News from the Hall September 2013
News from the Board by Collin Riley
With August and summer now behind us, the weather cools. Kids return to school, and apples are harvested. September’s return to routine replaces the less formal pace of summer's activities even as we gather ourselves for the approaching holiday season.
Our August potluck, featuring our local public officials, informed us about the plans and challenges in their work. Speakers were Monterey County Planning Commissioner Jay Brown; District Director for Congressman Sam Farr's office, Alec Arago; Chief of Staff for Monterey County Supervisor Simon Salinas, Chris Lopez; Fort Hunter Liggett Garrison Commander Col. Donna Williams; Monterey County Under-sheriff Max Houser; Game Warden Matt Gill, and Parks Department representatives. There are many challenges in all departments. Scarce resources, increased volume in regular administration, bureaucratic gridlock, and new controversial mandated programs are weighing on them. Bright spots were the solar program at FHL, ultimately planned for three megawatts, and acquisition by Sam Farr’s office of a local historical landmark for the County using money from the Pentagon budget. Chris Lopez also indicated significant progress in Star Thistle eradication R&D, mentioning their successful test patch. All indicated their gratitude for our event and community. Max Houser commented that the most effective crime deterrent is the sense of an engaged community. This is the message he carries to all new police academy graduates. His office, that of Sheriff Scott Miller, appreciates our efforts along those lines.
Yuri Pineda thanked the Hall and Beth Winters for their support in her People to People Student Ambassador trip to Europe this summer and presented the hall with an oven mitt from London. David De Los Santos accepted a hall scholarship for his daughter Dani, a music student at Cal Poly. The De Los Santos family live in Lockwood, and Dani is a gifted student/artist.
Our next potluck is Friday, September 20, at 7:00 pm. Preceding the potluck, beginning at 2:00 pm, is our fabulous annual Quilt Show. More details on this spectacular event are elsewhere in this newsletter.
Thank you for making our community the special place it is by supporting our Hall and all its contributors. Have a wonderful September. See you at the Hall. Thank you for the chance to serve.
This month’s potluck on Friday, September 20, is hosted by the Hesperia Hall Home Bureau and features its annual quilt show. The show is open from 2:00 until 9:00 pm, and the potluck dinner begins as usual at 7:00 pm.
Scholarship Report by Ed Buntz
We would like to thank all quilt raffle enthusiasts for purchasing tickets since those proceeds go into the scholarship fund. We still have the Quilt Show, Oktoberfest, and the Country Faire to upgrade your chances of taking home this year’s quilt, so keep buying those tickets.
The scholarship committee would like to thank Jack and Lois Lindley as well as Kate Snell for making donations in memory of Dustin Miller. We extend our condolences to Jane and all of Dusty’s family and friends, as we have lost a most unique, generous, and memorable friend.
Academic year 2013-2014 is cranking up already and our recipients are getting registered, collecting their awards, and heading into another year of challenges. We received many wonderful thank you notes from our students expressing their sincere appreciation for the financial and emotional support from our community. Local high schools are underway as well, so remember to support our local students in building the foundation for higher education pursuits.
If you would like to support the Hall scholarship program with a tax deductible donation, simply make out a check to Hesperia Hall, put “Scholarship Fund” on the memo line, and send to Hesperia Hall, 51602 Bryson-Hesperia Road, Bradley, CA 93426. If you would like to save a stamp, feel free to give your check to any Board member at a potluck or Hall event. If you have any questions about the Hesperia Hall scholarship program or how to establish a 529 college savings account, please contact Ed Buntz at (805) 472-2070 or Lois Lindley at (805) 472-9556.
Political Night at the Hall
August’s potluck at Hesperia Hall is traditionally the event to which local government officials and representatives are invited. Once again this year, many of the civil servants for our locality or their representatives attended, gave updates and reports, and took individual questions afterwards. This community event sharing neighborliness and food with those who do the business of local governance provides a direct link between us as private citizens and those who work on our behalf.
