Linda Petersen, advertising manager of The West Marin Citizen, working from her bed in The Rafael Assistance for Living, a convalescent hospital on North San Pedro Road in San Rafael.

I’ve been posting periodic updates on Linda Petersen’s condition following her horrific traffic accident in Inverness June 13. Linda suffered 10 broken ribs, a broken arm, a broken leg, a broken knee cap, two broken vertebrae, two broken ankles, and a punctured lung when she fell asleep at the wheel and hit a utility poll along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

Since then, Linda has spent time in Marin General Hospital, Kaiser Medical Center in Oakland, and now The Rafael. She wears casts on both legs and on her left arm. Her head and neck are immobilized by a medical “halo” made of steel.

The halo won’t come off for at least four or five more weeks, and until then she is basically stuck. She spends a few minutes in a wheelchair each day, “but it’s not very comfortable,” she acknowledged Monday. “It puts a strain on my neck. This thing was probably invented during the Second World War and hasn’t been been updated since. It weighs a ton.”

Weighed down by the head gear, which is screwed into her skull, and able to move only her right arm, Linda has chosen to fight the tedium of spending a couple of months on her back by getting back to work.

Using her cell phone, she’s already working with about a dozen advertisers, she said, “and as soon as I’m online, there’ll be a lot more.” (Three days later following numerous calls to an ISP her laptop was finally connected to the Internet.)

How do merchants react when she calls them from her hospital bed? “They’re kind of surprised,” she replied. “‘Oh, Linda, how are you doing?’ they ask. ‘We’ve been worried about you. You sound so good.” Does their concern translate into ad sales? “It might give me a bit of an advantage,” she admitted with a laugh.

Linda has been receiving a steady stream of cards, emails, and phone calls from well wishers. People have brought her flowers, fruit, yogurt, ice cream, books, balm, and magazines. “I’m so touched by that,” she said. “The outpouring of encouragement has really helped me keep a good attitude.”

Linda’s much-beloved dog-about-town Sebastian died in the crash. Here the two of them paused while on a walk at White House Pool.

Speeding Linda’s recovery, her doctors say, is her being in good physical shape at 61 years old. Before her accident, Linda went to the West Marin Fitness gym almost daily. Until two months before the accident, she went horseback riding every week or two, and therein lies a story.

Linda lived in Puerto Rico for more than 20 years, and in March 2000, she was riding her own horse, a Paseo, when it was attacked by a much larger stallion. With the other horse trying to “throw itself” onto the back of Linda’s horse, she leapt off, only to have her horse fall and roll over her lower back.

Her injuries on that occasion consisted of a dozen broken bones, including a crushed pelvis, and numerous internal contusions. Despite major surgery and extensive hospitalization after the mishap, her hip was deteriorating by the time she moved to the Bay Area about five years ago, necessitating a hip replacement in 2006.

After recovering from that hospitalization, Linda resumed riding, accompanying friends on trails throughout Marin and Sonoma counties. Increasingly on her mind, however, was her recent hip surgery and the fact that our bones become more brittle and take longer to mend as we grow older. So two months before her automobile accident, “I decided I better not do anymore riding,” she noted, laughing at the irony.

And then the conversation turned to business. Shari-Faye Dell of The Citizen happened to also be visiting when I showed up at The Rafael, and Linda told her that ads for Osteria Stellina restaurant and Zuma gift store were ready for this week’s issue. “Check with Chris [Giacomini, the owner] at Toby’s,” she told Shari. “If he isn’t there, you can also talk with Oscar [Gamez, the feed barn’s manager].”

Later in the hallway I commented to Shari how remarkably Linda was handling a situation that would devastate many of us. “She’s one of those people whose glass is half full,” Shari responded with admiration.

A female Anna’s hummingbird has taken to frequenting the flowers growing in wine-barrel tubs on my deck.

The website Hummingbirds in Motion reports, “The hummingbird (scientific family: trochilidae) does not fly in the same way other birds do. They can fly forward, backward, up, down, and even upside-down. The motion of their wings changes its angle with each flap. Unlike other birds, hummingbirds flap their wings horizontally in the shape of a figure 8. They also expand and contract their tail feathers, which allows them to hover in mid-air.”

This week I saw a wild turkey scare off a young deer on this hill by flapping its wings, and I’ve previously seen horses having fun chasing turkeys around in the Giacomini family’s pasture next to mine.

Wild turkeys are not native to West Marin but were introduced here for hunting. In 1988, wildlife biologists from the California Department of Fish and Game released a small flock on the Loma Alta Ranch overlooking the San Geronimo Valley. This original flock quickly grew, and many of the birds migrated first to the San Geronimo Valley and then to other parts of West Marin.

When a flock took up residence in a stand of eucalyptus trees west of Tomales in 2000, relations with townsfolk soon became strained. The turkeys tore up gardens, scratched parked cars by climbing over them, and threatened children walking along the street.

The menacing peaked in January 2001 when two tom turkeys lunged at a pair of schoolchildren riding scooters. The children escaped unharmed but had to abandon their scooters as they fled.

In March 2005, a low-flying turkey hit a power line over Highway 1 in Tomales, causing the line to slap against another line and blacking out the town. The turkey, which fell to the ground with some singed tail feathers, was initially dazed by the incident but then wandered off.

