• Sue Horne for State Assembly
• Al Gore challenged by Vaclav Klaus
• Will we Napa Grass Valley?
• Sad exit for longtime Nevada City merchant
• I soloed yesterday

Sue Horne for State Assembly – Jo Ann and I are financial supporters of Sue’s campaign and have already cast our absentee ballots for her.  We did so because we have found her to have the right stuff for representing and promoting our mores, values, and a future beneficial to all citizens of California.  She is honest, smart, experienced, energetic, and has the courage to pursue her ideals.  Sue promises to be resilient to the predations of character that sooner or later taint most people who choose the political profession – the professors of which must always remind us that they are “The Honorable …” when we all know that in the large they are not.  Over the years Sue Horne has shown us that she is made of sterner stuff, and we expect nothing more from her than that she remain true to herself.

Vaclav Klaus, a trained economist who also happens to be president of Czechoslovakia, has challenged Al Gore to a public debate on the current Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hysteria sweeping the world.  During his Washington DC visit this week he was quoted (30may08 WSJ) to have said the following –

The basic questions of the current climate change debate are sufficiently known and well structured:
1) Do we live in an era of a statistically significant, nonaccidental and noncyclical climate change?
2) If so, is it dominantly man-made?
3) If so, should such a moderate temperature increase bother us more than many other pressing problems we face and should it receive our extraordinary attention?
4) If we want to change the climate, can it be done? Are current attempts to do so the best allocation of our scarce resources?

My answer to all these questions is NO, but with a difference in emphasis. I don’t aspire to measure the global temperature, nor to estimate the importance of factors which make it. This is not the area of my comparative advantages. But to argue, as it’s done by many contemporary environmentalists, that these questions have already been answered with a consensual “yes” and that there is an unchallenged scientific consensus about this is unjustified. It is also morally and intellectually deceptive.

This makes Dr. Klaus the first world leader to understand the complex and structured nature of the AGW issue who has begun asking the ‘nested’ questions all of which must be answered in the affirmative if we are to respond reasonably to climate change.  I have written a more complete piece on the entire sequence of these questions which can be downloaded from here.  Needless to say, Al Gore has ignored in silence this challenge to publicly examine the basis for the hysteria of which he is the international bandleader.

The Managed Growth Initiative will be on our ballots this fall.  The Rural Quality Coalition and other local left-wing organizations will be promoting its passage between now and then.  For more perspective on the statewide experience and potential consequences for us if MGI passes, please see ‘Don’t Napa Grass Valley’ on the CABPRO Report.

On yesterday’s Dixie Fix we learn of some reported shenaningans with the closing of the Broad Street Furniture store.  The Rebanes have been loyal and satisfied customers of this establishment since moving here.  Sad to hear that their exit is less noble than their years of service.

I soloed yesterday.  My lifelong dream of sitting alone at the controls of an airplane flying high over a beautiful landscape of mountains and forests finally came true. After a quick turn around the traffic pattern Friday morning with my instructor – Dave Connell of Alpine Aviation – to check that I had not forgotten anything and that my sweaty palms could still manage the joystick, I landed and taxied to where Jo Ann, with stoic smile firmly in place, was standing near the gas island of the Nevada County Airport.  There Dave got out and filled in some critical parts of my pilot’s log book, stuck out his hand, told me I was ready, and wished me good luck.  From a distance Jo Ann called out, “Fly Safely!” before I pulled down the canopy and restarted the Diamond DA-20, a beautiful little airplane which had bravely taken the punishments that I and other students had subjected it to during the past months.  I was off alone for departure on Runway Two Five.

Taxiing toward the run-up area I was aware of the total familiarity with what I had to do, and much too busy to be anything but anxious to get the pre-flight checks done and into the air.  I, as all pre-solo students over the past century, had run the entire solo scenario through my mind day and night countless times.  Few residents know that we have a first-class, full service aviation company right here in our county.  Gordon and Sandy Mills own and operate Alpine Aviation based at the airport.  Before starting flight training, I was assured by my local pilot friends that Alpine trains its students ‘past the solo skill level’ before turning them loose in one of their fine flying sources of revenue.  And that was my grateful experience as I roared down the runway and lifted off – Dave had prepared me well for what turned out to be a beautiful and enjoyable morning above Nevada County.

After the prescribed three take-offs and landings, and with all the parts of the airplane still flying in reasonably tight formation, Dave said my solo work was done and urged me now to take off again and just enjoy myself over the Sierras.  I didn’t need two invitations and was soon in the air at six thousand feet.  When I got back and taxied to the Alpine facility, Dave, Jo Ann, and Sandy were there ready to take the obligatory pictures.  Dave entered a very kind appraisal of the solo into my logbook and gave me a copy of the classic Stick and Rudder.  Jo Ann and I then went to have some very tasty hamburgers at Lefty’s Grill on Broad Street.

But before this 68-year-old gets too carried away with it all, let the record show that my instructor did deftly remove his expensive Bose, noise-cancellation, aviation headset from the cockpit before I had a chance to close the canopy for my solo.