News

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Poet Jabez William Churchill will present “From South to North and Back Again” as the keynote address of the NEA Big Read in Lake County.

The presentation will take place beginning at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 21, at the Mendocino College Lake Center at 2565 Parallel Drive in Lakeport.

Churchill’s address explores themes found the NEA Big Read selection, “Into the Beautiful North” and other works by Luis Alberto Urrea.

The Lake County Library is partnering with the Lake County Friends of Mendocino College to present this free event for the public.

Churchill, the poet, examines novelist Urrea’s works in terms of his eloquent images, his craftsmanship, his masterful writing, his impossible-seeming stories and his cultural perspectives.

Churchill is currently reading and absorbing Urrea’s novel “The Hummingbird’s Daughter,” based on people and events in Urrea’s family history, as is much of his writing.

Churchill teaches modern languages at Mendocino Community College and Santa Rosa Junior College. He served as Poet Laureate of Ukiah 2014-2016 and has been a California Poet in the Public Schools since 1998, working primarily with bilingual youth and youth at risk.

His published works include “Song of Seasons,” “Controlled Burn,” “Durmiendo con Fantasmas/Sleeping with Ghosts” and “El Velo/The Veil.” His work has been published in anthologies and literary journals, and he enjoys performing readings of his poetry.

“Into the Beautiful North” follows the adventures of 19-year-old Nayeli who works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father who journeyed to the United States when she was young. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village – they've all gone north.

While watching “The Magnificent Seven,” Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men--her own "Siete Magníficos” – to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over.

A national initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, the NEA Big Read broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book.

For more information on this event, please contact the library at 707-263-8817. You also can view a full calendar of events for the NEA Big Read in Lake County, which continues through October, at http://www.lakecountybigread.com.

The Lake County Library is on the internet at http://library.lakecountyca.gov and Facebook at www.facebook.com/LakeCountyLibrary.

Jan Cook is a library technician with the Lake County Library.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Control has a remaining fire dog and several new dogs needing homes this week.

Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of German Shepherd, hound, husky, Labrador Retriever, McNab, pit bull, Rottweiler, terrier and Shiba Inu.

One of the dogs featured is Winston, the last of the dogs taken in during the Mendocino Complex.

Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.

The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).

Female pit bull

This female pit bull terrier has a short fawn and white coat.

She already has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 18, ID No. 11199.

Shiba Inu mix

This female Shiba Inu mix has a short red and brown coat.

She already has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 19, ID No. 11198.

Female terrier-McNab mix

This female terrier-McNab mix has a short black coat.

She’s in kennel No. 20, ID No. 11210.

Male terrier-McNab mix

This male terrier-McNab mix has a short black coat.

He’s in kennel No. 21, ID No. 11211.

Female pit bull terrier

This female pit bull terrier has a short brown coat.

She’s in kennel No. 22, ID No. 11192.

‘George’

“George” is a male pit bull terrier with a short brindle and white coat.

He’s in kennel No. 25, ID No. 11082.

‘Naquysa’

“Naquysa,” which means “Star,” is a 9-year-old female husky-shepherd mix with a long black and tan coat.

Shelter staff said she is good with other larger dogs, but she is not recommended for a home with small dogs or cats.

She’s in kennel No. 27, ID No. 11000.

Male German Shepherd mix

This male German Shepherd mix has a short brown and black coat.

He already has been neutered.

He’s in kennel No. 28, ID No. 11223.

Male Labrador Retriever mix

This male Labrador Retriever mix has a short black coat with white markings.

He already has been neutered.

He’s in kennel No. 29, ID No. 11151.

Female pit bull

This female pit bull has a short brindle and white coat.

She already has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 30, ID No. 11152.

‘Hashi’

“Hashi” is a senior male pit bull terrier-shepherd mix.

He has a short tan coat and already has been neutered.

Shelter staff said he is good with other dogs and with children, but is not good with cats.

