Calhouns Can(n)ons

Another Sewer Petition

2012-01-30T06:19:00.000-08:00

This email arrived in my mailbox. A local, unidentified group has a petition sign-up site on Change.org. One of its aims seems to be, perhaps, to try to wake up the Board of Supervisors, which is futile, since they don’t care. For them, this is a long-done-deal that is now mercifully off their desks. Heck, the district’s own Supervisor had to be dragged, kicking and screaming to even make the most feeble of attempts to try to get a zero-interest State Revolving Loan – couldn’t be bothered to even lobby for it, except as an afterthought so the attempt failed. Which means the monthly cost for this project will be higher than it needed to be. Or, perhaps the intent of the petition is to wake up the Feds, who also don’t care? You gonna lose your home because you can’t afford a $200 a month sewer bill? Take a number and get in line with the millions who are also going to out on the street with their underwater homes.

Well, it will be interesting to see how many signatures this site can get. Last chance to shake a fist, I suppose. Next stop: Economic Cleansing. A chance for capital rich bargain hunters to move in and make a bundle. It will take a period of extraordinary economic pain and dislocation, but dear old Los Osos, my Beloved Bangladesh by the Bay, is slated to be transformed into a new Carmel by the Sea. Which is what happens to all seaside communities in California. It’s the American Way.

The email:

Dear Friends,

A petition to stop the planned industrial gravity flow Los Osos waste water system has just been created: Stop The Most Expensive Per Capita Sewer In The US - The Los Osos Sewer!, going to San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors and State and Federal Officials:

As most of you know, this sewer is not needed and will make the water supply in Los Osos less sustainable. We are also sincerely concerned for the economic plight of families, individuals, retirees, businesses and job stability in our community and county from the impact of the $190 million Los Osos Sewer. This is the most expensive sewer per capita in the United States.

To convince decision makers the community is concerned and it's not just a handful of people, there is a petition on Change.org that every time someone signs the online petition a copy goes to 16 officials including the 5 members of the Board of Supervisors, 3 members of the Coastal Commission, administrators with the USDA who loaned around $80 million, Lois Capps, Senators Boxer and Feinstein and the State Water Regional Control Board.

To show your support of this movement please sign the petition this weekend and send the link to friends and ask them to sign right away.

Please help make a difference, let these officials know of your concern for the economic stability of our community and our county.

Please go to: http://www.change.org/petitions/san-luis-obispo-county-board-of-supervisors-state-and-federal-officials-stop-the-most-expensive-per-capita-sewer-in-the-us-the-los-osos-sewer?share_id=WpNxpbnXBT& to sign the online petition.

There is also www.StopTheLosOsosSewer.com that links to the petition on Change.org.

The time is urgent, the $300 a month sewer expense awaiting us all is not a given, not if we do something to show concern for the many families who will be displaced and challenge many's ability to provide for themselves and/or their family.

Thank you for reading, PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR EMAIL LISTS or post on your Facebook page!

And thanks for signing!

Your Sunday Thought

2012-01-29T06:02:00.000-08:00

Whatever is experienced will fade to a memory. Everything that is seen will not be seen again.
Milarepa

Calling Dr. Borenstein . . .

2012-01-27T06:44:00.000-08:00

Doctor B? Please go to www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com Wait, where'd she go? Oh, gosh, there she is, hiding under her desk with Supervisors Patterson and Gibson. Woa, getting crowded under there. Shhh, if you make a sound, they'll simply disappear. But if we wait very quietly, maybe they'll come out and answer Ron's simple -- very simple -- question.

Movie Time

2012-01-26T06:49:00.000-08:00

Do yourself a favor and get on down to the Palm Theatre to see "The Artist"" It's a wonderful conceit: a modern old-timey silent movie, a mash-up of every old, hoary Hollywood movie cliche in the book -- the meet-cute, true love thwarted, the Perils of Paul, Asta the Dog saves the day, true love revealed, boffo ending. All done with a wink and a nod. Too clever by half. And great fun.

Also too clever by half is another nearly silent movie -- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Gary Oldman is marvelous as George Smiley, all owlish eyes, watching, watching, and patiently finding and fitting one small piece of the puzzle after another. The film itself is as fragmented as a puzzle dumped out on a table, a muddle of fragments, brief scenes that mean nothing by themselves, intercut with more fragments of imagery, obscure bits of meaningless dialogue, and through it all, Smiley asking a question here, finding a document there, until all the bits and pieces slowly come together to reveal the mole that Smiley is hunting.

It's a clever bit of film making, all this cutting back and forth in time, from puzzle-bit to puzzle bit. But for me, it all quickly turned into a long, intricate shaggy dog story, a clever bit of business -- a film about making a hunt-for-a-spy film rather than a film about characters in peril, which means it's ultimately a film with no heart. By the time the mole is revealed, my response was, "Well, O.K., nicely done." And when the mole gets his just desserts, the only reaction I had was, "Well, no loss there. Now, let's go home." Which is a huge contrast to Le Carre's "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold." That movie (and book) was all character and peril and heartbreak in the ugly world of realpolitik.

Except I did feel a good deal of satisfaction when Smiley, inscrutable as ever, gets his job back -- vindicated as the master of a game played by vipers in an ugly world of secrets and sleazy betrayals.

If you're an Elmore Leonard fan, he's got a new book out ("Raylan") and season two (three?) of "Justified," is starting on FX with couple of great bad guys added to the cast. If they come close to his previous nemesis, the late, great apple-moonshine-making Mags, from last season, this year promises to be a great one. Actor Timothy Oliphant ("Raylan") is lucky to have both great screen writers and a fabulous supporting cast. And he's particularly lucky to have Walton Goggins ("Boyd Crowder") as his ongoing antagonist. Both Oliphant and Goggins, like early "NYPD Blue" David Caruso (before he went all fake poseur on "Miami Vice") or Ryan Gosling (in "Drive," or almost anything else he's done), are one of those rare actors you can't (don't dare) take your eyes off of because you have no idea what they're going to do next. It's a rare quality and has got to put all their fellow actors on their best game.

And finally, Performance of the Year, Political Class: Newt Gingrich's deliciously faux outrage while he feasted on debate moderator CNN's John King who dared to ask about Newt's performance in "My Three Wives; The Three-Way." Actually, Newt takes a Newtie (a fake gold statue given for Biggest Bold-Faced, Flat-Out, Flip-Flopping Lie" for just about anything he says and does.(" I am not a lobbyist; I'm a historian.") Plus he gets extra points for being absolutely without shame when uttering his 180's. In short, he's the Jon Lovitz of the political world -- the "fact" changing prevaricator of SNL who repeatedly, cheerfully, shamelessly, continually changed his story when his lies became untenable -- without missing a beat, Jon would switch one whopper with another equally improbable one until his whole tower of babble lies spun off into the realm of the pure comic.

For Jon, it was all comic gold. For Newt, his continued performance will depend on whether the voters remain oblivious to his Jon Lovitz act. It's just possible that Newt will tell one hilarious whopper too many and the voters will finally figure out he wasn't being intentionally funny, he was just plain old lying, and The Hook! The Hook! will fly out of the wings and yank him unceremoniously off stage. In comedy, as in politics, there must be a basic "truthiness" to the comic character you're creating -- lose that and you lose the audience. In comedy as in politics, timing is all.

Your Sunday Poem

2012-01-22T05:36:00.000-08:00

This from "What Love Comes To; New & Selected Poems," by Ruth Stone

Yes, Think

Mother, said a small tomato caterpillar to a wasp,
why are you kissing me so hard on my back?
You'll see, said the industrious wasp, deftly inserting
a package of her eggs under the small caterpillar's skin.
Every day the small caterpillar ate and ate the delicious
tomato leaves. I am surely getting larger, it said to itself.
This was a sad miscalculation. The ravenous hatched
wasp worms were getting larger. O world, the small
caterpillar said, you were so beautiful. I am only a small
tomato caterpillar, made to eat the good tomato leaves.
Now I am so tired. And I am getting even smaller. Nature
smiled. Never mind, dear, she said. You are a lovely link
in the great chain of being. Think how lucky it is to be born.

ColBEAR! ColBEAR!

2012-01-20T05:37:00.000-08:00

Calhoun’s Can(n)on for January 20, 2012

The true axis of evil in America is the brilliance of our marketing combined with the stupidity of our people

Bill Maher

Do you suppose Stephen Colbert will save America from itself? As a comedian/satirist playing a blowhard right wing pundit on TV, his latest stunt just might do the trick.

Months ago, Colbert sat with his attorney on air, discussed the unbridled, unfettered, astounding benefits and hilarious lack of rules or restraints of a political Super PAC and then, right there on air, started his own. And the money from his gleeful, in-on-the-joke fans poured in.

That was part one. Part two came a few days ago when his “Daily Show” compadre-in-comedy arrived, and with Colbert’s lawyer standing by with the papers all drawn up, he transferred control of his Super PAC to Jon Stewart. Then he announced that he was thinking about running for President of the United States of South Carolina.

After which he and Jon solemnly pledged that, of course, they would have NO COORDINATION between themselves as “candidate” and “Super PAC” administrator. Nossir. Absolutely no coordination since that would be . . . illegal. But, if Colbert discussed in great detail all of his campaign strategies on his TV show and Stewart just happened to tune in and took detailed notes and followed through with everything Colbert discussed, well, that wouldn’t constitute “coordination” under the law and would be perfectly legal, wink-nudge, wink-nudge. And in short order, spoofing “political” ads showed up on the South Carolina airwaves in time for the Republican primary election.

It was a perfectly delicious comic skit, with only one problem. Everything they were setting up was absolutely real and legal and already at work in the current presidential race. The Supreme Court has decreed that money is speech so there can be no limits on political money since it’s “speech,” and if it does not specifically mention a particular candidate (wink-nudge) there can be no limit on it. So, Super PACs, formed by often unknown people and groups funneling unlimited amounts of money to organizations with fake names, no accountability, and with no requirement to report either the amount or source of those donations, are now the real drivers of our political campaigns. Indeed, the amount of PAC money available to support a candidate is often two or three times the amount that’s in the candidate’s official campaign coffers.

It’s an oligarch’s wet dream. Rich individuals, corporations, unions, various affinity organizations, even foreign governments, are now effectively free to “buy” any candidate they want and win any political race they want. It’s all in the numbers.

For example, a well-funded PAC can buy/bid up all the print space and airtime in a specific district to tout their candidate, thereby forcing any opponents to make do with the few ad spaces left in some small local advertorial publications read by nobody. Strategically target Congressional districts and you can effectively pack Congress with your minions. Get a sufficient number of hand-picked Congresspersons beholden to you for their new, cushy jobs, and you’ll soon get legislation beneficial to your interests. All it takes is money. Which is speech. Which is free.

And it’s all perfectly legal.

The media savvy and political junkies are hip to what too many ordinary Americans apparently don’t understand: Control the narrative and you almost always control the outcome. If that means you falsify the narrative, then that’s what you do, since politics is no longer about educating and informing the voter, or competing with the best vision or policies; it’s about winning by any means necessary. And the voter too often goes along with the deception, even when the outcome will harm him or her in very real ways.

And that’s where PACs have their real power: Unlimited funds to hire the expertise needed to create those false narratives with no way to hold them to account. If voters thought the “death panels” lie was bad, they haven’t seen anything yet. Well-financed Big Lies can be half-way on their way to becoming Received Wisdom before Poor Truth can put on his shoes. It’ll be one multimillion-dollar Swift Boating campaign after another. It’s a good bet that pollster Frank Luntz, Republican political strategist/False Narrative meister extraordinaire, already has his clients all lined up. America, The Uninformed, The Badly Informed, The Falsely Informed is now up for sale to the highest bidder.

Unless a pair of comedians performing a piece of theatrical satire wake up enough voters who will ask: Is this any way to run a country? And do it before American democracy is put up on the auction block.

Your Sunday Poem

2012-01-15T04:58:00.000-08:00

This by Ruth Stone from "What Love Comes To, New and Selected Poems."

The Dog

The dog is God.
It knows it is God.
It is God living with God.
Even in the rain,
the esters, the pheromones,
calligraphy of the sacred,the great head points into the wind,
the blood thrashes in the thick veins.
The language of the feces, urine,
species, rut, offal, decay --
nothing is hidden from the dog,
who keeps its own cousel,
leading you by the leash.

Bag It!

2012-01-12T07:04:00.000-08:00

The robo call was rather alarming. A voice warning me that my cloth shopping bag was FULL OF GERMS! And could CONTAMINATE my groceries. And if the ordinance up for a vote Wednesday was passed we could all die in the streets like dawgs!

Turns out the robo calls were by a couple of “Doctors,” who were hired by some vague “coalition” that was opposed to the ordinance that would ban single-use plastic bags and they thought that maybe a little scare campaign would work on SLO Towners.

BIG mistake. As a rule, SLO Towners are a squint-eyed, insulated, suspicious, well-read, smart, tough-minded, dueling-banjo picking backwoods,latte-sipping lot who don’t take kindly to strangers a’comin’ inta their town and trying to tell them what to think or do. And when one of the scary germ guys on the phone turned out to be, not a medical “Doctor,” but a guy with a doctorate in musical art, well, the Tribune’s editorial staff went into a high dudgeon. And SLO Towners were left to wonder, “What? So if we use a reusable shopping bag we’re gonna die of a Motzart fugue? Screaming in agony, crying out, “Too many notes! Too many notes?”

And just when you thought you were safe from the long tentacles of national politics, here came Grover Norquist, the wealthy K-Street lobbyist who now has every Republican in the republic bent to his will and safely locked into his blood oath. He sent a letter to Jim Patterson, chairman of the IWMA (Integrated Waste Management Authority), which was holding the hearings and would vote on the issues, knowing that every Republican member of the Board would get copies of the letter and be put on notice as to how they should vote: Grover had spoken and they would obey.

And so the stage was set for the SLOTown drama pitting latte-sipping enviros, the grocery industry (Surprising to me, The California Grocers Association endorses the ordinance, primarily because “free” plastic/paper bags cost stores money.), our county waste management dept, against Grover’s Boys, the fear-mongering Germ Squad, COLAB (Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business) and “Keep Bags Free,” a group supported by the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying arm of the plastics industry.

But it soon became clear that the drama in the room during the nearly 4 hours of testimony was really a picture of National Politics writ small: North vs South, Urban vs Rural, Rich vs Poor, Conservative vs Liberal, Republican vs Democrat, Privitizers vs The Good of the Commons. “Don’t Tread on Me” vs “Regulations are the price we pay for civilization.”

And one poor woman who identified herself as a health worker who works with fragile, old/young patients and who was growing more unbalanced and hysterical the longer she stood at the podium going on about germs. Poor woman was clearly getting ramped up into the realm of “Uh-Oh, Call the Sheriff” before she got control of herself and sat down, still highly agitated.

She was a perfect example of how fear-mongering can affect the already disturbed, although perfectly sane speakers were also going off into the realm of the silly:

– declaring that people’s reusable bags are so filthy and encrusted with dangerous germs that they will endanger grocery baggers with plague and death, while ignoring a reasonable solution: grocery baggers are perfectly free to say to customers, “This bag is not safe to pack for either you or me. You’ll need to pack it yourself or get a new bag.” Problem solved.

--painting a picture of grocery shoppers so stupid they will just toss dripping salmonella-coated meat packages into their bags with the rutabagas when most people normally put their produce and meat into the plastic produce bags offered (which will still be available), thereby keeping each safely separated from each, just like they do now.

-- a public so stupid they’re incapable of washing their cloth bags when needed and so unaware that they live and move daily in an environment filled with germs. And if they compared the germs on their kitchen sponge with even a filthy reusable cloth bag, they would faint and never go into their kitchen again.

And so it went, speakers waxing into high drama, going all Mel Gibson shrieking, “FREEDOM! FREEDOM!” Speakers comparing a simple waste management problem to ghastly TYRANNY! With jack-booted thugs arresting store owners who violate the ordinance, then selling their children to slavers while they rot in prison for life. All of which sparked some one-upsmanship between several Board members, each trying to out-patriot the other, while yet another Board member drolly informed the audience of his famous forebear who was elected to the House of Burgess at the same time George Washington was, and who would roll over in his grave to ever hear “freedom” and “tyranny” being used in reference to use or non-use of a plastic bag

Well, it was an old, old American argument: balancing individual liberty to do what we will, when we will and damn the consequences versus curbing our reckless selfishness for the sake of the common good. Clearly, compliance on a voluntary basis hasn’t worked; recycling isn’t working well because the plastics industry hasn’t stepped up to the plate on the issue and on a more practical issue, “dirty” plastic bags can’t be used in recycling, plus there’s little market for low-grade recycled bags. And, not enough people are voluntarily recycling in the first place. It’s all going into the land fill.

But several Board members still wanted to redo the ordinance to stress voluntary compliance and “education,” including Board member John Hamon of Paso Robles. He felt it should all be about education. But, then he went on to note what a bother the ordinance would be to someone like him, like when his wife now calls him at work and asks him to stop at the store for a few things on the way home and he doesn’t have any bags with him, thereby proving that “education” clearly hadn’t worked on HIM.

And, like clockwork, County Supervisor Frank Mecham checked in with his usual for-public-consumption blather. He’s famous for that – statements that sound great, but upon closer examination, are, at best, ingenuous, at worst, fatuous and fake. But initially sure look good as sound-bites.

Like, “Let’s put this ordinance to a vote”. Right. Thanks to the Robert’s Supreme Court, elections now go, not to what a majority of voters really want, but to the bankrolls of the biggest corporations, the wealthiest players. Want to guess how much money the plastics industry would spend in this little county to defeat any kind of vote on the issue? And guess how “fair” that vote would really be.

Or Mecham’s, “This is a littering problem,” and all that was needed was to enforce littering laws. Which sounded wonderful, but would Frank then vote to raise taxes sky high to hire the thousands of additional police needed to do what he suggested? Not a chance. So the result of that suggestion would be, status quo, which is the opposite of what he was supposed to be doing on this Board – managing waste, reducing the waste stream, not maintain the status quo.

It was pure Mecham. Play to the crowd with great sounding but ultimately fatuous statements that really translate into, “let’s do nothing but look busy while doing it.”

Well, like SLOTown’s banning of smoking in public places, this ordinance (going into effect in more and more cities and counties throughout the state) will likely be seen to be “controversial,” until it isn’t and becomes commonplace. After which everyone will puzzle out why anybody got upset at such a simple change in behavior that’s easily accomplished and one that perhaps can lead to other ways of living that all can cumulative help improve our environment.

And make no mistake, plastics of all kinds are a serious threat. Not because single-use bags are going to kill us all, but because all plastics eventually degrade into smaller and smaller particles which then begin to affect the plankton, the base upon which all sea life depends. Kill off the plankton, choked to death in a lethal soup of miniscule plastic molecules, and you choke the sea to death. And the consequences of that catastrophe on all of us and the generations coming after us is something that warrants action now by all of us. Including Grover Norquist’s clients, the plastic industry, since all those employees, even their CEOs, occupy the same planet as latte-sipping SLOTowners do – a shared fate, the common good.

By five o’clock it was time to wind up and vote. One of the Norquist Boys, John Hamon, the Board member representing the city of Paso Robles, the “education” guy who learned nothing, tried to derail the whole thing by calling for a Super Vote (8 versus the simple majority). But the ploy failed. Clearly, there was a super majority of Board members who understood that this issue wasn’t about FREEDOM or even the environment: it was a County Waste Management issue, and was an ordinance first created by the County Waste Management Authority itself, in cooperation with all plastic-bag using groups, (business, grocers, enviros, public) in order to reduce (manage) Waste, which was what the board was all about in the first place.

And so it went, the vote 8 – 5 in favor. Before the meeting got started, they had to go into closed session to discuss a threatened lawsuit from various opponents. So the ordinance may be delayed or derailed, as usual. But, if it stays in place, starting in October, every one better start remembering to bring bags to the stores or get dinged 10-cents for paper bags. Based on other counties/cities that have enacted a similar ordinance, in a very short time, those 10-cent purchases drop precipitously.

Thereby proving you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Your Sunday Poem

2012-01-08T05:14:00.000-08:00

This from "The Voice at 3:00 A.M. Selected Late and New Poems" by Charles Simic

What The Gypsies Told My Grandmother While She Was Still A Young Girl.

War, illness and famine will make you their favorite grandchild.
You'll be like a blind person watching a silent movie.
You'll chop onions and pieces of your heart
   into the same hot skillet.
Your children will sleep in a suitcase tied with a rope.
Your husband will kiss your breasts every night
     as if they were two gravestones.

Already the crows are grooming themselves
     for you and your people.
Your oldest son will lie with flies on his lips
   without smiling or lifting his hand.
You'll envy every ant you meet in your life
   and every roadside weed.
Your body and soul will sit on separate stoops
   chewing the same piece of gum.

Little cutie, are you for sale? the devil will say.
The undertaker will buy a toy for your grandson.
Your mind will be a hornet's nest even on your
   deathbed.
You will pray to God but God will hang a sign
   that He's not to be disturbed.
Question no further, that's all I know.

Snack Time

2012-01-06T06:04:00.000-08:00

Ummm, grab your knives and forks. It’s time for a feast. The Republicans are dining on one another and Iowa is just a preview of what’s to come in South Carolina. Ummm. Delicious.

