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CLEARLAKE OAKS, Calif. – Bike Angels United is planning its seventh giveaway for fire survivors and children in need this fall.

The giveaway for survivors of the Pawnee fire and Mendocino Complex will take place at the Clearlake Oaks Moose Lodge on Saturday, Nov. 10.

Bike Angels is an all-volunteer group formed by Candy Alcott of Livermore.

Alcott’s original goal was to bring joy to the families and children affected by the 2015 Valley fire.

Since then, the group has continued its giveaways in response to the other wildfire disasters the county has endured.

Alcott said that hundreds of people have continued to support the group’s efforts for three years.

Now, they’re asking for more support as they prepare for their November giveaway.

Bicycles, new or gently used, and new helmets are needed.

Donations are also needed to fix bikes for the November giveaway.

Alcott said new bikes and helmets can be purchased online at www.walmart.com and shipped to the Clearlake Walmart (store No. 1979) for Bike Angels United. The order confirmation number should then be messaged to Alcott or to the Bike Angels United Facebook page.

For more information call Alcott at 850-375-8492 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or on Facebook contact Bike Angels United.

It is the unfortunate reality of the universe that life is not fair.

The world has no obligation to make our stay on it any better or worse than where our own actions take us.

For some people, life is a terrible thing to happen to them. For others, who learn to bend with the pressures of life rather than break, it holds limitless possibilities.

Take, by way of example, the little-known inventor Philo Farnsworth.

Philo was born in a log cabin in Indian Creek, Utah, in 1906. Stories tell us that from the time he could talk, he was asking questions about gadgets.

At 11, the boy and his family loaded up several wagons and made the long journey to Idaho, where they hoped to set up a new life.

On the way north, they stopped in Salt Lake City, where the electric street lights, cars and telephone wires set the young inquisitive boy agog with wonder.

The Farnsworths stayed a few years at an uncle's farm, which had electricity for light, heat and equipment.

It was while living here that Philo discovered his passion for tinkering and he routinely fixed the old generator and mechanical farm equipment on the farm.

His bedroom in the attic was full of science magazines, his favorite being Hugo Gernsback's “Science and Invention.”

He avidly followed the results of the magazine’s ongoing competition whereby readers from throughout the country submitted their inventions for consideration.

The magazine editors awarded prizes to the most spectacular inventions devised by their readership.

When he was 15 years old, his family moved out of his uncle’s house and onto their very own farm.

Shortly thereafter, Philo won Gernsback's first prize of $25 for best reader invention – he had built a magnetic car clock.

When he came of age, Philo attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where his family had recently moved. Unfortunately, when his father died suddenly a few years later, Philo dropped out of university to care for his now struggling family.

But that didn’t stop him from tinkering, and not long after dropping out of college, Philo attracted the attention of two investors.

With funding from these men, Philo moved with his new wife to a laboratory in San Francisco. It would be here that he would create his greatest invention to date.

For years, the young man had been kicking around the idea of transmitting images across space electronically.

The notion itself was nothing new and, in fact, other inventors throughout the world were struggling to develop just such a device – most notably, the Russian-born inventor Vladimir Zworykin at Westinghouse Electric Corp. in Pittsburgh.

The race was on to develop the world’s first feasible television set.

On Sept. 7, 1927, in his small laboratory in San Francisco, Philo placed a slide containing an image of a triangle in front of a machine he called an Image Dissector.

Retreating to a back room, Philo gathered around a receiving tube and pressed the button to commence the experiment. As he watched, one line of the triangle appeared in a small bluish square of light on the receiver – he had done it, he had invented television.

If he thought fortune and fame would soon be his, Philo was sorely mistaken. The age of the idealist-inventor-turned-businessman was past. It was up to capitalists, not the inventor, to fully harness the possibilities of new inventions.

That, at least, is how David Sarnoff saw things. Sarnoff was the president of Radio Corporation of America, more commonly known as RCA, the biggest radio company in the nation.

When news reached him of this Philo Farnsworth and his unbelievable device, Sarnoff knew he had to control it. So, the businessman sent along Vladimir Zworykin, the Russian inventor who now worked for RCA.

Zworykin approached his fellow inventor with RCA’s offer of $100,000 for the rights of the television – an amount of money equivalent to roughly $1.5 million today. But this Utahan farm-boy had more guile in him that Sarnoff had supposed, and he obstinately refused to sell his brainchild for so cheap a price.

So Sarnoff resorted to the favorite weapon of all capitalists – the courts. Suing Philo for supposed copyright infringement, Sarnoff hoped to bog down the inventor in a sea of lawyer bills and complicated legal briefs. Philo was equally determined, however, and he travelled to Europe to drum up investors and when he returned to America, he gave Sarnoff the fight of his life.

After nearly a decade of court battles, Sarnoff recognized that his profit margins were quickly dissipating. In 1939, he caved and offered Philo Farnsworth a $1 million, multi-year licensing agreement for his device.

Sticking to his guns had allowed Philo to holdout and instead of a one-time payment of $100,000, he received what in today’s equivalent would be $16.8 million for licensing alone.

