Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

For the past couple of weeks I have been looking forward to restocking my hen house. In The Great Chicken Massacre of Christmas 2007, something wiped out 10 of our 11 chickens while we were out of town. New chicks are not available, I was told, until March as they are flown from the mid-west somewhere and the cargo holds are too cold otherwise. OK.
What I have also since found out is that I am not the only one looking for chicks this time of year. There are two farm supply stores in town that carry chicks and they are sold almost before they come in the door. I was working with one of them which was expecting a shipment last Friday. I was ready. I stopped by first thing Friday morning and was told the shipment from the U.S. Postal Service looks late. Then that Friday afternoon the fellow at the store said they still had not shown and he was worried. He said they would like be stressed at this point and he wouldn't want to sell them to me until he kept them over the weekend to make sure they would survive. Out of curiosity I stopped by Saturday morning to see how it went and the fellow told me that the shipment had arrived really late from the post office and almost all of the chicks were already dead and most of the rest had died since.
He said another shipment would come this week and I was welcome to some of those.
He was upset about it, but not nearly as upset as I was with the thought that the U.S. Postal Service would simply allow 100 or more chicks to die in its care. Small as they are, they are not widgets, or steaks that might get a little thawed if late but still be good. These are live animals that the Postal Service simple allowed to die. I am told it's mostly from dehydration, which means they are not given any water for hours and hours on end. How is that possible?
I am hoping some post office employee can explain it to me.

Posted by K.C. at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I got a call from Margaret Parducci the other day about a letter to the editor from Maria Andrews in Willits who was defending all the pot growing in Mendocino with, among other arguments, the notion that grape growers in this county during Prohibition were essentially drug dealers. She specifically mentions John Parducci, one of the fathers of the Mendocino County wine industry, who, in a recent article we did on his 90th burthday, said he took grapes back East during Prohibition, grapes which were likely used for home wine making. John's wife, Margaret, called to say that the shipping of grapes back east during Prohibition was just that, and only that. Growers could only sell their grapes as fruit during those years. Margaret said she resented the assertion that John was a drug dealer when her "husband was only in high school - we weren't even in the wine business. It just made me mad."

Posted by K.C. at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I heard from Smart Growth Ukiah's Judy Pruden today about the industry ideas contest that the group sponsored to find good ideas for industry to locate at the old Masonite site instead of the mixed use project Developers Diversified Realty is promoting.
The contest deadline was pushed to Feb. 5 and all the entries are now in and Judy says there are 25 "fabulous" ideas. She asked if I would be willing to serve on a committee of a variety of local residents to judge them and I agreed. We will get together during the first week of April after we have all looked at all 25 ideas to pick winners.

Posted by K.C. at 08:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just a note this morning to recommend reading the full text of Barak Obama's speech on race in Philadelphia this morning. (www.nytimes.com has it). Whether or not you plan to vote for him, it's well worth checking out.
It reminded me of something I have been saying for years: that we ought to stop using the Census to divide us by race and let it simply count us and categorize us by income. We would then find out that more of us are in the same boat than we ever thought. I always hate it when I see headlines like: "Whites no longer majority in U.S." whenever some new census report comes out.

Posted by K.C. at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I checked the Ukiah Smart Growth site this morning hoping to get their take on the Mendocino Crossing plans made public this weekend in Ukiah. Perhaps since they are against anything DDR came up with on that property they will ignore it completely. Visiting the site did remind me that Jan. 15 was the cutoff for their contest to come up with a good idea for an industrial use for the site. Anyone know when the winner will be announced? I talked to Smart Growther Richard Shoemaker a couple of weeks ago and he said he would have no problem if the disputed asphalt plant went there.
Meanwhile, I notice most of the anti-Mendocino Crossings comments in the TOPIX forum on the Daily Journal site were from people who no longer live in the area.
Last Thursday at Schat's Green Party leader Richard Johnson said he hoped someone - he doesn't have time - would start a recall campaign against outgoing Supervisor Jim Wattenburger. His reasoning was that having such a campaign waged now would put Wattenburger on the defensive and perhaps force him to vote against Mendocino Crossings in order to avoid having a recall on his record. Wattenburger has announced he will not run for reelection and that has people like Johnson worried that he will vote in favor of Mendocino Crossing because he has nothing to lose. We discussed the fact that the recall, even if launched right now wouldn't be on the ballot until November giving Wattenburger most of his remaining time as supervisor to do what he liked. I also pointed out that a recall effort might backfire and instead push Wattenburger into the Mendocino Crossings camp if he was on the fence. There was musing around the table that perhaps a recall effort would frustrate and freak Wattenburger enough to simply resign. Seems like a lot of mental effort going out to one supervisor who has already backed out. It seems like his opponents succeeded in scaring him out of the race, what more do they want? Meanwhile, if the opponents of Mendocino Crossings want to get past Wattenburger to the next 2nd district supervisor, who they undoubtedly believe will be MC opponent John McCowen, (and perhaps to a new 1st District supervisor too) why not convince supervisors David Colfax, Kendall Smith and John Pinches to delay the process until new supervisors are seated. Seems like more opportunity there than in continuing to concentrate efforts on Wattenburger at this point.

Posted by K.C. at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's what the Sac Bee's Web site is saying about the salary information it got on state workers.

