Letters to the Editor

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10.24.07

Flat-out Endorsement

When Fifth District supervisor Mike Reilly first announced that he would not be running for re-election, we—like many longtime residents of western Sonoma County—immediately started thinking of the people we hoped would run. When the first few candidates threw their hats in the ring, there were no surprises; we knew those announced candidates as friends, neighbors and community activists.

But the person we hoped would join the race is the one we had known longest—before Guerneville had a sewer, before Santa Rosa’s infamous sewer spill into the Russian River, before the 1986 flood. We knew Rue Furch as a parent of children at Guerneville School, as a local businesswoman, as an environmentalist. We knew from experience that the issues and problems of concern to us were the same ones that absorbed her thinking.

As a veteran member of the Sonoma County Planning Commission, Rue has been actively involved in dealing with those issues for over 15 years. She knows the devil is in the details; she also knows which of those details count the most. If Rue is elected, she will change hats, but in a very real sense, she will be doing the same job from a different angle. She is well respected throughout the county as a person who listens and studies the facts before taking a position on a subject. We have no doubt that she will be an effective participant in board deliberations as well as an alert guardian of Fifth District interests.

Rue Furch is running as a citizen, not as a politician. When done being supervisor, she has made it clear that she will retire rather than seek another office. Because we think of the supervisor’s job as providing constituent service to fellow citizens more than as pursuing a political agenda, we believe Rue is the candidate who will best serve.

We thank all the other candidates for stepping forward to seek this office. They are aware that being supervisor of this diverse district is a demanding and sometimes monumentally frustrating job. But of all of the declared candidates, we think Rue Furch best understands what she’s getting into. We support her as the most effective steward of our beautiful area and of the way of life we have long treasured.

Wallie Kass, Alby Kass, Darlene Kersnar and Scott Kersnar, Guerneville

The Criminals in Charge

Lynn Woolsey is my Congressional representative, and Lynn has been a great rep on the issues that concern me. Even though I live in the Sixth Congressional District, I plan on working for the Cindy Sheehan campaign, in the Eighth Congressional district. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the house and current representative for the Eighth District, needs to get the message loud and clear that the issue of “impeachment” of George Bus, and Dick Cheney must be put back on the table now!

I was in Washington, D.C., the week of Sept. 22, and while there, I sat in a Senate subcommittee on funding appropriations. The committee was hearing testimony on whether or not to approve more billions of dollars for the illegal, misguided wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How can anyone say that impeachment is not worth the time and energy or just shrug that he’ll be gone in a year anyhow? Impeachment is a critical issue. These two men are criminals, they have violated the Constitution, they have lied to the American people and they are aggressively planning an invasion of Iran!

Not only must they be impeached, they should also be tried for war crimes, crimes against humanity.

barry latham-ponneck, Sebastopol

Edwards for the Criminals’ Job

I support John Edwards’ candidacy because he strongly supports our troops. First, he wants to bring the troops home from Iraq as soon as possible. Second, he is very angry about the mistreatment the administration is dealing out to our returning medically disabled troops. The actions of the acting Surgeon General of the Army, Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, parroting the administration’s efforts to save budget dollars by denying medical care, is unconscionable. No other candidate has stood up and as forcefully called on the administration to account for its actions.

Gerald W. Hunt, San Jose


Wine Tasting Room of the Week

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I’ve heard many times that vines have to struggle to produce quality wine. This bit of French country wisdom must have lost something in its eventual translation to the florid prose of wine-marketing gothic. A Washington State winery’s recent full-page ad in a magazine takes it up a notch, bragging that their vines “are made to strain under extreme conditions and strict training. It is by teetering on this precipice between life and death [italics mine] that the best attributes are coaxed from our grapes.” It’s as if the love of good dead grape teeters toward a kind of leering sadism. Must the tastiest glass be squeezed from weather-beaten little vines clinging to a bare rock cliff face, their dry, cracked roots straining to lap up the last micron of water, while the taunting, firm hand of the vine-master dangles the hard, plastic nipple of drip-irrigation just out of reach? Must one always suffer to be beautiful?

