Elvis Costello

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Every Year’s Model: We look at Elvis with fond surprise.

–>Northern Songs

The importance of being Elvis

By Greg Cahill

When an angry Elvis Costello burst upon the world stage in the mid-’70s amid the tumult of the punk invasion, he arrived with unbridled passion, a cynical take on life and a pen full of vitriol. Who’d have guessed that within the breast of this brash rocker beat the heart of a pop balladeer who would go on to collaborate with such middle-of-the-road tunesmiths as Paul McCartney and Burt Bacharach, or record with the likes of Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and the Brodsky Quartet?

Perhaps we should have learned to expect the unexpected.

Still, many critics and fans alike have been thrown into a tailspin by his latest CD, North, a song cycle on love lost and found, all revealed in 11 quiet, piano-based jazz ballads, sometimes played by a small combo, other times cloaked in lush orchestration.

The album–Costello’s 24th release and arguably his most consistent and most honest work–is a commercial flop by pop standards. Released on the Deutsche Grammaphon label, a classical-music subsidiary of Universal Music, North has failed to chart on the Billboard Top 200 and has struggled even to gain a foothold on the trade magazine’s lesser jazz chart.

What do the critics say? “The trouble with Elvis’s latest effort,” writes Mark Wilson in the online journal Press, “is that it reeks of late-career indulgence.”

Critic Hartley Goldstein of the Pitchfork Weekly is even less kind. “Costello seems less concerned with presenting a collection of melodically clever songs filled with his trademark sense of irony and double-entendre than with recording an album for the classical and jazz elites,” he laments. “In other words, it looks like the result of self-conscious pandering to his inner music critic. . . . It’s a cruel irony that, as he grows older and aims higher, he only falls further away from himself and fails more profoundly at grasping that elusive quality.”

Admittedly, it’s hard to accept that the man who wrote the songs on North–the title alludes to Costello, 49, turning his attention toward his new wife, Canadian-born jazz singer Diana Krall– is the same guy who penned the ecstatic joy of “Tokyo Storm Warning,” the infectiously hip “Moods for Moderns” or who once was told by a BBC censor that if it were learned that the cryptic satire “Pills and Soap” had a deeper, hidden meaning, then Costello would be banned from the British airwaves for life.

Of course, the song chronicled fascism during Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s stay at 10 Downing Street.

But these days Costello is showing himself to be a mature artist who is growing old gracefully– a few well-timed public tantrums notwithstanding. Of course, this isn’t the first time that Costello–who performs March 12 at the LBC with longtime keyboardist Steve Nieve–has been taken to task for straying from his rock roots.

In 1999, the same year Costello collaborated with Bacharach on the Painted from Memory album, dispirited Salon writer Bill Wyman bemoaned: “On his first few albums, Costello had laid out sweeping, ever-more-paranoid romantic equations–love as civil disturbance, as propaganda, as global warfare. . . . Someone with his capacity for fury could scarcely complain, but he must also have felt the waste, of both his talent and a generation’s affection. To have murdered our love was a crime. We forgive nothing.”

That acrid essay prompted one fan to respond, “Bill Wyman loses interest in Elvis Costello midway through Costello’s career, and somehow that’s a betrayal on Costello’s part? Bill, he’s not dating you; he’s just writing and playing music in close enough proximity to you that you can hear it. Try not to take it so personally.”

But it is personal–all great music is personal, and Costello has penned some of the most personal songs of his generation. His 1977 debut, My Aim Is True (which found the Bay Area band Clover, a prototype of Huey Lewis and the News, backing up the singer), served up a playful mix of raucous British pub rock and heartfelt ballads. The chorus of the tender “Alison” would provide the album’s title and a hint of Costello’s sentimental leanings.

The song “Less Than Zero,” an indictment of a neo-Nazi TV host, provided a template for Costello’s genius for fusing the personal and the political. Costello would return to that theme over and again. On the disturbing “Night Rally” from 1978’s follow-up This Year’s Model, Costello took on the emerging fascist youth of the National Front. A year later, on 1979’s brilliant Armed Forces (originally titled Emotional Fascism), Costello effectively used politics as a metaphor for personal conflict on several now-classic songs.

This was an artist capable of elevating the rock song to previously unrealized heights. He also was a performer mired in contradiction, and one that criticized his punk peers for being calculating and contrived. At first, these idiosyncrasies held a lot of charm. Then one night in 1979, in a bar in Columbus, Ohio, Costello’s charm wore off: during a booze-fueled bout with members of the Stephen Stills Band, and in the midst of a Rock against Racism tour, Costello loudly denounced Ray Charles with a racial slur. The statement devastated Costello’s credibility.

“It’s horrible to work hard for a long time and find that what you’re best known for is something as idiotic as . . . this,” Costello later told Rolling Stone writer Greil Marcus.

Costello’s career would recover. And he would go to create some of his best work, including the 1982 Beatlesesque masterwork Imperial Bedroom (produced by Geoff Emerick, who had worked on the Fab Four’s magnum opus Abbey Road) and the excellent King of America and Blood and Chocolate.

Between 1986 and 1998, however, Costello struggled to match his earlier success as a songwriter, though he had moments of glory. It was during that time that he began embracing new influences that ultimately would lead to North.

The most obvious influence is the 1998 Bacharach collaboration, but North also bears the imprint of several other Costello projects, including the gorgeous ballad “Shipbuilding” (a 1983 antiwar song that ridiculed Britain’s role in the ill-conceived Falkland Islands War and featured a plaintive trumpet solo by the legendary Chet Baker), 1993’s foray into chamber pop The Juliet Letters with the Brodsky Quartet and Terror + Magnificence, a 1997 collaboration with saxophonist John Harle that readily straddled jazz and classical.

The sentiments on North can be sweet. Costello delivers the line “Friends look at me these days with fond surprise / But when I start to speak, they roll their eyes” with no hint of irony. This is unabashed love, an Audrey-Hepburn-and-Gregory-Peck-in-Roman-Holiday kind of love, for which Costello makes no apologies.

“I think it’s a very positive record,” he told Press recently. “It begins in a very bleak mood and fairly rapidly it changes from that. The first half of the record is more doleful and full of bewilderment, and that is all about love coming to you and it not being necessarily easy for you to accept or even to recognize it. There are moments of humor, even in the first couple of songs.”

Is it a midlife crisis record? the interviewer asked. “I don’t think it’s a midlife crisis record. Not at all. That ain’t a crisis, it’s a cause for celebration!”

But does his early work make it difficult for some fans to accept or expect songs that are so open-hearted? “I don’t think so. There are other songs that are very specific and very clear and unadorned with the devices for which I’m sometimes said to be known. I don’t deny that those songs are there. But most of the songs on King of America have a plainness of language. “I Want You” [from Blood and Chocolate] is not exactly a disguised song; it’s expressing a very different kind of emotion.

“I have had a ballad in the center of my repertoire from the start–the best-known song from my early years is a ballad [‘Alison’]. I got fascinated with words and playing games and disguising things, and I’ve written some really good songs that are not about literal things, because they’re not trying to be. The big lie is that everything has to make sense.”

North ain’t rock, but it is a success on its own terms. Expect more of the same, at least for a while.

Krall and Costello have penned a half dozen or more songs together for Krall’s next album. (We can thank Costello that never again will we have to endure Krall covering anything as shallow as Michael Franks’ saccharine “Popsicle Toes.”)

Croons Costello in “I’m in the Mood Again,” the closing track on North, “I don’t know what’s come over me, but it’s nothing I’m doing wrong / You took the breath right out of me / Now you’ll find it in the early hours, in a lover’s song.”

Kick back and enjoy it. Just think of North as a new mood for moderns.

Elvis Costello performs with Steve Nieve on Friday, March 12, at 8pm. LBC, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. $45-$65. 707.546.3600.

From the March 3-10, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Al Franken

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O’Franken Factor: Feuding with Bill O’Reilly is a full-time job for Al Franken.

–>Left vs. Right

The bipolar world of Al Franken

By Joy Lanzendorfer

“I don’t play dirty,” Al Franken says. “I just don’t. I’m completely fair. I’m a little mean sometimes, but when I’m mean, it’s done with humor and it’s fair.” Being fair is important for Franken since the recent publication of his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. As the title suggests, the book criticizes the right-wing media and, by extension, the Bush administration.

The book has spent 26 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, currently hovering at No. 6 in the top 10 bestselling nonfiction hardcovers. (Incidentally, seven of those 10 books are about politics or the media, or politics and the media, and four of them were written by strong media personalities, namely, Franken, John Stossel, Michael Moore and Bill O’Reilly.)

As his upcoming sold-out event at the Luther Burbank Center would indicate, Franken has hit upon a trend. But then, he is no stranger to this kind of literary success, since his 1996 book Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot was also a bestseller. Still, these days there is more competition, so Franken has tried to make a distinction between himself and people like O’Reilly. He would like you know that he is (a) more honest and (b) funnier.

And while his book is certainly funny, in a phone interview from his Manhattan home, when grooming his dog wasn’t distracting him, Franken made it clear that he takes politics deadly seriously.

“I wrote this book because I was angry at the Bush administration and the people who cover it in the media,” he says. “I kept hearing about this mythology of the liberal bias, but when you look at what goes on in the media, it just isn’t the case. Like in the 2000 election, the coverage Gore got, or look at what’s happening right now with Bush’s National Guard records–why wasn’t that looked into in 2000?”

This month, Franken will begin co-hosting a radio talk show with Katherine Lanpher. It will be called The O’Franken Factor, a take-off on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor. The three-hour show will air five days a week in select cities.

