 You're tuned into the COVID-19 Community Report here on KDRT-LP 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm Autumn LeBae-Reneau and today is Tuesday, October 6, 2020. We're sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. My guests today are Michael Bish of the Yolo Food Bank and Natalie Nelson from Pence Gallery and we'll get to those interviews in just a few minutes. Once again, important local COVID-19 updates. Last week the state of California moved Yolo County into the red or substantial tier in the state's blueprint for a safer economy and as a result restrictions eased for some businesses. Effective Wednesday, September 30 and for the duration that Yolo County is in the red tier, the following businesses were allowed to open at limited capacity while continuing to follow the state of California guidance, the county's face covering order and strict social distancing protocols. Here's that list. Retail shops, shopping centers including swap meets and indoor malls, personal care services such as tattoo collars, piercing shops, electrolysis and body waxing, museums, zoos and aquariums, places of worship, movie theaters and family entertainment centers, hotels and lodging with fitness centers, fitness centers and gyms open indoors and restaurants open indoors. However, each of these businesses have limitations on the percentage of maximum occupancy allowed. For retail for example, it's 50% for indoor gyms, it's 10% and places of worship 25%. So there's a whole lot of figuring out to be done there on the part of all of these businesses that can now reopen. And as always for specifics, please see the county's COVID-19 resources spotlighted on the front page of Yolo County dot org a little bit more about this because it's important. Yolo County was initially placed in the state's purple or white spread tier on August 31, but we've been doing a good job meeting the red tiers metrics for two consecutive weeks allowing for this movement forward. The state's blueprint tracks two metrics. This is where it gets confusing. The seven-day daily case rate and the seven-day testing positivity rate. For the week ending September 21, Yolo County's rate for daily cases was 4.7 and testing positivity was 4.2%. And here's where you can see the progress. For the week ending September 28, daily cases was 3.1 and for testing positivity 2.5%. So to move into that red tier, counties must meet a daily case rate of between 4 and 7% and positivity of between 5 and 8% for two consecutive weeks. And that is after having been in the purple tier for at least three weeks. So that's where we are now. And although we've moved into the red tier, there are some industries that still face restrictions. For example, wineries are still only allowed to operate outdoors with modifications and bars and breweries that only serve alcohol are still closed. In addition, all our schools in the county must wait an additional 14 days after we've been placed in the red tier before being allowed to reopen for instruction that's in-person or hybrid. And Yolo County Public Health said it will continue working with local school districts and colleges on strategies and plans for reopening for in-person learning. And there's a whole progression there of what will get us to the orange tier and how we'll meet those metrics, but really you continue to see the drop a daily case rate between 1 and 3.9% in orange and so on. And counties can also move backward into more restrictive tiers if their metrics worsen for two consecutive weeks. So it is going to be a dance, an ongoing dance, again YoloCounty.org under the COVID-19 spotlight. Let's take a moment for music and we will be back with our first interview then. All right. My first guest today is Michael Bish, Executive Director of the Yolo Food Bank, an organization with a mission to end hunger and malnutrition in Yolo County, founded as a volunteer run backyard gleaning program more than 50 years ago prior to the pandemic. The Food Bank had been serving the nutrition needs of more than 45,000 Yolo County residents per month. We'll hear from Michael about how much that number has jumped in the last six months and much more. Thanks for joining us, Michael. It's good to be with you again, Autumn. Yeah. So I last interviewed you on April 14th, which seems like a lifetime ago, at least in pandemic terms. And at that time, you all were just stepping up mightily. The Food Bank was in full ramp-up mode, trying to get food delivered out to as many people as possible. So what was one of the biggest shifts you had to make during the pandemic? Well, that's going to be a hard question to answer because there were so many. So if I need to boil it down to one, I would say safer way of distributing the food, limiting the contact between individuals so that we ourselves weren't spreading the virus. Yeah. Yeah. And you actually started deliveries to households of people who couldn't get to the drop-offs. And that just had to be a phenomenal amount of work. That was a huge lift. And fortunately, we had so many strong partners, the county, the city, including the city of Davis, all of the volunteers, many companies donated vehicles and drivers and provided other forms of logistical support. It was really the community coming together as a pandemic response. And in fact, it's become something of a case study in crisis response the way the communities of Yolo County came together to meet the needs of every single resident here in Yolo County. I just recently joined in a case study