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Opinion
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- Written by: Linda Juntunen
In observation of Wildfire Awareness Week, the Lake County Fire Safe Council invites all Lake County residents to take the opportunity to make this fire season safer for your family, your pets, and your home.
We don’t want you to be afraid of wildfire … we want you to be ready for it.
Make a note on your calendar to attend the third annual Wildfire Safety Expo, on Saturday, May 12, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kelseyville Lumber Home Improvement Center. Learn how to make your home fire resistant and your families ready for evacuation in the event of wildfire.
Talk directly with your local firefighters from Kelseyville, Lake County, Lakeport, Northshore, South Lake Fire Protection Districts; and also Cal Fire, U.S. Forest Service and BLM. Let them show you what we need to do to help them in their efforts to help us.
Come and see firefighting training exercises, check out the equipment the agencies use, and talk to the men and women who fight our fires. Introduce your children to Smokey Bear and Sparky the Fire Dog, and shake the hand of a firefighter.
Talk to vendors at the expo about fire protection products, fuel reduction services, fire recovery procedures, and safer building materials.
Get tips about fire safe landscaping, defensible space, evacuation plans for your family, your pets and your livestock.
Learn about the Firewise Communities USA program and what you can do to help your neighborhood reach its fire safety goals.
Come meet the volunteers who help our communities when wildfire strikes.
Please remember that preparing your home for a wildfire is a critical step in the partnership between you and the firefighters who work to protect you.
Take the time to learn about the measures we can take to get ready for fire season. Help our firefighters help us.
We hope to see you at the Expo this Saturday, May 12, in Kelseyville. It’s a family friendly event with hourly prizes, and admission is free!
Linda Juntunen is coordinator for the Lake County Fire Safe Council in Lake County, Calif.
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- Written by: Lisa Alotta
I am unable to write or say what I really feel because I am upset at the closing of the pain clinic in Sutter Lakeside Hospital, but I will try.
Dr. Vernetta Johnson is an angel for many of us. She is a great help and support to the people of Lake County to reduce their suffering and improve their quality of life by reducing their pain.
In spring 2007 she was featured in the Sutter Lakeside Hospital magazine in which she explained the proper procedures of pain management. Her main message was there is hope for chronic pain.
She is too important of a figure to be leaving this hospital. She is an icon and the people are very upset. She helps about 2,800 people a year always with a smile and her great personality. I know about 30 of her patients here in Upper Lake.
When I wrote my last letter about the Upper Lake Clinic closing I did not know at the time that the hospital was closing the pain clinic too. I never believed this would happen. It is so very much needed and people come from all over to see Dr. Johnson.
The nurses and the doctor were always so busy. At times it was hard to get an appointment, but if you were in real need they would always find a way to squeeze you in. Even to her discomfort of staying after the time the clinic would normally close.
Vernetta is very dedicated to her patients and helping everyone. She is an anesthesiologist and the director at the pain clinic at the hospital, which will close in June. She is dedicating her life to helping others. Not for money as she proved by traveling to other nations to help out when disaster strikes. Last year she went to Africa to help.
She is a great person and doctor. That is why we were all in shock to hear the ugly news of her discharge from the hospital.
We will miss Luana, Kathy, Leonor, Roger and Sandy; all the staff at this wonderful clinic.
The hospital will lose money not save money by closing the pain clinic down. Her patients had lab tests, x-rays and other procedures all done at the hospital, which generated income.
The hospital mailed out letters telling the community of other pain clinics available, but none are in Lake County. Ever if there were several here in the county I wouldn’t go. She is the only one for me.
I hope the hospital in losing a good doctor does not get a bad reputation. We need the pain clinic. We need more specialists, so more people will come from all over to our hospital. We need a hospital that will take care of all our needs. Too many times we have to go to Ukiah, Santa Rosa or some other city to get the services we need. This is wrong!
This is a nonprofit hospital, so why are they acting greedy.
Lisa Alotta lives in Upper Lake, Calif.
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- Written by: Nelson Strasser
The coming presidential election reminds me of an old joke: A man dies who is despised by everyone in his congregation. A service is held, and the Rabbi asks, “Before we bury this man, has anyone got anything good to say about him?”
There are a few moments of silence, and then a voice comes from the back of the room, “His brother was worse!”
Some background: When Ronald Reagan said that government was the problem and not the solution; it marked the beginning of the age of deregulation.
Deregulation meant the fox was guarding the hen house, and resulted in a series of disasters which began with the savings and loan scandal and ended with derivatives and credit default swaps which, if not for government intervention, would have brought the flow of credit, and thus commerce, to a standstill.
An example of a derivative (meaning its worth is derived from something else) is a collateralized debt obligation, or CDO. A CDO could be a bundle of mortgages, some being subprime mortgages, that would be divided up into tranches (the French word for trenches).
Perhaps one of the tranches would have mortgages held by people with good credit scores, and there might be 14 other tranches, each more risky. The risky tranches are cheaper, because they are more likely to fail.
One problem turned out to be that if a relatively small number of loans went into default, the entire CDO was junk.
It gets worse. You could bet deals would fail (called going short) by buying a kind of insurance called a credit default swap.
Companies who issued the “policies” did not have the capital to cover the losses and when tons of deals went bad, as they did in 2008, collapse was imminent.
Enter the U.S. government to save the day. The powerful financial sector had opened the door to this debacle by erasing any meaningful restraint on the gluttony of the greedy. What all this means is that we got screwed.
Enter Romney, like the neighbor across the hall from the Jack Nicholson character in the movie “ As Good as it Gets: selling “crazy.”
Romney asserts that business will create the jobs to put the middle class back to work (maybe he is going to hire all the unemployed at Bain Capital), and carping away at “big government.”
That myth never gets old, and the beauty of myths, as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, is that you can have an opinion without thinking or reading a book. So, bad as Obama is, and that is pretty bad, I think Romney is worse.
The main point that I want to make, is that the issue of “big government” or “bad corporation,” is, a misdirection play: The blockers all move to the right, but when the running back gets the hand-off, he goes left.
The real issue is that no person, group or organization should be able to function under the cover of darkness, with no oversight and no “checks and balances.”
Human nature is such that even the best and most well-intentioned among us need limits.
Nelson Strasser lives in Lakeport, Calif.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Solliday
Many thanks to those South Lake County residents who helped support the South Lake Fire Safe Council in 2011!
The SLFSC is operated solely by volunteers, and our mission is to allocate significant resources to wildfire education, prevention, and preparedness projects in the South Lake County area.
The support that we received in 2011 was invaluable in helping the SLFSC continue its programs and projects, and we are grateful to all of our supporting members.
Thanks to the donations of residents throughout South Lake County, here are some of the projects that the SLFSC was able to accomplish in 2011:
- Inexpensive chipping provided at over 115 different residential sites,
- A large fuel break created on Bottle Rock Road,
- A large fuel break created around Hidden Valley Lake Subdivision,
- A new fuel break started on Sulfur Creek Road in Cobb,
- Several existing fuel breaks received much-needed maintenance.
It is only because of our supporting members that these projects were possible, making our South Lake County neighborhood a safer place to live.
Please, take a moment to express your support for the South Lake Fire Safe Council by sending a check of $25 or more to:
SLFSC
PO Box 1773
Middletown, CA 95461
Checks should be made payable to the “SLFSC” and please write “2012 Membership” on the memo line of your check.
Elizabeth Solliday is director and treasurer of the South Lake Fire Safe Council based in Middletown, Calif.