In an April 2 column, Chip Johnson of The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about the closing of the Nummi automotive plant in Fremont, a 28-year joint venture by General Motors and Toyota. A headline on the column, however, created some confusion.

The column had nothing to do with the closure reviving memories of a flood in the Midwest although an unfortunate break between the two lines of the headline made it appear that way. The intended message? Nummi’s closure caused memories of a Midwestern plant’s closure to come flooding back to the columnist, who was affected by it.

In other news, The Chronicle on April 3 reported that San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón made a formal apology to the Bay Area’s Muslim community for remarks he made a week earlier.

The problem, The Chronicle noted, started with “comments he made to a 150 City Hall officials and members of the building trades regarding a June 8 seismic retrofit bond.

“During that event, Gascón reportedly said that the Hall of Justice is susceptible to terrorist attack by members of the city’s Middle Eastern community, including an Oklahoma City-style explosion caused by a van parked out front.

“Gascón [later] denied lumping Middle Easterners or Arab Americans together, saying he referred specifically to those from Yemen or Afghanistan as potential threats….

“[Nonetheless], community outrage was immediate, with members of San Francisco’s Arab American organizations calling the remarks degrading an inappropriate.”

On April 2, Chief Gascóon told a gathering of  Muslims: “I’m sorry that I’ve offended you, that I’ve offended the Afghan community and other Middle Eastern communities.” His apology was warmly received.

“I really respect him now,” said Iftekhar Hai, president of the United Muslims of America Interfaith Alliance, after the apology. Reading about all this, I too felt reassured about the police chief, until I had one of those Clark Kent/Superman flashes. Has anyone ever seen Chief Gascón and comedian Steve Martin in the same room together? Is it possible the apology was merely a Steve Martin stunt?

More from The Chronicle. I hope you read Jon Carroll’s March 31 column, for it was set in Point Reyes Station. At dusk. With the evening growing cold. And Jon locked out of his car which was parked in front of the Tomales Bay Foods Building.

Jon had just given a public interview at the Dance Palace, where townspeople laughed at his jokes and “lauded” him “in a gentle, West Mariny sort of way.” But then they went home. “I was the visiting celebrity, and yet I was all alone,” he wrote. “It teaches a person something about the nature of fame, but it’s not something that a person did not know already.”

It’s an engaging column, so if you haven’t read it already, you ought to take the time.

Looking around West Marin, what else is in the air? How ’bout these three hang gliders above Stinson Beach?

Or the Point Reyes Arabians herd atop the hill above my cabin?

When hay is put out for the Arabians, the wild turkeys rush over faster than the horses, apparently because they like to eat mites that are found in the hay. Or so a stableman told me.

Paul Reffell, the longtime POSSLQ of Marshall artist-activist Donna Sheehan, threw a surprise 80th birthday party for her Thursday evening at Toby’s Feed Barn. Scores of her friends and relatives, along with a few politicos, showed up. Everyone told her she looked great.

The oft-repeated comment prompted Donna to tell the crowd, “There are three stages of life: youth, middle age, and ‘you look great,’ which those of us over 70 hear a lot of on main street.” And as a matter of fact, she added, “I’ve never been happier.”

The receiving line was so lengthy that Donna took it sitting down. Most of the guests brought food or drinks for a potluck table.

“It’s hell being born on April Fool’s Day,” Donna said, noting that she and Paul “just came from the St. Stupid’s Day parade in San Francisco.”

Providing entertainment, Ingrid Noyes of Marshall sang and accompanied herself on the accordion. Singer Tim Weed accompanied himself on the guitar.

Donna meanwhile reminded guests that Paul, her paramour, is 20 years her junior.

In short, he’s not old enough yet to have people automatically telling him he looks great.

Margie Boyle (left), an old friend from Lakeville, invited Donna to dance, and before long much of the party was dancing too.

