Our View: Thumbs up, thumbs down

Thumbs down to the mindless, brutal violence that occurs all too often in our community. Last week's shootings and stabbings may have been a hiccup, statistically speaking, but the incidents themselves suggest a disturbing trend toward lawlessness.

The March 13 discovery of three men shot to death in a Linda apartment was shocking by any measure. On March 15, the shooting of three men at a party in Marysville was followed shortly by a fight at a Wheatland bar that injured five people and led to two arrests, while in Sutter County two unwelcome party guests were allegedly robbed, beaten and tortured.

Even the arrest of two reputed gang members in the horrific September slaying of Willie Roberts Jr. does little to reassure the public that things are under control. This isn't the sort of problem that can be solved by law enforcement alone, as was explained at two recent gang forums in Marysville and Live Oak. It will take a determined effort from everyone to take back our streets from the thugs and gang-bangers. What will you do in your neighborhood?

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Thumbs up to Colusa County Board of Supervisors for sending an expansion of the Colusa Mosquito Abatement District to a public vote. The little critters have moved from a summertime annoyance to a bona fide threat to public health, thanks to the spread of the West Nile virus that killed an elderly county resident last year.

Libertarians generally advocate for less government, not more, but this falls well within its appropriate role as a guardian of public safety. We hope Colusa County residents will support the district's expansion when it goes to a mail ballot later this year.

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If you didn't read Thursday's Education section, you missed the story about Marilyn DeVore, who has spent an amazing 40 years educating children. DeVore, who will retire from the Marysville Joint Unified School District at the end of this school year, has spent her last 20 years with MJUSD and in Butte, Nevada and Orange counties before that.

Talk about dedication: DeVore earned the moniker the "mother of homeschooling" by a California Department of Education official for putting on a backpack and hiking out to a Nevada County family's home to provide instruction when the rains came and the creek rose. John Pimentel, principal at Marysville Charter Academy for the Arts, worked in Yuba County with DeVore in 1990 and described her as a "pioneer in the independent study and home school arena."

But the best quote in the story came from D'Anna Dorn of Yuba Feather Elementary School, who said DeVore "refused to let any child slip through the cracks." We offer a big thumbs up, many gold stars and a happy retirement to Marilyn DeVore, and suggest her commitment to children be a lesson to us all.