Auburn pilot Dennis Freidig developed the “Adopt a Pueblo” program to help fund more healthcare clinics south of the border with the Gold Country Chapter of The Flying Doctors.
The local chapter of The Flying Doctors – which has been generating neighborly goodwill with Mexico for about 25 years – will this week spread its wings testing a trial program to help fund more small private plane trips delivering sorely needed healthcare clinics to rural, and often isolated villages, beyond California’s southern border.
The new program – called “Adopt a Pueblo” (or Village) – seeks support from community organizations to help fund the cost of efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of the indigenous people of Mexico served by the nonprofit organization.
It’s all part of an effort by the Gold Country Chapter of The Flying Doctors – or Los Médicos Voladores – to generate additional funds for the group’s humanitarian endeavors that includes sending medical personnel to run short, temporary clinics in Mexico. The group hopes to expand its efforts with more trips if the new program soars.
The first trip with local sponsorship departed Thursday for its five-hour journey to provide dental services to the populace of San Ignacio in the Sonora region of Baja as part of a two-day clinic. The Auburn Host Lions Club, the program’s first sponsor, provided $750 to help fray airplane and fuel costs, and to provide the “little extras” that mean so much to locals in these remote villages, such as reading and sunglasses.
“It was just a natural fit for the Lions Club and the Flying Doctors to work together,” said Dennis Freidig, a Flying Doctors pilot who developed the “Adopt a Pueblo” program. “What a difference we can make together.”
Defined, sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. Sustainability is also our ability to change and adapt. Our flexibility is linked to our survivability. This sounds like common sense, right? No one wants civilization to come to a grinding halt due to pollution, starvation and a lack of water.
Early in human history, we used naturally occurring materials for shelter, making significantly less impact on the environment. When nomadic peoples moved on, their structures were largely broken down and reintegrated into the environment.
With the rise of civilization and technology, we were able to manipulate naturally occurring materials into less natural – but more durable – products like fired clay, metals for jewelry and tools, glass, cement and more recently plastics and the thousands of petroleum-based products we use daily.
Human populations also reflect in the fertility of the soil. As our numbers increased, the soils we lived on began to produce less. We responded by simply picking up and moving along. As our numbers increased, we had to stay put, increasing our yields naturally at first with manure and now with chemical fertilizers. Once believed to be a modern miracle, these fertilizers leave behind toxic residue in the soils and water.
Factory farming of animals is another example of a non-sustainable practice due to massive amounts of toxic runoff, antibiotics, air pollution and petroleum required for production and transportation.
So what is sustainability? It is a holistic approach to living – from the design of buildings and communities to the way we eat and even our buying habits.
In honor of Earth Day, opportunities for improvement are everywhere. Here are some eco-groovy ways to help:
First, I had to endure my wife dragging me off to Mexico to lie on beaches and then returned only to find that the Auburn Journal had published yet another in its series of “what’s wrong with Gordon Ainsleigh” editorials on the day I left. Inexplicably, the Journal had a problem with my announcing at the last Auburn Recreation District Board meeting that “for the remainder of the meeting, I will be snacking on food that is more nutritious than what we feed the kids in ARD summer program” and proceeded to dig into a bag of cat food.
My hero, Jesse Ventura, said it best. “So you’re telling me that when I got elected governor of Minnesota I was supposed to quit having a sense of humor?” Like Jesse, I believe that humor is a vital part of health, happiness and living to a ripe old age. Judging from current performance, the Journal editors don’t have a prayer of living as long as Bob Hope, George Burns and Jack Benny, but I do.
Humor can also be a vehicle for social change. For example, most doctors know that walking for about an hour each day cuts senior death rates almost in half, and greatly extends the good years of living. But we doctors have a problem trying to persuade senior citizens to become streetwalkers. That why I’m pushing so hard for exercise pathways and scenic trails in all the ARD parks. Government should provide something better for us seniors than the life of a streetwalker.
Meet Bob Houston
Candidate for the Placer County Board of Supervisors 5th District seat, Bob Houston, will meet and greet the voters at the Auburn home of Joanne Neft, 326 Aeolia Drive, on Friday, April 18 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 916-663-9126.