He’s in kennel No. 31, ID No. 7499.

Female hound

This female hound has a brown and white coat.

She already has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 32, ID No. 11116.

‘Winston’

“Winston” is a male pit bull terrier and Rottweiler mix with a short black and brown coat.

He was taken in during the Mendocino Complex in the city of Lakeport.

He’s good with people and other dogs, and is high energy.

He’s in kennel No. 34, ID No. 10970.

Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .

For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

BERKELEY, Calif. – For one brief shining moment after the 2015 detection of gravitational waves from colliding black holes, astronomers held out hope that the universe’s mysterious dark matter might consist of a plenitude of black holes sprinkled throughout the universe.

University of California, Berkeley, physicists have dashed those hopes.

Based on a statistical analysis of 740 of the brightest supernovas discovered as of 2014, and the fact that none of them appear to be magnified or brightened by hidden black hole “gravitational lenses,” the researchers concluded that primordial black holes can make up no more than about 40 percent of the dark matter in the universe.

Primordial black holes could only have been created within the first milliseconds of the Big Bang as regions of the universe with a concentrated mass tens or hundreds of times that of the sun collapsed into objects a hundred kilometers across.

The results suggest that none of the universe’s dark matter consists of heavy black holes, or any similar object, including massive compact halo objects, so-called MACHOs.

Dark matter is one of astronomy’s most embarrassing conundrums: despite comprising 84.5 percent of the matter in the universe, no one can find it. Proposed dark matter candidates span nearly 90 orders of magnitude in mass, from ultralight particles like axions to MACHOs.

Several theorists have proposed scenarios in which there are multiple types of dark matter. But if dark matter consists of several unrelated components, each would require a different explanation for its origin, which makes the models very complex.

“I can imagine it being two types of black holes, very heavy and very light ones, or black holes and new particles. But in that case one of the components is orders of magnitude heavier than the other, and they need to be produced in comparable abundance. We would be going from something astrophysical to something that is truly microscopic, perhaps even the lightest thing in the universe, and that would be very difficult to explain,” said lead author Miguel Zumalacárregui, a Marie Curie Global Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics.

An as-yet unpublished reanalysis by the same team using an updated list of 1,048 supernovas cuts the limit in half, to a maximum of about 23 percent, further slamming the door on the dark matter-black hole proposal.

“We are back to the standard discussions. What is dark matter? Indeed, we are running out of good options,” said UrošSeljak, a UC Berkeley professor of physics and astronomy and BCCP co-director. “This is a challenge for future generations.”

The analysis is detailed in a paper published Oct. 1 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Dark matter lensing

Their conclusions are based on the fact that an unseen population of primordial black holes, or any massive compact object, would gravitationally bend and magnify light from distant objects on its way to Earth.

Therefore, gravitational lensing should affect the light from distant Type Ia supernovas. These are the exploding stars that scientists have used as standard brightness sources to measure cosmic distances and document the expansion of the universe.

Zumalacárregui conducted a complex statistical analysis of data on the brightness and distance supernovas catalogued in two compilations – 580 in the Union and 740 in the joint light-curve analysis (JLA) catalogs – and concluded that eight should be brighter by a few tenths of a percent than predicted based on observations of how these supernovas brighten and fade over time. No such brightening has been detected.

Other researchers have performed similar but simpler analyses that yielded inconclusive results. But Zumalacárregui incorporated the precise probability of seeing all magnifications, from small to huge, as well as uncertainties in brightness and distance of each supernova.

Even for low-mass black holes – those 1 percent the mass of the sun – there should be some highly magnified distant supernovas, he said, but there are none.

“You cannot see this effect on one supernova, but when you put them all together and do a full Bayesian analysis you start putting very strong constraints on the dark matter, because each supernova counts and you have so many of them,” Zumalacárregui said. The more supernovas included in the analysis, and the farther away they are, the tighter the constraints. Data on 1,048 bright supernovas from the Pantheon catalog provided an even lower upper limit – 23 percent – than the newly published analysis.