Consider, Newt Gingrich whining because Romney’s PAC was running ads that said mean things about Newt. Newt whining? Newt is the father of the PAC and the father of formalizing mean things to say that will demonize your opponent.

And, surprise, Rick Santorum “wins” Iowa and is now chugging off, suddenly a serious candidate. Rick Santorum? The guy who went from the topic of gay marriage straight to man on dog sex in zero steps. What kind of mind keeps that connection rattling around in his brain so in no time he can go there? I mean, before I’d be able to make that connection and come to that kind of conclusion, I’d have to make a whole bunch of steps and think seriously to find anything resembling the “six degrees of separation” connections needed to make that leap. But not Rick. Nope. Apparently equal marriage rights for gays equals man on dog sex. Eeeuuuuu. Creepy Brain Time.

Well, South Carolina should be a hoot. We’ll have our Man On Dog Santorum, Can’t Remember S—t Perry, PAC-man Newt, and “Lurch” Romney. And LOTS of secret corporate money, none of it accountable to the public, thanks to the Robert’s Supreme Court.

Does it get any better than this?

What If?

Interesting article in the L.A. Times by Marc Lifsher reporting that about “a dozen companies are the first in state to apply to become ‘benefit corporations.”

“A dozen companies committed to maximizing social good while turning a profit have filed papers with the state to become California’s first ‘benefit corporations.” Amazingly enough, California has a new law that “gives companies a way to legally structure their businesses to consider social and environmental efforts as part of their missions.

“While that may sound like marketing hype, it’s important from a legal standpoint because it helps shield benefit corporations from lawsuits brought by shareholders who say that company do-gooding has diluted the value of their stock.

“California becomes the seventh state to adopt this relatively new corporate structure.

“Until now, California corporate law mandated that shareholders’ interests trump those of all other parties. . . . . Benefit corporations offer for-profit companies a way to do well and do right, said Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) . . . ‘There is a way to create jobs and grow the economy while raising the bar for social and environmental responsibility.”

If you want to understand one reason why we have, as a country, been heading down the drain, it’s because our corporate structures are legally required to put maximum profit ahead of all other considerations. That focus on profit above all is the source of so many of our woes. That and the total focus on quarterly reports as opposed to long-term business/economic health.

In short, we have set up an economic system now that behaves like a bad germ – a virus that kills its host too quickly. In nature, the goal of a smart germ, like a smart parasite, is to keep its host alive as long as possible so it can feed and reproduce. A dumb germ/parasite, gobbles it all, kills its host to soon, and therefore dies as well. That’s been our model – gobble and die. Not smart.

But a benefit corporation? Ah, that allows a corporate parasite a good way to feed heartily but still keep its host alive for years and years. Think what a transformation would happen in this country if long-term planning and social/environmental considerations became part of the business mix – companies that understood, for example, that keeping their employees healthy and happy paid off financially. Companies that understood that toxic waste actually is a resource that’s worth money and can be profitable for them. Corporations that were allowed to factor in long-term thinking instead of simple Grab ‘n Run greed.

The story finishes thusly: “The growing interest in benefit corporations reflects a sense that there’s a better way of doing business out there,” said John Montgomery, a Melo Park lawyer who helped draft the new California law.” . . . “Patagonia [one of the the new benefit corporations] is trying to build a company that could last 100 years . . . Benefit corporation legislation creates the legal framework to enable mission-driven companies like Patagonia to stay mission-driven through succession, capital raises and even changes in ownership by institutionalizing the value, culture, processes and high standards put in place by founding entrepreneurs.”

Imagine that.

On the Other Hand

Of course, creating a decent society may be all moot. According to some folks, the Mayan Calendar tells us that the world will in 2012, so why bother?

It never ceases to amaze me how in love with World Death so many people are. Apparently the earth is such a hideous place for them that it becomes a deep-seated need to fantasize about and long for its violent end. Armageddon! Mayan Calendars! Wheeeee, destroy it all! Even the hummingbirds and sweet-smelling lemon blossoms. Wipe them all out.

I don’t get it. If those folks are so in love with world destruction, there’s a quick shortcut to that end: Suicide. One bullet and your whole world ends. Problem solved, while still leaving this beautiful, magical, extraordinary place intact for others to enjoy.

A reminder

Well, since the world won’t end, despite what the Mayans say, on Wednesday January 18 from 6 pm – 7 pm at the Monarch Grove Elementary School, 348 Los Osos Valley Rd) there’ll be a public meeting to review “The restoration of your neighborhood streets and roadways following the installation of the waste water collection system,” wherein you’ll see a 45-minute overview of the repair, restoration and enhancement efforts for your streets.”

With any luck, maybe everybody will speak up and push for “low impact” type pavement that will help get every drop of rainwater back down into the ground instead of having it all flood down the street. Though on my street, we do end up with some quite spectacular lakes that you can float a boat on. Which is great entertainment for the dreary winter months.

New Days

2012-01-03T05:56:00.000-08:00

Calhoun’s Cannons for Jan 6, 2012

If the only prayer you say in your life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart

A new year. A new day. The sun is wan and low, the daily temperature moving from the overnight 40’s to the daytime 70’s and back again, neither winter nor spring. But the grapevines have finally given up amidst the confusing temperatures and have fallen into a deep slumber, their scraggy vines waiting to be clipped. An unexpected and early frost has already blasted the rest of the garden, except for the mallows and some sort of cascading ground cover that is improbably blooming and sending its pale blue flowers down over the concrete retaining wall. A long surviving purple petunia, which was hiding under the lemon tree, has come back to life, and is now waving around its rococo petal ruffles. Silly thing. We may not be done with frosts so this brazen blooming is an act of foolhardy bravery. Bless its heart.

Christmas has been packed away for another year, except for a package from dear friends in Florida that was saved for the new year. She and I try to see how much interesting, fun stuff we can cram into a U.S. Postal Service Flat Rate box. Our motto has become, “If it don’t fit in the box, you ain’t getting it for Christmas.” Unfortunately, the flat rate tended to encourage shipping things like a heavy cast iron door- stop shaped like a frog, so we also had to institute another rule: “If I have to dust it, I don’t want it.”

So, in this year’s box are all manner of wonderful things, including cream white tea-towels and a pot holder with a black silhouette of a raven on it and the words “ravenous.” Which were far too fine to actually use in the kitchen, so they promptly went up on the mantelpiece. To collect dust.

Well, there are rules and there are rules. No need to get too fussy about it all. Same goes for New Year’s resolutions. I stopped making those years ago. I’ve already given up cigarettes and booze. Those are vices for whippersnappers. I no longer whip or snap. And the dogs see to it that I get in a daily walk, so that resolution is really their doing, for which I can take no credit and can receive no smug sense of virtue.

Besides, change is both habit and choice and those things are best when they strike at random, when you are ready for both. Setting some arbitrary month for doing (or not doing) things is a set up for failure. Like leaping out on stage at Carnegie Hall before you’ve had a single dance lesson. Not likely to bring the crowd to their feet.

No, no. Stick with the small stuff that really is the big stuff. About all I can manage daily is a resolution to try to remember Don Miguel Ruiz’ “The Four Agreements,” which I’ve stuck up on my computer so I can see them every morning: Be Impeccable With Your Word / Don’t Take Anything Personally / Don’t Make Assumptions / Always Do Your Best. Remembering daily to follow those directions regularly keeps me out of a whole lot of unnecessary drama. It’s also a reminder that we are all works in progress that unfortunately did not come with operating instructions.

Which makes things both interesting and exciting. And problematic. Bring Band-Aids.

The dogs, of course, don’t bother with any of this foodle-fardle. Their operating instructions are built in: Run fast. Have fun. Chow down. Sleep soundly. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good New Year’s Resolution for all of us. A new year. A new month. A new day. A new hour. A new minute. Live it well.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T05:41:00.000-08:00

Show me a day when the world wasn't new
Sister Barbara Hance

New year. New day. New hour. New minute.

Live it well.

Woa, Nellie

2011-12-30T05:57:00.000-08:00

            Stephen Spielberg’s new movie, “War Horse,” has jumped the shark, galloped off into the ditch, and in doing so, I think he’s invented a new genre first pioneered by Mel Brooks: The World’s Worst Mash Up.

            Think, “Springtime for Hitler.” Think “National Velvet's Longest Day.” Think, “Winnie the Pooh in Auschwitz.”

            I mean, before this there’s been children’s stories, then there’s been realistic adult stories about brutal trench warfare in WWI. But now, thanks to Spielberg, we have a heart-warming PG-13 tale in a new film that combines both! You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Mostly you’ll cringe!

            Worse, Spielberg seems to think his audience consists of dolts so he has long pauses filled with . . . . meaningful . . . looks: boy gazes soulfully at horse, horse gazes at camera, English officers gaze at one another as they contemplate death in a muddy ditch or being shot to pieces on the wires, horses gaze at one another. All this mooning and staring and gazing is supposed to convey the high “seriousness” of this whole misbegotten project. Oh, and let’s not forget, the endless times when everyone stares at the horse and reminds the audience that that sure is a very special horse, that is. Yessir.
            And did I forget to mention John Williams’ score, there at every possible moment to goose the tear-ducts, in case some inattentive audience member forgot to feel his heart-strings tugged at the pre-designated spots?
            In short, from beginning to the appalling end – lifted straight from “Gone With The Wind.” You remember that famous, melodramatic tableux, the hyper-saturated blazing orange evening sky, Scarlett O’Hara in silhouette, fist raised holding a radish? Yes, that one – the movie is utterly dishonest --one long mash-up of rigged clichés, all of them hoary.

            Or utterly phony. Take the scene of the British cavalry mustering on the training field to practice their sabres-drawn, full battle charges. It's a bright sunny day. Not a cloud in the sky. Suddenly, the screen is filled with fog, out of which thunders the charging horses. Very dramatic, but . . . fog?  The establishing shot showed it was a bright sunny day.  Where did the fog come from?  Worse,  as the camera pans back we can see the bright sunny sky all around the bellowing patch of fog. Unless the audience is to believe that the British high command would regularly require fake smoke machines during their practice cavalry maneuvers, then the only reason for the fake fog is simply this: Spielberg goosing the audience with phony, whiz-bang dramatic tableaux simply because it looked waaaaayyy cool.

        This sorry willingness to put an irrestible single swell moment above the coherence of the narrative appears in more apalling form as our heroic horse completes his spectaculrly filmed scenes fleeing across no man's land only to get horribly tangled and trapped in the barbed wire. There he founders, cut and suffering. It's an awful moment until both British and German soldiers realize the animal's agonizing entrapment and, under a white flag, go out to cut him free. When the German soldier calls to his mates for wire cutters, out of the trenches flies a half dozen, into the air to land with comic thumps. The audience laughs uproariously, utterly forgetting the poor horse, the hero of this film, who is muzzle down in the mud. And so a powerful dramatic, moving moment was lost because Spielberg couldn't resist a bit of comic business that better belonged in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. And so it went, the fake foundering the real, with silly Spielbergian indulgences breaking the narrative and knocking the willing suspension of disbelief out of the the theatre.
            I should have known. In his “Schindler’s List,” a work of high seriousness (It was filmed in black and white so we’d know how highly serious it was), Spielberg went for pure kitsch. In a long-shot of Jews being herded down the street, he colorized the coat on a little girl in near subliminal palest rose. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, so I saw the film again. Nope. Little girl in palest rose coat, the only color in the scene. It was akin to pasting a huge blinking neon sign over her in order to make sure the audience got the message: “ Oh, Look, It’s a Pathetic Child. You must weep now.”
            Imagine that scene running again and again and again for well over two hours. That’s “War Horse.”
            And it's time that nag was sent to the knacker-man.

Christmas Gumbo

2011-12-28T06:57:00.000-08:00

It was one of those pre-Christmas Dinner, San Pasquale moments that had me thinking, Hmmm, I wonder if Round Table Pizza is going to be open? I was right in the middle of making up a big pot of Chicken and Sausage Gumbo and praying to San Pasquale, the patron saint of cooking, when I spied that the recipe said to take a cup of oil and a cup of all-purpose flour and stir them together over medium heat, whisking constantly, for about 20 minutes, until the flour roux browned to the color of milk chocolate.

A CUP of oil? WTF???

As the cauldron-like wok full of dangerously hot oil boiled away furiously, filling the house with the weird smell of browning flour, that’s when I thought about Round Table Pizza. I mean a whole cup of oil? Really??

But the whole thing came together, one guest came with a big pile of hush-puppies, another with a sweet potato/pecan pie and everyone started humming “Jambalaya Jingle Bells.”

When I planned the Christmas Dinner menu, I got curious about Gumbo. I hadn’t made any for over thirty years. So, I hit Wikipedia and came to find out that gumbo is a stew or soupish stew that came from southern Louisiana during the 18^th century. It’s basically a stock of some type, a thickener, and “the vegetable holy trinity of celery, bell peppers and onions.” The thickener is either the African vegetable okra, the Choctaw spice filé, which is ground from the leaves of the sassafras tree leaves, or roux, the French base made of browned flour and fat. Or all three. The name comes from either the Bantu word for okra (Ki ngombo) or the Choctaw word for filé (kombo.)

But the one key thing bout Gumbo is that there are as many recipes as there are people making it. Some use okra, some filé, some both, some use meat and/or shellfish. Some call for tomatoes, others, not. There’s even a Lenten version made with no meat but with every kind of green you can think of.

If you’d like to try the recipe, which is perfect for a cold winter’s evening, here it is, with modifications. In future, I’m going to brown up a whole bunch of flour in the heavy wok before hand and open all the doors and windows and set a fan going. Then I can keep the browned flour on hand in a sealed container, maybe even toss it in the freezer, for any roux making in future. I’ve also cut the amount down to ½ cup each since I don’t use a lot of oil in cooking. You can adjust accordingly. Filé powder can be found in the spice section of the market. Okra, frozen or fresh will work. I used boned chicken thighs and a wonderful semi-spicy chicken sausage I found at Costco. (Hilshire Farms kielbasa & etc. will work just fine too) The recipe is from Bon Appetite.

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp paprika

½ tsp cayenne pepper

3 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs

½ c. oil

1 lb andouille or other spick smoked susage, cut into ½” rounds

½ c all purpose flour

2 medium onions, finely chopped

4 scallions, thinkly sliced (green parts used for garnish)

2 celery stalks, finely chopped

2 green bell peppers, finely chopped (I used red and yellow sweet peppers)

2 tsp chopped garlic

8 cuts low-salt chicken broth

2 bay leaves

1 tsp chopped fresh thyme

2 cups sliced okra, divided

1 ½ tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp hot sauce

1 tsp file powder, plus more (optional

Steamed rice

Season chicken with salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne, and sear chicken until golden brown. Cut chicken into bite sized pieces. Transfer to a plate, Add sausage to pot, cook until browned, add to chicken.

Strain drippings from pot to measuring cup, add whatever more oil to make ½ c. Re-heat drippings/ oil over medium heat. Whisk in flour and whisk continuously for about 20 minutes until the roux is the color of milk chocolate. (or, if you’ve browned the flower before hand, whisk with equal amounts of butter or oil until well mixed) Add onions. Cook until soft. Stir in scallions, celery, peppers, garlic. Cook until soft.

Slowly whisk in the broth. Add bay leaf, thyme, (and any other spices you want to toss in), add reserved chicken and sausage. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer about 45 minutes.

Add 1 cup okra, Worcestershire, hot sauce. Simmer another 30 min. Add remaining okra and cook about 5 more minutes, until last batch of okra is crisp-tender.

Remove from heat, add filé powder. (Don’t ever boil file powder as it will get bitter and stringy, which is why you add it at the last minute.)

Serve over rice, with cornbread and a salad. And enjoy.

Christmas Gumbo

A CUP of oil? WTF???

But the whole thing came together, one guest came with a big pile of hush-puppies, another with a sweet potato/pecan pie and everyone started humming “Jambalaya Jingle Bells.”

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp paprika

½ tsp cayenne pepper

3 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs

½ c. oil

1 lb andouille or other spick smoked susage, cut into ½” rounds

½ c all purpose flour

2 medium onions, finely chopped

4 scallions, thinkly sliced (green parts used for garnish)

2 celery stalks, finely chopped

2 green bell peppers, finely chopped (I used red and yellow sweet peppers)

2 tsp chopped garlic

8 cuts low-salt chicken broth

2 bay leaves

1 tsp chopped fresh thyme

2 cups sliced okra, divided

1 ½ tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp hot sauce

1 tsp file powder, plus more (optional

Steamed rice

Slowly whisk in the broth. Add bay leaf, thyme, (and any other spices you want to toss in), add reserved chicken and sausage. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer about 45 minutes.

Add 1 cup okra, Worcestershire, hot sauce. Simmer another 30 min. Add remaining okra and cook about 5 more minutes, until last batch of okra is crisp-tender.

Remove from heat, add filé powder. (Don’t ever boil file powder as it will get bitter and stringy, which is why you add it at the last minute.)

Serve over rice, with cornbread and a salad. And enjoy.

Your Christmas Poem

2011-12-25T05:34:00.000-08:00

This by Berthold Brecht. I wish you all a glorious day.

The night when she first gave birth
Had been cold. But in later years
She quite forgot
The frost in the dingy beams and the smoking stove
And the pressure of the afterbirth towards morning.
But above all she forgot the humiliation
Of having no privacy
Common among the poor.
That was the main reason
Why in later years it became a holiday for all
To take part in.
The shepherds' coarse chatter fell silent.
Later they turned into the Kings of the story.
The wind, which was very cold,
Turned into the singing of angels.
Indeed, of the hole in the roof that let in the
     frost nothing remained
But the star that peeped through it.
All this was due to the vision of her son,
     who was easy,
Was fond of singing
Surrounded himself with poor folk
And was in the habit of mixing with kings
And of seeing a star above his head
    at night time.

Dear Santa

2011-12-24T05:26:00.000-08:00

I know you're busy packing, the sleigh jammed with toys and goodies, but I wanted to add a couple of things to my list before you take off.

Please bring some brains, or at least common sense, to the Tea Partier Grover Norquistian Republicans in Congress. For some reason, they've all lost their marbles. Come to think of it, most of the world seems to be in the same condition. So, can we have some brains all 'round?

And while you're packing some sense, please send some to our own district 1 Supervisor, Frank Mecham. He popped up in the Dec 22 Bay News commenting on the recent expenditure of $7.68 million for contract management on the Hideous Sewer project. Frank is quoted in the Bay News as saying he "would continue to support the project only if the construction bids are low." He's been saying that for several years now, right before he votes on what is now one of the world's most expensive sewer projecst, one that is likely to force a good chunk of the community to sell and move because they can't afford it. Right now the costs are pegged at $155 a month.

Apparently, Frank must think that price is "low" because, so far, he keeps voting for every step of it, no matter how much the price goes up. And since he's only one of 5 Sups, even if he decided that $155 a month is now too high, his "no" vote would meaning nothing. So I guess his support and comments are just another meaningless mantra that makes him sound concerned without requiring that he actually do anything about those concerns. Typical Pol.

So, let's see, brains and common sense. That's a start. In Washington, a sufficient number of Pols came to their senses and voted to give working people a few more pennies in their pockets via the last minute continued tax cuts, so maybe more little kids will have that the toy they wanted will show up under their tree. So that's good. Unfortunately, those same nincompoops will be returning to Congress after the holidays so the level of mean and stupid will rise once again. Maybe you've got some Sugar & Spice & Nice pills in your pack that you can sprinkle all over Washington? Worth a try?

Come to think of it, some Peace & Goodwill to all the nations of the world would be a great gift. Not sure your sleigh is large enough to accomodate the sheer amount of Goodwill that would be needed in a world hell-bent on self destruction, but every little bit helps, so give it a go. I know, I can hear Rudolph grumbling already. It's is a heavy lift. Promise him more cookies when he gets home Sunday night.

In closing, I want to thank you for all the gifts you've already brought me-- My dogs, my friends, my family. I am truly blessed.

So, have a Merry Christmas. And look out for all the jets planes getting everyone home in time to celebrate. It's a zoo out there.

Christmas Moon

2011-12-16T05:31:00.000-08:00

Calhoun’s Cannons for Dec 16.2011

I would sing some Solstice carols, but I don’t think I know any. The glorious moon is full now, the only light in the darkest season of the year. And the recent cold snap has laid flat a good swath of nasturtiums in the back yard. The poor dears never learn. Fall falls and they set their seeds and dry up. Then at the first rain the seeds hatch, their new leaf rounds appearing over the sandy yard like an invading army of little double-wide green umbrellas. Then comes the frost and their enthusiasm is harshly tempered. But that doesn’t stop them from trying again. Busy little teachers with their chipper little lessons of endurance and renewal on the longest of nights.

The Rogers Red grapevines went out in a blaze of scarlet glory, their leaves burning red in the waning sun, waiting for the first windstorm to scatter their finery all over the yard. And after their spectacular finish, they’re ready to tuck up their twig-tips for a long winter’s nap and dream of summer’s green.

