Podcast appearances and mentions of Santa Clara Valley

In this first episode of the second season of The Kosher Wine Podcast, join Dr. Kenny Friedman and Rabbi Yisroel Bernath as they sit together for the first time live on the podcast.They welcome their wives, special guests, family and friends, drink wonderful wines, and celebrate the holiday of Pesach (Passover) with happiness and special friendship. Kenny and Rabbi Bernath enjoy the:Nana Estate, Mitzpe Ramon, Tethys, 2021Shirah, Coalition, 2019Four Gates, Santa Clara Valley, Syrah, 2016Listen in and have a seat at the table.Support the showEmail your questions and comments to kosherwinepodcast@gmail.com

We're positively kvelling over the brand new anthology from this week's guest Eric Gouldsberry - "Our Life and Times with the Earthquakes" - which vividly (and lovingly) portrays the thrilling early days of the original San Jose Earthquakes franchise (1974-84) of the old North American Soccer League, and the transformative impact it brought to the Bay Area's fast-growing Santa Clara Valley. Through his personal journey as a devoted fan and with never-before-seen images captured by his father - "official unofficial" team photographer Ray Gouldsberry - Eric brings to life the magic of a team that ignited an untapped soccer fan base in the South Bay and helped define the 1970s-era pro version of the "beautiful game" in America. We explore the club's ingenious marketing tactics, pioneering players, eclectic fans, and the various highs and lows of the original Earthquakes both on and off the field - all set against the meteoric rise and ultimate collapse of the enigmatic NASL. It's all here: cozy Spartan Stadium, its painted field, cheer instigator (and Episode 7 guest) "Krazy" George, the "Shakers," indoors at the Cow Palace - plus, the little-known origin story of 1978's expansion Oakland Stompers and the intense-but-brief rivalry that time forgot! + + +   SUPPORT THE SHOW:  Buy Us a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/goodseatsstillavailable "Good Seats" Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/?ref_id=35106 SPONSOR THANKS (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): Old School Shirts.com (10% off promo code: GOODSEATS) https://oldschoolshirts.com/goodseats Royal Retros (10% off promo code: SEATS): https://www.503-sports.com?aff=2   BUY THE BOOK (AND SUPPORT THE SHOW!): "Our Life and Times With the Earthquakes: Images and Memories from the Glory Days of San Jose's Original Pro Soccer Team": https://amzn.to/4i2YVmI FIND AND FOLLOW: Website: https://goodseatsstillavailable.com/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/goodseatsstillavailable.com X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/GoodSeatsStill YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@goodseatsstillavailable Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodseatsstillavailable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodseatsstillavailable/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodSeatsStillAvailable/

In this episode, Khalid Turk, Chief Healthcare Information Officer at Santa Clara Valley Healthcare, discusses the organization's commitment to digital transformation, patient-centered care, and equitable access. He shares insights on integrating new hospitals, leveraging AI, and balancing budget constraints while fostering innovation in one of California's largest public health systems.

Experience Quetsmo's “The Roosevelt Mural,” curated and produced by Empire Seven Studios, on the south-facing wall of the new Roosevelt Park Apartments on the corner of East Santa Clara Street and North 21st Street. Shane Martin Oseguera, also known as Quetsmo, is a muralist from Redwood City, California, currently based in San Diego. His moniker combines Quet, a reference to Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of creativity, with SMO, his initials. Quetsmo remembers getting the call about “The Roosevelt Mural” from Empire Seven Studios–“As soon as [Carlos] introduced this opportunity to me, I told him, Man, this has been a dream of mine. I have been waiting for this call for years, and hands down, I'm all in. I've been putting 110% 24/7 on this thing.” Quetsmo spent a couple of months preparing the design and two months on the wall itself. The mural is over 100 feet wide, spans 77 feet vertically at its tallest point, and is 20 feet high along the sides. Focusing on plants and animals native to California, Quetsmo hoped to capture the diversity of the state's landscape. The crown jewel, centered on the tallest portion of the wall, is a larger-than-life Elephant Cactus adorned with a single hawk and cactus blooms painted in pearlescent white. It can be seen from East Santa Clara Street and symbolizes the strength of the community in one of San Jose's oldest neighborhoods. “Not only this community, but so many others like it, and the people within it have endured many hardships but continue to stay resilient. And that's exactly what this cactus represents.” -Shayne M. Oseguera. About the Development: The Roosevelt Park Apartments, a First Community Housing development, are designed for young adults experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, homeless families, large families, and, if possible, foster families and/or survivors of domestic abuse. The project's goal was to create a synergistic set of services and facilitate community building so that 80 families and transitional-age youth could remain in this rich and supportive neighborhood rather than being pushed out of Silicon Valley.  Artist Statement: The composition transitions from the ocean to the west to the desert to the east. A unique quality we share all along the western coast, from Oregon down to Baja California and Mexico. The Santa Clara Valley mountain range stretches across the background, bringing a calming sense to the viewer. The foreground is a colorful reflection of the local biodiversity found within our community. People are seen interacting with the environment through activities they can engage in. The 1964 Impala lowrider in the bottom right-hand corner represents the surrounding area's dominant Hispanic and Latino demographic. A large Elephant Cactus stands tall as the main focal point. Personifying the resilience of all demographics who have endured countless hardships yet continue to adapt and survive despite the odds against them. Follow Quetsmo on Instagram @quetsmo and website at quetsmo.com Follow Empire Seven Studios on Instagram @empire7studios and their website at empiresevenstudios.com (Last featured on The Content Magazine Podcast Episode #16) Learn more about The Roosevelt Park Apartments at rooseveltparkapartments.com

In this episode, Khalid Turk, Chief Healthcare Information Officer at Santa Clara Valley Healthcare, shares his experiences leading IT initiatives during the pandemic, the importance of cybersecurity resilience, and the ongoing digital transformation of healthcare systems.

A drenching rainy season that isn't over yet has given California another gift, besides a big snowpack and gnarly skiing: a “superbloom.” A superbloom is not a scientific term according to botanists, but this year's bloom promises to deliver a spectacular display. Anza-Borrego Desert is already reaching its peak, the park currently awash in a carpet of desert sunflowers, dune primrose and dandelions. For many areas across the state, peak blooms are still ahead. We talk to superbloom explorers, experts and wildflower lovers about what to look out for and the best ways to experience this year's bonanza. Guests: Radhika Thekkath, co-president, Santa Clara Valley chapter of the California Native Plant Society Evan Meyer, botanist and executive director, nonprofit Theodore Payne Foundation Dan McCamish, senior environmental scientist, Colorado Desert District, California State Parks

Railway tycoon Leland Stanford lived in Santa Clara Valley and founded Stanford University in 1891. Another prominent Stanford University figure, Frederick Terman. invested heavily in businesses that would base themselves in the area and employ talented young people. One such business was the original start-up, an electrical company started in a garage by Stanford alumni William Hewlett and David Packard, Hewlett-Packard. The beginning of Silicon Valley as an epicenter of innovation began in 1955 with the arrival of the Shockley Semiconductors Laboratory. Another revolutionary point was reached in 1968 when Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore left Fairchild Semiconductor to form Intel.

In This Episode Silicon Valley's non-profit landscape is marked by intense competition and technological challenges. With over 2,000 registered organizations, only 10% manage to secure the majority of grants and donations, highlighting a fierce battle for funding. Compounding this issue is that 40% of these non-profits, despite being in a renowned tech hub, need more resources or expertise to utilize digital tools for fundraising and engaging donors effectively. Additionally, around 60% rely on a single funding source, significantly heightening their risk of financial instability. Non-Profit Fundraising Problems in Silicon Valley Competition for Funding: In Silicon Valley, over 2,000 registered non-profits fiercely compete for funding, with just 10% securing most grants and donations. Challenges in Adopting Technology for Fundraising: Despite their tech hub location, 40% of Silicon Valley non-profits need more resources or expertise for effective digital fundraising and donor engagement. Lack of Diversified Funding Sources: Approximately 60% of Silicon Valley non-profits rely on a single funding source, increasing their vulnerability to financial instability. About Dee Dee Kiesow Dee Dee Kiesow is a non-profit Executive Director with 30+ years of experience in fundraising and community engagement. She uses her passion for enrolling donors by inspiring joyful giving to elevate and transform those in need. Dee Dee excels in fund development, strategic partnerships, vision and engagement, board mentorship, and developing pathways to bring grassroots to greatness. Working on a regional and national scale, Dee Dee possesses in-depth knowledge and experience in leading both the complex day-to-day operations of an organization as well as guiding its vision, growth, and financial reserves. Dee Dee is also a benefit auctioneer and raises tens of millions for numerous organizations using her Six Figure Fundraising Framework®. She holds a B.A. in Radio/TV Journalism from San Jose State University. Her speaking engagements range from keynotes to numerous college lectures inspiring young adults to consider careers in the non-profit sector. Show Notes Background of Dee Dee Kiesow: A fifth-generation Santa Clara Valley native with a history in fundraising and community development, starting from their time at San Jose State University. Transition to Nonprofit Development: The guest shares their journey from being a top salesperson to starting several nonprofits, influenced by the concept of unlimited ‘inventory' in goodwill and community service. Unique Fundraising Approach: Describes a non-fearful, fit-based approach to fundraising, comparing it to the different attitudes of ‘Chicken Little' and ‘Paul Revere'. Six-Figure Fundraising Framework: A detailed explanation of a proven fundraising method developed from 20+ years of experience, focusing on ideating outcomes, strategic partnerships, and donor development. Balancing ROI and Donor Experience: Balancing financial return and donor experience in fundraising events, emphasizing efficient spending and impactful donor engagement. Emphasis on Donor Appreciation: Discusses the crucial role of donor appreciation in maintaining long-term relationships, likening donors to beloved family members. Elements of Successful Fundraising Events: Insights on creating fundraising events that satisfy donors, including understanding donor profiles, focusing on storytelling, and providing diverse giving opportunities. Monetize Your Minutes Concept: Explains a three-step process for maximizing fundraising efficiency through detailed planning, strategic execution, and post-event analysis. Ensuring Event Scalability and Repetition: Strategies for making fundraising events repeatable and scalable, focusing on choosing the right person for money requests and authentic cause representation. Maximizing Lifetime Donor Value and Organizational Buy-In: Discuss strategies for increasing lifetime donor value and ensuring all organization members are aligned with fundraising approaches.

White Fang, now at his masters home in the Santa Clara Valley, has to learn how to get along with the entire family, their servants, and their dogs...and domestic chickens. Try the new "Tales of Escape & Suspense"- links below! ANDROID USERS- 1001 Tales of Escape & Suspense at Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/2HQYk53AJHTOgBTLBzyP3w 1001 Stories From The Old West at Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0c2fc0cGwJBcPfyC8NWNTw 1001 Radio Crime Solvers at Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/0UAUS12lnS2063PWK9CZ37 1001's Best of Jack London at Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2HzkpdKeWJgUU9rbx3NqgF 1001 Radio Days at Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5jyc4nVoe00xoOxrhyAa8H 1001 Classic Short Stories & Tales at Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/6rzDb5uFdOhfw5X6P5lkWn 1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories & Mysteries at Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/6rO7HELtRcGfV48UeP8aFQ 1001 Sherlock Holmes Stories & The Best of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/4dIgYvBwZVTN5ewF0JPaTK 1001 Ghost Stories & Tales of the Macabre on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5P4hV28LgpG89dRNMfSDKJ 1001 Stories for the Road on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/6FhlsxYFTGNPiSMYxM9O9K 1001 Greatest Love Stories on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5sUUFDVTatnGt7FiNQvSHe 1001 History's Best Storytellers: (INTERVIEWS) on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/3QyZ1u4f9OLb9O32KX6Ghr APPLE USERS New! 1001 Tales of Escape and Suspense at Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-tales-of-escape-and-suspense/id1689248043 Catch 1001 Stories From The Old West- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-stories-from-the-old-west/id1613213865 Catch 1001's Best of Jack London- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-best-of-jack-london/id1656939169 Catch 1001 Radio Crime Solvers- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-radio-crime-solvers/id1657397371 Catch 1001 Heroes on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-heroes-legends-histories-mysteries-podcast/id956154836?mt=2  Catch 1001 Classic Short Stories at Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-classic-short-stories-tales/id1078098622 Catch 1001 Stories for the Road at Apple Podcast now:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-stories-for-the-road/id1227478901 NEW Enjoy 1001 Greatest Love Stories on Apple Devices here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-greatest-love-stories/id1485751552 Catch 1001 RADIO DAYS now at Apple iTunes!  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-radio-days/id1405045413?mt=2 NEW 1001 Ghost Stories & Tales of the Macabre is now playing at Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-ghost-stories-tales-of-the-macabre/id1516332327 NEW Enjoy 1001 History's Best Storytellers (Interviews) on Apple Devices here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-historys-best-storytellers/id1483649026 NEW Enjoy 1001 Sherlock Holmes Stories and The Best of Arthur Conan Doyle https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1001-sherlock-holmes-stories-best-sir-arthur-conan/id1534427618 Get all of our shows at one website: https://.1001storiespodcast.com My email works as well for comments: 1001storiespodcast@gmail.com SUPPORT OUR SHOW BY BECOMING A PATRON! https://.patreon.com/1001storiesnetwork. Its time I started asking for support! Thank you. Its a few dollars a month OR a one time. (Any amount is appreciated). YOUR REVIEWS ARE NEEDED AND APPRECIATED! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As we embark on the frosty voyage into the debut chapter of Call of the Wild, let's mull over the opening verse: "Old longings nomadic leap, Chafing at custom's chain; Again from its brumal sleep, Wakens the ferine strain." The beautiful web of words foreshadows a primal awakening. The domesticated being yearns to return to its inherent wild state, held down by the chains of societal norms. Our lead character is Buck, a strong, furry, canine resident of the sun-drenched Santa Clara Valley. Unbeknownst to him, a wave of change is surging along the Pacific coast. Buck, king of his domain, lives oblivious to the tide of gold seekers amassing in the North. They seek muscular, rugged dogs like him, to bear the frost and toil in the harrowing Arctic lands. Buck's tale is imbued with rich imagery, as his tranquil existence stands on the edge of an arctic upheaval, literally and metaphorically. His regal life, amidst the  spacious dwelling of Judge Miller, is described as caught in contrasting shades of serenity and grandeur. Judge Miller's estate, teeming with life, is Buck's kingdom where he is revered, respected, and loved. He is a dignified aristocrat, but not a spoilt one. He carries a certain pride in himself but fiercely guards his roots, maintaining a balanced lifestyle with his love for hunting and water.But comfort can be deceiving, and tranquility, fleeting. As the chapter unfolds, the reader is pulled into an undertow of deception and treachery. Manuel, doomed by his gambling, commits an unforgivable act. He transforms Buck, from a lively companion leisurely strolling through an orchard, into a shackled, gasping victim of a cold-blooded transaction. Buck's life quickly spirals into a grim sequence of betrayals and brutalities. His world flips upside down into an unfriendly landscape of humans and iron bars. His grandeur keeps shrinking, replaced by the instinct of a survivor. He is sold and shipped, teased, and tormented. He encounters an unusual array of characters in the underbelly of human and canine societies, brimming with shabby manners and ruthless souls. But in this grimness, Buck gains a valuable insight: a man with a club is a lawgiver, a master—a grotesque but unearthed truth of the wild.Emotions run high as we follow Buck's journey to the cold North, led by a curious fellow called Perrault. The chapter rounds off on an intensely anticipative note, with Buck caught in the mystique of his new masters, incessantly wary of his uncertain future, but ever resilient. And as we close, Buck has his first taste of snow.

Sip Sip Hooray for Rhone wine varieties! Our guests today are a husband and wife winemaking team, working and living in California's Santa Clara Valley. This is a historic winemaking region, dating back to the 1798, but Kim and Todd Engelhardt are adding their own chapter to the story, buying property and planting vineyards on land that, in the late 1880s, was known as Lion Ranch. The Engelhardts went all in on Rhone wine varietals - and their honeymoon in the Rhone Valley sealed the deal. They visited Condrieu - where only Viognier is made - and fell in love with it. But they didn't just buy and drink Viognier - they built a wine business - Lion Ranch Vineyards & Winery - around it. Now, with wines names like Lioness, Lion's Share and Alpha, this winery roars. Todd, an emergency room physician by night, handles organic farming, and the duo is moving into regenerative farming, along with incorporating Baby Doll sheep and bees into their ecosystem. Kim overseas the winery operations, sales and marketing and is the president of the winery association Wineries of Santa Clara Valley. Together they share winemaking duties.  We're delighted that Kim and Todd are taking time to chat with us on the pod. We know you'll be smitten with them, their story, their approach to wine and, of course their wines. 

eine Rezension von Constanze Matthes „Es gab sie noch immer, diese Welt in ihrer erfreulichen Mittelmäßigkeit.“  Ihr Leben ist auf den ersten Blick so unaufgeregt alltäglich. Mary Perrault kümmert sich um Haus und Grundstück, um ihren Mann und die vier Kinder. Mit ihrer Familie lebt sie in der kalifornischen Provinz, im Santa Clara Valley, malerisch zwischen Bergen, Meer und Marschland und unweit von Sacramento gelegen. Ihr Haus ist ein Hort der Gastfreundschaft und Sicherheit. Doch auch die tragischen Schicksale und die großen Ereignisse der Welt machen nicht Halt vor ihrer Tür. Mit ihrem Roman „Draußen die Welt“ erzählt die amerikanische Schriftstellerin und Lyrikerin Janet Lewis (1899 – 1998) vom Alltag einer amerikanischen Familie sowie den Auswirkungen der Weltwirtschaftskrise Ende der 20er-Jahre und Anfang der 30er-Jahre.  … Constanze Matthes, ich bin Journalistin und leidenschaftliche Leserin. Die Liebe zu den Büchern begann im zarten Alter von vier, fünf Jahren, als meine Mutter mich zum ersten Mal in die kleine Bücherei unseres Dorfes mitnahm. Wenige Jahre später schleppte ich die Bücher dann stapelweise allein nach Hause. In der Schule las ich stets die Pflichtlektüre und war meinen Mitschülern ein gern gesehener Gesprächspartner, um den Inhalt des zu lesenden Buches in der Pause vor der Deutschstunde zu erzählen. Sollte man an dieser Stelle „verraten“ sagen? Nach dem Abitur und einem Auslandsaufenthalt in Norwegen studierte ich im Hauptfach Germanistik mit Schwerpunkt Literaturwissenschaft. Allerdings las ich dann nicht immer die Pflichtlektüre der mehrseitigen Lektüreliste und besuchte viel eher die wunderbare Bibliothek des Deutschen Literaturinstituts. Vor allem dann, wenn meine Mitbewohnerin den Koffer-Fernseher über das Wochenende wieder nach Hause mitnahm. Noch heute bin ich „fernseherlos“ und investiere vielmehr meine Zeit in große und kleine Geschichten, dicke und dünne Bücher.

This agricultural history explores the transformation of the Santa Clara Valley over the past one hundred years from America's largest fruit-producing region into the technology capital of the world. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the region's focus shifted from fruits--such as apricots and prunes--to computers. Both personal and public rhetoric reveals how a sense of place emerges and changes in an evolving agricultural community like the Santa Clara Valley.  In Valley of Heart's Delight: Environment and Sense of Place in the Santa Clara Valley (U California Press, 2022), Anne Marie Todd explores the concepts of place and placelessness, arguing that place is more than a physical location and that exploring a community's sense of place can help us to map how individuals experience their natural surroundings and their sense of responsibility towards the local environment. Todd extends the concept of sense of place to describe Silicon Valley as a non-place, where weakened or disrupted attachment to place threatens the environment and community. The story of the Santa Clara Valley is an American story of the development of agricultural lands and the transformation of rural regions. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

This agricultural history explores the transformation of the Santa Clara Valley over the past one hundred years from America's largest fruit-producing region into the technology capital of the world. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the region's focus shifted from fruits--such as apricots and prunes--to computers. Both personal and public rhetoric reveals how a sense of place emerges and changes in an evolving agricultural community like the Santa Clara Valley.  In Valley of Heart's Delight: Environment and Sense of Place in the Santa Clara Valley (U California Press, 2022), Anne Marie Todd explores the concepts of place and placelessness, arguing that place is more than a physical location and that exploring a community's sense of place can help us to map how individuals experience their natural surroundings and their sense of responsibility towards the local environment. Todd extends the concept of sense of place to describe Silicon Valley as a non-place, where weakened or disrupted attachment to place threatens the environment and community. The story of the Santa Clara Valley is an American story of the development of agricultural lands and the transformation of rural regions. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

This agricultural history explores the transformation of the Santa Clara Valley over the past one hundred years from America's largest fruit-producing region into the technology capital of the world. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the region's focus shifted from fruits--such as apricots and prunes--to computers. Both personal and public rhetoric reveals how a sense of place emerges and changes in an evolving agricultural community like the Santa Clara Valley.  In Valley of Heart's Delight: Environment and Sense of Place in the Santa Clara Valley (U California Press, 2022), Anne Marie Todd explores the concepts of place and placelessness, arguing that place is more than a physical location and that exploring a community's sense of place can help us to map how individuals experience their natural surroundings and their sense of responsibility towards the local environment. Todd extends the concept of sense of place to describe Silicon Valley as a non-place, where weakened or disrupted attachment to place threatens the environment and community. The story of the Santa Clara Valley is an American story of the development of agricultural lands and the transformation of rural regions. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography

This agricultural history explores the transformation of the Santa Clara Valley over the past one hundred years from America's largest fruit-producing region into the technology capital of the world. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the region's focus shifted from fruits--such as apricots and prunes--to computers. Both personal and public rhetoric reveals how a sense of place emerges and changes in an evolving agricultural community like the Santa Clara Valley.  In Valley of Heart's Delight: Environment and Sense of Place in the Santa Clara Valley (U California Press, 2022), Anne Marie Todd explores the concepts of place and placelessness, arguing that place is more than a physical location and that exploring a community's sense of place can help us to map how individuals experience their natural surroundings and their sense of responsibility towards the local environment. Todd extends the concept of sense of place to describe Silicon Valley as a non-place, where weakened or disrupted attachment to place threatens the environment and community. The story of the Santa Clara Valley is an American story of the development of agricultural lands and the transformation of rural regions. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-west

This agricultural history explores the transformation of the Santa Clara Valley over the past one hundred years from America's largest fruit-producing region into the technology capital of the world. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the region's focus shifted from fruits--such as apricots and prunes--to computers. Both personal and public rhetoric reveals how a sense of place emerges and changes in an evolving agricultural community like the Santa Clara Valley.  In Valley of Heart's Delight: Environment and Sense of Place in the Santa Clara Valley (U California Press, 2022), Anne Marie Todd explores the concepts of place and placelessness, arguing that place is more than a physical location and that exploring a community's sense of place can help us to map how individuals experience their natural surroundings and their sense of responsibility towards the local environment. Todd extends the concept of sense of place to describe Silicon Valley as a non-place, where weakened or disrupted attachment to place threatens the environment and community. The story of the Santa Clara Valley is an American story of the development of agricultural lands and the transformation of rural regions. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

California has been pummeled by storms in recent months, but the benefit of that never-ending rain cloud is all the makings for a beautiful Bay Area spring. Rivers are gushing, wildflowers are blooming, mushrooms are sprouting and waterfalls are tumbling in places they haven't been seen in years, We'll talk to a panel of nature-lovers about what to look for and the best places to see the glories of spring. Guests: Radhika Thekkath, president, Santa Clara Valley chapter of the California Native Plant Society Tracy Salcedo, outdoor guide author, has written multiple books about hiking in California, including “Hiking Waterfalls Northern California: A Guide to the Region's Best Waterfall Hikes.” Brad Day, publisher, Weekendsherpa.com - A free weekly e-mail about accessible outdoor adventures in the Bay Area. J.R. Blair, amateur mycologist and retired lecturer in Biology at San Francisco State University.

