#ShutdownCanada, Friday’s nationwide protest in Canada calling on the government to investigate the murders and disappearances of indigenous women, was a bit of a disappointment, failing to garner as much public participation as expected.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a branch of the Organization of American States, last year reported that First Nation women in Canada are being murdered and disappeared at four times the rate of white women.

Although more than 7,000 people had said they would take part in demonstrations planned in Calgary, Espanola, Edmonton, Fredericton, Halifax, Hamilton, Kamloops, Lethbridge, London, Moncton, Montreal, Niagara, Oshawa, Ottawa, Regina, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg, according to Ontario’s Two Row Times, fewer than 700 showed up, Warrior Publications reported.

Unist’ot’en camp (Warrior publications photo)

Also joining the demonstrations were several groups trying to stop environmental damage. One of them, Unist’ot’en Camp, describes itself as a “resistance community in Northern British Columbia, whose purpose is to protect sovereign Wet’siwet’en territory from several proposed pipelines.”

The Unist’ot’en clan says, “Wet’suwet’en territory, which extends from Burns Lake to the Coastal Mountains, is sovereign territory which has never been ceded to the colonial Canadian state; the  are not under treaty with the Canadian government.”

Since July of 2010, the Wet’suwet’en have established a camp in the pathway of the Pacific Trails Pipeline.

On Friday, protesters also blocked a main entrance to the Port of Vancouver. In Winnipeg, a number of protesters blocked a road. In Regina, a small group blocked a railway line. And in Montreal, protesters temporarily blocked a major intersection and then briefly occupied a branch of the Bank of Canada.

Despite police limiting the protesters’ movements, #ShutdownCanada did cause some disruption in Regina, noted Daniel Johnson, who took part in demonstrations there. “But it was not the success it could have been.” ________________________________________________________________

No St. Valentine’s event, of course, is likely to ever get as much public attention as the 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago.

This was during Prohibition, and in a fight over territory, Al Capone’s South Side Italian Gang  captured five members of Bugs Maran’s North Side Irish Gang, as well as two of its accomplices.

The seven were lined up against a wall inside a garage and executed with Tommy guns. (See photo at left.) One member of the North Side Gang, Frank Gusenberg, lived for three hours after the shootings. Although he received 17 gunshot wounds, he refused to tell police who the gunmen were. ____________________________________________________________

Canada on Valentine Eve Friday was lucky to escape its own massacre, which had been planned for Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Before the carnage could occur, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took a 23-year-old woman from Illinois, Lindsay Kantha Souvannarath, and a 20-year-old man from Halifax, Randall Steven Shepherd, into custody on charges of conspiracy to commit murder.

The woman subsequently told authorities about plans to attack a mall. Two other men, 17 and 20, have also been taken into custody, and a fifth person, a 19-year-old man, committed suicide when police surrounded his home.

Police said the plotters were not involved with Islamic terrorism and merely wanted to kill as many people as possible before taking their own lives. Luckily the Mounties received a tip and found that on social media, the group had revealed an obsession with mass killings. ________________________________________________________

Tony’s Seafood Restaurant.

Also on Valentine Eve, the band Rusty String Express packed Tony’s Seafood Restaurant in Marshall. “The musicians play a mix of jazz, Celtic, and other styles, some traditional and covers,” said West Marin musician Ingrid Noyes.

“But they also write a lot of their own material. They give it all their own unique spin, and they have a unique sound with that mix of instruments.”

The restaurant offered plenty of meal specials, and barbecued oysters were served for only $2 apiece, which is the best restaurant price I’ve seen in West Marin in a very long time.

A Buckeye butterfly on Saturday paused for a rest on bamboo that grows in a half wine barrel on Mitchell cabin’s lower deck. Other parts of West Marin matters were less tranquil on Saturday. In Point Reyes Station, so many tourists crowded into town that a couple of restaurants ran out of food. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

No Name bar

The Michael Aragon Quartet on Valentine Eve played what I call “modern jazz” (think John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley) in Sausalito’s No Name bar, as it does every Friday evening. From left: Rob Roth on sax, KC Filson on keyboard, Pierre Archain on bass, and Michael Aragon on drums.

