Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

The blog is back and now that the new year is here and things are getting back to normal, I'll be blogging regularly again. We hope soon to add a blog from Kate Marianchild, who our readers may have noticed is creating a regular feature on flora and fauna of our area. And we are setting up a blog for the local Girl Scouts, to help keep the community up to date on scouting in our area. If you would like to blog for the Daily Journal, shoot me an email and let me know what you subject is and we'll talk about it. The more voices out here in the cyberworld the better.
I want to take a moment here to thank Valerie Holm Warda, a Ukiah High School teacher who has been writing a monthly column for our Sunday pages for many years, and who, over the holidays decided to rearrange her life's priorities and would no longer have time to do it. I thank her for her many, many thoughtful columns which - she on occasion reminded me - we got for free. If anyone out there would like to try their hand at a monthly Sunday column, again, email me with two or three samples of columns you would write and we'll have a look. I can be reached at udjkcm@pacific.net.
We are also setting up a blog for our new sports editor Anthony Dion, who is quickly getting to know the sports scene locally and is looking forward to the coming sports season. Covering sports on Sundays and Monday for us now too is John-Michael Kibrick, a Ukiah HIgh senior. Feel free to contact him with sports info on those days.

I got a call the other day from a reader who saw the article about lagging voter registrations. She said she's not really surprised and that there may be many reasons people have decided to give up on voting. "I don't vote because the federal government can walk in and overturn my vote," she told me. " I will not vote as long as my vote doesn't count.
I am no longer registered to vote. I want to vote but I have to stand by my principles." Besides the Supreme Court decision which put George W. Bush in the White in 2000, this reader also feels that her vote was discounted when Californians voted to legalize medical marijuana but the federal government still calls it illegal.

A reminder that the Redwood Region Logging Conference is coming back to Ukiah this year in March at the fairgrounds. The conference goes back and forth between Eureka and Ukiah each year. An Education Day will be held Thursday, March 20, the opening day of the 70th annual Redwood Region Logging Conference. Attendance will be limited to 1,500 Mendocino and Lake County school children, grades 3-6th. So for teachers and others interested in getting kids to that event or for more information about attending the conference, visit the web site at
www.rrlc.net, In addition, the Redwood Region Logging Conference is offering local schools the opportunity to have educational materials provided to students. Teachers interested in having a Resource Professional (Forester, Wildlife or Fisheries Biologist, Geologist, etc.) visit their classroom, or schedule a log truck visit to their school are invited to visit the web site, as well about scheduling an event.