LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lakeport City Council will hold a special meeting this week to discuss the award of a contract to construct a new seawall for Library Park.
The council will meet beginning at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 12, in the council chambers at Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park St.
The Library Park seawall sustained major damage from waves during the heavy flooding in February 2017, as Lake County News has reported.
Since then, the city has had to keep parts of Library Park fenced off and has been working through a complicated Federal Emergency Management Agency process in order to receive funding for a new seawall.
On Tuesday, the council will consider awarding the seawall construction contract to the lowest bidder, West Coast Contractors Inc. DBA Oregon West Coast Contractors, according to the staff report for the meeting.
The company bid $799,773; the city’s engineer estimate for the project was $1 million.
City staff said the project will be funded by FEMA, with a 6.38-percent match from the city, which will be funded by the proceeds from the city’s insurance policy.
The construction contract will cover the placement of approximately 534 feet of sheet pile wall work and includes modifications to the existing center pier; construction of concrete wall cap, terminus ends, and openings for stairs, dock access ramp and center pier; concrete stairs; and other miscellaneous work necessary to complete the work in place, the staff report explained.
Staff said construction is estimated to start Dec. 23.
The council also will consider approving an amendment to the event application, with staff recommendations, for the Dickens’ Faire street closures.
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.
NORTH COAST, Calif. – November is Native American Heritage Month across the country, marked as a way to honor and preserve Native American cultures.
In recognition of this, Mendocino College will host its annual Native American Heritage Celebration in the Lowery Student Center at the Ukiah campus on Thursday, Nov. 14, from 4 to 7 p.m.
This free event is open to the public, so bring your family and friends to an entertaining evening of traditional Native dancing by Shokawah Ke, crafts, games and cultural activities, which will include a display of historical artifacts and photos that provide a history of the culture of Mendocino and Lake County tribes.
Free Indian tacos will also be served.
The event will begin with a traditional Native American blessing and welcome, followed by a keynote address from Sonny J. Elliott Sr., chairman of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians, who will speak to the importance of education in the tribal community.
Cultural activities, games, and information tables hosted by local native community members, elders and leaders will include a coloring Pomo language table, traditional stick games, traditional Pomo basket weaving, traditional tule duck and doll making, traditional clacker making, and lessons about the history of Native American tribes of Mendocino County and how to gather and prepare traditional food of the California natives.
The Ukiah campus of Mendocino College is located at 1000 Hensley Creek Road.
For more information about the event, contact the Native American Student Resource Center at 707-468-3000, Extension 4603.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – With a year-long statewide campaign, the California Highway Patrol is working with the California Office of Traffic Safety to combat distracted driving by changing the habits of adult drivers through educational and enforcement efforts.
For the Adult Distracted Drivers campaign, which started Oct. 1, the CHP will conduct at least 100 distracted driving enforcement operations and at least 600 traffic safety presentations statewide.
Simply changing driving habits can help stop distracted driving.
“Our goal with this grant is to educate the public about the hazards associated with distracted driving,” CHP Commissioner Warren Stanley said. “The CHP will continue to encourage drivers to discontinue the deadly habit so everyone can reach their destination safely.”
Each year, distracted drivers kill or injure thousands of people. Distracted driving is a habit that can be broken.
The campaign will remind drivers that the likelihood of being involved in an automobile accident increases dramatically if they drive distracted.
Cell phones are the top distraction for drivers because they have become central to daily life. Steering, braking, and focusing on the roadway are priorities while driving.
A person trying to drive and use a cell phone at the same time cannot do either very well.
“Texting while driving results in longer reaction times than drunk driving. When driving, your attention must be on safety,” Commissioner Stanley added. “Nothing on that phone is worth endangering your life or anyone else’s.”
Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Cranberry and orange has long been a popular culinary match. Today’s column includes a family recipe for cranberry-orange relish, perfect for a Thanksgiving table. Photo by Esther Oertel.
It’s hard to believe, but we’re on the cusp of the holiday season.
In less than three weeks, most of us will be celebrating the quintessential American holiday, Thanksgiving.
Roasted turkey with stuffing, bowls of sweet and white potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pies will fill our tables.
While we consider this delicious fare traditional for the Thanksgiving feast, the truth is that what we serve on this day has evolved over time. What the Pilgrims and Indians ate in 1621 New England bears little resemblance to what we serve today.
