To get almost anywhere from Alderpoint, where I live by the Eel River, you must take the road over the shoulder of Pratt Mountain out to US 101 in the valley of the South Fork of the Eel. As I came across one morning last week I saw this ocean of fog shrouding the valley, with islands that will vanish like Avalon as the day warms up.



Later that day, or that week, when I was finished with my last case of the day in WIllits, I got onto US 101 and headed north. I hadn't gone but a mile or two when I found a rainbow blocking the highway.



Today I had to cross the Coast mountains to get to Red Bluff, out in the central valley of California. I ate an early supper from the Safeway in Fortuna, and stopped at one of the few places in the mountains on Rt 36 where food is available, for a milk shake Its the Mad River Drive-in.



That's my Volvo parked in front. I got Vanilla Mint, and it was so thick that they gave me a spoon in case the straw would not work. Here's what the rest of the commecial district of Mad River looks like:



I arrived safely at the Best Western. My room is most of the way down this corridor.



This was probably my last trip over the mountains on Rt 36 this winter. The road is famous for black ice, and curves at the bottom of long mountain grades. The most dangerous part when there is no ice comes after you emerge from the eastern flank of the mountains and traverse a section of small hills where the road often changes direction just over the crest. Someday they'll fix it, I suppose.

Not for me as a lawyer, I got a client's felony charges dismissed, but downstairs while waiting for something - and in the courthouse you are always waiting for something - I came across the bulletin board where foreclosures are listed. Mendocino county has less than 100,000 people in it, and on the board were 36 foreclosures. Most were recent mortgages, but one was from 1999 and I really felt for the family that had been making payments on their home for 10 years, only to lose it now.

The oddest thing to consider as you pass the vacant storefronts in Willits and Ukiah is that there is really only one industry that is booming in the county now. Fishing is gone, forestry is gone, the real estate boom is busted -what can be done with the land to keep the economy afloat? Grapes and marijuana are the answers that seem to have emerged. And of the two, marijuana is much better for the economy and the people who live in the county. Most vineyard work is seasonal and low paying, marijuana can be grown indoors, all year round, and everyone connected with it makes decent wages or better. People are flocking to the county from all over the nation - indeed from all over the world, judging by the arrest notices in the newspaper- to grow marijuana. That keeps the real estate market from absolutely collapsing, as marijuana farmers buy land that vinyards won't, and low end houses. And it brings an untold amount of money into the local economy.

So what are the governments of the county and the cities within it doing to encourage this lifeline to the economy? Nothing. In fact they are apparently staying up nights trying to figure out how to destroy the only industry still flourishing in the county. (I should point out to non- California readers that we have legal medical marijuana here and it seems that virtually all of the marijuana being grown in Mendocino county is either legal, or could be if the growers got their paperwork straight).

And why are so many elected officials acting directly against the interests of the people who elected them? Prejudice against marijuana and the people who use it, and ignorance of the law. The backlash in California by government and law enforcement against the medical marijuana laws is so odd and so massive that you have to reach back into the 1950s government and police obstruction of desegregation in the south to find anything as pervasive and perverse. Unlike the segregated south, however, juries in Mendocino county are not opposed to medical marijuana (or, for the most part, any other kind) and so most marijuana arrests are either dismissed, compromised, or result in acquittals. If the whole situation did not result in a lot of personal tragedy for those arrested, the stupidity of it all would be funny, I suppose.

I don't stay in Willits often, because I don't have early morning court in Willits often. They are closing the court in Willits in a few weeks, and I may never stay in Willits again. But I'm in Willits tonight, at the Willits Best Western which is on a hillside at the south end of town. This part of Willits is in transition, and it appears to be transitioning from shops to pastures and forests. Let me put it this way: I wanted to eat dinner. I gave the Purple Thistle strong consideration, but the odometer said it was 1.7 miles from the motel. I have walked it in warmer weather, and enjoyed the 3.4 mile round trip stroll. With a walk like that, I can have two glasses of wine at dinner.

But that was summertime. Today it was 50 degrees and sinking, and quite dark when I got to the motel. So I decided to dine at Gribaldi's instead. After dark you may know it as "DINNER" since that's its only illuminated sign. My sweetheart and I had breakfast there one day and she got biscuits and gravy, and gave the dish an A+ rating. Real American food done right. I thought perhaps they could equal that at dinner, and besides they were only .3 miles away.

But first a serious hurdle had to be overcome. When I dine alone I like to read the newspaper. It slows down the dinner. No newspaper at the motel (in Ukiah there is USA Today, often). So I had to cross 101 to the paper racks by Perkos. DANGER! DANGER! I would need change, and go inside to get it, and then once inside perhaps I would stay and eat there!!!!!. It has happened before. But not this time. Perkos was dark, the paper racks were empty. Perko's building has an unsafe for human habitation notice on it. So I walked thru the shopping mall to get a paper at Rays Food Place. I walked past empty storefront after empty storefront. Only the chains and some low rent busineses (Hot Yoga!!) remain with few exceptions. Super Taco, which is really good, was open and really empty.

