Chris Amico: Journalist

Originally published in the Hayward Daily Review

Terry “Big T” Williams pours his blues out over a swaying crowd, music and sweat rolling off him, green guitar howling.

“I’ll play the blues for you,” he sings, and he delivers on the promise.

The sound comes from the Mississippi Delta, translated and augmented on its way to the West Coast, to Russell City, where a new blues emerged.

Playing in front of Hayward City Hall on Saturday, Williams captures the endpoints of a musical journey espoused by the annual Hayward/Russell City Blues Festival.

“West Coast music is mutt music,” Ronnie Stewart, founder of the Bay Area Blues Society, explains. “It’s a mixture of everything.” (more…)

(click the image to see a three-part slide show)

Alameda hosted its 14th Relay for Life on Saturday and Sunday, with 400 people on 26 teams walking the track at Encinal High School for 24 hours.

The Alameda Relay’s goal was to raise $130,000 in the event to go toward research, education and support of local services, such as driving cancer patients to therapy.

The relay included the first lap dedicated to survivors, and a luminaria ceremony, with candles in sand lining the track to light the way for walkers through the night to dedicated to loved ones who have had cancer.

This year’s theme was “Celebrate, Remember, Fight back.”

“Survivors celebrate that they made it through the treatment. And of course they remember the friends they’ve lost. And we encourage everyone to fight back,” said Emilia Stephens, the Relay’s team captain coordinator. (more…)

Click the photo for a slide show

Biaggio Parma is “trying to hold a little bit of history that’s fast sliding away.” This jeep was a reconnaissance vehicle in Europe during the Second World War.

Parma served in the US Navy from 1957 to ‘61, working as an electrician aboard an aircraft carrier. (more…)

Slide show: Rick Gunn reflects on his 25,000-mile bike ride through a world we shouldn’t fear.
Three years ago, Rick Gunn rode his bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge in a heavy fog, pedaled down into San Francisco, took a ferry to Vallejo and turned east. From there, he crossed America, then Europe, Asia and Oceania in a 25,000-mile ride that ended Saturday back where the trip started.

At the end of this very long ride, Gunn has learned that the rest of the world is not something to fear. In detailed accounts of his travels posted online, there is an unfettered joy and unrelenting optimism in what Gunn sees. The journey has made Gunn, a former Castro Valley resident, a devout pacifist and left him with an abiding love for humanity.

The most dangerous place, Gunn says, is here at home in America. (more…)