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MARTIN ESPINOZA

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | August 20, 2017, 8:35PM

| Updated 6 hours ago.

Sonoma County residents have been waiting weeks, months and in some cases years for todays solar eclipse the likes of which has not made an American coast-to-coast journey in nearly 100 years but you may not even get to see it, according to the National Weather Service.

Steve Anderson, a forecaster for the Weather Service, said satellite images suggest it may be cloudy this morning during the eclipse. Its expected to start about 9 a.m., peak at 10:15 a.m. and end at 11:30 a.m.

Its not good news, Anderson said. It may clear out a little sooner tomorrow, but if you really want to make sure you see it, you might want to get on Highway 101 and head north to Ukiah or go to far eastern Napa County, like Lake Berryessa.

Anderson said cloud cover is likely to reach up to 2,500 feet. That does not bode well for the Robert Ferguson Observatory, which sits at 1,275 feet in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park. There is Sonoma Mountain at 2,463 feet, which would still leave you short, so that means Mount Hood (2,664 feet) could be your best local bet.

In the cradle of Sonoma, Napa and Lake counties theres Mount Saint Helena at 4,341 feet, while the city of Cobb in Lake County is at 2,631 feet.

Meanwhile, fires in southwestern Oregon have threatened areas close to the 70-mile path of totality in Oregon that offers the most spectacular views of the eclipse, which will completely blot out the sun. Hundreds of residents in Oregon have been asked to evacuate their homes. About 1 million eclipse visitors are expected in the state.

Anderson said about five wildfires in southwest Oregon and northwest California have sent smoke high into the atmosphere, where upper level winds are bringing it to the North Coast. The smoke is too high to smell but its presence is more than visible.

You might get a good sunset out of it, Anderson said. When its that far away, the smoke naturally rises, so when it gets down here its very high.

High temperatures today are expected to be about 80 degrees in Santa Rosa, 86 degrees in Cloverdale and about 65 degrees on the coast with all-day cloud cover.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.

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Clouds expected to hinder eclipse viewing Monday morning - Santa Rosa Press Democrat

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MEG MCCONAHEY

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | August 20, 2017, 7:55PM

| Updated 6 hours ago.

One man late Thursday night sprayed three hateful words on the garage door of a northwest Santa Rosa family.

Sunday afternoon, a clean-up crew of more than 50 people appalled by the display of racism, showed up to wipe away the graffiti and show Fijian immigrants Di and Bentley Chong Wan that one guy with a spray can doesnt speak for them.

Residents of the older subdivision near Coffey Park streamed into the cul-de-sac where the Wans have rented a home for the last year bearing covered dishes, small bouquets of flowers and supportive signs reading, Only Love Prevails Here and Keep Hate out of Santa Rosa.

I am so overwhelmed by the support of my neighbors, said Di Chong Wan, surveying the turnout from a camp chair on the sidewalk. Something good always comes out of small bad things. Love overrides everything.

Helen Tucker, who lives a few streets over, had walked past Di Wan in Coffey Park Saturday and approached her after noticing shed been crying.

If it happens somewhere else its hard to do anything about it. But I can do this and it feels really good, said Tucker, who has lived in the neighborhood for 25 years. For the potluck she looked up Fijian recipes and made a traditional banana cake.

Di Wans husband Bentley, 50, said it hit him like a brick wall when he came home Friday morning after working all night both he and his wife are in-home caregivers to discover someone had scrawled I hate n.....s in large black letters on his garage door.

It shocked us. Weve seen stories like this in the news and now its happening to us, he said. I didnt know what I should do, or if I should do anything at all. I brushed it off a little bit. But finally it dawned on me that this is unacceptable.

One of the Wans five sons who was home at the time, spotted the hate tag and called Santa Rosa Police.

The Wans have a small security camera outside their home and captured footage of the perpetrator, which they gave to police. In the meantime, Bentley Wan decided to take matters into his own hands. He said he determined that the vandal was a 28-year-old man who had been visiting the son of a neighbor.

The Wans tracked down the man, who does not live in the neighborhood, and invited him to come over and talk. He showed up Saturday night, Bentley Wan said, and spent about 90 minutes talking with his family. He told them he lashed out after he found his car, parked near the Wan home, vandalized. He wound up apologizing.

The Wans declined to identify the man.

