LAKEPORT, Calif. – Members of local law enforcement and fire agencies gathered with community members on Friday evening to honor the men and women across the national and locally who lost their lives while protecting the public.

The Lake County Safety Office Memorial Service took place at the Lake County Memorial Park in front of the Historic Courthouse Museum in downtown Lakeport Friday evening.

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office chaplains hosted the event once again this year.

Chaplain Terry Cara said the gathering was a way of remembering the special people who protect others.

Troop 39 Scout Master Bill Green offered a welcome, telling law enforcement and firefighters, “You guys are running into danger while everybody is running away from danger.”

He said it takes a special kind of a person to do that, and that despite a lot of negativity toward law enforcement, they are loved and appreciated.

His Boy Scouts handed out patches to firefighters and law enforcement officers, as well as retirees, who attended the event.

Sheriff Brian Martin in turn shook each Boy Scout’s hand and gave them sheriff’s office challenge coins.

Cara said that nationwide in 2016, 145 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty, as did 89 firefighters. Additionally, 63 police K9s died while in service.

“Each life lost is tragic,” Cara said, explaining that each of the officers and firefighters had taken a solemn oath to protect the public.

During the event, candles were lit in memory of those who died. Pastor Shannon Kimbell-Auth, another sheriff’s chaplain, said they included lighted candles because, as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.”

“We have each known the darkness of grief,” Kimbell-Auth said.

Kimbell-Auth also quoted the words of Jesus Christ, who said there is no greater love than to lay one’s life down for one’s friends.

Lt. Hector Paredes, commander of the California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake Area office, read the names of the 11 public safety officers and five K9s who died in California last year, with a bell rung for each name at the end of the reading.

Cal Fire Division Chief Greg Bertelli read the names of the California firefighters who died last year, with each of them also honored with the ringing of the bell.

The ceremony then moved to the “end of watch” remembrance for the five Lake County public safety officers who died in the line of duty.

Sheriff Martin read the story of Sheriff George Kemp, 56, who was shot in the chest and mortally wounded on Thursday, May 10, 1910, by one of two suspects in a horse theft and burglary case that he was attempting to arrest. He died later that day.

Lake County Fire Chief Willie Sapeta honored Fireman Michael Mattioda, 19, who died on July 14, 1984, after being badly burned while fighting the Mount Baldy Fire in Clearlake.

Martin also shared the story of Deputy Sheriff William Hoyt, 52, who died on Wednesday, Oct. 11, 1967. Hoyt, who was unarmed, was shot in the Lake County Courthouse by a prisoner who had grabbed another deputy’s gun and began firing on the way into the courtroom. Hoyt staggered to a counter, retrieved a pistol and retired fire, shooting a prisoner. Hoyt died later that same day of his injuries.

Lakeport Fire Chief Doug Hutchison read the story about 20-year-old Matthew Black, a volunteer firefighter with Lakeport Fire who died on June 23, 1999. Black was electrocuted by a live power line while working on a grass fire.

The last story recounted was that of Sgt. Richard Helbush, 34, who Martin said died on Saturday, May 2, 1981. Helbush was shot three times in the back and once in the head when he stopped to help two motorists, Robert Cox and Annika Deasy, in a remote area along Highway 29.

Helbush didn’t know that Cox and Deasy were wanted on suspicion of murdering a Stockton restaurateur. They later were taken into custody after a high speed chase and shootout involving then-Sheriff’s Deputy Don Anderson, now the county’s district attorney.

Cox later took his own life in jail, while Deasy served 27 years in prison before being returned to her home country of Sweden. She was released from custody there on May 2, 2011, the 30th anniversary of Helbush’s shooting, Martin said.

Both Anderson and former Sheriff Ray Benevedes were on hand for the ceremony, with Martin noting their presence as a way of illustrating that the names of those who died in service were not forgotten.

Cara then read the names of three other men who served the county – retired Lakeport Fire Chief Ken Wells, Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy Jake Steely and California High Patrol Sgt. Matt Norton  –  who died over the last year and a half. Their deaths did not occur while on duty.

