Ventura County Jewish Film Festival wound up its 14th annual season this month with a screening of the award winning short film “A Children’s Song” a heartwarming story that delved into the history of Jews fleeing from Nazis at the outbreak of World War II, and settling in Shanghai.
Stars of the film showed up for a Q and A, included actor comedian Lee Lawrence, ten year old ViviAnn Yee, and 11-year-old Adam Chernick, with Ventura Temple Beth Torah compere Ivor Davis.
by Jennifer Tipton
The Ventura Harbor has several top picks for dining out for my husband’s birthday we chose Brophy Bros. one of his favorites. Sunday, March 5th was my husband’s 60th birthday.
Part of the charm of Brophy’s is certainly the ambiance. You can choose to sit inside in a cozy booth or the bar and enclosed outdoor patio both which have beautiful views of the harbor.
I reached out to Brophy’s several weeks ago to arrange a surprise birthday dinner. Kerry was amazing at communicating with me via email. She put a special menu together and offered suggestions for my vegan friends. Kerry wanted to be sure all food would come out at the same time for such a large group. A special table was set up for us out on the patio and there were heat lamps as the evening was a bit chilly.
Two servers split the table down the middle. The service was outstanding! The drinks kept coming, waters were refilled and bread baskets replaced (which wasn’t easy because the sourdough is super yummy and at least one friend is a “breadie” ).
Brophy Bros. is primarily a seafood restaurant however there are a variety of choices on the menu. My husband’s favorite is the shrimp and crab salad. Kerry added that to our custom menu.
Back to our party … yes, all the food came out at the same time. They did a plate of grilled veggies for our vegan friends. The servers knew who ordered what even though some of us were trading places at the table not in an effort to confuse them but to visit with those at the opposite end of the table. The servers kept up! A special shout out to one of our servers, Tyler. He presented the cake with candles lit and sang with us. Although it was more work for them, checks were separate as we requested.
Hard work must pay off because Kerry tells me Tyler is now the weekend manager Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
The Ventura County Community College District Veterans Resource Center Coordinators from Moorpark College, Oxnard College and Ventura College met with managers from California Lutheran University, California State University, Channel Islands, and National University to discuss best practices for helping student veterans achieve success. Leading the discussion was VCCCD Trustee Larry Kennedy, Chancellor Bernard Luskin and Vice Chancellor of Educational Services Rick Post, all United States Navy veterans. The meeting included all of the cooperating higher education institutions in Ventura County that have a veteran’s center.
The VCCCD is leading a state-wide effort to expand and improve veterans’ services on college campuses. Kennedy, Co-Chair of the Community College League of California Veterans Caucus, shared the Caucus goal to increase the organization’s membership of individuals and institutions to advocate on behalf of veterans and encourage state and federal support in funding for counselors and other needed services for student veterans. “Things were different when I returned from Vietnam,” stated Kennedy. “Today’s students need more than VFW halls. In addition to academic support, they need re-entry and transitioning support. We would like to see a Veterans Resource Center on every community college campus in the state,” Kennedy added.
Chancellor Luskin and members of the Board of Trustees, including Chair Bernardo Perez and Trustee Stephen Blum, attended the Association of Community College Trustees National Legislative Summit in Washington, DC, Feb. 13-16 to connect the CCLC Veterans Caucus with ACCT and national legislative staff. Meetings are scheduled with representatives from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Senate and other legislators to address issues specific to student veterans.
“With an estimated 1.8 million veterans residing in California, the state’s veteran population is the largest in the nation. Many of the increasing number of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will look to one of the 113 community colleges as the most easily accessible and affordable educational options available. In fact, more than 61,000 veterans, and active duty service members, enrolled at a community college in 2013-14,” said Kennedy.
“The California Community Colleges are urging Congress to fund more counselors for veteran students and fund the Centers of Excellence for Veteran Student Success in the Higher Education Act,” explained Chancellor Luskin.
Winter whale watching off the beautiful Central Coast of California runs from December to mid-April. An Island Packers whale watch is a perfect way to gather with family and friends to view the Pacific Gray Whales as they migrate through the Santa Barbara Channel on the way between their feeding grounds in Alaska and their breeding grounds in Baja.
Other possible sightings include humpback or fin whales, and occasionally Orcas, all of whom visit the productive waters of the Channel to feed on rich resources found in the majestic waters.
The Half Day Whale Watch Cruise provides stunning views of the Ventura coastline or the Channel Islands, wherever the whales may be sighted.
The Island Wildlife Cruise Half Day tours the north shore of Anacapa Island where visitors will see the historic lighthouse, view the highly photographed Arch Rock, enjoy a closer look at the California sea lion, spotted harbor seals and other wildlife.