Transcript for 04/05/2023 Bay Native Circle 0000:00:00 Show Theme  00:01:00 Morning Star Gali  Chimi Sunwi. Good evening and welcome to Bay Native circle here on KPFA, 94.1, KFCF 88.1 in Fresno and online at kpfa.org. This is Morning Star Gali. Your host for this evening. Tonight's show is dedicated to all of you celebrating spring blessings and renewal. And enjoying this full moon evening tonight's main native circle profiles some of our community warriors, Anthony Guzman of the Native American Health Center. In Oakland is the Chief Cultural Officer. Besides his community work, he is a father and a husband and considers that his most important role in life. We will hear an interview with James Jackson, a Vietnam veteran who interviews Bruce Gali, a Wounded Knee veteran, and Standing Rock Veteran. All of our veterans are honored and respected within our communities, we will also hear from our very own Bay Native circles, Rass K Dee, a musician, and former producer for BNC. Rass is a cultural and music warrior, blending and incorporating culture into a modern medium.    01:59 James Jackson  Hello, my name is Jimmy Jackson. I live in Tuba City Arizona on the Navajo reservation…I am Kinlichini…born for salt and my maternal grandparents are Towering House and my paternal grandparents are Bitterwater and…   I recently went to visit the traveling wall of Vietnam Memorial and it was in Fort Verde, Arizona, and it was an odd experience to be amongst the Yavapai Apache people… who were forced March to San Carlos in the early, early, early times of Arizona. I went to see other veterans as well at the memorial. So that's why I went there. Bruce Gali is an Elder from Northern California, he is from the Achomawi band of the Pit River Indian Nation… And he recently traveled to Wounded Knee, South Dakota for the 50th year Memorial of the Occupation there, as well as he is a veteran of Standing Rock, North Dakota Occupation 2016 excuse me… he endured quite a bit of hardship there, Bruce?     00:03:35 Bruce Gali  Thank you, Jimmy you know, for the introduction, yes. So, the question was…How did I end up in Wounded Knee?…well you know, back in the late sixties there, you know Alcatraz was going on Also there was some land struggles in Kashia Indian reservation…also Northern California, then they had fishing rights…in Yurok country…but through all these gatherings, especially Alcatraz, there was a number of tribal peoples, tribal nations coming from around the country to do that occupation on Alcatraz and later on they had went to Pit River because we were having a land struggle with PG&E and also the United States forest service on our four corners  You know land struggles so when Wounded Knee started, the tribe had asked, or the tribal council had asked if there were volunteers to like to go over there because of the Sioux tribe had participated in Pit River at that time…so they had asked for volunteers asked for the tribal council had    had asked for volunteers, give me a second here… We had to ask for volunteers, and they asked that I go over there and not to fight the United States government but to go over there and protect the women, children, and elders. Just like the people from Alcatraz from other nations had done so…in order to return that favor.  I volunteered to go back there that time our spiritual person in Pit River country was Charlie Buckskin, chief and Raymond Lego, and a couple of the other council people Talbert Wilson, Doc Jenkins , and they had ceremony for me and they asked that I go back there and that I would be protected and that ..you know not to fight the United States government but to protect the women, children and elders, back there and that I would be able to go back there and defend the people and be able to come back and give my report of what was going on at that time back there. So, when I had gone back there, started out in Pit River and went to UC Davis, we had to a safe house there, and probably 40 people in a room and I had walked in there and asked if I could participate in going back there if they had room …like that   And so, at that time, there were 3 cars going back there and I had secured one of the seats in the vehicle and there were 21 of us that had gathered in UC Davis at that time and we all jumped in the cars and left that evening. Now that was probably the first night that it was the 27th…so probably the 28th when I arrived down there. 21 of us in three cars were packed in there like a bunch of sardines. But we were being followed, I think, through Reno, Nevada, and Colorado and then after that we ended up in Rapid City. We had gone over there, and we went to one of the Indian Centers or Indian community down in there. People started asking or saying they heard about that. There was a group coming in from California a lot of names were mentioned so we did feel that it was safe at that time  Because we wanted to go into Wounded Knee, so we left there and Other people from the community had to stay in Rapid City overnight and then the next day we had went to Porcupine …we went through Porcupine, there were 21 of us going through that there at that time.  So, we walked through the Wounded Knee, we got there probably …we left about 8 o'clock at night, we walked in when the sun was coming out, and they had a bunker over there …California…little California bunker. So other people were there from California, so a lot of people didn't know the story remains that there was about 36 of us altogether…there were all different tribes within turtle island.  But a lot of them came out from California…so you know it was kind of there were California tribal people, but there was 36 of us all together, and I remember that one evening when we were there, one of the folks that is no longer with us now, ..Charlie Steele had asked that he wanted everybody to introduce themselves, their name and what their purpose was for being there…went around in a circle…you know all 36 of us and there right after that the next day they had flesh offerings, and I went over there to see Wallace Black Elk and didn't realize at that time how strong spiritually the prayer was, and I had taken flesh offerings from Wallace Black Elk.  That second evening and he had told me the same exact word that my tribal council from Pit River that those bullets would go right through me, and I was there to protect the women children and elders and not to fight the United States government and I would be able to survive this day and bring back the message from their country back to Wounded Knee and here now today, I really understand and know that power of prayer. And the thing is going back to Wounded Knee on its 50th year anniversary, I had talked to some other people and if you really look at it when I moved back I was 23 years old, and at that time it was 1973, and I looked at it now and at this 50th anniversary and here now I'm just turning 73 years old, you know, and still surviving.  So that's what I'm trying to acknowledge to the people out there is how strong that prayer is.  You know the Creator already knew my path in life…like I said…time tells everything…and like I honor that and I like to say that now, I like to acknowledge the women that were there inside Wounded Knee, inside the bunkers, either cooking or on security or bringing in supplies and even the women that were on the outside ..you know out there gathering fresh medical supplies, clothing, you know that stuff…people haven't acknowledged that about women in their quest… and how their strength was helping us in order to be there…And hold that ground..    13:51 Jimmy: Did you see any people that you knew at the Memorial?     13:56 Bruce:  Yeah, you know there were probably about five or six of us…we were standing around …after these 50 years A lot of things that you know we weren't sure about or to confirm other things that have happened during those days in Wounded Knee and so, we were able to sit down and confirm or you know, just stand around whatever talking and conferring stuff that was going on 50 years ago…  So that was quite interesting, and I talked about the repercussions of the aftermath about killings…the women that were missing…In the mountains, a lot of people were still around on that hillside, you know, and we asked or talked about quite a few of the other people there…whether they were still alive or what they were up to. You know in this present day, it was quite interesting     15:53 Jimmy:  Do you have any last words:    15:57 Bruce:  Yeah…probably last words I'd like to say like I say… acknowledging the women , acknowledging KPFA, for giving me time to speak about this 50th year anniversary like that…I'm not too sure if I'll be able to go back again and I know and I know I'm not going to be able to be there for the 100th year anniversary and I want to give the acknowledgement, blessings for people that I honor very much that have helped me financially ..with the rooms or whatever to go back there like that…just so …I'm honored and blessed to have let me have the acknowledgement about myself being part of that back there…I had mentioned before that it wasn't about me myself or I…it was about us being back there acknowledging the people that weren't able make it because of hardships  Maybe they were taking care of grandmothers, grandpas, grandchildren …children…so on the like that…trouble with their vehicles, maybe they didn't have gas money to go there and come back…the hardships of them having to work like that…I said acknowledging the women that were part of Wounded Knee but weren't on the inside worked on the outside gathering materials like that. So, I'm honored and blessed for all that… the Facebook page is Bruce Gali ok, talk to you guys later–HO!     00:18:39 Cathy Jackson   We're speaking with Anthony Guzman of the Native American Health Centers.   Anthony, can you please introduce yourself?     00:18:46 Anthony Guzman  Sure, my name's Anthony Guzman, and I am the Chief Culture Officer of the Native American Health Center? I'vebeen working here now for, you know, 2 1/2 years, when I first started working here working at the health center, I came in as the Director of Community Wellness. Also, in August of last year, the health center created a position called Cultural Officer and they hired me to fill it and so I'm really grateful for the opportunity to serve in that position. It's a new job that's going to pop up around urban Indian organizations across the country and really one of the things that's the responsibility of that office is to insure that the traditional practices, ancestral wisdom is integrated into all aspects of the organization, and that culture doesn't become a trinket in these types of organization and that it's part of our value system and the way that we do business At the center, and so…several other organizations have one, such as Sac-Sacramento American Indian Health, Santa Clara Valley…and I think one of our partners up in Seattle…Urban Indian Health Institute are doing the same thing, so we followed suit…we saw the value in it…our leadership saw the value in it…so that's my current role…yeah, really excited about it.    01:54 Cathy Jackson  And where are you from?     01:55 Anthony Guzman  I am from Randlett, Utah. I grew up on the Ute Indian Reservation in Northeastern Utah. You know, I remember growing up out there as a kid when I just couldn't wait to get away from there, I wanted to get to the big cities and you know, I always just had this deep desire to be in the city. And now at 46 years old, I take every opportunity I get to go home, back to the middle of nowhere, high desert and ah, you know the mountain sage brush, clay sandstone hills where I grew up…it's really important to me know…to go back home and spend as much time there with my family and..  But honestly when I go home…I find myself just wanting to be alone…as a kid where I grew up you know and walking around…walking around on the high desert, along the river…and really just listening to the sounds that's ..really just nature…yeah, it sounds crazy just to talk about it now but…I remember then how badly I wanted out (chuckles)    03:10 Cathy Jackson  And before we start talking about your upcoming event at the Presidio. Can you tell the listeners why you chose to do the work that you do?     03:22 Anthony Guzman   That's an interesting question, I really… I became a social worker, I worked in the school at the University of Utah, and got a master's in social work. But before that, I went Haskell Indian Nations University, and I went to a boarding school at Anadarko, Oklahoma…and I never planned on   ever going to college, let alone being a social worker …Social workers…where I grew up…it was…social workers weren't seen as people that were there in support…help and build the community…they were kind of seen as people who took away kids and… diagnosed you…And so, I never sought out to do this work, I sure didn't think I would be in the position I was in today. I think the work called me and you know, itjust seemed like it fit and navigated my way through school and again going through school was something that I never planned on doing either…I just think that Creator had a plan for me and to be able to do what I do today is such a blessing and so…that's kind of how I answered that question…I don't know if I really chose this path…it just kind of folded in front of me.   00:21:57 (Cathy Jackson)  OK, I'm going to uh, throw in another question here before we talk about the event…ahm..  You spoke about having a son and I wanted to know what some of the differences are that you feel, or I don't know how to really phrase. How are you raising your son differently from how You were raised?    00:22:21 Anthony Guzman   That's a that's such a beautiful question. You know, I think about both sides of my family: my, my dad was born in Tiajuana and so I'm half Mexican. My father moved from Tiajuana when he was five years old to Northen California and Watsonville, CA. So, I had a large family down there. And so, his father became an orphan in Mexico City when he was a child and grew up in orphanages. And my mom… both of her parents went to boarding school establishedon my reservation…and  both of those histories impacted the way both of my parents parented, you know it was a tough love it was you know I think that even when was going up…the first time… I ever said I love you to my mom and dad, I was probably about 29 years old and, it was really Awkward for myself, it was awkward for my parents too. Like they – I remember seeing how uncomfortable my mom and dad were when I said it to them.  And I think that had a lot to do with the history of both people, the, the, the intergenerational trauma from alcohol and drugs and historical aspects of systematic oppression and colonization and both of my family …both sides. And so, a lot of my testament…to who I am as a father. I had to come through the school of social work, because I don't think that if I went to that school and learned the skill set I did… I don't know if I would be able to be the father, I am today, you know, a very active father.   I bathe  my son…you know when he was a baby…I wash, I cook, I do the dishes, feed him and cloth him…changehis diaper, I love you…to the point now– you know I've never laid a hand on my son…which was very different for me…and I tell him that I love him and he's beautiful every single day.  You know, I think one of the things that I remember that being a father now…opposed to my dad, sleep with my son, cuddle with him, read him bedtime stories and just let him know how much I appreciate and I love him every single day don't know if I Would have necessarily been.   Able to do that without the school that I went through. And the work that I've done on myself I do, I'm actively in therapy…I've been in therapy, it's one thing to do therapy with people, but some other things to know how it feels on the other side of that therapy chair. And to do my work as well. And so, I think the difference I think…my fatherhood style, my dad's …night and day…and that's nothing to say anything bad about my parents…that's what they knew…that's what their parents gave them…and their parents, I can't imagine things they went through. Being a father is the most important thing to me, and it really helps me navigate the work in the community.  So along with the question of the most important thing in my life is being a father…and a husband, you know it's the most important thing, it's the most sacred ceremony that I know that exists to me right now. The most beautiful and I'm glad to call myself a father.    00:25:36 Cathy Jackson   That was a really good answer. So, tell the listeners what obstacles you have encountered in providing the services you do– talk a little bit about the services…and um, what are some of the obstacles you encountered in providingthose services…    00:26:07 Anthony Guzman  Well you know when I think about providing services, it's-it's– I've worked my entire career in the Indian community-in the Native communities…I'm a social worker, I've worked for my own tribe for years, Friendship house ah, CRC, among various tribes, you know back home in Utah, but also worked in urban Indian organizations in Salt Lake City as well.. And I think the obstacles that we always face like…the sources of money that we get.  Not always enough money -that always can be an issue, but it's about the sources that we get that money from. So, if you're getting money from the feds, from the county, from the state…private donors…attached to that funding is always the expectations that you have…and some of those expectations aren't bad they're very important. You know, data collection, what is your data telling you? And being able to justify the work that you'redoing with sometimes that that's a double-edged sword   Sometimes it feels like it's just a bunch of obstacles and you know your heart's making sure your community's getting services that they need and wanting to see the community thrive and heal from all the disparities and trouble they've had…  However, each one of those contracts and funders, you know, sometimes those challenges in which you expect or there's a bureaucracy there. That's just the slog at times. And you know, like, you know, there's certain there's certain contracts, and you got to know your contracts and grants to say, hey, this contract, you can buy food and have a cultural celebration where you feed the people, and    and some say no… you can't do that, or they say you can't charge a traditional practitioner to this, and so I think one of the one of the obstacles to that and you know being able to have unrestricted fundings to do those types of work without having to ask or knowing all these little details of those contracts.   But I don't want to say those are bad things, you just have to be very astute in what you are doing on all those contracts, particularly when you have a lot of contracts, you just have to run through one of those and it's a lot of awareness.   So my hat goes off  to go to the organizations that you, that they know what they need and can put the money where they want to and I think sometimes that's one of the obstacles with having a lot of contracts ..there's some awesome things you can do, you have to think outside the box to fulfill those grants expectations when you have unrestricted funding to do the work that you do then that's awesome.  Hey, let's have a wonderful cultural celebration, and we bring in healers from all over and pay our relatives. What they deserve to be paid. That'salways been something that is important to me.   I remember I had– I used to hold punk rock skateboard festival on my reservation.  And I remember – You know, like you can't do that like, but that's not a substance abuse prevention– I'm like you bet it is, I had skateboard competitions, you know, punk rock, and heavy metal, you know, hip hop artist, some of which are now very well known in the country, which I'm really proud to see where they are right now. But you know, SAMSHA, IHS-Phoenix area office…  So, you know, they might not be really able to see the connection on how those types of activities are prevention activities for youth and even some of the adult folks. So, bureaucracy is definitely a challenge there. And you know, sometimes it's my colleagues. Sometimes I'm not saying anything about understanding the world in general. Sometimes we got folks that are burnt out with the work that they do and that really kind of comes through, and I'm fortunate my colleagues that we currently have right now are fantastic and they really believe in the mission of our organization to ensure that the Community gets you know, support physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. And um, so I'm really proud of that.     00:30:04 Cathy Jackson   We need to leave a few more seconds when we switch back and forth…ah.   You do have a really good staff and I'd like you to talk a little bit about them if you if you can.    00:30:16 Anthony Guzman   Sure, you know, I think I've been really blessed to, you know, come into an organization you know, that's been here doing this amazing work for  50 years doing this amazing, work  you know, With so many of our community partners out there and, you know, friendship House, IFH, CRC and these guys have been doing the work for so long I just hope that, you know, I can put a little bit of contribution into the fantastic work. That's just, you know, what happens with these organizations and then blood, sweat and tears as you well know, for so long when somebody like me with, you know, I'm 46, but still there was the whole generation of people. And I stand on the shoulders of what we did, all that work for us to do what we're doing right now.  You know Marty Waukazoo's our CEO…he has a leadership style that really allows people to meet their full potential, you know, really admire, you know, Marty and I actually worked for Helen as well at…the Friendship House and worked for Helen before I moved to the Bay Area. It was really eye-opening to see leaders like that. Everybody has challenges, you know in leadership. It's really always something that's complex and knowing and understanding that time. Marty's been great, Natalie-Natalie Aguilera…she's the chief administration officer. She herleadership is, you know, really comes through years 17 years of working here at the health center she really knows the organization and the departments. Michelle Shawnego who is a Chief People officer…really leads up a really massive department in our Human Resources…she really has to make very strong decisions and   Understand the complexities of our workforce.   That's very big and diverse you know, out of 275 employees and were close to 100 native employees but our workforce is a is a reflection of the Community that where we are at in Fruitvale and the Mission a very diversecommunity of our very diverse workforce, African American Latino relatives, people from all- Of the world, really constitute our workforce and I'm really proud to see that our workforce is as diverse as it is. So those are some of our Native Leadership.  Hat's off to Dr. Jenkins…our chief medical officer Greg Garrett, our Chief Operations Officer, Alan Wong, our Chief Financial Officer, every single one of those people contributes to every day.    operation of the Native American Health Center, you know. Let me tell you I've had some pretty tough jobs and when I came here. I think a lot of people have the same experience, the pace of which we move every single day. It's grueling and rigorous…I was just pretty blown away on how quickly I have to, you know, download information, make decisions, and move and be able to hold so much at one given time. You know, just didn't realize that I had the capacity to, to work as I'm doing now, and it definitely takes its toll on me, but I make sure that my mental health is– I stay on top of it, and so that when I go home, I can manage it and be a father, a husband and friend, to the best of my ability to some of my colleagues and. At the health center we provide mental health services, clinical, dental. We have a WIC, we have a school-based services in 11 different schools, we have a Richmond site…ah provide rental assistance in San Francisco, prevention services, substance abuse-prevention services, perinatal programming, through community wellness department, and here's ah, we do everything we can to insure that-that culture and traditional values, in an inter-tribal space is interjected in every aspect of our programming, and so again, very humbled and happy to be able to contribute to an organization that's been doing great work for so long.   00:35:03 Cathy Jackson   Thank you. Let's talk about the event that's coming up on Saturday, April 15th at the Presidio now.    00:35:11 Anthony Guzman   Yes, yes. You know, I want to say a fantastic big hat's off to Laura Cedillo who's one of the program managers at the health Center. She's always been a fantastic community organizer and done so much great work, I know I learn from Laura all the time and the way that she engages in the community, you know? So, on Saturday April 15th from 11:00 to 4:00 PM, we have the Inter-Tribal Dance Gathering, dancing is our medicine. We have our brush dancers showing up. The bird dancers, round dance songs–you know, Mike Ballenger, All Nations Singers…and just the title, “Dancing is our medicine,” is so powerful…You know as a clinician you know, you learn all these different types of interventions, you know, and cognitive behavior therapy, motivational interviewing…EMDR you know, the list goes on and often times…they take these little Elements of human beings have used historically heal,    and understand lives about people who have to function in the world.   one of the things that I always notice was that all indigenous people all around the world danced for all things they danced for healing: they danced to grieve, they dance for joy and celebration, they dance to laugh Andso… You know I think that western psychology and medicine  is finally starting to catch up at understanding ah, how you integrate movement, and song and dance into the lives of human beings…it's so crucial and important and I think the inter-national dance gathering is that, it's a demonstration to say -hey look, these ways have always supported the growth and healing and driving of people. But it's also opportunity to just come together and be in community and laugh and dance.   You know, every single one of us I think that times and you know in our lives and get caught up and our work and titles and what we do and mission and we're all out there achieving, but when we dance… All that goes away, and we become one with the people around you,    We come one with the space that you're in you can hear the trees and you can hear the birds. You can hear the ocean. We can hear the laughter of children and all that stuff goes away…and for a moment you're tapped into everything around you, and that's the way when we think about this event, that's how I envision it… That's how I feel when I hear the word dance…so get out there, shake your tailfeather, use your clapper, you know, wherever it may be…cause at the end of the day…when Indigenous people dance…it boils down to a couple of things…and some of it is…love and relationship.   00:38:40 Cathy Jackson   Well, I'm sure people will look forward to that event at the Presideo…can you give the contact information for the event and maybe some of the social media contact- I saw a flyer maybe you could talk about that.   00:39:00 Anthony Guzman   Sure, [if] you have any questions regarding the event, get a hold of Joseph Vasquez or Laura Cedillo, and you can get ahold of them at 415-417-3556 or you can e-mail at  SFCWD@nativehealth.org We also have our Instagram page I believe that is. Directions are 7 Gen 1D, Native American's Health Center Instagram page, and from there, you will be able to get connected to the rest of our social media accounts on Twitter… And Facebook…I think right now, our Instagram has a lot of good stuff there and you can follow some of the things that we are doing not only in San Francisco, but also in Oakland, and the Richmond site as well.     00:40:02 Cathy Jackson   Well, I'd Like to thank you for taking the time to speak, to Bay native circle today. Are there any last words?   00:40:11 Anthony Guzman   Yeah, you know, I think we covered a lot a lot of topics today. And I just want to thank you so much for giving us an opportunity to share a little bit about who we are and what we do at the health center…I think ah,  one of the things that I think is so important, you talked about and thank you for asking you know…as men in the community think about how important it is, that we ah, you know, we take care of our mental health…we cherish it, and when we see something that we need to you got to  make sure you talk to somebody and find the services that we need to in order for us to know as men, as fathers, as brothers as friends to all of our communities…that we take care of ourselves in that way, ..you know our women have carried us in community so, so strongly, and for so long.. But that wait can be very-that wait can wear…and so, they definitely need us I know there's men out there, doing exactly what I'm talking about.  But if you see a brother out there, and they're suffering and they're down…go over there, let them know how much you care about them, if you don't know how to give them the support that they need…don't be afraid to let them know, and normalize some of the help for mental health, it's so important…and I'm saying that as someone that has practiced that myself. You know I've found that times that I've tried to power through things, but every time I've reached out to get support…I see that my resiliency's a lot more–I bounce back quicker…and I learn something, I learn something about myself, and I stay in relation to other people, and to pass that on to other folks, too.   And I see them if they might need help, or they reach out.  So, I wanted to share a little bit about that, because I know how important that is support each other…it'ssuch a dynamic and fascinating time right now, so much going on…I'm so excited about our indigenous America right now…let's do everything we can to fulfill our dreams in community.  Again, thank you so much for the opportunity to share some thoughts, and yeah and (I think he said Wopila)     00:42:31 Cathy Jackson OK, thanks.     (Transition theme)   00:42:31 Cathy Jackson   We're here with Rass K'Dee…ah Rass please tell the listeners a little bit about yourself…and what you've been up to lately.   Rass K'Dee:  hey, how's it going, been a while since I've been on air, thank you for having me Cathy…appreciate it–big fan of your program also, back in the day…yeah, I definitely have been a listener of Bay Native Circle…um…actually host for – I think nine years I hosted?  So… It's good to be back on air with you…and just share what we've been up to. I belong to the band AudioPharmacy…my name is Rass K'Dee…been performing with Audiopharmacy-this will be our 20th year coming up next year, so we're excited to be celebrating 20 years of our work and music and cultural sharing in the bay area and beyond, and ah…yeah, we're just gearing up for a bunch of events this spring, just coming on the air to share some music, and just some vibes with the people.     44:28  Cathy Jackson:  So, tell me a little bit about this film and concert that's coming up     44:31Rass K'Dee:    Yeah, so we made a film called “Groundworks” which is, was…initially it was kind of a collaboration with Dancing Earth…this other group from Canada, Toaster Lab… another film group. We came together to kind of you know, create these short films…they were like 360 films, they were for virtual like virtual reality films? And um, for the virtual space, and um, we filmed a couple of them and through the process of filming these original films, we ended up making a feature- a full length documentary…uhm, which is not 360…just 2D space, but…it's 57 minute film, and it features bunch of California Native Voices, and cultural bearers and one of them is myself, also Canyon Sayers Roots, Bernadette Smith, and L Frank Manriquez, some of the voices that you've probably heard a lot here on KPFA in the Bay Native Circle over the years, and we asked them what kind of…what do they want to share…what are the stories that they want to share…you Canyon, you know, talked about Indian Canyon, Bernadette talked about the acorn festival, and reviving the acorn festival…myself talked about my music, and work with the Nesta Media Arts Center here in Forestville building our sustainable artists hub here in Sonoma County, and Snag magazine, our native arts and culture magazine and then L Frank talked about her work-their work, artwork, and work that they do as well.  Everyone kind of shares a little bit about their culture, and cultural piece…but yeah the film has had a lot of success, it aired on KQED last year…I think it was on…over a thousand stations, it went nationwide…so that was a good opportunity for folks to see it last November, we're just following up with some screenings here in the bay area, we're screening it at the San Francisco State…I think it's on April 12th…at SF State from Noon to 1:30 and they'll be a Q and A, and also a panel, the filmmakers won't make it this time, but some members of AudioPharmacy…some members of the Native staff and teachers at SF State will be on the panel as well and that's going to be at SF State on April 12th…um, and then we also have a concert that we're doing.  We're following up with a concert on April 19th at the McKenna theatre in at SF State, and that concert is with AudioPharmacy, my band…you know for those that aren't familiar…we're world hip hop ensemble–anywhere from five to ten of us onstage at once…but we have a pretty, pretty well-known for getting the party jumpin' in the bay area community.  But that show will be on the 19th from 7 to 8:30 and for students out there, students of SF State or students in general…the first 200 tickets are free, so definitely jump on that, and there's also some promo codes if you go to AudioPharmacy.com…you can find out more information about those.    Cathy Jackson 48:25:   Well, it sounds like you have been busy. Can you talk a little bit more about the film…and where people can see it now?    Rass K'Dee 48:34:  Yeah so if you have a KQED membership, you can watch the film, it is on KQED on the PBS stations in your city where you're tuning in from, but you can just search “Groundworks” on KQED or search Groundworks Film…you can also see the trailer, search Groundworks trailer um you can see the film trailer, but yeah, the film was really kind of evolved from like really from a question we asked you know, these tribal leaders and members you know, what issues or what things do you want to talk about, what kind of things do you want to show from your community…as opposed to approaching them with our own hatched idea of what we want to share from their culture from their community, and I think that's a little bit of a different approach…I think a lot of times us as culture bearers, community culture workers, or ceremony makers…or…yeah, so a lot of times, people come to us with projects that are kind of fully hatched, they want us to um just come on for a fifteen-minute land acknowledgement or open upthe band or sing a song you know, as artists and musicians…culture bearers…  You know, we didn't want to do that…we wanted the artist to share what they wanted to share, and what are the projects that you're excited about, and it's um, just more of a different approach, and I think that really opened up…I think…you know these artists that we're showcasing opened up them to be able to really  hone in on the projects they want the world to hear about, and that's what's most important really is  that the ones that are near and dear to their hearts…you know.    Cathy Jackson 50:20:   That's great so you're really opening up space for other people…ok well anything else you'd like to add?    Rass K'Dee 50:43  Yeah…well I'd love to see–we have a bunch of shows coming up this spring and I recommend just checking us out and I think the best way to check out our calendar for April/May is to AudioPharmacy.com…and you can see all of our dates, we have a show at the Oakland Museum on May 5th, and then we'll be in San Francisco at the Gongster's paradise event on May 6th, the day after…we just have a bunch of shows in April and May, so I'ddefinitely check out audiopharmacy.com if you want to come to one of those…come see us in the community. But yeah, we're excited for the spring…excited for the upcoming events…yeah just this new birth…time of renewal…so I'm giving thanks for you Cathy…thank you so much for having me on today.    Cathy Jackson 51:43:   Well, thank you so much and I'm sure that Falcon will pick out some music from your Radio Cafe to play…is there anything you'd like to suggest?    Rass K'Dee 51:56  We have a couple of new songs, there's a new song called “Translucent” which just came out, and the music video is coming out soon…that, it's already ready…music video, we also have a song called “Lose your Mind”…which is a really long song, you can play a portion of it…nine minute song…that one also has a music video, those are like newer songs, but anything from our catalog, you know, is great…you know audiopharmacy, we have several albums…and I know Falcon's a big fan, so he'll find something…    52:34 Cathy:  Alright thanks a lot     52:36  Audiopharmacy song…to outro    55:16 Morning Star Gali: Here's the calendar for upcoming events with audiopharmacy…On April 12th, Groundworks films screening with audiopharmacy includes a Q and A, this will be held Wednesday April 12th from 12 to 1:30 p.m. at 1600 Holloway Ave in San Francisco…for more information visit groundworksfilms.com. On April 19th, audiopharmacy is playing a live cypher at San Francisco State University…this is a free event…this will be held from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. again on April 19th.  Also, on April 19th audiopharmacy is providing a live theatre performance. This will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at 1600 Holloway Avenue in San Francisco.   For more information please visit audiopharmacy.com/events.  On Saturday April 15th from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., you're invited to the Native American Health Centers Inter-Tribal Dance Gathering, “Dancing is our Medicine” this will be held at the Presidio in San Francisco. Dance in many indigenous communities is a prayer, an offering…a balancing our physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional selves, which in turn heals and strengthens our communities.   The native American Health Centers welcomes Indigenous Communities and the greater public to enjoy healing dances by California tribes, Ohlone Hupa and Kumeyaay…round dance songs by Mike Ballenger, Kickapoo/Sac n Fox, screen printing by Smithsonian, featuring artist Calixto Robles, Zapotec, and beading with Kelly Roanhorse, Dine…and more.  Purchase delicious foods celebrating the bay area's diverse cuisines from Presidio pop up food and beverages, and vendors. Limited seating is available, please bring your own blanket or folding chair.  For more information visit Park Conservancy.org, or nativehealth.org for the latest updates.  Thank you for listening to our special edition of bay native circle…a special thank you to our engineer, Falcon-Miguel Molina, Jr. This is Morning Star Gali, you have been listening to Bay Native Circle…our producer is Janeen Antione, opening music is L. Frank, mixed with Rass K'Dee, Robert Mirabel, and Rare Tribal Mob. Thank you goes out to Mike Biggz for running the boards, and to Diane Williams for the opening prayer. We thank our musical artists, our guests, and our listening artists for your continued support. We want to give a shout out to our brother's sisters listening on the inside, especially those on death row. Thank you to Creator, to the indigenous peoples on the lands we occupy, to our ancestors…and to those yet to come…blessings (end)  The post Bay Native Circle – April 5, 2023 – Morning Star Gali Hosts. Cathy Jackson Interviews Anthony Guzman, Rass K'Dee & Jimmy Jackson Interviews Bruce Gali appeared first on KPFA.

