Cover Artist Samantha Buller
Inside Lan Park/Grid May 2022
Samantha Buller is a Northern California artist who paints full time in her home studio, teaching workshops whenever possible.
Kill The Messenger
We get emails at Inside Sacramento. Some of them demand my head on a platter.
Not long ago, seven or eight emails arrived at the editor’s desk saying awful things about me. The emails were identical, but people who sent them were different. There may have been a strategy to this, but I didn’t catch it.
The people who sent the emails were angry about my campaign to open the Sacramento River Parkway and levee bike trail. They overlooked one important fact: It’s not my campaign. The parkway and bike trail are the city’s idea.
Untie Me
I’m hoping whoever reads this is looking for a job, specifically a hospice chaplain position.
I currently hold the title, but am eager for my employer to hire a replacement so I can retire—again.
The right candidate must be an approachable and caring person, unlike the man I interviewed some years ago. He arrived wearing a suit and became offended when I told him our hospice chaplains leave their clergy trappings at home.
“Why?” he asked.
Loss Recovery
Some NBA teams don’t worry about balancing the books. Their owners swim in deep green seas of personal wealth. They treat league membership as an extension of their entitlement, a bragging right with benefits of ballooning equity.
The Kings are different. Their owners are rich, relatively speaking, but can’t matchup against billionaires. A welterweight bank account is a big disadvantage in a game played by heavyweights.
Work In Progress
Many articles in Inside Sacramento have described the failure of local elected officials to address the homelessness crisis. I hear your frustration and take responsibility for the failure. The crisis continues to grow. With it comes more suffering and misery among those living in our open spaces, more hardships for small business owners, more blight and trash in neighborhoods, more aggressive confrontations between campers and residents, and more crime.
Three efforts are underway in the city of Sacramento and Sacramento County that could significantly reduce the number of people living unsheltered while eliminating the worst impacts of encampments. I am working on these efforts and want your feedback.