Photo copyright Art Rogers 2002

During a chilly rain on Nov. 12, 2002, Donna gained worldwide attention when she assembled 50 “unreasonable women” at Point Reyes Station’s Love Field. Lying naked on the wet grass, the women spelled out PEACE with their bodies while Point Reyes Station photographer Art Rogers recorded the event.

Donna at the time explained she got the idea from a similar protest in Nigeria earlier in the year. Women fighting corporate exploitation stood nude in a vigil that lasted several days outside of Nigeria’s parliament, she noted. “[The Nigerian women] shamed the men and won their cause,” she said.

As can be seen in photos on Donna’s “Baring Witness” website, the Point Reyes Station demonstration almost immediately inspired many similar demonstrations throughout the United States as well as overseas.

I owned The Point Reyes Light at that time and asked my former wife Ana Carolina to cover the Love Field demonstration for the paper. Donna, who must be the Pied Piper of West Marin, convinced Ana Carolina to join in despite my ex-wife’s conservative Guatemalan background. Here’s the story Ana Carolina wrote about the event. As for Art’s photo, as soon as it appeared in The Light, the wire services picked it up and sent it out worldwide.

I was first aware of Donna’s skill at political organizing, roughly 30 years ago when she became upset with Caltrans plans to spray weeds along Highway 1 rather than cut them. Forming a group called MOW, Donna organized protests and to my surprise managed to stop the spraying.

(MOW, which is short for Mow Our Weeds, is the only acronym I know where one of the words the initials stand for is the acronym itself.)

More recently, Donna and Paul again garnered widespread attention with a book titled Redefining Seduction, which says women should take the lead in courtship.

A Nov. 10 posting, “Progress in the backyard peace process,” described my getting an initially hostile raccoon and possum to peacefully coexist. I had brought them to the negotiating table by putting two piles of peanuts on it. Over the course of several nights, I moved the piles closer and closer together until they were eating side by side.

However, as the posting noted, I was continuing my shuttle diplomacy, for I’d taken to heart Henry Kissinger’s warning: “The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.”

Female possum out to dinner with a male raccoon.

A major breakthrough occurred Friday night when the two sides ended up so close together they occasionally rubbed noses as they dined on a single pile of peanuts. Both trod lightly around each other, but there was no snapping or growling.

In contrast, the same raccoon got into three fights with other raccoons the following evening, suffering a painful bite to a front paw during one brawl. I’m sure all this reveals something about the difference between inter-species and intra-species relations, but I don’t know what.

Turning to international diplomacy, a posting on Jan. 23, “Disconcerting standup reporting,” described al Jazeera correspondent Prerna Suri in New Delhi reporting on India and Bangladesh rekindling ties. The standup comes a short way into her report.

What makes her standup so disconcerting is that she appears to be in the middle of a New Delhi expressway with cars whizzing past her on both sides.

Commenting on the posting, professional cameraman Mark Allan of Inverness Park noted he had shot similar standups on a curb at Lombard Street and Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. By shooting with a long lens, he said, the traffic seemed closer than it really was.

This past weekend, Prerna herself submitted a comment in which she explains how her report was actually shot. “This stand up in question was, as Mark rightly pointed out, done on a curb (not in the middle of an expressway like you mentioned),” she wrote. “It was right outside the India Gate.”

The capital’s 140-foot-high India Gate is a monument to the more than 80,000 Indian troops who were killed in World War I, fighting for the Allies.

Meanwhile, the posting on Prerna’s standup has drawn interest from around the world. In the past month, far more readers have reached this blog by Googling Bangladesh India standup report than any other topic.

Now for followup reports on the undiplomatic front. The Point Reyes-Petaluma Road saw two more instances of vehicles running off the road last weekend. In one case, a vehicle ran off Highway 1 just a few feet north of the two roads’ intersection.

Neither mishap was as dramatic as the one reported here a week ago when a Porsche on March 5 sailed off an embankment at the first curve immediately east of Point Reyes Station. The sportscar flew 50 feet through tree branches and dropped 25 feet to the ground. Driver Joshua Moore, 38, of San Rafael miraculously escaped without injuries when the car landed on its wheels.

