ANOTHER REASON not to shop at Walgreens. The Starbucks of drug stores is 
refusing to sell the current edition of Rolling Stone because it has a
 picture of crazy-boy Boston bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, on the mag’s cover.
 A range of demagogues from Boston’s mayor to rollodex faculty “experts” 
claim the photo of Tsarnaev flatters him and insults his victims. But 
that’s what the killer happens to look like and the article inside 
certainly cannot be described as flattering.

THE MAGAZINE has issued this entirely reasonable statement: “The fact that
 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our 
readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the
 complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a
 tragedy like this happens.”

TRANSLATION: This guy is so much like the many young people who 
read Rolling Stone, that we wanted to try to understand how a kid who smokes dope and 
listens to bad music all day could go out and kill large numbers of 
people.

FOR THIS the magazine is banned?

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Illston

A COUPLE of weeks ago, Susan Ilston, a Frisco-based federal judge, told 
the FBI it couldn’t withhold information the agency had “gathered” on
 NorCal’s Occupy movement. The G-Men claimed “privacy, security, law 
enforcement concerns, and that the national security” forbade them from 
revealing the documents to the suing party, the ACLU.

ONE OF THE SPY DOCUMENTS, the FBI claimed, “would threaten serious damage to 
the national security” because it would reveal “penetration of a specific target.”

THE JUDGE pointed out that the FBI hadn’t explained how the national 
security might be damaged by these revelations.

I’LL BET THE FBI will come back with one of their black-out specials, a seemingly random pile 
of paper with every other word blacked out, and the judge will say, “Thank
 you, boys. Keep up the great work keeping US safe.”

I MAKE these cynical remarks from first hand experience observing the SF 
federal courts in drug cases involving Mendo people and the case of my 
friend, Pol Brennan, an Irish nationalist. (And random other high profile
 events and personalities over the years.) The judges were… well, let
 me put it this way: if these people are all that stand 
between US and a straight-up police state, get ready for a police state.

BACK A WAYS, I sent off for my own federal file. Among other laughable 
inaccuracies in between whole paragraphs of blacked-out gibberish, the FBI placed me on a continent where I did 
not happen to reside at the time. Conclusion? Not only does the FBI and,
 presumably, the umpty-many other tax-funded spy agencies allegedly keeping
 US from “harm’s way,” a phrase I was tired of the second time I heard it,
 routinely violate what are supposed to be our guaranteed protections 
against this stuff, they’re so incompetent that much of the information 
they collect is wrong.

SORRY for grabbing you by the shirt collar and shrieking at you like this,
 but, as most of our readers know, all of this is occurring in a context of 
summary global execution. The killing of alleged terrorists via drones is
 creating more terrorists faster than we can kill the real ones, and not only the real ones (maybe) but their
 wives, their children, and whoever else is unlucky to be with them when
 some dull-normal sitting in a recliner at an Air Force base in Omaha
 murders them from six thousand miles away.

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HELEN BUSHBY

Helen Bushby, age 75, born December 29, 1938, passed away Monday night, June 24th at her home surrounded by loved ones in Ukiah, California. Helen is survived by her husband Tony Bushby, sister Betty Phillips, seven children, 16 grandchildren and all the great-grandchildren. Helen was preceded in death by her parents Bill and Ann Riggs, and her brother Earl Riggs. She married Tony her love of 49 years on May 9, 1964. She owned and managed many restaurants including The Greenwood Cafe in Elk and The Flicker Inn in Redwood Valley, Sambo’s and Club Fort Bragg just to name a few. Helen liked selling crab and fish at Ukiah Farmers Market. She loved her having all her pets and working outside in her flower garden. No services will be held at her request. The family wishes to extend their gratitude to Dr. Ives and the staff at DCI and Ukiah Hospice. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to HOHS Dialysis Fund.

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JUDGE DENISE LIND, who’s presiding over the Bradley Manning leak-trial, did not dismiss the “Aiding the Enemy” charge against Bradley Manning, stating that the Army did present evidence that Manning should have known, based on his training, that the enemy would be able to access the information he released to Wikileaks. She also stated that evidence was presented that Manning did know that the enemy could use the SIGACTS (mapping of incidents in a region) he leaked in the same manner that the Army uses them. Judge Lind read into the record the evidence that she determined met the elements for the charge. If the judge gives weight to that evidence when she enters her final verdict at the conclusion of the case, it does not look good for Manning or Press Freedom in America. The result would be chilling for whistleblowers or anyone that publishes information on the internet that could be used by the “enemy.” Manning has already pleaded guilty to illegal use of information that he had the right to access. The chilling issue here is that with no contact with the enemy, Manning could served life in prison without the possibility for parole. Bradley Manning did not give the information to an enemy of the United States, he gave it to the media. Even if you don’t believe Wikileaks is the media, Judge Lind asked the Army on two occasions the following: If the documents were released to The New York Times and not Wikileaks would you still have brought the same charges? The Army’s response on both occasions was “Yes Ma’am.” So precedent that would be set here with a guilty verdict is that providing information to any media organization can result in a conviction for aiding the enemy. Where is the line? How often have we all crossed it? (— Scott Galindez, co-founder of Truthout, now Political Director of Reader Supported News.)

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22ND ANNUAL ART IN THE GARDENS — BIGGEST & BEST EVER! The 22nd Annual Art in the Gardens 2013 is shaping up to be the biggest and best Art in the Gardens the coast has ever seen, with 50% more vendors participating over last year! http://www.gardenbythesea.org/enews/gate.cfm?issue=164&ea=ava@pacific.net&xfa=enews.article&article_id=246

RHODY’S GARDEN CAFE OPENS! The Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens is proud to announce that it has opened a new cafe; on premises serving reasonably priced, fresh, locally produced foods in a garden setting. The initial response has been wildly enthusiastic. http://www.gardenbythesea.org/enews/gate.cfm?issue=164&ea=ava@pacific.net&xfa=enews.article&article_id=247

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SUPPORT WILL PARRISH! Write to District Attorney David Eyster In Brief: Will demanded a jury trial, and District Attorney David Eyster responded by throwing the book at him. Will is being charged with 16 misdemeanors. His maximum jail sentence is eight years. Get guidance on writing to DA Eyster by clicking on the link below! Joined by a crowd of two dozen supporters, Little Lake Valley Defender Will Parrish attended his arraignment yesterday morning, July 12th, at the Mendocino County Courthouse. Local attorney Omar Figueroa is representing him pro-bono and doing an excellent job. County District Attorney C. David Eyster had charged Will with three identical infractions, meaning Will would be ineligible for a jury trial where he could argue his case to other members of the public. Supporters suspect this move was aimed to exclude such a trial. Will intends to take the case to jury and, for that reason, was looking for the charges to be elevated to misdemeanors. The judge stated that he wasn’t aware of any statutes allowing this to occur, but defense attorney Omar Figueroa was ready with case law supporting Will’s right to have a jury trial. Eyster, who seems to be taking a personal interest in the case, said that he had already found charges that would be mutually agreeable. Then he stated that he would be filing different charges now that they need to be misdemeanors. More than simply re-filing the case charging Will with misdemeanors, Eyster decided to throw the book at the locally well-known journalist and activist. Will is being charged with 16 misdemeanors, which include a separate charge of “Unlawful Entry” for every day he was on the wick drain derrick. He is facing a maximum prison sentence of eight years! Will opted to maintain his right to a speedy trial, meaning as of now there will be a quick turnaround in the case. Will’s Court Schedule:

July 24th, Pre-trial conference.

Aug 1st, “Motion in limine.”

Aug 5th, Jury trial begins at 9am

(Courtesy, SaveLittleLakeValley.org)

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AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD GIRL WAS KILLED yesterday when a gunman shot up a home in the Dimond area of Oakland, an area of town usually spared the mayhem now prevalent in Oakland. Two other children, 4 and 7, and the children’s grandmother suffered minor injuries. The Chron’s comment line instantly filled with sarcastic remarks from white (undoubtedly) wahoos along the lines described here by a sane commenter: “We can all make the ‘where are the protests now?’ comments, but the sad truth is that this will not become a national news story, will not be picked up by cable channels, and will fade away with the next big atrocity. In places like Chicago, New Orleans, Camden, and yes Oakland, ‘communicide’ is barely newsworthy, and it’s always somebody else’s fault anyway. You used to be able to run to the suburbs, but they’re no better these days…”

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

FRIENDS OF THE EEL RIVER and Californians for Alternatives to Toxics have filed an appeal challenging a Marin judge’s dismissal of the groups’ lawsuit against the North Coast Rail Authority. In May, a Marin County judge dismissed a two-year lawsuit aimed at stopping the North Coast Rail Authority from expanding rail operations from Napa County to Willits. The original lawsuit was filed a July 2011 when the two groups contended the NCRA should be forced to conduct an in-depth environmental review along the entire length of rail line from Napa County to Arcata before expanding rail operations along any corridor. It typically takes between 18 months and two years to resolve an appeal of this type. Freight railroad operations were restored to Windsor in 2011. Restoring rail service north of Windsor remains a matter of financing, says NCRA Executive Director Mitch Stogner. The total cost to fix the tracks to Redwood Valley was estimated at $12 million in 2012. A short term goal for the railroad is to restore the 23 miles rail between Windsor and Cloverdale. The cost for this stretch was estimated at about $5 million in 2012. The restoration would likely occur in even smaller increments. Restoring the 5.3 miles of track from Windsor to Healdsburg is estimated at $1.3 million. The 8.9 miles from Healdsburg and Geyserville, including about 90 feet of major repairs at Foss Creek, is estimated to cost $2.2 million. The 8.5 miles from Geyserville to Cloverdale is estimated at $1.5 million. Other than the area at Foss Creek the work is primarily to make track, signal and bridge repairs necessary. Typical track repairs include replacing ties, rails and leveling the track. The NCRA is seeking federal grants to help fund track restoration efforts, says Stogner.

When I was in the Air Force in the 1970s I had access to classified information about the Soviet Union’s air defenses, logistics support systems, likely invasion scenarios in Eastern Europe, military philosophies, equipment capabilities, and a whole host of related factoids.

In a nutshell, the Soviet military philosophy seemed to be based on flooding the battlefield with cheap equipment and undertrained soldiers, sailors, pilots and equipment operators and technicians.

For example, in East Germany, the Soviet Union’s air defense system depended on thousands of small, mobile, low-power, very simple radar systems which didn’t cover much airspace but together seemed formidable in satellite photos.

What the surveillance photos didn’t show was that most of the radar equipment seen from the air didn’t work. The radars had been sent to the front, or what the Soviets considered to be the front, and they just ran them until they broke, which typically didn’t take long. The Soviet radar technicians would then cannibalize broken radars for spare parts to repair the unbroken radars in a informal tactical system which still produced radar coverage from what we estimated to be about 20% of what was in place at any given time. Since there were so many of them, some models going all the way back to World War II, they actually produced a decent amount of radar coverage and they were harder to take out because most of them didn’t work anyway and western pilots had to get within range and provoke a Soviet radar operator to shine its beam on them to figure out which ones worked and which ones didn’t.

As far as it went, it worked fairly well and didn’t require the huge and expensive “logistics tail” that expensive, high-performance western military equipment (which frequently did not meet specifications anyway) typically requires — lots of redundant circuitry, detailed spare parts supplies, lengthy repair technician training times, expensive parts and maintenance manuals, extensive operator training, expensive high-performance equipment, fancy repair equipment and tools, and an elaborate delivery support delivery system (convoys, drivers, etc.) and on and on. (The repair system required it’s own logistics support too.)

The same flood-the-field philosophy seemed to permeate the rest of the Soviet military establishment. Their equipment was at the same time simple, cheap, unsafe, low performance, low power, hard to operate, easy to repair, easy to manufacture and deliver, and therefore there would be upwards of five units for every single western-style equivalent.

Once when I was temporarily stationed in Iran in the mid-70s, I worked with several Iranian Air Force junior officers who had to use Soviet ground equipment because they got it in exchange for natural gas Iran traded to the Soviet Union. The Iranian Air Force officers were very unhappy with the exchange — a typical remark I heard was “we give them gas and they give us shit” — because the trucks, tugs, jeeps, radars, generators, tires, and everything else just didn’t work well and frequently broke down. On top of that, the Soviet spare parts system, such as it was, allowed users to order spare parts only one day each year depending on the type of equipment. (Obviously, ordering spare parts didn’t necessarily mean you would get spare parts, or that they’d be the right spare parts, or that they’d work…) The Iranian Air Force officers did the best they could keeping some of their equipment in operating condition but it was a constant challenge, on top of many other challenges.

Taking the philosophy one step further into the human arena meant that the Soviets more or less considered their troops to be expendable. They didn’t provide much safety equipment, very little training, and they tended to order their troops into riskier situations than Western military commanders would ever do. Heavy casualties were part of the Soviet military equation in the minds of the USSR’s generals and defense officials.

But that didn’t mean that the Russian soldiers were any less brave or talented as their Western counterparts.

I was reminded of all of this background and history recently when I read about the death of Russian pilot Nadezhda Popova on July 8, 2013.

Nadezhda Popova was part of a unit of Soviet women pilots who flew old biplanes to bomb the invading Germans in World War II. As the Wehrmacht approached Moscow in 1941, Stalin, influenced by a woman named Marina Raskova, one of very few women in the Soviet air force before the war, agreed to set up a women’s air force unit — a night bomber regiment. From mechanics to navigators, pilots and officers, it was composed entirely of women.

Nadezhna Popova, 19

Aged 19 (!), Popova was one of the first to join what became the best-known of three units, the 588th. By then, early in the war, the Soviets had sustained heavy losses of planes, often on the ground, to the Luftwaffe. So these women had to do their best with cheaply built 1920-vintage wooden biplanes, “Polikarpov Po-2s” that had been used for training and lacked radios and modern navigational equipment. They could carry two half-ton bombs.

The women of the 588th flew their first mission on June 8, 1942. The Germans had retreated in the snow from Moscow but the great battle of Stalingrad was yet to come. Three planes took part in that first mission, aiming for the headquarters of a German division. The raid was successful but, of course, one plane and its pilot were lost.

The 588th flew only at night, and concentrated on harassment bombing of German encampments, rear-area bases and supply depots. The aim was psychological as well as practical. Being light weight, their rickety old planes — no guns, no armor, no canopy, no parachutes, limited fuel, poor performance no radios, no GPS!, minimal instruments and navigational aids (they were lucky to have crude maps, a stopwatch and a compass) — could fly close to the ground and were often undetected by radar. Popova and her comrades would cut their engines near the target — a very risky maneuver which risked not getting the engine started again after the run, leaving the pilot with no elevation to recover in — and glide in and drop their ordnance, restart their engines (if they were lucky) and head back to base. The Germans hated being made to scatter by women and called them the Nachthexen [the Night Witches]. One German source said they were “precise, merciless and came from nowhere.” The Nazis viewed them as such a menace that an Iron Cross was promised to any Luftwaffe pilot who shot down a “Nachthexen.”

Because the Polikarpov planes were only capable of carrying the two small bombs strapped under their wings, the pilots had to fly multiple missions every night, returning to base to collect more bombs. Nadezhda Popova once famously flew 18 sorties in a single night.

According to an obituary in a London newspaper she remembered the freezing cold weather the most. “When the wind was strong it would toss the plane. In winter when you’d look out to see your target better you got frostbite; our feet froze in our boots, but we carried on flying. You had to focus on the target and think how you could hit it. There was no time to give way to emotions. Those who gave in were gunned down and they were burned alive in their aircraft as they had no parachutes.” (All this was at night, remember.)

Their tactics involved flying in formations of three with two of the planes breaking off to act as decoys and attract the searchlights while the third slipped quietly in to drop its bombs.

On one occasion after crash landing in the North Caucasus Ms. Popova joined a retreating Soviet column in which she met another downed pilot Semyon Kharlamov. His head was heavily bandaged so only his eyes were showing, but he charmed her with jokes and after meeting up several times over the course of the war, they eventually married.

The 588th Night Bomber Regiment was so successful that Stalin formed three regiments of women combat pilots.

Besides the obvious dangers of air combat, life on the ground was not easy. There was a great deal of resistance to the idea of women combat pilots; their male counterparts often looked down on them, and their living conditions were usually primitive. Sexual harassment was common.

Nadezhda Popova was born in Shabanovka (today’s Dolgoye). Her father was a railwayman. She grew up in Ukraine in the Donetsk coalfields. She hoped to become an actress; she loved music and dance and performed in amateur theater.

But all that changed when a small aircraft landed near her village and the young Ms. Popova became passionate about flying, enrolling in a gliding school without telling her parents. At 16 (!) she made her first parachute jump and first solo flight.

In the Soviet Union, as elsewhere, this was a time of huge enthusiasm for aviation and Russia had claimed numerous early distance, altitude, and other records. Women were also busy conquering the skies. In 1938 Marina Raskova and two other Soviet women officials set a world record for a non-stop direct flight by women when they flew an ANT-37, a Soviet-built twin-engine aircraft named Rodina [Homeland], over 3700 miles from Moscow to Siberia.

Several Russian women pilots were famous at the start of World War II because of their daring exploits in the First World War. Among others, Princess Eugenie Shakovskaya served as an artillery and reconnaissance pilot, having volunteered for the Czar’s air force in 1914, and flew with the 26th Corps Air Squadron in 1917.

All this undoubtedly influenced the young Nadezhda Popova, and despite her parent’s opposition she carried on with her new passion. She obtained her pilot’s license and applied to enroll in pilot school, but was turned down. Polina Osipenko, Inspector for Aviation in the Moscow Military District, however, intervened and recommended that she be given her chance, and she was accepted as a student in the Kherson flight school, from which she graduated at the age of 18 (!). Ms. Popova then became a flight instructor!

After the war, as women returned to ordinary jobs the female pilots were often regarded as loose women, but Popova stayed in aviation. She was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. All tolled Ms. Popova survived an amazing 852 missions, starting in the Ukraine and ending up in Berlin in 1945. She survived several forced landings. She met and married another pilot, Semyon Kharlamov, and they remained together until Semyon’s death in 1990.

Nadezhda Popova died on July 8, 2013. She is survived by her son, now a general in the Belarussian Air Force. Ms. Popova was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union, Gold Star, Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Star (three times) during the Second World War.

Obviously, a book and a movie are long overdue.

MOTHER FACES JAIL TIME after allowing toddler access to meth, alcohol.

