Driving down Campolindo Road last week, my houseguest Linda Petersen spotted a western pond turtle on the pavement, so she stopped and took it off the road. (Photo below by Linda Petersen)

In mid-to-late spring, western pond turtles go in search of mates, which may explain this turtle’s wandering. Notwithstanding their name, western pond turtles are usually found around slow-moving bodies of water.

By creating stockponds, however, ranchers have now provided many pond turtles with actual ponds for habitat. This is good because the western pond turtle is on the federal government’s list of threatened species. There’s no shortage of them in Northern California, but they have mostly died out in Washington and British Columbia.

More cold-blooded carnality in the road: I found this western fence lizard in my driveway Tuesday. Her courtship having already concluded, she may be carrying as many as 17 eggs. Around eight would be more typical, but her condition appears so gravid my guess would be higher.

California newts, meanwhile, are reaching the end of their mating season. The skin of a newt such as this secretes a neurotoxin, tetrodotoxin, that is hundreds of times more toxic than cyanide. Newts, by the way, are amphibians.
Other amphibians native to West Marin include salamanders, red-legged frogs, and Pacific tree frogs such as this. Female tree frogs in West Marin are nearly finished laying this year’s eggs, which hatch in three to four weeks.

Tree frogs depend largely on camouflage to escape predators. Notice how the facial stripe hides this frog’s eyeball. In addition, the frog’s color changes as it moves around. But unlike the chameleon, which changes its color to match background colors, the Pacific tree frog’s color depends on how moist or dry its location is.

This garter snake is warming himself on my driveway. Like lizards and turtles, snakes are reptiles, and both reptiles and amphibians are characteristically cold blooded, which raises a couple of questions. Why are some animals cold blooded? Are there any advantages to it?

Clearly explained answers, I discovered with surprise, can be found on the website of NASA’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, which has created an online “infrared zoo.” Few of us would expect the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to be in the zoology business, so NASA tells why some of its staff are:

“Although our specialty is infrared astronomy, we feel that a first step in understanding the infrared universe is to learn what the world around us looks like in the infrared and to understand the unique knowledge that can be gained by viewing our world in a different light.”

Having said that, NASA goes on to explain the advantage of being cold blooded (such as this Pacific gopher snake on Campolindo Road) vis-à-vis being being warm blooded. Here are some excerpts:

“Warm-blooded creatures, like mammals and birds, try to keep the inside of their bodies at a constant temperature. They do this by generating their own heat when they are in a cooler environment, and by cooling themselves when they are in a hotter environment.

“To generate heat, warm-blooded animals convert the food that they eat into energy. They have to eat a lot of food, compared with cold-blooded animals, to maintain a constant body temperature….

“Cold-blooded creatures [like this Pacific ring-necked snake I found in a rotten log] take on the temperature of their surroundings. They are hot when their environment is hot and cold when their environment is cold…. Cold-blooded animals often like to bask in the sun to warm up and increase their metabolism….

“There are many advantages to being warm-blooded. Warm-blooded animals can remain active in cold environments in which cold-blooded animals can hardly move….

“Warm-blooded animals can… seek food and defend themselves in a wide range of outdoor temperatures. Cold-blooded animals can only do this when they are warm enough…. Cold-blooded animals also need to be warm and active to find a mate and reproduce….

“Being cold-blooded, however, also has its advantages. Cold-blooded animals [like this arboreal salamander] require much less energy to survive than warm-blooded animals do….
Many cold-blooded animals will try to keep their body temperatures as low as possible when food is scarce.”

It occurs to me that all this may have implications for coping with mankind’s energy crisis. The cold-blooded approach would be for everyone to consume less but be less active in order to get by on less energy. The warm-blooded approach would be to keep consuming in order to stay warm, safe, and active, but this requires continually finding new sources of energy. When you file ‘em together, which class are you in?

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’s and Lys Plotkin’s litigation

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

* 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.)”

Blacktail deer forage around my cabin on a daily basis, and I’ve often posted photos of them. But apropos May Day, I had a new experience last Thursday with my cloven-hoofed neighbors.

A doe brought this spring’s offspring into my field. They were the first fawns I’d seen this year, and they ultimately provided me with an opportunity to photograph a one- to two-week-old fawn at close range.