The ceremony ended with a prayer by Chaplain Rick Barnes, the playing of “Taps” by Bill Vann of the Lake County Military Funeral Honors Team and a final benediction and prayer by Chaplain Mike Suski.

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.

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“What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it.” – David Attenborough

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Wilderness is one of the most prominent features of Lake County, and that's why we have an open invitation to view birds in all of their various habitats year round.

A walk in an oak woodland awakens one’s senses with the rat-a-tat sounds of woodpeckers in action, or you may discern an unforgettable hawk's cry.

Strolling a stony stream's bank you may sight industrious flycatchers and swifts. Listen for their distinct calls interspersed with the sonorous sounds of the stream as it bounds over rocks, or as the creek's clear and bright waters chortle purposefully along.

As Vincent Van Gogh said, “One can never study nature too much and too hard.”

We live in the Pacific Flyway – the north-to-south migratory path that draws birds – and birders to our fair county.

With more than 300 species of birds viewed on Clear Lake alone, and, according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, over 51 million birdwatchers in America, there is a lot of potential pleasure to experience here.

During your pursuit of passage into the valleys of Lake County you will encounter jewel-like hummingbirds, turkey vultures surfing the thermals, bluebirds, blue jays and a myriad of other avian species.

Clear Lake is a supreme source of bird watching. That fact was underscored recently, with a fantastic excursion on Ed Legan's pontoon boat ride up Cache Creek during Lake County's own Redbud Audubon Heron Days.

My husband and I boarded the boat along with other bird lovers at Shaw's Campground – a perfect place to launch your kayak, by the way – and toured up Cache Creek's oxbows along Anderson Marsh State Historic Park and Slater Island.

Our local Audubon Society, called Redbud Audubon, has been hosting Heron Days for 22 years. As stated on the group’s Web site, “If you have attended this event in past years, you know what a wonderful celebration of nature this event offers. The boat tours are a rare opportunity to see nature up close on beautiful Clear Lake.”

The National Audubon Society, a nonprofit, is thoroughly devoted to conservation, utilizing three components to bring forth its mission: education, science and grassroots support.

Named for John James Audubon, the famed ornithologist who wrote and illustrated “Birds of America,” there are about 500 local Audubon chapters in the United States who involve the public in the important Christmas Bird Count annually, along with Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Great Backyard Bird Count. Now you can find online avian data bases such as Audubon's eBird for observation and education.

Our cruise on the creek netted an impressive amount and variety of bird life. We were even privy to the sight of an otter who was as surprised to see us as we were, when we spotted it!

A juvenile green heron was sighted, along with many Great Blue Herons nesting, soaring above the cottonwoods majestically, and tending to their juveniles. Also seen were Canada geese, cormorants and white egrets who compose a stark contrast to the surroundings with their dazzling, angelic white feathers.

We saw grebes galore – both Western and Clark's grebes. They were seen diving for green strands of lake vegetation, which they then offer to their mate as ideal nesting material, we saw grebes “rushing” or dancing across the water, but mainly we saw Grebes gathered in large colonies, nesting.

These floating houses must not be disturbed during nesting time in the spring, as they may be home to between one and seven eggs.

The Western Grebe can be differentiated from another species of grebe found on Clear Lake, Clark's Grebe, by the black cap that extends along and below the eye.

The Western Grebe also has a more pointy, longer beak than that of the Clark's. Western Grebes have a wingspan of about 32 inches, and grow 21-29 inches in length.

Grebes are found not only in lakes, but also ponds and marshes. Their habitat includes estuaries and sea coasts in the winter season. According to ornithologists, there are 22 species of grebes found in the world.

For further information visit Redbud Audubon’s Web site or its Facebook page.

Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Book lovers of all ages are invited to “Read by Design” with the Lake County Library's 2017 Summer Reading Program.

The program is open to all ages, so everyone can join in the fun.

Signups begin Saturday, May 20, at all four Lake County Library branches and you can sign up any time during the summer.

Once you sign up you can keep track of your reading progress when you return your books to the library. There are four programs, each targeting a different age group.

