Greetings one and all. if you are sitting comfortably then I shall begin. There are a number of things going on in the Valley in the next week or so and therefore I thought we should start with the P.S.A.’s. Glad you agree.

Dear Editor:

My name is Kathy Corral and I am the former Manager of the Dental Clinic at Anderson Valley Health Center. Due to an Executive Management and Board of Directors’ decision my position was eliminated on July 26, 2013. I did not have any notice regarding this change therefore I was unable to thank the people of Anderson Valley for the last eleven years. I want everyone to know that I am so thankful for having the pleasure and privilege of serving you and your dental needs.

I will miss you all.

Most Sincerely,

Kathy Corral

Boonville

* * *

Open letter to the Anderson Valley community and the Board of Directors of AVHC

Board of Directors Anderson Valley Health Center, 13500 Airport Road Boonville, CA 95415.

Dear Board Members,

I understand that Anderson Valley Health Center is once again struggling financially because the Bureau of Primary Health Care renewed the Federal Grant for a single year rather than the usual multi-year renewal. I was hoping that once AVHC received federal funding survival would be a past not present concern.

I was stunned to learn that Kathy Corral, Dental Program Manager at AVHC, was precipitously “let go” due to the financial situation. Kathy single-handedly shepherded the dental program since it began in 2002. Without her knowledge of all aspects of dental, AVHC would not have had a viable service. Since its inception Kathy was involved in all aspects customer service, billing, scheduling of patients and staff, hiring and supervision of staff, ordering of dental supplies and equipment, working with dental labs and writing policies and procedures. Without her able assistance, I, as the Executive Director would not have been able to establish a successful program.

I know that Kathy did nothing wrong, but firing her without warning at the end of the day on a Friday and taking her keys and escorting her out the door in front of staff and patients seems extreme. I know that this is the “corporate way,” but AVHC is part of a caring community and is kind to the people who live and work in that community. I also understand that the Medical Director, Mark Apfel, who is responsible for the quality of all service at AVHC, was neither consulted nor informed of the Board of Director’s decision about Kathy.

The list of Core Values for the health center states, “The staff of AVHC is one of our most valuable assets.”

I care deeply about the Health Center. I want to see it survive and thrive. I know that can be a challenge! I hope the community is actively involved in the health center becoming the outstanding health care venue that it is capable of being.

Sincerely,

Judith Dolan, AVHC Executive Director (2000-2011)

Boonville

* * *

THE SUDDEN dismissal of long-time AV Health Center’s Kathy Corral was carried out in such an indefensibly brutal fashion it has shocked us all. Here’s a lady who served for 11 years in the Center’s thriving dental adjunct, was instrumental in founding it in fact, and suddenly, at the end of a work day Friday, with no notice it was her last, Ms. Corral’s office keys are taken from her and she’s marched out the door like a criminal in front of fellow workers and patients. Wow! Even by the dependably crumb bum standards of Anderson Valley’s Nice People, this treatment of Ms. Corral is low down. According to Judith Dolan’s statement on this grim episode, Mark Apfel, who has overall responsibility for the medico-dental functioning of the place, was not aware that Ms. Corral had been laid off.

THE HEALTH CENTER’S board of directors: Ric Bonner; JR Collins; Wally Hopkins; Eric Labowitz; Yadira Mendoza; Sandy Parker; Lynne Sawyer; Gaile Wakeman. Administrators are Diane Agee and Dave Turner.

Dearest Editor,

Tonto and QueNoSabe (or QuienNoSabe) called each other names. One called one “QueNoSabe” (or “QuienNoSabe”), which means “One Who Doesn’t Know”, in Spanish, and the other one called the other one “Tonto”, which means “Dumb” or “Dummy”, in Spanish. It makes sense.

Tonta

Fort Bragg

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SIMPLE, WITH LOTS OF HELP

Letter to the Editor,

Thank you for your kind words in the AVA in regards to last week’s Not-So-Simple Living Fair. Although we have not done our final tally, it appears as though this year’s event was an even greater success than last year’s. More people showed up to learn important skills, share hard earned knowledge and enjoy a community based on common interest.

Like all good things, this event is not at all simple to organize and put on, and I really only had a small hand in it’s success. I’d like to mention and thank all the other organizers who dedicated so much time and personal resources to this year’s fair. First and foremost, I’d like to thank Cindy Wilder our lead organizer who put in so much time and held so many important roles throughout the year. If it weren’t for her ability to multitask so very gracefully, I don’t know if the event would have happened at all. And from the first generation of Not-So-Simple Fair organizers, Linda MacElwee and Sophia Bates who wrangled presenters and Diane Paget who kept the creative reuse area going, all while continuing to hold the original vision. There were many people who were drawn into the the organizing committee over the last three years; Brent Levin who facilitated the many meetings, Ryan O’Corrigan who gathered entertainments and took over for Captain Rainbow in his absence, Kate Castagnola who wrangled all the volunteers, Lynda McClure and Jenny Burnstad who secured the event and the gates, Vicki Moss who ran the best pot luck ever, Rainbow Hill and Alice Woelfe-Erksine who gathered all the food and craft vendors, Jini Reynolds who lent her years of event organizing experience to our meetings as well as the beautiful hospitality room, Tamekia Brown who put together the kids area with advice from Deleh Mayne, Barbara Lamb who oversaw the kitchen with all it’s various classes, and Rose Flanigan who kept our social media up to date.

Not on the organizing committee, but without whom the event would have been so much less, Lori Lee for assisting Cindy with the fantastic and constantly changing website, Torrey Douglas for the brochure with it’s last minute changes, and Via Keller for posters so beautiful we kept having to replace the ones folks kept taking home.

There were also many fantastic volunteers who dedicated so much time and put so much thoughtfull attention into the running of the event. Thank you all for another wonderful Not-So-Simple Living Fair. On behalf of the organizing committee, I look forward to seeing you all next year,

Julie Liebenbaum

Boonville

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EVEN BARCLAYS?

Editor,

Money grubbers beware:

It’s not bad enough we have our own greedy and manipulative banks gaming the capitalist system, most notably the Bank of America and JP Morgan-Chase. Now it’s revealed that Barclays, the English icon, was in on the power scam that built Californians out of millions a few years back. Our staunch ally, Britain. Who needs enemies?

Fool on the Hill

Eureka

PS. Is it the canary in the coal mine gasping for breath that Bank of America is closing shop in McKinleyville and Eureka?

PPS. Too big to fail — right!

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THE CAGE

To my clinician:

“The Majestic Beast”

Dr., Each day you enter here at the belly of the beast and walk the grounds of the hidden university. You witness a first hand account of all the anguish, agony and suffering — behind the eyes of so many men whose spirits have been broken due to psychosis from childhood traumas that go unspoken and even though we all act tough acting off of different haunches, even gangsters cry out too at night sometimes due to a guilty conscience. Have you ever gone to the zoo and stood before the cage of an untamed beast in a frustrated rage? And found yourself craving that human urge to want to reach out and touch? But just as you attempt it, it struck out at you just as you expected such. I am that uncivilized savage majestic beast, caught up in a cage without a release. You don’t even know I exist. But as a creature of God’s creation, I am too just like you deserving of love from the abyss.

Ken Crawford D-55689

PO Box 1050

Soledad CA 93960

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THAT’S HER!

Editor,

Devil Girl? You mean the Creole sex goddess with the big firm booty and the giant hard knockers and the foot long tongue? The Devil Girl that made hash out of Mr. Natural and Flakey Foont? As drawn by the demented lust-freak, R. Crumb, who sits atop a pile of battered women in HUP #3, dangling his dong into an unconscious mouth? Why–why–this is pornography, Mein Redaktor!! Your duty is clear! Wrap up this Evil Portrait and mail it to me immediately!!

Yrs,

Jay Williamson

Santa Rosa

ED NOTE: Crumb is a great artist, and Devil Girl, in all Crumb’s renditions of her, is a work of art.

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BOOZE VS. HEROES

Editor,

Loose Booze in Mendocino County.

I was moved in a fashion from the beginning of time to have adoration for our Public Health Department for allowing love and concern they so preciously have and keep for our community now as well as for our future community. There’s something special about those who have been gifted to care for the public’s health. How important is the need of care and love for a people as as a whole which makes up a community? Extremely important! Just as important as it is for that same level of intense care and love to be woven in our police department which works 24 hours around the clock making sure that our community is a public safe environment; or our fire department which is on call 24/7 to make sure we as a community don’t burn in hell. Can’t forget our ambulance and the membership program. They show the same care and love through their donations which helps support our community along with CalStar and Reach. All those who lend their talents and abilities to the aid of our community right here where we all live in unison are qualified as “health and safety” needed heroes. What’s more life-sustaining than this?

So lets face it! All of our needed and accepted heroes need funding to help make sure we can live a life filled with “health and safety” which is a daily need. Plus our community happens to be in a time of hunger and suffering! We are hungry for change and suffering because of the lack of funding to help needed change to take place. Think about it. Can you imagine a mother telling her child who is hungry that “Dad isn’t going to give her enough money to shop for food”? No! Of course not! But if it happens the innocent child suffers and so do the heroes and the community if the heroes can’t seem to get the support from those who hold the wallets and purses of funds. Make no mistake about it. I believe that we as a community are in the Reagan Times which is “war on drugs” and other lifestyles that roll parallel with it!

I do take my hat off to Supervisor Pinches who said “the Public Health Department should spend more time in grammar schools.” Although the second part of his statement, “and less time worrying about booze outlets,” I totally disagree with.

Here’s are a few things that I feel compelled to share on the statements.

Who do our children listen to first and the most? Their parents or their guardians.

Whose words are next to the gospel when it comes to her children? The parent or guardian.

Prevention in schools in the form of programs is always a plus! It lends a hand in helping our children’s thought processes. Although no one on earth has a much more influential effect on our children’s “executive functioning skills” than the parent or guardian.

My point? Approving more funding for our heroes who worry about the effect of booze outlets or placing funds in campaign ads for booze prevention is extremely needed. Our reality here is that there’s a huge percentage of parents who spend their grocery money at these booze outlets who will then sit back and tell their children to hurry and get dressed for school so the Public Health Department can teach you how not to be like me!

Those in a position of handling funds for community, please listen. This is in words, but in live action reality out boozing adult behavior in the homes is before the hour school where the strongest and biggest influences on the children are born. So by approving more funding to the Public Health Department supporting our needed heroes to go after the booze outlets, not only will we hit the nail on the head but we will build a stronger family structure which in turn and hope will give us a booze-free healthy and safe community.

My fellow Mendonites remember: if we as a community don’t come together and stand for something right, then we will stand a chance of being separated to fall for something wrong.

Raoul Taylor

Redwood Valley

PS. Mendonites: P.U.S.H. — Pray Until Something Happens.

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SUPPORT KMEC

Dear Friends,

The Mendocino Environmental Center recently hosted a community radio forum with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and several local organizations. You can listen to the full two-hour show by clicking here.

We discussed who we are, how we can work better together, and how we can better engage the public. All who attended and listened found it very inspiring. To support the work of the Center and it radio station, KMEC 105.1 FM, please become a member. For regular membership, send a check for $35 to Mendocino Environmental Center, 106 West Standley Street, Ukiah, CA 95482. Your check is sufficient for membership if it includes your address and contact information. Thank you very much for your interest and support.

Dennis O’Brien

Ukiah

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ESCAPE FROM ITALY

Comrades,

We assembled our mob. They have beaten and disfigured the already dead “look-alikes.” They are already hanging by their heels. Their own mothers couldn’t recognize them. Your tri-engine plane is ready for the flight to Catalonia from Spain, one of our last long-distance submarines will take you to Argentina. In Argentina your loyal friend Stefani has arranged immediate cosmetic surgery. You will then disappear, disguised as an Italian-Jewish refugee. The major players have been well compensated and threatened. Twenty years of service have earned you a clear place in the sun.

Viva la Duce — Graziani.

PS. Stranger than fiction. The corpse identified as Mussolini had no sign of stomach ulcers. A medical condition he suffered from. The entire population was well aware of this ailment.

Captain Fathom

Albion

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NO CHOICES LEFT

Editor,

The Trend in America –

The trend is to criminalize homelessness. The big cities have passed all sorts of laws designed to persecute those who live on the streets. They can’t beg, can’t sleep on a bench, can’t camp under a bridge, can’t store personal items in a public park, can’t sit on a sidewalk, can’t eat in public. Many of these have been as struck down by the courts. Some attorneys have done some work convincing federal judges that the bad laws infringe on First Amendment rights. So the cities selectively enforce general laws such as loitering, vagrancy, public drunkenness. They target the homeless but a guy with a nice suit gets drunk in a bar and pees in an alley — no big deal. The homeless guy pees in the same alley and is he is arrested for urinating in public.

Sweeps are common. What are sweeps?, you might ask. Sweeps target one area of the city. Shovel off all the homeless and dump them somewhere else. Atlanta did this just before the Olympic Games. They couldn’t have poor people begging and sleeping on the park benches with the world watching. So they sent the shock troops to eliminate the problem. Then they bragged about how pretty the city was. Where did they put the homeless? Well, they didn’t take them to shelters that’s for sure. Why? Because they don’t have any. They moved them around, dumping them in other parts of the city.

I’m not saying this would happen in Ukiah. But remember, everybody has to be somewhere, but the homeless have no alternatives. If you’re hungry, you will beg or steal for food. If you’re tired, you will sleep wherever you can. If you’re homeless, you have to live somewhere. Do the homeless get arrested then?, you might ask. Yes, every day, it’s stupid public policy.

Take me, C. Philip Lopez, and other people living on the streets in and out of the Buddy Eller Shelter. I’m on SSI. I was and still am on probation trying my best to step up and become self-sufficient. I went to the program they required. I finished the program for probation. It took me a year longer than most because of my seizures. I have good days and bad days but I finished, so I thought, after having the seizure. I rode my bike across Ukiah when I should not have. I was not feeling good. Just because I have a probation officer I am looked at and accused of using speed. In three years I had not given one dirty test for anything.

Now I am sitting with 30 days in county jail losing my house that helped me pay my rent. So now I face going back to the streets and sleeping under a bridge. Do I want to be there? No. Can I get arrested for this? Yes. I am guilty because the City Council in its brilliance has made it a crime to be homeless. But everybody’s got to sleep somewhere. Now I’m in jail. I don’t have the money to get a good lawyer. I barely make it as it is and I’ve been taken from the one who loves me. People have stolen my property and taken advantage of my girlfriend. So now I have been kicked down another notch on top of being arrested, humiliated, fined, punished and I am supposed to see the error of my ways and go find a home. And get off the streets.

This happens in most of our cities all the time. Would I be better off in jail? You might say, No. If you haven’t been to jail lately, don’t go. Cops are not trained to deal with the homeless, especially the mentally ill and addicted homeless. The jails are overcrowded. The criminal justice system is a nightmare to begin with and persecuting the homeless only clogs it more.

Here is the stupid part: It costs 25% more per day to keep a person in jail than to provide shelter, food, transportation and counseling services. These of course would have a long-term benefit. These of course would make more sense and save 25%. And that doesn’t include the cost of arrests and processing.

Most of the cities are broke anyway, especially Ukiah. That’s why they’re closing shelters. Remember, they waste money making criminals out of the homeless. It seems up for litigation. Ukiah is spending more on legal fees than on building shelters for the homeless.

You have to love this country, one of the supposedly richest countries in the world can’t house its people, so they sleep out in the streets and panhandle on State Street and this upsets the sensitive Ukiahans. So they elect someone who promises to clean up the streets and he or she will get a blue ribbon from the city council to outlaw homelessness just like that: Can’t beg, can’t sit on the sidewalk, can’t be homeless. And they cut budgets like hell, close shelters and cut assistance and at the same time they spend a shitload paying Ukiah lawyers to defend them for trying to eliminate poor people.

C. Phillip Lopez

Ukiah

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WUZ UP WITH CRAIG

Editor,

It’s Crunch Time!

Warmest greetings of peace and love, Powerful spiritual currents are occurring in this darkest phase of the Kali Yuga, resulting in abominable social situations. A cloud burst mid-June in northern India washed away countless villages, bridges, and urban residences as the wall of water cascaded southward. Glacial melting, deforestation, and the moving of a Kali related goddess murti to accommodate a power project are all cited as factors in the devastation north of Rishikesh. Once again, global climate destabilization is recognized as the most critical environmental concern, and there are no ordinary effective solutions. Following the dissolution of the Washington DC Occupy protest encampment at Freedom Plaza last year, I returned to California, but was soon flown back by Veterans for Peace to help get additional media attention for their ongoing dissent. This led to my reuniting with members of the D.C. Occupy kitchen working group. We stayed at a house in Virginia, and co-wrote a play which is focused on the increase of global warming, and the failure of society and government to do anything intelligent in response to the crisis. The play is parked in my blog, several pages back, at ; it has not been performed publicly as of yet. I wrote countless poems of a mystical/radical nature, which were sent out and subsequently published…am happy that Earth First! and particularly Warrior Poets Society appreciated them…they’re on the blog too. Apparently the left wing in Washington D.C. didn’t value me enough to let me stay at the Peace House, and since the Catholic Worker Olive Branch House was turned into condominiums after the D.C. Metropolitan Police confiscated it, I had nowhere to live long term in the district, and therefore accepted a return airplane ticket to California in mid-December. Due to having given up my housing space in Cali before returning to Washington D.C., I returned homeless to Cali! Six months of homeless shelter hopping ensued, as I continued to be active with Berkeley Catholic Worker these past 23 years. I also spent countless hours doing advanced yoga sadhana at Ocean Beach, when not reading mystical texts at Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union Library. Last Thursday I boarded a Greyhound bus in Oakland, and traveled 3,000 miles to Pittsburgh, PA to again reunite with members of my D.C. Occupy kitchen working group. We are at a house in Mt. Lebanon, PA hosted by our friend Julie, who is sitting in a Pittsburgh jail, for letting postmodern America publicly know of her dissatisfaction with mindless materialism’s illegitimate authoritarian structures. As I sit in Julie’s backyard at a large glass-topped table, with a summer shade umbrella, sipping my organic chai tea, and automatically “writing down the bones” longhand in my marble covered standard student issue blank page composition booklet, I reconsider a proposal I made to the D.C. Occupy encampment at McPherson Square in January of 2012. My proposal is to create a caravan to circumambulate the beltway which goes around Washington D.C. The purpose is to neutralize the bogus energy which emits from within the beltway, which is negatively affecting the rest of world society, and irresponsibly contributing to a deteriorating global ecological situation. (This is aside from philosophical considerations, such as the stupidity of materialism in lieu of necessary individual spiritual progress, which itself is the whole purpose of taking human birth in the first place). I suggest creating a caravan featuring recitation of mantrams, performance of Vedic rituals, and related sacred art forms. And yes, your band on a flat bed truck is welcome, and I am open to other traditions and their ways being woven into this as well. The potential is vast! I am tonight sending this message out and I am very actively seeking others to do the beltway action. I want to establish permanent residency in the region, having obviously moved on from California after 40 years of front line radical environmental and peace & justice enlightened behavior. Following my bliss, Craig Louis Stehr Nota bene: I am accepting money, and don’t even think about giving me any insane left wing American shit, inferring that I am not being politically correct because I am asking for it. I need some dental work, and I am still interested in enjoying an adult social life at 63 years of age. Yo, that’s just the way it is right now. My current address:

Craig Louis Stehr, c/o Julie Diana,

903 Florida Ave., Mt. Lebanon, PA 15228-2016.

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THANKS FROM THE TOMPKINS

Editor,

The family of Robert Tompkins would like to extend heartfelt thanks to the volunteers and staff of the AV Fire Department, the AV Ambulance Service and REACH Helicopter for their professional and and timely response to the unexpected, tragic loss of my husband, Robert. The family would like to thank the Valley all the condolences, cards, phone calls and prayers during this difficult time.

Sincerely,

Shirley Tompkins and Family

Philo

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A PREVENTABLE TRAGEDY

Editor,

The story as I know it: Escalade, a large brown and white dog owned by a man named George who lives in Clearlake, disappeared from his yard. Strayed, picked up, stolen? George reported him stolen, made trips to various animal controls including two to the Ukiah shelter. It was said no one saw him until one officer said they all knew him and that he had been adopted out two weeks ago.

Legally, if a dog is unclaimed for a certain number of days and then adopted out, he/she is legally the property of the adopters. That is the legality of it. And of course, the tragedy is that if the dog is microchipped, then it has a much greater chance of being reunited with its person. I keep reading these wonderful stories of dogs and cats found thousands of miles away and identified through microchips. They are cheap now, $10 or $15.

The only hope for George to have his companion of ten years back is if the people who adopted Escalade give him back. He has offered to pay whatever they paid for him. That would be the morally correct action. No ifs, ands or buts about it. George and Escalade have a solid ten year relationship. Even if George was not a former Prisoner of War in Vietnam, even if he was just the guy on the corner, Escalade in every way (other than legally at this moment) is his dog.

This is not the first time a much loved dog has ended up at Animal Control and been adopted to another person or family and not returned to their person. It was a tragedy 10 years ago and it is a tragedy now. I know how quickly I become attached to some of the 300 foster dogs that I have had over the last 15 years. I know how a well loved dog can fit in another household easily. I also know how totally devastating it is to lose a dog to illness or old age. I do not know how these people can keep Escalade knowing how much George misses him. There are thousands of truly homeless dogs that need a good home. Escalade has a home.

Now, more time has gone by, Escalade and George, his rightful owner, have NOT been reunited! George made two trips to the shelter in Ukiah. The staff denied that any of them even remembered him being there. Then one of their officers walked in and said, “Oh yeah, we know that dog well. He was adopted two weeks ago.” Then “suddenly” the rest of the staff remembered him. I think they remembered him from the start, they just didn’t want to admit they knew anything.

I’m trying to help George get Escalade back. It is not George’s fault his baby was stolen from his property in Clearlake and abandoned in Ukiah. Now that the Ukiah shelter knows the dog was stolen it is their responsibility to get the dog back, or they are guilty of receiving and selling stolen property. George is even willing to refund the new adoptees the money back. This is more than wrong of the shelter to keep this man from his therapy dog, and his four legged son of 10 years. George has had to start counseling through the Veteran’s Administration because he is so upset. If any of you would like to call and complain to the shelter about this, their number is (707) 463-4427. This will be a voice mail more than likely, and please be polite about your complaint because we are still attempting to get Escalade back to George, and do not want to make the shelter angry.

Their Facebook page is

www.facebook.com/mendocino.animal.

Eliza Wingate

Upper Lake

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TULSA TO TOKIN’ & TIM

Editor,

Dr. Doo’s humorous cartoon depicts me, a tokin’ female with a joint, and the caption, “Why does Pebbles Trippet love baseball — she’ll tell you she likes any sport she can play on grass.” (AVA 7/31/13)

Fred nailed it! That’s an astute explanation of why this thing called Major League Baseball has a hold on me. Baseball has a calm pace; weed calms you down. They are both slow lane kinds of things and they mesh when done together.

Having grown up in Tulsa Oklahoma under the umbrella of the Tulsa Oilers, I learned the rules and got the hang of the game by keeping a meticulous scorecard and rooting for the home team. My Dad took me with him and I got used to him yelling incomprehensibles when something went wrong. He turned me on to baseball as well as how to drive a stick shift car and for those early lessons I am grateful. I also played catcher in grade school, a little standing broad jump, swimming, diving and ping-pong. But the only sport that has continued to matter is major league baseball.

The first team I cared about was the underdog insurgent 1969 New York Mets who took the world by storm, moving from last to first, winning the World Series and proving the old adage, “The Last Shall Be First.”

I remember marching in a massive anti-war demonstration in Boston, carrying a dinky little portable radio listening to the Mets win the World Series as we marched and chanted against the Vietnam War and the Draft. I didn’t have to choose between marching for peace and cheering for the underdogs as they won the World Series.

After that, I lost interest for 40 years til the SF Giants caught my attention, after the demise of the bloated Barry Bonds big ball showboat era. Out of the superstar void arose a grassroots team of freaks, oddities and misfits with heart and talent and a knack for pulling together. “Fear the Beard” was the clarion call of bushy closers Romo and Wilson along with two-time MVP ace Timmy the hippy with long hair.

‘Torture” was the emotional theme, walking the tight wire of multiple elimination games, winning every one with small ball. From the smooth savvy announcers and down home manager to the can-do spirit of the P players — Pence, Posey, Panda — to Romo’s t-shirt of the decade, “I only look illegal.” The SF Giants are an extended family encompassing millions, starting with a melting pot of folks at the core who get along and immensely enjoy what they’re doing. Oh, that’s the other reason I love baseball. I like to see men get emotional.

Pebbles Trippet

Elk

PS. If I were to guess why the giants have lost their edge, it’s because their three big superstar pitchers — Lincecum, Cain and Zito — were rewarded too early with multi-year outsize contracts and learned they could coast instead of scrap. As Lincecum once said about his own rise within MLB, “It was too easy.”

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THE PUBLIC BANKING CHARTER

Dear Editor,

In February 2011 Occupy Mendocino and Occupy Ukiah wrapped crime scene tape around the front of the Mendocino County Offices in Ukiah. We were carrying signs showing fraud in the Clerk/Assessor/Recorder’s office and got the attention of the Supervisors. We spoke at their next meeting informing them of fraud in foreclosure documents recorded in the Assessor’s office. Occupy informed the BOS that the San Francisco Assessor, Phil Ting, had an audit of 400 foreclosure documents and found 80% of them had errors denoting fraud. We delivered 500 signatures on a petition for funding an Audit to the Mendocino BOS and have yet to hear of a response.

We informed the supervisors of the action taken by the State legislature of Nevada which required Assessors to send Affidavits of Authenticity to banks and entities sending foreclosure documents to be recorded. In the first month of enactment, the rate of foreclosures dropped by 75% in Nevada.

Now two years since we occupied the Supervisors offices with crime scene tape, we have been urging Susan Rannochak, Assessor/Recorder with a petition asking her to send Affidavits of Authenticity with CA Penal code 115, requiring true signatures of foreclosure documents to be recorded. No action was taken to stop fraud by the Recorder Susan Ranochak. She simply records all foreclosure documents, even those not paying transfer fees and those stamped with MERS,(Mortgage Electronic Registration System) having no chain of title. This is destroying the integrity of land title and property records in our county.

In January 2013 Occupy Mendocino urged the Board of Supervisors to apply for a Public Bank license and to use Eminent Domain to take contracts of foreclosed properties, reevaluate them to market value and direct mortgage payments to the county, creating a revenue stream and keeping revenues local.

Supervisor Dan Hamburg has been interested and charged Occupy to come up with a proposal. He attended the Public Banking Institute Conference in June along with nine others from Mendocino County, including John Sakowicz. Occupy Mendocino has begun writing a draft Mendocino County Charter with a Public Bank to continue efforts to stop foreclosures using Eminent Domain and we are dismayed at the lack of interest from some of the Supervisors, while already the City of Richmond has begun using Eminent Domain on occupied foreclosures with notices of default. Richmond as well as San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland are Charter Cities, this enables them to capitalize a bank with the help of their treasurer. San Francisco is also a Charter County. Their lawyer has found that a Charter county has more sovereignty than general law counties or cities.

We are asking individual Supervisors in this county to meet with us to acquaint themselves with our proposed Charter. We would be willing to amend the draft in response to them. When will the supervisors take action to meet with public banking chapter members to discuss the draft Charter for Mendocino County?

Sincerely,

Agnes Woolsey

Mendocino

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CALL ME COMRADE, PLEASE, PHIL

Bruce, Bruce, Bruce,

Know I often laud you as a vital news and muckraking source in our County. However, your recent Off the Record coverage of Ukiah City Council is heavily laden with disinformation. Not sure who your source is for such anti-Ukiah AVA propaganda but it’s unlikely this provocateur resides in our city. Do you and the Maj actually watch the Council meeting videos in absentia or are you relying on Star Chamber Sakowicz to supply the dirt? Lately, he’s been on an irrational vendetta against the City.

It’s time to counter the disinformation campaign being waged by a few individuals who don’t live in the City of Ukiah.

The argument you repeat that the “City was changing its position” in December about sharing all new revenue 50%-50% is total bullshit. Cities rarely take positions but we might accurately use that phrase after a majority vote is taken by a City Council. Come on man, you’ve got to know that a two-person City committee can never speak for the City when the Council majority has not made its position clear by formal vote. Never happened with this dubious proposal.

