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  Crime and punishment in the garden:  
     The mouse sniffed its way through the dark. Rejecting the wild pea vines, it scurried past the oak barrels full of strawberry plants. Been there, snipped that, tucked away in its nest. The mouse knew that Uncle Ben hadn't come home night before last from his raiding party on the cucumber plants. The mouse was keenly aware that Old Macdonald was putting out more and more traps. The mouse even suspected that a writer was anthropomorphizing it in his weekly column.
     There they were: pot after box of cukes, the stems and leaves a perfect compliment to any rodent's living quarters. The mouse clambered over the top of the redwood box. It tapped a foot on the still damp soil. Then... What's this? The smell of dairy products... Cheese... Yum... Sniff, sniff... Snap!
     Mousetraps may be nearly as old as cultivated gardens. Ancient Greeks referred to them. In Shakespeare's Hamlet (1602), the young Danish prince tells the usurper King Claudius that the play within the play they will watch is entitled, “The Mousetrap.” A half century earlier a mousetrap appeared in the Spanish novel The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities. The hero swiped cheese from a ratonera (mousetrap) to quell his hunger pangs.   
     There are electric mousetraps, wooden ones, plastic ones. There are bucket style mousetraps, jaw-like devices, and the traditional spring-loaded trap, patented in the 1890s in the U.S. by William Hooker and in Great Britain soon thereafter by James Henry Atkinson. Twenty or more years before, in 1870, a South Carolinian named W.K. Bachman patented a live-capture mousetrap. The advantage is obvious: for those disinclined to any sort of killing the mouse can be transferred far away and released. These live-capture traps must be checked regularly, though, because mice can die relatively quickly from dehydration.
     Going back to the 1800s my Macdonald ancestors employed another kind of mousetrap: barn cats, unofficial family pets who worked for their dinner. Those barn cats served as bounty hunters who meted out swift justice to mice and rats not only in barns but in the expansive gardens on this part of the Albion River valley.
     In the realm of local crime and punishment, law and order, a Fort Bragg source called a week ago, saying simply, “Check the agenda for next week's Fort Bragg City Council meeting."
     I promptly plopped myself down in front of the computer, successfully navigated the new City of Fort Bragg website to find a “Consent Calendar” resolution authorizing the hiring of Stephen Willis of Sausalito as an interim police chief for the City of Fort Bragg Police Department. To see the full resolution go to the AVA's Mendocino County Today online section from July 12th. The opening of the resolution says a bunch: “Whereas, Fort Bragg Police Chief Scott Mayberry and Lieutenant John Naulty are both on medical leave and it is uncertain when they will return to work...”
      Naulty has apparently been on leave since March 19th when he shot and killed the assailant of Mendocino County Sheriff's Deputy Ricky Del Fiorentino. Even a three and a half month absence might be understandable under those circumstances. I last saw Chief Mayberry in the Ten Mile Courthouse in mid to late June. He seemed to be his usual affable self, laughing while recalling his days as a Fort Bragg High School basketball star in the early 1980s. He provided not a hint of going out on medical leave.
     Stephen Willis will be paid $64.33 per hour for his work, not to exceed eighty hours for any two week period beginning July 15, 2014.  The contract between Willis and the City of Fort Bragg contains provisions for Willis' total annual salary (not to exceed $61, 756.80) and another provision governing his possible employment through the end of April, 2015. All of which makes Chief Mayberry's absence/leave appear more permanent.
     On the other hand, Willis is an old hand at the interim business of chiefing. He has filled the same position at the Fort Bragg PD more than once before. Willis served in a similar capacity in Seaside, Monterey County, in 2009.

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  Brian Chesky was born in the summer of 1981. He was raised in the community of Niskayuna, New York. After high school, he attended the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Before earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) Chesky helped run the school's hockey team, which goes by the nickname NADS. That's right, when fans cheer they shout, “Go NADS!”
     You can't make this stuff up. The school's basketball team is known as the BALLS.
     In 2001 the  hockey team was on the brink of being canceled from the rink, so Chesky, being an enterprising young fellow, decided the team needed a sort of re-branding, an attention grabbing logo or mascot. And what better mascot for a team known as the NADS than “Scrotie.”  
     Scrotie's upper body resembles something like a penile version of Gumby with a double barreled sack hanging below. On ice skates this Scrotie is something else! Google “Scrotie on ice” to view him skating down an opposing mascot.
     Along his merry way at the Rhode Island School of Design Chesky met Joe Gebbia. Both eventually moved west to the Bay Area. In 2008 they became roommates in San Francisco. Unemployed and cash poor, Gebbia and Chesky saw opportunity knocking when an industrial design conference was about to open. Most of The City's hotels and motels were booked to the limit at the time, so Chesky and Gebbia purchased three air mattresses and quickly put up a website called Air Bed and Breakfast, advertising short term rental space in their loft.
     The duo made enough money to entice Harvard grad and technical architect Nathan Blecharczyk
 to join them as a third partner. More importantly the new trio of entrepreneurs gained the backing of Y Combinator.  
     Y Combinator was founded in 2005 by Viaweb partners Paul Graham, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell, along with Jessica Livingston (she later married Graham).  Y Combinator gives seed money to start up companies. Along with dollars and business advice, Y Combinator also helps the selected start ups  make invaluable connections in the financial world.
     Whether it was the acumen of Chesky, Gebbia and Blecharczyk or the backing of Y Combinator, Air Bed and Breakfast transformed into Airbnb and took off to the tune of offices worldwide and more than 50,000 users daily. A report in the Irish Independent claims that one man in Dublin has made 15,000 Euros in less than a year from part time rental of his apartment in Ireland's capital city. He sleeps in a friend's spare room when paying visitors take over his place.