The ghosts of the long-dead Basenjis are all around the yard. My own little troop of Jacob Marleys, whispering wraiths, ghosts of Christmas Past and all the long summers gone, their ashes taken up into the blazing grape leaves by now, and present in the pungent sage bushes or glowing in the white beauty of the rock roses. Everywhere I look, a yard of little graves full of transformed life. All the Basenjis but one who, wrapped in a sweater to warm her old bones, now sniffs and pees in salute on the resting places of her kin. All gone now, while the seasons turn and she too will be but a memory, whispering.

Inside the house the nutcrackers are all in their places, holly garlands and wreaths and lights girdle the room. A tacky Kinkaid clock chimes Christmas Carols every hour on the hour, while across the kitchen my John Deere clock chimes John Deere engine noises, also on the hour. The effect startles visitors who think it odd that “God Rest Ye Merry” should have “ta pockata-pockata-pockata” in the middle of it. I find the sounds deliciously disturbing, a reminder that the world is a very noisy place filled with dissonance, until you stand back very far and squint. Then it hums with lovely weird music.

Including the scrabble of the tall dogs’ toenails on the floor as they titter-tatter in circles, yipping and eager for their walk in the cold morning sun. Since adding another rescued Greyhound to the pack, I have to take them out in batches since Archibald McDawg, the resident butthead, is ADD-afflicted and infects the other dogs with his crazed hyper-vigilance. Those left for the second walk will howl their Anvil Chorus of woe that I can hear half-way down the block. I often think about timing our leave taking when both clocks are going off just to hear what that comic coda would sound like.

On the political front, the year has not lacked in comic effect either. I can’t help but think God has a wicked sense of humor. In the midst of such economic woe, with Mother Nature poised within a few carbon-points of taking her terrible, irreversible revenge on us all for our heedless but successful efforts at turning her once beautiful world into a global heat sink, we get clowns. Clowns. Clowns with bad comb-overs, clowns popping out of pizzas, clowns leaping up at Come-to-Jesus political rallies, clowns spilling out of a paralyzed Congress and fiddling on their little violins while the circus tent burns down. It’s a Christmas mummers’ masque, the last futile dance macabre before the bell towers fall and the Black Death arrives in the morning. More carbon-loaded Yule Logs for the fires! Wassail!

Well, nothing much to do, really, once the fine gears have clicked into place and the great wheel begins to turn. And turn it will. Since the lessons of Scrooge remain unlearned, the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come will start arriving soon. And as Scrooge found out, it won’t be pretty.

But at this moment, I am shivering in the dark cold of early morning. Looking west, I watch the setting moon go dark and red with eclipse. It is a glorious planetary dance that has gone on for millions of year, but still causes wonder at its beauty. To my left a rooster crows. He has seen. Behind me, the sun is rising in a pink-streaked dawn.

Inside the house, the dogs are restless. They want their walk, their breakfast. And there’s still Christmas chores for me to finish. In the backyard, the nasturtium seeds are once again pushing their green leaves out into the pale warmth of the sun. Another year has begun.

Hallelujah!

O.K. Muslims, It's Your Turn In The Stupid Barrel

2011-12-14T06:02:00.000-08:00

Has Lowe’s lost its marbles? Some little band of idiots, the Florida Family Assn, “a Christian group that lobbies companies to promote ‘traditional, biblical values,” decided that TLC’s new reality show, “All-American Muslim,” DIDN’T show the muslim family as violent jihadis, bombers, child-rapers, wife-beating religious fanatics and so they threatened to boycott Lowe’s.

What’s that you say? Yes. A show about an All-American family living in middle America, shopping at, well Lowe’s, or WalMart, going to school, sitting around the dining room table, attending mosque, all typical shots in a “reality show” that has cameras living with someone in their home, and apparently those perfectly nomal, boring, everyday scenes didn’t jibe with spokesperson David Canton’s ignorant and bigoted ideas about Muslims, and he objected because the show conflicted with his belief structures. So, of course, the show had to go.

And Lowe’s, being apparently headed up by IDIOTS, caved into the opinions of this small wackadoodle group.

Really. Has Lowe’s lost its marbles? It’s embarrassing to see a huge, national Company behaving so stupidly. Some small, bigoted, ignorant group calling itself “Christians” has its bigotry challenged by a TV show, so it whines and threatens, and Lowe’s caves. Pathetic.

Well, push-back came soon enough. Jon Stewart had a field day. The required Famous Celebrity (Mia Farrow) started a Tweetathon and California State Senator, Ted Lieu, demanded an apology from Lowe’s, pointing out, “The show is basically about Americans who happen to be Muslim. For Lowe’s to say that the show is dangerous, or agree that it’s dangerous or somehow showing anything other than American Muslims as normal, is quite outrageous.” He’s planning a boycott of his own and is drafting a legislative resolution denouncing the company’s action. (Oh, yeah, like elected officials would sign on to anything that might indicate that they believe that Muslims are anything other than terrorists out of fear that some bigoted “Christian” somewhere might object?)

And a petition on www.SignOn.org has showed up so people could send a messge to Lowe’s that they’re IDIOTS. And so it goes.

All of which is yet another reason why most of the rest of the world thinks Americans are complete fools, knuckle-dragging xenophobic Christers, uneducated, paranoid, bigoted fools. And when you read of idiot stuff like this, it’s hard not to agree.

Really. Embarrassing. When did we become such cowards? And so pathetically ignorant? And, sadly, where are the real Christians when crap like this happens? Their voice should be leading the pack in denouncing their fellow co-religionists as the bigoted ignoramuses they are. Were I a “Christian,” I’d think it was paper-bag-on-the-head time. Again.

Happy Solstice

Longest day of the year and Hanukkah begins. So, light the lights. The season of cold and dark and glowing candles begins!

Your Sunday Poem

2011-12-11T05:09:00.000-08:00

This wickedly sly poem is by Charles Simic.

One-Man Circus

Juggler of hats and live hand grenades,
Tumbler, contortionist, impersonator,
Living statue, wire walker, escape artist,
Amateur ventriloquist and mind reader,

Doing all that without being detected
While leisurely strolling down the street,
Buying a newsaper on some corner,
Bending down to pat a blind man's dog,

Or sitting across from your wife at dinner,
While she prattles about the weather,
Concentrating instead on a trapeze in your head,
The tigers pacing angrily in their cage.

Last Year at Marienbad meets On the Beach

2011-12-09T06:19:00.000-08:00

“Melancholia,” now playing at the Palm, is a powerful, haunting, beautiful, spectacular failure of a film. A perfect example of the Auteur in need of a sharp-elbowed minder at his side to constantly hiss at him, “Very nice, Lars, now let’s move along.” Well, director/writer Lars von Trier’s Danish, so maybe many of the film’s problems are that Scandinavian thing.

Or maybe Lars just got so entranced by his new camera he started falling in love with all his images, like a kid who goes through a whole role of film shooting the same flower from every angle, then pastes them all into his album. Lars forgot that images in a film are carriers of the story and require a certain pace to work properly; get too many repetitive shots and the audience starts wool gathering and you’ve lost them.

Which is a shame for this movie has some beautifully realized use of image-as-conveyor of story. And Trier uses slo-mo, dream-like images at the opening of the film that beautifully foreshadow both the story and what is coming at the end – a pair of fantastic cinematic book ends that will stay with you long after the film’s over.

Basically, the story is an end-of-the-world tale and/or (take your pick) an outward representation of the inner condition of profound depression – the hopeless, helpless, relentless coming apart of the sufferer’s inner world. (von Tries suffered from severe depression, so is familiar with that state.) In this world, (Kirsten Dunst) is at the estate of her wealthy brother-in-law (Keifer Sutherland) who’s paid big bucks for her elaborate wedding, which her sister, Clair, has planned. After endless wedding party shots, with no explanation, Dunst dumps hubby and with a scene change, she’s deep into a helpless depression and returning to the estate so her sister can care for her. While Dunst recuperates with her little isolated family (sister, brother-in-law, their young son, the sister’s much beloved horses) the audience is further informed that the little new star seen in the sky during the wedding is, in reality, a planet headed our way.

At first, Sutherland bustles about all scientific and engaged, convincing his frightened wife that the planet will fly by. Before long (after endless more scenes of everyone mooning around staring at one another in that artysy European art film way), the wife learns the truth – it won’t be a fly-by, her husband was lying to them. By that time, he’s committed suicide, leaving his family to their fate alone, the sister grabs her son and attempts to flee but there is nowhere to escape to, and it finally falls to Dunst to remind her little, terrified nephew that he’s not to be afraid, that she’s Aunty Steel-breaker (at least that’s what it sounded like) and she has powers to protect them all in a “magic cave,” which she proceeds to build, a teepee frame into which she brings her sister and nephew to wait until the planet crashes into them.

Certainly a fair enough story to tell. Which Triers does tell in those brilliant opening foreshadowing images; eerie, haunting shots of this giant planet glowing in the night sky; a super slo-mo shot of Dunst in her elaborate wedding dress fleeing through a thick forest filled with entangling vines clinging to her legs as she flees their clutches; a black horse suddenly falling, falling, falling to the ground; the sister clutching her son as she runs across what looks like a soft stretch of grass that horrifyingly turns to soft mud, sinking her up to her knees with each step, incapable of moving forward, and finally, Dunst, shot in such a way that she resembled a colossus while behind her lightning was streaking out of the dark clouds as she slowly raised her hands, her face as serene as a powerful and terrifying goddess, and watched with calm interest as lightning started flowing out of her fingers.

With those symbolic images, von Triers retells them in the film itself in more realistic fashion – the husband dumped at the wedding party, the killer planet approaching, the estate’s beloved horses which the audience knows are doomed, the mother fleeing in a golf cart in a futile attempt to save her son, and finally, Dunst remaining the only character left with the power, grace and courage to shield her loved ones from the final horror hurtling out of the sky.

Unfortunately, too much of the stuff in between these amazing book ends was so repetitive, self-indulgent, distracting and annoying that I suspect most of the audience was praying – praying – that that killer planet would just hurry up and arrive and get it over with.

Which is hardly the frame of mind a filmmaker should want his audience to have while watching his Masterpiece. And which is a shame as well, since clearly von Trier has in his artistic paint box some pretty spectacular movie-making skills and the understanding that film and dreams and poetry all operate on a far different level in our brains than other art forms. It’s too bad he lacked the hard, focused, disciplined eye that would have allowed him to winnow his rich assortment of “moving pictures” in order to tell his story in a far better fashion.

So, is this a film worth seeing? As painful as so much of it was to sit through, I’m actually glad I went because I’m glad I now have those amazing images firmly planted in my head. And the memory of how cleverly the film-maker book-ended that film. So, if you love movies, those things may well be worth the price of admission. And since there’s no such thing as a free lunch, I guess all the self-indulgent crap in the middle was the price I had to pay for the good stuff.

Why Frank Luntz Is The Most Dangerous Man In America

2011-12-08T06:46:00.000-08:00

If you want a glimpse at why language matters and why so much of what passes for political discourse today is either mere hollering or deliberately perverted language, take a read of George Lakoff's essay, "Words that don't work, at http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/8777-focus-words-that-dont-work

Pollster and Republican strategist and language meister Frank Luntz is paid big bucks not to illumnate or 'splain or clarify. He's paid big bucks to use "focus groups" to suss out the perfect words that he can advise his bosses to use disguise, decieve, misdirect, obfuscate and falsify. And when people believe the deceptions, the misdirections, the falsification, they make decisions based on those lies and that rarely turns out well for them. But it always turns out well for those manipulating the languge in order to get the action they want.

Luntz will be working overtime in the election of 2012. And the stakes couldn't be higher. Pay attention. If you thought "death panels" was brilliant, you ain't seen nothing yet.

At at the same site, check out another essay at http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/269-36/8774-the-most-important-speech-of-his-presidency That also will be the key issue in 2012 -- a decision by the voters on whether and how and how far they want to re-balance The Value of The Commons. That's the question the Occupy Wall Streeters, the 99%ers are asking. The American voters will have to decide. Unfortunately, with Frank Luntz at work, their decisions will be made that much more difficult. But, it needs to be done if we even have a shot at re-balancing a country gone off the rails.

Samcro Santas

2011-12-05T06:10:00.000-08:00

It was Sunday, the first Sunday of December, so it was time for the 30th annual Avila to Creston San Luis Toy Run. Along the waterfront at Avila, as far as the eye could see, motorcycles. Fabulous motorcycles, polished and gleaming.

And being a very public run, time for some suitable sartorial splendor.

And the showing of colors.

Lots of colors.

Including a Sons of Anarchy look alike.

All you needed to particpate in the run was a toy strapped to your ride. Or, if you were driving up, a toy in your car.

At 10:30, the bikes streamed out of Avila in an endless ribbon, roaring up the road, astonishing in their numbers, toys and flags and the whole resplendent leather aesthetic on dark display. It was a prefect day for a ride and in less than an hour, the whole grand parade ended up at the Loading Chute in Creston where the toys were loaded into a huge van to be distributed to needy kids this Christmas. Then it was barbeque time, beer time (what else on a motorcycle run?) and plenty of music.

All in all, a splendid day with a whole bunch of nice people willing to go that extra mile to lend a hand and make sure a whole lot of kids had some toys for Christmas.

SAMCRO aesthetic: Death's head holding a child's fluffy sof-sof toy.

Your Sunday Poem

2011-12-04T05:42:00.000-08:00

This from my favorite poet, Billy Collins, from his book, "The Art of Drowning." Support your favorite poets. This Christmas, give your friends books of poetry along with the usual poinsettia.

Days

Each one is a gift, no doubt,
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.

Today begins cold and bright,
the ground heavy with snow
and the thick masonry of ice,
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.

Through the calm eye of the window
everything is in its place
but so precariously
this day might be resting somehow

on the one before it,
all the days of the past stacked high
like the impossible tower of dishes
entertainers used to build on stage.

No wonder you find yourself
perched on the top of a tall ladder
hoping to add one more.
Just another Wednesday

you whisper,
then holding your breast,
place this cup on yesterday's saucer
without the slightest clink.

Oh, Put It To Bed, Please

2011-12-02T06:35:00.000-08:00

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for December 2, 2011

O.K, we’re in a grumpy mood, despite Christmas cheer wafting around in the Santa Ana winds that are blowing Los Angeles into the sea. We’re unemployed, we’re poor, we’re cranky. Well, at least 99% of us are. But in the gloom, there may be a shining glimmer of hope. As reported in the Dec 2^nd The Week, “As recently as 2002, 60 percent of U.S. citizens surveyed said they agreed with the statement, ‘Our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others.’ But with our economy in tatters, our debt rising, and our foreign interventions producing frustration, American’s belief in our innate superiority has fallen to 49 percent, below a majority for the first time.”

To which I can only say, “It’s about time.” This phony belief in “American Exceptionalism” was always a dangerous notion, useful for deluding school children and a handy tool used by demagogues hoping to fool the lumpen proletariat. Recently, we’ve heard a great deal of huffing about it from Republican candidates who take gassy umbrage at President Obama whenever he dares to gently point out America’s clay-footed reality, as if pointing out clay feet to a world keenly aware of those giant muddy brogans is nothing more than stating the obvious.

Ronald Reagan’s political ad men really cranked up that “shining city on a hill” hokum and it’s been the Holy Grail of conservative mythmaking ever since. True, America was seen as a New Jerusalem to a small band of early immigrants, but to vast numbers of other arrivals, America was never a City of God but a Wide Open City Of Main Chances. It was a place where boomers and strivers, the greedy, the ambitious, the talented and the lucky could find a place to make their dreams come true. It was also a welcoming home for the rapacious thieves and scalliwags who came to prey, not pray.

And they almost all did very well for themselves. But it does not take too long reading real history, not the fake kind we love so well, to discover that Tolstoy’s dictum, “Behind every great fortune is a great crime,” applies to many of our most revered American Heroes. You don’t have to look very deeply inside our cherished “American Exceptionalism” to find slave holders, shady land deals, a few duels, genocide, broken treaties, outright theft, treason, and the endless litany of sleazy ethically-compromised “sausage-making” that constitutes how our Congress gets anything done. Shining City? Washington? As if.

No, America isn’t exceptional, and it isn’t singularly blessed by God to be a beacon to the world, and it isn’t a New Jerusalem. Its founders brilliantly created some distinctly unique wrinkles in self-governance that greatly improved the chances that a democracy of and by and for the people could survive and even thrive, but governments and nations are living things – fallible, finite, fragile. They need constant care, but the care must be founded on a cool-eyed, realistic assessment of how things are actually operating.

I mean, it’s no good handing a mechanically-challenged, muddle-headed, ideologue a brand new Rolls Royce. If he believes that it’s God Made and hence Perfect in all its parts and forms, he won’t hear that the engine is running a bit rough. Or see that the wheel bearings need repacking. And if you point out those realities, it will only earn you a thrashing as a Commie or a “person who hates America.” And if you silence and cow the realists long enough, the very real engine block will seize up, the wheels will fall off and that gorgeous Rolls will go off into the ditch.

So, please. Enough with this fake American Exceptionalism. Dump it. God had nothing to do with the disasters we create. In this latest mess, God’s in the clear. He didn’t do it. A whole bunch of war mongers, greedy rapacious gamblers and wholly-owned Corporate Boss Tweedian Pols and a citizenry cowed or deluded by shining cities on hills or just asleep at the switch failed to pay attention to the engine light that came on.

And now the country’s grumpy. Good. Maybe this time, they’ll pay attention and will call in a whole bunch of realistic mechanics who know what a real engine “ping” sounds like and just how to fix it.

Herman, Herman, Herman

2011-11-29T06:50:00.000-08:00

Oh, Hermie, Baby. Give it up. You went about this all wrong. You should have put on your pimp hat and shiny suit and trotted out all your stable of ladies – those you harassed and now your long-time mistress.

Go ahead. Play the race card. Be bold. Claim them all as your Ladies. Then tell your rich white Republican pals that they wouldn’t understand, it’s a Black Thing.

Instead, you wimped out. Denied everything then grabbed the Wussy White Pol’s classic cop out – “If I do quit, it’ll be . . . for the sake of my family.”

For the sake of your family? Oh, pluuueeeze. Your wife should have handed you a slice of pizza and told you to “eat your vegetable,” then booted your sorry behind out the door years ago.

Now, Shoo. Go away. Thank you.

Speaking of Running

Run – do not walk or saunter – run down to Santa Maria to the John Hancock College’s Marian Theatre for PCPA’s new production of “A Christmas Carol.”

The play, with Music and lyrics by David De Berry, was directed by Mark Booher, and is wonderfully different than any other production of “Carol” that I’d seen before. It’s a musical but not the usual big Broadway boomer. Instead, the songs, many of which sound like old Victorian Christmas carols, or were adapted from same, acted as a fully integrated enrichment to support Dicken’s wonderful language and dialogue, not upstage it. The result is a perfect blend of music and text. Add in a terrific cast at the top of its form, a fabulous set design, beautifully designed costumes and choreography, and superb lighting that becomes a critical part of the drama and you have a truly outstanding production.

I’ve never seen a bad play at PCPA and this one was one of the best. Do yourself a favor and go see it. Perfect way to start the holiday season with a happy heart. www.PCPA.org. It’s running through Dec 23.

Sunday Trip

2011-11-27T05:59:00.000-08:00

If you've got holiday company and are alooking for a nice morning trip, I suggest a drive up to San Miguel Mission. The restoration work to repair the damage from the earthquake a few years ago is done. Even the experts at the Getty got involved to preserve the lovely 1820 frescoes.

You can stroll around the courtyards, and grounds. They even have two mud ovens, though none that look like a giant bear.

There's even a rather bare and sad cemetery where over 2,000 Mission Indians are buried.

And, of course, the requesite antique-looking adobe fountain.

Then Go See Hugo

If you love movies, Martin Scorsese's new film, Hugo is a must-see. Avatar and now Hugo are two films where the filmakers really understood how to fully utilize the visual mechanics and qualities of 3-D. For too many films, 3-D is simply an excuse to add a few bucks to the ticket and throw a few things at the audience. Or, worse yet, ignore the story altogether and spend the big bucks, not on a great script, but on whiz-bang roller-coaster effects which become as repetitive and uninteresting as a Whirly-Gig ride at the fair after a few minutes.

Not James Cameron, not Martin Scorsese. They're storytelling makers of moving pictures first and formost and in both films they have created an entire world and invited the viewer to step into that world, not merely sit in a theatre seat and have things tossed out at them. Huge difference.

As USA Today puts it, Hugo is "a wonderous blend of fantasy and mystery that will appeal to adults as well as children."

But be warned. There were previews before the movie and it seems George Lucas intends on 3-D-ing his first (actually 3rd) Star Wars movie, (Phantom Menace.) Trust me, no amount of 3-D can save that film. Or the next one. I mean, does anyone think 3-D will improve Jar-Jar Binks? Me thinks not.

And the original, 1977 first Star Wars is perfect as it is. Gilding that perfect lily is a waste of time.

And if you're in the mood for a far darker film, catch "Take Shelter" at the Palm. This acting tour de force is compelling, disturbing, riveting portrait of a man coming undone. Or is he? Take shelter, indeed.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

Take a breath, take a walk, hug your kids, hug your dog, visit a neighbor, call a friend, bless the day, bless the food, bless the world.

And have a happy thanksgiving.

