Ask Sydney

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January 31-February 6, 2007

Dear Sydney, I have kids who are almost teens. I smoke pot every now and then and am pretty easy-going as far as drinking and pot smoking goes. It doesn’t bother me. What, I’m wondering, is appropriate around the kids? Do I smoke around them eventually? Keep it a secret? When they hit the teen years, do I let them do it around me if they show interest? I would rather they party at home, where they’re safe, but I also don’t want to be a bad influence. Any ideas?–Cool but Careful Mom

Dear Cool Mom: What a loaded topic! The best thing you can do for your kids is to have no addictions. None. You should exhibit calm, loving, inspired, dedicated, focused and understanding behaviors at all times, and you should not drink or smoke at all, not in front of your kids and not in secret. That would be the best thing, and if I were to say otherwise, I would just be trying to make all of us feel better about ourselves. However, if like the majority of humankind you are a flawed parent with some form of addiction–be it sugar, caffeine, hard liquor, infidelities or pharmaceuticals–then you have a decision to make.

As for allowing them to party at home, I don’t think this is a decision you have to make right now. If only childrearing decisions could be so easily pinned down ahead of time! There are too many variables that will only become apparent with time. Write to me in a couple of years, when and if the situation comes up, give me the specifics, and we’ll discuss it then.

Dear Sydney, I’m wondering how you feel about the new Humane Society in Sebastopol. It’s beautiful and houses bunnies, dogs and cats in homelike environments that are warm and obviously very high dollar. Right across the highway from this amazing refuge for animals is the Joe Rodota bike trail, where many homeless folks sleep in the dirt with make-shift tents of plastic. I heard recently that a homeless man from Sebastopol suffered from frostbite. What do you think this reflects about us as a community?–Just Wonderin’

Dear Wonderin’: It would be difficult not to be awed by the splendor that is the Sebastopol Humane Society, and it does seem as if hardly any expense was spared. When walking the resplendent halls, one might be moved to wonder if perhaps the design might be a little extravagant. But this building was made possible in large part by community support. People gave generous quantities of their own money to help build it. And they did this as opposed to building a marble-floored homeless shelter for those people freezing in the bushes, because they love and respect animals with the same sort of compassion and commitment that they love their fellow humans, perhaps even a bit more. There comes a time when your average Homo sapiens begins to gain a certain amount of control over his or her own fate; animals, on the other hand, are completely at our mercy. I suspect that the people involved with creating and maintaining the Humane Society feel as if this animal shelter is the least they can give to creatures that have been thrown by the wayside. Just the same, it is to our great discredit as a species that we can not care for everyone among us with such generosity and vision.

Dear Sydney, it seems like I’m always the one who empties the vacuum cleaner bag, dumps the compost and scrubs the mildew off the shower. How can I get my roommates to notice these things? I’ve brought this to their attention, but nothing seems to change. If I keep bringing it up, I’m going to seem like Super-Cleaning Bitch. If I leave it, I’m risking the chance of athlete’s foot. What should I do?–Love My Roommates, Hate Their Habits

Dear Super-Cleaning Bitch: You cannot force another person to have the same sensibilities as you do in regards to cleaning. Sure, you can start fights or employ passive aggression, but ultimately all you will do is spur a couple of meager and half-hearted attempts at cleaning on your roommate’s part, and then there will be a return to the way things were before. The best way to avoid this scenario, be it with roommates or sweethearts, is to discuss your needs in regards to housework before moving in together, compare notes and then see if you are at all compatible. You probably won’t be, but at least this way you both know what you’re getting into in advance.

And keep in mind, it’s very likely that you are not enabling your roommates at all with your cleaning; they probably genuinely don’t give a shit either way. If they did, they would feel qualms for not pitching in and would help more. The reality is, some people are OK with living in squalor. Rather than worry about cleaning the tub, when they get athlete’s foot, they just buy that stuff that comes in a tube at the drug store and it goes away. Your best angle here is either to treat the housework as a sort of daily challenge that you must transcend with peace in your heart, or insist that everyone pitch in a modest cleaning fee. After all, if they’re going to treat your collective space with total disrespect, then they should at lest have the decency to pay you for your labors. Demand your due, and if it you don’t get it, then get your own place. It’s the only real solution.

No question too big, too small or too off-the-wall.


Art Imitates Design

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Art Imitates Design

the arts | visual arts |

Design 2007:
Hello Creative | Russian Orthodox Frescoes | Drawing as the New Design

‘Basketball Pyramid’: David Huffman’s mixed-media piece is among the drawings on exhibit at the di Rosa.

By Brett Ascarelli

‘There’s a lot of young blood tonight!” gushes a staff member at the di Rosa Preserve’s opening of “Graphic: New Bay Area Drawing.” Later, I ask another staff member about the evening’s hipster quotient.

“Well, with this kind of show . . .”

“Drawing?”

“Yeah,” she answers.

Enough said. Indeed, drawing is the hip, young thing of the art world, forging its own trail in the last decade among its more august cousins, painting and sculpture. Last year, Art News devoted its entire January issue to drawing, and even the most important international art fairs have been crammed with simple media like pencil and pen.

