FlameMapper is a leader in near-real-time fire behavior modeling that identifies needed areas of mitigation (grazing goats) for the first phase of emergency management. Their software uses virtualfires to understand the movement of fire and fire intensity over a landscape. This allows for targeted goat-grazing-fire-mitigation for maximum impact at the lowest cost. The in-kind service that the creators of Flamemappers are willing to provide will ultimately come in the form of maps with identified areas ranked in terms of priority. This removes the guesswork of the fire mitigation of our 450 acres of city-owned land as well as 36 square miles surrounding Nevada City.(PLEASE NOTE; THIS VERSION OF FLAMEMAPPER MAP HAS THE HWY THROUGH NEVADA CITY AS HWY 20. IT IS ACTUALLY HWY 20/49)

How Does It Work?

FlameMapper enhances understanding of the spread of fire by providing advanced fire forecasting technology to improve the way wildfires are tracked and contained. It uses predictive tools to help supply citizens information to prepare for action. This data includes evacuation routes, critical junctions, direction of fire spread, speed, and rated areas of mitigation.

Software will provide wildfire mitigation analytics; a prioritized list and statistically justified mitigation plan so our maintenance budget will be far more effective. It can build fire structure, then synthesize where the greatest exposure is, highlighted on where the fire is likely to go.

Clearly defined fire boundaries will be assimilated and mapped. We will be able to even zoom in to see where the structures are most vulnerable.

By mapping the possible spread of fires Nevada City can implement effective plans with the ability to prioritize mitigation through fuel load reduction via goats and hand-crews. Proper mitigation measures can encourage a fire to go in a certain direction.

Utilizing fire science this software can keep fire crews and equipment safer than ever before with high-resolution wind modeling, and instantly identify risk and understand the landscape in a whole new way.

The software provides five different spatial analysis models, and creates scenarios of fires coming from different directions thus allowing our community to identify critical junctions and mitigation to ensure safe evacuation routes.

Price depends upon our capabilities, expertise in OES or fire department and ability to use the tools. However, for Nevada City, this is being donated as in-kind professional services andwill include analysis of a 9 square mile radius with Nevada City in the center.

The FlameMapper team of specialists has been working with Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, and the City of Malibu utilizing post analysis. They have also worked with the US Coast Guard, and Berkeley National Laboratory's creating 50 virtual and consecutive fires. Developers have worked also with campuses, facilities, and fired departments. Please note that the fire spread modeling details will be provided this week. Check back for more information!

During the busy 4th of July weekend I just read in our local paper that our local internet provided, Spiral Internet, that was proposing an UNDERGROUND fiber optic system throughout Nevada County, is being sold to Race Communications with the plan for "aerial installation." We have also JUST been informed that the PUBLIC HAS UNTIL THIS TUESDAY (2 FULL BUSINESS DAYS) TO PROTEST THIS BAIT & SWITCH. This is a common tactic in the Telecom World: push through their agenda during the holidays when nobody is looking. This is a bait & switch that we have seen across the nation again and again; "Oh, we're going to give you fiber optics to EVERY home. Ooops! Sorry, we're going to pocket the $400 billion you have all paid out over the last 20 years and give you radiating wireless service instead." This is a slippery slope and if anyone is aware of this telecom playbook they will know what is next. The definition of "aerial installation" can mean anything including another Bait & Switch to radiating 5G antennas in your neighborhood. You don't think so? Just check out our Telecom's shady history. It's well documented here:

Original story that spurred this LOCAL PROTEST here:

Nevada County Residents have been asking me what can they do about this little "tweak" to the fiber optics installation to our homes (from the promised underground to "aerial" installation). Here's a list of talking points you should send TODAY to the CPUC at public.advisor@cpuc.ca.gov RE: Sale of Bright Fiber to Race Communications and Race's proposal of "aerial delivery on existing poles in existing rights-of-ways."

This is what you can do NOW:

WRITE THE CPUC and tell THEM NO.

ADDITONAL CONTACTS BELOW!

We have until TOMORROW, YES, TUESDAY for the public to RESPOND.

TALKING POINTS:

Nevada County residents should ask the CPUC to deny this stock sale from Bright Fiber to Race. Do not allow Race to cut corners at the expense of a community’s safety and wellbeing by installing on vertical infrastructure.

Americans have paid out more than $400 billion to the telecom industry over the last 20 years for underground fiber optics to every home. We want our underground fiber optics now.

We want the CPUC and the FCC to investigate this $400 billion dollar telecom heist.

We want an account of the $400 billion already spent.

The CPUC must understand THIS is financially discriminatory for the people who have paid once, twice perhaps and now will pay again for an inferior and dangerous new infrastructure design (wireless on poles).

