Fire season is here. We’re in a drought. In spite of the recent rain, fuels are dry and ready to burn.

Are you ready for fire season? Would you know what to do if a wildfire was in your backyard?

Have you cleared defensible space around your home? Is your address clearly marked? Do you have an evacuation plan for yourself and your family? Do you have your emergency checklist ready?

During the 2012 fire season, some of us got to answer those questions firsthand.    

Last September, driving to town on a Friday afternoon, I turned a corner and saw a column of smoke rising on Cow Mountain. Way too close for comfort. I turned around and went back home.

My husband and I watched the column build and glow red from the flames. The wind was blowing the opposite direction of what it normally does, but we could tell by the rate of spread; if the wind changed to “normal” we would literally be in the line of fire. We stopped staring at the fire and kicked into gear.

We got out the emergency check list we’d made. It kept us organized and about as calm as possible, considering we were both wondering if we might lose our home.

Ladder out … check. Hoses hooked up … check. No flammable materials around the house or on the porch … check. Vehicles headed out with windows up … check. And so we went down the list.   

I double-checked what I call my “go kit” to make sure everything we needed was there. It’s a case I put together each year as fire season approaches. It sits by the door or goes with me in the car. It has medications for the entire family, including the dog’s, spare pair of glasses and other essentials.

Back to the check list … water, dog food, dog crate, external hard drive for the computer, non-perishables, a change of clothing, batteries, toothpaste, chargers for the phones and laptop. And down the list we went again.

We had things together in about 30 minutes. If the phone hadn’t been ringing so much, it probably would have taken half that time. It’s amazing how quickly you can move when it’s needed and you have a checklist to follow.

The neighbors were getting organized, too. People with livestock were following their evacuation plans and didn’t wait until they were told to move their animals. Maybe it was memories of the 1981 Cow Mountain fire, but my hunch was we’d all seen how quickly things moved during the recent Wye Fire and learned from it.

Then my husband and I made another decision. We called ahead, then went to town and rented a moving truck. The wind was still in our favor, and we decided to take advantage of the extra time. How lucky we were to have it. If we’d been in the Wye Fire, we would have already evacuated and been hoping our home would still be there when we returned. We had the luxury of time residents in the Wye Fire hadn’t had.

       
The wind still hadn’t changed when we got home, so we started packing the truck with some of our furniture. We figured it was easier to haul it back inside than try to get things loaded in a panic.  

We knew we’d done the best we could with protecting our home. We debated about leaving, but had a good handle on the fire’s location and felt sure we were still okay. We watched the air tankers overhead, we watched the fire trucks roll down the road during shift changes.

We gave thanks for the volunteers and emergency personnel who were there to help. We thanked our lucky stars for the men and women trained to fight these fires. They’d left their families and homes to protect ours.  

As residents, we have a job to do, too. We need to create defensible space not only to protect our homes, but the fire fighters who defend them. We need to do our part of the job, so they have a fighting chance to help us.

To find out what you can do to prepare for a wildfire, don’t miss the Wildfire Safety Expo on Saturday, May 18, at Kelseyville Lumber from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

There’s a bounce house for the kids, plus Smokey Bear and Sparky the Fire Dog will be there. We also have free prizes that will be given each hour.

You’ll have the opportunity to see fire fighting demonstrations and talk to the men and women who help protect us. You might even want to say thanks and shake their hand.

The Wildfire Safety Expo is a family event that will help answer your questions about fire protection. It’s fun, it’s free, and you won’t be sorry you attended.

Don’t wait until a fire is in your backyard before you learn what to do. For more information about the Expo, please call the Lake County Fire Safe Council at 707-263-4180, Extension 106.

For additional fire safety information, check the Cal Fire Web site at www.readyforwildfire.org .

Linda Juntunen is project coordinator for the Lake County Fire Safe Council. She lives in Lakeport, Calif.

It’s becoming a common scene to see our military personnel returning home from war suffering from mental and physical wounds.

According to RAND (2009), 981,834 veterans return to the U.S. with 18 percent suffering from some form of mental illness.

The mental illnesses that our veterans are experiencing can go unseen unlike a physically wounded veteran. The unseen wounds can create problems within a veteran’s life and how they cope. Military individuals struggle on a daily basis with the invisible wounds of serving in a highly stressful environment.