The vineyards that surround Balletto and Dutton-Goldfield look to be anything but struggling. I see irrigated vine rows thick with green leaves along Occidental Road, sloping down in alternating ribbons of rich soil to the Laguna de Santa Rosa. These grapevines seem tidily managed and abundant. I don’t know, but they’re making some good stuff over at Dutton-Goldfield and Balletto. Between them, they farm 1,500 acres, but release their own wine from only a fraction of that acreage. They’re separate operations, but share a winemaking facility and tasting room, open since 2006. You can find it by the little clapboard sign, with some balloons most days, at the entrance to a long, pitted gravel vineyard road. In the midst of stacks of half-ton picking bins, loading docks and farm machinery, there’s a well-tended patio with seating, a fountain and adjacent tasting room. Being out of the touring loop, it’s generally a low-key place that picks up a bit on weekends.The Dutton-Goldfield 2006 Shop Blanc Pinot Blanc ($25) is barrel-fermented in old oak, so it’s rich and full on the tongue, while remaining buoyant and refreshing. Both fairly nice Chardonnays, the 2005 Balletto Estate Chardonnay ($18) has picked up a roasted hazelnut and hard cheese aromas, while the 2005 Dutton Ranch Chardonnay ($35) has more mineral notes, as well as citrus and apple-pear with light oak treatment.

Both Pinots are light or medium-bodied, flavorful, with gentle tannin and a hint of depth. I got cherry, vanilla and smoke out of the 2006 Balletto Estate Pinot Noir ($24), while finding that the highest priced 2005 Freestone Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir ($58) is unsurprisingly the finest, with candied cherry aromas, liqueur and lingering softness. For a pure expression of Russian River Zinfandel, one would do well to try the 2005 Balletto Zinfandel ($21), a juicy but not simple pot of brambleberry fruit and black pepper.

As for picking up a bottle to bring home? My wallet came out without a struggle.

Balletto & Dutton-Goldfield, 5700 Occidental Road, Santa Rosa. Tasting room open daily, 10am to 4pm. $5 tasting fee waived with purchase. 707.568.2455.



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Punkademics

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Punkademics

10.24.07

All I want is for future generations to just go, ‘Fuck it. Had enough. Here’s the truth.’—Johnny Rotten, in the Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and the Fury

There are at least two exceptional things about Athena Kautsch. First, she not only teaches various English classes, including a rigorous honors class, at Casa Grande High School in Petaluma, but she also team-teaches “Rebels, Resistance and Revolution,” about history’s rabblerousers. A lot of students fail the course.

Second, Kautsch is also known as Athena Dread (or Athena Cochina) and moonlights playing bass in the thrash-punk band Vöetsek (pronounced “vote-sek”). Legendary and revered in thrash-punk circles, Vöetsek are known for furious, ultrafast, ultraloud songs like the 45-second “Tampons Should Be Free,” an indictment of the hypercommodification of a woman’s most basic and necessary helper. To experience Kautsch teaching English in the all-American, butter ‘n’ eggs town of Petaluma is one thing, but to see her onstage in a dingy venue, abusing a BC Rich Warlock bass guitar to the screams and fury of Vöetsek is quite another. Teachers play in bands, but how many play in punk bands?

It brings up philosophically rich questions. Is “Athena Dread” the alter ego of Athena Kautsch, mild-mannered yet edgy punk teacher, or is Ms. Kautsch the workaday alter ego of Dread, key component and founding member of Vöetsek? Can both identities coexist harmoniously? Aren’t all or most punks basically kind of like Sid Vicious?

With a few clicks of the mouse, anyone can find Vöetsek on the Internet. There are digital slide shows of Athena, smiling, with scruffy-looking musicians and Mohawked fans reveling in post-gig shenanigans. Onstage, Athena is pure concentration, laying down the bass on songs that are over before they begin, full of screamed lyrics and a primal yet evocative awareness.

Today’s teenagers are not surprised to find an aging boomer teacher in many a classroom; a Hendrix poster on the wall and a nostalgic fondness for late ’60s-style revolution is all too common and, with due respect, altogether blasé. In Athena’s classroom, however, one finds a sticker for punk band Capitali$t Casualties on her filing cabinet.

