Cranberries and elephants

In case you were wondering what I was doing this week, this happened. Enjoy!

Opinion: In support of Mendocino County Measure AF and California's Proposition 64

I support both Mendocino County's Measure AF as well as California's Proposition 64. It is time to decriminalize, legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana. These are complementary measures, insofar as Mendocino County is concerned; some of the flaws of one are corrected by the other.

Oddly, nobody is talking about this complementary nature. They're only being addressed as separate measures.

My take on Mendocino County's Measure AI

I get back to basics and talk about Mendocino County's Measure AI, which would levy a tax on marijuana businesses.

On "real" conversation

I read an article ("Small talk should be banned -- here's why" http://www.wired.co.uk/article/banning-small-talk) on the effect of small talk on relationships. The thesis of the article is that small talk is the lowest common denominator of social interaction with strangers in society, but that restricts the level of depth people can reach with each other.

Of the great many articles that I have read in various media, this one struck a personal note. By my nature, I am a retiring guy with a strong streak of social anxiety. Social situations are difficult for me; to wit, attempting to strike up a conversation with an interesting woman beyond what is required of a commercial exchange in a store is similar to tearing down a cement wall with my bare hands.

This difficulty in forging relationships goes beyond the romantic and into the area of close male friends as well. Social anxiety is relatively ironic for somebody who spends most of their professional life talking to people. The truth is, however, that small talk, or chit-chat, is a skill that I use to both acquire information and keep people at a distance.

Why should I personally want to keep people away? After all, I actually feel isolated a great deal of the time, even in a group. Simply put, I'm afraid of how I might be judged. Much of my instinctual conversation does deal with, as the aforementioned article states, "complex social issues" such as my evolution of perspective on sexuality, race, gender, and god (or gods, if you're so inclined).

And that is the crux of how I perceive my society; we are not allowed to be dynamic people, but rather to be static personalities. For example, as a younger man, I was, to put it mildly, homophobic and racist. It's not a simple conversation to discuss how I went from "it's tab A into slot B" to fully supporting same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights. Neither is it a five minute discussion to full explore racism against blacks and Hispanics as an actual personal attitude (based on more than simple ignorance) that can be overcome, and not a "oh, there are still racists out there" vague concept. These are ideas that cause many people, myself included, a great deal of discomfort.

I am supposed to be, according to how we present ourselves to the public, as either all one way or all the other. Gray areas need not apply.

And yet, gray areas are really all that there are in life. But they do not lend themselves to small talk. So I have developed a skill with personal engagement that keeps things impersonal and wonder if the day will come when I actually have a conversation with somebody about more than the weather.

Paul Bunyan Days 2016 in Fort Bragg, California

Labor Day weekend came and went here in Mendocino County. That means that Paul Bunyan was in town and I made sure to catch as much of the festivities as I could.

Paul Bunyan Days is four days of "things to do" and is one of the great highlights of the year on the Fort Bragg-Mendocino Coast. There's the pie sale, the book sale, the logging games, the parade, a tricycle race, the gem and mineral show, a classic car show, an ugly dog contest, and much more. I managed to get to some of the events. You can watch it below.

If you just stumbled upon this, I hope you follow me on my escapades around Mendocino County.

Mendocino Coast fiber optic gets diverse

By Matthew Reed

The Mendocino Coast now has a redundant fiber optic and internet outages like those that occurred in 2014 and 2015 should now be prevented.

Sage Statham, business manager for Mendocino Community network, said he received confirmation from AT&T on Tuesday, Aug. 9, that the local internet service provider would now have access to the the South Coast fiber optic circuit.

"We like to call it a diverse circuit because redundant implies that it is not needed," Statham said. "This circuit would allow MCN telephone and data to continue to function even if the main fiber line was down."

In 2014, a break in the fiber optic line on Comptche-Ukiah Road interrupted service to hundreds of customers and businesses, including 911 service. In 2015, a vandal damaged the fiber optic line near Hopland, which blacked out service to much of Mendocino County as well as parts of Humboldt County.

