The Midcoast Coast Community Council in conjunction with the League of Women Voters are sponsoring a candidates forum.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 7:30 pm

Seton Medical Center Coastside Marine Boulevard & Etheldore, Moss Beach. Take Highway 1 to Marine Boulevard and follow hospital signs uphill. Parking: Attendees must park in upper parking lot. Bring your questions!

Coastside Fire Protection   7:30

Coastside County Water District   8:30

Granada Sanitary District   9:00

The governor’s office has announced it will not close California’s state parks, but will cut $12.1 million from their maintenance and equipment budgets, and $2.1 million by cutting days and hours of operation at some parks.

The LA Times reports that this is not exactly a reason to cheer:

The California State Parks Foundation, which has figured prominently in the struggle to keep parks open, responded to the governor’s plan suspiciously and placed this statement on its website: "While the Governor has found a clever way to get political cover on this issue, it’s not clear that this plan won’t actually leave Californians with just as limited access to their state parks as if they had been fully closed.

"The ‘found money’ here is from having less lifeguards on state beaches, not maintaining restrooms, not staffing parks for health and safety standards, etc. And you’ll see at the end of the release, a $22-million cut in next year’s budget is still on the horizon."

Drummer Mike Clark, best known for his funk/fusion playing and stint with Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, demonstrates his prowess as a post- bop jazz master.
Donald Harrison is being called one of the most important musicians of the new millennium by CBS Sunday Morning. He is the originator of the Nouveau Swing style which merges acoustic swing with modern R&B, second-line, hip-hop, and reggae rhythms.
Mike Clark – Drums
Donald Harrison – Sax
Rich Goods – Bass
Piano - TBA

Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society
Douglas Beach House on Miramar Beach
307 Mirada Road, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
650 726-4143, http://www.bachddsoc.org
September 27, 2009, 4:30 – 7:30, $30

Seton Coastside’s annual Teddy Bear Clinic will be Sunday, September 27 from 11 am – 3 pm.  Seton Coastside provides this event, introducing children, ages 2-12, to the emergency department and hospital setting without the pain.

Children receive goody bags including Teddy Bear Clinic coloring books and crayons and this year they receive a copy of a hand washing song sung to the tune of "Row, Row Row Your Boat", in an effort to help decrease the spread of the flu this fall.

To help children not be afraid of the hospital, they are encouraged to bring in their favorite toy stuffed animal as the "patient". The child and his or her toy then go through the entire process of the emergency visit in a non-threatening atmosphere.  First, they make an appointment to see the doctor. They apply for "Teddy-Care" insurance, and then have their toys’ vital signs taken along with the "patient’s" history.  From there, the children are directed to the radiology department (a copy machine), where an "x-ray" is taken, and onto the lab where a "blood sample" (cranberry juice) is taken. 

On Friday and Saturday September 25th and 26th the Half Moon Bay Library will be the hot place to go.

Friday night at 7:00PM join Dennis Mercer for lessons in Salsa/Merengue dancing.

Come back on Saturday when 40 of our local cooks bring their best salsas for sampling. Salsas range in strength from mildly spicy to "AAAA!  Call 911!" The tasting begins at 12:30PM.
 
Stop by early Saturday for the Friends of the Library Book Sale which runs from 9:00AM until 2:00PM and snap up some bargains.

On Saturday September 26th, The Visionary Edge will screen Angels in the Dust. The event will be co-hosted by and presented at the Community United Methodist Church in Half Moon Bay.

Onsite babysitting will be provided during the film for $5 per child for the evening. Saturday, September 26th. Doors will open at 7:00pm, event begins at 7:30 at the Community United Methodist Church, 777 Miramontes Street (at Johnston), HMB. The event is free; donations will be   accepted to cover the costs of screening. Call 650-560-0200 for information and reservations.

Angels in the Dust, an inspiring documentary, tells the story of Marion Cloete, a university-trained therapist who over fifteen years ago—with her husband and two daughters—fearlessly walked away from a privileged life in a wealthy Johannesburg suburb to establish Boikarabelo (formerly Botshabelo), an extraordinary village and school that provide shelter, food, and education to more than 550 South African children.

The tale of Marion and the orphans she cares for is echoed in a dramatic parallel saga of the orphaned elephants of Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa.  The longtime government practice of culling— killing adult elephants to control herd sizes—tore apart the complex social fabric of elephant culture, a fabric that is not unlike that of the traditionally close-knit African village. As a result, orphaned elephants grew up exhibiting unusually violent behavior, such as attacking and goring rhinos. But elder elephants were recently introduced into the Pilanesberg population to re-socialize the young. The experiment is working—and it offers a resonant reflection of the healing taking place for the human children being "re-parented" by Marion at Boikarabelo.

