Some present themselves as American Indians, and insist that they cannot understand why the Kelseyville high school mascot name, the "Kelseyville Indians," was changed. You will notice if you read their letters that they never specify their tribal affiliations, perhaps because they do not know

them or do not care, which would explain why they took pride in a mascot representing a generic 1940s "Hollywood Indian," and felt honored by such things as the "tomahawk chop" that was done by the audience, or by such encouragements for the other team as "Kill the Indians!"

Some residents say that history cannot be rewritten, and so the past should be forgotten ... If the past is to be forgotten, why remember Kelsey at all with a town named after him? Is not the point of naming a town after an individual to honor him or her? How can a murderer, a child molester, someone who abused, starved, provoked the Pomos to the point of driving them to kill him, be so honored?

It seems these people wish to forget the part of history that makes them uncomfortable, that is to say the mistreatment of Native people by Indo-Europeans. They want to replace this true history with the kinds of fairy tales they call history, educational establishments call history, our government calls history: Columbus was a "gallant hero," this continent was mostly "empty" when "discovered," it was "settled" by courageous "pioneers" who wanted nothing more than to practice their religion freely, and the Native people just "vanished"... apparently all according to "God's plan," since it is also said, even to this day, by some prominent Americans, that "God gave us this country." The stamp of "God's approval" is always very convenient to attempt to validate or whitewash the worse possible crimes against humanity.

This resistance to the name change is wholly hypocritical and irrational, based on the desire by the most cowardly and morally bankrupt among us to keep denying and burying historical truths. I would understand a logical argument about costs, such as the cost to businesses, school, etc. ... but to say that there is an emotional "attachment" to the name of Kelseyville that cannot be overcome, particularly by a woman who left decades ago after graduating from high school to live in the Carolinas (one of the letters recently published by the main Lakeport newspaper, whose advertisers seem to pressure the editors to mostly print letters that oppose the change) is completely ludicrous.

Let me explain: Indo-Europeans came to this continent uninvited, as "conquerors," took it by brutal force or by constant deception, whichever was cheaper and more expedient, as they took other continents such as Australia. They would have taken Japan, India, China and kept Africa if these continents had not already been quite densely populated, because they appeared by their actions to be the most aggressive, arrogant, dangerous and driven people in the world, having waged devastating wars against each other for many centuries, having depleted their state coffers, and thirsting for new riches such as gold, diamonds, and land.

Because their cultures were unsustainable, based on endless growth, they grew like cancer cells and

overtook the planet. The world we know today, with for example China having forgotten its own 1,000-years-old sustainable culture and polluting its own land and water to the point of national suicide, is the outcome of this cultural disease known as western civilization, which worships "progress" at any cost, even at the cost of the eventual death of much of humanity.

Read any book on history, and you will quickly notice the difference in the way the conquests of Mexico and South America are portrayed, as opposed to the conquest of North America. Simply put, Spanish conquerors "bad," Anglo-Saxon conquerors "good." The Spanish came for land, gold and slaves, and the Anglo-Saxons came for ... let me see ... oh, yes, they received the divine call of Manifest Destiny to relieve the "savage heathens" of their lives and their property. The Anglo-Saxons were of the "superior race," destined by "God" to conquer and rule the world and establish a "superior" civilization, while the Spaniards were merely brutal and immoral adventurers. This is how history is written. No wonder there is resistance to the change of the name of the town of Kelseyville, because there is much resistance to the truth.

The point of telling the truth, however, is not to inflict guilt. The past, the present and the future are directly and tightly connected. The native people of this continent were decimated by European kingdoms and empires, and later by America itself, because our western (and now global) civilization never has enough, being as unsustainable today as it was 500 years ago. Indigenous people all over the world are still loosing their cultures, their resources, their lands to what is still called progress but is nothing more than a pathology to consume all that can be consumed to extinction, so that an egotistical civilization can become ever more inflated and arrogant, like the Roman Empire, while it is progressively choking on its own wastes and toxicity.

