When has Indian mascot ever been derisive?

Thank you, Dave Boker, for pointing out the obvious but ignored aspect of the Warrior controversy (“DN still in search of a Warrior symbol,” Jan. 26).

The taxpayers and alumni of the community should not be held voiceless to the decision made by whatever current crop of young, impressionable students attending Del Norte at a moment in time decide when a mascot may be chosen.

I have an ongoing, 21-year commitment to Warrior sports so have a vested interest in the outcome of this decision. We have been the Warriors as long as I can remember; 60 or more from reading Coach Trone’s column. When has the Indian mascot ever been a symbol of shame or derision? Why is it wrong to take pride in an aspect of our collective history that had gained respect and admiration in spite of a sometimes harsh and atrocious (on both sides) past?

Why do the minority aggrieved have the power to claim victim status and demand we all put aside our own preferences and yield to the madness that is political correctness? If we must not speak of that which offends, history is held hostage, and history held hostage is soon forgotten.

Ultimately, our collective memory will forget great American Indian leaders and their contributions, the shame of past injustices, and the lessons to be learned from both. We will not remember the brave, formidable warriors who fought so valiantly in battle against superior numbers and advanced technology, and whose indomitable spirit prevailed in gaining the admiration of even their most ferocious enemies.

Breaking out the bingo cards and pulling the slot machine handle is not going to engender the same respect in the history that will supplant the old.

The decisive moment of Jerry Brown’s 2010 campaign for governor came that September, when he looked straight into a camera for the simplest of political commercials.

“No new taxes without a vote of the people,” he declared. Brown kept that promise. When Republicans in the Legislature stymied his attempt to put a tax-increase proposition before voters the easy way, without an initiative petition campaign, Brown raised well over $1 million and put his proposal on the ballot the hard way.

The decisive message of last fall’s campaign over his measure, by then called Proposition 30, again had Brown looking straight into a camera, this time pledging that much of the money from his initiative would go to public schools.

He wasn’t precisely calling commercials for the rival Proposition 38 lies when he did that, but one of their frequent claims has now been debunked. Some ads for 38 — which would have raised $10 billion a year, almost all earmarked for public schools — claimed none of the approximately $6 billion from Prop. 30 was assured for schools.

The budget Brown proposed early this month essentially gives about half the proceeds of Prop. 30 to elementary and high schools, providing them $2.7 billion more than last year’s austerity budget.

So Brown kept another campaign promise, a stark contrast with the way some of his predecessors treated campaign commitments. He also said he’d use some Prop. 30 money to restore other programs, observing that “other worthy things also have been cut.” Things like in-home care for frail seniors and the disabled, the CalWorks welfare to work program, child care and Medi-Cal all are now slated for budget increases or at least maintenance of last year’s levels. Again, a promise kept.

It hit me like a ton a bricks Friday afternoon. The flu? By Saturday I was immobilized. I lay in bed unable to get warm, drifting in and out of sleep. The clock said 6, then 9, then 1, then 4.

Sunday, I felt a little better but I ached all over. I couldn’t get comfortable in bed and I couldn’t find anything to entertain me. My book felt too heavy and the print too small. TV noise gave me a headache. I reached for my laptop and got onto Facebook, settling onto a page I hadn’t visited in awhile.

Mike Savoca is a young man in New York City whose roots go back to the same small fishing village on the Adriatic Coast that mine do. Although he is in his early 20s, Mike definitely has an “old soul.” When he is not studying for his college classes, he is researching our ancestry and posting the history of our parents’ obscure Croatian hometown on his Facebook page called Zablace Geneology.

If I want to know anything about my Grgas relatives, I go to Michael’s page. There’s an ongoing chat with relatives literally from all over the world piping in and posting photos. Mike is the geneology authority and sets us straight about why someone is a first cousin twice-removed or how a woman I’ve never met living in Ontario, Canada, and I are related (“your grandfather and her father’s grandfather were brothers”). 

As I took my time Sunday afternoon scrolling through photos and comments that have been added to the page, I was surprised to see a picture of my grandmother taken in 1973, just two years after the first and only time I saw her. 

My recollection of Baba (grandmother) Gara (her nickname, which means “dark,” was bestowed on her because she was always tan) from my two-week visit when I was 21, was that she was aloof and a little grumpy. I could speak some Croatian and understand more, but we definitely weren’t able to sit down at the kitchen table and have a conversation. So we didn’t really interact much.

