WE’VE ENJOYED the recent presence of a high school kid, Ms. Mayte Guerrero, as an “intern.” The Anderson Valley Education Foundation paid Ms. Guerrero to endure a couple of hours a day in the cluttered gloom, and relentlessly bad vibes of the AVA’s turbulent office high atop the Farrer Building, downtown Boonville. Not to embarrass her, but Ms. Guerrero is very smart, the kind of student apprentice who gets it with one telling, and she’s mannerly and pleasant. She seems to have emerged psychically unscarred from her summer adventure. You talk to some kids, or try to, and all you get back is grunts and animal sounds or, worse, an adverb attack. “Like I said to the dude, like dude…” Having a kid around the office one has to watch what one says; it’s easy to forget how young they are and how old and cynical you are. When I was a kid the input I got ranged from “Sit down and shut up” to “Lemme tell you something, kid, and this is all you need to know about life — Most people are nuts. Don’t be surprised by anything they do or anything that happens.” Which wasn’t bad advice, really, as general life-prep. I have vivid memories of the guy who told me that; Bob Wyman, baseball manager of a youth “all-star” team sponsored by Fisherman’s Grotto Number 9. We played year-round, kind of like youth club teams do now. Wyman was an ex-fighter, and he looked like one complete with the crushed nose. How he made money was always something of a mystery because he always had plenty of free time for batting practice in the middle of the day on workdays. There were rumors that he was a professional tough guy for organized crime. Wyman was definitely a tough guy. I saw him knock out a heckler with a quick flurry of perfectly aimed, efficient punches that he got off without even looking back. We were all very, very impressed and, needless to say, never dared pop off at the guy ourselves. A lot of things he said to us, average age 16, can’t be repeated here, but there wasn’t, back in the day, the oppressive rhetorical coddling kids get today. I can remember things Wyman said, most of the them wildly “inappropriate” by today’s mollycoddling standards; I can’t remember anything I got from a classroom, high school or college, and if I had to do it over again I’d skip college all together, and I’m here to advise all you kids out there to skip it too, unless you want to be a doctor, an engineer or something else that requires real know how and training. Liberal arts? A degree in philosophy? Journalism? Creative Bloody Writing? Complete waste of your time. You want to learn to write with at least passable clarity? Read a lot. For a kid, for anybody, reading’s the key to learning to write. If you don’t read you’ll write like a school administrator. Think like one, too, probably. And grow up to be a fascist. Figure out what really interests you, then try to smarten up enough to earn a living doing it, especially now in the crumbling economic context you’ll be swimming in all your days from here on. A diploma in blah-blah is not going to help you survive, and you’re going to graduate on a great big stack of debt. Back to Ms. Guerrero, AVA intern. I told her versions of the above without discouraging whatever college ambitions she may have, and she has them. Smart, second generation immigrant female? The libs at places like Stanford will slobber all over her application, maybe even charter a plane for her to fly down from Boonville for a visit with the lawns of Palo Alto. She’ll do well whatever she chooses to do. But she’s an exception, not the rule. If there was intelligent life anywhere in the public school system, young people would get a couple of hours a day in basic English and math then spend the rest of the day with people who actually know how to do stuff, but it’s all seat time and pep rallies, and before you know it the kid is 18 and out in the world with no skills, no discipline, no money, no job, no nothing except maybe seasonal work in a pot patch. It doesn’t have to be this way. ============================= MENDOCINO COUNTY Deputy District Attorney Damon Gardner shot and wounded another man on a downtown Sacramento street early last Thursday morning during what DA David Eyster has since described as a “physical confrontation.” The shooting occurred outside a hotel at 15th and L streets in downtown Sacramento. Police responded to a report of a “knifing” where they discovered that the “knifing” was a gunshot wound to the victim’s “upper body.” The police report said that “two people passed two others when an argument began between the two groups.” Everyone, natch, had been drinking. “Words escalated into a fight and then a shot was fired.” The wounded man was transported to the hospital for, miraculously, a non life-threatening injury. He has not yet been publicly identified. Khoury Khoury GARDNER, who has a concealed weapon permit, was with another assistant Mendo DA named Alexandra Khoury. Gardner, 39, had been on paid medical leave from the district attorney’s office since mid-August. Ms. Khoury, 25, was in Sacramento to attend a “legal education seminar.” It’s not known why Gardner was in Sacramento, but the fetching Ms. Khoury, a collegiate tennis champ, would seem to offer plenty of incentive for his presence. THE SACRAMENTO Police Department said in a press release that there had been no major developments in the case and detectives continue to investigate. The Gardner story, by the way, was immediately picked up by Fox News. ============================= FORT BRAGG POLICE are still looking for a youngish man observed firing a shotgun at a PG&E substation last Saturday. Six, 12-gauge shotgun shells were found after the man fled into nearby woods when he realized he was being watched. He’s described “as about 6-feet tall with shoulder length, shaggy blond hair,” and wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt with some kind of logo on the back. He had also been seen on a “Giant” brand bike found near the substation. ============================= LAST THURSDAY (17 October) a Chinese couple was found dead, apparently murdered, in a mini-van parked near the area of the “bark dump” off Highway 20. They have now been identified as Jim Tat Kong and Cindy Bao Feng Chen. Mr. Jim was from San Pablo, Ms. Bao from San Francisco. Dollars to donuts this one is never solved, but I’ll bet it had something to do with gambling; Chinese, ordinarily, are too pragmatic to kill each other over romance, and please pardon the ethnic stereotyping here. But who knows? It only takes one generation for immigrants to become as crazy as US. ============================= THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS approved the Mendocino Town Plan at a