The past is not only a matter of history but of culture. Simply put, we, people of European decent, are here, and everywhere else that is not our original native land, because we created cultures that were not sustainable on our own continent. America kept breaking all the treaties it signed with native people, that is to say breaking the law, and expended west because it could not sustain itself in the east, and was desperate to find gold and other resources to overcome numerous economic depressions, such as the one that occurred before Custer's last stand.

When the past is forgotten, there is no direction to our current path and no visible pattern of behavior, and we come to believe that we just invented the world, and that all knowledge of history is useless. And then we cannot understand why we have problems, such as the ones that occur as a result of having waged a brutal war against nature for centuries, so that we could keep growing forever, a truly

utopian, unrealistic and absurd concept.

This western civilization committed global genocide against indigenous people all over the world because is was unnaturally hungry, and still is. We are in the Middle East because we do not have sustainable technologies and a sustainable economy. The Pomo people of this area were targeted by an

official state policy of extermination because they were living on a rich land that an unsustainable American culture sought to acquire by any means.

Kelsey acted according to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which conceptually and legally elevated Indo-Europeans above all other races and gave them license to commit the most abominable acts, with the blessing of land speculators, investors, bankers, politicians, other would-be settlers, slave traders or gold-seekers, and all in the federal government who wanted the so-called "Indian problem" to disappear. In the same manner, land in the Amazon basin of South America was sold, in the 1970s, to ranchers or investors as "clear" or "as is" ... "clear" meant that mercenaries, some of them Vietnam vets, had liquidated the Native Indian population, often with napalm.

An unsustainable civilization is a monster, like a cancer cell or a super virus, that destroys everything it touches. Failing to connect the dots between the past, the present and the future, there is no doubt that we will be doomed. To change the name of the town of Kelseyville might seem completely irrelevant to those who do not see a greater pattern in the crimes this civilization committed against the native people of this continent.

To change the name is, however and beside the many obvious reasons, also saying that these crimes were not unavoidable as is often postulated, that there is another way of life, of being, that we do not need to perpetuate the same patterns of conquest, of world domination, of the endless exploitation or destruction of the natural world and of those few who, not as demented as we are, continue to live traditionally in harmony with the earth.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.

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Another friend of mine tells me that, on Friday morning, Joe wasn't feeling well, so his partner (common-law wife by now) took him to the doctor. You know how men are – they never want to go to the doctor unless they feel like they're about to die because there may be needles involved – so when he got in the car with her, she knew that something was terribly wrong.

Joe is ("was" is still too hard to say) a fly in the ointment – not always the life of the party – but almost. He's the instigator, he laughs the loudest from his belly, he's the first to get on his motorcycle – without a map – and say, "Let's go!" (Until that time he jumped back on his bike that had been sitting in the desert sun of Tonopah, Nev., for a few hours wearing the tattered jeans with the hole in crotch – and not wearing even boxer shorts underneath his jeans! – and had to miss the whole rest of the trip due to burns on very sensitive areas). But he was the guy who was always the last to go to sleep on a camping trip - and cleaned up the campsite and got it ready for coffee in the morning while everyone else was already asleep and dreaming of pancakes.

After his partner brought Joe, who didn't have health insurance or the $150 the doctor required for an office visit, back home, he died from a massive heart attack several hours later.

If California already had in place SB 840, Sen. Sheila Kuehl's universal health care bill, Joe would be alive right now. It probably never occurred to him to go to the emergency room at the hospital because he had always gone to his doctor's office in the past. But he no longer had health insurance or the $150 to get checked out.

Please urge our politicians to support SB 840.

www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/HCA_CA/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7081

E-mail Terre Logsdon at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Since then, the toxic dust which New Yorkers were told was “safe and acceptable” by Former Mayor Giulani, has resulted in several deaths and serious lung problems including cancer. In fact, a federal judge ruled that former EPA director Christine Todd Whitman had misled residents and rescuers when she pronounced that the air quality in lower Manhattan met safety standards and necessitated neither a surgical mask nor a respirator. She claims under oath that she did this under the urgency of our federal government to get Wall Street and the economy up and running again and because Giuliani did not want New York to be seen as unsafe by a bunch of people wearing masks or hazmat suits.

