Stupid, Stinking, Dumbass Local Government

Have you ever had to read one of these? I have. I hate them. They make a pit in the bottom of my stomach. For the past 25 years the Sacramento County government, overseen by a Board of Supervisors, has been trying everything they can think of to turn our farming community into whatever project of the moment strikes them.

They got their toe into Sloughhouse more than 35 years ago when they snuck in and bought property without telling the seller they intended to turn it into Sacramento County's dump. This is lie #1. 

Picture this, if you will: Sloughhouse is a long narrow valley between Deer Creek and the Cosumnes River. To the north it's bordered by foothills. To the south is the slightly higher plain that is Wilton. Jackson Road is a two lane highway that goes through the valley, taking traffic to Amador County to the east. Sloughhouse is about 15 miles from the city of Sacramento to the west, and 5 miles from Rancho Murieta to the east.

The dump - Kiefer Landfill - sits in the foothills just north of Deer Creek. The oldest part of it is unlined, which means that dump juice leaks into the Deer Creek aquifer. The dump was supposed to close after it had been in operation for 25 years. This is lie #2.

The dump did not close, the county decided to make it bigger. Because it was polluting water under neighboring farm properties, they declared that everything within a designated space around the dump would become a "Buffer Zone" for their festering problem. This would be cheaper than actually cleaning up the problem, though they were gambling that the pollution wouldn't spread beyond their arbitrary line (a gamble they lost). This zone included parts of several people's properties. They bought some out, they threatened condemnation on others. They didn't end up with everything they initially wanted. Like my property and a couple of other pieces. I'm not sure why they gave up on mine, perhaps the appraiser went back to the office and reported the snarling, rabid lady who met him at the door and told him in no uncertain terms to get his ass off the place and don't ever come back? I'm sure he'd seen the same at my aunt's house, but my property was not needed for a dump expansion. Whatever.

Some farmers owned land that stretched from the foothills (where they had their houses), on down through the bottomland. They sold their entire pieces to the county, opting not to keep just the bottomland. (You can't get a permit to build a new house on the bottomland because it's a floodplain.) So this put some cropland into the county's hands as well.

In their Negative Declaration for the buffer project the county said their intention was to have all lands remain in the same use that they were previously. (For those of you abroad, a Neg Dec means the project won't cause significant damage to require mitigation.) Well, this was lie #3. 

Ever since the county has owned land here they've been trying to change everything. First, the farmers who were leasing the property had to go through the county's bid process, because the county of course doesn't operate on a handshake like the rest of us have for a hundred years. 

At least twice a year I hear of some new project that some county idiot is proposing for MY community. Once I heard they wanted to turn it into a golf course. None of us play golf. Isn't it more important to supply food? Another plan was to turn it into some kind of park. Those of us who live here joked that they could put in lookout points where people could park off the highway and observe the growing mountain of the dump. There was a plan to put a bike trail along the Cosumnes River, which would have made it considerably easier for people to steal copper from our water pumps. No one ever came out here and asked what we residents thought about anything.

Now, you need to know that the only thing that has saved us so far is our own County Supervisor, Don Nottoli. He was born and raised in nearby Galt. He worked for our previous supervisor when he was young and took over that office several years ago. He knows us all by name. He and his assistant Pat have come to our rescue, not only from the county, but also from Caltrans' stupid projects. If it wasn't for Don, we'd probably be long gone. So I don't include him in my assessment of county government.

I think it was in 2009 that the county first started talking about creating a special planning area (SPA). They held carefully contrived public meetings that pretty much allowed them to ignore the very vociferous comments they got from this community. And now they've put their plans into a 400-page EIR. Citizens have the opportunity to write comments and submit them. That deadline is April 3. I just got the EIR last week. They plan ahead to cut your comment time down to as short as they can because, once again, they know they are not going to like what they hear. 

So that's a couple of weeks to examine every word in the document with a fine tooth comb, because it's a landmine of hidden intentions, partial truths, and glossing over big problems. I have only read 4 pages so far, and found that they want once again to widen Jackson Highway to 4 lanes through Sloughhouse. Why? Caltrans tried this and gave up, there's no room down here for a 4 lane highway without cutting a wide swath through valuable farmland, or removing every house down here. The houses were all built when Jackson Road was used by stagecoaches, it's NOT as one county employee (who probably moved here from Los Angeles or the Bay Area 5 years ago) suggested, that we were all stupid to build our houses so close to the road that has now become a major thoroughfare. Of course if you eliminate all the houses, you get rid of us pesky people who live here.

I'm beginning to understand what it must have been like for my Polish ancestors, living where every conqueror in Europe rode through. We in Sloughhouse have done a great job of preserving our riparian habitat, of taking good care of our farmland, and of providing reasonably-priced fresh vegetables directly to the public. Even through a constant attack from our own county government. 

I will undoubtedly be in a pissy mood for a while, sorry about that. 

Baby Pigeon Report

The baby pigeons are growing and doing just fine. The gray baby has most of its feathers and is eating on its own when I'm not looking (it's not stupid, if you admit you can eat on your own, no one will feed you). Here it is a week ago.

