West Marin is finding ways to deal with the federal shutdown as conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives hold the national budget hostage to their goal of eliminating the country’s new affordable-healthcare program.

With the Point Reyes National Seashore, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and Muir Woods National Monument temporarily closed, some residents and visitors are paying more attention to the coastal art scene.

At least on the first weekend of the closure, some pieces of national parkland were less closed than others. In the town of Stinson Beach, sybarites continued to use the federal beach but were barred from its parking lot. At Pierce Point, some park visitors simply ignored the “closed” sign in the parking lot. “This was all they put up in the way of a ‘barricade,'” wrote Sarah Paris of San Francisco, who took the photo. She added there were “lots of people parked there and quite a few on the trail.”

Meanwhile, other visitors upon learning they couldn’t explore the Point Reyes Lighthouse decided to explore Point Reyes Station instead. What they found were two art galleries showing a variety of first-rate exhibitions.

Point Reyes Station artist Sue Gonzalez (left) is showing her highly regarded paintings of Tomales Bay at Toby’s Feed Barn Gallery. This painting titled Evening Fog is priced at $4,800.

The exhibition at Toby’s will run throughout October, and Sue will hold an opening reception from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12. The gallery is open until 5 p.m. seven days a week.

Sue at work in the studio of her Point Reyes Station home. She attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison and graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a major in painting. She also studied with prominent Beat artist Wally Hedrick at Indian Valley College and with Ted Greer, who in 1981 made a video of Hedrick.

A visitor to Toby’s Gallery is intrigued by Sue’s painting titled Tomales Bay.

Ripples on the surface of the bay are almost always prominent in Sue’s paintings, but that doesn’t make her art redundant. The movement of the water and the play of light upon it are a large part of her paintings’ appeal. Sue is seen here with her painting titled Reflections 2.

A visitor from Australia admires Sue’s painting titled Teachers Beach.

Besides being a painter, Sue is a “reading-intervention” instructor at West Marin School.

The elementary school includes students with a wide range of abilities in English, especially because many of its students come from Spanish-speaking homes, although Sue herself does not despite her last name being Gonzalez.

That’s the surname of her husband Anastacio Gonzalez, who’s known in West Marin for his jars of Anastacio’s Famous BBQ Oyster Sauce.

Here Sue stirs a brush in the paint on her palette while working in her studio.

Also exhibiting his art this month at Toby’s Gallery is printmaker Tom Killion of Inverness Park. Tom works in Japanese-style woodcut and lino-style prints.

Nicasio by Tom Killion.

Vicente Canyon, Big Sur by Tom Killion. Actually it should be Dr. Tom Killion since he holds a PhD in history.

The opening reception for Tom’s exhibit will also be from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12.

As it happens, just a block away, Gallery Route One also has some fascinating exhibits at the moment. One that I found particularly engaging was a display of works by members of the gallery’s Latino Photography Project.

In the GRO project, professional photographers coach Latinos as they document the immigrant experience, and 10 up-and-coming photographers are represented in the show. This photo by Juanita Romo is titled Mi Primera Comunión.

The Abundance by Ruben Rubledo shows workers with a barge of oyster bags.

Gathering the Harvest by Ruben Rubledo.

The present exhibitions at Gallery Route One also include humorous paintings by Andrew Romanoff of Inverness, grandnephew of the last tsar of Russia, and mixed-media art by Madeline Nieto Hope, who has a wide variety of interests. She holds a Master of Arts degree from UC Berkeley and is the county’s “West Marin education coordinator” for its solid-waste-reduction program.

The exhibits at Gallery Route One will remain up through Sunday, Oct. 20. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day but Tuesday.

A coyote walked past Mitchell cabin five minutes ago, which brings up the question: what other critters are around at this time of the year? Summer will begin Friday, but on this hill some creatures still have quite a bit of spring in their step, as these photos from the past week illustrate.

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A female gray fox has become a daily visitor to Mitchell cabin.

Foxes are tricksters, as many cultures realize.

And the expression “crazy as a fox” has been around far longer than any of us have.

So it was no accident when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp decided to call its off-the-wall reporting “Fox News.” ____________________________________________________________

Finding dinner ready on the picnic table.

This vixen shows up in late afternoon shortly after Lynn and I put out birdseed for our cage-free aviary, which at the moment includes: red-winged blackbirds, tri-color blackbirds, scrub jays, stellar jays, sparrows, finches, towhees, doves, crows, ravens, quail, ring-tailed pigeons, juncos, chickadees, and doves. We call their feeding time “the evening bird show.”