Franken’s show may be an opportunity for the left to beat the right at its own game. After all, the left has never been able to make a dent in the conservative-dominated talk-radio market. Some have even started calling Franken “the Rush Limbaugh of the left.”

But considering that on the heels of his book criticizing Limbaugh–Franken spends most of his new 380-page book criticizing the biases of conservative media–that nickname could carry a certain ring of hypocrisy. He insists his show will not be like Limbaugh’s show.

“It’s true, we’re going to try to counter the influence of conservative radio and TV,” he says. “But we’re going to play a different game. It’s going to be honest. That’ll be different. We’re going to be funny. That’ll be different.”

Franken believes that the right is meaner and less honest than the left. The right, he alleges, makes up stories about specific targets in an effort to destroy them. “For example,” he says, “I just had a story written about me that was totally false. And you really can’t prepare for that. You have to take it as it comes and try to get a thick skin. The only way you can win is to not let them get to you.”

He’s referring to a story in the New York Post alleging that Franken “body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Howard Dean” at a Dean rally. Franken admits that he helped security get the protester under control when, after yelling and screaming, the man started running toward the podium. “But I didn’t body-slam anybody,” he says. “I didn’t run across the room and slam him to the ground the way they said.”

Predictably, Franken is less critical of the left. He “likes” Michael Moore even though “he does some things I wouldn’t do.” He claims to like most of the Democratic presidential candidates equally and will let the primaries sort themselves out. But while he is liberal on almost every subject you can imagine, from affirmative action to the environment to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, Franken has been conflicted on one of today’s most pressing political issues: the war in Iraq.

In the beginning, Franken was pro-war, even giving a speech for Clear Channel Communications in which he said in part, “Today we are all Americans, except for NPR listeners, who always seem a little French to me. If I could be serious for a minute. I know your prayers are with our men and women fighting in Iraq, who are there protecting us from Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.”

Today, Franken seems to regret that speech, which he writes in his book that he made because of the pervading sense of fear in the United States, but tells me he made because Colin Powell’s speech to the U.N. convinced him the war was necessary. At this point, he doesn’t favor pulling out of Iraq.

“Well, now we’re there,” he says. “We can’t allow the mission to fail. It would be nice if we could have a president who attracts international support. That’s why I want to get rid of this guy because he has alienated the rest of the world.”

If you really want to get Franken going, bring up O’Reilly. At every turn, O’Reilly calls Franken a smear merchant and Franken calls O’Reilly a liar. They have already had a heated confrontation at a book expo in Los Angeles, and on the NPR show Fresh Air, O’Reilly ended an interview with host Terry Gross because he felt she was less hard-hitting in a previous interview with Franken than she was with him.

Franken always seems ready to discuss O’Reilly. In his Fresh Air interview, for example, Franken accused O’Reilly of lying throughout the discussion, especially when Gross asked O’Reilly about his interview with Jeremy Glick, who opposes the Iraq War even though his father died in the World Trade Center. O’Reilly yelled at Glick on the O’Reilly Factor. Franken covered the incident in his book.

“The most pernicious lie O’Reilly told Fresh Air was about Jeremy Glick,” he says. “He said that Glick said that Bushes One and Two orchestrated the attack on our country, which he did not say. You know, that’s really obnoxious. Glick’s only crime was having his dad die in the World Trade Center. All they have left is his Dad’s phone. And he gets defamed by O’Reilly.”

This kind of interview-within-an-interview talk can start to feel a little postmodern after a while, but it’s Franken’s way of holding the right accountable.

“The left has dropped the ball,” he says. “That’s why I wrote my book. I mean, somebody had to do it. And I think it’s beginning to happen. You’re beginning to see a lot of books about Bush now.”

You can say that again.

Al Franken appears before a sold-out crowd on Thursday, March 11, at 8pm. Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. 707.546.3600.

From the March 3-10, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Finding the Moon

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The Earth Also Rises: This NASA photo shows our globe as seen from the moon’s lovely surface.

–>Finding the Moon

A cursory examination of all things lunar

By R. V. Scheide

We may have lost the moon. Oh, it’s still there, all right. I saw it the other night, waxing high above Dry Creek Valley, a silver crescent slotted into the glittering edifice of night. What I mean when I say we’ve lost the moon is that we’ve lost our connection to it.

There was a time when lunar rhythms informed nearly every aspect of daily human existence. The moon was once thought to control the forces governing the birth, life and death of every living being in the universe. But that was before progress snipped the umbilical cord tying humans to nature, casting the species adrift in the void of reason. Perhaps we don’t notice that we’ve lost the moon because we have lost a part of ourselves as well.

Few people seem to have noticed the moon’s absence. No one has filed a missing moon report. Its disappearance from our lives has not been remarked upon by major newspapers. Jack London did hint at the loss in his novel Valley of the Moon. Starting in Sonoma County, the main characters, Billy and Saxon, trek all over northern California, searching for the mythical Valley of the Moon, where the water bubbles up from the ground, fish and game abound, and there’s not too much work to do, leaving plenty of time for playing around.

Sounds like nirvana, but perhaps a little lunar wanderlust comes with the territory London called home. For while most people in the North Bay couldn’t tell you what phase the moon is in tonight to save their lives, there is a small community of individuals who time their activities to the phases of the moon. A few go so far as to tie our entire destiny to the moon.

What can that mean to those of us who have lost track of the earth’s only natural satellite?

I first encountered the local lunar community several months ago on the West County Community Bulletin Board, the aptly named WACCO Internet listserv hosted on Yahoo. In addition to being an excellent source for secondhand refrigerators, WACCO serves as a clearing house for the practitioners of the sacred arts who serve what some people call, for lack of more precise terminology, the local pagan community. The moon is all over WACCO, from screen names like “Moonrise” and “Moonsong” to moon goddess workshops to full-moon drum circles.

For the most part, this community uses the moon for keeping time– planning events on the new and full moons–which occur 14 days apart. As Sahar Pinkham, leader of one of the full-moon drum circles, told me with tongue slightly in cheek, “I time my circles to the moon, because that way I know I’ll have the week off in between.”

Fond of quoting the 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi, Pinkham’s association with the moon goes deeper than that. Like most of the so-called pagans I’ve encountered so far, he freely borrows snippets from religious, philosophical and folkloric influences to form a worldview that includes the moon as a vital element.

“Stories of the moon are universal, appearing all around the earth from the beginnings of human history,” writes Jules Cashford in The Moon: Myth and Image, her scholarly examination of the written record. “The oldest markings on rock, horn, bone and stone suggest that the moon may have been the first recorded story of the human race.”

She’s talking Paleolithic times. Some members of Judeo-Christian culture may be shocked to learn that for all intents and purposes, its origins lie in a 30,000-year-old moon cult. It was the moon, not the sun, that taught us such basic concepts as the difference between light and dark, night and day, teacher and student. Cashford thinks the moon may have taught us how to think abstractly, when some ancient sage, probably a woman, imagined the existence of the “missing” phase that occurs during the three days the new moon is invisible here on earth.

The moon cycle courses through our spiritual veins today, as surely as the shifting tides, even though most of us don’t notice it. Although the Western world became “solarized” roughly 3,500 years ago with the advent of agriculture, mathematics and monotheism, Cashford, a member of the International Association of Analytical Psychology who lives in Somerset, England, writes that most scholars now agree that “the moon, not the sun, was the earliest focus of religious life.”

Despite efforts by clerics and other authorities to erase the moon’s influence on the interpretation of history and everyday life, many lunar vestiges remain. The full moon, which recurs every 28 days, was a significant event for our electricity-deprived ancestors, thanks to its capacity as a dependable natural floodlight and timekeeper. Most major religious holidays were timed to the full moon, a schedule many denominations adhere to today.

In fact, Easter, the remembrance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is still timed to coincide with the full moon. The custom can be traced back to the ancient Sumerians, who passed the tradition on to the Hebrews. The first Jews observed Shabbat not once a week, but once a month, on the night of the full moon. The Last Supper was a Passover meal, once again timed to the full moon. Critics have compared Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ to a horror film and rightly so, for its imagery, replete with the full moon and the cross, is the leitmotif for the entire genre.

The thing that makes Gibson’s torture-fest somewhat bearable, at least to Christians, is the concept of the resurrection, also introduced to us by the moon. The three days between the Nazarene’s execution and his surprising comeback is an interpretation of the new moon’s three absent days–and the sudden hole pierced in the cosmos by the first slender crescent of returning moonlight–that has been repeated countless times by many different cultures. This myth, which Nietzsche called the eternal return, may be among the moon’s greatest gifts to humanity.

“The essential myth of the moon is the myth of transformation,” Cashford writes. “Early people perceived the waxing and waning as the growing and dying of a celestial being, whose death was followed by its own resurrection as the new moon. The instinctive identification of the people with their moon meant that they interpreted the moon’s rebirth as offering a similar promise for human beings in their own waning and death. The moon then became a symbol of hope, the light that shone in the darkness of the human psyche.”

That’s not just solace (a sun word) for that age-old fear of death. The eternal return promised by the moon can be used as a powerful tool for self-transformation and building community. We wax, we wane, we are born again. What could be more natural?

Elizabeth Moriarty, a traditional healer who lives in Sebastopol, is in touch with the moon. The full moon, she notes, has long been viewed as a time for celebration, for turning outward. On the other hand, the new moon, with its three days of invisibility, naturally lends itself to introspection. With that in mind, she hosts for women a monthly sacred temple experience timed to the advent of the new moon.