As it happened, I’d gone out on my deck to take in the afternoon when I spotted a doe grazing just below me. Soon it nosed around in some tall grass, and up jumped two fawns.

The fawns followed their mother through the grass to my driveway, where she surveyed the surroundings before leading them into the open.

Continuing to photograph them, I followed the three until I caught their attention, and the doe with one fawn (seen here) ran off.

The other fawn, however, may have been to tired to stay with them. It simply wandered into tall grass, which happened to be next to my driveway. As can be seen in the photo above, the grass was far taller than the tiny fawn walking through it.

The fawn might have been expected to seek out a secluded spot in which to rest and not be seen, but this one lay down only a couple of feet off the edge of my driveway not far from where I was standing.

As is evident in the photo above, the fawn was well camouflaged by its spots, and even when I walked up to it, the fawn remained motionless. “It probably thought it was invisible,” Point Reyes Station biologist Jules Evens told me with a laugh Monday. When I walked away from the fawn without touching it, that impression was probably confirmed.

The fawn was so well hidden, in fact, the only way I could get a clear photo of it was by shooting directly down with the grass slightly parted. Even then, the fawn remained absolutely still.

I quickly departed, and for more than half an hour after I left, the fawn lay curled up beside my driveway before its mother returned and led it away.

If a fawn is continually stressed, Susan Sasso of Olema told me, it needs its mother’s licking, as well as her milk, when she returns, for both calm the young creature. Susan, who rehabilitates sick, injured, and orphaned fawns for Wildcare, noted that fawns can die of excessive stress.

At facilities on her property, Susan at present is feeding four very young wards every four hours seven days a week. This exhausting schedule will slow down in a few weeks, but the fawns will be in her care until sometime in August. She does it every year.

Here Susan (at left) and another Wildcare volunteer, Cindy Dicke of Olema, prepare to release a fawn in Chileno Valley.

It was one of six that in 2006 grew up on Susan’s property and then were trucked to Mike and Sally Gale’s ranch for release. The fawns were sedated for the trip but quickly revived once they had received wake-up injections.

Blacktail deer in West Marin are just beginning their fawning season, Susan noted. In total, she has received five fawns, but one, which arrived in bad shape, soon died. The other four, however, are healthy and putting on weight, Susan said.

Wildcare, for which Susan volunteers, ended up with these fawns for a variety of reasons. One was orphaned when its mother died in childbirth; another became separated from its mother after getting caught in a culvert; construction workers separated two from their mother…

“When the fawns are one to two weeks old,” Susan noted, “the mothers leave their babies for a while and graze until their udders are full.” So if you too find a fawn by itself, Susan said, “don’t bother it.” In all likelihood, its mother has simply left for a few minutes to pick up some milk and will be back shortly.

Fifty years ago this month, the late columnist Herb Caen of The San Francisco Chronicle coined the word “beatnik.”

As it happened, a recognized Beat Generation — epitomized in literature by poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist Jack Kerouac — had made its presence known over the previous decade, and six months earlier, the Soviet Union had begun the “space race” by launching Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the globe. With his typical whimsy, Caen in April 1958 blended the two names into beatnik.

This much of what I remember I can confirm. What I can’t confirm is my vague recollection of why Caen did it. I welcome any correction, but if my memory is accurate, it was in reference to an otherwise-not-bad Beat who one day lost it and ended up destroying property in North Beach.*

On this mostly unnoticed but nonetheless historic anniversary, it would seem appropriate to comment on Sausalito’s No Name bar. It too began five decades ago, but its connection to the Beat Era runs deeper.

“When the bar first opened, it was a beatnik bar,” Michael Aragon, drummer and bandleader, told me last week. (Seen here performing with Aragon are Rob Roth on sax and Pierre Archain on bass.)

“Lots of folks like Jack Kerouac, [actor] Sterling Hayden, Allen Ginsberg, and the like hung out there and played chess, read poetry, wore lots of berets and horned-rimmed glasses, and played bongo drums,” said Aragon, who schedules the music at the No Name. “And how can we forget the cigarettes?”

