Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

Convention coverage

2008-08-23T17:42:20Z

For those who are going to be glued to convention coverage in the coming week, be aware that at the UDJ we have on our opening Web page all the coverage from our sister paper The Denver Post. Go to www.ukiahdailyjournal.com and you can click into the section and get the complete Denver Post coverage of the Democratic convention.
When the Republicans convene in Minnesota the week after, I believe we will have the same Web site access on our opening page from our sister paper in St. Paul.
So you can get all the convention coverage in the coming weeks right from www.ukiahdailyjournal.com.
We will also have stories from our own correspondent Tim Riley who will be attending both conventions on our behalf and will be looking to connect with Mendocino County residents there. If you know anyone locally who will be at either convention, email me their contact info at udjkcm@pacific.net and I'll make sure TIm gets it so he can talk to them while they're there.

Changes at the Daily Journal

2008-08-22T16:21:10Z

As happens here at the Daily Journal from time to time, we are having a splash of turnover in our newsroom staff. Some of you may have noticed the byline of David Minton. He is our new education reporter. He will cover Ukiah Unified School District, Mendocino Community College and The Mendocino County Office of Education. Also he will cover a variety of other things like children and youth, health and transportation, and write features. His phone number is 468-3522 and his email will be udjdm@pacific.net as soon as I get it set up - which should be today.
Our law enforcement and courts reporter Ben Brown is leaving us Aug. 29 for San Jose and we have a Humboldt State journalism school about-to-be-graduate Zack Cinek coming in. Zack hails from Willits and will serve a five-week internship with us to fulfill his last semester of course work. We hope to make him a permanent part of our staff at the end of that time. He will takeover the police/court beat. That beat also includes agriculture and the environment. After Aug. 29 contact Zack at 468-3521 or udjzc@pacific.net
Our sports editor Anthony Dion is leaving us for a new job in Colorado. His last day is Saturday. On Sunday I will become sports editor for a time so expect the sports pages to be abbreviated until we find a replacement. I have interviewed six candidates from all around the U.S. this week and will offer the job to someone today. If I get an acceptance this weekend I hope to have a new sports editor in place by mid Sept. at the latest. In the meantime all you sports coaches, parents and players, please use our web site sports reporting feature or call up at 468-3518 to report scores or just email udjsports@pacific.net with your game reports. I will have a photographer out and about shooting local games but I won't always have the results right away unless people call in. I will have no one to actually cover games. Our part time sports writer position is also still open, so anyone locally who wants to write sports and can learn to lay out pages on our Quark desktop publishing system should come into the office at 590 S. School St and fill out an application.

Something new from "For Better or Worse"

2008-08-13T23:17:22Z

Here's a press release we got today:

“For Better or For Worse” Sets Date to Start Over with New Material

Kansas City, MO (Aug. 13, 2008)—Calling the next phase of her comic strips "new-runs," Lynn Johnston announced that beginning Monday, Sept. 1, her immensely popular "For Better or For Worse" will start over again. Using new comic strips drawn in the style she used 29 years ago when the Patterson family first appeared on comic pages, Johnston will begin retelling their story from the beginning, eventually blending at least half of the classic original comic strips with new material.

Johnston explains her approach and talks about why changes in her personal life led her to back off from earlier plans to retire on a video posted on YouTube.com. Please copy and paste this url into your Web browser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUzkOxgmmc4

“Everything in September is new,” said Johnston, "the punch lines, the drawing, all are new. The only thing retro is the way I'm drawing everything. I want it to flow into the classic material seamlessly.”

“This first year, the ratio of old to new will be at least 50-50,” explains Johnston. “I want this to be the best thing I’ve ever done, and I’m having so much fun drawing Lizzie as a baby again and revisiting all the characters.”

“For a generation of new readers unfamiliar with ‘For Better or For Worse,’ it’s a chance to begin an exciting journey; for current fans, it’s a chance to relive their favorite episodes,” says Lee Salem, president and editor of Universal Press Syndicate, Johnston’s syndicate. One such episode is the adoption of Farley, the Patterson’s beloved dog. That will come in October.

For the past year, Lynn Johnston’s widely syndicated comic strip has been a blend of new and old storylines.

“At first I thought that I could segue back and forth from today to yesterday, but that became very confusing. Some people really enjoyed it and some just wanted us to get on with the story,” she says.

Johnston will select material from her collection of almost 10,000 archival strips to help retell the Patterson family's story as her longtime fans remember it, pausing in spots to update references that seem confusing or even to flesh out characters she didn't explore in the first telling.

