North County’s ring of fire left islands of moonscapes behind this Memorial Day weekend, but roses and raspberries can show up anywhere.
A rose — the Golden Touch award — to the Golden Door Foundation for donating $75,000
to Forensic Health Services in Escondido, the only 24-hour center in North County where sympathetic professionals interview — and collect critical evidence from — child-abuse victims as well as adult rape victims, one of the hardest human tasks imaginable.
This rose is not for the amount of money, though it’s considerable. It’s for the resonant connection.
The existence of the center, a crucial nonprofit partner of law enforcement that opened some 28 years ago, was threatened late last year when Palomar Health withdrew its financial support. Soon thereafter, the Golden Door opened communications.
Thanks to an outpouring of support, notably Supervisor Dave Roberts and many others, Forensic Health Services did not shut its doors. The Golden Door, however, bided its time.
The elite luxury spa north of Escondido, purchased in late 2012 by billionaire William Conway and wife Joanne Conway (a frequent Door guest), might seem an ironic benefactor for victims of unspeakable crimes. But if you look behind the Golden Door, it’s an intuitive union.
Initiated in 2013, the Golden Door Foundation expresses its mission this way: “We believe in changing lives. We believe that responsibility extends beyond our walls. As a show of support to those involved in making the world a more loving, more humane and more peaceful place, we have pledged 100 percent of our net profits from the Resort to select charities in support of their missions.”
Sounds an awful lot like someone North County knows well.
The Golden Door owes its mind/body DNA to Deborah Szekely, the resort’s founder and a
philanthropist with a strong-willed social conscience.
The foundation’s commitment to the Forensic Health Services is right out of Szekely’s playbook.
Most of us will never pass through the Door’s golden gates for a week of physical and psychic perfection worth many thousands of dollars to people, mostly women, of great means. Then again, most of us will never have children or adult loved ones who will pass through the doors of the Forensic Health Services, a physical and psychic sanctuary for the grievously wounded.
But each of these North County institutions in their way affirms the profound value of the other, one hopes for a long, long time.
A retroactive raspberry — the Skunky Elephant in the Room award — to the Encinitas City Council for unanimously voting in December to allow Mayor Teresa Barth and Councilwoman Kristin Gaspar to share mayoral duties for 2014 without a clear understanding of what the vote meant.
In retrospect, it was a feel-good prescription for partisan absurdity that’s coming home to roost this week.
As Gaspar said at the time, the pachyderm in the chambers was the 2014 election and the belief, justified or not, that whoever enjoyed the title of “mayor” would have an advantage over the field in the city’s first mayoral election.
At the meeting, both Gaspar and Barth said they were undecided if they would run. Barth has since said she’s had enough of office; Gaspar says she remains undecided whether to run for a council seat or try to become the city’s first elected mayor.
Which brings us to Councilman Tony Kranz, a likely mayoral candidate on the liberal side of the city’s political divide. In a move obviously pointed at Gaspar, he’s saying he will swear off the deputy mayor title as a gesture of good faith. If he runs, it will be as a humble “councilman.”
Gaspar, unmoved by his grandstand, believes it’s her turn to be mayor and she wants that promised gavel.
It appears all but certain that Kranz, Barth and Councilwoman Lisa Shaffer will vote Wednesday to strip Gaspar of her title unless she promises not to run for mayor.
No doubt the council majority will cite some muddled pre-vote December conversation — Barth at one point turned to the audience and apologized for the “warts” — but bottom line there was no clear statement in the final motion that Gaspar, who offered to take the first half of the year if Barth preferred, would be disqualified to be the appointed mayor in June if she became a candidate for mayor in the November election.
Gaspar had an expectation that she’d be mayor and now that she’s on the verge of that promised honor, the majority is afraid she’ll use it to her advantage. Her response? “A deal is a deal.”
To take the gavel away from Gaspar and keep Barth on as mayor for the rest of the year will be yet another goofy rendition of what former Encinitas Mayor Jim Bond used to call the annual (or in this case semiannual) “skunk dance.”
Happily, come November, voters will be in charge of the odorous hoedown.
A rose — the Salt on the Earth award — to all those culturally literate readers who were quick to point out that the dropping of saltwater on wildfires, which I touted in a recent column, would have a devastating effect on the land.
Didn’t I remember Carthage? several asked. Who could forget the Third Punic War and the legend of the victorious Romans sowing the land with salt to render it infertile?
Using saltwater to fight fires would have the same effect on North County, I was told by several earth stewards.
As comparisons go, I do think this is salt and pepper. Dropping ocean water into a raging fire that’s destroying everything in its wake is a far cry from plowing rock
salt deep into the ground. The chemical interactions, and the long-term effect, are just very different.
But I have to shake some props on the fiery debate.
Readers like these are the salt of my earth.
logan.jenkins@utsandiego.com
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