In other words, our government was more concerned about money than about additional lives. Because of this, people like Felix Hernandez, Tim Keller, Deborah Reeve, James Zadroga, James Godbee, Felicia Dunn-Jones and their families have become additional victims of 9/11.

Since then, we have gone to war in Iraq, very simply based on the “threat” of another 9/11 terror attack. In fact, we have now lost more of our citizens to the war in Iraq than in the original 9/11 attack. Kind of defeats the purpose given, if you think about it.

So, let’s think about it. Let’s think about how 9/11 has changed the lives of U.S. citizens, the law and our government. Let’s think about how living in terror actually defeats the purpose of freedom and gives our enemies the upper hand. Let’s consider how we now have the Patriot Act in place has changed and will continue to change how we live. The Patriot Act now forces us (lawful U.S. citizens) to allow:

• Physical searches and spying on U.S. citizens without a warrant and the right to do so without notifying the suspected party.

• Monitoring of both the telephone and internet communications without giving notice or seeking a warrant.

• Arrests solely on the basis of “suspicion” alone, without warrant and without a formal charge.

• Detaining suspicious persons indefinitely and without notice neither publicly nor privately.

• Deportation of legal immigrants for minor violations.

• Carrying out selective prosecutions and racial profiling unchecked.

• Detaining, deporting, and denying fundamental due process rights to lawful immigrants, including the right to legal counsel and public hearings.

• Wire-tapping client confidential communications.

I think the answer is obvious. 9/11/01 is not history, as it is still shaping our lives. I believe it is worth not just remembering but worth thinking about.

This article is dedicated to ALL of the people who lost their lives, livelihoods and loves on 9/11/01.

Please visit :

www.fealgoodfoundation.com/WhoWeAre.html

www.911ea.org/Donation.htm

Lakeport resident Andrea Anderson's mother worked at the World Trade Center, and left the building 20 minutes before the first plane hit, losing many coworkers and friends.

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Acronymed research groups multiplied. Project Sentinel inspired Project Phoenix which inspired META. SETI was organized. Famous universities joined the mother-of-all wild goose chases: Harvard, MIT, JPL and Caltech led the charge. The sky wasn’t falling it was talking, they imagined in a foggy delirium. ET wasn’t phoning home, he was phoning Earth. The US government jumped on the band wagon and provided money. Grants followed grants. NASA joined JPL and formed the NASA Ames Research Center. A 330-meter dish at Arecibo in Puerto Rico with high sensitivity and billions of frequency channels was constructed. Even Hollywood producer Stephen Spielberg donated $100,000 to buy electronic chips for META, hoping to find the real ET.

Sorry to say, foolishness is a disease not limited to North America. Like mindless lemmings, Argentina’s astronomers and engineers duplicated META’s hardware for their own southern hemisphere hunt for the same wild goose. North Americans can only listen to part of space, they said, we‘ll listen from the South. Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia joined the Argentinians. Huge radio telescopes from both hemispheres now scan the entire sky. Alas, the search for ET draws a galactic blank.

Radio telescope scientists are not necessarily foolish to look for ET. They’re foolish to assume they can use science they understand to find him. They’re foolish to assume he’s less intelligent. There’s plenty of evidence to show that ET does exist and the same evidence shows he’s far more advanced than earthlings. Why spend so much money on old radio telescope equipment? Thinking scientists know better. They understand they’ll have to make a lot more technological breakthroughs before they’ll be able to listen in on conversations from outer space. The evidence suggests space-aliens live in a higher fifth dimension and can avoid fourth-dimension human searches whenever they want. ET is laughing at all those huge radio telescopes.

Old school physicists only see and measure three spatial dimensions and one time-dimension called the fourth-dimension. They know very little about the fifth-dimension and aren’t putting much effort trying to learn. Sometimes it’s hard for fools with Ph.D.s to admit they don’t know everything. If they accept the evidence of extraterrestrials, living and communicating in a fifth-dimension, they'll have to admit someone is smarter and far more advanced than they. They’re satisfied to spend billions of dollars on radio telescopes in the fourth-dimension they understand.

