A special event
The Kelseyville Pear Festival team thanks all of the sponsors, vendors, volunteers and visitors who came together to make the 23rd annual Pear Festival a special hometown event. We are grateful for the long time sponsors and welcome the new ones who contributed to the Festival. It takes the commitment of many willing hands and muscles to create the unique celebration. Thank you all!
We appreciate all who spent the day at the Festival. We say, ‘stroll Main Street and catch the small town magic.’ It was a Pearfect Day. Thank you,
Marilyn Holdenried and Sharron Zoller, Festival Co-chairs
Schooling and knowledge
The more I see and hear about current schooling, tests and such, the more thankful I am that I am old enough to have completed K-12 when the ultimate educational technology was pencil and paper, fountain pens, typewriters, and slide rules. Pupils were able to participate in the learning process and, while it was embarrassing, it was a feather in your bonnet if your essay was thought good enough to be read to the class. We had team projects and learned to work with other students — even communicate with them without electronic help.
We also had no trouble with the fact that all students are not equal. We weren’t concerned with why, we just knew that some kids got better grades and it was accepted. We also realized that skills were different between students and that, while you may be a A student in one subject, you might have trouble in others. We also assumed that all of us students had an equal opportunity to learn. I guess 80 years makes a difference both in subject matter and attitude. When you attained a passing GPA you graduated. At that time no one really worried if you dropped out of high school and a lot of boys did so to enlist.
When I read that Governor Brown’s decision to do away with the final graduation test allowed some 33,000 to get diplomas held up by their not passing, I worry — particularly when the overwhelming portion of the failures were failed for a “presumed lack of English proficiency.” I, personally, have no problem that English proficiency should be a graduation requirement, but I think that is more an educational responsibility, than a student responsibility. I feel there is far too much emphasis placed on “knowledge.” Knowledge is fine, but it is worthless without the imagination, visualization, and the ability to communicate that knowledge.
Closing, I think that the public should recognize that all students neither want to, or need a college education. Their abilities as people (personality, nature, communication ability, and such) are what is important. If they find they need, or want further education it is not only is available, but reflects a decision they should be proud to make.
Guff Worth, Lakeport
Wasteful
“You will hear there were previous congressional investigations into Benghazi. And that is true. It should make you wonder why those investigations failed to interview so many witnesses and access so many documents.” Trey Gowdy, House Committee on Benghazi, Oct. 22.
How many ‘new’ witnesses has the committee interviewed?
8 State employees serving in Benghazi who left five or more months before the attacks
4 CIA staff
3 Defense Department employees who corroborated testimony their superiors provided to Congress previously
3 information technology or records staff related to Clinton’s e-mails
2 Clinton speechwriters
2 State Department staff members who worked at the U.S. office at the United Nations
2 staff members of the press shop of the Near Eastern Bureau
1 Defense Intelligence Agency officer who previously responded to questions from Congress about Benghazi in writing
1 State Department employee who served in Benghazi and left more than a month before the attacks
1 State Department contracting officer
1 Diplomatic Security Operations Center staffer
Cheryl Mills, former Clinton chief of staff and Sidney Blumenthal, outside adviser to Clinton
Two of the new eyewitnesses come from the intelligence community and one from the Defense Department (Washington Post Fact Checker, October 15)
So what has Mr. Gowdy actually spent $4.7 million dollars on?
Kevin Bracken, Kelseyville
Memories of Gillian Billester
Time I think for a few idiosyncratic memories of Gillian Maggid Billester.
I can’t speak of Gillian’s youth, or health, or her employment history. Systemic chance threw us together under certain conditions, and when the conditions changed, our ways parted, so I only really knew her for a few years, and only in the setting of the Arts Council. Of course she made a great impression on me, and on the Arts Council.
She was the Executive Director of the Lake County Arts Council when I arrived in town, must have been in 2000 or 2001. I was looking for something to do to get me out of the house and seeing things and meeting people. I was just what she was looking for, I think. It wasn’t long before I was working inside the shabby ruin that was the Soper-Reese, building a stage for a student — produced play, and on the Board of Directors.
She seemed like a normal person to me, newly arrived from San Francisco as I was. That is to say she was perceptive, empathetic, intelligent, wily, capable, creative, bohemian… It was easy for me to talk to her; I never said anything I didn’t think she understood immediately. She could do politics in the art-community environment as few others could. But she had come to this obscure corner of the world because she had no desire for the noise and clamor that her talents could have bought her in the city. In fact it was the noise and the clamor, the politics and the competition in the other-than-arts-community, which attached itself to her, unbidden and undesired, and caused her to retire from the Executive Director post when she did. That corresponded with the drying-up of state money for the arts.
She had done a great deal with very little money up until then. The Winter Music Fest was her idea. She helped the infant Spring Music Festival grow up to the beautiful lady it has become. Gillian collaborated with Mr. Soper; he put up the money and she put up with all the people with agendas that grew up around that, and they bought the theater from Mr. Reese. None of that was easy, either, and it never got any easier. This isn’t the place to tell the tale of that time, though it was a full and bitter-sweet era. Maybe someday I’ll write a play around that plot. Anyway, the Arts Council lost a woman who had done a great deal to bring the arts to the surprising life they show today in this backwater. She went on to be a dynamic part of Dale Billester’s lock smithy and rock and role bass business. After that, we didn’t see much of her. I don’t think she could look the Main Street Gallery and the Arts Council in the eye after all that. Too painful, the past; onward!
I’m pretty sure that now she is talking Michelangelo and Vivaldi into doing some volunteer work, getting young spirits to the easel or music stand.
Xian Yeagan, Lakeport
