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Posts Tagged ‘california’

California Cities Sing Simultaneously

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 16, 2018| 8 Comments »

bigsingcaliforniaeric-whitacre-crop

Photo: Marc Royce/Los Angeles Times
Conductor Eric Whitacre (above), the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and a 2,200-person audience at Walt Disney Concert Hall participated in “the largest free group singing event in California history” on July 21.

Kudos to creative thinkers who keep coming up with new ideas to engage people in the arts! In July, the conductor of the Los Angeles Master Chorale led an exceptionally large audience of interested Californians in a free singing event that must have warmed the cockles of a lot of hearts. This went well beyond the annual singing of the “Hallelujah Chorus,” which many other choral groups invite the public to join.

Jessica Gelt of the Los Angeles Times reports, “Eric Whitacre, the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s Swan family artist-in-residence, says he’s like that old cola commercial — he wants to teach the world to sing. The whole world. And he’s not joking. But he’ll start with a statewide singing event, ‘Big Sing California.’ …

“The massive project, years in the making, [featured] the 100-voice Master Chorale onstage singing along with 2,200 audience members to a program of songs selected and conducted by Whitacre and Master Chorale Artistic Director Grant Gershon, along with guest conductors Moira Smiley and Rollo Dilworth.

“Those proceedings [were] simulcast to five venues all over the state packed with additional audience members [also] singing along. Each venue [rehearsed] with its audience for a few hours before the event. …

“ ‘If you’ve never experienced a couple thousand people singing together, it just brings chills. … It’s the best of human experience … the best of who we are distilled together.’

“Whitacre began singing when he was 18, and it changed his life. He has been singing and composing since then, traveling the world in the process, establishing a massive social media following and creating a series of online ‘virtual choirs,’ which are edited together after participants upload videos of themselves all singing the same song. …

“Gershon adds that Whitacre has ‘single-handedly gotten more people excited about singing together than anyone else on the planet. He confirms that the choral experience is transcendent and transformative.’ ”

More at the Los Angeles Times, here. The list of songs are here.

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Streaming Afghan TV from California

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 19, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Rosa Furneaux
Haroon Ebrat reaches for his notepad, where he has written down audience requests. The entrepreneurial immigrant runs Afghan Theatre TV, a Farsi-language variety show, out of his garage in suburban California.

I’m impressed how this immigrant from Afghanistan took it on himself to keep his culture alive by broadcasting a variety show from his garage. Many viewers have responded with gratitude.

Jeremy Lybarger writes at Pacific Standard, “Afghan Theatre TV operates out of a soundproof garage 40 miles east of San Francisco. … It’s an unexpected setting for a studio whose Farsi-language variety shows stream online 24 hours a day to more than a million viewers a month, according to the station. But much about Afghan Theatre TV is unexpected, starting with its credo that politics and show business don’t mix. …

” ‘We entertain,’ says Haroon Ebrat, the network’s 66-year-old founding impresario and star. On most afternoons for the last six years, he’s shuffled out to his garage in house slippers to host the live call-in shows that have made him famous, or at least recognizable to the Muslims who mob him, groupie-like, in restaurants, supermarkets, and parking lots across the Bay Area. The calls — 500 an hour, Ebrat says — come from all over: Canada, Germany, Russia, Australia, and many of the dozens of other countries that make up the Afghan diaspora. …

“Afghanistan has been in a quasi-permanent state of war for over three decades, historically exporting more refugees per year than any nation besides Syria. Most Afghans decamp to neighboring Iran or Pakistan, but approximately 124,000 live in America. …

” ‘He has preserved the culture of Afghanistan,’ says Ebrat’s 36-year-old daughter Shabnam, who hosts a call-in show of her own, often accompanied by a local psychic who counsels callers about work and love. Such preservation has come at a cost, both literal and cultural.