Foxes love birdseed as much as birds do, and I recently witnessed the vixen licking birdseed off my deck while a white-crowned sparrow just overhead pecked birdseed off the railing. _____________________________________________________________

By now the vixen sort of trusts Lynn and me. Here Lynn hands her a couple of slices of bread. It’s a friendly exchange. This particular fox’s table manners are surprisingly dainty — no snapping at the hand that feeds her. ____________________________________________________________

After receiving her bread, the vixen usually foxtrots off a short distance to eat, apparently preferring to do her chewing in private. ________________________________________________________________

A second fox, a male, visits us after dark.

However, that’s also the time when two or three raccoons show up to be hand fed their own slices of bread.

If the raccoons aren’t fed immediately, they often doze by the kitchen door, waiting to be noticed.

The fox and raccoons never fight, but they’re leery of each other.

The more-nimble fox, however, always finds a way to avoid confrontations with them. And I’ve sometimes watched while the quick gray fox jumps over the sleeping coon.

I learned a few years ago that I can get them to eat side by side by putting out two handfuls of peanuts in close proximity on the deck. The lure of honey-roasted peanuts is obviously stronger than their suspicion of each other, as this photo from last week demonstrates. ___________________________________________________________

One critter that no doubt is pleased we’re feeding the foxes is the jackrabbit that hangs out in my fields. I’m sure a hungry fox would be delighted to dine on hare if it could catch one. But it would find it far easier to catch the jackrabbit’s slower-footed cousin, the cottontail rabbit.

Well, that’s our fair and balanced fox news for this week. Stay tuned for Sean Hannity’s harangue against these atheists in foxholes.

Western Weekend, West Marin’s annual salute to its agricultural heritage, was held Saturday and Sunday in Point Reyes Station with a parade and 4-H animal competition.

Pete Tomasetti and his wife riding a 1941 Farmall Tractor followed by a 1938 Allis Chalmers tractor driven by Ben Wright together took first place in the parade’s Farm Vehicle category. _____________________________________________________________

The Point Reyes-Olema 4-H Club’s animal show in Toby’s Feed Barn Saturday. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Hugo Stedwell Hill of Inverness holds an American blue rabbit, which is a heritage breed.

Dorothy Drady of Nicasio, who was watching over the exhibit, gave this account of the rabbit’s evolution:

The American blue was originally bred in Pasadena in 1917 and became the most popular breed in the country because of demand for its fur and meat.

By the 1970s and 80s, the breed was almost extinct. In the 1990s, the American Livestock Breed Conservancy placed the American blue rabbit on its “endangered” list. Nonetheless, there are now fewer than 500 worldwide.

The animal show was smaller than in previous years because some 4-H members who usually take part will instead compete in the Tri-Valley 4-H Fair Sunday, June 9, from 9 a.m. to noon. It will be held at the Pomi Ranch on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road near Union School.

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4-H Club members taking part in the animal show included, front row from left: Ashley Winkelmann, Nicole Casartelli, Ellie Rose Jackson, Phoebe Blantz, Rachel Stevenson, Eva Taylor, Katie Stevenson. Onstage from left: Ruby Clarke, Willow Wallof, Brinlee Stevens, Nina von Raesfeld, Point Reyes-Olema 4-H Club president Audrey von Raesfeld (with clipboard), Olivia Blantz,  Camille Taylor, Caroline von Raesfeld, Marlowe Ural, Gabriel Ural, Stran Stevens, and Max Muncy. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod) _____________________________________________________________

4-H member Olivia Blantz won a top poultry award for her Mille Fleurs type hen of the Belgian d’Uccle Bantam breed.

Mille Fleurs, which is French for 1,000 flowers, refers to the many white spots of feathers.

(Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

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Point Reyes Station’s main street was lined with almost 2,000 parade watchers by starting time at noon Sunday. For the hundreds of children on hand, it was a grand party. _____________________________________________________________

Elise Haley Clark sang the National Anthem acapella just before the parade began. Despite her youth, she sang with poise and drew warm applause from the crowd. _____________________________________________________________

The Marin County Sheriff’s Posse had one of three color guards in the parade, along with the Coast Guard and the National Park Service. ____________________________________________________________

A procession of county and Inverness fire engines followed the color guards at the start of Sunday’s parade. _____________________________________________________________

Western Weekend Queen Sara Tanner, 16, a sophomore at Tomales High, earned her crown by selling the most Western Weekend raffle tickets. ____________________________________________________________

Western Weekend Princess Camille Loring of Marshall, is a senior at Tomales High. She was the runnerup in ticket sales. _____________________________________________________________

The entry from “Return to the Forbidden Planet, Shakespeare’s Forgotten Rock ‘N Roll Musical,” took first place in the parade’s Adult Music category. Singer Phillip Percy Williams (standing with microphone) wowed the crowd with his cover of Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s song “Young Girl.” The musical is scheduled from June 20 to 30 in Tamalpais High’s Caldwell Theater. _____________________________________________________________

