ULTIMATE FRISBY
Fourth grade. Bernice A. Ray Elementary School in Hanover, N.H. Teacher: Cynthia Hayes. Every day she would read to the class. Twenty or thirty minutes. The kids would all lie on the floor and listen.
My favorite book from that year was Robert C. O’Brien’s Newbury Award-winning “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.” Which I just finished reading to my own 11-year old daughter.
Now I hesitate to give away too much of the book because it’s such a great read, but the premise is that scientists studying rats and mice inject them with a drug which wildly accelerates their brain capacity and intelligence – enough so that it gives them the creativity to escape the laboratory and venture out into the world, where they attempt to create their own utopian society. An excerpt:
“Soon we built ourselves the life you see around you. Our colony thrived and grew to one hundred and fifteen. We taught our children to read and write. We had plenty to eat, running water, electricity, a fan to draw in fresh air, an elevator, a refrigerator. Deep underground, our home stayed warm in winter and cool in summer. It was a comfortable, almost luxurious existence.
And yet all was not well. After the first burst of energy, the moving in of the machines, the digging of tunnels and rooms—after that was done, a feeling of discontent settled upon us like some creeping disease.
We were reluctant to admit it at first. We tried to ignore the feeling or to fight it off by building more things—bigger rooms, fancier furniture, carpeted hallways, things we did not really need. I was reminded of a story I had read at the Boniface Estate when I was looking for things written about rats. It was about a woman in a small town who bought a vacuum cleaner. Her name was Mrs. Jones, and up until then she, like all of her neighbors, had kept her house spotlessly clean by using a broom and a mop. But the vacuum cleaner did it faster and better, and soon Mrs. Jones was the envy of all the other housewives in town—so they bought vacuum cleaners, too.
The vacuum cleaner business was so brisk, in fact, that the company that made them opened a branch factory in the town. The factory used a lot of electricity, of course, and so did the women with their vacuum cleaners, so the local electric power company had to put up a big new plant to keep them all running. In its furnaces, the power plant burned coal, and out of its chimneys black smoke poured day and night, blanketing the town with soot and making all the floors dirtier than ever. Still, by working twice as hard and twice as long, the women of the town were able to keep their floors almost as clean as they had been before Mrs. Jones ever bought a vacuum cleaner in the first place.
The story was part of a book of essays, and the reason I had read it so eagerly was that it was called “The Rat Race”—which, I learned, means a race where, no matter how fast you run, you don’t get anywhere. But there was nothing in the book about rats, and I felt bad about the title because, I thought, it wasn’t a rat race at all, it was a People Race, and no sensible rats would ever do anything so foolish.”
And I thought about this book after reading Milender’s story on page six about the Destination Marketing consultants who made their presentation to the Mammoth Lakes Tourism board last week.
So if I understand correctly, we market the place to the point of oversaturation. And then enlist the people who oversaturated it to fix the problems associated with the oversaturation.
Welcome to the Vacuum Factory.
One more Marlene Fiebiger anecdote. What stands out in my memory is the groundbreaking for The Parcel a few years back. Bunch of white chairs laid out. Politicians tossing dirt with shiny shovels before launching into the self-satisfied speeches.
Marlene gets up to the microphone and proceeds to rip the project. Not because she was against affordable housing, but against the volume of tree removal and the plans for blocky four-story apartment buildings.
“They promised us a village in the trees,” lamented husband Dieter. “That’s the saddest part. That they took away our dream home at the end, our Eden, our view and trees and nature. We’ll never be able to get that village in the trees back. The big city followed us here [to Mammoth] and devoured us.”
Several weeks back I made a public records request to Northern Inyo Hospital.
“I would like to know how many patients were transported out of NIH between April 24, 2023 and July 23, 2023, who transported them (C2C, REACH, etc.), and where they went (airport, another hospital, etc.).”
I made the request because C2C, which was awarded a temporary contract to provide ambulance services, had claimed it was shut out of providing ground transport for Northern Inyo Hospital patients – that the ER staff’s tight relationship with REACH Medical had the effect of funneling patients towards REACH and subsequent care flights to distant hospitals.
In her reply, NIH Compliance Officer Patty Dickson said, “We do not track the company that transports, only whether it was ground, air, or private vehicle.”
The stats: 99 transports during the designated time period.
Of those, 96 were transported by air, 2 by ground and one by private vehicle.
C2C pulled out of the area on July 23 following a 90-day stint.
REACH is currently providing temporary ambulance service for the Greater Bishop area until a longer-term service contract is negotiated.
The Sheet caught up with local real estate broker Matthew Lehman this week to discuss the current state of the Mammoth market.
Some themes: 1. Inventory has creeping higher since March. Condo inventory has doubled from 28 to 57. Single family home inventory has nearly tripled from 9 to 25 in that time frame.
2. Lehman said insurance, or the difficulty in finding proper insurance, has begun to factor into market transactions. He knows of one sale which fell through because of an insurance issue. Other sales have stalled out, he said, but will probably close.
As soon as you open escrow, insurance is an immediate priority, he said.
3. Special assessments. This has also contributed to deal complexity. “We find lenders are putting on the brakes because anything that references ‘structural damage’ makes ‘em nervous.”
It’s also taken some time to pin down HOAs on the assessment amounts.
Finally, some good news. The old Bleu space in the Mammpth Mall has been leased to a Southern California businessman who is planning to put in a Brazilian Steakhouse concept in the space. Expect a late ‘23 opening. Milender will have more on that next week.
Speaking of Milender, she wants to talk mosquitoes …