Now, instead of a single circuit supplying all internet service, there is a second fiber optic circuit.

"The main path is the one that has had the two cuts and travels from Santa Rosa to Ukiah, Ukiah to Boonville, Boonville to Comptche, Comptche to Mendocino and finally from Mendocino to Fort Bragg," Statham said. "The secondary path runs Mendocino to Manchester, Manchester to Annapolis and Annapolis to Santa Rosa."

Statham said that AT&T refused to give MCN detailed information on the new circuit, but he was told that the secondary circuit should even be able to run along the Trans Pacific fiber line that goes to Hawaii and Japan.

In the event that the primary fiber optic line is damaged, there will likely be no interruption in service to customers, Statham said. The switch to the second circuit should be automatic.

"It is possible that current calls could drop while the traffic is re-routed, but we believe that they should stay active," he said. If the switch failed to automatically re-route, MCN can manually reconfigure with about 15 minutes of labor by an MCN technician.

"MCN has done it’s part to make sure our phones and data will continue to work and hopefully other companies and local officials have done the same," Statham said.

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The Great Depression and Baseball in Mendocino County

The Depression in the United States forever scarred the psychology of a generation of Americans and helped shape the course of political dialogue forever. At no other time was the national political and social continuity more threatened as capitalist commerce no longer kept thousands of Americans fed in the urban centers. Social, economic, and regional self-sufficiency was centered on rural towns where much aid was administered through informal neighborhood networks. These communities of self-sufficient and relatively self-reliant farming and logging families spent what little leisure time they possessed focused on social events such as picnics, restaurants, and sporting events, most notably, on California’s Mendocino Coast, baseball.

Baseball, both watched and played, allowed the coastal Mendocino public to forget for a few hours the uncertain economic realities that existed across the nation and were most evident by the intermittent closings of coastal mills for a dearth of buyers. 

Players were also workers in the woods and in the towns’ mills, as well as grocers, gas station owners, and dairy farmers. They played hard and worked harder, when there were jobs. Multiple leagues existed on the Mendocino coast, not including high school teams that would play against the various town and association teams in exhibition and pre-season games. Baseball was played in every town on the Mendocino coast in some fashion. The home field of the Fort Bragg Seals also hosted concessions operators and ticket sellers who earned a small wage.[1] The teams were for entertainment and meant little in relation to greater issues, such as the mills’ operation. However, baseball was a vivid expression of coastal Mendocino County’s culture of mutual aid and support.

Baseball interwove other communities together with the greater Mendocino Coast community. The local Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp at California’s Russian Gulch State Park maintained a very competitive baseball club as a part of their recreation program and was a part of a larger Northern California CCC baseball “sub-district” league. The Russian Gulch camp was established on November 17, 1933 with the express intent of developing Russian Gulch into a state park for California. Immediately, crews “started on road and trail construction, camp ground clearings, stream improvement, eradication of poisonous plants, general cleanup, and many other approved projects.” Eleven months later, federal work crews had constructed “three miles of road, forty individual camping units consisting of stoves, tables, cupboards, and water. One Recreation Hall fifty by sixty feet, one Custodian Cottage of five rooms, eight latrines (Chich Sales type) and ten miles of foot trails...”[2] Initially only fifty crew members began the work, but that number soon swelled to over two hundred enrollees.[3]

In addition to conservation work, the CCC provided opportunities for a number of athletic activities including boxing, basketball, and baseball. The CCC baseball teams played their games on Mendocino High School’s field.[4] The high school also opened its doors to hundreds of CCC enrollees to finish their high school education by hosting night classes twice per week with, a CCC reports adds, “the entire school staff and the school’s facilities and equipment at their disposal.”[5] A CCC educational report for Russian Gulch camp in 1938 noted that “[t]he healthy relation existing between the people and high school and the men of this company has improved the moral of this company.”[6] The “people” of Mendocino included Auggie Heeser, editor and publisher of the Mendocino Beacon, who declared “Hail to the boys of the CCC!” at the opening of the Russian Gulch camp.[7] Mendocino’s embrace of the CCC was likewise illustrated by the invitation of local families to enrollees for holiday parties and dinners.[8]

