Past postings are numbered in the order they went online, with the most recent postings located immediately below the Table of Contents.

To go directly to stories without scrolling, click on the highlighted phrases following the numbers.

Weekly postings are published by Thursday.

262. Crafting the Considerate House

261. West Marin remembers Duane Irving

260. The art of boating

259. Firefighters in action

258. Do you like coyotes and bobcats? How about rats?

257. Los mapaches con cacahuates; también fotos de los cuervos y venados

256. Proposal for ceasefire in West Marin ‘newspaper war’

255. The young creatures of summer

254. Eli’s coming — causing momentary dismay at The Point Reyes Light

253. Under the volcano and in the eye of the storm — a firsthand account

252. The duel between The Point Reyes Light and The West Marin Citizen

251. Santa Muerte and El Cadejo

250. Wildlife around my cars on the Serengeti Plain of West Marin

249. A big Western Weekend Parade in li’l old Point Reyes Station

248. 4-H Fair and Coronation Ball keep alive Western Weekend’s agricultural traditions

247. A tail for West Marin to bear in mind this Western Weekend

246. Point Reyes Light sells and will incorporate as a nonprofit

245. Point Reyes Station area blackout rumored to have been sparked by bird

244. Planned Feralhood desperate for a new home

243. John Francis takes a walk down under

242. A day in a small town

241. Point Reyes Station’s notorious curve is scene of yet another vehicle crash

240. The Mother Goose method for getting rid of thistles

239. A benefit so that handicapped kids can go rafting

238. Where angels fear to tread

237. The Chronicle, hang gliders, and horses

236. Crowd celebrates 80th birthday of Marshall artist-political activist Donna Sheehan

235. A classic revisited

234. Nature celebrates spring

233. More on diplomatic news we’ve been following

232. Sportscar flies off embankment; no one hurt in miraculous landing

231. A chat with the Trailside Killer

230. Life and death on my hill

229. Valentine’s Fair raises money for Haiti relief

228. Historic irony as milk truck overturns in Marshall

227. Encouraging my bodhisattva possum on her path to enlightenment

226. Benefit for Haitian earthquake survivors filled with mixed emotions

225. What drought? Nicasio Reservoir overflows

224. Disconcerting standup reporting

223. The storms begin; schools close; a near miss at my cabin

222. Spare the rodent (or rabbit) & spoil the diet

221. Lookin’ out my backdoor: some of my favorite wildlife photos

220. Careening through the holidays

219. Chileno Valley journalist working in Abu Dhabi brings new wife home for visit

218. Just what would Mayberry be like on acid?

217. The foxes of downtown Point Reyes Station

216. Interpreting dreams

215. Let’s talk turkey

214. You’ll Never Walk Alone — an unlikely story

213. A wistful walk on the bottom of Nicasio Reservoir

212. Progress in the backyard peace process

211. John Francis leaving; 4 other artists turn pages but sticking around

210. What we inherit

209. Over 200 show up at fundraiser to help pay injured ad manager’s medical bills

208. A community helping one of its own

207. A country mouse in the Tenderloin

206. News of the week reported through pictures

205. Update on injured ad manager of West Marin Citizen; benefit planned; and will there be a race?

204. Startling weather; amazing stepdaughters

203. Talented-animal tales

2o2. Saga of The West Marin Citizen ad manager’s recovery spreads around the globe — not always accurately

201. And you were there

200. Hospitalized ad manager of West Marin Citizen coming home; friends volunteering to provide meals

199. Scenes from the Inverness Fair

198. Great progress for injured ad manager of The West Marin Citizen despite problems with convalescent hospital

197. Thieves use ruse to clean out till at Station House Gifts

196. Anastacio’s Famous BBQ Oyster Sauce goes on sale

195. A hillside of wildlife

194. Kaiser Permanente’s ‘Sicko’ machinations shock injured ad manager of The West Marin Citizen

193. Immobilized by multiple injuries, ad manager keeps selling from hospital bed

192. All creatures feathered and furry

191. The wildlife of summer around my cabin & an update on Linda Petersen’s condition 

19o. West Marin Citizen advertising manager hurt in crash; her popular dog Sebastian dies