Candidates speak at forum in Auburn
A forum will be held on Saturday, April 19 from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Placer High School Auditorium in Auburn. On hand to present their ideas for Placer County and to respond to questions will be Jim Holmes from District 3, Kirk Uhler from District 4, and District 5 candidates Bruce Kranz, Jennifer Montgomery, and Robert Houston. There are two ballot measures for the June 3rd election – both involving “eminent domain.” The League of Women Voters of Placer County will present the pros and cons for the measure and answer questions. Voter registration will be available. This event is sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Placer County, the Auburn and Roseville/South Placer branches of the American Association of University Women, and the Placer County Elections Division. For more information, e-mail
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or call Jeanene O’Brien at 530-823-1783.
Newcastle firefighters Cameron Gibson, left, and Christian Suman stand in front of the Newcastle Fire Department building at Cypress and Main Street. The building, which is in a state of disrepair (as seen at the top of this photo), is no longer suitable for use as a fire station and the community is stepping forward to find a new location to house their public safety personnel.
For an agency tasked with maintaining public safety, the building that houses their employees is anything but safe.
While pulling their fire engine out of the Newcastle Fire Department building at Cypress and Main Street a few years ago, the overhead beam supporting the garage door ripped off the truck’s light bar – because the beam had shifted, according to Michael Leydon, former Newcastle Community Association president and current president of the Newcastle Elementary School District Board. He said the station is essentially crumbling around the firefighters.
The cost of renovating the building has been estimated to run between $850,000 and $1.2 million, he said. That’s why the elementary school board stepped forward to offer the firefighters a new home.
The school board owns property nearby on Old State Highway that also features a large warehouse. According to Leydon, the facility has already been inspected and is in good enough shape to house the firefighting equipment and engines.
The school board is working with the Newcastle Fire Department and the Placer County Office of Education to craft a memorandum of understanding regarding the use of the property, leases, improvements and the addition of a manufactured building to house the firefighters.
One issue is Pine View School located adjacent to the proposed site. According to Leydon, early plans call for a fence to be constructed between the school and the new fire station. He said moving the fire department is a priority.
Retired Police Chief Nick Willick, right, discusses plans for the next Project Auburn with the Downtown Business Association. The May 31 community work party, known as Project Auburn, will focus its efforts on improving the facade of the State Theater building in Downtown Auburn.
More than 30 business owners and managers took a tour last Thursday of the first phase of the planned improvements of the State Theater Building in Auburn.
Retired Auburn Police Chief Nick Willick spoke to the Auburn Downtown Business Association at their general meeting last week and took the group on a tour of the exterior of the building. He was at the meeting with Dr. Bill Kirby to inform the group about Project Auburn, slated for May 31.
Project Auburn is an annual community work party spearheaded by the Rotary Club of Auburn. Previous Project Auburn improvements included painting numerous homes in a neighborhood, beautifying Old Town Auburn (renovating two Victorians, painting curbs, landscaping the park and constructing the billboard) and making repairs at Recreation Park.
This year’s target is the facade of the State Theater building on Lincoln Way.
Willick took the business meeting outside last week and pointed out what the group would be doing on May 31. They plan to paint the exterior in advance of the construction of the recently approved marquee and vertical sign, and replace windows with those that are more fitting to 1937.
Recently, on a public trail near Auburn, a horse was attacked by an off-leash dog resulting in injuries requiring vet emergency treatment. We have leash laws, but only a few obey them because there is no enforcement. As soon as most dog owners go into the woods, they take leashes off. Leashed dogs, wildlife, and horses, are all targets for these kinds of ever-increasing vicious dog-attack encounters.
The next step is to ban all dogs from any trails—this is already done in Yosemite. We must either ban dogs or increase taxes and/or use fees to guarantee leash law enforcement. In spite of all this tragic law-breaking, Placer County residents still insist on bad-mouthing and cutting taxes which denies the public even the most basic protections.
Offenders must be arrested, hit with heavy fines, forbidden from ever using public lands, and serve mandatory jail time. We must remove scofflaws and take back our public lands so that we can safely enjoy them once again.
