The Palo Alto Philharmonic - Tchaikovsky on TV!

Did you know that Palo Alto has a symphony orchestra? I didn't, and I'm apparently not alone, even though I enjoy classical music. The PA Philharmonic are local, they are dedicated and they want to share their passion for symphonic music with you.

The Palo Alto Philharmonic, under Music Director Thomas Shoebotham, is a full sized (~65 member) community orchestra which performs 4 orchestral concerts a year at a very reasonable price ($20) at the Cubberley Theater. In addition to full orchestral concerts, they perform several smaller concerts at other venues around town. Their upcoming concert schedule can be seen on their website.

The orchestra has been around since 1988 and is a non-profit organization. The musicians are volunteers, and generally have non-musical careers in the community.

The orchestra concert programs begin with an informative pre-concert talk, discussing the pieces to be heard in the program. Their repertoire ranges across all periods of orchestral music, including 20th century music and even original compositions from their Assistant Conductor and award-winning composer-in-residence, Lee Actor.

Volunteers from The Media Center were at the Philharmonic's October 2011 concert in force. Six of us operated six cameras and three high-quality microphones scattered around Cubberley Theater. We've posted to YouTube the Philharmonic's performance of Bernstein's "Overture to Candide" and Liszt's "Totentanz" featuring guest piano soloist Péter Tóth.

The Philharmonic's performance of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony from that October concert will be shown at the following times, on Channel 27...

• Friday, November 25 9pm
• Saturday, November 26 10pm
• Friday, December 2, 9pm
• Saturday, December 3, 10pm

Latest playback times can be found on our online TV schedule.

The Philharmonic's next Orchestral concert is on Saturday, December 10 at Cubberley Theater. Check their website for other concerts.

Health Care 2.0

submitted by Martin Wasserman:

Modern information technology is having a huge impact on the health industry, enabling patients to have much greater access to information and helping them to be much more active participants in their own health care. It's now possible to get quick information and advice online from your doctor without having to wait for an appointment, and to compare experiences with people who have similar conditions to your own via social networking programs. Also, increased knowledge of genetics is making it possible to tailor medical treatments much more closely to the physiology of the specific patient.

On this month's Future Talk, host Martin Wasserman interviews several people who are directly involved in finding ways to apply modern information resources to improve public health. The in-studio guests are John de Souza, CEO of MedHelp, an online health community with a wide range of services that boasts 12 million unique visitors a month, and Bruce Cohen, CEO of VitaPath Genetics, which does individualized DNA analysis to enable more precisely tailored medical treatments.

Additionally, Future Talk attended the recent Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, where we spoke with several people involved in this rapidly growing field. Karl Ulfers is V.P. of Consumer Solutions at Optum Health, whose products provide better online communications between health care consumers and providers, Brent Poole is CEO of Mindbloom, which seeks to promote mental, physical and spiritual health through a social gaming experience, and Damon Ramsey M.D. is CEO of Healthism, which offers social networking tools aimed at preventive health maintenance.

The message of all of these people seems to be consistent: the more information and access to resources you have, the better you can maintain your own well being. Here are the cable TV Playback times. This episode may not be scheduled just yet.

Election Videos

How did you make your voting decisions? Did you use any of the videos linked on our Elections Page? If so, how helpful were they relative to other resources you used such as mailers or news articles? We'd love to know.

We were pleased with the number of folks who viewed the videos online. We hit a new high of 463 views for an election video - the San Mateo County Measure H pro and con arguments. In Palo Alto, there were 245 viewers of the Measure D debates and 427 viewers of the Measure E debates. When you factor in those who watched the debates on the cable TV channels - for which we have no measurements - we believe that we reached at least 5% of the voters.

Perhaps, the most impacting video was the one featuring candidates for the East Palo Alto Sanitary District. While it got the lowest number of views compared to the other videos - 106 - that accounts for over 25% of the voters for that race! And that doesn't include those who watched the candidates on cable TV where it played numerous times.

The videos provide a chance for voters to evaluate the presence and communication skills of the candidates in addition to their ideas and policy positions. We're glad that the videos multiply the number of people to see the candidates - well beyond those who actually attended the public forums. We hope to see the number grow with each election. We've already begun to plan for the 25+ races we expect to cover in 2012.

Here's a tip for all our great TV studio crew volunteers. Find out which producers are scheduling talented chefs to come in and cook a televised feast. Then sign up as a camera person. The crew members for "Frente Unido" ("United Front Presents") were the happy tasters of celebrated Chef Maritza Hurtado' s enchiladas and secret sauces this evening. Chef Hurtado, of Special Touch Catering, was unloading boxes of yummy ingredients as this disappointed writer had to leave the Media Center. I'll be imagining her strawberry dessert concoction while munching my cauliflower this evening. Hurtado recently won an award from the Renaissance Entrepreneurial Center for her community involvement. Do you think more community producers should include a cooking show episode now and then? If so, what kind of cooking would you like to see?

Here is the Frente Unido playback schedule.

