Sunday, December 5, 2004
By CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
My top two reasons for wishing success to the doctor-assisted death bill Assemblywoman Patty Berg is working on are different from Berg's two.
She wants to win the right for terminally ill Californians to legally and humanely end their lives because she watched her husband die after a stroke 17 years ago, and today her independent-minded mother is 90 and slowly losing herself to disease.
Berg doesn't know if her husband would have chosen a hastened death, or if her mom would. But she thinks the option should be available.
I agree because of two powerful and restless women, Carolyn Lund and Esther Long.
Carolyn was a PD reporter who retired to Oregon, the one state with an M.D.-assisted death law. When she decided she'd had enough of an incurable cancer, her doctor helped her with a dignified death.
Esther, my go-getter aunt, lived in California when she decided she would waste away no more from cancer. Unable to ask her doctor's assistance and not savvy about how best to end her life, she resorted to gasoline and a match.
Most people with a terminal illness will ride it out. Since Oregon passed its law seven years ago, fewer than 200 dying patients have asked their doctors to quicken the end. It's an option you and I might never choose, but one that should be there.
IT'S NOT GREAT ART, but behind the oil painting that goes up today in the lobby of the Sonoma County Museum is a good tale.
The piece is an 1896 rendering of the stately, plantation-style Sonoma County Hospital, predecessor to Community Hospital and the Sutter Medical Center. (For a peek, go to www.sonomacountyhistory.org.)
Found recently in the basement at Sutter, the painting is signed by one Eugene Perrot, an undertalented artist who labored as a landscaper in Santa Rosa while awaiting the big break that never came.
Members of the Historical Society have good reason to suspect that Perrot painted it for longtime county physician Melville Shearer: the man in the buggy in the foreground looks to be Doc Shearer.
If Perrot hoped the painting would kick-start his career, he was disappointed. In 1919, he died a pauper's death -- at the Sonoma County Hospital.
Historical Society members think this painting is worth the effort they're going to to raise enough money to frame and restore it.
HARDLY ANY JUNKIES have applied for the director-level job advertised by Sonoma County's Community Child Care Council, though the want ad in the PD referred to the salary as DOPE.
It was supposed to say DOE, which stands for Depends on Experience. There was no charge for the P.
INTO THE BOX: Allan Hardcastle, Sonoma County's presiding Superior Court judge, is off the bench these days and unable to tend to his weekly task of scolding or fining people who shirk jury duty.
Hardcastle received a summons himself, and what could he do? The defendant in a current drug-pushing case has a judge on his jury.
YOU SAY TOMAHTO: Since mentioning that the 115-year-old greenhouse at Luther Burbank's Home & Gardens soon will be dismantled piece-by-piece because of decay to the redwood mullions around the panes of glass, I've heard from woodworkers.
They said the wooden pieces between panes are not mullions, they are muntins. They are most certainly correct.
But the architectural preservation firm doing the work calls them mullions, and the Burbank Home staffers call them mullions. I'm inclined to do the same, because it is a sillier word than muntin.
Contact Chris Smith at 521-5211 or csmith@pressdemocrat.com.
# # #