typically tumultuous meeting in the town of Mendocino on Tuesday. The key remaining issue was designation of the town as a “Sensitive Coastal Resource Area” (SCRA) which would have allowed whatever is usually designated as a “project” to be appealed to the California Coastal Commission. Board Chair Dan Hamburg passed the gavel in order to make a motion (seconded by Fort Bragg Supervisor Dan Gjerde) to approve the Town Plan with the controversial SCRA provision. The motion failed 2-3 with only Hamburg and Gjerde in favor. The same motion without the SCRA designation then passed on a 4-1 vote, with only Hamburg opposed. EXCEPT FOR THE SCRA, most of the long-standing planning issues seemed to have been worked out to the general satisfaction of the various interest groups in the fractured community of Mendocino. A compromise on tourist rentals had been worked out in advance, with Vacation Home Rentals (aka: a single family residence available for short term rental) capped at ten and Single Unit Rentals (a second residential unit rented on a short term basis) capped at 20. The Art Center, which had been approved for 19 units in the 1992 town plan, but never had more than 13 actual units, was happy to get approval for their 13 existing units, plus one they plan to build. The Art Center units will primarily be available to instructors and students, but will also offer lower cost accommodations to tourists, as long as the bed tax is collected. DISCUSSION OF THE SCRA was torpedoed before it began when Hamburg delivered a rant against the County’s Planning and Building staff. Back in 2006, before Hamburg was on the Board, the Supes considered the long-delayed issue and directed staff to amend the town plan to include a SCRA. Hamburg questioned why that was never done. Clearly frustrated and visibly angry, Hamburg came close to losing it as he launched into an indictment of staff. He railed against former Planning Director Ray Hall who retired at least five years ago. Hamburg even turned on CEO Carmel Angelo and County Counsel Tom parking, demanding to know why it had never been done. When he finished, Hamburg wanted to know if current Planning Director Steve Dunnicliff had anything to say. Without waiting for a reply Hamburg concluded with a sharp “I didn’t think so.” And there went any opportunity, if one existed, to have a reasonable discussion of issues related to a SCRA designation. THE MAIN ARGUMENT IN FAVOR of a SCRA is that it would provide an additional avenue of appeal of development in the small coastal hamlet. But the appeal would be to the Coastal Commission which, because its staff has been squeezed over the years since its creation, is notorious for taking forever to make decisions. The people in the town who want Mendocino to stay the same don’t trust the Board of Supes over in Ukiah and don’t care how long the Coastal Commission sits on a permit. A SCRA would also mean that simple projects anywhere in town, even out of sight on the east (inland) side of Highway 1, would require higher fees, longer time lines and a public hearing even if they never got appealed to the Coastal Commission. Without the SCRA designation, simple residential projects can be heard by the County’s Coastal Zoning Permit Administrator, a much more streamlined process that would still be appealable to the Board of Supes. THE MAIN ARGUMENT AGAINST a SCRA is also that it would provide an additional avenue of appeal. The people making this argument fear getting caught up in Coastal Commission limbo. They also think its unfair that they are required to shell out big bucks for permit fees and project approval, but a disgruntled neighbor or anyone else can file an appeal with the Coastal Commission for free. So in reality, most appeals would bypass the Board of Supes and go straight to the Coastal Commission. Which, for applicants, means lots more money, lots more time, and uncertainty from year to year when or if a project will be approved. Staff will incorporate the various changes of the version finally approved by the 4-1 Board vote, and the Town Plan will come back to the Supes for final approval. Maybe by that time Hamburg will have simmered down. ============================= POST OFFICE BUILDINGS FOR SALE! The US has entered into a contract with a real estate firm to sell 56 buildings that currently house US Post Offices. The government has decided it no longer needs these buildings, most of which are located on prime land in towns and cities across the country. The sale of these properties will fetch about $19 billion. A regular real estate commission will be paid to the company that was given the exclusive listing for handling the sales. That company is CRI and it belongs to a man named Richard Blum. Richard Blum is the husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein. (Most voters and many of the government people who approved the deal have not made the connection between the two because they have different last names). Senator Feinstein and her husband stand to make a fortune (estimated at between $950 million and $1.1 billion!) from these transactions. His company is the sole real estate on the sale. CRI will be making a minimum of 3% and as much as 6% commission on each and every sale. All of the properties that are being sold are all fully paid for. They were purchased with U.S. taxpayers dollars. The USPS is allowed free and clear, tax exempt use. The only cost to keep them open is the cost to actually keep the doors open and the heat and lights on. The United States Postal Service doesn’t even have to pay county property taxes on the subject properties. Would you put your house in foreclosure just because you couldn’t afford to pay the electric bill? Well, the folks in Washington have given the Post Office the OK to do it! Worse yet, most of the net proceeds of the sales will go back to the USPS, an organization that is so poorly managed that they have lost $117 billion dollars in the past 10 years! No one in the mainstream media is even raising an eyebrow over the conflict of interest and on the possibility of corruption on the sale of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of public assets. How does a US Senator from San Francisco manage to get away with organizing and lobbying such a sweet deal? Has our government become so elitist that they have no fear of oversight? (Don’t answer that.) And it’s no mere coincidence that these two public service crooks have different last names; a feeble attempt at avoiding transparency in these type of transactions. Pass this info on before it’s pulled from the internet.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 23:31:24 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015