In the Senate: Verbal Fireworks Over Firearms
The United States Senate, whose T-shirts--if they had them--would read “Greatest Deliberative Body in the World,” has nothing on the California version.
Some moments from last Thursday’s state Senate debate on a bill banning military-style semiautomatic assault weapons:
Raymond N. Haynes (R-Riverside), quoting George Washington: “ ‘Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. . . . They deserve a place of honor with all that is good.’ ”
Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles): “The Constitution never intended for big men to be running around with assault weapons for fun. . . . It’s primitive. It’s savage.”
Barbara Lee (D-Oakland): “I’d just like to remind many of you, I hope you disagree with George Washington because, after all, he did own slaves.”
Richard Mountjoy (R-Arcadia): “I can’t believe we’re even talking about that. How many of you are wearing clothes made in China? Look at the labels if you have a problem with George Washington.”
Mountjoy, declaring that he has heard some of the “craziest stuff” from lawmakers who know nothing about guns: “You refuse to be educated about firearms. That’s your choice.”
Watson: “My education was questioned. You match me with [my] PhD. My mind is always open. There is no legitimate reason for owning an assault rifle in the United States.”
And so’s your old man.
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Sales in the Sunset More than 3,000 Westerners polled at the behest of Sunset magazine in order to school potential advertisers in the ways and tastes of this part of the world showed that, in the magazine’s words, “All’s well on the Western front.”
We think we are taller, healthier and better-looking than the average American. We have more discretionary income, but we spend less of it on doughnuts, ice cream, cookies, fast food or salad dressing than do other Americans. We watch less TV, recycle and buy “green” more often than folks living in points east.
Sunset president/publisher Steve Seabolt--who deserted his Chicago hometown for Rose Parade and surfing weather--says this is not a dig at the rest of the country. “New York’s wonderful. The Midwest is wonderful. The South is wonderful. We just have very different psychological hot buttons from people elsewhere in the country.”
Enough modesty. In this centenary year of Sunset, maybe it’s time for a new subtitle: “A hundred years of rubbing it in.”
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Hog haven The faded fad of Vietnamese potbellied pigs left dozens of little piggies abandoned, with no home to stay in, and sometimes only the prospect of going to market--a meat market.
Seven years ago, Eva and Ercell Ingram rescued Nigel . . . and now their place in San Martin, south of San Jose, has become the porcine rescue mission for Omar and Cleo and Priscilla and Missy, about a dozen, all told, of the once chic and very expensive pets.
Animal shelters statewide have put the Ingrams on something akin to a pig rescue network, and the fortunate live in room-sized pens with quilts, fiberglass igloos, sun and windshields, and share scratching rocks and a mudhole and kiddie swimming pool. They also share the Ingrams’ $200 per month worth of pig chow, vegetables, hay, grass and treats of almonds and dried bananas.
Eva Ingram says her husband tells her the only difference between raising kids and pigs is that the pigs don’t have to be sent to college.
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Pistachio Land
Late March marks the beginning of the blooming period for California’s pistachio trees. The United States ranks second to Iran in pistachio production, and virtually all of the nation’s pistachios are grown in California. Here are the metric tons produced in 1996.
Rank: METRIC TONS*
1. Iran: 282,000
2. California: 60,000
3. Turkey: 42,000
4. China: 25,000
5. Syria: 18,000
6. Greece: 4,000
7. Italy: 2,000
8. Afghanistan: 1,600
9. Tunisia: 1,000
10. Madagascar: 260
* A metric ton is 2,204.6 pounds.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times
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ONE-OFFS A once-rural Glen Avon animal refuge founded in 1972 for retired show business Siberian tigers and North Chinese leopards has been sued to move or close down by Riverside County because subdivisions encroaching on the property have led to zoning changes. . . . The 25-year-old Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement was awarded to Stanford University’s Anne and Paul Ehrlich for their work on population biology and campaigns on resources and the environment. . . . A conscience-stricken someone mailed Merced County a $25 money order and an anonymous handwritten confession to stealing an unspecified something from a county vehicle in 1970. . . . A Sonora jury convicted a blind diabetic of cultivating 28 more marijuana plants than is permitted for medical reasons. . . . A Valencia man who wants to open a restaurant along Interstate 5 in Lebec with bikini-wearing waitresses and a neon sign reading “Girls, Girls, Girls!” was arrested for allegedly groping a woman.
EXIT LINE
“We have mixed feelings now. But if you’re going to win a collector’s item, all you can do is store it and keep it. You’d be a fool to drive it.”
--Bill Clark, of Canton, Ohio, who won a credit card sweepstakes prize--a trip to San Francisco, and the Grateful Dead’s vividly painted 1959 VW micro bus, with a peace sign in place of the VW logo on the front and only about 23,000 miles on the odometer. (What a short, strange trip it must have been).
California Dateline appears every other Tuesday.
