The Buzz

 Many people today, are concerned about the environment and wishing that they could do something to help stop climate change, species extinction and more.  We are all conserving electricity, cutting down on our driving and driving more conservatively.  But many people want to do MORE to protect the world for future generations!

Placer Nature Center has a great suggestion.  Community members that want to DO something about the environmental challenges ahead can make a big difference in the quality of our environment by teaching thousands of children each year -  how to make choices that help heal our environmental wounds.  In addition, they will teach children science concepts and make them more scientifically literate - contributing to better academic performance for the children.

Placer Nature Center invites concerned citizens to become Placer Nature Center docents.  A delightful 6-week training culminates in a festive graduation after which simple community members become official Placer Nature Center docents and take their place as an environmental leader.  Connecting children and adults with nature makes both people and then environment healthier. 

Through Docent Training, participants learn hoe to teach the natural history and cultural science programs offered to school children who visit our site on school field trips. Docent training takes place every Monday and Wednesday. Participants are encouraged to dress for the weather! For more information, call Linda Desai at 530-878-6053

Fall 2008 Docent Training Schedule:

September 8, 9AM-11AM Orientation & Tour of Placer Nature Center

September 10, 9AM-12PM  Curriculum:  Senses of Wonder - Preschool, Kindergarten

September 15, 9AM-12PM Curriculum:  Habitat/Life Cycles - 1^st, 2^nd Grade

September 17, 9AM-12PM Curriculum:  Maidu - 3^rd  Grade

September 22, 9AM-12PM Curriculum:  Food Chains/Ecology - 4^th, 5^th  Grade

September 24, 9AM-1PM Curriculum: Watershed - Paddlers/Stream Swimmers 12PM-1PM:  Graduation/Potluck

Placer Nature Center, a private 501(c) (3) nonprofit, is open to the public and maintains miles of trails on their 60-acre campus.  Programs offered for preschoolers to adults, scouts and other groups, astronomy classes, environmental lectures and seasonal workshops.  For information please visit http://www.placernaturecenter.org/ or call 530-878-6053. To date Placer Nature Center has served nearly 180,000 students and 200 teachers.

Placer Nature Center is located at the end of Dry Creek Road at 3700 Christian Valley Road, Auburn,

This Journey of re-awaking my senses is starting to push the limits of my comfort zone. After all at 39 my tastes aren't going to change, are they?
My trepidation began this morning when I listened to my partners voice mail. You see I like to be in control, and today he gets to chose which direction the journey winds. In a voice that sounded all most gidy he tells me "to get ready for a day of sweet wine and stinky cheese." So, you see this is where my goose bumps get goose bumps.
I have a very sensitive olfactory organ. I have never been one to try and get past the smell of something. Oh yeah and about sweet wine, I am more of a Merlot or Cab kinda woman.
At this point I am starting to wonder if he even knows me at all. After all these years together did he ever notice that I have never ordered a port or willingly drank a glass of white wine? Could it be he has no clue from the overwhelming supply of air fresheners, order guard garbage bags, and deodrants in our cupboards that I am sensitive to smell?

Well, in the spirit of adventure, I did not make up an excuse to work late. Joining my partner in a culinary vacation to a small granite ensconced mediterranean isle. We are going to dine on "shepard's cheese". With a smirk, almost as if he knows something I don't, my partner begins to unpack our feast. Little did I know I was about to be amazed by the rich historical insights my partner had made. He proceeded to educate me about how shepard's cheese came about.How the monks being diligent washed developing mold spots from their young cheeses for the sake of purity and cleanliness, only to find an unusual sticky, bright orange surface layer develop. Unbeknownst to the well meaning brethren, they had cultivated a bacterial culture on their cheeses, known today as Brevibacterium Linens. The fact that they used the only sanitary liquids around, booze or boiled salted water, and the regimented way they organized their day further served to consistently select these ripening microbes – which prefer the resulting pH and salt level.