To enhance habitat for great blue herons at Bear Valley Ranch (Historic W Ranch), the Point Reyes National Seashore has torn down historic structures, built new ones, and restored the primeval parking lot on land the previous owner had treated as an open field.

With a typically inquisitive expression, possums are among the cutest of creatures, as I’m sure you would agree.

A possum admires its reflection in the glass of my kitchen door.

The “common opossum” is not native to California but rather the Deep South and was introduced into the San Jose area around 1900 “for meat, delicious with sweet potatoes,” Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evens writes in The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula. By 1931, he notes, possums had spread as far south as the Mexican border but did not reach Point Reyes until 1968.

My oldest stepdaughter Anika, 22, is about to visit for a week from Minneapolis where she has been attending Normandale Community College. Anika, who holds dual US-Guatemalan citizenship, has received high marks in her classes and has been accepted by the University of Minnesota for the fall semester.

With badgers openly hunting gophers on this hill at the moment, I’ll, of course, warn my soon-to-be Golden Gopher to watch her steps. Thanks to Wikipedia, however, I can at least pass along this tip regarding protection from badgers: Scandinavian custom is to put eggshells or Styrofoam in one’s boots when walking through badger territory, as badgers are believed to bite down until they can hear a crunch. And doesn’t that sound like comfortable footwear?

Anika has been working her way through school at a Best Buy store in Minneapolis. A while back, the company wanted a Latina model for a photo, and she was picked. To her surprise, the picture ended up in an ad recruiting staff for a new Best Buy store in Mexico City.

But getting back to my story.  While Anika is here, I’m going to let her use my second car, a 17-year-old Nissan that I seldom drive. Years of grime and pine sap had become embedded in the paint, so last Friday I took the Nissan over the hill to a car wash, thinking she should have a clean vehicle to drive.

The Nissan came out looking great, but as I was driving home through San Anselmo I noticed something wrong. I was in slow traffic, but my speedometer read 40 mph. I had no way to judge my true speed, and to my dismay, I realized I was about to enter Fairfax where local law enforcement frequently ambush unwary travelers. Driving in that border town without a working speedometer seemed like going on patrol in Kabul without a flak jacket.

Luckily there were three or four cars ahead of me, and by keeping my place in the convoy, I made it through unscathed. However, when the convoy went through the San Geronimo Valley and got up to about 55 mph, my speedometer said I was doing almost 90. I kept looking for cops but fortunately encountered none.

Back in Point Reyes Station, it was already too late to have the speedometer worked on that day. Worse yet, if the speedometer was failing because the odometer was failing, the work could not be done any time soon. State government has to give an okay in advance for odometers to be replaced. As a result, I spent half the weekend cursing my misfortune.

Come Monday morning early, I took the car to mechanic Sean Bracken, and to my delight he quickly solved the problem. It turned out a 1992 Nissan lets you set the speedometer to read in either miles per hour or kilometers, and during the car wash, the switch had apparently been reset. It was a lesson gladly learned, and Sean was good enough not to charge me for it.

But then, several weird things happened last week. While my car was being washed, I read in that day’s Marin Independent Journal, “Two women were arrested on animal cruelty allegations Thursday in the ritualistic killing of chickens near Mill Valley.” The article goes on to quote a law professor who says religious belief is usually not a defense in criminal cases. What the hell was going on?

Dominating Friday’s IJ was a lengthy account of FBI agents raiding Novato Sanitary District offices. Odd, especially since no reason was given. Odder yet was a comment deep in the story that the raid on the sewer district “has nothing to do with an ongoing bank fraud investigation after more than $500,000 was electronically lifted from Novato Sanitary accounts at Bank of Marin. Some of the funds have been tracked to former Soviet republics, and some money has been recovered.” Iwonder which republics did it.

Were columnist Herb Caen still alive, an article in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle would have provided him with an obvious “namephreak.” Paparazzi in Miami have reportedly managed to get photos of a Catholic priest cuddling on a beach with his girlfriend. The article noted, “The Rev. Alberto Cutie [is] a celebrity among Latino Catholics for his good looks, media savvy, and advice about relationships.” Accompanying the story was a photo of Cutie, and indeed he is one.

“Make me chaste and continent,” said Saint Augustine, “but not just yet.” Or maybe never, says the Rev. Cutie, who believes priestly celibacy is not necessarily a blessing.

The National Research Council on Tuesday released a report which found “a lack of strong scientific evidence that the present level of oyster-farming operations by Drakes Bay Oyster Company has major adverse effects on the ecosystem of Drakes Estero.”

Notwithstanding Park Service statements, oyster growing appears to instead provide a significant environmental benefit, the council’s report concluded. An announcement of the 100-page report’s release noted, “To some extent, the oysters in Drakes Estero replace the filtering and material processing that was lost more than a hundred years ago when the native Olympia oysters were over-harvested.”

In 2007, Marin County supervisors asked Senator Dianne Feinstein (right) to intervene after the Point Reyes National Seashore administration began harassing the oyster company.

That July, Feinstein responded by convening a meeting in West Marin attended by top Park Service officials, oyster company owner Kevin Lunny, Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey, and others.

