PASTOR RON PENROSE has died in Willits. Old timers will remember Ron and his family from the 1970s when Ron pastored the Assembly of God Church here in Boonville. At that time, Ron also worked as a road man for the County. One winter, during a big rain, he was swept clear through a long culvert, miraculously emerging at the other end without injury, an adventure that did not diminish his faith. Some of you younger old timers will recall that Ron was a fine fast pitch softball pitcher and a good all-round athlete. For several years, Pastor Ron was the Boonville team's ace hurler in the Cloverdale Fast Pitch League. He was a nice man and a good man. Our condolences to the Penrose family.
A BENEFIT MEXICAN DINNER will be held this Saturday 2:00PM at the Philo Grange featuring all kinds of Mexican food. The event is to raise medical funds for Ms. Marci Ochoa who is suffering from lung cancer.
IF YOU NEED a nanny or elder help please consider Irene Bergman's "Nanny Can." Ms. Bergman is the goods, and she lives right here in The Valley, providing nanny service for infant and child and professional, assisted-living help for seniors. Ms. B can be reached at 707-295-2851 or ridrof1@yahoo.com.
ANOTHER UNSOLICITED PLUG: The custom-made picture frames by the ingenious Tim Kline of Ukiah. Things of beauty, they are.
I-80 TO TRUCKEE: To put this in perspective, Blue Canyon averages 252 inches of snow per year, Truckee averages 204 inches per year, and both have zilch right now. The weather station at Blue Canyon (5,240-foot elevation at the small airport) is used as a reporting point for meteorologists across America; it has bare dirt around it right now. Drought? Hardly. The station has already recorded an amazing 46.67 inches of rain this winter. If all that rain were snow, it could be 20, 30 feet high. As you head into the Sierra, there is no snow at all when you cruise up the Whitemore Grade above Blue Canyon (5,022 feet), a sparse layer of snow at Kingvale and Soda Springs (6,128 feet), zilch with a few speckles on the terrain above Donner Lake (6,394 feet), and virtually nothing at Truckee (5,951 feet). — Tom Stienstra
AV FIRE CHIEF ANDRES AVILA told the CSD board last week that at least some of the surplus (aka “reserves”) the department has accrued lately is needed to replace the Chief’s Command/Response vehicle and to outfit up to six new recruits who have recently signed up to undergo firefighter training. Retired CalFire mechanic Steve Weir told Avila last week that the current command vehicle has a bad oil cooler which will need expensive repairs soon. This on top of other breakdowns lately (the transmission continues to be unreliable) means that to keep the vehicle reliably on the road upwards of $10k would have to be spent on this aging vehicle with more repairs looming. Last Wednesday, the Chief got approval from the Community Services District Board to pursue a new or late model replacement in the $40k to $80k range. Three of the new recruits are being screened and one is already scheduled for Fire Academy training. Several new sets of gear will be required for the newbies.
CHIEF AVILA is also preparing to conduct a training burn in early April at an old building about a mile south of Boonville. The structure is owned by Bill Chambers who is “donating” the structure for fire department training. Neighbor notifications are forthcoming.
MARVIN SCHENCK, Curator at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, will be retiring in mid-February after almost 15 years in that position. A talented painter, Mr. S will now concentrate his time at his studio in Philo to continue creating paintings and prints depicting Anderson Valley and the greater Mendocino region. (Having seen some of the man's work, the AVA thinks it's very fine indeed. And we also think that under Marvin's leadership, the Grace Hudson, always interesting, has become a must-see for locals and visitors alike.) There will be a farewell party for Marvin Schenck at the Museum on Friday, February 13th, 4:30 - 6:30. All are invited.
THE AV SOLAR GRANGE is once again gearing up for the spectacular 24th annual Variety Show, coming up March 6th and 7th. Seeking: Mad thespians, surreal magicians, contortionists and bendy folks, mind readers, competitive whistlers, cat jugglers, horse whisperers, slam poets, hula hoopers, and demonstrations of skill in matters practical or frivolous. Call Rainbow: 895-3807 or Bill: 895-2318 and show us what you got!
THE ANDERSON VALLEY Health Center Board met today (Wednesday, Jan 28th) at the Boonville Fire House meeting room. New directors were appointed, financials, were discussed, a committee was appointed to launch the search for a new executive director.
