Crosscurrents

The music you’re hearing is by Rumbaché [Room Bah SHAY]. This Bay Area band combines many styles, from timba and bomba to funk and salsa – with some Stevie Wonder thrown in.

They’re performing on Sunday (03.11) at The Sausalito Seahorse. We think they’ll want you to get off your seat and dance, because there’s a free dance lesson at 3pm. The music is scheduled from 4 to 8pm.

Clowns remind us not to take ourselves too seriously. But it takes a professionally trained clown to lighten the mood in a hospital while being therapeutic. In a quiet hospital wing, some unlikely sounds float down the hallway: an accordion, a ukelele, and laughter. Luz Gaxiola and Molly Shannon make their daily rounds at the California Pacific Medical Center. They’re part of the Alameda based Medical Clown Project.

One post earlier this week mapped the top 10 states with the biggest foreign-born population growth since 1990; another post took a look at the states that since 2010 have enacted anti-illegal immigration laws. Among these are five states that since then have enacted strict laws similar to Arizona’s SB 1070, which the U.S. Supreme Court is set to weigh in on next month.

Activists are out in full force today. A rally for International Women’s Day is currently underway at San Francisco City Hall to protest sexual harassment of female transit employees and other female public workers in San Francisco...

A new study issued today by San Jose State University reports that building a high-speed rail system in California is likely to create jobs and support population growth in both major and mid-size cities, but only if it's done well. It will take strategic planning around station location, links to other kinds of transportation, and effective zoning and land use policies, not just a "build-it-and-they-will-come" approach...