Dream Time

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Dream Time

December 6-12, 2006

‘I dreamed I looked in the mirror and saw a clown,” says Elizabeth Fuller in the opening moments of her new solo show, Dream House. “Didn’t look like me,” she adds. “It looked like my sister, but I don’t have a sister, so this was a complication.”

She goes on to explain that she doesn’t normally have dreams like this one, the one being acted out onstage in a big PVC-framed box in front of an audience she addresses as “Creatures from outer space!”

Under normal circumstances, she dreams about “normal stuff”: people she cares about, flowers, parties, “hideous monsters” and showing up naked for algebra class. In this case, however, she is dreaming about building a new body with the help of her inner “sisters,” each named Elizabeth but occupying a different archetypal role: the clown, the developer, the plumber, the dreamer, the inspector, the gambler and the slut. Appropriately, each has a different approach to what her real-life “dream”–as in ultimate, optimum, preferred or longed for existence–should look like.

The show, co-written and directed by Fuller and her longtime collaborator and partner Conrad Bishop, is not easy theater; it is conspicuously nonlinear, nonlogical and occasionally nonsensical in keeping with the whole dream theme. It is also quietly and emotionally explosive, and frequently quite challenging, if for no other reason than for the thickness and richness of all that language, which unfolds in a warm, thick blanket of the world’s meatiest words.

Fuller and Bishop are the whirlwind of creativity behind Sebastopol’s Independent Eye theater company. Over the last several months, while dropping tantalizing hints about this project, they have been writing and directing original plays in collaboration with other companies (Drake’s Drum with the Sonoma County Rep; Ragnarok with Berkeley’s Shotgun Players; Long Shadow with Nevada City’s Foothill Theatre). The two have been at work on Dream House, a highly experimental performance piece in which Fuller builds a stylized house onstage as she portrays various aspects of her own personality and marshals her inner forces to create a new heart, mind and soul in which to live.

After a three-week run in San Francisco that ended at Thanksgiving, Fuller and Bishop’s specific brand of poetic, free-associative dream theater has come to the North Bay; it just began a three-week run in the Condiotti Experimental Theater at Spreckels Center for the Performing Arts.

While Dream House will definitely not be everyone’s cup of Red Rose, the decidedly nonmainstream show is bursting with more ideas, revelations and philosophical introspection than are usually found in 10 shows. Easily the most personal show the Independent Eye has produced in years, Dream House is also a first-rate showcase for Fuller, who plays all of her “sisters” with breathtaking physicality and grace. It is too easy to call performances like Fuller’s “daring,” a word that is doled out to nearly every actor or actress who gets naked onstage, something Fuller does as Lizzie the slut near the end of the show.

What is truly daring about this performance is not the nudity, but what Fuller does with it, using the moment to reveal the depths of insecurity and self-judgment that cripple so many women and men, acting out in heartbreaking vividness what must actually be going on in her head at that spectacularly vulnerable moment. I will not spoil the scene further by revealing too much (that’s Fuller’s job), but perhaps it is enough to say that Fuller’s performance is both defiant and emotionally raw.

The densely packed text is at times playful and silly (“A ladder! I could get high!”), coarse (“You can’t press the shit-clogs outta your pipes!”), cryptic (“I’d better figure this out before it figures me out!”), lyrical (“It’s not ready yet, it’s a dream–dreams leak!”) or psychologically spot-on (“I do have great empathy with people who feel they’re inferior, because they probably are”).

For all the show’s clever stage craft and affective lighting design, and despite Fuller’s practiced ease as the primary focus of the spotlight’s attention, Dream House is primarily a poem. It’s what Allen Ginsberg might have written had he been a woman. In Dream House, Fuller finds her own mesmerizing way to howl, and builds a remarkable–and remarkably weird–world around it.

‘Dream House’ runs Friday-Saturday through Dec. 16. Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. $10-$15. 8pm. 707.588.3400.


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Snake Oil, Anyone?

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Snake Oil, Anyone?

Private? Aye: Even those who are decades away from needing Medicare should pay attention to the government’s current experiment in pushing the private over the public. Yet another proud moment in the ‘ownership society.’

By Patricia Lynn Henley

Last year, Americans 65 and older had six months to choose among a myriad of Medicare options, both for Part D, covering prescription drugs, and what are known as Medicare or Senior Advantage plans, where private companies provide managed healthcare similar to the original government-run program.

As the government leads the way toward the privatization of Medicare, the spiritual descendants of snake oil salesmen are using slick direct-mail techniques, toll-free numbers and a host of ambiguous phrases to convince seniors to buy their products. One for-profit company even managed to manipulate more than 30 mainstream media outlets into including its name and contact information in news stories as if it were a nonprofit service.

The advice “Let the buyer beware” has moved squarely into the realm of health insurance.

Rattled by initial changes to the Medicare program, most people assumed that 2007 would bring simpler choices. Instead, private insurers are making extensive changes in premiums and coverage. This year, there were 25 Advantage programs in the greater San Francisco Bay Area; starting Jan. 1, there will be 43. Medicare recipients have until Dec. 31 to choose the plan they want for all of 2007.

“People are having to make life-changing decisions about their healthcare coverage,” says Tatiana Fassieux, a regional manager for the Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program (HICAP), a state agency established to provide accurate information to Medicare beneficiaries.

And with the move toward consumer-driven healthcare, where individuals–rather than employers or, in the case of Medicare, the government–become responsible for their health insurance choices and costs, all age groups could face similar choices.

Senior Educators is “an independent service to help navigate Medicare and to help seniors find the best coverage,” says Kelly, the friendly young woman answering Senior Educators’ toll-free phone line. Kelly starts to explain that the “independent service” works with “many” insurance companies, but quickly corrects herself to say it “works with just about every insurance company in California except Kaiser.”

After discussing the caller’s circumstances, Kelly finally acknowledges that her services are free because Seniors Educators “contracts with insurance companies and we get paid referral fees from the insurance companies.”

Although it’s hard to tell from its website and promotional mailers, the San Francisco-based Senior Educators is licensed in California as Professional Senior Educators Insurance Services, a name that’s supposed to be used in full whenever the company conducts any business. As reported earlier in these pages (“Senior Scam?” Nov. 22), this is a for-profit agency making money by referring seniors to one of the private insurance companies it represents; there are just six in California.

Last year, Senior Educators operated primarily in California; now it’s offering “free, unbiased guidance” in more than a dozen states. Thanks to ambiguously worded statements sent to the press and a news wire story giving no indication of its for-profit status, company officials have been quoted next to nonprofit Medicare experts in more than 30 newspaper stories nationwide. In some cases, the firm’s contact information was listed as a resource for Medicare recipients, with no acknowledgement that Senior Educators earns money for every referral to a private plan.

