NORTH COAST, Calif. — A moderate Saturday evening earthquake centered in Mendocino County was felt across the region and as far away as Southern California.
The United States Geological Survey said the 4.4-magnitude quake occurred at 8:44 p.m. and was centered 5.2 miles southeast of Talmage, 7.6 miles east southeast of Ukiah and 26.5 miles west northwest of Clearlake, at a depth of nearly 5 miles.
The quake was felt around Lake County. This reporter felt it as a sharp jolt.
As of 1 a.m. Sunday, the USGS had received 425 shake reports from around Lake County, the North Coast region and all of California.
The USGS reported the quake was felt as far away as Oxnard and Bakersfield.
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.
DAVIS — California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Rep. Mike Thompson, along with state and local leaders, stood together on Friday in solidarity to address the need for bold state and federal action to address gun violence.
The call to action is part of Gun Violence Awareness Month, a month to bring awareness to the urgent need for stronger gun violence protections nationwide.
California has long been a national leader in effectively preventing gun violence — with one of the lowest rates of gun deaths in the country.
“There have been more mass shootings than days in 2023, and gun violence is now the leading cause of death for American children. Enough has long-been enough.” said Attorney General Bonta. “Gun safety laws work, and yet time and time again, they’ve been stopped or delayed from being implemented on a national scale by the gun lobby and the politicians in their pockets. I stand with leaders, including Representatives Thompson and Bera, as we call for bold and decisive action against gun violence. A crisis of this magnitude deserves creative and collaborative solutions, including investing in lifesaving violence intervention programs that work to break cycles of retaliatory shootings. Whether by seizing firearms from potentially dangerous individuals, holding the gun industry accountable in court, or seeking a constitutional amendment, California is committed to ending gun violence and keeping our people safe.”
“Gun violence is an epidemic that requires a response from every level of government, including local, state, and federal level,” said Rep. Thompson. “As Chairman of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, I am working in Congress to advance commonsense gun violence prevention legislation that will save lives and help keep our communities safe. I am proud to have stood with leaders like Attorney General Bonta who are leading efforts in California to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals and modeling how sensible gun laws can reduce gun violence.”
Despite efforts at the state level, in 2020, firearms were the leading cause of death for children in the United States. Gun violence is a true public health crisis that requires immediate and proactive attention.
Attorney General Bonta in 2022 established the Office of Gun Violence Prevention within the California Department of Justice, or DOJ, to advance California’s efforts to adopt a more holistic approach to reducing gun violence, inviting stakeholders from throughout California to assist in these efforts.
Attorney General Bonta is committed to ending gun violence through collaborative and holistic approaches. Through ongoing gun violence reduction efforts led by the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, DOJ’s Bureau of Firearms and several litigation teams, the Department of Justice has seized firearms from dangerous individuals using the Armed and Prohibited Persons System, prosecuted firearms trafficking cases, and advanced and defended California’s commonsense gun laws.
Gun violence remains a growing threat to public safety throughout the nation. On average, there are over 110 gun deaths each day and nearly 41,000 each year in the U.S. Guns are the leading cause of death among children and adolescents; with U.S. children being more likely to die from gun violence than in any other comparable country.
California continues its efforts to advance laws and policies that save lives and prevent gun deaths. In 2021, California saw a 37% lower gun death rate than the national average. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California has one of the lowest rates of firearm mortality in the country — 44th out of 50, with 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 people — compared to 13.7 deaths per 100,000 nationally, 28.6 in Mississippi, 20.7 in Oklahoma, and 14.2 in Texas.
Children in California are less likely to be killed by guns, with California’s gun death rate for children lower than other states, and 58% lower than the national average.
Despite this, there is much work to do. While Californians are less likely to die as a result of a firearm, too many Californians still suffer the harm of gun violence:
• Someone is killed with a gun every three hours in California. • Californians who live with handgun owners are more than twice as likely to die of homicide. • California women living with handgun owners are more likely to die by suicide. • More than half of those killed by firearms in California die as a result of suicide. • From hiring police to detect and investigate gun crime to paying medical expenses for gun injuries, gun violence is expensive. Annually, gun violence costs the state approximately $18 billion — just under $500 per Californian.
More about Attorney General Bonta’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention can be found here.
The Department of the Interior announced Thursday that 57 local governments in California will receive a total of $61 million in payments in lieu of taxes, or PILT, funding for 2023.
Because local governments cannot tax federal lands, annual PILT payments help to defray the costs associated with maintaining important community services.
PILT payments are made for tax-exempt federal lands administered by the Department’s bureaus, including the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service.
In addition, PILT payments cover federal lands administered by the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Utah Reclamation Mitigation and Conservation Commission.
Payments are calculated based on the number of acres of federal land within each county or jurisdiction and the population of that county or jurisdiction.
Lake County, with 386,108 acres of federal land, will receive $1,006,080. It ranked No. 22 statewide for payment amount.
