Garden Court

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Garden Court

Photograph by Michael Amsler

Straight From Mama’s Kitchen: Rich Treglia, chef and owner of Garden Court Cafe, showcases his restaurant’s homey goodness.

Home-baked Charm

Casual cafe food gets the white-glove treatment at Garden Court

By Sara Bir

The Garden Court was, for years, located on a particularly bucolic stretch of Highway 12 in Sonoma Valley. On weekend mornings, its parking lot would be overflowing and people would have to improvise parking spots on the side of the highway. That’s a good sign–it means it’s food worth waiting for to many people–but I never was patient enough to score a table.

Now Garden Court Cafe and Bakery is in downtown Glen Ellen (if there is indeed such a thing as a downtown there). Co-owners Rich and Stacy Treglia bought Garden Court Cafe from Peter and Lesley Fay in 1997; before that, it was Fay’s Garden Court. Rich does all of the cooking and baking and, as we shall discover in a moment, jam making.

On weekdays, I learned, it’s possible to just waltz in and grab yourself a table. The place is cheery and small but not crowded, with a décor rooted in the “cute country knickknack” vein–not overdone, but definitely perceptible, with a few curios hanging on the walls and some nicely framed but unexceptional wine country art. There’s a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room, though being the dog days of summer, there wasn’t much use for it at the time.

A lot of the breakfast dishes have special names: Stacy’s Scramble (cheddar cheese, sautéed onions, and black olives), Baby Bear Porridge (oatmeal), Mother Flugger’s Banana Pancake. All of the eggs Benedict-style treatments have local place names: Eggs Kenwood, Eggs Sonoma, Eggs Valley of the Moon, etc. I breakfasted on Eggs Glen Ellen ($9.95 for two eggs), an assemblage of spinach, bacon, and grilled onions on an English muffin with a very silky-piquant, textbook perfect hollandaise sauce.

Hollandaise-related dishes are a good once-a-year luxury, and Garden Court’s Benedicts are worth the splurge. I’d like to believe that the spinach on my eggs offset the nutritional damage from the generous slabs of crispy-smoky bacon–it’s never too early to squeeze a little something green into your day, particularly when faced with pork products.

But I had ordered Eggs Glen Ellen with two eggs when I should have stuck to one. By the time I’d plowed through all of the bacon, onions, spinach, and hollandaise, there was no room left for the mess of country potatoes on the side. No wonder the waitstaff’s T-shirts read: “If you go home hungry–it’s your own fault!”

Mr. Bir Toujours was roused from his comatose weekend slumber early on a Sunday morning to assist in treading more of Garden Court’s breakfast territory. We drove an hour, most of which was occupied by me warning him that we’d be in for a wait. “I used to not even be able to park at this place,” I said.

This was not what he wanted to hear. Mr. Bir Toujours is not a morning person, meaning that in the mornings, his behavior is not very personlike. Sure enough, we were in for a wait of about 20 minutes or so. It wasn’t so bad, though, because there’s a deck out back under a trellis of grapevines where pots of coffee and pieces of coffee cake and scones are available to soothe the savage beast in nonmorning people. You can even eat some of the grapes from the vines, if you’re feeling adventurous. My one complaint: We discovered this area not because the waitstaff told us about it but because a helpful customer saw Mr. Bir Toujours sulking in caffeine withdrawal on the bench out front and tipped us off.

Once seated, Mr. Bir Toujours was a very good sport when, after I told him he could get whatever he wanted, he said, “Oh, eggs Benedict!” and I said, “No, no, not that–I’ve already tried that.”

He got two eggs over medium instead (“Just Eggs,” as the menu puts it, $8.50 with meat and $6.50 without). As for the sausage patty, it was as sizable as a hamburger patty, almost. Enlightening. All of Garden Court’s sausages are made in-house, and homemade sausage always tastes so much better than mass-produced stuff. I’d like to eventually sample all of Garden Court’s sausages (hot Italian, turkey-apple, and turkey chorizo).

There’s only so much food one can consume in one day, however, and the macadamia nut waffle with fresh fruit and plum sauce ($7.95, the special that morning) I had ordered claimed much of that day’s stomach real estate. A light and golden Belgian waffle was all but obscured under a mighty pile of sliced bananas, pears, apples, and plums–it was like a whole smoothie’s worth of fruit.

The plum sauce was chunky and a deep ruby color, sweet but almost more of a relish than a sauce in its consistency. Plentiful and crunchy macadamia nuts in large chunks studded the waffle’s webbed interior. This was one serious waffle. Even so, I managed to clean my plate without incurring that awful, leaden post-big-breakfast feeling.

Mr. Bir Toujours, a big connoisseur of jam on toast, was delighted with Garden Court’s homemade jam, praising its fruity vibrance. They make their own jelly, too.

This house-made thing is a big part of Garden Court’s appeal. Nothing there is terribly fancy, but the care and attention they put into things typically overlooked–the quality of jam, for instance–make all the difference. Pretty much everything at Garden Court tastes like it was made by some mythical country-cooking grandma clad in calico, the kind of person who scavenges her own wild blackberries and grinds her own meats–like Tasha Tudor, actually, who’s a likely candidate for owning a pot-bellied stove, too.

From the bakery, I tried a brownie ($1.95). Like most of the bakery goods, the brownie tastes as homey as it looks–not sleek by any means, but with its own homespun charm. These things are monster blocks, more on the cakey side then the fudgey side, and dotted with a generous handful of chocolate chips. I left mine in the car in the warming rays of the noonday sun, so it was all oozy when we ate it at the office. It made me popular for about five minutes.

On the lunch tip, Garden Court offers all kinds of sandwiches that will please a food-loving wine country tourist who’s fatigued of cutting-edge cuisine in white tablecloth restaurants. I nearly had a conniption fit when I saw that the special that day was the hard-to-find Monte Christo ($8.95), which is sort of a savory French toast sandwich of turkey, ham, and Swiss cheese that’s dipped in an egg mixture and griddled.

Sometimes Monte Christos are served topped with powdered sugar and raspberry jam on the side, though this version was not. It was stacked into two triple-decker triangles, in the manner of a club sandwich. The problem with this was that the sandwich’s thickness didn’t allow the custard to set fully, resulting in rather soggy, eggy bits on the corners. Those parts I just didn’t eat, but the rest was very tasty. The side of potato salad was dressed with a sour cream and dill mixture and was far preferable to the half-mayonnaise garnish salads you often get with sandwiches.

Garden Court offers four-course prix-fixe dinners every month at under $40 per person. I wasn’t able to make it to September’s special dinner, though its menu looked alluring, hinting at dishes a step up in refinement from omelets and pancakes.

The servers at Garden Court are all very friendly and pleasant, but they do have a tendency to leave you stranded for spans of time that are perhaps five minutes too long. During our Sunday breakfast, for instance, no one came to refill our coffee. But aside from that, Garden Court is a lovely little spot, relaxing and slow-paced with food that’s made to be worth going out of your way–and waiting on a porch with coffee and scones–for.

Garden Court Cafe and Bakery. Breakfast and lunch daily, 7:30am-2pm. 13647 Arnold Drive, Glen Ellen. 707.935.1565. www.gardencourtcafe.com.

From the September 18-24, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

E-Waste

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Tech Trash

As new technology appears, old technology clogs up the landfill

By Joy Lanzendorfer

They say computer years are like dog years. For every year of human life, seven years of technological advancements go by. This has slowed recently, but manufacturers are still coming out with new equipment that makes the old stuff look only slightly better than a Commodore 64. It’s tempting–sometimes essential–to upgrade. (For work! Really! Playing that new computer game is just a side benefit.)

But what happens to old, obsolete computers?

Electronic waste, or e-waste, is an often overlooked environmental problem that is increasing in lockstep with our lust for new technology. E-waste includes not just computer equipment but other electronics like cell phones, TVs, and microwaves.

The United States generates more e-waste than any other country. In 2000, 4.6 million tons of e-waste entered U.S. landfills. Sonoma County estimates that locally over 49,000 computer monitors and televisions become obsolete every year, or 4,000 a month. Last April, the county had nearly 81,000 stockpiled TVs and computers.

E-waste has become such a problem that Sonoma County is considering a “take-back ordinance,” which would hold retailers responsible for accepting equipment back from customers. The local ordinance, however, has been put on hold as California considers the e-Waste Collection and Recycling Bill (SB 20), the first of its kind in the United States.