Physicists have been aware of signs of the fifth-dimension for more than 40 years. Anyone can catch a glimpse of the fifth-dimension when moving while watching a hologram (holograms are three dimensional pictures placed on a two dimensional surface which gives the image a curvature when the observer moves). Mathematicians also know five-dimensional space occurs frequently in their field. They know how to project images of polytopes in fifth-dimension geometry (hexatetrons, decaterons, and triacontakaditerons). Other physicists see signs that gravity is unified with the electromagnetic force which opens avenues of research into the higher dimension.

Unfortunately, the Carl Sagan scientists largely ignore good evidence and say the fifth-dimension is “hypothetical,” or joke about music performed by the Byrds. All the while, ET lives in his more advanced world that nobody understands and no one can hear what he says.

Outside fields of holograms, mathematics and gravity, there is a profusion of evidence supporting research into the fifth-dimension and extraterrestrials. Some scientist won’t call it evidence because it’s eyewitness and personal experience. Air plane pilots (both Air Force and civilian) have made written reports about “UFOs” flying alongside. Sometimes they appear and disappear or change direction suddenly and perhaps even accelerate to the speed of light. These reports gather dust in filing cabinets because physicists can’t reconcile eyewitness evidence with test tube evidence. More and more, “UFOs” are captured on movie cameras of ordinary citizens. SETI yawns. They don’t consider this contact with ET and build bigger and better radio telescopes.

Not long ago, Hollywood made a movie, “The Exorcist,” based on a true story about a girl possessed by an evil spirit. In the story, something strong and invisible threw a Catholic priest out the window of a two-story building. The priest died and an accompanying priest wrote the report. Neither astrophysicists nor particle physicists investigated because they don't accept personal experiences or eyewitness data to be related to physics. Also, these kinds of personal experience stories upsets some people because they suggest extraterrestrials may not all be benevolent.

There are thousands of reports about people making contact with something “spiritual” using Ouija boards. Physicists say these messages are really from within the person using the board but personal testimonies by the thousands say the contacts are from without and by someone or something intelligent that sometimes causes great harm. To those who know about Ouija boards, the physicists are the ones who are unscientific.

Paranormal stories can also be scientific evidence that ET does exist. People really have seen and reported ghosts and haunted houses with corroborating witnesses. They’ve been cross-examined by skeptics and could not be shaken. Neither can scientists put these stories in test tubes so they don’t use them in their research.

Classical physicists won’t accept parallel stories about extraterrestrials told in the Bible. There are many fantastic eyewitness and personal experience chronicles about space-aliens who have not only phoned earth but visited. Their stories have been cross-examined and found to be reliable.

One ET healed the sick, and raised a man from the dead. He had a special ability to appear and disappear. More than 500 witnesses saw Him defy gravity and levitate from the ground up into the clouds.

Another man on the road to Damascus was knocked off his donkey by an ET. He only saw a bright light and heard a voice telling him what to do. Also, Jacob wrestled all night with an ET. Elijah was swept up in a whirl wind. These and many other stories tell about mankind’s close encounters of a third kind with more advanced life forms. They don’t make sense to scientists stuck in the fourth-dimension.

The search for extraterrestrials is really the search for physicists’ fifth-dimension. It’s not hypothetical and it’s not music by the Byrds. It may be the place Mister Mxyzptlk comes from. Fifth-dimension physics opens up mind-boggling possibilities that scientists may fear because something or someone is more intelligent and further advanced than they. Signs point to travel at the speed of light and the wonderful ability to appear and disappear. Laws of gravity may be suspended. Mind-blowing medical breakthroughs to heal the sick and live forever young are phenomenal possibilities.

Radio telescopes just won’t get it done. They’re a nonsensical waste of money. Researchers must share and accept each other’s evidence and not be like blindfolded men feeling an elephant. One blind man feels the trunk and says it’s a snake. Another feels a leg and thinks it’s a tree. Yet another feels a tusk and says it’s a spear. They don’t know they’ve all discovered the same elephant.

