I was preparing to fix breakfast about 11 a.m. today when I looked out the kitchen window and saw a bobcat hunting just outside.

Two weeks ago, as was reported here, I had been thrilled to see and photograph a bobcat hunting near a car parked at my house. This time, the bobcat was even closer.

To photograph it, I slid open the kitchen window as quietly as I could, freezing motionless whenever the bobcat heard a noise and looked up.
The cat was hunting gophers, and I while I watched, it pounced and caught one. With the gopher dangling from its mouth, the bobcat then ran uphill to eat its meal under a clump of coyote brush. Later today, I twice again spotted the bobcat nearby.

Three or four mornings ago, I had likewise looked out a kitchen window and spotted a mottled cat (at left) with a bobbed tail hunting near my woodpile.

Before I got too excited, however, I used my binoculars to inspect it more thoroughly. Rats! It was just a big housecat with a bobbed tail.

Soon the cat walked over to my woodpile and sat at the edge of the tarpaulin that covers it.

While all this was going on, I took a couple of photos just to illustrate the difference between a real bobcat, Lynx rufus californicus, and a faux bobcat, Felis catus.

As can be seen in the photos, the easiest way to tell them apart is that real bobcats don’t wear pet collars.

Entries are numbered in the order they were posted but by necessity are published in reverse order. The most recent postings (the highest numbers) begin below the Table of Contents while No. 1 is at the bottom of the final page.

To go directly to a story without scrolling, click on the highlighted phrase following the numbers.

Weekly postings are published by Thursday.

1. Introduction to this site SparselySageAndTimely.com plus an account of orphaned fawns being released in Chileno Valley.

2. Robert I. Plokin and Lys Plotkin

3. Nature’s Two Acres: A Point Reyes Station Photo Exhibit

4. Nature’s Two Acres Part II: Living dinosaurs actually found around my cabin

5. My background: Biographical information on newspaperman Dave Mitchell

6. Nature’s Two Acres Part III: Insectivores and Not

7. Nature’s Two Acres Part IV: Christmas turkeys & where the buck stopped *

8. Storm-caused fire razes Manka’s Lodge and Restaurant in Inverness

9. Big Pot Busts at My Cabin

10. Bankruptcy court trustee lets Robert Plotkin hold onto some of his Ponzi-scheme ‘profits’

11. Nature’s Two Acres Part V: By Means of Water

12. Nature’s Two Acres Part VI: How Flashing Affects Wildlife

13. Nature’s Two Acres Part VII: Rats v. dishwashers

14. Marin supervisors refuse to tilt at McEvoy windmill

15. The Bush Administration at Point Reyes: Part I

16. The Bush Administration at Point Reyes Part II: Whatever happened to the Citizens Advisory Commission to the GGNRA & Point Reyes National Seashore?

17. Saying Yes to Change: A former Point Reyes Station innkeeper finds true joy by moving in with a working-class family in a poor neighborhood of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

18. The Gossip Columnist

19. Nature’s Two Acres Part VIII: ‘Mice & rats, and such small deer’

20. Nature’s Two Acres Part IX: Point Reyes Station’s blackbirds

21. Nature’s Two Acres Part X: ‘Nature Red in Tooth and Claw’

22. Former Point Reyes Light columnist John Grissim, the late pornographer Artie Mitchell, Brazilian President Lula and the advent of orgasmic diplomacy

23. Nature’s Two Acres Part XI: The perky possum

24. Nature’s Two Acres Part XII: April showers ‘cruel’ with ‘no regrets’

25. Nature’s Two Acres Part XIII: ‘Who’s the Head Bull-Goose Loony Around Here?’

26. Sheriff Bob Doyle ’stays the course’ despite blunder and gets county government sued.

27. Nature’s Two Acres Part XIV: ‘The world, dear Agnes, is a strange affair.’

28. Nature’s Two Acres Part XV: ‘Among animals…one finds natural caricatures.’

29. Mermaids, cows, Horizon Cable, and Russia’s Internet war on Estonia

30. New newspaper to be published in West Marin

31. Nature’s Two Acres Part XVI: A gopher snake & other neighbors

32. Many fail to find Western Weekend livestock show; a new newpaper debuts in West Marin; The Point Reyes Light reports a former bookkeeper is in jail on embezzlement charges.

