The La Honda Voice

Coastal Cleanup Day - Saturday September 17th, 9am-12noon

 

Did you know that approximately 80% of trash found on the beach comes from inland sources?  It's important to clean up beaches, but we can have a powerful effect all year long limiting litter wherever we are.

Come to San Gregorio State Beach September 17th or one of the nearby sites and help in this state-wide effort to clean up trash. Locations and information can be found at http://www.flowstobay.org/cs_cleanup_participate.php.

SGERC encourages the use of re-useable gear - gloves, buckets, personal water bottles etc. This reduces the amount of trash generated in the cleanup event. Bring gloves, sturdy shoes, sunscreen and layer your clothing so you can be comfortable no matter the weather.

SGERC will provide refreshments and award small prizes for the most unusual item, most trash collected, biggest item and other categories. Cleanup starts at 9am, but come no later than 11am to be done by noon.

Please share thanks to our State Parks for providing free parking for volunteers and trash disposal, as well as the County of San Mateo, the Coastal Commission and the Ocean Conservancy for sponsoring this event. SGERC is proud to once again be site captain at San Gregorio State Beach.

See you at the Beach!

Neil Panton - Director

San Gregorio Environmental Resource Center (SGERC)

[email protected] (650) 726-2499

The Face of Local Music - Helen Casabona

 
Helen at the 2011 La Honda Country Fair

by craig eddy

After graduating from Stanford this months featured musician Helen Casabona ended up in Sunnyvale. To this day she is still wondering why she didn't just move straight to La Honda.  Safe to say she loves living here. Helen is a gifted guitar, keyboard and cello player. She first started taking piano lessons in the first grade. At twelve years old she got a guitar and because of her brothers banjo playing she started showing interest in Bluegrass music to the horror of her classical minded parents. I jammed with Helen once at a July 4th picnic and she pulled out all the classic bluegrass tunes on keyboards. However Helen really found her calling when she started listening to artists like Jorma Kaukonen, Reverand Gary Davis,  Katie Webster, and as she says it "all those blind blues guys". Helen spent ten years playing guitar and ignoring the piano. Eventually she realized she could have a lot of fun playing the bluesy stuff on piano too. Her favorite venue to play was Saint Michaels Alley in Palo Alto.  One of her favorite gigs played was the Sacramento Blues Festival where she got to play before Bo Diddley. These days Helen is performing with her friend Susanna in the duo Abalone Dreams.  She loves playing in Abalone Dreams because it is very improvisational and the music is never quite the same from performance to performance. Look for Abalone Dreams and Helen Solo at Cafe Cuesta this October.

August Edition of the La Honda Voice

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Local Hams Make Field Day A Huge Success!

SET UP AN ANTENNA and a ham radio as quickly as possible, then communicate with other hams around the country.  That's the goal of the annual ARRL Field Day held the last weekend in June. Other goals are to operate with emergency power and set up in a public place.  In many emergencies around the world, this is exactly what happens.  Ham radio operators are often the first to establish communications in areas hard hit by earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis.

La Honda is fortunate to have a dedicated group of ham radio operators that take every opportunity to practice their skills and prepare for an actual emergency. Participating in events like Field Day, Dream Machines and local bicycle and running races allow these hams to assemble and learn their equipment, plus practice communicating in an "Incident Command" type structure (IC in charge, sub-groups reporting to the IC). Practicing in these relaxed conditions prepares operators to respond with confidence under adverse conditions, which usually accompany a disaster or other emergency.

This year, La Honda Field Day had a record turnout of 72 visitors and participants over the weekend. They operated entirely off the grid with generators and a solar panel, and were visited by the ARRL section manager and local officials. An information booth and public "Get On The Air" station welcomed visitors to the site (La Honda Gardens) and allowed the community to learn more about ham radio and the exciting world of this sort of communication.  They were pleased to have participation from some of the young people in the area, and plan to expand that element next year.

Using both morse code and voice transmissions, the group made 294 contacts with places as far away as Hawaii, Alaska, Manitoba and Ontario in Canada, Vermont and other Eastern states.  There is a scoring element to this event, and the La Honda Amateur Radio Club beat their scores from all previous years.

If you don't know where the closest ham radio operator is to you, you might make an effort to find out.  This area has many minor emergencies including road closures, animal rescues plus phone and power outages.  Your neighborhood ham might be a tremendous help to you one day!  The La Honda group encompasses the South Skyline area, Alpine Rd, Loma Mar, Pescadero, Butano and San Gregorio.

To find out more about the group, upcoming events, or how to get your own ham radio license, visit the website:

http://www.sc4arc.org/