Climate RWC – March 2022 by info-climaterwc

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ISSUE SEVENTY NINE • MARCH • 2022

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR•

In this area we’re used to reading about high-technology or biotech companies coming up with breakthroughs and cutting-edge products but sometimes they’re so specialized that it’s hard to relate—or, yeah verily, to even know what they’re talking about. That is decidedly not the case with this month’s cover story about the plant-based food industry and the challenge it represents, not just to meat-producers, but to our very ideas about what we want to put on the dinner table. Headquartered in Britannia Seaport Centre business park off Seaport Boulevard, Impossible Foods is one of the leading innovators in this area of food technology. The company has bold plans for eliminating meat-based agriculture by 2035, as writer Don Shoecraft explains in his fascinating story, and has formidable capitalization to manifest that destiny. Among the claims behind this push are economic, social and environmental advantages over producing cattle and other animals that we eat. (We don’t even like to think about the fate of the Babes in the barnyard.) But will consumers be willing to go meatless, to go cold turkey on the steakhouse? A friend of mine swears by Burger King’s Impossible Whoppers, that they are in fact better than the real beefy deal. It’s an intriguing and more complicated question than I imagined when this story was assigned, and I hope you’ll find it as informative as I did. It begins on page 8. For those who haven’t, the question of whether to get a solar roof has become more difficult because of a hotly debated proposal to change a formula that affects (i.e. reduces) the cost benefit of having one. As writer Vlae Kershner details in this month’s Spotlight, the current net-metering formula fostered a great boom in rooftop solar installations in the state. But critics say that system has created a subsidy for wealthy people at the detriment of those who can’t afford to go solar, increasing their share of the cost of maintaining the grid. You’ve probably been hearing ads about this debate on the radio, and Vlae’s story, which is on page 24, will give you good background on the issue. Joanne Engelhardt, who wrote a story about San Carlos’s Birder’s Garden store for the January issue, returns this month with a behind-the-stacks look at some dedicated volunteers who turn used and donated books into revenue for libraries and the San Mateo County History Museum. Joanne has volunteered with one of the groups, the San Carlos Friends of the Library, for 13 years so she brings an informed perspective to this Profile. It’s quite remarkable how much revenue they and other groups generate, and hats off to them for this contribution. History columnist Jim Clifford this month reveals a story about a real piece of World War II history which has been donated to the archives of the Redwood City Library. It’s a very rare firsthand journal about the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Jim describes what’s in this diary, as well as how it ended up in the Local History Room. Lots of good reading and news you can use—I hope you enjoy the March issue.

Janet McGovern, Editor March 2022 ·

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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S •

FEATU RE

Plant-Based Meat

PROFILE

Used Books

SPOTLIG HT Solar Rooftops

MICRO CLIMATE Chalk Granny

AROUND TOWN ��16 HISTORY......................30

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5 · CLIMATE · February 2022

SPOTLIGHT•

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C L I M AT E •

CLIMATE

Letters to the Editor

M A G A Z I N E Publisher

S.F. Bay Media Group Editor

Janet McGovern janet@climaterwc.com Creative Director

Jim Kirkland jim@climaterwc.com Contributing Writers

Don Shoecraft Joanne Engelhardt Vlae Kershner Janet McGovern Jim Clifford Photography

Jim Kirkland Editorial Board

Janet McGovern Jim Kirkland Adam Alberti

Thank you for a very interesting article in Climate [Ed: February featureon longevity]. The resources list was especially helpful, I feel. However, speaking of climate, I felt a great disconnect between the picture painted of lives lived to 100 and the climate disaster that is already here, much earlier than scientists expected. We already are dealing with the covid viruses that look to be with us for quite a while, and the supply/shipping difficulties that are showing up in the empty shelves in stores. The climate disruption is going to further affect food supplies as growing areas shift due to heat and drought; we see that already in South America and Africa. People aren’t going to stay where they have always lived, as water becomes scarcer and temperatures soar; borders are already becoming fortified in Europe, not to mention our own. The climate change is going to disrupt the sunny predictions for all these future centenarians as populations shift and violent incursions follow at borders, and as life as we know it is disrupted on a very large scale for everyone on the planet. I wish that had been folded in to the article so more people will wake up and deal with climate issues that must be dealt with now. Action is needed now, not lulling people into a false sense of security. People I know are already seriously concerned about the struggles ahead for their adult children and grandchildren. Judith Kirk, Redwood City

Advisory Board

Dee Eva Jason Galisatus Connie Guerrero Matt Larsen Dennis Logie Clem Molony Barb Valley CLIMATE magazine is a monthly publication by S.F. Bay Media Group, a California Corporation. Entire contents ©2022 by S.F. Bay Media Group. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use in any manner without permission is strictly prohibited. CLIMATE is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. CLIMATE offices are located at 570 El Camino Real, Ste. 150 #331 Redwood City, CA 94063. Printed in the U.S.A.

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Out to Pasture? Producers hustling to replace animal agriculture with plant-based “alternative meat"

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By Don Shoecraft

"How would you like your cell-based protein cooked?" That'll be the question for restaurant servers if Redwood City's Impossible Foods delivers on its promise to eliminate meat-based agriculture by 2035. Should that ambitious mission succeed, the Peninsula once again will be in the vanguard of a meat revolution. At the turn of the 19th century, San Francisco’s fresh meat slaughterhouses waged a “butcher war” with South San Francisco over refrigeration. Refrigeration won, but both sides profited in the long run. Photo courtesy Impossible Foods