Annual mammal sightings often seen also include minke whales, and sometimes the largest animal ever on the planet the majestic blue whale. Common dolphin populations often appear on the scene to delight passengers as they frolic with the boat, and ride the bow and stern waves.
Rates for half-day trips are $38 for adults, $34 for seniors and $28 for children age 3-12. Children 2 and under are free.
“All year long, we invite visitors to come aboard our boats for an exciting and educational Nature Discovery Tour of the Channel Islands National Park,” stated Cherryl Connally, Office Manager at Island Packers.
Island Packers is the authorized concessionaire the Channel Islands National Park, family owned since 1968. The main office is located at 1691 Spinnaker Drive in theVentura Harbor Village. For more information visit the user-friendly website or to book online at www.islandpackers.com or call 642-1393.
Recently Ventura-based YCE, Inc. a woman-owned engineering and surveying firm, hosted the local premiere of Dream Big – Engineering Our World at the Collection’s Century Riverpark 16 theater. Over 400 enthusiastic guests were greeted by YCE, Inc. owner Marta Alvarez who then viewed Dream Big, a larger-than-life movie celebrating engineering wonders of the world through the telling of heartfelt stories of human ingenuity.
In conjunction with the premiere, YCE, Inc. awarded scholarships to two deserving young women. A three-member judging panel read over 50 applications before selecting Anahi Morelos, a Lompoc High School senior who was awarded the $750 engineering scholarship and Alexandra Alamillo, a Camarillo resident & Cal Poly SLO Agricultural and Environmental Plant Sciences student who was awarded a $750 agriculture scholarship.
The Society of Women Engineers 2016 Engineer of the Year, Marta Alvarez was named one of three national winners in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Dream Big contest. Alvarez strongly believes in giving back to her community and to the fields of engineering and agriculture. “I saw this as an opportunity to really celebrate women in engineering and agriculture,” stated Alvarez. “That’s why we decided to incorporate two scholarships for local, tri-county female students.”
YCE, Inc. is a full-service civil engineering and land-surveying firm located in Ventura. Founded in 1986 by Marta Y. Alvarez (PE/LS/MASCE), civil engineer and land surveyor. YCE is a nationally recognized Minority/Women-Owned Business Enterprise (M/WBE) employing engineers and land surveyors.
Marta was just announced by NAWBO-VC as their Bravo Innovator of the Year!
by Diane Loring
Related to one of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Huntington and in protest of the recent election of a president not being qualified or fit to be representative of what the Declaration stood for, Diane Elizabeth Huntington Loring has left America. Samuel Huntington was Diane’s uncle four generations removed and son of Nathaniel Huntington her great grandfather five generations removed.
When revisiting the Declaration of Independence it strikes me how most charges made against King George III (whom I share a common ancestor with both of us descendants of our great grandfather line of Edmund Tudor), seem to be in direct correlation to many of the charges currently being made by, including myself against Donald Trump.
It is fascinating on many levels to read the Declaration of Independence and realize what has not changed in America after two hundred and forty years, specifically no mention of women and what is afforded them as equal citizens. It seems instead America has come full circle by electing the very representation of what they loathed and were originally leaving, King George III ruler of Great Britain, Ireland and the Thirteen Colonies.
While women were not mentioned in the original Declaration of Independence, they have had the opportunity for over ten years holding absolute power and percentage of the vote to right the Declaration of Independence and their unstated inequality once and for all. They have unequivocally rebuked that opportunity twice in ten years, electing a President who again, if you read carefully in the Declaration, sounds much like the reasons two hundred and forty years ago the Signers of the Declaration of Independence vilified King George III.
I have spent most of my life fighting the good fight for women and equal rights for all. My forefathers have been fighting from the beginning as well as my foremothers. My father, uncle and grandfather fought in World War II. My step-grandfather was shot down over Germany, captured by Hitler, spent years in a prisoner of war camp and was ultimately awarded a Purple Heart. These were good, honorable, ethical men who also had a high regard for the women in my family and I believe would be mortified by America’s choice of president. All the while they were gone, women held down the home front, working outside the home, while raising children.
At this point I believe America is in a very sad state and downward spiral of cyclic dysfunction and either women need to exercise the power they hold for epic change or quit the fight altogether and be content with their status. I have chosen to return to my ancestral home of London, England and truly feel that I am home safe where lives her Royal Majesty, my relative and Queen.
Best of luck to America. God Save the Queen.
Tech Today with Ken May
How did Amazon take down the internet?
