This fall’s annual movie show with Derrick Bang arrives with a few extras. To note his 50 years as a movie critic, he reads — and critiques! — the first paragraph of the first movie review he wrote, in 1974 for the California Aggie at UC Davis. We also hear from a film director who worried Derrick might not like his film. Plus we get Derrick’s usual take on movies to see and avoid this holiday film season, although he could only find a few, for reasons rooted in the current ambiguous state of filmmaking. Please, have a seat. We’re pulling back the curtains.
The photo, by Jim Mitchell, shows Derrick Bang at the California Aggie in April 1976.
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This week’s subject is narrow, but contains a question worth considering. It involves one of the ways that ideas emerge and ultimately shape public life in Davis. This specific path involves the Davis citizen commissions that advise the City Council on subjects including city spending, planning, police accountability, and several other areas.
A commission can take up a topic for various reasons, including if the council asks it to, if city staff needs it to, and on its own volition. The third option might be changing. This year the council will decide if a commission should get prior approval from its council liaison (or a council subcommittee) before putting an item on the commission’s agenda.
Why make this change, what’s good about it, what isn’t? Today on Davisville we hear from two proponents — Mayor Josh Chapman and Vice Mayor Bapu Vaitla, who form the council’s subcommittee on commissions — and Elaine Roberts Musser and Dan Carson, two of the change’s leading critics.
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Sahaya International, a Davis nonprofit, took shape after a chance meeting when founder Dr. Koen Van Rompay (pictured), a researcher at UC Davis, was in India for an AIDS conference. Since then Sahaya has grown into a group of friends and donors, many in Davis, who give money to help people in developing countries by relying on local knowledge, trust, and long-term connections.
Sahaya celebrates its 25th anniversary at Veterans Memorial Theater on Nov. 2. Today on Davisville we talk with Van Rompay about how Sahaya began, what it does, and how it operates. Sahaya’s tax return says they raised and gave away about $830,000 in 2023.
“There’s much that we can do if we just join hands together, especially if you find people you trust,” he said. He’s just as happy if Sahaya’s work inspires people to do something useful outside the charity, “close to their heart,” on their own — the ripple effect.
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Each weeknight at 9, people gather in Central Park near 4th and C streets, some to receive surplus food, some to hand it out. This is the Davis Night Market (pictured), a small-budget volunteer venture created in 2019 to feed people and reduce food waste. We talked with two of its co-founders in January 2020, and the market has since grown to five nights a week. “The food is kind of the carrot to get people in. It’s more about the community,” adds Max Morgan, a volunteer since 2019. "People are in desperate need of community, as much as they need food.”
“We really have only one rule: take what you can eat,” says Joanna Sodke, a volunteer for nearly a year. “Anyone can come here and take food.” (There are limits on pizza, she says, “a very hot item.”) Donors include well-known food purveyors in Davis, plus people with extra produce from their trees and gardens. The market operates with a county permit. Sometimes a volunteer will need to talk a person through a difficult moment. Today on Davisville, Joanna and Max talk about how it all works, including why they meet at night.
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Today’s show is for people interested in the current election but sick of the usual political noise. The guests are two highly experienced political analysts, Dan Schnur and Richard Zeiger, who will teach an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute class at the University of California Davis this fall called “An Election Like No Other.”
On Davisville today we talk about why this presidential election is both different and traditional, why many elected offices are uncontested, cynicism as a turnoff and as a way to cope, and young Americans who opt to get involved in their community outside of politics. "Volunteering is noble," Schnur says, "but you can only clean up so many parks. Participating by voting or running for office or getting involved in other ways is equally important."
“One of the most important lessons about politics … It leads to a democracy [and] you have to be willing to lose,” says Zeiger, who lives in Davis. "That’s what the whole business is about, somebody’s going to win and somebody’s going to lose. And when you lose, you pull your pants back on and you go back into the fray.”
