New Parks director sworn in
Maj. General Anthony Jackson was sworn in Nov. 16 by Gov. Jerry Brown as the 19th Director of California State Parks, according to a press release recently sent out by the department.
At last, a rivalry game well worth developing a Sunday game plan for
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.
Best time to visit local wineries is right now
The days of summer fun are over at the wineries. All the grapes have been picked and crushed and their juice is getting busy in the barrels - letting the aging process take over. But, before the season is over, Mother Nature has one last spectacular act in store for us. Like the last five minutes of a fireworks display where the best is saved for last, the vineyards have burst into flaming colors of red, gold and orange. As if to self-ignite themselves, the leaves that have nourished the grapes all summer long, are going out in a blaze of glory.
