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Just back from Ashland, Oregon, where I saw two plays. The good news: fifty to sixty high school students in attendance at Much Ado About Nothing. The bad news: average age of audience goers one day later at the excellent Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night: seventy or older.
     Further good news: The amazing acting achievement of  OSF's Danforth Comins. On back to back days for over six months he has played leading roles in Much Ado About Nothing (which runs beyond two and a half hours) and Edmund, the stage alter ego of playwright Eugene O'Neill, in Long Day's Journey Into Night. O'Neill's Long Day's Journey plays out over nearly four hours. Unfortunately for readers, Comins performances will have concluded by the time this piece reaches you in print or on the computer.
     O'Neill's masterwork, Long Day's Journey Into Night, was so true to his own dysfunctional family life of 1912 that the playwright ordered it not be publicly performed until twenty-five years after his death. Due to quirks in the bequeathing of the play's rights to Yale University that order lasted for only three years following O'Neill's demise in 1953.
     Let's just abbreviate it to LDJIN and be done with it. The play is still relevant 103 years after the time in which it is set. Not only are family's just as messed up as ever, but the most obvious reasons for the dysfunction in O'Neill's immediate family, alcoholism and drug addiction, are as great a detrimental factor in American life as it ever has been.
     It's not easy to say this, but let's skip over the alcoholism that killed O'Neill's beloved older brother in his forties (as it still kills so many today) to the more insidious drug addiction that lies at the root of LDJIN. O'Neill's real mother and the mother portrayed on stage in LDJIN were both prescribed morphine to ease their pain and “nerves” after childbirth. Both fictional and real figures became hopelessly addicted for the remainder of their lives.
     The world of prescription drugs in general, as well as pain killers, is a more rampant problem today than a century ago, due in some part to a U.S. populace inclined to believe that they are the anointed ones who should be free of even the hint of pain, stress, or discomfort 100% of the time. Pharmaceutical corporations eat that mentality for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then bank the profits in the billions.
      The age of instantaneous advertising combined with generation upon generation needing, wanting, demanding instantaneous gratification has magnified the addictive problem exponentially. Make no mistake about it, we are living in a culture in which one prescription leads to another (often to counterbalance the previous one), and so on, ad infinitm. If you watch television, and what right-minded, potentiallly addictive personality doesn't, you may have already viewed the commercial for Vanda Pharmaceuticals sleep disorder drug for the blind.
     Recently I started wondering, why am I seeing this ad relatively often? The reason lies in an October, 2014 Federal Drug Administration (FDA) letter to Vanda that allowed the drug to be advertised to the non-blind general populace as a sleep disorder preventative. Obviously, this opened Vanda's product up to an incredibly wider customer base. By the way the approval letter from the FDA also noted that the condition Vanda's drug was potentially treating is experienced almost exclusively by blind people.
     This is just one example of drug companies and our government esssentially colluding to pull the wool over apparently sheepish American drug consumers. I could go on and on about other drug shenanigans, but I 'm not feeling all that great right now. My self medication prescription: a little baseball playoffs on the TV followed by a glass of water, and sleep. 

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Nearing mid-October and no end in sight to this drought. The etymological root of the word drought takes us back to the old, Old English term “drug.” Readers can make their own jokes or serious connections to local conditions.
     The corresponding sunny weather and the arrival of the latest edition of the Pacific Crest Trail Association magazine may send me out into the wild once more this year. Perhaps a section or two of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) northeast of Ashland and a play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as a reward for the mini-trekking.
     My last visit to the PCT was in late July and early August. Three friends and I set out from the edge of June Lake, several miles northeast of the town of Mammoth Lakes. By evening we'd made camp on the northwestern corner of Waugh Lake, less than a quarter mile off the PCT and John Muir Trail (JMT). Waugh Lake is the westernmost of three dammed lakes. Gem and Agnew are the other two. My understanding is that the dams help provide power to the surrounding communities. Most hikers who head west from the June Lake trailhead are surprised to find a still running tramway alongside the path as they make their way upward in extremely steep and rocky terrain.
