The Davis Enterprise Sunday, January 29, 2023

Keeping vigil

Candlelight gathering honors victims of gun violence

By Monica Stark Enterprise staff writer

On Thursday night, about 75 Davisites gathered in Central Park for a candlelight vigil in response to the recent gun violence in Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay and Oakland.

The recent tragedies hit close to home to the event’s lead organizer, Roan Thibault, a freshman at UC Davis who helped start the UC Davis chapter of Students Demand Action this quarter.

“With so much carnage across a state that I love — and as a Los Angeles native, it adds a disturbing element to these tragedies for me to be able to visualize familiar communities like Monterey Park in so much pain,” he told the Enterprise.

Thibault said in a college town, “Davisites can process the violence across our state and channel it into action.”

“We cannot keep living like this and allowing our communities to die like this. And I hope we’ll spotlight the devastating toll that gun violence has had on the AAPI community, from these tragedies to the daily gun violence that doesn’t make the headlines,” Thibault said.

Thibault had the idea to hold the vigil, which began with a simple email to Davis City Council Member Gloria Partida, who he knew had been an active organizer around gun

safety and high-impact events like these. Partida emceed the vigil.

Students and community members gathered on the lawn near the carousel that the solemn and chilly evening listening to elected officials, faith leaders, and the host organizations, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and Students Demand Action, who demand action and justice from the gun violence that has plagued the country.

As candlelight illuminated the tears of some, the

Housing plan heads back to

victims were honored; their stories told if they were known.

Alex Lee-Jobe, a founding member of the Davis Phoenix Coalition and retired Davis teacher, began by stating the victims’ names. “Say their names,” she called out. Valentino Marcos Alvero, 68; Hongying Jian, 62; Yu Lun Kao, 72; Lilian Li, 63; My Nhan, 65; Ming Wei Ma, 72; Diana Man Ling Tom, 70; Muoi Dai Ung, 67; See VIGIL, Back page

Vitalant sounds alarm on blood shortage

By Aaron Geerts Enterprise staff writer

The country finds itself in the thralls of an emergency blood shortage, and the nonprofit, Vitalant is doing everything in its power to reverse this devastating trend. While the situation remains dire, hope still exists and pumps through the veins of everyday people — like the ones reading (and writing) this article.

In a recent press release from Vitalant, the blood supply for about 900 hospitals nationwide has recently dipped to its lowest level in a year. Due much in part to the fallout effects of the pandemic, changes in the way people

work and live have contributed to this drop in blood supply. For example, working from home has dropped business-hosted blood drives by 50% in 2022 from 2019 — a decline in 90,000 donations. As the number of Vitalant donors overall has dropped 20% in the last three years, the need for all blood types — especially type O — remains paramount.

“The reason we’ve had so many blood shortages is not only because fewer people are donating, but right now we have more blood being used by patients than what’s being collected. And blood is perishable,” said Vitalant communications manager

Vickie Wolfe. “Blood that’s donated today is likely going to be used by patients right away. O-negative is universal, so if there’s a terrible car accident and they’re giving blood to people before their type is verified, they’re going to be giving O-negative. Every two seconds in the United States someone needs blood and one out of every seven patients who are hospitalized has a blood transfusion. It’s one of the most common medical procedures that takes place in hospitals and people aren’t aware of that.”

Wolfe went on to emphasize how the perishability of See BLOOD, Page A4

City Council Commissioners call on UC Davis to densify

By Anne Ternus-Bellamy Enterprise staff writer

Nearly a year-and-ahalf after the Davis City Council adopted its plan for accommodating more than 2,000 new housing units — and nearly a year after the state rejected the plan for lack of compliance with state law — the City Council will be asked to adopt a revised version of the 2021-2029 Housing Element.

The Davis Planning Commission earlier this month voted unanimously to recommend council approval and the council will consider the new version on Tuesday.

Under state law, local jurisdictions must provide a certain amount of housing serving all segments of their populations and the Housing Element lays out the plan for doing so.

The city of Davis, which is required to provide 2,075 additional dwelling units through 2029 under the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, must demonstrate to the state via the Housing Element that sufficient land is zoned to provide that housing and, where there is not enough land, to identify an inventory of

potential sites suitable and available for re-zoning.

Of the 2,075 units the city must provide, 580 must be very-low-income units; 350 low-income units; 340 moderateincome units; and 805 above-moderate income units.

“We did adopt a version of the Housing Element in 2021 and submitted that to (the state Department of Housing and Community Development,” Sherri Metzker, the city’s community development director, told planning commissioners at their Jan. 11 meeting.

But the state declined to certify the plan and provided the city with a letter outlining the changes needed.

City staff and consultants then spent “the better part of 2022” working with state officials, Metzker said, and returned to the Planning Commission with Version 2. Should the council approve the revised Housing Element, it will then be sent back to state housing officials for certification.

A number of housing developments already approved by the city or in the planning process are expected to provide many of the required housing units, however, those

Tiki bar sailing into downtown

This summer, the owners of University of Beer plan to open a tiki bar in part of the former Woodstock’s Pizza space.

Nate and Melissa Yungvanitsait of Davis, the husband-andwife founders of U of B, plan to call their new venture Shipwrecked Tiki Bar. The bar, which will not serve food, will specialize in premium rum drinks. It will fill the former bar side of Woodstock’s, at 217 G St., which is approximately 2,350 square feet.

Nate Yungvanitsait said Shipwrecked Tiki Bar patrons will be welcome to bring outside food, just as they can at University of Beer. And though the City Council just paved plans to permanently exclude cars from that section of G

Street, he said he’s not planning outdoor seating. It wouldn’t fit with the nautical/pirate theme.

He went to his native Thailand to order custom decorations for the new bar. The theme revolves around the story of Captain “Bad Luck” Bob, a shipwrecked pirate who is missing an arm and an eye. The décor tells the story of the shipwreck that caused his injuries. As patrons enter, there will be a beach room, an octopus tentacle room and then a jail room.

“All of them will relate

See COMINGS, Page A3

Monica Stark/EntErpriSE photo

About 75 people gather in Central Park on Thursday night for a candlelight vigil in response to the recent gun violence in Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay and Oakland.

We’re at a cultural tipping point ...

According to an interesting story from the Associated Press, some folks in this country are getting tired of being “required” to provide a tip for services rendered every time they spend a dime.

I suppose we've all known from a young age that people are expected to leave tips at restaurants, but I didn't realize until much later that you were also supposed to tip the barber, even if he gave you a truly terrible haircut.

But if the barber, why not the dentist? Or the doctor?

I know after my last colonoscopy, I thought everyone involved should be tipping me.

Of course, tipping a firefighter who saved your life or the cop who recovered your stolen car is strictly forbidden.

According to the AP story, “Across the country there's a silent frustration brewing about an age-old practice that many say is getting out of hand: tipping.”

Fair enough, but last time I checked, tipping is still voluntary.

I do recall a time when a fairly standard tip for good service in a sit-down restaurant was 15 percent. That figure has now shifted sharply upward to 20 percent, with “inflation” being the excuse.

Which is silly. If my restaurant

Enterprise staff

As some readers may have noticed, the Sunday edition of The Davis Enterprise may be arriving a day early to certain parts of the city. This reflects consolidated production schedules and diversifying delivery options.

In addition, the financial uncertainty created by 2019’s AB5 legislation, which reclassifies certain classes of independent contractors as employees, looms over the entire industry. Implementation of AB5 for the newspaper publishing sector was put on hold by the Legislature through Jan. 1, 2025.

“We now offer mail

bill used to be $50, the tip would be $7.50 at the 15-percent rate. So if inflation now takes that same bill to $60, a 15 percent tip would increase to $9.00, which covers the inflation. Going from 15 to 20, by the way, is a 33.3 percent increase.

The other part that doesn't make sense is that the tip is based on the size of the bill, not the difficulty of serving the food.

Is it harder for a server to deliver filet mignon and a baked potato (say $50) than a bacon cheeseburger and fries (say $20)? Then why should the tip on the former be $10 and the latter just $4?

Why should the tip on a $60 bottle of wine for two people at one table be twice that of six $5 bottles of beer to six people sitting at the next table? Sounds like the latter is considerably more difficult than the former.

Why do you tip at Denny's but not McDonald's? Have you ever

delivery,” Enterprise circulation manager Bob Franks explained, “and in order to facilitate that, we are printing earlier and the Sunday paper is available to deliver on Saturday as we expand delivery options. Some carriers are delivering on Saturday and some are doing it on Sunday.”

The Sunday paper is also available on Saturday in news racks across the city.

The Enterprise will continue to post breaking news and sports coverage online at www.davisenterprise.com throughout the weekend and in the “Morning Edition” newsletter, which goes out by email every morning.

looked over the counter at a McDonald's or Raising Cane's and seen how very hard those people are working?

Added the AP, “Some fed-up consumers are posting rants on social media complaining about tip requests at drive-thrus, while others say they're tired of being asked to leave a gratuity for a muffin or a simple cup of coffee at their neighborhood bakery.”

Full disclosure — two of our kids have part-time jobs as baristas as they work around their studies, and the tips they receive are helpful to their bottom line, even though their hourly wages are more than fair.

But again, tipping is optional. And a cup of coffee no longer costs a quarter.

“As more businesses adopt digital payment methods, customers are automatically being prompted to leave a gratuity - many times as high as 30 percent — at places they normally wouldn't.”

There's no doubt if you're paying with a credit or debit card rather than cold, hard cash, you're likely to leave a larger tip. It doesn't matter if your restaurant bill is $10 or $100, you're paying for either with the same piece of plastic. But if you're paying with cash, there's a big visual and emotional difference when you count

out all those 20-dollar bills.

“Academics who study the topic say many consumers are now feeling irritated by automatic tip requests at coffee shops and other counter service eateries where tipping has not typically been expected and service is usually limited.”

Given the wide variety of beverages available at “coffee shops” these days, many of which require significant preparation, I disagree that service is “limited.” The workers are not just pouring alreadymade hot coffee into an empty cup. Nowadays what they're making more likely resembles a milkshake than a straight cup of coffee.

