May 28, 2022
After 43 successful years in the intense, contentious world of law, Richard Turner abruptly pivoted into a soul-soothing sphere of artful photography, global travel and poetry.
Following graduation from Stanford, he became a young deputy attorney general in the California Department of Justice, serving as Gov. Ronald Reagan’s personal lawyer. His duties ranged from keeping his boss abreast of current matters to addressing government legalities, and even to quelling riots.
Later when Turner announced his decision to move on to private practice, the governor offered him a judgeship in hopes of keeping him. “I declined. I felt I was too young,” Turner says. Everyone predicted his starvation.
May 28, 2022
If you’re fighting cancer or some other chronic disease, I owe you an apology for breaking the promise I made in 2009.
That was the year I served as chaplain in the Air Force field hospital in Balad, Iraq. Every two weeks there, I took the morning to donate blood platelets.
“What are platelets?” you ask.
Here’s what the Red Cross says: “Platelets are the tiny cells in your blood that form clots to stop bleeding.”
May 28, 2022
Felicia James likes mushrooms. She really, really likes mushrooms.
“They’re dear to my heart,” she says. “I just happen to really like them. I’ve been Team Mushroom for the last few years.”
James is planning to vote for her favorite fungi again this year as part of Food Literacy Center’s Veggie of the Year, an annual contest during Food Literacy Month in September where students and the public vote for their favorite vegetable and partake in events that include cooking demonstrations with local chefs.
May 28, 2022
And the award for most absurd move by a California city to circumvent state law allowing multiple residential units in neighborhoods previously zoned for single-family homes goes to the snooty Silicon Valley suburb of Woodside.
Rather than allow a few duplexes, city officials released a memo this year declaring the entire town a safe haven for mountain lions. So, of course, Woodside claimed it could not permit any duplexes, lest valuable mountain lion habitat be compromised.
The town would rather have mountain lions roaming around than people who might want to live in a duplex. And we wonder why California has a shortage of affordable housing.
May 28, 2022
Current law makes it a crime for people to deprive their companion animals of “necessary sustenance, drink or shelter.” But the statute falls short of what that means.
Necessary sustenance could be a loaf of bread or a candy bar—anything to keep the pet alive. Drink could be a can of Coke. A metal cage, just large enough for the animal to stand up and turn around, is considered shelter.
Last October, I wrote about a pit bull in the backyard of a Sacramento home. She lived 24/7 in a 4-foot by 6-foot chain-link kennel on hardpan dirt with a filthy water bowl and feces scattered about.
