A retired woman unexpectedly returns to her newspaper career after a chance encounter in Downieville.

Illustrating the importance of respectful political discourse using vegetables.

Learn how to prepare for wildfires in California, including evacuation plans, safety measures, and post-fire procedures.

Carbide lamps are an icon of underground mining. Introduced in 1901, they were such a major improvement over candles that they were universally adopted by the U.S. Mining Industry.

Taken with permission from Mountain SpringsOne of my fondest memories of my mother is watching her apply this tradition while bending over the kitchen table, and with those rough warm hands of hers, wielding a toothpick with the same finesse of a surgeon intent on a delicate operation. With great patience and tenderness, she is extracting a baby chick from its shell’s thin membrane that has dried and become impossibly stuck. As though attesting to my mother’s prodigious skill in midwifery, that chick grew into a strapping rooster forever memorialized as Billy Toothpick.Always willing to encourage me in my own investigations in natural history, she cheerfully allowed me to use our enormous claw-foot bathtub for short periods in the spring for my experimental aquatic nursery. As a result, countless generations of hellgrammites (officially, stone fly larvae), and frogs proliferated in the tub among a habitat of sticks, rocks, and cold running water.But there were contradictory

“Housework can’t kill you but why take a chance.” – Phyllis DillerThis month’s article is to inform you that housework can make you sick if not done properly. What I am talking about is cleaning up after rodents that may have taken up uninvited residence in your home. You could put a virus (hantavirus) that they carry into the air that people breath in and become sick or even die. In California, deer mice carry Sin Nombre virus which can cause Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome in people. Statewide, approximately 12% of deer mice are infected with this virus. Infected deer mice shed this virus when they defecate or urinate, presenting a potential risk to humans. The California Department of Public Health Vector-Borne Disease Section makes the following recommendations when cleaning rodent contaminated areas of your home, garage, vehicle, or other enclosed space.Do not vacuum or sweep rodent contaminated areas. This can stir up virus that has been deposited by m

People v. Ben Christopher Beeler (23CR0041)On July 25, 2023, Ben Christopher Beeler was convicted of violating Penal Code section 25850(a), possession of a loaded firearm in a public place. He was placed on one year probation, forfeited his gun, and ordered to pay fines of $1,015.00.People v. Joel Randolph Miner (22CR0085)On July 27, 2023, Joel Randolph Miner was convicted of violating Penal Code section 594, vandalism. He was ordered to serve 38 days in jail, placed on one year probation, and ordered to pay a fine of $625.00.People v. Glenda Rae Garcia (22CR0058)On August 8, 2023, Glenda Rae Garcia was convicted of violating Vehicle Code section 23110(a), throwing an object at a moving vehicle. She was placed on one year probation, ordered to pay restitution of $667.94, and a pay a fine of $315.00.People v. Kayla Marie Seeland (23CR0039)On August 8, 2023, Kayla Marie Seeland was convicted of violating Vehicle Code section 23103/23103.5, reckless driving, alcohol related She was placed

Continued from last week...Clara was a much loved part of the community throughout her life. As a young wife and mother, she was constantly in demand as a midwife. Her cooking and baking and her gardens were legendary. A cousin, Virginia Maxwell, fondly remembers the annual mass of purple iris in the picket-fenced yard on Church Street and the large raspberry patch that yielded daily platters of fruit in the summer. Martin later added on a section to the back of the house that became a kitchen, a bathroom without a toilet, and a workroom. In the 1920s he hooked up a generator from our own water source and the house had its first, rather dim, electricity. In 1937, a little enclosure for a toilet was finally built in the back workroom and the privy came down. My fun-loving Uncle Walter honored its demise with a 21-gun salute.Both Leslie and Walter left Sierra City for the San Francisco Bay area as young men and never returned to live there. Leslie had two children, Bob and Joan; Walter,

In my first “This Citizen’s View” writing, I jumped right into the deep end. My premise to even be so bold as to write monthly with my thoughts is to have others engage in some way with what is, to my mind, important thinking and discussion. The things I think important to discuss will come in the next columns. I appreciate the opportunity from the Mountain Messenger Team. We are all citizens. We may claim citizenship in the more local or the more global of contexts. It all relates back to our place and our connections. We are so very fortunate, as is said many times over in this most fortunate of print papers, to be here and to come, come back and go out from here, Sierra County, the Sierra-Nevada Mountain Range. Our experiences are unique and shared but also diverse. This is what I hope to explore here.One of the things that I think about is how those who have grown up here have gone out from here. Folks younger than myself, schooled in the ways of Sierra County by