Seljak published a paper proposing this type of analysis in the late 1990s, but when interest shifted from looking for big objects, MACHOs, to looking for fundamental particles, in particular weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, follow-up plans fell by the wayside. By then, many experiments had excluded most masses and types of MACHOs, leaving little hope of discovering such objects.

At the time, too, only a small number of distant Type Ia supernovas had been discovered and their distances measured.

Only after the LIGO observations brought up the issue again did Seljak and Zumalacárregui embark on the complicated analysis to determine the limits on dark matter.

“What was intriguing is that the masses of the black holes in the LIGO event were right where black holes had not yet been excluded as dark matter,” Seljak said. “That was an interesting coincidence that got everyone excited. But it was a coincidence.”

Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – A Lakeport man arrested earlier this year for trafficking young local women as prostitutes in the Bay Area has reached a plea agreement with the Lake County District Attorney’s Office.

On Friday, Sam Lindsey Massette, 37, pleaded guilty to two counts of human trafficking for the purposes of prostitution and two counts of pimping women in prostitution, according to District Attorney Don Anderson.

Under an agreement with Anderson, Massette will receive sentences of 20 years for human trafficking of a victim identified as Jane Doe 2.

He also will receive concurrent sentences of 20 for human trafficking of Jane Doe 1, six years for pimping of Jane Doe 3 and six years for pimping of Jane Doe 4, for a total maximum aggregate term of 52 years, Anderson said.

Anderson said that charges against Massette for human trafficking of Jane Doe 5 were dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

The agreement comes days ahead of Massette’s preliminary hearing in the case, which Anderson had previously reported was set for Oct. 17.

On Oct. 2, Massette’s wife, Krystina Pickersgill, 28, pleaded guilty to one count of human trafficking, as Lake County News has reported.

Under an agreement with Anderson, Pickersgill will be placed on probation with a maximum prison sentence of 12 years if she does not complete probation.

Her agreement was entered into based on her mental health issues and lack of any criminal history. Anderson explained that Massette had taken her off her medication and then started an effective pattern of manipulation and brainwashing.

In the beginning Pickersgill was a victim of human trafficking and is now starting her recovery and getting her life back, Anderson said.

The investigation into this matter started after the performance “Jane Doe in Wonderland” about human trafficking. After the performance victim Jane Doe 1 approached Anderson, who was a speaker at the play, and explained she was a victim of human trafficking.

The investigation led to the service of 26 search warrants for locations including Massette’s house at 2569 Lagoon Drive, Lakeport, were the defendants were arrested, Anderson said.

The investigation revealed Massette ran a high class human trafficking ring, using Lake County girls, and working primarily out of San Francisco, according to Anderson.

Anderson said Massette and Pickersgill recruited girls at an early age while they are still in high school.

It’s also alleged that in 2006 Massette trafficked two minors ages 16 and 17 for prostitution. Anderson said some of the victims were coerced and threatened to perform acts of prostitution. Pickersgill was not part of the human trafficking of the minors in 2006.

In addition to their respective sentences, Massette and Pickersgill have waived all their interest in property seized by the District Attorney’s Office pursuant to the Profits Organized Crime Act, Anderson said.

Seized by the District Attorney’s Office was $14,530 in cash and four vehicles valued at more than $300,000. Anderson said the seized assets will be turned over to the county of Lake’s general fund.

Anderson extended his appreciation to the five women who came forward and put a stop to this human trafficking ring.

“These women showed extreme bravery by coming forward and helping our office,” he said. “They have undoubtedly saved many young women from a life of being trafficked into prostitution.”

He added, “I also want to extend sincere gratitude to the human trafficking investigators of the District Attorney’s Office who have worked countless hours fighting the once growing epidemic of human trafficking in Lake County.”

Anderson said the District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting two other separate cases involving human trafficking.