“We are barraged with unnatural rhythms on a daily basis,” Moriarty says, describing the cacophony of modern life. Tapping into the new moon’s rhythm helps cut through all the white noise. “I try to stay with this rhythm, because it comes so naturally. When we really do feel ourselves, then we get to remember who we are.”

Most cultures, including our own, originally gave the moon male and female attributes. As civilizations became more advanced, the tendency was to view the moon as female. For Moriarty and others like her, the moon has become the wellspring for the so-called goddess phenomenon, the source for female powers of intuition, creativity and spirituality.

The most prominent link between women and the moon is of course the menstrual cycle, which on average roughly equals the time it takes the moon to complete its orbit, 29.5 days. This extraordinary coincidence led ancient cultures to believe that the moon was the source of menstruation, a belief permanently codified in language.

“In many languages, words for moon, month and menstruation are identical,” Cashford writes. “For instance, Greek: mene, moon; katamenia, menstruation. Latin: mensis, month; menses, menstruation, while menstruum meant both monthly payment or term of office, and in plural, mestrua, the blood of the menses.”

While modern medical science tends to play down the notion, anecdotal evidence of a connection between menstruation and the moon abounds. Folklore still repeated today holds that when women sleep outdoors for an extended period of time, their cycles will eventually harmonize with the moon’s.

The ancient association between moon and menstruation, combined with the moon’s very real power over the tides, led to the belief that the moon was the source of blood, water and fertility. With its waxing and waning phases, the moon brought both life and death, processes that were viewed as natural and even necessary. Every living thing followed the same pattern: birth, death and, via offspring, rebirth–the eternal return promised by the new moon.

As Moriarty notes, the full moon is more commonly viewed as a time for celebration, for looking out instead of in. That certainly seems to be the case for what might be the most popular lunar activity in the North Bay: full-moon drum circles.

My first full-moon drum circle was conducted by Sebastopol percussionist Kim Atkinson in January. Drum circles are not about showmanship; they’re about playing together with others in community. In order to play with others, one must first look inside to establish a rhythm. Like the concept of light and dark taught to us by the moon, playing a single drum beat is a relatively simple thing. It’s either on or it’s off. From this meager beginning, Atkinson led us through a session that gradually built in sonic complexity.

In February, at the next full moon, I journeyed to Schoolhouse Beach, about five miles north of Bodega Bay, where Sahar Pinkham has held full-moon drum circles for the past four years. The sun had just dipped below the edge of the ocean when I arrived. Despite the chill in the air, more than 30 drummers had turned out to gather around the fire and beat the skins.

Pinkham signaled the beginning of the session by blowing a long, loud note on a conch shell. The moon had not yet risen and the night had grown quite cold. Again, the ceremony began with simple rhythms that gradually grew in complexity. Several hours passed before the ocean began to slowly light up. The band of silver moonlight crept toward the shore and up onto the beach. Then, high above the cliffs behind the drummers, the star performer made its appearance, the full moon.

There was no raucous celebration or howling. Someone noted that the moon symbolized hope, and there was a reverent moment of silence. Then they returned to their rhythms. By channeling the moon, they’d achieved a level of unity that manifested itself in a song I could still hear beating as I followed the full moon on the highway home.

While the full-moon drum circles and yoga sessions brought me closer to an understanding of what might be called the lunar self, actually following the moon as it waxes and wanes through the phases has proven to be the most effective means of “lunarization.” Thanks to fair weather in late January and early February, I was able to observe all of the phases, beginning with the first slim crescent after the new moon to the waning quarter three weeks later.

The moon rises on average an hour later every day, and I found myself grooving to this quirky rhythm, each night eagerly anticipating the next phase’s arrival over the eastern horizon. I imagined that I could sense the rotation of the earth and the intricate geometrical relationship between earth, sun and moon. Then the clouds rolled in and blotted out the sky for the next several weeks, and I had some semblance of what the ancients must have experienced when the moon disappeared from their sky.

One of the oldest and most elegant explanations for the moon’s disappearance comes from Vedic astrology, or Jyotisha. Originating in India some 4000 years ago, Jyotisha places far more emphasis on the moon than do other branches of astrology. Instead of 12 constellations, there are 28 “mansions,” individual star fields that correspond to each separate phase of the moon. Over thousands of years, Indian astronomers have used this system to map the sky, noting the alignments between phases and constellations, and relating them to current events as they happen.

“Jyotisha tracks the dance between the sun and the moon and their relationship to one another,” explains Penny Farrow, a Jyotisha teacher at the Vedic Vidya Institute in San Rafael. In India, Jyotisha is one of six integral parts of a complex philosophical system known as the Veda; Jyotisha is called the eyes of the Veda and is still used today. “Through accurate calculations, obser-vations of the sky and direct experience, it is linked to the destiny of man,” Farrow says.

Seeking an explanation for the moon’s monthly disappearing act, early Vedic astronomers looked to the stars and the 28 mansions of the moon, imagining that the mansions housed 28 sisters. In this case, the moon was considered male, and as it passed through each mansion, it paid each sister a visit. Some of the sisters began to notice that the moon seemed to favor one sister over the others, and they complained to the creator, who honored their grumbling and caused the moon to wane and die. But that upset the sisters, too, and they begged the creator to bring the moon back. The moon has been waxing and waning ever since.

On a personal level, Farrow says Jyotisha can be used by anyone who feels hhis or her life is out of balance. The system can also be used to test the balance of entire cultures. Farrow says Vedic astrologers successfully predicted the calamitous times we’re presently passing through long before 9-11 changed the world forever. For those of us who have lost the moon, that may sound like a lot of mumbo-jumbo, but as far as Farrow is concerned, it’s all there, in the dance between the sun and the moon and the stars.

For those among us who have forgotten the moon and remain skeptical of its powers, I’m reminded of a line from the Tao Te Ching : “Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice.” In Jack London’s Valley of the Moon, Saxon and Billy eventually find what they were looking for. Turns out that sonoma was the Suisun tribe’s word for “valley of the moon,” where Saxon and Billy began their journey in the first place. Wherever you go, there you are.

As for myself, the clouds parted and I finally found the moon again. As this story waxed and waned in my mind, I stepped outside into the night, and there it was, a silvery slit in the western sky above Dry Valley, nicely complemented by the nearby jewel of Venus. Farrow says when the moon appears in a showy combination like this, it can bring good luck.

I was ecstatic after not seeing the moon for so many days, but its placement puzzled me at first. I’d grown accustomed to finding it above the eastern horizon and hadn’t expected to find it in the west. I felt . . . unbalanced. Then I remembered that the moon comes up an hour later each day. It was right where it was supposed to be, irresistibly and inevitably drawing me toward it.

From the March 3-10, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Swirl ‘n’ Spit

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Swirl ‘n’ Spit
Tasting Room of the Week

Roshambo Winery

By Heather Irwin

Vibe: Tour a few wineries and you get pretty used to the usual tasting-room small talk. Chatty, soulless banter of the “You from around here?” variety that makes your ears bleed after a while. So when the guy with the skin art started to pour and the woman behind the white rubber bar asked us, “You from around here?” we were a little disappointed. That was, until she finished with “Because we’re trying to find a cool local band for our party next month.”

Right. And that would be the “Prince”’80s dress-up tank party? Nope. They already have a celebrity impersonator for that. It turns out they need a band for the party two weeks after that.

Throw mama from the wine train, baby. At Roshambo, the kids are kickin’ it like it’s 1999–a vintage year after, all.

At the helm: All steel, concrete and glass, this two-year-old newcomer is the upstart of the valley, swinging a wine glass between its bejeweled toes and refusing to be ignored. Located at the southern end of the Russian River Valley, its young owner Naomi Johnson Brilliant is carving a niche in spicy, saucy Zins, most notably with the 2000 and 2001 Dry Creek and Olson Vineyards releases.

Though Brilliant has neither a background in wineries nor winemaking (she studied art), it’s a decided advantage. Because after years of trying and failing to get friends to drink wine, she decided maybe it wasn’t the wine that was the problem but wine’s image. Her goal became to make wine and winetasting more approachable to the beer-and-cocktail set: unstuffy, unpretentious, and of course, really, really cool.

Certainly, some critics say too much time is spent on the T-shirts and the art gallery funk-factor of the tasting room and not enough on the quality of the wine. But everyone’s a critic and the proof is in the bottle. Roshambo’s Zins are quietly winning awards after just two years of production and are, we hear, being matched at a number of posh eateries around town. The whites, especially the Chardonnay, still have a little maturing to do. But honestly, who doesn’t?

Mouth value: 2001 Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel; 2002 R.P.S. Dry Creek Valley Syrah Rose. Try the 2001 Roshambo Chardonnay and see what you think.

Party on: The winery will host a celebrity tank event that’s oh-so-Prince on Saturday, March 6, 7-11pm. $15, reservations required. The next gallery opening is Saturday, March 13, 5-8pm with photographer Steven Starfas and installation artist Bianca Partee. The winery’s two-year anniversary party with the Lemon Lime Lights takes place Saturday, March 20.

Five-second snob: So, what’s with the name? Roshambo is the rock- paper-scissors game–you know, the one where you crush your brother’s hand and scream, “Rock beats scissors, sucka!” Naomi loved the game as a child growing up in Japan (where it is called jan ken pon), and as a tribute to her mixed Californian-Japanese heritage and her skill at the shake, the name just stuck.

