The arrival of spring goes hand in hand with images apt to inspire the nearest lounging poet. How fitting, then, that National Poetry Month should fall on this time of year. In Yolo County the celebration has already begun, but with readings on the way at both The Avid Reader and Bistro 33, the coming weeks promise to be eventful. The Sacramento Poetry Center, located on 25th St., held its annual poetry conference Apr. 4and 5, featuring readings, workshops and lectures by local and visiting poets. Among its participants was Sacramento State English professor, Joshua McKinney, who read with fellow poets Camille Norton and Jane Hershfield on Friday evening. The following morning he held a workshop with approximately 10 participants. “What I liked most was the camaraderie, the spirit of sharing a mutual endeavor that I experienced,” McKinney said. “There were some fine writers in attendance.”

If you’ve always wanted to learn a percussion instrument or brush up on your current skills, now’s your chance. Tonight, Saturday and Monday, the UC Davis Percussion Festival will commence, complete with workshops and concerts from both students and masters, featuring Brazilian beats, merry marimbas and more. The UC Davis department of music began doing music festivals four years ago, with each year celebrating a different particular instrument. Last year was the cello festival, and this year will mark the first percussion festival to be held on campus with percussion lecturer and performer Chris Froh at the helm as the festival’s director. “To be given free range, and to basically do whatever I’d like to do, has been ideal,” said Froh. Today’s performance in Mondavi’s Grand Lobby will feature both the percussion students and the samba school, a newer and relatively unheard of addition to the course catalog. The class is open to all levels of experience and performs every quarter, which made participating in the percussion festival a natural flow of events, Froh said.

Stop-Loss Directed by Kimberly Peirce Paramount Picture Rating: 3 Stop-Loss isn’t a political movie, per se. It’s not meant to sway the audience in any particular way about the political ideologies. It’s not necessarily an anti-war movie, nor does it preach “Support Your Troops” messages into every scene. At heart, Stop-Loss is a drama that focuses on the effects of war – not the war itself. Rather than concentrating on the merits of war, director Kimberly Peirce focuses on the storytelling of human drama, an area that seems to suit her better, based on her directorial debut in 1999 with Boys Don’t Cry. Stop-Loss is about a group of soldiers returning from duty in Iraq. Undoubtedly, it’s been a tough gig: On their last tour, Sergeant Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) and his men are ambushed, leaving one man in their group killed and another permanently disfigured. Friends, family and a cheering town greet the soldiers at home in Texas, but life doesn’t get any easier for them once they return. Duty and combat has permanently changed them; one soldier is in rehabilitation after losing an arm, a leg and his eyesight after the ambush, and he is unable to visit his family in Mexico. The effects are more than physical for other soldiers: Brandon suffers from nightmares about the ambush that he feels responsible for. After their homecoming party, Sergeant Steve Shriver (Channing Tatum) suddenly snaps, and Brandon finds Steve at home in a drunken fit, digging a trench hole in his front yard in his underwear.

On Apr. 1, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors commenced Child Abuse Prevention Month with Yolo County’s participation in the statewide campaign against child abuse. Prevent Child Abuse California’s “It Only Takes a Minute – to Make a Difference in a Child’s Life” campaign aims to raise awareness about child abuse in the Yolo County area. Child abuse, including neglect, is the third highest issue statewide behind education and health care, said Danielle Mole, program manager for Legislative Affairs at Prevent Child Abuse California. “The point of this is to raise awareness of child abuse issues at each county level,” Mole said. First 5 Yolo is a sponsor of “It Only Takes a Minute.” Statewide polling results from their 2007 Community Needs Assessment report found child abuse is a high priority issue, but few know how they can help. Child abuse was closely related to parents who were substance abusers and involved in the welfare system.

Christi Raycraft has figured it out. For the third year in a row, the senior leads the UC Davis women’s water polo team (21-8) in goals scored and total points. This year, for the first time, she leads the Aggies in exclusions drawn and broke the season record previously held by assistant coach Katherine O’Rourke. She has led her Aggies to an 11-1 conference record, and with a win over Santa Clara this Saturday, UC Davis will have clinched the first seed in the conference championships later this month. With the team riding an eight-game winning streak and still on a high from a Saturday win over defending league champion Loyola Marymount, Aggie Sports Writer SAMMY BRASCH sat down with the Davis native to discuss everything from her head coach to what makes the team – ranked 10th in the nation – so successful.

Editor’s note: MUSE offers a monthly feature to review specific exhibits from art galleries on campus and throughout the Davis/Sacramento area. This month’s “Gallery Review” is of the exhibit ‘American Folk Art’ by various artists. The exhibit will be on display until Apr. 19 at the John Natsoulas Gallery. The gallery experience can be an overwhelming one. However enlightening the creations, a plaguing stiffness can be in the air. That sense of heightened formality, a need to whisper and the rule to keep a respectable distance from the work on display. This prim decorum is not the case with “American Folk Art.” It’s a welcome unpretentiousness: Folk art is created by those with little or no formal training in art, and most of the works on display in the exhibit are marked by a naivety, a certain inexperience that lends itself to an unstudied aesthetic. Many of the paintings are have a childlike quality – bright colors, flat images, a simplified, almost archaic approach to light and perspective – pieces that would seem more at home on a refrigerator door held up by a kitchen magnet than on a gallery wall.