“Afghan Theatre TV is a family business, as are many of the more than 3,000 ethnic media outlets. … In between these segments of original programming, the station airs Afghan music videos and concert footage, and on some nights local musicians perform traditional songs like a live house band (hence the soundproofing). Ebrat, a prolific filmmaker, also screens the movies he’s made, which are ultra-low-budget mash-ups of comedy, action, and music starring him and his family.

“The station boasts a handful of Bay Area advertisers — kebab shops, halal supermarkets, Muslim-owned tax services — but Ebrat relies on his children to keep the lights on. (Shabnam is a real estate agent; [older brother] Burhan works with cars.) …

“Ethnic media, produced by and for immigrants, faces unique challenges. The relatively small niche audiences, for example, can discourage advertisers. … Even large outlets struggle to survive. Channel 18, a multilingual network that broadcast out of Los Angeles for more than 40 years, filed for bankruptcy in 2012 before finally shuttering its international format in 2017. …

“Part [the] experience includes reckoning with cultural disagreements within the same family. Shabnam Ebrat has become a target for older or more traditional Muslims who see her appearance — dyed-blond hair and make-up — as an affront to God. She doesn’t wear a hijab either. On Instagram, where her selfies reach about 23,000 followers, commenters debate whether or not she’s going to hell for posing in miniskirts and bikinis. …

“There’s the added stigma of being outspoken in a society that, to many Western onlookers, muzzles women. In Afghanistan, some women have no public identity of their own. They’re referred to simply as the wife of, daughter of, or sister of. …

“Overall, though, politics are absent from Afghan Theatre TV, where the maxim is that entertainment brings people together and politics drive a wedge. Haroon is more interested in the zombie horror movie he has in production than he is in discussing the White House. His only stated political aspiration, however vague, is to restore peace in Afghanistan.” More.

Seems like a good idea to stick to entertainment. One thing I’ve noticed while working with Afghan refugees, whether their first language is Farsi or Dari, is that individuals are, well, individualistic. Like groups everywhere, Afghans may have attitudes that diverge a good bit.

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Glowing Tide in California

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 9, 2018| 7 Comments »

Photo: Stephen Bay  
Bioluminescent waves crashing against rocks at Torrey Pines State Beach in San Diego, Calif., last month.

How I loved the glowing waves we sometimes saw at night in late summer on Fire Island! The microscopic marine organisms that light up when disturbed apparently visit California earlier in the year.

Vanessa Romo writes at National Public Radio, “It took four attempts for Stephen Bay to see the neon blue waves crashing against the rocks at Torrey Pines State Beach in Calif., but when he did, just one thought went through his mind: ‘Holy cow, the waves are glowing!’ …

“A red tide off the San Diego coast is behind the brilliant display of bioluminescence that is lighting up the water and drawing huge crowds to marvel at the rare phenomenon.

“According to Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, the red tide is due to a cluster of dinoflagellates — microscopic organisms — that live in phytoplankton and light up when there is movement or are disrupted. …

“Bioluminescence expert Michael Latz said that local red tides like the one visible this week from Encinitas to La Jolla — about a 20 mile stretch — ‘have been known since the early 1900s due to observations by Scripps scientists.’ …

“It’s not clear how long the current red tide will last; in some instances they’ve lasted from a week to a month or more. The last red tide in San Diego took place in September 2013 and lasted a full week. A similar event in October 2011 lasted a month. More here.

Swimming in a warm, glowing ocean at night — heavenly. Some red tides are harmful, but NOAA says, “Most blooms, in fact, are beneficial because the tiny plants are food for animals in the ocean. In fact, they are the major source of energy that fuels the ocean food web.”

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A Restaurant Where Immigrants Are Treasured

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 9, 2017| 9 Comments »

Photo: Anna Mindess
One of Ba-Bite’s colorful salads: red cabbage with mung bean sprouts, dried figs, arugula and feta and the creamiest hummus. The restaurant is like a welcoming family for immigrant workers.

