The Lake County Rodeo Association said to look for Patten in the annual Rodeo Parade in Lakeport on Main Street at 11 a.m. Saturday, July 9.

Patten, 92 years young, is hanging up her spurs and letting her 30-year-old Arabian shed his saddle blanket.

She was 4 years old when her family moved to Lake County. A horse lover forever, she had to beg, borrow or steal a horse to ride until she married her high school sweetheart, Tom Patten in 1940. He claimed she married him for his horses which, she says, was about half right.

She and Tom set their sights on Modoc County and moved there in 1942, settling on a ranch in Cedarville.

Horses were the exclusive use for all ranch work including cattle drives, branding on the range, anything that needed doing was done on horseback. By this time the Pattens had one son, Dennis, and a second son, Danny, was born in Alturas.

The Pattens bought the Cedarville ranch and a second ranch in Eagleville with the Homecamp Cattle

Co.

Patty Patten lived and pioneered in much the same way her grandmother had in 1887 in the Owens Valle in Inyo County. No modern conveniences such as running water in the house, electricity, phone or radio reception were available.

In 1946, the Patten's leased and later sold their ranch in Modoc County, when they were needed back in Scotts Valley for the family pear ranch. Their third son, Peter, was born in 1946.

The Clear Lake Horsemen's Association was established that year, with the couple as charter members.

They also joined the famous and established Quadrielle team (a square dance on horseback) that had performed at the World's Fair in 1938.

Many Lake County families found it necessary to form a Junior Horsemen's Association and a drill team which continues today under the apt direction of Carol Thorn. Son No. 4, Doug, arrived and in 1955 son No. 5, Scott, was born. All the Patten boys were members of the Clear Lake Junior Horsemen.

Lake County was and, for the most part, continues to be a horse-oriented community. Patten family participation in every parade, horse show, trail rides, pack and hunting trips continued for many years.

Today, Patty Patten is still an active member in the Clear Lake Horsemen's Association and the Back Country Horsemen, Golden Feather Riders and the newest formed chapter of the Lake County Horse Council.

She is very proud of her charter membership in the Clear Lake Horsemen's Association, their

development and dedication of the Glen Eden Trail, connecting Lake and Mendocino Counties for public use for horsemen and hikers.

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The Lake County NAACP is hosting its inaugural cookout fundraiser on Saturday, Aug. 6.

The event will take place at Clearlake's Austin Park, on the corner of Lakeshore Drive and Olympic Drive.

Without A Net will perform live from noon until 3:30 p.m.

They will serve barbecue ribs and chicken with all the fixings around noon.

The donation will be $8 per plate or $10 for a combo plate.

In addition, many new raffle prizes will be offered, including a new Ronco ShowTime rotisserie oven; a Roto-Q 22.5-inch electric charcoal grill; and Weber 18.5-inch charcoal grill.

Donation tickets for the raffle are six for $5.

You do not have to be present to win. Should the winner of any prize live outside of Lake County, they will be responsible for shipping and handling charges.

The group has several raffle ticket locations: Ness Jewelers, Tatonka Trading Post, Girlfriends Salon, Cache Creek Apartments office, Kuts By Kieve and Spoil Me Rotten Beauty in Clearlake; Fancy Paws Pet Center in Clearlake Oaks; and Lakeview Market in Lucerne.

The NAACP hopes the community will join them and enjoy a day of good food and music.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lake County Mediations held its annual meeting on Thursday, June 23, and elected its new slate of officers.

The following officers and directors were elected .

Mary Heare Amodio, Joseph McGlinchy and Linda Garcia-Eckert returned to the board for an additional term and Philip Twichel and Gladys Rosehill were elected as new members to the board.

Mary Heare Amodio was elected president, Catherine Elias-Jermany as vice president, Linda Garcia-Eckert as secretary and Glenn Trumble as treasurer.

“Lake County Mediations” (formerly Lake County Dispute Resolution Services) provides a wide range of safe, confidential and effective mediation services and training to the Lake County community and has provided mediation services to the Lake County Courts since 1993.

Mediation is a nonadversarial inter-personal process. Parties to a dispute are supported by a neutral third party (the certified mediator) in identifying the disputed issues, developing options and seeking their own fair settlement.

As a neutral party, the mediator has no advisory or decision-making authority and functions solely as a facilitator.

Barbara Johnson, executive director of “Lake County Mediations,” can be reached by telephone at 707-263-6800 or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The group’s Web site (www.LakeCountyMediations.org) has additional information and links that explain the benefits of mediation, how to use the community program and more about the mediation process.

BERKELEY, Calif. – Much of the University of California, Berkeley’s vast language resources is accessible, free of charge, to anyone with Internet access via the new California Language Archive (CLA) Web site and its catalog of UC Berkeley materials – the largest indigenous language archive at a U.S. university.

The site, http://cla.berkeley.edu/, is filled with downloadable digital content that includes rare audio recordings and written documentation.

A few examples include 51 hours of Wintu songs and conversations, the hummingbird fire story recited in the nearly extinct language of Nisenan, and handwritten notes on Chochenyo that are based on linguist and ethnographer J.P. Harrington's work with the language's last good speaker.