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How It Began Its founding story is that highly regarded Stanford Medical School biochemist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Pat Brown conceived an idea to save the planet: Eliminate meat agriculture. The something to replace it, he reasoned, would be plant-based and should smell, cook and taste like meat. That eliminated then-available plantbased meat substitutes because they were sold pre-cooked with artificial flavors and aromas built in. The solution Brown favored pointed to heme, a family of proteins in meat that give it the look when raw, the smell when cooking and the taste of eating meat. Impossible claims to be "the first" to identify heme as key to meat for looks, cooking and taste. Its flavor is a distinct taste sometimes identified as savoriness, or umami. All living things, plant or animal, contain heme protein; however, animal and plant hemes differ. Hemoglobin, the abundant iron-rich, oxygen-carrying constituent of blood, is abundant in animals. When

in muscle tissue it is a cousin, myoglobin. Among plants, soybeans are among the best heme producers. They produce a small amount of heme, legume hemoglobin, or leghemoglobin for short, in nodules on roots. Compared to the heme Americans consume in 55 billion pounds of beef,

The process is at the core of company claims about its economic, environmental and societal advantages over cattle ranching and meat slaughter. It is also scalable and therefore critical to Brown's 15-year timetable for eliminating meat agriculture. As he put it during a November radio interview with the Palo Alto Humane Society, "the way we make meat uses way less land, way less water, one one-hundred twenty-fifth the land area, one eighth the water, less than a tenth of the fertilizer and agricultural chemicals, less labor growing the crops because we use labor more efficiently, no labor managing the animals and less labor in manufacturing. "We designed the whole process, as opposed to having this ungainly creature come in the door and be hacked to pieces by a bunch of exploited workers with large knives." Photo courtesy Impossible Foods

It was a minor development in meat, however, compared with the change Impossible forecasts. Meat is a vast array of things political, sexual, economic, cultural, ecological, technological and even romantical—name it and meat probably is in the picture somewhere. Academics have established that meat has a gender component, that men and women react differently to meat, that meat conveys a masculine component if it's red and a feminine one if it's, say, chicken. The key signal comes from blood. And blood, or, more accurately, its substitute, is at the core of Impossible Foods' business.

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Pat Brown, CEO of Impossible Foods

Pat Brown conceived an idea to save the planet: Eliminate meat agriculture. The something to replace it, he reasoned, would be plant-based and should smell, cook and taste like meat.

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veal, pork and lamb a year, soybean heme's production is miniscule. Producing its additive soybean leghemoglobin requires industrializing the process. Growing fields of soybeans to harvest tiny root nodules has obvious limitations. The company devised a system to boost soybean heme production through genetic modification of yeast. The method extracted soybean’s leghemoglobin-making gene and inserted it into yeast DNA. The yeast does its work, making leghemoglobin, in a fermentation tank, the same technology beer brewers use.

Carnivores and Vegans This last characterization repeats the conundrum of the "meat paradox:" Most humans do not approve of the kill and slaughter of meat animals, but they love to eat the meat. Human teeth and stomachs are designed for it. To a degree that thus far has not been quantified, the success of the transition to plant-based meat partly will depend on how attractive it is to consumers not to struggle with the meat paradox. Most people, with intent, just don't think about it. Of those who do, some reject meat entirely, as do vegetarians and vegans, or avoid it, as do flexitarians; however, eschewing meat is a minority movement. According to Gallup, only 5 percent of Americans are vegan or vegetarian, and it's mostly a non-white, liberal, 18-to-34-year-old phenomenon.

• Meat eaters may find Brown's other arguments persuasive. "Replacing animal agriculture over the next 15 years would unlock negative emissions sufficient to offset all other greenhouse gas emissions for 30 years … Eliminating animal agriculture does what you can never do with fossil fuel emissions," he said. "It unlocks massive negative emissions. You can reverse animal agriculture emissions, historic emissions, almost completely. At the same time, the same thing will almost completely reverse the collapse of global biodiversity, which is almost entirely due to animal agriculture and overfishing." Impossible's mission is global. "Our long-term plan is to be everywhere," according to a company spokesperson, "in every market globally, and have a full array of products for every culture and cuisine. That means scaling to produce over one trillion pounds of plant-based meat, and our goal is to do that by 2035." "I am 100 percent confident," Brown said in that November interview, repeating what he has said many times, "that we'll replace (animals in the food system) within 15 years." Grand declarations such as those bring to mind Elon Musk and Tesla. Musk may have been the only one who believed he could eliminate gas-fueled cars, but through the influence of economics and official policy, that pledge is on the way to being fulfilled. Success moving humanity to Mars—Musk's signature ambition— may be more difficult, but in that goal he already has government science and funding on his side. The Disruption Model Musk may not be the model, but Impossible's playbook follows his, and that of the archetypical Silicon Valley tech company's: disrupt the status quo, attract capital and scale up.

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Bill Gates

Gates faulted "cows and other grass-eating species" for emitting 6 percent of global methane emissions. "So we need to change, just cows alone." “End the cruelty of meat slaughter” and “save the planet” are excellent clarion calls, and investors have responded, reportedly with $1.4 billion in funding, according to filings by Maraxi, Inc., another Pat Brown company under the Impossible umbrella. Market watchers have touted the value of an Impossible Foods initial public offering of stock, should it ever decide to become publicly owned, at $10 billion. Reuters has identified some funders: kicking in a reported $300 million were celebrity investors Serena Williams, Katy Perry, the rapper Jay-Z, The Daily Show host Trevor Noah, will.i.am, Ruby Rose, Jaden Smith and others. Public filings also disclose the participation of several billionaire investors and investment funds, among them Vinod Khosla's Khosla Ventures. Khosla was founder of Sun Microsystems and is partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers. He's noted locally for litigation with San Mateo County and the California Coastal Commission over pub-

lic access to Martins Beach, a Khosla property on the coast side. Others are Temasek, a $380 billion investment portfolio based in Singapore, and multi-nationals, Mirae, UBS Capital, Viking Global Investors and Coatue, an actor in crypto analytics. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has gone farther, devoting time and talent to the cause, in addition to money —$50 million, according to published reports. Last May he told the Economic Forum of Washington that, "of all the categories, the one that has done better than I would have expected five years ago is this work to make what’s called artificial meat. "So you have people like Impossible or Beyond Meat, both of which I invested in … It's slightly better for you in terms of less cholesterol. Of course, there's a dramatic reduction in methane emissions, animal cruelty, manure management and the pressure that meat consumption puts on land use." Gates faulted "cows and other grass-eating species" for emitting 6 percent of global methane emissions. "So we need to change, just cows alone." What to Call It He enters a semantic thicket, however, to say "what's called artificial meat," because industry tends to avoid "artificial." Impossible Foods uses "plant-based products" or "plant-based meat" generically, but leans on its trademarked word, "Impossible," as in Impossible Burger, Impossible Sausage, Impossible Chicken Nuggets and Impossible Pork. Other terms: cultured meat, meat protein, plant protein alternative, meat analogue, meat substitute or alternative meat product. Variations are numerous, but because of potential legal problems, including lawsuits, "veggie" can be off limits. The basic proteins in the majority of plant-based alternative products are, like soybeans, from legumes, not vegetables. March 2022

