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Thursday, June 10, 2010 – Daily News – 5A Opinion Draconian D NEWSAILY RED BLUFF TEHAMACOUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U N T Y S I N C E 1 8 8 5 attendance code Editor: Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes let- ters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All let- ters must be signed and pro- vide the writer’s home street address and home phone num- ber. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and cannot exceed two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section of those submit- ted will be considered for publi- cation. Letters will be edited. Letters are published at the discretion of the editor. Mission Statement We believe that a strong com- munity newspaper is essential to a strong community, creating citizens who are better informed and more involved. The Daily News will be the indispensible guide to life and living in Tehama County. We will be the premier provider of local news, information and advertising through our daily newspaper, online edition and other print and Internet vehi- cles. The Daily News will reflect and support the unique identities of Tehama County and its cities; record the history of its com- munities and their people and make a positive difference in the quality of life for the resi- dents and businesses of Tehama County. How to reach us Main office: 527-2151 Classified: 527-2151 Circulation: 527-2151 News tips: 527-2153 Sports: 527-2153 Obituaries: 527-2151 Photo: 527-2153 On the Web www.redbluffdailynews.com Fax Newsroom: 527-9251 Classified: 527-5774 Retail Adv.: 527-5774 Legal Adv.: 527-5774 Business Office: 527-3719 Address 545 Diamond Ave. Red Bluff, CA 96080, or P.O. Box 220 Red Bluff, CA 96080 I am writing this letter to bring attention to Tehama County’s draconian school attendance poli- cy. The administrators of the schools, in partnership with the district attorney are doing their best to criminalize absences from school. Their motives for this are simple, money. I say this because the policy, by the admission of the adminis- trators, is not tied to academic performance in any way and is completely arbitrary. In an effort to increase their funding through the reduction of absences, which they lose money over, they have decided to take a cruel and legal- istic approach. I have first hand knowledge of this because I have been a target of their threats and intimidation. I have a child at West Street School who is by all accounts a great stu- dent in both academics and behavior. I take my child’s educa- tion very seriously and attendance is an important part of this equa- tion. However, all kids are bound to miss school. My child has missed no more than an average amount of days for illness as well as a couple of days when we wanted to provide some educational opportunities outside of the classroom. Because of this my child has been labeled a habitual truant. My child has never been truant and certainly not habitually. Tru- ancy is defined as a student who stays away from school without permission. What the school offi- cials want to do is take away the rights of parents to decide if their child has permission to stay home from school. I have been threatened with fines and jail time and my child, a third-grader, has been threatened with incarceration in juvenile hall. I ask you, is this reasonable? When I asked this question of Mr. Kelish, the superintendent of the Corning School District, I got this cold and bureaucratic reply, “It is non negotiable.” Now we see that the prosecu- tor and the school attendance offi- cer have charged a parent with felony forgery for creating a doc- tor’s note that school officials say is required by law when your child is sick. So the school wants to destroy a family and send a person to prison for six years for violating the attendance policy? It may be easy to dismiss this due to the fact that the parent in question is being labeled by the DA as lazy and may have a lifestyle that some disapprove of. But what do you know of the challenges this mother faces? I challenge all those who truly believe in limiting the power of government to ask yourselves if justice is being served here or are the school administrators trying to use the power of government to usurp the rights of parents to decide what is best for their chil- dren’s education and increase their funding. I challenge DA Cohen to show humility by rescinding the charges and showing there is indeed balance in the justice sys- tem and the heavy sword he wields is righteous. Jason Votaw, Corning Fishing regs Editor: It is my understanding Cal- Trout has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Fish and Games’ trout planting program. A lawsuit that not only covers all anadromous streams but all sec- tions of said streams, even those sections of streams that have been planted with DFG hatchery trout as long as anyone can remember, meaning in most cases as much as fifty or more years. As I understand it, the lawsuit was brought about because they don’t want hatchery trout spawning with native trout or steelhead. DFG plants catchable size trout to give people the opportunity and the experience of catching a trout that otherwise, for whatever rea- son, they may never experience and isn’t the planted areas ideal to teach children to fish and get them interested in an outdoor experi- ence? The sole purpose, as I understand it, is for that reason and not to stock the stream, because very few if any would survive. Think about it, how many people come here from the city to hike, hunt, fish, or cut Christmas trees wind up getting lost and have to be found by Search and Res- cue? The same goes for these fish, they have never had to fend for themselves. If a few did survive after all these years it is kind of like closing the barn door after the horse got out. What about native trout? How many streams in this