LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Butterflies and moths, with their seemingly endless variations of markings and colorations have long captured the imaginations of adults and children alike.
Lake and Mendocino counties are home to hundreds of species, and the team at Lake County’s Agricultural Center have announced an exciting new educational display.
County residents and visitors are encouraged to visit 883 Lakeport Blvd. in Lakeport, to view an astounding 325 specimens and 254 different species.
Twenty different butterfly and moth families are represented, including bird-like sphinx moths, flashy and delicate gossamer-winged butterflies, beautiful swallowtails, exotic tiger moths and soft, cloudlike white and sulphur moths.
Butterfly specimens in this collection range in size, from the twin-tailed swallowtail butterfly, at over three inches across, to the western pygmy blue butterfly, the smallest in the world at ½ inch across.
Moth specimens range from the ceanothus silk moth, at over four inches across, to the Microhelia Angelica, spanning less than ½ inch across. Some moths even have clear wings, mimicking wasps.
This unique and remarkable project was started in 2019 by Steven Hajik, Lake County’s agricultural commissioner/sealer of weights and measures from 2002 to 2022, and completed shortly before his retirement in 2022.
The display could have not been completed without significant contributions from the UC Davis’ Bohart Museum of Entomology.
Special thanks are due to Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum, for her insightful assistance in this endeavor.
Agricultural Center staff look forward to sharing this extraordinary work with you; the collection is viewable Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For more information, or to plan a group visit, please call 707-263-0217.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Authorities said a Hidden Valley Lake woman died on Thursday in a solo-vehicle crash along Highway 29.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office identified the victim of the crash as Dorothy Maxine Tarelli, 52.
Sheriff’s spokesperson Lauren Berlinn said positive identification of Tarelli is pending pathology results.
The California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake Area office reported that at 2:18 p.m. Thursday it received a call of a crash with a vehicle down an embankment on Highway 29 south of Bradford Road near Middletown.
When CHP officers arrived on scene, they determined that it was a solo vehicle wreck involving a 2003 Toyota.
The CHP said Tarelli was traveling southbound on Highway 29 when she “failed to maintain the roadway,” resulting in the Toyota going off the road’s west edge and hitting two trees before rolling over.
Tarelli’s Toyota came to rest down an embankment at the edge of St. Helena Creek, the CHP said.
The CHP said Tarelli, who was using her seat belt, died of her injuries at the scene.
Traffic at the time was minimal and not impacted due to the crash scene being located off the highway, the CHP said.
This crash is still under investigation by CHP’s Clear Lake Area office.
Anyone who has any further details regarding this crash is asked to contact Officer Mahorney at the CHP’s Clear Lake Area office, telephone 707-279-0103.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Morgan Polikoff, University of Southern California
The National Commission on Excellence in Education’s release of a report titled “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 was a pivotal point in the history of American education. The report used dire language, lamenting that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Using Cold War language, the report also famously stated: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
The report ushered in four decades of ambitious education reforms at the state and federal levels. Those reforms included landmark policy shifts like George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program and major state reforms in areas including teacher quality, school choice and test-based accountability for schools and teachers. But what is the legacy of “A Nation at Risk” 40 years after its publication? And what are the implications for school reform in the coming years?
As a scholar of education who specializes in standards-based reform and accountability, I believe important lessons can be learned about American education by examining what has taken place since the release of the report. Here are three:
1. Education reform has improved outcomes, but progress has slowed or reversed in the past decade
The U.S. has had major challenges with educational performance that long predate “A Nation at Risk.” One is that too many students are not mastering grade-level material. Another is that not enough are enrolling in and completing college given the benefits of college to individuals and society. Additionally, large gaps exist in both of those areas based on race and ethnicity and income.
Since the report, students from all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups have continuously made achievement gains, and gaps have narrowed considerably since the 1970s – especially in the early grades. Yet low levels of achievement and gaps in achievement remain. For instance, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 34% of fourth graders scored below the “basic” level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, meaning they weren’t reading at grade level. Since COVID-19, national assessment results in reading and math indicate the pandemic erased two decades of achievement gains; for instance, in eighth grade math the number of students scoring below basic increased from 31% in 2019 to 38% in 2022.
2. The reforms did not address the root causes of the problems
The report spurred four decades of intense reform led by states and the federal government. But these reforms have largely not addressed the major causes of poor educational performance – poverty and other factors outside of school, as well as highly decentralized educational systems that thwart meaningful school improvement.
While schools can help lessen these disparities in school readiness between more and less advantaged children, the report failed to look beyond schools for solutions to problems that stem from social inequality.
The narrow view of “A Nation at Risk” is notable because the widely accepted wisdom of the time, especially among Republicans, and going back to the 1966 Coleman Report, was that schools aren’t a primary driver of inequality. After all, the Coleman Report found that differences in school resources, like money and books, didn’t account for differences in student achievement between more and less advantaged children.
Even the education efforts since the report have not been able to address the structural barriers in U.S. education to large-scale improvement. For instance, in a recent book I show that state and federal policies over the past 30 years that focus on improving schools through better and clearer standards have only modestly improved teaching.
A big part of why standards and other education reforms have failed has to do with the fact that school systems in the U.S. are remarkably decentralized. About 13,000 school districts and their individual teachers exercise substantial control over what actually happens in classrooms. The inability of policymakers at higher levels – such as states or the federal government – to meaningfully change school practice partially explains why other major reforms have failed to achieve real results. Examples include the Obama administration’s US$7 billion school turnaround plan and teacher evaluation reforms. In a more centralized system, policies enacted at the state and federal levels could be implemented as intended; that is rarely the case in U.S. education.