In 1841, more than 200 years after what we now refer to as “the first Thanksgiving,” New England historian Alexander Young discovered a letter from Edward Winslow, one of the original colonists, mentioning the 1621 feast. It was Young that gave that feast the moniker mentioned above.
Winslow describes four hunters killing enough fowl to feed the camp for a week. While turkey was plentiful in North America – and eaten by the colonists and Wampanoag Indians – it’s speculated that the “fowl” mentioned in the letter consisted of seasonal waterfowl such as ducks and geese.
Turkey eventually became the fowl of choice on Thanksgiving menus, but not right away. A menu for a New England Thanksgiving dinner circa 1779 mentions roast turkey, but only as one of the meats offered at the meal, not as the star. Also listed are venison, pork, pigeon and goose.
In contrast, this year more than 240 million turkeys will have been raised as the mainstay of our Thanksgiving dinners.
What about the stuffing? Historians tell us that the practice of stuffing the cavities of fowl and other animals with mixtures of breads, spices and other items is ancient. Romans and Arabs employed this cooking technique. The terms “stuffing” and “dressing” as they relate to cookery derive from Medieval European culinary practices.
The English settlers and Wampanoag did occasionally stuff birds and fish, but if stuffing was used, it likely consisted of herbs and onions, rather than bread.
Any cranberries served at the harvest celebration were likely only in Wampanoag dishes. They enjoyed them raw or sweetened with maple sugar.
It would be 50 years before an Englishman mentioned boiling this New England berry with sugar for a “sauce to be eaten with … meat.” Since sugar was expensive in England in 1621, it’s quite possible that there was not any of this imported sweet in New Plymouth at that time.
Today turkey and cranberries are a much-loved food marriage.
The tradition of serving fruit with meat, particularly citrus fruit with fatty meat, goes back thousands of years, likely originating in the Middle East. Examples are found in many cultures and cuisines.
The acid in the fruit cuts the fat in the meat. In the case of lean meats such as turkey and chicken, cranberries add flavor to what is generally considered a bland food.
Other classic meat and fruit combos include pork and applesauce, goose and cherry sauce, fish and lemon, and duck l’orange.
It’s hard to imagine Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes, but the original feast didn’t include them.
Potatoes, which originated in South America, had made their way across the Atlantic to Europe, but had not been generally adopted into the English diet. The potato was virtually unknown there in the 17th century. At that point they were not included in the diet of the Wampanoag Indians, either (though they did eat other varieties of local tubers).
Today’s Thanksgiving meals typically include a version of a sweet potato (or yam) dish, but that wouldn’t have been included in the original harvest meal.
The sweet potato, which originated in the Caribbean, had also made its way to Europe, but was rare and available only to the wealthy.
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain liked them and had them planted in their court gardens. King Henry VII of England liked them as well, and considered them to be an aphrodisiac.
Yams are native to Africa and are often confused with sweet potatoes. Most sweet potato dishes – pies included – are just as successfully made with yams.
Like the white potato, neither yams nor sweet potatoes were part of the diet of the Wampanoag Indians or, for the most part, the English at the time of the first feast.
Have you ever wondered why marshmallows are so often paired with sweet potatoes on the Thanksgiving table?
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marshmallows were very trendy. They were mass produced, plentiful, and very inexpensive, and were aggressively marketed by the companies that manufactured them.
The earliest recipes found pairing marshmallows and sweet potatoes date to the 1920s. There were typically casseroles where marshmallows were layered with the potatoes. To a lesser extent, they were also paired with candied yams.
Often signature dishes from the 1920s were very sweet, and some historians speculate that this is a reaction to Prohibition.
Pumpkin, native to the New World, was likely available as part of the harvest feast, but not in the form of pie. It may have been baked, possibly by placing it in the ashes of a dying fire, then mixed with animal fat, maple syrup, or honey, and made into a soup, a common way of using it by American Indians.
As for our beloved Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, recipes for stewed pumpkin tempered with sugar, spices and cream wrapped in pastry have roots in Medieval times, when similar pies were made with squash and gourds.
Corn was part of the earliest Thanksgiving feast, though it was hard Indian corn, unlike the corn we know today. American Indians were cooking with corn long before European settlers arrived, and the English colonists learned to grind it for use in breads, pancakes, porridge and puddings as a substitute for the grains they were used to.