Yossarian Lives!

2011-11-23T05:20:00.000-08:00

Ron Crawford, over at Sewerwatch ( www.Sewerwatch.blogspot.com ) has completed a hilarious second round of puzzle-solving. This one involving former BOS Katcho Kachadjian, he of the public crocodile tears and private “as little as possible” Chinatown ethos.

Well, who can blame him. Katcho’s punched his Ambition Ticket and moved on up to play with the big boys in Sacramento and you don’t get into that game unless you’re willing to ask no questions, and when asked to request a very simple, highly focused audit to answer a few simple questions on the State Revolving Fund (all fully documented with supporting documentation), your response will be to do “as little as possible,” or, preferably, nothing at all.

If you want to know why The 99% hate “government,” Ron’s posting will show you why. The public, official letters contrasted with the semi-private, wink-nudge casual e-mail exchanges are particularly telling. It’s all a delicious mash-up of Through the Looking Glass and Catch 22. Part III of this funny/tragic story will pick up again on January first, when Ron contacts the new “independent” state auditor and starts his “Waltz me Around Again, Willie” round of inquiries. My bet is the nice lady heading up the new office is already firmly in the Chinatown loop.

As usual, the local media, Tribune, New Times, Cal Coast News, all of ‘em are also into Chinatown mode. For a politician, doing as little as possible, especially when it’s all about covering one’s ass, is understandable. But for the “ watchdog press?”

Spray Your Troubles Away

I love American snark. No sooner had campus policeman Lt. John Pike sprayed seated, non-violent, non-threatening Occupy Wall Street protesters at the UC Davis campus, than some wag whipped out PhotoShop and there was Mr. Pike cakewalking through art history. It was a deliciously satirical take to a needlessly savage act. ( at Huffington Post www.huffingtonpost.com )

The visual symbolism of the real spraying is certainly telling – the absolute contempt, the indifference to the damage about to be done, the pain inflicted -- Mr. Pike as The Exterminator about to poison the bugs at his feet. It was also an image that evoked the 1960’s, with Sheriff Bull Connor blasting civil rights demonstrators with high-powered fire hoses.

As an icon of how the 1% views the 99%, Officer Pike dancing through art history doesn’t get any better than that. Let them eat cake. Pike is also a great reminder that things do not change much. Power does what power does, even in a country whose government professes to derive its power from . . . We the People. You know, those folks on the ground getting pepper sprayed in the face.

Creepy Time

2011-11-21T07:30:00.000-08:00

You’re only as sick as your secrets, and after watching Clint Eastwood’s new movie, it’s obvious that J. Edgar Hoover was one sick puppy. Dangerous, too boot. So that old maxim should be changed to read. “You’re only as sick and dangerous as your secrets,” and Hoover hand and kept many, many secrets.

Clearly, Director Clint Eastwood in his old age hasn’t mellowed. He seems to be getting downright flinty, Gran Torino-get-off-my-lawn crabby – gimlet-eyed comes to mind. Which makes this film extremely odd.

For over two hours, he absolutely savages Hoover with an unblinking eye. The man was sick, obsessed, seriously weird, dangerous, phony. The movie is filmed in the cold, icy light and grey, washed-out color Eastwood used in a previous film, “Changeling,” which drops the temperature of the theatre to zero and makes all the characters look like the vampires from “Twilight” have already paid them a visit and sucked all the life and blood out of them.

Then, in the middle of this ice-cold, savagely, almost satirically cruel movie, Eastwood proceed to tell us a tender . . . love story. The effect is absolutely disorienting.

Worse, the relentless, intimate focus of the camera puts the viewer into the very uncomfortable position of being a voyeur watching two hours of intimate, embarrassing unmasking of a failed, sad soul – his good deeds soon buried with him and his appalling weirdness left standing as his malign monument. Then at the end, we’re supposed to be moved to sympathy for this twisted sister because he supposedly had at least had one real, true thing in his life: His need for and love for his long-time companion Clyde Tolson.
But even that romance was hard to believe because it was impossible for me to believe these characters were whole enough to feel anything called “love.” Neurotic need, self-serving manipulation, folie a deux, toxic attachment, yes. Love? Not so much.
Not to mention, I had real trouble overcoming all the surrounding ice to see much of anything redeeming about any of these characters. Hoover and Tolson lived a life of lies, Hoover’s assistant, Helen Gandy, (played by Naomi Watts) was a world-class enabler who stood by her boss as he trashed the law and trampled on the Constitution and grew to wield such power that he could threaten Presidents.
In his earlier movie, “Unforgiven,” a young man says to Easwtood’s character, after witnessing a killing, “Yeah, well, I guess he had it coming.” To which Eastwood replied, “We all have it coming, Kid.”

In J. Edgar, perhaps Eastwood has found the perfect illustration of what may be Clint’s ultimate pronouncement on the world.

Amazon Games

If you’ve ever ordered a book from Amazon and wondered about the “star” ratings and “reviews,” well, Los Osos writer Anne R. Allen has a great new blog on writing, www.annerallen.blogspot.com and has posted a great tell-all as to how that system works. Publishing is changing quickly now, so if you’re still thinking Publishers, hard-bound books, bookstores, etc,. here’s a chance to Zoom! into what’s really going on. It's a great read.

Your Sunday Haiku

2011-11-20T05:50:00.000-08:00

Reddish morning sky . . .
    Rain for you today
    I guess,
Lucky little snail!
                   Issa

Paper Bag Time

2011-11-16T05:44:00.000-08:00

Calhoun’s Cannons for Nov 16, 11

I watched as many of the Republican debates as I could stand without having to arrest myself for cruel and inhumane punishment, something candidate Michelle Bachman is four-square in favor of. So it’s clear to me its paper-bag-over-the-head time because nobody has any sense of shame any more since most of the candidates are suffering from The Sarah Palin Syndrome: no real-world assessment of self except some glowing, aggrandized version of, “ Of course I’m qualified to be President! I’m Wonderful Me!”

Even worse, I don’t think the public has any sense of shame either, which likely comes from too many people watching too many Mean-Girl, Gong-Show “reality” programs. In that world, talent-bereft, unqualified, humiliation-proof narcissists are the norm. And when those shameless characters show up on the political/public stage, the voters clearly don’t hear alarm bells going off in their heads. I mean, in a sane world, most of the Republican candidates wouldn’t have any poll numbers higher than zero.

So, it’s paper bag time for cowboy Rick Perry. He can’t even remember what he’s supposed to be adamantly opposed to. This is a guy whose brain can barely manage to operate on bumper-sticker slogans. Paper bag over the head for him.

And Newt? Really? Newt? He’s a hack who truly knows no shame. His overweening sense of his own wonderfulness has allowed him to shamelessly spend years turning up like a bad penny to haul his tired old failed ideas out of his portmanteau for all who will listen, blissfully unaware that the sane people in his audience are rictus-smiling and nervously edging out of their seats. Shhh, don’t make any sudden moves. Keep smiling. The door’s that way. That guy has so much shameful baggage, he doesn’t need a paper bag. He needs a Luis Vuitton suitcase the size of New Jersey, all charged to his $500,000 revolving Tiffany account. Paper bag him.

Ditto for Herman Cain. He needs a whole lot of paper bags to carry the lists of names of all the ladies who are coming out of the woodwork to complain of his improper canoodling. Plus, during a sit-down with newspaper editors from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he apparently had trouble understanding which Lybia was under discussion. Oh, Gaddafi, right, you mean that Lybia? In a reasonable world, his polling numbers would be minus-zero

As for More Water-boarding Michelle? Please. Paper bag.

And it doesn’t stop with presidential candidates. Jack Abramoff has hired some big PR flaks and will soon be staging a comeback. You remember Casino Jack, corrupt and corrupting lobbyist who would sell his grandmother to his mother then sell them both down the river? Major player in Bush’s Washington who has been spending time in jail for his efforts? Well, he’s coming baaaaccckkkk. And, unlike Nixon’s hatchet-man, Charles Colson, who found God while in prison, while Jack is claming a similar enlightenment, he isn’t planning to return to a quiet life of private penance for his sins. Oh, no. Jack’s back. Shameless. No paper bags for him. But will the public care? Will they boo and hiss and demand he go away? Not likely. Not in “Jersey Shore America.”

Not in Penn State America, either. Before the growing list of victims has even been identified, the alleged molester, Jerry Sandusky, appears on TV brazenly soft-soaping and justifying his behavior as “horseplay,” while the first reaction to all this by some Penn State students was to riot to protest the firing of their legendary Coach who did “as little as possible” to protect the boys, thereby doing “as much as possible” to protect the man who was preying on them. And now everyone is changing their stories, scrambling to cover their bare behinds with gym towels that are now suddenly the size of a micron.

Have we really come to this? Has our common sense, our basic sense of decency, our critical sense of what’s real versus what’s fake been so corrupted that we no longer know the difference? Or care? If so, then it’s time to bring back the paper bag.

In the Nov. 24 Rolling Stone magazine article, Matt Taibbi observes that the Occupy Wall Street movement “was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It’s about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one’s own culture, this is it.”

Gold star for Matt. He’s got it just about right.

Return to Camp Ocean Pines

2011-11-14T06:03:00.000-08:00

Last year, volunteers showed up at Camp Ocean Pines in Cambria one weekend, to help decorate an ampitheatre that had also been built by volunteers. The staff hosted a "thank you" lunch plus tours of the camground this Sunday. The patio even included a real live scarecrow to greet visitors. And, yes, I do mean "live."

The camp is an extraordinary place, a former YMCA camp, now transformed into a multiple-use site that brings school kids from all over te county to a beautiful natural area to learn about the environment and engage in hands-on outdoor lessons. It's also an old-fashioned summer camp with volunteers constantly raising money to offer scholarships for undrprivledged kids so they too can have that valuable camp experience. And it serves as a base for all sorts of retreats, conferences and special creative workshops. Including a mosaic workshop that culminated in the ampitheatre decorating project.

And volunteer, hands-on help is how the ampitheatre came to be built -- a special project of a group of engineers. When the concrete seats were done and the flagstones mounted on it, that's when the mosaic volunteers moved in to decorate the cracks with all kinds of sparklies!

Both the tops of the seats are the stairs down to the stage were flagstone with all the mosaic placed inbetween. In additon, each of the rows of seats were all color coordinated, which makes it easy to direct bunch of people who can be told they're to sit in the blue row, or the green row.

The camp is busy planning new projects, including building needed bathrooms and -- how cool is this -- they're planning a zipline to take kids zooming throught he tree tops.

All of this incredible work depends on the support of volunteers and donors to keep this program going. If you'd like to help support their activities -- like help sponsor a kid so he or she can have a camp experience that would be otherwise unavaible to them, visit http://www.campoceanpines.org/ or call (805)927-0254. Christmas is comming as is the IRS end of charitible donations time period. What better gift than to give a kid a Camp Ocean Pines experience.

Red tailed hawk in his cage, watching visitors

Your Sunday Poem

2011-11-13T05:48:00.000-08:00

This from "Of Gravity & Angels," by Jane Hirshfield. Loved the sly reference to W.H. Auden's poem, "Musee des Beau Arts."

Osiris

They may tell you the god is broken
into a higher life,
but it isn't true:
the one who comes back remains,
even riveted, even pieced-
together in spring,
an always-broken god.
The knots survive in his body,
the clenched-grain scars.
And the iced winter ponds are real:
the children, skating lightly there,
feel a secret shiver
as they cross the blue places
of darkness rising-to-meet,
where the other face of the god
is looking up.

Lou Tornatzky Heals Los Osos!

2011-11-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

Feeling better? I sure am. Just go to http://recreatelososos.org/ and you too will be healed.

And if this website and this new organization, “ReCreate Los Osos,” sounds familiar, just click on links and you’ll see that “Celebrate Los Osos” is right there at the top of the list.

Yep, looks like The Pandorians are baaackkk. According to RCLO’s history, Los Osos is apparently in a serious funk, people wandering around long-faced and feeling so damaged and hurt by the Hideous Los Osos Sewer Wars that they’re seriously in need of “healing” that “would be accomplished, not by “rehashing our points of agreement or disagreements about the sewer. Rather, it would be accomplished by having fun together – projects, gatherings, music, plays, walks.” All of which would have to be free events since there will be about zero discretionary income left in this community due to the high cost of the sewer. But, you know the old behavior based marketing PR drill; plant a few photo-op trees and petunias, and get lots of pictures of good works in the paper, thereby making everyone feel “healed.” Smiley faces all ‘round.

But all I could think when reading through this website was the old folk saying, “Only one who has hidden under the bed himself thinks to look there first.” I mean, unless you somehow felt you had helped “injure” Los Osos in the first place, why would you feel the need to “heal” it? Makes no sense. Unless you’re suffering from some form of Pandorian Baron Munchausen Syndrome?

Well, by all means, let’s do have some fun together. But if you’re seriously interested in “healing” Los Osos, near as I can see you’d have to 1) rescind the CDOs on The Los Osos 45 and reimburse them for their expenses defending themselves and their homes; 2) have Jeffery Young, on behalf of the RWQCB write a sincere letter of apology to those 45; 3) fire Roger Briggs; 4) fire the entire RWQCB who deliberately refused to understand the real narrative on Los Osos and instead operated on a false Pandorian narrative, thereby making a bad situation a disaster; 5) reinstitute the MWH breach of contract lawsuit and finally find out just who did breach that contract; 6) hold a complete investigation and review/audit of this whole mess from day one, preferably conducted by the FBI, and let the chips fall where they may. The agents can start with Ron Crawford’s website, http://www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com/. and make sure they get an answer from the SWB as to his official filed complaint about the millions of dollars in the original SRF loan for “amenities” at Tri-W. He’s also got lots of other documents parked there the G-men can start on. Will make for fun reading.

THEN, when the results of that investigation are published, then and only then will we have the “healing” that comes from an accurate, verified, and complete narrative about this whole WTF? FUBAR’d mess instead of the smoldering swept-under-the-rug infected lump we've got now.

THAT’S how you “heal” Los Osos. But music, plays, walks? Eh, not so much.

Soup for a Rainy Sunday

2011-11-06T04:21:00.000-08:00

Ah, chilly, wet, wonderful day. Here's a yummy soup for such a day, from http://www.bonappetit.com/ which I modified a bit. Feel free to mess around with the spices. I did.

Curried red lentil and swiss chard stew with garbanzo beans

2 tb olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, diced
5 teaspoons curry powder
(can also add sweet paprika, garm masala, cumin, coriander, cloves etc. And can add cooked chicken chunks/shreds if you want a non-vegetarian dish. )
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste
3 14-oz cans chicken or vegetable broth (I used one 32 oz box of chicken stock)
1 large bunch or 2 small bunches Swiss chard, tough stalks removed, coarsely chopped.
1- 1/2c diced butternut squash
1 pound red lentils (about 2 1/4 c)
1 15 oz can garbanzo beans, drained

Heat oil in heavy large stock pot over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, saute until golden (about 13 min.) Mix in curry and spices, stir. Add broth and squash and lentils (follow package directions on lentils) Cook until squash and lentils are soft. Add chard and garbanzos, cook about 10 min or more, until chard is soft.

Can serve topped with a dollop of yogurt. Makes 6-7 servings.

Oh, Give It Up, Won't You Part Duh

2011-11-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

Poor Tammy Murray. She's the lady who wants to open a Compassionate Cannabis Information Center and Dispensary in Oceano. I know. You're snickering already. It's the start of the old Peanuts routine -- Lucy, Charlie and the football.

On Thursday, the SLO Planning Commissioners voted 4 - 1 to approve her request, which was in itself remarkable, since the BOS has made it absolutely clear they do not want a pot dispensary anywhere in the county. So Ms. Murray will now spend more time and money on permits and plans and take this to the BOS wherein they'll find all kinds of excuses to dump the whole idea and send her back to the drawing board, again.

Zwoop! football yanked.

This little dance will continue until somebody -- Feds, State, somebody -- rethinks this law and decides what they want to do about pot in general, except continue with the ridiculous laws we have now, all wink-nudge with a few people getting hammered while others go free. Like all our drug laws, it's hypocritical and, let's face it, insane, and ultimately creates a climate of cynical contempt for law itself. We know better than this, so we really do need to reconcile our hypocritical selves with our commonsense selves and thereby do a better job of governing ourselves in a very real imperfect world.

Well, Don't Worry, It's Too Late Now.

Actually, I guess the best thing to do now is to toke up. The AP reports that "The global output of heat-trapping crabon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record . . . a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming. . . . The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gasses are higher than the worst-case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago."

In other words, we have already screwed the pooch and we, not the pooch, are in the gunsights of the wrath that is about to set down on us. It's eerie to even think about. Like the silence before the tornado's funnel cloud suddenly appears out of the sky, the sickening sensation as the sea waves rapidly start sucking out. The future has been locked in now, the tragedy about to unfold is just over the horizon, out of sight to our eyes but not to our minds. Exactly how it will play out on each continent remains to be seen, but one thing we should know: Our great grandchildren will curse our names.

But one huge problem will be solved shortly: overpopulation. We won't have to write any more editorials about the 7 billionth baby. Or the 8th billionth. The effects of global warming on food production, fire, flooding, innundation of arable land, with changes in climate patterns destroying now viable farming land, will all have a profound effect on how many people will surive. And since millions of people are now on the edge of starvation, their future is zero.

We should be very proud of ourselves as a species.

Because Congress Has A Plan

The House voted 396-9 to reaffirm that our national motto is, "In God We Trust." That's what Congress has been spending its time doing. Not funding jobs bills, or dealing with the hungry, the sick, or even planning how to try to blunt the worst of the devastating effects climate change is bringing our way.

No. Our national motto was put in place in the 1950s to prove we were better than those godless Commies. It wasn't under threat of being un-mottoed. No scary atheists had started a bill asking for its removal. Nothing. But in the face of all our troubles and problems, Republicans in Congress stopped everything so they could "debate" and discuss and "reaffirm" a national motto what wasn't even under question. And the dickhead Democrats went along with this farce so in the next election their Republican opponents couldn't stand up and claim that they voted against God.

This is what We the People have created. This is who We the People have voted into office. A sufficient number of fools to play the fiddle while the republic burns. The founding fathers surely are weeping. Except Ben Franklin. He's laughing. He knew.

Oh, Give It Up, Won't You?

2011-11-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the Tribune reported that Tammy Murray of Oceano would go before the SLO Planning Commission on Thursday to ask them to “vote in favor of her plans to open Compassionate Cannabis Information Center” in Oceano. Mx. Murray wants to run a “470-square-fot collective in a 931-square-foot single-family hyome on a property surrounded by a sprinkling of homes and mini-storage facilities.”

Oh, well, good luck with that. I can guarantee her plans will go nowhere. The whole Medical Marijuana law was one big joke. The people voted the law in and the law enforcers and elected officials and Feds immediately began ignoring or violating it. So did the “patients” and users and the doctors and everyone else. It turned into one huge political football and a farce and now it’s just a disgrace.

A dishonest disgrace that taints everyone who fools with it. The President promises to back off on the issue then sends the Feds to hammer communities big time. Local Pols stand four-square behind “helping sick people dying of cancer” (That always looks compassionate and doesn’t require that the Pol actually does anything), then makes sure that ordinances are written so as to make dispensaries impossible. And when called on it, blandly shrug their shoulders and say, “Don’t blame meeeee, the ordinance (which I wrote) won’t allow it, sooooo sorry.”

And one sheriff, wishing to distract the public from the little matter of his own illegal wiretapping contretemps, engineers a Federal raid and an otherwise upright citizen is facing years in Federal prison.

And the public winks and nods and perfectly healthy people wanting to get a buzz on head for dishonest Doctors claiming their backs hurt, Owwwww, or they’re nervous and can’t sleep, Awwww poor baby, can they plueeezeeee have some Weeeeed?

And growers start plowing ACRES of the green stuff and the amount of pot showing up on the market at “compassionate use” dispensaries (and on the street) surpasses by a gazillion the number of sick people in the state. And before you know it, the whole point of the original Medical Marijuana law turns into idiocy with all the players acting like dishonest fools.

That, dear readers, is the price otherwise sensible people must pay to maintain their appalling hypocrisy.

And so Thursday, the Planning Commissioners will put on their Oh, Look, I’m Being Concerned & Compassionate face and Ms. Murry will be told, “Oh, Darn, we’re sorry but it looks like the ordinance just won’t work at that property. You’ll have to spend even more money and time and come back and we’ll look at another property but you and I know this little dance will end badly because you will NEVER be allowed to open a dispensary but we’re too dishonest to tell you that outright and save you a good deal of time and money. Plus we don’t want to publicly appear to be mean bastards who want cancer patients to suffer.”

Feh.

Duh Times Two

Physicist Richard Muller, one of the Koch Brother’s paid handmaidens and climate change skeptic has finally had a change of heart. Seems he took another look at what nearly all climatologists have already looked at ad naseum and decided, Oh, Gosh, heh-heh, I guess you guys were right after all. Temperatures ARE rising.

Normally, this wouldn’t be much of a problem. Scientists are always questioning and re-testing data and theories. That’s what good scientists do. But in the case of global warming, the paid deniers have helped slow American’s response time to the wrath that is about to set down on us. And that slowed response time will cost many, many people their lives and property.

