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Scheduling details are set, as San Benito County food and wine producers will have a chance to promote locally grown or produced items at the first San Benito Olive Festival slated for Oct. 19 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Paicines Ranch.

This is truly a wonderful and historic day for the South Valley! Right in our own backyard, we celebrate 35 years of one of the premiere food festivals in the entire world: The Gilroy Garlic Festival. The festival is the inspiration this week for a classic West Coast salad, which features beautiful grilled garlic shrimp.

At some point when you become a parent, you lose your coolness. Seriously. I don't know where it goes, but it's gone. And you, the person voted “coolest” in high school are suddenly lumped in with the rest of the goofy parents - basically every single parent on the planet. There is no escape, no matter who you are or how cool you once were. I'm pretty positive even Mick Jagger's daughter looked at her dad and thought, “Will he stop with the duck lips? It's soooooooo embarrassing. And who dances like that at his age?”

To the casual observer, South Valley seems to be a prosperous area. There are lavish homes, well-kept landscaping, expensive cars and other signs of wealth. But beneath this glitzy surface there is a good deal of poverty and despair.

Last time we talked about the hold-up play to effectively sever the communication link between your opponents and minimize the number of tricks they can take. This time, we will talk about one of the most exciting auctions in bridge: bidding for slam. It’s not always the most comfortable process, but it’s definitely more exciting because the stakes are very high.

We've been working on an interesting file the last few weeks that involved a buyer, our seller, three past beneficiaries, the title company, their legal department, the seller’s lawyer, two brokers, many support people and a few couriers. As you might imagine, with that many people involved, things haven't been very smooth.

As a way of expanding living space, many homeowners today incorporate the great outdoors in their home decorating projects. This is especially true here in the South Valley and other parts of California where we enjoy near-temperate weather most of the year. Whether it's for a porch, patio or sunroom, outdoor decorating can create a beautiful extension of your home. And, as with any other room, it all begins with a plan.

Are you old enough to remember the fly-over of the fabulous villa at the beginning of the television show "Dynasty?" Or the mansion and huge sprawling garden in the movie "Heaven Can Wait?" Where are those places? England, or maybe some "old money" mansion back east?

The Hollister 10/11 American All Star team went undefeated to clinch the District 9 title in Gonzalez. They battled hard to advance, but their streak ended on Tuesday against Aptos. Hollister placed third in sectionals.

The scant information regarding the intentions of the county board and the possibility that critical decisions will be made with only a minimum of public input, forces me to speculate on the board’s plans for a hiring a permanent CAO and assistant CAO.