You can never have too much chili in Wonderland

"The adventures first… explanations take such a dreadful time."


---The Gryphon, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland(Lewis Carroll)





For Tweedledee and Tweedledum, who kind of look alike, think alike, act alike but don't talk alike.



The annual city chili kickoff didn't disappoint as various departments brought their home-made chilies down to White Park to be judged by a panel of three appointed experts not to mention people who dropped by. The proceeds from the purchases of tickets go to the United Way fund.

I don't know who won, but there was some very good chili there. There was some music playing and many people, mostly city employees milling around, talking. Contrast that with City Hall where few employees even talk inside the elevators, which are slowly losing that garishly King Midas motif and appearing more stylishly demure in tune with the modernism of the 21st Century.

Someday the elevators will all be finished, once they reconstruct them with parts including those purchased on Ebay and complete the restaurant that is apparently going to dominate the first floor.

I didn't see representatives from the public library there, let alone the promised display in honor of Banned Books Week which begins this Saturday nor were there any from the fire department which traditionally makes great chilies. But the others were there, including public works, public utilities, finance and the police department which had five chilies on display including several by Lt. Mike Perea and the Internal Affairs Division(housed separately from the other department chilies).

I purchased several tickets but representatives of different departments also provided several. Beef, chicken and vegetarian chilies were plenty, each one bearing the style and attitude of its artistic chef. Several departments also held raffles.


In the midst of it all, was a cardboard castle which was supposed to advertise the "Riverside Renaissance". There were characters there in costume, including what looked like royalty from a different time and place than the actual European renaissance.




The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand:
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"


---Lewis Carroll






Every booth was so sure their chili was the best. Every department is sure it is the best. It's interesting to watch both the interdependence and inter-rivalries between different departments at work through the expression of culinary creatism and skills.


Councilman Frank Schiavone, who apparently was too ill to attend last week's city council meeting wasn't judging chilies and he seemed surprised that people believed in the entity known as FRED. The latest rumor is that they've split up and gone their separate ways, each splitting the candidates running in Ward Five in Ed Adkison's spot between them with Adkison getting Chris MacArthur and Schiavone, Donna Doty Michalka. Schiavone denied that he does what Adkison tells him to do.

Adkison wandered past to judge the chilies. I think he left his gavel elsewhere.



At any rate, Schiavone has apparently recovered and was talking about his auras and karmic law and well, chili. Let's hope this zen kick lasts for a while. However, don't be surprised if the city council speech code goes back to the Governmental Affairs Committee, a BASS stronghold, for another round of tinkering, but probably not until after November's election and before Adkison departs politics and goes back to the real world.




Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.


---Lewis Carroll



Both Councilman Andrew Melendrez, who represents the Eastside and representatives from the police department have said that there will soon be a community meeting as promised about the recent injunction against Eastside Riva as part of his regular meetings he's been holding. Both said that efforts have been made to get a representative from the elusive Riverside County District Attorney's office to attend, most likely Prosecutor Jack Lucky. The Human Relations Commission has also invited the District Attorney's office to send a representative to answer questions about the injunction at its October general meeting.



It remains to be seen whether the District Attorney's office will ever send a representative to answer the many questions about the injunction, namely the first one being, where's the District Attorney's office to answer our questions. Though apparently, Melendrez mentioned that he might be sending a representative to Casa Blanca to talk about the injunction.

So, the District Attorney's office isn't going to answer question about the injunction from those living in the neighborhood that is well, currently the setting for the injunction but District Attorney Rod Pacheco is sending a representative to a neighborhood where there isn't one. Isn't there room or enough representatives in the District Attorney's office to meet with residents of both neighborhoods?

More than one Riverside elected official expressed shock and some dismay that they were not informed of a forum in the Eastside last month held addressing the injunction. None of the city council members appeared to even be aware that an injunction was coming from the District Attorney's office. How could this be?

The District Attorney's office and the police department know about it, but the elected officials don't? It's a little difficult to adequately represent your ward if you don't know what's happening in it.



Melendrez also said that discussion on the UCR Charrette project was to be on the city council agenda this upcoming week but it's not on the agenda.




"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"


---The Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There(Lewis Carroll)







There's other elections taking place in Riverside this autumn and one of them is for both the Riverside Unified School District and the Alvord School District.

On Sept. 26, a candidate forum was held for the Riverside Unified School District candidates, both incumbents and challengers, at the Sierra Middle School, according to the Press Enterprise.

The incumbents were Gayle Cloud and Lewis J. Vanderzyl and the challengers both will face are Luis Aguilar, Tom Hunt and Arthur Murray.


(excerpt)


Hunt, a Riverside public relations consultant, and Aguilar, a Riverside attorney, said the district needed to collaborate with the business and civic communities in Riverside, as well as City Hall and local colleges. Hunt said he would bring a Rolodex full of influential contacts to the board.

"We need to connect much better with City Hall and our community," he said.

Hunt and Murray, a retired veteran educator, spoke about education as the foundation for keeping a skilled labor force and business in the city.

Murray, in particular, talked about how crowding at schools on the city's Eastside has resulted in students being bused to other schools outside their neighborhoods. He said he would promote new and timely construction to solve that problem.