Der Blütenduft des Santa Clara Valley weht durch den Roman „Draußen die Welt“ gewürzt mit der Frische von Salzwasser, die der Wind aus der Bucht von San Francisco heraufbringt. Die Gegend gehört heute zum Silicon Valley: Bereits damals mischt sich das ländlich-nachbarschaftlich Idyll mit allen Vorzeichen der Moderne. Deswegen ist der Roman der Amerikanerin Janet Lewis ein erstaunlich gegenwartsnahes Buch, obwohl es im Original bereits 1943 erschienen ist.

Come meet us, the Marys, and sip Santa Clara Valley Wines with us! That's right, Mary B and Mary O are hosting the VIP Sommelier Experience during the Santa Clara Valley Wine Auction on Saturday, March 25 at Guglielmo Winery in Morgan Hill, Calif. We're super excited to support this fantastic and historic California wine region, the birthplace of the state's commercial wine industry. And we are excited to meet you, our listeners, and share a Sip Sip Hooray! toast. In this special pod episode, we have all the T on the wine auction - including previewing a few auction lots. VIP admission is at 5 pm and gets you special access to the best of the best wines, plus you get to meet us and some of the local winemakers. General admission begins at 6 pm. And yes you can buy tickets now. Then you're in for a real treat, as we welcome 3rd generation vintner Gene Guglielmo. At 98 years old, Guglielmo Winery is the longest continously operated family winery in the Santa Clara Valley. If you do the math, you'll see that the winery started in 1925, right in the middie of Prohibition! Needless to say, Gene's got great stories about this and more! Special thanks to Wineries of Santa Clara Valley and the Morgan Hill Community Foundation, which will distribute auction proceeds to local non-profits serving the community. We appreciate being invited to participate in this giving event.

