April 13th - Sue Dishart, Guide Dogs for the Blind

April 20th - Anthony Roth, Adolescent Counseling

Never thought much about a sheep before except in the phrase 'better hung as a sheep than a goat,' but after Mr. Holmes' talk a schizophrenic idea developed: either adopt one or obliterate the species. One of the reasons his Blue Duck Redwoods decamped from California to the wilds of  Rotarua a few hundred miles from Aukland, New Zealand, is to salve the environmental devastation of New Zealand domestic sheep. To hear him tell it, roaming sheep herds eat every branch and shrub down to the soil, poison rivers with their defecation and urination and leave a featureless and lifeless landscape in their wake. New Zealanders commonly arm themselves with silencer-equipped automatic weapons with which to put down any wandering Ovis aries they come across. It's common to see the results of a mass sheep or goat slaughter alongside a country highway. They're so dangerous to a country, why bother with nukes? Drop a few thousand New Zealand sheep on a belligerent and you'll have it begging for mercy.

Subject of the talk, however, was California redwoods in New Zealand, not sheep, though they are inextricably entwined with the Holmes family's Blue Duck enterprise.

The Holmes group is part of a family line of Mendocino tree farmers and harvesters. Government regulators and environmentalists have all but killed the lumber business in the North Coast over the past few decades, so, in the late 1990s, they decided to move the operation to more hospitable political climate in New Zealand. In fact, Holmes was tasked by the government to help convert 750 acres of barren but fertile rangeland on the northern island of the country to redwood forest, an area well adapted to the trees in climate, soils and topography.

Some primeval lands remain in the area. Holmes showed pictures of some that could have been taken in an Amazonian rainforest. After sheep, the geography would look it home in the hills north of Fairfield if they were dry and golden.

It's a hands-on, family enterprise planting 30,000 to 40,000 California redwood clones over rolling countryside. Everyone, from 80 year-old patriarch Lee Maurice Holmes to sons and daughters do everything from spray Round-Up patches for planting to digging to placing saplings. Everyone except, however, the youngest Holmeses, who spend their lives piddling and paddling in the Retaruke River like ephemeral water sprites.

Holmes figures it will take about 18 months for the plantings to take root and another 20 to 30 years to reach harvestable stature. Good thing about redwoods is that, once they're established, cutting them down is just a setback in a lifecycle of perhaps thousands of years. New trees spring from roots and burls .

How does Holmes plan to survive for the 30 years while watching redwood trees grow? Raise sheep.

“Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety-one, like the number 21 or 31?

If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea...does that mean that one out of five enjoys it?
 
Why do croutons come in airtight packages?   Aren't they just stale bread to begin with?
  
If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, then doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed?
 
Do Lipton Tea employees take 'coffee breaks?'
 
What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?

  If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?

Is it true that you never really learn to swear until you learn to drive?
 
Whatever happened to Preparations A through G?

Why, why, why do we press harder on the remote control when we know the batteries are getting weak?

Why do banks charge a fee due to insufficient funds when they already know you're broke?