Dear Sudan …
Gayle Donsky of Mill Valley is leading a committee that is putting together “Standing Against Genocide: This Time Darfur,” which will kick-off the Bay Area’s participation in the month-long national Darfur Days of Conscience. When Michael Krasny, who is the evening’s emcee, mentioned he’d be coming directly from teaching a class at S.F. State, Donsky offered to bring him dinner — whatever he wanted, she said. His choice: latkes.
Also on stage will be Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, and Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir. The event is free and will take place April 6 at S.F.’s Congregation Emanu-El. The month of information and action will culminate with a silent vigil on the Golden Gate Bridge and a rally in Crissy Field on April 30. For info about participating in this stand against genocide, visit www.dearsudan.org. P.S. Donsky is pretty sure a name star will be added to the April 6 event roster. Stay tuned.
Future scientists
Mazel tov to four budding scientists on Brandeis Hillel Day School’s Marin campus who are winners of the Weizmann Institute’s Bay Area Youth Science Tikkun Olam Awards. Winners and their projects include Corbett Schmitz, whose solar cookers demonstrate how solar energy can be used to benefit Third World countries; Gena Madory, who studied causes of earthquakes and surveyed families of students on how prepared they were to deal with an earthquake; Geoffrey Hartman, who studied the nature of infrared light and lasers used to advance technology of medical procedures; and Sam Mickel, who used hydraulic technology in vehicles to make them environmentally sound.
Short shorts
As j. goes to print, Congregation Rodef Sholom members Deb Grant and her children Melissa Furano and Doug Furano, Dan Goltz, Ken King, Dan Shiner and his daughter Netiya Shiner and I will be in Waveland, Miss., with a group from Tiburon’s Westminster Presbyterian Church working to repair what the eye of Hurricane Katrina destroyed. Barbara Rowe, a pastor at Westminster Presbyterian, is leading the contingent.
Chowing down at Hotel California in Todos Santos, Baja, Mexico, I ran into former San Francisco resident and photographer Meryl Schenker who now lives in Seattle and is a photographer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Schenker left San Francisco 10 years ago to get a master’s degree in photography, but while here worked about three years for the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, taking photos of many Bay Area Jews — maybe you.
Greg Phillips, who has been the guiding hand (as well as the on-stage welcome guy) in Osher Marin JCC’s CenterStage program since the Marin campus opened 15 years ago, is the new director of San Mateo’s Broadway by the Bay.
Abby Levine, program director of Progressive Jewish Alliance, has been named to the San Francisco Sweatfree Advisory Committee by the S.F. Board of Supervisors and the mayor. The committee enforces the city’s sweatfree ordinance that was passed in 2004.
David Alper is spending a “gap” year (between his graduation from the Jewish Community High School of the Bay and beginning college) in Israel in a Young Judaea program. He writes that he began it in Haifa working for the fire department. Now he’s in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, where he rooms with JCHS classmate Daniel Levy.
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