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William R. Hobbs, a homeless resident of Point Reyes Station.

Over the past few months I’ve gotten to know a homeless man, Billy Hobbs, 61, who hangs out in downtown Point Reyes Station, often at a table in front of the community peace garden or a table outside Toby’s Coffee Bar. He also frequents benches outside the postoffice, the Palace Market, Cabaline, and the yellow hut at the commons. He sleeps outside at night except when it’s raining. Then he sleeps in the post office. (And, no, he’s not the much-publicized drunk who could not control his bladder and bowels while passed out in there.)

Billy has been homeless for almost five years. He held many jobs in his younger days, in construction, painting, and agriculture among others; now he hopes to find parttime work around town.

Billy these days is primarily an artist, and he often spends his days sketching.

A drawing, which Billy is still finishing, of Jesus on the cross.

Here Billy shows one of his sketches to another artist, Igor Sazevich of Inverness.

Billy’s sketch of a Buddhist deity.

Billy grew up in Marin County, the son of a well-known attorney, Kendall E. Hobbs. As an adult, he spent several years living in Montana and lived for a brief spell in Mexico. At present, he is hoping to convince county government to provide parttime work for homeless people in Marin County.

Here is a letter he wrote this week to Supervisor Dennis Rodoni:

Dear Supervisor Rodoni,

A Point Reyes Station friend a couple of weeks ago encouraged me to write you concerning this particularly thorny issue. I am not professing to be an expert on any of these issues, but I have been involved with them. 

I grew up in Marin but have been homeless in the county for close to five years now, and I think I have met enough of the homeless people living here in Marin to have a pretty good idea as to what they need and want things that would make life easier for all of us.

Myth v. Fact. Homeless people are all drug addicts or alcoholics, or just plain crazy, or too lazy to work. Wrong! There are many different ways to become homeless. Nobody that I have met or talked to wants or chooses to be homeless.

Some just no longer want to be part of a society that can barely recognize their existence. Some are just not willing to admit their problems. Some just don’t know how to ask for help.

Some things that we could come to an agreement on: Do homeless people exist in Marin? Of course, they do. To make things more understandable, here are some steps we can all take. Pay them, like they do in Half Moon Bay, $15 an hour for a part-time garden-growing project, recycling, or cleaning streets.

We just need to give them a chance to feel like they’re part of our community, as well as get more government help. Housing, where is it? Can homeless people get it through the state or federal government? The county needs an aide I can write to inquire about getting on a list.

I know that if we were given the chance, many of us would certainly work in order to get housing or make some money. I previously worked and provided money to my family. Please give us the chance to prove it! Throw us a lifeline, please.

Sincerely, William R. Hobbs, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956 

Or leave a message at the Food Bank in West Marin. Thank you very much.

Billy holds up his drawing of Sir Francis Drake landing in Drakes Bay, where the privateer spent 36 days in 1579.

A science fiction fantasy, which Billy calls “Space Jam,” features an other-worldly musician.

Billy’s sketch of himself.

In his letter to Supervisor Rodoni, Billy points out that not all homeless people are “drug addicts or alcoholics, or just plain crazy, or too lazy to work.” Having gotten to know him, I don’t dispute this fact.

Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

If you like wildlife, state government wants you to kill some of it.

California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife has announced it will try “to recruit new hunters and anglers throughout the state” because hunters provide 60 percent of the funding for fish and wildlife conservation through license fees and taxes on guns and ammunition, The San Francisco Chronicle reported three months ago. 

That funding has been steadily declining. “Only about 5 percent of Americans 16 and older hunt,” a 50-percent decline in just five decades,” The Chronicle explained. “The decline is attributable to urbanization, the rise of media entertainment, restricted access to hunting territory, and a lack of free time. Additionally, hunting declines as the population ages, and as the Baby Boomers grow ever older, the number of hunters will continue to plummet.”

Hunting doesn’t appeal to me. As I see it, the state’s encouraging hunting, accompanied by purchases of guns and ammunition, in order to bolster license fees and taxes makes as much sense as it would to encourage double parking in order to collect more in parking fines.

Solar panels.

The curse of solar panels. Solar panels are becoming popular in Afghanistan, The Economist reported last week, but they’re not being used primarily for homes. They’re mostly used for growing opium to make heroin, which “helps fund the Taliban, as well as pro-government warlords who are scarcely better.” The panels provide the electricity for opium farmers to pump water from deep wells, and that’s lowering the water table, the magazine noted. “Shallow wells have gone completely dry.”

Judaism’s Star of David

Still another, but happier, surprise. In a review of the book Sacred Liberty: America’s Long, Bloody and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom, the same Economist also reported that in contrast to historic anti-Semitism, “Jews are now the country’s best-liked religious group but the warm attitudes transcend philo-Semitism.” What’s happened? “By 2010 around half of all Americans had a spouse of a different religious tradition. Neighborhoods, workplaces, and friendships have become more religiously diverse.” It’s clearly counterproductive to be prejudiced against one’s friends and associates.

The Victorian-era poet Robert Browning (1812-1889).