Margaret O'Mara, Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Chair of American history and professor at the University of Washington, leads the conversation on big tech and global order.   CASA: Welcome to today's session of the Winter/Spring 2023 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I'm Maria Casa, director of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Thank you all for joining us. Today's discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic, if you would like to share it with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Margaret O'Mara with us to discuss big tech and global order. Dr. O'Mara is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Chair of American history and professor at the University of Washington. She writes and teaches about the growth of the high-tech economy, the history of American politics, and the connections between the two. Dr. O'Mara is an Organization of American Historians distinguished lecturer and has received the University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Award for Innovation with Technology. Previously, she served as a fellow with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education. From 1993 to 1997, Dr. O'Mara served in the Clinton administration as an economic and social policy aide in the White House and in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is the author of several books and an editor of the Politics and Society in Modern America series at Princeton University Press. Welcome, Margaret. Thank you very much for speaking with us today. O'MARA: Thank you so much, Maria, and thank you all for being here today. I'm setting my supercomputer on my wrist timer so I—to time my talk to you, and which is very apropos and it's really—it's great to be here. I have a few slides I wanted to share as I talk through, and I thought that since we had some really interesting meaty present tense readings from Foreign Affairs as background for this conversation as well as the recent review essay that I wrote last year, I thought I would set the scene a little more with a little more history and how we got to now and thinking in broad terms about how the technology industry relates to geopolitics and the global order as this very distinctive set of very powerful companies now. So I will share accordingly, and, Maria, I hope that this is showing up on your screen as it should. So I knew I—today I needed to, of course, talk—open with something in the news, this—the current—the ongoing questions around what has—what was in the sky and what is being shot down in addition to a Chinese spy balloon, which is really kind of getting to a question that's at the center of all of my work. I write at the intersection of economic history and political history and I do that because I'm interested in questions of power. Who has power? What do they value? This is the kind of the question of the U.S.-China—the operative question of the U.S.-China rivalry and the—and concern about China, what are the values, what are the—and Chinese technology and Chinese technology companies, particularly consumer-facing ones. And this is also an operative question about the extraordinary concentration of wealth and power in a few large platform companies that are based on the West Coast of the United States—(laughs)—a couple in my town of Seattle where I am right now talking to you, and others in Silicon Valley. It's very interesting when one does a Google image search to find a publicly available image and puts in Silicon Valley the images that come up are either the title cards of the HBO television comedy, which I was tempted to add, but the—really, the iconic shot of the valley as place is the Apple headquarters—the Spaceship, as it's called in Cupertino—that opened a few years ago in the middle of suburbia. And this is—you know, the questions of concentrated power in the Q&A among the background readings, you know, this was noted by several of the experts consulted about what is the threat of big tech geopolitically and concentrated power, whether that's good, bad, if that's an advantage geopolitically or not. It was something that many of those folks brought up as did the other readings as well. And this question of power—who has power and taking power—has been an animating question of the modern technology industry and there's an irony in this that if you think about the ideological granddaddy of Apple itself is the Whole Earth Catalog, which I—and this is—I quote from this in the opening to my review essay that was part of the background readings and I just thought I would pop this up in full for us to think about. This is Stewart Brand. This is the first issue of the Whole Earth Catalog. The full issue is digitized at the Internet Archive as are so many other wonderful artifacts and primary source materials about this world, and this is right here on the—you know, you turn—open the cover and here is the purpose: “We are as gods and might as well get used to it. So far, remotely done power and glory as via government, big business, formal education, and church has succeeded to the point where gross obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the Whole Earth Catalog.” The audience of the Whole Earth Catalog was not a bunch of techies, per se. It was back to the landers, people who were going and founding communes and the catalog was—you know, which was more a piece of art than it was an actual shopping guide, had all sorts of things from books by Buckminster Fuller to camp stoves and to the occasional Hewlett Packard scientific calculator, making this kind of statement that these tools could actually be used for empowerment of the individual because, of course, the world of 1968 is one in which computers and AI are in the hands of the establishment. We see this playing out in multiple scales including Hollywood films like Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which, of course, follows, what, four years earlier Dr. Strangelove, which was also a satiric commentary on concentrated power of the military industrial complex, and computers were, indeed, things that were used by large government agencies, by the Pentagon, by Fortune 50 companies. And so the countercultural computer or personal computer movement is very much about individual power and taking this away from the global order, so to speak. This is the taking—using these tools as a way to connect people at the individual level, put a computer on every desk, connect everyone via computer networks to one another, and that is how the future will be changed. That is how the inequities of the world would be remedied. The notion of ultimate connectivity as a positive good was not something that originated with Facebook but, indeed, has much, much deeper origins and that's worth thinking about as we consider where we are in 2023 and where things are going from there. It's also worth thinking about the way in which global—the global order and particularly national security and government spending has played a role—an instrumental role—in the growth of the technology industry as it is. Take, for example, the original venture-backed startup, Fairchild Semiconductor, which is legendary as really starting the silicon semiconductor industry in the valley. It is the—it puts the silicon in the valley, and the eight co-founders known as the Traitorous Eight because they all quit en masse their previous job at Shockley Semiconductor working for William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor, and they went off and did something that one does not—did not do in 1957 very often, which was start your own company. This was something that you did if you were weird and you couldn't work for people. That's what one old timer told me, reflecting back on this moment. But they, indeed, started their own company, found outside financing and in this group contains Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, the two co-founders of Intel, as well as Gene Kleiner, co-founder of Kleiner Perkins, the venture capital firm. This is really the—you know, the original—where it all began, and yes, this is a story of free-market entrepreneurialism but it also is a story of the national security state. This is a—Fairchild is founded at a moment when most of the business in the Santa Clara Valley of California, later known as Silicon Valley, was defense related. This is where the jobs were. This is the business they were doing, by and large. There was not a significant commercial market for their products. A month after they're incorporated—in September '57 is when Fairchild incorporates itself. October 1957 Sputnik goes into orbit. The consequent wave of space spending is really what is the literal rocket ship that gets Silicon Valley's chip business going. The integrated circuits made by Fairchild and other chip makers in the valley go into the Apollo guidance system. NASA is buying these chips at a time that there is not a commercial market for them and that enables these companies to scale up production to create a commodity that can be delivered to the enterprise. And so by the time you get to the 1970s you are not talking about defense contractors in any way. These are companies that are putting their chips in cars and in other—all sorts of one time mechanical equipment is becoming transistorized. And Intel is Intel, still one of the most important and consequential—globally consequential tech companies around at the center of the action in the CHIPS Act of last year, not to mention others. But this longer history and this intertwining with the military industrial complex and with broader geopolitics—because, of course, the space program and the Apollo program was a Cold War effort. It was about beating the Soviets to the moon, not just doing it because we could. But that really kind of dissipates and fades from collective memory in the Valley and beyond with the rise of these entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, young, new-time CEOs that are presenting a very, very different face of business and really being consciously apolitical, presenting themselves as something so far apart from Washington, D.C. And this notion of tech, big or little, being something separate from government and governance is perpetuated by leaders of both parties, not just Ronald Reagan but also by Democrats of a younger generation that in the early 1980s there was a brief moment in which lawmakers like Tim Wirth and Gary Hart were referred to as Atari Democrats because they were so bullish on high-tech industries as the United States' economic future. And the way in which politicians and lawmakers from the 1980s forward talked about tech was very much in the same key as that of people like Steve Jobs, which is that this is a revolutionary—the tools have been taken from the establishment, and this is something that is apart from politics, that transcends the old global order and is a new one. And, in fact, in the speech in May 1988 in Moscow at the end of his presidency Ronald Reagan delivers a—you know, really frames the post-Cold War future as one in which the microchip is the revolutionary instrument of freedom: “Standing here before a mural of your revolution”—and a very large bust of Lenin—“I talk about a very different revolution that is taking place right now. Its effects are peaceful but they will fundamentally alter our world, and it is—the tiny silicon chip is the agent of that, no bigger than a fingerprint.” This is really remarkable, if we sit back and take a deep breath and think about it, and particularly thinking about what happens after that. What happens after that are decades in which, again, leaders of both parties in the United States and world leaders elsewhere are framing the internet and understanding the internet as this tool for freedom and liberation, a tool that will advance democracy. Bill Clinton, towards the end of his presidency, famously kind of said, effectively, that I'm not worried about China because the internet is going to bring—you know, internet is going to make it very hard to have anything but democracy. And this notion of a post-Cold War and beyond the end of history and tech and big tech being central to that that, in fact, aided the rise of big tech. That was a rationale for a light regulatory hand in the United States, allowing these companies to grow and flourish and so big, indeed, they have become. But I want to end on a note just thinking about the—you know, why this history is important, why this connective tissue between past and present actually does matter. It isn't just that, oh, this is nice to know. This is useful. Lawrence Preston Gise was the second—sorry, the first deputy administrator of DARPA in 1958, created in the wake of the Sputnik—post-Sputnik panic, originally called ARPA, now DARPA. He later ran the entire Western Division of the Atomic Energy Commission—Los Alamos, Livermore, et cetera. Longtime government public servant. In his retirement he retired to his farm in west Texas and his young grandson came and lived with him every summer. And his grandson throughout his life has talked about how—what a profound influence his grandfather was on him, showing him how to be a self-sufficient rancher, how to wrangle cattle and to build a barbed wire fence. But the grandson—you know, what the grandson didn't mention that much because it wasn't really relevant to his personal experience was who his grandfather was and what he had done. But when that grandson, Jeff Bezos—a few years ago when there was—when Google employees were writing their open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai saying, we are not in the defense business. We are—we don't like the fact that you are doing work with the Pentagon, and pressuring Google successfully and other companies to get out of doing work with the Pentagon, Bezos reflected, no, I think we're—I think this is our patriotic duty to do work—do this kind of work. And as I listened to him say that on a stage in an interview I thought, ah, that's his grandfather talking because this little boy, of course, was Jeff Bezos, the grandfather of Lawrence Preston Gise, and those—that connective tissue—familial connective tissue as well as corporate and political connective tissue, I think, is very relevant to what we have before us today. So I'll leave it there. Thanks. CASA: Thank you, Margaret, for that very interesting introduction. Let's open up to questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) While our participants are gathering their thoughts would you start us off by providing a few examples of emerging technologies that are affecting higher education? O'MARA: Yeah. Well, we've had a very interesting last three years in which the debate over online learning versus in-person learning very quickly was not necessarily resolved. We did this mass real-time experiment, and I think it made—put into sharp relief the way in which different technologies are shaping the way that higher education institutions are working and this question of who's controlling the—who controls the platforms and how we mediate what learning we do. Even though I now teach in person again almost everything that I do in terms of assignments and communication is through electronic learning management systems. The one we use at UW is Canvas. But, of course, there are these broader questions—ethical questions and substantive questions—about how our AI-enabled technologies including, notably, the star of the moment, ChatGPT, going to change the way in which—it's mostly been around how are students going to cheat more effectively. But I think it also has these bigger questions about how you learn and where knowledge, where the human—where the human is necessary. My take on it is, aside from the kind of feeling pretty confident in my having such arcane prompts for my midterm essay questions and research projects that ChatGPT, I think, would have a very hard time doing a good job with it but although I'm looking forward to many a form letter being filled by that technology in the future, I think that there is a—you know, this has a history, too. The concern about the robot overlords is a very deep one. It extends from—you know, predates the digital age, and the anxiety about whether computers are becoming too powerful. Of course, this question of artificial intelligence or augmented intelligence kind of is the computer augmenting what a human can do rather than replacing what a human can do or pretending to have the nuance and the complexity that a human might be able to convey. I think there's, you know, these bigger questions and I'm sure—I imagine there are going to be some other questions about AI. Really, you know, this is a—I think this is a very good learning moment, quite frankly, to think more—you know, one of the things I teach about a lot is kind of the information that is on the internet and who's created it and how it is architected and how it is findable and how those platforms have been developed over time. And what ChatGPT and other AIs like them are doing is they're scraping this extraordinary bounteous ocean of information and it is as good as the—it's as good as its source, right. So whatever you're able to do with it you have—your source materials are going to determine it. So if there is bias in the sources, if there is inaccuracy in the sources, there is—that will be replicated. It cannot be—you know, I think what it is is it's a really good rough draft, first draft, for then someone with tacit knowledge and understanding to come into, and I like to think of digital tools as ones that reveal where things that only people can do that cannot be replicated, that this—where human knowledge cannot be, where a machine still—even though a machine is informed by things that humans do and now does it at remarkable speed and scale it still is—there is—we are able to identify where humanity makes a difference. And then my one last caution is I do—you know, the one thing you can't do with these new—any of these new technologies is do them well really fast, and the rush to it is a little anxiety inducing. CASA: Thank you. Our first question is from Michael Leong from the—he's a graduate student at the University of Arizona. Michael, would you like to unmute and ask your question? Q: Yeah. Hi, Dr. O'Mara. Hi, Ms. Casa. Sorry for any background noise. I just had a, like, general question about your thoughts on the role big tech plays in geopolitics. Specifically, we've seen with SpaceX and Starlink especially with what's going on in Ukraine and how much support that has been provided to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and potentially holding that over—(inaudible)—forces. So, basically, do we expect to see private companies having more leverage over geopolitical events? And how can we go forward with that? O'MARA: Yeah. That's a really—that's a really great question. And you know, I think that there's—it's interesting because the way—there's always been public-private partnerships in American state building and American geopolitics, and that's something—it's worth kind of just noting that. Like, from the very beginning the United States has used private entities as instruments of policy, as parastatal entities, whether it be through, you know, land grants and transcontinental railroad building in the nineteenth century all the way through to Starlink and Ukraine because, of course, the Pentagon is involved, too—you know, that SpaceX is in a very—is a significant government contractor as ones before it. I think that where there's a really interesting departure from the norm is that what we've seen, particularly in the last, you know, the last forty years but in this sort of post-Cold War moment has been and particularly in the last ten to fifteen years a real push by the Pentagon to go to commercial enterprises for technology and kind of a different model of contracting and, I should say, more broadly, national security agencies. And this is something, you know, a real—including the push under—when Ash Carter was in charge of DOD to really go to Silicon Valley and say, you guys have the best technology and a lot of it is commercial, and we need to update our systems and our software and do this. But I think that the SpaceX partnership is one piece of that. But there has been a real—you know, as the government has, perhaps, not gotten smaller but done less than it used to do and there's been more privatization, there have been—there's been a vacuum left that private companies have stepped into and I think Ian Bremmer's piece was really—made some really important points in this regard that there are things that these platform companies are doing that the state used to do or states used to do and that does give them an inordinate amount of power. You know, and these companies are structurally—often a lot of the control over these companies is in the hands of very, very few, including an inordinate unusual amount of founder power, and Silicon Valley, although there's plenty of political opinionating coming out of there now, which is really a departure from the norm, this kind of partisan statements of such—you know, declarations of the—of recent years are something that really didn't—you didn't see very much before. These are not folks who are—you know, their expertise lies in other domains. So that's where my concern—some concern lies where you have these parastatal actors that are becoming, effectively, states and head of states then and they are not, indeed, speaking for—you know, they're not sovereign powers in the same way and they are speaking for themselves and speaking from their own knowledge base rather than a broader sense of—you know, they're not speaking for the public. That's not their job. CASA: Our next question is from Michael Raisinghani from Texas Woman's University. Michael, if you could unmute. Q: Thank you, Ms. Casa and Dr. O'Mara. A very insightful discussion. Thank you for that. I just thought maybe if you could maybe offer some clarity around the generative AI, whether it's ChatGPT or Wordtune or any of this in terms of the future. If you look, let's say, five, ten years ahead, if that's not too long, what would your thoughts be in this OpenAI playground? O'MARA: Mmm hmm. Well, with the first—with the caveat that the first rule of history is that you can't predict the future—(laughs)—and (it's true ?); we are historians, we like to look backwards rather than forwards—I will then wade into the waters of prediction, or at least what I think the implications are. I mean, one thing about ChatGPT as a product, for example, which has been really—I mean, what a—kudos for a sort of fabulous rollout and marketing and all of a sudden kind of jumping into our public consciousness and being able to release what they did in part because it wasn't a research arm of a very large company where things are more being kept closer because they might be used for that company's purposes. Google, for example, kind of, you know, has very in short order followed on with the reveal of what they have but they kind of were beaten to the punch by OpenAI because OpenAI wasn't—you know, it was a different sort of company, a different sort of enterprise. You know, a lot of it are things that are already out there in the world. If we've, you know, made an airline reservation and had a back and forth with a chatbot, like, that's—that's an example of some of that that's already out in the world. If you're working on a Google doc and doing what absolutely drives me bonkers, which is that Google's kind of completing my sentences for me, but that predictive text, those—you know, many things that we are—that consumers are already interacting with and that enterprises are using are components of this and this is just kind of bringing it together. I think that we should be very cautious about the potential of and the accuracy of and the revolutionary nature of ChatGPT or any of these whether it be Bard or Ernie or, you know, name your perspective chatbot. It is what it is. Again, it's coming from the—it's got the source material it has, it's working with, which is not—you know, this is not human intelligence. This is kind of compilation and doing it very rapidly and remarkably and in a way that presents with, you know, literacy. So I'm not—you know, does very cool stuff. But where the future goes, I mean, clearly, look, these company—the big platform companies have a lot of money and they have a great deal of motivation and need to be there for the next big thing and, you know, if we dial back eighteen months ago there were many in tech who were saying crypto and Web3 was the next big thing and that did not—has not played out as some might have hoped. But there is a real desire for, you know, not being left behind. Again, this is where my worry is for the next five years. If this is driven by market pressures to kind of be the—have the best search, have the best—embed this technology in your products at scale that is going to come with a lot of hazards. It is going to replicate the algorithmic bias, the problems with—extant problems with the internet. I worry when I see Google saying publicly, we are going to move quickly on this and it may not be perfect but we're going to move quickly when Google itself has been grappling with and called out on its kind of looking the other way with some of the real ethical dilemmas and the exclusions and biases that are inherent in some of the incredibly powerful LLMs—the models that they are creating. So that's my concern. This is a genie that is—you know, letting this genie out of the bottle and letting it become a mass consumer product, and if—you know, OpenAI, to its credit, if you go to ChatGPT's website it has a lot of disclaimers first about this is not the full story, effectively, and in the Microsoft rollout of their embedding the technology in Bing last week Microsoft leaders, as well as Sam Altman of OpenAI, were kind of—their talking points were very careful to say this is not everything. But it does present—it's very alluring and I think we're going to see it in a lot more places. Is it going to change everything? I think everyone's waiting for, like, another internet to change everything and I don't know if—I don't know. The jury's out. I don't know. CASA: Thank you. Our next question is a written one. It comes from Denis Fred Simon, clinical professor of global business and technology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He asked, technology developments have brought to the surface the evolving tension between the drive for security with the desire for privacy. The U.S. represents one model while China represents another model. How do societies resolve this tension and is there some preferred equilibrium point? O'MARA: That is a—that's the billion-dollar question and it's—I think it's a relevant one that goes way back. (Laughs.) I mean, there are many moments in the kind of evolution of all of these technologies where the question of who should know what and what's allowable. If we go back to 1994 and the controversy over the Clipper chip, which was NSA wanting to build a backdoor into commercially available software, and that was something that the industry squashed because it would, among other things, have made it very difficult for a company like Microsoft to sell their products in China or other places if you had a—knew that the U.S. national security agencies were going to have a window into it. And, of course, that all comes roaring back in 2013 with Snowden's revelations that, indeed, the NSA was using social media platforms and other commercial platforms—consumer-facing platforms—to gather data on individuals. You know, what is the perfect balance? I mean, this is—I wish I had this nice answer. (Laughs.) I would probably have a really nice second career consulting and advising. But I think there is a—what is clear is that part of what has enabled the American technology industry to do what it has done and to generate companies that have produced, whether you think the transformations on balance are good or bad, transformative products, right. So everything we're using to facilitate this conversation that all of us are having right now is coming from that font. And democratic capitalism was really critical to that and having a free—mostly free flow of information and not having large-scale censorship. I mean, the postscript to the Clipper chip—you know, Clipper chip controversy is two years later the Telecom Act of 1996, which was, on the one hand, designed to ensure the economic growth of what were then very small industries in the internet sector and not—and prevent the telecoms from ruling it all but also were—you know, this was a kind of making a call about, OK, in terms when it comes to the speech on the internet we are going to let the companies regulate that and not be penalized for private—when private companies decide that they want to take someone down, which is really what Section 230 is. It's not about free speech in a constitutional sense. It's about the right of a company to censor or to moderate content. It's often the opposite of the way that it's kind of understood or interpreted or spun in some ways. But it is clear that the institutions of—that encourage free movement of people and capital have been—are pretty critical in fueling innovation writ large or the development and the deployment and scaling of new technologies, particularly digital technologies. But I think you can see that playing out in other things, too. So that has been, I think, a real tension and a real—there's a market dimension to this, not just in terms of an ethical dimension or political dimension that there does need to be some kind of unfettered ability of people to build companies and to grow them in certain ways. But it's a fine balance. I mean, this sort of, like, when does regulation—when does it—when do you need to have the state come in and in what dimension and which state. And this goes back to that core question of like, OK, the powerful entities, what are their values? What are they fighting for? Who are they fighting for? I don't know. I'm not giving you a terribly good answer because I think it's a really central question to which many have grappled for that answer for a very long time. CASA: Thank you. Our next question comes from Ahmuan Williams, a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma. Ahmuan? Q: Thank you. Hi. I'm wondering about ChatGPT, about the regulation side of that. It seems like it's Microsoft that has kind of invested itself into ChatGPT. Microsoft had before gotten the Pentagon contract just a few years back. So it's kind of a two-part question. So, first of all, how does that—what does that say about government's interest in artificial intelligence and what can be done? I know the Council of Foreign Relations also reported that the Council of Europe is actually planning an AI convention to figure out how, you know, a framework of some type of AI convention in terms of treaties will work out. But what should we be worried about when it comes to government and the use of AI in political advertisements and campaigns, about, basically, them flooding opinions with, you know, one candidate's ideas and, therefore, them being able to win because they're manipulating our opinions? So what would you say would be kind of a regulation scheme that might come out of these type—new flourishing AI devices? O'MARA: Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm. That's a good question. I think there's sort of different layers to it. I mean, I see that, you know, the Pentagon contract—the JEDI contract—being awarded to Microsoft, much to Amazon's distress—(laughs)—and litigious distress, is a kind of a separate stream from its decision to invest 10 billion (dollars) in OpenAI. I think that's a commercial decision. I think that's a recognition that Microsoft research was not producing the—you know, Microsoft didn't have something in house that was comparable. Microsoft saw an opportunity to at last do a—you know, knock Google off of its dominant pedestal in search and make Bing the kind of long—kind of a punch line—no longer a punch line but actually something that was a product that people would actively seek out and not just use because it was preinstalled on their Microsoft devices. That is—so I see that as a market decision kind of separate from. The bigger AI question, the question of AI frameworks, yes, and this, again, has a longer history and, you know, I kind of liken AI to the Pacific Ocean. It's an enormous category that contains multitudes. Like, it's—you know, we can—oftentimes when we talk about AI or the AI that we see and we experience, it's machine learning. And part of why we have such extraordinary advances in machine learning in the last decade has—because of the harvesting of individual data on these platforms that we as individuals use, whether it be Google or Meta or others, that that has just put so much out there that now these companies can create something that—you know, that the state of the art has accelerated vastly. Government often is playing catch up, not just in tech but just in business regulation, generally. The other—you know, another example of this in the United States cases with the—in the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century, with what were then new high-tech tech-driven industries of railroads and oil and steel that grew to enormous size and then government regulators played catch up and created the institutions that to this day are the regulators like the FTC created in 1913. Like, you know, that's—of that vintage. So, I think that it depends on—when it comes to—the question about electoral politics, which I think is less about government entities—this is about entities, people and organizations that want to be in charge of government or governments—that is, you know, AI—new technologies of all kinds that incorporate ever more sophisticated kind of, essentially, disinformation, that—information that presents as real and it is not. The increased volume of that and the scale of that and the sophistication of that and the undetectability of it does create a real challenge to free and fair elections and also to preventing, in the American context, international and foreign intervention in and manipulation of elections but true in every context. That is, you know, getting good information before voters and allowing bad actors to exploit existing prejudices or misassumptions. That is an existing problem that probably will be accelerated by it. I think there's—there's a strong case to be made, at least in the U.S. context, for much stronger regulation of campaign advertising that extends to the internet in a much more stricter form. In that domain there's—I think we have pretty good evidence that that has not been—you know, having that back end has made the existing restrictions on other types of campaign speech and other media kind of made them moot because you can just go on a social platform and do other things. So there's—you know, this is—I think the other thing that compromises this is the rapidly changing nature of the technology and the digital—and the global reach of these digital technologies that extends any other product made—you know, any other kind of product. It just is borderless that—in a kind of overwhelming way. That doesn't mean government should give up. But I think there's a sort of supranational level of frameworks, and then there are all sorts of subnational kind of domain-specific frameworks that could occur to do something as a countervailing force or at least slow the role of developers and companies in moving forward in these products. CASA: Thank you. Our next question is a written one. It comes from Prashant Hosur, assistant professor of humanities and social sciences at Clarkson University. He asks, how do you—or she. I'm sorry. I'm not sure. How do you think big tech is likely to affect conventional wisdom around issues of great power rivalry and power transitions? O'MARA: Hmm. I don't—well, I think there are a—these are always—these definitions are always being redefined and who the great powers are and what gives them power is always being reshuffled and—but, of course, markets and economic resources and wealth and—are implicated in this for millennia. I think that tech companies do have this—American tech companies and the tech platforms, which I should preface this by saying, you know, none of the companies we're talking about now are going to rule forever. Maybe that just goes without—it's worth just note, you know, this is—we will have the rise and fall. Every firm will be a dinosaur. Detroit was the most innovative city in the world a hundred and ten years ago. There's still a lot of innovation and great stuff coming out of Detroit, but if you—if I queried anyone here and said, what's the capital of innovation I don't know if you would say Detroit. But back in the heyday of the American auto industry it was, and I think it's a good reminder. We aren't always going to be talking about this place in northern California and north Seattle in this way. But what we have right now are these companies that their products, unlike the products of Henry Ford or General Motors, are ones that are—go across borders with—you know, the same product goes across borders seamlessly and effortlessly, unlike an automobile where a—to sell in a certain country you have to meet that country's fuel standards and, you know, safety standards, et cetera, et cetera. You have a different model for a different market. Instead, here, you know, a Facebook goes where it goes, Google goes where it goes, YouTube goes where it goes, and that has been kind of extraordinary in terms of internationalizing politics, political trends. I think what we've seen globally is very—you know, the role of the internet in that has been extraordinary, both for good and for ill, in the last fifteen years. And then the kind of—the immense—the great deal of power that they have in the many different domains and, again, Ian Bremmer also observed this kind of the—all the different things they do and that is something that is different from twenty-five years ago where you now have companies that are based on the West Coast of the United States with products designed by a small group of people from a kind of narrow, homogenous band of experience who are doing things like transforming taxis and hotels and, I mean, you name it, kind of going everywhere in a way that in the day of the—you know, the first Macintosh, which was like this cool thing on your desk, that was—yes, it was a transformative product. It was a big deal and Silicon Valley was—became a household word and a phrase in the 1980s and the dot.com era, too. That was—you know, everyone's getting online with their AOL discs they got in the mail. But what's happened in the twenty-first century is at a scale and—a global scale and an influence across many different domains, and politics, this very deliberate kind of we are a platform for politics that has really reshaped the global order in ways that are quite profound. This is not to say that everything has to do with big tech is at the root of everything. But let's put it in context and let's, you know—and also recognize that these are not companies that were designed to do this stuff. They've been wildly successful what they set out to do and they have a high-growth tech-driven model that is designed to move fast and, yes, indeed, it breaks things and that has—you know, that has been—they are driven by quarterly earnings. They are driven by other things, as they should be. They are for-profit companies, many of them publicly traded. But the—but because, I think, in part they have been presenting themselves as, you know, we're change the world, we're not evil, we're something different, we're a kinder, gentler capitalism, there has been so much hope hung on them as the answer for a lot of things, and that is not—kind of giving states and state power something of the past to get its act together that instead states need to step up. CASA: Our next question is from Alex Grigor. He's a PhD candidate from University of Cambridge. Alex? Q: Hello. Yes. Thank you. Can you hear me? O'MARA: Yes. CASA: Yes. Q: Yeah. Hi. Thank you, Ms. O'Mara. Very insightful and, in fact, a lot of these questions are very good as well. So they've touched upon a lot of what I was going to ask and so I'll narrow it down slightly. My research is looking at cyber warfare and sort of international conflict particularly between the U.S. and China but beyond, and I was wondering—you started with the sort of military industrial complex and industry sort of breaking away from that. Do you see attempts, perhaps, because of China and the—that the technology industry and the military are so closely entwined that there's an attempt by the U.S. and, indeed, other countries. You see increase in defense spending in Japan and Germany. But it seems to be specifically focused, according to my research, on the technologies that are coming out of that, looking to reengage that sort of relationship. They might get that a little bit by regulation. Perhaps the current downsizing of technology companies is an opportunity for governments to finally be able to recruit some good computer scientists that they haven't been able to—(laughs)—(inaudible). Perhaps it's ASML and semiconductor sort of things. Do you see that as part of the tension a conscious attempt at moving towards reintegrating a lot of these technologies back into government? O'MARA: Yeah. I think we're at a really interesting moment. I mean, one thing that's—you know, that's important to note about the U.S. defense industry is it never went away from the tech sector. It just kind of went underground. Lockheed, the major defense contractor, now Lockheed Martin, was the biggest numerical employer in the valley through the end of the Cold War through the end of the 1980s. So well into the commercial PC era and—but very—you know, kind of most of what was going on there was top secret stuff. So no one was on the cover of Forbes magazine trumpeting what they've done. And there has been—but there has been a real renewed push, particularly with the kind of—to get made in Silicon Valley or, you know, made in the commercial sector software being deployed for military use and national security use and, of course, this is very—completely bound up in the questions of cyber warfare and these existing commercial networks, and commercial platforms and products are ones that are being used and deployed by state actors and nonstate actors as tools for cyber terrorism and cyber warfare. So, yes, I think it's just going to get tighter and closer and the great—you know, the stark reality of American politics, particularly in the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries, is the one place that the U.S. is willing to spend lots of money in the discretionary budget is on defense and the one place where kind of it creates a rationale for this unfettered—largely, unfettered spending or spending with kind of a willingness to spend a lot of money on things that don't have an immediately measurable or commercializable outcome is in national security writ large. That's why the U.S. spent so much money on the space program and created this incredible opportunity for these young companies making chips that only—making this device that only—only they were making the things that the space program needed, and this willingness to fail and the willingness to waste money, quite frankly. And so now we're entering into this sort of fresh—this interesting—you know, the geopolitical competition with China between the U.S. has this two dimensions in a way and the very—my kind of blunt way of thinking about it it's kind of like the Soviet Union and Japan all wrapped up in one, Japan meaning the competition in the 1980s with Japan, which stimulated a great deal of energy among—led by Silicon Valley chip makers for the U.S. to do something to help them compete and one of those outcomes was SEMATECH, the consortium to develop advanced semiconductor technology, whose funding—it was important but its funding was a fraction of the wave of money that just was authorized through last year's legislation, the CHIPS Act as well as Inflation Reduction Act and others. So I'm seeing, you know, this kind of turn to hardware and military hardware and that a lot of the commercial—the government subsidized or incentivized commercial development of green technology and advanced semiconductor, particularly in military but other semiconductor technology and bringing semiconductor manufacturing home to the United States, that is—even those dimensions that are nonmilitary, that are civilian, it's kind of like the Apollo program. That was a civilian program but it was done for these broader geopolitical goals to advance the economic strength and, hence, the broader geopolitical strength of the United States against a competitor that was seen as quite dangerous. So that's my way of saying you're right, that this is where this is all going and so I think that's why this sort of having a healthy sense of this long-term relationship is healthy. It's healthy for the private sector to recognize the government's always been there. So it isn't though you had some innovative secret that the government is going to take away by being involved. And to also think about what are the broader goals that—you know, who is benefiting from them and what is the purpose and recognize often that, you know, many of the advanced technologies we have in the United States are thanks to U.S. military funding for R&D back in the day. CASA: Our next question is written. It's from Damian Odunze, who is an assistant professor at Delta State University. Regarding cybersecurity, do you think tech companies should take greater responsibility since they develop the hardware and software packages? Can the government mandate them, for instance, to have inbuilt security systems? O'MARA: Hmm. Yeah. I think—look, with great power comes great responsibility is a useful reminder for the people at the top of these companies that for—that are so remarkably powerful at the moment and because their platforms are so ubiquitous. There are—you see, for example, Microsoft has really—is a—I think what they've done in terms of partnering with the White House and its occupants and being—kind of acting as a NSA first alert system of sorts and kind of being open about that I think that's been good for them from a public relations perspective, and also—but I think it also reflects this acknowledgement of that responsibility and that it also is bad for their business if these systems are exploited. Yeah, I think that, again, regulation is something that—you know, it's like saying Voldemort in Silicon Valley. Like, some people are, like, oh, regulation, you know. But there's really—there can be a really generative and important role that regulation can play, and the current industry has grown up in such a lightly-regulated fashion you just kind of get used to having all that freedom, and when it comes to cybersecurity and to these issues of national security importance and sort of global importance and importance to the users of the products and the companies that make them there's, I think, a mutual interest in having some sort of rules of the road and that—and I think any company that's operating at a certain scale is—understands that it's in their market interest to be—you know, not to be a renegade, that they are working with. But I think having—you know, there can be a willingness to work with but they're—having a knowledge and an understanding and a respect for your government partners, your state partners, whether they be U.S. or non-U.S. or supranational is really critically important and sometimes tech folks are a little too, like, oh, politics, they don't know what they're doing, you know. We know better. And I think there needs to be a little more mutual exchange of information and some more—yes, some more technical people being able to be successfully recruited into government would probably be a help, too, so there's—on both sides of the table you have technically savvy people who really understand the inner workings of how this stuff is made and don't have simplistic answers of like, oh, we'll just take all the China-made technology out of it. You're, like, well, there's—like, it's kind of deep in the system. You know, so having technologists in the conversation at all points is important. CASA: Thank you. I think we have time for one more question. We'll take that from Louis Esparza, assistant professor at California State University in Los Angeles. Q: Hi. Thank you for your very interesting talk. So I'm coming at this from the social movements literature and I'm coming into this conversation because I'm interested in the censorship and influence of big tech that you seem to be, you know, more literate in. So my question is do you think that this—the recent trends with big tech and collaboration with federal agencies is a rupture with the origin story of the 1960s that you talked about in your talk or do you think it's a continuity of it? O'MARA: Yeah. That's a great way to put it. The answer is, is it both? Well, it's something of a rupture. I mean, look, this—you know, you have this—you have an industry that grows up as intensely—you know, that those that are writing and reading the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968 the military industrial complex is all around them. It is paying for their education sort of effectively or paying for the facilities where they're going to college at Berkeley or Stanford or name your research university—University of Washington. It is the available jobs to them. It is paying for the computers that they learn to code on and that they're doing their work on. It is everywhere and it is—and when you are kind of rebelling against that establishment, when you see that establishment is waging war in Vietnam as being a power—not a power for good but a power for evil or for a malevolent—a government you don't trust whose power, whose motivations you don't trust, then you—you know, you want to really push back against that and that is very much what the personal computer movement that then becomes an industry is. That's why all those people who were sitting around in the 1970s in Xerox Palo Alto Research Center—Xerox Park—just spitballing ideas, they just did not want to have anything to do with military technology. So that's still there, and then that—and that ethos also suffused other actors in, you know, American government and culture in the 1980s forward, the sort of anti-government sentiment, and the concerns about concentrated power continue to animate all of this. And the great irony is that has enabled the growth of these private companies to the power of states. (Laughs.) So it's kind of both of those things are happening and I think, in some ways, wanting to completely revolutionize the whole system was something that was not quite possible to do, although many—it is extraordinary how much it has done. CASA: Margaret, thank you very much for this fascinating discussion and to all of you for your questions and comments. I hope you will follow Margaret on Twitter at @margaretomara. Our next Academic Webinar will take place on Wednesday, March 1, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Chris Li, director of research of the Asia Pacific Initiative and fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, will lead a conversation on U.S. strategy in East Asia. In the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR's paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/Careers. Follow at @CFR_Academic on Twitter and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Thank you again for joining us today. We look forward to you tuning in for our webinar on March 1. Bye. (END)  