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• What to call the products seems still in flux, spurring companies to get creative. Gardein, branded as "the plant-based protein" company, avoided the common stratagem of tacking an adjective—or two or three—onto "meat" and coined product nouns. Though they convey the idea when read, it may not be possible to pronounce them without losing meaning. It may not even be possible to say some of them using standard English sounds: "Be'f," "Saus'ge," "Chick'n," and 'Ste'k." ‘What is meat?’ may be a problem for a nascent plant-based industry not least because the federal authority on the subject, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, defines meat as "the flesh of animals (including fishes and birds) used as food." That First Beef War For generations, since Gustavus Swift opened an abattoir in South San Francisco and helped build a town to house the people to work in it, "meat" meant more than "tissue," it was the muscle meat of slaughtered farm animals bred for the purpose by a meat industry, which in 2020, the last complete year of the USDA meat census, processed nearly 10 billion cattle, hogs, sheep, lambs, chickens and turkeys. The beef slaughter has been losing meat market share for several decades. The 32.8 million head of cattle processed in 2020 is down from a high of 45 million head in 1975; however, beef remains meat's mainstay because compared to other animals one cow yields a very large quantity of high-quality protein and commands a high price here and overseas. Impossible Foods and Bill Gates emphasize the negative, that to create protein cows take up lots of space, generate troublesome waste and contribute to global warming.

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F E AT U R E •

“What is meat?” may be a problem for a nascent plantbased industry not least because the federal authority on the subject, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, defines meat as "the flesh of animals (including fishes and birds) used as food." Brown calls beef production "by far the most destructive technology in human history." A company statement claims "that the yield of protein in the U.S. soybean crop is five times greater than all the protein in all the meat consumed in the U.S. By using our ingredients, including soy, far more efficiently in our supply chain than in the livestock supply chain, we need less of them, thereby decreasing demand for ingredients like soy every time an Impossible product replaces animal meat." Soybeans already represent the second-largest crop in the U.S. next to corn, and, while land devoted to crops today is about the same as it was in 1917, the portion devoted to soybeans is growing fast, jump-

ing 26 percent over 2012 to 329 million acres in 2017. Land devoted to pasture fluctuates year-to-year. As of 2012, pasture and range acreage, at 655 million acres, was up over the annual average. The numbers indicate that soybeans are taking over lands already in crops, not pasture land, but even should it come to the point where animal and soybean farming have to compete for land, cattle producers don't believe range and pasture land will convert. Rangeland usually is hilly, rocky, dry and untillable. Cattle are among the few animals able to thrive on it. The Rancher Reaction The industry Impossible hopes to disrupt, the one whose longevity seems about to be curtailed, is not reacting very strongly to the threat. With the help of sympathetic members of Congress, they have drafted legislation, the Real MEAT (Marketing Edible Alternatives Truthfully) Act, to establish a federal definition of meat. It also has filed a request with the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration to "enforce existing labeling laws for plant-based protein products," existing laws developed over generations to benefit the meat industry as it has been known. As it hasn’t been voted on, the Real MEAT ACT has done little, other than provide a platform for press releases in which the cattlemen can lambaste "fake meat," "misbranded imitation meat" and "labgrown" meat while poking the FDA. Danni Beer, a South Dakota cattle rancher and a member of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association Truth in Labeling Committee, says labeling, not

• technology, is the crux of the issue, and in her opinion plant-based food companies are stalling. "They publish press releases saying 'We're going to come forward,' but it seems every time they need a round of funding they come out with a release." She does not feel a sense of existential dread. "Sometimes when I listen to their propaganda it scares me that people will believe that information," she said. "When I look at how much of the market share they are actually selling compared to meat, it doesn't scare me at all. I really have a lot of confidence in our product, because it's good." Elimination of meat agriculture, she said, "sounds like something that I can't imagine in my lifetime or my children's lifetime either. You can't break it down to be that simple." Cattle rancher Beer says she’s very interested in plant-based meat technology—she calls it “cell-based protein”— and is “impressed with how much they believe in it.” Cattlemen are frustrated that companies work in secret while agricultural meat production is heavily regulated, in the open and government-inspected. A Lucrative Market Secrecy may be as simple as the fact that no company yet in the plant-based, cell-based alternative meat business has unveiled the metaphorical rocket to Mars that signals the end of the development phase, the "killer app" that slays all competitors and sets the course for all to follow. It's not for lack of effort. At stake is business worth at minimum billions, possibly trillions, of dollars. Even traditional meat mega-companies are muscling in. Conagra Brands is on the market with its

F E AT U R E •

subsidiary Gardein. Cargill, Inc. the world's largest privately held company, is marketing PlantEver plantbased "beef patties" and chicken nuggets in China and has invested in "other alternative protein products" in Asia and the U.S. To give meat its due before its disappearance, scientific literature, pr i ma r i ly

