LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Wine Auction's winning combination of wonderful wines, locally produced food and an exciting atmosphere once again inspired people from all over the region to help support worthy local causes.

The auction was held on Saturday, Sept. 17, at Cache Creek Vineyard and Winery in Clearlake Oaks.

“It was a beautiful night under the moon,” said Wine Alliance director Marie Beery, “and people were very generous under its influence.”

The bidding was fast and furious as auctioneer Shaun Hornby racked up some impressive totals during the live auction part of the program.

John Clarke's 2016 painting, which featured a quartet of musicians playing in a vineyard, earned a top bid of $5,000. Eleven other items went for $2,000 or more making for some impressive numbers.

A preliminary tabulation indicates that the evening's activities brought in more than $67,000, which includes both the live and silent auctions.

“Thank you to all of our ticket holders and bidders,” said Wine Alliance director Sharron Zollar.

Over the next few weeks, the auction figures will be combined with numbers from ticket sales, sponsorships and expenses, to provide a final accounting.

Last year, despite the cancellation of the auction because of the Valley fire, the Lake County Wine Alliance raised enough money to give $87,800 to local charities and community organizations.

Based on preliminary figures,the Wine Auction board expects to meet or beat last year's figures, organizers said.

During the auction, attendees were treated to tasty treats from 10 of Lake County's finest food purveyors, and a three-course meal produced under the supervision of chefs Rob Cabreros, Ann-Marie Pleskaczewski and Gordon Upfold.

The meal was complemented by a pair of Cuvee wines blended by Jed Steele of Steele Wines and Mark Burch of Chacewater.

The Lake County Wine Alliance, producer of this event, wished to thank the more than 450 volunteers, sponsors and participants who made the evening possible.

Announcing this year's beneficiaries, Wine Alliance President Kaj Ahlmann said: “To build a strong community, we need to help the next generation respect Lake County’s agricultural tradition and improve their educational skills. With our grants, the Wine Alliance is working towards those goals.”

This year's beneficiaries are the five comprehensive high schools of Lake County for their arts programs, People Services, Any Positive Change, The Lake County Hunger Task Force, Catholic Charities, the Lake County Symphony Association, the Lake County Arts Council, Friends of the Lake County Museum, the Lake Community Pride Foundation, the Children's Museum of Arts and Sciences, the Lake County Literacy Coalition, the Lake County Sheriff's Activity League, Woodland Community College (Lake Campus) Culinary Club, the Clearlake Gleaners, Operation Tango Mike, Sponsoring Survivorship and Meals on Wheels at the five Lake County senior centers.

Sponsors of the 2016 Lake County Wine Auction were Calpine, PG&E, Sutter Lakeside Hospital, Beckstoffer Vineyards, the Lake County Winegrape Commission, Six Sigma Vineyard & Winery, Cache Creek Vineyard & Winery, Sysco Foods, Tribal Health Consortium, John Clarke, Mendo-Lake Credit Union, Umpqua Bank, Bella Vista Farming, Boatique Winery, Saw Shop Bistro, Servpro, Shannon Ridge Vineyards & Winery, TricorBraun WinePak, Congressman Mike Thompson, Kelseyville Pharmacy, Brassfield Estate Winery, C-Line Express Trucking and Savings Bank of Mendocino County.

Members of the all-volunteer Wine Alliance Board are Kaj Ahlmann, president; Dr. Judy Luchsinger, vice president; Sharron Zoller, secretary; Rob Roumiguiere, treasurer; and Marie Beery and Bill Groody, directors.

Save

Save

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Just a year ago the Falling Leaves Quilt Show almost didn’t have a venue, when the Lake County Fairgrounds became a fire camp.

This year the fires are out and the Ladies of the Lake Quilt Guild is in final preparation mode for the show’s opening day on Oct. 1.

The Falling Leaves Quilt Show, which draws hundreds of quilt-loving guests from all over northern California, will take place at the Lake County Fairgrounds at 401 Martin St., in Lakeport.

Show hours are Oct. 1, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Oct. 2, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information contact show Linda Morrison at 707-263-4504 or visit the Web site, www.LLQG.org .

The show will feature nearly 200 quilts, some only a few inches across and others made to fit a king-size bed, executed in a variety of techniques and in all colors of the spectrum.

Guests will find an array of styles from traditional to modern to innovative. Imagine strolling through aisles and aisles teeming with works of art that can fill a wall – that’s what a quilt show is. Quilts have come a long way from being just bedcovers and are now recognized as art.

Each year the quilt show committee selects one noted quilter for special recognition. This year’s featured quilter is Tami Benevedes-Graeber, a “local girl who made good” showing off her work in her old hometown.

Benevedes-Graeber is a fourth generation quilter who grew up in Lakeport and still has family ties here. In 2005, after retiring from a career in nursing, she discovered free-motion machine quilting and unleashed her imagination, producing fifteen quilts in her first year alone.

