Labrador Love
Roo was 11 months old with a broken femur. X-rays showed the break was not a first for the yellow Labrador. His owners wanted him euthanized.
Instead, their veterinarian reached out to Central California Labrador Retriever Rescue.
Poet For All
When I caught up with Andru Defeye, the city’s youngest poet laureate, he was prepping for Sacramento Poetry Day, held last October.
“I want the entire city of Sacramento to know it’s Poetry Day,” Defeye said. “From kids in schools to the contest to the gala—however we can blow this up.”
Poetry Day was created in 1986 by the late Mayor Anne Rudin. But it hadn’t been celebrated at scale in years. After being named poet laureate in 2020, Defeye (pronounced “defy”) resurrected the event in 2022 with an Academy of American Poets Fellowship.
Hidden Gem
The Mills Station Arts & Culture Center is a hidden gem in Rancho Cordova. Cheryl Gleason is determined to change that.
As the center’s art director and curator since 2018, Gleason plans everything that happens at Mills Station. It’s also her job to make sure people see the exhibits, workshops, history displays, cultural demonstrations and more at the center each month.
Strung Out
I love Capitol Bowl. On dark nights, those white neon lights beckon with a nostalgic plea across West Capitol Avenue.
Inside, modern technologies honor and blur connections to 1960s bowling alleys, memories of beery scents, billowing ashtrays and Sure Strike scoring crayons.
Capitol Bowl calls itself a “modern bowling center.” This means glow bowling in disco darkness and automatic digital scorekeepers that erase the need for human calculations. The grill serves bacon cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches and a thoughtful salad thick with tomatoes.
