If you are interested in music and making new friends, James Broderick has a perfect opportunity.
Broderick is volunteer coordinator for the Sacramento chapter of Guitars for Vets, a national nonprofit that provides free guitar instruction to struggling veterans.
“The vets we serve have been referred to us by counselors and therapists at the VA and lessons are held at VA facilities,” Broderick says. “Few of the vets we teach have any musical experience. For the most part, we’re talking raw beginners.
“Our goal for 2022 is to expand our volunteer corps dramatically and unleash an army of guitar players upon the world.”
What would our city look like if gardens replaced vacant lots? If composted soil took over lawns? And if backyard hens produced our eggs? Oak Park resident Alex Hoang, along with some neighbors and community partners, is finding out.
Hoang is founder of Oak Park Eggery and Tanama Garden. “It was a trash lot, a dumpsite, for decades,” Hoang says about two parcels of land near 12th Avenue and Stockton Boulevard. With the help of community members, the lots are being used to make compost and grow food for the neighborhood.
I first met Christopher Price 25 years ago when he became our family doctor. He was straight out of medical school, and I recall him making the case for a family practice. Here’s what I recall: When one physician treats all members of a family, the doctor can interact with the family more frequently. In the process, the physician sees people when they are healthy, not just sick.
This idea made sense to my husband and me. At one point, Dr. Price saw me, Jim, our children and my elderly mother. It worked out for everyone, and I had the opportunity to get to know our doctor.
There’s an old academic exercise among urban planners where they ask something like this: If a revolution comes to your town, will you instinctively know where to gather to find out what’s happening?
Identify a park or square where people would naturally flock, and it means your town has some appreciation for civic space and a sense of community fostered by planners and architects.
My family and I enjoyed living in Carmichael for 20 years. If that question were asked of residents there, what would they answer? Spoiler alert: They can’t say a strip mall or Starbucks.
The sights on lower X Street did it for me. Coming off the freeway, I saw wrecked cars and busted campers and people standing around, a pitiful procession pinned against the gutter like a forlorn carnival that took a wrong turn. Somebody stuck two orange traffic cones partway into the street, warning motorists to steer clear.
Lower X Street, home to warehouses and body shops, never delivered a welcoming hug to visitors who enter the city from river’s edge. Now it arrives with a punch in the face.
In 2010, Matt and Yvette Woolston opened a new restaurant in Carmichael. A follow-up to their much-lauded North Sacramento spot, The Supper Club, this new enterprise was more of a neighborhood joint, with a focus on wine, pizza and scratch cooking.
More than a decade later, Matteo’s Pizza & Bistro still attracts local diners looking for an upscale but unfussy evening of quality eats.
On a recent visit, my wife and I ran into good friends, the Au family of Carmichael. They were leaving as we were coming in. They gushed about the meal they just finished.