Lisa, who lives in Oakland, California, put this nice story about an Oakland restaurant on Facebook. If I ever go to Oakland, I’m going to visit Ba-Bite in person.

Anna Mindess writes at KQED Food, “They’ve won accolades for their silken hummus and rainbow of organic salads, but for the owners of Oakland’s Ba-Bite, the most precious thing the almost two-year old restaurant can display right now may be the Sanctuary Restaurant poster on their front door. …

“Ba-Bite is Hebrew for ‘at home.’ Even though most of Mica Talmor and Robert Gott’s employees don’t speak Hebrew, (besides English, they speak Spanish, Maya, and Arabic) they completely understand the concept. The majority of them — like most food service workers in the Bay Area — are immigrants. After walking across deserts at night, being shortchanged or abused in other restaurants where they could not complain, working at Ba-Bite feels like they have found a family.

“Russell Chable manages the kitchen at Ba-Bite and is responsible for set up, prepping, and cooking. He grew up in a tiny town in Mexico’s Yucatan. … He started as a dishwasher and worked his way up to his lead position in Ba-Bite.

“After eight years away from home, Russell missed his mom. Sure, he would talk to her on the phone every week, but he wanted to see her face. So this determined young man decided to build his parents a cell tower so that he could FaceTime with his mom. Six months ago, he made contact with a man back in Mexico who outlined what would be needed: laptops, cables and a cell tower. Russell had his uncle check out the man and then sent money. Now he uses FaceTime to talk to his mom every week, and his parents have a small business renting out computer and internet time. …

“Fatima Abudamos is from Jordan and works as cashier. She also holds the distinction as Ba-Bite’s best falafel shaper. As she stuffs the green balls with sheep’s milk feta, she says, ‘This is an amazing place, just like a family. I’ve worked here almost two years. Mica is not like a boss, she’s more like a friend. She doesn’t scream if you make a mistake; she explains things. I feel safe here; it’s my second family.’ …

““We pay all of our workers well,” says Gott. “Partly because we know how expensive it is to live here. My experience is that more often than not, immigrants are working multiple jobs or longer hours, and forgo taking time off at all costs, as they want to or need to make money. …

“[Food runner Kasandra Molina says,] ‘This space here doesn’t feel like a workplace, it feels like home. We all get along. They care about our opinions and feelings. They don’t treat us just as employees; it’s more like a family.’ ”

More at KQED, here.

Are you in Oakland? Check out Ba-Bite at 3905 Piedmont Ave. Phone: (510) 250-9526

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A Native American Language’s Last Speaker

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 6, 2016| 2 Comments »

Racing against the clock, the last fluent speaker of a Native American language records folktales and creates a dictionary.

Jia Tolentino writes at the website Jezebel, “Marie Wilcox, an octogenarian Native American woman from the San Joaquin Valley in California, was born on Thanksgiving in 1933; she grew up in a one-room house with the grandmother who delivered her and spoke her native Wukchumni …

“In this 10-minute mini-doc from the Global Oneness Project, via NYTLive, Marie talks about speaking primarily English to her children, who worked alongside her in the fields for a good part of the year. She started learning Wukchumni when her sister started speaking it again in an attempt to pass the endangered language on to each their kids.

“ ‘I was surprised she could remember all that,’ her daughter says. ‘She just started writing down her words on envelopes. … She’d sit up night after night typing on the computer, and she was never a computer person.’

“ ‘I’m just a pecker,’ says Marie. ‘I was slow.’

“She decided to make a dictionary. ‘Not for anyone else to learn — I just wanted to get it together.’ …

“According to a New York Times piece on this documentary from 2014:

Before European contact, as many as 50,000 Yokuts lived in the region, but those numbers have steadily diminished. Today, it is estimated that fewer than 200 Wukchumni remain.”

Watch the short film Marie’s Dictionary, by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, here. I found it moving.

Photo: Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

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Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2016| Leave a Comment »

What is going on with the oceans? Warming trends are bringing sea creatures further north and for longer periods.