While we don’t know exactly what was served at the first Thanksgiving, historians can be pretty certain that it included at least some of the bounty available to them, such as cultivated parsnips, carrots, collards, turnips, parsley, spinach, cabbage, sage, thyme, onions and marjoram, as well as native cranberries, pumpkin, nuts, grapes, lobster, oysters, other seafood and, of course, local fowl.
The recipe I offer today is my mother’s orange-cranberry relish which has been offered at our holiday table for as long as I can remember. She served it in hollowed out orange-skin halves, which make for a pleasant and colorful presentation.
A former chef and restaurateur, my mom did organic, locally grown food in our family restaurant before it was cool. She was a true pioneer.
Like me, she cooks in a rather free-form fashion, so my apologies if the recipe seems a bit vague. Please feel free to contact me through Lake County News if you have questions.
The cooking of the oranges three times is to ensure they’re not bitter, since the skins are left on.
Danni’s Orange-Cranberry Relish
2 to 3 oranges, finely chopped with skins on 1 and ¼ cup sugar, divided 12-ounce package of fresh cranberries
Cover oranges with water in saucepan. Bring to a boil and allow oranges to simmer for a few minutes.
Drain oranges in colander and repeat process with fresh water.
Drain oranges again and put in saucepan with fresh water to generously cover them, along with ½ cup sugar.
Bring to a boil and simmer until liquid reduces somewhat and oranges get candied a bit in the sweet water.
Drain them, reserving the cooking liquid, and set aside.
Using the cooking liquid and fresh water, measure 1 cup of liquid into a saucepan.
Add ¾ cup sugar and bring water and sugar to a boil.
Add cranberries, return to a boil, and cook until their skins pop.
Remove from heat and stir in oranges.
Allow mixture to cool and refrigerate until served.
If serving in orange skins, they may be refrigerated after filling.
Recipe by Danielle Loomis Post.
Esther Oertel is a writer and passionate home cook from a family of chefs. She grew up in a restaurant, where she began creating recipes from a young age. She’s taught culinary classes in a variety of venues in Lake County and previously wrote “The Veggie Girl” column for Lake County News. Most recently she’s taught culinary classes at Sur La Table in Santa Rosa, Calif. She lives in Middletown, Calif.
KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – One person was killed Saturday evening in a two-vehicle wreck in Kelseyville, the latest in a series of deadly crashes to occur in Lake County in recent weeks.
The crash occurred on Highway 29 at Main Street at about 5:45 p.m. Saturday.
Firefighters arriving on the scene reported over the radio that one vehicle was on its side with a partial ejection of a person.
The California Highway Patrol reported that the vehicles involved were a truck and a sedan. The truck was the vehicle that rolled onto its side.
An air ambulance was requested to rendezvous with a Kelseyville Fire ambulance at Lampson Field, based on radio reports.
Incident command reported that they had one person with minor injuries and one person who was critically injured and needed to be extricated.
At 6:10 p.m., incident command canceled the air ambulance, reporting that the critically injured person had died.
A sheriff’s deputy was dispatched shortly afterward for coroner duties, according to scanner traffic.
The crash is the fourth traffic-involved fatality in the last two weeks. Two other incidents involved vehicle wrecks near Clearlake Oaks and Nice, and one pedestrian died after being hit by a vehicle in Nice, as Lake County News has reported.
More information will be published as it becomes available.
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.
Every November, communities around the world hold remembrances on the anniversary of the Nazis’ brutal assault on the Jews during “Kristallnacht.”
Also known as “the Night of Broken Glass,” it’s one of the most closely scrutinized events in the history of Nazi Germany. Dozens of books have been published about the hours between Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, when Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, decided to unleash violence against Jews across Germany and the annexed territory of Austria with the aim of driving them out of the Third Reich.
Most accounts tend to emphasize the attacks on synagogues and shops, along with the mass arrests of 30,000 men. A few note the destruction of Jewish schools and cemeteries.
It’s an aspect of the story that has rarely been researched and written about – until now.
A pattern emerges in survivor accounts
In 2008, when I arrived at the University of Southern California from Germany, I had been researching Nazi persecution of the German Jews for 20 years. I had published more than six books on the topic and thought I knew just about everything there was to know about Kristallnacht.