This seeming unconditional acceptance of the strangers in their midst was possible because the area was isolated and rural, but self-sufficient. According to Emery Escola, a member of a long-time Mendocino County family, during the Great Depression the area was relatively protected from the more harsh effects of widespread starvation or malnutrition. He said he “didn’t really know it was the depression.” He continued,

I wasn’t old enough to know about finances and money like that. My whole early life was during a low economic time. I didn’t have too much idea about what value was. When the depression came it didn’t make too many changes to us. Everybody shared their food. If somebody killed a pig and had too much left over, they’d share it with their neighbors. Never went without something to eat. We had it pretty good compared to in the city. Most of the people raised their own food anyway.”[9]

Escola described the coast as dotted with farms that provided many of the essentials, such as eggs, milk, and butter. During the Depression, Escola and his brother built a trapper’s lodge to trap fur animals along the Noyo River to earn what cash was necessary for survival beyond food. Escola sold raccoon, mink, and otter skins to chain retailers such as Montgomery Wards.[10] Perhaps it was such abundance in isolation that allowed leisure activities such as baseball to proliferate.

The natural abundance did not necessarily translate into financial abundance. The Fort Bragg Seals practiced and played games at their primary field located at the corner of Madrone and Main Streets, now occupied by CVS Pharmacy, Coast Cinemas, and a strip-mall. Located on the same block, just outside the first base side fence, was the twenty-seven room, three-story Piedmont Hotel, built by the Andreani family in 1914. [11]

In this undated photo, Fort Bragg's town team squares off against Albion. In the background along the first base line is the Oak Manor Hotel, on Oak Street, and the Catholic church, originally located at the corner of Main and Oak streets. The church is now called Portuguese Hall, on Stewart Street. Note the absence of the Piedmont Hotel, built in 1941. The baseball field was torn down in 1955. Photo courtesy of the Mendocino County Historical Society

From this matrix of regional abundance and communal generosity Mendocino Coast baseball gained its roots. One of the locals, C. Louis Wood, played third and first bases, as well as being the manager at the beginning of the ’37 season; Wood also owned a gas station on Main Street in Fort Bragg. His ownership of the gas station was his connection to the community as evidenced by the Mendocino Beacon’s declaration that “[t]he Fort Bragg Seals, under the sponsorship of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, have been having regular workouts the past week…C. Louis Wood, who has the Associated Service Station on the corner of Main and Redwood avenue, will manage the team this year… Woods [sic] has had considerable experience with baseball teams and is well qualified to handle a team.” The Associated Service Station owned by Wood was located two blocks from the Seals’ ballpark, certainly a convenience to a business owner who was a part-time slugger. [12]

But just because Fort Bragg’s hometown nine were part-time did not mean they were not serious hitters. Another set of local part-time sluggers were the Galletti brothers. The Galletti’s were from a Point Arena dairy family, one of the many farms and ranches that produced such regional abundance.

On June 9, 1937, Leo Galletti illustrated why small town baseball during the Depression was as magical as the legendary teams of Major League Baseball. In an error-free contest, the Seals’ Tilio Pavioni energized the home crowd when he safely hit three times in four at-bats, walked once, and stole second base twice; he did not, however, score a run. In the home half of the sixth, third baseman Galletti, previously a catcher with the Point Arena Dairymen baseball team, clobbered a pitch over the fences for the game’s only run.[13]

In the bottom of the sixth Galletti watched from third base as Fort Bragg’s defense took its turn in turning in a gem play, in particular catcher Waddy Lawson. Lawson brought fans to their feet when he picked off a runner at second base. With a runner on second, and anticipating an attempted steal of third, in a play that foreshadowed in technique modern Major League Baseball catchers, Lawson called for a pitch-out from pitcher Johnny Matson and threw from the kneeling position to second base to eliminate Santa Rosa’s scoring threat.

