“Your Sacramento Guide: How a corner cafe is changing the town of Ione - Sacramento Bee” plus 2 more

Your Sacramento Guide: How a corner cafe is changing the town of Ione - Sacramento Bee
National Park app field guide misses more than hits - San Jose Mercury News
Voter’s guide: Vincent Sheheen - The State

Your Sacramento Guide: How a corner cafe is changing the town of Ione - Sacramento Bee

Posted: 30 Oct 2010 11:44 PM PDT

Ione is an earnest little town, a bit out of the way and off the map unless you're driving a truck from Galt to Jackson.

It's not so ridiculously isolated that cyclists from around the region don't go out on weekends to cruise the rolling grassland roads, but it's far enough west of the more-beaten foothill paths and far enough east of bigger cities – it's about 40 miles from downtown Sacramento – to be mostly a self-contained community.

That's good and bad. People there have a genuine sense of their history and connections, and they have that small-town neighborliness toward one another and people passing through.

But in recent years, Ione could support only small businesses, and there was no real gathering place, no social crossroads or communal hangout.

Then in December 2008, Kraig Clark, a Fair Oaks resident but a son of Ione, opened Clark's Corner, a bright yellow cafe and village hub at the corner of Main and South Church streets, and Ione became a different place.

Not right away, and not so much that many nonlocals would really notice. But Ione is changing in a lot of nice little ways.

This is a story about exactly that: nice little things. But it's also about how someone who wants to make a difference actually can, whether it's in a small town, a busy neighborhood or a big city. Sometimes small things have big impacts.

Clark's Corner is, in some ways, a small thing. It's a comfortable place with very good food, but it's not likely to prompt many 40-mile drives. Still, if you're in the area, and even more, if you live nearby or are from Ione, then it's something special.

Marta Bracken has lived in Ione for four years and works at the Hair Design salon next door on Main Street.

"Most of the traffic is just people driving to Jackson or somewhere. There wasn't really much to stop for here," Bracken said. "But since they've opened, Main Street has come alive a little. This is still a pretty quiet place, but I've watched the town kind of change."

Clark's Corner has a big, comfortable, just-modern-enough room that would fit smoothly into Sacramento's midtown or on San Francisco's Chestnut Street. It has distressed-wood floors, high ceilings, a few soft chairs mixed in with the tables, lots of windows and lots of brick. The feel mixes foothills Gold Rush and urban coffeehouse, and for the Ione community, it's part hangout, part performing arts center and part living room.

"We thought Ione could use a nice place like this," Clark said. "But a big part of the concept was to make it a community center and to give people a place to connect."

Boy, howdy, is it ever a community center. With a 1,000-square-foot banquet and multiuse room and a cozy outdoor patio, they have story time for kids on Tuesday mornings, wine nights on Fridays, music on weekends, Monday night football-watching, art shows, trivia nights, book club gatherings, belly dancing, fiction writers' get-togethers, kickboxing workouts, open-mike nights, coffee meet-ups and, for the wild at heart, meetings of a knitting club.

They also have a community wall – "Put your event here," it says – for doings around Amador County ranging from school volleyball practices and a mind-body-spirit fair to Halloween events and puppies for sale.

"At any time, we're selling tickets to 10 different events," said Andrea Bonham, who manages Clark's Corner and also sits on the Ione City Council. "It could be a school play, a (Preston) Castle fundraiser, a police fundraiser or science camp."

They've also staged some big nights – with authors, with top-line comics, with boxer Tony "The Tiger" Lopez, and with endurance athletes Sally Edwards and Seattle's Barefoot Ted. In September, they hosted a dinner for Chris Horner, a cyclist who rode the Tour de France on Lance Armstrong's Radio Shack team, then a ride with Horner the next day.

And a biggie for Ione was a presentation staged by a Lincoln expert who dresses up as and plays Honest Abe for kids and adults.

"There's some Lincoln connection here," Bonham said. "No one really knows the story, but everyone talks about it. In October, we got ('Abe') up here and people loved it. It was also something that was extra credit for local schools."

Turns out, when they do events with any history lessons attached, they contact the local schools to try to add to their curriculum. That is what community is all about.

"This town is pretty special," Clark said. "There are a lot of people here who are new to it, and we wanted everyone to connect so they'll all feel comfortable. And we want them to meet the old-timers and get a sense of Ione's history."

Ione does have a history worth knowing, but first the back story on Clark.

He is, most of all, a good guy – easygoing, soft-spoken and simply likable. He's also one of Sacramento's most successful entrepreneurs. He graduated in 1991 from California State University, Sacramento, and co-founded the mortgage-risk assessment company CoreLogic Inc., which, before he sold most of it, was among the fastest-growing private companies in the country. Clark now runs Auqeo! Inc., which builds sales organizations for small and midsize tech start-ups.

But who Clark is really shows in Clark's Corner, just as it shows in his support for all kinds of community doings, including the Urban Cow Half-Marathon, one of the most popular runs in Sacramento.

"He was our major sponsor when it was (called) Cowtown, and he owned CoreLogic," said race director Rich Hanna. He helped coach Clark for his first marathon as a member of Team in Training in 2000. "But now Clark's Corner is our sponsor, and I told him there's no way this is going to help your business way up in Ione. He said he still wanted to help."