The AP even quotes an expert from Murray State University who studies tipping. Makes me wonder if he gets tipped for studying tipping.

“Unlike tip jars that shoppers can easily ignore if they don't have spare change, experts say the digital requests can produce social pressure and are more difficult to bypass. And your generosity, or lack thereof, can be laid bare for anyone close enough to glance at the screen, including the workers themselves.”

Indeed, stiffing the help is not for wimps.

— Reach Bob Dunning at bdunnng@davisenterprise.net.

Thursday Live! welcomes alt-country star

Special to The Enterprise

The Davis Odd Fellows’ Thursday Live! music series returns Feb. 2 with San Francisco musician Maurice Tani.

Doors open at 7 p.m. at the Odd Fellows Hall, 415 Second St., with music starting at 7:30 p.m. All ages welcome. Thursday Live! shows are free, but donations are encouraged to support the musicians.

Tani has been a fixture on the local altcountry scene for more than a decade with his band 77 El Deora. He previously sang and played guitar for the seminal Motownstyle party bands Zasu Pitts Memorial Orchestra and Big Bang Beat.

Known for his agile guitar style and expressive singing, Tani's particular flavor of Americana is a broad-spectrum tincture

of influences to cure the wide range of ills his fertile imagination conjures. While rooted (at times distantly) in country music, his writing is centered on an urbanwestern perspective — short musical narratives of life on the left coast, a sort of cinema for the blind.

Thursday Live! is sponsored by the Davis Odd Fellows Music Committee with support from KDRT radio. It’s a continuous music series that happens the first Thursday of most months.

“We are so proud and thankful for music lovers in our community who continue to keep live music with local musicians alive and thriving,” committee member Juelie Roggli said.

To be added to the email list, contact Roggli at juelrog@gmail.com.

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to the story of Captain Bob on his journey,” he said.

“It’s gonna be a very great addition to Davis, and it will be a landmark bar in the whole Sacramento region,” he said.

“The decoration — I’m going all out. It’s going to be a Disneyland when they walk in. It’s a great wow factor.”

Davis has another tikithemed bar — Wiki Bar — at 234 D St., on the Best Western Plus Palm Court property.

For its former space, Woodstock’s was paying rent to two landlords. The pass-through connecting 217 G St. and the larger 219 G has since been filled in to accommodate separate tenants. After a midDecember closure during the transition, Woodstock’s reopened Dec. 22 at 238 G St., a spot last occupied by KetMoRee

University of Beer, which started in Davis in 2012, has locations in Vacaville, Sacramento, Folsom, Roseville and Rocklin. All but the Davis location, at 615 Third St., include restaurants. The company plans to open a seventh location in East Sacramento in March.

After that, Yungvanitsait said he will focus on opening Shipwrecked.

Davis Cards and Games closed its virtual reality escape room early this month. When the game store moved to 1790 E. Eighth St., it kept its original space at 654 G St. for the new concept, The Davis Cards & Games VR

Wendy Weitzel/Courtesy photo Shipwrecked Tiki Bar will fill part of the former Woodstock’s Pizza space downtown.

Escape Room and Mystery Games Retail Annex which opened in April. Patrons used virtual reality headgear, working with others to answer clues and maneuver their way through 3D simulated settings.

Melissa Showalter, who owns the businesses with her daughter Gretchen, said in an email, “It was not bringing in enough bookings to keep the doors open at the G Street location. We are going to offer it as a pop-up event monthly (or more often if the demand is there) at our main store.”

Meanwhile, another company is giving a more traditional escape room concept a try. EscapeDavis opened in December at 140 B St., Suite 6B, owner Alex Recalde said.

In this escape room, participants work together in a real room to investigate

and solve the puzzles to escape before their 60 minutes runs out. The suggested age is 12 and up. Minors need the consent of a parent or guardian.

The latest theme is “Gunrock’s Den,” where participants investigate a mysterious speakeasy involved in an illegal alcohol trade. Learn more at https://escapedavis.com/ Davis previously had another escape room, Escape Key Davis, which opened in 2017 and appears to have closed the following year.

I have an update on Mamma, the Italian food restaurant and deli filling the former Bistro 33 and City Hall Tavern sites at 226 F St. The owners hope to have it open sometime in March.

“Things are moving along nicely but there are a couple ‘old building’ things that needed addressing,”

co-owner and Davis native Michael Galyen said.

The owners also have a barbecue restaurant in the works called Craft, filling the former Uncle Vito’s Slice of N.Y. spot at 524 Second St.

Pho Tasty, the Vietnamese restaurant at 301 G St., is expanding its hours. My assumption is that it’s to take advantage of the G Street evening party scene. It’s open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays but is now staying open until 2 a.m. on the other two eves.

Yolo County Environmental Health forced the temporary closure of MT BBQ House on Jan. 20. The restaurant at 229 G St. was still closed as of late Thursday. The reason cited for closure was insect/rodent infestation.

I was a little worried when I got a sneak peek at a legal notice (notice to creditors) running in The Enterprise’s classifieds section about a bulk sale of the Baskin Robbins store in Davis. But manager Lydia Chale said the store is just changing owners.

“Everything is going to stay the same,” she said, confirming that hours will likely remain 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, and 11 to 11 on Fridays and Saturdays. She didn’t anticipate any closure during the transition. Chale said the new owner takes over on Tuesday. I left a message to learn more but did not hear back before my

First Northern acquires 3 Columbia Bank branches

Special to The Enterprise

DIXON — First Northern Community Bancorp, holding company for First Northern Bank, announced that its acquisition of three Columbia State Bank branches in Orland, Willows and Colusa has

Hirsch to report on campaign donations

Special to The Enterprise

The Davis Progressive Business Exchange will meet from noon to 1 p.m.

Wednesday, Feb. 1, at Lamppost Pizza, 1260 Lake Blvd. in West Davis.

The speaker will be Alan Hirsch, who is a frequent political activist with a table at the Davis Farmers Market. He will talk about political donations in Yolo county and how Davis dominates the county in the number of political donors and amounts of money. He will be using data and figures for the November 2022 election.

Contact Bob Bockwinkel at 530-219-1896 or email

G. Richard Yamagata at yamagata@dcn.org for information.

been completed.

The acquired branches were divested by Columbia Bank in connection with the pending merger of Columbia Banking System Inc., the parent company of Columbia Bank, and Umpqua Holdings Corporation. Fol-

lowing the acquisition, all employees of these branches were retained by First Northern Bank and the branches will remain in operation as branches of First Northern Bank.

1910, now operates 14 fullservice branches serving Solano, Yolo, Sacramento, Placer, Contra Costa, Glenn, Colusa and the west slope of El Dorado County.

deadline. The legal notice listed LDCO LLC of Sacramento as the buyer, and said the anticipated sale date was Feb. 14.

The outgoing owner is Charles R. Mitchell, whose office address is in Folsom.

Coincidentally, in the space that was once occupied by a second Baskin Robbins, Casablanca Restaurant is also changing hands. Ibrahim Zabad, who opened the restaurant in March 2021 in Anderson Plaza, is leaving the business to his brother-inlaw, who previously managed it.

The Mediterranean and Moroccan restaurant is at 640 W. Covell Blvd. It was closed temporarily during the transition. It reopened Jan. 19. Zabad, a political science professor at St. Bonaventure University in New York who splits his time in Davis, said running a restaurant proved to be too much of a burden on his academic career.

Dogtopia, the doggie day care coming to the El Macero Shopping Center, is still working through the permitting process with the city.

Cindy Hespe, who owns Dogtopia with her husband, Wayne Wiebe, said they hope to have a building permit soon. “I am hoping to start the buildout within a month,” she said. If all goes well, it could open this summer. It fills the former Tuesday Morning space at 417 Mace Blvd. Dogtopia is a

franchised business that provides dog day care, boarding and “spa” treatments for canines.

Shu Shu’s Clothing & Accessories closed its store on Jan. 21. The high-end women’s boutique was at 227 E St., Suite 3, in the alley between Chipotle and Peet’s Owner Shokoufeh “Shu Shu” Hanjani, who opened the store in 2014, said she plans to do quarterly popups in and around Davis.

I reached out for info on Estelle Bakery & Pâtisserie (filling Konditorei location), Bull ’N Mouth (filling De Vere’s spot), Sit Lo Saigon (filling Thai Nakorn space) and Orangetheory Fitness (filling former Round Table location in South Davis) but did not hear back.

Missed a column? Wondering when a new Davis business is opening? Check my paywall-free Google spreadsheet, which includes more than 325 Davis businesses coming or going. It’s at https://bit. ly/DavisBusinesses. Look for the tabs for Restaurants Open, Restaurants Closed, Coming Soon and more.

— Wendy Weitzel is a Davis writer and editor. Her column runs on Sundays. Check for frequent updates on her Comings & Goings Facebook and Instagram pages. If you know of a business coming or going in the area, email her at wendyedit@gmail. com

Obituary

Marjorie Caroline Turner Collins

Marjorie passed away peacefully with her family by her side at her home at the University Retirement Community on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023.

Marjorie was born in Riverside, raised on the family ranch by her parents Edna McMillan and T.J. Jackson, surrounded by extended family. Marjorie’s early accomplishments included 4-H activities in cooking, sewing and sheep raising. She earned her county’s Top All Star Honors.

She graduated from Polytechnic High School in 1942 and went on to UC Santa Barbara to become a school teacher. She particularly enjoyed teaching history, culture and art. She began her teaching in Inglewood and restarted her career at North Davis Elementary after moving in 1964. She taught fourth and sixth grade until her retirement in 1985.

She was an active member of the PEO Sisterhood. She is fondly remembered by her students and co-workers to this day, and inspired three of her granddaughters to become teachers themselves.

At the end of World War II, Marjorie was invited on a blind date by a mutual friend where she met her future husband George O. Turner.

They married in 1949 and honeymooned at the historic Mission Inn in Riverside.