After inquiries by the North Bay Bohemian and a complaint by an employee of a nonprofit organization, the California Insurance Commissioner’s office is investigating Senior Educators’ marketing efforts. But Senior Educators’ spokesman Conor Lee says it’s always clear the firm is a for-profit business.

“In any kind of mailing or solicitation, we specifically describe ourselves as a licensed service to discuss Medicare plans. If a senior calls us for information on specific plans, it very clearly states that we are compensated.”

Margaret Riley, HICAP manager for nine counties in the Sacramento area, objects to private companies acting as if they’re nonprofit organizations. She says that firms like Senior Educators only connect seniors with the private companies they represent and don’t have the training to know when other programs, including the original government-run system, could be the best choice for a particular individual.

“I don’t object to anybody helping seniors, but don’t help them in the name of your own pocketbook,” Riley asserts. “Help them in the name of what’s best for them. If you have good intentions and you’re ethical, you’re not going to mislead others. You’ll say right out what you’re doing–that you’re selling insurance.”

If you have $1,195 to $1,395 to spare and are willing to complete an online study program or attend a four-day class and then pass a test administered by the same people who sold you the course, you can become a Certified Senior Advisor through the Society of Certified Senior Advisors. As the website for the Canadian equivalent proudly proclaims, “Certification builds Credibility, Credibility builds Trust, Trust builds Business.”

“When you add CSA to your name in your ads, that gives you an aura of legitimacy,” Riley says. “[Saying that] ‘I am a certified senior adviser,’ is not worth the paper that it’s written on, because I have CSAs calling me for advice. Their level of training is not extensive.”

An insurance agent in the Chico area not only lists himself as a CSA in his newspaper ads, he also claims his office to be a “Medi-Care Part ‘D’ Drug Enrollment Center.”

The problem, says Congressman Pete Stark, D-Fremont, is that Medicare officials didn’t set tight parameters when allowing private insurance companies to sell Part D prescription coverage. Years ago, when federal legislators structured what are known as Medigap policies, Stark explains, they allowed companies to offer only 10 to 12 standardized programs. Premiums could vary, but benefits had to be comparable.

“There’s no standardization now in the Part D programs,” Stark says. “The whole system is almost stacked against the beneficiaries and in favor of the insurance companies. The longer you look at it, the worse it gets.”

While Medicare recipients are locked into the plan they choose for all of 2007, Stark says, insurance companies can change their formularies at any time during the year. They could, for example, drop the exact drug a senior needs, but the subscriber won’t be able to switch to another plan until 2008.

“All I’m hearing from the [Medicare] administration is about how wonderful these plans are,” Stark adds. “We’re supposed to serve the beneficiaries, it seems to me, rather than the industry. We haven’t heard the last of these scams, because there are operators out there ripping off seniors.”

While the marketing techniques used by companies like Senior Educators may be questionable, that’s a matter for each state to decide, says Jeff Flick, Bay Area regional director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The federal government regulates the health-insurance companies themselves, not the agencies representing them.

“Procedures are in place to make sure plans are following guidelines,” Flick explains. “When one plan crosses the line and violates marketing requirements, generally the way we find out is a competing plan reports it. The plans tend to police each other.”

And what about the press coverage that implied Senior Educators was a nonprofit service? Flick says press releases aren’t reviewed by the government unless they contain specific benefit information. Senior Educators’ bid for free media coverage isn’t illegal.

“I’m not sure there’s a law against being clever,” Flick adds.

A trained HICAP counselor will make a public presentation on Medicare 2007 on Wednesday, Dec. 13, at the Parnow Friendship House, 164 N. San Pedro Road W., San Rafael. 1:45pm. Free. HICAP: 1.800.434.0222; Medicare: 1.800.MEDICARE.


Tall Tale

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Tall Tale

December 6-12, 2006

The cover of harpist Joanna Newsom’s exhaustingly dense new album, Ys, is an exquisitely detailed allegorical painting in egg tempera that stylistically resembles Kit Williams’ 1980 storybook-puzzle Masquerade. Williams had buried a jewel-studded 18-carat gold hare somewhere in the English countryside, and a careful reader could piece together clues that Williams embedded in the text and illustrations to decipher the location of the treasure. Masquerade‘s cryptic plot involved the moon’s ill-fated attempt to send a lovelorn message to the sun, but the book’s end offered no resolution, leaving the reader bewildered and, in many cases, frustrated.

As far as we know, Joanna Newsom has not concealed gems and gold in a Northern California stand of live oaks, though the knackering complexities of Ys won’t convince listeners otherwise. The singer-songwriter charmed fans with her 2004 debut The Milk-Eyed Mender, a collection of intimate, idiosyncratic songs, most of them featuring nothing but Newsom’s harp and youthful, occasionally squeaky vocals. Her sometimes arcane vocabulary (Newsom could moonlight as an SAT tutor) had listeners reaching for their dictionaries, but no printed guide exists that could crack the code of the sprawling Ys.

For her second album, Newsom has returned with not only a harp, but an orchestral arrangement by Van Dyke Parks. Ys (pronounced “ees”), at 55 minutes and 42 seconds, is five songs long. Five chorus-free, labyrinthine songs long; you’d need a TelePrompTer to sing along.

When Newsom played at New York’s Webster Hall early this November, she first played a solo set, singing tender little songs from The Milk-Eyed Mender to a beguiled crowd, her massive harp resting on her slender shoulder. So thick was the air with crushes on this inimitable girl that the audience was soon drunk with it; smitten myself, I wept for all the small things in the world that get lost and left behind. And I felt like a dork and got embarrassed, though everyone else there was a dork, too.

Sentimental weeping ceased when Newsom’s band came out to accompany her in playing Ys straight through. Live, Newsom’s harp and voice were more forceful than the swells of the recording; she pushed the many, many words of Ys out of her body with a feverish intensity, and plucked her harp with a striking physicality for someone sitting down and hardly moving her upper body, save her restless arms and fingers. Having not heard the album yet, I tried to follow the lyrics–she sang about a meteor, then a bear, then a bell dropped off a dock, then she missed someone’s precious heart. She lost me somewhere after the meteor.

Instead, I exulted in the energy spilling from the stage. Newsom was Arachne, her harp a loom on which she wove mad, enchanted tapestry, whose words and images bled together. She and the band finished to waves of applause while I stood rubbing my sore feet. The show I attended was an early one; in a few hours, Newsom and the band would perform the whole thing all over again, which overwhelmed me. All I had done was to stand there, and I was exhausted after one round.

