Fall is so much easier now than it was when I was younger. I’m putting the finishing touches on the summer’s work, pruning back the tendrils of jungle so they don't throttle the guys when they mow.

I remember the hard years of market gardening and canning. Years like the one when the grandchildren, the peaches and the tuna arrived simultaneously just as the beans were coming on faster than I could pick them.

Early in September I’d be canning everything edible, planting buckwheat in a lettuce bed, beets where the peas had been and garlic everywhere. Garlic is a wonderful deterrent for many diseases and pests, and individual cloves can be poked among and around everything, especially roses. Garlic is one of those underrated plants like potatoes and tomatoes.

Should taxpayer money be wasted on a special election?

As an architect, I have run a successful business for 25 years, based on precision, thoroughness, and correctness — exactly what I do for you as your elected official in city policy making.

Regarding the Waste Water Treatment Plant Proposition 218 process, four rate increases were planned. The City Council simply approved a previously scheduled rate increase.

Our city employees and police officers are among the lowest paid in the state. It’s better business sense to award a cost-of-living pay raise (2 percent) than to lose staff/officers due to underpayment.

Fluoride in our drinking water is not decided by the City Council — it must be decided by  city voters.

Maybe it’s a sign of growing old, that quiet fear you have when the telephone rings at 3 in the morning.

You know that 2,900 of your fellow Americans and 64 of your neighbors in Morris County were murdered the day before when madmen attacked your country in peacetime. You reach for the phone with a silent prayer that the people you love are safe.

You are told that your cousin was among those killed when Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. You lie there in the dark with tears on your face and ice in the pit of your stomach, knowing that the world had spun off its axis and entered some mad red season.

It’s too bad that those rare moments we Americans can collectively recall can’t be pleasant ones.

Maybe someday we’ll make first contact with friendly extraterrestrials, and we’ll all remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard the word. Until then, the type of news we all remember initially learning of will probably be jarringly bad.

While the deaths of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Elvis were memorable, I believe there have been only two such nationally transcendent events in my 54 years. The first began with a playground monitor’s whistle, prematurely ending recess on a gray Oregon Friday and sending my classmates and me back to our first-grade classroom. Our teacher told us our president had been killed. We went home early to a weekend trapped inside black and white TV sets.

From the pages of the Del Norte Triplicate, September 1945.

Del Norte’s beautiful redwood groves along the north bank of Smith River, now being felled by the woodsmen’s ax and milled at the Crag Plant at Smith River, will be preserved.

This announcement is made by E. F. Benedict, chairman of the Del Norte Planning Commission, who in company with Right Rev. Monsignor O’Loughlin, placed the matter squarely up for the California State Park Commission in Eureka yesterday, Sept. 27, following the trip to Del Norte.

The north bank redwoods will be made a part of the National Tribute Grove established about a year ago, and arrangements for purchase of the desired areas will be made immediately thru the Save the Redwoods League, according to Benedict.

I am not a big fan of Sacramento lawmakers or Governor Brown. The omnipresence of state government, its bureaucracy, and endless list of A-Z agencies and commissions overseeing every aspect of our lives has left its dark imprint on California’s gloomy economy.

Tuesday’s Triplicate news article, however, gave me something to be hopeful about.

The Democratic-controlled Assembly and Senate are actually making subtle overtures to work with business and ameliorate the onerous regulatory bureaucracy that plagues the Golden State.

As a first of hopefully many such peace offerings toward business, Democratic state Sen. Alex Padilla introduced SB 292 to streamline the process to reduce intimidating environmental bureaucracy with the intended goal of building a new football stadium near Staples Center.

On the afternoon of Sept. 1, I received a phone call from Jim Maready and he told me that we lost Allan Morris to a fatal heart attack. I couldn’t believe what he said and made him tell me again. Those words just knocked the wind right out of me.

Coming back to Crescent City to coach has been a great experience for me. One of the reasons that this has been such a great experience is the privilege I had working with Allan.

I first met Allan when he was coaching youth football. He had an easy way about him where you could tell he was in charge and knew what he was doing, but never raised his voice to yell at players when they made a mistake. He made corrections in a very positive way.

I have to respond to Marlowe Thompson’s letter (“President has added more debt than all others for pass 200 years,” Aug. 25), due simply that there is so much wrong information out there and several of his statements were misleading.

 What man or woman would be able to handle the absolute mess that former President George W. Bush created: two wars, the attack on the World Trade Center, No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D that was left unfunded, tax breaks for the rich, repeal of the rules to regulate banks and the environment, bank bailouts, torture (i.e. water-boarding), the lack of response to the hurricane in New Orleans and on an on.

Also keep in mind that our participation in foreign wars was not accounted for in the federal budget under Bush. These wars are costing billions of dollars and are unsustainable.

Stealing no sin for us as Obama spends $1 billion for Libyan oil

President Obama was powerful enough to attack Libya illegally, but powerless for our problems.

It seems like those rebels were paid by Al Qaeda; if so, are we helping the bad guys?

Probably Obama thinks that we can easily afford $1 billion to fight Moammar Gadhafi.

According to Libyan radio I listen to every day, they have a civilian war going on. With bombs dropping constantly, most doctors left the hospitals and they have no medication to treat wounded people, mostly civilians and kids.

The same media believe that we might steal their oil in the future. I expect the same, since we have been taking resources from many nations around the globe.

Stealing is not a sin for us.

Samuel Rosa

Crescent City

House Calls runs every other Thursday. Today’s column is written by Christine Walker, a certified phlebotomy technician at Sutter Coast Hospital.

I love summer. It’s all about long summer days at the river, walking in the sand barefoot at the beach, getting together with family and friends for a barbecue dinner, gazing at the stars at night. What could be better?

Last year my husband truly was “King of the Grill.” He can cook anything from large meaty hamburgers to juicy steak with dripping sauce in the flames, creating a summer dinner aroma. At the same time, I was inside preparing macaroni salads and dinner rolls while the kids played. All seemed well. This was many a night at my house, with friends stopping over talking and having a great time.