In this week's episode of Clean Talk, Madelaine Cuevas, Infection Control and ICU Nurse at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and Kaiser Permanente, joins us to share her expertise and knowledge around infection control.Tune in to hear about a range of topics including:• Madelaine's background and what brought her to where she is today• About Santa Clara Valley Medical Center• About Kaiser Permanente• How being an ICU nurse helps implement infection prevention protocols• Experiences in the HAI Taskforce Committee combatting C-Diff and other infections• How Madelaine & her team were able to reduce C-Diff to 0% at O'Connor Hospital• What Madelaine & her team are doing in Santa Clara Valley to improve C-Diff numbers• Useful Applications for UV Light in patient rooms• The mission to improve hand hygiene at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center• Empowering nurses and staff with contests, prizes, resources, and education• What to expect in the future for infection controlMadelaine Cuevas has been a nurse for more than 12 years. She started her career in the Philippines in 2007 as a Medical/Surgical nurse. She then moved to Saudi Arabia in 2009 and began her career as an ICU nurse. In 2013, she moved to the USA, where she continued her career as a nurse.In April 2020, Madelaine's career as an infection prevention nurse started as she was hired as an extra help infection prevention nurse by the previous infection prevention nurse in the facility. In that role, she got to really see and understand what infection prevention nurses do. In September 2020, Madelaine transitioned from being an extra help nurse to a full-time infection control nurse.Clean Talk Registration: https://cleantalk.onlineClean Talk Official Website: https://cleantalk.tvYouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/CleanTalk_TVLinkedin Group: https://linkedin.com/groups/9094477/Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/986587845276744#cleantalk#infectioncontrol #infectionprevention #infectionpreventionpodcast#infectioncontrolpodcast#sealshield

Nova Perrill Nova Perrill, winemaker for Foppiano Vineyards, is back on California Wine Country with Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger. He was on the show back in 2018 on this episode, and again this time in 2019. His last appearance was here, in 2021. Giovanni Foppiano founded Foppiano Vineyards in 1896. It is one of the oldest family-owned wineries in California. Try to imagine, as they do here, how Healdsburg in the 1890s was pure potential. The winery survived Prohibition by shipping dried grapes as a home winemaking kit. To ship to dry states, they had to add a flyer with a warning not to add water and sugar or else it would ferment. Nova tells about how he got started in the wine business. He studied at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a degree in Ecology. He liked marine biology, having grown up on the coast. Then he took a Master's in Crop Science. At the time the school was a dry campus and they learned about winemaking but did not make any. He got a job at Mount Eden where he laid the foundation of his knowledge, from start to finish. “Talk about grape to bottle, that was the experience I needed... Everything after that is creativity. Foppiano Vineyards Tastings They taste the first Foppiano wine, a Carignane. Foppiano Vineyards' location is south of Healdsburg, at the northern tip of the valley. It gets sunshine, but also cooling influences from the river. They grow all the usual French varietals that are grown here. Click the logo to visit our sponsor Bottle Barn online for up-to-the-minute bargains on wine, beer and spirits. Harry Duke asks Nova Perrill about how he made that transition from studying marine biology to winemaking. Many winemakers have told about a similar turn in their early career path. Nova tells about how he was never really committed to the first path and he also knew he had great interest in all things natural. He moved to the Santa Clara Valley after college and he simply sent his resumé to every winery in commuting distance. With agriculture, you have to enjoy working on nature's demands and timetable, no weekends, etc. “Grape growing is not this extravagant lifestyle… You've got to be able to appreciate that if you're going to make it.” Join the Rodney Strong mailing list to receive special offers, information on new releases, and more. Nova has brought some wines (pictured above). He brought a 2016 Chardonnay from Foppiano Estate. The acidity is keeping it lively and fresh. It has some creamy lemon curd flavor. Foppiano Vineyards does estate and reserve tastings and also large-party tastings. You can make reservations but drop-ins are also welcome. Nova Perrill explains that they strive to be casual and low-key. Being a historic winery and vineyard they try to capture that feeling for their guests. It is located right off Old Redwood Highway. It is only about five minutes from Healdsburg. Their wines are also available at Bottle Barn.

Welcome, you belong here. In this episode: FAQ is: How do I visit my family members in the military?  Today's Destination is: Sunnyvale, CA Today's Mistake- Losing my airline rewards Travel Advice:  Join my clubhouse rooms for travel tips   FAQ: Nadia asked, How do I visit my family members in the military? My son is graduating from military training and I want to see him in Korea. Are there any discounts I can tap into for travel?   Answer:  Depending on the training center location, and security screening you may be able to visit him. When you do visit, you may want to check out some of the military benefits and see if they apply to family members, such as shopping in the commisary or other attractions.  It's possible that you can ask the airlines for assistance in this, because they have likely had this question answered also. This question was from a recent clubhouse room. I'll mention Clubhouse at the end of the podcast again. Today's destination: Sunnyvale, California   You'll find Sunnyvale in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County, California. It's located along the famous Highway 101 and El Camino Real. San Jose borders to the north. Mountain View is Northwest and Los Altos is southwest. Cupertino is to the south. Santa Clara, home of the Mission and University was reviewed in episode 160 and is located to the east. The population is about 150,000, which is next to San Jose, the second most populous city in the county.  It's part of Silicon Valley. It's the birthplace of the video game industry, where Atari was founded.  https://www.sunnyvale.ca.gov/ https://www.sunnyvale.ca.gov/recreation-and-community/community-centers/senior-center https://www.sunnyvale.ca.gov/recreation-and-community/parks-and-trails/baylands-park https://heritageparkmuseum.org/ Here are a few suggestions for Sunnyvale. Heritage Park Museum is open three days a week and does not charge admission.  There is also pottery and other activities at the local community center. The senior center may be of interest to you, so look in the show notes for these and other links.  Consider visiting Baylands Park for hiking or picnics.  Sunnyvale was known for having orchards and some still remain here. But most notably lately it is known as the home of several tech giants. The big industry here is the technology and information headquarters of many computer tech companies. Some of these large firms started here in garages and in high schools. Google, Apple, Facebook, now Meta and others have a presence here. Venture-capital seems to be flowing through the water. Sunnyvale is known for the home of many future technology projects.  In Mountain View, you'll find the Computer History Museum, open Wed-Sun. https://computerhistory.org/   I visited Sunnyvale several times over the past 40 years living in California and most recently in January 2022 and stayed with my cousin, Jane Halligan. I flew into San Jose airport, rented a car and explored the area with several local residents to get insights to guide you to the best travel activities. Jane and I walked around an area that is reserved for seniors and community minded individuals and around what remains of the orchard groves.    Do - Visit the Community Center and Museum. Go hiking and visit the Senior Center. Don't - Get stuck in traffic on the freeways if possible.  Today's Mistake - Losing my airline rewards I've lost more airline points than I'd like to admit. It's probably hundreds of thousands of miles that were not recovered over 50 years of traveling solo. I've had special status on several airlines that no longer exist and I never did follow up to find out where my points went. I assume they just disappeared. Now, my credit card gives me rewards that I can turn into cash, no matter what airline I travel on. I would like to keep my points on dozens of airlines that I fly, but it seems that to do so requires a lot of extra work that doesn't add up. My advice is to keep track of your rewards better than I do. You can make them work for you. Today's Travel Advice-Join my clubhouse rooms for travel tips. No makeup needed. Join “Clubhouse” and the club called “ Women Travel Best.” There are hundreds of women like you who travel in the group and I hold about one room per week. Please join us. You don't need an invitation to join. It's open to anyone with a phone. It's still early days with this social audio media. You don't need to dress up or put on makeup to come to a room. Just download the app, entter your phone number and some basic information and you are in. https://www.clubhouse.com/ Connect with Dr Travelbest Drmarytravelbest.com Dr. Mary Travelbest Twitter Dr. Mary Travelbest Facebook Page Dr. Mary Travelbest Facebook Group Dr. Mary Travelbest Instagram email: info@drmarytravelbest.com Dr. Mary Travelbest Podcast Dr. Travelbest on TikTok

August 11: Saint Clare, Virginc. 1193–1253Memorial; Liturgical Color: WhitePatron Saint of embroiderers, goldsmiths, and laundry workersShe heard Francis, left comfort, and slept on the floor for forty-one yearsSilicon Valley is not, topographically, a valley. The name is a contrivance dating from the 1970s and 80s. The actual valley is named after today's saint. Santa Clara Valley, running southeast from the southern shores of San Francisco Bay, was named after its beating heart, Mission Santa Clara de Asís—a church, school, and farm—founded by Franciscan Friars in 1777. The current mission church, a beautiful twentieth-century idealization of mission architecture, sits on the site of the original Mission structure and is the iconic campus centerpiece of Santa Clara University, California's oldest. It's likely that Saint Clare never left her convent in Assisi, Italy, for the last forty years of her life. Yet a valley, city, and university in far away California are named in her honor. That a medieval, cloistered, Catholic nun is still so present to a hyper-modern portion of the world is a testament to the global reach and cultural impact of Catholicism and the Franciscan order.Clare of Assisi was born about a decade after and in the same small town as Saint Francis. Many of Clare's earliest friends became nuns in her community, survived her, and gave testimony in her canonization process, reporting interesting details about her early life. Clare was from an economically comfortable family in the upper part of Assisi, in the neighborhood of the nobility. She had two younger sisters. Her mother was pious and had gone on long pilgrimages to holy shrines. Her household included knights and soldiers. From an early age she was interested in religious life and gave religious instruction to the many servants and others in her vast household. Clare was a prize to her father, as eligible daughters were like pawns whose marriages could seal alliances with other noble families. An Assisi marriage broker testified, after Clare's death, that he had approached Clare various times with offers of marriage from interested suitors. She turned him down each time and instead challenged the broker about the quality of his own Christian commitment. If Clare had never met Saint Francis, she may well have become a Benedictine nun in a convent for noble women, putting her education to good use in the copying of sacred manuscripts.But she did meet Saint Francis, so her natural religiosity turned more radical. At the age of eighteen, Clare heard Francis preach in a local church and was deeply moved, as so many were, by his presence as much as his words. She began to meet with him privately to talk about the things of God and a new plan for her life. On Palm Sunday in Assisi, there was a tradition that eligible young ladies would process down the aisle of the Cathedral to receive a blessed palm branch from the Bishop's own hands. Interested local bachelors showed up to watch this kind of sacred debutante parade. Clare was in the Cathedral on Palm Sunday 1212, but she did not process with all the others. Instead, the Bishop, known to history as Guido, descended the sanctuary steps and extended a palm to her as she remained in her pew. Christ would be her spouse. Her plan was about to unfold.That very night, Palm Sunday 1212, Clare secretly fled her family home and, with Francis' help, entered behind the barred doors of a local convent. She donned a rough habit, and her hair was shorn. The men in her family were alarmed and rushed to bring her home and to her senses. Clare would not budge. As they tried to drag her out of the chapel, she grabbed the altar as an anchor and tore its linens to the floor. The men finally recognized the law of sanctuary and retreated. Clare never deviated from the path she chose that Palm Sunday night. Her close, holy relationship with Francis would endure until his death. He was the leader, the giver, the essential figure. She provided support and allegiance.Clare would go on to become the first woman to write a rule for other women. She became the foundress of all female Franciscan religious, who number in the tens of thousands today. She had an iron will, a great capacity for physical suffering, and lived a cloistered life of intense and continual prayer. For Clare and her spiritual progeny, the Poor Clares, religion was not primarily an internal disposition. Religion cannot be reduced to mere feelings, pious thoughts, or holy words. It is not a truly great and religious thing to separate the paper from the plastic in the recycle bin. It is a truly great and religious thing to go barefoot, to fast, to abstain from meat, to remain chaste, to wear a coarse habit against the skin, to pray long hours on your knees, to sleep on the floor, and to spend the night shivering in the cold. Such a life is for the few. But there are such few in the world, even today. Of their lives, nothing is counterfeit. Of Saint Clare's life, nothing was counterfeit either.Saint Clare of Assisi, you chose a radical form of love of God as a cloistered nun. May your example and your prayers inspire all Catholics, especially female religious, to organize their entire lives around God, His Son, and His Church.

On the second half of this thought provoking episode of the Positvely Green Podcast, meet Chris Walker, who describes himself as an “old white guy who questions everything”.  Raised in the Santa Clara Valley before it was Silicon Valley–Chris grew up in an agricultural context, working summers drying grapes with his grandfather in Coachella Valley.    You will hear Chris' thoughts about: - How narratives shape our reality and how we might challenge them - Questioning standards for products and food - Resources and recommendations for additional learning   As a young man, he traveled to Jamaica and volunteered supporting small farmer cooperatives, working for the Social Action Centre in Halfway Tree compiling all of the sugar cane records of the sugar cane cooperative movement of 1970s and 80s Jamaica. Returning to the US, he studied agronomy and pomology at UC Davis, and was involved in the Organic Agriculture movement of 1980's California.   He has lived and worked in Mexico, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates, where he has resided for the past ten years.

On the first half of this thought provoking episode of the Positvely Green Podcast, meet Chris Walker, who describes himself as an “old white guy who questions everything”.  Raised in the Santa Clara Valley before it was Silicon Valley–Chris grew up in an agricultural context, working summers drying grapes with his grandfather in Coachella Valley.    You will hear Chris' thoughts about: - How narratives shape our reality and how we might challenge them - Questioning standards for products and food - Resources and recommendations for additional learning   As a young man, he traveled to Jamaica and volunteered supporting small farmer cooperatives, working for the Social Action Centre in Halfway Tree compiling all of the sugar cane records of the sugar cane cooperative movement of 1970s and 80s Jamaica. Returning to the US, he studied agronomy and pomology at UC Davis, and was involved in the Organic Agriculture movement of 1980's California.   He has lived and worked in Mexico, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates, where he has resided for the past ten years.

Today on the show, José and I welcome Martha Niño, a Silicon Valley veteran who has a good story to tell. It's a story I'm very familiar with. Beneath the Silicon Valley lies the Santa Clara Valley, which really should be called TACO VALLEY. When I first met Martha, I referred to her as my Silicon Valley twin.  Martha's story is one of cracking the code - making it past a barrier. A barrier that gets established by the gatekeepers. And sometimes, a barrier that may be self-imposed.   Martha shared her story on stage in front of hundreds of her coworkers in 2019. Today you'll be hearing some of that day's talk as well as her take on how tacos influence the tech world.    FACO A FACO is a person or an organization that misrepresents the taco and or the culture.  This week's FACO: Santa Monica police mobile command center in a parking lot near the Santa Monica Pier on Jan. 22. The city is pushing out unlicensed vendors who sell on the pier on weekends. To enforce the rules is one thing but the response to this was similar to BLM protests in D.C. back in 2020. OVER the TOP!  TAQUOTE: “A TACO sin nada is still better than a FACO con todo!”   SOCIAL MEDIA Isidro Salas: https://twitter.com/10ktacos José R. Ralat: https://twitter.com/TacoTrail   * This episode was originally recorded on FIRESIDE .  

Here is the story of a Mexican-American pioneer, healer, trailblazer, businesswoman and landowner. Her name is Doña Juana Briones de Miranda and she is the woman remembered as the "Founding Mother of San Francisco”, for she was one of the first three settlers in Yerba Buena before it became San Francisco. Juana left an important legacy in California. She was an active and caring person who impacted the lives of many people — Hispanic, indigenous and Anglo-American.   In 1769, Marcos Briones and his father Vicente arrived in Alta California from San Luis Potosí, New Spain - today's Mexico. Marcos and Vicente were soldiers in the Portola expedition. In Alta California, Marcos met and married Isidora Tapia. Isidora and her family arrived later, her father Felipe, a soldier on the de Anza expedition in 1776. Star crossed lovers, whose families traveled over 1600 miles on a mission to colonize and explore the region and establish the Mission San Francisco de Asi.    Marcos was a founding settler of Villa de Branciforte, in present-day Santa Cruz. Branciforte was the last of only three secular pueblos founded by the Spanish colonial government of Alta California. On the eastern bluff of the San Lorenzo River, facing Mission Santa Cruz, their daughter Juana  Briones was born in March of 1802. Juana spent the first decade of her life in a wattle-and-daub house doing chores alongside her brothers and sisters, having fun and gaining an extensive knowledge of herbal medicines through her interactions with Native Americans. The majority of the population there was indigenous. When she was ten, her mother Ysidora passed away.   Marcos moved the family to an area called Tennessee Hollow. Marcos began to help build what would become the Presidio of San Francisco. Starting as a fortified military village used for farming and livestock grazing. Juana was shaped by the native people of the region and the language, religion, and institutions of colonial New Spain. She'd learned more about herbs and their medicinal values from the new region from her grandmother, who learned them from native Ohlone women.    Herbs like Yerba Buena (which translates to Good Herb), which provided the first name of the city of San Francisco. It was said the community of Yerba Buena was named for her healing mint tea. She was schooled informally by the Catholic priests at the Mission Dolores. With other military children and the Native Americans who had been rounded up and brought to the mission for “conversion” to Catholicism, she attended regular daily mass but she did not learn to read or write.     Juana met a handsome soldier stationed at the Presidio named Apolinario Miranda. His parents were of Yaqui descent. The Yaqui were indigenous to the Mexican state of Sonora and the Southwestern United States. Juana and Apolinario were married in 1820 and established a farm at the Presidio near the site of El Polin Spring. It is one of the few remaining springs in the city  and runs under the site of her long-vanished home. The spring waters of the were believed to bestow fertility. With that in mind, Juana gave birth to 11 children between 1821 and 1841.   In 1828, Juana had a tragic month when three of her children died and a fourth child passed just one year later in the rugged frontier environment.  Juana was a strong woman. Apolinario was abusive and Juana's time with him was not happy. So abusive that his military superiors reprimanded him for it numerous times. He had a serious drinking problem and wasn't much of a rancher or businessman.    In the area now known as North Beach, near what is now Washington Square, the Briones bought land. Juana was a natural entrepreneur and started a dairy ranch at their new home. They were one of the first three non-indigenous settlers in Yerba Buena who lived somewhere other than on the Presidio or at Mission Dolores. After Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, commerce increased in the San Francisco Bay. Briones excelled in farming and sold milk and produce to the crews of Russian, American and Spanish ships that docked in the bay for the hide and tallow trade.   Juana also treated many illnesses such as smallpox and scurvy patients, delivered babies and set broken jaws. You could not count how many children had their broken bones set by this kind woman. Her reputation as a healer was widely recognized. She trained her nephew, Pablo Briones—who was later known as the Doctor of Bolinas or California in medicinal arts. Her aid to the people of Bolinas during a smallpox outbreak was well-known, and she was loved among Hispanic settlers, native people and the Anglo-Americans alike.   She taught her own children the value of hard work. As soon as they could walk, they learned to pull weeds and how to load the wagon. Her daughters Presentacion and Manuela were fine seamstresses and they did the sailors' laundry and mended their clothes. Her son Jesus went to the boats to see what the men needed, and delivered goods and messages to Juana. She also harbored four runaway sailors who jumped ship because they wanted to remain in California. Two Americans, a Filipino man and a Native American from Connecticut. The men lived with her and Apolinario until 1832.   In 1833, Briones' husband was granted land bordering the Presidio near today's Green and Lyon Streets. Their new home was on another spring called El Ojo de Agua Figueroa.  In 1834, Juana adopted Cecilia, a young Native girl whose parents had died. In 1835, the Presidio was temporarily abandoned when Commandante Vallejo transferred his military headquarters north to Sonoma. It was then that her husband's abuse became intolerable. Marriage was considered indissoluble by society at the time. She turned to the Catholic bishop. “My husband did not earn our money. I did,” she told the bishop, “My husband does not support the family. I do.”  As her husband, he had access to any property she acquired. The bishop was moved by her plea, knowing full well her husband was a good-for-nothing, and with the mayor's help, the bishop helped her move to the western foot of Loma Alta in the area now known as Telegraph Hill.   Her husband tried to force her to return home and legal officials ordered him to stay away, which he didn't. Briones appealed to courts repeatedly with suit against her husband for physical abuse after repeated episodes of violence and in return a justice of the peace seized some of his property. Juana navigated the male-leaning legal system, hiring people to write on her behalf. This was no small step in the patriarchal, hierarchical world of 19th century colonial California. Juana was free and Apolinario Miranda later died.   She found the booming city too frantic, and bought a 4,000-acre ranch in Santa Clara Valley from her friends José Gorgonio and his son José Ramon in 1844. She named it Rancho La Purisima Concepción and successfully expanded her cattle and farming interests. The Briones family ranch was a home, social hall, and hospital all rolled into one. Briones' status as a female landowner was unusual in an era where women generally could only possess land they inherited from a deceased husband. Yet she was an independent woman who was prospering on her own. Her children also prospered.  In 1848, Mexico ceded this land to the U.S. under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill. Almost overnight, the sleepy little mission became a busy city, filled with all manner of men who came to get rich overnight and ‘ladies of the night' who hoped to liberate the men from their gold dust. Juana wasn't bothered by the U.S. coup at all, in fact, when her Anglo friends suggested she become an American citizen, she did.  Across the nation, Boston traders sought out her “California banknotes,” as they called her cowhides. She entertained lavishly, with European and American guests attending her fiestas. “Anglo, Hispanics, and Native Americans came for bear fights, calf roping, and pig roasts. Sick people also came to recuperate under Juana's watchful gaze.”   When the U.S. made California a state in 1850, all Mexican landholders were put through many hurdles with proving they had title to their property. The original landowners were required to certify their land ownership before the U.S. Land Commission. The legal process was too difficult or expensive for many people, especially the women and racial minorities who had owned land under Mexican law. Many were cheated out of their land. In 1852, the U.S. Government informed Juana it intended to seize her land that had originally been granted in her husband's name. Apolinario Miranda was dead by then, and the government said she had no legal right to the property.    She fought for 12 years to retain the title to her lands in both San Francisco and Santa Clara counties and many of the Anglos she'd helped over the years came to assist her in the fight for her rights. The battle went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. She won ownership of her ranch and the property in Yerba Buena. Juana left portions of her rancho La Purisima Concepción to her children, who bore their father's name, Miranda and sold the rest to members of the Murphy family, who came to California with the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party.    Briones purchased other tracts of land and eventually settled the town of Mayfield. Briones' was one of the founding members of today's Palo Alto. She built a home there in 1884 and remained in Mayfield for the remainder of her lifetime. Juana Briones died in a cow stampede in 1889 at the age of 87.    In 2010, her house at 4155 Old Adobe Road in Palo Alto was listed as one of the 11 most endangered historic places in the country by The National Trust for Historic Preservation. Despite a big fight between the owners and educators, historians, architects, neighbors, and business and community leaders, a demolition crew arrived a year later to dismantle her modest home. The property was sold the following summer for $2.9 million.   Doña Juana Briones de Miranda is remembered as the "Founding Mother of San Francisco” and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Menlo Park, California. She lived here under three flags and helped found the eighth-largest city in the United States. During her lifetime, Juana was known and loved by many people because of her energy, her business sense and her concern for others. Even so, today she is still relatively unknown, but more people deserve to know about her. In San Francisco, she is commemorated at the northeast corner of Washington Square near her once her dairy farm. A historical plaque is on a bench at the bottom of The Lyon Street steps. In Palo Alto, her memory is preserved by the Juana Briones Elementary School, Juana Briones Park, and several street names incorporating either Miranda or first names of her children.    Queens of the Mines is brought to you by Youreka Productions. Andrea Anderson researched, wrote and produced this series.    

