Everybody’s business

Little Italy
The popular pizza purveyors at Left Coast are adding on, with an Italian-style deli and specialty foods store adjacent to the pizza place at 800 Bruce Road.

Owner Matt Skinner said Costa Sinistra, which means Left Coast in Italian, is intended to focus on the southeast Chico neighborhood’s needs and could be compared in some ways to the much-admired Bustolini’s Delicatessen on Broadway.

Left Coast Pizza is known for its twists on pizza toppings (think blue cheese and pine nuts) and will take similar creative license with its sandwiches and salads. “We’ve put a real cool twist on this,” Skinner said, mentioning a basil-garlic spread and specialty cheeses.

Skinner expects the deli to be open by Jan. 19. Soon, a seating area will be added to Left Coast as well.

Any openings?
With a name like Smucker… OK; that’s too easy. The J. M. Smucker Company has been named the nation’s “best company to work for” in a survey by Fortune magazine. After recurring appearances in the top 25 over the past seven years, Smucker succeeded in garnering the No. 1 spot among the 100 companies reported on in Fortune’s Jan. 12 issue.

The Chico connection, of course, is that Knudsen & Sons Inc., which was bought out by Ohio-based Smucker years ago, has long had a large plant in town. It’s also called Smucker Quality Beverages.

Smucker was praised for its relatively high pay and paid time off for volunteer work.

Getting goosed
The annual Snow Goose Festival is back for a fifth year and better than ever.

John Merz, executive director of the Sacramento River Trust, a primary organizer of the event, said this year’s festival has an even wider variety of activities to choose from. “We’ve actually expanded to Red Bluff this year, which we’re pretty excited about.”

The Jan. 23-25 event will be preceded by a $7 benefit showing of Winged Migration at the Pageant Theatre on Jan. 21-22 at 6:30 p.m. Field trips will range from wildlife refuges to an “owl prowl” to the Sutter Buttes. Workshops for young and old will focus on birds, bats and other creatures as well as nature journal writing. The Saturday night banquet includes a presentation about the Alaskan Arctic by research biologist and photographer Michael Denega.

For more information, go to www.sacrivertrust.org.

Singing for the trees
A Chico State University graduate has released a CD—and a potential small forest along with it.

Laura Sullivan, a former music major, decided to include tree seeds in each of her CDs of “contemporary instrumental” music. Her album is titled Pianoscapes of the Trails of North America and is filed in the New Age section.

The seeds, which are embedded in tree-shaped pieces of paper, would spawn blue spruce. Sullivan, a Mt. Shasta native, figured including the seeds would be a good way to encourage improving the environment and is also dedicating a portion of the CD’s proceeds to the National Arbor Day Foundation.

Sullivan will appear in a TV show this year titled Music Across America.