     Don't think for minute that Airbnb is confined to large cities like San Francisco or Dublin, Ireland. There are at least fifteen Airbnb rental locations already in Mendocino County. Prices range from $40 per night for a “bungalow futon” in a Fort Bragg residence to $250 for run of an expansive home on the  coast.  
     With the local economy in the doldrums, or worse, Airbnb seems like a nice way for somebody to augment their income. Not so fast. City governments from San Francisco to Fort Bragg have figured out that Airbnb rentals are often subverting local business, zoning, and taxation laws and regulations. San Francisco has clearly written Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) regulations, commonly referred to as a hotel tax for anyone who rents out a guest room(s). In San Francisco that TOT is 15%.
     The City of Fort Bragg has recently been made aware of some of its Airbnb locations, each of which may face problems with TOT as well as zoning ordinances. Standard hotels, motels and inns, besides paying a percentage of their profit for every room they rent, generally have some sort of business zoning requirement.  In other words, you can't start a hotel in a residential area without first getting a zoning change permit from the local planning commission. At least one Airbnb in Fort Bragg is situated in a Harold Street locale that has been zoned residential for decades.
     In addition, some Mendocino County Airbnb practitioners are completely devoid of any business licensing. Those who are renting cottages and/or rooms outside of the confines of our counties' few cities may soon find that the County of Mendocino may be coming after them for all sorts of taxes and regulation violations. When that happens, you may want to seek legal advice from someone other than a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. Go NADS!

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  We're at that time between the Comptche Volunteer Fire Department's Father's Day picnic and the similar one put on by the Albion-Littleriver Fire Department. The Macdonald Ranch lies within the boundaries of the latter, but family members have attended both events for years. For the better part of the twentieth century, and back into the nineteenth, the Macdonalds hosted a Fourth of July picnic alongside the Albion River. Watermelons were hidden and chilled in the river before serving. Baseball and softball games ensued on open fields with ancient, blackened stumps as backstops. In the first three decades of my life, late June and the first three days of July involved helping my dad move large redwood rounds and extra wide planks into place to serve as tables and support bases for those Fourth of July picnics. Since the Albion often floods its banks in winter, each fall meant hoisting the huge rounds onto the pickup bed and driving them, one at a time, to high ground.
      Somewhere in the late 1980s my mother grew weary of cooking up a hundred pieces of chicken and having them devoured by uninvited guests before the platters settled on the serving table, and all the Macdonalds grew tired of cleaning up after near strangers who seemed incapable of finding well defined garbage and recycling receptacles. By that time most of the larger than life figures of my youth who faithfully attended those Independence Day gatherings were gone or too elderly to make the trip down our rugged road. Until the mid 1990s it was far easier to drive along the “Masonite Road” from Flynn Creek to get to the Macdonald Ranch than it was to travel out the Littleriver Airport Road and down what amounted to a rough dusty (or slick and muddy in winter) logging road.  
     The Masonite Road and before it the railroad made our family equally proximate to Comptche as well as Littleriver or Albion. Indeed, in the summers before I started school, when my mother wanted some alone time, she gave my older sisters and me a handful of dimes and sent us off for a long walk. A long walk meant up the main fork of the Albion, past Tom Bell Flats, and on out to the Comptche Store, where we possessed just enough coin of the realm for a Coca-Cola from the big red, icy cold, box and an Eskimo Pie before turning around for the return trip home. The one and only time I complained of being tired on one of these summer sojourns, my eldest sister pushed a broken redwood branch between my legs and said, “Here's a stick pony. You can ride him home.”
     If our mother said, “Go for a very long walk,” that meant that she had had enough of children for the day and we were not to return until super time or dusk, whichever came later. Very long walks might mean that from the Comptche Store we continued on the Flynn Creek Road, past the present day fire station, beyond the Holmes Ranch to where McDonald Gulch (no relation) emptied out across from Uncle Charlie's place. Charles Macdonald was my father's second eldest brother (born in 1890). Though Uncle Charlie spent many years working for the railroad in Fort Bragg (today's Skunk line) he never learned to drive an automobile. By the late 1950s Charlie was well into retirement, but he liked to take a look at the river at the end of the day. This would make our “very long walk” not so long after all. Aunt Lenora (Lenora Clark Macdonald, of the Clarks on Brandon Way, Fort Bragg, a century and more ago) was Charlie's long suffering chauffeur. Us kids would catch a late afternoon or early evening ride with Lenora and Charlie down the Masonite Road alongside the south fork of the Albion to a gate that Charlie kept latched a quarter mile or so east of the confluence of the Albion River's south fork and main branch. In early summer a large patch of thimbleberries ripened there. If you were the child picked to unlatch the gate, like as not, some hard candy waited atop the gate post, candy that Charlie had left wrapped the last time he passed through.
     At the gate, Charlie and Lenora turned their automobile for home. My sisters and  I, our fingertips red from berry picking, scampered another three miles down the river road, home to a full supper and perhaps a piece of pie, if dad hadn't eaten it all after a long day working in the woods.

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  Craig Guydan left the Fort Bragg Police Department for Cotati over a month ago, but his work has not gone gently or quietly away. Between June 11th and June 18th two cases brought Guydan back to the Ten Mile Court. In many respects the more anticipated case was one dating back to November 23, 2012, in which Karen and John Brittingham of Mendocino were charged with felonies in resisting Fort Bragg police officers, including Guydan. The Brittinghams retained local attorney Mark Kalina and at least one investigator to seek out and subpoena as many coast residents as possible who have had negative encounters with Officer Guydan since he arrived in Fort Bragg in mid-May of 2012. Kalina apparently found quite a number of these citizens. His subpoenas more or less decimated the work force of one fairly good sized coastal business. Guydan, who has recently moved on to the Cotati Police Department, had been the subject of at least three formal complaints while with the Fort Bragg PD.
