Maybe you are like me and didn’t really notice when the Contra Costa Times went broke and was sold. Maybe you hardly noticed when it became the ‘East Bay Times” its slew of seasoned reporters who lived in the communities they wrote about were let go, and the youngest and cheapest were left to man the boat. After ten years of struggling to hang on for dear life I had finally begun to develop a comfortable working relationship with my favorite reporters – all of whom are lost fired. One of them I talked to was working as a substitute teacher. One was getting ready to start a blog. You can imagine.
If you wonder why the mayor of our town can say anything he wants about any policy and no one challenges him about the pesky truth its because our local paper has become a ghost town with one overwhelmed reporter and one overwhelmed editor handling the bulk of the work.
So were pretty dam lucky to get this.
‘The beavers are still around’: Martinez Beaver Festival 2018 will be full of surprises
MARTINEZ — The festival that sprung from a successful 2007 grassroots effort to save a family of beavers is coming to town this year with promises of a live painting, readings from a new beaver book, and new locations where organizers say the semiaquatic critters have moved.
The festival’s June 30 date just so happens to coincide with the West Coast premier of the film “The Beaver Believers,” which covers the struggles of the American beaver in the wake of climate change. The film will premier June 28 at the Empress Theater in Vallejo.
The festival, now in its 11th year, blossomed from a 2007 controversy over what to do with a group of beavers that had built a dam blocking Alhambra Creek. The first thought was to kill them, but community outraged ensued. Eventually, a flow device was used to move the dam.
Well, ahem. no actually. Not MOVE the dam, just move the water past the dam. But hey, Nate did a pretty nice job. Once in charge of just the court story’s in Martinez, now he has to cover everything. He started out in our conversation thinking the beavers lived IN the dam – so baby steps, right?
“I don’t think it’s an accident that Martinez is the hometown of John Muir and all these people grew up taking field trips to his house and being informed about nature,” Perryman said. “I think that really helped.”
This year’s Beaver Festival will feature a live chalk painting by artist Amy G. Hall, and a live reading by author Ben Goldfarb of his new book, “Eager: The surprising, secret lives of beavers and why they matter.”
Beaver Festival 2018 will start at 11 a.m. on June 30 and go through 4 p.m. It is at Susana Park, near the intersection of Susana and Estudillo streets.
Ahh, he liked that quote. I could feel it register in our conversation. There are a lot of parts I wished could have made it into the article. Like the fact that the Martinez beavers and the festival were actually IN the film. Or that we were also IN the book too. Or the fact that Amy will be working on her giant painting for two days. But hey we’re lucky to get that, The fun part about the article is that it has multiple mis-atributed photos – stolen equally from Cheryl, myself, and even Rusty I think! It is true that some indeed are by Susan Pollard their photographer as stated but they have no idea which, and now they never will.
They first shocked me by stealing that tail up photo in 2007 and now it’s in their vault and isn’t coming out. Never mind. We know the truth, right?
Speaking of the truth about beavers, 100 copies of Ben’s book were delivered to the house yesterday for all the events when he’s here. I told him I would be happy to baby sit. Now I’m surrounded by beaver boxes just waiting for the big day.
And speaking of really being surrounded by amazing things, our good friend Rusty Cohn sent these from yesterday morning when he had a most wonder-filled visit to the Tulocay creek beavers. Rusty bemoaned his limited lcamera and talked about the bitter choice between a new lens and a new car.
I scoffed and said which one I obviously thought was more important.