The Grand Marshal of Sunday’s Western Weekend Parade was Jim Patterson, who is retired after having been principal at different times of West Marin School and Tomales High. ____________________________________________________________

Papermill Creek Children’s Corner marched and rode down the parade route to publicize the preschool’s upcoming summer camp. ___________________________________________________________

Main Street Moms, who each year have a political entry in the parade, this year called on California Governor Jerry Brown to join the fight against fracking. Fracking, which uses water under pressure to force petroleum and natural gas from underground rock formations, has been blamed for polluting groundwater. _____________________________________________________________

The Nave Patrola, which spoofs the Italian army in World War I, as always was a hit of the Western Weekend Parade. This year the bumbling marchers took second place in the Adult Drill category. _____________________________________________________________

Drakes Bay Oyster Farm, which is fighting a court battle to renew its permit to operate in the Point Reyes National Seashore, entered a large float that carried company workers followed by a band. As the National Academy of Sciences and others have shown, the Park Service has repeatedly faked scientific data in trying to make a case for evicting the more than 80-year-old company.

A man at center in the foreground holds up “Want a Sign?” inviting parade watchers to join the entry and carry a “Save Our Drakes Bay Oyster Farm” sign. _____________________________________________________________

(Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Having supported the oyster company’s cause for several years, I decided I ought to carry a sign.

All went well as we marched semi-rhythmically down the main street to the beat of the band. When we reached the finish of the parade, however, I personally had a bit of excitement.

I was handing my sign to someone sitting on the lowboy behind Lunny’s stopped truck when the truck slowly started up and one of the trailer’s wheels rolled onto the outside edge of my right shoe.

Lowboys are designed to carry heavy equipment, so the weight was substantial. For a couple of moments, I couldn’t move my shoe, but although the wheel was pinching my foot, I didn’t feel any great pain. As it turned out, I had somehow managed to squeeze my toes to the other side of my shoe.

The truck continued to slowly roll forward and soon freed my foot. Nancy Lunny, wife of oyster farm operator Kevin Lunny, saw what had happened and hurried over. “Are you all right?” she asked anxiously. In fact, I was exhilarated from having survived the close call unscathed and told her with a laugh, “I’m perfectly okay.” ____________________________________________________________

A the conclusion of the parade, the Marin County Farm Bureau put on a well-attended barbecue outside of Toby’s Feed Barn. The Doc Kraft Band (under the blue canopy at right) performed country rock ‘n roll music.

Later that afternoon while thinking back to the parade, it occurred to me that my experience with the trailer wheel just might be a metaphor for the oyster company’s fight for survival. The Lunnys may be getting squeezed, but they’re not going to be crushed.

Where the computer age meets the Old West.

For several days I wondered if I would be able to put up a posting this week. A week ago, Horizon Cable upgraded the community’s Internet service, and for the next six days, my computer was able to get online only sporadically. In fact, while writing this I lost my Internet service temporarily.

I’m not knocking Horizon. The staff put in many hours getting me back online. The problem, I’m told, is that my hookup is “non-standard.” It long predates Horizon’s ownership, and the cable is mostly strung along barbed-wire fences. _____________________________________________________________

A toll-gate camera recorded a license plate, and this photograph of a Mercedes in Southern California was sent to me.

More computer problems. Last week I received a letter from Metro ExpressLanes in Gardena, Los Angeles County, informing me that I had violated express-lane regulations on Interstate 10.

“Welcome to the Metro ExpressLanes!” the letter cheerily began. “We noticed that you used the I-10 ExpressLanes without a transponder. As of February 23 at 12:01 a.m., all vehicles (including carpoolers) traveling in the I-10 ExpressLanes are required to have a transponder. The attached violation notice has been issued as a result of your travel without a transponder.

“We understand that the transponder requirement is recent, and the $25 penalty has been waived as a courtesy to you. However, the toll amount [75 cents] is still due.”

The license plate on my 1992 Acura. Can you “C” the difference?

Ever since my former wife Cathy and I bought The Point Reyes Light in 1975, I’ve had a “LIGHT” license plate on my cars. People around West Marin often recognize me on the road because of it.

Unfortunately, Metro ExpressLanes’ computers, which apparently use the Close Enough operating system, proved unable to distinguish between “LIGHT” and “C LIGHT.”

I’ve now written Metro ExpressLanes: “I have not been in Southern California in several years. My car is an Acura, not a Mercedes, and my license plate is “LIGHT,” not “C LIGHT.” Whether that will lay the matter to rest or whether I have become mired in a bureaucratic swamp remains to be seen. _____________________________________________________________

Enjoying a sunny afternoon last week, this dragonfly, a male Red-veined meadowhawk, kept returning to one small twig on a branch next to Mitchell cabin.

