On Friday, June 12th at 8:49pm, authorities responded to a battery call at St. Francis Catholic Church in Fillmore. According to reports a priest had been battered by a Hispanic male who wore a mask and was carrying a hammer. The suspect was trying to break into church property and attacked the priest, who was able to defend himself, before fleeing east bound on Ventura Street, after taking a religious statue and Bible. About four hours later Sheriff’s Deputies were able to arrest 32-year old Rene Villanueva of Fillmore at the ARCO station, about one mile east of the church. Villanueva was booked into the Ventura County Jail for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon. He is also being held for a parole violation. Villanueva’s bail was set at $220,000, with no release due to the parole violation.

Fillmore Unified School District

Public Hearing and Receipt of Initial Proposal

Approve Certification of Signatures 2020-2021
The Board approved the Certification of Signatures 2020-2021

Approve Resolution 19-20-21 of the Fillmore USD Ordering a Regular Governing Board Member Election, Ordering
Consolidation with Other Elections, and Constituting "Specification for the Election Order" to be held November 3, 2020
The Board approved Resolution 19-20-21

Approve Fillmore USD's Covid-19 Operations Written Report
The Board approved Fillmore USD's Covid-19 Operations Written Report

Adopt the 2020-2021 Budget
The Board adopted the 2020-2021 Budget

Approve Resolution 19-20-22 for Child Development Services California State Preschool Program
The Board approved Resolution 19-20-22

Approve Resolution 19-20-23 for Flexibility in Determining Average Daily Attendance used to Calculate the LCFF for
2019-2020 Through End of Reduced State Funding Due to the Economic Crisis Caused by Pandemic
The Board approved Resolution 19-20-23

Award Bid for Food and Grocery Products for Fillmore Unified School District Child Nutrition Services
The Board approved the awarding of this bid.

Personnel Recommendations
The Board approved all personnel recommendations including new hires, promotions, resignations, and leaves.

Bob Crum

I'm delighted. Brenda C, wrote saying: "I did it! I bought the EOS Rebel T8i. However, I did not buy the EF-S 18-55mm IS STM lens because I read that prime lenses are better. So, what prime lens should I consider buying?

First, Brenda, I am so proud of you. With your new camera, you are about to embark on fantabulous photoing adventures.

A lens, often referred to as 'glass', is the most important part of a phonetography kit. And one of the great debates in photography is prime vs. zoom lenses. But generally speaking, the better the glass, the better the photo regardless of the camera is the common refrain. It's mostly true, but as in all things photographic, there are pros and cons to everything. But I digress.

Let's take a look at a couple of comparisons. Combo A: Inexpensive Nikon D3500 ($395 on
Amazon) camera with a $2,500 prime lens. Combo B: $5750.00 Hasselblad camera with a $100 crappy lens. Did you already guess what combo would produce the best photo? Of course, the inexpensive Nikon with a high-quality lens. The cheap lens on the uber high-quality Hasselblad camera will struggle to create quality photos.

Back to primes. It's recognized worldwide by every photographer worth peanut butter that prime lenses are universally superior to zoom lenses in many cases. Prime lenses generally offer wider apertures, shallower depth of field and better bokeh, some for lower cost, perform better in low light, usually sharper optics and less bulky.

Brenda didn't mention what genre of photography she intends to engage in. So I'll use the scatter-gun approach that will apply to all 2,692,585 of my readers. The three prime focal lengths generally recognized for portraiture photoing are 50mm, 85mm, and 135 or 150mm lenses. Two other factors: lens speed and stabilization or not. The faster the speed (aperture opening), the more the lens will cost. If you intend to shoot portraits only, and the camera on a tripod, save money and pass on stabilization.

Now, if you intend to shoot landscapes, consider a wide-angle prime, mid-range primes in the 50 to 100mm focal lengths and a long-range prime in the 100-300mm focal lengths. You can forget a wide-angle prime. I found none in a cursory browse of the Net. However, Sigma produces an 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6 DC HS lens, which is as wide as you can go for APS-C Canon DSLRs without going fisheye. For the other lenses, your options are Canon (EF-S) lenses, and lenses from Tamron or Sigma.

I called the camera shop where Brenda bought the camera and they said that they'd sell you the Canon EF-S 18-135mm IS STM lens at a kit price saving you lots of money. Buy it. Shoot with the 18mm-135mm for a couple of months and note what focal length you use most. That's your clue to the focal length of the first prime you might consider buying. Presuming you insist on a prime lens.

All that said, here comes the monkey wrench. Certain prime lenses for particular photography is good. But primes are not always the best lens to use. Every time a lens is changed, the camera's sensor is subject to dust. Just a few just spots in a photo is annoying or means lots of time photo editing them out. Hence, except for a Canon 50-Nifty (50mm), I don't own a prime lens. Regular readers know that I regularly use one lens: Tamron 16-300mm telephoto lens to avoid dust issues. Brenda, unless you're shooting in a studio, I encourage you to reconsider and buy a couple of telephoto zoom lenses. Perhaps zoom lenses discussed next. Stay tuned.

The photo of the week is a home in the Bodie ghost town complete with outhouse!

Send comments, questions or suggestions to: focusonphotography@earthlink.net

https://www.blog.fillmoreusd.org/sierra-high-school-warriors-blog/2020/6...

