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The following dogs are ready for adoption or foster.
“Bella” is a female Siberian Husky mix.
She has a long red and white coat.
She is dog No. 4428.
‘Ben’
“Ben” is a male American Pit Bull terrier mix.
He has a short brindle coat.
He is dog No. 4454.
‘Brownie’
“Brownie” is a male Chihuahua with a short black and tan coat.
He is dog No. 4431.
‘Bruce’
“Bruce” is a male American Staffordshire Terrier mix puppy.
He has a short smooth yellow coat.
He is dog No. 4383.
‘Bumble’
“Bumble” is a male Siberian Husky with a gray and black coat.
He is dog No. 4452.
‘Cindy Lou’
“Cindy Lou” is a female German Shepherd mix.
She has a medium-length tan and black coat.
She is dog No. 4448.
‘Jack’
“Jack” is a male Labrador Retriever mix with a short yellow coat.
He is dog No. 4155.
‘Jerry’
“Jerry” is a male American Pit Bull terrier with a short brindle coat.
He is dog No. 4455.
‘Rudolph’
“Rudolph” is a male shepherd mix.
He has a short tan and black coat.
He is dog No. 4436.
“Sadie” is a female American Pit Bull terrier mix with a short black and white coat.
She is dog No. 4460.
‘Sugarplum’
‘Sugarplum’ is a female German Shepherd mix.
She has a medium-length black coat.
She is dog No. 4447.
‘Tinsle’
“Tinsle” is a female American Pit Bull Terrier mix puppy.
She has a short brindle and brown coat.
She is dog No. 4433.
‘Toby’
“Toby” is a male boxer mix.
He has a short tan and white coat.
He is dog No. 4389.
‘Yule’
“Yule” is a husky of undetermined gender with a black and white coat.
Yule is dog No. 4432.
Call the Clearlake Animal Control shelter at 707-273-9440, or email
Visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or on the city’s website.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
Thousands of sparkling young stars are nestled within the giant nebula NGC 3603, one of the most massive young star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy.
NGC 3603, a prominent star-forming region in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way about 20,000 light-years away, reveals stages in the life cycle of stars.
Powerful ultraviolet radiation and fast winds from the bluest and hottest stars have blown a big bubble around the cluster.
Moving into the surrounding nebula, this torrent of radiation sculpted the tall, dark stalks of dense gas, which are embedded in the walls of the nebula.
These gaseous monoliths are a few light-years tall and point to the central cluster. The stalks may be incubators for new stars.
On a smaller scale, a cluster of dark clouds called "Bok" globules resides at the top, right corner. These clouds are composed of dense dust and gas and are about 10 to 50 times more massive than the sun.
Resembling an insect's cocoon, a Bok globule may be undergoing a gravitational collapse on its way to forming new stars.
The nebula was first discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1834.
When winter cold settles in across the U.S., the alleged “War on Christmas” heats up.
In recent years, department store greeters and Starbucks cups have sparked furor by wishing customers “happy holidays.” This year, with state officials warning of holiday gatherings becoming superspreader events in the midst of a pandemic, opponents of some public health measures to limit the spread of the pandemic are already casting them as attacks on the Christian holiday.
But debates about celebrating Christmas go back to the 17th century. The Puritans, it turns out, were not too keen on the holiday. They first discouraged Yuletide festivities and later outright banned them.
At first glance, banning Christmas celebrations might seem like a natural extension of a stereotype of the Puritans as joyless and humorless that persists to this day.
But as a scholar who has written about the Puritans, I see their hostility toward holiday gaiety as less about their alleged asceticism and more about their desire to impose their will on the people of New England – Natives and immigrants alike.
An aversion to Christmas chaos
The earliest documentary evidence for their aversion to celebrating Christmas dates back to 1621, when Gov. William Bradford of Plymouth Colony castigated some of the newcomers who chose to take the day off rather than work.
But why?
As a devout Protestant, Bradford did not dispute the divinity of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Puritans spent a great deal of time investigating their own and others’ souls because they were so committed to creating a godly community.
Bradford’s comments reflected Puritans’ lingering anxiety about the ways that Christmas had been celebrated in England. For generations, the holiday had been an occasion for riotous, sometimes violent behavior. The moralist pamphleteer Phillip Stubbes believed that Christmastime celebrations gave celebrants license “to do what they lust, and to folow what vanitie they will.” He complained about rampant “fooleries” like playing dice and cards and wearing masks.
Civil authorities had mostly accepted the practices because they understood that allowing some of the disenfranchised to blow off steam on a few days of the year tended to preserve an unequal social order. Let the poor think they are in control for a day or two, the logic went, and the rest of the year they will tend to their work without causing trouble.
English Puritans objected to accepting such practices because they feared any sign of disorder. They believed in predestination, which led them to search their own and others’ behavior for signs of saving grace. They could not tolerate public scandal, especially when attached to a religious moment.
Puritan efforts to crack down on Christmas revelries in England before 1620 had little impact. But once in North America, these seekers of religious freedom had control over the governments of New Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut.
Puritan intolerance
Boston became the focal point of Puritan efforts to create a society where church and state reinforced each other.
The Puritans in Plymouth and Massachusetts used their authority to punish or banish those who did not share their views. For example, they exiled an Anglican lawyer named Thomas Morton who rejected Puritan theology, befriended local Indigenous people, danced around a maypole and sold guns to the Natives. He was, Bradford wrote, “the Lord of Misrule” – the archetype of a dangerous type who Puritans believed create mayhem, including at Christmas.