Still seeing red. When flying, dragonflies and damselflies look similar, but once they land, they’re easy to tell apart. Dragonflies at rest keep their wings spread, as you see in the above photo.

When damselflies are at rest, they fold their wings over their backs, as this female Common bluetail is doing.

It’s good to have damselflies and dragonflies around because they both eat insects, primarily mosquitos and midges. ______________________________________________________________

The first camellia blossom of spring at Mitchell cabin. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Also in the red: the camellia is the state flower of Alabama although it’s not native to the Deep South or even to the United States. The flowering trees originated in Asia and have been cultivated in China and Japan for centuries.

They began showing up in England during the 1700s as a result of increased trade with Asia. Inventor Col. John Stevens, who had served in George Washington’s army, is credited with introducing them to North America in 1797. He is said to have imported some camellias from England to beautify his land in Hoboken, New Jersey. ________________________________________________________________

Male quail (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) has been called one of the great poets of American literature, and when these guys (above and below) showed up on Sunday morning, they brought to mind four lines from the final stanza of Stevens’ poem Sunday Morning:

“We live in an old chaos of the sun,/ Or old dependency of day and night…. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail/ Whistle about us their spontaneous cries….”

Of course, their spontaneous cries can’t begin to match mine when my Internet connection manages to get itself “lost,” as they say, while I’m using my computer.

Female Blacktail deer

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The weather has been so pleasant the last few days that even horses in the field next to mine have taken to lying down and basking in the sun.

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Meanwhile, a badger has excavated a burrow (also known as a “sett”) in the grass in front of Mitchell cabin.

As was noted here four years ago, “Badgers mate in late summer,” according to the Parks Canada website. “However, the fertilized egg does not implant into the uterus and begin to develop until February.

“This delayed implantation means that breeding can occur in the summer when the adults are most active, and young are born in the spring when food is abundant….

“They live off their mother’s milk until August when they strike off to establish their own home range.”

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Badgers live in setts up to 30 feet long and 10 feet deep, for they are extremely efficient diggers thanks to long claws and short, strong legs.

Although they can run up to 17 or 18 mph for short distances, they generally hunt by digging fast enough to pursue rodents into their burrows.

Its common for badgers to take over the burrows of prey they’ve eaten. Given the overabundance of gophers on this hill, I suspect that’s how this sett came to be.

I’ve found a couple of other holes along my driveway where a badger apparently chased gophers into their burrows. However, the holes were small compared to the sett’s opening, leading me to infer the badger gave up the chase in these other locations.

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A mother badger is known as a sow while her offspring are called cubs or kits. In May 2009, I photographed this sow and kit sunning themselves atop their sett in the horses’ pasture.

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Hank Snow (1914-1999).

On old song from the western countryside. While letting my thoughts wander a week ago, I happened to remember the late Hank Snow. He was without a doubt Country and Western music’s preeminent singer from Nova Scotia.

In 1962, the highly popular performer recorded the tongue-twister hit I’ve Been Everywhere (Click here to hear). The song required awesome elocution, and it inspired more than a 125 knockoff versions.

Snow himself had taken an Australian song and reworded it for North American audiences. Many of the knockoffs localized the song’s place names to appeal to listeners in different parts of the US. Through a friend from Florida, I knew of a version aimed specifically at certain cities and towns in that state. (The singer, however, couldn’t begin to match Snow’s virtuosity.)

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A mysterious turn of events: In my March 31 posting, I noted that according to Google Analytics, which tracks visits to this blog, the number of readers in my hometown of Point Reyes Station had plummeted to zero during the first few days of last month while readership in Sunnyvale mushroomed. Offhandedly I joked, “Has Silicon Valley hijacked West Marin?”

The posting must have caught somebody’s eye. Within a week of its going online, according to Google Analytics statistics, visits to this blog from Sunnyvale fell off to virtually none.

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Meanwhile, again according to Google Analytics statistics, the number of visits to this blog from Point Reyes Station residents returned to normal. Could this be coincidence? The history of the Old West is replete with unsolved mysteries.

Last Tuesday this blog published its 400th posting. In its nearly eight years of existence, SparselySageAndTimely has managed to inform, amuse, or irritate visitors each week without fail.

Moreover, the number of visitors it attracts keeps growing. I pay attention to which topics interest people, and like many other bloggers, I depend on Google Analytics to tell me how many readers I have and where they live. But suddenly strange things are happening at Google.

A Google Analytics graph indicates 3,335 people from around the world visited SparselySageAndTimely during March.

Google Analytics, which is supposed to tally how many people visit this blog each day, reported that on Saturday, SparselySageAndTimely drew 256 visitors from around the globe, up from 255 on Friday. For a blog that focuses on small-town life, those are pretty good numbers. [After this posting was already online, Google Analytics reported a whopping 428 people visited SparselySageAndTimely on Sunday.]

