For the 2026 Humane Society of the North Bay calendar, we took our three foster dogs (one of which is going to Muttville later this month) for a photo shoot with firemen here in Vallejo. Today’s photo shoot was with Fire Station 24. Before some of you (you know who you are) get all hot and bothered, the firemen kept their shirts on. Anyway, it was a great experience and I’m glad these foster dogs will help other homeless cats and dogs by the funds raised with the forthcoming calendar. Thank you to Lisa, Mei and others from HSNB who arranged this. For good measure, Mei had the wherewithal to suggest Shea and I pose with the dogs by the kissing booth.
On the way to the fire station we gave our friend Teena a lift to the hairdresser. She wanted to take pictures of the models as we left.
Earlier that morning Shea called them and Snoopy for a photo, and what he got he couldn’t have planned better if he had tried:
As we were celebrating the win of the Vallejo Tobacco Retail license passing here in Vallejo with lots of strength, I was honored with a certificate for the many hours our coalition worked together to get this passed, not to mention the Smokefree Multi-Unit Housing that we passed several years ago.
Hearing that this senior named Bug (I’m calling him Bugsy) with less than perfect behavior was rejected by a rescue/transfer organization specializing in seniors, I decided to foster him from the Humane Society of the North Bay (HSNB dot org). He needed some time in a home environment and I’m expecting Calvin and Hobbes will be adopted soon. Bugsy also has dental problems, arthritis, and a cute uneven underbite. Not only does he resemble an old version of Hobbes, but he also has a spot on his nose and a snout that resembles my late 18.5-year-old Pomchi Timber who died in 2023.
Shea joined me in a celebration of local success in saving lives from tobacco in Oakland. Advocates with our coalition led by LGBTQ Minus Tobacco were instrumental in a new ordinance for smoke-free bar patios there. Hopefully, San Francisco will soon follow so that more lives can be saved from Big Tobacco. Now patrons and staff at bars can safely traverse the open spaces without being subjected to toxic smoke as is the case in restaurants already.
I love the mosaic art in this community center on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland where we gathered.
Most people know that I’m a second-generation Californian and most of my rearing when we were not in NYC, Spain, and Italy was in the East Bay, so the same county as Oakland. Oakland has long been a leading large city in the effort to reduce death by tobacco, even though this is the area we were living in when my father died from his tobacco addiction. He only lived to be 50 years old, as did his mom who also died of tobacco-related illness.
Spending some extended time in the sun today was good to get my mind off the shit show in DC. I was able to use my day off to work on plants and outdoor decor. I know the dogs appreciated the sun and warm outdoor furniture with me.
There’s a lot going on in this video. I was in the garden with the dogs today as we had 65-degree (F) weather in January! I’m proud of this globe I painted, which is on a solar spinner. It survived the fire and was previously located at “ground zero” where the fire reportedly began. Still no explanation except “electrical anomaly.”
Front yard blossoms:
By the way, that is NOT poop that Hobbes is chewing on. It’s pineapple or bark.
I worked on my plants, thinking about what I’ll do with them and the outdoor decor from this rental when I move back home in a few months. I think about the move back all my waking hours at this juncture.
I put together a very utilitarian table out of repurposed, broken parts, which I’m very proud of. I love practical furniture.
The dogs bring me such joy, as does the sun.
Enjoying the warm weather with the dogs and Shea and appreciating what a great man this holiday is in honor of. I’m not watching the travesty in DC and do not want anything to do with people who are normalizing it. I pity this country and rejoice that I can pursue my EU citizenship, even though I’ll stay and still do what I can, more on the local level in the foreseeable future, to make life better even for those innumerable fools who vote against their best interests.
I will actively seek to disconnect from fascists and I will also make it quite clear that they are no longer in my life, especially the ones I’m not related to and have no reason to stay connected to. There are enough toxic people in the world already that I have to deal with, and the political ramifications of their existence and corruption.
Bonnie and Calvin evening wrestle. This is why most people can’t believe Bonnie is completely blind. For those who don’t know, her eyes were surgically removed to reduce pain after she went completely blind in August.
The adoptable Honey Bear had a kissing booth! This princess is going to make some household very happy. Thanks to foster mom and fellow board member Mei for bringing her!
Below are other pictures from a festive night at Vtown Provisions that hopefully raised a lot of money for our non-profit Humane Society of the North Bay!
Pictures taken by our official photographer, America!
Thank you to the Vallejo Waterfront Weekend (a yearly weekend event every October) for their big check to Humane Society of the North Bay. Some of us board members went there to receive it. It took place at Suite Treatments here in Vallejo.
Nelson, the Jack Russell, is Jackie’s dog. She runs the event and owns the venue we were in. Honey Bear, the brown dog, is available for adoption. He came with his foster mom Mei.
We attended my friend Andrea Sorce’s Victory & Swearing In Celebration at the Vallejo Museum with a great crowd looking forward to the many new leaders of this area, including a new county supervisor, new state senator, and several new city councilmembers.