As a result of the meeting, Lunny was allowed to get some permits he needed, and the Park Service agreed to finance a National Research Council study of whether oyster cultivation in Drakes Estero was, in fact, doing any environmental damage, as the park had been claiming.

(The National Research Council, along with the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine make up the national academies. They describe themselves as “independent, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under an 1863 congressional charter.”)

The conflict began with an ideological shift within the Park Service over the past 12 years, which led to a decision to close the oyster company.

In an attempt to build public support for the decision, the National Seashore administration three years ago began publicly accusing the company of doing environmental damage.

But it was mostly hogwash. An October 2006 park report titled A Sheltered Wilderness Estuary contained so many misleading statements (some of which were caught by the scientists it cited) that the park had to keep posting revised versions online, four in all, along with two “correction” and “clarification” postings.

Commenting on the National Seashore’s maligning the oyster company, the National Research Council wrote, “In several instances, the agency selectively presented, over-interpreted, or misinterpreted the available scientific information on potential impacts of the oyster mariculture operation.”

Comments such as these in the report prompted The San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday to note, “The findings mark the second time in a year that the Park Service has been put under the spotlight for essentially fudging data in its attempts to show that the Drakes Bay Oyster Company harmed the environment.”

The first exposure occurred in July 2008 when the Inspector General’s Office of the Interior Department issued a report that concluded National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher and his senior science advisor had misled county officials and the public about the oyster company’s effect on seals, eelgrass, and sedimentation.

Oyster company owner Kevin Lunny (right) under siege from a park administration that doesn’t play by the rules.

After the National Research Council report was issued this week, Senator Feinstein wrote Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, “I find it troubling and unacceptable that the National Park Service exaggerated the effects of the oyster population on the… ecosystem,” The Chronicle reported.

However, The Chronicle also quoted Neubacher’s boss Jon Jarvis, director of the Pacific West Region of the Park Service, as saying he still won’t extend the oyster company’s use permit for its onshore facilities when the permit comes up for renewal in 2012.

“That really is a policy and law issue,” said Jarvis (right), “not a science issue.”

Which begs the question: if it’s not a science issue, why did the park administration go to such lengths to misrepresent science in its dispute with the oyster company?

As for the policy and legal issue, Jarvis is relying on the opinion of a field solicitor in the San Francisco Field Office, who says the bottomlands of the estero can be designated federal wilderness despite state government’s retaining fishing (including aquaculture) rights over them.

In 1976, then-Assistant Interior Secretary John Kyle told Congress the wilderness bill they were about to pass could not include the estero’s bottomlands because the state owned them. Now we have a presumptuous federal lawyer in San Francisco saying that the Assistant Secretary of the Interior Department and his legal staff got it all wrong and that he, in his outlying field office on the West Coast, knows better.

Assistant Secretary Kyle’s written statement to Congress was “inaccurate,” field solicitor Ralph Mihan has decided, and Congress’ new concept of “potential wilderness” overrode it anyhow.

However, attorney Mihan wrote this opinion in 2007 during the Bush Administration, and in it he acknowledged his reasoning was based not only on law but also on “present-day National Park Service director’s orders and management policies.”

In short, the oyster company is haunted by the ghost of the Bush Administration’s Park Service.

Because the bottomlands of Drakes Estero are under the jurisdiction of the State of California, which by law must forever protect them for fishing, including aquaculture, they can never become part of a Wilderness Area of the National Park Service.

This legal fact may in the long run be the main obstacle to the Point Reyes National Seashore administration’s machinations to close Drakes Bay Oyster Company three years from now.

In an historical and legal analysis posted Wednesday on the Community Conversations page of the Marinwatch website, attorney Sandy Calhoun writes, “When the State of California transferred the submerged lands in Point Reyes National Seashore to the United States in 1965, the State Legislature… retained for the people of California fishing rights on and over submerged lands.”

Nor did the Legislature have the power to transfer those rights to the federal government, even if it had wanted to, although in the last couple of years, the acting director of the State Department of Fish and Game has acted as if he could cede “primary management authority” over the estero to the park. In fact, the acting director also lacks the legal ability to do so, attorney Calhoun writes.

“The California Constitution prohibits the State Legislature from transferring away the public ‘right to fish,’ which includes oyster cultivation,” Calhoun notes, and “what the California Legislature cannot do directly cannot be done indirectly by an administrative interpretation of an act of the State Legislature.

“In short, it would be unconstitutional for the California Department of Fish and Game to administratively cede jurisdiction over oyster cultivation in Drakes Estero [below] to the National Park Service.”

In 1974, when the Park Service wrote an environmental-impact statement for the proposal to designate 10,600 acres of the Point Reyes National Seashore as wilderness, the park noted that “control of the [oyster company] lease from the California Department of Fish and Game, with presumed renewal indefinitely, is within the rights reserved by the state on these submerged lands.”

When the Sierra Club broke with other environmental groups and complained about the bottomlands not being also designated as wilderness, the Park Service responded, “It has been the policy of the National Park Service not to propose wilderness for lands on which the United States does not own full interests.”

Nor is the state government’s interest in leasing bottomlands to the oyster company merely a matter of regulating operations and collecting fees.

The California Aquaculture Promotion Act of 1995 proclaims: “The Legislature finds and declares that while commercial aquaculture continues to provide considerable benefit to people of the state, the growth of the industry has been impaired in part by duplicate and costly regulations and illegal importation and trading in aquaculture products.