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works cited in the Woodford Publishing Series in Food Science, Technology and Nutrition, makes these points. Animal tissue becomes meat when it dies. What makes it palatable is "postmortem metabolism," a process that after cell death develops those constituents which humans covet in meat. It differs from plant protein in that it is able to hold a large amount of water, giving it juiciness. Meat has almost no carbohydrates. In addition to containing about 20 percent high-quality protein, beef is a significant source of many nutrients. These nutrients can be derived from nonanimal sources, but meat concentrates them and is unique in delivering them in a single food. Meat animals screen toxins from the plants they eat. Meat protein is superior at Phot

making muscles grow. Meat protein differs from plant protein, in the words of Dr. Bruce German, distinguished professor and chemist in UC Davis' Food Science and Technology Department, in that "plants are not really very nourishing, they didn't evolve to nourish us. In fact, they evolved to avoid nourishing us." Dr. German is researching a third way of delivering food protein, a method using the protein-producing power of human breast milk — some argue the perfect protein — harnessing microbes, as Impossible Foods does, to do the work in fermentation tanks. Like Brown, he believes "the current agriculture system is just not sustainable. At least a third of the destruction of the planet's land, air and water is attributable to agricultural activities … We are going to have nine, 10 billion people on this planet. How are we going to nourish them? "The meat idea is not a bad one, but the question is, could we do it better?" The technology is established. The 'what' is not. "People think it will be one thing," he said. "It won't. Everybody has a different response to food and somewhat different aspirations for health. We're going to have to include diversity into this whole thing." The future will be "precision nutrition, delivering diets to people that help their particular health issues and their desires. In so doing, wouldn't you want to know what they like in terms of flavor, texture?" There will be cattle, he said, but not many. "Maybe on your birthday every year you'll get a steak. The rest of the time you'll say, 'I really don't like steak that much. Can I get X?'" C

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The Pandemic Transforms a Grandmother into a Street (Chalk) Artist Mary Kay Mitchell doesn’t care if people walk all over her art work—in fact that goes with the territory for the Redwood City resident transformed by the Covid pandemic into the artist known as ChalkGranny. A law firm receptionist working at home, she got bored early in the pandemic and one day grabbed her grandson’s chalk to decorate the walkway in front of her Anamor Street home. “I did a couple of ‘Hang in there’ and ‘Cheer up’s’ and then I did a heart with a rainbow and it said, ‘When this is over, what will you remember?’” Mitchell asked herself the same question, and ended up supplying the answer by taking on a new identity as a chalk artist. In the process she’s captured some local fame as a result of the steady stream of projects and commissions she’s completed—everything from sidewalk birthday “cards” to elaborate mini-murals in chalk. Whatever she takes on, says the fun-loving and outgoing Mitchell, “it has to make me laugh.” Initially, she worked in front of her own house, creating yoga poses in chalk; a parade for the (cancelled) Fourth of July event, with twirlers, Shriners, and band musicians; a solar system; and even hopscotch boards. She set out stones so people could play, and was delighted to watch grandparents teaching their grandkids what hopscotch is. Her husband, Marcos Domingos, would sit out in front of the house while she worked and chat with the neighbors. As people began to notice and her creations appeared on social media, “chalking” requests started to come in. Her website, chalkgranny.com, showcases multiple examples and also answers key questions—like how much does it cost? Her rate is $50 an hour, and ChalkGranny says most projects run $50 to $100. She had been commissioned to create a large and

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Pictured are Mary Kay Mitchell, grandson Gideon, and some of her chalk art work.

complicated Chinese New Year chalking for the Mandarin Immersion School at Orion School, which included a fierce water tiger and some painstakingly applied Chinese calligraphy. The fee for the artwork for that one was $200. Most of what she earns, Mitchell says, goes for chalk and then to the Second Harvest Food Bank. “Each piece that I do involves research, tremendous amounts of research,” Mitchell said, as she stood in late January studying the tiger she was creating on a school wall. “I go deep into it and I learn new things. Each piece has given me some insight into culture.” School principal Katherine Rivera sent Mitchell an enthusiastic note of appreciation for the chalking, which debuted in February. “It highlights our school-wide focus on celebrating the cultures and language represented at this school and in Redwood City.”

Mitchell, who got her art training at Nazareth College in New York State, has had an eclectic work history. She has taught art but also taught water aerobics (for the YMCA), served as a waitress and then as an event planner. She worked for the San Francisco Chronicle for 25 years, where Mitchell managed the annual Season of Sharing Fund. She’s now employed

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by the O’Donnell & Associates law firm in Menlo Park as a receptionist and notary. “I love my job,” she says. “But this”—referring to her chalking—“is my own thing.” When she started chalking, she used the Crayola chalk of 5-year-old grandson Gideon Mitchell. But Mitchell went online and discovered Eternity Arts chalk, produced by a snowplow driver in Michigan who is a “gospel chalker” and teaches people how to draw scenes from the Bible with his chalk. “Let me just say,” Mitchell declares, “this is the chalk of God. Nothing (else) is this good.” When she creates a piece, the colors white and black are applied last. She rubs the chalk in with a sponge or her gloved finger. (You can’t erase chalk.) Having taught yoga and water aerobics, Mitchell says she’s in pretty good shape and can spend two or three hours at a stretch working on a piece, but “I never kneel. If I kneel, I’m never getting up. Ever.” It doesn’t bother her that rain might wash away one of her chalkings or that they aren’t permanent. Far from it: “It’s better for me,” she says. “I’m a real self critic. And if I don’t like it, I’m really glad it goes away.” Ironically, it’s a worldwide pandemic that has prompted her, and many others, to try to connect with their neighbors and share some fun, Mitchell observes. “People have discovered wonderful new ways to keep themselves engaged in life. The lucky people. Not everybody has the wherewithal to do that.” As the pandemic seems to be winding down, Mitchell won’t be bothered if her chalking days are over, because she has so many other creative outlets, including embroidery and making socks. She might even like to teach chalk art. “Anybody can do it,” she says. “It’s something that you can’t take yourself too seriously. Because it’s chalk. It’s gonna go away. Like Covid. It goes away, hopefully.” And then adds, “A good metaphor.”

