KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – Join the Ely Stage Stop and Country Museum on Saturday, June 14, for its Picnic on the Porch.  

Celebrate the arrival of summer with a food and fun-filled day on the wrap-around porch looking out on Mt. Konocti.

The main house will showcase a quilt display loaned by Wilma Taylor and Victorian style beaded flowers and jewelry created by Ellen Dills. Select beaded pieces will be available for purchase with a portion of the proceeds benefitting the museum.

In addition to the stagecoach and retired San Francisco cable car, seldom seen pieces of historic farm equipment can be viewed in the barn and on the grounds.

Hear live music of the Stage Coach Era performed by Don Coffin and friends. Enjoy local gourmet caterer Rosey Cooks’ seasonal box lunch and “trio of tasty treats” dessert.

Docents will be pouring lemonade or bring your own wine to sip in beautiful Ely Stage Stop wine glasses that will be available for purchase.

Bid on super silent auction items and buy tickets for bountiful raffle baskets. Bids and raffle tickets will be accepted through lunch with items awarded before the end of the afternoon.

Seating is limited so reserve now. Ely’s first picnic last year was a lot of fun and its return has been greatly anticipated.

The fun will begin at 11 a.m. and continue until 3 p.m. Lunch is typically served at noon. Event cost is $30/per person.

For tickets, call Pam Hendricks at 707-279-0427 or visit the museum and ask the docents for tickets during museum hours, Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Ely Stage Stop and Country Museum, home of the Lake County Historical Society, is located at 9921 Soda Bay Road (Highway 281) in Kelseyville.

Visit www.elystagestop.com or www.lakecountyhistory.org or check out the stage stop on Facebook at www.facebook.com/elystagestop .

LUCERNE, Calif. – A caregiver support group for families dealing with memory loss or other cognitive impairments will meet on Thursday, June 5.

The group meets at the First Lutheran Church, 3863 Country Club Drive across from the Lucerne Alpine Senior Center, from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Social worker Jenny Johnson is the facilitator.

The group is sponsored by Redwood Caregiver Resource Center (1-800-834-1636) and the Social Day Programs in Lake County.

For more information call Jenny Johnson at 707-350-3030 or Caroline Denny at 707-263-9481.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Mendo-Lake Devil Pups Youth Activities Program has a few spots left for a free 10-day summer camp in Southern California for local youth.

The camp will be held from July 23 to Aug. 2.

The leadership skills and team building camp is open to boys and girls from Mendocino and Lake counties who will be between 14 and 17 years of age at the time of the encampment.

Tryouts are held locally with the camp activities at the U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

The program is designed to work with nondelinquent and drug-free youth who are ready for a summer of challenge that they will never forget.

The training emphasizes many core values such as personal responsibility and accountability.

Graduates often recount the positive experiences their summer camp training had on their adult lives.

The program's goals are to help youth become solid citizens within their own community.

While only a few graduates go on to military service, those who do have related that this training better prepared them to excel.

To find out if you qualify you must act soon and apply for the testing process. Contact Liaison Representative Wayne McBride at 707-489-7948 for information on how you or some young person you know can participate in this once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – What do you call the stuff at the bottom of a river or stream?

Most of us call it “mud.” But if you are a biologist, it’s the “benthic community” – and a community it is, teeming with all sorts of creatures, from microscopic bacteria to aquatic worms and the larvae of more familiar bugs such as mayflies and dragonflies living on the stream bottom’s sediment, rocks and submerged logs.

It’s a menagerie that’s important to the larger food chain in the environment, providing food for fish, frogs, birds and even bats, breaking down organic debris and recycling nutrients.

If you are a volunteer water quality monitor, a school biology teacher, an avid fisherman or just naturally curious about the world around you, there’s a new portable tool to learn more about these critters called “Bugs To Go.”

Developed by the Clean Water Team at the State Water Resources Control Board and Aquatic Bio-assessment Laboratory, it’s a touch screen-enabled PDF you can carry on your computer tablet or smart phone – so you can zoom in on photos of those mayfly larvae with a finger spread to catch details.

Biology teachers on a field trip can have students identify benthic critters by comparing samples to the photos in the application.

Do you like to fish a particular stream? A little knowledge can increase your luck. Knowing what kind of fish food lives in the water, and when it hatches or matures, gives you a leg up on how and when to fish.

