Triangle Works (TW) is a group of local residents bringing community, “Placemaking” and creative pursuits to  El Sobrante.  Our evolving mission is to create, enhance and vitalize the Sobrante Triangle area (the Triangle created by Appian Way, Valley View and Sobrante Ave). We are working to develop and engage an innovative, diverse and forward-thinking community, foster local talents, foster education and expression in creative work, and steer development and investment towards community-centric and community relevant businesses and services.

We would like to highlight some of Triangle Works projects:

The Shed 

• Classes have started at The Shed.

• The Shed is a Maker’s Market and Workshop. This former shed of Adachi Nursery & Florist is being transformed into a creative community space that will offer classes for up to 12 people.  Classes have started! Classes are currently being planned for this summer and fall.  The Shed is designed to foster education and expression in creative work. Come learn wood working, sewing, painting and even mushroom propagation and many other creative topics. Classes will focus on personal and community development and will be offered for both children and adults.  Classes are project-based, so come learn how to create something new and take it home with you.  As we build this community, we're looking for both students and teachers. 

• The Shed is open every Sunday during Planting Justice's Farmers Market.  Pop in, say hello, ask about upcoming classes and see samples of creative works from the classes and workshops. 

• Retail opportunities in The Shed will be coming soon. 

• For more information on The Shed and classes Visit Our Website.

Kid’s Art table

• Bringing creative interests to all. Invite your kids to partake in a supervised Kids’ Art Table open Sunday’s during the hours of Planting Justice's Farmers Market.

Mural and Art Committee

• Last year’s mural, which covers half a block at Appian and Fran, was a great success.

• We are developing our second community mural; we have an artist and a tentative site! 

Triangle Works “Foundation”
We are slowly but surely growing our roots in the community and building our vision, structure and work plans as our core membership expands.  We are looking for people interested in seriously committing to helping TW grow into a force, alongside Good Table, Planting Justice, including their Farmers Market, to make our Triangle not a “Sobrante” (“leftover”) but a Place we want to be.   We’re expanding community participation in all TW planning and activities. Triangle works is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, A Community Center for El Sobrante (ACCES).

 Email Triangworks@gmail.com if you are interested in joining our Mural and Arts Committee or helping with further development of our base.

by Janine Bedon

Courtesy of Amauri Mejia via unsplash.com

In the Community

Happy May, Good Tablemates! For this edition of Meet Your Tablemates, let’s meet Vivian Lew, one of our community volunteers. Vivian will be teaching some of our community yoga classes, plus offering holistic wellness teaching when we open.

Special thanks to Kelly Knight for taking the video and conducting the interview, Nicole Morin for editing, and Vivian for chatting with us.

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Join us for our next Work + Fun Day!

When: Saturday, May 28th from 12-3 PM

Where: 5166 Sobrante Ave, El Sobrante 94803

We host Work + Fun Days on the last Saturday of every month. Get a chance to tour our new 1.3 acre location, meet fellow Tablemates, and help get the site closer to Opening Day-ready!

Since a lot of construction is taking place at the site, we ask that you wear sturdy shoes, clothes you don’t mind getting dirty, and a face mask for dust and covid protection. Plus, don’t forget to bring your favorite gardening gloves and tools if you want to get down and dirty with us!

Help us share the Good word by following us on Facebook and Instagram

by Janine Bedon, Communications Manager for the Good Table

Courtesy of Pixabay via pexels.com

In the Community

It’s time for another installment of Meet Your Tablemates! This month, let’s meet Tamika and Bailey, volunteers for the Good Table.

Tamika is a physician who is passionate about community health. Bailey is Tamika’s daughter and is excited for the possibilities that our space can bring to the community. Watch the video below to learn more about why they’re excited to welcome the Good Table in the El Sobrante community!

Special thanks to Kelly Knight for taking the video and conducting the interview, Nicole Morin for editing, and Tamika and Bailey for chatting with us.