"I'm starting right at the very beginning—when Elizabeth was a little crawling baby and couldn’t say too much, and Michael was in kindergarten,” she adds. “I’m a better storyteller now, and I want to … improve the storyline or take a piece of art and make it better. What a luxury to change, fix and to augment. I'm such a perfectionist; I want to put my hands on it and have it tweaked here and there.”

Johnston says that a change in her marital status changed her mind about retiring completely.

"At this time in my life I thought I would be on a cruise ship to Panama or the Mediterranean, retired with my Tilley hats, my sneakers. But I’m a single lady now, and I want to keep working,” she says. “Because I don't have to work 365 days of new material into a year, I can still take some time off to paint and travel.”

“I’m considering this a renewal, not a retirement,” she adds.

Over the years, not only did her characters age in real time in the strip, but Johnston’s art style changed, too.

“When I first started the strip, the comic’s style was fast and loose, probably because I was so busy and I had to get it out fast,” she says. “It had a happy freedom to it. What I’m experiencing now by redrawing, it’s almost like I’m drawing portraits. I'm changing John's jaw. And over the years, Elly's nose grew up to the size of a potato. Now, I'm drawing it smaller again, the way it was when I first started to draw. There is a huge difference between the earlier and the later styles.”

“For Better or For Worse” has been syndicated since December 1979. In 1985, Johnston became the first woman to receive the Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society. She has also received the Order of Canada and claims a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. This summer, Johnston was inducted into the "Giants of the North" -- the Canadian Cartoonists' Hall of Fame. She lives in Ontario.

"For Better or For Worse" now appears in more than 2,000 papers around the world. Read by people of all ages, the award-winning comic strip deals honestly with both the lighthearted and the serious, and has effectively brought families together for laughter, tears and dialogue. Johnston has produced 46 books about her strip, and her strip has been adapted into six animated television specials and a popular animated series.

Biographical information and more can be found at www.amuniversal.com/ups and www.fbofw.com . Daily strips are posted on www.gocomics.com .

What a surprise

2008-08-13T14:09:41Z

I got back from a wonderful vacation at a beach house back east to find the surprising news about John Enquist, the long time Mendocino County Winegrowers Alliance director who went on to become the head of the newly formed Mendocino Winegrape and Wine Commission.
According to the press release from the Commission which we reported on when it came out the first week in August, Enquist allegedly misappropriated about $200,000 from the new Commission funds. The Commission and Enquist apparently came to a settlement after a state audit of the books as Enquist is not being prosecuted and the press release indicated he is not accepting any official liability. However he did repay the commission $217,803.82. What he was doing with that money will forever be a mystery to most of us I guess.
The Commission says it now has some new auditing procedures in place that will prevent whatever didn't happen from happening again.
The release also indicates that Enquist was terminated from his job last December, when at the time the public was told he was just moving on and they threw a big party for him.
I know that the business community hates bad news and a brand new commission already having a financial scandal doesn't help, but it also looks just as bad for the public to find out after the fact that all this was going on. I know everyone is always worried about someone suing someone and they have to be careful not to make a formal accusation in public against someone they weren't willing to formally accuse before the law.
They got their money back, so they just want to put it behind them.
Enquist obviously had the money on hand to give back to them and he was willing to pay the additional expenses of the recovery of the funds so he's no doubt glad to have the thing behind him too. Nothing has to go on his record or his resume. Unfortunately, Google will still be around and the reporting on this will be out there in cyberspace forever.
I assume the press release was approved by him or his legal representatives.
I am amazed at John. I worked with him on a couple of local projects and saw him several times a year and liked him when he was with the Winegrowers. He was always a good source for news on the local wine business. Why would anyone get tangled up in something like this? It makes no sense.

