Redding’s Firechief has a blog and is active on social media

You can catch up with the Firechief of Redding at his blog: From the Firehouse. Be sure to read his review of 2015 at the Redding Fire Department and the record 12,856 calls for service. Chief Gerry Gray is also quite active on twitter @ggfire343 and well worth following for the up-to-the-minute fire coverage in our very flammable region.
Firehouse Blog Gerry Gray

 

Fire is a concern everywhere, and especially with our warm Summers. But I saw two homes burned in town just this week, so dangerous in Winter as well. I have never required the department’s services, but I am reassured that we have these professionals on whom we can rely for emergency help.

FireEngine1Fire ReddingRFD2

Build It in Redding

Spring 2016 classes have been posted for this wonderful Redding after school program, Build It. Classes include:

Lego Robotics
Scratch Computer Programming
Arduino and Electronics
Javascript and HTML
Stop-Motion Animation

As a child, I would have absolutely eaten this stuff up. How terrific that we have this available to today’s Redding youth. Even though I’m in real estate, barely a day goes by that I don’t need to code something in HTML or CSS. It would have been a lot easier to learn as a kid!

Build it

Build It’s Core Values from their About page:

We believe

  • Education is fun
  • When there is passion, there is education
  • Freedom is one of most empowering vehicle of education
  • Creativity is more important than knowledge
  • Generosity multiplies open mind and effortless learning

Therefore we

  • make it fun for everyone come in contact with Build It: paid or non-paid students, parents, social workers, staff, classes, camps, birthday parties, charity events,…
    recognize the spark, and light it on fire!
  • give staff the freedom to run
  • staff give students as much freedom as possible
  • the goal is not to obtain knowledge, but to promote creativity
  • give generously, time, resource, knowledge, and ideas

Build It. That’s Really Redding.

ShastaHigh

Check your solar availability in Redding

Google has a cool feature that uses their mapping knowledge to guestimate your home’s suitability for generating solar power. They call it Project Sunroof. It doesn’t work everywhere, but for the addresses in Redding I tried it worked fine. Check out the results for the Redding City Hall seen below.
Google Project SunroomRedding gets a lot of sun, in case you were unaware. I see some solar installations around town, but seemingly not nearly enough to take full advantage of our sunny climate. This tool may help you decide to go solar. Check your address and see what you might save. Thanks Google.

Reflecting on life around Shasta long ago

Curating this intriguing video here. I often wonder what it was really like in the Northstate, say 600 years ago. We know very little for certain. But from bits and pieces of history I’ve learned, a kind of mental picture emerges. Thousands of people living along the rivers and streams that make life abundant here. Then abruptly decimated by plague and disease brought here via contact with the “old world.” By the time the Gold Rush hit around 1849, that larger indigenous culture was nearly two hundred years gone. What little was left was crushed by mining and other natural resource exploitation. Not even like they traded land for beads. It was simply taken.

After that, we know more. A native village on the north side of the river from early Redding existed in an uneasy and ultimately doomed relationship with the town. Remaining tribal fragments are today scattered in various Rancherias. Remnants of what we would today describe as genocide. Trying to visualize the whole picture is impossible with so many pieces of the story missing. And then this brief video added an important piece to the picture.

I like to think that if you try hard enough, you can visualize just a glimpse of first people’s lives when observing the natural beauty that surrounds us in the northstate. Lives engaged hunting and gathering. Bountiful salmon, smoked for keeping on pole racks along the river. Menacing Wolves, Mountain Lions, and terrifying Grizzly Bears. A complex oral history passed down around a village fire. And not romanticized. They were just like all humans, good and bad. Also tribalism can bring out the best and worst in humankind.

And then it was gone.

And so the collective history of humanity in the Americas will always have a big gaping hole.

MtShasta Lenticular1

Shasta County mental health resources

Mental health issues affect everyone.

Listen to the stories of these local brave faces and their journeys.

If you, or anyone you know can use help, there are resources at Shasta County:
To access mental health services 24 hours a day, call (530) 225-5252.

If you are considering suicide and need to talk to someone, call 800-273-TALK (24-hour national line) or (530) 244-2222 (local).

Here is a link to a county resource website:
http://shasta.networkofcare.org/mh/

Stand against stigma

Sign the petition to bring a UC to Redding

I remember this well. About 15 years ago the cities of Merced and Redding were in a battle for the next University of California. Even though Merced was located less than 30 miles to CS Stanislaus, a decision was made to place the new campus in Merced. Recently a bill was introduced to create a new UC with a STEM theme and Northern California students and families want the University of California to build this newest campus in Redding. You can sign the petition to bring the UC to Redding.
University of Redding “Where science lives.” It’s ReallyRedding.

A Martian marathon

Recently, the Martian robot rover Curiosity completed a journey of more than 26 miles on Mars. Over 11 years. You can watch a time lapse of the journey in this video.
It seems to me that years from now, when looking back on this period of history, this will seem a more important accomplishment than most things we see in the daily news.
Robot planet explorer from California. From the Red Planet to Really Redding.

Visit the Courthouse Museum in Old Shasta

Before Redding existed, Shasta was the queen city of Northern California. Shasta’s mostly fireproof main street now lies in ruin. But you can catch a glimpse life in the Gold Rush era and more at the Courthouse Museum.
Courthouse Museum Christmas 2013The ruins are now Shasta State Historic Park. There are also live demonstrations of pioneer skills like blacksmithing that go on in the park. Here are a few images I captured of what the museum typically has on display.



Keeping in touch with the past. Just a 6 mile ride west of town, it’s Really Redding.