# 480 - 14th October 2015

     Greetings one and all. Are you are sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin… And sometimes I think there is no better way to do that than by going straight to the Public Service Announcements (P.S.A.’s)…        
     Calendars and pens at the ready… #336 - The annual Oktoberfest fundraiser presented by the A.V. Senior Center is set for 5pm, Saturday, October 24th (dinner served at 6pm) at its usual excellent venue - The Barn alongside the A.V. Farm Supply on Highway 128, just a little north of Philo. Tickets are $30 each which covers the dinner, dessert, a beverage, and your donation to the Senior Center. The menu will feature Pork Sausage, Beer-steeped Sauerkraut, German-style Warm Potato Salad with Bacon and Onions, Dessert, and local beer and Wine, with non-alcoholic beverages also being available… #337 - The Vets from the Mendocino Animal Hospital will be visiting the Valley on just one occasion this month - that’s Thursday, October 29 at the Anderson Valley Farm Supply on Highway 128, north of Philo… #338 – The quarterly (?) visit to the Valley by the County HazMat vehicles will be on Friday/Saturday, October 16/17 at the County Fairgrounds in Boonville from 9am to 1pm each day. I urge you take the opportunity to get rid of your nasty rubbish as these guys will take virtually anything that you cannot take to the County Dump, including batteries and toxic materials, but not dead animals - please leave those to me and my relatives! Call 895-3011 for further details… #339 - The Food Bank is open on the 3rd Tuesday, October 20 - gardeners, farmers and produce growers of all kinds, remember to donate your extra produce. It will be greatly appreciated. Please drop off on the Monday before, behind the Boonville Methodist Church.  If you need someone to glean your produce to take to the Food Bank, contact Valerie Kim at valerie.h.kim@gmail.com. Denisse Mattei is the Food Bank director. You can reach her at 895-3763… #340 - The Mendocino Bookmobile returns to the Valley on Tuesday, October 20. They are here on alternate Tuesdays for 45 minutes at each of these places and times: Navarro Store 9am (for just 30 minutes); the Floodgate 12.30pm; Philo 1.30pm; Boonville (Apple Hall) 2.30pm. Phone 463-4694 for further details… #341 - The A.V Museum is open every Saturday and Sunday, from 1pm-4pm. Situated in The Little Red Schoolhouse next to the Elementary School on A.V. Way, this is a perfect thing to do in the Valley when you have a couple of hours spare on a weekend afternoon. It is not without reason that it is generally regarded as ‘The Best Little Museum in the West’…
    As a bonus P.S.A. here is the menu for the Community lunches over the next week at the Senior Center at the Veterans’ Building in Boonville. The Center asks for a $6 donation from seniors and charges $7 for Non-seniors… Tomorrow, Thursday, October 15, the lunch, served by Marti Titus and her crew at Noon, will be Tamale Loaf, and Chocolate Zucchini Cake for dessert… Then, next Tuesday, October 20, the lunch will feature Moroccan Chicken Stew with Cherry Crisp for dessert. All meals include vegetables, salad bar, and fruit, plus milk, coffee, tea, and lemonade. What a deal - it maybe the best $7 you’ll spend all week!  Hopefully you will be able to attend, and remember – ALL ages are welcome! Hope to see you there… 

