Placer Nature Center lost a wonderful friend last week when Peter K. Brink passed away. We would like to share a few details of his work for the Center with the public – as he was a wonderful character and delightful and generous human being.
During the past 17 years, Peter has been involved with our environmental learning center in so many ways. Our “On the Brink of Discovery Room” honors Peter’s contribution to restoration of this structure into a science laboratory. For over 12 years, our “Family Days” open house events annually celebrate insects and exhibited Peter’s astonishing collection. They are also shared every summer with our “Bugs, Bugs, Bugs” summer campers. He was a regular lecturer at our “Conservation Awareness” classes for California Conservation Corps youth. The reporting system we use to keep our Board of Directors current on grant activity was designed by Peter when he served on our Fund Development Committee. Our exhibit hall rug hosts circles of school children every school day and was funded by the Brink family. Our “Endowment Fund” was established thanks to an initial gift by the Brink family. The Native American baskets that adorn our Maidu exhibit are on loan to us from the Brink family.
As you can see, our gratitude to and love of the Brink family is longstanding and deep. You will also be interested to know that Norma is a regular visitor to the Center and assists with record keeping for income to the Center that is generated by our grant writing, school tours and fund raisers.
We grieve with her and the family at Peter’s passing and will miss him as we celebrate his memory and contribution to children and the environment forever.
Ron Blair, left, and Rex Maynard will be in the canyons of the American River on Saturday as volunteers for the Earth Day American River Cleanup. Photo by Don Chaddock.
In honor of Earth Day, which is officially observed on Tuesday, one group will be turning their attention to the American River on Saturday.
Protect American River Canyons (PARC) organizes about 100 volunteers every year to hike down to the river and pick up trash, litter, old computers, refrigerators and whatever else people have tossed into the canyon. Volunteers from local service clubs, the high school and the general public show up in droves.
And for those who’ve never ventured into the canyons, now is the perfect time.
“It’s a good opportunity to see the river and canyons,” said Eric Peach, PARC’s Conservation Chairman. “Right now, everything is blooming. They can come out, enjoy the river, and help us clean. If we get a good turnout (of volunteers), and everyone does a little, we get a lot more done.”
Peach said it’s sad that with that much natural beauty to enjoy, some people ruin it by throwing garbage into the canyons.
“You wonder what people are thinking,” Peach said. “It’s jarring to look at all that beauty and see trash along side it.”
Peach encourages families to come out and treat it as a “walk with a purpose.” The bulk of the cleanup happens underneath the Foresthill Bridge.
“People are throwing everything off of (the bridge) like TVs, ladders and shopping carts,” he said.
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.”