Delvalle

A Boonville mother who admitted to allowing her toddler son to ingest life-threatening amounts of methamphetamine and alcohol will serve 270 days in county jail as part of a suspended state prison sentence ordered by Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman. At sentencing hearing held on July 9th, the mother, Samantha Ann Margeret Dellvalle, age 22, was warned by the Court that a violation of any term of her probation will result in the young woman being sent to state prison for up to four years. Having reviewed the Probation Department’s social study of the defendant and sentencing recommendation, Judge Moorman announced in court that she had decided not to impose a state prison sentence at the outset on Dellvalle, allowing the defendant to, instead, be incarcerated in the county jail. The Court said it had reached this decision because of the defendant’s young age and lack of prior criminal record. Deputy District Attorney Shannon Cox argued for the imposition of a state prison commitment, citing the overall seriousness of the case and the fact the child could have easily died. Cox argued this was an appropriate case to be used to send a wake up call to other parents in community who may be similarly-situated. Dellvalle had entered a guilty plea on July 9th to felony child abuse and endangerment, following her earlier arrest in Boonville in March of this year. A co-defendant, Raymond Earl Mabery, age 21, was also charged with child abuse, but also with being under the influence of controlled substances and possessing drug paraphernalia. Prosecutor Cox said the case against Mabery, a relative of Dellvalle, is still pending. Dellvalle’s son was rushed to Ukiah Valley Medical Center by his grandmother who became concerned over how sick he appeared after she picked him up at Dellvalle’s house. At the hospital the boy was found to have dangerously high levels of methamphetamine and alcohol in his system. With proper medical care, the boy recovered and is now in the custody of his biological father. (— District Attorney Press Release)

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JUSTICE4SUSAN Keegan website announced.

Dr. & Mrs. Keegan

Ukiah, California (July 19, 2013) – The friends and family of Ukiah resident Susan Keegan, whose death has been declared a homicide, will launch a website on July 23, 2013, honoring what should have been her 58th birthday. On the morning of November 11, 2010, Susan Keegan was reported dead in her Ukiah, California home by her husband, Peter Keegan, MD. Dr. Keegan – Harvard undergraduate, UC San Francisco medical school – claimed Susan abused drugs and alcohol and speculated that her death was either an accident or a suicide. Dozens of friends and family members told the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department something very different – that Susan was a healthy and vigorous writer, artist, and community activist and a pillar of the Ukiah community in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. The day before Susan’s death, Dr. Keegan was reported to have “gone ballistic” in the office of their divorce mediator. The Sheriff’s office mishandled the early investigation and autopsy and released the body to Dr. Keegan, who immediately had his estranged wife cremated. Newly elected District Attorney David Eyster stepped in soon after and reopened the inquiry. Two search warrants have been executed on the Keegan home and in August 2012, Mendocino County officials amended the death certificate, citing “homicide” as the cause of Susan’s death. Law enforcement authorities say “there is a person of interest” in the case, but there has been no arrest and no prosecution. With the third anniversary of Susan Keegan’s death only a few months away, the Justice4Susan Committee wants answers. The web site provides details about the Keegan homicide, links to media stories, and offers opportunities for people to Stand up for Susan. AbouAbout the Justice4Susan Committee: We are personal friends and family members who knew both Susan Keegan and Dr. Peter Keegan well, and loved them both. Immediately after Susan’s death, each of us independently contacted the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office to share our suspicions about the nature of her death. In time, we found one another and agreed that we had an obligation to Susan to seek the truth from the Mendocino County law enforcement community. Justice is our only goal.

Contact the Justice4Susan Committee: Justice4SusanKeegan@gmail.com

FROM THE WEBSITE’S HOMEPAGE:

On the morning of November 11, 2010, Susan Keegan, age 55, was reported dead in her Ukiah, California home by her husband, Peter Keegan, MD. Her death certificate identifies cause of death as HOMICIDE. There is one suspect in the case, but no one has been prosecuted. Family, friends and the taxpayers of Mendocino County are waiting for justice.

How long will the wait continue?

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

Speaking Out for Susan

Susan’s friends and family began pleading with the law enforcement community of Mendocino County to investigate her death from the moment it was announced. Those pleas continue to this day.

Her husband’s claim that this vibrant, healthy woman could have been sufficiently intoxicated to fall and hit her head seemed far-fetched. In the weeks before she died, some in the Ukiah community had received odd phone calls and unannounced visits from Dr. Keegan claiming Susan had become an addict. They knew it was untrue.

The law enforcement authorities eventually agreed. In August 2012, almost two years after her death, they amended her death certificate to call the death a homicide.



Those close to Susan told the authorities:

• “In all the years I knew Susan, I never saw her stumble or lose control. She was a sure-footed, strong and confident woman. She did not rush or act irrationally. She was intelligent, capable and careful…. I urge you to press for an investigation into this matter.”

• “Moderation was part of Susan’s character. She was clear-headed, rational, organized and very responsible… I am hoping that sufficient care, time and resources will be put into determining the cause of Susan’s death… It is easiest to deal with the truth, whatever it turns out to be.”

• “I feel that I know her well and that she was an exceptionally grounded, principled, and clear-headed person….”

• Susan and I were in especially close touch during this difficult period … I have firsthand knowledge of how she was spending her time, and what her emotional state of mind was. She was sad, but very forward-looking, and most certainly in full intellectual and emotional control. “

• “Nothing will bring Susan back. But painstaking investigation and vigorous prosecution are not only the duties of your office; they will also be a fitting tribute to our late friend.”

(For a complete summary of the case and related documents go to http://justice4susan.com/)

KEEGAN CASE SUMMARY (AVA, April 13, 2013)

ASSISTANT DA PAUL SEQUIERA issued this terse statement Thursday on the unprosecuted murder of Susan Keegan. “It’s still under investigation.”

REALLY? We’re not talking about the Kennedy Assassination here. We’re talking about the highly likely murder of a woman committed by her husband, a woman bludgeoned to death in her South Ukiah home by her doctor-husband of 30 years. What’s the hold-up? The DA might lose the case? This isn’t a ball game. We’re not compiling won-loss stats here. We’re talking about an unprosecuted crime. It’s way past time to arrest Doctor Keegan and prosecute him. Maybe he’s innocent. We won’t know until it’s sorted out in a public way, but this “it’s still under investigation” baloney has become insulting. If Joe The Tweeker’s wife had been found bludgeoned to death in the marital bower under similar circumstances, you can be sure that Joe would already be in his third year in the state pen.

IS THE KEEGAN case as simple as that? Maybe the DA can tell us. The doctor said he found his wife dead in her bathroom of the home they shared. He said she’d fallen and hit her head. The wounds to Susan Keegan’s head were not, however, consistent with a bathroom fall, hence the upgrade of the death certificate to homicide.

THE DOCTOR said his wife was a drunk and a pill-popper, an assessment that does not square with Mrs. Keegan’s busy daily schedule. She was a woman who got up every morning and did things, as her many Ukiah friends are prepared to testify. Pill-popping drunks don’t do much besides indulge themselves. If Mrs. Keegan was a drug-addled drunk the people she saw every day would have noticed. They didn’t.

SUSAN KEEGAN’S death has been officially ruled a homicide. There was one other person in the house when she died. That person, Doctor Keegan, didn’t offer any other explanation for his wife’s death than that he’d found her dead in her own bathroom and had immediately slandered her to the police as likely having fallen under the influence. He didn’t say he heard a possible intruder during the night or offer any other explanation for what might have happened to his wife. One death, one suspect, one death certificate that says homicide.

THE DA’S OFFICE under Eyster has yet to prosecute a single tough case. Sequiera was hired to prosecute tough cases. The endless delays in this one are starting to smell. How is it possible to have a homicide, one suspect — but no arrest, no prosecution? This kind of class-based prosecution policy has gone on for years in this county, most famously in the 1987 Fort Bragg Fires. In that one, a handful of crooks got away with burning the heart right out of the town. I could list a dozen major crimes from 1970 to the present that either went unprosecuted or some kind of cozy deal was worked out with the well-placed, well-connected perp.

SUSAN KEEGAN was a good person. She was prepared to leave the marriage and move on. Doctor Keegan was very angry, murderously angry, that half their property would belong to Mrs. Keegan, and he did what he did, which was to commit murder, a murder under investigation since November of 2010.

OUR LATE DA Norm Vroman even prosecuted egregious domestic violence cases, knowing they were iffy because the female victims refused to testify against the “man” who had beat them. Vroman prosecuted these cases anyway because they should have been prosecuted, win or lose.

EYSTER’S done some good things — his dope prosecution policy is a very good thing for the County — but letting woman killers slide because the cases aren’t airtight is signing off on murder.

KEEGAN MURDER CASE TIMELINE:

• November 11, 2010 — Susan Keegan reported dead at her Ukiah home by her husband, Dr. Peter Keegan.

• November 11, 2010 — Family and friends call Sheriff’s office and explain why death should be treated as suspicious.

• November 13, 2010 (approx) — Body released to husband and cremated shortly afterward.

• Fall 2010, Winter/Spring 2011 — Family and friends begin calling the Sheriff’s office and the DA’s office urging a full investigation.

• June, 2011 — Search warrant executed at Keegan home.

• Summer/Fall 2011 to Winter/Spring 2012 — Family and friends continue to call DA’s office inquiring about the status of the investigation. DA tells the public the case is “under investigation.”

• August, 2012 — The cause of Susan Keegan’s death is officially declared “Homicide.” Sheriff’s office tells media “there is a person of interest.”

• Fall/Winter 2012 — Family and friends continue to call DA’s office inquiring about the status of the investigation. DA tells the public the case is “under investigation.”

• January 2013 — Second search warrant executed at Keegan home. Family and friends continue to call DA’s office inquiring about the status of the investigation.

• April 2013 — Assistant DA says case is “under investigation.”

http://justice4susan.com/home/you-can-help/

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Carrillo

A SONOMA COUNTY reader writes: “Come on. Doesn’t anyone understand what was happening when Supervisor Efren Carrillo was caught ‘prowling’ with ‘sexual intent’ or planning some kind of burglary? Let’s put on our thinking caps. Why on earth would someone be wandering around a lawn outside an apartment complex late at night? Hmmm. The answer of course is that he just left another woman’s bedroom in a hurry when her husband came home. So when she heard the husband’s keys in the lock she immediately sent Carrillo out the window and kicked his shoes and pants under the bed and welcomed hubby home with open arms. Then, since Carrillo also probably knew the woman in the neighboring apartment, he knocked on her window so he could ask her to call a taxi for him. Hey! What would you do if you had left an apartment in a hurry with no shoes or pants and needed some help — discreetly. You’d probably knock on somebody’s door or window hoping that they would be understanding and not ask too many questions. Clearly, that plan didn’t work out and the supervisor was caught with his pants down. Of course none of that is a crime. I think they are postponing any serious hearing for at least a month while they wait for the husband to forget about when he came home and thinking, ‘Ohhhh — THAT explains why the bed was warm when I got home.’ The case would have gone ‘cold’ by then. The husband wouldn’t realize what had probably happened. I assume that when Efren bailed out of jail the woman he was with called him on her cellphone and told him she had thrown his pants and shoes in a dumpster. This kind of problem is not unusual for American politicians. It goes all the way back to George Washington and Ben Franklin. For example, there is a story about how George Washington caught pneumonia when he left a woman’s house without adequate clothing one time. I’m sure that somehow Supervisor Carrillo will escape this mess with the assistance of Doug Bosco, his patron, and Bosco’s newspaper, the Press Democrat, which Bosco owns a large share of. I don’t know if the PD would carry an ad offering a reward for the supervisor’s pants and shoes — no questions asked. But I expect that the case will be orchestrated by Bosco and high profile Sonoma County defense attorney Chris Andrian. In a way I feel sorry for Supervisor Carrillo. He was just looking for help in an awkward situation and he got arrested for stalking and attempted burglary. Sheesh!”

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PUBLIC EXPRESSION (sic), BOARD OF SUPERVISORS CHAMBERS, UKIAH, JULY 16, 2013.

John Sakowicz: I am speaking as a private citizen only. This Wednesday the Ukiah City Finance Director Gordon Elton is retiring. The city is doing a proclamation. With the help of the Anderson Valley Advertiser who did an article earlier this week, I would like to cite some of Mr. Elton’s dubious achievements: Hijacked redevelopment funds, of upwards of $1 million annually, for up to 10 years to pay for —

(Mumbling from Board Chair Dan Hamburg.)

Sakowicz: This is a non-agenda item. …to pay for this…

Hamburg: I realize that. I just don’t know where you are going with this, John.

Sakowicz: To pay for — well, he bankrupted the city.

McCowen: Excuse me, Mr. Chair. It’s not something that’s within our purview and public comment is for items not on the agenda but within our purview. I believe County Counsel could confirm that.

County Counsel Tom Parker: Yes sir.

McCowen: It’s not necessarily an open forum.

Sakowicz: This is for information purposes.

McCowen: It’s not an open forum.

Sakowicz: Okay. All right. Well, I will be publishing this and I will be reading it at the Ukiah city Council meeting on Wednesday.

Hamburg: Thank you. Thank you, John. Okay, others who would like to address the board?

Supervisor John Pinches: Mr. Chairman.

Hamburg: Yes.

Pinches: This is the first time — I have sat here for over 10 years, going on 11 years. This is the first time that I have ever seen public expression restricted in any way at this forum.

Hamburg: Well, um. (Clears throat). Ok.

Pinches: I don’t understand. I mean, three minutes of public expression should be three minutes of public expression. Period.

Hamburg: Well, thank you for that. Umm, Supervisor McCowen did ask for County Counsel’s opinion and he did concur.

Pinches: I disagree with that opinion.

Hamburg: Well, yeah. I hear you. I understand what you’re saying. And uh, Mr. County Counsel would you like to offer further consideration?

Parker: Yes. The, the public expression is for items that are not agendized as has been stated and is well-known. The — but my legal analysis is that the county has no jurisdiction over the city. Mr. Elton is not a county employee. The county could – the county would have no, no jurisdiction to agendize honoring Mr. Elton’s services to the public in general or the, to the city of Ukiah in particular. So it — that was the basis for my conclusion, there really is —

Hamburg: Yes, well. You know. I — I’ll let Supervisor Pinches speak but I do also have some concerns because now, you know, every time somebody speaks we are going to have to analyze whether it’s something we have purview over and that’s going to be a tough standard to meet, you know, fairly often.

Pinches: First of all, City of Ukiah taxpayers are also County of Mendocino taxpayers. They are the same group of people. If we are going to start selecting who can say anything and who can say what, I guess my first question would be, who’s going to be in charge of that?

Hamburg: Well, ostensibly, it would be the Chair with the advice of County Counsel. And you will be Chair quite soon.

McCowen: I am willing to leave it to the prerogative of the Chair, but, as a matter of law and Brown Act compliance, public expression is for matters under our purview but not on the agenda and the concern is not so much that the speaker rose to honor the city employee but his intent from his opening comments was actually the opposite. I do not think that is appropriate because that city employee really would have no equivalent forum in which to respond.

Hamburg: Yeah.

McCowen: So just kind of as a matter of decorum I did not think it was appropriate. But again, at the discretion of the chair.

Hamburg: Well, I agree. It’s a slippery slope. And it may be something we should talk about a little bit more after this meeting. But, I have to say, Supervisor McCowen, that I share your, your chagrin at somebody getting up to criticize someone who’s not a county employee. And again as you said, in a forum where that person has no — you know, I was thinking how someone once got up, and it’s not really that infrequent, somebody will get up and blast a supervisor or criticize some ill treatment they received in a county department from a particular individual working for the county and that never elicits a complaint from a Board member even if you happen to be the Board member who is getting wailed on, that comes with the territory. But to get up and wail on an employee who doesn’t even work for the county, I just don’t — I have a little bit of a problem with that. So I am going to rule that that comment was out of order and I will discuss it further with County Counsel and the CEO sometime in the future.

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PRESCHOOL MOVES OUT, BUT NOW HAS NO PLACE TO GO. HELP!

The Caspar Children’s Garden (CCG) preschool board of directors has been working since early spring on an agreement to move their program to the farm house located at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens (MCBG). This past week the board was unexpectedly informed that the Botanical Garden was no longer interested in renting to them. CCG has already spent over $8000 (almost half their savings) applying for a County use permit (in conjunction with the MCBG and their landlord, the Mendocino Coast Recreation & Park District) and were willing to make improvements at their own expense. With this disappointing news, the program is now in need of a new home. The preschool has 25+ years experience running a successful business serving hundreds of families; a team of experienced teachers; a large group of parents waiting to enroll their children this fall; and a storage unit packed to capacity with all the materials and furniture that belong in an early childhood program. If you know of a possible location or can contribute in any way to this urgent request for assistance, please contact the CCG director, Sandra Mix, at cg@mcn.org or 707-367-9763.

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EDITOR,

I work in the Anderson Valley and coach high school basketball in the 
Mendocino School District. I once coached basketball in AV and had a short
 AD fill-in at Mendocino High to add to my public school volunteer
 credentials. You recently reprinted an article from Paul McCarthy’s blog 
where he attacks Robert Pinoli, and accuses the Panther soccer team of 
cheating by illegally practicing.

 With the name of Mr. McCarthy’s blog being Mendocino Sports Plus, I would 
like to remind your readers that this blog, and Mr. McCarthy himself, have
 no connection to Mendocino High School or Mendocino High School Sports,
 whatsoever. The name may indicate otherwise. This is his Facebook page we
 are talking about.

 As a senior coach in Mendocino, I find myself apologizing for him 
regularly. This is the second time he has attacked Mr. Pinoli, who I
 personally believe is one of the more honorable members of CMC, NCL, and
 NCS. (I challenge any sports fans to know what those letters all stand
 for). It was embarrassing to go play basketball in Point Arena when the AD 
and school were accused of being “pussys” and “chicken” to play Mendocino,
 when they had to forfeit for not having enough players (for 8 man 
football, the small school version of football). When Laytonville won big 
in football, Cory James Sr., one of league’s hardest working multiple-
sport coaches, was accused of running up the score. I remember calling the
 AD, Sue Carberry, in Laytonville, to beg for forgiveness, when he likened 
the beautiful new campus to a prison. In fact, the AD and principal in
 Mendocino have been on the receiving end of abuse for not running and 
supporting the 8 man football program the way he would like it. My 
personal favorite was when he accused the AD, Mr. Gold, of not properly 
teaching the football coaches of how to turn on the showers.