     As dinners were heated over “pocket rocket” and “Jet boil” mini-stoves beside Waugh Lake, smoke crept toward us from fires to the east and from the south. There was quite a bit of concern for our rookie backpacker, who is a two decade survivor of a rare medical disorder which restricts blood flow to the organs. Use your imagination on the effects of forest fire smoke on such a condition.
     Fortunately, wind directions swirled and turned during the night. By morning skies above our band of hikers were bright and clear.  However, the southern smoke returned to trail us as we trudged toward Donahue Pass. Just before commencing our ascent, all four of us paused for a snack and rest on boulders alongside the trail. Almost any break of more than a few minutes alongside the JMT/PCT will bring a conversation with fellow “thru” or section hikers, especially on the cusp of entering Yosemite National Park. We met two young women from Canada who had originally intended to hike the 225 mile John Muir Trail, but the permit system now in place shut them out of starting at Yosemite Valley or Tuolumne Meadows. They had to enter at Sonora Pass, some seventy-seven miles north of Tuolumne Meadows. Like most long distance hikers, they had no regrets  about walking the trail less planned for, regaling us with snippets of detail about the northern portion of Yosemite National Park and beyond.
     I should interject here that my usual trail pal Steven Steelrod (yes, Virginia, he has a steel rod in one leg) was along. He is an inveterate chatter-upper of fellow backpackers, always garnering valuable, or occasionally faulty, information for future adventures.
     We beat the smoke to the top of Donahue Pass. It seemed to give up at that point, retreating southward once more. The only bothersome smoke from that point on was the thick layer seemingly permeating the campgrounds at Tuolumne Meadows from early evening on into the dark hours. Why campfires were allowed there at all, in the midst of drought and a record wildfire summer, is beyond me. Perhaps the park service believes campers would give up on Tuolumne Meadows if not allowed to have campfires. Who knows? The campground was jam-packed by one p.m. on a Monday, so our four tired backpackers were glad that we had an automobile waiting for us to take us to the relief of an overnight motel in smoke free Lee Vining.
     An aside to those with empty stomachs on the eastern side of the Sierra. It may sound preposterous, but the best lunch or dinner available waits for you at the Mobil gas station, just south of Lee Vining. After turning off U.S. 395 for the Tioga Pass Road, and the eastern entrance to Yosemite, don't blink or you might miss the left turn into the Mobil. I am not making this up. The restaurant inside the Mobil Station is called The Whoa Nellie Deli, but it's more like a diner with mini-mart décor. You don't have to have hiked 25 or 225 miles to appreciate the food.

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Continuing the mildly fictionalized saga of young Les Ford in Mendocino County a hundred ten years or so ago, here is a second excerpt from the opening chapter of the novel Outlaw Ford:

     The river, that river, first river of my childhood; crammed with logs near the harbor.  The gray-green water at Deadman’s Curve banked by hills cut clear and brown: made the river look wider.  Cal, the only one of us taught to swim.  Then the Dillard boy got caught under the logs.  Mother said, “If you go an’ get yourself drowned dead, don’t come crying home to me.”
     Long straight stretch to the next bend upstream from Deadman’s; fields of grass growing wide on either side, reeds blending into clover.  Company cattle grazed beneath a trestle that ran away from the water into a dark gulch of redwood yet to be felled.
     Company beef: for the camp cook’s pot, for the hungry plates at the Guest House; folks up from Frisco chewing tender, gnashing tough; captains of freighters waiting to be laden with their precious timber cargo.
     Learned both those words, cargo and laden, from Captain Freeman.  He came from Norway with a name too hard to pronounce and told the immigration man, “I’m a free man in America.”
     I got to eat lunch beside him at the Guest House, if I didn’t bother Cal while she served.  The Captain always lifted his spoon ever so carefully over his bowl of soup.  Never saw him spill.
    Lost his accent right away in the States, but when he laughed I heard the Norseman sunk low in his throat.  “Do you know the name of my vessel?”  
     He answered himself, “The Shroud of Fog.”
