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San Joaquin Valley Election: Your Vote and Mine

Flannery O’Connor’s short story, Good Country People, features a Bible salesman who steals a woman’s artificial leg, leaving her stranded in a hay loft in the family barn. That’s just the bare plotline. Like any of O’Connor’s stories in the broad Southern Gothic tradition, it has multiple layers of irony, elements of the gruesome and […]

The Kindness of Trees…and People

A few days ago, I was in the community laundry room at my apartment complex when I spotted a bottle of Tide detergent sitting on a table, a handwritten note taped to its front. The message on the bottle read: Repaying kindnesses I hope you have a wonderful day! Please only take what you need. […]

More Problems for Gavin Newsom’s Homeless Orders

Other than the legal cover provided by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass vs Johnson, there’s nothing new about Gavin Newsom’s statewide orders to clear homeless camp. Sweeping homeless camps has been California’s default tactic for managing homelessness for years. By now, most anyone even remotely familiar with the state’s severe housing shortage […]

Eastern Rarity brings Birders to San Joaquin County to Look and Listen

Jim Gain knew it was remotely possible that an Eastern Wood-Peewee might appear in San Joaquin County, but since the last reliable sighting had been in 1983, he thought the report he saw on e-bird last Saturday was almost certainly an error. The report was from a person whose name Gain didn’t recognize, which added […]

More Sweeps? Why California Fails on Homelessness

Even before Gavin Newsom’s statewide order to clear camps, Modesto’s homeless people were saying Stanislaus County Sheriffs had already started arresting people with no place to go. Whether that’s the case or not, jail time for homeless people is the expected outcome after the Supreme Court ruling on Grants Pass vs Johnson on June 28. […]

Learn 100 Common Valley Birds: Species #69/100

Few things on earth fill us with as much delight as birds, and knowing them by name only adds to our pleasure. In California’s Central Valley, with only a little bit of effort, anyone can learn 100 local bird species. Valley residents almost daily come in contact with at least a dozen species that most […]

Will Water Districts Fail to Deliver on Historic Contract?

Earlier this year, Louis Brichetto was having breakfast with a local cattleman who mentioned having seen the Brichetto name on a historical water contract he had been reviewing along with some of his own old contracts. The casual remark got Brichetto’s immediate attention. Brichetto’s roots in Stanislaus County’s Oakdale region go back well over 150 […]