     On June 18th, the Brittingham's preliminary hearing got under way about 11:30 a.m. As soon as Kalina read the name of a Fort Bragg business owner he'd subpoenaed to take the stand, Assistant District Attorney Tim Stoen's voice rose an octave in objection. He wanted to strike all references to Guydan's past actions outside of the Brittingham encounter, which was rumored to have involved volatile verbal and/or physical confrontations between Guydan and each of the Brittinghams outside of The Company Store.
     Judge Clayton Brennan overruled Stoen's objection with the caveat that he would reconsider the motion to strike later. The Fort Bragg business owner took the stand, out of order so he could return to work at noon. He described a Labor Day, 2012 confrontation with Guydan in an alleyway that included brusque and rude questioning by the officer followed by Guydan repeatedly shouting at the businessman's wife to "Put down the broom." She had been sweeping up, but Guydan seemingly saw the broom as some sort of  weapon or threat.
     The businessman stepped down from the witness stand and Judge Brennan recessed until 1:30. Faced with the prospect of a long line of similar negative character witnesses against Guydan, Stoen essentially agreed to drop the charges and the Brittinghams agreed not to sue the City of Fort Bragg or its police department. All charges against Mrs. Brittingham were dropped. John Brittingham took a twenty-four month deferred entry of judgment on a misdemeanor resisting and obstructing a peace officer charge, which means that if he has no other legal troubles in the next two years the resisting charge will be dropped as well. Neither Brittingham has a past record.
     A week earlier, on June 11th, the Ten Mile Court played host to the People v. Billy Ray Doak Jr. Until the early morning hours of St. Patrick's Day Mr. Doak resided at 1235 N. Main Street, Fort Bragg, with his fiancee/girl friend, Lorrie Kitchen, and her two sons, ages eight and six. In the wee hours of St. Patty's Day, the State alleges that Bily Ray Doak Jr., employing a .45 caliber handgun, shot a hole in the ring finger of Ms. Kitchen's hand.
     Officer Guydan was called to the ER of Mendocino Coast District Hospital around 2:30 that morning. The jury of six men and six women heard an audio tape, recorded by Officer Guydan, in which Ms. Kitchen, in obvious and audible pain, refuses to identify herself or where she lives. Officer Guydan did his homework with ER staff and discovered Ms. Kitchen's address. A fresh gunshot wound necessitating investigation, Officer Guydan proceeded, with other law enforcement, to 1235 N. Main St., where he conducted another audio tape interview with Ms. Kitchen's eight year old son. On the tape the boy clearly states that his mother and Billy, whom he often refers to as "dad," had many fights or arguments. The boy further stated that mom and "dad" had one earlier on the night in question and that he saw Billy with a gun in his hand outside, near the front porch, just a couple of minutes before the gun was fired.
     Readers will be thanked and excused for thinking this is a slam dunk, open and shut case of battery with serious bodily injury. Billy Ray Doak Jr. was facing that charge as well as the more serious felony charge of mayhem. Four days of testimony, cross-examination, rebuttal, and deliberation proved that this was far from a slam dunk. The problem rested not in the stars, dear rraders, but in a not so little thing best identified as  co-dependency. Ms. Kitchen apparently remains gaga for Billy Ray Doak Jr., despite her now recovering ring finger nearly being severed by a .45 that belongs not to Billy Jr., but to his father, Billy Ray Doak Sr.
     Billy Sr. seemingly handed off a passel of rifles and a couple of handguns to Billy Jr. last November before going to visit a sick uncle in Arkansas. Billy Sr. lives in a trailer and was fearful that his gun collection could be easily pilfered during his  absence. Billy Jr. seemingly was still uder the technical constraints of a gun possession prohibition brought about by a divorce from a former spouse some three years ago.
     All of that aside, a conviction turns problematic when a co-dependent fiancee/girl friend/victim tells the jury that Billy Ray Doak Jr. did not shoot her at all, she shot herself accidentally while sitting on the front porch that St. Patrick's Day morn as she pulled the slide lever back on the .45 and the gun went off. Indeed, there were photos of blood on the porch step below where Ms. Kitchen maintained she sat, admittedly inebriated before the Irish holiday could gain a good head of Anchor Steam. Of course, Billy Ray Doak Jr. repeated a remarkably similar story line when he took the stand. Both admitted their drinking, but both claimed that they had taken a "time out," during which Billy walked toward either Virgin Creek or the beach and Lorrie Kitchen went inside to cuddle her young sons back to sleep in bed. Both Billy Jr. and Lorrie claim that there was no previous pushing and shoving to the floor as recorded by Officer Guydan's audio interview of Ms. Kitchen's eight year old son.
     Billy's testimony had him returning to the 1235 N. Main residence with the .45 in his back pocket, then sitting on the front porch to have a cigarette. At some point he got up and walked out into the shadows to gaze up at his favorite constellations, with the .45 presumably slipping out onto the porch's top step. Lorrie Kitchen's testimony had her  coming out onto the front brick porch, sitting on the top step while picking up the handgun, attempting to slide it back, then boom.
     Ms. Kitchen's testimony gained momentum and details as it went on under cross-examination from ADA Kevin Davenport. Ms. Kitchen claimed the bullet hole could be seen in a heart shaped piece of redwood Billy had cut for her as a yard ornament. She more or less fawned over the redwood piece when it was introduced into evidence.
     Next, Davenport had the misfortune of sitting practically face to face with Ms. Kitchen's eight year old son, when the boy took  the stand and recanted the testimony he'd given to Officer Guydan at the time of the shooting. The eight year old said it was his mother he'd seen with a gun that night/morning, that his "dad" had not shot mommy, and that he didn't remember Billy knocking her to the ground earlier.
