Richard Rico | A visionary at Market - Vacaville Reporter

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FROM under an obscure pop-up tent in the agro theatre of Saturday’s Farmer’s Market, and behind a COVID mask, like all the rest, Craig McNamara stepped out to say hello. We have met before. I have written of him before. But it still took a minute for it to register. In our Farmer’s Market was, by far, one of the most globally respected, innovative and dedicated agriculturists in California.

I wondered if anyone shopping for cherries that day knew who he is, or the role he is playing in sustainable agriculture, and educating today’s youth about partnering with the planet for sustaining us all. Impressed? We should all be. He and his wife were filling in at our market for daughter, Emily. One of her specialties is ag marketing. After earning a Masters at Duke U. in farm planning and policy, she returned to their Winters ranch. So, too, her brother Sean. He tends 500 sheep, grazing in ranch orchards, a basic tenet of Silvopastures. “It’s an old word describing a system of forage, trees and livestock,” Craig said. In 2014, he was named Agriculturist of the Year by the California Expo and State Fair Board for his innovations in the Calif. ag industry. In 2011 he was named president of Calif. Board of Food and Ag by Gov. Jerry. He is owner of Sierra Orchards, a diversified operation focused on sustaining-teaching conservation aspects of agriculture.

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He founded Center for Land-Based Learning, which fosters respect for all Earth resources by young adults. A kind of ag boot camp is offered to chosen high schoolers who spend a prescribed time learning from the ground up. Craig has a centralness of purpose: To grow young minds about the balance of sun, land and water to feed the world. And they get it.

Craig’s father is the late Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, architect of U.S. strategy in the Vietnam War. Craig finished a memoir, he told me, about growing up in colliding worlds of sustaining-ag policy, and defense policy. Saturday, he was at Farmer’s Market.

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COMES a time when we must wade into the detritus crammed in the garage, and exorcise it. I came upon a scrapbook. On one page is a yellowing news clipping of a Reporter Sports story that memorializes an epic 1949 basketball game—Vacaville High B Team versus Winters Warriors for the Solano County Athletic League crown. I was not a starter. That was Tony Moreno, John Pine, Joe Paolino, Frank Garcia, Tony Garcia. At the end of the third, we were behind, 36-28. With minutes to go, two came out with four fouls. Coach Bud Gott waved me in. Tony Garcia’s scoring soared. I got a few. At the buzzer we won, 48-43! The gym nearly slid into Putah Creek. I saw Tony recently. I told him I found the story. He teared up. “Can I get a copy?” He did. It’s now in our Hall of Fame–in my garage.

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JOHN P.T. Barnum Cox, the man who would be Gov. Newsom, has given voters a 1,000-pound reason why he can not be taken seriously. Less than three years after he was politically put down by Newsom, Cox is, or was, bussing Calif. with a Kodiak bear on board, and “Meet the Beast” scrawled across the side. Even if Cox escapes cruelty charges to voters and animals, he should be made to send the Kodiak home, and himself to Bodie. Kevin McCarthy will leave a lamp on.

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AS a capsized world overloaded with virus poison is trying to right itself, and dark funnel clouds of injustice keep touching down all around us, not enough can be expressed, written or appreciated about the hearts and souls of Memorial Day. They gave us all they could so that we can stand free on their shoulders. It’s not just about one day, it’s about the life-times before, and after. Sacrifices can be of the ages, or the moment, and change the world. Tragic deaths–John Kennedy to George Floyd to the latest shooting in San Jose that killed 8–created outrage anew, and refreshed the cry: Enough!

The author is former publisher of The Reporter.

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Richard Rico | A visionary at Market - Vacaville Reporter
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