County planning a joke

2008-07-26T15:54:44Z

Those who were sitting in the June 10 Board of Supervisors meeting heard from a local man who has been severely abused by the county's planning department and who has still to get any relief. Chris Stone has been trying since January of 2007 to build a little over 200 homes - some houses, some apartments -- on 50 acres at the south end of Ukiah across from the Redwood Health Club. The land is already zoned for exactly his kind of project and the project, by all accounts is well-designed, uses advanced sewer discharge systems, anticipates solar use and carves out a retail space for perhaps a local store. It has the lower, mdidle and upper income homes all together and from what I can gather is exactly the kind of development local politicians say they need and want.
So what does the county planning department do? It stalls and ignores Mr. Stone, demands unnecessary studies and generally makes the man spend hundreds of thousands of dollars without any sign that his project will move forward. Mr. Stone produced the environmental studies - although the project should really get a negative declaration since it's a zoned use - and based them on not only what the county's rules currently demand but used more challenging assumptions than the county would have.
What does the county planning department do? It decides to demand new studies based on what it thinks it might have in the Ukiah Valley Area Plan at some future date. And everyone knows the UVAP is far from being ready to adopt.
So Mr. Stone very politely - for someone who could and probably should have been raging much sooner - went to the Board of Supervisors and complained. The county planning department pretended to be on top of the situation, and supervisors promised Mr. Stone that he would get action from the tippy top, the CEO himself.
Mr. Stone tried to schedule meetings with the CEO to no avail. So he went back to the supervisors in July and lo and behold the county administration suddenly scheduled a meeting and acted like they'd never seen him waiting hopefully in their anterooms.
How that July 17 meeting went is unknown as of now, but Mr. Stone has another gab session in August.
County Planning Director Ray Hall is retiring in days - as far as I'm concerned he should have been retired after the Vichy Springs development debacle in the early 1990s. The county now has an opportunity to recharge its planning department - and not with $177,000 a year consultants and not with anyone who has been working in the department under Hall's "leadership." The county needs a talented planner who it will allow to be creative, but demand be responsive and who will lead the county into the future. This county's reputation for micromanagement, anti-developer sentiment and political mayhem will make that person difficult to find.

Beijing air bad for athletes?

2008-07-21T15:37:04Z

Overheard in a Sonoma County tasting room Sunday was an American couple who live with their children in Beijing explaining that the air pollution in Beijing is so bad (LA is Lake County by comparison) that the Olympic athletes already in the region are actually staying in Tokyo and flying over to Beijing when necessary. They say that young people are routinely urged to wear masks when they are outside but often refuse to do so and that they do not let their own children outside to play. (One wonders what income is worth that but anyway ...)
Today I read in the Washington Post that Beijing has begun a three-week air cleanup program that prohibits all public smoking in the city of 16 million, and that has shut down factories and limited residents' driving to certain days of the week.
Will it be enough to clean up the air by the time the torch is in place? I don't know but I can say that this is one summer Olympics I wont be wishing I could attend in person. And I suspect that a lot of Americans who go over there are going to be rudely awakened to the fact that they can't breathe. Can you clean up the air of a city of 16 million in three weeks?

Tidbits

2008-07-19T17:38:16Z

Tidbit 1: I have noticed in the past couple of weeks that Bruce Bread is no longer available at Safeway. I wonder if thehigh prices of wheast has put a crimp on Bruce Bread's product. They were always the expensive loaf. If cheap bread is now at $4-$5, perhaps Bruce Bread got too expensive? I had actually begun buying Bruce Bread since at $4-plus a loaf it was the same price as the lesser loaves.

Tidbit 2: Gas at Hopland's USA station (or what ever the southernmost one is) is $4.39, the cheapest I've seen around.

Tidbit 3: I understand that Peter Richardson, former owner of Rainbow Construction has settled with Ukiah Unified School District. I don't know for how much. The person who told me said he couldn't divulge that part. As you may recall, Rainbow went out of business after the school district refused to pay more than $3 million in charges the company felt it had coming to it when the Grace Hudson School was finished. The construction was over a year late and the school district said the overages were Rainbow's fault. Rainbow said they were the architect's fault. From what I have seen in reports on the construction and from talking to subcontractors, I believe Rainbow got a raw deal and the school district basically put them out of business (plus the Ukiah Valley lost the more than 200 good construction jobs they represented locally). Also it is telling that UUSD is now suing the architects.

