Hanford Insider: April's Energetic Pulse with City Council Endeavors, Fond Farewell to Councilwoman Sharp & the Alluring World of the 'Book Lady'

On this week's episode of the Hanford Insider, rob will give us a preview of the busy April in Hanford that's coming up the book. Lady Erin Vogel stops by to let us know about her exciting plans for upcoming events and I'll be back to update you on all of the high school sports action over spring break. This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, april 1st.

Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Hanford Insider. I'm your host, rob Bentley. Thanks for listening In community news this week. It was so great to see so many people out this weekend enjoying the nice weather. Activities like the downtown egg hunt, fraternal hall car show, the Hola Cafecito grand opening, the Carnegie Museum Asian Experiences exhibit and the grand opening of the Boys and Girls Club of Hanford at Coe Park.

The Hanford City Council will be meeting on Tuesday During the afternoon study session. They'll be continuing discussions about the Community Block Grant and going over the Downtown Strategic Plan. That includes market analysis, policy and administration, tourism and promotion, economic vitality and design. I've read the presentation and it's cool to see the city addressing the need for an improved downtown district. You can find the presentation in the study session agenda packet During the regular meeting at 7,. The agenda items include dissolving the Parking and Traffic Commission, in addition to the Municipal Code, which allows for more regulation of use of public spaces by homeless individuals, a grant application to assist additional first-home buyers called the Home Program, and approving a plan for construction of the new concession stand and restroom area at the Bob Hill Athletic Complex, to be completed in time for the 2025 baseball season. Finally, the council will recognize Councilwoman Diane Sharp. As this will be her final meeting before relocating, the council seat will remain vacant until after the November election.

Here are some things coming up on our community calendar. This Tuesday, april 2nd, the Hanford branch of the Kings County Library will be holding an iPhone basics class at 10 am. Bring your iPhone and learn something new. The fourth annual Autism Awareness 5k run and walk will be on Saturday, april 6th at the Quail Run Park on Glacier Way. Also on April 6th and Sunday, april 7th, there'll be a monster truck show at the Kings Fairgrounds beginning at 12 pm. For more information, visit the King's Fair website at thekingsfaircom. The King's Players and Children's Storybook Garden and Museum are presenting their 4th Annual Murder Mystery Dinner on April 20th. For more information, visit childrenstorybookgardenorg.

The Hanford Chamber of Commerce Taste of the Value will be held in the Civic Center Park on April 26th. Visit hanfordchambercom for more information. On Sunday, april 28th, there will be a Mother's Day vendor fair and hat bar in the Carnegie Museum Garden from 11 am to 4 pm. Dj's Collectibles in downtown Hanford will be holding a free comic book day on Saturday, may 4th at 10 am. Also on May 4th, the Pioneer Middle School Band Boosters are having their Battle of the Bands fundraiser at the school. They're looking for bands and vendors. Contact panther1boosters at gmailcom for more information. For you.

Car show enthusiasts, mark your calendars now for the Hanford West High School Bandbackers Cars on Campus Car Show on April 27th and the third annual Carnegie Museum of Kings County Downtown Hanford Car Show will be held on June 8th. Registration is now live at carnegiecarshowcom. I'll be grabbing events as I see them on the Hanford Sentinel calendar and social media pages. If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together. Send your information to hanfordinsider at gmailcom. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events. Well, it's a great pleasure to welcome to the show Erin Vogel. You might know her as the book lady. She's been very present at the Thirst of Night Marketplace and now she even has her own shop that she's going to share a little bit about. She'll also share about what she does in the community and her love of reading and the love of teaching reading. Welcome to the show, erin. How are you doing?

I'm great. Thank you, Rob, for having me.

Before we get to the Thursday Night Marketplace. I know that you've had a love of reading your entire life. What inspired you to pass your love of reading on to others?

So my journey for reading began early. I fell in love with reading in junior high school. I remember Mr Westmoreland in high school, my math teacher. We were talking about reading one time and he said you know, it doesn't matter what you read, just read. And he does, I don't care if it's a Harlequin romance, I don't care if it's a comic book, just read. And that really kind of opened me up to reading and I became a voracious reader and I remember riding my bike down to Old Town News and Such with a dollar and I could go in and buy three books and come home and so I would go down every week, and sometimes a couple times a week, and buy a couple of books and then I could trade them in. And so that really helped me explode my love of reading. And so when I became a teacher, the biggest passion I have in teaching is reading.

And as a third-degree teacher now, I talk to parents and I talk to kids and I know all kids learn to read at different times and at different stages.

And when I talk to the kids at parent conference night the parents sometimes say, and the kids will say, well, we don't have any books at home and that kind of breaks my heart, because I remember riding my bike down and getting books and I thought, how do you not have books at home? Like how, what do you do other than watch TV? And so when I started doing Thursday Night Marketplace that was the kind of the connection in the leap was I realized we don't have an affordable place for kids to go to get books. I mean, I love buying brand new books but they are expensive and I thought I want to open the door and give kids a place to go where they come in with a dollar and they leave with the book, Not a dollar in sales tax. So I absorb the sales tax and it comes out, but I want them to come up and it's great because they'll hold a dollar bill in their hand and the book and it's just the most magical moment and I have kids all the time coming down to get books.

So, Erin, you told me one time that when you started at Thursday Night Marketplace, it wasn't necessarily about books. I understand that you had another passion that you wanted to share with children.

I did. I went in to try crafts. I was teaching summer school and doing crafts with 100 kids and the kids were loving it and they had glitter and glue and feathers and we were making a new craft every day and they were going crazy and I thought, wow, I should go down to the Thursday Night Marketplace and have a place for kids to go do crafts. And it didn't work. It kind of failed. I only had, you know, four or five, six sales a night and it's a lot of work to only have a couple kids come by. And I thought, well, and I tried to tweak it to make it work and it still didn't work. And so one day I cleaned out my classroom and I thought I'm going to bring these old books down here and I'll put them out for a dollar and see what happens. And all of them sold out that night. And that was that aha moment where I thought, wait a minute, I can bring books down here.

And I wanted to specialize in children's books because that's what I know. I know kids, I know third graders really well Eight-year-olds are awesome and I thought I can really help kids find some books and get excited. And it gives the kids something to do when they show up to Marketplace, like, hey, you know, mom and dad can go shopping, but this is for kids. So it started with the kids books. And then the adults were going like, where's our books? We want books too.

And I thought, okay, so it just it just grew and so I only had like a solid month. At the end of marketplace the first time I did it to kind of get my you know, just to experiment, get my hands around it. So then last year I had the entire season and I hit the ground running and I had the books. Adults, adults and children had it organized and again, still tweaking it, we went from a single booth to a double booth, which was a which a great move. We were so crowded and it's just blossomed. I mean, the kids love it. I have so much fun going out and hunting for books. Like that's like my favorite Saturday thing. I'm like I'm going to go book hunting. So that's kind of how it started.

That's so cool. So and we'll talk more about Thursday Night Marketplace in just a moment but I know that you have other school events like book fairs and some other events that you've been to Can you tell us about some of the events that you've done outside of the marketplace?

So I've been invited to do. I go by invitation, so I've been invited to go to some schools that are open house or they're back to school night, where they have like they'll have food trucks and some vendors, and so I've been invited to attend those, which that's a lot of fun. I've also done some book giveaways. Down at the Ceremony Museum this next couple of weeks they're going to have an open house and I will be out and all the kids will get a free book, which is exciting to give them. You know, again, connecting kids to literacy. Oh, I also did your car show. I did this, the Carnegie Museum car show, and that was a lot of fun, as the kids were coming through when they're done looking at the cars, they came to see me.

So you've done all of these events and now you've even opened up your own little bookshop. Tell us a little bit about your bookshop in the Hanford Antique Emporium.

Yes, this was the best event. So I now have space rented at the Hanford Antique Emporium and there's a set of three bookshelves and some end caps. But it's called the Book Lady's Itty Bitty Bookshop because that's what it is. It's just designed to be a very small little bookshop. It's expanded a little bit so instead of being just books, there's some trinkets for the kids. There's like rainbow pens and mermaid pens and some stickers. There's some 10 signs that are just funny. For adults there's some t-shirts, but it was. It's always been my dream to have a bookshop, and so you know, working full-time as a teacher, obviously this is as much as I can handle, and so I have the space down at the Hanford Antique Emporium, which is just. It's been a wonderful experience. Carlos and Ann have just welcomed me with open arms. The vendors down there are amazing. The business has turned into such a. It's very eclectic. It's not an antique store anymore. It's a home for people like myself that need a small space to rent, and so it was a good match.

Yeah, I've been in there. It's a great little place and it's a lot bigger than it looks like from the outside. You know, when you're standing out on 8th Street you're looking at the front. You really have no idea just how far back the antique emporium goes.

It's 6,000 square feet and it's a long, long, narrow rectangle and it just keeps going and going.

So what are the hours that it's open?

They're open every day. So Monday through Saturday they are open 10 to 5, and Sundays 12 to 5.

And do you have a usual time that you try to be there?

