Davisville

Doug Hatton has appeared as Santa Claus at events in and around Davis for 22 years. On today’s Davisville he talks about the experience, what Davis kids ask for, the time a girl asked for an ATM for her room, how he manages expectations, and the enjoyment he gets from doing it all. Listening is important, he says, kids can sense if someone really wants to talk with them, and yes, his beard is real.

In August 2014, author Julia Scheeres and Thom Bogue spoke at the Avid Reader about her book, “A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown,” and his memories of the remote South American camp of the Peoples Temple where 918 people were killed or committed suicide one day in November 1978. Bogue, then a teenager and now mayor of Dixon, was one of the relatively few survivors. Scheeres’ critically praised book draws on previously unavailable recordings and records from the temple, which once had a major presence in San Francisco. They talk about it in this 2014 interview on Davisville.

Daniel Marsh was a few weeks short of 16 when he murdered Mary Northup’s father Oliver “Chip” Northup Jr., and Chip's wife Claudia Maupin, in their Davis home in 2013. As Lauren Keene has written in the Davis Enterprise, "the brutality of [the killings] stunned seasoned law enforcement as well as the community at large." Marsh was convicted as an adult in 2014, but after voters approved a change in state law in 2016, Marsh won a Yolo court hearing that asked if he should now be transferred to the juvenile justice system. The transfer -- rejected by the court last week -- could have meant he’d be released at 25. On today’s program Mary Northup talks about the hearing, listening to Marsh in court, the change in California law that will soon forbid 15-year-olds from being tried as adults, and balancing rehabilitation against protecting the public.

Musician Gene Parsons, who will perform in Davis with the rest of the Mendocino Quartet on Oct. 13, returns to Davisville this week for a discussion that largely has two parts: the quartet, and a few memories about the first LP he recorded with the Byrds -- Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde.

Dr. Byrds followed the popular band's late 1968 country-rock breakthrough record, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Dr. Byrds is not among Parsons’ favorite Byrds records – he prefers Untitled and Ballad of Easy Rider – but he agrees that the playing of Clarence White is one of the attractions of Dr. Byrds. White, a widely admired guitarist, died in 1973 at age 29 after he was struck by a drunk driver. “You hear a lot of Clarence in there [on Dr. Byrds],” Parsons says, “figuring out how he’s going to work with this band.”