The Seals won 1-0, with Matson throwing a complete game to earn the win.[14]

There were times, though, that fans left disappointed without even the satisfaction of watching a game at all. In local contests of “town teams,” games were often cancelled because visiting teams failed to show due to inclement weather, automotive breakdowns, or plain discourtesy. Mendocino County’s roads during the Depression were poorly maintained and the primary method of getting to Fort Bragg until 1936 was by steamer; after 1936, automobiles were at best questionable conveyances over the coastal mountains.

Coastal Mendocino area’s very geography was a deterrent to outside teams playing in Fort Bragg. On July 24, the Mendocino Beacon reported that the California Colored Giants of Oakland failed to appear for a game because the axle of their team bus broke only seventy miles from Oakland.[15] 
Then on August 4, the newspaper reported that the Winters team had failed to arrive for the game because the team car had broken down.[16]

For four consecutive Sundays, the Seals refunded the fans’ money. That meant that, in addition to games versus Winters and the Oakland Colored Giants, games against two additional out-of-area teams had also been cancelled. The Fort Bragg Junior Chamber of Commerce, responsible for scheduling games and advertising, announced that it would not schedule any more games that year. The season would end for the Seals with two games against Scotia and one game against Talmage. [17]

The Fort Bragg Seals’ 1937 ended prematurely. The local newspaper did not report detailed statistics for the players. The Fort Bragg Seals were not the New York Yankees or St. Louis Cardinals. They did not play 150 games or more per season; barely a dozen games were played during that season. They committed errors that were “inexcusable” to the local press. They did not have a Joe DiMaggio or Joe Medwick.

But individual players often demonstrated a remarkable athletic ability, especially considering they practiced but once a week. The players for the Fort Bragg Seals were known well enough to the town that only their last names were used to identify them to readers. Men like Pavioni, Lawson, and Matson played as if they were on the Boston Red Sox or Detroit Tigers, but they could only dream of salaries matching that of Lou Gehrig and DiMaggio.

The Seals, to appearances, were a “bush league” team that was staffed by part-time players. But town baseball games were consistently attended by relatively large crowds of spectators and individual players could often demonstrate a remarkable athletic ability, especially considering they practiced but once a week. In those moments of competition and athleticism, the Seals and the other local teams transported their friends and neighbors out of 1937 Mendocino County, away from labor unrest and economic strife. For that ability alone, the Fort Bragg Seals were professional.

Mendocino County was rich in natural resources that mitigated the effects of the Depression. Baseball was an escapist luxury that allowed residents of coastal Mendocino County, as well as other towns across America, to forget for a few hours the uncertain economic realities that existed during the Great Depression. Within Mendocino County, though uncertainties were held at bay by natural wealth of resources and wealth of community spirit. Baseball was only one visible expression of the Mendocino coast’s history of cultural richness.

---

[1] Louis Andreani, Fort Bragg Remembered, 21-24

[2] “Superintendents Monthly Narrative Report,” United States Department of  the Interior, National Park Service, State Park Division, Russian Gulch SP-11, Mendocino, California, October, 1933

[3] Mendocino Beacon, October 14, 1933

[4] Mendocino Beacon, June 26, 1937

[5] “Summary of Camp Facilities for Education, Job Training and Recreation,” Russian Gulch Camp SP-11, September 2, 1937

[6] Civilian Conservation Corps Educational Report, Camp SP-11, Company No. 219, Fort Bragg, California, October 28, 1938

[7] Mendocino Beacon, February 19, 1934

[8] Mendocino Beacon, December 23, 1933

[9] Emery Escola, interviewed by Jonathon Matlin and Khalil Robinson, Mendocino Middle School Oral History Project, CD, November 15, 2000

[10] Emery Escola, interview, November 11, 1989, pg. 4, qtd in Robert Winn, “Bridges, Huckleberries, and Robin Stew: The Depression and The New Deal in Mendocino County”, Mendocino Historical Review, Vol. 14, Winter/Spring 1989-90, pg. 13

[11] Andreani, Fort Bragg Remembered, 21-24

[12] Mendocino Beacon, April 24, 1937.