Spot: Roshambo Winery, 3000 Westside Road, Healdsburg. Open daily, 10:30am-4:30pm. Tastings free; picnicking available. 707.431.2051 or 1.888.525.VINE.

From the March 3-10, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Zazu

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Enjoy!: Husband-and-wife chefs John Stewart and Duskie Estes preside over ZaZu.

–>Date Night

Zazu passes the roadhouse road test

By Heather Irwin

My personal ad reads something like this: SCD (single, confident diner) seeking same. Likes piña coladas and eating foie gras in the rain. No side-order phobias or boiled-chicken fetishes. Lite and nonfats need not apply. Your favorite restaurant review gets mine.

So you have to understand that if an acquaintance sticks around long enough to be worth a nice dinner, he is inevitably subjected to my restaurant road test. Because if you can’t respect his entrée, how can you respect him in the morning?

Zazu turns out to be the ideal proving ground in a casual, gravel-parking-lot-and-screen-door kind of way. The country bistro vibe features a menu complex enough to really kick your dining partner’s gustatory tires but simple enough that the test drive isn’t a white-knuckle affair.

Run by thirtysomething husband-and-wife chefs John Stewart and Duskie Estes, Zazu has a funky, offbeat atmosphere that feels a lot like going over to a cool friend’s place, only with tablecloths, great service, a clean bathroom and really good food. Long and narrow, the bar spans the front half with only a handful of small tables alongside. The back is cozier, with a padded banquette and cafe-style tables that let you rub elbows with aplomb. Not too romantic, not too noisy, not too committed for casual daters or a friendly gathering, yet cozy enough for the married (and hoping-to-be) folk.

The menu, like any good date, is obviously trying hard to impress but comes across with understated eagerness rather than sloppy, wet pretense. Strict adherents to seasonal cooking, Stewart and Estes offer a quirky combination of home-style American and Northern Italian. Kind of Mario Batali meets Paula Deen meets the Naked Chef.

Eyes bigger than our stomachs, we hit the small plates hard, ordering a big, flaky Dungeness crab cake (a thumbs-up for the date’s first order of the night) loaded with fresh crab and roasted butternut squash, sitting on a healthy squirt of Old Bay aioli ($13.50), and the small-plate special, seared foie gras with a mushroom-shaped brioche and pineapple relish ($13).

I was jonesing for the Hog Island oysters with pomegranate cosmopolitan granité ($2.50 each), but by 8pm they’d run out. (On my two visits, a number of items had run out later in the evening, so if you want something particular, go early. Seating starts at 5:30pm).

The big plates are just that–big–and vary both seasonally and sometimes nightly, according to what’s looking best at the markets and from the produce suppliers. This being late winter, the dishes are pretty hearty, featuring pork, lamb, scallops and steak. The grilled Hereford flat iron steak with Point Reyes blue cheese ravioli and roasted garlic ($23) is a year-round staple and an easy winner. But we were feeling more adventurous.

He went for the diver scallops ($25), grilled and tender, sitting atop a generous bowl of risotto that was nearly black with bitter radicchio and a sweet rather than tangy 25-year-old balsamic vinegar studded with small bits of Forelle pear. The result was a lobbing of creamy, sweet, savory and bitter on the palate. Think of it as a workout for your taste buds. And it was another menu score for my date–comforting but with just the right amount of danger.

Not being one to ever refuse poetry, I tried the Ode to Pork ($21.50). The cuts were somewhat unusual, being pork cheeks and belly. The cheeks have a darker, almost shredded, barbecue-like quality that were fall-apart tender in a light, slightly sweet apple cider sauce.

The belly is a whiter, slightly chewier cut, but was also remarkably tender and well-matched with a long ribbon of apple jack cabbage and a thinly layered square of turnip potato gratin. Just a hint–the fibrous cabbage is amazingly hard to cut gracefully, and mine ended up halfway across the table. Then again, I’m a klutz.

King of Cool: Elvis would love Zazu, too.

–>Additional side dishes were initially intriguing: buttermilk mashed potatoes, chard, grits with white truffle oil and collard greens. Being in an adventurous mood, we loved that we could get a plate of three (we picked the taters, grits and greens) to taste for $13.50. But while the greens were smoky and spicy with ham hock, the potatoes and grits left us wanting to move on. Kind of like a bad blind date.

The wine list is extensive and, honestly, a little overwhelming. We decided to split a Hartford Pinot Noir (Sonoma Coast, 2000) and an Atalon Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley, 1999) by the glass ($9 each). While the pinot seemed a bit grapey, the Cab sang “hallelujah” and we ended up fighting over the last sips.

What we especially loved on the wine list were the $5 Clucks–$5 pours that reminded us more than a little bit of our beloved Two Buck Chuck and lacked any pretension whatsoever. OK, so we’re not exactly wine snobs. For those wanting more than a five-buck buzz, Zazu also offers premium pours Thursday through Saturday with specials posted on the chalkboard.

For dessert, Zazu’s specialty of the house is a plate of “better butters” (think Nutter Butters made with actual butter) dipped in melted Scharffen Berger chocolate. By the end of the evening–after some impressive ordering, several glasses of wine and a whole lot of eye-gazing–we were ready to ask the question: “Can we, ah, take that melted chocolate to go?”

Zazu is open Wednesday-Sunday, 5:30pm-10pm, 3535 Guerneville Road, Santa Rosa. 707.523.4814.

After-Dinner Drinks

So you’ve had dinner, you’ve done the movie–now what? Perhaps a little aperitif to aid, of course, with digestion? Grab a coffee, clear your head, then head out again to nearby watering holes.

– Big Bucks: Just down the road a piece from Zazu is the Underwood Bar and Bistro (9113 Graton Road, Graton, 707.823.7023), open late Friday and Saturday. The zinc-topped bar is classy-sophisticated. You’ll feel like you’re somewhere other than, well, Graton.

– Mid-Bucks: Sebastopol’s Ace-in-the-Hole Cider Pub (3100 Gravenstein Hwy. N., 707.829.1101) bills itself as the nation’s only cider pub. So there’s that and the fact that drinking apple juice that will knock you on your ass is pretty much a good time in anyone’s book. Pear, apple, honey and berry flavors are available. Ace has a kicked-back alehouse feel with plenty of room to stretch out, but–and here’s the bad news–they’re only open until 10pm on Friday and Saturday.

– Buck: Head back into Santa Rosa to the 440 Club (434 College Ave., Santa Rosa, 707.542.2550), a post-post-retro cool off-sales bar and liquor store. It ain’t the Ritz, but the drinks are stiff and cheap, and the padded bar is a groovy throwback. The regulars dig old Blue Eyes on the jukebox, and female patrons just might get to dance with the bartender.

–H.I.

From the March 3-10, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Diane Schuur

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After ‘Midnight’: Diane Schuur swings.

–>Schuur Thing

Jazz singer Diane Schuur soars on latest project

By Greg Cahill

Being blind since birth has never kept Diane Schuur from realizing her dreams–even skydiving. Compared to jumping out of an airplane and free-falling several thousand feet, recording with pop icon Barry Manilow was a cake walk for this gifted Seattle-born jazz singer and pianist.

“Not many people are aware of this, but Barry is a huge jazz fan,” says Schuur, whose recent CD, Midnight, features 13 new songs by Manilow. “He is such a giant. The writing was done so lovingly. No one has ever done that for me before.”

Critics have been duly impressed as well, especially since the project took Schuur to new heights and brought newfound credibility to a songwriter better known as the Prince of Schmaltz. “Manilow proves to be an underrated songwriter,” music critic Scott Yanow recently said of the disc, “contributing some touching ballads and a few swingers while collaborating with some talented and often witty lyricists. A few of the songs are good enough to become standards.”

It’s a well-deserved milestone for Schuur, whose first professional gig was singing country songs at a local Holiday Inn at age 10. Twenty-five years ago, jazz tenor saxophonist Stan Getz began championing her career after hearing Schuur sing “Amazing Grace” at the 1979 Monterey Jazz Festival. The song has become something of a signature piece for Schuur, who can bring tears to your eyes with her soaring talents.

Over the years, she has been better known as a pop singer, but Schuur has remained firmly rooted in jazz. She recorded a great 1987 album with the Count Basie Orchestra and has released several impressive swing collections, including 2001’s critically acclaimed Swingin’ for Schuur. Her 1995 recording of Dinah Washington’s “Blue Gardenia” is a spectacular nod to that late, great jazz diva.

North Bay audiences will get a rare chance to get up-close and personal with Schuur at the 19 Broadway nightclub in downtown Fairfax, when the singer holds court at that intimate room on Friday, March 5, for two shows, at 8pm and 10 pm. Admission is $40 (and worth every cent). Comedian Doug Berg opens the show. 415.459.1091.


Jazz Notes

– The North Bay jazz scene is jumping these days. While the March 6 concert with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at the Napa Valley Opera House is sold-out, the Luther Burbank Center–which two weeks ago hosted Nancy Wilson and Ramsey Lewis–will present the Newport Jazz Festival’s 50th-anniversary tour on March 23. The all-star roster for that show includes pianist and composer Cedar Walton; Grammy-nominated guitarist Howard Alden; bassist Peter Washington; Grammy- and Emmy-nominated trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard (music director and composer on several Spike Lee films); tenor saxophonist, flutist and six-time Grammy-nominated soloist Lew Tabackin; clarinetist Ken Peplowski; drummer Karriem Riggins; and comedian and jazz diva Lea DeLaria. $28-$50. 707.546.3600.

