Davisville

Vince Guaraldi’s music continues to have a wonderful afterlife, thanks to the successful recent releases of the Peanuts soundtracks that Guaraldi recorded before he died at 47 in 1976. Today we update the story with Derrick Bang, who wrote the book about the San Francisco jazz pianist and writes liner notes for the Peanuts soundtrack producers Jason and Sean Mendelson. Bang believes there’s likely more unreleased music to come even after the soundtracks series ends. Today on Davisville he also names an often-overlooked Guaraldi song that he says evokes a stroll in the rain as winningly as the composer’s Christmas song “Skating” evokes kids skating on a pond. We hear part of the song, “Rain, Rain Go Away,” which is nothing like the children’s nursery rhyme.

Bang underscores his belief in Guaraldi’s music and talent. “I want to do the best I can to make sure that his music lives into the 22nd century,” he says on today’s program. “I want him to become one of our Tchaikovskys.”

Illustration taken from the cover of The Charlie Brown Suite and Other Favorites CD (2003), which uses a drawing of Vince Guaraldi by Charles Schulz.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe wants to entertain and challenge audiences with live satire, but Michael Gene Sullivan, the writer, director and an actor for this year’s show — Disruption: A Musical Farce — says he aims for more than two-dimensional hilarity.

“I’m very much against the pie-throwing satire of ‘here’s my enemy, I set him up, create a straw man, make fun of him, set fire to him,’ ” he says on this week’s Davisville. “When I was describing the [regular working-class cop] character [in the play] to someone, they were like, ‘I don’t want this guy to be a hero.’ I said, ‘he’s not a hero, but he’s not a villain, either.’ He’s totally understandable.…” (Sullivan plays the part in the play; the photo shows him in costume)

The nonprofit can't currently afford its former big summer tours, but has kept Davis on its annual circuit. This year they’ll perform July 10 in the Brunelle theater in Davis. Tickets are free but they ask viewers to donate $20 apiece.

Davis needs hundreds of additional homes for people with very low incomes, says Bill Pride during today’s Davisville, and other Yolo County cities have similar needs. As executive director of a new nonprofit, Yolo Community Builders, Pride wants to respond to that demand by building more tiny housing units throughout the county, inspired by the innovative Paul’s Place in Davis, for people who would otherwise be homeless.

Today we talk with Pride and Maria Ogrydziak, an accomplished architect who will design the new units. Pride is a former executive director of Davis Community Meals and Housing, which built and runs Paul's Place, a four-story building in central Davis that combines permanent housing, transitional housing, and various services to help people escape homelessness. Ogrydziak designed Paul's Place.

Other nonprofits would own and offer support services at the locations that Yolo Community Builders plans to develop. YCB is developing these partnerships with nonprofits, and Pride hopes to announce the first projects by the end of the year.

(Image, taken from Yolo Community Builders website, shows two tiny homes side by side)

The Davis school district might have to close up to three public schools over the next decade for reasons that include declining birth rates, high housing costs, and changing job patterns. Adding more homes for families in Davis could blunt that trend, but Davis voters generally resist population growth. So, people in Davis need to start talking about what they want to do, while there's still time to plan for the change. Matt Best, superintendent of the Davis public school district, discusses the choice this week on Davisville.

“We’ve got to plan for one of two scenarios. One, we see housing on the horizon and we’ve got a plan for a reboundary [of attendance areas] if those students arrive. The second path is, there is no new housing on the horizon, and we’ve got to plan to close two or three schools over the course of the next decade, and how are we going to solve that problem as a community?