Bay Area artists have turned out a variety of drawings for the di Rosa exhibit. One pen, gouache and watercolor repeats tiny patterns that resemble rice grains falling from one Smurf’s hat into another. Further on, a dark landscape of ink splatters, skeletal trees and orange basketballs references the modern baroque style of a recent Urban Outfitters ad campaign.

Looking at the iconic, flat and insanely precise works, one is reminded of modern Japanese, American and Swedish commercial aesthetic sensibilities. But this is art, not design. Or is it?

Michael Schwager, di Rosa curator and progenitor of this newest exhibit, stands apart from the food table. This is the second drawing exhibit he’s curated since works in this medium wowed him at the Art Basel: Miami Beach art fair in November 2005. What’s driving the aesthetic?

“Cartooning and graphic novels are a huge influence, I think, on a generation of twenty- to forty-somethings,” says Schwager. “A more informal way of making an image, like cartoons, is becoming more accepted, whereas in the ’50s, most artists worked towards making huge, abstract expressionist paintings.

“It’s very different today. There’s a different aesthetic goal in mind; every generation is different. Pop art commented on consumer society; the ’80s drew on art history. The influences of today are often in popular culture,” says Schwager.

Nevertheless, he cautions, “these artists have much more aesthetic concerns than graphic design. The work comes from a more personal place or from popular culture.”

In fact, Schwager clarifies that the word “graphic” in the show’s title has “no relation to graphic design, whatsoever–I was just thinking graphic in terms of images on paper.”

Dean Smith, 45, has two large-scale drawings in the show. The drawings look like staggered starbursts filled in with thousands of teensy strokes. The pattern they make is not dissimilar to the hairs of his salt-and-pepper beard, only more numerous. Like his drawings, Smith’s personal aesthetic tonight is monochromatic.

“The works are centering devices: centering one’s attention, consciousness and perception,” says Smith, who stopped painting about 12 years ago to focus on drawing.

Are there any pop cultural influences on his work?

“Absolutely zero!” he responds hotly.

But pop culture seeps into our psyches, and it reaches us through the catchy branding of design. Today’s ubiquitous icons can’t help but rub off onto artist’s pads, even if the artists don’t admit it.

Artist Ala Ebtekar does admit it–and happily. His digital prints of cartoony warriors are a highlight of the show. To make them, he scans his original drawings, then works on them with Flash and Adobe Illustrator. The resulting images are Transformer-like men carrying traditional heroic attributes–and hip-hop gear.

In an e-mail from Paris, where Ebtekar is currently staying, he describes why he chose his computer aesthetic. “Most importantly, [these pieces are] really a reflection of NOW,” he writes. “I could have used the medium I am more familiar with–in my case, drawing or painting–but after coming up with the idea of what I wanted these characters to be, and how I wanted them to be read, using the computer as a tool to convey that seemed only obvious. I think that sleekness, and the idea that they could be mass-made (and not a one-of-a-kind art object), is something that appealed to me.”

As current trends in graphic design incorporate handmade typefaces, scribbles and crafts, art itself is doing the reverse. Graphic design is finally coming home to roost–boosting the art form that created them.

‘Graphic: New Bay Area Drawing’ is on view through Wednesday, March 10, at the Gatehouse Gallery in the di Rosa Preserve, 5200 Carneros Hwy., Napa. 707.226.5991. For complete details on the Preserve, go to www.dirosapreserve.org.



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Our Friend Logan

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Our Friend Logan

music & nightlife |

Photographs by Sara Sanger
Real: ‘Logan was one of the only performers I know who was exactly the same onstage as off,’ says Michael Houghton.

By Sara Bir

The album of 2007 was released the day after Christmas 2006. We were shepherds watching our flocks of plastic snowmen lawn ornaments, and Logan Whitehurst’s Very Tiny Songs came upon us, glowing with goodness and light.

Logan Whitehurst, founding drummer of the Velvet Teen and the tireless creative engine behind his solo project, Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club, passed away on Dec. 3, 2006, after fighting brain cancer for several years. He was 29. A tribute to his life and art is slated for Feb. 10.

If this is a story of loss, it is also one of legacy, one in which Logan’s swan song, the joyful, 76-minute micro-opus Very Tiny Songs, offers a bittersweet tonic of comfort. Listening to Very Tiny Songs is the audio equivalent of eating an entire bag of M&Ms and savoring every bite.

Logan grew up in the Central Valley, kidding around with his cousins and siblings, winning spelling bees and recording goofy skits. He got into music when his stepbrother started a band. “I went out in the garage, and I’d kind of bang on stuff to keep time for them,” Logan said in a 2003 interview with the Bohemian. “My stepmother heard this and went and paid $75 and bought a drum kit.” Logan would use that same sparkly red drum kit throughout his entire drumming career.

While pursuing a printmaking degree at Sonoma State University, Logan became an integral figure in the Sonoma County music scene. He met Owen Otto in 1995, when Otto’s geek-rock band Little Tin Frog put up flyers looking for a drummer. “It had a They Might Be Giants reference, ‘Rhythm Section Want Ad,'” Otto recalls. “We put Logan in, and instantly it just worked.”