The city of Davis’ Climate Action Team recently completed an inventory regarding the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. In the study, it was revealed that 225,200 equivalent tons of carbon dioxide were emitted in 1990. If conditions remained constant, the city would produce 313,006 tons of emissions by 2015, according to the study. While the numbers themselves are not encouraging, where the emissions are coming from is actually a positive. According to the CAT inventory, transportation accounted for 57 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Davis in 1990. This number is, in a sense, both promising and discouraging. The fact that over 100,000 tons of emissions were released by transportation alone is certainly an issue, but it’s an issue that we as a community can resolve. Davis’ public transportation system and bicycle-oriented landscape means there’s little need to drive a personal car from place to place. Additional changes to infrastructure could further promote alternative transportation methods and a diminished reliance on personal automobiles.

The national average graduation rate of African American and Hispanic students has decreased significantly in the last 30 years, according to a recent study conducted by Michal Kurlaender, an associate professor of education at UC Davis. According to the study, the number of graduating African Americans in 2004 dropped 33 percent, while the Hispanic student graduation rate dropped 34 percent nationally. The increase in dropout rates has grown in tandem with an enduring increase in enrollment to college by minority groups overall. Kurlaender said that there are several possibilities for this phenomenon. “There are many reasons for [students] to drop out: They may find employment that is more lucrative, have no taste for school or find they aren’t good at it,” Kurlaender said. Kurlaender also cites that some students may experience a lack of preparation due to a misalignment between high school academics and the intensity of college coursework, as well as financial constraints due to rising tuition fees. All of these factors may contribute directly to the dropout rate of minorities in college, who are more likely to come from low-income families and may be dependent on financial aid. She stressed that these reasons are not mutually exclusive.

TODAY Summer abroad enrollment day Noon to 4 p.m. Education Abroad Center, corner of Third and A streets Secure your spot in a summer study abroad program and get extensions for important forms by visiting the EAC. Enrollment is first-come, first-served. The last day to enroll is Friday by 5 p.m. Emerson Jr. High carnival 4 to 10 p.m. 14 Cannery Park St. Help the Emerson Junior High School PTA raise funds for the school! Rides can be purchased individually and day passes are $25 at the door. Day passes are available for $20 at Carousel Stationary and Gifts at 706 Second St. Chemistry Club meeting 5 p.m. 281 Chemistry Those interested in participating in the Picnic Day magic show should attend this practice session. Trivia night 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Silo Café and Pub Show off your knowledge of random factoids! Math Café 6 to 8 p.m. Scholars’ Center Study Room, Surge IV Get a good serving of mathematics at this weekly tutoring session with the Women’s Resources and Research Center. Women and men are both welcome. Sigma Mu Delta barbeque night 7 p.m. Chaparral Lounge, 2689 Sycamore Lane Get to know the brothers of this pre-health fraternity over ribs.

Anyone who left Theta Chi’s Zion I and Mistah Fab outdoor show last Saturday without a few black and blue spots,smashed eyeglasses,mysterious bite marks,or at least an elbow to the stomach should count themselves lucky. In town like Davis,chock full of young hip-hop fans from the Bay Area,you have to expect that people are going to get bit crazy – or you might say,hyphy,when two extremely popular hip-hop artists from Oakland come to visit. The double lineup nicely catered to both fans of the socially conscious and poetic underground fare of Zion I as well as the lighter-themed,pounding,up-tempo beats of Mistah Fab that anyone who listens to the radio even occasionally has probably memorized perfectly. This isn’t to say that the crowd was utterly out of control the entire time.The vigorous local and UC Davis student band Sex,Funk,and Danger got the audience moving and grooving benignly and not belligerently with their hybrid of hip-hop,funk and jazz.

“They say times have changed, and they have,” a well-dressed plump woman in her fifties told me. “But some things are still the same.” I listened attentively as I pushed the cart out to her car, and she continued talking with ease, perhaps because she was a regular customer of mine. She explained that she was shopping in produce and thought the cherries looked a bit old, so she asked Vinny, who was working nearby, if there were any newer ones in the back. He said no, but a short time later a second customer asked him the same question, and he said yes, and dutifully went to the back to retrieve them. The second customer was white. Vinny was white. My customer was black. Curious after her explanation, I asked Vinny what the deal was. Very thin and not exactly attractive, Vinny adjusted his glasses 20 years out of style. “I know, she said something to me. I thought we had no cherries in the back when she asked. Then next time I was back there, I see that we did have more. What am I supposed to do, lie to the next customer because she happened to be white?”

Arriving at the Philadelphia International Airport and armed with the motivation of contributing to Senator Obama’s campaign as a “springtern” – a colloquialism for a spring internship – little did I know what to expect. But experience I did, and it was uncompromising, rewarding and ultimately, eye-opening. Philadelphia is a city that is distinctly heterogeneous. Buildings appear segmented, even aloof, from each other. On the one hand, the neoclassical architecture harks as a reminder of the past, intent on maintaining the memories of patriots pursuing independence. Meanwhile, symbols of the capitalist advance – the leaden, towering skyscrapers – juxtapose these cultural ancients. Coexisting, they both brim and bore, at times seemingly conflicting between a steely desire for progress and a poignant nostalgia to preserve.