Lake’s neighboring counties, their number of federal acres and payments, are as follows:
“The Biden-Harris administration is committed to boosting local communities,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget Joan Mooney. “PILT payments help local governments carry out vital services, such as firefighting and police protection, construction of public schools and roads, and search-and-rescue operations. We are grateful for our ongoing partnerships with local jurisdictions across the country who help the Interior Department fulfill our mission on behalf of the American public.”
Since PILT payments began in 1977, the Department has distributed nearly $11.4 billion to states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The department collects more than $26.3 billion in revenue annually from commercial activities on public lands. A portion of those revenues is shared with states and counties.
The balance is deposited into the U.S. Treasury, which, in turn, pays for a broad array of federal activities, including PILT funding.
Individual payments may vary from year to year as a result of changes in acreage data, which are updated annually by the federal agency administering the land; prior-year federal revenue-sharing payments reported annually by the governor of each state; inflationary adjustments using the Consumer Price Index; and population data, which are updated using information from the U.S. Census Bureau.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has many new dogs and puppies waiting for homes.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Anatolian shepherd, Catahoula leopard dog, German shepherd, husky, Labrador retriever, mastiff, pit bull, plott hound and terrier.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online for information on visiting or adopting.
Male German shepherd puppy
This 6-month-old male German shepherd puppy has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 2, ID No. LCAC-A-5315.
Anatolian shepherd-mastiff mix
This 3-year-old male Anatolian shepherd-mastiff mix has a short fawn coat.
He is in kennel No. 5, ID No. LCAC-A-5276.
Male pit bull puppy
This 3-month-old male pit bull puppy has a short brindle coat.
He is in kennel No. 6, ID No. LCAC-A-5266.
Male pit bull terrier
This 3-month-old male pit bull terrier has a short brindle coat.
He is in kennel No. 7, ID No. LCAC-A-5265.
Male yellow Labrador retriever
This male yellow Labrador retriever is a year and a half old.
He is in kennel No. 8, ID No. LCAC-A-5361.
Male Catahoula leopard dog
This 2-month-old male Catahoula leopard dog has a short black and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 9a, ID No. LCAC-A-5249.
Male Catahoula leopard dog
This 2-month-old male Catahoula leopard dog has a short black and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 9b, ID No. LCAC-A-5247.
Female terrier
This 12-year-old female terrier has a brown and black coat.
She is in kennel No. 10, ID No. LCAC-A-5327.
Male pit bull
This 1-year-old male pit bull terrier has a short black coat.
He is in kennel No. 11, ID No. LCAC-A-5258.
Male Catahoula leopard dog puppy
This 2-month-old male Catahoula leopard dog puppy has a short brindle coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 12b, ID No. LCAC-A-5245.
Female Catahoula leopard dog puppy
This 2-month-old female Catahoula leopard dog puppy has a short brindle coat with white markings.
She is in kennel No. 12c, ID No. LCAC-A-5246.
Male Catahoula leopard dog puppy
This 3-month-old male Catahoula leopard dog puppy has a short tan and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 13, ID No. LCAC-A-5354.
Female pit bull
This 9-year-old female pit bull has a gray coat.
She is in kennel No. 14, ID No. LCAC-A-5349.
Male German shepherd
This two and a half year old male German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 16, ID No. LCAC-A-5337.
Male German shepherd
This 1 year old male German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 17, ID No. LCAC-A-5324.
Male plott hound
This 2-year-old male plott hound has a short brown coat.
He is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-5143.
Female pit bull terrier
This 5-year-old female pit bull terrier has a short gray and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 19, ID No. LCAC-A-5321.
‘Jojo’
“Jojo” is a one and a half year old female pit bull terrier with a short tricolor coat.
She is in kennel No. 20, ID No. LCAC-A-5312.
Male shepherd
This 2-year-old male shepherd has a tan and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-5223.
Male pit bull terrier
This 5-year-old male pit bull terrier has a short white coat with red markings.
He is in kennel No. 23, ID No. LCAC-A-5322.
Female pit bull terrier
This 2-year-old female pit bull terrier has a short tricolor coat.
She is in kennel No. 24, ID No. LCAC-A-5333.
Male shepherd
This 1-year-old male shepherd has a tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 25, ID No. LCAC-A-5303.
Male pit bull terrier
This 1-year-old male pit bull terrier has a black coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 27, ID No. LCAC-A-5203.
Male pit bull terrier
This 1-year-old male pit bull terrier has a black coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 28, ID No. LCAC-A-5334.
Male pit bull puppy
This 5-month-old male pit bull puppy has a white coat.
He is in kennel No. 29, ID No. LCAC-A-5325.
‘Luna’
“Luna” is a 1-year-old female husky with a red, tan and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 30, ID No. LCAC-A-5270.
Male shepherd
This 2-year-old male shepherd has a short tan coat with white markings.
He is in kennel No. 31, ID No. LCAC-A-5344.
Female pit bull-shepherd puppy
This 5-month-old female pit bull-shepherd puppy has a short tricolor coat.
She is in kennel No. 32, ID No. LCAC-A-5072.
Male shepherd
This 1-year-old male shepherd has a tricolor coat.
He is in kennel No. 33, ID No. LCAC-A-5310.