Underground fiber optic installation is the most secure, private, and reliable. We demand our fiber optics stays underground.

Utilizing power poles and aging vertical infrastructure in a drought and fire prone California is irresponsible.

Stop the deployment of untested and unsafe 5G small cells in neighborhoods and communities. Fiber optics is the answer.... and underground.

Race states it will use its standard approach of "aerial delivery on existing poles in existing rights-of-ways." This is a slippery slope that could ultimately lead to loss of local control over our public rights-of-ways as we have already seen this Bait & Switch technique transpiring in cities across the nation.

Demand the CPUC and FCC stop the deregulation of the telecom industry and once again regulate the industry so as to protect consumers from this unfettered "gifting" of billions of dollars as well as the reckless deployment of untested technology upon the American people.

PLEASE CUT AND PASTE AND SHARE NOW! WE HAVE ONLY 24 HOURS FOR PUBLIC COMMENT.

ALSO, feel free to contact the following:

Michael Picker, President of the Commission

Liz Podolinsky, Telecom Advisor, POD@cpuc.ca.gov, 415-703-3201

Carla Peterman, Commissioner

John Reynolds, Advisor on Communications

Shannon O’Rourke, Energy, Safety and Water Issues

(No contact info given…. )

Liane M. Randolph, Commissioner

Rachel Peterson, Chief of Staff

rachel.peterson@cpuc.ca.gov, 415-757-7844

Martha Guzman Aceves, Commissioner

Michael Minkus, Chief of Staff and Telecom Issues

(No contact info given…. )

Clifford Rechtschaffen, Commissioner

Sean Simon, Chief of Staff

Office: 415-703-3791 Mobile: 415-214-0125.

Email: Sean.Simon@cpuc.ca.gov

Today is the ultimate in Confluence-of-Stories for me; Easter Sunday and April Fools Day landing on the same day.

Let me explain.

I was born on Easter morning, April 10th, 1966, in San Francisco. Two months later I would be adopted into the Senum family and given the name Reinette. Though the date of Easter changes from year to year I have always considered Easter my birthday of sorts.

From as early as I could remember I knew I was adopted, but was only ever given a little non-identifying information about my birth mother and birth father. I could not help but think of my birth mother, in particular, every day, wondering who she was and what she was doing.

Come April 10th, 1977, my birthday would land once again on Easter Sunday and I would turn 11 years old. At the same time a great aunt of my adopted family came for a visit from England bringing with her their family tree that dated back almost a thousand years.

I was simply mesmerized by this. I completely soaked it up and was delighted to see our family’s history. But that’s when it hit me like a brick; this was not my blood. This was not my family's story.

So I asked my adoptive mother when would I be able to see my family tree and my mother looked at me and quipped, “You can't know that. You can’t see your family tree. That's illegal.” Illegal?? I almost fell over. Though I was only 11 years old I was still able to immediately recognize the injustice in this. How could it be illegal for me to ever know my family story?

As fate would have it, the very next day I would come across an article in the now defunct newspaper, the Sacramento Union, showcasing adoptees in search of their birth families. I quietly took the newspaper article, wrote down the addresses of the adoption research organizations that had been listed, and I quickly and quietly sent off several letters to these organizations using my best friend Karen's home address as the return address. I didn’t dare let my adoptive mother know what I was up to because I knew she would be devastated.

I gave these organizations the little information I had of my birth mother like her age, hair/skin color, religion, and asked them if they would help me find her. One week later I would get responses from all these different organizations and they all said the same thing; From the information you've given us you’re very young, your mother is young, and until you turn 18, legally, there is nothing we can do for you -- but don’t worry, you have plenty of time.

Well, unbeknownst to me and these adoption organizations, my birth mother was battling breast cancer and would die that year, in 1979, at the age of 35. I would not know this until nearly 20 years later.

After receiving the responses from these adoption organizations I would confess to my adoptive brother about my search and show him my handful of letters that I had received. He would immediately tattle this to our mother causing an irreparable explosion in our relationship; a chasm that we would never recover from.

My adoptive mother was hurt, rejected, and could not understand why I had done this: I had been adopted into such a good family. How could I betray them like this?

I tried to explain to my adoptive mother over and over I was not rejecting them. I simply wanted to know where I came from. I simply wanted to know my family story. I wanted to see where I was on my own family tree. She couldn’t hear this. Unexpectedly, my adoptive mother would blurt out in a moment of rage, “Just so you know your name is Marcella Anderson!”