And that “skepticism” for pay in a scientist is particularly heinous. The Koch Brothers are oil and coal guys. Their interest isn’t the planet, it isn’t people, it isn’t the environment, it isn’t science. It’s how to make as much money selling carbon burning products so they can make as much money as possible. And if the result of that selling means death and destruction to the largest number of people, well, that’s no concern to them. They’ll hire “scientists” to deny the obvious, delay efforts to counter the damage their products are doing, buy congressmen and ad men to lie about the issue. In short, they’ll do everything possible to keep their status quo. Like cigarette manufacturers who hid then lied about the truth about their products and used “scientists” to do it, the Koch Brothers are peddling death while denying it. It’s not personal. It’s business.

And many Americans are dumb enough to have bought into their lies. And that will have a double barreled effect: The delays that still continue (Now, the talking point isn’t whether the science is accurate, it’s, O.K. it’s real, but can we AFFORD to do anything about it?) will hit us on two fronts: The lead time need to offset the worst of the coming effects has already passed and more delay simply means the effects will be far worse than they needed to be – a direct fault of climate change deniers’ delay tactics. In addition, that delay means the loss of US technology leadership. Other countries not in thrall to people like the Koch Brothers, are forging ahead of us in alternative energy research and development. And that’s a real shame. But it’s what happens when you fail to ask the one basic question: Who profits from Fact A and who doesn’t?

In short, follow the money and you’ll usually find a liar and his hired minions. And you can bet that his interests and yours will not coincide.

In the meantime, send a post card to President Obama / White House / 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC 20500 and tell him to veto the Keystone XL project. Burning more oil is exactly the wrong thing to be doing – 180’ wrong.

A Tale of Sickening, Heartbreaking Kismet

Sounds like America’s global warming policy, but it’s not. In this case, it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, it’s beautifully written, it’s absolutely fascinating and as it builds to the end, which we all know, it takes on a terrible sense of pure, unchangeable Fate. Kismet. It was as Allah Willed It. And the stupid swaggering male macho turf wars that blinded the agencies that were charged with protecting America will make you sick to your stomach, make you furious, and finally hurt your heart as it lays out how “history” too often comes down to this: So many will die because a few top macho American security chiefs hated each other’s guts and were jealous of their turf. Simple as that. And too many others were asleep at the switch and spending more time guarding their bureaucratic rules than watching on the walls, as one misstep after another kept Al Qaeda on track for its date with destiny.

I’m speaking of the book, “The Looming Tower; Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by Lawrence Wright. Available in paperback. It is a compelling read.

Molly Discovers The Box of Toys

First I heard the rapid incessant squeeking, chomp-squeek, chomp-squeek, followed by a blur of movement, then more squeaks, them a quick spin. It was Molly Malone, the new greyhound. She’d discovered the box of toys in the corner and with untold delight started pulling out and test-chomping each one. In no time, her activity and noise attracted the mild interest of Finn McCool who stretched his long neck near to sniff and watch.

That set Molly curling into a ball to snuggle down on top of her treasures to guard them like a mother hen guarding her chicks. She didn’t growl, she didn’t give the stink eye to Finn, but the way she held her neck and head, low to the ground, stretched out like a poised snake, was dog-body language enough and Finn wisely decided to get interested in something else.

Good Momma Molly and her nest of toys.

Your Sunday Poem

2011-10-30T05:19:00.000-07:00

The Old Age of Nostalgia

Those hours given over to basking in
the glow of an imagined future, of be-
ing carried away in streams of promise
by a love or a passion so strong that one
felt altered forever and convinced that
the smallest particle of the surround-
ing world was charged with a purpose of
impossible grandeur; ah yes, and one
would look up into the trees and be
thrilled by the wind-loosened river of
pale gold foliage cascading down and
by the high melodious singing of count-
less birds; those moments, so many and
so long ago, still come back, but briefly,
like fireflies in the perfumed heat of a
summer night.

-- Mark Strand

Write It Down, Write It ALL Down. Yep, All Of It. Right Down To The Very End

2011-10-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

Mississippi has a constitutional amendment on the ballot for Nov 8 that would “declare a fertilized human egg to be a legal person, effectively branding abortion and some forms of birth control as murder.”

This amendment needs to be passed. Why? Well, when you craft a constitutional amendment, you’ve got to follow up with . . . laws crafted to enforce that amendment, and laws – unless they’re fake laws, hypocritical laws, phony CYA laws only there for political cover –must spell everything out in mind-numbing detail. And that’s where this law will be important in the ongoing abortion discussion.

Americans need to see, in all exactitude, EXACTLY what will happen in Mississippi, for example, when a woman has an abortion. Since she’s killed a “person,” she’ll have to be prosecuted for, what? Murder? Clearly, since the act is willful, the murder charge will have to be first degree, so the murdering Mummy will have to face the death penalty. How could she not?

Or, since causing the death of a “person” is murder, suppose a pregnant woman has a miscarriage and the Doctor suspects she did something that caused the “person” in her womb to die – drank some alcohol, didn’t get a flu shot and got the flu, carelessly exposed herself to a kid with German measles, whatever, surely the law will include a provision that the doctor be required to report the miscarriage to the county corner who will have to start an investigation. After all, without a complete investigation into any and all miscarriages, who could be sure they weren’t homicide? I mean, when fully grown people die of no known immediate cause, there’s an investigation into their deaths. Surely, that will have to be the case with any and all pregnancies that do not end successfully with a live birth.

Or consider, since some forms of birth control will be outlawed, the law must logically require all licensed pharmacists alert the authorities of anyone seeking to buy those outlawed forms of birth control. And if they don’t, they could be convicted of aiding and abetting in a murder of a “person.”

And so forth, all the way down the line. Including increased U.S. Postal monitoring of suspected of seeking to buy certain forms of birth control via interstate mail. And, certainly, the law would also have to include transporting anyone across state lines to secure either forbidden birth controls and/or abortions in another state.

See how far this is Amendment will have to go and why it’s so important to get passed? To date, so many anti-abortion laws are written more for political sound-bites, useful for waving like a flag to get votes. But laws have to be spelled out, each and every detail. They’re like large balls of string. You can’t just hold one end of the string and pose for the cameras as a staunch defender of “personhoods.” No, you’ve got to unspool that huge ball every since inch of the way and spell out EXACTLY how A connects to B and results in C which leads to E, and so on all the way to the end of the alphabet, complete with footnotes.

Then and only then, will voters get a clear idea of exactly what a State must do to control a woman’s body. And when that happens, when that’s spelled out in all the exactitude of The Law, most people mutter, “Uh, nevermind,” as the political gets personal, the general becomes specific and comes to roost on your daughter, your wife, your mom. Then, suddenly the whole idea begins to unravel as exception after exception starts creeping in.

After all, the law is always good when it applies to other people. When it begins to apply to us, ah well, that’s usually when we start changing the subject then change the channel.

Which is why this Mississippi amendment is so important. Go for it, Ole Miss. Write it all down. Every bit of it. Then hand it to your womenfolks. See what they make of the fine print.

Your Wednesday Reading

2011-10-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

Do yourself a favor, go to http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025, Matt Taibbi’s blog posting – OWS’s beef: Wall Street isn’t winning, it’s cheating. If you need a reason to be mad, there it is. Then get a copy of Matt’s “Griftopia.” That’ll finish the job.

Your Sunday Poem

2011-10-23T05:21:00.000-07:00

Molly McGillicuddyMalone gets a new toy from her Aunt Sally in Florida

This Billy Collins charmer from "Doggerel; Poems about Dogs," (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

Dog

I can hear him out in the kitchen,
his lapping the night's only music,
head bowed over the waterbowl
like an illustration in a book for boys.

He enters the room with such etiquette,
licking my bare ankle as if he understood
the Braille of the skin.

Then he makes three circles around himself,
flattening his ancient memory of tall grass
before dropping his weight with a sigh on the floor.

This is the spot where he will spend the night,
his ears listening for the syllable of his name,
his tongue hidden in his long mouth
like a strange naked hermit in a cave.

Aw, Adam Hill Doesn't Like Los Osos Either, Does He?

2011-10-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

So the Shredder sticks pins in what he calls the Los Osos Sewer Nuts. Now New Times reports that on Oct 11th, Linde Owen came to the microphone to object to "what she said was a lax county investigation into a relationship between Public Works Director Paavo Ogren and former Los Osos Community Services District director Maria Kelly" and County Supervisor Adam Hill shut her down, claimed he wouldn't allow "slanderous" statements at public comment time. So Hill cut off Owen's microphone and whistled up the sherrif's deputy who escorted Owens from the lecturn.

The following week Linde and others came back to the microphone to condemn Hill for cutting off Owen's 3 minutes and violating various public comment statutes and etc. Then Erick Greening, The Most Amazing Civic Minded Person In The Room, Always, stood up and, according to the New Times article, said:

"I'm a grateful user of the First Amendment. Whenever I hear speakers that I agree with I'm grateful for the First Amendment. When I hear speakers I disagree with I'm grateful for the First Amendment. When I hear people presenting illuminating information I"m grateful for the First Amendment. When I hear people presenting what I think is misinformation I'm grateful for the First Amendment. And when I get up there and correct what I think is misinformation I'm grateful for the First Amendment. And I hope everyone in this room always treasures the First Amedment on that basis and we all have a chance to use it."

THAT's why I call Eric The Most Amazing Civic Minded Person In The Room, Always.

Apparently, our Mr. Hill didn't make a peep and, I'm sure, didn't hear a word Eric had to say. Poor Mr. Hill. He hasn't quite figured out that it's impossible to get the public out of public comment. I fear he's in over his head, has risen to his level of incompetence and just hasn't mastered the art all Supervisors need to master: The art of the Snile -- you know it well, the just-slightly insincere smile crossed with a barely perceptible sneer, a deliciously subtle fake (but deniable) smirk that communicates the following perfectly: Thank you for sharing now shut the f--k up and go away thank you.

Instead, Hill panics and turns bully-boy and that never works out well. Not with Bearish folks from Los Osos.

Somebody Get These Guys A Calculator? An Abacus? Some Fingers and Toes?

Are you still here? The world was supposed to end yesterday. Yep, the Oakland-based Family Radio International, the folks who brought you the Rapture last May that didn't rapt, said their 90-year-old leader, Harold Camping, was at it again. Sez the good reverend, "Thus we can be sure that the whold world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect) are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on Oct 21."

Well, bless Harold's little heart. Here it is the 22nd and I'm staring at the computer screen and the dogs are snoozing on their beds and the sun is about to come upjust like it has for the past, oh, I don't know, gazillion years and will continue to do so for another gazillion. Well, DANG!

OH, Don't Worry, Take A Pill. That's What We Do Here In Toxic Nation

This from a Nation Roundup in the Trib: "About 1 in 25 adolescents in the United States is taking an anti-depressant, according to a new government study billed as the first to offer such statistics on that age group. " The ages studies were from 12 to 17 and was based on surveys and depression screenings of about 12,000 U.S. adolescents and adults, 2005 through 2008.

The study also found that about 1 in 10 adults are taking antidepressants as well.

Wait, it gets better: From the L.A. Times: A new report from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, a leading health policy foundation, found that "The U.S. health care system is lagging further and further behind other industrialized countries on major measures of quality, efficiency and access to care."

Even better, is this conclusion: "Despite the problems with access and quality, the U.S. continues to spend far more than other industrialized nations on health care, with per capital spending now topping $8,000 a year, more than twice what most other industrialized countries spend."

In short, we pay more for crappier health care and have poorer health outcomes than other countries. Someone seeing that might conclude that Americans are stupid. In our case, it would be more accurate to say we're overweight and sick and stupid-- fools just asking to be fleeced.

No wonder we and our children are depressed. That's what living in a sick, fleeced, toxic culture can do to you if you're dumb enough to keep clinging to the status quo. So, eat up those Big Macs and keep shoving tranqs down your kids gullets. And whatever you do, be sure to vote for politiciams who will dismantle Obamacare and Medicare/Medicade, public health programs, and will remove all government regulatons on the health care industry as a whole. After all, the free marketplace will solve all our health care problems. True, a reformed and improved, innovative Medicare for All type national health care program might be able to actually deliver better health outcomes for less money to everyone in our very, very sick nation, but that would be "socialized medicine" and in Toxic America, we can't have that.

Are We All The 99 Yet?

2011-10-20T05:20:00.000-07:00

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for Oct 21, 2011

The blackest despair that can take hold of any society is the fear that living honestly is futile.
Italian journalist, Corrado Alvaro

Had enough? Seriously, have you finally had enough? Clearly, the people occupying Wall Street have had it. They’ve figured out that 30 years of lies were, well, 30 years of lies. Tax cuts for the rich will trickle down and raise all boats; An unfettered, unregulated marketplace will solve all problems; Give rich folks tax breaks and suddenly they’ll be transformed into “job creators;” Dismantle government and America will surely become the shining city on a hill once more.

Crap. All crap. What we’ve seen instead is the consolidation of corporate power melding with (and buying) state power. In short, We the People allowed our By The People government to be hijacked, our stock markets turned into a rigged crap game, and guess who were the first ones to be tossed overboard in the new reality of Corporate Casino America? Right, We The People. Yes, very funny. Hoist by petards all around. Ha-ha.

But now people are beginning to understand the price they’re going to pay to keep the Greed is Good ethos. They’re beginning to see what it means in real time, in real towns, for real people when the top Republican leader declares publicly that his number one priority for the next four years is to see President Obama defeated. Not jobs. Not fixing a dysfunctional, broken system. Not even fixing a bridge, a road, a school. Nope. Top priority: Obama gone by any means necessary.

As a result, Main Street’s finally beginning to feel in their pocketbooks what it means to have a majority of people in Congress committed to that priority and, in addition, sworn to fealty, not to the Constitution, not to their constituents, not to what’s best for the country, but to some corporate lobbyist named Grover Norquist.

True, Main Street voted those guys into office. And sent along even more rabid True Believers, people who ran for a government office with the express purpose of dismantling the government that created the office they ran for. Yes. More Ha-ha.

So, have they now had enough? Sure, there’s a few demonstrations in a few cities, but will any of it translate into votes come November? Without the votes there will be no change in Congress and hence no change on Main Street.

Except the distinct possibility that a Corporate Republican majority in House and Senate, with a Republican President at the helm will mean another conservative Supreme Court appointee will be added to the bench. And when that happens, the Citizens United Decision – Corporations are People, my friends. Corporations are People – will never be overturned, will be strengthened and added to by other similar rulings, and at that point the corporate takeover of our democracy will be complete.

While despair is certainly one option, Mat Taibbi, whose brilliant new book “Griftopia” hilariously illuminated just how the thieves on Wall Street helped bring this country down, has a terrific list of Things to Do in the October 27 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. Here’s a few of his suggestions:

1. Break up the monopolies. “The so-called ‘Too Big to Fail’ financial companies . . . are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous an unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.”

2. Pay for your own bailouts. “A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts . . . It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes . . . and force Wall Street to go back to the job it’s supposed to be doing, i.e. making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow”.

3. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. Repeal the “preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans . . . to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.”

4. Change the way bankers get paid. No more “bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up . . . later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company’s long-term health – no more Joe Casanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.”

That’s a short list, but it’s a start on the long, long list of what needs to be set right. But it all depends on Main Street taking back their government from Corporate ownership. And for that to happen, voters not only have to be finally wised up to the con that’s being run on them, they have to finally have had enough. Then vote like their life depends on it.

Because it does.

Aw, Shredder, You Don't Love Los Osos Any More, Do You

2011-10-17T05:15:00.000-07:00

The following is a "Viewpoint" response by Julie Tacker to New Times' The Shredder/s Oct 13 swipe at "Sewer Nuts." The Shredder's remarks are in italics) My response follows.

Response to Shredder October 13, 2011

Dear Shredder,

I think I’m having a problem communicating. Every week I go to the Board of Supervisors and say the exact same thing and nobody seems to listen. Also, my application to lynch Paavo Ogren and Maria Kelly was rejected, AGAIN. What am I doing wrong?

—Los Osos Sewer Nut

Dear Nut,

It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

The same can be said for the sewer decision makers (1980-98, County of SLO, 1999-2005 LOCSD, 2006-today County of SLO) study after study, design after design, to still end up with an energy hungry gravity sewer IS insane.

I consider what I am about to say the most important piece of advice I have ever given: SHUT UP.

No Shredder, you SHUT UP! If you can’t be part of the solution, get out of the way.

For years I’ve listened to you rant about your sewer.

You may have heard the dedicated concerned citizens of Los Osos week after week, but you obviously weren’t listening. If you had been you would know why they go and perhaps have joined them in their plight.

You hate it. You really hate it.

We don’t hate the sewer, we hate the process (tainted by corporate greed, small town politics and now a love affair that revealed what we already knew, Maria’s vote to settle with mondo-engineering firm MWH let lover-boy Paavo off the hook (for illegally ordering the backdating of a contract).

We hate having our voices quashed by those who claim to be doing what’s “good” or “right” for Los Osos. Those who do not live with the complexities of the issues in Los Osos, those who do not care what the dissention has done to a community that is otherwise quite lovely.

You want more funding. You’re not happy about the funding you got.

“Funding?” What funding? Los Osos could have got a better loan from a loan shark than it’s getting from the USDA. The County’s “skilled negotiators” portrayed Los Osos as ‘deadbeats who defaulted on a $6 Million loan in 2005’. This is completely false. The loan in question was rescinded by the State when their own engineer agreed with the District’s engineer and newly elected Board that moving the sewer from downtown would reduce the project cost by $25 million. That engineer was quickly removed from the project and buried in a cubical somewhere in Sacramento.

I’m not sure what you want, and I don’t think you are either.

Los Osos has always wanted a fair process and a chance to build an environmentally friendly project. For example, this project doesn’t even provide for solar panels on the rooftop of the plant to offset costs of operation. When this was brought to the attention of the permitting authorities, the County’s response was to orient the building east/west to absorb the southern sun, but not add the panels. The rate payers would pay for the panels up front, but would also benefit from the long term cost offset…maybe you Shredder, can get the answer “why not?”

You’ve had years to formulate a cohesive statement, argument, manifesto, anything.

At one time (1998) 87% of voters were in agreement of one thing; to take the project away from the County. They were sold on “faster, better, cheaper” and are still in search of it.

Instead, all anyone’s heard for years is incoherent rambling against anyone and everyone even remotely connected to Los Osos.

Again Shredder, you haven’t been listening to those weekly speakers. Each brings something different. They come from all walks of life, political parties, religious preferences, and myriad life experiences. Some speak sewer, others water, some to cost, the complex details, or as of late -- the recently revealed love affair involving key players, Maria and Paavo.

And if they’re not on your side—whatever the hell side that happens to be—they’re against you.

Not necessarily. The Los Osos issues are very complex (if you were listening you would know that). Those citizens who march like lemmings to the podium to agree with the County ARE against those who bring forth the issues, concerns, and flaws. They like living like mushrooms; in the dark being fed compost. Clearly they haven’t taken the time to go through the studies, add the figures themselves, or look at the logistics of the permits (e.g. Harming/killing no more than 15 snails over the course of the 45 mile long project, emptying 5,000 septic tanks in under a year, tip-toeing through Native American ruins/burial grounds, daily dewatering of a million gallons of polluted groundwater from trenches, digging in sugar sand, the complex list goes on and on).

There are two ways to go about this. One way is to sit down privately and try to reach a resolution.

Which issue would you like “resolution?”

Gravity verses STEP? Good loan verses bad? Who is eligible for subsidizes and who isn’t? Farmers will take the wastewater or they won’t? Seawater Intrusion marches on while the County sits on $5 million intended for conservation devices? Denitrifying septic returned water for drinking? Selling our Solid Waste franchise to the County for a mere $2.8 Million, never to get it back? Paavo and Maria? Which?

The other way is to grandstand on TV and the radio every week clearly getting nowhere.

You obviously do not follow these dedicated citizens very closely; they attend many more meetings that are not televised than are. (They are not allowed appointments with individual Supervisors to take issues up behind closed doors.) They spend their precious time, days and often very long nights, reading documents, buying copies of documents, and mounting travel expenses to cross the state to speak to the State and Regional Water Board, Coastal Commission, and others to make their voices heard.

You’ve fallen in love with the sound of your own ramblings, and probably driven away people who might have something important to contribute to the subject.

What you call “Rambling,” I call free speech. You in the newspaper business are supposed to be the biggest advocates for the 1st Amendment. As for others who may have been “driven away,” I say, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

You have managed to accomplish nothing, really.

Really Shredder? These hard-working, dedicated individuals have brought the overarching Los Osos issue of Seawater Intrusion to the forefront. While you sit comfortably on your porcelain thrown and don’t give flushing it a second thought, the informed citizens of Los Osos have to weigh flushing pollutants into their future drinking supply while depleting their current drinking water supply and paying dearly for it.

Might I suggest a hobby? Perhaps crocheting unicorns onto pillowcases; believe it or not, that’s actually a more substantial contribution to society.

Crochet away dear Shredder, I’d prefer to read the latest Water Conservation report.

I’m a cheapskate, but I’ll happily chip in for yarn if you’ll cork it.

