Cremation Law Scatters Fine Line Over Lake Tahoe

A new state law legalizes a practice Californians have committed in unwitting lawlessness for years--scattering cremated ashes over the countryside. Still, certain venues are off-limits, among them lakes and streams. This makes the meticulous art of map-reading especially important at South Lake Tahoe: While California law prohibits scattering ashes in the lake, Nevadans are allowed to scatter ashes over any public waterway.

Both Nevada and California allow for scattering ashes on private property with the property owner’s written consent; Californians must also secure a permit for ashes dispersed on public land.

But the bi-state agency that governs Lake Tahoe on Monday was considering limits on water scooters and big motorboats. It evidently acknowledges a lot bigger pollution threat to the purity of lake water than a few cremated remains.

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On the bus: First Jerry Brown, governor of the 1970s, returned to politics as Oakland’s mayor. Now the Black Panthers, ungovernable force of the 1960s, are back in Oakland with the Turbulence Tour.

Thirty years after the Panthers made Oakland a staging ground for facing down police excesses, David Hilliard, once the Panthers’ chief of staff, now seeks power within the system as a City Council candidate. And he directs a Black Panther Legacy bus tour.

Among the stops on one recent tour, as Panther co-founder Bobby Seale shared the Ciceronian microphone with Hilliard, were:

* The intersection where the Panthers demanded a traffic signal for kids crossing the street and set up armed patrols when the city was slow to comply.

* The corner where, in April 1968, Little Bobby Hutton was shot and killed by police in a running gun battle.

* The sidewalk where Huey Newton was killed in 1989--not by police, but by a drug dealer.

Not on the tour: the California Assembly, where, in 1967, armed Panthers marched in to protest proposed restrictions on carrying guns; so formidable was their presence, it was rumored, that there wasn’t a dry seat in the house.

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Below the title: The ultimate accolade or insult to any event is being reduced to a movie, and the San Francisco-based progressive magazine Mother Jones asked readers of its online service to suggest film titles for the impeachment saga. From hundreds of submissions, it chose several winners, among them: “The Lyin’ King” . . . “Saving Private Lyin’ ” . . . “The Big Lewinsky.” A loser: “Executive Emission.”

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Lucky No. 13

1998 marked the 13th anniversary of the California Lottery. Cumulative sales through last September 30 were nearly $27 billion, more than $10 billion of which has gone to supplement educational instruction in the public schools. Here are the Lottery revenues dispersed to California’s public schools each year since 1985:

Revenue to public education in millions

‘85-86: $693 Million (Scratcher games only.)

‘88-89: $1.03 Billion

‘98-99: $216 Million (first quarter only)

Source: Public Affairs Office, California State Lottery, Sacramento.

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times

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One-Offs: Four months after an Earth First! tree-sitter was killed by a falling tree in Carlotta, another man protesting logging by taking up residence in an old-growth tree fell nearly 100 feet, breaking his pelvis. . . . A Fremont chemistry PhD and lab supervisor has designed “Infection,” a public-health board game whose players roll dice to move on a board marked with contagion, and draw disease cards from the sniffles to bubonic plague; players lose when they “die”. . . . A man investigators call a peeping Tom was arrested for spying on a sexual assault investigator in the women’s bathroom of the Santa Cruz County government center, across the hall from the sheriff’s office.

EXIT LINE

“If we had known, we would have been down there screaming.”

--Redding resident Garrett Glazner, protesting city approval of a dentist’s proposal to change the name of his 2 1/2-block, dead-end portion of Parkview Avenue to “Smile Place.” Dentist Dennis Mihalka, who will pay the $246 cost of the two new street signs, says the stub of street is out of line with its continuation on the other side of the Sacramento River, and that gets his patients confused and lost. Quoted in the Redding Record Searchlight.

California Dateline appears every other Tuesday.