involving Rob Davis that was recorded and it's pretty phenomenal what we've all done together. Yeah. I read a statistic earlier that prior to the pandemic, the food bank was serving 45,000 Yolo County residents per month. How much has that increased during this time? We're now up to 50,000 food. Wow. Staggering. And you distribute food all over Yolo County. You know, I've interviewed elected officials in both the winters and West Sacramento. And they both talked about the impact of the Yolo Food Bank and their communities and just how deep and broad it was. Let's take a couple minutes and talk about food distribution here in Davis. What services have you continued and what's new or coming down the pike? Well, we're up to 25 distributions each month in Davis. So we have three weekly distributions at Sac City College, University Covenant Church and Davis Community Church. And we also have a weekly delivery to the pantry on campus, the student-run pantry there. And then we have twice a month distributions at the Davis Migrant Center, Davis and Power Yolo on D3. And then three monthly distributions at Mutual Housing, Davis Bill Apartments and Shaps Retirement Center. We also provide the food for the Respite Center and we're also going to be providing the food for the new Interfaith Winter Rotating Shelter that's now morphing into sheltering individuals in apartment units. And then I forgot one, actually, so we're beginning next week, every Tuesday, we're going to be having a food distribution to 96 households over at Margarita Montgomery Elementary School. And that's above and beyond the door-to-door delivery that we're still doing in Davis. So we're still delivering to 84 senior households right to their doorsteps. Wow. So let's pull out one of those as an example, Margarita Montgomery, how does that work? If people want to get a food bank food there, what do they need to do? Well, you stop me on that one because I just heard about that. Okay, pick another one. So for most of the other drive-up distributions, so that's one of the things that we've done because of the pandemic is we've gone from walk-up distributions to drive-up distributions. So you just drive your car on the given date and time and get in line. But we also take walk-up clients as those for folks that don't have cars. Okay. Do you have to show proof of residency, proof of income? What do you need to do if you need help? No, there's no proof of anything. Whoever is in need of sustenance is welcome to come to one of our distributions. And that's because, as we know, the mere fact of when you start screening folks, that discourages them from availing themselves of much-needed services. The food bank model doesn't do that. That is awesome. You peaked my interest earlier. You mentioned the UC Davis Pantry for students, and I think you also said something about the Sac City. Davis campus, people seem to have an opinion of college students sometimes that they're, oh, people are paying for them to go to school and they're all good and they don't need anything. When the reality is we have a staggering number of poor students in this community. So can you tell us a little bit more about your efforts to connect with the students? We are working very closely with various units on campus, including ASUCD, to meet the food security needs of the students on campus. And as you quite rightly point out, there are a lot of students that come from struggling families. So somehow, some way they manage to afford tuition, and they don't have much in the way of leftover resources to meet that student's needs, whether it's their nutritional needs or their needs for shelter. And we're just super pleased that we can help on the food end of things. I'm sure it's, go ahead. It's my understanding that about 40% of the student body has some kind of unmet nutritional need. Yeah. That's a staggering number. Yeah. I remember my senior year at UC Davis, student loans had run out and I lived on ramen, peanut butter and bananas. I don't eat ramen to this day because it was such a thing back then. So I'm sure you are helping a lot of students there. And you know, I'm thinking about at-risk populations. The whole county has really come together to support the project, room key project. So can you tell us about Yolo Food Bank's role in that, and then a little bit more about what the interfaith rotating winter shelter is morphing into and how you'll be involved? Yeah. So I want to say it was maybe the third week of March, the county and the city homeless coordinators called us at Yolo Food Bank and said, hey, we have upwards of 40 homeless individuals sheltering in place in motel rooms. But we don't have any way to feed them. Can you help us out? Yeah. And two hours later, we had put together meal kits for those 40 individuals. It was on a Friday. And so we had put together enough meal kits for that Friday, the Saturday, and the Sunday. And off they went. And we've been doing it every day of the week since. It grew close to, I want to say, 298 individuals at one point. And yeah, it's been this huge coordinated effort to meet the needs of homeless individuals so that they could shelter from the pandemic. Right. And the interfaith rotating shelter, it's, you know, at my church, which is the Unitarian Church in Davis, I've cooked for, you know, I've participated by cooking at that shelter for years, which by its very name, it rotates from church to church. And obviously, that's not going to happen in the pandemic. So, you know, how are you aware that