     Mr. Doak's attorney, Ronald Britt, now in his fortieth year of practice, muddied the waters further by getting Officer Guydan to testify incorrectly about tiny details such as the location of the bathroom and how many steps were part of the front porch.
     The prosecution looked sunk after the boy's recantation, but Davenport held his top card for rebuttal testimony. Linda Schardt, a woman of retirement age, who has taken over caretaking the eight and six year old boys since early April, was and is one of the closest neighbors to 1235 N. Main Street. She testfied that Billy had physically injured Lorrie Kitchen more than one time in the midst of recurring arguments. She also testified that in a phone conversation with Lorrie Kitchen while the latter recuperated at Howard Hospital in Willits (Ms. Kitchen had refused to have the surgery to her finger take place at Mendocino Coast District Hospital), Ms. Kitchen confessed to Ms. Scardt that Billy had indeed shot her finger.
     In her rebuttal testimony, Ms. Kitchen tearfully accused Ms. Schardt of wanting to take possession of her boys so she could be paid for caretaking them. However, while trying to impeach the date of just when a further in person conversation took place with Ms. Schardt, Lorrie Kitchen gazed longingly at the defendant and told the courtroom that it was he, Billy Ray Doak Jr., who had driven her back from Willits to Fort Bragg. Observers couldn't help but think that an hour's drive together might have given Billy and Lorrie ample time to concoct their story about the shooting.
      The jury deliberated all of Monday afternoon, June 16th without a decision on either charge. Upon their return on the 17th, one of them was too ill to continue. A Littleriver alternate replaced the sick woman, making the final composition of the jury seven men and five women. By mid Tuesday afternoon, the jury returned to the courtoom, telling Judge Brennan that they were hopelessly deadlocked on both felony charges, 6-6 on mayhem and 8-4 on the battery with serious bodily injury count.
     Separate interviews with five of the jurors after the trial revealed that the panel's 8-4 vote favored conviction. The jurors who spoke also said that none of them believed Ms. Kitchen's testimony that she accidentally shot herself. The jurors believed the eight year old's audio tape testimony taken within an hour or so of the shooting. Officer Guydan's confident, yet sensitive handling of that interview seemed to be an example of fine police work. Oddly, some of the jurors who voted not to convict Mr. Doak chided Officer Guydan for not conducting gunshot residue (GSR) testing on Ms. Kitchen and Billy Ray Doak Jr. on St. Patrick's Day. This may be another case of too much CSI television watching. The most recent scientific studies downplay the accuracy of gunshot residue evidence.
     ADA Davenport is re-filing the charges against Billy Ray Doak Jr. Davenport appears to be confident enough in his case that he may very well add an assault with a deadly weapon count when the matter goes before a new set of jurors on August 13th.
     A final note: during the jury selection process, one prospective panelist was heard contemptuously responding to the defendant's name, Billy Ray Doak Jr., "That's right out of central casting."
     Mr. Doak's ancestors stem from Arkansas and I have to say that having taught and coached another Billy Ray in Cottonwood, CA, an A student and a superior athlete, whose family also hailed from Arkansas, the Mendo Lib mentality behind the "stright out of central casting" comment, displays an ignorance that is appalling in the 21st century.
     Billy Ray Doak Jr. may very well be guilty of the charges against him; however, if your vehicle was broken down and you were stranded by the side of the road, I'd wager that Billy Jr. or Sr., or Lorrie Kitchen, for that matter, would be more likely to stop and lend an efficient helping hand than most self-professed liberals along the Mendocino Coast.
    

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  Last week's piece concerned the check list that my outdoors buddy Steven Steelrod and I use before every backpack or camping trip. I also mentioned a sans Steelrod backpack into the Yolla Bolly wilderness. When I mentioned that to a local attorney he voiced concern about marijuana grows and men with guns.The trip lasted four days and the six of us who backpacked in from the Green Springs trailhead did not see another human nor any sign of anyone in the area below Hammerhorn Mt. as far north as Soldier Ridge. It appeared that one or two people with a horse had been the only other users of the trails this spring. We camped near the only available water for miles, with no evidence that anyone had stopped there since 2013 or earlier.
     The whole trek would have proved relatively uneventful except for the last two hundred yards of the trail. I was in the lead of five other backpackers, returning to the trailhead. The hiker behind hollered, “Do you see the car?”
     I pivoted onto the final downhill switchback and spotted the vehicle. “There it is.”
     A stride or two farther I got the adrenaline rush of the year when a thick rattlesnake slithered from the hillside above the trail directly into my path. Whatever the current hop, skip and jump record is, I can attest that I approached that mark in the next few milliseconds.
      I spun around, a seemingly safe distance down the trail from where the three to four foot long rattler slid behind a chunk of pine bark. Seconds later he reappeared, nearly coiled, rattles hoisted against a downed log less than a foot from the trail. I called out to my closest companion who took a wide detour to my side. Calling out to each subsequent hiker got us all around the rattler, including the two miniature donkeys who packed in with one of our fellow hikers.
     The reptile was most likely a Northern Pacific Rattlesnake, Crotalus oreganus oreganus. Crotalus comes from the Greek krotolon, meaning rattle. These snakes commonly called timber rattlers. The taxonomy is still somewhat unsettled, so readers may also see it identified as Crotalus viridis oreganus. Whatever the name, they can be found in the inland parts of California as far south as Santa Barbara County and as far north as Siskiyou County, though their patterns may vary slightly in different locales. They can be called pit vipers because in winter they den in burrows or caves, often in large numbers.