I got a paper - a Chronicle $1.00, very small, with the new glossy paper on the outside of the sections - and passing more empty storefronts, some with signs saying the cops could harass the homeless there, then passing a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk outside the Subway eating salvage subs. He looked frightened as I approached. Across the street and soon I was at Gribaldi's. Big dining room, few tables taken. "Anywhere you like" said the waitress. Maybe even "Anywhere you like, hon." I had a glass of merlot (this is California after all) and a chicken fried steak with a baked potato, and the house salad drowned in thousand island dressing. It was American food nite at Gribaldi's, at my table. incredibly delicious in a heart attack inducing sort of way. I'm afraid I ate all the butter on my baked potato and most of the sour cream, and all 3 slices of very thick kind of buttered white bread, along with my 10 oz chicken fried steak and several lonely broccoli florets. They didn't ask me if I wanted desert, which is good, because I did. I wanted apple pie a la mode, and I would have ordered it too but I'm adopting a kind of Buddhist approach to desert and not asking for it if it is not offered. Dinner with 20% tip: $17.00 Motel $94. Chronicle $1.00. (Information for readers of the future who wonder what prices were like "back then.")

We came for the plays. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is now in its 75 the year, and legendary among our friends for its quaility. We've liked it, and we're back again to close down the season. Tonight's Macbeth is the last performance of the festival for 2009.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves. Yesterday Matinee was Alls Well that Ends Well. Its one of those Shakespeare plays that presents cultural difficulties for modern viewers. The plot is that a servant girl falls in love with the son of the count. The young man goes to the king and hopes to find glory in the wars. The king is sick, and his doctors can't help him. The girl, daughter of the greatest physician of her time, has his secrets and hopes that by curing the king she can win the boy. She pledges her life as guarantee for the cure, and asks to marry her pick of the court if it works. It works, she picks the son. He's not for it, refuses, angers the king and ends up in a shotgun wedding. Next day he sends his still virgin wife home, and goes off to the wars. Up to here, possibly ok with everyone.

He says he will bed her, which is to say become a real husband, if she gives him the ring which he wears on hs finger, when she is carrying his child. She dutifly goes home, blames herself for putting him in the danger of the wars, and leaves on a pilgrimage. He wins glory and tries to seduce a townswoman in Florence. But our girl accidently meets the towngirl, when pilgriming in Florence and works a deal where by townie asks the ring as the price of her virginity, gets it, and sets up date for delivery of her part. But its dark, and the deliverer is our heronine instead - who becomes pregnant, and gets the ring from the townie. Goes back to the king's court, meets her husband, who continues to be a grade-A creep, and saves his life by delivering the ring and explaining the affair to the King. They live happily ever after.

Despite the male lead being a character who is impossible to like, and continually thinking our heroine has a screw loose for pursuing him, the performance was very enjoyable. I suppose its like the zen koan about cutting the cat in half. You cant understand it by thinking of the unfortunate cat.



It was halloween of course and everyone in town it seemed was costumed for the day. Decorations everywhere, shrieks on the hardware store p.a. system - like that. Ashland has three resident theater groups and a college, and Ashland does halloween. They had a huge parade to cap off the daytime celebrations. I snapped this jac o'lantern the next morning.

In the evening we saw a new play, about the writing of Macbeth - which we see tonight, get it? called Equivocation. Wonderful play, unclear what it was exactly about, but enjoyed every moment of it. Don't miss it if you get the chance to see it. It being the last night of the premiere performance the author was in the audience, and got to be in the midst of the standing ovation with calls of "Author, Author". Probably a good moment for him.

Next morning I'm off on a long excercise walk. I go down the hill, round the bend, follow the old road until it crosses the freeway, over I go and as I'm nearing the end of the bridge I look down at the embankment and there I find



lying on the ground. I get off the bridge, hop the fence, fight thru the blackberrys and they are mine. According to the label they were grown in Columia. How sad, thinks I, that they come all the way from Columbia only to get tossed off the Old State Highway bridge. So I took them back to the motel and gave them to my sweetie.

We saw The Music Man in this afternoon's matinee. "There's trouble in River City" comes from that play. Who would have thought it. Enjoyed it a lot, altho I didn't think the female lead sang in the right style and it was difficult to understand her lyrics. Every musician piece - and it is a musical comedy - got applause and at the end, which was the final performance for the year - there was a long standing ovation.

Outside was this tree.