This Blue Oak (Quercus douglassi) is one of 10 Chico Heritage Trees. It has a 53-inch diameter, quite large for a Blue Oak because they grow very slowly. Chico’s urban forester, Richie Bamlet, estimates the Oak is about 150 years old. It can be viewed at the east end of Baroni Park or by bicycling down to the end of Preservation Oak Drive off East 20th Street.
If Bamlet is correct about the tree's age, it took root during Reconstruction after the American Civil War. For more information about Chico’s Heritage Tree Program click here or watch for more ChicoSol photo features on this topic.
More than 300 people gathered Saturday at City Plaza and then walked through downtown Chico in support of suicide prevention.
Chico’s eighth annual Out of the Darkness Walk included some emotional remembrances from nine area residents, each holding a paper heart representing being touched by suicide or attempted suicide.
The event drew 307 walkers and raised nearly $10,500 that will be used “to prevent suicide, to defeat the stigma surrounding mental illness, and to support survivors of suicide loss and those at risk of suicide,” said walker co-organizer Lisa Currier, who directs Crisis Care Advocacy and Triage.
More than 30 people gathered Friday outside Chico State’s Bell Memorial Union (BMU) to protest a Christian clinic — Women’s Resource Clinic — that was hosting an anti-abortion speaker at its annual gala.
Protesters, organized by a Mobilize Chico group called “Women on Reproductive Defense,” or “WORD,” said the Women’s Resource Clinic – not to be confused with Chico’s Women’s Health Specialists – is actually an anti-abortion organization that fails to provide “medical treatment” or “clinical care” and has intentionally confused the community about its purpose.read more
upper photo shows billboard as it was Wednesday night; lower photo by Chicosol shows removed art on Thursday morning.
by Leslie Layton
The brief appearance of a billboard that depicted President Trump as a Hitler-esque figure has unleashed a wave of hateful, threatening messages directed at a Chico woman and her vintage clothing store.
Nicholle Haber, owner of “Rouse & Revolt,” said Thursday she was shocked by the maliciousness of people who were upset by the billboard art that was posted at East Third and Mangrove avenues in Chico Wednesday night. The billboard appeared to have been scraped off entirely by early Thursday, hours after a Chico television station aired a story.read more
We will never be the same because of you,
We will never be the same without you,
You will be remembered. –From a poem by film director Lee Mun Wah in remembrance of Marc Anthony Thompson
by Dave Waddell
Marc Thompson had a big smile – broad and gap-toothed — and an even bigger personality. He made a mark on people, “like a blazing star across the midnight sky,” in the words of activist Lee Mun Wah, one of Thompson’s mentors. And he had dedicated his young life to fighting against a litany of social injustices.read more
Tyler Rushing, who died during a chaotic confrontation in close quarters with Chico police, most likely succumbed to an earlier “devastating gunshot” wound from a private security guard responding to a burglary.
That’s the conclusion of Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey in a 17-page report made available to ChicoSol and other news media prior to a press briefing by Ramsey this morning.read more
