Not for Dicks…

NOT FOR DICKS… Squid generally stays close to the lair, but has been oozing around the region’s grasslands lately, looking for wildflowers. For that purpose, Squid’s eyes are mostly trained on the ground, and it was only from reading national newspapers that Squid learned that residents are pushing the San Benito County Board of Supervisors to remove what seems to them a big phallus that has been adorning the county administration building’s lawn for the last 30 years.

After reading about the people agitating for change, Squid looked up again and indeed, now Squid could clearly see a short, fat penis where previously there had been a decorative statue.

Now, what to do? The artist, Los Angeles-based Richard Deutsch, who created the sculpture three decades ago, said he was inspired by what was then Pinnacles National Monument (now Pinnacles National Park).

Squid wonders if the public might also view the namesake rocky spires at Pinnacles as too phallic. Should we knock those down, too? It took 30 years for people to start complaining about Deutsch’s sculpture; the Pinnacles are 23 million years old and so far, as far as Squid knows, nobody has noticed.

ON DEFENSE… Squid is always bemused by bureaucratic processes that dictate life ashore. In the sea, Squid operates in an autocracy of one, doing and eating what Squid pleases.

That’s far from how things work in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, where the two jurisdictions have had to work hand-in-hand on the storm response concerning Pajaro, inconveniently nestled on the border between the two. Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo kicked up a fuss about disaster recovery centers in the wake of the flood, blasting Watsonville City Manager Rene Mendez for failing to provide a facility large enough to accommodate a “one-stop” center with all federal, state and county resources in one location.

Alejo claims both Monterey and Santa Cruz county officials, as well as FEMA, asked Mendez to make roomy Ramsey Park Family Center available, but were rejected without reason. (Instead, FEMA posted up at Watsonville’s old city hall on Main Street, a too-small space.) Mendez disputes that account, telling Squid’s colleague that his office “never received a request” for Ramsey Park from the counties nor FEMA.

Yet Mendez’s explanation does not jive with what Squid’s colleague also hears from Santa Cruz County spokesperson Jason Hoppin – who confirms that the two counties did indeed request Ramsey Park in a meeting with Watsonville Assistant City Manager Tamara Vides but were “told it wasn’t available at that time,” also without a reason.