When they return home, wounded veterans should not have to worry about receiving quality care in a timely manner. For veterans suffering from mental illnesses, they do not have the time to wait for care from the Department of Veterans Affair.

According to the VA, there are 3.4 million wounded warriors residing in the United States. That is a very high number of individuals who are attempting to seek care from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The sad reality is that with such a high volume of wounded warriors seeking care that the VA has become impacted.  

Many veterans are waiting six months to a year to receive assistance in accessing services and benefits within the VA.

The huge backlog of veterans waiting to seek care from the VA has created issues in regards to the fact that our veterans are not receiving the care that they truly deserve sooner.

In 2008, the Wounded Warrior Act was passed into legislation as an attempt to improve mental and physical health care for returning military personnel.

The act strives to create changes in the way that the VA system addresses the issues of veterans not having access to quality care.

A major problem that the VA faces is the large number of individuals who go in and out of the doors at VA clinics.

The Department of Veterans Affairs serves 8.3 million veterans across the nation. This is important to know because it allows an individual to understand that the VA is trying to help those who are asking for help but with the overload that they are facing, it can be tough.  

We are trying to find answers to the problem and create a better environment within the VA for veterans to ensure that they receive care in a timely fashion before it may be too late.

For veterans who have to wait for long period of time, they may turn to other outlets as a way to destress.

The outlets that a veteran may choose may be negative and be costly to them. These outlets are a mixture of alcohol or drug abuse, and the last resort may be suicide.

If there is such a backlog of care within the VA, it is time for other resources to be utilized for our veterans to ensure that they have a safe space to turn to before it’s too late.

Veterans should be provided with a list of resources that they can access while waiting to receive assistance from the VA.

There is no such thing as leaving what they see behind them because they will always carry the tragic events that they experienced while serving in a war zone.

We must continue to honor our veterans no matter what they are experiencing and assist them in receiving the care that they need. We can’t let them give up on themselves as they wait to receive quality care from the VA.

We can help them by assisting in sharing information about resources that are available within their own local communities and keep fighting alongside them to ensure that the wait time continues to decline.

Jacqueline Wilson is a masters of social work graduate student at the University of Southern California. She is from Clearlake, Calif.

A few days ago I spotted a bald eagle about 200 yards away, his white head practically screaming “I am NOT a turkey vulture!”

He was flying north up Kelsey Creek, when he got closer he turned west and silently glided on a thermal straight towards me.

As I tried to stand perfectly still, the magnificent bird watched me as I watched him float by less than 30 feet directly over my head, once past me he kept heading west towards McGaugh Slough.

It was a routine I had witnessed many times over the years, a bald eagle searching the streams for the hitch run, after he went to McGaugh Slough it would be Adobe Creek, then Manning Creek or one of the other small tributaries of the lake.

There has been a fair amount of discussion lately about the hitch being added to the endangered species list, and whether or not it was warranted.

What oftentimes gets lost in the debate is the fact that in many cases the affected species is not simply the specific animal in question, but is actually an entire food chain, as is the case with the hitch.

This amazing fish has survived here for thousands of years but now is teetering on the brink of extinction, the fate that its cousin the Clear Lake splittail has already met. No hitch means fewer bald eagles, and a shock up and down the whole food chain.

It is unclear exactly what is responsible for the the current condition of the hitch population, though one thing we do know is that they need to have water in the creeks for a successful spawning season. Too much water can be a problem too, as untimely storms can erase a week’s worth of hard upstream travel, sometimes more than once or twice.

We know that our climate is changing faster than at any time before, and this fish will likely have to find a way to adapt if it is to survive.

The dry spring weather we have been seeing in recent years could be a feature of this change, water can be too low for the hitch to get to the prime spawning grounds, a problem sometimes made worse by drafting from the creeks at this critical time for frost protecting vineyards.

Then there is the quagga threat, if any of the non-native mussels get into the lake the biology of that environment will change so drastically that the extinction of the hitch is virtually assured, since they both feed on plankton.

The current population of the hitch is likely in the 20,000 to 30,000 range, which may sound like an impressive number but it must be remembered that this fish has a short lifespan and a few bad years of spawning conditions in a row could potentially bring the population down into the hundreds.

