Welcome to the Alameda Journal blog, “Life on the Island.” Here you’ll find posts on Alameda almost (but not quite) every day. Life on the Island is also a great place to locate other stories about Alameda that are published in the Alameda Journal and the Contra Costa Times. Your comments are, of course, always welcome.

The Alameda Journal blog is run by Eve Pearlman, who has written for many local and national publications, publishing pieces with such titles as “Do You Know How to Get Pregnant?” and “Head Start: Welcoming Parents to Grow.” Eve holds a master’s in journalism from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and a bachelor’s from Cornell University. The daughter of public school teachers (one of mathematics, the other of English), Eve is a passionate advocate for education. She volunteers at her neighborhood school (this year reading weekly with the first grade green group), serves as a PTA jack of all trades and also sits on the School Site Council. Knowing that California public schools receive only about two-thirds of the dollars they need to function successfully, she also serves on the board of the Alameda Education Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to raising money for Alameda public schools. In prior incarnations, she built a fence in Idaho, rode her bike across the Continental Divide, and fully recovered from snow blindness after tackling a particularly brightly-lit 14,000-foot peak in Colorado. She lives now in Alameda—where else?—with her husband and two children.