189. Sunday’s Western Weekend Parade

188. The Western Weekend Livestock Show

187. Western Weekend parade will be Sunday despite reports to the contrary

186. The purple couch beside the road

185. A funny thing happened at the car wash Friday & other odd events

184. My brush with a badger

183. Scientists find no evidence oyster farm harming Drakes Estero; more likely restoring it

182. Why bottom of Drakes Estero can never become part of a wilderness area

181. Badger, Ratty, and the sensual raccoon

180. ‘And how the wind doth ramm!/ Sing: Goddamm’ — Ezra Pound

179. A tailgate gallery of bumper-sticker humor; Point Reyes weather both Arctic & tropical

178. Crowd in Inverness Friday calls for reviving park’s Citizens Advisory Commission

177. Flying over Northwest Marin

176. Spring meditations in a Miwok cemetery concerning the news of West Marin.

175. Two warning signs of Spring

174. Tomales may be little but it’s lively

173. Doe stalks cat; raccoon emulates Scripture — for the rain it raineth every day

172. Three-year drought comes to a symbolic ending as Nicasio Reservoir overflows

171. Pot busts at my cabin — again

170. Happy Valentine’s Day (as it’s evolved)

169. Blogging about blogging

168. Thinking about words

167. Point Reyes Station celebrates President Barack Obama’s inauguration

166. A reader in Ghana

165. The bittersweet story of a hardy little tree

164. A parting look at 2008

163. Blackout hits Tomales Bay area

162. Nature’s Two Acres Part XXXVIII: Way Out West in West Marin

161. Chileno Valley Ranch as depicted by a rancher-artist who lives there

160. Nature’s Two Acres XXXVIII: This time it’s a tale of two bobbed cats

159. Thanksgiving in Point Reyes Station

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

157. Quotes Worth Saving II

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

155. Election night euphoria

154. The fun and anxiety of preparing for a disaster

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

152. The political zoo.

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

150. A coyote at my cabin

149. Preparing for the fire season

148. Telling the Raccoon ‘Scat’

147. Faces from the weekly press

146. Tomales, Tomales, that toddling town

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

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

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

142. Landscape photos & paintings in Stinson Beach

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

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

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

138. The good, the bizarre, and the ugly

138. Alice in ‘Wilderness’

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

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

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

134. Scenes from my past week

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

132. Kite day at Nicasio School

131. Sunday’s Western Weekend Parade in photos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

123. ‘Still Life with Raccoon‘

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

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

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

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

118. Five Faces of Spring

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

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

115. A country without the decency to ban torture

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

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

112. Dillon Beach sewage spill update

111. ‘Drive-by journalism’

