Northern Inyo Hospital District (NIHD) appointed Melissa Best-Baker to fill Topah Spoonhunter’s seat at its December 2 special meeting. 

At the same meeting, it also introduced Interim CEO Lionel “Chad” Chadwick. 

But there’s still one more missing piece to the NIHD puzzle. Zone 5 Board member Robert Sharp did not run for reelection. No one else ran for the open seat either, so the NIH Board will now have to appoint another board member to fill out the roster.

If the current composition of the NIH Board serves as a roadmap, one might guess that if you are a past or present employee of the Inyo County Health and Human Services Department, that you may be on the short list.

NIHD Board Treasurer Jean Turner, now retired, is former head of Inyo HHS.

NIHD Board Chair Jody Veenker’s LinkedIn profile indicates she is a current Inyo HHS staffer, serving as Director of First 5 Inyo. 

Newest board member Best-Baker’s Facebook page identifies her as Deputy Director of Fiscal Oversight and Special Projects at Inyo County Health & Human Services. Her page also indicates that she has worked at Inyo HHS since 1999. 

As two of the three district zones up for election this November (Turner’s was the other) did not have a candidate, it appears serving on the NIHD Board is about as attractive as a root canal these days. 

There are financial challenges, union unrest … no picnic. 

As an example, the budget for employing traveling nurses was a little more than $1 million pre-pandemic. Pandemic hits and suddenly traveling nurses are in great demand and who wants to stay on staff when you can make triple taking your show on the road. The upshot: NIH now pays more than $6 million annually for its traveling nurses according to outgoing board member Sharp. 

The Northern Inyo Hospital District board meets next on December 21 beginning at 5:30 p.m. 

I greatly enjoyed (and promptly ordered) Bill Heavey’s review of Carmine Gallo’s “The Bezos Blueprint” in the Wall Street Journal last week and promptly ordered a copy at The Booky Joint. 

The book talks about the Amazon founder’s unique (and very terse) communication and writing style. 

Gallo analyzes 48,000 words written by Bezos over 24 years of shareholder letters, and discovers he uses 16 words per sentence and writes at an 8th grade level (using the Flesch-KIncaid scale). 

From Heavey’s review: “There’s a good reason we should value writing that’s easy to read. Our brains are not made to think.” 

Mr. Heavey quotes the neuroscientist and author Lisa Feldman Barrett, who says, “Your brain’s most important job is to control your body’s energy needs. In short, your brain’s most important job is not thinking.” 

*That’s why I encourage you to turn your brain off and spend some time with me every week!

Couple other notable observations. Gallo says you have 15 seconds or about 35 words to grab a reader’s attention. If you don’t, you’ll lose half of them. 

Bezos banned the use of PowerPoint amongst his senior staff in 2004 – local bureaucrats please take heed. Putting together a PowerPoint and then reading the slides back to people is boring as hell and a massive waste of time.

Stop it.

 Finally, at Amazon, Gallo says it’s always Day One, “a metaphor for creating and sustaining a culture of innovation.” 

So what’s Day Two? Stasis, followed by irrelevance, an excruciating, painful decline and then death. 

About five years ago on his way off Council, Shields Richardson invented the Mayor’s Spirit of Mammoth (whatever the hell that is) award. And I told Shields at the time, “This is stupid, because within about three years, you’re gonna run out of ideas.” 

And Shields laughed and said, “In three years it won’t be my problem.” 

This year, outgoing Mayor Salcido, almost as a parting reminder of her wishy-washy lack of decisiveness, gave the award to the Town employees. 

So everyone gets a trophy. 

Barf.

My feeling is you can’t have a Spirit of Mammoth award unless Alicia Olson’s name is engraved on it. 

As Wendi Grasseschi has departed the Mammoth Times (see page six) I wonder who will fill in and write the weekly weather story (because it’s just impossible to readily find that information online). 

I told Pike to find me some weather. Had to endure several dumb jokes to get it. 

“Pike, with the weather forecast ahead of this weekend’s storm. In Mammoth, snow expected to begin Saturday. 11 to 17 inches during the day. After dark, forecasters anticipate the storm will dump an additional 16 to 22 inches. 

Come Sunday, 10 to 16 inches of flakes are expected to land on our turf. That’s 37 to 54 inches of fresh powder on which to surf, stomp, and slide.

If my new habit of not washing my hair continues (preserve the natural oils!) then a few additional flakes can be expected over the weekend.

Monday will be partly sunny.

Over in Bishop, much to Garcia and Grisman’s delight, dreadful wind and rain can be expected throughout the weekend. 69% chance of rain on Saturday. 81% chance of rain on Sunday. Cancel your foursome. 

A high of 54 on Saturday and 43 on Sunday compete with respective lows of 34 and 16.”

Sign of the times. Presser this afternoon from Inyo County Asst. Board Clerk Darcy Ellis regarding the numerous vacancies on several boards, committees, and commissions.

Letters of interest are currently being accepted for positions on the Big Pine Cemetery District, the Bishop Rural Fire Protection District, the Inyo Fish & Wildlife Commission, the Child Care Planning Council, Eastern Sierra Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council, and the Inyo County Water Commission. Appointments to fill the vacancies will be made by the Board of Supervisors.

Letters of interest should be sent to the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors at P.O. Drawer N, Independence, CA 93526 or dellis@inyocounty.us.

Deadlines for submission come up as early as December 15. 

Finally, Mammoth named #1 ski town in the U.S. The cynic in me can’t help but ask, “I wonder how much that cost?” I’ll bet you they had every MLT employee on a strict protocol to send in at least fifty votes per day.