Google Analytic’s graph of how many visits this blog received from the Point Reyes Station area during March.

Google, however, seems determined to rain on my parade. SparselySageAndTimely’s highest number of visits (averaging about 10 a day) has traditionally come from Point Reyes Station, where this blog originates. Nonetheless, the Google Analytics’ graph for March suggests that everyone in town suddenly stopped reading SparselySageAndTimely three and a half weeks ago.

If Google were to be believed, this blog has received only one visit from Point Reyes Station since March 5 and no visits whatsoever from any other town in West Marin. I might worry that SparselySageAndTimely had somehow offended all its readers here or bored them to death except for the fact that West Marin residents continue commenting to me about postings they’ve just read.

I’m not enough of a computer techie to figure out at what point along the Internet Google Analytics lost track of West Marin. As far as this blogger is concerned, it’s annoying to receive obviously incorrect statistics; however, it’s also reassuring to know conclusively that the days when readership is reportedly high are, in fact, even better. And days when readership is reportedly low aren’t really all that bad.

Janine Warner of DigitalFamily.com designed this website, and offhand she wasn’t sure what the problem might be or how to find out. One possibility, she said, is that residents of the Point Reyes Station area are now being counted in with residents of a neighboring community.

I checked the numbers for all the nearby towns and cities, and none of them appeared to have suddenly increased its readership. But then as I looked at the above list of the 10 communities in California with the most readers, something caught my attention. Sunnyvale.

Has Silicon Valley hijacked West Marin? With 118 visitors a month to this blog, Sunnyvale has now jumped to second place behind San Francisco with its 157 visitors. Until the first week of March, Google was consistently reporting that SparselySageAndTimely.com had more readers in little old Point Reyes Station than in those two cities combined. In less than a month, if Google’s statistics were to be believed, this blog’s hometown has dropped to sixth place in readership and will soon disappear from the Internet.

As Mark Twain wrote, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

All of this is, of course, just a curiosity of the Worldwide Web. The only real damage it does is to my ability to see what topics are of greatest interest to people in West Marin.

Far worse damage will occur at the end of June when Google eliminates its RSS feeds. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or alternately Really Simple Syndication. RSS feeds notify readers by email when a new posting goes online, as well as provide a link to the posting.

More than 92 percent of this blog’s readers in Point Reyes Station visit more than once a month, and some of these readers have told me they use a Google RSS feed to alert them to new postings. When Google eliminates its RSS feeds come July 1, this blog might actually lose some West Marin readers.

It’s a dilemma, and at the moment I’m pondering alternative solutions. What a way to celebrate turning 400!

In the 1970s and earlier, the West Marin Lions Club owned the Red Barn on Mesa Road in Point Reyes Station and used it for a community center large enough to hold huge gatherings. All that changed when Rip Goelet of Inverness Park bought the building, painted it green, and began hosting smaller events.

One of the large events which used to be held there was the annual St. Patrick’s Day barbecue, a benefit for Sacred Heart Church in Olema. These days, of course, the barbecue is held at the Dance Palace as it was on Sunday.

On St. Paddy’s Day in 1979, one of the fundraising events at the barbecue gave youngsters a chance to win a goldfish, such as Louis Ptak of Inverness (center) has just won by throwing a ping pong ball into a bottle. Point Reyes Light photo

This story is also set in 1979 although it began a year earlier. As it happened, young Michael Leighton of Inverness Park won a baby chick at the St. Patrick’s Day barbecue in 1978.

His parents, John and Darlene, were not altogether delighted, but John found an old chicken coop at the dump and fixed it up for Michael’s new pet. (This was back before the county closed the West Marin Sanitary Landfill in Point Reyes Station.)

The chick grew into a chicken, and the chicken, alas, turned out to be a rooster. As a pet, it couldn’t be eaten, but by itself in a cage, it was worthless. It required care and feeding and because of its enforced celibacy developed into an irascible pet.

In September 1979, matters got even worse. The rooster was outgrowing its cage. The Leightons, who were building a house on top of tall, wooden poles rather than on a cement foundation, were living in a trailer on the property during construction. They didn’t have time to build a new cage for the rooster, which only their son liked anyhow.

Before long, the rooster took to crowing every sunrise for an hour, beginning shortly after 5 a.m. “That’s it,” said John one morning. “That rooster has got to go.” Darlene agreed but worried how her son would react.

Later that day, John and Darlene were working on their new house when a family of tourists from Reno dropped by to admire the pole construction. The tourists also had a son, and he wandered over to the rooster’s cage. Impressed by the surly bird, he called his parents over to look.

