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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — A Lake County resident now studying at Mendocino College has been elected to a state board that will give him the opportunity to advocate for community college students.
Leonardo Rodriguez of Kelseyville, who turned 20 in June, was elected on Aug. 12 to the California Community College Trustees Board as its student member for the 2021-22 academic year.
Born in Mexico, Rodriguez’s family came to the United States when he was 5 years old.
He refers to himself as a “Dreamer” — a reference to the DREAM Act that was proposed, but not passed, in Congress to assist young people with immigration status.
He’s lived in Lake County since he was in fifth grade. He’s a 2019 graduate of Kelseyville High School and a first-generation college student.
Rodriguez also is the student trustee for the Mendocino-Lake College District Board of Trustees, a role he was selected to fill last semester by fellow students.
Student trustees have the same general responsibilities as all trustees to represent the interests of the entire community, while also providing a student perspective on the issues facing the board.
Mendocino College Superintendent/President Tim Karas said Rodriguez’s selection to the California Community College Trustee, or CCCT, Board is a first for the Mendocino-Lake College District.
“This is transformational for us. Student Trustee Rodriguez will provide a voice for 2.1 million California community college students. His voice will inform and shape statewide strategic directions. Having an advocate for rural colleges with an equity mindset is critical to deliver higher education to all,” Karas said.
The CCCT Board consists of 21 members elected statewide by the 73 district California Community College governing boards and a student-member elected by the student trustees.
The board takes positions on and formulates education policy issues that come before the California Community Colleges Board of Governors, the State Legislature, and other relevant state-level boards and commissions.
This policy board provides input to the League Board to advance the mission and effectively serve the organization's member colleges.
Rodriguez told Lake County News that he ran for the CCCT Board on a platform of implementing anti-racist and equitable policies, expanding dual enrollment in urban and rural communities, and establishing student retention initiatives.
He wants to see policies instituted that are race conscious and which look at impacts on all student demographics. Making sure classes are culturally relevant and ensuring student success are part of implementing anti-racist policies, he said.
Rodriguez was endorsed by District 5 Supervisor Jessica Pyska and community organizer Luisa Acosta.
An introduction to service
Before he was elected to the college and state boards, Rodriguez served on the Lake County Latinx COVID-19 advocacy group, which started last year when there was an outbreak in the agricultural sector.
The group had urged officials to give out masks and do on-site testing, and it was there he worked with Acosta. He said he also felt then-Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace had valued his voice and ideas as he advocated for the Hispanic community.
Rodriguez felt that if his voice was valued there, he wondered if it would also be welcomed at the college board level.
“Really, it was about representation,” he said, explaining his entry into running for the college boards.
In July, Rodriguez also spoke to the Lake County Board of Supervisors to raise his concerns about the impact of COVID-19 on students, suggesting that with the surge and the fact that only about half of the county was vaccinated, that schools should probably not yet reopen.
Rodriguez told Lake County News that COVID-19 hasn’t revealed new problems in education, but rather has highlighted existing issues, including academic failure, financial insecurity, mental health and inequities when it comes to access to technology.
“Community colleges are often almost a home for a lot of students,” he said. “It really does become their space.”
Having their space taken away by COVID-19 has impacted students both in the short-term and the long-term as they struggled to make the transition from in-person to online courses, he said.
He said some students also are having to give up their dreams of college to help their families stay afloat, an issue he’s been hearing a lot about.
Students are missing the in-person dynamics, discussion and interaction that are part of the full package of what higher education is, Rodriguez said.
This is Rodriguez’s second year in college and he’ll be graduating from Mendocino College soon. He is on track to graduate with associates degrees in three majors — political science, history and liberal arts with a focus on social sciences.
He plans to transfer to Sacramento State University to pursue his bachelor's degree in political science and will then go on to obtain his master’s degree.
Rodriguez plans to do internships in Sacramento so he can meet legislators and continue working with the community to learn about the problems people in society face.