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Join us for our next Work + Fun Day!

When: Saturday, April 30th from 12-3 PM

Where: 5166 Sobrante Ave, El Sobrante 94803

We host Work + Fun Days on the last Saturday of every month. Get a chance to tour our new 1.3 acre location, meet fellow Tablemates, and help get the site closer to Opening Day-ready!

Since a lot of construction is taking place at the site, we ask that you wear sturdy shoes, clothes you don’t mind getting dirty, and a face mask for dust and covid protection. Plus, don’t forget to bring your favorite gardening gloves and tools if you want to get down and dirty with us!

Help us share the Good word by following us on Facebook and Instagram

by Janine Bedon, Communications Manager for The Good Table

Photo by Matheus Frade on Unsplash

In the Community

The Good Table is possible because of the many hands, minds, and hearts that have gone into the project. We want to highlight their contributions through our video series, Meet Your Tablemates. Let’s meet one of them today!

Soheila Bana is a Good Table volunteer and the founder of 94803 Emergency Preparedness Alliance. She's an incredible resource for our project, and we're happy to have her! Watch the video below to learn why she joined the Good table cause.

Special thanks to Kelly Knight for taking the video, Nicole Morin for editing, and Soheila Bana for chatting with us.

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Do you want to become a Good Tablemate? 

Join us on our next Work + Fun Day!

When: Saturday, March 26th from 12-3 PM

Where: 5166 Sobrante Ave, El Sobrante 94803

We host Work + Fun Days on the last Saturday of every month. Get a chance to tour our new 1.3 acre location, meet fellow Tablemates, and help get the site closer to Opening Day-ready!

Since a lot of construction is taking place at the site, we ask that you wear sturdy shoes, clothes you don’t mind getting dirty, and a face mask for dust and covid protection. Plus, don’t forget to bring your favorite gardening gloves and tools if you want to get down and dirty with us!

Help us share the Good word by following us on Facebook and Instagram

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P.S. Hello there, I’m one of your new #goodtablemates! My name is Janine and I’m helping the GTUCC with their blog, newsletter, and other communication needs. I recently graduated from UC Berkeley where I studied climate justice and global development. I joined the Good Table team because I share their passion for food justice, alternative economies, and fostering community spaces. Feel free to send me a message via the Good Table Facebook or Instagram.

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Community

One of my favorite things these days is Substack, a platform for journalists and writers to distribute and get paid directly for their writing. It takes out the middleman, and allows that community to benefit from the folks who’d like to support them.

In honor of this, I’d like to share some of my favorite posts on social justice and community from the last couple months. I’m hoping you’ll discover some writers you like, and some communities or movements that are new to you.

Link roundup:
How to Build a Rugged, Resilient Society, by Anne Helen Petersen
It’s Time to Stop Panic Giving, by Virginia Sole-Smith
The Antidote is Always Turning Deeper Towards Each Other, by Garrett Bucks
"I had been hating my body like it was a job for years and I wasn’t happier, healthier, or thinner. I was just…tired." , an interview with Regan Chastain
"Our collective courage is flagging and there is no time for that”, by Chris LaTray (this is from 2020, but it’s still really good.)

by Rev. Dr. Melinda V. McLain

“Isolation” by Fabio Barbato

Spiritual Touchstone

During my 25+ years as a pastor, one of the most common worries I hear from parents with regard to their children (no matter what age!) is about friendship. Will my child make friends? Will those friends be a good influence? And, of course, what can I do as a parent to help my child make good friends?

There are no easy strategies for parents confronting this problem on behalf of their children. And the problem of loneliness and a lack of friends is certainly not limited to children. We recently learned from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, the book our Mindfulness Circle is reading that at least 10% of Americans say that they don’t have any close friends at all.