Well Bruce, OK, the last note above is only accurate in reference to the last seven years. The City has entered no agreement and has taken no vote on a sharing formula since 2007. However, few involved in the current anti-City disinformation campaign know or want to admit that the City did take a vote — a unanimous vote — to endorse a sharing formula on November 27, 2006. Now get this — on the recommendation of current 2nd District Supervisor John McCowen (then Councilmember) and Mayor Phil Ashiku, that unanimous vote by the Ukiah City Council supported for “the selected area” a 65% City—35% County sharing of new revenue out of the City’s piddly 9¢ on each sales tax dollar. As this is the only tax sharing formula position the “City” has ever taken, it would clearly be a change of mind if the “City” were to move to endorse the 50%-50% concept.

The AVA’s failure to find and mention these facts surely harms your journal’s credibility. I’m concerned you’ve been relying so heavily on questionable, non resident sources.

And give us a #$%$&^& break about a meeting of two Supervisors, two Councilmembers and a bunch of powerful (i.e. high paid) staff on December 17. At the recent City Council workshop on tax sharing, CEO Angelo ripped the City for changing its position, yet we’ve already shown this to be a bogus claim. It was as if County leaders thought this December 17 meeting was some kind of “smoking gun” that the “City” was not only not playing fair but had committed a sacrilege or terrorist act on that date. Flabbergasted by such nonsense, I then exclaimed something to this effect “What’s the big friggin’ deal about a meeting that got rather testy” because the financial analysis of the proposal caused the Councilmembers present to suggest alternatives.

AVA hero Angelo went on to argue the City’s financial analysis was “not based on real numbers” but, hey, the gracious County, the AVA reports, “was ready to come back to the table anyway.” For the record, the County has produced no financial analysis of any tax sharing proposal. All such analysis has been produced by City staff.

More importantly here is that all projections regarding the future sales tax revenue cannot be “real numbers” because they are projections into the future. Come on! The AVA is supposed to get this kind of stuff.

The star chamber’s John Sakowitz, again who frequently provides valuable, well researched reviews of local government, has lately been on the warpath against the City of Ukiah, which may make sense as he doesn’t live in the City. In attacking the City for dipping into reserves in order to maintain services provided by City staff, Sakowitz comes out for severe budget cuts which can only mean reduction in staff or staff salaries. Claiming in the AVA and the UDJ he implies that the City is on the verge of bankruptcy because we refuse to shaft our staff and curtail City services. Utter hogwash. The City of Ukiah now carries one of the most conservative budget reserves in the State of California, more than 35% of its expected expenditures for 2013-2014.

And even without the JS supported radical staff concession, we will end this fiscal year with a reserve of 25%, far above 70% of nearly all other California Cities. Bruce.

Yes, I realize much of this seems “mind numbing trivia” yet the community could use a wee bit more. After the November ’06 proposal for a 65% — 35% split adopted unanimously by the Ukiah City Council, including its sponsor John McCowen, Supervisor Mike Delbar “expressed his appreciation for the proposal” according to Council minutes of that meeting. Subsequent to that City decision the Board of Supervisors refused to recognize that draft agreement.

Then back to your sources — the reason a regular AVA reader will question yours or the Maj’s authorship of the Rip Ukiah series is the inclusion of such doublethink as “score one for the County at least in terms of credibility” and such elementary school syntax as “the County CEO and the County Counsel were well prepared with remarks that were to the point …”

What you should know and few Ukiah valley residents do know is that under State mandate City of Ukiah sales taxes are already shared. Yes, the current sharing of the sales tax dollar collected in Ukiah shows these takes: State of California 52 cents, County of Mendocino 30 cents, City of Ukiah 15 cents, Education Protection 3 cents. Then of course you know that the lions share of property taxes for City of Ukiah property goes, after the schools’ take, to the County of Mendocino.

Yes, indeed, the City of has resisted “jumping off the cliff” with the County and has approached this sharing agreement with utmost caution. Few know and those among County officials who do know seem not to want the community to know: no other city in California has entered an agreement to share all of its future new sales tax revenue or even future revenue from its new retail businesses. Yes, there are dozens of agreements in place but these involve specific sections of a city or new annexations. Those aware of the novelty being discussed should appreciate the caution being taken by City Councilmembers and staff.

We have been repeatedly warned by County officials, including the City’s own representative on that Board, John McCowen, that with only three votes the Masonite site can be transformed into a mega mall. Those paying attention know that any such action would fly in the face of the 70% county voter rejection of DDR’s Measure A several years ago. Dangerous to tell so many voters, most in Ukiah, that you’re ignoring their wishes.

Still I assert we can achieve a reasonable tax sharing agreement before the end of the year.

Phil Baldwin

Ukiah

The AVA responds: “Rip Ukiah”? Easy, Phil, some of our best friends live in Ukiah, a model of civic functioning under you and your colleagues. But as anyone who pays attention knows, Ms. Rodin, Polly Anna Landis, and Little Benj, don’t need help making themselves look silly, which they manage to do at nearly every meeting of the Ukiah City Council. And you get off some doozies yourself, Phil. But heck, even our infallibility has been challenged a few times. Ancient history aside, it seems clear that for the last several years there has been agreement on a 50-50 split of sales tax revenue by the City’s and the County’s ad hoc negotiators right up until the last meeting (the one the City participants conveniently can’t recall). And thanks for the basic civics lesson, but yes, we understand that an agreement is not final until it is voted on by a majority of both sides. But it reeks of bad faith when the people on one side abandon a long-held position without a clear showing of the need to do so. And as we understand the proposed agreement, it would only apply to future revenue that is currently up for grabs; that is, it is no more the City’s revenue than it is the County’s. The basic prob seems to be that the City Manager is unable to provide the leadership that would lead to a balanced Ukiah budget and is therefore unwilling to share any of the future sales tax revenue.

________________________________

OPEN LETTER TO ELIZABETH SWENSON

My Dear Elizabeth Swenson ––

I want to thank you for keeping Channel 3 on the air for a while, because the ARTS Showcase at least temporally gives me the illusion that my world is not going to hell in a hand basket!

I owe you an apology –– not that I’ve ever been actively related to the Footlighters or MCTV, other than being interviewed for Senior Perspectives and in news clips and having attended Footlighters’ performances. I apologize for the naivety exposed on October 8, 2009 in The Advocate Community Forum, in which in part I said:

“For half a century Footlighters Theater brought the coastal community a touch of down to earth family fun and in doing so earned our sincere thanks. So it was with confusion and sadness that I learned that in the name of Footlighters a lawsuit is pending against MCTV, our public access television station.”

Apparently there was some dispute among the members of Footlighters as to the gift offer of the Footlighters’ somewhat dilapidated building to the TV public access outlet. But as I wrote in 2009 :

“In my view, the Footlighters at the time took proper and responsible action. The reputation of the Footlighters was safeguarded, their deteriorating property brought back into use, while the quality of life for the entire community was enhanced by the strengthening of MCTV.  After transfer of ownership, MCTV substantially repaired the property, expending over $100,000 to do so.”

During the two years MCTV spent making structural repairs, Footlighters said nothing. Then a lawsuit –– against MCTV ! not vs Footlighters’ erstwhile President! Apparently absent any mutual discussions, in this action one could discern opportunism, even greed. I remarked then:

“It is difficult to see how destroying MCTV furthers the interests of the people dedicated to the Footlighters. We should focus our energies and creativity rather than let them be consumed by the destruction this lawsuit represents.”

As to my apology: When we chatted in 2009 I was mistakenly assuming good will and community respect would govern the matter of whether or not a law suit. I was in error and am sorry I was not more forthright in urging action.

In light of the current behavior of the remnants of Footlighters, the conflicts of interest shadowing the case, the persistence of misstatements of facts and misdirection by leaders of the Footlighters and their attorney, I should have been more direct in urging public and legal action. Now, I am puzzled why no appeal has been filed. To my mind, the very basis of the law suit was fragile, if non-existent.

The overwhelming reality is that we residents-citizens have been deprived of a vital community communication resource –– an important vehicle for helping to make government processes more visible, accountable, and accessible to our widespread residents.

Yes, we have newspapers and radio, and some of us have broadband computers –– but the loss of MCTV is seminal. For citizens to be able to see and recognize public officials –– and to realize they can speak up to them –– is a precious value. Access, participation and communication are critical to the very existence of our community and our democracy.

In my time I’ve seen many instances of incompetence and unfounded and arrogant assertions –– the McCarthy fiasco, for instance –– but this home-grown one is startling in its viciousness and absence of concern and respect for community needs and values.

Honestly, my personal inclination now in light of this revelation of ethical lapses and absence of community values is to remove myself from this environment. It’s only that being in my 97th year do I refrain from moving. Certainly today I’d not recommend anyone taking up residence or business on the Mendocino coast.

My dear Elizabeth, please remember that in shaping MCTV you achieved a marvelous turn-around against substantial odds. I honor and thank you!  Yes, I know you feel it was a team effort, that you had support –– enthusiastic often –– and the MCET-MCTV history will shine on, of that I am certain.

I must say, however, that I am acutely disappointed by the silence and invisibility of our community leadership who, by and large, have not stirred or expressed themselves. I am reminded of Edmund Burke’s comment:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good  men [ and women –– HE ] to do nothing.” With warm personal regards, I am

Howard Ennes

Fort Bragg

________________________________

RENT CLOSES SALOON, AGAIN

Dear Anderson Valley,

Shelly and I would like to tell all our friends, “Thank you” for the support we have received since reopening The Boonville Saloon. Unfortunately, we have to say, “Goodbye.”

It’s no secret why the bar was closed prior to our reopening in 2010. We are encountering the same issue. The rent has been raised to a level that we cannot meet. Our plan is to stay open until August 17th. If there were another location nearby we would give it a try, but that option has not presented itself.

This decision has been very difficult and we have prolonged it until now.

Once again, Thank you.

Shelly and Marcia

The Boonville Saloon

________________________________

REVISITING BASSLER

Dear AVA,

A few months ago, I read Allman and Spark’s hastily written how-to on catching a mentally ill killer, who also happened to be an excellent tracker and survivalist outwitting inner-city swat teams and police brigades by the hundreds in the Mendocino woods.

When I got to the part where Allman had just received news of the killing of Bassler and headed out Hwy 20 to the site, passing by, but not stopping to inform Bassler’s mother of his death, my heart ached with disappointment. Are the family of high profile killings by cop no longer informed by law enforcement when law enforcement has to act defensively in a mortal way in regards to a relative outside the law?

In this case such consideration was not given. Bassler’s family heard of his killing through the grapevine — not law enforcement. Natch Mom, conflicted and oblivious as she was, was not always forthcoming with information about knowledge of her son’s activities.

Instead Allman’s rendition sounded and felt like no victor vanquishing crime, but childishly hateful in intentionally NOT stopping to inform Bassler’s mother of her son’s killing. As though Allman had chosen in a very ugly way then, stooping to no better than her level, by matching her actions in choosing to not inform — like she did when dropping Bassler off with rifle in the location of Matt’s killing. Somehow, law enforcement is still supposed to be expected to take the higher moral ground, and failed at that last chance.

Many folks whom I’ve asked if they read the book, won’t even read it, and find it distasteful and opportunistic of Allman’s re-election bid, even if the money is donated to mental health blah, blah, blah.

Also in the book, why no mention of the extraneously unidentified burner/disposable cell phone call (the “hit” call) reporting Melo had been hit and was on the ground. A lot of folks hated Melo and the work that he did. It was creepy and weird then, that his body was left there overnight by law enforcement. That’s the strangest part of the whole story. Was it an assassination of Melo?

Law and lumber concerns about homeless vagrant campers numbering a small community (who also provided law enforcement with helpful witness information regarding meeting Bassler in those woods) were expensively rectified by the woodland sifting and dollars dedicated to Bassler’s highly expensive end.

Aaron Bassler kept trying to return to his mother’s home. Why didn’t law enforcement let him? Why could they not let Mom feed him one last time with laced food? Start with any one of several highly effective and expedient knock out drugs added to his mom’s food and let her feed him one last time.

Allman comes up for re-election. He’s starting to collect money for his campaign NOW. Can’t we get Tony Craver back? Recently Allman was asking for donations because the Sheriff’s Dept. is broke. After Allman’s been on whose side of how many pot confiscations — especially for those in his unsuccessful zip tie program? Pick another badge-man Mendocino!

Name Withheld

Fort Bragg

Ed reply: I know for a fact that both Basslers were kept fully informed throughout that awful series of events, and that Allman and Captain Smallcomb did everything they could to bring Bassler in alive. It was an unprecedented occurrence, and given that Bassler had committed two murders and seemed likely to commit more, law enforcement’s first priority had to be the safety of the wider community. Expecting the Sheriff to stop by the former Mrs. Bassler’s home to bring her the news of her son’s death seems wildly unreasonable to me in the circumstances. Melo was shot down doing his job managing a timber property, ordinarily not a capital offense. Drug people, many of them forever stalled in Blue Meanie mode, forget that at least half the population of this county do not assume the libertarian position on the drug issue. Allman is Sheriff of everyone while going to extraordinary and extraordinarily creative lengths to accommodate the pot brigades only to be overridden by federal authority, which is where the unreason on the entire drug question resides. He’s been a good Sheriff in a difficult time, and I think the book is an honest account of the Bassler affair, and a must read for anyone interested in local history.

(ED NOTE: Someone is bulk purchasing all available hard copy AVAs from our outlets in Ukiah, coincidentally the same issue which features the Peter Richardson marijuana case on the front page above the fold. Accordingly, we are posting that lead story here in Mendocino County Today for those who may have missed it due to Ukiah’s non-availability. We are looking into ways to replenish the Ukiah stock. Stay tuned.)

* * *

OH, THAT OLD GANG OF MINE

by Bruce McEwen

There are pot cases and there are pot cases, and here at ground zero Pot County we see them all, great and small. This one is big, as in big personalities, and its roots go back some.

Richardson

You’ve got Peter Richardson, a long, lean charismatic fellow who, it is widely assumed, parlayed a Covelo-based pot fortune into a construction company that came to be awarded large, local public building contracts. Years ago Richardson was close to former DA Susan Massini who, when she fired present DA David Eyster, had one of her investigators march Eyster, then an assistant DA, out of the Courthouse at gun point. Eyster’s crime? Not supporting Massini for re-election. There were rumors that Massini, beguiled by the tall man with the meticulous braid down his back, protected Richardson from this and that prosecution.

In the current chapter of The People vs. Peter Richardson, you’ve got the County’s legendary cop, Peter Hoyle, a lawman not friendly to the herb in a county where the herb is not only the primary industry but holy sacrament to at least half the population.

You’ve got Keith Faulder, a crack criminal defense attorney who’s gone from prosecuting pot cases as an Assistant DA under the late Norm Vroman to defending them.

And you’ve got Eyster, the Mendocino County District Attorney whose babyface good looks are movie-perfect as the righteous young prosecutor out to beat back evil.

All these people know each other, go back together in all sorts of odd ways. They probably know each other better than many families know each other.

The judge is Ann Moorman, a kind of den mother in this one. She knows all the players, too. Before she was elevated to the bench a couple of years ago, Ms. Moorman enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as one of the top defense attorneys in the County.

District Attorney Eyster handles many of the County’s marijuana cases himself. He’s implemented a strategy for dispatching pot cases that not only saves the taxpayers a lot of public money but even makes some money for local law enforcement. In exchange for misdemeanor pleas and fines, Eyster resolves the endless flow of marijuana cases before they clog up the courts.

Some cases do, however, go to trial, but none of them have yet pitted the DA against his old pal Faulder. This will be the first pot case Faulder has taken to jury trial — if it goes that far — since he won the big one for the legendary Laytonville-Leggett agro-outlaw, Matt Graves back when Meredith Lintott was DA.

Eyster vs. Faulder in front of Moorman co-starring Peter Richardson and Peter Hoyle.

Let’s get ready to rummmmmmmmmbllllle!

Faulder is recently back from climbing Mt. Everest and seems to be in fighting shape. At Richardson’s prelim last week Faulder came out swinging with an immediate motion to suppress statements Richardson made to Agent Hoyle at the time of the Richardson bust, saying it was a Fourth Amendment issue. DA Eyster responded to Faulder’s constitutional gambit by consulting his holy law book to cite legal scripture saying that any such motion should have been submitted in advance. Eyster went on to point out that the case had been postponed because of Richardson’s prostate cancer, and that Faulder had had plenty of time to get his motions in order.

Faulder countered that his motion was implicit in the Constitution, and therefore had more authority than the rules of court. He said Richardson’s statements to Hoyle were involuntary; Faulder said he wanted a special hearing to prove that they were involuntary.

Judge Moorman said a special hearing wasn’t neces­sary. “We’re going to go ahead. I want to see how this unfolds,” she said.

Faulder made another motion concerning the medical marijuana recommendations possessed by Richardson and his wife. Eyster said they too should have been sub­mitted in advance. Faulder snapped back that the DA already had them because law enforcement had seized them at the time of the bust.

Eyster made his own motion, that “judicial notice” be taken that the defendant was already on summary proba­tion for a prior marijuana-related offense when Hoyle and Company raided him again early this year.

On that interface between devil weed and the forces of law and order, Special Agent Hoyle of the Mendocino County Major Crimes Task Force had busted Mr. Richardson at his Sanel Drive home south of Ukiah on February 7th of this year.

Eyster: “Did you find any marijuana at that loca­tion?”

Hoyle: “Yes, I did.”

Eyster: “Let me show you some photographs. What is this a picture of?”

Hoyle: “It shows a portion of the basement, two rows of mature marijuana plants with lights suspended over them.”

Eyster: “And this photograph, People’s exhibit num­ber two?”

Hoyle: “More plants.”

Eyster: “People’s three?”

Hoyle: “More plants.”

Eyster: “Number four?”

Hoyle: “More immature plants.”

Eyster: “How many?”

Hoyle: “Over 200 immature plants.”

Eyster: “Did you find any pots?”

Hoyle: “Yes. In a detached garage there were 10 stacks of 20 five-gallon pots in each stack.”

Eyster: “Do you know anything about the grow lights used?”

Hoyle: “Yes. I was talking to a grower as recently as two days ago who told me that you can expect to get one pound per light, per cycle.”

Eyster: “How many lights did you find at the Richardson residence?”

Hoyle: “Nine high-intensity lights.”

Eyster: “Find any zip-ties?”

Hoyle: “You mean the Sheriff’s zip-ties?”

Eyster: “Yes.”

Hoyle: “No.”

Eyster: “How many plants all together?”

Hoyle: “354.”

Eyster: “Was there any processed marijuana?”

Hoyle: “Yes. Approximately two pounds.”

Eyster: “Did you reach any conclusion?”

Hoyle: “Yes. In my opinion, the majority of this mari­juana was for sale and a portion for personal use.”

Mr. Faulder rose to cross: “The number 354 — does that include the really small plants?”

Hoyle: “The number includes all the plants.”

Faulder: “As to the processed cannabis, was it all in one bag?”

Hoyle: “I believe it was in five separate bags.”

Faulder: “But some of it was old, wasn’t it?”

Hoyle: “I don’t recall.”

Faulder: “Did you find a scale?”

Hoyle: “I didn’t, no.”

Faulder: “Did you talk to the other officers in the Task Force?”

Hoyle: “Yes.”

Faulder: “Did any of them find a scale?”

Hoyle: “If they did, it wasn’t pointed out to me.”

Faulder: “Did any of you find any packaging materi­als?”

Hoyle: “That’s a loose term.”

Faulder: “Did you find any weapons?”

Hoyle: “I didn’t find any firearms.”

Faulder: “So there were no weapons?”

Hoyle: “You throw a wide net at me, counselor.”

Faulder: “I’m not trying to trick you, I promise, Agent Hoyle. What kinds of weapons are you talking about?”

Hoyle: “There were knives in the kitchen.”

Faulder: “And you consider kitchen knives weap­ons?”

Eyster: “Objection. Argumentative.”

This came rapid fire, with the DA jumping to his feet to confront Faulder. The court reporter watched warily as the lawyers’ cacophony of claims and counter-claims made it impossible for her take it all down.

Judge Moorman, in the voice of a playground moni­tor, “Alright! Alright, you two! Everyone just take a breath.”

Faulder: “But you didn’t find any evidence of a prior grow, did you?”

Hoyle: “That’s not correct.”

Faulder: “You found pots.”

Hoyle: “Yes.”

Faulder: “But wasn’t there extensive landscaping at the property?”

Hoyle: “What do you mean by that?”

Faulder: “By what?”

Hoyle: “Extensive.”

Faulder: “I’ll leave that to you.”

Hoyle: “There was shrubbery, things like that.”

Faulder: “Of the smaller, immature plants — were they rooted — did you personally inspect any of them?”

Hoyle: “What do you mean, ‘inspect’?”

Faulder: “Did you pull any of them out and look at the roots?”

Hoyle: “I may have been somewhat involved in that, but I don’t really recall.”

Faulder: “Many were clones — were they rooted?”

Hoyle: “I recall some were rooted.”

Faulder: “Did you take any photographs of them?”

Hoyle: “No.”

Faulder: “Yes, but you did take photos of the cut plants, isn’t that true?”

Hoyle: “I took photos of all the plants after they were cut down.”

Faulder: “So as you sit here today, you can’t testify that all those plants had roots?”

Hoyle: “No.”

Faulder: “That’s all I have.”

Special Agent Hoyle stepped down, but be on the lookout, pot pharmas, Hoyle knows who you are and just might get around to visiting you next.

The prosecution rested after the fast go round with Hoyle and Faulder.

Faulder called his first defense witness, Ms. Jeannie Louette McKay, wife of the defendant. Ms. McKay had been at work when the Task Force made the bust. She came home to find her house turned upside down and her husband in jail. There had been another heated argument between Eyster and Faulder regarding spousal privilege as to testifying, and Judge Moorman finally ruled that privilege would be waived if McKay took the stand. She did.

Faulder: “Do you have a doctor’s recommendation for medical marijuana?”

McKay: “Yes.”

Faulder: “So you were not there?”

McKay: “No.”

Faulder: “But your husband, Peter, has a doctor’s rec­ommendation for medical marijuana, as well, doesn’t he?”

McKay: “Yes.”

Faulder: “So something happened recently that neces­sitated your husband’s medical marijuana recom­mendation?”

McKay: “Yes. He was diagnosed with prostate can­cer in August of 2012.”

Faulder: “How did Peter then change the way he used cannabis?”

McKay then launched into a tentative narrative, responding to cues from Faulder, describing the latest vogue in medical marijuana use. “He got a Vita-Mix blender and a Champion juicer,” she said. “He started making canni-butter [no trade mark, yet, entrepreneurs!] fruit juices, and vegetable smoothies, using fresh canna­bis.”

Faulder: “Did you have anything to do with the mak­ing of these products?”

McKay: “No.”

Faulder: “”Did you have anything to do with the growing of the cannabis?”

McKay: “No.”

Faulder: “So, only Peter did the cultivation and prepa­ration of the juices and smoothies?”

McKay: “Yes.”

Faulder: “Did you drink it?”

McKay: “Yes. It was usually in the fridge.”

Faulder: “Did you smoke cannabis?”

McKay: “Occasionally, not often.”

Faulder: “Nothing further.”

Eyster for the prosecution.

“So, you were aware of a search warrant being served at your home?”

McKay: “I was told about it.”

Eyster: “Who told you?”

McKay: “Peter did.”

Eyster: “You were aware he was on probation?”

McKay: “Yes.”

Eyster: “You knew he wasn’t allowed to have more than 25 plants, weren’t you?”

McKay: “I don’t know…”

Eyster: “You know about the Sheriff’s zip-tie pro­gram?”

McKay: “I don’t know…”

Eyster: “But you work for the County, don’t you?”

Faulder: “Objection, relevance, your honor.”

Moorman: “Overruled.”

Eyster: “Where do you work”

McKay: “I work at Child Protective Services.”

Eyster: “Do you smoke marijuana?”

Faulder: “Objection, relevance.”

Moorman: “Overruled.”

Eyster: “So you do smoke marijuana?”

McKay: “Occasionally.”

Eyster: “How often?”

McKay: “Once every two days or so, but it depends. My job is very stressful.”

Eyster: “On average, in a month?”

McKay: “I don’t know?”

Eyster: “Do you ‘roll your own’?”

McKay: “No.”

Eyster: “Do you use a pipe?”

McKay: “Yes.

Eyster: “How much do you put in it?”

McKay: “I don’t know.”

Eyster: “Can you give me an estimate?”

McKay: “No.”

Eyster: “Do you know what a gram is?”

McKay: “No.”

Eyster: “Do you have any experience with cooking?”

McKay: “I think I made cookies once.”

Eyster: “Ever use measuring devices for cooking?”

McKay: “I don’t recall.”

Eyster: “Do you have measuring devices in your kitchen?”

McKay: “Yes.”

Eyster: “But you never use them?”

McKay: “No.”

Eyster: “How much marijuana do you put in your pipe?”

McKay: “A small amount.”

Eyster: “How small?”

McKay: “A pipeful.”

Eyster: “How big is the pipe?”

McKay: “I don’t know.”

Eyster: “You say you have measuring devices in your kitchen — do you know a teaspoon from a table­spoon?”

McKay: “Yes.”

Eyster: “Well, is the amount you use closer to a tea­spoon or a tablespoon?”

McKay: “I don’t know.”

Eyster: “How often, then?”

McKay: “I told you I don’t know!”

Faulder: “Objection, your honor, that’s been asked and answered.”

Moorman: “Overruled.”

McKay: “Occasionally.”

Eyster: “Four times a month?”

McKay: “Yes.”

Eyster seemed to be badgering the witness, but if Ms. McKay only smokes four grams in the course of a month, and hubbykins really only needs a little for his juicer, why 300 plants?

The DA launched a kind of Good Housekeeping line of culinary inquiry. He wanted to know how much of the fruit/pot juice, canni-butter and veggie/bud smoothies she and her husband consumed. Were they canni-vegans on cannibas diets?

Ms. McKay said she had nothing to do with the preparation of these pioneer medico-nutritional products and couldn’t say specifically what proportions the pot recipes called for.

Eyster: “So you didn’t make the canni-butter … Did your husband?”

McKay: “Yes.”

Eyster: “How do you know?”

McKay: “It wasn’t there, and there it was.”

(Canni-Butter!)

Eyster: “So you never saw him make it — did you see anything?”

McKay: “A crock of butter.”

(Get your Canni-Butter Crock Kit today! — only $19.95! Operators are standing by: Call 1-800-707-3016, now!)

Eyster: “On February 7^th was there any canni-butter in your home?

McKay: “I don’t know.”

Eyster: “Would the crock have been in the fridge or out?

McKay: “I don’t recall.”

Eyster: “How did you know the police had been in the house?”

Either the cops had been in the house or someone had majorly freaked out and threw everything this, that and every which way. But seriously, who else gets to kick your front door down, throw you on the floor, call you and your granma muthafuggas, and toss all your stuff around?

McKay: “I finally got a call that Peter had been taken to jail.”

Eyster: “But you understood it was an important event?”

McKay: “Yes.”

Eyster: “Did you know that the charge of ‘marijuana for sale’ was going to be an issue?”

Faulder: “Objection, relevance.”

Eyster: “I think it’s tangentially relevant, judge.”

Moorman: “Overruled.”

McKay: “I don’t know.”

Eyster: “What did you then do to make sure you had an understanding of the difference between marijuana for sale and marijuana for personal use?”

McKay: “Our house was trashed! I was in shock.”

Eyster: “Did you ever go into the basement and help with the cultivation?”

McKay: “No.”

Eyster: “Why not?”

McKay: “I worked!”

Eyster: “Had there been a bankruptcy in your house­hold?”

McKay: “Umm…”

Faulder: “Objection, relevance.”

Moorman: “What’s the relevance?”

Eyster: “Marijuana for sale.”

Moorman: “Overruled.”

Eyster: “So you knew there was a bankruptcy?”

McKay: “Yes.”

Eyster: “When?”

McKay: “I don’t know.”

Eyster: “Oh, please, Ms. McKay.”

Faulder: “Objection.”

Moorman: “Overruled.”

McKay: “Peter had been sick, losing lots of weight, the marijuana was a medicine…”

Eyster: “The question was were you aware of the bankruptcy and when.”

McKay: “I don’t take care of the finances!”

Eyster: “Are your finances separate?”

McKay: “We share in the expenses.”

Eyster: “What income did Peter have?”

McKay: “Property management and an antique motor­cycle business.”

(Ed note: The construction workers at the Water Trough, many of whom worked for Pete when he ran Rainbow Construction, say he bought Harleys and Indi­ans rather than pay his sub-contractors. The old gent who owns the Trough corroborates this — Pete built the big new Grace Hudson school right across the street — and all these guys drank in the Trough during the construction. Many, including Pete, still do. Also, Pete told me himself that there was no “profit” in these big projects, so he invested all his money in collectable bikes.)

Eyster: “Did you know the property he managed was the source of the marijuana cultivation offense he was on probation for?”

Faulder: “Objection.”

Moorman: “Sustained.”

Eyster: “Did you know there was a mortgage?”

Faulder: “Objection.”

Eyster: “I get to probe, judge.”

Faulder: “That’s irrelevant.”

Eyster: “Don’t argue with me, counsel.”

The two lawyers were standing toe-to-toe, arms folded on their chests, scowling at each other.

Moorman: “Okay, you two. I want a sidebar — right now!”

When lawyers get out of hand, and the proceedings seem likely to veer out of control, the judge calls a time out to “admonish” them to behave.

Her honor stomped down off the bench, robes billow­ing, and stamped her foot to show her impatience as the lawyers continued their stare-down standoff. Then they gave it up and went to the corner with the judge for a few words of …? We couldn’t hear what. But a long, heated discussion ensued and at times Judge Moorman had to put her hands between the two lawyers, the way referees in boxing matches separate heavyweights. When they came back, Eyster resumed his attack on Ms. McKay’s impenetrable stonewall.

Eyster: “What’s the mortgage payment?”

McKay: “I don’t know.”

Eyster: “What’s the utility bill?”

McKay: “I don’t know.”

Eyster: “I’ll have more questions for this witness later, judge.”

Moorman: “Redirect, Mr. Faulder.”

Faulder: “Yes, thank you, your honor. Ms. McKay, do you do the cooking in your home?”

McKay: “Yes, I do.”

Faulder: “But your husband takes care of all the can­nabis cultivation and preparation?”

McKay: “Yes. I don’t go in there.”

Faulder then started a back and forth with his witness that was so rapid-fire I couldn’t get it down. But it had to do with how “extraordinarily sick” Mr. Richardson has been, his weight loss, and how the cannabis seemed to help him cope with what may well be terminal illness.

Judge Moorman said, “Slow down, I can’t keep up, you’re talking over each other and my court reporter has to take all this down.”

The judge has to comprehend it all and the court reporter has to take it all down. I have to do both. The judge has a law degree; the court reporter has a short­hand machine; I have a pencil and pad.

There was a recess, then a certain Dr. Lovejoy, a for­mer gynecologist was called to the stand, at which point the hearing was postponed.

Why would a gynecologist go from pudendas to pot?

Stay tuned.

And don’t forget to order your Magical Canni-Butter Crock Kit today!

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A HEAD-ON collision near Boonville between a big rig and a Mercedes shortly before 8am Wednesday morning, briefly closed 128 at the junction of 128 and 253. One person, presumably from the Mercedes, was taken by ambulance to Ukiah. No further details were available as the day concluded.

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DUI: IS IT AN ASSAULT?

Mendocino County judge hears arguments.

by Tiffany Revelle

In what could be a precedent-setting case, Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman will rule next week on whether a Ukiah woman accused of driving drunk through her neighbors’ fence and into their house should also face a felony charge of assault with a deadly weapon.

The felony charge was the point of contention in Mendocino County Superior Court during a daylong preliminary hearing Tuesday. A preliminary hearing is the district attorney’s chance to show a judge enough evidence to bind the defendant over for trial for the crimes.

Moorman said she would likely issue holding orders for five of the six charges against Joan Rainville, 53 — which also included driving with a license suspended for prior DUI convictions — but would need to review cases cited by both the prosecution and defense before ruling on the felony assault charge.

“I don’t think she intended to run anyone down, but I don’t think that’s the standard of the law,” said prosecutor Matt Hubley of the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office in his closing arguments.

He again showed the court a picture of a white wicker chair where one of Blair Carlson’s friends had been sitting just before 9 p.m. May 26 when Rainville’s 2008 Toyota Camry crashed through her fence and into her backyard toward her patio, where she and her husband were entertaining guests. The chair was just a foot away from where the car jumped onto the cement patio and hit the side of the house, cracking the wall of the main bedroom where Carlson’s 8-year-old son had been sleeping.

“We’re not having this discussion if that chair gets hit,” Hubley said. “Did anybody on that patio who was screaming and yelling for her to stop wonder if the car was a deadly weapon?”

Hubley upped the otherwise misdemeanor DUI case to the felony level with the assault charge on the premise that Rainville has had at least two prior DUI convictions since 2005, and had been advised during court proceedings that driving under the influence is dangerous to human life. That knowledge, he said previously, supports a charge of assault, which is the intent to commit battery.

The cases he cited “hold that the intent to commit battery can be inferred when the defendant commits acts that are inherently dangerous to others,” Hubley said. “If there is enough subjective awareness of the risk posed to others, that can rise to the level of implied malice.”

Rainville’s Ukiah defense attorney Justin Petersen argued that witness testimony given Tuesday indicated she didn’t know what was happening.

“My client has to know the surrounding circumstances that make it dangerous, and you can’t judge that by what she should have known, but by what she actually knew,” he said.

In order to stand up in court, a charge of assault with a deadly weapon needs to be based on “more than a risk of harm,” Petersen argued, but must have consequences that are “substantially certain.”

The judge and both attorneys acknowledged that there were no known cases on record where a DUI case became an assault-with-a-deadly-weapon case on that premise.

The danger in holding Rainville to answer the assault charge, Petersen argued, is that assault would then be too broadly defined.

“If you want to call this a 245 (assault), how many millions of other cases of driving under the influence are going to become assault cases?” he said.

Petersen said Rainville got into her car intending to pull backward out of her parking space at the apartment complex next door to the Carlson house but mistakenly thrust the car forward through the fence instead.

Rainville’s blood-alcohol level about an hour after the accident was 0.25, more than three times the legal limit, Ukiah Police Department officer Anthony Delapo testified Tuesday.

Hubley also called to the witness stand a retired California Highway Patrol officer who witnessed a 2005 incident where Rainville crashed into a tree in the town of Mendocino, resulting in a DUI conviction. He also called to the stand UPD officer Kevin Murray, who investigated a February accident where Rainville rear-ended a driver at a stoplight on South State Street at Gobbi Street, also resulting in conviction.

Her blood-alcohol levels had been 0.36 for one incident and 0.29 for the other, Moorman noted.

Also on the stand was state Department of Justice criminalist Matt Kirsten, who specializes in interpreting blood-alcohol test results. According to a study he cited, a person driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.15 is 45 times more likely to be in an accident than a sober driver.

Petersen argued that even so, the chances of driving under the influence resulting in an accident are “about one in 1,000.”

He continued, “Even though the substantial risk is serious, it’s still a tiny risk of hurting somebody.”

According to one of the cases he cited, the court must find that “injury is bound to happen.” He added, “there’s a difference between virtually inevitable and risk.’”

Moorman will render her decision on the assault charge and the other charges against Rainville Aug. 13.

(Courtesy, The Ukiah Daily Journal)

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DANIEL JOSEPH BARRETO, 62, of Sparks, Nevada had been camping near Mendocino with his family when he went out fishing late Friday afternoon in a kayak. When Barreto hadn’t returned by 8pm his family reported him missing. His body was found in a kelp bed near Albion after his kayak was spotted from the air by a Coast Guard helicopter on Monday evening. A weekend search for Barreto had been hampered by a thick fog.

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CALIFORNIA TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION

APPROVES $487 MILLION FOR STATEWIDE TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENTS

EUREKA – The California Transportation Commission Wednesday announced it has funded $487 million for 82 construction projects to improve transportation, safety, and mobility across California. “The California Transportation Commission is taking action to improve transportation, safety, and mobility from Del Norte to San Diego County,” said California Transportation Agency Secretary Brian Kelly. “These construction projects put people to work and improve the quality of life for millions of Californians.” “California is investing in transportation infrastructure to support regional job growth and improve the state’s mobility for years to come,” said Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty. The allocations include $169 million from Proposition 1B, a 2006 voter-approved transportation bond. To date, more than $16 billion in Proposition 1B funds have been put to work statewide. The remaining $318 million in allocations today came from various state and federal transportation accounts. Highlights of the funding allocations include: Del Norte County – $14.9 million for a project on Route 199 at the Patrick Creek Narrows near Gasquet to widen and realign the highway, and replace a bridge. Humboldt County – $4.7 million for a project on Route 169 at various locations to widen the highway and install metal beam guardrails. Mendocino County – $9.5 million for two projects on Route 128 to rehabilitate culverts and stabilize an embankment.

The two Mendocino/Highway 128 projects are:

1. $5,000,000 — Near Boonville, from west of Mill Creek Bridge to east of Beebe Creek Bridge. Rehabilitate existing culverts, replace deteriorated culverts and place standard drainage inlet and outlet structures at 51 locations to improve drainage.

2. $4,500,000 — Near Boonville, from Shearing Creek Bridge to 0.7 mile west of Maple Creek Bridge. Stabilize embankment, install cast-in-place steel reinforced ground anchor wall system and rock slope protection damaged by heavy rainfall.

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COMMENT OF THE DAY UNO: I’ve been taking CBD since February. I have cancer. I get mine, even though I live in SoHum, from a person in Marin who grows the strain of plant that has no THC. There are about six strains that he uses. He also puts some THC in some of his tincture as it also had medicinal purpose. He has a great web page with lots of information about CBD. Just Google www.synergymmj.com or Synergy Wellness to find out more. He has a legal business. I would suggest that a few of the people who made comments below me take the time to find out what you THINK you are talking about. CBD has been proven to stop tumor growth as well as reducing seizures and a variety of other ailments. I will find out how effective it is when I get my scan results on Friday. I have also been doing chemo so I am very anxious to see if anything has worked. But, I have not had all the horrid side effects that I think I could have had from chemo if I wasn’t taking CBD. Both my oncologist in Eureka and at UCSF had no problem with me taking CBD during my treatment. Dr. Gubbens at UCSF told me that many of his patients take CBD. This has nothing to do with growing pot for profit or abusing a 215, like so many people around here tend to do. Marijuana is way overdue to be made legal.

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COMMENT OF THE DAY DOS (Glenn Greenwald): “President Obama today canceled a long-scheduled summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in part because the US president is upset that Russia defied his personal directive to hand over Edward Snowden despite the lack of an extradition treaty between the two nations. That means that US media outlets will spend the next 24 hours or so channeling the government’s views (excuse the redundancy) by denouncing the Russian evil of refusing extradition. … The US constantly refuses requests to extradite — even where (unlike Russia) they have an extradition treaty with the requesting country and even where (unlike Snowden) the request involves actual, serious crimes, such as genocide, kidnapping, and terrorism. Maybe those facts should be part of whatever media commentary there is on Putin’s refusal to extradite Snowden and Obama’s rather extreme reaction to it.”

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A YOUNG BLONDE WOMAN was speeding down the road in her little red sports car when she was pulled over by a woman police officer who also happened to be a blonde. The blond cop asked to see the blonde driver’s driver’s license. The blonde driver fumbled and dug through her purse with frustration and difficulty, getting progressively more agitated. “What does it look like?” the driver finally asked the cop. The policewoman replied, “It’s square and it has your picture on it.” The driver dug deeper and finally found a square mirror near the bottom of her large designer purse, looked at it and handed it to the policewoman. “Here it is!” she chirped. The blonde officer looked at the mirror, then handed it back saying, “OK, you can go. I didn’t realize you were a cop.”

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SUSAN SPENCER & MICHAEL WILSON of Philo are currently exhibiting their assemblage art at Handley Cellars tasting room through the month August. Hours are 11am to 6pm. Assemblage Art is done first by sorting through materials that may be used in three dimensional “Junk or Found Art.” In the world of “Common Objects” and elements, we find that they can be transformed into a representational art form. “There are certain modes of construction and cohesion in the relational paths that bring you to a finished piece of work,” Michael says. Susan recently had a successful group show at the Gualala Center for the Arts and Michael is currently at Healdsburg Arts off the main Plaza in a continuing exhibition.

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EDITOR,

Our Public Defenders! Recently I found myself up against the Ukiah DA’s office for a car accident they called a felony. Shockingly and without proper funds I went to the Public Defender’s Office. The most amazing thing happened. I found this office to be the most caring, intelligent, hardest working group of people who never get enough credit. My attorney was Eric Rennert. Behind him and the whole office is yet another truly dedicated driving force, Linda Thompson. I never would have believed (as I had never been in the justice system before in my 62 years) that there are such people who care and will go the full mile to help people like me. What most of us do not understand is that we are all innocent until proven guilty. This is not what we found to be true. Over two years and pleading not guilty to this felony charge Mr. Rennert went to work on our case. He was not even through with his re-direct of the DA’s first witness when I was offered a lesser plea. There is no doubt that if we continued with the case and presented all the evidence that this whole matter would have been dismissed. How much time and taxpayer money went into this case that went on for over two years? If you’ve lived in Mendocino county for as long as we have you’ve also seen the changes going on with home invasions, murders and more. Please remember that all people are innocent until proven guilty and do NOT jump to conclusions before you see all the facts. And more than anything, give credit where credit is due, to our Public Defender’s Office! They are, to say the least, a group of outstanding people who really care about their fellow man. Cheers and a round of applause for the hard working people who never get enough credit for what they do. — Howard Krejci, Willits

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PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD about some great horses looking for homes. We are also looking for foster homes and/or people who would like to work with a horse. Lake County Animal Shelter has three horses that we believe we could adopt out fairly easily but our foster homes are full. We also need volunteers who would be interested in evaluating horses for their training level so we can be sure to find them the best home possible. For information about how to help or about available rescue horses go to www.saferhorse.com. Thank you, Angie Herman, SAFER Equine Rescue

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Move to Amend Coalition of Mendocino County Moves Forward.

Last November a resounding 74% of Mendocino voters passed proposition F in favor of a constitutional amendment clarifying that corporations are not people and should not have the same “rights” under the constitution as human beings. It also said that political spending does not constitute “free speech”. Recently, the Mendocino County Move to Amend (MTA) affiliate met with Assemblyman Wes Chesbro and Jeff Tyrrell, a staffer from Senator Noreen Evans office to discuss supporting “We the People” Amendment, House Joint Resolution (HJR) 29. HJR 29 calls for passage of a constitutional amendment that would state that Corporations are not people Money is not the same as free speech and political spending can be regulated. At this meeting the MTA group provided critical and in depth information about HJR29. Assemblyman Chesbro agreed that a constitutional amendment is needed and has previously voted “yes” on a related Assembly Resolution. We had a similar discussion with Jeff Tyrrell. Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, record amounts of money have been spent in races throughout the country. Due to Corporate constitutional “rights” allowed through the 14^th Amendment, local legislation in several states, enacted by its citizens, have been overturned. Case in point, the Supreme Court overturned a Vermont law requiring labeling of all products containing bovine growth hormone. (International Diary Foods Association vs Amestoy). HJR 29 addresses the legal fiction of corporate constitutional “rights” and the entrenched influence of monies in our democratic process. Mendocino County MTA is interested in continuing to inform our county of the forward movement of this issue to preserve the sovereignty of its citizenry and to fight the growing sense of disenfranchisement of the political process. — Joyce (Joy) Gertler, Caspar

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CAN’T HURT

Please Chant Mahamantram to Neutralize Bogus Govt. Energy Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Please visualize this being chanted around the beltway in Washington DC, with a caravan featuring YOUR BAND HERE, plus ritualists, poets, Earth First!ers, peace and justice activists, and the anonymous people fed up with a dissatisfying life of being plundered by materialistic institutions and their slave-employee minions. I mean, when are we going to finally tell this pointless, idiotic civilization to just FUCK OFF!? Three of us are in a house near Pittsburgh, PA. We need cooperation to get situated closer to DC And we need other participants. I have recently been informed that a lot of protesters are leaving DC at this time, to travel or to “get the hell out of there.” Fair enough, but the three of us (formerly of the DC Occupy kitchen working group) want to get the hell into DC, in order to counteract the bogus energy there; which is degrading all facets of the earth plane, in particular destroying the planet’s ecological systems to a point of irrecoverability. I mean, this is serious, y’all! Craig Louis Stehr, August 7, 2013 Email: craigstehr@hushmail.com Blog: http://craiglstehr.blogspot.com

A 66-YEAR-OLD MAN, not yet identified, died in a single-vehicle crash near Laytonville on Monday afternoon about 3. The deceased, driving alone in a 2003 Ford SUV, unaccountably ran off the east edge of 101, down an embankment and hit a tree. The CHP said the dead man hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt.

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THE FOLLOWING PRESS RELEASE has been edited by the Anderson Valley Advertiser to reflect local realities: The Mendocino County Office of Education, a 19th century relic that does not do a single thing that couldn’t be done cheaper and better by the individual school districts of Mendocino County, is seeking candidates for a soon-to-be open seat on its board of trustees. The position pays a couple of hundred bucks a month and comes with a lush package of medical fringes not enjoyed by most residents of Mendocino County or, for that matter, most citizens of the United States. Walking around money and free health insurance for “trustees” paid for out of classroom dollars, is to ensure their loyalty to the superintendent and to generally keep up the pretense that he and his agency do something of value. MCOE Superintendent Paul Tichinin, one of Mendocino County’s highest paid public officials, at roughly $120,000 a year to do a job with no visible duties and only the vaguest responsibilities, announced Wednesday that trustee Diane Zucker, whose term expires this year and also happens to be AVA editor Bruce Anderson’s sister-in-law, not that she cares to have that grim fact known, will not be running for re-election. The Widow Zucker has served twice on the board for a total of 13 years, and currently represents Area 2, which is Ukiah, east of which the County Office of Education is located in splendid isolation at Talmage, unvisited, no real function, funded at better than $46 million a year. “Diane has consistently served the county board with enthusiasm and dedication to the students of Mendocino County,” Tichinin said, perhaps surprised that there are such people in public education, but really meaning to say, “She only laughed out loud at me a coupla times.” Anyone interested in running for Ms. Zucker’s seat must file with the County Elections Department by Aug. 14 at 5pm, but must also be of the correct type — a cross between Jim Mastin and Mari Rodin say, although in a pinch a hybrid of Oop Bop A Loop and Bruce Richard would do just as well. “We don’t want one a them negative type people,” the superintendent clarified. Candidates must be at least 18 years old and registered to vote as a Hillary-Obama Democrat, but pot-smoking Republicans will be considered if they wear chinos, Hawaiian shirts, groovy guy pony tails, and shake their liver-spotted, flabby booties with Spencer Brewer at inland boogies. “Christ, who cares?” Tichinin concluded his announcement of The Widow Zucker’s retirement. “It’s all a lot of bullshit anyway. Hell, look at me. I’ve gotten over for years without anyone knowing or caring that I don’t know my ass from an abalone.” Call the elections office at 463-4371 for more information. According to the MCOE, the board is “committed to providing the leadership necessary to meet the educational needs of a multicultural and diverse student population to increase student success,” a statement so resoundingly false that God, if He were paying attention, would instantly strike down the person making it. It, the board apparently, typically meets the second Monday of each month at 10am when everyone else is at work, real work.

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PATROL DEPUTIES in Mendocino County and beyond are unhappy with “realignment,” Governor Brown’s response to a federal mandate to
 return “non-violent, non-sex, non-serious”
state prison inmates to local jails to serve their time. As far many local cops are 
concerned “realignment” simply accelerates the “catch and release” approach to law enforcement already in place.

ALTHOUGH MOST senior law enforcement
 officials both locally and statewide continue to promote “realignment” as
 a great success, patrol deputies who see the same criminals back on 
the streets after very short stays in jail, do not agree. “I wonder if the
 public in general knows about this, or even cares?” one cop recently
 grumbled.

METHAMPHETAMINE-DRIVEN crime is epidemic. Tweekers need to 
be locked up not only to save themselves, but to keep them from stealing everything they can get their
 hands on to buy crank. Add the growing low-level crime to 
Mendocino County’s chronic under-staffing and the picture line cops paint
 is not pretty as realignment puts state prisoners in 
local jails and pushes more County inmates who need to be in 
jail out onto the streets.

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THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE in Eureka has published a fire weather watch in effect from 3:17 PM Thursday, Aug 8, 2013. The following is the alert (The alert has been modified slightly from all uppercase to lowercase letters, etc.) The agency is warning of thunderstorms with “abundant lightning today and possibly again on Friday.” An upper low moving towards northwest California will bring a threat of thunderstorms to areas of Trinity, northeast Humboldt, northeast Mendocino, and eastern Del Norte counties this evening through Saturday. The greatest threats are those areas bordering Siskiyou County with a lesser threat over Mendocino county. The activity will start Thursday afternoon and continue into the evening. Thunderstorms may be accompanied by heavy rain, possible hail, and locally gusty winds. Scattered shower activity will likely occur again on Friday but there is still uncertainty regarding the amount of thunderstorms. Only a few storms will be possible Saturday mainly over the higher terrain bordering Siskiyou County.

THERE IS A RED FLAG WARNING for areas of the Upper Smith, inland Portion of the Smith River drainage within the Six Rivers National Forest, lower middle Klamath, inland portion of the Klamath River drainage within the Six Rivers National Forest and the Ukonom district of the Klamath National Forest, Hupa, the Hoopa Indian Reservation and the lower portion of the Trinity River drainage within the Six Rivers National Forest, Trinity, the western portion of the Shasta Trinity National Forest; there is a Red Flag warning from alert in affect from 3:17 PM Thursday, Aug 8, 2013.

The Red Flag warning now in effect until 11 AM PDT Friday for thunderstorms for fire weather zones 203… 204… 211… 212… 277 and 283. The fire weather watch now in effect from Friday morning through Friday evening for thunderstorms for fire weather zones 203…204…211…212…277 and 283.

AFFECTED AREA. Fire Weather zones 203… 204… 211 and 283. Thunderstorm activity is expected this evening and tonight. Possibly lasting into Friday morning. The highest threat will be near the border with Siskiyou County this afternoon. Later tonight into Friday morning there is a chance for more thunderstorms. Additional thunderstorms are possible Friday afternoon.

Collapsing Thunderstorms may produce gusts over 40 mph. Otherwise winds will remain generally light and terrain driven. Hail up to a quarter size will be possible with the strongest storms.

Impacts: Dry fuels along with the potential for abundant lightning may result in new fire starts.

(A fire weather watch means that critical fire weather conditions are forecast to occur. Listen for later forecasts and possible red flag warnings. A red flag warning means that critical fire weather conditions are either occurring now or will shortly. A combination of strong winds, low relative humidity and warm temperatures can contribute to extreme fire behavior.)

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BREAKING NEWS! THIS JUST IN! (ScienceDaily.com) Dogs yawn contagiously when they see a person yawning, and respond more frequently to their owner’s yawns than to a stranger’s, according to research published August 7 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Teresa Romero and colleagues from the University of Tokyo. Pet dogs in the study watched their owner or a stranger yawn, or mimic a yawning mouth movement, but yawned significantly more in response to their owners’ actions than to the strangers’ yawns. The dogs also responded less frequently to the fake movements, suggesting they have the ability to yawn contagiously. Previous research has shown that dogs yawn in response to human yawns, but it was unclear whether this was a mild stress response or an empathetic response. The results of this study suggest the latter, as dogs responded more to their owners’ genuine yawns than those of a stranger. The researchers observed no significant differences in the dogs’ heartbeat during the experiments, making it unlikely that their yawns were a distress response. Explaining the significance of the results, Romero says, “Our study suggests that contagious yawning in dogs is emotionally connected in a way similar to humans. Although our study cannot determine the exact underlying mechanism operative in dogs, the subjects’ physiological measures taken during the study allowed us to counter the alternative hypothesis of yawning as a distress response.”

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JOIN SANCTUARY FOREST on Sunday, August 18 for the Big Red: Ancient Redwood hike! This is an exciting opportunity to explore a section of virgin, Mattole headwaters forest, untouched by logging and rarely entered by humans. There are no trails, paths or markers, and guided hikes are the only safe way for the public to see this forest and visit Big Red. Hike leaders Stuart Moskowitz and Richard Gienger will take participants from the Mattole River to the ridge top and back to the Mattole for a total of 4 miles. Bring a picnic lunch to enjoy along the ridge top, where Stuart & Richard will share stories about the community’s historic efforts to preserve different areas of this forest, including the 2,000 year old Big Red, which sparked the creation of Sanctuary Forest in 1987. Meet at 9 a.m. at the Sanctuary Forest office. Wear sturdy walking or hiking shoes, and bring plenty of water. Hikers should be prepared for a rigorous, mostly uphill adventure on uneven terrain—there is also a very steep, slippery downhill section towards the end. The hike is free of charge, though donations are gladly accepted and help Sanctuary Forest offer this program year after year. For questions or clarifications, contact Marisa at marisa@sanctuaryforest.org, or call 986-1087 x 1#. Hope to see you there!

Support from volunteers and local businesses have made this program possible for Sanctuary Forest. Local businesses that have made generous contributions are Blue Star Gas, Jangus Publishing Group, Whitethorn Winery, Charlotte’s Perennial Gardens, The Security Store, Chautauqua Natural Foods, Clover Willison Insurance Services, Hohstadt Garden Center, Roy Baker, O.D., Worthy Construction, Wyckoff Plumbing, Mattole Meadows, James Friel Plumbing, Ned Hardwood Construction, Randall Sand & Gravel, Sylvandale Gardens, Redwood Properties, Dazey’s Supply, Monica Coyne Artist Blacksmith, Southern Humboldt Fitness, Pierson Building Center, Whitethorn Construction, Caffe Dolce, Mattole River Studios, and Wildberries Marketplace. Sanctuary Forest is a land trust whose mission is to conserve the Mattole River watershed and surrounding areas for wildlife habitat and aesthetic, spiritual and intrinsic values, in cooperation with our diverse community. (— Marisa Formosa)

Big Red in February 2013. Photo by: Marisa Formosa

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THE MENDOCINO COUNTY COMMUNITY INNOVATIVE PLANNING MEETING FOR MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES ACT (MHSA) will be August 20, 2013 from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. in Laytonville. The meeting will occur at the Laytonville Unified School District Board Room, 150 Ramsey Road, Laytonville. Members of the public are encouraged to attend the meeting to provide suggestions, ideas and feedback on a possible Innovative Mental Health program. Meeting agendas are published at: http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/hhsa/mhsa.htm. To attend this meeting by phone, Call-In at: (888) 296-6828. When prompted for the Participant Pin, Dial: 756853 followed by the pound # sign.

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MENDOCINO COUNTY APPLE FAIR ENTRIES need to be submitted by Friday, August 16. Entering produce, flowers, arts and crafts, etc. is a great way to support our county fair. Also, the AV Foodshed is helping to support our fair by having a booth in the Ag building across from the apple tasting. We are asking people to sign up to teach a short workshop (or help) on some kind of rural living skill, along the lines of our recent Not-So-Simple Living Fair workshops, but shorter. We need two in each time slot; one teaching a workshop and one helping and manning the table on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 13-15. We also need help building our booth, setting up (Thursday) and tearing down (Sunday). Please respond to cwilder406@gmail.com with your preferred day, time, topic and phone number. (For more about the fair itself and entry guidelines go to http://www.mendocountyfair.com/. )

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FREEDOM OF SPEECH ON KZYX WITH ROBERT MCCHESNEY, FRIDAY, AUGUST 9 @ 9:00 AM, PACIFIC TIME — “All About Money.” Because freedom of speech as been on my mind lately — I was cut off from public comment at a recent (July 16) Mendocino County Board of Supervisors meeting — I’m doing another show on it. Our last show with Hedrick Smith, long-time Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, also a Pulitzer Prize winning author and Emmy Award winning producer at Frontline, was a huge success. This Friday (August 9), my guest, Robert McChesney, and I will discuss the buyout of The Washington Post by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. What does this mean for freedom of speech, if Amazon was capable of cutting off WikiLeaks from its servers after the WikiLeaks released State Department cables? McChesney is a national media expert and professor of communications at the University of Illinois. Recent books include “Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America” and “Digital Disconnect.” Jim Sweeney, Assistant Editorial Director of The Press Democrat will also join the show. Robert McChesney, rwmcchesney@gmail.com McChesney is co-author of “Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America” and author of “Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy”, both published this year. He is professor of communications at the University of Illinois. Said McChesney: “As the commercial model of journalism is in free fall collapse, those remaining news media franchises have become playthings for billionaires, generally of value for political purposes, as old-fashioned monopoly newspapers still carry considerable influence. The United States went through this type of journalism at the turn of the last century and it produced a massive political crisis that led eventually to the creation of professional journalism, to protect the news from the dictates of the owners. Today professionalism has been sacrificed to commercialism, and the resources for actual reporting have plummeted. “Perhaps nothing better illustrates the desperation facing American journalism and democracy better than the fact we are reduced to praying we get a benevolent billionaire to control our news, when history demonstrates repeatedly such figures are in spectacularly short supply, and the other times we relied on such a model crashed and burned. America meets an existential crisis with an absurd response. No wonder this is a golden age for satire. We have to do better.” In December 2010, Amazon.com cut off WikiLeaks from its computer servers after the group released a trove of State Department cables. See this letter to Bezos, “Human Rights First Seeks Answers From Amazon in Wake of WikiLeaks Drop,” written at the time. McChesney is also the co-founder of Free Press. See: http://www.freepress.net/ For more about McChesney, see: http://www.communication.illinois.edu/people/rwmcches

LIKE MANY LOCALS, I’ve enjoyed the Haul Road north of Fort Bragg for years, an amenity we enjoy courtesy of the padrones of yesterday’s timber industry, and an amenity enjoyed by few other towns between San Diego and the Canadian border. For you readers unfamiliar with Fort Bragg, the Haul Road began as a logging railroad cut straight down the Mendocino Coast from a rich source of old growth redwood ten miles north of town. The rail line, installed around the turn of the 20th century, was eventually paved for post-War logging trucks and, I believe, in the early 1970s, was taken over by State Parks and opened to the public for walking and direct access to the Pacific.