I reeled backwards. I had a different name? I was given an actual name at birth? It never dawned on me that my birth mother had given me a name that would ultimately be changed upon adoption. I held on to this name, Marcella Anderson, close to my chest, knowing this would be the breadcrumb I would pursue at a later date. Some day.

But even the thought of this pursuit would be interrupted in 1985 when my adopted mother, 54 years old, was diagnosed with colon cancer, stage 4.

In the blink of an eye and at the age of 18 years old I would become my adoptive mother’s sole caregiver, giving her 8 to 12 injections a day, cleaning out her colostomy bag, bandaging a foot-long incision that was split wide open with infection. I would endure my adoptive father, for the first time, beating me, throwing me down a flight of stairs, kicking me in the stomach, blaming me for my mother’s cancer, freaking out over her pending death. He couldn’t handle it, took it all out on me. It was a horrific turn of events.

In an instant my life was consumed in a nightmare. Five and a half months into this bad dream, my mother’s bowels would become blocked and she began running a fever. I called her doctor who instructed me to call an ambulance and take her to Auburn Faith Hospital for testing.

My mother was overweight and my father and I did not have the capacity to carry her down a narrow set of stairs so once the paramedics arrived they hoisted her onto a gurney and immediately laid her flat. My mother went into a state of panic; she obviously had developed a tumor somewhere in her air passage and if laid flat she could not breathe, whatsoever

I explained this to the paramedics and they immediately popped her upright and we continued our way in the ambulance to Auburn Faith Hospital. Once we arrived they immediately whisked her away from me, and my supervision, so she could undergo a sonogram in the hopes of locating the obstruction in her bowels.

I knew we were getting close. The doctor said my mother most likely had about a week to live. I had spent the last 5 ½ months caring for this very stoic registered nurse. During this time we never spoke of her pending death. My mother pretended with me that she was not going to die. I took her cue and did the same though we both knew death was certainly on its way.

We were a family that never expressed our emotions. We rarely ever verbally expressed our love for one another, and now, so close to death, neither my mother nor I could bear a heartfelt and vulnerable conversation. So, instead, I simply practiced to myself what I was going to say to my adoptive mother when the time was “just right.” Over and over I rehearsed what I wanted to say, expressing everything that I had been bottling up inside. I was planning on closing that painful gap in our relationship caused by my search for my birth mother. I would ultimately set the record straight letting my adoptive mother know how much I loved her and that, yes, indeed, she was my “mother” and irreplaceable.

What I didn't know was that in spite of all this practice and preparation that opportunity would never come. A moment after my mother was wheeled away from me to undergo the sonogram, the doctor would return within minutes, pale faced. He walked up to me and my father, both standing in the hallway, and announced, “I'm so sorry, she just died.”

What?!

Just like that? What do you mean? But I didn’t get a chance to tell her everything I wanted to say! I’ve been practicing. Waiting for the right moment. This can’t be….

What happened next I will never be able to shake. I went rushing into the testing room and there I could see my mother on the gurney, lifeless, and I knew why. They had laid her flat. Within a minute of leaving my care, my warning would be neglected, and my mother would be laid flat, where she would ultimately suffocate to death.

As quickly as she died so did any opportunity for me to tell her how much I loved her and everything else I had been rehearsing in preparation for that “perfect moment.” Heaving and bawling over my dead mother’s body I would look up over my head, remembering stories about how after a person dies their soul would hover over their body. I wanted her to see my face. To hear my words that I had been holding back all this time. But instead, I would gasp when I looked up, seeing the last thing my mother saw before she died; a poster plastered to the ceiling that read, “You only live one, but if you live it right, once is enough.”

What words to die to I thought and I sobbed even harder.

I would be wracked with guilt for several years and felt searching for my birth mother would be a betrayal of my love for my adoptive mother.

It took time and much convincing that this was not a betrayal until finally I would somewhat recover and, once again, pick up my search for my birth mother where I left it when I was eleven.

I would now begin looking for the Andersons.

I had no clue where they were. I was so desperate that many times, as a teenager, I would imagine that my family members were the owners of Pea Soup Andersens Restaurant and Inn. Pea Soup Andersen’s had an iconic windmill and was a traveller’s destination along Interstate 5 in central California. Our family would pass by it during family vacations and I would often imagine myself entering this restaurant, recognizing the owners’ facial features as my own, ultimately reuniting once again with my birth family, living happily every after.

My search for the Anderson’s, however, proved fruitless. I had hired researcher after researcher and none of them could find my Andersons. Not even a trace.

For another 8 years I would continue looking, turning up little clues, until I turned 30. It was with this birthday I made a promise to myself that this would be the year I would finally find my birth mother -- come hell or high water.