During that time in Little Tin Frog, Logan began recording songs on his own. “I didn’t know how to use a four-track, and I didn’t know how to play any instruments,” Logan said of his early experiments with songwriting. “I couldn’t work out my ideas very well, and I just wanted to play with sounds. I’d sit down and try to harmonize with myself or start a drum machine . . . and that lack of skill translated to great appeal. It sounded like I was either trying really hard to make it bad, or I was just having fun.”

Thus, Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club was born. With a vacant, smiling plastic snowman named Vanilla as his sidekick, Logan charmed audiences with his complete disregard for image and coolness–which, of course, only made him that much cooler. “Logan was one of the only performers I know who was exactly the same onstage as off,” says Michael Houghton, who published the underground music magazine Section M, to which Logan contributed a darkly funny comic strip, “Jonathan Quimby.”

“But I think that ease and earnestness is so rare that it was completely riveting,” Houghton continues. “I’ve talked to the hardest of little street punks who pretty much hate everything, who would gather around and sit in a semicircle when Logan played, giggling and cheering for more.”

Through websites like MP3.com, where his songs had over 100,000 downloads, Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club built a dedicated online following. “It wasn’t just for distributing his music,” says Otto. “He would get in conversation with fans.”

“I think as his music got more of a cult following, he was getting that sort of instant gratification from more and more fans,” Houghton says. “Which is a big part of why he was always so gracious and personable to everyone he met, because they were a big part of his enjoyment of making art.”

Barry Hansen–better known as Dr. Demento, host of an eponymous long-standing weekly radio program showcasing “mad music and crazy comedy”–has championed Logan’s music since 2000, but it wasn’t until he came across Goodbye, My 4-Track in 2003 that something clicked. “Goodbye, My 4-Track just knocked me out from beginning to end,” he says. “It was a bit like hearing Sgt. Pepper for the first time.”

Logan’s solo work–and there are piles of it, a total of seven releases as the Junior Science Club and dozens of unreleased songs–combines a keen sense of wit with offbeat references both highbrow (plate tectonics) and lowbrow (the Spice Girls), all with a vaudevillian knack for showmanship.

“I’ve met a lot of talented people in my 36 years in radio, but Logan is extra special,” says Dr. Demento. “He creates a world that is a lot of fun to be in, even when darker things happen. His music is uncommonly melodic and absolutely loaded with hooks. And when I eventually got to know him a little, he turned out to be so gracious and witty, articulate and confident yet modest.”

Your friend, Logan: A celebration of Logan Whitehurst’s life is planned for Feb. 10 at the Phoenix Theater.

In 2000, Logan joined his former Little Tin Frog bandmate Judah Nagler in the art-pop band the Velvet Teen. Along with bassist Josh Staples, the trio maintained an ambitious touring schedule. It was shortly before leaving to tour Japan with the Velvet Teen that Logan began to suffer from headaches, nausea and dizziness. After many visits to many doctors, Logan was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2004. He moved in with his parents in Los Banos, where ridding his body of cancer though a demanding series of treatments became the singular focus in his life.

“What he went through being sick would have crushed a lot of people a lot earlier,” says Otto. “He had a philosophy of ‘this is my life and this is who I am, and I can’t control everything, so I have to go with the flow of what’s happening.’ He was an enormously optimistic and positive person in general. I could tell you dozens of stories of times where as a band we’d be driving around in the van all miserable, and he’d be upbeat, making jokes and trying to turn the situation around.”

Very Tiny Songs was Logan’s return to making music. This past summer, his doctors were optimistic; his cancer treatment came to a close, and he moved into what all hoped would be an extended period of remission. After being physically unable to make music for several years, Logan was motivated and eager to prove himself. With a future so open it was equally thrilling and terrifying, he looked to his online friends for inspiration and began writing and recording songs on the fly as mechanism to get back into the swing of things.

“I thought, ‘I’d better get ready, because I’m going to start doing stuff again,'” he said when he spoke to me on the phone from Los Banos last July. “I hit on this idea that I could get some sort of communication going with people again if I put it out there that I want suggestions for songs. I’ll make a bunch of songs to put on my website and you guys’ll download them and see that I’m still out there and still wanna do music.”

Fans, many of whom Logan had never met in person, inundated him with song suggestions, and he threw himself into the project, writing one to six songs a day for a month. By the time he was done, he’d recorded 81 songs. Most run only about a minute long, but each one is its own distinct entity–very short stories, or very concise jingles. More properly, they are very tiny songs, and they are hugely entertaining.

Very Tiny Songs is a privileged look into Logan’s creative process, and it conjures up all kinds of fascinating ideas about opening up the mind, dumping it out and seeing the surprising order in what’s there. “I was very much in the moment; there are some songs on there that I’m kind of surprised I actually wrote,” Logan said. “When I would sit down and think, ‘This isn’t good enough,’ the songs would slow down, and it kind of spiraled. So most of the time, if I found I was thinking too much, I would do the first thing that came to mind, the first thing that rhymed.”