They started their family of four sons in Long Beach until George was transferred to Davis. They built their family home in El Macero where Marj was a gracious hostess to many and shared her talented culinary skills.

As a family, they enjoyed many outdoor activities including backpacking and camping in the Sierra Nevada. There was also frequent cross-country road adventures. They loved spending time at their cabin

“Idyll Ours” at Donner Lake. Marj had numerous passions and hobbies. She was a world traveler, always wanting to learn and explore the local culture around the globe. Her travel companions included husbands, beloved sister Pepper, daughter-in-law Diane, grandchildren and lifelong friends. Later in life she facilitated numerous family reunions all over the country.

She excelled in multiple forms of arts and crafts. Sewing, needlework and painting were just a few of her many talents. When it came to gardening, Marj had a green thumb. She grew a variety of beautiful flowers and was especially proud of her and George’s awardwinning camellias.

In 1996, George passed away. In 2000, she moved to University Retirement Community where she was an active member, participating in many social activities and committees. Art shows and bridge were among her favorites. She loved meeting and making new friends.

This led to meeting her second husband, Hal Collins. They were married in 2003. Marj and Hal enjoyed life at URC as well as attending regional cultural events and travel. Marj expressed her gratefulness that she had two wonderful marriages and embraced her blended family.

Marjorie was active in the Davis Community Church from 1964 until her passing. She served as an elder, a youth leader and as a longtime participant in the Bell Choir. She was also an active member of Friendship Mariners and Presbyterian Women.

Marjorie was predeceased by husbands George Turner and Hal Collins, son Mike Turner, sister Pepper Patterson, and brother Don Jackson. She is survived by sons

BLOOD: Great need during crisis

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COLLINS

Don, Dave and Jim; their spouses Judy, Joanie and Paul; daughterin-law Diane; and brother-in-law Joe Patterson. She was cherished by her grandchildren Jill, Ben, Katie, Jorie and Natalie. She was blessed with greatgrandchildren Anna, Paige, Liam, Macie, Sylvie, Jude, June, Callum and Griff. Her spirit and passion for art and life was an inspiration to all who had the pleasure and honor of knowing her. A loving mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She will be greatly missed by all.

There will be a Celebration of Life to remember and honor her at 2 p.m. Saturday, March 11, at Davis Community Church.

The family is grateful to Yolo Hospice for their compassion and service. Memorial donations can be made to Truckee Donner Land Trust Conservancy at truckeedonnerlandtrust.org or Davis Arts Center at davisartcenter.org.

blood surprises people. Blood platelets — for example — are dedicated primarily to cancer patients to replenish cells affected by chemotherapy and must be used within a week of being donated. Meanwhile, red blood cells donated have a shelf life of only 42 days and plasma can be frozen for up to a year and used in a variety of different ways.

While Wolfe doesn’t want scare tactics to be the driving force behind people donating, the blood shortage yields the frightening potential of doctors being faced with impossible decisions to be made if there’s not enough blood to save lives.

“There is a need for younger, more diverse donors. We need to expand our donor population which has been falling steadily. Even before the pandemic that was happening, but especially since the pandemic we’ve just had so many people who used to donate aren’t donating anymore. That can be for a variety of

reasons,” said Wolfe. “We also need people to donate regularly. I run into so people who say, ‘Yea, I donate about once a year.’ And I’m just asking them if they can donate a little more. About two or three times a year. If you’re a whole blood donor, you can donate six times a year, and a platelet donor can donate 24 times a year. Overall, we’re looking for a reset here in 2023. We know a lot of things have changed since the pandemic, but some things have not changed.”

Even with the blood shortage crisis, people still lean on excuses not to donate. Whether it’s fear of needles or apathy, excuses only bolster the growing need for blood.

However, twisting arms isn’t Vitalant’s way of getting arms prepped to donate. Rather, empathy is encouraged.

One need only imagine how they would feel if a friend or loved one desperately needed blood. Wolfe, herself, never thought she would be one to need blood, and is a

living, breathing example of a life saved by the heroes referred to as blood donors.

“I had an extraordinary need for blood — 37 gallons — due to leukemia and a bone marrow transplant,” Wolfe said.

“I can never thank blood donors enough for giving me the gift of life. I encourage all who can to donate blood knowing what a positive, lifechanging difference it can make. Within each person lives a powerful, lifesaving element — blood — that can help futures unfold for those who never expected to have a need for blood.”

To help undo the blood shortage, there’s upcoming blood drives at the UC Davis West Quad on Feb. 1 to 3 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and at the Woodland Police Department on Feb. 9 from 2 to 6 p.m. To learn more about the organization or schedule a blood donation near them, visit vitalant.org. Davis’ local Vitalant facility is at 1801 Hanover Drive, Suite A, or 530-756-5976.

NOTICE INVITING BIDS City Hall Emergency Generator Project CIP

transportation, permits utilities and all other items necessary for the City H a l l E m e r g e n c y G e n e r a t o r P r o j e c t , C I P N o 8 2 7 7 ( t h e Project ) At said time Bids will be publicly opened and read aloud at the City Office Bids received after said time shall be returned unopened Bids shall be valid for a period of 90 calendar days after the Bid opening date

BID OPENING PROCEDURE

The bids shall be opened in 1 C o u n c i l C h a m b e r s a t 2 3 R u s s e l l B o u l e v a r d D a v i s C A 95616 Bidders will the any currently active health orders from Yolo County

2 Requesting Contract Book:

The Contract Book (including all plans and specifications) is required to be purchased for $130 per set from BPXpress Reprographics www blueprintexpress com/davis or by calling at ( 9 1 6 ) 7 6 0 - 7 2 8 1 B i d d e r m u s t p u r c h a s e t h e C o n t r a c t B o o k from BPXpress Reprographics AND be on the BPXpress plan holder list to be deemed responsive Only bidders on the plan holders list shall receive addenda notifications Please see further detail on bidding requirements by going to https://cityofdavis org/city-hall/public-works/managementa d m i n i s t r a t i o n / r f p s a n d s e l e c t i n g t h e r e s p e c t i v e l i n k t o t h i s P r o j e c t

m e n t A g r e e m e n t f o r t h e E P a r k e r r e s i d e n t i a l s u b d i v i s i o n project in Esparto and determine the project is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) based on the ‘common sense exemption under CEQA Guidelines Section 15061(b)(3) The E Parker project is located within the unincorporated community of Esparto north of the intersection of State Route 16 and County Road 86A (APN: 049-160-021 62 units approved on 17 acres) This would be the third extension for the project which was approved in 2007 and received extensions in 2017 and 2019 (Applicant/Owner: Yocha Dehe Wintun Nations) (Planner: JD Trebec)

NR #2023-01: Public hearing to approve amendments to the Gra ni te Ca p ay M i ni ng a nd Re c la ma tion Pe r mit ( ZF #20 0 1096) and the Granite Esparto Mining and Reclamation Permit (ZF #2007-071) as a part of the Second Cache Creek Area P l a n ( C

)

0

a r

e r m i t R e v i e w p r o c e s s T h e r e f e renced permits which have been previously approved by the County, authorize mining and reclamation activities on the following APNs:

3 Description Of The Work City Hall Emergency Generator Project, CIP No 8277: The work shall include removal and replacement of existing transfer switches switchgear transformers conduit wiring procurement and installation of a stationary generator in accordance with the intent of the Project Plans and Specifications All work shall be performed in accordance with the City of Davis S t a n d a r d S p e c i f i c a t i o n s J a n u a r y 1 9 9 6 E d i t i o n , A d d e n d a through July 2017 General Prevailing Wage Rate Labor Surcharge and Equipment Rental Rates and the Contact Documents All work shall be performed in accordance with the Contract Documents and all applicable federal and state laws and regulations

4 Engineer s Estimate: $550 000 Project Engineer: Kevin Fong P E

5 Contractor s License Classification and Subcontractors: Unless otherwise noted in the bid documents each Bidder shall be a licensed contractor: Class [A] General Contractor s License

6 Bid Bond performance bond and material bond: Please see

G r a n i t e E s p a r t o M i n i n g a n d R e c l a m a t i o n P e r m i t ( Z F #2007-071) Condition of Approval No 24 to remove the deadline for completion of proposed bank modifications and (ii) an amendment to Development Agreement No 11-165 regarding the Granite Esparto Long-Term Off-Channel Mining Permit to delete Section 4 2 3 of the agreement to conform to other operators agreements of the Mining Program Mining for the Granite Esparto project has not yet commenced An Environmental Impact Report (SCH #2009022033) was certified for the project on November 8, 2011, and no further environmental impact analysis is requir ed (Owner: Granite Construction Company; Planner: Elisa Sabatini Manager of Natural Re-

State water deliveries to surge — highest in six years

By Alastair Bland CalMatters

State officials announced today that water deliveries from the state’s aqueduct will be increased to 30%, the highest amount for January that growers and Southern California cities have received in six years.

Less than two months ago, amid forecasts of a third consecutive drought year, the California Department of Water Resources announced an initial allocation of just 5% of the supplies requested from its State Water Project, which transports Northern California water south.

But recent storms have boosted the reservoirs, snowpack and river flows that feed the state aqueduct. Never in the 27 years of records has such a poor initial estimate been followed by such a rapid, dramatic jump.

About 27 million people, mostly in Southern California, and 750,000 acres of farmland depend on water provided by the State Water Project.

“Thanks to the water captured and stored from recent storms, the state is increasing deliveries to local agencies that support two-thirds of Californians — good news for communities and farms in the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “We’ll keep pushing to modernize our water infrastructure to take advantage of these winter storms and prepare communities for the climatedriven extremes of wet and dry ahead.”

The first projection for 2023 water deliveries came on Dec. 1, when things looked very different in the dynamic interplay between California drought, water supplies and weather forecasting. At the time, Lake

is

Oroville — the project’s largest reservoir — was 27% full, containing less than a million acre-feet of water. Weather experts were meanwhile predicting

another winter of predominantly blue skies and light precipitation.

