If you follow California politics, then you’ve probably encountered the work of Dan Walters. For 33 years he wrote a column for the Sacramento Bee, writing about this state’s extensive cultural, demographic, economic and political changes since the 1960s and 1970s. He left the Bee this month, signed on as a columnist with the nonprofit journalism venture CALmatters, and joins us today to talk about our complex state, where change is constant and common ground can be very hard to find.
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Fifty years ago, the Summer of Love made San Francisco an international focus of pop culture, and people are still talking about the ripples. Today we join the conversation by talking with Gary Lee Yoder, a Davis guitarist/singer/songwriter who lived both here and in San Franciso in 1967. We discuss the Davis band Oxford Circle (he was a member), sitting next to Jann Wenner as Wenner typed up the first issue of Rolling Stone, and events that summer in Davis ... including a concert in Central Park where Yoder called the bluff of a police officer who said the band was playing too loud. In the show's second segment, we interview Steve Faith of Davis during this year’s Pin A Go Go pinball festival, which has grown too big to stick around at its longtime home at the Dixon May Fairgrounds. (This photo shows Davis' Sycamore Lane in 1967.)
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Today’s guests talk about two internet subjects in the news – net neutrality, the rules of which the Federal Communications Commission recently began to repeal, and the status of the civic effort to build a municipal fiber-optic network in Davis. The outcome of each could greatly affect your experience using the internet in Davis. The guests are Mac Clemmens, founder of Digital Deployment in Sacramento (and a well-regarded recipient of a UC Davis MBA) and Steve McMahon, a broadband expert and longtime board member of the Davis Community Network.
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So, how many hours have you spent today being entertained by images on your phone or laptop? Maybe more than you know or want. Today’s guests have a remedy for that—they decided to turn off their screens each weeknight for a week at 6 p.m., and invited others in Davis to do the same. Today five of the members of Davis Girl Scout Troop 1999, all 10 to 11 years old, and parent leader Jacqui Alldritt (in the back), talk about how the experience changed them, the response from friends and classmates, and the value of looking away from YouTube so you can do something else. They played with friends, read, talked and spent time talking with their families. Some have dogs who were happy to get their attention back!
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Maya Sinha writes a new Davis Enterprise column, “Lowbrow,” about “the hidden value in despised things.” Davis, like any place, has its conventions, and on today’s show we talk about bad music, schlocky TV, the value of not being pretentious, the relief it all provides, and how far she’s going to take this concept.
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Mike McPhate lives in Davis, where he writes and assembles stories about California for the online edition of The New York Times. Newsprint is fading as a format, but the Times is no longer just a newspaper. It remains one of the most influential news organizations in the United States, which means McPhate’s work helps to shape the way the country sees and understands California. Today's topics include the job, the “enemy of the people” media criticism from President Trump, how McPhate finds his stories, and why he chose Davis as a base.
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Today's program is a KDRT it's-fundraising-week-so-let's-do-something-different kind of show. Several years ago, a friend at UC Davis asked if I’d consider speaking to his class someday about what I’d learned as a reporter and editor during my newspaper days. I’ve never recorded that talk, but today’s show is based on my notes. So if you're interested in one community journalist's take on the trade, tune in. Among other things, you'll hear segments about what many people seem to really want from the media (“Protect me! Expose them!”); the day a Berkeley City Council member did me the favor of pointing out an obvious hole in a story I'd been proud of; and Ray Bradbury’s advice, when he spoke at Freeborn Hall in the early 1980s, about the best place to get advice when you're trying to figure out how to do something you love. As a news person, you get to talk to many people and learn from their experiences; I try to distill a little of that in today's program.
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Today we talk with Amelia Paterson of Blessed Extracts, a medical marijuana nonprofit that wants to make products in Davis and so is keenly interested in the new marijuana law that the city is creating this spring. We talk about security, regulation, keeping recreational marijuana away from kids, research, why Blessed Extracts wants to make Davis its home, and more. This interview is the last of a three-part series on Davis’ effort to create a new municipal cannabis law now that Californians have legalized recreational use of marijuana throughout the state. If you missed the first interviews, here are links to part 1 (with Davis city administrators Dirk Brazil and Diane Parro) and part 2 (with Yolo County Public Health Officer Ron Chapman).
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Now that Californians have legalized recreational marijuana, Davis is deciding how that change will play out here. Are retail dispensaries OK? How about outdoor growing? Cities and counties across the state face similar decisions. Two weeks ago we talked about Davis’ efforts to collect ideas and comments as City Hall begins to write the city ordinance. Two weeks from now, we'll present an interview with a marijuana advocate. For today's program we talk with Dr. Ron Chapman, Yolo County public health officer, to get his take on legal pot—what research says, lessons from Colorado (which legalized marijuana before California did), the importance of education in keeping marijuana away from kids and youths, ideas for local ordinances, and more.
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Davis is calmly (at least so far) going about the business of creating a city marijuana law, now that Proposition 64 has legalized recreational use of pot in California. The state ballot measure gave Davis, like every town in the state, several choices: Allow growing outdoors? Do you permit retail marijuana shops, and if so where? What about enforcement? How will all this synchronize with what the county, state and federal governments opt to do? On today’s show, Davis City Manager Dirk Brazil and Chief Innovation Officer Diane Parro talk about the current status, decisions facing Davis, what other cities are doing, and developments to date, including comments from the first “community conversation” this month.
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