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Dear family and friends, and whomever it may concern,

Son Chet is in Palestine! I hope he is well. I hope he does some good. He's been in Nablus for a couple of days.

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Chet Collins	Click here for Chet's blog

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I just heard some disturbing news about our community radio station, KZYZ. So, i'm looking back on the files. Oh yes, it was 2006, and it seemed that things were getting better but alas there is a new "crisis at KZYX"

Christina Aanestad, has been laid off. What? She is an inspiring example of grassroots investigative reporting. And she is out on the street?

See my letters to the board and "Crisis of Transparency At KZYX"

On another front, there's new stuff to report about the place where Gabrielle and I live:

News from

Gabrielle Welford and I, and about 20 other people live at Round Mountain Ranch Community. We had a pot luck party and variety show on June 6 called the June Bug Hop! and Variety Show. It was something else, and fun. It was the debut for our newly constructed Stage and Bar in the barn.

And from June 7 - 13, Gabrielle and I hosted Round Mountain Reunion Research Week. This included small invitational workshops and experiments in collective art and theater with emphasis on the history of Round Mountain and how to sustain our community and ecosystem. We are now assembling the material we collected. If you ever lived at Round Mountain or have some interesting anecdotes about the place over its thirty plus years, please do come or give us a call so we can meet with you and perhaps conduct a live experiment with your ideas. See Round Mountain Reunion.

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This web site is loosely organized. There are some audio and video recordings, but I'm still into words and traditional media like photographs and pictures. Gabrielle Welford helps with this site and her work can also be found here.

And I'm still amazed that it's possible to put words and pictures together and have them seen on the other side of the globe! You got to be kidding! Do you realize that when I first became a know-it-all activist, there were no xerox machines? Imagine that. There was no inexpensive way to send a picture. We used typewriters and carbon paper, and mimeograph machines, all extinct now.

What's here:

• The usual family pictures and a few written pieces, including some things my mother wrote. Hey, my mother and father lived when horses were used to plow the fields.

• My Dad and a horse named Barney. My Dad passed on to me a love for a horse named Barney. Barney was a workhorse, like other working animals in those days, he traded his freedom for a place in the family. I would love to see our fields tilled again by animals. But I betray myself, a sentimental lover of the past. Sure, Ok. But I am an optimist, a reader of Wendell Berry, and I believe we will learn again what we once knew, that life particularly agricultural life works best when based on family and community-sized farms.

• My Invisible Political Life. Here and there, I've commented on some of the highlights of my political life, if you will. Much of what passes for political these days doesn't interest me much at all. What does interest me are moments when somehow or other there is a break with the usual way of doing things.

• For example, what excited me the most in 1968 was not the work I was doing in a social psychology lab at Columbia but the social psychological experiment taking place outside. It started as a protest but became much more than that. It became an occupation of five campus buildings. Because the occupation stopped everything, the event became a great discussion that took place all over the campus and beyond. The discussion was not about academic matters, but about reality. Would the occupying students allow professors or administrator s into their discussions? Now there's an interesting question, a real question. What do you think was decided? But whatever was decided (and you can read about it in the Columbia Spectator, March 1968) my bias then was to maintain the discussion as long as possible, or to put it another way, to maintain this amazing break with world as it is.

• Another example of a break with the usual: I harbor here, the pages of the Eagle, the Mendocino College Eagle, that is. It's here because it was an experiment in journalism and a time of ferment and discussion. The Collage administration tried to bury it. And so, you can find out what happened back in 1996 - 1998 when President Karl Ehman and Vice President Donald Vasconcellos tried to remove Dean Susan Bell. It's all there, the whole story from lots of angles, because there were a lot of letters to the editor.

• KZYX. My exciting two years on the board of KZYX and the publication of "The Secret Life Of KZYX" where I attempt to define the role of Centrists and Egalitarians on the baord and the style of leadership at the station. It was an interesting and sometimes difficult time for the station. I'm happy to report that KZYX is doing very well by the standards I expressed at the time. I think our community radio station is one of the best in the world. See Media Forum, Issues 1 - 3.

• KMEC. A work in progress. See "Why bother with the MEC," etc. Media Forum, Issues 4- 6.

That's enough about politics. You can wander about on this web site if you are interested, or email me.

* * *This web site originates in Ukiah, Mendocino County, California. Here's a photo of the town that appeared in a City of Ukiah brochure (150K PDF) produced by Green Mac.

That's my step-daughter, Jenny Hanscom (of the Hanscom-Kelly-Collins-Crane Clan) pictured below. She's about to make the winning huck (long throw) that established Team USA as the women's world champions in Ultimate Frisbee. Behind her a Japanese player attempts to disrupt the throw. Jenny's back is to the goal, and she is about to turn and throw toward the goal. Wow! The determination on her face as she looks as far to the rear as she can! The frisbee. was caught by I don't know who for the final winning goal. The score was USA 14, Japan 10.