“The Legislature further finds and declares that commercial aquaculture shall be promoted through the clarification of respective government responsibilities and statutory requirements.”

As part of the state’s policy of promoting aquaculture, Drakes Bay Oyster Company is required to meet minimum production goals established by the California Fish and Game Commission. It can lose its lease to use the estero’s bottomlands if it doesn’t.

“These lease provisions, which confirm the state’s compelling interest in preserving and increasing the productivity of shellfish cultivation in Drakes Estero, demonstrate that oyster cultivation under state permits is not a commercial operation in the usual sense,” attorney Calhoun writes.

“Rather, in this context, ‘commercial’ is a shorthand term for private development of a state-retained, approved, and regulated use of a state resource, i.e. the bottomland in Drakes Estero.”

National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher would like to shut the oyster company down in 2012 when the use permit for its onshore facilities (at right) comes up for renewal, but the onshore facilities are also protected.

While the State of California doesn’t own any part of the oyster company’s onshore facilities, Section 16 of the federal Wilderness Act requires the Secretary of the Interior to provide “adequate access” to private or state-owned land within wilderness areas.

In 1997, before the Johnson family sold the oyster company to its present owners, the Lunny family, the park proposed the oyster company’s old buildings be replaced, and Supt. Neubacher himself signed a building permit application to add 3,500 square feet to the facilities.

In the environmental assessment prepared by Neubacher, the park superintendent argued that the new buildings were needed. “Because the aquaculture operation will be allowed to continue,” Neubacher wrote, “the proposed project will preserve aquaculture, specifically oyster processing and harvesting at Drakes Estero.”

Neubacher added that the “project will positively impact the local economy. Johnson Oyster Company accounts for 39 percent of the State of California’s commercial oyster harvest.”

But officialdom is always capricious. Less than a dozen years later, Neubacher and his bosses have changed their minds and now want to destroy the historic oyster company. In the past three years they’ve lined up a Bush-era lawyer for the Park Service, a faceless state bureaucrat, and a handful of environmental zealots to help rationalize the destruction.

Should all this end up in court some day, one key issue will be what Congress intended when it designated Drakes Estero “potential” wilderness back in 1976.

The field representative for Congressman John Burton (at left), who sponsored the legislation in the House of Representatives, was the  late Jerry Friedman of Point Reyes Station, chairman of the county planning commission and co-founder of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin.

Writing on behalf of Congressman Burton and half a dozen environmental groups, Friedman told senators holding hearings on the wilderness bill that it was written so as to “allow the continued use and operation of Johnson’s Oyster Company in Drakes Estero.”

Alan Cranston and John Tunney co-sponsored the wilderness legislation in the Senate. In written testimony, Senator Tunney noted that under the bill, “the existing agricultural and aquacultural uses can continue.” Senator Cranston took the same position both orally and in writing, as records of the hearings show, attorney Calhoun writes.

In separate legislation, Congress in 1980 declared that “encouraging aquaculture activities and programs in both the public and private sectors” was federal policy. Like the State of California, Congress complained that jurisdictional questions and misplaced government regulations were interfering with “the potential for significant growth” in US aquaculture.

In short, even if the Park Service decides to unilaterally reinterpret the concept of “potential wilderness,” Congress and the Legislature have already declared that more, not less, aquaculture is needed. Supt. Neubacher may want to defy Congress, the Legislature, and the state constitution, but it’s doubtful that any court will let him.

Most West Marin residents want the oyster company to survive, and because the State of California has an established interest in promoting aquaculture in the estero, it’s time for Assemblyman Jared Huffman and State Senator Mark Leno to join US Senator Dianne Feinstein in coming to the aid of Drakes Bay Oyster Company.

And if you have the time, attorney Sandy Calhoun’s 28-page analysis of all this is a good read. Its file can be found under “Drakes Estero: Historical Analysis of Oyster Cultivation and Wilderness Status by Alexander D. Calhoun” on Marinwatch’s Community Conversations page (near the bottom).

In San Anselmo last Thursday, an SUV parked near my car caught my attention because its tailgate was plastered with bumper-stickers, some of which had a Stinson Beach or other West Marin theme.

When the driver returned to the vehicle, I asked if he was from Stinson Beach. No, he replied before driving off, the car belongs to his sister, and she often goes to Stinson to walk her dog. As the SUV disappeared, I wondered about “Save a Cow, Eat a Vegetarian.” It’s obviously a jab at political correctness, but what exactly does it imply? That bovine and hominid vegetarians compete for ruffage?

Most of us have seen bumper-stickers that boast, “My Child is an Honor Student at St. Swivens High [or whatever] School,” and it was this sassy spoof that prompted me to start snapping pictures of the tailgate’s humor.

Here’s a poke at the kind of personal ads that show up locally in The Bay Guardian or on Craigslist.

In the unlikely event that some drivers actually find their inamoratas through ads on bumper-stickers, the SUV also offers this caution.

And should any reader in Stinson Beach spot this red Nissan Xterra, please ask the driver to explain the cow-and-vegetarian joke — and then forward her answer to this blog.