3. The political coalitions that brought reform have fallen apart
As on other topics, Americans are highly polarized on education policy. From “A Nation at Risk” through even much of the Obama administration, many aspects of the education reform agenda had bipartisan agreement. Governors of both parties came together to enact standards and testing reforms that set expectations for student learning and measured student progress against those expectations in the 1980s and 1990s. Congress voted overwhelmingly for the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, calling for more rigorous standards and more frequent testing to drive educational improvement.
And some versions of school choice – especially charter schools – were supported by Republican and Democratic administrations in Washington and nationwide. Even the now-controversial Common Core standards, which aimed to create consistent expectations for student learning in math and English nationwide, were originally bipartisan. That is, they were created and endorsed by leaders from both parties.
And expanding choice programs continue to drive down public school enrollment in states across the nation. Over a million students have been lost from public schools, and private school enrollment has increased 4% since the onset of COVID-19.
The result of these trends is that the reform consensus that brought about a broadly national approach to education reform is splintering into red state and blue state versions. I expect red state reform will likely emphasize school choice and a back-to-basics curriculum focused on reading, math and the avoidance of controversial topics. I expect blue state reform will likely emphasize whole-child supports like mental health, social-emotional learning and curriculum that is intended to reflect the culture of the nation’s increasingly diverse student body.
The problems raised in “A Nation at Risk” remain as important as they were in 1983. In my view, national leaders need to continue to improve educational opportunity and performance for America’s schoolchildren. Improved education benefits individuals – those with college degrees have longer life expectancies, higher earnings and wealth and even more happiness than those with a high school degree or lower. Education also benefits societies, leading to greater economic growth. But 40 years after the report, policymakers don’t seem to have learned the lesson that schools alone won’t solve the nation’s educational problems. And if that’s true, the nation remains at risk.
With spring settling in across the U.S. and days lengthening, many people are ready to spend more time outside. But after a walk outdoors, have you ever found seeds clinging to your clothes? Lodged in your socks and shoelaces? Perhaps tangled in your pet’s fur? While most of us don’t give these hitchhikers much thought, seeds and burrs may be the first signs of invasive plant spread.
Certain species of non-native invasive plants produce seeds designed to attach to unsuspecting animals or people. Once affixed, these sticky seeds can be carried long distances before they fall off in new environments. With favorable conditions, they can become established quickly and outcompete native plants.
As a recreation ecologist and an avid hiker, I study how people inadvertently spread invasive plants along trails. There are simple things that everyone can do before, during and after going outdoors to avoid picking up plant hitchhikers and help maintain trail systems for others to enjoy.
Hardy, numerous and adaptable
Invasive plants are non-native species that can harm the environment, human health and the economy when they are introduced into new areas. However, not all non-native plants are invasive.
Plants with invasive capabilities tend to grow quickly, adapt easily to many different environmental conditions, produce seeds in vast quantities and successfully disperse and germinate them. These characteristics enable the plants to spread efficiently to different areas. Many vectors help invasive plants disperse, including birds, animals, wind, water and humans, via clothing, shoes, pets, gear and vehicles.
Invasive plant seeds tend to be small in size, high in number and hardy. They can persist in soil for many years, remaining viable and ready to germinate when conditions are right.
These seeds will usually germinate earlier in spring than those of native plants and keep their leaves until late fall, crowding out and outcompeting native varieties. Each species produces seeds on a particular schedule – annual, biennial or perennial – and at a specific time. For example, invasive biennial garlic mustard releases seeds every two years in late spring.
No cheap solutions
Invasive plants have many harmful ecological impacts. One of the most familiar U.S. examples is kudzu, a climbing vine that has smothered trees across the Southeast.
Kudzu grows prolifically, outcompeting native vegetation. It also alters the nitrogen cycle by increasing soil nitrogen levels and releasing nitric oxide, a gas that reduces air quality and promotes ground-level ozone pollution.
In the western U.S., carpets of invasive grasses, such as cheatgrass and medusahead, create highly flammable fine fuels. Their presence makes wildfires more frequent and intense.
Some invasive plants directly threaten human health. Giant hogweed is an herb in the carrot family that can grow 15 to 20 feet tall. Its poisonous sap can cause severe skin burns. Others, such as poison hemlock and water hemlock, are highly toxic to humans and animals if consumed.
Managing invasive plants, animals and insects is a growing problem, with costs that run into billions of dollars annually. A 2022 study estimated the annual cost of managing biological invasions in the U.S. at about US$21 billion as of 2020.
Invasives are especially threatening for remote, biodiversity-rich places like Antarctica, where remoteness and geographic isolation promote endemic species – those only found in a particular geographic region. These endemics evolve in the absence of natural competitors and predators, so introducing invasives can have catastrophic consequences.
Recreational trails act as corridors
Many invasive plants thrive on disturbed soil. Decades of research has shown that recreational trails promote the introduction of invasive plant species into natural and protected areas, including national parks and national scenic trails like the Appalachian Trail.
The Appalachian Trail is the longest hiking-only footpath in the world, extending almost 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine. More than 3 million visitors hike on some portion of it every year. Invasive plants commonly found along the trail include garlic mustard, multiflora rose and purple loosestrife.
In a recent study, I worked with the U.S. Geological Survey to investigate Appalachian Trail hikers’ invasive plant knowledge, perceptions, and behaviors. We found that most hikers were unaware of this issue. As a result, few took precautions to avoid contributing to it.