I’m a cheapskate too. I’d like an affordable sewer bill so I can afford a hobby. You say you’ll chip in for yarn? Nice. How about chipping in to pay the bills? Sewer and water combined are estimated at $500.00 per month per house.

I’d rather be a “Los Osos Sewer Nut” than a mushroom. Thanks for the compliment.

Julie Tacker,
40 year Los Osos resident and longtime dedicated “Sewer Nut”

My response to Julie’s email “Viewpoint” to the Shredder’s comments is as follows:

Julie.
Thanks I'll post it Monday. Sadly, "the press" has simply bought The Narrative -- All the sewer projects were/are all fine and anyone who complains about any of them for whatever reason is an Anti-Sewer Obstructionist Nut. Case closed.

And because it IS such a complicated issue, no reporter, except Ron Crawford, has taken a close look at and documented all the really interesting connected dots that illustrate some of the extraordinarily questionable aspects of these various projects as they morphed from the (fake) Ponds of Avalon (the original bait & switch that started the wrong train going down the wrong hill towards the wrong cliff) to the Coastal Commission's "bait & switchy" Tri-W (with the CC's staffer, Monowitz, having been lied to -- Aw, shamey-shamey-- with disastrous consequences) to the present county project. And did I forget to include Roger Briggs and the RWQCB's disgraceful electioneering via the Mad Hatter Tea Party & Torequmada's Auto d Fe "Trial" of the Los Osos 45?)

Lordy, it's a sickening, but dazzling tale, indeed. But one that went untold because while so many of the "Sewer Nuts" were acting as frantic signalmen waving red flags as the Sewer Train hurtled full throttle off onto the wrong tracks and headed for the cliff's edge, The Press labeled them "Sewer Nuts, then took a nap.

Well, understandable. Reading Ron's time-lines and cached documents does take time. Much easier to just call people Sewer Nuts. More fun, too. But hardly qualifies as "journalism."

Your Sunday Poem

2011-10-16T04:30:00.000-07:00

This from Jane Hirshfield's "Of Gravity & Angels."

In That World, The Angels Wear Fins

In that world, the angels wear fins.
Red hulls pass over like clouds, their shadows
angling down between ropes of sun.
When women who have dived there return,
they do not speak of oysters or pearls.
shaking their heads they say, "There is nothing."
They say, "We must look somewhere else,"
and twist their black hair in the world of men,
and wade heavily through the grass-scented air.
From this they know loss like salt:
how without it, the tongue grows stubborn and dull,
tastes nothing.
But the wild flavor, the sea, how it moves in them,
hip and thigh -- a soundless current, kicking
downward the rest of their lives.

Everything Including the Kitchen Sink

2011-10-12T05:42:00.000-07:00

I have two words for you. Harvest Gold. No, wait, I have five words for you: Forty year-old Harvest Gold. Sink, that is. I know. Bad as that is, it could have been Avocado. But Harvest Gold I’ve lived with for 25 years now and enough is enough.

After saving my shekels forever, buying all the stuff needed, the phone call was made and Kirk Sidner of Estero Plumbing arrived with his tools to buzz-saw through the ceramic trim and lift the old sink out and plunk in a new one. I found some tile trim at Matt Clark’s tile (a place where, when I enter, I think I have died and gone to heaven – gorgeous stuff) and the trim matched closely enough to look like a deliberate design choice.

And so the deed was done just in time to get out the mop: Molly McGillicuddy Malone, the new greyhound, brought with her more than just a smile and a wagging tail. Like the new kid in preschool, she likely came with some gut-bug variant and before you can say, Good Dog, everyone was down with diarrhea – trot city. And time to start the boiled rice, hamburger and Imodium diet. Within a couple of days all but Finn and Zuri were heading back to digestive health. Finn required some assistance with being pilled with Fagyl, while Zuri is bringing up the rear, running a fever and now on doses of antibiotic.

Both Finn and Zuri are always problem patients. Finn because you’ve got one shot at getting medicine into him and if it tastes funny, he’s done with you. You get the stink-eye and his jaws stay firmly clamped shut. And Zuri because Sloughi’s are notorious stoics – likely a survival tactic in a harsh environment. Their foot could be falling off before you’d hear a peep out of them. So you learn to watch them very carefully and in Zuri’s case, yesterday morning when she walked in to say good morning. tail tucked, ears drooping, back hunched, walking stiffly, I knew something was wrong and called Dr. Truax. So, it’s on to some liquid antibiotic which, happily, she doesn’t seem to mind. And now we wait. 24 hours should turn the corner with her.

Poor doggies. Well, Molly likely was the Typhoid Mary of this incident, but dogs often acquire and pass around any number of mutant bugs so if you’re a dog owner, you know the drill well.

Speaking of Dogs

If you have a dog or even if you don’t, come on out to El Chorro Off Leash Dog Park Sunday, 10 – 2 pm. for our 10th Anniversary celebration. There’ll be hot dogs, cake, lots of dogs and about 11 a.m. we’ll be having the dedication ceremony for the new expansion to the large dog area

The expansion was made possible by a generous grant from the late Harold Miossi’s Charitable Trust (The Miossi’s were long time dairy farmers in SLO County; their ranch starts at the base of Highway 101 and Santa Rosa Ave., and Harold was involved for years in the community.)

I’m on the Board of SLO-4-PUPs, the group that started El Chorro Dog Park, the first off-leash dog park in the County. When the dog park first opened ten years ago, a handful of the board members were faced with a whole lot of wood-chip-hurling and mulch spreading and so we were out there often in work parties with other volunteers, working day after day. Early on, I remember being out there hurling mulch when this nice older gentleman showed up with his dog Fred. Without waiting to be asked, he picked up a pitchfork and joined us as we tossed chips for hours.

From that point, I would often see him early in the morning, and as we chatted, I slowly discovered what a remarkable gentleman he was; Berkeley Graduate, County Probate Referee, County Grand Juror, he was also involved in all sorts of environmental and community organizations.

Many years later, I heard Harold had passed on and last year our Board was notified that Harold had loved that park and that grants from his Charitable Trust were available for park improvements. So we applied for a grant and now we have an expanded area, a new doggy pool spa area and lots more room to roam. All thanks to Harold.

So, stop by and take a gander this Sunday. Say Thank You to Harold’s Spirit, who I know is out there hurling mulch or walking up the canyon trail with his dog, Fred. Then have a hot dog. Pet a real dog and come wander around in the most beautiful dog park in the county.

We’ll even have our new SLO-4-PUPs / El Chorro Dog Park embroidered logo baseball hats available in waaay cool grey-green or grey-blue colors, all for a $20 donation.

Your Sunday Poem

2011-10-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

This charmer by Wislawa Szymborska, from "Monologue of the Dog."

A Little Girl Tugs At The Tablecloth

She's been in this world for over a year,
and in this world not everything's been examined
and taken in hand.

The subject of today's investigation
is things that don't move by themselves.

They need to be helped along,
shoved, shifted,
taken from their place and relocated.

They don't all want to go, e.g., the bookshelf,
the cupboard, the unyielding walls, the table.

But the table cloth on the stubborn table
-- when well-seized by its hems --
manifests a willingness to travel.

And the glasses, plates,
creamer, spoons, bowl,
are fairly shaking with desire.

Molly McGillicuddy Malone

2011-10-07T06:18:00.000-07:00

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for Oct. 7, 2011

                                    In Dublin’s Fair City,
                              Where the girls are so pretty
                      I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone

It was the petal ears and the dark liquid eyes, I suppose, that first caught my attention. And that “look” that spoke of the age-old woe of a good girl fallen on hard times. And the back story that resonated with me since her fate was a reversal on my other rescued racing greyhound, The Mighty Finn McCool. Finn’s mother had died of neglect shortly after giving birth at the track in Caliente, her pups tossed aside to die until the angels from the Greyhound Adoption Center in El Cajon swooped down to rescue them. In this case, Molly was raced while pregnant, then when her condition was discovered, she was discarded. But, unlike Finn’s mother, she didn’t die. Instead, she would end up giving birth to three healthy pups, nurse them tenderly until they were ready to be adopted to wonderful new homes, and then have her photo peer out at me from a GAC email to trigger a goofy conceit on my part.

You know the old joke? Play a country western song backwards and the wife comes back, the dog doesn’t die, the pickup truck runs again and the booze stays in the bottle. With Molly’s brindle striping, she looked like Finn’s twin, so I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to symbolically unspool Finn’s song: his mother wouldn’t die but would, instead, come to live with him forever and ever. Silly? Yes, but there it was.

                              As she wheel’d her wheel barrow
                              Through Streets broad and narrow

So I contacted Barbara VanDeventer, the local GAC representative and once Molly’s puppies had been sent to their new homes and she had been spayed, Barbara and I headed to Kettleman City to meet Jim Howell, GAC’s volunteer transporter. When we got home, Candy and Phil, my greyhound-owning neighbors came by to help with our introductions, a meet ‘n greet walkabout, one by one, until we had the whole gang walking as a pack up and down the street. Then, all in a line, two by two, we kept walking right into the house and out into the backyard before any of my dogs could even think about defending “their” territory.

And with only a few brief snarks at the other dogs for unauthorized butt-sniffing, Molly slid into the pack like she had lived here for years. Even Zuri, the Sloughi, a breed that is the canine version of a crow -- new-adverse and suspicious of all things—took to Molly like a long lost sister. And in no time they were play-bowing and hip-bumping and racing down the breezeway to fly out into the yard with a bound. Finn, of course, was ecstatic at his new fake Mom, a mom small enough to walk under her very, very tall fake son.

                     Crying cockles and mussels alive, alive o!

And so the dynamic and energy of the household shimmered briefly then parted and sweet Molly McGillicuddy Malone slipped in without a ripple. Even a trip to the dog park jammed nose to tail into the back of my Tall Dog Car with the other thugs couldn’t ruffle her composure since it turns out she’s also a great Rider In Cars.

So there it was. From a silly conceit to a lovely reality, all because she’s a good girl, our Molly is. And why shouldn’t she be? After all, the McGillicuddy clan motto is Sursum Corda – “Hearts Upward.”

                             Alive, alive o!, alive, alive o!
                    Crying cockles and mussels alive, alive o!

Well, That Limb Mother Calhoun Went Out On Sure Wasn't A Very Long One, Was It?

2011-10-05T05:57:00.000-07:00

Stuck at home while Kirk (Estero Bay Plumbers) was installing a new kitchen sink, at 1:30 pm., as announced, I tuned in the BOS meeting on the radio, curious to hear County Administrator Jim Grant's report on the Paavo Ogren/Maria Kelly Mess.

Why did I tune in at 1:30? Well, said Bob Cuddy's Tribune Sept 30 story, , "It is my intention to report out after closed session, " County Administrator Jim Grant wrote in an email to The Tribune. Closed session takes place after the morning session of the Bord of Supervisors and the report starts the afternoon meeting at 1:30. p.m."

So, naturally, any Los Osos folks interested in this issue would show up in the morning, waaaaay, waaaay before the official 1:30 report-out time, because they would know that the BOS would have arranged to have Mr. Grant report out in the morning, waaaay, waaay before the announced time, thus making sure nobody from Los Osos would be in the audience. Then, in the afternoon, after closed session, oh, along about 1:30 p.m. the folks in the audience who specifically came to hear that issue would ask, "Hey, where's the report," only to be told, "Oh, we gave that report this morning, waaaay, waaaay before any of you guys showed up, so, sorry, you're too late, there will be no report now, so shut up and go away, thank you."

To which several Los Osos folks objected. Linde Owen even politely raised a point of order, in fact, only to be gaveled down by Chairman Hill. Mr. Grant did chime in to say he'd be happy to talk to audience members in the hallway, (away from the microphones and TV), which is how the County clearly wanted to handle this whole mess -- bury it out of sight with a brief 2 page report, declare there was no conflict at all, and above all, allow no questions in public. Which is how the BOS likes to do business when one of their own steps in it.

Declared Chairman Hill after gaveling down the few irate commentors from the audience, "What's a Board of Supervisors meeting without a little bitterness?"

Really? Bitterness? Well, Mr. Hill., let me suggest a reason for the ire. Let's start with declaring that you're preparing an above board, transparent report, that the report will be presented at a time and placed announced, the public will be allowed to review the report and offer public comment, exactly like you handle all other issues, and then you switch the time so there would be no transparency, no public comment, only citizens chatting with your CEO in the hallway. Ya think that might account for some . . . bitterness, eh?

Well, Mother Calhoun is not surprised by any of this in the least, especially not the old switcheroo without notice. Par for the course. And so we all troop off into the happy sunset, all smiley-faced, job well done.

Except for Paavo. This stupid mess made his employers look bad, look foolish, caused them to engage in the ridiculous ruse of shuffling presentation times so as to reduce the possibility that a public hearing would make them look even more foolish. Afraid the public would drag up all kinds of troubling issues they do not want paraded in public. Employers don't like knowing that one of their bright, shining stars' messy private life has exposed them to a public mess, exposed them to embarassing questions in the public mind such as, "Why'd the heck did you hire that guy?" Employers will remember that and consider, behind closed doors, during private employee evaluation reviews, that perhaps their fair-haired boy doesn't have the kind of mature judgement required for promotion up the line. That he's demonstrated that he's a liability to them. That perhaps it's time for him to consider employment somewhere else since his trajectory upwards in this County is over.

Well, now it's all back to business as usual, here in SLO County. It's how we roll. And comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone living in Los Osos.

Your Sunday Poem

2011-10-02T06:54:00.000-07:00

This from Billy Collins, "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes."

Memento Mori

There is no need for me to keep a skull on my desk,
to stand with one foot up on the ruins of Rome,
or wear a locket with the sliver of a saint's bone.

It is enough to realize that every common object
in this sunny little room will outlive me --
the carpet, radio, bookstand and rocker.

Not one of these things will attend my burial,
not even this dented goosenecked lamp
with its steady benediction of light,

though I could put worse things in my mind
than the image of it waddling across the cemetery
like an old servant, dragging the tail of its cord,
the small circle of mourners parting to make room.

Mother Calhoun Goes Out On A Limb

2011-10-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

So, I get home from a visit to my sister and there's the Trib's local page headline: "Report set on Public Works head." Ah, yes, the Paavo & Maria story is heading to it's official end when Tuesday afternoon County Administrator Jim Grant issues his official investigative report on the claims that Paavo Ogren and Maria Kelly's private canoodling involved any professional conflict of interests. The report is slated to start at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday,Oct 4.

Based on the Tribune story and from what Mother Calhoun knows of both the Los Osos Sewer Wars and the County's business-as-usual M.O., let me speculate that here's what will Happen Tuesday. 1) Paavo won't be fired. 2) The report will find no conflict of interest, no laws broken. The public will be told that everything is fine, that the complaints were unfounded (You know how those Los Osos Crazies love to file unfounded complaints.)   Nothing to see here. Move along.

Of course, the second cat was let out of the bag by the brief Tribune story:  "Grant said the alleged conflict factored into Ogren's annual performance evaluation but only in a larger context that also includes work products, leadership abilities, budgeting and feedback from staff, peers and the board, etc. So, yes this issue would be included as part of the annual evaluation," he wrote in an email, " but weighted based upon its overall significance determined by my findings."

Translation: Paavo's career advancement in this County just hit its glass ceiling because his reckless, unprofessional lack of judgement went public and so this couldn't possibly have been swept under the "personnel rug" so everyone could just continue with business as usual. So, after a decent interval, I suspect we may well read about Paavo accepting another well-paid job in another county so he can become their lawsuit-in-waiting problem. In SLOTown, there will be public smiles and congratulations to Paavo about his new job.  Followed by lots of private sighs of relief that once again, SLOTown ducked a bullet.

On the entertainment side of this sorry story, if public comment is allowed on Tuesday following the report, there could be lots of raised voices, gavel banging, red faces and threats of adjorning the meeting. Happily, there'll be no hurled chairs, though, since the seats in the BOS room are bolted to the floor.

Your Sunday Poem

2011-09-25T05:03:00.000-07:00

This from Billy Collin's collection, "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes"

Man in Space

All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,

and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine
when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,

why they are always standing in a semicircle
with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,
their breasts protected by hard metal disks.

Don't Ask. Don't Tell. Good Riddance

2011-09-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for September 23, 2011

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

What was the problem? No, really. What was the problem? Gays have been serving in the military since before Christ was a corporal. Rome did not conquer the known world with a gay-free army. Alexander the Great? C’mon. Sparta? Don’t even go there. Really.

And now that our hysterical, last-gasp patch job, the ridiculous “Don’t Ask” policy, has gone the way of all such desperate measures that demean and deny our fellow citizens their full humanity, aren’t we embarrassed? Ashamed? Don’t want to discuss it? Nevermind.

Isn’t it always that way? Always. First the absolutist mind set that takes nonsense as The Received Truth: Everyone knows that Negroes aren’t human, they’re some sort of inferior sub-set species; Women are too feeble-minded and weak to be given the right to vote. They’re fit only for motherhood and making breakfast. Mexicans? See how suitable they are for stoop labor? No white person could do that kind of hard work. It’s in their blood. Ditto for the Chinese. They can build our railroads but are too inscrutable to own property and run businesses. Gays are an abomination to God. Jews, too. And all Muslims are evil, murdering jihadists bent on killing Christians. And God forbid if any one of these God-despised, not-quite-humans should marry our white sisters.

They’re endless, the excuses, and more often than not, always backed up by the claim that God agrees with our ridiculous pronouncements, too. It’s all part of His Plan, see? Until it suddenly isn’t. Then slaves get freed and women get the vote and gays are officially allowed to serve in the military and Mexican farm workers seize the power of the ballot box and Chinese people start winning Nobel Prizes, and Muslims build mosques next door to churches and their congregants share pot-luck suppers while watching their kids play little league baseball.

And the world doesn’t end and the sky doesn’t fall and it soon becomes clear that God had nothing to do with all these phony, self-serving “truths,” all of which are so small and pinched and mean and stupid that God couldn’t possibly have been behind them all since that’s not how God rolls, that’s how humans roll. So everyone looks around all sheepish and feeling foolish and refusing to look at one another, heh-heh, and they blink at the brave new world – which is actually the same old world but with one more layer of Stupid scraped away – and say to themselves, What were we thinking? Really? What were we thinking?

And it’s always the same dynamic. First comes the blood sacrifice to the God of Mean, the God of Stupid, the God of Fear, the God of Demagoguery, all the small, smarmy evil Gods that rule the dark human heart. And after much struggle, much sacrifice, and so much suffering, the God of Light removes the scales from our eyes and the world changes, we change, and then puzzle over how bizarre and silly our former beliefs and behaviors were. Who were those idiotic people? we ask. Surely, not us!

But it is us. It’s always us. It’s hard-wired into our little monkey brains, the free-floating fear that constantly seeks an “Other” du jour to target: Blacks, Jews, Gays, Women, Mexicans, Muslims, whatever. There’s an inexhaustible supply of people to despise. Take a number. Everyone gets a turn in the barrel. And though the target may change, the ritual stays the same: Fear, hatred, sacrifice, suffering, struggle, then suddenly –change.

And afterwards, which always comes far too late, we blink and look around and ask, What was the problem anyway? Really. Does anybody remember? What was the problem?

Ian Parkinson? Meet Warren Jensen. Warren Jensen, Meet Kamala Harris . . .

2011-09-20T05:25:00.000-07:00

The Los Osos World Class Sewer Circle Jerk is now complete and all documented by Ron Crawford at http://www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com/ One of the most extraordinary features of the public abuse and public fleecing and failures and singularly fascinating screw-ups and humongeous waste known as the Los Osos Sewer Project, is the absolute refusal by those in oversight positions to do their jobs -- not even to try to explain documented problems -- like how DID money for tot lots and ampitheatres get into that original SRF loan anyway? Instead of accountability or answers, everyone -- everyone -- turns away. Not our responsibility. Talk to the hand.

This conspiracy of silence about the repeated systemic failures of every agency involved in this project, from the CSD to the Water Boards, to the Coastal Commission to the asleep-at-the-switch "watchdog" media, is one of the most extraordinary aspects of this 30-year saga. The result is that Los Osos was raped and the rapists walked away with a promotion and a raise.

Which is what happens in . . . Chinatown.

Your Sunday Poem

2011-09-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

From "The Lives of the Heart," Poems by Jane Hirshfield.

The World Loved by Moonlight

You must try,
the voice said, to become colder.
I understood at once.
It is like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze,
braced in stone. Only something heartless
could bear the full weight.

Stop That Brandishing

2011-09-17T06:19:00.000-07:00

Odd little story in yesterday's Tribune. Our two Republican representatives, Senator Sam and Rep. Katcho voted against AB 144 (which is now on Gov. Brown's desk for a signature or veto). The bill, if passed, would make it a misdemeanor to "openly carry an unloaded handgun in public."

"According to a legislative analysis published on the states website, the bill's supporters believe the absence of such a law has led to an increase in 'problematic instances of guns carried in public, alarming unsuspecting individuals (and) causing issues for law enforcement.

"Open carry creates a potentially dangerous situation," according to the analyst's summation of the bill's supporters.