The 40th Episode of the Archives of Physical Medicine's RehabCast features Tiago Jesus and Christina Papadimitriou on the growth of the person centered rehabilitation model in practice - it's about putting the person, not the patient, at the center of what we do, and doing it collaboratively. The episode also features Elizabeth Pasipanodya of the Santa Clara Valley medical center on her work teasing out a set of cognitive profiles seen in SCI rehabilitation, and determining how they relate to the client's psychological well-being. #RehabCast is the PM&R podcast for all of rehabilitation medicine: physiatry, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech language pathology, neuropsychology, rehabilitation nursing and more.

In this podcast, Shizue picks up where she left off in Part 1. Her paternal grandmother, Shige, had just located her husband in Stockton. Shizue goes into more depth about her grandmother's life. Her dad, Barry, grew up in Stockton and went to UC Berkeley. He was set to graduate in June 1942. But then Pearl Harbor was bombed in December 1941. The order to "relocate" Japanese-Americans to internment camps was issued in February 1942. Her mom's family had been in camp in Arizona. At this point in the conversation, we springboard to a larger, broader talk about the dominant, northern European culture in this country and what it's like not to be part of it. Shizue worked for many years at the J. Walter Thompson office in San Francisco. At first a fine arts student, she switched to commercial art at the Academy of Art here in The City and got the job in advertising. She describes a white, male-dominated work culture and how she navigated that. We rewind to talk about Shizue's early life. Her parents met shortly after WWII, when Japanese-Americans who had been forced into internment camps were now free. Her dad joined the Army and so the family moved around. Shizue was born in Baltimore. Around the time she was 12, they moved back to California and eventually up from the Santa Clara Valley to San Francisco, where Shizue went to high school. She describes being a shy, bookworm-ish kid who strove to fit into the "model minority" demographic. That ended when she was a teenager and had an existential crisis. After her work in advertising, she ended up doing HIV prevention outreach to folks living in subsidized public housing. It was through this work that Shizue started to turn her attention toward people of color. She also started writing poetry. We end the episode with Shizue's thoughts on our theme this this season: "We're still here." Shizue's personal site is https://www.shizueseigel.com/. Her creative writing for people of color website is https://www.writenowsf.com/. We recorded this podcast at Shizue's apartment in the Outer Richmond in November 2021. Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

The very special guest on the Season 1 finale of Art Heals All Wounds is opera composer Hector Armienta. Hector is also the Art Director of Opera Cultura, a Latinx Hispanic opera company in San Jose, California. As a Mexican American composer, Armienta composes operas that explore what it means to be between two cultural worlds. His musical inspirations include the works of Puccini, Mexican corridos, and mariachi, to name a few. What is it like to brave crossing the border in the hopes of finding a better life in America? What about farm workers, people who work in homes, cleaning and caring for children, young people who thought they were finally fulfilling their dream to attend college? What happened when March 2020 brought a pandemic that turned these dreams upside down? Hector Armienta interviewed Latinx immigrants in San Jose and Santa Clara Valley and gave their stories voice, a beautiful, operatic voice, in his operas Cuentos and Mi Camino. Hector's compositions are beautiful. But it's his vision that is really exciting. He pushes the preconceived boundaries of opera and theatrical performance with his work. During the pandemic, when live performances weren't possible, he created an animation for the opera Mi Camino. His plans are to take opera beyond the restrictions of borders, pandemics, and cultural and political boundaries, into virtual reality, augmented reality and extended reality. If the metaverse is coming, having Hector's music there will make it a much more human space.  Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

The very special guest on the Season 1 finale of Art Heals All Wounds is opera composer Hector Armienta. Hector is also the Art Director of Opera Cultura, a Latinx Hispanic opera company in San Jose, California. As a Mexican American composer, Armienta composes operas that explore what it means to be between two cultural worlds. His musical inspirations include the works of Puccini, Mexican corridos, and mariachi, to name a few. What is it like to brave crossing the border in the hopes of finding a better life in America? What about farm workers, people who work in homes, cleaning and caring for children, young people who thought they were finally fulfilling their dream to attend college? What happened when March 2020 brought a pandemic that turned these dreams upside down? Hector Armienta interviewed Latinx immigrants in San Jose and Santa Clara Valley and gave their stories voice, a beautiful, operatic voice, in his operas Cuentos and Mi Camino. Hector's compositions are beautiful. But it's his vision that is really exciting. He pushes the preconceived boundaries of opera and theatrical performance with his work. During the pandemic, when live performances weren't possible, he created an animation for the opera Mi Camino. His plans are to take opera beyond the restrictions of borders, pandemics, and cultural and political boundaries, into virtual reality, augmented reality and extended reality. If the metaverse is coming, having Hector's music there will make it a much more human space. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Jan Marholin, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Clara Valley, discusses overseeing operations of Piru, Santa Paula and Fillmore Clubs during the pandemic and spreads the word about their fundraising efforts. Chianti Troyke, Damsel Pro for Damsels In Defense, speaks on ending cycles of abuse and empowering women. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/alynettework/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/alynettework/support

Join an important discussion with this veteran congresswoman about her role on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack and its potential impact, as well as the state of the country and our democracy, the possibilities for bipartisan legislation, and how to handle such crucial issues as the pandemic variants, the economy, gun violence and immigration. Zoe Lofgren has been a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1995, representing the 19th District of California, encompassing San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley. She currently serves on the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and is a former law professor. Representative Lofgren has most recently been appointed to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol and has said her goal is to "uncover the truth, protect our democracy, and ensure that such an attack will never happen again.” SPEAKERS Zoe Lofgren U.S. Representative, California's 19th Congressional District Dr. Gloria Duffy President and CEO, The Commonwealth Club of California—Moderato In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on August 4th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join an important discussion with this veteran congresswoman about her role on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack and its potential impact, as well as the state of the country and our democracy, the possibilities for bipartisan legislation, and how to handle such crucial issues as the pandemic variants, the economy, gun violence and immigration. Zoe Lofgren has been a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1995, representing the 19th District of California, encompassing San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley. She currently serves on the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and is a former law professor. Representative Lofgren has most recently been appointed to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol and has said her goal is to "uncover the truth, protect our democracy, and ensure that such an attack will never happen again.” SPEAKERS Zoe Lofgren U.S. Representative, California's 19th Congressional District Dr. Gloria Duffy President and CEO, The Commonwealth Club of California—Moderato In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on August 4th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Andrea Mackenzie, General Manager of the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. For more than 25 years, Ms. Mackenzie has worked in the fields of land use planning, conservation planning, public policy, and finance for open space and agricultural land preservation agencies at county, regional, state, and national levels. The Open Space Authority works to protect and steward the region's natural capital, open spaces, water resources, natural areas, and working lands to support healthy lands, resilient communities, and strong economies. Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation.

Episode Notes Greg and Jordan discuss a somber tale of cancel culture, where the former CEO of JetBlue and current Stanford professor cries about cancel culture from his heated pool overlooking the Santa Clara Valley. Links to the articles:https://www.deseret.com/2021/6/20/22516382/my-road-to-cancellation

A gunman opened fire at a public transit rail yard in San Jose, California, Wednesday morning, killing at least 8 people and wounding others, Deputy Russell Davis of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office said.The suspect, a male employee of the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), is dead, Davis said. He has been identified as Sam Cassidy, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation confirmed to CNN.Police also received information about explosive devices inside the transit building, which the bomb squad is investigating, he said.Authorities received 911 calls at about 6:34 a.m. PT saying there were shots fired near a VTA control center, a hub that stores light rail trains and a maintenance yard, Davis said. VTA employees were among the victims.Multiple law enforcement agencies and Fire Department personnel responded to the incident using their "active shooter protocol," Davis said."While shots were still being fired, our teams were entering the building," Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said.The shooting occurred in the VTA rail yard -- not the operations control center -- at a time when light rail was starting up for the day, VTA Board Chairperson Glenn Hendricks said. The yard is where the VTA vehicles are maintained and dispatched."A horrible tragedy has happened today, and our thoughts and love goes out to the VTA family, the organization and what they've had to go through," Hendricks said.There are multiple active scenes connected to the investigation into the shooting, according to San Jose Fire spokeswoman Erica Ray.Light rail service will be suspended for the day as of noon, the VTA said, as the crime scene investigation has limited its ability to provide service. The VTA is a public transit service that operates bus and light rail services in the Santa Clara Valley and employs about 2,000 workers.The mass shooting is the 232nd incident in which a minimum of four people were shot in the US this year, according to a tally by the Gun Violence Archive.The Bay Area is no stranger to such spurts of violence. In July 2019, a 19-year-old gunman opened fire at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, located about 30 miles from San Jose, killing three people and wounding more than a dozen.Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and from the Federal Bureau of Investigation responded to the scene, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he was monitoring the situation.San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who also serves on the VTA board, referred to the shooting as a very dark moment for the city."This is a horrific day for our city, it's a tragic day for our VTA family," he said. "We know that so many are feeling deeply this loss of their loved ones and their friends."The president of the Amalgamated Transit Union International, a labor union that represents transit workers, said the union is "shocked and deeply saddened" by the mass shooting."Our hearts and prayers are with our sisters, brothers, and their families at Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 265," President John A. Costa said. "We are working to provide support and assistance to the victims' families, and everyone impacted by this tragic event."- words by Eric Levenson and Stella Chan, CNN

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This edition of the KCBS Radio features "The Al Douglas Show" from July 1964 and focuses on San Jose's Frontier Village amusement park. Frontier Village was only around for about 20 years but remains a fond memory for a generation of Santa Clara Valley residents. This segment is in the collection of the San Jose Public Library California Room.

Buck is a 140-pound dog, a mix of St. Bernard and sheepdog, and lives in Santa Clara Valley with his owner, Judge Miller...Uitgegeven door SAGA EgmontSpreker(s): B. J. Harrison

Erica Manfre, the Moody Wine Drinker, talks to George about his childhood, growing up at a winery, how the industry has changed, his role in staying current as market demands shift, and more!More on the winery  at https://guglielmowinery.com/More on Moody Wine at https://www.moodywine.com/More on Santa Clara Valley wineries https://www.santaclarawines.com/santa-clara-valley.html 