Here are things that concerned hikers can do to help manage invasive plants:
– Identify and report sightings of invasive plants. The more land managers know about where these species are present, the more effectively they can monitor and manage their spread.
– Choose clothing and shoes carefully. Certain surfaces, such as uncovered socks, shoelaces, fleece and Velcro, are more seed-friendly than smoother materials such as nylon. Wearing pants that are uncuffed and pocketless to minimize snag points and fastening gaiters over shoes are easy ways to repel plant hitchhikers. Gaiters will also keep pebbles and mud out of your boots.
– Follow the Leave No Trace principles, which outline minimum-impact strategies for visiting the outdoors. For example, stick to marked formal trails to avoid dispersing invasive plants off-trail. Camp on designated or well-established campsites, and don’t transport firewood between sites – use certified or local firewood and hay. Clean your pets and vehicles as well as your clothes before and after hitting the trail.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The working relationship between Lake County’s fire agencies and the Health Services department took another step back this week after the county’s health department head issued a news release about the staffing levels of the Northshore and Lakeport fire districts that the chiefs said is inaccurate.
On Wednesday, Health Services Director Jonathan Portney issued the news release — which later was edited — stating that his department “is fully committed to ensuring public safety in light of the current challenges faced by the Northshore Fire Protection District (NFPD) and Lakeport Fire Protection District (LFPD) in providing adequate emergency medical services (EMS) coverage expressed by the Northshore Fire Protection District.”
Northshore Fire Chief Mike Ciancio said on Thursday during a special district board meeting to discuss staffing — which had been called on Monday, and not in response to Portney’s statement — that a lot of what was in the news release were “lies, that are not true.”
Lakeport Fire Chief Patrick Reitz on Thursday likewise was critical of Portney and the Health Services Department for making the statement without having discussed it beforehand with him or his agency, explaining that it didn’t accurately portray fire department functions.
“Not only have they not talked to us, they didn’t even CC my department with a copy of the news release,” Reitz told Lake County News, explaining that he found out about it when a member of the community gave him the news release.
Portney’s statement said, “the County of Lake Health Services Department is working with partners and other relevant stakeholders to address these shortages and ensure that the community receives the necessary medical care in emergencies.”
“How can they say that when they haven’t reached out and had those discussions with their partner agencies and his peers?” Reitz said.
Since the statement’s release, neither Ciancio nor Reitz has had any contact with Portney, leading them to wonder just which partners and stakeholders he’s actually working with. Both have spoken with county officials to register their concerns about the action on Portney’s part.
The news release also suggests that the districts aren’t responding to emergency calls, which Reitz said isn’t true.
“I am not sure what they are trying to insinuate here, other than I don't appreciate it,” Reitz said.
Portney’s news release was posted on the department’s Facebook page. Lake County News did not receive a copy of it through the normal news release distribution.
Portney and Health Services public information officer Dwight Coddington did not respond to questions emailed to them on Thursday afternoon by Lake County News regarding the statement and its distribution.
The first paragraph of the original version of the statement, which can be seen below, said the challenges in providing adequate medical services coverage had been “expressed by Chief Paul Duncan & Chief Mike Ciancio.”
Duncan works for Cal Fire, not the local districts.
“You have a director who doesn’t even recognize the partner agencies or his peers with those partner agencies,” said Reitz of Portney.
Reitz said Portney’s press statement confuses the 911 emergency medical services, or EMS, system with the system that relates to interfacility transports, lumping the two together when they are separate functions. It also asserts that such transports are the responsibility of fire departments, when they’re really the responsibility of the hospitals.
“There is a huge difference between the 911 EMS system and the interfacility transport system and the laws and the regulations that govern both,” said Reitz.
Ciancio and Reitz said Thursday that all of Lake County’s fire districts are challenged with hiring and retention now, but that no emergencies or sudden changes have occurred in their current operations as Portney’s news release suggests.
Ciancio said operations now are as they have been for the last 18 months, with the district running about 3,800 calls a year.
Of Northshore’s 19 paid positions, 13 are filled to cover one of the largest fire districts in the state, at 357 square miles, and covering 44 miles of Highway 20. Reitz said he has a total of 10 positions.
Meanwhile, emergency 911 response “is not an issue,” said Reitz.
Timing of the statement
The timing of Portney’s news release suggests it’s in response to two recent actions taken separately by Ciancio and Reitz.
Ciancio — who had a meeting last year similar to the one on Thursday to discuss the district’s ongoing hiring challenges — said that, keeping in mind the fragile EMS system and being mindful that no one can afford extra work, he’s been working on a plan for the future in an effort to keep positions filled.
He said he’s not short on ambulances, but increasingly it's hard to keep medics, as they can go to other counties and draw six-figure salaries, an issue he can’t easily remedy due to the district having had two failed tax measures on the ballot. Still, his agency runs two ambulances a day and has had help from a volunteer medic.
Ciancio said he discussed his recruitment and retention ideas at a recent meeting that included only the county’s fire chiefs. Less than 24 hours later, he said Portney was requesting that North Coast EMS monitor daily ambulance providers.
The result is that this week — “all of a sudden,” Ciancio said — Health Services became interested in knowing the availability of emergency ambulances in the county.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Ciancio, who thinks Portney reacted to the secondhand information about that staffing discussion at the chiefs meeting, since the last time the chiefs had a discussion with Portney was in September.
Portney’s statement said the Lake Health Services Department “acknowledges the alert raised by the NFPD about the inadequate coverage of paramedics on the North Shore of the County, as well as how these difficulties will impact Sutter Lakeside Hospital in arranging inter-facility transfers for patients requiring a higher level of care due to the unavailability of air-based resources during adverse weather conditions.”
