Local art lovers have access to galleries and exhibits in Midtown and downtown Sacramento. But there’s another opportunity just east of town that might be the most accessible of all. Why is the Mills Station Arts and Culture Center in Rancho Cordova — also known as the MACC — so accessible? First, admission is free. And second, it’s right next to a @ridesacRT light rail station and bus hub and has loads of free parking. Cheryl Gleason has been running the @cccrcmacc since it opened six years ago. Her programming philosophy isn’t just about art, it’s about history and culture. “Maybe it's U.S. history, world history, maybe it’s California or even Rancho Cordova history," Gleason said. "I look to do something that’s social justice, being a little edgy and not playing it always safe, and other things that make people think.” The current exhibit, “When Art and Poetry Collide,” features pieces like The Old Man With The Beard by fiber artist Penny Hanscomb. “She took a very simple, old poem and created this stunning view in fabric of this man with birds nesting in his beard," Gleason said. "It’s a simple, sweet, whimsical poem. And so is the piece of art, and so stunningly executed." At the heart of Gleason’s efforts is a desire to make the MACC as accessible as possible. “Everybody should be able to come and enjoy art for free and that is what we do,” Gleason said.

Air regulators, including many in California, are regularly turning to a part of the Clean Air Act that lets them forgive bad air days from the record. Tucked into the landmark 50-year-old law is a rule called “Exceptional Events.” It lets local air regulators off the hook for bad air in regulatory decisions if they can prove it was from causes out of their control, like wildfires. An investigation from The California Newsroom, Muckrock and the Guardian found that as climate change warms the planet, regulators are turning to the loophole more and more often. Vijay Limaye is a health scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He says the loophole obscures the true risk of unhealthy air. “And we really need to be taking into consideration the truth on the ground in terms of what exposures look like and what that means for public health across the country,” Limaye said. The investigation found more than 21 million Americans live in areas where exceptional events allowed local regulators to claim the air was cleaner than it actually was. Nevada County may offer a glimpse of a smokier future. After fires in 2018 and 2020, the EPA wiped more than two weeks of ozone pollution from the record. That didn’t get Nevada County all the way to a clean bill of health, but local regulators avoided having to tighten rules on local emissions. You can learn more about exceptional events and read the entire series at the link in our bio. ✍️Molly Peterson, The California Newsroom 📸@capradio_andrew 📊Andrew Witherspoon, the Guardian

When Jacob Swedlow formed his experimental jazz/soul fusion band @labratsmusic, he not only wanted to bring a new approach to modern jazz, he also wanted to unite Sacramento’s rich music scene under one umbrella. Enter @thetorchclub, the home of the new weekly cultural arts and music series “Sunday Sessions.” “Sunday Sessions is my attempt to gauge the whole music community from all genres and walks of life [and] to bring them into the same room,” Swedlow said. “We have church musicians, rappers, spoken word people, singer-songwriters, multi-instrumentalists, producers and more.” Since its recent inception, the series has served as a launching pad for numerous creatives and helped them bring their ideas to life from concept to reality. “I wanted to work on a project, and I didn't feel like I was ready for it,” said nu-soul vocalist @diamondthemusical. “Being able to come to Sunday Sessions and see the growth of everyone, I've been able to feel like I can be vulnerable enough to push things out. It’s a fun place to express yourself.” While the series is presented in an open mic format, what makes each night special is the variety of artistic disciplines that are showcased. Performances often turn into full-on jam sessions. “You know, you can experiment and that's what's beautiful about it,” said @jakharismith, who started out as a rapper, but has branched out to becoming a vocalist since attending the Sunday Sessions. “It’s a jam session and the language that comes from the stage is cutting edge and unique, which makes the music a free-flowing … experience.” Sunday Sessions take place every Sunday evening at 8 p.m. at the Torch Club, located at 904 15th Street in Sacramento. ✍️ Chris Campbell 📸 @capradio_andrew