The program for “pre-readers” challenges parents and other family members to read together with their children who haven't quite started to read yet.

The kids program is recommended for children ages from 5 to 12 who are independent readers. Children can read books and earn stickers for their game cards.

For children who read 25 books or 1,000 pages The Friends of the Lake County Library will donate a book to the library with a special bookplate inside the book commemorating their achievement.

At the end of the program in August, there will be a party for the children who participate.

Teens age 13 to 18 can sign up to read books. For every 200 pages you read, you get a ticket for a grand prize drawing. There will also be a variety of events for teens over the summer at the library.

The Lake County Library now includes a summer reading program for adults. It’s a fun way to challenge yourself to read more this summer. For every 200 pages you read, you get a ticket for a grand prize drawing.

“The Summer Reading program is a great way to promote reading over the summer because children are encouraged to find and read materials that interest them,” said Lake County Library director Christopher Veach. “Students read more when they can choose their own materials from a wide selection and are able to share their choices with their peers.”

There have been many studies that show that students who read often achieve higher academic success than students who rarely read. Also, students who read just for fun are more likely to do better in school.

A study performed by Dominican University in 2010 found that students who were part of a library summer reading program had better reading skills at the end of the third grade than students who didn’t participate.

The Lake County Library Summer Reading Program is supported in part by the Friends of the Lake County Library and Friends of Middletown Library.

For more information contact the library at 707-263-8817 or visit the library Web site at http://library.lakecountyca.gov .

The Lake County Library is on the Internet at http://library.lakecountyca.gov and Facebook at www.facebook.com/LakeCountyLibrary .

Jan Cook is a technician with the Lake County Library.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has just two dogs available for adoption as this week begins.

The dogs available this week include a little dachshund and a bigger pit bull.

Lake County Animal Care and Control is adopting out dogs this week with a $50 discount – waiving the county adoption fee portion and costs for microchipping. There will will be costs for spaying and neutering dogs.

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.

In addition to the animals featured here, all adoptable animals in Lake County can be seen here: http://bit.ly/Z6xHMb .

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”).

Female dachshund

This older female dachshund has a friendly grin and a short brindle and brown coat.

She already has been spayed.

She’s in kennel No. 9, ID No. 7521.

‘Ice’

“Ice” is a young male pit bull terrier.

He has a short black coat.

He’s in kennel No. 21, ID No. 7452.

To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .

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.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .

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.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Members of the Lake County Symphony Association Wine Club are looking for home brewers and garage winemakers to participate in the 2017 Home Wine and Beer Makers’ Festival.

The event takes place from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, June 17, at Lakeport’s Library Park.

The Wine Club sponsors the event as a major fundraiser for the Lake County Symphony and Youth Orchestra.

Each year, dozens of amateurs from throughout Northern California show up to pour tastes of their homemade beverages, hoping to win a coveted “Peoples’ Choice” award from event attendees.

There is no booth fee for the amateurs, who have until June 7 to sign up for this year’s festival.

Amateur winemakers also have the opportunity to enter their creations for separate professional judging and the chance to win one of the wide range of ribbons offered.

They are joined by many of Lake County’s leading commercial wineries who, although not eligible for prizes – which are restricted to amateurs – nevertheless want to show their support for our fine local music.

Now in its 16th year, the Winefest also attracts artists and artisans who offer their wares for sale, along with musicians who provide live entertainment for the entire festival. 

Additionally, the Norcal Aircooled Group vintage car club will be on hand with more than four dozen collectible car owners showing off their unique antiques.

Adults eligible for tasting wines and beers are charged $25 at the gate, or $20 in advance, available through the Chamber of Commerce or most winery tasting rooms.

There is no charge to visit the vendors or to explore the vintage automobiles.

Symphony Association President Charlie Schley urges potential amateur participants to contact him as soon as possible; June 7 is the cutoff date for entries.

He can be reached at 707-279-2997 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Additional information is available online at www.homewinemakersfestival.com .

NASA’s annual survey of changes in Arctic ice cover greatly expanded its reach this year in a series of flights that wrapped up on May 12.