It also noted, “Health Services Director Jonathan Portney has requested continuous updates on staffing levels and is actively engaging with North Coast EMS, which oversees and ensures adequate services provision (per ordinances) to ensure better communication and coordination.
“The LCHD [Lake County Health Department] is also exploring various solutions to overcome the current challenges, including seeking private support to provide emergency medical services and bolstering the EMS infrastructure. County of Lake Health Services is offering their full support,” it said.
The statement noted that “updates and solutions regarding the ongoing efforts to resolve the EMS shortage and improve emergency response services will be provided during an upcoming Lake County Board of Supervisors meeting.”
Emergency services versus interfacility transports
Emergency ambulances and transport services appear to be an overarching issue at the heart of the matter between Health Services and the fire chiefs.
Ciancio and Reitz said that interfacility transports, which include “priority one” calls for ambulances, are the responsibility of the hospitals, not the fire departments. Such services aren’t even covered in the local fire ordinances or in the fire district taxes paid by Lake County property owners.
Speaking for his side of the lake, Reitz said Sutter Lakeside Hospital cannot get reliable interfacility transport from private ambulance companies, a problem that’s exacerbated when there are weather events or a lack of air resources to move critical patients.
Availability of private ambulance companies is a longtime problem in Lake County which is why more than 15 years ago fire departments had stepped up to try to help fill the breach when an ambulance provider pulled out.
Reitz said the fire districts have wanted to meet with Health Services to try to find solutions.
He said he and his peers in the chiefs association, other partner organizations and agencies, have wanted a seat at the table to work toward a meaningful solution for ambulance services, “and it just hasn’t happened.”
Increasingly, with the districts needing to focus more on taking care of their residents, they’ve been stepping back from interfacility transports, which can take ambulances out of circulation for several hours depending on where they have to go — such as Santa Rosa, San Francisco and Sacramento.
“Is that really fair to our taxpayers when our taxpayers pay for 911 response?” Reitz asked.
Case in point: Reitz, whose district only has one ambulance, said that a few weeks ago Lakeport Fire got a call at 3:50 a.m. for a priority one out of county ambulance transport. He said that despite not wanting to accept the transport, the district did so; he explained that wasn’t the time to raise the issues with resources, when a person needed medical assistance.
Within 10 minutes of accepting it, they had a call in their district that required an ambulance and at that point didn’t have one, meaning that Kelseyville Fire had to cover them.
Reitz said hardly a day goes by when mutual aid isn’t activated in Lake County to respond to calls, as in the case with Kelseyville responding to help Lakeport. “We constantly are crossing borders and backing each other up.”
Two weeks ago he sent an email to county officials about that early morning ambulance call, explaining he didn’t appreciate having to strip his district of its only ambulance to address a situation that is the hospital’s responsibility. Nothing came of that outreach, he said.
On Monday, Reitz sent out a memo explaining that Lakeport Fire was not taking any more priority one calls for interfacility transport indefinitely due to staffing and equipment issues.
Health Services also didn’t respond directly to that email, but Portney’s statement followed two days later.
Ciancio and Reitz said they’ve had few interactions with Portney, who began his job at the start of 2022.
Ciancio said he’s talked to Portney twice in that time, including once last year when Ciancio brought up the issues with ambulance transport. He pointed out that the Board of Supervisors had directed Portney to fix the county’s nearly 20-year-old ambulance ordinance, but that hasn’t happened.
Reitz, who joined Lakeport Fire in November, said he’s spoken once to Portney since his arrival and that they agreed to work together. He said he gave Portney his ideas about addressing the ambulance situation and that while Portney indicated interest, he hasn’t spoken to him about it since.
“When they don’t even come to the table, how are we supposed to address this?” Reitz said.
Ciancio said he’s spoken about the situation with Portney with two members of the Board of Supervisors — EJ Crandell, who represents District 3 and was at the special Thursday afternoon meeting, and Bruno Sabatier, who represents the Clearlake area in District 2 and is one of the board’s members on the North Coast Emergency Medical Service Committee.
Rietz said he did not want to disclose the county officials he spoke to about the matter.
The situation with Portney’s public statement about Lakeport and Northshore followed by roughly two weeks a discussion at the Board of Supervisors in which the Lake County Fire Chief’s Association submitted a letter against the need to spent $20,000 to hire Mike Marsh EMS Consulting for ambulance strike team support through the Regional Disaster Management Services Association.
Under the contract, Marsh’s work included a number of tasks related to interfacility transport and monitoring of the system operations of moving patients from Lake to other counties.
“We feel the County of Lake should not be financially responsible for the request of those resources when it is clearly the responsibility of the sending facilities to arrange transportation for their patients,” the chiefs association letter said.
The letter said the services Marsh was to complete also were redundant with work the chiefs association already is doing, and that the money would be best spent to extend an EMS liaison position held by a current employee.
Despite those concerns, the board unanimously approved spending realignment funds to pay Marsh’s contract.
“He is not what Public Health needs, unfortunately. He is not,” Ciancio said of Marsh.
Ciancio added that when he brings up Marsh in other EMS circles, “they just say good luck with that one.”
A rocky tenure
In addition to the issues with the county’s fire departments, Portney’s 15-month tenure has not been smooth.
In that time, he’s been the focus of seven closed session performance evaluations — the most recent one on Tuesday — with the Board of Supervisors. That’s more than any other county department head, who usually are evaluated once or twice a year. More frequent closed-door evaluations have historically been a precursor to a department head’s departure.
