Department of You Get What You Pay For (except, we do pay)

Yubanet ran an announcement for a free Public Health Department-sponsored H1N1 vaccination clinic in GV yesterday afternoon. The word "free" sounded appealing, as did not being laid up with the flu, so I went, signed in, & got my arm disinfected and then jabbed.

The "disinfecting" was just one gentle dab ("we don't want to spread the bacteria around" was the explanation I recall hearing, when I asked) and from the way the arm looked afterward ("weepy", with vaccine-colored tears) and feels today (zero soreness), the vaccine all ended up on the outside.

I hope she managed to put the vaccine on the inside of everyone else - its highest and best use probably isn't as moisturizer.

Nevada County Nature wiki (nascent)

Today for displacement activity I created a Nevada County Nature wiki, and populated it with one large and one small mushroom.

I envision it as a thumbnail-photo field guide, linking to existing web writeups on the species in question. And I hope others will contribute, because I'm not planning on devoting much time to it.
(Feel free to replace the rainbow photo with something less dark...)

(I'd originally started with a Nevada County Calif wiki, then realized that this was biting off way more than I intended to chew; but if someone else wants to take that on, I think you can just start editing.)

We here are blessed, journalistically speaking

For the moment, we in Nevada County are indeed fortunate. We have:

• Two local newspapers, The Union and the Nevada City Advocate;
  
• One former newspaper editor, Jeff Pelline, since repurposed to great effect;
  
• One forum hosting constructive community dialogue, the chez Pelline comments;
  
• One progressive news site, Yubanet;
  
• Citizen journalism from Sierra Voices host Don Pelton and occasionally me;
• Back-fence coverage from Dixie and dcain;
  
• One kitchen-sink local aggregator, Nevada County Voices;
• One nexus of local contrarian commentary, the Steele-Rebane-CABPRO axis;
• Two radio stations, KNCO and KVMR;
• The public-figure vanguard dipping a toe into constructive online community dialogue - Sierra College trustee Aaron Klein and Clerk-Recorder candidate Barry Pruett;


• The prospect of even more riches - looking out, I see reps from the Mountain Messenger and Nevada City Free Press teetering at the edge of the pool. (Jump! Jump!)
  

And we have no shortage of news to cover, since our public-figure cultural spectrum ranges from MayorReinette Senum and APPLE-NC to the Meckler-headed Tea Party Patriots and aforementioned CABPRO folks.


It's enough to make your head spin.

p.s. what did I miss?

The fungus that ate Penn Valley

Anyone know what it is?

Behind NYTimes-featured Tea Party mom, the vice chair for a Scaife-funded front group

(scoop, I think)

In mid-January a New York Times story, In Power Push, Movement Sees Base in G.O.P. , reported on the Tea Party Patriots' game plan to take over the Republican party from beneath. The story quoted a Tea Party activist new to the political scene, stay-at-home mom Anastasia Przybylski:

"...in a perennial battleground district outside Philadelphia, Tea Party activists are trying to strip the local committee of its influence in choosing the Republican nominee...
“We kind of changed the rules,” said Anastasia Przybylski, one of the organizers... who describes herself as “just a stay-at-home mom” who became agitated about the federal stimulus package."

Przybylski's partner in these Tea Party efforts has been good friend (and fellow local mother) Mariann Davies. According to PhillyBurbs.com's Gary Weckselblatt,

"a Doylestown mother of three young children...Przybylski and good friend Mariann Davies began the Kitchen Table Patriots, a conservative group concerned with America's ballooning national debt. They organized the Washington Crossing [Bucks County PA] Tea Party, and to show how new to the game they were, they began by calling it a "pork roast and tea party," said Przybylski, who developed the group's Web site, thekitchentablepatriots.com, though she could "barely cut and paste before I started."

"...to show how new to the game they were..."

OK, how new to the game were they?

Googling reveals that Przybylski's friend and co-organizer Mariann Davies, an attorney, is vice chair of the anti-illegal-immigrant front group "You Don't Speak for Me!", one of three such groups ("Choose Black America" and "Coalition for the Future American Worker" being the other two) set up by the largely Scaife-funded group Federation for American Immigration Reform.

And, though less surprisingly, the website of the Tea Party group Davies and Przybylski founded, the Kitchen Table Patriots, currently promotes a "Citizen Lobby Training" conducted by the (also-Scaife-funded) conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks.

What is it about moms, anyway? What does Frank Luntz say about moms?