In the No Name’s protected garden where smoking is still permitted, Michael Hall plays chess four times a week, as he has for 20 years. Hall, an electrical contractor who lives on a houseboat, is but one of the bar’s regular chess players.

Along with chess and smoking, cool jazz and bebop from the Beat Era are alive and well and living in Sausalito. “I have been blessed with the opportunity to keep jazz music alive at the No Name for the past 25 years,” Aragon said. “This is the longest-running, continuous jazz gig in Marin County.

“This in itself is a miracle, considering that most people believe that the only way to survive in the club world is to constantly inundate the mind with tremendous amounts of decibels.”

Trombonist Mal Sharpe, who heads the Big Money in Jazz Band, has played Dixieland jazz Sunday afternoons at the the No Name for roughly 15 years, he told me this week. Thanks to YouTube, Sharpe and his band can be seen and heard playing at the bar by clicking on The Sunny Side of the Street or St. Louis Blues.

“The bar is a unique place,” Aragon remarked, “because on one side of you there could be sitting a homeless person and on the other side, someone that owns a $50 million yacht. What I have tried to do over the years is make sure that no matter what, everyone is treated the same.”

There is music at the bar seven nights a week. On Friday and Saturday, jazz groups play from 9 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., and on Sundays, there is Dixieland from 3 to 7 p.m.

On Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the No Name features blues and folk music from 8:30 p.m. to midnight. On Tuesdays, an open microphone is held from 8:30 p.m. to midnight.

The bar is now under its fifth ownership, Aragon told me, and as the sign out front reveals, No Name is not really the bar’s name. It literally is a bar with no name. Check the phone book; you’ll find it listed as “no name 757 Bridgeway Sau.”

There’s also no cover charge, and the audience is always a mix of oldtimers who were around for the Beat Era, tourists, and fans of live-music, especially jazz.

* Over time, the term “beatnik” came to refer anyone with the supposed trappings of Beat writers and artists: berets, dark glasses, dark clothing, and a propensity to use hipster slang. For Ginsberg and Kerouac, “Beats” were down-and-out wanderers who also were visionaries. Both writers resented their quixotic outcasts’ being confused with “beatniks.”

‘Still Life With Raccoon‘ (My school of art obviously lies somewhere between R. Crumb and Art Nouveau)

Black Mountain with the Giacomini Wetlands in the foreground. Much of what is now Nicasio Reservoir, Point Reyes Station, and the land in between was once owned by the Black family, whose daughter Mary married Dr. Galen Burdell, a dentist. When the narrow-gauge railroad between Cazadero and Sausalito went into service in 1875 — with a stop in a pasture his wife had inherited — Dr. Burdell subdivided the pasture and created Point Reyes Station. (Photo by Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park)

Point Reyes Station as seen from an airliner. (One of the plane’s jets is visible at upper right.) In the center at the top of the photo is Nicasio Reservoir with Black Mountain just below it while at the bottom, Papermill Creek empties into Tomales Bay. The row of whitish roofs at right is along the main street of town. Guido Hennig, a German friend working in Switzerland, shot this photo while en route from Europe.

A tight maneuver. Linda Sturdivant while driving home with her daughter Seeva one afternoon last week came upon this full-sized bus making a U-turn on the levee road.

The levee road (a section of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard) used to be straight. The jog in it was created by the 1906 Earthquake. Land on both sides of the San Andreas Fault, which runs under the roadway, was offset 20 feet by the temblor.

Linda, by the way, takes care of people’s pets when they’re away. Recent wards (each owned by a different master) have included a cat, a rat, and a duck. Sounds like the start of political joke.

So that’s how things look around town these days. And if you’re interested in some blossoms for your own cabin, Mrs. Raccoon appears to be selling some nice ones.

This yellow journalism stinks, I said to myself last Wednesday morning upon picking up my San Francisco Chronicle at the bottom of the driveway. As I discovered with displeasure, one of the neighborhood foxes had peed on it.

Foxes are like that, marking relatively prominent spots around their food sources and dens. Last year, neighbor Jay Haas discovered that foxes were leaving their scat on top of the fence posts between his property and mine.

Campolindo Road is a foxy neighborhood. Gray foxes periodically take shortcuts across my deck at night, and several of us on the hill have seen red foxes during the day.

