(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK (ENN)—SAN BERNARDINIO, CA— While all of the participants of the Little League® Western Regional Tournament enjoy their experience in San Bernardino, there are a handful of notable stars who have gone on to have professional careers.
Darnell Coles
As a member of one of three local-area teams to ever play at the Western Regional Headquarters in San Bernardino, Darnell Coles led the San-Ri Little League from Rialto and San Bernardino to the West Regionals in 1974. Unfortunately, San-Ri lost in the championship game to a very tough Red Bluff team from Northern California. After a star career at Eisenhower High School, lettering in four sports, Mr. Coles earned a football scholarship to UCLA. Despite his scholarship, Mr. Coles was also drafted by the Seattle Mariners and chose to play baseball. Mr. Coles later starred with the Detroit Tigers, hitting 20 home runs in one season. He is currently the hitting instructor for the Milwaukee Brewers.
Ken Hubbs
Ken Hubbs – Colton (Calif.) Little League (1954)
While he never played at the Western Regional Headquarters, Ken Hubbs and the Colton (Calif.) Little League went to the Little League Baseball World Series in 1954. He lettered in four sports in high school, named All-CIF in three sports, and was named an All-American in both football and baseball. After being recruited by John Wooden to play basketball at UCLA, Mr. Hubbs was drafted by the Chicago Cubs and quickly made his way to the majors, setting many fielding records in his brief career. In 1962, he was named the National League Rookie of the Year and became the first rookie to also win the Golden Glove. Unfortunately, his career was cut short as he died shortly later in a plane crash. In his honor, Colton Little League has since been renamed Ken Hubbs Little League and continues to be an active Little League program today.
With thousands of players participating in the West and Northwest Regional Tournament, this select few were also able to take their talent to the ultimate level playing on the professional level.
Rialto’s Night Out is a way to reduce crime in the community
By Naomi K. Bonman
(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK (ENN)–RIALTO, CA— To reduce crime in the community, law enforcement and city officials partner together to create a National Night Out.
National Night Out is a widespread celebration in the United States that has been ongoing for the past 35 years. Even though this national event has occurred annually since 1984, many community residents are still in the dark about both the history and the purpose of National Night Out. Our goal is to shed some light on National Night Out.
In 1981, the National Association of Town Watch (NATW) was founded to connect community watch programs across the nation and provide them the resources they needed to make a difference in their neighborhoods.
In 1984, the NATW officially introduced National Night Out as a night where community members and local police officers would band together to meet with each other, discuss community safety concerns, and celebrate the neighborhoods where they live. It is a night for residents to forge a positive bond with the law enforcement officers that are tasked with protecting their community.
Rialto held their National Night Out on Tuesday, August 7, in Downtown Rialto at the City Civic Center. People of all nationalities came out for some good ol’ wholesome, family fun, which was also a good way to kick off the new school year as well.
There were plenty of food and informational vendors, as well as music, games and raffles that city residents partook in for clean and safe fun. The event also allowed Rialto residents to engage, connect and get to know law enforcement officers.
Today, over 38.6 million community participants in 16, 377 unique neighborhoods participate in National Night Out. The Southeast states will be celebrating their Night Out on October 2, 2018 to avoid the brutal heat of early August.
Caylee Cardenas, 9, from San Bernardino with puppy Dozer.
(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK (ENN)—LOMA LINDA, CA—Yucaipa Animal Placement Society (YAPS) collaborated with restaurant chain Raising Cane’s in bringing the society’s puppies to visit cancer patients at the LLU Children’s Hospital hematology/oncology outpost clinic Monday, July 30.
Patients cuddled up to the puppies between treatments. The clinic — which is an outpost of unit 4800 — treats pediatric blood-related diseases and cancers and is the largest of its kind in the Inland Empire. Young cancer patients receive treatments such as blood transfusions in the clinic.
The visit was designed to bring joy to children diagnosed with cancers such as leukemia, brain tumors and blood-related diseases such as hemophilia.
“I love seeing the smiles on my child’s face when they’re surprised by something special like this,” said one patient’s parent.
This is the first visit to Loma Linda University Health for both Raising Cane’s and YAPS.
(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK (ENN)—SAN BERNARDINIO, CA— To show their love to our servicemen and women, the Concerned Citizens for the Development of North Fontana and P-Love Helping Hands partnered with Danny Martinez Veterans Affairs to provide our soldiers with comfortable Snuggie pajamas that will be sent overseas.
(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK (ENN)—— SAN BERNARDINO, CA— Community Action Partnership of San Bernardino County (CAPSBC) is excited to be selected by Macy’s San Bernardino as the nonprofit beneficiary of the 2018 The Big Give Back – Make Good Cents for Your Community campaign.
Macy’s Corporate and Macy’s Staff have been a long-time supporter of CAPSBC, giving both times to volunteer, and dollars to support their great programs. Many staff volunteer at their Food Bank, which is the largest provider of free emergency food for those in need in San Bernardino County.