Female shepherd
This 10-month-old female shepherd has a tricolor coat.
She is in kennel No. 34, ID No. LCAC-A-5323.
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.
The Federal Reserve’s decision to hold rates steady signals that central bankers believe it is time to hit pause, at least temporarily, on their aggressive campaign to tame runaway inflation.
The latest data, not to mention several other factors, however, suggests it’s time for a full stop.
On June 14, 2023, the Fed chose not to lift ratesfor the first time in 11 meetings, leaving its target interest rate – a benchmark for borrowing costs across the global economy – at a range of 5% to 5.25%. Over 10 consecutive hikes beginning in March 2022, the Fed had raised rates a whopping 5 percentage points.
“Holding the target range steady at this meeting allows the committee to assess additional information and its implications for monetary policy,” the central bank said in a statement. The Fed indicated it still expects to raise rates two more times by the end of the year.
As an economist who follows the central bank’s actions closely, I believe there’s good reason to think the Fed’s brief hiatus is likely to turn into a permanent vacation.
Inflation is lower than it appears
The fastest rate of inflation since the 1980s is what prompted the Fed to hike interest rates so much. So it makes sense that inflation would be a key indicator of when its job is complete.
The latest consumer price index data, released on June 13, showed core inflation – the Fed’s preferred measure, which excludes volatile food and energy prices – falling to an annual rate of 5.3% in May 2023, the slowest pace since November 2021. That’s down from a peak of 6.6% in September 2022.
While the data shows inflation remains well above the Fed’s target of around 2%, there’s good reason to believe that it will continue to fall regardless of what the Fed does.
Shelter, a measure of the cost of owning or renting a home, is the largest component of the consumer price index, accounting for more than one-third of the total. In its latest report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported shelter costs rose 8% from a year ago. After stripping that out, inflation was up just 2.1%.
The thing is, the data reported by the bureau doesn’t reflect the reality of what’s happening in the current housing market.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics relies on a survey that gauges rental prices from 50,000 leases, many of which were signed during the rental bubble in 2021 and 2022. A better measure of current market rents is the Zillow Observed Rent Index. That index suggests rates are declining – rents rose 4.8% year over year in May, aligning with pre-pandemic rates.
Comparing the two measures suggests the official consumer price index data lags behind the market by four to six months. Using current rents would put inflation much closer to where the Fed wants it to be. Jason Furman, former chair of the government’s Council of Economic Advisors, created a modified version of core inflation – which uses a market-based measure of shelter prices – at 2.6%.
The risk of more rate hikes
Moreover, it is likely that further rate hikes will do more harm than good – particularly to the banking sector – and without helping lower inflation below its current trajectory.
While there were several factors behind the banks’ demise, an important one was the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes, which caused the value of many of their assets to fall. The banks catered to depositors with accounts that exceeded the US$250,000 threshold protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. These depositors ran for the hills when they learned about the extent of the bank losses.
The combination of already high interest rates and low office occupancy rates will likely force banks to absorb hundreds of billions of dollars in loan losses, inevitably putting more banks on the brink of failure.
And if the Fed keeps raising rates, the situation is likely to get a lot worse.
Don’t make the same mistakes
The Fed was behind the curve in 2021 and 2022 in realizing inflation was getting out of control, and it has been historically slow in recognizing the impact of rental rates on inflation.
The June pause in raising rates should give the Fed time to take a break, look at the data and, I hope, realize inflation is closer to its target than it appears.
But if it continues to raise rates, I believe the central bank will be repeating the same mistakes it made in the past.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has more new adoptable dogs ready for homes this week.
The week’s adoptable dogs include “Daisy,” a 3 and a half year old female border collie mix with a black and white coat.
Also ready for new homes are “Bonnie” and “Clyde,” two Great Pyrenees mixes.
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.
Each winter, the Geminid meteors light up the sky as they race past Earth, producing one of the most intense meteor showers in the night sky. Now, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission is providing new evidence that a violent, catastrophic event created the Geminids.
Most meteor showers come from comets, which are made of ice and dust. When a comet travels close to the Sun, the ice evaporates and releases gas, dislodging small pieces of the comet and creating a trail of dust. Slowly, this repeated process fills the comet’s orbit with material that produces a meteor shower when Earth passes through the stream.
However, the Geminid stream seems to originate from an asteroid — a chunk of rock and metal — called 3200 Phaethon. Asteroids like Phaethon are not typically affected by the Sun’s heat the way comets are, leaving scientists to wonder what caused the formation of Phaethon’s stream across the night sky.
“What’s really weird is that we know that Phaethon is an asteroid, but as it flies by the Sun, it seems to have some kind of temperature-driven activity. Most asteroids don’t do that,” said Jamey Szalay, a research scholar at Princeton University. Szalay was an author, with Wolf Cukier as the lead author, on the science paper recently published in The Planetary Science Journal.
The research builds on previous work by Szalay and several of his Parker Solar Probe mission colleagues, including the Geminids direct images captured by Karl Battams’ team, to assemble a picture of the structure and behavior of the large cloud of dust that swirls through the innermost solar system.