Advocacy for the Hispanic community is a key concern for Rodriguez, noting he looks forward to seeing immigration reform passed.
He said he wants to serve California and its people “in any capacity that will allow me to complete my life dream of being a voice for those who are unheard.”
Email Elizabeth Larson at
The head-on crash occurred at about 9:15 p.m. Saturday on Highway 20 east of Clearlake Oaks, in the area of mile post marker 39.5, according to radio traffic and California Highway Patrol reports.
Vehicles involved were described as a silver SUV and a white sedan, with a third vehicle reported to be 30 feet down an embankment.
First responders reported the vehicles were blocking the roadway when they arrived.
There were a total of six patients, with two seriously injured, according to radio reports.
Firefighters and deputies were reported to be looking for additional crash victims in the creek but radio traffic did not indicate any were found.
Ground ambulances transported several of the patients, with two air ambulances requested to respond to Adventist Health Clear Lake Hospital to transport two crash victims to out-of-county trauma centers, scanner traffic said.
The air ambulances were reported to have flown the two most seriously injured patients to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.
Firefighters reported clearing the scene just after 11 p.m.
Additional information was not immediately available late Saturday night.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — A new organization, the Konocti Women’s Service Club, has formed to continue the work that has been done for more than 40 years by the Konocti Lioness Club.
In the 1920s, service clubs called Ladies Auxiliary were partners in service with Lions Clubs.
By 1949 there were auxiliary clubs forming throughout the world and dedicating themselves to volunteering.
In 1975, the international body that governs the Lions Clubs formally recognized Ladies Auxiliaries as Lioness Clubs. By 1985, 5,300 Lioness Clubs were active in 92 countries with membership totaling 139,412.
In the shadow of Mount Konocti in Lake County, the Konocti Lioness Club was formed in 1980 and its members have served their community as dedicated Lionesses for 40 years with their motto of “For Kids’ Sake.”
In 1992 the international body that governs Lioness Clubs decided they could no longer support the Lioness Program as it was. Individual Lioness Clubs could continue as a service program with their local Lions Club still maintaining a Lion liaison officer.
Consequently, in 2018, that same governing body announced the end of the Lioness Program as it was known, dissolving all ties to the program effective June 30, 2021.
Across the globe, Lioness clubs have chosen to leave the international body in favor of their own programs and will launch under new names and banners.
That resulted in a new beginning.
In 2021, many of the former Lioness Clubs aligned to form the Global Service Organization, a global community of service clubs. Their goal is to continue the service the Lioness Clubs began creating a platform that will allow members to build a global service community and continue serving for many years to come.
The Konocti Lioness Club has reorganized to become the Konocti Women’s Service Club, a proud independent service club, looking forward to serving the Lake County community with the same motto, “For Kids’ Sake.”
All of the money raised goes to charities that support at-risk children.
The purpose of their club is to provide opportunities for women to unite in friendship and in mutual understanding, and to guide, teach and reach the children of our community.
Their goal is to give service and to be philanthropic with their money to support youth with dignity and motivation.
Over the last five years, the club has given high school scholarships totaling $15,000 and has supported their local schools with supplies.
They partnered with Flotilla 88 of Lake County to provide youngsters life jackets and have provided and staffed three summer day camps for elementary age children.
The Konocti Women’s Service Club has been supported recently by the folks at Dream of a Better World, whose generosity helped the club to provide Christmas gifts to individuals who had fallen on hard times in December of 2020.
Now, the club is glad to be on the move and happy to be a part of the worldwide community of the Global Service Organization.
Konocti Women’s Service Club members are fun, strong and energized to do good for their community. They are also looking forward to meeting other service clubs throughout the world.
Dorothy De Lope is a member of the new Konocti Women’s Service Club.