Her work has won numerous national and two international awards. Guests who wish to talk with can visit her in the featured quilter location and she will be speaking about how she went from entering the Lake County Fair to entering prominent national shows.

Quilt guild members wearing hostess ribbons or white gloves will circulate through the show to answer questions and help guests. Please feel free to ask them for help.

“Cross and Crown” the 2016 opportunity quilt will be on display and tickets will be on sale. Seven members of the LLQG made from Civil War-era reproduction fabrics in using a pattern by Jill Shaul of Yellow Creek Designs.

The Falling Leaves Quilt Show has more ways to entertain its guests.

The Country Store Boutique is a great place to find recycled quilting, sewing and craft items and one-of-a-kind country collectibles. Other attractions are gift baskets featuring themes like yarns and crafts, Christmas, birds, games, babies, gardening, sewing, coffee and tea, quilting, and Lake County treasures.

In the silent auction corner guests can bid on a variety of tempting items including fabric kits, quilt kits, several sewing machines and a quilting frame. Guests can enter their names for a door prize drawing and can vote for their favorite quilt.

For those eager to improve their quilting skills, the demonstration booth will offer presentations on prairie points, mitered corners and strip paper piecing.

In the vendor mall, 12 vendors will show off fabric, sewing machines, patterns, notions and all manner of things that interest quilters. La Penquita Mexican restaurant will cater lunch Saturday and Sunday in Barty’s Café in the fairgrounds.

The winners of the opportunity quilt, the door prize, the theme baskets, the silent auction items and the Viewers’ Choice award will be announced on Sunday afternoon.

Guests will note ribbons on many quilts in the show. Quilters who enter the Falling Leaves show can choose to have their quilts judged by professional quilt judges so they can get helpful criticism. Those judges award ribbons based on standard judging criteria.

The show also has five non-professional judges, local VIPs who have no expertise in quilting, they just know what they like and they award ribbons to the quilts that they would like to take home.

This year’s VIP judges are Brock Falkenberg, Lake County’s superintendent of schools; Rick Davis of Davis Tire, Marci McDaniel-Davis of Chatoff Properties and Davis Tire; Dave Faries of the Lake County Record-Bee; and Clinton Karp of Pet Country.

This diverse group will have an advance look at the show as they make their selections. Watch for the VIP ribbons on their favorites.

Shelley Aldrich founded the Falling Leaves Quilt Show in 2002, and beginning this year, Aldrich will present the Founder’s Award to the quilt of her choice.

Membership in the Ladies of the Lake Quilt Guild is open to anyone interested in quilting, regardless of skill level.

The purpose of the guild is to promote and encourage quilting and to perform community service through quilt making. Each year quilt guild members make and donate baby quilts to the birth center at St. Helena Hospital Clear Lake and doll quilts to Toys for Tots.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Marymount California University has been ranked in the 2017 U.S. News & World Report List of Best Colleges.

MCU ranked in the top 20 of 65 institutions in the Regional Colleges West category.

It's the first time MCU has been included in the list, Kelly Curtis Intagliata, spokeswoman for the university, told Lake County News.

Marymount has campus locations in Rancho Palos Verdes, San Pedro and in Lucerne at the former Lucerne Hotel.

U.S. News and World Report gathers data from each college within the category on up to 15 indicators of academic excellence.

Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects U.S. News' judgment about how much that measure matters.

Finally, the colleges and universities in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score.

“It is wonderful to be recognized nationally for the outstanding educational opportunity and value that MCU provides its students,” said Marymount president Lucas Lamadrid, Ph.D. “Our ranking confirms what we have known – Marymount California University meets students where they are and is unparalleled in taking them forward to achieve success. This is our mission as a Catholic university committed to excellence.” 


Marymount offers associate degrees; bachelor of arts degrees in business, criminal justice, film and media production, liberal arts including areas of emphasis such as biology and human performance, and psychology; master of science degrees in community psychology, and in leadership and global development; and a master of business administration.

Visit www.MarymountCalifornia.edu for more information, call 310-377-5501 or follow the Lucerne Campus on Facebook.

Summertime airshows are fun to watch, especially when aircraft fly in tight formation.

The sight of airplanes soaring overhead practically wingtip to wingtip is thrilling to behold.

Four of NASA’s spacecraft recently performed an equally thrilling maneuver: In Oct. 2015, the satellites of NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission gathered into a tetrahedral formation with each spacecraft at the tip of a four-sided pyramid only six miles across. Moving together as one, they raced around Earth at 15,000 miles per hour.

Conrad Schiff, MMS Orbital Dynamicist at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, MD said, “No other multi-spacecraft formation has flown this close.”

The purpose of the maneuver was to study the inner workings of magnetic reconnection—sometimes called the Universe’s favorite way of making things explode.