In January, Oliver Milman reported at the Guardian about a sea snake with a suggestive name (“Why you yellow-bellied sea snake, you …!”) that has suddenly shown up in California.

“California beachgoers have been urged to steer clear of a species of highly venomous sea snake following a third, and unprecedented, instance of an aquatic serpent washing up on to the state’s beaches.

“A 20-inch yellow-bellied sea snake was discovered on a beach near San Diego … The sighting was the third reported instance since October of the species, which prefers the tropical waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans, washing up on California’s beaches.

“The only previous verified sighting of a washed-up yellow-bellied sea snake was in 1972. Experts believe the snakes have ridden a warm current of water, fueled by the exceptionally strong El Niño climatic event, farther north than they have ever previously ventured. …

“ ‘It’s been an incredibly interesting year for southern California. We’ve seen tuna and marlin and tropical bird species such as red-footed boobies,’ said Greg Pauly, curator of herpetology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. …

“Yellow-bellied sea snakes are fully aquatic snakes capable of swimming vast distances. Although they are highly venomous, their targets are small fish and it’s thought they have yet to cause a recorded human death. However, Pauly said people should keep their distance if they encounter another washed-up snake.

“ ‘They are fairly docile and it’s unlikely for someone to be envenomated,’ he said. ‘It’s rare for them to bite people, it’s usually fishermen who are carelessly pulling up fishing nets.’ ”

More here.

Photo: Carolyn Larcombe/Wandiyali Images
Seen in California after el Niño, yellow-bellied sea snakes usually live in the deep waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans. 

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Inmates in the Vineyard

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 5, 2016| 4 Comments »

When people are serving time for a crime, how much better for society — both during their sentence and after they get out — if they have some useful work while inside.

Patricia Leigh Brown writes at Atlas Obscura, “Justin King spends most of his hours in a cinderblock dormitory room for minimum-security prisoners, sleeping on a metal bunk bed and being constantly monitored by surveillance cameras.

“But on a crisp California morning with coastal fog hanging on the hillsides, King, who is serving time for selling methamphetamines, and three of his fellow inmates at the Mendocino County jail huddle together in a 175-acre vineyard to pick plump sangiovese grapes. The only visible difference between the prisoners and the other field workers are the GPS tracking devices wrapped around their ankles.

” ‘Hey dude!’ King, 32, called out to his fellow inmate, Meliton Rangel, as King eyed a promising group of clusters wet with dew. ‘I hit clump city here!’

“The men’s enthusiasm for grapes with just the right sugar levels and tannins is a variation on the concept of work release, in which inmates deemed low security risks are employed by private companies. …

” ‘They’re hard workers,’ [Vineyard owner Martha] Barra says of her new employees, who wear “civilian” clothes in her magazine-esque vineyard. ‘They have to meet the same punctuality and performance requirements as everybody else.’ …

“The work is notoriously grueling: At first, Rangel, a stiff-legged 37, said he was going to quit. That changed when he received his first paycheck—his first one ever. ‘This has really helped me out,’ he says. ‘It feels very good to work.’ …

“In the Mendocino program last year, four of the six inmates who worked on the grape crew at Redwood Valley Vineyards have indeed stayed out of jail. Three now have full-time jobs. One now works at the vineyard full-time, rebounding from tough years of drug addiction and homelessness. …

” ‘There’s peace of mind out here,’ King says.”

More here.

Photo: Olivier Vanpé /Wikimedia Commons
Clusters of ripe and unripe Pinot noir grapes.

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A Respite for Farmworkers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 17, 2014| 2 Comments »

When a do-gooder from the nonprofit Kounkuey Design Initiative told poor farmworkers at a California trailer park she wanted to work with them to build a place to relax and play, they didn’t think much would come of it.

Patricia Leigh Brown writes at the NY Times why the community is happy to have been proved wrong.

