Letters to the Editor
What’s with WIC?
Dear Editor:
For many years, I sold produce grown on our family farm to WIC customers who patronized the Ventura Farmers Market. I was proud to participate in the WIC program as a vendor. I knew the nutritionist who taught WIC recipients how to shop wisely. I thought it was a program that made sense.
When the State Department of Public Health decided to evaluate the program because some businesses were behaving fraudulently, we were required to send a worker to a class to learn how the new rules and regulations would be implemented. We complied because we believed in the program. Later, the State mailed a very expensive, extensive compilation of materials.
One day, as I was selling at the Farmers Market, I looked up to see a woman in a suit and high heels with clipboard in hand eyeing my simple stand. She had traveled from Sacramento and was evaluating my operation. I recall that I passed but my neighboring vendor wasn’t so lucky; she was cited because her WIC sign was upside down.
Such silliness at such expense!
Our family farm no longer participates in the WIC program because when we sent the coupons in through our bank the State did not honor them. And the bank charged us.
The State’s idea of switching to electronic banking cards will eliminate more farmers willing to participate in the WIC program. Switching to electronic banking cards is an idea suitable for “big business.”
It is a mystery to me why the fraudulent businesses weren’t dealt with individually. The end result is that a good program has been jeopardized.
Mary Shore
Santa Paula/Mammoth
Gates School of P.R.
Dear Editor:
In reading The Sheet’s latest story on Sheriff Obenberger’s exchange with the Board of Supervisors, I wonder if Sheriff Obenbeger forgot who ultimately signs his paycheck? While yes, he is “constitutionally elected,” he may also be “constitutionally” unelected. Sounds like Obenberger went to the Darryl Gates School of Police Chief Public Relations. If Matt Dillon ever behaved as Obenberger did, he’d have been canceled long before the end of his 20-year TV run.
Ken Harrison
Cardiff by the Sea, CA
Angelic Correction
Dear Editor:
In last week’s Sheet, Lee Ann Eller gave credit to the high school students for collecting toys for the Mono County Health Department’s Angel giving tree.
I would like to clarify that I (Carolyn Balliet) coordinate the event but this project is not sponsored by the health department. The presents are brought there for staging and volunteers collect and transport them to the community center.
We greatly appreciated the gifts brought by the students; they help supplement presents for the children.
Carolyn Balliet
Mammoth Lakes
Pioneer Correction
Dear Editor:
I wanted to thank Victor Meier for a very well researched article on Mammoth’s Pioneer Cemetery. The only correction that I would make would be that when I was quoted about only teeth and bone fragments being left at the site, I was talking about the Native American site at the newest Snowcreek Development. This site was occupied by Native Americans from 1,000 BC to 1,000 AD.
The Mammoth Pioneer Cemetery would have full skeletons and mostly intact caskets.
If you look over my left shoulder in the picture, you will see some low bushes. Buster (K-9) alerted in the center of the bushes. Mark Davis and I took retired Mono County Sheriff Lloyd “Digger” Wilson to the cemetery site prior to the most recent snow. He told us the area where the low bushes are, contained several grave sites, and that he had arrested some subjects for grave robbing at that location several decades ago.
As far as using a backhoe to look for graves, I would describe this as “Caveman Archeology” at best.
Proper methodology would start with historical research into prior surveys of the site by both Mono County and the US Forest Service that clearly show a cemetery at that location, Human Detection K9 search of the site, Subsurface Geophysics scan using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Magnetometer or EM and Gas Chromatograph/Mass Specrometer analysis of soil samples.
We have used this methodology with great success in recovering missing Americans from World War 2. We are up to over 60 recoveries on Tarawa alone.
Paul Dostie
Hammil Valley