“Would you be interested in selling that rooster?” the father asked Darlene. “We have a flock of 40 hens in Reno, and our one rooster has gotten too old to take care of them.”

The ancient Greeks and Romans called such turns of events “deus ex machina.” When a playwright had written his actors into such a tangle that only the intervention of the gods could straighten things out, a god (deus) would be lowered onto the stage by a machine.

From the bird’s eye view, this drama in Inverness Park must have seemed to have a deus ex Reno. Instead of ending up in a stew pot while his young owner wept, the randy rooster found himself en route to Reno where a harem of 40 hens awaited him.

As for John and Darlene, the tourists gave them $5 for the rooster and cage. Michael, who was off playing while this miracle on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard occurred, was left an invitation to visit his former pet the next time he got to Reno.

This world may have been going to hell in a handbasket, but for one September afternoon in Inverness Park, all was well.

She’ll be missed. Thursday was the last day of February, which also meant it was Kathy Runnion’s last day working in the Point Reyes Station Post Office. With the Postal Service eliminating employees, closing post offices, and stopping Saturday deliveries to save money, Kathy accepted an early retirement offer.

Kathy on Thursday said her goodbyes while serving refreshments in the post office’s lobby. One of the reasons for doing so was to assure postal customers she was in good spirits and hadn’t “gone postal,” she joked. With her are Oscar Gamez from Toby’s Feed Barn (at left) and David Briggs from The Point Reyes Light (at center).

Kathy, who lives in Inverness Park, worked 24 years for the Postal Service, 14 years as a clerk in the Point Reyes Station Post Office, four in the Bolinas Post Office, and one in the Inverness Post Office plus five years as a rural carrier in Glen Ellen.

It’s not that Kathy had been angling for early retirement. Seated at a Toby’s Feed Barn table near the post office, Kathy (at right) in November 2011 distributed American Postal Workers Union literature. The flyers urged the public to back a congressional measure, House Bill 1351, so that the Postal Service would be saved rather than savaged.

“The problem,” the APWU explained, “is that a bill passed in 2006 is pushing the Postal Service into bankruptcy. The law imposes a burden on the USPS that no other government agency or private company bears. It requires the Postal Service to pay a 75-year liability in just 10 years to ‘pre-fund’ healthcare benefits for future retirees. The $20 billion in postal losses you heard about doesn’t stem from the mail but rather from [the] congressional mandate.”

Unfortunately, Congress as usual wasn’t up to protecting the public interest once politics got involved.

Another lost cause. Kathy (right) in May 2008 joined other West Marin residents in trying to dissuade the Vedanta Society from letting the Point Reyes National Seashore use Vedanta property as a staging area for slaughtering a herd of fallow deer. Estol T. Carte (center), the Vedanta Society’s president, listened to the polite group of demonstrators but promised nothing and delivered just that.

US Senator Dianne Feinstein, then-Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, then-Lt. Governor John Garamendi, famed zoologist Jane Goodall, and the senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, John Grandy, PhD, were likewise on record as opposing the impending slaughter, but the Park Service was out for blood.

Nearly all the fallow and axis deer in the park were gone within months despite recent assurances from the National Seashore that the killing would be carried out over 11 years, which would allow time to take another look at whether to get rid of all the exotic deer. It was one more frustrating flip-flop by the Park Service, which in 1974 had insisted the deer belonged in the National Seashore because they were “an important source of visitor enjoyment.”

Kathy feeding denizens of a Planned Feralhood enclosed shelter at a Nicasio barn.

Retiring from the Postal Service will not take Kathy out of the public eye, however. For 12 years she has headed Planned Feralhood, an organization that traps and spays or neuters feral cats.

More than 700 of them have been adopted for pets. Some of those which could not be domesticated were let loose but with feeding sites established so they don’t have to fight over scraps of food and garbage. Others are being cared for in Planned Feralhood shelters.

Planned Feralhood recently became a non-profit corporation after operating for years under the fiscal umbrella of other nonprofits. Donations can be sent to Box 502, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956.

Two gray foxes basking in the sun as seen from a rear window of the Point Reyes Station Post Office. The foxes are on the roof of a shed that’s part of Toby’s Feed Barn and adjoins the Building Supply Center’s lumberyard.

In December 2009, I was at home one morning when I got a call from Kathy at the post office. I’d probably like to get a photo of a pair of foxes sleeping just outside a post office window, she said. I grabbed my camera and rushed into town, managing to get there in time to record the scene.

Two days before she retired, I received a similar message from her: “I’ve got a downtown wildlife story for you that needs investigation.” Naturally, I asked what was up. Kathy said she had seen some kind of hawk, although not a red-tailed or a red-shouldered hawk, walking on the cement floor just inside the Feed Barn next door.

