We visit Chico's Blue Room Theatre to talk with formidable female actors in the play "PUMA" about unstoppable women wrestlers. We also talk with a teacher/student team of artists from the Pleasant Valley High Art Department whose paintings celebrate the renewal of nature following the devastation wrought by North State fires.

This week on Cultivating Place, the third installment in the Seeds of September four part series– we’re joined by Rowen White, founder of Sierra Seeds a seed and seed advocacy cooperative in Nevada County, Calif. Rowen, a Mohawk woman who serves on the Indigenous Seed Keeper’s Network and is current chair of Seed Savers Exchange, shares with us her love, purpose and poetry of seed stewardship. Join us!

We visit Mission San Juan Capistrano this week, the seventh California mission, first claimed by Spain in 1775 but officially founded in November of 1776. It’s still a bit hard to believe that a schmaltzy 1939 song by Leon René, When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano—recorded by everyone from Gene Autry and Glenn Miller to the Ink Spots and Pat Boone—is responsible for the excited flutter here in spring. Every year on March 19, St. Joseph’s Day, tourists flock to town to welcome cliff swallows as they arrive from their annual 6,000-mile migration from Goya, Argentina.

Local researcher Maris Thompson collected stories of immigration in the German American Midwest during World War I. Award-winning NPR journalist Tom Gjelten talked to immigrant families in Virginia for his book A Nation of Nations. This week join Nancy for immigration stories past and present.

Nearly 260 of the more than 1,000 homes lost in the Carr Fire were within the city limits of Redding. At Tuesday night’s city council meeting an update was given on the cleanup process.

The council granted City Manager Barry Tippin’s request to continue a local state of emergency which allows him to sign contracts for cleanup and infrastructure repair without council approval.  It also allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to reimburse the city for a majority of the expenses involved. Residents who lost homes only have until the end of the month to opt in or out of cleanup by the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. 

Watch Monday's full Chico City Council debate below. 

Eight of the nine candidates vying for a seat on the Chico City Council faced off Monday night at a League of Women Voters event on the Chico State campus.

In terms of municipal politics, all of the candidates love Bidwell Park, they want better public safety, more decorum and less heated rhetoric, passenger service at the airport, Chapmantown annexation to go smoothly and for Chico to be envied elsewhere. Most boast long local roots. 

The full audio of Sunday's debate is available below. 

About 450 people gathered in Anderson Sunday, watching Republican Congressman Doug LaMalfa meet Democratic challenger Audrey Denney in person, for the first of two face to face events.

At the conclusion, both candidates received broad applause and partial standing ovations from the crowd jammed into Anderson High School.

The event, organized by the League of Women Voters of Shasta County, was both cordial and civil. But it also showed the wide contrasts in style and perspective. 

On 9/14 we visit Theatre on the Ridge in Paradise to hear from the director and the cast from TOTR's current production "Women in Jeopardy," a comedy-mystery.  We also visit MoNCA (Museum of Northern California Art) in Chico to chat with the curator of the current exhibition of works by San Francisco artists reflecting on African-American lives and culture. We also talk with one of those artists. She photographs many different objects with sentimental significance to members of the SF African-American community.