. It was with the city’s labor negotiator about the process, progress to date and instructions to proceed with the department heads bargaining unit. It was precisely about the Council expectation and instructions to the City labor negotiator to achieve the labor cost reductions that has so far been agreed to by the City manager. The reason for the labor cost reductions is to end general fund deficit spending. Labor cost approximate 70% of the general fund expenditures. The discussion of positions continues but is not part of the labor negotiations. I believe you sincerely want to help but going off half cocked does not help. Doug.”

DEAR EDITOR,

At the Ukiah City Council meeting on Wednesday, July 3, the Council responded to the Grand Jury report on capping the Vichy Springs landfill (agenda item 13-f). At that time, I heard City Public Works Director, Tim Eriksen, repeatedly say time and time again that he wished he didn’t have to cap the landfill site. He talked about seeking waivers from CalRecycle [formerly the California Waste Management Board-Ed]. He said he didn’t want to finally close the landfill by capping it, even though the landfill has been not been accepting refuse for 12 years.

Ericson’s insistent plea for a waiver at the meeting was echoed by City Councilmember Mari Rodin.

And now, in a front page story in the Ukiah Daily Journal on Friday, July 12, City Manager Jane Chambers has joined the chorus for not finally closing and capping the Vichy Springs landfill.

But let’s be clear. The City of Ukiah is out of compliance with state law, and it faces big fines and penalties. The Vichy Springs site was opened in 1954 and has not accepted refuse since September in 2001. However, it has not been permanently closed. It has not been capped. This is a violation of State regulations, Title 27, California Code of Regulations §21110-Time Frame for Closure.

Let’s be crystal clear about something else. The CalRecycle regulation requires permanent closure of the site within two years. CalRecycle, LEA (the local enforcement agency acting for CEQA), and the Water Board are all agencies charged with enforcement procedures and the authority to assess penalties, according to Public Resources Codes §45000 and §45023.

Making matters worse, the landfill sits on a web of earthquake faults and in a watershed area. The toxins locked inside the landfill could pop open like a pus explosion in an infected abscess at any given time. The Vichy Springs landfill, incidentally, is built into a hillside, which is not the most stable geology for a landfill. So, let’s pray we don’t get even a small earthquake tremor in the Vichy Springs area.

My problem with Eriksen, Rodin, and Chambers?

I would like to see the cash balance in the trust fund the City of Ukiah has set up used for finally closing the landfill.

Why?

I am beginning to suspect the money isn’t all there.

In fact, I would like to see the cash balances in all of the City’s enterprise funds. In other cities, these enterprise funds include: landfill maintenance special fund, municipal solid waste-landfill closure and post-closure trust fund, public utilities trust funds (electric, water, and sewer), building and safety enterprise fund, state sales tax set aside fund, affordable housing trust fund, health insurance fund, transportation trust fund, economic development fund, municipal services district fund, private-purpose trust fund, etc.

I would even go further.

If I were on the Ukiah City Council, I would very much like to undertake a total review of the City’s enterprise accounting system. This would include: water and sewer rate studies, an indirect cost analysis, a review of GASB 34 fixed assets, a review of the enterprise fund accounting systems, and a review of systems development charges (impact fees).

I have lost faith in the City of Ukiah.

Sincerely, John Sakowicz, Ukiah

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

HANA DAHL, a young filmmaker from Mill Valley, writes: “Hello! Our Boontling video is finished and thought you might want to spread the word in Boonville. Wes Smoot and Rod DeWitt are the main interviews.

link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24EGayAWyzY

RECOMMENDED READING: “Spy Rock Memories” by Larry Livermore. The Mendocino County literary oeuvre is pretty thin, although there are lots of good writers in our beloved mother county. This book helps make up the deficit, and is the best thing I’ve read on the general subject of Back To The Land in that fraught decade — 1970-80 when the city had become so violent that thousands of people fled north where they bought logged over land in remote areas up and down the Northcoast and settled in, not knowing what hard work it is to carve out a homestead where there’s no developed water, let alone a power grid. Livermore was not your generic back-to-the-lander. A gifted writer, he describes in vivid detail his struggles to establishment himself in the infamous outlaw stronghold of deep Spy Rock, the wild outback northeast of Laytonville, establish himself on both the land and with his neighbors. While still a newcomer in a place where suspicion came with the primary occupation — marijuana production — Livermore began producing the pioneering zine, The Lookout, which instantly made him persona non grata with both his mountain neighbors — as pot growers they didn’t like the attention — and the residents of Laytonville, who didn’t like Livermore’s descriptions of their town as an unpromising collection of ramshackle buildings strewn haphazardly along 101 with a lot of ramshackle personalities to go with the architecture. Then he became famous, and then he became rich and famous. I knew Livermore was famous when a Boonville kid asked me if I knew Livermore. “Yup, known him for a long time. We’re good friends. He writes for my paper when the spirit moves him.” The kid looked at me with renewed respect. I had to tell him twice before he believed me. By that time Livermore had formed or managed a bunch of famous bands, including Green Day, which made him and them gadzillions. His pioneering zine, The Lookout, was nationally distributed. I have to admit that I still haven’t heard any of the music apart from an a-rhythmic ditty Livermore gave me many years ago called “Fuck You and Die,” to which, try as I might, I’ve never quite been able to dance to. But apart from his fascinating accounts of establishing his home above the snow line on Spy Rock, including some harrowing trips home by snowshoe, I found Livermore’s stories about how his zine grew and the genesis of his life as a music entrepreneur absolutely fascinating.

Livermore

“Spy Rock Memories” will be of great interest to the thousands of people of the Northcoast who’ve carved out lives for themselves in the vast back country of Northern California, and of equivalent interest to the general reader who simply likes good stories well told. (http://larrylivermore.com/?p=2861)

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FRIDAY, TORI CAMPBELL, a long-time news reader at KTVU, went live at noon to announce the names of the Asiana pilots at the controls of Flight 214 as Sum Ti Wong; “Wi Tu Lo; Ho Lee Fuk; and Bang Ding Ow.”

MS. CAMPBELL, even as she plowed phonetically on through the joke roster, remained oblivious that she and the station had been pranked. They thought they had a scoop and, as it turned out, they did after a fashion.

WHAT SEEMS to have happened is that KTVU received a call from a man — probably a man, this being a white guy kind of gag — alerting the station that he had the names of the pilots. The station duly called the National Transportation Safety Board where an “intern” confirmed that the joke names were indeed the true names of the pilots, which means not only had KTVU been pranked so had the NTSB, with Ms. Campbell as the fall guy (sic).

AS THE JOKE went viral and a global laugh went up we all wondered why nobody at KTVU caught it before the uncomprehending Ms. Campbell ran with it on the air.

MS. CAMPBELL soon issued an on-air statement that the names were wrong, but laying off KTVU’s gaffe on the “intern” at NTSB. The names, she sort of apologized, were “inaccurate and offensive” but had been “mistakenly confirmed” by the NTSB.

THE NTSB SAID “the intern had acted outside his authority” but had been “trying to be helpful.”

ADDING to the global hilarity, KTVU had just been promoting itself as “being first on air and on every platform in all aspects of our coverage (of the crash at SFO) was a great accomplishment, but being 100 percent accurate, effectively using our great sources and social media without putting a single piece of erroneous information on the air, is what we are most proud of as a newsroom.”

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LINDA WILLIAMS reports in the Willits News that “California River Watch has filed a claim with the City of Willits threatening to sue the city in federal court. The city has 60 days from June 21 to remedy the situation or be sued.”

IF WILLITS again succumbs to this shakedown it will be the third time Jack Silver has gotten over on The Gateway to the Redwood Empire.

WE’VE WRITTEN ENDLESSLY about this character and his bogus non-profit, California River Watch. Here’s how it works: Silver finds a technical violation of the federal Clean Water Act. (I’ve long suspected he’s got a tipster in the State Water Agency). Then he fires off a letter to the alleged offender threatening to sue for lots of money but, he says, “Show me you’re trying and send me some good faith money and I won’t take you to court.” Municipalities usually pay up because it’s cheaper to pay Silver to go away then go into court against him.

SILVER has pulled this neat bit of extortion up and down the Northcoast. You name the town, that town has paid him off — Fortuna, Ukiah, Ferndale, and innumerable mom and pop businesses. He burned Willits for $40,000 in “attorney’s fees” back in 2002, and has alleged since that Willits’ sewage treatment plant “discharges raw sewage into gutters, canals, and storm drains connected to adjacent surface waters.” He got that information from the State, and how accurate it is, well, he makes it sound like it’s very serious and Willits is somehow tolerating it. Which Willits is not doing. None of Silver’s victims are deliberately out of compliance with the Clean Water Act.

AS MS. WILLIAMS reports, “The claim filed against Willits is nearly identical to the claim River Watch filed against the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District in April with the creek names changed and the specifics associated with the sewer system adjusted. In January, River Watch filed a claim against Mendocino County about the county’s storm water runoff into the Russian River. Some of the remedial measures requested were a dry-weather inspection of the piping, mapping of the storm water drain outfalls and requirements to mitigate construction site runoff. The county denied the claim and River Watch filed suit in federal court in March.”

BASED IN OCCIDENTAL in West Sonoma Couny, Silver is organized as a charity non-profit. His board of directors, when he incorporated in 1996, consisted of family members. His goal, he claims, “is to strengthen the ability of citizens to protect water quality in rivers, tributary watersheds, oceans, bays, wetlands, surface and groundwater in Northern California.” His goal, obviously, is to enrich himself by continuing to cash in on Water Quality Act loopholes accompanied by disproportionate fines that make it possible for Silver to exploit them.

A REVIEW BY THE WILLITS NEWS in 2011 “of its annual reports since 2003 showed River Watch received $1.61 million from legal settlements; $201,000 from grants and $97,000 in donations. During this same period it spent about $1.3 million in legal fees. The top year to date in settlements came in 2008 when River Watch received $831,000.”

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SF MIME TROUPE IN POINT ARENA — INVITES COMMUNITY TO A SCHMOOZE BEFOREHAND. The community is invited to a community potluck with the San Francisco Mime Troupe on Tuesday, July 16, at 7pm upstairs at the Odd Fellows Lodge in Point Arena. Please bring a dish and hang out with the troupe the night before they present “Oil & Water” at the Arena Theater (show is the next night, on Wednesday, July 17 — sponsor tickets still available and include reserved seating. Contact Shauna at shauna@arenatheater.org or 882-3272 for more info. Hope to see you there — blake more PS. Kids are welcome!

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GOODBYE WORLD

Hello everyone,

I want you to know that the Anderson Valley Education Foundation is sponsoring the Northern California Premier of the movie, “Goodbye World” at the Grange. The movie was filmed in the Anderson Valley and includes many local residents as extras. Please save the night of Friday, August 2nd. Doors will open at 5:30 for food and beverages with the screening at 7 pm. Following the showing, the director will hold a Q&A session. I hope you can come. Please forward this message to friends who may be interested. Tickets are $15 per adult and $7 for children 17 and under. Tickets are available at Laughing Dog Bookstore, All That Good Stuff, and Lemon’s Market. Funds raised from the event will help support the Education Foundation’s three primary activities: Summer Internships, Scholarships and Grants. Hope to see you there! — Dick Browning, Philo

WILL PARRISH, ace eco-reporter for the AVA, was in court Friday where he learned that DA Eyster has filed “either 16 or 19 misdemeanor charges against me, including a separate ‘Unlawful Entry’ charge for every day I was on the boom. Each charge carries a maximum six month jail sentence. I opted not to waive my right to a speedy trial, so it’s all going to happen very quickly.”

PARRISH, in a rear guard effort to prevent the huge folly of the Willits Bypass, had strapped himself to Caltrans road building equipment.

PARRISH’S pre-trial hearing is set for July 22nd and a jury trial is on for August 5th. Omar Figueroa is representing Parrish, meaning Parrish’s trial won’t be a pushover for the DA’s office.

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YEARS AGO, DA Susan Massini charged me with every variation of disturbing the peace she could come up with, including making “a loud noise on a school campus” or something like that. Eyster prosecuted me, Vinceny “Queeg” Lechowick presided. Kind of. Eyster won. Kind of. The DA wanted more time for what amounted to a scuffle, but my attorney, the late great Karl Leipnik, working pro bono, got me off, kind of, with 35 days.

I CONSIDER that particular incarceration a victory in that it resulted in a major overhaul of the County Jail, beginning with the early release of a dozen or so inmates due to illegal overcrowding, which wasn’t the only illegal thing going on in there with the full knowledge of the Mendocino County Superior Court. All it took to get some remediation going was some outside publicity and an ad hoc writ to the court, signed by every inmate in the place, demanding that everyone play by the rules.

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THE MENDOCINO COMMUNITY NETWORK was last in the news when the Mendocino Unified School District tried to sell it off a few years ago, but no buyers appeared.

MCN been a money-loser since its inception by a cunning little fellow named Rennie Innis who got it going in the mid-90s using a 1992 NASA grant to the school district. As we’ve described in detail in previous articles, MCN was and is operating a private, commercial business under the auspices of a public school district, taking advantage of numerous direct and indirect school subsidies while marketing the private business as “good for the kids.”

A FEW YEARS after setting up MCN and paying himself and his assistant, Mitch Sprague, in the hundred thou range, Innis moved on to Hawaii. MCN was then taken over by Sprague.

MCN gets facilities, utilities, some staff, and financing, folded into the school’s overhead. We knew of at least three people who were unable to start or expand internet businesses in the 1990s on the Coast because they couldn’t compete with MCN’s subsidies.

IN ADDITION to its subsidized overhead, MCN has never paid any of the taxes that a commercial business has to pay — no property tax, no income tax, no business tax. So it came as no surprise that no commercial computer outfit would want to pick it up because if they did, they’d have a whole new stack of expenses on their books, and they’d have to pay taxes.