Many reviews of Ys stress the length of the songs, although tracks that reach beyond 10 minutes are nothing new–free jazz, Grateful Dead or “Trapped in the Closet,” anyone? What is notable about Ys‘ mini-epics are how precisely thought-out and deliberate is each word and note. There are few purely instrumental passages, no lapses into mind-blowing jams or sprees of proggy arpeggios.

All of which makes Ys impressive. But is it good? The timeless, precocious modesty of The Milk-Eyed Mender eclipses Ys in emotional impact, if not scope. Parks’ orchestration on Ys dilutes the arresting purity of Newsom’s delivery, even though the moments when she’s not singing are rare.

Yet Ys refuses to be left alone. The queenly image of Newsom on its cover steadily and quietly confronts the viewer, daring almost coyly: Go ahead, try and figure what the hell all of this is about. The quest is bound to fail, but the voyage will be rewarding.

Eventually, two men did locate the golden hare jewel of Masquerade. They had cheated, communicating with a former girlfriend of Kit Williams for clues. And while it was possible to find the treasure purely though the information in the book, it seems fitting that no one managed to do so in time. A real-life treasure hunt simply blurs the edges of fantasy and truth too much. The lost treasure of Ys is a talisman that makes sense of the whole project, and that talisman lies, inaccessible, in Joanna Newsom’s head.


Morsels

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December 6-12, 2006

Chris Martin, founder of Taylor Maid Coffee, and his daughter Janae are the new owners and managers of Howard’s Cafe in Occidental. Martin’s brother-in-law ran the restaurant until he passed away earlier this year. Martin decided to take on the restaurant to keep it in the family.

Some changes are a-foot already: trained baristas are now on staff pulling Taylor Maid espressos. Come the first of the New Year, they will be switching to organic eggs, grass-fed beef and local, organic vegetables (some of them supplied by Taylor Maid’s gardens), season permitting. All vegetable drinks will be organic, and with Taylor Maid’s huge strawberry and raspberry patches, organic berries will be available much of the year. The shift was made, Martin says, “to support local farmers and to connect with the community.”

The Martins hope prices won’t have to increase significantly with the changes and are considering offering higher-priced items as an organic “upgrade.” They’re also looking into accepting credit cards or installing an ATM machine on site. Martin says about the cafe, “We’re putting nothing but love into it!”

Howard’s Cafe, Bakery and Juice Bar, 3611 Main St., Occidental. Open for breakfast and lunch, daily. 707.874.2838.

Quick dining snapshots by Bohemian staffers.

Winery news and reviews.

Food-related comings and goings, openings and closings, and other essays for those who love the kitchen and what it produces.

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Mutiny of the Bounty?

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Mutiny of the Bounty?

Sweet meat: Per-pound fees for fisherman remain low while market prices are healthy.

By Alastair Bland

The ocean floor west of Marin is once again crawling with Dungeness crabs, and for the fourth winter in a row, commercial fishermen have hauled up large early-season numbers. Since the opening day on Nov. 11, the Bodega Bay fleet of about 40 vessels has delivered approximately 500,000 pounds to the harbor’s dock, suggesting a prosperous season ahead.

“Locally, we’ll receive 700,000, up to a million pounds in a bumper year,” says Mike Lucas of North Coast Fisheries, based in Santa Rosa. “We’ve got more than half a million, and this is only two weeks in. It’ll slow a little, but we’re going to get a lot more than a million this season.”

The big hauls come as much-needed relief for many fishermen who took a hard financial blow during the tightly regulated Chinook salmon season, which ended at the beginning of November. The high numbers of Dungeness crabs also have many biologists and fishermen somewhat surprised, as they’d been expecting a crash in the fishery for several years. Graphs and charts compiled from records dating back to the 1940s show a cyclical pattern in crab landings, with peaks occurring every decade or so.

“There was a nice tight cycle from the 1940s through the 1970s, a nice sine wave,” says Pete Kalvass, biologist with the Department of Fish and Game. “Then it got a little weird in the ’80s and ’90s with some of the El Niño events, and since then it’s just gone off on a big climb.”

Each of the past three seasons has produced over 20 million pounds of Dungeness crab statewide, twice the long-term annual average. The catch is shared between some 400 boats between the Oregon border and Monterey, with a few crabs coming from Morro Bay and Santa Barbara. Meanwhile, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska have seen similarly high catch rates in recent years.

“Some people think we might be in a long-term climate regime change that’s good for the crabs,” says Kalvass.

Lou Botsford, a professor of biology at UC Davis, studies Dungeness crabs and has given particular focus to the crustacean’s larval stage of life, during which the baby crabs float through pelagic, open ocean zones as plankton.

“This increase in crab abundance seems to stem from a shift in ocean conditions that started in ’99 and went through 2001, 2002,” he says. “Four years is the time it takes for crabs to grow from the larval stage into the fishery. The first really good year was 2003, so that’s a four-year delay from ’99, which suggests that the positive effect has been on the larval stage.”

Botsford reports that the years of 1999 to 2002 were dominated by cold-water, La Niña conditions, the opposite of the warm-water El Niño phenomenon. Dungeness crabs, which do very well as far north as the Gulf of Alaska, are a cold-water species, and to many scientists, the correlation between La Niña and the heightened population four years later makes good sense. By the same line of reasoning, some biologists are predicting that the warming of the waters experienced in 2003–an El Niño year–will be reflected by a drop off in the 2007-2008 crab season.

“What goes up must come down eventually,” says Kalvass. “But to what level, there’s no way to know.”

But along with the good news this season there comes some bad. The government officially declared the past Chinook salmon season to be a fisheries disaster, prompting fishermen to expect relief funds to help them through what they consider to be a financial and ecological mess created by the federal government itself. Less money than anticipated has arrived, however. While a strong crab season could put fishermen on their feet again, Chuck Wise, who has fished locally for four decades, says current prices are far from premium.

“They just aren’t what they should be anymore. It’s down to $1.85 a pound now. In ’99, 2000, we were getting $2.50.”

He attributes the price drop to large seafood receivers who have essentially monopolized the market in recent years. They occupy the ports and wait for the boats to return, and in the near absence of other seafood companies, competitive pricing is long gone.

“They basically set the price for everything, and for four or five years now the holiday crab rush has been junked for us. That’s what this whole fishery was about, but not anymore.”

Wise says this season’s fishing started out fast and promising, with the heaviest hauls coming from the Point Reyes region, between Double Point and Bolinas, five miles to the south.