BECAUSE most of the Haul Road abuts the ocean, much of it has fallen into the sea, especially the lengths of road north of MacKerricher State Park. State Parks has a $750,000 grant to take out the pavement and related debris in the area of Ward Avenue. Lots of people want Parks to somehow revamp the collapsed sections to a walking path, which seems impossible-to-futile to this Boonville walker, but doable to many others. What to do about that portion of the Haul Road — 2.7 miles of macadam chunks, will, along with the Mike Sweeney Memorial Transfer Station, be discussed at the Supe’s meeting this Tuesday at Town Hall Fort Bragg, beginning at 10am.

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WHY A NEW ONE? Why not leave the trash transfer station at Caspar? According to a thorough account on a proposed new transfer station off Highway 20 by the excellent Frank Hartzell of the Fort Bragg Advocate News, Tuesday’s (Aug. 13) joint meeting of the Fort Bragg City Council and County Board of Supervisors at Fort Bragg’s Town Hall “may determine the future location of a waste transfer station for the coast.”

MIKE SWEENEY, manager of the Mendocino Solid Waste Management Authority, reveals that Fort Bragg and the County “have been working to develop a site where collection trucks and residents can drop off waste and recyclables to be sorted and packaged for transport.” According to Sweeney via Hartzell, a new trash op on Highway 20 three miles east of Fort Bragg would “reduce long-term costs of waste disposal, increase flexibility for long-haul transfer and reduce truck and traffic emissions.” (The full report is online at MendoRecycle.org.)

ACCORDING to Sweeney’s report, retooling Caspar would cost $3.86 million, while ground-up site development and construction at Highway 20 is estimated at $4.79 million.

FOURTH DISTRICT SUPERVISOR Dan Gjerde apparently is for the Highway 20 site. As quoted by Hartzell, Gjerde has said that “…the Highway 20 site, with its central location, would require shorter local truck trips for the garbage hauler, and so it is expected to impose even lower operational costs on coast garbage rates, especially the long-term rates.” In fact, it’s less central for Mendocino and Albion-area residents and not particularly relevant to Fort Bragg, whose trash is mostly handled by a commercial hauler.

THIS ONE SEEMS to be a done deal. It also seems to us a deal that is not justified by the presumed long-term savings, if any, and we’re not opposed simply because we consider Sweeney, the sole suspect in the 1990 car bombing of his ex-wife, a criminal sociopath. This country is run by criminal sociopaths, as a glance at Wall Street confirms. No one has ever accused Sweeney of not being capable; heck, he pulled off this major unresolved felony that enriched his two daughters and Darryl Cherney while managing to reinvent himself as Mendo’s lead trash bureaucrat, transitioning seamlessly from Maoist maniac to glib-guy acronym-spouter, a self-reinvention possible only in the unique amnesio-psycho-cannabis ambiance of Mendocino County, where everyone is whatever they say they are and history starts all over again every day.

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IRONIES AND CRIMES everywhere one looks in Mendocino County. Every time I see or hear mention of “Town Hall” Fort Bragg, I remember the Fort Bragg fires of 1987 when, in one spectacular night of arsons, well-connected criminals burned down the old Fort Bragg Library, the adjoining Ten Mile Courthouse and the venerable Piedmont Hotel. Today’s Town Hall arose from the ashes of the old library and courthouse. Most places in America criminals who torched a town’s civic center would be arrested and prosecuted. Not here. Never happened, and here we are, floating beneath an officially sanctioned umbrella of major crimes, unpunished, largely forgotten.

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THE BOONVILLE CONNECTION: According to Friday’s SF Chronicle, Randy Alana, 56, a registered sex offender and convicted killer, is being questioned about the disappearance of an Oakland woman who worked as an investigator for the federal public defender’s office. The remains of a woman fitting the missing woman’s description have been found near Vallejo, and Alana is under arrest for failing to register as a sex offender.

Alana

I ONCE FUNCTIONED as Alana’s foster father, as I also once functioned as David Mason’s foster father. They both lived with my family at the same time when we all arrived together in the bucolic Anderson Valley. Mason was subsequently executed at San Quentin for the ice pick murders of old ladies in the East Bay and for knocking off a cellmate. Alana was convicted of murder, rape and also killed a guy in jail.

BEFORE YOU GO all judgmental on me with accusations that I helped create the spectacular adult psycho-sexual maladjustment of the two lads, let me say that when I knew them as 14-year-olds it was well after they’d been deformed by their formative years. The short of it is with these guys, and millions of others on the receiving end of the American class system, intervention comes way too late — take a kid out of a pathological home when he’s 12, and he’s already damaged beyond repair, already has learned to get what he wants by force and violence. He’s unlikely to change until he gets too old and tired for crime. Of course just as many damaged children who spend their youths in bad homes and bouncing around the foster care system don’t grow up to become killers, but none of them, psycho or not, have an easy time of it, especially in the mass pathological psycho-social context we have going in this country.

ALANA spent about a year in Boonville. As a kid, he had a pronounced aptitude for, and interest in, automobile mechanics. If he’d been left in Boonville instead of “reunified” with his family, a bedraggled punching bag of an immigrant German mother and an alcoholic black father, the boy might have regained some of the fellow feeling that had been beaten out of him as a much younger child. Ditto for David Mason.

THE LAST TIME I picked up a morning paper to be startled by this guy, he was described as an “enforcer” for the prison version of the Black Guerilla Family, I think his affiliation was called. Alana, 6’6” and 260 was awaiting trial on charges that he’d murdered someone in prison when he and another guy stabbed another inmate to death.

HOW DID A GUY like this ever get out? If he’s responsible for the disappearance of Ms. Coke, a former love interest, that question is going to be asked a lot. Alana racked up his murder and rape charges in the early 1980s when he was still young, only a few years out of Boonville. He must have done well enough inside prison, apart from a cellblock murder here and there, to convince a parole board that he would no longer be a roving menace on the outside. But I must say, if he appeared at my front door today to reminisce about the old days in Boonville, he’d have to do it at gunpoint. He was dangerous as a kid, as was the aforementioned Mr. Mason, and both of them got a lot more dangerous as they grew into adulthood.

IN BOONVILLE, circa 1971, I suffered my first interface with the County’s educational establishment, at least its Boonville branch. I’d gone to see the Boonville school superintendent about enrolling Alana in the school’s automotive repair classes. Alana sported a big afro, as was the style among young black people at the time. The school chief said, “Sure, but he’s got to get a haircut.” I was nonplussed. The hair issue had already been to the Supreme Court where the ruling had been, “Like, it’s a matter for parents to decide, not school administrators.” But the superintendent, an edu-intellectual of the type still prevalent in the County, explained, “I’ve seen those people hide razor blades up there.” It went to the Boonville School Board. They also said no haircut, no automotive repair class. As I tried to explain hair law at the inevitable special school board meeting called to discuss hair length, the mob assembled for the meeting muttered threats and advised me to sit down and shut up. I concluded it wasn’t safe at Boonville High School for the kid so I didn’t pursue his enrollment; he was not a kid to suffer fools and bad things could have happened if, as was likely, the superintendent tried to cut his hair. Soon thereafter, with “family reunification” being the social work theory in vogue in the early 1970s, as was the cockamamie notion that hyper-aggressive delinquents invariably possessed a tell tale “simian crease” on the palms of their hands that made them prone to ultra-vi, the boy went home to Oakland and on into a life of mayhem and incarceration.

(A WOMAN’S BODY, presumed to be that of Ms. Coke, was found Friday about 1pm off Cherry Glen Road, across Interstate 80 from Lagoon Valley Park in Vacaville.)

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ON-LINE STATEMENT OF THE DAY: “After 35 years in education, I find that children who are ‘English only’ often are the least fluent in my classroom. Why? The average child gets eight hours a day of ‘screentime’ — video games, computer TV, Baby Einstein, etc. That means eight hours a day they do not have interactive language with anyone — how can you learn your native language (English or otherwise) if no one talks to you? Watch a parent in the grocery store. Chances are they are on their cellphone, not interacting with their child. Some parents talk to their children in the grocery store — ‘Look, they have bananas! We need some yellow bananas, so let’s count…’) The child learns the cadence of the language, the sentence structure and grows up with a profound vocabulary, ready for literacy when they enter school.” … And books? The Rotary Club in Santa Rosa gives each third grader a children’s dictionary every year. I cannot tell you how many children cry because it is the first book they have ever been given in their lives! Then they take the dictionary home and read it. How can you expect the complex skill of literacy when many children come from homes without books?”

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Evans

NOREEN EVANS, state senator out of Santa Rosa, will announce next week that she will not seek re-election in 2014. She was elected in 2010. Insiders say she’s interested in a SoCo supervisor position. She’s always been interested in money and has been dogged by questions about tax funded jaunts here and there while also drawing a salary from the law firm she worked for prior to her stay in the state senate.

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DISCOVERY DAY for youngsters. Date: Saturday, August 17, 2013. Time: 1-4pm. Free Admission for Kids 12 and Younger. Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, 18220 North Highway One Fort Bragg— Plant a special flower pot, See how a seed sprouts, Play with art in the garden, Make a bag of herbs and a fairy wand, Take home a cup of succulents to plant…. Fun projects with the Master Gardeners and Fort Bragg Garden Club! For Information Call: 964-4352 x10.

WE’VE COMPLAINED for years that California River Watch, in Occidental, is operated as a non-profit shakedown racket by a man named Jack Silver. Silver rifles the reports filed with the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control office in Santa Rosa by municipalities then, based on the information provided, sues the municipalities filing them. (You can google the stuff we’ve written about him over the years, or search this website for the more recent material.)

THE CITY OF WILLITS is trying to get in full compliance but, like many broke small towns, Willits finds it difficult to maintain an aging infrastructure. It’s not as if Willits is deliberately out of compliance with the Clean Water Act, and it’s not as if anybody is going to get sick because their tap water is running dirty in big rains. But Silver will now inform Willits that if they send him a nice hunk of dough as attorney fees for his hard work filing the complaint with the feds, typically between 50 and a hundred thou, he won’t take Willits all the way into court. This character has been doing this up and down NorCal for going on two decades.

LINDA WILLIAMS of the Willits News has an excellent account of Silver vs. Willits in that paper’s August 9^th edition, reporting on Silver actually filing suit in federal court against Willits, and nicely sums up the action this way: “River Watch requests the court require the city to cease violations now 
and in the future and to order the city to pay ‘civil penalties per
 violation/per day for its violations of the CWA’ and to pay River Watch
 reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.” (Our emphasis)

WILLIAMS CONTINUES, “In this filing River Watch claims the city violated its sewer plant permit by having water leak into the sewer collections lines during wet weather. This overloads the sewer system and results in the discharge of raw
 sewage into gutters, canals, and storm drains connected to adjacent 
surface waters,” according to the claim document.

IN MAJOR RAINS, disposal systems all over the County have difficulty, and all over the County there is unwholesome runoff into streams from all manner of sources, but most of those sources don’t carry great big insurance policies that towns and cities carry.

WILLITS, like all the entities sued by Silver, is in the process of making good faith efforts to maintain a fail-safe infrastructure. If they weren’t, Silver wouldn’t have the information to sue them with.

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WHAT YOU WON’T FIND in an internet or site search however is this very revealing debate hosted on KSRO 1350 AM by (now KGO) talk host Pat Thurston back in 2002 between Jack Silver and Bruce Anderson and a water official from Santa Rosa. So, for a more complete picture here’s that exchange.

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KSRO Newstalk 1350 (AM) Santa Rosa, Pat Thurston Show, Thursday, March 14, 2002. Guests: Jack Silver, RiverWatch; Bruce Anderson, Anderson Valley Advertiser.

Pat Thurston: You may have read recently in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat an article by Mike Geniella about an environmental organization called RiverWatch. There was also a sidebar article. And today the PD editorializes about RiverWatch. If you are a person who reads the Anderson Valley Advertiser, this was a story that Bruce Anderson wrote several weeks ago. I don’t know that there was anything additional in the Press Democrat. But right now we have Jack Silver joining us in studio. Jack is the founder of RiverWatch. Is that right Jack?

Jack Silver: Co-founder.

Thurston: Co-founder. And you are an attorney, right?

Silver: Yes.

Thurston: And Bruce Anderson, editor and publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, joins us via telephone. He wrote that piece. Hi Bruce.

Anderson: Hi.

Thurston: Nice to talk with you. And thanks for joining us. Now, Bruce, you started this with some allegations which were published long before the Press Democrat did. In your article you essentially accuse RiverWatch, and more specifically Jack Silver, of being a shakedown artist. Would you explain those accusations?

Anderson: Yes. Typically, the PD rides down out of the hills a month or so after the battle to shoot the wounded. So I have a certain amount of sympathy for Mr. Silver. He must be terribly wounded at this point.

Silver: I’m doing just fine, Bruce.

Anderson: Good.

Silver: Thanks for your concern.

Anderson: But yes, I think that Mr. Silver, like other environmental groups, has found a loophole in the law that really doesn’t have anything to do with environmental regulation, protecting us from derelict water agencies, keeping our water clean, saving trees, or the rest of it. By writing demand letters for offenses that are mostly minor, or if they’re not minor, they’re in the process of being cleaned up by cash-strapped public agencies, and very poor municipalities like Willits, for example. It’s not as if these agencies are deliberately poisoning our water, or are knowingly and negligently allowing it to be poisoned. So on the basis of a demand letter he says, Give me 40, 50 thousand bucks and I’ll go away and you won’t have to litigate this. He knows and the City of Willits knows that they don’t have a lot of money to pay legal fees for lengthy court battles. So typically, or at least in the past, a number of public agencies have paid up. And Mr. Silver has gone away and he’s gotten his $40 or $50 grand, and another $40 or $50 grand has gone to his co-non-profit, the Clean Water Institute, to allegedly do a little environmental work on their own. So I don’t know how else you could describe it. Write a letter…

Silver: Truthfully, and factually, which you’re not doing…

Anderson: Then you should sue me.

Silver: I’m not interested in suing you, Bruce. I’m interested in following the conservative agenda of dividing the liberals to get them to fight amongst themselves. I think that it’s both unnecessary and counterproductive. This is the first time we’ve spoke. That’s right? You’ve never spoken to me before, right?

Anderson: That’s right. I tried to call the Clean Water Institute…

Silver: I’m not involved with the Clean Water Institute.

Anderson: Same post office box in Occidental.

Silver: Uh…

Thurston: Well, Jack, let’s get to some of the things that Bruce is alleging here. He called you a shakedown artist. Are you a shakedown artist?

Silver: No.

Thurston: You have filed lawsuits against public agencies and asked them to settle with you and you made a pretty penny off those settlements, right?

Silver: … I don’t know how you characterize a pretty penny. We settled a suit with Santa Rosa, and I probably, after paying co-counsel, and staff and all the costs, probably made about $50 an hour. So I’m not sure what a pretty penny is. In some circumstances, that’s a pretty penny. As an attorney, working for a defense firm, I’d probably make about four times that much. But since I’m not defense minded, I don’t. So…

Thurston: When you reach a settlement with a public agency that you’ve litigated against, as part of that settlement do you absolutely positively require something that has bettered the environment? Are the people in the community better off than they were before you litigated against their public agency?

Silver: Yes. For several reasons. The first thing we always look for and the first thing we ask for is abatement of anything that they’re doing. I wouldn’t characterize the violations we found to be minor. When you find minor violations in the records of the Regional Water Quality Control Board, and then you go in and do an audit on these places, you find horrendous practices that are not even covered by any inspection that’s ever been done. That’s what we get an abatement for. The monetary settlement, the penalties and the fees, we feel are absolutely necessary as a deterrent. If all these people did was wait around until somebody caught them in what they’re doing, and this just made them fix it, which is what a lot of them do, it never has any incentive of being pro-active. Us being watch dogs out there and being able to jump on them and extract something that should be painful for them does teach them that they need to take care of this upfront. And not put the burden on the environment.

Anderson: That sounds wonderful. But I defy you… Well, perhaps in the Santa Rosa case he can name these sorts of egregious, major violations that are going unaddressed. But there’s none up here in the case of Willits that I know of. What he’s done in the case of Willits is write them a demand letter saying, Pay or I will sue you. And he tracks these so-called violations down at the Water Quality Control office. They’re the ones who do the field work and write these things up in the first place. They either don’t exist, or they’re in the process of remediation, or they’re so minor as to not warrant a violation in the first place. The state is derelict here, really. The state should be doling out the fines, not individual private attorneys.

Thurston: Isn’t that the thing that allows you, Jack, to file the lawsuit? The state, if they don’t impose some sort of financial penalty, then you, as a private citizen, can file a lawsuit and demand some sort of money?

Silver: Not exactly. In our point of view, I am the state. We are the state. The state is us. If people believe that the agencies and the government are going to take care of these problems, then they should believe what they read, too. Which I can’t encourage them to do. Bruce, have you been to the plant in Willits? Have you looked at it?

Anderson: I’ve seen the plant in Willits, yes. I’ve never been afraid to drink the water in Willits.

Silver: Do you know they discharged during winter their treated effluent into the field next door that runs off into the creek and that it’s non-monitored?

Anderson: We’re not drinking the creek water. And it is monitored.

Silver: But the creek water is water for habitat for salmonids, and …

Anderson: Santa Rosa’s been using the lower Russian River as sort of a semi-waste line for years. And Brenda Edelman has addressed that for many years.

Silver: And that goes out in the ocean.

Anderson: The violations in the Russian River are much more egregious than anything that’s happening in Willits. Willits is not doing that deliberately. Willits was in the process of remediating that particular problem.

Silver: Ok. If somebody is a child molester. If they’re just not really doing it as bad as somebody else, we should leave them alone? I mean, come on now! The other thing is that everybody…

Anderson: There’s a difference between a child molester and drinking water.

Silver: I don’t consider disposing of this material into the creek a minor thing. It may be that they don’t drink the water, but it is habitat. And it is degrading water for other creatures. I don’t look at the fact that the earth is only here for us humans.

Thurston: Is it true that the City of Willits is in process of trying to address this problem? That they’re already trying to correct it?

Anderson: Of course! They’re not lunatics.

Silver: They’re not addressing this problem. They deny that they do this. And when they do talk about it they talk about this wetlands project that they’re trying to put in in the next six years that would be put in this flood plain. We’re not dealing with that part of it, but we don’t believe that even what they’re planning to do will address the problem. What we want is monitoring. Maybe what they’re doing has no harm on there, but if they don’t know and they won’t look, and they won’t even monitor, that’s when we start getting concerned because we say they’re not monitoring because they’re afraid they’re going to find violations.

Thurston: But if you’re asking them to monitor… Why do you…? I mean I have a copy of the letter you sent to Willits, that was republished in the AVA, in which you ask for $50,000 in remediation funds in lieu of penalty, and $40,000 in attorney fees and costs. That’s a lot of money for a little town like Willits.

Silver: Let me explain that.

Anderson: That certainly leaves them a lot less money to do the remediation that Mr. Silver is allegedly requesting. And that’s the problem with it. And the remediation part of that nearly $100,000 fee goes to Mr. Silver and his paper board Clean Water Institute, and then where does the money go?

Silver: Let me explain that.

Anderson: The Clean Water Institute hasn’t done very much.

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Silver: The letter to Willits was a request. It’s not uncommon when you’re suing someone for them to know what you want. That letter was sent in response to that. It was not intended to be an absolute demand. Secondly, given the response that we’ve had from the public, money is off the table now. And we told Willits that. We sent them a letter that said as far as penalties, which we translate into remediation funds, and attorneys fees, we’ll let the judge decide that. That way it’s out of our hands. And let’s focus on the real concern which is the water quality issue.

Anderson: The real concerns arose when Willits said, Yeah, we’ll talk to you about all this stuff, but we want to do it in public, in open session so that everybody involved can sit in on it. At that point Mr. Silver backed off his shakedown letter.

Silver: Let me respond to that.

Anderson: That’s the chronology of events.

Silver: You’re mischaracterizing what occurred.

Anderson: No I’m not.

Silver: We paid …

Anderson: I want to respond to the insult here about serving the right-wing agenda, that I wasn’t able to respond to.

Silver: I didn’t say you were. I just said that when we bicker…

Anderson: That was the context. That’s always…

Silver: That was a way of expressing it.

Anderson: What always happens when there are these mercenary environmental groups who basically exist to serve themselves and then their critics are characterized as somehow right-wing, or serving the right-wing agenda… It happens up here all the time. We have the Trees Foundation which is almost entirely a self-interested group. When you look at the Trees Foundation, an umbrella group, you find all kinds of disparate interests, but the same individuals, all of whom are profiting. So what is happening here on the northcoast, particularly, which I’m most familiar with, is that the environmental movement has become a jobs program, and sort of a haven for opportunists of all kinds as the environment itself deteriorates before our very eyes. There’s an enormous contradiction between what people say they’re doing and what they’re actually doing. And then when they are criticized, the beautiful people, who by self definition are good and righteous, when they’re criticized the critic becomes the right-winger or serving the right-wing agenda. And so forth.

Thurston: Jack, you said that Bruce got the Willits chronology wrong. Did you refuse to meet in public in the Willits situation?

Silver: I think that meeting in public is a good idea. The problem that we have right now is that we’re just beginning our investigation. We had some meetings with them. We had some access to the public records. After we filed suit we had the right to get documents that we weren’t able to get before that. And we would like to have a meeting, but we want to wait until we have sufficient information so it would make the meeting worthwhile and we’d be able to present information that the public would find more important than the, uh, information we have currently.

* * * COMMERCIAL BREAK * * *

Thurston: Joining us now is Miles Ferris. Miles is director of utilities for the city of Santa Rosa. Miles, I understand you were involved in the lawsuit by RiverWatch against Santa Rosa.

Ferris: Three of ‘em.

Thurston: Were these unfounded lawsuits?

Silver: They weren’t all RiverWatch suits, all three of them.

Ferris: Well, Jack, I somewhat disagree. It was Jack Silver that did it. By the way Jack…

Silver: (illegible) did it too.

Ferris: And that’s your brother Paul, isn’t it?

Thurston: What did you say?

Ferris: I said I think your co-counsel that you pay is your brother Paul.

Silver: No. He’s one of them. We work with the Northern California Environmental Defense Center. There are a number of attorneys there. So you might see them on, on, on… on our letterhead sometimes in the pleadings.

Thurston: What about the suits against Santa Rosa, Miles? Do you think these were unfounded?

Ferris: Yes! One of them we went all the way to the Ninth District Court, and we prevailed. And the others were settled.

Thurston: Why were they settled?

Ferris: After the last suit I calculated how much was spent on the lawsuit. The worst part of it is that when you’re embroiled in one of these things you absolutely lose your staff time and you probably lost 18 months of momentum in the department to make things better. You’re being charged with hundreds of thousands, and millions and millions of dollars of potential liability that you can’t ignore. So it becomes your primary focus to defend. And when you’re all done and everything is said and done, you have really lost not only money, but more importantly you’ve lost your people for a tremendous period of time.

Thurston: What was the lawsuit you settled with RiverWatch about? What did it concern? Were you in the wrong?

Ferris: Were there violations? Minor violations. They were all in my opinion very minor. Yet the argument that is made that the reason the Water board hasn’t gotten around to fining you or something, therefore you need a bounty hunter to come in and charge off with the bad guys and give them a fair and impartial trial and hang them with a rope whether they like it or not.

Thurston: Do want to respond that that, Jack?

Silver: I like Mr. Ferris. I like working with him. And we do disagree on these. However, the last suit of Santa Rosa that we won on we had found… first of all, we filed suit, and then the Regional Water Quality Control Board filed suit and they went through their suit and then found them to be in a certain amount of violation, which we then removed from our suit. But the thing that got them to the bargaining table, the thing that got them to settle is that the US District Attorney’s office wrote an opinion that we were right and that they were violating the Clean Water Act by discharging irrigation water and allowing that to run off into the Laguna without monitoring and without a proper permit for that.

Thurston: So there was a settlement that was reached with RiverWatch. As a result of that settlement, were there changes in your policies or practices or procedures that you did in how this water was being discharged or being monitored? Was that part of your agreement in the settlement?

Ferris: No. First of all, what they won on they didn’t win. We settled. We settled mainly because I made the decision, along with the counsel and the board, that in essence we’re a public utility and I can tell you it wasn’t easy to get them to go along with the settlement, but we have so much going on in the department in terms of building and maintenance, the wastewater transmission project, we’re doing major changes in the treatment plant, not only that we’re doing major technological changes to the entire utilities department, and we’re spending several million dollars on it… To lose momentum in those areas to go to court and lose… it would cost us more to fight and win than it would cost to just settle.

Thurston: But was this a matter of all you had to do to get RiverWatch to back off is to pay them off?

Ferris: Well… We settled a lawsuit. I’d hate to characterize Jack and Paul as, uh, uh… you know, taking cash just to go away. Because, I… I really think Jack has …

Thurston: But that’s what it sounds like! If you were involved in some sort of violation, but there was nothing… if all they wanted was money, if they didn’t say, And you have to change this and you said, Ok, we’ll change this and give you money, then it was! Then it was for money! It was doing it for money! It was getting RiverWatch off your back by paying them off!

Ferris: Yeah. Let me say, I can’t look into Jack’s mind. I have no idea.

Thurston: But is that what happened? There was no change, only money?

Ferris: That’s what happened.

Thurston: Jack, respond to that. It does sound like extortion!

Silver: The, uh, money that, you know, that we get… You know, the Regional Water Quality Control Board has to step in and take care of this. We worked very closely with the Regional Water Quality Control Board on this case. And we uncovered things that they had done and they were up for some renewals on their permit, and some of the process that they had, the Regional Water Quality Control Board approved to us, that they would take care of those. In those circumstances we want the agency to have the opportunity to do enforcement when they are the agency that should be doing enforcement.

Thurston: But your lawsuit didn’t do anything for Santa Rosa. It didn’t do anything for the quality of the water. Your lawsuit brought you money.

Silver: … I don’t agree with that.

Thurston: Then what did it do for people? What did it do for the quality of the water?

Silver: There was another $20,000 that went out in projects and that was already published in the Sebastopol paper, and if anybody wants to get a copy of that, that was done with a joint committee between the city of Santa Rosa and the RWPC organization and some representatives there…

Thurston: Brenda Edelman.

Silver: Yes. And there were several changes that were made by the Regional Water Quality Control Board that were part of their ACL, the administrative civil liability action, and also part of their interpretation and, uh, monitoring changes that they made to update Santa Rosa’s permit. So it was unnecessary for us to put those also into a settlement agreement when the Regional Water Quality Control Board was already taking care of them. But they didn’t take care of them until we uncovered it.

Thurston: You’re saying it wasn’t stipulated in the suit, but you’re saying as a result of your filing the suit they did that, so then when you settled the suit all you needed at that point was money.

Silver: Well, I wouldn’t characterize it that way. But at the end of the day, that’s what has elapsed.