Having been recorded in such a freewheeling manner, Very Tiny Songs betrays nary a whiff of sloppy impressionism; the song’s musical concepts are compressed, yes, but undeniably fully formed. “Unicorns” opens with a dewy, soft-focus harp that’s pure fantasy clichÈ, but suddenly veers into ’80s dance-hall synth with a rap interlude worthy of Eric B. & Rakim: “Gonna bust a move with a unicorn / Gonna get on down with the one big horn.” In “Michael Is the President of the English Club,” Logan’s mock-stuffy riff on Anglophilia could easily stand toe-to-toe with an installment of Masterpiece Theatre.

“Pop songs usually have two or three parts: verse, chorus or maybe a bridge,” Otto says. “In most of those songs on Very Tiny Songs, he has the parts. To make it a longer song is the easy part. It would take most people a lot longer to write 81 songs.”

Very Tiny Songs‘ relentless sense of melody and ambitious scope can overwhelm the listener on the first three or even 12 plays, with surprising benefits. “It is such a long album, invariably you’re going to need a snack or someone’s going to call your cell phone,” says Josh Drake of Pandacide Records, the label that released Very Tiny Songs. “In that 70-plus minutes of music, you’ll miss a song, so you’re always finding new ones. He didn’t write a bad song on the whole thing.”

Weeks after he completed the songs and artwork for Very Tiny Songs, Logan was plagued with headaches and dizzy spells. A visit to the doctor revealed that his cancer had returned with a vengeance, and he was told he’d likely have less than a year to live.

After Logan’s death, response from fans and online friends was enormous.

Dr. Demento featured Logan’s music on his first program of the year; tribute videos cropped up on YouTube; people posted consoling thoughts on the Junior Science Club’s MySpace page. On far-flung message boards and obscure podcasts, people came forward to remember Logan.

When writing e-mails to fans, Logan always closed with “Your Friend, Logan.” Reading that always made me feel warm, excited–Logan is my friend!–because, even in the inexpressive confines of text on a computer screen, you could tell he truly meant it. Anyone would be fortunate to have a friend like Logan, and he was a friend to many.

There will be a memorial celebrating the life, art and music of Logan Whitehurst on Saturday, Feb. 10, at the Phoenix Theater. The public is welcome to attend. 201 Washington St., Petaluma. 8pm. 707.762.3565. Those wanting to learn more about Logan and his music can visit www.loganwhitehurst.com and www.juniorscienceclub.com.




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Second Set of Hands

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January 31-February 6, 2007

It’s really no surprise that David Byrne was spotted at Clap Your Hands Say Yeah shows a couple years back. After all, the Brooklyn/Philly quintet’s exceptional debut album sounded at times like a twitchy half-hour variation on ’77’s “Pulled Up” and singer Alec Ounsworth’s emotive, acrobatic whine–more so than other vocalists from Tom Verlaine to Ian McCulloch–channeled the most talkative Head’s vocal inflections.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Lou Reed is their next legendary audience member, judging from how their second self-released record, Some Loud Thunder, starts. The opening track kicks off the album White Light/White Heat-style, but beneath a wave of distortion. “All this talking, you’d think I’d have something to say,” sings Ounsworth, barely audible amid production replicating a poorly leveled home cassette recording. Each bass drum crash drowns out everything else, effectively burying any hopes of repeating their first record’s polish.

However, the song’s harmonies fight through and much of this mostly rewarding album is easier to swallow, from the harmonious ’60s-style chamber pop of “Emily Jean Stock” to the instant crowd-pleaser “Underwater,” a low-fi Badlands that pushes the Killers’ recent Springsteen tributes further into embarrassment. But the band’s straying from their proven pop forms offers mixed results. The multifaceted “Arm and Hammer” pleasantly evokes early Who mini-operas, but the repetitive Krautrock excursion “Satan Said Dance” does little else but allow the band to test out their many spooky keyboard effects.

Thunder‘s sometimes blatantly reactionary aural filters are a necessary evil for a sophomore effort from a band who could probably never improve upon their previous twitchy jangle. But also muffled in the ’60s-rock production survey course is their originality, which was more apparent on their debut’s differently derivative aesthetic. Breaking the mold is commendable, as are the formidable melodies that survive the clatter. But if they want to add standing ovations to their namesake, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah should take their talent forward instead of backwards.


First Bite

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January 24-30, 2007

All we wanted was an oyster potpie, as touted by Siena, the elegant California-Tuscan restaurant at the new Meritage Resort in Napa.

“Rich and creamy,” purrs the restaurant’s online menu, promising plump pastry stocked with salsify, carrots, English peas and oyster mushrooms. The savory dish is listed as a luncheon appetizer, and on a chilly, gray winter day, it sounded like heaven.

But we were arriving for dinner, so I called Siena, begging them to save us a couple of pies. That would be a special request, the hostess answering the phone cheerfully replied, but after checking with the chef, she reported he would be delighted to do so. That chef would be Jeffrey Longenecker, recently relocated from Sea Ranch Lodge, and known for his local, seasonal, terroir-informed approach to cooking.

