Marcos Breton The Sacramento City Council has approved the use of
eminent domain to acquire land and the building on it in order to build a new downtown arena. We'll talk about this development and other political and legal wrangling involving the proposed sports and entertainment complex with Sacramento Bee columnist
Marcos Breton. He usually joins us at the start of each month to discuss a range of topics facing the Sacramento region. You can find Breton's columns in the
Bee’s Our Region sectionevery Wednesday and Sunday.
Insight Studio Sessions
The city wants to acquire land and property through eminent domain for the downtown arena project.
Wild and Scenic Film Fest The
Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City brings more than 5,000 environmentalists to the area each year and is known around the world for its focus on conservation and sustainability. This year's festival is exploring the origin of power and the environmental cost of creating that energy. Feature films "Pandora's Promise" and "Gasland II" explore nuclear energy and hydraulic fracturing. There will be non-energy-focused films, too. Valley filmmaker
Jeff Litton is presenting his documentary about the shark-finning industry, "
Environmental Lawyers and the Protection of Sharks." He joins us with festival organizer Melinda Booth to talk about his and other films at this year’s Wild and Scenic Film Festival. The festival begins Thursday and runs through Sunday.
Kushman by the Bottle In this installment of Kushman by the Bottle, Capital Public Radio’s resident wine expert
Rick Kushman joins us to talk about the joys of winter wine tasting in Northern California. Kushman has two upcoming events including a tasting at
33rd Street Bistro Thursday and a wine education class at
Renwood Winery in Amador County on Jan. 18. To reserve a space for the 33rd Street Bistro event, call (916) 455-2233.
RICK’S PICKS (Napa wineries for winter tastings):
1. Silverado Vineyards. Big open tasting room on a hill with a great view and a big fire going on cold days.
2. Bouchaine Vineyards. It’s small and down in the Carneros region (the southern end of Napa). They specialize in Chardonnay and Pinot Noir but others, too, and are almost sure to be near-empty.
3. Cakebread Cellars. One of the cornerstone wineries of the Valley and they get overlooked a lot, which makes them a good place to stop. The tasting room is cozy and they do a bunch of themed tastings, too, including food-and-wine classes.
4. Honig Winery. They’re in the middle of Rutherford and small, and have one of the least stuffy tasting rooms in the valley. They’re by appointment only, in theory, but you can call from the parking lot.
5. Domaine Carneros. For sparkling wine fans. If it’s cold, there’s a fire going in the big tasting room, and if it’s warm, like now, the deck is in the sun and will make you feel decadent.
Another Napa tip, schedule a lunch at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena. That beautiful old building – it was once Christian Brother winery – has a special charm in winter.
Andy McKee Andy McKee's guitar playing can be called anything but typical. His acoustic instrumentals are rhythmic, melodic, beautiful and sometimes created by a two-handed type of tapping and picking that goes beyond the norm. McKee actually owes much of his current musical success to the popularity of a viral video of him performing the song "Drifting" with his two-handed tapping technique. The video currently has more than 48 million hits on Youtube. McKee is performing this Wednesday night at Harlow's in Sacramento and joins us ahead of the concert for an in-studio performance.