The Chamber of Commerce, together with interested Ocean Colony residents, are sponsoring a fine art show and sale on Sunday, October 8, from 2 to 6pm at the Colony Club in Ocean Colony. 

This is a fundraising event for improvement of the medians along Hwy 1.  All artists are Ocean Colony residents.  Admission is free. There will be wine for sale by the glass and free hors d’oeuvres provided by local restaurants and neighbors. 40% of the price of sold paintings, and the proceeds from beverages, will be donated to the median project and is tax deductible. 

There will be plenty of parking available including parking along Miramontes Road and a free shuttle to the Colony Club.

Who are the real Nimbies?

People have been throwing around the word "Nimby" lately. On the Coastside, Nimby (Not In My Back Yard) is usually used to describe people who insist that developers follow the law.

Some folks will tell you that the people who insist on environmental impact reports, biological studies, preservation of endangered species habitat, or even permits before changing the use of a piece of land aren’t environmentalists. They’ll tell you that these people are Nimbies or no-growthers using environmental preservation as an excuse to prevent development in their back yard. That their concern for open space, public access, wetlands, and endangered species habit masks a darker, selfish purpose: to prevent all development on the Coastside.

What do you call someone who doesn’t want to preserve the environment in their back yard?

Why isn’t it Nimbyism to say, "I want to preserve the environment, but not at the expense of developing the Coastside"?  Perhaps you didn’t support the expansion of the Midpensinsula Open Space District to the Coastside. Or you think the Peninsula Open Space Trust is bad for the local economy.  Or that the Coastal Commission has too much control of Coastside development.  Or you don’t think there should be a process for changing the use of environmentally sensitive land. Or you’re quietly planning to vote for Proposition 90.

Why doesn’t that make you a Nimby?

Personally, I don’t find the label useful. But if you insist on using it, why must it be applied to opponents to one type of activity in one’s back yard (development) and not another (conservation)? When will we accept that every proposal must stand on its own merits—including its relationship to its environment—and that name-calling has no place in our community?

Provided by Troop 263

Coming off the great success of a ten-day trip to Alaska, Boy Scout Troop 263 from Half Moon Bay has welcomed four new scouts into the Troop and seen many Eagle Scout projects completed. Boys interested in Scouting are always welcome.

Sixteen scouts and four adult leaders traveled to the Kenai Peninsula and Denali National Park this August, camping, fishing, sea kayaking down a fjord and hiking their way through the Alaskan Wilderness. They enjoyed multiple sightings of bears, eagles, Dall Sheep and Caribou and caught native fish. The scouts made a lot of progress on Merit Badges, such as Fishing, Indian Lore and First Aid as well as earning rank advancements.

Troop 263 Scouts braved cold weather, pouring rain and long bus rides to enjoy seldom seen vistas and wildlife in its natural habitat.

"An Inconvenient Truth" will be shown Monday to Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday this week at the Methodist church in Half Moon Bay.
 
Paramount Classics has made a gift of 4,000 Inconvenient Truth DVDs to houses of worship all over the country through a faith-based ecological sustainability organization called Interfaith Power and Light (IPL).  IPL is a non-partisan ministry that works with congregations to reduce pollution through energy audits, efficient lighting and appliances, supporting the development of clean energy and providing education. 
 
The Social Concerns Prayer Group, a newly formed group at the Methodist Church, are sponsoring the film.  What’s the connection between a church and global warming?  Global warming is not a political issue; it is a moral issue.  People of most faith traditions are called to love one another and to be responsible stewards of God’s creation.  As we saw in New Orleans, the ones who suffer most during natural disasters are the poor.  We must start planning now to support those who will be affected in our community when the effects of global warming strike.  Although the film offers potential solutions for global warming if we act now, it portends extreme disruption of life as we know it. 

After each film, there will be a discussion on ways to reduce energy use, prevent carbon dioxide emissions and contribute to the sustainability of the earth. 
 
Groups in the community who are committed to these goals may contact Shari Deghi at 726-1340 and reserve table space for written material.

Click for details.

If there was a question I thought I wouldn’t have to ask, it’s whether Coastsider is Orwellian. But I’m asking the question of our audience, because a distinguished Coastsider has made the accusation in a public forum.

Monday, I sent out a cheery newsletter describing some features of the site that I thought our readers would find interesting. It included the following item:

Finally, the hottest story on Coastsider right now is letter from a former planning commissioner about the HMB Planning Commission meeting which APPROVED THE NEW CCWD PIPELINE AGAINST THE RECOMMENDATION OF THE COASTAL COMMISSION. There’s some excellent discussion that includes one of the planning commissioners as well as a member of the CCWD board. We offer a great deal of information about this controversial issue that you won’t get from any other source. I don’t think you can understand this issue without reading this discussion:

  https://coastsider.com/index.php/site/news/1509/

Along with the thanks from our equally cheery readers, I was copied on a dyspeptic message from one citizen to the entire CCWD board:

So Folks…......scroll to the bottom and read Barry Parr’s total misrepresentation of the infamous late night planning commission meeting.