LAST WEEK Mitch Sprague, seeing MCN’s revenues heading faster and faster into the proverbial bit-bucket, announced to the Mendocino School Board that he was packing it in. Part of that announcement included a statement from Mendocino Unified Superintendent Jason Moore (who clearly has no idea of the true history of MCN) that MCN “has run a deficit for a while” — i.e., its entire existence if honest accounting had been applied.

SPRAGUE sees the email on the screen with the frowny faces and has thrown in his towel. We’re now taking bets on how much longer MCN will last. The over-under is two years.

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THE UKIAH CITY COUNCIL held a special meeting last Wednesday to decide if they should hold another special meeting Friday to discuss the replacement procedure for Councilwoman Rodin, who has said she would be stepping down on August 16. Councilmember “Red” Phil Baldwin was absent Wednesday, so the council decided to hold another special meeting Friday to decide the issue. Baldwin was absent again. There seemed to be lots of confusion about the timing of an election, which must be called not less than 114 days before a regularly scheduled election, but not until the seat is actually declared vacant or until the person resigns or blah, blah, blah ad infinitum. Mayor Crane said that Rodin could resign that day to clear the way for an election in November. Rodin, who appeared by conference call, presumably from Monterey, said she might not resign after all, that she might change her mind. The council decided again to wait until Baldwin can be present for the decision.

THE COST OF A SPECIAL ELECTION was raised as a concern. If the election was combined with the November election, the cost was estimated to be $15,000-$20,000. If the council waits until March, the cost is estimated to be an additional $10,000. If Rodin wanted to facilitate an election, she could easily have timed her resignation (which she now seems to be hedging) so the election could be held in November. Now, after missing the deadline for November, it is predictable that the council will choose to fill the vacancy by appointment, on the grounds that the city can’t afford to spend the money on a special election, or be without representation from August to March. Since this is the same group that spent $30,000 on the dining platform, $45,000 for some jive landscaping, and millions on garbage giveaways and bloated city admin, any handwringing over the modest cost of an election will be the purest form of hypocrisy. The reality is, the city council thinks they are better qualified than the public to decide who should sit with them. And they sure don’t want to sit with anyone who will utter a discouraging word about the slo mo dismantling of city services and finances that is currently underway.

Rodin

UKIAH COUNCILWOMAN MARI RODIN, who may or may not be departing, will be honored Thursday for her “many accomplishments” at a private reception at the home of City Manager Jane Chambers. Previous departing councilmembers have been recognized at simple public receptions held in the foyer of City Hall immediately before their last meeting. Councilwoman Rodin’s “record of accomplishments,” which she apparently does not want celebrated by the un-washed public, includes the following:

1) HI-JACKED REDEVELOPMENT of upwards of $1 million dollars annually for ten years to pay administrative salaries with money that should have gone to fix “blighted conditions” like crumbling streets and boarded up storefronts. Now that the state has pulled the plug on redevelopment, Ukiah is left with a $1 million dollar annual structural deficit because the Rodin-led city council has refused to cut the bloated administrative overhead;

2) SCHEMED with the other feebs on the Ukiah city council to boost the pay for City Manager Jane Chambers from $150,000 annually by secretly agreeing to pay her $16,000 in “merit pay” and $8,000 in “executive pay,” which, along with a hefty car allowance, health insurance, retirement and other perks, tops out at a cool quarter of a million dollars in annual compensation. When the sordid arrangement came to light, the council made a show of cutting Chambers’ indefensible merit and executive pay while leaving the door open to restore the cuts if Chambers can convince the employee bargaining groups to take a 10% cut in their salaries, thereby exhibiting leadership of the Kendall Smith variety;

3) ELIMINATED THE CITY AMBULANCE service and $650,000 in annual revenue that went with it, causing the lay off of six firefighter/EMTs, thereby reducing fire department staffing to its lowest level in 45 years;

4) STRUCK A DEAL with the Ukiah Valley Fire District, to make up for the resulting staffing shortages, that has resulted in stationing the remaining Ukiah firefighters outside the city limits, thereby reducing response time for any in-town emergency calls;

5) SQUANDERED almost $30,000 in public funds to eliminate three parking spaces and build a dining platform to benefit Mari’s favorite restaurant, Patrona’s, so that she and her council cronies, Little Benj Thomas and Polly Anne Landis, can dine al fresco within a fenced enclosure that keeps the public who paid for it carefully at bay;

6) SQUANDERED another $45,000 in pubic funds to “landscape” the new city electrical substation with about twenty trees and shrubs, which works out to about $2,500 per oleander;

7) SIGNED OFF on a sweetheart deal with the Ukiah garbage hauler, handing over millions in public dollars and forcing increases on the ratepayers;

8) JOINED Little Benj and Polly Anne in passing a meaningless resolution in support of “Zero Waste” although for the last two years they have successfully blocked the diversion of food waste from the Ukiah waste stream, preferring that it be trucked outtahere to be landfilled at high cost to the ratepayers, instead of hauled to Cold Creek Composting at no charge to be converted into a valuable soil amendment;

9) JOINED CITY MANAGER CHAMBERS in withholding information and dissing the Ukiah Valley Sanitation District, so that instead of providing information and working out their differences, the District now has two or three lawsuits going against the city;

10) IN SHORT, throughout her career, Mari Rodin has functioned as a reliable shill for the City Manager, always siding with the interests of city administration instead of representing the interests of the people she was elected to serve.

A READER WRITES: “Is Mari Rodin really taking a job as an analyst with Monterey County LAFCO? All I can say is, the applicant pool must have been pretty thin. Rodin, who is a genuinely good-hearted person, but not exactly rocket scientist material, never impressed me as the analytical type. As a self-described grant writer, Mari has made it into her late-40s without ever having a real job. You know, the kind where you are expected to show up at the same time every day and work a set number of hours. It will be interesting to see how well she adjusts to that.”

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ADMIT IT, YOU LAUGHED. I did, my wife did too, and she’s Chinese. I refer to the KTVU debacle where the news reader, Tori Campbell, read off these names as the pilots of lethal Flight 214: “Sum Ting Wong; Wi Tu Lo; Ho Lee Fuk; and Bang Ding Ow.”

BEFORE YOU DENOUNCE ME as a racist dog-pig please read Freud’s essay on jokes. All kinds of “inappropriate” material can be converted to humor, and one man’s funny is another man’s insult.

ON THE OTHER HAND, was that a Chicago newspaper whose headline read, “Fright 214”? The joke was supposed to be the perceived Asian inability to pronounce “L.” Ho hum. That one’s been done to death, and wildly unfunny in the context.

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THE TRAVON MARTIN verdict, seems to me, is a lot like the OJ case. With OJ, the jury made a perfectly logical decision to find OJ not guilty based on the incompetent prosecution they were presented in the courtroom. The Travon Martin jury made a perfectly logical decision to find Zimmerman not guilty based on the incompetent prosecution they heard in the courtroom.

ZIMMERMAN set the whole thing in motion by stalking the boy, walking right up behind him then, after “words were exchanged,” and Martin, a big, strong kid, knocked Zimmerman down and pounded him a few times, Zimmerman shot him. If Zimmerman had stayed in his car like he was supposed to do as a neighborhood watch guy, not a police officer, Travon Martin would still be alive. I thought at a minimum Zimmerman was guilty of manslaughter, and murder would not have been inconsistent with the known facts.

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DEAR ANTOINETTE

Marie Antoinette’s mother’s advice

My dear daughter,

1770 / Vienna — Do not take any recommendations; listen to no one, if you would be at peace. Have no curiosity—this is a fault which I fear greatly for you; avoid all familiarity with your inferiors. Ask of Monsieur and Madame de Noailles, and even exact of them, under all circumstances, advice as to what, as a foreigner and being desirous of pleasing the nation, you should do, and that they should tell you frankly if there be anything in your bearing, discourse, or any point which you should correct. Reply amiably to everyone, and with grace and dignity; you can if you will. You must learn to refuse. After Strasbourg you must accept nothing without taking counsel of Monsieur and Madame de Noailles, and you should refer to them everyone who would speak to you of his personal affairs, saying frankly that being a stranger yourself, you cannot undertake to recommend anyone to the king. If you wish you may add, in order to make your reply more emphatic, “The empress, my mother, has expressly forbidden me to undertake any recommendations.” Do not be ashamed to ask advice of anyone, and do nothing on your own responsibility. In the king you will find a tender father who will also be your friend if you deserve it. Put entire confidence in him; you will run no risk. Love him, obey him, seek to divine his thoughts; you cannot do enough on this moment when I am losing you. Concerning the dauphin I shall say nothing; you know my delicacy on this point. A wife should be submissive in everything to her husband and should have no thought but to please him and do his will. The only true happiness in this world lies in a happy marriage; I know whereof I speak. Everything depends on the wife if she be yielding, sweet, and amusing. I counsel you, my dear daughter, to reread this letter on the twenty-first of every month. I beg you to be true to me on this point. My only fear for you is negligence in your prayers and studies—and lukewarmness succeeds negligence. Fight against it, for it is more dangerous than a more reprehensible, even wicked state; one can conquer that more easily. Love your family; be affectionate to them—to your aunts as well as to your brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. Suffer no evil speaking; you must either silence the persons or escape it by withdrawing from them. If you value your peace of mind, you must from the start avoid this pitfall, which I greatly fear for you knowing your curiosity.

Your mother.

Marie Antoinette & Her mother Maria Theresa

Hambleton

ACCORDING to a Sheriff’s Department press release, Mr. Dana Brandon Hambelton, 30, of Arcata, at approximately 4pm Sunday was southbound on 101 when a deputy “observed” his “non-operational tail lamp.” The deputy subsequently “detected the odor of cannabis emanating from inside the car.” A search of the vehicle revealed four mason jars containing a “honey oil” type of concentrated cannabis. There was also a plastic bag nearby which contained 92 grams of another type of concentrated cannabis known as “bubble hash.”

THE AVA’S drug expert tells us that honey oil “makes you fall down and hit your head; its thc content is about 39%.” He added, “But we could certainly use more professionalism in the drug trafficking community. What kind of idiot transports with a tail light out?”

A STONED IDIOT, undoubtedly. Bubble hash, incidentally, “is super refined honey oil that forms bubbles when you smoke it.” I’ll bet you could double your fun if you took a bubble bath along with the bubble hash, and triple your jollies with a wad of Double Bubble Gum. Stoners just have so much fun!

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SPEAKING OF WHATEVER we were speaking of, a caller noticed a full pallet of ammonium phosphate at Friedman Brothers, Ukiah, with a note attached that said, “Special Order, Mateel Community Center.” Why would the Mateel want golf course (and/or bombmaking) chemicals? We called the Mateel to find out if they’d ordered it and if they had, why? Sports stadiums use this stuff to green up their grass, but it’s bad mojo, as Ashley, the pleasant young woman who answered the phone at the Mateel agreed. “It’s like gnarly stuff,” Ashley said, before assuring me that she’d call the Mateel’s plant manager, Johnny, and get back to me.

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DAVE HULL and Ric Piffero are making an offer to Ukiah that Ukiah hasn’t refused. But with the present apparat running the city… But it seems to be a done deal. Hull and Piffero are offering the city 37 untouched acres, valued at a mil-plus, in Ukiah’s west hills. Back a ways, H&P got Westside Ukiah all excited when they tried to build on the property. During that hassle H&P further aroused the Pwoggies by flying an American flag on their property and blasting out Bruce Springsteen’s wowser anthem, Born In The USA, through early morning loudspeakers. H&P were unhappy, as I recall, at the opposition to their development plans. The property includes Gibson Creek, “sloping hillsides and old-growth redwoods.” You can hike to it by walking due west on Standley Street.

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Carrillo

SONOMA COUNTY Supervisor Efren Carrillo, 32, was arrested early Saturday morning creeping around his neighborhood in nothing but his flip-flops and Fruit of the Looms. It seems he was looking for love, but wound up charged with burglary and prowling when he tried to climb through a neighbor woman’s window.

CARILLO has long been viewed as perfect flab glab lib lab material by the flab glab lib lab Northcoast Democrats, especially big shots like Mike Thompson and Doug Bosco. The Party endorsed Carillo over Rue Furch, a woman with much more real progressive history. But for today’s Democrats of the Bosco-Thompson type, Carillo is perfect. A glib, principle-free Hispanic in an area with an ever-larger Hispanic population, a kind of Mexican Obama, how could he miss? But now this, an adventure that raises serious questions about the dude’s mental equilibrium.

WILL CARILLO’S midnight ramble hurt his political future? No. It will probably help him with Democrats, for whom the bar can’t be too low. (The Republicans don’t even have the bar or the poles to rest it on.) Look at Clinton. His approval ratings rose faster than his penis during his Monica Lewinsky interlude.

ON HIS PLUS SIDE, earlier this year Carillo gallantly knocked out a gavacho pestering a young lady in his company. But an early morning attempt to break into a single woman’s apartment— well, that might even be too much for Bosco and the Party stenos at the Press Democrat. As it happens, the supervisor was at a Demo wine guzzle with Thompson earlier in the day and may have still been drunk from that event when the cops corralled him.

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ABOUT TIME. A series of regulations went into effect earlier this month that will place new restrictions on San Francisco’s professional dog walkers. The new rules require dog walkers to obtain a city-issued permit, puts a limit on the number of dogs that can be walked at a time (a maximum of eight) and requires dog walkers to have any vehicles used to transport dogs to be inspected, approved and carry $1 million in liability insurance. Violators will be charged a $50 fine for the first infraction.