Not surprisingly, as we move into the third year of a global pandemic, loneliness appears to be on the rise. A new report from Harvard states that: “36% of all Americans—including 61% of young adults (18-25) and 51% of mothers with young children—feel ‘serious loneliness’.” And not surprisingly, loneliness appears to have increased substantially since the outbreak of the global pandemic, although a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study in 2019 found that at least 1 in 5 Americans reported feeling lonely or socially isolated.

Rising loneliness and social isolation are serious health problems with real world consequences. Human beings are social animals like all primates, and we are meant to be in relationship. But somehow, we’ve lost the art of being in community. It might be that we honor rugged individualism too much. Or that we are distracted by media and technology. Or it could be that we’ve just forgotten (or never really learned) how important it is to take time for friendship and to be in community.

The Harvard report suggest three immediate strategies including “raising awareness”, such this blog post or by simply thinking about your friendships or lack thereof. Their second recommendation is to “increase and improve our social infrastructure”. The Good Table is designed to do that for folks in El Sobrante, but we can all take advantage of existing social infrastructure such as volunteering with a local organization or becoming part of a spiritual community such as a temple, gurdwara, church, mosque or synagogue. And the third recommendation is to work “to restore our commitments to each other and the common good”.

From a spiritual perspective, the best antidote to loneliness is to develop a warm and compassionate heart toward others. There are many meditation and prayer practices that can help anyone to become more aware and connected to one another. These practices also help us turn away from focusing on our problems and become more compassionate. This “turning” then helps us to make new friends and strengthen our existing community connections.

My own view is that the fastest way to decrease our own loneliness and self-centeredness is to actively choose to becoming a helper and volunteer. This can be hard for young adults and parents trying to juggle a challenging schedule, but the results can be miraculous.

Try doing one new thing “out in the world” once a month such as participating in a community work day. Here in El Sobrante, there are many opportunities including our monthly “clean-up the town day” every 3rd Saturday (including this Saturday, Feb. 19) from 10a-12n (meet at the library) or come to our site (5166 Sobrante Avenue) on the last Saturday (Feb. 26) from 12n-3p.

Here is some final wisdom to ponder from Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the subject of loneliness.

“Much depends on your attitude. If you are filled with negative judgment and anger, then you will feel separate from other people. You will feel lonely. But if you have an open heart and are filled with trust and friendship, even if you are physically alone, even living a hermit’s life, you will never feel lonely.”

— Archbishop Desmond Tutu

May we all find happiness and friendship.

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

In Our Community

Image: StateOfIsrael

It’s the worst drought we’ve seen for years here in California and in the west overall, and I’ve been thinking about how to reduce my personal water usage. Granted, the individual can only do so much, but together, we can make a collective difference.

Surprisingly, some of the methods to reduce water use are a little counter-intuitive, but let’s start with the ones that are obvious:

• Shorter showers. Turn off the water when shaving, time yourself (I like to play music, and when I know two medium songs are done, so is my shower), use 2-in-1 products to cut down shampooing time.

• Reduce landscaping water. Use drip irrigation instead of sprinklers, plant drought-resistant plants, reduce or get rid of your lawn.

• More efficient laundry. Only doing laundry with a full load, and using high-efficiency washing machines if you can.

• Better dishwashing. Most dishwashers these days are high-efficiency, and even if they’re not, they use water MUCH more efficiently than handwashing dishes. Reduce or eliminate hand-washing.

Now for things you might not expect:

• Lower your electricity usage, and switch to renewable energy - electricity production in California requires a lot of water, and water requires a lot of energy.

• Eat less meat, particularly red meat. Do you know what food has the largest global water footprint? Beef. It takes approximately 1,847 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef — that's enough water to fill 39 bathtubs all the way to the top.

• Move away from high water use crops. The biggest water use crop in California is alfalfa, which is used to feed livestock, but after that, it’s almonds and pistachios, and then rice.

• Advocate for high water use crops to be grown in other parts of the country where there is no drought. The Midwest is full of commodity grain, but could grow many other things. Get involved with The Farm Bill and advocate for diversification of crops across the country and supporting farmers.