* * * COMMERCIAL BREAK * * *

Anderson: I’d like to make a few quick points here. Mr. Silver is being disingenuous in many ways. The fundamental problem is that public agencies as we all know carry massive insurance policies, and they’re imminently suable. They pay off all the time to make attorneys and problems go away. School districts do it. Even big private media groups do it. They have these huge deductibles. And Mendocino County does it. They paid the late Judi Bari once $5,000 not to pursue an alleged false arrest suit. So lots of public agencies do that. The other part of this particular problem is that the non-profit laws and the charity laws in the state of California are loose to the point of non-existence. There’s no enforcement! So these phony groups, these basically mercenary environmental groups, these mercenary do-good groups of all kinds, set up phony non-profits with paper boards and proceed to enrich themselves and their friends. Is $50 an hour a pretty penny? Yes. When you consider the fact that working people would be clicking their heels if they made half that an hour. Until the fairly recent past, Helen Libeu, who’s well known in Sonoma County, Ron Guenther, up here in Mendocino County, Brenda Edelman and the Russian River Group, these people went out on their own time and money to save trees and monitor the river and do all that. It wasn’t a profit making venture for them. I think they did it quite successfully. Considering that they were underfunded or that they were operating out of literally out of their own pocket. But now we have more environmental groups, more tax-exempt charities and less charity and fewer trees and a deteriorated environment generally.

* * * COMMERCIAL BREAK * * *

Thurston: Brenda Edelman is being quoted in the newspaper as saying that when she realized what you, Jack, were really about… it says here, “she quit RiverWatch three weeks ago over concern with its tactics.” Can you respond to that, Jack?

Silver: Not really. I know Brenda. She’s a friend. We’ve had her over for dinner a number of times. Her concerns are, I think, uh, not necessarily related, as much as her quotes are.

Thurston: Her quotes?

Silver: Yeah. You’re quoting her. Or paraphrasing her. I haven’t talked to her personally, so it’s difficult for me to determine exactly…

Thurston: You haven’t talked to her? She didn’t talk with you about all this?

Silver: No.

Thurston: Bruce Anderson wrote a scathing article about RiverWatch. Now I understand, Jack, that you’re going to be responding to the Press Democrat piece and their editorial. You’re writing an op-ed piece and they’ve agreed to give you a whole 750 words. Right?

Silver: Right. And we’re hoping they’ll print it on Sunday, which is a better day for people to read it.

Thurston: Bruce do you have a final statement before we let Jack have the final word?

Anderson: Mr. Silver wound up in a lawsuit with the city of Fortuna over alleged environmental violations that were petty and in the process of being remediated. He has just written a demand-shakedown letter to the city of Ferndale. I don’t know how that one’s going to shake out because there was an ACCIDENTAL, by all accounts, sewage spill last winter. Hopefully, they’ll resist. But it was during the Fortuna dispute that the Justice Department itself said that Silver’s fees that he was asking of Fortuna were excessive. But that suit apparently settled as well before the Department moved farther. People should be very careful about what kind of boards they sit on, what kinds of so-called environmental groups they donate money to. Like the Redwood Summer Justice Project. People probably think that has something to do with redwood trees, when actually it’s to fund a lawsuit that benefits three private individuals.

Thurston: They tricked me, huh Bruce?

Anderson: Yeah.

Thurston: I sent them $50 bucks one time.

Anderson: You’re a sap!

Thurston: I know.

Anderson: You got taken. You were had.

Thurston: I’ve learned my lesson.

Anderson: There are all kinds of groups. I wouldn’t give the Sierra Club a nickel myself. But if you get Rachel’s Environmental Newsletter, if you read that or Alexander Cockburn’s fine work, you’ll find out that there are legitimate environmental groups and you should support them. But there are so many illegitimate ones out there like RiverWatch and the Clean Water Institute, that you’ve gotta be heads up and I’m glad that people are finally waking up to this particular one.

Thurston: And Jack Silver…

Silver: We’ve been appreciating the attention too, because we’ve never had more support for what we are doing than ever. Primarily because they look at the sources of a lot of the materials and recognize, uh, you know, where there’s smoke there must be fire. I also just appreciate the fact that we don’t really discuss environmental issues and we’re living in a time of increased degradation of our, of our environment and of our health. And bringing these things into the forefront, talking about them, getting people activated about them, that’s what we’re about and that’s what we enjoy doing. We have a website — NorthernCaliforniaRiverWatch.org, if you can’t find it under that you can search under River Watch and come up with that. On there we tend to post what we’re doing, what we’re about, we try and keep people up to date on the litigation that we have, the findings that we have, and we’re also starting another part of the web page in which we give a detailed breakdown of everything that we’re doing in the way of injunctive relief and if any moneys come out of that where the moneys went to and how they’re spent.

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THE ANNUAL summer argument between salmon and Central Valley farmers has commenced with the Bureau of Reclamation’s decision last week to release Trinity River water into the lower Klamath River between August 15^th and September 21^st. The farmers of course want that water, but biologists predict another wholesale salmon die-off if the lower Klamath, already running low, slow and too hot for fish, doesn’t get it.

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The Little River Airport Logging Fiasco

Passing The Buck, In Slow Motion

by Mark Scaramella

Mendocino County owns about 57 acres of “productive timberland” near Little River Airport on the Coast. The property was profitably logged way back in 1996 during the period that some people remember as the “cut and run” days before Louisiana-Pacific and Georgia-Pacific finished decimating their huge Mendocino timber holdings and sold out what was left to the Fisher family (owners of The Gap clothing empire) and the Washington State employee pension fund, respectively. Back then the timber market was still holding up and the County made several hundred thousand dollars while also removing some dead and diseased trees.

That mid-90s harvest was conducted under a conventional “Timber Harvest Plan.” But since then, in an attempt to save small property owners some paperwork and time, California came up with an idea called a Non-Industrial Timber Management Plan (NTMP) which is supposed to allow smaller timberland owners “to prepare a long term management plan that reduces regulatory time and expense by providing an alternative to filing individual timber harvesting plans. In exchange, landowners agree to manage their forests through uneven-aged management and long-term sustained yield.”

The mid-90s THP was prepared by a local non-corporate timber forester who has been involved with County timber activities and discussions for decades now, Steve Smith. Smith, taking the theory of the NTMP to heart, then prepared one for Little River Airport in the hope that the County could make some ongoing revenue by sustainably harvesting a few Airport trees every ten years. But by the time 2006-2007 rolled around the timber market had begun to decline with more and more lumber being imported from Canada, and then ultimately collapsed with the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Making matters worse, in the intervening years some of the fir trees at the Airport have aged to the point that they are no longer expected to generate decent grade lumber. Nevertheless, County officials continued to limp along trying to get the NTMP’s “Notice Of Timber Operations” approved by the various agencies involved — which in the case of the Airport includes Caltrans because the Airport operates under Caltrans rules (and growing trees can become a factor in maintaining safe airspace for take-off and landing).

Until last year, the Little River Airport Logging planning was loosely assigned to the County’s now defunct “Forest Advisory Committee” which made occasional reports about the status of the timber harvesting at the Airport and loosely directed the County’s two main forestry experts, UC Extension Advisor Greg Giusti and the still-involved forester Steve Smith on plans and directions.

Then last year, in attempt to get serious about snagging some new revenues for the County’s depleted coffers, the County turned the project over to County CEO Carmel Angelo who turned it over to the County’s General Services Director Kristin McMenomey who was expected to push through the various contracts and timber harvest paperwork and then hire a logging operator.

But the process has become bogged down in layers of bureaucracy and agency approvals that no one at the County level was prepared for, especially Ms. McMenomey who bluntly admitted at the July 30 Board of Supervisors meeting, “I am not a forester.”

Late last month Ms. McMenomey reported, “The Board of Supervisors directed the Little River Timber Harvest be referred to the CEO’s office for a potential harvest in 2013. The direction from the Board was to have the CEO bring back the item to the full Board to hear Mr. Greg Guisti give his expertise on the subject. Due to Mr. Guisti’s availability (he was out of the Country for three months) to make such a presentation as well as the availability of the Board’s calendar at the end of the year, the decision was made to move forward with a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to get the process started [again] and the CEO would utilize her CEO Report to keep the Board of Supervisors updated.

”The General Services Agency (GSA) received this project on November 7, 2012 and immediately met with Greg Guisti and Steve Dunnicliff (previous project coordinator) to obtain an update on the status of the Harvest. GSA began work with Greg Guisti to create a Request for Qualifications for a Forester so as to hopefully begin a harvest in 2013. GSA issued the RFQ on April 5, 2013 and a contract was executed on June 24, 2013 [with a local coastal conservation oriented forester named Roger Sternberg].

“Subsequent to the contract being executed, the forester immediately began contacting the [California] Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW), US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and CalFire to determine whether or not these agencies would accept the following previous studies completed on the site:

“• Marbled Murrelet (MAMU) surveys completed in 2008 and 2009

“• Northern Spotted Owl surveys completed by MRC in 2010- 013

“On July 10th, the forester and a consulting wildlife biologist met with DFW to make the case that no additional Marbled Murrelet surveys were necessary. DFW was willing to not require additional surveys, however they wanted the County to designate five to six acres as a no-cut area and establish a 300-foot buffer, constituting a total of eight acres, in which harvesting would need to be approved by DFW. (This position was based on a site visit conducted by DFW staff in 2007.) A total of 14 acres of the property would likely be impacted, representing 25% of the NTMP area and 30% of the Redwood-Douglas-Fir stand. This could potentially result in a major impact on the amount of timber that could be harvested and the income that could be generated for the County. The decision was made to conduct two years of surveys (this year and next year) which should enable the County to harvest greater levels of timber in 2014 or potentially sell the rights to this timber to an organization like Save-The-Redwoods League — something that Linda Perkins from the Sierra Club has proposed.

“One survey has been completed to date and the other three will be completed by the end of this month. The USFWS and CalFire also require nonindustrial landowners to conduct six Northern Spotted Owl surveys for two years in a row. However, the Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC) conducted three surveys this year on its property adjacent to the airport. The Forester was able to get the USFWS to agree to another three surveys this year, plus three surveys next year, assuming that MRC conducts three surveys next year as well. One survey was completed on July 15th, and two others are scheduled to occur by the end of the month.

“The Forester [Mr. Sternberg] also met on July 15th with CalFire staff to review the Nonindustrial Timber Management Plan and discuss required amendments to the NTMP. As a result of this meeting, the Forester has a clear idea of how to expeditiously amend the NTMP. On the same day, he also met with Tom Peters of the [California] Department of Transportation (DOT) to discuss FAA requirements for clearing, the potential conflict of selling timber rights relative to FAA requirements, and the availability of bridge and culvert material that might be used on the truck road in the NTMP harvest area. Taking all of the above into consideration, the County is aggressively pursuing its option to harvest as soon as possible given the constraints of the various State and Federal agencies.”

“Aggressively…” We’d hate to see what passively would look like.

“Depending on upon the results of the surveys, it is anticipated that the County would have the ability to harvest timber in August of 2014. This would require GSA to embark upon the process of obtaining bids from loggers with a potential bid launch sometime in February/March of 2014. It should also be noted that deferring of the timber harvest until 2014 makes sense for two important reasons: 1) The mill price for Redwood will likely be better next year, as the current market is close to saturation; and 2) The County will be able to solicit bids from the best loggers in the area, many of whom are now committed to other jobs.”

It’s far from clear that the mill price for redwood “will likely be better next year.”

With this background, the Board discussed the Little River Logging project again at their meeting on July 30.

Pinches: “I was under the impression that CalFire was the lead agency when it comes to timber harvest plans, especially a Non-Industrial Timber Management Plan which we have on that site. But in reading this memo from Kristin [quoted above] it basically says that our forester who was hired started the meeting by contacting US Fish and Wildlife and CalFire. But it says that the US Fish and Wildlife service was not willing — they required more additional surveys on the marbled murrelet but they wanted us to designate five or six acres of no-cut area and establish a 300 foot buffer consisting of eight acres. Basically they are just cutting the heart out of our NTMP.

Supervisor Carre Brown: “It’s called extortion.”

Pinches: “So yes, we have an approved NTMP; we have to go by the new protocols on the biological surveys. But it’s like, yes, we will let you harvest a few trees but leave the heart out. Maybe using the word ‘fight’ is the wrong word, but we need to stand up for ourselves on this. If that should be left out of the harvest area than it should have been left out of the NTMP! I don’t see where things have changed to the point since we adopted this NTMP which we spent a lot of money on. It’s like, [Supervisor] Carre [Brown] just said it, it’s kind of like they’re extorting us. We need a forester who will stand up to this!”

McMenomey: “What we had was you had the forester come back to me after meeting with CalFire. I listed out the agencies, I didn’t list them out in the order of whom he met with first, but he met with basically everybody in the first week.”

Pinches: “CalFire is the lead agency, right?”

McMenomey: “Yes. And they are requiring the marbled murelet surveys to be re-conducted because our last surveys have expired. So, when approaching Fish and Game-Wildlife to try and negotiate, if you will, doing so many right now and so many per season because we are already too far behind to conduct everything now, they said, We will agree to, you know, fewer surveys if you agree to basically set aside, what is it?, about 14 acres or something like that? I just told the forester that that is not in accordance with the NTMP and that the answer was No, we were not going to do that. So instead we are going to conduct the surveys and we are just going to — we were already able to squeeze a couple in and we are just going to move forward and conduct the surveys in hopes that we will have all the results and we can go ahead and harvest in 2014. We should know — we also — there is an update to this, another hooting, a hooting [owl surveys], if you will, was conducted, so there have been two of the three, and both have shown no results which is good [no owls is good?], so we have one more to go on the hooting before we are finished with that.”

Pinches: “What is your projected total cost to do this, to hire this new forester to bring our NTMP up to speed to where we can harvest timber?”

McMenomey: “At this point, what we did is we entered into a contract not to exceed $20,000. So we are doing everything we can with the assistance of Greg Giusti and some other experts who are willing to donate their time.”

Pinches: “You expect the contract with the forester not to exceed $20,000. But does that include the biological surveys?”

McMenomey: “That’s everything.”

Pinches: “That’s everything?”

McMenomey: “That’s everything. That’s all the hooting, that’s everything. He hires the sub-consultants under his limit with the county.”

McCowen: “Is it correct that there was a competing proposal to perform the same work for a not to exceed $10,000?”

McMenomey: “There was a proposal of not to exceed $10,000 to complete the work. However, the plan of action to do so, you could not do that in accordance with our NTMP because we have surveys that have to be conducted and it was CalFire’s call. And you can’t possibly know CalFire’s call until you meet with them. And they made the call. You have to redo your studies.”

McCowen: “Was everyone bidding on the same project?”

With this, Ms. McMenomey hedged.

McMenomey: “Everybody was bidding on the same project. It wasn’t a bid. It was a request for qualifications. And so we had a committee where they were all ranked and we had Steve Smith as our registered forest professional on the committee and myself and David Grimmm and Greg Giusti did not rank any proposals. He was there as a resident forest expert if we had any questions. We ranked them separately. We got together in a conference room. And we had our top three. They were very clear who our top three qualifications were, based on the criteria that we were given. And so we looked at the top three and we did the scoring and summarized it and the top one came out and it was Mr. Sternberg.”

McCowen: “I guess I just have a comment. I’m kind of concerned that we’ve had this on the radar for a long time and we have known the issues and the surveys and so forth and the Board gave direction last November to move forward and it wasn’t until five months later that the RFQ was issued and so here we are, we have missed this logging season.”

McMenomey: “We had we would have missed it anyway. We needed to start back in May of 2012 in order to harvest in 2013. So we missed the mark on that one. So…”

McCowen: “I’ve heard that before.”

Supervisor Dan Hamburg: “What is— so I understand, we’ve got Dave Giusti engaged in this, Giusti, engaged in this?”

McMenomey: “Greg Giusti, yeah.”

Hamburg: “Excuse me, Greg Giusti.”

McMenomey: “He is engaged to assist me if I have some questions or need some guidance, as I am not a registered forester. He is. He is sort of the resident County expert when it comes to, when it comes to a point where, like, for example, in Fish and Game-Wildlife warning us to basically not harvest a major portion of that property which is not in accordance with the NTMP. I said, you know, I sent an email to him, I said, honestly, my feeling is, No. Is there is some issue here? And he was like, well, no; it should be in there; it’s not in accordance with the NTMP. So he is sort of my double check if you will.”

Hamburg: “Okay. What about Steve Smith?”

McMenomey: “Steve Smith — I have utilized him in the past on the first time I did this which was many, many years ago and he is also a valuable resource and is very familiar and he has offered his services to our forester, you know, at, for free, basically, if he —”

And at this point the video of the Board meeting mysteriously hiccupped and the rest of the discussion was cut off. (The County’s videographing service is looking into the problem.)

But we have gathered since then that the Board expressed some cautious concern about Ms. McMenomey’s selection process and whether she had really selected the right forester or simply chosen someone who was more familiar to the Smith-Giusti government forester axis to see if this now unbelievably convoluted process can ever be completed.

As the conversation in the Board room proceeded the Board became increasingly frustrated with the “coordination” costs being run up by Mr. Sternberg without much on-the-ground progress. Pinches wondered if Mr. Sternberg, who specializes in conservation easements, not actual logging, has a good handle on the timber market itself.

Back in 2011 the Board imposed an important condition on the project before they approved any contract with a timber operator: They required that a specific buyer (a mill, in other words) be lined up and committed with a firm purchase price for whatever logs were to be cut before any actual logging was done.

These days with so few mills left on the northcoast and many of them either far away (increasing trucking costs) or specializing in only certain kinds of logs and tree species, that sensible requirement will be hard to meet — and it hasn’t even come up in this latest round of buck passing and bureaucratic bickering.

With all the restrictions and delays and the clock running on the billable paperwork hours, the County will be lucky to make any profit on the job at all.

At the rate they’re going and with the layers of uncertainty involved, Mr. Sternberg could easily come back in a month or two with another costly new wrinkle that will not only require the County to pay him more than his $20k “not to exceed,” but might kill the job entirely if the economics don’t pencil out. Thus losing all the money invested in the paperwork so far.

At that point the County will be forced to deal with the question of selling what’s left of the Airport’s timber rights to a local conservation organization or selling the 57 acres at a loss to someone with enough competence to actually do the job. Someone with competent forestry professionals and much deeper pockets — like the Airport’s neighbor: Mendocino Redwood Company. ¥¥

THE UKIAH VALLEY Medical Center is a for-profit medical complex owned and operated by the tax-exempt 7th Adventist Church. The Center announced last week that it has eliminated six jobs because, it says, it expects to make less money when Obama Care kicks in.

OF COURSE the Adventists didn’t put the layoffs that harshly; their smoothie-woothie spokesman, Nick Bejarano, said the layoffs were “directly and indirectly” related to the Affordable Care Act, and are necessary because hospitals will receive lower reimbursements as part of state and federal payment reforms.

ACA, aka ObamaCare, section 1886(q) of the amended Social Security Act establishing the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, requires that payments to hospitals with excess readmissions be reduced.

THE ADVENTISTS having an inland Mendo monopoly, they have to treat everyone, and certain of those everyones are frequent fliers. The Adventists prefer the fully insured, not the 5150s, tweekers, drunks, and the even more plentiful plain old poor people who can’t pay $5,000 to get their broken arm put in a cast. (Five thou, I hope, is an exaggeration, but you get the point. We all get the point. My colleague, The Major, just got a bill for $619 for “lab work” dispatched to a San Diego lab by a Ukiah dentist. The actual investigation, called a biopsy, probably took a lab assistant about thirty seconds.)

UNDER OUR PRESENT health care “system,” which can be called Pay or Die, hospitals naturally prefer fully insured patients, old geezers who suddenly appear in an emergency room are worth ten times their weight in real gold.

OBAMA CARE, as we know or should know, is an insurance scheme written by, guess who?, the insurance companies. If you don’t buy one at upwards of $300 a month, the IRS will fine you.

IT’S NOT GOING TO WORK. Working Americans, already maxxed out, don’t have upwards of $300 to buy mandatory insurance. And we wonder how ObamaCare can possibly apply to lots of people who do have the money — the off-the-books workers of Mendocino County, a very large segment of our population. There are hundreds of people in this area who haven’t filed income tax returns in years, if ever. Nationally? Millions.

HENCE, the mass, last minute propaganda effort by the federal government to get people signed up, which is occurring in a context of most people not knowing anything of the particulars of what’s expected of them, or the October 15th kick-off date.

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THAT’S A STUNNING field of sunflowers at Saracina Vineyards just north of Hopland, and a welcome sight, occurring as it suddenly does in the industrial-agro sameness of vineyards. I’m told the sunflowers are eventually plowed under to reinvigorate exhausted soil, an encouraging twofer of beauty and utility, you could call it.

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WE’RE TRYING to find out who compiled the following stats contained in this press release, but we suspect the Mendocino County Health Department. Yup, suspicions confirmed, the Mendo Health Department with an assist from the Coast Hospitality Center and the Ukiah Community Center,  something called “Love In Action,” plus the County’s many non-profits clustered on the poor like fruit flies on piles of rotting bananas — miscellaneous self-interested parties. The stats were compiled during a one-day count on January 24th. Take it all with all the skepticism you can muster, but be it known that the bogus count is worth $1.9 million to all of the above in federal grant money. If the poor weren’t this country’s last growth industry, you think “Love In Action” would be all huggsies-wuggsies?

THIS IS THE ACCOMPANYING BULLSHIT: “The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors will hear on Monday county staff’s annual report on homelessness in the county. The annual report is done in compliance with the Homelessness Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act of 2009, to comply with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, to track trends and access funding. The report, based on a homeless census and survey conducted Jan. 24, defines a homeless person as ‘an individual who lacks a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence,’ which include people housed at shelters, at institutions for 90 days or fewer, and those whose ‘primary nighttime residence is a public or private place not meant for human habitation.’ People living in shelters are counted the evening before volunteers gather in the early morning hours to count those living in cars, under bridges and in other places. For the unsheltered count, workers prepare weeks in advance, mapping zones and seeking out homeless encampments. Teams of three meet at 5am on the day of the unsheltered count, and count only people and vehicles with people in them. Volunteers are paid mileage at the county employee rate, and homeless workers are paid $10 per hour. The count, conducted every two years, shows that the numbers of homeless have decreased since 2011, when the count was last done. There were 104 people staying in emergency shelters in 2013, up four from the 2011 count; 71 people in transitional shelters in 2013, up from the 2011 count of 42 people. Overall, the 2013 count showed there were 175 people sheltered, up from 142 in 2011; and 1,169 people unsheltered, down from the 2011 count of 1,314. The 2013 grand total of homeless people in  Mendocino County is 1,344, down from 1,456 in 2011. The report includes the results of one-on-one interviews conducted by homeless workers, who also received $5 per survey. This year, workers interviewed 418 homeless people, according to the report. People who took the survey each received a $5 ‘incentive card.’ The survey showed there are 293 ‘chronically homeless’ individuals in the county, along with 27 families — with 24 of those being unsheltered — and 56 people in chronically homeless families. Of those, 39 individuals and three families are in emergency shelters. Homeless people with chronic substance abuse problems numbered 261 in the surveys, which also showed 230 homeless individuals are severely mentally ill. Of those, 180 substance abusers and 157 mentally ill homeless people are unsheltered. Homeless veterans numbered 63, with 48 of those unsheltered. Homeless victims of domestic violence numbered 59, with 40 of those in emergency shelters and 19 unsheltered. The 2013 ‘Point in Time’ count budget included $2,976 for the coast; $2,472 for the southern, inland portion of the county, and $1,100 for the northern, inland area. The benefit of the Point in Time count is that it meets HUD requirements for $1.9 million in grant funding. The grant is divided into amounts of $133,242 for supporting housing transition; $204,229 for a supportive housing program; $1.4 million for tenant rental assistance and $49,870 for sponsor rental assistance,” whatever that is.

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WORLD TRAVELER and part-time Boonville resident Geoff Thomas has recently published his first travel book — “Poor Circulation I: Ashes To Boonville.” A fully literate writer in a time of no guarantees, Thomas vivifies his adventures as he makes his way to and through the most improbable places on a Triumph motorcycle. The book begins in Thomas’ native England as the dutiful son vows to bring his late mother’s ashes to far-off Boonville. According to one reviewer the book “is far more than just another travel diary or tale of great adventure, it is an extraordinary exploration of one man’s inner journey and a quest to fulfill his mother’s final wishes. The images Thomas evokes, as well as the atmosphere and emotion he describes really brings to life this tale of discovery and realization. If only there were more writers like Thomas out there, bringing the human story to their tales of great adventure.” Actually, the book is better than that; the writer spares us the kind of prolonged introspection which, unless you’re Proust, is better unsaid, and certainly better unwritten. And when Thomas does indulge in what a lesser pen would be mere woo-woo and who cares, he does it funny. These days, the engaging Mr. Thomas can be found as the “ringer” on the Bar Team at the Thursday night quiz at Lauren’s Restaurant, Boonville.

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SOLFEST XV is scheduled for Saturday (August 17th) at Real Goods’ Solar Living Center in Hopland, noon to midnight. As always, the event will be short on soul unless, of course, your idea of a rully, rully hardhitting event is a panel discussion featuring Supervisor Hamburg and Congressman Huffman, that snooze-aroo and a lot of the expensive eco-gadgetry that Real Goods pedals to upscale consumers with environmental pretensions.

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HOOPA VALLEY TRIBE INTERVENES

Westlands files lawsuit against Trinity water release

by Dan Bacher

The Westlands Water District and San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority filed a lawsuit in federal court in Fresno on Wednesday, August 7 in an attempt to stop increased flows on the Trinity River set to begin on August 13.

The lawsuit alleges that the Bureau of Reclamation’s planned releases from Trinity Reservoir to protect salmon in the lower Klamath River would be unlawful and would further cut water available for the growers, causing them “significant and irreparable harm.”

“Plaintiffs will be irreparably harmed by the lost water supply from the proposed releases, up to approximately 109,000 acre-feet,” the lawsuit stated. “Instead of releasing that water to the Trinity River, Defendants could export it to the Sacramento watershed to support deliveries to members of the Authority, including Westlands. By doing so, Reclamation could restore the 5% allocation to south-of-Delta contractors that was cut on March 22, 2013.”

“In addition, increasing exports from the TRD to the Sacramento River watershed would increase hydropower generation in 2013,” the document claimed.

The lawsuit documents are available at: http://mavensnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Trinity-Complaint-as-filed.pdf

The Hoopa Valley Tribe responded by intervening in the lawsuit in support of increased releases down the Trinity. You can read the Tribe’s intervention here: http://www.c-win.org/webfm_send/339

“Our fisheries scientists are very concerned about developing fish disease conditions in the Lower Klamath River, conditions that will affect the salmon runs returning to the Trinity River,” said Danielle Vigil-Masten, Chair of the Hoopa Valley Tribe. “Accordingly, the Hoopa Valley Tribe has strongly supported the decision of the Bureau of Reclamation to release additional Trinity River water to ameliorate conditions in the Lower Klamath River. A die -off of Trinity River salmon, if it were to occur again this year, would be very harmful to the many Hoopa tribal members who rely upon these fish.”

The Yurok Tribe and Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) will also intervene in the lawsuit in support of the Trinity River releases, according to Zeke Grader, PCFFA Executive Director.

The release will supplement flows in the Lower Klamath River to help protect an expected large returning run of adult Chinook salmon from a disease outbreak and mortality, according to Pete Lucero, Bureau of Reclamation spokesman.

The third largest run of fall Chinook salmon on record is expected to ascend the river and its tributaries this year – and representatives of Indian Tribes, fishing groups and environmental organizations are trying to prevent a fish kill like the one of September 2002 from taking place this season.

“It’s deja vu all over again,” responded Tom Stokely, Water Policy Analyst for the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN). “Back in 2002, these same water agencies blocked downstream releases of Trinity River water, which could have prevented the deaths of tens of thousands of adult salmon. Now they want to do it again. If they are successful, a major fish kill is likely.”

“The bottom line is that the Bureau of Reclamation has promised to deliver much more water than is available in the system. These conflicts will only worsen until water contracts and water rights conform with hydrologic reality,” he concluded.

In a press release on Wednesday, the Hoopa Valley Tribe warned that the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) plan to supplement Klamath River flows to avoid a fish kill may not be sufficient. “We need more water and we need it sooner,” said Hoopa Fisheries Director Michael Orcutt.

“The Klamath River is expecting a large fall run of salmon, yet the river is extremely low and warm. These conditions are similar to those in 2002 when an epidemic killed over 60,000 adult salmon in the Klamath River,” according to Orcutt.