I was trying to understand why he did it, said Bentley Wan, who was a teacher of math and economics in Fiji. Was he coerced? What did he mean? I concluded he was just a young, drunken man who was mad and wanted to vent his anger and frustration. I dont know why he chose the word he did.

Santa Rosa police said the incident is under investigation. They were unaware the Wans had identified and met with the perpetrator.

Sgt. Marcus Sprague, who supervises the property crimes unit, said Sunday the recording submitted by the Wans lacked sufficient quality to make a positive identification. He said the case remains under investigation and detectives today will interview potential witnesses and review the tape and see if there is anything else we can do.

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Ultimately, it will be up to the Wans to press charges if a suspect is identified, he said.

Sprague said there is no apparent rash of hate graffiti in the Wans neighborhood.

Graffiti is typically a misdemeanor. But it can rise to a felony if there is a suspicion that it is related to a hate crime, Sprague said.

The Wans immigrated from Fiji eight years ago and chose to settle in Santa Rosa at the urging of friends.

They told me the weather is beautiful, Bentley Wan said. The people are beautiful. It has all the comforts of the city but it doesnt feel like a big city. Its homey. I came here and found its the absolute truth.

Despite the words left on his garage, his faith in community remains unshaken thanks to the support from acquaintances and complete strangers.

Thank you. The only word that comes to mind is that were overwhelmed by your love and care, he told the gathering, after several took up rags and solvent and wiped off the words in a display of solidarity. Since it was discovered Friday, the graffiti was concealed behind a banner hung by neighbor Pamela Van Halsema. A teacher and librarian at Kenilworth Junior High, she organized the block party believing there is safety in numbers and if people know one another, they will be more likely to support each other.

Van Helsema said she has long worried about a rising and vocal hate rhetoric in the country that came to a head at a white nationalists rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Aug. 12. The gathering turned violent, leaving one counter-protester dead and 34 people injured. Two Virginia State Police officers in a helicopter monitoring the rally also died when it crashed.

Van Helsema printed out flyers and knocked on doors around the neighborhood. The reaction was mixed.

I had one person say, Well, maybe somebody doesnt like them. And another literally cried when I told them what happened, she said.

She has attended several meetings of Santa Rosa Standing Together, a grass roots group aimed at breaking community social and racial barriers. She learned the first step to understanding is getting to know one another. Bringing people together in her own neighborhood seemed to a good place to start.

Sharing a meal together is one of the best levelers in the whole world. Often what you bring reflects a little bit of who you are, said Van Helsema, whose two daughters saw the graffiti Friday morning while walking the dog. Daughter Talia Mulder, 17, knocked on the Wans door and offered to paint their garage.

Betsy Sanville, a nurse from Forestville, brought several heart signs on stakes saying Love Lives Here and Be Kind to place in the Wans yard. Di Wan is a caregiver for her 91-year-old mother.

Shes just a big-hearted and warm-hearted woman who makes my mom feel safe and brings lightness to her home with a sense of humor and tender loving care, she said.

Im surprised how sad this makes me feel. And some of that is not knowing what to do about it, not knowing how I can make the most difference to change peoples thoughts.

Bentley Wan said he doesnt feel like pressing charges. That, he said, would smear the mans name.

The last thing we want is for him to lose his job or be destroyed, Bentley Wan said. That would destroy what this whole process is trying to restore. I was taught not to bear a grudge and not to carry hatred. You cant live your life carrying excess baggage. It will just slow you down.

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @megmcconahey.

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Mondays Letters to the Editor

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A Santa Rosa neighborhood's love wipes out hate - Santa Rosa Press Democrat

John Delaney says hes a different kind of Democrat.

I work to pursue goals that I think the Democratic Party shares broadly, but I think about how you do that differently, Delaney says.

Delaney is a member of Congress from Maryland and the first officially declared Democratic candidate for president in 2020.

It bears reminding that the 2020 presidential election is more than three years away, and even Iowas first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses are roughly 2 years off.

Yet here was Delaney, making his way around the 2017 Iowa State Fair this past week, holding multiple media interviews and meeting with people interested in his campaign over the span of a couple of days in Des Moines.

The 54-year-old Delaney said he is not a typical Democrat because he believes the best government work is done when both major political parties work together, and that he has a different view on economic issues because of his experience as an entrepreneur.