Jenny Hanscom a moment before throwing the goal that won the women's division championship for the USA at the World Ultimate Frisbee. Championship, August 9, 2008. Japan took second place. See the whole photo.

Son Chet and I flew up to see the World Ultimate Frisbee championship tournament in Vancouver, B.C. We had to catch our return flight so we missed the women's championship game which pitted the USA against Japan. But my son Robin stayed for the game and took the picture. Jenny's team "Fury" represented the USA because rhwy had beaten all the other women's frisbee. teams in the country. See an earlier picture of Jenny on the cover of Ultimate.

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Paula Gunn Allen, a very dear friend of Gabrielle's, died on May 29, 2008. She was brilliant. She was brave. She was iconoclastic, And she was mentor and a major source for "Too Many Deaths," Gabrielle's dissertation. Before her trailer burned down in 2006, King helped Paula digitize some of her photographs and, later, after the trailer was gone, the beginnings of her memoirs, The Perils of Being Paula.

Paula (memorial site)

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More politics:

Publication (Written in 2008): After participating unsuccessfully (see below) and watching the continuing decline of the Endocrine Environmental Center (MEC), Gaby and I wrote a Proposal to the MEC and the Cloud Forest Institute (150K PDF file), asking to convene a "Mediation Workshop on Democracy and Community Organization." For background on the MEC situation, see Media Forum, No. 5. See also "More about Media Politics" below.

More about local media politics:

During the summer 2007 my work at the Mendocino Environmental Center and it's radio station, KMEC, 105.1 FM (Ukiah, CA) was a debacle, or resulted in a debacle that revealed much about the in-group politics at the MEC. Gaby and I worked together on that with Dennis O'Brien, the President of the MEC (Mendocino Environmental Center, Ukiah). We envisioned a radically improved publication, much more than the usual newsletter, a really timely and interesting magazine, one that would inspire the members and increase their number. In October (2007) after four months of work, we produced the final draft of a 32-page magazine. We were all proud of it, but as we circulated drafts of the editorial, Dennis and the board freaked out saying that what Gaby and I wrote was too critical of the MEC and other local organizations. We were summarily "removed" from the project. Gaby and I felt the board had invalidated the whole endeavor and withdrew our support and the articles and photos we had contributed.

In December 2007, the MEC. published "The MEC Magazine" which was pallid and uninspired compared to the draft we had created together. (See disputed editorial).

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As part of the break with the MEC, I promised to publish the material we intended to publish through the MEC, including interviews with Dan Hamburg and Alicia Littletree. (See Media Forum, No. 6) Hopefully that will come out soon. Meanwhile, under the banner of SmartMouth Publications, we have released an "Open Letter To The Supes Regarding Medical Marijuana" including an interview with Milan Hopkins M.D. who prescribes medical marijuana.

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Mendocino County politics: Consider this web site a place where you can engage us or any other participant in discussions going on within and about significant local organizations. (The easiest way to get ahold of us is by email.) Already in place is extensive coverage of the movement for member control of local community radio stations, KZYX and KMEC. That's the Mendocino County Media Forum and perhaps there will be more about the movement toward "economic localization" and "smart growth" in Mendocino County, as time and interest allow.

Green Mac is providing a space for archives of the Mendocino College Eagle (the college newspaper that isn't) and for the beleaguered pro-democracy movement among the part-time faculty. (See the archives Mendocino College Part-time Faculty forum and archive at MPFA forum

Or you may be interested in the mostly outdated but still useful, Mendocino County Media Directory, which we no longer research but do occasionally update (by direct request).

Travels. I had a great time at my 50th High School Reunion, 2006, in Westerville Ohio. Gabrielle and I visited Susan Crane (mother of Chet and Robin Collins) at Jonah House, the faith-based resistance community in Baltimore, Maryland. (See "Three Days At Jonah House" photos.)

Gabrielle has traveled about much more than King, who is by comparison a real stick in the mud. More about Gaby's travels and writings.

And other stuff. Like many of you, we were profoundly affected by the events of 9/All. See the handful of short articles written by some people we greatly respect: "Writings of interest to those who love this world." These responses, so contrary to the mass (media) hysteria of the time, are just as brilliant now as they were then.

I hope you like it. If you have the time, drop a line.

Warmest regards to you and yours,

King Collins and Gabrielle Welford
(king@greenmac.com and welford@hawaii.edu)
1201 Parducci Rd.,
Ukiah, CA 95482
707-468-5513