People were at the coffee bar in the entranceway, but they didn’t seem to worry the hawk, which was surprising because hawks tend to avoid humans. Kathy added that all the small birds that used to nest among the rafters of the Feed Barn had disappeared.

I asked Feed Barn owner Chris Giacomini about this, and he confirmed the birds had disappeared, but he didn’t know about the hawk. It seems a hawk had discovered good hunting at Highway 1 and Second Street. All the pigeons that used to perch on top of the Grandi Building also disappeared for awhile, Kathy told me, but a few have returned.

With Kathy’s retirement from the post office, Point Reyes Station is losing not only a first-rate postal clerk but also a first-rate observer of the wildlife to be found in the town’s commercial strip.

The Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History in Inverness on Sunday held a grand opening for a new exhibition, “Hometown: Growing Up in Point Reyes Station.” The exhibition consists of fascinating photographs from the Codoni family, whose patriarch Quinto Codoni immigrated to West Marin from Switzerland’s Italian-speaking Canton of Ticino 140 years ago.

Clara and Quinto Codoni on D Ranch. The driftwood porpoise (in background at left) had Coca Cola caps for eyes and bailing rope for whiskers.

Quinto Codoni (1855-1940), part of a wave of immigration to West Marin from Ticino, was 18 years old when he joined his brother Joe in Tocaloma.

“This was 1873,” the late Jack Mason wrote in the Winter, 1980, issue of The Point Reyes Historian. “There was no train. The little schooners then in use were equipped to carry butter, not hogs.

“It was young Quinto’s job, on behalf of Charles Howard’s tenant ranchers [on Point Reyes], to get their pigs to the nearest scow for San Francisco [which landed in Drakes Estero]. On foot this took up to three days.

“Once at the Ferry Building, the hogs were put aboard wagons and taken to a slaughterhouse on Sansome Street. A commission merchant paid them later in gold.

“Thus Quinto got his Big Chance in America.”

Lucy Codoni (at right) was a daughter of Quinto and Clara.

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Lucy Codoni’s granddaughter Sharen Hicks Schrock of Petaluma (center) loaned albums of family photos to the Jack Mason Museum, so they could be copied and exhibited. Enjoying the grand opening with museum curator Dewey Livingston (left) and their mother are Marley, 11, and Jaden, 14, two great-great granddaughters of Quinto Codoni.

“The Codonis’ cabin at Drakes Beach was the site of relaxation and entertainments for two or three generations,” according to the exhibit. “Quinto and his friends built the cabin, located at the entrance to Drakes Estero, and hosted family and friends alike. At least once, waves damaged or destroyed the place, but it was faithfully repaired. It was eventually reestablished farther inland, the site today marked by a cypress tree and ranch road near the Drake Monument at Drakes Estero.”

At right: Quinto, which means fifth-born in Italian.

“When a railroad, the North Pacific Coast, began serving the Point Reyes-Tomales Bay community in 1875, Quinto availed himself of it, [and] had a hogpen at trackside to which he now brought hogs as well as calves by wagon….

“By the age of 55, he was the chief hog and cattle buyer on the Point,” wrote Mason.

“Moustachioed and personable, Quinto was a force to contend with in town as well as country.”

The Codoni home on B Street in Point Reyes Station, Mason added, “was one of the town’s nicest. [It] had a marble fireplace and electricity. Quinto’s Delco plant furnished lights not only for his own house, but for Lucy Silverfoot’s around the corner, Dr. Cavanaugh’s on B Street, and two other houses Codoni owned.”

Quinto Codoni on a wagon at Schooner Bay, an arm of Drakes Estero from which he shipped hogs to San Francisco.

“In 1910, Quinto sold the Tomales Bank and Trust Company a lot on A Street for its branch office, which opened in 1913,” Mason wrote. “Not surprisingly, Quinto became a director and vice-president. Bank patrons came to respect Mr. Codoni as a conservative in money matters; he had made his when it wasn’t easy to come by.”

“Around 1910,” according to Mason, Codoni  “went in with some Point Reyes ranchers to buy the schooner Point Reyes,” which “could accommodate a deckload of 200 hogs.”

Unloading hogs at Schooner Bay for shipment to San Francisco.

Mason noted that Codoni “and Tom Marshall owned a slaughterhouse on Paper Mill Creek which supplied Point Reyes Station with steaks and chops. Tom’s butchershop was on B Street.”

A caretaker’s cabin at the landing in Schooner Bay. High waves eventually destroyed it.

“Quinto Codoni acquired the old Shafter-Howard D Ranch dairy through foreclosure in 1927,” according to the exhibition. “This ranch is seen on the road down to Drakes Beach. He took to the ranch life (although he leased out the dairy operation) and decorated the ranch house yard with an outdoor kitchen, interesting sculpture, and a massive flagstaff, seen here during installation.

