UC Davis
Can Electric Bikes Help Save The Planet?
Pre-pandemic, electric Jump bike rentals in Sacramento trailed only Paris in popularity. Today, electric bike ownership is soaring. From commuters to joyriders to grandmothers, e-bikes are turning even non-cyclists into e-vangelists (like Rocklin City Councilmember Jill Gayaldo, pictured below) and creating a greener, less fossil-fuel-filled world. Now we just need more of our region’s leaders to make it easier and safer for all of us to plug and play.
Action Planet
It’s easy to be green this spring. From planting trees to catching an eco-themed juggling act, here are fun (and free) ways to celebrate Earth Day and help the planet throughout the month of April.
Man. Verses. Nature.
Like the ripple effect of a pebble dropped into the still water of a pond, Gary Snyder’s outsized influence extends far beyond the edges of his remote, hand-built home in the woods near Nevada City. At 92, the poet and environmentalist has lived an extraordinary life—from birthing the Beat Generation with fellow writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to winning the Pulitzer Prize for his book Turtle Island, which has been described as a “poet’s love lyrics to planet Earth,” and even inspiring the release of the Pentagon Papers. With two new major anthologies out, this former UC Davis professor is proving that he still has a lot to teach us all.
"By Any Means Necessary, I Will Keep Being an Artist."
Painter. Bluesman. Filmmaker. Educator. After retiring in 2012 from UC Davis, where he was an art professor for 43 years—and on the eve of a solo show at the Manetti Shrem Museum—Mike Henderson reflects on shining shoes as a young man in Missouri, seeing his soul in Van Gogh's Potato Eaters, believing he had lost decades' worth of paintings in a fire, and securing his place in one of the greatest university art departments ever assembled.
Q&A with Dr. Shani Buggs of UC Davis' Violence Prevention Research Program
Gun violence in the United States has become associated with polarized news cycles emerging from deadly mass shootings. But what causes those shootings? And what can we learn about gun violence from the nearly 99% of American firearm deaths that aren’t linked to mass shootings? Dr. Shani Buggs seeks to answer these questions and many others in her work with the Sacramento-based Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis, shedding new light on the ways that race, trauma, economic insecurity and intimate partner tragedies intersect with guns—and how violence can be stopped at the community level and beyond.
A Viral Sensation
When Dr. Richard Corsi floated an idea on Twitter for a highly effective, inexpensive, DIY air purifier to help lower the risk of Covid, his light-bulb moment went viral in the best possible way. Now many of America’s top scientists—and even the White House—are touting the invention, and people all over the planet are thinking inside the box.
Wayne Thiebaud
(The First 90 Years)
The Crocker Art Museum is honoring him with a major retrospective. The California Hall of Fame is about to induct him alongside Barbra Streisand and James Cameron. And The New York Times’ chief art critic says there’s “no painter in America that is more satisfying or skilled.” But on the eve of his 90th birthday, after a career that took him from Disney to the Whitney, Sacramento’s Wayne Thiebaud is hardly resting on his laurels. In fact, he’s just getting warmed up.
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