Chuckwalla Rewired -- More news briefs from the Reveille

More from Chuckwalla Wire

The Reveille's mole out at the JC tells us that one of the community instructors at Extended Day got the breeze for allegedly retailing inappropriate subject matter.  The four-session class, “Financial Know-How,” was cancelled abruptly after the administration got wind that the class might better have been called “How to Rob a Bank.”  We sent our part-time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss to find out more. Her report:

According to the course syllabus in the Extended Day catalog, “Financial Know-How” would cover strategies for handling personal finances, banking, loans, and income taxes. The instructor, Jeff Bailey, claimed to be a former savings and loan executive, but an on-line  background check revealed a criminal record with arrests for credit card fraud and for defrauding an innkeeper.  His only local address is a mail drop at the PO.  A Chuckpo source, however, said  Bailey is a known resident at the Borrows, a transients’ commune south of town. I was able to interview Bailey at the Brewhaha Brew Pub on Emerald Way.

You got canned. For teaching your students how to rob a bank.

-There are two ways to rob a bank.  One is with a gun and a note.  That works more often than the banks want to admit.  The other way to rob a bank is to borrow money you're not going to repay. That’s what I was going over.  Sure. Ethical questions?  The same questions that confront a hedge fund exec or a used car salesman. I wasn't advising. I was explaining that it takes preparation. You’ve got to have a good front. You have to establish a credit score of 700 or better. You do this by collecting a lot of store credit cards, Macy’s, Home Depot, then making small purchases on credit and always paying the minimum on time. After a while you’ll qualify for some of the major credit cards.  Capital One is easy to get.  Look for cards that are high interest. Easier to get. You also want to claim an employment history with the federal government.  Hard to check.

Won’’t the bank check?

-You’re going to rob the bank. But you're never going into the bank.  Or talk to a banker.  All the stores, car dealerships, and everybody who offers credit, have relationships with banks.  You’re robbing the bank through them. You establish a credit profile of an average sap who overextends.  Gradually make more purchases on credit and always pay only the minimum.  Now set the day you’ll execute, and your getaway plan.  Say you’ll be going to Mexico.  You order stuff that will be useful in your new life. You'll need a reliable car.  Pick a sleazy dealership that offers low down and easy credit.  The salesman will trot out the four-square. One square is the monthly payment. You want to get that one as low as possible without raising suspicions.  Same with the down.  Don’t look too good.  Clothes should be clean but not fancy. You’re the average working  mope. Not too bright. But a reliable widget.  After you’ve got a free car, and used the cards to get what you need for the getaway, the time has come to wring out the cash advances.  If  you have a good collection of cards, this should be ten grand or so.  Now you can split.

To the Borrows?  I hear a lot of vehicles out there are on the repo list.

-Thing is, as long as the cars are out at the Borrows, they won’t be repossessed.   It’s kind of a safe haven. The only tow truck that ever went out there….is still there.  You ever hear of the Borrows Compact?  No trouble, no law. No deputy as long as nobody is getting murdered.  I know, the meth cookers. But that’s different. The Borrows? The  purest kind of Albanian anarchy.  Everything settled within the clan.

So in a word, rob a bank by running up debt and stiffing the lenders.

-You don’t need my class.  But I also teach one on student loans.

“I was a man of grace and polish. Oh rats, my strongest oath. All at once I’m using language. That would turn an ear to toast”  Johnny Carson, riffing on “My Fair Lady.”

Panacea Bakery, the niche kitchen behind the Two-Niner Diner at the airport specializes in artisan bread, particularly Middle Eastern buk, a heavy whole grain loaf loaded with walnuts and berries.  The bakery’s latest offering is the “Panacea Pep,” a survival biscuit styled on the one developed by the Department of Sustainability and Resilience at the University of California, Riverside.  “We had to reverse engineer it,” says Besty Morales, chief baker at Panacea.  The university's recipe is patented, but the ingredients have been published: whole wheat, pea protein, whey, sunflower seeds, prune extract.  “We added a little olive oil and honey for better mouth,” Morales says, “but it still has an indefinite shelf life and needs no refrigeration.”  The Pep biscuit is perfect for the backpack or lunchbox, she says.  Or, the prepper’s cache.

Walk, don’t run  The annual Triped Senior Challenge will be held this coming Sunday, sponsored by the Marion Shumway Senior Center and Pool  The five mile course begins at the Chuckwalla HIgh School practice field, with the starting gun at 8 a.m.  All contestants must be 60 plus and present a signed letter from a board certified physician.  Winner receives a dinner for two at the Weary Gentleman.  (Sponsored)

Speaking of the Tripeds.   A cute license plate spotted on Hobbesianway.  “9THING”  Took a minute.  Ninth Inning. The car had a Tripeds Hiking Club bumper sticker. 

At Tuesday's council, ChuckFi reported the completion of its investigation into the smoky three-alarmer that ripped through the downtown community center last Thursday night, a fire that started shortly after the sudden cloudburst that flooded the Field of Dreams ballpark.  A gaggle of the unhoused, many of whom usually congregate around the ballpark bleachers, took refuge from the deluge under the nearby center’s ample eaves.  According to the fire department report, the displaced transients plugged their heating pads to a busbar connected to an unlocked outlet on the outside of the building.  “The heating pads are used by the campers to warm the inside of their sleeping bags, and the many heating pads connected on one outlet caused an overload that sparked the fire.”   Part time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, who went out to investigate, said that the unofficial campsite by the ballpark bleachers, usually is serviced by a 120 amp extension cable that runs through a jimmied window of an equipment shed.  That outlet apparently is able to handle a dozen or so heating pads connected by extension cords to a bus bar.  Jimmy Diesel, one of the plein aire overnighters at the ballpark, says he always tucks a heating pad  into his sleeping bag  ‘You put it on your chest to warm the core.”  ChuckFi said the blaze caused an estimated $5000 in damage.  City workers have since put a padlock on the center’s outdoor outlet and fixed the window of the equipment shed.

Public Comment    One of the underrated benefits of a quasi-democracy is the "public comments" portion of a city council meeting. Ruffled citizens, busybodies, cranks,  blowhards, each get three minutes at the podium, and the council has to take it.  At Tuesday's council, a lady who lives in one of the apartment buildings on Hobbesianway, shared her indignation about a new sign that has gone up in front of Tan's Donuts and Danish. The lady, who provided copies of a photo, said, in effect, that the new sign offended good taste and morality.  Pictured, with a nod to Botticelli, is a naked and chestnut-tressed Aphrodite, standing on a pie plate, one hand demurely covering her breast with an eclair, and the other holding a strategically placed doughnut.  Councilman Henry Pipps, apparently in exculpation, mentioned the liquor ads in the windows of the Horney Toad and the Oar House. After thanking the citizen for her input, the mayor said the council's hands probably were tied because of the First Amendment.

Breatharian credo   A note from Tiffany Allen, a resident of the Breatharian House, in response to the recent assertion by OMG youth leader Byron Fistule that Breatharians “groom atheists.” 

The secular Breatharian doesn’t proselytize. He’s not on the web, does not promote religion, solicit money, hawk books, advertise, spread the good news (there’ isn’t any) or seek converts. The loosely held credo accepts that hypocrisy is unavoidable, and that the Breatharian bar is too high for strict adherence. The Breatharian aim is to live without combustion, by eschewing oil, gasoline, electricity and the burning of carbon in any form.  Other than that, raw food veganism, austere simplicity, anti materialism, and minimalism regarding possessions. He doesn’t aggressively proselytize, or hawk books door-to-door like the OMG zealots. Not a prophet of doom or redemption.  Simply burn no carbon. Cook no food.  

The Tracks and Scat Sports Bar and Grill has announced a change in its Happy Hour schedule.  “Starting next week, we’re going to an Endless Happy Hour format, with the Hora de Feliz beginning at our 9 a.m. opening and extending through closing time at 2 a.m.,” said owner Miguel Juarez. “Like other bars and restaurants, we were under a lot of financial pressure during the Celestina Flu outbreak, and the receipts haven’t really recovered.”  Juarez said he hoped all-day Happy Hour pricing would bring back customers who got used to drinking at home during the health emergency.  He said the Happy Hour pricing will apply to all the food items on the bar menu, including the popular Scat Brats and Hoof ‘n’ Paw Sliders.  (Sponsored)

Beet Bailey on Dining in the car  When I travel I picnic in my car.  Also while tenting as a host in a BLM campground I will eat in my car when the wind is up. I put a towel across my lap and on top of it a Martha Stewart Stainless steel salad bowl.  My one dish is a china soup mug sitting inside the salad bowl.  I don’t try to heat anything.  Sometimes in the campground I’ll boil some water for a Thermos.  On the road I eat out of the grocery store.  Cold cereal, pea protein and nuts, with powdered milk; cheese and crackers; a can of beans seasoned with vinegar and sugar; individual cartons of yogurt and cottage cheese; fresh fruit, bell peppers, carrots and broccoli, and a quart bottle of unsweetened tea.  I clean the soup mug inside a plastic grocery bag, using paper towels, alcohol wipes and squirts of water.  If possible I find a view, but often I settle for the back end of a supermarket parking lot.  I never go to a restaurant.  Too expensive, bad food, oppressed help.

(Ms. Bailey is a regular contributor to the Reveille, specializing in frugality and simple living.)

Talking the Walk   Perennial critic Besos Amazn has weighed in via e-burst regarding the recent council decision to declare the sidewalk on Victory Lane a bike path.   “Of course sidewalks are unused by pedestrians. Half the U.S. population are de facto invalids.  They can’t walk a mile. Too feeble. Too fat.  And school kids on bikes are being knocked down right and left by monster pickups and SUVs.  Separate the tanks from the unarmored people!”

Deep DET   The secretive and authoritarian overlord of Desert Empire Transit isn’t talking, as usual, but he seems to be up to something.  One of DET’s Blue Bird former school buses is up on the rack undergoing major work at Ed’s Auto Repair but owner Ed Aimes says he can’t answer any questions.  We asked part-time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss to pry something loose.  Her report:

DET boss Jack Baylor has a standard answer to any query from the Reveille:  “No comment!”  But a helpful mole inside the county transit sector says that the DET chieftain has wangled a state grant to convert the fleet of eight DET buses to electric power.  “The cost of a new electric bus would be prohibitive for a small district, but DET ‘s proposal to convert the district’s present buses to battery power got state approval and funding.”  According to the source, the conversion will be done at no cost to the district.  All buses in the DET fleet formerly served as ‘60s-era school buses, and, for technical reasons, this makes a conversion easier than is the case for later models.  The source, who says he has seen the proposal, notes that electric buses would mean a substantial savings in fuel costs.

No “Jams" Session   An English Composition teacher at Chuckwalla High has been reprimanded by principal Merrit Williams for wearing pajamas to her classroom.  Actually, a nightgown.  Teacher Becky Everett was assigned, over her objections, to an 8 a.m. English Comp class but says it’s just too early for her.  “I’m not a morning person,” Everett says, “and I live all the way at the end of Power Pole Road.” Nobody is saying that Everett’s morning attire is immodest.  The coarse linen long-sleeved floor-length nightgown is burka-like in cut, and the head is covered in a nightcap.  “It’s the example,” Williams said.  “We are prohibiting students from wearing pajamas to school.  We can’t have teachers doing it.” 

Walk (and Bike) On By    The city council has fine-tuned last week’s edict making the sidewalk along Victory Lane a bike lane.  A new rule just promulgated by the city’s department of works sets the bike speed limit on sidewalks at 9 mph.  Also bike riders are required to give way to any pedestrian encountered.  The sidewalk bike lane decision came about after the council received a report from the planning commission saying that most of the city’s sidewalks are not used by pedestrians.  We asked part-time reporter Cheryl Weiss for a look.

After a month-long study, the city planning commission found that hardly anyone walks in Chuckwalla.  “The only significant pedestrianism is along the Hobbesianway downtown.”  On the other hand, bicycles are popular in town among certain cohorts.  The lycra-wearing sports cycling contingent is small, but students, ag workers, the poor, and the unhoused ride bikes in numbers in the hundreds, and they often cycle on arterial roads with minimal shoulders.  The report suggested that some of the under-used sidewalks could be declared bike lanes.  Victory Lane intersects Hobbesianway by the old Greyhound station and runs west to cross College Drive.  “Most of Victory Lane runs along an alfalfa field,” said Chuckwalla Junior College student Blair Coons, who cycles to his classes. “That means no driveways on one side of the street.”  Coons said Victory is an arterial with a posted speed limit of 35 mph, and not much of a shoulder.  “It’ll be a lot safer to ride on the sidewalk.”    Mayor Crain says the sidewalk bike lane is an experiment.  “The city pays something to maintain sidewalks, and it’s true you don’t see many pedestrians.  We’ll see how this works.”

Chuckwalla's autistic savant is back in town after being "fired" by NASA, as another casualty in the AI revolution.

(Editor’s note:  Maddie Hicks, readers will remember, came to local prominence for designing the award-winning humane chicken processing plant for Carr’s Quality Poultry.  She is also remembered at Chuckwalla High as the student who broke up the three-legged chicken chase by swinging a broom in the school auditorium. We assigned part time interim reporter Cheryl Weiss, captain of the women's badminton team at the junior college, to find out what happened.)

After her design for humane chicken factories came to notice, Hicks was hired by NASA to help with the nutritional component of the planned manned space mission to Mars. "They wanted to develop sheathed chicken embryos that would stand up to intense bombardment from ultraviolent radiation," Hicks said.  But her job soon expanded to a more secretive mission.  "NASA scientists were looking at autism as a possible model for future astronauts on prolonged space voyages beyond Mars," Hicks said.  "Past psychological profiling showed that volunteers on the high end of the spectrum were better able to tolerate prolonged isolation and lack of stimulus. There was the thought that an autistic personality would be best suited for decades-long one-way journeys beyond the solar system."  But rapid developments in AI scotched the program, Hicks said. AI now has become smart enough to handle the complex and multitudinous tasks of space travel.  More, it can withstand gamma radiation, and go into hibernation for years as a spacecraft traverses the void.  AI isn't perfect however.  For high functioning, the latest bots need access to the cloud, and also require industrial levels of energy. The space ship model would only be able to receive intermittent bursts of data from the cloud, and would have to rely on a small nuclear reactor for limited energy.  Still, even slimmed-down AI would offer "orders of magnitude" greater ability than what has been available to previous probes.  "I'm not at all surprised or disturbed," Hicks said, "AI, robotics, and automation are going to replace many jobs." She said she has yet to decide on her next venture.

Female mud wrestlers Thunder Clap and Sumo will demonstrate their holds and throws during a Wednesday a.m. assembly at Martin Van Buren Elementary.  The two wrestlers, members of the Soiled Doves tag team frequently appearing at mud wrestling events at the Rez casino and at the Horny Toad Saloon, will be featured as part of an ongoing school celebration of girls' athletics.  "Title IX has opened up so many fields of athletic endeavor for girls," said Helen Bachstrom, assistant principal.  "We want to show girls there are no limits."  The wrestling duo will be introduced by Martin Van Buren PTA president Mary Summers, and the assembly will include drinks and snacks donated by Chuckwalla's Beaux Talks Beauty Salon.

Chuckwalla High School principal Merrit Williams reports that new regulations in place this year have brought about campus improvements.  "Overall, we've had a smooth year," Williams said. "in large part because of a realistic appraisal of expectations."  For one thing, the parental concerns about the library have been abated by the new policy that requires parental approval before issuing library cards.  "Students cannot use the library without their parents’ permission," Williams said. "And we call the parent before a book is checked out."  Others who wish to read are able to use the computer bank in the social lab, or in study hall, under outside monitoring.  "The campus is secure," Williams said. "Valley Vigilance has done a superb job in fostering a good learning environment.".

Batman loose   Chuckpo says the vandal currently smashing car windows in town probably is not familiar eco-terrorist Andy Padillla. " "Not his MO at all," says Acting Chief Lt. Abel Dick. It's not burglary, either, Dick says.  It appears more ideological.   "All the victimized cars had their license plates obscured, to foil the new cameras."  Chuckwalla received a state grant last year to install half a dozen license-reading cameras downtown along Hobbesianway to catch scofflaws running the stop signs.  Dick said some drivers have taken to covering the plates with tape or with splashes of mud.  "Whoever is bashing out the rear windows has it in for these people"

Hoots of derision in the Reveille's letters column for Mayor Crane's comment at last Wednesday's council in which he compared Chuckwalla to Amsterdam after a vote to declare the sidewalk along Victory Lane a bike lane.  The council took the vote after a city planning commission study found that few pedestrians ever use the sidewalk.  A typical response, this one from Besos Amazin:  "If Chuckwalla resembles Amsterdam in any way it's for drugs and prostitution, not for bike lanes.”

Video Nemesis   The town's champion gamer Fred Turk has a new YouTube out that's a big hit. He's collated a bunch of videos showing average citizens dealing out righteous retribution to criminals such as would-be carjackers or porch burglars.  The YouTube is called "F**ked with the Wrong Guy."  Use the no-astericks spelling when looking for it. 

Shouldering Sleep  Dave Betts, a volunteer cook at Harmony House, has an eye for innovation. One of his clients who sleeps rough came in to breakfast with a sleeping bag serape.  "The sleeping bag had slits for his head," Betts said, "Now he wears the bag instead of carrying it in his rucksack."  

Litter?  Let it lie.  Our own curmudgeonly gadfly and contrarian Besos Amazn has had a letter to the editor published in the New York Times!  Besos, a frequent contributor to the Reveille’s letters page, always has a litany of off-beat opinions that he airs locally, but this is the first time, he says, he’s reached a national audience.  The headline for his Times debut was “Don’t Pick Up Your Litter.”  His argument, a familiar one to his Reveille readers, is that garbage, most perniciously plastic, is not recycled, and winds up in the landfill or in the ocean.  “Tossing a plastic soda bottle into a trash can or recycling bin does not make it disappear,” Besos writes. It’s true that 90 percent of plastic waste is never reused, but goes into dumps, where over time it leaches toxicity into the soil.  Some of the plastic waste gets off-shored to Guatemala or Malaysia and is either burned in massive trash fires or winds up in the ocean. (A miniscule part of LA’s plastic waste is compressed into blocks and sent by rail to the waste ziggurat inside the meteor crater on the Lumbee Rez).  “It would be more ethical to leave your trash along the highway or in a vacant lot,” Besos says, “where it would degrade and pollute your own neighborhood.”   He claims, intuitively, evidently, that a plastic wrapper lying by the wayside is less noxious than one festering at the bottom of the land fill.  “If, for esthetics, you must pick up litter along the road at least have the decency to take it home and store it in perpetuity in your own backyard,” 

Teens still can ride DET’s Five-Buck Bus.  After a week of waffling and contradictory statements, the Desert Empire Transit board has rescinded its decision to prohibit juveniles on the system’s premium express bus line.  Last month DET issued new rider regulations for the Five-Buck Bus that would have  banned children and teens under 18 from using the popular line that whisks riders from two upscale neighborhoods to a stop in front of the Chuckwalla Police station.  The premium line already has dress guidelines (no shorts or pajamas) and limits passengers to 20 per bus.  DET leadership has been mum on reasons for the now-rescinded rule, but an anonymous source within the transit community has said that passengers submitted a petition to DET management  requesting the ban on kids. The DET free bus which meanders around town frequently has been subject to disturbances from rowdy juveniles, but according to one DET driver the Five-Buck young riders have not been a problem.  “They mostly are kids from Sobrantes Estates who attend the Montessori Academy downtown or go to the Christian Charter School on Heliotrope Dr.”  Reveille's source suggested the reason for rescinding the rule may be that Sobrantes' parents threatened to sue the district for discrimination. With the late success of the Five-Buck Bus the district has just tottered into solvency “and they don’t need a lawsuit.”

Blood Sample   An adjunct professor from the Chuckwalla Junior College’s Department of Sustainability and Resilience has requested blood samples from the varsity football team as part of her study into whether the human body can evolve to tolerate extreme heat.  Julia Felton, who heads the department’s field research unit, said the blood would be drawn following practice sessions in which the team often trains in wet bulb globe index temperatures in excess of 100 degrees.  “The players here have all grown up in a climate analogous to some of the hottest regions in the world,” Felton said, "We would like to see if they show any biological markers indicating an adaptation to extreme heat and humidity.“  The testing would be part of a larger study being undertaken by the UC Riverside’s Department, which operates a satellite research branch at the JC.  In past years, department researchers have used Chuckwalla’s desert venue for studies of vernacular architecture and of native heat-resisting strategies. Felton said the city’s surrounding alfalfa crop, irrigated from the Colorado River, covers the area with a humid dome of water vapor that in combination with summer’s 100-120 degree temperatures puts the index temperature “right at the cusp” of what the human body can tolerate. Assistant varsity coach Tony Arguella said any such study would require written parental consent and the supervision of team physician Dr. Emilio Mendez, but was skeptical about the premise. “The Inuits adapt to the cold by wearing fur coats and mukluks,” Arguella said, “We adapt here in the same kind of ways.” He said team members during the training season take mandatory siestas, practice after 10 p.m., when the temperatures drop below 90, wear ice packs under their jerseys, and plunge their feet into buckets of ice water during breaks.  “We know heat stroke, and get a player off the field at the first sign,” Arguella said.

REGARDING THE PIECE last week about the scion of a Chuckwalla pioneer family, Enos Sturdivant, now 94 years old, who lives in a packing crate in a niece's backyard on a rural dirt road on the outskirts of the town’s gerrymandered city limits.  A relative tells us he would like to see Enos removed to an assisted living facility, and is willing to pay for it, but that Enos has declined the offer, preferring his present abode in a tiny wooden box once used for shipping melons. Gerald Handley, the relative, said he has petitioned Imperial County superior court judge Harvey Talbot for an order making Enos a ward of the court, and mandating his removal to assisted care. Judge Talbot says he will not make a ruling until he receives a welfare report from the county Social Services department.  But in a hearing last week a representative from Social Services told Talbot that because of staff shortages it may be several months before a county worker can visit Enos and evaluate his living arrangements.  (We assigned part time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, a freshman at Chuckwalla junior college and member of the school’s scholastic honor society, to pay Sturdivant a visit. Her report:)

The packing crate, once the property of Pease Farms, measures ten feet in length, six in width, and five feet in height, dimensions designed for a snug fit on the pre-World War II flatbed trucks that hauled melons from the Colorado River to markets in Los Angeles.  The crate is now in a corner of  the large backyard of a secluded two-story house belonging to 65-year-old Mary Crawford, Sturdivant’s niece.  Sturdivant is a spare, bewhiskered five-and-a-half footer, dressed in sweatpants and a billowing long-sleeved peasant’s smock.  He was reclining on a lounge chair and immersed in the day’s wordle, when I asked permission for an interview.

I hear they want to put you away.

“Jerry (Handley) means well. He came over here.  I admit I’m old. I can’t see this puzzle without this magnifying glass. It takes me a cane or two to move around.  I’m kind of incontinent, if you know what that means.  My memory is shot. Blah, blah.  But I can still take care of myself, and Mary lets me stay here for free.  She’s disabled and doesn't use the yard.  She doesn't want me living in her house, though.”

Does Jerry have ulterior motives?  

 “Nope. All I`ve got is $600 a month Social Security. He’s just a natural do-gooder and Christian busybody.” 

So what’s your day like?

 “Tea and a banana, oatmeal and an orange.  Putter in the garden, get in a walk to the mailbox, vegetable soup and crackers, read the paper, take a nap, read a book, visit Mary, pudding and a cookie, watch a movie. Night-night.”

I see you have electricity.  

“It’s an extension cord to Mary’s back porch.  I have a hot pot, an oil electric space heater, a toaster, a fan, and a light.  I can only use one appliance at a time or I trip the breaker.”

The incontinence? 

 “I grew up on a farm.  I can clean up the barnyard.”