“We will continue to make every effort to free these victims from those who force them into prostitution against their will and help give them a new start in life,” he said.

NORTH COAST, Calif. – A semi wreck that occurred on the Hopland Grade has led to planned closures of the highway this coming week in order to recover the truck and its trailer.

Caltrans posted video of the Thursday wreck, which can be seen above.

In a crash report issued on Friday, the California Highway Patrol’s Ukiah Area office said the crash occurred at 1:25 p.m. Thursday on the Mendocino County side of Highway 175 near a construction zone.

Lodi resident Christopher Cortez was driving a 2012 Peterbilt westbound with an attached loaded trailer of plywood. The CHP said he had passed multiple regulatory signs prohibiting any vehicle over 39 feet in length, which he failed to obey.

Due to the overall length of the semi and trailer, Cortez was unable to negotiate the turn in the roadway, causing the vehicle to roll down the embankment, the CHP said.

The Caltrans video shows the trailer beginning to overturn first before the semi twisted over onto its passenger side and slid off the roadway.

The CHP said Cortez, who was the semi’s only occupant, was uninjured, and neither alcohol nor drugs were factors in the wreck, which remains under investigation.

The Caltrans District 1 office reported that recovery of the truck and trailer is set for next week.

Caltrans spokeswoman Cori Reed said full closure of Highway 175 will be necessary during the recovery operation.

She said Highway 175 from 5.6 miles east of Highway 101 to Mathews Road outside of Lakeport will be under a full closure on Monday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., during which time the truck and trailer will be recovered.

Reed said the truck’s load of plywood will be recovered on Tuesday and Wednesday.

On those days, the closures will be shorter, lasting from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., in order to help accommodate commuter traffic, Reed said.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake Tribe donated $4,000 to the Lake County Office of Education to be awarded to the six Lake County schools with the best attendance during the 2018-2019 countywide Attendance Challenge.

The Attendance Challenge runs two different weeks this year. The first week runs from Oct. 15 through 19. The second week begins on March 19.

The winning schools will be determined based on the attendance rate of both weeks combined.

“The Habematolel consistently supports within our tribe and the community our youth’s educational and extracurricular goals through tribal programs and direct contributions to local school programs and individuals,” said Sherry Treppa, chair of the Habematolel Pomo Executive Council.

Habematolel donated award money for last year’s Attendance Challenge. Clear Lake High School, Terrace Middle School and Coyote Valley Elementary School were the winning schools.

This year there are six categories, which include:

1. Highest Attendance Percentage for a Lake County Elementary School.

2. Highest Attendance Percentage for a Lake County Middle School.

3. Highest Attendance Percentage for a Lake County High School.

4. Highest Attendance Percentage for a Lake County Alternative School.

5. Highest Attendance Percentage for a Lake County Preschool School.

6. Most Improved Attendance Percentage Lake County School.

“With chronic absenteeism being a true concern for Lake County students, LCOE staff brainstormed solutions to help educate the students, parents and community on the importance of attendance. And thus, the Attendance Challenge was born,” said Lake County Superintendent of Schools Brock Falkenberg.

The definition of “chronic absenteeism” is missing 10 percent of the school year—or about 18 days – for any reason, excused or unexcused. This equals missing two days of school a month.

Rob Young, Emergency Services/Special Projects Coordinator at LCOE, who is responsible for organizing the Attendance Challenge, explained that the winning school in each category will receive $500 to be used to celebrate and support good attendance.

The remainder of the donation money will purchase “Attendance Challenge Winner” banners for each winning school to display.

Treppa said, “Our youth are our future workforce, and our tribal and community leaders. It is vital that current leaders and parents ensure our youth are well educated, socially adjusted and prepared to take on those responsibilities. The first step to achieving this is to assure their attendance at school.”

“The Lake County Office of Education is grateful for the partnership with the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake Tribe,” Falkenberg added. “We thank them for their continuing support of our county’s attendance activities for all local students.”