[13] Mendocino Beacon, June 12, 1937

[14] ibid

[15] Mendocino Beacon, July 24, 1937

[16] Beacon, August 7, 1937

[17] Beacon, August 21, 1937

[18] Mendocino Beacon, March 22, 1968

OPINION: In opposition to Measure U

Measure U is the wrong tool for the wrong task. It implicitly targets a group of people in need of assistance and the underlying logic of the text of the measure is flawed.

Measure U forbids social service organizations from operating in the central business district of Fort Bragg "under any circumstances" unless that organization was already there before January 2015. Proponents are engaging in a classic case of Not In My Back Yard, as known as NIMBY. They don't want to see the members of their community who are suffering or who are disadvantaged. They want to close their eyes to the homeless, the disabled, and the poor and pretend that Fort Bragg is still a vibrant small city with more jobs than people.

In addition to the NIMBY aspect of Measure U, it's a very expensive temper tantrum. Proponents of the measure fought against the city giving grant money the Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center for the purchase of the Old Coast Hotel building; they lost the argument. Granted, Fort Bragg's city government gave the community a short shrift in meetings, but that is not the Hospitality Center's fault. And yet, Measure U targets the Hospitality Center because of its mission to work with the homeless and plans to use the building for that purpose.

Proponents would rather the Old Coast Hotel building sit empty in perpetuity than have a business use it for helping people in need. It is intellectually inconsistent to target social service agencies because of their clientele, but not the drinking establishments that do actually contribute to social disorder. Social service agencies such as Hospitality Center serve the better angels of human nature while bars serve booze.

If the issue is how the City of Fort Bragg government, including City Manager Linda Ruffing and the city council, handled community concerns, the awarding of the grant to Hospitality Center, or the Old Coast Hotel ownership's willingness to accept less money for a private nonprofit instead of a private business, those are separate issues that must be the focus of a different initiative, referendum, or recall process. They don't need to result in a discriminatory law targeting those people in the community who might cause Measure U proponents to feel uncomfortable.

Measure U is an attempt to address the wrong issue with the wrong method. It completely misses what's wrong with the city; supporters are making Hospitality Center into a straw man.

The arguments in favor of Measure U are filled with even more fallacies. Proponents argue that the measure "...insures the preservation of our Historic Downtown business district-north  to Pine Street and South to Oak Street, from Main Street to McPherson." While this may be the central business district, it is not a cohesive historic district. Indeed, it is not actually a registered historic district in the strictest definition. Visitors to the coast would have to travel to Mendocino to find an actual historic district. The central business district is a hodge-podge of historic buildings and contemporary structures. Buildings from the 19th century are nestled against others from the 1920s and later.

Measure U proponents want voters to "Vote Yes if you want to preserve the historic use and structure of the Old Coast Hotel." The logic is untenable. The hotel was sitting empty. Community members who wanted to acquire the building and use it commercially were rebuffed by the property owner unwilling to negotiate on price; yet those same owners negotiated a deal with the City of Fort Bragg. The historic Oak Hotel across the street from the Old Coast Hotel is a seedy-looking collection of apartments once a notable lodging establishment comparable with the long-gone Piedmont Hotel. There is no hue and cry to restore the Oak Hotel to its historic use.

In addition, supporters of Measure U argue in the voter information pamphlet that "...the city's rich history should be celebrated and business's [sic] allowed to prosper." Fort Bragg's "rich history" is one of industry and jobs. It was a mill town with a thriving fishing harbor. The city has always been the commercial and economic center for the Fort Bragg-Mendocino Coast. If proponents truly wish for business to prosper, it needs to find ways to become collectively competitive with inland businesses. They need to fill the empty stores on Franklin Street and offer basic affordable necessities, instead of junk antiques and specialty boutiques.