There’s no cover charge; the music is inevitably great; and at times virtually every seat in the bar is taken. When that happens, some customers inevitably retire to a covered garden in the rear to talk, smoke, meet people, or play chess.

She’s appreciated.

One of the attractions of the No Name on Friday nights is its unceasingly cheerful waitress, Sarah Burke. Just placing drink orders with her is part of the fun. I’m hardly the only person to notice this, and as a way of saying thanks, her regular customers signed a Valentine’s card, which she received Friday, along with a potted red rose.

Hunters-gatherers: Two migrating robins forage outside Mitchell cabin last Wednesday.

There are more robins in West Marin than usual this winter. Wildcare, the wildlife-rescue group in San Rafael, reported last week, “It’s songbird migration time…. In the past few weeks, we have admitted 11 thrushes and six robins with head trauma from hitting windows.”

In order to feed these patients, the Birdroom at Wildcare “needs earthworms (good from your compost) and frozen berries (wild blueberries, the small ones, are best).” The group can be reached at 415 453-1000.

Most of us remember the Rwandan genocide, in which ethnic Hutus slaughtered 500,000 to a million ethnic Tutsis between April 7 and July 15, 1994. Less well known is the genocide a year earlier in the neighboring East African country of Burundi where 300,000 Tutsis perished.

A new documentary, Deo: Escape from Burundi, by former Bolinas resident Ole Schell tells what happened in Burundi and how one moneyless survivor managed to escape to the United States, learn English, graduate from the Harvard School of Medicine, and then return to his former village where he organized the creation of a health center. (Click here to watch the 20-minute video)

The filmmaker is the son of Ilka Hartmann of Bolinas, a renowned documentary photographer. As it happened, Deo Niyizonkiza, the survivor, visited Napa, and she shot some still photos of him that are included in the documentary. Ole’s father is Orville Schell, former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at U.C. Berkeley and now director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.

Ole Schell was interviewed last Thursday on Huffington Post Live about his new documentary, Deo: Escape from Burundi. (Click here to watch interview)

The massacre of Tutsis by ethnic Hutus was not the result of a centuries-old animosity, as many of us had assumed. The real culprit in the bloodshed was Belgium in the 20th century, Ole says. At the end of the 19th century, Germany colonized Burundi and Rwanda but after its defeat in World War I was forced to cede them to Belgium.

Although the Hutu and Tutsi spoke the same language, the Belgians officially separated them as part of a policy of “divide and conquer,” Ole says in his Huffington Post interview.

Belgian colonist measuring noses to decide who was a Hutu and who was a Tutsi.

“They would measure people’s noses, cheekbones, and height and declare some people Hutus and some people Tutsis,” Ole told the Huffington Post. “It was almost arbitrary. Some people in the same family would be a Tutsi and some would be a Hutu.

“It really didn’t make much sense, but it took hold and got in the psyche of the people.” The result was a series of genocides perpetuated by both sides.

The genocide in 1993 grew out of a 1972 rebellion when Hutu members of the gendarmerie (soldiers with police duties) tried to estabish a new republic, killing thousands of Tutsis, as well as any Hutus who wouldn’t join the insurrection. In response, Burundi’s president, a Tutsi, declared martial law, and 80,000 to 210,000 Hutus were slaughtered.

In 1993, Tutsi soldiers assassinated Burundi’s first democratically elected head of state, a Hutu, and civil war broke out in within a day.

Deo Niyizonkiza, the survivor and central character of the documentary, was a 20-year-old medical student in Burundi when the slaughter began. Ole’s video relates how narrowly Deo, a Tutsi, escaped machete-wielding Hutu militiamen.

Deo’s entire odyssey is inspiring. When he was young, he says, a class might start the school year with 50 or 60 students. Only half that many would start the next year, the others having died mostly from curable diseases. There was no medical care whatsoever in his rural village and none in the area.

