Davisville

“Vince is always pulling splinters from his fingers, driven in when he claws at the wooden baseboard, behind the keys,” wrote Bay Area music critic Ralph Gleason, as quoted in Davis author Derrick Bang’s newly revised book Vince Guaraldi at the Piano. Splinters? They came from Guaraldi’s intense playing, Bang says, nearly nonstop performing, and the worn quality of the pianos he played in clubs.

Guaraldi, the Bay Area jazz musician known most for his Peanuts soundtracks and the song “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” died in 1976 but is arguably more popular than ever, Bang says. Two recent signs: This month's latest archival release of music from a Peanuts special, It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown, and Bang’s updated book, which he will talk about 6:30 p.m. July 11 at the Avid Reader in Davis. On today’s Davisville we learn more about the music, new stories Bang heard while updating his book, and the baffling review Guaraldi received from the California Aggie the last time he played in Davis.

Davis has just gone through a local news media earthquake. We’re talking about the Davis Enterprise’s decision to lay off Wary I columnist Bob Dunning (left, in photo), which shocked and/or angered thousands of people in town. In less than a week, Dunning had restarted his column and sports writing on Substack, with enough paid subscriptions to more than replace his salary at the Enterprise. Within days, Comings & Goings local business columnist Wendy Weitzel left the paper voluntarily to also move her work to Substack.

The evolving Davis news and information story has many parts. Today on Davisville we talk with local small business tech entrepreneur Brian Bolz (on right in photo), who helped Dunning and Weitzel get started on Substack, where they quickly found audiences. Bolz discusses how he became involved, plus his goals, what he’s doing, and how he sees the larger picture.

Long before he flew four missions on the space shuttle, Steve Robinson was the first DJ of a now-vanished Davis commercial radio station, KYLO, in the late 1970s. Decades later, he’s a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Davis, and director of its Center for Space Flight Research — and he will soon return to local radio as occasional fill-in host for Rod Moseanko, host of the station’s Silver Nine Volt Heart. (The photo shows Steve, left, and Rod in the KDRT studio May 11.)

Today on Davisville we enjoy a serious conversation about space flight, plus hear Steve’s memories of KYLO — including what happened when he told listeners he was running out of records to play  — and learn what brought him to KDRT. After he returned Davis in 2012, Robinson said, “I was looking for some good radio,” and found it with Rod’s show. “I thought, ‘this kind of radio is still alive. It was very exciting to me.’ ”

In Harboring Happiness: 101 Ways to be Happy, author Dan Brook says happiness is worth pursuing despite all the awful things happening across the globe. He bases this on research and on what he has learned during his decades as an instructor and sociologist (he earned master’s and doctorate degrees in sociology from UC Davis in the 1990s).

So how do you become happier? You probably have to work at it. His suggestions range from “getting more experiences,” and feeling gratitude, to “being around people who make you happy” and converting the fear of missing out into the joy of missing out.

“I’m happy not because I ignore the problems of the world, but in spite of them,” he says. Work to fix what’s wrong, but “being miserable does not help solve those problems.” He elaborates on his ideas during today’s Davisville.