We also know that the hitch numbered in the hundreds of thousands in the not-too-distant past, so what is left is just a tiny fraction of that, and its extinct cousin the splittail went from a healthy population to oblivion in just a few short years.

There are many things we cannot control that may influence the survival of this species, but certainly we can find another way to frost protect vineyards – wells, wind machines, spray materials – and certainly we can take meaningful steps to keep the quagga out of our lake.

The Board of Supervisors has known for years that the hitch fry are being sucked up the intakes of the massive pipes, as their habitat is radically altered every night that frost protection is needed while they are in the creeks. Currently the quagga program consists mostly of stickers, pamphlets and signs.

So far the main complaint about listing the hitch is that the “citizen science” involved with the counting process is questionable, since it wasn’t done by professionals using strict scientific methods.

This is a very weak point for several reasons, the first is that every year the entire adult hitch population leaves the deep parts of the lake and tries to spawn far up the creeks, where the fish can easily be tracked day-by-day as the schools slowly move upstream. The water is clear and shallow when they do this, and frequently observations are made multiple times each day at the same spot by different people,  a process which has confirmed that the variations in the counts is fairly small.

The overall numbers change dramatically year to year due to the weather, but we do have enough data from good years to know what the rough average is, and even if you doubled it this fish would still be in serious jeopardy.

So the doubts about “citizen science” are pretty questionable themselves, and if scientific disciplines were employed in the count the outcome is unlikely to change significantly, either in the numbers or the conclusion that the hitch need to be listed.

Maybe the hitch is doomed to exist only in photographs, but that does not mean we should not make the effort to do the obvious things that may be helpful to it’s survival, especially in the case of the quagga, where there are so many other reasons to take action.

Now is the time for making the effort, and to begin planning for the probable listing of the species in order to keep that status from becoming an unnecessarily burdensome set of regulations to follow, to a large extent the outcome here is what we make it.

Philip Murphy lives in Finley, Calif.

How a community grows and why can greatly impact the nature of that community. Changes that might go unnoticed in a large community can be game changers in a small one like ours.

There are a few changes that have taken place in Lake County over the past several years that are beginning to have a very positive impact.

Some years back, the pear industry suffered from a major depression in the market, which forced many growers to begin removing much of the older marginally productive orchards.

Agriculture was clearly in a transition period in Lake County, and while there were pressures to develop, the local bureaucracy slowed this process enough to allow the wine industry to grow and begin to flourish in the county.

Patience followed by vision allowed this to happen. During this time the industry has grown from a grower owned coop winery and a couple of small family wineries to over 40 major wineries and the establishment of Lake County as a major grape growing region.

The closing of Konocti Harbor Inn had a similar impact on entertainment in the area. Where we had a major employer and magnet for the tourist industry we suddenly had just a few school and small theater group performances and our symphony, performing in the schools and local churches.

There were the concerts in the park during the summer, but the rest of the year was pretty dry when it came to live entertainment. Live music or theater on any regular basis required a trip out of the county.

Along came Jim Soper and his support of the vision of Jillian Billester and the Lake County Arts Council to purchase the old Lakeport Theater and create a performing arts venue in Lake County and allow live entertainment to begin to grow in the county.

It didn’t happen overnight. Like the wine industry, the process of developing this has been slow, but patience has again paid off.

An ever-increasing pool of talent now has a place to perform, the community has a local venue in which to be entertained, and these changes have enriched our community.

In the mid-1970s, Mendocino College and Yuba College began offering college classes at each end of the lake. The offerings were limited but over time programs grew and the ability to attain an associate degree, without having to leave the county, was achieved.

This past year both Mendocino and Yuba expanded their facilities and made possible increased opportunities for a higher education in the county.

Now Marymount California University, in response to the vision of Kelly Cox to find a way to utilize a community landmark, will be bringing yet another positive change to our community; the ability to achieve a bachelor or even graduate degree right here in Lake County.

This too will not happen overnight. These things are what a positive community is made of: economic stability, cultural growth and educational opportunity, all enhanced by long-term vision and the patience to allow that vision to develop.