So he decided to study medicine. He moved to a city and was at work in a hospital when word came that the president had been killed and that Hutu militias were killing every Tutsi they could find.

Members of a Hutu militia.

Militiamen could be heard entering the hospital and killing people either with machetes or by burning them alive. Deo ran to his room and hid under the bed. In his haste, however, he forgot to lock the door.

Ironically, that saved him. A militiaman opened the door, looked around the room, and remarked, “….That cockroach [insulting slang for Tutsi] is gone.” He then left.

Tutsis burned alive by Hutu militia.

When the militiamen finally left, there were piles of bodies everywhere. Because flesh had been burned, the smell of meat was in the air, Deo recalled.

He escaped into the woods and walked for days to reach Rwanda where a Hutu woman got him into the country by telling soldiers he was her son. After six months in Rwanda, Deo returned to Burundi.

A friend bought him a ticket to New York so he could get out of the country and study medicine at a good school. He arrived with only $200 and speaking no English. For awhile he lived in an abandoned tenement in Harlem and then in Central Park.

Deo is clearly a pleasant, diligent man, and working as a deliveryman he met a church worker who took a liking to him and introduced him to a couple who gave him shelter. They also taught him English, helped him get legal residency, and ultimately be admitted to Harvard and Columbia universities.

New health center.

At Harvard, Deo was impressed by Professor Paul Farmer, whose Partners in Health organization brought medical care to impoverished regions of the globe, and he began working with it. While working in Rwanda in 2005, Deo returned to Burundi to visit his ailing mother.

Appalled at the unhygienic practices he observed in a Burundi hospital, such as two patients using the same IV, he decided to build a health clinic in his home village, the documentary notes.

Within a year, Deo had a bare-bones clinic in operation, and it has now grown into a modern facility that includes a community center. Villagers have formed cooperatives to grow food. Most importantly, the introduction of modern medicine has had a dramatic effect on the health of villagers.

Before: What having medical care available has meant to a villager called Frederick.

After: And that’s just the start. You can see the heart-warming documentary online by clicking on the link at the top of this posting.

It was time for the Christmas tree to come down. At Mitchell cabin, however, it not only comes down but is thrown down.

Our Christmas tree was only four feet tall this year, so once Lynn had removed the ornaments and I had taken down the lights, I could easily pick it up and toss it off our deck. That way, I didn’t have to awkwardly carry it through narrow walkways and down a couple of dozen steps, scattering needles the whole way.

Back when I lived in cities such as New York, Council Bluffs, and San Francisco, I could never have gotten away with throwing trees from my deck. The neighbors would have had conniptions. Nowadays, no one complains when I toss Christmas trees off my deck. This year, the only neighbors around were three horses, and they didn’t even whinny when old tannenbaum dropped out of the sky few yards away.

(Blog trivia: In the November 24 posting, I mentioned having developed a muscle spasm in my back as a result of trimming daisies with a chainsaw, as unlikely as that sounded. For the record, the bushes above with yellow flowers are those very daisies.)

Like many other West Marin residents, I dispose of my worn out Christmas trees at the bin behind the sheriff’s substation (Fourth and C streets in Point Reyes Station). Again this year, the number of Christmas trees dropped off at the bin far exceeds its capacity, and many have been discarded on the edge of C Street. It’s always an unceremonious farewell to Christmas.

Replacing weltschmerz with jazz at the No Name bar in Sausalito last Friday. From left: Rob Roth on sax, KC Filson (barely visible) on keyboard, Pierre Archain on bass, and Alex Aspinall on drums. In a green jacket at the far right is Sausalito artist Steve Sara.

Finding peace of mind can be difficult these days, what with massacres of thousands of innocent people around the globe: from Paris, to Nigeria, to Yemen, to Iraq, to Syria, to Afghanistan, to New York City, to Boston and so on. It’s not only horrific, it’s frustrating because there’s very little each of us alone can do to stop any of it.

People use many remedies to relieve the frustration. For me, the best are the traditional “wine, women, and song.” As a result, Lynn and I drive to Sausalito about once a week to listen to jazz at the No Name, have a few drinks, and talk with strangers.