The target date for augmented flows in the Lower Klamath River is August 15. “Because of the two day travel time between Lewiston Dam and the Lower Klamath, the releases from Lewiston Dam will begin in the early morning hours of August 13 and end in the last week of September,” Lucero explained.

Lucero said flows in the Lower Klamath River will be targeted at 2,800 cubic feet per second during this period and Lewiston Dam releases will be adjusted accordingly. Reclamation plans to release 62,000 acre feet of Trinity water, plus an additional 39,000 acre feet of emergency water if fish demonstrate signs of disease, to the Klamath during this period.

An Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact were prepared in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act, and are available online at http://www.usbr.gov/mp/nepa/nepa_projdetails.cfm?Project_ID=14366.

The Trinity River, the Klamath River’s largest tributary, provides the only out of basin water for the federal Central Valley Project. The Brown administration is currently fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels under the California Delta to export massive quantities of Sacramento and Trinity River water to corporate agribusiness and oil companies.

The construction of the tunnels would lead not only hasten the extinction of Central Valley salmon and steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other species, but would devastate the salmon and steelhead populations of the Trinity and Klamath rivers.

The Environmental Protection Information Center is urging people to take action by calling on the Department of the Interior to release more Trinity water and prevent another disastrous fish kill: http://www.wildcalifornia.org/blog/klamath/

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LIGHTNING FIRES BURNING ON MENDOCINO NATIONAL FOREST

Willows, Calif. – The Mendocino National Forest is currently locating and taking action to suppress fires started by lightning during a series of storms from Thursday evening through Saturday.  The Forest received more than 200 lightning strikes over the three days.  The Forest has identified four fires on the Upper Lake and Covelo Ranger Districts on the west side of the Forest and two fires on the Grindstone Ranger District, located on the east side of the Forest.  All four fires on the Upper Lake and Covelo Ranger Districts are all small and have been contained at less than an acre.  The Mickey Fire, which was identified Thursday evening in the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness is out.  On the Grindstone Ranger District, the Wallow Fire was discovered Friday and contained at one-tenth of an acre Saturday.  The Crocket Fire is currently burning on the north end of the Snow Mountain Wilderness and is approximately 10 acres.  It is burning in heavy slash, brush and some timber in the same area as the 2001 Trough Fire.  It is expected to be contained today, but smoke will still be visible for the next several days.  Fire managers are asking the public to avoid the Crocket Fire Area due to increased fire traffic – both on the ground and in the air – as they work to achieve control of the fire.  As conditions continue to dry out and warm up, Forest firefighters anticipate discovering more lightning fires in the coming days.  As a reminder, the Forest is currently under fire restrictions.  To report a fire, please call 911.  For more information, please contact the Mendocino National Forest at 530-934-3316, or visit www.fs.usda.gov/mendocino<http://www.fs.usda.gov/mendocino>.  Updates are also available on Twitter @MendocinoNF. (CalFire Press Release.)

NORM FLUHER of Mendocino’s venerable Blair House used to sit on the board of the Mendocino County Lodging Association until he was purged from that august body for asking the un-askable. Mr. Fluher wanted to know where all the money goes and, very soon, it was bye, bye baby for him. His colleagues on the board voted him off the board by a one-vote margin.

THE LODGING ASSOCIATION collects $325k from its members, which is then “matched” by the County, and the entire $650k is then given over to Scott Schneider’s “Visit Mendocino County.” Schneider pulls down a nice $90,454 for 35 hours of work a week. What exactly Schneider does during those 35 hours is one of those many ongoing Mendo mysteries, comparable to asking what Paul Tichinin does all day long as the County’s superintendent of schools.

HERE’S how Fluher was got. “Board Member Conduct & Disciplinary Action. Pauline [Zamboni] presented the item. A number of Board members support an effort to impose disciplinary action on Norm Fluher, including possible removal from the Board. Letters in support of Norm have been received and some public are in attendance to express such support. Pauline notes that the proposed disciplinary action is based on his noncompliance with MCLA’s current bylaws, one violation in Article 2, ‘Purpose and Mission’ statement, i.e., his actions to disestablish the existing BID; and three violations in Article 4-Item 6, ‘Duties and Responsibilities of Board Members,’ i.e., his actions on more than one occasion being counter to Board policy as set by vote of a majority of members; and his action of giving the appearance of speaking officially for the organization without prior authorization. In addition, his continued actions which could be viewed as being counter to the fiduciary duties and responsibilities expected of a Board member to the organization was also brought into question. Pauline motions that the Board take disciplinary action against Norm by requesting him, in good faith…” And so on, the bloodletting accomplished by “Pauline” on a nicey-nice first-name basis.

BUT WAIT. “Norm does not agree to accept the disciplinary action and the motion is rescinded. Pauline motions Norm be removed from the Board. Jan seconds. Wendy [Roberts] also seconds. Motion Fails with 11 Yes and 4 No (13 Needed to pass).” But Pauline, Jan and Wendy went right to work and soon Norm was outtathere by one vote.

STILL CONFUSED? The inns, bed and breakfasts, motels and so on tax themselves to the tune of $325,000. Then the taxpayers, unbeknownst to most of them, casually drop another $325k to promote Mendo’s delights in the great outside world, which is where Schneider comes in to do whatever he does — Frisco wine parties and a couple of big signs near the County line — and somehow the tourists come running. Fluher doesn’t think the money is well spent. Neither do we.

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THE CITY OF UKIAH’S landfill east of town closed in September of 2001, but rather than seal the dump off as per environmental regulations, the City dithered and dallied for so long — twelve years — that now the County of Mendocino has subjected Ukiah to an “enforcement action.” Which really means a lot of back and forth woof-woofing between Ukiah lawyers and the County’s hard-hitting County Counsel’s office. This is the kind of techno-hassle that should be worked out without involving lawyers, but…

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EXCERPTS FROM COUNTY CEO CARMEL ANGELO’S REPORT to the Board of Supervisors for Tuesday, August 13:

2013-14 BUDGET REPORT: The Recommended Budget has been published and is available on the County website at http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/administration/13-14RecommendedBudget.htm Department reviews will be completed by August 16, 2013 and adjustments or corrections will be reflected in the Final Budget. The Auditor continues to work on the year-end closeout process for FY 2012-2013. Executive Office staff are monitoring the process and gathering information that may affect the 2013-2014 Final Budget.

HEALTH CARE REFORM UPDATE: October 1, 2013 marks the first day of the open enrollment period for Covered California. The Health and Human Services Agency is busy training staff to prepare them for the new enrollment process. Additionally, HHSA is reviewing its public outreach strategies, computer entry protocols, and any other necessary retraining to appropriately reflect the changes being implemented through the Affordable Care Act. HHSA is also hard at work transitioning its current Path to Health enrollees into Medi-Cal, and finalizing contracts for a new, state-mandated call center for Covered California. The biggest priority at the moment is increasing staff levels within HHSA to be prepared for a potential influx of new applications to Covered California by Mendocino County residents. The application period for up to 12 new Eligibility Workers closed at Human Resources on Friday August 8, 2013. Finally, there is a strong educational outreach effort occurring internally to make sure HHSA employees are familiar with the details and requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

TO: DOUGLAS F. CRANE, MAYOR. UKIAH City Council, 300 Seminary Avenue, Ukiah, CA 95482

Dear Mayor Crane and City Councilmembers:

I regret that I am not able to attend today’s meeting due to a prior commitment. However, I wish to make the following comments on agenda item 12a regarding the joint meeting of the City of Ukiah (City) and County of Mendocino (County) to discuss a master tax-sharing agreement. It is well known that the City and County have been meeting on the topic for many years but have been unable to reach a fair and equitable master tax-sharing agreement. I believe it is important for all involved, including the general public, to have as much accurate information as possible. While it is true that state law mandates that approximately .30 cents of each sales tax dollar collected countywide, including within the city limits of the four incorporated cities of Ukiah, Fort Bragg, Willits and Point Arena is ultimately distributed to the County of Mendocino, it is equally true that every penny of these funds are spent to provide state mandated services to all County residents, including those who reside within the cities. Unfortunately, this sales tax allocation doesn’t cover all the costs of providing statemandated services. Each year the County is required to spend millions of additional dollars from the County General Fund to provide state mandated services that city and county residents rely on. Therefore, it provides an incomplete picture to focus on the topic of state mandated sales tax collections, all of which must be spent to provide state mandated services. It is my understanding that the sales tax sharing discussions have historically been focused on the appropriate formula for sharing funds derived from the local 1.00% sales tax rate – not the funds derived from the state 6.50% sales tax rate. In order to reach agreement, I believe it is advisable to re-focus our discussion on the 1.00% local share, as well as future distribution of property tax and transient occupancy tax within the annexation areas. I welcome the inclusion of the November 27, 2006 letter from the City Council to the Board of Supervisors expressing a commitment to move forward with the steps needed to implement the Ukiah Valley Area Plan. Now that the UVAP has been completed, and the Municipal Service Reviews for Ukiah Valley public agencies are nearing completion, it is time to move forward with a master tax sharing agreement. It is time that our jurisdictions, and those we serve who live and work in the Ukiah Valley, benefit from the positive outcomes, as stated in the above referenced letter, that can best be realized , by reaching a comprehensive agreement for tax sharing. The county stands ready to continue the development of a fair and equitable master tax-sharing agreement so all our residents may benefit from more collaborative local governments that work together for the greater good. As stated in my letter of July 29, 2013 to City Manager Chambers, the County continues to support key land use policies that favor development that is consistent with the Ukiah City Council recommendations on land use in the greater Ukiah area. Let me reiterate the County ad hoc still supports the 50/50 split and the Costco addendum, a carve-out that gives the city millions in sales tax dollars from Costco up-front, and possibly no increased sales tax revenue to the county for the life of the tax-sharing agreement. I remain optimistic and I look forward to city and county staff working together to resolve any outstanding issues with our draft master tax-sharing agreement.

Sincerely, Carmel J. Angelo, Chief Executive Officer, Mendocino County

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Evans

AS REPORTED LAST WEEK, Noreen has finally figured out she can make more money working on retainer for the special interests than if she merely does their bidding as a member of the legislature. Or, the State Dems may have told her to jump before she gets pushed. We doubt her decision is related to her love of administration of justice or lawmaking. By the way, she was angling for appointment as a judge but the Governor’s screening committee declined.

* * *

Dear Friends: This year marks my 20th in public office, including 10 years in the Legislature. But Sacramento is not my home and politics not how I planned to spend my life. Though I enjoyed my job as a lawmaker, my first love is the administration of justice. I will leave the Legislature next year at the end of my term to return to my private law practice. I am immeasurably grateful for the faith, trust and support of our great community and the hard work of my dedicated staff. 
 Together, we wrote the nation’s first Homeowner’s Bill of Rights, improved our foster care system, protected the coast, kept state parks open, updated regulation of California’s wine industry, preserved CEQA as the cornerstone of California’s environmental protection laws, and much more. I chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, working to strengthen consumer and privacy protection and keep our courthouses open in the face of massive budget cuts. I also chaired the Legislative Women’s Caucus, advocating for the interests of women and children. When California faced economic meltdown, as Chair of the Budget Committee I prevented the worst of many attempts to shut down public services. After several difficult years, I am confident the state is now moving in the right direction under Governor Brown’s leadership, with a strong Democratic majority in each house. As I return to private practice, I will continue to be a strong advocate for progressive values, working families, equal protection and justice for all. We have seen California through unprecedented challenges. I hope my efforts over the past two decades have contributed in some small measure to a better future for us all.

Noreen Evans, California State Senator, District 2

HANK SIMS (of LostCoastOutpost.com) adds:

One the one hand it’s a bit surprising, because few folk willingly bail from the legislature before they’re termed out. Evans has another four years coming to her. On the other hand, she’s been publicly dismissive about the $100,000-per-year pittance of a so-called “salary” she receives as a public servant, even going so far as to hire herself out as a part-time attorney while on the state payroll. Evans’ return to the private sector blows the 2014 races wide open. Assm. Wes Chesbro is up for the term-limit guillotine next go-around, and Evans is stepping down. Who will the party bosses appoint to replace them? The Sonoma and Marinites are jockeying around — Dick Spotswood has the Spotswoodian take here — but there are bound to be some Humboldters in the mix. Stay tuned.

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THE FILING DEADLINE for the local November elections is extended to August 14 for those races where an incumbent did not file.

LOCAL RACES TO WATCH: The three Brooktrails incumbents, including Tony Orth, who is currently probably the longest serving board member of any pubic agency in Mendocino County, are faced with a couple of challengers;

THREE Russian River Flood Control District incumbents, who include former County Supervisor Richard Shoemaker, are being challenged by Ukiah Valley Sanitation District General Manager Frank McMichael (who was defeated by Shoemaker for re-election as Second District Supervisor back in 1996. McMichael is calling himself a “water rights advocate.” Shoemaker, of course, is a Shoemaker advocate.

MARY MISSELDINE, a dental hygienist, will replace Diane Zucker on the MCOE board.

SUSAN RUSH is among six candidates for four seats on the Point Arena Unified School District Board.

OVER IN COVELO, tribal member Amanda Britton is challenging the three incumbents who are running for re-election to the Tribal Council.

THREE of the four incumbent Ukiah Unified School District Board members up for re-election, including long time incumbent Kathy James and Glenn McGourty, who are choosing to step aside.

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ACCORDING to today’s Press Democrat story by Paul Payne, 1,511 people were arrested in Mendocino County on felony charges and 835 – or 55.3% — were convicted. Lake County had 365 felony arrests and 171 convictions for a rate of 46.8%. “Mendocino County’s assistant district attorney, Paul Sequeira, said felony arrest conviction rates don’t mean much because the standard of proof is higher in court. Many people arrested on felonies are later charged with lesser crimes or dismissed, he said. Sequeira said his office keeps statistics based on the number of complaints filed that shows a conviction rate of 87% in 2012 and 88% in 2011.

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Jones

ADAM MORALES comments on the banana toss episode last Sunday at AT&T, for which the fan who did it has already apologized.

A fan, probably drunk, tossed half a banana at Adam Jones, the Orioles’ All-Star centerfielder.

The episode conjured visions of the racist fans who’d throw bananas at black soccer players in Europe, especially Italy.

“At the ‘stick it would have been a beer but who is going to waste a $10 foofoo micro brew? A free banana from a catering cart is a different story. If there had only been $8 brats left on the cart I doubt anything would have been thrown. I’ve been going to Giants games since I was a kid in the 70s. This is nothing compared to what you’d see or hear in those days. Nobody took it personally or cried PC tears of protest. The players wouldn’t hide behind agents (CAA? Gimmie a break!), they’d turn around and talk right back and at times barely restrain themselves from jumping into the stands to ‘continue the conversation.’ I was excited for the new ballpark and even more so when I went to the preview night for season ticket holders. That excitement was curtailed when I met my new ‘neighbors’ in section 119. A bunch of yuppies on one side who would never pay much attention to the game showing up in the third leaving in the seventh and a rotating group of annoying South Bay folks who worked as bartenders/waitresses in some upscale brew house and could not stay off their cell phones. Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of great true fans there, but the majority of the 30,000 plus new season ticket holders were pretentious, stuck up
posers. It’s a business — I get it and seeing the Bonds years (’roids or not) and our World Championships has only strengthened my love of my HOME team but I could do without the fans of the last 13 years. If I’m not mistaken centerfield is bleacher town — what’s a catering cart even doing there? That should be the land of snuck-in flasks, not catered dinners! Again I get it— it’s a business. Well, business is good with 200 plus sellouts in a row. Let’s see how many of these ‘fans’ are there next year or the year after if the Giants don’t win it all. That’ll be the time to throw things.”

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RETURN TO PHILO

So quiet so still everything to see

In this wilderness so tame

I try to listen to feel to dream

To sing every song I’ve never sung

Every sight I’ve never seen

Looking for any path to anywhere.

I sing not wanting the song to end

Searching for the words I can’t find

Humming to myself for all to hear

Wondering where it has been.

You don’t need to write

Only going up and not down

You can write wherever in any weather

You can write whether you’re right or wrong

You might even write when everyone is wrong.

This day will never be the same

Just as the redwoods grow and change

Reaching up and everywhere

Teaching us all who we are.

This is the way we travel

Finding more to see and sing about

Bring out the best of us

To last forever.

This is a day to walk or run

To climb to crawl to take the time

We’ve never found but for now

On this day of sky sun air to breathe.

This is the time and place

This is the way we always

Seem to dream and sing about

Walking through these sunny miracles.

Finding the words to say

Hello or goodbye

In any language at any time

Takes a better poet than I

Takes a symphony of sounds

I hope to find to let us hear

Of our time here in this place

Of dreams of growth of feeling.

Finding what we only hope to find

Breathing as we climb the trails

Feeling as our hearts are beating

Every moment of our possibilities

We are together when we’re apart

It never seems far away

The sun keeps shining in our hearts

The songs keep singing keep coming.

— Jim Boudouris (not to be confused with my cousin in Philo, Jim Boudoures of the Philo SawWorks.)

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REMINDERS AREN’T THREATS

TO: Board of Directors, Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, P.O. Box 1, Philo, CA 95466

August 8, 2013

Re: Violation of California Corporations Code – Annual Membership Meeting

Members of the Board:

Thank you for your letter of July 24, signed by your president, Elaine Herring. The letter appears to be responding to my letter of July 2, which I mailed to you. I did not hand each board member a copy of my letter at your meeting of July 1, as your letter states. That letter was handed to you by member King Collins, and raises other issues that the board needs to address. This letter will focus on your violations of the California Corporations Code concerning our annual membership meetings.

Sections 5510-11 of the Corporations Code state, in part:

5510. (b) A regular meeting of members shall be held on a date and time, and with the frequency stated in or fixed in accordance with the bylaws, but in any event in each year in which directors are to be elected at that meeting for the purpose of conducting such election, and to transact any other proper business which may be brought before the meeting.

5511. (a) Whenever members are required or permitted to take any action at a meeting, a written notice of the meeting shall be given not less than 10 nor more than 90 days before the date of the meeting to each member who, on the record date for notice of the meeting, is entitled to vote thereat . . .

The Bylaws of Mendocino County Public Broadcasting state, in part:

Article X. MEETINGS OF THE MEMBERSHIP

Section 10.01 Annual Meeting:

1) The annual meeting of the Membership shall be held within sixty (60) days of the completion of Board elections each year, unless the Board shall provide for another date and so notifies Members.

2) The purpose of this meeting shall be to declare the results of the preceding election of the Board, to present an annual report to Members on the activities and accomplishments of MCPB, to present the audit report, and any other business as may come before the meeting.

3) Notice of the annual meeting date and location, including agenda items that may require Membership vote, shall be given to all Members a minimum of fifteen (15) days prior to the meeting if delivered by first class mail or a minimum of four (4) days prior to the meeting if broadcast daily on the Station’s radio frequencies and posted at the Station headquarters.

In plain English, since our bylaws require a membership meeting each year, a timely written notice to all members is required by state law.

You have stated several reasons why MCPB is exempt from the law. All are in error.

1) Cost. “Please note firstly that it costs MCPB in the range of $3,000-$4,000 to give a written notice of anything to all members.” Although the superior court can consider practicality in enforcing the Corporations Code, there is a cost-free alternative. Simply include the notice of the annual meeting with the notice of board elections.

Our bylaws state the following concerning the notice of elections:

Section 6.03 Elections

(2) The President of the Board or the Elections Coordinator shall announce ninety (90) days prior to the date of election that nominations will be accepted. Such announcement shall conform to MCPB’s Elections Policies.

In order to make both notices simultaneously, you would need to schedule the annual membership meeting on the same day as the close of balloting. You would not be the first membership nonprofit to do so. You could also change the timing for notice of the election. You could also include a membership renewal. There are many ways to avoid additional mailing costs. Practicality does not preclude compliance with the Code.

2) Habit. “Secondly, MCPB has never given notice of its Annual Meeting by mail.” Prior violations of a law do not justify future noncompliance. All you have done with this statement is to acknowledge a continuing pattern of noncompliance.

3) Agenda. You argue that the annual membership meeting is not a meeting at which “members are required or permitted to take any action”, and that therefore the notice provisions of the Corporations Code do not apply. “Accordingly, the Corporations Code Section that you cite, requiring 90 days advance written notice, was not applicable to the Annual Meeting in 2013, and it will not be applicable to any future Annual Meeting – unless the agenda for such meeting permits or requires action by the members.”

Your conclusion is based on the erroneous premise that only the board of directors can set the agenda at the annual membership meeting. If 20% of the members attend, they can conduct any relevant business, including changes to the bylaws. No board of directors can limit the rights of members that are established in the Corporations Code. Your efforts to do so by limiting the agenda and not giving proper notice violate both the letter and the spirit of the law.

4) Compliance with Bylaws. You argue that your actions were proper because “MCPB’s notices for the 2013 Annual Meeting complied fully with its By-laws,” citing Section 10.01(3) (above). Your argument is based on the erroneous premise that a corporation’s compliance with its own bylaws relieves it of the duty to comply with the Corporations Code. You are wrong. Mendocino County Public Broadcasting is a California corporation and must comply with the California Corporations Code. It is the notice provision in our bylaws that are out of compliance. Your failure to understand and acknowledge the significance of the annual membership meeting has resulted in erroneous policies and procedures.

Once you recognize the importance of the annual membership meeting, you will also understand that MCPB failed to hold a proper meeting in May by failing to answer any questions put forth by members at the meeting. It failed “to transact any other proper business which may be brought before the meeting” or to fully “present an annual report to Members on the activities and accomplishments of MCPB” as required by our bylaws (above). Even Horowitz and the vulture capitalists have to answer questions at their annual shareholder meetings. Are the MCPB board and management to be held less accountable?

The Board’s current policies of ignoring the rights and concerns of the members of MCPB bring into question its legal legitimacy. Worse, it burns the bridges of communication that are essential to any nonprofit membership organization. As a member of the Board of Directors, each of you has a sacred duty to maintain that communication.

In your letter, you characterized my efforts to protect the rights of members as “threats”, doing so five times in the first few paragraphs. But it is never a threat to nurture the collective consciousness of a nonprofit membership organization. Nor is it a threat to remind you that failure to comply with the California Corporations Code will expose Mendocino County Public Broadcasting to whatever court action is necessary to protect the rights of its members. Please change your policies and procedures as soon as possible to bring them into compliance and avoid any such action. It is the only way for our organization to find its best destiny and fulfill its mission of serving the people of Mendocino County.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely, Dennis O’Brien, Ukiah

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MEMO FROM OSLO:

If Peace Is Prized, a Nobel for Bradley Manning

by Norman Solomon

The headquarters of the Nobel Committee is in downtown Oslo on a street named after Henrik Ibsen, whose play “An Enemy of the People” has remained as current as dawn light falling on the Nobel building and then, hours later, on a Fort Meade courtroom where Bradley Manning’s trial enters a new stage — defense testimony in the sentencing phase.

Ibsen’s play tells of mendacity and greed in high places: dangerous threats to public health. You might call the protagonist a whistleblower. He’s a physician who can’t pretend that he hasn’t seen evidence; he rejects all the pleas and threats to stay quiet, to keep secret what the public has a right to know. He could be content to take an easy way, to let others suffer and die. But he refuses to just follow orders. He will save lives. There will be some dire consequences for him.

The respectable authorities know when they’ve had enough. Thought crimes can be trivial but are apt to become intolerable if they lead to active transgressions. In the last act, our hero recounts: “They insulted me and called me an enemy of the people.” Ostracized and condemned, he offers final defiant words before the curtain comes down: “I have made a great discovery. … It is this, let me tell you — that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.”

Alone Bradley Manning will stand as a military judge proclaims a prison sentence.

As I write these words early Monday, sky is starting to lighten over Oslo. This afternoon I’ll carry several thousand pages of a petition — filled with the names of more than 100,000 signers, along with individual comments from tens of thousands of them — to an appointment with the Research Director of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The petition<http://www.manningnobel.org/>urges that Bradley Manning be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Like so many other people, the signers share the belief of Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire who wrote this summer: “I can think of no one more deserving.”

Opening heart and mind to moral responsibility — seeing an opportunity to provide the crucial fuel of information for democracy and compassion — Bradley Manning lifted a shroud and illuminated terrible actions of the USA’s warfare state. He chose courage on behalf of humanity. He refused to just follow orders.

“If there’s one thing to learn from the last ten years, it’s that government secrecy and lies come at a very high price in blood and money,” Bradley Manning biographer Chase Madar wrote. “And though information is powerless on its own, it is still a necessary precondition for any democratic state to function.”

Bradley Manning recognized that necessary precondition. He took profound action to nurture its possibilities on behalf of democracy and peace.

No doubt a Nobel Peace Prize for Bradley Manning is a very long longshot. After all, four years ago, the Nobel Committee gave that award to President Obama, while he was escalating the war in Afghanistan, and since then Obama’s dedication to perpetual war has become ever more clear.

Now, the Nobel Committee and its Peace Prize are in dire need of rehabilitation. In truth, the Nobel Peace Prize needs Bradley Manning much more than the other way around.

No one can doubt the sincere dedication of Bradley Manning to human rights and peace. But on Henrik Ibsen Street in Oslo, the office of the Nobel Committee is under a war cloud of its own making.

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

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“THE APPEARANCE OF THE LEVIATHAN herself was quite pleasing. Like all large, comfortable old whalers, she had a sort of motherly look — broad in the beam, flush decks, and four chubby boats hanging at the breast. Her sails were furled loosely upon the yards, as if they had been worn long, and fitted easy; her shrouds swung negligently slack; and as for the ‘running rigging,’ it never worked hard as it does in some of your ‘dandy ships,’ jamming in the sheaves of blocks, like Chinese slippers, too small to be useful: on the contrary, the ropes ran glibly through, as if they had many a time travelled the same road, and were used to it.” — ‘Omoo,’ Herman Melville

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NOT-SO-SIMPLE 2013 LOST AND FOUND

Greetings. If you were not with us at the Not-So-Simple Living Fair this year, we missed you and hope you come back next year. If you were in attendance, please note these lost and found items: camera, tent in green bag, Razor scooter, St. Johns Bay cotton flannel shirt, A’s baseball cap, beige floppy hat, red bandana, yellow plastic bat, misc BYO dishes. Also, if you were in attendance, please send any suggestions for next year. Thanks, NSSLF Coordinating Committee. — info@notsosimple.info

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FOR THE 100th TIME…

Warm spiritual greetings, These past two days I have been rereading the published lectures of Shunryu Suzuki, entitled “not always so: practicing the true spirit of zen.” Roshi said: “As much as possible, follow your inner voice, rejecting useless things. Dogen Zenji said that if your practice is pure enough you will be supported by Buddha, so do not worry about who will support you or what will happen to you. Moment after moment completely devote yourself and listen to your inner voice.” The commitment to realize a Washington DC around the beltway radical environmental protest action is enlightened, steady, and firm, just like one’s back during zazen. Myself and two others (formerly of the Occupy DC Freedom Plaza kitchen working group) are still staying at a house in Mt. Lebanon, PA. We are eager to move on to D.C. and need a place to go to, and we need others to participate in the DC beltway action. I ask you for the hundredth time: “What Are We Waiting For?” This is the one question that I am unable to answer. Can you help me?

Gassho, Craig Louis Stehr, August 12, 2013

903 Florida Ave., Mt. Lebanon, PA 15228-2016

Email: craigstehr@hushmail.com

Blog: http://craiglstehr.blogspot.com

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KINETIC CARNIVALE STEAMS UP WILLITS

Second annual fair provides weekend’s span of activities, unites old and new

by Roberta Werdinger

The Second Annual Willits Kinetic Carnivale powers up on Sept. 7 and 8 with a full weekend of activities combining the old and new in a way that is uniquely Mendocino and totally 21st century. The Carnivale’s offerings this year include a daylong fair on both days, an evening ball with a full lineup of music and performance, handcar races, volunteer and VIP opportunities, and crafts and wares galore, alongside the annual Steam-Up of amazing operating equipment by Roots of Motive Power, and — new this year — the Kinetic Fly-In, aircraft displays and airplane rides for sale at the Willits Airport. Interested parties can visit the website at www.KineticCarnivale.com, which has a wealth of information about the weekend. There’s also a Facebook page named Kinetic Carnivale with news updates and more photos. For more information on the Carnivale, including volunteering, send an email to info@kineticcarnivale.com. The Kinetic Carnivale is produced by the Mendocino County Museum. The Mendocino County Museum is at 400 East Commercial St. in Willits and can be contacted at 459-2736 or online at www.MendocinoMuseum.org.

