Hanford Insider: Honoring Juneteenth and Upcoming Community Fun at Longfield Center, City Council Updates with New Appointment

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On this week's episode of the Insider, Rob will take a look back at the Hanford City Council actions last week and what's on the agenda for this week.

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We'll also see what's on the community calendar, including a preview of the Juneteenth celebration at the Longfield Center this Saturday.

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This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, June 10th.

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Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Hanford Insider.

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I'm your host, rob Bentley.

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Thanks for listening.

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The weather this week is going to be very warm again, with temperatures in the high 90s to low 100s.

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It was so great to see so many of you at the Carnegie Museum of Kings County Car Show in downtown Hanford on Saturday.

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It was a fantastic show that drew over 200 entries and visitors from all over Central California.

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On behalf of the museum, I'd like to thank all of those of you who came out.

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This really is becoming a fun new annual event.

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In community news, the Hanford City Council met last Tuesday and appointed Martin Devine to fill the remaining term of departing Council Member Kalish Morrow.

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This week the Council will meet once again, but this time the agenda item is the proposed revenue measure that could potentially be placed on the November ballot.

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The Council has to decide if the measure should be placed on the ballot and if it is the next steps towards getting the word out about the need for it.

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I'll be up front with you and I'll let you know that I am in full support of the measure.

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I believe it will improve the quality of life in Hanford.

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You'll get your chance to vote in November.

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You can watch the City Council meeting in person or online at cityofhanfordcacom.

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Here's some things coming up on our community calendar.

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The Kings Fair opens this Thursday, june 13th, and runs through Sunday.

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It'll be fun for the whole family.

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Visit thekingsfaircom for more information.

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The Kings County Library would like to let everyone know that all of the branches will be closed on Friday, june 14th for Staff Development Day.

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Staff Development Day Women with Visions Unlimited will be holding a community Juneteenth celebration at the Longfield Center on Saturday, june 15th, beginning at 10 am.

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A little bit later in today's episode we'll hear all of the details of this event.

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The Patty Dance Studio will be presenting the Rise of the Phoenix at the Hanford Fox Theater on Saturday, june 15th at 6 pm.

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Tickets are on sale now at the Patty Dance Studio.

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The Kings Players are presenting A Penny for your Thoughts at the Temple Theater each weekend during the month of June.

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Visit kingsplayersorg for showtimes and tickets.

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The Storybook Garden and Museum will be hosting a celebration of Peter Rabbit's birthday on Friday, june 21st, from 10 am until noon.

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Visit childrenstorybookgardenorg for more information.

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The Carnegie Museum of Kings County presents Kings County's Asian Experiences.

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The museum is located at 109 East 8th Street and is open each Friday, saturday and Sunday from 1 pm to 5 pm.

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Admission is $5 per person with a $10 family maximum.

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For more information you can visit carnegiemuseumofkingscountyorg.

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This summer, the Cinemark Movie Theater in the Hanford Mall will be offering Summer Movie Clubhouse, where tickets will be just $1.75 per movie For 10 weeks.

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There will be a fun movie for the kids.

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The movies will be shown on select days, june 10th through August 15th.

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There will also be special deals at the snack bar.

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Visit cinemarkcom for further details.

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I'll be grabbing events as I see them on the Hanford Sentinel calendar and social media pages.

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If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together.

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Send your information to hanfordinsider at gmailcom.

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Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events.

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Well, it's a pleasure to welcome to the show from Women with Visions Unlimited, carolyn Hudgens and Paula Massey.

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How are you doing?

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Doing good?

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Thank you, rob.

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Got a special celebration coming up this Saturday at the Longfield Center with the Juneteenth Community Celebration.

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Can you tell us a little bit about the origins of the Juneteenth and why it's important to celebrate?

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of the Juneteenth and why it's important to celebrate.

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Okay, so the origin basically of Juneteenth is when the Emancipation Proclamation was passed by Abraham Lincoln in what 1863.

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But the people in Galveston, texas, didn't know anything about being free.

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So General Gordon Granger came in 1865, but two and a half years later to tell these people that they were free from slavery.

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So that became a celebration at that time.

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When they did find out but it wasn't real pretty like oh, we're free, we're gone.

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No, some of them got shot, some of them got hung and some of them were brought back to their plantation.

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But as a whole, a lot of them were freed at that time.

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And when they found out that they were free, they did have a big celebration, a jubilee about being free.

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So a lot of them went out to different states in the South looking for their loved ones because they had been separated.

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So that became a time of like a family, a family reunion, and that's basically how family reunions even got started amongst the Black people down South started family reunions because they were looking for their loved ones.

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So at that time in 1865, it became basically a holiday, a day of jubilee, a day of celebration, a day of eating, a day of rejoicing, a day of activities for kids, just a lot of fun and happy times at that time in 1865.

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And it was actually it was on the 19th of June when Grazer came to Texas to tell them that they were free.

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So, actually being June 19th, they shorted up to Juneteenth the Juneteenth celebration.

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So, Paula, why do you think it's important for us to recognize and celebrate Juneteenth?

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Because it's like it's a holiday and we're standing in unity with those that thought they were free but were not really free.

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And also, when Carol was talking, there were other states, there were other towns not even in Texas that had slaves that were still working, thought they were still slaves.

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They didn't know they were free.