The music is great, the bar well tended, and as for the women, there is a covered garden in the back of the bar where one can coo, drink, smoke, play chess, or get into fascinating conversations with other customers. On Friday, I heard about Sartre from a man who knew him in Paris. A transplant from Montreal, who had lived near the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, told me about the Canadian government’s relations with its First Nation peoples. ______________________________________________________________

The artist Steve Sara (seen above) can often be found evenings in the No Name, inconspicuously sketching the scene.

Usually his subjects are unaware they’re being sketched. I certainly have had no idea when Steve was sketching me.

He surprised me last Friday with this oil painting of my listening intently to the blues on a previous Friday.

Steve says his art is “influenced by Social Realism, the Ashcan School, and California School Artists such as Emil Kosa and Phil Dike.”

He paints both en plein air and from photos in his Sausalito Studio. ________________________________________________________________

A pair of crows were keeping watch over the lower field at Mitchell cabin on Saturday until I played the role of human scarecrow. The moment I focused my camera on them, the bird on the left took flight.

Since Lynn’s birthday is tomorrow, we decided to take an outing today and ended up along the Petaluma River near downtown.

One of the attractions of the Petaluma River is that a number of good restaurants have clear views of the water. Lynn and I found a table with an excellent view at Dempsey’s Restaurant and Brewery, where we ate outdoors beside the river.

Dempsey’s bills itself “Sonoma County’s oldest brewery,” having been founded 22 years ago. The attractive, dark-wood restaurant is at the right end of this pedestrian bridge over the river. Downtown Petaluma is on the left end.

So what if the Golden Gate Bridge was shut down Sunday? This was the only bridge we needed in order to keep wandering.

As storms raged Dec. 11, the Los Angeles Times reported, “Ano Nuevo State Park near Santa Cruz, where elephant seals are the main attraction in fall and winter, also closed Thursday.” New Anus State Park? Yet that’s what the Sacramento Bee also called it.

“Año Nuevo,” the actual spelling of the park’s name, is obviously Spanish. The tilde over the “n” changes it into a separate letter in the Spanish alphabet, an “ñ” (pronounced enye). The distinction is important. Año means year in Spanish while ano means anus.

With the Spanish-speaking population of California steadily growing, you’d think the state’s newspapers would all add Spanish accent marks to their printing fonts. Most computers already include them. All the same, some bilingual readers of The Times and The Bee must have found reports of an “Ano Nuevo” closure rather amusing.

At least that’s how several Point Reyes Light readers reacted when a Spanish-language column we ran back in 1985 intended to say a certain girl had six years, which is how age is expressed in Spanish. The tilde, however, was left off “anos,” and my resulting embarrassment no doubt explains why this issue is still on my mind almost 30 years later.

Christmas Day at Mitchell cabin. From upper left to upper right: this reporter, four horses, three deer. (Photo by Kathy Runnion)

But then a lot in the news surprises me these days. Take this report which ran in the London Daily Mail and other newspapers: “Rory Curtis, 25, suffered a serious brain injury after a car crash in 2012. He woke from a six-day coma and started speaking in fluent French.

“[The] former footballer was also convinced he was actor Matthew McConaughey. He broke his pelvis, but made a full recovery with an experimental drug. Mr. Curtis is still able to speak perfect French two years after the crash.” The man told the press he hadn’t studied French since grammar school and before the accident had only a “basic grasp” of it.

Another unexpected turn from the realm of newspapers and language: Last summer at an International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors conference, I met Charlie Gay, retired editor and publisher of the Shelton-Mason County (Washington) Journal. He’s a sharp newspaperman, and when a group of journalists were asked by email a week ago, “What are your resolutions for the New Year?” Charlie, using the language of photo resolution, replied: “My only resolution is 2048 pixels by 1536 pixels.”

The close of Christmas Day in Mitchell cabin with presents opened, dinner over, our guest departed, and the fire burning low. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

In conclusion, remember your fundamental, so to speak, Spanish when you send Happy New Year! messages to your Latino friends and relatives. Include the tilde in Á Feliz Año Nuevo! You certainly don’t want to wish everybody a “Happy New Anus!” There’s no telling what the reactions would be.

