As your outgoing mayor for 2011/2012, I want to thank the community and my fellow City Council members for the honor bestowed upon me and highlight some of the projects we have achieved together:

Last year’s Christmas celebration started off the season with Santa landing in a helicopter dazzling kids of all ages thanks to the Business Improvement District efforts.

Former Mayor Charles Slert unexpectedly resigned, bringing us Rick Holley in an appointment to the City Council.

The city became more involved with the California League of Cities Redwood Empire Division, and I was appointed to the Legislative Committee, Richard Enea continued his appointment to the Public Safety Committee and we attended the quarterly conferences in Lakeport, Eureka and hosted the meeting here in July offering us an opportunity to showcase the city with tours of the area and facilities in addition to becoming involved with the Coastal Cities group in an effort to work in a more homogeneous nature with the California Coastal Commission and the amendments to our Local Coastal Plan.

From the pages of the Crescent City American, December 1927.

From all over the United States dispatches are coming through the daily papers of the wintry blasts that are striking the whole country.

Here in Del Norte County we are enjoying comparatively mild weather in comparison with that of even our close neighbors.

Situated as Del Norte County is, we are protected from the storms of winter and the terrific heat of summer and though we have a wind and rainstorm occasionally that is disagreeable, we have much to be thankful for and should be very glad that we live in God’s own chosen country!

In a moment of post-retirement candor earlier this year, former judge Robert Weir compared it to a “jihad.” The animosity among some of the high-profile players in the Del Norte legal community certainly isn’t abating in the spirit of the holiday season.

I won’t go into a blow-by-blow account of the professional and personal battles involving various local lawyers over the past few years, including the current district attorney and his predecessor as well as some former deputy prosecutors. But since the latest missile was launched in the form of a letter to the editor, I will address that.

Letter criticizing DA was right and long overdue

In her Dec. 1 letter, “Spare us DA’s ramblings,” Karen Olson is spot on, I’m glad someone finally spoke up and said what many of us are thinking.

It is very annoying to attend a public assembly and having the district attorney grab the microphone and give his standard spiel of what a great guy he is.

Jon Alexander, the election is over. The newsprint space the DA takes up with his opinion of what a great guy he is would be better utilized by your staff investigating subjects such as what happened to the fire tax we sent to Sacramento? Is there a chance it will be returned? What is the status of the lawsuit? How will the tax be spent? What is the status of the Assembly bill to repeal the tax? An Assembly bill was submitted, then the Assembly went on vacation just before this last election.

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that gridlock in the state legislature between Democrats and Republicans has ended. The bad news is that gridlock in the state legislature Democrats and Republicans has ended.

One of the most important aspects of our form of government is that there are checks and balances. On the national level, with the Republicans owning the House of Representatives we can be sure that there will have to be compromise with the Senate and President for anything to get done. That’s a good thing. Unfortunately, with this election, that process has been lost on the state level. With the Democrats in control of two-thirds of the Assembly and Senate, they have reached their holy grail over what is going to become state law in the next two years. 

Triplicate website not timely

The Triplicate guidelines for submitting a letter state that consumer complaints will not be accepted. I will let the editor decide if this letter is a consumer complaint.

I have lived in this county for more than two decades and have relied on the Triplicate to provide me with local news as well as national headlines.

I enjoy the articles written by local writers, I really miss Inez Castor. While I have never been a subscriber, as I did not want another plastic mailbox in front of my house for vandals to prey on, I do put coins in machines around town to buy editions that seem to have articles about something relevant that piques my interest.

Beware of nukes. Beware of zombies. Beware of too much of a good thing, and beware of the consequences of not enough.

About 10 years ago, an in-law relative of mine bought a small second home in extreme southeast Idaho. It was, he figured, the safest spot within reasonable driving distance of his home to be in the event of a nuclear bombardment of the United States.

Personally, I’m not losing any sleep over thermonuclear war, but I confess to a certain kind of what-if doomsday thinking of my own. 

When I owned a cafe in Brookings, the No. 1 item requested and served was French onion soup.

I started the day before slicing onions into thin rings, as thin as I could get them with my mandolin. You can get thin slices with a good knife too. Either way, be careful and take precautions not to slice your fingers.

Since I was making a lot of them I would caramelize my onions in the oven. This makes it easy to do a huge panful and you don’t have to babysit it and keep stirring it constantly.

Del Norte Triplicate file / Bryant Anderson A spawning salmon in Mill Creek thrashes in the water as one of its final acts before expring after a journey from the sea.

There! Right by that mossy rock, where that white stick is twitching in the current! Wait … well, I thought I saw it … maybe not.

The dark mass shifts ever so slightly, teasing with a brief flash that one doesn’t quite see; the shadow moves, then morphs into a different shape, then shifts again. And you’re still wondering in the quiet if something is really there. Suddenly the water explodes in a tumult of splashing as writhing forms tear against the current and you can see one, two, no — three —huge fish in improbably shallow water thrash their way up to the next deep sheltering pool.

Del Norte High School fans always get excited when basketball season starts.

This old Warrior really enjoys being in the warm gym where I can watch both our boys and girls teams compete. It is especially exciting for me to see two former Warrior varsity basketball coaches joining forces again to coach our freshman boys.

Kirk Burrows and Dale Thomas have paired up again to help the young Warriors. Last year this duo helped our freshmen to an undefeated season.

While Kirk still teaches at the high school, Dale has long since retired from a 30-plus-year teaching career at Del Norte. He came to Del Norte after graduating from Humboldt State in the mid-1950s.