Kenneth “Pops” Yarber became homeless in 1995, not long after a brain aneurism put him in a wheelchair. Suddenly, he was forty years old and […]
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Homeless: Are Shelters Obsolete?
The rise in numbers of homeless shelters in the United States coincided with deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill in the late 1970s. During the same decade, runaway inflation—especially rising costs of living—left some members of the economy unable to keep up. The result was more homelessness. Over the years, socio-economic factors have continued to contribute […]
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Water and the River: Upping the Ante
Those who attended last Tuesday’s afternoon session of the Federal Energy Regulation Comission (FERC) at Modesto’s Doubletree Hotel listened to people who use and love the Tuolumne River explain why their needs should be represented in decisions about relicensing Don Pedro Dam’s hydroelectric project, which is powered by the Tuolumne River. The chief issue for […]
Water: “We farm, you pay.” Subsidence and Socialism in the Valley
Among the more persistent mythologies of the American west, few are as enduring and erroneous as those about water, especially here in the San Joaquin Valley. The one consistent element in all of them is that no matter what’s wrong, “It’s all government’s fault.” So it is that when California became the last state in […]
Homeless: Frank Ploof Reflects on Beard Brook Village
Frank Ploof’s last job before retirement was at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He was a Computer Scientist by classification but spent most of his career defining and building information systems. Working with scientists got him accustomed to information systems, critical thinking, testing theories, and working with data. For well over the last five years, […]
“Why do we wait for occasions like this?”
An overflow crowd packed Modesto’s Islamic Center Monday night, as speaker after speaker emphasized the need for unity and love in the aftermath of the slaughter of fifty worshippers at a mosque in New Zealand last Friday. Muslim leaders apologized several times for not having a facility big enough to accommodate everyone, and earlier on […]