Yuletides are often full of surprises, and this year’s has been no exception.

Santa Claus once touted Lucky Strike cigarettes as “a gift that brings pleasure to every home.” But that was 60 years ago.

In recent times, that pleasure has been the target of fatwas in many parts of the US and in those parts of Iraq controlled by Isis.

After seizing control of Kirkuk in June, Isis threatened to whip anybody selling cigarettes.

But surprise! By September the jihadists were forced to drop their ban on cigarettes.

It turned out that some heavy-smoking Iraqis could endure Isis’ cruelty but not its ban on smoking, and the jihadists needed their support.

Lynn and I had just gotten out of bed Monday morning when the phone rang and Lynn picked it up. Surprise, the caller was a news reporter who said there was a rumor going around that I had died. Lynn was shocked: “What are you talking about!”

Yes, I turned 71 last month, but as Mark Twain said, “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Nonetheless, I will state for the record, as Twain did, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” (In Twain’s case, the rumor began with a cousin being severely sick in London for two or three weeks.)

Cartons of cigarettes were popular Christmas presents in the 1950s. “I’m sending Chesterfields to all my friends,” president-to-be Ronald Reagan proclaimed.

At the time, he was starring in the 1951 movie “Hong Kong.”

That movie is not to be confused with the 1933 movie “King Kong.” Whether or not Reagan tried out for the title role in that earlier film, he didn’t get it.

President Reagan’s fans called him “the great communicator.” I was never sure why. “I am not worried about the deficit,” President Reagan once said. “It is big enough to take care of itself.”

When actor Ed Asner criticized Reagan’s foreign policy, the actor-turned-president shot back: “What does an actor know about politics?”

At times the late president simply seemed to not realize what he was saying: “We are trying to get unemployment to go up, and I think we’re going to succeed.”

President George W. Bush was likewise known for such verbal missteps: “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

If we’re going to have convoluted syntax emanating from the White House, the person we need to lead us would be a wise-cracking, Groucho Marx type. At least he could lift our spirits with such wisdom as: “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”

Or: “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don’t know.”

Or: “Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.”

I’ll sign off by sharing with you my favorite Yuletide song, The White Snows of Winter. It’s based on Brahms 1st Symphony and sung by….  Surprise!….  The Kingston Trio.

With a series of deluges falling on the coast Monday and Tuesday, total rainfall for November topped 16 inches, according to Marin Municipal Water District readings at its reservoirs.

Nicasio Reservoir is full, and Seeger Dam is overflowing into its spillway. I shot this photo at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

All fall, the caked-mud bottom of Nicasio Reservoir could be seen in many places, making it a symbol of the drought around here. By late Monday, however, the reservoir had begun to overflow.

In West Marin where we don’t depend on Central Valley aquifers or the snowpack in the Sierra for water, the drought is over. As long as there’s rain falling on your head, you can water your lawn without feeling guilty. Just don’t try it in other parts of the state where, according to NASA, the drought may last a couple more years.

Those of us who have worked at newspapers know that sooner or later we’ll be responsible for glitches that will both embarrass us and make us chuckle. The bad part is that newspaper glitches are seen by thousands of people.

The funniest miscue I’ve recently seen was a Dec. 5 headline in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat’s online edition: “Highway 101 crash causes miles-long backup through Santa.” Thank goodness for St. Nick’s intestinal fortitude. Christmas is almost upon us.

Some miscues aren’t merely funny, and these often require a correction. However, the correction itself can be pretty amusing. Here’s a marathon correction from the Nov. 14 Napa Valley Register. It’s a good paper, which may explain the thoroughness of the correction:

“An article in the Holiday 2014 edition of Inside Napa Valley magazine, about St. Helena art gallery owner Christopher Hill, included in the Nov. 13 edition, contained a number of errors.

“Christopher Hill never lived in Germany. He was born in Berkeley and raised in Danville.