The university happened to be the new home of the Shoah Foundation and its Visual History Archive, which today includes over 55,000 survivor testimonies. When I started to watch interviews with German-Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, I was surprised to hear many of them talk about the destruction of their homes during Kristallnacht.
Details from their recollections sounded eerily similar: When Nazi paramilitary troops broke the doors of their homes, it sounded as though a bomb had gone off; then the men cut into the featherbeds, hacked the furniture into pieces and smashed everything inside.
In an interview recorded by USC’s Shoah Foundation that’s now in their Visual History Archive, Kaethe Wells explains how her family home was attacked by stormtroopers wielding axes during Kristallnacht.
Yet none of these stories appeared in traditional accounts of Kristallnacht.
I was perplexed by this disconnect. Some years later, I found a document from Schneidemühl, a small district in the East of Germany, that listed the destruction of a dozen synagogues, over 60 shops – and 231 homes.
These surprising numbers piqued my interest further. After digging into unpublished and published materials, I unearthed an abundance of evidence in administrative reports, diaries, letters and postwar testimonies.
A fuller picture of the brutal destruction of Jewish homes and apartments soon emerged.
For example, a Jewish merchant named Martin Fröhlich wrote to his daughter that when he arrived home the afternoon of that fateful November day, he noticed his door had been broken down. A tipped-over wardrobe blocked the entrance. Inside, everything had been hacked into pieces with axes: glass, china, clocks, the piano, furniture, chairs, lamps and paintings. Realizing that his home was now uninhabitable, he broke down and – as he confessed in the letter – started sobbing like a child.
A systematic campaign of destruction
The more I discovered, the more astonished I was by the scale and intensity of the attacks.
Using address lists provided by either local party officers or city officials, paramilitary SA and SS squads and Hitler Youth, armed with axes and pistols, attacked apartments with Jewish tenants in big cities like Berlin, as well as private Jewish homes in small villages. In Nuremberg, for example, attackers destroyed 236 Jewish flats. In Düsseldorf, over 400 were vandalized.
In the cities of Rostock and Mannheim, the attackers demolished virtually all Jewish apartments.
Documents point to Goebbels as the one who ordered the destruction of home furnishings. Due to the systematic nature of the attacks, the number of vandalized Jewish homes across Greater Germany must have been in the thousands, if not tens of thousands.
Then there are devastating details about the intensity of the destruction that emerge from letters and testimonies from postwar trials.
In the village of Kamp, near the Rhineland town of Boppard, attackers broke into the house of the Kaufmann family, destroyed furniture and lamps, ripped out stove pipes, and broke doors and walls. When parts of the ceiling collapsed, the family escaped to a nearby monastery.
In the small town of Großauheim, located in the state of Hesse, troops used sledgehammers to destroy everything in two Jewish homes, including lamps, radios, clocks and furniture. Even after the war, shards of glass and china were found impressed in the wooden floor.
In an interview recorded by USC’s Shoah Foundation that’s now in their Visual History Archive, Ruth Winick recalls how men in green uniforms burst into her family’s home, destroying just about everything inside.
‘Everything ravaged and shattered’
The documents I found and interviews I listened to revealed how sexual abuse, beatings and murder were commonplace. Much of it happened during the home intrusions.
In Linz, two SA men sexually assaulted a Jewish woman. In Bremen, the SA shot and killed Selma Zwienicki in her own bedroom. In Cologne, as Moritz Spiro tried to stop two men from destroying his furniture, one of the intruders beat him and fractured his skull. Spiro died days later in the Jewish hospital.
In a letter dated Nov. 20, 1938, a Viennese woman described her family’s injuries to a relative:
“You can’t imagine, how it looked like at home. Papa with a head injury, bandaged, I with severe attacks in bed, everything ravaged and shattered… When the doctor arrived to patch up Papa, Herta and Rosa, who all bled horribly from their heads, we could not even provide him with a towel.”
The brutality of the attacks didn’t go unnoticed. On Nov. 15, the U.S. consul general in Stuttgart, Samuel Honaker, wrote to his ambassador in Berlin:
“Of all the places in this section of Germany, the Jews in Rastatt, which is situated near Baden-Baden, have apparently been subjected to the most ruthless treatment. Many Jews in this section were cruelly attacked and beaten and the furnishings of their homes almost totally destroyed.”
These findings make clear: The demolition of Jewish homes was an overlooked aspect of the November 1938 pogrom.