SMCERTA Report by Carla Martinez
This is a reminder that South Monterey County Emergency Response Team (SMCERTA) will be holding a three-hour “mini” course on disaster preparedness on Saturday, September 14, 2013, from 9:30 am to noon at Hesperia Hall. The course will cover an overview of what SMCERTA is designed to do for the community during a disaster. We will also present detailed materials that will enable participants to begin home preparations that can be implemented when a local disaster strikes and you are asked to evacuate your home.
If you are interested in attending this course, please contact Carla Martinez at (805) 391-3185 no later than September 10th. This course is free to all participants. Please call if you have any questions.
Hall Quilt Show, 2013 by Kate Snell
The 11th Annual Hesperia Hall Quilt Show will take place on Friday, September 20, from 2:00 until 9:00 pm, with a potluck at 7:00 pm. Contemporary as well as vintage quilts of the area will be on display along with photos and histories of the quilters. Approximately fifty quilts will be shown, over half of them bed sized. There will be, as well, an antique iron exhibit. There will be an opportunity quilt, door prizes, and a hand quilting demonstration. Admission is free.
Hesperia Hall’s annual quilt show and potluck, hosted by the Home Bureau, is a popular event that brings many visitors from outside our immediate area, and among those visitors are numerous quilting aficionados who are very generous and enthusiastic about buying quilt raffle tickets, the proceeds from which are so crucial in funding our Hesperia Hall scholarships. The spirit of the show and high attendance also make for a livelier potluck evening, not to mention the culminating drawings for numerous door prizes.
The quilts on exhibit at this 2013 Hesperia Hall Quilt Show will primarily be the work of quilters in our immediate community, thus the work of an unusually vibrant and productive group of local craftspeople. Readers, you will undoubtedly know personally several of these quilters, and you who live locally will know, have a connection with, or be related to one or more of our scholarship recipients over the years. Please support all these people by buying quilt raffle tickets.
The 2013 raffle quilt, an extra long (for pillow tuck) generous queen size, is a traditional design called Palm Leaf. It features precise piecing, many, many hours of hand quilting, and is suitable for use in both traditional and modern design. Tickets are one for a dollar, six for five dollars, and twenty-five for twenty dollars. At the quilt show, each buyer purchasing twenty dollars worth of tickets or more also receives a free pincushion.
Drawing for the lucky winner of this quilt will take place Sunday, October 27, at the Country Faire. Winner need not be present. The recipient of this exceptional quilt will possess a signed and dated heirloom worthy of passing on to loved ones.
Yellow Star Thistle Beware! by Susan Raycraft and Beth Winters
Southern Monterey County Rural Coalition (SMCRC) recently received another grant for Yellow Star Thistle (YST) eradication. On Saturday, July 27, at a ceremony in Salinas, Southern Monterey County Rural Coalition received its second year of grant money from the Community Foundation for Monterey County’s Neighborhood Grants Program. We join just a handful of South County groups receiving program support. The grant award will allow us to continue working in ways that will benefit our community with particular emphasis on controlling Yellow Star Thistle. The demonstration project at Jolon and Argyle Roads continues to dramatize the effects of the concerted efforts of all who have become involved in this project.
In other news of interest to residents of rural southern Monterey County, on August 2, 2013, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced in the Federal Register that it will conduct a full environmental impact statement for the agency's Hollister Field Office in Central California. This document will analyze the potential impacts of allowing hydraulic fracturing on the 284,000 acres of public land within the field office's jurisdiction, including many thousands of acres in southern Monterey County.
BLM is launching an independent, statewide science review of the potential oil and gas drilling impacts on the environment and the general geology of the state, including the potential seismic impacts of drilling in a state that is constantly under threat of earthquakes. The California Council on Science and Technology will lead the science review and will publish a peer-reviewed report on its findings by early next year.