Time to get angry, prevent downsizing of hospital

Just over eight months ago I wrote a letter to the editor expressing my concern regarding the transfer of ownership of Sutter Coast Hospital to Sutter Health. That concern has not abated, but has increased significantly by the events that have transpired since then.

First, the chief of staff of the hospital, Dr. Greg Duncan, has apparently been placed on double-secret probation by the Dean (see “Animal House,” the movie) of the Sutter Health legal team and is not allowed to attend certain parts of meetings of the Board of Directors. The reason for Sutter’s action is that Dr. Duncan has been deemed a subversive (see Joe McCarthy, the Red Scare) because he has publicly stated that he thinks Sutter Coast Hospital should honor the promises it made to this community when it was given monopoly privilege over hospital care in our region.

The promises as written in the original agreement between Sutter Health and the Del Norte Healthcare District are: Sutter Coast Hospital will be governed by a board, the majority of whose members will be residents of Del Norte County. The quality of care provided to patients by Sutter Coast Hospital shall meet or exceed the quality of care presently provided at the existing hospital. (Lease Agreement page 2, 3/19/1987.)

Second, it has been discovered that there are two studies that have been conducted regarding the downsizing of Sutter Coast Hospital to Critical Access status, reducing the number of beds to 25. The problem is Sutter Health will not allow anyone in the community to see the documents. Where is Daniel Ellsberg when you need him? (See Pentagon Papers).

A call to action might be to follow John Belushi’s lead in “Animal House”: “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” or would it be more appropriate to stand at the window and shout as Howard Beale (see “Network,” the movie) did: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

If nothing happens to change the direction of Sutter, we may not have a community economically viable to survive the next decade.

Jim Coston, Crescent City 

We’re going downhill; no leadership to stop it

As Sutter Health works quietly behind the scenes to take over our hospital and regionalize it, we need to get some serious action going to stop this! Our community has seen the lumber industry vanish and the fishing industry decimated. We brought in a huge prison which was supposed to make us a “boom town” but instead clogs our justice system and pulls in bad elements of our society, along with a terrible rise in drug trafficking.

We now see a new super-Walmart up and running, without regard for the smaller businesses in our community who are trying to make it but probably can’t compete. (Please support your local grocery stores/hardware stores!)

Where is the leadership in this town/this county? Evidently the will to do big things is not present in their thinking. If our hospital is lost to Sutter because of ineptitude, complacency, fear, or just plain ignorance, we will have no one but ourselves to blame as we see our economy and way of life tilt downward for lack of decent medical care. No thinking person would move his family here knowing that they would have to be shipped out for anything other than a minor illness. What competent physician would be willing to set up practice here?

Lilyan Wood, Crescent City

A recent letter from a longtime resident illustrates the challenges facing the newspaper industry these days.

The writer said she had lived in Del Norte for two-plus decades and always relied on the Triplicate for “local news as well as national headlines.” She’s never been a subscriber, however, preferring to occasionally “buy editions that seem to have articles about something relevant that piques my interest.”

Her beef was that the newspaper doesn’t post its product to its website “in a timely fashion.”

In other words, c’mon Triplicate, join the Internet age and give us your product instead of selling it.

She assumed we could collect enough revenue through online advertising to compensate for letting people read the news for free. Unfortunately, that has proven to be an industry-wide fallacy resulting in dramatic downsizing and even closure of some newspapers.

Here’s the truth, at least in Del Norte: For the foreseeable future, the fortunes of the local newspaper are inextricably tied to its print product.

That is why we don’t post local articles and photos to our website from one edition until the next edition is already in our subscribers’ hands or available for purchase at stores and machines.

When the 1949 school year rolled around at Del Norte High School, two new athletes joined the Warrior fold, Lee and Bob Templeton.

Lee was a freshman that much has been written about, as he became an all-league performer in football, basketball and baseball and was recently inducted into the Del Norte High School Hall of Fame.

Bob Templeton, Lee’s older brother, was a junior and was also an excellent athlete, competing in football and basketball, but football was where he was a real standout.

I well remember in our junior year when Bob put on the football gear and came out to practice for the first time. 

He showed right away that he was going to be a welcome addition to the team. He was a running back with fair speed and a lot of power — not fun to tackle.

My favorite memory of Bob was in the final game of the 1950 football season. This was the last game of his senior year, and we were playing the Arcata Tigers at home.

Music, to me, is one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind. It comes in various types to fill all the different portions of our lives.