     Rattlesnakes are essentially defensive rather than offensive creatures. The one who slithered onto my path probably could have struck me if it had wanted before my hop, skip and leap away. Humans are not part of their prey. The Northern Pacific Rattlesnake dines on lizards, frogs, mice, some birds, rabbits, and squirrels. However, adult California Ground Squirrels are immune to this rattler's venom and will stand their ground against a rattler they deem a threat.
     Though the bite of a timber rattler may not be the deadliest among snakes, it should always be considered potentially lethal. If the unforeseen does happen, here's what the California Poison Control Center advises in the case of a rattlesnake bite: stay calm; wash the bite area gently with soap and water; remove watches and rings that can constrict swelling; immobilize the affected area, keeping the bite below the heart; and transport to the nearest medical facility. In our part of the Yolla Bollys that would have meant a three hour or more car ride!
     On a  more positive note, let's go back to the final categories in the Steelrod/Macdonald backpacking checklist. Under the Entertanment section, our list includes: frisbee, playing cards, pen/pencil, Sudoku, book/reading material, writing tablet, fishing gear, and an inflatable raft. Truth be told I think Steelrod has given up on lugging the raft to distant lakes, but he still swims across them.
     The Food section is left up to the individual, but fresh food is a great luxury even a day or two into the wild. Kiwi fruit is a surprisingly good traveler if you start with fairly firm ones. Avocados follow the same rule and provide healthy oils. Packaged tuna or salmon (not cans!) makes for a tasty dinner. We've had lip smacking results combining the lightweight packaged tuna with a product called Bear Creek Country Kitchens creamy potato soup mix.  Always bring apples, carrots or oranges for fresh produce.
     This year will see us take our last packets of Swiss Miss cocoa in the backpack food pouch. I finally looked at the packaging long enough to discover that Swiss Miss is a Con Agra product. In the last decade Con Agra has spent millions in attempts to defeat county and statewide ballot initiatives aimed at product labeling and GMO bans.
     

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  It's late spring, temperatures are comfortable: time to go camping or better yet backpacking. During the first week of June I headed into the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness in the northwestern corner of Mendocino County. In the Wintun language "Yo-la" means snow covered and "Bo-li" translates to high peak. Doubt there will be snow, but peaks rise to the 7,500 foot range. The trailhead lies a few miles south of the three main peaks: Sugarloaf Mountain, Solomon Peak, and Hammerhorn Mountain.
     Avid readers will recall that I often backpack with the semi-legendary outdoorsman Steven Steelrod. Yes, he really has a steel rod implanted in his body, but not in the part that would make it most humorous. This trip will be sans Steelrod, but since it is still early in the season it may be of some assistance to share a backpacking/camping checklist that Steelrod and his wife, a good wilderness photographer in her own right, came up with decades ago. Over the years Steve and I have added and subtracted from it, hopefully refining the process. The actual checklist takes up two double spaced pages and is usually left in an automobile at the trailhead after one final check. The paper can also make a nice fire starter, so it sometimes gets stuffed in my pack. Items like park permits and maps are relatively obvious, but others such as cash for self-registration at wilderness trailheads far from the nearest ranger station are easily forgotten. Even when packing light for a trek into the wild, a plethora of small items should be brought along, hence the checklist.
     The Steelrod/Macdonald checklist is broken down into subheadings. Paperwork is for maps and permits. Clothing, for everything from ponchos to flip-flops or camp shoes and a laundry bag to keep the smell of your dirties separate. And believe you me, after a couple days in the wild, clothes and especially socks stink to the high heavens. Just like in the infantry, don't stint on your socks in the great outdoors. Housing is the next category. If you think it's impossible to  forget a tent or a sleeping bag remember something I witnessed winter before last. An experienced Sierra Club member arrived at his backwoods destination in February, after an eight and a half mile uphill snowshoe slog, only to discover he'd left his sleeping bag inside his pickup at the trailhead. A dispiriting, lonely hike out spelled the end of his winter getaway.
     Household items may prove almost as critical. Once upon a time our ancestors used pine cones and corn cobs to wipe their behind; however, unless you grew up doing that yourself, don't expect to start the practice out on the trail without uncomfortable ramifications. And now a word or two about GPS systems. Screw 'em. You're better off with a compass in case of an off trail misadventure. Your best bet in the wilderness is to pay attention to where you are in relation to obvious landmarks. In this day and age assume that all water must be run through a filter before drinking. Don't be stupid. Giardia sucks, big time! As anyone who has hiked for any length of time knows, duct tape is a necessity. It's one of the best short term solutions for foot blisters. Don't leave home without it. Other household necessities: headlamp and extra batteries, rope for tying your food sack high in a tree, so you can eat the contents instead of leaving your yummies to a bear. Many wilderness areas have made bear canisters a requirement. Our list also includes such things as a case for your glasses, tiny tools for eyeglass repair, a garbage bag (carry out what you packed in), a hot pot holder, a few paper towels (always handy), a scrub pad, Kleenex tissue in small baggies (loose in your pockets they'll sweat to shreds). Obviously, you'll need some sort of Sierra cup as well as pots and/or pans, but keep these lightweight and minimum in number. A Swiss Army knife is a fine substitute for a knife and fork, but don't forget a couple of spoons for an extended stay. The lightest weight “pocket rocket” fuel stoves are the way to go for cooking in the wild. If you live on the Mendocino Coast, the Outdoor Store in Fort Bragg has a fine selection. Matches and waterproof matches are a must. For those who share a tent or a hut with others, ear plugs are also a must unless you want to return home more sleepless than Tom Hanks in Seattle. For several days or longer on the trail a small, palm-of-your-hand size sewing kit will prove invaluable for all sorts of repairs, not to mention sliver removal.