110. Sewage spills into ocean at Dillon Beach

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

108. Nature’s Two Acres XXV: Talking turkey

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

106. Signs of bureaucratic contamination

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

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

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

102. Storm damage bad but could have been tragic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

94. Marin County gets a bum rap from itself

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

92. Guess who came to Christmas dinner

91. Yuletide greetings from Santa Claws

90. Assemblyman Jared Huffman’s ominous mailer

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

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

87. Blackouts bedevil Point Reyes Station area

86. Urban legends

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

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

83. Striptease in Point Reyes Station… well, sorta

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

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

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

79. Lessons to be learned from the oil spill

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

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

76. Giving thanks for an abundant harvest

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

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

73. Point Reyes Station pharmacist decries health-insurance practices

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

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

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

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

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

67. One last warm weekend before the season of darkness

66. Ranching matriarch Hazel Martinelli dies at 101

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

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

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

62. Hawks on the move

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

60. Vandals dump sewage at West Marin School

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

58. Bolinas firehouse and clinic opening party Sunday

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

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

55. Language, politics & wildlife

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

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

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

51. Quotes Worth Saving & the Inverness Fair

50. Watching the Point Reyes National Seashore obliterate cultural history

49. Congress sees through Point Reyes National Seashore claims

48. Music, wildlife, and the cosmos

42. Garbage in, garbage out

41. 76-year-old Nick’s Cove reopens

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

39. Ship’s flare or meteor

38. The death of a salesman: Andrew Schultz

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

36. Monday’s demonstration against The Point Reyes Light

35. Inverness Park fire Friday razes art studio

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.

33. Sunday’s Western Weekend parade and barbecue

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.

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

30. New newspaper to be published in West Marin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

18. The Gossip Columnist

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.

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

15. The Bush Administration at Point Reyes: Part I

14. Marin supervisors refuse to tilt at McEvoy windmill

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

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

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

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

9. Big Pot Busts at My Cabin

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

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

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

5. My background: Biographical information on newspaperman Dave Mitchell

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

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

2. Robert I. Plokin

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

Most long-time residents of West Marin know his story. For 22 years beginning in 1971, John Francis of Point Reyes Station refused to ride in motorized vehicles (largely as a reaction to a humongous oil spill at the Golden Gate).

And for the first 17 of those years, he also maintained a vow of silence. His not talking caused him to listen more and kept him out of arguments over his not riding in motorized vehicles, he told listeners at the Dance Palace Sunday.

John received standing ovations Sunday after two farewell shows of storytelling, acting, and banjo playing.

Notwithstanding the audiences’ enthusiasm, there was a bittersweet quality to the shows. Although West Marin has been his home base for 40 years, John, his wife Mattie, and their sons Sam and Luke, will move to Cape May, New Jersey in a couple of weeks.

(The  family will live in his parents’ old home and expect to benefit from New Jersey’s healthcare costs being much lower than California’s.)

Even when John was on the road from 1983 to 1995, a group he founded in 1982, Planetwalker, remained based in West Marin. On its website, Planetwalker describes itself as “a non-profit educational organization dedicated to raising environmental consciousness and promoting earth stewardship.”

While on the road, John walked to Missoula, Montana, where he earned a master’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana. He then walked east to Madison, Wisconsin, where he earned a doctorate in Land Resources with a focus on oil-spill damage.

In the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, John headed a Coast Guard team writing the congressionally mandated Oil Spill Act of 1989. Once done with that, he sailed to Antigua, stayed a year working as an environmental advisor to the island’s British governor, and then sailed further south to Venezuela.

Along with his many other talents, John is a first-rate artist. His book “Planetwalker: How to Change Your World One Step at a Time” is illustrated with his sketches.

After he had walked the length of Venezuela, John’s life changed significantly. At the Venezuela-Brazilian border, he resumed riding in motorized vehicles. “Walking had become a prison for me,” he later explained.

Nonetheless, he walked across the Amazon from Venezuela, through Brazil, to Bolivia, where he caught malaria and just about died. However thanks to Al Gore, the UN had designated John a “goodwill ambassador” and provided him with a transmitter so he could send daily messages to schoolchildren around the world. John used the transmitter to send out a distress signal.

However, the Bolivian government initially showed no interest in saving him, he said Sunday. John credited Mattie with getting the White House to bring about his rescue.

Throughout Sunday’s show, John kept returning to a skit in which he was weak and delirious from the malaria. In the final scene, he imagined seeing enormous mosquitoes, which turned out to be dragonflies, which ultimately turned out to be the helicopters that had come to save him.

It was a wonderful performance, and John’s impersonations of his mother and father were masterful and humorous while his candid stories about race were telling.

In one frightening incident on a back road north of Jenner, a white bigot stuck a gun to John’s head and in racist language told him blacks were not welcome in the area.

After the man had left, John realized he had recognized the face: “It was death.” John took the experience as a reminder of life’s fragility and the need to fully appreciate the present.

