Off Beat: Harmony Health is bright spot for Yuba

If you've paid any attention to media coverage of Yuba County, you know it seems to follow a certain pattern.

The county's poor. The people who live there are really poor. It's a woebegone area. There is no hope.

So it wasn't surprising earlier this month when the California Health Report took a whack at Yuba County.

The story started this way: "Just north of Sacramento, Yuba County is home to crushing poverty, homelessness and hunger. It also has some of the poorest health outcomes in the state, ranking 52nd out of 58 counties in the state's 2011 County Health Status Profiles; it ranks the worst in deaths from lung cancer."

Well, there you go again. Another typical story about Yuba County.

No hope. No luck. No chance.

But it was quite jolting when the next paragraph took this turn: "So it might be surprising that in the tiny village of Linda, just outside the county seat of Marysville, Harmony Health Medical Clinic offers something rare even for much larger cities. On a street shared with 14 liquor stores, the community clinic provides integrated health care that spans physical, mental, and reproductive health, along with extensive social services."

Yes, this was a positive 1,200-word story about Yuba County and the Harmony Health clinic, a topic that this newspaper previously covered.

It wasn't completely positive. Harmony Health is located in a "tawdry strip mall," the story noted.

And clinic director Rachel Farrell offered this observation about Yuba County: "There's abject poverty (in the county) that I've only seen in the Third World."

OK, so it's not exactly Chamber of Commerce-type material, but when you're in Yuba County, anything approaching positive publicity is worth something.

DiFi does it

That was an intriguing bit of political sleight of hand pulled off by your U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, inserting a request for a new review in an unrelated piece of legislation.

Suddenly the Enterprise Rancheria casino is back in play after the feds thought they had tied it up in a nice bow and handed it to the tribe and its financial backer, Gerald Forsythe.

So now it's back for another review. One wonders what will be different.

What's surprising is Feinstein's office cited some recent polls showing lack of support for the casino.

The only poll that really counted was that advisory election a few years back that showed Yuba County voters would do just fine without a casino.

With all the casinos that have sprung up in California, one wonders what the real reason is for DiFi's sudden interest in little Yuba County.