Taking advantage of Parker’s flight path — an orbit that swings it just millions of miles from the Sun, closer than any spacecraft in history — the scientists were able to get the best direct look yet at the dust grains shed from passing comets and asteroids.
Built and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, Parker Solar Probe does not carry a dedicated dust counter that would give it accurate readings on grain mass, composition, speed, and direction.
However, dust grains pelt the spacecraft along its path, and the high-speed impacts create unique electrical signals, or plasma clouds. These impact clouds produce unique electrical signals that are picked up by several sensors on the probe’s FIELDS instrument, which measures electric and magnetic fields near the Sun.
To learn about the origin of the Geminid stream, the scientists used this Parker data to model three possible formation scenarios, and then compared these models to existing models created from Earth-based observations.
They found that violent models were most consistent with the Parker data. This means it was likely that a sudden, powerful event – such as a high-speed collision with another body or a gaseous explosion, among other possibilities – that created the Geminid stream.
Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA’s Living with a Star program to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. The program is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. APL manages the Parker Solar Probe mission for NASA.
Desiree Apodaca works for the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Phosphorus, a key chemical element for many biological processes, has been found in icy grains emitted by the small moon and is likely abundant in its subsurface ocean.
Using data collected by NASA’s Cassini mission, an international team of scientists has discovered phosphorus — an essential chemical element for life — locked inside salt-rich ice grains ejected into space from Enceladus.
The small moon is known to possess a subsurface ocean, and water from that ocean erupts through cracks in Enceladus’ icy crust as geysers at its south pole, creating a plume. The plume then feeds Saturn’s E ring (a faint ring outside of the brighter main rings) with icy particles.
During its mission at the gas giant from 2004 to 2017, Cassini flew through the plume and E ring numerous times. Scientists found that Enceladus’ ice grains contain a rich array of minerals and organic compounds — including the ingredients for amino acids — associated with life as we know it.
Phosphorus, the least abundant of the essential elements necessary for biological processes, hadn’t been detected until now.
The element is a building block for DNA, which forms chromosomes and carries genetic information, and is present in the bones of mammals, cell membranes, and ocean-dwelling plankton.
Phosphorus is also a fundamental part of energy-carrying molecules present in all life on Earth. Life wouldn’t be possible without it.
“We previously found that Enceladus’ ocean is rich in a variety of organic compounds,” said Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, who led the new study, published on Wednesday, June 14, in the journal Nature. “But now, this new result reveals the clear chemical signature of substantial amounts of phosphorus salts inside icy particles ejected into space by the small moon’s plume. It’s the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth.”
Previous analysis of Enceladus’ ice grains revealed concentrations of sodium, potassium, chlorine, and carbonate-containing compounds, and computer modeling suggested the subsurface ocean is of moderate alkalinity – all factors that favor habitable conditions.
Enceladus and beyond
For this latest study, the authors accessed the data through NASA’s Planetary Data System, a long-term archive of digital data products returned from the agency’s planetary missions. The archive is actively managed by planetary scientists to help ensure its usefulness and usability by the worldwide planetary science community.
The authors focused on data collected by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer instrument when it sampled icy particles from Enceladus in Saturn’s E ring. Many more ice particles were analyzed when Cassini flew through the E ring than when it went through just the plume, so the scientists were able to examine a much larger number of compositional signals there.
By doing this, they discovered high concentrations of sodium phosphates – molecules of chemically bound sodium, oxygen, hydrogen and phosphorus – inside some of those grains.
Co-authors in Europe and Japan then carried out laboratory experiments to show that Enceladus’ ocean has phosphorus, bound inside different water-soluble forms of phosphate, in concentrations of at least 100 times that of our planet’s oceans. Further geochemical modeling by the team demonstrated that an abundance of phosphate may also be possible in other icy ocean worlds in the outer solar system, particularly those that formed from primordial ice containing carbon dioxide, and where liquid water has easy access to rocks.
“High phosphate concentrations are a result of interactions between carbonate-rich liquid water and rocky minerals on Enceladus’ ocean floor and may also occur on a number of other ocean worlds,” said co-investigator Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist and geochemist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “This key ingredient could be abundant enough to potentially support life in Enceladus’ ocean; this is a stunning discovery for astrobiology.”
Although the science team is excited that Enceladus has the building blocks for life, Glein stressed that life has not been found on the moon – or anywhere else in the solar system beyond Earth: “Having the ingredients is necessary, but they may not be sufficient for an extraterrestrial environment to host life. Whether life could have originated in Enceladus’ ocean remains an open question.”
Cassini’s mission came to an end in 2017, with the spacecraft burning up in Saturn’s atmosphere, but the trove of data it collected will continue to be a rich resource for decades to come. When it was launched, Cassini’s mission was to explore Saturn, its rings, and moons. The flagship mission’s array of instruments ended up making discoveries that continue to impact far more than planetary science.