“Codoni’s daughter Alice married Petaluma dairyman Bill Hall, and they ran the dairy from 1936 until turning it over in the 1960s to their daughter, Vivian Horick.”

From the depot in Point Reyes Station, Clara and Quinto Codoni (at right) took the narrow-gauge railway north to the end of the line in Cazadero.

Ernie Grandi (1907-87) relaxes beside a rail car. A lifelong resident of Point Reyes Station, Ernest Grandi served in the Army during World War II and for 22 years worked as a carpenter here. He was also chief of the former Point Reyes Volunteer Fire Department and a member of several civic groups. Like Codoni, Grandi’s parents Agostino and Olympia were immigrants from Ticino. They spoke only Italian until he went to grammar school.

“Thrift and hard work got [West Marin’s Ticinese] a large slice of the American pie,” Mason wrote, and in the case of Quinto Codoni earned him the historian’s sobriquet “Mr. Point Reyes Station.”

“What kind of a day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times….” Walter Cronkite

The USS Arizona burning after Japanese torpedo bombers attacked the battleship on Dec. 7, 1941.

Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killed 2,402 people and wounded another 1,247, plunging the US into a war that ultimately cost America and its allies more than 61 million military and civilian lives. Axis countries lost more than 12 million lives.

My father used to tell me about from coming home from church in San Francisco that Sunday, Dec. 7, when a neighbor shouted out the window to him that the Japanese had just attacked Pearl Harbor. Friday was the 71st anniversary of the attack, and heavily attended memorial ceremonies were held from Pearl Harbor, to the Coast Guard Station in Alameda, to New York and Washington, DC.

Some West Marin’s responses to the attack were described in a Tomales Regional History Center bulletin earlier this year: Tomales High “student Kathie Nuckols (Lawson) clearly remembered the Monday morning of Dec. 8, 1941, little more than 24 hours after Pearl Harbor was bombed. “Our principal called all the students into the auditorium to hear President Roosevelt call our country to war. His voice came through a small radio, and we strained to hear his words, overwhelmed by the drama as only teenagers can be.

“Blackout shades lowered in the auditorium, tanks passing the school on their way to occupy Dillon Beach, the imposed limits on travel because of gas rationing, especially affecting the sports programs…. These are some of the things students of the war years remembered. Yet these events were undoubtedly put into perspective by the biggest effect of all, the nine Tomales High students who did not come home from the war.”

The annual Christmas-tree lighting in Point Reyes Station drew a large crowd Friday evening. The tree is on the landscaped median between the Palace Market parking lot and the parking lot of Wells Fargo Bank, which handed out hot chocolate and sweets.

Phyllis Faber

Meanwhile at the Dance Palace community center, Marin Agricultural Land Trust held its annual dinner Friday. Now an octogenarian, Phyllis Faber, a biologist, and the late Ellen Straus, a rancher, founded MALT in 1984 to give permanent protection to family farms. It was a time when economic pressure to subdivide the coast was spurring ranchers to sell their land to developers. The farmland trust became the first of its kind in the nation.

A red-shouldered hawk is still able to hunt the pastures around Mitchell cabin thanks to a century and a half of ranching, which served to protect much of West Marin from over-development.

Bob Berner, who has been MALT’s executive director since its founding 28 years ago, will retire next month, and Friday he gave an emotional farewell to MALT supporters in the Dance Palace.

Under Berner’s leadership, MALT has bought agricultural easements from 69 ranchers, guaranteeing that at least half of all Marin County’s family farms will forever remain in agriculture.

A herd of blacktail deer take advantage of West Marin’s open land to graze near Mitchell cabin.

MALT’s new executive director as of Jan. 14 will be Jamison Watts, who happens to be a great, great grandson of naturalist John Muir’s sister, Margaret Muir Reid. Watts for the past six years has been the executive director of the Northern California Regional Land Trust (NCRLT).

Watts, who inherited the Muir family’s interest in conservation, earned a degree from UC Davis in Environmental Biology with an emphasis in Conservation Biology. He spent the next 12 years as a field and wildlife biologist, while simultaneously earning a master’s degree in Biological Sciences, before going to work for NCRLT in 2006.

Much of the Rich Readimix plant was under water when Papermill Creek overflowed its banks on New Year’s Eve 2005.

In sadder news this week, The West Marin Citizen reported that the Rich Readimix plant on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road is about to close after more than 60 years in operation.

Don and Doug Joslin created the cement plant during the 1950s, and it was so well known throughout West Marin that nearby Platform Bridge was commonly referred to as Joslin Bridge. After 35 years, the Joslins sold the plant to Rich Readimix, which also has a plant in Greenbrae. All the workers at the West Marin plant will now be transferred to Greenbrae.