Is he pining for discussion on his blog?

How sad!

Yikes. More on my misrepresentations (although nothing on my sadness) in a moment, because you’re going to get to see the entire exchange. Normally, I don’t forward private email willy-nilly, let alone publish it. But this was copied to the entire CCWD board (and others), so it’s a public document, both literally and legally.

Here’s where it gets fun. My request for clarification ("What did I misrepresent?" was the entire message) prompted an angry, angry response from James Larimer, PhD., a member of the CCWD board.  He copied his message to the other members of the board.  Unless I’m mistaken, that makes it not only a public document, but a (technical) violation of California’s open meeting law. I made a point of replying to him alone, and he copied his reply to the board yet again. Here’s the part that took me aback:

Finally, you infer that a Coastal Commission staffer, who was heavy lobbied by Lansing, is the Coastal Commission.

This kind of reporting of public events pretending to be news or objective commentary is at best yellow journalism. The apparent motivation for your editorial comments make it look more like double speak out of an Orwellian novel, intent to achieve a political goal and not designed to inform the debate.

I think he meant "imply", not "infer", but he’s right about one thing.  I confused the Coastal Commission staff with the Commission itself.  They use the same letterhead, but they’re not the same thing. I feel pretty sheepish about getting that wrong. 

I was surprised by the tone of Dr. Larimer’s letter because he always seems so cheerful and avuncular in his opinion pieces in the Review about all the great stuff we’re not getting because our developments aren’t big enough (last month, last year and even earlier).

But mostly, Dr. Larimer’s letter left me baffled rather than sheepish.  It was mainly a recitation of good stuff I’d neglected to say about the CCWD’s pipeline application. Fair enough, I suppose. But, as far as I can tell, I’ve never written anything about the pipeline—positive or negative. As for "reporting of public events pretending to be news or objective commentary", the offending passage in our newsletter accurately described the link as a Letter to the editor from a former planning commissioner. If you followed the link, you’d see the headline began "Letter:" and the story was tagged "Letter to the editor" in the same bright green we use for press releases. Dr. Larimer’s accusation of Orwellian double speak seems unintentionally ironic.

If you read all the comments on Sofia Freer’s letter to the editor, and I recommend you do, you’ll see that Dr. Larimer posted four of eighteen comments on the letter, and I posted ... um ... none.

Personally, I find the vicious, behind-the-scenes name-calling exemplified by Dr. Larimer’s email to be the single most corrosive force in the Coastside community. That he felt the need to show it off to his friends feels like the behavior of a schoolyard bully.

But, Dr. Larimer seems to have a thing about Coastsider.  Recently, on the Review’s website, he called it "Nimby blog". If it were a girl, I’d say he had a secret crush on Coastsider.

I definitely have a point of view, although it’s a lot more moderate than Dr. Larimer wants you to think. Take a look at my treatment of Don Bacon’s Smart Growth letter. He submitted it to Town Hall and I promoted it to a main-page story, and it is still in our Top Stories list.  In the comments, I pretty much agreed with half of it.  But I also questioned him about some areas where I thought he had diverged from Smart Growth philosophy.

But the most important thing to remember, as I reminded Dr. Larimer, is that everyone has equal standing in Coastsider comments.  No one, including me, gets favored treatment. This is in contrast to the Review, where Clay and Deb won’t mix it up with you in the comments. No one is edited here, unless they’re not being civil. So please click the link below, read the emails, and add your comments. I promise not to distort them, unless of course I think you’re wrong. (That was a joke, Jim.)

Coastsider: Orwellian or Utopian? Sandbag or sandbox? Nimby blog or friendly frog?

You tell me.

The Livability Project and NorCal Solar Electric are sponsoring the Pacifica Solar Home Tour on Saturday, October 7th, as part of the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour.

The tour begins at the Pacifica Community Center, 540 Crespi Drive, at the corner of HWY1 and Crespi Dr.  Tour maps and a vendor fair will be available from 1:00 to 3:00 PM.  Tour homes will be opern from 1:00 to 5:00 PM.

Six homes featuring PV, solar hot water, and/or solar pool heating will be available to tour.  Homeowners will be on site to to answer questions and share data related to their systems.  One home will also have a collection of electric vehicles on display.

For more information contact Jeanie Ferreira at 650 355-8602, e-mail [email protected] or go to www.nationalsolartour.org

Some farmers, including G. Berta Produce of Half Moon Bay, are continuing to grow and sell spinach, reports the County Times.

"We don’t use fertilizer. We use the old traditional way of cover-cropping, rotating and tilling," said Kim Ramos, who runs the farm with her husband, explaining a millennium-old practice for fertilizing soil naturally. Some fertilizer contains manure, which potentially could be contaminated with E. coli.

"We don’t have a packing plant," Ramos continued, "My husband and I pick the vegetables, we pack them, and within a day or two you are eating them. So they’re not going through a bunch of peoples’ hands."

The real problem may be industrial farming and distribution techniques, which can not only contaminate large quantities of food, but spread it nationwide overnight.