YUBA CITY — Sikh communities want more visibility and want their stories heard.
Not only should the religious stories be told, but also the stories about how Sikh farmers grow peaches and walnuts, how Sikh community members import food from Mexico or export into Canada, and how they contribute to California’s economy. That’s the view of Jasbir Singh Kang, co-founder of the Punjabi American Heritage Society in Sutter County.
The “Sikh Listening Session” held in Yuba City on Oct. 23 was organized by the California Racial Equity Commission and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs (CAPIAA), and gave community members the opportunity to share their stories.read more
The grave marker now has the names of all who perished in the crash.
In folk music circles, most people know Woody Guthrie’s song “Plane Crash at Los Gatos.”
But few ever visit Fresno’s Holy Cross Cemetery where a mass grave holds the remains of 28 farmworkers who died in the fiery 1948 plane crash that the song is about.
The song bemoans the fact that the farmworkers who were being deported to Mexico had no names in either news reports at the time of the crash or on a diminutive stone that marked their common grave at the edge of the little graveyard. The media reported only the names of the plane’s crew and the immigration officer who died in the crash with them. In protest, Guthrie made up generic names for the migrants and his 1948 words were put to music 10 years later by Martin Hoffman.read more
Editor’s note: ChicoSol is reviving its Highway 99 series that was popular some 10 years ago to mark this year’s Cesar Chavez Day. State Route 99 cuts through California’s Central Valley, where union organizing had a tremendous impact.
by Lindajoy Fenley posted March 27
The final resting place of Cesar Chavez, who led strikes to improve the lot of underpaid and disrespected farmworkers nationwide more than 50 years ago, has the peaceful moniker Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz.
It has been headquarters of Chavez’s United Farm Workers union (UFW) since 1972 and a National Monument where the labor leader’s March 31 birthday has been celebrated annually since 2010. A warning sign that entry to the area is “impassable during high water” serves as a metaphor that the struggle for farmworker rights still faces challenges. Indeed, the bucolic spot tucked into the hills 30 miles east of Highway 99, a few miles before it merges into Interstate 5, is not immune from the controversy that marked Chavez’s life.read more
In the Northern California town of Red Bluff, just south of the Redding Carr Fire, the Tehama District Fairground has been converted to a makeshift staging and resting area for the exhausted fire crews battling the catastrophic fire that has threatened to engulf the whole of Redding to the north.
The townspeople of Red Bluff, who have witnessed the daily exchange of firefighters to and from the fairground, have shown their gratitude for the fire crews by posting “Thank you” signs on the enclosing fence.
The Carr Fire started July 23, and as of Aug. 11, had burned 190,873 acres, destroyed 191 homes and was 57 percent contained, Cal Fire says. The Red Bluff Daily News reported that citizens came out to personally thank the firefighters Aug. 9.read more
Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars feed mostly on the native Pipevine plant that contains a toxic substance that also makes the caterpillars toxic, so that birds and other predators leave them alone.
If you can’t find what you’re looking for, take a look at what you’ve got. The black and red-dotted caterpillar phase of the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly sets a good example of this parable for humans.
Normally, in a more natural setting, the caterpillars attach themselves to rocks or trees. But in lower Bidwell Park’s recent freeway construction site, these familiar objects have been stripped away. In the absence of the customary, the caterpillars must improvise.
They do so by hauling themselves up the sides of the concrete freeway supports where they attach and weave a protective, hard shell around themselves.read more
Manteca, 148 miles south of Chico on Highway 99, is on the route motorists have traveled for years from the Bay Area to YosemiteNational Park.
by Lindajoy Fenley
Dave Gordon’s mural in downtown Manteca harks back to the early 1900s, when trains steamed through fields of bright yellow sunflowers, and watermelon and pumpkin crops made this San Joaquin Valley farm town prosperous. A huge watermelon rides in a small child’s wheelbarrow, tall gray canisters fill the milkman’s truck, a mother with kids in tow holds a couple of sunflowers, and wispy white clouds hover in a clear blue sky.read more