"In most cases when a person is openly carrying a firearm, law enforcement is called to the scene with few details other than one or more people are present at a location and are unarmed, . . . In these tense situations, the slightest wrong move by the gun carrier could be construed as threatening by the responding officer, who may feel compelled to respond in a manner that could be lethal. In this situation the practice of 'open carry' creates an unsafe environment for all parties involved."

Since the Republican Party (and most of the Democratic party) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the NRA, and Sam and Katcho are also sworn blood oath Norquistians, they want nothing to do with this bill and voted against it.

And if Governor Brown vetoes it, that'll mean that upcoming Tea Party Rallies can be filled with people carrying guns. Nobody will know if they're loaded or not without checking, which is half the fun. I mean, a resentful, angry crowd playing the victim card, an emotionally charged rally, when excitement and tempers are high, and people are waving guns around, what could go wrong?

Ah, Republicans and their guns. That love affair goes way beyond a well regulated milita and rolls off into Freud territory. Not to mention dog-whistle territory, that lovely territory of juxtaposition and historical memory: a black president, open carry guns at a political rally, carried signs picturing an Afro-haired witch-doctorish Obama with a bone through his nose. All that was missing was the noose hanging from a tree with strange fruit swinging, and the grinning smiles of the armed folks gathered there, grinning obscenely for the camera. Dog-whistle music for our dark unspoken racial history.

Do I overreach? Then tell me, did you ever see guns at a Bush rally? Clinton? Heck, he was a good 'ol boy, you'd think the gun toters would have not thought twice about showing up to his rallies carrying weapons, but I never saw any of that. Until Obama. Did you?

Ah, Republicans and their guns. Well, maybe that explains why they've grown so mean. Fear makes you meaner 'n a snake and Republicans are truly scared people. They're scared that somebody's going to take something away from them (like some money to pay for the roads they drive on or the schools their kids atend) or scared that somebody's going to make them help take care of the sick and lame and, for God's sake, The Poor, (like their neighbors). That's a horrifying idea to people who so strongly and publicly profess to being Christian. Look after the poor? What the hell is that??

And if you view the world as a scary place where you are constantly being menaced by taxes and civic responsibility to love your neighbor as yourself, and instead you view your neighbor as some horrible scary Mexican Black Woman who's threatening your manhood by coming to take your job and move in next door and marry your daughter while the Commies and Socialists are coming in their black helicoptors to take you away to a slave labor camp in Montana for re-education purposes, then naturally you'll really NEED to carry a gun with you at all times.

Even when you go into a pie shop -- especially a pie shop -- because you never know when some urban black thug will rush into that pie shop and yell, "Stick 'em up," and if you have your unloaded weapon you can wave it at him and he'll run away. Or, more likely, since your weapon is unloaded (since it's still illegal to carry a concealed weapon without a permit and one of the reasons you're glad Sam and Katcho voted against this new bill is it would have forced you to a) get a permit, which nobody would give you since you're paranoid, batshit crazy dangerous, and b) with a permit you'd have to conceal your weapon which would defeat your purpose of being seen to be a badass without the requisite responsibility and risk of actually being a badass.), the end result of your little faux Clint Eastwood dumbshow would be to get your behind shot off, either by the robber, or by the cops who burst in, think you're the criminal since you're the jackass who's waving a gun around, and blow you away.

Thus doth fear -- False Expectations Appearing Real -- irrational, free-floating, unnamed, unacknowledged, chthonian fear make fools of those suffering from that chronic, lethal condition.

But, boy, does it make for great profits for Gun Companies, increased revenue for the NRA which means copious campaign money will rain down on the NRA's foot soldiers -- our Congressmen and Senators.

Sweet pie all around! Pass the bullets.

Oh, Brother
Well, my dear old HP color printer finally started giving up the ghost. Actually, it started croaking several years ago. You know the drill, when it's new you can print off photos which is really cool, then very soon, the printer starts getting out of whack, so you get those striped bands through the photo and no amount of adjusting helps, so you forgo photo printing and just use it for genera printing, which raises the questioon, Why am I wasting money buying colored inks (my HP was one of the ones wherein you could replace each ink cartridge, not one of those all in one deals) when all I"m printing is black and white stuff.

So I limped along, wasting ink, until finally the thing stopped printing much of anything. So, down to Staples, wherein I chatted with a nice Staples Geek, who suggested a laser printer, B&W only, way cheaper. So there it sits, all neat and tidy and humming. Then it's back to Staples with my old, dead HP for recycling. (Yes, Stapes will recycle electronic equipment, (and empty ink cartridges) bless their hearts).

Now I'll post this, say a prayer to the Computer Gods (which is needed since my computer's Macafee system is apparently having random glitches for no known reason. Steve Vandagriff, my computer guru, ran the thing through its paces and can find no known reason for Mac's weirdness), then hit print and see what happens.

The Stuck Brain

2011-09-13T06:40:00.000-07:00

Ever get an annoying snippet of song stuck in your brain and there it stays annoying you for days? The same thing happend while I was watching the Nova special on building the 9-11 memorial. The project is huge and impressive, the new WTC skyscraper astoundingly beautiful. Then therei's the memorial footprint pool. Quite amazing with the carefully constructed weir's allowing a soft fall of cascading water that flows down into a reflecting pool and from there the pooled water falls down a square hole in the middle. (I gather people can go under the pool and look up out of the hole as well.) The architect who designed the pool wanted to try to create a presence of absence, to create a kind of rememberence of that which is now gone.

But watching the memorial in action, the water slipping over the weirs and down the walls and heading for the square hole in the middle, I suddenly had one of those awful, unwelcome brain glitches and now here's what I keep seeing everytime I see that memorial pool: Instead of a vast pool the exact footprint of the missing World Trade Towers with the whole vast, unbroken shimmering surface reflecting the sky, reflecting emptiness, reflecting absence, now all I keep seeing is a giant kitchen sink with the ghostly presences all being constantly washed down the square drain.

Which isn't what the architect had in mind and isn't exactly the image you want to present in a memorial. But there it is, stuck in my brain. Kitchen sink. Drain.

At Least Michele Bachman Fixed Her Hair

In the last GOP debate, Bachman was really scary looking. She's got problem eyes. They're deep-set and squinty when they're not looking wild and barking mad, and when you add in a giant helmet of hair surrounding those squinty eyes and the piranah-teeth smile, the whole effect is scary.

Thank goodness, in last night's debate, somebody got hold of Bachman's hair and tamped it down and back, which softened her whole face and made her look much calmer and more pulled together. All of which, when you think about it, is weird. These pols have access to and can afford the best make-up people in the world. (For God's sake, call the folks from "What Not To Wear." The hairdresser on that show would have whipped Bachman's hair into shape months ago.) But too often, I suspect they just don't avail themselves of that expert advice and the result can be disastrous.

It's all about the visual nowadays, body language, clothes, hair, make up, and not just for women pols either. We humans lead with the gut, that instant judgement that often defies explication, but there it is. You could have the greatest ideas in the world, have the most impressive resume, but if you're visually too short, too fat, too frumpy, too old, and too wussy and wonky, you're doomed. It's all about the visual, the gut instinct.

Kabuki theatre, actors hiding behind symbolic costumes and masks posturing on a stage, highly stylized symbols, gesturing. And that's who voters vote for. God help us.

Cap Doff To The Trib

No, honestly. The Tribune's been running "Fact Check" under its reports on the debates. Thank you for that. One of the most frustrating things about these debates is the amount of pure bull crap that gets shoveled out to the audience, none of it corrected or even foot-noted. Since so many voters don't read, aren't policy or political wonks and junkies, about all the information they get is in media selected "sound bites" and misleading campaign stump speech snippets -- Bulls--t, in other words. Vast carloads of it. The perfect environment to create, grow and plant false narratives (see Frank Luntz, the most dangerous man in America) and invent The Big Lies that, if repeated often enough, become received Truth in the minds of the voters. So, more "fact checks," please.

Place Yer Bets, Ladies and Gentlemen

President Obama has sent his jobs plan to the Republican-controlled Congress. It's his "pass this bill, now" bill and it will pay for jobs fixing schools, bridges, etc. by raising taxes by limiting itemized decuctions for charitable contributions for people making over $200,00, close loopholes for those poor oil and gas companies (who everyone knows are really suffering financially), require fund managers pay higher taxes on certain types of their income (Wall Street fund managers are also poor and suffering, Lord knows), and change the taxing on corporate jets.

So, lay your bets: Will Republicans vote to fix schools and bridges (thereby putting regular, non-rich people back to work so they can pay their rent, buy food and perhaps buy a widget or two thereby causing the widget factory owner to hire a few more widget-makers) or will they stand fast with millionaires, corporate jet owners and oil companies?

Your Sunday Poem, 9-11-11

2011-09-11T05:34:00.000-07:00

From Jane Hirshfield's "Given Sugar, Given Salt."

The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead

The dead do not want us dead:
such petty errors are left for the living.
Nor do they want our mourning.
No gift to them -- not rage, not weeping.
Return one of them, any one of them, to the earth,
and look: such foolish skipping,
such telling of bad jokes, such feasting!
Even a cucumber, even a single anise seed: feasting.

September 15, 2001

O.K., Rick, Let's Do That

2011-09-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

In the GOP debate last night, candidate Rick Perry said, "Maybe it's time to have some provocative language in this country and say things like, 'Let's get America working again and do whatever it takes to make it happen.'"

Whatever? O.K. President Obama will present a jobs package tonight, so let's see how many Republicans will vote for it. The jobs package will be a "whatever." Shall we place bets on the votes?

Want more "provocative language," here's something that all the GOPers who are babbling on about "job creation" need to remember: Jobs are created from the bottom up, not the top down: Demand, then supply.

A manufacturer of widgets doesn't wake up one day and say, "Oh, look, I just got a nice tax break, I think I'll go out and hire 10 people to make more widgets, even though nobody's buying my widgets because they have no jobs and no money to buy widgets and so I've got a warehouse full of widgets I can't sell, but with this nice tax break, what the hell, I think I'll just go make more of them that I can then store in another warehouse."

Or, as what has actually happened too many times, "Oh, look, nice tax breaks for moving my widget company off shore, so I'll lay off all my American workers, hire Indian workers and make bazillions of widgets to sell to the Chinese, then lobby Republicans in Congress to vote to get even more tax breaks on all my nice profit. After all, I'm a 'job creator!'"

So please think about that "provocative" reality the next time you hear some GOPer talking about "job creation" and "job creators," and "job creating tax breaks."

Thank you.

Bend Over, Grab Your Ankles and Fill 'er Up!

2011-09-06T06:19:00.000-07:00

The tar sands of Alberta, Canada, are filled with heavy, dirty oil that must be extracted, using all kinds of chemicals and energy to unlock it. It also has to be transported via pipeline, with the usual risks of pipeline breaks and spills, to shipping ports of the Pacific. And the shortest route lies across First Nation sovereign tribal lands, and the sovereign First Nationers are having none of it.

So, what to do, what to do? Well, the Canadian-owned oil pipeline called Keystone XL needed to find a third world country, one whose government can be bought off or is already in the pockets of Big Oil, a poor, broken country that would be powerless to stop a corporation (or another country) from running pipes across their sovereign lands to the ports in coastal Texas so the oil could be transhipped tor China and other foreign markets, with the astounding profits from that transshipment to remain in the pockets of Canada and various KeystoneXL operators.

And guess what country fits that bill? Yes. US.

Notes "Steve Kretzman of Oil Change International, an NGO that researches the links between oil, gas and coal companies and governments," and reported in truth-out.org (http://www.truth-out.org/us-awash-oil-and-lies-report-charges/1315072790 , " With four times as many oil rigs pumping domestic oil today than eight years ago and declining domestic demand, the United States is awash in oil. In fact, the U.S. exports more oil than it imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration -- and has done so for nearly two decades." . . . "Little of the 700,000 to 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil pumped through the 2,400-kilometre, seven-billion-dollar Keystone XL will end up in the U.S. gas tanks because the refineries on the Gulf Coast are all about expanding export markets." . . . "Because Keystone XL crosses national borders, President Barack Obama has to issue a permit declaring the pipeline serves the 'national interest' in order to be approved. "The only way Keystone XL could be considered in the national interest is if you equate that with profits for the oil industry, said Kretzman, who wrote the report."

And, of course, while a good portion of the U.S. digs out from more flooding that surely is one of the effects of global warming caused by the burning of -- you guessed it -- oil, a lot of Americans may well ask themselves the same questions other third-world countries have asked themselves: Why should we suffer from the effects and pay the full costs of pollution and environmental damage swhile some other country and/or private corporation reaps all the financial rewards?

Well, Bwa-hahahah.

Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Amerikistan. Welcome to the new American Reality, Baby. Bend over.

Anniversary

2011-09-02T05:26:00.000-07:00

Calhoun's Cannons for September 2, 2011

We do not see our hand in what happens, so we call certain events melancholy accidents.
Stanley Cavell

Like all of you, I remember that morning. I had been out at dawn running the dogs in the chaparral behind the Los Osos Junior High. It was a clear, beautiful morning, the air sharp with the tang of the sage and eucalyptus. When I loaded the dogs back into the car and turned the key, the radio came on and as I drove home I listened in puzzlement. A plane. The Twin Towers. What the hell? Oh, please, not another crazy guy with family and IRS problems and a Piper Cub. Then I got home and turned on the TV, along with the rest of the world, and saw. It wasn’t a Piper Cub. It wasn’t even a crazy guy.

And here we are, ten years gone and still the heart hurts. A photo or an old piece of film unspooling and my body winces. A glimpse of the two towers, the plane, the falling man. Like a glancing blow to the chest, the breath stops, the pain is sharp, then gone.

And as my memory pulls back from that moment of impact and expands out to cover the years afterwards, in place of sadness, more and more I can only feel a kind of sick exhaustion. Because the attack unhinged America and sent us into a ginned up war of revenge against the wrong country, the dead of 9/11 will never be free to be mourned alone. The body count’s too high now for any hope of clean sorrow.

But then, clean sorrow is very likely a folly. The thousands who died in the 9/11 attack were not the victims of a random act of nature. It was not an indifferent lightning strike or an earthquake that toppled the towers. They were the end-game of a long history of cause and effect. Osama bin Laden, rotting away under the sea, was a creation of western imperialism, oriental despotism and religious fanaticism, all acting on the other until they came home to roost on that fateful day.

We live in a constant web of reciprocity, the connected dots all around us, too often unseen. The world ripples with unintended consequences, patterns hidden until it’s too late to change their deadly stitches and hems. Abdul Wahab, an 18th century holy man arises out of the Egyptian desert and 300 years later, the Twin Towers fall. The planes that brought them down were arrows from his bow, Osama bin Laden merely the archer.

And the Twin Towers were no accident. World Trade Center, symbol of western capitalism, imperialism, decadent materialism, home of the money-grubbing infidels. Osama bin Laden knew the West like he had knitted a sleeve of it. He knew our shoot first Cowboy President, knew the jingo rage of a furious population blinded by revenge, led by too many people with shock and awe disaster capitalism agendas. He was betting our response would be one of overreaction that would lead us into self-destruction and financial ruin. And he was right.

Russia and America begat Afghanistan begat the mujahidin, begat Osama bin Laden, begat Al Qaeda begat 9/11 begat George Bush’s Iraq war, begat a bankrupt nation bleeding treasure and blood back into the wilds of Afghanistan.

Round and round it goes in one exhausting spiral, each turn creating one more call and response. The world vibrates and the body count grows and grows, from the still-dying soldiers in Helmand Province to the multitudinous victims of jihadi murderers in their bomb vests, to the New York first responders now starting to sicken and die from the deadly toxins they inhaled while searching the rubble for bodies in lower Manhattan. It never stops. Which is why a tenth anniversary celebration of remembrance seems premature. What we really have here is an ongoing funeral service interrupted by constantly arriving new coffins. With no end in sight.

Unless the end can be found in the various “Arab Springs” that have awakened so many people of the middle east from their nightmare lives that were hemmed in by cat’s paw dictators, thuggish thieves protected by outside nations and corporations eager for their cut of the plunder. And perhaps those Arab Springs will also awaken the people from the grip of ignorant tribalism and a corrupted Islam and allow them a chance to join the world as a free people.

If this comes about, then perhaps the circle of death and destruction that started on that terrible day will be complete and will bring about a rebirth in many countries, including our own. Perhaps then the coffins will stop coming, the dead will be left to bury the dead, and the ripple started that clear fall day in New York can come to rest. And we will finally be able to mourn cleanly without additions and footnotes. Perhaps then the pain in the heart will abate, and in its place will be the silence of remembrance.

Shanti. Shanti. Shanti.

Your Government At Work Part 1

2011-08-29T06:45:00.000-07:00

To date, only 22 people dead in a massive storm that raked the entire east coast. Even Republican governor Christie defended the pre-storm measures and dared his fellow anti-govnment types who will start whining about overkill to shut the f--- up; the "overkill" prevented deaths and Christie was firm that that's what government supposed to do -- protect life and limb beforehand, then stand ready to help dig out when terrible things happen.

After all, imagine what things would have been like if "heck of a job, Brownie" was still heading FEMA?

Your Government at Work Part 2

A drone strike killed Al Qaeda's second in command. Buh-bye Atiya Abdul Rahman.

Our County Governmnet At Work, Part 3

And then there's our own SLOVille. See "Warren Jensen, Please 'investigate' Your Own Clients, And Lemme Know If You Find Any Wrongdoing" at http://www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com/

Bwa-hahahah. Yup. Chinatown.

Daddy Neanderthal

2011-08-22T06:26:00.000-07:00

There's a fascinating article in the August 15th New Yorker, "Sleeping with the Enemy," by Elizabeth Kolbert, about recent DNA evidence that indicates that early humans mated with Neanderthals (before (likely) wiping them out). Even more interesting, there is also DNA strains from yet another hominid in some of our own DNA which means there were likely several strains of humanoids that we encountered and mated with (then wiped them out?) in existence on earth before the triumphant survival of modern man.

Svante Paabo is heading up the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Antropology in Leipzig and is doing the DNA research and as more bone fragments come under study, it's likely that there may turn out to be even more branches of the human tree that still remain in our mitochondrial DNA. Notes the story, "Neanderthals were very closely related to modern humans -- so closely that we shared ur prehistoric beds with them -- and yet clearly they were not humans. Somewhere among the genetic disparities must lie the mutation or, more probbly, mutations that define us. Paabo already has a team scanning the two genomes, drawing up lists of likely candidates.

"I want to now what changed in fully modern humans, compared with Neanderthals, that made a difference." he said. " What made it possible for us to build up these enormous societies and spread around the globe, and develop the technology that I think no one can doubt is unique to humans. There has to be a genetic basis for that, and it is hiding somewhere in these lists."

What makes Paabo's work so important is this: "Over the decades, many theories had been offered to explain what caused the demise of the Neanderthals, ranging from climate change to simple bad luck. In recent years, though, it's become increasingly clear that, as Paabo puts it to me, "their bad luck was us." Again and again, the archeologoical evidence in Europe indicates, once modern humans showed up in a region where Neanderthals were living, the Neanderthals in that region were actively pursued, or perhaps they were just outcompeted. The Neanderthals' "bad luck" is presumbly the same misfortune that the hobbits [small hominids-- Homo floreniensis -- discovered in 2004) and the Denisovans [another extinct branch of the humanoid tree] encountered, and similar to the tragedy suffered by the giant marsupials that once browsed Australia, and the varied megafauna that used to inhabit North America, and the moas that lived in New Zealand. At it is precisely the same bad luck that has brought so many species -- including every one of the great apes -- to the edge of oblivion today.

"To me, the mystery is not the extinction of the Neanderthals," Jean-Jacques Hublin, the director of the Institute for Evolutionary Antrhropology's department of human evolution, told me. "To me the mystery is what makes modern humans such a successful group that they have been replacing not just the Neanderthals but everything. We don't have much evidence tht the Neanderthals or other archaic umans ever led to an extinction of a species of mammal or anything else. For modern humans, there are hundreds of examples, and we do it very well."

Their bad luck was . . . us. If you think about the future of this globe, that's got to be one bone chilling sentence.

The author concludes with a visit to one of the prehistoric caves at Grotte des Combarelles to view the extraordinary cave paintings. "In very recent times, the floor of the Grotte des Combarelles has been dug out, so that a person can walk in it, and the tunel is dimly lit by electric lights. But when the etchings were originally created, some twelve or thirteen thousand years ago, the only way to gain access to the site would have been to crawl, and the only way to see in the absolute dark would have been to carry fire. As I crept along through the gloom, past engravings of wisent and aurochs and woolly rhinos, it occurred to me that I really had no clue what would drive someone to wriggle through a pitch-black tunnel to cover the walls with images that only another, similarly driven soul would see. Yet it also struck me that so much of what is distinctively human was here on display -- creativity, daring, "madness." And then there were the animals pictured on the walls -- the aurochs and mammoths and rhinos. These were the beasts that Paleolithic Europeans had hunted, and then, one by one, as with the Neanderthals, obliterated."

Your Sunday Poem

2011-08-21T06:33:00.000-07:00

In an odd season without a summer, here's Jane Hirshfield, from her book, "Given Sugar, Given Salt."

Speed and Perfection

How quickly the season of apricots is over --
a single night's wind is enough.
I kneel on the ground, lifting one, then the next.
Eating those I can, before the bruises appear.

