Tag: mark derry

Started my day Wednesday with a lone coyote, which I've seen before but never so close. On a chilly walk with the dogs backside of Christmas Hill Park, the coyote, like the one in the old roadrunner cartoons, sped by going a million miles an hour 25 yards ahead across our path. Dogs take chase. Coyote chasing rabbit. After a half mile, the coyote stopped, the dogs pulled up and headed back my way and the coyote forlornly bayed into the frosty dawn. He seemed to have lost his pack. Then, I cartoon kaboomed on the iced-over walkway next to the amphitheater and headed next for a meeting with MayorAl. Ah, never a dull Gilroy moment.

Oh, yeah, that's what should be on Gilroy's priority list – a new tobacco ordinance that forbids smoking in our parks, at the designated areas at the Garlic Festival, on our golf courses and, what's next, on our back porch? I get it - smoking is bad for you. But I believe that government believing it has an unlimited right to socially engineer everyone's life is just as bad, and perhaps worse. Gilroy has an obesity problem, so let's outlaw potato salad and the selling of Carl's Jr. bacon burgers within the city limits. It's amazing the things that make the priority list just because some advocacy organization, probably slyly funded by taxpayer dollars, received money so that bureaucrats can claim a "purposeful" livelihood. Who's going to enforce this ordinance? The police do nothing about all the hooch smokers at Las Animas Veterans Park and Christmas Hill Park near the amphitheater now. The Council should send Breathe America and its social engineering lobbying effort packing. Enough already. Educate, but do not dictate.

New Year's Day in Gilroy 72 degrees ... so strange, next thing you know I'll start to like rap music or, heaven forbid, duh Raiders. Naw. Weird weather, though, freezing nights - like 25 degrees on the westside for nights in a row - and zippo on the December rain meter. And on the horizon 'tis clear skies. Good for golf tee times, but lousy for ski resorts.

In between the Christmas tree taking not one, but two crashing tumbles in the living room - yes, it's up for good now albeit with a pronounced lean - there were the happy holiday happenings that salute the season. Christopher Ranch's party, always a warehouse treat, featured a great new band; the Gilroy Foundation kicked things off with an event outdoors on the terrace at Gary Walton's fine Fourth Street building where the Foundation's offices are located; and the Gilroy Assistance League headed up to spectacular view territory at Steve and Teresa Costa's home. Meanwhile, back at the Very Derry Ranch, new strategies were devised to hoist that 14-foot green beauty upright and get it to stay that way.