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August 2024 • ALAMO TODAY & DANVILLE TODAY NEWS • PAGE 1
& AUGUST 2024
KIM’S NURTURING NEST ANIMAL SANCTUARY: 2024 EUGENE O’NEILL FESTIVAL TO WHERE SKILLED CARE COMES BUNDLED FEATURE PLAYWRIGHT’S DANVILLE HOME WITH LOVE By Jody Morgan IN HEADLINER PLAY
At Kim’s Nurturing Nest Animal Sanctuary (KNNAS), chickens came first. Farm animals with special needs and feral cats followed. Retired from her full-time career as a pediatric critical care nurse in 2019, founder Kim Kunst transformed their Danville property into a full-fledged sanctuary with her husband’s blessing. Officially registered as a 501 (c)(3) non-profit on March 26, 2021, KNNAS has helped 522 animals and spayed/neutered 341. There are 64 animals currently in residence housed in eight immaculate structures designed for their specific needs. The number of animals changes day to day as some move on to adoption or foster care Kim spent 10 days bottle-feeding Nimbus so he was strong enough to move to in other places and new animals arrive. another sanctuary to bond with other Some special warriors live out their lives lambs. Photo courtesy of KNNAS. at the shelter surrounded by loving humans and animal friends. The first four chicks Kim acquired in 2010 weren’t rescues. She loved to garden and had space to add chickens. Kim describes her horror at discovering that males, banned from many towns as disruptive to the peace because they crow at the crack of dawn, are macerated the day after they hatch. Kim began volunteering at Animal Place Sanctuary in 2015 after her husband spotted an article about their factory farm rescue. Kim explains: “These chickens have been suspended off the ground in battery cages their entire lives so they don’t know how to roost safely at night and pile on top of each other at night. The ones on the bottom suffocate. Volunteers are needed to move them off each other so no one is in a pile. Once they are asleep and it’s dark, they don’t move around but its stressful to keep them from piling up. This needs to be done for a few weeks until they relearn to be safe and to perch normally. They also can’t perch high off the ground since their bones aren’t strong enough to support them. It takes time to build their bodies to be strong since Rosie, Kim Kunst's first special needs they are fed such minimal amounts and rescue, played a leading role in making have no ability to exercise their muscles.” other hens with mobility issues feel loved. Photo courtesy of KNNAS.
See KNNAS cont. on page 16
For the Eugene O’Neill Festival 2024 to be held in September, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright’s gracious home in the hills above Danville will play a unique role in Mourning Becomes Electra, one of his most ambitious, enthralling, and action-packed dramas. The eight performances over three weekends, September 14th-29th, will begin and end in the courtyard of O’Neill’s Tao House, as the National Historic Site stands in for the grand New England mansion owned by the rich and powerful Mannon family. In a play that’s a captivating mix of Greek tragedy, soap opera, and even noir crime thriller, the Mannon family dynasty starts to come apart in the weeks after the end of the Civil War. When the play op ens, t he four Mannon family members – mother Christine, daughter Lavinia, father Ezra, a Union brigadier general, and son Orin, a wounded veteran – are each consumed with their own demons, which include the incestuous family dynamics suggested by the play’s title. Sweeping passions lead to adultery, jealousy, and despair, as well as to increasingly shocking acts of
See O’Neill continued on page 14
The SRV 10-Year-Old District All-Star Team celebrates with their newly won Section 3 banner—the first Section title for the league at any age since 2004. Photo by K&D.
The Editors Serving the communities of Alamo, Diablo, & Danville
Volume XXIV Number 8
Volume XV Number 8
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