Vida En El Valle Blogs: The Latin voice of the central valley.

I was so excited to receive a letter from the U.S. Census Bureau yesterday. “Yes!,” I thought to myself, “I finally get to fill out this census I’ve heard so much about.” (The letter ended up not being the actual census survey, but a reminder letter. Oh well. I have something to look forward to.)
But [...]

I felt like I was paid to drive the Valley’s Blossom Trail yesterday!
A little after noon on Tuesday, I drove from Fresno to Selma, where I picked up Vida photographer Daniel Cásarez. Then we drove to Corcoran, to interview students on the school’s Academic Decathlon team, and then to Dinuba, to interview a Latino business [...]

I wrote a story for this week’s edition of Vida about police agencies’ towing policies regarding unlicensed drivers. Here in Fresno, the police will not tow the car of an unlicensed driver if the person was not cited for the same offense in the past six months.
But in many cities across the Valley and state, [...]

Movies about Valentine’s Day could easily fall into two categories: mushy romantic comedy (boy meets girl, blah…blah…blah) or dark, cynical flick (boy meets girl, boys breaks girl’s heart, blah…blah…blah.)
What stands out about the movie, “Valentine’s Day,” which opens Friday, is that it doesn’t fall into one of those lame movie categories. Rather, it succeeds in [...]

The 28th annual Fresno County Academic Decathlon, held Saturday at Clovis East High School, was certainly a battle of the brains. Students had seven precious, adrenaline-filled seconds to answer the toughest of questions about kings, queens, and revolutions.
But the event was also a battle of the fans. During the Super Quiz, people in the audience [...]

Early Wednesday morning, I threw a camera, two reporter’s notebooks, and a voice recorder into my daypack, hopped on the Amtrak, and travelled to San Francisco to cover a rally for environmental justice in front of the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional office.
At the event, about 50 Kettleman City residents, along with residents of other communities [...]