Opinion

March 19, 2013 — The first day of spring is March 20 this year. This is good news for many who live in the mountains. Each day, as I look into my backyard from the window in my home office, I note the height of the snow against the fence. It is shrinking.

The days are getting warmer so I no longer need to keep the fire in the woodstove lit the entire day or grab my coat on a sunny afternoon. When I drive into the valley the grass is green and the flowers are beginning to bloom.

Traditional signs of spring, depending on the area in which you live, include birds building nests, budding trees, butterfly sightings and daffodils pushing up through the soil.

March 12, 2013 — A few weeks ago the newspaper opined about the lengthy delay in getting a ruling on a request for a writ of mandate filed in Lassen County Superior Court regarding the effort to recall Lassen County District 5 Supervisor Jack Hanson. Tom Hammond, one of the South County recall proponents who said he would seek Hanson’s seat if the recall effort qualified, filed the request for a writ Aug. 10, 2012 — more than seven months ago this week.

Hammond seeks a judge’s ruling to force the Lassen County Clerk to accept recall petitions she rejected. Without a judge’s ruling in his favor, the recall effort, the second launched against Hanson since Tom Stone, the county’s former administrative officer who was fired in 2011, failed to collect enough signatures and is finished.

March 12, 2013 — I really start hating life each spring when the government appropriates the last delightful hour of my peaceful morning slumber through Daylight Saving Time (often mistakenly referred to as Daylight Savings Time). Some people love that extra hour of daylight in the evening, and I guess that’s OK, but I don’t like losing an hour of sublime rest every morning between now and November. It’s all because good old Ben Franklin came up with the idea of saving some daylight hours in the first place.

Now, I have many issues with the education I received, even though I started school in the good old days of the 1950s when America’s public schools were supposed to be the very best in the world. Hey, they didn’t reveal Ben Franklin’s true character when we studied him in school, and I’m still mad about it.

March 5, 2013 — It was Friday night. I had just finished work and was heading over to my friend’s house on the periphery of the county with my dogs in tow. As I turned onto Richmond Road, two things happened simultaneously. A light began flashing on my dash indicating a transmission problem, and my dog, Loki, pooped.

Loki has many issues, and pooping in the car is just one of them. I don’t know why he has it in his head to do this or how to fix it. I’ve walked him for up to an hour first and have consulted just about every known source of dog advice at Margie’s and on the Internet. He still poops when he goes for a ride. So now he rides in a crate, and I keep cleaning supplies in the car.

I turned around and headed to NAPA where the two kind clerks, one of them named Rocky, sold me some transmission fluid to hold me over until I could get to a shop.