AROUND TOWN•

Many people have collections, but not many go out of their way to share them as Belmont resident Carolyn Hoskins does in turning the artifacts, memorabilia and other items she’s accumulated about black history and culture into a mobile museum. To celebrate Black History Month, her collection was on display throughout February in the vacant Cost Plus World Market store opposite Redwood City City Hall. Thousands of items could be seen in the 22,000-square-foot space—photos, movie posters, commercial products, record albums, appliances, a pair of real metal shackles and more—to illuminate black history. It’s called the Domini Hoskins Black History Museum and Learning Center, after a grandson whose questions were the initial spark that set his grandmother on a mission. “The whole point of the Learning Center is to make sure that people realize that African-Americans excel in more than just entertainment and sports,” says Hoskins, “which there’s nothing wrong with that.” Her late husband, Robert “Bob” Hoskins, was a San Francisco 49er defensive tackle who died in 1980 of a heart attack, at the age of just 34, leaving behind a loving family and friends in the community. “It’s not just black history,” she says, of what she wants to educate people of all ages about. “It’s world history.” The displays are broken down into categories, but Hoskins says most of the students enjoy the inventions African-Ameri-

cans were involved with: the potato chip, the refrigerator, the toilet, the clothes brush, to name a few. “What would we do if we didn’t have the traffic signal?” she asks. “So all of these things were invented by blacks.” The museum was open six days a week but she set aside time on Mondays for school and other special groups. She puts together goodie bags of material for the schools “because we don’t want the education to be just for one day.” Interaction with grandson Domini, in fact, was the impetus for what became a lifetime of collecting. About 20 years ago he was going to Central School in Belmont and was assigned in February to do a report on a famous African-American. He told her he’d already done two reports on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “His question was ‘Weren’t there any other famous black people that did anything?’ So my answer to him is as you see today, over 22,000 square feet of black history.” The roving museum has been set up in various places over the years, and for over a decade, the San Mateo County Event Center has hosted it. The museum became a registered nonprofit in 2007, with Hoskins as its executive director. The museum has several community sponsors, among them the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the NFL Foundation and the cities of Belmont and Redwood City. Hoskins would, however, like to find a permanent home for the museum. For information, visit hoskinsblackhistorymuseum.org. C

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AROUND TOWN•

Auntie Lou Turns 105 Louise Prado turned 105 years old on Jan. 28. The middle child of nine brothers and sisters, she was born in the Bayview District of San Francisco in 1917. "The '20's were interesting but I loved the '50's the most," she says, "But through it all I loved to dance, was crazy about it. Don't think I missed a night dancing at the Bal Masque." It was there in 1942 she met her husband of 57 years, Ashley. "I heard his laugh and that was it. He was the one. Helps that he was cute." Prado became an engineer at Ampex, for 30 years where she got to work with Bing Crosby recording on the newly developed reel-toreel tape machine. After retiring from Ampex Prado kept herself busy with a variety of jobs which included caregiver at the Sharon Heights Convalescent Home in her late 80's. "I liked taking care of the old people," she smiled. Prado says her longevity is due to a never-ending schedule and willingness to help other people. "Someone was always calling me for help. I wasn't lazy, that's for sure."

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AROUND TOWN•

Lunar New Year Welcomes the Tiger Redwood City's Courthouse Square was the setting Feb. 19 for the annual Lunar New Year Celebration, ushering in the Year of the Tiger with displays of drumming, the martial arts, dancing and a variety of other aspects of Chinese culture. Crowds gathered to watch performances by Orion Alternative Elementary School Mandarin Immersion and Playthrive After School performance along with California kung fu and tai chi, leading up to the grand finale, the arrival of Lion Dancers, attired in colorful costumes and undulating to the beat of the festive music. Meanwhile, inside the San Mateo County History Museum, there were lots of art and educational activities for kids.

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AROUND TOWN•

Mardi Gras Returns to Redwood City in Style Sue Lehr Mitchell, vice president of the Redwood City Downtown Business Group, loves planning parties. And what better way to promote and support local businesses during a traditionally slow time — not to mention the Covid interruption — than to put on the granddaddy party of them all. "It has been a dream of mine for a long time to bring Mardi Gras to the Peninsula," says Mitchell. So, after a one-year hiatus, the Mardi Gras Carnival returned to downtown Redwood City on Feb. 19. Locals were invited to put on their best beads and outfits, dine at open restaurants, specialty food booths, sip on a "hurricane" and boogie to the music of Al Lazard & the World Street Players; Howard Wiley Project; MJ's Brass Boppers; and Grammy-nominated soul accordionist Andre Thierry. Master of Ceremonies Donald Lacy and DJ Marc Stretch kept things lively, in between the live bands.

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AROUND TOWN•

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PROFILE •

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PROFILE •

Another Chapter for

Used Books Volunteers befriend libraries and a museum by reselling and recycling books

By Joanne Engelhardt

When Dan Brown’s mystery thriller “The DaVinci Code” came out in 2003, it sold more than 80 million copies in its first six years. It was bested that same year by J. K. Rowling’s fifth book, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” which sold the same number of books in just six months. That’s only two of the approximately 300,000 books published that year. By 2021, that number had grown to several million. But what happens to all those books after they get devoured by their buyers? And where do the hundreds of popular titles public libraries buy go when they’re no longer getting checked out?

hanks to secondhand bookshops like Encore Books in downtown Redwood City, as well as smaller ones run by libraries and volunteers, many books get resold, read, donated back and sold a third, fourth, or a fifth time— and sometimes even more. “We do everything we can to keep from having to put books into a recycling bin,” explains Redwood City Library Director Derek Wolfgram. But with about 224,000 books available in his branch

libraries, the odds are that many can’t be spared that fate. “The library policy says that whenever a book is worn, outdated or no longer being checked out, it’s time to take it off our shelves,” Wolfgram adds. He heaps high praise on Friends of the Redwood City Library volunteers who spend countless hours searching for new homes for culled books.

