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.
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… then what do some of the latest movies say about us? That’s one of the discussions on today’s 8th annual fall movie show with Davis film critic Derrick Bang (Davis Enterprise, Derrick Bang on Film). He also lists a few end-of-year movies he looks forward to, a few that have him anticipating the worst, and one that he says will likely allow no middle ground of opinion: Anna and the Apocalypse. As usual, this is a lively discussion!
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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.
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American life is full of conflict – political, social, economic, all types. Today’s guest is Kara Hunter, executive director of the Yolo Conflict Resolution Center, who knows a lot about the subject. We discuss the center, what it does in Davis, who uses it, the results they get, and also about conflict overall – including how she’d advise the Senate if she were given the task of resolving their conflicts in the wake of the Supreme Court Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. “The first thing I’d ask all of them to do is stop talking,” she says, “and start listening to one another.”
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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.” |
Today's program rebroadcasts an interview from January 2013 with Joel Davis, a hometown Davis journalist whose book “Justice Waits: The UC Davis Sweetheart Murders” played a key role in solving the 1980 Davis kidnapping and murder of UC Davis students John Riggins and Sabrina Gonsalves. A Sacramento Superior Court jury convicted Richard Hirschfield of the crime in 2012, nearly a third of a century after the murders.
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Today I welcome back Steve Boschken, an expert in Davis real estate, for a talk about the Davis market, trends, when the next recession might arrive, who’s buying houses in Davis, how the new rental housing in the works might affect demand, the number of houses listed for more than $1 million (1 in 4), and if building small homes would help make housing more affordable in Davis … and whether voters would allow them. He says he knows an architect who has considered it in Davis.
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Mayor Pro Tem Gloria Partida and Councilman Dan Carson joined the Davis City Council in July after winning election in June. On today’s program they talk about their first priorities, what the city needs from UC Davis (and perhaps what UC Davis wants from the city), the difficulty of engaging a largely disinterested public … and, because this is still a town where people contact council members over concerns as micro-local as barbecue smoke, the best ways to reach them, and how soon you'll hear back if you do.
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About 16 million Americans served in World War II. Today, 73 years after that war ended, perhaps 3 percent of those veterans are alive. Among the survivors, an even smaller number lived through infantry combat during the war—and today’s guest is one of them. Francis Resta, who lives in Davis and was born in 1925, was a mortar-man and machine gunner in the 102nd Infantry Division, and fought in Europe. Today we talk about his experiences, living through “insane” and “endless” combat, post-traumatic stress disorder, why many combat vets shun the idea they’re heroes, and why he wants to talk about it all now.
*This episode was awarded First Place in "Radio/Audio – Non-Commercial: Public Affairs Program" at the San Francisco Press Club 2019 Awards Dinner.
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Rosa Washington Olson grew up in the South and has lived in Davis for nearly half a century. She taught school for decades, earned advanced academic degrees, and as a public speaker she can engage people with warmth, understanding, and purpose—and challenge them with blunt facts. She grew up in a strong family amid “a time of overt racism,” she says, “but we had parents who shielded us from that hostility, and they always said to us ‘you are somebody. You will be somebody.’ ”
She has endured racism countless times, including in Davis. “Everything in the South was overt. You knew. All of the other places away from the South, hid behind the South, with their subtle, latent racism. People who went north thought they were going somewhere and realized they ran into the same kind, but in a different way.”
She also says she loves life and enjoys people, and wants to encourage, motivate and build bridges with other people. She likes Davis. The community of church is important to her (she started going to the Davis United Methodist Church in 1972). And she remains hopeful. “We are not to forget society,” she says. “It’s not an I and it’s not a me, it’s us together.”
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