The original East San José Carnegie Branch Library opened in 1908, as part of the city of East San Jose. When this town was annexed by the City of San José, the branch became one of the San José library system’s branches. It was renovated in 1981 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. It is the only remaining publicly-operating Carnegie library in Santa Clara County.

The latest renovation of this branch, a major undertaking, began on February 14, 2008. Because of its historic status and Carnegie designation, the old building needed to remain, so the architects designed a project that added onto the original building and increased the square footage from 7,281 square feet to 12,000 square feet, dramatically increasing the overall public space. There is now a tech center, teen center, expanded children’s room, community room, and family learning center.

The grand reopening of the newly-expanded branch is happening this Saturday, August 29. The opening ceremonies, followed by ribbon cutting, will start at 11:00 a.m. Afterward, everyone will be able to enjoy cake in the community room and various activities throughout the library.

Want to get involved with this new-old branch? Keep an eye on this page for future volunteer opportunities, or consider joining the Friends of the East San José Carnegie Branch Library.

César Chávez was born in Arizona March 31, 1927, however his family later lived at 53 Scharff Ave, here in San Jose.

At 8:30 AM tomorrow  morning, March 28, a celebration of this American hero begins at the Mexican Heritage Plaza. The walk will be followed by a festival at the Plaza de César Chávez.

If you’ve noticed the old rotating neon sign for Food Bowl on McKee Ave has been dismantled, and been worried it’ll be demolished, I hope this will reassure you. Although the shopping center owners have basically remodelled the facade of the store itself to death, the city required to keep the sign with its vintage googie look.

Here’s hoping the owners will actually follow through, and not find a way to work around the city requirements, or ust leave the project half-done until the sign collapses in a heap of rust.

According to this morning’s edition of the San Jose Mercury News, San Jose’s City Hall is now at peace after the “Little Saigon” fiasco. With that resolved, it also brings Ly Tong’s fasting to an end.

What happened? Apparently Vice Mayor Cortese’s earlier recommendation of private funding for signs along the area was heeded by councilman Sam Liccardo, along with Mayor Chuck Reed (Yay Dave! — I live in his district). What doesn’t appear to be clear from the article was whether Councilwoman Madison Nguyen was involved in drafting the proposal.

For now, it appears the city will be distancing itself from the issue.

The approach makes sense — why this was not done before things got out of control is a bit curious. Gauging various stories on the issue, most link the issue’s escalation to a lack of leadership by Mayor Chuck Reed. Whether that’s true or not is not for me to say… but something went wrong.

The path that the supporters of “Little Saigon” took is still a bit puzzling to me. The only thing I can think of is the emotions representative of a people who were displaced from their homes due to Communism led them to this path. There were those who strongly opposed any formal discussion of renaming this section of Silicon Valley real estate, while there were also those who were willing to pursue some recognition and preservation of their culture in a country they now call their home. I think this might be key to the whole thing. Yes… despite what naysayers may think, this is their home, just as the Italians, Irish, Chinese, Japanese and a countless number of immigrants made the good old U S of A their home. I think it’s probably fair to say that the same criticisms of the Vietnamese community can be equally extended to every immigrant group in American history.

Was this necessarily the right path? While it all seems a bit extreme, only time and history will tell. Also, despite the seeming polarization of the community, not to mention anyone who had something to say about the issue, I think we should consider what this means for everyone, not just the Vietnamese community.

What does this all mean? Well, thanks to some great professors I had in college many moons ago, and my involvement in my own community, I learned that mono-cultures breed fear and intolerance towards anyone that doesn’t blend in. In food speak, the reality is that our country is not a melting pot (I like to say fondue), it’s really a nice stew, where almost every ingredient is still recognizable. While not as refined as a fondue, each ingredient in it’s lumpy goodness is bathed in a thick gravy that suspends each ingredient uniquely, but in a single recipe to create a stew. That’s pretty much America – each culture is still uniquely identified but each is American.

What have we learned from this? In the end, probably nothing as politics goes.

However, as citizens, I think it’s easy to forget that we create the communities we live in… not some bureaucrat that said the right things to get voted into office. Maybe we should all create a little passion of our own to build the communities and the homes we want…

As my wife told me a long time ago, home is where we live, love and play… and that could be anywhere.