Today I stopped in Point Reyes Station to photograph the Sir George Mallory of chickens, who can often be seen trekking along Highway 1 downhill from West Marin School.

“Why do you keep climbing through the fence?” I asked Sir George. “Because it is there,” he crowed. I urged him to be careful, remembering that his namesake had fallen to his death while making a third attempt to climb Mount Everest. “You’re probably also worried that the sky is falling,” Sir George clucked and went back to pecking.

As for blacktail deer, which every day forage near my cabin….

Does chewing their cuds in the shade

West Marin is in the fawning season. Susan Sasso of Olema, who rehabilitates sick, injured, and orphaned fawns for Wildcare, six weeks ago took in her first fawn of the year. Its mother had died in childbirth.

But the greatest threat to blacktails — as it is in the short term for Sir George Mallory chicken — is the motor vehicle. “Night travel on the road is dangerous,” writes Point Reyes Station biologist Jules Evens in the maiden issue of The West Marin Review.

“Skunk, coon, opossum, and especially black-tailed deer are apt to appear around any curve. By day, one is assured of finding vultures feeding on the victims of our dispassionate, modern-day automotive predators — CRVs, 4-Runners, Humvees — twisted and splayed on the asphalt. The vultures gather in small groups, taking turns at the roadside deer dinner.”

So I ask you, friends, please slow down when you drive past Campolindo Road at night. These deer too are my friends.

Chileno Valley ranchers Mike and Sally Gale several weeks ago returned home after spending a fortnight in the Middle East visiting their son Ivan, a newspaperman in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Sally, Mike, and Ivan Gale at their Chileno Valley ranch last Christmas.

In 2003 and 2004, Ivan was an excellent reporter for The Point Reyes Light, winning three national and three statewide journalism awards during those two years. Ivan left The Light to attend Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and earned two master’s degrees in Communications, one with a specialty in Science Reporting.

From there, he managed to land a job in the UAE, where for two years he was a business reporter for The Gulf News in Dubai. The transportation industry was his main beat. Ivan, now 33, this month will begin a new job with a startup daily in Abu Dhabi.

Maps from the World Fact Book, which is posted by the CIA.

The UAE is a federation of seven states on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula: Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain. The federation’s neighbors are Saudi Arabia and Oman while across the narrow Strait of Hormuz lies Iran.

The emirates are shown to the upper left of Oman on the right side of Saudi Arabia.

A federal constitutional monarchy, the UAE’s presidency is always held by a member of the Al Nahyan clan of Abu Dhabi and its premiership by the Al Maktoum clan of Dubai. The Supreme Council, which consists of the rulers of the seven emirates, elects a Council of Ministers.

Thanks to oil and natural-gas revenues, which in turn have fueled other industrial development, the UAE has the fifth highest Gross Domestic Product per capita in the world.

A whopping 85 percent of the UAE’s population of 4.5 million are non-citizens. Along with residents from other Arab countries, there are 2.15 million South Asians (mostly Indians, Filipinos, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis plus several thousand Sri Lankans).

In its report on Human Rights, the US State Department annually complains about abuse of South Asian workers in the UAE. And while acknowledging improvements in recent years, the State Department also reports the UAE’s Islamic fundamentalism can be harsh.

These criticisms notwithstanding, Islam in the emirates is far less fundamentalist than in such neighbors as Saudi Arabia and Iran. And the UAE is definitely friendly to the West. From 1892 until 1971, its states were by treaty under British military protection. In 1990-91, the emirates joined the fight against Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War, which followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

During his parents’ visit, Ivan (at left) accompanied them on a trip to Jordan, which is across the Arabian Peninsula from the UAE. Included here are two photos from that trip. While Sally like other women was expected to wear a headscarf, Ivan and Mike are wearing them to ward off a cold wind.

Because the emirates are Arab states ruled by sheiks, with each state having both secular and Islamic law, I found myself wondering what is it like for Ivan to live and work in this world — especially when he doesn’t speak Arabic. And for that matter, why are there several English-language newspapers in the UAE?

On the occasion of Ivan’s moving from Dubai to Abu Dhabi and going to work for a new newspaper, I questioned him by email about his life there. Here are his answers:

DVM: What can you tell me about the newspaper where you’ll be working?

