The Future of The Mateel

I heard a report on the sad state of affairs at the Mateel Community Center on KMUD’s Local News the other day. Faced with immediate bills, and overshadowed by a looming half-million-dollar debt, SoHum’s most celebrated non-profit has very few options. Some hope that the Mateel can secure a debt consolidation loan through the Humboldt Area Foundation using the Mateel Hall as collateral. If that happens, the Mateel will have to repay the loan, plus interest, which means that our community will make payments on that debt, for many, many years to come.

The other option, it seems, requires the Mateel Board of Directors to declare bankruptcy, sell the hall and the rest of the Mateel’s assets, and if there’s any money left, after all of the creditors have been paid, they can use whatever is leftover to try to start a new community center. There’s a good chance, however, especially in today’s real estate market, that liquidating the community’s assets won’t raise enough capital to cover all of the Mateel’s debt, in which case some creditors will take a loss, and the community will have to start from scratch.

It boils down to this: Will we, the SoHum community of today, spend the next twenty or thirty years paying for the excess and irresponsibility of SoHum’s aging dope yuppies, in order to save their dream, the aging and irresponsibly excessive Mateel Hall, or will we write it all off as a total loss? Unless those aging dope yuppies dig deep into their own pockets and come up with that half-mil, right now, we no longer have a community center. Instead, we have inherited from them a yawning chasm of debt that they now invite us to throw our money and our lives into.

Did you expect anything else? Did you think the black market marijuana industry was going to leave the Mateel Hall to the SoHum community as a gift for posterity? Drug dealers throw great parties, but they don’t generally leave nice community centers in their wake. Instead, they leave gutted buildings and trashed properties. Why should the Mateel be any different?

Drug dealers often, and with good reason, feel guilty about their dirty Drug War windfall, so they sometimes donate large sums to churches and non-profits, especially when money is easy, but these donations come sporadically, and rarely continue long term. Drug dealers also tend to gamble irresponsibly and spend too much money on status symbols. Drug dealers need visible status symbols to compensate for the deep negative status of their occupation. Inevitably, the gambler’s luck runs out, and the trashed status symbols get hauled off to the scrapyard, or in this case, sit vacant, waiting for demolition or immolation. The Mateel was both a charity, and a status symbol to the black market marijuana industry in Southern Humboldt, but now that the money’s gone, it may just become part of the trash they leave behind.

Thankfully, the Mateel has had the forethought to prepare the community for this moment by discontinuing the only program people really needed and relied on them for, namely the Mateel Meal, a free lunch program, years ago. We still have plenty of hungry people in our community, but they already know better than to look to the Mateel for help. For them, nothing will change if the Mateel closes permanently. The Mateel never offered shelter to those in need. Hundreds of people in our community who sleep huddled under plastic tarps outside in the rain, because of the lack of affordable housing, will not miss the fancy dress balls or A-list reggae shows at the Mateel, so the venue will be no great loss to them.

The Mateel Hall primarily serves the dope yuppies who live in the hills, have plenty of money, and want a swanky place to party, and because of that, the Mateel feels more like a country club than a community center. I’m not really a country club kind of guy, and the Mateel has done a pretty good job of turning my partner and I off to events there. First, precious few of the events held at the Mateel Hall interest us. Second, we’ve had enough bad experiences at the Mateel that we’re very hesitant to go back. Third, most Mateel events are outside of our entertainment budget. Exclusivity achieved! So, as tragic as it is to lose the Mateel Community Center, when it comes down to it, a whole lot of us here in SoHum will hardly notice that it’s gone.

The War on Drugs Lives On in the Minds of it’s Victims

For a place that’s been so defined by the War on Drugs, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by how deeply the people of Humboldt County have internalized the insanity of the Drug War. It was only a couple years after the helicopters stopped persecuting the pot farmers, that all of the growers came to a town meeting in Redway to demand that the County Sheriff send more cops down here to address our heroin and meth problem. They asked the same cops, who they knew were corrupt, and had terrorized their whole community for decades, the same cops who raided their homes and held their children at gunpoint, the same cops who tortured non-violent protesters by swabbing pepper-spray directly into their eyes, to do something about the fact that their own kids now use heroin and meth.

