We at the Napa Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program would like to thank the Napa Valley Register and reporter David Ryan for the excellent series of articles on Napa's nursing homes, the residents of those homes, and the Ombudsman Program. Too often our nursing home residents are forgotten once they are placed in a facility. Their stories were sensitively presented and highlighted by absolutely beautiful photographs by Andrea Roth. Thank you.

It was mid-July 2004. The constitutional deadline for enacting a state budget had passed a month earlier, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, eight months into his governorship, was squabbling with Democratic lawmakers over a spate of budget-related issues.

Dear editor,