– Meanwhile, Zebulon’s Lounge turns up the heat this month with several first-rate jazz acts, from acid to fusion to trad. On Friday, March 5, look for Dave MacNab’s Jazz Lab, featuring L.A. transplant and San Francisco resident Dave MacNab on guitar. MacNab has recorded with Shelby Lynne and Bob Weir and shared the stage with the likes of Sting, k.d. lang, Matchbox 20, Ben Harper, Jeff Beck, Willie Nelson, Taj Mahal, Rickie Lee Jones and Bon Jovi, to name a few. He promises to cook up something new and interesting in his Jazz Lab, which features drummer Scott Amendola (of the Charlie Hunter Quartet) and bassist John Shifflett (who has recorded with everyone from Peter Apfelbaum to Michael Zilber).

– On Saturday, March 13, Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Frankye Kelly (cousin of blues master Albert Collins and a Mississippi native now living in the Bay Area) brings her blues-inflected stylings (think of a young and vivacious Sarah Vaughan) to Zebulon’s; Mel Graves provides accompaniment.

– On March 20, the Broun Fellinis return with their unique brand of hard-bop explorations. This seminal acid-jazz trio (bass, drums and sax) have performed with everyone from Erykah Badu to the Roots, and from Medeski, Martin and Wood to Ben Harper. Did someone say high energy? Zebulon’s Lounge, 2321 Fourth St., Petaluma. 707.769.7948.

–G.C.

From the March 3-10, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Louise Boyd

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Louise Boyd

Heiress and adventurer Louise Boyd’s dual existence

By Jordan E. Rosenfeld

You can have your famous women of history: gun-slinging Western gals, frontierswomen and female pilots. Give me Louise Boyd any day. A Marin County heiress to a gold-rush fortune and a groundbreaking arctic adventurer, Boyd resisted socially dictated constraints, taking up a pastime that put the female hobbies of her peers–like lace tatting and croquet–to shame.

Her critics, and even some admirers, felt the socialite-turned-explorer led a split life unbefitting her gender and station in Depression-era society. After visiting with curator Dawn Laurant of the Marin History Museum–which is hosting an exhibit on Boyd subtitled “Marin’s Arctic Explorer” showing through August–and perusing Boyd’s possessions, I feel confident that Boyd would have proclaimed that hers was not a split life, but rather a complete one. She found ways to satisfy both her debutante self (this woman knew how to throw good parties) as well as her free, ruffian self, who rode horses with her brothers during childhood summers.

Born in 1887 and described as “tall, poised and blue-eyed” (read: not beautiful), Boyd had the finishing-school degree and comportment of a lady and future wife, though not a single prospective husband appeared in the picture. But if her beauty was in question, her decisiveness was not. When the arctic ambrosia took possession of her on a tourist cruise of Norway at age 34, she put aside her fine china, heirloom jewelry and her father’s investment company to sail glacier-laden waters seven more times.

Boyd’s possessions, made possible by the estimated $35 million fortune she derived from her father and uncles’ 19th-century California gold strike, reveal the rival aspects of her nature. A pair of mother-of-pearl and gold-inlaid opera glasses sit opposite her rugged, black expedition binoculars. A silver, engraved picnic set, which looks too dainty and pristine to have ever left the house, rests against a battered, plain leather traveling case. Two weathered snow shoes tower over an ivory pocket knife, embossed leather journals and a beautiful silver compass.

Photographs courtesy of Marin History Museum

Double Life: Marin heiress Louise Boyd seen dressed for presentation at court…

…and an arctic expedition.

The photographs at the museum also show Boyd’s dual aspects. In one photo, she reclines like a heroine from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel draped in elegant silk and beads, her Roman nose and smug grin framed by feline eyes tilted slightly down. In another, only a portion of her face, a giddy smile, is visible within the thick, fur-lined expedition gear. She looks like a woman who could barely be bothered to sit still for the camera and who eventually would prefer to be behind it.

It must be asked why Boyd, who grew up swaddled in privilege, chose to finance and spearhead dangerous arctic expeditions, primarily of Greenland, Denmark and Norway, from which people often did not come back alive and on which she had her share of close calls. Laurant believes Boyd was drawn to the arctic as a “final frontier” beyond all the continents she had already traveled.

“She wrote that the arctic held a beauty she wanted to unlock. Once she got inside the landscape, she would never be outside of it again,” Laurant says. “Her first impression of the arctic was of a blank and soundless world, but that she soon came to know the tremendous variation inside it, and it opened up some of its mystery to her.”

Indeed, a passage from one of Boyd’s journals delivers a mortal meditation on the arctic, a lyric piece of PR: “The icebergs in the fiords–so majestic in height and size–give one a first impression of permanence and everlasting durability. This idea is soon dispelled, however, a booming sound and an instant later what had seemed indestructible is an unrecognizable mass of broken ice.”

For a woman whose considerable wealth came to her as the result of so many deaths of those beloved to her–her two younger brothers, her parents and her uncles–one could easily believe that “inside” the arctic, with its reputation for the barren, Boyd sought a tangible mirror of the death that felled her family. And in her explorations, it appears she found these icy climes to be full of life, compelling her to return.

Alternately, perhaps Boyd wanted an antidote to privileged boredom, to go far from the strictures of civilized high society that was a part of her life on land. It’s hard not to imagine that the mansion known as Maple Lawn, which belonged to her parents, and the Gate House built by her grandfather, which became a temple to her deceased brothers, were suffocating tributes to loss. Donated to Marin County in honor of her brothers in 1935, the Gate House has been the home of the Marin History Museum since the mid-’60s.

It’s also easy to cultivate an image of Boyd as a lost and lonely spinster, or perhaps a closeted lesbian, since, as Laurant notes, no amount of digging through her letters and journals reveals a hint of a lover. But it is clear that Boyd did have one great love: the chilled beauty of the arctic itself, the thrill of discovery to which her wealth allowed her access.

With no experience, in 1926 she chartered a Norwegian sealing vessel, the MS Hobby, and hired a team of polar experts and scientists for a further expedition of the icy wastes of the arctic. Stakes were high and skeptics were full of wind that the heiress could not do anything that male explorers before her, like Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, hadn’t already done. Not one to halt for criticism, Boyd handled everything herself, from hiring crew to ordering provisions (the lists read like ingredients for a feast) and equipment (these crews were likely the envy of others), financing the venture in full.

On that first trip, Boyd even did some hunting, bagging a few polar bears, next to one of which she is proudly posed in a photo. According to Laurant, she soon realized this wasn’t an appropriate way to treat the wildlife she so admired. On the next of her seven total expeditions, all shots fired were from her Kodak Eastman.

This particular camera had its standard wood construction replaced with aluminum to make it arctic-friendly. Louise later sold this camera to her friend Ansel Adams, who went on to use it for years. Her photographs became well-known and won her the prestigious Cullum Geographical Medal from the National Geographic Society, which also published two of her books.

Both by chance and by intention, many of Boyd’s trips did serve larger purposes. In 1928 she garnered international attention when she joined a search in Greenland for the missing explorer Roald Amundsen. Boyd changed her personal plans and led a 10,000-mile search for Amundsen, traversing the coast of Spitzbergen and crisscrossing the Greenland Sea.

Though the lost explorer was never found, King Haakon of Norway recognized Boyd’s contribution and presented her with the Chevalier Cross of the Order of St. Olav. She was the first woman to ever receive this honor. It wouldn’t be her last medal; Boyd was eventually as decorated as a war veteran, earning five other honors, among them medals from the Swedish and French governments.

Boyd’s gritty determination took her to places no one had ever been. During a 1931 expedition, she made it to Ice Fjord, an inlet never before visited by ship. The Danish government named the area Weisboydlund, or “Miss Boyd Land,” in her honor. Who needs a husband when they’re naming fjords after you?

Still, it’s clear that her biggest contributions were her photographs–bigger even than her assignment for the U.S. government leading reconnaissance to provide maps, charts and photographs essential to radio transmissions between allied pilots and submarines during WWII. Only a fraction of her photos hang on the Marin History Museum’s walls. Most are retained in the National Geographic collections, but even the handful here are enchanting.

Boyd’s photographs of glaciers and fjords are shocking and gorgeous. Life throbs inside contrasting configurations of dark water and bright icebergs. It’s hard not to fall prey to the obsession that bit Boyd, imagining oneself trekking blank slates of ice, and navigating through subzero temperatures and bone-carving winds.

Boyd’s final expedition, in 1955 when she was 68, was not by sea. During all her trips, she had had never come closer than 300 miles to the North Pole. She chartered a DC4 plane and crew and made headlines again by becoming the first woman to fly over the North Pole, as well as the first person to privately finance such a journey. After that, she retired back to the civilized world of parties and connections, though she maintained correspondence with many of her expedition associates, who had come to respect, admire and possibly even fear the regal woman who out-hiked and out-endured them yet stood to lose a lot more than they.

Eventually having to depend on friends for subsistence, Louise Boyd died on the eve of her 85th birthday, her fortune spent but surely not, as some have suggested, squandered.

‘Louise Boyd: Marin’s Arctic Explorer’ exhibits through August at the Marin History Museum, 1125 B St., San Rafael. Hours are Monday and Wednesday-Thursday, 1pm-3pm, and the third Saturday of each month, noon-4pm. Free. 415.454.8538.

From the February 25-March 3, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Armageddon

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Armageddon

Strong-Arming It: Pass my bond measure, baby.