John also told of a droll observation at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington. A member of the staff told John his colleagues had been expecting a team leader who hadn’t ridden in motorized vehicles for 18 years and who had just resumed talking after 17 years of silence. What caught them by surprise, the staff member added, was John’s being black.

West Marin will definitely miss John, but he promises to return from time to time. For one thing, he’s now walking — a couple of states at a time — back across the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. So far, he’s walked across New Jersey and into Ohio.

Also on Sunday, photographer Art Rogers of Point Reyes Station (left) and painter Thomas Wood of Nicasio concluded a month-long exhibition, Silver and Oil, at the Pelican Gallery in Point Reyes Station.

The exhibition of “landscape photography and paintings” repeatedly juxtaposed photos and paintings of the same scene, such as these two views of Black Mountain from the east. This was the second year in a row that the Rogers and Wood have mounted a joint exhibit.

Meanwhile, photographers Richard Blair and his wife Kathleen Goodwin held a party in their Inverness Park studio a week ago to celebrate publication of their new book, Visions of Marin.

The couple previously produced California Trip and the highly successful Point Reyes Visions coffee-table books.

Visions of Marin, as the book’s publicity notes, “includes local histories of Marin towns, beautiful images of Marin’s parks and natural wonders, as well as agriculture, outdoor sports from horse riding to bocce, Sausalito’s sailing community and ethereal landscapes.”

From 1920 to 1991, The New York Daily News called itself “New York’s Picture Paper” because it used photographs with captions rather than articles to report a disproportionate amount of the news.

In that spirit, this blog will now try out a Point Reyes Station Picture Posting.

While carpenter Charlie Morgan was walking out my cabin’s basement door this morning, he spotted a small gopher snake slithering in. We grabbed it although it pretended it was a rattlesnake, flattening its head into a triangle and shaking its rattle-less tail. (Photo by Charlie Morgan)

The snake didn’t like being picked up and tried to wriggle free, but it didn’t strike. Its mouth was so small it probably couldn’t have even if it had wanted to. In any case, I soon released it.

Seeva Cherms, daughter of Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park, gave me this sign as a Christmas present two years ago.

As too many roadkills make evident, the possums of West Marin are in particular need of a safe preserve, so I’ve started one.

A continuing problem, however, is the ancient feud between my hill’s possums and raccoons. Tense encounters occur night after night, and I’ve photographed several, such as this confrontation on Sept. 12.

In an effort to end the inter-species unrest, I finally resorted to a two-millennia-old stratagem for keeping unruly masses complaisant. When anti-social disorder broke out again last night, I distracted the raccoon with bread and circuses — “panem et circenses” in the words of the Roman satirist Juvenal, who coined the phrase around 200 AD. The circus in those days was somewhat different, of course, although it did have lions.

Tonight I tried the same ploy with the possum, and it worked until the raccoon came over and stole the bread. Raccoons are like that — even among themselves. I’m tempted to send one in particular to Father Flanagan’s Home for Wayward Raccoons in Kits Town, Nebraska.

Meanwhile over in Inverness tonight, Linda Petersen, the injured ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, showed up after a Volunteer Fire Department meeting to thank firefighter Burton Eubank (right).

Burton was the first rescue worker on the scene when Linda fell asleep at the wheel June 13 near Motel Inverness and hit a utility pole.

Linda suffered 18 broken bones and a punctured lung in the crash.

Burton tonight noted the dispatcher originally said the crash had occurred just west of downtown Inverness not far from Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant. As he rushed to the scene from Inverness Park, however, Burton discovered the wreck was actually east of town and radioed other members of the volunteer fire department to let them know.

Linda remembers almost nothing from the wreck, so Burton recounted how he evaluated her condition and what he and other firefighters did to remove her from the car without causing further injuries. As it turned out, Linda had two broken vertebrae, so the precautions were crucial.

