Valley People

THE GOOD NEWS! New hires at the Anderson Valley Unified School District include: Noor Dawood, who will function as a teacher's aide at the Adult School. Logo Teveseu is now an instructional assistant at the Elementary School, as is Madelin Gasaway. Lucia Soto will help out an hour a day at the Elementary School as a bilingual specialist while John Toohey is serving as a tutor in the school's after school program. Nicole Mclain and Elizabeth Echeverria have been named After School Program Grant managers.

ONCE A PARENT always a parent, but when your kids are small you want them around smart, healthy people, which is why I think AV parents should be absolutely delighted that Logo, Madelin and John are working with their little ones.

SPEAKING of the schools, and it's hard to avoid the subject after recent events, I saw a gun guy on the television news saying that he thinks elementary teachers and especially principals should be armed. I don't know about you, but I have a hard time imagining Donna Pierson-Pugh with an AK-47 strapped to her back.

NO FURTHER INFO on a Tuesday 8am accident near the entrance to KZYX described to us as "Some guy got hit with a backhoe." Ouch.

THE HOLIDAY SCHEDULE for Laughing Dog Books:

December 19 thru 24, open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

December 26 thru 29, open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Closed December 30-31, January 1-2.

Open January 3 and beyond regular winter hours:

10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Tuesdays.

CHARLIE TO THE RESCUE! We wouldn't have known about Boonville resident's Charlie Paget-Seekins latest expedition to the front lines of a major disaster if we hadn't received a press release from the sponsoring agency. A modest young man who brings a variety of practical skills to people who need them, Charlie, on the news of Hurricane Sandy, soon left the placid confines of the Anderson Valley for the East Coast where he joined the "daunting task of mold remediation."

MOLD REMEDIATION may not sound crucial, but to the thousands of people already forced from their homes by flooding who will remain homeless if their homes aren't made habitable by the time the weather warms up, they will be permanently homeless. "Charlie’s experience working down south after Katrina makes him a great guy to have on board,” Respond & Rebuild's statement on their efforts said, defining their mission this way: "[We have]identified inexpensive and effective methods that help displaced families get home faster and safer at no cost to struggling homeowners." R&R gets the mold out, a difficult, grubby task for people unafraid of difficult, grubby work. The guy deserves our blessings for doing it. Charlie, not so incidentally, has also worked on Haitian relief projects.

THIS WEEK, due to the press of business, some of it downright simian, we're including items normally found in the wilds of Off The Record. The Valley People col is usually off limits to the house specialty which, as you know by now, is pure negativity, and the paragraphs we've included here this week are certainly borderline, such as Man Beater of the Week, which appears here for technical reason but also to draw your attention to a phenomena pretty much unknown in busier police jurisdictions, that phenonema being young women being arrested for slapping their Sig Other. Used to be, and go ahead and call me Old School, that male-like persons did not call the cops simply because they got slapped. Or even slugged by another male-type person. What happened, happened without the involvement of law enforcement. But suddenly there's this epidemic of tiny women being arrested for "battering" their husbands and boy friends. Que the heck pasa?

This week's Man Beater, the dejected Ms. Elizabeth Stroud, of Caspar, is typical. Five feet tall and 107 pounds, bail set in the unserious amount of $10,000. What kind self-respecting male-type person would call the cops on this girl? If she rushed at him with a machete or an ax he's got a beef, but a single 107-pound punch? It isn't right.

COUNTY LEADERSHIP has some big, bold plans for 2013. Take this hard-hitting announcement from County CEO Carmel Angelo from her December 18, CEO report: “2013 Organizational Initiatives: The Executive Office will present a number of initiatives in 2013 focusing on county communication; visioning sessions focusing on County fiscal measures and revenue forecasting; leadership training, succession planning and talent development such as building high performance teams. A key issue will be consolidation of programs and services throughout the organization.” Ms. Angelo explains what she means: “2013 Visioning Session: An Executive Office initiative in the new year will include a Board visioning session(s) to discuss County revenues, budget development strategies, and fiscal policies moving forward. Additional information will be shared at the Board’s year-end workshop.”

THIS MAY at least partially explain why the Santa Rosa Press Democrat’s classified section has almost daily ads announcing new openings in the CEO’s and the Clerk of the Board’s office. (Ongoing dissatisfaction and turnover in County HQ has plagued the office for the last two years.)

THE ANDERSON VALLEY FILM CLUB announces the start of its “Pop-up Cinema” series with the showing of “Under African Skies,” at Lauren’s Café, Saturday, January 5, 2013, at 8:30 p.m.  Admission is free but donations will be accepted to help defray costs. This will be the first of six film evenings organized by the group over the next three months.  A schedule of upcoming films will be released soon. “Under African Skies” documents the return of Paul Simon to South Africa in 2011 for a 25th anniversary concert of the recording of his Graceland album in that country.  The film reunites Simon with some of the artists who recorded the album with him in 1986 and rekindles a discussion of the controversy that surrounded Simon’s trip to South Africa when it was being boycotted by anti-Apartheid groups. The films contains video footage of Graceland’s recording sessions, interviews with artists who appeared on the album, as well as footage of the 25th anniversary concert.  Join us, beckons Eric Labowitz, for this winter series of exceptional films.

THE ANDERSON VALLEY FOOD BANK "would like to remind the community of our holiday distribution of toys and foodstuffs. We are currently serving about 70 families in the valley, with seniors comprising about 5% of our recipients. Sara McCarter and Judy Long of the Volunteer Fire department have put out collection baskets around the valley to receive donations of new (unwrapped) toys for the 162 children who are part of the Food Bank families.  Cash donations are also very much appreciated and help pay for additional turkeys at holiday time, and for supplemental produce and dairy products throughout the year.  The Food Bank is an all-volunteer organization, so 100% of all donations go directly to provide nutrition for Anderson Valley families. Cash donations should be sent to: Directors, AV Food Bank, P.O.Box 692,  Boonville, 95415. For inquiries call Jill Myers at 707 684 0719, or Denisse Mattei at 895-3763.  The clients and the volunteers are very grateful for all our generous community does for the Food Bank."

THIS PAST SUNDAY, December 18th, at about 6am, Godolfredo Cruz, 22, of Boonville was arrested about 8 miles up the Ukiah Road. He'd cracked up the vehicle he was driving drunk and had been hauled off to jail by the time Boonville's emergency services angels arrived to care for Mr. Cruz's 17-year-old girl friend who had suffered minor injuries. Just down the road on the Boonville side of the hill, a pick-up truck appeared to be pulled off the road and back in a bit in that little glen in the twist of the road before the top gate to the Miner-Anderson Ranch. Passersby thought the occupant or occupants of the truck had deliberately pulled in there. They saw what appeared to be curtains pulled over the truck's windows. But the curtains turned out to be inflated air bags and, as of press time, nobody knows who was in the truck or what the heck happened, other than the truck had flown off the road and over the berm separating the road from the forest, landing right side up after an air-borne journey that much have been very exciting for whomever had enjoyed it.

THIS SATURDAY, Floodgate Farm (Bill Taylor) and Chase the Monkey (Jaye Alison Moscariello) will be at the Boonville Farmers Market, Rain or Shine, that's Saturday, December 22nd from 10am-12:30pm.