Contrary to the stereotype of the “gutterpunk”—an early 20s fuckup with a small, disoriented pet s/he can’t take care of, filthy hair and clothes and spiky jacket espousing any number of punk bands known or unknown—punk teachers are highly educated, gainfully employed, creatively critical of the American way and American dream. And they’re teaching the future, our children. They release workaday frustrations by playing in punk bands like Vöetsek, Holier Than Thou, Millions of Dead Cops (MDC).

It isn’t really news or noteworthy that teachers, be it high-school or post-secondary, play in bands, but playing in a punk band sets them apart, and with good reason. For why is it that no one bats an eye when the friendly local math teacher busts out a guitar for a sober sing-along of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” but someone like Kautsch has to work diligently to protect her punk identity in the interest of her professional career?

Her teaching side alone stirs up enough controversy with some of Petaluma’s more conservative parents. Casa Grande’s principal, Ron Everett, says that he sometimes receives a pissed-off phone call.

Kautsch isn’t alone. From Chuck Carlson, a Western civilizations lecturer at SSU who shows his students a PowerPoint slide presentation featuring the Clash’s famous London Calling album cover and plays them Clash music, to Casa Grande guidance counselor Brett Sklove, whose office is filled with posters and original flyers for seminal punk bands, there is a small yet vibrant number of academipunks in today’s learning institutions at all levels.

“Punk means to me a sharing of ideas,” says Kautsch, sipping a dark beer at a Cotati restaurant. “My students and I are growing and learning together. Punk rock is not the punk bands you see on MTV; it’s not what bands are playing this year’s Warped Tour. Punk is, however, about being an active member of the DIY community.”

Anarchy, despite what mainstream media say, does not mean chaos, disorder, violence. On the contrary, it works to prevent these things by establishing its own system—by lacking a system at all in the first place.

The connection between punk and academia is nothing new. Philosopher Paul Feyerabend advocated an “epistemological anarchism” in the scientific quest for knowledge. In other words, anything goes in the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge; it’s all fair game. Punks in everyday society can often fly under the radar with their nonpunk, professional lives. After all, one can cover up a Dayglo Abortions tattoo fairly easily with makeup or clothing, but the loosely organized academipunk community is nonetheless out there, a demographic to contend with.

As more baby boomers retire and fade into senior citizenship, Generation X’s general reputation for disaffection, cynicism and postmodernism will eclipse the boomers’ sunnier, modern, lysergic-birthed outlook. What the Summer of Love or Woodstock was to leftist boomers, the golden decade of punk (roughly 1975 to 1985) is to many a Gen X punkademic. This postboom marks a significant paradigm shift, and raises the question of what the current millennial generation will adopt as their own individual and collective philosophy. Until then, a growing number of academipunks are coming out of the woodwork.

Evidently, and thankfully, punk is far from dead.

Authority Figures
Here is a partial, and highly subjective, list of punk bands with highly educated members
Milo Auckerman, the Descendants PhD, biochemistry
Jello Biafra, Dead Kennedys Studied acting and history of Paraguay at UC Santa Cruz
Dave Dictor, MDC Special education teacher
Greg Graffin, Bad Religion PhD, zoology; life sciences professor at UCLA
Davey Havoc, AFI Double major (English and psychology), UC Berkeley
Dexter Holland, the Offspring PhD candidate, molecular biology
Jose Palafox, Yaphet Kotto UC Berkeley ethnic studies professor
Max Ward, Spazz, 625 Thrashcore (and formerly Capitali$t Casualties), PhD candidate at NYU


Doll Face

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Doll Face

10.24.07

What do you think of critic David Denby’s comment in The New Yorker magazine that onscreen acting has never been better than now? Lars and the Real Girl, an indie film of great charm and not a little sappiness, is an example of the benefits and pitfalls of the kind of big acting Denby cherishes. It stars Ryan Gosling, one of the real hopes of his profession, in the title role.

Lars, a bottled-up bachelor living in the guesthouse behind his happily married brother, Gus (Paul Schneider, a redeeming factor in The Assassination of Jesse James), and his pregnant sister-in-law, Karin (Emily Mortimer). One evening, he presents to them his new girlfriend, a sex doll called Bianca, whom he adores and intends to marry. Gus, Karin and the rest of this far-north, Lutheran-Scandinavian Wisconsin town decide to treat Bianca as a human. The wise-woman of the town, Dr. Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson), insists that Lars needs to be indulged in his passion. This is one of those Frank Capra&–cum&–Northern Exposure small towns, where everyone pulls in the same direction.

