California was once home to over 300 Native American dialects and as many as 90 languages. Today, only about half of those languages are still with us and many are working to revive them.
Some Adult Day Healthcare Centers in Alameda County that were initially relieved to hear that their state funding would not be entirely cut, thanks to a settlement reached between disability rights activists and the State Department of Health Care Services, are now worried. At LifeLong Medical Care in East Oakland, more patients have been found ineligible for the new Medi-Cal subsidized program set to replace adult day healthcare than LifeLong staffers expected.
Animal activists are up in arms over the budget cut they say turns back the clock on animal welfare over 100 years. Governor Brown recently proposed repealing the Hayden Act which guarantees animals will be held in shelters 4-6 open business days. The repeal would mean municipal shelters would only be required to hold stray animals and pets for 72 consecutive hours from the moment of impound and shelters would not be required to treat animals with medical care.
After two years of being threatened with complete funding cutoffs from the state, some of California’s adult day health care centers are finally seeing a ray of hope. In the recent culmination of a lawsuit challenging the funding cutoff, the State’s Department of Health Services has announced a new 2012 adult care program that will close some centers but allow others to stay open with continued state support.
Oakland North caught up with The California Honeydrops to talk about their unique soulful gospel, second line New Orleans-style second line jazz, blues, swing and R&B sound, how they got their start playing at BART stations, and to confess that they love Oakland.
Deep in West Oakland, a collective of artists called Five Ton Crane (5TC) is hard at work tuning up their submarine Nautilus. Although it doesn’t go underwater, there seems to be little else this lifesize submarine can’t do—it even defends its perimeters with a water spear gun and bumps tunes from its built-in iPad technology.
“Love, respect, care, responsibility, honor, and peace”—that’s the Warrior’s Code that East Bay youth are being taught at Destiny Arts Center as part of the Growing Peaceful Warriors Program. Instructors teach young people self-defense and conflict management skills to deal with possible real-life dangerous situations through the martial and performing arts.
A new suite of rooms at Oakland Children’s Hospital is furnished with bright bedspreads, comfortable couches and chairs, kid-sized furniture, and a refrigerator stocked with snacks–all intended to give the families of profoundly ill or dying children an intimate and homelike surroundings within the hospital.
Sara Davis Buechner, an associate professor of piano at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, established her success early in her career. She joined the Oakland East Bay Symphony on November 4 to play Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2 “The Age of Anxiety,” as part of their kick-off concert for the 2011-2012 season. Buechner has an incredible off-stage story as well. She was once known as David but in 1998, at the age of 39, underwent gender reassignment and transitioned to being Sara. Although facing walls as a transgendered woman, Sara remains positive and hopeful for the future generation. “I have often said to people, ‘I don’t know why we’re so obsessed with what’s between the legs—I think what’s between the ears is a lot more important,’” she said.
On Saturday, at the Oakland Zoo’s Snow Building, families reunited with the doctors and nurses who cared for their premature babies at the Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
The Oakland Hills Fire may have started on the ground, but the Eucalyptus trees surrounding people’s homes in the Oakland-Berkeley Hills helped it burn more and spread even further. The highly flammable non-native species accounted for 70 percent of the energy released through combustion of vegetation during the fire, according to the National Park Service. Twenty years after the fire, Eucalyptus trees still surround many homes and live in many of Oakland’s parks, while residents debate whether they should be saved or removed as fire hazards.
As Mayor Jean Quan fielded reporters’ questions on Friday about the clash between police and protesters earlier this week, she was suddenly drowned out by cheers coming from outside as documentarian and activist Michael Moore arrived to speak to a gathering crowd of hundreds on the steps of City Hall.
With a wag of her tail feather, Oakland East Bay Symphony violinist and stand-up comedian Dawn Harms wooed the crowd of elementary school students at Oakland Technical High School on October 20th as part of The Musical Time Machine performance by the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s annual Young People’s Concerts series, which is designed to engage children and teach them about music. The symphony offered six free shows at Oakland Tech and Allen Temple Baptist Church from October 20th – October 22nd.
While much of the country took Monday off in honor of Columbus’ expedition to the New World, Phat Beets Produce farmers’ market in North Oakland took an alternate approach on Saturday with its “Decolonize Your Diet: An Indigenous People’s Day” celebration.
Souley Vegan, located at Broadway and 3rd Street in downtown Oakland, conjures up a sense of Southern comfort with murals of jazz artists like Louis Armstrong and Big Mama Thornton covering the walls. The air is scented by the steaming gravy wafting off the top of one patron’s mashed potatoes. Blues tunes carry over the entire seating area and bar, as does the sizzling of something frying in a batter: tofu.
The scent of locally-raised barbeque meat, organic Asian Fusion cuisine, and many other tasty bites cooked by dozens of food trucks is wafting over Jack London Square for the third annual Eat Real Festival this weekend.