A bouquet – the Gimme Shelter (and Equal Responsibility) award – to Escondido Councilman Sam Abed for making good on his promise to seek a regional solution to the homeless shelter crisis that bedevils North County each winter.
Last year, the Escondido council came off like skinflint Scrooges, refusing to allow the Salvation Army to offer temporary housing for the area's cold and helpless. We're carrying too much of the load, Escondido complained.
Abed turned out to be the poet laureate of Escondido's fear and hurt.
“We are sick and tired of making Escondido a sanctuary city for homelessness, for illegal immigration, for poverty, for low-income housing, for crime, for gangs. This city needs to survive.”
From that self-pitying low point, Abed rebounded strongly, cheerleading a system, administered by a coalition of 30 nonprofit agencies, in which North County's nine cities would contribute their fair share for five shelters providing a total of 199 beds over 121 nights.
The problem is larger, of course, than the planned cure. The rough estimate is that 3,000 people live homeless in North County.
Still, Abed has kick-started a necessary regional response to widespread human misery.
The motive may have been to repair the political damage, or assuage the guilt, from a heartless vote, but the result, thanks to Abed's mending effort, is praiseworthy.
A bouquet – the Charming Snakes award – to Dick Robertson, MiraCosta's acting president, for an acute (and cute) sense of irony during the discussion of whether the governing board's dais had room for a representative of the college's part-time teachers.
“It will be cozy,” Robertson said of the crowded prospect, “but we all like each other.”
Yes, and in Baghdad the Shiites and the Sunnis are strolling arm and arm on the banks of the Tigris.
Ultimately, the board voted to study making room for one more representative, though Robertson volunteered that he, once an interim president is hired and Robertson returns to his job as vice president, could join the audience.
Despite Robertson's good-natured twit, the main business of the meeting reaffirmed the entrenched hostility within the board.
A request for an audit of the financial damage from the Palmgate scandal was defeated 4-3 amid the usual venomous hissing.
A brick – the Gay-Bashing Wave award – to the chorus of blogging critics jeering like homophobic hard hats at the Cardiff-by-the-Sea surfing statue, which will be unveiled tomorrow morning at Chesterfield Drive and Highway 101.
Sure, the sculpture of a slight boy learning a very difficult sport does not reinforce the stereotype of the super-macho waterman.
But spare us the leering references to Speedos.
Mythic romanticism wasn't the intention of artist Matthew Antichevich, a Hemet resident who's surfed the local reef.
The important thing is that Cardiff residents raised most of the money for the public art – and they appear to love the sweetly unpretentious design.
A bouquet – the Pumping Up the Dollar award – to Bill Mitrovich and Bruce Leonard, two mountain bikers whose faith in the inherent strength of American currency was rewarded recently.
While mountain-biking seven miles into the Peñasquitos Canyon, Mitrovich blew out one of his tubes as well as the tire. Stuck without a spare tire, Mitrovich, a retired teacher, was resigned to carrying his bike back to his car.
But Leonard, Mitrovich's riding companion, had an old biker's trick up the sleeve of his jersey.
“We'll see how strong the dollar is,” he said.
Leonard asked Mitrovich if he had any money. Mitrovich produced two dollar bills, which the men crisscrossed between the tube and the blown-out tire. Sure enough, after carefully blowing up the spare tube, the legal tender held up for the rest of the ride.
The dollar may be weak abroad, Mitrovich told me, but “it's strong at home.”
A bouquet – the Firefighter Francis of Assisi award – to Encinitas Chief Mark Muir for his inexpensive addition to the standard equipment of every front-line firefighting vehicle – oxygen masks custom-designed for small and large dogs as well as cats.
About a month ago, Muir received an e-mail from a resident suggesting that the chief look into the lifesaving gear, which he did. (Most fire departments try to use human-sized when the need arises for animals.)
Muir's department is by no means the first in the nation or the region to carry pet masks, but he's at the front of a curve that could save the lives of precious family members from smoke inhalation.
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.