When you shop at Macy’s San Bernardino between August 1 to the August 15, you will see a message at the credit card pin pads when you check out that asks would you like to round it up to Help Community Action Partnership of San Bernardino County. You then have the option to round up your purchase to the nearest dollar, up to $0.99 cents.
We know you love to shop at Macy’s and you will be helping your fellow community members in need!
Macy’s San Bernardino is located at Inland Center Mall, 400 Inland Center Drive in San Bernardino.
(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK (ENN)— SAN BERNARDINO, CA— Roger’s Burgers has opened a 24-hour burger restaurant in downtown San Bernardino! The corner at Sixth and D Street is not particularly freeway close but is apparently close enough to the many burger lovers who keep coming back!
Roger promises 100% Angus Beef patties that are hand pressed daily; never frozen! They brag about a “4×4 Wild & Wreckless Burger” that features four 1/3 lb. beef patties, tomato, red onion, mustard sauce, pickle, chili, bacon, cheese and topped with pastrami. I have not tried that, but have enjoyed the plain ole, “Wild and Wreckless” that has only one 1/3 lb. patty and everything else.
Roger’s also has chicken, turkey, veggie and vegan sandwiches and salads. Charbroil is their mode of cooking.
They have done several things right; they moved next door to WssNews (we eat a lot) and he has made a commitment to the San Bernardino rebound with his 24-hour service. His menu is exciting, and his food is very good.
Roger’s website iswww.rogersburgersusa.comand you can phone in your order at (909) 381-8001. Roger’s other location is in Burbank.
(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK)—RIALTO, CA—On Saturday, August 4 at the Johnson Center in Rialto, there were hundreds of cheerful and grateful smiles and gestures as students prepared for the new school year as they were given free backpacks and hair cuts.
Another successful Back to School Backpack Giveaway is under wraps thanks to Rialto Mayor Deborah Robertson and CEO and founder of Young Visionaries, Terrance Stone. Of course they couldn’t have made the event successful without the generous support of their volunteers and sponsors.
(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK (ENN)— RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA— Jazz Enthusiasts, coming to the Inland Empire Labor Day Weekend Saturday, September 1, for the I. E. Jazz Experience in Rancho Cucamonga at the Beautiful Mountain Vista Winery.
It will be a day of great live jazz music and bands, great wine, selection of food vendors and a marketplace. The artist lineup for this year is Jason Weber, Michael Haggins, Vaughn Fahie, Nick Gomez and the Latin express, Jazz Zone, and more.
There will also be a Paint n Sip event throughout the festival for those that want to learn how to paint and sip on some great wine.
In the tasting room, sample great wines also featuring various wine demonstrations, fun lectures, more live entertainment and workshops. Listen to http://BACRadio.com to win tickets and for more details go tohttps://iejazzfestival.com
Advance tickets are on sale now. Get them before the price goes up!
John Jennings discusses the challenge of transforming the beloved classic into a best-selling graphic novel.
(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK (ENN)— RIVERSIDE, CA— For graphic novelist and illustrator John Jennings, transforming Octavia E. Butler’s classic “Kindred” into a graphic novel was both physically and emotionally draining.
Jennings, a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California, Riverside, created the adaptation with fellow scholar, graphic novelist, and longtime collaborator Damian Duffy for Abrams ComicArts.
Published in January 2017, “Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation” debuted at No.1 on the New York Time’s Best Sellers list for hardcover graphic books and has received wide acclaim, garnering a Bram Stoker Award among other honors. Now, it is a finalist for this year’sEisner Awards for best adaptation from another medium.
Jennings, who provided the illustrations for the 240-page book, called the 11-month process “a small miracle.” The work took a physical toll — Jennings injured his shoulder while working on the illustrations — but also an emotional one.
Originally published in 1979, Butler’s story focuses on Dana, an African American woman who is transported to a pre-Civil War-era Maryland plantation, returning numerous times to help her white ancestor Rufus whenever he finds himself in grave danger. Trapped in the past, she experiences firsthand the harrowing cruelty inflicted on her own enslaved ancestors and later, herself.
Turning Butler’s book into a graphic novel presented Jennings and Duffy with several unique challenges, from figuring out how to truncate Butler’s seminal work while doing it justice, to the many aesthetic considerations involved in converting prose to a highly visual medium.
“You can’t go word-for-word with a comic book adaptation because they handle storytelling differently,” Jennings said. “We actually had less pages to tell the same story. Octavia was a masterful writer, but even with the terseness of her words, we still had hundreds of words that had to be cut and instead shown. That’s the thing in comics books; you need to show, don’t tell.”
To depict the time periods, Jennings played with the book’s color schemes, muting the present day and making the past full-color.
“Normally when you’re doing flashback stories, the current day is vibrant and in color and the past is kind of sepia-toned, but we wanted to do something different,” Jennings said. “We wanted to play around with the fact that in the book, Octavia talks about how vibrant and how real the past was, and how bright and harsh it is, so we decided to do the opposite.”
For the scenes in the present, Jennings drew inspiration for the color tones from an unlikely place.
