CRA News Sept. 2005

Selected articles from the newsletter of the Carmel Residents Association

Stan Spohn stands by a beautiful oil painting he exhibited in the May Festival of Artists and Writers

CRA Meeting -- Panetta Institute for Public Policy

President's Message
Residents as Advocates

by Sherry Shollenbarger

Recently, I spent a peaceful afternoon in front of my fireplace looking through the archives of the Carmel Residents Association. In 2007 our organization will have been in existence for twenty years. I was impressed that the donations made to the city over the years total over $40,000. Among them, the 1995 benefit featuring the late Charles Schulz raised $27,000 for the library; over $7,500 for city projects came from CRA's Chili Fiestas; $1,200 helped "re-kindle" the library's fireplace; $1,800 went to the fire department for a CPR mannikin; $2,000 helped clean sidewalks in the business district; and $500 helped fix up the Vista Lobos meeting room. There were many other miscellaneous contributions. While our primary mission is not fund-raising, it is nice to be able to help out our city when we can.

However, as we prepare for another busy year I wish to write a few words about community involvement. We live in a small, charming village in pristinely-beautiful surroundings. Carmel has remained a sought-after place to live. Here is a village whose character was enlivened with formidable founders and lovingly nurtured through the 20th century. It is this nurturing that I wish to discuss.

As with all things of value, special care is required. So it is with Carmel. This village requires that we live as informed residents. Knowledge is our best ally. It is through this newsletter, so professionally edited and published by our editor Linda Anderson, that we share our thoughts with you, inform you of upcoming events both educational and social, and add understanding of this region with historical biographies. Our calendar lists upcoming meetings involving city government. I am a member of the city's Economic Development Committee. Our organization appreciates the importance of partnering with like-minded businesses who understand that the quality of the business district helps to maintain the beauty of Carmel.

All residents here love Carmel. Our membership is not exclusive in this. What we attempt to maintain is a level of involvement in the functioning of the village that promotes awareness of situations that may create unintended consequences.

I welcome everyone back as we head to the Panetta Institute to learn more ways to work productively in our community and return for camaraderie at Casanova. To non-members, I invite you to join our very diverse membership as we seek to maintain and preserve this vital community, helping Carmel remain a special place today and for the future generations.

Two New Board Members Welcomed

The two newest members of the Carmel Residents Association board, Nancy Collins and Gene McFarland, were introduced at the May Festival of Artists and Writers at the Carl Cherry Center. Both have been very active in the Beach Cleanup and other Association activities.

Nancy joined the Carmel Residents Association after buying her house in 1999. Her dream was to live in Carmel when she retired from the U.S. Department of Commerce, where she was the Director of Product Management and Marketing for the National Technical Information Service, the clearinghouse for government scientific and technical information products. She served on the board of Community Family Life Services for ten years in Washington, D.C. Nancy has a B.A. from Michigan State and an M.A. from Ball State University. Since moving to Carmel last year, she has volunteered with Animal Friends Rescue Project, the Carmel Residents Association Issues Committee, St. Bernards and PacRep Theater, in between renovating her house and indulging her love of travel. This past summer she and her daughter, a Michigan attorney, spent two weeks in Peru working as EarthWatch volunteers on a new archeological excavation. "Never have the two of us had so much fun getting so dirty," she said. Nancy's son, also an attorney, is an FBI agent working in Indonesia on counter-terrorism.

Gene McFarland was featured in Profiles by Walter Gourlay in the May issue of the Carmel Residents newsletter. A Carmel native, he attended Sunset, Junipero Serra and Carmel High. He has a business degree from Cal. State University S.F. and did graduate work at U.C. Berkeley. A part-time resident for many years, he returned 15 years ago after 30 years in banking in San Francisco and Los Angeles, running a corporate university and managing urban-affairs activities promoting education and job development for disadvantaged youth. He taught finance at Los Angeles Valley College for 11 years and after retirement was a 5-year volunteer at Carmel River School. Besides a passion for maritime history, Gene enjoys working with Friends of Carmel Forest, Carmel schools and other conservation efforts. He was instrumental in organizing the April Association meeting at the Hilton Bialek Preserve. Gene and his wife, Constance Robertson Kirby, of Los Gatos and Carmel, have four children.

Thanks to Carmel Bakery

Sandra and Richard Pepe, owners of Carmel Bakery, because of rising rents, will no longer be able to supply pastries for the Beach Cleanup. While we are disappointed, because the pastries were a highlight for volunteers, we understand their decision and know that all of our members will join us in thanking them for their many, many years of support.

