OMVNA Newsletter, January 2006

I am fairly new to this area after having lived most of my life in Chicago, and am looking to you to help familiarize me with OMV, the goings on and its wonderful residents.

I welcome and encourage you to write articles, with a list of potential topics on page 2, that I can publish in the newsletter. Also, if you have ideas of things you would like to see included in upcoming editions, please contact me at editor@omvna.org. I look very forward to hearing from you!

From the Chair
By Ken Rosenberg

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ken Rosenberg and I am the new Chair of our downtown "Old Mountain View" Neighborhood Association. If this newsletter was delivered to your door, you live in Old Mountain View. OMVNA is not a homeowner’s association — renters and owners are considered equals. Also no dues are required. Simply living here entitles you to be part of the group.

So, what does it mean that you are a member of OMVNA? It means you get a place to be heard, a representative voice, knowledge about the neighborhood and the City Government, an opportunity to have fun and an internet site to store all of this information. Let me take each of these in order.

Every month (the second Monday at the Chamber of Commerce on Castro Street), we hold a meeting. All neighbors are invited. If you are having an issue or problem (with a neighbor, the City, traffic, etc.), we may be the right place to air it. In the very least, we will point you in the right direction to help you solve the problem.

If there is a change to the Downtown (construction, traffic signals, business updates), we are on top of it. We have a representative called the Downtown Community Liaison who is responsible for updating OMVNA on all official goings on. If an issue is big enough (the last issue was the retail space in the parking garage being constructed on Bryant and California), we will influence the decisions to the betterment of the residents of the downtown.

About three or four times a year, we host "General Meetings" on a Sunday afternoon. These meetings typically are theme based and attempt to showcase neighbors or simply the neighborhood. For example, last year we held a bicycle safety fair. The year before, we hosted a historic building walking tour. These events are intended for the whole family and people of all ages. Food and/or ice-cream are always provided so mark your calendar now for the next "meeting" on April 30th from 2-4 p.m. It will be a big event.

Lastly, we have two internet services for your convenience. If you want to participate in on-going dialogue in a timely manner, please sign up for our Yahoo! Group called OMVNATalk. Here you will have a place to submit or read emails. I am trying to build up membership in this group as we currently have 189 members, of the 2,000+ households in the downtown. To sign up, go to www.yahoo.com. Click on "Groups." In the search box, type "omvnatalk." Click on the omvnatalk link and sign up. Alternatively, you can send an email to: omvnatalk-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, and I will sign you up! OMVNA also hosts a website. The address is: www.omvna.org. You can find out all you ever wanted to know about our Association from that website.

I look forward to the coming year. If you have thoughts, suggestions, or want to ask a question, please do so! This is all about the Neighborhood.

Neighbors Share Thoughts on Free City-wide Wireless Network
by Bruce Karney

In mid-November, Google offered to install and manage a city-wide wireless network to provide free, moderately high-speed internet access to nearly all residences and businesses. The offer was discussed passionately for a week on OMVNAtalk, the neighborhood Yahoo! Group. It was the subject of more than 25 postings from fifteen different people, whose opinions ranged from "how soon can we get it!" to concerns about the health impact of radiation and the privacy of their e-mail and web usage.

Free WiFi means that those who currently pay $40-50 per month or so for cable or DSL connections could disconnect these services and have Google be their ISP. Upload and download speed may (or may not) be as fast as cable or DSL, but would be far faster than dial-up. The cost of a wireless card, if needed, is approximately $40. In a statement made by a Google Product Manager, Minnie Ingersoll, "The network will be deployed by March 30, but it will not be turned on for public access until we have had time to perform network tests. I am currently budgeting one month for acceptance testing and a launch date around April 30th."

Here are some thoughts from neighbors who accepted my invitation to share their opinions: "If it's safe, economical, reliable, and convenient, I'm for it and will likely try it," wrote Aaron Grossman of Dana Street.

Alice Martineau and Olivia Bartlett are concerned because the literature they read from American, Swedish and Dutch sources indicate that there are no ‘safe’ levels for the radio frequency radiation that WiFi transmitters produce. The proposed output from the transmitters exceeds the .01 microwatt/cm2 level mentioned by Santa Barbara environmental researcher, Cindy Sage, as being the point above which DNA damage begins to occur. They say, "We'd much rather pay for wired service than incur chronic, long term, involuntary radiation exposure for us, our children, and all immune compromised Mountain View residents."