He clashed with former Sheriff Brian Martin over the jail medical program. Health Services has been involved in that program for decades but last year Portney didn’t issue a request for proposals for the program and stated his belief that his department shouldn’t be involved. The supervisors formed an ad hoc committee to address the situation and later approved a six-month medical services contract extension in June and a new four-year, $3.9 million contract with California Forensic Medical Group in December.
Portney also has come under fire for turnover in key positions and for hiring as director of nursing an individual without the required public health nursing credentials, and he’s been criticized for hiring consultants like Marsh based on personal friendships.
In December, nine Health Services staff signed a letter of no confidence against Portney, blaming him for plummeting morale and for alienating community partners including fire departments, the sheriff’s office, Social Services and Behavioral Health, as Lake County News has reported.
That letter signaled all was not right between Health Services and the fire departments.
“This department has a long history of cooperation with law enforcement and fire departments. Our County's State of Emergencies with Destructive Wildland Fires, COVID, PSPS etc, over the last 5-6 years, had built a team of cooperation, respect, and ‘Doing the Right Thing’ for the safety of all county residents. Director Portney has all but destroyed these relationships,” the letter said.
Portney himself circulated that letter to dozens of county staff and said that it was submitted to the Board of Supervisors by Cal Fire Chief Paul Duncan, who he had incorrectly named in his original Wednesday statement on the fire department staffing.
On Feb. 17, more than two months after Lake County News published an article about the letter of no confidence, Portney contacted the publication to ask that it take down “all articles highlighting myself and the Health Services Department staff members.”
He added, “I believe this good-faith action will be the best option for all parties involved. I appreciate your consideration, and with your support, we can continue building a robust and healthy Lake County. If you choose not to take them down… when appropriate investigative materials are available, I trust that you will update the community and the articles accordingly to reflect all findings?”
When Lake County News asked what purpose would be served by this action and precisely how that would contribute to a “robust and healthy” Lake County, Portney didn’t respond to the question.
Portney’s statements
The full revised version of Portney’s news release is below, along with an image of the earlier version. · Health Services Department Ensures Commitment to Public Safety Amid EMS Shortage
LAKE COUNTY, CA (March 29, 2023) — The Lake County Health Services Department is fully committed to ensuring public safety in light of the current challenges faced by the Northshore Fire Protection District (NFPD) and Lakeport Fire Protection District (LFPD) in providing adequate emergency medical services (EMS) coverage expressed by the Northshore Fire Protection District.
The County of Lake Health Services Department acknowledges the alert raised by the NFPD about the inadequate coverage of paramedics on the North Shore of the County, as well as how these difficulties will impact Sutter Lakeside Hospital in arranging inter-facility transfers for patients requiring a higher level of care due to the unavailability of air-based resources during adverse weather conditions.
In response to these concerns, the County of Lake Health Services Department is working with partners and other relevant stakeholders to address these shortages and ensure that the community receives the necessary medical care in emergencies.
Health Services Director Jonathan Portney has requested continuous updates on staffing levels and is actively engaging with North Coast EMS, which oversees and ensures adequate services provision (per ordinances) to ensure better communication and coordination.
The LCHD is also exploring various solutions to overcome the current challenges, including seeking private support to provide emergency medical services and bolstering the EMS infrastructure. County of Lake Health Services is offering their full support.
The Health Services Department is committed to addressing this critical situation and ensuring the well-being and safety of our community. Updates and solutions regarding the ongoing efforts to resolve the EMS shortage and improve emergency response services will be provided during an upcoming Lake County Board of Supervisors meeting.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Middletown Art Center is seeking artists interested in being a part of a unique opportunity to revitalize the beloved EcoArts Sculpture Walk and being paid to do it.
The 15th installation will focus on responding to Lake County’s cultural landscape.
Cultural landscape is a term used in the fields of geography, ecology, and heritage studies, to describe a symbiosis of human activity and environment.
Collectively, cultural landscapes are works of art, narratives of culture, and expressions of regional identity. They invite us to draw the focus of conservation from the protection of past fabric toward the management of future change. It can be a vehicle for people-centered approaches, which support a sense of belonging and participation.
Work should inquire into and acknowledge the history of place, take a deep look at the present, and/or envision a healthy future for us and the ecosystems we are a part of.
This year, and moving forward, the center’s intention is to utilize the platform of the outdoor exhibit to dialogue with nature while recognizing the inherent healing that can happen by making art in nature with community.
The organization especially encourages works that bring awareness to social justice and environmental issues and concepts.
Artists are invited (but not required) to facilitate community engaged artmaking projects that amplify voices that might not otherwise be heard; or host a workshop in which the artist shares skills and receives support in completing work.
Pieces can be permanent, temporary or constructed to return to the earth. Working with materials found at the park and other natural materials is preferred. Please see Installation criteria and learn more at Middletownartcenter.org/ecoarts. All submissions will be juried.
Please apply by April 15 for consideration for permanent installations. Seasonal installation applications accepted until April 24.
Installation and community art making activities may begin late June and preferably extend through August.
Because permanent pieces may take longer, the deadline for permanent pieces extends to Sept. 1 or thereafter as needed.
Funding opportunities range from $300 to $6,000 depending on the piece and contingent upon grant approval.
For more details and application visit the Middletown Art Center’s website.
Questions? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with subject line “Sculpture Walk” or call the MAC at 707-809-8118.
A new NASA mission to Saturn’s giant moon, Titan, is due to launch in 2027.
When it arrives in the mid-2030s, it will begin a journey of discovery that could bring about a new understanding of the development of life in the universe.