Remembering Shea Staduim

2008-07-10T17:53:00Z

As I read somewhere that the day that Shea Stadium will close down approaches (in September), I recalled a time when Mets games were an important part of family life for me. For those of you who aren't baseball fans or who don't know the New York area, Shea Stadium was opened in 1964 in Queens to house the new New York Mets baseball team. My single mom found it a great place to spend an inexpensive evening with her two daughters, me 10 and older sis 12. You could take a subway right to the park (we never owned a car) and I don't know what admission was, but it was cheap. My mom often had another woman, someone usually from her midtown office, along for the games and my sister and I learned for the first time about baseball. But mostly we were delirious to be out at night with mom, watching as the night deepened and the bright field lights and the deep green outfield and burnt orange infield came alive. We also loved the Mets fans around us. Loud, raucus and almost obsessive, they had coffee cans and wooden spoons, homemade horns, bells, whistles and other noise makers which my sister and I never had a hope of being allowed to imitate. Of course in those days the Mets were new, and not very good as I recall. But we loved them.
I guess my mom wasn't a Yankee fan and Yankee Stadium was harder to get to and not in a neighborhood a single woman wanted to walk with two young girls at night. (Although my Dad, who lived across town from us in Manhattan used to love to tell us that Yankee Stadium was owned by the Catholic Church and, being Catholic, wasn't that just grand?)
One year about 1988 or 89 my husband and I were in NYC visiting my mom and we all decided to go to a Mets day game. I had forgotten how tall Shea Stadium is and when we took our seats in the rafters in a chilly wind, we realized that even the resident crows and pigeons were flying below us and about four innings in, stiff with cold, we decided we'd had enough and left.
Despite that, and the fact that Shea is far from a great ballpark, it will always be part of my childhood - along with the big World's Fair globe nearby - and that's how I'll remember it.

Trying something new

2008-07-09T17:48:47Z

I had an idea the other day that I am going to try out here and if it seems popular we'll move it to its own forum somewhere more prominent on our web site. Let me know if you think this could work.
I want folks locally to share information about how to save money on things they buy regularly. Did you see a good sale on something? Is gas a few cents cheaper in one spot today? Where can you get a loaf of real whole wheat bread (not pretend wheat bread) for under $4. Things like that.

I'll start with what I think is the best deal on coffee in town. The two pound bag of French Roast whole beans at Food Maxx for $7.99 - it may be up to $8.99 now but it's a great deal and the coffee is just fine.

The organic peaches at Safeway for $1.99/lb. were very good and I think they are still there on sale.

NYT discovers volunteer firefighting

2008-07-07T16:22:58Z

For those who haven't yet seen it, the New York Times has a story in today's online version called, "With Pride, Californians Step Up to Fight Fires," about volunteer firefighters in Mendocino County. As those of us who live here know, these men and women are always at the front of the line when emergencies strike. What this current wildfire situation has told me - and I've said it already - is that we don't have enough resources in the state to cover what will be years to come of summer wildfires, and that our rural county got pretty much put to the back of the list when more populated counties went up. I don't argue that lives and property must trump forestlands, but if there were enough firefighters and tankers and equipment to go around Cal Fire wouldn't have to make those hard choices. Over and over we have heard fire officials tell us there's not enough to go around. In the aftermath, our state and federal legislators better be heeding this call - and not with legislation just to start collecting higher and higher fees from landowners. Firefighting serves us all.

Trains? Where?

2008-07-06T01:34:15Z

I hope that it is not too late for the California Transportation Commission's Caltrans fans to realize that much of the millions upon millions of dollars they have spent on highways over the past 10 years should have been going to revitalizing our train systems. How nice would be it be right now to have a passenger train running up and down the Highway 101 corridor on tracks that already exist. Yes, I know there have been more than a few missteps by the North Coast Railroad Authority, but their efforts were often stymied by a lack of funding from the state which never saw a highway it didn't love. I am guessing that had we had available for railroad redevelopment just the money the state has spent at Confusion Hill in the past 20 years we could have a fully functioning passenger railroad up and down the North Coast. I'll concede that the Eel River corridor is a challenge but from Willits south there's no reason we can't have freight and people running on rail tracks. Now that many of us are spending close to $100 a week on gasoline, how nice would it be if I could hop down to the depot in Hopland and take the train to Ukiah every day?
Nationwide our train system is seeing an upsurge in use. For thirty years our federal government has treated Amtrak like a freeloading uncle who won't get a job. It must pay for itself! they cry. I have never understood why federal tax dollars should not go to subsidizing our national transportation system. How much less dependent on oil would we be now if trains were readily available everywhere in our nation - not just in major cities, but everywhere. People get tired of hearing it but it has to be said that the Europeans have the kind of train systems we should have. Even in the smallest towns, a usable and frequent train schedule is available to anywhere.
I hope it's not too late for us.

Fireworks anyone?

