Sebastopol’s Enmanji Temple, a cornerstone of the area’s Japanese culture, is the subject of a short documentary film that reveals a key episode in the preservation of the historic structure.

There is a strong element of autobiography in many of Lina Hoshino’s films, and Leap of Faith grew out of her curiosity about her new surroundings after she moved North from San Francisco to the small town of Penngrove, north of Petaluma.

As she leanred more about the multi-cultural history of her new home, Lina discovered a trove of recordings made by the local Japanese-American Citizens League, which led her to the subject for her film.

Leap of Faith will have its  World premiere on KRCB Public Television on Monday, May 3 at 9, pm with a repeat broadcast Tuesday, May 18 at 11:30pm.

The roots of violent behavior can be traced back to the earliest stages of childhood, even before birth. But steps to shape positive development can also start just as early.

Robin Karr-Morse and her co-author, Meredith Wiley, are now at work on a new book, The Monster in the Closet, that takes a deeper look at the physiology of infant brain development. A key part of the process, Karr-Morse explains, is the gradual maturation of the cortical brain.

When a child’s development is impaired, whether through neglect, abuse, poor diet, exposure to drugs or any other sources, the consequences can sometimes be countered or mitigated if positive interventions become available. But Karr-Morse says their effectiveness varies so widely, it becomes virtually impossible to generalize about outcomes.

Robin Karr-Morse was the featured speaker April 28 at the the annual Blue Ribbon lunch for Child Abuse Prevention month in Sonoma County, an event co-sponsored by the California Parenting Institute and Prevent Child Abuse, Sonoma County.

Alzheimer’s disease, a severe form of progressive dementia, casts a long and fearful shadow on the baby boom generation, but lifestyle changes and advance planning can delay and even diminish its impacts.

A certified Occupational Therapist, Teepa Snow  is a dementia expert who trains and consults for healthcare professionals and families privately. She explains that  while Alzheimer’s is the most widely recognized form of dementia, it is just one of the many forms that condition may take. Here, Snow  (left) describes a few of the others.

Simple forgetfulness is a common trait for most adults, but the early signs of Alzheimer’s are significantly more acute. Here, Teepa Snow breaks down the difference.

The diagram below illustrates the physiological changes that characterize Alzherimer's disease.

Advertising isn’t just annoying, contends industry critic  Jean Kilbourne, it can be genuinely harmful, especially in promoting additions to alcohol, tobacco or even just shopping.

Kilbourne observe that many of the most prolific advertisers are trying to promote regular consumption of their products, which although legal, are nonetheless highly addictive. So they are, essentially, working to promulgate addictions.

Politics is another area in which Kilbourne worried that the growing reliance on campaign advertising is inflicting powerful and distorting influence, implicitly facilitating corruption of candidates while discouraging public participation in the electoral process.

Those concerns have been exacerbated by the recent Supreme Court decision affirming “corporate personhood,” and striking down any limits on campaign spending by corporations. Kilboure fears that decision will have far-reaching and terribly destructive consequences.

Jean Kilbourne will deliver her presentation, “Deadly Persuasion” about advertising and how it tries to manipulate us, in the Sonoma State University Cooperage, Tuesday, March 23 at 7:30 pm. Here's a summary/preview:

What are advertisers really selling us?

Advertising is an over $200 billion a year industry. We are each exposed to over 3000 ads a day. Yet, remarkably, most of us believe we are not influenced by advertising. Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be. Sometimes they sell addictions.

In her slide presentations, Jean Kilbourne examines images in advertising with the incisive wit and irony that have delighted and enlightened her audiences for years. With expert knowledge, insight, humor and commitment, she brings her audiences to see that, although ads may seem harmless and silly, they add up to a powerful form of cultural conditioning. She is known for her ability to present provocative topics in a way that unites rather than divides, that encourages dialogue, and that moves and empowers people to take action in their own and in society’s interest.

She explores the relationship of media images to actual problems in the society, such as violence, the sexual abuse of children, rape and sexual harassment, pornography and censorship, teenage pregnancy, addiction, and eating disorders. She also educates her audiences about the primary purpose of the mass media, which is to deliver audiences to advertisers. The emphasis is on health and freedom — freedom from rigid sex roles, freedom from addiction, freedom from denial, and freedom from manipulation and censorship.

One little-reported consequence of the war in Iraq has been the displacement of an estimated 2 million former citizens who have fled to neighboring nations or even further. Their story is the subject of Eclipse of the Sunnis,  a new book by NPR Mideast correspondent Deborah Amos.

Amos began covering the Middle East for NPR more than 20 years ago, and renewed her interest in the region following the 9/11 attacks. Even though she sees the Iraqi Sunnis as complicit in their own downfall, as instigators of the sectarian insurgency, she also believes their situation as an enormous population of displaced professional and middle class families is an important story, one she felt could best be told by presenting the human faces of some of those involved.

The split between Sunni and Shiite Muslims may appear to be the result of religious differences between two factions within Islam, but Deborah Amos cautions that this interpretation is a simplistic misreading of the complex geopolitics of the Middle East.

It’s a convenient shorthand to speak of the displaced Iraqis as “refugees,” but that, too, is an over implication, in Amos’s view. Because these are mostly middle class households, they are able to monitor events and their situation in ways that are completely unknown to most poverty-stricken refugees. But their circumstances leave them vulnerable to an eroding standard of living that may take generations to recover.

Amos writes about the significance of the Iraqi general election here.