Upcoming cultural opportunities at the Soper Reese Theatre:

• Lake County Symphony’s annual Mother’s Day Concert: 3 p.m. Sunday, May 12;
• Third Friday Live presents “Twice as Good” 7 p.m. May 17;
• Lake County Live: Live on stage radio broadcast on KPFZ 88.1 FM, 6 p.m. Sunday, May 26;
• CLPA Youth Symphony Concert: 3 p.m. Sunday, June 9;
• Second Tuesday Classic Movies presents “Goldfinger,” 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 11.

Tickets are available at The Travel Center in the Shoreline Shopping Center, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; the theater box office on Fridays from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and two hours before show time on the day of any event. Tickets also can be purchased online at www.soperreesetheatre.com .

For all the latest in information, tickets and more go to www.soperreesetheatre.com and we’ll see you at the theater.

Kathy Windrem and Mike Adams are part of the large volunteer group that run the Soper-Reese Community Theatre in Lakeport, Calif.

If two mechanics are working on your car, but they’re not talking to one another, the results may not be so good.

Likewise, if a baseball coach doesn’t communicate well with his players, he’s not likely to win as many games as he could.

Good coordination can improve outcomes in all sorts of human activities. Health care is no exception.

That’s why Medicare places so much emphasis on getting doctors and other health care providers to work together more closely and to share information on their patients.

For one thing, Medicare is encouraging the formation of accountable care organizations, or ACOs.

An ACO is a group of doctors and other health care providers who agree to work together and with Medicare to give you the best possible care by making sure they have the most up‑to‑date information about you. ACOs are designed to help your providers work together more closely to give you a more coordinated and patient-centered experience.

If you have Original Medicare and your doctor has decided to participate in an ACO, you’ll be notified of that, either in person or by letter, and the ACO may request your personal health information to better coordinate your care. You’ll have the option of declining to have your Medicare claims information shared with the ACO.

Your Medicare benefits, services, and protections won’t change. And you still have the right to use any doctor or hospital that accepts Medicare at any time, just as you do now.

For more information, visit www.medicare.gov/acos.html or call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227). TTY users should call 877-486-2048.

Medicare also gives financial incentives to doctors and other providers who adopt health information technology. Health IT can help manage your health information, improve how you communicate with your health care providers, and improve the quality and coordination of your care.

These tools also reduce paperwork, medical errors, and health care costs.

One example is electronic health records, or EHRs. These are records that your doctor, other health care provider, medical office staff, or a hospital keeps on a computer about your medical care or treatments.

EHRs can help lower the chances of medical errors, eliminate duplicate tests, and may improve your overall quality of care.

Your doctor’s EHR may be able to link to a hospital, lab, pharmacy, or other doctors, so the people who care for you can have a more complete picture of your health. You have the right to get a copy of your health information for your own personal use and to make sure the information is complete and accurate.

Electronic prescribing is another way to coordinate and improve care delivery. It allows your doctor (or other health care provider who is legally allowed to write prescriptions) to send your prescriptions directly to your pharmacy.

Electronic prescribing can save you money, time, and help keep you safe. You don’t have to drop off and wait for your prescription. And your prescription may be ready when you arrive.

Prescribers can check which drugs your insurance covers and may be able to prescribe a drug that costs you less.

Electronic prescriptions are easier for the pharmacist to read than handwritten prescriptions. This means there’s less chance that you’ll get the wrong drug or dose.

And prescribers can be alerted to potential drug interactions, allergies and other warnings.

David Sayen is Medicare’s regional administrator for Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada and the Pacific Territories. You can always get answers to your Medicare questions by calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).

“Cocktails anyone?”

Don’t drink? Don’t have to. Just step outside and get a whiff of what the aerial mixologists have for you and not in the traditional sense.

You see, you don’t have to drink. All you have to do is breathe. Sounds like a crazy notion, doesn’t it? I know. It sounds crazy to me which is why I nearly didn’t write this commentary.

I use the word commentary because it’s being published in the section reserved for opinion so you see, the news media that publishes it is not responsible for what I think or what I say and for understandable reasons, it might serve their best interest to disclaim any association with my comments or beliefs. After all, it’s just my opinion so I’ll thank the editor for running my letter and you decide what is fact and fiction.