TINY POVERTY-RIDDEN CHUCKWALLA    A model for nation-wide public transit?  Two officials from the federal Department of Transportation were in town this week to check out Desert Empire Transit’s tiered fare system.  Might it work for bigger roads?  DET has three tiers:  local snail service that stops everywhere and is free; premium two-dollar service runs the same route with fewer stops; and then the express “five-buck bus,” which hurtles non -stop from high-end neighborhoods (Sobrantes Estates, Colmas Dorado) to the Chuckpo station house downtown. The buses are all the same (mostly converted Blue Bird school buses) except that the five-buck bus limits the number of passengers to 20, and has a dress code (no shorts, pajamas or tee-shirts).  According to Harold Stemson, DOT’s lead investigator here, a data mole in DC noticed that the DET five-buck bus ridership almost pays for everything else, including salaries and maintenance.  “Chuckwalla DET is a very small system,” Stemson said, “but it’s something to think about.”  The DOT spokesperson said he’s aware of rider complaints that the DET free buses are dirty, run late, and are sometimes dangerous because of intoxicated or deranged passengers. Still, he says, it’s notable that overall system ridership increased markedly with the five dollar fare on the express line. “It appears passengers will pay more to use buses that offer a seat to themselves among well dressed people,” Stemson said.  Well, it’s an old saying in transit circles, “The problem with public transit is the public.” 

A SWARM OF GEES? More G-Men stopping at the Packer House BnB this week. Two pasty faces from HUD are here for a week to look at the backpacking camp on the Rez, with the idea of picking up ideas for federally sponsored long-term camping for the unemployed or displaced.  On the Lumbee Rez, the itinerant can pitch a tent for two bucks a night and stay indefinitely. Or stay for free, if the camper is willing to put some labor into the adjoining pot garden, the produce from which is retailed at the casino tobacco store.  No cars or liquor allowed in camp, but plenty of shake .  HUD wonders if this is scalable as one remedy to the intractable housing shortage.

REALLY LONG TERM PARKING  How long can you park your car in front of your own house?  Dave Distillino, the owner of Desert Bowl on Rhinestone Dr. adjacent to the entrance to Sobrantes Estates, complained to the council Tuesday that Sobrantes homeowners are crowding out parking space for his customers by positioning non-operational cars along a public street.  “On league nights my lot is packed, and the overflow has nowhere to park,” Distillino said “because of all these junk cars on Emerald Lane.” (Editor’s note:  We assigned Reveille intern reporter Cheryl Weiss to investigate.)

Cindy Kinder, spokesperson for Sobrantes Estates Homeowners Association, said that on weekends and on tournament nights, rowdy Bowl patrons have become a nuisance.  “The bowl parking lot is too small, and their patrons are parking within the Estates.  When returning to their vehicles at night, they can be noisy and disrespectful of privacy.”  To prevent this, she said, residents have purchased non-op cars from Randy’s Wrecking and Pull-a-Part and parked the cars, permanently, along Emerald Lane near the Bowl.  “The cars belong to the homeowners, and there is no reason they can’t be parked in front of their houses.”  Kinder said that despite coming from the wrecking yard, the cars all have been freshly painted in neutral gray.  “I offered a special,” said yard owner Randy Evans. “At my paint shop, I power washed the cars and sprayed them, windows and trim, with a coat of metallic gray that I got surplus from a government auction”  The cars, Evans said, already had been stripped for parts but the chassis were “pretty clean” and still had tires.  Car body, paint job, tow over to Emerald Lane, $300, Evans said. “I was glad to get them off my lot.”  Chuckpo acting police chief  Lt. Abel Dick said that at the request of mayor Crane he had run the plates.  “They’re all registered to the various homeowners as non-op,” Dick said. “I don’t contemplate any action here.”

OH MY PAPA   At last some clarity on the rickshaw ordinance. At Wednesday council, the board unanimously approved a set of regulations for licensed rickshaws on Chuckwalla streets. Operators of licensed rickshaws now must have at the ready OSHA certified PAPA (powered air purifying) respirators, to be worn when the valley’s notoriously noxious air quality deteriorates to a particulate matter of 2.5 microns (PM 2.5) count of 60.  The battery powered respirators feature full face masks and are designed for jobs requiring physical exertion.  “They‘re frequently worn for wildfire suppression or by oilfield roustabouts,” according to Abe Franklin, equipment salesman for Valley Farm Supply.  Mayor Robert Crane said the city could not in good conscience allow rickshaw pullers to endanger their health by breathing the city's frequently polluted brew of dust, diesel exhaust and ag chemicals.  Other new rules involve age restrictions for operators (18 to 40) and equipment inspections to be done by Chuckpo (time permitting).

TOY TOWN  (Editor’s note:  Regarding the city planning commission’s approval last week of a development of disposable cardboard housing for low-income residents, to be built in the flood-prone Arroyo Seco wash south of town.  Part-time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, a freshman at Chuckwalla Junior College and a runner-up in the Imperial County Chess Bowl, submitted a term paper about the plan for her honors sociology class at the college.  Follows excerpts from her report:)

To build out the development the city council would have to pass an emergency ordinance overriding various sections of the building code in the interests of humanitarian assistance. As envisioned, the two-room cottages would be built from water-resistant cardboard panels on standard two-by-four framing. Foundations would be concrete blocks. The buildings would not be  plumbed or wired, the gravity-fed water supply coming from elevated tanks nearby, and 110-volt electricity directed to central distribution jack boxes with household sockets. Each cottage would have an outhouse with a composting toilet.  Thomas Betts, project manager, said the cost of each unit is estimated at $4,000.  “The house is designed to be disposable,” Betts said.  “If it’s washed away or blown over, it can be replaced at little additional cost.” The vision, Betts said, makes use of land contiguous to the city that otherwise would be unsuitable for housing.  The Arroyo Seco wash frequently is subject to flash flooding.  As recently as 2013, the swale of the wash temporarily became a lake suitable for kayaking.  “But mostly, it’s dry,” Betts said, “so why not use it to help solve our housing crisis.”  A sticking point in getting city approval has been the matter of insurance  Banks will not make loans for housing developments without it. Nor would future buyers of the cardboard houses be able to get coverage for the replacement costs in the likely event of flood.  “The issue is reinsurance,” said city manager Abe Franklin.  “The developer has formed his own insurance company but needs reinsurance to spread the liability.”  Betts said the hurdle is getting people comfortable with the idea of disposable housing.  “The equity is not in the house, but in the contract guaranteeing a damaged house will be replaced within weeks.”   

Shuttle Wired   Ed Meeks, co-owner of Bill and Ed’s Auto Repair, got a contract from the city council Tuesday night to retrofit the Hobbesianway tractor shuttle with an electric motor.  At the weekly meeting, the Chuckwalla council voted unanimously to pay Meeks $3500 to exchange the 1955 John Deere’s 60-hp gas motor with a used 72 volt Crown Swingmaster electric motor.  “This will do a lot for air quality,“ said mayor Robert Crane, “because that old John Deere has no pollution control and stinks pretty bad.“  The shuttle, a flatbed trailer set up with benches and pulled by the John Deere, trundles a three-mile route from the old Kmart parking lot  to the Greyhound station at Mercury Dr., delivering and picking up Snowbirders patronizing businesses along the main drag. According to Harold Stems, manager of the city’s maintenance yard, power for the tractor can be supplied by 20 confiscated golf cart  batteries now in the yard’s storage shed.  The batteries had been stolen last year from a garden supply warehouse in Riverside and used by the thieves for operating the hydraulic lifts on low riders.  “The cars had been impounded for various violations, and the warehouse people  didn’t want the batteries back, since they’d already collected the insurance,” Stems said.  Meeks and his partner run a side business converting gas cars to electric.  “We’ve done a  couple of dozen so far,” Meeks said. “We strip down light weight compact models from the salvage yard and put in used fork lift motors,” he said.  “The cars make good commuters.”

Dogs Gone   Regarding that distress signal two weeks ago from the Humane Society’s dog pound.  According to society director April Raines, the shelter is at full capacity because of an abundance of large canines that can’t find homes.  Raines said new arrivals, “the bigger breeds, Shepherds and Dobermans,” began being dropped off over the last few months until now there is no room for more.  “People bought these cute little puppies three years ago at the start of the Celestine Flu outbreak,” Raines said. “Now the dogs are eighty-pounds, and demand lots of food and attention.”  And if they haven’t been fully socialized they may no longer be welcome as family pets.  Raines said she never wants to euthanize a healthy animal but fears she may have no choice.  There may be a solution.  When the subject arose at Tuesday’s city council, councilman Henry Pipps, who is also CEO of Valley Vigilance, said he is talking with Raines about taking all the shelter’s large dogs for training at his company’s newly established Kennel Kamp, which prepares dogs for security work.  “Those big breeds need action and room,” Pipps said. “They won’t be happy in a backyard.”  Valley Vigilance already fields guard dogs that accompany the Martin Van Buren Elementary walking school bus, and provides packs which patrol the perimeter of the Marvin Gardens housing project.  Pipps said he sees an opportunity to provide canine security for the burgeoning plastic ziggurat at the Rez.  “I’ve already sent a query to the (Los Angeles) county’s department of sanitation suggesting that patrol dogs could help discourage theft.”   (Editor’s note:  Thieves, allegedly crossing over the bombing range from the Slabs, have been stealing blocks of compressed waste plastic from the Rez to fire illegal distilleries.)  Pipps added he also planned to suggest to the California Department of Corrections that dogs could benefit the supervision of off-site work crews from Ironwood. Over the past year several inmates have escaped while working with crews outside the prison walls.  “What I’d like to see is a grant from the state,” Pipps said. “Guard dogs aren’t pets,” he said, “the training is different. They’re only friendly with their handlers.”  And there is a distinction, he said, between guard dogs and attack dogs.  “True attack dogs usually come from Germany, are rigorously trained, and are expensive, about twenty grand each.”

This month’s self-published Kindle books by Tri-Desert authors

“Trodden Corns,” by Besos Amazn  The Sorrows of Young Besos, being the latest petulant stirrings from the Empire’s curmudgeonly gadfly

‘Zero Ohms,’ by Fever Childe  Self-help for workaholics.  Stop struggling, and surrender to the path of least resistance.

‘Win for Number One,’ by Everett Downs   More self-help.  How to recognize and overcome the enervating feelings of compassion and selflessness that stand in the way of success.  You don’t owe anybody.  Nobody else matters. So don’t encourage the needy.

“The Cavalier Garden of Romantic Posey,” by Chuckwalla High School English teacher Melinda Bates.  Rakes and Hoes.  

Roundabout?  At Tuesday’s meeting, the Chuckwalla city council tabled a recommendation from the planning commission to install a roundabout at the intersection of Hobbesianway and Mercury Dr.  “It’s a European kind of idea that people around here don’t get,” said councilman Tony Androtti, “Better would be a four-way, or maybe even a stop light.” At previous meetings, citizens had complained about the dangerous intersection, recounting incidents of near-collisions and pedestrian near-misses by cars blowing the stop signs on Mercury Dr. Councilman Henry Pipps said he could appreciate the reluctance of Chuckwallians to embrace foreign concepts such as the “glorietta,” but pointed out it was the least expensive option for improving safety. “A four-way means yellow flashers, and a light would be a major cost, maybe $50,000,” Pipps said.  “Maybe we could set up a tutorial on one of the side streets.”  Mayor Robert Crane, however, opted for putting the item over until the council reaches more of a consensus.

 

The Lumbee Master Vision   (Editor's note:  The Chuckwalla Chamber of Commerce held a closed board meeting Friday night to hear chamber president Bert Bertinelli spell out what he called the "Lumbee Indigenous Peoples' Master Vision" for the next decade. Bertinelli, who doubles as a paid spokesman for the Lumbee rez, opted to close the session to the press and to non-board members, but Reveille part-time intern Cheryl Weiss got hold of a transcript furnished by an auditor.)

In short, Bertinelli said the economic vision for the rez should build on the sovereign nation status, to exploit opportunities created by global warming, pollution, overpopulation, and state and federal bureaucratic inertia.  He said that alert Chuckwalla businessmen could also profit from some of the proposed actions. "The nation can expedite shelter options for displaced or surplus populations, it can sequester huge volumes of waste products, and it can become a national supplier of cannabis products."   According to Bertinelli, "the future is refugees," and the sprawling, mostly unoccupied reservation could accommodate myriad undocumented migrants, homeless persons, as well as the shiftless and penurious. "Cities and states, the feds, too, will pay good money to find a place to put the un-housed and unwanted." The nation, because it doesn't have zoning regulations, can create  overnight vast camps for thousands. "The indigenous nations have a tradition of temporary shelters for transients," Bertinelli said.  "We know about tents and hogans."  He said the nation could use the work of the University of Riverside's department of sustainability and resilience, for extreme heat strategies, for camp hygiene, for water supply, for internal security. "Compost toilets, shade awnings, water buffaloes (water tanks), and maybe Valley Vigilance, which already on the Rez to guard the plastic trash."  The Lumbee nation currently has contracts with multiple agencies to store waste.  The City of Los Angeles operates a spur rail-line to freight bales of plastic waste to be stored in perpetuity inside the Watahebi Meteor Crater.  Riverside County operates a tire incinerator of the Rez. The state of California recently opened a facility to dismantle and recycle car batteries.  "Trash and junk everywhere, and no place to put it," Bertinelli said.  "A huge opportunity."  Bertinelli said that once bureaucrats realized agencies could offload surplus people and waste without the usual tangles, "the money will start to flow."  Particularly with the potential for growing weed. The backpacker camp already has a five acre pot garden tended by residents, with the product sold at the casino tobacco shop.  Plus dozens of more informal gardens dotted around an area the size of New Hampshire.  Chuckwalla, being adjacent to the rez, was bound to prosper as a supply hub.  "There's money in this for everybody," the chamber president said. "The sky's the limit."  Cheryl Weiss

Letter to the Editor   Besos again      

“I know that the Reveille is too dainty to use anything other than euphemism and circumlocution when discussing anything earthy, and so no surprise to me at the paper‘s recent rendering of a popular compound curse word as “motherf*****.”   It started me thinking.  Why is this asterisk-laden word on everybody’s lips on all occasions around here? What does it really mean?  Merriam: a despicable cretin, or sometimes, someone formidable or impressive. But isn’t the root of the slur referencing an unspeakable injury and deeply repulsive affront to the principle actor in everybody’s life.? So I started thinking about mothers, and particularly about the place of mothers in a community like Chuckwalla, impoverished, crime-ridden , and (another Reveille favorite) “low-information.”  Now for the intuitive leap.  Could “mothers” be the key to cleaning up this blighted mess of a burg?   It’s the mothers who have borne the horror of the latest round of gang-related shootings.  Sons shot, sons jailed.  What if the city recruited some of these stricken moms into some kind of deputized committee of vigilance?  One of the problems for our putative crime fighter (Chuckpo) is that nobody trusts the cops or will even speak to them. Even if the cops know the gangsters or their whereabouts, no witness is willing to cooperate or give evidence to make an arrest or a case.  But the moms know who these motherf****** are. The moms live in the same neighborhood; they know by name and face the criminals who entice their sons into crimes.  Righteous fearless moms, organized and empowered with badges and weapons, could root out the bastards corrupting our town.  Think of the Mambas, tough female rangers in game parks, hunting down poachers.  Think of the tough, case-bitten women who run Amtrak dining cars.  People not to be f***ed with.  Give moms police powers and police tools, and they could give a new meaning to “motherf*****.”   Besos Amazn

 

Spelling “B”  When it comes to style, the editor sometimes has to put our foot down.  Is it going to be “breatharian” or “breathairian?”  One might think that since the Los Angeles-based cult believes  that the human body can subsist on air alone, with no further nourishment, then the logical root would be “breath air.”  But we note that the so-called sectarian faction headquartered in the rambling two-story on Gem St. near the JC campus has a sign out front announcing “Breatharian House.”  Spokesperson Jill Meadows, a 19-year-old sophomore at the JC, says it’s no misspelling.  “We are a secular apostate offshoot,” she says, advocating a minimalist  vegan diet of raw vegetables and fruits. “We distinguish ourselves by the spelling.”  Therefore the royal edict:  since the Reveille’s coverage focuses on the doings of the house, rather than of the larger cult, breatharian, and breatharianism will be the Reveille’s style.

 

Toilet and Trouble.  Editor’s note:  A gushing  freshet of emails in response to intern reporter Cheryl Weiss’ feature last week on the dearth of public conveniences in Chuckwalla.  No city-managed public loos, in the downtown or anywhere else; no rest stops at the off-ramps; no chemical cans at the bus stops.  And all the restaurants and saloons posted with forbidding notices: “Restrooms for customers only!”   Some of our  enterprising citizenry have found answers for the urgent bladder problem. Here’s one missive that may be helpful.

 

“I carry a pickle jar in my backpack.  The secret is loose trousers, so you can work in the jar easily below the belt without drawing attention.  During the Celestine Flu outbreak when public johns everywhere were closed,  I used the jar almost every day when I was out and about.  On the trolley platform I pretended to by examining the schedule; on the street just about anywhere that’s sort of out of the way; even on the bus, because of social distancing, it’s possible.  The jar needs a lid with a tight seal, which should go on before trying to retrieve the jar.  Actually, I don’t use a pickle jar anymore.  I had to go while I was in the supermarket parking lot and had  found a semi-secluded spot under a tree when I realized the glass jar had broken inside my pack.  I’m glad I had loose trousers.  I peed down the side of my leg into my sock, and didn’t get my pants wet.  But now I carry an empty  plastic peanut butter jar.  P.S. (ha ha) No reasons girls can’t do the same if they have one of those cup funnels.”

(The writer signed his name but we’re using “Anonymous’ for now.)

Like a carburetor    A brief from frugal year-round tent camper Beet Bailey tells us about a venturi trailer she saw at the Journey’s End mobile home park on Amethyst Way.  “The 46-foot-long single wide has been positioned so the front end faces the prevailing northwesterly breeze.  The bay window has been removed, the opening enlarged and covered with porous filtering cloth.  Most of the back end has also been cut out, creating a long breezeway for cooling. “It’s the venturi effect with the constricted space causing  a lowering of air pressure that speeds the air through the trailer,” Beet says.   The trailer’s owner, Tom Franks, claims the breeze does a lot to temper the 100 degree-plus summertime temps.  He has also put aluminum panels on his roof, and shade awnings all around.

(Editor's note:  Reveille intern reporter Cheryl Weiss tells us that at Wednesday's council meeting several speakers during public comment groused about the alleged failings of Desert Empire Transit.  According to the speakers, the free buses don't run on time, have rude drivers, are dirty, and aren't safe for women and children because of unruly or intoxicated patrons.  We asked Weiss to look into this, but apparently DET's head guy, Arnold Praatt, isn't taking her calls, and nobody else is authorized to speak for the bus line.  However, we did receive this press release from Praatt.)

The DET visioning statement of long-term development goals

The current DET goals encompass a five-year-and-outward vision of safe and reliable service which will include expanding and diversifying our personnel investment.   The department's leadership team has a strong managerial background enabling a department-wide effort of external re-branding as well as implementing performance oversight and internal benchmarks emphasizing core values and collaborative partnerships to align services with appropriate economic development opportunities that will enhance overall mobility initiatives.  According to DET Managing Director Arnold Praatt, "the key goal will be public accountability in terms of service and full transparency of our role in the community and commitment to diversifying our workforce. You know where you're going when you're heading in the right direction for success," Praatt said.

Tick Talk   In the latest communiqué to the Reveille,  lone wolf eco-terrorist Andy Padilla, the city’s elusive green guerrilla, takes responsibility  for the recently-discovered infestation of black-legged ticks at the Tiny Town miniature golf course, and allegedly at the county dog park on Mercury Dr.  Padilla claims to have raised the ticks (Borrelis bucqdorferi) at his secret lab in the Scorpion Mountains and to have infected the sesame seed-sized insects with Lyme Disease.  The Imperial County Health Department issued a bulletin after receiving reports from pee wee golfers about finding ticks on their clothing.  The health notice, along with the usual caveats about ticks, said an inspector had collected specimens from Tiny Town and had forwarded the samples for analysis at the county’s Riverside lab. Abe Studenitz, owner of Tiny Town Amusements, said he had closed the popular attraction for two days last week while an exterminator, Ace M Pest Control, sprayed the area. The county health inspector also checked the county dog park but found no ticks.  In his communiqué,  Padilla offers no motives for his latest alleged attacks but in the past he has cited his opposition to “bourgeois indifference” to climate change.  (Editor’s note:  The county dog park has been closed since December pending settlement of litigation claiming that the county had failed to follow environmental guidelines regarding waste.  The lawsuit, filed by the Green Zone Café board of directors, alleges that the county’s environmental review failed to consider the potential health hazards of feces-laden dust on residents of Sobrantes Estates, directly downwind from the park.)

Herd 'em in   The death of a child cyclist struck down by a monster pickup on Pricklypear Way north of town has occasioned a community meeting that ended with a resolution to hire private security to usher bicycling school children to their classrooms.  An as yet unidentified eight-year-old was killed last Wednesday when a oversize GMC pickup driven by Sy Johnson, 20, made an abrupt turn into a driveway.  According to Pricklypear Way resident Shirley Knight, the ad hoc group voted to ask Valley Vigilance Security to provide bicycle outriders to accompany the several dozen neighborhood children who on school days ride thier bikes to school.  "There needs to be a dedicated bike lane along Pricklypear (which is an arterial street with a posted speed limit of 35 mph) but we've been told by the mayor that the city hasn't any money for street improvements."  Instead, the neighbors agreed to assess themselves to hire security to ride along with a pod of student cyclists. "We want highly visible adult officers wearing cameras," Knight said.  A Chuckpo spokesperson said the Pricklypear accident is under investigation and no charges have been filed.

This little red light of mine  Apparently the Little Red Songbook sing-along in Victory Park will go on as scheduled for Wednesday noon.  The Breatharian House duo,  A Pair of Chicks, will perform works from the Wobbly songbook, followed by a program of spirituals from the OMG Youth Ministry’s vocal  trio, the Amazing Graces.   The unusual double bill represents a conciliation brought about through the intercession of Chuckwalla mayor Robert Crane. The blurb in the Reveille announcing the event sparked an angry email from OMG Youth Ministry director Byron Fistule in which he threatened picketing of the Breatharian duo‘s performance.  “The Hail Adoni  Baptist Church (parent of the OMGYM) unalterably condemns Breatharianism in all its parts,” said Fistule, who promised to drown out “caterwauling socialism” with a vociferous protest.  It was the conciliating mayor who smoothed feathers by suggesting the concert also could be an opportunity to showcase the talents of the Graces, “whose voices often it’s been my pleasure to enjoy in church.”  The Chicks and the Graces, Crane said, are “wonderful young women who should get every chance to reach out to the community.”  The Chicks will perform “Solidarity Forever.”  Hook, Line and Sinker,”  and “Worthless is the Freedom Bought.“ The Graces will cover “Jesus Paid it All,” “To God be the Glory,“ and “The Old Rugged Cross.“  The singers will close out the concert by joining voices for  “If I Had a Hammer.”

Refining the flour  UC Riverside’s satellite department of sustainability and resilience, at the Chuckwalla JC campus, has refined its recipe for  the school’s much ballyhooed survival biscuit, improving the cereal powerhouse that provides battered heat refugees with complete nutrition in one hard cracker.  The biscuit, meant to be as imperishable as Royal Navy hardtack, contains all the vitamins and minerals that are on the Wheaties label, plus complete protein, gut probiotics, and a dose of fiber.  The new recipe is also easier to bake. “After mixing the easily obtained half dozen ingredients, the biscuit dough can be baked in a simple solar oven,” said Brad Steffle, a UC resilience specialist.  Or lacking an oven, the biscuits can be baked like sun-dried bricks in the searing afternoon of the apocalyptic Southern Hemisphere.  “Just put the patty on a flat stone in full sun,” Steffle said.  To be edible, however, the baked biscuit has to be dipped in liquid.

The latest self-published Amazon  e-books from Desert Empire authors

“Blind, Deaf, and Nuts,” the anonymous memoirs of a Chuckwalla assisted living caregiver.

“Every Person for Themselves,” By Faith Dennis, the Palo Verde survivalist and food hoarder. An improving tract for the improvident, on the theme of “you’d better watch out..”

