Bay Area

"House Republican leaders have put off a vote on a controversial transportation bill, until after the Presidents Day holiday. Instead, the bill has been broken into smaller pieces, including one that would increase oil and gas drilling to help pay for bridges and roads. One congresswoman lost the fight to keep new drilling off the California coast. The problem is that federal gasoline taxes don’t raise enough money anymore to pay for the country’s transportation needs. To help make up the difference, House Republicans want to open up Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, expand drilling in the Gulf and sell new leases off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Democratic Congresswoman Lois Capps of Santa Barbara is sponsoring an amendment that would take California’s coast out of the equation. "This is not the appropriate place to expand drilling," she says. Republican Congressman "Doc" Hastings of Washington heads the Natural Resources Committee. On the House floor, he told his... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"Marin County Wedding Vows from Serial the movie" - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"With the Middle Class Scholarship, CSU and UC students will fill out the standard financial aid forms. All students with family incomes less than $150,000 that do not already have fees covered will receive a Middle Class Scholarship that slashes fees by 2/3. For the CSU, approximately 150,000 students will receive the Middle Class Scholarship and save over $4,000 per year. About 42,000 UC students will receive the Middle Class Scholarship and save up to $8,169 per year. Community Colleges will receive $150 million to expand affordability efforts. Local districts will have discretion to allocate the funds to best meet their individual needs, such as expanding the use of fee waivers or providing grants to cover the costs of books, transportation, or other educational expenses. Investing in California's students is an investment in our future. For every $1 we spend on higher education, the state gets a $3 return on its investment (www.cccco.edu). All Californians, including those from... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

I'd like to see more financial analysis of this proposal but I agree that public college tuition is ridiculous. The first responsibility of UC and CSU should be to provide undergraduate educations to the children of CA citizens. Other considerations should be secondary to this mandate. - Spidra Webster

"Reporting from San Francisco -- At the stroke of noon on Tuesday, music will blast out over the shoppers in Union Square and the homeless people in Hallidie Plaza. The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus will chime in from the City Hall rotunda, along with the big-hatted belters from Beach Blanket Babylon. Radio stations have been asked to preempt the midday news. And if Mayor Ed Lee has his way, San Franciscans from Nob Hill to Noe Valley, the Presidio to Potrero Hill, will look up from their computer keyboards, drop what they're doing and burst into song. The same song. The one this storied city's residents love to hate and hate to love: I left my heart in San Francisco. High on a hill, it calls to me …. It is, more or less, the 50th anniversary of when Tony Bennett first crooned San Francisco's musical Rorschach test in the Venetian Room of the Fairmont Hotel, and the mustachioed mayor with the Busby Berkeley bent is presiding over a civic extravaganza in honor of the 85-year-old... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"In Oakland and Redwood City, industrial shredders the size of department stores grind thousands of junked automobiles into fist-sized scraps, loading the lumps onto waiting ships to become fodder for a global recycling industry. But as the “green steel” goes out to sea, the leftovers — pulverized seat cushions, insulation and grime, collectively known in the shredding industry as “auto fluff” — are trucked to regional landfills. There, buried in mountains of trash, the byproducts of long-dead cars begin a second, potentially toxic life that could loom as a hazard to environmental health. Off the road, junk cars continue to pollute because of what some critics say is a decades-long failure by California to properly regulate the powerful automobile recycling industry. Millions of tons of potentially toxic refuse created by recyclers of cars and heavy home appliances in the Bay Area have been buried in municipal landfills, instead of being transported in specially designated trucks and... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"As Wikipedia says "The Alvarado Adobe was demolished in the mid-20th century to make way for a motel." Sad. This is a reproduction. "A single beam from the original structure is incorporated into the roof of the replacement structure, at the rear of the adobe facing the interior courtyard." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Pablo,_California" - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

Amazing how hard it can be on Google Maps to find out what creek you just saw. I had to cross-reference between these maps and Google Maps to figure out I'd seen Wildcat Creek. - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

Sad that we've concreted up so many waterways in CA and sad that we're so auto-oriented that Google Maps doesn't label the smaller waterways in our communities. - Spidra Webster

