Community

Some of our reservoirs are spilling—is the drought over?

Gilroy’s not the biggest weapon in the battle against cancer, but the city has become something of a little giant when it comes to fundraising for research and support for the survivor community—with a little help from friends.

Parents filled the seats in the storytime room at Gilroy library on April 6 as their smiling children sat on the floor, getting as close as they could to Gilroy librarian and storyteller Elizabeth Munoz-Rosas.

What happens when 52 nuns fall fatally ill with botulism? Hilarity. A bizarre combination perhaps, but one that can only be found at Limelight Actors Theater’s newest show, “Nunsense”. The 1985 musical-comedy has been a tremendous success off-Broadway. The show made its debut in Gilroy last Friday—appropriately enough, on April Fools Day.Nunsense tells the story of the Little Sisters of Hoboken, who are in dire straits after the death of most of their order at the hands of some tainted soup. Five of the surviving nuns decide to put on a show to raise money for the convent. The money, in a hysterically morbid twist that comes to characterize the show, is needed to bury four botulism-stricken nuns in the convent’s freezers. What proceeds is part-cabaret and part-vaudeville, featuring singing and dancing numbers, a quiz for the audience, and moments in which the cast comically break the fourth-wall.“This show was on my bucket-list,” director and Limelight owner Kevin Heath said. “I know that it’s been done a lot but I just really love the show and I wanted to put our twist on it.”Heath enlisted the help of three veteran actors of the show. Carol Harris plays Sister Hubert, the wisest and most humble nun of the group. Sister Mary Amnesia, whose comedic fodder comes from her forgotten memory, is played by Rosalind Farotte. Sister Robert Anne, the mischievous and daring nun of the group, is played by Betsy Andrade.Limelight’s production of the show marks the fifth time Farotte has played Sister Mary Amnesia. Farotte also had the opportunity to work with her daughter, Elizabeth Farotte Heenan, who served as the choreographer for the show.“I think that you become more confident,” Farotte said. “You become more comfortable throwing stuff in there. Before, I’d worry about it or hold back.”During one part of the show, Farotte plays with the audience, walking around the dinner tables of the theater, throwing zingers here and there and making pop-culture references that a pious nun shouldn’t know. Heath said that only 30% of Farotte’s antics were scripted, with the other 70% improvised on the fly by the actress.Andrade, who has also played her character for the fifth time, said she identifies most with Sister Robert Anne.“She’s kind of rough around the edges but I think she’s got a really big heart,” Andrade said. “And I went all the way through Catholic school, from kindergarten through college.”The five are led by the demanding but light-hearted Sister Mary Regina, played by JoAnna Evans. Finally, Sister Leo, the naive novice of the group, is played by Roberta Vinkhuyzen. Limelight’s “Nunsense” is the first production in which Evans and Vinkhuyzen have been cast in the play.“Kevin calls up and says, “Please, please be Mother Superior!,’” said Evans. “I’ve directed for several years now and it was a chance to get back into acting and singing.”Evans describes her character as having the illusion of being in control while simultaneously prone to fun and mischief like the other nuns. At one point during the show, Sister Mary Regina finds contraband from one of the nuns, which launches the group into the uproarious song, “Tackle That Temptation.”“As a group of actors working together, we bond very closely to each other and it's a very supportive atmosphere,” said Roberta Vinkhuyzen of the all-female cast in “Nunsense”. “It makes it a lot easier to bury your soul on stage.”“Nunsense” is Vinkhuyzen's first musical at Limelight, although she has performed in other shows at the theater, such as “Steel Magnolias” and “The MOMologues.”The supportive atmosphere Vinkhuyzen describes is an important factor in the production of the show. The cast of “Nunsense” never wavers. Their confidence is palpable and every part of the performance is organic, so much so that one has to wonder if these women don’t have a little bit of their characters’ qualities in them. “The people that walk up on our stage are all A-list actors,” Heath said. “And the play is never offensive and always humorous.”Heath hand-picks each of the cast members for a production. He knew that when he opened Limelight in 2011, “Nunsense” would eventually hit the theater.“Nunsense” is for the zany and eccentric part of all of us. Its broad appeal comes from its mixture of low-brow and high-brow humor. It is irreverent, yes, but it has a certain charm that reminds us that everyone likes to laugh. Even nuns.“Nunsense” is playing at the Limelight Actors Theater, at the Gilroy Center for the Arts on 7341 Monterey St, through the end of April. For a schedule of performances and ticket-prices, go to limelightactorstheater.com.  