state have a pure strain of native trout? Damn few! While we may not have Your Turn many pure native species we cer- tainly have wild trout. Brown trout and brook trout are not native of California but we have some wild browns and brooks in our local streams. For years DFG has tried to keep the golden trout streams in the High Sierras free of other species of trout but more than twenty years ago there was a story about other trout invad- ing at least one of the streams and they found a cross breed, true or false? I don’t know. As for steelhead the Sacra- mento River steelhead are mostly hatchery released fish. However, there is some wild steel- head that come back to spawn in the Sacramento River and its’ trib- utaries. What is a steelhead but a rainbow trout with access to the Pacific Ocean that takes the trip and come back here to spawn after three or four years. So, if you take your family for a day or for a camping trip to your favorite stream that is usually planted by DFG and there is no fish, you can thank Cal-Trout and fly fishing elitist that think nobody should keep any fish only catch and release and no bait, no hard- ware (spinners and such), no planters please. Again thanks to the elitist there is no water in Tehama County that DFG can plant fish this year. However, I’m told, Shasta Lake will have a lot of fish. I fly fish and use barbless hooks and I do catch and release even with planted fish I also keep some fish to eat once in awhile. However, I use other methods when I fish bigger streams and lakes. Les Wolfe, Red Bluff Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Jim Nielsen (R), State Capitol Bldg., Room 4164 P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento 94249; (916) 319-2002; Fax (916) 319- 2102 STATE SENATOR — Sam Aanestad (R), State Capitol Bldg., Room 2054, Sacramen- to, CA 95814. (916) 651-4004; Fax (916) 445-7750 GOVERNOR — Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 558-3160; E-mail: gover- nor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Wally Herger (R), 2635 Forest Ave. Ste. 100, Chico, CA 95928; 893-8363. U.S.SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 393-0710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (415) 403-0100. Fax (202) 224- 0454. EM Forster and Facebook Commentary Big Brother is watching you in a very Orwellian”way. Has been for years. People who have never heard of George Orwell know of the term Big Brother. In many ways his dark vision of what the year 1984 would look like is prophet- ic. For example, his novel 1984 takes place during a never-end- ing war while technology is aid- ing an over-reaching govern- ment. I read that in the New York Times yesterday. Orwell was right. He was dead on. Spooky. E.M. Forster is best known for his novels “Howards End” and “A Passage to India.” Not as well-known is a 12,000-word science fiction allegory about technology titled “The Machine Stops,” written in 1909. Forster’s gloomy tale takes place in a future where all the world’s people have become hermits, content with no longer physically touching others, opt- ing instead to live in solitary with the aid of The Machine. “There are no musical instru- ments and yet…this room is throbbing with melodious sounds,” he writes. The protagonist Vashti lives in a small climate controlled room, illuminated by neither lamp nor window. She has thou- sands of friends. She even lec- tures on “Music during the Aus- tralian Period.” It all takes place through The Machine. The catalyst is when her son wants to see her in person instead of through the “blue plate.” People don’t travel above ground anymore. The atmos- phere is barren and brown. And Vashti doesn’t care for “air- ships.” Basically he predicted central air, the Internet, video confer- encing, television, radio, global warming and commercial air travel. Forster was right. He was dead on. Spooky. “The Machine Stops” was penned 100 years ago. From a historical perspective, the first radio was not installed in the White House until 1922, yet a Victorian like Forster imagined modernity amazingly close. I first read this short story 10 years ago. It was before I became a telecommuter, before MySpace — before Google was a verb. Now I have days when I feel like Vashti, isolated in my pajamas revering The Machine. “The Machine feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being,” wrote Forster. But the story is also a poignant criticism of technological advance- ment. The current struggle between old media and new media is one of reporting ver- sus the digesting news. One hundred years ago a lecturer in Forster’s tale pro- nounces, ”Beware of first-hand ideas! First hand-ideas do not real- ly exist…Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth- hand, for then they will be far removed from the disturb- ing element – direct observa- tion.” It’s a rundown of blogging versus journalism. It’s not just that Forster fore- saw the Internet, but he guessed rightly how it would be used. In this fable of the future, ideas are valued most – they are the new commodity. Talking to her son Kuno about his desire to see her in person is private, until Vashti turns off her isolation switch on The Machine. “The room was filled with the noise of bells and speaking- Tina Dupuy tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Had she any ideas lately? Might one tell her one’s own ideas?” He’s describing online communities. He’s describing Face- book. He’s describing Twitter. “We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now,” Forster wrote. “It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it.” Of course, as I write this, my machine chimes with the siren call of new emails, IMs and tweets tempting me to distrac- tion. To quote Vashti as she tried to comfort herself while on the air-ship, “O Machine! O Machine!” Tina Dupuy is an award- winning writer and the editor of FishbowlLA.com. Tina can be reached at tina@cagle.com.