The particle cheese he has chosen for today was Tomme du Berger, this cheese is made from raw sheep and goat milk products and aged up to 4 months. The sticky rind barely contains a bulging, intensely fatty paste. For all its buttery richness, salty assertion and animal aromas, the cheese is mercurial, and remarkably fruity. (I really did taste the ripe pears.)

The pefect pairing for this cheese according to Chris Munsey or Murray's Fine cheeses in New york, ("The wine to pair up with this pungent farmhouse fromage is an equally vivacious and original partner, an Alsatian Gewürztraminer "Harth-Cuvee Caroline" 2005 from Bernard Schoffit. Schoffit's tiny 10 hectare vineyard is perched delicately on a slope so steep it had been abandoned as impossible to harvest, until he came along. This master winemaker has managed to wring an unctuous, heady perfumed gem from the unforgiving slate, a Gewürz with rich linenol, gardenia and honeysuckle aromas, a wonderful concentration of fruit and well-balanced acidity.") So that is exactly what we did.
Finding the right wine to pair with strong, stinky washed rind cheese like Tomme du Berger is difficult. Typically dry wines are overpowered by the strong salty flavor disappearing completely after the first bite. Not so with this match, which finds a dynamic combination of salty and sweet, barnyard funk tamed by the flowery aromatics of the wine. I would especially recommend this wine and cheese pairing for those who think they don't like sweet wine and stinky cheese - you will be converted! I have been!!!

Feeling full and wonderfully aroused, I looked over at my partner and thought maybe he knows me in a way I have yet to know myself.

Find out what he made me eat for dessert next time.

Lisa Sabrina Fults
Special Ts and Sports
Custom Screen

Very much enjoyed watching the movie Mandela and de Klerk, the story of  Nelson Mandela played by the wonderful Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine as F.W. de Klerk.  Of course the acting is excellent and the story is riveting and what a relief:  No profanity or nudity.  Unfortunately, because of the nature of apartheid/segregation, violence was depicted in a graphic manner--all offset by the stimulating conversations of Mandela and de Klerk in their attempts to end the violence and end segregation in South Africa.  This film inspires because it shows what one majestic man and his followers did to change the history of segregation in South Africa.  Poitier is a credit to his race and his profession and Caine certainly does a swell job in his role.  Four stars to this well-produced film set in Cape Town,  South Africa.

It is being said by many that 2008 is the beginning of great change/shift; and I agree because there appears to be a greater intensity in energy and many are in flux or change.   Friend Syl Bruce makes her transition in locating her 20-year business from Downtown Lincoln to the end of High Street where she should be located in March, ready to continue business as Southwest Silver; we wish her luck in navigating this latest challenge.  Friend Linda Lareau, Owner of  Courthouse Coffee fights to hold her own against the mighty corporations who do not have the superior location across from the Historic Auburn Courthouse.  Fight on, Linda.  And then there's friend Donna Arz who oversees ten holistic practitioners at The Healing Light Institute in North Auburn.  Arz also oversees a teen program and manages to recreate with running, tennis and golf; so Arz is smart in providing recreation with the demands of  entrepreneurship as a single mother; and we wish success to Arz.  And welcome home to Liz Pope as she returns to Auburn to find her place in the media where she has learned much about in Reno working for a radio station there.  Others in the retail and restaurant and real estate and mortgate business will face hard challenges until the cycle balances itself out.

 

 

OK, I admit to ingesting meat products; I confess to my choice to fall into eating animals in the abstract; but I do see myself shifting more and more away from such and toward fish (OK, I know these were once living creatures).  I do, however, have a great love and appreciation for those creatures of the wild including a pair of undomesticated felines and a miniature parrot and it pains me when I see brightly featured in the Sacramento Bee, photos of women holding the wild creatures of the sky, ducks that have been shot down from the sky (do not consume duck) while flying free.  And I must speak out for that which is disallowed from flying free to be photographed dead by the hunter with the high-powered gun.  Of course, I am free not to hunt and not to gaze upon these photos; but I am also a nature, animal/pet lover; so I choose to celebrate nature and love  and care for my pets and I feel by putting this small tribute out there that others, too, may choose to contribute their positive love of the wild and the free, and domesticated, too.  Will I discontinue my ingestion of meat products?  Time will tell a I confront my own demons.  Peace