Why did it stay in the shadows for so long?
In the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht, most newspaper articles and photographs of the violent event exclusively focused on the destroyed synagogues and stores – selective coverage that probably influenced our understanding.
Yet, it was the destruction of the home – the last refuge for the German Jewish families who found themselves facing heightened public discrimination in the years leading up to the pogrom – that likely extracted the greatest toll on the Jewish population. The brutal attacks rendered thousands homeless and hundreds beaten, sexually assaulted or murdered.
The brutal assaults also likely played a big role in the spate of Jewish suicides that took place in the days and weeks after Kristallnacht, along with the decision that tens of thousands of Jews made to flee Nazi Germany.
While this story speaks to decades of scholarly neglect, it is, at the same time, a testament to the power of survivor accounts, which continue to change the way we understand the Holocaust.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has a number of terriers, big and little, along with Kuvasz, Rhodesian Ridgeback and heeler mixes.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Brussels Griffon, heeler, Kuvasz, Labrador Retriever, pit bull, Rhodesian Ridgeback and wirehaired 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.
If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).
This male Rhodesian Ridgeback has is in kennel No. 19, ID No. 13210. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male Rhodesian Ridgeback
This male Rhodesian Ridgeback has a short tan coat with black markings.
He is in kennel No. 19, ID No. 13210.
This female pit bull terrier is in kennel No. 21, ID No. 13195. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Female pit bull terrier
This female pit bull terrier has a short black and white coat.
She is in kennel No. 21, ID No. 13195.
This male heeler is in kennel No. 23, ID No. 13194. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male heeler
This male heeler has a short brown and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 23, ID No. 13194.
This male pit bull terrier is in kennel No. 24, ID No. 13172. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Pit bull terrier
This male pit bull terrier has a shot gray and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 24, ID No. 13172.
“Shakira” is a female pit bull terrier in kennel No. 26, ID No. 6930. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. ‘Shakira’
“Shakira” is a female pit bull terrier with a short black and white coat.
She already has been spayed.
She is in kennel No. 26, ID No. 6930.
“Scrappy” is a female wirehaired terrier in kennel No. 27a, ID No. 13174. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. ‘Scrappy’
“Scrappy” is a female wirehaired terrier with a coarse tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 27a, ID No. 13174.
“Scruffy” is a female Brussels Griffon in kennel No. 27b, ID No. 13175. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. ‘Scruffy’
“Scruffy” is a female Brussels Griffon with a medium-length tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 27b, ID No. 13175.
This young male pit bull terrier is in kennel No. 30a, ID No. 13192. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male pit bull terrier
This young male pit bull terrier has a short brown and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 30a, ID No. 13192.
This female pit bull terrier is in kennel No. 30b, ID No. 13193. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Female pit bull terrier
This female pit bull terrier has a short black andwhite coat.
She is in kennel No. 30b, ID No. 13193.
“Max” is a male pit bull terrier in kennel No. 31, ID No. 13173. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. ‘Max’
“Max” is a male pit bull terrier with a short tan and white coat.
He has been neutered.
Max is in kennel No. 31, ID No. 13173.
This female Kuvasz is in kennel No. 33, ID No. 13212. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Female Kuvasz
This female Kuvasz has a short black coat with white markings.
She is in kennel No. 33, ID No. 13212.
Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.
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 glow of the Milky Way – our galaxy seen edgewise – arcs across a sea of stars in a new mosaic of the southern sky produced from a year of observations by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS.
Constructed from 208 TESS images taken during the mission’s first year of science operations, completed on July 18, the southern panorama reveals both the beauty of the cosmic landscape and the reach of TESS’s cameras.
“Analysis of TESS data focuses on individual stars and planets one at a time, but I wanted to step back and highlight everything at once, really emphasizing the spectacular view TESS gives us of the entire sky,” said Ethan Kruse, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow who assembled the mosaic at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Within this scene, TESS has discovered 29 exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, and more than 1,000 candidate planets astronomers are now investigating.
TESS divided the southern sky into 13 sectors and imaged each one of them for nearly a month using four cameras, which carry a total of 16 charge-coupled devices, or CCDs.
Remarkably, the TESS cameras capture a full sector of the sky every 30 minutes as part of its search for exoplanet transits.
Transits occur when a planet passes in front of its host star from our perspective, briefly and regularly dimming its light.
