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- Written by: Angela De Palma-Dow
Dear Readers,
The year of 2023 is almost over and that means that the Lady of the Lake photo contest is almost over. This is your last call to send in your water or wildlife photos to the 2023 Lady of the Lake Photo Contest!
The annual contest was opened in spring, with submission closing December 31, 2023.
The purpose of the photo contest is to get the readership to think about and appreciate lakes, rivers, creeks, and anything water in Lake County. Water holds a special beauty, especially paired with the beautiful contrast colors of fall. Now is the time to capture that beauty on camera, maybe with some fall or winter colors and hues.
Winners from each category will win a free breakfast or lunch (or Brunch!) with Lady of the Lake sponsored by Angelina’s Bakery on Main Street in Lakeport, CA. Photo winners will also be highlighted in the Lady of the Lake Column in the Lake County News. Every photo submitted to the contest will be eligible to be used in the Lake of the Lake Column alongside relevant column topics, with proper credit reference.
The rules are simple:
There are two submission groups; Novice and expert / professional.
There are two types of photo categories: Water and Wildlife.
Because this is the Lady of the Lake photos contest, all photos submitted have to include a lake, creek, stream, wetland, marsh, or pond. For those who have asked, temporary water bodies do count and would include aquatic resources such as vernal pools and intermittent streams. Landscapes and scenery will be included into the “water” category, and anything with an animal focus will be grouped into the “wildlife” category.
For example, a landscape shot of Clear Lake with birds flying in the sky will still be considered in the “water” category, but a close up of a grebe mating dance on Clear Lake, will be considered in the “wildlife” category.
This is a nature-centric photo contest. Humans, from a distance, can be included in photos, but their faces can not be close enough to be recognizable. For privacy, any photos that contain recognizable faces will be disqualified.
All photos must be sent as digital JPG / TIFF / PNG attachments or google drive links to the
When submitting photos, in the email subject line include: “Photo Contest _ group type_category” For example, if you are a novice submitting a photo of a river otter sunbathing on a rock, the subject of your photo would be “Photo Contest_novice_wildlife”. Save your photos files using your last name.
There is a limit to 3 photos submitted in each category by a single photographer, so a single photographer can submit a maximum of 6 photos, 3 in each category of water and wildlife.
Photos must not be more than 5 years old and of course, taken within Lake County boundaries.
There are no restrictions on the type of camera used to take the photos, so feel free to use those camera phones as well as point and shoots and DSLRs.
Photos will be judged and ranked by a panel of three members of the professional photographic and business Lake County community. Judges will not be participants in the contest.
Good luck!
Sincerely,
Lady of the Lake
Angela De Palma-Dow is a limnologist (limnology = study of fresh inland waters) who lives and works in Lake County. Born in Northern California, she has a Master of Science from Michigan State University. She is a Certified Lake Manager from the North American Lake Management Society, or NALMS, and she is the current president/chair of the California chapter of the Society for Freshwater Science. She can be reached at
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
The hikes are part of America's State Parks First Day Hikes program.
The nationwide First Day Hikes program offers individuals and families an opportunity to begin the New Year by taking a healthy hike on Jan. 1 at a state park close to home.
Participants can choose between two routes this year. The first hike will be a leisurely trip to the end of the former McVicar trail.
In order to honor the heritage of the indigenous peoples who have inhabited the land now known as Anderson Marsh State Historic Park, the McVicar Trail was recently renamed the Dawa Qanoq’ana trail, which in the Pomo language means “south way in front of me.”
This hike will go from the parking lot to the shores of Clear Lake across from Indian Island, a round-trip distance of about 7½ miles of mainly flat terrain, with the first about .3 miles being accessible.
This hike should take between three and four hours, depending on how many times we stop to admire what we see along the way.
The second shorter hike covers a 3½-mile loop over the Cache Creek, Marsh and Ridge trails, with the first roughly half mile being accessible. This hike should take between two and two and a half hours.
The New Year’s Day hikes will be led by State Parks volunteers associated with the Anderson Marsh Interpretive Association, or AMIA.
“The event offers a wonderful opportunity to begin the New Year right by getting outside, enjoying nature and welcoming the New Year with friends and family on Jan. 1,” said Henry Bornstein, an AMIA Board Member who is one of this year’s hike leaders.
Hikers will experience grasslands, oak woodlands, willow and cottonwood riparian habitats, and the tule marsh habitat of the Anderson Marsh Natural Preserve, and may encounter a variety of migrating and resident birds and other wildlife.
Both hikes begin at noon at the park off Highway 53, between Lower Lake and Clearlake.
Children of all ages are welcome. Hikers should bring water and snacks, binoculars if they have them, and a hat for protection against the weather.
Sturdy shoes that can handle a little mud are recommended.
Participants on both hikes are welcome to walk part way and make an early return at their own pace.
No dogs are allowed on these trails, which pass through the Anderson Marsh Natural Preserve.
Heavy rain will cancel the walks.
For further information, the public is asked to contact AMIA at (707) 995-2658 or
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Australian shepherd, Chihuahua, Doberman pinscher, German shepherd, Great Pyrenees, hound, Labrador retriever, pit bull, shepherd, terrier, Welsh corgi and West Highland 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.