“But already it’s starting to dry up. There’s been a lot of pressure, a lot of boats.”

Many vessels, he says, come from Northern California, Oregon and Washington waters. These are fishermen whose season usually does not open until December and who have historically come south to get in on the Central California action before returning home for their own opening day. A delayed California opening last year dissuaded this flood of out-of-state fishermen, and Wise says the fishing was hot and long-lasting as a result.

“Those guys weren’t here last year, and I was able to fish until June,” Wise says. “Usually, I don’t go beyond February. But this year, we’ve only been fishing for a week, and we can see already that we won’t be pulling crab gear every day.”

There was talk before this season of a walkout, according to Dave Yarger, president of the Fishermen’s Marketing Association of Bodega Bay. Yarger says that many in the local fleet hoped to go no less than $2.25 per pound for live Dungeness crab, but with the financial stresses of the poor salmon season still shadowing most fishermen and their families, going on strike was not an option. The season had to begin.

“There was no money from the salmon,” says Yarger, “and that’s part of what pressured the boats into going fishing. We also wanted to be sure that people got their Thanksgiving crab, and I hope they got a good deal. I heard it was $4.99 in some stores. That’s not fair. That’s a big markup. It’s funny–we’re the only guys involved who can’t mark up the price.”

Mark Neugebauer, captain of the 36-foot Betty J, says that out-of-state vessels helped to spoil the strike, too.

“We were trying to go on strike, but there was this big boat, a guy from Washington, who said, ‘To hell with you, I’m dropping my pots. Screw all of you.’ He had a thousand pots, and once that many are in the water, you have to get out there and fish. So we all had to race out there and get screwed with the price. That guy is not a part of our local association, and he came down and just made a mockery of our whole democracy here.”

Neugebauer, who keeps no more than 150 crab pots soaking at any given time, has bypassed the retailers and markets his entire catch straight to consumers from the dock in Bodega Bay’s harbor. He sells the crabs at $6 each; about $3 per pound. He receives a better price than if he were to sell to the seafood receivers, he says, but the tradeoff comes in having to sit out an entire day of fishing to make the face-to-face transactions.

“The other guys here come in and just drop off the crabs, get paid and are done with it. I have to spend all day, but it’s not really that big an inconvenience, since I live on my boat.”

The Dungeness crab season lasts through June. The best deals, for both the fishermen and consumers, are to be found at the dock, where the crabs are sold live, healthy and fresh. Princeton Harbor near Half Moon Bay offers an off-the-boat market, as does Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco and the harbors at Fort Bragg and Bodega Bay. As the season progresses, fishermen pull their pots with progressively less regularity.

The Boat House 1445 Hwy. 1. Crab, $4.99 a pound, cooked. Also, get some fish and chips while you wait; this is a great place for low-stress, down-home seafood. 707.875.3495.

Dee’s Bayside Deli 599 Hwy. 1, in the Lucas Wharf parking lot. Crab, $4.25 a pound, cooked. 707.875.8881.

The Tides Wharf 835 Hwy. 1, Bodega Bay. Crab, $4.99 a pound, cooked. Fish market phone number: 707.875.3554

The Seafood Guys 599 Hwy. 1, in the Lucas Wharf parking lot. Direct-from-the-boat seafood sales. Crab, $3.99 a pound, live; $4.25, cooked. 707.875.3571.

Spud Point Crab Company 1860 Westshore Road (across from Spud Point Marina), Bodega Bay. Crab, $4.99 a pound, cooked. Stay for some of the fresh chowder at this family-run and -fished operation. 707.875.9472.

Also, look for the “Fresh Crab for Sale” signs that appear when the boats come back to harbor, usually located at the corner of Bay Flat and Eastshore roads. To contact fisherman Mark Neugebauer of the Betty J in Bodega Bay, call 707.621.4646.



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Quick dining snapshots by Bohemian staffers.


Winery news and reviews.


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First Bite

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December 6-12, 2006

I was immediately charmed by the collection of vinyl propped up against the wall on the counter of this wee restaurant in the South A Street section of Santa Rosa, and by how tucked-away it is on a residential street, like a juicy secret. But apparently it’s no secret because at 1:15 on a recent Friday afternoon, all the tables were full. (At this point, there are only a handful of tables and most of them outside. But I hear tell that the restaurant, only eight weeks old as I write, is already growing out of its onesie and will soon break through the wall to incorporate 20-plus more tables.)

The waitstaff are helpful and smart, and pretty much all have the same name as me. While we waited for a table, I flipped through the albums: classic Miles Davis, Al Green, Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66! The chef, whose calm, constant motion is framed by the pass-through, suggested that I should play a record if I liked. How, with a full house and no sous chef, he was noticing my secret wish, I’m not sure, but I am sure that I was delighted. One of the Mollys opened up the record player in the black vinyl case and I dropped the needle on Sergio for a little samba on a sunny afternoon.

The chef is Mark Malicki, formerly of Truffles in Sebastopol, which I’m sorry I missed but is my husband’s favorite Sebastopol restaurant to date–he still talks about the dumplings. Malicki also runs a thriving catering business. The menu at the Cafe Saint Rose is nice and short and changes often. Ingredients are seasonal, local and organic whenever possible. Malicki offers a three-course prix fixe menu ($30) on certain nights.

Soon, and thankfully before I started pretend samba dancing in anticipation, a table opened up outside. We saw a grilled cheese sandwich ($6.50) pass by that we had to have. It was pressed, buttery, crisp and chewy. The bread (from genius bakers Della Fattoria in Petaluma) is perfect for pressing. It came with a fresh frisÈe salad with a creamy-garlicky dressing.

We also ordered the three Moroccan salads ($9), which on this day consisted of dates stuffed with pigeon, roasted peppers with pomegranates and a chickpea purée–strong, distinct flavors and a nice trio of textures and colors. Lastly, we had the duck rillettes with persimmons, arugula and almonds ($7). The duck (a kind of chunky paté) was spread on a soft Della Fattoria whole wheat. The combination of flavors–the fatty, rich duck with the spicy arugula and perfectly ripe slices of Fuyu, plus the crunch of the roasted almonds–was divine.

We did save room for dessert: a fig galette and an Ecco cappuccino (yum, and in a bowl). The galette ($5) was thin, flaky and buttery, with a giant dollop of crème fraîche–a perfectly executed savory dessert. Also, respect to the cucumber-flavored water the staff pours freely. So refreshing!

Even without the vinyl, I’d still have been charmed by the adorable, neighborhoody, side-street location, the fresh, sophisticated food, the generous portions, the service (slow but attentive and sweet), the local art on the walls and the nicely designed menu.

