Increasing the population of Angwin by 50% is bad enough, but the increase in traffic would be worse. Some of the newcomers would be PUC and St. Helena staff, but from 400 to 500 would be new families which would not find work here. Both husband and wife would be commuting up and down the hill - for work, for shopping, for the high school, etc., etc. A conservative estimate is that traffic would double on Howell Mountain Road in Angwin and on Deer Park Road going down the hill. One of the beautiful pictures Triad presented is of a tree-lined Angwin Main Street. They would make the road narrower. That's right .. narrower. Their suggestion is that through traffic be directed around Angwin onto White Cottage Road. So, all you residents of White Cottage Road, that is the College's special gift to you.

Thousands of people each year are charged for items which they did not buy. Why? Because someone got hold of their social security number. Angwinites are just as much at risk as anyone else.

For your information, we are posting below the official web site of the Federal Trade Commission. Please go to this web site to learn how to protect yourself from this kind of fraud.

Click on this and it will take you there. Do not be a victim!

As you all know, the Coastal Ranges (one of which includes Howell Mountain and stretches to Mt. St. Helena and beyond) are not volcanoes, but are "volcanic rubble". A great variety of rocks which long-ago volcanoes discharged into these massive windrows. Mt. Konocti on the western shore of Clear Lake is our closest real volcano.

Geologists cannot explain the presence of serpentine in this rubble. You will see it in the road cuts on Butts Canyon Road just a ways north of the Aetna Springs Road. Serpentine when first exposed is green and shiny, really beautiful. It is weathered in the Butts Canyon road cuts mentioned so is gray and not very shiny there. But I saw this big chunk ( about 3 ft across) up near the top of the Pine Flat Road, and there is lots of it in the road cuts up there.

Serpentine is the State rock of California.

Old timers in Angwin used to think that our local wells were recharged with snow melt from the high Sierra. But geologists found a deep strata of serpentine between here and there which would have served as an impervious barrier. Another good theory shot to pieces.

Now, wasn't that exciting!