You’d think they’d realize that if the National Guard and 30 years of CAMP couldn’t stop them from growing weed, no amount of cops are ever going to stop their kids from shooting heroin. Besides that, after seeing so many of their neighbors, friends, family members and even themselves, busted, jailed and labeled felons because they grew, used or carried cannabis, you’d think they might not be so quick to demand the same violence against their own children, just because they prefer to use a different substance. You might think so, but you’d be wrong, because the insanity of the War on Drugs lives on in the minds of it’s victims.

Pot farmers have gotten used to deflecting. They like to say: “I’m just a Mom and Pop grower trying to put a new pair of tires on my old truck. Why don’t you go after the diesel grows, the guerrilla grows on public land or the big mountaintop removal grows, instead of me?” They deflect attention away from what they did, and on to people who do something worse, but even if you have a big diesel mountaintop removal grow on public land, you can still say: “Why don’t you go after heroin and meth, instead of me?” Now that pot is legal, and growers get abatement letters about code violations instead of paramilitary police raids, they still scream: “Why don’t you go after heroin and meth?” Cannabis criminals constantly scapegoat the hard drug industry to make their crimes seem less heinous by comparison.

Alcoholics do the same thing. Half of the people in Humboldt County have an alcohol problem, and too many of them were born with fetal alcohol syndrome. Alcohol is, by far, much more of a menace to our community than heroin and meth combined, but you can have a problem with alcohol, and your family and friends will still love you, your boss won’t fire you, and you can still make the mortgage payment, because alcohol is legal, cheap and accepted by society. As long as you keep your shit together, you can kill yourself slowly with alcohol, and call it a normal American life. Still, alcoholics will say: “Sure I drink, and I got a couple of DUIs, but that’s nothing compared to people who shoot heroin and meth. Why don’t you go after heroin and meth instead of harassing people like me?”

I saw this at a Eureka City Council meeting last July. Of three individuals who stood to testify against our local harm-reduction needle exchange program, two of them wore clothing that advertised other drugs, while they testified. One guy wore a long-sleeve t-shirt bearing the logo of a local brewery, with the words “Never Straight” in big letters down both sleeves. That strikes me as either the slogan of a radical queer separatist group, or an alcoholic lifestyle. Since the shirt also proclaimed the name of a local brewery on the front and back, I assume the latter. He also had the bulbous red nose and beer belly to go with it. Wearing that shirt, he testified that syringe exchange programs, have turned us into a bunch of “drug addicted Peter Pans,” and demanded that the City of Eureka close down HACHR, a local charity that works to reduce the harm associated with drug use by providing clean syringes and overdose prevention kits.

Another guy who testified to end this program wore a green hoodie. On the back, a design featured a human skull, surrounded by a wreath of cannabis leaves with the words “Humboldt County” loudly emblazoned on it. Since cannabis has never killed anyone, I can only assume that the skull refers to the dozens of people who met a premature death in the black market marijuana industry here in Humboldt County. Those are the only deaths I know of linked to both cannabis and Humboldt County, and we have plenty of those. Just a couple of weeks ago, someone left two of them in an SUV at the end of my road and set it on fire. I don’t know if the design intended to celebrate this kind of violence or to commemorate it, in the way that other war veterans commemorate the terrible wars they’ve fought in. Either way, the design speaks to the human toll of the War on Drugs. Apparently, he hadn’t looked carefully at it before he put it on to go address the city council.

Everyone, it seems, feels the need to scapegoat someone who does something they think is worse than whatever it is that they do.  Then they demand harsh punishment for the scapegoat, and when the problem gets worse, they demand even more harsh punishment for the scapegoat.  That’s how it goes with prohibition, the more cops you throw at it, the more money there is to be made from it, and the more of it you see on the streets. It’s a vicious cycle that plays out again and again, and it works with any drug.

Since cops can no longer go after people for weed, they focus on heroin and meth. Now that cops focus on heroin and meth, we see an explosion in heroin and meth use, so we ask the cops to focus even more attention on heroin and meth and the problem gets worse. It’s crazy, and it’s a craziness that destroys our community while it makes cops and drug dealers filthy rich. Those are our kids who use these drugs, and it’s our money that pays for all of this craziness. You’d think we would have learned our lesson by now. You’d think.

