Sunday Night Lights. That’s what we’re talking about. It will be under typically dour-gray skies when the San Francisco 49ers travel north to clash with their new rivals, the Seattle Seahawks. The lights will come on for the National Football Conference championship. It’s a late afternoon game – 3:30 west coast start – built for prime time TV around the country and it has EPIC written all over it. As a longtime 49ers fan, you have to love it. There’s nothing better to stoke the fan fires than a bitter rivalry, and this new Hatfield-and-McCoys-worthy feud harkens back to the old days when the Los Angeles Rams were all things rotten. This blossoming match-up might even be better since the trash-yakking Seahawks are coached by “Pretty Boy” Pete Carroll who left USC just in time to duck under the trail of rules violations and NCAA sanctions. Former Stanford and now 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh doesn’t like Pete one bit, and that’s the thing he’ll have to overcome to win Sunday. Jim would like nothing better than to run it down Pete’s team’s throat – especially in the Red Zone. But he has to be smarter than that, he has to be creative offensively when it counts, he has to balance smash-mouth football with Bill Walsh genius and he has to pretend that squeaky Pete on the opposite sideline is just a lousy rendition of a Disney character.
Flipped through the channels last night and caught a segment of the 2004 movie classic depicting high school football in Texas, Friday Night Lights, starring Billy Bob Thornton as Coach Gary Gaines, who said this to a player who took a tough loss as evidence of being cursed: “Fact of the matter is, I believe that, uh, our only curses are the ones that are self-imposed. You know what I’m sayin’? We, all of us, dig our own holes.” Dig yours few and far between and you’ll have life by the tail. And, if the 49ers do that Sunday, they’ll win 27-24.
Won a chuckle when I opened this email press release from the library: “What if you could capture much of the rain runoff from around your house and use it for a garden, with the excess percolating downward to recharge your local aquifer, purifying itself as it goes through the soil?” Ah, sounds wonderful, but what if it just doesn’t rain? Chuckles aside, given the water shortage situation that is not bloody likely to go away in California ever, I’m more and more of a believer in gardening with native plants. The guest lecturer, Alan Hackler, has long been a native plant proponent and he’ll be talking at the Morgan Hill Library, 660 W. Main Ave., on Wednesday, Jan. 22 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. If you like to garden and want to be a responsible water user, Alan, who is the owner of Bay Maples, a native plant nursery, is someone worth listening to.
Listen up. “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing,” said legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi. But it’s not true. You still have to get your Sweetheart a Valentine’s Day card or gift and this is a cool idea – especially for commuters who head to San Jose often. For a $50 donation to the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy you can adopt a rose at the Heritage Rose Garden which hosts the largest collection of rose varieties in the western hemisphere. The gift box includes a card informing your Sweetheart about the adopted rose and the personal message you wrote for the plaque that will be displayed by that rose for one year. As a bonus, there’s a small box of chocolates from Schurra’s Candy Factory, a large gourmet cookie from Café Too!, a punch card good for one free red rose each month for a year from Citti’s Florist and a tax deduction. Details: Phil Cornish at 408-298-7657 or www.grpg.org. Sweet.
Not sweet, but bitter is the news that Saint Louise Regional Hospital – and, in fact, the entire Daughters of Charity Health System (six California hospitals including O’Connor in San Jose) – is on the block. It’s not surprising. Saint Louise has been piling up operating losses for years and the healthcare environment hardly supports the Catholic organization’s mission to treat all patients regardless of their ability to pay. Likely the new edicts from Obamacare on reproductive services played a role in the decision. “The Daughters of Charity Health System Board of Directors announced … its decision to solicit proposals from Catholic, public, non-profit and for-profit organizations to purchase DCHS hospitals individually or the health system in its entirety,” read a release. Now what? The potential loss of a full-service hospital in South County should be a tremendous concern. Given his supervisorial experience at the county, city experience as Gilroy’s current and past mayor and his political acumen, Don Gage would be the sound choice to convene a task force. On the agenda: looking into options to keep Saint Louise open and serving as a liaison board to pass along the needs and wishes of the community to the Daughters of Charity brass. Morgan Hill Mayor Steve Tate and Supervisor Mike Wasserman would be key partners along with Chamber of Commerce and service club representatives. The spectrum should be broad, for the loss of our hospital is a specter that would seriously diminish our quality of life.
Reach Editor Mark Derry at ed****@ga****.com.
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