Community

Dogs are amazing. They can do incredible things. Well maybe not my dog, Sherman, who is more likely to get into mischief than save mankind but we’ve all heard stories about detection dogs sniffing out drugs, explosives, cadavers and disaster survivors. In the mid 90’s, handlers started training them for conservation tasks such as sniffing out scat from endangered species and detecting trafficked ivory. Now their olfactory prowess is being used in the fight against invasive plants and insects. And this year dogs are being trained to sniff out Covid 19 odor with 82% accuracy. The list of how man’s best friend is helping us just keeps getting longer. 

Earth Day celebrates the natural beauty of our planet and reminds us of what we can do to keep it healthy. Always on April 22nd, Earth Day is a day of education about environmental issues and is now a global celebration. In anticipation of this day I recently spent the morning in nature at the UCSC Arboretum where the birds and the bees were enjoying the nectar flowers. Whether you plant a tree, clean up litter, garden, hike in the woods or marvel at emerging wildflower, be in contact with the soil and breathe fresh air outside on this day.

Twice a month a group of people meet at the Senior Center at Highlands Park in Ben Lomond. The goal is to have a space to talk about the inevitable—how to best support someone before they die.

Cats kill 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion birds and 6.9 billion to 20.7 billion small mammals in the U.S. every year. Those startling statistics were recently revealed in a paper published in Nature Communications and picked up by media outlets from Comedy Central to the New York Times and Smithsonian.

In between the raindrops, I found a dry space to spend time in during a visit to Fall Creek in Henry Cowell State Park.

I imagine that most readers are aware that California will be holding its Primary Election on March 3, 2020.  Besides the many important offices that will be on the ballot, there is a lesser-known proposition that can provide vital funding for school facilities modernization and new construction.  With a certain ironic twist, this will be Proposition 13.  No, this proposition has no impact on how property taxes are assessed, or collected – it has nothing to do with the Proposition 13 that was passed in 1978.

Recently I visited a garden of glass, and it was spectacular.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women, responsible for more deaths each year than from all other causes combined. Between the ages of 45 to 65, one in nine women develops some form of cardiovascular disease. After age 65 the ratio climbs to one in three women.