Before signing off, I have one last question. What are we to make of the weather boxes that are now offered on Google homepages? Shingles can be blowing off roofs around here, and Google will report a windspeed of 3 mph for Point Reyes Station. Usually, Google’s current temperature bears a closer resemblance to reality than its windspeed, but recently even its current-temperature reports for Point Reyes Station have been goofy.

Skies were mostly overcast at noon Tuesday with a light drizzle, but the air was neither still nor 51 degrees below freezing. With all its technical expertise, you’d think Google would realize its system was crashing when it reported Arctic air in Point Reyes Station.

Just to see if the goofy temperature Google had listed around noon Tuesday was merely a brief aberration, I checked again at 2:22 a.m. Wednesday. By now the air outside had warmed up some, according to Google, but our springtime night was still 12 degrees below freezing. Meanwhile, my own outdoor thermometer showed an air temperature of just over 50 degrees.

By 2 p.m. Wednesday, my thermometer indicated the air outdoors had risen to 60 degrees, so I checked what Google was reporting and this time found Point Reyes Station sounding like a town in the tropics. If I were to believe Google, the temperature here had soared by 113 degrees in 26 hours. What is going on?

Addendum: By Friday, Google was reporting that in Point Reyes Station’s zip code, current temperature “information is temporarily unavailable.” I’d like to think that this blog had something to do with that, but I doubt it.

Against my better judgment I showed up for Friday’s “Community Conversation” concerning the Point Reyes National Seashore’s intention to close Drakes Bay Oyster Company. Since retiring three years ago, I’ve continued to write about public issues in West Marin, but I haven’t taken part in many political events. Having achieved Nirvana, I’d rather not disturb it.

But Friday evening, I was one of 125 or so West Marin residents who filled the Inverness Yacht Club for a heavily structured discussion of the park.

Sounding like marriage counselors, a team of moderators started the meeting by telling us we were there to express our feelings, not to present facts.

To avoid bad feelings, we couldn’t criticize anybody by name (e.g. National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher) but could only refer to his organization (e.g. “the park”). In fact, the moderators later called me out for naming names when I said President Obama is an improvement over President Bush.

The members of a “community” need to “communicate,” the moderators said more than once. No speaker should hog the microphone, they added, but were themselves slow to relinquish it. After more than half an hour of a two-hour meeting had been spent on these introductory comments with no letup in sight, I began eying the door next to me only to discover it merely went to a fire escape. On the other hand, the moderators’ efforts to ensure parlor-like decorum did pay off. I can recall more acrimony during a public discussion of museum hours.

Phyllis Faber told the group that Supt. Neubacher was away but had said that even if he were in town, he wouldn’t attend.

Faber added that Neubacher also said the park’s associate superintendent was likewise out of town but would have attended were she here. (Faber is co-founder of MALT, a fellow of the California Native Plant Society, and an author of a botanical guide, so her account is probably reliable.)

At the Drakes Bay Oyster Company site (seen here), oysters are sold and canned. A Park Service use permit, which expires in 2012, is strictly for these onshore facilities and not for oyster growing in the estero itself, which has been designated “potential wilderness.” Neubacher supporters have claimed that extending the onshore facilities’ use permit would be a threat to wilderness nationwide because of the precedent it would set. Others claim that makes neither legal nor logical sense.

Gordon Bennett, a member of the Marin Group of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the national Sierra Club, has been carrying Neubacher’s water (not always with the support of his group) ever since the park superintendent three years ago first proposed shutting down the oyster company come 2012. On the eve of Friday’s meeting, Bennett sent an email to those sympathetic to Neubacher, warning them off by claiming the meeting was a “set-up” which had been “organized by proponents” of the oyster company.

It’s hard to tell whether the email had any effect. Some members of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, which supports Neubacher’s position, were on hand, including its president and a former board member. A couple of people, including forester Tom Gaman of Inverness, said the park should get rid of the oyster company to create wilderness.

Most of those who spoke, however, like most West Marin residents one hears on the street, supported the company. Several people, such as innkeeper Frank Borodic of Olema, said the oyster company is well run and good for the environment.

After two hours, however, only a couple of proposals got virtually unanimous support from the audience: 1) have additional oyster-company critics at future Community Conversations in order to create more of a dialogue; 2) get Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey to introduce legislation resurrecting the Citizens Advisory Commission to the GGNRA and Point Reyes National Seashore.

Because the two parks were established to serve the Bay Area’s mostly urban population, Congress in 1972 decided that Bay Area local governments should nominate candidates for a Citizens Advisory Commission, which would then be appointed by the US Secretary of the Interior.

Since they were appointed by a member of the president’s cabinet, the commissioners’ decisions, while only advisory, carried weight with the park administration. A superintendent could not ignore them without risking his job, former Supt. John Sansing once told me.

Supt. Neubacher and his staff have tried to discredit Drakes Bay Oyster Company by telling county and federal officials that seals are frightened away by the growing and harvesting of oysters. Apparently not having heard about this, the 18 harbor seals seen here are sunning themselves on oyster racks in neighboring Tomales Bay.

The advisory commission had needed Congressional reauthorization every few years, and for almost three decades, Congress approved it. However, in 2002, its term expired, and with Republicans in charge of Congress and the White House, the commission was allowed to die.

