SQUIDFRY 10.06.16: Words With Trees…

WORDS WITH TREES… Squid knows a good time when Squid sees one, so Squid oozed down to the Oldemeyer Center Sept. 29 to bear witness to the firstSeaside City Council meeting about Monterey Downs since the project’s final environmental impact report was released in late July.

Early in the meeting, City Manager Craig Malin reminded everyone there would be no votes that night, as it was only a workshop, and also felt compelled to say that the project “applicant is not a person, it’s a corporation.” (It’s actually an LLC, which are explicitly not corporations, but Squid digresses.) Terminology was a theme of the night, with several minutes of questioning by Councilmember Ian Oglesby, who wanted to clarify for the record that the project site is not a “forest,” it’s an “oak woodland.” (If you look up synonyms for woodland, guess which word you’ll find!) “If we’re going to talk about it, we need to have the proper terminology,” Oglesby said. Mayor Ralph Rubio wanted to clarify the percentages of different tree sizes on the site. “I keep hearing ‘old-growth trees,’” he said, and appeared satisfied when told there are 60 trees on the project site with a trunk diameter of 24 inches or greater. But the best line came from Teri Wissler Adam, the city’s contract project manager, when she was asked about the assumed water credits from the county in the EIR. “The EIR is full of assumptions,” she said. Squid checked the dictionary this time: “a thing that is accepted as true… without proof.”

STUMP UP… Squid was feeling gloomy over the weekend after becoming obsessed with a new podcast called My Favorite Murder, in which two sassy women spend an hour talking about their favorite murders. After listening for hours, Squid knew it was time to part from this dark pursuit and get outside, preferably to a place where Squid would not think of murder. Perfectly quaint Pacific Grove quickly came to mind, so Squid oozed toward the Rec Trail and stopped at Berwick Park.

Something about birds chirping in the background while watching a single person peddle a family of four in a surrey made Squid perk up. But then Squid saw it: a nearly finished sculpture of two whales breaching.

Since it cost nearly $9,000, Squid did Squid’s best to admire it, since Squid appreciates public art. The artists truly are skilled if they can shape a tree stump into two humpback whales – even if a cephalopod would have been a better choice. The Pacific Grove Rotary Club funded the sculpture, and Squid is told a couple thousand dollars more are needed to put up a white picket fence around it – kids keep trying to climb on it – in addition to installing lights. Squid wonders where how deep the Rotary Club’s pockets are. Maybe they can help P.G. pay its pension obligation, no Aquarium tax needed.