I come now with a pair of heartwarming observations from The Milpitas Beat’s recent pair of candidate forums…
This past Saturday morning, at the Milpitas High School library, The Beat and The Sunnyhills Neighborhood Association hosted a school board candidates forum. Candidates and current school board trustees Minh Ngo and Rob Jung were set to attend a semi-formal roundtable talk (actually, it was more of a rectangle) about the issues (the other candidate in the race, Doug Sueoka, couldn’t attend).
My wife Rhoda (the founder of this newspaper) and I walked up toward the library at around 8:30 am, the better to load in our cameras and sound equipment before the 9 am start time. Candidate Rob Jung (of course) was already there. Only he wasn’t inside the library; he was standing outside of it.
The staff had not shown up to open the door.
Within minutes, Minh Ngo showed up, too. Others gathered round, as well, all of us discussing how to get inside. Ngo fired up his cell phone and called the school’s principal to try to orchestrate access. The principal told Ngo that he needed the name of a custodian on campus, so he could phone that custodian and grant him permission to open the library doors. Hearing this, Jung swiftly marched across the campus, way over by the football bleachers, off in search of a custodian. It seemed like the forum’s fate (or at least location; we could have done it outside) was uncertain…until the principal called Ngo back, pledging to show up himself within minutes and open the door. Only he didn’t have to, for soon enough Jung reappeared with a custodian who had a library key in hand.
My wife Rhoda pointed it out before I’d thought of it: “The candidates,” she said, leaning into me with a smile, “took action.”
It was true. And this wasn’t their event; it was ours. They were the guests. But the two of them sure demonstrated noteworthy leadership and executive function when it came to opening those doors.
This put me in mind of a smile-worthy element from last Monday’s city council forum, which we hosted at The Milpitas Library (or the Milpitas Jose Esteves Library, but really, who’s keeping track?). During that event, the library’s microphone system had problems. The audio bridge stopped functioning midway through the evening, leading to one of the two available mics not working. In the meantime, the mics’ sound wasn’t audible from the podium in front of the stage to the candidates who were seated on the stage. In other words, when the reporters (who were pointing away from the stage and facing the audience) asked the candidates questions from the podium, the candidates couldn’t hear what they were saying. The audio bridge issues certainly didn’t help with this spatial layout issue, which we soon resolved by relocating the reporters.
The good news was, the reporters asking the questions were mostly Milpitas High School journalism students, along with our ace in-house reporter Maria Denise Cuenca (who started with us as an MHS intern and is now in her third year of college). What began as a crisis of technology run amok turned into an inspiring lesson in composure: every young reporter – every young reporter – handled the limitations with the utmost grace and professionalism, certainly more so than I was able to muster as I tracked down the library staff behind the scenes. In these young professionals, I found not just inspiration, I caught a glimpse of the future. If the future awaits these young people, I thought, then it probably won’t be so bad.
It’s been an unusual ride for me here in Milpitas. I am a complete and total outlier: a bear-like Jew born of a Brooklyn father whose intensity and irreverence have somehow been embraced in many quarters. But I don’t always feel like I belong here. This past week, though, among these good people, I felt the most extraordinary sense of warmth and pride.
These were good people. Amid humbling moments.
I felt like I was home.
Yes, you are home in Milpitas Mr. Shapiro.