Limited seating means reservations are a must for dinner. Call ahead to confirm hours, as things are changing fast. Lunch, Monday-Friday; dinner Wednesday-Saturday. 465 Sebastopol Ave. (between Santa Rosa Avenue and South A Street), Santa Rosa. 707.546.2459.


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

Ordinary Riches

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Ordinary Riches

Oh, lighten up: Clark starts talking cream-top milk, and we get all nostalgic for fertility images, OK?

By Clark Wolf

Splitting his time between Guerneville and Manhattan, acclaimed consultant Clark Wolf graces these pages with the occasional diatribe from the periodic local.

My friend Michele’s idea of total luxury is standing out in the warm sunshine on a woodsy roadside, chowing down on something good from a nearby taco truck and knocking back a cold one.

Mahatma Gandhi, on the other hand, considered the notion that the ultimate in luxury was total abstinence. Nada. Nothing. Bupkis. Doing completely without was, to him, having it all.

Well, to each her or his own, but as we dig into this season of wretched excess, it seems reasonable to ponder our preferences and those realities of our luxurious lives we might sometimes foolishly overlook, forever losing their precious value.

Sometimes luxury is relative: a long, lazy morning in bed after a hard week’s work. Sometimes, as it so often is the case with food, it’s all about how much there is and how hard it is to get me some.

In the 1800s, pots and pots of river sturgeon caviar sat free for the scarfing on saloon bars all throughout California’s Gold Rush country. Its salty tang fired up a mean thirst and was cheaper than peanuts, and easier to clean up after. It was a toss-off and a come-on, now as nearly extinct as Caspian beluga.

Then there is the recent big-deal story about an organic farm in the heart of the Napa Valley. Turns out, amid the internationally owned and funded vineyards and the heart stopping estates, somebody forgot the need to grow tomatoes. The rich folks got hungry for something good to eat, so a farm was front-page news. I believe we could call that a cultural or values correction. And a good thing, too.

I have a friend who’s a famous movie star (I will not drop the name). I was her youth group leader in high school. She’s semi-retired, or removed from “the show business” as we call it, because she can afford to be.

For her, life’s greatest luxury is having the freedom and joy, not the job; to be on hand to make a morning and later an evening meal for her younger child and her husband when he’s around, each and every day.

Another pal, the widow of a retired financier, took the plunge just before turning 60 to become a now-treasured organics farmer of meticulous and brilliant result. Hard, dirty work is her life’s luxurious reward.

Nature’s plenty is fragile, no matter how hard we try to pretend that abundance is a birthright. When we organize our growing of food, it’s called farming. When we industrialize it, much is lost–or warped or poisoned. And getting back to simple purity, or the purely simple, is no mean feat.

Way back in 1980, I was at the apex of a revelation, standing in the middle of a fancy grocery in San Francisco that was the result of every available foodie’s dream. I was selling cream-top milk in bottles, hand-gathered wild mushrooms and the newly christened free-range chickens.

Even then it was widely accepted that the so-called simple pleasures of really fine food were, at times, shockingly expensive.

These days, we’re thoughtful enough to consider how food is grown and made and how everyone along the way might be treated in the process; fair trade considerations make us feel more comfortable with a $4 Frappuccino (for one prime and empty-calorie-filled example).

About that time in the ’80s, I was visited by a major New York City reporter who trailed me around the shop and asked probing questions about some of what she felt were the highlights of our emporio d’excess. Picking through what we then called precertification organics, she happened on a tub of fresh bean curd. “What do you do with tofu?” she intoned.

“Nothing in public,” I snapped back.

We’ve been friends since. But the point was that even simple, homey–and at the time considered funky/hippie–blocks of tofu could elicit a range of conflicting responses, from the rarified to the righteous to the obscure.

I’ve let go of my real interest in caviar, now that even a small amount from the deep end of the Caspian Sea (which I prefer to think of as Persia) doesn’t seem like such a good idea, and is, in a few ways–locally, nationally and internationally–illegal. (Historically, though, for some that has been of additional allure.)

These days, my personal indulgences seem to include antioxidants. I really do love to pop for in-season, Southern Hemisphere (Argentina, Chile, New Zealand) blueberries–organic where possible–that can go for as much as six bucks a half pint. I know there’s airfare and carbon use across the world involved, but it’s still money going to farmers, cheaper than a small glass of decent wine and probably better for me than a lot of things.

Which brings me to foie gras. Gavage, the practice of fattening a bird’s liver by some serious feeding, was discovered, not invented, by the Egyptians (you know the ones) way, way, way back when they found that birds self-readied for the long and strenuous (pre-Jet Blue) migratory flight across Europe and Asia. It was a found luxury, not easy to predict or control, a little like the precious morel mushrooms that seem to migrate on their own, unpredictably.

There has been a lot of fuss about the abusive handling of animals that become our dinner. I’m all for thoughtful care, but as the lively chef Mario Batali said recently, “I’m happy to be at the top of the food chain.”

In my experience, and obviously my opinion, there are far more critical issues we as a community, a nation and a world need to address. Ascribing human feelings to animals is self-serving and disrespectful–most assuredly to the animals, especially in as much as they’re sometimes better served and indulgently overfed than our school kids, who scarf processed muck at the mall, at home and at recess. Have you never seen a bird feed its young? It’s down the gullet. It’s yet another perhaps unpleasant moment in nature some would prefer to ignore, but it’s real life.

But most importantly at a time of year and history when it’s so critical to pay attention to achieving peace wherever it may be found, I urge family and friends to enjoy the greatest luxury of all: the freedom to choose what we do, who we are and how we express it. To choose what pleases us and nourishes us when we gather at the table–limiting or eliminating whenever possible our intrusion on the practices and the beliefs of others.

So, enjoy your line-caught, heirloom, free-range, organic, artisan holiday Tofurky. And please pass me my foie gras.

Clark Wolf is the president of the Clark Wolf Company, specializing in food, restaurant and hospitality consulting.



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The Byrne Report

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December 6-12, 2006

Did you know that the U.S. Northern Command just tightened its control over Northern California? “NORTHCOM” is the combatant command created by the Bush administration to control armies on the move inside the so-called North American battle space, which includes Mexico and Canada. The self-described job of NORTHCOM is to repel invaders, eliminate drug dealers and “terrorists,” and control civil disturbances. To spot these nuisances, NORTHCOM runs an intelligence “fusion center” at its headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo. It correlates electronic data collected from military and commercial sources with duly recorded suspicions forwarded by local law enforcement agencies and neighborhood watch groups.