I don’t take any special delight in writing this story, no more than I would in writing an obituary but people nonetheless read death notices in the paper just as they do wedding and birth announcements so as I see it, someone has to do it.

In my case however, this being a relatively small county, population wise, I don’t want to be known as the whacko who’s delusional any more than I wanted to be identified with the “tin hat” people when I wrote about what I perceived to be the dangers posed by Smart Meters but it seemed that I wasn’t alone on that one and for awhile at least, it was a subject on many people’s minds until like most things, it went to the back of the line to be replaced by tomorrow’s headlines and our every day lives.

Take heart if you believe anything you read here that you are not alone and that millions of people all over the globe have asked the same question that may be on your mind and they’re not crazy either. They’re not the people you see on the History Channel who claim to have been abducted by aliens from outer space and they don’t spend their nights in the woods looking for Bigfoot. No, they’re not that entertaining.

These are by any standards that most of you would accept, otherwise quite normal, down-to-earth people who weren’t looking for anything weird but who nonetheless found themselves confronted with some legitimate questions about what they were seeing up in the sky.

They found in sharing their stories that they were not alone and over the last few years, more and more people probably not so perceivably different than you were asking the same questions and when they turned to the media or any recognized authority for answers, they found themselves puzzled because they couldn’t get an answer that made sense.

Even more puzzling was the question, why isn’t there anything being said about these phenomena on the mainstream media? After all, if it’s not being covered by CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, 60 Minutes, the nightly network news or whatever you use to get your information, then it must not even be happening so why even worry about it, right?

I really can’t stress enough that I resisted writing this commentary because like most people, I do care about what people may think of me and I don’t think anyone wants to be identified as a lunatic because of what others may perceive to be outrageous beliefs that they hold. I’m also not the guy who’d yell fire for no reason unless I really believed there was one and in this case, I’m afraid I have to throw caution to the wind and just come out with it.

The short story is that we’re being sprayed from the air by what most eye witness accounts report are unmarked aircraft and it’s happening at an ever increasing rate and all over the world. Crazy? Yes, I agree! Maddening I’d say. But don’t take my word for it. See for yourself. Take a look up on what used to be one of those picture perfect blue sky days we’ve all grown very familiar with in Lake County and ask what’s wrong with this picture? I assure you, you won’t be the first.

You might start by asking people who spend a lot of their lives working outdoors what they think they’ve seen and if anything has struck them as a bit unusual.

The common official myth debunking reply is, they’re nothing but contrails, the same trails of jet exhaust we’ve seen in our skies all our lives.

If you drill deeper and ask, but what about the trails that crisscross in unusual patterns and that linger and stretch from horizon to horizon and that last for hours and leave behind a milky white mist where there was a blue sky, you’ll pretty much get the same answer as you will when you ask about those clouds that look kind of like clouds but not really.  

So when all’s said and done, you may be left with an uneasy feeling that something is wrong but there’s really no one to ask and no where to turn for information or is there?

But don’t shrug your shoulders yet and go away thinking, there’s no one ask, there’s no one to tell and there’s nothing you can do and by all means don’t get pushed in to denial because you don’t want to be labeled as cuckoo or because it’s just too terrible to think that this could be happening even though you know your eyes aren’t lying to you.

You might be interested to know that there’s some pretty amazing videography of these events and some startling pictures taken by local residents who had questions about what they observed in the sky and wanted to document what they saw.

What I think is even more amazing is that this is being photographed simultaneously all over the world and there are thousands of photographs and stories that all seem to point to the same question, “What in the world are they spraying?” which also happens to be the name of a 2010 documentary you can view on the Internet and probably even more provocative, “Why in the World are they Spraying?” released just last year which may answer some questions you have as well as raise some more worth asking. This film doesn’t claim to have all the answers but in my opinion, it should raise some doubts as to what the official explanation is for what we’re all seeing.

If I’ve done nothing more than make you curious enough to wonder if there’s anything to this, then I feel I’ve done what I set out to do. Just go to your Web browser and type in: Chemtrails. There’s a ton of information out there if you want it and some very I think legitimate sources who are feeling comfortable enough to come out of the shadows knowing that there are those of us who are willing to be called crazy if that’s what it sometimes takes to get to the truth.

Howard Glasser lives in Kelseyville, Calif.