We all have likes and dislikes — that’s the thing that makes us different and more interesting as individuals.

My phone rings with “Für Elise,” a Beethoven composition I played at piano recital as a teenager, and still play today for my own enjoyment. I like good jazz and bluegrass, but I’m not much for rock, and I can’t stand rap. If I’m subjected to it involuntarily for any length of time, I find myself getting angry — and when I hear today’s youngsters referred to as the angry generation, I wonder if that could be partly to blame.

As a member of my church praise team, I love the old hymns. A lot of our churches today don’t seen to sing many of the old ones very often, but we do. Have you ever wondered about the stories behind some of those wonderful old songs?

One of my favorites is “It is Well With My Soul,” by Horatio G. Spafford. This hymn came out of a traumatic time in his life, and reflects his faith in God.

In 1871, he suffered losses in business, and his 4-year-old son died of scarlet fever.

In 1873, he planned a visit to England with his family- his wife and four daughters. At the last minute, he was detained by a business matter, and sent his family on ahead, on the Ville du Havre, planning to take a later vessel to join them.

Longtime Del Norte County resident Chuck Blackburn’s column appears monthly.

In the winter, storms sweep out the sand, exposing bedrock on Pebble Beach. Del Norte Triplicate / Bryant Anderson

Today, in January 2013, I am sitting at a parking lot due east of Castle Rock just south of the airport runway. I have watched the ocean so many times from here over the years. Just north of this location is Garth’s Beach, which I am sure takes on the name of Garth McNamara of the long-standing McNamara family in this community.

I see two surfers trying to catch waves that are remnants of a rough ocean that breaks over a submerged reef that runs north-to-south toward Castle Rock.

When the ocean is calm there is no break on this reef unless there is a really low tide. When the ocean is rough, usually during the winter months, I have seen breakers 20-30 feet tall.

It is awesome to watch the surf break at that level. There is deep water west of Castle Rock and outside of this reef so the waves form quickly and build to great heights as they strike the shallow water of the reef. This same big surf strikes Castle Rock and the tall rocks that are off the coast west of Pebble Beach Drive.

During big winter storms I’ve watched waves rise 20-40 feet to strike these rocks.

In contrast, years ago I put in a drift boat at Marhaufer Creek during a calm summer ocean and rowed out behind Castle Rock and fished to the east of all these rocks.

From the pages of the Crescent City American, January 1931.

A monoplane piloted by Floyd Hart of Medford, cracked up just after a takeoff on the beach here Wednesday, Jan. 28, and stripped off the landing gear and damaged one wing of the plane.

Hart had just taken off and circled to about 800 feet in the air when his engine died and, not having sufficient altitude or speed to make it back to the beach, he was forced to land between the Shell Oil Company tanks and the Redwood Highway.

No one was injured. The plane was hauled back to Medford for repairs. 

Hogs stolen

Thieves entered the slaughterhouse north of this city Monday and stole three hogs belonging to Bud Huffman, proprietor of the Piggly Wiggly meat market.

No trace of the culprits has yet been found, nor the hogs either. 

Along came the Ford

A Model T coupe came out of an encounter with a mule, minus three wheels Monday near Gasquet.

Del Norte better off without Sutter Health

I want to say thank you to Dr. Greg Duncan and the other physicians and community leaders who are working tirelessly to keep Sutter Health from further reducing the availability and quality of health care in our community.

I am concerned about the potential human cost to the citizens of Del Norte, should Sutter Health continue and succeed in its quest to regionalize Sutter Coast Hospital and downgrade it to a critical access facility.

There are countless medical scenarios where the delays involved in transporting patients out of the area could mean the difference between life and death. Family members whose presence with the patient is crucial for the patient’s treatment and recovery will also be heavily affected by increased out-of-area care.

Traveling the long distances to hospitals in other cities is a hardship for many and impossible for some. It’s also expensive for all, and prohibitive for many.

Many hospital positions have already been lost as a result of Sutter Health consolidating business services elsewhere. How many more jobs will be lost at the hospital and in the community if Sutter Health receives a green light to do as it pleases, without regard to the desires and needs of the community it partners with and serves?

The manner in which Sutter Health has been systematically and unilaterally reducing the availability of medical care to the citizens of Del Norte County is unconscionable.

The better choice for our community is to pursue contracting with a health corporation, such as Asante, that will expand medical services here, not downsize them.

Elizabeth C. Green, Crescent City