“When Chelina Odbert, the 36-year-old co-founder of the nonprofit Kounkuey Design Initiative, based in Los Angeles, showed up two years ago and asked residents to propose ideas for a park that they might design and build collaboratively, most assumed she was yet another do-gooder bearing ‘muchas promesas’ that would come to naught.

“And yet, after more than a year of drawing, debating, hauling rocks and waiting out bureaucratic delays, the residents had a fiesta recently to celebrate the opening of the park, a public space built out of railroad ties and other simple materials. It has a playground, a community garden, an outdoor stage and a shade structure where neighbors can gather and gossip even on 110-plus-degree days.

“The park, which doubles as a zócalo, or traditional town square, exemplifies a new phase for both Kounkuey (KDI for short) and the field of public-interest design, which tries to put design tools into the hands of neighbors who can create local change. …

“Alberto Arredondo, 51, lives across from the garden and has become its keeper. … Before, he said, he would come home after a day in the fields picking grapes and collapse on the sofa. The park, he added, has ‘de-stressed the women.’

“His theory was borne out by Rosa Prado, whose commitment to the park never wavered. ‘It helps with depression,’ she said. ‘You go out your door, and you see a lady in the park and sit next to her.’ She added, ‘Then a few minutes later, you forget what you’re worried about.’ ”

More here.

Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Residents of all ages turn out for the opening of a new public space, by the Kounkuey Design Initiative, in St. Anthony’s Trailer Park, home to farmworkers east of Palm Springs, Calif. 

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A Restaurant Founded on Gratitude

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 13, 2013| 4 Comments »

Pavithra Mehta writes at Yes! Magazine about a network of restaurants where guests are asked to “pay it forward.”

Mehta’s explanation is a little far out for me, but I know I wouldn’t mind eating at one of these places. They sound cheerful. And I would be happy to pay it forward.

“In Berkeley, Calif.,” Mehta writes, “the Karma Kitchen restaurant bases its business on the concept of gratitude. Each visitor can pay nothing or voluntarily pay for a meal for a future guest. …

“The bill comes with a note that explains their meal was a gift from someone who came before them. If they wish to pay it forward, they can make a contribution for someone who comes after them …

“More than six years [after its founding], Karma Kitchen is still going strong. It has served more than 30,000 meals and now has chapters in half-a-dozen cities around the world. And it is all sustained by gratitude.

“Karma Kitchen works on the deceptively simple premise that the heart that fills, spills. The nature of gratitude is to overflow its banks and circulate. It does not stand still. But remove that ineffable quality from the equation, and the virtuous cycle breaks down.

“The sociologist Georg Simmel called gratitude ‘the moral memory of mankind.’ It serves to connect us to each other in small, real, and human ways. Remove it from the fabric of our lives, and all relationship becomes an endless series of soulless transactions.”

More at Yes! here.

Video: Seva Café , Gujarat, India

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Rare Oarfish Appears — Twice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 21, 2013| 2 Comments »

Justin, a family friend, worked for several years at the Catalina Maritime Institute but was no longer there, alas, when a giant mystery fish turned up last week.

Melissa Locker has the story at Time, “It sounds like something out of a horror story: Jasmine Santana was snorkeling off the coast of Southern California’s Catalina Island when she spotted a half-dollar sized eye staring up at her.

“It wasn’t a Halloween prank, though, but the body of a giant oarfish resting on the sandy bottom in about 20 feet of water. Instead of panicking at the sight of the sea creature, Santana called in the troops. After all, she is a marine science instructor at the Catalina Island Marine Institute. Even as such, she had probably never seen anything like this 18-foot oarfish before. The elusive sea creatures live thousands of feet deep in the ocean and are rarely seen alive or dead. …

“The creatures are the longest bony fish in the world, known to reach 56 feet in length.” More.