“Beam in My Own Eye,” by Besos Amazn.  Another dash of bitters from the local gadfly who haunts the columns of the Reveille’s letters page.

“Eyeball and Thumb, a Heuristical Journey,” by Blythe's Terry Lott.   The local inventor and tinkerer offers rough-and-ready rules for navigating the common perplexities of life.

“The Primate Diet,” by Evan Fields.  Bananas and peanuts? The Sometimes Spring author and  world traveler "forages and nibbles" through the grocery produce aisles to create a no-cooking, high fiber natural diet based on fruits and nuts.

“Romanian Baby,” by Skylar Plimsoll.  The autobiography of an abandoned infant raised in a Catholic orphanage located on a remote desert religious retreat, his horrific mistreatment, and subsequent life of crime.

“Spitting Buttends,” by Besos Amazn again.  Another motley collection of polemics from the prolific local gadfly who seems to have a contrarian opinion about everything.

 

OBSERVATORY

Snake handling    The Borrows Gang rattlesnake feed faces no shortage of serpents for the annual barbeque held at the gang’s rustic encampment near the old Frog Skin mine south of town.  Event spokesman and Borrows resident Bo Keeley said the rattlesnake poaching of the previous year has been nipped by “vigorous measures“ to ensure a plentiful supply of the toothsome reptiles.  Last season, poachers from Texas cleaned out the major nests around town to supply the Big Springs, Texas, rattlesnake roundup and cook-off, which had come up short because of a prolonged drought and an outbreak of plague that decimated the rodent population, the rattlesnakes’ principle nourishment.  “We let the Texans know what we thought about snake rustling,” Keeley said. Still, because of last year’s depredations, the rattlesnake crop has diminished, but, thankfully, there is Billy Everett’s snake farm.  “Billy has raised up a big ball of snakes for us,” Keeley said. And he said the meat will be delicate and flavorful, since the snakes have been raised entirely on white laboratory mice. “Your wild rattler takes a varied diet of  rats, lizards and toads, which can make the meat a little gamey,” Keeley said.  “Billy’s snakes are pure sirloin.”

 

Tape Worm  An American Legionnaire who wishes anonymity secretly taped the talk given Friday night at  Legion Lodge by Chamber chief Bert Bertinelli touting the new Pacific Rim Co-Prosperity Sphere,  Bertinelli calling it "a win-win for all," particularly for the Chuckwalla alfalfa farmers who have found a market in China.  Bert, on tape:  "It's also win-win for People of Redness who finally are getting a little more of a taste, with the trash incinerator and the plastic dump. (Editor's note:  Bertinelli is a paid spokesperson for the Lumbee Nation).  "So I'm thinking:  celebration.  A pow-wow at the Rez. What about an Alfalfa Fest at the casino?  A way to celebrate prosperity.  A huge gala.  Celebrities. The casino girls could put on a Miss Alfalfa pageant. The showgirls.  Bonnie Yoni and Downey Dent.  Maybe a  special appearance by Melanie Duggs flashing her Twin 44s.  The Roarin' Forties. Dance of the Implants.  We could fly in some Chinese from Long Beach.  A round of golf at the Dunes and then the casino.  And it's a peace gathering.  Everybody invited:  the hay farmers, the dairymen, the squires who sold out to the water district.  We could bring in some Koreans too.  Make it a memorial night for the Chosan Pearl.”  (Editor's note:  The Korean bulk carrier Chosan Pearl rolled over and sank when a load of alfalfa on deck got soaked in unexpected heavy weather).  “The Nation is looking at the Rim, and the East is Red.  The Nation partnered with the Chinese gas plant; it partnered with Sung Il on the Alien Museum.  Korean patronage at the casino? Saturday night,  forty percent.  Comes over from Monterey Park  The Sphere has a dome over the Rez."  Reached at the Chamber office, Bertinelli at first denied making the remarks, but after listening to the tape, claimed it had been maliciously edited.

Name Game  Our reporter didn’t catch his name but some citizen at the Wednesday night council meeting’s  public comment took umbrage about the names of the saloons along Hobbesianway. “We need remediation,” he said, to avoid visitors’ taking offense while cruising the town’s main drag.  What?  The three bars located on downtown Hobbesianway are the Horney Toad, the Beaver Lodge, and the Oar House.

A mobile medical clinic sponsored by the Southern California Methodist Council will be in Chuckwalla this weekend, offering free health care to all in the Albertsons parking lot.  The free clinic, housed in half a dozen buses, crisscrosses the state with a contingent of volunteer doctors and nurses. “It’s kind of a traveling circus,” said Robert Delaney, the clinic director. “We come to town, set up our tents, and make people feel better.” Delaney said the clinic offers first aid, consultations, prescriptive meds, and limited surgical procedures. “A lot of people can’t afford insurance,” he said, “but a lot of medicine is fairly straight forward and not expensive.  We can clean up wounds, diagnose problems, prescribe antibiotics, surgically remove skin cancers and actinic lesions.  We provide counseling about a healthy lifestyle.” Although sponsored by the Methodists, the service is open to all, and there’s no proselytizing, Delaney said. A traveling free dental clinic also visits Chuckwalla annually.  That clinic is sponsored by the Chinese labor battalion installing the co-generation unit at the gas plant.

Alphas (Editor’s note:  A Chuckwalla JC adjunct professor of sociology, Herman Nesbitt, recently published in a peer-reviewed national journal the results of a year-long study into how hierarchies are formed.  In his article appearing in The Sociobiotics Journal Nesbitt details his experiments into the social behaviors that divide random groups into domineering Alphas and complacent Betas.  Part-time Reveille intern Cheryl Weiss, a freshman hono rs student at the college, finds out more.)

During an interview in his shared college office, adjunct professor Nesbitt said his signal experimental model, replicated a dozen times, demonstrated how Alphas self-identify in a random group and quickly join together as the dominant faction.  “In the main outline of the experiment, a student-actor would take the platform in front of random assortments of students who thought they had come to a classroom to hear a lecture from an off-campus speaker.  Instead the student-actor behaves arrogantly, insults the audience, and is generally obnoxious.  Inevitably, most of the audience, the Betas,  react with facial expressions and body language showing they are offended, but otherwise are quiescent.  Alphas, however, immediately push back, verbally engaging the actor and bandying insults.  The most interesting behavior, and this happened every time, was that the Alphas, who didn’t know each other, all rise from their seats and physically gather together in front of the stage, directly confronting the actor.  It’s as if they are announcing, ‘We are in charge here.”  The experiment is arranged so that all the audience members are strangers to each other, but every time the dominant Alphas in the group identify themselves and join together.  It is my hypothesis that this behavior may explain historically how the aristocratic classes emerged. Some recent intriguing studies with rat populations point in the same direction.”  Cheryl Weiss

New Cafe in Town  A name for the new coffee spot adjacent to the Castaways senior hostel is still in flux, as the three owners haven’t settled.  The temporary banner across the entrance reads Classless Society, "but none of us likes it," says Reynold Phelps, one of the owners. Too precious. "We want a name that references our Marxist roots, and that underscores the  paradigm shift in our thinking on non-exploitative labor.”  Phelps say the problem with restaurants in general is that they foster subserviance and class distinction, with the dichotomy between waiters and entitled clients.  “We see no reason why one person should serve another or otherwise be placed in an inferior relationship," Phelps says.  "Why should anyone else bring your plate or bus your table?”  The three owners (the other two are Barrie Dennison, and Andrew Horton) are Castaways residents who make up the entire membership of Chuckwalla’s Socialist Workers Union, a Trotskyist group.  “We were all members of the Spartacus League in Brooklyn, and forty years later happenstance brought us together here.”  In the new cafe diners schlep their own food from the kitchen, pour their own coffee, and clean up their own table. “There’s an area where people can wash and rack their dishes, modeled on the idea of a hostel breakfast kitchen, where everybody takes care of himself,” Phelps said. As for the food, "our first priority is good nutrition." Other signs of socialism:  the cafe menu prices will be noticeably below market, and all of us get the same wage. Historically, Trotskyite socialist groups have been riven by infighting, and the Socialist Workers Union in Chuckwalla  is no different.  “We have two factions and three tendencies,”Phelps said. “My suggestion for a name was The Revisionists." 

Porphoria?  The Rs Tres bilingual charter school will be holding a bake sale tomorrow at noon to raise money for its annual Spelling Bee to be held next month.  The Christian elementary school, which emphasizes scholastic  fundamentals and traditional values, meets in the home of OMG Youth Ministry pastor Byron Fistule.  The bake sale, featuring homemade cupcakes and doughnuts, will be held at Victory Park, corner of Mercury Way and Edison.  Last year’s Bee winner, Darjeen Patel, got the medal for spelling, pronouncing and defining  PORPHORIA. (Sponsored)

News junket   Donald Chan, prexy at Chuckwalla JC, has an Aero Commander single engine plane that he frequently uses to hop over to Palm Springs for a Saturday night poker session.  On the way home Sunday morning he brings a dozen copies of the New York Times to distribute to a dwindling cadre of loyal Times readers.  He says he never thought he’d be a paper boy at his age but his select clientele of  the town’s elite still are willing to subscribe to a real newspaper to accompany the scones and coffee at the Your Toast airport café.

Rickshaws Redux  Following a much-noticed New York Times article about the sudden appearance of rickshaws on Chuckwalla streets, the city council Wednesday once again turned to the knotty question of how best to license and regulate the burgeoning number of human-powered conveyances.  "This hit-piece has cast a dark shadow on our city," said Mayor Robert Crane. "It made us look like we were returning to slavery."  The Times photo accompanying the article showed a man identified as an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador pulling a home-made rickshaw carrying an unidentified portly Caucasian burgher. Crane said the current rickshaw ordinance needed to be amended to add stricter penalties for operating unlicensed rickshaws.   Under regulations put in place last month, rickshaw operators must pay a license fee, pass a medical checkup, and be between the ages of 18 and 35. Operators must also wear forced-air HEPA respirators on days when atmospheric PM2.5 is greater than 100 ppm. Penalties for non-compliance, however, only involve minor fines.  Councilman Henry Pipps said the Times article also mentioned the upside of rickshaws.  "They don't pollute, and they reduce congestion by giving rides to the elderly going to the doctor or the grocery store." At present Chuckwalla has four licensed rickshaw operators:  Rickety Rick's, the original operator, founded by junior college students; Breatharian Commune, which specializes in short trips for the elderly and disabled; Harmony House, which serves the un-housed and car-less; and Castaways Hostel, generally serving the tavern trade.  The Times article, however, focused on "gypsy rickshaws" pulled by paperless border crossers from Mexico and Central America who congregate at the former Kmart parking lot to offer rides to snowbirds heading to Albertsons.  "This is a health and safety issue," Crane said. "Some of those Jerry-built contraptions are falling apart."   Acting police chief Abel Dick said his officers have issued several tickets to operators of unlicensed rickshaws but doubted the tickets would hold up in court.  "The problem is the law doesn't clearly define a rickshaw," Dick said, "We're treating them as bicycles, but they could be pedestrians." Dick added that the gypsy operators worked for  "suggested donations' rather than fares, which further complicated the legal picture.  After an hour's desultory debate, the matter was moved to an ad hoc committee to be formed later.

Pillow Arrangement with Wanda  Fridays, 7-8 p.m. Students should bring seven pillows  Wanda shows how to pile the pillows for a good night’s rest, or for relaxing with a book, or for binge-watching television.   The reclining body needs support under the arms, the small of the back and the knees.  Wanda says people should never sit to read.  The reader needs to be reclining, with pillows supporting the back and head, both arms, and under the knees and feet.  Wanda’s Yoga 486 Hobbesianway. (Sponsored)

Innards in vitro  The kidney, liver and tripes in the cold case at a local meat market made up part of the lesson plan on a recent Chuckwalla High School biology class field trip. Some parents didn't like having their kids with the cuts.  The Chuckwalla district school board met in closed session Tuesday to review "numerous parental complaints" about a school field trip that took a biology class to Clover Meats on Victory Dr. to study in vitrus the internal organs of cows and pigs on display for sale in the cold case. Board members meeting in executive session following the regularly scheduled public meeting declined to comment about the complaints, but Reveille sources revealed that several parents had phoned high school principal Merrit Williams to say the study session at the meat market was inappropriate.  Allegedly one mom went so far as to call it "repugnant."  The only teacher who oversees a biology class at the high is Mary Slatter, who was hired last year straight out of San Jose State University.  Slatter declined to comment, but one of her students said the class went to the meat market because "they won't give us cats."  In past years, biology students at the school have dissected cats as a term project, but the dissection module has been discontinued this year over concerns about the provenance of the specimens.  The student said that class looked at kidneys and livers, sweetmeats and tripes, and discussed the functions of these organs in mammals.  Jose Rivera, the lead butcher at the market, said the group of some dozen students were respectful and interested.  Rivera offered to show the students a carcass he had hanging in the back room, and the organ meats he had removed.  "The kids really paid attention to the teacher," Rivera said, "I've been a butcher thirty years, and I learned something."

 

Pipps Interview continued   (Editor’s note:  A Leaders in Motion interview with City Councilman Henry Pipps was abridged last week for lack of space.  Part-time reporter Cheryl Weiss conducted the interview, which continues below.  Frederica is Pipps’ infant daughter:

Weiss: So how’s Frederica?

Pipps:  A spoiled brat like her mom.

Weiss: Uhm. You and Poppy?

Pipps:  We’re lifers.  Ball and chain.

Weiss: Personal questions?

Pipps:  Go.

Weiss: I was two classes behind you.  So how did you and Poppy…?

Pipps:  Well, you must know Poppy, she was in your class. One of the elite mean girls. Disdained everybody.  You probably remember how she mocked you and the other Four-O girls at that assembly. She was head cheerleader and the school beauty. I was the guy who wore his scout uniform to class every day.  And I kind of had a reputation as…

Weiss: As a hooligan.

Pipps:  Exactly.  Looked like one too.  Obviously wasn’t in her clique.  I didn’t really ever talk to her until she was kidnapped by that naked lunatic…

Weiss: The disbarred Lumbee.  He was taking her to the Rez.

Pipps:  To the casino, where somebody, I think Bertinelli, had the idea she’d go full monty on stage…

Weiss: You rescued her.

Pipps:  Fred called me.  He knew Troop 354 taught bushcraft at Wankan Tanka (high school.)  He figured I knew the Rez. Chuckpo isn’t allowed out there, and the Rez cops never answer the phone.  So he asked me to go get her.

Weiss: Wasn’t there some kind of running gun battle?

Pipps:  Something like that.  I caught up with the loon before he got to the casino. He wanted to argue the argument, but what I did not expect, Poppy didn’t want to be rescued.  She’d never been to the casino.  So after the loon was out of the argument, I had to reverse kidnap Poppy.  I threw a clove hitch around her wrists and tossed her in the back seat.  Then a truckload of goons from the casino came after us.  A few shots fired in the air.  That was the so-called running gun battle.

Weiss: Was it love at first sight?

Pipps:  It was a fight from the start. Poppy is an athlete.  You’ve seen her routines. She bit and kicked and screamed her head off.  She screamed at Fred over the phone. They were having some kind of beef.  She kicked my leg purple. I told Fred she was safe and that I’d bring her home after she cooled off.

Weiss: What did you do with her?

Pipps:  I took her to a cabin that the troop has up on Scorpion Peak.  As soon as I untied her wrists she started punching me like the heavy bag.   She was screaming and spitting,  and we were rolling around on the floor…

Weiss: You didn’t…?

Pipps:  We did.  But at the end of the fight it was pretty much consensual.  After that every week she’d sneak out and we’d get together.  Pretty soon she’s pregnant and I went to see Fred.  He pulled Poppy out of school and we got married in Vegas.  Then he figured out a way for me to support her.

Weiss: The city council.  He put up the money?

Pipps:  There wasn’t much money spent.  I was coming in late as a write-in candidate.  He just spun his Rollo-dex, called in chits, arm-twisted a little  A Chuckwalla by-election is low turnout, and I had the advantage of the dog issue.

(Editor’s note: Just before the election, Pipps led Troop 354 in rounding up packs of feral dogs that had been attacking pedestrians and cyclists in the Arroyo Cholo neighborhoods.)

Weiss: What happened to all those dogs?

Pipps:  A few of them adopted. Those sick or incorrigible were put down. Troop 354 took a dozen or so prospects to train for the checkpoints.  The Chinese labor battalion took some to use as guard dogs for the gas plant.

Weiss: You’ve had to recuse yourself a lot on the council.

Pipps:  Anything directly related to Fred.  Indirectly I often vote against his overall business interests, which align with those of Bertinelli and the chamber.  I told him from the start I wouldn‘t vote with the chamber. The city has no money, and if it weren't for the Marvin Gardens (apartments) mess, we’d be in state receivership.  I try to think of improvements, like the traffic cone bike lanes, that are cheap or no-cost. The chamber is against anything different or that alarms the merchants.

Weiss: How old is Frederica now?

Pipps:  Two.  And she’s going to be a handful.

(Editor’s note: The Marvin Gardens low-income apartments were funded by a city deal so complicated and toxic that the state receivers won’t touch it.)

Observatory  The weekly meander around the Tri-Desert Empire

Leaders in Motion. The Reveille’s interviews with the Desert Empire’s vanguard personalities.  This week part-time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, a runner up in the Imperial County Junior Chess Bowl, talks with city councilman Henry Pipps.

(Editor’s note:  Pipps became the youngest elected official in Chuckwalla history after his write-in victory at the age of 18.  He is also CEO of the security company Valley Vigilance, as well as scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 354.)

Weiss:  So the contract with Juche House?

Pipps:  Hi, Cheryl.  Congrats on the chess bowl.  Some of the women staying at Juche House (a shelter for abused women) have jobs at the packing plant. The house doesn’t have a van these days, and the city bus makes so many stops that it’s quicker to walk the mile or so to the sheds.  But some of the women reported feeling uncomfortable because they were being harassed by knuckleheads.  They came up with the idea of a walking labor bus to get them to work.

Weiss:  You provide the security.

Pipps:  Valley Vigilance has contracted to provide two guards and a dog to escort the dozen or so women to the sheds.  It’s pretty much the same kind of deal as the our walking school bus for Martin Van Buren (elementary school). Or our escort for the sophomore girls spirit team.

Weiss:  So does your father-in-law Fred Pease pay the tab?

Pipps:  Yes.  Pease Packing pays the bill.

Weiss:  Any conflict here?

Pipps.  I don’t think so.  It isn’t city money.  As you know, I’m married to Poppy (a Pease daughter) so I know Fred. When he heard about workers being hassled by knuckleheads, he asked for help.  It’s his peak season, and along with humanitarian concerns, he doesn’t want his work force bothered. 

Weiss:  What’s the money?

Pipps:  Two guards, twelve hours a week, ten bucks an hour per guard.

Weiss:  Speaking of Fred, what’s the latest on the bridge?

(Editor’s note:  In a communiqué to the Reveille, lone wolf eco-terrorist Andy Padilla claimed responsibility for the explosion that crippled the newly-built bridge crossing Arroyo Seco.  The bridge was part of a new paved road linking Chuckwalla to a Pease Associates affordable housing complex now under construction.  Residents have staged protests against both the road and the housing, citing worries about traffic and noise, and saboteurs have pockmarked the new road with “artificial potholes.”)

 Pipps:  I recused myself.  I would have voted against the road.  The people out there want to keep the rural character and don‘t want pavement. And the city doesn’t have the dough for new roads.  The council had said it only would repair the arterials downtown.

Weiss:  Until Fred Pease twisted some arms.

Pipps:  No comment. This may solve itself  because we don’t have money to fix that bridge.

Weiss:  I heard you’re now flying drones out at the checkpoints.

Pipps: At the Intaglio Junction checkpoint.  That’s the main south-to-north route and because of terrain the junction is hard to avoid, what with the arroyos and washes.  But some of the smugglers have been cutting foot paths over the buttes.  The Pathfinders have been sending out camera drones.

Weiss:  Does that work?

Pipps:  Sort of.  Not at night.  We intercepted a few of the mules as they reentered the main trail.

 (Editor’s note: As scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 354 Pipps oversees the Pathfinder Scouts manning the interdiction checkpoints south of town.)

 Weiss:  Is it hard to become a Pathfinder?

Pipps:  You have to be fourteen, vision corrected to 20/30, able to carry 40 pounds three miles in 50 minutes. Ten pull-ups, fifty pushups. A C-average in school.  No police record.

Weiss:  Do Pathfinders go straight to Valley Vigilance?

Pitts:  Sometimes.  You have to be 18 for a guard card.  We hire younger kids to work in the kennel and the garage.  Getting through “Really, Dude?” (the company’s training program) can take three months.  But Pathfinders is great preparation for security.

Weiss:  Since you took over as CEO the company has grown.  What do you have now?

Pitts:  Starting out, we had sophomore girls and the high school gate.  Then we did the Red-Yellow game, and picked up the Yellowjacket events. We got Sunday Thunder stock car and tailgate swap meet.  That’s big. Then Marvin Gardens housing, the Horny Toad and Rez casino mud wrestling, the auto graveyard, the plastic dump on the Rez. Pele Verde hospital.  The walking school bus, and now the Juche House. We have a contract with Chuckpo for additional staffing as needed. We do the Arroyo Cholo bike trail for the neighborhood association  We provide security teams for the JC’s sand fly study, and the sustainability and resilience project.  It’s a full plate.

Weiss:  You getting rich?

Pipps:  I take the same $15 an hour pay as a senior guard.  Fred gave Poppy a house, and we’re modest. There’s a lot of company overhead:  the dog kennel, the training, the dune buggies.  And every contract means more hires.

Weiss:  How many women?

Pipps:  We now have 15 female guards.

Weiss:  Including Thunderclap.

Pipps:  Thunderclap and some other Soiled Doves moonlight at the tailgate swap meet.  They’re a big help in keeping things calm. They can kid the knuckleheads.

 (Editor’s note: The Soiled Doves are a mud wrestling team.)

 Weiss:  Thanks,  Henry.  Go Jackets!

Pipps:  Jacket Power!

Heat Trap  Press release from the UC Riverside Department of Sustainability and Resilience:  Students from the department's satellite campus at Chuckwalla JC have started construction of a model heat refuge designed for survivors in areas made uninhabitable by changing climate. The refuge incorporates ideas from vernacular buildings in tropical and desert regions, including heat chimneys, breezeways, evaporative walls, primitive heat pumps and cooling shafts. "We are designing for ground temperatures of between 160-180 degrees," said Arnold Schwerin, a resilience  methodology graduate student, "To have any change of survival, any remaining inhabitants will have to cool the ground immediately around the refuge, reducing the ground temperature  in a 30-foot radius to no more than 120 degrees." This can be done through a combination of shading and reflectors, such as tarps and awnings and reflective surfaces. The refuge, able to accommodate four occupants, will sustain life during the punishing afternoon hours.  After sunset, the occupants may be able to emerge to seek food and water.  "It will be a nocturnal life," Schwerin said.

 

Reminder:  Load and Lock Mini-Storage, 2020 Highbeamn Way,  offers a winter Sno-Bird special. A five by eight locker for $40 a month.  Owner Jeff Trelawney says locals should also consider the offer.  "We live in an area simultaneously threatened by wildfire, floods, windstorms, and a rising crime rate. “When disaster strikes it's good to know your irreplaceable belongings are safe."  Sponsored

Editor’s  note: The original script for  the 1949 film ”Sands of Iwo Jima" had the Duke saying, "Load and lock!"  The writer Harry Brown took the command directly from the Marine Corps manual for the M1, and it makes sense.  The round is loaded into the chamber and the breech bolt is locked into place. It was the director Allan Dwan who decided the line sounded better as "Lock and load!"  The Duke's authoritative delivery made the three words synonymous with "Get ready for action!"

Homeward Bound  A regular at the Brewhaha Saloon reports that new lapel stickers are available at the bar:  "Hi, my name is (blank).  If I appear lost, take me to the nearest police station."  Or maybe somebody could call a cab.