2008-06-28T18:03:36Z

The Fourth of July (actually Fifth of July) fireworks show is back on at the moment. The folks who run the racetrack sent out a press release a few days ago saying they were off, but then the fairgrounds folks said, no they were still on. They are waiting as long as they can to make a decision. According to the folks at the fairgrounds, the firefighters don't really know whether they'll still be in residence at the fairgrounds a week from now. I suspect they will and so do most people I talk to, but you never know. The fairgrounds folks don't want to cancel and then have a glorious sunny clear weekend next week and feel dumb.
I don't know that canceling a fireworks show at this point in our county would be dumb no matter which way you look at it. Even if it's gloriously clear and sunny next weekend, isn't setting off fireworks just a wee bit like laughing at the gods? If the weekend is glorious we can still have our community picnic at Todd Grove Park to celebrate our independence.
Why not rebook the fireworks for later in the year - assuming that the Sacramento fireworks people will be willing to reschedule - when it is completely safe and our community is ready for a celebration. How about fireworks after the Truckers Light Parade this December?

Covering the fires this week has been a challenge for our tiny staff of two reporters (some days, some days only one) and one photographer. I think they did a heck of a job getting the information out there. One of the two reporters is now on vacation so Ben Brown will be our primary reporter on the fire story. I will try to help as best I can and we have a Ukiah High grad home for the summer from journalism school at Sac State named Sara House helping us out too. Early on there were so many Cal Fire people coming into town you never knew who that day's spokesperson was going to be. The flow of info is pretty organized now which allows us to get pretty solid information regularly.

The big continuing question of course is what the weather and winds will do in the next fews days. Wind is of course our friend and foe. It clears the air and allows the tankers to fly but also spreads the fires. One firefighter told me that if the winds would turn and blow smoke out to the ocean it might also turn the fires on themselves and they would burn out more quickly.

No sympathy here

2008-06-25T14:33:04Z

The wildfires burning in the county have necessitated a huge Cal Fire incident command at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds in Ukiah which means that the Fourth of July fireworks show has been canceled. (Not only are the fiaigounds occupied but it would be a little weird to say the least to shoot off fireworks in the middle of a wildfire crisis.) As we have reported, fireworks shows are very expensive. A group of local businesses came up with the approximately $20,000 to put on this year's show and they're consulting on what to do next, whether to have the show later or save the money for next year.
Anyway, the group put an $8,250 deposit down with a company in Sacramento (which shall, for the moment ,remain nameless) and earlier this week the organizers called them to say that the show could not go on and see about getting that deposit back.
The initial response thus far has been, "So? You booked it you bought it." Even after explaining that this county is in a state of emergency and that we have a serious crisis on our hands, there was no sympathy.
I'll let you know if they change their minds. Then I'll print their name.

Meanwhile, I have to say that the way Cal Fire gets these incident camps set up is pretty impressive. The initial team of abut 50 people swoop down and organize everything. And they buy locally, which is great. Everything from pens and paper to tents and baked goods is being purchased in Ukiah wherever possible. I got a call from a reader who was worried that the community needed to donate food and water to the firefighters, and while I am sure they would accept donations, you shouldn't worry, they are being fed by the state.

Yoo hoo, here I am

2008-06-22T20:12:56Z

Well I am finally back on line - not that anyone perhaps except Fred there missed me. Anyway, I go back to the newspaper full time on Monday and I send thanks out to everyone who sent good wishes while I was out on a surprise lengthy medical leave. What was supposed to be a simple procedure turned into major surgery and I was sidelined for four weeks. I akm feeling much better and looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.
I wanted to get on line to day to pass along an interesting note sent to me by a reader warning consumers who trade in their grill propane tanks.

For those of you who like to grill it up during the summer, here's a safety announcement you need keep
on your front burner.
It seems that "Meth cooks" are getting the propane tanks from the exchanges at Wal-Mart, Kroger, etc. and emptying them of the propane. Then, they are filling them with anhydrous ammonia. After they are finished using the tanks, they return them to the store. The tanks are then refilled with propane and sent back for you and me to buy. Anhydrous ammonia is very corrosive and weakens the structure of the tank. It can be very dangerous when mixed with propane and hooked up to our grills, etc. You should inspect the propane tank for any blue or greenish residue around the valve areas, and note any pungent smell of ammonia near the tank. If it is present, refuse to purchase that one.
Here's the NPGA Site for your review also. Article includes pictures of stained valves.
http://www.npga.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=529

KC's a little out of it

2008-05-29T17:09:16Z

You won't be hearing too much from me for a bit as I went into the hospital last Friday and had some unexpected major surgery. I will not be back in the office until at least June 16 and possibly later. I am recovering as well as can be expected and just want to say that the folks at Ukiah Valley Medical Center rock.