Sacramento State alumna Alyssa Nakken — who became the first woman to coach on the field in a Major League Baseball game when she worked first base for San Francisco in April 2022 — has interviewed for the Giants managerial vacancy. President of Baseball Operations Farhan Zaidi confirmed Sunday night that Nakken had gone through a first-round interview last week. The Athletic first reported Nakken had interviewed for the job. The 33-year-old Nakken, a softball star at Sac State from 2009-2012, has been a coach on the @sfgiants staff since former manager Gabe Kapler hired her in January 2020. According to MLB.com, Nakken is believed to be the first woman to interview for a major league managerial position. At @sacstate, Nakken was a three-time all-conference player at first base and four-time Academic All American. She’s also a graduate of Woodland High School, where she won more than 70 percent of her games and had 25 shutouts. Nakken went on to earn a master’s degree in sport management from the University of San Francisco in 2015 after interning with the Giants’ baseball operations department a year earlier. Her husband, Robert, announced in August on social media the coach is expecting the couple’s first child, a girl, on Feb. 9. ✍️📸 Associated Press

Animals hit and killed by cars are an unfortunate yet common sight for drivers in California, and especially in the Sacramento region. “The Bay Area through Sacramento, through into the foothills and Tahoe, that is where we have the most roadkill in the state,” said Fraser Shilling, director of the Road Ecology Center at UC Davis. “The reason for that is we have these big protected areas, big areas of wildlife habitat, right next to mega, urban regions with lots of traffic.” While sad, roadkill — and the data researchers collect about it — can help us learn more about the health of animal populations in the state. In the Road Ecology Center’s eighth annual report on roadkill, Shilling and others found a 10% per year decline in statewide roadkill reports for mule deer, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Shilling said that if nothing changes on the road, like no increases or decreases in traffic or no measures preventing animals from getting onto the road in the first place, “the most likely explanation is that it's because there's a decline in the population.” Researchers also found an increase in the number of mountain lions killed on the state’s roadways. After Shilling talked with mountain lion experts, he discovered a likely reason could be that the large cats were moving around more frequently in search of prey — which is often mule deer. “The number of deer roadkills going down indicates a decline in the mule deer population,” Shilling said. “The number of mountain lion roadkills going up indicates that sort of desperate search for food because there’s fewer deer to find.” If you’re driving along the highway and see roadkill — and can safely pull over — you could participate in this data collection effort. The Road Ecology Center maintains a website where you can report roadkill in California at wildlifecrossing.net. ✍️ Manola Secaira 📸 Rich Pedroncelli, AP Photo

Four more Capital Public Radio board members resigned Wednesday in the latest leadership changes at the Sacramento NPR member station. It comes one week after 14 board members resigned, many citing a lack of support and communication from the university following an audit that found significant financial mismanagement at CapRadio and called into question the station's ability to pay for two costly downtown projects — a new headquarters and a performance space. Wednesday's resignations all come from board members currently working at Sacramento State. The university, which holds the station's FCC license, announced it would take over operations and financial management of the station after a California State University Chancellor's office audit found numerous instances of financial mismanagement at CapRadio. In a statement, @sacstate did not provide a reason for the resignations and said it did not anticipate further changes on the board, though there could be further shifts in the operation of CapRadio. "More changes are anticipated as Sac State and CapRadio respond to recommendations in the CSU audit, and while they await results of a forensic examination commissioned by Sac State to determine underlying causes of CapRadio’s problems," the university wrote in a press release Wednesday. According to the university, only seven board members remain, including interim General Manager Tom Karlo, who serves as an ex officio member. Also remaining are Sac State student body president Nataly Andrade-Dominguez and Chico State Interim Provost Terence Lau. CapRadio operates North State Public Radio in Chico. On Oct. 4, 13 board members sent a resignation letter to Karlo and university President Luke Wood, detailing what the board members called "a failure of Sac State to inform and engage with the board in a good faith effort to resolve CapRadio's financial issues." In an emailed statement sent Wednesday morning, Karlo said Sac State is working with the CSU Chancellor's office on how to repopulate the CapRadio board. ✍️ Chris Hagan 📸 Mike Hagerty