Bianca is presentable enough; her face looks a little like Sally Fields, though the parted mouth is more Angelina Jolie. And we’re told, with all necessary discretion, that Bianca is anatomically correct. (There always has to be the possibility of consummation in a farce.) Soon, Bianca, swathed in donated hand-knitted clothes, is pushed around in a wheelchair to church and to volunteer work. She even gets a part time job in a boutique window.

Gus, the comic relief to this melancholy, doomed romance, is the one who is most worried—especially when Lars recruits him to board Bianca in his spare room. She’s a pious girl, Lars explains, and doesn’t want to spend the night with a man to whom she’s not married.

Working from Six Feet Under vet Nancy Oliver’s script, director Craig Gillespie spares this story of love and social discomfort from becoming a sour farce. It’s more than just an extended SNL skit. The winter light is right for this story of implicit sadness, especially when Bianca turns out to be too pure a spirit to survive.

Remember when Dustin Hoffman played an unsuccessful actor in Tootsie, fired from a job as a tomato in a TV commercial because he didn’t know what the tomato’s motivation was? Later, when Hoffman played an autistic in Rain Man, critic Pauline Kael cracked that Hoffman had finally got to play his tomato, a character free from the pressure of having to react.

The part of Lars in Lars and the Real Girl is a similar tomato, since no one aggressively confronts the deluded boy. I think what keeps me from falling in love, instead of mere like, with Lars and the Real Girl is that sense of stunt-performance-watching that keeps breaking out, as it often does, in this best of all possible acting eras. The problem with this kind of tomato acting is that it can be used for dramas that would make a visionary of Lars.

We’ve all seen the dreaded “sometimes when we touch, the feeling gets too much” movie, and Lars borders on it. This is especially evident in a scene where Clarkson tests Lars’ nerves; she can’t even lay a hand on the bottled-up young man without hurting him. The big “acting is better than ever” performance can, in lesser movies, end up as one long wince.

In one sense, Denby is right: everything else that’s going wrong with the movies—the writing; the limitless crassness of franchise-production; the commonness of poor visuals—is superceded by the willingness of the actors to make things real. Yet it’s the character-acting support that really make Lars more than a bizarre oddity.

This movie would be a dreadful male fantasy—starring a mute inert woman as a “real girl”—if it weren’t underpinned by three strong, caring women. Mortimer’s face warms this movie like an artificial sun, and this Scotch actress has a peerless Midwestern accent. “Are ya hungry?” she asks brightly, and you know she’s about to up-end a cornucopia. Clarkson brings every ounce of poise to this role, listening intently, bearing on her noble shoulders a huge French braid that makes her look like a Norsewoman.

I’d also mention the toothy, sweetly geeky girl that never gives up on Lars. As Margo, Kelli Garner might get overlooked, a slim girl unconscious of the fact that she wears stripes and plaids simultaneously, and who does this marvelous wiggly dance of triumph when she bowls a strike. There’s simply no substitute for the living.

‘Lars and the Real Girl’ opens Friday, Oct. 26, at the Rialto Lakeside Cinema, 551 Summerfield Road, Santa Rosa. 707.525.4840.


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News Briefs

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ISSUEDATE

Time to vote

With the race already (groan) underway for next year’s presidential election, the Nov. 6, 2007, election may not be high on most folks’ to-do lists. However, this “off year” election will wrap up a lot of nitty-gritty business that needs doing in Marin and Sonoma counties. The good news for Napa County voters is that they get the day off; Napa County doesn’t have a Nov. 6 ballot. So Napans can sit back, relax and save their election energies for next year.

In Marin and Sonoma, voters will be selecting representatives to serve in a wide range of offices, such as mayor or sanitary board member. Current North Bay Bohemian policy is to not make recommendations in individual local races, but we will provide an overview of what’s on the ballot.

One interesting legal note is that special districts which raise money through voter-approved taxes then have to officially ask voters to raise their appropriations limits so they can spend the funds that have been collected. Elections to do just that are being held in the Bodega Bay Fire Protection, Forestville Fire Protection, Inverness Public Utility, Mesa Park (Firehouse Community Park Agency) and Reed Union School districts.