Those dogs and the others shown on this page at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online for information on visiting or adopting.
The shelter is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: James Deaville, Carleton University
At the beginning of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the 1965 Peanuts Christmas movie, the story’s anti-hero, Charlie Brown, expresses sentiments with which many of us can identify at this time of year: “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel … I always end up feeling depressed.”
Charles Schulz understood the uncomfortable truths of human nature like few other cartoonists. This is part of why A Charlie Brown Christmas so effectively conveys the double-sidedness of the holiday season.
New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik recognized this in his 2011 CBC Massey Lecture in Edmonton, “Recuperative Winter,” noting that we experience “the happiest time of year as a time of maximum stress, with feelings of sadness, disappointment, confusion, depression …” more often “than elation.”
And yet we cannot and would not want to envision a winter without holidays. At least if we look to broadcaster choices for this time of year, many of us keep returning to holiday screen narratives from childhood, whether those of Charlie Brown, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) or Frosty the Snowman (1969).
Key to the formation of this Christmas nostalgia is the music.
Flawed heroes
Why do we continue to find such pleasure in these tales? After all, these title characters not only experience challenges to their identities but are somehow impaired in and of themselves. Charlie Brown remains a blockhead, Rudolph’s unique bright nose, for which he is ostracized by other reindeer, keeps glowing brightly and Frosty ultimately melts.
Even George Bailey, the ostensible “hero” of It’s a Wonderful Life, (1946) responds less than admirably to the various hardships that beset him.
The Christmas classic film sees an angel intervene in the life of a suffering and frustrated businessman. But after the holidays, Bailey will still have to deal with banker Potter in the “crummy little town” of Bedford Falls.
That viewers identify with these flawed characters helps explain the attraction their holiday specials have, and for some families, annual rituals of watching them in a family circle.
Indeed, it may well be such collective engagement with these musical narratives of broken individuals and compromised conclusions that makes it possible for some of us to feel a sense of familial togetherness and belonging often associated with the holidays.
Though the outcomes of the stories are known, admirers revisit them for the recuperative memories of past experiences with family, or at least for the catharsis that nostalgia can evoke. This is the case even though these idealized and romanticized pasts may never have existed for viewers.
Music and emotions
Music serves as the foundation for the emotional economy of holiday-themed specials.
The traditional carols and newer songs typically communicate messages of religious fulfilment (“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”), family pleasure (“Jingle Bells”) and overcoming personal struggles (“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”). Yet they do not ignore the darker emotional worlds of the holidays.
Gopnik singles out “In the Bleak Midwinter” as his “favourite carol.” The carol’s lyrics are a poem written by Christina Rossetti in the 19th century, and the song is best known in the musical arrangement by composer Gustav Holst. As Gopnik writes, “It is a song about the remaking of the world, and it also is a song about, well, the bleak mid-winter.”
The Economist published an essay in 2016 under the title, “The Curious Comforts of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’,” with the subhead: “Though sombre in tone, the carol is a perennial festive favourite.” A 2008 BBC poll also named it “Best Christmas Carol.”
Beloved jazz piano Christmas
But the most celebrated musical representation of ambivalent emotions toward the holiday remains A Charlie Brown Christmas from almost 60 years ago.
Curiously, the show almost did not see the light of day due to various complications in production, including pushback from CBS executives, who felt it lacked action, the children’s voices needed more polish, and the jazz was inappropriate for a kids’ program.
And yet that music by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi — a self-described “reformed boogie-woogie piano player” — is a big part of what has endeared A Charlie Brown Christmas to generations of viewers.
Pulitzer-winning novelist Michael Chabon sums up its impact: “That show, in its plot, characters and perhaps above all in its music, captures an authentic bittersweetness, the melancholy of this time of year, like no other work of art I know.”
Bittersweet vibes
Guaraldi’s chart-topping creation “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” (1963) has the same bittersweet vibe as his tracks for the television special, and in fact serves as the source for the iconic Charlie Brown Christmas dance number “Linus and Lucy.”
Beyond Charlie Brown, Frosty and Rudolph, other holiday musical TV specials from the 1960s are also based on eponymous pre-existing songs that invoke loss or impairment. In The Little Drummer Boy (1968), Baba the sheep is seriously injured, while Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970) presents loss through the the banning of toys.
Of course these popular audiovisual narratives exploit core threats depicted in their plots to make the outcomes seem all the more miraculous, yet a residue of loss remains, even in the most optimistic of them.
At the end of Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, for example, Santa is compelled to limit himself to spreading his largesse on only one night of the year.
Joy, stress and melancholy
Charlie Brown does not undergo a Scrooge-like conversion or social redemption in the closing moments of his Christmas special either.
After he claims to have ruined the tree and then suggests it needs “a little love,” one of his friends re-affirms his “loser” identity with the sarcastically insinuating phrase, “Charlie Brown is a blockhead …”
Nevertheless, the beloved Christmas music — simple, tuneful and memorable — possesses the power to mediate the characteristic holiday mix of joy and stress and melancholy. Its power? Helping us ever again return to the time of year with hope for more of the one and less of the others.
James Deaville, Professor of Music, Carleton University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.