Fast food is ubiquitous with familiar chains like McDonalds, Burger King, Jack-in-the-Box, and to a certain extend even Starbucks. However, a number of international chains have arrived in San Jose, serving up fast food favorites from overseas. To the Filipino community, there is only one chain synonymous with unique Filipino fast food. That restaurant is Jollibee.

Having eaten at Jollibee in both the Philippines and in the United States — the American version is true to the original. While far from Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods, certain foods might provide a little bit of a surprise.

A Filipino favorite is Jollibee Spaghetti. What makes it different? It’s kind of like Spaghetti-O’s with slices of hot dog and carrots.  Pancit palabok is a tasty noodle concoction with a sauce that’s typically made of shrimp heads with crushed pork rinds, fried pork, shrimp, green onions with a hard boiled egg (pictured above). Another unique offering is their Chickenjoy meal – fried chicken served with brown gravy and white rice (I put the gravy on the rice). My personal favorite is the Filipino equivalent of salisbury steak served on white rice. I didn’t say it was healthy for you. Like Saab cars, people fall into two camps — people love it or they hate it….

If you’re in East San Jose, are hungry and looking for a change from the ordinary, Jollibee might be worth a trip.

Jollibee (San Jose)
2008 Tully Rd.
San Jose, CA 95122

http://www.jollibee.com.ph

John Kerry (yawn) and Zoe Lofgren (nice lady) will participate in a town meeting this Saturday at the Mexican Heritage Plaza.

They hope to help promote Obama’s (can’t find his way to San Jose) bid for the presidency.

Mexican Heritage Plaza - Feb. 2 @ 1:00p

1700 Alum Rock Ave.
San José, CA 95116

ph 408 928 5500

Event Hot Line
ph 408 928 5564

Group says Mount Pleasant School District needs more diversity among principals. KIDS: 70 PERCENT LATINO; PRINCIPALS: ALL WHITE

This was the headline in an article in the San Jose Mercury News….

I’ve made no secret that I live in East San Jose. To say that it’s diverse would be an understatement. Not too long ago, a parent group at a school complained about the lack of diversity in the administration because of the hiring of a non-Hispanic principal at a school in the district, and it appears that the Latino Leadership Alliance has sent a letter to the school district stating “the district’s failure to assemble a diverse pool of school principals is unacceptable and irresponsible in a valley that is renowned for diversity.”

For anyone who knows me, it had me thinking…
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I never really noticed this until the other day, but in the Evergreen foothills, there’s a clear visual distinction between an area that has some level of development (in Evergreen, it’s usually a large home nestled in the hills) and an undeveloped area. In this photo, follow the middle lane into the hills. You’ll soon see a property line that’s been fenced off.

On the left side of the fence you’ll see a number of homes along the middle of the photo. On the right hand side, you’ll see property that hasn’t been developed. Other than parklands, this is about as pristine natural land as you can get in San Jose (Vice Mayor Dave Cortese’s family ranch is close to this area).
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The Mount Pleasant School Districted voted on February 12 to move forward with restructuring the existing schools. The impacted schools and resulting grades after the restructuring are :

– Valle Vista Magnet School becomes K-5
– Mount Pleasant Elementary School becomes K-5
– Robert Sanders Elementary School becomes K-5
– Ida Jew (formerly Foothill) becomes K-5
– August Boeger becomes 6-8
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I came across an article on NBC11 on a stabbing that occurred in San Jose. Normally, I would have read the story without incident, until I had noticed the location of the incident and how it was reported.

As in any big city, there are different neighborhoods that subdivides the city — whether they’re official or not. Well this incident occurred on San Felipe Road. What I found that was interesting was that the news reported the location as San Jose, not Evergreen. Evergreen’s kind of the other Almaden Valley in San Jose (really, really expensive houses).

The reason I thought this was strange was because if this were to have happened in East San Jose, the news would have annunciated “Eeeest SSaaannn HHHosai” and repeated it every 5 words to make sure everyone knew it was in East San Jose. Well, technically, San Felipe Road is Evergreen… so why didn’t the news say Evergreen? When good stuff happens, it’s always in their respective communities — Almaden Valley, Willow Glen, Rose Garden, etc… When bad stuff happens, it typically happens in 2 places, San Jose and East San Jose. When good stuff happens in a “bad area”, the news positions the story as being, “Wow, a good thing happened to an impoverished area of San Jose.” If you were watching the news, you’d think bad things happen in San Jose, and really bad things happen in East San Jose.
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