And here it is now.

The gray baby is such a sweetie. It jumps into my hand and rides to the counter where I feed it, then jumps down onto the paper towel. It opens its mouth for either the tube or some pigeon peas. All it takes is a soft touch to handle it. I love this pigeon.

Here is the white baby a week ago.

I'm not trying to pop its head off, I'm trying to steady its head so I can feed it. This baby is not a sweetie, it thinks it's a dragon. It wants to be fed, but I have to pry its mouth open every time, while it beats me with its wings. I think its parents should thank me for bringing it into the house. Here is the "white" baby now.

It's not really white anymore, it has spots and a dark head. Those wings are already longer than the gray baby's wings, and it can really use them for a karate chop.

This is my pigeon-feeding assistant.

Gollie doesn't bother any of the birds when they're in their cages, but she always looks like she's ready just in case one of them happens to fall off the counter. (Pigeons don't fall off things, that's why their parents can raise them in precarious places.)

There haven't been anymore incidents of babycide out in the pigeon coop. That's because there haven't been any babies. I've been replacing real eggs with these:

Hopefully the adults will all get paired up and the single ones will start hanging out in nightclubs and leaving the families alone. In the meantime, there are 4 pairs sitting on these plastic eggs. I call it pigeon birth control. Oh my, would Rick Santorum disapprove of that? T...S...

Mama Mia

My life is not always as dull as it seems, sometimes I get out and have a great time. This week I got to see the national touring stage production of Mama Mia! I went with Melanie (my former workmate) and her guy, Adam. We had the best seats EVER...front row center. As Melanie said, the actors could spit on us, we were so close.

This will be my next sewing project. I'll make it for Melanie, she could totally wear it. It's her color, too.

One of the things I love about ABBA is the fans. We are all people who like to have fun. 

I still have only 2 CDs in my car. Both of them are ABBA and I play them all the time. So, of course, I know all the songs. That makes it easy to sing along. The people who wrote the play seem to know this about ABBA fans, so at the end of the play there is a medley of songs that encourages the whole audience to stand up and dance and sing along. This is something Melanie and I would have done anyway, but it's more fun when you have lots of company. It reminded me of the 15,000 people in Las Vegas who sang "Hey Jude" along with Paul McCartney a few years ago. 

With all the dissension in this country, most of it the result of butt stupidity, it's so neat to be able to share a good time.

Aparagus!

These photos were taken by Rick Grimshaw. The fields are muddy for the first time this winter.

But there's asparagus to pick. And eat, of course. We're having some for dinner.

It's officially springtime in Sloughhouse.

Water Aerobics

Getting myself up out of bed at 7 a.m. on a stormy day to get to the water aerobics class takes as much effort as the class itself. Some of it is mental effort, I have to invent new lies to myself. ("I have to wash my hair anyway, might as well do it at the gym.") This morning, with steam wafting from the 85° pool, I was reminded of the hot springs macaques of Japan. There were 8 of us this morning. We looked a lot like this, except we were all wearing hats.  

Bad Parenting?

The past couple of weeks have been rough ones in the pigeon pen. I've found 3 dead babies on the ground. This past week I found a baby in the middle of the floor, it's sibling nearby and dead. Two days later there were two very small babies moved out of their nests. I'm not sure if it's bad parenting, or if there is a child abuser in the flock.

This is the first baby I found alive on the pen floor. It took about an hour for this baby to adapt to being tubefed and kept in a warm, clean place in the house.

Now it whistles when it sees me coming, opens its beak for the tube, and cooperates nicely to have pigeon peas rolled down its throat. I'm not sure how I'm going to integrate it back into the pen when it's older.

I had my eye on this baby and its sibling from the time they were hatched, hoping nothing would bother them, and thinking I might have to bring them in if it looked like there was a problem.

I wanted to leave them with the parents as long as possible. It's very hard to handraise a newborn pigeon, it gets easier when they're a few days old.

This baby's sibling had been dragged out of the nest and pecked, all in about an hour after I checked them. I brought them both in right away, hoping they were old enough to tubefeed. The injured sibling didn't have bad wounds, but it did have an impacted crop. It's parents had been feeding it full-sized peas. I wouldn't do this, myself, until a baby was as big as the one in the top picture. I tried massaging the crop and that seemed to loosen up the stuff inside it, but this morning the baby was dead.

The remaining small one seems to be doing fine. I mixed a little yogurt with its food, something I read about online and am hoping will help. So far, so good.

These babies are in aquariums in the den along with the chicks and Bob and his computer. There are now 9 barred bantam OE (1 succumbed), 4 Anconas, and 4 bantam Dominiques. Next week I can move them to larger brooders in the GARAGE!!!

Goodbye and Good Riddance

To all my friends and relatives who have put up with my complaints about the crap in my garage over the years, this was a great day.

First time the Jeep has seen sunshine in 27 years. First time I've been able to walk through the garage and not trip over boxes of useless (but precious, of course) junk in 25 years.