Tag Archives: life

A Near Death Experience And Lessons Learned

Tom-Browning
Tom-Browning

On August 11, 2014, while working on a fire in the Klamath National Forest, Tom Browning and two others were forced to take refuge in fire shelters while the fire burned over them. Tom, a retired Fire Battalion Chief, shared this near death incident on Tuesday night with more than 20 FFA and 4H students from Bear River and Nevada Union high schools as part of the Nevada County Fairgrounds Foundation’s Speaker Series. The series brings business education – through access to business leaders, life experiences, and leadership tips – to local high school students.

When faced with an adverse or dangerous situation, Browning’s advice to the students is to “stay calm.  You can’t think when you panic or are overwhelmed. Being calm is contagious.”

Browning has more than 40 years of firefighting experience, including 34 years with the City of Grass Valley Fire Department. He retired as a Battalion Chief in 2011. Since his retirement, he has been a member of the North San Juan Fire Protection District, where he serves as volunteer Battalion Chief.  He is also a member of Nor-Cal Team II, a federal Inter Agency Incident Management Team, whose responsibility is to help manage large wildland fires on federal responsibility lands.

Browning is a sixth generation Nevada County resident, and has served as past president of the Nevada County Livestock Producers and the Nevada County Farm Bureau; and is a current board member and past president of the Nevada County Fair Board. He holds his AA degree in Administration of Justice and a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management.

In sharing leadership and life experience advice, Browning emphasized to the students that they should “focus on education and learn as much as they can; experience and learn from life’s lessons; be ethical by doing the right thing even when no one is looking; never give up; and never stop learning.”

The Fairgrounds Foundation’s speaker series, which began in October, featured six speakers. Students had an opportunity to hear about the speaker’s career path, how they achieved their goals, insight regarding their area of expertise, and an opportunity for questions. The series, sponsored by Sandy Ballou of California Outdoor Properties, will start up again in October and high school students are invited to attend.

About the Nevada County Fairgrounds Foundation: The Nevada County Fairgrounds Foundation’s mission is to support and improve the community’s Fairgrounds, and to support youth in agriculture. For more information about the Fairgrounds Foundation, or to become a member, visit NevadaCountyFair.com/foundation/.

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Pit Bull Helps Nevada County Woman Detect Seizures

  A woman who wanted a shelter dog as a companion for herself and her son instead got much more than that.

The pit bull the Nevada County woman adopted can detect seizures, something important for her. Danielle Zuckerman, a former Navy nuclear scientist never knew adopting Thor could change her life. “I feel so much more comfortable, going out in public and going to do things, because when you’re an epileptic, you don’t have control over your own body,” she said.

Zuckerman has seizures due to a spinal cord injury. 

Read more CBS Sacramento

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You Think We Have Traffic Jams in Nevada County?

httpv://youtu.be/ySSrG7HgvIQ

Thousands of Bangladeshis crammed ferries and trains, leaving Dhaka on Thursday to return to their home villages and celebrate Eid al-fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Don’t show this video clip to the airlines, they may get some new ideas on seating. I also wonder if they have enough life preservers for all those people on the ferries?

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Vernazza – the History, the Disaster and the Recovery Part 3

vernazza-painting-doors

The Recovery

Vernazza’s First Farmacia and Restaurant and Re-Open: On January 21, 2012 Vernazza’s Farmacia (Pharmacy) reopened. By Italian law, a pharmacy is allowed no more than 90 days closure before the proprietor loses his/her license. Therefore, the work to restore the pharmacy was rushed to completion. The walls were empty and there was only a table, chair and the pharmacist, but the pharmacy was open for business!

vernazza-farmacia

June 2012: Bars, restaurants and places to stay are open and doing business in Vernazza. Of the twenty-two restaurants, bars, pizzerias and gelaterias, only two are uncertain, or are not opening in 2012.  Of the twenty-three stores and banks only four are not open, and of the thirty-three places to stay only three are not open. Children play on the beaches again and people are shopping, eating and enjoying vacations in the town. Of course many things are still being repaired, but the pace is furious.

A blogger on the Travel Advisor Trail Updates on the Save Vernazza website said that she and her husband “hiked the 5 cities on June 25th and 26th. We did all 5 cities in one day. The hikes were beautiful. The only trail closed was between Manarola and Corniglia.”

July 2012:  Vernazza has accepted architect Richard Rogers’ generous donation to design and oversee the Project for the Reconstruction of Vernazza. Richard is with

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) which is an international architectural practice based in London. Over three decades, RSHP has attracted critical acclaim and awards with built projects across Europe, North America and Asia.