“The take-back ordinance is in review, but the county is watching what happens with SB 20,” says Lesli Daniels of the Sonoma County Waste Management Agency. “If the state passes SB 20, we may not need a take-back ordinance.”

The e-Waste Collection and Recycling Bill narrowly passed the state assembly earlier this month and is currently in the Senate. If it passes, consumers will pay a recycling fee of $6 to $10 when they buy equipment in retail stores and over the Internet and telephone. The bill will also ban export of e-waste to foreign countries that don’t have high environmental standards.

Disposing of e-waste costs the county $52 per ton, second only to disposing of hazardous waste, which ranges from $933 per ton to $1,500 per ton.

“With hazardous waste, you’re dealing with gallons and quarts, where with e-waste, the average weight is 55 pounds,” says Daniels. “You’re moving heavy, bulky objects, which contributes to labor costs.”

A computer has over 700 chemicals in it, including toxins like lead, mercury, and cadmium. If not properly recycled, these chemicals could seep into our land, water, and air.

Many people don’t recycle their old electronics because of the cost. Sonoma County charges $25 to recycle old monitors and TVs. The Computer Recycling Center, a local organization that refurbishes old machines and donates them to different programs, charges up to $15 to take computer equipment, depending on quality.

But many people just put equipment in dumpsters. Sonoma County gets 23 percent of its monitors and old TVs from checked loads that are brought into the landfill. And since only 10 percent of the loads are checked, much more e-waste is getting into the landfill undetected. The county estimates a 300 percent increase in roadside dumping of e-waste in the last two years, including one dump of over 200 machines.

“We can’t always count on the consumer to take on the recycling burden,” says Daniels. “So that burden is passed onto other taxpayers.”

The United States ships approximately half of its e-waste to countries like China, India, and Pakistan, where environmental standards are less strict.

“Too frequently when we send e-waste to those countries, it’s handled improperly,” says Sheila Davis of the Clean Computer Campaign. “To recover precious metals, they will put the parts into an acid bath and then dump the acid bath into the river. The pollution we contribute to those countries is unacceptable.”

The e-waste recycling bill, penned by Senator Byron Sher, has undergone criticism from all sides. Governor Gray Davis vetoed an earlier version of the bill after computer manufacturers lobbied heavily against it.

Environmental groups were much happier with the earlier version of the bill because it required manufacturers to make equipment more recyclable.

“I think the bill falls short of what is actually needed,” says Sheila Davis. “It doesn’t motivate the manufacturer to remove toxins in the design.”

Other groups concerned with Internet freedom say this bill is nothing more than a computer tax for a cash-strapped state and an attempt to get more taxes from the Internet. Some say the bill will hurt independent retailers.

But at least one independent retailer, HSC Electronic Supply in Rohnert Park, doesn’t expect the bill to hurt business.

“It won’t affect us because it will affect all retailers equally,” says manager Ed Jacobson. “I’m in favor of SB 20. E-waste is a very serious problem. A good portion of the public doesn’t want to pay the recycling fee for computer equipment. They just sneak it into the garbage.”

From the September 18-24, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

The Violent Femmes

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The Violent Femmes

‘Violent Femmes’ (1983; Rhino’s deluxe edition)

‘Hallowed Ground’ (1984)

‘The Blind Leading the Naked’ (1986)

‘Add It Up (1981-1993)’ (1993)

‘Freak Magnet’ (2000)

One ‘Cause You Love Me: The Violent Femmes have coasted 20 years on their debut album.

Femmes Fatale

The Violent Femmes bring their classic alterna-rock to the North Bay

By Greg Cahill

My sole recollections of the Violent Femmes in concert are based on an encounter nearly 20 years ago at the now-defunct Sleeping Lady Cafe in Fairfax, a vegetarian restaurant that offered John Cale and Green on Red, among other seminal alternative rock acts, served up with steaming cups of herbal tea and the best veggie burger around. The Milwaukee-bred Femmes were pretty wasted that night on what appeared to be mushrooms–bassist Brian Ritchie kept tripping out because he thought I resembled dada-rocker Captain Beefheart (and I did, sort of).

But what I remember most was that drummer Victor De Lorenzo played one of the best percussion solos I’d ever heard before or since. And he did it by applying a set of wire brushes to a scant drum kit that consisted of a snare turned sideways in place of a kick drum, a beat-up tambourine, and a metal washtub inverted on a floor tom that echoed in a decidedly weird fashion, even if you hadn’t ingested mescaline that night.

It was the perfect showcase for the band’s punked up, folk-jazz hybrid.

“Oh, yeah,” says Ritchie when I catch up to him last week. “That was the trance-o-phone. Strangest thing–he just broke it a couple of weeks ago after all those years. Guess it’s time for a trip to the hardware store.”

What are the odds?

Despite an on-again, off-again career that sometimes has left this highly creative band in the same spotty shape as the rickety trance-o-phone, the Femmes are holding their own these days. Ritchie, standing on the tip of Manhattan with cell phone in hand, takes a few minutes to contemplate the state of the group that the All Music Guide has called “the textbook American cult band of the 1980s.”

It’s been 20 years since their 1983 self-titled debut became a college radio hit, spurred on by singer-songwriter Gordon Gano’s angst-ridden anthems (including a couplet that pondered, “Why can’t I get just one fuck? / Guess it’s got something to do with luck”) and the band’s sparse arrangements. Now the Femmes are on the last leg of an anniversary tour that brings them to Petaluma.

Last year, Rhino Records issued an expanded two-CD anniversary version of that debut release, complete with rare demos and a separate disc filled with contemporaneous live material, prompting De Lorenzo to rejoin the band after a nine-year absence. “We didn’t rehearse or anything after he returned,” says Ritchie, a former factory worker who grew up listening to the Velvet Underground, Sun Ra, and minimalist popsmith Jonathan Richman. “We just got up onstage and played.

“If we don’t know how to sound like the Violent Femmes after 22 years, then we might as well hang it up,” he adds with a laugh.

Musically, the Femmes cast a very wide net. The band started in 1982 when Gano joined Ritchie and De Lorenzo, who had been experimenting with a raw acoustic-based sound. “What we saw was that most bands were trying to create a false energy by simply turning their amplifiers up or by banging on the drums really loudly,” Ritchie explains. “We decided to explore another option. Our main prototype was the Velvet Underground, which did play with a lot of loud feedback. We just thought it would be nice to play that kind of music but with the rhythms you might find in bluegrass or the improvisation you might find in jazz.

“In some ways, that’s what the early rock and roll acts were doing–people like Jerry Lee Lewis–but it got loud really quickly. It was sort of like those early acts were fighting the arms race or something.”

Guitarist James Honeyman-Scott of the Pretenders discovered the Femmes and helped them land a record deal with Slash Records (home of Los Lobos and other roots and cowpunk acts). Their 1983 debut never charted, but it became a cult hit and eventually reached platinum sales. Gano’s fundamentalist Christian beliefs emerged on their 1984 follow-up Hallowed Ground. Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads produced their third and most accessible album, 1986’s The Blind Leading the Naked, which features a cover of T-Rex’s “Children of the Revolution,” a slight hit.

Eventually, both Gano and Ritchie spun off solo projects and the band tapered off, with Gano’s religious beliefs becoming an impediment for some fans.

However, the Femmes irrepressible pop resurfaced on soundtracks to such films as Grosse Pointe Blank, Mystery Men, and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. After a six-year silence, the band returned in 2000 with Freak Magnet, a return to form with its quirky folk-pop odes to moshin’ and misbehavin’.

“I think we have our own little niche in the music world,” Ritchie says, “and fortunately for us, people still appreciate that.”

The Violent Femmes perform Tuesday, Sept. 16, at 8pm. at the Mystic Theater, 21 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. Tickets are $30. 707.765.2121.

From the September 11-17, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Sonoma County’s Poet Laureate

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Sonoma County’s Poet Laureate

Spreading the Word: The identity of the future poet laureate is not to be revealed until the Book Fair; shown is the current laureate, David Bromige.

The Making of a Poet Laureate

The Book Fair announces Sonoma County’s newest poet laureate

By Sara Bir

Sonoma County has a poet laureate? What’s a poet laureate?”

Given that many people don’t even know the name of their mayor, it can’t be too shocking that the poet laureate of Sonoma County doesn’t come in too strong over the county’s common cultural radar. That’s just how it is.

