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- Written by: Janine Smith-Citron
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The joyous holiday season has begun with the highly anticipated fifth annual Festival of Trees Spectacular Party and Christmas tree auction, set to take place on Dec. 2 at 5 p.m.
The event will be located adjacent to Sophie's Day Spa at 3855 Main Street in Kelseyville.
It promises to be a magical evening full of cheer and festivities. Tickets for the event are on sale for $80 each until Nov. 20 and $85 after and include a no-host bar featuring Lake County wines, appetizers and a scrumptious dinner catered by Lake Event Design, all before the tree auction commences.
The Festival of Trees will showcase up to 25 brilliantly decorated Christmas trees donated by community members, organizations, and businesses.
The auction proceeds will benefit the special needs of Hospice/Palliative Care patients, as well as the Wings of Hope grief counseling program, which provides support to families with children who have lost loved ones.
Along with the tree auction, there will be a silent auction featuring beautiful holiday decor and other unique items.
For those who wish to participate, there are still a few openings available for tree donations to be included in the auction. Interested individuals are encouraged to contact Hospice Services to learn more.
In addition, community members are invited to view the spectacular trees in advance with characters from the beloved holiday classics, “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” and “Frozen,” after the Kellyville Light Parade.
The Festival of Trees has been made possible through the generous sponsorship of Platinum sponsors, including Sutter Lakeside Hospital, Lake County Tribal Health Consortium, Adventist Health Clear Lake, Kelly Butcher, Michaels Insurance, Sophie’s Day Spa, and Kelseyville Lumber.
Jamie Sells with Sophie's Day Spa is thrilled to support this inspiring event, noting, “Come to a spectacular party while supporting an amazing organization. So much talent, delectable food, and generosity for an organization that gives so much will align for an evening of celebration. It can't get better than that!”
For further event and ticket information, please call 263.6222 or email
Hospice Services is a nonprofit healthcare organization that has been providing compassionate comfort care for patients and families experiencing life-threatening conditions for the past 44 years.
These services are made possible through the generous support of community members and fundraising efforts.
Let us come together and spread holiday cheer for a good cause.
Janine Smith-Citron is director of development for Hospice Services of Lake County.
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — It’s that time of year when the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reminds drivers to be aware of wildlife on state roads and highways.
Every autumn, as Daylight Saving Time concludes, the number of vehicle-wildlife collisions on California roadways increases.
As drivers adjust to less daylight during the evening commute during the first week of November, it’s also important to understand this is also the time of year that deer, elk, bears and other animals are typically on the move for migration, mating or foraging.
Over the past month, numerous dead deer have appeared along Lake County’s highways and roadways after they were struck by vehicles.
Collisions with wildlife can be dangerous and costly for drivers. Nearly 400 people were injured in more than two thousand collisions in 2019 involving wildlife, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Also, the UC Davis Road Ecology Center estimates the total annual cost of animal-vehicle conflicts in California to be about $250 million.
“Wildlife-vehicle collisions pose an increasingly significant threat to both people and wildlife and can result in serious injury or death. This time of year, large native species such as deer and elk are more likely to cross highways or roads during their mating season (rut), and black bears are on the search for food,” said Human-Wildlife Conflict Program Coordinator Vicky Monroe. “We ask drivers to remain cautious, vigilant, and aware of their surroundings while driving to help reduce this conflict."
Learn more about CDFW’s efforts to improve wildlife connectivity.
Standard driving safety tips that also benefit wildlife include:
• Be extra alert when driving near areas wildlife frequent, such as streams and rivers, and reduce your speed especially around curves.
• Don't text and drive! Leave your phone alone; it can wait.
• Pay extra attention driving during the morning and evening hours when wildlife are often most active.
• If you see an animal on or near the road, know that others may be following.
• Don't litter. Trash and food odors can attract animals to roadways.
• Pay attention to road shoulders. Look for movement or reflecting eyes. Slow down and honk your horn if you see an animal on or near the road.
• Respect wildlife. California is their home too.
CDFW thanks drivers for recognizing the importance of safe driving as daylight hours are reduced.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Australian shepherd, border collie, boxer, Chihuahua, German shepherd, hound, Labrador retriever, pit bull, shepherd and treeing walker coonhound.
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: Yoni Ashar, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Most people with chronic back pain naturally think their pain is caused by injuries or other problems in the body such as arthritis or bulging disks. But our research team has found that thinking about the root cause of pain as a process that’s occurring in the brain can help promote recovery. That is a key finding of a study my colleagues and I recently published in JAMA Network Open, a monthly open-access medical journal.
We have been studying a psychological treatment called pain reprocessing therapy that may help “turn off” unhelpful and unnecessary pain signals in the brain. To do this, we carried out a study in which some people were randomly chosen to receive the pain reprocessing therapy treatment, while some got a placebo injection into their backs.
We included 151 adults ages 21 to 70 years old with chronic back pain. We found that 66% of participants reported being pain-free or nearly pain-free after pain reprocessing therapy, compared with 20% of people who received a placebo.
These results were remarkable because previous trials of psychological treatments rarely led to people reporting full recoveries from chronic pain. So we needed to better understand how this treatment worked: What changed in people’s thinking that helped them recover from chronic back pain?
Why it matters
Chronic pain is one of the biggest health problems today. It is the leading cause of disability in the U.S., and it has an economic cost greater than that of diabetes or cancer.
The most common chronic pain condition is back pain. Many patients – and doctors – are focused on identifying different back problems that they suspect may be causing the pain. So they try all sorts of treatments, often to no avail.
A growing number of scientists now believe that many cases of chronic back pain are caused primarily by brain changes. Pain can originate with an injury, but then the pain system can get “stuck” and keep firing long after injuries have healed.
Pain is the brain’s alarm system, letting us know about injuries or other threats to our body. Much of the time, the system works well, accurately warning us that a part of our body is injured and needs to be protected. But when a person has been in pain for months, years or even decades, pain processing pathways are more likely to fire, and brain regions that typically are not involved in pain start to be involved. Chronic pain also leads to increased levels of activity in glial cells, which are part of the brain’s immune system. All these changes in the brain then serve to “entrench” the pain, making it persist.
People, very understandably, think that if their back hurts, there must be a problem in the back – even though we researchers know this is often not the case.
It’s critical to note that just because the signal originates in the brain, the pain is not any less real. The pain is always real, no matter what. But to treat it effectively, one needs to accurately identify the root cause.
How we do our work
In our study, we asked people to tell us in their own words what they think is the cause of their chronic back pain. It is a simple question, but few studies have asked their participants to describe the source of their pain.
Participants in our study described injuries, weak muscles, arthritis and other bodily factors as the causes of their pain. Almost no one mentioned anything about the mind or brain.
One of the main goals of pain reprocessing therapy is to help people think differently about the causes of their pain. After we treated participants with pain reprocessing therapy, about half the causes of pain that people described were related to the mind or brain. They said things like “anxiety,” “fear” or “neural pathways” were the causes of their pain.
The more that people shifted to this kind of understanding, the more their back pain went down. We think this shift in understanding reduces fear and avoidance of pain, which can tamp down pain pathways in the brain and promote healthy, pain-reducing behaviors like exercise and socializing.
Ask your health providers, or check out these online resources that can help you assess whether and when the brain is playing a role in chronic pain.
Accurately identifying the underlying causes of pain is the first step toward healing it.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Yoni Ashar, Assistant Professor of General Internal Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.