It was the most ambitious spring campaign in the region for NASA’s Operation IceBridge, an airborne mission to monitor ice changes at Earth’s poles, which also included a rapid-response flight over a new crack in Petermann Glacier, one of the largest and fastest-changing glaciers in Greenland.

“This has easily been our best year ever for surveying sea ice,” said Nathan Kurtz, IceBridge’s project scientist and a sea ice researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Geographically, we covered a wider area than ever before, and the new instruments we deployed during this campaign have given us denser and more accurate measurements.”

IceBridge explored for the first time the Eurasian half of the Arctic Basin through two research flights departing from Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the northern Atlantic Ocean. The mission also took measurements of a recently formed crack on the ice shelf of Petermann Glacier.

This Arctic season, IceBridge completed all of its sea and land ice baseline flights –surveys that are repeated year after year to measure regions that have been evolving rapidly over the last decades. In total, the mission carried out 39 eight-hour flights in 10 weeks.

Of those, 13 focused on surveying sea ice, while the remaining 26 flights targeted land ice. Several flights included collaborations with international Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) missions teams to collect and compare measurements of snow and ice.

The largest one was with CryoVEx, a campaign dedicated to validating data gathered by ESA’s (the European Space Agency) CryoSat-2 satellite, but IceBridge also coordinated data collection with a group of European adventurers collecting snow depth data while doing a traverse toward the North Pole, with ESA’s Sentinel-3A satellite, and with a GPS survey near Summit Station, Greenland, designed to validate future measurements by the upcoming Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission, among other collaborations.

IceBridge's first research flight took place on March 9 onboard NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility’s P-3 Orion aircraft. As with every year, the first part of the campaign was dedicated to overflying the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover, plus several fast-changing land ice areas from two sites: Thule Air Base in northwest Greenland and Fairbanks, Alaska.

But this campaign, the IceBridge team added an extra base: Longyearbyen, Svalbard. From there, the mission was able to reach areas of the Eurasian side of the Arctic Ocean that had not been explored by IceBridge before.

While analyzing preliminary data, Kurtz said that he was intrigued to see that the layer of snow on sea ice in the Eurasian side of the Arctic is currently thinner than what snow depth climatology models based on older measurements predict.

“The new snow measurements will help better understand changes in the Arctic sea ice cover and help constrain satellite measurements to make sure they’re accurate,” Kurtz said.

IceBridge also expanded its scope westward with a flight to the western side of the Chukchi Sea, a sea situated between Alaska and Russia. It was the first time the mission ever crossed the International Date Line.

In mid-April, the IceBridge team was alerted to a crack on the floating ice shelf of Petermann Glacier. Stef Lhermitte, an associate professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, had just discovered the rift while going through satellite imagery.

Lhermitte wrote about his observations on Twitter and the NASA manager for the cryospheric sciences program learned about the tweets. Serendipitously, IceBridge was then planning on flying one last mission over Petermann.

“The day before the flight, we worked late into the evening to redesign our Petermann flight plan to overfly the new rift according to the coordinates Stef [Lhermitte] sent us,” said John Sonntag, IceBridge mission scientist. “This achievement was only possible because of the long-standing culture of international scientific openness and cooperation. IceBridge and other NASA missions, which make their data freely available to all comers worldwide, go a very long way to perpetuate and strengthen this culture.”

The new rift intrigues scientists because it is much further upstream from the glacier's front than other cracks, which could create a large iceberg when it finishes tearing through the ice and potentially make the ice shelf and the glacier it buttresses unstable. Whether this happens or not, the new measurements of the rift IceBridge collected will help researchers better understand the evolution of cracks.

“Getting fresh data on this newly developed rift is exciting. Because it’s so new, we’ll have a better handle on its evolution,” said Joe MacGregor, IceBridge deputy project scientist and glaciologist at Goddard. “I look forward to seeing what comes out of these measurements.”

The final part of the campaign was based in Kangerlussuaq, in west Greenland, and focused on land ice.

