This coming week, the Alameda Food Bank (AFB) will gather for the annual volunteer appreciation event — the one time a year when the volunteers come to be served rather than do the serving themselves. A special focus for the event will be the 40th anniversary of AFB, and how it has carried out its mission: “to provide nutritious food to the low-income residents of the City of Alameda on a non-discriminatory basis.”
Last November California voters passed Proposition 64, which allows anyone 21 or older to buy recreational marijuana (cannabis) from licensed California sellers beginning January 1, 2018. State lawmakers continue enacting legislation to regulate this multibillion dollar industry.
In August 2015, we lost two generous Alamedans; and now in August 2017, Alameda has shown how it gives back and remembers by creating a beautiful public space at Krusi Park that is open to all.
Two years ago, Rachel Shahinian, 50, and her daughter, Annika Zinsley, 10, were killed by a driver going the wrong direction on State Highway 120. The Krusi Park Stage & Gathering Space behind Otis Elementary School, where Annika attended school, celebrates the inspiration to live generously that is their legacy — offering a space for performance, gatherings and time outdoors.
There has been a secretive effort by city staff to rename one of Alameda’s beaches. It’s not only bad form, it’s a bad idea. Breakwater Beach is a small beach located at Alameda Point near the Navy’s former campground and the city’s Encinal Boat Launch Facility. The beach and its adjacent Bay Trail are under the jurisdiction of the East Bay Regional Park District. If not for the breakwater there, a barrier that protects the harbor from the force of the waves, the beach would not exist.