On his most recent visit to Vernazza, Rogers brought his friend Renzo Piano, an Italian architect born in Genoa and educated in Milan who leads a firm called Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Both architects have won the Pritzker Prize (the Nobel of Architecture) and are considered two of the world’s leading architects. Together they designed the Pompido Centre in Paris.

Rogers and Piano believe that Vernazza’s reconstruction should be elegant in its simplicity in order to preserve Vernazza’s unique character as an authentic Italian small town.

 

January 2012: The removal of a million square feet of mud and debris from the main part of Vernazza revealed extensive interior damage to dozens of buildings. Plumbing, electrical wiring, phone lines, floors, walls, windows, doors, fixtures — everything will need to be replaced. Workers and machines excavated the canal that once ran through the upper town, and rebuilt the main sewer line. Next, a network of landslide barriers was built in the hills surrounding the town. Vernazza was extremely vulnerable to more flooding until this job was completed.

The doorways of small businesses along main street, Via Roma, have been boarded up since the flooding and mud slides. But on the morning of January 6, 2012, over 50 artists showed up to breathe inspiration and life back into the desolate ghost town. Organized by painter Antonio Barrani, their mission was called “Un Arcobaleno di Solidarietà per Vernazza” — A Rainbow of Solidarity for Vernazza. Each painter took a lifeless, boarded-up doorway along Via Roma and transformed it into a work of art.

More than just decorating the Via Roma, this avenue of art was designed to inspire all who love Vernazza to play a role in her recovery.

Then on January 23, 2012 the restaurant Belforte re-opened. This restaurant was above water level, high along Vernazza’s waterfront, so there was no structural damage, although all services were lost. The military cooks that had provided meals for crews and volunteers were required to leave Vernazza on January 7, 2012. Now, workers again had a place to go for a hot meal and break from the work.

One Saturday in January, a train pulled up and some tourists got off, as they came down the stairs, their expressions told that they had no idea what had happened in Vernazza on October 25, 2011. Residents and workers put together on-the-spot, the first Save Vernazza Information Center.

March 2012: On March 9, 2012 Mayor Vincenzo Resasco, detailed Vernazza’s strategic plan for reconstruction, and updated the progress made thus far and the plans for Vernazza to reopen for the tourist season.

  • Sewage: completed
  • Canal: includes roadwork as well as enlargement of the canal itself (enabling the canal to withstand future storms such as that of October 25, estimated to occur once every 200 years)
  • Landslides: project focuses on securing the slides that directly impact the canal and reconstruction of the canal banks and bed in such a way as to decrease the velocity of the water.
  • Water: continuing on schedule, approximately 90% of all homes with running water
  • Aqueduct: continuing on schedule
  • Electricity: continuing on schedule
  • Via Roma: This week, temporary asphalting of Vernazza’s main street
  • Gas: By the end of June 2012, a temporary methane gas containment system will be in place to provide methane gas to Vernazza.

Residents and children are now playing in the square and some older residents are coming home to live. Tourists are walking the streets, restaurants are opening and on March 9 the weekly street market returned. Vernazza is moving forward…and forward with a new focus.

April 25, 2012: Travel guru and Cinque Terre promoter Rick Steves visited Vernazza and was shown the remarkable progress made in the past 6 months and the work still yet to do. All people who have read his Italian travel books know how much he loves the Cinque Tierra and Vernazza in particular. On seeing the Vernazza, he shed tears for her damage, and voiced hope for her recovery. His website has been providing continued support and coverage of Vernazza’s recovery efforts. Rick Steves has plans to return soon with his crew to film a new Cinque Terre travel special. To read about Rick’s day in Vernazza see his website 

Let us all hope that Vernazza will be brought back to full life and even greater beauty very soon.

Two important ways you can help:

1. Visit the Cinque Terre in 2013, or as soon as you can. This corner of Italy — especially Vernazza — needs travelers to keep their economy afloat. A family-run hotel or restaurant will not survive waiting a year or two for business to return. If you can’t make it in 2013, think of what you’d normally spend during a day in Vernazza and donate that amount to one of the groups listed below!

2. Donate to trusted local relief groups.

Save Vernazza is a very active and engaged Italian non-profit organized by three American women who have lived in Vernazza for years: http://savevernazza.com/. There are some fascinating before and after shots and many other updates on the home page of the website.       

Una pietra per Vernazza is a non-profit fund set up by the municipality of Vernazza:

3. Purchase from Save Vernazza Fundraising Partners who donate all or part of the proceeds of artwork, photos and music to the recovery effort.

