The canneries that were once a key industry in the Valley of Heart’s Delight are all gone now, but if you look around San Jose you’ll see remnants of them. Some, like the big water towers, are obvious and others are more subtle.
Del Monte Plaza, a tiny courtyard on Hannah Street near Auzerais Avenue, is one of the latter. The open-air space is styled like a plaza at a Mexican rancho, with potted plants, benches and a small fountain. The part that makes it special are the ceramic-tile displays on the walls with photographs featuring cannery workers and showing what life was like back in those days. At least, that’s what you would see if the tiles had not become so faded out from the elements over the years.
That’s where a new nonprofit, Stakeholders + Neighborhood Initiative, is coming in with a plan to give the displays some TLC. It was formed last year by community leaders in the greater Gardner community with the intent of continuing the work started by the Diridon Area Neighborhood Group (DANG). And if the name reminds you of San Jose’s old Strong Neighborhoods Initiative, that’s by design. Its leadership includes co-presidents Kathy Sutherland and Laura Winter and board members Mary Pizzo and Sarah Springer, all veterans of neighborhood associations in the city.
S+NI launched the Del Monte Art Rehabilitation Advised Fund in October after identifying a donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, to purchase and install new tiles. Bert Weaver, S+NI’s treasurer, said the group is thrilled to engage with the community on the project and looks forward to more opportunities to support neighborhoods.
You can find out more about S+NI at www.thesni.org, including its plans to help revitalize the Gardner Community Center.
GETTING JAZZED: San Jose Jazz deserves a round of applause after announcing that it’ll be providing an additional 20 musicians with $1,000 grants for the third year of its Jazz Aid Fund. That brings the initiative’s total to $110,000 since it was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, with $80,000 of that going to artist commissions and the rest for performance fees.
The artists receiving grants this year are from all around the Bay Area and include Oakland vocalist Tiffany Austin, Los Gatos roots reggae artist Kava Jah, San Jose singer/songwriter Jackie Gage, Oakland harpist Destiny Muhammad, Alameda pianist Adam Shulman, and Foster City teen trumpeter Skylar Tang. Six of them — and we don’t know who yet — will premiere their commissioned works at the third annual SJZ New Works Fest in downtown San Jose, set for April 14-29, 2023.
You can read more about each of the grant recipients at www.sanjosejazz.org/jazz-aid-fund.
CAMPING BUDDIES: Peter Carlino of corporate caterer Entrees Unlimited and Jerry Baker, a former executive vice president of Fairchild, have known each other since their kids went to Archbishop Mitty High together. So after Baker retired in 2001 and decided to launch a nonprofit to give back to people with special needs, Carlino got on board right away. And his expertise in the catering business was a big help for Tuolumne Trails, a camp the nonprofit created near Groveland for special needs kids and young adults that welcomed its first campers in 2008.
Carlino designed the commercial kitchen in the camp’s Great Hall and continues to serve on its board. He remembers being particularly touched after spending a week at camp with teenagers who were all burn victims. “I was plugging for donations for the camp on live TV,” he said. “I started crying because it was so moving.”
Of course, Tuolomne Trails had to close for summer 2020 because of COVID-19 and two shortened summer sessions followed that, which really stretched the nonprofit’s budget. Carlino says the nonprofit board — which includes Baker’s wife, Paula, and several other Silicon Valley veterans — is working to get things back on track for 2023. “We were hurt so bad by being closed during COVID, we are really on a push,” he said. You can find out more at www.tuolumnetrails.org.
WATER WORKS: Andy Gere, the president and chief operating officer at San Jose Water, spends a lot of his time worrying about droughts, water rates and infrastructure, but he got to enjoy his job a bit more last Monday as he delivered a $15,000 check to Washington Elementary School in San Jose to send 75 of the school’s fifth-graders to science camp at Camp Campbell next spring.
The funding was available after San Jose Water decided to not hold its barbecue this year and wanted to do something charitable with the money, and Corporate Communications Manager Sharon Whaley made the connection with Washington School, where the students are mostly from lower-income households.
Source: www.mercurynews.com