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So, from what I'm understanding is, galveston, texas, was the last drop, last stop, to let the people know hey, y'all been free for two years, but prior to that, granger and a lot of the black soldiers that were riding with him went to other states and other cities to tell them you're free, yeah.

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So I think it was important to know, because if we don't know this stuff, how can we just share it with other people?

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And we know that in our schools they banned a lot of books.

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They banned a lot of the history from what we need to know.

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I didn't know about I'm 66 years old, I didn't know about Juneteenth until maybe 2010 yeah, 2010 and went to a celebration in Vegas not Vegas, but Phoenix, arizona and saw how they were doing it.

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Really didn't care for it, but this is how they celebrated.

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So we decided that you know, we're going to do something here and, like I don't know whether Carolyn already said it, we had a young lady, a senior citizen, who kept asking us about doing Juneteenth and we decided this is the year that we need to do it.

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Yeah, this is the year to do it because, for the first time, we'll be celebrating Juneteenth, with it being made a federal holiday in 2021.

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This is our first opportunity to actually celebrate it as a federal holiday.

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Carolyn, can you tell us about the event that's coming up on Saturday and some of the things that are happening?

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I understand you're having music, food vendors, kidzone.

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It's at the Longfield Center.

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It should be a great day.

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Yeah, I think it'll be a fantastic day.

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I mean, the city, we partied with the city.

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They're working with us.

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They're actually blocking off the street, which is huge, so that we won't have traffic coming through back and forth down Dowdy, and we're going to use both sides.

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We're going to have the coal park side is going to be the kids zone.

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The law field center side.

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We'll have our band playing.

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High sight will be playing.

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We'll have our food vendors, our informational vendors, craft vendors.

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We're going to have a peach cobbler contest.

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Oh yeah, yes.

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So everybody's hyped up for the peach cobbler contest Because they sit there on the fly like, oh yeah, I'll be there just for the peach cobbler, but we'll have that.

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We'll have a spades and domino contest.

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Oh my God.

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We have jump rope, double dutch, all those good things that kids used to do, Sack races, all kind of double dutch, if I didn't already say double dutch.

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They're going to also have the big giant Connect Four pieces, Just all kind of.

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I think it's a dunk tank, so we dunk somebody dodge ball.

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It's just going to be a day full of fun, I mean.

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And it's a community, a community of celebration for everyone.

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Can you highlight some of the vendors that you're going to have there with food and some of the different stuff that's going to be out there?

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Yes, we have Jefferson Hot Wings will be there and they'll be serving up some delicious plates of barbecue or chicken and hot links, possibly ribs.

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But we also have fish.

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We're going to have fish fry, gosh we're going to have.

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We're also going to have Valley Voices is going to be there and they're going to be administrating the COVID information and administering COVID shots, vaccines for those boosters.

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So if anyone needs to have a booster or the shot, they can go to that booth.

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They will give them a $50 card gift card and also a plate of food from Jefferson Hot Wings.

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So that will come along with just signing up and getting a shot.

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They also need, if they could bring their shot record or their shot card from the COVID and then that'll kind of cut down on the time for them to look it up.

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So that's a big thing a $50 gift card.

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I was like, yeah, that's a good incentive That'll pay the fee.

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So we got that going on as well.

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So it should be a good time all around.

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And, like I said, the educational part we're also going to have free kids books.

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We got books that we just want to make sure it gets in the hands of these kids because literacy is so important and that's one of the things that our organization does.

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We push reading, the literacy part.

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You know we got kids graduating from junior high, high school, that can you know.

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They're not up to par on their reading level, so we want to always make sure we have some books just to give to them for free, no problem.

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The most important part about it, rob, is actually the educational part, because we don't know.

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Uh, you know we.

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We just weren't raised, especially in california.

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We weren't raised with having to.

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I've been to juneteenth celebrations in los angeles, fresno, tulare, allensworth.

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I've been to all those.

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Now hampton is the county seat.

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We need to have our own celebration right here in Kings County.

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I've been to all the other ones.

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Let's have our own right here in Alvord.

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So I'm excited.

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That's amazing.

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It sounds like an amazing event and I know the community is going to come out strong.

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Hopefully we'll have some cool weather for you, and I want to take this opportunity to thank Paula, and you, carolyn, for all the work that you do in the community to advocate for the Black community in the Kings County area.

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I know we had the Carnegie Museum exhibit back a year or so ago and it was very successful and I learned a lot and I thank you for the years of work that both of you have put in and I especially am excited for this event coming up on Saturday and if you need any more information about it, you can check the Hanford Insider social media and I'll be posting the flyer and you can.

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If you subscribe to my newsletter, you'll also get a copy of the flyer as well.

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So once again, carolyn and Paula, thank you so much for coming on the show and I hope you have a wonderful event on Saturday.

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Thank you.

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Thank you, Rob, for having us.

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We appreciate it.

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Well, that's all the time we have for this week's show.

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Tune in next week as I get the amazing opportunity to interview my former student turned White House correspondent for National Public Radio, tamara Keith.

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We'll reminisce about growing up in Hanford and her path to the national stage.

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If you'd like to support the show, you can go to buymeacoffeecom slash Hanford Insider.

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If you have a show idea, be sure to email me at hanfordinsider at gmailcom and I'll look into it.

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Thanks for listening.

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Stay cool and have a great week.

Hanford Insider: Honoring Juneteenth and Upcoming Community Fun at Longfield Center, City Council Updates with New Appointment

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