It’s Back to School-Shooting Season

Summertime is over and the kids are back at school which means it’s time for America’s fastest growing extreme sports spectacle: school shootings. Of course, mass shootings never really go out of season because when it comes to mass murder, there are no rules, only records waiting to be broken. When you set out to break records, set records, and set records straight in a mass killing, few targets look more appealing than a classroom full of innocent unarmed children entrusted to the care of a school-marm. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

They used to call the phenomena of mass shootings “going postal” after a postal worker gunned-down his supervisor and co-workers in a, then unheard of, act of violence. Today, that term only applies to disgruntled workers who kill their co-workers. The death toll from these workplace events rarely rise high enough to attract much media attention outside of the local area.

To draw national headlines these days, you need to make real mayhem. You need at least a two, and preferably three figure death toll to make national headlines for more than one day. If you’re going to kill that many people, you can’t expect to make it all personal. There are bound to be strangers involved. When it comes down to numbers, it only makes sense to go with the target-dense school, over the personal vendetta against the boss and the hand-full of coworkers you are likely to find at your old place of employment.

Now that school is back in session, I expect we’ll see a very competitive season here in the US. It appears that current efforts towards gun control legislation have had very little effect on the availability of firearms, but have instead helped sell more assault rifles, bump stocks and high-capacity magazines as collectors hurry to “buy ‘em before they ban ‘em.” The US has a thriving firearms industry and they offer aspiring murderers a range of highly accurate, rapid-fire, high-capacity weapons built for quick reloading.

American mass killers, at least the civilian ones, overwhelmingly choose these very accurate, one-bullet-at-a-time type, firearms for their seemingly indiscriminate killing sprees. Elsewhere in the world, when it comes to indiscriminate killing, the people who compete seriously in that field, generally use bombs as their weapon of choice. It remains to be seen if civilian American mass murderers can compete, globally with their high-tech, one-bullet-at-a-time strategy.

From a strategic perspective, a high-accuracy, one-bullet-at-a-time rifle offers little advantage, over a bomb or a shrapnel grenade when the goal is indiscriminate carnage in a given area. However, from the killers perspective, using a highly accurate rifle insures that the killer looks directly at his victim at the moment he fires the lethal shot. With an accurate rifle, the killer can savor every death, and at the same time, improve his marksmanship.

The High-tech American approach to indiscriminate slaughter focuses on the shooter’s experience. Shooters like the way their guns feel, and look, and they like the feeling they get when they shoot them. Shooting guns feels good, and the only thing that feels better than shooting guns, is shooting people with guns. In the US, mass murder is all about creating the perfect experience for the shooter. After all, he’s the one paying for all of the weapons and ammunition. Elsewhere in the world, a mass killer will build a bomb for about $100. Here in the US, mass killers spend $5,000 for an assault weapon, $2,000 on sidearms and at least a thousand dollars on ammunition, for that kind of money, I imagine that they expect something out of their shooting experience.

If American civilian mass murderers hope to set records here in the US and become competitive globally, they need to think carefully about this strategy. I understand the appeal of the one-bullet-at-a-time strategy for American civilians. Civilian mass murderers don’t get paid for gunning-down a classroom full of elementary school students. They do it because they love killing. They kill for the pleasure of killing, so we should expect that they will do it in the way that they find most satisfying.

However, the other thing that holds American civilian mass murderers back from competing globally is that American civilian mass murderers overwhelmingly work alone. That’s a real shame. One of the most heart-warming things to come out of the Columbine School shooting, that terrible tragedy that started the whole school-shooting phenomena, was that at the center of it, it was a story of boys working together.

Right now, I know that there are a lot Americans out there thinking seriously about going on a rampage. If these people could get together, just imagine what they could accomplish by working together. Unfortunately, the culture that so effectively, and assuredly produces mass murders, also effectively alienates them to the point that they no longer trust each other. American culture encourages people to replace the people in their lives with things. For many mass murderers, their guns were probably also their best friends.