Ivan: The National is set to launch on April 17 and will be a nationwide, general-interest, English-language newspaper.

We will be the only English daily based in Abu Dhabi [above], the UAE capital, but there are a handful of other English dailies based in Dubai and Sharjah.

A lot of newspapers have done well here because the real estate market (and the economy as a whole) is so hot it is keeping the advertising market extremely buoyant.

Our newspaper is funded by the Abu Dhabi government which is reshaping its media subsidiary (and our parent company), Emirates Media Inc., into Abu Dhabi Media Company. ADMC’s CEO is Ed Borgerding (formerly executive vice president of Walt Disney International in Hong Kong and senior vice president of Walt Disney International Television in Hong Kong and London).

Our newspaper is the first and most significant new initiative from the Abu Dhabi government’s media arm, which has some pretty ambitious plans for the future.

DVM: Why is it possible for an English-language paper to survive in the Arab world?

Ivan: Some UAE-based English dailies have not only survived, they have flourished. This is in large part due to the high expat and South Asian population fluent in English. There could be as many or more English speakers than Arabic speakers in this country because of the
high numbers of foreign workers living here.

There are some other [English-language newspapers in the Arab world]: The Daily Star in Lebanon and some newspapers and business magazines in Cairo, where English-language publications have established themselves. But outside the UAE, I don’t think you will find the same conditions of a booming economy and a critical mass of English readers that have spelled success for the local dailies here.

Outside of the commercial aspects, I think local publications provide an important service for English readers living outside the region. There is a growing hunger among readers in the East and West [for news] about what is happening in the Middle East, and this will mean online readers will increasingly consult the websites of UAE newspapers for news and analysis.

DVM How many English-language newspapers are there in the UAE?

IVAN: 7 Days (daily freesheet), Gulf News (daily broadsheet), Khaleej Times (daily broadsheet), Emiates 24-7 (daily tabloid business newspaper), Xpress (free weekly newspaper), Gulf Today (daily broadsheet), and soon The National (daily broadsheet).

I should also note that The Times of London began printing an edition in the UAE last year, and The Financial Times does as well, I believe.

DVM: How much of the English-language press’ readership in the UAE is from India?

Ivan: It has been said that some newspapers cater almost exclusively to the South Asian segment of the population. As a block they could very well constitute the single largest group in this country. It’s probably true that some of the English newspapers rely on this group for at least half or more of their readership. But there are also large numbers of expats living here from the UK, Europe, and North America. A lot of Arab businessmen also consult the English press for news and analysis too. So it’s definitely a mix.

DVM: What fuels the UAE economy?

Ivan: A brief answer would be high oil prices which spill over into a booming real estate market, high consumer spending, and the relentless pace of infrastructure mega-projects [built with] private and government… investment. Travel and tourism are also very important.

DVM: I gather you’ll be covering transportation. Why is that a major beat in the UAE?

IVAN: The thing is, there are many major beats here because the UAE government — and Dubai [above] in particular over the past five years — have undertaken an ambitious and wide-ranging diversification campaign. So there are exciting developments going on in real estate, finance, telecoms and technology, travel and tourism, media and marketing, and of course oil and gas.

But it is important to note that transport was the first major industry that put this country on the map after its pearling industry collapsed. Dubai borrowed heavily to dredge its creek and then build a deepwater port around the 1950s — before the country’s oil and gas reserves were discovered.

They’ve gone from strength to strength, and Jebel Ali Port in Dubai is now the largest between Rotterdam and Singapore. Emirates Airline is now on track to become the largest international airline in the next four to seven years. The airline has roughly 250 aircraft on order right now, worth $60 billion, while Dubai and Abu Dhabi together are spending close to $50 billion on new airport infrastructure. The name of Dubai’s new airport hub is telling: “Dubai World Central.”

DVM: Under Islamic law, Muslims are not allowed to drink alcohol. What are the UAE’s laws on drinking as they apply to you?

Ivan: It is legal to buy from a licensed liquor shop if you have an alcohol license. You can also buy from the duty free shops at the airport when you arrive. In some emirates, there are hole-in-the-wall shops where you don’t have to have a license.