“This latest discovery of phosphorus in Enceladus’ subsurface ocean has set the stage for what the habitability potential might be for the other icy ocean worlds throughout the solar system,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who was not involved in the study. “Now that we know so many of the ingredients for life are out there, the question becomes: Is there life beyond Earth, perhaps in our own solar system? I feel that Cassini’s enduring legacy will inspire future missions that might, eventually, answer that very question.”
The Cassini-Huygens mission was a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, managed the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL designed, developed, and assembled the Cassini orbiter.
At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Special Collections, where I am head curator, we’ve recently completed a major digitization and rehousing project of our collection of over 5,400 photographs made by Lewis Wickes Hine in the early 20th century.
Traveling the country with his camera, Hine captured the often oppressive working conditions of thousands of children – some as young as 3 years old.
As I’ve worked with this collection over the past two years, the social and political implications of Hine’s photographs have been very much on my mind. The patina of these black-and-white photographs suggests a bygone era – an embarrassing past that many Americans might imagine they’ve left behind.
A sociologist by training, Hine began making photographs in 1903 while working as a teacher at the progressive Ethical Culture School in New York City.
Between 1903 and 1908, he and his students photographed migrants at Ellis Island. Hine believed that the future of the U.S. rested in its identity as an immigrant nation – a position that contrasted with escalating xenophobic fears.
Based on this work, the National Child Labor Committee, which advocated for child labor laws, hired Hine to document the living and working conditions of American children.
In his work for the National Child Labor Committee, Hine journeyed to farms and mills in the industrializing South and the streets and factories of the Northeast. He used a Graflex camera with 5-by-7-inch glass plate negatives and employed flash powder for nighttime and interior shots, hauling upward of 50 pounds of equipment on his slight frame.
To gain entry into factories and other facilities, Hine sometimes disguised himself as a Bible, postcard or insurance salesman. Other times he’d wait outside to catch workers arriving for or departing from their shifts.
Along with photographic records, Hine collected his subjects’ personal stories, including their ages and ethnicities. He documented their working lives, such as their typical hours and any injuries or ailments they incurred as a result of their labor.
Hine, who considered himself “an investigator with a camera,” used this information to create what he termed “photo stories” – combinations of images and text that could be used on posters, in public lectures and in published reports to help the organization advance its mission.
Legislation follows
Hine’s muckraking photographs exemplify the genre of documentary photography, which relies upon the perceived truthfulness of photography to make a case for social change.
The camera serves as an eyewitness to a societal ill, a problem that needs a solution. Hine portrayed his subjects in a direct manner, typically frontally and looking straight into the camera, against the backdrop of the very factories, farmland or cities where they worked.
By capturing details of his sitters’ bare feet, tattered clothes, soiled faces and hands, and diminutive stature against hulking industrial equipment, Hine made a direct statement about the poor conditions and precarity of these children’s lives.
Hine’s photographs made a successful case for child labor reform.
Notably, the National Child Labor Committee’s efforts resulted in Congress establishing the Children’s Bureau in 1912 and passing the Keating-Owen Act in 1916, which limited working hours for children and prohibited the interstate sale of goods produced by child labor.
Although the Supreme Court later ruled it and a subsequent Child Labor Tax Law of 1919 unconstitutional, momentum for enshrining protections for child workers had been created. In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established restrictions and protections on employing children.
The National Child Labor Committee’s project also included advocacy for the enforcement of existing child labor regulations, a regulatory problem reemerging today as the Department of Labor – the agency tasked with enforcing labor laws – comes under fire for failing to protect child workers.
The ethics of picturing child labor
A recent surge of unaccompanied minors, primarily from Central America, has brought new attention to America’s old problem of child labor and has threatened the very laws Hine and the National Child Labor Committee worked to enact.
Some estimates suggest that one-third of migrants under 18 are working illegally, whether it’s laboring more hours than current laws permit, or working without the proper authorizations. Many of them perform hazardous jobs similar to those of Hine’s subjects: handling dangerous equipment and being exposed to noxious chemicals in factories, slaughterhouses and industrial farms.
While the content of Hine’s photographs remains pertinent to today’s child labor crisis, a key distinction between the subject of Hine’s photographs and working children today is race.
Hine focused his camera almost exclusively on white children who arrived in the country during waves of immigration from Europe during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. As art historian Natalie Zelt argues, Hine’s pictorial treatment of Black children – either ignored or forced to the margins of his images – implied to viewers that the face of childhood in America was, by default, white.
The perceived racial hierarchies of Hine’s era reverberate into the present, where underage migrants of color live and work at the margins of society.
Contemporary reports of child labor violations offer few images to accompany their texts, graphs and statistics. There are legitimate reasons for this. By not including identifying personal information or portraits, news outlets protect a vulnerable population. Ethical guidelines frown upon revealing private details of the lives of children interviewed. And, as Hine’s experience demonstrates, it can be difficult to infiltrate the sites of these labor violations, since they are typically kept secure.
Digital cameras and smartphones offer a workaround. Beginning in 2015, the International Labor Organization urged child laborers in Myanmar to become “young activists” and use their own images and words to create “photo stories” – echoing Hine’s use of the term – that the organization could then disseminate.