     He laughed and I looked beyond his thick, gleaming teeth for a horn-headed Viking I’d seen in a picture book.  Cal filled his water glass.  The Captain studied her smile.  “If I hit the rocks and go to Davy Jones’ Deep, I want it said I went down in a shroud of fog.”  His ocean eyes followed Cal then he nudged me and grinned.  “Nice excuse for my epitaph.”
     Cal glanced away, so I pushed my cracker crumbs onto the floor.  “Captain, what’s an epitaph?”
      “It’s a saying writ on your grave, Les, a saying that sums up all your life and deeds.”  He leaned forward and lowered his voice, “Sometimes, you have to lie a little to get at the truth.”
     Cal was my favorite sister then.  The one who taught me to swim when Mother wasn’t looking.  I reached out, tugged her by the arm, and asked, “Will you marry the Captain?”
     She flushed and pulled away.  “Don’t think it’s your place to ask.”
     The Captain’s chuckle ran down his throat to somewhere near a growl.  “Les, sometimes you have to know when to keep your cabin door shut.  Tight.”

     Until I met the Captain I thought my first name was Boy.  That’s all Father called me.  Not that he didn’t say it pleasantly, as in, “For heaven’s sake, Boy, don’t let your mother know we’ve been up to Uncle Nolan’s still.”
    If not for the Captain and big sisters Cal and Neva (what everyone called Nevada), I might never have heard my name spoken in childhood.  My younger brother (by sixteen and a half months) was called Gus, short for August.  He was born in May; maybe they were hoping for a girl.
     Two bends beyond Deadman’s Curve and Railroad Gulch the river narrowed to a stream.  A mile farther east, alders and willows grew where the stream became no more than a babbling creek, easy to ford.  That was our name, Ford; Miller Ford, my father’s name. Miller had been the surname of one of his grandmothers.
     Father once said you could always tell a man’s roots in the old country.  Cooper or Baker or Smith had been the family occupation when a name took hold and stuck.  A blueblood didn’t work a mill.  A Ford once probably lived near the crossing of a stream or maybe it was a corruption of forge.
     “How do you corrupt a word?” I asked the Captain the next time he stopped into the Guest House.  I had the Fair sisters near cleaned out of their penny purses with poker, this new game Uncle Nolan showed me.  
     I clutched four aces close to my chest when I turned to listen to the Captain’s response. He heeled his boots clean on the mat by the door.  “The same way you corrupt a man,” he said.  “Let him think he’s more than he really is.  Then watch him run.”
     “Run?” I asked.
     “Run away with your money or run away from the chance to earn it with an honest day’s labor.”
     “Captain, you runnin’ away from marryin’ Cal?”  With all eyes on the Captain, I slinked my fifth ace down under my seat.

     Most of the logging camps along the river had no names, just numbers that grew as the chopping moved inland.  Names were reserved for significant places like Railroad Gulch, the Forks, or Clearwater Creek.
     The family who ran the cookhouse at the Forks lost a baby son to diphtheria in the late winter after I turned five.  They nailed shut a clear pine box, set it on an open flat car, and tied the coffin down.  Where the straps broke and the coffin tumbled off into the brush was Deadboy Siding from then on.
     Assuming the body had ridden the rails to the undertaker, the dead boy’s family hitched two rigs to ride around to the mill town for the burial.  Miles Standish himself, cranked upriver on a handcar to retrieve the body; Miles Standish, the company owner, the eighth Miles Standish in a direct line of Miles Standishes going straight back to the Mayflower.
     Of course, he spoke several words at the service.  Only phrase I recalled was “angel of death.”  While the circuit preacher droned I asked Ma, “Is Death real?”
     “Yes, indeed,” she whispered.  “And he might just come after a little boy who doesn’t pay his respects.”  She pressed a forefinger to her lips.
     Brother Louis played the bugle at the funeral.  Everyone in the family played.  Father fiddled at dances down at the company hall, above the harbor.  I’d sit on the edge of the stage while the toe of his right boot tapped out a tune; remember the smile on his face when I first learnt to slap the spoons in rhythm.