"Two of the original Tuskegee Airmen were honored Saturday at Marin's Gnoss Field, and one of them, a 93-year-old World War II navigator, went up in the air with a formation flying team that performed for a crowd of spectators gathered on the tarmac of the county-owned airport. Lt. LeRoy Gillead, a remarkably spry and articulate nonagenarian, was beaming when he was helped down from one of the single-engine prop planes flown by members of the Redstar Formation Team. As he shook hands and graciously posed for photographs with admirers, he was asked how he's holding up under all the sudden attention. "It's tiring," he said with a grin. "But when you're in your mid-90s, everything's tiring. Everyone wants to touch you. We've become icons." The flybys capped a morning-long salute by the Gnoss Field Community Association to the Tuskegee Airmen, an African-American flying brigade that fought in World War II, becoming the first black aviators in the U.S. military. Gillead, a retired... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"Any city would welcome the general and generous title of "Best City," and major U.S. cities constantly vie to be dubbed the best in something, including those lining the West Coast. San Francisco and Los Angeles, though both Californians, are very different cities on various levels, yet residents feel compelled to line them up next to each other for endless rounds of comparisons. One Angeleno, Josh Heller, says, "I've never completely understood why San Franciscans talk smack about Los Angeles." So he did a little digging, reflecting and blogging. You can read "Why San Francisco hates Los Angeles" in full here, but for your Saturday afternoon reading convenience, we sifted through his recent account of visiting San Francisco and selected a few of Heller's finest rivalry observations, which are pasted below. You can be brutally attacked (read: coyly judged) [by San Franciscans] for merely mentioning that you’re from Los Angeles. Last summer my girlfriend and I went to a cafe on... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"Living memory has a way of disappearing fast. Before you know it, those who were there are gone. Now 72 years after the Angel Island Immigration Station closed its doors, maybe a couple hundred people still remember firsthand what it was to travel by boat thousands of miles to California only to be held for days, weeks or months in guarded wooden barracks surrounded by San Francisco Bay. Those who do remember are getting on now. And they were very young then. So mostly their memories of their stay on the island have a blurry-edged, childlike feel. Myron Wong, 83, who came from China in the station's final year, 1940, recalls tossing around a tennis ball and watching men play pool. He didn't know anything of Angel Island's grim history, he said. "My brother and I just played." Marye Kimoto, 88, of Culver City, can still describe the shoe boxes with small dolls tucked inside that she and her sister, Bess Saito, 87, were given when they were held on the island for a week in the early... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"On a morning in August 2007, a slender masked man ran up to Chauncey Bailey on an Oakland sidewalk and fired two shotgun blasts at the journalist. The first slug tore through Bailey from the side, at shoulder level, shredding the tops of his lungs and his trachea. The second came nearly straight on from the front and tore open his abdomen. The gunman began to run off, but then turned back to fire one more shot that tore away half of Bailey's head. I knew Bailey — we were distant colleagues at the Detroit News from 1986 to 1992 — and there's something deeply chilling about reading the intimate details of his violent death. But that graphic encounter forms only one of many chilling moments in Thomas Peele's "Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism's Backlash, and the Assassination of a Journalist," a deeply reported look at the rise and fall of what can best be described as a multigenerational cult of thugs. Peele's book begins with Bailey's murder, as it should, since... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"LIVERMORE -- A 16-year-old boy suffered minor injuries Friday night when he was struck by a vehicle while walking in a crosswalk on South Livermore Avenue, police said. The collision happened at 8:37 p.m. as the teen was attempting to cross the avenue in a marked crosswalk between First Street and Railroad Avenue, according to a Livermore police news release. The driver of a Honda traveling south on South Livermore Avenue did not see the teen and struck him with the front of the vehicle. The injured teen was taken to a local hospital where he was treated and released, police said. The collision was under investigation, but police do not believe alcohol was a contributing factor. The roadway was closed for about three hours after the collision. This was the sixth injury to a pedestrian this year in Livermore, where such collisions have been on the rise in recent years, police said. There were 18 pedestrian injuries in all of 2011, up from 17 the previous year. There have been no... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"The San Francisco Police Department released a video Friday reassuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth that they are not alone in their struggles for acceptance. The video is part of the national It Gets Better Project, which, according to its website, "was created to show young LGBT people the levels of happiness, potential, and positivity their lives will reach -- if they can just get through their teen years." According to Mayor Ed Lee and Police Chief Greg Suhr, Friday's release marks the first time a law enforcement agency has made a video for the project. The police department's video features more than a dozen gay and lesbian officers and a 911 operator talking about when they realized they were homosexual, their struggles with their self-esteem and thought of suicide, the difficulties they had coming out to their families, and the confidence, love, and acceptance they feel now. One gay officer tells a story about an apology he received from his father after he... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"In a written release, Controller John Chiang called January’s revenues "disappointing on almost every front." Personal income and corporate tax each lagged by a combined $700 million, and only the state sales tax managed to exceeded the mark, coming in $42 million higher than expected. H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs at the California Department of Finance, said that it was unclear why personal income’s lagging but that its "something we're watching." It could be that self-employed taxpayers underestimated what they owed the state in January and will pay more in April. Californians also may have delayed stock sales because of market conditions — or the governor’s team may have over-estimated capital gains income. If the trend continues, state lawmakers will be forced to close a larger deficit next year. California lawmakers won’t know why January revenues were low until the end of April, after they’ve counted all the tax returns. A spokesman for the legislative analyst says that given the uncertainty, lawmakers are likely to wait until May before making any major budget decisions." - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"Just down the fabled Sand Hill Road from the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, physicists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory ponder questions about energy, time, space and the possibility of alternative universes. But back at the shopping mall, a window into an alternative universe is already taking shape, just steps from the Apple Store. Workers are constructing the latest Microsoft Store, smack in the heart of Apple territory and not far from the home of Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs. It is scheduled to open on April 19. Just as the wildly successful Apple Stores have a definite look and feel, so, too, do the dozen or so Microsoft Stores that have opened since 2009. Glass front? Yes. Blocky wood furniture on which products are displayed almost as museum pieces? Helpful employees in T-shirts? Of course. Classes and workshops? Yes. Special area for children? Yes. Apple has a genius bar; Microsoft has an answer desk. MacBooks, iPhones, iPads, iPods and other Apple... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