Despite his achievements, Philo Farnsworth never received the acclaim he so deserved. In 1957, he was a mystery guest on the game show “I’ve Got a Secret.” A panel of celebrities peppered him with questions about his secret, but failed to guess what it was: “I invented the television.”

Philo’s prize for stumping the panel was $80 and a carton of cigarettes.

No, life isn’t fair – even for those, like Philo, who fight for the just purpose of receiving due rewards.

But, we can take heart in the story of Philo Farnsworth. He, at least, was able to assuage the injuries done to him by impartial Fate with $16.8 million.

Antone Pierucci is curator of history at the Riverside County Park and Open Space District and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.

A planet-encircling dust storm on Mars, which was first detected May 30 and halted operations for the Opportunity rover, continues to abate.

With clearing skies over Opportunity’s resting spot in Mars’ Perseverance Valley, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, believe the nearly 15-year-old, solar-powered rover will soon receive enough sunlight to automatically initiate recovery procedures – if the rover is able to do so.

To prepare, the Opportunity mission team has developed a two-step plan to provide the highest probability of successfully communicating with the rover and bringing it back online.

“The Sun is breaking through the haze over Perseverance Valley, and soon there will be enough sunlight present that Opportunity should be able to recharge its batteries,” said John Callas, Opportunity project manager at JPL. “When the tau level [a measure of the amount of particulate matter in the Martian sky] dips below 1.5, we will begin a period of actively attempting to communicate with the rover by sending it commands via the antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network. Assuming that we hear back from Opportunity, we will begin the process of discerning its status and bringing it back online.”

The rover’s last communication with Earth was received June 10, and Opportunity’s current health is unknown.

Opportunity engineers are relying on the expertise of Mars scientists analyzing data from the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to estimate the tau near the rover’s position.

“The dust haze produced by the Martian global dust storm of 2018 is one of the most extensive on record, but all indications are it is finally coming to a close,” said MRO Project Scientist Rich Zurek at JPL. “MARCI images of the Opportunity site have shown no active dust storms for some time within 3,000 kilometers [about 1,900 miles] of the rover site.”

With skies clearing, mission managers are hopeful the rover will attempt to call home, but they are also prepared for an extended period of silence.

“If we do not hear back after 45 days, the team will be forced to conclude that the Sun-blocking dust and the Martian cold have conspired to cause some type of fault from which the rover will more than likely not recover,” said Callas. “At that point our active phase of reaching out to Opportunity will be at an end. However, in the unlikely chance that there is a large amount of dust sitting on the solar arrays that is blocking the Sun’s energy, we will continue passive listening efforts for several months.”

The additional several months for passive listening are an allowance for the possibility that a Red Planet dust devil could come along and literally dust off Opportunity’s solar arrays.

Such “cleaning events” were first discovered by Mars rover teams in 2004 when, on several occasions, battery power levels aboard both Spirit and Opportunity increased by several percent during a single Martian night, when the logical expectation was that they would continue to decrease.

These cleaning dust devils have even been imaged by both rovers on the surface and spacecraft in orbit (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8lfJ0c7WQ8 and https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/5307/the-serpent-dust-devil-of-mars/ ).

The chances are small that dust accumulation would be the root cause of Opportunity’s lack of communication. Nonetheless, each day during the passive phase, JPL’s Radio Science group will scour the signal records taken by a very sensitive broadband receiver of radio frequencies emanating from Mars, looking for a sign that the rover is trying to reach out.

Even if the team hears back from Opportunity during either phase, there is no assurance the rover will be operational. The impact of this latest storm on Opportunity’s systems is unknown but could have resulted in reduced energy production, diminished battery performance, or other unforeseen damage that could make it difficult for the rover to fully return online.

While the situation in Perseverance Valley is critical, the rover team is cautiously optimistic, knowing that Opportunity has overcome significant challenges during its 14-plus years on Mars.

The rover lost use of its front steering – its left-front in June of 2017, and right front in 2005. Its 256-megabyte flash memory is no longer functioning.

The team also knows that everything about the rover is well beyond its warranty period – both Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, were constructed for 90-day missions (Spirit lasted 20 times longer and Opportunity is going on 60 times).

The rovers were designed to travel about 1,000 yards, and Opportunity has logged more than 28 miles. Through thick and thin, the team has seen their rover soldier on.

Now, Opportunity engineers and scientists of Opportunity are planning, and hoping, that this latest dilemma is just another bump in their Martian road.

“In a situation like this you hope for the best but plan for all eventualities,” said Callas. “We are pulling for our tenacious rover to pull her feet from the fire one more time. And if she does, we will be there to hear her.”

Updates on the dust storm and tau can be found at https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll.html.

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, built Opportunity and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

For more information about Opportunity, visit https://www.nasa.gov/rovers or https://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The county of Lake reported that its Mendocino Complex recovery coordinator will be holding office at several locations around the county in the coming week.

Lake County Recovery Coordinator Nathan Spangler will be available from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 4, through Friday, Sept. 7, at the following locations:

· Tuesday, Sept. 4: Scotts Valley Women’s Club, 2298 Hendricks Road, Lakeport.