33. Sunday’s Western Weekend parade and barbecue

34. Western Weekend retrospective; anonymous satire of Point Reyes Light distributed at parade; Light’s use of unpaid interns may run afoul of labor laws.

35. Inverness Park fire Friday razes art studio

36. Monday’s demonstration against The Point Reyes Light

37. Preventing fires at home while The Point Reyes Light feels the heat

38. The death of a salesman: Andrew Schultz

39. Ship’s flare or meteor

40. What we didn’t celebrate on the Fourth of July

41. 76-year-old Nick’s Cove reopens

42. Garbage in, garbage out

48. Music, wildlife, and the cosmos

49. Congress sees through Point Reyes National Seashore claims

50. Watching the Point Reyes National Seashore obliterate cultural history

51. Quotes Worth Saving & the Inverness Fair

52. The KWMR/Love Field ‘Far West Fest’

53. ‘Possums,’ a sequel to the musical ‘Cats’

54. Truth becomes an endangered species at the Point Reyes National Seashore.

55. Language, politics & wildlife

56. Despite public-be-damned management, it’s still a beautiful park.

57. Nature’s Two Acres XVII: As seen by an old, almost-blind dog

58. Bolinas firehouse and clinic opening party Sunday

59. Paving Point Reyes Station’s main street at night

60. Vandals dump sewage at West Marin School

61. Point Reyes Station’s Hazel Martinelli celebrates 101st birthday with party at son’s deer camp

62. Hawks on the move

63. Tuesday’s Marin County Farm Bureau luncheon for politicos

64. White House Pool: a public park where management listens to the public

65. Nature’s Two Acres Part XVIII: Seasonal sightings

66. Ranching matriarch Hazel Martinelli dies at 101

67. One last warm weekend before the season of darkness

68. West Marin’s ‘Mac Guru’ leaving town — a friend with a knack for surviving

69. Coastal Post’s December issue to be its last, assistant editor says; publisher contradicts her

70. California photo book’s release celebrated with gala on Inverness Ridge

71. Ship hits Bay Bridge; spilled oil drifts out Golden Gate and mires birds on West Marin coast

72. Farm Bureau president quits; defends independence of wife who disagrees with his political position

73. Point Reyes Station pharmacist decries health-insurance practices

74. Nature’s Two Acres Part IXX: ‘Things that go bump in the night’

75. Being a Gypsy isn’t enough; KPFA fires host criticized for not being a ‘person of color’

76. Giving thanks for an abundant harvest

77. West Marin Community Thanksgiving Dinner celebrated in Point Reyes Station’s Dance Palace

78. Nature’s Two Acres Part XX: Where coyotes howl and raccoons roam free

79. Lessons to be learned from the oil spill

80. Point Reyes Station’s ‘Path of Lights’

81. Stefanie Pisarczyk (AKA Stefanie Keys): a woman of two worlds

82. Our Lady of the Chutzpah — the many faces of State Senator Carole Migden

83. Striptease in Point Reyes Station… well, sorta

84. Winter Moon Fireside Tales — an undiscovered gem draws only four ticketholders opening night (but more for second show)

85. Nature’s Two Acres XXI: Coyote influx benefits some birds around Point Reyes Station

86. Urban legends

87. Blackouts bedevil Point Reyes Station area

88. Non-native species stops traffic in Point Reyes Station

89. Nature’s Two Acres XXII: They’re hundreds of times more deadly than cynanide… and headed this way

90. Assemblyman Jared Huffman’s ominous mailer

91. Yuletide greetings from Santa Claws

92. Guess who came to Christmas dinner

93. ‘Eco-fascism‘ in the Point Reyes National Seashore

94. Marin County gets a bum rap from itself

95. Hurricane-force wind & heavy rain take heavy toll on West Marin

96. Blackouts, newspapers in the news, and poetic frustration on the prairie

97. Old Christmas trees, wild turkeys, and the famous cat-and-rat scheme

98. Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposal to close Tomales Bay State Park to save money could prove expensive

99. Nature’s Two Acres XXIII: Bambi, Thumper, and Garfield

100. Lawsuits against and by Robert Plotkin settled out of court

101. Nature’s Two Acres XXIV: Buffleheads, Greater Scaups, and the 16.6 million wild ducks shot annually

102. Storm damage bad but could have been tragic

103. Heavy news media presence briefly halts axis-deer slaughter in the Point Reyes National Seashore

104. Statewide campaign to legalize hemp and marijuana comes to Point Reyes Station

105. A final thought about the Caltrans worker who just did his job — and saved the day

106. Signs of bureaucratic contamination

107. Here’s hoping ‘the goose hangs high‘ this Thursday for Valentine’s Day

108. Nature’s Two Acres XXV: Talking turkey

109. Nature’s Two Acres XXVI: Which came first, blacktail or mule deer? Hint — their venison is oedipal

110. Sewage spills into ocean at Dillon Beach

111. ‘Drive-by journalism’

112. Dillon Beach sewage spill update

113. A tale of Kosovo, West Marin, and a bored battalion of Norwegian soldiers

114. National Seashore’s slaughter of deer traumatizes many residents here; ‘we demand a stop’

115. A country without the decency to ban torture

116. Prostitution in New York, Reno, and Point Reyes Station

117. Supervisor Steve Kinsey defends further restrictions on woodstoves in West Marin

118. Five Faces of Spring

119. Seeing history through newsmen’s eyes…. or the pen is mightier than the pigs

120. Point Reyes Station and Inverness Park demonstrators call for a pedestrian bridge over Papermill Creek

121. Newspaperman from Chileno Valley describes his life in the United Arab Emirates

122. Nature’s Two Acres XXVII: Animals about town:

123. ‘Still Life with Raccoon‘

124. The Beat Generation lives on at the No Name Bar

125. Nature’s Two Acres XXVIII: The first fawns of spring

126. Nature’s Two Acres Part XXIX: Cold-blooded carnality… Or, why be warm blooded?

127. Lt. Governor John Garamendi joins battle to save fallow & axis deer in Point Reyes National Seashore

128. Humane Society of the US says National Seashore claims about deer contraception are misleading

129. Western Weekend’s 4-H Livestock Show fun — but smaller than ever

130. Early projections hold: Obama, Woolsey & Kinsey win… Leno easily bests Migden & Nation

131. Sunday’s Western Weekend Parade in photos

132. Kite day at Nicasio School

133. Artist Bruce Lauritzen of Point Reyes Station draws a crowd for opening of exhibit

134. Scenes from my past week

135. Nature’s Two Acres Part XXX: Baldfaced hornets

136. Nature’s Two Acres Part XXXI: The pink roses of Point Reyes Station

137. Nature’s Two Acres Part XXXII: The first raccoon kits of summer

138. Alice in ‘Wilderness’

138. The good, the bizarre, and the ugly

139. A demonstration to save Point Reyes National Seashore deer; park administration dishonesty officially confirmed

140. Point Reyes National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher seen as ’scary’

141. What’s in the Inspector General’s report on the park that newspapers here aren’t telling you

142. Landscape photos & paintings in Stinson Beach

143. What government scientists elsewhere had to say about the park’s misrepresenting research to attack oyster company

144. Nature’s Two Acres Part XXXIII: Photographing wildlife indoors and out

145. How park administration used deception & sometimes-unwitting environmentalists to harass oyster company with bad publicity

146. Tomales, Tomales, that toddling town

147. Faces from the weekly press

148. Telling the Raccoon ‘Scat’

149. Preparing for the fire season

150. A coyote at my cabin

151. Nature’s Two Acres Part XXXV: Mr. Squirrel

152. The political zoo.

153. Porky Pig, Demosthenes, Joe Biden, and ‘K-K-K-Katy’

154. The fun and anxiety of preparing for a disaster

155. Election night euphoria

156. Nature’s Two Acres Part XXXVI: The migrating birds of fall; or ‘Swan Lake’ revisited

157. Quotes Worth Saving II

158. Nature’s Two Acres Part XXXVII: a bobcat at my cabin

159. Thanksgiving in Point Reyes Station

* President Truman’s oft-used saying “the buck stops here” originally “comes from the phrase ‘passing the buck,’ which is a poker-playing expression.The buck was a marker to show who next had the deal; the buck could be passed by someone, who did not want the responsibility of dealing, to the man on his left. (The marker was occasionally a silver dollar, which, by the way, is how the dollar became known as a buck.)” — Safire’s New Political Dictionary by William Safire (Random House, New York, 1993).

Here’s hoping you had a happy US Thanksgiving this past fourth Thursday of November. My family in Canada celebrated that country’s Thanksgiving on Oct. 13; it’s the second Monday of October up north where the harvest comes earlier. As for my family down south in Guatemala, that long-suffering country gets no Turkey Day at all.

In Point Reyes Station, approximately 225 guests and 25 volunteers took part in the West Marin Community Thanksgiving Dinner. For the second year, the feast was held in the Dance Palace, with diners filling the main hall and most of the church space.

West Marin Community Resource Center organized the event, but numerous groups ranging from the Inverness Garden Club to the Marin County Fire Department helped with preparations. Here volunteers served a line that stretched around the room.

All fall I’ve been seeing wild turkeys along West Marin’s roads, but I hadn’t spotted any on my own property until this flock of eight hens showed up appropriately enough on the eve of Thanksgiving. Clucking contentedly, they dug small holes in my pasture before moving on.

Wild turkeys, of course, are not native to West Marin. Working with the California Department of Fish & Game, a hunting club in 1988 introduced the wild turkeys on Loma Alta Ridge, which overlooks the San Geronimo Valley. The original flock of 11 hens and three toms all came from a population that Fish & Game had established in the Napa Valley during the 1950s.

There’s not much turkey hunting in West Marin these days except by Point Reyes National Seashore staff trying to exterminate them where it can. On private lands, however, the turkeys can usually find a haven.

While on my deck enjoying the sun around 2 p.m. Saturday, I looked down and spotted something moving in the grass near the cars parked at the foot of my front steps.

After first using a pair of binoculars to confirm that the animal was a bobcat and not just a large housecat, I quickly got out my camera.

I’ve seen a bobcat hunting around my cabin before — and even shot a photo of it — but this was my first chance to photograph one at fairly close range. That was a thrill.

Although rabbit and hare are the primary fare for bobcats in other parts of the country, this member of the lynx genus also hunts small rodents, as well as insects, and even deer in some regions. Their numbers are fairly stable in most of the United States despite heavy hunting in some places.

The subspecies of bobcat common to this region is the Lynx rufus Californicus. The adult male averages three feet in length, including a 4- to 7-inch bobbed tail, and is about 15 inches tall at the shoulder.

In Point Reyes Station, which President-elect Barack Obama carried with 86.1 percent of the vote, brown hills quickly turned to green after the election.

It’s time for another installment in this blog’s occasional series Quotes Worth Saving, which, in fact, is the label on the file in which I save them. Here are a few gleaned from the press during the past three years.

SWANSEA WALES — When officials [via email] asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign [”No entry for heavy-goods vehicles. Residential site only.”], they thought the reply was what they needed.

Unfortunately, the email response [Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith I’w gyfieithu.] to Swansea council said in Welsh, “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.” So that was what went up under the English version, which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket. “When they’re proofing signs, they should really use someone who speaks Welsh,” said journalist Dylan Iorwerth. — BBC, Oct. 31, 2008

All official roadsigns in Wales must be bilingual, and this is hardly the first time confusion has occurred in translations:

VALE OF GLAMORGAN, WALES — Cyclists were left confused by a bilingual roadsign telling them they had problems with an inflamed bladder. The “Cyclists Dismount” sign between Penarth and Cardiff became “lld y bledren dymchwelyd” in Welsh — literally “Bladder Inflammation Upset….” The Vale of Glamorgan Council said new signs were being made. It is possible that an online translation led to confusion between cyclists and cystitis. — BBC, Aug. 15, 2006

And there are times when despite everything being clearly written, the reader is left wondering, “What the heck was really going on?”

FRESNO — Fresno County authorities have arrested a man they say broke into the home of two farmworkers, rubbed one with spices, and whacked the other with a sausage before fleeing…. The suspect, 22-year-old Antonio Vasquez of Fresno, was found hiding in a nearby field wearing only a T-shirt, boxer shorts, and socks.

The victims told deputies they awoke Saturday morning to the stranger applying spices to one of them and striking the other with an 8-inch sausage…. Money allegedly stolen in the burglary was recovered. The sausage was tossed away by the fleeing suspect and eaten by a dog.” — Associated Press, Sept. 8, 2008

She’s no paparazzi, but San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik features a “Public Eavesdropping” item in each column. Six weeks after Italy’s most-beloved opera singer died last year, Garchik quoted a tourist in Paris remarking, “I never understood why Pavarotti was chasing Princess Diana.” — San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 19, 2007

West Marin provides wintering grounds for a variety of migrating birds, and one of the first to arrive each fall is the Golden-crowned sparrow.

This one showed up on the railing of my deck a couple weeks ago. Besides having a yellow stripe down the middle of its head, the Golden-crowned sparrow has a distinctive, three-note song. The best description I’ve heard of it comes from horsewoman Connie Berto: “Three Blind Mice sung in a minor key.”

Golden-crowned sparrows’ summer breeding grounds are in Alaska and British Columbia. The birds migrate south to Vancouver Island and the West Coast of the United States each winter.

Illegal migrants? I spotted these Mute swans a week ago on La Laguna, the small lake along Chileno Valley Road near Laguna School. These are part of a larger flock that included a few Trumpeter swans. Despite Mute swans’ beauty, Oregon and Washington, as well as some Midwestern and East Coast states, have begun trying to kill them off. It’s the US Interior Department’s white-deer and Drakes Bay-oyster scandals all over again: nativism masquerading as science.

As an organization called Save Our Swans notes, “In 2004 a nationwide program in the United States was announced that would reduce Mute swan populations by 85 percent, with the remaining swans to be pinioned, neutered and placed in parks. This caused an outrage by citizens and was fought in court….”

The Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service claims that Mute swans, which are smaller than Trumpeter swans, are non-native and eating up all the “native” swans’ food (mostly water plants, such as algae). But there’s no more evidence for this than there was for the Point Reyes National Seashore’s claim that white deer were out-competing blacktail deer for the park’s abundant forage.

Despite the nationwide policy of Fish and Wildlife, “the Mute Swan is protected in some states by state statute, for example, in Connecticut,” Save Our Swans reports. “Since swans eat algae, they can be very valuable in shallow bay areas, in rivers and ponds.”
Migrant swans in Chileno Valley, which was named after another group of migrants, Chilean ranchworkers.

Mute swans, moreover, are neither mute nor non-native. Save Our Swans explains that Mute swans are “circumboreal.” That is, they migrate around the far north, “including the Russian Maritimes and Kamchatka, a major staging area for millions of birds on migration to the American continent, a short distance away.”

Given their migration route, it is hardly surprising that cold weather sometimes forces migrating swans south to the Atlantic states, to the Upper Midwest, and on the West Coast as far south as California. Mute swans have been reported for centuries in what is now the United States. A 1585 scientific expedition on behalf of Sir Walter Raleigh brought back to England a detailed drawing of a Mute swan on the Atlantic shore.

In short, the Mute swan is a primarily Eurasian bird whose migration routes have always resulted in some members of the species living in the United States, where the Department of the Interior now wants to kill them off.

