On the northern end of Stockton, you’ll find Angel Cruz Park. Most weekends it’s lined with food vendors, many of them Hmong and Cambodian immigrants. For more than 30 years, this has been a destination for made-to-order dishes, where locals argue over who has the best beef sticks or papaya salad. For her series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse spent a day at the park, learning about the people behind the food.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is known for farming, boating and fishing. And it’s got some new migrants: Artists from cities. Reporter Jon Kalish wondered how these urban newcomers are fitting into life in the rural Delta and what an influx of creatives has meant for the community. He talked to transplants whose stereotypes about rural California were challenged when they became part of the community.
More than half of people in the U.S. choose to be cremated when they die, in part because of the high cost and the environmental toll of conventional burials. In the next few years, Californians will have another option when it comes to a loved ones’ remains: human composting, which turns the bodies of people who’ve died into fertilizer for forests and home gardens. KQED’s health correspondent, April Dembosky, brings us the story of one man from San Francisco who didn’t want to wait for the law in California to change.