Fort Bragg is not the town it once was. It is part of an area that is losing businesses and professionals. Cottage industries are not filling in the void left by the closing of the mill nor are they refilling the coffers of the schools that made this area so attractive to professionals with young families. If the business and property owners in the central business district want to better help the city, they need to address the issues that have contributed to the vacant storefronts on Franklin Street and the inability of the area to either build or attract large-scale employers.

It is not the purpose of public law or the initiative process to target specific groups or industries unless the case can be made clearly that the law will benefit the greater good. Laws that are exclusionary need to be so to serve the greater good, such as limitations on what businesses or individuals can be within a certain distance of schools. Measure U does not serve the greater good. It only serves the venal impulses of our human nature. It is in the same group of proposed social controls as excluding all Muslims from the United States or making law enforcement stops of people based on skin color.

I encourage voters in Fort Bragg to vote "no" on Measure U.

OPINION: In support of Measure V

I encourage Mendocino County residents to vote "yes" on Measure V next month.

When I was reporting for Mendocino's weekly community newspaper, The Beacon, part of my beat were rural fire departments south of Fort Bragg, California. One of those tiny departments was the Albion-Little River Volunteer Fire Department, an agency that covers an incredible geographic area that includes a lot of commercial timber land, most of it owned by the Mendocino Redwood Company.

In 2014, ALRVFD Chief Ted Williams became increasingly concerned about dead trees on MRC property left behind by the timber management practice known as "hack-and-squirt." Hack-and-squirt involves making a cut in an undesirable tree, such as tan oak, and then applying an herbicide to the cut. There are different herbicides used in the timber management industry, but one commonly used is imazapyr. The trees are then left to die and fall on their own.

2014 was also a year with record temperatures and low rainfall. In Mendocino, residents within the Mendocino City Community Services District were mandated to install water meters on their wells to help the district manage the limited groundwater. In the northern portion of Mendocino County later that year, over 12,500 acres burned near Laytonville when a wildfire was ignited by lightning.

In the early months of 2015, Williams had no reason to believe things would be different and there were hundreds of acres of dead timber bordering his fire district. He took his concerns to the Albion-Little River Fire Protection District board of directors, looking for a solution and then broadened his approach to include community members and fire professionals.

When I interviewed Mike Jani in March 2015 for a Beacon article, the issue of dead standing trees was quickly becoming a topic of concern for several coastal communities. Jani, the president and chief forester at MRC, attempted to minimize the dangers from standing dead timber.

“Our experience with the way fire reacts is it stays on the ground and doesn’t get into the canopy,” he said. “Albion-Little River Fire Protection District may have been ill-informed of the fire risk.”

Over a year later, MRC has spent $197,000 fighting against the county-wide measure, Measure V, that would make dead standing timber a public nuisance. In late March of this year, at a public forum moderated by the League of Women Voters, the timber company, with other opponents of the June measure, argued against Measure V on the basis of cost as well as creating a beneficial environmental situation; opponents continued to argue against the danger of dead timber as potential fuel in wildfires.

And while MRC has donated plenty of time and money to Mendocino County communities over the years, in this issue the company is wrong. The risks involved with hundreds of acres of dead timber seem self-evident. It is essentially miles of firewood waiting to be lit. Those potentially burning trees put first responders at risk due to falling snags, to say nothing of the question of whether those dead trees create unusually toxic smoke when they burn because of residual herbicide.

Measure V is needed to ensure that the negligence of property owners such as MRC does not endanger communities or firefighters. While I can understand the argument of trying to limit expenses, there is a point when common sense needs to rule over commercial expediency.

No landowner, whether it is an individual or a corporation, has the right to put their neighbor at risk because of one or more dead trees. MRC needs to accept it's responsibility to the greater community good, not just its bottom line.