Together we can make change and help turn things around, making California and the west a more sustainable place to live. The only way we’ll get through the upcoming crises is together.

In the Community

The arts have always been important part of any community. Today, we’d like to spotlight two artists in our community that are doing amazing things.

Photo Credit: Susan Wilson

Carolyn North
A remarkable person, Carolyn has given birth to three children, been a midwife in India, sung in a Gospel choir, started a farm, taught her technique of dance healing as a dance therapist for many years, started a hunger organization, Daily Bread, built a strawbale house, written 11 books on matter and spirit and, stayed married to the same man for 58 years until his death in 2015, started the CommonSpace Community Land Trust in Sonoma County, and became a member of the Wild and Radish Community of Northern California (of which our partner org Planting Justice’s Gavin Raders and Haleh Zandi are members) where she is helping design a program for elders aging and dying in community.

As if that weren’t enough, Carolyn “recently donated her Berkeley home valued at approximately $1.3 million — residential property she and her husband purchased in 1966 for $28,500 — to the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative. The Oakland-based organization permanently removes residential properties from the mass market through cooperatives and land trusts and creates affordable housing opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and other underserved minority groups. North’s former family home now offers affordable housing, primarily for artists who are people of color.”

Carolyn says:
”I feel I am here to help make the transition from a materialistic culture to a culture that recognizes that we are all connected with each other, with the earth and with the cosmos.

You can read my bi-monthly articles on Musings On The Passing Scene and can follow links to information about my books at About Carolyn’s Books. The latest books are From the Notebooks of Carolyn North: Musings on the Passing Scene (Vol. 1) and its sequel The Living Edge of Dying: Musings in an Era of Breakdown (Vol. 2). They both address the realities of our time with deep seriousness, humor, personal stories and suggestions of how to keep on keeping on.”

Read Carolyn’s interview in SF Classical Voice: Carolyn North

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Steve Zwetsch

Making musical instruments out of unexpected items is Steve Zwetsch’s particular genius. Five years ago, Zwetsch came across a YouTube video of a guitar made from cigar boxes and wondered if he could craft something similar.

Being a self-taught handyman, Zwetsch gave it a shot and created the instrument in his basement. Before the pandemic, he would make five cigar box guitars a year but after his bakery business was impacted by COVID-19, he created 14 guitars in six months.

“It’s fun to make these things and I’m making them more for the art value than anything else. Then, the fact that it created more art with the music that you can play with it, is just phenomenal.”

— Steve Zwetsch, in profile by ABC News

Read his profile by ABC News here: The Art of Imperfection

by Rev. Dr. Melinda V. McLain

Good Table News

Great news for our site! It has been a LONG and winding road, but we finally have a building permit to begin the renovation of the Adachi site!

Deep thanks to all of you who have worked so hard to get us to this moment - especially our Project Manager, Colleen Rodger and Architect, Darrel DeBoer, plus all the folks from Planting Justice, the Good Table UCC, and all our wonderful community volunteers who have helped us reach this milestone! We are so grateful for all of you!

Come out for our next Community Work + Fun Day on Saturday, April 24th, 12p - 3p. Wear a mask, sturdy shoes, and bring gloves and gardening gear. 

In the Community

Last week got me thinking about neighborliness and community.

We live along a creek, and several trees have fallen, necessitating their removal. These are BIG trees: 40-50 feet and the creek is “private”, so it is a collective responsibility. The laws around this are pretty complicated as well.

Colleen with a log from one of the trees

One of our trees fell across the creek on the land of one of our neighbors and they also had one come down onto our side. We have the best access, so they found us via NextDoor and we decided to hire the same person to do the work via coming through our yard. This meant we had to sell and move out an old trailer, which was a multi-step, difficult process.