On Nov. 19, NORTHCOM’s 9th Reconnaissance Wing announced the deployment of the Global Hawk at Beale Air Force Base in Yuba County. On that day, the Air Force’s newest unmanned spy plane flew its first official combat command mission over the continental United States. Beale will soon host a dozen of these $132 million war-fighting machines, which can fly at 65,000 feet for 34 hours while leisurely photographing Americans and uploading their pixels to the fusion center at Colorado Springs. Privacy? Fuhgeddaboutit.

In the Middle East, the Global Hawk’s main activity is targeting houses and individuals for instant destruction by Hellfire missiles. It is difficult to conceive of a legitimate peacetime application for this harbinger of death in American airspace. Global Hawk “pilots” fly by remote control from ground-based control booths the size of shipping containers.

Concurrent with the deployment of Global Hawk, NORTHCOM ran a military-law enforcement exercise in the North Bay called Golden Guardian. The operation tested the intelligence-gathering and combat-command capabilities of local police forces and homeland-defending troops known as U.S. Army North during a simulated earthquake. Army North’s Soldiers (the S is always capitalized in Rumsfeldspeak) are charged with “interdicting” enemies of the corporate state to “protect the American people and their way of life.”

Hey! Since when did our way of life include 24-hour surveillance by Global Hawks and interdiction by Soldiers? Who is the enemy? Us?

On Oct. 26, the Army released The manual declares, “The goal of modern warfare is control of the populace.” That goal applies to domestic as well as foreign operations: “From the mid-1950s through the 1990s, the Army conducted UO [urban operations] in the U.S. . . . during civil unrest and anti-Vietnam [War] protests.”

Urban warfare doctrine targets poor inner city neighborhoods for destruction and occupation whether they are in Third World countries or festering inside the homeland. “Urban Operations” warn Soldiers that youth gangs in Los Angeles, known collectively as “Threats,” temporarily united to fight Soldiers during the policing of the Rodney King riots in 1992. Ignoring the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which generally prohibits Soldiers from acting as law enforcers, the manual calls for “full spectrum” urban operations (led by NORTHCOM), which combine law enforcement and military operations with air support against the Threat flavor of the day.

“Urban Operations” makes it clear that, as in Fallujah, Panama City and occupied Palestine, sections of rebellious cities will be exploded by air strikes or plastic explosives because “rubble piles provide excellent covered and concealed positions” for invading Soldiers. “Shantytowns” may be “knock[ed] down and traversed [by tanks] without affecting mobility at all.” Destruction of neighborhoods and vital infrastructure is termed “a necessary shaping operation.” It is done to keep “insurgents” from merging with and politically mobilizing the populace.

Taking a lesson from the Pentagon, “Urban Operations” warns, “[T]hreat forces may not abide by international agreements, such as the Geneva Conventions.” Nor will the idle, young, politically active, dark-skinned criminals necessarily play fair with Global Hawk budgets: “Threats will [use] decoys to absorb expensive and limited precision-guided munitions as well as cause misallocation of other critical Army resources.” Hint, hint.

Even worse: “[A] disgruntled civilian population may attack or disrupt commercial activities as a political statement against the United States.”

Beware: “[T]errorist elements . . . may also employ ‘rent-a-crowds’—civilians paid or incited to demonstrate against military forces armed with only sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails.” Taking a cue from Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, “Urban Operations” recommends that Soldiers use sports stadiums as interrogation centers and holding facilities for the disgruntled masses.

As a final warning, Soldiers are reminded that video is a two-edged sword: “[N]egative visual images of military operations presented by the media can change political objectives. . . . Commanders should . . . induce cooperation between the media and Army forces . . . successfully engaging the media as a force multiplier.”

And that is why you knew little or nothing about NORTHCOM and Global Hawk until today. Force multipliers don’t report on those things.

or


No Place Like Home

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No Place Like Home

November 29-December 5, 2006


Chef Octavio Barrera isn’t exactly a gushing conversationalist when he sits down for an interview with me one recent sunny fall afternoon. We’re parked at a comfortable table on the patio, under the lacy shade of trees, and he’s brought me a bottle of chilled Pellegrino, which he politely pours into my glass.

He smiles at me, properly chef-handsome with his dark hair, dark eyes and a well-groomed goatee, then folds his hands in front of him.

I grin at him, poise my pen and wait. I’ve just asked him what I think, after the countless celebrity chef interviews I’ve conducted over my years as a restaurant writer, is the ultimate interview floodgate: “Tell me about yourself.”

Normally, this is the cue for a chef to let loose with all kinds of fantastic childhood stories. Romantic tales are most common: dragging on Mother’s apron as she whipped up feasts fit for royalty using only a humble chicken (raised in her own yard, of course, with its neck wrenched by her very own slender hands), herbs (plucked seconds ago from her own garden) and perhaps a tablespoon of olive oil (pressed from a tree she raised from a sapling that she hid in her bosom as she voyaged from some faraway homeland).

Except now. Barrera smiles silently, the seconds ticking slowly by, until I finally prompt, “Your background. How did you get into cooking? Why did you want to be a chef?”

His mouth flickers upward, he nods happily and my pen fingers grip in anticipation.

“I like to cook,” he says.

The topic I’m pursuing is Barrera’s new restaurant, Cuvée Napa. Since opening last April, the restaurant hasn’t exactly received a flurry of glowing media coverage. Its accolades in the few publications that mentioned it included words like “familiar,” “comfortable” and “giving diners what they want.” Its food has been described as “standard fare” and “pleasant.” Its theme is defined on Cuvée’s own website simply as “new American favorites.”

Yet I’ve come here, drawn like some bistro groupie, not so much for the menu–the typical chicken, salmon, lamb, steak and such–but because the space has a blessed address.

It’s cradled in the bosom of Napa’s burgeoning downtown, in the heart of the city’s rapidly growing culinary epicenter made up by the COPIA campus, sophisticated restaurants like N.V. and Pilar, and trendy wine bars like the new Stave.

More importantly, for a recent Arizona transplant like me, it’s the former home of Restaurant Budo.

As NorCal foodies will remember, Budo was the fanciful Asian-California creation opened by chef James McDevitt in 2004. McDevitt, like me, was a Valley of the Sun escapee, and when he left Scottsdale for Napa, it was like someone had stolen our favorite toy. In the late ’90s and early ’00s, McDevitt’s Scottsdale eatery, Restaurant Hapa, was the place for creative dining in Arizona, offering something we desert rats had never really seen before: fusion cuisine.