JUST LAST SATURDAY afternoon, I was walking on California between 7th and 8th when a leashed, medium-size dog, maybe a forty pounder, leaped out from behind his inattentive owner at a passing Hispanic woman. She just kept going, probably thinking to herself, “One more bummer here in Gringolandia,” as the trendo-groove-o dog owner said, “Gee, he’s never done that before.” I’d like to see a law banning big dogs from The City. Period. It’s not fair to the dog to keep him cooped up in an apartment. Your little yappers, while annoying, are at least apartment-manageable. And you shouldn’t be allowed to own a dog at all if you have to hire someone to walk it. (A trendo-groove-o is a young guy with a little pork pie hat, stovepipe jeans, a t-shirt with a corporate logo, a tattoo of a cartoon character. They’re coming in the windows!)

OF COURSE my upstairs neighbor, who happens to be blood, maintains a dog about the size of a Shetland pony. He hires a neighbor lady to walk the beast, a giant poodle of some kind, and an animal with zero redeeming features — dumb, loud, unattractive, which, it occurs to me, is also a description with wide human applicability. A city doesn’t work unless there’s basic civility, at least minimal regard for one’s neighbors. Frisco’s teeming with entitlement creatures, kind of like Westside Ukiah transplanted to SF. Tiny case in point: A lady is advertising on our neighborhood blog, typically chock-a-bloc with restaurant tips — gastromania also being prevalent in The City — for someone to drive her and her rabbit to the veterinarian. I’d volunteer to hunt her rabbit or eat it, but drive a rabbit? Anywhere?

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ON-LINE STATEMENT OF THE DAY: “As an Oakland resident, I’m embarrassed that we’ve become the go-to town when national newscasts need cheap photo-ops of burning flags and broken windows. Oakland is not Biloxi, 1962. It’s extremely integrated and diverse, we even have a place for entitled, pseudo-intellectual Reed drop-out ‘anarchists’… Go break some windows in Florida!” (SF Chron comment line)

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TODAY (TUESAY JULY 16) at 1pm, Sheriff Allman will hold a press conference to announce a major development in a “cold case” homicide investigation. The press conference will be held in the Donovan Room at the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office (951 Low Gap Road in Ukiah). Those interested can use the Summit Conference Call System by dialing (877) 223-4490 and entering Conference Security Code: 38768. Please call in by 12:55pm as the Press Conference will start promptly at 1pm. (Credentialed media only.)

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FLIGHT 214 CRASH ANALYSIS

Editor,

As a pilot and former flight instructor, I’ve been following this Asiana Airlines crash story very closely.

At the outset — I picked up the incident early on the car radio when I was out shopping. I spent the rest of the day on the net trolling the world (in the four languages I can get along in) to see who was reporting what.

One seemingly significant thing I found was that early on, the Italian press [la Repubblica} noted that the pilot had declared an emergency. They changed the verbiage three times on their website, but the message remained the same. No one else anywhere (that I could find) mentioned the pilot declaring an emergency.

Soon after this revelation — early afternoon, California time — I found on the Hearst Chronicle sfgate website a [purported] recording of the SFO tower:

(1) It informed OZ 214 that the emergency crews would be available;

(2) It gave approach instructions for other inbound aircraft;

(3) It shooed some other aircraft away with “go-around” instructions. The 214 pilot’s responses were undecipherable. He was saying something — quite short, possibly simply an affiirmative — but who knows what?

And I have not heard another thing about this recording. (It would unravel a lot.)

My initial reading of the crash was that there must have been a runaway trimtab. The plane pitched up and the pilots tried to compensate. How else could it get so low and slow? That’s why they hit the barrier.

(The initial radio reports were that the plane lost its tail on landing — which I figured must have been caused by metal fatigue: The tail fell off, and then the plane went — bang — nose-first into the ground. The first report is, of course, always wrong.)

The recording also noted that OZ 214 was cleared for 28L. Which means that any mechanical problem must have occurred shortly before final, because otherwise tower would have cleared them to a closer runway — which is 10. And they could have come in over northern Pacifica and saved several minutes of flying, rather than going to San Jose just to go north. (This approach to 10/28 is used only during bad weather, about which Bay Approach controllers used to say, Hey, we’re always out of practice, because we only use this approach 5 days a year.)

This was a visual approach. Any pilot looking out the window is trained to tell where the plane is going to land: Your landing spot is where the terrain doesn’t move. You can see your way right to the runway. This is basic pilot training.

Plus, a VASI (or, I think, on big planes) PAPI system of lights will give you a very good idea of whether you’re descent is high, low, or appropriate. (SFO’s glideslope wasn’t working, but, hell, this wasn’t an instrument approach; if the pilots can’t do a visual in VFR, they shouldn’t be trying to land the f-ing plane in the first place. — which may be recursive.)

Any student pilot can go low and slow. (It’s the classic set-up for a stall-spin accident.) Speaking as a former flight instructor here, if you let ‘em get away with it a time or two and then scare the hell of them (by saving the landing), they’ll never ever do it again. They’ve been there, they know. Presumably.

Then there’s cockpit communication problem. CRM — Cockpit resource management. Some decades ago, because of the overweening authority of pilots in command, it was determined that anarchism trumped authoritarianism: All authority must justify itself. The pilot flying is hands-on. The pilot nonflying monitors and challenges. (“Captain, the airspeed is too low”; or generically “Hey, the instruments say otherwise!”) Consider the commercial jet that flew into the swamp in the Southern USA. There was a malfunctioning indicator light. Nobody was watching the store. Nobody monitored; nobody challenged. For OZ214, with three experienced pilots in the cockpit, how in the world is it possible that the sloppy approach goes unmonitored, unchallenged?

Now if the reigning Samsung honcho can call a six-hour meeting with no dissent — or even bathroom breaks — allowed, perhaps the S. Koreans are too much in awe of authority. Or as one of the OZ training pilots commented [to closely paraphrase], If someone in the cockpit had said “Airspeed,” we wouldn’t be talking about this.

It’s a shame we have to.

Michael Slaughter, Pacifica

PS. The KTVU debacle, however racist (as is widely and snidely sneered), is to me still very funny. Involuntarily so — but I still giggle every time I think of it. And today, some corporate media were declaring that this incident has smeared the reputation of KTVU. I say, however, that that’s nonsense:

It’s US television — WHAT reputation?

The overall silliness reminds me of an old two-panel Wizard of Id cartoon:

Employment interviewer: “Your name?”

Candidate: “Dhing Dhong.”

Interviewer: “Your previous employment?”

Candidate: “Avon Man.”

In short, IMO BFD. Silly, stereotype-invoking, but funny.

PPS. If you want real racism in action in the USA, look at Juan Cole’s piece on July 14 on a racial breakdown of who gets murdered [by the state] for murdering whom? Or the comparison he notes of comparative household wealth, black/white. Stunning.

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NO SUCH THING

Editor,

I write in response to a recent San Francisco Chronicle story about the proper role of photojournalists (“Eyewitness to History,” Insight, SF Chronicle, July 7, 2013).

I think that the creed of objectivity has ruined journalism and that it should be abandoned entirely. Journalism should be concerned with truthfulness, not “objectivity,” and the two are not the same.

Journalism should tell us what is going on and why we should care. If a journalist does not care about what he covers, why should the public? But to be “objective” means to be morally and emotionally uninvolved, uncommitted, disinterested.

It defeats the whole point of reporting on current events which is to inform the public about matters of public interest. If the journalist is not morally and emotionally engaged in his subject, why should he expect the public to be?

The very decision to cover a story implies that the story should engage the public. By eschewing any personal moral or emotional engagement with the story, the journalist is surely not going to engage the public.

This credo of “objectivity” is at odds with the entire purpose of journalism and explains why so much “mainstream” journalism is so boring.

Steven Yourke, San Francisco

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HELPFUL HINTS FOR AMPUTATIONS

The Battle of Gettysburg, fought 150 years ago this week, saw the deaths of more Union and Confederate soldiers than in any other Civil War battle. An estimated 9,000 men were killed during the fight, and another 40,000 were injured. The victorious Union Army, after driving Confederate forces south, stopping their northward advance had much to celebrate and many to mourn, but for those who survived the immediate fighting, a second battle lay ahead in the struggle of the wounded to survive.

Civil War medicine could often be more of a hazard than enemy ambushes. Germ theory, a new-fangled idea that involved hand-washing and instrument sterilization, wasn’t yet in fashion with America’s medical professionals, and keeping bone saws clean on a bloody battlefield was a minor concern.

With limited knowledge and even more limited resources, doctors and surgeons often turned to amputation when a soldier suffered any kind of significant wound. Before the war’s end, some 60,000 men would have a limb removed. Tillie Pierce Alleman, a fifteen-year-old girl whose recollections of Gettysburg during the battle would be published in 1889, observed a grisly scene outside a local home:

To the south of the house, and just outside of the yard, I noticed a pile of limbs higher than the fence. It was a ghastly sight! Gazing upon these, too often the trophies of the amputating bench, I could have no other feeling, than that the whole scene was one of cruel butchery.

Surgeons weren’t just cutting and hoping for the best, though—Samuel Cooper’s The first lines of the practice of surgery was a must-read for any army doctor working on the front lines. Here, we’ve excerpted some of Cooper’s most helpful advice for amputation of the arm, leg, and smaller extremities. It goes without saying—we do not encourage you try this at home:

Arm: The patient may either sit on a chair, or lie near the edge of a bed, and an assistant is to hold the arm in a horizontal position, if the state of the limb will allow it. The pad of the tourniquet is to be applied to the brachial artery, as high as convenient… Instead of making a short stump, when the arm must be taken off very high up, Dr. Larrey thinks it more advisable to amputate at the shoulder joint. He says, that if the humerus is sawn through higher than the insertion of the deltoid muscle, the stump becomes retracted towards the arm-pit by the pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi; the ligatures on the vessels irritate the brachial plexus of nerves; great pain and nervous twitchings are apt to be excited; tetanus is frequently brought on; the stump is affected with considerable swelling; and at length, an anchylosis of the shoulder follows…

Thigh: The thigh should be amputated as low as the disease will allow. The patient is to be placed on a firm table, with his back properly supported by pillows, and assistants, who are also to hold his hands, and keep him from moving too much during the operation. The ankle of the sound limb is to he fastened, by means of a garter, to the nearest leg of the table. An assistant firmly grasping the thigh with both hands, is to draw upward the skin and muscles with some force, while the surgeon makes a circular incision, as quickly as possible, through the integuments, down to the muscles. When the integuments are sound in the place of the incision and above it, their retraction by the assistant as soon as they are cut through, and a very slight division of the bands of cellular substance with the edge of the amputating knife towards the point, will generally preserve a sufficient quantity for covering, in conjunction with the muscles cut in a mode about to be described, the extremity of the bone; and the painful method of dissecting up the skin from the fascia, and turning it back, previously to dividing the muscles, may be considered useless and improper in all amputations of the thigh, where the skin retains its natural movableness and elasticity…

Fingers and toes: The operation may be done in various ways. Sometimes a small semilunar incision is made on the back of the finger or toe to be amputated, extending across the part with its greatest convexity about half an inch beyond the joint. The Rap is next raised, and reflected. The skin on the other side directly opposite the joint, is divided by a second cut, extending across the finger, or toe, and meeting the two ends of the first semilunar incision. The joint is now bent, and the capsular ligament opened. One of the lateral ligaments is then divided, which allows the head of the bone to be dislocated, and the surgeon has nothing more to do, than to cut such other parts, as still attach the part, about to be removed, to the rest of the limb. When the arteries bleed profusely, they must be tied; but, in general, the hemorrhage will stop without a ligature, as soon as the flap is applied to the end of the stump, and the edges of the wound have been brought together with adhesive plaster. Of the plan of stopping the bleeding by pinching the vessels, sometimes recommended, I can say nothing from my own experience.

Angela Serratore (Courtesy, Lapham’s Quarterly)

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WE’RE LESS THAN TWO WEEKS AWAY from NSSLF 2013! The schedule is now online at http://notsosimple.info. On the home page click on tentative schedule for 2013. We will try to minimize changes at this point, but you should keep checking back up to Fair time. We also have four satellite workshops this year. Two are the weekend before the fair (which is this next weekend) and two are the Fri-Sat of the Fair. You will find links to them on the home page. Also on the home page are links to information about our Barter and Trade Circle, Preserves Table and Kids Area if you want to find out about how to participate. See you at the Mendocino County Fairgrounds in Boonville July 26,27,28.

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EVERYONE IS WELCOME at the Manchester School Alumni Association’s 3rd Annual BBQ Benefit on Saturday, July 20. The celebration starts at 1pm until 8pm, at the Greco Field Farm Center, on Highway One in Manchester. This event will support educational programs at Manchester School. Enjoy Tri-Trip and Chicken BBQ with all the fixin’s, Full Bar by Knights of Columbus, Dessert Auction, Silent Auction, Children’s Games, Horseshoe Tournament, and more! Entertainment by Old Stage, Fast Company & DJ Sister Yasmin. Pre-sale Tickets: Adults $12, Children 6-12: $5 Tickets at the Gate: Adults $15, Children 6-12: $6 Sponsors: $50 or more gets you 2 free meal tickets To order pre-sale tickets, volunteer or sponsor call Cindy at 877-1676 or 884-1828.