Clark said he actually used his own money to sponsor the races because he didn't think it was financially responsible to use company funds.

"Causes that people are passionate about resonate with me," Clark said. "Rich really loves running and he's a great coach. I just wanted to help."

That's been his goal with Clark's Corner: to help Ione. His parents and brother live in town. Some of his dad's art is on the walls, and his brother works at the coffeehouse.

Part of one wall has an image of Australia, the home country of his wife, Louise. That's in the same corner of the wall as the Eiffel Tower (where Bonham fell in love with her husband, Ron Radogna). There's also an "I" on the wall for Ione. Clark put his money down on family and on the town's social health and sense of place.

The building itself goes back to the 1870s, when it was a dry-goods store. There was a lot of that sort of thing in Ione in the mid- 1800s. While many foothill towns grew around gold mining, Ione was a supply center because it was a rail and stage hub, and because there were ranches and farms all around.

For the record, it was also called Bedbug and Freezeout, though no one seems to have a good story about why, and the name Ione, according to the city, is believed to have come from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "The Last Days of Pompeii."

In more recent days, the area's biggest employers have been Mule Creek State Prison, the Preston Youth Correctional Facility (which used to be in the gothic and graceful Preston Castle) and the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's training facility.

Then Castle Oaks Golf Club got built in the mid- 1990s, and there seemed to be two groups of people, the long-timers and the newcomers.

"You don't want a town to get split up," Clark said. "We thought maybe we could make this a community center and just make Ione a more connected place for everyone."

On a recent weekday, Pollie Pent and Cindy Lincoln were having a late lunch at Clark's Corner. They're both Ione cops and came from City Hall just across Main Street.

Lincoln only recently started working for the police. She was a retired corrections lieutenant. "I just came here for lunch with my friends because the food is screaming good," Lincoln said. "Now it's also convenient."

Pent was in uniform and on a break from patrol. She said she's watched the subtle changes in the area since Clark's Corner opened.

"It really is a community gathering spot, not just for Ione but for the whole county," she said. "And I've really seen the difference, especially in the past several months. There are a lot of night events, a lot of connections getting made. People are getting info about what's going on here."

None of that is huge, but it matters to people in Ione. It matters just like Clark's Corner's "brand walls" matter. Those are two big wooden walls – one behind the counter, one in the banquet room – with brands from ranches in the Ione Valley and all over the county.

"People are so proud of their brands," Bonham said. "It doesn't seem like much if you're not from a ranching family, but there were grandkids who couldn't wait to get them on the wall."

That's why this one small place is such a big deal. It's given Ione a larger sense of history and connection, it's created an automatic gathering spot and the feel of social possibilities, and it's given people like Pent a place to get hot food or coffee on a cold night.

"There was nothing open around here at night," she said. "This was a real happy miracle for the police department."

Call The Bee's Rick Kushman, (916) 321-1187. Listen to him Tuesdays at 8:40 a.m. on NewsTalk 1530 (KFBK).

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National Park app field guide misses more than hits - San Jose Mercury News

Posted: 30 Oct 2010 11:58 PM PDT

By Karen Schwartz
For The Associated Press

I'm in Rocky Mountain National Park watching the elk resting on the Estes Park golf course when someone from the Visitors' Center approaches me about taking a survey.

I decide to impress him and pull out my iPad, loaded with the brand new National Park Field Guides application. I switch it on, tap the bar that says "Current Location" and smugly present it to him.

"Er. Badlands National Park is a long way from here," he says of the park name that appears on the screen -- 400 miles and two states away.

Turns out this app is not designed to automatically locate your position. I falsely assumed that by tapping a bar labeled "Current Location," it would put me in Rocky Mountain Park. But all I was doing was randomly tapping a spot on the map beneath the bar -- and I happened to tap Badlands. To get information on the park I was in, I would have to physically find the right place on the map, or choose it from an alphabetical list.

And so it was with this application. I really wanted to like it, but it kept disappointing me.

On the positive side, the application covers 50 national parks and is free to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users. It's lighter to carry around than a guidebook and includes descriptions of the parks and lots of information. It lists plants and animals (bird, fish, mammals, trees and wildflowers); things that are poisonous and dangerous; and information about threatened and endangered animals. It even has

audio of bird calls.

On the negative side, the information is provided in a format that resembles an encyclopedia. I can search for "elk" but not for "elk diet." Once I go to the entry for elk, I need to manually scroll through pages that cover: "description," "similar species," "breeding," "habitat," "range," "sign," and "track," until I get to a 700-word "discussion" section, where it tells me what elk eat.

It also tells me that "the Roosevelt subspecies (C. e roosevelti), shown in plate 317 in its rain forest habitat in Washington's Olympic National Park, is found in the Pacific Northwest." Why, I wonder, does it refer to a photograph that isn't included in the guide, and why does it clutter up the page with information about a species that is 1,500 miles away from here?