Meanwhile, “Trumpeter swans, native birds, have been ‘placed’ by wildlife management agencies — often in areas in which they never bred historically — to create a ‘trophy’ species for sportsmen,” Save Our Swans reports. “There has already been a trial hunting season on Trumpeter swans in the Pacific Flyway and suggested programs to expand the [current] program coast to coast.”

Like Tchaikovsky, I’ve always thought of killing swans as brutally misguided. If you agree, please check the Save Our Swans website to see how you can help stop this government-sponsored barbarity.

A healing this nation has needed for more than two centuries has just occurred, and like many of the people around me this past evening, I’ve found my eyes periodically filling with tears of happiness.

In West Marin, Barack Obama picks up 86 percent of the vote on his way to winning the presidency. Tuesday night in Point Reyes Station, a crowd at Café Reyes joins in as televised crowds of Obama supporters elsewhere cheer state-by-state election returns.

Back in the 1960s, I tried to do what I could for the Civil Rights Movement, assisting with a Civil Rights broadcast on KZSU, Stanford University’s radio station; taking part in a drive to register black voters in Leesburg, Florida, when it was still mostly segregated; and serving as faculty advisor to Upper Iowa College’s black-student union, the Brotherhood. In those days, this country’s racial divisions loomed so large I would never have imagined that within 40 years the United States would elect a black president. But Tuesday we did.

Yet it is noteworthy that most Americans did not vote for Obama for the sake of electing a black president.

In exit polls, almost two thirds of Tuesday’s voters said their biggest concern was the US economic recession, and a majority thought Obama could cope with it better than Republican John McCain. In short, voters were more concerned with economics than with race, and that simple fact is a wonderful indication of our country’s having matured.

Exit polls found that overall a majority of whites, blacks, and Latinos favored Obama, but unlike white women, less than half of white men, 43 percent, preferred Obama. That statistic has been used to imply that many white men couldn’t overlook Obama’s being black.

In fact, it shows just the opposite. Democratic candidates for president seldom do as well as Republican candidates among white men. President Bill Clinton, for example, won only 39 percent of the the white male vote in 1992 and 43 percent in 1996. Obviously, Obama’s race didn’t hurt him among white male voters.

Tuesday’s election, of course, wasn’t all about race and economics. The United States is currently fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its international reputation has been shredded by the outrages at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. And its healthcare system is causing suffering for many Americans.

For a president of any race to take all this on would be an enormous challenge, but at least Obama begins with a mandate from his countrymen and the blessings of the rest of the world. While voters didn’t elect Obama primarily to restore America’s reputation abroad, that could be the election’s most-immediate effect, as news reports from around the globe confirm.

Watching television — Tuesday night’s crowd at Café Reyes eagerly waits for the networks to declare Obama the winner, which occurs at 8 p.m. sharp, an hour after the polls close in Point Reyes Station.

Here are the results of local votes on the West Marin ballot (winners in boldface):

Congress: Democratic incumbent Lynn Woolsey, 73 percent; Republican Mike Halliwell, 23 percent. (Woolsey at the same time beat Halliwell 71 percent to 25 percent in Sonoma County.)

State Senate: Democrat Mark Leno, 75 percent; Republican Sashi McEntee, 24 percent. (Leno also bested McEntee 71 percent to 29 percent in Sonoma County and 87 percent to 13 percent in San Francisco.)

Assembly: Democratic incumbent Jared Huffman, 72 percent; Republican Paul Lavery, 23 percent. (Huffman likewise topped Lavery 66 percent to 26 percent in Sonoma County.)

Bolinas Fire Protection District: incumbent David Kimball, 40 percent; Sheila O’Donnell, 27 percent; Shannon Kilkenny, 24 percent; Donald Holmes, 8 percent.

Marin Healthcare District: incumbent Sharon Jackson, 30 percent; Hank Simmonds, 24 percent; Archimedes Ramirez, 23 percent; Frank Parnell, 21 percent; Peter Romanowsky, 2 percent.

