Coastside Lutheran Church will hold their annual Labor Day Book Fair Saturday and Sunday Aug 30 and 31 from 9am to 3pm, and Monday, Sept 1, from 9am to 1pm at the church, 900 Cabrillo Highway N, in Half Moon Bay, just north of Strawflower Village.  They are currently accepting donations of hardbound and paper backs, CDs, DVDs, books on tape, original video cassettes on Mondays to Thursdays from 9:30am to 2pm. Receipts are available. Please no encyclopedias, magazines,  textbooks, computer books, Reader’s Digest books, or outdated travel books.

Highway 92 at Skyline has just reopened after a big rig jackknifed about 7 this morning.

Chet Bardo, the new superintendent of State Parks for the 30 parks from San Mateo County to the Pajaro Valley, is a resident of Montara.  Bardo’s responsibility includes more than 64,000 acres of parklands and 40 miles of coastline. There’s in interview with Bardo in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Q What do you see as the biggest issues facing local parks?

A Funding. ... If things were to really go south, it would be difficult. We’re charged in this district with just an incredible amount of historical structures and culturally sensitive areas. To look at that and try to figure out where to focus funding is a challenge. That’s probably one of the biggest challenges, and hence why we have a deferred [maintenance] backlog statewide.

Staff is doing a great job of keeping things up and running and dry, but it’s a constant thing. And as you know, when you work on a historic structure it takes a whole different level of repair. You just don’t go put something on it that’s not supposed to be there and call it a fix.

...

Q What is your background and how do expect to put that to work here?

A I’ve been with the department for about 26 years, going on 27 in August. I’ve done the full range of duties from a seasonal park aide at an entrance station to a field ranger to a supervising ranger to most recently a sector superintendent. My background is in wildlife biology.

And I love teaching. When I was a field ranger, I was very active in local schools. I always had a lot of fun doing that.

Q What is your favorite park?

A The coastal parks are great. I was pretty much born and raised in Half Moon Bay. I tell people before I had to get responsible and get a job, I used to spend my days at the beach all summer, swimming and fishing—I never took up surfing—mostly fishing and just dinking around. I haven’t spent a lot of time in the redwoods. Big Basin is new to me. Henry Cowell is new to me. And I’m sure I’ll love them just the same.

The deputy director of the Coastal Commission writes to Capitol Weekly that the commission’s policy of protecting maritime chaparral from clearing and development is not the problem in Big Sur. He says the commission’s critics are trying to focus attention onto the commission’s policies, rather than the problem of building homes in hazardous areas where it is not possible to clear enough brush to create a zone of safety.

He notes that maritime chaparral has evolved a need for periodic fires to compete with other plant communities.

Given its limited distribution, we estimate that less than 0.1 percent of the more than 200,000 acres in the Big Sur Coast area could potentially involve conflicts between this sensitive habitat and developable residential building sites. But protecting this habitat doesn’t prevent us from taking reasonable measures to reduce the risk of fire.

The Coastal Commission does not require permits for necessary brush clearance around existing buildings in Big Sur; nor has it interfered with brush clearance that may be ordered by fire officials. In fact, Commission staff worked closely with Monterey County and Cal Fire on an emergency approval for clearing dead oaks from Big Sur last year to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire.

But no amount of brush management can save rural, inaccessible homes when massive wildfires rage out of control. That is why the Commission is focusing more on approaches that require new development to avoid hazardous areas. Unfortunately, many property owners are reluctant to fully acknowledge the severe dangers of building in high fire risk areas. Rather than locating a new home in a less hazardous place, they attempt to create a defensible space around their new buildings within the hazardous area. In these circumstances, the Commission has requested that applicants record a legal document acknowledging that they are locating their new house within a known hazardous area and that they assume this known risk.

It’s midway through the summer and I have yet to get in any hammock time, although I do have a rather wonderful and dilapidated sofa on my front lawn to laze about in of an afternoon, which is as good a place as any to indulge in a summer reading spectacular. 

