Bob Dunning: One thing we won’t have to worry about anymore

BROCHURE MANIA … got my first “Yes on I” literature a couple of days ago, hand delivered by a very young child who may or may not have been paid for his efforts … in addition to platitudes from all sorts of important people, the clean and simple “postcard” features a hairy hand plunging a see-through glass directly into a stream of tap water …

If you still have the same postcard and don’t mind fetching it, it’s worth a second look … very clearly, there is a cockroach on the very “head” of the faucet, just above where the water comes out … there’s another cockroach on the rim of the glass itself, just to the right of the glass … since the proposed system is not yet in place, I’m guessing that cockroach filtration is one of the main reasons this project is going to cost so much …

BIG, BAD JOHN … John from South Davis writes “Your recent column has some highlights and one glaring inaccuracy.” … something tells me I’m going to hear about the inaccuracy first … “You wrote: ‘Based on the most recent poll results released by the Yes on I campaign, it appears I’m the only person in town who still drinks Davis water from the tap, so “bad taste” is no longer a reason for a new project.’ ” … those are my words indeed, John … I recognize the melody …

Adds John, “I have been drinking Davis tap water ever since I moved in nearly 30 years ago and was told that ‘This is the equivalent of bottled mineral water except it doesn’t have the fizz.’ Pretty tasty is you ask me.” … John, you’d better sit down … if you could only see a photograph of me in 1951 when I had my first sip of Davis water in Miss Decker’s Central School kindergarten classroom and compare it to how I look today after drinking nothing but Davis tap water my entire life, you would see how horribly it ages the human body … shoulda called the Culligan Man when I had the chance …

A PEPPER FOR YOUR THOUGHTS … my friend Sally at ucdavis.edu reports that “The new promotional banner over the western entrance to Whole Foods Davis is a big, bright banner featuring a militant, propaganda-style raised fist grasping a red pepper next to the slogan: ‘Power to the Pepper.’ …

Adds Sally, “This is especially appropriate for a town still recovering from the events of November 2011, don’t you think?” … not to mention the fact that the $30,000-per-person-pepperspray-payoff was recently signed, sealed and delivered … Peter Piper can certainly buy many pecks of pickled peppers with that kind of payola … or as my friend Carlos noted: “That’s a lot of jalapeños.” …

FIRED UP … as winter hit with a vengeance last week, Raymond at sbcglobal.net decided it was time to burn a log or two in the old fireplace … but he’s not happy with the way things are going in this town … “I still contend there is a large segment of the Davis electorate that likes to have a fire in the fireplace (or at least the ‘right’ to do this) a few times each winter.” (see photo above) …

“I get on this wood-burning topic with folks all the time. The problem is, of course, none of these Davis residents are local political activists or operatives. They aren’t the professional City Council meeting audience members. Nor are they the professional weekly letter-writers to The Enterprise. They are homeowners (aka, taxpayers) with hectic lives who have families to raise (rather than local activism to engage in) and, often, employment on the other side of the Causeway or in the East Bay, in a few instances.” …

To “The early bird gets the worm,” we can now add that the night owl who can sit through an entire council meeting might get whatever he wants simply because everyone else has a job …

— Reach Bob Dunning at bdunning@davisenterprise.net