It’s Election Season and as always, CAPS Media is actively engaged. Recently, CAPS crews produced a series of Video Voter 2020 information segments with candidates for the Ventura City Council and the Ventura Unified School District Board. Each candidate was given 2 minutes to present a general statement and then asked to respond to three specific questions from CAPS moderators. Candidates for City District 2 are Doug Halter, Dougie Michie and Christie Weir; District 3 candidates are Barbara Brown, Aaron Gaston, William Cornell and Mike Johnson; District 7 candidates are Heather May Ellinger, Nancy Pedersen, Joe Schroeder and Michael James Nolan. VUSD Area 3 candidates are Jackie Moran and Amy Callahan. The Video Voter series airs on Channel 6 and streams on CAPS Media and on social media thoughout the election season. Broadcast times for City Council candidates include Thursday Oct 8th at noon, Friday at 9am, Saturday at 5pm and Sunday at 8pm. VUSD Video Voter statements air Thursday the 8th at 7pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 9:30p and Sunday at 6pm. Check the schedule found on capsmedia.org for more dates and times.

The CAPS team is also collaborating with the League of Women Voters in staging and distributing a series of candidate forums and voter information discussions, all of which are airing and streaming on CAPS Media outlets.

CAPS Media board member Kathy Good is producing and hosting a series of voter information programs for her “In The Women’s Room” radio show which airs on CAPS Radio KPPQ 104.1 at 8am on Mondays and 2pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Kathy’s in-depth and informative interviews with officials and experts explore a wide range of issues pertaining to Ventura County elections. Elizabeth Rodeno, CAPS Media program director, stated: “Kathy is absolutely awesome. Her interviews are always engaging, personal and informative. Kathy is a treasure for KPPQ and all of Ventura.”

The remarkable and resourceful ECTV students in the El Camino High School media program at CAPS Media, are producing a series of historic interviews exploring the Chicano activist movements of the past with participants who experienced the awareness-raising, cultural events in the Chicano Moratorium of 1970. Due to the COVID-19 realities, the interviews are recorded in a hybrid-zoom format, in English and Spanish, with guests isolated in the CAPS Media studio and students conducting the interviews from their homes. The programs will air on both Channel 15 and on CAPS Radio KPPQ at 104.1 and streaming on the MyTuner app and hosted on the KPPQ Podcast network.

For Ventura County, CAPS crews continue to cover the weekly COVID-19 updates in English and Spanish. The updates can be viewed on the County website at ventura.org and on the county’s social media pages. In addition CAPS Media is producing a series of voter awareness videos to inform the public on the election process. The key message is that Voting By Mail is safe and secure. In fact, Ventura County has been using Vote By Mail for years – and it has always been safe and secure. Due to COVID-19 precautions, this year every registered voter in the county is receiving a ballot in the mail. Ballots were mailed on Friday, October 2nd and should be arriving in your mailbox by mid-October. If a voter does not receive a ballot, has questions whether or not they are registered to vote, want to know how to return their ballot or have any other questions, they can find all the answers at VenturaVote.org.

Due to the COVID-19 emergency the CAPS Media Center is closed to Members and the public until further notice. CAPS Member/Producers can submit programming via the online portal at capsmedia.org for broadcast and streaming on CAPS public access television Channel 6 and on CAPS Radio KPPQ 104.1FM.

All of us at CAPS Media hope everyone is Staying Safe and Healthy during this challenging time.

Remember – Please Vote! This is your opportunity to share your views and let your voice be heard.

Aaron Gaston candidate for City Council in District 3 joined the gathered residents.

by Richard Lieberman

“We are here to make our street safer,” stated John Coffman. Speaking to a crowd of Dean Drive residents who have been concerned about speeding cars, accidents and what they believe to be unsafe conditions on their street.

The residents are looking for the City to install speed humps on a stretch of Dean Drive to slow down passing vehicles. Speed humps are different than the speed bumps we are all accustomed to. Speed humps are about 4 feet wide and gradually raise to impede speeding vehicles.

“We have speeds on this street that range from 40 to 70 miles per hour,” said Coffman. The City has already installed a stop sign and two radar devices that display the speed of an approaching vehicle. To John and supporters, it is not enough to keep motorists from regularly speeding through the neighborhood. They believe that installing the “humps” is the best response to slow drivers down.