In far less dramatic fashion, a black Toyota Corolla ran off the roadway at Four Corners (the intersection of the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road and Nicasio Valley Road) shortly before 6 p.m. this past Saturday.

The car came to rest against some willows in a gully southeast of the intersection, and neither of the two occupants was injured. However, the Highway Patrol arrested the driver, Arthur V. Gomez, 36, of Fairfield, for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol.

The next day, another vehicle ran into a ditch on the north side of Highway 1 at the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road. A 25 mph sign was knocked down in the mishap, but no injuries were reported, and authorities were not notified. By Monday, the sign was back in place.

A sportscar went out of control on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road immediately east of Highway 1 about 2:30 p.m. today, sailed off the roadway, and landed on its wheels 25 feet down an embankment.

The white Porsche GT-3, which landed facing back toward the road, was airborne for roughly 50 feet, as evidenced by bare spots where bark had been knocked off limbs high above the ground.

From skid marks on the pavement, it appears the driver lost control in rounding the first curve east of Point Reyes Station. He then over-corrected and ended up in the oncoming lane before spinning back across the road and off the embankment.

The driver, who declined to give me his name or hometown, was not injured in the wreck. (Monday morning update: the CHP has now identified the driver as Joshua Moore, 38, of San Rafael.)

Traveling with the Porsche when the wreck occurred was a red Ferrari, but its driver told me he didn’t know what caused the mishap. (The CHP on Monday said the accident was caused by an “unsafe turning movement” but that Moore had not been cited.)

The property on which the Porsche landed is used by Tomales Bay Oyster Company, and its workers managed to turn the car around by sliding it on the muddy ground.

The driver was able to start his car only to have its wheels spin in the mud. The oyster workers then pushed the car to open ground, from which it could be towed.

A highway patrolman checks the car while the driver stashes its broken spoiler behind the seats.

Because the driver declined to identify himself (and because it took three days to get the information from authorities), all I initially knew about him is what’s on his license plate frame: “Member 11-99 Foundation.”

The name “11-99” is taken from a radio-code message that means: “Officer needs assistance. Send location to all units.” The foundation, according to its charter, “provides emergency, death, and scholarship benefits to California Highway Patrol family members.”

To aid the families of retired officers and those killed in the line of duty, the foundation raises its money from individual donors, volunteers, and grant-making institutions.

However, the “member” license-plate frames have occasionally come under fire as potentially having a corrupting effect. Critics in past years claimed that people who liked to drive fast made large donations in order to get the frames, a membership certificate, and a special wallet with a 11-99 Foundation badge to show any CHP officer who pulled them over.

The 11-99 Foundation directors voted to phase out the frames last year and to more aggressively prevent people from selling them online. The directors also instructed staff to “develop a program to address the status of all ‘Member’ license-plate frames currently in circulation.”

The foundation on its website says it needs to maintain control over the frames because “we don’t want the 11-99 Foundation to continue to suffer because some misguided individual tried to take advantage of the license-plate frames, hoping they would inappropriately influence a law enforcement officer.”

In 1979-80, “Trailside Killer” David Carpenter murdered one woman and possibly three others on Mount Tamalpais, as well as three women and a man in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Most of the women were also raped.

Carpenter’s arrest came the following year after he murdered two women in Santa Cruz County. He was caught when the companion of one Santa Cruz victim survived despite being wounded and was able to give lawmen a description of the assailant.

For years, Carpenter has also been a suspect in several other slayings, and this week San Francisco police announced DNA evidence has now tied him to the 1979 murder of Mary Frances Bennett, 23, of San Francisco. She had apparently been jogging near the Palace of the Legion of Honor when attacked.

Police said she had been stabbed at least 25 times in her chest, back, and neck. Bennett’s “butchered” corpse was found under a thin layer of dirt and leaves.

In 1984, a jury in San Diego County convicted Carpenter of the Santa Cruz murders, and he was sentenced to be executed. In 1988, a second jury convicted him of the National Seashore murders and one murder on Mount Tamalpais.