Upon hearing his new home was in Napa, I, like other Arizona food writers, imagined an Oz–über-glamorous wine country! Budo was to be next to a “luxury boutique resort,” I recall reading, “part of the COPIA culinary showcase.” One Phoenix restaurant writer gushed that McDevitt was “heading to Napa big time . . . making a national splash.” It was quite the circus.

Except now I’m here, and that “resort” is just the River Terrace Inn, looking like a nice roadside hotel. McDevitt’s fusion concept was a bit too outrageous for down-home Napa, it seems; while critics liked the place, the dining crowds never showed, and after the New Year’s floods did their damage, McDevitt closed it this spring and moved to Le Cirque in New York.

So now I’m sitting in a restaurant that, while quite charming, looks like any other restaurant. Gone is the lavish interior that was Budo, the refined dining room stripped down to more causal banquettes and wood tables. There are no breathtaking dishes, like Budo’s signature rack of baby veal with crisp sweetbreads in a pool of fresh water-chestnut purée and edamame foam. On any given night, Cuvée caters to folks noshing on staples like fried calamari, iceberg wedge salads, pork chops and spice-rubbed skirt steak.

And I’m trying to pull a lavish, Food Network-style story out of a chef who obviously would much rather be back in his kitchen, working.

So where’s the hook? I ask Barrera. What makes this place special?

He looks at me like I’m from another planet. As we’ve been chatting, his restaurant has been filling up with diners. Reservations are a must.

“I like to cook,” the St. Helena native repeats. “I just do it better than anyone. Wine country, modern American food. It’s what people here want to eat.”

While other chefs may jump through crazy culinary hoops to gain acclaim in their town’s rapidly expanding spotlight, Barrera is pure Napa. He focuses on simple but stunning chipotle-honey barbecue ribs with orange and jicama salad, buffalo mozzarella with marinated sweet peppers, and grilled lamb sirloin with ratatouille. He emphasizes big rib-stickers like filet mignon with grilled zucchini and wild mushroom red wine sauce, and eternal favorites like a hulking, beefy, 14-ounce rib-eye fancied just a tad with Argentine chimichurri sauce and paired with thick herb fries.

Cuvée is all about local diners, Barrera explains. Regulars who want a neighborhood place where the chef shops the farmers market around the corner, and offers specials like “3 [courses] for $30 Wednesdays” and a daily “Napa cheese steak” with a pint of beer for just $8.

After my first dinner there, I finally get it. When food is this sumptuous, it doesn’t require a “big time” splash or circus. This is real, gorgeous Napa cooking. It’s why the place is packed.

Finally, I do get Barrera to admit that, yes, he did have a beloved grandmother who loved to cook for her huge family. And, yes, he got a kick out of helping her out at her many parties. He’s got that fabled chicken dish, too; his is pan-roasted golden in lemon herb butter, flooded with natural juices and paired with grilled corn, sweet peas and fava bean succotash.

But ultimately, he’s not here to help me–a silly newbie from Scottsdale–craft a romantic chapter in my Napa-Oz novel. He’s got a busy kitchen to tend.

Cuvée Napa

Address: 1650 Soscol Ave., Napa

Phone: 707.224.2330

Hours: Open for lunch, Monday-Friday; dinner, nightly

From chef Octavio Barrera, Cuvée Napa

Barrera makes his chorizo from scratch, but home kitchens will appreciate the ease of store-bought. For an even easier recipe, use packaged roasted tomatoes.
2 pounds Manila clams, cleaned
6 ounces best quality chorizo sausage
2/3 c. roasted Roma tomatoes
2 tbsp. garlic, sliced nickel thick
8 ounces extra virgin olive oil
1 medium Yukon gold potato, parboiled until soft, cut into small cubes
6 ounces dry white wine such as a Spanish Albariño
salt and pepper to taste.

Method

One day in advance, roast tomatoes. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Cut a small amount of each end off tomatoes, then cut in half crosswise. Stand each tomato half cut-side up on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Drizzle each tomato with olive oil, salt and pepper, and a pinch of dry oregano. Place in oven for two hours or until shriveled and 1/3 original size. Slide skin off tomatoes, crush them roughly in your hands and set aside in refrigerator.

Remove chorizo from casing and crumble meat into a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Let cook until fat has rendered and meat is cooked, but not fried crisp. Set aside.

Fry potato in 2 ounces olive oil in a nonstick skillet until brown and crispy. Season with salt and pepper, then remove from pan and drain on paper towels.

In a medium-heavy saucepan with a lid, add 4 ounces olive oil and heat to medium. Add garlic and cook until lightly brown, approximately 45 seconds (if garlic gets too dark, it will be bitter). Add chorizo and roasted tomatoes, and continue cooking for another 45 seconds. Add clams and white wine. Cover and cook until clams open. Season with salt and pepper and add potatoes. Give the dish a quick stir, then divide evenly into warm soup platters. Drizzle remaining olive oil over dish and serve. Serves two as a main dish, four as an appetizer.

Quick dining snapshots by Bohemian staffers.

Winery news and reviews.

Food-related comings and goings, openings and closings, and other essays for those who love the kitchen and what it produces.

Recipes for food that you can actually make.

Civil Death

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Civil Death

Lock and key: Conjugal visits and family time are shown to dramatically decrease recidivism in inmates. Nonetheless, such privileges are on the decline.

By Eugene Alexander Dey

Stripped of all rights during confinement, prisoners have long suffered under the doctrine of “civil death.” Epic struggles for humane treatment in places like Attica and San Quentin prisons did, at one time, coalesce with the larger Civil Rights movement. In fact, over the course of eight years, beginning in 1968, California broke from precedent and codified an inmate’s bill of rights. By the 1980s, before these liberties had a chance to take full effect, a tidal wave of tough-on-crime measures led the opposite way, resulting in an unparalleled prison-building boom, heavy-handed sentencing measures and an eventual repeal of the innovative treatise.

From all these steps backward, prison families lost the most. Even though the state still officially recognizes what it terms “the value of visiting as a means to establish and maintain meaningful family and community relationships,” the actions of corrections officials throughout the state would suggest otherwise.

Clyde T. Gambles Jr. is a married father of two. Serving a 15-year sentence at the California Correctional Center in Susanville (CCC) for second-degree robbery committed in Solano County, Gambles maintains his family bonds through collect phone calls, letters and the occasional visit. “Currently, I’m not eligible for family visiting,” the 28-year-old says, explaining that this revision in his rights is linked to a 1997 misdemeanor conviction for sex with a minor. “I was 18 and a senior in high school,” he shrugs. “She was a 15-year-old in 10th grade.”