Measure Q (Sonoma-Marin rail district, combined two-thirds vote needed): Marin County, 63 percent yes, 37 percent no; Sonoma County, 73.5 percent yes, 26.5 percent no.

Getting ready for disaster is both anxiety-ridden and fun, as some of us in West Marin learned in the last few days. One particularly fun event was the West Marin Disaster Council’s annual pancake breakfast in the Point Reyes Station firehouse.

Retired County Administrator Mark Riesenfeld of Point Reyes Station watches Inverness volunteer firefighter Ken Fox pour batter at the West Marin Disaster Council’s pancake breakfast Sunday.

During the fundraiser, oyster farmer Kevin Lunny (center) chats with Marin Magazine writer P.J. Bremier (in dark glasses). In the November issue, Bremer writes at length about the Point Reyes National Seashore’s desire to close down Lunny’s century-old oyster operation. Listening (left of him) is Dolly Aleshire of Inverness. Librarian Jennifer Livingston of Inverness stands in the foreground.

Marin County firefighter Tony Giacomini reads off the names of winners in the disaster council’s raffle. Assisting him are his wife Nikki, his son Brandt (who has just drawn a ticket), and Brandt’s brother Ryan (beside him).

Raising money for disaster preparedness, as was noted, is the fun part. The anxiety-ridden part was the drill we disaster council members held last week.

Here was the mock scenario. On Tuesday, a Magnitude 6.9 earthquake on the Hayward Fault (which runs from Fremont to San Pablo Bay) causes massive destruction. Some 2,000 Bay Area people die, and 5,000 more go to hospitals.

Marin County is mostly isolated from the outside world with Highway 101 blocked at Petaluma, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge closed, and the Golden Gate Bridge reduced to one lane. It takes until Thursday to get a comprehensive assessment of the damage.

So last Thursday morning, about 50 public employees set up shop in an alternative emergency-operations center at the jail while out here on the coast, neighborhood liaisons to the West Marin Disaster Council pretended to look for damage.

I’m the Campolindo Drive liaison to the disaster council. That basically means in case of a disaster, such as a major earthquake, I’m supposed to radio my area coordinator, Kate Kain of Point Reyes Station, and let her know if there are any serious problems on this road.

Thursday was the day to test our ability to use the high tech walkie-talkies we’ve all been issued. We’d received instructions from radio expert Richard Dillman (who also does technical work at KWMR), but most of us had never before used the radios, and I was a bit nervous.

What if I couldn’t remember which of the radio’s many buttons to press when I tried to speak on the air? If I pressed one wrong button, I’d change the band on which I wanted to broadcast. Another button would set off a disruptive beeping at Kate’s house. If I went on the air at the wrong time, I’d interfere with another liaison’s reporting in.

I set the alarm for 9:30 a.m. Thursday, which is early for me, and likewise took an early shower. (I was going to be sharp for this drill.) Methodically, I ate breakfast and read the morning newspaper. (I was also going to be full of energy and in possession of the latest information.)

At 11 a.m. as scheduled, I went out on my deck to radio Kate, whose house I can nearly see from mine. Although I could hear other people radioing in reports, it took me several minutes to figure out the correct button for talking on the air. (It’s under my thumb in the photo above.) Eventually, I managed to get through and report that all was well on Campolindo Drive. Kate thanked me for taking part in the drill, and that was that.

I went inside feeling mightily relieved. I’d passed the test! I’d managed to work that mysterious radio without making a fool of myself! To celebrate, I took the rest of the day off.

This has been an unlikely presidential campaign in many respects, particularly because new facts about the candidates keep coming to light. Here’s one that came to me in a strangely circuitous fashion.

The night before last week’s full moon, I happened to be outside at twilight when the moon rose over the hill above my cabin. The sight was evocative enough that I grabbed my camera and found a spot near my woodshed where I could record the moment.

A corner of the woodshed ended up in my photo, and I was immediately reminded of K-K-K-Katy, one of the most popular songs of World War I. In the 1918 song by Geoffrey O’Hara, a stuttering “soldier brave and bold” sings:

“K-K-K-Kathy, beautiful Katy,/ You’re the only g-g-g-girl that I adore./ When the m-m-m-moon shines,/Over the c-c-c-cowshed,/ I’ll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.”