    Moving quickly on to a few of the topics and Valley events under discussion this week at The Three-Dot Lounge – yes it’s “Moans, Groans, Good Thoughts, and Rampant (yet surprisingly reliable) Rumors” from my favorite gathering place in the Valley, a somewhat secret location that sees people get together and share their thoughts about life in Anderson Valley and often far beyond, and where we subscribe to the Winston Churchill philosophy that “A lie will get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put on its pants”… So, with that in mind, I shall quickly put my pants on and continue…
… Following the visit of the President to the Oregon town of Roseburg where the nine students were killed a week or two ago, a motion was unanimously passed among the Three-Dot regulars that the protesters in the town who ‘greeted’ Obama with shouts and placards suggesting he ‘Go back to Kenya’ are not the smartest of folks… Meanwhile, those residents asking that he allows them to keep their guns and, as one woman said, ‘to stockpile as much ammunition as she can get her hands on’ are merely expressing their Second Amendment rights or, in my humble opinion, actually misinterpreting them with regards to the 21st century…
… A Three-Dot regular informs me that two of the current five members of the A.V. School Board are leaving when their terms end in less than a month - Martha ‘Marti’ Bradford, who, after so many years service, to paraphrase an old Three-Dot joke, apparently will not be carried out of the boardroom in a box after all, and Patti Wilson… Richard ‘Dick’ Browning’s term is also up, but I am reliably informed he wishes to return and nobody has applied to oppose the sprightly 80-year old’s tenure at this point in time… The two other members - Stacey Soboleski and Erica Lemons, each have a couple of years to go in their terms… So, looking past the general public’s perception, right or wrong, that there is a somewhat cloak-and-dagger vagueness to how the Board seems to operate when it comes to elections and seemingly behind-the-scene appointments, I believe this means there are two places to be filled. I have heard one of them already has a nominee. There is a Board meeting this coming Thursday evening, November 15, so if anyone is interested in moving the school forward in a positive way and who can help to bring some enlightened and perhaps alternative views and energy to the group then this might be the last chance you get for another two years…
… A quick recap on Country Life - Rule 8: ‘If a property has open gates and/or broken fences, this will invariably result in dogs and livestock getting out.’ Commons sense, I know, but not for everyone apparently… And a further result might well be dogs being shot by farmers believing them to be a threat to livestock, or livestock themselves straying on to roads and causing accidents… All worth thinking about I’d say…
… Talking of dogs, and pets in general, the Anderson Valley Farm Supply is changing its inventory of pet food supplies and would like input from local pet owners as to their preferred products with regards to this. You are invited to all 895-3884 and let them know your pet needs…
… Looking for an excellent taqueria on one of your visits to Santa Rosa? I suggest Los Hermanos on Burt Street just off Santa Rosa Avenue, south of Highway 101 exit 487 - Yolanda Avenue/Hearn Avenue… There are many taquerias in the town of course but the fine food and excellent and warm service of this family run business is just about the best I have come across after years of research…
… From our 3-Dot regular, The Old Buzzard, comes another in his insightful series – ‘Signs that the Apocalypse is Approaching’… Buzzard reports, … “Turning to events beyond these shores, our well-informed regulars agreed that the West’s main ‘ally’ in the Middle East, Turkey, is in serious peril of imploding as it approaches a ‘perfect storm’ scenario following Saturday’s bombings of a peace rally in the capital of Ankara that left over 100 dead. The situation there features deep political and social divides; the bubble of economic success on the brink of bursting; an impending confrontational election with the possibility of even greater violence; the threat of I.S. on its doorstep; over 2 million neighboring Syrian refugees already in the country with more on the way; and now to top it all off, there are Russia fighter jets invading their airspace… Certainly a framework for an approaching apocalypse, and one we should all be aware of, and yet ignorantly I’m focussed on the bewildering amount of time it is taking The Besotted Pig restaurant to open at the Floodgate… “

    Well now I think it’s time to take my leave… Besides I’ve got see a man about a sheep… So, that’s enough, “take me drunk, I’m home,” and until we talk again – ‘Keep the Faith’; be careful out there; if you break a leg don’t come running to me; stay out of the ditches; think good thoughts; be wary of strangers with more dogs than teeth; please remember to keep your windows cracked if you have pets in your vehicle; and may your god go with you… Oh, and of course, one final request, “Let us prey”… Sometimes poking, often stroking, but almost always humbly yours, Turkey Vulture - saddened but ultimately comforted in the knowledge that the old hare has safely moved to his new burrow in the sky…
p.s. You can contact me with words of support/abuse either through the Letters Page or by e-mail at
p.p.s. Keep on wagging that tail, Fred… Hi, Silver Swan – behaving yourself? Hopefully not!… Keep up the good work, Round-eyed Robin