Assuming he stays in the race for the long haul --- during the interview he assured he would --- Delaney will be among what almost assuredly will be a large crowd of Democratic candidates. (CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza recently estimated more than 20 possibilities --- and that list did not include Delaney.) So Delaney will need a message that differentiates himself from the crowd.

A key element of Delaneys message is that he thinks federal officials are, as he said it, having the wrong conversation. He said too much political debate is about re-litigating battles of the past, and not enough about looking toward the future.

And a critical piece of that forward-looking debate, Delaney said, is technology and the disruption it will have on the global workforce.

Technology, automation, global interconnections, these are changing everything, Delaney said. These things are going to have profound effects over the next 20 or 30 years, and theyre going to create large-scale opportunities and challenges, and were doing nothing to prepare our country and our citizens.

Delaney said the federal government should be doing more to prepare for those profound effects by creating a more competitive and entrepreneurial business climate, creating a better educated and more well-trained workforce, investing in communities, and make smarter investments of government resources to create a healthier budget and environment.

That, to me, is a blueprint for the future, Delaney said.

Delaney founded two companies: a finance company for health care providers and a commercial lender. Both went public within three years of their founding, according to Delaneys biography.

He was first elected to Congress in 2012 and serves on the financial services committee.

Delaney said his business background gives him a different economic perspective that is different that some Democrats, that he does not view the private sector as the enemy.

And that message, Delaney said, is what will help Democrats regain voters they lost in 2016 --- including in Iowa, which went twice for former President Barack Obama but flipped for Trump.

I dont think its the policy goals of the Democratic Party are wrong. But I definitely think that we are not talking to people about what they care most about. We tend to talk to people about what we care most about. And those are very different things, Delaney said.

Obviously what most people care about is their job and the economy in their local community. Because really at the end of the day everything flows from that: a persons sense of dignity, their ability to raise a family, their ability to support their kids, the ability to make sure the community has the resources it needs so its vital and vibrant. And Democrats arent talking enough about that.

As for his early entry into the race, Delaney said part of the reason is his desire to be straight with voters, who he thinks are tired of all the b.s. in politics.

We all know there are a lot of people running for president right now, Delaney said. Theyre just not saying it.

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A 'different' Democrat comes to Iowa - Sioux City Journal

(1 of ) A tree explodes into flames as the wind whips up the southern front of a wildfire as it burns near Sisters, Ore., Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. (Andy Tullis /The Bulletin via AP) (2 of ) A wildfire burns just outside of Sister, Ore., Friday Aug. 18, 2017. (Chris Pietsch/The Register-Guard via AP)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ASSOCIATED PRESS | August 19, 2017, 2:37PM

| Updated 3 hours ago.

SISTERS, Oregon Evacuation orders affecting hundreds of people were issued in California and Oregon as wildfires neared small towns, including one thats a prime location for viewing the eclipse.

About 600 residents were told to leave the tourist town of Sisters, Oregon, and authorities said Saturday another 1,000 people had been told to be ready to leave if necessary.

Sisters is located on the edge of a 70-mile swath of the state where the moon will completely blot out the sun.

No structures had been lost and no injuries have been reported since the fire began last week. The cause is under investigation.

Crews were expecting a tough day Saturday with winds gusting to more than 20 mph.

On Monday, they will have to contend with the solar eclipse that fire officials say will ground all firefighting helicopters and most fixed-wing aircraft for about 35 minutes as the moons shadow passes over the area.

Shopkeepers were hoping the fire would not inhibit business as tourists arrive to watch the eclipse.

If you look up at the sky its not an orange cloud anymore, said Andrew Bourgerie, co-owner of Sisters Bakery. So its simmering down a little bit.

Some campsites and recreational areas were shut down due to the 12-square-mile wildfire in Deschutes National Forest that jumped fire lines Friday.

Officials say the blaze is producing heavy smoke while burning in forests at higher elevations and sagebrush in lower areas.

We have a few days before the eclipse to see if the smoke is in the area, fire spokeswoman Lisa Clark said.

Officials said only aircraft with instruments allowing them to fly at night can fight the fire during the eclipse. Clark said that eliminates the bulk of the firefighting fleet, though large airtankers will be able to fly.

