Uncategorized

According to the BLM: “More oil was produced in California in 2013 than in any other state except Texas and North Dakota” and in 2009 76% of that production used enhanced techniques that would be banned by Measure J. There was not a single documented report of significant groundwater or aquifer contamination from all those operations and water use is a drop in the bucket compared with agriculture or even food processing.

Though there were no parties or celebrations, I recently had an anniversary. And it was a somewhat unusual one for a journalist: 10 years with the same newspaper.

In South Korea, the Beverly Hills pizza made with California walnuts is hard to keep in stock – and devotees of the carbolicious food might have a San Benito County walnut farmer to thank.

Although the thermometer belies the season, here in South Valley we hover on the threshold of fall. Pumpkins, autumn leaves and crisp, cool evenings shall soon overtake the sunny days of summer.

Think Hawaii and images of romance, blue skies and glorious weather float by the conjured thoughts. Midway across the warm Pacific lies a chain of islands called Hawaii, 2,000 miles of ocean from our mainland with no continental coast between. These small bits of land appear offered to the sky by water and pressed to the earth by stars. Here civilizations of Occident and Orient merge under the tropical influence of the Polynesian culture.

Most think of San Juan Bautista resident Luis Valdez as the American playwright who wrote such classics as the play “Zoot Suit” and the film “La Bamba.”

Despite having never won an individual championship race in high school, Lenae Stevens finds herself as a part of history.

Daniel Lowell owns his own cleaning business, works as a counselor at a group home in Salinas, coaches the Anzar High cross-country team and is the race director for the Double Road Race in San Juan Bautista on Sept. 20.

September is California Wine Month and comes just in time to celebrate our brand new Wine Trail signage and another vintage year of grape-growing. The new wine trail signs give visitors a clue that they are entering wine country—with 20-some wineries between Morgan Hill and Gilroy. You can see all 70 of these signs along Watsonville Road and Butterfield and places in between, including a sign on U.S. 101 near Dunne Avenue. The highway sign is made from a mesh material to allow the wind to pass through and keep it upright no matter how hard the wind blows.

Although the San Benito County Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau took a vote among board members to officially oppose the Measure J initiative on the November ballot, the organization’s Green Committee has taken the opposing view.