Marin voters will also be choosing candidates to serve on the governing boards of Bel Marin Keys Community Services District, Kentfield School District, Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District, Marin Community College District, Mill Valley School District, Novato Fire Protection District, Novato Sanitary District, North Marin Water District, Reed Union School District, Ross School District, the San Rafael Board of Education, Shoreline Unified School District, Southern Marin Fire Protection District, Stinson Beach Fire Protection District, Tamalpais Community Services District, Tiburon Fire Protection District and Tiburon Sanitary District.

City Council members will be selected in the Marin County towns of Fairfax, Mill Valley, Novato and San Rafael; Fairfax and San Anselmo are each electing a town clerk; and San Rafael is choosing a mayor, city attorney and clerk/assessor.

Throughout Sonoma County, representatives are being chosen as board members for Bodega Bay Fire Protection District, Bodega Bay Public Utility District, the Mendocino County Board of Education, Monte Rio Recreation and Park District, Occidental Community Services, Point Arena Joint Union High/Arena Union School District and Shoreline Unified School District. And the Sonoma Valley Unified School District is hoping two-thirds of its voters approve a six-year, $91 parcel tax.

Whew. For an “off-year” that’s a lot of elections with a lot of potential impact.


No Exit

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No Exit

the arts | stage |

Photograph by Jeff Thomas
Exile: Kristen Brown as Magda and William Neely as John co-star in ‘The Consul.’

By David Templeton

Composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who died earlier this year at the age of 95, was celebrated for much of his life as the spirited creator of entertainingly accessible American operas, winning numerous awards, including two Pulitzers (for 1951’s The Consul and 1955’s The Saint of Bleeker Street), along the way. As a young composer, he enthusiastically embraced the emerging technologies of radio and television, writing the first operas ever created for those forms of media. His most famous opera, the Christmas-themed Amahl and the Night Visitors, was created for television and first broadcast as a live holiday special on NBC in 1951.

For all his success, however, Menotti—born in Italy but raised in America—never won the hearts of the classical-music critics in his adopted country, where his works were viewed by the critical press as coarse, oversentimental and mawkishly cautious. To make matters worse, after a few initial compositions written in Italian, all of Menotti’s major libretti were written in English, which won him American audiences but lost the favor of the traditionalists.

“Basically, Menotti was too popular,” says Elly Lichenstein, executive director of Cinnabar Theater in Petaluma and director of The Consul, which opened Oct. 19 in conjunction with the countywide Performance Sonoma slate. “His music and the stories he told were designed to bring people to opera who had never been interested, and the purists thought this would only bring the art form down. And he wrote for Broadway, which was the worst crime of all from the point of view of musical classicists, who felt that opera was about inspiration and art, whereas musical theater was just vulgar and commercial.”

Menotti won some brownie points for founding and directing the annual Festival dei Due Mondi (“The Festival of Two Worlds”), held since 1958 in Spoleto, Italy, with its companion event, the Spoleto Festival, held in Charleston, N.C. Massive, multidisciplinary arts celebrations, the Spoleto fests feature all manner of concerts, opera, dance recitals, theatrical performances and visual-art displays, along with forums and roundtable discussions on music, the arts and science.

“The Festival of Two Worlds was designed by Menotti to make opera and classical music something that the average person could approach and get something from,” Lichenstein explains. “That was his goal, to bring this art form, not down to a lower level, but out to a broader audience, out to the people who had always believed opera was too difficult or too complicated.”

One could say the same thing about the intimate 90-seat Cinnabar Theater, founded in 1970 by the late Martin Klebe, who once performed at the Festival of Two Worlds, as a place where opera could be made available and accessible to nonclassical audiences. Over the years, Cinnabar has performed several of Menotti’s operas, a tradition that continues with the current production.

The Consul is a rich, riveting political thriller about the residents of an unspecified fascist country who are desperately awaiting papers to escape to freedom. The primary focus is Magda (Kristen Brown), wading through a nightmare of red tape and secret police dealings as she tries to win an exit visa before her freedom-fighting husband, John (William Neeley), who is in hiding at the border, is forced to return for her, thus putting his own life in peril. Much of the action takes place at the consulate, where an assortment of foreigners and oddballs also wait for exit papers. The music is alternately eerie and hopeful, with touches of fantasy that suggest a Twilight Zone alternate reality.