“Hill prefers the term ‘art gallery’ rather than ‘art studio.’

“When talking about part-time residents of St. Helena, Hill never said, ‘I’d like to see these people have more of a business interest in the town.’

“Hill said his interest on St. Helena is community-wide, not just personal.

“His daughter is not an accomplished equestrian, rather she is an avid one. She is not currently working on a recycling program at school; and both Hill and her daughter speak in German to each other all the time, not just when they are at home. [“her”?]

“‘The Crushers’ is a St. Helena men’s softball team, which Hill sponsors and manages. ‘The Shockers’ is a Napa Junior Girls softball team, which he also sponsors.

“The Chamber of Commerce did not name Hill the Opinionator,’ and Hill never said, ‘I suppose I am.’

“Hill said, ‘There is no reason why we can’t keep our treasures,’ not ‘traditions.’

“Hill proposed a parcel tax to raise revenue, not a real estate transfer tax.

“Although he was once involved in a Yountville gallery, he does not maintain studio space in Yountville.

“It was ‘industry colleagues’ not his friends who ‘gave Hill ‘six months at best’ before his first art gallery would fail. He did not say, ‘And then they added that the tourists just won’t come to an upstairs location.’

“His mantra about surviving and expanding his business during the tough times related to 2002, not 2008.

“Hill began his art career in 1995 at age 24, not 27, in San Jose, not Graz, Austria.

“He never said, ‘We offer much more than vineyard scenes. And we’re very informal, no suits or ties.’

“Finally, The Christopher Hill Gallery features artists from North America, Spain, Austria, and Germany, not just California, Austria and Germany.”

I read this correction at the time the Napa Valley Register published, it and the Romenesko media blog has since reported that when Mr. Hill called the paper about the inaccurate information in the original article, he was told a freelancer had screwed up.

No discussion of newspaper miscues would be complete without acknowledging the important role played by typographical errors. I recall that when I was editor of The Point Reyes Light, one of the oddest corrections I ever wrote concerned a typo:

“Correction: Because of an extraordinarily involved typographical error, an account in last week’s paper of the ‘Miracle of the Virgin of Guadalupe’ became even more amazing. An English-language caption to a photo was supposed to have read: ‘According to legend, the Virgin Mary appeared outside Mexico City to an Indian named Juan Diego, leaving her image on his cloak.’ Instead the caption read: ‘leading her in on his clock.’ An accompanying Spanish-language version of the caption was correct.” Dec. 27, 1985

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. I turned 71 Sunday, which was probably a good decision, but I threw out my back earlier in the week, which definitely was not a good move. You never realize how much use you have for something until you throw it out.

Just standing up is now a pain, and walking is even worse.

Doug Hill, president of the Berkeley City Commons Club, relays a member’s question to me at the end of my talk. (Photo by Dave LaFontaine)

As it happens, Morton McDonald, who has a home at Duck Cove in Inverness, had invited me to tell the Berkeley City Commons Club what I knew about Synanon from the cult’s days in West Marin. I had agreed to go last Friday but had to strut and fret my hour upon the stage from an overstuffed chair.

I’ve tried to portray my injury as caused by rugged work, telling friends I threw out my back while working with a chainsaw. “What were you cutting?” they ask. “Daisies,” I sheepishly reply. They’re inevitably startled. “No one throws out his back cutting daisies,” they say, “and no one cuts daisies with a chainsaw.”

It’s a long story. Former Point Reyes Light reporter Janine Warner and her husband Dave LaFontaine drove up from Los Angeles for my birthday and are staying for five days. My stepdaughter Kristeli, who is in her last year at New York University, will fly in Tuesday and stay for five days over Thanksgiving.

Vegetation was hanging over the railing along the outdoor steps, and I wanted everyone to be safe when they used the stairs. When I cut four or five dead fronds off a palm and three dead branches off a couple of pines, the chainsaw went right through them. But when I bent over to cut some woody branches from dead sections of two daisy bushes, a muscle spasm locked onto my back with all four feet.