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BLUES BROADS to Perform Last Sundays in the Park this Sunday, August 18th in Todd Grove Park at 6pm. What do you get when you put four incredibly talented women together, add an award-winning vocalist/keyboard/sax player and a backup band of equal abilities and histories? The result is the blues supergroup known as The Blues Broads.

Dorothy Morrison, Tracy Nelson, Annie Sampson and Angela Strehli, all highly regarded vocalists in their own rights. Reflecting more than two centuries of collective experience in blues, country, gospel and rock, the awesome aggregation is nothing less than a roots music “super group” of the first order. The Blues Broads are vocalists Angela Strehli, Tracy Nelson, Annie Sampson, and Dorothy Morrison. They are joined, whenever possible, by Deanna Bogart, whose skill on keyboards, saxophone, and vocals makes her an “Honorary Broad.” The band features Petaluma native Gary Vogensen on guitar (Boz Scaggs, Etta James), Bay Area local Steve Ehrmann on bass (John Lee Hooker, Roy Rogers), S.F. Bay’s Paul Revelli on drums (Charlie Musselwhite, Bo Diddley), and the North Bay’s Mike Emerson on a second keyboard. Each of these nine fantastic players have had careers most musicians would die for, playing with legends from Charlie Musselwhite and B.B. King to Boz Scaggs, Sammy Hagar and even Simon & Garfunkel. This powerhouse of talent combines to become something even more than the sum of its parts. (Short clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT1_aO2U5g8)

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14TH ANNUAL SEAFOOD AND HARBOR FESTIVAL LABOR DAY WEEKEND. Sunday, September 1, 2013 Noon – 6pm. Point Arena Pier, Port Road, Pt. Arena Free Admission! Fresh, Local Seafood Feast: Salmon Kabobs, Fish Tacos, Oysters Beer, Wine and Soft Drinks; Desserts too! Entertainment: Thrive, Honest Outlaws, Groove Factor, DJ Sister Yasmin Raffle, Kids’ Activities, Boat Rides around the Pier, weather permitting. Smoked Salmon Contest: $20. Entry fee, winner splits the pot with the Pier Fund. This event benefits the Point Arena Pier. No Dogs Please. Information: 707-227-0939. www.harborfest.net.

JOHN CHAMBERLIN’S MEMORIAL PARTY will be Saturday, August 31, at the Greenwood Community Center in Elk, from 3 to 11 pm. Potluck and bring your own drinks. Music by dozens of John’s friends, a silent auction and a memorabilia sale. Come celebrate John’s life and work and all our years of dancing together!

With the announcement by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN Sunday that marijuana has been shown to reduce the size of cancer tumors, the testimony of Dr. John Palmer Lovejoy in the medical marijuana case of Ukiah’s Peter Richardson is suddenly invested with more gravitas than it seemed last week. Last week, it seemed that Richardson was simply growing the stuff for America’s insatiable market while using some of what he produced to beat back his prostate cancer. Gupta’s announcement Sunday night means that marijuana as medicine will seem a great deal more credible to many more people.

Mendocino County owns 57 acres of “productive timberland” near Little River Airport on the Coast. The property was profitably logged back in 1996 during the “cut and run” days as Louisiana-Pacific and Georgia-Pacific finished decimating their vast Mendo timber holdings, soon selling their blitzed acres to the Fisher family (owners of The Gap clothing empire) and the Washington State Employee Pension Fund, respectively. Back then there was still a lucrative market for timber, and Mendocino County made several hundred thousand dollars while also removing some dead and diseased trees from the County’s trees at Little River.

“You are from somewhere if you know the names and stories of the hills, the springs, and the mountains. If you can name the plants and the animals on it. 

You are from somewhere if you dream of it in the night, and think about it during the day. When your sweat and tears have mixed with the rains to bring life from the dry earth. 

You are from somewhere, when you defend it with every ounce of your energy.” 

— Indiana Nez, Western Navajo defenders against Black Mesa coal mining

The mist hovers dense and low over Little Lake Valley, especially on clear nights with light winds. The condensed vapor forms due to the interaction of the damp wetlands air with stored heat radiating up from the ground. It is a version of what in the Central Valley is called “tule fog,” thus named for the tule grass wetlands that covered roughly four million acres of the valley, until roughly 90 percent were sacrificed to the Progress of Man — in the form of ranches and roads — beginning in the 18th century.

A CLOSER LOOK at the thuggish dismissal of Kathy Corral reveals that the overall survival of the Anderson Valley Health Center might be more precarious than many of us thought. The dental clinic has been losing money, but the looming restoration of MediCal’s dental component may re-secure funding for that sector of the Center’s operations, although not in time to save Ms. Corral’s job, the job she’d held for 11 years, the job she moved to Boonville for and bought a house here on the assumption her employment was secure. When I spoke to her last week, Ms. Corral, 60, insisted she not be portrayed as a “disgruntled employee,” although she said her sudden lay-off “felt like a heart attack.” Ms. Corral was a model employee and very popular with patients. She often bought supplies and needed pieces of equipment out of her own pocket and worked long weekends on her own time. In other words, a model employee who, if it had been calmly explained to her in civilized terms and circumstances would have understood that a money- losing dental clinic necessarily must lay people off. But to be marched out of the building like a criminal?

WE’VE COMPLAINED for years that California River Watch, vaguely based in Occidental (Sonoma County), is operated as a  shakedown racket by a man named Jack Silver. Silver rifles the reports filed by municipalities with the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control office in Santa Rosa then, based on the information provided, sues the municipalities filing them. (You can google the stuff we’ve written about him over the years, or search this website for the more recent material.)

MENDOCINO COUNTY has needed a slaughterhouse forever, and maybe we’re about to get one. The Economic Development & Financing Corporation (EDFC) will hold a public meeting next month to discuss potential plans for a local facility where ranchers could have their animals slaughtered and processed. The meeting is scheduled for Sept. 5 and follows the release of the Mendocino County Meat Plant Study, conducted by the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources Cooperative Extension (UCCE) and funded by an Economic Development Administration grant.

THE 19 RANCHERS surveyed for the study “indicated that there is significant interest in utilizing a combined slaughter and processing facility located in Mendocino County,” that would include “meat grinding, labeling of packaged cuts and extended carcass hang time. We are a direct market to the Bay Area — they want our local products, but the only way to get the end product into the market is through a United States Department of Agriculture facility.”

WHICH the proposed slaughterhouse would be. Local meat producers now have to drive their animals to Humboldt and Sonoma counties for certified processing. The cost of the project is estimated to be $1.9 million, with $1.4 million being the cost of the facility and $500,000 for cash reserves.

WHERE TO PUT IT? They’ll look for a site with: Access to municipal sewer utilities, Access to municipal electric and water utilities, Proximity to a major transportation route, Community acceptance of project site, Labor force availability, Land site suitability, Ranch site requirements.

THE PUBLIC MEETING is scheduled for 5pm, Sept. 5 at the EDFC’s conference room at 631 South Orchard Avenue, and the ranchers better stand by for people in bunny suits and human wave attacks by vegans. “Community acceptance of project site” won’t be easy, but the old Masonite site seems like a natch.

IF MENDO COULD GET ITS ACT TOGETHER and set up a cooperative like the ranchers in Puget Sound did a few years ago — a big if, given the level of non-cooperation shown so far — it’s possible that a mobile slaughterhouse like the USDA-approved Island Grown Farmer’s Coop would work well in Mendocino County.

(http://www.extension.org/sites/default/files/IGFC%20Case%20Study.pdf)

BY WAY OF BACKGROUND, here’s our report of the last time the Board of Supervisors discussed the prospect of an inland slaughterhouse back in June of 2010. (Note the significant reduction in the cost of the facility — among other things — and the two ranchers who offered their own property as sites for a slaughterhouse facility.)

THE MEAT AXE

by Mark Scaramella

On Tuesday, May 18 (2010), the Board of Supervisors spent an afternoon discussing the possibility of a slaughterhouse somewhere along Highway 101. 101 is something of a slaughterhouse itself, especially near Hopland to the south and between Willits and Laytonville to the north. The interstate suddenly goes from four lanes to two. Motorists slow to react are often killed.

The slaughterhouse under discussion, however, would render four-footed animals into steaks and chops.

Several sons of the soil, fresh off their back 40s, appeared before the Supervisors to talk up a tax-subsidized facility.

The slaughterhouse idea has been floating around for several years now, never getting very far because, of course, nobody’s willing to put up millions of dollars for, ahem, a pig in a poke.

Ranchers, miscellaneous Friends of Ranchers, and some local food advocates spoke for the idea; none of them offered to front the money. They seemed to think the Supervisors would somehow fund it, or fund the planning of it.

A rancher named John Ford, unlike his fellow ranchers, seemed much more reality-based. Ford rattled off some likely numbers and told the Board, “I can’t see where this is economically viable.”

Several enviros and a vegetarian told the Board that there were various problems with the idea — the smell, the waste, the humane treatment, the idea itself…

One Ukiah resident was for it as long as it wasn’t in his neighborhood.

Counting herself among the Friends of Ranchers, Fifth District Supervisor Candidate Wendy Roberts said she’d spoken to “Sea Ranchers and large cattle ranchers Peter Bradford, Larry Mailliard, Larry Stornetta… They tell me it would make a tremendous benefit to them. No more hauling of animals out of county.” Roberts then added the facility should not be in the Ukiah area. “Our support is conditional on that,” said Roberts.

“Our support”?

Supervisor Pinches, a cattleman, pointed out that the idea hasn’t gone much past “Gosh! Wouldn’t it be great if the County built us a slaughterhouse!”

Bradford, Mailliard and Stornetta, individually or severally, could finance a slaughterhouse themselves. So, why don’t they? Why do they even suppose the public should be involved in building one for their private cows?

John Harper is chief of Mendocino County’s UC Extension/Farm Advisor Office, local fount of tax-funded advice and the occasional handout for gentleman farmers. The office also includes forestry expert Greg Giusti and the egregious grape guy, Glen McGourty. Harper functions as supervisor of the other two and their “livestock” expert. It fell to him to come up with a slaughterhouse concept for discus­sion purposes, although Harper took pains several times to note that his $18 million (depending on which price per square foot number you use) figure was pure speculation since nobody knows how much livestock would be brought in for slaughter nor how much finished meat could be sold. And nobody knows how the slaughterhouse would be funded or where it would be located or how the hippies would be cooled out if it magically became more than the dream of wealthy ranchers to get themselves a big freebie.

In other words, it was discussion time at the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors.

The ranchers agreed with Harper that there’s a market for their chopped up cows and pigs in the Sacramento Valley and among San Francisco’s Whole Foods types that a Mendo-based slaughterhouse might efficiently serve. Presently, Mendo’s small animal exports are trucked to Eureka or Sonoma County to be converted to hamburger and lamb chops.

Supervisor Pinches suggested that a producers cooperative might be a good way to get things going.

And there’s the rub.

Mendocino County’s wealthiest ranchers are all for having Mendocino County spend hundreds of thou­sands of dollars and many staff hours to discuss imaginary slaughterhouses but they don’t want a co-op and, of course, they don’t want to put up their own money.

At this point in Mendocino County’s long history of civic inertia — it took a whole decade to simply update the General Plan and five years to rubber-stamp a waterless modest housing project permit — the County has zero money to fund any free enterprise for rich people, let alone one costing an estimated $18 million.

Two local ranchers, Jim Lawson of Willits and retired Undersheriff Beryl Murray of Redwood Valley, seemed entirely carried away with the prospect of free money. They told the Board “You [the Board of Supervisors] can build it on my ranch if you want to.”

Ukiah Councilwoman Mari Rodin (who, by the way, doesn’t seem to know what “tare weight” is) spoke for the fantasy slaughterhouse.

There will be a slaughterhouse in inland Mendocino County the day after the Willits Bypass is completed.

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AND AFTER 150 YEARS Boonville will be without a full service bar when the Boonville Saloon closes this week. Shelly and Marcia did their darndest to make a go of it, but as of Saturday the 17th the nearest place for Valley people to get a real drink will be the Water Trough, Ukiah.

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A CLOSER LOOK at the thuggish dismissal of Kathy Corral reveals that the overall survival of the Anderson Valley Health Center might be more precarious than many of us thought. The dental clinic has been losing money, but the looming restoration of MediCal’s dental component may re-secure funding for that sector of the Center’s operations, although not in time to save Ms. Corral’s job, the job she’d held for 11 years, the job she moved to Boonville for and bought a house here on the assumption her employment was secure. When I spoke to her last week, Ms. Corral, 60, insisted she not be portrayed as a “disgruntled employee,” although she said her sudden lay-off “felt like a heart attack.” Ms. Corral was a model employee and very popular with patients. She often bought supplies and needed pieces of equipment out of her own pocket and worked long weekends on her own time. In other words, a model employee who, if it had been calmly explained to her in civilized terms and circumstances would have understood that a money-losing dental clinic necessarily must lay people off. But to be marched out of the building like a criminal?

IF YOU CAME in late, after nearly 12 years on the job as manager of the AV Clinic’s dental office, a man named Dave Turner, two Fridays ago, demanded Ms. Corral’s keys, told her she could not say goodbye to fellow employees and escorted her out to the parking lot like she’d done something wrong. Clinic administrator Diane Agee had, however, grandly assured Ms. Corral that the Gualala-based management of the Anderson Valley Health Center would not contest Ms. Corral’s unemployment benefits.

AND HERE’S the rub, or the likely rub: The Anderson Valley Health Center is managed by traveling administrators out of Gualala. They manage three clinics including the one in Gualala and a dental office in Point Arena. The Anderson Valley Health Center, it seems, is now viewed by Gualala as a liability, that Anderson Valley people are close enough to Ukiah to avail themselves of the clinic at the old Hillside Hospital or submit to the for-profit medical services offered by the Adventist Hospital complex.

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KNOPF has published Coast writer’s Carolyn Cooke’s latest, a collection of short stories called Amor and Psycho which might be a case study of romance in Mendocino County but is instead a work of art. Ms. Cooke, a resident of Point Arena where amor and psycho are daily occurrences, is a really, really good writer whose terrific non-fiction has appeared, but not often enough, in this very newspaper. The Chron’s reviewer wrote Sunday “…Summarized, these stories sound like major downers, yet somehow they manage to be bracing. Cooke writes with humor and great affection for people, and she is unafraid to take on the inexplicable.” Which surrounds us, the inexplicable that is, and always is made interesting in the hands of a capable writer, which this person definitely is.  I’ve got my copy of Amor and Psycho on order.

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HOW SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN PELICAN BAY PRISON ALMOST DROVE ME MAD

by Michael Cabral

How can I make anyone understand what it’s like to cling desperately to the hope of someday being heard because that¹s the only hope left? That¹s one reason why the hunger strike going on across California’s prisons matters. It might just keep that hope alive for prisoners locked down in Pelican Bay State Prison¹s Security Housing and Administrative Segregation Units (known as the SHU).

At the age of eighteen years, four months, and six days, I was cast into the SHU where I stayed for two and half years, alone, without a window, a television, or a radio. (Mail, when it came, was delayed for months at a time.)

My only real distractions were the terrifying and gut-wrenching sounds and smells of grown men reaching their breaking points: crying, screaming, banging; blood and feces being smeared on walls and bodies; Correctional Officers (C/Os) yelling, shooting pepper spray — and puking.

I found a small measure of comfort in books and in treasured conversations through the ventilation system, with older men whose faces I¹d never see (conversing with anyone face-to-face was so rare as to be nonexistent). There was also the sound of my door being padlocked shut whenever there was a tsunami warning, meaning that if a tsunami did wash over us, the inmates¹ only hope is that death comes quickly. Maybe that sound was the most dehumanizing of all, because to realize you matter so little to other human beings is not a feeling one gets used to, or ever forgets.

There were seven inmate suicides during my time in the SHU. None of them surprised me. As an eighteen-year-old with my entire life ahead of me, I understood why people wanted to die.

To combat the temptation to follow my neighbors into the afterlife, I exercised with extreme vigor, I wrote, I studied family photos, as well as images I found in old magazines, imagining myself in the places and situations depicted. These offered at least the illusion of escape from the bare cement walls that always seemed to be closing in on me. Such relief came at a cost ‹ a progressive separation from my real life. I could get so lost in my fantasies (about home, barbecues, beaches, about committing violent crimes, about sex, building my dream house, about any number of things) that the slightest interruption ‹ the sound of the food port being unlocked at dinnertime ‹ could hurl me into fits of anger, depression, anxiety attacks. Living in the SHU was literally driving me mad.

On the bright side, there is a bakery in Pelican Bay. We¹d often get fresh baked cookies in our lunches. They were delicious. Sometimes, though, C/Os [correction officers] would remove them from some of the lunches for their own enjoyment. They were that good, good enough to make someone squash an inmate¹s only sense of relief, perhaps his only source of joy, with a dirty boot before passing in the tray. “You really have to try one.”

I spent two and a half years in the SHU, ostensibly as punishment for a fistfight with another inmate (I was charged with battery with no serious injury). I believe the real reason was that I had defied the Administration by refusing to participate in prison gang politics and to inform on other inmates who were active gang members. You could say I was lucky to get out in that short a time. More than 75 Pelican Bay SHU prisoners have been held in isolation for more than twenty years, and more than five times that number have been there for more than a decade.

Ironically, when I was placed in the SHU they told me it was for my own protection, and to give the prison time to evaluate my housing needs. If that “evaluation” had taken any longer, I would have lost my mind. ¥¥

(Michael Cabral has served ten years on a 15-Life sentence for murder, beginning when he was still a juvenile. His first two and a half years were spent in the Pelican Bay SHU. He spent time in Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad, and is currently at Corcoran State Prison. His writing has appeared often in The Beat Within <http://www.beatwithin.org> , New America Media¹s weekly publication of writing and art by juvenile detainees.)

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DIAGNOSIS: NOT A CHARITY

Editor,

Those UVMC Job Cuts—

I understand that UVMC has had another round of employee cutbacks: some people being fired outright, others having had their hours slashed. Times are tough. But let’s take a closer look.

The hospital has scapegoated the as-yet-to-be-implemented Affordable Health Care Act for these cuts, preposterously citing a projected .07% cut in revenues. This apparently amounts to be a whopping $35,000! In addition! If you talk to clinicians at the hospital, many of these penalties have long been anticipated, with plans in place to further reduce readmissions. Note that in other contexts, UVMC’s administration cites a readmission rate that is actually quite low in relation to hospitals nationwide.

So what is actually going on? No one really knows. This is a closed organization. But it seems likely that the layoffs are more related to organizational forces within the larger Adventist system. There is a big push within the Adventist system to think in terms of a larger northern California network, mostly centered in St. Helena. In the past few years many local jobs have been lost to reorganization, replaced by positions in Sonoma County. You can argue that this is the efficiency of “economies of scale,” but the fact remains that jobs are lost here in Ukiah. On one hand the hospital continues to appeal to our community for donations, on the other it is actively implementing cuts in services that instead will be offered at other Adventist hospitals out of town.

What I find most annoying is that UVMC is supposedly a non-profit, but it is a non-profit hospital in name only. I can’t think of any meaningful acts of charity on the part of the hospital. Can you? Rather, its profits are consumed by the salaries of a large, corporate-like administrative structure. Being a closed organization UVMC is tight-lipped about the salaries paid to its administrators but if it is similar to the same-sized hospitals in northern California, administrative salaries are much higher than those of doctors and nurses. (Check out typical administrative salaries at Becker’s Hospital Review). In addition, it is not commonly known that a significant percentage of the hospital’s local revenue is passed up the food chain to a large central regional administration located in Roseville. Again, the figures are not available to the public. UVMC is now the largest employer in Ukiah. Many families depend on it for their income. But when real or imagined financial exigencies occur, it is the lowest level, most poorly paid employees who bear the brunt. Nowhere do I read of cuts in administrator salaries. Thus, our local hospital’s economic model differs little from big banks and corporations.

It seems like the community needs to be aware that this large economic engine in our county is not really as community-minded as its public relations department makes it out to be, and I hope that the hospital, with enough pressure from the community, will respond with some credible numbers and some much needed transparency in its dealings with local employees and patients.

Sincerely, John Arteaga, Ukiah

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Baroja

AT AROUND [1936] Don Pío Baroja, one of my favorite writers, found refuge in Basel, where he lived in the house, in the shirt, in the trousers, and in the slippers of the oddly totalizing writer Dominik Müller, and ate his heart out with homesickness for Spain. The only element of his clothing that didn’t originate in Müller’s costume shop was the beret on his head.  Don Pío was a very special kind of anarchist, so special that he had enemies in all political camps in his fatherland, all of whom wanted to shoot him, even in the attics of country’s two embassies in Paris. So he fled to Basel’s Water Tower area, where Dr. Müller did for this Spanish refugee what we refused to have the Führer do for us: he offered him a pair of pants. Pío Baroja accepted. Herr Müller published an interview with this, the greatest Spanish novelist of his time. People who read it and who knew Baroja said to themselves, “There goes another one — Baroja’s on Franco’s side!” It gave us a shock, too, and we sought out this Basque writer. He was, thank heavens, still the same. His Swiss host had played an evil game with the refugee’s world fame. I lacked the courage to alert Don Pío to the scam that was going on. He was himself unable to read the words his friend had put in his mouth. [...] He was old, sick, and exhausted, and without Spain he couldn’t go on living.  This vagabond genius, this desperado and anarchizing romantic, whose life’s work already filled more than eighty volumes, was suffering from the same illness as had befallen his Basque compatriot, Unamuno: Spain. [...] The finest products of the country are the ones who are repeatedly ruined by it — not only in Iberia, although that is where the affliction causes a dramatic level of desperation only possible in the somber shadow of the Man of La Mancha.

— Albert Vigoleis Thelen, 1953; from “The Island of Second Sight”

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WBAI-FM LAYS OFF MOST OF STAFF

by Ben Sisario

WBAI-FM, the noncommercial radio station that has been a liberal fixture in New York for more than 50 years, laid off about two-thirds of its staff last week, including its entire news department, because of long-simmering financial difficulties.

In a tearful on-air announcement on Friday, Summer Reese, the interim executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI, said that after talks with SAG-Aftra, the union that represents broadcasting talent, “we will be laying off virtually everyone whose voice you recognize on the air,” effective Monday.

She said on the air that 75% of the staff would be let go, but in an interview over the weekend she said that the final number was 19 out of the station’s 29 employees, about 66%.

Andrew Phillips, the former general manager of another of Pacifica’s five stations, KPFA-FM in Berkeley, Calif., has been appointed WBAI’s interim program director.

A spokeswoman for SAG-Aftra declined to comment.

Pacifica also operates stations in Washington, Houston and Los Angeles, and syndicates popular public affairs programs like “Democracy Now!,” which started at WBAI in 1996.

WBAI, which broadcasts at 99.5 FM, has long struggled financially, and its leadership structure has been described as anarchic. But its problems multiplied last year after Hurricane Sandy, when it was forced to vacate its studios on Wall Street. In March, the station began a drive to raise $500,000 to pay back rent on its transmitter. Ms. Reese said the station had millions of dollars in debt and had operated at a loss since 2004. She said the Pacifica network had repeatedly drained its finances to cover WBAI’s expenses. The station, she added, could no longer afford to make its payroll and was laying off employees to pay its transmitter rent and to avoid being forced to sell its broadcast license.

WBAI is not the only troubled Pacifica station. Ms. Reese recently said that WPFW-FM in Washington might not be able “to get through until September.” Over the weekend she said that since Pacifica had been dealing with these troubled stations, “the entire enterprise is distressed,” but that by fixing its finances the network could survive.

(Courtesy, the New York Times)

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EDITOR,

Gotta say the workmen’s comp process seems more like a scam these days. Us employers pay a lot to insure that our workers and clients are protected. It helps us sleep at night for sure, but then one hears about how workers, who need the compensation literally have to hire a lawyer and sue to get it. What’s up with that? So who wins, lawyers and insurance companies. Seems like the idea is getting missed here; protecting the injured. With the State breathing down our necks to do the right thing from all departments including the DMV, why are the insurance companies just helping the injured workers? Seems more like a scam to me. — Philo Head Scratcher, Greg Krouse

ED NOTE: Single payer would do away with much of Workmen’s Comp which, as you say, makes it very difficult for small businesses to stay in business and pay the exorbitant rates the insurance combines demand.

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CLOSING EAST HILL ROAD WITHOUT A PERMIT

The City of Willits agreed last week to allow CalTrans’ contractors for construction of the Willits Bypass, DeSilva Gates and FlatIron, to close one of the area’s major residential thoroughfares, East Hill Road through October 15th. The closures takes place daily from 7am to 7pm. Following is a letter to the editor written by Willits resident Mary Burns, submitted to several local newspapers. The letter does an excellent job summarizing the facts of the situation.

 “Caltrans’ closure of East Hill Rd is causing major traffic jams, and the contractor doesn’t even have a permit yet! This not only impacts the thousands of people on Pine Mountain and East Hill Road, but anyone who intends to head south on 101 and lives on Eastside, Valley, Canyon, Tomki, or Hearst Willits Road, has good reason to use East Hill rather than endure City traffic.

I believe all residents have a right to use East Hill Road. It is not “unusual use”; it is routine use. The City is quaking in their boots because the contractors, De Silva Gates and Flatiron (“DSG/F”), threatened to sue if the City did not allow their unusual and extreme use of our streets without appropriate compensation to the City. Yet DSG/F are not practicing “good neighbor” policy for routine use. Those of you in attendance during a recent City Council meeting will recall Bruce Burton admonishing the crowd to be lenient with DSG/F, as it constituted being a good neighbor. To whom? A temporary resident or people who have contributed to the community for generations and are committed to staying here and contributing more, REAL neighbors?”

Where is the Traffic Management Plan? Why wasn’t the TMP part of relinquishment discussions? Why is it not part of current negotiations with DSG/F for use of City streets? It was promised in the FEIR. Closing City streets IS use! More than that: it is abuse! Perhaps it’s time to hire another attorney, since the City attorney did not assure that the relinquishment agreement was enforceable and the City is unwilling to enforce the agreement. We need to call every council member! This closure may be the very reason DSG/F had their attorney threaten the City! Are they trying to save money by not hiring a flagman, and working more slowly? If they didn’t account for traffic management in their bid it is THEIR mistake, not ours.

Finally, just because this portion of East Hill Road is on City property doesn’t mean Mr. Pinches is off the hook. He is the advocate for county residents and should be with us in demanding the City address the county residents they impact with their agreements. Let them learn WHY it is time they adopt a good neighbor policy. It is high time the City take account of the 8,000 people their decisions affect who do NOT have voting rights.

This is only the beginning of six years of construction, and a mere glimpse into the abuse of residents that DSG/F can apparently be expected to dish out. I encourage EVERYONE to show up at the City Council Meeting on August 14th to express their outrage at the City for allowing this. I hope everyone calls who they know on Pine Mountain or the valley that use East Hill Road, and encourage them to show up on the 14th. Even if this issue is not on the agenda, it must be addressed at public comment.

(Courtesy, savelittlelakevalley.org)

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THE MENDOCINO COUNTY REPUBLICAN CENTRAL COMMITTEE will meet Saturday, August 17, 2013, 10:00 AM – 12:00 Noon at Lumberjacks Restaurant, 1700 S. Main Street, Willits. No, we don’t have to sit in the same booth just because there are only four of us in this drug-drenched county of Billaries. We may be an endangered species but we’re still dangerous! For further information contact: Stan Anderson, 707-321-2592.

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LOCAL PLAYWRIGHT’S WORK TO BE PRODUCED IN NEW YORK

Bullock

Local playwright Lawrence Bullock, whose work has been produced at various theaters since 1992, has received news that his one act play “My Prisoner, Myself” has been selected for production at The Producer’s Club, under the auspices of Love Creek Productions, an independent theater ensemble that has been producing plays for over thirty years.  Patrick Simone, graduate of Marietta College, will be directing the one act. He says, “I am excited to be directing this entertaining and funny one-act. It’s a great play.” Casting will be complete soon and the show will run for two weeks, beginning September 12th,  at The Producer’s Club, a small “black box” theater on 44th street in New York City, in the Times Square Theater District.  Mr. Bullock wrote “My Prisoner, Myself,” as a way of relaxing while he was writing the first draft of a more serious full length play, “Verify Zero” (since completed)  which he describes as “A study of the modern soldier, corruption in the military, and the misguided attempts to create the perfect warrior. I didn’t want to write an ‘anti-war’ play per se, but a play in which the discussion of the futility of war  is also a character. Modern warfare has become truly bizarre, with attempts to selectively remove soldiers’ traumatic memories, either through therapy (hypnotherapy and others) and through chemical memory erasing regimens. “Verify Zero” has elements of a thriller, with a side dish of thought. I hope to do a local reading soon , if possible.”