An Upstairs Annex That’s similar to the process that San Carlos Library follows, according to branch manager, Jessica Koshi-Lum. Used bestsellers and other nearly new books can be purchased for $3 at a small shop just inside the library. A much larger room called the Annex on the second floor holds about 9,000 used books, which library volunteers sort through for their monthly sale days.

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• Janice Smith has volunteered with the Friends group for about 13 years (including three as president and 11 as a board member). These days her main responsibility is running the Annex and organizing the one-Sunday-a-month book sale. Though the sale lasts only three hours, volunteer cashiers and helpers rack up about $2,000 in sales each month. The Annex has about 25 regular volunteers, more than half of whom are responsible for specific sections like history, fiction, business and memoirs. The remainder are “floaters” and help wherever they are needed, such as in culling, “dotting” and shelving books. Smith explains that the Friends use a “dot” system to weed out books that don’t sell. When a book arrives at the Annex, volunteers put one of four colored dots on it. When books with the “oldest” colored dots have been on shelves for four months, they get culled. That doesn’t mean they go into recycling bins. Over the years, books have been given new homes at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital, San Mateo County’s Juvenile Hall, a Costa Rican library, an elementary school in Kenya, Notre Dame School District, new teachers in the San Carlos and Redwood City school districts, and other worthy nonprofit projects. The Book Nook Tucked away in a corner of the San Carlos Library Annex is an area called the “Book Nook,” where vintage and antiquarian books are kept. Roy Hoyer oversees this specialized area, which has received donations of several very old books over the years. One notable treasure was a 1900 first edition of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” which, Hoyer recalls, sold for $750. “The buyer didn’t say exactly why he wanted it, but he likes to collect famous books.” Hoy-

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PROFILE •

Janice Smith

Smith explains that the Friends use a “dot” system to weed out books that don’t sell. When a book arrives at the Annex, volunteers put one of four colored dots on it. When books with the “oldest” colored dots have been on shelves for four months, they get culled. er says it was in tattered condition with some missing pages, and adds “It would have been worth much more if it was in better shape.” He gets help from volunteer scanners who assess donated books to decide whether to put them in the book shop, the Annex or the Book Nook. To determine a price for other special books, Hoyer checks the Amazon price, then lists them for half of that. “Some of my customers come in every month or two to see what’s recently been donated,” he says, “because repeat visits can pay off with a real find.” Hoyer once got an early edition of Julia Child’s “The Art of French Cooking” which sold for $50 and three volumes of the 1747 edition of “The Memoirs of Sully” (prime minister to Henry the Great).

Smith estimates that the San Carlos Friends group gives the library about $40,000 annually, although in 2013 it donated $275,000 due to a large donation. Over the years the Friends group has funded the purchase of some outdoor furniture for the library, as well for Healthy Cities Tutoring, special programs, equipment and library materials. Redwood City Friends The Redwood City’s Friends group has a book shop near the front doors of the downtown library, and several other rooms to sort, clean and price books to sell. Friends President Mary Scavarda says about a dozen members show up weekly to sort donations—down from about 25 before the Covid pandemic. The Friends also stock a small book “kiosk” at the Redwood Shores library branch. Pre-pandemic, Scavarda says the Friends group received about 30 bags of donated books each week, most of which get left in the library lobby. Donors also bring new or like-new books to a monthly drop-off event, behind the downtown library. It was paused for seven months, but started up again in February. “We sell a lot of our better inventory online via Spectrum Books (spectrum-books.com) with proceeds funneling back to the Redwood City Library,” she adds. (They sell through Amazon and eBay as well.) Scavarda estimates annual online sales average between $20,000 and $25,000. Her volunteers have discovered many unusual items among the donations. “We once found $300 and had no way of knowing who donated the book it was in,” she recalls. Other, more prosaic items left in books include airline boarding passes, photos—and socks.

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PROFILE •

The downtown Redwood City Library Friends group had an unusual side hustle last year: Honey. They put three beehives on the library roof tended by a subgroup of volunteers self-named the Redwood City Library Bees. About 1,400 jars of honey sold for $10 a jar with all proceeds benefiting the library. Overall, the Redwood City Friends group expects to fund about $93,000 in library projects this year, ranging from $31,343 for children’s programs, $5,000 for Spanish language programs and $1,000 for a traveling story time. Bargains in the Basement In downtown Redwood City people can score “gently used” book bargains—and other items like puzzles and comic books— at Encore Books, located in the basement of the San Mateo County History Museum. Visitors explore four rooms chockful of books on nearly any topic. Volunteers show people around or let them wander on their own. Several changing book displays feature a topical theme (“love” was February’s), as well as a table showcasing a single subject like history or cooking. Two rooms are stuffed with paperbacks—priced at 50 cents or $1—and there’s a cozy nook filled with children’s books so youngsters can explore, read and select their own books. Volunteers Wally Jansen and BettyJo Fairclough show up most Saturdays to unlock the doors and help people find what they’re after. Though Encore Books has 30,000 to 40,000 titles crowded onto the shelves, Jansen reveals there are more boxes in backrooms, not to mention some stored at his home because there’s no space at Encore. “On many Saturdays there are people—and often boxes of books—lined up at the doors when we arrive to unlock the doors,” says Fairclough. A volunteer for

about six months, a closure that reduced the volunteer corps (many in their 80s). New volunteers are coming on board, though, and Jansen and Fairclough hope to open two days a week soon.