It was the best oyster potpie I could have imagined. Poor chef Longenecker–it was no mean feat for him to get it to me. First hint of a predicament: We were greeted as the “potpie party,” and told that our dishes were ready if we were. We sipped our complimentary cava (now there’s a fine amuse), nibbled salted breadsticks dipped in fancy Rutherford and Italian olive oils, and wondered–pre-made pies? Say it ain’t so.

Minutes later, we were told, happily no, Chef would need time to make them, did we want salads? My answer will always be yes. Siena sends out a superb platter of whole romaine leaves ($8), curled with smoky prosciutto di Parma, shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano, and what would have been way too much creamy garlic dressing if the thick, rich stuff weren’t so good. A tower of thin-sliced roasted beets and rutabagas ($8) is a sophisticated mix, too, triple-punched with pungent mustard greens, preserved Meyer lemon and smoky white truffle vinaigrette.

We ordered entrées, a maple roasted duck breast ($30) with dried cherry bread pudding, candied yams and root vegetables; and sorrel-wrapped ahi tuna puttanesca ($27) with fontina polenta cake, haystack potatoes and Kalamata-caper-anchovy sauce.

Our waiter intervened. Our pies were full entrées themselves, he warned, wondering where we got the idea they were appetizers. Or that they were even on the menu at all, he suddenly announced, since he’d never heard of them. (Nor had chef, by the way, evidently creating these recipes out of thin air just for us).

Perhaps someone ought to check the Meritage website, I stuttered.

All was forgiven the second the pies arrived. These were beyond glorious, an upscale salute to comfort food. A heavy cast iron crock bubbled with silky bisque so richly creamed and buttered that it shimmered with each spoonful of enoki mushroom, carrot and meaty mollusk. A thick cap of puff pastry shattered in buttery flakes on top, giving way to steaming, doughy innards, and when the pastry was gone, we dunked chunks of fresh-baked rosemary-kissed bread. Thrilled as we were with the chef’s special attention, the pies were also pricey; we hardly expected our lovely “lunch appetizers” to be $30 each. But apparently, the kitchen didn’t either.

Siena, inside the Meritage Resort, 875 Bordeaux Way, Napa. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily; brunch Sundays. 707.259.0633.


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

Morsels

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If wine really is bottled poetry, as Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote,then San Francisco’s Fort Mason was worth a bazillion words during the 16th annual Zinfandel Advocates and Producers (ZAP) Festival held Jan. 24-28.

The gates opened at 1pm on Saturday, Jan. 27, for the grand all-day tasting, and throngs of thirsty wine tasters flooded forward into the Herbst and Festival pavilions like eager souls into Heaven. Up to their necks in wine, they waded from table to table and winery to winery, swirling, sipping and swallowing until their tongues went numb and such back-of-the-bottle prose as “hinting at rose petals,” “aromas of vanilla and saffron” and “the perfect match for braised pork loin” could have been hard truth or downright drivel. It was impossible to know. Everyone was intoxicated. The world was spinning.

My tasting mate and I dove into the Festival Pavilion and swam straight to the table of Sharp Cellars (www.sharpcellars.com; 707.933.0556). This Sonoma winery, owned by Vance Sharp III, produces just several thousand cases per year. The wine is not cheap, but the flavor of its 2001 100 percent pure blend Zin ($45 per bottle) is the spiciest, sweetest and most remarkable I have ever tasted. Think really, really excellent vinegar. Sounds bad, but it’s great. Plus, it’s certified organic.

I slogged forward in search of more eco-friendly wine, and I noticed how visibly nervous the winemakers got when asked if their grapes were organic. Their bodies stiffened and their faces grew dark, as though I had accused them of bottling up poison, which I guess I sort of had.

While ZAP is a celebration of Zinfandel, it’s also a celebration of great food. On the evening of Thursday the 25th at Fort Mason, the ZAP Good Eats and Zinfandel Pairing event brought together over 50 wineries and restaurants to produce many mouth-watering, innovative wine-food combos. The featured chefs–mad and brilliant scientists of flavor–grilled up heaps and hills and mountains of meat, meat, meat, meat, meat! They drizzled this seared flesh with Mediterranean delights like fig-pear chutney, pomegranate reduction, rosemary gravy and secret barbecue sauces using–get this!–Zinfandel.

ZAP 2007, with its 270 participating wineries, 600 or so Zins and excess of rich food left me almost speechless for a day afterward. Robert Louis Stevenson probably could have written a charming poem about the wine-sopped week. Or just copied something from the back of a bottle. Nobody would have known.

For info on more ZAP, visit the website at www.zinfandel.org.



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Lifer

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music & nightlife |

By Gabe Meline

Life on the road can be a smorgasbord of hijinks and mayhem for a punk-rock singer, but when I think back to a two-month period spent with Russ Rankin traveling across Europe, I recall an unusually centered personality who just happened to get onstage every night to scream his head off. It is a testament to his calmness that only a few small details remain lodged in my memory: dedicated to punk rock as a whole, his favorite albums include 7 Seconds’ The Crew, Consolidated’s Friendly Fascism and Government Issue’s Boycott Stabb. His personal ethics lean strongly toward veganism and straightedge (a tattoo on his leg shows the Statue of Liberty pouring out a liquor bottle), and a portion of the proceeds from his music is charitably donated to Food Not Bombs. He’s no stranger to a good laugh, and one of his favorite movies, viewed over and over between reading Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, is the Paul Newman ice-hockey farce Slap Shot.

