John Steinbeck"s Birthday 2014

According to GOOGLE, today would be John Steinbeck’s 112^th birthday. I like to think that the days of harassment, poverty and fear that Steinbeck describes in “The Grapes of Wrath” are history. Yet today I read about King City, in the beautiful Salinas Valley, where the acting police chief and several officers were charged with selling impounded cars of poor Hispanic residents.

Apparently, there have been on-going reports of complaints, mostly from the Hispanic community, that the police were taking their cars and money and there was nothing they could do. This week investigators finally had enough evidence to arrest six people for bribery and criminal threats.

Interviews with the Hispanic community unearthed the high level of mistrust of the local police. Cars were routinely and illegally towed and impounded. When the owners were unable to raise the storage fees, the cars were confiscated and either sold or given away.

The sad part of this story is that this type of treatment of immigrant communities, is not part of California’s sordid past, but continues throughout the state. We want safe, well-integrated and peaceful towns and the fact that authoritarian behavior is tolerated, is Beyond Cuckoo. I think John Steinbeck would agree. Do you?

John Steinbeck"s Birthday 2014

Bill Nye Meets Marsha Blackburn on Meet the Press

I don’t normally watch NBC’s Meet the Press. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the program, but my viewership goes back to my childhood. On Sunday mornings, the show simply got beat out by cartoons. As an adult, I don’t normally watch cartoons—until this morning.

I became familiar with Bill Nye, when my husband, Blake Webster, interviewed him for his book, “Environmentalists in Action:  Profile of Green Pioneers”. This morning, he debated Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who is vice-chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Now, we all agree that lately the weather is Beyond Cuckoo and that there is a general consensus among the scientific community, that carbon emissions play a role in global climate change.  Well, Ms. Blackburn is Beyond Skeptical. To quote, “you don’t make good laws, sustainable laws, when you’re making them on hypotheses, or theories, or unproven sciences.

Mr. Nye offered up some common sense. He pointed out that what Ms. Blackburn called a “very slight” change in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is in fact significant at a 25% increase since 1994. With little air time, the numbers and names tossed about, to be honest, meant little to me. What hit home was Ms. Blackburn’s repetition of the phrase “Cost/Benefits analysis”, which sounded to me like, it’s simply too expensive to look into environmentally clean technology.

Bill Nye made me glad to be American as he pushed back with a more patriotic view. “As a guy who grew up in the US,” he said, “I want the US to lead the world in this….The more we mess around with this denial, the less we’re going to get done.”

You can find Blake Webster’s interview with Bill Nye on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Green-Environmentalists-Profiles-Pioneers-Authorities/dp/1451568282/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392594420&sr=1-9&keywords=Blake+Webster

Bill Nye Meets Marsha Blackburn on Meet the Press

The Nut Job

The Nut Job!

Apparently there is a growing (pun intended) concern in California’s San Joaquin Valley surrounding walnut heists. One of the most recent involved the theft of 140,000 pounds of hulled and dried walnuts worth an estimated $400,000. Unfortunately this was not an isolated incident—agricultural crime is on the rise. Some believe the Russians are behind it—I kid you not. One suspect was detained in Bakersfield, where he told police that he had instructions from an anonymous caller, with a thick Russian accent, to drive the stolen walnut load to Los Angeles. Once there, he was further instructed to drop the trailers of walnuts in a vacant lot and walk away. On January 17, 2014 two men were arrested by the San Joaquin County Sheriff and booked into jail. The walnuts were recovered, but authorities will not disclose the location.

So, I’m watching news reports about how food products bearing the Olympic symbol have become a big hit with the Sochi 2014 Olympic Licensing Program. Consumers all over Russia are snatching up millions of Olympic Symbol embossed packages of candy bars and baked goods, such as cookies and brownies. Extremely popular are treats from the Moscow Nut Company.

Let’s just say that this case has yet to be cracked.

 

The Nut Job