Ventura Police Department statistics show that from 2005 to 2015 there were 770 tickets issued for speeding on Dean Drive. “That represents five percent of all tickets issued in the city,” added Coffman. “That is out of 17,700 tickets issued city wide,” he said. Adding Coffman said, “The length of this road is about three quarters of a mile there is about 700 miles of roads in the city, we are about one tenth of one percent,” he added. “We want them (the police) to write more tickets to get the speed down, but enforcement has stopped,” Coffman said.

From May 1st to June 20, fifty-three days that showed about five thousand vehicles traveling at 36 miles per hour or greater, six hundred vehicles were traveling at 40 miles per hour faster and one going seventy-two miles per hour. The data was compiled by city traffic engineer and collected from the radar signs already installed.

“We had a pretty bad accident about four weeks ago and it was a hit and run driver, guy came through here fast and hit a car,” Coffman said. “The police department won’t enforce it any more they have other priorities,” he added. “It would cost the city about $25,000 to install speed humps,” he added.

Aaron Gaston candidate for City Council in District 3 joined the gathered residents “you all need to contact the city manager we really need to get this fixed.” Gaston said.

Attending residents agree they want to see either enhanced enforcement or speed humps installed. Doing both enhanced enforcement and installing speed humps would curtail speeding on the block and achieve the goal bringing traffic safety to the neighborhood.

“The Where and the Why” – Wrona Gall

by Richard Lieberman

While the worldwide pandemic continues to alter the way we live, work and play the Museum of Ventura and Ventura Botanical Gardens have taken things outdoors. Dining, music, movies and haircuts have taken themselves outdoors. The Museum and the Botanical Gardens have taken art outside. Teaming up the Museum and the Gardens have joined to offer a sculpture installation at both venues.

Bringing art according to Denise Sindelar, MVC Deputy Director to the Gardens is a years old idea. VBG has been interested in a permanent art exhibit at the site since the beginning of the Botanical Gardens. Artist works from Ojai, Ventura, Channel Islands, as well as many other artists from the local area and from further afield. Most of the submitted entries however came from Ventura County. The exhibit consists of about 50 pieces, created by 20 artists.

The exhibit is at the entrance to the gardens and on the lower layers and at the courtyard of the Museum.

Since the Museum is temporarily closed due to the pandemic the exhibits were displayed at the Museum plaza outdoors. The works can be viewed from the plaza and can be seen from Main Street. There are seven pieces currently on display, including Privitt’s “Captured Semisphere”, and a series of painted panels by Carlos Grasso called “Colorspace Plaza.” Paul Lindhard and Kevin Carman, while exhibiting at the Gardens also have two works at the Museum, “Flaming Medusa” and “Acorn”.

The theme of the exhibits was “Arte Forastero” it’s Latin root means outside. A fitting title for a very different art exhibit during a very trying time. Some might think it a little strange for artwork to be exhibited outside the walls of a Museum, but in this case outside works well.

Come visit the Botanical Gardens and visit the Museum it will be well worth visiting, to view art among the splendor of the outdoors, where on one side the mountains and the other the sea form a background that enhances the experience.

Nicole Cabell from the 2012 Face Of Ventura series by Johanna Spinks.

by Susan Scott Executive Director

“Nicole Cabell is an American soprano.” So begins her formal bio, but I have a sense Venturans would write it differently – something like: “Nicole Cabell is a ‘hometown hero,” a local girl from a modest family who took the opera world by storm when she won the prestigious BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in 2005.”

Nicole debuted at The Proms in London the next year (a very big deal) and her career from there would take her to opera houses throughout the world, like Covent Garden, Lyric Opera in Chicago, The Met and more. And – in the midst of this career rocket – she closes the 2008 Ventura Music Festival in a sold-out performance staged at Ventura High School, her alma mater, and follows it with a master class for 500 students the next day. This weekend was a very big deal for Ventura and the town went crazy. They loved Nicole and she loved them.

The appearance became even more mythic when she came down with laryngitis the night before she was to perform. She couldn’t sing at rehearsal the next day either and found her voice only that night when she opened it to sing on stage – a veritable (operatic) cliff-hanger.

Fast forward, I catch up with Nicole in July where her Pandemic experience has her in the middle of a long cross-country move and home remodel. She’s relocating from Chicago to Rochester NY to take up her new position as Assistant Professor at the prestigious Eastman School of Music. I congratulate her, and she agrees to participate in Music Connects. She’ll think about what music to connect with as she completes the move.

Nicole decides on the song version of Langston Hughes’ poem, Kid in the Park, because she thinks it reflects the mood of the deepening cultural awareness in the country. I think it does too and I think you are going to love the video and the music.