 Most parents I talk to love this facebook page for the wonderful
 collection of pictures of our kids playing games. I personally enjoy this
 part. The “shoot first” and “deal with the facts later” type of writing 
that Mendocino Sports Plus engages in is entertaining at times, often
 hurtful, regularly embarrassing for MHS, fun to respond to, and sells
 papers. (Just ask the AVA.)

 — Jim Young
, Mendocino High School Basketball

ED REPLY: O please, Jim. What sniveling. High school sports around here is 
lucky to have anyone even notice, never mind writing about them. As for the
 ancient whine that the adventures of our scintillating local personalities 
sell newspapers, well, har de har. I’m glad McCarthy takes the time,
 whether or not you agree with him. Not everyone is cut out to be a pom-pom girl.

YOUNG WRITES BACK: I was very clear with what I agree with and what I
 don’t. It is sort of logical, I guess, that I would back the “trash 
talkee’s” (coach volunteers and AD’s) and you the “trash talkers”. You 
say sniveling, I say it takes some thick skin to spend multiple years in 
youth sports. Ask your son. You know I love your paper. — Jim

ED REPLY: It takes thick skin to roll out of bed everyday anymore, Jim. As Tarzan said to Boy, “It’s a jungle out there.”

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COMMENT OF THE DAY from LostCoastOutpost.com reacting to a stream diversion bust of two out-of-state growers at Willow Creek: Okay. Has anybody checked out Willow Creek lately? It’s crazy. Fountain Ranch Rd all the way into town, both sides of the river down through Kimtu and more. Wide open flat fields full of weed. I correct myself- the sheriff could spend EVERY day out there busting. This train has run away, jumped the tracks and gone over the edge…we are careening through space….and we are approaching the bottom. Expect a hard jolt of reality soon. We are about to see the over-saturated market. I’m calling $600/pound by January….foreclosures and massive property crime to follow. Hope that was fun!

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TO: DISTRICT ATTORNEY DAVID EYSTER

County of Mendocino, Ukiah, CA

July 19, 2013

RE: People Vs William Edward Parrish Case NO MCUK-INNT-13-16663-000

Dear District Attorney David Eyster,

Among other destructive projects that Caltrans has in the works, I have been following this decision by Caltrans to forge ahead with this very harmful freeway bypass through Little Lake Valley. There are many violations of environmental laws being carried out, and these wick drains were not in the EIR. Also, this is nesting season and this should have stopped this project to allow time to consider alternatives and complete the court process. This is in court, and waiting for the decision by the judge.

One very viable alternative would be to have the bypass go by way of the railroad tracks, still leaving plenty of room in case the railroad starts up again someday. EPIC has the plans, but Caltrans only wants the most expensive project, even though they only have money for a two lane each way. Four lanes is their plan to flatten out, in hopes for money for an expanded bypass in the future. This bypass all goes back into a one lane each way Highway 101 north of Willits. This is mind boggling that this choice for a bypass is being allowed. This could actually affect the water supply of Willits in draining the wetlands, in addition to the other obvious destruction to habitat that makes Willits a very special place, as the Gateway to the Redwoods.

Caltrans caused this back up issue in the middle of Willits town, by making Highway 101 go from 2 lanes in each direction and narrowed it down to one lane each way there at the Safeway gas station.

The bypass Caltrans is forging ahead with will cause irreparable harm to the wetlands, and it is a waste of money as it does not connect traffic from Highway 20, and above Willits the traffic is very light. Caltrans has shown time and time again to NOT listen to the will of the people, and be practical.

Caltrans needs to use the alternatives and make the 2 lanes in each direction bypass by the railroad tracks, and fix the middle of Willits town back to two lanes in each direction all through town, not just at the south end by the shopping center.

For these reasons, I support these young people trying to protest (as it seems to be the only thing that gets attention to this destructive project). One can’t replace the wetlands, tributaries to the rivers once dried up and fish can’t travel there, the ancient trees and habitat for wildlife. Willits should be making this area into a protected Wildlife area, rather than allowing Caltrans to be destroying it.

Aside from the Bay Bridge disaster wasting money by side stepping processes, killing 100’s of Cliff Swallows at the Petaluma River Bridge , wanting to harm Richardson Grove State Park (all for STAA Trucks over 65 feet), and Route 199/197 to log old growth, this destructive plan is not well thought out.

It is not ok for Caltrans to ruin our environment for their projects, and I hope Jerry Brown expands his investigations to all these wasteful projects going on. This money could be better used to fix Highway 101 from San Francisco north and through Santa Rosa, where traffic is still a nightmare any day one gets caught in commuter traffic or lunch time.

Our great grandparents and grandparents entrusted Richardson Grove State Park to the State in 1922 to be protected, as they saw the forests and wild lands being destroyed at an alarming pace. We CAN slow this destructive process down, before it is all gone, never to be recovered.

Please see the whole picture here. We need to be protecting the environment, while also making compromise and building in the least destructive manner to preserve our precious Redwood Highway from Willits to Oregon along 199. Please drive up and see for yourself, how light the traffic is above Willits, until you get to Eureka.

This is why the people are protesting; they know it is just plain wrong to go through with this wasteful and destructive way of bypassing Ukiah, that will not solve the problem of the road narrowed in the center of town that is the cause of this congestion.

Will Parish is an excellent Journalist, and he is very brave to stand up against this BIG MACHINE called Caltrans who is not listening to the people who have scientific proof of how destructive, this choice of a bypass is. Please don’t pump this case up, as many of us would also be climbing trees or equipment if we were younger, to stand up for what is right for the environment, our North coast, and for Willits town I have been enjoying passing through all my life, and stopping to eat, get gas, and shop.

William Parrish did not do anything violent. He was simply protesting in a very peaceful way, and he stands for what I and so many (thousands) believe. This bypass through the wetlands is a terrible idea.

Please administer justice pursuant to Penal Code 851.8 (d) and dismiss William Parrish.

Thank you for your consideration in this very important matter.

Sincerely, Trisha Lotus, Eureka

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KEEP LOCAL COMMUNITY ACCESS TELEVISION ALIVE! Sign this petition

Our Community Access Television facility here on the Mendocino coast that has offered training to citizens to create programming since the 1970′s and provided vital visibility to local governmental affairs, is threatened to be destroyed. This is a situation where an internecine playground squabble between factions of Footlighters, a local theatrical club, was allowed to turn into a situation where MCTV was the scapegoat. It appears that the judge was incompetent (if not biased) and very possibly had a conflict of interest. The Footlighters’ lawyer is, obviously, corrupt and primarily interested in his portion of the take. Lawsuits have forced the dissolution of the 501(c3) MCTV facility. That’s why I signed a petition to Fort Bragg City Council and Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. Will you sign this petition? If so, click here: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/we-need-community-access?source=s.icn.em.mt&r_by=1639481 Many thanks!

Howard Ennes, Fort Bragg

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DEPRESSING STAT UNO

ONE in every four women is a victim of domestic physical violence at some point in her life, and the Justice Department estimates that three women and one man are killed by their partners every day. Between 2000 and 2006, thirty-two hundred American soldiers were killed; during that period, domestic homicide in the United States claimed ten thousand six hundred lives….. (A Raised Hand, Rachel Louise Snyder)

DEPRESSING STAT DOS

IN CALIFORNIA’S community college system, 85 percent of entering freshmen need remedial English, 73 percent remedial math. Only about a third of these students end up transferring to a four-year school or graduating with a community college associate’s degree.

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WAY TO GO, VINCE!

Elk Resident Vincent Longo Named To Dean’s List At Ithaca College—

Ithaca, NY (07/19/2013)(readMedia)— Vincent Longo, a resident of Elk and a Television-Radio major in the class of 2015, was named to the Dean’s list in Ithaca College’s Roy H. Park School of Communications for the Spring 2013 semester. From day one, Ithaca College prepares students for success through hands-on experience with internships, research and study abroad. Its integrative curriculum builds bridges across disciplines and uniquely blends liberal arts and professional study. Located in New York’s Finger Lakes region, the College is home to 6,100 undergraduate and 400 graduate students.

RANDOM OPINIONS. I like railroads as much as the next guy, and I see no reason other than the usual pettifogging gangs of career officeholders and time-serving public bureaucrats that a high-speed train can’t run between San Rafael and Willits. It won’t though. Ever.

THE TRACKS and rights-of-way are already there, and two slow-speed trains, up through World War Two, ran every day between Tiburon (linked by ferry with San Francisco) and Eureka. Hard to believe that 60 years ago you could board a train in Fort Bragg, make a southbound connection at Willits, and enjoy a drink at the Top of the Mark by sundown the same day.

SINCE THEN, of course, America has lost its way. We no longer have the kind of leadership that gets big things done, apart from wars, that is, or apart from their primary latter-day function, which is to shovel as much money to the oligarchy as they can, starving public amenities and social programs as they go. (On my recent trip to Scotland, I asked the foreman of the farm where we stayed, “Any toffs around here? I’ve never seen a toff except in Brit movies. I’d like to see one.” His reply, “Why would anyone want to see one of those bastards?” And that just kinda summed up the difference in class consciousness between US and the old country.)

THE NORTHCOAST’S Democrat Party apparatus is one of many hogs in the railroad restoration stream, not that Republicans wouldn’t do the same. The Democrats use rail funding as a jobs program for their most faithful old boys, people like Dan Hauser and Mitch Stogner, inserted into key rail positions despite zero railroad experience.

IT WOULD TAKE an estimated $600 million to get a train running again through the Eel River Canyon to Eureka. That money is unlikely to be forthcoming short of revolution or as a public works project under an FDR-like president; “dreams” of a Eureka-Marin railroad are pure fantasy — cynicism if it’s Democrats doing the dreaming. The Hauser-Stogner-Democrat Axis insists it’s doable. Their jobs depend on saying that.

EVEN WITH THEM in the way, there’s no reason a train couldn’t again run regularly between Marin and Willits, a prospect as unlikely as a train running farther north through the collapsed stretch of track in the Eel River Canyon. Marin to Willits, however, should be easy. No sign it ever will happen.

HAUSER CLONES at the Humboldt Bay Harbor Authority, or whatever it’s called, have spent $250,000 public dollars on another rail fantasy — an east-west line linking Humboldt County to I-5. This chimercal line would run between Samoa and Redding. That rail line, the study says, would cost a billion dollars in money that our bi-partisan masters spend their days diverting upwards to the One Percent. So, like the north-south line from Marin to Willits, it also won’t happen. Anyway, it’s highly unlikely, even if a rail line presently linked Humboldt Bay and Redding, that anyone would ship stuff on it because shippers can get in and out of the ports of Oakland and San Pedro just fine, and there’s no lumber out of HumCo anymore.

WHAT seems odd to me about the ongoing rail fantasies, at least those linking any part of Humboldt County with the SF Bay Area, is that nobody except the Democrats putting them out there believe them, and they don’t really believe them, I’d assume, other than as a funding source for a few of them and their friends.

AND WHO’S CHUGGING up the tracks with the latest on rail matters but Daniel Mintz…

STILLMAN OUSTED FROM NCRA

by Daniel Mintz

Division over the viability of railroad development is sure to spike now that trails-friendly Arcata Councilmember Alex Stillman has been pulled off the North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA) Board of Directors.

The committee that appoints a city representative to the NCRA board met July 16 to re-evaluate Stillman’s appointment, which had been made a month earlier to the chagrin of railroad advocates.

A majority of the mayors who make up the committee voted to rescind the appointment and after spirited debate and some confusion over process, the same majority voted to appoint Fortuna Mayor Doug Strehl to the NCRA board in Stillman’s place.

Stillman

When Stillman was appointed, Ferndale Mayor Stuart Titus was absent and the committee was deadlocked between Stillman and Strehl. Eureka Mayor Frank Jager broke the tie by switching his vote from Strehl to Stillman.

But the appointment was soon challenged on procedural grounds by Eureka Attorney and rail advocate Bill Bertain, triggering a reassessment and the follow-up meeting.

Marcella Clem, the executive director of the Humboldt County Association of Governments (HCAOG), which provides staff support to the committee, downplayed the alleged procedural glitch but David Tranberg, HCAOG’s attorney, said that “it’s pretty obvious that a mistake was made” involving a paperwork submittal deadline.

With the appointment voided, a vote on re-doing it was pursued, with Stillman and Strehl once again vying for the pick.

Deliberations on it were marked by two twists – Titus created another deadlock situation by nominating himself as a third candidate and Eureka Councilmember Mike Newman, a strong rail development supporter, represented Eureka instead of Jager, a longtime Boy Scout troopmaster who’s a trails enthusiast.

In making a motion to appoint Strehl, Newman explained that it’s what most Eureka councilmembers want. “Our council was in discussion and we were behind the appointment of Doug Strehl,” he said, adding that Jager wasn’t at the meeting because he “had other things to do.”

Earlier, Stillman said that she supports a “rails with trails” approach but Newman said that’s not quite the stance supported by a majority of his city’s councilmembers. “We’re more in support of rails first, versus trails,” he continued.

Stillman had also described the southern end of the NCRA’s line as a redevelopment priority, while Strehl asserted that railroad development is a local economic necessity.

During a public comment session, rail supporters lobbied for Strehl and rail skeptics rallied for Stillman. The committee was equally divided with northern city reps, including Arcata Mayor Shane Brinton, supporting Stillman – with the exception of Eureka via Newman.

Trinidad Mayor Julie Fulkerson recounted Stillman’s long track record of achievement and questioned the re-appointment process. “We’re going to look like a bunch of flakes if we change our nomination at this point,” she said.

Noting Newman’s presence in place of Jager, Fulkerson suggested that there have been private discussions about getting Stillman off the NCRA board. “I don’t know what happened in Eureka – Frank was here last time, and saw that this was an opportunity to build bridges,” she said. “Something happened – and I don’t think it’s going to be discussed – but I find it offensive.”

Votes on appointing Stillman and Strehl were each deadlocked because Titus – the swing voter – voted against both of them due to being a candidate himself.

It seemed that there was no way for the committee to move an appointment but Fulkerson offered a plan. “We can get around it the way we did it the last meeting, because we had one gracious person who changed his vote,” she said. She told Newman, “You could honor the spirit of your mayor and change your vote.”

“How about you changing your vote?” asked Rio Dell Mayor Jack Thompson.

Fulkerson said her decision-making has been “consistent” and “I’m not interested in sending a message to the rail board that we’re indecisive.”

Faced with a lingering deadlock, the committee emerged from it by voting on whether to appoint Titus. The only one who voted in favor of that was Titus.

Having been eliminated as a candidate, he broke the tie by voting for Strehl.

Another matter was settled at the meeting – HCAOG is stepping out of the railroad debate crossfire. “We’re getting out of this business as of 5 p.m. today,” Tranberg said, explaining that from now on the clerk of the county’s Board of Supervisors will provide staff support to the committee.

After the meeting was adjourned, Newman was asked about the suggestion of closed-door decision-making and why he was there instead of Jager. In a rush to get to the Eureka council meeting, Newman disregarded the question as a reporter walked beside him.

Fulkerson was nearby and said, “C’mon, Mike — you can talk and walk at the same time, don’t be like George Bush, speak up.”

But Newman was mum.

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ELIZABETH SWENSON, director of Mendocino Coast TV which was recently shut down in the wake of an unfortunate local Superior Court decision, wrote Saturday:

“Yes, MCTV is defunct, though the dissolution will take some time and it is possible in theory that the Footlighters [who won the lawsuit] and their lawyer would drop the $44,000 judgment and agree to not press for that money. But right now MCTV has no money to pay Footlighters or to pay staff. At this point, any money we raised would go to the Footlighters. If they and their lawyer dropped the judgment, MCTV, with a lot of financial help (probably less than $50,000 to start up again), could move and set up someplace and MCTV could survive. While in theory this is possible, there is no indication that this is going to happen. If for some reason this happened, it would be a miracle I think. I believe the petition [mentioned in yesterday’s Mendocino County Today] is worth signing and it serves to see if there is support for community access and also to let local governments know Community Access (public, government, education Access) is important to this community and essentially ask them to step up and help financially to get a new non-profit to run community access. Neither I or the MCTV board are behind the petition. While I knew about it before it went up I had nothing to do with starting it.” — Elizabeth Swenson, Director, Mendocino Coast Television

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ASTONISHING SIGHT on 19th Avenue this morning (Saturday) a little after 11, a late model Honda with a Mike Thompson bumpersticker on its rear fender. I guess there are people enthusiastic about the guy but this is the first person I’ve seen to go public about it.

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THE SAN JOSE Mercury News reported Saturday that Giants officials are fed up with the seagulls. The gulls are showing up in increasing numbers, especially in the last innings of night games. Hundreds sometimes land on the field during play. They also bomb fans and make clean-up after the thousands of departed human slobs even more difficult. It’s uncanny how they know when a game is winding down, circling the ballpark in such numbers its kind of eerie, like a scene out of the famous Hitchcock movie filmed at Bodega Bay. But there are more and more of them, and they’re showing up earlier and earlier. Maybe the Giants should give away pellet guns along with the bobbleheads.

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HELEN THOMAS, the great White House reporter, has died. For years, as the big boys of corporate journalism crawled up to the throne to lob softball queries at presidents and their spokesmen, Thomas spoke right up, putting the rest of the pack to shame. Unfortunately for her, when she said in an unguarded moment that she wished the Israelis would get out of Palestine altogether, Thomas was driven into retirement. Even the most tentative support of Palestinians finishes you off in America, such is the lock the Israel Lobby has on public opinion. Most reasonable people, who are also routinely denounced as anti-Semites by the Israel Lobby, simply for opposing Israel’s unconscionable and ongoing persecution of the Palestinians — Alice Walker just got a deluge of abuse for sticking up for the Palestinians — would settle for a return to the pre-’67 War borders. Maybe the old girl was a closet anti-Semite; that was a crazy thing for her to have said, but all the bully boys from every which way pounced on her, and Helen was done.

THE LAST FEARLESS REPORTER

There Will Never Be Another Helen Thomas

by Ralph Nader

There will never be another Helen Thomas. She shattered forever one anti-woman journalistic barrier after another in the Washington press corps and rose to the top of her profession’s organizations.

Helen Thomas asked the toughest questions of Presidents and White House press secretaries and over her sixty-two year career took on sexism, racism and ageism. She endured prejudice against her ethnicity — Arab-American — and her breaking the taboo regarding the rights of dispossessed Palestinians.

She also made many friends in journalism and spoke to audiences all over the country about the responsibility of journalists to hold politicians responsible with tough, probing, questions that are asked repeatedly until they are either answered or the politician is unmasked as an unaccountable coward. That is the example she set as a journalist and the recurrent theme in her three books.

