Category: random

Once again Senator Harry Reid is busy rewriting both Nevada and U.S. history.  When asked about renaming Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport during a ceremony at the airport’s new Terminal Three, he said he was for it — but that’s not all he had to say.

“Pat McCarran was one of the most anti-Semitic — some of you might know my wife’s Jewish — one of the most anti-black, one of the most prejudiced people who has ever served in the Senate,” said Reid, “It’s not a decision I’m going to make, but if you ask me to give my opinion, I don’t think his name should be on anything.”

McCarran was a United States Senator from Nevada from 1933 until his death in 1954.  He was also Nevada Chief Justice, chairman of the Nevada State Board of Parole Commissioners, chairman of the Nevada State Board of Bar Examiners and district attorney for Nye County.

The only thing he was “anti-” on was Communism — which he hated with a passion.

This is the second time Reid has attacked a deceased Nevada politician. In 2009, he released his biography, “The Good Fight,” a play on words referring to his boxing background, claiming Nevada U.S. Congressman Walter Baring told him President John Kennedy’s assassination was “a good thing.”

“There is no way my dad would have said anything like that, much less to Harry Reid,” said Jeff Baring, son of former Congressman Walter Baring, “Simply, no way.”

As I said then — and repeat now — Reid needs mental health help.

Nevada voters have one less choice in November, now that a federal judge struck down the states voting option of “none of the above,” saying it’s unconstitutional and should be removed from the ballot.

U.S. District Judge Robert Jones says that because the option can never win, even if it gets the most votes, those votes are worthless. A federal lawsuit filed in June and backed by the Republican National Committee argued Nevada’s voter option disenfranchises voters because it’s a perpetual loser.

However, former Sparks Assemblyman and state Senator Don Mello, who created the 1976 law disagrees.

“Talking about disenfranchising the voter?” he tells KOLO 8 News. “That’s what he’s trying to do, by telling them they’re not allowed to go to the polls and vote none of the above.”

“It tells the candidate something too.” Mello adds. “That they’d better change their ways if they want to stay in office.”

Jones is a 2003 Bush appointee and because of this Mello, a Democrat, sees the ruling as another GOP efforts to suppress votes by creating stricter voter ID requirements.

“If the Republican party doesn’t like it,” Mello says,” they ought to run better candidates.”

Recently, the Obama administration has battled state’s over their requirement voters produce a picture ID to vote, saying it disenfranchises minorities and the elderly. Furthermore, the Department of Justice has taken several states to court to stop them from removing the dead, illegal aliens, felons and those who’ve moved to another state or country from the voter rolls.

Meanwhile, the September 20^th deadline for finalizing ballots looms for officials across the state who have the last-minute job of making the changes to the ballots before mailing them to overseas voters.  Secretary of State Ross Miller says his office will pursue “an immediate and expedited appeal.”

More and more, the Republican and Democratic parties are looking like the same party.

Joseph Russ was born in 1825 in Maine, and came west in 1850. In fall of 1852 he purchased 100 cattle in Placerville, and with two hired cowboys, drove them over the Coast Range to Humboldt County, selling them in Eureka to the Army which was buying beef for its troops on the north coast where there were Indian wars.

The following spring he filed a claim and built a log cabin near Fern Cottage. He and a partner, Barry Adams, went to the Sacramento area to buy a large herd of cattle, eventually opening a meat market in Eureka.

He met his future wife Zipporah in Sacramento and persuaded her family to move to the Ferndale area. Though she was 16 and he was 29, they married December 17, 1854, having 13 children throughout the years.

In the mid-1850s they began to buy ranch land, ultimately owning some 50,000 acres. Over time Russ enterprises included timber and lumber, an abattoir, several meat markets, a bank, ships, and a dry goods emporium.

Joseph conducted his business activities from the home in Fern Cottage; the children went to school, and the home was the center of a dairy farm. Across the street were barns, stables and living quarters for ranch hands.

Bertha Russ Lytel, the youngest of Joseph and Zipporah’s children, died in 1972. She was the last direct descendant to live in the Fern Cottage home, built originally in 1866.

All the furniture and furnishings are original to the house and the family, but not of the same period. Many of Zipporah’s dresses are on display in her bedroom or sitting room.

According to the homes website, ferncottage.org: “Of the 182 direct descendants of Joseph and Zipporah Russ on our records, 36 live in Ferndale, another 19 elsewhere in Humboldt County, for a total of 30.1 percent in the county.  Another 60 live elsewhere in Northern California and 19 in Southern California.”