This time [then-Interior Secretary] Gale Norton and the Park Service said, “It’s been a very good commission for 29 years, but we don’t need it anymore,” former Commissioner Amy Meyer told me in 2007. National Seashore spokesman John Dell’Osso in 2004 had already told me the park administration did not want the commission revived because it sometimes interfered with what the Park Service felt should be done.

The Neubacher administration has also argued that local residents don’t speak for all Americans. It’s a specious argument since most park visitors are from the nine-county Bay Area and are far more familiar with the park, and with anything going wrong in it, than are people in other parts of the country, who seldom, if ever, see the National Seashore.

Closely following Friday’s discussion are oyster company owners Kevin and Nancy Lunny.

Meyer noted the commission had acted as an “interface” between the public and the park, and its absence has been felt. In the past four years, there has been widespread public dissatisfaction with the National Seashore over: 1) a 2004 ranger-pepper-spray scandal; 2) the inhumane slaughter of non-indigenous deer a year ago; 3) the present oyster-company dispute. Without the advisory commission to provide the public with a forum for resolving these issues, they have become so contentious that Supt. Neubacher is seldom seen around town anymore.

Congresswoman Woolsey four years ago introduced legislation to resurrect the commission, and it was attached to a House bill (which was being pushed by now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others) to acquire land in San Mateo County for the GGNRA. The bill passed in 2005, but when it did, the rider resurrecting the commission was gone.

Meyer said she and other people went to Congresswomen Pelosi and Woolsey, asking that they temporarily drop the advisory-commission legislation. The fear, Meyer said, was that the Bush Administration would pack the advisory commission with people who shared his ideology.

On Friday night, I suggested that since we now have the Obama administration, the time is ripe to resurrect the commission. A number of other speakers, including Liza Crosse, aide to Marin County Supervior Steve Kinsey, agreed. And when a show of hands was taken later, almost everyone supported the idea, regardless of where they stood on the oyster-company issue.

Seen from a low-flying airplane, the northwestern 40 percent of Marin County is a bit different from what one sees driving on public roads, as I was reminded this week.

Sally Gale with her husband Mike raise grass-fed beef in Chileno Valley, and for Christmas 2007, she gave him a gift certificate for one-hour plane ride. Mike (above) finally had a chance to take the flight this week, and he invited me along.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, Mike and I showed up in the Aeroventure office at the Petaluma Airport where pilot Tom Dezendorf loaded us into a Cessna that was tied down out front. As Mike and I would later learn, Tom, who mostly works as a flight instructor these days, previously was an Emmy-winning production manager for NBC.

As befits a flight instructor, Tom’s takeoff was as smooth as his camerawork, and if I hadn’t been looking out the window I’d have thought we were still on the runway.

Once we were airborne, Tom headed out to Chileno Valley so we could shoot some photos of Mike’s and Sally’s ranch. Their stately ranch house, which has long been in Sally’s family, had fallen into such disrepair it was uninhabitable before they spent four years (1994-98) restoring it.

From Chileno Valley, Tom at my request headed out to Drakes Estero, crossing Tomales Bay en route. I wanted to photograph this tribal region of the Point Reyes National Seashore where there are continual skirmishes between a Taliban warlord, Olema bin Laden, and the Drakes Bay people.

Bin Laden has been trying to end century-old oyster growing at the estero by imposing a pitiless environmental sharia on the region. His many cruelties by now have raised concern among neighboring peoples, as well as a number of county, state, and federal officials.

New readers unfamiliar with the injustices that prompt this digression into satire can find them in previous postings about Drakes Bay Oyster Company. (N.B. I’m speaking only for myself here and not for Mike.)

As we approached the estero, stockponds like steps descended hillsides in front of us almost to the shoreline.

Northwest Marin contains scores of stockponds the public never sees because they’re hidden in remote canyons or, surprisingly enough, near the tops of ridges. As we flew over some of the higher ones, I wondered what their sources of water are.

On the other hand, Petaluma residents are more likely to have swimming pools hidden out of public view, as we could see while flying to and from the airport. I guess the difference says something about what goes on where.

On our way back to Petaluma, we flew over Point Reyes Station to shoot a few photos. There were no swimming pools to be seen.

That’s the Coast Guard housing complex at the upper left. Just below it are the houses EAH sold at market rates, and below them are rows of trees around a corner of the playing field at West Marin School. To the right of the trees is the EAH affordable housing project.

The Dance Palace is the blue building at lower right. Above it (with a brown roof) is the Arthur Disterheft Public Safety Building, which houses the county fire station and sheriff’s substation. Winding through the upper right of the photo is Papermill/Lagunitas Creek. In the center of it all is Point Reyes Station’s commercial district, which mostly lines the town’s main street, a three-block-long jog in Highway 1.

The term Northwest Marin is sometimes used to describe the Tomales, Dillon Beach, Fallon area, and once in a great while, it is used to refer to all of West Marin (including the San Geronimo Valley) from Olema north.

City-Data.com describes Northwest Marin (see its map below) as consisting of 322 square miles with a population as of July 2007 of 9,366. The median household income in Northwest Marin a year and a half ago was $62,106 compared with $59,948 for California as a whole, City-Data.com estimated.