that's changing? You mentioned something about apartments, and then what will the food banks role be there? It'll be the same as it's been for Hotel Project Room Key, where we're providing the meal kits for those folks. It's my understanding that there's about 40 of them that are going to be sheltering in apartment units in Davis. And so we will be providing all the meals that they, or the meal kits that they're going to need to be able to successfully shelter in place. All right. As the person who's been steering the ship, what I've heard from you repeatedly in this short interview is gratitude for people who have helped you, people who have stepped up. Who would you like to thank? I would like to thank for starters, the 181 volunteers that make all these distributions work. I mean, these are 181 residents of Davis who are ensuring that we're not only feeding people in Davis, but countywide. It's just amazing how so many Davis residents are willing to help out. And then also the food donors. If it weren't for the food donors, there wouldn't be anything for us to distribute. And so we have these amazing food donors from all around the county, whether they're farmers or grocery store operators, food distributors, and the like. And last but not least are amazing fund donors. 97% of our budget is funded by private philanthropy in a typical year. And it's just astonishing how generous and compassionate so many individuals are with their time, their funds, and their food donations. Nice. All right. Just as nonprofits, especially the Food Bank, helps so many others. You know, we have needs of our own too. I want to encourage people to bookmark your website, yellowfoodbank.org. Of course you need donations. Of course you provide information. And I also want to ask what are your current or ongoing volunteer needs? In other words, if someone wanted to get involved, they'd go to the website and what might be available for them. We have needs for folks to sort food, to pack food, to deliver food, to hand out food at our distribution. We have a multitude of volunteer needs and they are listed on our website, which is at yellowfoodbank.org. Great. Anything else you'd like us to know, Michael? I want to see the community continue to rally around each other because this pandemic is going to be with us for a while to come, unfortunately. So we must remain vigilant and resolute. All right. Well, I want to thank you for your time. I know you're a really busy person. Just, you know, thanks for all you've done for our community and you and your staff and your board. You really, it's Yeoman's work out there. You stepped up. Thank you. Thank you, Autumn. And we really appreciate the work that you do as well. All right. You take good care. You too. Bye-bye. Bye. Okay. Once again, that was Michael Bish, Executive Director of the Yellow Food Bank and an organization that has just continued to honestly amaze and astound me with their impact, their generosity and their reach over the course of the pandemic and once again, yolofoodbank.org to support to get involved, et cetera. We're going to go to music for a couple of minutes and I'll be back with my second guest. And my next guest is Natalie Nelson, Executive Director of Pence Gallery in Davis. In pre-pandemic times, the Pence is a destination gallery in downtown Davis and a perpetual hotspot on the second Friday art abouts. Natalie joins us now to talk about how they're keeping art alive downtown. Welcome to you, my friend. Thank you. It's great to hear your voice, Autumn. Thanks for inviting me. Likewise. So as you and I both know, the arts and culture segment has really taken hard hits during COVID. So let's start with what do you do when what you do is offer an art experience where you have to close your doors. And the Pence has actually closed and reopened more than once as health orders have changed, right? Well, and it's funny you mentioned March 13th because that was the first event we had to cancel and that was the second Friday art about reception where we normally get 300 people and little did we know that we would stay shut for three and a half months. And then we opened for just appointment only in June and then we finally opened and we had to close again because of the governor's mandate. So it's been challenging, but like a lot of places we decided to go virtual through video and that's been a wonderful way to reach people. We frankly had no idea of the impact of video. Right. So you started a YouTube channel, correct? Right. Exactly. We had one and it only had two small videos on it and we actually created 26 different videos from March onwards that are tours of artist studios. They are craft ideas for kids and then we did a lot of virtual tours of our shows. Right. It was really, really fun and I think it was a way to really help highlight artists and what they do and make people feel in their homes like they weren't so stuck. Yeah. Yeah. So that was one thing we really wanted to emphasize. It's been an interesting thing here at Davis Media Access during this pandemic to watch everyone else use video tools to reach the masses. Right. And we've ended up helping a lot of people with that, but it is, everyone has had to do that pivot in whatever way. I want to talk about your... It's a little awkward for us because you folks, do you do it all the time? We had to start from scratch and we even put together a blooper one because we had so many times where we just messed up, but it ultimately ended up, I think, getting us a new audience