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THE BROTHERS COMATOSE Play Sundays in the Park

On Sunday, July 28th in Todd Grove Park at 6pm Fowler Auto & Truck Center, The City of Ukiah, KWNE-FM and MAX 93.5 are proud to present the fourth concert of the 22nd annual Sundays in the Park concert series featuring the Stomp Along String Dudes, The Brothers Comatose. Believe it or not, it’s tough to create foot stomping rhythms without the use of percussion. San Francisco quintet the Brothers Comatose are one of those modern, rambling bluegrass ensembles that sustains up-tempo tunes, joint harmonization and plucking along via chirping mandolins, fiddles, guitars, banjos and upright bass. “The good thing about a string band, is that things tend to culminate with dancing rather than elbows flying in a mosh-pit,” says Gio Benedetti. As for the name, only a brother could pick it out by observing his sibling. Guitarist and vocalist Ben said when brother Alex Morrison (banjo and vocals) goes into a trance-like state while playing his banjo, “his eyes roll back in his head like he’s in a coma.” It’s certainly not indicative of their music, which doesn’t have any of the indulgent noodling breaks characterized by other string based bands – though the musicianship is solidly there, it’s given with a communal and inclusive spirit to sing and dance along to.

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BILL NOTEMAN to Play Parducci Acoustic Cafe this Saturday This Saturday July 20th, Parducci Winery’s Acoustic Café series will be presenting the fabulous Jump Blues Band Bill Noteman and the Rockets. The festivities start around 7:00 with gates opening at 6:00. General Admission is $14 and tickets are available at Parducci Wine Cellars tasting room, on 501 Parducci Rd. in Ukiah, by calling 463-5357, or online at parducci.com/Wine-Store/Event-Tickets. Food will be available throughout the summer from The Potter Valley Café and North State Street Café with part of the drink proceeds benefiting the Alex Rorabaugh Center (The ARC). Seating fills quickly so be sure to show up early enough to get a seat at 6:00.

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ANNUAL RECREATIONAL ABALONE HARVEST REDUCED

by Dan Bacher

State officials and representatives of some corporate “environmental” NGOs have constantly touted the so-called “marine protected areas” created under the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative as a “science-based” method for bolstering fish and shellfish populations in California.

Yet a recent California Fish and Game Commission decision revealed that traditional fishery management, rather than the marine protected areas supported by the Western States Petroleum Association, Safeway Corporation and other corporate interests under the MLPA Initiative, may be much more effective in addressing fishery declines than the creation of questionable “marine protected areas.”

The Commission on June 26 voted to modify abalone fishery regulations along the northern California coast. By doing this, the Commission effectively admitted that fishing regulations, rather than alleged “marine reserves” that went into effect on the North Central Coast on May 1, 2010 and on the North Coast on December 19, 2012, are the “solution” to reducing pressure on a declining abalone population. The decline was spurred by a die-off that coincided with a local red tide bloom and calm ocean conditions in 2011.

The Commission voted to reduce the annual limit to 18 abalone (previously 24), with no more than nine taken from Sonoma and Marin counties. Other changes to abalone regulations included a coast-wide start time for the fishing day of 8 a.m. and a closure at Ft. Ross in Sonoma County.

The changes were proposed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and then adopted by the Commission.

“The new management measures we’ve adopted today will help ensure that the red abalone remains abundant on the North Coast and the popular recreational fishery there continues to thrive,” said Commission President Michael Sutton. “Our job is to keep wildlife populations in California healthy and not wait for a crisis to take action.”

Jim Martin, the West Coast Regional Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance and representative of the Sonoma County Abalone Network (SCAN), responded, “Apparently Fish and Wildlife believes that traditional fishery management is more effective than marine protected areas in rebuilding fishery stocks – and that reductions in harvest are more effective than closing down areas.”

Martin noted that the abalone decline – caused by a die-off and not overharvesting – occurred in 2011. SCAN immediately supported a temporary closure at the Fort Ross index site to help the population to recover.

“They extended this temporary closure to a year round one,” said Martin. “We supported both that closure and an 8 am start time to help enforcement, as well as reduced bag limit south of Mendocino County.”

However, the abalone fishermen felt the reduction of the bag limit from 24 to 18 was “completely unnecessary.”

“What they really did was reduce the allowable recreational catch from 280,000 to 190,000 abalone, over a 30 percent reduction. And the Abalone Recovery and Management Plan only called for a 25 percent reduction,” said Martin.

In the course of discussing the regulations, Martin and other fishermen asked the Department to quantify the benefits of marine protected areas to the fishery.

The MPAs were touted by MLPA officials, including Ron LeValley, the former Co-Chair of the MLPA Initiative Science Advisory team now being investigated by federal authorities for conspiracy with two others to embezzle nearly $1 million from the Yurok Tribe, because of the “benefits” they would provide by bolstering abalone and fish populations. (http://www.times-standard.com/news/ci_23598585/escalation-an-embezzlement-court-documents-offer-new-details )

“The CDFW refused to quantify the benefits because they said it would take too long,” said Martin. “We believe there should be some benefit to quantify these benefits based on science.”

“The whole selling point of these MPAs is that they would make fish and shellfish populations more abundant,” said Martin. “The first test of that theory turned to be based on false promises.”

Martin emphasized, “We don’t think these marine protected areas benefit abalone at all. If they benefit abalone, give us some numbers. Instead they turned to traditional management to deal with a situation wasn’t harvest related.”

The CDFW press release announcing the regulations confirms Martin’s contention that the Department effectively admitted that the marine protected areas weren’t benefiting the abalone at all.

“Northern California red abalone are managed adaptively by the Commission, using traditional management measures coupled with fishery independent surveys to maintain the catch at sustainable levels, as prescribed by the Abalone Recovery and Management Plan (ARMP). Ongoing data surveys by the Department of Fish and Wildlife detected the effects of a recent abalone die-off along the Sonoma coast,” the Department stated.

“The declines in abalone density triggered the changes to management measures, because the densities dropped below levels that are prescribed in the ARMP for management action,” the release continued.

“The new regulations are intended to provide an opportunity for abalone populations in Sonoma and Marin to increase, and to help Mendocino County maintain a productive fishery. The set start time for the fishing day will also aid enforcement,” the DFW said.

Not mentioned anywhere in the news release are the “glorious” new marine protected areas, created under an allegedly “open, transparent and inclusive” process, that were supposed to bolster the populations of abalone and other species.

The release also didn’t mention the reasons for the abalone die-off and how to prevent a similar situation from taking place in the future.

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NEW SEED LIBRARY OPENS AT THE ROUND VALLEY PUBLIC LIBRARY

Covelo, CA  —  The first seed library in Mendocino County has just opened at the Round Valley Public Library in the small (pop.1255), remote town of Covelo, California. The Seed Library is one of several seed libraries to open this year in Northern California.

Seed libraries are a fairly new phenomenon. The concept is simple: patrons “check out” seeds, take them home to grow tasty and nutritious food for their families, let a portion of the crop go to seed, save some of that seed for planting next season and return some to the library.

Why seeds? With high food prices gardening has come back into style. “Growing your own food is like printing your own money,” according to food activist Ron Finley. Combine that with the fact that people from all walks of life are rediscovering that fruits and vegetables grown in their own backyards have a flavor that just isn’t found in supermarket produce and you have a new generation of Victory Gardens sprouting up all over the country.

There are benefits to growing and saving seed of heirloom and other open pollinated varieties of food plants besides saving money. One is that after several seasons the plants grown become acclimatized to local conditions. The plants become better suited to the area than the plants grown from seed raised in other parts of the country. And by selecting for desirable traits, the gardener can develop strains that mature earlier, or taste sweeter, or tolerate higher temperatures.

People are also attracted to seed saving for philosophical reasons. According to many estimates, we’ve lost more than 90% of the food plant varieties that existed a century ago. Big agricultural corporations rely on monocultures, and the ensuing loss of genetic diversity reduces food crops’ ability to adapt to pests, plant disease, and changes in climate. A large percentage of seed savers are motivated to save seeds in response to corporations who quietly bought up seed companies over the last few decades only to “discontinue” production of old time varieties in favor of hybrid or GMO varieties that need to be purchased from the company every growing season.

“By reclaiming the tradition of seed saving, we are taking seeds out of the hands of big corporations and putting them back into the hands of backyard gardeners,” says Pat Sobrero, Seed Librarian at The Seed Library.

People can become members of The Seed Library and withdraw seeds by promising to return some open-pollinated seed at the end of the growing season, either seed they’ve saved or commercially grown seed, preferably seed grown close to “home.”

Anyone is welcome to check out any type of seed they want to plant, although The Seed Library discourages its patrons from returning “advanced difficulty” seed until the gardener has the knowledge, time, and skill to do it correctly. This ensures that the next person to check out seed will grow out what they intend.

The library offers brochures and handouts on basic seed saving, has many books on seed saving available for checkout, and plans to offer classes on gardening and seed saving in the future.

The Seed Library is open during the Round Valley Public Library’s regular hours, Tuesday through Saturday, 10 to 5. You can find out more about The Seed Library by visiting their facebook page: www.facebook.com/TheSeedLibrary .

Temperatures are finally climbing into the mid-90s after one of the coldest, most overcast, lingering springs on recollection. Summer crops are thirsting for sunshine. Thanks to wire hoops and plastic rowcovers I succeeded in bringing the first watermelons to the highly competitive Bloomington Saturday market, one of the biggest in the country, but the honor was diminished by a ten day stretch of overcast days with highs barely reaching 80, great weather for lettuce and broccoli but lousy for forming sugar in fruit. Also, my elderly neighbor (who grew up on the homestead my family purchased upon my son and me returning home from Boonville three years ago now) raised about a dozen guinea hens who discovered my pride and joy watermelons and hollowed out about thirty from the experimental row, rendering them striped diosaur eggshells out of which the reptiles had hatched. Fortunately the gentleman farmer/horticulturalist has been tending to peach, apple, pear, apricot, and nectarine trees as well as several varieties of grapes, making wine for decades, and is no longer able to drink much so his basement is lined with racks of vintages.

Anticipating a federally funded runway improvement grant, the Boonville Airport Committee put out bids for an engineering consultant early this year. It’s been several years since Boonville International’s Air Strip crew had surveyed the engineering/consulting field, and the FAA thought the Boonville Fly Boys should check the consulting field again before the grant could be applied for.

Doff your hat and clap your hand over your heart! If in uniform, snap to attention and salute! Run up the colors, and play “The Stars and Stripes Forever”!

“I’m not safe at the jail,” hollered Michael T. Grunwald, suspected of torching Old Glory.

“They’re after me!”

Grunwald could be heard howling in anger, fear and perhaps pain, all the way down the elevator and out the back, condemning the court, slandering the judge, the system, the halls of justice, the whole show. Everyone was gape-mouthed. Grunwald had pulled off one of the all-time Courthouse freakouts.

Georgina Pacheco & Robert Parks

Accompanied by a DNA analyst from the state’s Department of Justice office in Eureka, Sheriff Tom Allman announced Tuesday that the 1988 rape and murder of Georgina Pacheco had been solved.

Robert James Parks, a Fort Bragg fisherman, and a brother-in-law of the victim, has been identified as the killer. Parks committed suicide in 1999 in Long Beach Harbor by chaining himself to a boat in 30 feet of water and sinking it. Parks was the last person to have been seen with Miss Pacheco. He’d picked her up at her place of work, the Sea Pal Restaurant in Fort Bragg.

The DNA science applied to the case was complicated. The FBI’s samples taken from the murder scene had, over time, become unusable for identification purposes. But the persistence of Sheriff’s detective Andy Porter, and DA’s investigator Tim Kiely, persuaded the state’s Department of Justice laboratory to take another look at the post-mortem rape kit. The lab soon found identifiable DNA on the wooden handles of swabs preserved at the time of the murder, a time when DNA as a forensics tool was in its infancy.

EVERYONE who knew Dick Durrett is saddened to learn of   his passing. A long time resident of Yorkville, Mr. Durrett had been ill for some time. A quiet, modest man in a noisy time, we will all miss him. Our condolences to wife Bette, daughter Maya and son Ishi.

ANDERSON VALLEY FIRE CHIEF COLIN WILSON filled us late last week on recent lightning fires and a couple of major emergencies. “As I’m sure everyone noticed we had some major thunderstorm activity Monday night and Tuesday morning.

“We established a command post at our Boonville station and contacted our volunteer lookouts (we now have 16) and began getting smoke reports a little before 10am Tuesday morning. The first fire was south of Highway 128 near the base of Haehl’s Grade about six miles east of Yorkville. It was a strike in a large fir tree which spread into the surrounding vegetation about 50 feet around the tree. Both CalFire Boonville engines and both of our Anderson Valley Yorkville units responded to the scene and with the help of our newest volunteer lookout, Ramone Avila on Ward Mountain, they were able to locate and access the fire relatively quickly. They laid hose and extinguished the ground fire in short order but had to remain on scene for several hours waiting for a timber faller provided by CalFire to arrive and put the tree on the ground where they could fully extinguish it.

“Kyle Clark, AV firefighter/EMT and volunteer lookout, reported our next fire in the Navarro drainage near Floodgate creek. The Howard Forest Hele-tac crew was the first on scene. They got a line around the quarter-acre fire and pretty well extinguished it with bucket drops from the copter. It took quite a while for our engine company from Boonville to gain access over the Mouse Pass Road and about an hour longer for the CalFire engine company to arrive since they came in through the Perry Gulch Ranch. They did some final mop up and departed around 8pm after ensuring there was no extension or rekindle.

“We also chased a few smoke reports from Cold Springs Lookout which was staffed for several days by George Castagnola of Signal Ridge. There was a considerable amount of haze east and south of the tower for the first two days making it difficult to determine whether we had new fires in the area or not.

“Surprisingly we have had no additional fires to date yet reported in the District but there’s still the very real possibility of ‘sleeper fires’ smoldering in shady and or damp areas that may still be discovered in the next few days.

