Cosumne Gal

Some of you readers know how long we in Sloughhouse have been battling the county department of waste management (DWM). Their enormous dump mountain hovers over all of us in the rural eastern part of Sacramento County. It has been a long, tedious journey to get DWM to just honor their word.

Their first word, when they sited the dump in our area more than 45 years ago, was that it would only be used for 25 years, then it would be closed and turned into a park.

At the end of 25 years they came up with a grand plan to turn it into a regional super dump instead. That's when we started fighting back. It took at least 5 years to kill that plan. We didn't succeed in closing the dump, but the size was limited. To accomplish this we, the citizens, had to attend countless board of supervisors' meetings downtown Sacramento. Also we had to speak at state water quality control meetings and state waste management meetings. Are you like most people who hate speaking in public? So were we. We had to overcome that.

One of the things the county did along the way was procure property around the landfill as a buffer zone. Not to buffer US from their dump, but to make sure there would be no development near the landfill. There was no threat of development from the Sloughhouse side of the dump. We're a farming community, on an active floodplain. There has been no new building allowed here for a long time. The land on the north side of the dump, however, had been bought by a developer who threatened to put apartments on it, and to sue the county if he wasn't allowed to do that. This developer routinely buys land around landfills in other locations and pulls the same trick.

So the county drew a circle around its dump and claimed it didn't need environmental documents to confiscate the land because it was only changing ownership, not function. The land, they said, would be open space forevermore. They even wrote that into the county general plan. Until a couple of years ago when it was changed to: "...forevermore, or unless the supervisors or DWM changes their mind."

And then they changed their mind. Probably pushed by the board of supervisors to make some profit off all that land, DWM decided to put a complex of recycling businesses on the Sloughhouse side of the buffer zone. We went through another round of idiotic public meetings, studies, environmental documents, all the same crap that is done on county employees' work time, but us citizens have to take time off our jobs to attend.

If you're a citizen like me, you study all the documents for at least 2 weeks, then write and rewrite your comments, editing them up to the last minute. Citizens only have 3 minutes to speak at most public meetings, if you want to make all your points it takes a lot of work to craft a short, efficient speech. Gut twisting work. The last thing you want to do is fail and go home thinking that you could have saved your community if only you'd had a better prepared speech, or if you'd only been able to persuade a couple more people to attend the meeting.

Last week I was mailed notice of yet another meeting. DWM would be at our local community planning council (CPAC) to give us an update on their plans. Oh goody.

I didn't bother to write anything this time because there were no accompanying documents to read for comments. And the bottom line is, the details don't really matter. What matters is the lies. Someone needs to just keep reminding them about their lies. I can do that without a script.

I inadvertently sat next to the new director of DWM. I had never seen him before. When the meeting started and DWM was asked to give its presentation, it surprised me when he stood up and walked to the front of the room.

"I am here tonight to let you all know," he said, "that we have withdrawn our plans to develop the buffer zone." We're not reworking them, we have no further plans, the buffer zone will remain open space."

We won.

How did that happen?

Spring came to California a couple of weeks ago, in its typical manner. One day it's winter and the next day it's 76° and everyone is wearing their shorts and sandals. Not me, I don't wear those things ever. And anyway, even though the weeds are already a foot tall, everything is green, the fruit trees are blooming and the bees are buzzing, I'm not in a Spring mood yet.

I have been very busy with poultry shows. I went to one in Hollister (about 3 hours away) in early January. For the first time since I've been a member of the Cal National program, I won a plaque.


I was 18th of the 20 people who won one. The top winner had over 1000 points. She often shows more than 50 birds, all different breeds. I show two breeds, so it takes me a while longer to accumulate points.

In late January, Anna and I went to the big show in Modesto. That show was the American Poultry Association (APA) national event. There were over 3000 birds. We had Dominique friends who flew in from Maryland and Missouri, and one came down from Oregon on Amtrak.

This is our friend Mark, from Missouri.


He is THE national expert on Dominique chickens, and is also the life of any party. Does my face look bloated and tired? That's an accurate evaluation. Too much fun can take a toll.

Here are some of my other friends, Nadja and Michael.


By the time I got 27 birds ready for the show, I was beat. It was so nice having Anna's help.

Early this month I went to the show in Ferndale. My friend Katherine drove the car up and back, I got to be the passenger. Bob and Anna came up on Saturday, spent a little time at the show, then went off exploring for the rest of their weekend. This is their valentine from Glass Beach.


This winter, two of my favorite famous fellows passed. Kenny Stabler was quarterback of the Oakland Raiders in the late 1970s. He, Fred Biletnikoff, and Dave Casper are the reason I became a football fan. They made the game an adventure to watch. Stabler and Casper were great with their fans, too. I have pictures and autographs tucked away from those wonderful years when the Raiders were often in the Superbowl.


One of my favorite TV shows about that same time was Grizzly Adams, starring Dan Haggerty. There was no high drama, it was just a cute story about a peaceful fellow who lived in an isolated log cabin with his grizzly bear. I believe Haggerty was the bear's trainer, I think this show could have been his only acting job.


These are photos of Ken and Dan in their younger years. Neither of them aged well, Ken was beat up by football and Dan evidently had a drug problem. Aging beats us all up, even if we don't have drugs and football in our lives.

Despite going to a lot of poultry shows, I am feeling stuck in a rut. I needed to have the floor in the living room redone, so we pulled out the carpet and had it hauled to the dump. The living room furniture had already gone there. Vladimir came out and he and his brother installed a new Pergo floor. Like anything that's done in this house, it wasn't easy. They discovered a leak near the fireplace. From outside we could see that the chimney has pulled away from the house about 2 inches. Bob maintains the chimney is actually straight, it's the house that's leaning. Evidently because we actually had some rain this winter, water leaked down the gap and ran down a 2x4 onto the floor inside, where the carpet was starting to mold. The cats, who I had suspected, were blameless.

The floor under the carpet is tongue and groove. It's in very good condition. However, if you measure it, it starts at the west wall, goes up about an inch in the middle of the room (where there's a big timber under it) and then goes downhill to the east, outside wall. There's a 1-1/2 inch drop from the middle. The lip on the Pergo boards is not very big. The guys laid it very carefully, hoping nothing will pop up over time.

In the meantime, I have walls on both sides of the fireplace that need to be replaced. They can't be easily patched because 40 year old drywall is thicker than the modern stuff. The fireplace rockwork was done over the top of the old drywall. New drywall will have to be cut out to go around the rockwork.

Bob had volunteered to do this, not fully appreciating what was required. He came out yesterday, already suffering from a back ache, and just sat on the floor with a glum look on his face. "What's the plan?" I asked. I could tell by the look I got his only plan was to retreat. Which is exactly what happened. So now I need to hire someone to do the work.

Meanwhile there are only 2 chairs in the house, the rickety old computer chair I'm sitting in right now, and a folding chair. Things from the living room are stacked along both sides of the hall, which means no night trips to the bathroom without a flashlight (the light switch is blocked). Wesley routinely pulls things out of the storage boxes and drags them around the house. Biscuit and Gollie have found cozy spots and are nestled between the boxes. This whole mess makes me extremely grumpy. Thankfully it's just me and the cats here, and they know to stay hidden.