Monday, June 17, 2013
Food and Drink Twenty Bucks for Riding a Bike? Sure!
Posted by Nicolas Grizzle on Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 9:23 PM
Let’s get this straight—just for riding a bike less than three miles, one can obtain a $20 gift certificate to a top notch San Francisco bakery and restaurant opening a new location in Santa Rosa? Now, does anyone have a helmet?
The “mother dough” culture, which reportedly gives San Francisco’s Boudin sourdough bread the legendary flavor it’s packed with, is heading up to the restaurant’s new Montgomery Village location tomorrow, June 18. It’s leaving the Rincon Valley Library at 9:30am to be safely locked away in the new space, less than three miles away. Anyone wishing to participate in this bike ride, from the beginning, middle or end, gets a $20 gift certificate. Well, the first 100 cyclists, anyway. But considering it’s a Tuesday, the middle of the morning, in Rincon Valley, chances are high to get in on the delicious, free action.
The new restaurant opens July 11 at 2345 Midway Dr., Santa Rosa. Progress is already quite visible from Farmer’s Lane on the new space.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
media Sonoma West Publishers Expand North
Posted by Jenna Loceff on Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 8:51 AM
The Cloverdale Reveille has changed hands, according to a link on its landing page. (Which takes you to a story on Facebook, for some reason.)
The paper, owned by the Hanchett family since 1988, "will now be owned by Sonoma West Publishers, owners of The Healdsburg Tribune, Windsor Times and Sonoma West Times and News.
The new publisher and owner will be Rollie Atkinson and his wife Sarah Bradbury. Atkinson has worked at The Healdsburg Tribune since 1982, assuming ownership in 2000," according to the story published this morning.
Kind of a funny note: The tagline on the homepage says "weekly since 1878" but a scrolling "ad" about the paper says "serving Cloverdale since 1879."
I guess they were just there for a year and then started serving Cloverdale.
Monday, June 10, 2013
authors Ten Things I Learned from Cheryl Strayed
Posted by Leilani Clark on Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 4:04 PM
So without further adieu, here are:
Ten Things I Learned from Cheryl Strayed.
1. If you have small children (and the money), hotel rooms can be a good place to write. Strayed got Wild written by checking into hotel rooms for 48 hour stretches where she would “write like a motherfucker.” She doesn’t write everyday. She calls herself a “binge writer.” The most important thing is to find time to write, whether it’s everyday, one day a week or in weekend spurts. There’s hope for us Moms yet!
2. Memoir gets a bad rap as narcissistic, but Strayed says that successful memoir is the opposite of narcissism. “You’re transcending the difference between you and me,” she told us. We do this by using self, and the narrative tools of fiction, to create story.
3. How do you write your truth while protecting those you love? “I got to a place where I was genuinely writing about people on the other side of forgiveness,” Strayed said. But it took years of writing to get there, and even then, though her father was abusive, tyrannical and “not a good person,” she woke up “breathless with sorrow” when she thought about him reading what she’d written in Wild. The important idea to try to remember is that the entire picture is often broader and more complex then we realize when we begin writing.
4. People want to read a human story, with all the mistakes, bad choices, ugliness and triumph that comes for all of us at one point or another. Nobody wants to hear about somebody who never makes mistakes, who never shows a shadow self. “Use the places where you rubbed up against yourself,” she said.
5. “Trust however weird you are, a whole bunch of us are just as weird.”
6. Think about the question at the core of your work. For Strayed, whose mother’s death forms the spine of Wild, it grew from “How do I live without my mother?” to “How to bear the unbearable.”
7. Strayed believes in radical honesty, sparing no shadow. She said that most people fear condemnation when they speak their deepest truths, foibles, when they excavate their darkest matter, but rather than being condemned, when people write to the place that makes them uncomfortable, to the point of revelation, that’s when the bridge is crossed between the reader and the writer.
8. She’s all about “Trusting the heat.” “Do it so righteously that we can’t help but look,” she told us. “It’s up to you to make a place for yourself in this world.”
9. It was pretty damn wonderful to see 250 people writing together in one large room.
10. Write what haunts you. What are you obsessed by? What keeps you up at night? Remember, everyone starts out with some kind of handicap and without an audience. But that doesn’t mean you can’t write like a motherfucker. Nobody can (or will) give you permission to do this but yourself.
Friday, June 7, 2013
media Is Print Dead?