In California, authorities issued an evacuation order for the small town of Wawona as a week-old fire in Yosemite National Park grew and air quality reached a hazardous level.

The U.S. Forest Service said the fire grew to more than 4 square miles overnight due to winds from thunderstorms. Authorities ordered people to leave as air quality was expected to worsen.

Wawona, with a population of 1,000 to 2,000 people at any given time, is less than 2 miles from the fire. The evacuation order included the historic Big Trees Lodge, formerly known as the Wawona Hotel.

The fire has closed campgrounds and trails in the national park since it began a week ago. It was 10 percent contained.

In Montana, 155 National Guard troops arrived to monitor about three dozen security checkpoints in an area south of Missoula that was evacuated due to a fire that flared up after burning since at least July 15.

The fire destroyed two homes and several outbuildings Thursday. It burned an additional 14 square miles Friday and has charred an estimated 44 square miles of wooded, mountainous terrain west of Lolo.

The troops will relieve law enforcement officers so they can return to other duties.

The Missoulian reported that heavy smoke has settled into valleys and officials warned of poor air quality

Idahos two largest wildfires were burning mostly in wilderness areas.

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Wildfire nears Oregon eclipse-viewing spot; hundreds evacuated - Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Mary Clarkin

Kansas House Minority Leader Jim Ward, D-Wichita, jumped into the pool of candidates running for governor by announcing his candidacySaturday morning in Wichita.

Ward joins a Democratic Party lineup that includes former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer; former Kansas Agriculture Secretary Joshua Svaty, Ellsworth; Olathe physician Arden Andersen; and Wichita high school student Jack Bergeson. The Republican primary has drawn an even larger field.

Speaking prior to the announcement, Ward said the decision by Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, to run for the congressional seat in the 3rd District was one factor in his decision to run for governor. Davis is a previous House minority leader who ran but lost to Republican Gov. Sam Brownback in 2014. Davis had been mentioned as a possible candidate in the 2018 gubernatorial race.

I did my due diligence, Ward said, as he weighed the race. That included surmising the field of candidates and talking to every Democrat in the House. There are 40 Democrats in the 125-seat House.

Ward, 59, will run on a platform advocating fiscal responsibility, tax fairness, strong schools, public safety and investment in roads and infrastructure. He has prior experience as a prosecuting attorney in Sedgwick County, and he opened his private practice in 1990.

He entered the House in 2003 and was elected House minority leader for a two-year term that began in 2017. He will continue in that role next year. He will not be the only member of the Legislature running for state office or Congress next year. Ward thinks that works in his favor.

I think theyre looking for a problem-solver, Ward said of voters. They will gain insight about candidates from their job performance, in his opinion.

Ward wont be able to run for governor and another term in the Kansas Housesimultaneously, so his jump to the governors race creates an opening in the 86th House District in the 2018 election. It also means House Democrats will choose a new leader following the 2018 election.

Rep. Jason Probst, D-Hutchinson, was chosen in June to fill the seat held by the late Rep. Patsy Terrell, D-Hutchinson, andProbst said Ward has been helpful as he learns about the new job. Probst said he knows Ward better than the other Democrats running for governor, but hehasnt felt pressureto endorse a candidate.

Probst said he also hasnt thought much about the topic of endorsing a gubernatorial candidate.He said hes spent most of his time trying to figure out how to do this and what the district needs from him.

University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis said Ward is not going to get a better year than 2018 to run for governor. He gets to run against the Brownback record and against President Trumps record, Loomis said.

I certainly think if youre Jim Ward, you look around and Carl Brewer is certainly not nothing as a candidate at all, but I dont see that theres a lot of energy there, Loomis said. And youve got Josh Svaty who is pro-life and also is not especially well-known, Loomis said.

Ward also has the example of Davis, who ran a competitive campaign against Brownback in 2014.

More Democratic votes are in the four northeast Kansas counties of Johnson, Wyandotte, Douglas and Shawnee than anywhere in the state, Loomis said. If I was any of these candidates, Loomis said, I would work like an absolute dog in those counties.

Loomis did not regard Wards entry into the race as too late. A big question will be which of the candidates can raise serious money to run against the Republican nominee in fall 2018, he said.

Ward made his announcement at a labor union headquarters, and Loomis said which candidate gets labors support also will be important.

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Democrat Ward launches bid for governor - The Hutchinson News