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Written by: Editor

Published: 20 May 2012

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Greg Cole, Traci Dutton, Ken Frank, and Peggy King will judge the second annual Cattails & Tules Wine & Food Pairing Festival, a major fundraiser for the Konocti Regional Trails and Anderson Marsh Interpretive Association.

The event, which pairs food from local restaurants with award-winning wines from Lake County, will be held Saturday, June 16, at Gregory Graham Winery and Vigilance Winery & Vineyards in Lower Lake.

Greg Cole is the executive chef and owner of Celadon and Cole's Chop House, both located in historic downtown Napa.

A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park, Greg and his wife and business partner, Beth Fairbairn, opened the award-winning Celadon in 1996, and Cole’s Chop House in 2000. In 1998 Greg was selected as one of the 24 "hottest young chefs" in America by the Wine Spectator magazine.

Traci Dutton is the sommelier and beverage manager for The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, located in St. Helena.

Dutton is responsible for selecting and purchasing wine, creating wine lists, menus, and food and wine pairings, and staff training for all components of the CIA Greystone campus, including the Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant, the Professional Wine Studies Program, and Special Events. Her imaginative wine lists at the Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant have won numerous awards.

Ken Frank, the executive chef and owner of La Toque in Napa, is entirely self-taught. He began his career at age 16 with a dishwashing job in France, and quickly worked his way through the kitchen ranks to become a successful chef at a very young age.

In 1979 he opened the original La Toque on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood at age 23. In 1998 Ken decided to pursue his dream of moving to Napa Valley, where he opened a new La Toque in Rutherford. In 2008, La Toque moved to the new Westin Verasa in downtown Napa.

Cookbook author Peggie King joined the healthy food revolution with her first cookbook, entitled “Fit Food for Foodies.” Her simple recipes are gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free. Peggie has prepared her unique recipes for local community winery events featuring healthy lifestyle foods paired with local wines. Peggie’s “day job” is in environmental consulting.

Cattails & Tules will be held on June 16th from noon to 3 p.m. and will showcase local restaurants and chefs as they pair Vigilance and Gregory Graham wines with their creative cuisines.

The panel of judges will evaluate the pairings in four different categories: best presentation, most creative, best of show and best use of local products. Guests will vote on a special fifth category, "Consumers’ Favorite Wine & Food Pairing."

Tickets may be purchased at Shannon Ridge, Vigilance, and Gregory Graham Tasting Rooms, online at www.cattailsandtules.com or by calling 707-998-9656.

The price for the event is $40 per person, and proceeds will go towards the Konocti Regional Trails and Anderson Marsh Interpretive Association.

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Written by: Dr. Tony Phillips

Published: 20 May 2012

On Tuesday, June 5, 2012, Venus will pass across the face of the sun, producing a silhouette that no one alive today will likely see again.

Transits of Venus are very rare, coming in pairs separated by more than 100 years.

This June's transit, the bookend of a 2004-2012 pair, won't be repeated until the year 2117. Fortunately, the event is widely visible. Observers on seven continents, even a sliver of Antarctica, will be in position to see it.

The nearly seven-hour transit begins at 3:09 pm Pacific Daylight Time (22:09 UT) on June 5. The timing favors observers in the mid-Pacific where the sun is high overhead during the crossing.  

In the USA, the transit will at its best around sunset. That's good, too. Creative photographers will have a field day imaging the swollen red sun "punctured" by the circular disk of Venus.

Observing tip: Do not stare at the sun. Venus covers too little of the solar disk to block the blinding glare. Instead, use some type of projection technique or a solar filter. A No. 14 welder's glass is a good choice. Many astronomy clubs will have solar telescopes set up to observe the event; contact your local club for details.

Transits of Venus first gained worldwide attention in the 18th century. In those days, the size of the solar system was one of the biggest mysteries of science.   

The relative spacing of planets was known, but not their absolute distances. How many miles would you have to travel to reach another world? The answer was as mysterious then as the nature of dark energy is now.

Venus was the key, according to astronomer Sir Edmund Halley. He realized that by observing transits from widely-spaced locations on Earth it should be possible to triangulate the distance to Venus using the principles of parallax.

The idea galvanized scientists who set off on expeditions around the world to view a pair of transits in the 1760s.  

The great explorer James Cook himself was dispatched to observe one from Tahiti, a place as alien to 18th-century Europeans as the Moon or Mars might seem to us now. Some historians have called the international effort the "the Apollo program of the 18th century."

In retrospect, the experiment falls into the category of things that sound better than they actually are.  Bad weather, primitive optics, and the natural "fuzziness" of Venus’s atmosphere prevented those early observers from gathering the data they needed.  

Proper timing of a transit would have to wait for the invention of photography in the century after Cook’s voyage. In the late 1800s, astronomers armed with cameras finally measured the size of the Solar System as Edmund Halley had suggested.

This year’s transit is the second of an eight-year pair. Anticipation was high in June 2004 as Venus approached the sun. No one alive at the time had seen a Transit of Venus with their own eyes, and the hand-drawn sketches and grainy photos of previous centuries scarcely prepared them for what was about to happen.  

Modern solar telescopes captured unprecedented view of Venus’ atmosphere backlit by solar fire. They saw Venus transiting the sun’s ghostly corona, and gliding past magnetic filaments big enough to swallow the planet whole. One photographer even caught a spaceship, the International Space Station, transiting the sun alongside Venus.

This year should be even better as cameras and solar telescopes have improved. Moreover, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is going to be watching too. SDO will produce Hubble-quality images of this rare event.

For more news and information as the date of transit approaches, stay tuned to http://science.nasa.gov .

Dr. Tony Phillips works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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Written by: Elizabeth Larson

Published: 19 May 2012

CLEARLAKE OAKS, Calif. – Northshore Fire Protection District firefighters were called to a structure fire in Clearlake Oaks early Saturday morning.

The fire was first dispatched shortly after 2:30 a.m. in the 12000 block of The Plaza, according to radio reports.               

Firefighters arriving at the scene reported finding a mobile home on fire.

The fire was located in the rear of the home, radio reports indicated.

The fire was reported contained at approximately 3:19 a.m.

The cause of the fire and details about the resources on scene were not immediately available early Saturday morning.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .