Thumbs up, thumbs down: Edison High freshman wins car for all A’s
Thumbs up to Michelle Salazar, a ninth grade honor student at Edison High School, for putting her foot on the gas during a lot of late-night study sessions. She’s now the owner of a shiny new Toyota Corolla. Michelle was among the Fresno County students entered into a contest for maintaining a 4.0 grade-point average.
Those classy wheels were provided by the primary sponsors, Education Employees Credit Union, Toyota, Friends of the Big Fresno Fair and the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools. Now, if she can just pass drivers training. We’re not worried!
Thumbs up to Fresno businessman Manuel Prieto for donating $30,000 to build a special fair museum exhibit highlighting the history of Latinos in the Valley. The “Mexicanos and Mexican Americans: Interwoven into the Fabric of Fresno County’ exhibit covers six themes ranging from arts and culture to the contributions of Mexicans and Mexican Americans to the economy.
Juan Esparza Loera reports in Vida en el Valle that Lydia Chávez, executive director of Fresno Arts Council, worked with a committee, including Irma Olguín Jr. of Bitwise Industries, to develop the exhibit. The stories of Latinos in the area are told through six, flat-screen monitors. Each has a parabolic speaker so the visitor can stand under the speaker and be briefed on what they are seeing.
“I think this exhibit is going to demonstrate how large we are now, how we’ve grown,” said Prieto, who owns two auto dealerships and farms in the Kerman area. “We’re in many different facets of industry now. “Not only do we still work in the fields, we have attorneys, we have doctors, we have architects, we have people with businesses. We should be able to show everybody that we should strive for more than simply settling for a job in the fields. That’s not who we are anymore.”
And all those involved have made sure that every museum visitor knows it.
Thumbs up to Mid Valley Disposal for its aggressive annual recycling and compost program with the Big Fresno Fair, making the best out of those half-eaten corndogs and experimental deep-fried coronary concoctions that we just wanted to taste!
Last year the company diverted over 73 percent of fair waste, recovering everything from paper towels to animal and food waste for compost. A total of 160 tons of waste from the fair was diverted, keeping all that trash out of the landfill and making some good compost for our plants.
Thumbs up to the winners of the Fresno Arts Council’s 2017 Horizon Awards, which will be presented 3-6 p.m. Sunday at the Tower Theatre. The winners are Mac Mechem and Aideed Medina, artists; Good Company Players, business; Michael Reece, educator; Pengsue Vang, youth; Howard Watkins, citizen; Jonathon Hogan and Joel Abels, special.
Tickets, at $20 a person, are available at the door or online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2017-horizon-awards-ceremony-t….
Thumbs down to Fresno State faculty member Lynette Bartucci for asking for special parking treatment and being really slow to learn that parking is a headache for most everyone at any big university. But, as she told Crescencio Rodriguez-Delgado of the Collegian newspaper, racking up $600 in parking tickets makes us wonder if she’s really college material. She even went so far as to leave a note on her car, begging the cops not to ticket her when she deliberately parked in a 30-minute spot.
“Please reconsider giving me a ticket,” she wrote, “there are no parking places in PS31.” She attached a business card.
. Take the advice of President Joseph Castro, who suggests folks arrive early, park out by the Save Mart Center and take the shuttle. At least Fresno State is flat; lucky she doesn’t work at San Diego State or UC Berkeley, where every trip is a hill climb.
This story was originally published October 6, 2017 at 4:48 PM with the headline "Thumbs up, thumbs down: Edison High freshman wins car for all A’s."