Her free spirit, her courageous belief that injustice must be exposed by journalists, her congenial personality and her relentless focus (she asked former President George W. Bush and his press secretary Ari Fleischer dozens of times “Why are we in Iraq?”) will be long remembered.

Her tenacious, forthright approach to journalism stands as a stark contrast to the patsy journalism of too many of her former self-censoring White House press colleagues.

The remarkable combination of skills and perseverance will distinguish Helen Thomas as one of the giants of American journalistic history. (Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition.)

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DAN HAMBURG is presently chairman of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. He’s also herd bull to a large number of the County’s liberals, defining liberals here as Obama voters generally in lock-step with Democrat Party propaganda as expressed, say, by Rachel Maddow or NPR.

WHEN HAMBURG last week shut down John Sakowicz’s remarks during the three minutes the public is supposed to be allowed to talk about any old thing, Hamburg undermined a long-standing local tradition. You’d have to go back to John Cimolino, the supervisor from Georgia-Pacific and Fort Bragg (in that order, too) to find a supervisor who even gave a hoot what the great unwashed said during the three minutes allotted to them at the beginning of each meeting. “Do we have to listen to these nuts?” an anguished Cimolino would exclaim as the late One True Green, Richard Johnson, approached the podium. Well, yes, Johnny, we do. It’s called democracy. But even the conservative boards of yesteryear let the people have their say.

BUT LEAVE IT to the libs to shut it down when someone is about to say something “inappropriate,” i.e., something the libs don’t approve of.

SAKO was going to denounce a ritual attaboy proclamation for a couple of retiring bureaucrats, and more power to him. Sako’s just about the only person in the County to follow the money, and follow it in ways we can all understand. Public officials who’ve helped undermine County finances through incompetence or simply to go along to get along with, in this instance, the captive Ukiah City Council and its disastrous city manager, shouldn’t get a merry send-off. They deserve to be put in perspective. Which Sako was about to do when, backed up by Supervisor McCowen, Hamburg cut Sako off and told him to sit down.

* * *

CENSORSHIP FOR ‘WE, THE PEOPLE’ — I have just reviewed the verbatim exchange that led to the unprecedented incident of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors censoring me, a member of the public, during the time set aside for non-agenda public comment. This incident occurred at the very beginning of the Board meeting on Tuesday, July 16.

Since Tuesday’s meeting, the County CEO has apologized to me in private. Two Supervisors have also expressed that had they been Board Chair they would let me speak and would not silenced me by ruling me “out of order” as Chair Dan Hamburg did with County Counsel Tom Parker’s agreement. These Supervisors would have let me continue, as was my absolute right.

As of today, I have not received a formal apology from the Board for what was for me a public humiliation. Nor has the Board’s policy on non-agenda public comment been corrected, clarified, and made public, so that this violation of free speech does not happen again.

I was silenced presumably for not speaking on an issue related to County business. County Counsel Parker pontificated and obliquely referred to California Government Code: 54954.3, which states as follows: “(a) Every agenda for regular meetings shall provide an opportunity for members of the public to directly address the legislative body on any item of interest to the public, before or during the legislative body’s consideration of the item, that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body, provided that no action shall be taken on any item not appearing on the agenda unless the action is otherwise authorized by subdivision.”

But there’s a problem with Parker’s opinion — two problems, actually.

One, Hamburg held me to a double standard.

Two, I was indeed about to speak on issues related to County business.

Let’s first take the problem of a double standard.

Readers must know that in the past non-agenda public comment has seen members of the public speaking on all manner of issues unrelated to Mendocino County Board of Supervisors’ business. This has included comments on issues as disparate and unrelated to Board business as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, genetically modified food, global warming, the decriminalization of marijuana, gun control, the economy, healthcare, immigration, etc.

Clearly, the Board held me to a different standard.

That said, my comments were not unrelated to County business as Hamburg suggested. And he knew this.

I’ll explain.

Presently, the City of Ukiah has filed two lawsuits against the County of Mendocino. Both lawsuits are concerned with money. Ukiah City Finance Director, Gordon Elton, about whom I wanted to speak on Tuesday, is directly linked to both lawsuits.

The City of Ukiah, along with the Cities of Willits and Fort Bragg, are suing the County of Mendocino and Auditor-Controller Meredith Ford for hundreds of thousands of dollars they claim she overcharged them in fees for administering the cities’ property taxes.

Ford’s office is responsible for distributing each city’s share of the property taxes collected in the county, for which it charges an annual Property Tax Administration Fee.

The amounts purportedly overcharged by the County Auditor in administration fees on county-city transactions known as the “Triple Flip” and the “VLF Swap” add up to $339,630 for Ukiah, Willits, and Fort Bragg from fiscal year 2006-07 to 2011-12.

However, Gordon Elton should have known in his capacity as Ukiah City Finance Director that the State of California set up this arrangement, not the County of Mendocino.

Although the California Supreme Court ruled on Nov. 19, 2012, that counties could not charge cities for the additional cost of administering the allocation of property taxes resulting from the Legislature’s enactment of the Triple Flip and VLF Swap, the Court’s ruling only applied to the problem in the 2012-13 fiscal year, and it was not intended to correct past fees. It was not retroactive.

Consequently, Gordon Elton could have — and should have — saved both the City of Ukiah and the County of Mendocino the time and money of a specious lawsuit . He should have advised the Ukiah City Council before it acted.

Gordon Elton, as City Finance Director, also failed miserably on a second issue involving the City of Ukiah and the County of Mendocino: the sales tax revenue sharing agreement.

Like the City’s lawsuit against the County Auditor on property tax levies, the lack of a sales tax revenue sharing agreement between the City and the County falls right into the lap of the city finance director.

The City and the County have been in “discussions” for years. Why so long? Because the City heavily depends on sales taxes to fund its general government services. And the City has been running a $1 million budget deficit for two years as it refused to cut payroll despite losing $1 million in RDA funds.

In closing, it is a statement of fact that Hamburg held me to a double standard on non-agenda public comment. But Hamburg also censored what I was about to say about the ways in which I believe Gordon Elton has not only failed his employer, the City of Ukiah, but has also failed the County of Mendocino.

Gordon Elton did not deserve a glowing official proclamation from the City of Ukiah on the occasion of his retirement. It was absurd.

But as absurd as the proclamation was, it was no surprise. In fact, it was politics as usual. Elected officials cover up for staff as payback for those many occasions when staff covers up for elected officials.

As I said. Politics as usual. Whether you’re talking about Washington DC, Sacramento, the County of Mendocino, or the City of Ukiah. Government is an insider’s game, my friends.

The losers? You guessed it. You. Me. We, the People.

We’re the outsiders. And now, we’re censored during public expression during the non-agenda part of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisor meetings. It was our one opportunity to be heard.

To Ukiah Mayor Doug Crane’s credit, he did not censor me during public comment after the proclamation reading at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. I cited Gordon Elton’s failings — as best I could in three minutes — including the City’s two pending cases against the County and Elton’s role by association in those cases.

I should not have been silenced at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

Respectfully submitted, John Sakowicz, Ukiah

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SKIP TAUBE, board president of the Caspar Children’s Garden, a successful, long-standing, and much-need daycare center for pre-schoolers, is rightly disturbed that the very existence of the center is imperiled by a uniquely highhanded, and unexpected move by the Botanical Gardens and the Mendo Coast Rec and Park District not to rent space to the pre-school. Mr. Taube explains: “The Caspar Children’s Garden (CCG) preschool board of directors has 
been working since early spring on an agreement to move their program
 to the farmhouse located at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens
(MCBG). This past week the board was unexpectedly informed that the 
Botanical Garden was no longer interested in renting to them. CCG has 
already spent over $8,000 (almost half their savings) applying for a 
County use permit (in conjunction with the MCBG and their landlord, the
 Mendocino Coast Recreation & Park District) and were willing to make 
improvements at their own expense. With this disappointing news, the 
program is now in need of a new home. The preschool has 25+ years
 of experience running a successful business serving hundreds of families;
 a team of experienced teachers; a large group of parents waiting to
 enroll their children this fall; and a storage unit packed to capacity
 with all the materials and furniture that belong in an early childhood
 program. If you know of a possible location or can contribute in any
 way to this urgent request for assistance, please contact the CCG
 director, Sandra Mix, at cg@mcn.org or 707-367-9763.”

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DEAR SIR, My name is Geoff Cooper. Since 1998 I have been attempting to
 get our Government to investigate what takes place in the Masonite
 facility which stands on the River Shannon below Drumsna Village in Ireland. The
 factory killed all the fish in the river in 1998. It also pours out into
 the atmosphere grey muck on a daily basis. The incidence of cancer in
 the area has risen by over 38% in the last ten years. Our fisheries
 board, the EPA and anyone in authority deny we have a problem here.
 Some years ago I took water samples and had them analyzed at the best
 laboratory in Ireland. The results were quite frightening. The water
 carried several thousand times the permitted amount of Formaldehyde plus
 a de-foaming agent. Even when I presented the facts to the EPA they
 still denied there was a problem. The factory here is self-monitoring. I
 was told by informants in the factory that the man from the EPA visited
 once every month, sat in the manager’s office and then was taken to
 Carrick for lunch. When he arrived back at the Masonite facility he just
 got in his car and left. Longford Town which is downstream of the place
 extracts water for the town’s consumption. Many folk have had serious
 stomach problems. A pet shop in the town had to stop keeping fish as
 when the owner topped up his tanks with tap water all the fish died.
 Four weeks ago there was another massive fish kill on the river. The
 fisheries board blamed anglers for keeping fish in nets too long. There
 aren’t any anglers as the river is not worth fishing. For the record I
 am a freelance journalist. I write on a regular basis for two Irish
 magazines. I also present films for TV and am currently working on a
 series of six for a British TV company. My website is fishingforall.com.

PS. I have a 
meeting next week with members of our Government. At last they are 
listening a little. Maybe it is a forlorn hope but any information will 
be well and truly appreciated. The factory in Ukiah was the sister 
factory to what we have here. Years ago I spoke to one of your rangers
 who told me they had killed all the fish in the Russian River and had to
 be monitored by his team twice daily. When I told him our government had 
allowed them (Masonite) to self-monitor his reply was, “Are your 
government [bleep]ing crazy?” My regards and thanks once again. — Geoff Cooper

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DRAMATIC EARLY LOGGING PHOTOS

A series of photos recently released from the Humboldt State University Library capture early 20^th century lumberjacks working among the redwoods in Humboldt County. The photos are part of the Ericson Collection, a series of pictures from northwest California from the 1880s through the 1920s by Swedish photographer A.W. Ericson.

Most of these pictures are from the 1915-era displaying the work of loggers in once densely forested northern California— about 20% of the state’s total forested area. Humboldt County now has nearly 1,500,000 acres in public and private forests, including the Redwood National and State Parks. The enormity of the tree trunks are highlighted by the workmen who are dwarfed by the trees’ sheer size.

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ART IN THE GARDENS

On August 3^rd, 2013, the finest California artists and craftsman, musicians, wine makers, and culinary artists bring their talents and original art to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens for the 22^nd annual Art in the Gardens, including Featured Artist - Paula Gray.

Originally from Moss Landing, a small fishing village, in Monterey County, Paula Gray pursued her childhood passion for art by first attending Cabrillo College and later earning a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree from CAL Arts in Los Angeles. While still in school, she accepted a job at Disney in Burbank where she participated in the design and construction of attractions such as Small World, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the Haunted Mansion.

Her artistic talents are multidimensional, as she has applied her considerable expertise to such creative endeavors as: curator of the Museum of Northern Arizona; co-director of a city-wide mural project in Los Angeles; and creator of comic books and film strips; fashion photographer; book illustrator; and graphic artist.

In 1980, with a grant from the California Arts Council in hand, Paula Grey arrived in Anderson Valley to develop a program to provide art experiences for children in residential facilities. Recognizing a need for art programs in the Anderson Valley schools she wrote for, and received, another grant which she used to hire local artists to teach in the areas elementary and high schools. So began her enthusiasm for teaching.

Gray taught at Mendocino College for over 25 years and says “color and composition” was her favorite class to teach. She notes that artists use the same principles of color and composition that occur organically in nature. Paula believes that the artifacts of “primitive” cultures are the nearest representation to true art as they merge sophisticated craftsmanship with a deep and intuitive understanding of the natural world.

“Animals are important to me. They have always been a major part of my life,” she says. Paula enjoys the fawns outside her window and a pair of ravens who knock on her door to remind her to give them their breakfast along with domestic animals. The coming together of her love of art and the influence of animals on her life culminate in her wonderful paintings. Her signature images portray the whimsy of animals. This is clearly evident in this year’s Art in the Gardens featured art, a fanciful portrait of a happy dog. A pok-a-dot kerchief tied around its neck, turquoise eye shadow, and a red rhododendron truss in its mouth. It can’t help but make you smile!

The Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens loved this cute pup so much…that they have adopted it (with Paula Gray’s blessings), named it, and made it the mascot for their newly renovated café which will be called “Rhody’s” Garden Café.

Plan to join the excitement at the 22nd annual Art in the Gardens on August 3^rd, 2013, from 11 am to 5 pm. Experience the Gardens in full summer bloom, stroll garden paths, meet artists, meet “Rhody”. Shop specialty crafts and place a Silent Auction bid, walk the coastal bluffs and enjoy great food and music. You will also view live art demonstrations, sample delicious culinary treats, taste premium Mendocino & Lake County wines, and listen to live music. Art in the Gardens is one of our biggest fundraisers, with all proceeds assisting the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens in supporting horticulture, conservation, and education. To join the festivities, visit our website for complete details. Tickets can be purchased at The Gardens Store, Harvest Market, Out of This World, or online at www.gardenbythesea.org.

Over the weekend the kiddo, who is now the ripe ol’ age of seven and I had some extra time after playing and before dinner. I asked him if he’s like to go to the Pudding Creek Trestle or to Glass Beach. “Glass Beach!” So that’s where we went. It being July in Fort Bragg, parking was tricky but we found a spot, wrapped our sweatshirts around our waists “justincase” and hit the trail.

As we walked passed the trash cans and the locked gate, I noticed the heaping piles of blackberry briars had been mowed down to a foot high. Typically in the summer and since as far back as I can remember, the briars were a source of pie making berries and also a place to the coastal homeless to get some shelter from the wind. I talked about this with the kiddo. He asked how I knew about the people living in there. I told him I had happened across blankets and bedding while berry picking over the years, forts that were not really forts.

It was quiet for the next little while on the walk. Then we got to the fork in the road. That’s when we saw this:

The kiddo has been reading for a while now so the lower sign brought a pretty sad emotional reaction that I will not describe further because I don’t need to. We followed the north trail to an edge in the path where the soft sandstone is in a quick erosion process. I had him stay on the north side of me so he did not surf down the face on an overhang.

We stood overlooking the high tide crashing over the rocks into the shallow algae pond, the remaining pieces of dirty glass covered in sandstone silt and the dedicated tourists playing in the water next to the heaps of stinky rotting seaweed and the flies that love it so much.

For the kiddo, it’s a lesson in change I think. For me, it has been a strange process of harvesting yesteryear’s trash from the sea since I was a kid. Don’t ask me to tell you how many ceramic-covered spark plugs I gathered as a kid because I could not tell you. I get that the only reason there is sea glass there at all is because a while back, people would back their pickups off the cement wall and toss all their trash right into the sea.

Granted, this was mostly the era before plastics but look at all the glass, auto parts, spark plugs and who knows what else. The ceramic and the glass we see but remember the metal re-bar coming out of the ceramic slabs and what looked like actual car parts encased in rock? Never mind the orange puddles that you hoped were just rust.

I am of two minds about it. I liked collecting treasures from glass beach as a kid but from what I understand, the City decided after inquiring that “restocking” the beach with glass was not a good idea.

So for your viewing pleasure, here is a blog post dedicated to Glass Beach and all it’s glory by Travis Burke with beautiful photographs.

Cheers!

RECOMMENDED READING: “A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption and American Culture” by Alexander Cockburn.

Cockburn, a frequent visitor to Boonville, was the last of the political writers who was also a very good writer, much better than Christopher Hitchens to whom he was often compared and, unlike Hitchens, a true enemy of empire to the end. There aren’t many writers I go out of my way to read. (None, at the moment.) Today, it’s all term-paper prose. Cockburn often complained to me about what bad writers many of his CounterPunch contributers were, and how much time he had to spend doing basic editing of their stuff. Cockburn was always a writer I’d read the instant I got it, a writer I always looked forward to. His prose was alive. He was alive, what used to be called an “all-outer.” He was robbed of another decade or so, but in the seven he lived he probably packed in more than ten people. Cockburn combined information with a lively and even elegant prose. And not just on politics; he was lively and interesting on a whole range of subjects. What you won’t read in all the reviews of this book is how Cockburn, the last ten years or so of his life, was non-personed by much of the left, especially the lock-step sectors at places like KPFA. The Nation cut him back as it went all the way over to a spine-free Clinton-Obama-ism. And so on, as left media disappeared faster than the left itself. He was often scathing about the personalities of the talk show left, the people who’ve become rich “speaking truth to power,” in the fatuous phrase of the self-aggrandizing. Cockburn was the real thing, a lion of opposition all his days. The would-be little Lenins hated him, and he mopped the floor with mainstream media figures on those occasions he was permitted to go head-to-head with one of them. He was intransigent, never gave one inch all his days. This book conveys him perfectly.

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“THE DREARIEST place on any campus is the J-school, and whenever any young person comes to me to write a testimonial for them to get into journalism school I rail bitterly at their decision, though I concede that these days a diploma from one of these feedlots for mediocrity is pretty much mandatory for anyone who wants to get into mainstream journalism.” (— Cockburn)

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“PEOPLE THOUGHT Candlestick and I were soul mates. We were both big and ugly. We were both windy. And they could never figure out how to get rid of either one of us.” — Lon Simmons

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MOVE OVER Mendocino National Forest. The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office says it uprooted more than 10,000 marijuana plants last week from the Los Padres National Forest. The raid teams also confiscated 960 pounds of processed dope and removed more than 3,000 pounds of trash from the gro sites.

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A READER WRITES: Caltrans, Caltrans, Caltrans… Damn near disaster Friday on 101. (Remember the Rosewarne Concretions? Well, we never found out what they are because Caltrans doesn’t have the bucks to do the study. Their priority is “safety”; they’d need to get a grant or something to do science for science’s sake.)