Royal Merriment   King Cole Club marijuana dispensary at 440 Mercury Drive will host an open house Wednesday starting at noon to celebrate the company's new brand of cannabis edibles.  "We fill the pipe, we fill the bowl." (Sponsored)

Third Age  The Chuckwalla Tri-peds seniors hiking club will meet Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Gypsy Boots Memorial Bench in front of the old Greyhound Station for a five-miler along the Arroyo Cholo Trail.  Lunch, water, sturdy boots. (Sponsored).

Celestial Harp of Healing and Cassiopeia Skyfish will lead a sound healing group chant and Om Mantra during the annual Lavender Labyrinth Sound Bath Experience starting at 7 p.m. at the Green Zone Cafe.  Bring gongs, crystals, singing bowls, hand pans, mono chords, chimes, drums and vocals. (Sponsored)

Humpty Dumpling Chinese Restaurant. Dim Sum, Won Ton, and Pot stickers  Birthdays. Weddings, Big parties.  We can put it together.  (Sponsored)

Straight from Pyongyang   Genuine quilted cotton padded jackets from North Korea.  These thick hand-sewn winter jackets are designed for rough use and cold nights.  As warm as goose down for half the price. Special shipment, numbers limited. Dwayne’s Sporting Oasis, Amethyst Dr. at Quartzsite Way.  (Sponsored)   

(Editor’s note: Textiles are the leading export from North Korea after coal and surplus labor.)

Police Presence  Readers are asking about the empty squad car permanently parked in front of the Breadfruit Café, corner of Hobbesianway and Mercury Dr.  Chuckpo acting chief lieutenant Dick says its purpose is to temper the heedless driving habits of sno-birds headed from the freeway to Albertsons.  “We have a spare squad car but no spare officer to use it,” Dick says, “The car’s presence slows down speeders.”   Maybe a uniformed department store mannequin behind the wheel? No wages or benefits.

Treat the rich  (Editor’s note: Below another emailed plank in the quixotic platform of long-shot city council candidate Besos Amazn. Sometimes he pontificates on local issues.  Not today.)

Only the rich should be allowed to drive automobiles in cities.  We should recognize the reality of a plutocracy, and realize some social benefit. It’s clear the greedy rich will pay for special privileges. Billionaires spend millions for a five-minute taste of zero gravity in low orbit. They pay exorbitant prices for special boxes at a ball game. How about an annual license fee of $5000 for the privilege of driving a car into the city.  The proceeds go to trolley cars and bicycle-friendly streets.  With only luxury cars and limos on urban streets, less congestion. Less noise, pollution, ozone and carbon dioxide. Same for air travel. Plane tickets should be beyond the reach of the middle class. The rich can hire special luxury railcars to subsidize Amtrak.  No point trying to soak the rich with higher taxes.  A lost cause easily thwarted by lobbyists and campaign contributions.  But the rich will pay for special treatment. Besos.

Diet Time  Half sandwiches, broths, and salads at the Spare Lunch Cafe, 125 Hobbesianway.  We know you’re trying. (Sponsored)

Bad Taste?  A tipster informs us that the Chuckwalla Unified School board trustees may vote to reprimand several high school students for joke videos posted on TikTok.  According to the informant the students constructed a bogus "Proud Boys" parade float that featured tiki torches with flower petal flames, Pepe the Frog, and a paper Mache hand signaling "A-OK," The video, posted to coincide with he Chuckwalla Days Parade, also depicted the float veering into a crowd of screaming students.

Catching up with the Besos Amazn campaign. Periodically, the reclusive long-shot candidate for a city council seat issues bullet-point stands on the issues, some of them pertaining to local matters.  The latest blitz:

"To raise wages and benefits more of the surplus low-level unskilled mopes need to be removed from the workforce.  The solution is long-term vacation tent camps where the idlers and neer-do-wells can find a secure abode that includes free meals, composting toilets, communal showers, and a two-bit glass of beer.  The camps would be on federal land and operated by the National Guard.  They should be segregated. The harmless but hapless in one well-guarded camp secured from human predators. Another camp for the alkies and topers. Another for the addicts, heads, and hypes. A good idea would be to dispense free opiates to entice drogues away from the city streets..  Maybe the poppy crop could be purchased from the Taliban and repurposed into pharmaceutical grade dope. We could solve the addiction scourge by feeding hypes with a good product not stepped on with fentanyl.  At the same time break the grip of the cartels"   Besos goes on,  but this is the gist of his latest.

The latest self-published eBooks from local authors

“You Don’t Suck as Much as You Think" by Tim Reston, a clinical psychologist at the YoutGard juvenile detention facility in Blythe, offers guidance to the self-doubters.  Here’s an except:

“Beneficial rationalizations at 3 a.m. when one is apt to dwell on disappointments, humiliations, lost opportunities and failures. A larger perspective.  Human life is a nano-blink of zero consequence to a universe which is cold and indifferent.  Things always fall apart but matter is conserved.  All the waste and destruction of human folly will be reconstituted over the millenniums into something strange and new.  The universe takes your interchangeable atoms and rearranges them into something else.  All your trophies, certificates, diplomas, testimonials along with all the other detritus in the attic will become something else.  In the end, nobody really cares about you,. Not your mother, wife, or children, and despite the lip service you won’t be missed. They say they’ll never forget you. It’s a lie. This is liberating. This is freedom. You’re still obsessing about that humiliation in 10th grade when you bobbled a pop fly during that crucial game against the Farmtown Weasels?  A deep sepulchral laugh from the universe.”

“Clean up Pittsburg and Swamp the Netherlands:  Camp Hygiene for the Budget Traveler”  World-wide wanderer Esther Franks of Sometimes Springs offers her outback expertise from a life of adventure travel.

“Practical Etiquette.”   Manner maven Molly Lindquist in her short treatise on courteous behavior says it is really simple. To be a good guest at the table, use a fork (any size, either hand), don't talk while chewing, and use your napkin.

“Dystopia Now: It's Here"  A look at deep adaptation from Everett Small an adjunct professor in the Sustainability and Resilience Department at UC Riverside. Not that you should give up or be a gloomy Gus, but really, it's too late.  The load has shifted. Nothing can stop the coming deluge.

"You've hit the thumb on the nail."  More vinegar and black bile from dyspeptic essayist and mordant village gadfly Besos Amazn.

‘Haut Ink’  A collection of risqué tattoos from local tattoo artist Jeff Friedman.

End of history   (Editor's note:  Apparently we missed a contentious marathon meeting  on Tuesday of the Chuckwalla Unified school board on Tuesday.  We asked part-time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss to catch up)  

 According to Chuckwalla High principal Merrit Williams the district is ordering some curriculum changes as an outcome of a 13-hour school board meeting in which dozens of parents complained that students were getting too much of the dark side of American history.  "The parents has a point about the unrelenting negativity," Williams said.  "It's probably too much awfulness, particularly for kids growing up in Chuckwalla."  

Williams said the high school teaches a state-sanctioned lesson plan called "American Story," touching the major historical events.  But even the version abridged and bowdlerized by state monitors has been too distressing for some parents.  Beginning this semester the required portion of the lesion plan will focus on civics and constitutional government, the Bill of Rights, bicameral legislatures, and on how a bill becomes a law. “The inspirational  kind of thing," Williams says.

"American History" will be offered  as an elective available in the junior and senior years, and will require parental consent.. Parents will be able to decide how much they want their kids to know.   History 1A will cover the Revolutionary and Civil wars, conscripted immigration and drafted labor, Reconstruction, First Nation relocation, industrialization and the Gilded Age.  History 1B will take up the Spanish American war, the concentration of  wealth, labor unrest, the imperialist occupation of the Philippines, Haiti, Hawaii and Nicaragua, World War I, the Spanish Flu, the stock market crash and Great Depression, Prohibition, and the cultural stagnation of the Fifties.

Another fire at the plastic disposal site on the Rez. The small fire, under investigation, was quickly contained by a rapid reaction team from the gas plant.  According to city councilman Henry Pipps, who is CEO of Valley Vigilance, the gas plant volunteer firefighters were on the scene within minutes to quench the blaze, which may have been kindled by thieves from the Slabs collecting fuel for illegal stills. Pipps said Metropolitan Waste Disposal, which built the railroad spur out to the giant meteor crater containing the thousands of bails of waste plastic, has agreed to hire more security to guard the growing ziggurat  of  plastic which is being stored in perpetuity. "It would be an environmental catastrophe if this really started to burn," said Pipps,  The councilman is also scoutmaster of Troop 354.  The scouts teach bush craft at Wonka Tonkan  High on the Rez, and Pipps said he plans to recruit some of the students for training as security guards.

Council Notes

Mohamed’s Mountain   “It would be kind of like a roving general store,” explained food truck operator Hasaam bin Hasaam, while seeking city council approval Thursday to operate a mobile convenience store in Chuckwalla’s outlying neighborhoods.  Hasaam said he envisioned a refurbished food truck offering general merchandise as well as falafel, tacos, and flat meat sandwiches.  The truck would be a “mobile Seven-Eleven” retailing basic groceries, batteries, household supplies, snacks and beverages, magazines, and kitchenware.  Hasaam said the roads are so poorly maintained within the far-flung gerrymandered city limits that in lieu of a bone-jarring drive to town many citizens would welcome a  store that came to them.  “It would save time, money,and wear-and-tear on their cars.”  He said the idea came to him after reading a Reveille article about Jiffy Peddler (Dave Emory) who delivered merchandise by bicycle to Council Estates on the eastern edge of town.  “But I want to do it legally,” Hasaam said.  Mayor Crane said he could see no objection to a business license provided Hasaam adhered to the standard codes for food trucks, and didn't offer tobacco or alcohol. Councilwoman Edith Bentley said fewer cars on the pot-holed disintegrating byways on the city’s fringes would help keep down the dust “ and that  (the truck) would be a blessing for housewives who had run out of sugar.’  The council voted unanimously to give Hasaam’s proposal a second hearing after allowing time for public comment.  Cheryl Weiss

Editor’s note: The perpetually money-strapped city council in February directed city works to limit street maintenance to the downtown, and to let the outlying roads return to nature.  Instead of making repairs beyond  the downtown, the city has reduced the speed limit on non-arterial streets to 10 mph.

 

Dave Emory, the “Jiffy Peddler,” was arrested last month on a series of misdemeanor charges related to possession for sale of alcohol and tobacco products without a license.  He allegedly was delivering cigarettes and six-packs by bicycle to residents in the Council Estates neighborhood. )

Assemblyman Tory Abrams (D. Riverside) has introduced a "quixotic" bill that would charge California drivers a fee for driving fast. The bill calls for all state licensed drivers to have encoding transponders in their vehicles that would transmit a car's speed when passing CHP mobile checkpoints.  "It's like the Fastrak transponders used to track bridge tolls," Abrams said in a press release, "The faster you drive, the more you pay."  Under the bill, drivers would pay extra fees (to be determined) for driving at speeds above 55 mph. A person driving above 75 mph automatically would receive a speeding ticket. "People who want to drive in the fast lane, and thus use more gas, cause more pollution, and increase the risk of accidents, should have to pay more to offset the damage they cause,”  Abrams said. An assembly legislative analyst told the California Journal that Abrams' bill was one of those "quixotic pipe dreams" that lands in the hopper every legislative session. “It’s DOA.”  Cheryl Weiss

Joyful Noise  A consortium of local garage bands provided a brief musical interlude at the city council meeting Tuesday as part of a petition seeking city permission to play free concerts in several neighborhood parks  The  bands (the Tri-Kings (Leroy, Elrey, and Elvis); Million Kevlin Jones and the Hydrogen Fusionairs; and Alexander Okay and the Macedonians) frequently perform Saturday nights at the Castaways boarding house, but would need a permit for appearances on city property.  Leroy Evans, of the Tri-Kings, offered the council a five-minute sample of what neighbors would be hearing, with a rendition of the band's own "Party Tart." Councilman Henry Pipps  said if the concerts went forward they should be held between 7 and 8 p.m.  "Give it an hour, pass the hat, and wrap it up," Pipps said

 Dunkin’ Doggie Pet Salon, 482 Mercury Dr., is hosting its annual Pet Dress-up this Saturday between  noon and 4 p.m.  Best pet costume wins a free shampoo and paw manicure.  The presiding judge will be Judy Janz, owner of BowWow Boutique in Blythe.  Last year the winner was the three-year-old Chou “Kiddo,” in a Speedo and swim goggles. Salon owner Peggy Haskins reminds pet partners that the coming week will feature 25 percent discounts on dog baths, and specials on flea collars and parasite meds.  Ivermectin tablets are back in stock (nil for humans).  Sponsored.  

Let them eat crackers   UC Riverside's Department of Sustainability and Resilience, which has an adjunct lab at Chuckwalla Junior College, has announced that it is developing a nutritionally complete cracker designed for use in famines.  According to a department press release, the "Integrated Food Security Phase Five Biscuit" will have a year-long shelf-life and will provide complete human nutrition in a four-ounce cracker. The IPC phase scale was developed by the United Nations for use in Somalia by international agencies. Phase Five refers to famine and humanitarian catastrophe in which 20 percent of the target population faces starvation, death and destitution. "What is wanted is a food  substance that is stable, compact and complete," says the department. The recipe for the proposed cracker will include some combination of pea protein, oat bran, vitamins, peanuts, flax meal, and prune fiber.  A small amount of sugar and salt probably will be included, according to Bernard Ingles, head nutritionist for the project, for balancing electrolytes rather than for increasing palatability.  “In phase five the clients are eating roots and grass,” Ingles said.

Barnes Aboard    Navy Machinist Mate Second Class Ernest Barnes, a 2002 graduate of Chuckwalla High School, has reported for duty aboard the USS Urchin, a supplementary supply transport homeported in San Diego.  The Urchin (STB145) has the primary mission assignment of transporting material to forward operating areas in support of Marine expeditionary forces.  The Urchin-class transports are former commercial vessels that have been reconfigured to carry military material,  general cargo, or humanitarian aid. The engines have been removed to increase cargo capacity, and the ships are towed into their supporting positions by Navy tugs. All Urchin-class transports have been equipped with the Deep Sea Anchoring System (DSAS) that allows ships to be positioned over the horizon.  MM2 Barnes previously served aboard the USS Kittyhawk (CV34) during a Mediterranean deployment, and is a recipient of the Good Conduct Medal.  He is the son of Mrs.Harriet Barnes of Sometimes Springs, Ca.

Heroes Arise!  Those strike signs toted by members of the United Service Workers picketing in front of the Hope View Convalescent Residence on Mercury Dr. “Heros work here, for $12 an hour.” A wage dispute with the corporate management. The 50-bed residence facility displays a banner that says “Heroes Work Here.” Evidently the heroes would like a pay raise. Currently they get the state minimum.  

New self-published Amazon e-books by local authors.

“The Alimentary Canal:  The 15-foot MIracle.,” by local chiropractor Toby Wanlan. “What is man? A tube that gobbles at one end, and purges at the other.” 

“Blue Niagara: The case for geriatric pharma-erotica,” by Harri DeRamps. Exercise and blueberries, sure, but also sildenafil, steroids and cannabis.  

“The Quest for Phrana: An Unauthorized History of Breathairianism,” by an Anonymous resident of the Chuckwalla Breatharian Commune.  An account of the strange dietary cult (humans can live on air alone), from its roots in LA as the brainchild of a religious charlatan to its current secular version advocating raw food veganism and extreme minimalism.

“Bastards of the World,” by Besos Amazn.   Another 60,000 words of bombast and invective from Chuckwalla’s curmudgeonly homeboy.  This time our acerbic provocateur  takes potshots at landlords, servile waiters, entitled dog owners, and old ladies who hold up the line at Albertsons. 

Slurry Seal Crew Attacked    A city work crew sent on Monday to repave part of Lava Lane in the Council Flats district had to retreat under a rain of rocks and bottles from angry residents protesting the repair of the pot-holed road that connects Mercury Drive to the projected Pease Estates development.  “We were getting ready to lay down some slurry seal when the neighbors started to lob bottles at us,” said Wayne Everett, a Chuckwalla public works supervisor. “Nobody hurt, but we decided to hold off until we got some more direction.”  Council Flats residents have appeared at past city council meetings to speak against proposed road repairs in their neighborhood, arguing that improved road conditions would lead to increased traffic and development.  “We like our rural character,” said Flats resident Mary Tooley. “Our kids can ride their bikes to school without being run down by speeders.”  Local melon mogul Fred Pease recently got the green light from the city to build a 40-unit affordable housing complex at the end of Lava Lane, after overcoming vociferous objections about traffic and quality of life. “Fred ramrodded that project through the council and then sweet-talked the city into repaving Lava Lane,” Tooley said. “We’re not having it.”  Acting Chuckpo chief Lt. Abel Dick said an officer would be on hand when the paving crew returned to work.

Lease a’Lectric  Shade tree mechanic Brian Dibbs has cobbled together two more “Volts-wagons,” -- his home-built electric cars based on the 1901 Baker,’ -- and is willing to lease them to commuters who want gas-free transport.  Dibbs said the DMV has okayed the boxy two-seaters for use on residential streets, adding that he has made arrangements for the vehicles to be recharged during the day at his downtown workplace,  Benny’s Tire and Brake.  “It’ll be an inexpensive way for somebody to have a work car for commuting downtown, or maybe somebody just wants to go electric.”

Purple Majesty winery’s latest offering, the low sulfur Benchmark Red, got a favorable mention in this month’s edition of the prestigious Wine Connoisseur Magazine.  “A surprisingly drinkable jug with a pucker-free non-metallic finish….”  This could prove to be the Brent Crude of the jug wines.

Re the United Service Workers picket line at Hope View Convalescent: Part time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss brought in a copy of the union’s ad hoc strike newspaper called “The Weekly Windex.”  Taking you behind the pane.

The case for a police state.  (Editor’s note:   Part time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, salutatorian of last year’s senior class at CHS, covered a talk yesterday delivered by assistant sociology professor Herbert Carney of UC Riverside.    Carney, a nationally recognized expert on the psychology of crowds, and author of the acclaimed study, “Mob of One,” spoke to a noontime JC audience at Ocotillo Hall on the subject of “The case for a police state.”

Carney began by underscoring that he neither endorsed nor encouraged the police state.  “Usually they are underpinned by extreme ideology, being intolerant of all differences to a sanctioned cultural norm, repressive of dissent, and prone to heavy-handed violence.”  He said, however, that examples exist of authoritarian control leading to public benefit. He noted the tidy streets and well-regulated transit in Pyongyang, the low child mortality rate in Cuba (where vaccinations are mandatory), and the Chinese ability to quarantine huge populations with a word. He said his case for a police state was “solely a thought experiment,” and involved the probably quixotic idea of a beneficent and benign police state which included an impartial judiciary, a bill of rights, and a humane penal system.  “What it would lack is democracy,” he said, “Citizens would be prevented, by coercion, if necessary, from popular activities that ran counter to the public weal”  He noted that any solution to the well-known looming global dangers might mean that individual freedoms would have to be curtailed. “All leaders will have to decide about warming, pollution, drought, refugees, epidemic disease, gridlock, and so on. Can the individual own a private car, consume meat, travel freely, or would these things have to be restricted for the common good --against his will?”  

Carney said that a top-down police state might have a better chance of quashing an epidemic, or dealing with natural disasters, than would a more decentralized organization, since police states can be Draconian. “But if citizens can vote you out of office, it’s difficult for leaders to make people accept unpopular measures.”  In answer to a question, Carney said he saw “zero chance” of the US becoming the kind of police state he envisioned. “If it happens here it would be more like a populist, nationalist, religious, kind of thing, something that the people actually wanted”  Cheryl Weiss

New look for walking school bus  Students coming and going on foot to Martin Van Buren elementary will be wearing a new uniform next week.  At its monthly meeting yesterday trustees for the Pele Verde Unified school district voted unanimously that bus walkers will be required to wear bright orange safety vests and that the accompanying  parent-monitors will hold six-foot flagstaffs flying orange pennants.  The action came after four students last month were injured when a car jumped the curb as the walking school bus approached the school entrance.  “Safety is the number one concern and we must do all we can to protect our students,” said trustee Melvin Delany. “The vests and pennants will ensure that motorists will be able to see the bus.”

Trustee Tony Flemming said  the safety vest mandate didn’t go far enough. “We also need to widen the street in front of the entrance.” He said that after dropping off their kids, parents are turning around to go back to Mercury Drive.  “There isn’t enough room without going over the curb, not for your Klondike, or a Silverado, or a Sierra, or a Club Wagon.”

According to Chuckpo acting chief Abel Dick, on the morning of May 7 a parent making a 180-degree turn in front of the school ran over the sidewalk and knocked down four students in the walking school bus.  “The driver of the SUV apparently didn’t see the students below his field of vision,” Dick said. The injured students were taken to Pele Verde Memorial, where they were reported to be in stable condition with non-life threatening injuries.  Dick said the driver was counseled at the scene and released.

 

Refugee haven at the Rez?  ( Editor’s note: Chamber president and Lumbee Nation spokesman Bert Bertinelli tells us that he is in talks with “high ranking federal officials'' about a plan to set up immigrant refugee camps within the sprawling Lumbee indigenous peoples community.  The Chamber chief says the Department of Health Services is desperate to place thousands of Central American immigrants seeking refugee asylum status.  The Lumbee Rez?  We sent part time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, a runner-up in the recent Imperial County all-school badminton tournament, to get the details.)

Bertinnelli said the building of immigrant refugee camps “is going to be a huge opportunity for everybody, and it’s just going to get bigger. It’s the future.” The main obstacle facing governments, he said, is finding locations.  “We are going to need all sorts of camps, not only for undocumented immigrants, but for the domestic homeless, for prison overflow, for climate migrants, for the non-working surplus labor, or for the overqualified unemployables. The sovereign nations can play a big role.  We have the space, we have a welcoming attitude, and we have the kind of management vision that allows for non-traditional solutions.” 

Bertinneli said the historic sheltering techniques of native peoples mean that camps “can spring up overnight, and at a very comfortable dollar.”  He cautioned, however, that oversight  would have to be ensured. He said “the feds wanted the National Guard, buit the Nation won’t have blue coats.  I suggested the International Red Cross, and  private security of the quality of Valley Vigilance. Then there’d be the usual social services, clinics and kitchens and so forth, supplied by various donors.”

The Chamber president said the plan calls for the camps to segregate occupants by nationality and ethnicity (to avoid conflicts) and that each camp would have a detention area for the inevitable predators, thieves and bullies that are part of any population. 

“We haven’t got to the money yet,” Bertinelli said, “but that part is bound to be a big relief for the taxpayer.”  Cheryl Weiss

Chuckwalla High Notes  Principal Merrit Williams announced yesterday that the high school will be reopening “in a few days,” after the weeks-long shutdown occasioned by an outbreak of Celestine Flu (H1N1).  “We’ve sterilized the entire campus, and the county health people have given us the go-ahead,” Williams said.  He said that some new rules will be in place as the school reopens.  “Generally, we will be building on our previous commitment to safety and security.”

The curriculum once again will focus on two fields of study: academics, for those who qualify, and contemporary skill sets for the rest.  Class size for academics has been cut to a dozen students in the interests of social distancing.  Williams said that the school has ten teachers to cover academics, and this number should be sufficient, although the program may have to  tighten selection. The library now will be open only to verified cardholders and authorized visitors. The audio quad will be open from noon until 2 p.m., for M3P players only; no phones or pads. Those who bring their own cots and blankets will be able to use the Siesta Lounge from noon to 1 p.m. Sleeping on the floor is prohibited. This semester the campus workshop is offering classes in rough carpentry, basic welding, 12-volt electrics, and janitorial science.  Newly hired track coach Newton James will take over the Yellowjacket Trekkers for the Morning Mile.  All-Day Sports will be supervised by gym staff and Valley Vigilance.  Williams said he is setting up a system of quiet- time pods on the practice field,  where student affinities can gather under the surveillance dome.  Since a state-wide injunction last year has banned the use of disciplinary carrels, the new policy for refractory students will be open-air sequestration that will allow the non-compliant or antisocial “an opportunity for monitored solitude and reflection.”  Chuckwalla High will continue to be a closed campus, with security and metal detectors provided by Valley Vigilance. Cheryl Weiss

More Dough for DET   City comptroller Syd Greene says it’s green lights down the track for getting a new state infusion for cash-strapped DET.  The city last year applied for a state grant to keep the wheels turning at the city’s beleaguered transit system, and now Sacramento, after reviewing DET’s latest financials, is ready to give a thumb’s up.  What convinced the beancounters, Greene says, was the success of DET’s tier pricing scheme.  “They liked the look of the fare box numbers from last quarter.”  Starting in January DET pashas arranged the fares in tiers. A free bus circulates around the city from 6 a.m to 9 p.m..  A commuter express, priced at $3, connects Sobrantes Estates and the Pleasant Gate subdivision to downtown. The “Five Buck Bus,” with loading nodules at the Quarily Fair Starbuck’s and at Golden Chimes, also heads downtown but unloads in front of Chuckpo rather than at the Hobbsianway hub.