Posted by Jenna Loceff on Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 5:21 PM
For years, the media related rhetoric has been: "Print is dead." The news of the last print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the closing of the Rocky Mountain News, both in 2009, shook newsrooms to their core.
Online news sites like the Huffington Post, Politico, Patch and Salon have gained popularity and shifted the way people get their news. Newspapers have gotten smaller and there are fewer subscribers. But is it because people don't want papers? Or just that there isn't as much money in them and the content is declining?
Last year, New Orleans became the largest U.S. city to not have a daily paper. The Times-Picayune became a three-per-week publication with more focus on the online content. That apparently is not what people want. In an article in the New York Times, reporter David Carr noted the publisher decided to bring back the paper as a daily because of the public engagement. Also, the Philadelphia Inquirer is set to publish again; though only on Saturdays.
Now it is debatable, apparently, whether the method in which New Orleans' paper is being distributed is a good one. Says Carr:
On Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, a broadsheet called The Times-Picayune will be available for home delivery and on the newsstands for 75 cents. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, a tabloid called TPStreet will be available only on newsstands for 75 cents.In addition, a special electronic edition of TPStreet will be available to the three-day subscribers of the home-delivered newspaper. On Saturdays, there will be early print editions of the Sunday Times-Picayune with some breaking news and some Sunday content.
But the public demanded it and they listened.
When I went to J School, everyone I knew said I was studying a dying industry. After all, "Newspaper Reporter" is apparently the worst job out there.
I always argued it was reporting I was studying, not newspaper reporting. And I figured no matter what, there would be a medium for the message. I am sure there will be a day when print is dead—environmentally speaking, it certainly makes more sense to have news delivered electronically. But apparently even today, people argue for print. And while I am a news junkie and look at it online constantly, there is nothing like a cup of coffee and the Sunday New York Times—in print—to make me happy.
media The War on the News Industry
Posted by Jenna Loceff on Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 5:18 PM
While politicians like Michele Bachmann and Anthony Weiner are taking the press into their own hands, effectively making press conferences irrelevant, Attorney General Eric Holder and the DOJ are attacking reporters from another direction, approving search warrants, signing subpoenas and collecting phone records. Oh yeah, and the NSA is wiretapping, well, everyone, in what the ACLU is referring to "beyond Orwellian."
Meanwhile, Congress and "our beloved president" are arguing about whether this stuff really matters. And claiming it has been done with "congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate."
Is the government saying they don't want a free press and they don't care whether everyone's information everywhere is up for surveillance? It certainly seems so. It used to be when a politician had something to announce, they called a press conference where journalists would gather, listen to their statements, and then ask questions. Of course, a journalist could ask any sort of question, making the politician have to face things he or she may not want out there, but they are elected officials, are they not? They should be held responsible for what they do.
Oh yeah, there also used to be this thing called privacy, where one could assume they weren't being looked down upon by the overlords. The whole communication system has allowed for global expansion, technological breakthroughs and many other incredible things. And it has made the world smaller, and a place where it is much easier to track what anyone does, anytime, anywhere.
This time, the conspiracy theorists were right. And I'm not surprised.
food 'I Don't Want to Eat Octopus'
Posted by Nicolas Grizzle on Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 12:24 PM
I don’t eat octopus. It has a lot to do with respect. If I were less hypocritical, I would probably not eat any meat, even fish. But no, I have standards. An animal has to impress me somehow in order to stay off my plate. There are too many reasons to list why octopus meets this criteria for me, but they are damn smart, adaptable to any situation, can communicate with sudden changes in color, mimic other animals, can crush far more than its body weight, etc.
This kid (I believe he’s speaking Portuguese) doesn’t want to eat his octopus. Not because the taste, but because it’s a living creature. He then launches into a beautiful and articulate diatribe about why he doesn’t want to eat animals, and even makes his mom cry. The weirdest part is he looks a little bit like me as a kid.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
news America Porks China
Posted by Nicolas Grizzle on Wed, May 29, 2013 at 11:48 AM
Turns out all those people who put money into pork futures were right, after all. Today it was announced that Chinese company Shuanghui will buy Smithfield, one of America's largest pork producers, for $34 per share, about 30 percent above its closing share price yesterday. Reports on the value of the deal vary; some report it as $4.7 billion, some say it's $7.1 billion. Either way, this is the largest takeover of an American company by a Chinese company.
There are concerns on this deal, naturally. Shuanghui was embroiled in a tainted meat scandal two years ago in China, but the companies say this deal will primarily focus on exporting American pork to China. Shuangui says it also hopes to learn more about the United States food safety processes. China is the world's biggest pork market.