The one thing I had not been able to do was open up my adoption records. After enduring my adoptive mother’s reaction to my search I didn’t have it in me to ask my adoptive father to sign for the release of my adoption records. I could not do this without his signature and I could not bear the thought of causing him any grief or sense of betrayal as I had my adoptive mother. It was the opening of this file that seemed to be the one and only thing standing between me and my birth family, however.

At the time I was living in Los Angeles, studying film making, and one of my dearest friends, a notary public, had been watching me turn up nothing after nearly 20 years of searching. So committing the ultimate sin, and, yes, crime, she allowed me to sign the papers as my adoptive father, requesting the opening of my adoption file, and she notarized his forged signature.

As you could imagine, she knew this a crime, and something she would never ever do under any kind of circumstance, but she also knew my personal circumstance. She knew the serious crime she was committing and told me if this ever came back to haunt her she would deny it and say that her notary stamp had been stolen. I will always be eternally grateful to her for putting herself on the line like this. I knew it was a very big deal and know to this day if she had not done this I would still not know who the hell I am.

So, to spare my adoptive father the same suffering my adoptive mother endured, we forged his signature, sent off the notarized documents to the state and two weeks later my adoption files were opened and sent to me. This was when I discovered that my adoptive mother had put me onto a 20-year long wild goose chase.

My last name was not Anderson it was Funston.

For 20 years I had been looking for the wrong people.

My adoptive mother had to have known my last name was Funston. I was born in San Francisco where there is a Funston Avenue and a Fort Funston named after the legendary General Frederick Funston, my natural great-grandfather. My adoptive mother had lived in San Francisco for a period of her life so I find it difficult that she mixed up the name Anderson with Funston. I have no doubt that at the time my adoptive mother told me this false name she knew it would mislead me because Funston would have been too easy to track down, particularly in San Francisco. Unfortunately, death would take my adoptive mother so quickly and unexpectedly she too would never be able to tell me what she always wanted to say: I was not an Anderson. I was a Funston.

Soon after I got my adoption files opened, I hired the most remarkable researcher, Ida Knapp. She was simply brilliant. We would ultimately have to trick “the system” into giving us the rest of the story.

Ida began searching for my birth mother whose name we found out from the opened adoption records was Jane Funston.

We searched records across the entire state of California and finally the whole nation, far and wide. From death certificates to divorce records we could not find any trace of Jane Funston. My birth mother seemed to have completely vanished from the face of the earth. It seemed fate had decide to keep me in the dark for eternity. But fate was not going to deter Ida Knapp. She told me what I needed to do next.

“Reinette, I want you to write to the San Francisco University Hospital where you were born, but I want you to write as your birth mother, Jane Funston, saying that you have a daughter who is having pregnancy complications. Request your, or Jane’s, medical records, and let’s see what we get.”

So, I did just that.

A week later I got the medical records of my birth mother Jane Funston and that’s when I found out she returned to the same hospital 4 ½ years later and gave birth to my natural half-brother, Damien McLean.

I have a half-brother of the same blood as my mother, I thought. This meant the world to me.

We were never able to track down Jane. But in a matter of a day or two we tracked down Demian through his father, Jane’s former husband, Michael McLean, living in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where Jane ultimately had died.

I got on the phone not knowing what to expect and I called Michael McLean. He answered, a low, soothing voice, and as soon as I told him I was the daughter of Jane Funston he said to me, “We have been waiting for your phone call for 30 years. “

I was flabbergasted. He continued, “We knew that if there was anybody that you would track down to get to your mother it would be us. We were the most settled and “trackable.” We also knew that if you had not been put up for adoption that once your mother had died you would've come to live with us like your brother, Demian, had. So we always though of you as the child we never had.” I explained to Michael how this 20 year long search continuously turned up nothing and that ultimately we were only able to find Jane through Demian. Michael would explain the reason why I could not find my mother was because when she died her name was no longer Jane Funston. It was Istarra Yedlowski. Istarra Yedlowski?

Being the good hippie that she was, she changed her first name from Jane to Istarra and then married a man with the last name Yedlowski.

Istarra Yedlowski. That would be the name she would die with. Well, no wonder I couldn’t find her.

Michael would continue, “Why don't you call Pat, my wife, she would love to hear from you.” So I did, and when she answered the phone I told her who I was she excitedly exclaimed, “The Baby! The Baby is calling! The Baby is calling!” We were both in tears.

The dust has been settling over the years and the mystery that shrouded my birth family has dissipated for the most part.