4. Tell Others Save Vernazza has free posters you can download, print, post and distribute to your local community center, coffee shop, library, or Italian restaurant. http://savevernazza.com/donationflyers/

Authors Note:  The Cinque Tierra town of Monterosso was also damaged in the flooding of October 25, 2011, but not as severely as Vernazza.

Article by Judy J. Pinegar – Published in Corriere della Valle

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Vernazza – the History, the Disaster and the Recovery Part 2

vernazza-before-and-after-f

Before and after photos.

The Disaster:

On October 25, 2011, Vernazza was struck by torrential rains, massive flooding and mudslides that left the town buried in many meters of mud and debris, causing over 100 million euro worth of damage. Three long time residents were killed in the flooding and mudslides that occurred on October 25, 2011, their bodies were found on the shore near St. Tropez, France.

People caught in the lower levels of the town had to flee upward in apartment buildings and private houses to get away from the torrential mud and water, gas leaks also broke out in the town, making people fear from the chance of fire as well as drowning. To read many other heartbreaking and heartwarming stories by residents and tourists caught in Vernazza on that day go to: Save Vernazza

On October 26, the tourists and townspeople were forced to walk through Vernazza at the height of the second story windows, over 4 meters/13+ feet of mud and debris to be evacuated by sea. The town was in a state of emergency, although repair work began immediately.

December 3, 2011: This day’s posting on the Save Vernazza Website reads:

“The only thing ‘normal’ in Vernazza these days is the train schedule. She is a town without her people… Imagine Vernazza without a single soul in it. If she were a person I’d say she’s lonely. Feeling abandoned. And I often think of her this way. Like a living being she has a life, a soul, a vibrance, a presence like no other place I’ve been. I find myself feeling sorry for her a lot of the time. Is this strange? Somehow I don’t think I’m alone in my feelings.”

December 2012: On the day after the flood, Mayor Resasco promised that the whole town would celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in Vernazza. On the morning of December 8, with the “asado” barbeque slowly cooking over the coals in Piazza Marconi, the trains arrived from La Spezia and Levanto, filled with families, elderly couples and children. The elderly, many of whom had never previously lived anywhere else, walked around with tear-filled eyes, marveling at how much had been accomplished in such a short time and mourning what had been lost. The volunteers were filled with pride at their role in giving so much joy to this community. The day was filled with friendship, hugging, laughter, tears and sharing stories. Talk of hope filled the air, as people began to envision a renewed Vernazza.

Tomorrow: The Rebuilding

Article by Judy J. Pinegar – Published in Corriere della Valle

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My Angel Passed Away

Angel
Angel

I lost my Angel, my pit bull that I had with me for almost 13 years.  She passed away on March 8, 2013 and I really miss her.

I got Angel when she was only a pup of about 2 months.  At first when I took her for a drive, she would sit on my lap and help me steer. As she got older, she grew too large to sit on my lap, so I had to have  her sit on another seat. I guess she was insulted that she couldn’t help me drive, because after that, she would never sit in the front seat.

The first two years, she was a little kid growing up. She destroyed two mattress, a coach, living room chair, my cell phone, the back seat of my truck and many other wondrous tasty things. Then a miracle happened, she turned two years of age and quit chewing everything in sight.

Angel was always great with kids, they could sit on her, pull her ears and she would just lick the children’s faces. She loved most people, but every once in a while, she would growl at someone for no apparent reason.

She was pretty tough, thinking about the time, back in August 2009 when she fought off a coyote. You can read about this experience in her life on another of my posts at Dog Dreams and Angel 

I think she had a great life, getting massages almost every day and three dog treats a day on top of that. Maybe that was why she was so mellow.

She passed away while I was in Argentina.  I cut my vacation short in order to be with her when she passed but I was several days short of being with her. She passed away due to an intestine that was ruptured and a large cancerous cell that affected her vital organs.

All I can say at this point is that I miss her dearly and I’m sure there is a reason that Dog spelled backward spells God.

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New York Museum of Natural History

my-son-in-museum-new-york

Image 1 of 9

My oldest son John Jr.

The next day we visited the American Museum of Natural History we had been here on our last trip to New York, but this museum could take easily take several FULL days of study.

The first thing we did was to watch “Journey to the Stars” a short film narrated by Whoppi Goldberg about the life and death of stars, like our sun. The movie is shown inside a globe within the four story tall planetarium of the museum – quite a sight in and of itself!

On the bottom floor of the planetarium the best display is the Willamette Meteorite (so named because it was found in Willamette, Oregon) weighing 15.5 tons! It is made of metalic iron. Thousands of years ago it traveled at 64,000 kilometers per hour and crashed into the earth’s surface. The top surface (see pictures) is covered with large cavities. This is because over the years the rainwater reacted with sulfur within the meteorite, creating  sulfuric acid, which then ate away at the iron of the meteorite.