A Gilroy group has teamed with a national organization and the government to help fish and folks thrive along a stretch of creek whose waters and trout end up in the ocean.Coastal Habitat Education and Environmental Restoration, or CHEER, and the 150,000-member Trout Unlimited, based in Arlington, Virginia, have completed the first of a dozen installations of water storage tanks along Little Arthur Creek near the eastern base of Mt. Madonna County Park.The tanks are designed to help preserve natural creek pools prone to drying up after young steelhead trout hatch, while offering property owners dependent on iffy wells and unreliable creek water systems a year-round supply of good water.Taken in part from a similar project a decade ago in Northern California, if successful the idea could become a valuable tool in preserving in-stream water flows and fisheries that suffer during the dry season, according to CHEER founder Herman Garcia.For each fish that survives the dry season and makes it to the ocean and back to the Little Arthur, 5,000 to 10,000 eggs will be produced when they spawn, he said.Before the project, CHEER volunteers each year were rescuing an average of 3,500 trapped fish—called fry—from pools that dry up from resident water use just in that short stretch of the creek, releasing them downstream to sections that are still habitable.In the project area, and downstream, “the system does not sustain enough water for them to survive,” Garcia said.It was in 2009, the 50th anniversary of its founding, that Trout Unlimited and CHEER held the first meeting for residents along Little Arthur Creek, most with addresses on Redwood Retreat Road, in rural western Gilroy.TU identified the tributary of Uvas Creek in the Pajaro River watershed as likely to benefit from a pilot program called the Coastal Streamflow Stewardship Project, according to its literature.Its goal was to “improve water flow and conditions in late spring, summer and fall for the purpose of enhancing habitat for steelhead [trout] while meeting the needs of local residents who also depend on water from the creek,” residents were told.The project was grounded in the philosophy that “groups of users can cooperatively manage water diversions to achieve more cumulative protection and more cost-effective results than any water user could achieve alone,” according to the letter sent to residents.Thirteen residents attended a meeting on June 17 that year. Six years later, in 2015, the first system went online on the Gifford property.Jack and Rita Gifford now have something they have not had since buying their country home more than 50 years ago on the banks of the Little Arthur: a consistent, reliable source of clean water all year long for drinking, laundry, showering and irrigation of outdoor plants.Before, they had to drink and cook with water that reeked of sulphur, shower fast before the water ran out and lost plants and trees when the creek went dry. They had little luck with wells; the last one produced less than 50 gallons every 24 hours.“I appreciate this water beyond how I could ever explain it,” said Jack Gifford, 83, a retired San Jose State University Information Technology professor. “The joy and happiness of taking a shower, getting in and just being consciously aware that this water is not going to run out before I finish,” he said.When years ago Gifford watched the CHEER truck approach and heard Garcia suggest that he take part in a new-fangled water preservation effort, he was ready to listen.So impressive is the new installation that TU last week sent a crew to film the project and landowners.Assisting TU and CHEER with years of preliminary studies were the California Fish and Wildlife Department, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.Gifford called the project, “worthy work that deserves not to be impeded.”Matt Clifford, a TU attorney based in Emeryville, said that when the organization looked for other creeks after the Mattole River project, that “Little Arthur was the obvious choice because of the steelhead and the small number of landowners involved,” he said.He called CHEER the ideal partner because of its success in restoring steelhead habitat and Garcia’s contacts with landowners.“It’s all about relationships; it has to work for people and for the fish,” Clifford said.To get results, CHEER and TU installed eight 5,000-gallon tanks and a pumping and filtering system between the Giffords’ house and the creek.The massive tank installation includes pumps that pull water during the wet season from the creek through filtering systems and into the tanks. From there it goes through a chlorine purification tank and, when needed in dry months, in pipes to the house so the Giffords do not have to pump water from the dwindling creek supply and can leave it for the fish.When the project is completed with 11 or 12 installations, the cost will be about $1 million, Clifford said, all funded by the California Coastal Conservancy, the Fish and Wildlife Department and the Santa Clara Valley Water District.Garcia said that while the project is not yet proven, it has worked on the Mattole River and he believes it will work on the Little Arthur and will provide benefits for property owners, fish, those who enjoy fishing, conservation groups and the environment.  