This mission, called Dragonfly, will carry an instrument called the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer, or DraMS, designed to help scientists hone in on the chemistry at work on Titan.
It may also shed light on the kinds of chemical steps that occurred on Earth that ultimately led to the formation of life, called prebiotic chemistry.
Titan's abundant complex carbon-rich chemistry, interior ocean, and past presence of liquid water on the surface make it an ideal destination to study prebiotic chemical processes and the potential habitability of an extraterrestrial environment.
DraMS will allow scientists back on Earth to remotely study the chemical makeup of the Titanian surface. “We want to know if the type of chemistry that could be important for early pre-biochemical systems on Earth is taking place on Titan,” explains Dr. Melissa Trainer of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
Trainer is a planetary scientist and astrobiologist who specializes in Titan and is one of the Dragonfly mission’s deputy principal investigators. She is also lead on the DraMS instrument, which will scan through measurements of samples from Titan’s surface material for evidence of prebiotic chemistry.
To accomplish this, the Dragonfly robotic rotorcraft will capitalize on Titan’s low gravity and dense atmosphere to fly between different points of interest on Titan’s surface, spread as far as several miles apart. This allows Dragonfly to relocate its entire suite of instruments to a new site when the previous one has been fully explored, and provides access to samples in environments with a variety of geologic histories.
At each site, samples less than a gram in size will be drilled out of the surface by the Drill for Acquisition of Complex Organics (DrACO) and brought inside the lander’s main body, to a place called the “attic” that houses the DraMS instrument. There, they will be irradiated by an onboard laser or vaporized in an oven to be measured by DraMS. A mass spectrometer is an instrument that analyzes the various chemical components of a sample by separating these components down into their base molecules and passing them through sensors for identification.
“DraMS is designed to look at the organic molecules that may be present on Titan, at their composition and distribution in different surface environments,” says Trainer. Organic molecules contain carbon and are used by all known forms of life. They are of interest in understanding the formation of life because they can be created by living and non-living processes.
Mass spectrometers determine what’s in a sample by ionizing the material (that is, bombarding it with energy so that the atoms therein become positively or negatively charged) and examining the chemical composition of the various compounds. This involves determining the relationship between the weight of the molecule and its charge, which serves as a signature for the compound.
DraMS was developed in part by the same team at Goddard which developed the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite aboard the Curiosity rover. DraMS is designed to survey samples of Titanian surface material in situ, using techniques tested on Mars with the SAM suite.
Trainer emphasized the benefits of this heritage. Dragonfly’s scientists did not want to “reinvent the wheel” when it came to searching for organic compounds on Titan, and instead built on established methods which have been applied on Mars and elsewhere. “This design has given us an instrument that’s very flexible, that can adapt to the different types of surface samples,” says Trainer.
DraMS and other science instruments on Dragonfly are being designed and built under the direction of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which manages the mission for NASA and is designing and building the rotorcraft-lander.
The team includes key partners at Goddard, the French space agency (CNES, Paris, France), which is providing the Gas Chromatograph Module for DraMS that will provide an additional separation after leaving the oven, Lockheed Martin Space, Littleton, Colorado, NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, Penn State University, State College, Pennsylvania, Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, California, Honeybee Robotics, Brooklyn, New York, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Cologne, Germany, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Tokyo, Japan.
Dragonfly is the fourth mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program. New Frontiers is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate Washington.
Nick Oakes works for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has more new puppies and dogs for adoption this week.
More than 30 dogs are waiting for new homes.
They include “Susie,” a 5-month-old female Labrador retriever mix puppy, and “Keilani,” a 3-and-a-half-year-old female German shepherd mix.
The shelter is located at 6820 Old Highway 53. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
For more information, call the shelter at 707-762-6227, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or on the city’s website.
This week’s adoptable dogs are featured below.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKEPORT, Calif. — Next week, the Lakeport City Council will receive a report on an outreach program to city businesses.
The Business Walk program in Lakeport is designed to familiarize the business community with the city and other resources available to them.
City staff and members of the Lakeport Economic Development Advisory Committee, or LEDAC, contact local owners and managers, providing them with the opportunity to speak with representatives about issues of concern.
The goal is to help local businesses thrive and grow.
Last fall, 16 teams of staff and volunteers, totaling 29 individuals, surveyed 115 businesses in 16 areas of the city.
Findings from the visit have been compiled by LEDAC and will be presented to the Lakeport City Council at its meeting on April 4.
The city’s economic development strategic plan identified annual in-person visits as an important element in the support and retention of existing local businesses.
The walks were put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic and were resumed to engage with and hear from the business community.
“Respondents were satisfied with business life in Lakeport, describing it as a laid-back, friendly, cooperative environment” in which to do business,” said Denise Combs, chair of the Business Walk Subcommittee.
“Significant challenges have changed since the last survey in 2019, with worries about lack of business declining considerably while the inability to find competent staff has more than doubled, reflecting national trends,” said Pam Harpster, another subcommittee member.
The report contains recommendations to the Council for action items to address specific findings.
The public is encouraged to attend the meeting in person at City Hall at 6 p.m. or via https://www.cityoflakeport.com/agendas_and_minutes/index.php.
LEDAC is an advocate for a strong and positive Lakeport business community, and serves as a conduit between the City and the community for communicating the goals, activities and progress of Lakeport’s economic and business programs.
The committee meets bimonthly on the second Wednesday, 7:30 to 9 a.m. All meetings are open to the public.
Trustees hire attorneys to assist with normal trust administration and with litigation. When are the attorney fees properly paid from trust assets?
