Each school day for thirty-six years, the children walked into now- retired Ceres teacher Linda Scheller’s fifth-grade classroom, eager to learn but “often burdened by grinding poverty and difficult family situations at home.” “A lot of my students’ families were very, very poor,” Ms. Scheller recounted recently when interviewed about her powerful new collection of poetry, Wind and Children (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, www.MainStreetRag.com), which focuses on her lengthy […]
Arts
Linda Knoll: a Champion for the Arts and Education
Whether creating a beautiful homage to the great marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson, or painting a loving, whimsical memorial to her cats, Modesto artist and arts advocate Linda Knoll’s canvases are always vividly colorful and arresting. But Ms. Knoll is not only an extraordinarily talented artist; she’s a gifted arts educator as well who has headed the Central California Art Association’s (CCAA) arts outreach program to Valley schools for […]
Gillian Wegener – Award-Winning Poet, Community Leader
Gillian Wegener was twice the recipient of the Dorothy Rosenberg Poetry Award (2006, 2007), and was honored as one of Stanislaus County’s Outstanding Women in 2015. She served as the City of Modesto’s Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2016. In these troubled, chaotic, and tragic times, the power of poetry to mend wounds or express our deepest feelings is there to be tapped by all, though poetry is often left […]
Award-winning Patty Castillo Davis: A Voice for Social Justice
MAMA award-winning singer/songwriter Patty Castillo Davis is quick to admit that, even as a little girl, she was all about the words, the music, and the beat as she sat in front of the television watching Nancy Sinatra power through the lyrics of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” “I loved Nancy, and I wanted those white boots, and that blonde mop top – I wanted to be her.” Ms. […]
Modesto Poet, Writer, & Activist Tina Curiel-Allen
In sharp, powerful images from her poem “The Things I Stole,” the fine Xicana/Boricua poet, writer, and activist Tina Curiel-Allen recalls one of the most painful but transformative experiences of her life: It wasn’t until jail that I found a place that could steal from me, /I found walls that ate time and tears like money, /And offered no form of recompense. /I felt the extent of my debt in […]
Community Profile: Modesto Poet Laureate Stella Beratlis
When Modesto Poet Laureate and MJC librarian Stella Beratlis heard that her first book of poetry (Alkali Sink, Sixteen Rivers Press, 2015) had been nominated for that year’s Northern California Book Awards, she admitted recently that she was, “totally floored— because in my wildest dreams where I allowed myself to imagine how my book was received, a Northern California Book nomination was the pinnacle. So it was surreal when I […]
Community Profile: Award-winning Poet & KCBP Radio Programmer Linda Scheller
Linda Scheller’s Fierce Light has recently received accolades from outside our area, earning prizes in the National League of American Pen Women’s 2020 Catherine Cushman Leach Poetry Award competition. “The Ballad of Dr. James Barry” received 2nd place, and “Hill Top” earned 3rd place. The awards will be given in Washington, D.C. in April. Stanislaus County is home to an exceptionally vibrant and prolific poetry community, nurturing, a rich diversity […]
Visions of the Homeless: through the artist’s eye
Raven Partida doesn’t have any special camera equipment or training, but she’s been taking pictures for years. Many of her more recent photos are of homeless people, their dogs, and their environment. Prior to this new interest, she photographed a variety of inanimate things, especially abandoned buildings and homes. Partida says that she was one of those kids whose, “head was stuck in the National Geographic Magazine.” “The last 15 […]
The Girl From Our Town: Writer Supreme Angela Morales
Angela Morales was hired to teach English at Merced College in 1997. A graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writing Program, Morales proved to be a gifted teacher and valued associate. Few could have guessed, however, that their quiet and unassuming colleague would prove to be the writer extraordinaire she became a few years later.* A hint of things to come arrived when one of Morales’s essays was featured in The […]
Modesto Has Poets
Although it was a signal event in Modesto’s cultural history, last year’s publication of More Than Soil, More Than Sky gave only a hint of the rich vein of literary art our local poets have fashioned into a growing monument to regional culture. Though it contained the work of some fifty-one poets, the book, like all anthologies, was as remarkable for the superb poetry that was left out as for […]