Council asked to ban smoking on the beach

In their 13 years of service, Carmel Residents Association Beach Cleanup volunteers have picked up more cigarette butts than any other type of litter. Last year, 1,286,116 cigarette butts were collected on the U.S. coast by Ocean Conservancy volunteers. Marine animals and seabirds commonly swallow discarded cigarette butts, causing starvation or malnutrition.

Tobacco litter can leach toxic substances into water and sediment, contaminating the food supply. At the July City Council meeting, the County Health Department's Tobacco Control Program Coordinator Michelle House described the benefits of tobacco-free beaches and asked the council to consider banning cigarettes on Carmel beach. The Health Department, she said, would help with writing such an ordinance and pay for necessary signage. House presented a list of 12 California communities with beach smoking ordinances, including Los Angeles, Malibu, Marina Del Rey, Topanga, Huntington Beach and San Clemente. Carpenteria has passed a first reading on an ordinance and Long Beach, Santa Cruz and Capitola are in the drafting stage. She pointed out that in a 2003/04 Los Angeles County survey, 88% of respondents supported a smoking restriction on beaches.

After the above presentation, Clayton Anderson, Chairman of the Beach Cleanup, asked the council to place the question of making Carmel Beach smoke free on a future agenda for public discussion. Not one City Council member asked the city administrator to follow up on Anderson's request.

A July 29 Pine Cone editorial suggested that although cigarettes aren't the only things that cause littering at the beach, "A smoking ban on Carmel Beach may be a good idea." The editorial went on to say that enforcement should be "no more aggressive than the laws against littering that are already on the books."

No one expects the Police Department to patrol the beach asking smokers to extinguish their cigarettes. But some well-placed signs saying that smoking is illegal should make people think twice before lighting up and using our white sand beach as a giant ashtray.

Oct. 6 community forum on Measure "W"

In keeping with its longtime tradition of sponsoring impartial forums on elections that affect local residents, the Carmel Residents Association will hold a public forum about Measure "W" on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 7 p.m. in Carpenter Hall at Sunset Center.

Watch for more details on this event in the Pine Cone's What's Happening column. Fliers will also be distributed in front of the Carmel Post Office.

On Nov. 8, voters will be asked to decide whether or not the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District should be "directed to investigate the cost and process to publicly acquire the private water utility system presently owned and operated by the Monterey District of California American Water (Cal-Am) and be directed to recover up to $550,000 for costs of the investigation as a surcharge upon water bills of Cal-Am customers."

According to the impartial analysis of Measure "W" by water district general counsel David Laredo, approval of this measure will not by itself authorize the purchase or condemnation of Cal-Am. It will only fund a study of this possibility. And if the acquisition were to proceed, the managing agency would not necessarily be the water district. It could be managed by an existing agency or a newly-created public entity. The maximum surcharge authorized by this measure would be $1 on each $50 bill for one year.

Momentum for this election was largely precipitated by a rate-increase request filed last February by Cal-Am asking to have its rates doubled over the next three years. Negotiations on what increase Cal-Am will be allowed are currently under way before an administrative law judge.

A Reminder

Cleanup Week for Carmel and its surrounding area is October 10 to 14. This is the time you can leave up to seven bags or seven 32-gallon cans to be picked up with your regular garbage. They ask that you make sure the extra bags and cans are secured and that you place them at the curb.

Walter Gourlay's CRA Profiles resumes in October.

OLD CARMEL
by Connie Wright

Lincoln Steffens: Reformer, Muckraker

Lincoln Steffens, "the best reporter in America," as he has been called, was born in the Mission District of San Francisco in 1866 to a pioneering family. They moved to Sacramento as they prospered financially. His boyhood was spent riding his pony, swimming in the American River, walking the railroad tracks, building a tree house. He entered the University of California at Berkeley in 1885, and was undistinguished in his stay there. He then embarked on a European tour of the great universities. He attended briefly the Universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, Munich, Leipzig, the Sorbonne and the British Museum. He was dissatisfied with all of them because, as he said, " ... they did not teach what was not known." He meant that they taught existing opinion, not theory or speculation. He was always impatient with unexamined thought. At the Sorbonne he secretly married another American student, Josephine Bontecou.