DVM: How much Arabic do you speak? How do you get along — both at work and around town — without being fluent?

Ivan: I’ve picked up greetings and how to exchange pleasantries but never studied the language. And I’ve never felt that I was any worse for it. The Emiratis and the Arabs from other countries who live here all speak English with varying levels of fluency. People in the service industry are invariably from the Philippines or South Asia. Frankly, this would be a tough place to study Arabic because there is no immersion experience. English is read and spoken all around you.

Gathered on both sides of Papermill Creek Sunday morning, 125 West Marin residents demonstrated their support for a pedestrian bridge at the site of the onetime irrigation dam for the Giacomini Ranch.

Demonstrators including surfboarders, kayakers, several dogs, and people on opposite shores assemble for an Art Rogers photograph Sunday morning. A line over Papermill/Lagunitas Creek marks where the demonstrators want the Park Service to build a pedestrian bridge.

Originally a saltwater marsh, the ranchland was bought by the Giacomini family in 1944. Encouraged by the federal government (which wanted to increase wartime milk production) and subsidized under the Land Reclamation Act, the Giacominis built dikes surrounding the ranch to keep water from inundating their pastures at high tide. For half a century, the ranch prospered, but in 1998, the State Water Resources Control Board, stopped issuing permits for its seasonal irrigation dam.

In 2000, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area bought 550 acres of the ranch for $5.75 million. This Recreation Area land is being administered by the Point Reyes National Seashore, which last year began excavating it for a new marsh.

Even before the 550-acre sale eight years ago, the Giacomini family had sold more than 400 acres to public agencies, with Marin County Open Space District acquiring a slice of acreage just downstream from the Green Bridge. The acreage is bordered by the creek on the south and Point Reyes Station’s C Street on the north.

A footpath along the western edge of the county land from C Street to the dam site became popular for short walks.

Meanwhile, the County Open Space District — with assistance from the state — developed White House Pool park on the opposite bank. The park includes a scenic path along Papermill Creek from Inverness Park to the old dam site.

Demonstrators on the south shore of Papermill Creek last Sunday said they want a bridge so that pedestrians and bicyclists, especially children, are not forced to travel along the shoulder of the 45 mph levee road when going between Inverness Park and Point Reyes Station.

Not surprisingly, many of those at Sunday’s pro-bridge demonstration were residents of Inverness Park.

As administers of the Recreation Area land, the Point Reyes National Seashore has said it will soon hold a public meeting to discuss the proposed bridge. At this point, loudest opponents to the proposal are ideologues who insist that once a new marsh is created, humans should not sully nature with a path and bridge.

The new wetland will be located between downtown Point Reyes Station and downtown Inverness Park. The pathway above runs between the proposed bridge site and C Street in Point Reyes Station (seen in the background).

Folks, the land is not virgin terrain on either side of Papermill Creek below the Green Bridge. Not only has much of it been grazed for more than 50 years, humans have been reshaping it since at least 1855 when Samuel P. Taylor “built a warehouse at creekside for the paper he manufactured eight miles upstream,” to quote the late historian Jack Mason’s Earthquake Bay.

“It was here the steamer Monterey deposited passengers Olema-bound.

“A ferry crossed the creek here, Charlie Hall charging 25 cents one way per passenger. His bar, the Ferry House, was nearby to the south…. The county bridged the creek in 1875, the year the train came and the steamer pulled out.”

When the Park Service bought the Giacomini Ranch eight years ago, it’s stated goal was to create wetlands and thereby slow sedimentation of Tomales Bay and improve its overall environment. There was no mention of creating a wilderness area between the county firehouse and the Inverness Park Store. Remember, the former ranch is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the purpose of recreation areas is not to exclude humans.

Demonstrators on Sunday morning walk along the scenic path from White House Pool to the site of the proposed bridge. The Point Reyes National Seashore a while back argued for the elimination of this route near the creek, I have been told by county staff. In the background is Inverness Park.

The National Seashore, which would have to pay for much of the bridge, is also opposing it. For a public park, it is amazing how misanthropic its policies are. A while back, the park tried to convince Marin County Open Space District to reroute the scenic White House Pool path so that it ran along the edge of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard (the levee road) instead of along the creek. That way, nature would not be disturbed by humans walking through it. Fortunately, the county did not go along with the idea.

