Who says there’s no nightlife in Montara? The will be an open mike at Caffe Lucca, in the heart of Montara’s entertainment district, this Friday night from 7 to 9:30pm.  In August, there will be Friday open mikes at Caffe Lucca on August 1, 15, and 29

Caffe Lucca
Hwy 1 @ 8th St.
Montara
728-5229

On Friday August 1st at 7:00PM the Half Moon Bay Library will be hosting Blue Blanket Improv, a local improv troupe known throughout the Bay Area.  They specialize in "short form improv".  It’s a series of short games, each with a different structure or set of restrictions on what the players can and can’t do.  Everything that is spoken or performed onstage is completely unrehearsed, created on the spot, and usually base on suggestions from the audience.  Blue Blanket shows are fun for the entire family.  For more information go to

blueblanketimprov.com

The Coastside Land Trust is holding our monthly restoration event at our Francis Beach properties this coming Saturday, July 26th, 12:30 to 3pm.  We’re making good progress re-establishing native vegetation on these properties. It sometimes seems like an impossible task, but if you look a the picture with Michael Kimsey and his adopted berry vine, it is clear that Michael is winning ground for the berry vine. Berry vines provide both shelter and food for animals. This year’s is a particularly good year for our native berries, and the birds, insects, and people are enjoying them and thriving.

Please join us. Check in at the Francis State Beach kiosk at Kelly and the Pacific Ocean, proceed north on the maintenance road to the maintenance sheds. Our properties are on the east side of the maintenance road. Refreshments, good humor and appreciation are provided for all ages and abilities.

Jo Chamberlain
Executive Director
Coastside Land Trust

Rep. Anna Eshoo, has gotten $750,000 toward a new Emergency Operations Center and police station for Half Moon Bay written into the Homeland Security Appropriations Act being considered in Congress. The total cost is estimated to be $3.5 and $5 million, reports the County Times.

The facility, to be constructed on a site to be determined, would include necessities such as wireless Internet and satellite TV, backup generators and an independent electrical system.
...

The prospect of losing all three roads that connect to the Bayside in a major earthquake is very real, [HMB Police Chief Dan] O’Keefe said. Two major earthquake faults bisect the coast, and the roads have already fallen victim to slides, flooding and erosion over the years.

It might even be possible to lose all land line and cell phone communication, which happened in April 2006 when a landslide cut an AT&T fiber optic cable on the coast. Even the police station lost telephone access.

Losing access to the Bayside would also mean losing access to rescue workers, most of whom live elsewhere. On a typical night shift, four Half Moon Bay police officers are on duty, along with 10 firefighters and six sheriff’s deputies — three of whom are spread out over Skyline Boulevard and the South Coast.

Half Moon Bay’s police department is currently housed in a fifteen-year-old "temporary" structure. The article suggested that the center could serve all Coastside public safety agencies, including the California Highway Patrol, the county Sheriff’s Office and fire and state parks officials and that Chief O’Keefe is "confident he’ll find enough funding for the project, possibly from the county, to begin planning for the new building next year".

Feature: No End In Sight

When: Friday, July 25, 7:30 pm

Where: Methodist Sanctuary,  777 Miramontes, Half Moon Bay (Corner of Johnston & Miramontes)

Donation: $6.00  


The Coastside Film Society will be screening a documentary about the Iraq war that caught them by surprise. According to Joe Devlin, Film Society board member, "when the film was first recommended to us our initial inclination was to say ‘No thanks, we try to veer away from political films’.

"No End in Sight did not turn out to the be film we assumed it would be. We expected a bombastic polemic featuring interviews with Cindy Sheehan and her cohort. Instead we found film featuring introspective interviews with former Bush administration officials who talk frankly about mistakes made and opportunities missed." 

This approach has won the film almost universal accolades and the "Special Jury Prize" at the Sundance Film Festival. 

Mick LaSalle, of the San Francisco Chronicle said, "No End in Sight" is the most cool headed of the Iraq war documentaries, the most methodical and the least polemical."

