Around Town Around Town (August 24, 2005)

FLYING HIGH . . . The Palo Alto Airport Association will hold its annual Airport Open House next month, despite the event falling on an inauspicious date -- Sept. 11. Ralph Britton, head of the association, said the members discussed moving it from the second Sunday of the month, but ultimately decided to forge ahead. There will be a memorial ceremony during the day, and Britton hopes to get a bagpiper to play "Amazing Grace," the standard funeral hymn for fallen firefighters. Airport Day will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is expected to draw about 4,000 people, Britton said. Public service aircraft such as the Life-Flight helicopter ambulance, and aircraft from the CHP, California Division of Forestry, Forest Service, and Santa Clara County Sheriff will be on display, plus a range of antique aircraft, new airplanes, and homebuilt experimental-category airplanes. A display of birds from the city's Baylands Nature Center will also be featured. One popular activity allows kids aged 10 to 17 to take a ride in an airplane. "Ninety kids took us up on that (last year)," Britton said.

MARCH OF THE MOVIEGOERS... When the overhead lights at the CineArts at Palo Alto Square movie theatre failed to come up at the end of a recent screening of "March of the Penguins," locals, perhaps inspired by the story of survival they had just seen, knew how to maneuver through the pitch blackness. Many intrepid moviegoers whipped out their PDAs and cell phones and illuminated the path to the nearest exit.

LITTLEST INDICATORS . . . Sure, you could use energy prices, unemployment claims, building permits and stock prices as leading economic indicators, but for the real scoop on the financial health of the community, look no further than the tots in your neighborhood. Tots? Yep. According to Margo Dutton, executive director of Palo Alto Community Child Care, preschool enrollments for the fall show an economy that's on the mend. All of the PACCC centers are at capacity, but unlike previous years, when parents had to work full-time to make ends meet, more families are enrolling their tots part-time. That means parents are now able to work at home, hold part-time jobs or even stay at home full time, Dutton said. Her pronouncement: "The economy has certainly come back."

BAAACK TO BOL ... The sheep of Bol Park have returned. In March, a flock of sheep, owned by Brian Null and Julie Dawson, became notorious when the City of Palo Alto announced it might have to enforce a city rule prohibiting such barnyard animals in city parks, due to a neighbor's complaint. Mediators were brought in, but Null and Dawson left town before an agreement with the complaining party was reached. The sheep's' return was announced on Monday via a neighborhood listserv by Barron Park neighbor Bob Moss. "Their presence is sure to delight many and infuriate some," he wrote. The grazing controversy had previously become so hot-and-heavy, the city even set up an e-mail address -- babablacksheep@cityofpaloalto.org -- to take input on the sheep.

JOINING SHEEHAN ... The mother of a Palo Alto body shop manager who was killed in action in Iraq in June 2004 joined Cindy Sheehan's protest outside of President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas last week. Nadia McCaffrey, mother of Army Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey, 34, flew to Texas to join Sheehan, who has gotten national media coverage for her attempt to ask the president why her son died in Iraq. "I want the killing to stop, the killing of American soldiers and the killing of women and children in Iraq," Nadia McCaffrey, who resides in Tracy, told the Tracy Record newspaper last week before she left. "I had to be here. I had to support Cindy and I had to support the mothers," McCaffrey said in an interview with the Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now!" program, McCaffrey said last Friday. "I came because what she started is very important. I think it's going to make history." Patrick McCaffrey had been the manager of the Akins Collision Center on Park Boulevard in Palo Alto, where he had worked for 13 years. He joined the National Guard after Sept. 11, 2001, coworkers said last year. McCaffrey was deployed to Iraq in March 2004 and was killed in an ambush on June 22, 2004. He was posthumously promoted to sergeant.

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