Otherwise, we risk being attacked as our public lands become the sole playground for lawbreakers.
The new Loomis Basin Chamber of Commerce office is located at Horseshoe Bar and Doc Barnes roads in Loomis. The facility acts as a visitor center at the gateway entrance to town off of Interstate 80 and was made possible through partnerships between the Town of Loomis, which is leasing the land to the organization for $1 per year for the next 20 years, and businesses and individuals. Doupnik Manufacturing donated the building and High Hand Nursery donated the landscaping. The building officially opened last October.
Loomis suffers sales tax losses, but economic outlook is positive
Like many small towns, Loomis is facing declines in sales tax revenues and uncertainty regarding the state’s budget crisis. But, looking ahead, Loomis Town Councilman Mike Ucovich is optimistic.
He lists many reasons for that optimism. The town is moving forward with plans to either restore or rebuild the train depot located at the end of Horseshoe Bar Road. The vacant Horseshoe Bar Grill, which shuttered its doors more than two years ago when the former owners relocated to southern California, will be reopening in the coming weeks. The Village at Loomis plan, a decade-long project, will be the largest development in the town’s 20-year history if it’s approved, adding up to 800 residents. The town’s fire district is finally on sturdy financial ground after struggling for years. The Blue Goose Fruit Shed restoration project was recognized at the County Economic Development Summit held last month in Lincoln. And, Ucovich predicts there will be no major changes to the town’s budget despite the state’s fiscal woes.
The newest sales tax figures, representing decreased retail activity in the fourth quarter of 2007, show that Loomis is down about 20 percent. The previous quarter, the town suffered a 22.7 percent loss, the largest of any town in the Sentinel’s five-city coverage area.
“Since Roger Carroll, our finance director, always over estimates our expenditures and under estimates our revenues, we’ll be fine,” Ucovich said.
“We’re a low flying public service entity,” he said. “We have a relatively small staff so, unlike Auburn, we don’t have to get rid of everybody.”
While lost in a moment of introspection, I found myself pondering what I would say in this column and exactly how to express it, when I was struck by the parallels between my mental indecision and our situation here on Earth.
I think that collectively as a species we too seem to be waiting around and milling over our environmental responsibilities; anticipating the right time to arise when we will step forth and heroically take action. Perhaps we have been waiting for someone else to solve the problems or make the changes.
I realized I was never going to manifest more time to write, have more ideas or a greater literary ability.
And so that is how this column has come to be. Just in case you were wondering about the name, “Green Maven” is my super hero alter ego. My superpowers as Green Maven would allow me to peacefully transform unsustainable practices into holistically sustainable systems with my power ring. I would also have a really killer recycled costume and a sustainably built secret headquarters.
And as for the name, I found out after my selection that it is also the name of the Green search engine www.greenmaven.com so that ought to be easy for us to remember when the need to look up green information arises.
I hope you join me in on the adventure of becoming “green.” This is an adventure we are all collectively taking together here on our small planet whether we like it or not and whether we participate or not. This adventure is taking place both globally and more tangibly, locally.
SARSAS is an acronym for Save Auburn Ravine Salmon And Steelhead. The organization’s mission is to restore, protect, and improve the habitat and runs of salmon and steelhead in the Auburn Ravine by providing a navigable waterway from the Sacramento River to the city of Auburn.
SARSAS is a part of the Dry Creek Conservancy, a non-profit, non-governmental organization, and our goal is to modify the 10 man-made barriers on the Auburn Ravine and the six or more beaver dams, making them passable for fishes. This undertaking will have a lasting effect on the quality of all our lives. We have an opportunity to create something no other town in California has, which is an anadromous (migrating up rivers from the sea to breed in fresh waters) fish run with salmon spawning in the center of the Auburn. So doing this is not only “possible,” but highly “doable.”
Since I was born in Ophir and spent my childhood exploring the Auburn Ravine (AR), and Valerie and I lived in Ophir before moving to Auburn, we have an intimate knowledge of the AR. We first saw the incredible beauty of a city with salmon spawning in its center in Juneau, Alaska, and got the idea to reproduce that beauty in Auburn.