Although my shed is for wood, not cows, I was by now interested in the song. I looked up composer O’Hara (1882-1967) and learned he was a Canadian who left home and became a US citizen. For me, that was noteworthy because my mother did the same thing.

But what about portraying stuttering as humorous? These days that would be considered politically incorrect even though Porky Pig (”Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-That’s all folks!”) has been one of Warner Brothers most loved cartoon characters.

Googling onward, I learned that the actor, Joe Dougherty, who was the original voice of Porky Pig, had a stutter himself. Like many other people who stutter, Dougherty apparently learned to deal with the problem.

A story many of us heard in school concerns the great Greek orator Demosthenes (384-322 BC). To master speaking clearly despite starting out with an impediment, Demosthenes, as we learned, put gravel in his mouth and practiced speeches at the edge of the ocean where the surf drowned him out.

When I checked a list of famous people who’ve stuttered, Demosthenes (at right in a painting by Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouy) was, of course, on it. But also, to my surprise, was Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden. In fact, the senator from Delaware turns out to be a sort of latter-day Demosthenes.

“Biden suffered from stuttering through much of his childhood and into his twenties,” notes Wikipedia, citing a speech he gave to the National Stuttering Association in 2004. “He overcame it via long hours spent reciting poetry in front of a mirror,” Wikipedia adds, citing See How They Run: Electing the President in an Age of Mediaocracy by Paul Taylor (Alfred A. Knopf, 1990).

Most of us have heard the tragic story of Biden’s daughter and first wife being killed, as well as his two sons critically injured, in a traffic accident. This happened just weeks after he was initially elected to the US Senate in 1972. It took many months, but Biden (at left) eventually recovered from his devastation, becoming an increasingly influential senator while commuting daily between Delaware and Washington in order to raise two sons by himself. Now it turns out that Biden had earlier demonstrated similar fortitude in overcoming severe stuttering.

This is a man who has risen above major adversities in his life. That alone doesn’t qualify him to be vice president or president, but it does say something about the kind of person he is.

Just what does that gull see?

One of the odder results of Senator John McCain’s choice for a vice presidential running mate is that Americans are learning about a previously obscure but medically recognized brain disorder. The disorder, which can lead to clinical anxiety, causes sufferers to see things after they’re no longer there.

Ironically, the name of the brain disorder is Palinopsia. This is true. “You could look it up,” to quote James Thurber. The all-too-apt coincidence of names was first brought to public attention in online commentaries by Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker and Michael Daly of The New York Daily News.

For defense, the gopher snake frequently pretends to be a rattlesnake.

Snake bitten after Republicans, as well as Democrats, accused him and running mate Sarah Palin of rabble rousing that could lead to violence, Senator McCain is now trying to defuse his supporters’ fury toward opponent Barack Obama.

When a woman at a rally in Minnesota last Friday told McCain she didn’t trust Senator Obama because “he’s an Arab,” McCain responded, “No, ma’am, he’s a decent family man.”

It’s true that Obama is not Arabic. But since when are being Arabic and being “a decent family man” mutually exclusive? (Editor’s note: Less than an hour after this posting went online, Jon Stewart raised the same question on the Daily Show. In short, SparselySageAndTimely.com was out in front of the Daily Show on this issue — at least in the Pacific time zone.)

Western fence lizards come in many colors, sometimes looking almost red on their backs although males are typically blue on their bellies.

Another irony. Despite bogus claims about Senator Obama’s ancestry, if you go back enough generations, Obama through his mother is related to George Bush (11th cousins), Dick Cheney (9th cousins), two signers of the Declaration of Independence (Richard Henry Lee and his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee), a 19th century US Supreme Court justice (Edward Douglass White), and numerous other American statesmen.

To improve the public’s poor opinion of them, President Bush and Vice President Cheney may want to start stressing that they’re related to the much-more-popular senator from Illinois.