Rankin is what those in the punk-rock scene call a “lifer,” and it’s because of his measured expulsion of energy that he still has a wealth of it left. Twenty years after the long-running punk band Good Riddance emerged as his eventual life’s work, Rankin’s idea of a good time remains getting up onstage and screaming his head off. Now, as the frontman for the more hardcore-oriented Only Crime, he’s upped his own ante. Backed by veterans of bands like Converge, GWAR and Black Flag, Rankin has sworn off any notion of pop songwriting and given himself a heavy stock in which his lyrics simmer. It’s a workout, and here’s hoping his stamina (exercised by recent turns at ice hockey, no less) can continue to keep up with his ambition.

Only Crime performs this Friday, Feb. 2, with New Mexican Disaster Squad and Snag at the Phoenix Theater. 201 E. Washington St., Petaluma. 8pm. $10. 707.762.3565.




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Letters to the Editor

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January 31-February 6, 2007

milking the public purse?

As Pogo so aptly observed, “We have met the enemy–and it is us!” That is, for voting into office, election after election. Some people in California worry about illegal aliens pouring across the border from Mexico. I worry far more about insidious parasites like Feinstein who milk the public purse for all its worth while proclaiming loudly about how she’s looking out for us. Yikes!

Michael Stubblefield, Oxnard

illuminati

Congratulations to the Bohemian and Peter Byrne on the interesting and comprehensive article about Sen. Feinstein. This most illuminating story regarding “a public servant” deserves recognition and further publication!

Bill Yoes, Abilene, Texas

calling mr. smith

I am both disheartened and disgusted as a lifelong Democrat to learn that my own senator has been ripping off the taxpayers just as badly as any GOP member ever has.

I rejoiced at the recent election. As with many of my fellow citizens, I’m fed up with the lies and policies of the current administration. I did not, however, vote for the same old crap with a new name. We want reform. We want honesty. Diane Feinstein, you should at least be censured by the Senate, and at most leave the Senate.

This is not the first time your ethics have been brought into question. Many years ago, you voted for students to get tuition and books paid for to those fly-by-night colleges. Your husband owned some of those, did he not?

Enough! No representative or senator should be allowed to skate by doing this kind of blatant dishonest behavior. It’s about time that both parties clean house. We need Mr. Smith to go to Washington again!

Kama M. Scott, Disgusted Voter, Reseda

crony stink

I’m in the process of moving out of Marin, but I wanted to thank you for your article. The very fact that someone has the courage to approach these issues with regard to this woman is encouraging. Sen. Feinstein was right in line voting for the Iraq war and, when Israel invaded Lebanon, she held a rally in S.F. and spoke in favor of this attack. I have not voted for the senator in two elections now because she stinks of cronyism and certainly is not representing the people of the Bay Area in her pro-war stance and her support of Israel. One painful irony is that following her vote for the Iraqi war, an elementary school was named for her in San Francisco. How many of those children, I wrote to her at the time, will die in the fields of Iraq or some other country in the Middle East due to her vote?

I would so appreciate seeing you pursue both Feinstein and Schwarzenegger in their continued cozying up to oil and big corporate interests before our state is completely taken out of the control of those of us who love her deeply. Keep up the good work. I will continue to read you, only online from now on.

Gloria Simms, Leaving Mill Valley

unleashing byrne

I am glad to see Peter Byrne unleashed once again on a hunt for evidence of graft and corruption continually squashed by larger papers and most other media far less courageous in the San Francisco Bay Area.

He has yet again done a superb job here. Frankly, we all need to remove officials who use the system for familial personal gain, as he well proves.

Janet Campbell, San Francisco

absolutely stunning

Peter Byrne’s fact-laden investigative report is absolutely stunning and beautifully presented. It’s Pulitzer quality and I would seriously hope that the New York Times and Washington Post reprint it in full immediately.

While we may have differing views on other issues, I certainly salute excellent investigative journalism, including the attendant diligence and courage required to produce what Byrne just did.

Bravo!

Elaine Willman, National Chair, Citizens Equal Rights Alliance

cut the cord!

Any in Congress who have a conflict of interest, questionable behavior or an ethical problem should be dismissed from any committee that is related to that problem. Sen. Feinstein is only one example. There are probably others with similar problems. The umbilical cord to special interests must be severed. We must elect people who are public servants and not corrupt politicians.

Joseph Rizzuto, Los Gatos


Shaping Sonoma Grove

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Shaping Sonoma Grove

Photograph by Robbi Pengelly
Still standing: Alice McAdams has lived at the Sonoma Grove for a quarter of a century and intends to stay regardless of the changes.

By Patricia Lynn Henley

The do-your-own-thing spirit of the hippie era keeps a toehold in Rohnert Park, thanks to an agreement between a group of tenants and the owner who bought the 152-unit Sonoma Grove Trailer Park a little over a year ago.

“I think both sides worked hard to come to a settlement that we can live with,” says Candace Birchfield, a Grove resident since 1983. “Both sides had to make compromises.”