Supervisor Rich Gordon’s next Coastside office hours will be Thursday, September 24 from 10am to Noon at the Sheriff’s Moss Beach Substation.  Supervisor Gordon will be unable to attend Thursday, but his staff member Matt Jacobs will cover for him.

UPDATE:  This item has changed a couple of times, but as of Wednesday afternoon, Supervisor Gordon is not planning to be there this month.

I would like to thank each and every volunteer that gave up their Saturday morning to come and help clean our coastline for the 25th California Coastal Clean Up day. Over 50 volunteers turned up at Montara State Beach to help out, including a large enthusiastic crowd from Sunset Magazine. We had people travel from far and wide including one couple who drove from Reno and another man from Palo Alto.

So far with just 65% of the cleanup sites results in, the statewide count stands at 66,550 volunteers, which should approach the event goal of 70,000 volunteers. Those volunteers picked up 819,394 pounds of trash and an additional 89,899 pounds of recyclable materials, for a total of 909,294 pounds. As occurs every year, some unusual items were found throughout California. The Winners of the 2009 Most Unusual Item contest are: Coastal California: A volunteer in Marin found 10 single shoes, none of which matched. Inland California: A volunteer along a creek in Yolo County found a grand piano! At Montara Beach a deal seal was found with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the head, very disturbing.

The Coastal Commission expects to exceed 1,000,000 pounds of trash when all the totals are in. Here is a short list of the most common items found at Montara Beach and Grey Whale Cove: 78 Plastic bottles, 108 Glass bottles, 102 Soda cans, 99 Bottle caps, 24 shoes, 14 Condoms, 96 Plastic straws, 300 nails, +1000 Styrofoam pieces, 295 Plastic knives/forks/spoons and +1500 cigarette butts (too many to collect).

Past Coastal Cleanup Day data tell us that most (between 60-80 percent) of the debris on our beaches and shorelines comes from inland sources, traveling through storm drains or creeks out to the beaches and ocean. Rain—or even something as simple as hosing down a sidewalk—can wash cigarette butts, bits of styrofoam, pesticides, and oil into the storm drains and out to the ocean. The California Coastal Commission is asking all Californians to take responsibility for making sure trash goes where it belongs—securely in a trashcan, recycling bin, or a hazardous waste dump when appropriate.

This past Tuesday I stopped by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) Open House at the Moose Lodge in Pacifica.

Every GGNRA Open House meeting I have attended typically includes a small militia of curious and sometimes fearful residents engaging in lively trail-use and open- space debate with representatives from Caltrans and GGNRA.  It’s an eclectic mix of mountain bikers, equestrians, dog walkers, biologists, activists, environmental planners and GGNRA staff.

The first discussion I joined was led by a local resident concerned about a new segment of the California Coastal Trail (CCT) that will, after the tunnels are open and a section of Highway 1 is closed to vehicle traffic, eventually link Highway 1/Devils Slide near the new bridge through to Linda Mar.  At first, the man said that the trail would not allow mountain bikes, and when that myth was dispelled by Steve Griswold the GGNRA trail planner, the man asked if ATV’s would be allowed on parkland. He then gave everyone an earful about all the taxes he pays to own an ATV and how the state needs to provide him a place to ride.  As the crowd thinned it became obvious that concerns about ATV rights were not a high priority for other residents.

I walked away from that discussion with a better understanding about the exact location of the future CCT connection from the Midcoast to Pacifica.

On my way to the lodge exit, I stopped to chat briefly with Brent Plater about his battle to restore Sharp Park.  Plater said, "San Francisco is not going to continue subsidizing golfing in Pacifica."  The City of San Francisco owns Sharp Park Golf Course; it is funded and managed by the San Francisco Department of Parks and Recreation.

The proposed restoration includes a new Sharp Park trail that would connect with the California Coastal Trail, the Bay Area Ridge Trail, and the surrounding GGNRA lands. 

Planter would like to restore the natural ecology of Sharp Park and preserve endangered species.  To learn more about Plater’s fight to restore Sharp Park go to: http://www.restoresharppark.org/

Brent Plater is the former director of Bay Area programs for the Center for Biological Diversity and served as an environmental law fellow at Faegre & Benson, worked as a law clerk at the Environmental Law Foundation and as a conservation intern at the National Wildlife Federation, and taught environmental law to undergraduates at Boston College and San Francisco State University. He serves on the Wildlife and Endangered Species Committee of the Sierra Club and was recently appointed by the Secretary of the Interior to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s Pet Management Rulemaking Committee. His speaking engagements this fall included a talk at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club.

Plater received his bachelor’s degree in natural resources and environment from the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment; his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall); and his master’s in public administration from the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government. At Golden Gate University Plater teaches the Environmental Law and Justice Seminar.