SUPER 'STAR' NURSE: Nurse Cheryl Brandt has been named Employee of the Year by Community Hospital of Los Gatos. The award is also called a Superstar Award because the hospital sees to it that a real star in the firmament is named after its outstanding employee of the year.
Brandt works in the intensive care unit. However, she willingly lends a hand to whatever department needs help. Before coming to Community 13 years ago, she worked for the Intensive Care Registry for 13 years. Here's how dedicated this night nurse is: she worked on the due date for her first child. That child is Jessica, 13. Her other offspring is Justin, 11. Husband Allan is self-employed in the marketing field.
Co-workers describe Cheryl Brandt as joyous, hardworking, intelligent and tenacious. She is a natural educator and gives classes to other staff nurses in the hospital. And she spends one week of her vacation as a volunteer nurse at her daughter's summer camp in the Sierras.
Church is an important part of this family's life: they are Mormons. A family trip to Disneyland, part of the award Brandt won, will probably be taken this summer.
Brandt says going to work is like going to see friends because Community Hospital is small enough to have a community feeling. And returning patients become friends, too. The retention rate for nurses is "incredibly high" at Community, she says—a number have worked there for 10 years, which is unusual.
Winning the award was a total shock but certainly made her feel special. The International Star Registry will send Brandt a celestial map so she can find the star named for her.
THE LURE OF FLORENCE: Dr. William Fredlund, professor of art at UCSanta Cruz, talked about the city of Florence to a burgeoning crowd at the Foothill Club's public lecture series recently. Fredlund urged his audience to mutter "oohs" and "ahs" as each slide of different views of the city and countryside were presented.
Indeed, each slide did look like a painting in its own right, which was part of Fredlund's point—that Florentines were careful to create art with whatever materials they had at hand. In the hills around the city, for instance, the tiers for planting grapes are artfully arranged, as are the switchback roads leading to the villas.
The most outstanding gold workers in the world are still those from Florence. The famed Ponte Vecchio bridge contains shop after shop along its sides, and has since 1330. Though subject to flooding, it has retained its nobility and beauty through the centuries.
A small piece of glass is embedded in the walls of each shop on the bridge and, if the glass cracks, the shopkeeper realizes the wall has shifted. The authorities are notified so that the structure can be immediately repaired to keep its structure intact. The glass is called a "spie."
Why did this city become the most powerful, dynamic and dramatic center of the 14th and 15th centuries in Western Europe, even though it isn't a port and is hemmed in on three sides with mountains? Advanced banking practices, a stable culture and an atmosphere where art was prized in all avenues of life help supply the answer.
The speaker's own enthusiasm for his subject was apparent as he moved around the room, asking questions, exclaiming over the beauty of the slides and talking as excitedly as though seeing Florence for the first time.
KITE RUNNER AUTHOR: Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, the acclaimed novel about Afghanistan, will discuss and sign his book April 5 at 7:30 p.m. at the Saratoga Library. Hosseini is a San Jose physician and this is his first novel.
The Kite Runner is a heartfelt story of a friendship that covers 40 years in Afghanistan's tragic evolution—from the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present. It's a story that has not been told in fiction before: a tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal.
The Kite Runner won the 2004 Borders Books Original Voices Award and it has been optioned by Dreamworks for film adaptation.
HONOREES: The Sister City trip leaving for Italy in '05 will be named in honor of the two women who went on the Sister City trip to Italy the day after 9-11. Kerstin Stone and Louise Webb were the only two people gutsy enough to embark on the planned Sister City trip the day after that grim disaster.
The two had a great time, in large part because it wasn't crowded anywhere they went. Ed Porter, Sister City president emeritus, will lead the '05 trip. But will the trip be called Webb/Stone or Stone/Webb?
Porter termed it a memorial, but Webb insisted she was still very much alive (and still shopping), so Porter amended his wording to "commemorative."
LOVE & TAXES: April 11 is the last date to catch Josh Kornbluth's Love & Taxes at Theatre on San Pedro Square. Kornbluth is the writer/performer. Box office is 408.283.0200. The theater founder is Saratogan Gary de Mattei.
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By Mary Ann Cook