The Sacramento Bee launched last week a searchable online database which lists the salaries of state employees. Reactions were mixed to the database and The Bee experienced a deluge of traffic and complaints from state workers. Public Editor Armando Acuña responded to the varied responses by saying that state workers are accountable to the public for whom they work. He also said “The Bee’s posting last week of an online database making it easy to look up the salaries of state workers by name has made two things clear: First, many state workers are irate, complaining it is an invasion of their privacy. Second, the database is wildly popular, with more than 2 million page views in just the first three days, setting a sacbee.com record by a quantum leap that’s growing each day.” A significant number of state employees fault the paper for making the information so readily available, because those who want to know “should have to do the ‘homework,’” to find it, in the words of one employee. They castigated the paper as irresponsible for making it easy to find the information by simply inputting someone’s last name. The state of California already publishes an online directory of workers at www.cold.ca.gov. Acuña summed up the argument well by saying “If you work for the government, you are a public employee, with all that entails. You are paid by taxpayers, who are entitled to know how much you are paid, not in some abstract way but in real dollars and cents.” Sacramento Bee Editor Melanie Sill responded to reader questions about the state employee pay database and encouraged people to comment on the site.

Posted by K.C. at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've had a couple of people ask me what happened to our salary requests from the city and the county. I have the salary information in hand and we are looking at what to do with it and how to present it. I have also asked for the same information from the Mendocino Office of Education, the Ukiah Unified School District and Mendocino College. I have been researching what other newspapers have done with similar information and it ranges from publishing just the salaries of department heads and higher to creating an online searchable data bank of all the names and salary information. Even with the information in hand, there is a lot of sifting and clarification involved. None of the information is simply presented. The lists include base salary plus overtime plus unspecificed "other compensation" which can be different for each person. Some of the employees listed were only there part of the year so their salaries look skewed but information about which is which is not given. Anything we do with the information will have to come with long lists of explanations and caveats. Anyway, we are indeed working on it.

Posted by K.C. at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Someone who uses the UDJ web site TOPIX forum has posted a poll asking people whether Measure G should be repealed (which is what Measure B will do). This is strictly reader driven stuff, not posted by the UDJ itself. I was forwarded an email authored by someone in the No on B camp who urged everyone to get on the site and vote no right away. Tonight the topix board shows hundreds against the repeal of Measure G and about 70 for it. So, if you are for repealing Measure G (as I am most strongly) you should go to our web site, click down the "Blogs" menu and go to "Forums.' There you will see the poll. Vote Yes. Of course, remember these kinds of polls are totally unscientific and are meant as amusing interaction. But with a controversial topic like this one, people tend to put more meaning into these things and, anyway, it's fun to vote and see how many people you can convince to do the same.

Posted by K.C. at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Almost every day when I drive down Feliz Creek Road to work I see that big water tanker truck pulled up to the fire hydrant just before you get to the intersection of Feliz Creek Road and Mountain House Road. This truck is there filling up at least three or four times a week that I see and probably more. I know the town of Hopland was issued a moratorium by the state on hooking up new water customers and I was under the impression that the town was also prohibited from continuing to sell its water. Clearly the water is still leaving the hydrant and being taken elsewhere. Hey Hopland PUD members, what's up?

Posted by K.C. at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week on PBS's American Masters, there's an episode on Pete Seeger, our nation's finest, hardest working and purest songwriting activist who has dedicated his life to the notion that music can bring people together to do extraordinarty things. The part of the show about Seeger's early years with the folk-singing quartet The Weavers includes interviews and footage of Ronnie Gilbert, the sole female of the group who, with The Weavers was blacklisted in the 1950s. Gilbert - who turns out to be an area resident - will be the featured speaker this Sunday at the Women's History Day celebration in Ukiah. Here's your chance to see and hear someone who was working for justice in our land before many of us were even born. Because of the expected crowd this year the event is being held at the fairgrounds (not the Civic Center as has been traditional) at the Fine Arts buildings. It starts at noon and costs $10 - a bargain.

Posted by K.C. at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read a story in the New York Times about how so many students - especially at the high school level- who are eligible for free school lunches don't eat them because of the stigma of being in the "free lunch line." Apparently at some schools - and this story cited a school in the Bay Area - there are two separate menus of food, one for the free kids, and one for the paying kids. Also, apparently new federal regulations forcing non-nutritional foods out of the cafeterias has created a kind of first class area down the hall from the cafeteria where kids with money hang out buying things from vending machines, while the free lunch kids have to stay in the cafeteria to find food.
Frankly I am amazed that any of these conditions exist anywhere. Anyone with any sense could see these kinds of conditions are going to lead to exactly this problem - a two tiered system where once again, the poor kids are stigmatized. Some schools "suddenly" waking up to this problem are considering changes like creating debit card systems, where students would pay for lunch with a debit card or punch card of some kind and no one would be able to tell who really paid and who didn't. Of course some educrat would no doubt make the paid cards blue and the free cards orange for everyone to see and screw up the whole idea.
Why not just make all food free for all kids? After all, the taxpayers pay for every bite of this stuff anyway. If it was free for everyone, parents would save money, the cafeteria food would be more widely scrutinized if more parents knew their kids may actually be eating it, and the schools would have much better control over the nutrition all their students are getting.

Posted by K.C. at 08:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)