But how does one become poet laureate? And what does poet laureate do? And why do we need one? California has one (Quincy Troupe), as does Healdsburg (Armando-Garcia Davila).

And we’ll be getting a new one in 2004. David Bromige, Sonoma County’s current poet laureate, is nearing the end of his term. The laureate-elect will be announced on Saturday, Sept. 13, at the Sonoma County Book Fair in Santa Rosa. And while we can’t say who it will be, we can say how he or she got there. The following is a diagram of the process from poet to laureate.

“It was partly an honor to bestow on someone who’s obviously an exceptional poet living here in Sonoma County,” says Bonnie Petty, who’s on the Poet Laureate Selection Committee and works with Sebastopol Center for the Arts, the organization that acts as administrator for the position. “But it was really looking for someone who would be an ambassador for the literary arts community in Sonoma County.

“It’s a nice honor,” Petty continues, “but it’s kind of dubious: ‘Well, everyone in Sonoma County thinks you’re a really great poet, but we don’t have anything to offer you except a whole lot of people are going to call you up and ask you to come and read’–which can be good and bad.”

Sonoma County poet laureates serve a two-year term; the new poet laureate will have the position from January 2004 to January 2006 and will succeed David Bromige. Don Emblen, Sonoma County’s first poet laureate, served from 2000 to 2002.

There are about 12 members on the selection committee. Nominees are selected by the community. Packets of nominees’ work go out to committee members, who have about 10 days to look over the material, then pick out the finalists. Once notified, the nominees prepare a statement and collect more poems. The committee then makes the decision.

It sounds more simple than it is. “Five members of the committee represent the five electoral districts of Sonoma County. The problem has been this: How do you get it to be a countywide agreement when the county agrees on so little between its various parts?” says Bromige, who notes that there’s one representative for all of West County. “It’s a pity that a place like Guerneville doesn’t have a vote, since the river has long been a camping-out ground for poets.”

There are also representatives from Sonoma State University, Santa Rosa Junior College, Sonoma County Library, the Literary Arts Guild, and the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Former poet laureates have the option to sit on the committee as well.

“You’ve got half a dozen good poets,” says Emblen, “and you’re looking at their work and arguing with people about it, and it can get quite complicated. But it’s like any kind of elective process. You’ve got pros and cons for every candidate, and all of that has to be talked out.”

Final selection of the new laureate took place Aug. 27, giving the laureate-to-be several weeks to prepare for the announcement at the Sonoma County Book Fair.

So that’s how the poet laureate gets there in the first place. But what then? “Exactly what one’s supposed to do is up to the poet laureate to find out,” Bromige says.

“I didn’t know what I ought to do,” says Emblen, “aside from what I do all of the time. There are just lots and lots of groups that called and wanted me to read, so it got to be pretty busy. I guess one of the main things is to try to increase the public consciousness of literature and poetry particularly. I was on the radio and TV a few times, and there were some nice write-ups by the Chronicle and the local paper. All of that was part of the effort to make people aware that there are a lot of poets working away in this county.”

One way Emblen got the word out was through the Poetry on the Bus program. “I correspond with a poet up in Seattle, and he was telling me that they had poems on the bus. I thought it was a good idea, so I volunteered to print in large type some short poems. I used some of my own poems, and then Sebastopol Center for the Arts used poems by young people, and I printed those. When David Bromige was appointed for the next spot, I did a bunch of his poems, too.”

Both Emblen and Bromige have a long history of encouraging budding writers. “They’ve taught [Emblen at SRJC and Bromige at SSU], they’ve mentored people,” Petty says. “They’ve been active not only in getting their poetry out there but in creating an atmosphere that encourages new poets and young poets to keep writing.”

The position of Sonoma County Poet Laureate is still relatively new, though, which presents challenges; it’s not as easy as reading a few poems a month and judging a contest or two. “The thing that I find most distressing about Sonoma County is the thing that is wonderful about Sonoma County,” Bromige says, “and that is the autonomy of its various regions. I think a lot of people in, say, Sonoma, don’t want to blend with the county as a whole and accept a poet laureate who is also the poet laureate of Rohnert Park. It’s hard to secure a feeling of unity. People are against growth, so they hold on to the individual characteristics of their town. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t, but it makes it difficult to be everybody’s poet laureate.”

Even the position of United States Poet Laureate has very vague expectations, though, so it’s sort of built into the role. As former U.S. poet laureate Robert Haas put it, “It was a bit Kafkaesque; you’re handed this card that says ‘Do something.'”

How the new Sonoma County Poet Laureate will read that card is yet to be told.

David Bromige will read at 10am at Courthouse Square. The announcement of the new poet laureate takes place on the stage at Courthouse Square at noon. The fair runs from 10am-5pm. Admission is free. 707.544.5913. www.sonomacountybookfair.org.

From the September 11-17, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Angèle

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Angèle

Photograph by Michael Amsler

On Wings of Angèle: Chef Christophe Gerard whips up delicacies at Napa’s Angèle.

Angèle, Baby

Down by the river, Napa gets an infusion of France

By Sara Bir

Beware the dreaded veal blanquette! Or so I had always thought. I once had to make the stuff in cooking school, and its ingredients of veal, cream, and egg yolks looked so bland on paper. The whole idea is not to brown the meat, but to gently seal it off in butter and then blanch it in white beef stock prior to draining the meat, and finally add a white sauce of sorts.

I followed the steps in the recipe, tasted the results, and was convinced of utter failure. “It tastes weird,” I confessed to our chef-instructor. “Oh, it’s fine,” she shrugged. “A veal blanquette is supposed to be delicate.” Rich, but delicate. To me, it resembled phlegm.

So imagine my shock when blanquette de veau was mentioned multiple times in both the printed and spoken word as one of the highlights of Angèle, a French bistro that’s been enlivening downtown Napa since December. Owner Bettina Rouas was a manager at the French Laundry; operator Claudia Rouas works at Niebaum-Coppola; their father, Claude Rouas, opened Auberge du Soleil. And chef Christophe Gerard was sous chef at Lespinasse in New York. The folks behind Angèle all have bitchin’ résumés.

When we made plans to give the place a go, I singled out the veal blanquette as the yardstick that would gauge the evening.

Angèle is not as aggressively French as La Poste in Sonoma or Bouchon in Yountville. It’s more perceptibly a Napa-France hybrid, the cuisine being more French and the setting more Napa. It’s in a converted boathouse in the Hatt Building, which also houses Celadon, the Napa General Store, the Napa River Inn, and serves as the venue for the Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival. We arrived just before The Tempest was set to begin, and cast members in full costume were pacing around on the sidewalk, joking around and fidgeting before their curtain calls.

“You’ve got table number three,” our server leaned in to tell us. “It’s the best table in the house.” The best tables at Angele are actually out of the house. The patio overlooks a rather scenic bend in the little Napa River, and on a late summer evening the twilight air is ideal for a drink and good company.

But from table three, you can see the river just fine. Angèle’s interior has lovely exposed timber rafters and a cellarlike coolness that’s welcome at the end of a balmy day. Huge canvasses of fruit and vegetable still lifes hang on the walls, and potted boxwood trees sit on the tables.

When the warm baguette arrived, it was plopped directly onto the paper-lined table, along with a small crock of butter. Of course this made a tremendous mess once we tore into the bread, but our server was very attentive about crumbing the table.

We started with a terrine de lapin (rabbit and prune terrine, $9.50), a delight for any lover of country-style pates. Its homey, course texture allowed the slight gamy taste of the rabbit to come through, while the accompanying deep purple onion marmalade provided a good sweet-tart counterpoint. An impressively thick slab of terrine graced the plate, which makes this a fine dish to share, but Mr. Bir du Jour was not fast enough, and I conquered a good three-fourths of it.

Salade de betteraves ($9) will fulfill your daily beet requirement, with its glistening base of diced red beets crowned with a plume of frisée dressed in a truffle vinaigrette. Next to the beets, the truffle essence was not very discernible, but the vinaigrette was nice and tart against the earthy beets, and crumbles of a mild blue cheese set the whole affair off.