Heating pads, back braces, and a ball-bearing-filled massage machine are helping, and I’ll no doubt recover in a week or two although post-traumatic-stress disorder could be a lingering problem.

I sign a copy of The Light on the Coast for Morton McDonald. The book includes a section on the paper’s investigation of Synanon, an investigation that led to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. (Photo by Dave LaFontaine)

In the “best of times” category, The Light on the Coast: 65 Years of News Big and Small as Reported by The Point Reyes Light, which I wrote with Jacoba Charles as coauthor, is now in its third printing. The Tomales Regional History Center is the publisher, and the book can be ordered online using the History Center link in the righthand column.

Two blacktails butting heads outside my kitchen window last week. I’d think a deer could easily get an eye poked out that way, but I’ve never seen a buck with an eye patch.

In a startling report last week, Aljazeera America unveiled the Kuwaiti government’s ingenious solution for dealing with its undocumented residents. Why couldn’t the US do something similar? Of course, we’d have to figure out how to do it on the cheap; Kuwait is the fifth richest country in the world per person while the United States is only tenth.

Here’s how reporter and opinion editor Atossa Araxia Abrahamian explained the scheme. “The oil-rich gulf state of Kuwait has struggled for years with a demographic problem: More than 100,000 of its residents are legally stateless, and the country refuses to recognize them as its own, saying they entered the country illegally.”

The Bidoon, as they’re called, “come from a range of economic backgrounds, some Bidoon live in poverty while others…. live in tony houses.” Many are descended from desert nomads. What they share is being routinely denied basic documentation such as birth, death, and marriage certificates supposedly because the Bidoons are “illegal residents.”

This, in turn, makes it almost impossible for them to get social services and passports.

But now, “a Kuwaiti minister has told a local paper that within a month, Kuwait’s Bidoon… would be eligible to gain citizenship, not of Kuwait but of the Comoros Islands,” Aljazerra’s Abrahamian reported. Never heard of the Comoros? Take a look.

The Comoros Islands, a tiny archipelago in the Indian Ocean, lie 185 miles east of Mozambique. With a land area of only 785 square miles, the former French colony is one of the smallest countries on earth. Its population is approximately 798,000. Kuwait isn’t all that big itself, 9,880 square miles (the equivalent of 83 by 83 miles), with a population of 4 million.

Kuwaiti’s interior minister has revealed that in less than a month, the government of his desert state will help its Bidoon register for “economic citizenship” in the lush, tropical Comoros Islands, Aljazeera reported. “This would legalize their immigration status in Kuwait and allow them to qualify for health and education benefits,” reporter Abrahamian explained.

However, she added, “the citizenship could also put them at risk of deportation. While stateless people are difficult for countries to get rid of, their lack of documentation actually protects them from being sent away; foreign citizens can be kicked out at a moment’s notice.”

The Islamic Human Rights Commission has called Kuwait’s scheme “a cynical ploy to relieve itself of its own obligations to the Bidoon.” The Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa program has called it “shocking.” A New York-based Bidoon activist quipped, “I went to bed in West Asia and woke up east African. These are the miracles of Arab regimes.”

And what do the Comoros Islands get out of the deal? Roughly five years ago, the impoverished islands began selling citizenships and passports to stateless residents of the United Arab Emirates and so far have made $200 million from the deal, which is a lot when you’re short of cash.

The mosque in Moroni, the capital of the Comoros Islands.

“In return for the passports [bought for Kuwait’s Bidoons], Comoros will…. receive direct investment from the Kuwaiti government, which promised to build schools and charities on the islands,” Kuwait’s interior minister said.

“Many Bidoon see reason to accept the offer, reasoning that any citizenship, even if it’s from a country most people haven’t heard of, let alone one they can find on a map, is better than nothing, especially when it appears to come with actual benefits,” Aljazeera commented.

One Bidoon worker in Kuwait was quoted as joking that “Comoros looked nice and that they would soon be jetting away to the islands.”

With that thought in mind, why doesn’t our government merely buy citizenship in some Caribbean island-nation for our undocumented immigrants arriving from Mexico and Central America? It would be far cheaper and safer than the current battle on our southern border.

