| AG Brown: East Palo Alto 'Murder Capital' No More
EAST PALO ALTO, Calif. -- California Attorney General Jerry Brown visited East Palo Alto Tuesday to tout a recent local and state effort to crack down on violence in the city once dubbed the murder capital of the United States.
Following an outbreak of violence that police say resulted in six homicides and 67 firearm assaults between November and January, a nine-month combined effort began between community members, police and the state Department of Justice. Critics: Too Early To Call EPA Crime Crackdown A Success The program, Project Safe Neighborhood, was aimed at curbing drug trafficking and gang violence in East Palo Alto. .
Horvitz roots out a fun folk-rock outlet
The first half of 2008 has not yet been named Wayne Horvitz Season, but perhaps it should be. Horvitz has four albums coming out between now and May, is embarking on a long-form collaboration with author Sherman Alexie based on the James Welch novel "The Heartsong of Charging Elk" and just got a remarkable review in The New York Times. Writing about Manhattan's Winter JazzFest at the Knitting Factory, New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff wrote, "Mr. Horvitz should have a room named after him at the club ... his aesthetic and his music encoded the notion of 'downtown jazz.' " One "downtown" notion was the idea that genres — whether jazz, classical or klezmer — need not be pure, hierarchical or, for that matter, even relevant. One genre that continually inspires Horvitz is traditional American folk-rock, including the lyrics, the kind done so well by Bob Dylan and his former group, the Band.
Ways to wean travellers off the water bottle
High on the slopes of India's Kangra Valley, Dharamsala is a spiritual, new-agey kind of place that attracts tourists as much for its mountain scenery as its laid-back Tibetan vibe. So when I crested a hill just outside of town nine years ago, what I found shocked me out of my meditative state and seared itself into my conscience. Thousands upon thousands of empty plastic water bottles spilled down the slope. This was the town's solution to a largely tourism-generated problem. Don't drink the water—it's a mantra we live by when visiting regions with unsafe water systems. But drinking bottled water instead isn't a perfect solution. Recycling doesn't exist in many of these countries, and those empties are a mark you leave on the local environment. Of course, everyone wants to avoid water-borne illnesses, which range from diarrhea to hepatitis A to typhoid fever.
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