The friendly family doctor with a black bag who would come for house calls, remove swollen tonsils, check a child’s temperature during the flu season, deliver a young woman’s baby and carefully tend to the sick and dying in their own beds is gone.

The effort to keep the Sacramento Kings in town showed what a community can do when everyone rallies around a cause. Now that the Golden 1 Center is opening and fans are coming downtown to enjoy the Kings, it’s bringing many people together again — perhaps too closely.  

Businesses in Northern California are especially well-positioned to expand globally. The region has a culturally diverse population and an enviable proximity to ports, airports, rail systems and foreign trade zones. Even as exporting makes sense for individual businesses, encouraging companies to expand internationally makes even more sense for the local economy.

“If I have to use the word ‘funnel’ one more time today, I might die. #buzzwords” — @abhinemani

Posted on Twitter by Sacramento’s Chief Innovation Officer, Abhi Nemani, on Aug. 22, this was the tweet heard ‘round the Comstock’s office. It kicked off a lengthy debate among our staff about what “funnel” actually meant.

I was recently let go from a job due to accessing information on our system that I had been taught was allowed. HIPAA guidelines show no issue with getting this information because it was requested. I did break a policy (that I was unaware of), and the company did not wish to discuss the matter further.

In those early days of Disneyland, Walt hired Van France to establish Disney University and hire and train the “cast” (employees) that would bring the theme park to life. France reinvented the training and development of employees with his carefully crafted Four Keys (now more commonly known as Crystal Clear Priorities, aka CCPs).

Since 2007, the nonprofit Capital Region Family Business Center has worked to help family-run businesses solve some of the unique challenges facing their companies. The organization recently took another step toward that goal by hiring Stella Premo as its first full-time, paid executive director. We talked to her about the ups and downs of running a family business.

Though largely hidden from the consumer’s eye, food waste is hardly insignificant. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we waste between 30 to 40 percent of food each year — and with it water, money and the chance to feed food-insecure people.

Annie and Jeff Main started farming after college, inspired by the back-to-land movement of the 1970s. They farmed on rented land for 17 years and then bought their own 20 acres in Capay Valley, in Yolo County.

 You probably need a vacation. Most of America does. Between 1976 and 2000, the average worker took roughly 20 vacation days annually, according to data from Project: Time Off. But as the economy buckled in 2008, so did our desire to flock to the beach, and in 2015, the number plunged nearly a full week lower, translating to 658 million unused vacation days.

There are good reasons to focus on the special challenges posed by family businesses, like how to keep family resentments from turning to business rivalries and avoid nepotism that results in the wrong people working in key positions. But for some Sacramento immigrant family businesses, blood ties have been the key to survival.

In 2005, GR launched Crete Crush, a sister company to its trucking operation that includes two concrete and asphalt crushing and recycling centers, one at the company’s Rancho Cordova headquarters, and another at its 15-acre facility off Bradshaw Road in Sacramento. When the company first started, it was paying someone else to crush the concrete and asphalt that was accumulating from demolition site hauls.

Jeff Pettigrew prepares the inside padding of a casket at Pettigrew & Sons Casket Co., a family-run business in Sacramento founded by the late Fay Pettigrew, who is Jeff’s grandfather.

The U.S. medical profession is changing for its practitioners. There are fewer and fewer self-employed physicians, as more turn to employment by a medical group or hospital. In general, the U.S. will face a projected shortage of up to 90,400 physicians by 2025.