“On Monday we were dispatched to a Medical Aid call for a person buried in a trench. This occurred at 2171 Hwy 128 just east of Floodgate at about noon. A construction crew was building a pond for a vineyard at that location and were in the process of constructing the ‘keyway,” which is a deep wide trench cut under the levee and then filled with compacted dirt to seal the dam to the underlying soil. The uphill side of the cut gave way and slid into the trench burying a worker up to the top of his head. Fortunately, a coworker saw the accident and was quickly able to expose the victim’s head enabling him to breath A small excavator and a backhoe were used by the construction crew to carefully free the victim who was then packaged by fire department personnel and carried to a helicopter landing zone that had been established nearby. The victim was transported by Reach medevac helicopter to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital where he was treated and released later in the evening, apparently without having sustained significant injury, which was quite surprising given the fact that he was partially buried for about 30 minutes…. “Our volunteer lookouts have become a critical resource for these types of events and we will depend on them tomorrow to locate and direct us to any potential fires. Keep your fingers crossed.”

THE WEIGHT ROOM at the high school was broken into over the weekend. The room’s plexiglas was kicked in and maybe 200 pounds of weights, bars, and dumbbells stolen. Coach Kuny estimates the value at $300, with repairs a little more.

“All I want is the stuff back,” the coach said K. “Call me at 489-8452 and tell me where it is and that will be the end of it. Otherwise, I will find out who did it and it won’t work out well for whoever it was.”

CORRECTION: Jan Wax informs us that Cricket Lake, wife of the infamous killer Leonard Lake, was never associated with the Philo Pottery Inn. She worked for a time at the adjacent Anderson Valley Inn, then called the Philo Motel. Cricket Lake was also employed as a teacher’s aide at AV Junior High until parents complained that she was recruiting girls for photo shoots with Lenny in the motel’s hot tub. Lake, a community-minded kind of guy, was a volunteer fireman. He and Charles Ng were arrested on Ray’s Road on federal gun running charges, but were soon out of jail to commence a series murders that only ceased when Lake was caught shoplifting in South San Francisco. Cricket was last known to be a resident of Covelo.

JEFF DeVilbiss has a good idea: “If Fish and Game and all the others were serious about limiting the take or ‘saving the species’, all they have to do is ban the use of Wetsuits in the gathering of abalone. Enforcement would be simpler, and cheaper, as only the hardy and knowledgeable few would be out there on minus tides.”

HOLLIS RAE HARMAN and Eric Bernard Levin are in business as the Sequoyah Country Club, Yorkville Highlands, Hippie Hill, 33151 Highway 128. Sign me up!

PAUL McCARTY writes a lively Mendo sports blog. He’s the only guy writing regularly on a subject of great local interest — Mendocino County sports, and all blessings upon him for doing it. Paul raised some local hackles last week with the following. “Hey, How can Anderson Valley High school get away with this? Soccer team practices before NCS rules allow. No wonder the Anderson Valley High School team won the Division 3 soccer title two of the past three years and have been in the playoffs for the past eight years in a row – they’re getting a jump on the season by scheduling practices before the first allowable day of practice according to the North Coast Section rules. And we guess that’s ‘OK’ with ‘acting’ NCL III commissioner (and AV athletic director) Robert Pinoli (talk about a conflict of interest). According to the NCS rules (set in stone), the first day of practice for this fall’s soccer season is Monday, August 19th – for ALL teams except (apparently) Anderson Valley. Here’s a notice from the ‘Valley People’ section of the Anderson Valley Advertiser July 3rd from the AV soccer coach Steve Sparks: ‘Now that graduation parties are over and done with for another year, it’s time to get down to business. The AV Boys’ soccer team begins summer practices next week (which would have been July 10th), 6:00 pm on Wednesday at Tom Smith Field behind the school. As usual it is expected that around 25-30 student athletes will be competing for spots on the roster so they are all encouraged to come out Wednesdays for the next month before Mondays are added to the practice schedule for August…’ Has the AV High School soccer program received a waiver from the NCS to practice when no other high school team can? Highly unlikely. We’d asked ‘acting’ NCL III commissioner Robert Pinoli about this but he won’t talk to MSP ever since we caught him (and confronted him) illegally and arbitrarily starting a ‘running clock’ in the AV/Mendocino football game (in the first half) last Fall without consulting the coaches. We forwarded our concern to NCS Commissioner Gil Lemmons about the incident also. ‘Acting’ commissioner Pinoli is no stranger to controversy. When his friend, the AV principal Jim Tomlin, was fired last winter by the school board over there (3-2 vote not to renew his contract), Tomlin, along with Pinoli, fired the baseball coach (Ben Anderson) the next day. Anderson, of course, was one of the three school board members to recommend the motion ‘not to renew’ the principal’s contract. The AV school superintendent “unfired” Anderson by 1:00 pm of the same day and the AV baseball team had a fine, winning campaign this season. Pinoli also sat idly by (and let stand) as the Geyserville soccer team nominated every member of its squad for ‘All League’ status ! Incredible.”

ASKED about these charges, AD Pinoli calmly stated, “Summer practices can be held by any sport so long as it’s not an official practice. Coaches can’t demand that athletes be there; they all have to wait until official practices begin.”

THE NCS doesn’t seem to enforce any part of the rulebook, probably because enforcement, given the number of schools in NorCal and NCS’s sparse staffing, is impossible. Besides, a bunch of Boonville kids playing soccer as the coach looks on is….. what? An organized practice? Or a bunch of kids playing soccer with the coach looking on?

HOWSOMEVER, if AV coach Steve Sparks is caught on video barking out orders to his assembled squad on a July afternoon, Boonville might be in for an NCS letter of stern reproach.

AS FOR GEYSERVILLE, they’ve been so hopeless in all sports for so many years — ever since the Blackburn Bros back in the early 1980s — whatever Geez does to create enthusiasm for the strenuous life should get a big thumbs up. That school’s tiny enrollment and its easy proximity to both Cloverdale and Healdsburg, golly, it’s a minor miracle the school even exists.

QUINCY STEELE was in town visiting his mom, Annie Stenerson, when he happened to mention he’d been in the air the infamous day of 9-11. Quincy remembered a packed airport at Indianapolis with “people crying, long lines, car rental lines 100 deep. My dad had the ticket framed.” Dad, of course, is Jed Steele, pioneer Valley wine guy, pere and fils both standout basketball players in their respective days.

IT NOW COSTS $35 to camp at most state parks and the Department of Fish and Wildlife charges upwards of $45 for a fishing license, meaning a truly low cost rural adventure for persons of ordinary means is getting so expensive lots of young families can’t afford it.

HANA DAHL, a young filmmaker from Mill Valley, writes: “Hello! Our Boontling video is finished and thought you might want to spread the word in Boonville. Wes Smoot and Rod DeWitt are the main interviews. (Or google it.) Wes and Rod are show biz naturals, which was the consensus opinion here at your beloved community newspaper.

GOODBYE WORLD. “Hello everyone,” Dick Browning writes, not to say adios but to… “I want you to know that the Anderson Valley Education Foundation is sponsoring the Northern California Premier of the movie, “Goodbye World” at the Grange. The movie was filmed in the Anderson Valley and includes many local residents as extras. Please save the night of Friday, August 2nd. Doors will open at 5:30 for food and beverages with the screening at 7 pm. Following the showing, the director will hold a Q&A session. I hope you can come. Please forward this message to friends who may be interested. Tickets are $15 per adult and $7 for children 17 and under. Tickets are available at Laughing Dog Bookstore, All That Good Stuff, and Lemon’s Market. Funds raised from the event will help support the Education Foundation’s three primary activities: Summer Internships, Scholarships and Grants. Hope to see you there!”

UNSOLICITED PLUG: Dr. Jennifer Van Warmerdam, orthopedic surgeon of St. Mary’s Medical Center, San Francisco. As previously hyped in these pages, the whole medical show at St. Mary’s is radically superior to, say, the mega-hyped, industrio-med complex at UCSF. St. Mary’s has an advantage in being smaller, of course, but it’s far more efficient in services delivered, and the services delivered are served up in far more pleasant circumstances than at the frenetic UCSF. Anyway, all you Medicare wheezes out there, and I’m one of you, I know you’d be pleased with St. Mary’s.

I WENT IN recently with a knee prob, the details of which I will spare you. I try not to be one of these old guys if you ask, “How you doing?” a half hour later you have the complete medical rundown and a promise, “Wait here and I’ll bring you my x-rays.”

DR. VAN WARMERDAM fixed me right up. When she walked in I thought, “No way she can be the doctor. She’s too young.” Not to be too big an oinker about it, but like most Americans of my vintage I always expect some version of Dr. Marcus Welby, and also like most people of my vintage I have zero confidence in The Youth of Today. But this kid did not mess around. She quickly figured it out — a slight tear in the magogamarog or something like that, and lickety split I was dancing out the door.

PROBABLY SHOULD add that I think Coast Hospital in Fort Bragg is a wonderful little place, and Mendocino County is blessed with an abundance of capable medicos. I steer clear of the Adventist complex based in Ukiah, however, not only because Catholics are a lot smarter and their theology much more, ah, inclusive, but my family has had bad experiences at Adventist, which I won’t go into here. I also think one of their emergency room doctors is a slam-dunk psycho, and I’ve often watched the greedy bastards do invasive surgeries on well-insured senior citizens that dispatched those well-insured senior citizens immediately to the next life. I’ve instructed my heirs and assignees that if I suddenly keel over it’s either Coast Hospital, St. Mary’s or a quick bullet to the back of the head. (ed note for literalists. Just funnin’ ya about the diff between Catholics and vegetarian cults.)

A CALLER noticed a full pallet of ammonium phosphate at Friedman Brothers, Ukiah, with a note attached that said, “Special Order, Mateel Community Center.” Why would the Mateel want golf course (and/or bomb making) chemicals? We called the Mateel to find out if they’d ordered it, and if they had, why. Sports stadiums use this stuff to green up their grass, but it’s bad mojo, as Ashley, the pleasant young woman who answered the phone at the Mateel agreed. “It’s like gnarly stuff,” Ashley said, before assuring me that she’d call the Mateel’s plant manager, Johnny, and get back to me. She didn’t. Yet. And probably won’t. But we’ve learned that the Mateel is using this “gnarly” brew to make the grass green in the concert bowl smack on the battered Eel River, just in time for their revived Reggae on the River. Years ago we complained that the Mateel, cynosure of everything good and organically pure in a poisoned America, had made its front door out of rare and mostly extinct hardwoods. But using this stuff anywhere near the Eel borders on criminal irresponsibility.

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MENDOCINO COAST TELEVISION has been forced to cease operations. It was an important, sometimes pivotal, public media for many years, bringing public meetings into the livingrooms of Coast residents in the Fort Bragg-Mendocino area plus a wide range of cultural offerings. The station’s directors have announced that Coast Television lost a lawsuit filed by the Footlighters little theater group on whose premises Coast TV was located. Without a home and in hock to lawyers, there was no option other than to go dark.post

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ODD CONTRETEMPS during public comment on non-agenda items at this morning’s (Tuesday, July 16th) Supervisor’s meeting, when John Sakowicz rose to, ah, expand upon the City of Ukiah’s overly effusive goodbyes for Mari Rodin and Gordon Elton. Supervisor McCowen objected to Sako’s remarks a couple of sentences in and Board Chair Hamburg told Sako to sit down.

SUPERVISOR PINCHES said it was unprecedented in his ten years on the Board of Supervisors that any member of the public had been censored for any reason, or for speaking on any topic, during the public comments part of the Board meeting for non-agenda items.

HAMBURG then asked his buddy and tax paid gofer, County Counsel Tom Parker, for a legal opinion. Parker duly opined that Sako could indeed be silenced if he wasn’t speaking on County business. But the City of Ukiah’s finances are directly related to County business; the City is presently suing the County over the collection and distribution of taxes by the County Auditor.

THANKING PARKER for the legal opinion he knew he’d get, Hamburg informed Sako he was “out of order” and told him to sit down.

MOST PLACES, censoring or silencing the public, much less the press, raises fundamental constitutional issues. Among other things, it’s a violation of the Brown Act. Sako is both a member of the public and a media guy via his reporting on financial matters for KZYX. He’s done some excellent reporting on the deteriorating finances of the City of Ukiah on his “All About The Money” program for the County’s public radio station.

THE CITY OF UKIAH has been running a $1 million budget deficit for the last two years. The City of Ukiah has not adjusted to the realities of Redevelopment money going away. If the City files for bankruptcy, then it’s a County problem, too.

IF UKIAH hasn’t put away the money into an enterprise fund to close the Vichy Springs landfill — it stopped accepting refuse in 2001, and sits in an earthquake zone and in a watershed area; and it may soon incur big fines and penalties by California’s environmental regulatory agencies, i.e. CalRecyle — then the County may have to bail out the City. EPA issues, for example, particularity water pollution issues, could supersede city jurisdiction.

AND UKIAH may soon default on the bonds used to pay for a $56.5 million sewer plant. The credit rating agency, S&P, downgraded these bonds by two steps last year. What happens at the County level if the City defaults on these bonds.