Bring It On

Everyone’s guide to flirting with Armageddon

By R. V. Scheide

If someone were to hang a placard above the entrance to the California Primary 2004, it might read something like this: “Abandon all principals, ye who enter here.” Whether you’re conservative, moderate, liberal or some political shade in between, there’s just about no way to get out of the voting booth this time around with your ideals totally intact. Such is the intellectual violence of this season’s contest.

The culprit, of course, is that mythical bottomless pit known as the state budget, which last November figured prominently in the successful recall of Gov. Gray Davis. Tech-bubble exuberance and legislative gridlock got the better of the lackluster Davis. His replacement, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, star of some of the most violent action movies ever made, now threatens voters, if they do not pass his Economic Recovery Plan, with Armageddon.

Unfortunately, it’s not a merely a threat; it’s a cold, hard economic fact. If Arnold’s big package falls limp, nearly every analyst agrees that state services will be cut as much as 20 percent across the board. Complicating the matter, the two initiatives composing the governor’s big package–Proposition 57, a hefty $15 billion debt-relief bond, and Proposition 58, the California Balanced Budget Act–are tied together.

If Proposition 57 fails, Proposition 58 cannot be enacted and vice-versa. Voters must pass both, or the budget will spiral downward into those icy levels where Wall Street degrades the state’s already abysmal bond rating below that of Buenos Aires, potholes crater the streets, the homeless stalk the sidewalks and, God forbid, even moderate Republicans openly suggest taxing the rich.

Armageddon, indeed. The rats are once again deserting the ship, leaving voters to patch, shore and bail for themselves. Actually, it’s the children of these voters who’ll be paying the damages, in the form of principal and interest on the multibillion dollar bonds that have been proposed to keep the state vessel afloat.

In addition to Arnold’s big package, there’s Proposition 55, the Kindergarten-University Public Education Act, a $12.3 billion school bond. Then there’s Proposition 56, the Budget Accountability Act, which seeks to lower the Legislative supermajority requirement to pass budgets and budget-related tax increases from 66 percent to 55 percent, supposedly breaking that legendary legislative gridlock. It also forces the governor and the Legislature to work without pay until a budget is passed if the annual June deadline is not met.

During years of surplus budgets (a fairly optimistic projection, if the Rapture is indeed upon us, as President George W. Bush seems to believe), Proposition 56 creates a “rainy day” fund in which specified increases in revenue will be deposited for use during future economic downturns. The initiative also provides voters with tools to hold lawmakers accountable, requiring summarized budget information on state ballot pamphlets and the listing of legislators’ voting records on the Internet.

As if all that’s not confusing enough, registered Democrats must deal with the causus belli for the election, the Democratic presidential primary. As of this writing, the race has been whittled down to two contenders, senators John Kerry and John Edwards, but 10 candidates remain on the ballot. Is choosing a candidate other than one of the two anointed frontrunners a wasted vote?

The answer is complex and depends more on the individual voter’s political temperament than any advice the Bohemian might be able to provide. Same goes for the propositions. With that in mind, the following text breaks down the electorate by political types: conservative, moderate, progressive and two flavors of maverick, Dean and McCain. Adhering to the ideals of these individual types should provide a handy guide for warding off, or ushering on, Armageddon, whichever the voter’s preference might be.

Progressive: The progressive category includes Green Party members, far-left-leaning Democrats and independents who place the value of community over those of industry. While radical in nature, the progressive is constrained in the current political climate by this devotion to community, which is after all what the Gropenator threatens with Armageddon. Thus, the following selections seem prudent, if not necessarily obvious.

President: Dennis Kucinich. The senator from Ohio opposed the war against Iraq when it counted and has a proven record championing progressive causes.

Proposition 55: Vote yes. At least you know where the money for this $12.3 million school bond is going. Sort of.

Proposition 56: Vote yes. It’s not as easy a decision as progressives might at first think, though. Lowering the supermajority requirement from 66 to 55 percent might break gridlock now, but suppose some day the Green Party finds itself in the position of today’s conservative legislative minority, which wields enormous influence over the budgeting process? Be nice to ball up the latest deforestation project in committee, wouldn’t it?

Proposition 57: Vote yes. As much as progressives might want to see Schwarzenegger fail, too many people will get hurt by the cuts that will be implemented if propositions 57 and 58 don’t pass.

Proposition 58: Vote yes. Anyone who thinks the so-called Balanced Budget Act will put an end to the state’s financial shenanigans is probably smoking angel dust. But if you don’t vote for 58, 57 fails too.

Maverick, Flavor One: Realm of the Deaniacs. This is a swing category for registered Democrats, and it’s where the action is this election cycle. Like their favorite presidential candidate, mavericks are mad, impulsive, pissed off. Their anger courts their own doom, but they don’t care. They’re mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

President: Howard Dean. A vote for Dean is like flipping the bird at Kerry and Edwards, both of whom wilted while George W. Bush and the neocons’ imperial sun was rising. At convention time, the vote counts, when it comes to shaping the party’s platform.

Proposition 55: Vote yes. At least you know where the money for this $12.3 million school bond is going. Sort of.

Proposition 56: Vote yes. Deaniac mavericks like to get things done. Reducing the supermajority requirement will break the gridlock in the short-term and provide Democrats (your party, after all) the leverage necessary to raise taxes on the rich. Those legislators who don’t play along can rest assured that the Mavericks will be out there, tracking their votes on the internet.

Proposition 57: Vote no. You recognize Arnold’s big package for what it is: yet another tax increase in disguise as a billion dollar bond issue. Some disappointed mavericks can’t believe they voted for this clown in the recall.

Proposition 58: Vote yes. Just to piss the governor off.

Moderate: Playing It Safe. Moderates can be Democrat, Republican or Independent. They can be conservative or liberal, depending on the occasion. They represent the largest block of voters, the great whitewashed middle. All this talk about Armageddon scares the hell out of them, and they vote accordingly.

President: John Kerry. For registered moderate Democrats, genuine war hero Kerry offers the sense of security sorely lacking in the presidency since 9-11.

Proposition 55: Vote yes. Moderates are suckers for school bonds and they know where the money is going. Sort of.

Proposition 56: Vote yes. Moderates hate confrontation, and since the 66 percent supermajority was passed in 1979, the legislative process has become entirely too argumentative. A simple majority would be fine with most moderates, so 55 percent is entirely agreeable.

Proposition 57: Vote yes. No one knows what an estimated 20 percent cut in state services across the board looks like, but if it’s any worse than Arnold’s film version of Armageddon, End of Days, the state is in deep shit. Moderates don’t like Armageddon. Too messy, too final.

Proposition 58: Vote yes. The moderate has no other choice. Remember, 57 and 58 are linked.

Maverick, Flavor Two: Memories of McCain. This maverick is a registered Republican or Independent who tends to think on the conservative side, but isn’t shy about occasionally breaking ranks with party ideology.

President: Ineligible, but if the California primary was open, McCain mavericks would vote for John Edwards. It’s the best shot at keeping the Democrats divided.

Proposition 55: Vote no. Unlike their more liberal cohort, these mavericks know a tax increase when they see one.

Proposition 56: Vote no. These mavericks also realize the power the two-thirds supermajority grants the conservative minority in the Legislature.

Proposition 57: Vote yes. After all, Gov. Schwarzenegger is a Republican. He deserves the benefit of the doubt, even if this proposition, which borrows money to pay the state’s debt, goes against everything such mavericks stand for.

Proposition 58: Vote yes. The Terminator was a great film.

Conservative: Contemplating Total Negation. Despite what you might have heard, conservatives aren’t necessarily wild about the results of the recall. Arnold is clearly a heathen who has so far refused to take the “no new taxes” pledge. Unlike the other groups here, this hard-bitten lot has no fear whatsoever of Armageddon. Like their commander in chief, they say, “Bring it on!”

President: Ineligible, but if the primary was open, Al Sharpton. The far right helped fund his campaign, after all.

Proposition 55: Vote no. Borrow money to fund schools where a child can’t say a prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance? Fuhgeddaboutit.

Proposition 56: Vote no. Giving up the only power conservatives have in the state is total insanity.

Proposition 57: Vote no. No matter what the conservative California Taxpayers’ Association says, a little Armageddon never hurt anyone.

Proposition 58: Vote no. Conservatives favor balanced budgets, but with Armageddon within in such easy grasp, why take a chance? Vote no, and bring it on.

From the February 25-March 3, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Democratic Primary

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Democratic Primary

Photograph by Michael Amsler

Party of One: A recent candidate’s forum in Sebastopol drew an underwhelming crowd.

Done Deal

Mainstream media have given it to Kerry. Why are we having a primary?

By Tara Treasurefield

Santa Rosa resident Tille Cassidy is an avid Howard Dean supporter, having walked local precincts for the Vermont governor’s Democratic presidential campaign. Interested in learning where the other candidates stand on the issues, she attended a candidate’s forum at Sebastopol’s Masonic Center on Feb. 10. Cassidy never imagined she’d become one of the featured speakers of the evening.

The Kucinich campaign organized the event, and invited the Clark and Dean campaign representatives from Sonoma County, along with a member from the Kerry campaign in Marin. But the only speaker to show up that night was Miles Everett, representing Dennis Kucinich.

That’s not surprising, as earlier that day, several pivotal events shook the other campaigns. John Kerry won both the Tennessee and Virginia primaries, Wesley Clark decided to withdraw, and Howard Dean was hanging by a thread.

In the face of all that, few had the time or energy for a candidates’ forum. Facilitator Michael Gillette asked for volunteers from the crowd of 25 people to speak for the campaigns that weren’t represented. Cassidy’s hand shot up, almost in spite of herself, and a few minutes later, she was at the podium speaking for Howard Dean.