No, I work once a month and then it's always a different weekend, so I don't have a set schedule. However, the owners are really good. If someone needs to get me a message, they can either Facebook me, instagram me or leave a message with Carlos and Anne. If you're looking for specific books, I try to get down there and restock it. I just did a big restock this last week, so probably half of the books came home and new books were down there, so I try to rotate, so there's always some new books for adults and children.

So, in getting ready for the Thursday Night Marketplace, I'm even going to have a booth this year on any of the nights and I've talked to Michelle Brown and I've talked to Jim Castleman and we've got shows coming up talking about all of the entertainment that'll be coming this year. But can you give us a little preview of some of the things that you'll have this year at the Marketplace that starts on May 2nd?

Well, I definitely. I am so excited. So we are going to be in the same spot. It will be two spaces in front of the restrooms, basically facing the Fox Theater. We've expanded I say we, I've expanded it to include the items at the Antique Emporium, so if you can't find something at Marketplace, I now have a location for you to go. There are t-shirts and the t-shirts range. There are some teacher finding teacher shirts. There's church shirts about faith and there's shirts that are just a lot of reading, like Harry Potter. There's some shirts from the Hobbit, so just some fun variety of shirts. I have some tin signs. There's pens and stickers for the kids. There's ink pens. The first night that we open we'll have a little grab bag for the kids. The first hundred kids will get a little bag with a little you know, just a little toy in it, just to say thank you for coming back.

That's great and you certainly have a wonderful following. Where can we find the book? Lady on social media.

So she's on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook, it'll be the book lady, and on Instagram it's the book, lady Erin.

Well, Erin, it was so nice talking to you and I'm really looking forward to this year's Marketplace.

And I'm going to have to stop by the Antique Emporium and visit the Itty Bitty Bookshop, I think. Well, thank you for having me, Rob. I hope your show is a huge hit while you're down there. And now it's time for Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley in baseball action.

We'll start with a team that's getting hot, as sierra pacific went five and oh to win the selma kiwanis tournament championship, one of the oldest tournaments in the valley, all of their wins coming by five or more runs.

So here here's a quick recap. A seven-run seventh inning, sparked by a basis-clearing Austin Davis triple, led to an 11-0 shutout of Sanger West, and the Golden Bears wasted no time in an 11-1 victory over Minarets, scoring 10 runs in the first inning and never looking back. Junior Christian Flores highlighted the offense, going 3-for-3 on the day with 2 RBI. The offense continued against Kalinga, as Justin Simas went 2-for-3 with 3 runs batted in, and Landon Kiker stole two bases en route to the 11-2 victory. The two close games for Sierra Pacific were a pair of five-run victories. In an 8-3 victory over Selma, it was sophomore pitcher Caleb Kuhlwein who led the Bears from the mound, allowing only three runs while striking out 11 over six innings. And the final game was a 12-7 victory for the Golden Bears over Madera South, as Sierra Pacific tallied 11 hits in the game and Mason Garcia went two for three at the plate with three runs batted in. Another note, justin Simas was named tournament MVP for the Golden Bears. Those five victories bolstered Sierra Pacific to an 11-5 overall record on the season.

In other baseball news, hanford West played three games in the Fresno Easter Classic, as they were able to pick up a 4-2 win over Fresno High before dropping their other two games 3-1 to Crater and 7-0 to Clovis West. The Huskies now sit at 6-9 overall on the year and Hanford High couldn't find consistent offense in close games, falling to Clovis 3-0, reedley 5-4, and Hoover 1-0. However, the Bullpups were able to pick up a lopsided victory over Edison by a final score of 11-1. Despite the three prior losses, the Bullpups are still over .500 on the year, at 8-7 overall, and in softball, league play starts this week and Hanford West and Hanford High decided to get some extra games in last week before league play

starts. We'll start with Hanford West, as, unfortunately, the Huskies were unable to pick up a win in the four games that they played. However, three of those losses were by only two runs, as they fell to Clovis East, buchanan and Clovis West, before being bested 10-2 by Liberty. Before being bested 10-2 by Liberty. Hanford High Softball was able to secure a 9-1 victory over Pioneer Valley, but fell short in their other three games to Bullard, liberty and Redwood, and as for Sierra Pacific, they were not in action over spring break. As always, we want to hear from you, so please send scores, stats or stories to HanfordInsider at gmailcom. I'm Eric Bentley and this has been your.

Hanford Insider Sports Report. Well, that's all the time we have for today's show. If you enjoyed the show, leave a review on my website. Spotify listeners can also leave a review by tapping on the podcast title at the top to open the show page. Scroll up to the About and tap it. Tap the rating count and leave your stars Apple podcast listeners. Tap the podcast title at the top. Scroll down completely to Ratings and Reviews and tap Write a Review Rate with stars, or you can write a review and tap submit. Thanks for your support.

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