My son’s kindergarten teachers, holding class on Zoom last year, instructed: “Eyes watching, ears listening, voices quiet, bodies still.” However, I noticed my 6-year-old’s hands would stay busy with items found around our house, building with Legos, shaping clay or doodling with a crayon.
While some might describe this child as being “off task,” research suggests his manipulation of materials actually aroused his mind, allowing it to focus on the required task.
As a parent of two school-aged children and a professor and researcher of learning with technology, I believe current models of remote education are inefficient for learning, teaching and productivity.
That’s because sitting in front of a computer screen subdues, or completely detaches people from, many of the sense-making abilities of their bodies. To learn most efficiently, our minds depend on the movement of our bodies, working with a variety of tools, being in dynamic places and having our collaborators nearby.
The body’s role in thinking
Most notably, remote learning assumes that as long as the mind is engaged, it’s fine if the body stays still. But this argument is backward.
Research from embodied cognition – the study of the body’s role in thinking – shows that the body must first be interacting with the world to activate and open up the mind for learning.
That’s why, for example, students working with a variety of tools and materials during a learning activity are better able to grasp abstract concepts, such as gravitational acceleration or fractions.
To ask students to sit still while performing their work actually increases their cognitive load, or the burden on the mind. It requires them to concentrate on quieting their bodies, which are seeking out avenues for sense-making, as well as on the primary task that fixes them to their desk or digital screen.
As psychologists Christine Langhanns and Hermann Müller concluded from studies of people solving math problems, “Sitting quietly is not necessarily the best condition for learning in school.”
Learning from our environment
Humans’ internal thoughts are extensions of the world around them. The technologies and tools they use, the people they collaborate with, the walk they take to school or work, all evoke feelings in the body. Their minds then assemble these feelings, making meaning or thoughts that are informed by past experiences.
In this way, thoughts are iterative. People sense their way through current moments while bringing to bear what they have learned over the body’s accumulated history. Learning to safely cross the road, for instance, takes practice. Over time, the brain organizes input from the senses to recognize a good time for crossing.
Importance of gesture
Gesture is yet another essential use of the body for thinking and learning.
Not only do people’s hand movements, head turns and shrugs add nuance and emphasis to words spoken to listeners, gestures help speakers form thoughts into words before speaking them.
In problem-solving scenarios, research shows that for many math learners, their gestures show they understand strategies before they can articulate those solutions through speech. In this way, educators trained to look for and understand gesture can see a learner’s process and progress in understanding concepts before a student is able to translate that understanding to speech or a written test.
Additionally, educators and other experts can use gesture to more efficiently explain concepts to students and novices. Gestures make abstractions visible, giving them temporary form.
A view of the whole person, therefore, facilitates learning from one another. But that’s a stark contrast to a year spent seeing only the faces of fellow students and teachers, or just a blank box.
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Get ready to move
Some students will remain online this school year – due to health or other concerns – while others will return to in-person classrooms. I believe both models of school can better incorporate the body to support learning. The following tips are for educators designing remote or in-person classes, though parents and students can also encourage and help sustain an active classroom culture.
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Normalize movement during classes, not just during movement breaks. For instance, make a neighborhood walk the mode of inquiry for the day’s science lesson. Ask students to bring back their observations to the whole group.
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Begin every class with time to assemble different materials to think and work with, such as notebooks and different kinds of paper, various writing and drawing instruments, putty and blocks. Incorporate interaction with these tools throughout the lesson.
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Encourage and use gestures. If online, invite camera use, and back away to give students a wider view.
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Build in time for students to tune in to how their body is feeling as a window into their emotional state.
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Provide opportunities for iteration, practicing a task in different contexts and with different tools and people that engage the body in different ways. The content or big idea stays the same, but how and with whom students engage shifts.
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If online, try out videoconferencing platforms like Ohyay that try to replicate physical closeness and movement in a virtual space.
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Consider the classroom as extending out into the school campus and neighborhood. Allowing students to experience a familiar location in a different way, with their classmates and teacher, can evoke new perspectives and thoughts.