They returned to the United States in 1892. His father, having believed him to be single, refused to support him any longer, and Steff finally got a job on the New York Evening Post. Since he knew nothing about reporting and was extremely naive politically, he had a difficult time initially. He was finally assigned the task of reporting on Wall Street, where he learned a great deal about finance, some of it much to his personal profit. During the Depression of 1893 he observed the police beating up strikers illegally. He became a skilled reporter, writing stories dealing with poor immigrant slum dwellers. In 1901 he became the editor of McClure's Magazine, which specialized in muckraking, a term coined by Theodore Roosevelt to describe the exposure of corruption in both government and business. His first article exposing corruption in politics appeared in 1902 -- Tweed Days in St. Louis -- and was followed by articles on Minneapolis, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. He discovered that police graft was much the same in all cities -- St. Paul, New York, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago and New Orleans.

After Josephine's death in 1911, he went to Mexico to observe the Revolution. He was becoming a political theorist. He met Madero and Carranza, leaders of the Revolution. He visited Russia three times in order to observe that Revolution, and stated, "I have been over into the future and it works." He met Kerenski and Lenin. Increasingly more radical, he became convinced that we should labor to change the foundations of society as the Russians were doing, or simply accept the American status quo rather than reform which would not work.

He returned from Russia with a message from Kerenski to Woodrow Wilson that the Russians would not fight Germany. Wilson enlisted Steffens to speak for peace (without annihilation of the enemy) in the U.S. before the Armistice. But, so repugnant was this idea to Americans, who wanted vengeance, he was not allowed to speak anywhere.

A reporter at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, he witnessed the dismantling of Wilson's Peace Plan. He also met Ella Winter. More than thirty years her senior, Steffens was immediately attracted to her. They married in 1924, just prior to the birth of their son, Pete, in Italy. Coming to Carmel in 1927, they bought a house from the artists Cornelis and Jessie Arms Botke on San Antonio near Ocean, which they called the "Getaway."

His autobiography, an 875-page tome, was published in 1931 and became a best seller. Friends from all over the world came to visit; students from Berkeley and Stanford came to talk to him, and some may have learned how to think. When Ella was otherwise preoccupied and unable to shield him, he lectured at Harvard and was besieged for interviews, speeches and articles. As a result, he suffered a coronary thrombosis. But from his bed, his interest in world affairs continued. He died in 1936.

OUR FAVORITE PLACES

Who doesn't want to be organized?

Barbara Livingston writes, "Life in Carmel-by-the-Sea is good but it got much better for me this summer after I brought in Carmelite Bonny McGowan to organize the various out-of-order rooms in our house. She started with my filing system and office, went on to the kitchen and then tackled the big ones -- the garage, laundry room and basement. Bonny worked miracles for me. I no longer cringe when I open drawers or doors. She instinctively knows where things should go and how they should be filed, arranged, stacked, stored for immediate or future reference. If, like me, your household organization has seen better days, I recommend that you call Bonny McGowan. You will not only like her work, you will like her modus operandi. She is in and out as quickly as the job can be managed and there is no unnecessary conversation. Try her, I guarantee you will love the results! You can call Bonny at 625-6968.

[This column gives members the opportunity to share their enthusiasm about local businesses. It not only provides a wealth of information for all of us, but supports our business community. Please send a short paragraph on your favorite business to Carmel Residents Association News, Box 13, Carmel, CA 93921 or contact editor Linda Anderson.]

DID YOU KNOW?

The city now has three emergency telephones at the beach. Please make a mental note of these locations because knowing exactly where they are could make a big difference in the outcome of a crisis:

• Ocean Avenue at Del Mar. A pay phone is located near the rest rooms. No money is needed to dial 911.
  
  
• Scenic south of 8th, just a few feet north of the emergency beach access gate near the top of the dune. Just pick up the phone and you will be connected with Police Department.
  
  
• Scenic and 13th, at the top of the steps to the beach -- also a direct line to Police Department.

READABLE READS

The Forger, a novel by Paul Watkins -- an American artist learns that his "art scholarship" is a ruse to enable him to copy masterworks to trade to Nazis for art they plan to destroy.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss -- a surprisingly-entertaining discussion of punctuation and how much trouble can be caused by getting it wrong, i.e., "A woman without her man is nothing." or "A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Remember that your City Council is on T.V.

City Council meetings are taped and re-broadcast
Sundays, 8 a.m. - 12 noon on
KMST Channel 26