Café a bright spot in west Valley community

The roomy coffeehouse is replete with the usual trappings: expensive espresso maker, oversized sofas, enticing pastries, a customer in artfully torn jeans typing on her BlackBerry.

Clovis seniors flock to fitness class

The men and women in the Senior Stretch and Tone Class -- people who flew planes in World War II, danced rumbas and climbed Half Dome -- shuffle through simple aerobics. It's the most faithfully attended exercise class in the Clovis city recreation system.

Kingsburg's coffee-klatch culture mulls over murder

KINGSBURG — People talk. That’s why a murder in this Swedish-themed town of about 11,000 has created two mysteries, not just one.

Loyal Valley listeners tune in to Radio Tradio

Dennis is selling a 2-year-old sleep apnea machine for $350. He'll throw in a humidifier.

Someone out there reads all the letters to Santa

Each year, letters to Santa -- scribbled and sealed tight (children really seem to like glue) -- arrive at local post offices.

Wife fills owner's shoes at Sanger pool hall

SANGER -- Alex Gonzales, daughter of a pool hall owner, can't shoot pool. She doesn't even know how to rack the balls. Her father, Juan Enrique Gonzales, never felt a pool hall was a proper place for his daughters or his wife, Angela.

Ingenuity and conservation in a small Dinuba repair shop

DINUBA -- Three signs in the short alley point the way to Pete's Shoe Repair. When you walk in the door there's Pete Hodian, 80, wearing a bright yellow hat that says "Pete's Shoe Repair," leaving no doubt that you found the place

Valley rides pomegranates' popularity

Jim Simonian isn't the sort to sip pomegranate martinis, buff his skin with a pomegranate scrub or read the sort of magazines that would apprise him about Academy Award nominees getting Pom juice in their gift bags.

Cinema Mariposa

MARIPOSA -- Two young Germans passing through this mountain hamlet on their honeymoon entered "cinema" into their global positioning system.

In Clovis, bingo's not a game, it's community

A lot of numbers are floating around a packed, smoky Clovis Bingo Hall, and only some of them are coming from the bingo caller.

Hmong immigrants lose a secret garden

The setting sun is an orange stamp on a rice-paper sky. A late summer breeze rustles through 10-foot sugarcane tickling the stillness. A coat with Thai embroidery hangs inside an unoccupied shed fashioned from bamboo, cornhusks and a cardboard refrigerato

Yosemite hamlet finds a sense of community in a taco

EL PORTAL -- It's late summer in this hamlet just outside the western border of Yosemite National Park.

In search of Fresno baseball diamond

Tinker to Evers to Chance. If you're a big-time baseball fan, those words probably mean something to you. If not, just know the names are synonymous with baseball's double play -- a study in multiple connections -- and that Fresno's link to baseball lore plays a role in this story of a lost baseball field and a rediscovered friendship.

Letting the plants grow

At this hand-powered Madera County flower farm, bouquet colors don't match, potatoes show up among the zigzagging zinnias and the well just ran dry -- but that's a source of entertainment as well as alarm.

They pet horses, don't they?

The driveway to Jensen's Armstrong Stables is a passageway into the country from the center of the city.

Sound of drums

DUNLAP -- These Sierra foothills are home to a lot of things: cults, a cheetah refuge, church camps. Down the road, there's a Greek priest buried on a hill behind the domes and arches of a Byzantine-style monastery. A man eating lunch at the local di

City turns up heat on shaved ice

The day after a story about Huntington Boulevard ran, the city of Fresno hustled out there to close down a shaved ice stand catering to neighborhood kids.

Leapin' lizards!

In a small, shingled 100-year-old farmhouse near Fowler, there lives a two-headed, bearded dragon lizard.

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