In the years that followed, the Puritans exiled others who disagreed with their religious views, including Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams who espoused beliefs deemed unacceptable by local church leaders. In 1659, they banished three Quakers who had arrived in 1656. When two of them, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, refused to leave, Massachusetts authorities executed them in Boston.
This was the context for which Massachusetts authorities outlawed Christmas celebrations in 1659. Even after the statute left the law books in 1681 during a reorganization of the colony, prominent theologians still despised holiday festivities.
In 1687, the minister Increase Mather, who believed that Christmas celebrations derived from the bacchanalian excesses of the Roman holiday Saturnalia, decried those consumed “in Revellings, in excess of wine, in mad mirth.”
The hostility of Puritan clerics to celebrations of Christmas should not be seen as evidence that they always hoped to stop joyous behavior. In 1673, Mather had called alcohol “a good creature of God” and had no objection to moderate drinking. Nor did Puritans have a negative view of sex.
[You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter.]
What the Puritans did want was a society dominated by their views. This made them eager to convert Natives to Christianity, which they managed to do in some places. They tried to quash what they saw as usurious business practices within their community, and in Plymouth they executed a teenager who had sex with animals, the punishment prescribed by the Book of Leviticus. When the Puritans believed that Indigenous people might attack them or undermine their economy, they lashed out – most notoriously in 1637, when they set a Pequot village on fire, murdered those who tried to flee and sold captives into slavery.
By comparison to their treatment of Natives and fellow colonists who rebuffed their unbending vision, the Puritan campaign against Christmas seems tame. But it is a reminder of what can happen when the self-righteous control the levers of power in a society and seek to mold a world in their image.
Peter C. Mancall, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace said this week that Verily, a South San Francisco-based company that has been conducting testing for the virus in the county since the spring, will be replaced by OptumServe.
Pace said drive-thru testing will no longer be offered. Instead, testing will take place indoors at sites in Lakeport and Lower Lake.
Beginning on Jan. 4, OptumServe will offer testing at the Silveira Community Center, 500 N. Main St. in Lakeport from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Testing will be offered from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at the Lower Lake Town Hall, 16195 Main St.
Pace said walk-ins are welcome and no appointments are necessary. He said the new testing services should be much more accessible.
He said Rite Aid also is offering COVID-19 testing. Appointments can be made at the Rite Aid website, which shows that the service is available at the company’s Clearlake store and is being conducted by Verily.
Public Health officials have continued to urge people to be tested for the coronavirus as a way of identifying those who need care quickly and in an effort to prevent people who are infected from spreading it to others.
As of Wednesday, Lake County Public Health said approximately 21,804 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in Lake County, which has a population of just over 64,000.
Of those tests, 1,524, or 7 percent, have been positive, and 20,280, or 93 percent, have been negative, Lake County Public Health reported.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
CHP reminds Californians to stay safe for the holidays; Christmas Maximum Enforcement Period planned
Although traffic may be lighter this holiday season, it is not an invitation to speed.
The rules of the road still apply, and motorists should avoid driving tired, impaired or distracted.
California has instituted a regional stay at home order throughout most of the state and is advising residents to stay close to home as much as possible and not travel significant distances.
If you must travel, the CHP wants to remind you of some important traffic safety tips to help you arrive safely: Drive sober, avoid distractions, always buckle up, and leave plenty of time to get to your destination.
“The CHP wants to ensure your safety throughout this unprecedented year,” said CHP Commissioner Amanda Ray. “We are hopeful that the public will do their part and remember to make safety a priority.”
Safeguarding California’s roadways through the upcoming Christmas holiday, the CHP will implement a maximum enforcement period, which begins at 6:01 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 24, and concludes at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 27.
During that time, all available officers will be on the road for enhanced enforcement and to assist any drivers in need of help.
The mission of the CHP is to provide the highest level of safety, service and security.
Lt. John Bednar of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office said a corrections deputy at the Mendocino County Jail had been off work with an illness and, per policy, received testing for COVID-19.
On Saturday, the corrections deputy reported to jail administration that he had taken a COVID-19 test and received a positive result, Bednar said.
Working with Mendocino County Human Resources, contact tracing was immediately done. Bednar said two employees were identified as being potentially exposed and were subsequently tested.
On Monday, one of those employees received a positive test. Bednar said an additional employee reported feeling ill and submitted to COVID-19 testing, and was also found to be positive that same date.
Because of the positive results, Bednar said jail administration reached out to Mendocino County Public Health, which arranged for testing kits for all staff members. Testing began for all staff members on Tuesday.
The Mendocino County Public Health Department also worked to secure test kits so that all of the inmate population and corrections staff can be tested. Bednar said testing has begun and will continue until all inmates and staff have been tested.
On Tuesday evening, three male inmates reported feeling ill with flu-like symptoms. On-site jail medical staff from Naphcare responded immediately and began testing the three inmates. Bednar said the three inmates all tested positive for COVID-19.
Based on those results, Bednar said the housing unit in which they were assigned was quarantined, following the jail’s COVID-19 policy, to avoid any potential spread of the virus.
On Wednesday morning, a fourth male inmate from a different housing unit, complaining of flu-like symptoms, was tested and found to be positive, Bednar said. Again, following the jail’s COVID-19 policy, the housing unit in which the inmate was housed was placed on quarantine.
In addition to the normal cleaning of the jail, a deep cleaning of the jail was performed by staff following the positive findings, Bednar said.
The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office thanked Bekke Emery and her staff for their quick response in assisting it and providing the necessary testing supplies so that testing can be completed for the safety of inmates and staff.
“Working with our partners at the Public Health Department, we will continue working to keep the staff and residents within the Mendocino County Jail safe,” Bednar said.