"Children should be able to attend schools in their own neighborhood with time spent on academics, and not going to and from school," Murray said.

Cloud, Vanderzyl and Aguilar each appeared to allude to how the federal No Child Left Behind Act is rigid, forcing schools and districts to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching.

"We don't want to create students that are all alike, because they are all unique and different," Aguilar said.









They were supposed to come into town, try some cases then leave but according to the Press Enterprise, it looks like the strike force of a dozen judges may be extending its stay. Instead of leaving in November, they will be remaining here until at least next June.


(excerpt)


The strike force was never intended to entirely clear the huge backlog.

"All of the partners are interested in finding a more efficient way to deal with the criminal caseload ... to accomplish more with existing resources," he said.

George assigned Huffman to work with the court, the district attorney, public defender, the county bar and other legal groups.

"I have been impressed that all sides are working in good faith and making good progress," Huffman said.

Fields said the county's judges are on track to hear approximately 900 non-strike-team criminal trials this year, which would be a record for the county. Last year, the county's judges heard 795 criminal cases.

Calling the extension of the strike force's stay "great news. District Attorney Rod Pacheco said, "It's getting a lot of that backlog out, and they can do it more effectively now because they are staying until June."

Assistant Public Defender Robert Willey said both the extension of the strike force and the administrative work on the system clearly demonstrate "the court's commitment to addressing and solving the backlog issue -- all aspects of it."







On the eve of Banned Books Week, here comes this column by Dan Bernstein from the Press Enterprise.


Instead of one novel or several novels being banned from the Riverside Unified School District, are they banning the teaching of novels? That's what Bernstein asks.


(excerpt)


Misconceptions?

"They will deny it to the bitter end," says North High English teacher Ann Camacho, "but we all know that novels are not supported by the district and it's dangerous thinking."

The district's Dara Mosher puts it plainly. "We're a standards-based curriculum, not literature-based." The best way to achieve "standards proficiency"? Use the "core textbook." The anthology. But "ban" the novel? No. Never.

Yet, there was talk about not even reading novels until spring. Mosher said that was later "clarified. . . . What we said was, at the beginning of the year, novels could be used as outside reading." Students would discuss what they'd read. In class. Once a week.

Then came the phone calls and board appearances and another "clarification": Teach novels. Just get the core standards out of the way first.

So the novel is undead, tattered and battered. It remains a back-bench understudy to the anthology, that colorful compendium of carefully prepared "core-standard" bites, bits and chunks. Lit. Lite.

Board member Gayle Cloud thinks the district has its priorities exactly right. Yes, the novel "enriches things. . . . But we need to watch our dependence on novels for teaching things kids need to know on writing, grammar. . . . These kids have one shot getting through school."



And exactly how does one develop good reading skills, without reading books?




The Los Angeles Times ran this article on how the drop in homicides in that city this year might be related to a new program instituted by the Los Angeles Police Department and former gang members.


(excerpt)



"For the first time, we're requiring captains to call the gang interventionists, give them the word on the shooting and get out there and avert another homicide," Deputy Police Chief Charlie Beck said.

"We are pretty good at solving homicides, but we are trying to get better at preventing the next homicide."

Beck and other LAPD officials said the intervention workers have been particularly good at "rumor control," calming tensions after a shooting to prevent retaliation.

It's a delicate dance, with gang interventionists taking pains to not look as though they're directly working with police out of fear of losing street credibility. They will help ease tensions, but most refuse to provide detectives with gang intelligence.

"That's a paradigm-changing breakthrough," said Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney who was hired by Los Angeles to evaluate its anti-gang programs. "They know they can't contaminate each other, and they're figuring the lines that can't be crossed, so they're negotiating that right now. I know that work is going forward."

The decline in homicides underscores an 8% decline in overall violent crime in Los Angeles, bucking a trend that has seen violent crime inch up in other major U.S. cities.









San Luis Obispo Sheriff Pat Hedges videotaped all this meetings with his employees, according to the Associated Press. Naturally without telling any of them. Now, Hedges is under fire for this practice but is defending it.


(excerpt)


The sheriff told The Tribune this week that he believes videotaping the meeting was legal. One of those videotaped, Chief Deputy Gary Hoving, has filed a $1.25 million claim with the county alleging the sheriff's actions were illegal.

The state attorney general's office is investigating and the county has hired an outside investigator to examine the sheriff's actions, the county counsel's office said.

Hedges challenges the county's authority to investigate the matter.

"My supervisor under the (state) Constitution is the attorney general," Hedges said, adding that voters would have the opportunity to vote him out of office if they objected to his conduct.








Who was the first Black detective in the Riverside Police Department? The answer's here.



(excerpt, Riversider)



My Mom and I were among the many marchers in the protest against George Wallace.



My Dad was there to protect the presidential candidate.



Later that night, George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama gave my Dad a signed card making him a Honorary State Trooper.



----Tina Caroline, Det.Etienne Caroline, Jr's daughter





In World Rugby Cup news, the All-Blacks are heading into the quarterfinals against Romania without one of their key starters. Romania has already conceded the test match hoping to score enough points against the top-seed to avoid embarrassment. Still, in rugby like other sports, it's impossible to predict what will happen.