     Mother knew how to draw the bow, too, but I recall her then as the church organist.  Brothers and sisters picked up fiddles, banjos, and mandolins as easily as they learned to ride.
 
     Morrie and Orrie rode horses since they were three, but there along the river one day I watched ‘em clamber onto some docile steers; one after the other threw ‘em in the grass.  I looked on from the top rail of a fence.  A Hereford bull, eatin’ at the clover, moseyed over ‘til he was right alongside.  Mouth and drippy nose in the grass, he lingered there so long I couldn’t resist.  Slid down astride his back; him so wide my toes barely reached his flanks.  He didn’t seem to notice and carried me along to a new spot to munch.  I patted his hide, his tail swatted me and a fly.
     Leaned forward, grabbed his horns with both hands, and gave him a kick.  He jerked and I flew, tumbling through sky, green grass spinning around me; landed on my bee-hind, like a whole hive stung me.
   Rolled to my feet then marched right up to his white face.  “You don’t look like no Mr. Death.  I won’t take that, Mr. Bull.”  I socked him on his curly forehead.
     He looked up, eyes reddened, hooves pawing at his turf, and the next thing I knew Morrie swung me by my waist way up in the air, not settin’ me down ‘til we’re both far away from there.  
     That’s how I got my start punching cattle.
     At dinner that night Orrie told what happened.  Ma frowned at me.  “If you want to go riding bulls and broncs, that’s fine, but if you break your neck don’t come crying home to me.”
     See more about this novel: malcolmmacdonaldoutlawford.com

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Early Mendocino County is filled with many yarns and tales. One of the characters in Outlaw Ford (the novel excerpted here) states, “Sometimes you have to lie to get at the truth.”
     That's more or less a direct re-statement from one of my great uncles. Fiction sometimes comes closer to reality than a history textbook. However much Outlaw Ford reflects a certain part of local history from more than a century ago, I must remind readers that it is ultimately fiction, lest some thirteenth cousin sue me for presenting Aunt Billie-Bobbie in an unflattering manner.
     Of course, I have/had no Aunt Billie-Bobbie. Many of the locales presented in these excerpts are real. Just west from where I write, the Albion Lumber Company maintained a Company (Guest) House alongside this river. A few bends of the river westward, at the mouth of what is still called Deadman's Gulch, a white picket fence enclosed a cemetery. How its first occupants first arrived there occurred in much the same way as described herein.
     Without further ado, here are the opening scenes from chapter one of Outlaw Ford:

     I’ve been cheating the Fates right from the start.
     The night I was born Ma, Pa, and big sister Cal played cutthroat pinochle by lantern light in the log house of my youth.  Ma held a winning hand when the labor pains hit, wouldn’t lay down her cards ‘til she made her bid.
     A storm rumbled the sky while they helped Mother to the tracks and onto the handcar.  Pa and Cal pumped the handles down the rail line toward the Company House.
     According to Ma, “You shot right out in the rain, bounced clean over the edge.  Pulled you back, yanking hand over fist on your cord.”
     “Lucky to be alive,” they said at the Company House when Pa carried us in.  Not one, or two, but three midwives there; the Fair sisters: Lacey, Chloe, and Atropos.  They managed the lumber company’s guest house and restaurant.  Cal waited tables there.
     Thunder clapped and Pa said, “God’s applauding the birth of my son.”
     Chloe Fair spun her thread.  “It’s God alright, shooting craps across the high heavens.”
     Her sister Lacey measured me head to toe.  “Beelzebub’s betting the Almighty can’t save this baby’s soul.”
     “Who’ll win?” Cal asked.
     Atropos, who’d snipped my cord, looked up from beside the couch where they’d laid Ma and little me, “Too soon to tell.”
     Lightning struck all around; New Year’s Eve, New Year’s morn.
     Nineteen hundred, nineteen ought one, flip a coin; take your pick.  With all the fanfare you’d think I’d get more attention, but Ma was back at the stove next day.  I got a makeshift bassinet in a corner of the kitchen.