and we just did a virtual art auction which was very successful so we want to try to keep reaching people through the virtual means. Yeah. I'm glad to hear your auction was successful. That's great. I want to talk about your current exhibit that opened October 2nd and I'm a little bit in love with the artist. She's a summer-known Sarah Post. Yes. Sarah's show is called This is Not a Dream and she came up with the title because she was thinking obviously about since March onward. Sometimes we woke up and we thought life was normal and then for various reasons we were hit with these waves of, oh my gosh, I can't go out. I can't be my friends. What's going on in the world? And so the paintings are about some of them confinement, some of them about counting the days and missing our friends really and missing connection to others. It's a powerful show. I'm just so excited to have it here. Yeah. So let's pause for a second. Talk about the Pence's location, so your address downtown and your current hours and what is walk-in access like these days and what will people find there? Sure, that's a great question. We are located at 212 D Street, so we're right in downtown Davis and right now our hours are every day except for Monday from 1130 a.m. to 5 p.m. We're a free gallery. We've always been free. You're welcome to donate of course because we're a non-profit but you will find masks at the door. If you need one, you'll find hand sanitizer. We sanitize all the time and you will find a very quiet, kind of contemplative space. We've had about 20 people through a day which is not very many people for us typically. So we do ask that people social distance and wear a mask. But it's been really nice to see people come back through and say, wow, I didn't know you were open. It's so nice to be in a gallery again. Yeah. I think there's widespread hesitancy because we don't know. It's part of the reason I keep inviting people on this show. So are you actually open? I mean, people access you. We just don't know, you know, that feeling of being stuck at home and being isolated. I think it's challenging to kind of regroup and move back into those kind of interactions that speaking for myself, I really took for granted prior to this time. Right, absolutely. And I think people need to feel comfortable and they need to feel like businesses are doing what they can to safeguard their health. And so, you know, you'll see all of us wearing masks. We actually started a program kind of outside just to make people a little bit more comfortable where the artist is in the gallery, but everything is open to the air and we have drinks outside. And so we tried it out and it was a lot of fun. Nice. People's social distance outside with masks. And we have one coming up this Sunday from two to five with artist Chris Daubert. So we're trying to make people feel a little bit more comfortable. Yeah, well, you have that beautiful courtyard too with the murals and the statue and everything. So it's a really soothing environment. I'm making a mental note to take a break from my computer and my home office one of these days and come visit. Yeah. Come downtown. Yeah. We want to encourage people to support our artists and our art organizations because it's not just the pen, it's the art center. I have all these places that are really feeling this impact. You know, the arts connect us all. So we need them. They do connect us all. They also provide us with respite and, you know, sometimes humor, sometimes contemplation, all of that. Right. Well, we've seen wonderful examples of voice through the arts of people, you know, stating what they really feel and I think that's one thing people forget is arts are language. Yeah. Yeah. All right. After Sarah Post exhibit, what's coming up next? We have this fantastic installation show that's all carved out of firewood, so discarded pine by Chris Delbert, who's, you know, really world renowned for his sculpture and his installation. And so he is going to be opening it. Actually, it's supposed to open today. And so you walk in and it looks like an empty gallery and these sculptures are floating behind a screen. But they're real. And so that continues through November 29th. And they're lit in this really mysterious way. So you have to come in to see it. We're going to do a video, but it just won't capture what it feels like to be in the space with these kind of mystical objects. All right. And then the next month we have Holiday Market, which I believe opens November 6th. So we're going to try some holiday shopping, see if people feel comfortable coming in. We hope so. And support the gallery as well as our artists. All right. We just keep going. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. And thanks for sharing what the pence is up to. And I want to make sure I have this right, pencegallery.org for all the info. Absolutely. All right. Thanks so much, Natalie. I don't Facebook. Thank you so much, Autumn. All right. Take good care. All right. That was Natalie Nelson with Pence Gallery. Good to hear that they are open and continuing to stage interesting exhibits downtown, pencegallery.org for more info. Next week, I've got my show partially organized, Heather Sluder of the Yellow Crisis Nursery. We'll talk to you about how parenting has gotten even harder during the pandemic. It's a really important conversation. You parents out there, especially of young kids with home, hang in there. You are loved and you are seen. All right. This is Autumn Lab, live from the KDRT studio.