Microsoft also made their employees dance... THAT could be one of the problems ;) - Johnny

"A group that for years has quietly supported state parks in Marin is stepping forward as park closures loom, intent on raising thousands of dollars to keep them open. The nonprofit Marin State Parks Association and its subgroups Friends of China Camp and The Olompali People want to increase membership tenfold and raise as much as a quarter million dollars by May 1 to keep two state parks open in Marin. Until now the group's focus has been on education and volunteerism in the parks. But a meeting Saturday at China Camp will serve as a coming out party for the organization's newer role. "We have been a pretty low-key organization, but faced with closures we are really gearing up and we see a role for us to play," said San Rafael resident Steve Deering, a member of the group, while sitting at a picnic table at the Chinese fishing village at China Camp. "That means working with the county, with the state and doing our own effort to keep the parks open." The work has already started.... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

"The bad news is that state funding for California libraries has been completely eliminated. There’s not really any good news about that except that it was expected. This past July, state library funding was sliced in half, and there was a trigger amendment attached to the budget that would eliminate state funding for public libraries at midyear if the state's revenue projections were not met. Needless to say, they weren’t. Now libraries in the Bay Area, as in the rest of the state, will lose funding for literacy programs, InterLibrary Loans, and miscellaneous expenses such as librarian training programs and books. Libraries in rural areas will be hit the hardest because they receive more state funding than libraries in larger cities with larger budgets. These cuts are not new. State funding for libraries has been dwindling for the past decade. The Public Library Fund, which provides direct state aid to public libraries for basic service, has never received its full appropriation from... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

Cliff, it's what Jerry did his first time around. - Georgie Bestie

"SACRAMENTO -- A former California wine keeper convicted of destroying more than 4.5 million bottles in a warehouse fire was sentenced Tuesday to 27 years in prison. A federal judge in Sacramento also ordered Mark Anderson to pay $70.3 million to customers who lost their premium collections in the October 2005 blaze. Anderson, 63, stored the wine for 95 vintners and dozens of private collectors for a fee at the Wine Central warehouse in Vallejo. Prosecutors say he set the fire to cover up the fact that he was embezzling wine for years. Winemakers from Napa and Sonoma counties stored wine inside the warehouse, a former submarine repair facility. It was thought to be fireproof because of its thick concrete walls and floors. The building did not have sprinklers, meaning the fire spread quickly. It heated the inside of the warehouse to about 2,000 degrees, cooking the wine in its bottles. Anderson, 63, came under immediate suspicion because he was at the facility the day the fire started,... more... - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet

The guy deserves it but I wish the financial industry assholes who've inflicted just as much damage for their greedy ends were serving time like this. - Spidra Webster

"Rated by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the top exhibitions to see in the Bay Area in 2012! Question Bridge: Black Males is an innovative video installation created by artists Hank Willis Thomas and Chris Johnson in collaboration with Bayeté Ross Smith and Kamal Sinclair after traveling around the country interviewing 150 Black men in eleven cities. They created 1,500 videos of conversations with men representing a range of geographic, generational, economic, and educational levels. They then wove the conversations together to simulate a stream-of-consciousness dialogue, allowing important themes and issues to emerge, including family, love, interracial relationships, community, education, violence, and the past, present, and future of Black men in American society. The project will be on view simultaneously at OMCA, the Brooklyn Museum, the Castain Art Center in Atlanta, and Salt Lake City Arts Center. Learn more about the project, and view videos at QuestionBridge.com." - Spidra Webster from Bookmarklet