On Saturday April 18, The Visionary Edge will host Emmy Award-winning acoustic ecologist and author Gordon Hempton. The event will be co-hosted by and presented at the Community United Methodist Church in Half Moon Bay. 

In One Square Inch of Silence Gordon Hempton has written the next Silent Spring—and will forever change our conception of conservation and activism. A beautifully written call to arms against the agents of manmade noise, this eloquent defense of natural quiet comes packaged with the author’s astounding recordings of nature. 

"Good things come from a quiet place: study, prayer, music, transformation, worship, communion," says Gordon Hempton.  "The words peace and quiet are all but synonymous, and are often spoken of in the same breath.  A quiet place is the think tank of the soul, the spawning ground of truth and beauty." 

Part road trip, part popular science, and part polemic, One Square Inch of Silence is a celebration of nature and an ear-opening journey into Earth’s vanishing sanctuaries. Like a sound safari, One Square Inch of Silence recounts Hempton’s trek across the country to capture the sounds of American landscapes and the reflections of American people on the importance of quiet in their lives. Birdsong, melting ice, and bugling elk all achieve immortality as the author addresses questions of surprising importance, including: Why isn’t natural quiet part of the ecological agenda?  

Saturday, April 18th. Doors will open at 7:00pm, event begins at 7:30 at the Community United Methodist Church, 777 Miramontes Street (at Johnston), HMB.  Suggested donation is $10 advance, door $15. No one turned away for lack of funds! Call 650-560-0200 for information and reservations.  

The San Mateo County Office of Education is taking control of the fiscal management of the La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District. The district faces a $200,000 deficit, a construction debacle, and the resignation of Superintendent Tim Beard, reports Julia Scott in the County Times.

The website of the Pillar Ridge manufactured home community has set up an informational website about the proposed Big Wave office complex.  Pillar Ridge is the closest neighborhood to the Big Wave site.

From the National Weather Service:

This hazardous weather outlook is for the entire San Francisco and Monterey Bay region.

Partly cloudy skies with seasonable temperatures are expected today. By tonight a dry cold front will approach the San Francisco and Monterey Bay region and locally strong northwest winds with gusts to 40 mph will be possible along the north bay coast and in the north bay hills.

Tuesday through Sunday, northwest winds will increase through the day as the dry cold front passes over the region. Local wind gusts in excess of 45 mph will be possible…Especially Tuesday afternoon and evening near the coast and in the hills.

Behind the cold front…Cool temperatures will bring the possibility of frost to the north bay valleys tuesday night into wednesday morning. There is a chance that a frost advisory may need to be issued should this pattern develop. Persons with interests that are susceptible to frost should take precautionary actions now.

Generally quiet weather is forecast wednesday through sunday with dry conditions and seasonably mild temperatures.

Moon News’s ongoing going-out-of-business sale gets a good treatment from Julia Scott in the County Times, who notes that a new store is rising to take its place.

For Mark Sipowicz, owner of the soon-to-be closed Moon News Bookstore, saying goodbye to the customers he has known for the past 12 years has been like losing an entire family — and the home they built together.

"It’s been humbling to stand here every day and listen to people express their disappointment and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. What are we going to do?’" said Sipowicz, who is sad, not bitter, about the toll the local economy has taken on his business. ...

Book-lovers will be heartened to know that another book seller, Harbor Bookstore, will attempt to fill the shoes left behind by Moon News later this month when it opens at the Harbor Village shopping center in Princeton-by-the-Sea. The bookstore’s owner, Carol Brehm, worked at Moon News for 10 years, according to landlord Keet Nerhan.

This weekend, State Parks archeologist Mark Hylkema directed about a dozen participants in a dig on the bluffs of Montara.  You may have seen the work from the highway as you passed through town Friday and Saturday. By nightfall Saturday, he would be gone and the site would be returned to its previous condition.

The Chiguan sub-band of Ohlone Indians butchered sea otters at a settlement overlooking the ocean around AD 1500, leaving behind the mound that overlooks the ocean here. The workers were recovering shells and bones. These would be used to research the natives’ diet, as well as assess changes in climate in the last 500 years.

Hylkema last dug at this site 25 years ago, when he was graduate student, and when carbon dating was less sophisticated.

Hylkema also took a core sample, which will be used to look for much smaller remains, such as fish bones and otoliths—tiny earbones from fish which must be examined under a microscope, but which can provide information about the species butchered on the site.

The Midcoast Community Council is holding a Coastal Trails meeting, Wednesday, May 13.

The MCC is particularly interested in connecting various existing Coastside trails, trails in development and future trails to form one interconnecting trail system. 

Trails provide demonstrated benefits to individuals and communities, health and fitness, active transportation, economic development and environmental stewardship.

Trails:

• Increase transportation options and reduce auto travel.
• Offer opportunities to observe, learn about and care for the environment.
• Offer economic benefits such as increased tourism and increased property values.
• Provide opportunities for solitude, passive and active recreation, including promoting fitness through healthy exercise.

The goal of the meeting is to inform and update the Coastside community about trail progress, trail funding, trail mapping, provide resources for community involvement and to discuss the current and future Coastside Trail System.  Guests speakers include County Parks Director Dave Holland, GGNRA, POST and others.  

Seton Coastside, 600 Marine Blvd, Moss Beach

Sabrina Brennan

This question for Mary will become even more pertinent if a bill proposed by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, CT (R) makes it through congress. It may only be a coincidence that DeLauro’s husband, pollster Stanley Greenberg, happened to have Monsanto as his client 10 years ago, but the wording in some sections of the bill just smells like a fermenting nightmare.

The bill? H.R. 875.

Sec 3 (14) FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITY- The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.

Relative to the above section, a “small business concern”, as mentioned in Sec. 201 (c)(12), is defined according to the Small Business Act, Sec. 3(a), as having gross receipts over $750,000. Many smaller farms (particularly a farm “grossing” only $750K, would fall under the umbrella of having to conform to the restrictions and guidelines contained in this bill that only a large commercial agricultural concern could easily adopt.

Sec 101 (b)(5)(C) development of consistent and science-based standards for safe food (emphasis added)

Who decides what standards are science-based? If the benchmark is set by Monsanto’s GMO and pesticide standards, nothing short of eliminating organic and biodynamic farming will be acceptable.

Montara Water and Sanitary District has been honored for its conservation efforts by the Silicon Valley Water Conservation Awards Coalition, reports the County TImes

Montara Water & Sanitary District won the award for the small government agency/utility category for reducing the community’s already low per capita water use to just 69 gallons per day — pretty good considering the average person uses about 80 to 100 gallons per day or more, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"We were excited," said Clemens Heldmaier, general manager at Montara Water & Sanitary District. "The nice part is that it not only recognized that we’ve done something right, but the citizens who were a big part of this success."

"We are living in times where we can’t always expect water to come out when we turn on the faucet," Heldmaier added. "A lot of problems are associated with water, and a lot of work goes into conserving water, so I’m proud that we can set an example."

Other winners were Redwood City, Applied Materials, California Native Society, the City of San Jose’s Environmental Services Department, First Community Housing, former state Assemblyman John Laird, the Kirsch Center for Environmental Studies, Stanford University, and ValleyCrest Landscape Maintenance.

Gina Gould, 38, a resident of Half Moon Bay, died in a collision with a truck Wednesday at 7:45am on Edgewood Road [map], reports the Mercury News. She was identified on Thursday.

As she drove downhill on a curving section of Edgewood just west of Crestview Drive, her car spun counterclockwise and slid onto the wrong side of the road, CHP Officer Amelia Jack said.

A heavy-duty truck headed westbound swerved right to avoid Gould’s car but struck the convertible’s passenger side, Jack said. ...

Jack said the cause of the crash is still under investigation, but it appears that the convertible’s speed and the wet road from an earlier rainstorm may have played a role.