And Why Am I Not Surprised?

2011-08-19T07:03:00.000-07:00

Recent Op/Ed in the New York Times cited the update of an original 2006 study of political attitudes by David Campbell and Robert Putman of Notre Dame University. The pair “returned to interview many of the same people again this summer. As a result, we ca look at what people told us, long before there was a Tea Party, to predict who would become a Tea Party supporter five ears later. We can also account for multiple influences simultaneously – isolating the impact of one factor while holding others constant.”

Among their findings: The Tea Party’s “origin story,” is fake. They were portrayed as “non partisan political neophytes,” when, in reality, they were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born,” and,write the authors, “. . . past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.”

Further discoveries: Tea Party members weren’t created as a reaction to the Great Recession. While many Americans suffered from financial problems, “they were no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party.” And a wish for smaller government and balanced budgets weren’t a predictor either.

Note the authos, “So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

“More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 – opposing abortion, f or example – and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek ‘deeply religious’ elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.”

Which makes the Tea Party’s professed reverence for the Founders (and the wearing of tricorn hats and the dragging around of muskets) while yakking about following the constitution hilarious. The founding fathers were clear on that: Separation of church and state and no religious tests for officeholders.

As for the racial dog whistle music, well, that comes as no surprise. That was present from day one. (As was the fake “grass roots” “origin story” which was, in reality, funded and fueled by huge infusions of cash from Dick Armey’s Republican PAC, among other conservative donors, Fox TV personalities, and “think tanks.” Nothing “grass-rootsy” about any of it.)

What may come as a surprise are the authors’ conclusions: “Given how much sway the Tea Party has among Republicans in Congress and those seeing the Republican presidential nomination, one might think the Tea Party is redefining mainstream American politics.

“But in fact, the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion; among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic. To embrace the Tea Party carries great political risk for Republicans . . .” because “On everything but the size of government, Tea Party supporters are increasingly out of step with most Americans, even many Republicans.”

And, irony, irony, the authors go on to point out that the there are parallels with “the anti-Vietnam War movement which rallied behind George S. McGovern in 1972. The McGovernite activists brought energy, but also stridency, to the Democratic Party – repelling moderate voters and damaging the Democratic brand for a generation. By embracing the Tea Party, Republicans risk repeating history.”

As someone who thinks the Republicans now running the Congress have proven themselves unfit to govern, the crash ‘n burn of a party that’s driven itself off the cliff can’t come soon enough.

I mean, Michelle Bachman? Rick “Yosemite Sam” Perry? Really?

Oh, Give It Up Already

Matt Fountain had an article in this week’s New Times on a proposed medical marijuana facility for Oceano. “On May 25, Grover Beach resident Tammy Murray applied with the county’s Department of Planning and Building to open a facility in unincorporated Oceano, she said, because despite several attempts by others, local qualified patients by and large remain without a place to get their medicine.

“According to Murray’s minor use permit application, the 5,500-square f-foot facility would be located in an industrial area on the 1400 block of South Fourth Street in northern Oceano, fitted with security cameras and staffed by a full-time guard.”

Oh, Dear. Poor Ms. Murray will now be subjected to the following:

1. Various public officials and politicians, including the Board of Supervisors, will chest pound about how they’re four-square in favor of “compassionate” use of “medical marijuana,” that nobody is more compassionate than they are, blah, blah, blah.

2. Various planning commissioners will scrunch their brows and earnestly pour over the submitted plans, niggling, snipping, adding, and forcing the applicant through all kinds of expensive hoops.

3. The sheriff will piously state that he will follow the law as written.

4. At public hearings, half the audience will stand up to tell horror stories about suffering people who can only get relief with medical marijuana while the other half will stand up to decry the evil weed and start screeching about SAVE THE CHILDREN!

5. When the matter finally comes before the Board of Supervisors, they will restate their profound compassion. Indeed they’ll vie with one another as to how much more compassionate they are than the other guy, then, with a huge sigh and crocodile tears flowing down the aisles, will, reluctantly vote the matter down.

6. IF by some miracle the dispensary does get voted into being, within a few months, the sheriff will head up a posse of federal agents who will raid the place, slap the owner into federal custody, drag him/her down to L.A. for trial, bankrupt him/her to pay for legal counsel, then he’ll/she’ll be found guilty under federal law and be slapped in prison for years.

Then everybody will go home, smugly satisfied that while, yes, yes, it’s unfortunate, that people suffering from cancer will have to suffer more, the community will be protected from the awful prospect that somebody somewhere might be getting high on “medical” marijuana.

The Creepy Factor

2011-08-16T06:39:00.000-07:00

So, Rick Perry declares he's running for President and the media pundits start visibly drooling and swooning and getting shivvers up their spines at all the manly manliness of the Dude, and salivating at now being able to push the election coverage into a simple-minded 24/7 empty of content sports metaphor with ratings and rankings and minute by minute plays to be called, and suddenly, watching him on the news, everything blurs and doubles and suddenly its all deja vuish again as Perry morphs into George Bush and I get cold chills and think, Aw, Gawd, we're gonna now bomb Iran because they may have weapons of mass destruction and then put the war on the national credit card since deficits don't matter if it's a Republican who's running them up, and give more tax breaks to rich people and oh, God, in no time there he'll be in a crotch-stuffed jump suit and Texas-sized boots, all hat and no cattle, clomping across the deck of an aircraft carrier only to fall to the deck to raise his arms to heaven and thank Jeeeesus for his Victory over the Heathen and, while he's kneeling, to also pray for rain for Texas, then go on to dismantle Medicare, Social Security, EPA regulations, education reforms so as to turn the U.S.A. into one big polluted states-rights successionist Texas filled with minimum wage jobs, a country being run by a handful of wealthy oligarchs overseeing the serfs.

Oh, Boy, America can't wait. Yeeee haw!

What To Do On A Nice Saturday

2011-08-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

First, go to http://www.sanluislighthouse.org/ then call (805) 540-5771 to reserve a tour. It's $20 per person. The Trolley Departs 12, 1 & 2 pm. on every Saturday from a parking area outside Avila Beach (Directions will come with your reservation confirmation) . Docent led tours are about 1 1/2 hours.

The lighouse was built in 1890, closed in 1974, was granted to the San Luis Harbor District in 1992, in 1995 Point San Luis Lighthouse Keepers formed to restore and manage the light station. The trolly tours started in 2010. Don't miss this one.

If you were at lightkeeper in 1890, or the lightkeeper's wife,

Here's what you'd see coming up the wagon road from Avila Beach

And here's what you'd see walking up to your front door.

And here's what you'd cook breakfast, lunch, dinner on. And heat dish water and bath water on. It ran on coal.

And here's where'd you wash up, with hot water from the stove.

And then you'd sit in the livingroom in front of the coal stove.

And here's what you'd see up in the tower while you were cleaning the Fresnel lamp.

And here's the beautiful Fresnel lamp and pendulum that turned the great lamp.

And here's part of the steam run machinery that ran the great foghorn that boomed out across the sea, keeping ships from harm on dark and stormy nights.

And if you were the lightkeeper's 10 year-old daughter, here's what you'd see as you left your home to catch the boat that met the train at the foot of Avila's pier that took you into San Luis Obispo for a big day out in the big city.

Grab the Plant Food

2011-08-13T06:17:00.000-07:00

Run, do not walk, run over to http://www.sorcererproductions.org/ ,or visit them on Facebook, then call the Clark Center box office at 489-9444 (Mon-Fri 12-6, Sat 12-4) and get tickets for the Sorcerer Production's peformance of "Little Shop of Horrors. It'll be playing there Aug 12 - 28 on Friday, Sat (two shows) and Sunday matinees.

Sorcerer Productions has a great line up for the upcoming season and if "Little Shop" is any indiction of what this outstanding ensemble can do, the audience is in for some wonderful theatre. Everything about this production is top notch. It was a fast, funny, fantastic evening of theatre. Do not miss it.

FEED ME!

OK. What In Hell Was THAT All In Aid Of?

2011-08-12T05:51:00.000-07:00

Stock market up. Stock market down. Stock market up. Down. Up. Down.

Not a single shoe did the Stock Market manufacture. Not a bridge, a road. It planted no crops, taught no child, ministered to no sick person. It didn't build a single house, repair a single car, machine a single die, pour so much as one ingot of steel.

It did absolutely nothing to rebuild America. It has now even become uncoupled from "real value," "real businesses," "real things," and is simply a big casino for a tiny handful of The International Monied Class. The disconnect is dangerous for America because "real" people have bought into the notion that somehow they are part of the International Monied Class, that the market will affect their real life, that in pandering to Wall Street, Congress (a wholly owned subsidiary of both Wall Street & Multi-national corporations --Which, as Mitt Romney reminded an outraged senior citizen in Iowa, "are people," as in "Corporations are people."), is somehow going to "help" the average working stiff. It won't.

So decoupled has Wall Street become from reality, that stocks that used to be valued and traded based on actual value, have now become disconnected algorithms -- meaningless bits of data moving at the speed of light, split second speculation based on . . . split second speculation, pure gambling and gaming of the system, totally divorced from the real Wealth of Nations, a con game that enriches a few at the expense of everyone else.

Matt Taibbi is right: America has now become Griftopia, a nation of grifters, addicted to the blinking Big Spin, frantically buying lottery tickets, penny-ante day traders, eyes glued to the streaming stock numbers, dreaming of the big payday that will never come because in Griftopia, the Street is being run by and for the benefit of a handful of major players. And as for the "real" people? They're the mooks and marks.

Yowsa, yowsa. Step right up.

Uh, Wanna Run That One By Me One More Time?

2011-08-11T06:57:00.000-07:00

If all six Republican apointees to the New! Improved! Super Mini-Me Congress have signed Grover Norquist's Blood Oath to never, ever raise taxes, and this super committee is supposed to be one of those "Let's Solve The Budget Deficit Problem Committee Wherein Everything's On The Table," how's that gonna work?

Shall we start taking bets now?

Aw, Shut Up Wisconsin and Eat Your Mouldy Cheese

2011-08-10T06:58:00.000-07:00

Bwa-hahahah. So Wisconsin voters voted in a whole bunch of slash 'n burn Republicans who (surprise!) slashed 'n burned, so everyone went Waaaa, Waaaaa, and the unions got all pissy because they, particularly, were targeted for destruction, and they said, Boooooo! Boooooo! and everyone stomped around and held huge, loud protests, then they organized a bunch of recalls to dump some of the Republican legislators who'd been slashing and burning them, and the election is now over and the voters only recalled two legislators (out of six) which means the state government remains firmly in the hands of the slash 'n burning Republicans, so everyone's back to square one, and now folks are talking about recalling Chief Slasher, Governer Walker.

Are you kidding me???? Oh, Wisconsin, give it up. You don't seem to understand. We live in Battered Wife Nation. Smack us around, cut us to the bone, create policies that begger us and kick us to the curb and we'll re-elect you again and again or we'll elect even worse batterers -- ones with knives, not just fists. We're addicted to the abuse because, like battered wives, we've been brainwashed into thinking that we're not worth anything. Sell our jobs down the river and move the profit upline to a small handful of wealthy? Fine by us. We don't deserve a living wage. Leave us and our underwater homes underwater while spending our tax dollars to bail out the rich Wall Streeters? That's o.k., too. We don't deserve a bail out. Matter of fact, we don't deserve anything at all since we're expendable, unnecessary baggage dumped by the road to insure that only a very few will win the all American race to the top .

So, instead of your "On Wisconsin" fight song, it's time for all you cheesers to shut up and just eat the few scraps of Cheddar that's trickling down to you. It's all you deserve and everybody knows you're not going to do anything about it. I mean, look at your recall results. Meh.

And Now, The Question

2011-08-09T06:54:00.000-07:00

Ah, the stock market is dropping like a stone. Guess who makes money when the stock market drops like a stone? Guess who makes money buying up tons of blue-chip stocks cheap when the market drops like a stone, then waits for the market to return and thereby makes pots more money?

Working people? Poor people? Middle class people who are out of work and underwater on their mortgages, their 401K's shreds? Why, Nooooo. Not them. They lose their jobs as multi-national companies dump them and move those salary-savings (and the jobs) offshore. Speculators? Really, really rich speculators? Like Wall Streeters?

Ah, yes. Lots of quick money to be made when economies crash. Lots of money to be made by, uh, helping economies to crash, too. So, let's all give a big shout-out to the Tea Party who were instrumental in getting this Wall Street party started in the first place. Yippee! Yo, Michelle Bachman, you were right. Claiming defaults and downgrades would be harmful to our economy were all a big Democratic lie. Rich people, who are the only ones that count, are gonna get richer and if regular people get hurt? Talk to the hand.

In America, "regular" people don't matter any more. They're not the demographic American business is looking for. Brazilians are. Brazilians, for example, are in an expanding economy, having lots of babies, setting up households. Lots of money to be made by American companies who move their operations (and jobs) offshore to focus on their new customers and grow their new business. And those new customers aren't Americans. Who are broke and so not buying what American companies produce any more. So the hell with them.

Unless, of course, Americans can be turned into non-union, cheap-wage sweatshop workers hired by multi-national American companies to produce products for, say, Brazilians. Hey, maybe the tag "Made in America" will once again mean something. O.K., maybe that wouldn't quite mean what it used to mean, but heck. In a third-world country like America, a sweat shop job is better than nothing.

Meantime, happy days are here for the big cash-boys. Mo' money, mo' money. Let the good times roll and God bless the child. . .

While Rome Fiddles

2011-08-08T05:51:00.000-07:00

If you think the stakes aren’t high, please go to the Youtube link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGeXdv-uPaw&feature=share

It’s your home and its in trouble.

Your Sunday Poem

2011-08-07T04:08:00.000-07:00

This by Jane Hirschfield from her book, "Given Sugar, Given Salt."

August Day

You work with what you are given --
today I am blessed, today I am given luck.

It takes the shape of a dozen ripening fruit trees,
a curtain of pole beans, a thicket of berries.
It takes the shape of a dozen empty hours.

In them is neither love nor love's muster of losses,
in them is no chance for harm or for good.
Does even my humanness matter?
A bear would be equally happy, this August Day,
fat on the simple sweetness plucked between thorns.

There are some who may think, "How pitiful, how lonely."
Others must murmur, "How lazy."

I agree with them all: pitiful, lonely, lazy.
Lost to the earth and to heaven,
thoroughly drunk on its whiskeys, I wander my kingdom.

Millionaire America. Happy at last!

2011-08-05T04:23:00.000-07:00

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for August 5, 2011

Whew! That was a close one. A band of crazed Democratic socialists in Congress were threatening to reduce the country’s massive debt by both making cuts in various government programs, including Medicare and Social Security, and – horrors! –by balancing those cuts with higher taxes on the rich and super rich, until the newly elected Tea Partiers saved the day, took the country hostage and threatened to take our economy over the cliff unless Congress promised that there would be No Taxes, not even on the ultra rich.

Not wishing to see the US economy ruined, which could have triggered a world-wide crash, the weenie Dems caved. Now, you’d think that such a meek capitulation would make the average working American furious, knowing that they alone would be the ones bearing all the pain of cuts to their safety net, but, no. They were jubilant because Americans, no matter what their station in life, truly believe that they are the millionaires and billionaires that the proposed tax hikes would have affected.

Which is why they elect and re-elect representatives who are rabid Norquistian No Taxers, staunch ideologues who believe in the theory that millionaires and billionaires (like the voters) are “job creators,” and that taxes are “job killers,” even though there is little historical evidence to support either claim.

And, believing themselves to be millionaires, the American voters also don’t need or want any social safety nets either, and vote accordingly. They’re apparently convinced that they’ll never lose their jobs (don’t need any of that socialistic unemployment insurance; that’s just another government give-away). They also believe that they’ll never lose their job-related health insurance or that their health will never fail (don’t need or want any kind of national health-care reform, and certainly not some awful socialized medicine like Medicare.) Being rich, they don’t’ need it. The private market will take care of their few needs. And if it doesn’t, well, that’s no problem. They have millions. They’ll just pay the doctor and hospital out of pocket.

And as for getting old and needing some kind of “social security?” Not needed. They’re rich and will pay their own way.

And so, in the middle of a near depression, they elected lots of new cut ‘n slash Tea Partiers and re-elected their staunch oath-signing No Tax Norquistian incumbents and sent them to Congress to slash the budget and cut government programs to the bone, and/or to try to kill them altogether. And keep taxes low or zero on millionaires and billionaires (and corporations who’ve skated out of paying taxes altogether) so all those non-tax-paying “job creators” can create jobs. And if you look around you, you’ll see how well it’s worked. The corporations that were awash with hoarded money, paying out obscene bonuses to their CEO’s, and/or getting tax breaks for moving jobs off shore, have, with this latest budget deal, started hiring again. Factories are humming. Every day I can hardly lift up the newspaper, so heavy is it with “help wanted” listings from all these “job creators.” Companies are desperately opening up hiring halls in towns across America just begging people to come work. And Millionaire America is once again filling the malls and shopping centers, buying everything in sight. I can only imagine the kind of sugar plum dream retailers will have this Christmas.

All of which is great news since the recently promised cuts-only to the federal budget will mean that hundreds of thousands of federal employees are about to lose their jobs and be added to the unemployment rolls. And those federal cuts will also trickle down to add to budget woes in the states, with state employees getting even more pink-slips as well. But, not to worry. Federal, state and city workers are all millionaires, too. And all those private sector, un-taxed, cash-hoarding job-creators are ready for them! Step right up. Here’s a job application blank. Name your salary! Happy days are here again.

Talk about a win-win for Millionaire America where every man thinks he’s King Croesus and votes accordingly. And if that wasn’t enough good news, Congress, always messy and often dysfunctional at best, has now decided to make itself irrelevant. It will create a tiny new Super Congress – the Gang of 12 – that will decide what to do about the budget. Talk about Grover Norquist’s wet-dream; make government small enough to drown in a bathtub. Grover’s never been able to drown the real Congress before – it was too big. He couldn’t fit them all into his house, let alone into his bathtub. But twelve unelected people?

Ah, piece of cake.

Dana Adobe /Dave Stamey Concert

2011-07-31T06:14:00.000-07:00

Restoring and re-plastering the old adobe

What Captain Dana would have seen while standing in his living room.

What Captain Dana would have seen from his back (front?) porch.

What Captain Dana would have seen standing in his back (front?) yard looking back towards the house.

What Captain Dana would have driven to town in.

The ghost in the air above the pepper tree is that of the Old Vaquero who once rode for Captain Dana. And in the foreground, new adobe bricks for the ongoing restoration.

Stamey fans at the fund-raising concert.

Dave Stamey

If you're not familiar with Dave's music, go to You Tube and watch a few of his videos: "The Old Vaquero," "Wheels," and "Come Ride With Me." Lovely. And next year, if Dave's performing at the annual fund raiser for the adobe, come on out and see how much has been done to save this amazing bit of Old California.

Archibald McDog, Almost Happy At Last

2011-07-30T06:05:00.000-07:00

The stitches on Archie's latest surgery aren't quite ready to come out, but Archie's graduated from the large clear plastic Cone of Shame to the black, soft, smaller Cone of Shame, which is a bit easier to navigate with.

So outside he went for some flower sniffing and an invitation to some boom 'n zoom from Zuri.

A few more days and he'll be out of the cone and back to his old tricks.
Hooray for Archie.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch . . . A Much Awaited Press Release . . .

July 29, 2011
Santa Barbara, California
‐ Please Contact Marshall Ochylski at 441--4466 for Additional Information

After a day-long hearing, Federal Bankruptcy Court Judge Robein Riblet approved the Los Osos Community Services District Bankruptcy Plan.

In order to get the Plan approved the District was required to present the court with a Plan that demonstrated that it had made its "best efforts" to maximize the return to its creditors. The Court ruled that the District had achieved that goal and approved the Plan.

In his testimony to the Court, Marshall Ochylski, President of the Los Osos Community Services District’s Board of Directors, explained the District’s efforts to come up with a Plan to meet that legal test. Marshall explained that the District took its obligations very seriously and had done everything within its powers to maximize the return to its creditors.

The Plan approved by the court resolves all the lawsuits and claims arising from the District's former wastewater project, and puts an end to over six years of District involvement in numerous legal proceedings. As President Ochylski stated, "The resolution of these lawsuits and claims gives the District a fresh start and allows it to focus on providing essential services to its residents such as water, fire protection and drainage."

Under the Plan, the District will pay in full over time the holders of the bonds issued in connection with the former wastewater project as well as loans the District has taken out to pay for improvements to the District's water system and other District property. The District will also pay the contractors and other creditors with approved claims arising from the former wastewater project between 35% and 40% of their claims. The District will not have to pay anything to the Regional Water Quality Control Board for fines it assessed against the District or to claims by the State Water Resources Control Board for loans it made to the District to build the former wastewater project.

President Ochylski, who has acted as the representative of the District in the bankruptcy proceedings since his election to the Board in 2008, expressed his appreciation to all those who had worked with the District to bring this bankruptcy to a successful conclusion. "Through hard work and persistence, the District was able to get its Plan approved and continue to moving forward to provide the services its residents deserve without the distraction of the bankruptcy."

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