In California, the law allows the trustee to pay reasonable attorney fees associated with the normal administration of the trust (See sections 16247 and 16243 of the Probate Code).
Normal trust administration work done by attorneys includes advising the trustee on his or her duties, petitioning the court for instructions, sending notices to trust beneficiaries and creditors, work involved with transferring title to trust assets, and trustee accountings.
The work billed by the attorneys should be supported by itemized invoices as the trustee has the burden of proof to show that charges made are proper (See Purdy V. Johnson (1917) 174 Cal. 521, 530).
In addition, trust litigation involving the validity of the trust and the assets and affairs of the trust are also paid by the trust estate because such litigation benefits the trust itself (section 15684 of the Probate Code).
For example, if the trust sues to claim ownership and possession of an asset then the trustee’s attorney fees are payable out of the trust, even if the trustee is unsuccessful in suing on behalf of the trust.
However, if the trust litigation instead involves a dispute between competing trust beneficiaries over their inheritance rights in the trust, i.e., a trust contest, or involves whether the trustee is personally liable for a breach of trustee duties (i.e., for possible wrongdoings as trustee) then such litigation does not benefit the trust itself. Rather, such litigation personally benefits either a beneficiary or a trustee (See Whittlesey v. Aiello (2002), 104 Cath 1221).
In such cases where the litigation benefits someone personally, the general rule is that the trustee must remain neutral, i.e., not use the trust assets to advocate for one side or another fighting over the terms of the trust distribution.
However, if the trust itself contains express language authorizing the trustee to use trust funds to defend the terms of a trust against a contest the trustee may then use trust funds (See Doolittle v. Exchange Bank (2015) 241 Cath 529).
Also, when a trustee’s administration is the subject of lawsuit (e.g., a petition to remove the trustee or to penalize the trustee for breach of trust), the trustee is generally ill advised to use the trust funds to defend against himself or herself.
If the trustee loses the litigation then he or she must repay the trust for the attorney fees paid for the unsuccessful defense of the trustee.
Moreover, the unsuccessful trustee is then wide open to further attack because the attorneys that the unsuccessful attorney had hired as trustee owe their attorney duties of loyalty and confidentiality to whomever occupies the office of the trustee (at any given time) and not to any person who once occupied that office.
Thus, when a trustee is replaced the successor (current) trustee (who may have sued to remove to the prior trustee) is legally able to ask the prior (removed) trustee’s attorneys for all confidential communications between the attorney and that prior trustee.
Accordingly, a trustee who may be found to be personally liable is well advised to hire an attorney using his or her own money so that the attorney represents the trustee personally and not as trustee; so that the attorneys duty of loyalty and confidentiality is owed to the individual and not the trust.
Of course, after the trustee has successfully defended him or herself against allegations of breach of trustee’s duty, then the now vindicated trustee may request that his or her attorney fees be reimbursed from the trust assets.
Furthermore, if a beneficiary contests a trustee’s accounting either without reasonable cause or in bad faith then the court may award against the contestant the compensation and costs of the trustee and other expenses and costs of litigation, including attorney fees, incurred to defend the account (Section 17211 Probate Code).
The foregoing discussion is not legal advice. Consult an attorney for guidance.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235.
A new UC San Francisco-led study brings scientists closer to understanding the causes of a mysterious rash of cases of acute severe hepatitis that began appearing in otherwise healthy children after COVID-19 lockdowns eased in the United States and 34 other countries in the spring of 2022.
Pediatric hepatitis is rare, and doctors were alarmed when they started seeing outbreaks of severe unexplained hepatitis. There have been about 1,000 cases to date; 50 of these children needed liver transplants and at least 22 have died.
In the study, publishing on March 30 in Nature, researchers linked the disease to co-infections from multiple common viruses, in particular a strain of adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV2). AAVs are not known to cause hepatitis on their own. They need “helper” viruses, such as adenoviruses that cause colds and flus, to replicate in the liver.
Once they returned to school, children were more susceptible to infections with these common pathogens. The study suggests that for a small subset of these children, getting more than one infection at the same time may have made them more vulnerable to severe hepatitis.
“We were surprised by the fact that the infections we detected in these children were caused not by an unusual, emerging virus, but by common childhood viral pathogens,” said Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, professor of laboratory medicine and medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, director of the UCSF Clinical Microbiology Laboratory, and senior author of the paper.
“That’s what led us to speculate that the timing of the outbreak was probably related to the really unusual situations we were going through with COVID-19 related school and daycare closures and social restrictions,” Chiu said. “It may have been an unintended consequence of what we have experienced during the last two-to-three years of the pandemic.”
By August 2022, clusters of cases were reported in 35 countries, including the U. S., where 358 cases were under investigation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched an investigation into the causes.
Testing for viruses
To conduct the study, which was backed by the CDC, researchers used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) along with various metagenomic sequencing and molecular-testing methods to examine plasma, whole blood, nasal swab and stool samples from 16 pediatric cases in six states – Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and South Dakota – from Oct. 1, 2021, to May 22, 2022. The specimens were compared with 113 control samples.
In genotyping the 14 available blood samples, adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2) was detected in 93% of the cases and human adenoviruses (HAdVs) were found in all the cases; a specific type of adenovirus linked to gastroenteritis (HAdV-41) was found in 11 cases. Additional co-infections with Epstein-Barr, herpes and enterovirus were found in 85.7% of cases.
Chiu noted the results mirrored the findings of two concurrent studies conducted in the United Kingdom, which identified the same AAV2 strain. All three studies identified co-infections from multiple viruses, and 75% of the children in the U.S. study had three or four viral infections.
