Friday Fish Fry: Jim Provenza, Blue Devils, a tax raffle and a stunning home tour
Fall is in bloom all over our beautiful home town
JIM PROVENZA - A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS ... After serving 16 years - four full terms - on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, and serving the public in a variety of roles over the last 40 years, Jim Provenza is officially stepping down.
His advocacy and his passion for making all of our lives better were legendary. Sure, some folks disagreed with his "causes," but no one could question his motivation.
In a time where self-promotion seems to be the order of the day, Jim was content to simply put his nose to the ground and see what he could accomplish, without fanfare or patting himself on the back.
In his time working with the California Legislature, Jim wrote California's hate crime law, led investigations into conditions at California's prisons, led efforts to combat gang violence, sexual assault and child and elder abuse, and tightened environmental protections.
Throughout his professional life, whether on the Board of Supervisors or directing Legal Aid in Santa Barbara County or working with the legislature, Jim has been a stalwart for equity and justice and inclusion and the inherent dignity in every one of us.
No project was too big or too small, from tackling global warming to making sure that migrant centers in Madison and Davis had air conditioning so that those among us who work in 100-degree heat could have some relief when they came home from a hard day's work.
If only all of our "representatives" in government had Jim's outlook and backbone and strong advocacy, what a better world this would be.
If you look in an unabridged dictionary under the words "Public Servant," you'll no doubt see Jim's name and smiling face.
To borrow a phrase from the Good Book, well done good and faithful servant.
HATS OFF TO THE BLUE DEVILS ... Those who follow prep sports know that Davis High School has just completed an incredibly difficult season on the football field.
Winning, it seems, is a lot more fun than losing. I suppose as long as there's a scoreboard at the end of the field, a team's win-loss record will be how it is judged.
A better standard would be to look inside this season and see how the kids on the so-called "losing" side of so many games stuck together even as the losses continued to mount.
There was no quit in these kids, who regularly learned much more about the agony of defeat than the thrill of victory.
There are, of course, celebrated high schools where an athlete can play four full years and never lose a game, but I'm not sure what life lessons are being learned on such a team.
I guarantee that in five years or 10 years or 50 years from now when the players from the 2024 Blue Devil football team gather to remember the good old days, they indeed will remember their time together fondly and every player will be thankful that things unfolded exactly as they did.
These kids will be teammates for life who learned many valuable lessons together, on and off the field of play.
And that's an amazingly good thing.
We should be proud of the guts and the grit and the pride they all showed together under the lights on Friday nights.