As with every Arctic campaign, IceBridge hosted a teacher from the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States’ PolarTREC program. This year, the participant was Adeena Teres, a science teacher at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Teres wrote a blog on her IceBridge experience and participated in live chats from the airplane with K-12 classes across the U.S. In total, the IceBridge team conducted 65 classroom chats from the P-3 and from the ground during this campaign that reached 1414 students in 14 U.S. states, plus Mexico and Canada.

This summer, IceBridge will carry out two additional campaigns to gauge how the melt season impacts Arctic sea and land ice. The first survey will take place in late July and will be based out of Thule, focusing on the multi-year sea ice cover north of Greenland and in the Canadian Archipelago.

The second one, starting in early September, will operate from Kangerlussuaq and replicate land ice missions that IceBridge completed this spring. Both campaigns will use smaller planes with a more limited set of instruments than the regular springtime flights.

The mission of Operation IceBridge is to collect data on changing polar land and sea ice and maintain continuity of measurements between ICESat missions. The original ICESat mission ended in 2009, and its successor, ICESat-2, is scheduled for launch in 2018.

Operation IceBridge is currently funded until 2019. The planned overlap with ICESat-2 will help scientists validate the satellite’s measurements.

For more about Operation IceBridge, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge .

Maria-José Viñas works for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Most married people leave their estate to their surviving spouse and children. Typically, when the children are from the current marriage, there is no issue with leaving everything to the surviving spouse. That is not always the case with blended families.

Some married people with children from a prior marriage feel that the security of the surviving spouse is paramount. They believe the surviving spouse should be free to do as he or she wants with assets from the deceased spouse’s estate.

They typically leave most everything to the surviving spouse; meaning the surviving spouse can spend the entire deceased spouse’s estate and can also disinherit the deceased spouse’s own children.

However, some married people want not only to protect their spouse but also their own children.

Careful estate planning consideration and safeguards are needed in such cases.

How much does each spouse want to leave for their surviving spouse versus to leave to their own (biological) children? Do the children have to wait until the surviving spouse dies before receiving some or all of their inheritance? Will the surviving spouse and stepchildren be entangled with each other because of the estate planning?   

Many married people try to balance these competing concerns.

Approaches vary. If one’s spouse and stepchildren cannot get along then it may be desirable for all to receive their separate share at death and part ways. Otherwise the decedent’s children must wait till their stepparent dies; waiting often leads to conflict.

Rightly or wrongly, the decedent’s children may feel that their step parent is abusing his or her rights as lifetime beneficiary in their parent’s estate, especially if the stepparent is the sole trustee.

Where the decedent’s estate is left in trust for the lifetime benefit of the surviving spouse, the trust should be clear and explicit about what rights the surviving spouse has as beneficiary.

When and to what extent is the surviving spouse allowed to receive distributions of trust principal in addition to distributions of trust income? Will the surviving spouse be the trustee who decides upon such distributions?

Can the trustee sell the family residence in order to make more money available to the surviving spouse, or is the children’s consent required? What desired standard of living by the surviving spouse is the trust intended to support?

Is the surviving spouse expected primarily to rely on his or her own resources and the trust be a supplemental resource or even a resource of final resort? The trust should address these and other relevant issues.    

The intended standard for distributions to the surviving spouse is clearly an important planning issue.

Sometimes a person wants his or her estate to supplement the surviving spouse’s resources but only to the extent necessary to maintain a certain standard of living. In that case decedent’s trust may require the trustee to consider the sufficiency of the surviving spouse’s own separate resources before distributing any principal.

Otherwise if the deceased spouse’s trust estate is used up this reduces what remains for the decedent’s own children.

Taken to one extreme the surviving spouse may be expected to completely spend-down her own assets before the trustee may distribute any principal.

Alternatively, looking at the other extreme, the deceased spouse’s trust may provide that the distributions to or for the surviving spouse’s benefit are to be made liberally and that the interests of remainder beneficiaries (the decedent’s children) are only of secondary importance.

Trying to do right in any given family situation clearly means balancing the expected needs and interpersonal family relationships of the beneficiaries in the estate plan.

Getting it right can turn out to be well worth it in the long run to those who will live with the results.

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. His Web site is www.DennisFordhamLaw.com .