“It’s typical Menotti,” says Lichenstein, “in that it takes a subject that doesn’t seem like the stuff of typical opera, and tells that story using music that is beautiful and emotionally gripping. Menotti composed with the expectation that his works would appear in opera halls or on the Broadway stage, but he works very well in small houses like Cinnabar. I would say that in the case of The Consul, which takes place in offices and small apartments, Cinnabar is the perfect place to see this show.”

‘The Consul’ runs Friday–Saturday through Nov. 10; no show Nov. 3. Oct. 26–27 and Nov. 2 and 9–10 at 8pm; Nov. 4 at 2pm. In conjunction with Performance Sonoma. Cinnabar Theater, 3333 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. $32–$35. 707.763.8920.



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Opinion: Power of Power of Attorney

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On Christmas day 2005, just three days short of my 21st birthday, I woke up early, excited to open gifts with Mom and Dad. I have been fortunate that my parents are such good friends, even though they have been divorced for over 18 years. Later, Mom and I headed out from her Windsor home to deliver gifts to our friends while Dad did his own thing. The air outside was crisp, as it should be on Christmas morning, and the rooftops glistened with white frost.

When we got back, I opened the front door and felt a chill come over me even though it was warm inside. As I turned the corner, there was Dad facedown on the floor. We rushed to get him up; he wasn’t moving, his body was limp. When I raised his head, he looked at me and his eyes rolled to the back of his head. I yelled, “Wake up, stay with us!” I thought, “Why is this happening?”

I called Jane, my half-sister, Dad’s daughter from a previous marriage who is much older than I and who long ago disconnected herself from the family, to let her know what happened. She came to the hospital, and we met with the doctor in a small room. He told us that, at the age of 64, Dad had suffered a massive stroke affecting his speech and paralyzing his right side.

Dad lay unresponsive in the hospital on the verge of not surviving, hooked up to life-support in the ICU at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. I had to figure out if he had a will or any paperwork stating what to do if something like this were to happen. Jane, Mom and I went to search Dad’s house; nothing turned up. There was no power of attorney, no will and no extra names on his accounts. The fact that he had nothing in order made the process of taking care of him that much harder.

Soon after finding this out, I also discovered Jane had deceived me with the show of support and love she had seemed to offer. When we cleared out Dad’s house, she threw out almost everything without seeming to give a second thought to what she was doing. I caught her throwing away a box of old photos, mostly of me when I was little, but also a few photos of Dad when he was in the Navy. I couldn’t believe it. What little belongings she did save fit into Dad’s motor home which she had towed away to a spot unknown. What I did know was that I was alone.

Weeks later, Dad was awake and working with therapists, but with limited communication and unaware of what I was dealing with. In order to figure out what to do for him and where he should live, a meeting was called with the doctors, hospital staff, Mom, Jane and me. Dad had made it clear that he wanted me to be his advocate. Jane would not accept that, nor allow me to take care of him; I had no paperwork from Dad indicating otherwise. But she had a four-page paper typed, ready to distribute to everyone, explaining why it would be “ludicrous” to let me take care of him and how I am a bad person. At that point, I knew I had to fight for him. The first step was getting power of attorney.

It was a struggle, but I knew I couldn’t give up. I made several phone calls, was referred to various people, and filled out paperwork that had questions I could not answer.

Eventually, I did gain Dad’s POA, which came with responsibilities: changing the mail, bouncing between banks, signing him up for Medi-Cal, traveling to the VA in San Francisco, applying for Social Security, dealing with lawyers, scheduling transportation, finding a place close by for him to live and getting him therapy. My 21st birthday came and went in a flood of paperwork with emotions running high. I just wanted everything back to normal.

If Dad had something—a will, POA or a notarized document stating his wishes—this all could have been prevented. See, like most of us, Dad felt like he was going to be healthy forever and figured he was too young to have anything happen to him.

Through all of this, I learned how to fight for someone I love, knowing I couldn’t give up because Dad needed to see that life is worth living. The lesson here is to have your papers in order; you don’t want your loved ones going through this.