The physicist must accept the evidence of the airplane pilot who must accept the images of the amateur photographer who must accept the evidence of the exorcist who must accept the evidence of a person who was miraculously healed. Evidence can be cross-examined, of course. That which cannot be shaken must be accepted and shared if mankind is to ever escape the fourth-dimension and listen in on ET‘s conversations.

Darrell Watkins lives in Kelseyville.

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Later, relaxing in the shade of a fruitless mulberry tree, we surveyed our Hidden Valley Lake backyard. The fruit trees generously feed us cherries, apples, and figs. We eat grapes from grapevines growing along the back fence. Our persimmons will ripen soon.

From two raised-bed gardens, we eat zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, kale, artichokes, eggplant, strawberries, basil, parsley, garlic chives, oregano and lemon thyme. And, we’re harvesting giant sunflower and pumpkin seeds to roast.

Around a tiny lawn in our unfenced front yard, sage, rosemary and lavender plants flourish underneath three flowering fruit trees.

This is the first summer we’ve swapped vegetables over the fence with our neighbor, another gardener. Also new this year is the enjoyment my husband gets from lovingly preparing cardboard “gift baskets” for friends filled with vegetables and fruit from our yard.

Especially satisfying is consuming our own delicious food. We augment our fresh food supply by shopping at Kelseyville’s farmers’ market, an occasional trip to Hardester’s grocery store, and with home-grown beef from my dad in Natomas, near Sacramento.

Author Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, was my birthday gift from my son and daughter-in-law. Living in San Francisco, they live vicariously hearing our “crop reports” during weekly phone conversations.

Kingsolver’s book makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet. My husband and I bless our rural life in which we can raise our own food and consume what is raised by us or people we know.

We realize the growing season is finite. Our water use will soon lessen. Meanwhile, we give thanks for the water and the harvest it provides.

Susanne La Faver lives in Hidden Valley Lake with husband, Lyle.

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On Sept. 10 I could think of no other woman whose global influence has impacted so many lives as Anita Roddick.

Dame Anita Roddick lived in Britain, but dedicated her soul to the world. I never had the pleasure of meeting Dame Anita. But, I know that her bravery, business acumen and concern for all people touched my life.

She leaves us, her husband, and two daughters with a legacy to be admired, respected, and looked to for inspiration and guidance.

Dame Anita’s illustrious and socially conscious life included an education in teaching (Bath College of Higher Education), work for the United Nations, ownership of The Body Shop until 2006, and an exemplary record of achievement in humanitarianism.

Her life achievements include numerous awards in the areas of business ethics, business leadership, environment, Officer of the British Empire and an award for “Chief Wiper-Away of Ogoni Tears,” from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, Nigeria in 1999.

The connection that I share with Anita is multifold. In the 1990s my father, Dr. Carl Jensen, announced that Anita wanted to fund Sonoma State University’s Project Censored. At the time, Project Censored had published yearly books announcing the 10 most censored stories on a shoestring budget.

Anita’s gracious offer of funding helped Project Censored continue to bring significant stories to the public forum in a substantial way. Upon learning about the Body Shop through Dr. Jensen, I sought out her wares at The Body Shop. I was, as an environmentally conscious person, pleasantly surprised by the company’s product line.

True to her personal philosophy of healthy living, Anita’s company provided products that passed all environmental and animal protection activist concerns. Not only that, but Dame Anita sought the release of Nigeria’s social and environmental activist, Ken Saro Wiwa.

As an Environmental Studies and Planning Major at Sonoma State University I was touched by Anita’s call to save Nigeria’s forests, protect the Ogoni people, and release Ken Saro Wiwa from Nigeria’s prison.

The message I learned from her brave activism, care for people and the environment represents, absolutely, the ethos of love. Anita’s documented care for all transcended every act of humanitarianism I have witnessed in my life to date. This is a woman we all should have known, for she was humorous, loving, and gave to so many with all of her heart.

May we all be blessed with having known of Anita’s great work in our world.

Pia Jensen grew up in Santa Rosa and is former vice-mayor of Cotati. She visits Lake County on occasion to see family. She lives in Florida.

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