     Sister Cal wasn’t born there, but back on the farm in Kansas.  The folks lived their ambitions and humor in their children's names: California, Nevada (born in Nebraska), Louis (for Louisiana), Ida (for Idaho) and off they went.  In California, Moreland, Orland and I were born.  Cal called me Les right off, never Lester.  Mother and Father, they had their mirth.  Three boys in a row: More, Or, Les.
     After we all rolled out, I wasn’t more or less, but right in the middle, so’s you’d hardly notice; six older, six younger.
     Father’s brother, Nolan, taught me how to play cards.  Scarcely could walk and talk when he showed me how to shuffle a deck and other tricks of the trade.  Soon I was playing rummy with Chloe and Lacey Fair whenever Ma went to town.
     Next time Nolan showed at home I boasted, “Double dealt.  They never knowed.  And I bested ‘em.”
     Ma overheard, slapped my hands and said, “That’s cheating.  No. No!”
     She scowled at Uncle, but when her back was turned he whispered, “Anything goes when you have to play Fair.”

     Father chopped in the woods six days a week.  Sundays, camp meeting.  Preacher came, riding the circuit, read the words, led the hymns, gave the look for all to say amen.
     One Sunday afternoon when I was four, Father walked me down the railroad track.  His hand held mine while we strode toward Dead Man’s Curve; big bend in the river, sharp turn of the rails.
     On a slope above the bend, a picket fence surrounded Dead Man’s Cemetery; three unnamed markers.  “Shot in that cabin.”  Father pointed up the hill.  “Playing at cards, wild wagers on a moonless night.”
     I looked up to my father, who said, “Never gamble on cards, boy…  When you do, don’t wager more than you can afford to lose.  Always play to win, but let the other fellas slink away with a little somethin’ jingling in their pockets.”
      We walked around the fence once or twice, patting every picket.  “Death’s never a stranger ‘round here, boy.  Seldom sends ahead to let you know he’s coming.”
     Just a few days later, I played with an old deck underneath the dining room table of the Company Guest House while Cal cleared the plates; all three Fairs too busy for me.  Dealt out cards to an imaginary opponent; changing the rules to my own brand of War so I always won.
     The front door banged open against the wall.  Dishes clattered to the floor all around and Cal wailed.  A young steamship captain staggered in carrying a man in his arms, their shirts smeared with drying blood and more that seeped from an unseen wound.  Both men disappeared while the captain set the injured man on the table top.  All I saw were polished boots.  “Log flew off at Deadman’s, Miss,” The captain said to Cal.  “Hit him flush.”
     Blood flooded the tablecloth and dripped from the fringed edges onto my jokers and aces.  The injured man slammed a hand down and called, “Jesus!  Help me.”
     He didn’t come, unless the Company House cook was Jesus Christ.  In which case you’d think he’d make a better vegetable beef soup.
     Blood swamped my entire deck.  The injured man let out a prolonged groan.  The table shook, then wobbled to a standstill, followed by a longer quiet.
     The captain and Cal clasped hands together, spoke some holy words and amens.  The cook said, “Death’s got him now.”
     Felt a shiver run right through me.  The front door slammed shut.  I scrambled from under the table, but by the time I swung the big redwood door open Death was out of sight.
     I started going to Dead Man’s Cemetery almost every day after my chores were through.  Pitched pennies against the rails, leaned over the fence looking for new headstones.
     One afternoon I caught a splinter in my palm.  Big brother Louis ambled along while I tried to pinch it out.  “Whatcha doin’ down here?” he asked.
     “Guardin’ the gate, so Mr. Death doesn’t put Pa in with the dead men.”
     “There’s no Mr. Death.”
     “You sure?”
     “No, but if there is, he’d be a lot sneakier than you give him credit for; wouldn’t be hiding out at the graveyard.  That’s not where people die, it’s where they go after they’re dead.”
     I popped the sliver along with a trickle of blood then spit in my palm.  Louis daubed it dry with a corner of his shirttail and I asked, “If he don’t come here, why doesn’t everybody live in a graveyard?”  