Magnetic reconnection can happen anywhere magnetic fields permeate space. Magnetic lines of force cross, cancel, reconnect and in a sudden explosion, magnetic energy is unleashed in the form of heat and charged-particles racing away in all directions.

This process is linked to a wide range of explosions from flares on the sun to massive eruptions in the cores of active galaxies.

It also happens in Earth’s magnetic field. Not far above our own planet, small-scale magnetic reconnection sparks geomagnetic storms, disturbances of Earth’s magnetosphere that among other effects can trigger aurora.

MMS was launched in March 2015 to study the process at close range – by studying it close to home, we can better understand it throughout the universe.

John Dorelli, a member of the MMS science team at the Goddard Space Flight Center explained, “To understand magnetic reconnection, we have to measure thin layers of fast-moving electrically-charged material called current sheets that are typically six miles or less in thickness. That’s why the spacecraft had to fly in such tight formation.”

Down on Earth, airplanes can fly much closer together than that – but they have a big advantage over MMS.

Schiff said, “First, aircraft flying in formation above Earth enjoy the control afforded by the atmosphere – that is, lift and drag. These forces are akin to the friction that allows your car's tires to grip the road. Spacecraft do not ever feel these forces. A highway analogy would be driving on ice. Under these frictionless conditions, you always allow far more space between yourself and other drivers.”

“Second,” said Schiff, “the pilot in an aircraft is always able to see the other planes – visually and via instrumentation. In space, the spacecraft can't see each other. They require much more sophisticated instrumentation to know where the others are.”

MMS solves the formation problem, in part, using its Navigator System.

Schiff said, “The Navigator uses GPS signals and a model of the orbital dynamics so that each spacecraft knows where it is at all times.”

Each spacecraft also has an Acceleration Measurement and Control System. Schiff explained that “this system carefully measures the output of the onboard thrusters and either steps on the pedal or steps on the brake to ensure that control is maintained.”

Cutting-edge computer software called the Formation Design and Control Algorithm, helps, too. Schiff said, “It analyzes the dynamics of MMS and finds orbits where the spacecraft can safely gather in pyramid form.”

Six miles set a record, but it was only the beginning.

Tom Moore, the MMS Project Scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center said, “As of September 2016, we’ve gotten the formation down to 4.5 miles. A tighter formation will give us key data from what's called the electron dissipation region of the reconnection zone.”

Rarely has space physics been so thrilling.

For more about MMS visit www.nasa.gov/mms .

NORTH COAST, Calif. – Mendocino College has been awarded a five-year, $2.2 million Developing Hispanic Institutions grant from the U.S. Department of Education through a highly competitive process.

The goal of this grant is to better serve Latino and high-need students at Mendocino College’s four educational sites in Mendocino and Lake counties.
 
With this federal Title V grant, Mendocino College will further develop a culture that promotes, expedites, and values student success among Hispanic and all other students.

Mendocino College will achieve this goal through a comprehensive First Year Institute program for incoming students.

The grant will ensure a seamless transition from high school to college, fund additional outreach services, and provide additional counseling support for all students.

With these funds the college will also strengthen instructional programs and student services to improve student retention, persistence and completion; augment continuous professional development for all college personnel to increase equitable and culturally competent educational practices; and advance the college’s access, equity and social justice initiatives by promoting greater understanding and appreciation for diverse races and cultures.
 
“We’re extremely excited to receive this Hispanic Serving Institution grant to support our College,” said Mendocino College Superintendent/President Arturo Reyes. “These funds provide a wonderful opportunity to better serve all Mendocino College students and particularly our under-represented students. The additional resources will go a long way toward changing our students’ lives through exceptional educational experiences and culturally appropriate practices in student services.”
 
As the primary higher education choice for our region, Mendocino College provides access to many Hispanic/Latino students.

This grant will allow the college to help all students overcome any barriers they face while enrolling and attending Mendocino College and prepare them to succeed at four-year institutions.
 
In order to be eligible, an institution of higher education must have a Hispanic student population of 25 percent, which Mendocino College achieved in 2011. 

For the 2015-16 academic year, the average student population at Mendocino College was 6,204 with 31 percent of those students identified as Hispanic. The 2016-17 incoming class was more than 40 percent Latino.
 
Mendocino College cites outreach to the Hispanic/Latino population as one of its primary goals under its Educational Action Plan, revised in 2015.

In both Lake and Mendocino counties, it is imperative that the growing Hispanic population experience the same support and opportunities as other student groups.
 
Mendocino College has served most of Mendocino County and the northern part of Lake County for 42 years. 

The Ukiah campus, North County Center, Mendocino Coast Center and Lake Center all offer a wide range of coursework for students. 

For more information on the College, and the variety of initiatives offered, please visit www.mendocino.edu .