San Jose Inside

WITH LITERARY TRAVEL on the rise these days, more and more people are feeling the need to follow in their favorite authors’ footsteps or to explore the locales that writers have placed in their novels. Longtime media consultant and video engineer Mark Hager is currently working on a novel about backstage life in Silicon Valley’s corporate venues, and if I’m still around when this thing comes out, I will organize similar tours like the one he and I recently undertook.

Food for Thought

What shall we suppose is the spark that attracts our children’s motivation? Is it the exhilaration of sport?  Is it the need to join in, and be alike? Is it the need to set out, and be different?  Much has been written and legislated in the desire to find the elusive formula that will spark and educate each generation to a sense of responsibility and, if we’re lucky, leadership.

Mayor Chuck Reed’s efforts to make government more open and transparent have had an unexpected side effect—he’s also made it more boring.

As we commented at the founding of San Jose Inside, our modest effort to change and improve the political landscape in San Jose, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke, writing in eighteenth century England, did not have the need to say “people,” but I will, since our politics has been greatly improved by the advent of the many women in local political firmament. And I will further offer the thought that here in our city, women have often stepped forward and courageously changed the direction of our local government.

As I sat enjoying the rest and relaxation that comes with the Memorial Day holiday, I wondered why we can’t find a way to make three-day weekends a part of our city’s culture. I know it doesn’t seem possible, but think about it hypothetically for a moment. What if we only worked 4 days each week? Would our city benefit?  Yes!

It’s graduation season, and tassels are being turned in high schools, community colleges, vocational programs and universities all over the South Bay. This year, a friend of mine who I first met seven years ago when he was locked up in the max unit of juvenile hall (I was giving writing workshops through a program called “The Beat Within”) got his high school diploma and is now taking classes at De Anza College. He was the kind of youngster that was always quick witted, which probably got him more trouble than anything else, but this year, his gift for gab was rewarded, and he was the commencement speaker at his graduation. He was even on the evening news when they did a segment on graduations, which was a bit of redemption for him since the last time he was on TV, he was kicking in a newspaper stand during Mardi Gras years ago.

City Hall Diary

Last week, the council spent 90 minutes deliberating the sale of a 0.19 acre parcel of surplus downtown property for $450,000. The current tenants, the Arab American Community Center and the Indochinese Refugee Center, are nonprofits who pay $12 a year in rent (month to month) on an expired lease. They were notified in January 2006 about the city’s plans to sell the property.

Complaints of “Gamey” Chicken Marsala

San Jose’s favorite romance, between City Hall peregrine falcons Carlos and Clara, came to an ignominious end yesterday after three employees discovered that they ingested most of the birds after complaining that their weekly Thursday lunch special of chicken marsala tasted “gamey.”

Sudden loss and rattled nerves on the first day of the Santa Cruz Mountains wildfire

The Summit fire that engulfed the Santa Cruz Mountains around Corralitos on Thursday hit the small, tight-knit rural community without warning, resulting in some last-minute heroism and a great deal of anxious waiting.

IN THE TRAVEL writing business, one always runs across those service-type articles with titles like “72 Hours in Casablanca,” “A Weekend in Montreal” or “Three Perfect Days in London”—the point being that the reader should be able to easily replicate the author’s experience. Since nobody anywhere has bothered to enlighten us with a “Five Hours in Alviso” exposé, allow me to furnish an example of how just such a piece might begin.

Food for Thought

The new Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) array of interstellar listening devices located near Mt. Lassen should have caught humankind’s attention and imagination. With the special radio telescopes coming online, the Mountain View-based private nonprofit organization is greatly improving its ability to detect evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. SETI’s efforts and the work at the Lick Observatory in discovering planets outside our solar system make Santa Clara County the center of our planet’s search for alien life forms and worlds that can sustain them.

Last week’s Willow Glen forum for the District 2 County Supervisor seat featured stumping from candidates Patricia Martinez-Roach, Richard Hobbs and George Shirakawa. What stumped Fly is why no one asked Shirakawa about the lien the city placed on his house last month because he didn’t pay his garbage bill on time.

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is a favorite quote of many who discuss history. Most likely said first—and best—by poet and philosopher, George Santayana, we should remember it in San Jose.