On November 14, KQED broadcast a six-minute PBS report about a nonprofit called “The Living New Deal” that’s been actively documenting public works projects constructed during the heart of the Great Depression throughout the United States. This particular segment talks specifically about major projects in the Bay Area, including the Bay Bridge and Berkeley High, but what gets really interesting is when you open the New Deal Map and do an online search for any given location. Projects in the Grand Lake neighborhood we call home included Davie Tennis Stadium, the Morcom Rose Garden, and a mundane stretch of sidewalk on Lakeshore with a 1940 WPA stamp.

A November 17 article in The Oaklandside by Azucena Rasilla reported on a group of volunteers who call themselves the Trash Falcons. In just over two years, they’ve picked up eleven tons of garbage around the northeastern side of Lake Merritt and, on a couple of occasions, they’ve participated in clean-ups on Grand Avenue and at the Splash Pad that were organized by Councilmember Nikki Bas. If you want to pitch in, the group meets at the corner of Perkins and Grand every Sunday morning.

Hot off the presses is a new recipe book by Victoria Wise titled Vic’s Little Book of Good Eats Vol. 1. We’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Victoria, but thanks to her online resume we know that she cooked the very first meal at Chez Panisse and two years later opened  Pig-by-the-Tail Charcuterie across the street in Berkeley. Formerly neighbors on Calmar, we have met her husband, Rick Wise, who has enjoyed a long career as a cinematographer and more recently as an art photographer. All the images in Victoria’s new cookbook are by Rick, as are a couple of his collages that we routinely use on our Farmers Market page. More about the cookbook at this link. If you’d like to check out Rick’s photo gallery, please click on this link.