After he was placed on death row in San Quentin where he remains today, Carpenter (left) contacted me out of the blue, and this ultimately led to my interviewing him in the prison. Photo by Christopher Springmann

At the time of the interview in 1985, Carpenter, then 55, had spent more than 22 years in custody.

Carpenter was first incarcerated at the age of 17 for allegedly having oral sex with a three-year-old girl. He denied the charge but spent three months in Napa State Hospital.

Three years later, in 1950, he was arrested on charges of raping a 17-year-old girl, but the charges were dropped. Ten years later, he was arrested a third time. A military policeman shot and wounded Carpenter when the officer found him using a hammer to beat a secretary who had rebuffed his sexual advances. He went to federal prison for nine years.

In 1969, ten months after his release, Carpenter sexually attacked two women in Santa Cruz County, stole a car, and drove to the Sierra. In Calaveras County, he robbed two women, kidnapping one of them. He would later be charged with rape in connection with the Calaveras attacks, but that charge was eventually dropped.

A few days after the Calaveras attacks, Carpenter was arrested in Modesto. Convicted of robbery and kidnapping in Calaveras County (where he escaped from jail briefly) and of rape in Santa Cruz County, Carpenter went to state prison for seven years.

When he got out in 1977, he was returned to federal prison for violating his parole with the Calaveras and Santa Cruz attacks. In 1979, Carpenter was placed in a halfway house in San Francisco while awaiting parole. Three months later, the first trailside murder occurred. Here are the murders to which he had been previously linked:

Edda Kane, 44, of Mill Valley was shot in the back of the head Aug. 19, 1979, while hiking on Mount Tamalpais.

Barbara Schwartz, 23, of Mill Valley was stabbed to death while hiking on Mount Tamalpais March 8, 1980.

Anna Mejivas, a friend of Carpenter, was found slain in Mount Tamalpais State Park on June 4, 1980.

Cynthia Moreland, 18, of Cotati and Richard Stowers, 19, of Two Rock were shot to death Oct. 11, 1980, off Sky Trail in the National Seashore.

Anne Alderson, 26, of San Rafael was jogging at the edge of Mount Tamalpais State Park Oct. 15, 1980, when she was killed with three bullets to the head. Alderson’s murder was the only one on Mount Tamalpais for which Carpenter was prosecuted.

Diana O’Connell, 22, of Queens, N.Y., and Shauna May, 23, of Pullman, Wash., were shot to death Nov. 28, 1980, also off Sky Trail in the park. Their bodies, along with those of Moreland and Stowers, were found the following day.

Ellen Hansen, 20, a UC Davis graduate student, was shot to death while hiking near Santa Cruz March 29, 1981. Her companion, Steven Haertle, was shot four times but survived.

Heather Skaggs, 20, of San Jose disappeared the day she was scheduled to go shopping with Carpenter, May 2, 1981. Her body with one gunshot wound to the head was found in Santa Cruz May 24.

As it happened, KQED television in 1985 taped a debate between Synanon attorney Phil Bourdette and me. After watching the debate from inside San Quentin, Carpenter wrote me at The Point Reyes Light, and we began a correspondence.

Before it ended, Carpenter was answering questions from The Light and its readers. How common is homosexual rape of inmates by inmates? Most rapes occur in large jails operated by counties, not in state prisons, Carpenter answered.

With so much money being spent on prisons, how well is it used? “Pre-1976-77, everybody was under an indeterminate sentence, and you had to earn your way out of prison,” Carpenter replied. “There was very little trouble in the prison system  because the men knew they had to keep their noses clean to have any chance at parole.

“Back then most of the work that was done in prison was done by the inmates themselves. Rehabilitation is dead in this state….. Virtually all of the jobs that were done by the prisoners and cost the taxpayers practically nothing are now all being done by civilian personnel at a very high cost to taxpayers.”

When I managed to schedule an interview with Carpenter in San Quentin, I was intrigued by the prospect but didn’t know what to expect. Would he seem to be a monster, a sadist? Carpenter instead seemed rather charming.