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NORTH COAST HONOR FLIGHT

In 2004, a World War II Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC. It is a stunning tribute to our men and women in the armed services. Unfortunately, most of our World War II veterans have never had the opportunity to see what was erected in their honor. The youngest of our WWII veteran is 87. The mission of Honor Flight is to transport America’s veterans to Washington, D.C. to visit the memorials at no cost, with current priority to WWII Veterans. Subsequent to the World War II Veterans, efforts then focus on Korean War Veterans followed by Vietnam War Veterans, honoring them both in a similar manner. Guardians, whose travel expenses are not paid for, accompany each Veteran to ensure safe travel. The program sweeps the nation but with the help of the Humboldt County Chapter and Gregg Gardiner this amazing program is coming to Mendocino County through the South Ukiah Rotary. We need to find these WWII veterans, If you are a WWII veteran or you know of a WWII veteran who resides in Mendocino County and is able to travel and has yet to see the memorial please contact 462-3555. Or visit www.southukiahrotary.org for an application. For the October 2013 trip we have room for 50 World War II and Korean War veterans and 35 guardians. The guardians pay their own way, and the cost to them is $1,000. If you would like to be a guardian please call or submit an application. Tom Brokaw had it right when he entitled his recent book “The Greatest Generation”. Never has so much been asked for by any one generation in our history. Any sized contribution can be made payable to North Coast Honor Flight and dropped off at Umpqua Bank in Ukiah, CA

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NINTH ANNUAL PURE MENDOCINO

Ukiah, CA – The Cancer Resource Centers of Mendocino County (CRCMC) are gearing up for the ninth annual Pure Mendocino event. The organic, locally sourced dinner will be held Saturday, August 24 at Paul Dolan’s biodynamic Dark Horse Ranch located on Old River Road. The event features an opening reception with wine tasting and a silent auction at 5 pm, a farm-to-table dinner at 6:00 pm, and live music from 7:30 – 10 pm. A limited number of pre-sold tickets will also be available for the biodynamic farm tour before the event at 4 pm. Pure Mendocino is the biggest fundraiser of the year for CRCMC and according to Executive Director Sara O’Donnell, “One hundred percent of all funds raised for the Cancer Resource Centers are used to provide ongoing services at no cost to those facing cancer in Mendocino County.” Chef Olan Cox of Mendough’s Catering and Wood Fired Catering will lead a team of chefs to prepare this year’s meal, and silent auction items feature vacation rentals (at local B&Bs and in Tahoe), picnics at local wineries, handcrafted furniture, yoga lessons, and more. After dinner, dance the night away to live music by blues legend Rick Estrin and the Nightcats. Estrin serves up fresh and modern original blues injected with a solid dose of gritty roadhouse rock ‘n’ roll. The Nightcats include jaw-dropping guitarist Chris “Kid” Andersen, singing drummer J. Hansen, and dynamic multi-instrumentalist Lorenzo Farrell (electric and acoustic bass, organ and piano). CRCMC provides cancer support services to patients and their families free of charge, including help with navigating our complicated medical system, assistance with deciding which treatment is right for each individual, preparing for medical appointments, attending and recording medical appointments, and offering a lending library full of excellent resources. CRCMC also offers support groups. For more information, visit crcmendocino.org. To date, major sponsors of Pure Mendocino include Frey Vineyards, Dark Horse Farming Company, Fetzer Vineyards, Golden Vineyards, Westport Hotel, Ukiah Valley Medical Center, and more. Tickets are $135 each and must be purchased in advance—they’re available online at puremendocino.org or at the CRCMC Offices (inland at 590 S. Dora St, Ukiah or on the coast at 45040 Calpella St, Mendocino). For more information call 937-3833 or 467-3828.

A CALLER noticed a full pallet of ammonium phosphate at Friedman Brothers, Ukiah, with a note attached that said, “Special Order, Mateel Community Center.” Why would the Mateel want golf course (and/or bomb making) chemicals? We called the Mateel to find out if they’d ordered it, and if they had, why. Sports stadiums use this stuff to green up their grass, but it’s bad mojo, as Ashley, the pleasant young woman who answered the phone at the Mateel agreed. “It’s like gnarly stuff,” Ashley said, before assuring me that she’d call the Mateel’s plant manager, Johnny, and get back to me. She didn’t. Yet. And probably won’t. But we’ve learned that the Mateel is using this “gnarly” brew to make the grass green in the concert bowl smack on the battered Eel River, just in time for their revived Reggae on the River. Years ago we complained that the Mateel, cynosure of everything good and organically pure in a poisoned America, had made its front door out of rare and mostly extinct hardwoods. But using this stuff anywhere near the Eel borders on criminal irresponsibility.

“Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes as to wealth. Ambition begins by accumulating as a means of happiness, and finishes by continuing to accumulate as an end.” — Charles C. Colton, 1870

* * *

The first peak I bagged is called Poppy. It was at the head of our little box canyon and I must have been five or six years old when, tagging along with the big kids, I got to its top. I benefited mightily from the post-WW2 camping craze, and while our pilot and captain was my dad who enjoyed fishing, hiking, star-gazing and tending campfire, I most enjoyed getting atop a high spot; any high spot would do. By the time I became a husband and then a father of two boys, I’d been bagging peaks my whole life. Virtually all were nameless prominences near where ever it was I happened to be, but I’d also made a few non-technical climbs in the alpines of various mountain ranges. So naturally I’d wish to pass on this avocation to my wife and children.

“In individuals, insanity is rare: but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

My brother sent me an email with a link to a page at Amazon where one can purchase, for just three hundred dollars, a Parrot Drone Quadricopter. This drone weighs four pounds and is twenty-three inches by twenty-three inches small and is equipped with a video camera. The drone can be controlled using an iPhone, iPad, and android devices. The four-prop drone records and shares video while flying. There were three hundred reviews by people who have purchased this particular drone, but I did not read any of the reviews because I feared one or more of them would include complaints about the limited bomb-carrying capacity of the drone.

“There are only two dangers for a writer: success and failure, and you have to be able to survive both.” — Edward Albee

A friend sent me an email suggesting I read something by a fantastically successful American novelist I had never heard of. I was not surprised I had never heard of this writer, as I read almost no fiction by living American writers. Why? Because nearly every time I give one of these writers a try, I am more than disappointed, I am horrified. I suffer from the knowledge of proper grammar and syntax, and when an author reveals in the first paragraph or first page of his or her novel or short story that he or she knows little about grammar and syntax, I find it impossible to proceed.

But when a friend emphatically recommends a writer, I will at least give that writer a look-see. Alas, this latest fantastically successful writer failed the grammar/syntax test before I was three sentences into his multi-award winning novel, and seeing that these failures continued regularly thereafter and were clearly not the fruit of an intentional stylistic choice, I gave up and went back to working on my own fantastically unsuccessful, but grammatically sound work.

“Democracy don’t rule the world, you’d better get that in your head; this world is ruled by violence, but I guess that’s better left unsaid.” — Bob Dylan

A young professional football player named Aaron Hernandez has recently been arrested and charged with murder. The owner of the team he played for, the New England Patriots, assembled a group of reporters to announce that Hernandez had duped them by pretending for two years to be hardworking and polite while also proving to be a fantastic football player. Now it appears Hernandez was a gun-toting, drug and alcohol-using criminal who may have killed even more people than the one person he is accused of killing.

The owner of the New England Patriots was outraged that Hernandez was not the person that he, the owner, thought Hernandez was. Indeed, many people involved in professional football, a sport that celebrates violence and encourages players to try to severely injure each other, also expressed outrage that this young man, who grew up in an ultra-violent society listening to ultra-violent rap music and playing ultra-violent video games and watching ultra-violent movies that glorify gangsters and guns and senseless killing, might prove to be criminally violent.

“The two biggest sellers in any bookstore are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it.” — Andy Rooney

Recent news suggests that the vast book-selling conglomerate Barnes & Noble may soon go out of business. In my youth there were only independent bookstores. Then the era of chain stores dawned and chain bookstores such as B. Dalton and Crown Books popped up everywhere and put many independent bookstores out of business. Then along came chains of giant bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders and they put the chains of smaller bookstores out of business and put many more independent bookstores out of business. Then along came the interweb and Amazon and the advent of e-books, and Borders was wiped out and now Barnes & Noble is collapsing, which should portend a few good years for the remaining independent bookstores patronized by a shrinking number of people who are still willing to pay full price for books and have not yet converted to e-readers.

In the course of this swiftly evolving bookstore landscape, the personal computer became as ubiquitous as television, cell phones took over the world, and the proper use of grammar and syntax became a dying art, not quite yet entirely dead, but nearly so. And the amazing thing (amazing to me) about the pervasive misuse of our beautiful language in most of the books published in America today is that very few people are aware that anything is amiss with the writing they read.

Several people have responded to my lamenting the demise of good writing with eerily similar proclamations along the lines of, “I don’t care how good the writing is so long as I like the story.” This strikes me as deeply ridiculous, as ridiculous as saying, “I don’t care if there’s any water in the river, so long as I can catch some fish.”

“The one thing the public dislike is novelty.” — Oscar Wilde

On July 9, 2013, NBC news reported: “New research shows the more pollution, the higher the health risks.”

That startling news brings to mind those feature articles that appear in Lifestyle and Home & Garden sections of Sunday newspapers everywhere and have been appearing in those sections every few months since the 1960’s, articles about an amazing new phenomenon called organic gardening. These articles invariably feature smiling people who have been gardening in this revolutionary new way for at least a year or so and just love the results. These radical gardeners don’t use pesticides or chemical fertilizers yet somehow still manage to grow vegetables and fruits that taste wonderful.

I wonder why it is that organic gardening is forever being characterized in the mainstream media as something new. I find this to be one of the great mysteries of my lifetime, every bit as mysterious as the constant rediscovery that walking is good for us.

“And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” — William Shakespeare

When I was a young man, I read an obituary that had such a profound impact on me that I can still see the entire layout of the obituary in my mind’s eye. The large black and white photograph accompanying the long article was of a slender man with a long white beard sitting at a table and writing with a pen on a large piece of parchment. This man (I can’t remember his name) was famous for three things. The first thing he was famous for was that he had been one of several dozen people involved in a renowned (now forgotten) research project concerned with the relationship between human health and walking. The second thing he was famous for was the invention of a simplified English alphabet (now forgotten) that he believed would usher in an era of universal literacy that would in turn lead to universal prosperity. And the third thing he was famous for was that he lived until he was a hundred and seven and was mentally and physically fit as a fiddle until the last day of his life.

I don’t remember much about his simplified alphabet except that he had eliminated the use of most vowels, which struck me as a bad idea since I loved vowels, a love that continues to this day. I do, however, remember the details of the research project he was involved in that evaluated the effect of walking on human health. According to the obituary, when this man was in his sixties, he was in such poor health that his doctors declared he would soon be dead. He was obese, his heart was failing, he was anemic, pre-diabetic, his liver was shot, on and on. It was at this point in his life that he got involved in the research project with several dozen other elderly people who had also been declared hopelessly ill by the medical establishment.

The project required that these people take long walks every day, and by long walks I mean walks of ten and fifteen and sometimes twenty miles, with only occasional days off from walking. According to this obituary, nearly all the people in the study not only got completely well—theretofore incurable diseases and ailments literally disappeared from these people—but they all lived well into their nineties and beyond.

“There are seven different souls in each person: the mineral soul, the vegetable soul, the animal soul, the human soul, the angelic soul, the secret soul, and the soul of the secret of secrets.” — Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak

Last night I dreamt I was helping Aaron Hernandez clear away branches hanging down into a small meadow where Aaron was going to be acting as a psychotherapist for people coming to him for help. We worked in silence, I doing the pruning and Aaron dragging away the branches. I felt peaceful and optimistic, and I had no doubt that Aaron would be a great help to the people who came to see him. Strangely, the more branches I pruned, the more branches there were to prune, yet I felt confident that we would soon get the branches cleared away and Aaron would be able to proceed with his work.

Todd Walton’s web site is UnderTheTableBooks.com.

In a letter that calls for “community action in a time of extreme need,” county supervisors are supporting a state grant funding request from the Eel River Recovery Project.

The condition of the Eel River and its tributaries during this year’s dry cycle was highlighted at the July 9 Board of Supervisors meeting. Supervisor Estelle Fennell co-sponsored approval of a letter to the state Water Quality Control Board asking the agency to fund the Recovery Project’s citizen monitoring work, data collection and water conservation outreach efforts.

Just when the San Francisco Giants looked as dead in the baseball water as their one-time ace Tim Lincecum, little Timmy turned the tables by throwing a no-hitter last Saturday night. Though the 9-0 score proved lopsided, Lincecum’s quest for baseball immortality kept me tense as could be on the edge of the couch. Afraid of jinxing Timmy, I clutched my empty dinner plate through the last three and a half innings in much the same way I did for Matt Cain’s perfect game 13 good-luck months ago. When “she-who-must-be-obeyed” asked after five innings, “Do they have a hit?” I ignored the query, signaling her that there was something worth watching here.

Greetings one and all – if you are sitting comfortably then I shall begin. Let’s start with something I have found myself pondering quite often of late. “Is everything referred to these days as ‘awesome’ really that awe-inspiring?” I don’t think so. Much of what is so described is actually “pretty good,” “fairly tasty,” “somewhat decent,” “rather pleasant,” “moderately interesting,” “quite well done,” or “sort of impressive.” The things that are awe-inspiring are more likely to be breathtaking, magnificent, overwhelming, stunning, sublime, and wondrous. Why can’t people just say so? Just wondering.

Michoacan is the mostly rural Mexican State from which the vast majority of Hispanic people in this Valley originate – they tell me that it is not dissimilar to Anderson Valley in many ways. As this community continues to maintain valuable links to its original culture, one of the aspects of this that remains of great importance is found in the world of fútbol – soccer to Americans, football to us English.

Protesters outside Corcoran Correctional Facility. Courtesy, Steve Rhodes via Flickr.

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” ― Nelson Mandela, who spent six of his 27 prison years in solitary confinement

Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins’s’ prison movie The Shawshank Redemption is one of the most popular repeats on cable. The story is set in the 1940s. When Robbins, the convicted wife-killer, screws up he’s thrown into solitary confinement, a dark dungeon, for only a couple of weeks, which is seen as very brutal punishment. All through the “prison cycle” of movies in the 30s and 40s, from Each Dawn I Die to Brute Force, solitary is relatively brief before the misbehaving prisoner is released into the “general population”.