Now the National Seashore administration has raised a new objection. Even though the bridge would connect two rutted dirt paths, the park says it would have to be wheelchair accessible, and the requisite ramps for the eight-foot-wide bridge would double its length, making it 450 to 600 feet long. That’s more than twice the length of the Green Bridge and more than three times the length of Platform Bridge.

This Brooklyn Bridge over Papermill Creek — up to twice the length of a football field — would cost millions of dollars, the park says, and it is therefore unaffordable. I’m not buying any of it.

Here Joyce Goldfield of Inverness Park, who uses a motorized scooter to get around, takes part in the pro-bridge demonstration along with Duane Irving.

While Newsday reporters celebrated their winning a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1970 for an exposé of corruption involving public officials and Republican Party figures on Long Island, one of the crooks who had been exposed showed up.

Republican leader Freddie Fellman, who would subsequently go to prison, “lived up to his reputation as a big talker, taking the floor and catching the attention of the assembled journalists. ‘Wait a second,’ he said to the surprised revelers. ‘You couldn’t have done this without me!’”

The story is from a new book, Pulitzer’s Gold by Roy Harris Jr., senior editor at CFO magazine. I mentioned it here five weeks ago because the book, which has been selling well, devotes a chapter to The Point Reyes Light’s 1979 gold medal.

Now that I’ve had time to read the book at a leisurely pace, I find myself frequently recounting stories from it, such as the Freddie Fellman tale. Anytime a book does that for me, I figure it’s pretty well written.

Another story I love from Pulitzer’s Gold recounts how Raleigh, North Carolina’s News & Observer won the Public Service medal in 1996 for revealing environmental problems from the state’s burgeoning hog industry. It illustrates the circuitous routes that newspaper investigations often take.

While looking into malfeasance at the North Carolina State Fair back in 1995, two News and Observer reporters discovered the state veterinarian was taking gifts from pork producers. They then looked into the hog industry and discovered that although it had become huge in North Carolina, this “had happened mostly out of the public eye,” the book relates. “And so had the pollution that came with it.”

News and Observer staff eventually wrote that a “megalopolis” of 7 million swine had sprung up in North Carolina, with each pig producing two to four times as much waste as the average human. What’s more, the newspaper reported, this megalopolis of pig pens “has no sewage-treatment plants. All the wastes… are simply flushed into open pits and sprayed onto fields.” Not surprisingly, groundwater was becoming contaminated.

Still another good story from the book — this one containing a public-relations lesson — concerns The Philadelphia Inquirer’s winning a Public Service medal in 1990. The prize was for revealing “how the American blood industry operates with little government regulation or supervision,” in the words of the Pulitzer Board.

In 1989, a business reporter at The Inquirer gave blood during a drive at his office. Afterward, he became curious about what happened to the blood next. Planning to write a routine business story, the reporter contacted the local Red Cross director and started asking routine questions: How much blood is in the blood bank? What is the dollar value of the blood?

But the director cut him off, saying, “We don’t have to tell you that?” The reporter told author Harris, “I was taken aback, and my journalistic antennae went up.” Suddenly suspicious because of the director’s stonewalling, reporter Gilbert Gaul eventually determined that 61 percent of the Red Cross’ business was blood, not disaster relief, and that “red cells are really a commodity, and they’re sold that way.”

Gaul revealed a secretive, nationwide market in blood, which was being repeatedly sold and resold. His series brought about more federal inspections of blood brokering nationwide, as well as more attention to keeping AIDS out of the blood supply. And it all began with the Red Cross director in Philadelphia refusing to answer some routine questions prompted by a blood drive.

Pulitzer’s Gold is also wonderfully rich in quotations from a variety of writers. Some examples that I’ve found myself repeating:

• “What I try to do in my paper is to give the public part of what it wants to have and part of what it ought to have, whether it wants it or not.” — Herbert Bayard Swope, executive editor, New York World

• “The Jazz Age had had a wild youth and a heady middle age… the most expensive orgy in history…. It was borrowed time anyhow — the whole upper tenth of a nation living with the insouciance of grand dukes and the casualness of chorus girls.” — F. Scott Fitzerald on the 1920s

• “Every reporter is a hope, every editor a disappointment.” — Joseph Pulitzer (Pulitzer’s son and grandson are seen above with a bust of the legendary publisher)

In looking at 88 years of competition for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, which Joseph Pulitzer considered the top award, author Harris recounts some fascinating events in American history. And what makes the telling itself fascinating is that it’s history as seen through the eyes of reporters who covered the events, whether Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, or the desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas, schools.