Mary Scavarda

Overall, the Redwood City Friends group expects to fund about $93,000 in library projects this year, ranging from $31,343 for children’s programs, $5,000 for Spanish language programs and $1,000 for a traveling story time. the past five years, she praises Jansen for volunteering a whopping 35 years. Darlynne Wood, who’s been a volunteer even longer, helps out on what she calls a “hit or miss” basis. Her volunteerism, in fact, goes back to the days when the museum was at the College of San Mateo. “We had a book sale at San Mateo’s Borel Bank one year,” she says. (The bookstore relocated to Redwood City in 1999.) Encore Books’ operation was also impacted by the pandemic and shut down for

Benefiting the Museum All the money raised by Encore Books is funneled upstairs to the history museum. “Before Covid, we took in about $20,000 a year,” Jansen says, “so our goal is to top that sometime soon.” Typically most paperbacks at Encore sell for $1, hardcover books for $2 to $4, and there’s specialized pricing for rare books and classics. On a recent Saturday, Laura Praszker of Redwood City picked out several books to buy including one for a friend. A self-described “voracious reader,” she says she probably reads 80 books a year and collects antique books like “The Moonstone.” After she finishes reading most of her book buys, she donates them to the library or to SAVERS (a Redwood City secondhand store). Three middle-school students from San Carlos’ Tierra Linda School also were at Encore looking around. One, IIris Yan, bought a $2 book called “The Master’s Violin.” “I love the classics because it’s like a window into people who lived long ago,” she explains. The library stores and Encore are accepting books that are in reasonably good condition—and they also need more volunteers. “If you’re willing to volunteer, we’ll always find a job for you to do,” says San Carlos’s Smith. For more information on these organizations, check out their websites at: friendsofrwclibrary.org, scfol.org and historysmc.org C

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SPOTLIGHT•

Cloudy Outlook For Rooftop Solar Proposed regulations soon may halt favorable deals for consumers

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SPOTLIGHT•

By Vlae Kershner

When the California Public Utilities Commission proposed a new economic framework for owners of solar roofs in December, the reaction was nearly as angry as if it had blotted out the sun. At least 145,000 people contacted the CPUC or governor and more than 3,000 participated in protest rallies in San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to the California Solar & Storage Association, which leads a coalition of over 600 organizations and officials that oppose the changes. The focus of the protest is a proposal called Net Energy Metering 3.0.

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SPOTLIGHT•

Net metering turns a home’s electric meter into a two-way system. Customers are credited for selling power generated by their solar roofs on sunny days, while paying for energy taken from the grid at times when solar doesn’t meet their demands. California began net metering in 1996 and revised the formula in 2016. The system is credited with fostering a boom that saw the state add 1.3 million solar roofs producing almost 12 gigawatts of rooftop solar in roughly 15 years, equivalent to six Diablo Canyon nuclear plants, according to the solar association. So much solar is produced that peak net load on the electric grid has moved from the afternoon to the early evening. Two Changes NEM 3.0 would make two giant changes in the formula. First, solar owners who have a utility such as PG&E as their energy provider would receive a lower credit for selling surplus generation during the daytime, when there is sometimes more solar available than the grid can use. Some estimates have put the reduction at as much as 80 percent. Second, they would have to pay a monthly fee for connecting to the grid of $8 per kilowatt. The average system in Northern California is around five kilowatts. The fee is intended to ensure solar roof owners pay their share of fixed costs of the electric grid such as transmission and delivery. Many customers pay a $15-a-month fixed charge already, “so the average rooftop solar customer would now be facing a $55-a-month fixed charge,” said Jeremy Waen, director of public policy for Peninsula Clean Energy, the community choice agency that provides power to most people in San Mateo County. Kathleen Goforth, a retired Environmental Protection Agency scientist who

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a month for delivery for her 1,500-squarefoot home, which has a 13-panel rooftop solar system. She believes that the proposal would increase delivery fees to $50 or more for many customers. “We just fully electrified our house and having solar reducing our electric bill helped make it possible for us to handle the cost of replacing gas appliances with more energy-efficient electric,” including heatpump heating and cooling, a heat pump water heater, and an induction cooktop. “We love it. As close as we can we zeroed out our greenhouse gas emissions and we no longer have a gas bill. So far, our total monthly energy bill has been lower than it was when we were using gas.” Kathleen Goforth

Goforth said PG&E charges electric delivery fees of $5 to $10 a month for delivery for her 1,500-square-foot home, which has a 13-panel rooftop solar system. She believes that the proposal would increase delivery fees to $50 or more for many customers. installed solar panels on her San Carlos home in 2015, is among those who made comments to the commission. “Increasing the grid maintenance fee and further diminishing the payment to homeowners for sending clean electricity to the grid will only increase the financial burden on those who already installed solar at significant personal expense and dissuade others from taking the same step,” she wrote. In an interview, Goforth said PG&E charges electric delivery fees of $5 to $10

Shifting Solar’s Cost On the other side is PG&E and the Affordable Clean Energy for All coalition of 114 senior, consumer, business and low-income groups, which argues that inflated subsidies “have put an unfair cost burden on renters, seniors, disadvantaged communities and other working Californians who don’t have the ability or means to install rooftop solar systems. “Currently, Californians who don’t have solar panels are paying about $245 more each year in electric bills to cover the costs for those who do have rooftop solar. If NEM isn’t fixed, that $245-per-year cost shift will grow to $555 per year by 2030.” The Wall Street Journal editorialized that the subsidies were “welfare for the wealthy.” Mohit Chhabra, senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, argued that homeowners are being paid far too much for daytime production. “If the same solar panel was placed on the grid side of the customer’s meter (not on the rooftop but a few steps away from the customer's property, for example) instead of behind the consumer’s meter, it would be paid at least five times less,” he blogged.

• Equity issues shouldn’t mean an end to incentives, countered Jan Pepper, chief executive officer of Peninsula Clean Energy. “Expanding programs to bring benefits of solar to more people makes more sense than penalizing people looking into solar now,” especially since California’s new building code requires solar roofs and the state’s goal is to be carbon-neutral in electricity by 2045. Low-Income Discounts She noted that an existing program allows people in disadvantaged communities to receive no-cost solar installations or, if they can’t install the roofs, receive a 20 percent discount based on locally sited solar projects. Pepper has had a solar roof on her Los Altos home since 2001. She estimated the proposal would add $307 to her annual power bill on top of the $760 she paid PG&E last year. “I think it makes people question whether to put solar in.” An analysis by natural resources consulting firm Wood McKenzie found that the proposal would cut California solar installations by 50 percent by 2024, with the payback period—the time it takes for lower bills to equal the cost of installation—rising from five or six years to 14 or 15 years. NEM 3.0 had been set for a commission vote on Jan. 27, but was delayed indefinitely after Governor Gavin Newsom said changes needed to be made and two new commissioners were appointed. Waen said the way the proposal was pulled suggests a “wholesale rewrite” is in the offing, but it’s anyone’s guess what changes will be made. “While PCE has formally remained silent, I do think that the $8 kilowatt charge is the most egregious part of that proposal. There is very little basis for why that is reasonable, why that charge is the right amount.”