     More about this novel: malcolmmacdonaldoutlawford.com

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Last week PBS re-broadcast Ken Burns' landmark documentary The Civil War. Monday, September 14th, Fort Bragg played out its version at the City Council meeting.
     Why the Civil War comparison? Let's start with a quote from Robert E. Lee in January of 1861, three months before the outbreak of war at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. “I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honour for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution.… [A] Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind.”
     Of course, Lee's personal sense of “honour” bound him to the most important part of the Confederate States of America's military, the Army of Northern Virginia. In short, he failed to heed his own words and better judgment.
     Time will tell whether the group calling itself the Concerned Citizens of Fort Bragg, which formulated a proposed ballot initiative to ban social services from Fort Bragg's Central Business District (CBD) will continue down the road of calamity or recognize a lost cause when they see it.
     The lost cause became as evident and inevitable as the result of Sherman's March at the September 14th council meeting when Fort Bragg's City Attorney Samantha Zutler opened fire with her staff report on whether or not the City Council should vote to place the downtown social services ban on the ballot themselves. Her first legal conclusion: The City Council cannot vote to place the measure on the ballot  without the City first complying with CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act).
     Zutler's second opinion: Consistent with other provisions of the zoning code, if the initiative passes, the facility [Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center's new offices within the Old Coast Hotel] and other targeted social service organizations will become legal non-conforming uses, but the uses will not be prohibited.
     The City Attorney went on: If Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center's right becomes vested before the measure takes effect, the retro-activity provision in the initiative would likely be subject to challenge as an improper interference with MCHC's vested right to operate the facility. The killer blow came in this Zutler legal opinion: Using a zoning ordinance to target a specific facility that exists to provide housing to low income persons, persons with disabilities, or persons receiving public benefits could be challenged as discriminatory and unlawful under state and federal laws.
     In other words Fort Bragg City Council members, if you put such a measure on the ballot you (collectively) will be subject to state and/or federal litigation.
     Boom! Message received by all five council members, including Vice Mayor Lindy Peters, the lone vote against the Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center move to the Old Coast Hotel site on the northwest corner of Franklin and Oak Streets. Each of the five councilmen spoke against the proposed initiative on September 14th, citing two main reasons: 1) the potential high costs to the city in litigation, and 2) the measure could also deny central business district locations to other, unquestioned, social service organizations.
     Nearly a full house of citizenry appeared at Fort Bragg's Town Hall for the mid-September meeting. Approximately 35-40 opponents of the social services ban strolled a block or two with banners high to Town Hall in the half hour preceding the City Council meeting. When the issue arose during the council gathering the measure's opponents outnumbered its proponents in terms of public speakers at the podium, though one proponent stated that hardcore members of the Concerned Citizens of Fort Bragg (CCFB) were boycotting Fort Bragg's City Council meetings. Therein lies the core of the Civil War analogy. If the CCFB and like-minded proponents of the social service ban initiative continue on at this point certain obvious questions arise. If the measure's proponents gather enough petition signatures to qualify it for the ballot (not an unreasonable supposition considering numbers of signatures bandied about in public discourse), just when will that vote occur? In a special election or in conjunction with next June's California primary? Is CCFB willing to spend the money to defend this measure in state and federal court?
     One might guess the answer to the latter question would be a simple no, but Fort Bragg's so-called “concerned citizens” have already marched into territory filled deep with pride and a collective sense of “honor,” even if they don't spell it the way Robert E. did. Folly is a remarkably nearsighted, clench-fisted fellow.
    We are 150 years on from the American Civil War, but the divide of that conflict still seethes at the corroded roots of contemporary U.S. politics and society as a whole. These concerned citizens of Fort Bragg are a proud bunch. They don't seem to care one iota for the City's attorney on a personal or professional level. They may be perfectly willing to charge headlong into the high cost of litigation in much the same way as good old Robert E. sent General Pickett's regiments charging straight into the heavily fortified Union cannons at Gettysburg.