Also featured are studies of the Pomo peoples who made the Lake County area their home.

“This very extensive information is valuable for scholars, and absolutely vital for Native American communities trying to revitalize endangered or no longer spoken languages,” said Andrew Garrett, a UC Berkeley professor specializing in historical linguistics and the driving force behind the CLA.

The campus’s extensive sound recordings and written data on indigenous California languages typically have been available to scholars, native communities and others – only during regular business hours, and scattered among multiple campus locations.

The new, easy access to information, according to Garrett, “will make a huge difference” in the study and preservation of endangered American Indian languages, and in researchers’ ability to use the site’s links to actual geographic locations for the sound and document records to map the many layers of California’s language diversity.

The archive has a special focus on California, but includes languages all the way from Alaska to South America and from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. It is the online face of a collaboration/unification of two distinct UC Berkeley archives – the Berkeley Language Center (BLC) and the linguistics department’s Survey of California and Other Indian Languages research center, which curates the BLC’s linguistic field recordings.

The new site resolves nagging problems with incompatible catalogs and different content formats that have complicated attempts at coordinated use of the BLC’s nearly 2,000 hours of audio recordings and 8,000 audio clips in about 90 languages dating back to1949, and the survey’s 60,000 scanned images of manuscripts, notes and lexical “file slips” that can be used to compile a dictionary.

The most important content from the Survey has been digitized, Garrett said, but it will still take a few more years to properly scan and catalog all of the archive’s more than 150 linear feet of written documentation contained in 186 individual collections.

By summer’s end, the CLA will expand further when it adds a detailed catalog of approximately 2,700 wax cylinder recordings – mostly of California Indian tribal songs – dating back to 1901 and safeguarded at the campus’s Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

“Everyone who’s interested in those languages will be astonished to learn how much is available there,” said Garrett.

Later, archive leaders hope to add a catalog of Bancroft Library journals, diaries and other documents relating to indigenous languages of California and the West – like the original 1922 field notes on the now-extinct language of Wiyot, as recorded by the pioneering cultural and linguistic anthropologist Gladys Reichard.

Meanwhile, CLA visitors can now listen to an account of the origins of the Pomo languages; read linguist and ethnographer J.P. Harrington’s handwritten notes on Chochenyo, the indigenous language of the East Bay; or peruse information collected during a 1957 survey of a few speakers of the Central California coastal region’s Ohlone languages and records of words and pronunciation guides in the now extinct language.

A map interface enables archive visitors to zoom around California looking for materials, and the site provides the precise geographical place where a recording was made.

More work is being done to align the archive’s written materials to a location, which can be tricky, as a researcher’s records may reflect numerous sites.

An especially alluring feature for linguists is a genealogical tree that the CLA provides for each language of California and North America.

The CLA project was developed with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In addition to Garrett and Mark Kaiser, director of the BLC, the CLA has been constructed by UC Berkeley’s linguistics department information technology specialist Ronald Sprouse and graduate students Amy Campbell, Hannah Haynie, Justin Spence, John Sylak and former student Maziar Toosarvandani, who received his Ph.D. in 2010.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – KPFZ Lake County Community Radio is in the Pepsi Challenge in an effort to raise funds for new equipment.

The station is trying to get a $25,000 grant to upgrade both power and equipment in order to extend its broadcast area.

To support the station, visit www.refresheverything.com/kpfz and vote once a day for the next month.

If you drink Pepsi and buy it in bottles or by the carton there are special codes that you can use to vote 100 times more. Look under the bottle cap or on the carton.

The projects with the most votes get the grants. This is a national competition.

The Pepsi Challenge Web site requires you to log in with an email address and password then you can use that to log in daily to vote.

Each person gets five votes a day but only one vote per project. If you vote for other projects make sure they are not in the $25,000 category or it will negate your vote for KPFZ.

Another vote can be texted to Pepsi which equals two votes for KPFZ.

For more information call Ghia, 707-263-3391.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Democratic Central Committee will meet on Thursday, July 7.

The monthly meeting will take place at Lake County Tax Services Office 1210 S. Main St., Lakeport, and will begin at 7 p.m.

Agenda items will include discussion on plans for the annual legislators' barbecue, which will feature guest speaker State Controller John Chiang, and be attended by Congressman Mike Thompson, state Assemblyman Wes Chesbro and state Sen. Noreen Evans.

Plans for the 2012 Presidential election and how Lake County Democrats can participate and support the reelection of President Obama and Sen. Feinstein will be laid out and members will be able to sign up for key roles in the election effort.

Also, on the agenda, reports from Peter Windrem, representative for Thompson; Joey Luiz, representative for Chesbro; and a report from Evans.

Meetings are open to the public and committee membership is open to all registered Democrats.

The Lake County Democratic Central Committee is the official governing body of the Democratic Party in Lake County. Contact the Democratic Party of Lake County at 707-277-0713 or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The committee's Web site is www.lakecountydemocrats.org.