ALL OF THE ABOVE remain a mystery. We are most concerned about "financials," and we live in hope the quest for a new boss is undertaken without the fatuous "national search for excellence" unique to Mendocino County's public agencies, a search that inevitably begins and ends with someone on the existing staff for whom the job has been pre-wired.
WITHOUT NAMING THEM, I can think of a dozen people right here in the talent-rich Anderson Valley who could do the job and do it well. I think it's unfair to insert a stranger into a local power job because, well, this community can be like walking into the old Boonville Lodge — by the time you get a close look at your drinking partners you're already in hand-to-hand combat trying to get out the door.
THE LOCAL SEARCH committee for an excellency to run the Health Center consists of: Mark Apfel, M.D., Eric Arbanovella, George Gaines, Maureen Hochberg, R.N., George Lee, M.D., Teresa Malfavon, Susan Smith, M.D., Bill Sterling.
THE ABOVE NAMED are certainly capable citizens, and let's hope they choose well. Here at your beloved community newspaper we think we're pretty good at decoding financial statements, and we mos def want to see the Health Center's numbers and always are all for complete transparency of the public's business.
I WENT to the clinic some weeks ago where Doc McGhan fixed me right up. But I walked in and I walked out with nary a word from the front desk about payment, and I have yet to receive a bill. Ditto for my colleague, The Major, who was recently seen for a cracked rib. I was in a kind of flu fugue as I breezed in and out, it only occurring to me later that nobody had asked for my Geezer Card or cash. I want to pay, as does The Major because we, like everyone else around here, want the clinic to survive, and we hope our experiences were atypical. To keep the thing afloat, the "financials," especially from people who can afford to pay, people like us, must be collected.
ON THE GENERAL SUBJECT of not only the Anderson Valley Health Center but public bodies everywhere in the land, the token appointments of a politically correct check list of un- or under-represented groups of persons is hypocritical and patronizing. Appointing high school kids to community oversight boards is especially annoying. To us anyway. Like, a sixteen-year-old gives one hoot or is in any way prepared to decode mounds of federal regs, never mind a public budget? The mentality that thinks a high school kid on the Health Center Board serves any practical purpose whatsoever is still in elementary school themselves, early elementary school. Down with youth fetish-ism! Down with false consciousness!
THE GREAT LOCAL UNSPOKEN is how much to slide the slide payment scale for local immigrants and the miscellaneous gringo paupers who stagger through the clinic's doors. And local boards are always on red alert for a token Hispanic, preferably female, preferably predisposed to flab glab lib lab-ism, to decorate this or that non-profit. The wineries should be picking up the whole tab for their labor, and we should have single payer in this doomed country, but neither will happen any time soon. But the libs who advocate this purely show biz tokenism — typically the same people who think Obama's doing a great job and ObamaCare is a major healthcare step forward — ought to get serious about keeping the Anderson Valley Health Center solvent, not keeping up appearances.
GRAFTING REMINDER. Mendocino Permaculture 32nd Annual Winter Abundance Fair will be held on Saturday, January 31, from 9 am to 4 pm, rain or shine, at the Fairgrounds in Boonville. Free admission and classes on fruit tree & vine propagation, variety selection, and seed saving for all kinds of plants. Free scions and seeds--over 500 varieties. Please bring seeds, labeled scions, cuttings, and plants to share. Tree rootstocks, lunch and beverages will be sold. More info at 463-8672, 895-3897, or at www.mendocinolocalfood.org.
FIRE CHIEF ANDRES AVILA WRITES:
Regarding: Anderson Valley ISO review results
The Anderson Valley Fire Department has recently been reviewed and upgraded by ISO (Insurance Services Office) for capabilities to suppress structure fires in our fire district. Many property owners in the west end of the Valley have been rated at the lowest rating of an ISO 10 for years due to limited apparatus, stations, and because of increasing standards implemented by ISO. We are very pleased to announce that ISO has now improved this rating to a 5Y (formerly known as an 8B).
The new rating of 5Y will improve cost savings in insurance policies for all properties insured within 5 road miles of any of our Anderson Valley Fire Stations (except Signal Ridge). The newly recognized stations are: New Philo Station across from Jack’s Valley store, Guntley Station behind Handley Cellars, Old Navarro Station across from Navarro Store, and the Rancho Navarro Station at the club house. These fire stations where strategically built in areas of the Valley to better our response times but to also increase this rating for residences up and down the 128 corridor.
Visit our website at andersonvalleyfire.org to find details on our apparatus and fire station locations. Many insurance companies will request this information which can be found on the website.
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