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.
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.
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’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
Even if you’re not Eddy Money, you can get two tickets to the paradise we have here in Shasta County… for not very much money at all. RABA stands for Redding Area Busing Authority, and offers rides around Redding for a base fare of $1.50. Recently, they launched a new online interactive map for Redding area bus riders.
Getting around without spending much money. That’s Really Redding.
Here’s a sweet little video put together by Rocky Slaughter of of Sugar Pine Media. Featuring music by Redding artist Tracy Manuel from Miracle Mile Records.
There are two popular spots in the mountains surrounding Redding for casual snowplay, Eskimo Hill and Snowman Summit. Eskimo Hill is near Lassen Peak on Hwy 44, and Snowman is on the way to McCloud on Hwy 89. Recently, I took some images of our family outing to Snowman Summit, below.
Snowman Summit is about an hour’s drive from Redding. It has the added advantage of having a Snowman Summit webcam, courtesy of CalTrans, so you can see snow conditions in real time.
[edit] Tickets taken! That was quick. Thanks, readers.
Redding friends, I have 2 tickets to the afternoon performance of the band Decades at the Cascade today, a benefit for the Sheriff’s Assoc. A $40 value, free for the asking. So ask! (530) 356 4500.
Well technically called a UAV for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Drone imagery of Redding’s Sundial Bridge is presented here as captured by imaging. The use of drones like the DJI are so important when trying to get amazing footage like this. Amateur and professional photographers/ videographers have been in awe of their capabilities for some time and this video vindicates their endorsement. Beautiful Redding.
Side note: It’s regrettable that use of drones to shoot real estate videos (or any commercial video) remains illegal in the U.S. except in rare cases. Meanwhile, you can use “hobbiest” UAVs for unpaid imagery like this. The photographic quality has come so far. I would love to use this tool for my home seller clients.
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. Redding 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.
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.
