From the Publisher’s Desk

I grew up in a small Michigan town with a lovely Main Street. Local merchants owned the shops and cafes. My mom and dad were friendly with many of these small business owners. We knew their children and they knew us.

A large part of what attracted my husband and me to East Sacramento was the small-town attitude that supported local merchants. When we bought our vintage 1925 home in 1989, one of the first neighborhood shops we discovered was East Sac Hardware at 48th Street and Folsom Boulevard.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Inside Sacramento. At a time when print publishing has been decimated, my husband Jim and I feel grateful to have survived and thrived.

Today, a new publication like Inside would be called a “micro” business. In 1996, we divided the tasks based on the experiences and success of our previous careers. My career was in interior design and project management. My strengths were writing, graphic design, sales, marketing and community involvement. Jim handled accounting, payroll, printing, delivery, invoicing and business details. He had been an executive for IBM and a small business manager.

What made Inside unique was our motivation. Neither of us had publishing experience.

Lost among the election reports was some of the best national economic news ever. The October federal employment report showed 906,000 jobs were added in the private sector, with an increase of 724,000 jobs to the labor force. Wages were up 4.5 percent. Unemployment dropped dramatically across every demographic group.

The federal government said the gross domestic product—the measure of total economic output—grew by a record-setting 7.4 percent between July and September, or 33.1 percent on an annualized basis. The economy grew at a pace never seen before. This is what economists call a V-shaped recovery.

Anyone who reaches 100 and is still active has mastered the art of aging. But to reach an advanced age and work every day, stay sharp, physically active and self-sufficient puts you in another category—what gerontologists call “super-agers.”

Sacramento artist Wayne Thiebaud is the ultimate super-ager of today’s art world. He’s famous around the world for creating colorful paintings and drawings of commonplace objects—pies, lipsticks, paint cans, ice cream cones, pastries and hot dogs—and for landscapes and figure paintings.

In 1996, California voters approved a citizen-sponsored initiative—Proposition 209—that added the following words to the California Constitution: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin, in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.”

Since I have no school-age children or grandchildren, I’ve watched the debate over school openings from afar. But every American has a stake in the discussion over how, when and if to bring kids back to school. Pandemic-driven closures last spring affected 62 million pre-primary, primary and secondary school students, along with parents and teachers.

Sadly, the debate is taking place at a divisive time—the 2020 presidential election, as our country experiences unprecedented civil and economic unrest and a rise in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths.