End of an Idyll
snichols has learned sad news: the Van Vleck Memorial Park on the Cosumnes River outside Sacramento will close soon. snichols is almost unable to cope with how lamentable she finds this development.

For the lucky few, this private park, run by Reaganite ranchers, provided a little slice of eden for months on end every year. Sweet, unreserved camping with no frills on the banks of a warm, clear, deep, slow-moving stretch of river--the best freshwater swimming you could possibly have without even leaving the county. snichols' kids can't even imagine their summer without it.

They say they're closing it due to extreme vandalism, that they "have no choice." But that's unlikely to be true. The entire creation of the private park by the late Stan Van Vleck Sr. was to deter the many many trespassers on Van Vleck Ranch who were desperate to swim and camp in this incomparable unspoiled stretch along with amazing wildlife, deer, egrets, turtles, beaver and coyote.

More likely the "no choice" decision results from the greedy manoeverings of a clan of landrich heirs who know that their only big opportunity for cash comes from selling large portions of this stretch to be annexed to the huge and already encroaching luxury golf retirement housing immediately adjacent to the property.

Stan senior used to lament how he lost half the ranch to one of ex-wives and she cashed it out to kick Rancho Murieta off.

The entire park is apparently already zoned residential; has been since the environmentalists lost the battle to stop Rancho Murieta from building at all, so it's difficult for even the creative advocates to figure an angle to stop the despoilment of this gorgeous land.

And regardless, the idyll is over for snicholsfamily and all her free-loading friends.

Ose and the Arena
snichols can't be bothered to read the papers, but then, she doesn't have to. She just talks to snicholspouse and all is revealed.

He salvaged one moment of a horrendously attenuated and poorly thought out meal at the Melting Pot with snicholsmom and kids this evening, with the one tidbit I didn't have to cook myself and dip in sauce to enjoy.

snicholspouse: Didja see the Natomas arena deal officially fell through today? I wish we could take credit for torpedoing it, but some proposals are so bad they sink of their own weight.

snichols: No. Cool. Hey, maybe I can get the manager to cancel the 3rd course if I wait for 15 minutes next to the kitchen.

[For the non-Sacramento centric amongst snichols' readers, we're speaking here of the prayed for death of a scheme which would have opened up the city's urban growth boundaries to develop and in the bargain supposedly generated enough money to expand the arena where the Sacramento Kings play passifying their restless owners the Maloofs]

later when the kids are asleep...

snicholspouse says something to the effect of, but snichols is completely mangling it: kind of ironic that {Republican suburban Congressman Doug} Ose was the one who brought it down. His family owns land in that area and he evidently didn't think it was great deal for them, so now he's lauding the importance of deciding this growth issue through better channels. He's always been fine with exploding the urban growth boundaries before.

snichols: Cool. I'm going downstairs to watch Sex in the City.

Weintraub v. Court
snichols doesn't like it when one of her adherents attacks another. Perhaps that's why she hasn't blogged lately.

Here's what happened:
snichols-adherent #1 (Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Weintraub--whom snichols thinks can rightly be called one of her adherents, even though they agree on only 2 things, because he reads snicholsblog and encourages her mightily in all endeavors) recently launched into snichols-adherent #2 (Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights President Jamie Court--although Jamie might argue that she should be more of an adherent of his than he of hers, she agrees with Jamie in virtually all things except occasionally his choice of tie) in Weintraub's blog, The California Insider . In relevant part:

You've got to love the arrogance of Jamie Court, he of Harvey Rosenfield's Consumer Watchdog outfit, lecturing Common Cause against its budding alliance with Schwarzenegger on redistricting reform...isn't it a little hypocritical for Court to be leading that charge, when his own organization, long suspected of being a front for the trial lawyer lobby, refuses to disclose the sources of its contributions?

Court fails to dignify Weintraub's comments with a reply in his fabulous Arnold Watch , but he tells some of the rest of the story:

A conversation with staffers at the group confirms Common Cause opposes the redistricting ballot initiatives on file to be circulated for the November special election. The group is also against Arnold's "no limits" fundraising practices for the November...

Here's the thing:

snichols knows Jamie Court, and she knows the "trial lawyer lobby." Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights has never, ever, been a "front group" for the latter. Does the Foundation solicit and accept contributions from individual plaintiff's lawyers? Undeniably.

Why do individual consumer attorneys give FTCR $? Because FTCR is the hardest-hitting consumer rights group in California (with an appropriate shout out to Richard Holober and snichols' homies at Consumer Federation of California who recently backed the Governator out of a series of proposals to remove appropriate oversight of various professions).