SPOTLIGHT• “Solar remains a great investment. It is a better investment now than it will be if the proposed decision from CPUC goes through,” said Spencer Fields, manager of market strategy for the solar comparison website EnergySage.

Jan Pepper, CEO Peninsula Clean Energy

“Expanding programs to bring benefits of solar to more people makes more sense than penalizing people looking into solar now.” A Phased Approach Under the proposal, existing solar customers would be grandfathered into old rates for 15 years after their interconnections, so someone who bought a system five years ago would get the new rates after 10 years. For a 120-day period after passage, any new interconnections would still receive the old rate design. “A 120-day window is a tight window still,” given the time needed for system design and delays in the supply chain for solar panels, Waen said. “My general advice for anyone contemplating installing rooftop solar is not to hesitate, start now, even while we wait for a new decision.” The reduction in daytime generation credits would encourage customers to add solar batteries to store power and sell it to the grid at higher rates in the evening. Batteries also provide emergency power during utility outages, which can occur due to wildfire risk, storms, or heat waves. However, battery storage can cost nearly as much as installing the solar panels.

Checking the Numbers Free to consumers, EnergySage allows homeowners to comparison shop options side-by-side by getting custom quotes from pre-screened solar providers, based on the homeowners’ utility bills and satellite imagery. “You get enough options so you know you’re getting the right system at the right price,” Fields said. The quotes include financing options for the systems, which typically cost $15,000 and up but vary widely by location and type of equipment installed. An alternative with lower upfront costs is to enter into a power purchase agreement with a provider like Sunrun or SunPower, in which the company installs and owns the system and sells power to the homeowner. PPAs jump-started the industry in the early 2000s with a 60 percent market share, but make up less than 40 percent of the systems sold today due to the widespread availability of solar loans, Fields said. They can be good or bad deals. “The things to look for are the price of electricity today versus the PPA price and then crucially, what are the assumptions for rate increases, both for the utility rate and the PPA rate.” He noted that residential solar owners, but not PPA customers, receive the federal Investment Tax Credit of 26 percent. The rate drops to 22 percent in 2023 and then disappears unless extended. President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, stalled in Congress, would raise the credit to 30 percent. C

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Diver’s Pearl Harbor Journal Surfaces in Redwood City A vivid account of searching the wreckage of ships sunk during the Pearl Harbor attack is now part of the archives at the Redwood City library’s history room. A rare diary kept by a Navy “hard hat“ salvage diver details what he saw during a dangerous job that started just 10 days after the Japanese attack that launched America into World War II. Included are graphic descriptions of remains found aboard the USS Arizona, whose hull is now a national memorial. The six-page document, which ends on August 2, 1942, came into possession of the archives by sheer serendipity, according to Marian Wydo, president of the archives committee. It was discovered at the home of Mike and Julie Markwith, found “among their mother’s things after her passing,” said Wydo, who thanked the Markwith family for the donation. “If anyone would like to see the original manuscript, please feel free to come to the Local History Room and we will be happy to show it to you.” She added that the next edition of the Journal of Local History, which is published by the archives, will carry the entire diary. “It is a bit of history that needs to be preserved,” Mike Markwith said about the papers found at the home of his mother, Marilyn, who passed away last April. He said the family didn’t know what to do with the diary until his wife, Julie, suggested it be in the archives. No one knows the name of the sailor who wrote the diary, which is in longhand. Time has erased much of the name at the top of the first page. It appears to be “A.J. Katz something,” followed by what seems to be his rating, an electrician’s mate.

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say pushed it aside as any attempt to bring it up would have been foolish as it would have broken apart.” The unidentified diver recovered the commission pennant “that flew on the Arizona, the one she carried on the day she was sunk – Dec. 7, 1941.” The diver’s diary is in rare company. When the book “Descent into Darkness” was published in 1996, it was billed as the only first-hand account of the salvage work at Pearl Harbor. The book by Navy Commander Edward Rayner, who passed away in 1997, tells how divers operated in waters so dark they couldn’t see much beyond the front of their helmets.

Rare Find “These types of accounts are particularly rare, as keeping a diary was forbidden due to security concerns during the war,” Scott Pawlowski, curator at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial, told Climate. “That sounds like an amazing diary.” Indeed it is, especially the author’s reporting of his dive to the Arizona, which remains a cemetery for hundreds of men killed in the attack. Of the 2,335 military fatalities in the attack 1,177 were aboard the Arizona. “The sight is terrible,” the diver wrote. “To be quite frank, there are thousands of bones broken into bits, lying all over the deck. There also are shoes in various spots that the foot still remains.” The battleship was “the most sickening sight,” he continued. He also inspected the remains of the battleship West Virginia where “we ran into a body lying across the hatch which we had to open. We left it or rather I should

Hazardous Salvage Work There was always the fear of unexploded ammunition going off. According to the book, the divers memorized the blueprints of each ship and then guided themselves by feeling their way through the wreckage. Eight battleships were damaged, with four sunk. All but the Arizona were salvaged. Will the identity of the author of the diary ever surface? David Conlin, head of the National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center, has sought the aid of historians and others in the quest to find out. Conlin said, however, that there is a good chance “your question cannot be known.” Markwith has a theory. He said his father was a sailor who was sent to Pearl Harbor after the bombing. “I do recall his talking about some of his buddies who were divers. Maybe this was written by one of them. As for how he took possession of this diary, we will never know.” C

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