During the satellite’s first year of operations, each of its CCDs captured 15,347 30-minute science images.
These images are just a part of more than 20 terabytes of southern sky data TESS has returned, comparable to streaming nearly 6,000 high-definition movies.
In addition to its planet discoveries, TESS has imaged a comet in our solar system, followed the progress of numerous stellar explosions called supernovae, and even caught the flare from a star ripped apart by a supermassive black hole.
After completing its southern survey, TESS turned north to begin a year-long study of the northern sky.
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. George Ricker of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research serves as principal investigator for the mission.
Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
Francis Reddy works for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The plane of our Milky Way galaxy arcs across a starry landscape in this detail of the TESS southern sky mosaic. Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA)
Francisco Morales-Gomez, 31, of Clearlake, California, was arrested on the evening of Friday, November 8, 2019, after a day-and-a-half-long standoff with law enforcement in which he held his child hostage in his home. He was taken into custody without incident shortly after surrendering his child to authorities. Lake County Jail photo. CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Clearlake’s police chief offered new information Friday night about what led to a day-and-a-half-long standoff between a man and authorities and what it took to resolve the situation safely.
On Friday evening, authorities took Francisco Morales-Gomez, 31, of Clearlake into custody without incident shortly after he safely surrendered his 6-year-old child, who he had held with him in his house on 29th Avenue since Thursday morning.
The incident would draw in resources from other parts of Lake County and the North Coast. Agencies assisting the Clearlake Police Department included the Lake County Sheriff's Office, Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, Mendocino County Sheriff-Coroner, California Highway Patrol, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Lake County Fire Protection District, according to the Clearlake Police Department.
Clearlake Police Chief Andrew White told Lake County News that the original call that developed into a hostage situation came in on Thursday morning, when Morales-Gomez’s wife called to report that he had brandished a firearm at her.
White said officers responded to the residence at 29th and Boyles avenues, surrounded it and called out to everyone inside the house to leave.
Morales-Gomez’s brother came out of the house, White said, while Morales-Gomez came to the door with his child – carrying what was believed to be a rifle – before taking the child and going back inside the house.
At that point, negotiations began, said White.
At about 9 a.m. Thursday, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office SWAT Team was asked to respond and when they arrived they took over negotiations, White said.
White said they also evacuated about six homes in the immediate vicinity and closed down some nearby streets, including portions of 28th, 29th and Boyles avenues.
On Thursday night, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office sent its SWAT Team, which White said brought a helicopter, a robot and a drone. All of that technology was used to monitor the situation while the Sonoma County team took over negotiations overnight.
White said the robot was used to deliver a phone into the home in order to communicate with Morales-Gomez.
On Friday morning, the Lake County Sheriff’s SWAT Team resumed leading the negotiations, White said.
During the standoff, Morales-Gomez and the child primarily remained in a back bedroom in the house, White said.
Morales-Gomez had not made any specific demands during the negotiations. However, “He had made threats to shoot the law enforcement officers,” White said. “He said that multiple times.”
Then, on Friday evening, Morales-Gomez called negotiators about food, so White said they ordered a pizza. One of the SWAT team members placed the pizza inside the front room, while Morales-Gomez remained at the back of the house.
White said Morales-Gomez didn’t go for the pizza. However, while still in the back bedroom, he agreed to pass his child out of a window to law enforcement.
Then, Morales-Gomez attempted to go out of another window. That’s when the SWAT team captured him, White said. That occurred shortly after 6 p.m.
The child, who White said appeared to be in good health after the ordeal, got the pizza.
Officers took Morales-Gomez to the hospital to be cleared and to get a blood sample as part of the search warrant law enforcement has for the case, White said.
At 7:15 p.m. Friday, the Clearlake Police Department sent out a Nixle text alert stating that residences on 29th Avenue that had been evacuated were safe and people were clear to return home.
White said they understood and recognized the impact on the neighbors who had to be away from their homes while the situation unfolded. He added that safety – for the public and the victim – is paramount.
Prior to Thursday’s call that began the standoff, White said the Clearlake Police Department had not had any contacts with Morales-Gomez.
Asked about potential costs to the department for the complex and lengthy operation, White said the assistance from Mendocino and Sonoma counties was through mutual aid and therefore will not result in a cost to his agency.