Meanwhile, there was another big tree blocking the creek that two other neighbors on the other side couldn’t decide as to whose responsibility, so the neighbors who originally contacted us had the crew pull it out at their expense. Doing this necessary tree work is difficult and expensive. We were so fortunate to have generous and kind neighbors to work with, but I worry about other neighbors who may not have the wherewithal to hire tree folks to come do this work well. And I’m concerned about neighbors who have a hard time getting along. This spirit of neighborliness made this process so much easier than it could have been. It showed me, once again, how vital community is, especially after the year we’ve all had.

Also, the tree guys pointed out a wild bee hive along the creek so now we know where all our bees come from! Sadly, we also now know that one of our huge stands of bay laurels has a fungus that is hollowing them out. All of this is likely is a result of the long drought. It’s sad, magnificent, and some folks are in danger of having a big tree land on their house. Doesn’t that just epitomize the times: tragic, beautiful, deeply sad, with moments of great joy and working together. That’s a broader metaphor for life, I think, written in the trees.

A wild bee hive is living in the crevice in the tree trunk on the left

If you’d like to learn more about our local creeks and want to help, check out: SPAWNERS, a great local group working to restore our watersheds.

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Artist: Rachel Wolfe-Goldsmith

In Our Community

It goes without saying that 2020 has completely changed our way of life, and mostly not in good ways.  Sure, it was novel to bake our quarantine sourdough at first, but as the months dragged on, the lack of social connection and being in community has really worn on all of us.  (It’s also given us insight into and compassion for the everyday life protocols of our immunocompromised community members — but that’s a different article).

Social isolation, the anxiety about our loved ones potentially getting sick, grief for those we’ve lost and the gigantic scale of the pandemic, anger at the current administration for their failure to act… it all adds up.  What do we do about it?  How can we keep ourselves mentally healthy during a time with so few resources?

Resilience, as defined by Merriam Webster, is the ability to recover quickly from stress.  “It's the notion of springing back into shape after being knocked down. In today's world of economic and political turmoil, being able to withstand the related shocks and stresses - for both individuals and societies-at-large - is more important than ever,” says the Salzburg Global Seminar, an independent non-profit organization that inspires current and future leaders to shape a better world.

So how do we cultivate resilience?

Artist: Jorge Bejarano

Certainly, therapy, meditation, yoga and other mental health resources can help us find some equilibrium, if we have access to them.  But something that occurred to me this week was that art and creativity may offer us even more.

I was driving around the block, my small children in their carseats in the backseat.  In order to stop the baby from crying, I was driving around downtown Oakland, stopping as little as possible.  As I drove the improvised circles, I noticed that the plywood covering storefronts and businesses had been overlaid with street art.  Intensely colorful murals and impactful statements lined the streets.

Artist: Natty Rebel

The next day, I went back on foot to document some of it.  It seemed important to witness, to document this cultural moment.  As I took pictures, I thought about the motivation to create art: outrage, joy, inspiration, boredom.  Art is a channel for these emotions, a place to contain and express them.

Street art, in particular, is a chance to be in community -- it’s a conversation with the viewer and with the other pieces surrounding it.  The art I saw decried police killings, stood up for black lives, and rejoiced in the community and the diversity of Oakland.  It’s important to witness these voices, understand their truths.

Artist: Unknown (Please get in touch — we’d love to give the artist credit!)

Art can be an outlet for anger at injustice, a voice for the unheard, a signal to rally, a comfort to those who feel alone.  In our contentious and difficult times, it can be a way to release stress, to make something creative, generative.  It can be solace, comfort.  It is the ultimate container for anything we feel.

Do you have an art practice?  What does it look like?  Does art help you cope with the uncertainty we face?  What other ways can you find resilience?  

As we go into 2021, art and community will matter more and more.  I urge you to observe the art around you, and generate your own practice, whatever it looks like for you.  The world needs more art.

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For more on the street art taking place in Oakland and San Francisco, check out these news articles and organizations:

Open-Air Art Museum
How Oakland Community Organizers Are Preserving Street Art
Painting the Void