The book is also packed with interesting tidbits about the awarding of the prizes:

• Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, for example, once wrote dismissively about the prizes although he himself had lobbied Pulitzer jurors on behalf of The Post. (In recent years, Bradlee has spoken more highly of the prizes.)

• In 1918, the Public Service prize went to The Milwaukee Journal for a campaign against “Germanism in America.” The campaign included opposition to German-language classes.

• Columbia University in New York City houses the awards program, and in 1972, university trustees tried to block the gold medal’s being awarded to The New York Times for publishing the Pentagon Papers. The trustees objected that the papers were stolen, but Columbia president William McGill convinced them not to intervene.

• Much of the New Orleans Times-Picayune coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which won a Public Service award in 2006, was published only online because the newspaper building was flooded.

• The Point Reyes Light won its gold medal in 1979 for an exposé of violence and other wrongdoing by the Synanon cult, but even though my former wife Cathy and I then owned the paper, I hadn’t known what went on during the judging until I read Pulitzer’s Gold. According to Los Times media reporter David Shaw, who is quoted by author Harris (above), members of the Pulitzer board and jury told him “they honored The Light ‘more because it was a small paper whose editors had shown great courage, at considerable financial risk, than because the paper’s stories were necessarily better than the three other finalists in the Public Service category.’

“All thought The Light stories excellent. But Shaw quoted Michael O’Neill, then editor of The New York Daily News and a member of the jury, as saying that ‘if you took the names of the newspapers off the… entries, I would definitely have voted for The Chicago Tribune series on the problems of the aged.’ Shaw also quoted an unnamed board member as saying of The Light’s Dave and Cathy Mitchell: ‘The job that couple did was damn good, but the guts they showed, with Synanon just a few miles down the road… that’s what the Pulitzers are all about, that’s what won the award.’”

Shaw of The LA Times accuses board members of sentimentality for reasoning this way. In contrast, Bob Woodward, The Washington Post writer of Watergate fame, “proposes that ‘degree of difficulty’ should be factored into standards used for the Public Service Prize,” author Harris notes. “To some degree,” he adds, “the Pulitzer board already does that when it considers the long odds faced by a small newspaper.”

Pulitzer’s Gold, University of Missouri Press, 382 pages plus 90-page appendix, $39.95.

“A little Madness in the Spring/ Is wholesome even for the King” — Emily Dickinson

We’re only four days into Spring, and already the world looks brighter. Of course, the return of Daylight Savings Time has probably helped. In any case, here are five faces that have brightened my cabin in the past few days.

My houseguest Linda Petersen’s dog Sebastian among the daffodils.

Deaf and legally blind, Sebastian will turn 15 in May. Linda’s daughter Saskia 10 years ago found the Havanese-mix filthy, matted, and hunting through garbage in the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Saskia managed to locate Sebastian’s owners, who not only were willingly to give him to her but even had a few veterinary records for him.

A wild turkey showed up a few mornings ago just outside my kitchen window. The tom was displaying for some hens under the pine tree.

Neighbor Didi Thompson in early afternoon called excitedly to say a bobcat was in the Giacomini family’s field, which is next to her property and mine.

Another neighbor, George Stamoulis, had previously seen the bobcat on our hill, and Cat Cowles of Inverness while driving to work at Hog Island Oyster Company had spotted it walking up Campolindo Road downhill from our homes. Finally, it was my turn to see it, if only from a distance.

Vamping for cannabis: Seeva Cherms (daughter of Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park) and her friend Michelle from Hollywood.

The two are working in the drive to qualify a ballot initiative that would legalize the use of marijuana and the cultivation of its non-euphoric cousin hemp. Please see Posting 104 for that story. While touring the state, they dropped by at sunset to say hi.