While admitting “my record sucks,” Carpenter stammered that he was not responsible for the trailside murders. Carpenter’s stuttering was, in fact, so severe I felt an immediate sympathy.

Carpenter acknowledged experimenting with pot after he got out of prison in 1979, so I asked if marijuana gave him any relief from his stuttering. “Alas,” he replied, “it really didn’t do anything for me speechwise. My stuttering stayed the same, but my attitude toward my stuttering changed. The more I smoked, the less I cared or let it bother me.”

Years later in conversation with a former member of the San Quentin staff, I speculated that Carpenter’s stuttering was so disarming it may have made sympathetic women more vulnerable to an attack.

The former staffer, in turn, said he suspected that Carpenter murdered his rape victims because a middle-aged, bald man with an extreme stutter would be easy to identify. That does make sense.

A Valentine’s Fair Saturday at Toby’s Feed Barn was the latest fundraiser hereabouts to help survivors of the catastrophic earthquake that hit Haiti a month ago.

The small-scale fundraiser, which coincided with a “mini” farmers’ market, brought in several hundred dollars. Joyce Goldfield (at right) of Inverness Park sold more than $200 worth of anatomically correct gingerbread men and women.

Linda Petersen, ad manager for The West Marin Citizen, organized the fundraiser and sold $58 worth of Valentine’s cards made by second grade students at West Marin School.

In June, Linda was severely injured in a traffic accident, which killed her popular Havanese dog Sebastian. Four months ago, another fundraiser was held at Toby’s to help pay her medical bills, and last month she found a new Havanese, Eli (pictured), at the Marin Humane Society.

Other contributors to Saturday’s fundraiser were Moonflowers Bodycare (soaps and lotions), Sandra Wikholm, who sells baked goods at Wedgewood Bakery, Gaia Tea, Marin Roots Farm, Flower Power, rancher Liz Daniels, KT’s Kitchen catering, Zuma, and the Giammona brothers, Morgan and Ryan, (eggs).

Their mother Connie Giammona brought an orphan calf for a petting zoo while Kathy Simmons, wife of West Marin Citizen publisher Joel Hack, brought rabbits to be petted. The singing duo Todd Pickering & Blue performed, as did flamenco guitarist Carl Nagin.

Myriam and Mark Pasternak of Devil’s Gulch Ranch in Nicasio were in Haiti during the earthquake and told about their experiences. Myriam had previously founded a nonprofit, DG Educational Services, which teaches Haitians how to raise and breed rabbits for food. Part of the proceeds will go to the project, and part will go to Partners in Health run by Dr. Paul Farmer.

Sponsoring Saturday’s fundraiser were Toby’s Feed Barn and The West Marin Citizen.

A loaded milk truck belonging to Straus Family Creamery of Marshall overturned along Highway 1 just north of Nicks Cove today. The Highway Patrol reported the accident happened at 8:50 a.m.

The 270-degree rollover occurred when the long tanker-truck, which was southbound, encountered a northbound vehicle on a tight curve, members of the county fire department and Straus family told me. The truck came to a stop with a pair of its dual rear wheels off the pavement, the firefighter said.

The truck was still upright when the driver got out, but it then rolled over, the firefighter added. No one was hurt in the accident.

The property on which the truck landed is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and a small amount of milk spilled out of the tanker’s hatch.

In a serendipitous irony, however, the spilled milk didn’t go very far, let alone down to Tomales Bay a short distance below the curve.

Straus Creamery uses rice hulls for bedding in the cows’ stalls, and in 2003, a truck heading to the dairy ranch ran off the same curve and spilled a load of hulls. The decision at the time was to leave the hulls on the ground since they weren’t doing any harm.

When milk began leaking from the overturned tanker-truck today, it was immediately absorbed by the old rice hulls. Here a cleanup worker shovels more hulls under the leak.