But that small difference doesn’t begin to compensate for the horrifically high cost of living here. On a cost-of-living scale that considers 100 to be average for communities nationwide, Northwest Marin scores a frightening 191.7, which City-Data.com not surprisingly calls “very high.”

Among Northwest Marin residents 25 and older, 93.1 percent have high school degrees, 46.7 percent have college degrees, and 18.5 percent have graduate or professional degrees.

The “most common industries for males” working in West Marin, City-Data.com says, are: “construction, 17 percent; professional, scientific, and technical services, 10 percent; agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, 10 percent; educational services, 8 percent; accommodation and food services, 7 percent; health care, 5 percent; arts, entertainment, and recreation, 5 percent.”

Listed as the “most common industries for females” are: “educational services, 12 percent; health care, 11 percent; professional, scientific, and technical services, 9 percent; accommodation and food services, 7 percent; arts, entertainment, and recreation, 7 percent; religious, grantmaking, civic, professional, and similar organizations, 6 percent; public administration, 5 percent.”

The average household size in Northwest Marin is 2.4 people, lower than the statewide average of 2.9, and far fewer households in Northwest Marin consist of families (46.2 percent) than is typical statewide (68.9 percent).

Some 7.8 percent of households here are made up of unmarried partners compared with 5.9 percent statewide. An additional 0.9 percent of Northwest Marin households describe themselves as lesbian and 0.7 percent describe themselves as gay men, City-Data.com reports.

In 2007, the estimated median price of a home in Northwest Marin was $838,246 compared to $532,300 statewide. I wonder how much prices have dropped since then, probably not enough to help the 10.6 percent of residents with incomes below the poverty level.

Nothwithstanding how hard it is on the one in 10 Northwest Marin residents with incomes that low, statewide the percentage of people with incomes below the poverty level was 40 percent higher in July 2007 before the recession hit.

When the lot beside Tomales Town Hall came up for sale a while back, the Town Hall board took advantage of the opportunity to acquire yard space that came with an ancient shade tree. Having now paid off well over $100,000 of the note and needing only $20,000 more, the Town Hall on Saturday held a fundraising pig roast, barbecue, and silent action.

Two bands played, one in the yard and one in the hall. Performing here is the band Blue Holstein with (from left) Charlie Morgan on guitar, Vic Marcotte on drums, Don Armstrong on guitar (seen here as lead singer on a Bob Dylan reprise), and Cheshire Mahoney on sax. A former West Marin resident, Cheshire now lives in Ashland.

The roasted pig, which was carved next to Highway 1 outside the Town Hall, was a hit with townspeople, and the line waiting to get in on the feast ran the length of the hall and out the front door.

Meanwhile a couple of blocks away, cartoonist Kathryn LeMieux was holding a moving sale. The sale will resume from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Sunday, March 8, at 31 Carrie St.

Why is she moving? In his day job, her husband Don Armstrong of Blue Holstein is now superintendent of Fort Bragg Unified School District, having previously been a teacher in Bolinas and later a superintendent in Petaluma. Kathryn told me the couple is tired of maintaining two homes and having to live apart much of the time, so they’re going to live in Westport (north of Fort Bragg) and rent out their home in Tomales until he retires.

For 11 years during the time I owned The Point Reyes Light, Kathryn drew the comic strip Feral West for the newspaper, and she now draws it for The West Marin Citizen. The move will bring an end to the strip, she said.

Kathryn is also one of six women who 10 years ago started the cartoon Six Chix, which is syndicated by King Features and appears locally in The Marin Independent Journal. Each cartoonist draws one strip a week and takes turns drawing the Sunday cartoon. Kathryn told me her last Six Chix strip will be published Friday.

Frustrated by the “hard work” of producing on deadline while her earnings from newspapers shrink because of changes in the industry, Kathryn said she will give up cartooning to concentrate on her oil painting.

I happened to run into Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evans at Kathryn’s moving sale, and he was fascinated by some of the non-artwork she was also selling. “Where else can you buy a possum skull?” he asked me.

Along with an original Feral West cartoon from 2004, I myself picked up a 1960 issue of The Baywood Press, as The Light was called until September 1966. A Page 1 story in the issue reported that sheriff’s deputies were looking for an arsonist who used a blanket soaked with kerosine to set fire to the house immediately north of West Marin School. Assistant fire chief Louis Bloom estimated that $250 worth of damage was done to the home, which belonged to Robert Worthington and his family. They were on a two-week trip to the Central Valley when the fire broke out around midnight.

Another Page 1 story reported that dogs from homes along Highway 1 had killed seven sheep belonging to now-deceased Elmer Martinelli, father Point Reyes Station’s Patricia, Stan, and Leroy Martinelli.

Nor were Kathryn’s sale and the Town Hall pig roast the only fun around Tomales. On the Tomales-Petaluma Road, a succession of motorists kept stopping to photograph Veanna Silva’s camel grazing with a couple of cows. Two-humped Bactrian camels are native to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and China.

Also intriguing motorists along the Tomales-Petaluma Road is this sign outside the former Aurora School (built in 1873), which is now the home of Jerry and Leslie Swallow. What the sign really signifies, townspeople told me, is that the Swallows’ driveway has a blind turnout onto the the road, and that the Swallows have a sense of humor.