THIS JUST IN. The Mateel Community Center, Garberville-Redway, has decided not to use ammonium sulfate to green up the grass on their Eel River venue for Reggae on the River.

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REPORTS FROM POINT ARENA say the salmon are running thick and big, with lots of them upwards of 20 pounds. $8 a pound off the boat.

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LOSING FOCUS: Congressman Jared seems lost. With all the many and serious challenges we face, our representative has decided to fight back by holding a … photo contest! After our initial reaction of disgust and disappointment, we entered a photo in this contest, chronically Mendocino Redwood Company’s extensive chemical warfare above the upper Albion River last summer. (MRC poisons around 5,500 acres in Mendocino County every year.) Congressman Huffman says the two photos with the most “likes,” as of noon, July 18, will be featured on his Facebook and Twitter pages. You can help Jared focus by voting for our photo here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=280720425400106&set=a.280717998733682.1073741831.200227780116038&type=3&theater

Mike Kalantarian, Navarro

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“FUKUSHIMA, NEVER AGAIN” tells the story of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns in northeast Japan in March of 2011 and exposes the cover-up by Tepco and the Japanese government. This is the first film that interviews the Mothers Of Fukushima, nuclear power experts and trade unionists who are fighting for justice and the protection of the children and the people of Japan and the world. The residents and citizens were forced to buy their own geiger counters and radiation dosimeters in order to test their communities to find out if they were in danger. The government said contaminated soil in children’s school grounds was safe and then when the people found out it was contaminated and removed the top soil, the government and TEPCO refused to remove it from the school grounds. It also relays how the nuclear energy program for “peaceful atoms” was brought to Japan under the auspices of the US military occupation and also the criminal cover-up of the safety dangers of the plant by TEPCO and GE management which built the plant in Fukushima. It also interviews Kei Sugaoka, the GE nulcear plant inspector from the bay area who exposed cover-ups in the safety at the Fukushima plant and was retaliated against by GE. This documentary allows the voices of the people and workers to speak out about the reality of the disaster and what this means not only for the people of Japan but the people of the world as the US government and nuclear industry continue to push for more new plants and government subsidies. This film breaks the information blockade story line of the corporate media in Japan, the US and around the world that Fukushima is over.

FUKUSHIMA NEVER AGAIN will play Monday July 22nd, 7pm, at The Saturday Afternoon Club, 107 S. Oak St, Ukiah. There will be light refreshmsnts, snow cones and a cooling system provided to beat the heat. A question and answer session will follow. Find out what can be done to break the media blackout. Sponsored by Fukushima Response Mendocino, The Mendocino Environmental Center, Yemaya Seaweed Co. and The Service and Justice Committee of The Ukiah United Methodist Church. Donations accepted. Contact Charlie Vaughan 707-367-2194

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“IT WAS AN ACCUMULATION of velvet, lace, ribbons, diamonds and what else I couldn’t describe. To undress one of these women is like an outing that calls for three weeks advance notice; it’s like moving house. (— Jean Cocteau, 1913)

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RESIDENTS OF SINKING CALIF. SUBDIVISION FILE CLAIM by Tracie Cone

In a Monday, May 6, 2013, file photo Robin and Scott Spivey walk past the wreckage of their Tudor-style dream home they had to abandon when the ground gave way causing it to drop 10 feet below the street in Lakeport, Calif. The homeowners of the sinking Northern California subdivision have filed claims against the county, alleging a leaking county water system is to blame. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli)

For months homeowners agonized as houses in their subdivision sank one-by-one into a California hilltop. It got so dangerous that the U.S. Postal Service refused to deliver mail.

Now, they say they know the reason eight homes were destroyed and 10 others are in danger, and they’ve taken the first step toward recouping damages by filing a claim against Lake County.

A leaking county water system that went undetected for months saturated the hillside and caused the ground to give way, said Michael Green, an attorney for the 41 homeowners in the subdivision with sweeping views of Clear Lake in Northern California.

Green is seeking $5 million for each homeowner in the claim filed last month against the county.

“They’re facing a pretty significant economic disaster,” he said.

County officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. They have 45 days to respond to Green’s claim for damages before he can file a lawsuit.

Lake County supervisors previously asked Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a disaster area, but the request was declined.

The county has maintained that a landscape irrigation system operated by the Lakeside Heights homeowners association could have contributed to the ground saturation.

As home after home sank into the hillside, bewildered homeowners began to wonder if their land might be haunted.

Eventually, tests revealed leaks “dumping substantial amounts of water into the hillsides,” Green said.

He said even the owners of homes not damaged by the sinking earth are suffering damages because they will be unable to sell their property.

“We’re just trying to get these folks reasonable compensation,” he said. (Courtesy, Associated Press)

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McBride

ON JULY 16, 2013, at about 10:30am a Deputy Sheriff from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office observed a male driver talking on his cellular telephone while driving in the 42000 block of Highway 101 in Laytonville. A traffic stop was conducted near milemarker 60 and the driver, 36 year-old George R. McBride of Willits, was contacted at the driver’s side window. While standing outside the driver’s side of the pickup, the deputy detected the strong odor of both burned and unburned marijuana emanating from inside the passenger compartment of the vehicle. A search of the truck revealed 14 one pound bags of bud marijuana hidden behind the seat. McBride was arrested for possession of marijuana for sale and transportation of marijuana and transported to the Mendocino County Jail, with bail set at $30,000.

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A BOOK IS BETTER THAN A BOX OF CHOCOLATES

by Ralph Nader

Summer is an ideal season for jolting your mind into action by expanding your reading horizons. So shut off the computer and the television, put away the various gadgets, close your email and pick up a good book. There are plenty of entertaining choices for your reading pleasure, but the following titles are ones that I have enjoyed. They all address the serious pursuit of justice/happiness side of the written word.

1. Gaining Ground: A Story of Farmers’ Markets, Local Food, and Saving the Family Farm by Forrest Pritchard(Globe Pequot Press, 2013).

This is the personal story of a 21-year-old college graduate who, against his family’s advice, took over part of the family land in Virginia and, in less than twenty years, turned it from a working farm making only $18.00 in profit in the previous year into a bustling organic farm/community that is making an expanding family farming livelihood worthy of wider emulation.

2. Why Jury Duty Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Constitutional Action by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson (NYU Press, 2013).

I remember when Andrew was born. His mother gave him lots of attention, while also, then and now, directing the Pension Rights Center. The time was very well spent. For Andrew grew up to become a lawyer, a public defender, teacher and now an author who urges you not to be one of the too many citizens who under-appreciate and avoid the greatest civil institution of Anglo-America law – the jury. This is a brilliant and motivating plea to please serve when summoned.

3. Nuclear Roulette: The Truth About the Most Dangerous Energy Source on Earth by Gar Smith, Ernest Callenbach, Jerry Mander (Chelsea Green, 2012).

Civic Leader and editor emeritus of Earth Island Journal needs a whole documented book to cover the myriad present and deferred costs, colossal risks, and institutional insanity around this uninsurable, national security danger, this posterity poisoning and dictatorial technology – all designed just to boil water. As he demonstrates, there are many better renewable and efficient ways to produce electricity that the people are already using to displace the utter madness of nuke power plants, that even Wall Street won’t finance without a 100 percent Uncle Sam guarantee.

4. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger (Simon and Schuster, 2013).

Sure, this fast paced little book concentrates on how products, online content and some news catches on and spreads. As a marketer, you’ll love this readable volume. But as a fretting citizen, you’ll also see ways to become stronger with your message and your activities. For the impatient, Berger has it down to “six principles of contagiousness” you can put into practice.

5. No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses by Peter Piot (Norton, 2012).

This clinical microbiologist has been there – in the most dangerous African hotspots to the executive directorship of UNAIDS. He’s warning us that the real mass terrorists are those we cannot see with the naked eye, until, that is, their ravages eat their victims alive. This is a wakeup call to adopt the priorities and resources that can disprove Louis Pasteur of the nineteenth century who was heard to say “Gentlemen, it is the microbes who will have the last word.”

6. Our Commonwealth: The Hidden Economy That Makes Everything Else Work by Jonathan Rowe (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2013).

These are the last concrete, inspiring, challenging words of the late Jonathan Rowe who practiced what he preached but also preached what he practiced in Point Reyes Station, California (population 350). Public land, public airwaves, the air, the water, the oceans, the Internet, the sun and more human-made commons are what these brief and clear essays cover. Rowe describes the emerging movement to protect the vast commonwealth owned by the people. Gird yourself to see nature and human ingenuity in a very different light. A whole new world could come into focus.

7. American Canopy: Trees, Forests and the Making of a Nation by Eric Rutkow (Scribner, 2012). They’re all around us. We either take them down, or take them for granted. Rutkow does not. In his imaginative book, you tour with him and savor just what trees and forests have meant to our country’s history – and will mean for our future. Author S.C. Gwynne calls the book “a wonderful magic. He takes the most obvious of things – trees – and weaves an astounding and complex narrative that ranges across American history, from Johnny Appleseed to Henry David Thoreau, from Franklin Roosevelt to John Muir. You come away thinking that this country was, well, built out of trees.” Note Rutkow does not neglect climate change.

8. Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney (Nation Books, 2013).

There they go again. These advocates do not give up. Nor should we. Events have proven their prior works as understatements. With the mighty help of five corporatists on the U.S. Supreme Court, corporations and their wealthy bosses are “radically redefining our politics in a way that, failing a dramatic intervention signals the end of our democracy. It is the world of Dollarocracy.” The authors show ways out of this dictatorial compression chamber. Assuming that is, you become indignant enough.

9. The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph Over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970 by Sam Pizzigati (Seven Stories Press, 2012).

Veteran Labor Journalist Pizzigati challenges us with the question: If our forebears took on plutocracy to uplift most Americans and strengthen laws on business rampages, what’s our excuse? Some of the big/progressive/populist changes by average people over a century ago came before the wide use of the telephone, electricity, motor vehicles on smooth highways and other instant means of retrieving and communicating information symbolized by the Internet. Read this book for the answer. We have no excuse is what I think.

10. A recent oldie that merits revisiting. Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings (Orbiz, 2009). A Jesuit priest, poet and ardent peacemaker, who paid the price, Father Berrigan truly walked his talk. Imprisoned for civil disobedience against the War Machine, he came back again and again, shaming prosecutors and judges alike, with his powerful books, diaries, poems and homilies. It seems that Berrigan’s faith and witness came down to his practiced religion and the belief that reality is truth and truth is reality. These writings will touch your conscience and expand your cognition.

11. Another oldie. Take it Personally: How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World collected by Anita Roddick, Founder of the Body Shop (Harper Collins, 2001).

Selections by many change advocates, including me, are in this book. But its genius, colorful layout, gripping photographs, searing posters against injustice, memorable quotations and pungent insights are tributes to the late, great Anita Roddick who, in moral terms, turned the business of business upside down. You can digest Anita’s activating nutrition minutes at a time and you’ll want ever more. It waits for you, however impatiently.

Did someone once say a book is better than a box of chocolates?

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 “GIVING IS A TREAT” CANNED FOOD DRIVE AT THE LIBRARY

County libraries accepting food donations through Aug. 17. Ukiah Daily Journal The Mendocino County Library is partnering with local food banks this summer in a canned food drive from June 16 to Aug. 17. The county library is joining more than 70 other libraries throughout California in the statewide “Acquire a Taste for Giving” campaign. The Giving is a Treat food drive will occur during this year’s Summer Reading program, called Reading is So Delicious. During the food drive, the county library will offer a Food-For-Fines forgiveness: for each nonperishable canned food item brought to any County library, $2 will be subtracted from a patron’s overdue fines. Only non-perishable, unexpired, store-sealed items will be accepted. No glass, please. The overdue book fine forgiveness program serves a two-fold purpose: it will help meet the needs of many hungry members of the community, and customers who have accumulated high fines will be encouraged to continue to use the libraries. “Libraries are a vital part of our communities,” said Mindy Kittay, Director of the Mendocino County Library. “They are the public education centers of our county, and the place you can turn to for the discovery of ideas, the joy of reading and creating, and the power of information. “We are very happy to begin this new program and hope to make it a tradition every year during Summer Reading.” Whether or not you have library fines, your contributions to the Giving is a Treat food drive are most welcome. “We hope the community will use this opportunity to help the libraries, while also reaching out to their neighbors and helping families that are struggling in this poor economy,” said Dan Hamburg, Chair of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. Canned food items will be accepted at the following locations: Ukiah Main Branch Library, 105 N. Main St., Ukiah. Willits Branch Library, 390 E. Commercial St., Willits. Fort Bragg Branch Library, 499 Laurel St., Fort Bragg. Coast Community Branch Library, 225 Main St., Point Arena. Round Valley Public Library, 23925 Howard St., Covelo. Bookmobile, Call 459-7850 for location schedule. For more information, please call 467-2590.

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PERILOUS, VERY PERILOUS

by Bruce McEwen

Fifth District Supervisor Dan Hamburg was in court the week before last, and a good thing, too. He was about to lose $35,000, and after paying $9,500 in election fines imposed by the California Fair Political Practices Commission earlier this year, and maybe spending another $10,000-plus in lawyer fees for burying his wife at home without a legal sign-off his fellow Supes have refused to reimburse, wealthy as Hamburg is, he surely didn’t want to get socked another $35,000.

The Supervisor arrived in court with an impressive retinue of supporters who included several tax-paid retainers. County Counsel Tom Parker, togged out in a pinstripe suit and Mr. Parker’s assistant, a pretty young woman in a fawn-colored skirt suit and high heels named Brina Latkin, formerly associated with Hamburg’s Ukiah attorney, Barry Vogel. And there were the usual miscellaneous Hamburgians whose cult-like devotion to the su­pervisor has been discussed before. It was quite a show.

