Valley People (June 7, 2017)

JUDY WAGGONER-ISBELL'S MEMORIAL GATHERING

Lisa Kuny writes:

On May 26th my beautiful, caring, funny, crazy, giving, mother passed away. She left us here to be with her son Bobby Dean, her mother Catherine, father Ern, and so many other people we have loved and lost. She was not just a mom. She was a wonderful friend to so many. The best wackiest Gramma to her grandkids that were her life. She was a caring sister / mom to her many brothers. She was an aunt and great aunt helping raise her great nieces. Who me she loved very much. Kids were her life. She never passed judgement on anyone. Even those that did her wrong.

June 24th please join our family in CELEBRATING her life like she would want! A gathering of family and friends. Please come prepared to smile and chat and laugh. If you have pictures of Judy please bring them to share for the day.

Mom requested only a couple things on her day.

No black!!! She hated black! Its a sad color!

If you didn't bring her flowers when she was alive... Save your money and don't bring them now (in lieu of flowers I am setting up a fund for the Anderson Valley FFA program in her name. She was very proud of the things her grandkids accomplished in this program).

Happiness !!!!

Celebrate with wonderful food and drink!

So that being said. ...

June 24th 3 pm at the Grove/Amphitheatre area at the Navarro Store.

Bring your favorite dish or two to share. There are favorites my mom would enjoy so if you're willing to make one please PM me.

I know it will be a wonderful day

Thank you all.

Kuny and Waggoner family.

THE LATEST NEWS to emerge from Boonville's serial closed school board meetings —another one occurred Tuesday night as we go to press this week — is that three lucky elementary school teachers will be paid $1500 each to look after the place in the absence of suspended principal, Katherine Reddick. (School is out next week, but the fortuitous stipends could include summer session. Old timers, and not so old timers will recall the school days when there was one administrator at the high school, one at the elementary school and a school secretary at each site. Like Topsy, school admin has just growed although the number of students has remained fairly constant over the years.) Ms. Reddick has been placed on paid leave in the wake of an altercation between her and district superintendent, Michelle Hutchins.

MS. REDDICK had filed a police complaint alleging she was held against her will by Superintendent Hutchins in Ms. Hutchins' office. A deputy took the report over the phone, and that was where Ms. Reddick's complaint ended. If it was unfounded she should be charged with filing a false police report, but to simply ignore a complaint is not the way most police forces operate. Ms. R has retained an attorney, as has high school principal, Keri St. Jeor. The bilingual St. Jeor was sacked as high school principal but has been offered a position as Spanish teacher. Why he has been demoted is not known, and is unlikely to remain unknown as our super-secretive school district, seething beneath its bland exterior, turns to lawyers for even the most trivial matters.

AND NOW THIS: The school district office confirmed this morning that Jared Candelaria, 31, of Cloverdale has been offered a job as a teacher at the elementary school. Facebook is sizzling, as it perpetually is these days in the bucolic Anderson Valley, with complaints that Candelaria, then teaching at Yokayo Elementary in Ukiah, was arrested in February of 2016 by the Cloverdale Police for “felony possession and transportation of a controlled substance, specifically Oxycodone, a Schedule Two narcotic opioid pain medication.” But AV Unified, in the person of Leigh Krienenhop, said that Candelaria, although offered the position, Candelaria is still in the process of being checked out.

PRETTY CLEAR what happened here. The guy was sailing along to a new job with AV Not-So-Unified when Facebook ignited with his legal history, and now…..

COUPLA OBSERVATIONS: If Candelaria has, as they say, “paid his debt” to our drug-dependent society where marijuana is classified by the feds as more dangerous than  the super-sedatives Candelaria was busted for, should he be doomed forever and forbidden employment in the work he has trained for and is qualified to do? If I still had children at AV Elementary, short of the guy nodding off at his desk, and so long as he was capable, I would be fine with Candelaria.

SECOND OBSERVATION: Whatever other virtues and uses they might have, lawyers  are not helpful to the educational process. Call me Pollyanna, but given the givens of what we know about the administrative turmoil in our school district, why not back up a year? Why not do a rewind? Everyone stays in place — Mr. St. Jeor as principal at the high school, Dr. Reddick as principal at AV Elementary. Call this past school year The Year of Steep and Dangerous Learning Curves. At this point, bringing in new people again for next school year risks the same unhappiness that characterized this year.

JESSE SLOTTE was badly wounded in Iraq, so badly wounded that doctors were taking bets that it was unlikely he would survive. It sounds as if the demons still pursue the heavily decorated young father. He was arrested in Potter Valley on Saturday night, May 27, for an ugly episode classified as felony domestic violence. We hope his wife recovers and that there's no re-occurrence.

THINGS we all like: That roadside whimsy on the Cloverdale end of 128 is most welcome, and I'll bet you already know what I'm referring to — the gold-painted boulder, as if a giant nugget had fallen from Gold Rush skies.

A COUPLE WEEKS AGO in our brief update about the pending merger of the AV Ambulance Service and the AV Fire Department, we said that “the existing Ambulance Service operation will continue in a reduced form to keep the reimbursements flowing as they transition to an fundraising foundation structure after the merger.”

SOME PEOPLE read this to mean that the ambulance services were being reduced. No, the AV Ambulance Service will continue to operate as a non-profit fund-raising foundation, but the Ambulance Service operations will continue as is — only under the management of the Community Services District/Fire Department. The only thing being reduced is the role of the Ambulance’s non-profit board, which will continue to function as a board but only in a supporting financial role.

AV LIBRARY LINES — The AV Community Library will be closed Saturday June 10th through Tuesday June 20th, for the Sierra Nevada Music Festival. We will reopen on Saturday June 24th. Our hours are Tuesday from 1:30-4:30 and Saturday from 2-4, located in the Home Arts Bldg. at the Fairgrounds. Starting Tuesday June 27th, we will start the $4 a bag book sale, and the sale will continue until the end of July. Our last open day will be Tuesday, August 1st, when we close for the Fair. Thank you for your patronage and we hope to see you soon.  — Liz Dusenberry

TRANSMISSION MEDITATION: “Join us to experience a simple form of meditation that helps the planet and builds a stronger connection with your own spiritual nature. Transmission Meditation is a non-denominational group meditation that does not conflict with other meditations or spiritual practices, but can actually enhance them. Transmission Meditation is a potent form of world service that anyone, even those with busy lives, can easily do. It can be a mode of service for life, if you so choose. Do you want to help the world and strengthen the connection to your Higher Self? Transmission Meditation is the simplest way to do both. Friday, June 9, 7:00 pm, at the Center for Spiritual Living Gathering Place, Fort Bragg Company Store, Main & Redwood Streets, Fort Bragg.  Information: 877-1800 or 895-3134"