Ron Thompson and Marcia Gill of Alameda, right, won the first-place award of $250 in the inaugural art show at the City of Alameda’s Earth Day Festival for their fish sculptures. While their sculptures ingeniously included cast-off materials such as saw blades, drill bits, nails and valves, Thompson and Gill’s incorporation of plastic discards unanimously captured the judge’s approval.
Alameda County will receive just $800,000 of $5.5 million of a federal grant after the Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) Approval Authority voted to end a controversial regional training and exercise program and exposition last month.
The UASI, a group that distributes federal grant money for emergency training programs, made the decision at its March 14 meeting after the Alameda County Board of Supervisors (ACBOS) voted 3-2 to make changes to the program two days prior, according to a letter from Shawn T. Sexton, division commander project manager at UASI.
The Alameda City Council met last Monday to tour the Enterprise District at Alameda Point. After a brief meeting at the Ron Cowan Central Bay Operations and Maintenance Facility, Councilmembers toured the district with two stops: Building 530 at 120 Oriskany Ave. and Building 360 on an 18-acre site at West Pacific Avenue and Skyhawk Street.
Doolittle’s copilot died in San Antonio, Tex., April 9
The sad news that Richard “Dick” Cole died on April 9 at the age of 103 marked the passing of the last of the “Doolittle Raiders.”
Cole literally had a front-row seat next to Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle as the copilot in the No.1 bomber. Doolittle and Cole joined navigator Lt. Henry A. Potter, bombardier SSgt. Fred A. Braemer and engineer gunner SSgt. Paul J. Leonard as the first of the raid’s 16 B-25s to fly over Japan and the first to drop a bomb load — four incendiaries aimed at a large factory.
If the turnout at The Local coffeehouse last Saturday is any indication, Alamedans have a strong interest in the future of the Alameda Carnegie Library across from City Hall. A development team looking to turn the former library, dormant since 1998, into the Carnegie Innovation Hall, a place of art, science and community, has a well-developed plan for the building. The new concept for the library and development team have been designed by the library’s neighbor Michael Sturtz, founder of the Crucible, an industrial arts community in Oakland.