A fundraiser at Cavallo Point Sunday for Haiti’s earthquake victims brought in $15,345. The restaurant and lodge are at Fort Baker in Sausalito, and 120 attendees from East and West Marin filled a second-floor dining room to capacity.

The magnitude 7 earthquake that struck Haiti Jan. 12 was, as most of us realize, a disaster beyond comprehension. Virtually every multi-story building around the capital Port-au-Prince collapsed, and an estimated 200,000 people died. (By way of contrast, Hurricane Katrina, the worse natural disaster in US history, claimed 1,800 lives.)

So many hospitals fell down that the few remaining have been overwhelmed by thousands of seriously injured survivors. Food and water are scarce throughout much of the country. Public utilities and government facilities are in ruins.

All the money raised Sunday is going to two nonprofits, Partners in Health run by Dr. Paul Farmer and DG Educational Services Haiti project founded by Myriam Kaplan Pasternak of Nicasio.

Kevin and Nancy Lunny of Drakes Bay Oyster Company contributed oysters on the half shell to the fundraiser.

Myriam’s project teaches Haitians how to raise and breed rabbits for food, and she and her family happened to be in Haiti when the earthquake struck.

Luckily they were riding on a rural road. If they had been in the school where they were headed, they might well have died because the school collapsed, as can be seen in this photo by Myriam. Some students in the school were killed, she noted during the fundraiser.

Part of the West Marin contingent, Kay McMahon and Jim Campe of Inverness, chat before the dinner.

Myriam on Sunday told the gathering about the immediate aftermath of the quake, as well as about the days that followed.

The scenes on television of desperate Haitians in Port-au-Prince struggling with each other for food and water were not typical of the nation, she said.

In much of the country, the disaster brought people together.

How Sunday’s event came to be is a story in itself. It was the brainchild of reporter Andrea Blum, who worked for me at The Point Reyes Light six years ago and now reports for The West Marin Citizen.

Only two weeks earlier, she had decided to hold a Haitian fundraiser at the Muir Beach Community Center.

Andrea invited Myriam and her husband Mark Pasternak to attend, and Mark (right) used the Internet to encourage others to take part.

When Cavallo Point chef Joseph Humphrey received word of the fundraiser, he volunteered to host a larger event and provide food, a dining room, cooks, and formal serving staff.

Cavallo Point’s restaurant, by the way, is the only Michelin-rated restaurant in Marin County, and Sunday night’s elegant dinner showed why it got the rating.

Also contributing to the fundraiser were: La Tercera Farms, Star Route Farms, Rustic Bakery, Acme Bread, Della Fattoria Bakery, TCHO Chocolates, Straus Creamery, Tartine Bakery, Cakework, Good Earth Market, Whole Foods, Cow Girl Creamery, Gale Ranch, BN Ranch, Mariquita Farms, Kendric Vineyards, Schramsburg Winery, and (as emcee) Doug McConnell.

Children, some of them covered with cement dust, huddle in the aftermath of the earthquake in this photo by Myriam Pasternak.

Every seat in the dinning room was quickly reserved notwithstanding a minimum $50 donation, and Andrea sent out word that anyone who couldn’t attend should notify her because there was a waiting list.

The only “no show,” she later told me, “was Silvia Lange, the [77-year-old Nicasio] woman who disappeared at North Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore” Jan. 23.

Her disappearance came two weeks after Katherine Truitt, 37, of Alameda disappeared while also hiking alone in the park.

Andrea (right) said Lange “signed up for the dinner at 10:21 a.m. the day she disappeared.”

In short, Sunday evening was a rush of mixed emotions. It was an uplifting event organized to help Haitians recover from a disaster, and guests came away with a greater understanding of that island nation.

However, in the background was a missing guest who may have just died under mysterious circumstances here at home.

Whenever Nicasio Reservoir overflows at the end of a dry spell, I typically climb the cliff above the spillway to shoot a photo. It’s a difficult climb on unstable rock with only scattered Scotch broom for handholds much of the way. Today I did it for the fourth time and as usual got scratched up, but the view from a ledge high above the spillway made it all worthwhile.