Things quickly changed when a series of powerful storms soaked the state for

weeks early this year. The wet weather has boosted Oroville to 63% of its total capacity and 110% of its historical average for this date. The reservoir

contained 2.19 million acre-feet of water as of Jan. 26, and, like others throughout the state, it continues to rise.

Department of Water

Resources Director Karla Nemeth said the increased deliveries don’t mean the state will see a wet year.

“We are still early in the season,” she said, adding that “things have turned dry again.” She also said the increased deliveries are a result of more reservoir storage and doesn’t fully take into account increases in Sierra Nevada snowpack, which is now more than double its historic average for January.

Allocations for January

often are revised up or down later in the year, after spring runoff is measured. Usually, the final allocation increases. For instance, in June 2019, water deliveries reached 75% after starting the year at 15%.

The last time that water deliveries so early in the year exceeded the 30% was before the current drought, back in 2017 — when a record-breaking, five-year drought ended, rainfall almost broke state records, and deliveries reached 60%. The last three years were dismal, with allocations between 5 and 20%. The last time the local agencies got 100% was in 2006.

Fred Greaves/CaliFornia department oF Water resourCes photo via Calmatters State engineers measured the snowpack at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada on Jan. 3. The snowpack

more than twice the historic average for January.

VIGIL: Mourners decry pervasiveness of firearms, discrimination

Chia Ling Yau, 76; Wen Tau Yu, 64; Xiujuan Yu, 57; Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50; Jose Romero Perez; Aixiang Zhang, 74; Zhishen Liu, 73; Qizhong Cheng, 66; Jingzhi Lu, 64 Yetao Bing, 43; Mario Navarro.

Later on in the evening, UC Davis student Emma Tolliver shared the names and their stories as Kayla Garcia Pebdani lit a candle for each victim.

“My heart is broken tonight. I’m grieving for these folks from the Asian American Pacific Islander community, my community. Another mass shooting, and at this time, my kinfolk. The most recent victims could have easily been my sister, brother, uncle, auntie,” Lee-Jobe said.

The issues are twofold, LeeJobe said.

First, the stigma against receiving mental health support in the AAPI community. “There is a gentle side to the model minority myth that says as we age, we have a perfect loving family, high achieving children and beautiful

home. Well, what if we don’t have those perfect lives? What if we’re feeling weak and enraged? Anxious? Marginalize? Disrespected? Who do we turn to that speaks Chinese, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, or Hindi and is culturally competent? There needs to be more mental health workers with these qualifications.”

Second: gun control. “Neither of these angry men should have had guns,” Lee-Jobe said. “Where were the red flags? They both had wives and coworkers that knew of their anger.”

The accessibility of guns coupled with exacerbating conditions, like the substandard farmworker housing the shooter in Half Moon Bay lived in, or the squalid trailer park where the Monterey Park shooter lived, are not excuses, argued Anoosh Jorjorian, the director of Yolo Rainbow Families, a social and advocacy group for families with LGBTQIA members. But, she continued, “They are exacerbating conditions. And then, when guns are easily available, it just is too easy. It’s just too simple to

take people’s lives.”

Eunbee Ham, associate pastor of Davis Community Church prayed that courage would carry the community through any fears, and when the time comes, “we jump into action.”

“Let us also resist this violence, grief, and hatred by mirroring the joy and life they had while dancing and celebrating,” she said.

Ham expressed that people in the AAPI community have persevered through incredible violence war, exclusion and generational trauma. “We are a resilient community, and our resilience has limitations. I grieve the 18 people

HOUSING: ‘Other UCs are doing this’

projects do not provide enough low-income units to satisfy the city’s required allocation.

How and where to meet that shortfall is a key component of the Housing Element, which laid out sites in the city that could be rezoned to meet the requirement.

Among the issues raised by HCD in declining to certify the original Housing Element was the need for more detail on the suitability and viability of those sites for redevelopment. HCD also wanted more evidence that identified locations could accommodate the need for lowincome housing and information on how Measure J/R/D might impose constraints on future housing developments, among

other things.

The city of Davis was not the only jurisdiction in California that learned its Housing Element had not been certified by the state, and city officials last year expressed confidence that the months of work between city staff and consultants and HCD would resolve outstanding issues and lead to certification.

During their public hearing earlier this month, planning commissioners had the opportunity to recommend changes to the new version and voted unanimously to add language encouraging UC Davis to build higher density student housing on campus, specifically, buildings greater than five stories high.

Samitz, who said, “it’s so important to encourage UC Davis to build much higher density housing because other UC’s are doing this … UC Davis does not seem to be able to get past four stories and the occasional fivestory situation even though they have all this land.”

She noted that a private developer recently built a seven-story project across Russell Boulevard from campus and other UC campuses are building much higher student housing complexes.

whose lives are snuffed out too soon. And I think about the empty seats in the tables at home where these aunties and uncles were someone’s mother or father, grandparents or siblings are no longer able to laugh and enjoy the festivities of the Lunar New Year. While they are no longer with us, I do want to pray with our bodies, our hearts, our bells, our words, our actions and these candles.”

Steven Fujimoto, an ASUCD Senator, spoke primarily as a Japanese American student. He said growing up in a Japanese household, he was often told a phrase which roughly translates to “nothing can be done about it” whenever he complained or whenever someone said something mean, whether at school or anti-Asian sentiments in the news.

“I’m afraid that as a community, we don’t really have the tools to verbalize and recognize our grief. But tonight, to my fellow Asian American community members, the emotions we feel from these tragedies or any violence against our community isn’t

something we say (nothing can be done about it). I don’t want this night to go by without acknowledging the pain that the events of this past weekend have caused us.”

Fujimoto said the Asian community needs to look out for one another because at the end of the day, “we normal everyday citizens are the ones who keep each other safe.”

Jennifer Borenstein, Yolo County Local Group Lead for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, decries the devastating week it’s been for our state. “Tragically, these shootings only scratch the surface of the gun violence plaguing communities around the country every single day. My message is that we need to continue to work together to reduce gun violence and save lives. What gives me hope is that change is possible, we know there are solutions that work.”

To get involved, Borenstein urges locals to text READY to 644-33. “We’re going to continue doing work locally with our community and school boards.”

They were encouraged to do so by a former planning commissioner,

Eileen

“Other UC’s are doing this, it’s very successful, it’s much more cost effective, it helps the students, it’s the only way to control the cost of student housing longterm,” Samitz said. “We simply need to encourage UC Davis to do this and to have language of that in the housing element.”

Monica Stark/EntErpriSE photo Candles on stage represented individual victims of recent gun violence.

From Page A1

Rewind and going forward with UCD football

LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD ... Those who follow FCS football, the level at which UC Davis competes, no doubt know that a team from the Dakotas once again has claimed the national championship. Only this time it wasn’t perennial champion North Dakota State, but their nemesis, South Dakota State.

Yes, the Jackrabbits hammered the Mighty Bison in a way no one has in the last decade, taking a 45-21 win in the title game earlier this month in Frisco, Texas. This is indeed the Year of the Rabbit, but in Brookings, South Dakota at least, it’s also the Year of the Jackrabbit.

What some folks may forget is that way back on Sept. 10, the second week of the 2022 season,

the Aggies traveled to Brookings and came within a whisker of handing the eventual national champions a stunning defeat.

The Jackrabbits were seemingly in control, leading 24-10 with the ball at midfield as the clock in the final quarter ticked down under five minutes.

But Teddye Buchanan forced a fumble that Nick Eaton jumped on and Aggie quarterback Miles Hastings completed five quick passes, the last of which went to Justin Poerio for

a touchdown from nine yards out. The extra point was blocked, however, and the Aggies still trailed, 24-16, wth 3:19 remaining.

After a successful onside kick, Hastings again hit paydirt, this time with a 25-yard strike to McCallan Castles. Suddenly the Aggies were just two points down with 2:03 left, but Hastings’ two-point pass fell incomplete and South Dakota State was able to run out the clock after recovering UCD’s onside kick attempt.

The Jackrabbits then ran off 13 more wins without a loss to claim their first national championship.

A GOOD MAN GOES OUT ON TOP ... South Dakota State head coach John Stiegelmeier —

BasketBall

affectionately known across the state as “Coach Stig” — announced his retirement shortly after the championship win, having served 26 years as head coach of his alma mater.

Stiegelmeier, 65, certainly had offers to “move up” the coaching ladder over the years, but was happy with what he was accomplishing as he lived out that old saying, “Bloom where you’re planted.” Bloom he did.

THERE’S ALWAYS A LOCAL ANGLE ... Stiegelmeier roamed the South Dakota State sideline for 311 games, finishing with an overall record of 199-112 with 11 straight playoff appearances.

But where and when was the very first game he coached?

If you guessed Sept. 13, 1997,

on Toomey Field (a 17-7 Jackrabbit win), move to the head of the class.

Coach Stig was clearly a winner from the get-go.

SPEAKING OF FOOTBALL ... Facing the toughest opening schedule in school history, UC Davis opened the 2022 season with a 1-4 mark, then won five in a row before a season-ending loss to Sacramento State to finish 6-5 and just miss the FCS playoffs.

Big Sky Conference teams play an eight-game league schedule, with room for three non-conference games.

Last fall the Aggies opened with losses to Cal and South Dakota State, then beat

See UCD, Page B6

local roundup

Gymnastics tri-meet is today

Enterprise staff

Today, the UC Davis gymnastics team returns to the friendly confines of the University Credit Union Center as to host a tri-meet with Air Force and AlaskaAnchorage.

The three squads are scheduled to start at 1 p.m.

River Cats

The Sacramento River Cats are thrilled to announce that longtime radio and television broadcaster Johnny Doskow has accepted a broadcasting position with the Oakland Athletics.

Former UC Davis star Morgan Bertsch drives to the basket in December game for the Mechelen Kangoeroes. Bertsch averaging almost 17 points a game as one of Europe’s top players.