The audience learned a lot about Dean and Kucinich that night, and a little about Clark and Kerry. But the air was gloomy. “Everyone knows that Kerry will be the Democratic nominee for president,” said one attendee. “Why vote on March 2?”

A fair question to ask, particularly since moving the California primary from June to March in the 1990s was supposed to give Californians a say in choosing presidential candidates. Now it appears that yet again, a presidential primary candidate has wrapped up the nomination before a single Californian has cast a vote. Who’s responsible for reducing the choice to a single candidate without California voters having a say in it?

Media Massage Message

The Kucinich campaign’s Everett thinks he has at least part of the answer: the mainstream media. “The other night on a news broadcast, in a picture of all the candidates onstage, Kucinich was blocked out by the podium,” he says. “It’s the sort of thing that a news photographer ordinarily just does not do. I try to resist paranoia, but I think the major media are trying to minimize exposure even of Kucinich’s name.”

Carl Jensen, professor emeritus of communication studies at Sonoma State University and founder of Project Censored, shares Everett’s low opinion. “I was outraged at what they did to Dean,” he says. “Now they have eliminated all other major candidates but John Kerry. It’s obvious their methodology is working.”

Sour grapes from sore losers? Perhaps. But a growing body of hard evidence supports Everett and Jensen’s suspicions. From national outlets like the New York Times and CNN to such sources as the local paper and TV news, the mainstream media routinely promote certain candidates while discrediting others.

Last year during a debate on ABC-TV’s Nightline, news anchor Ted Koppel introduced Dennis Kucinich as “the boy mayor of Cleveland.” Ignoring the slight, Kucinich took Koppel to task for asking the candidates how they felt about Gore’s endorsement of Dean, instead of addressing real issues.

When Koppel then observed that Kucinich wasn’t doing terribly well with money and was doing even worse in the polls, Kucinich said, “I want the American people to see where the media take politics in this country. We started talking about endorsements, now we’re talking about polls and then we’re talking about money. Well, you know, when you do that, you don’t have to talk about what’s important to the American people. It may be inconvenient for some of those in the media, but you know, I’m sorry about that.”

It wasn’t the first time the media shortchanged Kucinich. Before a CNN debate in October, each Democratic contender was supposed to receive the same amount of talk time. But when it was over, National Journal revealed the amount of time each candidate actually received. Dean, then the frontrunner, was given 14 minutes. Kerry, whose campaign was floundering at the time, was given 12; Clark, 10. Way down at the very bottom of the list was Kucinich, with five minutes. He was allowed to speak only a third to a half as much as most of the candidates, and less than all of them.

Another glaring incident was CNN’s blackout of Kucinich in reports from the Washington and Maine caucuses, Feb. 7 and 8, respectively. Kucinich placed third in both states, ahead of John Edwards, Wesley Clark and Al Sharpton. But as far as CNN was concerned, he wasn’t even in the running. Before the Maine caucus, Kucinich spoke at five different caucus sites, one of which was filled with television cameras.

According to William Rivers Pitt, the Kucinich campaign’s press secretary, CNN reported, “Dean, struggling to revive his once-promising campaign, was the only candidate who campaigned in the state Sunday, making stops in six cities.” There are no two ways about it: the statement was false.

Such a Thing as Bad Publicity

Kucinich isn’t the only Democratic contender the media have treated unfairly this election season. In an analysis of nightly newscasts on CBS, NBC and ABC for January, both Media Channel and Media Tenor, two reputable media watchdogs, found that John Kerry, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and John Edwards received 93.8 percent of the time that was allotted to Democratic candidate coverage. The remaining 6.2 percent was divided among Al Sharpton, Joe Lieberman and Dennis Kucinich.

Of course, simply receiving more coverage does not necessarily guarantee a successful candidacy. Just ask Howard Dean. A January study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a nonpartisan research and educational organization, found that before the Iowa caucuses, 98 percent of the network evening news coverage of Kerry and Edwards was positive.

Over the same period, Dean received only 58 percent positive coverage. The center concludes that the networks “anointed” Kerry and Edwards before Iowa voters did. If the results in Iowa are any indication, it seems that the old adage “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” no longer holds.

Similarly, another CMPA study in January found that “a majority of nightly network newscast evaluations of Democratic presidential frontrunner Howard Dean were negative during the 2003 ‘preseason,’ while three-quarters of the coverage given to the other eight candidates was favorable.”

To illustrate how it determines what’s positive and what’s negative, CMPA provides samples of typical network news coverage just before the Iowa caucus:

“I believe in [Kerry]. I believe what he says. I believe that he means what he says.”–Unidentified Iowa voter, ABC (Jan. 18)

“I like [Edwards’] approach to the election. I like the way he treats other people.”–Iowan Earl Crow, NBC (Jan. 11)

“[Dean] just makes one dumb statement after another.”–Drake University professor, ABC (Jan. 9)

According to CMPA, “Not one person quoted by the networks had anything critical to say about North Carolina senator John Edwards (100 percent favorable coverage) in the two and a half weeks leading up to the Iowa caucus, while 96 percent of the evaluations of Massachusetts senator John Kerry were positive.”

By contrast, few living Americans have escaped hearing or reading about what’s come to be known as Dean’s “I have a scream” speech after the Iowa caucus. Trying to rally his supporters after the disappointing loss in Iowa, Dean used a special microphone that cancels out crowd noise in order to be heard above the din. The networks recorded Dean’s remarks directly from the microphone, making it appear that Dean was screaming at the top of his lungs in a silent room. That didn’t stop the media from running with the story, which effectively doomed the Dean campaign.

Matthew Felling, CMPA’s media director, says, “When some saw Howard Dean [after Iowa], they saw a man who was proving his resilience; it was like a pep rally. . . . [But the media] showed the speech 633 times to bolster the claim of his unelectability. In the week between Iowa and New Hampshire, when they should have been picking apart Kerry and Edwards, they continued covering Dean’s demise.”

So far, only ABC and CNN have acknowledged the exaggerated attention given to the incident. ABC corrected the “I have a scream” story by noting the special microphone, and CNN acknowledged that it gave the story excessive airtime.

“Finally, of course, the pressure will be to drive Dean out,” Jensen says. “If they can’t beat him in Wisconsin, then here in California on March 2.” (As this article was going to press, Dean had stopped actively campaigning after finishing third behind Kerry and Edwards.)

Felling adds, “When you look at the reality of the situation, Dean has the second most delegates of the race right now. But [the media] are treating him like he doesn’t have a chance of winning, placing, or showing. March 2 will be the nails in the coffin.”

The media focus on the horse race and have a short attention span when it comes to complex issues, the CMPA found. Only 17 percent of the stories covering the Democratic race have investigated the candidates’ voting records, proposals or positions on issues, while a full 71 percent have focused on poll numbers and behind-the-scenes tactics.

Singing the Dean Dirge

Political scholar and author Michael Parenti once said, “The ruling classes have always wanted just one thing: everything.” Nowhere has this become more apparent than with the continuing monopolization of mainstream media. The major media companies, Viacom, Disney, AOL TimeWarner, NewsCorp and NBC/GE, control 70 percent of prime-time network television and most cable channels. They also have vast holdings in radio, publishing, movie studios, music, Internet and other business sectors.

Clear Channel alone owns over 1,200 radio stations and 37 television stations, and is in 248 of the top 250 radio markets. And on Feb. 10, Comcast put in a $66 billion bid to buy Disney, which owns the ABC television network and ESPN. Already the largest cable company in the United States and the top provider of broadband, Comcast opposes a policy that would let the Internet remain uncensored. The media giants have spent nearly $100 million on lobbying since 1999 to increase their control of the airwaves.

In Everett’s opinion, the media block out Kucinich because he’s intent on dismantling them. “They know very well that they would be in for some rough sledding if he ever became president,” he says.

Jensen has a similar explanation for the media’s treatment of Dean. “I think it’s really more than coincidence that last November, Dean vowed to re-regulate the media, and under questioning, admitted that he would seek to break up a company like AOL Time Warner. It was after that that the media’s attitude about Dean seemed to change, from one of the fair-haired boy, their anointed victor, to the angry man. The corporate media is a serious threat to our democracy, and Dean literally promised to do something about that.”

Felling has several other explanations for the media’s behavior. “The news magazines really fell for Dean hard last summer,” he says. “They were looking for an anti-Bush, a south pole to Bush’s north pole. It was a compelling story.

“[But after] people started paying attention to him, he was no longer the loveable loser. He was getting arrows from the press and from his opponents. He suffered the most from having nine or 10 rivals for the nomination. Everyone can take on the frontrunner. We saw Gephardt get very negative on Dean in Iowa. The voters did not reward Gephardt, but they rewarded the alternative. I think Americans fell for that bumper sticker ‘Date Dean and Marry Kerry.’ They were really into the passion and verve of Dean, but they weren’t willing to commit.”

Also, adds Felling, “[the media] simplify things to a horrible and destructive degree. In 2000 most people looked at the presidential race as the Liar vs. the Dunce. Here we were with Dean and Bush, the Angry Man vs. the Cowboy. [They were] covering Howard Dean for a lot of 2003. Then they cracked open the frontrunner and saw what made him tick. That’s what the media are supposed to do with presumptive nominees. But after Iowa, the media didn’t move to Kerry and Edwards scrutiny. They just continued to sing the dirge of Dean.”