President Barack Obama is accusing Mitt Romney of being blind to the burdens of paying for college, claiming his opponent’s education policies amount to nothing more than encouraging them to tap their parents for money or “shop around” for the best deal.

“This is his plan,” President Obama said during his recent campaign speech in Reno at Truckee Meadows Community College. “That’s his answer to a young person hoping to go to college — shop around and borrow more money from your parents if you have to. Not only is that not a good answer, it’s not even an answer,”

The president continues to try linking Romney’s education policies with the House Republican budget blueprint offered by Congressman Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate.  He claims Ryan’s budget proposal would cut $115 billion from the Education Department, costing 1 million college students their Pell Grants over the next decade.

Meanwhile, Nevada’s unemployment rate stands at 12 percent, the highest in the country and 3.7 percentage points higher than the national rate. In fact the state’s numbers for unemployment increased four-tenths of a percent in July.

Nevada also has the sixth worst foreclosure rate in the country, due in part to new laws forcing lenders to increase the processing and paperwork timeline, however, while touching on employment briefly, the president failed to mention the housing crisis at all in his Reno remarks.

She had laid her baby to sleep in her bassinette and went to Mrs. Fortain’s, up the road for a visit. Mrs. Fortain owned the nearby mobile home park.

Once there, they began to chat about this and that, but were suddenly interrupted by a sound of the nearby Yurok Volunteer Fire Departments siren.

“Look,” Mrs. Farmer exclaimed, “I can see the fire truck coming this way!”

The red vehicle turned off U.S. 101 onto the gravel road of Sanders Court, and raced by Fortain’s Mobile Home Park.

Without another word the Widow Farmer ran into the road and towards her house. Smoke and flames were already pouring through the roof.

“My baby!” she cried as she raced into the front yard of her home.

Pa Sanders, the fire chief and owner of Sanders Court, grabbed her by the arm.

“You can’t go in there!” he said, “You’ll get killed.”

“Let me go!” she shouted, breaking free and running into the flaming house anyway.

Dashing through the smoke and flames, she scooped up her child, then started to make her way out. But, overcome by the smoke, she passed out, fell, and would have died with her baby in her arms had a fireman not found and carried her out.

Fortunately the baby wasn’t harmed; the Widow Farmer though, was badly hurt. Soon an ambulance arrived, taking her to Seaside Hospital.

There doctors found her hands to be horribly burned. And though they did their best to heal them, they were left scarred.

Weeks became months, and months became years. The Widow Farmer’s baby grew into an adult, she married and eventually moved away.

When I was ten-years old, the Widow Farmer was babysitting my brother, sisters and me when I noticed her hands. It was something I had seen before, but had never really paid attention too.

“You’re hands are ugly,” I exclaimed.

“Yes, Tommy,” the elderly woman said quietly, “They are ugly, aren’t they?”

She must have been hurt beyond words, because I remember the tears in her eyes.

“Do you know why I have ugly hands?” asked the Widow Farmer.

Then she told me the story. She told of the fire, of how she was held back, the wild dash into the burning house, how she lifted her daughter from the crib, of how she fell, of being rescued and how badly she burned he had been.

At that moment I realized she had done something heroic.

“My hands were beautiful back then,” she finished.

“Mrs. Farmer,” I said trying to choke back my shame, “they’re beautiful!”

A Carson City lobbyist may have bit off more than he should have when he brought together Nevada and technology giant, Apple, Inc.

Greg Ferraro represented Apple, while his company, Ferraro Group, has a contract with Nevada’s Governor’s Office of Economic Development, which inked the agreement. Ferraro’s long-standing friendship with Governor Brian Sandoval is also being called into question over the arrangement.

A state board approved a $200-an-hour contract with the Ferraro Group for public relations and communications in 2009, before Sandoval’s election as governor. The contract, extended in 2011 for another two years, caps out at $180,000.

The negotiations between Nevada and Apple netted the company $89 million in tax breaks. Furthermore, Apple is eligible for up to 12 years of reduced sales taxes and 30 years of property tax abatements.

For receipt of those tax breaks, Apple promised a $1 billion investment — mostly in computer servers — which will not manufactured in the state.  The company also agreed to hire 35 people full-time and another 200 contractors at its Reno facility.

Getting Apple to come to Northern Nevada and promoting the state as “a good place to do business,” were the goals officials had in mind when they launched this venture. So far, the second goal “has yet to pan out,” as they would say along the Comstock.

Meanwhile, Ferraro, who did not take direct part in the negotiations, says he doesn’t believe his relationship with both sides presents a conflict. It does though, double his pay out.