The Highway 101 freeway is four lanes going past my residence. There is no turn lane for folks heading north and needing to turn into our driveway. One diamond caution sign, set before you are in sight of the turn, is the only warning as one zips around the big bend in the road at Hole in the Wall between Laytonville and Leggett. Accidents have happened here before. Caltrans said we need to provide them with five dead bodies before they’ll put in a turn lane.

On Friday, July 19, they almost got their wish, and then some. It started, for me, with a loud car crash of type “BAM!” “Too close! Too close!” — was my first thought as I got up and opened the door to look out and see what had happened. Three cars were stopped out front: two whites and a red. The red one was dead in the middle of the two northbound lanes. The other two seemed to be parked neatly on the southbound side; one was one of my neighbor’s, the other the mail carrier’s. I grabbed my cellphone and started scurrying across the field toward the scene. My thoughts were in the “Holy Shit!” zone. If I don’t go to the right, where I can flag down oncoming traffic as it comes flying around a blind curve at at least 65 mph straight for the dead red car, something really bad will happen really soon. But, the accident and the people, who might need help, are to the left. I am momentarily torn, split the difference and just go straight. Coming into range, I yell at my neighbor, “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” She responds, “Yes!” Relieved, I commit to going to the right, across the field, across the highway, take up my post and start frantically flapping my arms at oncoming traffic. A few cars have already just missed hitting the red car. After a while, a Caltrans pickup truck with a very nice lady driver happened by and stopped to help. She didn’t know where to go either: stay to help flag or go on to the site to check for victims. I told her I knew my friend was ok, and I had seen someone get out of the red car. Having already called the accident in, she chose to turn on the truck’s blinking orange bar lights, put on her official bright Caltrans vest, and use her official “SLOW” hand sign to flag the oncoming traffic. (Which was really great because until then, the only obstacle to disaster was a toothless old lady with a bad haircut in baggy paint stained shorts, a baggy paint stained t-shirt and dusty cowboy boots with desperately flailing arms —wtf.) At least five semis and 50 cars passed before the road was cleared of the red car. My worst moment came when two semis in the slow lane and three cars passing them in the fast lane were coming full tilt around the bend. My thought, “No way they’re all gonna be able stop — so very little time to react.” I held my breath and flapped for all I was worth — behind me the red car in the middle of the road, all the cars and people that had pulled over to help: sitting ducks. So little time for the oncoming drivers to take it all in and react. Flap flap flap flap flap. “We could have ourselves an LA style pile-up: right here, right in the middle of nowhere, right now.” Flush with bad thoughts, I was afraid to turn my head and watch. Somehow, with miraculously perfect timing of the gaps in the southbound flow of traffic, the whole cluster made it around and through everything and each other. Disaster averted. After a very looooong 15 minutes, the red car got its ass off the road, imminent catastrophe was off the table. The Caltrans lady and I took a breath. I thanked her for stopping. She got back in her truck and took off. Turns out that the inattentive lady in the red car, at first, though not injured, had just not gotten out of her car. People on the curb screamed and screamed at her, finally got through and she got herself out — only to take up a post in front of the front of her car (!!!), guarding it or something (????), screaming back at the sideline folks. (!!!) Eventually, to the relief of everybody, she detached from her car and walked herself off the damn freeway. Another neighbor arrived on the scene and courageously volunteered to risk his life to help push the car off the highway. Everybody was stunned when the lady responded that she could drive it off (!!!!) which she then did. The red car had clipped the left turning white car just like the take-out move cop cars use against bad guys’ cars. The force of the impact drove the white car straight toward Mail Carrier Lady (who was innocently putting mail into our mailboxes at the time). Mail Carrier Lady barely had time to throw up her arms and scream, “STOP!” at the white car as it threw itself at her life. Fortunately, it missed. It took around 20 minutes for CHP to arrive on scene. Caltrans needs five bodies? They could have had 20. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM. Just like that. — Still shaking it off. — LB, Leggett

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DEPT. OF FRIVOLOUS lawsuits: A Mississippi-based federal judge threw out a case that claimed Woody Allen’s film, Midnight in Paris, stole a line from William Faulkner. The line? “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The alleged theft read: “The past is not dead. Actually, it’s not even past. You know who said that? Faulkner. And he was right. I met him too. I ran into him at a dinner party.” Faulkner’s literary estate brought the case.

FAULKNER WAS WRONG. Here in Mendocino County history starts out all over again, retooling personalities as it goes.

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: “For relative newcomers to SF, perhaps a bit of background would help. The Tenderloin district (as well as the 6th Street area) has for umpteen decades been the festering unhealed sore on the body politic. Endless fleabag hotels are still called home by thousands of prostitutes, heroin and crack addicts, cons on parole, murderers, rapists, porn ‘stars’ and their pimps, and the most desperate of the homeless. A certain landlord owns most of these bedbug ridden rejects from Scorcese’s ‘Gangs of New York.’ These palaces of human flotsam are tolerated by a so-called ‘liberal’ city too afraid and politically correct to tackle the job of obliterating these slums of crime that poison an otherwise decent place — a top destination for tourists from around the globe. Scrap the pawnshops and the liquor stores, the $5 j.o. theatres and the brisk business in illegal handgun sales and there might be hope. People get killed in that un-neighborly neighborhood constantly. Of course, in SF, some artistic types will swear that it’s all really just a normal, albeit run down, sentimental slice of San Francisciana, a historical district ‘worth preserving.’ Hahahaha. It’s always been this way in the Tenderloin. The City has been torn between its image as the land of The Summer of Love and its rep as the sleaze capital of Cali for quite some time.” (SF Chron online comment)

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labor of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government. Where there is no property, or at least none that exceeds the value of two or three days’ labor, civil government is not so necessary.” —Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1.

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FEDERAL REPORTS CONFIRM DELTA TUNNEL PLAN NOT BASED ON SOUND SCIENCE

by Dan Bacher

In March, California Secretary for Natural Resources John Laird claimed that the controversial Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDC) to build two giant peripheral tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is driven by “science.”

“At the beginning of the Brown administration, we made a long-term commitment to let science drive the Bay Delta Conservation Plan,” said Laird, who presided over record fish kills and water exports at the South Delta pumping facilities in 2011 and the completion of the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create questionable “marine protected areas.”

“Science has and will continue to drive a holistic resolution securing our water supply and substantially restoring the Delta’s lost habitat,” Laird gushed.

However, on July 18, scientists from federal lead agencies for the BDCP EIR/EIS – the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Marine Fisheries Service – exposed the hollowness of Laird’s claims that the BDCP is based on “science.”

They provided the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the environmental consultants with 44 pages of comments highly critical of the BDCP Consultant Second Administrative Draft EIR/EISDraft, released on May 10. The agencies found, among other things, that the draft environmental documents were “biased,” “insufficient,” “confusing,” “very subjective” and “vague.” (http://baydeltaconservationplan.com/Libraries/Dynamic_Document_Library/Federal_Agency_Comments_on_Consultant_Administrative_Draft_EIR-EIS_7-18-13.sflb.ashx)

The National Marine Fisheries Service said the environmental draft is “currently insufficient” and “will need to be revised.” The agency also criticized some sections of the document for arriving at “seemingly illogical conclusions.”

The Bureau of Reclamation criticized the language and content of the draft for “advocating for the project.” They also said the “identification of adverse and beneficial impacts is very subjective and appears to be based on a misreading of NEPA regulations.”

In addition, “The document is vague about the relationship between the various agency actions that compose or relate to the BDCP, including how these actions will be sequenced and the time/manner of environmental analysis for each,” Reclamation stated.

After their staff reviewed the documents, six Members of Congress from Northern California, including Representatives Doris Matsui, George Miller, Mike Thompson, Jerry McNerney, John Garamendi and Jared Huffman, called on the Brown Administration to withdraw and fully revise the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the tunnels in light of the draft documents being found “biased” and “insufficient” by federal scientists.

“The federal agency comments on the BDCP’s draft environmental documents continue to show not only that the project doesn’t solve the water problems that face our state, but that the BDCP as written is truly flawed,” stated Rep. Doris Matsui (CA-6). “Until we have a process that includes all stakeholders and is based on sound science, we are wasting precious time and taxpayer money. This is time and money that we do not have. In the meantime, the environment of the Delta continues to decline and our state’s water problems continue to grow. We must get on track with a process that will produce a viable solution for California’s future.”

Rep. George Miller (CA-11) said, “The Governor’s administration told us time and again that their process would be governed by unbiased, sound science. But these federal reports confirm the opposite. As we suspected, this process has been rushed, biased, and excludes viable alternatives at the behest of big irrigators and agencies that stand to gain huge profits from their increased access to northern water. To proceed any further without major revisions that take into account the concerns of all stakeholders, not just those with political and financial influence, would be shortsighted, unproductive, and ultimately a failure.”

“These reports confirm what we’ve been saying all along – this proposed BDCP is not a workable solution to California’s water challenges,” said Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-5) “It’s rushed, flawed, hurts wildlife and puts the interests of South-of-Delta water contractors ahead of North-of-Delta farmers, fishers and small business owners. Until we have a plan that is transparent, based on sound science and developed with all stake-holders at the table, then any process that moves us closer to building these tunnels will recklessly risk billions of California tax dollars and thousands of jobs.”

“We have said from day one that any proposal related to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta must be based on sound science and an accurate cost-benefit analysis,” said Jerry McNerney (CA-09). “The recently-released reports clearly show that Governor Brown’s misguided plan for the Delta is based on neither. To continue to move forward without taking into consideration the concerns of all stakeholders, the countless jobs that could be lost, and the billions of taxpayer dollars at stake is a clear disservice to the people of California. I will continue to fight against any plan that would divert more water from the Delta, and to stand up for the families, farmers and small business owners who rely upon a healthy Delta for their livelihoods.”

“The peripheral tunnel plan is incredibly destructive, and because it does not add one drop to our water supply, incredibly unproductive,” said Rep. John Garamendi (CA-3). “The current plan concludes that massive water diversions south of the Delta are needed and then twists arguments to meet that conclusion. Instead, we need a scientific process, freed from the blinders of bias, to meet the legally mandated co-equal goals of ecological conservation and reliability of water supply – both of which are essential to the state’s economy. As an alternative to the current BDCP, I have proposed a framework that would expand our water supply and protect the Delta through greater water conservation, recycling, and storage, levee improvements, and the protection of existing water rights. We need a water system that meets the needs of all Californians.”

“These reports are just the latest in a series of wake up calls showing that the BDCP is headed in a dangerous direction,” commented Rep. Jared Huffman (CA-02). “We need a plan for the Bay-Delta that is based on science and follows the law, and it looks to me—and clearly, to many others—like the BDCP continues to fall short.”

Delta residents, fishermen, Indian Tribes, family farmers and a growing number of elected officials oppose the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels because the $54.1 billion project will hasten the extinction of Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species. The project would also, under the guise of “habitat restoration,” take large areas of Delta farmland, some of the most fertile on the planet, out of production in order to deliver massive amounts of water to irrigate toxic, drainage-impaired land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

The peripheral tunnels also threaten salmon and steelhead restoration on the Trinity River, the Klamath’s largest tributary. The Trinity, whose water is diverted to the Sacramento River via a tunnel to Whiskeytown Reservoir, is the only out of basin water supply for the federal Central Valley Project.

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A PORTRAIT OF THE LEAKER AS A YOUNG MAN

By Norman Solomon

Why have Edward Snowden’s actions resonated so powerfully for so many people?

The huge political impacts of the leaked NSA documents account for just part of the explanation. Snowden’s choice was ultimately personal. He decided to take big risks on behalf of big truths; he showed how easy and hazardous such a step can be. He blew the whistle not only on the NSA’s Big Brother surveillance but also on the fear, constantly in our midst, that routinely induces conformity.

Like Bradley Manning and other whistleblowers before him, Snowden has massively undermined the standard rationales for obedience to illegitimate authority. Few of us may be in a position to have such enormous impacts by opting for courage over fear and truth over secrecy—but we know that we could be doing more, taking more risks for good reasons—if only we were willing, if only fear of reprisals and other consequences didn’t clear the way for the bandwagon of the military-industrial-surveillance state.

Near the end of Franz Kafka’s *The Trial*, the man in a parable spends many years sitting outside an open door till, near death, after becoming too weak to possibly enter, he’s told by the doorkeeper: “Nobody else could have got in this way, as this entrance was meant only for you. Now I’ll go and close it.”

That’s what Martin Luther King Jr. was driving at when he said, in his first high-risk speech denouncing the Vietnam War: “In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity.”

Edward Snowden was not too late. He refused to allow opportunity to be lost. He walked through the entrance meant only for him.

When people say “I am Bradley Manning,” or “I am Edward Snowden,” it can be more than an expression of solidarity. It can also be a statement of aspiration—to take ideals for democracy more seriously and to act on them with more courage.

The artist Robert Shetterly has combined his compelling new portrait of Edward Snowden <http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/18-15> with words from Snowden that are at the heart of what’s at stake: “The public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the ‘consent of the governed’ is meaningless. . . The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.” Like the painting of Snowden, the quote conveys a deep mix of idealism, vulnerability and determination.

Edward Snowden has taken idealism seriously enough to risk the rest of his life, a choice that is to his eternal credit and to the world’s vast benefit. His decision to resist any and all cynicism is gripping and unsettling. It tells us, personally and politically, to raise our standards, lift our eyes and go higher into our better possibilities.

(Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org <http://rootsaction.org/> and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy<http://www.accuracy.org/>. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” and “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters With America’s Warfare State.”)

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A MEETING IN A PART

In a dream I meet

my dead friend. He has,

I know, gone long and far,

and yet he is the same

for the dead are changeless.

They grow no older.

It is I who have changed,

grown strange to what I was.

Yet I, the changed one,

ask: “How you been?”

He grins and looks at me.

“I been eating peaches

off some mighty fine trees.”

— Wendell Berry

GLASS BEACH: LONG TIME PASSING

By Jessica Ehlers

Over the weekend the kiddo, who is now the ripe ol’ age of seven and I had some extra time after playing and before dinner. I asked him if he’s like to go to the Pudding Creek Trestle or to Glass Beach. “Glass Beach!” So that’s where we went. It being July in Fort Bragg, parking was tricky but we found a spot, wrapped our sweatshirts around our waists “justincase” and hit the trail.

As we walked passed the trash cans and the locked gate, I noticed the heaping piles of blackberry briars had been mowed down to a foot high. Typically in the summer and since as far back as I can remember, the briars were a source of pie making berries and also a place to the coastal homeless to get some shelter from the wind. I talked about this with the kiddo. He asked how I knew about the people living in there. I told him I had happened across blankets and bedding while berry picking over the years, forts that were not really forts.

It was quiet for the next little while on the walk. Then we got to the fork in the road. That’s when we saw this:

The kiddo has been reading for a while now so the lower sign brought a pretty sad emotional reaction that I will not describe further because I don’t need to. We followed the north trail to an edge in the path where the soft sandstone is in a quick erosion process. I had him stay on the north side of me so he did not surf down the face on an overhang.

We stood overlooking the high tide crashing over the rocks into the shallow algae pond, the remaining pieces of dirty glass covered in sandstone silt and the dedicated tourists playing in the water next to the heaps of stinky rotting seaweed and the flies that love it so much.

For the kiddo, it’s a lesson in change I think. For me, it has been a strange process of harvesting yesteryear’s trash from the sea since I was a kid. Don’t ask me to tell you how many ceramic-covered spark plugs I gathered as a kid because I could not tell you. I get that the only reason there is sea glass there at all is because a while back, people would back their pickups off the cement wall and toss all their trash right into the sea.

Granted, this was mostly the era before plastics but look at all the glass, auto parts, spark plugs and who knows what else. The ceramic and the glass we see but remember the metal re-bar coming out of the ceramic slabs and what looked like actual car parts encased in rock? Never mind the orange puddles that you hoped were just rust.

I am of two minds about it. I liked collecting treasures from glass beach as a kid but from what I understand, the City decided after inquiring that “restocking” the beach with glass was not a good idea.

So for your viewing pleasure, here is a blog post dedicated to Glass Beach and all it’s glory by Travis Burke with beautiful photographs.

Cheers!

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A FIVE CAR collision Sunday morning on the perennially hazardous stretch of Highway 20 near the Potter Valley Road turnoff, took the life of Robert Garrison of Newcastle. Garrison, 55, was driving five Boy Scouts, three of whom, including his son, were badly injured in the Sunday morning collisions. Garrison and the Scouts had been headed to the Boy Scout camp near Willits when a pick-up truck and trailer, driven by Sheriff’s Department captain Randy Johnson, was rear-ended, thus setting in motion a series of collisions involving five vehicles. Johnson had stopped to wait for a break in the traffic so he could turn off Highway 20 to the Johnson family property when he was rear-ended. In the ensuing series of crashes involving the Garrison fatality, five vehicles wound up careening into each other. The accident occurred at 11:10am, closing busy Highway 20 for three hours.

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PUBLIC EXPRESSION (sic), BOARD OF SUPERVISORS CHAMBERS, UKIAH, JULY 16, 2013.

John Sakowicz: I am speaking as a private citizen only. This Wednesday the Ukiah City Finance Director Gordon Elton is retiring. The city is doing a proclamation. With the help of the Anderson Valley Advertiser who did an article earlier this week, I would like to cite some of Mr. Elton’s dubious achievements: Hijacked redevelopment funds of upwards of $1 million annually, for up to 10 years to pay for —

(Mumbling from Board Chair Dan Hamburg.)

Sakowicz: This is a non-agenda item. …to pay for this…

Hamburg: I realize that. I just don’t know where you are going with this, John.

Sakowicz: To pay for — well, he bankrupted the city.

McCowen: Excuse me, Mr. Chair. It’s not something that’s within our purview and public comment is for items not on the agenda but within our purview. I believe County Counsel could confirm that.

County Counsel Tom Parker: Yes sir.

McCowen: It’s not necessarily an open forum.

Sakowicz: This is for information purposes.

McCowen: It’s not an open forum.

Sakowicz: Okay. All right. Well, I will be publishing this and I will be reading it at the Ukiah city Council meeting on Wednesday.

Hamburg: Thank you. Thank you, John. Okay, others who would like to address the board?

Supervisor John Pinches: Mr. Chairman.

Hamburg: Yes.

Pinches: This is the first time — I have sat here for over 10 years, going on 11 years. This is the first time that I have ever seen public expression restricted in any way at this forum.