  Today's episode examines the life of an eccentric, possibly mentally ill woman and the incredible house she built. We‘ll talk about possible hauntings, impossible architecture and the delusion of a heart broken woman. We are discussing Sarah Winchester and what some less than creative people have dubbed The Winchester Mystery House!      Her birth name was Sarah Lockwood Pardee. She was the fifth of seven children born to Leonard Pardee and Sarah Burns. There are no existing records or any other form of factual information to establish Sarah’s date of birth—even the year remains unknown. The scarce information that survives from the historical record indicates her birth must have occurred somewhere between 1835 and 1845. At the time of Sarah’s birth, the Pardee’s were a respectable, upper middle class New Haven family. Her father Leonard was a joiner by trade whose shrewd sense of business found him moving up the ladder of polite society as a successful carriage manufacturer. Later, during the Civil War, he made a fortune supplying ambulances to the Union Army. Young Sarah’s most distinguishing characteristic was that she was everything but ordinary. She was a child prodigy… a fire starter. Ok, no… By all accounts, she was also considered to be quite beautiful. By the age of twelve, Sarah was already fluent in the Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian languages. Furthermore, her knowledge of the classics (most notably Homer… no, not Simpson, and Shakespeare) along with a remarkable talent as a musician was well noticed. It is no wonder that New Haven Society would eventually dub her “The Belle of New Haven.” In addition to Sarah’s brilliance and respectable place in society, there were several factors about New Haven that presented a unique influence on her upbringing. To begin, there was Yale University (originally known as Yale College). From its inception, Yale (and New Haven) was a hub of progressive, Freemasonic-Rosicrucian thinking and activity. By the way, we’ll most definitely be taking a train ride on the Freemasons. As a result, Sarah was raised and educated in an environment ripe with Freemasonic and Rosicrucian philosophy. Several of Sarah’s uncles and cousins were Freemasons. But more importantly, at an early age, she was admitted to Yale’s only female scholastic institution known as the “Young Ladies Collegiate Institute.” Two of the school’s most influential administrators and professors, Judson A. Root and his brother N.W. Taylor Root were both Rose Croix Freemasons. In addition to the liberal arts, the Roots set forth a strict curriculum consisting of the sciences and mathematics. Sounds super fucking boring. Furthermore, two of Sarah’s schoolmates Susan and Rebecca Bacon were the daughters of New Haven’s highly respected Reverend Dr. Leonard Woolsey Bacon (no relation to Francis Bacon, who was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. His works are credited with developing the scientific method and remained influential through the scientific revolution, just in case you nerds were wondering.). While Sarah and the Bacon girls were attending the school, Dr. Bacon’s sister Delia, also a New Haven resident, attracted considerable fame and attention for writing her famous treatise that Sir Francis Bacon (with the aid of a circle of the finest literary minds of the Elizabethan-Jacobean Age) was the actual author, editor, and publisher of the original works of Shakespeare. Ah ha! See! Her work was sponsored by the author Nathaniel Hawthorne and was later supported by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain! Good ol Samuel Clemens. In addition to her writing, Delia Bacon gave numerous public lectures to the citizens of New Haven; thus, New Haven, Connecticut was the actual birthplace of the “Bacon is Shakespeare” doctrine. We’re here to learn ya, folks! Given her direct exposure to the Baconian Doctrine, along with her passion for the Shakespearean works, it was inevitable that Sarah was drawn like an irresistible force to a more than passing interest in the new theorem. Moreover, the Baconian-Masonic preoccupation with secret encryption techniques using numbered cipher systems most certainly influenced young Sarah’s world view. This unique backdrop to Sarah’s early development played a crucial role which, in essence, defined what would become her life’s work. So much smarts! As we’ll see, the Belle of New Haven became a staunch Baconian for the rest of her life. She just LOOOVED HER BACON! BLTs, Canadian bacon, pancetta… she loved it all! A completely strict diet of fucking bacon! Except turkey bacon. Fuck that fake shit. No, but seriously, She also acquired a vast and uncanny knowledge of Masonic-Rosicrucian ritual and symbolism… SSSYMBOLISM. Additionally, she gravitated to Theosophy. Theosophy is a religion established in the United States during the late nineteenth century. It was founded primarily by the Russian immigrant Helena Blavatsky and draws its teachings predominantly from Blavatsky's writings.Author and historian Ralph Rambo (who actually knew Sarah and is a direct descendant of American bad ass and war hero John J Rambo) wrote “it is believed that Mrs. Winchester was a Theosophist.” Rambo didn’t elaborate on the matter, making him and his statement one of the more boring we’ve heard, but since he was close to Sarah he was certainly in a position to know some things about her. It should be noted that most Rosicrucians are theosophists. Sarah adhered both to Bacon’s Kabbalistic theosophy, which is the eternal belief in the Mortal Kombat franchise no matter how bad their movies are… ok, that was stupid. Anyway, she was also super into the theosophical perspective held by Rudolph Steiner (1861- 1925). Steiner viewed the universe as a vast, living organism in which all things are likened to individually evolving units or cells that comprise a greater universal, synergistic body that is “ever building.” As we shall further see, the “ever building” theme was at the core of Sarah’s methodology. William Wirt Winchester was born in Baltimore, MD on July 22, 1837. He was the only son of Oliver Fisher Winchester and Jane Ellen Hope. In keeping with a popular trend of the day, he was named after William Wirt, the highly popular and longest serving Attorney General of the United States . Soon after William’s arrival, the Winchesters moved to New Haven where the enterprising Oliver, along with his partner John Davies, founded a successful clothing manufacturing company. Gradually, the Winchester patriarch amassed a considerable fortune. Later, Oliver channeled his efforts into a firearms manufacturing venture that eventually (1866) evolved into the famous Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Fuckin’ Winchester! Woo!! According to historical documents, the Winchesters and the Pardees were well acquainted, particularly through the auspices of New Haven’s First Baptist Church. Additionally, Sarah Pardee and William’s sister Annie were classmates at the Young Ladies Collegiate Institute. Not far away, William attended New Haven’s Collegiate and Commercial Institute—another arm of Yale College. Here, William’s teachers included N.W. Taylor Root (one of Sarah’s instructors) and Henry E. Pardee who was another of Sarah’s cousins. Thus, Young Sarah and William found themselves studying virtually the same curriculum under very similar circumstances. Moreover, like the Pardees, the Winchester family was not lacking in members who were Freemasons. Sarah and William were married on September 30, 1862. Their only child, Annie Pardee Winchester came into the world on July 12, 1866. Unfortunately, due to an infantile decease known as Marasmus (a severe form of malnutrition due to the body’s inability to metabolize proteins), Annie died 40 days later. In 1880, Ol Oliver Fisher Winchester died, leaving the succession of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to his only son. One year later, William died of fucking Tuberculosis at the age of 43. Dammit, TB! The double loss of Annie and William was a staggering blow to Sarah. However, the loss did leave the widow Winchester with an inheritance of 20 million dollars (510 million today) plus nearly 50% of the Winchester Arms stock—which, in turn earned her approximately $1,000 dollars per day (25,000 today)  in royalties for the rest of her life—the result of which made her one of the wealthiest women in the world. Get it, girl!  According to Ralph Rambo, john j rambo’s great great uncle, Sarah went on a three year world tour with her new band “Rifles and Posies”, who sold 3 million records worldwide and had a huge hit with their single “fuck tuberculosis” before settling in California in 1884.   “The New Haven Register,” dated 1886, lists Sarah as having been “removed to Europe.” No other information has survived to tell us exactly where Mrs. Winchester went during those years or what her activities consisted of. But we can project some well educated theories. Although Freemasonry has traditionally barred women from its membership, there are numerous documented cases in which some head-strong women have gained admittance into liberal, Masonic Lodges as far back as the 18th Century. A movement in France called Co-Freemasonry, which allows for male and female membership was already underway when Sarah arrived in that country. Given her social status, a predilection towards Freemasonic tenets, and a mastery of the European languages, Sarah could easily have been admitted into any of the permissive French Masonic lodges. Another possible scenario involving Mrs. Winchester’s activities while abroad could well have included visits to esoteric, architectural landmarks such as the French Cathedral of Chartres. Sarah’s Masonic-Rosicrucian interest in labyrinths would have drawn her to Chartres with its 11 circuit labyrinth, a puzzle-like feature that stresses the discipline of the initiatic tradition of the ancient mystery schools. Likewise, she would also have found inspiration in the Freemasonic symbolism and the mysterious structure (including a staircase that leads nowhere) of Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland . In 1884, Sarah took up residence in the San Francisco Bay area—eventually moving inland to the Santa Clara Valley (now San Jose) to buy an eight room farmhouse from one Dr. Robert Caldwell. Her apparent motive for the move was to live in close proximity to her numerous Pardee relatives, most of whom had come to California during the 1849 Gold Rush, and were scattered from Sacramento to the Bay area. One of these Pardee relatives, Enoch H. Pardee, had become a highly respected physician and politician while living in Oakland. Later his son George C. Pardee followed in his father’s footsteps rising to the office of Governor of California (1903- 1907. It is interesting that Wikipedia makes particular note of Enoch Pardee having been “a prominent occultist.” Most likely the occult reference has to do with the fact that both Enoch and his son George were members of the highly secretive and mysterious ( California based) Bohemian Club which was an offshoot of Yale’s Skull and Bones Society. Moreover, Enoch and George were Knights Templar Freemasons. Also interesting, is the fact that President Theodore Roosevelt (another member of the Bohemian Club) came to California in 1903 to ask Governor Pardee to run as his Vice Presidential candidate in the 1904 national election. The offer was turned down. During the same trip, Roosevelt attempted to visit Sarah Pardee Winchester. Again, Roosevelt’s offer was turned down.  THE STORY BEHIND THE HOUSE         The story goes that after the death of her child and her husband she moved to California and bought the 8 room farmhouse and began building. It is said once construction started it was a continuous process. Workers in the area would work in shifts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  We're going to explore the stories about her mental state,  the construction of the house, and the reports of ghosts and spooky stuff.     The story supposedly starts like this: There was no plan – no official blueprints were drawn up, no architectural vision was created, and yet a once-unfinished house took shape on a sprawling lot in the heart of San Jose, California. Inside, staircases ascended through several levels before ending abruptly, doorways opened to blank walls, and corners rounded to dead ends. The house was the brainchild of Sarah Winchester, heir by marriage to the Winchester firearms fortune, and since the project began in 1884 rumors have swirled about the construction, the inhabitants, and the seemingly endless maze that sits at 525 South Winchester Blvd.Today, the house is known as the Winchester Mystery House, but at the time of its construction, it was simply Sarah Winchester’s House. Newly in possession of a massive fortune and struggling with the loss of her husband and daughter, she sought the advice of a medium. She hoped, perhaps, to get advice from the beyond as to how to spend her fortune or what to do with her life. Though the exact specifics remain between Sarah Winchester and her medium, the story goes that the medium was able to channel dearly departed William, who advised Sarah to leave her home in New Haven, Connecticut, and head west to California. As far as what to do with her money, William answered that too; she was to use the fortune to build a home for the spirits of those who had fallen victim to Winchester rifles, lest she be haunted by them for the rest of her life. So there's that… Spirits from beyond told her to build! After this is when she ended up in San Jose and purchased the farm house. Winchester hired carpenters to work around the clock, expanding the small house into a seven-story mansion. The construction of the House was an “ever building” enterprise in which rotating shifts of workers labored 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. the House gradually mushroomed outward and upward,By the turn of the century, Sarah Winchester had her ghost house: an oddly laid out mansion, with seven stories, 161 rooms, 47 fireplaces, 10,000 panes of glass, two basements, three elevators, and a mysterious fun-house-like interior. It was built at a price tag of the $5 million dollars in 1923 or $71 million today. Due to the lack of a plan and the presence of an architect, the house was constructed haphazardly; rooms were added onto exterior walls resulting in windows overlooking other rooms. Multiple staircases would be added, all with different sized risers, giving each staircase a distorted look. Gold and silver chandeliers hung from the ceilings above hand-inlaid parquet flooring. Dozens of artful stained-glass windows created by Tiffany & Co. dotted the walls, including some designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. One window, in particular, was intended to create a prismatic rainbow effect on the floor when light flowed through it – of course, the window ended up on an interior wall, and thus the effect was never achieved. Even more luxurious than the fixtures was the plumbing an electrical work. Rare for the time, the Winchester Mystery House boasted indoor plumbing, including coveted hot running water, and push-button gas lighting available throughout the home. Additionally, forced-air heating flowed throughout the house. Adding further to the mysterious features, the prime numbers 7, 11, and 13 are repeatedly displayed in various ways throughout the House—the number 13 being most prominent. These numbers consistently show up in the number of windows in many of the rooms, or the number of stairs in the staircases, or the number of rails in the railings, or the number of panels in the floors and walls, or the number of lights in a chandelier, etc. Unquestionably, these three prime numbers were extremely important to Sarah. In 1906 something happened that would change the landscape of california and the Winchester house. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). High-intensity shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Devastating fires soon broke out in the city and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died. Over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed. The events are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest earthquakes in the history of the United States. The death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history and high on the lists of American disasters. Although The impact of the earthquake on San Francisco was the most famous, the earthquake also inflicted considerable damage on several other cities. These include San Jose and Santa Rosa, the entire downtown of which was essentially destroyed. Since if the damage in San Jose was located at, you guessed it, the Winchester house. Standing 7 stories at the time, the house was damaged badly and the top three floors were essentially reduced and the house said at for stories from then on due to the damage.  Aside from its immense size and Victorian style architecture, the House has a number of unique characteristics. To begin, it is undeniably a labyrinth. There are literally miles of maze-like corridors and twisting hallways, some of which have dead ends—forcing the traveler to turn around and back-up. There are also some centrally located passages and stairways that serve as shortcuts allowing a virtual leap from one side of the House to the other. Traversing the labyrinth is truly dizzying and disorienting to one’s sensibilities. The House abounds in oddities and anomalous features. There are rooms within rooms. There is a staircase that leads nowhere, abruptly halting at the ceiling. In another place, there is a door which opens into a solid wall. Some of the House’s 47 chimneys have an overhead ceiling—while, in some places, there are skylights covered by a roof—and some skylights are covered by another skylight—and, in one place, there is a skylight built into the floor. There are tiny doors leading into large spaces, and large doors that lead into very small spaces. In another part of the House, a second story door opens outward to a sheer drop to the ground below. Moreover, upside-down pillars can be found all about the House. Many visitors to the Winchester mansion have justifiably compared its strange design to the work of the late Dutch artist M.C. Escher. Practically a small town unto itself, the Winchester estate was virtually self sufficient with its own carpenter and plumber’s workshops along with an on-premise water and electrical supply, and a sewage drainage system. On September 5, 1922, she died in her sleep of heart failure. A service was held in Palo Alto, California, and her remains lay at Alta Mesa Cemetery until they were transferred, along with those of her sister, to New Haven, Connecticut.  She was buried next to her husband and their infant child in Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut. She left a will written in thirteen sections, which she signed thirteen times.  In accordance with her will Sarah had her entire estate divided up in generous portions to be distributed among a number of charities and those people who had faithfully spent years in her service. Her favorite niece and secretary, Marian Marriott, oversaw the removal and sale of all of Sarah’s furnishings and personal property. Roy Lieb, Mrs. Winchester’s attorney of many years, had been named in her will as executor to her estate. He sold the House to the people who, in 1933, preserved it as a “living” museum—today, it is known as the Winchester Mystery House also known as California Historical Landmark #868. Although no mention has ever surfaced as to any specific guidelines or special instructions by which Mr. Lieb would select a buyer for the property, one gets the distinct impression that Sarah wanted the House to stand intact and perpetually preserved… and so it does. SOME OF THE FOLKLORE Some of this stuff we've touched on already but here's a rundown of the folklore behind the house.  Despite the fact that Sarah Winchester was extremely secretive about herself, nearly all of what the public thinks it knows about her reads like a mish-mash of gossip out “The National Enquirer.” some refer to this body of misinformation as “The Folklore.” Indeed, on a research visits to the Winchester Mystery House, a senior tour guide informed one writer that “in the old days, the tour guides were encouraged to make up stuff just to give some spice to the story.” The Folklore about Sarah says that, after William’s death in 1881, the highly distraught Mrs. Winchester sought the advice of the then famous Boston medium Adam Coons. During a séance with Coons, Sarah was told that because of the many people who had been slain by the Winchester Rifle, she was cursed by the Winchester fortune. Coons further instructed Sarah that the angry spirits demanded that she move to California and build them a house. Upon her arrival in California, Sarah began holding her own séances every midnight so that she could receive the next day’s building instructions from the spirits. Her séances allegedly involved the use of a Ouija board and planchette, and 13 various colored robes she would ritualistically wear each night (for the edification of the spirits) within the confines of her “Séance Room.” To further appease the angry spirits, Mrs. Winchester made sure the construction of the House went on, nonstop, 24 / 7, 365 days a year for fear that should the building ever stop, she would die. For some inexplicable reason, however, Mrs. Winchester took precautions in the building design so as to incorporate all of the strange features of the House to “confuse the evil spirits.” Moreover, she would ring her alarm bell every night at midnight to signal the spirits that it was séance time, and then again at 2:00 am, signaling the spirits that it was time to depart. Which begs the question “who was in charge of whom?” And, why would spirits’ have an inability or need to keep track of time? Whenever people make mention of Sarah Winchester the typical response you get from people is “Oh yeah…wasn’t she the crazy lady who built that weird house because she was afraid the spirits would kill her?” Many of these people have never been to the Winchester House. Their source is usually television. “ America ’s Most Haunted Places” tops the list of TV shows that grossly reinforces the Folklore of the house. The misinformation is further compounded by the “Haunted House” tour business thriving in San Jose as the commercial enterprise known as the “Winchester Mystery House” which profits by perpetuating the Folklore myth. In fairness to the management of the “WMH,” they try to present Mrs. Winchester in a positive light. However, their Halloween flashlight tours, along with booklets, postcards, coffee mugs and other sundry items being sold in the WMH souvenir shop displaying the title “The Mansion Designed By Spirits” only enhances the Folklore version of Sarah Winchester’s life. You’ve got to hand it to them, they’ve created a highly effective marketing strategy for a very lucrative commercial enterprise. These are good people who mean well—but this is hardly the legacy Sarah wanted to leave to posterity.  Even in more recent times the house keeps giving up secrets. In 2016, a secret attic was discovered. Inside the attic were a pump organ, a Victorian-era couch, a dress form, a sewing machine, and various paintings. There was a rumour that Sarah had a secrecy room full of undisplayed treasures and large amounts of cash, it was thought this attic may have been that room but there is no concrete proof of this.  So these are the stories about Sarah Winchester and her house, now comes the sad news, most of what you think you know, and most of what you've just heard, are myths. Stories that have grown over the years about the woman and the house. Early on we talked about president roosevelt trying to visit Sarah and the house. If you forgot, the story goes that Theodore Roosevelt attempted to visit Sarah at home in 1903, but was turned away. This is used as an example of her alleged weirdness. It is said the rumors likely started about Sarah because in life she was extremely private, refused to address gossip and did not engage much in the community.  This infamous presidential visit never occurred. Eyewitness accounts state that the President's carriage never stopped at the Winchester place. Furthermore, Winchester had rented a house near San Francisco that year to prepare for the wedding of her niece. She was not at home. There is another myth that Sarah would spy on her employees. It is said that some employees believed Sarah could walk through walls and closed doors. The claims are that Sarah had elaborate spying features built into the house. There is no evidence she spied on her workers. Would a suspicious employer retain the same workers for decades? Would she name them in her will? Would she buy them homes? Would they name children after her? All these things happened. In short, there is no evidence that she ever spied on her employees. Then there is the fascination with the number 13 and several other numbers. Since websites detail the occurrences of 13 in the house: 13 robe hooks in the seance room, 13 panes of glass in several windows, a stairway with 13 steps, just to name a few. These facts are used as evidence to prove the woman was ruled by superstition. References to the number 13 were added after Sarah's death, according to workers at the time. The 13 hooks were added not long ago.  Then we have some of the crazy architecture. The story goes that she built crazy things like hallways to nowhere, stairs to nowhere, doors that lead to walls, and doors that lead to several story drops, to confuse spirits. Some websites make much of the architectural "oddities" of the house, such as doors and flights of stairs leading into walls, and how they were supposedly built to confuse vengeful ghosts. Some say there is a more natural explanation—the 1906 earthquake.  Research uncovered the fact that there was massive damage to the house in the trembler and that Sarah never fully repaired it. The stairs and doors that lead to "nowhere" are merely where damage has been sealed off or where landings have fallen away. After the earthquake she moved to another house. She did not want to make the necessary repairs—it had nothing to do with spirits. Not to mention she herself admitted that with her being the architect and having no formal training, things often did not go as planned. "I am constantly having to make an upheaval for some reason,” Winchester wrote to her sister-in-law in 1898. “For instance, my upper hall which leads to the sleeping apartment was rendered so unexpectedly dark by a little addition that after a number of people had missed their footing on the stairs I decided that safety demanded something to be done." Far from an exercise in spiritualism, Winchester’s labyrinth arose because she made mistakes — and had the disposable income to carry on making them. It didn’t help her reputation that she was naturally reserved. While most Bay Area millionaires were out in society, attending galas and loudly donating to charities, Winchester preferred a quiet life with the close family who occasionally lived with her. In the absence of her own voice, locals began to gossip. One of the biggest myths however is the stories of how construction started and kept in going 24-7. There were actually many instances of Sarah sending workers away. Many times in the summer months she would send them away for a couple months because it got too hot. And in the winter she would send them away for a little break for everyone. This has been uncovered in Sarah's own writings. The Feb. 24, 1895 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article that almost single-handedly laid the foundation for the Winchester Mystery House legend."The sound of the hammer is never hushed,” it reported. “... The reason for it is in Mrs. Winchester's belief that when the house is entirely finished she will die." So aside from appeasing spirits with the continued building this article states that she believes that if she ever finished the house that's when she would die, so that's why she kept building.  "Whether she had discovered the secret of eternal youth and will live as long as the building material, saws and hammers last, or is doomed to disappointment as great as Ponce de Leon in his search for the fountain of life, is a question for time to solve,” the story concludes. Some modern-day historians speculate one of the reasons Winchester kept building was because of the economic climate. By continuing construction, she was able to keep locals employed. In her unusual way, it was an act of kindness. "She had a social conscience and she did try to give back," Winchester Mystery House historian Janan Boehme told the Los Angeles Times in 2017. "This house, in itself, was her biggest social work of all." As far as all of the supernatural talk, most of it started after her death. The famed Winchester mansion fell into the hands of John H. Brown, a theme park worker who designed roller coasters. One of his inventions, the Backety-Back coaster in Canada, killed a woman who was thrown from a car. After her death, the Browns moved to California. When the Winchester house went up for rent, Brown and his wife Mayme jumped at the chance and quickly began playing up the home’s strangeness. Less than two years after Sarah Winchester’s death, newspapers were suddenly beginning to write about the mansion’s supernatural powers. “The seance room, dedicated to the spirit world in which Mrs. Winchester had such faith, is magnificently done in heavy velvet of many colors,” the Healdsburg Tribune wrote in 1924. “... Here are hundreds of clothes hooks, upon which hang many costumes. Mrs. Winchester, it is said, believed that she could don any of these costumes and speak to the spirits of the characters of the area represented by the clothing.” (It is worth noting here: There are no contemporary accounts of Winchester holding seances in the home, and “Ghostland” writes that the “seance room” was actually a gardener’s private quarters.) The myth took hold, though, and the home, with its dead ends and tight turns, is easy to imagine as haunted. Although the spirits are fun, the ghosts shroud the real life of a fascinating, creative woman. Winchester was "as sane and clear headed a woman as I have ever known,” her lawyer Samuel Leib said after her death. “She had a better grasp of business and financial affairs than most men." Speaking of supernatural, let's get into the haunted history. Dozens of psychics have visited the house over the years and most have come away convinced, or claim to be convinced, that spirits still wander the place. It was even named one of the “Most Haunted Places in the World” by Time magazine. Here are just a few tales, courtesy of Winchester tour manager Janan Boehme. The Case of the Ghostly Handyman Some of Sarah Winchester’s loyal workmen and house servants may still be looking after the place, according to sightings of figures or the “feeling of a presence” reported many times over the years, by tour guides and visitors alike. One frequent apparition is a man with jet-black hair believed to have been a former handyman. He’s been seen repairing the fireplace in the ballroom, or pushing an equally spectral wheelbarrow – if wheelbarrows indeed linger in the beyond — down a long, dark hallway. The Secret of the Invisible HandSeveral years ago, a man working on one of the many restoration projects in the mansion started his day early in a section with several fireplaces, known as the Hall of Fires. The house was dead quiet before tours got underway, and he was working up on a ladder when he felt someone tap him on the back. He turned to ask what the person wanted. No one was there. Reassuring himself he’d just imagined the sensation, he went back to his work, only to experience what felt like someone pushing against his back. That was enough. He hurried down the ladder, crossed the estate and started on another project, figuring that someone — or something — didn’t want him working in the Hall of Fires that day. The Sign of the Heavy SighA tour guide named Samantha recently led visitors to the room the Daisy Bedroom, where Sarah Winchester was trapped during the 1906 quake. Samantha was about to begin her spiel when a very clear “sigh” came from the small hallway outside the bedroom door. Thinking one of her guests had merely fallen behind, Samantha turned to call the person into the room but saw no one. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the darkened hallway, she did see something. The form of a small, dark person slowly emerged, gliding around a corner. Samantha quickly stepped around the corner and again saw nothing but heard yet another deep sigh. She felt sure it was the tiny form of Sarah Winchester herself, perhaps peeved to find people in her favorite bedroom. You can find a surveillance video that seems to show a ghost or something moving around in a balcony late ate night on the fourth floor. Just as unexpected things turn up on video, the same is true of photographs. The Winchester Mystery House's own Public Relations Coordinator reports that he took several photos of the mansion in 2015. When he downloaded the photos he deleted what he didn't need. But, one caught his eye. In one window of the house, Tim O'Day spotted something. Was it a shadow? A reflection of a cloud? Or something else? Visitors to the Winchester Mystery House also report taking photos with strange shapes in the windows. A few even shared their snapshots on Facebook. If you visit, study all photos carefully before hitting the delete button. You never know what you will find! Top haunted house movies from ranker.com https://www.ranker.com/list/the-best-haunted-house-movies/ranker-film?ref=collections_btm&l=367358&collectionId=2164

January is Sexual Trafickking Awareness Month.  Sharan Dhanoa, Director of Strategic Development for the South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking, joins us to talk about this public health emergency that flies to low on the radar, no one is aware of the danger our young Black and Brown girls and boys face. She has organized a series of conversations for the public to educate us about the problem, who's at risk and what can be done to stop it. Sharan facilitates collaboration amongst over thirty-five member agencies. In May 2014, she began facilitating the largest multi-county workgroup in the Bay Area, No Traffick Ahead, which is unifying efforts in eight counties in order to effectuate collective impact across sectors. Prior to joining the Coalition, Sharan worked with women trafficked into sexual exploitation in Calcutta, India, by aiding their development through economic empowerment. She started her career in crime research, has worked in crime surveillance, and in an emergency psychiatric facility. Sharan holds a Master’s degree in Criminology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Juris Doctorate from Santa Clara University School of Law. Sharan was awarded “2015 Abolitionist of the Year” for Advocacy by the San Francisco Collaborative Against Human Trafficking, the "Unsung Hero Award" by the County of Santa Clara Valley in 2015, and the South Asian Bar Association’s “Community Impact Award” in 2016.   2. We speak to the newly elected Mayor Ge'Nell Gary, City of Albany 3. C. SADE TURNIPSEED MBA/MS/PhD joins us to talk about the Cotton Pickers Museum and other projects that honor the legacy of enslaved Africans and their descendents. 

*Warning: We are super space cadets in this one and we're sorry. Our brains are stressed and tired, and we're doing our best, buuuuut we're having some special brain moments right now. We'll be back to normal shortly. We appreciate you all for putting up with us* An architectural curiosity, this mansion holds as many secrets as it does marvels. Once a modest unfinished farmhouse in Santa Clara Valley, it quickly transformed into something else entirely. Home to Sarah Winchester-- the widow of firearm magnate, William Wirt Winchester-- this 4 story home consists of a staggering 161 rooms, 40 bedrooms, 2 ballrooms (1 finished, 1 unfinished), 47 fireplaces, 17 chimney's, 2 basements, 3 elevators, and over 10,000 panes of glass. After the unfortunate deaths of her infant daughter and husband, Sarah turned to the occult. Consulting a Boston medium, she was told that the only way to appease the spirits of those killed by the Winchester's rifles, was to move West and build continuously build a house. So, Sarah did just that. Fabulously wealthy, she was able to hire carpenters to work on her mansion, the sound of construction filling the house day and night, even as she filled it with oddities of her own. For decades, this trend continued. Then, on the announcement of her passing, everything fell silent. Join us as Loren takes us through this strange and fascinating mansion and the woman who started it all. And, if you're feeling the urge, click the link below to take a virtual tour! Wait to Panic is a weekly podcast where two longtime friends take turns sharing stories that just might make your skin crawl. If you like what you hear and want more, give us some love and come back each Sunday for our newest episode! Have a story of your own that you want us to share? Email it to us at waittopanicpodcast@gmail.com and we'll read it during our listener episodes! Links: Virtual Tour by the Smithsonian Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Mystery_House https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/sarahs-story/ https://allthatsinteresting.com/winchester-mystery-house https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/winchester https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/winchester-helen-mirren-haunted-house-san-jose

Host Ben Rice chats with Brian Moore, a comedian and former employee of Santa Clara Valley Brewing and Fort Point Brewing, and Kelly Berger, a person excited but hesitant to try comedy and former taproom manager and sales associate for Solid Ground and New Glory. Over glasses of Deschutes Fresh Haze (Ben), Hapa’s Galileo’s Dream (Brian), and a New Glory Ubahdank (Kelly), we discuss the COVID-19 shutdown’s effects on the beer and entertainment industry, how a big personality can find its way into the exciting world of beer, dick and clit jokes, and Ben proposes some radical political policies. Plus! Comedy in a baseball stadium, the struggles of small breweries to maintain the status quo, comedy do’s and don’t’s when starting out (and showrunning), why bigger breweries might struggle with this shutdown more than you’d think, self-roasts, worst shows, and being an asshole on a first date. All this and more, on Episode 133 of Barley & Me. Enjoy!Follow Brian Moore on Instagram @bmomakesyoulaughCheck out Kelly Berger on Instagram @sacbeergirlAnd of course, you can find Barley & Me across social media @barleyandmepod. Email questions/comments/concerns/guest ideas/brewery ideas to barleyandmepodcast@gmail.com or barleyandmepod@gmail.comFind out more about our beer choices @deschutesbrewery @hapasbrewing & @newglorybreweryAnd be sure to learn more about the Black Is Beautiful Initiative, as featured in Episode 129 with Marcus Baskerville of Weathered Souls Brewing, at www.blackisbeautiful.beerGet your merch or make donations at www.customink.com/fundraising/black-is-beautiful-initiativeAlso, during this crisis, 100% of profits from sales of Barley & Me shirts via Zen-Threads.com will go to Another Round, Another Rally, a charity that supports front- and back-of-house members of the service industry whose wages and benefits may be affected. So grab a shirt and help a good cause and people you love! https://zen-threads.com/collections/beer-wine/products/barley-and-me-podcast-mens-crew-tee?fbclid=IwAR1G_5HJ3NCoWTRgmG6Q2PVALEiJsb1KtHClCaDli0NhsjZsc4KPmWCp_osBen is also posting #Chugs4Charity videos semi-daily on Instagram (@barleyandmepod), to help raise funds for those affected by this shutdown. You can Venmo Ben ($comedianbenrice) or hit his PayPal (@barleyandmepod) and all money will go to support the NAACP, ACLU, Black Lives Matter, and other civil rights helpers. Charities will change with the times and as emergencies arise. But the point is: all donations will go to help those who need it.Do you have a story about racism, sexism, homophobia, or transphobia in the beer industry? You can submit your story anonymously, to be read on a future episode of Barley & Me at https://forms.gle/SmDuBT3zGKxNCVZ757Intro Music: “Functional Alcoholism” by Be Brave Bold Robot (@bebraveboldrobot)Alternate Intro Music (not featured in this episode): “JamRoc” by Breez (@breeztheartist)Logo by Jessica DiMesio (@alchemistqueen) 

Welcome to our fourth season of 10,000 Tacos! While we were away, we lost a sail of our podcast. Juan Salas, my father, took his last breath on May 12, 2020. This podcast is about him, my mother, and my siblings. This podcast is a collection of stories and experiences around how growing up in a taco truck shaped the wonderful life I have today.    This podcast is a tribute to them, my parents.    In honor of his passing, we are dedicating this season to what we call "The Friendship Economy." My parents practiced this way of living, and it helped shape how I view this world. Empathy, compassion, discipline, and accountability are some examples of what the Friendship Economy looks like and how it works.    This season, we will share some stories around the Friendship Economy and how it plays out in our community.   We hope you can get some inspiration and direction as to how you can practice it.  As COVID -19 has impacted our planet and our way of living, we, too, were indirectly affected. Because of this pandemic, we could not celebrate my father's passing in the way we preferred.    I chose this episode to give my father's eulogy.    Here is his Eulogy: Juan Salas, that was my father's name.   He was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, in 1936. He was a father to eight children, three from his first marriage, and five from my mother.    My dad grew up in a small family size business. My grandmother operated a local butcher shop back when he was a kid. It was there, where I believe, he learned the many cuts of meats and preparation techniques that would enable him to make those kick-ass tacos that I grew up eating and ultimately selling.    In his early years, he was an amateur cyclist. In his late teens and early 20s, he took part in what was called la Vuelta Ciclista de Mexico, which was a big event for cycling.  In his early professional career, he was a civil engineer in the public sector. He traveled throughout Mexico as part of his job. I believe that it was then when he discovered his love to drive around, getting to know place after place just to wander and be adventurous. He used to refer to it as "a Puro Conocer." It was exercising curiosity. To me, it was basically - not fear the unknown- This was a tremendous attribute to have, which would later help him explore his own journey to the States.   In the spring of 1978, he went to California to find work. Later that fall, he sent for his wife, my mom, and their four children, including me. Nine short months later, though, their fifth child was born. I don't know. Do the math.    The following year, in 1980, he purchased our first food truck, our first taco truck, our first catering truck. With that truck, he set off on his entrepreneurial journey, along with my mom and my siblings. This is where we got started. With that truck, my dad gave us a front-row seat to how Silicon Valley was evolving - from orchards of the Santa Clara Valley to the bustling high-tech buildings and the freeways known today.   Now, people call it street food. Today, it's trendy to get street food. People love it. They weren't calling it street food back then, at least in friendly terms.   Street food was always popular in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and in many parts of busy Metropolitan places where somebody just sets up a little cart and start selling this type of food. And it's great!    He wasn't the first. But back then, here in San Jose, you did not see a lot of taco trucks on every corner.    I believe he helped usher homemade Mexican food to the mainstream, and I believe he deserves a little bit of credit for that.   He would go anywhere with that truck. He would go to construction sites, office buildings, schools, universities, and even police academies.    For a while, for a long while, he would provide lunch and dinner for many of the cadets who were going through the San Jose Police Academy, back when it was being held at Evergreen Valley College in the east foothills of beautiful San Jose, California.    And on weekends, he would go to the nightclubs and not to dance. No, no, no, not to dance or get his drink on. He would go out to those nightclubs, to go sell tacos and burritos. And we sold a lot of them.   My dad, he finally retired in 2006. When he was about 70 years old. If there is one thing I would say about my dad, it would be this: He was a devoted husband first. My dad, he truly loved my mom. He was not afraid to admit that she was his trophy wife. He would do anything for her. He was also a father who loved nothing more than to be surrounded by his children and his grandchildren.    He was an awesome, funny, and very welcoming person. Anybody he met for the first time, they would get what he would infamously call, "How are you?" - with his heavy accent. Those are the very first words he learned when he came to America. And he would call it by its name, "El How are you?" How are you? He cared. My dad didn't set the bar that high. I could only imagine being born to a rocket scientist, right? I'd say, "Oh man, how the F@#% am I gonna top that!" Nah - My dad did not set the bar high. But he did not set the bar low either. My dad was a very good friend to many people.    And he was a badass TAQUERO!   In 2013 he was diagnosed with End of life Renal Kidney disease, and he was given up to two years to live.    His endurance, his grit, the love from his family, and - lastly - the care from his beloved wife, we believe, allowed him to outlive the two years he was given initially to live.  He left us on May 12, 2020.   We believe that there are two lines in heaven right now.  One is to get in, and the other is to get TACOS!   TAQUOTE: ""(intentionally left blank – It's in his eulogy)         

At just three minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam, which had been designed as a reservoir for the Los Angeles water supply by William Mulholland, suddenly failed, releasing 11 billion gallons of water into a narrow valley in northeastern Los Angeles County, destroying everything in its path. Over the course of the next four hours, a roaring wall of water swept through the night, traveling 55 miles from the San Francisquito Valley, through the Santa Clara Valley, and on to the Pacific Ocean. ------------------- *Where To Find Us:* ------------------- Sign up for our newsletter at AmericanHauntingsPodcast.com ( http://www.americanhauntingspodcast.com ) Follow us on Twitter @AmerHauntsPod , @TroyTaylor13 ( https://twitter.com/troytaylor13 ) , @CodyBeckSTL ( https://twitter.com/codybeckstl ). Follow us on Instagram @AmericanHauntingsPodcast , @TroyTaylorgram ( https://www.instagram.com/troytaylorgram ) , @CodyBeckSTL ( https://www.instagram.com/codybeckstl/ ) Subscribe for more bonus content on our Patreon page ( https://www.patreon.com/americanhauntings ) ! This episode was written by Troy Taylor ( https://facebook.com/authortt ). Produced and edited by Cody Beck ( http://www.codybeck.com ). ------------------ *Musical Credits:* ------------------ FesliyanStudios Background Music ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdEEFrPBkT5WLeRCl2qsEJQ ) Cool Vibes - Film Noire ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STBy7VZ8rVw ) by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ) Source: Incompetech ( https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100863 ) Artist: http://incompetech.com/ Music by MusicByPedro: http://www.youtube.com/user/MusicByPedro Songs: Who's Out There ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaIQNWXJPqE ) , Lonely ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9HvPZGAqd4 ) Artist: TeknoAXE ( https://www.reverbnation.com/teknoaxe ) Song: Adrift In My Own Thoughts ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUFMHODlP1s )

"We have been entrusted with such an important responsibility."  Innovation evangelist, mobility game-changer, and transit leader Nuria Fernandez shares her remarkable journey to where she is now - GM and CEO of Santa Clara's Valley Transportation Authority.  Born and raised in Panama, she ended up studying civil engineering in the United States, in the "land of caterpillars" state of Illinois. After graduating, her first foray into transit began when she worked at the Panama Canal for one year, before moving back to the US.  A lifelong public transit rider, Nuria shares her interesting experiences working for large public transit agencies, as well as in the Clinton Administration at the Department of Transportation, and now also as the 2019-2020 APTA Chair. Remember to check out transitunplugged.com to learn from top transit professionals and stay up to date to catch all the latest episodes.