In most other countries of the world, mass murderers are usually wed to an ideology or political movement, but here in the US, we kill for the pure joy of killing. It’s that honest enthusiasm for indiscriminate blood-lust that sets us apart as a nation and as a people, and that’s what makes it such an exciting time to be alive here in the USA.

Stand Up for the Stratocaster

When you see something you know is wrong, sometimes you have to say something about it. Here’s a letter I wrote recently, and another that I encourage you to write as well.

To the good folks at Sweetwater Musical Instruments and Pro Audio,

I am deeply offended, upset and disturbed by an image that appeared on the cover of the most recent edition of “SweetNotes” supplemental circular. I’ve been a customer of yours for years, and I always appreciate receiving your catalogs in the mail, but the image I saw on the cover of SweetNotes shocked me to my core.

Who thought this was a good idea? What possessed them to do such a thing? How dare you put it on the cover of your publication where anyone could see it, including innocent children, who have no idea what they are looking at. A Stratocaster with an F-hole!?!?

What were they thinking? What were you thinking? This is wrong! This is offensive! This is mutilation, humiliation and degradation! Whoever did this should be charged with Stratuatory Rape. We should lock him up in a room with an arch-top guitar and throw away the key. At the very least, he should never be allowed within 100 yards of a solid body electric guitar ever again.

It was bad enough when Fender put F-holes on Telecasters, but that didn’t bother me because Telecasters are for country music. Country music is songs about people who do stupid things, sung by people who dress like cowboys but have no cows. In other words, country music is all about being stupid and phony, so a phony F-hole on a solid-body Telecaster in a country band just fits right in.

That’s not OK for a Stratocaster. The Stratocaster was built for Rock-n-Roll and christened by Jimi Hendrix himself. Rock-n-Roll is solid and heavy. It requires a heavy, solid-bodied electric guitar. The Stratocaster just barely weighs enough as it is. Gibson’s Les Paul model, another iconic Rock-n-Roll guitar, weighs a ton, but you don’t see them routing fucking F-holes into it, do you? No. If Gibson wants to make F-holes, they build a nice arch-top guitar and put the F-holes where they belong. If Fender wants to cut F-Holes so bad, they should learn to make an arch-top guitar themselves instead of defacing a classic Rock-n-Roll legend.

You folks at Sweetwater should not encourage Fender to continue the practice of scarring these beautiful instruments with those ugly gouges, nor should you lead your customers to believe that you abide by such violence. We all deserve at least a modicum of decency and respect, including and especially the Fender Stratocaster. I was deeply offended by the disrespectful and exploitative image that appeared on the cover of SweetNotes and I believe that it is exactly this kind of smut that contributes to the aesthetic insensitivity of society at large.

Sincerely yours,

John Hardin

Sweetwater Responds:

My assistant didn’t know how to take this.  I would have to assume this is just a phase that Fender is going through like weird body piercing.  I also don’t expect this to become a classic.

Thank you,

Matt Kreager, Sweetwater Sound

That’s Not Good Enough!!

Obviously, Sweetwater does not take this issue seriously enough. That is why I ask all guitar players of good taste, everywhere in the world, to please write to Fender Musical Instrument Company directly and demand an end to this needless violence against innocent solid-bodied electric guitars. If enough of us stand up for the Stratocaster, we can stop this butchery today and forever. Here’s their email address:

consumerrelations@fender.com

(Here’s a sample letter)

Dear Leo, (I know he’s dead, but why not)

Recently I saw one of your classic instruments, the Fender Stratocaster horribly defaced. Some idiot had gauged an F-hole into it! Then I realized that this mutilated and deformed instrument appeared on the cover of a new instrument catalog, meaning that someone at Fender intentionally did this to a Stratocaster. The classic Stratocaster sound is not enhanced by the addition of an F-hole, because the Stratocaster is a solid-bodied electric guitar. But of course you would know this, at least you did when you were alive, and I’m sure that while you were alive, you would never have let such a thing happen. Today, things have gone haywire and the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. I can see where people might find it hard to tell right from wrong, so sometimes we just have to spell it out. It’s wrong to put an F-hole on a Stratocaster. It’s just wrong, and you should stop doing it now.

Sincerely, (Insert your name here)

PLEASE SHARE WITH ALL OF YOUR GUITAR PLAYING FRIENDS!!!