President Obama will campaign Tuesday in Reno, delivering remarks at Truckee Meadows Community College. The Obama campaign says the event is open to the public, but tickets are required and will be available at Obama campaign offices in Reno and Carson City beginning at 11 a.m. Sunday.

The president will talk about the upcoming election, focusing on how his plan for the economy, jobs and paying down the nation’s debt differs from that of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. It will be Obama’s third visit to northern Nevada in recent months, including an official state-visit to speak to the Veteran’s of Foreign Wars Convention on July 23rd.

So far all the campaign visits the president has made to the Reno area has cost local taxpayers $350-thousand for the extra police protection. When the Reno Police Department asked the Secret Service for possible reimbursement, the department was told by the Secret Service, it considers the work the RPD does, part of the departments civic duty.

Not only is the president not creating jobs in Northern Nevada, he’s also making Northern Nevada taxpayers foot some of the bill for his campaign visits which should be picked up by the Democratic National Committe or the Obama Campaign.

There’s an old expression: All is fair in love and war. This also works well for politics.

The reason politics between the Left and Right is so dirty, comes down to the fact that each believes the enemy is “inside the wire.” That’s a term meaning your fire base, encampment, compound, etc., is in the process of being overrun and thus captured.

Once the “enemy” is “inside the wire,” this is where the worse of human nature comes into being. It’s known as “hand-to-hand combat.”

In “hand-to-hand combat,” opponents use every method available to destroy the other — including “dirty fighting.” In the case of real combat, “destroy” becomes a euphemism for “kill.”

Viewing this from a political stand-point, each the Right and the Left are attempting to “kill,” the others ideology. If I were a “field commander,” I’d go for absolute and utter inhalation of the enemy, before they reached the “wire,” and most certainly, once they were “inside the wire.”

And if you hadn’t noticed — the enemy is inside the wire. If you don’t believe me, jus’ watch the political ads on the TV.

It seems as if the two of us were always staring in to the deep blue, towards a point that we could only see. It was like that as we sat in Mike’s truck and day dreamed of finding the lost treasure somewhere out there, four-miles away and 250-feep deep.

Sitting there, I would spin the longest yarn about how I knew one of the men financing the project to search out the final resting place of the “Brother Jonathan.” I had worked for Paul over the summer and had heard very little about the project other than it had run short of cash.

That was always the biggest gamble with ‘treasure hunting,’ running out of cash once the search got real close. It was less than two years earlier the group had actually produced results in the form of off-color stills of what they claimed to be the wreck site.

Still it sparked our imagination. And although the wind blew a rain storm in off of the Pacific, it did not dampen our daydream about mounting a search for the lost side-wheeler and her golden bounty.

“I think we should just get a boat and go out to Jonathan Rock and dive on the wreck ourselves,” I offered.

Mike took another bite of his sandwich and shook his head ‘no.’ As soon as he could he said, “It’s too deep.”

Sighing, I knew Mike was right. Besides the group that had all the money but run out of cash, spent it on a submersible.

“Well, what if we used a great big vacuüm cleaner like device to suck up the sand and maybe some gold coin?” I asked, being a smart ass.

Mike laughed, “Yeah, 300 feet off hose and no way to aim it.”

We sat there in silence, dreaming until it was time to head back to school and class. Before we realized it we had graduated and went our separate ways.

It would be nearly five years before I thought about how me and Mike used to dream of finding gold together.  Since then I had tried my hand at panning and slewing for gold, but that was jus’ for fun.

It wasn’t until one day I was driving by the memorial for the shipwreck that the memory sprang to life.  I chuckled at the silliness of those youthful thoughts.

“We used to come here on most of our lunchtime and talk about finding the Brother Jonathan’s gold,” I told Adam as we slowly wheeled by the flag pole and marbled stones.

Adam looked out towards the sea.

“Do you think a fishing boat would get us out there?” he asked.

In complete surprise I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say.

“Well?” Adam repeated.

“Yeah,” I finally answered, “I guess so.”

We said nothing more as we drove back into town. Adam had to get to work and I needed to get home to Arcata.

Two weeks later I was sitting on the couch when the telephone rang.

“Hello,” I answered.

It was  Adam.

“How long do you think it would take you to get up here?” he wanted to know.

“Ninety minutes,” I answered.

Adam responded, “Good, see you then.”

The telephone went dead.

Quick as I could, I grabbed up my jacket and a hat and raced to my truck. I slipped it onto northbound Highway 101 less than three minutes later from my ‘G’ Street place.

It was practically dark by the time I rolled into the driveway of the apartment that Adam and a friend rented. They both came trotting out lugging air tanks and scuba gear, tossing the equipment to the back of my truck. The metal on metal made a loud bang as each tank struck the trucks bed.