Burton obviously hadn’t learned how to do all this in one training session, I quipped. “I’ve been a firefighter 24 years,” he replied, “ever since I was 18.” Burton said that some of the VFD’s traffic-accident calls are grim but responses such as Linda’s help balance that.

And put it on your calendar that a benefit to help pay Linda’s medical bills will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18, at Toby’s Feed Barn. There will be entertainment by Johnny and June from El Radio Fantastique, Peter Asmus and Space Debris, and Matt Love’s band (sometimes called the Love Field Allstars). The initial, so to speak, entertainer will be Charlie, the carpenter. Charlie, who’s also a DJ at KWMR, will be MC.

Providing food will be Marin Sun Farms, the Station House Café, Olema Farmhouse, Café Reyes, the Tomales Deli, the Palace Market, the Marshall Store, and Mike and Sally Gale’s Chileno Valley Ranch. In addition, Anastacio Gonzalez will barbecue oysters with his “Famous BBQ Oyster Sauce.” The sauce is now being bottled, with retail sales having begun last July.

“What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times. And you were there.” That was Walter Cronkite’s weekly signoff in the 1950s when he hosted TV docu-dramas, You Are There, which reenacted historic events.

Here in no particular order are some of the events that altered and illuminated the past week or so in West Marin. And now, thanks to the wonders of photography and the Internet, you were there.

The little possum which almost every night drops by for a visit is often a bit intimidated by the larger raccoons which also show up. Last Wednesday the possum was particularly chagrined when a raccoon walked overhead on the railing of my deck en route to the birdbath.

A joyful Linda Petersen, the advertising manager of The West Marin Citizen, came home to Point Reyes Station Saturday after two and a half months of hospitalization.

Linda suffered 11 broken ribs, two broken vertebrae, two broken ankles, a broken leg, a broken kneecap, a broken arm, and a punctured lung when she fell asleep at the wheel June 13 and hit a utility pole in Inverness.

Linda’s left leg is still in a cast, and she continues to need a wheelchair to get around. However, she no longer wears casts on her right leg and left arm or the steel-and-carbon halo that had immobilized her head and neck for seven weeks.

Today she spent a few minutes in The Citizen office and expects to now spend a few hours at her desk most weekdays. Friends and West Marin Senior Services are providing her with meals until she can cook again.

Redwood Empire Disposal, which is franchised to pick up garbage throughout West Marin, this week held its “summer community cleanup.” It was a chance for us customers to stack up to 14 bags, boxes, or cans of bulky waste at curbside to be carted off.

On Campolindo Way, our friendly garbageman Víctor showed up today to haul away the neighborhood’s junk. I had just spent two days cleaning out the basement in preparation for his arrival. Every time the garbage company holds these infrequent events, I scramble to collect half-forgotten stuff I’m finally ready to get rid of.

Here Víctor uses neighbors Skip and Renée Shannon’s recycling bin to hoist their junk into the garbage truck.

Like many West Marin residents, I spend several days each summer trimming trees and brush to make my property safer from wildfires, and here too my personal schedule is regulated by Redwood Empire Disposal’s schedule. The garbage company picks up yard waste only every other week. That invariably leads to a lot of limb lopping just before each pickup.

Mornings have been foggy most days recently in West Marin with the fog (seen here over Inverness Ridge and along Papermill Creek) typically burning off before noon.

The view from my deck reminded me of the wildfires that have been burning elsewhere in California. But it was merely the sun setting behind a fog bank. Gracias a Dios por eso.

Several hundred people on Saturday attended the annual Inverness Fair at the town’s firehouse green. The day of fundraising began with a pancake breakfast sponsored by the Inverness Volunteer Fire Department. The fair also coincided with the Inverness Library’s annual book sale.

As a benefit for Inverness School, the Inverness Store barbecued oysters and sold beer.