Photographs of child labor in foreign countries are far more common than those made in the U.S., which leaves the impression that child labor is someone else’s problem, not ours. Perhaps it’s too hard for Americans to look at this domestic issue square in the eyes.
A similar effect is at work when viewing Hine’s photographs today. While they were originally valued for their immediacy, they can seem to belong to a distant past.
But if Hine’s photographic archive of child laborers is evidence of the power of photography to sway public opinion, does the lack of images in today’s reporting – even if nobly intended – create a disconnect?
Is the public capable of understanding the harmful consequences of lack of labor enforcement when the faces of the people affected are missing from the picture?
CLEARLAKE, CAlif. — The Lakeshore Lions Club of Clearlake is sponsoring its 65th annual Redbud Parade and Festival on Saturday, July 1.
The parade will start at Redbud Park at 11 a.m. and will proceed down Lakeshore Drive to Austin Park.
The theme of this year’s parade is “Lake County Proud.”
This year, they will feature local marchers, a marching band, decorated floats, vintage cars, parade and show horses, fire and police vehicles, and much more.
Grand marshals of this year’s parade are Bob and Joan Mingori.
The Mingoris moved to Clearlake in 1983 after purchasing Joan’s father's weekend office of John N. Shelley OD, which had been there since 1951.
Their first involvement with the city of Clearlake was to be active members of the first Lakeshore Design Committee and creating the first spring clean-up days including a push broom parade in 1987.
Joan Mingori served on the City Planning Commission in 1986 through 1989 while Bob Mingori served on the board of directors of the then Redbud Hospital.
In 1993 Bob Mingori authored Measure P, the half-cent sales tax to improve policing service in Clearlake then afterward was elected to the Clearlake City Council and served as Mayor in 2000.
Joan Mingori began working for the Konocti Unified School District in 1996 until elected to the school board in 2018.
The Mingoris published the Lake County Visitor Guide from 1990 to 2002, during which time Bob was on the Clearlake Chamber Board of Directors and was president of the Lake County Chamber.
Today, Bob Mingori does some graphic work but mostly draws home plans while Joan, after the past two years managing the Clear Lake Chamber of Commerce, is now focusing on Bob, home and family.
During the July 1 celebration, the Lakeshore Lions Club also will sponsor the firework display at dark, so please stay and enjoy.
The city of Clearlake will be hosting a free concert showcasing Def Leppard Revisited and Journey Revisited at 7 p.m.
The Midway of Fun Carnival presale tickets are available at Clearlake Automotive, Bob’s Vacuum and A+B Collision. For ticket information call 707-350-7100.
At Austin Park, the Lakeshore Lions and Lakeshore Lioness will feature an assortment of food, cold drinks and beer.
There also will be arts and craft vendors, games and entertainment for all.
The Clearlake Chamber of Commerce will sponsor the International Worm Races.
This is the largest fundraiser for the Lakeshore Lions Club, so show your community spirit and support by helping them raise money for all the many causes Lakeshore Lions Club aids in the community.
The Lions support the eyeglasses and vision care for the needy, high school sports, sober graduation, scholarships and many other school activities, as well as the fire and police departments, the senior center, South Shore Little League and many other very notable causes.
Anyone who wishes to enter the parade can pick up an entry form at the Clearlake Chamber of Commerce office, Bob’s Vacuum, Clearlake Automotive and Kevin Ness Jewelers.
Any and all arts and craft vendors interested in booths, please call Nan Shields at Bob’s Vacuum at 707-994-9752.
To gather all the information you need for the parade, please call Alvaro Valencia at 707-350-7100.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Nearly two months after he originally was set to have been sentenced for killing his employer, an Occidental man on Thursday morning was given decades in state prison.
Judge J. David Markham handed down to 27-year-old Nova Maye Deperno a sentence of 35 years to life for the August 2021 killing of 63-year-old Ronald Meluso of Lucerne.
During the Thursday hearing, Deperno — who had surprised his attorney before — did so again by insisting, against his attorney’s advice, on giving a statement to the court that attempted to justify his actions. To do that, he claimed childhood hardships and even blamed his victim.
Judge Markham wasn’t impressed by Deperno’s claims, and said he should have listened to his attorney and not spoken at all.
“The guy is a manipulative, dangerous psychopath, I think,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff, who prosecuted Deperno, told Lake County News later on Thursday.
The sentence Markham handed down was the result of a plea agreement reached earlier this year between the District Attorney’s Office and Deperno’s attorney, Kevin Davenport. It gives Deperno 25 years to life for Meluso’s death, with another 10 years for an enhancement for use of a gun in the killing.
Meluso had given Deperno a place to stay and a job in the lead up to the murder, which occurred during a seven-month-long spree of crimes committed by Deperno from July 2020 to February 2021.
During that time, Deperno’s crimes — which involved several victims — included assault with a firearm, vandalism, felony evading of law enforcement, negligent discharge of a firearm due to shooting into a home and threats, including telling victims he was a member of the Mexican and Italian mafias.