So, it seems the only thing we don't get from China these days is pork, retaining it as a part of our American heritage. And now they're taking our pork. It's easy to say this is a win for the overall health of Americans, a blow to the "obesity epidemic," as it were. But bacon isn't to blame, it's the maple coating on the bacon, the chocolate bar in which the bacon is mixed, the 1,400-calorie burger on which it sits that is the real culprit. Only time will tell how this deal plays out.
Smithfield says it's keeping its operations in the U.S., which is good for its 46,000 employees. The headquarters will remain in Virginia and no facilities will close, says Smithfield. For now, at least, it's only the profits that will be leaving.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
media What Can—and Can't—be Known by a Short Video Clip
Posted by Jenna Loceff on Thu, May 23, 2013 at 10:35 AM
Anyone who goes near the internet or a television has at least heard of the Cotati police who kicked the door down at James and Jennifer Woods' house after being called on a domestic disturbance charge and tased Jennifer.
Crime reporter for the Press Democrat Julie Johnson wrote a story about the video going viral, and a follow-up that went a little more in depth about the incident and addressed the use of tasers.
All of these things are relevant and worth discussing. The video undoubtedly produces a visceral reaction—cops kicking in doors, a lot of yelling, a woman screaming before, during and after her tasing experience and the man with her who shot the video and who was yelling back and forth with the cops about not coming in.
Yet whatever one's thoughts are about cops, when they are called on a domestic disturbance, they are required to check to make sure there is nothing abusive or salacious going on.
I also want to state clearly that I am not justifying in any way this particular situation or the police's action. I am not a police apologist, I have in fact participated in Cop Watch and am very skeptical about a lot of things police-related.
But in terms of the viral video and the media issues surrounding it, my mind quickly went to ask questions about what had happened first. Why were the police there? Why was the man in the house yelling at them to go away? What was actually going on? And until there was some reporting done, and some questions were answered, what I saw was a man yelling at police who seemed to think it was very important to get into the house and used force to do so and then responded to the screaming woman by tasing her.
Certainly there are corrupt police who take advantage of their power. In my poking around into this situation, it is pretty clear this officer doesn't have the best track record. But what interested me about this was my instantaneous negative reaction of a clip of a situation. It reminded me that in addition to "just the facts" the media needs to provide context and some analysis of a situation to create understanding. Understanding about what happened as well as understanding as to how to prevent it from happening again.
Monday, May 20, 2013
books Sonoma County Book Festival Launches a Kickstarter Campaign
Posted by Leilani Clark on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 1:09 PM
It's official. Books are still rad. And the people who provide a venue for the authors and book-sellers that stilll believe in the power of the book are still rad. That's why the Sonoma County Book Festival received a Boho Award in 2011, and that's why it would be nice to keep the only major book festival in the county around for years to come. Like pretty much everyone else these days, they've turned to crowdfunding for help.
Today, the organizers announced the beginning of a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign to keep the festival running and fund an Executive Director to run the whole shabang, since its hard for volunteers to pull of something like this off. This year, the festival moves to Santa Rosa Junior College, instead of running through downtown Santa Rosa, like it has for the past 12 years each September.
From the Kickstarter page:
"The Sonoma County Book Festival has been celebrating books and authors and readers and our local community for the past 12 years each September, and it's been a glorious contribution to Sonoma County. What you may not know is that we've done it on a wing and a prayer. And at this juncture, our funds are low and our volunteers are tired. As the board of directors, we've had to ask ourselves, "Do we stop offering this incredible community celebration of books and literacy?" The answer came back as a loud, "Heck no!" The Festival and our community deserve more. In fact, we believe we can make the Festival even better for 2013."
Friday, May 17, 2013
Extended Play: Direct Energy
Posted by Rachel Dovey on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 11:43 AM
In this week's news story, we reviewed the final four contenders for Sonoma Clean Power. Direct Energy, especially, might raise the green-leaning eyebrow.
As we wrote in the news story: Between 2001 and 2004, Direct Energy was found by several regulators to have signed up unwitting clients in four U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. According to a newspaper report, the company brought attention to itself by accidentally signing up an Atlanta man who had been dead for over 20 years. It was charged with unethical business practices and fined $500,000 stateside and $150,000 in Canada.
There's a series on this fiasco in the Calgary Herald, which is this writer's new Canadian regional newspaper crush.