“What’s going on?” I asked as the pair climbed into the trucks cab.

“We got ourselves a fishing boat for the weekend,” Adam announced.

“Yup, my girlfriend’s brother is a boat captain and is taking us out,” said Robert, Adam’s friend.

“So where did you get…” I started.

“Belongs to my girl’s old man,” Robert cut me off before I could finish the question.

It was less than ten minutes before we wheeled into the parking lot of the harbor. I saw the boat even before I had the truck parked.

It was huge compared to the other vessels docked beside it.

“He’s from Alaska,” Robert offered.

The name on the bow of the craft read ‘Commodore.’

“Names Sammy Candia,” said the youthful looking man who shook my hand as I came on aboard the fishing boat.

“This here’s my sister Dee,” Sandy added.

She was a nice looking girl just over eighteen I guessed. Then it struck me as I shook her hand.

“Oh, your Robert’s girlfriend,” I said.

She smiled and nodded happily.

It was nearly 9 p. m. before we had everything stowed away. That included the 20 foot dory we sneaked off the pier.

Slowly Captain Candia powered up the diesel engines and backed the fishing vessel away from its slip and made for open water. The night lights of the little city were beautiful as they slowly shrank from sight, showing that the ‘Commodore’ was growing more and more distant from land.

“We’ll only be four miles offshore,” Adam said.

“Yes, but its dangerous waters because of sharp rocks,” reminded the Captain.

In less than two hours we were out near the site of the 1865 disaster. It was black over the calm sea as we stood at the boats railing, looking into nothingness.

Without warning, the mast lights popped on, temporarily blinding the four of us as we stood on deck. The flood lights high in the rigging spilled an odd glow over the ocean’s surface for nearly a hundred feet and still the space seemed empty.

“So what are those numbers again, Adam?” the Captain called out.

He wanted to know the exact latitude and longitude of the ships wreck. Adam looked at me.

Prepared, I was already digging in my hip pocket for my wallet.

“Latitude 41 degrees, Longitude 124 degrees,” I answered,“There’s the rest of the numbers you’ll need.”

The Captain went directly to work plotting our location in relationship to the site. I climbed back down to the deck level and started unleashing the dory.

Quickly, Adam and Robert were helping me slipped it over the side and into the water. After securing it, I decided I would start putting on one of the neoprene diving suits.

Soon Adam joined in. It took us about fifteen minutes of struggling to get into the wetsuits.

While we dressed, Robert and Dee checked the air cylinders and hoses of the dive tanks. Once done, they loaded them over the side of the vessel and into the waiting dory.

The ‘Commodore’ roared and shifted, moving from one angle to the next. As the large fishing boat closed in on its final positioning, we finished loading the dory.

Sammy came out and said, “We’re as close as we can get and we’ll only try this once.”

Both Adam and I nodded.

The plan was not to actually descend to the wreck itself, for that would be a fool-hearty act. The ship lay shattered and too far down to reach without a getting killed.

Instead we would just drop an anchor on top of the reef of rocks some seventy-five feet below with a rope attached and use the rope as a guide. Then using our underwater lights we hoped to pick up something, anything of value off the reef.

Gingerly, I slipped over the side of the boat. I had felt safe on the deck of giant fishing vessel and now I was giving that up for the uncomfortably of a twenty-foot boat made of timber.

Then Adam climbed aboard.

Slowly, he played out the rope that tethered us to the mother ship.  Meanwhile, I watched for hazards in the water as we made our way forward.

We were nearly out of reach of the flood lights when there was a sudden bump. It was one of the rocks we needed to find.  Quickly, I picked up the twenty-five pound anchor and launched it over the side.

The rope attached to it fell away with increasing speed until it went thump.  The anchor struck nothing.

I felt heartsick as I realized perhaps all the stories were true and this rock was a real pinnacle that simply rose sharply from the sea bed.

Straining, I retrieved the anchor with the hopes of dropping it again, only on the other side of the rock.  Again, the results were the same.

“There’s nothing there,” I said in an exasperate tone.

“Maybe it’s the wrong one,” Adam said, “Lets try another.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

Adam played out a little more line while I searched ahead for another rock in the water. There was nothing.

Without warning the tether Adam was holding went slack. He pulled on it in hopes of bringing it tight again. Instead he pulled in the end of the rope where the nylon had jus’ come undone from wear.

Suddenly, we  found ourselves adrift in the open sea.