White noted that in recent weeks his officers had responded to Sonoma County to assist with patrols in the Kincade fire evacuation area.
Besides the basic benefit of the mutual assistance, he said the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office also responded with far more units and equipment thanks to its size.
White said there will be a significant cost to the city for its own personnel. Volunteers were used when possible, such as enforcing road blocks. However, officers and staff from all of the Clearlake Police Department’s divisions were part of the response, staying on scene around the clock.
They also had to deal with their own regular call volume, which White said didn’t stop and included multiple other calls involving guns at the same time that the Morales-Gomez incident was under way.
Morales-Gomez, whose booking sheet lists his occupation as laborer, was booked early Saturday morning into the Lake County Jail.
Initial charges listed against him are felony counts of false imprisonment of a hostage, false imprisonment with violence, obstructing or resisting an executive officer and willful cruelty to a child, and misdemeanors of brandishing a firearm replica and battery of a spouse.
White said he expected Morales-Gomez to appear in Lake County Superior Court for arraignment on Wednesday.
White said his agency is requesting a bail enhancement so Morales-Gomez is held without bail, and when Morales-Gomez’s booking sheet was posted it showed he is on a no-bail hold.
“We have significant concerns with the threats he could pose to the community if he were to bail out prior to arraignment,” White said.
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.
Authorities at the scene of a standoff in Clearlake, California, that led to the arrest of Francisco Morales-Gomez, 31, of Clearlake, on Friday, November 8, 2019, following a day-and-a-half-long standoff. Photo courtesy of the Clearlake Police Department.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Registrar of Voters Office on Friday said it still has a small number of ballots yet to count as part of finalizing the election results for Northshore Fire’s Measure N tax.
At the same time, the Northshore Fire Protection District’s board chair said they have received messages from community members who reported they didn’t receive ballots or only got them in the mail this week.
The fire district put the parcel tax before more than 6,300 registered voters on the Northshore on Tuesday. Four precincts were open in Clearlake Oaks, Lucerne, Nice and Upper Lake.
Measure N needs a supermajority of 66.7 percent to pass.
An updated preliminary count released Friday shows that 1,971 ballots have been counted – 1,634 absentee, 337 percent.
Of those, 1,242 ballots, or 63.01 percent, were cast in favor of the measure, while 729 ballots, or 36.99, voted no.
The overall participation rate for the special election is estimated at 30.92 percent, according to the Friday report.
The Registrar of Voters Office must complete the official canvass – which began on Thursday and will continue until Dec. 5 – in order to certify the election, according to Registrar of Voters Catherine McMullen.
McMullen gave the following breakdown of the 48 ballots that remain to be counted during the official canvass:
· Ballots voted at the polling places on Election Day: 6.
· Vote-by-mail ballots dropped off at the polls on Election Day: 0.
· Vote-by-mail ballots returned via mail postmarked on or before Election Day, Nov. 5, and received by the Registrar of Voters Office by Friday, Nov. 8: 1
· Vote-by-mail ballots that require further review: 41.
· Provisional ballots: 0.
McMullen said provisional ballots and vote-by-mail ballots requiring further review may be entirely counted, partially counted or not counted.
At the same time, this week Northshore Fire Protection District Chair Jim Burton said he has been receiving calls from community members who said they did not receive ballots for the measure or only received them this week.
He said the committee that supported and campaigned for Measure N plans to report these concerns to the Registrar of Voters Office.
McMullen said the results released on Friday will be the last update until the final certified results of the election are released when the official canvass ends on Dec. 5.
There are many checks and balances when certifying election results as part of the official canvass, which McMullen is mandated by state law to ensure that the public can have confidence in the integrity of the final results.
Anyone with questions about the elections process can contact the Registrar of Voters Office at 707-263-2372, Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., or stop by the office on the second floor of the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St. in Lakeport.
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. – The California Highway Patrol is renewing its efforts to ensure children are safely secured while traveling California’s roadways.
The CHP has partnered with the California Office of Traffic Safety to implement the California Restraint Safety Education and Training – or CARSEAT – III campaign.
The CARSEAT III campaign will run for one year and focus on reducing the number of unrestrained and improperly restrained children killed in traffic collisions throughout California.
To accomplish this goal, the CHP will host educational seminars, classes and child safety seat inspections.
These efforts will highlight the importance of child passenger restraint and seat belt usage, and provide education related to the proper installation of child passenger safety seats.