· Wednesday, Sept. 5:Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Recovery Center at the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake Community Center, 9460 Main St., Upper Lake.

· Thursday, Sept. 6, Spring Valley Community Center, 1300 Wolf Creek Road, Clearlake Oaks.

· Friday, Sept. 7: Nylander Park Visitor Center, 12588 Acorn St., Clearlake Oaks.

The Ranch and River fires, together known as the Mendocino Complex, have exacted a considerable toll upon County lands and residents, alike.

County and city, state and federal agencies, local and national nonprofit groups, and countless community members have risen up in response.

Needs remain, and full recovery will be a long-term effort. Many wildfire survivors were able to take positive steps by visiting the county’s local assistance center, receiving a variety of supports and services in Lucerne in early August.

Dozens more have connected with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get information on federal assistance, including grants and low-interest disaster loans.

FEMA’s Disaster Resource Center remains open Monday through Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., at the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake Community Center, 9460 Main St., Upper Lake. The center will be closed for the Labor Day holiday, Monday, Sept. 3.

Each individual’s recovery journey is unique, and Lake County residents are understandably at various stages. Some are navigating initial responsive steps. Others, for example, have detailed questions regarding steps required to rebuild.

Some have practical needs, and may need to be pointed in the right direction to replace a vital document.

For others, emotional needs may be in the foreground, and the county can connect individuals with Behavioral Health and other supportive resources.

Given the diversity of emerging recovery needs and the geographic expansiveness of the Mendocino Complex disaster, it was decided to have Spangler travel to different locations around Lake County to connect with survivors.

“I am looking forward to meeting with Ranch and River fire survivors, helping to identify needs and available supports, and working with wildfire survivors to chart the best way forward,” said Spangler. “Whatever your recovery-related needs are right now, you are not alone. I hope to see many of you, and will happily do all I can to help make your next steps a little clearer.”

Spangler can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 916-521-7108.

LOWER LAKE, Calif. – This week Lake County Sheriff’s narcotics detectives arrested two men and a juvenile while serving a search warrant at an illegal marijuana grow in Lower Lake.

On Wednesday, the detectives served a search warrant in the 8800 block of Highway 29, according to a report from Lt. Corey Paulich.

When detectives made entry to the property through a locked gate they were confronted by two armed Hispanic males who were later identified as Carlos Cabadazazueta, 44, of Ukiah and Guillermo Cabadadelaherran, 19, of Lower Lake, Paulich said.

Paulich said Cabadadelaherran was armed with a 20-gauge shotgun and Cabadazazueta was armed with a .40-caliber handgun. After numerous verbal commands both suspects put down their guns.

While searching the property, detectives located a 16-year-old Hispanic male hiding in the brush who was in possession of more than $4,700, Paulich said.

On the property, Paulich said detectives located growing marijuana plants and three hoop style greenhouses that contained additional marijuana plants.

Detectives eradicated 858 marijuana plants and seized $5,493, Paulich said.

Cabadazazueta and Cabadadelaherran were both arrested and booked into custody for keeping a place to sell controlled substance, being armed while committing a felony, employing person under 21 to sell marijuana, cultivation of marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale, according to Paulich.

Paulich said the male juvenile also was taken into custody and turned over to juvenile probation for processing.

Due to the condition of the property detectives contacted Lake County Code Enforcement and requested they conduct an inspection, Paulich said.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – This week, Congressman John Garamendi (D-Davis, Fairfield, Yuba City) sent a letter with 12 of his California Democratic colleagues to the Federal Trade Commission calling for an investigation into Verizon for slowing the download speeds of the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s “unlimited” data plan after it hit a “data cap” while it was battling the Mendocino Complex fire, the largest wildfire in California history.

Specifically, Garamendi and his colleagues are asking the FTC to determine whether Verizon’s practices were ‘unfair’ or ‘deceptive’ pursuant to Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.

“Diminishing the download speeds of data that our firefighters rely upon to coordinate and deploy resources to fight active wildfires is unconscionable. The Mendocino Complex fire is threatening numerous communities throughout my district, including Lake County, which has experienced eight wildfires over the past three years. Any delay in firefighting efforts could be a disaster for my constituents, and we must ensure our first responders have unabated access to the services they rely upon to keep our communities safe,” Garamendi said.

“I’m calling upon the FTC to investigate this matter and determine whether Verizon is misleading customers in the services they offer, and to identify remedies that can prevent events like this from occurring in the future. I would like to thank Congresswoman Eshoo for coordinating this letter, and many of my California Democratic colleagues who joined us in this effort,” Garamendi concluded.

The letter was also signed by Representatives Nancy Pelosi (CA-11), Anna Eshoo (CA-18), Mark DeSaulnier (CA-11), Jared Huffman (CA-2), Ro Khanna (CA-17), Barbara Lee (CA-13), Zoe Lofgren (CA-19), Doris Matsui (CA-6), Jerry McNerney (CA-9), Jimmy Panetta (CA-20), Jackie Speier (CA-14), and Mike Thompson (CA-5).