“I actually sampled some of the colors from bruises and blood. The idea is that it’s her blood relationship to Rufus that continues to pull her back. It’s about family ties. That red is actually the color of what scabbed-over blood looks like.”
In Butler’s novel, time travel is more supernatural than scientific. To achieve this transition in the graphic novel, a subtle breakdown of the borders of the panels occurs. The lines become fractured and frenetic as Dana is pulled back and disappear completely when she finds herself on the other side of time.
Jennings found the experience of immersing himself so deeply in slavery especially difficult, noting he is a descendent of slaves in the South.
“I was crying physically onto the pages that I was drawing, because it’s so powerful, and so prescient, and so meaningful still today in the middle of the Black Lives Matter era. How do you get across visually the feeling of this book? My drawings were really manic, and energetic, and they make people uncomfortable.”
Despite the arduous process of creating the graphic novel, Jennings found the experience hugely rewarding, and it served as his first foray into mainstream work.
“These are things that really effect black people in America still, the wages of slavery which I think our country is still paying, and you can see how that presents itself in our current political climate,” Jennings said.
In graphic novel form, “Kindred” is offering new audiences a chance to experience Butler’s thought-provoking work.
“Some people who have never read comic books before have picked up ‘Kindred,’ Jennings said. “A lot of the time, it’s the first sci-fi or speculative story people have read, because sci-fi is still dealing with representation issues with people of color.”
Jennings will be at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego, participating in several panels and attending the Eisner Awards ceremony on July 20. Known as the “Oscars” of the comic book industry, the awards are named for the pioneering comics creator and graphic novelist Will Eisner. Jennings previously received an Eisner for his scholarly work, “The Blacker the Ink,” but the nomination for “Kindred” marks the first time he has been nominated for his graphic novel work as an artist.
“It’s a huge honor, especially to represent Octavia Butler’s legacy,” Jennings said of the author, who died in 2006. “I’m so glad we are a part of getting people to read her work and push her into the future. I’m hoping that if she’s out there somewhere looking at us, that she’s happy with what we’ve done, and we want to continue celebrating her.”
A softcover adaptation of “Kindred” is due at the end of July, and the adaptation will also be translated to Spanish, French, and Swedish, with those editions released in the fall.
John Jennings at Comic-Con
Jennings will be participating in five panels during Comic-Con International: San Diego. In addition to the various panels, he will also be attending the post-con offsite event, AfroFuturism Lounge, which he helped organize. Catch Jennings at the following panels and events:
Inland Affiliate Hosts Breakfast Wednesday Dedicated to Empowering, Supporting Community
(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK (ENN)— SAN BERNARDINO, CA —- Susan G. Komen IE is hosted a special breakfast on Wednesday, August 1 at Dignity Health St. Bernardine Medical Center in San Bernardino to educate, empower and mobilize the African-American community in the fight against breast cancer.
The breakfast was part of a broader statewide program known as the Susan G. Komen Circle of Promise Initiative that focuses on addressing breast cancer disparities among African-American women by educating the community and providing better access to care. The statewide program is made possible in part by a grant from the Anthem Blue Cross, Foundation, LLC. Proceeds from the breakfast help fund education, screenings, diagnostics, treatment, patient navigation and research to help find cures for breast cancers.
“All women and men, regardless of race, ethnicity, place of residence or socioeconomic status, should be empowered to take personal action and access appropriate breast health services. However, many African American women still face barriers to screening, diagnosis and treatment services,” said Jill Eaton, Susan G. Komen Inland Empire executive director. “The Circle of Promise initiative will make a significant impact on the lives of women in the Inland region, across the state, and ultimately, save lives.”
Gains from the war on breast cancer have sidestepped African-American women. Prior to 1980, African-American and white women faced nearly identical mortality rates of approximately 33 deaths per 100,000. But today, African-American women are 40 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than white women.
In fact, these women are between 40 to 70 percent more likely to have a late-stage diagnosis, are more likely to be diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, and are also more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer at a younger age.
For women without health coverage, the burden is even greater – uninsured women have a 30 to 50 percent increased risk of dying from breast cancer than those with insurance.
In San Bernardino County, there is a mounting crisis in the lack of quality and affordable breast health care services. There has been a dramatic decline in the number of surgeons, oncologists and primary care physicians available to serve African-American women, regardless of their insurance status.
The breakfast at St. Bernardine Medical Center, Matich Conference Center, featured speeches by:
Dr. Margaret Hill, a member of the San Bernardino City Unified District Board of Trustees who will share her own story of battling breast cancer;
Michelle Melancon, a certified oncology nurse and accredited oncology nurse navigator who recently was honored by Dignity Health St. Bernardine Medical Center for her work as a breast cancer navigator
Dr. Krissa Smith, director of research programs for the Komen Research Programs Department
Follow the Susan G. Komen Inland Empire affiliate on Facebook Susan G. Komen Inland Empire and or Twitter.
Westside Story Newspaper – Online The News of The Empire – Sharing the Quest for Excellence