Today, Dad has gone from a feeding tube to eating on his own and attending an adapted PE class at Santa Rosa Junior College. We just celebrated his 66th birthday, and he couldn’t be happier; that warm tingly feeling I get inside from seeing him happy makes all the difference in my world. As for me, I am just your average guy making my mark in this world, trying to accomplish as much as possible. I myself just wrote out a holographic will stating what my wishes are for the little amount I have. I want to spare my loved ones the same unintended trauma.

To learn more, contact the Sonoma County Council on Aging (707.525.0143), the Marin County Commission on Aging (415.499.7396), the Area Agency on Aging Napa-Solano (707.644.6612) or check out www.usa.gov/Topics.Seniors.shtml. The Byrne Report returns next week.


Rosso Pizzeria & Wine Bar

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10.24.07

Editor’s note: First Bite is a new concept in restaurant writing. This is not a go-three-times, try-everything-on-the-menu report; rather, this is a quick snapshot of a single experience. We invite you to come along with our writers as they have a simple meal at an area restaurant, just like you do.

The staff roll their eyes at yet another reference to the Creekside Center restaurant’s former tenant, Anthony’s Music Box. Rosso’s smaller space is unrecognizable from the once-rambling nightclub, except possibly that the smiling chef stands roughly in the spot of the long-ago DJ, spinning pizza dough and cooking it up in the central brick oven to a light techno soundtrack.

The setup is nice—friendly, plentiful staff, vintage Italian-style wall posters featuring local names like Redwood Hill goat cheese—but I wasn’t comfortable at first. For one thing, I had heard eggs and spaghetti were offered as pizza toppings, and that disturbed me, without regard as to how either hip or authentic that may be. But minute by minute, I warmed up to the joint. Appetizers, or salumeria, are offered in categories “Gusto” and “Carne,” most of which are meant to accompany the pizzetta ($3), a rich flatbread, as spreads and whatnot. We chose the warm olives ($3). Rosso is big on local produce, right down to the Love Farms thyme. The Rosso caesar ($8.50) with Sonoma romaine, creamy lemon anchovy dressing, Gorgonzola and Calabrian chiles (OK, not so local), is a satisfying salad. But my dining companion wanted to try the piadine, described as flat bread with a salad topping, with instructions to “fold it, cut it and eat it.” My opinion was, there’s bread, there’s salad, why rock the table? But the Rosso caesar piadine ($7.95) was quite tasty and, contrary to my expectation, didn’t spill all over the plate.

All main courses are “Pizze.” We skipped the meatball and spaghetti Goomba ($11.50), opting for the Funghi ($12.50), which promised shiitake and cremini mushrooms in a garlic-informed white base with taleggio and fontina cheeses and shaved artichoke. It was such a pleasure that I hesitate to mention the unexpected appearance of chicken on the pie. (Since this is a quick snapshot, new concept and all that, I just did.) “This isn’t artichoke, is it?” my vegetarian friend asked. As a sympathetic yet recovering vegetarian, I tasted and concluded—how do you say “quelle horreur” in Italian?—chicken. Our server at first attempted to explain the misappropriation of the fowl bits, but quickly offered to replace the pizza.

The excellent wine list is divided in categories “Here” (Sonoma), “There” (Italy) and “Everywhere” (Spain, New Zealand . . . Napa). Many bottles are under $30, and here’s just how reasonable those prices are: A 2006 Quivira Rosé of Grenache ($19) is just $2 above retail. If the wine-by-the-glass list suffers from the conspicuous absence of Zinfandel amid so much pizza, unlisted wines are available by the bottle, corkage is only $10 and donated to the Santa Rosa soccer league, and all wines are available to go with a 15 percent discount. That’s sweet for anyone who’s ever complained about restaurant markup.

But the clincher was really the delectable, almost lovable warm olive appetizer. The chef stopped by to explain they are marinated for days in citrus and herbs, then baked in the brick oven. That so much time is invested in a $3 appetizer that rewards with such unexpected nuance of flavor seems to signal Rosso’s genuine commitment to quality gustation. As for the spaghetti pizza? Um, you go first.

Rosso Pizzeria & Wine Bar, Creekside Center, 53 Montgomery Drive, Santa Rosa. Open for lunch and dinner daily. 707.544.3221.