On Tuesday, February 28th, an Amazon cloud server, specifically an AWS cluster of servers in the US-EAST-1 region, stopped responding. Sites and web apps like Mashable, Trello, Giphy, Quora, Netflix, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest and Buzzfeed, as well as tens of thousands of smaller sites all were suddenly down or slowed to a crawl. To the average person, all we saw was that a ton of sites and apps in common usage were not working. How does this happen?
It was so bad that Amazon wasn’t able to update its own service health dashboard for the first two hours of the outage because the dashboard itself was hosted on AWS.
“This is a pretty big outage,” said Dave Bartoletti, a cloud analyst with Forrester. “AWS had not had a lot of outages and when they happen, they’re famous. People still talk about the one in September of 2015 that lasted five hours,” he said.
The reason this affected so many sites is because Amazon’s AWS platform hosts virtual servers used by all of these businesses. Amazon’s S3 cloud storage systems were also affected. SO, even a site not running on an AWS server might have issues if it’s data was on S3. For example, a business might store its videos, images or databases on an S3 server and access it via the Internet.
As it turns out, it was all due to human error. A simple typo. As Amazon explains it, some of its S3 servers were operating rather sluggish, so a tech tried fixing it by taking a few billing servers offline. A fix straight from the company’s playbook, it says. “Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended.” Whoops.
As for why the problem took so long to correct, Amazon says that some of its server systems haven’t been restarted in “many years.” Given how much the S3 system has expanded, “the process of restarting these services and running the necessary safety checks to validate the integrity of the metadata took longer than expected.”
Cyence, an economic modeling platform, shared some data that show the ramifications:
-Losses of $150 million for S&P 500 companies
-Losses of $160 million for U.S. financial services companies using the infrastructure
Apica Inc., a website-monitoring company, said 54 of the internet’s top 100 retailers saw website performance slow by 20% or more.
Ouch!
Amazon apologized for the issue and said that it has put schemes in place to avoid the same problems caused by human error in the future. Let’s have this stand as a reminder to have adequate failover systems in place! Never put all your eggs in one basket.
On March 22, at 11:30 a.m. a groundbreaking ceremony for Solana Heights – 147 new homes in Ventura’s Westside neighborhood will be held.
Solana Heights, the master-planned community developed by CalAtlantic Homes, will bring 147 new homes to Ventura’s housing market including 116 single-family homes with two story floor plans and 3-5 bedrooms, as well as 31 townhomes with two and three story floor plans and 3 to 4 bedrooms. Several of the homes will have coastal views.
Solana Heights’ family-friendly amenities will also feature three new neighborhood parks totaling 1.5 acres of outdoor gathering spaces with play equipment, picnic tables and barbeques, and a gated dog park. It’s a very pleasant place to live so if your family want to move here then it is well worth the investment. A moving company like Big T will make it easier for you to move all your belongings and get your move off to a positive start.
The groundbreaking will be held at 2686 N. Ventura Avenue at School Canyon Road. Follow the signs for parking. Please wear comfortable walking shoes; this location is an active construction site.
Speakers will include City of Ventura Mayor Erik Nasarenko, CalAtlantic Vice President of Project Development Ken Melvin and Division President Elliot Mann.
Enjoying the sounds of the Equinox Ensemble Latin jazz blues band at Squashed Grapes were Staci Brown, Breezy Gledhill, Johanna Spinks and Alfred Lewis.
River Restoration Saturday. On Sat., March 18, VHC staff, volunteers and members of the California Conservation Corps. will join forces from 9 a.m.-12 noon to clean up trash and clear paths at the Willoughby Nature Preserve. River Restoration Saturdays are a part of VHC’s ongoing efforts to bring the Ventura River back to its natural state and make it more welcoming to human and wildlife visitors alike.
Volunteers should meet VHC staff at 9 a.m. next to Conservancy’s kiosk on the Main St. Bridge along the bike path near downtown Ventura (at Main St. & Peking Streets). Participants must be 16+ years, should wear pants, long sleeves, closed-toe shoes and sunscreen and are encouraged to bring a water bottle.
Ethnobotany of Local Native Plants: On Thurs., March 23 at 7 p.m., Angela Rockett Kirwin, Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, will discuss the edible and pharmaceutical uses of a variety of local native wild plants. For thousands of years, the indigenous peoples of California sustainably gathered, managed and used local plants for food, cultural practices and environmental stewardship. Discover the rich history of some of the plants that cover Ventura’s beautiful hillsides.
This free community lecture, a part of the Ventura Hillsides Conservancy’s ongoing Environmental Speaker Series, will take place in the Santa Paula Room at the Poinsettia Pavilion.
All events are free but reservations are highly recommended. RSVP at www.venturahillsides.org/events.
For more information call the Ventura Hillsides Conservancy 643-8044.