Today is National Coming Out Day. It’s a moment that can be pivotal in a person’s life, and one that an early Sacramento LGBTQ+ newspaper honored in its title. From 1978 to 2009, “Mom… Guess What!” (as in, “Mom, guess what?” “What?” “I’m gay!”) focused on life after coming out. One of Sacramento’s first LGBTQ+ papers (and arguably, its most prominent), it included coverage of opera and art, ballot measures and policies, the AIDS epidemic and more. The newspaper’s publisher and founder Linda Birner — a @sacstate alum — had already been politically active in groups like the National Organization for Women before starting “Mom… Guess What!” (swipe through the gallery to see a photo of Birner). But her impetus to build the paper was politician John Briggs’ 1978 campaign to ban openly gay teachers from working in California schools, which mobilized LGBTQ+ people across the state. “I wanted to start the paper as fast as we could, because the election was coming up in a couple of months,” Birner said. “And I wanted to make sure everybody was educated on what it was about what he was trying to do, which was get all these school teachers fired.” Founding member of the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus Dennis Mangers credited the paper with helping build community and cultivating a sense of safety. “We had a deeply closeted population of LGBT folks here,” he said at a Jun. 6 panel organized by @ctrsactohistory. “But there was something about ‘Mom… Guess What!’ that energized the community. It was a source of … really truthful, honest information about HIV/AIDS when the mainstream press was distorting it ... It chronicled all of our arts and cultural and sports activities that had been going up and very quickly.” If you want to look back at the newspaper’s old issues, there are plenty of ways to do so — issues are stored in @ucdavislibrary Special Collections, at the @sacllace and the Center for Sacramento History. This story originally appeared as part of our SacramenKnow newsletter. Sign up at the link in our bio. ✍️📸 Janelle Salanga

Join us this Thursday at @solomonsvinyldiner in downtown Sacramento for a celebration of This Is What It Feels Like, CapRadio’s latest podcast. Insight’s Vicki Gonzalez will be interviewing host @TerraLopez about the making of this series. You’ll hear powerful stories of folks from around the Sacramento region. The free event runs from 5-7 p.m. Solomon’s is located at 730 K St.

Sacramento County is opening a mental health center Friday, fulfilling a promise from the homeless agreement it reached with the city 10 months ago. Located on 1400 X Street, the center will offer both walk-in and specialty outpatient services, such as therapy and case management. The center is about one mile away from the X Street Navigation Center, which has 100 shelter beds. The city requested the county fund and open a mental health center in the downtown core during negotiations last year, Mayor Darrell Steinberg said. The center isn’t exclusive to people experiencing homelessness, however. Anyone can visit the center, which has showers, laundry machines, computers, couches and a TV. Outside, the center offers kennels for pets as well as tables and chairs. The walk-in wellness area is designed to give people an opportunity to build rapport, said Ryan Quist, the county’s behavioral health services director. “Once they get more comfortable and know the individuals that were working here and have relationships with the staff, then they're going to feel more comfortable opening up and going through an entire assessment process,” Quist said. Staff on site can assess people to determine if they qualify for outpatient mental health services, Quist said. County staff can also refer and direct people to the outpatient program at the X Street center. The center follows the same model as the county’s nine other sites for its CORE program, which stands for Community Outreach Recovery Empowerment. There are three other sites within City of Sacramento limits, including locations in North and South Sacramento. ✍️📸 Kristin Lam