California law requires a child be properly restrained in an appropriate child safety seat in the rear seat of a vehicle until they are at least eight years of age.
Children age 8 and older, who are at least 4 feet, 9 inches tall, may ride in the rear seat of a vehicle in a properly fitted seat belt.
Children under the age of 2 must ride in a rear-facing child safety seat until they reach 40 pounds or 40 inches in height.
For the best protection, all children should ride rear-facing as long as possible, until they reach the upper weight and height limits of their car seat.
“Making sure everyone in your vehicle is buckled up in an appropriate car seat for their age and size is the easiest way to prevent serious injury or even death in the event of a crash,” said CHP Commissioner Warren Stanley.
Commissioner Stanley also encourages drivers to set an example by buckling up for every trip, no matter how short.
“The goal of this campaign is to educate parents and caregivers to ensure all children and adults in California are using car seats and seat belts for every trip,” he said.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, child passenger safety seats reduce the risk of fatal injury by 71 percent for infants and by 54 percent for toddlers in passenger cars.
In addition to educational efforts, the CHP will be conducting enforcement operations concentrating on occupant restraint violations throughout the year with a special emphasis during the national “Click It or Ticket” campaign in May and national Child Passenger Safety Week in September.
For more information regarding seat belt regulations, child passenger safety, child safety seats – including free inspections and installations by appointment – please contact your local CHP Area office.
The Clear Lake Area CHP office can be reached at 707-279-0103.
Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Dennis Fordham. Courtesy photo. A tenant in common owns an undivided, fractional interest in a property – real or personal – with one or more additional tenants in common, who may be related or unrelated persons.
Let’s consider issues related to some scenarios.
Consider two friends who buy real property as equal tenants in common to turn into a rental property.
As equal co-owners they each are responsible to pay their own half of all maintenance, repair and real property tax costs.
What happens if one of the equal co tenants becomes unable to pay his share of such expenses?
That happened to a client of mine. In her case, she paid all the expenses associated with ownership and with repairing the rental property in order to re-sell the once rental property.
My client did so with an oral agreement with her business partner that she would be reimbursed from the partner’s half of the future sale proceeds.
However, the partner died prior to the property being sold. The deceased partner’s son – and sole heir – stepped in.
Disagreement arose over the son’s right to use the rental property, as to my client’s creditor claims against the deceased partner’s estate, and as to how to settle the mother’s estate, probate versus small estate administration.
These issues and how the property would be sold needed to be resolved. Disagreement led to litigation which led to a settlement.
Next, consider two siblings who together, as equal tenants in common, inherit their parent’s ranch, which has multiple dwelling units.
The siblings decide to live in separate dwellings on the ranch and to separate their use of the large estate where possible. A tenants in common agreement allows co-tenants to specify their rights and responsibilities associated with their agreement.
Although tenants in common each own an undivided interest in the entire property they can agree to allocate separate use of certain parts of the property to one tenant and to allow both tenants shared use of the other parts. They can allocate their rights and responsibilities accordingly.
The drafting of a tenants in common agreement will vary depending on the circumstances and objectives.
In our example, the agreement concerns in which dwelling each sibling resides and their individual rights and responsibilities for their separate dwellings and environs and for their shared environs and responsibilities.
Next, the siblings may each want to gift their undivided fractional ownership to their own children when they die.
A tenant in common can transfer his undivided interest into a trust with future beneficiaries, or can name such future beneficiaries in a will. Wills require probate when the value of the decedent’s probate estate exceeds one-hundred, fifty thousand dollars.
If, however, tenants in common cannot cooperate then each tenant in common has a right to bring a petition to partition action in civil court.
A partition action will result either in the division of the property, if possible, or in the sale of the property. Either way the tenants in common are set free of one another.
If parents wish to leave real property for the common enjoyment of their children they may wish to leave such property in a further on-going trust.
The trust will name a trustee and the terms under which the children and their families share the benefits and burdens associated with the property.
The trust prevents any of the children from selling, or partitioning, the real property and says what happens when all of the children are deceased, no longer want to use the property, or the real property becomes uneconomical to maintain.
The foregoing discussion illustrates why the tenants in common form of ownership needs to be thought through and addressed before entering into such an arrangement. If you are confronting the issue, consult a qualified attorney to discuss your planning options.
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.
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