Justin’s father answered an e-mail I sent: “The photo on the beach with all of the kids holding the oarfish was at one of the two camps that Catalina Island Maritime Institute operates.  That one in the photo was Toyon Bay.  Justin worked at Camp Fox, about 10 minutes away by boat.  … I just read in today’s Providence Journal that a 2nd dead oarfish was found Friday in the water near Oceanside, CA.”

What can it all mean? What will turn up next? A giant squid? The Loch Ness Monster?

If you see the Loch Ness Monster, be sure to let me know and I’ll come running. So disappointed Bigfoot turned out to be a brown polar bear, even an ancient one. I was hoping he would be more human.

Photo: Catalina Island Marine Institute/Reuters
The crew of sailing school vessel Tole Mour and Catalina Island Marine Institute instructors hold an 18-foot-long oarfish that was found in the waters of Toyon Bay on Santa Catalina Island, Calif., Oct. 13, 2013.

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California’s Exceptional Coast

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 9, 2013| Leave a Comment »

When Erik and Suzanne were living in California, Erik says, he often wondered how it happened that the state had such a glorious, unspoiled coastline, where one could drive for miles and miles and see only the beauty of nature.

Now he knows. It’s been a long, hard fight, one that probably will never end. Steve Blank talks about the fight at his website, here.

“California has some of the most expensive land in the country,” Blank writes, “and as we all know, our economy is organized to extract the maximum revenue and profits from any asset. Visitors are amazed that there aren’t condos, hotels, houses, shopping centers and freeways, wall-to-wall, for most of the length of our state’s coast.

“It was the Coastal Act that saved California from looking like the coast of New Jersey.

“In 1976 the voters of California wisely supported the Coastal Act and the creation of a California Coastal Commission with 2 goals.

“First, to maximize public access and public recreational opportunities in the coastal zone while preserving the  rights of private property owners, and

“Second, to assure priority for coastal-dependent and coastal-related development over other development on the coast. …

“The Commission has been able to stave off the tragedy of the commons for the California coast. Upholding the Coastal Act meant the Commission took unpopular positions upsetting developers who have fought with the agency over seaside projects, homeowners who strongly feel that private property rights unconditionally trump public access, and local governments who believe they should have the final say in what’s right for their community, regardless of its impact on the rest of the state.”

Good for California! There’s more at Blank’s website.

Photo: http://steveblank.com

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Restorative Justice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 15, 2013| 4 Comments »

Solving a problem by definition means making something better. But for many years, disciplinary action in schools made things worse. Now more communities are testing the potential of “restorative justice,” an approach focused on helping a perpetrator change for the better.

It was at a neighborhood picnic that I first heard from a couple neighbors that they were restorative-justice volunteers.

They told me that if a student spray paints someone’s garage, let’s say, the police get called in, and the kid may end up with a record.

Under restorative justice, however, police, perpetrator, victim, school personnel, and community volunteers hear the case and agree on suitable compensation — in this case, it might be repainting the garage. The youth sees face to face how the victim feels. Change is possible with the community involved.

Patricia Leigh Brown writes at the NY Times about a restorative justice program in Oakland, California, where a high school’s “zero tolerance” policies had ridden roughshod over underlying causes, leading to escalation of problems.

She writes about youth adviser Eric Butler, whose “mission is to help defuse grenades of conflict at Ralph J. Bunche High School, the end of the line for students with a history of getting into trouble. He is the school’s coordinator for restorative justice, a program increasingly offered in schools seeking an alternative to ‘zero tolerance’ policies like suspension and expulsion.

“The approach … encourages young people to come up with meaningful reparations for their wrongdoing while challenging them to develop empathy for one another through ‘talking circles’ led by facilitators like Mr. Butler.” More.

In one talking circle, participants discovered that a girl in trouble for uncontrolled aggression had just lost a brother to gun violence. She had not told anyone or sought support. She began to learn other ways to deal with her anger.

Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Mr. Butler with a student at Ralph J. Bunche High School in Oakland.