Teachers, parents and students can all change their expectations of what being “on task” looks like. Walking, running or dancing may not seem related to a particular task at hand, but these activities often help people do their best thinking. Activating the body activates the mind, so “seat time” might better be titled “activity time.”
Katie Headrick Taylor, Associate Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development, University of Washington
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Australian kelpie, beagle, Doberman pinscher, hound, husky, Labrador retriever, mastiff, miniature pinscher, pit bull, rat terrier, Rhodesian ridgeback, Rottweiler, shepherd and terrier.
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.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control website not listed are still “on hold”).
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm for information on visiting or adopting.
‘Coco’
“Coco” is a 5-year-old female chocolate Labrador retriever.
She is in kennel No. 6, ID No. LCAC-A-1541.
‘Carlos’
“Carlos” is a 1-year-old male Labrador retriever-pit bull mix with a short black and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 7, ID No. LCAC-A-1566.
Male miniature pinscher
This 1-year-old male miniature pinscher has a short blond coat.
He is in kennel No. 8, ID No. LCAC-A-1515.
Male beagle
This 1-year-old male beagle has a short tricolor coat.
He is in kennel No. 9, ID No. LCAC-A-1524.
American pit bull terrier mix
This 5-year-old American pit bull terrier mix has a short brindle coat.
He is in kennel No. 12, ID No. LCAC-A-1483.
Female pit bull-hound mix
This young female American pit bull-terrier mix has a short white coat.
She is in kennel No. 13, ID No. LCAC-A-1470.
‘Peanut’
“Peanut” is a 1-year-old female Doberman Pinscher with a short red and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 14, LCAC-A-1447.
‘Baby’
“Baby” is a 2-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback-pit bull mix with a short tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 16, ID No. LCAC-A-1520.
Male pit bull
This 2-year-old male pit bull has a short gray coat.
He is in kennel No. 17, ID No. LCAC-A-1568.
‘Deisel’
“Deisel” is a young male terrier mix with a short blond coat.
He is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-1578.
Male Labrador retriever
This 2-year-old male Labrador retriever has a short black coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 19, ID No. LCAC-A-1349.
‘Oliver’
“Oliver” is a 1-year-old Australian kelpie-rat terrier mix with a short tricolor coat.
He is in kennel No. 20, ID No. LCAC-A-1551.
‘Shamus McGee’
“Shamus McGee” is an 8-year-old male Labrador retriever mix with a short black coat.
He is in kennel No. 21, ID No. LCAC-A-1509.
‘Dusty’
“Dusty” is a 2-year-old female pit bull terrier mix with a short gray coat.
She is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-611.
‘Jim’
“Jim” is a 2-year-old pit bull terrier mix with a short black and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 23, ID No. LCAC-A-810.
Female mastiff
This 2-year-old female mastiff has a short brindle and white coat.
She weighs 102 pounds.
She is in kennel No. 24, ID No. LCAC-A-1395.
‘Rosco’
“Rosco” is 3-year-old a male Rhodesian ridgeback-Shepherd mix with a short tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 25, ID No. LCAC-A-1205.
‘Rudy’
“Rudy” is a 4-year-old male Chihuahua with a short red coat.
He is in kennel No. 26, ID No. LCAC-A-1394.
Female pit bull terrier
This 4-year-old female pit bull terrier mix has a short white coat.
She is in kennel No. 29, ID No. LCAC-A-812.
‘Bubba’
“Bubba” is a male pit bull terrier mix with a short black coat.
He is in kennel No. 30, ID No. LCAC-A-1306.
Labrador retriever mix
This 1-year-old male Labrador retriever mix has a short brindle coat.
He is in kennel No. 31, ID No. LCAC-A-1426.
Male husky
This 2-year-old male husky has a red and cream coat.
He is in kennel No. 32, ID No. LCAC-A-1024.