As reported in these pages a year ago (“Home, Sweet Trailer,” Jan. 25, 2006), Sonoma Grove is a hidden haven of laid-back serenity in southern Sonoma County. For decades, the Grove was an out-of-the-mainstream retreat whose residents lived extremely low-cost lives in a hodgepodge of vintage trailers and RVs, most augmented by hand-built decks and entry halls, long-established gardens and various whimsical accoutrements. Residents who had enjoyed the Grove’s funky charm were up in arms last year at new owners who had intended to purchase an RV park–not a commune. Conflicting visions remain of what the Grove is and will be.

After Houser Holdings LLC bought the Grove in November 2005, rules were tightened and rent increases announced, with some jumping more than 100 percent. A number of residents left. About 20 followed the advice of lawyers and organized a rent strike, which led to a flurry of eviction proceedings. More residents moved out.

After nearly a year of friction, a deal was struck. Exact details of the legal settlement are confidential, but all of the long-term residents who remain in Sonoma Grove–about 80 or so–have had to move to the southern end of the 5.5-acre property, leaving the north portion free to operate as an RV park for people passing through.

One thing that hasn’t been settled is how the Grove is viewed. The owners say that legally it is and always has been an RV park, but residents see the Grove as the home of a special, almost magical community.

“It can take you back to another place and time,” explains Linda Robbins, who’s lived in the tree-shaded Grove for more than eight years. “You think differently in a place like this. You see things differently. You relate differently.”

“The world out there is so fast-paced, and it’s all about upping the Joneses, about having a new car,” adds Alice McAdams, who’s spent 25 years in Sonoma Grove in her 38-foot trailer. “We can live at a simpler pace here, and it doesn’t make it wrong.”

For Teresa Thurman, a co-owner of Houser Holdings LLC, Sonoma Grove is simply one of only three RV parks in Sonoma County with what she considers an “ideal” location for tourists. A Lakeport resident, Thurman presents herself as a wife and mother of two small children who is simply trying to earn a living. “We’re a business,” she says. “We’re an RV park. People want to come to stay here.”

A rumor floating around the Grove says the property will soon be sold to developers.

“We never bought the park to develop it. That’s [an idea] that was created by someone else,” Thurman says. “It is what it is. It’s an RV park. We have no plans to do anything else.”

Thurman says that she intends to make the north end of the Grove more up-to-date and attractive to overnight guests, but doesn’t know exactly what will be done. “We’re still making those decisions.”

Grove residents are waiting to see what will be happen next. Some are anxious because, under the settlement, Thurman could increase the rents in September.

“Technically, she can raise the rents to $650 a month and still be within the limits of low-income housing. But what we are is extremely low-income tenants,” explains Ian Southerland, who moved to the Grove in his fifth-wheel trailer four years ago. For him and others, $650 is too much.

“I’d like to live here for the rest of my days,” he adds. “In reality, I think we’ve only been given a reprieve. If she chooses to raise the rent to a point where I can’t afford it, I’ll have to move. The majority of the people here are living on $800 to $900 a month.”

Thurman is sympathetic but businesslike. She hopes to keep things affordable, but it’s normal, she says, for a landlord to increase the rent each year; the Grove is no exception. “Their concerns are legitimate, but they aren’t any different than those of anyone who is renting.”

That won’t be an issue until September. Meanwhile, there’s a tentative peace. “We all came together at a Christmas party, and I was very happy to see that we were all able to break bread,” Thurman says.

At least one resident is still facing eviction proceedings, but for the others, things are relatively calm, at least for the moment. Many feel the struggle to stand up for their rights strengthened their sense of being a special community.

“I think we really did accomplish something that’s really amazing,” Birchfield says. “I’m sort of speechless. We didn’t waver. We hung in there and we saw it through to its most logical conclusion at this point in time.

“I think we’re very lucky to still be here.”


Prophet Motifs

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Prophet Motifs

the arts | visual arts |

Design 2007:
Hello Creative | Russian Orthodox Frescoes | Drawing as the New Design

Icon: The art of the fresco is at least 4,000 years old.

By Bruce Robinson

When Michelangelo was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he was using what was even then an old and well-established medium. Frescoes are paintings done on wet plaster, and despite their historic antiquity, they are not just a thing of the past.

Among the contemporary practitioners of this ancient art form is Father Simon Dolan, a 49-year-old monk at the St. Gregory of Sinai monastery near Kelseyville, who, for the past nine years, has been painting a series of fresco murals at the St. Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Church in south Santa Rosa.

“People have been painting in fresco for at least 4,000 years,” Dolan says, “and I don’t think we’re using it in any way that is substantially different from the way it has been done historically.”

Standing beneath the classical dome that rises 40 feet above the chapel floor, Dolan, a robust yet scholarly figure with a full beard, dressed in a simple black smock that extends to his shins, surveys the lifetime of work that awaits him there.

“Painting a church involves literally hundreds of large-scale paintings,” he explains. “We are going to paint from the very top of the dome all the way down to the floor. So all the walls, all of the arches, all of the pillars, everything except for the wooden timber roof will eventually, God willing, be painted in fresco.”

