NorCalUrban

What a great weekend! Last Friday and Saturday we were honored to co-host the Christian Community Development Association's (CCDA) Institute at our church (St. Samuel's). On Friday Noel Castellanos taught the class, "The Church's Role in Community Development" and on Saturday Bob Lupton taught on "Empowerment". Both classes seemed appropiate for what God is doing in East Palo Alto and the Bay Area.  We had an intimate group for both days which made the class interactive and fun. On Thursday night Melissa and I got to spend some time with Noel, and had a great dinner at Palace Barbaque in Sunnyvale. Noel is on a no-carb diet - and there is no better place to eat meat than Palace! I had a major grant application due Friday, so I was in and out for Noel's class - but the couple of hours I spent there were rich. I was able to attend all of Bob's teaching on Saturday. This is my second time through this class - and it seems to get better each time. B...

Join us for the the Christian Community Development Association ( CCDA ) Institute this Friday and Saturday. You can read more  here.   On Friday Noel Castellanos will be speaking on 'The Church's Role in Changing Communities" and on Saturday Bob Lupton will be speaking on "Empowerment".  Classes are from 9 to 4 each day and are located at St. Samuel at 1199 E. Bayshore Rd. in East Palo Alto. Call our office at 650-328-1890 for more information. 

This year is Samuel's last year in little league. It seems like yesterday he began playing in the Junior Giants program in Jack Farrell Park in EPA. This year, after some coaxing from his head coach Bruce,  I decided to be an assistant coach. The last time I coached was when Sam was in pitching machine league about three years ago. I've been pleasantly surprised how much fun this has been. The Ravenswood Kubs have a real shot at the league championship this year, after struggling over the last few years. They are a great group of kids.  Samuel has been on a tear in his hitting lately. He's batting lead off and for the last three games has been smoking the ball. Yesterday he batted three times, with a single, double and his first home run in little league. (In pitching machine league he once hit for the 'cycle'.) But this home run was no cheap shot - it cleared the center field fence in the deepest part of the yard. Thanks to Coach Bruce and others for searching for ...

It was an unusually warm weekend around the Bay this weekend. When it would usually be 65 degrees, it was around 90 in EPA. As many Bay folks do - when it gets above 75 we all start whining and head to the beach. What a beautiful beach day! Being true city lovers, Sam Melissa and I went to Ocean Beach in San Francisco.  Parts of it is beautiful black sand beach. The beach was packed, lots of folks, lots of sights. It's an odd day in San Fran when it's 80 degrees at the beach. After the beach we drove down the coast to Half Moon Bay arriving at one of our favorite restaurants the Flying Fish Grill. If you're ever in the area, check them out. It's a bit of a 'hole in the wall' place - but it has great, cheap seafood. I had the chioppino (a San Francisco creation - it's a Italian Seafood soup in a tomato base) and Sam and Melissa had their amazing fish and chips. (I loved the chioppino, but it was a little heavy on the calamari this time). If you're goin...

Charisse Domingo's  (from YUCA) photos, thoughts and work about the violence in 2007. 

The Redsox are foiled again! CNNSI Reports: NEW YORK (AP) -A construction worker's bid to curse the Yankees by planting a Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot in the ballpark. After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the remaining concrete Sunday and pulled it out. The team learned that a Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the stadium from a report in the New York Post on Friday, team officials said. Yankees President Randy Levine said the team at first considered leaving the shirt. "The first thought was, you know, it's never a good thing to be buried in cement when you're in New York,'' Levine said. "But then we decided, 'Why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?''' The worker had buried a ...

CNN.com recently had a article on the fees in banking, credit card and cell phones. It showed how these fees are boosting profits and becoming a key part of profit margins for these companies. I would like to highlight the overdraft fee issue.  The article states: - In '07, consumers paid $63 billion in credit card fees, over - $38 billion in bank fees (overdraft and other fees)  - Credit unions often have lower fees than banks - Being late with credit card bill can trigger fee of up to $35 - Credit card cash advance can carry 23 percent interest, plus fee It began with a story about a pizza: Terri Lovin and her husband, Harold, may have had the world's most expensive pizza ... at $117 a pie. No, it's not gourmet dining. A cashier charged the couple twice for the $22.50 pizza. That caused the Lovins, who live in Hawaii on a fixed income, to be overdrawn on their bank account by less than a dollar. And that resulted in multiple banking overdraft fees of $24 each. And that...

TRACY (CBS 5) ― As families from Oakland, San Francisco and East Palo Alto migrate to places such as Tracy and Stockton, police in the Central Valley say they are bringing in more young people with problems to the area. The gang graffiti that litters an otherwise well-kept city park in Tracy is a symbol of the growing pains now tormenting Central Valley communities. And police say the very children whose parents might have crossed the Altamont Pass to escape the streets of Oakland, San Francisco or East Palo Alto are driving the trouble. For law enforcement agencies such as the Tracy Police Department, the crime fight becomes even more complex because gangs are commuting to and from the Bay Area to commit crimes. See the video here.

Rudy at Urban Onramps recently posted this link. What an amazing article on the Pope's call to a faith filled response to the conflict with Islam. It calls us back to a faith filled response to our current challenge. This article resonated with my feelings about the church. I believe that in our country the Church has been all to connected to a political worldview. Our strength lies with our ability to be the subversive underground Kingdom that is governed by a different set of values. When the Church is the Church, separate from the State, we have authority and the world is forced to notice. The article states: A self-described revolution in world affairs has begun in the heart of one man. He is the Italian journalist and author Magdi Cristiano Allam, whom Pope Benedict XVI baptized during the Easter Vigil at St Peter's. Allam's renunciation of Islam as a religion of violence and his embrace of Christianity denotes the point at which the so-called global "war on ter...