Hello Readers:

I spent the morning listening to a very good webinar on newsletters and discovered that I am doing this all wrong. So, prepare yourself for major improvements.

First, you will get this six days a week at 1 p.m. PST. Yes, no more juggling with my schedule – at least I hope that will be the case. These are not automated, but apparently, they have to run with the precision of automation.

Yes, I sort of knew this, but knowing and doing – two very different states.

I asked for pandemic memories and you can still send them to info@missionlocal.com or reply to this email.

Here is one from Grandma B in the Mission who thanks Zoom for keeping her connection but also, “because it has opened the world to my severely handicapped granddaughter, age six. Anna lives in another state. She has no language and no mobility due to cerebral palsy. Covid has kept her therapists away, but she has been in Special Kindergarten, online with an excellent team of teachers, and she is learning to communicate without speech. This is a breakthrough! Like most kindergarteners, she is learning colors, shapes, letters, numbers and math concepts. We are now getting a glimpse of what has been going on in her brilliant little head, and she is finally able to express what is on her mind.”

What a lovely image – a mind unlocked for outsiders. Thank you, Grandma B.

Is San Francisco becoming a caricature of itself? Our managing editor and columnist Joe Eskenazi and the SF Chronicle’s columnist Heather Knight will offer their take on Thursday (April 15) at an event (in-person and by Zoom) sponsored by Manny’s. You can get tickets here.

See you there!

— Lydia

And now, our stories for today

New vaccine site hits Lower Mission as 16-year-olds and up qualify

This all happens on Thursday and we have where and the hours for the Mission’s walk-up appointment sites.

Covid Tracker: 35,599 cases, 502 deaths

Between March 12 and April 10, DPH reported 76 new cases in the Mission for a rate of 12.7 new cases per 10,000 residents.  The Citywide average is 11.5 new cases per 10,000 residents.  The neighborhood with the highest rate and third highest number is the Marina with 66 new cases or 26 new cases per 10,000 residents. Seventeen neighborhoods had less than 20 new cases.

Jhonnathan Dalmadi, 6, and his sister Teresa Dalmadi, 8, show off Jhonnathan’s drawing of a rainbow that he made on the first day of school at George Moscone Elementary School. Photo taken by Annika Hom on April 12, 2021. 

Opening Day: Kids head back to in-person school in the Mission (Updated after pick-up time)

“Me siento muy feliz,” Teresa Dalmade, 8, said about her day. Then, in English, “It was like a giant thumbs up!” She said, making the “good job” gesture with her own hand to emphasize the point.

“We learned a lot,” she said in Spanish, though she couldn’t remember what it was exactly.

Today’s snap: Scaled Rides

scooters and skateboards on mission street
On Mission Street. Photo by Lydia Chávez

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I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

As founder/executive editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.