Hamburg: Well, um. (Clears throat). Ok.

Pinches: I don’t understand. I mean, three minutes of public expression should be three minutes of public expression. Period.

Hamburg: Well, thank you for that. Umm, Supervisor McCowen did ask for County Counsel’s opinion and he did concur.

Pinches: I disagree with that opinion.

Hamburg: Well, yeah. I hear you. I understand what you’re saying. And uh, Mr. County Counsel would you like to offer further consideration?

Parker: Yes. The, the public expression is for items that are not agendized as has been stated and is well-known. The — but my legal analysis is that the county has no jurisdiction over the city. Mr. Elton is not a county employee. The county could – the county would have no, no jurisdiction to agendize honoring Mr. Elton’s services to the public in general or the, to the city of Ukiah in particular. So it — that was the basis for my conclusion, there really is —

Hamburg: Yes, well. You know. I — I’ll let Supervisor Pinches speak but I do also have some concerns because now, you know, every time somebody speaks we are going to have to analyze whether it’s something we have purview over and that’s going to be a tough standard to meet, you know, fairly often.

Pinches: First of all, City of Ukiah taxpayers are also County of Mendocino taxpayers. They are the same group of people. If we are going to start selecting who can say anything and who can say what, I guess my first question would be, who’s going to be in charge of that?

Hamburg: Well, ostensibly, it would be the Chair with the advice of County Counsel. And you will be Chair quite soon.

McCowen: I am willing to leave it to the prerogative of the Chair, but, as a matter of law and Brown Act compliance, public expression is for matters under our purview but not on the agenda and the concern is not so much that the speaker rose to honor the city employee but his intent from his opening comments was actually the opposite. I do not think that is appropriate because that city employee really would have no equivalent forum in which to respond.

Hamburg: Yeah.

McCowen: So just kind of as a matter of decorum I did not think it was appropriate. But again, at the discretion of the chair.

Hamburg: Well, I agree. It’s a slippery slope. And it may be something we should talk about a little bit more after this meeting. But, I have to say, Supervisor McCowen, that I share your, your chagrin at somebody getting up to criticize someone who’s not a county employee. And again as you said, in a forum where that person has no — you know, I was thinking how someone once got up, and it’s not really that infrequent, somebody will get up and blast a supervisor or criticize some ill treatment they received in a county department from a particular individual working for the county and that never elicits a complaint from a Board member even if you happen to be the Board member who is getting wailed on, that comes with the territory. But to get up and wail on an employee who doesn’t even work for the county, I just don’t — I have a little bit of a problem with that. So I am going to rule that that comment was out of order and I will discuss it further with County Counsel and the CEO sometime in the future.”

* * *

SO, HAMBURG cut Sako off because Sako, Hamburg assumed, was about to say something slanderous about Gordon Elton, Ukiah’s former finance director, and Mari Rodin, a Ukiah City Councilperson. The truth is the first defense against an accusation alleging slander, and the truth is that these two, Elton and Rodin, have not made prudent spending decisions for Ukiah, although they’re not alone in their profligacy. Hamburg later added that he’d also silenced Sako because Elton and Rodin don’t have anything to do with County business, that they and Ukiah are an island apart. But Sako also pointed out that the City of Ukiah and the County of Mendocino are fiscally linked in many ways, and if Ukiah goes belly up, the County would be left holding the bag. For saying this the guy gets the gag?

HAMBURG is more and more imperious. He’s always been invincibly righteous in the smug manner of so many “liberals,” but he’s never before claimed to be clairvoyant. That’s new.

HAMBURG, speaking to his choir round-the-clock clustered like fruit bats on rotten bananas at the Mendo ListServe, came back with,

“I agreed with Supervisor McCowen and County Counsel that Mr. Sakowicz was out of order with respect to his ‘public expression’ last Tuesday. (County Counsel Parker, new to the job, is already a confirmed, tax-paid Hamburg errand boy.) I don’t believe that public expression should be used to berate/accuse a non-county employee when that person is not even present to defend themselves [sic].

Nor does the BOS have any authority over a non-county employee.

Although the Board’s Rules of Procedure have a fairly limited definition of what is appropriate under public expression (generally, such expression is supposed to relate to topics within the purview of the Board), this rule has always been interpreted broadly and I see no reason that that would change in the future.

I did draw the line at what I considered to be slander against a non-county employee.

— Dan Hamburg, Mendocino Listserve, July 22, 2013 explaining why he shut down John Sackowicz at last week’s meeting of the Supervisors.

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A HIGHER LAW

TO: David Eyster, District Attorney, Mendocino County

Ukiah, California

Re: People v. William Edward Parrish,

Case No. MCUK-INNT-13-16663-000

District Attorney Eyster,

I urge you to consider a spirit-of-the-law approach in the case of Will Parrish. He is obviously not a common vandal. We all know why he was doing what he was doing, trying to prevent an ill-fated, unnecessary, unwanted, irreversible ecological disaster from happening. His act was noble, not base; generous, not selfish. And far from alone, his actions represented the thoughts and feelings of a large number of people who are close to, and well informed on, the issue.

Sometimes people are compelled to act in accord with a higher law, outside the statutory ones of their time and place. This is such a case. As District Attorney, you could, of course, use the letter of the law to maximize sentencing against Mr. Parrish, but that would be a terrible miscarriage of justice. Instead, I ask you to judiciously consider the larger context of these events and act accordingly. The law can be used as a weapon or it can serve a higher purpose. The actions of Will Parrish call for the latter response and I hope you will rise to the occasion. — Sincerely, Mike Kalantarian, Navarro

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STATEMENT OF THE DAY: “It’s fitting that Detroit is the first great American city to officially bite the dust, because it produced the means of America’s suicidal destruction: the automobile. Of course you could argue that the motorcar was an inevitable product of the industrial era — and I would not bother to enlist a mob of post-doc philosophy professors to debate that — but the choices we made about what to do with the automobile is another matter. What we chose was to let our great cities go to hell and move outside them in a car-dependent utopia tricked out as a simulacrum of “country living.” The entire experiment of suburbia can, of course, be construed as historically inevitable, too, but is also destined to be abandoned — and sooner than most Americans realize. Finally, what we’ll be left with is a tremendous continental-sized vista of waste and desolation, the end product of this technological thrill ride called Modernity. It’s hard to find redemption in this story, unless it’s a world made by hand, with all its implications for a return to human-ness.” (James Kunstler)

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DRAFT OF TAX SHARING AGREEMENT

Dear friends and neighbors:

The City of Ukiah Ad/Hoc members met several times with Mendocino County Superiors McCowen and Brown, and these meetings resulted in a new formula proposal for a tax sharing agreement between the City and the County.  See link: http://cityofukiah.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?meta_id=28036&view=&showpdf=1  The proposal will be discussed at a City Council Special Meeting on July 29 at 5:30 PM.   I am not a fan of Ad/Hoc meetings, because they are not Brown Act meetings. Ad/Hoc meetings give the public the general impression that government business is being transacted in secret.  That said, I have several problems with the proposed agreement. As has been the history of tax sharing up until now, the City sees itself as being “in the driver’s seat.” The proposed agreement also highlights several the failures of the Ukiah Valley Area Plan (UVAP).  I’ll write more about this proposed agreement later today.   Also, you may be interested to know that I have it from reliable sources the County’s AS 400 system — its financial system — was down last week for most of the week. This means that much of the work done at the Offices of the County Clerk-Tax Collector/Assessor, the Office of the Treasurer, and the Office of the Auditor, ground to a halt.  I wonder: What did the workers in these offices do all week?. What did they do all week?  And where was the County IT?   — John Sakowicz

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DRONES

The Predator drone began its career as a spy. Its first mission was to fly over the Balkans during the late 1990s and feed live video back to the US. In 2001, it was kitted out with Hellfire missiles and promoted to assassin. The CIA reportedly had qualms about operating unmanned killing machines, but these were swept away by the attacks of 11 September. In October 2001, the Washington Post reported that George W. Bush had signed a ‘presidential finding’ that effectively lifted a 25-year ban on assassinations. Although Bill Clinton had previously claimed the authority to mount covert attacks on al-Qaida, Bush’s finding greatly expanded the pool of potential targets and expressly permitted the drawing up of kill lists. ‘Targeted killing’, the new program, was like ‘clipping toenails’, one official told the Post, because al-Qaida could always generate new leaders. ‘It won’t solve the whole problem, but it’s part of the solution.’

BY EARLY 2002, the Predator had picked off its first target in Yemen. The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan got underway in 2004. The US military sent Predators to support ground forces in their campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, then against Saddam Hussein’s forces in Iraq, then against the Baathist ‘dead-enders,’ then against the rising insurgency. In 2001, the military had 167 drones; by 2009, it had 5500. Today the US drone fleet numbers more than seven thousand; in addition to Predators, there are longer-distance and harder-hitting Reapers, high-altitude radar-enabled Global Hawks, and hand-launched Ravens that look like model airplanes. Most missions are for surveillance, a substantial fraction for killings. They are carried out by US operators sitting in comfortable chairs in air-conditioned rooms thousands of miles away. Their screens show tiny, pixellated people disappearing into puffs of smoke.

Between three and five thousand people have died this way in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia; hundreds more have been killed by drones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Obama oversaw the departure of the last US troops from Iraq last year, and the current plan for Afghanistan is to complete the handover from Nato to local forces by the end of 2014. But as these conventional wars have wound down, the use of drones to kill individuals outside declared war zones has accelerated. Under Bush, the US carried out 48 known drone strikes in Pakistan. Under Obama, there have been more than three hundred. Other than a handful of ‘high value targets’, little is known about who exactly is being killed, and how many of the dead might be considered innocent civilians. Estimates of civilian deaths range from ‘single digits’ in a year (Dianne Feinstein) to the low hundreds (New America Foundation) to nearly a thousand (Bureau of Investigative Journalism) to more than 90 percent of all the deaths in drone strikes (the ex-military officers David Kilcullen and Andrew McDonald Exum). In March 2012, the New York Times reported that all military-age males, armed or unarmed, are considered to be combatants unless there is posthumous evidence proving otherwise; the Obama administration recently disputed this.

Most of the killings take place in inaccessible tribal regions, so the organizations keeping the body counts often base their assessments — ‘civilian’, ‘militant’, ‘insurgent’, or ‘combatant’ — on media reports of whatever is said to have appeared on the video feed. A former drone operator published an account of his experience in Der Spiegel:

Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach. ‘Did we just kill a kid?’ he asked the man sitting next to him. ‘Yeah, I guess that was a kid,’ the pilot replied. ‘Was that a kid?’ they wrote into a chat window on the monitor. Then someone they didn’t know answered….’No. That was a dog.’

In other words, distinguishing between civilian and militant has become a post hoc body-sorting argument. As viewed through the drone’s crosshairs, the ciphers on the ground are neither civilians nor militants: they could be called ‘civilitants’, some of whom have been rendered killable not by who they are or what they have done but by where they happen to be…

(Like a Mosquito, a review by Mattathias Schwartz of Jeremy Scahill’s Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield)

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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)

IT’S ALMOST HERE! Not-So-Simple Living Fair 2013 is in just a few days. We’re ready for you, so make your way to the Mendocino County Fairgrounds in Boonville July 26 – 28 (workshops begin at 10am Saturday morning.) This promises to be another great event with some of our same great workshop presenters and also some new presenters and new topics. Music Friday night will be by Foxglove and Saturday night we will welcome back Pura Vida. For a complete run-down, including schedule of workshops, workshop descriptions and presenter information, visit our website http://notsosimple.info. See you there!

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TWO PROTESTERS LOCKDOWN AT WILLITS BYPASS CONSTRUCTION AREA/PHOTOGRAPHER ARRESTED

CHP officers guard a protester locked down to a machine on the Willits Bypass. (Photos from the EarthFirst Facebook Page.)

Two protesters—a man, Travis Jochimsen, and a woman known as Blue Heron—slipped past the California Highway Patrol early this morning and locked down to machines used to drain land in Mendocino County They are trying to bring attention to the Willits Bypass which they believe is environmentally harmful.  A credentialed photographer with the Willits News, Steve Eberhart, has been arrested this morning at the scene of the lockdown.

According to Eberhart’s editor, Linda Williams, “We’ve contacted our legal staff and he’ll be cited and released within the hour….I think.”  Williams says, “[Eberhart] was the only person arrested.  He had credentials from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office as well as our own credentials.”

“This,” she says, “is his first arrest…We’re trying to get him out of jail. It is our number one priority and then get his cameras.”

Caltrans spokesperson Phil Frisbie, Jr. explained that Eberhart entered the Willits Bypass construction area at 5:30 A.M. along with about 15 protesters, and when CHP ordered them all to leave, the others left but he refused. Frisbie says that the group of protesters ”…distracted the two CHP officers who were guarding two wick drain stitchers overnight.  The distraction allowed two other [protesters] to attach themselves to the stitcher towers which had been lowered to the ground for the night.”

According to Frisbie, “Steve knows that the media must have a [Caltrans’] escort to ensure their safety, and he could have left with the protestors and waited for a [Caltrans’] escort.”

An activist site, Save Little Lake Valley, claims that Eberhart was arrested “while waiting for his [Caltrans’] escort to arrive.”

Rick Shreve, an activist against the Willits Bypass, reports that as of 10 A.M. the protesters are still locked down. He says the protesters are “trying to stop the draining of the wetlands…They are continuing to stop work on the Bypass.”

Frisbie, however says, “We should be installing wick drains again tomorrow. Also, other work such as pile driving are continuing unaffected.”

—Kym Kemp, Courtesy, LostCoastOutpost.com

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AN EXTREMLY WACKY story in Sunday’s Chron that there’s a high incidence of obesity in Mendocino County because we don’t have access to healthy food. The human focus of the piece was a couple of sedentary pudges who live in Gualala. In living fact, it’s harder to eat bad in Mendocino County than lots of places in this fine, fat land of ours. But Gualala people are especially annoyed that the story somehow managed to overlook the town’s two supermarkets, one more upscale than   the other, but both offering a wide variety of healthy and organic   foods. There’s also a weekly Farmer’s Market, an   organic health food store in Anchor Bay, two Food Banks, one in Gualala and one in Point   Arena, and several healthy eating places and grocery outlets in Point   Arena. Not a fast food restaurant anywhere on the Mendo coast until you get all the way to Fort Bragg where there’s a McDonald’s, and the only reason it’s there is for the people who drive up from Modesto to get out of the summer heat. A few years ago “Men’s Health” magazine named Gualala the healthiest place in the country. No exaggeration: You’ve got to search out bad food in Mendocino County.

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FORMER COP ARRESTED IN POT BUST — Law enforcement agents from Lake and Mendocino counties on Friday raided Reflections of Avalon, a Ukiah medical marijuana dispensary, and arrested owner Richard Erickson — a former Lakeport Police officer — according to authorities. Agents arrested Erickson, 60, of Lakeport, on suspicion of cultivating and possessing marijuana for sale, manufacturing a controlled substance and receiving stolen property. He is being held at the Lake County Jail under $150,000 bail. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force and County of Mendocino Marijuana Eradication Team served a search warrant at the business at about 7am July 19, according to MMCTF Commander Rich Russell. Russell and his Task Force agents were at the scene until about 3pm, during which time authorities arrested at least two other people who showed up at the business, allegedly to sell marijuana. One of the two arrestees allegedly intended to sell marijuana clone plants to the dispensary, and the other was selling between three and four pounds of processed marijuana, according to Russell. Agents seized about 25 pounds of processed marijuana at the scene, along with an unknown number of growing plants, cash and guns, including a Thompson submachine gun, according to Russell. Authorities had opened four safes and were working on a fifth when Russell left the scene, he said. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office was preparing a press release Monday, but the information wasn’t available Monday night. Erickson was an 11-year veteran with the Lakeport Police Department when he was terminated in 2006, the same year he was charged with misappropriating government funds for allegedly using police department equipment and time for personal reasons, including an affair with an 18-year-old woman. He was defended at the time by Don Anderson, who was elected Lake County District Attorney in 2010. Erickson was acquitted in 2007. (— Tiffany Revelle, Courtesy, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

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Redenius

ON JULY 18, 2013 at approximately 10:30pm, Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched 575 Cropley Lane in Willits to investigate a reported assault with a deadly weapon. The weapon used was an automobile. The 51 year-old male victim reported that his wife’s ex-boyfriend, Shelby E. Redenius, 42, of Willits, had attempted to run him down with a vehicle. Redenius is the father of his wife’s two year-old daughter. The victim stated that he was driving his vehicle on Blosser Lane when Redenius began to follow him very closely in his pickup. Redenius followed him closely all the way to his home on Cropley Lane. When the victim stepped from his vehicle Redenius accelerated his vehicle toward him rapidly, coming within inches of him. Redenius spun his vehicle in tight circles around the victim and his car. Seated inside the victim’s car throughout this incident were his 37-year old wife and her two year-old daughter. The victim stated that Redenius then intentionally drove his truck into the open driver’s door of the victim’s vehicle, bending it forward. Redenius then drove a short distance, spun his truck in a tight “doughnut” once more and drove away. The woman and her child were not injured. The damage to the victim’s vehicle and other evidence at the scene supported the victim’s version of events. Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputies contacted Shelby Redenius at a Hwy 20 location where he was arrested without incident for assault with a deadly weapon. Redenius was transported to the Mendocino County Jail where he is being held in lieu of $30,000 bail. (Sheriff’s Press Release)

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Feldman, McCully

ON JULY 18, 2013, at about 8:15am, Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office stopped a vehicle on North Highway 101 north of Willits for a violation of the California Vehicle Code. Upon contact with the driver, Allen Feldman, 29, of Los Angeles, and the passenger Benjamin McCully, 30, of Hollywood, deputies detected the odor of marijuana emitting from the vehicle. A search of the vehicle revealed packaging materials commonly used for transporting marijuana and $92,010 cash secreted within the vehicle. Both subjects were arrested and booked into the Mendocino County Jail on marijuana sales charges and are currently held on $30,000 bail. (Sheriff’s Press Release)

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Carr

ON JULY 18, 2013 at approximately 12:34pm Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to the 3800 block of East Side Calpella Road in Ukiah for a report of an assault with a deadly weapon (vehicle) and brandishing a firearm (rifle). On arrival Deputies were advised two male juveniles and a female juvenile, all age 16, had been riding their ATVs on their property when their neighbor returned home. The neighbor, identified as David Joseph Carr, 65, of Ukiah, was driving on the dirt road which accesses both residences when he suddenly accelerated and began spinning the rear tires and driving extremely fast. All of the juveniles were in the area of the road, returning their ATVs to their fenced in storage location when Carr swerved toward them, causing the three juveniles to pull out of the way and jump their fence. The juveniles advised Carr’s truck came within six feet of them when it passed. The three juveniles said they feared for their lives. Carr pulled to a stop in front of his residence and then went inside. The three juveniles also went inside their residence and began looking at Carr’s residence through their kitchen and dining room windows. All three juveniles said they watched as Carr came out of his front door carrying a rifle. They watched as Carr “shouldered the rifle” and pointed it toward their residence. The three juveniles advised they ducked to the floor, hid, and called 911. The three juveniles said this was not the first time Carr had pointed a rifle at them for riding their ATVs on their own property. Deputies observed the tire marks on the dirt driveway and saw the gravel was disturbed as if someone had been spinning their tires, and saw the tire marks swerved inward toward the juvenile’s residence. Deputies contacted Carr and his wife who were in their front yard watching through the overgrowth of grapevines. Both Carr and his wife were unarmed. Carr advised he had driven very fast down the road when he returned to his residence at the request of his wife, who had called him and advised the juveniles were “terrorizing” her by riding their ATVs on the juvenile’s property. Carr advised he was not trying to run over the juveniles when he drove to his house. Carr advised he did have a rifle but denied ever taking it out of the gun safe that was located in his front room, next to the front door. Carr admitted he had removed the rifle a week prior and went outside to investigate a loud noise that turned out to be the juveniles trying to get their ATV unstuck. Carr was arrested without incident for brandishing a firearm and booked in to the Mendocino County Jail, where he is being held on $30,000 bail. (Sheriff’s Press Release)

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EDITOR: I read an article in your publication written about Thomas Blackburn written in 2012. My interest is in reconnecting with his daughter, Stephanie mentioned in the article. I knew her briefly when we were attending college at U. of Colorado 1956-58. I am simply trying to reconnect and update our lives for the fun of it. I do not know if she married had children or…? And would like to. Could you forward this inquiry to the article writer and ask if he will send it to Stephanie. Thanks, Ron Phillips, R22059J@comcast.net

ED NOTE: That piece was written by Arthur Winfield Knight originally in the early 1990s and reposted last year as a “Blast From the Past.” Unfortunately, Mr. Knight has since passed away.

