Community Notebook Community Notebook (March 23, 2005)

Talks set on body, organ donations

John Dolph, former director of the Stanford Willed Body Program, and Gil and Donna Warren, volunteers with the California Transplant Donor Network, will speak at the annual public meeting of the Funeral Consumer Alliance on Sunday, April 3.

They will discuss body donation for science and organ and tissue donation.

The meeting starts at 2:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 505 E. Charleston Ave. in Palo Alto.

The alliance is a nonprofit organization of 5,000 members in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties that helps people make after-death plans. Volunteers help members make "dignified, meaningful and affordable" funeral arrangements, said Barbara Hultgren of the alliance.

For more information, call Ms. Hultgren at 322-0891 or the Funeral Consumer Alliance office at 321-2109. The office is at 463 College Ave. in Palo Alto.

North Fair Oaks residents sought

Residents of the North Fair Oaks neighborhood near Atherton are invited to serve as a community representative on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors' North Fair Oaks Municipal Advisory Council.

The council meets at 7 p.m. in Redwood City on the third Thursday of the month. Applications are due by April 1. Applications and information are available from Deputy Clerk Kim Langel at 363-4121 or at co.sanmateo.ca.us/boardsandcommissions.
Grant provides health care to uninsured

A $300,000 grant from the Peninsula Community Foundation will help provide health care to uninsured clients of the Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto.

The three-year-old health clinic serves 8,500 people a year from the vulnerable populations east of Bayshore Freeway with a range of health care for all ages. In 2005, at least 59 percent of patients will have no health insurance, Director Luisa Buada estimated.

The grant will underwrite a portion of the $2 million annual cost of treating uninsured patients; $25,0000 of the grant came from the Sand Hill Foundation.

For more information, call Kathleen Alexander at 330-7418

Fallen tree

Caption with David Boyce picture in print edition: Had it been the year 2050, an encounter between this London plane tree and a car bumper would have had a different outcome. One of 43 trees planted on the Alameda de las Pulgas in West Menlo Park to make the neighborhood more welcoming to pedestrians, this one fell victim to a patron of a beauty salon who backed her vehicle over it, said a salon employee. The tree in that spot has been run over several times, she said. The county has since replaced it.
Behind the barricades

Caption with Carol Ivie photo in print edition: These days, drivers aren't allowed through the few hundred yards of Santa Cruz Avenue connecting the intersection of Alpine Road and Junipero Serra Boulevard to Sand Hill Road. But that doesn't mean all is quiet. Behind the barricades, construction vehicles are rumbling away, redoing the approach to the intersection and adding bike paths to both sides of the road. The work began March 12 and is expected to continue until sometime in November.

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