One of the English poet Robert Browning’s most memorable lines is: “God is in His heaven, all’s right with the world,” which is from the poem Pippa Passes. “But,” as the linguist/journalist Bill Bryson points out in his book The Mother Tongue, “it also contains this disconcerting passage: ‘Then owls and bats/ Cowls and twats,/ Monks and nuns in a cloister’s moods,/ Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry.’

“Browning had apparently somewhere come across the word twat, which meant precisely the same then as it does now but pronounced with a flat a” and somehow took it to mean a piece of headgear for nuns. The verse became a source of twittering amusement for generations of schoolboys and a perennial embarrassment to their elders, but the word was never altered, and Browning was allowed to live out his life in wholesome ignorance because no one could think of a suitably delicate way of explaining his mistake to him.”

The rainbow flag of the LGBT movement.

Another racy surprise. Researchers had concluded that gay men tend to have more older brothers than straight men. Harper’s magazine, however, last October reported further research has found that “holds true only for those who are prone to be the receiving partner during anal sex.” Make of that what you will. I won’t hazard a guess.

Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

Photographer Marna G. Clarke of Inverness (at left) on Saturday opened an exhibit of portraits of older West Marin residents. The display at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station is called Autumn, and Marna explains: “In 2010 I turned 70 and wanted to document that stage of my life. I photographed myself, my partner and both of us in our daily lives…. Surrounded by fascinating, vital and active seniors, I began taking portraits of them as well….

“These portraits are of people I know, some well, others tangentially. They are in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, with one in his 60s…. Our youthful ‘Summer’ bloom has moved into ‘Autumn,’ for some more than others. We’re all having to adjust to the changes happening to our faces and bodies. A distillation of our life experiences has been gurgling away for years leaving a wisdom that now informs and guides us.”

Here are a few of the 20 portraits Marna is exhibiting, along with her notes identifying them:

‘ANDREW.  Born 1923 in London. Grew up at Grace & Favor House, Windsor Great Park, England. Came to West Marin in 1974. Photo taken in 2010.’

‘SANDY. 1924-2015. Born in Chicago. Grew up in Evanston, Illinois. Came to West Marin in the 1950s. Photo taken in 2006.’

‘JOE. Born 1935, Johannesburg, Transvaal, South Africa. Grew up in Johannesburg. Came to Inverness in 1971. MO. Born 1934, Belgian Congo, now Lubumbashi. Grew up in Johannesburg and Belgian Congo. Came to Inverness in 1971. Photo taken in 2019.’

‘PAUL. Born in 1951, London. Grew up in London. Came to West Marin in 1993. Photo taken in 2010.’

‘MURRAY. Born 1942, Cleveland, Ohio. Grew up in Cleveland Heights, Hollywood, Florida, New England. Came to West Marin in 2001. Photo taken in 2006.’

‘NED. Born in 1947, Cincinnati, Ohio. Grew up in Menlo Park, California. Came to West Marin in 1993. Photo taken in 2019.’

‘LAURE. Born in 1931, Paris. Grew up in a small village in the middle of France. Came to West Marin in 1972. Photo taken in 2018.’

‘VAN. Born 1949, New Orleans, Louisiana. Grew up all over (father was a US naval officer). Came to West Marin in 1976. Photo taken in 2019.’

Marna’s photography is straightforward but intense, which makes her portraits quietly dramatic. Visitors this past weekend were fascinated by the exhibition, which will hang in the gallery through June 16.

Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

In the past month a raven has taken to frequenting the birdbath on our deck. Yesterday Lynn was startled when she looked up from breakfast in time to see a raven eating a mouse-sized critter next to the birdbath. “What could that have been?” we both wondered.

When I later checked the birdbath, however, there was no flesh or bones, but I could see where the raven had left part of an egg shell and its inner lining.

This morning the birdbath held the remains of a bird that had been eaten by the raven. That, along with the egg shell, suggested an unpleasant pattern, so I checked a National Geographic website to find out what ravens eat. It confirmed they “prey on eggs and nestlings of other birds, such as coastal seabirds, as well as rodents, grains, worms, and insects. Ravens do dine on carrion and sometimes on human garbage.”

We’ve seen red-winged blackbirds buzz the raven both when it’s flying and when it’s standing, making us suspect their nests are getting targeted by the raven and its mate.

Here a raven arrives at the birdbath with a mouse in its beak. After dunking its prey in the birdbath several times, he set it down to eat.

Holding the mouse carcass with one foot, the raven tears off hunks of flesh. It’s not a pretty sight, but I don’t mind ravens eating mice. If ravens must kill to eat, I’d rather have them eat rodents than songbird eggs and chicks.

As a hunter, the raven is more aggressive than I had realized. “Teams of ravens have been known to hunt down game too large for a single bird,” National Geographic noted.

Ravens are extremely intelligent animals and can mimic the sounds of other birds, as well as wolves and foxes. In captivity, I read elsewhere, ravens can learn to talk better than some parrots, and they’re as smart as chimpanzees and dolphins.