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COMMENT OF THE DAY, Lost Coast Outpost (HumCo) comment line — a man called Moviedad responding to a fire in a homeless camp near Garberville: “At some point, the wealthy-elites in control of our government are going to have to reestablish care for the mentally ill and the indigent. There are so many people on the streets that in any “civilized” society would be in a mental health institution being looked after. But, to fund their many tax-breaks for corporations and their executives, they have thrown the disabled onto the streets. They’ve tossed out surgery patients who couldn’t pay, onto the sidewalks. In LA some were found wandering around with their IV bottles in tow. In Willow Creek at present, there are at least three individuals wandering around in the heat, who are completely unable to care for themselves. But our society has no concern. Our ‘leaders’ live the high life on working people’s taxes, pay almost none of their own, and solve social problems like the Mafia. But eventually all the birds come home to roost, and the barbarian practice of throwing people on the street to die makes it uncomfortable for the public. ‘Mommy, why is that scary old woman face down in her vomit on the sidewalk?’ ‘Because she’s a loser Suzy..’ It’s hard not become harsh and unforgiving. I can’t get my hands on those who are actually responsible, so blaming the victim becomes the norm. You see this in the interactions between police and the mentally ill. As far as the healthy living on the street with a backpack and a dog; you can see the desperation in their eyes. How long can some of these people make it before they do something? Jobs? Who has enough voluntary gullibility to buy into that BS? There are no jobs for these people. It would take a jobs-program that supplied a bed and a shower. These people are way too far gone to work for a private company. So they sit on the side of the road and they starve, and while they are starving they try to drink themselves to death. Us ‘baby-boomers’ reference the Nazi’s a lot when talking about evil, it annoys some people, but fact is, we are the Nazi’s now. Our system has become so corrupted with heartless fascists in key positions, that the concept of charity and compassion are treated as weakness. It’s become so powerful that whenever some brave soul dares to expose the criminal behavior or murder, genocide and crimes against humanity; they are declared a traitor and our corrupt, illegal, unconscionable Mafia that pretends to be the government of the US, begins the process of putting a ‘Hit’ on them and murdering them. What does all this have to do with a Hobo-camp fire? Why is there a Hobo-camp? Why are there so many people destitute, barely clinging to sanity? Why do I pay more taxes in California than Exxon-Mobil? Why does the board of directors of Exxon get to become rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams on the oil resources that are legally owned by the ‘People of the United States?’ I just wanted to put my two-cents in on the ‘homeless’ situation before the ‘brownshirts’ all chimed in with their usual ‘kill them all!’ and ‘Let it burn out all the vermin!’ These willing slaves of the ruling class who inhabit the blogs to rail against their neighbors and families on behalf of, and benefit to, the true traitors to our constitution.”

The California Highway Patrol has plenty of critics, and a crop of new young officers has appeared in Mendocino County, who, these critics say, are writing tickets for all kinds of things that older officers ignore.

A just concluded jury trial for a young man accused of driving while under the influence of marijuana reinforced a general suspicion that over-zealousness is in play around here.

How bad was this case?

It was so bad that the newest, and youngest, and shyest, and smallest counselor in the Public Defender’s office where body types run from squat-diminutive to hulking, won the case — her first jury trial, ever — against the DA’s biggest, baddest courtroom brawler, Joshua Rosenfeld, who has now lost his first DUI case.

Introducing Miss Christine Brady.

Harry Anslinger, the longtime Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, is widely considered the prime mover behind marijuana prohibition. But during the Congressional debate on prohibition in the spring of 1937, Anslinger was just one witness in a strange show trial.  He testified that marijuana induces homicidal mania and so forth, but it was not Anslinger who designed the complicated prohibitive-tax strategy. That maneuver was thought up by the Treasury Department’s top lawyer, Herman Oliphant. Nor was Anslinger called back to refute Dr. William Woodward of the American Medical Association, who made many telling points in opposition to the prohibitive-tax bill.

It was Congressman Fred Vinson of Kentucky who dealt with Woodward, subjecting him to a snide, relentless grilling. In the transcript of the hearing, which I recently published to get the hang of ebook production (thinking it was a simple, finite project), Vinson comes across as an effective prosecutor committed to getting the prohibitive-tax bill enacted, while Anslinger seems like a carnival pitch man —yowza, yowza, yowza. Both men were carrying water for the Treasury Department, which had drafted the prohibition bill and was asking Congress to impose it on the nation.

As I was mulling over the implications of Vinson, not Anslinger, being the actual villain of my imaginary drama, David West referred me to his eye-opening essay, “Low, Dishonest Decade,” published in 1999. West is a Wisconsin-based agronomist who spent most of his career as a geneticist/breeder of “corporate maize” (his term). He pioneered the application of molecular markers in crop breeding. He’s a very good writer and an insightful political analyst. Pot partisans ready to escape the single-issue trap should check out his website, www.newheadnews.com.

West disputes the widely held notion that Harry Anslinger pushed through federal prohibition with backing from William Randolph Hearst (whose timber holdings would lose value if hemp could be used for newsprint), the Du Pont Chemical Corporation (whose newly developed nylon would face competition from hemp), and Andrew Mellon, the Du Ponts’ banker, who had been the Republican Secretary of the Treasury (1921-33) and who appointed Anslinger to run the FBN in 1930.

A conspiracy involving Hearst, Du Pont and Mellon was posited by Jack Herer, the man who, in the 1980s discovered the suppressed history of hemp and its multiple uses and its economic potential. Herer shared his findings with all of us in a collage of documentation called The Emperor Wears no Clothes. Jack’s admirers —I’m one, and I hung out with him once— should be open-minded about West’s take on the federal prohibition.  Jack’s revelations and accomplishments are of an order of magnitude that won’t be reduced if his theory of three rich Republicans masterminding prohibition doesn’t pan out.

West posits a leadership role for Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury under Roosevelt from 1934 to 1945. (After FDR died, Harry Truman replaced Morgenthau with the above-mentioned Fred Vinson.)  Morgenthau was well aware of the Nazi threat and the strong isolationist sentiment that could keep the Administration from intervening on behalf of European Jews. He was tracking the expanding network of Nazi front groups in this country, and the German-American Bund. There were German-American hemp farmers in contact with Henry Ford, a leading anti-semite. Morgenthau must have suspected they were associated with the Bund and wanted to keep tabs on them. As Secretary of the Treasury, Morgenthau was in charge of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which had law-enforcement and domestic-surveillance capabilities. Its Commissioner, Harry Anslinger, was an ambitious bureaucrat out to maximize his agency’s power. West’s theory is that Morgenthau orchestrated the federal prohibition and that Anslinger’s railing against marijuana was part of the play.

It makes sense that the boss would be calling the shots. Anslinger himself told David Musto, MD, in 1970 that Morgenthau wanted a ban on marijuana —in response, supposedly, to pressure from law enforcement in a number of states. West thinks Morgenthau wanted a ban on the plant but for reasons he didn’t want publicized. The transcript of the Congressional hearing on prohibition shows that it was a Treasury Department production from start to finish.

In a paper on the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act that ran in the Archives of General Psychiatry (and was reprinted by Tod Mikuriya in Marijuana Medical Papers), Musto wrote, “The hearings before the House were held in late April and early May. They were curious events. The Treasury’s presentation to Congress has been adequately described many times, although no retelling has equaled reading the original transcript.”  Could there be a better blurb for our ebook?

Circumstantial Evidence in Morgenthau Bio

A biography of Henry Morgenthau, Jr., by Herbert Levy (Skyhorse Publishing, 2010) provides indirect support for David West’s hypothesis that Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury was the prime mover behind the federal ban on marijuana.

Morgenthau’s father, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., was a millionaire real estate investor who had backed Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and then became the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey. Henry Sr. bought a thousand-acre spread along the Hudson River which, under Henry Jr.’s management, produced apples and dairy products, but did not make money.

In addition to being a gentleman farmer, Morgenthau, Jr. subsidized a journal called the American Agriculturist. He was a lifelong friend of Franklin Roosevelt’s, and served as the “advance man” when FDR ran for governor of New York in 1928. Morgenthau helped FDR implement policies that benefited New York State farmers, and Roosevelt’s pro-farmer reputation helped him win the presidency in ’32.

One of Levy’s key sources is Morgenthau’s eldest son, Henry the third. (Jewish people, even non-observant ones, traditionally name their children after dead family members, not after their living selves. The Morgenthaus were well-to-do German Jews whose social goal was to assimilate as thoroughly as possible into gentile society. At the end of World War One, Morgenthau, Sr. was sent on a diplomatic mission to Poland in connection with pogroms in the re-emerging republic. When he reached his Warsaw hotel, Levy recounts, “His first act was to establish his American identity in the matter of his breakfast. He announced that he expected to have an American breakfast consisting of juice, cereal, bacon and eggs, and coffee.”)

In the spring of 1932, according to Henry III, “Roosevelt dispatched [my father] on a swing through the Middle West and Southern farm belt to gather opinion on the causes and cures for the agricultural depression and on the Roosevelt candidacy. ‘My trip is going fine,’ he reported to the boss. I am meeting a lot of interesting farm leaders. Most are Republicans but are ready to vote for you, if given the opportunity.”

Morgenthau aspired to be Secretary of Agriculture but Roosevelt gave that job to one of those erstwhile Republicans Morgenthau had recruited, Henry Wallace of Iowa —a gentile, his biographer notes. Morgenthau became head of the Farm Credit Administration. According to historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (another German Jew from a family seeking to assimilate fully), the FCA in 1933 “refinanced farm mortgages, inaugurated a series of ‘rescue’ loans for second mortgages, developed techniques for persuading creditors to make reasonable settlements, set up local farm debt adjustment committees, and eventually established a system of regional banks to make mortgage, production and marketing loans and to provide credits to cooperatives.”

The United States was still a country of small and medium-sized farms, with 30% of the workforce employed in agriculture. The farmers were suffering because of low commodity prices, some were calling for a “Farmers’ Holiday.”

Let’s call a Farmer’s Holiday,

a Holiday let’s hold.

We’ll eat our wheat and ham and eggs,

And let them eat their gold.”[2]

FDR’s New Deal undercut the radicals’ momentum with an Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) that would pay farmers to take acreage out of production and to destroy large quantities of wheat, cotton, hogs —surplus commodities. It was a quick but temporary and morally questionable fix.

Another way to raise commodity prices was to reduce the gold value of the dollar, which could be achieved by the Treasury Department buying gold at a higher price than was set by statute. Dean Acheson, Acting Secretary of the Treasury, argued vehemently that the Administration did not have the legal right to take the country off the gold standard. According to Schlesinger, “The Attorney General supported Acheson… A few days later Morgenthau showed Roosevelt a longhand memorandum from his general counsel Herman Oliphant suggesting various ways by which the President might buy gold through his executive power…

“Oliphant, digging into the recesses of his memory, into the recesses of his memory, recalled a Civil War statute which permitted the government to buy gold at changing prices; combined with the Reconstruction Finance Act, this seemed to give the President the power he needed.”

Dean Acheson would resign in high dudgeon. Morgenthau became Secretary of the Treasury on January 1, 1934. Herman Oliphant moved with him to Treasury as general counsel, and would be called on a few years later to figure out a cockamamie scheme to outlaw the Cannabis plant.

For farmers, an alternative to taking land out of production and destroying “surplus” commodities would have been to plant crops they could market profitably.  Thanks to advances in chemistry, there was at this time a rising “chemurgy” movement that Morgenthau, a farm expert, would certainly have been aware of. Chemurgy involves growing crops not for food but for transformation into various industrial products —plastics, coatings, thread, etc. As David West neatly puts it, chemurgy is based on “the idea that anything you can make from a hydrocarbon you can make from a carbohydrate… Rayon from plants instead of nylon from petroleum.” Henry Ford was a leading proponent of chemurgy. Ford built a car out of hemp-based products and arranged for a promotional photograph of the manufacturer, in an overcoat, bashing the rear fender with a sledgehammer to show how strong the material was.

Hemp processing operations in Illinois and Minnesota were launched in the mid-1930s, implementing newly developed technology and with ambitious business plans. (Jack Herer unearthed a Popular Mechanics cover story proclaiming “A New Billion Collar Crop.”) According to David West, these operations were strangled by federal red tape, but the hemp producers of Wisconsin, who had been in business long before the 1930s, were left alone.

“Morgenthau wasn’t concerned about hemp,” says West. “He was concerned about certain people who were producing hemp.”

West notes that there is no “smoking gun” to prove his thesis about Morgenthau’s key role in the prohibition of marijuana. He wrote “Low, Dishonest Decade” in 1999 and then turned his attention to directing the state of Hawaii’s experimental hemp-growing project. But that’s another story.

Fred Gardner can be reached at editor@beyondthc.com.

“There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic Oracle… ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Nothing too much’—and upon these all other precepts depend.” — Plutarch

The Mendocino Music Festival is upon us once again, and that means several things to me now that I’ve lived in Mendocino for eight years. The village will be cloaked in fog for many days of the festival, a majestic white tent will stand upon the headlands across the street from Dick’s, my darling wife Marcia, who has played in the festival orchestra for all the twenty-seven years the festival has been going, will practice her cello even more diligently than she usually does, the village population will be peppered with sophisticated classical musicians from urban areas who have come here to play in the festival orchestra, there will not be enough Mendelssohn on the program for my taste (I love Mendelssohn), and there will be so much fantastic music to hear, both classical and otherwise, that it will be impossible to attend but a small fraction of the musical delights on offer.

On the day of the festival’s opening night concert, I walk to town in fulgent sunshine and wonder if this brilliant clarity will attend the concert tonight or whether the fog, hearing the orchestral strains emanating from the majestic tent, will swiftly come hither and blanket the headlands.

At the corner of Highway One and Little Lake Road, my path converges with that of a young white man with long blond Rasta locks, a bulging knapsack on his back, and two enormous dogs on rope leashes. As we wait together for the light to turn green so we might be among the living when we reach the village side of the highway, I say to the young man, “How you doing?”

“Not good,” he says angrily. “This fucking place doesn’t have a laundromat, so poor people can’t wash their clothes. Fucking elitist enclave.”

“Well, the problem as I understand it is that the village has a chronic water shortage and laundromats use an enormous…”

“Bullshit,” he says, as we embark on our journey across the five lines. “I lived here twelve years ago. I know all about this place. They just don’t want any poor people around here. In Israel they have laundromats that use hardly any water. They could get some of those. But they won’t.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling the need to apologize for having a washer and a dryer and a good well that, knock on wood, has yet to go dry this year.

“And try hitchhiking with two big dogs,” says the young man, scowling at me. “Not easy.”

We part ways and I think to myself that the absence of a laundromat in the village is certainly unfortunate but also understandable economically and environmentally, while hitchhiking with two enormous dogs seems to be this man’s choice and not something imposed upon him by a cruel and unjust society. Then again, maybe he needs those dogs in order to feel safe in this cruel and unjust society, and from his point of view he doesn’t really have a choice about hitchhiking with giant dogs or not. Indeed, when I lived in Berkeley, I knew several women who owned large dogs for the express purpose of feeling safe when they went walking anywhere, and not just at night: anywhere any time.

“If you arrive early, you’re neurotic; if you arrive on time, you’re compulsive; if you arrive late, you’re hostile.” — Kay Hannah

After I shave away my three-day beard, I exchange paint-stained shirt and trousers for much cleaner clothing, load Marcia’s cello into the trunk of our car, and chauffer Marcia and our delightful neighbor Marion Crombie, viola, down to the festival tent for the long awaited opening night concert. Both gals look beautiful and full of equipoise in comfortable but elegant black attire, and they both express quiet optimism that the concert, despite the absence of anything by Mendelssohn, will be a good one. Verdi, Prokoffief, and Rachmaninoff are on the menu, and the sun, miraculously, is still shining brightly as I navigate the crowded lanes of the village, the air vibrating with the collective excitement that composes the prelude to the orchestral miracle we are about to witness.

I was going to bring along my little silver transistor radio so I could listen to the Giants game before the concert and during the lengthy intermission, but I chose to leave the tiny thing behind so as not to appear gauche and insensitive and possibly more interested in baseball than in my wife’s life work. Tim Lincecum is pitching tonight, and the dramatic arc of Monsieur Lincecum’s career especially intrigues me. After a stellar first few years, the wunderkind has fallen on hard times and is now in the throes of trying to reinvent himself as someone with a fastball in the low nineties instead of a fastball in the high nineties.