Find a mysterious bug and wonder what it is? Pictures show the benthic bugs in various life stages, and the text tells where they live and how sensitive they are to pollutants.

That last point is important. If you are monitoring a stream for water quality and health, you might want to do a “biosurvey”: collecting the creatures you find in the stream and classifying them.

Some of the bugs and other critters can thrive in a polluted atmosphere, but others require clean  cold water with lots of dissolved oxygen. So who you find in the survey, and equally important, who you don’t find, indicates the health of the stream.

To download the application, visit http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/swamp/cwt_volunteer.shtml and scroll down to “New eTool 'California Digital Reference Collection of Freshwater Benthic Macroinvertebrate Families'.” You’ll never think of mud the same way again.

The Clean Water Team is the citizen monitoring program of the State Water Resources Control Board Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program. The CWT Citizen Monitoring coordinator works statewide in order to provide technical assistance and guidance documents, training, quality assurance support, temporary loans of equipment and communication to citizen monitoring programs and watershed stewardship organizations.

To learn more about the Clean Water Team, visit: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/swamp/cwt_volunteer.shtml .

Follow the State Water Boards on Twitter at https://twitter.com/h2oboardsnews .

UPPER LAKE, Calif. – The Redwood Empire Civil War Roundtable will hold a discussion on Monday, June 2, regarding the differing viewpoints of Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general and US president.

The group will gather beginning at 6:15 p.m. at the Tallman Hotel, 9550 Main St., Upper Lake.

The Battle of Cold Harbor raged from May 31 to June 12, 1864, near Mechanicsville, Va.

During that battle, Gen. Grant ordered a charge against the entrenched Confederate Army of Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Within minutes, upwards of 7,000 Union soldiers lay dead or wounded in what would be the worst defeat Grant ever experienced.

But refusing to admit the mistake, Grant insisted on not asking for a truce to gather up his wounded, leaving thousands of men to suffer for more than three days between the lines in the sweltering heat.  

When he finally asked for the truce, many of the wounded men had died from exposure, lack of water and lack of medical attention. Northern "Copperheads" branded him "Butcher Grant."  

Was this justified, or was it just a way of Lincoln's enemies to embarrass the administration in an election year?

Local historian and school teacher Zane Jensen will lead the discussion, and provide background to what was called "Grant's Overland Campaign" that was ultimately successful in bringing Lee to bay.

Jensen has visited numerous battlefields and has done exhaustive research on Civil War battles and its participants. He combines personal photos with archived pictures, animated maps, and video to give a full multimedia presentation.

Phil Smoley will open the roundtable with a  review of  many of the other events that occurred across the county in June 150 years ago during the Civil War.

There will be a short presentation given by first-time presenter Sarah Seago, a 17-year-old high school junior from Lakeport.  

Seago's topic will be morphine and how its use in the Civil War changed history.

Her research has revealed a viable theory to explain many generals' odd behavior during major battles, and her findings may astonish many historians.

The Redwood Empire Civil War Roundtable was formed to honor the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War and typically meets on the first Monday of each month to review the events of that month 150 years ago.  

Admission is free, all are welcome.  

For more information, contact Zane Jensen 707-349-6390 or Phil Smoley at 707-264-4905.

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Middletown Lioness Club is hosting its annual Father’s Day Breakfast on Father’s Day – Sunday, June 15 – from 8 to 11 a.m.

It will be held at the Middletown Lions Community Building on Central Park Road in Middletown

This year Father’s Day does not fall on Middletown Days weekend.

The breakfast will include pancakes, ham, fresh eggs, biscuits, fresh fruit, coffee, orange juice and milk.  

The cost is $8 per person for adults, $5 for children ages 5 to 12 years, and children under age 4 may eat for free.

Raffle tickets are now available for the annual Father’s Day prize.

This year the prize theme is rest and relaxation. The main items are a covered fire pit and a covered lounging cot.  

Tickets are $1 for one or $5 for six.  

Every weekend from now until Father’s Day, tickets can be purchased at Hardester’s Market on Fridays from 2 to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

The drawing will be held in the afternoon on Saturday, June 21, at Central Park during the Middletown Days Celebration. The prize winner need not be present to win.   

The contact for ticket purchase is Lioness Sandy Harris at 707-987-3567.