     As we move into the Health section of the Backpackers checklist I am reminded that a small vial of medicinal alcohol or some sort of disinfectant is a great preventative. A decade or so ago, in the middle of nowhere, a large insect flew itself into Steelrod's ear. The critter was still buzzing inside when I caught up. Sounds unbelievable, but it's true. Since I was dealing with the eternally tough Steelrod, one round from a carefully aimed revolver went clean through and out the other side, while relieving the problem.
     You can believe the last part or not, but a good disinfectant and Q-tips doesn't weigh much in your pack. Don't forget your toothbrush, toothpaste and floss. The rest of the Health list reads thus: first aid kit, sunscreen, insect repellant, bandages, ipecac, chapstick, gauze pads, bandages, iodine, benadryl, neosporin, hand cleaner, athlete's foot powder, and a CalStar or Reach card (you don't want to pay extra thousands if you ever have to be helicoptered out of the wilderness). I also include Immodium or a similar product. It can prevent an extremely uncomfortable journey.
     Next week: The rest of the checklist, and whether or not I make it out of the Yolla Bollys alive.

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  I loved the old TV documentary series Connections, which tied together events, inventions, and people centuries apart. In that vein let's connect two seemingly random police reports of the last month. The most recent involves the May 26th arrest of Dylan Swartout  on a burglary charge. This is far from Mr. Swartout's (also known as Dylan Kiely) first rodeo with law enforcement. In September of 2012 I happened to stop by the Ten Mile Court for a random check of the goings on. Mr. Swartout, who is periodically homeless, was on trial for abusing his dog, Frankie. Largely due to some adept lawyering by the late Public Defender Tom Croak, Mr. Swartout won his two day jury trial. While covering that trial I made the acquaintance of a Fort Bragg resident, who, months later, provided a tip about an under reported police shooting. It turned out to be the only time a Fort Bragg police officer discharged his/her weapon in the entirety of 2012. It is likely the next time was when Lt. John Naulty had to defend himself during the tragic events of March 19, 2014.
     The December 22, 2012 shooting was not a gun battle with an armed killer. Instead it involved Fort Bragg Police Officer Craig Guydan shooting a thirty pound dog that had barked at him in front of a Fort Bragg house on Walnut Street.
     Officer Guydan, who spent almost two full years on the Fort Bragg police force, was the subject of numerous formal and informal complaints by citizens and the Coast Copwatch group (I am a member). At some point in April rumors started to swirl that Officer Guydan was leaving the force. A phone call to Chief Mayberry confirmed the reports.
     This takes us to a May 8th Fort Bragg Police Dept. press release, as well as the recollections of witnesses. Officer Guydan's last case in Fort Bragg started out in Bainbridge Park where he was sucker punched by a suspect. Guydan and other patrolmen gave chase and the wrongdoer was eventually apprehended near the Main Street fire station. Unfortunately, Officer Oscar Lopez was also injured in the chase, tackle and arrest.
     If things were truly full circle perhaps the May 8th suspect's dog would have taken a nip out of Officer Guydan, but there was no dog. And Craig Guydan is not leaving police work. He is moving on to another police department, with the City of Cotati.
     Cotati's police force might be more to Guydan's liking. On May 10, 2013 Cotati police officers broke down the door of a home after responding to a noise complaint from a neighbor. By the time the police arrived on scene there was no more noise. A couple and their roommate inside the home in question told the officers that there had been a brief, loud argument in the backyard over how to spend a tax refund, but that nothing was wrong. The couple, Jennifer and James Wood, and the roommate, James Helton, spoke through a window while holding up their hands to indicate that they didn't possess weapons. The officers demanded that the residents open their front door. Mr. Wood asked if the Cotati police officers had a search warrant. Reportedly the police reply was, “We don't need one.”
     “Why aren't you coming out?” one of the officers asked.
     “Because we don't live in a police state,” Mr. Helton responded.
     With Mrs. Wood's cell phone camera recording events, the Cotati police broke down the door then tased all three residents, including multiple times for Mr. Wood. The video recording ceased after ninety-six seconds when Mrs. Wood and her cell phone were struck by the electric shock current of the Cotati police tasers.
     Mr. Wood was charged with resisting, obstructing, or delaying a police officer. This January, twelve Sonoma County citizens returned a hung jury verdict, split 6-6 on the charge against James Wood. After the trial, Defense attorney Benjamin Adams stated, “The fact that a jury of American citizens could not agree that such a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment meant the entry into my clients' home was unlawful, shows how far this country has disintegrated.”
     Perhaps the only good news in all this: Frankie the dog was taken away from Dylan Swartout more than a year ago and is living a healthier, happier life with an anonymous, caring human friend. Pinky, the dog shot by Craig Guydan, miraculously survived and also is living a quiet, contented home life.

                                                                                           Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

  The trials and tribulations of bringing anything close to full scale mental health care to the Mendocino Coast continue. In March, Fort Bragg's City Council approved an application for a grant that would fund a mental health services facility at 300 N. Harrison Street. The Harrison Street operations would be run by Hospitality Center, an adjunct of Hospitality House, which provides meals and housing for some of the coast's homeless. Hospitality Center is in turn a subcontractor of Ortner Management Group (OMG), the Yuba City outfit that, a year ago, won the bid to provide privatized adult mental health services for all of Mendocino County.
     At the March Fort Bragg City Council meeting several residents in the neighborhood of 300 N. Harrison St. spoke out against the mental health facility, the comments ran the gamut from "not in my backyard (nimby)" to concerns about property values to what will become of the children in the nearby park to claims that Hospitality House has had an inordinate number of police calls, so why bring that kind of trouble to our neighborhood too. Some of the neighbors started a petition drive as well. This writer saw a copy of said petition on the checkout counters of a Fort Bragg grocery store. At the time (approx. a month ago) there were only a smattering of signatures, but recent rumors/claims purport hundreds of signatories to the petition opposing a mental health care facility at 300 N. Harrison.