The Inverness Yacht Club sold hotdogs to benefit its youth sailing program, and West Marin Community Services sold tostadas, beer, and sodas to raise funds for the Waterdogs, a program that teaches children living around Tomales Bay how to swim. Jim and Julie Monsoon sold ice cream to benefit West Marin Senior Services.

Scoby Zook, a director of Inverness Public Utility District, sold raffle tickets to raise money for the Inverness Association.

The Inverness Association was founded in 1930 as the Inverness Improvement Association.

In his book Summer Town, the late historian Jack Mason of Inverness traces the association’s origin to 1921 when the “Inverness Association for Fire Protection and General Betterment” first appeared on the public record, complaining about a local real estate magnate’s water system.

In 1930, it was incorporated as the Inverness Improvement Association. The association’s purpose, he noted, was “the collection of funds and their expenditure on the construction and maintenance of roads, trails, bridges, and culverts, and for the public welfare of the town.”

As a “political body with little authority, the trails were the association’s domain,” the historian wrote. “It could petition the county on behalf of its membership, but little more.”

The association began getting involved in “off-the-trail” issues when investors in the 1940s began buying beaches that had been open to the public and building homes on them, board member Michael Mery told reporter Will Kennedy of the old Point Reyes Light four years ago.

Alarmed by the trend, association members successfully fought for the creation of Tomales Bay State Park, which officially came into existence in 1952. Association members in the 1960s also joined the fight to create the Point Reyes National Seashore.

In early 1970 the association’s then-president Michael Whitt, MD, proposed that the group’s name be changed from the Inverness Improvement Association to the Inverness Association. “The idea being there was nothing to improve,” he told The Light reporter.

All the same, the IA (as it is often called) has remained active in land-use planning issues. And in 2004, it spearheaded the drive to have county government create the center median through downtown to slow traffic on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

For a third year, fairgoers were entertained by the band System 9, which played a mélange of jazz, popular music, and hard rock.

Along with a row of tables providing information about the Coastal Health Alliance, Marin Agricultural Land Trust, and the National Park Service, other booths sold crafts, art, jams and jellies.

Among those selling crafts was Maidee Moore of Inverness, who sold ornate canes to help finance surgery for Third World children with cleft lips and palates. Along with helping these children, Maidee for years was a leader of the Tomales Bay Waterdogs. In June, she was marshal of the Western Weekend Parade.

Co-chairmen for this year’s fair were Jerry Abbott, Tom Branon, and Ken Emanuels.

In his documentary Sicko, director Michael Moore includes a “confession” by a long-time Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) physician, who was speaking before Congress.

“My name is Linda Peeno,” she began. “I am here primarily today to make a public confession: In the Spring of 1987, as a physician, I denied a man a necessary operation that would have saved his life, and thus caused his death.

“No person and no group has held me accountable for this because, in fact, what I did was I saved a company a half a million dollars… And furthermore, this particular act secured my reputation as a good medical director, and it insured my continued advancement in the healthcare field. I went from making a few hundred dollars a week as a medical reviewer to an escalating six-figure income as a physician executive.

“In all my work, I had one primary duty, and that was to use my medical expertise for the financial benefit of the organization for which I worked. And I was told repeatedly that I was not denying care; I was simply denying payment.”

Throughout the United States, as Moore’s film reveals, such stratagems pervade  health insurers’ medical decisions and are evident in the way health-insurance policies are written. Here’s one patient’s experience with Kaiser Permanente, a not-for-profit health plan insuring 8.6 million members. Its website reports revenues last year topped $40 billion.

Linda Petersen, ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, suffered 11 broken ribs, two broken vertebrae, two broken ankles, a broken leg, a broken kneecap, a broken arm, and a punctured lung when she fell asleep at the wheel June 13 and hit a utility pole in Inverness. This week she had another disastrous collision, this time with her Kaiser Permanente medical-insurance policy.

“It’s kind of insane,” she told me Thursday when I visited her at The Rafael: Assistance for Living, a convalescent hospital in San Rafael. “Having health insurance doesn’t mean you’ll be covered.”

