Book event celebrates women who made it happen
Silicon Valley Reads will do its part next year to recognize the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States with a theme and book selections that celebrate the achievements of women.
The two books that will drive months of programs are “The Tenth Muse,” a novel by Catherine Chung, and “Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime,” a nonfiction book by Julian Guthrie. They may sound very different, but they’re both stories about women succeeding in fields traditionally dominated by men.
“Each of us has experienced the power of collective action
— the opportunity to join likeminded individuals to accomplish a common goal,” said Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools Mary Ann Dewan, who co-chairs the program with Santa Clara County Librarian Nancy Howe and San Jose Library Director Jill Bourne. “The featured books will help us build on a community conversation about the strength and courage necessary to fight for equity, diversity and inclusivity, and inspire our youth to do the same.”
The program, with the theme “Women Making It Happen,” kicks off Jan. 23 at De Anza College’s Visual and Performing Arts Center in Cupertino and offers more than 100 free events in February and March, including “Women Pathmakers,” an art exhibit at De Anza’s Euphrat Museum.
“Alpha Girls,” which is being adapted for a television series, should be especially resonant here because it tracks the careers and lives of four entrepreneurs in the Valley’s venture capital community who were important figures in the rise of companies including Facebook, Tesla, Trulia and Salesforce. Guthrie, an award-winning journalist formerly with the San Francisco Chronicle, said in a statement that she’s honored to have the book chosen.
“I can’t wait to share the inspiring, untold stories of incredible women who helped build some of the foremost companies of our day,” she said.
Three companion books for younger readers were announced around the same theme: “The
Most Magnificent Thing,” a picture book by Ashley Spires, and two books by Tanya Lee Stone, “Who Says Women Can’t Be Computer Programmers: The Story of Ada Lovelace” and “Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared To Dream.”
More information on the program is available at siliconvalleyreads.org, and the full schedule will be posted by the end of the year. INSPIRING YOUNG ARTISTS >> Lee Kopp remembers when ARTSPARK, the 9-year-old arts education program he directs, had the funding to do several programs a year, introducing third graders to musical theater, fourth graders to the symphony and fifth graders to dance. They’d bring the students on buses and fill up venues like the Hammer Theatre Center and the California Theatre, places where many of the young audience members had never been.
But corporate funding dried up, and the program had to shrink to survive.
“The last couple of years, ARTSPARK has only been able to do one program a year that has been two days — four performances — of our fourth grade symphony program,” he said. “It’s a great program with full orchestra explaining time signatures in music and music’s relationship to math. The orchestra plays classical, opera, jazz and movie themes in six different time signatures and teaches the kids to clap in the different times.”
That program will take place March 23 and 24 at the California Theatre for 4,500 fourth graders, along with teachers and adult chaperones.
And to raise funds for the program, Symphony Silicon Valley’s board of trustees is holding a season-opening gala dinner Saturday at the Silicon Valley Capital Club. Afterward, diners are invited to head over to the California Theatre for the symphony’s first program of the season (which is a separate ticket).
Tickets to the 5 p.m. dinner are $150 a seat and can be purchased by calling 408-286-2600, ext. 23, or at symphonysiliconvalley.org. TRIBUTE TO A CAMPBELL LEADER >> There was an outpouring of love — and a sea of flickering candles — in downtown Campbell on Monday night as hundreds of people said goodbye to Kelly Crowley, who was killed by a car last week at age 48. The gathering, punctuated by bagpipe music, began at Darling-fischer funeral home and proceeded to Khartoum, the popular watering hole where Crowley was the manager for many years.
Crowley, who was honored as Campbell’s Citizen of the Year in 2017, was a tireless leader for the Downtown Campbell Business Association and will be missed.
OPEN SPACE CHAMPIONS >> Emily Renzel and Enid Pearson will be honored Friday by the Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter at its 2019 Guardians of Nature benefit, which will feature former U.S. Rep. Pete Mccloskey Jr. as its guest speaker. Mccloskey, of course, was a co-author of the 1973 Endangered Species Act and co-chaired the first Earth Day in 1970.
He will introduce the two honorees, who have worked to protect Palo Alto’s Baylands, parks and open space — including two parks dedicated in their honor, the Enid W. Pearson-arastradero Preserve and the Emily Renzel Wetlands.
The event will take place at 6 p.m. at the Mitchell Park Community Center in Palo Alto, and you can get more information at sierraclub.org/loma-prieta/benefit19.
TODAY’S SPECIALS >> If your calendar today isn’t already full, there are a couple of San Jose events worth checking out. The first is the fall edition of the SOFA Street Fair, which will fill Downtown San Jose with art, vendors, wrestling and, of course, sofas in the streets. There will be live music on four outdoor and eight indoor stages from 2 to 9 p.m. on South First Street, stretching from San Carlos to Reed streets.
And the Italian American Heritage Foundation has put together a real homecoming today for San Jose native Frank Disalvo with a concert and dinner at its cultural center on North Fourth Street.
Disalvo, who now lives in Palm Springs, performs the tunes of Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Tony Bennett and more on weekends at Frank’s Place at the Indian Wells Resort. The event runs from 2 to 7 p.m., and you can get tickets and more information at iahfsj. org.