After the movie we wandered through the African Room. where there are panoramas of the various climates, and geographic areas of Africa including the birds, insects reptiles and mammals native to the area. The panorama also included the real animals, some birds and reptiles that have been preserved by taxidermy which make the displays really come to life.

We completed our stay with lunch in the food court, very nice, but not cheep!!

 


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Housing Inventories Are Falling

Photo Credit: http://www.shakesville.com/2008/06/my-former-landlord.html
Photo Credit: http://www.shakesville.com/2008/06/my-former-landlord.html

Home prices are increasing across the country as the number of homes for-sale continues to fall. But at a time when buyer demand is picking up, why is inventory still so low?

Inventories fell to 1.82 million at the end of last year, a 21.6 percent drop from one year earlier, the National Association of REALTORS® reports.

The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted several reasons behind the dropping inventories, including:

  • Sellers hesitant to sell: About 22 percent of home owners with a mortgage are still underwater, owing more than their home is currently worth. Home owners don’t tend to sell unless a life-changing event occurs when they’re underwater because they don’t want to take a loss on the sale of their house. CoreLogic data shows that inventories are the most constrained in areas with the highest number of underwater borrowers.
  • Not enough equity to trade up: Often times, home owners rely on the equity from their home to make a down payment on their next home. With fewer home owners seeing equity in their houses, they may not have enough money to move into a pricier home, which is constraining the would-be “trade up” buyer from moving.
  • Investors continue to snatch up properties: Investors are snapping up properties, but they’ve changed their strategy from past years, which is also constraining inventories. Now they’re holding onto properties and turning them into rentals instead of rehabbing properties and flipping them for profit. This is keeping fewer homes on the market.
  • Banks are slowing down foreclosures: Banks have new rules to meet with the foreclosure process, and it’s causing them to move at a slower pace in foreclosing on homes. Banks also are showing a preference for short sales and loan modifications, which are curbing the number of foreclosed homes on the market.
  • Builders are doing less building: Housing starts were at record lows from 2009 through 2011 so there’s less inventory being added to the market. A rebound in the new-home market has only recently started to occur.

Source: “Six Reasons Housing Inventory Keeps Declining,” The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 22, 2013)

 

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The Power of Words

httpv://youtu.be/Hzgzim5m7oU

How we use words in our every day life can have such an impact.  How the world perceives us, how we mean to inform people of our needs.  Even the words we use in every day life, to strangers to our love ones. This video The Power of Words really underscores this.  A well thought out presentation illustrating how powerful words can be. The video have been viewed worldwide over 12,750,000 times, which if I might say speaks for itself.

John J. O’Dell

Credits:

The Story of a Sign by Alonso Alvarez Barreda Music by: Giles Lamb http://www.gileslamb.com Filmed by www.redsnappa.com Director Seth Gardner.
Cast: Bill Thompson, Beth Miller http://www.uk.castingcallpro.com/view.php?uid=217905

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Foreclosures Reach Lowest Level Since 2007

Foreclosure filings dropped again in July, marking the 10th straight month for year-over-year declines and reaching their lowest level since November 2007, RealtyTrac reports. But analysts are still mostly attributing the drop to banks’ processing delays as they take more time to take action against delinquent home owners.

For July, about 212,764 homes received a foreclosure filing — which is a notice of default or auction sale or completed foreclosure — that’s down 4 percent compared to June. Filings were 35 percent lower than July 2010, according to RealtyTrac, and bank repossessions were down 33.6 percent from its peak in September 2010. Also, initial notices of default dropped 39 percent year-over-year to fewer than 60,000, which could be an indication that fewer borrowers are falling behind on their mortgage payments or that lenders are not filing notices as promptly in the past.

“The downward trend in foreclosure activity has now taken on a life of its own,” says RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio. “It appears that processing delays, combined with the smorgasbord of national and state-level foreclosure prevention efforts, may be allowing more distressed home owners to stave off foreclosure.”

Las Vegas continued to have the highest rate of foreclosures in the country — a filing for every 99 homes. Overall, for states, Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate of any state (one filing for every 115 homes), followed by California (one in every 239 homes), and Arizona (one in every 273 homes).

Source: “Foreclosure Filings Fall for 10th Straight Month,” CNNMoney (Aug. 11, 2011)

 
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Call or email

John J. O’Dell® GRI
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O’Dell Realty
(530) 263-1091
jodell@nevadacounty.com