Linda, as can be seen in the photo, still wears casts on both legs and her left arm. Her head and neck are immobilized by a steel-and-carbon “halo.” Although she remains physically helpless, Kaiser told her yesterday her hospitalization costs will not be covered after next week until she’s ready for more-advanced physical therapy.

What’s the rationale for stopping coverage? “A Kaiser representative said I was fulfilling the physical-therapy goals by being able to transfer to a wheelchair,” Linda explained. “They’re looking for all these bureaucratic excuses.”

It’s not that she can get into a wheelchair on her own, mind you. It takes a physical therapist to carefully lift her to the edge of the bed, help her balance and pivot on her right foot (which isn’t as badly broken as her left), and then seat her in the chair. Once she’s in it, all she can do is sit, which she does for an hour a day.

Kaiser yesterday told Linda that next week the lower-paid staff at The Rafael will be trained so that one of them can take over from the two therapists who have been moving her.

This may be penny wise and pound foolish since moving her requires expertise; on Friday, after this posting originally went online, a skilled therapist lost his grip while moving her, and she had to catch herself by standing on her broken left leg and shattered ankle. Now she can barely move the leg, which had begun to heal.

The Rafael, Linda explained, is one of three hospitals in Marin County with which Kaiser has convalescent-care contracts. “I have no option to go anywhere else,” Linda said, and “I can’t be kicked out.” But starting a week from now, she’ll have to pay The Rafael $1,750 per week for at least the next month.

Linda with her elderly dog Sebastian who died in the crash.

“After next week,” Linda said, “Kaiser won’t cover anything until the doctor says I can put more weight on my weight-bearing extremities [e.g. the foot the physical therapist dropped her on]. It’s a matter of what the fine print says in the insurance contract.” Linda, who got her Kaiser policy through her job, noted, “You don’t sit down and read all of it.” Nor would it make any difference if you did.

“I felt shocked that they could stand there — when I’m totally helpless — and say I’m not going to be covered,” Linda remarked. “But it’s become general knowledge that’s how healthcare works in this country. It’s mind boggling to me that anyone would vote against universal healthcare.

“As a patient, you’re confronted in a very vulnerable situation. It’s horrible. I was crying this morning. They threw me into turmoil. I don’t know how long I’m going to be here. I don’t know how much it will cost.”

“But I can’t sit here and agonize over it,” she added, and — putting on a smile — began poring over today’s issue of The Citizen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First an update on the condition of Linda Petersen since so many  people have asked about her. As was reported here, she  fell asleep at the wheel in Inverness a week ago and drove into a utility pole.

Linda, who is 61 and lives in Inverness, suffered multiple broken bones and a punctured lung. Her 16-year-old Havanese dog Sebastian, well known in Point Reyes Station for his sweet disposition, died in the crash.

Sebastian and a raccoon appear to be seated across the table from each other à la C.M. Coolidge’s series of paintings a century ago, Dogs Playing Poker. In fact, there was a window pane between these two.

I visited Linda today at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland where she has been transferred from Marin General Hospital.

Although she faces more surgery, Linda was in remarkably good spirits. She is, of course, the advertising manager for The West Marin Citizen, and while we were talking, she received a call on her cell phone from Citizen publisher Joel Hack. Suddenly Linda was back on the job from her hospital bed. “Check with Toby’s,” she told Joel. “Susan Hayes’ ad won’t be ready till Wednesday….”

Linda’s head and neck are immobilized by a medical “halo,” and she can raise only one arm. Nonetheless, she cracked jokes with Joel and later remarked that by staying involved in her work, she’s reducing the boredom of being stuck in a hospital. Now there’s a brave response to an awful predicament.

Now for an update on the wildlife around my cabin. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen as great a variety of critters on my deck at night as I normally see in a year. Here’s a gray fox that stopped by last week.