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California Law Supports Home Businesses

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

According to Lisa Gansky at Shareable (an online community offering tips for a better life through sharing), home food businesses are back.

In August 2012, writes Gansky, the California State Assembly passed legislation to ensure legal status for “small-scale cottage industries that sell baked goods and other ‘non-potentially hazardous’ food items produced in home kitchens.

“We’re talking homemade cookies and brownies, jams, jellies, fruit pies, mixed nuts, flavored vinegars, dried teas, roasted coffee, and other yummy stuff that’s already legal in more than 30 other states. …

“The California Homemade Food Act … clears the way for home cooks in the world’s eighth-largest economy to make and sell a wide range of products without the need to invest in commercial kitchen space or comply with the zoning and regulatory measures that govern larger producers and producers of meat and dairy products.” Read more at the Christian Science Monitor.

What about food-business incubators like the wonderful one I visited when Suzanne was still living in San Francisco? I guess they will adapt. After all, some entrepreneurial food businesses do need a commercial kitchen. Read about the good work of San Francisco’s La Cocina here.

I also know of two Massachusetts incubators for food entrepreneurs that have helped to launch successful companies. One is midstate at the Franklin County Community Development Corporation, here. The other, CropCircle Kitchen, is in the Greater Boston area — Jamaica Plain.

Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters/File
Butch Bakery cupcakes  in New York City. California has joined more than 30 other states in allowing small businesses that make jams, jellies, pies, cookies, brownies, and other treats to operate out of the owners’ homes instead of requiring a commercial kitchen.

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Outdoor Experience for Kids

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2012| 2 Comments »

Shawn and Laura Sears were touched by inner-city kids with too many strikes against them and invited a few for an outdoor camping experience. The outing was so satisfying all around that they just kept doing it.

Marilyn Jones has the story at the Christian Science Monitor.

“Leaving college with liberal arts degrees – his in psychology, hers in geology – Shawn and Laura applied to Teach for America and were eventually placed to teach in one of the poorest regions in the country.

“Today, celebrating 14 years together (getting married along the way in 2004), they’ve seen the seeds sown during their experiences in Mississippi grow to fruition in the founding of Vida Verde Nature Education, a nonprofit outdoor education camp they’ve now run for 11 years.

“Located on northern California’s spectacular coast between San Francisco and Santa Cruz, this free camp for children from low-income families has served more than 7,000 kids from the inner cities of Oakland, East Palo Alto, San Francisco, and San Jose.

” ‘We help them let go of much of the negativity they often carry,’ Shawn says. ‘It’s nonstop fun, and they get to just be kids for a few days. Three days later, they’re transformed.’ ”

Read more.

Tony Avelar/Special to the Christian Science Monitor
Laura and Shawn Sears founded Vida Verde to give groups of students three days of exposure to and hands-on experience in the outdoors.

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Helping Foster Youth

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I subscribe to a listserv out of Harvard called Innovators Insights. It culls public-policy articles from all over. When you sign up, you pick general topics you want to hear about. (I can explain more if you ask.)

Today I received a link to a story about a new program in California to help foster children who have to change schools a lot. It sounds like a reasonable idea although I imagine some people might object to being in databases.

“Sacramento County, California, is now employing a database for foster youth to ensure that they can transition to new schools with fewer problems. Foster Focus tracks students’ grades, credits, course schedules, residential history, educational plans, the identity of their social worker, and other data so that students are no longer placed in the wrong grade level or in classes they have already completed when they enroll in a new school. The county has also developed another database that compiles foster home addresses, making it easier for social workers to place students in residences near their schools. Agencies across the country are soliciting the county’s advice as they seek to replicate these databases.” Read more here.

In a related story, U.S. Congressman James Langevin (Rhode Island) has been working to pass a federal law to prevent identity theft of foster youth. It is a serious issue as their personal information passes through many hands. I wonder if a database like the one in California makes this less of a problem by having everything in one place.

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