All DET buses are the same standard Blue Bird coaches, except now four surplus school buses from Chuckwalla High have been added to the fleet.  “We have just put into practice what is well known in transit circles:  the problem with public transit is the public. Now the public rides for free. Paying passengers can choose their company.”  Greene says the $5 fare has proven so popular that the revenue covers much of the operating cost of the free bus.  “The state is only going to help those districts that are really trying to pull the ends together.”  The Five Buck Bus nodules have a covered pavilion, piped-in Mozart, a coffee cart, and security provided by Valley Vigilance.  (DET also has hired the security company to field  a canine unit at the downtown hub.).  “ At first we thought the dress code and temperature checks on the Five Buck line might cause an issue,” Greene said, “but turns out no gripes so far.”  

 

(Editor’s note: Part time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, an honors senior at Chuckwalla High, wondered how it is that the school district has spare buses to lease to DET.  We asked her to find out.)

According to CHS principal Merit Williams, the district has surplus buses to lease because of falling enrollments throughout the district. He says the outbreak of Celestine Flu (H1N1) triggered a ridership plunge early this year, although the dropoff predated the epidemic (allegedly started by lone wolf eco-terrorist Andy Padilla.)  “In the aftermath of the Red-Yellow game, I locked down the campus and expelled some students from Marvin Gardens and from Patton Field housing.  The Tea Party, the OMG Youth Ministry, and the Robert Kennedy Jr. Coalition opened new charter schools.  The Chinese girls from the gas plant come on a private bus. Some of the local moms prefer to send their kids in rickshaws. And the student non-completion rate is still around 50 percent. A couple of the buses were backups that we found we really didn’t need. But we can always use some more money.”  Cheryl Weiss

Rustlers to the Rescue...Chuckpo reports that 23 rescue horses were rustled overnight from the Happy Trails Rescue Ranch, a shelter corral for animals abandoned or given up by distressed owners during the downtick caused by the Celestine Flu outbreak.  Ranch wrangler Cindy Bates told police the rustlers broke down a section of corral fence sometime after midnight and drove the horses southward into the open desert.  “The thieves were mounted and headed the horses into the Chaparral Hoodoos,” a tangled maze of narrow canyons where it was impossible for Bates to pursue in her pickup. 

(Editor’s note:  We asked our part time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, a finalist in the Imperial County Junior Chess Bowl,  to follow the story.)

Happy Trails Ranch, located on land belonging to the Pease Melon corporation and funded by donations from local alfalfa growers, has provided a home for dozens of horses and mules that were evicted along with their owners with the collapse of the Sometimes Springs Pleasant Gates ranchette estates. Bates said the animals would have been slaughtered for pet food if Fred Pease had not offered an unused packing shed and warehouse as a shelter.  

Bates said that neither Chuckpo nor the Imperial County Sheriff had officers available to aid in retrieving the horses.  “I called councilman (Henry) Pipps,” Bates said. “The ranch doesn‘t have the resources to hire Valley Vigilance, but Mr. Pipps said he would contact the Pathfinder Scouts from Boy Scout Troop 354.” (Councilman Pipps, the CEO of Valley Vigilance, is also the troop’s scoutmaster).  Boy Scout First Class Daryl Hemp, a sophomore at Chuckwalla High who oversees  the Intaglio Junction narcotics interdiction checkpoint, mobilized his squad of Pathfinders to try to intercept the rustled horses along the False Pass Trail inside the sprawling Lumbee Indigenous-American Nation.  “We figured they’d be taking the horses through the Rez into Mexico. False Pass is the closest point on the border.”  The Pathfinders, who teach bushcraft at Wonken Tonka High, are familiar with the reservation topography and soon picked up the welter of hoofprints headed for the border.  “We were too late to catch the rustlers but did figure out what happened to the horses.” Hemp said that once inside Mexico the herd was split, with half going to Carniceria Rara outside Tecate.  “The carniceria serves some upscale bistros connected to the brewery.”  The other half of the herd was delivered to Rancho Malpaseo, a dude ranch and resort.  “They don’t have horseback riding there, but horses are scattered around in corrals as a tourist accent,” Hemp said. 

Rescue Ranch wrangler Bates said she thanked the scouts “for bringing closure,” but would not attempt to re-rescue the stolen horses from the Mexican dude ranch.  “We’re getting more homeless horses all the time, and our means are limited.”  Cheryl Weiss

(Editor’s note:  KZZZ, the Rattler, radio personality Wigwam Wampum tells us that border social media lit up last night with reports of an alleged incursion by armed, uniformed American soldiers, and that by this morning Mexico City had filed an inquiry with the US State Department.  Reached at city hall, scoutmaster Pipps assures us that none of the Pathfinder Scouts crossed the border.”We’re not like Pershing,” he said.)

Eminence Vigilantes Disrupt Council  City councilmembers  Wednesday had the new rickshaw ordinance on the agenda.  Little did they know that their deliberate and somnolent chamber would be filled with raised voices and waving pitchforks. Right after the pledge,  Byron Fistule,  pastor of Hail Adoni Baptist, crashed the meeting at the head of several dozen young zealots from the OMG Youth Ministry to demand the council set aside rickshaws and pay attention instead to their vociferous and unscheduled petition that the city of Chuckwalla immediately fulfill the Eminence Doctrine, as outlined by the evangelical National Values Coalition.  The doctrine, which is being rolled out nationwide, places  preeminence on Christian religion, English as the national language, property rights, and auto-centric transportation.  Fistule, who is also owner and operator of the local Krispy Kreme franchise, commandeered the podium to claim that a creeping secularism threatens American culture “with a farrago of alien corn.”   Some of the kernels he mentioned were multicultural diversity, censorship of Biblical truth, and publicly funded transit.  

Councilman Henry Pipps, who is CEO of Valley Vigilance, wondered if he should call some of his people to clear the room.  But mayor Robert Crane asked for a “sense of the council” that would amend the agenda to allow “out of order public comment.”  Several youths from OMG followed Fistule, and a representative from Dwayne’s Sports Oasis, Evan Toilon, used his three minutes to plump for adding the Second Amendment to the doctrine.  Responding to an on-the-spot social media post, showboat atheist Terry Ames turned up to indulge in a brief shouting match with the OMG claque.  Ames is best known for his secular creche that’s vandalized every year, and for the large poster on his garage door listing the six commandments that he agrees with.  After hearing out Fistule and his coterie, Mayor Crane adjourned the meeting, putting over rickshaws to another time.   

Yoga Supine.  Chuckwalla’s own Wanda Yoga has released a new YouTube crafted for what owner Wanda Wilkerson says is an underserved audience, the recumbent male couch potato.  “Yoga is so good for flexibility and relaxation, but often guys miss out on the benefits because of a reluctance to try stretches and poses they think are too girly.  ‘You know, ‘Child’s Pose’, no way.”  The video demonstrates manly stretches that guys can practice while lying supine on the couch, stretching all the major muscle groups without getting up,” Wanda says.  Some of the new yoga poses pioneered by Wanda include the Rack, the Pillory, the Bastinado, and the Fried Potato.  

Knee to the groin.  Prosthetics salesman Eric Pringle will be in Imperial County superior court again next week to answer charges that he practiced medicine without a license while performing knee replacement surgery at Pele Verde Memorial.  Pringle, a rep for Mount Zion Surgical Supply, is charged with surgically implanting an artificial knee during an hour-long operation at which no physician was present.  According to Pele Verde spokesperson Janice Chrim, it is common for implant device salesmen to be in the operating theater to advise surgeons.  “These new devices, particularly the knees, are so sophisticated and state-of-the-art that surgeons often need a little help about what goes where,” Chrim said.  The district attorney’s office claims that when Dr. Avery Hopkins was unable to appear for a scheduled knee surgery Pringle stepped in and did it himself.  A Pele Verde nurse who wishes to remain anonymous told the Reveille that the unnamed patient was prepped, sedated and lying on the operating table with the knee shrouded inside the sterile field when word came down that Dr. Hopkins had been detained by an emergency.  “To tell the truth, a lot of these salesmen actually do the operations,” our source said, “They’ve had so much training with the devices. But the doctor is supposed to be there.”

Mud Wrestling at the Toad.  This Saturday night at nine the Horny Toad Saloon will be hosting the popular All-In Mud Wrestling Throw Down, at which defending champions the Soiled Doves will be risking their Bad Girl Belts against the new challenger in the ring, Coeds of Color, a newly formed team of  allegedly full-time college students.  The Toad's Max Gonsalves says the bout is shaping up as an ideological and intellectual grudge match.  “Those Coeds think they’re so special,” Gonsalves said. “Thunderclap and Sumo are just itching to take them down a peg.”  Sponsored.

Fresh food, fresh air. Albertsons assistant store manager Kay Bennet says from now on the parking lot tables and tents will be permanent, as a way to reduce the number of shoppers inside the supermarket. "We always had a winter season snowbirds' corner in the parking lot where the RVers could pick up essentials such as bottled water and propane," Bennet said. "This season, because of the Celestine (flu), we stocked outside tables with grocery items, including produce." Cashier stations have been rolled out under awnings so shoppers can make their purchases without ever going inside. Bennet said the store could devote more parking space to display tables because of the new DET tractor-trailer bus shuttle on Hobbesianway. "The shuttle means snowbirds can park their rigs at the old Kmart lot. We don't need so much parking space here," Bennet said. The tractor-trailer shuttle runs on ten-minute headways along Hobbesianway between the old Kmart and Speedway Field.

GoPro for Chuckpo  Chuckwalla mayor Robert Crane announced at the Wednesday council that a donation from a philanthropic local businessman will underwrite the purchase of GoPro cameras and bicycle helmets for the Chuckpo force of five officers and a lieutenant. "We salute Matt Stoich (the owner of Chuckwalla Honda-Toyota-Nissen) for his generosity," Crane said. The head-mounted cameras, Crane said, should help alleviate citizen complaints about excessive force by police. "It's been our word against a knucklehead," Crane said, "but now we'll have a visual record of police contacts." The mayor mentioned the success of Valley Vigilance with the GoPros. When the security company's guards make a citizen's arrest, their cameras document evidence that can be used for justification before a court.

Bikes roll on  City councilman Henry Pipps at that same council meeting broached the idea of an amendment to city traffic ordinances that would allow bicyclists to roll through stop signs of neighborhood streets. Pipps said a cycling constituent had beefed about getting a ticket for running a stop, which occasioned spending three nights at traffic school. "We want to encourage bike riding," Pipps said. "It's a drag for a cyclist to come to a full stop and then start pedaling again. Maybe if he's careful and looks around he could just slowly roll through." Acting police chief Lt. Abel Dick said the case Pipps mentioned was the only citation issued to a cyclist "in about a year." "The guy was coming downhill and blew through the stop sign at 20mph with cars already in the intersection," Dick said. According to the acting chief, Chuckpo already has a lenient view toward cyclists at intersections. "If a bike rider slows down, and looks both ways we're not going to cite him," Dick said. Mayor Crane offered a "sense of the council" motion that would ask Chuckpo to continue that informal policy, and the motion passed unanimously. 

Pipps full of ideas. The councilman on Wednesday also bruited the notion that Hobbesianway could be designated "a linear shopping mall" that would be off-limits to auto traffic. Pipps said Chuckwalla could take advantage of pleasant winter weather to make the city's mile-long main drag into "an oriental bazaar" with merchandise moved into the street for the examination of strolling pedestrians. "We've got the DET shuttle, we've got the rickshaws, we've got the bicycle lane," Pipps said. "Shoppers could get around. It could be like a fair." Councilman Lyn Patel demurred, saying that shopkeepers would not approve of the innovation. "There's a security issue, there's a convenience issue," Patel said. "They wouldn't want to move stuff in and out. They're already mad at us about the bike lane taking away parking spaces. Not ready for this." Pipps said it was just an idea.

 Spittin" Chiclets, the NorCal punk band, will be appearing this weekend at the Brewhaha beer pub. The Friday and Saturday night performances will kick off at 9 p.m. Pub owner Dean Whiting said the hard-core group has gained a following up north and will be playing a few dates "in the sticks" before starting a run in Los Angeles venues. "I"m curious to see how they'll go over here," Whiting said. Opening for the group will be the local garage band Strummin' Dranks.

Hail Adoni Baptist Church is using the church bus to take prepared meals to the no-income residents of the Eight-Bys tiny cabins camp on Mercury Drive. "We were cooking the morning and evening meals at the site but because of wind and blowing dust it's easier to cook in the church basement kitchen," said pastor Byron Fistule "We also take the dishes back to run through our dishwasher. Simplifies everything." Some 40 formerly homeless from the Arroyo Cholo jungle now live in the eight-by-eight wood cubes connstructed of scrap plywood on land owned by zoning scofflaw and humanitarian Dan Jennings, a Hail Adoni dirrector. The encampment uses composting toilets, an Army Surplus water mule, and a gas generator. So far, no beefs from the county, and mayor Crane has lifted his initial objections, after recognizing the mutual benefit of relocating the occupants. "They get some good, and they're out of sight."  

That box on wheels spotted rolling around town? It's the "Voltswagon," a DIY battery car home-built by Chuckwalla's Ed Skinner. Ed said it's modeled on the 1917 Baker, a once-popular electric-powered "ladies car" that was easier to operate for distaff drivers than the hand-cranked tin lizzy. The car has no transmission, a belt drive, and is powered by a salvaged forklift motor and golf cart batteries. "The same specs as the Baker," Skinner says. "Top speed 40 mph and a range of 50 miles." Skinner uses the Voltswagon for his commute to his job at Benny's Brake and Muffler, and for shopping trips. And after Skinner ran it by the DMV, it's street legal.

 Deep Adaptation   Chuckwalla Junior College is slated to be the new home of UC Riverside's Department of Deep Adaptation, part of the University's School of Sustainability and Resilience. Department chair Bernice Nichols says the Chuckwalla environs are ideal for laboratory research into the coping mechanisms that will be needed by global populations subject to the future's relentless temperature inputs that will push much of the southern hemisphere into uninhabitability. "It's perfect here," Nichols says, "Summertime temps in Chuckwalla frequently top 100 degrees for weeks at a time, dust storms spread toxic agricultural pesticides, water sources are contaminated by fecal waste as well as by arsenic and selenium, invasive species have replaced native plants, and then (there's) the desert fungal diseases such as coccidioides (Valley Fever). Nichols says that the theory of deep adaptation assumes that inevitably the future's punishing heat waves accompanied by drought and crop failures will force swarms of climate refugees northward. But some cohorts, because of poverty or conflict, will be unable to leave areas no longer capable of supporting human life. "We want to find adaptive techniques these populations can use to achieve bare survival." The school will look at some of the vernacular architecture in the area, such as estivation chambers with heat chimneys, evaporative walls, wind scoops and tunnels, simple heat pumps, cooling shafts, and funnel skylights. "One of the first hands-on projects will be a solar still on campus," Nichols said. "We'll distill some of the cafeteria's grey water."

(Editor's note: Parttime intern reporter Cheryl Weiss last week dropped by a lunchtime lecture at the JC called "The 72 Keys of Solomon.")

Small hexes   A highschool classmate alerted me that a visiting warlock from Don Buck's School of the Tiger in LA would be speaking on how to invoke "the petty curse." The speaker, self-identified as Son of Kyokosky, alleges that his school, which teaches jiu-jitsu and other martial arts, also teaches black arts to a select coven of adepts. He said one of the most frequently used spells is a minor curse issued in retaliation for lesser grievances. To affect the curse, the warlock creates a magic sigil produced by writing out the curse's intention, and reducing the letters into a monogram. Son of Kyokosky said the petty curse does no serious or permanent harm to the target, but is meant as retaliation for such failings as ingratitude or for small crimes such as property theft or failure to repay a debt. He said usually the petty curse is "Never prosper." Some half dozen students in attendance had the opportunity to purchase a book of spells entitled "The 72 Keys." Cheryl Weiss

The Peewee Pickup basketball games at Howell Park have been cancelled until further notice in response to the ongoing siege of the Celestine Flu (H1N1) allegedly being spread by lonewolf eco-terrorist Andy Padilla. The popular evening games, open only to adults 5'10" or under, had been drawing large crowds, with the concomitant potential for spreading the virus, according to a park department handout. The games had resumed last month after being halted briefly by a discrimination suit claiming that public courts should not have height restrictions. A communique issued by Padilla said that he had infected the court bleachers with a virus solution, and a check by the county health department did find traces of H1N1 on the seats.

Dome of the Rock. (Editor's note: We got a press release from something called The Salt Dome Project. Apparently a consortium of energy entrepreneurs are looking for financing to harvest electricity from a giant "natural battery" out in the desert on BLM land near Sometimes Spring. We asked part time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss to look into it.)

The spokesperson for the salt dome project is Wendell Clary, a geologist from Nevada State University, Reno, and a consortium partner. Clary says that the chemical composition of a ten-mile-long salt dome formation underlying the desert varnish near the village of Sometimes Springs is generating a flow of electrons that could be captured and transferred to the Southern California grid. "My calculations indicate that we could harvest endless megawatts of energy created by this huge natural battery," Clary says. The electricity, he says, is the result of a rare confluence of underground minerals, primarily cobalt and lithium salts, that could produce energy "for a thousand years." Electrodes, the size of bridge pillars, driven ten miles apart (approximately at Junction Wells and Payson's Old Ranch) would be connected by transmission lines directly to the grid. The cost of the project, he said. would be in "the tens of millions'' but if all went well recouped within a decade. Everett Baker, a professor of geological science at UC Riverside, said the idea of a salt dome battery "is totally preposterous." The prospectus has "scam in big red letters'' written all over it, Baker said.

We get letters

Editor,  "Wigwam Wampum?" I wonder if the Native Americans living on the Lumbee Reservation enjoy this characterization of one of their members?    Louise Fouts, Chuckwalla

(Editor's note: That's the stage name of Jonny Franklin, the host of a popular children's program on KZZZ (The Rattler). Jonny, the nephew of William Franklin, the chairman of the Lumbee tribal council, has been hosting the daily show for about a decade. The show, something akin to the old "Mr Rogers Neighborhood," has a stock company of characters such as Ranger Rabbit and Tricky Coyote. Also guests such as nurses and nutritionists are invited to talk to kids about health and food choices. Is the name offensive? We asked reporter intern Cheryl Weiss to ask around.)

I asked Boy Scout First Class Lenny Twoheart, a Lumbee and the highest ranking scout in Chuckwalla. He said he had grown up listening to the program, and had never heard any complaints. "I don't think anybody even knows that wampum was some kind of Indian money. We say teepee instead of wigwam, and the only teepee of the Rez is that big metal one in front of the casino. If you heard the show you wouldn't think anybody was disrespecting Indians. Everybody knows Wigwam is a Franklin. They don't take any (guff)."

(Editor's note: After the big rubbish fire last week on the Rez, intern reporter Weiss wondered about the tribal deal that allows the County of Los Angeles to store in perpetuity hundreds of thousands of compressed bales of plastic inside a giant meteor crater. As a rule we are careful about our coverage of tribal affairs. An old adage in the newspaper game says Indian stories have no winners. We advised Cheryl to show the greatest discretion.)

The Lumbee contract with the County of Los Angeles for storage of plastic bales is one of several tribal arrangements, current and projected, with civic authorities for the disposal of waste. The Nation also is home of a tire burning plant belonging to the San Bernardino waste management district, and a recycling yard that salvages rare metals from electronics and catalytic converters for the California Department of Transportation. A proposal to site a nuclear-powered generating plant on Rez land abutting the Colorado River is tediously winding through the myriad complexities of permitting process. The US Department of Aviation has approached the council with the thought of storing retired airliners somewhere on the sprawling desert reservation that is almost the size of Rhode Island. 

Bert Bertinelli, the president of the Chuckwalla Chamber of Commerce, is also the hired public relations spokesperson for the Nation. "As a sovereign nation we are not required to report financials except to the IRS. LA county has described the plastic deal as a multi-million dollar contract and we'll leave it there. The nation performs a huge service. Plastic recycling is a joke. Less than ten percent of the plastic that goes into the blue bin gets recycled. And then, it's just turned into pellets used to make more drink cups. Most of the plastic waste goes to the city dump, winds up in the ocean, or goes up the incinerator flue as carbon dioxide. On the Rez, the bales can be stored safely inside the crater, under which is impermeable hardpan. It's safe forever."

The Lumbees have been recipients of federal grants for the construction of the Rez high school and community center. The Bureau of Land Management negotiated a swap with the Lumbees in which the nation gained title to several thousand acres of government timber land in Nevada in return for a grant allowing a right-of-way for a natural gas pipeline. The nation sold stumpage rights to a New York hedge fund. 

That plume of black smoke rising yesterday morning in the southwest quadrant came from a toxic rubbish fire that broke out overnight from within the thousands of stacked compressed bales of plastic waste being stored in perpetuity on the Lumbee Rez.  KZZZ (The Rattler) radio personality Wigwam Wampum, the de facto spokesperson for the Rez, says that arson is suspected as the cause of the sudden blaze spewing poisonous smoke that drifted over the village of Sometimes Springs, necessitating the short-term evacuation of approximately 60 residents. 

The fire was brought quickly under control by firefighter volunteers from the Chinese gas plant. Wampum said the worker brigade installing the regeneration unit responded with their equipment after the determination that all ChuckFiD units had deployed to other emergencies. "Col. Xi Ping (commanding the Chinese brigade) had a tanker and a 'dozer out here in fifteen minutes." The brigade was assisted by a dozen Pathfinder scouts from Troop 354, Wampum said.

According to Wampum, Valley Vigilance security guards stopped a van leaving the area and held two men for Chuckpo officers. Another passenger in the van, who attempted to flee into the desert, was brought down by a Valley Vigilance canine unit, Bruno, and was later transported to Pele Verde Memorial. 

Wampus speculated that interlopers from the Slabs may have been in the area to rustle bales on plastic, which allegedly have been used as fuel for hidden stills concocting the potent Distilled Once and For All Pioneer Vodka. "Wood is scarce around here, and the plastic burns pretty good."

The Lumbee Nation has a contract with Los Angeles to store in perpetuity baled plastic waste that the State Department of Health has determined to be too toxic to incinerate. The bales of compressed plastic trash are stacked by the thousands inside the Devolonian meteor crater, which geologists say lies atop an impervious adobe hardpan. The LA city council paid Southern Pacific to extend a rail spur to the site for delivery of the bales on two-mile-long freights.

Xi Ping's Chinese contingent arrived in Chuckwalla last year to build the regeneration section for the gas plant, which supplies electricity to the greater LA metropolitan area. The brigade previously has fielded volunteers during emergencies. Their quick response stemmed a break in the sewer pond levee, and the brigade's medical clinic has provided beds and treatment during the Clelestine Flu (H1N1) epidemic triggered by lone wolf eco-terrorist Andy Padilla.

Acting Chuckpo Chief, Lt. Able Dick, said the fire was under investigation as arson, but could not release the names of the persons in custody. A spokesman for Pele Verde Memorial said the person transported was in serious but not life-threatening condition. Sometimes Springs residents have returned to their homes, Wampum said.  