Wesley Morris, of the Boston Globe agrees,  "A raft of documentaries have come along since the start of the war, some of them accusatory, some investigative, some empathetic, nearly all of them skeptical. No film about the subject is better argued or more searing than "No End in Sight."  The film lacks the overt sensationalism of most of its competition, and never becomes a starchy piece of nonfiction. Ferguson surrounds himself with some excellent technicians who transform this rookie director’s impressive leap into journalism (Ferguson is an Internet millionaire) into a damning political thriller."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said, "This is not a documentary filled with anti-war activists or sitting ducks for Michael Moore. Most of the people in the film had top government or military jobs in the Bush administration. They had responsibility in Iraq or Washington, they implemented policy, they filed reports, they labored faithfully in service of U.S. foreign policy and then they left the government. Some jumped, some were pushed. They all feel disillusioned about the war and the way the White House refused to listen to them about it."

Richard Kirchner, who brought the film to the attention of the Film Society will introduce the film and lead the post screening discussion.  With luck, it will foster a lively dialog. (br>

For more information, see www.hmbfilm.org

NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary is celebrating 15 years of ocean protection through its Beach Watch volunteer shoreline monitoring program. Developed and launched by the sanctuary in 1993, Beach Watch is the flagship volunteer program of the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

The Beach Watch program uses highly trained "citizen scientists" from all walks of life to conduct regular shoreline surveys spanning 150 miles of coastline, from Point Año Nuevo south of San Francisco north to Bodega Head. The volunteers have also conducted special wildlife surveys during several oil spills, most recently the Cosco Busan spill in San Francisco Bay in November. Since 1996, the nonprofit Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association has managed Beach Watch data and volunteers.

Beach Watch surveyors identify wildlife, notify the sanctuary of the condition of streams and lagoons, document visitor use patterns and violations, and retrieve oil samples as evidence of spills to help pinpoint the source of oil on beaches. Information collected by Beach Watch volunteers has helped secure several multimillion-dollar settlements from responsible parties to restore affected wildlife and habitats.

More accurate tracking and counting methods have resulted in substantially higher reported dropout rates for California schools. CUSD’s reported dropouts rose from 10 in 2005-06 to 49 in 2006-07.

From the Sacramento Bee’s July 17 story:

A new high school dropout report released Wednesday shows significantly higher rates of students leaving public school in California than reported in previous years.

…

In the past, dropout counts were self-reported by schools and districts. In many places, the figures were considered serious undercounts, especially when compared with the rates of freshmen who actually graduated with their classes four years later.

…

[State Superintendent] O’Connell said the new system was designed to make better sense of transfers.

In the past, he said, when students left schools saying they were switching to another campus, their schools counted them as transfers, not dropouts, without checking if the students actually re-enrolled elsewhere. With the new student tracking system, the state was able to determine whether such transfers took place.

The newly released Half Moon Bay High School 2006-07 numbers show 313 seniors and 239 graduates, a loss of 74, with 49 reported dropouts, a 15.6% dropout rate (27% among Hispanic students).

By contrast, in 2005-06, the last school year under the old system, the preliminary report shows a senior class of 323 students, 272 graduates, and only 10 dropouts, a 3% dropout rate.

Not all the missing graduates dropped out; some simply failed to meet their graduation requirements, including the required exit exam, and some of those may yet graduate.

The accompanying graph shows reported dropout rates for the most recent six years (through 2006-07) for CUSD, San Mateo County, and California as a whole.

Enrollment, dropout and other school-related statistics are available at Ed-Data and CDE’s DataQuest site.

NOTE: Coastsider called CUSD Superintendent Rob Gaskill for comment, but he didn’t call us back before our 5pm deadline. We’ll post an update when we hear from him.

I noticed that we have a new vet in town.  Janet Dawson, DVM, MPVM is located on 614 Purissima St.  Her web site, which is nicely done, is at www.CoastsideVet.com.  It’s nice that to have another vet in town, although I love having Dr. McKinney of HMB Vet care for my dog.  Dr. Dawson bought a house on Purissima and renovated it for a practice.  It was very nice inside.  Stop in when you are walking around town.

Katharine Weber

Supervisor Rich Gordon’s office is holding its Coastside hours this Thursday, July 24 from 10am until noon at the Moss Beach Sheriff’s Substation, as it does on the fourth Thursday of every month.  Coastsiders are encouraged come and bring their concerns to the county government.

Has anybody else seen the whales playing in the water at the end of Fourteenth Street?  I first spotted them Sunday afternoon, and they were there again Monday afternoon. I’m no expert, but shouldn’t they already have migrated?  They looked to be gray whale size and were swimming in circles.  Any info is greatly appreciated.

Jeani Kessler