After scanning the menu, I noticed with some disbelief that there was no blanquette de veau. Off the hook! It’s not much of a summer dish, anyway. Now I’d never find out if Angèle’s veal blanquette was indeed that good. So by default I got the steak bordelaise ($21.50), which is basically Angèle’s version of steak-frites. Bordelaise sauce typically involves shallots and poached bone marrow, the former present here via whole roasted shallots just to the side of the steak and the latter nowhere to be seen.

The steak was gigantic and juicy and fatty in just the right places. I had ordered it rare, and dug into a very red slab of good meat, though there were moments when the thin but flavorful sauce didn’t stretch far enough in its seasoning role and I found myself craving salt and pepper (there was none on the tables).

The frites looked normal enough, a huge pile of them, each about the thickness of a pinkie and revealing a grease-kissed golden crispness and a robust potato flavor.

Angèle has a fine wine list, though their aperitif offerings (a rainbow of pastis drinks, citron pressé, Orangina, Lillet, and the like) were particularly tempting on an August night. Even so, I couldn’t help but order a glass of the house red ($6) to go with the steak. It’s just so fun to say “I’ll have a glass of the house red,” something you don’t get an opportunity to request often outside family-style Italian restaurants.

Mr. Bir du Jour stuck with beer, perhaps not the best match for seared salmon with pea shoots and basil-tomato broth ($19.50). A fragile emerald-toned fried basil leaf crowned the salmon, which was cooked to a very lovely medium. The pea shoots had been sautéed. I’d always seen them served fresh in salads before, but here they were crisp and slimy like stir-fried mung bean sprouts, only much fresher. The basil-tomato broth was a vivid opaque orange and had a creamy texture, pleasing enough that it would have been nice to have a little more napped in the bowl. Its basil flavor was subdued.

We split a side order of tomates provençale ($3.75), two fat and juicy tomato halves crowned with bread crumbs and garlic, and heated just enough to bring the sweetness of the perfectly ripe tomato to life.

How tactless is it to say that our house-made vanilla ice cream ($7) tasted like Breyer’s vanilla ice cream? After the steak, it was all I had energy for. But it was like really good Breyer’s ice cream, dense and slightly grainy, with an assertive, pure vanilla-bean flavor. Mr. Bir du Jour noted that it was a little gluey, though. Our coffees each came with a tiny madeleine perched upon the coffee spoon, a sweet little touch.

From the window of table three, we spotted lights on the river; three small boats were paddling down under the curtain of nightfall. And our server was not only very gracious and capable, but he also looked a bit like George Clooney. That was nice. And I’d rather have ice cream than blanquette du veau anyway.

Angèle Restaurant and Bar, 540 Main St., Napa. Open daily for lunch and dinner. 707.252.8115.

From the September 11-17, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

The All Girl Summer Fun Band

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The All Girl Summer Fun Band

‘All Girl Summer Fun Band’ (2002)

‘2’ (2003)

Photograph by Michael Lavine

For A Good Time, Call: The All Girl Summer Fun Band beats the Portland dreariness with upbeat pop.

Mission: Fun

All Girl Summer Fun Band lays it on the line

By Heather Seggel

Remember those old ads for Club Med vacations? “The antidote to civilization” was the slogan. I was surprised to think of it while listening to 2, the second release from Portland-based All Girl Summer Fun Band. The quartet of best friends pack 14 songs into 29 minutes, and fill each second with girl-group harmonies, boy-obsessed lyrics, and some fierce guitar licks filling out the sound. It makes for a great day-trip away from the daily grind, but who knew one of the rainiest places on earth could export such joyful noise?

Comprised of Kim Baxter, Arirak Douangpanya, Kathy Foster, and Santa Rosa native Jen Sbragia, the band was formed by Baxter, who wanted to get a group of girls together to play music with for a summer. All have played or still play with other bands, but this project was strictly for fun. Their name was more or less their mission statement, which turned out to be such an accurate summary of their sound that they kept it. Their first release came out in early 2002 and put fans everywhere on a sugar high.

The new record crams a heap of sha-na-na-na‘s and uh-huh, uh-huh‘s into its inventory of crushes and obsessions (including an ode to skateboarder-turned-actor Jason Lee, memorialized in a sighing chorus as “Doin’ kickflips in my dreams”). The music is exuberant and fun, causing critics to invoke their favorite childhood toys and candy, and sometimes to invoke the dreaded t-word, to Sbragia’s chagrin. “We were getting pegged as a twee, kind of silly novelty, and that’s annoying. I’m not a teenager, [I’m a] 33-year-old female musician,” she says.

Time has enriched the band’s lean approach as well. “We’ve all been playing together a certain amount of time, and our songwriting alone and together has become tighter and more assured,” Sbragia says. “Our first record [the self-titled All Girl Summer Fun Band] was the result of playing together for fun and ending up with enough songs for a full-length record. I think we just kept playing together and started to take it a little more seriously with the second record.”

They’re not out to scare away their fan base, though, Sbragia points out. “Not too serious! We’re still basically about fun.” It just comes with a side of respect for their chops now.

To counter the critical emphasis on cuteness, all four girls used distortion pedals to roughen up their sound a bit, which gives the swoony lyrics a little hormonal boost. “Grizzly Bear” features some cool, echoey surf sounds from Sbragia’s guitar. “Tour Heartthrob” has a churning rock base and features more aggressive vocals from the band (though it must be pointed out, the lyrics actually do rhyme “France” and “underpants,” which is pretty damn cute).

“Down South, 10 Hours, I-5” is a quick rock-and-roll road trip in song, leaky van and all. “Video Game Heart” accents a steady, darker beat with quirky old-school keyboards that accent the title. And “Daydreaming” is a quieter tune, recalling Sbragia’s other project, the Softies, currently on hiatus while band mate Rose Melberg enjoys new motherhood.

Did Santa Rosa’s punk heyday influence Sbragia’s playing? Not so much, she says. “I was [into] heavy metal [as a] teenager, not punk.” Taking in shows at the River Theatre, the Phoenix Theatre, and the Cotati Cabaret ultimately led her to start playing music on her own. “A couple of years before I moved to Portland, I was playing music with my friend Sari Bacilla in Pretty Face. We hung out a lot at Cafe This,” the Railroad Square coffeehouse that hosted a heap of shows in the early 1990s. She took a “punk-rock road trip” in 1994, ultimately settling into Portland, for the weather, of all things.

“It never rained enough for me in Santa Rosa, and I really liked the idea of living somewhere cold and damp,” she says. Lots of Sonoma County creative types have made the move north in recent years, but Sbragia indicates it may not be the bargain they’re expecting. “Portland has kind of been ‘the place to move to’ for a while now, and I think rent and housing prices are [rising],” she says.

While the area’s benefits include a good public transit system, there’s that rain to contend with. “You have to be able to handle the winters and not seeing the sun for a while. It can be dreary,” she says. “But I like that. You just have to brew your coffee a little stronger.” Having All Girl Summer Fun Band blood in your veins probably helps, too.

From the September 11-17, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Project Censored

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Out of the Shadows

Project Censored points out the stories that the mainstream press neglected

By Peter Phillips

Perhaps the most censored subject of this year is the growing concern among both liberals and conservatives that a dangerous trend is emerging within our political institutions. This trend has a name that is proclaimed loudly within the alternative/ independent press, on both the right and the left, but is rarely mentioned in the editorial columns of our daily newspapers and only hinted at on network and cable television. Some call it jingoism; others, nationalism or, more strongly, fascism.

Therefore, many of the best investigations this year were preoccupied with the erosion of civil and human rights, our policies overseas, and the drive toward war. Yet the stories with the most significant findings went largely ignored by the mainstream corporate media. The deeper the analysis went, the more shallow the corporate coverage seemed to become.

Our 2003 edition reveals a reluctance on the part of many journalists since 9-11 to cover stories that, though truthful, may run counter to the current political climate.

Sonoma State University Project Censored students and staff screened several thousand stories over the year. Our 90 faculty and community evaluators are experts in their fields, and they rate the stories for credibility and national importance. Some 150 stories this year made it to the final voting level. Project-wide voting by over 150 people established the most important stories for Project Censored 2003. The top 25 stories were then ranked by our national judges, including Michael Parenti, Robin Andersen, Carl Jensen, Lenore Foerstel, and some 20 other national journalists, scholars, and writers.

The Neocon Plan for Global Dominance

(Sources: David Armstrong, “Dick Cheney’s Song of America,” Harper’s Magazine, October 2002; Robert Dreyfuss, “The Thirty-Year Itch,” Mother Jones, March 2003; John Pilger, “Hidden Agendas,” http://pilger.carlton.com, Dec. 12, 2002.)

