It Takes Just One Word to Tick Off the Governor

What was intended as the briefest press conference on record wasn’t.

Gov. Gray Davis had summoned Capitol reporters to hear him read a statement about the state’s effort to rank schools statewide. But no questions afterward, he warned.

He capped off the reading of the statement with the remark that this was the shortest news conference he had ever held, and he began to walk off.

But then he agreed to take one question. He answered it. A second reporter chimed in. Again, Davis answered. Emboldened, a third reporter attempted to get in a question but made the fatal mistake of prefacing it by quoting Delaine Eastin, the superintendent of public instruction.

A hush fell over the crowd. Davis muttered something about how he knew he shouldn’t have taken questions, and walked out of the room, cocooned by his aides.

The name “Eastin” hasn’t fallen fair on Davis’ ears since Eastin appeared in TV ads for Davis rival Al Checchi during the 1998 gubernatorial primary. (Earlier that day, Eastin had said that several of Davis’ education proposals might help improve poorly performing schools.)

And you thought it was the Republican elephant that has the long memory.

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An undone deal Nearly 150 years after it was done out of the honor of being the state capital, the city of Benicia gets to be the star on California’s map--for a day.

Legislators will convene Feb. 16 in the old restored state Capitol building, built in the early 1850s. Legislators had convened there in 1853 and 1854, but Sacramento wanted to be the capital of California. So in 1854, 300 Sacramentans descended on the city ahead of legislators, and rented all the hotel rooms.

The elected elite, forced to sleep in saloons and stables, decided to look elsewhere for capital quarters, and settled on Sacramento.

Benicia, between Sacramento and San Francisco, was the third testing ground for a capital for the new state; legislators first met in San Jose in 1850 and 1851, then tried out Vallejo for a couple of years, then migrated to Benicia before being stampeded to Sacramento, where such shenanigans remain mother’s milk.

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Sending pike packing Buried in a news release deadeningly entitled “Local Steering Committee and DFG Release Recommendations to Manage Northern Pike at Lake Davis” is an explosive suggestion.

Really.

The invasive fish species was dumped into the lake in 1991 and, like so many invasive species, has bullied native species, like the profitable salmon and steelhead trout, into a parlous state.

They’ve tried barriers, they’ve tried chemicals, they’ve tried something called “electrofishing,” and none was completely effective. Now the committee and the state fish and game folks are recommending other remedies to keep the pike in check: fighting fish with fish (stocking predator brown trout to take on the pike), special nets to confine pike so they have to eat one another, electrical barriers and detonation cord.

“Detonation cord is the most effective tool readily available to kill large numbers of Northern pike,” the report said. The concussion kills fish in about a 20-foot radius, and would be used only in spots where the pike like to hang.

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One-offs Eureka is both the state motto and the model of the vacuum cleaner that a Fremont market owner waved menacingly--menacingly enough to scare off two armed robbers wearing ski masks. . . . A Camarillo man who chewed sunflower seeds to quit smoking lost his fight against a $271 littering ticket after he was caught spitting the seeds out the window of his car--and onto the windshield of the car of a CHP officer, who said the only things Californians can legally toss out a car window are clear water and live-chicken feathers. . . . Bank of America has given up its “Adopt an ATM” program urging employees to tidy up ATM sites on their own time. . . . Breast cancer awareness posters have been removed from Bay Area walls because the images of women with mastectomy scars were considered provocative.

EXIT LINE

“I don’t know how he does it. He can’t even remember to bring home a loaf of bread from the supermarket.”

--Leah Koltanowski, speaking a few years ago of her husband, George, a chess grandmaster and virtuoso who wrote more than 19,000 chess columns over 52 years for the San Francisco Chronicle. He died last week at age 96.

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Gettin’ Hitched

Here, in line for Valentine’s Day, are the numbers of marriages in California in the last 10 years. After decline in the early 1990s, the institution began to revive in 1996 and 1997, the latest year for which statistics are available.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics

Researched by TRACY THOMAS, Los Angeles Times California Dateline appears every other Tuesday.