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DOCENT TOUR AT GRACE HUDSON MUSEUM ON AUG. 20

On Tuesday, August 20, from 12 to 1 pm, Curator Marvin Schenck will lead a docent and member tour of the Grace Hudson Museum’s new exhibit, “Milford Zornes: A Painter of Influence,” a retrospective of the watercolorist and master teacher whose career spanned nine decades and many countries. The tour is free for members of the Museum.  The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah and is open Wed.-Sat. from 10 am to 4:30 pm and Sunday from noon to 4:30 pm. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call 467-2836. —Roberta Werdinger”

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CALIFORNIA LEGISLATORS CALL FOR OFFSHORE OIL FRACKING INVESTIGATION

by Dan Bacher

Assemblymember Das Williams (D-Santa Barbara) and eight other California lawmakers are calling on the Department of Interior and Environmental Protection Agency to investigate reports of fracking (hydraulic fracturing) beneath the seabed floor off the California Coast.

The legislators are asking for a strict review and possible new regulations of fracking in the ocean – less than 8 months after the completion of a network of questionable state “marine protected areas” that fail to protect the ocean from fracking, oil drilling and spills, pollution, wind and wave energy projects, military testing and all human impacts other than sustainable fishing and gathering.

“Hydraulic fracturing poses great potential dangers to our sea life and all California residents,” said Williams. “This controversial well stimulation technique needs greater scrutiny, particularly when it potentially jeopardizes our coastal way of life.”

Fracking employs huge volumes of water mixed with sand and toxic chemicals to blast open rock formations and extract oil and gas, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. The controversial technique is already being used in hundreds — and perhaps thousands — of California oil and gas wells.

Assemblymembers Mark Stone, Marc Levine, Richard Bloom, Adrin Nazarian, Bob Wieckowski and Senators Fran Pavley, Noreen Evans and Hannah-Beth Jackson have signed on in support of Williams’ letter to federal regulators.

On August 3, the Associated Press reported that oil companies have used hydraulic fracturing at least a dozen times to “force open cracks beneath the seabed” in the Santa Barbara Channel. The report says that regulators are looking into whether companies should obtain a separate permit and should face a stricter environmental review.

The Santa Barbara Channel, where the fracking has occurred, was the site of the tragic 1969 oil spill that killed countless birds and marine life.

“The fact that hydraulic fracturing is occurring off our California coast with little or no review is a frightening thought,” Williams said. “We, as residents and noble citizens, must stand together to call for greater scrutiny. We cannot take chances that could irreparably harm us all.”

Californians should support the legislators’ call for a federal investigation of hydraulic fracturing beneath the seabed floor off the California Coast. At the same time, the legislators should support a formal investigation into the many conflicts of interest that infested the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, including the leadership role that a big oil lobbyist played in the corrupt process that was privately funded by the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation.

Fracking opponents must also oppose Governor Jerry Brown’s Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels to export northern California water to corporate agribusiness and oil companies. Water destined for the canals will be used to expand fracking in Kern County and coastal areas.

The construction of the 35-mile-long tunnels would hasten the extinction of Sacramento River chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and other fish species, as well as imperil salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity River, the only out-of-basin water supply for the Central Valley Project.

Background: Big oil lobbyist oversaw creation of “marine protected areas”

Inexplicably missing from the mainstream media and even most “alternative” media reports on fracking is any mention of one of the biggest environmental scandals of the past decade – the alarming fact that Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, CHAIRED the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Blue Ribbon Task Force that created the alleged “marine protected areas” that went into effect in Southern California waters in January 2012. She also served on the task forces to create “marine protected areas” on the Central Coast, North Central Coast and North Coast. (http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/mpa/brtf_bios_sc.asp)

Grassroots environmentalists, Tribal leaders, fishermen and advocates of democracy and transparency in government blasted the leadership role of the oil industry lobbyist in creating these “marine protected areas,” but state officials and representatives of corporate “environmental” NGOs embraced her as a “marine guardian.” MLPA Initiative advocates refused to acknowledge the overt conflict of interest that a big oil lobbyist, who supports fracking, new offshore oil drilling, the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline and the evisceration of environmental laws, had in a process allegedly designed to “protect” the ocean.

You see, the “marine protected areas” created under Reheis-Boyd’s leadership weren’t true “marine protected areas” as the language of the landmark Marine Life Protection Act of 1999 called for. Reheis-Boyd, a marina corporation executive, a coastal real estate developer and other corporate operatives on MLPA Initiative task forces oversaw the creation of “marine protected areas” that effectively allow fracking and offshore oil drilling to continue and expand. (http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/02/the-oil-industrys-marine-reserves/)

These “marine protected areas” fail to protect the ocean from fracking, oil drilling and spills, pollution, wind and wave energy projects, corporate aquaculture, military testing and all human impacts other than fishing and gathering.

Reheis-Boyd apparently used her role as a state marine “protection” official to increase her network of influence in California politics to the point where the Western States Petroleum Association has become the most powerful corporate lobby in California. The association now has enormous influence over both state and federal regulators – and MLPA Initiative advocates helped facilitate her rise to power. (http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/lawsuit-filed-against-fracking-oil-lobbyist-says-its-safe)

Oil and gas companies spend more than $100 million a year to buy access to lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento, according to Stop Fooling California (http://www.stopfoolingca.org), an online and social media public education and awareness campaign that highlights oil companies’ efforts to mislead and confuse Californians. The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) alone has spent more than $16 million lobbying in Sacramento since 2009.

While I’m glad that the Legislators are calling on federal regulators to investigate reports of hydraulic fracturing on the ocean, it is imperative that also call for an investigation of the huge scandal of how state officials and corporate “environmental” NGO representatives allowed a big oil industry lobbyist oversee what passes for “marine protection” in California.

For more information about the MLPA Initiative, go to: http://intercontinentalcry.org/the-five-inconvenient-truths-about-the-mlpa-initiative/

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” — Mark Twain

I realize it is not, in Buddhist terms, skillful speech to call anyone an idiot, but there are times when no other term works quite so well for me. For instance, have you ever listened to John Boehner speak? I have only managed to listen to him for a few seconds at a time before I become nauseated and have to stop listening or lose my lunch, but what I have heard in those few seconds can only be called idiotic. Or Dianne Feinstein? Have you ever heard such blatant dishonesty, hypocrisy, and amorality spewed from the mouth of anyone? True, I am conflating dishonesty and hypocrisy and amorality with idiocy, but in my worldview these words are synonyms for each other.

And, assuming most of the elections in our great land are not completely rigged (a daring assumption), we the people elect these idiots, which would make us…

“You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.” — Norman Douglas

“The problem is men,” said a visiting divorcee, her ex-husband problematic, indeed, and definitely male. “They’re all idiots.”

“Could we rephrase that?” I asked hopefully. “To make an exception of present company? Could we say the problem is most men? Just so I don’t run out of the room screaming? Yet.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot,” said the divorcee. “I’m talking about the 75 per cent of male voters, Republicans and Democrats, who voted for George Bush instead of Al Gore.”

“You don’t think Al Gore is an idiot?” I asked. “Mr. Sabotage the Kyoto Protocol and promote nuclear power and then masquerade as an environmentalist?”

“Well, he seemed like less of an idiot,” she said, shrugging. “But you’re right. They’re both idiots. And that’s the problem. Most men are.”

“Why do you think that is?” I asked, having thought long and hard about why most men are idiots.

“Males evolved to be prolific sperm donors, hunters, and violent protectors of their mates and offspring from wild animals and other violent males.” She nodded confidently. “And that’s about it.”

“But why would such evolution lead to idiocy rather than brilliance? It seems to me that for most of our evolution, the forces of nature must have selected for intelligence, ingenuity, and…”

She shook her head. “Brute strength, violence, cruelty. Ever read the book Demonic Males? Check it out. Men are hardwired to be cruel, insensitive louts.”

“What about Mozart?” I suggested. “Mendelssohn? Ansel Adams? Danny Kaye? Fred Astaire? The Dalai Lama?”

“Mutations,” she said without missing a beat. “Do you see much evidence of those sorts of genes in the general male population? And the reason for that is obvious. The Mozarts and Mendelssohns and Fred Astaires, until very recently in the course of human evolution, only rarely survived long enough to procreate because the brutes killed them off in childhood.”

“Well, I disagree,” I said, fearing she might be right. “I think idiocy is learned. And I think that’s true for women as well as men.”

“The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.” — Robert Graves

When I was in my late twenties and thirties, I spent a good deal of time in Hollywood trying to get my screenplays turned into movies, an excruciating epoch that involved countless meetings with movie producers, studio executives, agents, actors, and directors, those who would deign to give me some of their time. And in the beginning of my Hollywood education, I thought a few of the movie people I encountered were brilliant, many were not so brilliant, and many more were idiots.

However, by the end of my Hollywood education, I concluded that all the movie people I’d met and spoken to were idiots, and by that I mean they had no imagination, no genuine sense of humor, and absolutely no interest in making good and original movies. They only wanted to make movies they thought would make money, which I consider a terrible kind of idiocy. I also concluded there must be a few non-idiots in the movie business, but for reasons beyond my understanding I was never fortunate enough to meet any of those elusive beings.

“It was déjà vu all over again.” — Yogi Berra

One of my screenplays, They Hate Me In Chicago, won me a dozen meetings with various Hollywood folks affiliated with other Hollywood folks who might have been able to get a medium-budget comedy drama produced. I should clarify that what won me those meetings was a clever one-paragraph summary of my screenplay, since none of the idiots I met with would ever have bothered to read an entire script unless they thought the idea was commercial or the script was written by someone they were having sex with or trying to have sex with or getting drugs from, or unless the script was written by someone they thought was having sex with or doing drugs with someone high up the Hollywood totem pole.

They Hate Me In Chicago is about a baseball umpire who makes the final call of the final game of the World Series, an incredibly close call at home plate that gives the series to the Yankees over the Chicago Cubs. The movie begins with our likable down-to-earth sweetly sexy hero making that fateful call, and follows our hero for the next year of his life culminating in his making the final and deciding call at home plate of the next World Series, the Cubs once again the National League team vying for the crown. Our flawed but lovable hero has a humorous and challenging life off the field as well as on, featuring several strong and appealing female characters to compliment the equally strong and appealing male characters—a compelling mix of professional and personal drama leading to the thrilling climax.

Right around this time, the movie Bull Durham was proving to be a great and surprising success, and was always referenced at my meetings regarding They Hate Me In Chicago. The producers, directors, agents, and studio executives I met with were universally baffled by the success of Bull Durham because, to paraphrase several of them, “Baseball movies were box office poison until Bull Durham came along and nobody can figure out why that movie did so well when so many other recent baseball movies bombed so badly.”

“I can tell you why Bull Durham was a success,” I said to each of the many movie people who professed bewilderment about that movie’s success. I was unaware at the time that my daring to say I knew something about movies that these folks did not know was an unforgivable breach of Hollywood etiquette. By suggesting I thought I knew more about movies than those with more power than I in the steeply hierarchical world of Hollywood was tantamount to, well, calling them idiots, which they were, but that is not the way to make hay in the movie biz. Au contraire, that is the way to burn bridges and end up on numerous shit lists in the movie biz, which I unwittingly did.

“Oh, really?” they all said, making notes to themselves never to meet with me again. “Do tell.”

“Bull Durham is a success because it’s not really a baseball movie. It’s a comedy drama about sex and romance with a strong female lead and a sexy leading man, and that’s why so many women love it. And it has a baseball subplot for men so they can say they like it for the baseball, when they, too, love it for the sex and romance. In other words, it’s the perfect date movie. Which is what They Hate Me In…”

“What do you mean Bull Durham isn’t really a baseball movie?” said the producers, agents, directors, and studio execs. “Kevin Costner isn’t playing ice hockey. Are you saying your movie isn’t really a baseball movie? Because the only reason we’re talking to you is because baseball movies are hot right now because Bull Durham, a baseball movie, is hot right now.”

As I said…idiots.

“I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the words of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me he missed the opportunity of his life.” — James Barrie

Today on my walk to town, I saw not one, not two, but four different people either talking or texting on their cell phones while driving. Not only are these practices illegal—the electronic equivalents of drunk driving—they are the height of idiocy and cause thousands of deaths and horrible injuries.

But far more idiotic than the use of cell phones while driving is the advent of computer screens in the dashboards of most new automobiles manufactured in America, screens for drivers to manipulate and look at while simultaneously doing one of the most dangerous things a human being can do: pilot a two-ton mass of hurtling metal at high speeds on roads filled with other multi-ton masses of hurtling metal being driven by other humans, some of whom are very old, very young, very stupid, very drunk, high on drugs, eating lunch, talking on phones, and staring into computer screens instead of watching the road ahead. That, as far as I’m concerned, transcends idiocy and climbs high into the realm of collective insanity.

Todd Walton will appear at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino on August 30 at 6:30pm to talk about and read from his recently reissued novel Inside Moves. His web site is UnderTheTableBooks.com.

* The Prince of Pompadoodle is from A. A. Milne’s children’s book of poems, When I Was Six.

(1999) — I was told it was only going to be a journey of a few leagues.

As my league work wasn’t up to snuff I figured it would take a while longer. I loaded myself up with the stuff of the classic poseur. A handbag a duffle bag, new shoes, an over-the-shoulder bag and a shopping bag flaunting that it’s Heavenly.

The spirit of our society is to contrive but not enjoy… Toiling to produce more toil—accumulating in order to aggrandize. The pleasures of the imagination, among which the love of scenery holds a conspicuous place, will alone temper the harshness of such a state; and, like the atmosphere that softens the most rugged forms of the landscape, cast a veil of tender beauty over the asperities of life.

 — Thomas Cole, American painter, 1836

You get as old, beat up and worn down as I am and you appreciate it when some highway department kindly builds a road that allows you to drive to a mountaintop. In the USA, the road up Colorado’s Pikes Peak (14,115ft.) is the most famous of these. After absorbing the grandeur of Pikes Peak’s summit views, in 1893 Katherine Lee Bates was inspired to write the song America the Beautiful. So evocative are her lyrics that her song nearly became our national anthem before getting beaten out by the current one, a paean so jingoistic, militaristic, sappy-romantic and embarrassingly Anglo Saxon it has to qualify as one of the worst national anthems ever. As if to hint at how such a mass outbreak of bad taste is so sustainable, for 97 years gleeful crowds have gathered to watch an auto race to the top called the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. Today motorcycle races, bicycle races, foot races, bag races and what all are annual events much anticipated and celebrated.

Then nobody has done more to make mountains into playthings than the Swiss. Seeing themselves as a guppy among sharks, the Swiss began by making their mountains into their fortress. In the process they became masters of blasting and tunneling, anchoring and suspending, cutting and filling. So naturally they also applied these talents to non-military purposes. As a result of their labors, to bag a peak in Switzerland you can take a train, cable car, gondola or elevator. Making the top of one of the world’s most fearsome mountains, the Eiger (13,040ft.) wheelchair accessible is quite some feat and a justly-earned source of Swiss national pride.

The East Bay’s two-headed Mt. Diablo (3,849ft.) also sports a freeway to the stars. Before the coming of industrial man, dust and smog, from atop Diablo you could overlook the length and breadth of the San Joaquin/Sacramento River valleys. You could see Yosemite, the High Sierra and the Tehachapis. Up north you could see Mt. Lassen (the southern anchor of the Cascade Range) and, even today, after a sunrise rain and the clouds have lifted, you can see Mt. Shasta (14,162ft.) some 300 miles away.

Under crystal skies, looking north from atop Shasta, 185 miles away you see Mt. Bachelor (9,065ft.) in Central Oregon. From atop Bachelor, in the southeastern foreground, you look across a bowed carpet of coniferous forest to the fingernail summit of Paulina Peak (7,984ft.), the apex of Newberry Crater. There are ski lifts to take you to the top of Bachelor and a possible glimpse of Shasta, and there’s a graded dirt road leading to the top of Paulina. Recently Trish, Jeff, Abel and I chose to take the road.

Why bother, you might ask. If all you’re after is a panorama, just spin around. Whether you’re inside a shopping mall, in the office, at the ball park, hoofing a sidewalk—just spin around. As for losing your eyes inside a giant panorama, what can that do but make you feel like a nit and—not so logically—certifiably insignificant? Like, what’s your age next to that basalt rock’s? What are your works next to the works surrounding you? What passes for industrial civilization teaches timidity, physical, moral and intellectual, and seeing yourself in physical perspective can sure enough be intimidating. Brings to mind ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust and all that. Yet, after a little getting used to, the effect is also liberating. It’s a psychic escape from the lock-stepping regiment and a leap into circular space; the vast space of human memory and imagination. A world to be looked at implies a looker, after all, and you’re happy to oblige.

I think of mountaintops as penthouses for the common folk. Say you’re rich and you’re living in a luxury condo 20 stories up in a towering high-rise overlooking New York’s Central Park. Between birds breaking their necks against your picture windows, you gaze down on the box of municipal green parkland with its blue pools and winding paths and it’s like you’re watching the goings-on inside an ant farm. You take the elevator to the roof and you’ll get a panorama, too. Though tiny next to a mountain top’s, inside it will be millions of people, blocks atop blocks for block after block into the vanishing point. There’ll be millions of human stories, millions of human cares. At night, beyond the fuzzy dome of all-night security lights, the stars still visible will be rubbed dull and the ceaseless otherworldly noises will be rising like the snarls and whimpers of exhausted and irritable wind-up animals. Beyond its dazzling lights, a midnight cityscape is a dusty and warbled bathroom mirror.

Newberry Crater is the largest caldera in Oregon. Although it’s nowhere near as famous (or quite as spectacular) as nearby Crater Lake (the remains of Mt. Mazama), Newberry has two lakes filling its deep bottoms and not just one. Looking up from the lakes, the rim of the crater looks like the gums of a wide-open mouth with all its teeth blasted out save for Paulina Peak, it looking like a dead and decaying molar broken into a point. An outlier like Pike’s Peak or Mt. Diablo, Newberry is a massif. Still the tip of its tooth stands loftier than the Cascade Crest minus its handful of glacier-clad volcanoes.

We arrive at Paulina’s summit parking lot and see a half dozen parked cars next a pair of unchained bicycles. There’s an extended family, the uniformed cyclists, two young couples with little kids, two old couples and a solitary Asian old man. They are speaking quietly if at all. The morning is windless, the sky massive, and deep silence tends to get you to listening to it or, at least, wishing not to disturb it. Being in awe, I suppose you could call it: hushed.

There’s something special about having a summit panorama that allows you to gaze down into the tangled innards of a volcano. The rest of the rim is a few hundred feet lower down, mostly forested and 21 miles in circumference. 1,300 feet below, the two lakes shine like big baby blue eyes, the milk chocolate cinder cone separating them a snowman’s nose. To the east at our feet lies what looks like a giant petrified mud slide that poured out from the rim, buried the forest and stopped just shy of the lakes. Big Obsidian Flow, the formation is called. Only 1,300 years old, it’s the youngest lava flow in Oregon. The obsidian is of the finest quality and tools made from it have been unearthed in archeological digs as far away as Illinois.

The Cascade volcanoes are laid out like a string of pearls, and far to the north, resting on Mt. Hood’s shoulder, we see Mt. Adams up in Washington. Up close we see Jefferson, 3-Fingered Jack, Washington, Three Sisters, Broken Top, Bachelor and, southward past Thielsen and Mazama, the vertical spear point of Mt. McLaughlin just above the California border. Eastward we overlook all of Central Oregon and beyond, mountain ranges backing mountain ranges all the way the Steens Mt. 150 miles away.

The view southeast most impressed me. From the lip of the parking lot, the steep mountainside looks like a straight leg with its foot buried in the sluff of a deep sagebrush bowl. Stuck out in the middle of the bowl is a long and low-slung black rock formation looking like an old WW2 B-17 bomber belly-landed, abandoned and left to the desert’s scavengers. “Fort Rock,” the sand-lapping homesteaders of early 20th Century christened it. Nobody knows how many names the natives had for it.

Fort Rock is a “tuff ring.” It’s what happens when a volcano spews lava through the fractured bedrock and accumulated mud at the bottom of an ancient inland sea. The volcano’s material piles up in a concentric ring and grows into an island and then, as the climate heats, dries and the lake shrinks at the end of the last Ice Age, a part of its vanished shoreline.

Up close, with its 300-foot vertical walls, Fort Rock sure looks like a fort. A fort with about a third of its wall blasted out. It was the wind-whipped waves of the lake lapping over the course of 100,000 years that had collapsed its palisades into rubble and spilled its innards outward into the water. Aloft on the surviving walls you see the terraced remains of ancient shorelines. You see shorelines plus the ancestral homes of cliff swallows and golden eagles.

There are caves, many caves, and back in the 1930’s inside one of them under a layer of pumice and rounded lakeshore stones an anthropologist found a cache of woven sage-bark sandals between 9,000 and 10,000 years old. At the time the sandals were the oldest human artifacts ever discovered in the US, but since then the timeline has more than doubled and, according to some, doubled again. Based on the latest linguistic evidence, while it is definitely true that large numbers of Siberians entered North America via the Bering Land Bridge at the end of the last Ice Age, when they did they encountered people. There’s a very good chance that both continents of the New World had already been peopled for many thousands of years before they arrived.

Looking down at Fort Rock from Paulina, I tried to imagine how many hundreds of human generations had lived there splashing in the lake water and basking in the sunshine. When Mt. Mazama exploded 7,600 years ago, it spewed flaming talcum power into the cave of the sandals, and I wondered if there’d been people inside. Certainly anybody out in the open during the eruption would have taken shelter inside the cave if they could. When the air filled with sulfur, methane, toxic chemicals and fiery grit, they’d’ve sheltered in each other’s arms, closed their eyes, held their breaths and gone to sleep while getting buried under what may as well have been snow.

At least they knew their doom wasn’t of their own making, I thought. At least they knew their people had a future; at least they knew nature endures forever, as the stars, as the sun, giving and taking but mostly giving. If only we in our climate-controlled techno caves could be certain of these same elementary things.

Aside from its winning title, the best material offered up by the documentary film Twenty Feet from Stardom are the musical performances, seen and — more important — heard both in footage of concerts extending back to the 1960s and in spontaneous outbursts of song staged before the cameras of the moviemakers in the more recent past. This is a movie about back-up singers (“background singers” is the term the musicians interviewed for the film generally favor), almost all of them black and female. Whenever these women sing together the joy they take in this singular act is inspiring, beautiful, even revelatory.

One such performance, though a short one, comes near the film when the fabulous singer, Darlene Love is reunited with other members of the girl group she fronted in 1960s, The Blossoms. After hugging each other these women immediately begin to sing one of their old numbers in perfectly tuned harmony. The unbridled brilliance of what they do is riveting. Even the singers themselves are swept up by the euphoria of the sound that comes magically from their mouths, the power of music rendering nostalgia irrelevant. It’s as if no time had elapsed since they’d last joined voices together four decades before. The dialectic of precision and ease, of rigor and naturalness, sets a standard for performances that extend across generic divisions between classical and popular music, indeed any other musical frontiers one can think of. Never bothering with much doubt about her own enormous gifts, Love herself is bowled over by The Blossoms’ excellence.

Love’s very name perfectly captures her musicianship: never is love of music more present than when she and her colleagues, and the various constellations of other women, sing together. Twenty Feet from Stardom is full of ironies, one of the lesser ones being the fact that this extraordinary singer was born Darlene Wright but rebranded as Darlene Love by the music business that, if the film is to be believed, did much to thwart her artistic fulfillment and financial success. The main bad guy is notorious producer, Phil Spector. Dutifully following Spector’s ironfisted orders, Love and the Blossoms recorded He’s a Rebel, which was released under the name of a phantom group The Crystals. Thanks to the powerhouse performance by the anonymous lead singer (Love) and her back-up vocalists, the song surged to number one on the Billboard charts in 1962. The filmmakers did not penetrate into the Corcoran State Prison in Central California to interview Spector, who would doubtless have spurned them anyway. For the forces of evil, the best defense is usually silence rather than denial.

On the cusp of breaking through to solo stardom, Love’s contract was sold by Spector to another label where she languished, this being only the most devastating blow of exploitation and degradation she apparently suffered. So discouraged became Love that for a time during the Seventies and early Eighties she quit the music business and cleaned houses. As Love tells it in the documentary, she was scrubbing a bathroom in December when a radio in the client’s house started playing Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), another hit of hers produced by Spector for his holiday compilation of 1963. This came as an epiphany for Love: a voice from afar — her own — calling on her to change her life. Like so many of these singing women, Love learned her art from earliest childhood in the black church, and she interpreted the radio revelation as a message from God calling her to get back to sharing her musical gifts with a wider public than toilet bowls.

Love returned to the profession singing back-up and went on to enjoy late career success on Broadway and as a solo singer. She is now in a beautiful 70 years old, seemingly as full of voice and personality and love of music as when she was a girl group genius in the 1960s.

In contrast to the career trajectories of so many of the other singers featured in the film, Love’s is a tale of rebirth and, finally, recognition: the movie concludes with her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011, the award bestowed on her by another woman, Bette Midler, one of the few female singers holding celebrity status to be interviewed for the film. Midler and others point out that the contributions of back-up singers were vital to the growth of Rock & Roll, especially in lending the crucial “blackness” to, among other white musical phenomena, the invaders from Britain, the Rolling Stones and others. Claudia Lennear was an Ikette behind Tina Turner under the terrifying reign of Ike Turner, and back-up singer for Joe Cocker, David Bowie, and the Rolling Stones, with whom she also broke occasionally to the front line, as the movie shows in colorful detail. Lennear, too, emerged from the back-up ranks to record a solo album, Phew! in the early Seventies but this effort did not vault her from the background of supporting harmony to the foreground of celebrity. She’s now a high school Spanish teacher. That Lennear nurtured a life-long love of foreign languages and as a child dreamt of being an UN interpreter is somewhat mendaciously suppressed by the film, which wants us to believe that her becoming a school teacher was a sort of failure and another black mark on the music industry.

Indeed, the film is unsure if it’s central theme is the joy of singing together — and not just as an essential flavor in white-rock rolls spice drawer — or if it is about the relentless urge to escape from the chorus to fabulous, even if drug-addled, solo success. Some of the film’s featured singers are let off their close-harmony tether and given space to emerge as individuals, but most return to the back of the stage, twenty feet from stardom. The forays to the front-line are often cast in a bittersweet light by the film, as in a wonderful scene when Lisa Fischer — a veteran session singer, who two decades ago won a Grammy as a soloist and has sung back-up for the Stones on all their tours of the last twenty years — is allowed space by bandleader Sting to spin out the fantastical, pitch-pure arabesques of her rapturous incantations. When Fischer speaks about her career, an up-and-down one in terms of celebrity culture, her words are a mix of pride, resilience and melancholy. Sting himself is puzzled by her failure to “make it” in outsized commercial terms. In the film, Fischer appears stoically to fall victim to the vagaries and vanities of an unjust business and the constantly turning wheel of fortune that lofts a musician to the top and then hurls them back down for no apparent reason. Yet Fischer sings on, her artistry and authenticity undiminished.

As befits a movie about the human voice, Twenty Feet from Stardom has been buoyed by a word-of-mouth chorus that has kept the film in the theaters longer than one might have expected and elevated it to the top of this year’s documentary list. The enthusiasm that greeted the movie at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival has only been amplified by its many fans and the overwhelming positive reviews like that of A.O. Scott in the New York Times. But for all the uncontainable energy and compelling artistry of the singers, the film leaves a bad taste in the mouth and a nagging echo in the ears: heard too often in aggravating counterpoint to the background voices are the “expert” talking heads who hold forth at regular intervals through the film. They are overwhelmingly white men, from Mick Jagger to Sting to Bruce Springsteen. Even though these rock patriarchs harbor sympathy for the vocalists who are the subject of the film, the male filmmakers unwittingly make it clear why so many of these women have been exploited. The men are seen to have the brains, staying power, and intellectual distance to write the history of background singing as it is presented in the documentary. Having richly benefited from the work of Lennear, Fischer and others others, Jagger has the stones to say of back-up singers, “I don’t think I’d want to do the oohs and the doos all my life.”

In Twenty Feet from Stardom, the female performers also speak clearly and forcefully about their lives and their art. Their singing embodies music’s irrepressible power. In spite of the frequent upwellings of life-affirming music, there is something depressing about this movie: in the end it is the men who get the last word.

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