Ex-Aggie Bertsch living the dream in Europe

By Bruce Gallaudet

Enterprise correspondent

After her brilliant career at UC Davis, basketball maven Morgan Bertsch’s massive talents are no longer foreign to the fans in Europe.

The all-time leading Aggie scorer — women’s or men’s programs — is in her fourth season abroad, tearing it up as the top point-maker for first-place Mechelen Kangoeroes of Belgium.

After a stop in Moscow and two campaigns in Poland, Bertsch is averaging almost 17 points a game, 4.3 rebounds and two assists this season while finally getting to play her attack-the-basket style in this third-century Flemish enclave of 86,000.

“It’s been really great,” reports the 6-3 power forward. “I’m loving the location I have this year. In seasons past, each place had their qualities, but being in Belgium … it has opened my eyes.”

New friends

As the only American on the Mechelen roster, Bertsch has new friends, has enjoyed living within a 20-minute drive of Antwerp and Brussels and has been able to immerse herself in an environment more compatible to her California upbringing.

The Netherlands, France and Denmark are all with an easy drive. She rang in the new year in Paris with her teammates; the City of Light is only a 90-minute train trip away.

Just last week, her oldest sister Mckenna and father Vince visited Morgan’s one-bedroom apartment in Mechelen. It was the first time Vince got to see his daughter play in Europe. When the Kangoeroes

traveled to Hungary for a EuroLeague game, Vince and Mckenna were off to Budapest for a little sightseeing.

The opportunities that her new gig have provided Bertsch, and her family have the ex-Aggie singing the praises of her new basketball life.

“I would argue this EuroLeague is one of the best leagues in the world,” Bertsch told The Enterprise via Zoom last week.

“There’s the WNBA, of course, but then there’s the EuroLeague. The best competition there is.

“It’s been really cool getting to play against the top talent, while traveling all over Europe to do it. Fun.”

While Bertsch maintains lofty statistics, her Mechelen crew has won only one of its first 13 games in a season that continues through March.

But EuroLeague is only half of the Kangoeroes’ task. They simultaneously participate in the upper division of the Belgium league, in which Mechelen is undefeated.

In-country conferences

How it works, Bertsch explains, is that teams throughout the continent compete in their in-country conferences, and the top 16 of those European teams advance to the EuroLeague the following year.

In Belgium, the Kangoeroes are undefeated.

So, how does basketball abroad compare to college at UC Davis?

“It’s very different. The level is much higher … and it’s a very different style than what I was playing at Davis, or the kind of competition you got in the Big West,” Bertsch says.

“European-style basketball is a

lot more ball screens, a lot more dynamic kind of plays. Whereas in the U.S., in general, it’s a lot more one-on-one, you rely more on individual skills.

“At least at Davis (head Aggie coach Jennifer Gross) was really good at catering our offense to the players we had. She was so smart at getting people in the right positions to do what they did best: positions to score or be successful otherwise.

“I think that was something I took for granted while at Davis because that was how I like playing basketball, and that’s how I learned to play basketball — I grew into the player that I am while at Davis.”

But when she was a rookie at Sparta & K (Vidnoe) in Russia, coaches were making players conform to predisposed team styles.

The same was true for her seasons in Lublin and Gdynia, Poland.

“(Michelen coach) Kristof Michiels is much more dialed into players and how to put them into spots that better use their skills and make them be more successful,” adds Bertsch.

“That’s something I really appreciate. Like I said, it’s something Jen did so well at Davis with all of our players. I see it as a different version of Aggie basketball here.”

Dallas Wings

In 2019, after rearranging the UCD record books, Bertsch was drafted in the third round of the WNBA draft by the Dallas Wings. She didn’t make the cut but, since then, has been asked to attend Connecticut Sun preseason workouts and to return to a Dallas camp. Each time no contract was

offered.

But Bertsch — who has averaged double-digit points wherever she’s played in Europe — still holds out hope for a call from the WNBA (and a job that sticks).

So, as an American playing professionally in Belgium, is Bertsch living the high life — or just grinding it out, especially being in two leagues?

“Any profession you’re in, there are highs and lows, goods and bads, right?” Bertsch points out.

“Sometimes it’s glamorized a lot: ‘Oh, what an amazing opportunity. You’re living overseas, you get to travel the world and you’re playing basketball …’

“I appreciate all those things — and they are the best parts of the job. But there are also things that people don’t take into account when they think about how amazing it is.”

Friends and family

Bertsch doesn’t like being away from friends and family back in the States: “I get to go home maybe once a season, maybe during Christmas, but you miss all the other holidays.”

And playing in Europe hasn’t been without its drama.

Bertsch has played on both sides of Ukraine: Moscow before the invasion and Poland afterwards. Did she see anything that made her think one way or another about the current conflict?

“I was in Gdynia, Poland, when war broke out in Ukraine. It definitely impacted Poland because it was the country that accepted the most refugees from Ukraine,” Bertsch recalls.

See BERTSCH, Page B6

“Johnny Doskow is synonymous with River Cats baseball,” said Chip Maxson, president of the River Cats. “Johnny was a gift to the Sacramento sports landscape for over two decades.

“His unique spirit was the perfect narrator to many memorable moments in River Cats history, including three Triple-A Championships, a combined no-hitter, and incredibly emotional moments like Drew Robinson’s first home run during his storied return to baseball. We are so happy for Johnny.”

Doskow, who has 30 years of Minor League Baseball broadcasting experience, will join Ken Korach and/or Vince Cotroneo for select games throughout the 2023 season.

The North Tarrytown, N.Y. native has called West Sacramento home for 22 seasons, as the voice of the River Cats, calling 12 Division titles, five Pacific Coast League Championships and three Triple-A National Championships.

Softball

Brooklyn Paratore, 15, who played in the Davis Youth Softball Association, has made the U15 Women’s National Team. Paratore attends Oak Ridge High of El Dorado Hills.

Mechelen kangoeroes/courtesy photo

Monopoly led to censorship

By Llewellyn King

Special to The Enterprise

Big tech has siphoned off advertising and wants to be a global censor.

The Department of Justice has filed suit against Google for its predatory advertising practices. Bully!

Not that I think Google is inherently evil, venal or greedier than any other corporation. Indeed, it is a source of much good through its awesome search engine.

But when it comes to advertising, Google, and others with high-tech platforms, have done inestimable damage. They have hoovered up most of the available advertising dollars, bankrupting much of the world’s traditional media and, thereby, limiting the coverage of the news — especially local news.

They have ripped the heart out of the economics of journalism.

Like other internet companies, they treasure their intellectual property while sucking up the journalistic property of the impoverished providers without a thought of paying.

While I doubt the DOJ suit will do much to redress the advertising imbalance (Axios argues the part of Google that the DOJ wants divested accounts for only 12 percent of the company’s revenue), it will keep the issue of what to do about big tech media churning.

The issue of advertising is an old conundrum, written extra-large by the internet. Advertisers have always favored a first-pastthe-post strategy. In practice, this has meant in the world of newspapers that a small edge in circulation means a massive gulf in advertising volume.

Broadcasting, through the ratings system, has been able to charge for the audience it gets, plus a premium for perceived audience quality — “60 Minutes” compared to, say, “Maury,” which was canceled last year.

But mostly, it is always about raw numbers of readers, listeners and viewers. As rough a calculation, first-past-the-post has meant 20 percent more of the audience turns into 50 percent more of the available advertising dollars.

I would cite The New York Times’ leverage over the Herald Tribune, The Baltimore Sun’s edge over the News-American, and The Washington Post’s advantage over the Evening Star. The weaker papers all in time folded even when they had healthy circulations, just not healthy enough.

With their massive reach, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc., are killing off the traditional print media and wreaking havoc in broadcasting. This calls out for redress, but it won’t come from the DOJ suit.

The even larger issue with Google and its compatriots is freedom of speech.

The internet tech publishers, for that is what they are, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and others reserve the right to throw you off their sites if you indulge in speech, which, by contemporary standards, incites hate, violence or social disturbance.

Recently, I was warned by LinkedIn that I would be barred from posting on the site because I had transgressed — and two transgressions merit banning. The offending item was a historical piece about a World War II massacre in Greece. The offense may have been a dramatic photograph of skulls, taken by my wife, Linda Gasparello, displayed in the museum at Distomo, a scene of a barbarous genocide.

I followed the appeal procedure against the two-strikes-you’re-out rule, but I have heard nothing. I expect the censoring algorithms have my number and are ready to protect the public from me next time I write about an ugly historical event.

The concept of “hate speech” is contrary to free expression. It calls for censorship even though it professes otherwise. Any time one group of people is telling another, or even an individual, what they can say, free speech is threatened and the First Amendment is compromised.

The problem isn’t what is called hate speech but lying — a malady that is endemic in the political class.

The defense against the liars who haunt social media is what some find hateful speech: ridicule, invective, irony, satire and all the weapons in the literary quiver.

The right to bear the arms of free and open discourse shouldn’t be infringed by social media giants.

Llewellyn King is the executive producer and host of “White House Chronicle” on PBS. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

Economy surges, but future cloudy

Last year was a strong one for California’s $3.4 trillion economy.

The state added 621,400 jobs, finally regaining the nearly 3 million that were initially lost during the COVID-19 pandemic as Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down major economic sectors. The year ended with a near record-low 4.1% unemployment.

“California continues leading the nation’s economy,” Newsom boasted after the December employment report was issued this month. Earlier he projected that if California were a nation, it would be close to surpassing Germany as the globe’s 4th most powerful economy.

All good. In fact, some economists believe that California’s job growth is so strong that only a shortage of workers – due to a decline in the number of Californians seeking work – is a major impediment to expansion.

That’s the economic upside.

The downside is that no one seems to know whether the good times will continue or the state will experience one of its periodic recessions, which tend to hit about once a decade.

For the last few months, the Federal Reserve System

We’re not terrorists

has been attempting to dampen inflation by raising interest rates. Its stated hope is that the economy will cool off enough to curb inflation but avoid a sharp downturn into recession.