In one case, Deperno told a young woman he planned to kill and dismember her, and sell her body parts to the Mexican mafia.
During Thursday’s sentencing hearing, Hinchcliff said Deperno had bragged in texts to friends that he intended to kill Meluso before luring him to a remote area in the hills above Nice and fatally shooting him.
Hinchcliff told Lake County News that a motivation for the crime was that Deperno needed money.
Information the prosecution developed during the investigation was that Meluso was running from Deperno when he was shot and that he was shot in the back.
However, Hinchcliff said they couldn’t prove that as when they found Meluso’s remains five months later, there were just a few bones left.
Deperno was arrested in Occidental on Jan. 13, 2022, after a manhunt and with the help of a SWAT team. The following day, he led authorities to the site near Bartlett Springs where he had left Meluso’s body.
Sentencing originally had been set for April, but at that hearing the proceedings took a bizarre turn when Deperno surprised his own attorney and the prosecution by objecting to a portion of the plea deal involving a lesser charge of assault with a deadly weapon.
That lesser charge, related to Deperno’s having pointed a gun at a young woman’s head, required he receive three years in prison to be served concurrently with the murder case, meaning he wouldn't have any additional time.
However, Deperno claimed at the April hearing that it was a “completely fabricated incident.”
In followup hearings this spring, the District Attorney’s Office agreed to drop that charge with a Harvey waiver and let Deperno instead plead guilty to felony terrorist threats in a different case in order to move forward with the sentencing in the Meluso murder.
Hinchcliff said that updated agreement meant they wouldn’t have to go through a lengthier process of withdrawing the full plea. “It just made sense since we were going to get the exact same sentence.”
Victim remembered in impact statements; Deperno tries to justify actions
An advocate for Lake County Victim-Witness read four victim impact statements from Meluso’s family and friends, recalling him as a generous, kind, compassionate and giving man.
His older brother, John Meluso Jr., said Ronald Meluso’s life ended too soon. At the same time, he said Deperno’s life has been wasted. “Two lives wasted — for what reason?”
Gloria Buxton, his sister-in-law, said Meluso was shot in the back by someone he believed to be his friend.
She said he left behind many who adored him, and his death left a hole in their family, with Meluso having always been the happy one. Buxton said it was still hard to believe he is gone.
Deperno, she added, showed no remorse and is a threat to society.
After the statements, Deperno said he wanted to speak, which Davenport advised him not to do.
Nevertheless, Deperno went forward with making a rambling, repetitious statement that attempted to blame Meluso, claiming that “it’s not that I’m not a compassionate person in a lot of ways.”
Adding, “There’s no point in crying a river,” Deperno said he has lost a lot of people in his life. “I was put through all sorts of things as a child.”
He said he could appreciate that Meluso had done good things for him. “I don’t want to slander Ron,” Deperno said, then proceeded to claim he tried to be kind and “even helpful” to Meluso, and that it wasn’t accepted the way everyone envisioned.
“Am I a violent person? Not really, to be honest,” said Deperno, adding, “The whole situation is heartbreaking at the least.”
Deperno said he hoped something good will come out of it before continuing to claim he was victimized in the process, including making an allegation that Meluso had drugged him.
“My heart goes out to his family. I’m sorry,” said Deperno.
Deperno, the son of a well-known designer and contractor in Sonoma County, added, “It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that my life has been really hard since I was a young kid.” As a result, he said he doesn’t know what to do other than retaliate.
He ended by saying he feels bad for contributing to violence and that he should have thought through his actions. “Sitting in a cell all day doesn’t agree with me.”
A trail of violence
Hinchcliff went over the charges in the case, including the fact that Deperno pleaded to first-degree murder with premeditation and the use of a firearm in killing Meluso, along with a guilty plea to terrorist threats, leading to the 35-years-to-life sentence.
“The defendant just stated he’s not a violent person. In fact, he’s a very violent person,” said Hinchcliff.
Hinchcliff said the other cases against Deperno were dismissed with a Harvey waiver, which allows them to be considered in sentencing and helps with restitution orders.
Those other cases include a felony vandalism charge from July 2020, in which Deperno used a stick to break two rear windows out of a woman’s vehicle, and another case involving an officer’s attempt at a felony traffic stop that led to a four and a half mile pursuit at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour.
In another case from October 2021, two months after he killed Meluso, Deperno committed assault with a firearm, terrorist threats, child abuse and attempted to dissuade a witness, Hinchcliff said.
A fourth case involved a 16-year-old female who said she was arguing with Deperno at a residence into which he had shot a firearm earlier that night. She said Deperno pointed a gun at the right side of her head and said he could kill her right now.
“This was something we found out about during the murder investigation,” because Deperno had threatened to kill her, cut up her body and sell it to a Mexican cartel, Hinchcliff said.
Still another case, from February 2021 — six months before Meluso’s murder — involved charges of assault with a firearm and terrorist threats, with Deperno threatening an 18-year-old woman with whom he lived at the time.
Hinchcliff said Deperno pointed a Glock handgun at the young woman’s chest and threatened her. She slapped the gun out of his hand, and then he slammed her head into the floor six or seven times.