"The text content we use on eNature.com and in the mobile guide comes primarily from the print editions of the Audubon field guides," software developer Tom McGuire of eNature.com explains. "Even though it's been pretty carefully proofed over the 10 years that eNature has been online, a few little things slipped by."

That's not to say the information isn't useful -- I did learn that elk are mostly nocturnal -- but it certainly isn't as interactive as one would hope from an application.

As I read through the description of elk "bugling" (the term used to describe the species' mating call), I wanted to be able to bring up the sound. But there's no such capability.

And what about maps? The "About Parks" section got me interested in a few hikes that it describes, but where are the trailheads?

Carrie Collins, a spokeswoman for the app, says it is not designed to serve as a travel guide, but more as a comprehensive database of flora and fauna in each park. Hence the title "field guide," rather than "travel guide."

Perhaps most annoying, each time I go to the app, it asks me to register, a move that McGuire says is intentional. (You can bypass this by clicking on the cancel button.)

My final opinion of the app is it's worth having because it doesn't cost anything and covers 50 of the 360 U.S. national parks, including Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Cape Cod National Seashore, and Gettysburg National Military Park.

Still, as the fellow from the Visitors' Center said after looking at the app: "I don't think this is going to keep people from stopping in to see us."

Voter’s guide: Vincent Sheheen - The State

Posted: 30 Oct 2010 08:45 PM PDT

Vincent Sheheen is the Democratic nominee for governor. He emerged from a three-candidate field of Democrats to win the nomination. His fundraising prowess made his nomination inevitable. Sheheen is 39, a scion of a political family in which his uncle was once speaker of the S.C. House and his father ran the S.C. Commission on Higher Education. Many Democrats think he is the best chance the party has had in eight years to win the governor's race. Here are 10 reasons to vote for Sheheen.

1. He's an experienced hand. State Sen. Vincent Sheheen has spent his 10 years in the General Assembly as a respected voice for bipartisan solution-making, from immigration reform, to restructuring to K-12 education funding reform. Haley, however, argues Sheheen and other Senate lawmakers did not act soon enough to prevent the state's jobless fund from going dry.

2. He's a coalition builder. Sheheen is telling lawmakers he will change the culture in Columbia that has been defined for eight years by a rift between Gov. Mark Sanford and state lawmakers. An endorsement by the S.C. Chamber of Commerce was earned in part because of a belief that Sheheen can get the executive and legislative branches working together again.

3. He's a conservative. S.C. is a conservative state and Sheheen is trying to win over independents and some Republicans by emphasizing his conservative views. Sheheen is

pro-life and he's a defender of gun ownership rights. Haley, however, has tried to paint Sheheen as a Washington liberal.

4. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Sheheen and Haley have made similar promises about beefing up the S.C. Department of Commerce, recruiting new industries to the state and building upon the state's economic strengths. Sheheen says the one place he can find common ground with a Republican General Assembly is job creation.

5. He's ready to invest in education. Sheheen makes the choice between he and Haley about whether you think K-12 education is needy or wasteful. Haley's education plan is about cutting what she considers costly and duplicative administration. Sheheen's education goals focus more on teacher pay and training as means to put a more skilled teacher in the classroom. But Sheheen's promises will run into some new budget realities the state faces, as some economist think S.C. will have to fill a $1 billion budget hole next year.

6. He'll bring back two-party government. S.C. is a Republican state. But some voters think government might work better if the political parties were forced to share power. If elected, Sheheen would put the executive branch in Democratic hands, which could serve as a check on the Republican dominated General Assembly. The state's next governor will also play a significant role in redrawing election districts. Sheheen is perhaps the best chance for the election map to give voters real choices by drawing districts where either a Republican or Democrat can be elected. A completely Republican government is likely to draw lines favorable to keeping them in authority for the next decade.

7. More pragmatism, less politics. Where Gov. Mark Sanford was considered by many an ideologue for his eight years in office, Sheheen has shown himself to be far less wed to ideology. Sheheen has supported bills driven by conservatives, having served on the committee that crafted one of nation's toughest illegal immigration laws. He's also supported taking stimulus aid to help public schools, expanding Medicaid and raising the cigarette tax. Those are far less popular issues, but ones Sheheen readily defends as necessary.

8. Tax reform. Both Haley and Sheheen have advocated comprehensive tax reform with the objective of making the state's tax code fairer and make revenues more dependable. Sheheen has been a leading voice in the General Assembly for repealing Act 388 and bringing balance to the system.

9. A voice for restructuring. Sheheen, a Democrat, might have a better shot than Haley in selling the General Assembly on giving the state's chief executive more authority. Many in state government have long argued S.C.'s weak governor needs more authority to hold state agencies accountable.

10. Environmental record. Sheheen and Haley agree on a surprising number of issues, and the disagreements, beyond the rhetoric of political season, are relatively minor. But one place Sheheen has distinguished himself is on environmental issues. Sheheen has a strong track record of being a champion of conservation, recycling and energy- saving green initiatives.

Maps Guides

Sunday, October 31, 2010

“Your Sacramento Guide: How a corner cafe is changing the town of Ione - Sacramento Bee” plus 2 more

“Your Sacramento Guide: How a corner cafe is changing the town of Ione - Sacramento Bee” plus 2 more

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