It’s not yet clear whether the system’s efforts will work as planned and economists are mixed in their projections of what lies ahead economically for the nation, not only because of the Federal Reserve’s actions but other factors, such as the war in the Ukraine.

Newsom’s proposed 202324 budget reflects that uncertainty.

“The uncertain future paths for inflation and Federal Reserve policy pose short-term risks,” the budget declares. “If high inflation persists longer than expected or if the Federal Reserve policy causes greater pullbacks by businesses or individuals, the economy could tip into a mild recession.

In response to “Letter: DHS event canceled,” by Anoosh Jorjorian, published Jan. 11, there is nothing hateful about saying it’s wrong to sterilize children and medicalize their bodies based on feelings. Feelings change with perspective and life experience.

We do not give dangerous cancer treatments without proof of a cancer diagnosis, so why are we giving cancer drugs to children who may be feeling uncomfortable with their growing and changing bodies? Why are we telling distressed children their perfectly healthy bodies might be “wrong”?

Over the last few months, parents like me have expressed concerns peacefully with compassion. Yet the Director of Yolo Rainbow Families has made inflammatory accusations against us in this publication as well as on Facebook, labeling us “far right,” “fundamentally un-American” and claiming our comments have led to “threats of violence.” These statements are false, defamatory and a blatant attempt to silence diversity. We are parents, not domestic terrorists.

Truly liberal and open-minded people use logic and reason to guide their decision making, not slurs and phobia

Speak out

President

“This could lead to a steeper decline in investment and interest-sensitive consumption, which in turn could cause a larger decline in economic growth and reduced nonfarm employment and personal income growth.”

“The biggest economic threat is continued inflation,” an analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California contends. “While December consumer data marked six straight months of slowing inflation, prices have not yet abated enough. Until that happens, the Federal Reserve will likely continue to take steps to slow the economy, increasing the risk of a recession.”

Recession fears and other factors are already having an effect on the budget, turning what Newsom and legislators thought was a nearly $100 billion surplus last summer into a multi-billion-dollar deficit due to sharp declines in projected revenue, mostly taxes from high-income Californians.

The most powerful engine of California’s economy, and therefore of the state’s revenue stream, is the Bay Areacentered technology industry, whose major firms are sharply reducing payrolls

indoctrination tactics. Please get curious. Do not be afraid to ask questions of your own. Here are some of the ones we’ve been asking:

Why have the UK, Sweden, and Finland stopped medical intervention based on gender for children?

Why are there more than 40,000 young people now expressing profound regret for the irreversible damage done to their bodies by “gender affirming surgeries”? Additionally, why do suicide completion rates increase over 19% post-surgery? https://www.researchgate. net/publication/291340368_Gender_ Dysphoria_in_Adults

Why has our school district contracted with CommuniCare Health Centers to provide legal and medical referral services to children as young as 12 without parental consent? Parents should view Elevate Queer Yolo’s intake form: https:// docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf SMvJuiMYE7miA47HFpFxy7OECd0jI 68ydL6DiYS--_sG6Vw/viewform for themselves. Consider if these services are appropriate for children to access on their own.

Finally, why did the Davis Parent University disregard its own safeguarding guidance of “12 and over with an adult,” which a representative stated followed “Pepper’s own research” for her lecture on “The Transgender Child”? Instead, making it accessible to anyone with a link and

Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202224-3553; email: https://www.padilla. senate.gov/contact/contact-form/

House of Representatives

through layoffs after expanding during the pandemic to serve the shift to work-athome employment.

Despite the layoffs, the region was still adding jobs during December — in fact 84% of the jobs California gained during the month, which attests to the mixed economic signals the state is experiencing.

“We don’t see anything catastrophic happening with tech,” Patrick Kallerman, vice president of research with the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, said. “I don’t see the tech industry collapsing.” While economists debate over the economic future and Capitol politicians dicker over how to deal with the projected deficit, their constituents are turning sour.

A November poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found high pessimism about the economy with 69% of Californians surveyed saying they expect bad times in the next year and 62% expecting periods of higher unemployment during the next five years.

— CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California's state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to Commentary.

promoting it directly to seventh-graders through their student portals?

Allie Snyder Davis

Pedestrianize downtown

I heartily agree with Bill Tourney (Jan. 17) and numerous others in our community, advocating for a pedestrianized downtown, starting with the block on G Street, between Second and Third streets, already closed to traffic. Let’s keep G Street closed and keep going. G Street represents the beginning of transforming our downtown into calm, green, welcoming destination.

Having lived in England for twenty years, it is common to encounter pedestrianized town centers in cities and towns all over Great Britain. This creates the kind of cafe culture our climate is ideally suited for. It encourages people of all ages and abilities, including our consistently overlooked disabled community, to comfortably navigate our town center, without the threat of being mowed down.

If we’re serious about being a green city, let’s expand G Street and close all of downtown to cars and motorized transportation.

If put to a vote, I’m confident the majority of people living and working in Davis will support this progressive initiative.

Marsha Coupé Davis

The Hon. Joe Biden, The White House, Washington, D.C., 20500; 202-456-1111 (comments), 202-456-1414 (switchboard); email: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

U.S. Senate

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 331 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-3841; email: https://www. feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/ e-mail-me

Sen. Alex Padilla, 112 Hart Senate Office

Rep. Mike Thompson, 268 Cannon Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20515; 202225-3311. District office: 622 Main Street, Suite 106, Woodland, CA 95695; 530-753-5301; email: https:// https:// mikethompsonforms.house.gov/contact/

Governor Gov. Gavin Newsom, State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814; 916-4452841; email: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/ gov40mail/

Trading miles for pages out on the greenbelt

The writer’s duty is to keep on writing.

— William Styron

When my disabled son Jukie and I started our daily greenbelt walking habit in the spring of 2020, I would often don a cloth mask about 20 yards before we encountered people walking towards us, and then remove it again as soon as we passed them. Jukie didn’t understand this new practice, so he gestured at my face to communicate that he wanted me to remove my silly mask.

While he never embraced either mask wearing or Zoom school, I made sure that Jukie would at least get some physical education during quarantine. He and I walked every day in 2020, when I averaged 4.6 miles a day, and in 2021, when I averaged 7 miles a day. Jukie lost some of the weight that he had gained as a side effect of his medications, and we both explored the streets of Davis. As if to indicate that he was having fun, about four times a walk he would catch up with me and give me a side hug,

atypically looking me right in the eyes.

With Jukie’s help, I aspired to walk 2,746 miles in 2022, or the distance between Davis, Calif., and my birth city of Washington, D.C. That would require me averaging 7.523 miles a day. I’m proud to say that I trounced that goal by walking a full 8 miles every day in 2022, a total of 2920 miles. You can imagine that I was eyeing that round number goal of 3000, but a variety of factors killed my averages in the last two months of the year — I would have to settle for 8 miles a day.

Still, that’s more than I had walked in any other year of my life, even when I was committed to distance running in high school or during my first year in Berkeley. And although I’ve run greater daily distances — there was that one day in 1989 that I got lost while visiting Orinda from Berkeley on foot, so I just ended up running all day — 2022 taught me that consistency matters most whenever you are

trying to complete a big task.

As John Quincy Adams said, “Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.”

Along with my meditation habit, I found that the regular physical exertion, my time on the tree-lined greenbelts of Davis, and the fresh air supported my mental health and overall wellbeing. I felt a sense of accomplishment every time I hit my monthly target, even if I had to add a number of late-night audiobook bonus walks on those evenings when I was falling behind my audacious eight-mile goal.

In 2022, I did write a 100poem book of poetry, much of it dictated to Google Docs while I was out on my walks, but I also glanced often at my list of unfinished book projects, regretful that I hadn’t devoted more time to writing non-fiction as well as poetry. I knew that if I truly wanted to make finishing and publishing these books a priority, I would have to make some sacrifices.

So, while my low-impact exercise regimen has supported my physical health, this writer also needs to write. Teaching the book “The War of Art” to my Writing in Fine Arts students at UC Davis, I came across this reminder from Steven Pressfield, one that seemed to be written for me: “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”

Ishall pump the brakes on my walking obsession in 2023 — I’m aiming for 5 miles a day, rather than 8 — and instead dedicate more time to finishing book projects. I agree with Maya Angelou: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Instead of agonizing over unfinished manuscripts, I shall complete and release them. Perhaps I will see if any of those uncaged birds will sing.

I’m already enjoying the new opportunities that have resulted from my change in schedule. Typically on Sundays I would catch up with my weekly mileage quota by strolling to morning

meditation in Chestnut Park, taking Jukie on a long walk, and then later walking with him to an outdoor dinner at a favorite Davis restaurant. As I seek to embrace new experiences, on this most recent Sunday I met with more than 20 new friends to play bocce, a yearly tradition for this friend group.

Because I spent so much of my boyhood throwing things — Frisbees, rocks, shuriken — I did pretty well at bocce, or so I was told. My team came in second — 30 points to the winning team’s 32 points — and I was even voted “Rookie of the Year.” I’m now the proud owner of a new gift card to YoloBerry, the best frozen yogurt shop in town.

As I walked to my car — yes, I actually drove to this event — I realized with a laugh that I was the only rookie this year. I look forward to many such realizations in 2023, including realized ambitions. I hope the same will be true for you.

— Andy Jones is a lecturer in the UC Davis University Writing Program, and a former Davis poet laureate.

On America’s role in Ukrainian war

By William W. Hagen Special to The Enterprise

Mel Gurtov’s col-

umn in the Jan. 22 Enterprise brought to my secular mind the famous lines from Jeremiah 6:14, in which the prophet denounces those in Jerusalem who belittled the murderous threat of conquest by Babylon. Speaking of the Israelite authorities, Jeremiah said (in one persuasive modern translation): “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”

Gurtov, writing from Portland for the organization “Peace Voice,” speaks for “supporters of a negotiated peace in Ukraine.” Putin, he says, recently “again said he is interested in peace talks,” failing to add that the Russian precondition for peace is Ukrainian recognition of all Russian annexations and conquests since 2014.