Since AAVs are not considered pathogenic on their own, a direct causal link with the severe acute hepatitis has yet to be established. The study notes, however, that children may be especially vulnerable to more severe hepatitis triggered by co-infections. While infections from adeno-associated viruses can occur at any age, the peak is typically between 1 and 5 years old, and the median age of the affected children in the study was 3 years old.
The clusters of acute severe hepatitis in children have recently waned, but Chiu said the best way to protect children from this unlikely outcome is by washing hands frequently and staying home when sick.
Authors: In addition to Chiu, authors include Venice Servellita, BS/CLS, Alicia Sotomayor Gonzalez, PhD, of UCSF, and Daryl Lamson of the New York State Department of Public Health. Please see the study for additional authors.
Funding: The study was funded in part by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (contracts 75D30121C12641 and 75D30121C10991 C.Y.C.) and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) (contract 75A50122C00022), and the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grant R61HD105618 C.Y.C. and C.A.R.). Additional funding was awarded under Agreement No. HSHQDC-15-C-00064 to Battelle National Biodefense Institute by the Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate, for the management and operation of the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center.
Victoria Colliver writes for UC San Francisco.
Lucas Berenbrok, University of Pittsburgh; Janice L. Pringle, University of Pittsburgh, and Joni Carroll, University of Pittsburgh
On March 29, 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Narcan for over-the-counter sale. Narcan is the 4-milligram nasal spray version of naloxone, a medication that can quickly counteract an opioid overdose.
The FDA’s greenlighting of over-the-counter naloxone means that it will be available for purchase without a prescription at more than 60,000 pharmacies nationwide. That means that, for 90% of Americans, naloxone nasal spray will be accessible at a pharmacy within 5 miles from home. It will also likely be available at gas stations, supermarkets and convenience stores. The transition from prescription to over-the-counter status is expected to take a few months.
We think that making naloxone available over the counter is an essential step in reducing deaths due to overdose and destigmatizing opioid use disorder. Over-the-counter access to naloxone will permit more people to carry and administer it to help others who are overdosing. Moreover, increasing naloxone’s over-the-counter availability will convey the message that risks associated with substance use disorder warrant a pervasive intervention much as with other illnesses.
Naloxone reverses overdose from prescription opioids like fentanyl, oxycodone and hydrocodone and recreational opioids like heroin. Naloxone works by competitively binding to the same receptors in the central nervous system that opioids bind to for euphoric effects. When naloxone is administered and reaches these receptors, it can block the euphoric effects of opioids and reverse respiratory depression when opioid overdose occurs.
There are two common ways to administer naloxone. One is through the prepackaged nasal sprays, such as Narcan and Kloxxado or generic versions of the drug. The other method is via auto-injectors, like ZIMHI, which deliver naloxone through injection, similar to the way epinephrine is delivered by an EpiPen as an emergency treatment for life-threatening allergic reactions.
The FDA will review a second over-the-counter application for naloxone auto-injectors at a later date. Although no interaction with a health care provider will be needed to purchase over-the-counter naloxone, when naloxone is purchased at a pharmacy, a knowledgeable pharmacist will be able to help people choose a product and explain instructions for use.
Research shows that when people who are likely to witness or respond to opioid overdoses have naloxone, they can save patients’ lives. This also includes bystanders as well as first responders like police officers and paramedics.
But until now, people in those situations could intervene only if they were carrying prescription naloxone or knew where to retrieve it quickly. Friends and family of people who use opioids are often given prescriptions for naloxone for emergency use. Over-the-counter naloxone will help make the drug more accessible to members of the general public.
Reducing stigma and saving lives
Naloxone is a safe medication with minimal side effects. It works only for those with opioids in their system, and it’s unlikely to cause harm if given by mistake to someone who’s not actively overdosing on opioids.
Since approximately 40% of overdoses occur in the presence of someone else, we believe public access to naloxone is extremely important. People may wish to have naloxone on hand if someone they know is at an increased risk for opioid overdose, including people who have opioid use disorder or people who take high amounts of prescribed opioid medications.
Community centers and recreational facilities may also keep naloxone on hand, similar to the placement of automated external defibrillators in public spaces for emergency use when someone has a heart attack.
There’s a long-held public stigma that suggests addiction is a moral failing rather than a chronic yet treatable health condition. Those who request naloxone or who have an opioid use disorder experience stigma and often aren’t comfortable disclosing their drug use to others, or seeking medical treatment. Removing naloxone’s prescription requirements by making it over the counter could decrease the stigma experienced by individuals since they no longer must request it from a health care provider or behind the pharmacy counter.
In addition, we encourage health care providers and members of the general public to use less stigmatizing language when discussing addiction.
Questionable accessibility
Often, medications switched from prescription to over the counter are not covered by insurance. It remains unclear if this will be the case with Narcan. If so, the costs will shift to the patient, highlighting the reason continued support of programs that offer naloxone free of charge remains important.
What’s more, over-the-counter access could paradoxically cause a decrease in the drug’s availability. A rise in purchases could make it harder to buy naloxone if manufacturer supply does not keep up with increased consumer demand. The U.S. experienced such shortages of over-the-counter drugs in late 2022 during the nationwide surges in flu, respiratory syncytial virus and COVID-19.
Federal and state governments could lessen these potential barriers by subsidizing the cost of over-the-counter naloxone and working with drug manufacturers to provide production incentives to meet public demand.
The effects of nationwide access to over-the-counter naloxone on opioid-related deaths remain to be seen, but making this medication more widely available is an important next step in our nation’s response to the opioid crisis.