For my money, there is not a much better way to spend a temperate afternoon than to prop ones feet up, and dive into a new book about some arcane but historically relevant detail while sipping a seasonal Aqua Fresca, wouldn’t you agree?  What? You have yet to discover this simple delight? Well, lucky you.  Seems there are still minor miracles to discover.  Aqua Frescas are quite elegant and easy to prepare, or you can get really complicated should your explorations in the culinary tend to take you a bit further afield -

All you need is an excess of any kind of really ripe summer fruit, some seltzer water, an optional, easy to make, but quite intriguing herb syrup, a nice big goblet and a novel about a gal named Gertrude who drew the map of modern day Iraq. Seriously.  Head for your favorite neighborhood independent bookstore and pick up a copy of something by an author you know nothing about, about a person you have never heard of.  Then throw an old sofa on the lawn, an old t-shirt on your bod, and a sarong if you really feel like letting your freak flag fly, and settle in.

At about 11:30am, Highway 1 will close at Ruisseau Francais for a short period of time, for PG&E to repair power lines, according to the Half Moon Bay Police Department.

The disease known as "sudden oak death" has hit trees near the Coastside particularly hard, reports Julia Scott in the San Mateo Daily News.

For reasons nobody quite understands, the disease known as sudden oak death has colonized the forests surrounding Crystal Springs Reservoir with greater brutality than other areas of the county that also contain trees susceptible to the disease, such as Woodside, Portola Valley, or the county parks in the hills above Pescadero. Biologists have detected only a handful of affected trees in those areas, whereas hundreds of trees are visibly affected throughout the Crystal Springs watershed - and absent a cure, the number continues to increase.

Experts have noticed the problem gaining momentum in San Mateo County this year in particular, Moore said. The results are there for all to see.

"When you’re in there on the trail and you see a dead tree, that’s one thing. But if you’re on Highway 280 and you’re looking at the watershed, you see pockets, patches of dead trees. It’s summer - it’s not like they’re supposed to be dropping their leaves," he said.

Rev. Christie Hardwick has identified Half Moon Bay as an ideal location to start a new business in staging same-sex weddings, now that it’s legal in California.

"I have heard from a couple of people making sure the (gay wedding) market knows that they’re there," said Charise Hale McHugh, president and CEO of the Half Moon Bay Coastside Chamber of Commerce. "Businesses have been hurting. Anything that brings people to Half Moon Bay is advantageous for everyone. We are a tourism-based economy."

Half Moon Bay farmer John Muller has already been approached about allowing his picturesque farm home, with its pumpkins and flowers, to be used as a site for future catered gay weddings.

"If things work out, we would be interested in doing it. It’s another aspect of the flexibility of staying in agriculture," he shrugged.

The San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury has issued a report saying that the school district needs to exercise tougher discipline at high school games, including a zero-tolerance policy, reports the County Times.

Half Moon Bay High has contended with questionable behavior at sporting events for many years but has no clear policy or procedure to handle offenders, the grand jury said in a new report.

The district should develop such a policy that features "zero tolerance of unacceptable behavior for student athletes and the student body," the report said. "This could include forfeiting all games for that year in the sport in which the unacceptable behavior occurred."

The game in November was marred by the actions of several Half Moon Bay players who allegedly made racist remarks to the visiting opponents from Sequoia High in Redwood City. The game also was disrupted by a handful of streakers storming the field and some people pelting visiting fans with eggs.

You can download the report from Coastsider.

Michael Frante, world-renowned musician and human rights worker, traveled to Iraq, Palestine and Israel to explore the human cost of war with a group of friends, some video cameras and his guitar. At 7:30pm on Saturday July 19th, The Visionary Edge will host a screening of Michael Franti’s documentary "I Know I’m Not Alone" at the Johnson House Depot in Half Moon Bay.

A compelling soundtrack, visual and musical montages and Franti’s intimate voiceovers make the film speak to the MTV, X, Y & Z generations as well as the baby-boomers.  A true armchair travel film pulling the audience into these war zones in the company of Michael’s guitar, eloquence and wit - you feel the humanity, artistic resilience and sometimes horrific experience of what it’s like to live under bombs and military occupation.

With its guerilla style footage captured in active war zones, the documentary is unlike the many academic and politically driven pieces in the marketplace, instead offering the audience a sense of intimate travel and the opportunity to hear the voices of everyday people living, creating and surviving under the harsh conditions of war and occupation.