Following the end of the Cold War and just prior to the first Gulf War, President Bush Sr.’s pentagon advisers Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz put forth a plan suggesting that the United States expand and intensify its military superiority.

In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz’s draft of the Defense Planning Guidance for 1994-1999 not only called for the United States “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival,” it warned that friends as well as enemies “need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.” This included “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil.”

During the Clinton years the neoconservatives founded the Project for the New American Century. The most influential product of the PNAC was a report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defense,” which called for U.S. military dominance and control of global economic markets.

With the election of George W. Bush, the authors of the plan were returned to power. With the old Defense Planning Guidance as the skeleton, the three went back to the drawing board. The United States stands ready to invade any country deemed a possible threat to its economic interests. Over the last year, mainstream media rarely addressed the possibility that larger strategies might also have driven the decision to invade Iraq.

Homeland Security Threatens Civil Liberty

(Sources: Frank Morales, “Homeland Defense: Pentagon Declares War on America,” Global Outlook, Winter 2003; Alex Jones, “The Secret Patriot Act II Destroys What Is Left of American Liberty,” www.rense.com, Feb. 11, 2003, and Global Outlook, vol. 4; Charles Lewis and Adam Mayle, “Justice Department Drafts Sweeping Expansion of Terrorism Act,” Center for Public Integrity (www.publicintegrity.org).)

The new Department of Homeland Security combines over a hundred separate entities of the executive branch, including the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and the U.S. Border Patrol, among others.

One DHS mandate largely ignored by the press requires the FBI, CIA, state, and local governments to share intelligence reports with the department upon command, without explanation. Civil rights activists claim that this endangers the rights and freedoms of law-abiding Americans by blurring the lines between foreign and domestic spying. According to the ACLU, the Department of Homeland Security will be “100 percent secret and zero percent accountable.”

As part of Homeland Security, the USA Patriot Act of 2001 allows the government increased and unprecedented access to the lives of American citizens and represents an unrestrained imposition on our civil liberties. The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (aka Patriot Act II) poses even greater hazards: a U.S. citizen engaging in lawful activity can be picked off the streets or from home and taken to a secret military tribunal with no access to or notification of a lawyer, the press, or family.

United States Illegally Removes Pages from Iraq U.N. Report

(Source: Michael I. Niman, “What Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know about Iraq,” The Humanist, March/April 2003 (also appears as “The Bush Administration Would Rather You Didn’t Know” in ArtVoice, Jan. 9, 2003). First covered by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!)

Throughout the winter of 2002, the Bush administration publicly accused Iraqi weapons declarations of being incomplete. The reality of this situation is that it was the United States itself that had removed over 8,000 pages of the original 11,800-page report.

The Iraq government sent out official copies of the report on Nov. 3, 2002. One, classified as “secret,” was sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and another copy went to the U.N. Security Council. The United States convinced Colombia, chair of the Security Council and current target of U.S. military occupation and financial aid, to look the other way while the report was removed, edited, and returned. Other members of the Security Council, such as Britain, France, China, and Russia, were implicated in the missing pages as well, and so had little desire to expose the United States’ transgression.

Perhaps most importantly, the missing pages contain information that could potentially make a case for war crimes against officials within the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. This includes current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for his collaboration with Saddam Hussein leading up to the massacres of Iraqi Kurds and acting as liaison for U.S. military aid during the war between Iraq and Iran.

Rumsfeld’s Plan to Provoke Terrorists

(Source: Chris Floyd, “Into the Dark,” CounterPunch, Nov. 1, 2002.)

According to the classified document “Special Operations and Joint Forces in Countering Terrorism,” prepared for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, a new organization has been created to thwart potential terrorist attacks on the United States. This counterterrorist operations group–the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group–will require 100 people and at least $100 million a year. The team of covert counterintelligence agents will be responsible for secret missions designed to “stimulate reactions” among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to “counterattack” by U.S. forces. This means that the United States government is planning to use secret military operations in order to provoke terrorist attacks on innocent people.

The Effort to Make Unions Disappear

(Sources: Lee Sustar, “Employers Attack; Unions Blink,” Z Magazine, Sept. 20, 2002; David Bacon, “Unions Face National Insecurity,” War Times, October/November 2002; Anne-Marie Cusac, “Brazen Bosses,” The Progressive, February 2003; Robert L. Borosage, “Class Warfare, Bush-Style,” The American Prospect, March 2003.)

Called the “most pro-corporate president in history,” George W. Bush, particularly since 9-11, has been engaged in a relentless yet largely covert effort to undermine labor unions and worker protections.

Immigrant workers have suffered the most from the “war on unions.” In the wake of 9-11, the Bush administration used the specter of national security to justify its attack on public-sector unions and to stall passage of the Homeland Security bill until receiving the right to exempt the 180,000 employees of the new department of most civil-service protections.

The Bush administration has announced plans to accelerate the process of contracting out federal work to private companies, putting the jobs of nearly 850,000 federal employees at risk. This invites antiunion, low-wage contractors to compete for what are now, in most cases, decent-paying union jobs with good benefits. But what went unreported is that this is proving to embolden conservative governors who are seeking wholesale privatization and deunionization of state and local workforces as well.

Closing Access to Information Technology

(Source: Arthur Stamoulis, “Slamming Shut Open Access,” Dollars and Sense, September 2002.)

The 7,000 Internet service providers available today are quickly being bought out by large monopolies that also control your local phone, cable, and, possibly, satellite Internet. A policy of open access currently makes it possible for people to choose between AOL, MSN, Jimmy’s Internet Shack, and thousands of other ISPs for dial-up Internet access. Phone companies would like to use their monopoly ownership of the phone wires to have total control over phone-based Internet services as well, but telecom regulations are in place to prevent this.

As the general shift from dial-up to broadband Internet access gets underway, the FCC is moving in with a series of actions that threaten to shut down open access. In 2002 the FCC decided to characterize high-speed cable Internet connection as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service.” This designation frees cable broadband from telecom rules, giving the cable companies that own broadband lines the ability to deny smaller ISP companies access over their cable lines. Cable itself is a monopoly in most towns; so anyone who signs up for cable Internet will typically have no choice but to use the cable company’s own ISP. Such degree of market control spells trouble for freedom of information on the Internet.

Treaty Busting by the United States

(Sources: Marylia Kelley and Nicole Deller, “Rule of Power or Rule of Law?” Connections, June 2002; John B. Anderson, “Unsigning the ICC,” The Nation, April 2002; Eamon Martin, editor, “U.S. Invasion Proposal Shocks the Netherlands,” Ashville Global Report, June 20-26, 2002; John Valleau, “Nuclear Nightmare,” Global Outlook, Summer 2002.)

The United States is a signatory to nine multilateral treaties that it has either blatantly violated or gradually subverted. The Bush administration is now outright rejecting a number of those treaties, and in doing so, places global security in jeopardy as other nations feel entitled to do the same. The rejected treaties include the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Mines, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a protocol to create a compliance regime for the Biological Weapons Convention, the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The United States is also not complying with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Commission, the Biological Weapons Convention, and the U.N. framework Convention on Climate Change.

This unprecedented rejection of and rapid retreat from global treaties that have in effect kept the peace through the decades will not only continue to isolate U.S. policy, but will also render these treaties and conventions invalid without the support and participation of the world’s foremost superpower.

U.S./British Forces Continue Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons

(Sources: Dan Kapelovitz, “Toxic Troops: What Our Soldiers Can Expect in Gulf War II,” Hustler, June 2003; Reese Erlich, “The Hidden Killer,” Children of War radio program, March 2003.)

British and American coalition forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately flouting a U.N. resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction.

Nobel Peace Prize candidate Helen Caldicott states that the tiny radioactive particles created when a DU weapon hits a target are easily inhaled through gas masks. The particles, which lodge in the lung, can be transferred to the kidney and other vital organs.

A U.N. report from August 2002 states that use of the DU weapons is in violation of numerous laws and U.N. conventions. Reportedly, more than 9,600 Gulf War veterans have died since serving in Iraq during the first Gulf war, a statistical anomaly. The Pentagon has blamed the extraordinary number of illnesses and deaths on a variety of factors. However, according to top-level U.S. Army reports and military contractors, “short-term effects of high doses [of DU] can result in death, while long-term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer.”