GILA RIVER AND MAMA - THE RUTH MIX STORY, on 27 this Saturday at 8 pm

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to designate certain areas as military zones.  This order paved the way for the unlawful incarceration of Japanese Americans in "relocation" camps.  This effectively ruined the lives of more than 120,000 American citizens and cast the dark shadow of racism across our country while our armed forces were ironically fighting fascism abroad.    After years of shame and silence around this dark page in our national history, the stories are emerging, often told by the children and grandchildren of the internees.  An unusual perspective will be unveiled this Saturday night at 8 pm on Channel 27 -- that of a teenager whose experience as an aide in one of the camps changed her life forever.

The Media Center is proud to cablecast a documentary detailing the personal experience of fifteen year old Ruth Mix who volunteered at the Gila River Japanese Internment Camp's Butte Camp Hospital.    During the summer of 1942, she moved into the camp to work full time with her mother who was a teacher there.

Charles Class, an established Media Center producer, served as one of three executive producers for "Gila River and Mama - The Ruth Mix Story." The 49 minute documentary includes historical reenactment and tells  the moving story of Ruth and the people she met and befriended during her time living at the camp.

The documentary was produced, written and directed by Claire Mix, the daughter of Ruth and granddaughter of teacher Frida Mix.  it wasn't until Claire was an adult that she became aware of her famlly's passionate involvement in the lives of the internees at  Gila River.  Claire slowly teased the story out of her aging mother, who, along with Claire's grandmother, had risked arrest in order to bring some relief to the suffering of the persecuted citizens at Gila River.

At this time of year when we celebrate the gift our veterans have given the nation, sacrificing their very lives, it is important that we remember Japanese Americans, many of whom wanted to serve their country, but instead were interned under most draconian and inhumane circumstances during World War II.

For additional playback times click here.

To learn more about this project visit the website:  http://www.gilariverandmama.com.

Funding for "Gila River And Mama:  The Ruth Mix Story" was provided by a grant from the California State Library through the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program.

The Media Center thanks Mr. Class for bringing this important story to us.  And we reach out and thank the California State Library and the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program for making this production possible.

Executive Producers Hy Shishino and Charlie Class with Shig Murakami
(Murakami  was  one of Frida Mix's 2nd Grade Students)

'HELP ONE CHILD" SWEEPS ZOOMIES

Lynne Cudden's video about the South Bay organization HELP ONE CHILD swept the graduate category of the 3rd Bianniual Zoomies held in the Media Center studios last Friday night.  Nobody could have been more surprised than the filmmaker herself!  She was characteristically soft spoken and humble about receiving all three awards.  It was really moving for this writer, to share the stage with Lynne and hear about her motivation to get the word out about this worthy non-profit that supports foster families.



Lynne began the video in class but went out to refine her vision and create a superior "calling card" for Help One Child.  Congratulations to Lynne from everyone here at the Media Center.  The video is embedded on the "Help One Child" website and greatly enhances their messaging.

"HELP ONE CHILD" was one of six videos chosen as finalist by the judges last Tuesday.  Our wonderful panel of judges consisted of Haelin Cho (youth representative), Beth Charlesworth (Zoomer not in Competition) and Sue Purdy Pelosi (MC Board Member).

Additional Finalists in the graduate category were:

"Quest for the Perfect Reverb" by Gary Masching
"California Avenue Redesign" by Roland Vogl
"Fall is For Planting" by Lynn Krug
"Mitchell Park Hard Hat Tour" by Wes Rapaport
"Cupertino Energy Upgrade" by Rick Row

Two environmental videos took top honors at the Zoomies in the Student Category and a third environmental video was named finalist as well.  The six class project finalists were:

"What Makes You Smile?", by Allen Rosenberg and Harlan Crowder
"Share a Garden" by Lynn Krug
"Recycling PSA" by Tesha Shalon
"Pet Food Express: Welcome to the Dog Wash" by Caroline Ebinger
"California State Park Closures", by Lindsay Burdette
"Anaerobic Digestion Plant" by Isabel Benatar

The "Recycling PSA" won Overall Excellence and also tied for Community Impact with Lindsay Burdette's video about the closing of the state parks in California.  Congratulations to all the finalists and  thank you for working on your craft with us!  All videos may be watched on the Zoom In Youtube page

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We thank the set up crew and the donation crew -- without whom the ZOOMIES would not have been so delicious, inviting and comfortable.

Lessa Bouchard
Beth Charlesworth
Doug and Pat Kreiiz
Joyce McClure

and MING'S of Palo Alto for donating a platter of appetizers plus gift certificates.

And thank you to the breakdown crew - pretty much everybody who was there at the end, with a special thank you to Gary Masching and Tommy Tuesday for stacking chairs and stowing props away.

And finally thank you to:

Scott Van Duyne
Stan Ng
and Jeff McGinnis

who did an amazing job making sure that all things technical ran smoothly.

Doug Kreitz has posted 21 pictures from the event.  Thank you Doug!

The "snaps" are available for "purchase" at a nominal fee - proceeds benefitting - you guessed it -- Zoom In.

And finally thank you to Mayor Sid Espinosa for his surprise visit, and impromptu speechmaking!  Sid was featured in two of the videos - Mitchell Park Hard Hat Tour and California Avenue Redesign.