The results of the science review will be used to develop an Environmental Impact Study (EIS), which likely will take a couple of years to complete. Public and private agencies and groups, including Monterey County and SMCRC, are welcoming the decision. Understanding the long-term effects of expanding the practice of hydraulic fracturing is essential to making good decisions about our environment.
Finally, we want you to save the date! Residents of southern Monterey County are invited to SMCRC’s September meeting on Wednesday, September 18, at 5:00 pm at St. Luke’s Guild Hall in Jolon, followed by a barbecue hosted by SMCRC. For questions, and to RSVP, contact Beth at (805) 472-2095 or Paula Getzelman at .
Story Road Concert
The musical group Story Road, consisting of fiddler John Weed, guitarist Stuart Mason, and vocalist Colleen Raney, will perform for the first time in our area on Friday, September 13, at Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church on Jolon Road. Doors open at 7:00 pm. A suggested donation of $15.00 is payable at the door. All money goes to the musicians.
Seating is limited to the capacity of the church, so it would be wise to reserve your seat by contacting John Foster at (831) 385-5327 or emailing him at .
Cooking from the Garden by Kate Snell
Green beans are a great favorite for the summer garden. They are wonderful steamed and sautéed, used in potato salad, slow cooked with ham hocks, and pickled. The plants are productive below 95 degrees, but when our Bryson-Hesperia temperatures are well above 100, the green beans often do not set. I gave up on them after the first few years living here until Bill Dayton gave me blackeyed peas from his previous year’s harvest. His family always grew them and picked the beans when they were young, green, and smaller in diameter than a drinking straw. Many people refer to them as snaps. If they get away from you, pick them as larger green blackeyed peas, which are wonderful sautéed and served with cornbread.
At the end of the season, harvest the mature pods and separate out the dried peas. Store and use for winter pots of beans, saving out the portion needed for next year’s seed. Bush beans take more space but produce a little earlier and are less work, while pole beans produce well over a long season and use less space but require support. Place seeds in well-amended soil after the last frost and when the days have warmed. You may want to soak your seed before placing it in the ground to help with germination.
Below is a recipe utilizing snaps, but other green beans may be substituted.
Spicy Green Beans
3 cups chopped green beans
3 cups chopped tomatoes
1-2 Tbsps. vegetable oil
1-2 Tbsps. finely chopped ginger
4 cloves garlic chopped
1-2 Tbsps. cumin
1 tsp. turmeric (optional)
½-1 tsp. crushed red pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
Sauté cumin, crushed red pepper, and optional turmeric in vegetable oil in frying pan or wok for a couple of minutes. Add chopped garlic to pan and sauté for 2 or 3 minutes more. Minced ginger goes in next, closely followed by chopped tomatoes. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, then add green beans. Simmer for approximately 10 minutes more depending on the size and variety of green beans. Take off heat and squeeze the lemon juice onto the green beans. This can be served on basmati rice or by itself.
Fishing with Rich by Rich Lingor
Getting out to the water to test the fishing in August means dogging excessive heat by picking rare shifts in our local weather or adjusting fishing times to cooler morning time or evening. Mid-day temperatures can be more than uncomfortable.
Some of our warmest days could make rocks sweat. Early rising anglers can enjoy some of the best moments our lakes have to offer, especially before the buzzing personal watercraft operators emerge from their nests. Swarms of this invasive species have a knack for instantly altering an otherwise peaceful environment. Look for the final surge of these critters to fade as the calendar eases past Labor Day.
Tracking the county reservoir data reports shows Lake San Antonio to be at fifteen percent of capacity and dropping as of mid August with continued release of water into the river at the rate of about six hundred cubic feet per second (600 cfs). Park officials attending the civic officials’ presentations at the Hesperia Hall potluck said that the drawdowns are required to stop when the water level reaches ten percent. The extraordinary drawdown of Lake San Antonio resulted from the inability to use the normal share from Nacimiento. Repairs to the generator were delayed by parts failures. My latest information indicates that replacement parts delivery was one week overdue as of mid August. Once the parts arrive, installation should take one week.