Soldiers in the Gulf War were often required to enter battlefields unprotected and were never warned of the dangers. In effect, George Bush Sr. used weapons of mass destruction against his own soldiers.

In Afghanistan: Poverty, Women’s Rights, and Civil Disruption Worse Than Ever

(Sources: Ahmed Rashid, “Afghanistan Imperiled,” The Nation, Oct. 14, 2002; Pranjal Tiwari, “Afghanistan: Lies, Near Lies, and Horrible Truths,” Left Turn, February/March 2003; Jan Goodwin, “An Uneasy Peace,” The Nation, April 29, 2002; Chien-min Chung, “Childhood Burdens” (photo essay with text by Scott Carrier), Mother Jones, July/August 2002; Michele Landsberg, “Afghanistan Documentary Exposes Bush’s Promises,” Toronto Star, March 2, 2003.)

While all eyes have been turned to Iraq, the people of Afghanistan have continued to suffer in silence in what is considered to be their worst poverty in decades. They still have no new constitution, no new laws, and little food. Ethnic and political rivalries plague the country and the military power of the warlords has increased.

Despite the fanfare, little has changed for the average Afghan woman. Many women have yet to stop wearing the burqa due to fear of persecution, and the new Interior Ministry still requires women to receive permission from their male relatives before they travel.

As of July 2002 the life expectancy for the people of Afghanistan is 46 years. The average yearly income per capita is $280. After 23 years of war, the adult male population has been decimated, and many children have taken the place of their fathers and mothers as the breadwinners in their families; 90 percent of children are not in school. More than one out of every four children in Afghanistan will die before his or her fifth birthday.

In January 2002, the Tokyo Conference pledged $4.5 billion for reconstruction, of which donor nations promised $1.8 billion this year. Nearly one year later, barely 30 percent of what was promised had been delivered. The U.S. government’s own contribution has been half that of the European Union.

Africa Faces New Threat of Colonialism

(Sources: Michelle Robidoux, “NEPAD: Repackaging Colonialism in Africa,” Left Turn, July/August, 2002; Asad Ismi, “The Ravaging of Africa,” Briarpatch, vol. 32, no. 1, excerpted from The CCPA Monitor, October 2002; Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, “How (Not) to Feed Africa,” New Internationalist, January/February 2003.)

Africa is the most war-torn continent in the world. Over the past 15 years, 32 of Africa’s 53 countries experienced violent conflict. During the Cold War years, the United States sent $1.5 billion in arms and training to Africa, thus setting the stage for the current round of conflicts. Over the years, these U.S.-funded wars have been responsible for the deaths of millions, and the subsequent displacement, disease, and starvation of many millions more.

In June 2002, leaders from the eight most powerful countries in the world (the G8) met to form the New Partnership for Africa’s Development as an “antipoverty” campaign. Not one of the eight leaders was from Africa. The NEPAD attempts to employ Western development techniques to provide economic opportunities for international investment.

The United States currently gets 15 percent of its total oil imports from Africa. By 2015, that figure will be 25 percent. Rather than a plan to reduce African poverty, NEPAD is a mechanism for ensuring that U.S. and other Western investments are protected.

Read more at www.projectcensored.org.

From the September 11-17, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

The Bohemian’s 25th Anniversary

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The Bohemian’s 25th Anniversary

2002.

The Silver Anniversary

Looking back at a quarter century

By Greg Cahill, Gretchen Giles, and David Templeton

There’s nothing like a little perspective to add sanity to your world. Enmeshed in the sometimes arduous, often rewarding process of putting out a paper every week, it’s a rare occasion that we can step back and take a look where we’ve come from. That, exactly, is what this issue is for. Though the numbers are fuzzy (25 years ago, apparently, the science of record keeping was still in its infancy), calculations show that the various incarnations of this newspaper, shot through with a steadying thread of commitment to Sonoma County and the North Bay, have reached the venerable age of 25.

It’s not an age to be mocked. The quarter-century mark, for many, is a time of taking stock–an adulthood in its infancy. Though as our profile of exemplary shows, it’s not an age lacking in perspective and wisdom. Luckily, it didn’t take the Paper/Sonoma County Independent/Bohemian 25 years to find its way in the world.

From its origins in Guerneville as a stalwart West County community paper, then slowly moving east (to Forestville and then Santa Rosa) over the years, and expanding to cover all of Sonoma County and then all of the North Bay, the paper has seen (and covered) the triumphs and pains of the fast-changing county and the region, all the while evolving and adapting itself.

And that is entirely thanks to an incredibly talented roster of employees. The pages of the Bohemian today are littered with past staffers, including Greg Cahill, who helmed the Independent/Bohemian for seven years and now serves as our contributing music editor; Gretchen Giles, once bylined as Gretchen Mikalonis, tireless associate editor-cum-freelance weaver of words; and David Templeton, who has been taking notables to see movies for his Talking Pictures column since 1994. That’s a lot of movies. You’ll find pieces by all of them in this anniversary issue.

But of course, there are so many more. More recent names include Sara Bir, our current staff writer, as well as former staffers Patrick Sullivan and Paula Harris, who still pop up every once in a while. Other names may be familiar in different contexts: Yosha Bourgea, Daedalus Howell, and Zack Stentz have all moved on to writing poetry and making films.

Michele Anna Jordan is renowned for her food writing. Sara Peyton keeps her finger on the pulse of the local book scene, and Bruce Robinson manages KRCB. John De Salvio, Nick Valentine, Simone Wilson, Janet Wells, Liesel Hofmann . . . well, the list is long–and that’s just the editorial staff. The business side of the paper has been run by an able group since day one. The truth is, this paper is built on the backs of our staff, our advertisers, and our readers. Thanks for a great 25 years.

—Davina Baum

[ Aching Breaking News | Art History | Odds and Ends ]


1989.

Aching Breaking News

25 years of stories–some serious, some seriously strange–from the pages of the North Bay’s best alternative newsweekly

By Greg Cahill

These are stories big and small. On the surface, the river of people and events that feed the news pages can seem insignificant (not another wastewater story!) or profound: Remember when the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights visited Santa Rosa in 1998 to investigate allegations of widespread police abuse after a string of officer-involved shootings and inmate deaths at the county jail?

During the past 25 years, the stories on these pages have run the gamut: gay bashing on the river and the slow response of local sheriff’s officials to the attacks; landmark sexual-harassment rulings against local schools; the Catholic Church’s efforts to limit reproductive services countywide through owning and controlling the leases at medical centers; and a pair of slick Hare Krishnas who rode their shiny new BMWs into Occidental a few years ago with plans to purchase Ocean Song and transform the secluded farm into a big international spiritual retreat.

Sometimes the news struck a nerve. Over the years, this newspaper has been boycotted by angry liberals, picketed by pissed-off conservatives, vandalized by God knows who (but he sure could swing a sledge hammer), and targeted with death threats.

Overall that coverage chronicled Sonoma County as it morphed from a rural and relatively isolated North Bay conclave into the largest county in the North Bay. That growth brought suburban sprawl, traffic congestion, pollution, gang activity, and skyrocketing housing prices. The quaint West County apple orchards gave way to industrial-sized vineyards, and high-tech businesses sprouted where alfalfa once flourished in Petaluma.

Now there is a glut of grapes and high-tech is at an all-time low.

Often the news focused on local heroes and more than a few zeroes (Frank Riggs, where are you, baby?). Randy Shilts, chronicler of the AIDS epidemic, died in 1994 at his ranch in the Sonoma County redwoods. Mario Savio, UC Berkeley free-speech movement cofounder turned popular SSU math professor, revived his activist leanings to oppose state anti-immigration legislation shortly before his untimely death in 1996 from a heart attack at the age of 53.

And then there is Mariann Hopkins of Sebastopol, a former college secretary who developed health problems related to the silicone breast implant procedure she had in 1976 after a double mastectomy for breast cancer. Her case became the first of its kind to reach the U.S. Supreme Court (which upheld a $7.3 million settlement in her favor) and led Dow Corning to reveal that it had withheld from the public incriminating studies that showed its implants were potentially harmful.

Here are 25 stories–some serious and some seriously strange–culled from the pages of The Paper, the Sonoma County Independent, and the Bohemian. These stories dip into the social, political, and cultural slipstream to show our community at its best and its worst.