Breaking News

After a series of thefts, the Sunshine Auto Cemetery has hired Valley Vigilance to stand guard over the company's five acres of solarizing abandoned vehicles. The car park, the brainchild of Chuckwalla melon farmer Eddie Mott, offers a final resting place for unwanted cars belonging to LA environmentalists who have given up driving.   

"The high consciousness owners have taken the pledge not to drive or fly," Mott said. But while they don't want their cars anymore, neither do they want them resold, recycled or crushed. They hope to remove the vehicles permanently from the carbon dioxide loop by leaving them forever in a desert graveyard. "Recycled parts wind up in working cars," Mott said. "And crushed cars are melted down to make more cars."

But the solarizing cars have been an irresistible temptation to thieves.

Mott said Slab City gangs on quads, armed with Sazealls, have sent raiding parties to strip parts and tires. "They can saw off a catalytic converter in about two seconds,"Mott said "Some of the cars are high end and valuable, in good shape and drivable, although I've disabled the ignitions."

Henry Pipps, the city councilman who is CEO of Valley Vigilance, said his company would police the lot with armed sentries and rescue dogs that have been repurposed for security uses. "We're raising a 30-foot tower to give us a good field of vision," Pipps said. The Mott property, which is located south of the city in the vicinity of the Borrows, is unfenced open desert. Mott said he doesn't need a permit for his operation, and that the county has raised no objection to the storage of hundreds of cars. "It's not a wrecking yard, it's not a toxic dump, it's not a retail outlet," Mott said. "It's just a couple of acres of parked cars." He declined to say how much he charges environmentalists for the service.

Pipps said the dogs, mostly East German Shepherds and rottweilers, would be off-leash although under "voice command." "We expect that after Slabovians find out about the dogs the word will get around," Pipps said.

In the shade  An entrepreneurial high schooler has been doing a good business selling parasols at the Fair Grounds to passengers using the new tractor bus running the length of Hobbesian Way. Sally Givens, 17 and a senior at Chuckwalla High, says she buys a truckload of parasols in LA's chinatown and retails them to bus riders for $5. Desert Empire Transit (DET) began tractor bus service last month as a means to lighten congestion downtown during the winter tourist season, when thousands of RVers flee blizzards in the northern states in favor of the sunny warmth of the long term visitors' campgrounds in Quartzsite.

A couple of repurposed John Deere farm tractors are pulling flatbed trailers outfitted with railings and benches on the two-mile route from the FairGrounds on the east end of Hobbesian Way to the old Kmart parking lot at the western end. The trailers are open and roofless, meaning that passengers are exposed to both sun and the frequent afternoon zephyrs. The parasols, products of China, are sturdy enough, Givens says, to throw shade on a pate and to protect a coif from gusty breezes during the half hour 5mph cruise along the main drag. "If people want to sell the parasols back to me when they return to their cars, I'll give $3," Givens says.

(Editor's note: In winter months in Chuckwalla traffic often crawls along the main boulevard as throngs of RVs headed to Quartzsite campgrounds exit the freeway to pick up ice, groceries, and other supplies before crossing the bridge into Arizona. The city council put several schemes in place last month to encourage RVers to park their rigs at the Fair Grounds or at the old Kmart and then take public transit into the business district. As well as the free tractor buses (underwritten by contributions from local business including Albertsons and O'Reilly auto supply) the council authorized dedicated bike lanes set apart from the street by orange cones inside old tires, since many RVers bring their bikes along. According to acting Chuckwalla police chief Abel Dick, traffic congestion has eased somewhat. "It's not the gridlock we had, with guys in Bermuda shorts yelling at each other," Dick noted that some RVers have been hiring the strong young men of Rickety Rickshaw to pull their purchases back to the parking lots).

We are the future  UC Riverside has signed a contract renting office space at the junior college for a university research group studying adaptation technologies for extreme heat environments. According to a press release from UC's department of sustainable environments, the Chuckwalla environs offer a perfect laboratory to study adverse climate conditions that may be globally widespread in the near future. "The Chuckwalla vicinity has a long summer of high temperatures of more than 90 degrees, often for weeks at a time, The area also has frequent sandstorms occasioning high levels of PM10 (dust) and outbreaks of Valley Fever. Moreover because of agricultural chemicals used in the cotton and alfalfa farms along the Colorado, toxic aerosols spread over wide areas." The researchers plan to study the ways in which local inhabitants have adapted to "hyper heating beyond normal human tolerance in a toxic ambiance." Dr. Edward Mann, professor of adaptive physiology at the university, said that climate alteration in the next half-century will trigger mass human migrations northward, but that some subset of the population will be unable to leave areas that have become uninhabitable under normal conditions. "We are seeking ways for humans to make an environmental transition," Mann said.

China hay ride The first cargo of Imperial County alfalfa is headed for China aboard a freighter powered by the wind. Last year the Reveille printed a social studies paper written by high school senoir and part-time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss about a Stockton shipping tycoon who had bought three derelict cargo vessels in Bangladesh and turned them into sailing ships for bulk cargo. On Wednesday one of his converted sailing vessels, the San Joaquin Corn Binder, cast off lines at the Port of Stockton loaded with 6,000 bales of Imperial County hay destined for cattle pens in Shanghai. "This is a huge development," said Chamber of Commerce president Bert Bertinelli, "There's a glut of alfalfa here since the dairy farms moved north, and fuel costs have made it uneconomical to ship hay to China, where there's a growing demand for beef. Wind powered ships put the trade together." The voyage by sail takes over two months but a new generation of Chinese cattlemen have positioned feedlots and stockyards adjacent to port facilities. "Conveyor belts take the bales straight from the ship to the pens," Bertinelli said.

Bikes yes, bums no  A longstanding tradition of the Chuckwalla Days Parade has been the "Bums on Bikes" contingent from the Harmony House Kitchen. The contingent, which grows larger every year, has become noted for comical turns and attempts at precision maneuvers often ending in amusing tangles. Alas. Harmony House has announced via email that the sponsored bicycle squad henceforth will be known as "The Harmony House Bicycle Cotillion." Okay. But we are heaving a deep sigh.

The Rapture unmasked  The Hail Adoni Baptist Church OMG Youth Ministry has another protest this weekend on the front steps of Pele Verde Memorial Hospital. The protestors, bearing signs saying, "Don't Stop the Rapture," were angry about an edict requiring masks or face coverings for anyone visiting the hospital grounds. A hospital spokesperson had said the masks are needed because of the recent outbreak of Celestine Flu (H1N1) caused, allegedly, by the nefarious work of lone wolf eco-terrorist Andy Padilla in spreading germs from his secret chemical lab in the Scorpion Mountains.

Armed Pizza Drive-by   The issue of rickshaws on city streets continues to puzzle the council. Avery Harris, owner of the popular Armed Pizza takeout, was cited by Chuckpo last week for riding in an unlicensed homemade rickshaw pulled by his son Gerald. According to acting chief Abel Dick, the vehicle's slow progress backed up traffic on Mercury Dr., creating a citable hazard. Chuckwalla has two commercial rickshaw companies, Rickety Rickshaw and Breatharian Rickshaw, and the city has yet to determine how they should be regulated. Interim City Manager Corry Blake told the council that the state DMV guidelines offered little help. "The closest thing is horse-drawn carriage, which are required to have lights, reflectors and mirrors."  Blake said that slow motorized vehicles such as golf carts could be street legal on roads posted for 25 mph, but had to be capable of speeds of at least 15 mph. "I'm thinking that a human powered rickshaw could be considered a pedestrian," Blake said, and thus prohibited from using the roadway. But he added that rickshaws shouldn't be on the sidewalk either. The council previously gave provisional approval to commercial rickshaws on the grounds that they provided an important service during the Celestine Flu epidemic, by transporting vulnerable seniors to hospital appointments. "If people are going to start using private rickshaws pulled by relatives, we're going to need some more clarity," said mayor Robert Crane. Councilman Henry Pipps suggested that pending guidance from the DMV, the council should instruct Chuckpo to treat rickshaws as bicycles, and to cite only for safety concerns. A motion passed unanimously

Automatic House  Pick 'n' Peel Auto Dismantlers has gone into low income housing line. In a classified ad in today's Reveille, the wrecking yard on Amethyst Way is offering stripped auto bodies as possible housing opportunities. According to Pick 'n Peel honcho Craig Smith, cars and vans that have been harvested of engines, tires and other reusable parts usually are sent to Riverside to be crushed into metal blocks. "Jeez, all the homelessness around here, people living in cars everywhere,” Smith said, “why not sell the car bodies to people in need of quick shelter." Smith said the car bodies could become homeless shelters, backyard granny units, guest rooms, or even playhouses. He said he already had got a phone call from a nearby landowner who has built 8x8 shacks on his property for the no-income homeless. "He's looking at some car bodies out there," Smith said. Junked vans make the best home, Smith said, but SUVs and full-sized sedans could also be repurposed. "Pull out the seats, put in a bunk, and bingo."

The Espalier Wall  By Beet Bailey  (Editor’s note: Beet writes a regular column on sustainability)

I was in town yesterday and called on Old Eddy, the former caretaker at Marvin Gardens Apartments, before that heavy task was taken over by Valley Vigilance.   I’m always keen to see his vertical garden behind his dugout at the east end of town. The vertical garden grows against a south-facing masonry wall. Actually, a whitewashed adobe wall, or more exactly it’s rammed earth inside a wooden frame, faced with chicken wire and plastered. Wing-like windbreaks on the east and west protect the plantings from the prevailing northwesterly. Tomato vines laden with fruit climb up the eight-foot southern face. Herbs in impromptu planters (tin cans, plastic jugs) hang on pegs. Two rows of lettuces and onions are set out on shelves along the base.   A roll of flexible netting is strapped along the top, to be draped over the plants at night.

 

His dugout next to the wall measures 12 feet by 12 and has been set in an excavation about three-feet-deep. The dugout is post and beam, covered by eight by four panels of salvaged wood, glued in three layers, the voids filled with mud. Spoils from the pit had been shoveled around the north side of the cabin to the top of the flat roof, which had been covered with half a foot of loose earth held in place by a rim of two-by-eights and topped with a swath of chicken wire. The cabin has no windows and the entrance a scuttle in the roof. No Charley Noble, but ridgepoles for rigging overhead tarps. The tarps, one brown, one white, were folded on the roof. The brown tarp throws some shade; the white one on top reflects the sun. Typical desert bum box similar to the eight-bys homeless camp at the end of Mercury Dr.

Old Eddy wasn’t home, and I knew from experience not to knock. The scuttle hatch corner has an almost invisible nylon fishing line leading to a plastic clothespin hidden under the earthen roof. Opening the hatch would cause the arms of the pin to snap together, closing a circuit activating a horn hidden nearby. Opening the hatch an inch, an intruder would make out the barrel and base receiver of a 12-gauge. Opening the hatch to full extent would trip the cocked hammer. I’d drop in on Old Eddy another time.

Clown Down    Chuckwalla-based rodeo clown Devon Hicks is picking up a few off-season bucks moonlighting as a “living loved one” at funerals.  While the remains of the deceased rest in an urn on a festooned table, the living Hicks lies in state in an open coffin atop two draped saw horses in the church rotunda.  At a funeral held Sunday at Hail Adoni (Baptist Church) the wife of the deceased gave Hicks a lingering goodbye kiss until relatives ushered the grieving widow to her seat.  From his reclining position Hicks shook hands with the other mourners filing along.  And when pastor Byron Fistule acknowledged the many civic contributions of the departed, Hicks waved from the coffin.  Hicks, who usually works the Western states as a rodeo clown, said he has found several gigs as a stand-in so to speak for principles at their funerals.  “Oftentimes the loved ones are not in condition for an open casket, or have already been cremated.  Yet the family still wants a traditional service.” Hicks got the idea last summer when was hired pre-mortem by the late real estate developer Calvin Busk to lie in a casket at Busk’s funeral.  Busk, known as a famous prankster during his three decades in Chuckwalla, wanted Hicks to issue sepulchral horse laughs at attendees, many of whom were creditors who had filed actions against Busk after the collapse of the ill-fated Sometimes Spring condominium conversion scheme.

Rules for Rickshaws?   The Chuckwalla city council spent a contentious hour Wednesday trying to hammer out a new ordinance regulating the proliferating number of rickshaws for hire in the city.

Two unregulated rickshaw companies have been operating for the last few months. Rickety Rickshaw, a cooperative made-up of members of the high school varsity football team, has been carrying paying passengers, mostly seniors, for shopping trips and doctors appointments. The Breatharian House also provides rickshaw rides mostly to a client list of shut-ins and persons with disabilities. And then Harmony House Kitchen offers free rickshaw rides for people using the homeless services being offered at the old Trisk House on Mercury Dr.

But in the last few weeks so-called “gypsy” rickshaws have been appearing on Chuckwalla streets.  “These are people who have built some kind of bicycle or hand-pulled rickshaw and are charging fares to riders,” said councilwoman Sorel Patel. “It’s entirely unregulated and dangerous.”

 

Patel favored an ordinance that would require for-hire rickshaws to be licensed. "The vehicles would be inspected and certified as safe, and the operators would be bonded.” She also wanted language that would require operators to undergo a medical examination.

Councilman Henry Pipps said the rickshaws had potential as a valuable adjunct to the transportation choices available. “They don't pollute and might be safer than buses for elderly passengers during the current Celestine flu (H1N1) outbreak.”  Mayor Robert Crane, however, said commercial rickshaws might present “a bad optic” for the city, since they were once associated with “exploitation and misery.”

Patel said that objection could be overcome by a rule that operators had to be under the age of thirty, in good health, physically fit, and of good moral character. They should also get a fair wage. The council seemed in agreement that some regulation was needed, but put the matter over for a month to allow time for community comment.  Maybe something like a taxi medallion” Pipps said. Cheryl Weiss

(Editor’s note: A $30,000 line item in the city council’s consent calendar Wednesday drew the attention of Reveille's intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, a Rotary Club merit scholar and finalist in the Imperial County junior chess bowl. “Emergency repair, sewer main, Amethyst St. transfer station.”   The city is on the brink of state receivership because of its debt overhang, and has no known reserves. So where did recently installed city manager Roger Fisk find $30,000 to repair a broken sewer main? Cheryl’s report.)

You borrowed thirty large? Who would loan money to Chuckwalla?

Fisk: As you are well aware, the usual sources of municipal funding have dried up for Chuckwalla. We had an emergency. Raw sewage was leaking into the street. Patel Excavation was willing, but they wanted a 30-day note. There was a chance a state window might have opened, but that takes time and paperwork. Mr. Patel suggested a non-traditional lender. Hawala Yemini Buffet.

The falafel shop?

Fisk. Middle Eastern cuisine. They also do some banking. You look perplexed. The buffet is part of a widespread tribally connected financial system. Under Sharia, loaning money for interest is considered usury, and harem. Instead of making loans, sharia banks invest in enterprises, and take a share in the profits.

Reveille: There’s no profit in Chuckwalla.

Fisk. A Yemini contractor in La Placenta is putting together a deal to clean up burned houses from the Santa Monica Hills fire. A sheik in Sana is willing to invest. But the contractor needs some equipment. A few heavy-duty trucks, a D-9 Cat, a backhoe, some other things that we had idle in the corporation yard.

Reveille: What does this have to do with falafel?

Fisk: Mr. Al-Saraya, owner of the buffet, arranged the details to conform to requisite practices. The Sana businessman phoned a wealthy cousin in Los Angeles who sent Mr. Patel the check for $30,000. The contractor picked up the equipment on loan from our corporation yard. As the work progresses the contractor will send regular remittances to Mr. Al-Saraya, who will credit the Sana account. The sheik will reimburse the LA mogul by wire transfer.

Reveille: The Levant. Is any of this written down?

Fisk. It’s on the honor system.

Auto-budsman?   The car won't start. It will have to be towed. One doesn’t have any idea what the trouble might be. And one feels completely helpless, completely at the mercy of the mechanic who is going to shake his head and mutter something incomprehensible to the non-technical ear.

Donald Pretoria may be able to help. He’s a recent graduate of Ironwood State Prison where he served five years for grand theft auto. Pretoria says he was a car thief from childhood but also worked pulling parts in the chop shops around the LA barrios. At Ironwood he got assigned to the motor pool, where the authorities put his mechanical knowledge to use in behalf the prison fleet.  Now the Castaways resident would like to help the auto-owning but mechanically illiterate driving public.

“A little while after I got out a female ex-con I know asked me to look at the communal van at Juche House (a county-sponsored residence for abused women),” Pretoria said. It was just a blown spark plug and coil, but the women were afraid their ignorance about cars would make them prey for unscrupulous mechanics.”

It isn’t just women, Pretoria says. “These days most men don’t know anything about modern car engines either. It used to be that any guy could do basic mechanical work. Replace a water pump or alternator. Change the points, set the timing, even do a brake job. Now cars are too complex for the average guy to work on.”   Pretoria assessed the Juche van, told the women how much it should cost, and accompanied them to the garage.  “Most of the mechanics aren’t overtly dishonest,” Pretoria said. “But they see when the owner doesn’t know anything, and there’s a tendency to do more than is strictly needed.” And at the dealerships, you’re talking to a salesman, not a mechanic. “A salesman’s job is to sell.”

Pretoria, for a small fee, usually about $50, will go with you to the garage. “My main goal in life is to stay cool with my PO,” Pretoria says. “I don’t ever want to lose my freedom again. I’m not trying to get rich.”  Although he no longer has any interest in boosting cars, he likes to put his knowledge to use. “I know cars,” he says, “I can’t be fooled.” He doesn’t do any work himself, but he has diagnostic scanners that can decipher the computer codes inside the engine’s chip. He can also steer the owner to the most economical solution for the particular issue.  “For new brakes on a Honda, there are good shade tree guys who will save you money,” he says. “ For timing belts or head gaskets there are good garages. For some complex cars, it has to be the dealership. In any case, I can tell you pretty much exactly how much it should cost.”

“I know every mechanic in town. I don’t play favorites.   I work for the person who hires me.” --Cheryl Weiss

Rickshaw for the Wary   An enterprising senior at Chuckwalla High is now offering bicycle rickshaw transport for seniors and others who are afraid to use public transit during the Celestial Flu epidemic.  Aaron Snyder, a strapping 6'3'', 180-pound Yellow Jacket linebacker, has transformed an Italian Gladdus touring bike into a three-wheeled rickshaw capable of carrying two passengers.

"People are afraid they could catch the flu on the bus," Snyder said. "I can take seniors to doctor appointments or shopping and they don't have to worry about germs."  He has installed a Plexiglas shield between the passenger compartment and the driver, and he wears a facemask.  The rickshaw has an overhead cover but is otherwise open to the fresh air.  "The fare is usually less than ten bucks, depending on distance and on whether they want me to wait,” Snyder said.  “It's a service to the elderly that also puts something in the college kitty."  Snyder said most of his fares are for trips between Journey’s End Convalescent Living and the medical complex on Hobbesianway.  "It takes about the same time as DET (Desert Empire Transit) and you don't have to sit next to somebody with a cough."

Mascot Name Change?   Chuckwalla Unified School District officials have passed on to the school board a recommendation from the district’s Gender and Culture subcommittee to change Martin Van Buren elementary school’s official mascot from the Stallion to the Mustang.  The school’s soccer and T-ball teams have competed as “Stallions” since 1974, and previously were known as the Jackrabbits.  According to an anonymous source within the district, the name change recommendation came after complaints from several moms about the gender specificity of the mascot name, considering that girls play on all the school’s athletic teams.  “Mustang,’ according to the source, retains the aurora of the Martin Van Buren indomitable team spirit without suggesting any gender bias.

Butt Reopens  The Malmsey Butt Happy Hour has now reopened from 4 to 6 p.m. daily.  All service is on the patio and patrons must stand on one of the designated circles. Patrons who wish to compliment a waitress for individual service may use the tip pitcher by the door. (Sponsored).

Wonder Wanda   Wanda Delkins, owner of Wanda Yoga, made a daring swimming rescue Saturday when one of her yoga clients got swept off a rock by a sleeper wave during a chair yoga class at Dune Cove near Pismo Beach.  A class of nine yoga clients led by Wanda were doing chair stretches on a rock outcrop overlooking the cove when a rogue wave swept over them.  Eight of the participants managed to cling to the rock, but Cindy Perth, 69, of Sobrantes Heights, was carried into the sea.

“There was kind of a rip tide,’ Delkins said, “that was puling Cindy away from shore.  Thankfully, her chair was floating nearby and she managed to reach it”  Wanda, who in her college days was a competitive swimmer, leaped into the water and swam to the rescue. “I gripped the chair legs and with a frog kick pushed Cindy across the current until we were in still water.  Cindy was fine, we got to the beach safely, and with the chair too.”  Wanda offers chair stretch yoga trips to various outdoor locations with scenic backdrops.  “It’s fun exercise and makes for good selfies.”   

The Reveille Observatory  Waltzing the tri-Desert Empire

(Editor’s note: A blitz of electrons regarding the Reveille coverage of the flap at the Cheap Ammo booth at the Sunday Thunder gun show and swap meet last week. We have too many e-mails to print, but will try for a representative sample.)

Editor,  Valley Vigilance neither condones nor censors the photo display at Cheap Ammo. Our contract with Sunday Thunder and the fairgrounds is to provide security and to keep the peace. When a vociferous dispute at the ammo booth began to escalate, our security officers intervened to separate combatants. No employee from our company ordered the booth to close. The booth staff on their own shuttered the booth and removed the photographs.  Henry Pipps, CEO, Valley Vigilance

Editor,  The owners of Cheap Ammo were in no way authorized to use the photos on display at the Cheap Ammo booth at the fairgrounds. The photos were taken without authorization from the archives of the Chuckwalla Police Department, and public distribution is prohibited. The department is now conducting an internal investigation.   Lt. Abel Dick, Acting Chief, Chuckwalla PD

Editor,   How do you get your chicken nugget, or your Mac or your Whopper? How does a murderer end a crime spree?  You really don't want to know. But the Cheap Ammo display wasn't false advertising.  If you buy a box of Cheap Ammo’s best-selling Magnum Police Load double ought and use it as intended this is the result you can expect for your money. By the way.  Although it's hard to tell from looking at him, the person pictured is the alleged perpetrator of the kindergarten massacre at Martin Van Buren. Lt. Dick did the deed after a chase and police standoff.   Besos Amazin, Chuckwalla

Editor,   Not everyone going to the Sunday Thunder swap meet belongs to the cave-dwelling crew at Wayne’s Sport Oasis. Sunday Thunder also draws children, and I’m sure some of the parents object to them seeing pictures like this. I am very glad that Valley Vigilance was there.  Acacia Spring, Sometimes Spring

(Editor’s note: The fracas at the Cheap Ammo booth occasioned the first use of a new Valley Vigilance technique for subduing knuckleheads. Vigilance security officers restrained one of the troublemakers by tossing a weighted net over him. “I got the idea from watching an old Victor Mature movie, Demetrius and the Gladiators,” said Vigilance CEO Henry Pipps. “We skip the trident.” Pipps said the company’s net is made of a repurposed truck cargo net. And weighted with small sand bags. In the Roman arena, gladiators fought with shield and a short sword called the gladdus. A “retiarius” fought with net and trident.)

Bums are Green   Much internal perturbation to the city bureaucratic Force following the Breatharian House open letter last week suggesting that the homeless are the true environmentalists, since they don’t consume many material resources. “The average family in Chuckwalla generates far more trash than the entire homeless encampment in Arroyo Cholo. It would be better if the unsheltered put their trash in a garbage bin instead of scattering it all along the arroyo but in volume it’s no way close to the waste generated by the average Lunchbucket family.”

The Breatharians also point out that the Bums on Bikes contingent from Harmony House Kitchen keeps getting larger at every Chuckwalla Days Parade. “The homeless have taken up the virtues of the bicycle in a big way. They get around town to the soup kitchen and bars without polluting the air.   They use the bikes to carry their gear to new locations after being rousted out of the arroyo.”  Meanwhile, a homeless guy, who evidently is a bike mechanic with tools, has started a business under the billboard at Bienvienidos and High Beam Way repairing bikes and fixing tires for the local kids at Martin Van Buren Elementary. In payment he accepts either lunch money or the lunch.