Fresco painting uses a special plaster made from lime putty, which is created by burning limestone and then plunging the residue, known as quicklime, into water and storing it there. When it’s time to paint, the wet lime putty is mixed into plaster and applied–only as much as can be done in a single day, perhaps an area of 12 or 16 square feet, depending on the amount of detail in the image–and allowed to partially dry before the painting begins.

“Fresco,” Dolan notes, “is an Italian word meaning ‘fresh.’ So what is fresh in the painting is the plaster that is freshly laid. And we’re painting directly on it.”

The first step in that process involves drawing a full-size outline or “cartoon” of the image to be painted. This is transferred to the wet plaster and serves as a guide while the paints are applied. Traditionally, the pigments are natural materials, derived mainly from colored soils, although some manufactured pigments are now available. But it is the chemistry of the lime putty plaster that gives fresco paintings their remarkable durability.

When the lime putty is mixed and spread on the wall, it begins to reabsorb from the air a molecule of carbon that it lost when the limestone was burned. As the plaster dries, “an invisible layer of carbonate crystals forms on the surface of the plaster,” Simon explains. “And any pigments that are ground in water and placed onto the wall while the carbonate crystals are forming become part of the wall itself.”

This requires quick and accurate work, he adds, because “every minute counts and every brush stroke is permanent.” Changes or corrections can only be made by chiseling away the dried plaster, and repeating the whole process.

Large images, such as the dome or an extensive interior wall surface, are done in a series of smaller sections. The borders or “joins” between these sections usually follow the outline of a figure or a line in the drawing, and so become virtually invisible after the sections have cured together.

And there’s another, almost supernatural aspect of the process that happens a bit later.

“A painter does his painting, and over the course of the next few days, without touching the painting, it gets better,” Dolan affirms, smiling at the thought. “As it dries, the plaster that’s underneath the colors becomes a bright white. And so it imparts a kind of luminosity to the colors.”

St. Seraphim’s is a new church building, completed in 1996. But from the beginning of the planning process, it was envisioned as “a grand palette for the fresco work,” says Father Lawrence Margitich, who has led the 70-year-old congregation since 1985. As part of the church design process, the congregation and the artist developed a detailed plan for all of the art that will eventually cover every available surface above the floor. These images, often portraying disciples and other biblical figures as well as numerous saints and prophets, are known more precisely as religious icons, and many have remained essentially unchanged through the centuries.

“Elements of it go right back to the early Christian era,” Father Dolan elaborates. “We can find examples of images that look very similar to what we’re painting here in the Christian catacombs.” Some of the images in those subterranean Christian graveyards date back to the first century A.D.

But icons, in this context, are anything but abstractions. Even the faces of the hundreds of saints recognized by the Orthodox Church represent a form of stylized portraiture.

“These people existed, and so when they’re painted, they’re painted to look as they looked in life,” Simon asserts. “The Church preserves their appearance down through the centuries, handing over that tradition from one generation to another.” Yet within that tradition, “there’s an astonishing kind of variety,” Dolan continues. From church to church and from one artist to the next, “you have unity, but you don’t have uniformity.”

To Father Margitich, the iconographic images represent “the teachings of the church in color and shape.” In fact, he sees the entire church building as a three-dimensional icon in its own right. “It’s an image of heaven, you could say, the kingdom of God populated by saints–religious people from all walks of life–and you are surrounded by them.”

Dolan began his study of iconography as a young art student, and followed it into the church itself. He has been painting murals and wooden icon panels for orthodox churches since 1980, and is now dividing his fresco-painting time between St. Seraphim and another, smaller church in the rural south of France. Together, they will represent his life’s work.

“A muralist doesn’t have but one or two churches in his lifetime,” Dolan says placidly. He looks at the myriad blank spaces that still surround the spacious sanctuary, and the high arc of the dome, where the outlines of the more elaborate artwork to come are already sketched in place. “We’ve been working here for a number of years and we’re maybe a fifth done.”

St. Seraphim of Sarov Church, 90 Mountain View Ave., Santa Rosa. 707.584.9491.



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Ask Sydney

January 31-February 6, 2007 Dear Sydney, I have kids who are almost teens. I smoke pot every now and then and am pretty easy-going as far as drinking and pot smoking goes. It doesn't bother me. What, I'm wondering, is appropriate around the kids? Do I smoke around them eventually? Keep it a secret? When they hit the teen years,...
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Second Set of Hands

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First Bite

January 24-30, 2007All we wanted was an oyster potpie, as touted by Siena, the elegant California-Tuscan restaurant at the new Meritage Resort in Napa."Rich and creamy," purrs the restaurant's online menu, promising plump pastry stocked with salsify, carrots, English peas and oyster mushrooms. The savory dish is listed as a luncheon appetizer, and on a chilly, gray winter day,...
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Letters to the Editor

January 31-February 6, 2007milking the public purse?As Pogo so aptly observed, "We have met the enemy--and it is us!" That is, for voting into office, election after election. Some people in California worry about illegal aliens pouring across the border from Mexico. I worry far more about insidious parasites like Feinstein who milk the public purse for all...
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Prophet Motifs

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