     Between the March Fort Bragg City Council meeting and early May a handful or two of the 300 N. Harrison neighbors have held meetings with Anna Shaw, Director of Hospitality House and Hospitality Center as well as  Mark Montgomery, vice-president of operations for Ortner Management Group (OMG).
    Also in early May, the Fort Bragg City Planning Commission had letters ready to send out to interested parties noticing a use permit hearing concerning the 300 N. Harrison St. property. At some point, short of mailing, those letters were pulled back and the 300 Harrison project is nowhere to be seen in upcoming Fort Bragg Planning Commission agendas.
     In Mid-May a Fort Bragg newspaper printed a "community forum," authored by one of the neighborhood residents in opposition to the mental health facility. The piece is pretty much a continuation of the March City Council meeting complaints, with one disingenuous exception. The letter writer in May praises the work of Hospitality House and makes no mention of the allegedly high volume of police responses to Hospitality House.
     There are some ripples of a different tactic being taken by others who oppose the 300 N. Harrison St. project. Supposedly, at one of the smaller meetings a neighbor asked Ortner's representative, Mark Montgomery, to explain the business relationship between Ortner Management and Hilbers, Inc., the Yuba City building contractor, which would also be involved in renovating 300 N. Harrison into a mental health services facility.
     The obvious and seemingly inconsequential connection between Ortner Management Group and Hilbers, Inc. is that they are both headquartered in Yuba City. Digging deeper, a corporate nexus reveals some odd connections. The chief officer of Ortner Management Group is its founder Tom Ortner. Mr. Ortner is also a managing member of something called 1535 Plumas Court Partners, LLC. Another managing member of 1535 Plumas Court Partners is an entity known as Hp-Gd, LLC. Probing into the background of Hp-Gd, LLC, one discovers that its managing member is Kurt Hilbers, the founder of Hilbers, Inc. So not only are Ortner Management Group and Hilbers, Inc. involved in the 300 N.Harrison project in Fort Bragg, they have a previous business affiliation in Yuba City, though you'd never know it due to the alphabet soup that provides cover for the Hilbers family's involvement in several business ventures (other corporate holdings of Kurt Hilbers and family include: Hjp-Gd, LLC and Hjpk, LLC).
     The business known as 1535 Plumas Court Partners, LLC (managed by Tom Ortner and two Hilbers family members under the disguise of Hp-Gd, LLC) may be the most curious. It turns out that 1535 Plumas Court is the address in Yuba City for North Valley Behavioral Health, the primary mental health facility presumably owned and run by Ortner Management Group. Whether it was built by Hilbers, Inc. or the property is still partially owned by the Hilbers subsidiary Hp-Gd, LLC is nebulous at best, but there is room here for questions to be asked by the City of Fort Bragg, the Board of Supervisors, the Mental Health Board, and Mendocino County's Health and Human Services Agency. One last coincidence: the head of Mendocino County's mental health services: former Ortner Management Group employee, Tom Pinizzotto.
     According to notes from the March 19th Mental Health Board meeting, Hospitality Center's Anna Shaw stated that escrow had closed on the sale of 300 N. Harrison; however, within Fort Bragg city hall multiple officials familiar with the 300 N. Harrison St. project are thoroughly uncertain as to who currently owns the property. One of these city officials directed this writer to a Greg Trainque, who is supposedly the agent for Ortner in the 300 N. Harrison St. matter. Contacted by phone and asked about the status of the project or who owns the place, Mr. Trainque stated, "I'm not at liberty to tell you. You've seen the parties at the meetings."
     How he knows what meetings I may or may not have attended is beyond my pay grade. He went on to say, "I'm not going to tell you because I might get in trouble."
     Further research shows Greg Trainque listed as the director at Willow Glen Care Center in Yuba City or director of logistics at the same place. The President of Willow Glen Care Center: Tom Ortner.
     By the end of last week a "Notice of Withdrwal of Pending Permit" appeared on the outside walls of 300 N. Harrison St.
    

                                                                                           Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

  Questions are arising again about the State Requirement Area (SRA) fee, which goes to defer the cost of fighting wildfires in locales without municipal fire departments. Much of Mendocino County, obviously, falls within the so-called SRA.
     Bills were sent out much earlier this year in Mendocino County, typically dated April 7th or 8th. The fee is a few dollars more (was Clint Eastwood consulted?) than in physcal year 2012-2013. An Albion Ridge resident finished making monthly payments for the previous year less than six months ago then received a new bill in April. State government officials have no straightforward answer for this other than to say that the billing cycle has been changed throughout California. According to the State Board of Equalization, the billing appears to be based on an alphabetical whim: Alpine County residents received SRA fee notices in the first week of March, Yolo and Yuba County fee payers will not be noticed until the middle of June.
     One of the things that the fees are being used to fund is what  CAL FIRE calls "defensible space inspection." The idea of inspections, of course, brings into question privacy rights. Inspections in Mendocino County are seemingly underway. A CAL FIRE notice appeared online about a month ago, stating, "The inspectors will be conducting their inspections during reasonable daylight hours, knocking on the door of the residence and being professionally dressed so that CAL FIRE staff can easily be identified as fire department personnel."
     But they are not our local fire department volunteer personnel. The CAL FIRE press release doesn't even hint at phoning ahead to homeowners concerning inspections. Albion/Littleriver Fire Department Chief Ted Williams recently stated, "While I appreciate Cal Fire's focus on fire prevention education in my community, I do have concern over some specifics of this inspection program... Some of us might prefer to be present or not return home to find crews traipsing around our dwelling curtilage. I've suggested to Cal Fire that they schedule and provide advanced notice, but they say this is not possible."