You know the name of the guitar player in the band, but for 25 years the man in front of Santana has been singer Tony Lindsay.

Several months after temporarily shutting its doors and laying off dozens of workers, the United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) distribution center on Cameron Boulevard in Gilroy is back up and running. Its first product shipment was dispatched late last month and a new general manager is leading operations at the state-of-the-art plant.“The future is bright for UNFI Gilroy, our associates and the community,” said Crystal Brennan, an 11-year veteran of the $6 billion publicly traded company, and UNFI’s first female general manager.“The state-of-the-art distribution center was built for growth and is temperature-controlled to handle a variety of natural and organic products that our customers want, while still being energy efficient. UNFI Gilroy has applied for Gold LEED [Leadership in energy and environmental design] certification,” she said.Brennan, a Texas native who worked at seven UNFI Distribution Centers in a variety of management positions, from human resources to operations and transportation before assuming the top job at UNFI Gilroy, said UNFI will “focus on giving back to the community through volunteer activities and green initiatives.”UNFI Gilroy was not yet fully operational when it was announced last July 21 that the 425,000-square-foot distribution center would delay its start of business until early this year because it lost a critical customer, Safeway, in its Northern California market.At that time, the Dispatch reported, then-mayor Don Gage had received a phone call and confidential note from UNFI’s chief operating officer, Sean F. Griffin, confirming the loss of Safeway and delay of the plant’s grand opening. Griffin said work would continue “on building and equipping the Gilroy plant with an eye toward opening in February.”Consequently, the company laid off the 38 employees who had just started working at the plant and offered good-will payments to the other, eligible new hires that had not yet started working.According to UNFI, more than 50 percent of the original active associates and others who had been offered positions are now working at UNFI Gilroy. The company has 132 employees, 43 of whom are Gilroy residents. The facility is huge and has room for expansion as the company gains more clients.Many of the hires have prior experience in warehouse operations, according to UNFI, and all associates receive extensive training regarding policy, procedure, operations, position function, equipment and safety.Brennan said that unlike other big warehouse companies, UNFI won’t replace workers with robots. The demands of the companies seeking their products are too specific for machines to do the work, she said, and the kinds of consumers who would buy the products would prefer knowing that people worked on the process, not robots.While earlier reports stated the Gilroy plant would eventually expand to 700,000 square feet, UNFI said there are no plans for expansion.The current plant size is 425,600 square feet.Gilroy UNFI ships to customers including Whole Foods, CVS and Sprouts.“I look forward to UNFI being an active member of the Gilroy community for many years to come,” said Brennan.

From a tough, fatherless boyhood to successes in college football, the military and real estate development, Robert James Dyer, who helped shape Gilroy as it is today, will be remembered Sunday, April 10 with what’s expected to be the kind of party he relished.

Shag Beauty Bar in downtown Gilroy went from hair salon to Project Runway last Sunday as 27 sewing students modeled their handmade outfits to a packed house.