Remembering Loma Prieta 25 Years Later
We begin today with the 25th anniversary of a day few living in the San Francisco Bay Area will ever forget. On Oct. 17, 1989 at 5:04 p.m. a 6.9 earthquake changed everything. The Loma Prieta quake killed 63 people -- most of them crushed in their cars when a double-deck freeway in Oakland collapsed. International media, in town for Game Three of the World Series at Candlestick Park, pivoted to covering the damage. Their focus was telegenic San Francisco and the devastated Nimitz Freeway in Oakland. But it was also chaotic in cities and towns closest to the epicenter. In Watsonville, just north of the Monterey County line, migrant farmers were forced to live in tents in the center of town. For days the magnitude of destruction near the remote epicenter in the Santa Cruz Mountains was overlooked. KQED's Silicon Valley News Editor Beth Willon was living there at the time and lost her home. Twenty-five years later she returned to her old neighborhood to bring us a story about the quake's lasting impact on the way homes are built today.
California Foodways: A Visit to a Dairy Farm Run by Inmates
The stereotypical job for prison inmates is making license plates. But the reality for some inmates in the Central Valley couldn't be more different. Their workplace? A dairy -- where they produce milk for almost all the state's prisons. For the series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse talks to inmates who say the job gives them much more than a small paycheck.
New Exhibit Puts Spotlight on Jewish Contributions to Hollywood
In the 1930s, as the National Socialist Party gained power in Germany, people around the world did what they could to help Jews escape the Nazi threat. Many Jewish filmmakers and producers found refuge in Hollywood, and their contributions forever changed American cinema and culture. Those stories are told in several new museum exhibits across Los Angeles.
Music Review: HowellDevine's 'Modern Sounds of Ancient Juju'
In the '60s, rock impresario Bill Graham introduced the electrified Chicago blues sound to Bay Area audiences when he started presenting these artists on the same bill as rock bands. But there was an older Mississippi Delta blues tradition already in place, an acoustic sound that provides the primary inspiration for the band HowellDevine. Music critic Andrew Gilbert reviews "Modern Sounds of Ancient Juju," a new album that harkens back to the blues' rural roots.