Money Primaries

There’s yet another factor that helps explain the media’s rejection of certain candidates: money or, rather, the lack of it. Media analyst Norman Solomon says, “In the presidential race, the most important early contests are the ‘money primary’ and the ‘media primary.’ Both occur before a single vote has been cast. Generally, for presidential campaigns, raising a lot of money is a necessary precondition for serious national media coverage. And, with few exceptions, extensive media coverage is crucial for effective fundraising.”

Of course, the media aren’t alone in shaping the outcome of elections. Witness the exclusion of Dennis Kucinich from the Feb. 22 debate in Los Angeles for failing to meet the League of Women Voters’ requirement that all participants must have “a standing of at least 3 percent in a nationally recognized independent poll of likely voters, such as Gallop, CNN, NBC/Washington Post, Zogby, etc.”

According to the League, this is really the doing of the Commission on Presidential Debates, a creation of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee. The commission took over the presidential debates in 1988, and maintains tight control of how they’re run. Open debates are part of Kucinich’s platform, and according to the Kucinich campaign website, “The [Commission on Presidential Debates] has transformed the presidential debates from dynamic political forums to glorified news conferences where candidates recite prepackaged sound bites and avoid significant issues discussion.”

Swinging the Swingers

Steven Hill is senior analyst at the Center for Voting and Democracy in San Francisco and author of Fixing Elections. He says that the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) lined up against Dean for several reasons, including his characterization of the DLC as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, his support for gay rights in Vermont and his stand against the war on Iraq. Also, says Hill, “Bill Clinton [who founded the DLC] thinks you have to win with a prosperity-celebrating message. ‘Dean the angry Democrat’ doesn’t play well among the swing voters.”

In Fixing Elections, Hill defines swing voters as “that small slice of fuzzy-headed and disengaged voters who determine the outcome of elections [in the United States].” And as far as the DLC is concerned, the swing voters-citizens who live in states where both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have a chance of winning-are the only voters that matter. On this point, the DLC and Steven Hill are in full agreement.

“It’s going to come down to this handful of states,” Hill says, naming Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington state, Minnesota and New Hampshire. “To [the DLC], it’s very much a map kind of thing. It’s too bad the media focuses on other things. The public would be better served and better informed if the media looked at it the way [the DLC] does. All the polls that show Kerry is ahead of Bush are meaningless. The only meaningful polls are in the swing states.”

But as Hill says, few Americans are concerned about swing states. In California right now, they’re wondering if there’s any reason to vote for one of the Democratic presidential contenders in the March 2 primary.

Speaking to this point, media critic Solomon says, “In the corporate-driven vehicles of presidential races, any individual is expendable, and it’s certainly possible that Kerry won’t be nominated. But as a practical matter, the campaign for the Democratic nomination seems to be just about over. People in California will be in a position to essentially ratify judgments that have already been rendered, via caucuses and primaries, elsewhere in the country.”

“Such realities should not make us passive; they should spur us on to do more effective grassroots organizing and to challenge the media conglomerates by building independent noncorporate media institutions, as well as by confronting the corporate mainstream media.”

Those who have campaigned locally for candidates remain anything but passive. Attorney and mediator Paul Zamarian coordinates the Clark campaign in Sonoma County. Now that Clark has dropped out of the race, he has a new priority. “It’s the end of Clark’s presidential campaign, but it’s not the end of the ‘unseating George Bush campaign,'” he says.

A member of the Sonoma County Democratic National Committee, Zamarian says the group will back whoever wins the nomination. “I’m going to suggest to our grassroots people–and hopefully the Dean people will do the same–that they keep their group fairly intact, and we all join forces in getting people to register and work for the defeat of George Bush,” Zamarian stresses. “The message this year is ‘Get rid of George Bush.'”

Newtonian Politics

Zamarian says he’ll probably vote for Clark in the California primary, and believes that he’d make a good secretary of state or secretary of defense if the Democrats retake the presidency.

Jensen, who co-hosts the Rohnert Park/Cotati Dean Meet-Up group, says that the Dean campaign is very much alive. “At our meeting on Feb. 4–following Iowa, New Hampshire and all that stuff–I was very apprehensive. I was surprised that 25 people showed up, and that they weren’t saying, ‘What’s happened to Dean? Maybe we should stop.’ They were mad, they were absolutely mad!

“The upshot was that they demanded that I hold the meetings once a week instead of every other week. Then we had a Dean Visibility Day and about a dozen people showed up at the Cotati Plaza. Dean’s campaign is [actually] a movement. People are out to change the system.”

The Kucinich campaign is also a movement, says Everett, and it has only begun. “This is just chapter one of Kucinich on the national scene,” he assures. “We have a lead personality now that we’ve lacked since [Minnesota senator] Paul Wellstone’s death. What we may be helping to create here is a national senator from Ohio who would be enormously valuable with the kind of following he has throughout the country now, where everything he says is going to resonate with people who have gotten involved in this campaign.”

Everett stresses another reason to vote for Dean or Kucinich on March 2. As long as they’re in the race, every vote cast for them will help them win delegates, and the more delegates they have, the more respect they’ll get in July, at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

“What’s important is that there be a strong progressive vote in as many states as we can muster it. We need as many progressive delegates at the convention as we can get,” Everett says. “That might be the only time a lot of people will hear either Dean or Kucinich: during their platform time. If the Democratic leadership wants the Dean and Kucinich delegates, they’d better show them respect.”

Tille Cassidy explains why she’s going to vote in the March 2 primary. “I never give up,” she says. “We can’t afford to give up. We need to get out there and vote. My vision is that some of the candidates will have a merging of sorts and combine delegates, to represent issues that aren’t part of Kerry’s platform. There are a lot of good people out there. We could have a powerful platform and program. Get out and vote. Don’t ever give up. We’re really close to making significant changes to our government.”

From the February 25-March 3, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Heart of the Sea’

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‘Heart of the Sea’

Photograph courtesy of Women Make Movies

Sunn Flower: Pioneering professional surfer Rell Sunn was here too briefly, but at least she was here.

Sea Sigh

Pro surfer Rell Sunn’s life honored in ‘Heart of the Sea’

By Gretchen Giles

Rell Sunn is dead! She’s dead! I simply cannot believe that the woman whose life is so fully sketched during an hour’s viewing no longer walks the earth, no longer swims in the sea. What’s more, she’s been gone since 1998, and I had never heard of her while she was alive. I am bereft; what time I wasted in the ’90s not knowing about and worshipping beneath the luminosity that was Rell Sunn.

A founding member of the Women’s Professional Surfing Association and one of the pioneering women to take a board into the water for championships and television, Sunn was one of those people who tread upon the earth far too infrequently. In Heart of the Sea, a documentary screening on Saturday, March 6, as part of the Sonoma Film Institute’s ongoing season, she mostly tells her own story.

Born Kapolioka’ehukai, meaning “heart of the sea” in Hawaiian, Sunn remembers that she could “read the ocean” before she could read books. “I thought,” she says with an inward smile, “that I knew everything I needed to know from being at the shore.”

Raised in the small, poverty-stricken Hawaiian town of Makaha–a place she describes as having residents who never move out (“they just move over”)–Sunn grew up under the sun, surfing daily, sleeping with the surfboard she won in a contest tucked under an arm, cutting school and chasing the DDT truck that regularly dispensed a spray so thick that she would come home drenched in the stuff, able to slick her hair back into place with poison.

Already a women’s surfing champion at 32, a single mother who passionately danced hula and supported her daughter by being a beach lifeguard, Sunn was toweling off after a competition one day when she felt a lump in her breast. Over the next 14 years, the cancer came and went during four chemotherapy treatments, a complete bone marrow transplant and even a coma.

In Heart of the Sea, Sunn remembers being in the coma, dreaming constantly of an elusive wave she was paddling toward but couldn’t catch. She finally caught the wave and coasted in upon its crest. That was the day she regained consciousness. “Surfing,” she says later, “saved my life.” Aye, were that only the case, though daily skimming of the ocean’s deep poetry must certainly have lengthened it.

Known as the queen of Makaha due to her annual youth surf championships–which were started to enliven a handful of bored summertime kids and grew into an event attracting thousands–Sunn had the type of compelling unadorned beauty that one cannot look away from. Even when drastically ravaged by chemotherapies, her radiant smile and intelligent glance remained sharp and quickened.

When not acting as “Auntie” to the children of Makaha, surfing professionally, rearing her daughter, doing local morning radio and national sportscasting or dancing hula, Sunn volunteered in cancer support, offering information on the many treatments she had first-hand knowledge of, discussing such possible culprits as DDT and helping the newly diagnosed begin their own passionate journey toward health.

But what Rell Sunn really did was surf. Slipping as easily into the water as Aphrodite, she surfed every single day that was spent anywhere near the ocean. Just before her death, too weak to paddle herself out, her friends towed her into the waves so that she could glide back to shore. Hawaiian lore dictates that the souls of the ancestors live in the ocean. They are embodied by sea turtles and other creatures, animals who look out for the swimmers splashing past them, protecting them from harm.

When Rell Sunn died at age 47, she too was returned to take her place among the ancestors. “When you get up in the morning and have the energy to get in the water,” she says quietly in Heart of the Sea, “you have your life again.”

‘Heart of the Sea: Kapolioka’ehukai’ screens on Saturday, March 6, at 7pm. Filmmakers Charlotte Lagarde and Lisa Denker are scheduled to appear. Sonoma Film Institute, SSU, Darwin Hall, Room 108, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. $3-$4.50. 707.664.2606.

From the February 25-March 3, 2004 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

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