Short Takes Short Takes (March 23, 2005)

When I grow up, I want to go to 4-hour meetings

On Career Day on March 10, some of the 10th-graders at Castilleja School in Palo Alto got to meet with doctors in the neonatal intensive care unit at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Others met the publisher of the Palo Alto Weekly, while still others got the latest on software at Adobe.

And then there were the students who were really plugged into the latest happenings: they got to hold a mock Menlo Park City Council meeting on dog parks.

The girls also met with City Manager David Boesch and were given a tour of the Menlo Park Police Department's evidence room.

"I had no idea what local governments did until today," student Nani Jansen said.
Menlo Park? Is that over by Lubbock?

During a heated discussion last week on plans for a child-care center, Menlo Park Councilwoman Lee Duboc responded to a claim that the city promised to build a new child-care center as part of the Measure T bond measure, passed by voters in 2001.

Ms. Duboc recalled being phoned by a pollster at the time. She kept pressing the pollster for details about the project with little success, she said. Finally, the pollster told her: "Ma'am, I don't know. I'm just calling from Texas."
Searching for Bobby Fischer

Budding chess enthusiasts are invited to a special "Chess for Fun" class at the Atherton Library on Wednesday, April 6, at 6 p.m. Kids with basic knowledge of the game will have a chance to test their strategic skills at a tournament, open to grades kindergarten through 8, on May 14.

The tournament's champ gets to face off with Atherton's own Bob Brennan, billed the "Superhero Chief of Police."

Call 328-2422 or e-mail Marlene Lee at leem@plsinfo.org for details.

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