The young woman fled, only to receive threats from Deperno threatening to kill her, her family and her dogs, Hinchcliff said.
In January of 2021, Deperno showed up at a residence and began yelling at two males because he was angry at one of them for snitching on him about a hit-and-run case in which he was involved. In that incident, Hinchcliff said Deperno claimed to be with the Italian mafia and fired a gun at their residence.
Based on his increasingly violent behavior, Hinchcliff said it was no wonder Deperno ended up committing a murder.
Hinchcliff said Deperno began living with Meluso and working for him. Meluso was last heard from on Aug. 19, 2021, and was reported missing three days later. Investigators found his home had been rummaged through and his prized silver Chevrolet Camaro was missing.
On Aug. 8 of that year, Deperno had started asking people about getting a firearm and said he was going to “whack” a guy who had a silver Camaro. Hinchcliff said it was premeditated, with Deperno having told people he just needed a gun and that it could solve all of the debt he owed.
Afterward, he texted a friend that he “got it done.” On Aug. 26, 2021, he sold Meluso’s Camaro for $6,000.
When Deperno was located, it took a SWAT team to finally apprehend him in Sonoma County on Jan. 13, 2022. The following day, Deperno showed officers where he had left Meluso’s body.
Davenport, for his part — as he continued to tell Deperno not to speak — said Deperno deserved some credit for taking law enforcement to the location of Meluso’s body. “I think that has some meaning.”
He said he wasn’t sure why Deperno committed the crime, and asked for the tens of thousands of dollars in fines, primarily for restitution, to be struck from the judgment.
Hinchcliff said the District Attorney’s Office did take Deperno’s cooperation and his age at the time of the crimes — he was under 26, which gives him youthful offender status and therefore some potential parole benefit in the future — into consideration.
Deperno then began to speak again, saying he confessed, he felt bad and he wasn’t going to be slandered.
He took issue with Hinchcliff’s statements about his criminal history. “If you could have proved those things, then you should have done that,” Deperno said.
He added, “I don’t mind paying for stuff.”
“You said that already. Stop,” said Davenport.
Judge hands down sentence
Judge Markham honored the sentencing agreement for 35 years to life.
With regard to Deperno, “What Mr. Hinchcliff said was absolutely true,” said Markham, noting there is absolutely no question that Deperno is an extremely violent person.
Unless he makes significant changes, Markham said Deperno should spend the rest of his life in prison.
Referring to Buxton’s comments about Deperno not being remorseful, Markham agreed, noting that as the victim impact statements were read, Deperno had a smirk on his face. He later attempted to justify his crimes, only apologizing afterward.
Davenport had noted during the hearing that Deperno could qualify for early release due to being a youthful offender. Markham said that’s correct, but it likely will be decades from now.
Markham said Deperno is solely responsible for ending up in prison. “He’s not going to prison because he had a hard life” or because Meluso did something he didn’t like. Rather, he made the decision to take the life of another human being.
Markham added that Deperno should have listened to Davenport when it came to not speaking in court. “I understand why he gave you that advice. It was probably advice you should have taken.”
He then ordered Deperno to serve the prison term and to pay a $10,000 restitution fine, with a second of that same amount reserved unless parole is revoked. Deperno also will receive 519 days for time already served.
Later on Thursday, Hinchcliff said he had been concerned Deperno would try to derail the sentencing once again, as he had in April. “I was actually kinda surprised that he didn’t, that he didn’t try something else.”
While Deperno has maintained that he’s a nice guy, who likes dogs and cats, making cookies with his girlfriend and painting, he also points guns at people’s heads, Hinchcliff said.
Hinchcliff, who called Deperno a narcissist, said that they could have taken the case to trial, and even if they had gotten 200 years to life, Deperno eventually would have been eligible both for youthful offender and senior offender considerations. As a youthful offender, he will automatically be eligible for a parole hearing after 20 years for the first-degree murder case.
However, if that happens, Hinchcliff said he hopes that the parole board will see the trial record, including Deperno’s comments in court.
“I was real eager for him to be able to say whatever he wanted to say to the judge,” Hinchcliff said, noting everything Deperno said will be put in a transcript of the plea proceeding.
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. — Firefighters responded to a wildland fire near Clearlake Oaks late Wednesday afternoon.
The Henderson fire was first reported at 4:41 p.m. Wednesday on Henderson and Terrace drives, Cal Fire reported.
The fire threatened nearby structures and power lines, and Cal Fire said spotting was a concern.
A total of 60 firefighting personnel, one helicopter, 15 engines, one dozer, three water tenders and three crews responded, Cal Fire said.
By 9 p.m., Cal Fire said the fire’s forward rate of spread had stopped, although the fire remained a threat to structures.
As of 10 p.m. Wednesday, the fire was reported to have burned 25 acres and was 20% contained, Cal Fire reported.
Radio reports overnight indicated some crews were being released while others are scheduled to return on Thursday morning.
Cal Fire said the fire’s cause remains under investigation.
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.