1978: Cazadero Conflagration

The Paper debuts in Guerneville shortly before a summer blaze sweeps through neighboring Cazadero. The weeklong fire destroys 30 homes and hundreds of acres of forest; many wild and domestic animals perish. The Creighton Ridge fire is sparked from a lawn mower, spreads quickly to dry tinder, and soon flares in high winds. Four firefighters suffer burns when flames force them to abandon their bulldozer in the area called Hell Hole. A crew of 500 firefighters saves the Magic Mountain subdivision south of Cazadero.

1979: Say What?

Local law enforcement officials turn over to the FBI a printed note found next to the body of Roy William Dale, who died of an apparent suicide in a 1974 Chevy Camaro parked at a Fort Ross Road turnout. The cryptic note implicates Dale in the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, stating that the hit had been conducted under the command of “the Big H” and alludes to a connection between the fatal 1968 shooting of Sen. Robert Kennedy and a plan to kill his brother Edward (“Two down, one to go”). Strangely, Dale’s hands and feet were tied. A hose from the car exhaust ran into the interior of the vehicle, and (even stranger) the windows were taped tight–inside and outside.

1980: Secret Warfare

Did the Japanese bomb Sonoma County toward the end of WWII? A reader speculates that high-explosive incendiary bombs sent by balloon on air currents across the Pacific Ocean in a little-known chapter of modern warfare may still lie unexploded in Guerneville. Experts estimate that 10 percent of the more than 9,000 such devices of a super-secret 1945 program actually made their way across the Pacific. A U.S. Army P-38 shot down the first one on Feb. 28, 1945 (several children had been killed by one in an incident in Northern California). Others fell in Sebastopol, near Calistoga, Cloverdale, and (gulp) Guerneville. The U.S. government censored press reports lest the Japanese gain knowledge of the campaign’s effectiveness.

1981: Close to Home

Cazadero resident and human rights activist Mark Pearlman and two others are gunned down in a hail of bullets at the Sheraton Hotel cafeteria in San Salvador. The murders, carried out by a right-wing death squad, underscore the continuing terror of the U.S.-backed regime.

1982: Strange Air

After 30 years broadcasting from Pool Ridge in “Monteeeee Rio,” the 750-watt KRJB radio station leaves the airwaves for lack of advertising dollars. The station, the only one serving West County at that time, had broadcast an eclectic mix that included vintage radio dramas and foreign-language news programming. Station owner Mike Erickson, who kept two coyote-crossed dogs by his side, was renowned for on-air tirades against “dirty hippies” and “welfare bums.”

1983: Big Pac Attack

An unknown assailant–clad in camo fatigues and a ski mask–strikes a blow against the emerging video-game craze when he strides into the Hiding Place restaurant in Guerneville, hoists an axe, and smashes a Ms. Pacman game table. Stunned patrons are left to ponder his motives as the intruder dashes out the door and speeds away in a waiting car, leaving the axe buried in the table. Ted Kaczynski in training?

1984: Not So Mellow

Who says West County is a hippie haven? A boycott of local businesses against rival newspaper the Sebastopol Times escalates into a brawl after the co-publisher and editor is arrested for punching a flower deliveryman. The boycott began after the Times ran an inflammatory editorial stating that Speaker of the State Assembly Willie Brown should be called a “nigger.” The editorial draws statewide condemnation. The flower guy is simply at the wrong place at the wrong, er, Times.

1985: Growing Pains

The transformation of Petaluma, Santa Rosa, and Rohnert Park into bedroom communities for Marin and San Francisco workers begins to put a strain on such smaller West County communities as Forestville, Sebastopol, Sea Ranch, and especially Bodega Bay, which has recently opened up to commercial and large-scale housing development. The big Santa Rosa sewage spill of ’85 sends a messy message that the county isn’t ready for this unchecked growth. These concerns set the tone for county politics for the next 15 years.

1986: If the Creek Don’t Rise

Two thousand residents flee their homes when a record-breaking “mountain of water” (49 feet 1 inch) deluges Guerneville and its environs in the great flood of ’86. And, no, folks didn’t learn their lesson–eight years later, the scene is repeated.

1987: Legacy of Love

The tiny Starcross monastic community in Annapolis attracts national media attention after it announces the group is caring for a five-month-old baby girl with AIDS, an unprecedented move. Starcross becomes a model for similar organizations, caring for AIDS children from Romania and Uganda and beyond.

1988: Jackson Action!

Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson stops in Santa Rosa in May, drawing local progressives and farm-labor activists. He vows to “reverse the Robin Hood” fiscal policies of Reaganomics. He loses, but the glow lingers.

1989: Preservation Society

The Paper selects West County activist Lenny Weinstein as its first Person of the Year. The soft-spoken sign painter, known for his tenacity and political wiliness, played a pivotal role breaking a four-year impasse and getting the state to designate the Sebastopol-to-Jenner route of Highway 116 a Scenic Highway. “I came here because this was a rural heaven,” the Bronx native notes. Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior announces that a two-year lease process that could result in oil drilling off the Sonoma Coast will continue, and Santa Rosa officials propose building a sewage pipeline running off of Salmon Creek.

1990: Frankly Speaking

In a major upset, Windsor real-estate developer and Republican challenger Frank Riggs, a political neophyte, unseats longtime Democratic congressman Doug Bosco. Riggs, who runs as “a Republican environmentalist,” later stuns his party as the only Republican in the House to vote against President George Bush’s 1991 Gulf War resolution. Party leaders soon whip him into shape. The Sonoma County Independent wins his ire for a cover story chronicling Riggs’ conversion into a foot soldier for Newt Gingrich’s conservative Contract with America.

1991: Breaking Ground

Plans for a new outlet mall in Petaluma and other major projects around the county prompt a front-page article on commercial developers that have targeted Sonoma County, and how to stop them. One idealistic suggestion: Boycott the new stores while counting your riches. “Out of the heap of our discarded distractions, a sense of purpose greater than our own wants and needs is likely to emerge.” The outlet mall is built anyway. Shoppers are few and far between.

1992: The Art of Eating

Michele Anna Jordan remembers Glen Ellen novelist and food writer M. F. K. Fisher, 84, who dies June 22. Fisher, known as the grand dame of food and a sensualist, turned the world on to the joys of gastronomy through words filled with wit, warmth, and wonder. Her influential work helped lay the foundation for the region’s current reputation as a culinary center.

1993: Fighting for Choice

A couple of weeks after Dr. David Gunn is slain in Florida by one of the pro-life movement’s shock troops, Santa Rosa physician Chistine Cummings is targeted by local Operation Rescue fanatics. After the Gunn murder, Cummings speaks out for choice on national TV and details plans to continue providing reproductive services at her blockaded women’s health clinic.

1994: Flip Flop

Marc Klaas, father of slain Petaluma 12-year-old Polly Klaas, discusses ways that he and others manipulated the media to keep Polly in the public eye, only to be manipulated in return by image-savvy news hounds and struggling politicians–including President Clinton and Gov. Pete Wilson–all hoping that the “three strikes” law would boost their careers. With “three strikes” law on the books, Klaas later opposes a state ballot initiative that would make it even tougher to rescind the statutes that sent three-time felons to jail for 25 years to life, even for nonviolent offenses. “I just don’t happen to think that stealing a basketball, which is considered a serious nonviolent crime . . . should be held over somebody’s head for the rest of their life,” he tells the Independent. Klaas later reverses that position and often can be seen on CNN’s Larry King Live touting the draconian law he helped to usher onto the national legal landscape.

1995: Who’s Sorry Now?

One year after local priest Gary Timmons is arraigned on molestation charges, victims decry “a conspiracy of silence among church leaders.” The arrest prompts a series of articles on the topic in the Independent, concluding that the Timmons case suggests a much wider culture of pedophilia in the church. Disbelieving Catholics assail the newspaper for its supposedly blasphemous coverage. Lawsuits stemming from similar cases will nearly bankrupt the Santa Rosa archdiocese and topple the bishop.

1996: Fatal Flaws

Sonoma housekeeper Maria Teresa Macias, a mother of three, is gunned down on the street by her estranged husband after repeated efforts to get Sonoma County law enforcement officials to issue a restraining order. The Independent details the shortcomings in the district attorney’s office, the sheriff’s department, and the courts. Several years later, the Macias family wins a wrongful death lawsuit against the county.