 No Place Like It    Apropos of homelessness, Mayor Robert Crane did an abrupt about face from his condemnation of the illegal homeless campground set up by zoning scofflaw Wade Jennings on his property south of town. His honor will no longer insist that the county remove the dozens of “eight-by” shacks that provide a basic roof to former Arroyo campers. Instead, he says, the city wants to partner with Jennings to open an official “backpacking campground” next to the eight-bys.   Crane said he changed his mind when he realized that the eight-bys have relieved one of the city’s financial burdens. Hail Adoni (church) is feeding the residents, which has decreased the city’s monthly contribution to Harmony House Kitchen.   The camp envisioned by Crane would be open to those who bring all their possessions on their back. No cars or trailers. Bicycles okay. “They can have a place to sleep,” Crane said, “Adoni will feed them, Wade provides composting toilets and washrooms, and the drinking water. We do good for these people and get them out of sight.”

No Pain in Romaine    A new offering debuts this week on the buffet at the Green Zone Café. “Nocoli” salads, Caesar, Chef, or Garden. A Green Zone spokesperson says Nocoli farm-fresh salads have been irradiated to ensure that no lingering e-coli pathogens disrupt the diner’s digestion. A newly purchased “Sunburst No-Coli” sterilizer has been installed in the café’s kitchen to bath the salad greens in electron beams of ionizing radiation. Café spokesperson Melinda Pierce said food irradiation effectively destroys organisms responsible for food-borne illness, and that USDA tests have shown irradiation to be safe. “The salad is not radioactive or mutated,” Pierce said. Earlier this month several patients at Pele Verde Memorial suffering from diarrhea and dehydration tested positive for e-coli, and a local farm stand was closed by health inspectors after produce showed traces of the pathogen.

We Get Letters

Put it under the bed  Editor,   Chuckwalla! Please don’t recycle plastic. Most of the plastic waste from recycling winds up in the ocean, is strewn on beaches, or smolders in garbage heaps in Malaysia, if it isn’t incinerated, adding to the aerial smudge. Only about nine percent is actually recycled, and much of that is re-used to manufacture new versions of waste. If you choose to buy plastic you should own it. Ideally, you would choose to keep your plastic waste forever, or until such time as science develops microbes able to digest it. As Diogenes suspected, there are no honest humans, but a hypothetical ethical person could keep his waste plastic under his bed, in a spare closet, in the guest room, and when space runs out, in covered piles in the backyard. If for some reason this isn’t feasible, then plastic waste should be sent to our own landfill, where it will contaminate our own groundwater, instead of polluting the ocean, or the downtrodden southern hemisphere. And by the way, dog owners. Instead of sending plastic-wrapped poop to the landfill, why not place your darling’s lump in a reusable container and compost your pet’s waste offering in your own backyard?    Donna Glass, Chuckwalla

 

 

 

(Editor’s note: Dogs. Feral dogs in Arroyo Cholo. Unleashed dogs chasing the walking school bus. Unsanctioned dog fights in neighborhood backyards. It’s an ongoing controversy in Chuckwalla, and served as the main campaign issue in the recent council elections. Of course we get letters.)

Editor,   We all love dogs. But dog owners? It depends. The pet has to have a license. Dog owners should be licensed and tagged too, after the successful completion of a certification course emphasizing common courtesy. Your dog is wonderful, the best of all possible companions. But you, dog owner, are not special, or entitled to ignore bagatelles such as the leash law. Sure, your dog may be a little, yippy, but so friendly, it would never bite anybody. The on-coming pedestrian or cyclist may not know this, or be unable to read in the stance of a snarling cur the benign disposition so obvious to you. It is your duty to curb your pet by drawing the leash close while the fellow traveler passes on the narrow foot trail or sidewalk. Two cardinal rules: curb your dog; pick up its poop. And please. The trash can. There is no fairy patrolling the paths at night picking up plastic bags of dog poop.    Farley Anderson, Chuckwalla

Feral dogs to be deported to China    Editor,   Regarding your story headline "Feral Dogs Deported to     China."   As we well know, the Humane Society animal shelter on Hobbsianway is overcrowded after the well-meaning effort by troop 354 to round up abandoned dogs in Arroyo Cholo. And the shelter suffers from ongoing budget shortfalls. Officials at the gas plant have offered as part of their partnership with the city to relocate the surplus of rescue dogs at the shelter to new homes in China. Relocated and adopted into caring families. Not deported. Many of the rescue dogs apparently already have been repurposed as sentry dogs at the gas plant. Others have joined the security firm Valley Vigilance as guard dogs. Yet the shelter remains overcrowded with two or three dogs per cage, which leads to a stress for the animals. According to Col. Ping, the rescued dogs have been settled in rural area of Fanouck Province where they can perform useful service in a farm setting. Col. Ping has assured us that all the dogs are well cared for and happy.   David Longacre, community services specialist, city of Chuckwalla

Axelrod  Editor,   Loose the Dogs strongly deplores the ghastly plan to send a shipment of kidnapped dogs from the Humane Shelter to an uncertain fate in China. The dogs were spirited from the shelter in the dead of night without any public notice, taken to the gas plant, and according to witnesses placed in cages inside shipping containers.   The only reason this comes to light at all is that a clinic volunteer, who fell asleep in her car inside the gas plant compound, was awakened by the howling of frightened animals. She witnessed the removal of the dogs by a crew dressed in gas plant uniforms. Humane Society president Diane Albrecht refused to explain the removal of the dogs and referred us to the City Attorney, who has not returned our phone calls. This cruel outrage must be stopped.   Penny Axelrod, president, Loose the Dogs

New Outreach for Homeless    House has announced that a former residence on Mercury Drive is slated to become an adjunct facility offering restrooms and showers to the city's homeless population. Those in need can get a ticket at the Harmony House Kitchen that will let them schedule an appointment for a shower and other services, such as luggage storage, free haircuts, battery charging, and limited computer time for job searches.  A Harmony spokesperson said that a contract Cuban dentist from the Chinese gas plant has volunteered two hours per week at the new facility to perform teeth checkups and basic oral surgery.

The residence, which once belonged to the late Claudia Thistle, has been vacant for ten years and has fallen into disrepair, but the spokesperson said that a crew from Ironwood State Prison has been seconded to help rehabilitate the residence. The crew of prisoners usually works on cleanup details in the city parks, but some of the prisoners have carpentry and plumbing skills. “They put in two showers, a line of commodes, and a locked storage area. Otherwise, the house mostly needed a good cleaning," the spokesperson said.

 

Since Mercury Dr. has restricted parking, participants will be required to walk from the kitchen, a distance of about half a mile, although the disabled will be able to schedule the Harmony House bicycle rickshaw. While recipients are waiting a turn in the showers, they will get free coffee in the kitchen's shaded patio. The spokesperson said the project had been brewing for more than a year. A lot of our regulars have been bathing in the irrigation canals, she said. In September, a transient, determined to be intoxicated, drowned in a canal near the kitchen while bathing.

According to city attorney Melvin Rosenblatt, the Thistle residence had been tagged for condemnation. The Thistle estate has donated the property to Harmony House for one dollar.   Cheryl Weiss

 

(Editor’s note: Below are excerpts adapted from an A plus paper written by part-time intern Reveille reporter Cheryl Weiss for her Sociology Honors class at Chuckwalla High. Weiss is a Rotary Club merit scholar and a runner-up in the Imperial County junior chess bowl.)

Sailing Ships Eyed by Valley Growers    The possibility of using wind-driven cargo ships to export the Tri-Desert Empire's agricultural bounty to China is getting the weather eye from some of Chuckwalla’s hay growers. At the city council meeting yesterday, the Chamber's Bert Bertinelli alluded to a term paper (authored by Reveille part-time reporter and Chuckwalla High honor student Cheryl Weiss) in which she examined how San Joaquin Valley farmers are shipping loads of corn and rice out of the Port of Stockton aboard a newly commissioned fleet of cargo ships powered by the wind. "The financials we see here are exciting," Bertinelli said. "Sailing ships lower the cost of shipping bulk feeds by more than fifty percent. "Some of our farmers are looking with interest."

The term paper, excerpts of which appeared in the high school's semi-monthly newspaper, Jacket Cover, was the result of a class project conducted by Weiss for Mr. Higgs social economics seminar. Weiss traveled to Bakersfield on a fellowship provided by the Chuckwalla Rotary to interview the owner of the sailing fleet as well as some of the participating farmers.

Jason (Jack) Lichtenstein, Bakersfield trucking magnet and shipping entrepreneur, said he had been inspired by a television news report about a ship cracking yard in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The yard buys and breaks up outdated ships for salvage. The no longer serviceable cargo ships are driven up on the beach, where hoards of workers strip everything recyclable. The stripped hulls are then either cut up and sent to re-rolling plants, or towed out to sea and sunk to make a reef.

Sensing an opportunity, Lichtenstein hopped a flight to Chittagong. "Most of the ships are only 35 to 40 years old. The engines and other machinery are shot, but some of the hulls are still sound. Lichtenstein offered to buy the stripped hulls of three small freighters, ranging from 500 to 1,000 tons in displacement, paying "a very low number that still topped any other return for the breaker." He then hired a crew to transform the empty hulls into sailing vessels. "I knew that, price-wise, shipping feed grains and other low value bulk commodities is a challenge for trans-oceanic shippers because of fuel costs. "

After a quick Google study of the feasibility of using sail for modern cargo ships, Lichtenstein hired a London naval architect to undertake the conversions. "What I wanted was rock bottom cost and utter simplicity." The stripped hulls were strengthened with several transverse bulkheads that gave the ships three separate holds of complete watertight integrity, with no access below deck between the compartments. The design, he said, makes the ship virtually unsinkable by any normal maritime hazard.

The two masts on each ship are tripods 100-foot-high that carry three layers of Dacron sails, "main sails, top sails, and top gallants." The tripod masts allow an uncluttered deck with no standing rigging, and minimum running rigging, yet still allow the sails to be rotated 180 degrees "The usual prototypes for modern sailing freighters use a lot of computers and servo-motors to trim sails," Lichtenstein said. "Too complex and expensive. My sails are raised, reefed, and lowered using standard winches turned by small gasoline donkey engines. These ships are meant for the steady trades, and don't need a lot of sail adjustment."

(Editor's note: We don't understand the maritime lingo, but leave it in for those who do.)

 

 

 

Lichtenstein said the three ships in his grain fleet have an average speed of six mph, meaning that the 7,000-mile voyage from the California coast to the cattle feeding pens of Kowloon takes about two and a half months. But, he said, this isn't that much slower than the modern behemoth cargo vessels burning tons of Bunker A. "These days, to save fuel costs the big bulk carriers slow to under ten knots," Lichtenstein said.  His three small sailing ships make four trips a year, and spend a month on the beach for fumigation and basic maintenance.   Because the ships have no internal power, the hulls don't suffer from the corrosion of electrolysis.

The usual cargo for the Lichtenstein fleet is surplus corn used for cattle feed, sent by rail to Stockton and dumped by conveyor belt into the cavernous holds. While Lichtenstein said that cost information is proprietary, his freight charges substantially undercut any other form of bulk grain transport. He said one of his ships, the San Joaquin Corn Binder, also has carried a shipment of bulk silage, also destined for animal pens "Another wonderful possibility is alfalfa," he said. "Farmers around Bakersfield are dry growing alfalfa on marginal lands with the help of bio-solids coming out of LA sanitary. Wouldn’t it be great if we could make this into some kind of slurry to entrain on Santa Fe gondolas to the Port of Stockton? This could be a nice trade."

And on the return trip the ships carry...tee shirts. "What happened is, that government-run textile factories in Kowloon overproduced shirt blanks big time? White tee shirts, a huge glut. They were planning to burn them. We worked out a deal, they vacuum-pack the shirts in rolls so they can be shot into the ship's hold on the grain conveyor. A little dough to the Chinese. We sell them at a nice price point to stenciling shops in LA."

The Lichtenstein ships fly Panamanian flags and are crewed by Bangladesh seamen with Filipino officers. Each ship has a crew of eight, so that two sailors are on watch at all times. Although the ships have no engines, auxiliary power if needed is supplied by a small tug carried aboard in place of a lifeboat. The tug can be lowered to give the ship a push in an emergency. Large harbor tugs guide the ships to the open ocean on the tide, "but the little tug is enough to keep the ship off a reef, or something like that." Because of modern satellite weather reports and GPS, the ships are routed to avoid dirty weather.

According to the Weiss term paper submitted to Mr. Hogg’s social economics class, Lichtenstein declined to provide specifics about "financials." Weiss determined from other sources, however, that official ownership of his sailing fleet resides with a corporation headquartered in the Caiman Islands. "This corporation takes advantage of loophole in the UN Law of the Sea treaty of 1984 that grants an insurance regulatory exception to certain commercial vessels, such as native fishing craft, that lack internal combustion engines. "Not having to pay for insurance is a major commercial advantage,'" the repot points out.

Council funds private cops

(Editor’s note: The Chuckwalla city Council voted 3-1 Tuesday to contract with the private security company Valley Vigilance for the provision of auxiliary on-call police services. The money for the contract is to come from a state grant meant to augment salaries for law enforcement in underserved rural counties. We dispatched intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, an honors student at Chuckwalla High and a county chess champion, to find out more from city councilman Henry Pipps, the 19-year-old CEO of Valley Vigilance and scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 354)

Reveille: Any appearance of a conflict here?

Pipps: I recused myself. Councilman Patel voted against just for that reason. The state grant allows rural counties to hire additional officers. By the schedule, Chuckwalla would have got enough money to hire one additional entry-level officer. That would have given us a total force of four officers and a lieutenant. Valley Vigilance offered to provide the department emergency backup services for the same dough.

Reveille: You’re not sworn.

Pipps: Under state law, the acting chief, Lieutenant Dick, can deputize citizens in emergencies.

Reveille: You have the security contracts with the fairgrounds for Sunday Thunder, security at the Marvin Gardens projects, the high school sophomore girls, the Martin Van Buren walking school bus, the intramural bike path. Are you stretching yourself too thin?

Pipps: This would be occasional work. Lieutenant Dick is thinking about some recurring issues. For instance, the OMG Youth Ministry demonstrations about Covid-19 and the Rapture, or their other protests that sometimes have ended with vandalism and trespassing.

Reveille: The crèche?

Pipps: Yeah. They tear down that crèche in Sobrantes Village every Christmas. They have also burned books at the library, and stoned women going into the Horny Toad. We have the Los Dorados Rubber Rendezvous at Sunday Thunder that usually involves arrests. And the chief would like to catch Andy Padilla before any more of his bio-terror. Then the usual Saturday nights at the Brewhaha and the Weary Gentleman.

Reveille: Any kind of special training for this?

Pipps. We’ve learned a lot from the Sunday Thunder swap meet. One of the things we found out is that female mud wrestling has a calming effect on the crowd. I don’t know why, but I’ve noticed the same thing when there’s mud wrestling at the Toad or at the casino. The girls are funny; they joke and kid when they’re wrestling with the volunteers from the audience, and that takes the edge off a liquored up crowd. Something to think about.

Reveille: You’re incorporating mud wrestling?

Pipps: Sort of. We already have a training course called, “Really, Dude?” that shows our people good ways to cool down the knuckleheads. We try to avoid the mistakes of police departments. They use too many old guys in their thirties and forties who use too much baton, or resort to tear gas and rubber bullets. We love-bomb a knucklehead four-to-one, using standard wrestling grips and Spock holds that press on nerves but not blood vessels or the windpipe.   One of our guys will grab the knucklehead from the front while a second puts him in a full nelson. A third hogties his ankles and a fourth puts on wrist cuffs connected by a loose ratchet tie. Best way to force his hands behind his back.

Reveille: It's not mud wrestling.

Pipps. Well, I’m thinking of offering some temp work to one of the Soiled Doves. Rockn Skatz is a very good wrestler. And funny. She could laugh a knucklehead into compliance.

Peripatetic School    With the closure of Martin Van Buren elementary school due to an outbreak of Celestine flu (H1N1), the school’s walking school bus has been repurposed as a “walking classroom” for two hours in the morning.

According to vice principal Cecily Gregg, the walking school bus will wind through the Prosper Park neighborhood as usual picking up scholars but instead of depositing them in the schoolyard the Conga line of grade-schoolers will continue by a circuitous route to Mercury Park Rec for outdoor exercise followed by teacher-led instruction.  “We can’t hold regular glasses during the flu outbreak, but we will try to continue with part of the year’s program in an outdoor setting,” Gregg said. Teachers will accompany the walking school, and security as usual will be provided by Valley Vigilance and the guard dog Credo, a German Shepherd that has become a student mascot.

Gregg said the teachers would give students individual attention while enforcing safe distancing. At Mercury Rec Valley Vigilance and Credo will disperse any idlers lounging on the baseball field bleachers, and after spacing the students on the benches a teacher will read a lesson. At the conclusion, the walking school will return the students to their neighborhood homes.  “It’s a trying time, but this is the best we can do for our students, and it certainly is a respite for the parents,” Gregg said. “The students return home in time for lunch, and they have had enough activity that they are good for an hour’s nap afterwards.”

Pipps calls on Pre-Teens for Bike Input   At the Wednesday meeting, city councilman Henry Pipps had a suggestion for the citizen volunteers recently tasked with overhauling the city’s bicycle and pedestrian master plan. Get some input from twelve-year-olds. “Pre-teens on bikes know every vacant lot shortcut, alley, and back road in the city,” Pipps said. ”They might have some thoughts about future foot and bike paths.” Good idea, councilman, although 12-year-olds don’t’ always pay strict heed to “No Trespassing,” “Private Property” and “Keep Out.”

Libertarian Mixer    Club Canute, the city’s Libertarian Party social mixer, meets Tuesday at noon in the Pioneer Room at Steaks ‘n’ Cakes on Mercury Dr. Club members, according to the handout, are dedicated “ to limited government, to very limited taxation, and to leaders who understand their limited power over human nature.” The club luncheon offers iced lemonade served in a silver tureen shaped like a bathtub.

Scouts and the Senescent   Boy Scouts from the city’s Troop 354 are offering their computer skills to homebound seniors having trouble using their iPhones and other digital devices. Boy Scout first class Tony Two-Heart says the help is aimed at seniors with disabilities such as hearing loss, low vision, dementia, and impaired motor skills. “They’re isolated and can’t figure out their phones,” Two-Heart said. “We often have to start at square one at ground zero, but we usually get them up to speed in a few hours.”

Patel Six Condos?    Chuckwalla motel mogul Bagwan Patel reportedly has entered into negotiations with the city to convert some of his motel properties into affordable condominiums. According to city hall sources, Patel has concluded that the sharp downturn in motel occupancy is more than a short-term blip caused by the Celestine Flu outbreak. First on the block would be the 36-room Patel Six. All rooms would be upgraded with new AC and electric kitchenettes and marketed as condos for prices ranging in the low 40s. The city source says that if Patel gets the green light for the conversion, and the sale is successful, his other four motel properties may go the same way.

Wont Work for Food    Cathy Wagstaff spotted this sign held by a mendicant ensconced at the Mercury Dr. freeway off-ramp: “I can’t accept charity unless it’s cash.” No credit cards, evidently

The Breatharian House

(Editor’s note: Last Thursday Chuckpo was called upon to disperse a rowdy demonstration that spilled into a hallway at Chuckwalla Junior College in front of a sociology classroom that was hosting a speaker expounding the tenants of Reformed Secular Breatharianism. The protestors, members of the Hail Adoni Baptist OMG Youth Ministry, soon left the building, and police lieutenant Abel Dick said no arrests were made and the school suffered only the minor vandalism of several overturned trashcans. The Reveille dispatched part-time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, a Rotary Merit scholar and county junior chess champion, to the city’s Breatharian House for more details. Her report:)

The sign on the door of the ramshackle two-story colonial reads, “Reformed Breatharian House, Bedford Falls.” It’s the wee joke, Bedford Falls being the fictional town in the Jimmy Stewart classic It’s a Wonderful Life. “Reformed” refers to the schismatic leanings of the house’s inhabitants, all of whom are students enrolled at Chuckwalla Junior College. Traditional Breatharians believe that life can be sustained solely through the nourishment of prana, that is, light and air. After a Breatharian devotee reaches a sufficient level of consciousness, no food or liquid need pass his lips. The fast is permanent.

Reformed (sometimes called secular) Breatharians, however, are vegan raw foodists who drink only water, preferably rainwater. They follow a limited and strict diet of raw vegetables cultivated in their own garden. Other than that (considerable) difference, they adhere to standard Breatharian practices.   They eschew all heating and cooking. They avoid all transportation that involves the combustion of fuels, and often have long and circular arguments concerning even the humble bicycle. They don’t use electricity, or any of the products requiring it. Each (theoretically) owns only one garment for both winter and summer. Their house is bare of furniture and fixtures. The communal toilet is flushed once per day.

It should be mentioned that they differ in one way from the brothers living in the monastery of the Reformed Breatharian Brethren atop Scorpion Peak. The student Reformed Breatharians will walk to school on roads and paths made of asphalt and concrete. The brothers only tread on natural surfaces.

According to a recent article in the junior college newspaper, the Breatharian creed has come in conflict with the junior college administration. The college has a policy prohibiting students and faculty from wearing hijab, as well as other scarves and headgear that conceal “prominent facial features.”   This includes hoodies, which must be worn down. Some of the Breatharian students favor wool cloaks that include snoods as an integral part of the garment. The students also have agitated for permission to wear surgical masks on days in which PM 2.5 (airborne particulates of 2.5 microns in size or smaller) have reached a density of 4000 parts per million. “The current policy is being reviewed to take into account possible health concerns,” according to a college statement.

Another issue, according to the newspaper, is that the Breatharian students do not use computers, and submit their assignments in handwriting, using plant-based ink on “recycled and recyclable” writing paper. Some teachers have refused to accept handwritten papers, and some of the younger instructors are unable to read script. The impasse, according to a college spokesman, “is currently under adjudication”

Every Sunday afternoon, the Breatharian House is picketed by part of the congregation of the Nary a Sparrow Full Bible Hail Adoni Baptist Congregation and the congregation’s OMG Youth Ministry. According to Pastor Byron Fistule, “Breatharianism is a deviant sect in opposition to the received Word and to American values.” An out-of-court settlement with the church last December resolved a complaint concerning a crèche that had been placed without permission amid the vegetables growing on the Breatharian House front yard.

Breatharians are not known to be a proselytizing community but last Thursday a spokesperson from “the Northern Marches” (which seems to mean the California-Oregon border) spoke at a meeting of the Sociology Forum at the college.

Breatharian schismatic Simon StCyr said that the ultra-orthodox version of Breatharianism holds that it is possible to get all nourishment from prana, the life force in air and light.  “We’re secular,” StCyr said.  “We eat a simple diet of raw foods.  We don’t all wear robes and sandals like the monks at the monastery, but we dress simply and unostentatiously.  Our main aim is to do no harm by avoiding commerce and consumerism, by not burning carbon, and by using as few resources as possible.

Sociology sophomore student Evan Hardell said he voiced an objection: “Do you actually expect an American to give up his car, his iPod, his internet, his hamburger, his vacation in Cancun, his pizza and beer, his shopping, his outboard motor, his weed-whacker, so he can eat a raw unpeeled potato?”

“I think you know the answer,” StCyr reportedly said.

Crane cites scofflaw    In a letter posted Tuesday, Chuckwalla Mayor Robert Crane has asked county officials to investigate a growing homeless encampment on private land contiguous to the city limits.  According to Crane, the buildings on the property are not permitted and are being occupied despite a lack of plumbing and electricity.  The land belongs to long-time zoning scofflaw, homeless advocate, and faith-based activist Wade Jennings, who lately has allowed the homeless to build tiny cabins on his extensive desert property on West Mercury Drive just beyond the Chuckwalla city line.

