Blind workers on a roll making toilet paper at San Leandro plant
There are worse businesses to be in right now than manufacturing cleaning supplies and toilet paper.
Case in point is the San Leandro factory that turns out tens of thousands of bottles of highstrength cleaner and tens of thousands of toilet paper packages a week. And most of the people who do it are blind or visually impaired.
It’s the LightHouse for the Blind factory on Washington Avenue. Inside, 1,000pound rolls of toilet paper are divided into smaller packages because, as much as the Bay Area craves toilet paper these days, nobody craves half a ton of it.
Production of the cleaner is up fourfold from two months ago, said plant manager Jonathan Vona. Workers are all on overtime, and the plant is about to start running a second line to bottle all the cleaner that the world cannot get enough of.
Valentino Benelli, who is visually impaired, said eyesight is not required to load empty bottles of Skilcraft cleaner onto one end of the conveyor belt or to unload filled bottles of it from the other end and put them into cardboard boxes.
“We’re lucky to be working,”
he said, “and we know it.”
Product manager Al Ahlm said the world has gone berserk for cleaner and toilet paper, no matter who makes it.
“It’s crazy,” he said. “We’re running nonstop. We’re hiring. We’re going to move into a new building.”
The pandemic is not a good thing, he said, but scrubbing hard is.
“In the long term, we want everyone to understand how important it is to have a good cleaner,” he said.
Actors’ relief fund: Kayla Kaufman was all packed up and ready to fly off to Oregon when the word came — don’t bother.
Kaufman, a San Francisco theater director, had been hired to help direct a production at the famed Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Then the entire season was scrubbed. When they cancel the plays, there’s nothing for directors to direct. There’s no paycheck, either.
“If you work in the theater,” she said, “you’re on shaky ground as it is. Then this pandemic comes along, and the ground gets even shakier.”
Kaufman looked in her cupboard, and it was practically bare, and she looked at the calendar, and it was almost time to write the rent check. Suddenly she found herself with more woes than Macbeth in Act V.
Fortunately, Bay Area theatergoers have big hearts, and their donations to a fund for outofwork performing artists meant that Kaufman could apply for, and receive, a $750 grant that went toward a badly needed supermarket trip and toward making the rent check good.
“It can be really scary for an artist when all the work suddenly dries up and disappears,” she said. “In San Francisco, $750 doesn’t go far over the long term. But when you need it right now, it makes such a big difference.”
Kaufman is one of 160 directors, actors, dancers, musicians and other workers who have been helped so far by the Performing Arts Workers Relief Fund, said Brad Erickson, who administers the fund (theaterbay area.org) on behalf of Theater Bay Area and who helps decide which starving artist gets how much.
A canceled show leaves a lot of folks in need, Erickson said. Not only does the actor who plays Hamlet need a grant, Erickson said, but the technician who shines a light on Hamlet needs one, too. So does the usher who shows a Hamlet patron to his seat, and so does a vendor who sells Hamlet sweatshirts. They’re all in the same line of work.
“With all the live shows closed, it’s a big problem for us,” he said. “A lot of artists make ends meet by driving for Uber or waiting tables in restaurants. Most of those jobs are gone, too. What we’ve been hearing from recipients is that this money is going straight toward food and rent.”
Theater tech Max Venuti got a grant, too. This month he was supposed to be shining spotlights on ballet dancers in Mountain View. Instead, he’s sitting in his living room, waiting.
“The grant helped me pay the rent and eat,” he said, “but more important than that, it told me that the community cares about the work we do.”
Hundreds of theatergoers are helping people like Kaufman and Venuti, Erickson said. Most donors are giving the rough cash equivalent of two theater tickets — not balcony tickets, but center section orchestra tickets. When live theater returns, as the old play says, it will largely depend on the kindness of strangers.
Virtual prom pictures: Without a prom, can there be a prom photo? An Italian restaurant chain says there certainly can.
Send in a picture of yourself in your prom clothes. Send a picture of your prom date, dressed likewise.
And even though your prom was canceled because of the pandemic, you get back a picture of the two of you, magically standing close together under a prom arch and silver letters that say “PROM.” All for free.
“We’ve been part of America’s prom memories for so long,” said Jessica Dinon, spokeswoman for the Olive
Garden restaurant chain. “We miss everyone!”
The best part is that you don’t even have to have planned to attend a prom, or even to be the age of someone planning to attend a prom, to get a free prom picture. You can be a high school senior, or you can be a 65andabove senior. Just send your original photos to Olive Garden via Twitter (@olivegarden) or an Instagram direct message (also @olivegarden).
There’s one catch. The picture that comes back includes images of the restaurant’s logo and food. You could end up being depicted holding a bag of the restaurant’s breadsticks, even if your hands were bare in your original photo. There is no free lunch even if there are free pictures of it.