Local Events

Rescue the Rescuers

About two months ago, passerby at the corner of International Boulevard and 42nd Avenue in East Oakland found themselves being followed by a fawn not more than a few days old. Bleating in clear distress, the baby deer was too young to know she should be afraid of humans. She was lucky her mistake didn’t cost her her life.

Photo By Jack Gescheidt

Someone called the police, the police called county animal control, and animal control called Lila Travis at Yggdrasil Urban Wildlife Rescue. Travis drove down to International Boulevard and coaxed the fawn into her car. Once in the safety of the animal shelter, the fawn thrived. She’ll soon be released into the wild.

That fortunate fawn was one of several thousand creatures rescued over the past decade by the volunteers at Yggdrasil, who have turned a rented home on a third of an acre in the Oakland Hills into a refuge for orphaned, injured and sick wildlife. There are about 60 critters in various stages of rehabilitation on the property now: Raccoons, snakes, squirrels, turtles, birds, opossums. In about a month, the animals and their human helpers will need a new home. The rent’s going up by $1,000 and Yggdrasil can’t afford it. Travis, who founded Yggdrasil with her husband in Temescal, 10 years ago, said the non-profit is looking for a new space.

Before Yggdrasil opened, the vast majority of wounded and ailing wild animals discovered by humans would be euthanized by city or county officials. On Thursday, Yggdrasil is hosting a lecture titled, “Secrets of a Familiar Neighbor.” The neighbor in question is the raccoon, a creature with more fascinating traits and habits than one might expect. In addition to talking about raccoons in the wild, Yggdrasil’s resident raccoon expert, Megan Isadore, will discuss ways that humans and raccoons can coexist more peacefully in the urban wild.

Are you interested in helping Yggdrasil? The outfit needs to raise $150,000 to build a new home. But they also need people to write letters of support to the Oakland City Council and the mayor’s office.  They need people to help move when the time comes. They need the community’s creativity.

Pick a Card, Any Card

Born to fourth-generation circus performers in Algeria, Jean-Paul Valjean has juggling in his blood. His motto: “Don’t laugh, it kept me out of the army.”

Jean-Paul Valjean at Work

The French army’s loss is our gain. Valjean brings his one-man circus to the Montclair Library Tuesday evening. Expect Valjean to twist himself into unusual shapes, juggle with his feet, tell jokes, and pull the odd rabbit from a hat.  A free, fun, family-friendly event on a summer evening, that’s why we love the Oakland Public Library. Tuesday, July 20, 7 pm, 1687 Mountain Boulevard.

Public Safety Forum Thursday Night

Did we really just lose 80 cops after years of clamoring for a bigger police force? Do we really have to report a burglary online now? Sadly, yes and yes. Unlike San Jose, which at just about the same time talks were collapsing here in Oakland, struck a deal that postponed for a year laying off at least 70 cops in that city, Oakland City Hall and the cops’ union failed to find common ground. Hopes for getting the cashiered cops back in uniform hinge on a parcel tax in November. City Councilwoman Pat Kernighan writes that five separate polls show that such a measure would fail to garner the needed two-thirds to pass.

If this alarming state of affairs is leaving you a bit baffled, then you might want to consider attending a public safety forum for the mayoral candidates at the Lakeshore Baptist Church Thursday evening. You won’t be surprised to learn that all of the candidates are making public safety key planks in their respective platforms. The question is this: If elected, how would they maintain a functioning police department with budget deficits projected to be $48 million next year, $54 million the following, and $60 million the year after that. What else should we be asking the would-be mayors?

One More in the Race

The Oakland mayor race increased by one Wednesday morning, after Trestle Glen resident Joe Tuman announced that he wanted the top job at City Hall.

For those of you that haven’t seen or heard Tuman talking politics on various TV and radio stations, he’s a political and legal communications professor at San Francisco State University. As a candidate, he’ll have an opportunity to apply some of the rhetorical techniques he wrote about in his 2007 book “Political Communications in American Campaigns.”

Tuman is a Cal grad and has lived in Oakland for 25 years. He says he was “pushed off his perch” and into the race by frustration at the lack of leadership in the city for the past eight years. You can read more about his positions here. It has absolutely no bearing on his potential performance as Oakland’s chief executive, but Tuman’s students at SF State give him pretty high marks on the anonymous Rate My Professor website.

We’ll be talking to Tuman and the other candidates in more depth in coming months, meantime you can see Tuman and the other candidates at a public safety forum Thursday night at the Lakeshore Baptist Church

Remember the Oaks

With the Oakland Athletics lingering in the bottom third of the American League, and the ball club’s owners hankering to leave town, it can be difficult to muster much enthusiasm for professional baseball in the East Bay. Allow us to suggest a journey back to a happier era.

You have two weeks left to see The Oakland Oaks: Pro Baseball in Emeryville, 1913-1955 at the History Room in the Oakland Public Library. Many people know that there was once a Pacific Coast League ballpark where Pixar now stands, but the details of the Oakland Oaks’ glory years have been largely forgotten. Casey Stengel, Mel Ott, and Lefty O’Doul all managed the team. The Oaks’ great rival were the San Francisco Seals. General admission was $1.25. The team won pennants in 1948, 1950, and 1954, the year before they moved to Vancouver and became the Mounties.

The exhibit at the library has a great collection of photos and memorabilia. Here’s a Today in Montclair Trivia Question: The Pacific Coast is still going strong as a Triple-A league. What is the current team name and hometown of the old Oakland Oaks?