Yet Gurtov concedes that, through Russian aggression, Putin, in egregious violation of international law, has “created insuperable obstacles to peace.”

Gurtov condemns Condoleeza Rice’s and Robert Gates’s call, in The Washington Post, to “dramatically” increase arms supplies to Ukraine, so as to halt the threat that Putin’s expansionism poses to the NATO states and so also — at the cost, Gutov adds, of Ukrainian suffering — to “reclaim all Ukrainian territory.” But, “morally and legally, that is no solution at all.”

Why this is so Gurtov does not say. One might suppose that, in an ideal world, the moral and legal thing to do would be, precisely, Russian withdrawal.

He concedes, moreover, that American advocates of negotiated peace have no definition of desirable terms of peace. He concludes, pessimistically, that

there will therefore be none, and that the war will instead continue until one side is exhausted “or, hopefully, (that Russia) changes course when the regime changes.”

But, will Russian democracy emerge from a Putinesque “victory”?

Those who question American support for Ukraine echo Gurtov’s vagueness and lack of concrete proposals for ending the war. Many who stand on the progressive left have evaded addressing the subject, except to deplore, as many Trumpian Republicans do, the cost of U.S. military and other aid. But to argue against a war, once begun, on grounds that it is costing too much is very Scroogian and potentially morally self-damaging. Should Lincoln have halted the Civil War on the Union side because it was costing too much?

Putin’s war on Ukraine is a resumption of imperial tsarist Russia’s efforts before 1917 to smother the birth of a modern Ukrainian national culture, grounded in its own language (the free use of which the Russian government tried to suppress before the revolutionary wave rose in the empire in 1905). We in the West have only a very vague idea of Ukraine, and more as a territory than as a historical region that, while it never attained independent statehood in past centuries, has long been the home of culture, politics and even religion that varied importantly from the Muscovite pattern.

The settlement in Ukraine of Russianspeaking immigrants dates

mainly from the 19th century, while Russia conquered Crimea from the Ottoman Turks only in 1783, and a significant Russian-speaking presence there dates only from after the Crimean War of 1853-56. Russians in Ukraine’s eastern provinces (the Donbas) streamed in as the region industrialized in the late 19th century. In other words, the argument that Ukrainian lands are “ancient Muscovite/Russian possessions” is false and deeply misleading.

Ukraine is now being born as a modern independent nation-state. It will soon figure in our minds as a country like Poland or France, and not as a chaotic fragment of the collapsed Soviet Union. We have good reason to support this development, because it will set a barrier to Russian ambitions of westward power-extension, a drive that has figured, among other states’ great-power ambitions, in the outbreak of nearly all modern European wars

n Student death reported at UCD: http://wp.me/p3aczg-4gCZ

since the time of Peter the Great.

Russian imperialism has done no favors to the Russian people, and we should look forward to the day when Russia, too, is a country like all others in Europe, and not a wouldbe hegemon and master of a stifling sphere of influence in east-central and central Europe.

It is conceivable that the present war will end in a stalemate, as has occurred elsewhere many times, including in post-World War II Korea and Germany. In that case, Ukrainian borders will reflect the military status quo.

Considering that Putin and his top officials have made it clear that the price Ukraine must pay for peace is recognition of Russia’s conquests since 2014, for Ukraine to accept negotiations on these terms would be admission of defeat, not entry into a settlement that, while it might involve compromises, could be regarded by the Ukrainians as tolerable, or even honorable.

This is the perspective in which the objective of

n Police deploy Taser during downtown confrontation: http://wp.me/p3aczg-4gAg

n UC dismisses chemistry professor for alleged sexual assault: http://wp.me/p3aczg-4gt2

n Basketball: Pepper continues growth in UCD men’s program: http://wp.me/p3aczg-4gyk

and conquered land.

So, yes, let the United States press hard diplomatically for open-ended peace negotiations with Russia. Perhaps they could give Putin an alibi for extracting himself from a war that is corroding his authority and empowering militarist-nationalist groups in Russia that have their own ambitions (which do not include their once-athletic but now creaky master).

militarily pushing Russian armed occupation as far back as possible is justifiable, both politically and morally. War is, certainly, a curse, but on occasion unavoidable for ethically defensible reasons. Who would say the Nazi armies, or those of Japan in China, should not have been stopped by arms, the only possible means?

And should anyone think that a Putinesque conquest of Ukraine would not be a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, let them look into the ravages inflicted on that land under Stalin, and into the repression of the Russian people themselves, especially the younger generations, taking place in Putin’s Russia today. Let them consider Belarus, a culture with its own language, but whose dictatorial russophone government serves, as it did under the Soviet Union, as a proxy for the Kremlin, and where people cannot freely speak or publish in their own language nor can they honestly write and teach the history of their oft abused

“In

But, meanwhile, let us and our NATO allies help Ukraine advance on the battlefield. If our Abrams tanks will do this, let us supply them, a step that will justify Germany in sending its Leopard tanks as well. The fear that Russia will respond with “battlefield tactical nuclear weapons” seems implausible, if only because the lethal radiation they would release would endanger both Russia’s separatist subordinates in Ukraine, people in Belarus, and in neighboring Russia itself. Through centuries, Russia has intimidated the West with the image, and too often also the reality, of a ruthless militarized autocracy. But has it won all its wars? The answer is definitely not, in important part because of its own inner weaknesses. We should not quail before its threats, but rather emulate the courage of the Ukrainians and the determination of their neighbors in eastern Europe to assist them in repelling Russia’s neoimperialism.

— William W. Hagen is a professor emeritus of European history at UC Davis.

What bookmarks tell us about our psyches

While struggling to remember a column topic I had in mind for today that was surely Pulitzerwinning commentary, I looked through the “bookmarks” I’ve saved on my Twitter account in hopes of spurring my memory. It didn’t work, but I’ve come to understand these saved stories are a glimpse into my psyche at any given time.

For example, around Christmas, I saved a lot of articles about food and drink. I’m a big fan of “America’s Test Kitchen” and have many of their recipes and cooking techniques stashed away for future reading. I know that time might never come, but as hoarding goes, this is fairly harmless.

In December, I saved a handful of articles about the perfect holiday cookies (of which I made zero), the best drinks for a crowd (zero made), and what to do if you drip candle wax on a tablecloth (I made zero dinners with either candles or tablecloths). I

also bookmarked the most popular recipes of the year from the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. So far I’ve made ... wait, let me count it up really quickly ... zero of these recipes.

Mmmm, while scrolling I just came across guides to blue cheeses — “Roquefort is delightfully assertive and salty” while “Danish blue is bold and crumbles well” — along with which apples are best for dumplings, and styles of mustard. Let me be clear: None of these guides will ever be consulted when I’m actually looking to buy cheese, apples or mustard because I won’t remember I have them.

Beyond food and drink, it appears that around Dec. 15 I

believed I was overdoing it on shopping. Based on an Atlantic article I kept called, “Why we buy what we do: How our brains get tricked into spending money,” I must have had some angst about impulse-bought Christmas gifts.

Near Thanksgiving, I saved the standard articles about gravy, pie crusts, mashed potatoes, hostess gifts and how to stop campaign mailers from overtaking your mailbox. And the summer month bookmarks include road trips to take, michelada recipes, bug repellent reviews, a story called, “Why we fight on vacation,” and a lovely Fourth of July flag cake with blueberries and raspberries.

Scattered throughout the year are lists of books to read and shows to stream on our too many subscription services. I also save a lot of recommendations from Consumer Reports and Wirecutter, and advice columns and self-help articles for me and my loved ones. A couple

of examples are The New York Times’ “Go ahead, ask for help. People are happy to give it.” and The Washington Post’s “Why do we get our best ideas in the shower?”

Stories about higher education are very well-represented among my bookmarks, and I have an abundance of articles about the future of news and nonprofit news organizations. In August, I’ve got five saves in a row, on topics such as news deserts, master’s degrees in journalism, diversity in newsrooms, low pay in local news jobs and trying to inoculate people against misinformation.

And then there are the ones that make me laugh. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (@ mcsweeneys) is my go-to for a literal LOL. I’ve saved so many tweets that I actually do go back and read.

Among my favorites: “The middle school teacher’s lounge: A restaurant review” which explains: “Famed for his pio-

neering work with preservatives, (William) Entenmann’s coffee cake fairly teases diners with the unspoken question, ‘Is that the same box that was here last week?’ Cherry cheese danish is puckishly presented, casually torn in half by the gym teacher’s possibly washed hands.”

I also love a story headlined, “If I emailed my parents the way Democrats email me,” with this favorite quote: “Mom, we don’t have a moment to spare. I’m asking — no, BEGGING — for you to chip in ASAP. If every parent reading this email contributes just $197.50 by midnight, we can defend the shirt I just bought from being returned this November.”

Seriously, if you ignore the crappy things, the internet is kind of amazing.

— Tanya Perez lives in Davis with her family. Her column is published every other Sunday. Reach her at pereztanyah@ gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter at @californiatanya.

Solo travel tips: Recommendations for venturing out alone

Special to The Enterprise

Whether you’re a lone wolf at heart or looking to broaden your sense of independence, traveling solo can be a richly empowering and satisfying experience.

Setting out on your own has many practical advantages.

You’re not worrying about accommodating another’s schedule, interest or needs, and you’re free to decide what you want to do and when. Solo travel also elicits some mental and emotional benefits, as you experience a unique sense of freedom, liberation and self-sufficiency.

If you’re considering a solo journey, consider these tips from the book “101+ Tips for Solo Women Travelers,” which is offered by Overseas Adventure Travel in free digital and print editions.

■ Make sure your passport is updated. Many countries now require your passport to be valid for six months after your return to the United States. If you don’t have a passport, or need to renew one, apply for one as soon as possible. Ideally you should have your application in six months before you depart.

