Every time I see a homeless encampment, I feel disheartened. They are among the least healthy environments in our city, rife with crime, trash, unsanitary conditions, open drug use, discarded needles and despair.
Tent encampments are testaments to our failure as a community and society to deal with the scourge created by drug addiction, mental infirmity and the economic factors that compel people to live on the streets.
By her own admission, Gina Knepp didn’t know a pit bull from a Pomeranian.
“But I knew how to motivate people. How to get energy behind the mission,” says Knepp, who took over as animal care services manager at the city’s Front Street shelter in 2011.
Her mission was to turn around a failing facility with an abysmal 20 percent “live release rate”—the percentage of animals leaving the shelter alive.
Browsing in a gift shop recently, I came across a lovely poster with the headline, “How to Build Community.” Given that building our community has been my mission for almost 30 years, I was naturally attracted to the message. The poster listed dozens of suggestions. Here they are, with some thoughts along the way. And I’d love to hear your ideas—email me and we’ll publish them in an upcoming edition.
Sutter Lawn Tennis Club celebrates its 100th birthday in September, which prompts one Grand Slam question: How did the little East Sacramento jewel manage to last a century?
A tempting story would tell how Sutter Lawn’s guardians intuitively aced the future and moved with the times at 39th and N streets. They adapted to changing tastes, acquired nearby properties and relentlessly expanded to become the city’s dominant sports facility.
It might seem strange that an instrument as old as the harpsichord is something musician Faythe Vollrath thinks of as “new in many ways,” but the accomplished harpsichordist, based in Placerville, maintains that there’s a method to the madness.
“It’s still very much ‘create your own adventure’ with the harpsichord,” says Vollrath, who performs as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the U.S. and abroad (she recently performed a concert of new music in Serbia as part of the Belgrade Harpsichord Festival).
America is binging on outrage because liberals are arrogant elitists recklessly opening our borders and bankrupting the country, while conservatives are hateful bigots bent on destroying the environment and oppressing poor people.
Neither statement is true, but both stereotypes feed the outrage addiction that has become the default narrative of public dialogue.