Finding every parking place within three blocks of the festival tent taken, I commandeer a space near the post office and traipse from there through the lovely flower-infested grounds of the MacCallum House and down the walkway that begins behind the Mendocino Hotel and pops out on Main Street across from the fabulous festival tent. Seeing I have nearly a half-hour before the music begins, I wander down to the trail across the street from Out of This World and traverse the headlands to the cliff’s edge from where I look down on the shining water, the surface of the sea as calm as a lake on a windless day. Intoxicated by the glorious scene, I fall into a reverie about Felix Mendelssohn and Tim Lincecum and Sergei Prokofiev and Madison Bumgarner and Jimi Hendrix and Sergei Rachmaninoff, geniuses all.

Fortunately my reverie concludes in time for me to join the tail end of the pre-concert melee outside the grandiloquent tent where I bump into Sam Edwards who kindly invites me to join him in a glass of wine, his treat, but I demur because of my deathly allergy to alcohol. We discover we both have complimentary tickets for seats in the nosebleed section courtesy of our partners who play in the festival orchestra, and upon comparing our tickets we find that my seat is directly in front of Sam’s.

“See you in there,” I say, as the bell clangs to summon the masses to find their seats.

With a few minutes remaining before the trouble begins, as Mark Twain liked to say about his public appearances, I wander down the aisle to the epicenter of the tent to say hello to Peter Temple, our local sonic master manning the bridge of his audio Enterprise, so to speak, riding the soundboard controlling the microphones suspended above the stage where a hundred and twenty-some musicians are vigorously sawing and tooting and banging away on their instruments to ready themselves for the exciting adventure they are about to embark upon.

When I inform Peter that I have been assigned a seat way in the back, he taps the chair beside him and says, “Sit here,” and so I do—best seat in the house. Am I lucky or what? I have a clear view of Marcia in her seat next to Stephen Harrison, our superb Principal cellist, and I have plenty of room to stretch my legs and wiggle in my seat as much as I want while the music plays. Yes, I’m lucky, but I suppose I made choices along the way that made such luck possible. Do we make our own luck? Is luck really luck or the manifestation of karma?

The lights dim. Allan Pollack enters from the wings. The crowd erupts in applause. Allan steps up onto the podium, faces the audience, smiles radiantly, and bows. I’ve seen Allan conduct the Music Festival orchestra and the Symphony of the Redwoods orchestra dozens of times, and I always have the same three thoughts whenever I watch him conduct: 1. What a cool guy 2. He reminds me of Groucho Marx in the best sort of way 3. How does he manage to get all those people with their separate egos and divergent inclinations to perform so harmoniously and with such unanimity of feeling?

“A man has only one way of being immortal on this earth: he has to forget he is a mortal.”— Jean Giraudoux

The concert a smashing success, the pianist James D’Leon triumphant over the monumental Rachmaninoff, Marcia and Marion in a celebratory mood, we arrive home to the news that Tim Lincecum just pitched the first no-hitter of his illustrious career, and I unashamedly burst into tears, having been cracked wide open by the metaphysical music and feeling Tim’s historic victory as a resurrection, both his and mine, however inexplicable that feeling is—proof of the interconnectedness of all things, the orchestra in that tent on the headlands supplying the quantum physical musical soundtrack to Tim’s remarkable achievement.

Todd Walton’s website is underthetablebooks.com.

Division over the viability of railroad development is sure to spike now that trails-friendly Arcata Councilmember Alex Stillman has been pulled off the North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA) Board of Directors. 

The committee that appoints a city representative to the NCRA board met July 16 to re-evaluate Stillman’s appointment, which had been made a month earlier to the chagrin of railroad advocates.

A majority of the mayors who make up the committee voted to rescind the appointment and after spirited debate and some confusion over process, the same majority voted to appoint Fortuna Mayor Doug Strehl to the NCRA board in Stillman’s place.

When Stillman was appointed, Ferndale Mayor Stuart Titus was absent and the committee was deadlocked between Stillman and Strehl. Eureka Mayor Frank Jager broke the tie by switching his vote from Strehl to Stillman.

But the appointment was soon challenged on procedural grounds by Eureka Attorney and rail advocate Bill Bertain, triggering a reassessment and the follow-up meeting.

Marcella Clem, the executive director of the Humboldt County Association of Governments (HCAOG), which provides staff support to the committee, downplayed the alleged procedural glitch but David Tranberg, HCAOG’s attorney, said that “it’s pretty obvious that a mistake was made” involving a paperwork submittal deadline.

With the appointment voided, a vote on re-doing it was pursued, with Stillman and Strehl once again vying for the pick.

Deliberations on it were marked by two twists – Titus created another deadlock situation by nominating himself as a third candidate and Eureka Councilmember Mike Newman, a strong rail development supporter, represented Eureka instead of Jager, a longtime Boy Scout troopmaster who’s a trails enthusiast.

In making a motion to appoint Strehl, Newman explained that it’s what most Eureka councilmembers want. “Our council was in discussion and we were behind the appointment of Doug Strehl,” he said, adding that Jager wasn’t at the meeting because he “had other things to do.”

Earlier, Stillman said that she supports a “rails with trails” approach but Newman said that’s not quite the stance supported by a majority of his city’s councilmembers. “We’re more in support of rails first, versus trails,” he continued.

Stillman had also described the southern end of the NCRA’s line as a redevelopment priority, while Strehl asserted that railroad development is a local economic necessity.

During a public comment session, rail supporters lobbied for Strehl and rail skeptics rallied for Stillman. The committee was equally divided with northern city reps, including Arcata Mayor Shane Brinton, supporting Stillman – with the exception of Eureka via Newman.

Trinidad Mayor Julie Fulkerson recounted Stillman’s long track record of achievement and questioned the re-appointment process. “We’re going to look like a bunch of flakes if we change our nomination at this point,” she said.

Noting Newman’s presence in place of Jager, Fulkerson suggested that there have been private discussions about getting Stillman off the NCRA board. “I don’t know what happened in Eureka – Frank was here last time, and saw that this was an opportunity to build bridges,” she said. “Something happened – and I don’t think it’s going to be discussed – but I find it offensive.”

Votes on appointing Stillman and Strehl were each deadlocked because Titus – the swing voter – voted against both of them due to being a candidate himself.

It seemed that there was no way for the committee to move an appointment but Fulkerson offered a plan. “We can get around it the way we did it the last meeting, because we had one gracious person who changed his vote,” she said. She told Newman, “You could honor the spirit of your mayor and change your vote.”

“How about you changing your vote?” asked Rio Dell Mayor Jack Thompson.

Fulkerson said her decision-making has been “consistent” and “I’m not interested in sending a message to the rail board that we’re indecisive.”

Faced with a lingering deadlock, the committee emerged from it by voting on whether to appoint Titus. The only one who voted in favor of that was Titus.

Having been eliminated as a candidate, he broke the tie by voting for Strehl.

Another matter was settled at the meeting – HCAOG is stepping out of the railroad debate crossfire. “We’re getting out of this business as of 5 p.m. today,” Tranberg said, explaining that from now on the clerk of the county’s Board of Supervisors will provide staff support to the committee.

After the meeting was adjourned, Newman was asked about the suggestion of closed-door decision-making and why he was there instead of Jager. In a rush to get to the Eureka council meeting, Newman disregarded the question as a reporter walked beside him.

Fulkerson was nearby and said, “C’mon, Mike — you can talk and walk at the same time, don’t be like George Bush, speak up.”

But Newman was mum.

The author, daughter Bella & Maria Elena Mendoza.

About 15 years ago when I was living in Philo, working as a pastry chef in Mendocino and baking pastry to sell at a few county farmers’ markets, I started thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up. More than that, I started thinking about how I wanted to spend the best hours of the most productive years of my life. I knew I would make food, and I knew that I wanted to use local ingredients because knowing where my food comes from has always been important to me. I figured that I had worked for enough other people at enough of their restaurants and now I wanted to try working for myself. And commuting 45 minutes each way into a different town was not the reason I had moved to Anderson Valley. Darius and I spent about six months writing a business plan. We wanted to create a place that would feel welcoming to both locals and tourists, a place where someone could spend a morning or afternoon sitting and reading a good book over a great cup of coffee, a place where local farmers could bring their produce left over from the farmers’ market and know it would get the star treatment it deserved. After much writing and drawing, a little graphing, and a touch of soul searching the idea of the Boonville General Store was born. 

Greetings one and all. If you are sitting comfortably then I shall begin. There is no doubt that “Cat Heaven” is an even better place following the arrival of O.J., the 19-year old “Top Cat,” who was welcomed there last week. This huge-hearted fellow was the leader of cats and kittens; the friend of dogs and puppies; and a cherished family member. RIP, buddy, you were the Coolest of the Cool.

July 24th marks the anniversary of Anthony Johnson acquiring 250 acres of land in Northampton County, Virginia during the summer of 1651. Anthony Johnson was a free black man, brought to the colony aboard the James in 1621. He had been captured in his native Angola. When he was initially sold to a white tobacco planter named Bennet, Johnson was known only as Antonio. Antonio was indentured to Bennet, the common practice of the time, meaning that he could work his way out of servitude after a period of hard labor (often seven years). Until the mid-1850s, in the American colonies, though indentured servants were often treated as roughly as slaves, the indentured servant could earn his or her freedom and there was no clear practice of lifetime slavery.

The fabled City Lights bookstore in San Francisco is sixty years old this year. They’re having a lot of celebratory events to mark the birthday. Even without the past decade’s steady and precipitous decline in the fortunes of independent bookstores, City Lights’ survival and thriving is literally extraordinary. Started as a paperback bookshop by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and partners, it expanded to sell all manner of reading material and became a locus of the fledgling Beat literary movement and much more. Ferlinghetti, having earned a doctorate from the Sorbonne in post-WWII Paris before returning to the United States, was no literary lightweight, and from the start stocked his inventory with works of deep political, philosophical and cultural significance.

But the Beats brought City Lights into the international limelight after Ferlinghetti heard a young Allen Ginsberg read his new poem “Howl” in San Francisco in 1955, convinced Ginsberg to let him publish the poem in the then-new City Lights publishing imprint, and was soon the center of a landmark censorship case after United States customs agents seized copies of the little book and local police arrested Ferlinghetti and another City Lights staffer for selling the “obscene” work. The Howl trial made headline news and put one more nail into the coffin of censorship, after the ACLU and renowned San Francisco attorney Jake Ehrlich successfully defended the book (while Ginsberg was already confessing to Ferlinghetti “To tell you the truth I am already embarrassed by half of it”). Fifty years later, Ferlinghetti wrote of Ginsberg “his insurgent voice is needed more than ever, in this time of rampant materialism, militarism, nationalism, and omnivorous corporate monoculture eating up the world.”

But what of Ferlinghetti’s own “insurgent voice”? He has published many books of poetry himself, and much more, over the past six decades, has been official poet laureate of San Francisco, received numerous awards both literary and civic, had his paintings widely exhibited and printed and, over 90 years of age, is about as famous as a poet can be in these times. A few years ago, he published via City Lights press, of course — a little pocket hardcover work titled, in fact, Poetry as Insurgent Art. It’s featured on the front counter at City Lights bookstore during this 60th birthday year as a sort of talisman of the shop’s existence. The book is his relatively succent answer to the question, Can Poetry Matter?

More than 50 years ago, renowned American poet William Carlos Williams wrote famously that “It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every day/for lack of what is found there.” Williams was no slacking beatnik. A practical man who was not only a poet but also a practicing physician, Williams’ lines are usually read to imply that poetry — good poetry, at least — is essential to one’s inner life and spirit. In the cultural doldrums of the early 1950s, that rang true for many people.

“Poetry can save the world by transforming consciousness,” Ferlinghetti argues in “Poetry as Insurgent Art.” He wrote this book for anybody who might listen, it seems, but especially for those who might be poets. “I am signaling you through the flames. The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.” Poetry, in this vision, must be a political statement, arrows slung for freedom of expression, thought and resistance. “Write living newspapers,” he counsels. “Your poems must be more than want ads for broken hearts” — in other words, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, to write mere “love poetry” in such times is “almost a crime.” So “challenge capitalism masquerading as democracy”; “Liberate have-nots and enrage despots”; “Don’t cater to the Middle Mind of America nor to consumer society.” And so on, in variations of his admonition to “be committed to something outside yourself.”

To be sure, this is a tall order for poetry — or any form of writing. But the six or seven (mostly) one-liners on each of the 30 pages of the section giving his book its name are testament to Ferlinghetti’s enduring vision and commitment. Some of these lines read as if they could have been penned in the Beat heyday, over half a century ago: “Stand up for the stupid and crazy”; “Dig folksingers who are the true singing poets of yesterday and today.” Political economy, down-home mysticisms, and occasional cringe-worthy silliness (“Make permanent waves, and not just on the heads of stylish women”) all blend into his own version of Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet.” Thus, poets should “see eternity in the eyes of animals,” but not “be too arcane for the man in the street.” Ferlinghetti can be self-deprecating: “Don’t lecture like this. Don’t say don’t.” But he is also dead serious: “Don’t let them tell you poetry is bullshit” and, especially, “Don’t ever believe poetry is irrelevant in dark times.” Indeed, as Williams would probably agree, in dark times and in this vision, poetry becomes even more essential.

The second major section of the book, “What Is Poetry?,” was started by Ferlinghetti in the late 1950s; here he provides backup for his argument for the importance of poetry, and that “life lived with poetry in mind is itself an art.” Here, the “political” reverts — somewhat — to the personal, as “poetry is the shortest distance between two humans,” is “the anarchy of the senses making sense”; and “it is a pulsing fragment of the inner life, an untethered music” which “restores wonder and innocence.”

Again, a lofty charge, but many have believed it, and some, such as Ferlinghetti, have lived it — even though, as he acidly quips (echoing Ginsberg’s famed opening lines to “Howl”) in “The Populist Manifesto” appended here, “We have seen the best minds of our generation/destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.” Many would-be appreciators of poetry can probably relate. To paraphrase Mother Goose, When poetry is good, it can be very very good; when it’s not, it can be horrid.

City Lights still hosts lots of author readings, not only of poetry but of every kind of new work, as long at it is not fluff. It remains an incredible resource, carrying works from around the world that are hard to find in other stores. The entire upstairs room is devoted to, yes, poetry; the two floors below are stuffed with a world of everything else in or out of print. There is still a little mail drop where people can write each other care of the shop or leave messages, a real anachronism in this digital age (but the store does have the following wonderful sign on display: “Stash your sell phone and be here now”). The store is a must-see stop on many San Francisco tourist itineraries and there are very good eateries nearby in North Beach and Chinatown — the little “Jack Kerouac alley” next to the store is a semi-official gateway between the two neighborhoods — and even better bars even closer. If you are lucky you might see Ferlinghetti himself ambling about.

Hopefully, many such tourists and other visitors will succumb to the impulse to buy Ferlinghetti’s impassioned, compact and concise little book from the shop’s counter, and actually read it. As for the man himself, long may he add to his poetic warning therein: “Wake up, the world’s on fire!”

This township is located in the Coast Range, almost all in and embracing the whole of the watershed of the Navarro River and a small portion of the headwaters of Dry Creek. It is 30 miles in length with a breadth varying from 8-20 miles. The arable land at present under cultivation nowhere exceeds more than a mile and for the most part only half a mile in width. Much more could be cultivated but so far has been deemed more valuable for pasture than for the plow. The southern part of the township is detached from the northern part because the main branch of the river, Rancheria Creek, has no bottomland speak of for some miles of its course opposite Boonville but further south on its extreme headwaters it again affords some tillable land. The Valley soil is a rich wash loam immediately along the creek bottoms. The bench lands are either black clover land or gravelly loam, while the pasture lands proper on the hills partake of the nature of both the last mentioned soils while the chemissal and brush lands are generally rocky and sterile. Exceptions in these latter may be found where the soil is a rich red volcanic debris that makes the best orchard and vineyard land.

DON’T FORGET next Tuesday evening’s (July 30th) community meeting at the Boonville Fairgrounds, 6pm, where Rasta Fest 2013, among other matters, will be critiqued.

A VISIT from Robert Kraft is always a “learning experience,” as the edu-crats might say. Locals will remember Robert from his years as the Triple A guy who appeared at our all hours emergencies of the vehicular type. He now lives in Bandon, Oregon. The guy’s a natural born archivist. Every time I’ve seen him over the years he’s given me, or shown me, something of historical interest. On this trip, Robert and his daughter Alicia appeared in our office with a disk containing several recordings of national television shows that featured The Valley’s famous Boontling speakers, a valuable bit of local history which, thanks to Mr. Kraft, will now be available to all of us just as soon as I get it down to the Little Red School House Museum.

WILL PARRISH is being charged with 16 misdemeanors. His maximum jail sentence is eight years. Get guidance on writing to DA Eyster in support of this most admirable young man by clicking on the link below. Local attorney Omar Figueroa is representing Will pro-bono. DA Eyster had charged Will with three identical infractions, meaning Will would be ineligible for a jury trial where he could argue his case to other members of the public. Supporters suspect this move was aimed to exclude such a trial. Will intends to take the case to jury and, for that reason, was looking for the charges to be elevated to misdemeanors. The judge stated that he wasn’t aware of any statutes allowing this to occur, but defense attorney Omar Figueroa was ready with case law supporting Will’s right to a jury trial. Eyster, who seems to be taking a personal interest in the case, said that he had already found charges that would be mutually agreeable. Then Eyster said that he would be filing different charges now that they need to be misdemeanors. More than simply re-filing the case charging Will with misdemeanors, Eyster decided to throw the book at the locally well-known journalist and activist —16 misdemeanors, which include a separate charge of “Unlawful Entry” for every day he was on the wick drain derrick, meaning a potential maximum sentence of eight years. Will opted to maintain his right to a speedy trial, meaning as of now there will be a quick turnaround in the case. Will’s Court Schedule: July 24th, Pre-trial conference; Aug 1st, “Motion in limine”; Aug 5th, Jury trial begins at 9am. (The trial date, we understand has been put over until September.) Stay tuned.

YOU DON’T KNOW RALPH

Editor,

Any time the name ‘Ralph Nader’ comes up, it is sure to stir controversy. It is like waving a red flag in front of the Democrats.