■ Look for trips with no single supplement. Often, quoted rates are “per person, based on

double occupancy.” This is because travel hosts know they can make more from a couple traveling than an individual. You can avoid paying a single supplement premium by being willing to match with a roommate or traveling with a tour company or cruise line with free or low-cost single supplement fees.

■ Use the ATM. As an affordable and convenient way to get cash, you can avoid wasting time in line at a bank or currency

exchange bureau by visiting an ATM. While you’ll likely incur a fee for using an ATM that’s not part of your bank, it is often less than the commission you’d pay at an exchange bureau. Plus, you can avoid additional fees by calculating how much you’ll need for the trip and making one withdrawal as opposed to multiple smaller withdrawals.

■ Download entertainment before you leave. When traveling, Wi-Fi can be expensive, slow or

just not available. Before you leave, download music, e-books, podcasts, favorite tv shows or movies to enjoy while you’re en route or during down time.

■ Join group tours. Once you reach your destination, you may enjoy joining small groups for excursions or to explore local cuisine. Or you can make your entire journey a group experience. A small group adventure with Overseas Adventure Travel has many benefits, and built-in

dining companions is just one of them.

■ Take precautions in your hotel room. When you check in, ask the receptionist to write your room number down instead of announcing it so everyone can hear. Make sure your room’s locks work on both the door into the hallway and the balcony. Never let any repair person or staff member into your room without confirming with the front desk first. Bring a rubber doorstop, which makes a hotel room door nearly impossible to open. Finally, have an exit plan: Know where the nearest exit is located and the route from your room. ■ Make new friends. For some, making friends seems to happen naturally while traveling alone by chatting with strangers at a neighboring restaurant table or striking up a conversation while waiting in line at a store. If those situations don’t occur naturally, there are useful apps that can connect you with local people as well as fellow travelers. Find more tips to prepare for your journey at oattravel.com.

— Family Features. Source: Overseas Adventure Travel

YoloCares names new palliative-care director

Special to The Enterprise

YoloCares named Lisa Adams the new director of palliative care and patient access, an exciting development for YoloCares’ second longest-running employee. Adams has been a friendly face at YoloCares for 21 years, starting as a part-time medical records filing clerk in 1998. In the early 2000s, Adams’s role increased to full-time as she took on more administrative tasks, helping with the volunteer and bereavement departments along with her work in medical records.

Adams was also a parttime student studying behavioral sciences and health information technology. In 2019 she graduated with a double major and was promoted to manager of patient access.

When asked what motivated her to apply for the

Name Droppers

position, Adams says, “It was an excellent opportunity for growth and I wanted to continue to grow with the agency.” Her history with YoloCares sets her up for success in her new title as she’s had her hand in nearly every nonclinical department at one point in time. “After 21 years of watching the

Adams wants to focus on sustainability by expanding billing and payor contracting which would allow for the expansion of palliative care services to a wider community.

Annie Oberholtzer of Davis earned a spot on the dean’s list at Missouri State University. Each semester, students at Missouri State who attain academic excellence are

agency evolve, adapt, and grow, I feel like I’m ready to take an active role in leading YoloCares.”

When it comes to working with a team, Adams prefers to work in the trenches alongside her employees. She sees herself as a hands-on manager so that she can understand how to be most helpful to her team.

As for the future of the palliative care program,

named to the dean’s list.

For undergraduate students, criteria include enrollment in at least 12 credit hours during the fall semester and at least a 3.50 grade point average (on a 4.00 scale). Oberholtzer was among more than 5,000 students named to the fall 2022 dean’s list.

Missouri State University is a public, comprehensive university system

with a mission in public affairs. Its purpose is to develop fully educated people with a focus on ethical leadership, cultural competence and community engagement. For information, visit www. missouristate.edu.

— Do you know of someone who has won an award or accomplished something noteworthy? Email it to newsroom@davisenterprise.net.

yourquizmaster.com.

Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

Strange-but-true facts about 49ers

Afive-time All-Star with the San Francisco Giants, Jeff Kent is the only player over the course of a career to hit .300 or above and slug .500 or above with runners in scoring position.

Overall, Kent played 17 seasons with six teams, including the Giants from 1997 to 2002. It’s ludicrous Kent is not in the Hall of Fame.

Strange but true: The San Francisco 49ers have not had a Pro Bowl quarterback since 2002. It was Jeff Garcia.

The last time the Dallas Cowboys played in the NFC Championship Game was 1995. Over the ensuing 28 years, 28 of the other 31 NFL franchises have made at least one conference championship appearance, including both the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars, who were 1995 expansion teams.

The others are the Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans and Detroit Lions. Says something about the Cowboys.

Tip of the cap to longtime NFL Hall of Fame writer Rick Gosselin for this nugget.

Belated condolences to the family and many friends of Gwen Knapp, who lost her battle with melanoma on Jan. 20.

She wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer before coming to San Francisco. First as a columnist with the original San Francisco Examiner then with the Chronicle, Knapp

wrote extensively on topics such as steroids, doping and other stains on the sporting landscape.

Knapp’s reporting and writing helped expose both Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds. Her most recent journalism job was as an editor at The New York Times.

Educated at Harvard, “Gwen was always the smartest person in whatever room she entered,” said longtime friend and Sports Illustrated writer Michael Bamberger.

Knapp was 61 years old.

If at least four members of Stanford’s women’s basketball team score in double figures, it’s a good bet the Cardinal wins. Coach Tara VanDerveer’s crew has won 55 of 57 games when that happens, including the last 35 straight, going into this weekend.

Note to NFL Competition Committee: During postseason play, eliminate the 1-point kick attempt and make every conversion a 2-pointer. Would add a lot of spice if a Super Bowl trip hinged on making a goal line stop.

Former UC Davis head football

coach Ron Gould will be the new RB coach at San Diego State. He was Aggie coach from 2013-16.

Gould had been at Stanford since 2017. He was not retained when Troy Taylor took over as Stanford coach following David Shaw’s resignation.

UC Davis’ own Nathaniel Hackett was not out of work very long. Hackett, let go as Denver Broncos head coach after 15 games by a new ownership group that didn’t hire him originally, is the new offensive coordinator for the New York Jets.

Today’s AFC and NFC championship games often produce more drama and excitement than the Super Bowl.

One reason for that is teams have just a week to get ready to face their opponent, often one unseen during the regular season.

A Super Bowl trip gives coaching staffs, mainly on the defensive side, a singular, known foe to prepare for and two weeks to do so. All four teams already have a data and video bank of their possible matchup.

Beginning Sunday night, all systems morph into overdrive. The heavy lifting, preparation-wise, comes this week.

The week leading up to Super Bowl LVII will be mostly chaotic, what with player media availability, an untold number of league- and sponsor-related press conferences, awards presentations and the like.

Contact Doug Kelly at DKelly1416@aol.com.

UCD: Father-son showdown this upcoming season

From Page B1

University of San Diego before opening Big Sky play with losses to Weber State and Montana State. The Aggies open the 2023 season at Texas A&M-Commerce in a rare late August start, then travel to vastly improved Oregon State in the first game at the Beaver’s newly refurbished stadium in Cor-

vallis. A sellout is assured. UCD finishes the nonconference schedule at home, Sept. 16, against former Big Sky member Southern Utah.

In conference play, UCD has home dates against Eastern Washington, Montana, Portland State and Sacramento State, and hits the road for games at Cal Poly, Weber State,

Northern Arizona and Idaho State.

The Idaho State game features a father-son showdown between Aggie head coach Dan Hawkins and his son, Cody, the newly named head coach in Pocatello. Might be a good time for Aggie fans to pack up the van and head for Potatoland.

THIS JUST IN ... The

From Page B1

“We had a huge influx of refugees, so my club donated our gym to help house them. (The Ukrainians) had nowhere to go so they stayed in our facility for the remainder of the season.”

Game venues

In turn, the team scrambled for practice facilities and game venues.

Fundraisers, donations and goodwill events to raise money, clothes, shoes and food were run by Bertsch’s franchise because “a lot of the refugees fled with very little. We had a huge number of relief efforts we put together.

“Tensions were high. If you know the history of Poland, the Poles are little bit wary of Russia. It was a high instance of insecurity, not really knowing what to expect from the Russians.”

In that first year in Russia, Bertsch made the acquaintance of superstar Brittney Griner, who played against the former Aggie on several occasions.

Later, Griner’s arrest and prison plight in Moscow weighed heavily on the European basketball colony:

lacking empathy and lacking an understanding of the situation. Comments like ‘Why is she even in Russia?’

“If you know and understand the situation of women’s basketball, and how little women’s basketball is valued in the U.S., then you’d know that she had to go play overseas.

“And who wouldn’t go overseas if you could make as much money as she could make?

“And what did she do that was so terrible that she deserved the kind of treatment (she received)?”

Traveling

Bertsch travels throughout Europe on a work visa and must always be aware of the peccadillos of individual country regulations.

“I can’t fathom how scary it must have been whether or not you’re going to come home and the feeling of helplessness: What does she have to do to come home when it’s in the government’s hands and you know you’re being used for political gain?

“How do you work within a system that’s not fair?”

FBI has found classified documents hidden inside Brock Purdy’s playbook.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has reinstated the Dallas Cowboys to oppose the Philadelphia Eagles in Sunday’s NFC championship game.

— Contact Bob Dunning at bdunning@ davisenterprise.net.

“It was a really sad situation, obviously. I felt terrible for her,” Bertsch says. “I can’t image how horrible it must have been. For me, being on the sidelines, I know what (life as a guest athlete in Moscow) entails.”

Bertsch said it was difficult to hear people’s opinions on Griner’s travails:

“You should never be listening to Internet trolls … but sometimes when you’d look at comments under posts about (her situation), there were so many people

Bertsch was delighted that Griner’s situation was resolved successfully and that she’s now home in Texas.

So, what does the future hold for the 2019 UCD biomedical engineering graduate?

She’s focusing on ensuring that her Mechelen team continues it unbeaten Belgium-league ways and waiting for a phone call from yet another American pro team.

“Yeah. WNBA. One of these days. That’s the hope,” concludes Bertsch.