THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News 3/25/2025
The “homeless” you have with you always
They’re called “evergreen stories” or topics; subjects that provide perpetual fodder for writing. In this case, it’s the “homeless” issue. An article in an October edition described Sam Ayer Park as a destination for the “unhoused”; the Thursday online, or “enewspaper,” edition provided an update about removing homeless folks from what I’ve always understood as “Dog Island Park.”
Soon after we moved to Red Bluff in 1988, into a second floor apartment in The Breakers complex a couple of blocks behind Denny's restaurant (as a DWR manager, Barbara said it would be embarrassing to live on a ground floor subject to flooding), exploring our new home town took priority. Since miles-long runs and 20-mile bike rides were standard for a 30-something body, exploring was endless.
A visit to Dog Island Park to check out the blackberries and paths ended uncomfortably as the presence of some men, decidedly not interested in berry picking or sightseeing, made it obvious that the park had a non-homeless function for locals seeking, shall we say, personal gratification. I knew that LA (our former home) had no lack of areas for such activities but right here in Red Bluff? I never visited the park again until Civil War Days.
To put my thoughts concisely, while the biblical saying, “the poor you have with you always” suggests homelessness will be a scourge forever, regulations must apply, similar to the “time and place” restrictions on free speech and assembly.
Sam Ayer/Dog Island Park should be cleared of homeless campers, who should be vetted by authorities for criminal records, ID’d, have drugs and paraphernalia seized (such categories of campers being kicked out of town), and, if space is to be dedicated for the non-criminal, non-druggies, strict compliance to sanitary, drug- and alcohol-free lifestyles enforced. The Supreme Court paved the way for such regulations; do it, Red Bluff.
While you’re at it, let’s hold weekly fairs or events in the park to keep the momentum of positive usage.
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Discussion of national, i.e. Trump-related, topics being verboten, it does this conservative heart well to see that the editor provides local readers with pearls of wisdom from columnist Michael Reagan. If you missed his Saturday piece, “The tragedy of late-stage TDS” or Trump Derangement Syndrome, it’s well worth finding and reading, or re-reading, especially for those dear souls among us who find themselves consumed with hate for the object-du-jour provided by MSNBC/CNN hosts’ “outrage of the day.”
However, we can afford to ignore such national issues while California provides its own “evergreen” sources of eyebrow-raising, head-shaking lunacy. For instance, columnist Dan Walters informed us in his March 6 Daily News piece, “First-of-its kind order,” about a lawsuit (undoubtedly filed “pro bono” by well-heeled lawyers living in gated, homeless-free environs), that “halts a sweep of California camp” in Vallejo. God forbid that local authorities act in the interests of tax-paying citizens desperate for public spaces free of camping refuse.
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Lunacy defined: “Help your kids cope with climate change,” Daily News Feb. 4 edition, which featured a 14-year-old, Gardena student looking wistfully into space while she says “decision-makers aren’t doing enough to address climate change.” The old “if we can land a man on the moon, we can…” rationale now becomes “if we can figure out how to live on Mars…” we should, apparently, be able to dial earth’s thermostat to mankind’s ideal conditions, everywhere and for all time.
So, in her few short years of semi-maturity, a 14-year-old kid has absorbed millions of years of climate variation, the causes of which have had nothing to do with SUVs, human-caused CO2, fossil fuels, modern farming and livestock—and factored in the massive swings in temperatures, and atmospheric CO2 from nature itself, over those millions of years.
My wild-arse guess: I’m certain she has teachers and class-time devoted to scaring the bejesus out of young skulls full of mush over minute, margin-of-error temperature changes, polar melting (which then reverts to polar freezing), and every unpleasant bit of weather news which departs very little from that of a hundred years ago. Is she aware of the Medieval, Roman and other periods warmer than now, as well as the Little Ice Age that ended 150 years ago?
No, government-paid teachers have got to get anxiety and fear ginned up to support high-tax, “clean energy” boondoggles, and lifestyle micromanagement so “we don’t destroy the earth.” I wish it was all a joke. Educate kids on science, math, technology, arts, music and healthy eating; infuse in them the sense of optimism and unlimited potential for their lives; put those who threaten the lives and bodies of girls and boys away long enough to let kids be strong, healthy adults ready to create abundance around them, and appreciate the mothers and fathers that raised them.
Decision-makers, do something about that!
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