LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR Laura Essayah writes: “So, it’s settled. I will be leaving for Morocco to continue my project overseas in Africa on December 14th and returning December 28th If you have any school supplies (notebooks, pens, pencils, erasers, paper, etc.) to donate to this school in El Jadida, Morocco, please contact me by December 10th. 895-3693 or 684-9464. Thank you so much.”
CINDY WILDER notes: “Put Saturday, October 31 on your calendar for our final Farmers Market, followed by our end-of-market pizza bake/potluck in the Hotel Courtyard.”
LAST WEEK'S Community Services District Budget Committee meeting briefly wondered, albeit tangentially, whether the 2010 census in Anderson Valley would come anywhere near toting up our true number of residents. Most locals who looked at the 2000 census thought it was well short of the real number, perhaps as much as half of the Valley's population went uncounted. Problems included Mexican nationals who don't want any contact with the Federales, *whoever* they say they are; census forms mailed to only to street addresses, not the mailboxes where many of us receive our mail; miscellaneous refuse-niks and gubmint haters of whom there are a large number; too many locked gates behind locked gates for census takers to waste time trying to find houses/keys, not to mention risk of life and limb, while looking for residents; plus the usual problems of students and other part-timers being uncounted or miscounted at the wrong address or location.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS thought maybe if the local schools and other interested groups made some effort to contact people about the census the count might be a little more accurate. But nobody knew where to go with this suggestion or who to contact.
IT TURNS OUT the County's Health and Human Services Agency, that well known bastion of efficiency, has already begun forming “Complete Count Committees.” The Census Bureau seems to think community organizations can be helpful in getting a complete count. Unfortunately, there's no clear definition of “community” in any of the literature. Doubly unfortunate is the sad fact that there is no such thing as community anymore. There are, instead, numerous affinity groups who happen to be strung out, often literally, along 128 from Yorkville to Navarro. According to HHS, “If you or your organization would like to be a part of a CCC, or if you have ideas on how to count specific communities within our county, please contact Kathleen Stone at 463-7968.” So there's a place to start. Counters, start your engines.
FLIES. The first rains bring literal millions of the things. They're everywhere. My theory is that the grape farmers have used so many chemicals around here they've killed all our frogs, the natural enemies of flies. Remember the thousands of little frogs the first rains brought? Gone. I miss Steve McKay, too. Remember Steve? Very smart guy. Taught ag and chemistry and physics and the higher math at the high school twenty years ago. I could call Steve up about chemicals and frogs and plant life and he'd have the answer. Now you call an expert and they tell you to buzz off. “You can't grow grapes without sulfur, you fool, so what if a few frogs go, too?”
LOCALS are still talking about last week's dinner at the Boonville Hotel featuring Valley-produced food and drink. Mary Pat Palmer's absinthe seemed to be the single biggest hit of the event. “Amazing stuff,” enthused several diners.
QUICK as Caltrans is at erasing graffiti, Big Orange is having a tough time keeping the new bridge abutments 3.34 miles up the Ukiah Road free of the stuff. Cretinous scrawls all over up there this week.
YADIRA MENDOZA-SANCHEZ has been appointed to the Anderson Valley School Board to fill the 4-year term vacated by trustee Michael Addison. Mrs. Mendoza-Sanchez, mother of two, and a graduate of Anderson Valley High School, was voted on to the board 3-2 over Ben Anderson, also a graduate of Anderson Valley High School. Trustees Addison, Bradford and Browning voted for Mendoza-Sanchez; trustees Erica Lemons and Grace Espinoza voted for Anderson.
BARBARA GOODELL reminds us that “Permaculture's 28th annual Chestnut Gathering and George Zeni Memorial Potluck will be held at the historic Zeni Ranch, Saturday, November 7th, 10:30am to 3:30pm rain or shine.” The Zeni Ranch is way to heck out Fish Rock Road, and well worth the trip if for nothing more than the natural beauty of the route, but doubly worth the journey for this unfailingly merry event.
ANOTHER intriguing event is the “Driving and Farming with Horses Workshop at Live Power Farm, Covelo, but darned if I can find the flier with the date and time specifics. Ask your neighborhood farmer. He or she will know.
POSITIVELY BIZARRE that someone or someones on the high school faculty could possibly object to the wholly innocent spectacle of the boy's soccer team changing into their soccer uniforms on the sidelines. The kids simply pull their uni-shorts over their boxers, and even the most dedicated voyeur (or perv) would look in vain for so much as a thrilling flash of bare buttock. But down comes the edict that the boys must hereafter dress out of public view.
NICE LITTLE PUFFEROO in Sunday's Chron on Meyer Family Cellars, the Yorkville winery, complete with a color photo of winemaker Matt Meyer and the always photogenic Jo Ann Aronson behind the bar. Jo Ann previously functioned as Yorkville Postmistress.
EVER TRIED a jujube? Known among Asians as Chinese dates, Lucille Estes of Boonville has the only jujube-producing trees I know of around here, and a trip to Lucille's gardens are always both a learning experience and a taste treat. I'm still eating the bag full my wife harvested at Lucille's last week. Ms. Estes is among The Valley's elite gardeners, if not the single most elite in all-round knowledge of how to grow things.
THE VALLEY'S single most stunning visual is about to present itself at the Indian Creek Bridge, Philo, as the poplars turn yellow against the ancient greens of old growth redwood.
COVELO seems to be pulling football fast ones. They told us they didn't have a football team to play us here in Boonville for our homecoming game. OK, we said, we'll play Point Arena the following week so we won't go for two weeks without some competition. Point Arena said fine, see you in Boonville. Then Point Arena says, Sorry, Boonville. Covelo is coming to play us. They say they have a team and the game is on the schedule so we gotta play them. Covelo also failed to produce a team the Saturday they were to play powerhouse Tomales. We're no powerhouse but we're pretty good, so que pasa, Covelo?
OVERLOOKED in all the recent remembrances of the '89 quake – it sounded like a sonic boom in Boonville – is the grim fact that the late Marc Reisner reminds us of in his earthquake book: if large quakes occur at the rate and intensity of the quakes that rocked California in the 18th and 19th centuries, San Francisco could become uninhabitable.
THEY'VE POURED the concrete for a casino on the Point Arena rez at the junction of Mamie Laiwa and Windy Hollow roads, easily the prettiest setting for a casino in all of Mendocino County.
YOU'LL BE HEARING lots more about her before the 2010 elections, but Wendy Roberts of Mendocino will run for 5th District supervisor. Mrs. Roberts, who runs a Mendo B&B with her husband, is a Stanford grad, as is candidate Dan Hamburg of Ukiah. Both are running against incumbent supervisor, David Colfax.
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