Nicasio Reservoir officially overflowed at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, Libby Pischel, spokeswoman for Marin Municipal Water District, told me this afternoon. However, another 24 hours went by before the spill became substantial, nearby resident Chuck Gompertz of Nicasio later told me.

The reservoir is owned by MMWD, which serves the San Geronimo Valley and most of East Marin south of Novato. Pischel said six of MMWD’s seven reservoirs, Alpine, Bon Tempe, Lagunitas, Nicasio, Phoenix, and Soulajule, are now overflowing.

Kent Reservoir, the largest, is more than half full, she added. (By my calculations, it’s more than 56 percent full, which matters to three West Marin towns outside the water district, as I’ll explain in a moment.)

As of Sunday, MMWD’s total storage was at 82 percent of capacity compared with 54 percent at this time last year and and 79 percent in an average year.

Another 1.54 inches of rain fell on Point Reyes Station Monday, Weather Underground reported, and by noon Tuesday, 0.26 inches more had fallen.

In dry weather, Point Reyes Station, Olema, and Inverness Park depend almost entirely on releases from Kent Reservoir for their water. The releases flow down Papermill/Lagunitas Creek past Point Reyes Station, where North Marin Water District uses creekside wells to withdraw water for the three towns.

North Marin is based in Novato, and it compensates MMWD for a portion of the releases by providing MMWD with water from Novato’s primary source, Lake Sonoma in Sonoma County. On Tuesday morning, Lake Sonoma reached capacity for the first time in four years.

Before: Canada geese take flight from a dry cove on the east side of Nicasio Reservoir last November.

After: The same cove sans geese as it looked today.

With weathermen now saying there’s a chance of rain on Friday, Saturday, and Monday, MMWD’s Pischel today was looking forward to Kent Reservoir’s rising even closer to capacity, which is 32,895 acre-feet (10.7 billion gallons).

The oldest reservoir in MMWD’s system is Lagunitas built in 1872. It now provides only o.4 percent of the total capacity. Phoenix Reservoir was built in 1905 (now 0.5 percent of total capacity); Alpine in 1918 (11.2 percent); Bon Tempe in 1948 (5.1 percent); Kent in 1953 (41.3 percent); Nicasio in 1960 (28.2 percent); and Soulajule in 1979 (13.3 percent).

In other weather-related news, The Marin Independent Journal reported a rock slide just south of Stinson Beach closed Highway 1 in both directions for three hours this morning.

And now the news…. We have all seen television correspondents doing standup reports in front of the White House, or of a house on fire, or of a food line in Haiti.

A quarter century ago when I was covering the insurrection in El Salvador for the old San Francisco Examiner, a gonzo TV reporter from the UK once told me his fantasy was to do a standup in the middle of a firefight with bullets flying all around him. It was a suicidal idea, of course, and he never tried it.

But here’s something that comes close, which I found earlier this month on Al Jazeera. It’s in a report now archived on YouTube describing India and Bangladesh rekindling diplomatic ties.

A short ways into the report, television journalist Prerna Suri does a standup in the middle of a New Delhi expressway with traffic appearing to barely miss her. It’s gratuitously nerve-wracking to watch, but it is good theater.

Friends who occasionally work in video tell me Al Jazeera didn’t use a “blue screen” to create an illusory background. They think the standup report may have been shot with a telephoto lens, which would compress the distance between the reporter and the vehicles behind her.

And even if the reporter is standing on a narrow median too low to be seen, it’s remarkable she never flinches as motor vehicles, some of them honking, crowd past her on both sides. Click on the following link and see if you can figure out how this disconcerting standup was shot. If you do, please submit a comment and perhaps you’ll get a job offer from Al Jazeera.

Post script: Professional cameraman Mark Allen of Inverness Park has provided an explanation, which is in the comment section. You might recall that last year Mark shot a 60 Minutes’s interview with chef Alice Waters, who hand-fed him a delicacy during the interview. Further update: Prerna Suri herself has now sent in a comment describing how the standup was shot.