Eating well isn’t only about what you eat; it’s also about where you live.

Whether you live in fast food central or around the corner from a farmers’ market, near two grocery stores or two liquor stores, your social environment helps dictate your food options.

Over the past year, I have helped coordinate the Community Food Council for Del Norte and Adjacent Tribal Lands. It’s our local version of a food policy council and its mission is to create a vibrant, sustainable local food system for all.

A stark reminder comes along every now and then that I’m not perched on technology’s cutting edge.

Take CD players — if you try to buy one these days you’ll discover that somebody must have taken them.

I wasn’t quick to climb aboard the compact disk bandwagon in the ’80s. My music inventory was tied up in vinyl and cassettes. But it was getting to the point where the record stores (remember them?) were offering practically nothing but CDs, so I acquiesced.

Veterans Day 2011 allows us to once again honor the men and women who currently serve and those who have served and defended our great nation in all branches of the armed forces of the United States of America.

Their sacrifice and service wasn’t initially honored on a universal Veterans Day. 

The first remembrance events began in 1919, the year following the signing of the Armistice that ended the Great War, later called World War I. In 1938, Armistice Day became a formally observed national holiday.

We’ve been enjoying “Chamber of Commerce weather” lately, and the visitors have been flocking — and floating — to Del Norte.

Consider Thursday afternoon on Pebble Beach.

Binoculars were getting a workout in the pull-off parking areas as gray whales spouted frequently. One in particular was a real show-off, keeping much of its bulky body above water even between the blasts of water and air.

Meanwhile, brown pelicans seemed engaged in some kind of Occupy Crescent City operation, mobbing close-in coastal waters by the dozens and staking out perches on the sea stacks. Local gulls, pushed away from their usual haunts by the glut of south-migrating visitors, were probably thinking, “Tourists.”

Del Norte Gardening runs monthly. Paul Madeira and Julie Jo Ayer Williams own Ocean Air Farms in Fort Dick.

We have had beautiful weather this October, and we could have an equally beautiful November.

We are happy to have such a great ending to what was a cool, wet and late-starting summer. Cooler temperatures were common throughout the West this growing season, so a warmer and sunny fall was just what we needed.

Our gardens have held on longer than usual and we are just now saying goodbye to summer squash, cucumbers (not much of a year), and basil to name a few. However, on Wednesday we did feel our first frost of the season in Fort Dick. So, there it is, we could have a mild November, or like nearly every other year, it could get cold and wet real fast.

A common plea of people made uncomfortable by coverage of criminal allegations is that the newspaper should wait until the matter has been resolved in court.

Otherwise, they say, you’re putting the defendant on trial prematurely and tainting the jury pool.

But there’s truth in the adage, “The wheels of justice move slowly.” Sometimes, cases take years to work their way through the courts. And often, they conclude with plea bargains that involve dismissal of some charges and the lowering of others. A climactic trial before a jury of one’s peers is the exception.

Kudos to City Manager Eugene Palazzo for coming up with a good suggestion and to Crescent City Council members for approving it.

If county supervisors go along with it as well, any upcoming analysis of solid waste issues will likely occur where it should — in the open.

That wasn’t the case with an ad hoc committee on solid waste appointed by supervisors two years ago, and it might not have been the case with a new ad hoc committee that supervisors recently proposed.

For the most part, Del Norte’s solid waste issues have played out in the open, with opportunity for public comment every step of the way. That included the process of awarding a garbage and recycling collection contract, which was highly competitive. And it included the recent collection price increases that have some people upset now that they’ve seen their bills.

Thank you, Cody Hoffman, for providing a local entry point to my annual column about what’s wrong with college football.

As I journeyed to the Willamette Valley for a family visit Saturday morning, I was probably driving alongside some of those Del Norters going to the BYU-OSU game in Corvallis to watch the former Warrior in action.

He didn’t disappoint, catching nine passes and playing the finest game of his young college career. And all that cheering from the Del Norters sprinkled around Reser Stadium wasn’t lost on the media. Triplicate Sports Editor Bill Choy was in the press box, where a couple of Utah journalists mentioned the Cody loyalists from Northern California. One joked that BYU should figure out how to get them to all its games, since they obviously bring out the best in Hoffman.

These are tough economic times for California and the United States. The unemployment rate is 9.1 percent for America, 12.4 percent for California, and 14.2 percent for Del Norte County.

Taxes are down because income is down. Budgets are strained. This country is in a recession. Del Norte County is no exception to the dwindling budget syndrome. The city of Crescent City anticipates at $250,000 deficit in its budget commencing July 1, 2012.

A few weeks back Sheriff Dean Wilson spoke about his role as the county’s top cop in the Sept. 3 Triplicate article “Tea Party Sheriff: Dean Wilson is filling two high-profile roles in county.”  I listen very carefully when the sheriff speaks. He has his pulse on the community and when he comments, I pay attention.

The voyage of discovery continues here at Third and H as we complete the second week of our transition to a three-times-per-week publication schedule.

We’re all still getting used to it. Yes­terday morning my wife Laura, also known as the newspaper’s Neighbors editor, went out to our Triplicate box attempting to procure a nonexistent Friday edition.

On Wednesday last week, the first non-publishing day of the new schedule, Circulation Director John Mihalyo came to work expecting dozens of calls from readers wondering where their Triplicate was. What he didn’t anticipate was being accosted upon arrival by one of our reporters complaining about finding no paper in the box at home.