And what’s more, none of these immigrants would ever be obliged to visit the Caribbean although how could they resist such entreaties as: “Aruba, Jamaica, ooo I wanna take ya, Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama. Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go, Jamaica. Off the Florida Keys, there’s a place called Kokomo….”

The names alone are enough to make one want to be a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, or St. Lucia.

Point Reyes Station today was unusually busy even for a Sunday. The firehouse was the scene of the 27th annual Pancake Breakfast and Benefit for the Point Reyes Station Disaster Council while Toby’s Feed Barn was the scene of the annual Papermill Creek Children’s Corner Carnival and Chef-Off.

It almost looked like there was a fire at the Point Reyes Station firehouse Sunday morning. All the engines were out on the street, and smoke from a fire-extinguisher demonstration was billowing nearby.

Fire engines are moved out of the firehouse every year to give people a place to eat. The breakfast was again organized by Larry Thompson, a county fire department engineer and paramedic.

Inverness Volunteer Fire Department helped Marin County firefighters staff the fundraiser. Here Inverness firefighter Burton Eubank serves pancakes and sausages while Inverness VFD Chief Jim Fox flips a pancake.

Lynn Axelrod, the Point Reyes Disaster Council coordinator, sells raffle tickets at the pancake breakfast.

Smokey the Bear gives a thumbs up as sales of raffle tickets and pancakes, along with donations, bring in $9,635 for the Point Reyes Station Disaster Council.

A firefighter demonstrates cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) at the entrance to the firehouse.

Children got a kick out of being hoisted in a rescue basket operated by a member of the Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team.

Other kids had fun pretending to operate jet boats belonging to the Search and Rescue Team.

Youngsters line up for a ride around Point Reyes Station in a fire engine. “Adults can ride too,” one firefighter told me, but I wasn’t about to take up some of the limited seating.

Only four blocks from the firehouse, The Papermill Creek Children’s Corner Carnival, a benefit for the preschool, began just before the pancake breakfast ended. Here Carolyn Placente of Point Reyes Station (left), chair of the preschool’s board of directors, handles the cashbox. Her kids, Dylan and Cherise, graduated from the preschool and now attend Inverness School.

The Papermill Creek Children’s Corner Carnival offered a variety of attractions, ranging from gourmet food to pony rides to live music to archery from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday in front of Toby’s Feed Barn.

Six professional chefs from West Marin donated their time and skills for the fundraiser, said food organizer Leslie Durkee. They were: August Temer, the Sand Dollar in Stinson Beach; Shannon Gregory, the Marshall Store; Jennifer Lutrell, The Fork at Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company; Matt Elias, Saltwater Oyster Depot in Inverness; Mary Margaret Stewart, the Siren Canteen in Stinson Beach; and Ed Vigil, Perry’s Deli in Inverness Park.

Selling pastries.

Five Brooks Stables in the Olema Valley provided pony rides as part of the fundraiser.

At a small petting zoo in the Feed Barn’s parking lot, two calves relax oblivious to a youngster rushing by.

With encouragement from Valerie Saenz, who ran the “Eyeball Toss,” youngsters try to get a golf ball to land in a vaguely skull-shaped target made of plastic cups.

Inside Toby’s, numerous little girls were eager to have their faces painted.

Kids tested their archery skills under the guidance of Richard Saenz of San Quentin. Richard is an instructor in the prison machine shop and also does contract work for NASA.

Without question, the physically largest attraction for kids inside the Feed Barn was a maze formed from bales of hay. It took some of the youngsters awhile to find their way out of the maze, and because of all the activities in town, it took some of their parents awhile to find their way out of Point Reyes Station.

Nor was Point Reyes Station the only West Marin town who chose to have some civic fun on Sunday. While all this was going on in Point Reyes Station, down the road in Bolinas, a Health and Safety Day, complete with helicopter demonstrations, firetruck rides, and fire-extinguisher training, was scheduled from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the firehouse and Community Health Center.