(Editor’s note:  In 1999, the city extended the city limits for five miles to the west to include Ironwood State Prison, as a means to broaden the tax base.  Jennings’ property lies next to the gerrymandered extension, five miles from downtown Chuckwalla). 

The dozens of tiny shacks, known locally as “eight-bys,” or “bum boxes” are illegal residences, Crane says, because they lack basic utilities and sanitation.  “The people living there are not city residents, and are adversely impacting city services,” Crane says, by using city garbage services, and by filling the community’s water tanker at the city parks.  Jennings has had previous run-ins with county enforcement officials regarding his willingness to allow what county officials describe as “homeless indigents and vagrants” to camp on his property.  In 2013 he was cited by the county for violations involving uncollected refuse.  “His place looked like a dump,” Crane said, “Trash everywhere.”

(Editor’s note:  The Reveille assigned part-time intern reporter Cheryl Weiss, a senior at Chuckwalla High and a recent runner-up in the Riverside School District’s Tri-Desert chess tourney, to look into the eight-bys.  Her report. )

The Jennings property is located at the western dead end of Mercury Dr., just north of the state prison.  A dirt road leads over a low hill to reveal a cluster of small shacks spread over approximately one acre.  This settlement of some  two dozen low income and no-income residents is called the “Eight-Bys” because of the dimensions of the tiny shacks, all of which are wooden cubes of plywood and scrap wood  that are eight feet in width, length and height.  The property owner, Wade Jennings, agreed to meet me on the property. 

Jennings said he is motivated by his Christian faith to do something concrete about the plight of the homeless in Imperial County.  Instead of putting up tents, or letting people bring trailers, as he has in the past, he has decided to build small individual shelters that give the residents, two-thirds of them female, a secure retreat out of the weather.  “Each individual eight-by-eight has a bed, a chair, a shelf, and a bucket,” Jennings said.  In a central patio are composting toilets as well as stalls where residents can wash using plastic jugs of sun-warmed water.

Also in the central area is a sprawling ramada covered by tarps where residents can prepare meals on picnic tables, or socialize in the shade on sultry afternoons. 

Jennings admits that in the past some guests have abused his hospitality.  “I was back East on church business (he is a director at the Hail Adoni Full Gospel Baptist Church), and things got out of hand out here.  We had junk trailers, piles of garbage, arguments and fights, drinking and drugs.  All that’s changed now.”

Jennings said he screens carefully to weed out trouble makers, and has deputized residents pledged to police the grounds, enforce the rules, and quell disputes.  Alcohol, drugs, weapons, and col-habitation are prohibited.  He doesn’t allow personal generators, but each resident is allowed a battery, which can be charged from a generator in the back of one of Jennings’ pickups.  Water comes in a tanker truck, and residents fill gallon jugs for cooking and washing.

The cabins are single-walled, uninsulated, set on skids, and can be erected, Jennings says, in a couple of hours.  Four-by-eight panels are assembled from salvaged wood glued together in layers inside forms.  Irregularities can be smoothed out with a coat of plaster.  Twelve panels make the eight-by-eight, and the resident can decide how he wishes to cut out a door and windows.  “Usually, people opt for a small door with the threshold well off the ground to keep out snakes and rodents,” Jennings said.  The windows usually are more like loopholes, and ventilation slats are covered with screening.  The cubes, of course, are flat-roofed, although most of the residents have installed ridgepoles for tarps.

Mable Kleeson says she is “forty something,” homeless, unemployed, and has a history of arrests for public intoxication.  She has been living in an eight-by for four months.  “I am so glad for this.  For me it’s about having a private place where I can keep my stuff.”  Her eight-by has a metal frame twin bed with a “rescue mattress,” a plastic patio chair, half a dozen plastic bins, and pegs along the wall for clothes.

Her eight-by has no fans or heat, and light comes from a flashlight and a candle.  She says she goes to bed at sundown and keeps warm with an overcoat and two sleeping bags.  On hot days she sits in her plastic chair in the shade of a tarp, her body loosely covered by a wet sheet.

“I’m a very nervous person around people,” Kleeson says, “That’s why living on the street was so hard, that’s why I got into trouble with alcohol.  I love it. I can stay here without any hassles.”  Jennings’s church provides free meals, cereal and coffee for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and stew for dinner, and while a copy of the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount has been posted in the patio, the residents are not required to attend the Sunday prayer meeting. 

“They leave you alone,” Kleeson said.  “It’s such a relief.”

 

Jennings says he has not been contacted by the county about the eight-bys and doesn't expect any official effort at code enforcement.  "We are helping people here who usually would be wards of the county," Jennings said.

Letters to editor

Editor,  Good article from Beet Baily about alternative underwear, but I have one knit to pick.  In her comparison of loin clothes to Commando I think she forgets that many of us prolies ride bikes every day. Commando can be an option if you wear seamless gym pants but not so much if you wear jeans.  A third option for bike riders is an untucked loin cloth with belt holding up unzipped or unbuttoned pants. Suspenders are a big help for Commando. As others have mentioned previously, breechclouts are good option for long-distance public transit, since underwear can be changed in bus or train water closets without removing pants. Or, as she mentions, regular underpants can be stuffed with paper towels or Kleenex.  But a helpful article overall.  Brett Holiday

Editor,  Ironwood State Prison without walls.  The word "deadline" comes from the Confederate penal system for prisoners of war.  Rather than walls or fences around their concentration camps, the Rebs simply drew a line in the dirt or dug a ditch to mark the prison boundaries.  Sentries in guard towers shot any Bluebellies who crossed the "deadline."  Ironwood is bursting.  The state designed the prison for a thousand inmates, tops; the captive population now is double that.  The Dept. of Corrections says the cost of incarceration has risen to a quarter million per capita annually.  For low level drug peddlers, con artists, grifters, street hustlers, car boosters, petty thieves, housebreakers and other non-violent felons, how about an outdoor tent camp surrounded by a simple Cyclone fence and guarded by gun towers and roving perimeter patrols stiffened with vicious sentry dogs?  We know dogs work.  Look at Marvin Gardens.  Since Valley Vigilance started using repurposed rescue dogs at night in the gated parking lots, crime has dropped to zero.  The Gardens has two gun towers but not a shot fired since the perimeter got secured by East German shepherds.  At the tent prison, volunteer gardening by inmates to defray kitchen costs.  A component to train service animals.  Work not mandatory but rewarded with coffee and crumb cake. Union rules: an eight-hour day with an hour for lunch and two fifteen minute coffee breaks.  Work suspended when temps top 90.  Humane conditions, with oversight by the International Red Cross and the ever-vigilant press.  A healthy vegan menu for the inmates, much of it supplied by their own efforts.  No attempt at corrections except literacy classes and library books.  Money saved, and idle minds occupied with effort tangibly worthwhile.   Besos Amazin.

Besos Candidacy?

Editor's Note:  Gadfly Besos Amazin remains cagey about his possible insurgent long-shot congressional bid. Yet he's making noises as if poised for a hat toss.  Almost daily we get e-mails from the gadfly provocateur.  In his latest he almost announces as an unaffiliated write-in candidate for the 25th Congressional District, with his campaign headquarters right here in Chuckwalla.  We are not surprised but we do admit that the groundswell of support for this candidacy washed over us unnoticed.  We do know that since this candidacy springs from our own circulation area, we had better cover it.  Although we have a familiarity with Besos because of his blitz of electrons in our direction, we have never met him in person.  We assigned the Reveille’s part-time intern and political editor Cheryl Weiss, a recipient of a Rotary Club scholarship, to track down Besos and prepare a report.)

Besos, the prolific e-provocateur, generates a flurry of e-mails and tweets daily.  We do our best to keep up, but sometimes the volume of insight and opinion emanating from his nimble fingers overwhelms us.  Yesterday was such a day.  Here are the highlights from the Besos outpouring:

“Editor, The only conceivably workable plan for homelessness is through federal action, the spineless local entities, such as Imperial County or the city of Chuckwalla, being too frightened of the rabid taxpayer umbrage that would follow any suggestion of putting a homeless encampment near settled burghers.  The Feds need to set up refugee tent camps for the homeless on BLM land in locations away from population centers. The only way to deal with the housing shortage in America is with refugee camps.  One size will not fit all.  Different camps for different populations:  lame camp, for the non-criminal chronically inept and helpless; dope camp for addicts (with free narcotics administered under supervision); alkie camp, for drinkers; backpack camp, for the younger indigent transients; 5150 camp, for mentals (with help, if possible); and prison camp, for the confinement of convicted thieves, dealers, and predators.  Besos Amazn

Editor, The Chuckwalla city council needs to end its mewing and handwringing about the sorry state of the backwater roads within the gerrymandered city limits.  The potholes and washouts on Cimarron Drive, Magma Parkway, Gemstone Road, and others west of town, are not going to be repaired.  No money.  No county or state bailout on the horizon.  The handful of whiners from the Dogpatch outlands who show up at council meetings might as well face up to the amazing official resilience in continuing to do nothing.  My suggestion:  look to other Third World countries with bad roads.  The drivers on crumbling barrio roads in Mexico DRIVE SLOWLY. So they don’t wreak their beaters. What the city council might do for cheap  is post new speed limits on our bad roads.  Fifteen miles per hour.  Assign a traffic cop and we’d have a positive revenue flow.  Besos Amazn”

“Editor, To Reveille reader Max Tobias, you schmuck, regarding my idea for giving free drugs to addicts.  Who would pay, Max?  The same people who pay for the failed war on drugs.  Millions of taxpayer bucks spent on interdiction, enforcement, counseling, rehab, and undercover police work such as that which broke down the door of the wrong house on Mercury Drive and arrested Larry Delaney, the Albertsons store manager.   Fifty years of the very expensive war on drugs, and heroin, crack, meth, OxyContin, and everything else, available to any school child who can find the corner of Eighth and Fairway.  Buy the poppy crop in Afghanistan, Max, turn it into pharmaceutical grade opioid in clean well-supervised American factories, and provide the dope, gratis, to registered addicts.  What would happen to the drug trade, Max?  Is this a good model for the scumbag dealers?  Most druggies don’t want to clean up; they’d rather support their habit by burgling your house.  If they could get their fix for free they’d probably be glad to stay home on the nod.  As for any foreign reluctance to selling poppy to America, I think the Afghanistan warlords would listen to a Don Corleone style offer.  But I agree with one thing you said.  You can’t give them money; they’d spend it on guns.  Payment would be in kind from a shopping list of approved items, such as washing machines and solar panels.  Besos Amazn.” 

Pot on the Rez?  The Lumbee Nation is floating a controversial proposal to establish a marijuana plantation on the reservation to be cultivated with labor supplied by the country’s homeless population.

“A great deal for everybody,” said nation spokesperson Bert Bertinelli.  The paid casino representative said part of the large and growing under-served indigent community in Imperial County could find permanent homes in worker colonies set up next to fields of marijuana plants.

“It would be volunteer labor,” Bertinelli said.  In return for daily hours of gardening, the colony residents would get a free pitch for their tents, three meals, two coffee breaks, and access to after-work “smoke circles” where they could enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Bertinelli said the Lumbees, as a sovereign nation, were legally entitled to grow the ganja and sell the surplus at the reservation casino and smoke shop.  The smoke shop already sells untaxed tobacco and easily could find room on the shelves for new products, he said.

The reaction in some county offices was muted.  Joseph Intaglio, chief administrative officer for Imperial County, said he would need to study the proposal further, while adding that he agreed that the county needed to do more to address the county’s burgeoning numbers of homeless.  He cited the reservation’s already established backpack campground as a step in the right direction, but said he still needed to investigate the supervisors’ likely stance on tying camping privileges to a work requirement for growing a crop whose legal status is still ambiguous. 

“It’s not clear to me yet that it’s okay to grow and sell weed on a Federal Indian reservation” Intaglio said.Bertinelli said that marijuana already is cultivated on parts of the sprawling reservation and the proposed plantation only would formalize an existing condition.  “Plus the benefit of doing something for all the poor mopes sleeping in doorways or in the back of cars.”  

He said that the authorized homeless camps in the county prohibit drugs, and thus were not attractive to some of the intended clients.   “So in exchange for a little gardening, you get three hots and a cot, plus free smoke,” Bertinelli said.  “A lot of people on the street are gonna like this.”

Last August, the Lumbee reservation opened a backpackers’ camp on the overflow parking lot west of the Spaceport Casino.  For $5 a night, campers arriving on foot or by bicycle can pitch a tent on the bare dirt.  But alcohol and drugs are prohibited on the fenced property, and campers can only bring in the possessions they can carry on their back.  The campground offers Porta-potties, outdoor showers, and a free breakfast that’s prepared with leftovers from the casino restaurants.   The county frequently provides homeless persons with vouchers that let them stay for up to two weeks in the Lumbee campground.

 Bertinelli said the Nation’s plantation proposal is now before the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Transit Update

 

DET “Nodes” for Super- Premium service, the Five Buck Bus  Desert Empire Transit has announced the establishment of two “transit nodes” for the newly initiated super-premium Five Buck Bus running from Chuckwalla’s upscale neighborhoods to downtown.  The so-called nodes are loading zones for passengers boarding the Five Buck Bus at Plaza Mall in Sobrantes Estates and at Quality Fare Market adjoining PleasantGate Villa.  According to spokesperson the bus stops will feature shade awnings, piped in classical music, and, for the morning commute, a coffee cart. 

With much fanfare DET launched last month a new transit scheme that changed the fare structure for bus rides.  A local service, which meanders around town and makes lots of stops, is free and continuous from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.  Premium express buses run at commute hours from fixed points to the downtown transit hub at Hobesianway and Mercury Rd.  The fare is four dollars, half price for seniors with a valid Medicare card.

The new super-premium buses that service Sobrantes and PleasantGate will have a fare of $5.  All DET buses offer the same basic amenities:  a seat and hand rails.  Some buses, both premium and local, are school buses on loan from Chuckawalla High, which has a surplus of vehicles because of falling enrollment.

“The tiered pricing seems to be working,” said DET spokesperson, “Ridership is up on both the local and express routes.  We think we can entice even more people to use public transit with the Super Premium pricing.”

The spokesperson said DET is following the tiered pricing example set by Los Angeles Metro, which last year began alternating on all its routes free buses with buses requiring a fare of $3.  The Metro also instituted a basic dress code for fare payers, and fare passengers receive boarding gate temperature monitoring during flu season.  To introduce the new system in LA, the Metro kicked off a city-wide advertising campaign with the slogan “It’s a Different Experience.”

Each of the new nodes in Chuckwalla will have piped in background music.  “Mozart and Chopin, mostly,: said, “These composers have been found useful for discouraging skate boarders and other youths from congregating under the awnings.” 

CJC Prof fired for “politicizing" in class    A popular teacher at Chuckwalla Junior College has been dismissed after a student Evangelical group complained that his lectures had become too politicized. A spokesman for the college confirmed that Tony Clark had been dismissed from the classroom, but declined to comment further, citing privacy rules for personnel matters. Pastor Byron Fistule, the sole designated spokesperson for the Hail Adoni Baptist OMG Youth Ministry, the student group, also declined comment.

(Editors’ note: The Reveille assigned intern part time reporter Cheryl Weiss, an honor student at Chuckwalla High, to follow the story. Her report so far.)

Susan Swartz was a year ahead of me in school and now attends the JC, where she is enrolled in an introductory Anthro class formerly taught by professor Clark. At Chuckwalla High, Susan and I had been classmates in several advanced classes. She always had been an assiduous note-taker, and was attending Clark’s class during the alleged politicized remarks. She said she didn't know why Clark was fired.

"We were studying the Chilean anthropologist Freire. He's very dry and uses a lot of big academic words and scientific terms. I don’t think Mr. Clark said anything about politics the day before he got fired. He was talking about Freire and about how educational leaders have had to struggle with conservative ingrained cultures.”

 Reveille: Do you have any of Clark's specific quotes?

“He was comparing the obsessive sexual totems of Chilean peasants, things like pet fighting cocks, with the cathected totem items of cultural subsets in America.

 Reveille: You have the quote?

"Here it is. 'In America, just as money is caca, the gun is wee-wee.’ He said that under relentless oligarchic and religious oppression, the Id people have an overwhelming sense of emasculation.   Id people know they aren’t valued by Ego people. For Id people, having a cathected firearm restores a feeling of potency. Freire says it would take violent revolution to get deep change. Professor Clark said that in American nothing would happen until mass killers started targeting high-value Ego people instead of other valueless Id people."

Reveille: Do you think he was fired because he questioned gun ownership?

"I think it was because he said caca."

 (Editor's note: This is a developing story.)

Rickshaw Rocket    Chuck Higgins, scion of the pioneer Chuckwalla family, often sits on his front porch of the family homestead at the bottom of Higgins Hill, watching the traffic climb the steep grade up Mercury Dr. to Pele Verde Valley Hospital.  Lately, he received an interesting proposition from the owner of the town’s one rickshaw service. Would Higgins, a stoutly built sometimes stonemason, occasionally provide a boost for rickshaw passengers on the way to the clinic?  A couple of bucks in it, if Higgins would supply his muscle at the rear end of the rickshaw for the 100 yards up the hill? “Why not,” said Higgins.  “I’m just sitting there anyway.”

Council Chokes  In a 3-1 vote the Chuckwalla City Council Wednesday killed a measure that sought to ban “intentional coughing with intent to harm.” The measure, sponsored by councilwoman Natal Patel, would have made it illegal to intentionally cough within six feet of another person.  She said ordinance was needed because Chuckwalla police lacked authority to restrain a protester who allegedly was coughing maliciously near counter demonstrators in front of the Golden Duck Restaurant on Hobbesian Way. The owner had closed the restaurant temporarily after swab tests revealed the front door handle had been contaminated with the so-called “Celestine flu (H1N1) allegedly being spread around Chuckwalla by lone wolf eco-terrorist Andy Padilla.

In a communiqué to the Reveille, Padilla claimed that the Peking duck dishes served at the restaurant used an ingredient (duck) that was inhumanely raised through force-feeding. Some members of the Loose the Dogs animal rights coalition had gathered to question the owner, when another group from the OMG Youth Ministry demanded to be seated. At council Chuckpo acting chief Lt. Abel Dick said he didn’t know why the two groups were arguing, but that he did not have authority to make arrests for coughing. “We separated the citizens and sent them home” Dick said. Dick said he saw no need for a new ordinance at this time.

Estar o no estar? Es la pregunta.    The Chuckwalla Community Theater is putting a new production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet on the boards this Friday at 7 p.m. at the Theater Arts building at Chuckwalla High. Drama teacher and director Gloria Ortiz said this would be the first Spanish language production of the play to appear in Chuckwalla. High school seniors Rodrigo Hernandez and Olivia Mendez have the starring roles as Hamlet and Ophelia.

Down with Lids    Mimi Talbot’s amusing letter about her husband forgetting to put down the toilet lid drew some traffic in the e-mail queue.

Editor,   A common problem for sure.  My posse had a talk about this at Saturday night poker.  Maybe Mimi would like to hear some of the comments.

One guy takes a tin cup to the john.  He uses that and pours the contents into the toilet.  Doesn’t even have to lift the lid.  Another guy put marks on the wall over the commode to place his hands so that he’s perfectly positioned to hit the mark without splattering. Another guy said he kind of semi squats over the toilet.  He denies that he actually sits. Another guy said he uses the washbasin. We’re not letting him play poker with us anymore. Hope that helps Mimi’s husband. Poker Gang, Chuckwalla

Wha..? What?

Editor,,I try to keep an enlarged perspective rather than engage in tit-for-tat bickering with a small person.  Not physically small, but small in character and subject to peevish snits during which she wants to stamp her tiny foot.  Literally a big foot, but tiny in effect.  Responding to criticism with ad hominem bombast has not been my way.  I examine each proposal from Kay and her coteries of earnest Lilliputians for anything remotely resembling common sense.  If anything like that is ever found I'll be the first to notice.  At the same time my duty must be to call out whimsical and self-serving schemes that detract from the general weal.  Arnold Kleppol, Chuckwalla

(Editor’s note: Kay Tsenin, chairman of the Chuckwalla chapter of the Tea Party, had a letter last week lamenting an alleged lack of civic pride in the city’s decision not to replace the dead palm trees on Hobbesianway.)

Whither Plastic   (Editor’s note: The Chuckwalla city council last Wednesday heard a petition from the Green Zone Zero Waste Coalition that called on the city not to renew its trash burning contract with Chuckwalla Waste Kiln when it expires next year. The kiln, claimed the petition, is a toxic polluter responsible for the high rate of asthma in the city. Instead of burning trash, the city should initiate a program of composting and recycling.)

Editor,    The Chuckwalla Waste Kiln burns the plastic. Plastic isn’t compostable, and only about 9 percent of plastic refuse in the US gets recycled. The plastic garbage that’s sent to Quarantine Rd. landfill leeches its toxic hydrocarbons into the soil. Ditto for the ash from the kiln, which also goes to the landfill. The small amount of plastic that’s actually recycled is flaked and molded into more crap. China and Malaysia used to be good sports about taking Yankee plastic waste but no more. Chuckwalla has a common dilemma. Recycling is a chimera. Zero Waste composting is a noble goal requiring Herculean, North Korean scale reeducation, not only of householders, but also of every restaurant and market. Separating trash is time consuming, menial and boring, and the householders who do it have to be organized and watchful. A zero waste outcome seems unlikely to be accomplished in the short time remaining on the current kiln contract, or during the remaining useful life of the landfill. Burning trash turns a small buck for Chuckwalla; investing in compost infrastructure would cost a lot. The Imperial County Composting facility may not be an apt example for comparison. The facility only takes neatly bagged yard trim collected curbside in leafy affluent suburban Imperial. The compost is sold at a small profit to the county. Any new Zero Waste composting jobs in Chuckwalla, to start with anyway, will be entirely on the public dime. The kiln makes trash disappear right now. The Zero Waste proposals are airy, thin on specifics, and on the come, and may not turn out to be realistic. Wary politicians in cash-strapped Chuckwalla will shrink from asking for more taxes.   As for health, the Foster report makes a fair point. There are lots of reasons for high asthma rates in Chuckwalla. To lower these rates would also mean tackling all the concomitants of blight, poverty, and TRAP. The kiln is a gross polluter, dangerous to health, and an eyesore. It should be shuttered. And yet one can’t blame a city honcho for recoiling when he thinks about the painful steps before Zero Waste replaces the kiln.  He thinks about uncollected garbage that has no place to go.   Tray Sylvester, professor of environmental science, Chuckwalla Junior College

(Editors note: TRAP stands for traffic related air pollution.)

 Musk Afloat   (Editor’s note: Cheryl Weiss, intern reporter for the Chuckwalla Reveille and a recipient of the Chamber of Commerce Meritorious Young Citizen Commendation, wrote this essay for Mr. Holmes Social Issues class at Chuckwalla High.)

Does the Elon Musk proposal for giant battery ships offer a "bridge” solution for cities powered by solar and wind energy?  We have seen much talk in the media about Musk's recently released plan to use oil tanker-sized battery barges to harvest wind energy from Aleutian windmill farms and bring the stored energy to cities on the Western seaboard. His vision is of the 600-foot lithium ion floating battery packs to be anchored off Refuges Island in the Aleutian Chain while being charged with electrical energy from five hundred 100-foot high wind turbines. The 200,000 mwh battery boats would then be towed down the coast to Seattle or Portland to be anchored in harbor and hooked to the grid. The batteries would be a backup source of electricity for a city during periods when sun and wind power wasn't available. Armbruster (Editor's note: Weiss follows the Purdue Owl citation protocol of listing the positions and qualifications of quoted sources in the end piece.) says that the wind-scoured Aleutian Islands are a rich repository of wind energy that could be harnessed by storing it’s electrical potential in floating battery banks, dozens of which could charge at remote wind farms and then reposition when the energy is needed. The Musk plan immediately drew criticism. Donaldson (2) said the notion of towing giant barges laden with unstable and sometimes explosive lithium threatened the environment. “This is fraught with the potential for disaster,” Donaldson said. (Editor’s note: the entire essay is posted on the high schools >meritscholars.chs.org< website.)