In-prison visits, particularly conjugal visits, are one of the few programs known to lower inmates’ rate of recidivism. While technically still in existence, only a fraction of California’s 173,000 inmates qualify for visiting rights under the numerous–and growing–revisions to this privilege.

“My family and I participated in the family-visiting program for a whole year before I was prohibited from participating and placed on close custody on 2002,” Gambles explains. In addition to having his freedom even more restricted, he’s now also denied contact with minors, including his children. By no means the exception, Gambles believes that the “system is designed to tear families apart.”

Though the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) claims to recognize the value of fellowship, including trying to house prisoners close to their homes, most prisoners end up in facilities hundreds of miles away from any close contact.

For Raymond Shipley, whose wife regularly drives 600 miles from their home in Los Angeles to his placement in Susanville, maintaining a relationship is plagued with innumerable impediments. Serving a sentence of 15 years, Shipley has been placed on “close custody” like Gambles. This classification level is a primary exclusion that bars long-term and life inmates from visitor eligibility. With a 2010 release date incurred for his multiple counts of shooting at an occupied building, and ineligible for conjugal visits until 2008, the 26-year-old Shipley covets any and all contact with his wife.

“The six-and-one-half-hour visit with my wife is my whole life, and every time the guards ruin it, the pain is excruciating,” Shipley says, adding that he loathes having guards hovering over him like insolent chaperones. “The state is the antithesis of close family ties. They do everything in their power to hinder our relationships at every given opportunity.”

Of course, regular visits are better than nothing. Having moved from the North Bay to Reno, about a hundred miles east of Susanville, Gambles’ wife is able to come see him two or three weekends a month. Such a commitment comes at a huge sacrifice. Relocating is not an option for Shipley’s wife, who works and goes to college full-time. She pays for the expensive collect calls and foots the bill for the gas, lodging and other miscellaneous expenses incurred when going to see her husband, a privilege that might be revoked at a moment’s notice.

Numerous racial incidents at the CCC, mostly involving white inmates, have prompted the prison’s administration to totally sequester the wards. “There are no visits if your race is locked down,” says Shipley. “Some prisons are slammed for months, if not years, before an inmate has the opportunity to see his family again.

“Currently, we’re locked down, and there is no end in sight.”

Blanket reprisals against an entire ethnic group is how California prison officials regularly address, not solve, racial unrest. As the most violent, intolerant and gang-infested incarceration system in the country, California’s segregated prison system is distinguished by institutional inequality. Under such a policy, loved ones of well-behaved inmates suffer enormous anguish and frustration. Shipley’s wife wrote in a recent letter to him, “I really would love to just be able to talk to you. It kills me not to know when I will be able to kiss you again. I am beyond tired of this nonsense.”

Severed family ties are not limited to married inmates. Erik Wick, a white inmate also on indefinite lockdown, is a regular in the prison’s visitor program. His parents live in Reno, but, as in Shipley’s case, he’s been denied all contact with family for most of the year.

Incarcerated since 1989 for two counts of first-degree murder, the 38-year-old Wick remembers when the push began that eventually suspended the inmates’ civil liberties. “Part of the ‘tough on crime’ movement of the 1990s was to take family visiting away from lifers,” he explains. “From a rehabilitative standpoint, the one prison demographic that desperately needs to maintain close family ties are the lifers.”

Eligible for parole in 2013, Wick continues, “The state’s policies in fact impede inmates’ attempts to maintain relationships. Visiting days have been cut from five to two days a week. Since visiting is now a privilege, the CDCR has no statutory obligation to provide it–and indeed, takes away and impedes visits frequently.”

In fact, CCC administrators take one of the hardest lines on visiting of any prison in the state by totally denying all locked-down inmates any visiting privileges. “When the CDCR makes a policy of locking down an entire race at a particular facility, the vast majority of those inmates are in fact losing their visits for others’ wrongdoing,” says Wick. “I thought we left that ugliness in the last century.”

Serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug conviction under the ‘three strikes’ law, writer Eugene Dey is an inmate under lockdown at the California Correctional Center in Susanville. His memoir, ‘A Three-Strikes Sojourn,’ received a 2006 honorable mention from the PEN American Center.


Dream Time

December 6-12, 2006'I dreamed I looked in the mirror and saw a clown," says Elizabeth Fuller in the opening moments of her new solo show, Dream House. "Didn't look like me," she adds. "It looked like my sister, but I don't have a sister, so this was a complication."She goes on to explain that she doesn't normally have dreams...
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Snake Oil, Anyone?

Private? Aye: Even those who are decades away from...
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Tall Tale

December 6-12, 2006The cover of harpist Joanna Newsom's exhaustingly dense new album, Ys, is an exquisitely detailed allegorical painting in egg tempera that stylistically resembles Kit Williams' 1980 storybook-puzzle Masquerade. Williams had buried a jewel-studded 18-carat gold hare somewhere in the English countryside, and a careful reader could piece together clues that Williams embedded in the text and illustrations...
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Morsels

December 6-12, 2006 Chris Martin, founder of Taylor Maid Coffee, and his daughter Janae are the new owners and managers of Howard's Cafe in Occidental. Martin's brother-in-law ran the restaurant until he passed away earlier this year. Martin decided to take on the restaurant to keep it in the family.Some changes are a-foot already: trained baristas are now on staff...
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Mutiny of the Bounty?

Sweet meat: Per-pound fees for fisherman remain low while market prices are healthy. ...
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First Bite

December 6-12, 2006I was immediately charmed by the collection of vinyl propped up against the wall on the counter of this wee restaurant in the South A Street section of Santa Rosa, and by how tucked-away it is on a residential street, like a juicy secret. But apparently it's no secret because at 1:15 on a recent Friday afternoon,...
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Ordinary Riches

Oh, lighten up: Clark starts talking cream-top milk, and we get all nostalgic...
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The Byrne Report

December 6-12, 2006Did you know that the U.S. Northern Command just tightened its control over Northern California? "NORTHCOM" is the combatant command created by the Bush administration to control armies on the move inside the so-called North American battle space, which includes Mexico and Canada. The self-described job of NORTHCOM is to repel invaders, eliminate drug dealers and "terrorists,"...
Read more

No Place Like Home

November 29-December 5, 2006Chef Octavio Barrera isn't exactly a gushing conversationalist when he sits down for an interview with me one recent sunny fall afternoon. We're parked at a comfortable table on the patio, under the lacy shade of trees, and he's brought me a bottle of chilled Pellegrino, which he politely pours into my glass.He smiles at me,...
Read more

Civil Death

Lock and key: Conjugal visits and family time are...
Read more
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