Goof Offs

Goof Offs

Inglorious garden goofs, accompanied by groans or expletives, are painfully inevitable. To goof is human, but navigating the minefield of mayhem is less painful when you know where to step.

Severing a drip irrigation line is a common garden goof. Polyethylene tubing is often buried by bark mulch, foliage or soil. Once pierced by a shovel head, hoe or hand pruners, the line must be repaired with spare parts or worse—an annoying trip to the garden center for necessary parts. Either way, it is a disruption.

Always expose drip irrigation lines before working in an area. Pull the landscape staples that secure the lines and move the tubing away before digging or weeding.

Pops Is Back

Pops Is Back

Pops in the Park music performances are a beloved tradition in East Sacramento—an entertainment mainstay for 31 years.

June is the traditional month for Pops. We had a two-year pause during the pandemic, but picked up the pieces last year with two great shows. People were delighted to have Pops back.

Cheap Help

Cheap Help

There are two kinds of cities in California. Some consider themselves full-service. This means city workers pick up trash, make toilets flush, trim trees, patch potholes, douse fires and arrest people.

The others are contract cities. They pay someone else to handle those mundane, necessary chores.

Sacramento fancies itself a full-service city. The mayor and City Council embrace the title with pride. They charge sky-high fees for utilities, parks and safety. They insist residents want the best possible civic amenities.

Worse Than Imagined

Worse Than Imagined

The meeting was touted as a Community Participation Workshop. It was anything but.

Its purpose was to give the public an opportunity to share comments, concerns and suggestions with the Animal Care Citizens Advisory Committee, a seven-member panel that makes recommendations to the City Council regarding the Front Street Animal Shelter.

Community members who turned out to have an open discussion about the city shelter were shut down after two minutes of comments—four minutes if the committee had no follow-up.

Questions from the public went unanswered. Dialogue was zero.

All The World’s A Stage

All The World’s A Stage

Lyndsay Burch has her hands full and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

At just 30 years old, the North Carolina native became only the second—and first female—artistic director of beloved professional theater company B Street Theatre, taking the helm from Buck Busfield, who had been involved in the company since its creation by his brother Timothy in 1986.

Directing has been Burch’s passion since childhood. She directed her first production at age 13 at the behest of a middle-school drama teacher who recognized her eye for “all the aspects of production, not just performance.”