     Williams went on to say, "Offering chipping and brush removal to those who cannot afford defensible space would likely yield a greater benefit to our communities without breaching privacy. Imagine what an additional annual $117 per residence would do for our local [volunteer] fire departments."
     Members of the Macdonald family have asked CAL FIRE (previously California Department of Forestry - CDF) for more than a decade to require Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC) to place a rocked rolling dip, or something similar, at the mouth of McKay Gulch to provide access  for fire trucks along the Albion River Road (known as the Masonite Road to long time locals). In 2001, after a boundary dispute with the Macdonald family, MRC essentially trenched out a "spite ditch" where the trickles of McKay Gulch cross the Albion River Road, cutting off all vehicle access. Of course, MRC got CDF and the Dept. of Water Quality to justify the deep ditch as beneficial to fish. However, nowhere else alongside the Albion has such a deep trench been dug to aid fish travel. Additionally the MRC trench is one of the only places between the coast and the Comptche Road that is immediately adjacent to livestock and human habitation.   
    Though I have personally made the request to CAL FIRE timber harvest inspectors that a more modest dip would still allow for the now rare passage of salmon, steelhead, or trout during the rainy seasons, CAL FIRE has done nothing to re-open this road.
     The bottom line with CAL FIRE is just that: the 99% who do the hard work of fighting and preventing fires are to be commended, the 1% at the top of this bureaucracy are still in the pockets of large corporate entities.

                                                                                          Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

  The Mental Health Board of Mendocino County held a special meeting on May 7th to hear additional information regarding Laura's Law (Assembly Bill 1421) and its possible implementation in Mendocino County. Laura's Law, modeled on New York state legislation, essentially amounts to assisted outpatient treatment (AOT for acronym followers). Who qualifies for AOT: a person with a serious mental disorder who is unlikely to survive safely within the community without help. Such individuals can be seen on any given day in Mendocino County's courts. One day before the May 7th meeting, Ten Mile Courthouse provided a near perfect example, a thirty-eight year old woman whose most recent arrest was for being a public nuisance and violating the terms of her prior misdemeanor probation. The woman was so obviously inebriated in the afternoon courtroom that both Assistant District Attorney Kevin Davenport and Judge Clayton Brennan noticed. The judge asked her if she had consumed any alcohol that day. The woman responded, "I drank a little this morning to calm my nerves."
     The judge ordered the bailiff to take her out for a sobriety test. A few minutes later a deputy returned with the result: .29 (the legal limit for drivers is .08). The judge, obviously reluctant to send the woman over the hill to the county jail, asked if she had housing. "I tried Hospitality House," she slurred, "but they say, 'Full, full, full.'"
    The real answer may be that Hospitality House will not provide overnight accomodation to a person who is intoxicated  on any given evening. The woman indicated that she'd been lucky lately, rotating among acquaintances for overnight housing.
     If a person cannot fend for themselves, mentally and physically, Laura's Law states that help can be requested for them by any adult with whom the person at risk resides, an adult relative, or an officer of the law. Judge Brennan most certainly recognized that this woman needed help. He said as much, stating that she was in need of long term residential rehab. Where does someone without funds get started on that rehab in Mendocino County?
     Fifth District Supervisor Dan Hamburg made that perfectly clear late in the May 7th Laura's Law meeting. The poor, who are mentally ill in this county, "end up at a place you don't want to go - the mental hospital on Low Gap Road." Law enforcement officers have become the primary first responders in this county for mental health crises, and that means the chronically mentally ill end up at the county jail.
      The Laura's Law meeting was attended by both Hamburg and Fourth District Supervisor Dan Gjerde. Hamburg is the Board of Supervisors official liason to the Mental Health Board. Gjerde attended the meeting as an interested observer. Also in the audience was Stacey Cryer, head of Mendocino County's Health and Human Services Department. The two supervisors seemed very attentive to the Laura's Law presentation and discussion while Cryer spent a vast majority of her time texting then leaving before the meeting was over. The youthful attorney representing our county counsel's office sat silent with arms clutched tight across her chest throughout the meeting. Sheriff Allman arrived late and left after an hour's attendance, but appeared more engaged than Cryer.
     Ultimately, the Mental Health Board unanimously passed a resolution urging the Board of Supervisors to implement Laura's Law here in Mendocino County. This came after discussion in which everyone from Mental Health Board members to the presenters from Nevada County, where Laura's Law has been implemented with much success and some record of monetary savings, agreed that the AOT program was not a panacea. It is inherently a small in numbers program, that relies on the subjects, the mentally ill, to voluntarily undertake the program. This, of course, means that those within the system be highly motivated and well-trained therapists or social workers in order to successfully engage and encourage the mentally ill into starting the program as well as guiding them through AOT treatment. All of this begs the question put in the form of a statement by Mental Health Board member Dina Ortiz near the end of the meeting, "It is hard to implement a program without the proper services."
      Which leads us back to Ten Mile Court, where Judge Brennan, with encouragement from ADA Davenport, directed the inebriated woman to check in with him in the courtroom the following morning at 9 a.m. Both Brennan and Davenport admonished her to arrive fully sober. In the meantime, Brennan advised her to bring back proof of attendance from at least one AA meeting during the afternoon or evening and to go directly from the court to the Hospitality Center (subcontractor for the privatized adult mental health provider for this county, Ortner Management Group [OMG]). The woman got a ride from Ten Mile Court to the Hospitality Center offices, which were closed. The woman's court hearing began at 1:30 p.m. The Hospitality Center, the main provider for adult mental health services on the Mendocino Coast is open on weekdays from 9:30 to 1:30!
     Ms. Ortiz's comment proved frustratingly true for the Fort Bragg woman who was attempting to take the first step in AOT treatment on her own.