The defendant was the disoriented-looking young guy out in the hall in bedroom slippers and baggy sweats that looked like he’d slept in them.

We would learn that young Matthew Hamburg had, completely outside all laws and procedures, been released from the County Jail and spirited away to a lock-up mental facility far from Mendocino County, the whole show paid for by local taxpayers.

The DA and the judge wanted to know how all this had happened.

The defendant, a pawn in this unprecendented maneu­vering, didn’t seem to know where he was. Ordinarily, the bailiff would have enforced the dress code for Superior Court. But the bailiff even had to allow a psych tech in who, called in at the last minute, was wearing shorts. She was Anderson Valley resident and Mendocino Mental Health senior crisis worker Beverly Bennett. Ms. Bennett said she had no idea she was coming to court or she would have dressed appropriately, and the bailiff made an exception by allowing her to stay.

A little background is in order here. Matt Hamburg’s latest legal problems stem from an episode back on May 5thwhen he got into some sort of beef at or near the Frank Zeek School in South Ukiah. He was reportedly using foul language at peak volume and blistering the sensitive ears of the young scholars on the playgrounds. The police were called, a dangerous high-speed chase ensued as Matthew lead cops down South State Street and out the Boonville Road to Shepherds Lane, site of the Hamburg property, where Matthew was finally run to ground and arrested after a scuffle with deputies. He was charged with recklessly driving to evade an officer, a felony.

Young Hamburg’s attorney is Carly Dolan of the Public Defender’s office. She is calmly capable in an office characterized by calm incapacity. She was immediately rushed — swarmed, really — by the Hamburgians when she appeared in the hallway.

“Oh, Ms. Dolan. Matt’s all better now, aren’t you, Matt? And Ms. Elliott, here, will be taking over. You know Ms. Elliott, of course, don’t you? Thank you, Ms. Dolan.”

Ms. Dolan’s comment the week before suggested that the Hamburg clan might be putting their political interests ahead of her client’s, and the judge had characterized visiting Judge Kossow’s work on the Hamburg case as “incompetent.”

Out in the hall someone had nudged Matthew forward, and he had made some perhaps rehearsed com­ments to Ms. Dolan when Katherine ‘Kit’ Elliott pointed up like an Irish setter to smile about how the Hamburgs had just retained her services and she would be substi­tuting in. “Thank you, Ms. Dolan,” but here’s your hat and what’s your hurry. Ms. Elliot will be taking over for you.

When Ms. Dolan finally got to the courtroom she was still attorney of record. She seemed a little overwhelmed. But that’s her natural expression. If you had any idea what she endures daily, you’d understand. She’s one of the few public defenders with a sense of humor, and enough sense of propriety to conceal it. They call her Olive Oil at the jail, but in any sane county she’d be running the Public Defender’s Office instead of taking orders from Linda Thompson who does such a bad job that her in-custody clients charged with serious crimes routinely ask to have her removed from their case or ask for new trials based on ineffective assistance of counsel.

Judge Moorman called the Hamburg case and mentioned the bench warrant for Matt Hamburg’s arrest she’d issued the previous week, explaining that she had no choice in the matter after 14 days of holding the warrant from the first time Mr. Hamburg had failed to appear. By law, she had to issue it. Young Hamburg, having been magically released from the County Jail and hustled off to Yuba City by County Counsel, the Mendocino County Mental Health Department and, apparently, the Public Defender’s office, acting at the behest of Supervisor Hamburg but unaware of what was happening to him, had blown dad’s $35,000 bail. Judge Moorman’s bench warrant meant that cops would have to re-arrest him for bail jumping.

“I had no information as to his whereabouts, and I still don’t know where he was,” Judge Moorman said.

“He was at North Valley Behavioral,” Dolan said.

North Valley Behavioral is a mental health crisis facil­ity in Yuba City. They have 16 beds for adults deemed in crisis. Mendocino County has an agreement with North Valley which requires the County to pay $825 per day for patients the County sends to Yuba City. Stays in this place are normally limited to three-to-five days. According to their website, North Valley Behav­ioral does not accept private placements or walk-ins, only county assignments. Private placements or walk-ins are unlikely to have the $825 per day.

“What was the nature of his residence at North Val­ley Behavioral?”

Dolan turned and gestured to the clutch of suits stand­ing in the doorway and said, “Mr. Pinizzotto would like to address the court on that point, your honor.”

County Counsel Tom Parker, his female assistant Ms. Latkin, and a short gray-haired man, who turned out to be County Mental Health Director Tom Pinizzotto, scurried forward to the defense table, but the judge had more to say about the warrant, and she seemed to be speaking to Dan Hamburg and his daughter Laura who had taken seats in the gallery.

“When you post bail, that is a monetary promise to appear, and when the defendant failed to appear, the court had no choice but to forfeit the bond because it was unclear as to his whereabouts.”

At this point it became clear that the supervisor was unaware of the complicated logistics done on his son’s behalf by County employees. It’s doubtful he would have sacrificed 35 grand simply to get his son out of the County Jail.

“If I may, your honor, give the court a brief timeline,” Pinizzotto interrupted. “On 5/5/13 he (Matthew Hamburg) was arrested and his competency was in doubt by the public defender; then on 5/30/13 he was 5150, and on 5/31/13 he was bailed out—”

“Wait a minute,” Judge Moorman broke in. “He was 5150 while he was in custody? How can that happen?”

How indeed. That adjudication has to be adjudicated. In court. An inmate can’t be declared 5150 and sprung from custody outside the judicial process.

The judge’s question caused much confusion on the part of the delegates from the County offices. The entourage huddled hastily with Mr. Parker. DA David Eyster seemed unaware that his jaw had dropped to the floor. He looked at the Judge like a man who felt he was owed an explanation. A junior prosecutor, Deputy DA Damon Gardner was handling the case for The People. It seemed that something spectacularly unusual, if not downright unlawful, had taken place and DA Eyster was present throughout, marveling with wide-eyed wonder as the scope of the shenanigans became evident.

“Under what circumstances?” Judge Moorman demanded of Ms. Latkin. The judge wanted to know how young Hamburg had been declared a 5150.

“For three days,” Ms. Latkin said. “He wouldn’t come out of his room at North Valley and Judge Mayfield granted the conservatorship.”

Judge Moorman clapped her hand to her head. Something had just occurred to her, it was plain to see, and in a few minutes we were to learn what it was. But first, she wanted to know, “Who placed him (Matthew Hamburg) at risk, Mr. Parker?”

Matt Hamburg, in custody at the County Jail, had been declared incompetent, removed from the Jail and taken off to Yuba City. Everyday 5150s who are not in custody, and there are lots of them in Mendocino County, must have the agreement of a judge and the DA on how they will be processed in the criminal justice system and on into whatever mental health programs may be available to them. It hadn’t happened that way in the Hamburg case.

Parker stammered inarticulately. There was still much confused scrambling about in the courtroom. Supervisor Hamburg hung his head and shielded his eyes with his hand. Parker fell silent.

“But you understand my concern, don’t you, Mr. Parker? There was no notice given to the court, no letter to the Public Defender’s office or to the DA!”

Judge Moorman waited but County Counsel Parker had nothing to say. What could he say? Parker had done somersaults to bypass usual legal commitment proce­dures. The judge resumed: “The client-lawyer rela­tionship is one I take quite seriously, I warn you, and if I find that there’s been any interference in that relation­ship, that would be perilous, very perilous. Now, it sounds to me like some County resources were used to do the 5150 without the court’s permission. But what I want is this not to ever happen again, so I’m going to recall the bench warrant, and I sincerely hope this has been a lesson to everyone involved.”

Supervisor Hamburg had just been granted a $35,000 reprieve. The Hamburgians in the gallery breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“However,” Moorman resumed, “I refuse to sign the placement order. A 1368 trumps a 5150 — and a conservatorship. Does anyone in the room know—?”

(A 1368 is legal shorthand for a hearing to determine if a defendant is competent to stand trial and participate in his own defense, per Penal Code Section 1368. You have the 1368, then you deal with the 5150 designation if the subject really is crazy.)

Ms. Elliott, self-declared attorney for the Hamburgs, rose and made her way forward, repeating that she’d been contacted by the family to substitute for the Public Defender.

“Not now,” Moorman said irritably, lashing Elliott back to her seat.

“Does anyone know how Matthew is right now?” Moorman asked.

Ms. Dolan resumed her skillful defense of Matthew Hamburg, as if his influential family were beside the point. Although she did falter a trifle. She said she’d just spoken with her client in the hall outside and was ready to withdraw her earlier assertion that he was unable to participate in his own defense.

“I had serious doubts before, but he seems much bet­ter today,” Ms. Dolan beamed with a fey glance over her shoulder at the Supervisor seated behind her.

Katherine Elliott again stood up.

“I’m ready to substitute, your honor. I’ve handled numerous 1368s and I’m ready to take the case forward.”

Judge Moorman said, “Please sit down, Ms. Elliott. The defendant has perfectly capable counsel at present.”

“Yes, your honor, but I’ve been asked to—”

The Hamburg purse, it seemed, recently having escaped a $35,000 withdrawal, was being opened to a private lawyer, so the Hamburg family voice would have a direct say in the proceedings via said private attorney.

As a county-paid lawyer Ms. Dolan, in a sense, works for Dan Hamburg — he is a County Supervisor, her superior, her her boss, but here she was hanging on to the case.

“He’s made a turnaround rather quickly,” Dolan said with a little jet of enthusiasm.

If a mentally ill person makes a dramatic behavior change it probably means his meds have been changed from the wrong meds to the right ones. In any case, someone has to make sure the mentally ill take their meds, and right there is where “the system” often breaks down.

Addressing the gallery, Judge Moorman said, “Keep in mind that a lot of taxpayer money is going into this proceeding and what I want to know is where is he now? Is he still at North Valley?”

“He has not yet been discharged,” Ms. Latkin, Assistant County Counsel, said, and Judge Moorman was sud­denly reminded of her earlier consternation.

Moorman fixed her sights on Ms. Latkin and fired.

“When you went to Judge Mayfield for the conserva­torship, did you tell her that criminal proceedings against Mr. Hamburg had been suspended because of a 1368?”

Ms. Fawn stammered, “Well, I, umm, don’t really, um, recall, exactly, everything that was said… I’d have to look at the file and see. I don’t really remember, um, all of our conversation. I can’t say.”

“Okay,” Moorman said impatiently. “Where is this North Valley Behavioral?”

“It’s in Yuba City, California,” Pinizzotto said.

“What?! You physically removed him [Matthew Hamburg] out of the county when he was deemed men­tally incompetent on a felony?!”

DA Eyster seemed to be enjoying the ongoing spectacle. He’d recovered his mandible and was popeyed with delight at this latest gaffe.

Moorman said, “Okay, that’s it. I’m going to take a recess and call in Dr. Kelly.”

A knot formed as the crowd moved towards the door. Supervisor Hamburg sidled up to County Counsel Parker and spoke his first words in the courtroom.

“Geez, I guess it’s turned into a real mess, huh?”

Parker noticed me sitting in the area reserved for the press with a pen poised over my notebook and deftly ushered our Supervisor out of earshot. When they’d mostly all adjourned to the hall, Moorman sent Dolan for her client, young Mr. Hamburg.

“I’m going to re-appoint Dr. Kelly now,” she told Matthew Hamburg. “I want to find out if you’ve been restored. We’re all concerned about your mental health, so I want you to go to Dr. Kelly’s office and talk with him again. Come back at 4:00 or 4:30, however long it takes, and we’ll decide what to do.”

Ms. Elliott made another attempt to substitute for Ms. Dolan, but Judge Moorman wasn’t having it.

“I’m not inclined to agree to the substitution without him signing the form, and he must first be deemed competent to sign. If he’s found competent by Dr. Kelly we’ll take up these other issues at that time.”

I had to go to the dentist at 3:30 and didn’t make it back by 5:00.

But neither did Matthew Hamburg and the matter was put over for another week.

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DETACHMENT & STYLE

It is an occupational hazard of the journalist to get caught up in the story, the deeper you dig the more you realize how desperate a give situation is and the more you realize something must be done; so you report the facts, the sobering facts, and still the world whirls on, the populace concedes, yes, it is a dismal situation, but they go on about their lives, saying in essence “it’s too much, the powers are too great, and we are simple folk with modest expectations.” Perhaps they need to be shown how it’s done. So you lock yourself to a piece of heavy equipment to stop the destruction until after eleven days they come and cut you loose and take you off to jail. This is what happened to Will Parrish, who was arraigned last Wednesday on three counts of trespassing, an infraction. The DA asked for 12 months of probation and charges of $250 for each day Parish was on the work site of the Caltrans Willits bypass, plus approximately $250 in fines and fees totaling about $3,000. Judge Richard Henderson gave Parrish a couple of weeks to think it over and released him on his own recognizance on the condition that he stay away from the bypass work site.

Carl Sandburg was a socialist and activist until he realized it was hurting his credibility as both a journalist and a poet. It was only after his friend Amy Lowell mentioned to him that his poetry was beginning to read like propaganda, that he finally left the Socialist Party; and then, not entirely coincidentally, the resulting detachment enabled his career as a journalist to develop. “The Sandburgs never again affiliated with a political party, although they supported liberal causes all their lives. But as Sandburg’s identity and visibility as a journalist grew nationally, his detachment from party politics was essential to his credibility.” (— ‘Carl Sandburg, A Biography’ by Penelope Niven.)

CALTRANS v. BIRDS

Editor,

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

URGENT UPDATE: In the US alone, over 250 species of birds are endangered, threatened, or of growing conservation concern. This means 1 in 4 birds from Alaska to Hawaii to the continental U.S. is in peril.