Our human events seem to get exponentially faster for us personally as age advances. It feels that, as slow as it seems problems are solved, more problems pile up behind at a sonic boom level. Feet have given way to animals bearing us across land to human-made vehicles, and then into the air.It is tempting to take the short cut when traveling. Short cuts have their purpose. Maybe we will reach our goal more quickly. Or, there will be unforeseen barriers. We may not be familiar already with the terrain. So, we put a certain amount of trust in guides, who know the territory. More and more, it is electronic, A-I types of tools we use for our movements. Gone is the paper map with creases and tears. It may not be an up-to-date map. Those roads are changing all the time with rerouting and closures. The guide is now Google maps which has its own troubles keeping up. It has improved, as we experienced on a long trip up the west coast to Canada. We still had our share of turn-around maneuvers.T

Review by Pamela BieryHeart Wood: Four Women, for the Earth, for the Future (Heart Wood) is a fictional book with elements of science fiction, magical realism and nature writing. Interwoven with the plot is a good deal of California history, especially that of the Sierra Foothills and Yolo County farmlands. Taken together, these elements present a story that is much more than the sum of its considerable parts.Four women, from different generations of the same family progress toward a common destiny united around the heartwood of a great oak, preserved in a desk. The theme itself might suggest women readers, but this is perhaps misleading. Author DicKard describes where we have been and where we are going as a society with dates ranging from the 1800’s to 2091 with prescient sensibility. Heart Wood: Four Women, for the Earth, for the Future is of interest to many, as unprecedented outcomes from climate change are currently being felt and history California history is remarkable in

Christmas After Tragedy, Part II[The Clampers] were the only charitable organization to provide relief for families of miners who had been killed or injured during the days of intensive mining activity in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Clamper charity was always done anonymously, if possible. In spite of their hard-drinking reputation, the Clampers were a highly respected organization and good citizens. That occasion in 1937 truly was one more instance in which they carried on their long history of care for those in need.I marvel at the fact that the Clampers who brought gifts came not from Downieville, but from the surrounding mountain towns. This era was in the depths of the Great Depression, and the people in those mountain communities were for the most part of modest means. That they put together a huge gift for the people of Downieville at such a time was something of special historical significance.A Child’s Life in DownievilleAs Downieville is the seat of Sierra County

Rumorville Strikes AgainThe Downieville Rumor Mill kicked into action after the meeting by SYRCL (and others) last Wednesday, August 23rd, with a story that SYRCL Executive Director Aaron Zettler-Mann had called locals a bunch of hicks. When asked for comment, Zettler-Mann was flabbergasted and fervently denied the accusation, stating that it was “so far from the truth” and that his feelings were hurt that such a rumor would be started as a result of the meeting.Local Bands CompeteDownieville held three separate concerts at similar times on Saturday: one on Main Street, one at Sabrina’s, and one at Boomtown Backyard. The last Music at the Mine concert of the season was also held at the Kentucky Mine Museum in Sierra City. Unsurprisingly, attendance was split.Beware the Mountain LionIn recent weeks, there have been multiple sightings of a large mountain lion roaming Pearl and Main Streets. The cat was confirmed to be on Main Street last Thursday around 5:30 a.m. and ne

Part 11: That Golden RushWhat I like about owning a business is that any day I feel like not being there, I hang up the “Closed” sign and do what I want: Carole Chukar is set free! On this particular day, I had decided to visit Betty Norbert, still homebound after she fell while looking for gold in a storm. Sitting in her living room, she revealed how she came to be possessed by gold fever.“Do you know that first day I went panning, I found three nuggets the size of kidney beans! It was easy. I dipped the pan into black sand, swooshed it around and voila—gold! I got hooked immediately! I couldn’t stop. I had to find more. On weekends, I made excuses to be away and found more places to pan—some were in the backwoods. Then I started going on weekdays! I left early for work, panned at places hidden along the highway and then did so again on my way home. I kept finding gold.”“People always saw your car parked along the road,” I said, an

Part 10: RevelationsOur little party—Nick and Noel Norbert, Rex Jenner, Jim Kelly, Jake the Carpenter, with Andre and the two Russian computer geeks—stood at the roadside in silence, awestruck. Betty, still groggy from her bad fall, watched from the truck. The raging Empire River completely demolished the NovyZol computer plant. The building had stood on a meadow where the river emerged from a steep canyon. And now in front of us, the water from the upstream debris dams that had let go had spread out in frothing brown swirls, full of logs, whole trees, and lumber. The meadow was now an ugly sea of storm detritus.The first to speak was Andre. “This is the end of our jobs,” he said woefully. His two friends were wide-eyed in wonder at the destruction. I could see the others in our little group—the Two River locals—wearing half smiles, rather satisfied to see the building wiped out. The computer company had been a great source of consternation. Its use