Quick-and-dirty dashes through North Bay restaurants. These aren’t your standard “bring five friends and order everything on the menu” dining reviews.

Free from Illusion

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Free from Illusion

Yes, Virginia: We Do Torture

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Yes, Virginia: We Do Torture

10.17.07

During a week when President Bush rather inelegantly declared that the United States “does not torture people,” the unjust treatment of Army chaplain James Yee seems especially poignant. “I don’t know if the White House is playing with word semantics or what,” Yee says by phone shortly after the president’s statements, “but from my experience, what I became aware of down in Guantánamo at a minimum met the threshold of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

There are few more entitled to comment on U.S. torture than Yee, a graduate of West Point and winner of two medals for exceptional service. While ministering to the alleged al Qaida and Taliban terrorists of Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay detention camp and acting as staff adviser for detainee religious practices, Yee openly objected to abuses inflicted on the camp’s prisoners. Upon reentry to the U.S., he was surprised to be found in possession of a list of Guantánamo detainees and interrogators. Yee was subsequently charged with sedition, spying, espionage and aiding the enemy.

Transferred to a naval brig in South Carolina, Yee was forced into solitary confinement for 76 days and made to undergo sensory deprivation. More than two months later, all criminal charges against him were dropped. Yee was welcomed back to the Army. He immediately resigned.

Yee has written a book, For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire, outlining the harsh conditions of maximum-security units in Guantánamo’s Camp Delta, as well as his own inhumane treatment—an experience for which he has yet to receive an apology. He sees his writing and lecturing less as a healing agent for his own scars than as an imperative message to a new generation. “Ultimately,” he says, “it will be these young men and women who will have to step up and redirect our country towards one that values the ideals that are embodied in our Constitution.”

And as for the claim that the U.S. does not torture people? “It’s a surety that we’ll look back on Guantánamo,” Yee says, “as being one of the darkest black spots in the history of our country, that’s for certain.”

Chaplain James Yee lectures on Tuesday, Oct. 23, at the Cooperage of Sonoma State University, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. 8pm. Free. 707.664.4129.


Letters to the Editor

10.24.07Flat-out EndorsementWhen Fifth District supervisor Mike Reilly first announced that he would not be running for re-election, we—like many longtime residents of western Sonoma County—immediately started thinking of the people we hoped would run. When the first few candidates threw their hats in the ring, there were no surprises; we knew those announced candidates as friends, neighbors and community...
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Wine Tasting Room of the Week

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Punkademics

10.24.07All I want is for future generations to just go, 'Fuck it. Had enough. Here's the truth.'—Johnny Rotten, in the Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and the FuryThere are at least two exceptional things about Athena Kautsch. First, she not only teaches various English classes, including a rigorous honors class, at Casa Grande High School in Petaluma, but she...
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Doll Face

10.24.07What do you think of critic David Denby's comment in The New Yorker magazine that onscreen acting has never been better than now? Lars and the Real Girl, an indie film of great charm and not a little sappiness, is an example of the benefits and pitfalls of the kind of big acting Denby cherishes. It stars Ryan Gosling,...
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News Briefs

ISSUEDATE Time to vote With the race already (groan) underway for next year's presidential election, the Nov. 6, 2007, election may not be high on most folks' to-do lists. However, this "off year" election will wrap up a lot of nitty-gritty business that needs doing in Marin and Sonoma counties. The good news for Napa County voters is that they...
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No Exit

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Opinion: Power of Power of Attorney

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Rosso Pizzeria & Wine Bar

10.24.07Editor's note: First Bite is a new concept in restaurant writing. This is not a go-three-times, try-everything-on-the-menu report; rather, this is a quick snapshot of a single experience. We invite you to come along with our writers as they have a simple meal at an area restaurant, just like you do.The staff roll their eyes at yet another reference...
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Free from Illusion

Read more

Yes, Virginia: We Do Torture

10.17.07During a week when President Bush rather inelegantly declared that the United States "does not torture people," the unjust treatment of Army chaplain James Yee seems especially poignant. "I don't know if the White House is playing with word semantics or what," Yee says by phone shortly after the president's statements, "but from my experience, what I became aware...
Read more
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