A raccoon finds its wandering obstructed by a possum on my deck.

When the possum didn’t leave, the raccoon took a run around it, giving the possum a wide berth. The possum hissed and bared its teeth but did nothing else. For several weeks, I’ve periodically seen this possum and raccoon warning off each other as they pass by on my deck. Sometimes, however, they ignore each other entirely.

A blacktail doe on this hill gave birth to a couple fawns roughly two months ago. Today they followed their mother around my pasture while a year-old buck grazed nearby.

The fawns appear healthy and are now old enough to enjoy bounding across my fields. I see them as a good omen for this summer.

The advertising manager of The West Marin Citizen, Linda Petersen, 61, of Inverness, suffered major injuries last night around midnight when her car hit a utility pole just west of Motel Inverness.

Her tiny Havanese dog Sebastian was killed in the crash, causing much sadness around Point Reyes Station.

Linda took him everywhere she went, and when The Citizen opened its office in Point Reyes Station more than a year ago, Sebastian soon became a much-beloved dog about town.

A gentle animal with long, silky hair and almost sad eyes, Sebastian charmed most people. Adults, as well as children, regularly stopped by The Citizen office just to see him.

As it happened, I had taken care of Sebastian all afternoon and evening yesterday while Linda helped with a caterer’s event in Stinson Beach.

On her way home to Inverness, Linda stopped by my cabin about 11:30 p.m. to pick up Sebastian but didn’t stick around long, explaining that she was sleepy and needed to get to bed. Unfortunately, her concern proved to be all too valid.

Sebastian among my daffodils.

Just after she drove through Inverness Park, she fell asleep at the wheel, ran off Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, and hit a utility pole. A sheriff’s deputy noted that although the car’s front end was crushed, the utility pole received virtually no damage.

Photographer Jasper Sanidad caught Linda’s and Sebastian’s affection for each other being echoed by a couple behind them in the garden of Café Reyes.

Paramedics transported Linda to Marin General Hospital, where she underwent surgery today for multiple broken bones and a collapsed lung.

Linda’s daughter Saskia van der Wal places roses on a small cairn above Sebastian’s grave.

This afternoon, Linda’s daughter Saskia and I picked up Sebastian’s body at the Marin Humane Society, where Animal Control had taken him. Returning to Point Reyes Station from Novato, we stopped near Nicasio Reservoir’s dam where a roadsign warns of falling rocks and gathered a trunk-full of rocks. She and I then buried Sebastian under a persimmon tree in my front yard and used the rocks to erect a cairn over his grave.

The mound of rocks is intended to serve both as a memorial to Sebastian and as a barrier to critters that might want to dig him up.

Linda was my houseguest for a year in 2007-08, and she and I have remained close friends.

I’m still in shock over what has happened to her, but I’m confident her spirit will be what saves her. When I talked with Linda at Marin General today, she was determined to get through this ordeal and resume her normal life.

As for Sebastian, during the year he and Linda lived in my cabin, we became buddies. (In this photo by Linda, I’m sheltering him from a cold wind.) When Linda was away, Sebastian slept beside me on my bed at night. In recent months I had looked after him several afternoons a week.

However, at 16 Sebastian was virtually deaf, legally blind, and (for the last few months) hobbled by an untreatable tumor on a rear leg. He didn’t have that much longer to live, but I still haven’t come to terms with the finality of his death. I probably won’t for some time.

As an old dog, Sebastian was too blind to notice the deer close behind him, and the doe quickly realized he was no threat.

Sebastian came from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where Linda lived for more than 20 years. Saskia had found him running in the streets of a working-class neighborhood, filthy, and eating garbage.

He nonetheless was such a sweet dog that Saskia tracked down his owners and asked if she could have him. Embarrassed by his condition, they gave him to her. In short, even as a young dog Sebastian was so good-natured he saved himself from a street dog’s life and enjoyed 11 good years instead. He was that charming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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