Max Hauser, also of Loreto Street, has a different perspective on the radio emissions issue: "Some have concerns about this additional source of radio emissions in their midst. If so, they owe it to themselves to research this complex subject to see the new emitters in perspective. Some folks are unaware, for instance, of the existing, longer-range, more-numerous cellular-telephony base-station transmitters all around us, at similar operating frequencies. WiFi base stations are sometimes called little cousins of these. Google’s spokesperson claimed 5 microwatt per square centimeter (µW/cm2) at 20 feet from a WiFi base station antenna (my own quick estimate for a uniform emitter was 4 µW/cm2 so the magnitude looked about right). I believe that some people already experience much higher densities from existing services not currently in the news, even without putting cell phones to their head (at reportedly about 1000 µW /cm2, equal to the published FCC safety limit)."

Have some thoughts on this topic you’d like to share with the neighborhood? Visit OMVNAtalk at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/omvnatalk and let us know what YOU think!

Why We Love PACT
by Lauren Salinero and Gretchen Peterson, PACT 5th graders

Hi! We’re fifth graders from PACT (Parent, Child, Teacher) School currently located at Slater Elementary School. We think that PACT is very special and we’d like to tell you a little more about it.

One of the coolest things about PACT is that parents come in to teach us about different things. This year two moms help us discover the wonders of science and chemistry by setting up really fun ways for us to learn the information. We have taken our blood pressure, determined our vital lung capacity, tested our own saliva, and even played with chicken tendons! Now we are starting chemistry. We can’t wait to see what we’ll do next.

Two other parents come in to help with math. One simulates the way we would use math in the real world, and the other teaches some of the kids advanced math, like game theory. Another parent arranges the field trips we take and takes hundreds of pictures at all of our gatherings. The best field trip was science camp — where we spent four days in the woods. We have also gone to San Jose Art Museum, and the Linear Accelerator. Next week, we will go to the Tech Museum, and in February to an overnight on the Age of Sail. We learn a lot on these trips, plus they are fun.

The best thing PACT offers, by far, is Arts Focus. Each trimester, every PACT student is assigned to one of seven art classes for five weeks. Some classes are Clay, Drawing and Painting, 3D, Textiles. For three hours, we, with kids from every other grade, get to do art. It is great because we have so much time to work on something. Plus, the teachers (who are parents) teach us a lot about Art History and Art Techniques. We will all dearly miss it when we move on to middle school. WE LOVE IT!!!

One of us has been in PACT for six years and one for three years. It’s cool because we have almost the same kids in our class from year to year, and you get to know kids very well.

We will be truly devastated next year when we have to leave PACT and move on to Middle School. We won’t be able to visit it at Slater, which makes us sad, but it will be at Castro, and all the cool things about it will still happen. We’ll miss it, but it will always be there for new kids to experience.

PACT ROCKS!!!!!!!

CERT Meeting & Drill Sunday Feb 5 — Public Invited
by Aaron Grossman

The OMVNA CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) will hold its annual meeting and drill from 10 a.m. to noon on Sunday, February 5, 2006, at Landels School. Guest speakers and trainers include Lynn Brown of the MV Fire Dept, Tracey Scott of Emergency Management Solutions, and John Czerniec of "Somewhere Out West," the new emergency supplies store on Grant Road next to Nob Hill Market. A Community Grant from the City of Mountain View will help provide funding for the event, and the public is invited.

About 37 members currently belong to the OMVNA CERT, mostly as Local Coordinators. In an emergency, they will probably NOT give you food, water, or shelter, but they WILL help you prepare in advance, and during an emergency they WILL help their neighbors organize and respond effectively. Our goal is to have 66 Local Coordinators, one for each block in Old Mountain View. We still have a ways to go, so if you might be interested, come on out. We can also use some volunteers to help out at the event. Contact Aaron Grossman at aagrossman@yahoo.com for more information.

The OMVNA Newsletter
is published by a volunteer editorial committee & distributed to some 2400 homes and businesses by volunteers.

To get in touch with us:

Write to P.O.Box 391328, Mtn. View, CA 94039
E-mail the editor editor@omvna.org
Find us on the Web at http://www.omvna.org

The opinions printed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the OMVNA Steering Committee.

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Last updated: 1/31/06

OMVNA Newsletter

January 2006Volume 18, Number 1

January 2006
Volume 18, Number 1