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On Tuesday, June 9th law enforcement came out in full force with helicopter, K-9 and SWAT. Officers responded to reports of a shooting at 6:30pm on West Telegraph Road (SR126) near Atmore Road. Deputies found one man injured; he was transported to an area hospital. According to reports the shooter was travelling south bound on Telegraph near the agricultural fields. Helicopters were then called in to search the surrounding Fillmore area for the suspect at 7:40pm. The suspect is assumed to be armed and as of Wednesday afternoon still at large.

Ventura Signal Volume V Number 24, 2 October 1875.
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Thomas Robert Bard
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Courtesy Fillmore Historical Museum

If you have been reading the last few stories from the Fillmore Historical Museum, you will have noticed that names keep recurring. This article will be no different. This shouldn’t be surprising since in the 1870’s and early 1880’s there were only a few hundred people in the Sespe/Cienega area (Fillmore didn’t yet exist). They were neighbors and business partners. They might be friends one month and bitter enemies the next, usually because of water or mineral rights.

Most sources agree that it was Thomas Bard who brought in the first successful drilled well on Thomas Scott’s property in Ojai in 1867. He was sent to this area as a representative of Scott, acting Assistant Secretary of War under President Lincoln, and who was also president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Mr. Scott had approximately 350,000 acres in California at that time. Bard would continue to act as Mr. Scott and/or Pennsylvania Railroad’s agent for many years. The Ventura County Signal, October 2, 1875, included an advertisement offering for sale the California Petroleum Company’s (owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad) interest in 7,080 acres of Rancho Ojai “on which there are two flowing oil wells, many natural springs of Petroleum and large deposits of Asphaltum.” The agent for the California Petroleum Company was T. R. Bard of Hueneme.

With the growing need for oil many people came to the area looking for petroleum. One of the folks it attracted was Joseph Franklin Dye. Joe Dye, born in 1831, was originally from Kentucky but had moved to Texas with his family (he was one of sixteen children) in the 1840s. He and two of his brothers went west to the California gold fields, but returned empty handed. He then headed to New Mexico and Arizona where he apparently worked as a miner and teamster.

Besides being a wanderer, Joe also soon became known for having a short temper and a hair trigger. In the early 1850s, he got into a dispute in New Mexico with ”Hand Saw” Pete Fantig (who apparently got the nickname because he killed a man by cutting him into pieces with a handsaw) over a card game. This ended with Joe shooting Hand Saw in the neck. Hand Saw survived to be later shot by a gambler in Salt Lake City. A Southern sympathizer, Dye has also been identified as one of the men who rode with the Confederate guerilla group in Southern California headed by John Mason and Jim Henry.

By the time Joe Dye came to the Santa Clara River Valley in the early 1870s, Dye had killed or wounded several men both while serving as a law officer in Los Angeles and while a private citizen. In October 1870 he shot and killed Los Angeles City Marshal William Warren over reward money, but was acquitted.

In the July 4, 1874, Ventura Signal, an announcement was published of the creation of the Piru Mining Company, a partnership made up of Joseph Dye, S. Levy and Charles Holmes all of Los Angeles. The mining partnership only lasted a couple of years, but Dye became familiar with the area north of the Santa Clara River. He filed claims in the Alamo Mountain and Little Sespe areas. By May, 1875, the same paper announced that “Somewhere in the Alamo mountains, Mr. Joe Dye has discovered a flow of fine petroleum, almost pure; so pure that it can be put into a lamp and burned, without refining.” Dye lost little time developing his claim, which brought him into conflict with anyone else filing claims in the same area.

By 1878, Dye was elected chairman of the Little Sespe Petroleum District which was to “bring order” to the claims in the area and oppose any take over by “tenderfeet from Los Angeles”. The District required that to keep a claim, the claimant had to spend at least $200 improving the property and it must have clearly established boundaries. In August, 1884, J. F. Dye, “incorporator of the district” and J. C. Udall “recorder of the district” wrote a letter in the Los Angeles Herald making it clear that the Sespe was not controlled by the Los Angeles capitalists, although they had leased 800 acres from one of the undersigned, undoubtedly Dye. Instead it is the members of the district who controlled the bulk of the resources.

About this time, Dye married and lived in the Sespe with his wife, Francesca (or in another account, Grace), and their daughter, Grace (according to one later newspaper account there was also a baby boy). Things seemed to be going well for Joe Dye. Including all of his mining claims, his net worth was thought to be at this time close to $200,000. He took on a partner, H. J. Crow of Glendale, and hired a local man, Herman Haines, formerly postmaster at Cienega, as help on his claim.

By the fall of 1886, however, Dye was in jail for the murder of Herman Haines. Dye had discovered that his young bride (she was at least 20 years younger than he) was romantically involved with his partner, H. J. Crow, and that Haines and his son acted as intermediaries between the two. Dye confronted his wife and sent her home to her parents. He then fired Haines telling him to keep away from him. Haines took to carrying a Henry rifle with him telling people it was for Joe Dye. For whatever reason, both men found themselves in Morris Cohn’s store/saloon in Santa Paula. Most accounts agree that Haines went for his rifle first but Dye was the better shot and shot longer. The wounded Haines ran out onto Main Street with Dye still shooting. Haines fell in the middle of the street, dying several days later. Dye gave himself up to authorities and was released on $10,000 bail. When he came to trial he was represented by Stephen M. White and Henry T. Gage, later Governor of California, both with known ties to the petroleum industry. Dye was initially convicted and sentenced to 16 years, but a new trial was granted and in November of 1888 he was acquitted, but only after spending fourteen months in jail. [To be continued]