Just enjoyed very much a movie titled The Gunfighter with Gregory Peck and while this tale is one of violence, I enjoyed the story which is depicted by the great Peck and guess what?  This wonderful film is in black and white, has minimum killing, little graphic depiction of the violence, no profanity and yet the message is clear:  Violence begets violence and man has a choice.  The film is beautifully acted by Peck and supporting actors Mitchell Mallard and Helen Westcott add to the authentic feel of the production directed by Henry King.  Actors are unique in that they leave a dimensional body of work behind that can become classics; and King and his actors have left us viewers with renewed faith in the movie industry, although this film was made in 1950.  See it.

It is becoming more and more challenging to override those headlines about crime and I always turn the television channel when the violence goes over the top and I try to avoid those programs that splash profanity around.   There really is much positive happening in the world because the world continues to spin and the sun rises and sets daily; so if we bear these realities in mind we can offset all the negatives that the media continues to deluge us with and we must remember that in a free world we can choose to wade in the negatives or sidestep same.  Nevertheless, it is disheartening to see so much emphasis put on celebs who are out of control and victims who have been assailed; so kudos to those programmers and media types who focus on the positive and golden stars to those film-makers who avoid profanity, violence and graphic sex.   On my CONNECTIONS program I focus on the lighter side and remember what actor Clint Walker said, that "We in the media have an opportunity to set an example with high standards".   Onward

A friend recently sent me a video of  Robin Williams; and while I am a fan of Williams, I absolutely abhor crude vulgarity and profanity-- even in the privacy of my home.  I closed down the video and emailed my friend my reaction whereby the friend defended the profanity, saying Williams was very funny.  We all have choices and I choose not to immerse myself in films and literature that are polluted by coarse, crude language.  I absolutely believe in free speech and am free to put down the book peppered with vulgar descriptions;  turn the channel when I see graphic violence or walk away from individuals who choose to spew profanity; but what a better scene it would be when we don't have to find ourselves dodging the profane, course and vulgar. 

After my Thursday radio program wherein I hosted golfer Terry Love and actor Perry King, we headed over to Courthouse Coffee and joined Beverly Lewis, Donna Arz and Diana Farr where the conversation quickly sequed into marriage/divorce.  Actor King talked about his disappointment with his two failed marriages and the pain of  divorce all the while I was feeling somewhat proud of myself for managing to navigate over thirty-nine years of what many call the most difficult of relationships, marriage.    I really do liken marriage to my newest found passion, golf, in that when you stay the course and look back at the field littered with the bodies who have been felled, there is that glorious feeling of accomplishment in simply beating the odds.  I am amused when the excuses come up such as "we grew apart" as if this has to be the end of all.   As a veteran of a long-lasting marriage, I have learned much; and one important truth is that marriage is like a successful business in that in order for the marriage to work there must be a mutual respect/regard for the other; humor definitely helps and there must be space in the togetherness.    I have learned, like in business, discussion and negotiation of  issues is one of the keys to success.  If you run hollering and hysterical out of a meeting, it's probably a deal breaker and it only makes more of an emotional mess on the domestic scene.   So, like in pre-school, when tempers flare and old issues become button-pushers, time-outs are a good idea so the parties can retreat to their separt havens until the dust settles.  I'm patting myself on the back as I approach yet another milestone at the end of this month, another year of marriage.  Yes, it can work; but there is always work to be done, always change to adapt to.   I say celebrate the achievement and reward yourself for staying the course. .. 

Authors abound, especially in the Roseville/Nevada City Area and I am pleased to land Nik Colyer, who writes books about the male/female relationship.  Nik tells me that his latest book "Channeling Biker Bob" is in the planning stages for a movie.  Nik guests November 29 on my KAHI CONNECTIONS program.  Tune in to 950AM Thursdays from 9am to 10am.