We caught a northerly current and quickly slid right past the ‘Commodore.’ And although we yelled and waved our flashlights, it was no use. No one saw us go by, and the engines steady thumping, drowned out our near panic-stricken voices.

Within seconds the darkness swallowed us and our little boat up. We knew we had to act fast to keep from becoming victims of the sea.

Immediately, I dropped the anchor overboard and jus’ as quickly started searching for the two paddles I had seen in the boats bottom. Meanwhile, Adam got rid of the excess rope, recognizing it was a hazard to our survival should we capsize.

To the best of my ability I tried to figure which way west was from our last known position.

“Adam, find me a reference point in the sky to row towards,” I said.

“Will the moon do?” he asked.

He pointed to my right.

“That would be south,” he added.

I didn’t say anything at the moment because I was feeling stupid for having not thought of that myself.

Together, we each manned an oar and slowly worked the dory farther out into the Dragon Channel. We discussed how the effect of the northbound current may have aided us by threading the hazards of Northwest Seal Rock from the Southwest Seal Rock.

We worked up a nasty sweat in our neoprene wetsuits as we rowed the wooden boat through the ever-increasing rough seas.  Neither one knew how long it had been since the moon had disappeared from our sight.

The loss of our one bearing in an otherwise unrecognizable night caused a sense of fear to grip both of us. We didn’t have to say anything, because we could see the worry in each other’s eyes.

Quietly we sat side by side, sliding the tips of the oars in the water, cutting the dark ooze that slurped and threatened a certain death, anticipating the next catastrophe.  Each of us felt as if he were a condemned man being readied for the blade of the guillotine.

It was in this anxious gloom that a small but piercing light shot across our eyes. We waited, transfixed, rowing all the while for the light to reappear. There is was again, just to their right.

“Did you see that?” Adam asked.

“Yeah,” I responded, “There’s another one.”

They were houses in the distance. We sat there for a minute talking over what we should do next.

“Shall we chance it?” I asked.

Adam shrugged his shoulders, “Why not.”

We turned the dory toward the lights and started rowing again.

Within a few minutes the boat seemed to slow down and then it jerked to a halt. We rowed as hard as we could, yet the craft refused to go any father.

It was at this moment I remembered the anchor I had dropped over board.  I pulled on the rope finding it wedged firmly in the sea floor.

As fast as possible, I worked to loosen the rope from the boat. Once loose, the anchor fell away and the dory shot forward rapidly.

Seconds later the craft was running parallel to the coastline as waves pushed it towards the beach. Both of us put our backs into it and launched the boat with each wave at the shore, finally beaching the craft high enough to get out and thank our luck star.

“So where do you think we are?” I asked.

Adam shook his head, “Haven’t a clue.”

We started walking along the beach hoping to find away off it and maybe to a road.  Not long after, we discovered a sign, ‘Kellogg Road,’ telling us we were north of the city and had a long walk ahead of us.

As we walked along the lonely stretch of dirt road, I suggested, “Let’s never do anything like this again, okay?”

“I’m with you on that,” Adam answered, “I think I get the meaning of Jonathan’s Point now.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” I asked.

“Better to be above ground than under it,” he replied.

We both laughed knowing we had cheated death.

“Think Rob, Dee and Sammy are worrying about us?” I wondered.

“Naw!” Adam shot back.

We laughed long and hard, finding it oddly funny.

1.  Guns have only two enemies: rust and politicians.

2.  It’s better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.

3.  Cops carry guns to protect themselves — not you.

4.  Never let someone or something that threatens you get within arms length.

5.  Never say, “I’ve got a gun.” If you need to use deadly force — the first sound they hear should be the safety clicking off.

6.  The average response time of a 9-1-1 call is 23 minutes; the response time of a .357 is 1400 feet per second.

7.  The most important rule in a gunfight is: Always win — cheat if necessary.

8.  Aim, left-center of mass, exhale, squeeze, don’t pull; reapply as needed.

9.  Make your attacker advance through a wall of bullets. You may get killed with your own gun — but he’ll have to beat you to death with it, because it’ll be empty.

10.  While in a gunfight:  If you’re not shooting, you should be loading, if not loading, you should be moving and if you’re not moving, you’re dead.

11.  In a life and death situation — do something.  It might be wrong — but do it anyway!

12.  If you carry a gun, people call you paranoid. Nonsense! If you have a gun, what do you have to be paranoid about?

13.  You can say ‘stop’ or ‘alto’ or any other word — but a large-bore muzzle pointed at someone’s head is pretty much a universal language.

14. A pure soul or a dirt gun; both will gain you quick admission to Heaven.

15.  You cannot save the planet — but you can save your family — and yourself.