Male pit bull mix
This 2-year-old male pit bull terrier mix has a short brindle coat.
He is in kennel No. 33, ID No. LCAC-A-1528.
‘Ghost’
“Ghost” is a 2-year-old female husky with an all-white coat and blue eyes.
She is in kennel No. 34, ID No. LCAC-A-1167.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
Protecting the ozone layer also protects Earth’s vegetation and has prevented the planet from an additional 0.85 degrees Celsius of warming, according to new research from Lancaster University, NASA, and others.
This new study in Nature demonstrates that by protecting the ozone layer, which blocks harmful ultraviolet, or UV, radiation, the Montreal Protocol regulating ozone-depleting substances also protects plants — and their ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere.
The impact from plants has not been accounted for in previous climate change research.
“We know the ozone layer is connected to climate. We know greenhouse gases affect the ozone layer. But what we’ve never done before this is connect the ozone layer to the terrestrial carbon cycle,” said lead author Paul Young, an atmospheric and climate scientist at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.
The ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, or stratosphere, blocks UV radiation that can damage living tissue, including plants.
The ozone “hole,” discovered in 1985, is the result of humans emitting chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are ozone-depleting chemicals and greenhouse gases that were once commonly used as coolants in refrigerators and in aerosols like hairspray. They were then phased out of use by the Montreal Protocol signed in 1987 and its subsequent amendments.
Scientists have previously simulated the world that we avoided by banning CFCs. Now, the new study returns to the same question — what would happen if CFCs continued to be emitted? — and looked at the effect on plants.
“Past world-avoided experiments have never considered the impacts of increased UV radiation on plants, and what that would mean for the plants’ ability to sequester carbon,” said Young.
The team used a series of models to gain a more complete picture and simulate two hypothetical scenarios: the world projected and the world avoided. “The world projected is similar to the path we’re currently on,” said Luke Oman, a research physical scientist focusing on atmospheric chemistry and dynamics at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The world avoided represents a path not taken.”
For the world-avoided scenario, the researchers assumed that CFC emissions would increase at the same rate, 3% every year, from the 1970s onward. The models show that there would be a huge thinning of the ozone layer across the globe by 2050. By 2100, ozone holes forming in the tropics would be worse than what has been observed in the Antarctic ozone hole.
In their models of the world-avoided, a depleted ozone layer would let more harmful ultraviolet radiation reach the surface, inhibiting plants from storing carbon in their tissue and in the soil. As a result, atmospheric CO2 levels are estimated to be 30% higher than they would likely be under Earth’s current trajectory. Consequently, Earth would likely be an additional 0.85°C hotter in that “world-avoided” scenario solely because of the impact on plants.
This global thinning of the ozone layer would allow significantly more harmful UV radiation from the sun to reach the surface, which would effectively sunburn the plants on Earth, said Young. Earth’s trees and vegetation would be much less efficient at photosynthesis, hindering their ability to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it, storing carbon in plant tissue and the soil for many years.
Overall, the damage to plants would result in 580 billion metric tons less carbon stored in forests, soil and vegetation. It would instead be released into the atmosphere, increasing atmospheric CO2 levels by 30% on average compared to the world projected scenario.
That huge increase in atmospheric CO2 alone would cause global temperatures to rise 0.85°C by 2100, according to the models. That’s on top of the warming Earth may experience due to prior and expected emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, as well as the 1.7°C of direct warming due to increased CFC emissions in this scenario.
But how do we know this “world-avoided” scenario is anything like the world that would come to be without the Montreal Protocol? The team checked their models against historical data collected by NASA satellites and other available data from NASA’s partners.
For example, they looked at ozone levels recorded by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument aboard NASA’s Aura satellite and compared them to what the models “predicted” would have happened.
What happened in the model was very close to what actually happened in the past, giving the scientists confidence that their model could accurately project what may happen in the future.
Sofie Bates is a member of NASA's Earth Science News Team.