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Emese Parker (pictured), an author and certified nurse practitioner specializing in women's health, began offering Davis Women's Circles this summer. Each has a theme -- one session focused on the perfect mom myth vs. the good-enough mother, and others include the mental load of mothering, rage and guilt, plus "some fun topics coming up this fall." The circles are for mothers, or soon-to-be mothers, of all ages and stages of life. Today on Davisville she explains how they work and why she's offering them in Davis.
The U.S. Surgeon General recently warned that parenting today is too hard and stressful because parents face expectations that they should spend ever more time and money educating and enriching their children, driven partly by fears that if they don’t, their kids could fail to achieve a secure, middle-class life.
Today we also talk about matrescence, a play on the term adolescence, or the “massive identity shift and transformation that affects all that she is.” “If we understand that it is a becoming process," Parker says, "then we can have real conversations about what parenting and motherhood is like. We don’t have to just smile and say 'oh yeah, everything is just fine.' We can actually have real conversations with each other and talk about what we’re enjoying, and what parts are harder than expected."
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Late summer offers a few particular attractions in Davis. The heat fades a bit, if only because the days are shorter, and evenings outdoors are mild. It’s an inviting season to look at the full moon if it’s up, and to think about another year passing. And swat some mosquitoes.
Here on Davisville, early September is a natural time to talk with someone who has spent a lot of time outdoors: Jean Jackman of Davis. She writes the “At the Pond” column in the Davis Enterprise, has taken some serious bike rides, and a quarter-century ago recorded local people talking about Davis history ("Down Home Tales of Davis"). We talk about a variety of things today, starting with the wildlife and birds she writes about in Davis. Later we hear Jean's recording of Jane Van Sant, who lived in downtown Davis, died 18 years ago at 94, and tells us in her own voice what Davis lived through during the flu epidemic of 1917-18.
The photo shows the full moon of August 2022 over north Davis.
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Davis has two local tax measures on the ballot this fall and today we talk about the one for the library, Measure T. (We looked at the other one, sales tax increase Measure Q, last month.) Measure T would raise about $1.1 million a year to pay for operations at what will eventually be Davis’ two public libraries — the existing one in north central Davis, and the new one in south Davis due to open in 2026.
Measure T would raise an existing property tax by about $49 per house or $24.50 per apartment, to $172 or $86 respectively per year. Today on Davisville we talk with Jim Provenza, a Davis member of the county Board of Supervisors, and Katie Caceres, a student at the University of California at Davis and an intern in Provenza’s office. They’re both part of the campaign. We talk about what the money would buy, how the county calculated the amount needed, libraries as town squares for speech and information, and how people use libraries as print gives way to digital.
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Pete Scully, who moved to Davis from London, has been sketching scenes in Davis for most of two decades and counting. He’s not sketching for a salary — his job as chief administrative officer for the Department of Statistics at UC Davis covers that requirement — but as a way of conversing with his surroundings and capturing views that he enjoys and expects might change. He draws for himself but makes his work available on his website and on Instagram, X (ex-Twitter), and Flickr. Today on Davisville we talk about why and what he draws, and where this work might eventually reside. He’s creating a portrait of Davis in the first part of the 21st century.
This photo from his X (ex-Twitter) account shows one of his 21 drawings (so far) of the Varsity Theatre.
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If you vote in Davis, this November you’ll be asked to decide Measure Q, a proposal to raise the sales tax in the city to 9.25 percent, up 1 point from now or an extra $1 for every taxable $100 you spend. The increase requires a simple majority to pass. The money would go to general city expenses, broadly defined.
On today’s Davisville, Davis City Council members Will Arnold and Donna Neville talk about the proposal, priorities, and other areas where the city is trying to boost economic development that would bring in more tax revenue.
And this is unusual — every Yolo city this fall is asking its voters to increase their sales taxes by 1 point. Winters, the smallest city in the county, would raise $1.2 million from its increase. Woodland would receive $16.5 million, West Sacramento $20 million, and Davis, the largest city, would collect $11 million. The numbers illustrate the relative sizes of the county's retail markets.
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