Here are a few other intriguing facets of Tomales, as reported by City-Data.com. The town as of July 2007 had 210 residents whose median age was 46.1 years old. The estimated median household income was $61,107 compared with $59,948 statewide.

Some 94.3 percent of townspeople are non-Hispanic white, 2.4 percent are Hispanic, 1 percent are Japanese, and 1 percent are American Indian. The average household size is 2.4 people compared with 2.9 statewide. Some 56.2 percent of these are “family households” compared with 68.9 percent statewide.

As of a year and a half ago, 11 percent of the households consisted of unmarried partners compared with 5.9 percent statewide. Another 1.4 percent of Tomales’ households reported being lesbian, and 1.4 percent reported being gay men.

City-Data.com calls the cost of living in Tomales “very high.” On the national cost-of-living index, 100 represents the US average, and Tomales comes in at a whopping 168.6.

But here’s what I find to be the most surprising statistics reported by City-Data.com. Back in 2007 before the recession hit, the proportion of Tomales residents with incomes below the poverty level (14.3 percent) was virtually the same as the state average (14.2 percent) while the proportion of residents with incomes below 50 percent of the poverty level (9.5 percent) was far worse than the state as a whole (6.3 percent).

That one in seven townspeople have incomes below the poverty level is all the more surprising given that Tomales is one of the better educated towns anywhere. Nine out of 10 residents 25 and older have completed high school, and 43.3 percent have completed college. More than one in five residents (21 percent) hold graduate or professional degrees.

The only thing I can think of that might explain this disparity between high education and low income could be the ascetic lifestyles of the 30 or so people living at the Blue Mountain Meditation Center off the Tomales-Petaluma Road.

But it’s incongruities such as this that make Tomales so interesting: from a pig roast to finance real estate for the Town Hall, to a camel and a “blind driver” along the Tomales-Petaluma Road, to possum, deer, and horse skulls plus artwork, antiques, and artifacts for sale in a cartoonist’s studio. It’s a great town, and, by the way, it’s going to miss you while you’re gone, Don and Kathryn.

Nicasio Reservoir overflowed early today, symbolically extricating West Marin from California’s three-year drought. The land draining into the Marin Municipal Water District reservoir has received seven inches of rain in the past eight days, district spokeswoman Libby Pischel told me.

On April 1, the amount of water in MMWD’s reservoirs will determine whether the district considers this a drought year, Pischel said, and district projections now are far rosier than they were at the end of January. MMWD reservoirs currently are 75 percent full, she noted, adding that they would normally be 85 percent full at this time of year.

The present storm system and one a week ago have been especially welcome in Bolinas. Two weeks ago Bolinas Community Public Utility District’s main reservoir, Woodrat II, was essentially dry, and BCPUD directors had voted to limit each household, regardless of size, to 150 gallons of water per day. By mid-afternoon today, the reservoir had risen to within two feet of capacity.

“We’re very grateful,” BCPUD general manager Jennifer Blackman told me during this afternoon’s rainfall. “We’re in a much better place than we were last month.” Although “rationing is still in place,” Blackman said, BCPUD directors last week held off voting on further restrictions because the current rain was being forecast.

Nicasio Reservoir that overflowed today is one of seven belonging to Marin Municipal Water District, which serves the San Geronimo Valley and most of East Marin south of Novato.

Shortly after noon, I began clambering up the embankment across the spillway from the dam in order to photograph the historic event.

Twice before in the past 30 years, I did this for The Point Reyes Light to record the ends of previous droughts. It’s never an easy climb. The slope is rocky and extremely steep with few hand holds in some places and dense brush in others.

This time was worse than ever. I was halfway to a ledge high enough to look down on the reservoir when my feet slid out from under me. I dropped to my hands only to have my camera fall out of a parka pocket. With dismay I watched as it tumbled away down the rocky slope.

Gloomily, I crawled and slid after it, muddying my pants, as well as bloodying my hands on the rocks. When I finally reached the bottom, however, I found a happy surprise. The camera had survived the rough descent better than I had. Kodak cameras are apparently as sturdy as they’re cheap. After wiping mine off, I secured it around my neck and once again began climbing.

Luckily, deer trails crisscross the slope, which made traversing it at least possible although not easy. But when I finally reached the ledge from which I could photograph the dam and spillway with the reservoir behind them, the scene easily compensated for my scrapes and bruises.

Seasonal waterfall. Driving from Point Reyes Station to the dam and back, I noted that every gully along the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road had become a stream which flowed into Papermill/Lagunitas Creek. When rainfall is normal, these small waterfalls are annual roadside attractions.

My hill too changes during heavy rains. When I looked out the dining-room window yesterday morning (that’s my cabin in the background), I spotted what appeared to be a piece of plastic flapping in the grass. My first impulse was to wait until the rain stopped before going outside to pick it up, but then I realized that what appeared to be plastic was actually water bubbling up.

An artesian spring had sprung up out of a gopher hole. That’s common in these coastal hills and, in fact, can damage ranchers’ pastures. During heavy rains, hillsides that have become honeycombed with gopher tunnels act like a sponge. If the top two or three feet of soil become over-saturated, wholesale slumping can occur.

And finally for all you cynics out there, no, there is no water pipe or septic line uphill from this artesian spring. Stay warm and enjoy the bad weather. With any luck, we’ll get more of it.