I had found my natural family and have them in my life including Jane’s friends, her paintings, even the front door to her artist study that has her hand prints on the backside, pressed in white paint. I can tell when I press my hands into the door that our hands are one and the same. My hand print fits Jane’s like a glove.

Most importantly Jane left behind a poem about “her firstborn she would never know” called The Accidental Life. I have it memorized and say it to myself every single day to this day. But for years I was under the impression that Jane had died some time in February until just a few years ago when I was researching on the Internet and came across her death certificate.

I was told that Jane, like my great-grandfather, Gen. Frederick Funston, had a wicked sense of humor and loved to pull pranks on her friends and loved one. This seems just as true in death as it was in life because when I looked at Jane’s death certificate I discovered she did not die in February as I had thought, but April 1st, April Fools Day, of all the days. I can’t help but think that not only in life, but also in death Jane pulled a fast one on me.

Today, the day that Easter Sunday and April Fools Day land on the same day, is a day in confluence of the most remarkable stories. Stories of deep yearning, intrepid searching, and, ultimately, of much needed closure.

So it is today that I say the words I was never able to say to my two beloved mothers; I love you. I thank you both for the life you have given me. I thank you both for making me who I am today. Life is good and I look forward to when we can meet again, on the other side, so I can tell you both in person.

On this day, Saturday, March 24th, 2018, a day that students are rising across the nation marching against the NRA, I want to share my thoughts. I am delighted to see our youth step into their power. It is overdue and I have written about this in the past, here. However, I believe there is much more to this story than automatic weapons and the NRA so hear me out. Hear me out before you make a swift judgment regarding my opinion of what is going on with all of these mass shootings.

First of all, if I ever die under suspicious circumstances I hope to God that EVERYBODY questions the official narrative and leave no stone unturned. We behave in this nation like asking deeper questions, pointing out inaccuracies in "official stories", or questioning authority regarding mass slayings is a bad thing. We owe it to the victims of ALL mass shootings (or any shooting or suicide) to ask as many questions as possible Out of Respect.

WE WERE WARNED

Many of you are familiar with US President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address warning the nation of what he viewed as one of its greatest threats; the military-industrial complex composed of military contractors and lobbyists perpetuating war.

As Eisenhower clearly defined, "an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" was an emerging hidden force in US politics and he warned Americans not to "fail to comprehend its grave implications.” Today, Eisenhower’s prophetic words have never been more resounding.

America is in perpetual war(s), 134 warsdepending on your definition, and today that war has come home to roost.

TARGETING AMERICANS

Either through overseas newscasts or through military psy-ops American flag-waving disinformation campaigns were constantly implanted in the minds of global citizens for decades by the U.S. military in conjunction with its corporate media. So refined was this global tentacle that it was invisible to the unwary eye. Not until the publishing of Confessions of an Economic Hit Manor the 1997 Hollywood film, Wag the Dog, did Americans begin to become aware of such hidden war-schemes.

Americans, for the most part, were insulated from this US hegemony mind control scheme being propagated worldwide by the U. S. state department. For decades this psychological warfare, promoted either through media or through terror, always had the same reoccurring theme; America’s might was right – and always justifiable.

It was in 2012, however, when this war-on-the-mind came home to roost; the Smith Mundt Actthat prevented the US government from propagandizing against the American people as it had global citizens was completely dismantled. Hardly an American noticed.

The Smith Mundt Act that explicitly “forbids information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion“ was nullified through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). America’s slick propaganda machine already had the experience, the money, and now with political approval it set its sights on the unsuspecting American public.

INVISIBLE MESSAGING

Today we find this propaganda system’s overarching objective is to render the messaging invisible by universalizing it within the American culture whether through violent video games, sports, Hollywood films/television, or college and high school campus military recruiting. It's ubiquitous within the American culture and is perpetuated without question.

While Americans and its media are quick to point out Russian trolls that influence our Presidential elections nary a word is mentioned about US Military Trolls & burgeoning Crisis Industry in America. Today, every American is pressured to accept some sort of military fettering thanks to either a orchestrated event or manufactured hysteria. To do otherwise is considered un-American and sets one up for perpetual demonization.

To clarify, when I speak about a orchestrated event I’m not saying people don’t die. A scene is either set for deaths to occur or for the Deep State to take advantage of these tragic deaths, particularly scripting, in order to manufacture an emotional response for a political agenda.

In the words of Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

This is not speculation. We clearly saw this in false congressional testimonies by children from Iraq and President Bush’s administration insistence of WMD, justifying an unjustifiable war in Iraq.

This trend and the force behind it was clarified by best selling author, journalist, and former political advisor, Naomi Wolf, who, during a 2016 public appearance, was asked by an audience member to speak to this deceptive industry.