Mr. Toy's Mental Notes

There is a petition drive now underway to recall Seaside city councilman Jon Wizard. The effort is being spearheaded by two former Seaside council members Helen Rucker and Darryl Choates, both of whom have conservative political leanings. Wizard tends to be more on the liberal side of things, and has openly supported the Black Lives Matter movement. In the interest of full disclosure Wizard, Rucker, and Choates are all three black, so racism doesn't appear to be at play here. I haven't followed Wizard particularly closely, but this recall effort gives me the creeps. As far as  I can see he has done nothing wrong. His only "offense" is that he has floated an idea to take some money from the Seaside Police Department budget (inaccurately called "defunding") and use it for other community programs that could help reduce crime. You may or may not agree with the idea, but it deserves a fair and open debate. This recall effort strikes me as a way to prevent...

I haven't posted any Mental Notes for about ten months now. That's because I've been busy. I started a project one year and three weeks ago. I thought I'd have it wrapped up by Labor Day. Nope. But I should be done by Thanksgiving. Nope. Christmas, definitely! Nope. But now I can finally announce to the world that it is finished. I have completely rebuilt my website, The Monterey Peninsula Toy Box , from the ground up. It is the first major overhaul of the website since 2008. The Toy Box now has a clean, modern look, and unlike the old version, it is mobile-friendly s o it looks just as good on a small phone screen as on a big desktop monitor. This is important because Google had been penalizing me in search rankings for not being mobile-friendly, and my ad revenue had dropped significantly since they started doing that.   I have been wanting to do this for about three years, but I lacked the technical know-how to build a responsive website. After a lot ...

“OVERTOURISM IS KILLING BIG SUR.” A banner was recently hung on Bixby Bridge with that message, but was quickly removed by Caltrans. A little over a week later that same message was painted on the pavement of the viewpoint overlooking the bridge. Caltrans cleaned it up within hours.   While I don't condone vandalism, I sympathize with the message, and it did help drive home the point. Big Sur, not unlike many other famous places around the world, has been overrun with tourists. The banner and paint job explicitly expressed the legitimate frustrations of Big Sur residents.   I haven't driven down the coast for awhile, but I have seen news reports showing cars on Highway 1 backed up for miles, crawling along at a snails pace. I've also read horror stories of people coming across piles of human poop, complete with toilet paper, along park trails due to the lack of public rest rooms. Clearly, something needs to be done. Soon.   It has been suggested that Highway ...

My online Photography Gallery and Picture Shop had a bit of a makeover this past week, so it seems like a good excuse to tell the story of one of my favorite floral images. In Carmel, California at the Church of the Wayfarer, there is a Biblical Garden featuring plants mentioned in the scriptures. I have often gone there in the spring and summer to see what's blooming. One foggy August day in 1995 I found this lily. I was trying out the 25 speed Kodak Royal Gold film, to see how it worked with flowers. There are very few color-print films that properly capture the subtle tones of a flower, at least to my satisfaction. As you can see, this film was a winner. The summer fog of the Monterey Peninsula is a blessing for this type of work. It provides a soft, even light, avoiding harsh shadows and highlights. There was a slight breeze, so I had to be careful with movement. I set the aperture as small as I dared without getting too slow a shutter speed, and waited several minutes ...

This happened 40 years ago this week. It was late December of 1978, I was 19 and working the snack bar at the Elsinore Theater in downtown Salem, Oregon. For those not familiar, the Elsinore was built in 1926 and had a seating capacity of about 1,350 spread on three levels. The main floor had about 700 seats or so, a luxury loge section on the mezzanine level had another hundred, while the upper balcony had over 500 seats. Being the largest theater in town, we got most of the big blockbuster movies, and for this Christmas season we were playing the first Superman movie. One night somewhere between Christmas and New Years we got the crowd in for the final showing of the day. We closed up the snack bar, I filled out my time sheet, and was ready to go home. I went out to my car, a 1976 AMC Lemon, er, Pacer, and it wouldn't start. I went back inside and asked my manager, Mr. Proctor, if he could give me a ride home since we lived barely three blocks apart. He said he...

Until a few days ago, I thought I knew what I was going to say about Measure J, which relates to a public buyout of our privately owned water utility California-American Water, or Cal-Am. Based on what I had been reading about it in the local press, I thought I knew pretty much everything there was to know about it. But now that I've had a chance to read the complete text of Measure J I find it is far different from what has been advertised and much worse than I ever imagined. The formal title of Measure J is “The Monterey Peninsula Water System Local Ownership Feasibility Study Initiative.” That's how it is being sold to Peninsula voters, as a “feasibility study.” But surprisingly, the word “study” is nowhere to be found in the body of Measure J's text . Although the text of Measure J spans two full pages of the Monterey County Voters Guide the bulk of it is devoted to spelling out J's purpose, a list of “findings” or statements used to justify the measure,...

State senate candidate Rob Poythress has been running attack ads against incumbent Anna Caballero on local TV. In one ad Poythress criticizes Caballero's support for the 12 cents per gallon gasoline tax increase which took effect earlier this year. Poythress claims this tax increase is costing motorists $1,000 a year. Seriously? Let's do some math. $1,000 divided by 12 cents per gallon works out to 8,333 gallons of gas consumed per year. Divide that by 365 days and we discover that one would have to burn through almost 23 gallons of gas per day, every day, in order for the tax to add up to $1,000 annually. For a car that gets 30 miles per gallon on the open road, 23 gallons would take you all the way from Monterey to Eugene, Oregon, which for all practical purposes is a two-day drive. I could be charitable and say that Poythress is being misleading, but since this claim of his is so blatantly false it really falls into the “lying weasel” category.