As someone who was featured with my own story in Bay Woof last month, I’ve been very excited to find out more about it, particularly as a board member of several years of one of the Bay Area’s animal shelters. I reviewed January’s issue today only to discover that there is a section called “Mr. Smarty Pants Knows” on dog behavior.
Even if R.U. Steinberg (the author) is a genius, why the hell does there have to be a cartoon depiction of him smoking a PIPE as the logo? Cartoons generally attract youth. What message does that give to readers, and why is it ever appropriate to stick tobacco into the mouth of a “smart person,” especially in 2025? Is cancer smart? This is the kind of normalization and marketing Big Tobacco just LOVES getting for free.
Does Bay Woof not realize how harmful smoke is to our pets?
I urge Bay Woof to reconsider why you are perpetuating smoking tobacco as a positive and “smart” thing to do for someone adopting such a moniker, with an academic cap no less.
I spoke at Vallejo City Council twice last night. One of the times was on the tobacco retailer fee amounts for the recently adopted Tobacco Retail License that my coalition and I worked so hard to get adopted here with youth activists who have the most to lose if we do not do something about the rampant youth tobacco sales in Vallejo which heretofore had no enforcement mechanisms for laws that been on the books for decades to not sell tobacco to minors, for example.
As Councilmember Bregenzer said, it’s sad that we’re already watering down the ordinance. Youth advocates came to City Council begging for help in improving their lives, but instead, the concentration and the bulk of the time spent on this was to benefit tobacco retailers who keep pushing for unlimited restrictions on selling their businesses with the privilege of continuing to sell poison. No attention was paid that next door in Benicia, for example, no such right exists AT ALL, as is often the case with these tobacco retail licenses.
Here is the video with my first comment on tobacco retail license fees:
What I said (almost verbatim) was:
With all the hullabaloo about the number of years to give tobacco sellers transferability to maximize profit on resale, which appears to mean zero consideration in changing business models to sell healthy products that nourish our community rather than poisoning it, I want to point out that the state of California and other progressive jurisdictions are already working on different ways of reducing the suffering caused by tobacco addiction and curtailing the privilege of selling addictive products that kill when used as directed.
Pollution caused by disposable tobacco products, including cigarette filters and disposable vapes, is becoming intolerable to many cities and counties.
Santa Cruz just passed the First-in-the-World Cigarette Filter Ban to mitigate pollution.
Many cities in Massachusetts are forbidding anyone born after [I said probably “before” by mistake] 2004 to purchase tobacco products for their entire lives.
Some cities in California like Burlingame are already not issuing any more tobacco retail licenses PERIOD.
Manhattan Beach and Beverly Hills in southern California completely disallow commercial tobacco sales within their city limits.
Accordingly, a lot of these transferability arguments are moot whether the transfer is in two years or twenty given current trends, despite Big Tobacco coming up with new poisonous products meant to skirt these laws as we enact them.
All the procrastination of reaching the reduced number of tobacco retailers in Vallejo may make a few people profiting off of the pain of our families feel somewhat vindicated, but I don’t know how it helps anyone sleep better at night.
What should always be paramount is the health of our population, especially our children. Every day Big Tobacco finds opportunities to normalize the media portrayal of ingesting carcinogens that have no medicinal or nutritional benefit. Anything they can get away with to prolong addiction and find new customers is delaying the inevitable if empirical evidence and science even matter anymore.
Here is the video with my second comment on tobacco license transferability:
What I said (almost verbatim) was:
While I’m very pleased Vallejo now has a Tobacco Retail License, making it the second city in Solano County to have one, I’m still disappointed that the mandate of at least one yearly check per retailer was not included as per the language of the Public Health Law Center model, particularly when almost all other elements of the model were wholly adopted in Vallejo.
Presuming the TRL will indeed be properly enforced, I once again ask that reporting to the city council be brought at regular intervals. Quarterly reports on how many retailers were checked and how many follow-ups were done on those retailers who did not comply should be an obvious goal here. I would think after all of the time and effort the city council put into the enactment of the ordinance, the progress should be presented for Vallejoans to see and appreciate. As a reminder, the intent of this was to always be revenue neutral, so not just the compliance checks, but the follow-ups should be budgeted when taking into account the fee for tobacco retailers.
If there is any concern as to why the fees are so high to begin with, one only needs to remember that Vallejo was proven to be the jurisdiction with the worst tobacco youth sale rates in the entire Bay Area. That’s literally why we came to the city council with this daunting problem. Even Benicia next door with the TRL they passed in 2019 had the reality of knowing that youth in their city and other nearby cities could easily just come to Vallejo to reliably get tobacco products. Vallejo needs to do everything it can to make sure that this is never the reality again, and like magic some of the blight will diminish. Thank you.
Here is a video of the entire drama on December 30th’s meeting:
