Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

The fast-running rivers are dangerous this time of year, but that’s not to say you can’t have fun in a puddle.

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Editor’s note: Here’s some photographs at Purdon Crossing, emailed from Nevada City resident Bruce Levy. Thanks for sharing them, right in our own backyard. Some background and a topo map is here. Please don’t get too close to the river! I’ve been going to the Sierra and foothill rivers since childhood, but the roaring rapids in the spring still worries me.

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A. Alan Post, California’s longtime legislative analyst, died of natural causes Saturday in his Arden Oaks home, the Sacramento Bee is reporting. He was 96.

“Mr. Post served as legislative analyst under five different governors during his 28-year tenure, beginning in 1949.

“A Renaissance man, Mr. Post also was known as an artist. He displayed his work in multiple shows, and his colored paintings sold well.”

The rest of the article is here.

I fondly remember Post, a native Californian and graduate of Occidental College.

He exhibited an independent mindset that often ruffled feathers, but it was always thoughtful. He never hollered.

Post spoke out against Prop. 13, stating that all we did was replace one unfair tax system with another.

“Voters in the city of Claremont, for instance, voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 13, but then found out that because of the enormous decrease in its property tax revenues the city couldn’t afford to keep its street lights lit,” Mr. Post recalled in one interview when he was 83.

“The real tragedy, says Mr. Post, is that California failed to take advantage of the opportunity provided by passage of the initiative pushed by Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann to make reforms in its tax-funded revenue and expenditure programs.”

I think he turned out to be right: We failed to make those reforms.

The rest of this interview is here.

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“Boreal forests across the Northern hemisphere are undergoing rapid, transformative shifts as a result of a warming climate that, in some cases, is triggering feedback loops producing even more regional warming, according to several new studies,” according to a new article in Scientific American.

“Russia’s boreal forest – the largest continuous expanse of forest in the world – has seen a transformation in recent years from larch to conifer trees, according to new research by University of Virginia researchers.

“In Alaska, where the larch were largely devastated by a disease outbreak in the late ’90s, vast swathes of forest are becoming inhospitable to the dominant white and black spruce.

“‘The climate has shifted. It’s done, it’s clear, and the climate has become unsuitable for the growth of the boreal forest across most of the area that it currently occupies,’ said Glenn Juday, a forestry professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.”

The rest of the article is here.

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Editor’s note: The L.A. Times has a poignant story about how putting same-sex marriage on hold is impacting elderly, ailing couples:

“Derence Kernek and Ed Watson live together each day in fear that they won’t be able to pledge ’till death do us part’ before it’s too late.

“Watson, 78, is in rapidly failing health, afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, diabetes and hypertension.

“A federal appeals court ruled last week that same-sex marriage will remain on hold in California until a judge’s ruling striking down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional makes its way through the higher courts — reviews expected to take a year or more.

‘We don’t have the money to travel to a state where it’s legal,’ said Kernek, 80, observing dejectedly that the travel would probably be too grueling for his partner of 40 years. ‘Besides, we wanted to do it in California, where our friends are, where we live. Now I don’t think we’ll be able to, not while Ed can still remember.’

The rest of the article is here.

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As time passes, Japanese earthquake victims say the gap between the reality of what they are experiencing and what international media is reporting seems to widen, the Columbia Journalism Review is reporting.

“As of today, the biggest media error in terms of virality is Fox News’s misidentification of a Tokyo nightclub as a power plant. That’s good for a chuckle, but it also speaks to a larger complaint that the media is spreading misinformation about the situation at Japan’s nuclear facilities.”

The rest of the article is here.

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