More than a dozen Capital Public Radio board members resigned Wednesday night, including the current board chair and officers. In a letter sent to @sacstate President Luke Wood and CapRadio Interim General Manager Tom Karlo, the members detailed what they called "a failure of Sac State to inform and engage with the board in a good faith effort to resolve CapRadio's financial issues." Last week a CSU Chancellor's office audit found numerous instances of financial mismanagement at the Sacramento-based @NPR member station. The audit also comes one month after CapRadio laid off 12% of its staff and canceled four music shows. Sacramento State, which holds the station's FCC license, announced it would take over operations and financial management of the station. In the resignation letter, the board members contend Sac State leadership has rejected multiple requests to meet to "better understand the decisions that were made.” CapRadio’s board met Tuesday evening, though the meeting was closed to the public due to discussion of “personnel and related matters.” In an email later that night, Sac State said the board voted to “move forward in hiring a new general manager at the cost of nearly half a million dollars a year,” and that it did not support the decision and wouldn’t fund the position. However, in the letter, the board members wrote that at the meeting they learned the position's funding “was actually conditioned on the resignation of board officers." Though the resigning board members wrote they valued the staff and listeners of the station, they felt their "only recourse at this point is to step down." On Thursday, Wood said he wanted to “thank the board members for their service.” “I believe that they were committed to public media,” he said. “And at the same time, we had an audit that showed that millions of dollars in loans and lines of credit were taken out without awareness of the university, and in some cases, even awareness of the board … And so many other high level egregious issues.” Sac State has commissioned a “forensic examination to determine the origins and causes” of CapRadio’s operational and financial problems. ✍️📸 Chris Hagan

Over 20,000 student assistants (@csueu_organizing) across @thecsu system will vote on whether to unionize — by joining the existing @csueu. They announced Tuesday that the California Public Employee Relations Board said they had sufficient support, more than 8,500 union cards submitted, to trigger a union election. That’ll be the next step in the process after student assistants filed a petition to unionize in April. “This is quite unprecedented in and of itself, and to be able to be part of those efforts, and to hear the news that this might be an actual possibility — it's just super thrilling,” @sacstate third-year and student assistant Utkarsh Mehta told CapRadio. With many students working multiple jobs — some serving as their household’s primary provider — and filling in gaps at departments on their campuses, they’re organizing to secure higher wages, paid sick time and holiday pay. Student worker organizing across the California State University system is reflective of broader undergraduate organizing across universities, both public and private alike, and a push to make academic worker voices heard. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond also spoke in support of students’ organizing at a press conference Tuesday. “Look at what's happening outside our doors — so many employee groups in so many sectors are on strike, because people are unable to earn enough to live, to eat, to own a home, to have health care,” he said. “And so this is bigger than what our students will become.” While the election date isn’t yet set, if student assistants vote to join the CSU Employee Union, they will become the largest non-academic worker student union in the U.S. ✍️ Janelle Salanga 📸 @capradio_andrew

The city of Sacramento is preparing to open its biggest groundwater treatment plant after seven years of construction and testing. The facility near Cosumnes River College will be able to produce 4 million gallons of drinking water a day. That’s more than double the rate of the city’s current largest groundwater facility. “We’re excited about it because it does help us manage our water supplies better in the future, especially when it comes to less predictable climate patterns and less predictable water supplies,” Department of Utilities spokesperson Carlos Eliason said. About 80% of the city’s water comes from the Sacramento and American rivers, while 20% comes from groundwater, according to the city. The new facility will be an anomaly for Sacramento — most groundwater wells are located in its northern area, including the city’s largest active groundwater treatment facility in North Sacramento. It produces 1.5 million gallons of drinking water a day. If you live nearby, you may start to notice the taste of your tap water changing as the plant starts working. Some residents could sense more of a mineral taste associated with well water compared to the treated river water the area is currently receiving, Eliason said. But if you notice an “earthy” taste or smell in your water, that’s probably not connected to the new groundwater facility. City staff say treated river water — which, again, 80% of the city uses — can give off that earthy taste in the late summer and early fall. Organic compounds accumulate in rivers this time of year, and some, like geosmin, remain after the city filters and disinfects the water. While some people can sense geosmin and other compounds in very low concentrations, the city affirmed that water with its earthy taste is still safe to drink. The plant should be up and running by mid-October, city officials said. ✍️ Kristin Lam 📸 City of Sacramento