Can/do the consumer attorneys control FTCR? Not a chance. Believe me, there's been times when their old guard smoke-filled-room big boy lobbyist (whose stale tactics have long ceased working) would have loved to control Jamie Court, Doug Heller and their warriers for truth and justice. But they can't and they won't.

snichols knows that that both Jamie Court and Daniel Weintraub will keep pushing the Governor to do the right thing (although it might be time for Jamie to admit that he supported the recall).

Nurses Blast Arnold in NY Times Ad
See this great ad that the California Nurses Association put in the New York Times. Last night snichols and her kids went downtown to a wonderful protest of Arnold's red carpet treatment for the special interests at the premiere of the sequel to Get Shorty. Hundreds of people stood in the rain to ogle the stars and protest the Governator.

Snichols' children especially loved chanting "hey, hey, ho ho, Arnold has got to go!"

Now as long as they don't substitute "snichols" for "Arnold," the snicholsfamily will be a-okay.

Battle of the Bulge

Snichols received this information today--knew about the bulge rumors, but not the squashed articles. Anybody think this is real?

A scientist at the Jet Propulsion Lab enhanced photos of the bulge on Bush’s back during the debates.

Here’s the link to the photos:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/11/10_402.html

Here’s a story that is new about how the New York Times was ready to run the story, but quashed it at the last minute.

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02052005.html

Would Jesus Want to Bash in the Windshield of Every SUV he Sees with a Baseball Bat?

Lately snichols hears a lot of talk about What Would Jesus Drive? as a question about the morality of driving SUVs, and she is in complete agreement with all of it. snichols viscerally hates SUVs. Literally. Every time snichols sees one (the big ones, she means) she feels her blood rising, her pulse accelerating, bile coming up in her mouth. And she starts kind of actively scanning the area for a baseball bat or an indelible marker.

But the Buddhists (and others) say that whenever you hate you hate a part of yourself, that the strength of your reaction is an indication of serious healing work that needs to be done. And snichols wonders whether Jesus's fingers would be as itchy for the bat as hers are. Jesus might not drive an SUV, but would he hate them?

Then there's the problem of SUV owners--snichols knows and loves a lot of them. It puts snichols to mind of the classic lyric to Mary Poppins "Sister Suffragette" (apropo of men there) "...though we adore them individually, we agree that, as a group, they're ra-ther stu-pid--oh, cast off the shackles of yesterday! Shoulder to shoulder into the fray..."

What part of SUVs (and their owners) is in snichols? Does snichols secretly want to own a stretch hummer limo? We don't think so. Yet snichols may consume overly much in all kinds of other ways. snichols is a leather-guzzling shoe hog for example and lately she is an absolute humous pig, depleting the world's supply of garbanzo beans by the minute.

Offensive bloggage
Every topic, every thought, every expression that snichols thinks of having put forward in the blog today seems potentially offensive to some reader, or too deeply personal to come out with. snichols is paralyzed by too much thought this evening--help snichols!!! help!!!

Snichols a Deaniac?
Now that Howard Dean appears a shoe-in for DNC chair, snichols is considering trading-in her vitriolic hatred, scorn and loathing for Dean for a "hey, cool, wahooo!"

You've all heard her rant about Dean's ludicrous centrist record as governor of Vermont as a "springboard" for him to be the standard bearer for progressives, so she won't bore you with it again. For President, it was dangerous and offensive, but as head of a party, maybe not so much.

Cautiously optimistic on the eve of Deaniation is snichols.

64 Days of Nonviolence
At snichols' church (the Center for Spiritual Awareness in West Sacramento, since you ask) we're engaging in 64 days of nonviolence a period that starts with MLK, Jr.'s birthday and ends with something to do with Ghandi (his death maybe?). Each day we're supposed to do another peaceful or nonviolent conscious act.

snichols is trying to do this with her children, who currently mock her spiritual tradition so it's not going well. Yesterday's exercise was to "smile at 3 people who look different from you."

So snichols pitches this to her kids. And here's what 10 year old snicholson has to say: "that'll be easy, Mom," (rolling his eyes) " everyone looks different from me" (the duh is silent).

It took snichols a minute, but then she realized how absolutely wonderful a statement that was. It didn't even occur to him that some people look more like him than others. Everyone looks different. He's the only one who looks like him--marvelous.

It puts snichols to mind that when this same snicholson was in kindergarten or first grade he chose his very darkest-skinned friend (by snichols' generation's standards, the kid who looked least like him in his class) to be his "twin" for twins day.

Yup. Things have changed a bit since snichols was young....for the better.