It’s the season of giving in the Bay Area, so whether it means volunteering to hand out food or opening up that wallet to make a cash donation, residents throughout the region are stepping up to help out those in need. On this edition of KCBS In Depth, we learn more about all the ways to give this holiday season, as well as the tremendous need that is out there in this very expensive region we all call home. Guests:  Lou Reda, the executive director of Hands on Bay Area, which helps organize volunteer work events  Pat Gallagher, chief development officer for Catholic Charities, which serves Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties  Annette Pizzo, community relations manager for Sacred Heart Community Service based in San Jose Gina Schlocker, WIC director for Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley, one of the agencies that oversees the local Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program (WIC) Host: KCBS Radio reporter Keith Menconi 

Bobbie Lee Shore joins the show to discuss her life experience growing up in Santa Clara Valley. She explains how things were different, what she does to overcome difficulties, and her views on God. I wanted to invite Grams on the show because she is so "with it" for being her age. I hope you can acquire some insight from this episode!

Phyllis Eleanor Tichinin has always struggled to have her contrary voice heard amongst the mainstream. Raised rurally in the once fruit-filled Santa Clara Valley, she earned her education as a soil scientist and environmental manager at the University of California Davis. Now in New Zealand, she raised her two children on her deceased husband's family farm. She is currently involved in consulting and activism to remove biocides from our food supply and environment. During her studies with Influence Ecology, she discovered how to have her voice heard. As we teach it, the marketplace is indifferent to us and our aims. If we want our voice (or inviations, offers, and requests) heard, we might need to understand how to excite or agitate the indifference in others–to awaken them from their stupor. Like many who study here, there comes a time when the fact of an indifferent marketplace is accepted. We recommend that you don't wage battle with gravity or indifference; you'll lose. Instead, you must learn to work with it. So how do you and I transact in an indifferent world? In this interview, you'll hear more.

Phyllis Eleanor Tichinin has always struggled to have her contrary voice heard amongst the mainstream. Raised rurally in the once fruit-filled Santa Clara Valley, she earned her education as a soil scientist and environmental manager at the University of California Davis. Now in New Zealand, she raised her two children on her deceased husband's family The post How to Be Heard with Phyllis Tichinin appeared first on Influence Ecology.

Nova Perrill is our guest today on California Wine Country with Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger. He is the winemaker at Foppiano Vineyards. (The owner and CEO of Foppiano Vineyards were on CWC last August, here is the podcast page of that episode.) Nova Perrill tells how he took a Crop Science degree at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo then he got hired at Mount Eden, where he learned winemaking and viticulture and where he was as likely to be on a tractor as making wine. It was in the Santa Clara Valley. Dan says that Santa Clara Valley had some vineyards back then but today it is mostly homes. Paul Masson played a critical role in California viticulture. For one thing, he hired Martin Ray. He was instrumental in label laws. We had adopted French names but they didn’t apply to us, as our appellations and micro-climates are different. He thought that they needed their own names. Dan Berger says the first wineries in Sonoma County were in the early 1970s. In the ‘90s when Nova got to Sonoma, they were still stuck on five varietals and since then a lot has happened. Nova Perrill's first vintage was 2004. He was part of a class of winemakers that were in the middle of the second Renaissance, as Dan described it. In the 80s and 90s, winemaking skills were rare and winemakers would find work as consultants in a lot of places. Nova describes the location of the vineyard, in Sonoma County. They are the oldest Sauvignon Blanc vines in Sonoma County. He has the option of finding fruit that favors each of the two main flavor profiles of SV, grassy or tropical flavors. Foppiano Vineyards was founded in 1896 by Giovanni Foppiano. It’s one of Sonoma County’s longest continuously operating vineyards. Every winery is assigned a bonded winery number. They are bonded winery 312, the 312th one opened in California. Next they taste a 2017 Chardonnay. It’s from the Russian River, right off the estate. He describes the location. They are planting Barbera there. This is the last vintage of Chardonnay from there. Dan finds lime flavors and traces of new oak in it. They only made 49 cases of it and it is available at the tasting room. Nova learned not to be afraid of barrel fermentation and ML, and not to overdo it; “balance is everything.” They taste a Cabernet that Dan says this is more like the ones of the 1960s. It is a 1981 so will have some brown color, and more after an hour. They have a new mural out in front, to commemorate the original storefront that they had there. There is an avocado tree that is famous throughout Sonoma County. It produces thousands of avocados. There is a 100-year-old barn and much more. They are open seven days a week and Nova describes it as a diamond in the rough. They don’t to a lot of advertising. Dan notes that sparkling red wine is really hard to make.

 If you had a severe disability would anyone come alongside you with encouragement? Today's Freshstart TV podcast is with Nick Palermo, the founder of EmmausInnMinistries.com. Over 30 years ago Nick started Young Life Capernaum in one location in San Jose working with high school students with physical and mental disabilities. Capernaum grew to over 300 locations in the United States and spread to over 40 countries. With Nick's newest 501c3 non-profit ministry he has widened the circle to include disabled young adults age 23 through age 50. There are hundreds of thousands of young people with disabilities in Santa Clara Valley and only a hand full of youth ministers who serve these friends who are longing for friendship, purpose, careers and independence. Support Nick and his friends with a tax deductible donation.  Freshstart-Radio.com

Dr. Kavitha Jennifer Ramchandran, Clinical Associate Professor, Medicine - Oncology at Stanford University. Her clinical focus is in Thoracic oncology and palliative medicine. Dr. Ramchandran served on the Planning Committee for ASCO’s Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium and is here to talk about the event.   Welcome to the ASCO Daily News podcast. I'm Lauren Davis. And joining me today is Dr. Kavitha Ramchandran, clinical associate professor of medicine of oncology at Stanford University. Her clinical focus is in thoracic oncology and palliative medicine. She served on the planning committee for ASCO's Palliative Care in the Oncology Symposium and is here to talk about it. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Today, we're talking about the Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium. Palliative care, which is really lessening the burden of disease and side effects of treatment, is having a moment. It's becoming more prevalent during earlier phases of treatment, not just at the end of life. How do you think we got here? Palliative care is a field in evolution. We've had opportunities over the last 40 years to see palliative care really evolve both in Europe and in the United States. As many of you know, palliative care actually stems from the hospice movement and was started with the hope that we could provide quality care for patients who are at the end of life. The goal was really to enhance a multidisciplinary level of care for all patients and with a focus not only on their physical needs but also on their psychological needs, spiritual needs, and social needs. What we've realized over time, especially in the last 30 to 40 years of medicine, is that we've made a huge leaps in terms of disease modification. We have new indications for new treatments every single day, with up to three to four new drugs being approved for cancer therapeutics every week. And that excitement has spawned this amazing rush for us to be able to try to cure and to lessen the impact of illness. However, we're also realizing that in doing that, we've also created an amazing epidemic of long-term toxicity and long-term needs that have to do with patients who are living with illness longer. And what this means is that palliative care has changed its scope, where we now are not only caring for patients as they come to the end of life, but we have to think about what it means to care for the whole person from the point of diagnosis, including caring for their symptoms, caring for financial toxicity, looking at the adverse events of some of these new treatments, paying attention to the caregiver and family as they negotiate complicated disease management. It's really about going back to whole person care but starting at the beginning because people are living longer, and disease management has become a lot more complicated. Absolutely. So I'm curious, what information from the Symposium do you think will yield the most changes going into 2019? Thanks for asking. I think this was an excellent meeting. I really hope some of you could have been there in person and are enjoying the newsfeeds post-meeting. I think one of the things that came out of this was some of the research on communication. We are in an era with new treatments that promise amazing things, including the possibility of cure even for disease that we once thought was incurable. And with that comes the need to really balance new communication strategies. There was a group of researchers that presented data on concepts of hope and optimism and how we balance that with realistic expectations and uncertainty. What we found was that hope unopposed actually can lead to patients receiving more toxic treatments and that those patients who had physicians who were able to talk a little bit more about uncertainty and provide a balanced approach often received treatment that was more appropriate for them in terms of their illness and their illness trajectory. Additionally, if you always offered hope, patients often had lower understanding of their prognosis and had a lower rate of advance care planning. I think this really allows us to think about how we educate our clinicians about balancing hope and uncertainty. Another piece that came out was in this era, we're really struggling with the use of opioids. We've had a lot of dialogue around the opioid crisis in the United States with an increase in opioid overdoses. And we had a great panel discussion on the great opioid debate in this meeting, specifically on how we treat patients who have malignant pain and how we provide them the medicines that they need to control pain. What stood out for me, here, was that we really need to think about addiction and malignant pain as two separate issues. If you have a patient with a history of addiction, it's important to get help from an addiction specialist so that you can still provide the medicines and the care that you need but you also get the advice, as a practitioner, that you need in order to care for those patients. Finally, we learned a little bit about guidelines and whether those guidelines are being followed. Dr. Rolland presented some data on high emetogenic chemotherapy. He found that even though we've had guidelines for many years on taking care of patients who are receiving high emetogenic drugs such as carboplatin and cisplatin, as practitioners, we're not actually following guidelines. We're not providing those patients with the right medications to control nausea and vomiting. And our adherence is often under 30%, resulting in poor quality of life outcomes for those patients. And finally, we learned a lot about digital health. We learned about an AI harness platform from our Boston group that would allow for us to better understand patients' pain. We also learned about EMR interventions that would help us to shorten the time to get patients the right treatment for painful bone metastases and that we can learn a lot about what patients think by following their thoughts and voices on local message boards through some of the work that was done by [? Cindy ?] [? Baggerwall ?] at Santa Clara Valley. How should oncology practices use the information from the Symposium to move the field forward or make process improvements? In the area of communication, I think that we have a steep challenge. We really need to learn to figure out how to communicate both hope but balance that with uncertainty. And I think those skills can truly be trained. But that needs to become a focus of our oncology training programs for all practitioners, whether they're in nursing, social work, or physicianship, to really think about how we learn those skills early in our training and practice them. Our patients look to us for so much, including not only the latest cure and the newest science, but they're also looking to us as guides. They expect us to be able to provide them some honest guidance on what they should do next. And that needs to be couched with both data but also our true perspective on what we think might happen next. And we need to be able to communicate that with compassion. I think that can be an area that we should be looking at educational ways to measure our competency there and see whether that really helps patients make good decisions and help us guide them to make the decisions. With regards to guidelines, I think that we've learned that research helps us to provide new guidelines. For example, with the high emetogenic chemotherapy, we have learned which drugs work. We've created the guidelines. Now we need a systems approach. We need to think about how we can use the EMR to help us to integrate those guidelines into our e-health solutions so that we make it easier for our clinicians to do the right thing. Similarly, when we think about our new research in neuropathy or in menopause-related symptoms, both of which were also presented, once we have data and good research and good guidelines, let's create a systems-based approach that allows us to integrate it into our technology so that we can make it easier for our clinicians to practice what we know is correct. And then finally, I think that we need to keep listening to our patients. We have a whole new host of ways of learning about what people are thinking, whether it be social media or discussion boards. And we're going to keep learning from them. So let's not forget to use that data and make sure that it helps us to figure out how we should be talking to patients and where they're learning their information from. That will help us to make sure we're on-target with regards to the relevance of the message that we're communicating. Is there anything else specific about the Symposium that you would like to mention? Yes, I think that there's two really interesting areas that were highlighted at the Palliative Oncology Symposium that we're just starting to learn more about. I think we're in the area of early research and thinking through the appropriate interventions in order to move these two fields forward. The first is looking at the adverse events of immunotherapy. This is a field that we learned a little bit about from the early trials that looked at comparing immunotherapy to chemotherapy. And most of those trials indicated that immunotherapy was relatively safe and that most patients tolerated it without too many side effects. But our palliative care colleagues were able to highlight the fact that actually, in the real world, we're seeing higher rates of toxicity compared to what was shown in the studies. I think that we're going to have to keep following this cohort of patients that are receiving immunotherapy over real-time. And we're going to have to decide, what are the true rates of these adverse events? There will also be a new field on really learning how to understand which patients are at highest risk. I think that, in a similar way that we understand perhaps which biomarkers predict for how patients respond to certain treatments, we'll also have to start to think about what biomarkers might predict which patients receive toxicity from these treatments so that maybe we can either counsel those patients better or plan for those toxicity. And I also think it's going to be important for us, as oncologists, to learn how to manage these toxicities long term, whether it be utilizing steroids or managing endocrine problems or hepatitides or pneumonitis. These are all areas that we're all learning a little bit more about as these drugs become more widely used. The second area that I think is really important but in a very different vein is financial toxicity. There was a active and new group of researchers that presented their work, including Yousuf Zafar and his team, as well as [? Ian ?] Oliver. And they asked us to ask patients and families a very simple question. Are you able to afford your care? As physicians, we often divorce ourselves from the financial impact of our treatments on patients and families. Unfortunately, it's no longer ethical for us to do so. These drugs are coming at great expense even though they also have great promise. And many times, patients and families are put in a very difficult situation between choosing something that could help them to extend their life versus not maybe having enough money in order to afford their basic living needs, such as housing or food. And, as physicians, we need to at least open that door to ask that question so that we can get them the right support that they need if finances are becoming difficult. I think that we're going to see a lot more work on this topic. And I think that we're going to be changing the way that we practice medicine so that we at least start to inquire and start to create systems that allow for patients to get the care that they need but also to be able to live their life in a way that allows them to get their other needs met, both for themselves and their caregivers. Again, today, my guest has been Doctor Kavitha Ramchandran. Thank you so much for being on our podcast today. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning into the ASCO Daily News podcast. If you're enjoying the content, we encourage you to rate us and review us on Apple Podcast.

Host Sue Hall speaks with Dr. James Crew about the new facilities and programs offered at the Santa Clara Valley Med Center. https://www.scvmc.org/Pages/home.aspx

Mary Elaine Hegland is professor of anthropology at Santa Clara University. Her areas of focus include women and gender, political anthropology, Shia Islamic ritual and politics, resistance and revolution, social and cultural change, and the anthropology of personal philosophies and life histories. Hegland has conducted anthropological fieldwork in Iran, Pakistan, India, Turkey, Afghanistan, and among Iranians and Pakistanis in the Santa Clara Valley. Her most recent publication is DAYS OF REVOLUTION: POLITICAL UNREST IN AN IRANIAN VILLAGE, Stanford University Press, 2014. http://iranian-studies.stanford.edu/node/843

2pm ET / 1pm CT / 12pm MT / 11am PT (Outside US: Dial 00 + 1 + 714-464-4891) Viki Winterton interviews Lindsey Leonard!  Lindsey Leonard is the Executive Director at the Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation. Lindsey joined TBCF in March 2012 with a decade of non-profit experience in program administration, fundraising, grant writing, donor cultivation, and facility management. Before joining TBCF, she worked at Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, a local nonprofit environmental organization, serving as a development director. Before joining the Foundation, she was the vice president of operations at Boys & Girls Club of Santa Clara Valley in Ventura County, and she served as a branch director and a state licensed childcare center director at United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County. Lindsey has devoted much of her professional career to making a positive impact in families' lives through education, mentorship and constructive social interactions. She has built her career on the philosophy that "the sky is the limit," and that every family can be great given an opportunity and the support they need. She believes openness to creating a positive work environment and collaborative participation is paramount to build a healthy organization, particularly in small communities such as Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura.   

Topics include the incredible fecundity of the Santa Clara Valley; what happened to the fecundity when the Santa Clara Valley became Silicon Valley; and where our food will be grown when we pave all our best farmland into cities. Guest: Robin Chapman,

When you know as much stuff about Disney history as Jim Korkis does, you get asked a lot of questions. Sometimes it's pretty basic like “When did Disneyland open?” Other times it's more obscure like “When did Mickey Mouse start wearing gloves?” Then there's the question that's totally off the wall like “How much does Walt Disney World weigh?” No, really, someone asked him that once. By the way, the answers are July 17, 1955, in the 1929 cartoon The Opry House, and haven't got a clue. But, I digress. Jim is back in the Lounge once again, finishing up a conversation we started last week. We heard all about his latest book, Secret Stories of Walt Disney World. Today, we take a look at his other recent publication, The Vault of Walt: Volume 4. Jim always has terrific stories to tell about Disney. Today is no different. Earlier this month, I took a trip up to the San Francisco Bay Area and paid a visit to my friends at the Walt Disney Family Museum. I finally got to see their special exhibition Disney and Dali: Architects of the Imagination. By all means, go see it. It runs through January 3. While I was there, I was also invited to drive an hour down the road to San Jose to visit the Winchester Mystery House. Now, unless you've lived in the Bay Area, like I once did, you may not be familiar with the Winchester Mystery House. It's a sprawling Victorian mansion in San Jose once owned by the widow Sarah Winchester. Sarah's late husband, William Winchester was heir to the Winchester firearms fortune. Sarah was quite well off financially. In 1884, Sarah purchased an unfinished farmhouse in the Santa Clara Valley and commenced adding onto it--for the next 38 years. At the time of Sarah's death in 1922 the house spread over six acres and contained 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and 6 kitchens. Why Sarah kept building all those years remains a mystery. Was she distraught over the deaths of her husband and a daughter in infancy? Did she believe that continually building would somehow appease evil spirits? Was she just a kindly woman who chose to spend her money supporting local builders, carpenters, landscapers and artisans? Whatever the reason, the continuous construction resulted in a labyrinth of rooms and hallways, staircases running into ceilings, doorways leading to nowhere and all manner of building oddities. You can still tour the house today and marvel at its mind-boggling construction and design. Visit during the holidays and you can see the house decorated in Christmas finery with over 20 custom designed Christmas trees. On select nights you can enjoy, like I did, the Spirit of Christmas with carolers, festive beverages and holiday treats. Don't be surprised if you see some snow fall too. Here to tell us more about the Winchester Mystery House is Janan Boehme. Enjoy! www.TheMouseCastle.comRSS Feed: http://themousecastle.libsyn.com/rss

SANTA CLARA VALLEY’S HOME CARE EXPERTS PODCAST Providing Trusted Advice For Your Peace of Mind We offer honest, compassionate and trusted information about home care and issues concerning seniors so you can maintain independence at home as well as providing peace of mind for families. The Santa Clara Valley Home Care Experts Podcast is powered by HomeWell Senior Care San Jose. We help adults of all ages enjoy the best quality of life possible by offering non-medical care wherever and whenever they need it. visit www.homewellsanjose.com for more info

David DeCosse, Director of Campus Ethics Programs, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Michael Zampelli, S.J., SCU Theater and Dance and Rector, Jesuit Community, Emily Hawley, SCU '13 and Matt Lee, SCU '13, take part in the Santa Clara City Library's Big Read commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Jack London's great story, "The Call of the Wild." London wrote the book while living near what is present-day Bellarmine Prep. The story itself begins in the "sun-drenched Santa Clara Valley." Of course, it ends with the great dog Buck at home in the deep reaches of the north woods.

Today's show with Host Lakota Harden and guest Travis Harden in studio, features interviews with Raymond Fiddler of Native Families Outreach and Education in Santa Clara Valley, as well as a tribute to LaVerne Roberts of the American Indian Alliance in San Jose. Music by Indigenous, De Sol, Night Wolf and Ulali. Also the Bay Area Indian Calendar.     The post Bay Native Circle – December 8, 2010 appeared first on KPFA.

Host Lakota Harden interviews Marc Yaffee, Navajo comedian who is performing in the Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley's upcoming 3rd Annual Fundraiser Comedy Jam. Also Donny Adolf, students Danielle Spencer and Arnold Torres from the American Indian Child Resource Center's Tobacco Usage Prevention Education program is in the studio for discussion. Bay Area Indian Calendar, as well as music from Tlingit Rapper Loren Sands of "half smoked productions" (as in smoked fish, half smoked) and a song by our own Dallas Wahpepah aka Rencho and the DIME . Go to http://www.kpfa.org/archive/show/100/2009/01 to hear all past shows, or sign up for podcast.   The post Bay Native Circle – Interview with Navajo comedian Marc Yaffee appeared first on KPFA.

This week I had the great pleasure of interviewing Tom Ferry, a self-proclaimed non-foodie, first time podcaster and somone who remembers a time when Silicon Valley was still called Santa Clara Valley. For him, food has always been more of a reason to get his (big) family together and be social. So, while it played an important role at getting everyone at the same table, it wasn't as important. Except for one thing...