1997: Magic Bullets?

A year after voters approve a series of landmark urban-growth boundaries in an unprecedented first-in-the-nation action, four more Sonoma County communities jump on the UGB bandwagon, hoping to contain rampant development and recapture the county’s pastoral heritage.

1998: Gridlock at the Polls

The overwhelming defeat in November of sales tax measures in Marin and Sonoma counties that would have funded nearly a billion dollars in transportation improvements, including $175 million for rail service, threatens to unravel the fragile coalition of environmentalists, business leaders, and public officials who spent eight years constructing the transit fix. Enjoy the gridlock.

1999: The Wrath of Grapes

West County residents are seeing red over rampant vineyard expansion after years of environmental degradation, pesticide drift into schools and homes, and the loss of agricultural diversity. The Town Hall Coalition, a grassroots group of local environmentalists, leads the way under the guidance of former Sebastopol mayor Lynn Hamilton and Occidental hair stylist Debra Anderson. Their efforts lead to a tough hillside ordinance that reigns in at least some vineyard conversions.

2000: Sprawl Brawl

Voters reject the Rural Heritage Initiative requiring voter approval for the next 30 years of any amendment to the Sonoma County general plan calling for significant development of agricultural land. Backers say Marin’s poor land-use policies had led to a northward exodus of workers and businesses, squeezing environmental resources and pressuring Sonoma County communities to transform pristine farmlands into acres of suburban cul-de-sacs. For those concerned about continued sprawl in the face of UGBs, well, now you know whom to blame.

2001: Puppet Government

Argyle Sox didn’t make it into office, but he had lots of supporters in his failed bid for a seat on the San Rafael City Council. The fact that Sox is a floppy-eared dog with mismatched eyes–and is a sock puppet to boot–did not deter some voters from tossing him their support. Assisted by his trusty “campaign manager,” actor-artist Robert Cooper, Sox wowed supporters with stump speeches along the lines of “I heard there are already four puppets on the council, so I thought I’d fit right in.” Incumbents are unamused. Maybe he can be a write-in candidate for governor.

2002: Local Boy Makes Bad

He’s been dubbed a parents’ worst nightmare. John Walker, a 20-year-old former San Anselmo resident, is catapulted into infamy a year earlier when he is found–long-haired and grubby–fighting alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan. He clambers out of a sooty basement in Mazar-i Sharif and lands in plenty of legal hot water. His lawyer successfully pushes a public relations strategy in the hopes that Walker will face charges resulting in a few years’ prison time and beat treason charges, which would have carried the death penalty.

2003: Red, White, and Blues

Petaluma makes national news when it becomes the second city in the nation (the other is Boston) to reject an anti-Patriot Act resolution. So far, 123 municipal, county, and state governments in 25 states have passed similar resolutions.


1995.

Art History

Have we come a long way in 25 years, baby?

By Gretchen Giles

A couple of years after Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude packed up their court documents and silky white parachute fabric, having completed the legally contentious 1976 Running Fence project that cast Sonoma and Marin counties into the international art world limelight, things appeared to have settled down to backwater-normal in these parts.

A drifter from Berkeley who arrived in Guerneville with a dog and a harmonica got the front page of The Paper because he was an interesting character, not a bedeviled homeless person. Struggling into its third year, the Russian River Jazz Festival cost just $8 a day and featured Count Basie.

Yet at a small rural college in Rohnert Park, acclaimed painter and Healdsburg resident Richard Diebenkorn was modestly exhibiting in a group show. Sonoma State College, not yet a university, opened its art gallery in 1978 with Diebenkorn and a host of other who’s-who Northern California artists, among them William T. Wiley, sculptor Peter Voulkos, painters Sam Francis, Joan Brown, Wally Hedrick, Nathan Oliveira, Manuel Neri, and Ed Moses appearing with a breathless list of others.

Susan Moulton, then head of the school’s art department, said her opening exhibit heralded “what promises to be a cultural renaissance north of San Francisco.” And, to a thrillingly large extent, she was absolutely correct.

It just took the rest of the North Bay a few years to catch up with her vision.

Sitting in the Guerneville library, which itself didn’t exist in 1978, I hand-crank the microfilm technology of the era. An ancient item marrying the microscope to the overhead projector to the sewing machine, the microfilm allows a peek back 25 years (OK–24 years, as the earliest editions of The Paper are lost to us) and the predictable discovery that it’s exactly the poignant experience I had expected it to be. But not for exactly the reasons I had expected.

I knew that I’d chuckle at the groovy haircuts and wide lapels but had the curious surprise of mourning the stillbirth of the feminist movement as I wound the film by. Writing about the Women’s Art Festival at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in August 1979, The Paper critic Elaine Affrante noted with assurance that “every piece sparkled with the consummate self-esteem that is associated with women’s endeavors in music and art.”

The notion of a “women’s art festival” itself seems oddly quaint, if not near illegal. Men can’t actually be excluded, can they? It seems as shocking now as would be announcing a “white men’s art festival,” though many museum exhibitions are of course little but.

Affrante’s bald statement is ludicrous enough to make such pioneering artists as Louise Bourgeois shudder but might bring a smile to other pioneers, such as Judy Chicago. Her Dinner Party (1974­1979), featuring 39 ceramic place settings celebrating women both real and mythic, exactly matches Affrante’s era.

I keenly remember the thrilling shock of walking around the installation’s opening at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at age 17, amazed that there were so many women worthy of eating at Chicago’s table, most of whom I had never heard of in school. Today, we tend to take such history (my gosh, remember herstory?) for granted, finding ourselves instead being somewhat irritated at Chicago for insisting on being a “woman artist,” as if her gender matters.

Hearkening back to the knotty fuss of macramé, the long work of coaxing appliqué onto Levis, and the lumpy pottery of the brown-bread hippie table all called to mind a harried braless woman in a handmade patchwork skirt called “Mom.” Then, she and her friends were women artists; handsome and hale today, they are merely artists–though they might insist on a capital A.

And many of the most enduring and most exciting art institutions that we have today in the North Bay are helmed by, if not exactly filled with art by, women.

Created in 1982, the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin County brought the creativity of the San Francisco arts community to a weird and successful partnership with both the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the National Park Service. But the Headlands Center didn’t really find its way until 1986, when it began its residency and exhibition programs for artists and the public. Today, this is among the best hothouse working environments for up-and-coming artists whose names aim to be solidly recognizable tomorrow.

The Cultural Arts Council of Sonoma County began its association with state funding in 1983, and in 1985 launched the first ARTrails open studios tour. With a roster of some 150 participating artists, ARTrails now generates over half a million dollars of stay-at-home money annually. Of course, this year sees the state contributing no bucks to the CACSC.

But 20 years has taught the agency a thing or two about survival, and executive director Karen d’Or is nonplussed. Dedicated to supporting the arts through exhibition and programming, the CACSC remains a curiously absent spot on local visitor bureau websites. Touting wine, river, and sea seems to be our calling card, yet the wealth of area art is our own smart secret.

Quicksilver Mine Company owner Khysie Horn opened her first store in 1983 in Guerneville, selling local handicrafts and hanging area artwork as spill-over in the hallways and front windows. When painter Alv Wilenius’ mythic portrait of one Norse god rising naked from the sea with his face in close proximity to another naked Norse god’s genitals was hung in the window, it upset an area hairdresser, and Horn bemusedly found herself amid a First Amendment fight that gained national attention in 1985.

The painting eventually became part of television producer Norman Lear’s “First Amendment” traveling tour. Horn celebrated her 20th anniversary of promoting locals-only art on a recent hot Sunday with the opening of a new gallery in Forestville that offers no knickknacks to help pay the rent. Look for Chiyomi Longo’s important one-person exhibit this Oct. 16.

Founded in 1984, the Sonoma Museum of Visual Art began as the California Museum of Art, an unwieldy title that seemed to aspire to showcase solely California artists, and even caused a minor identity crisis among its board members. Eventually throwing that title over for the more sinuous SMOVA, this entity currently provides William T. Wiley with a solo show (he’ll even play guitar for his supper on Oct. 4) and cannily marries area artists with the work of the nationally known. Executive director Gay Dawson has helped guide the museum closer to its mandate of being the premier presenter of contemporary art north of San Francisco.

The Sonoma County Museum opened in 1985 as a historical repository, debuting with the noteworthy attendance of a 105-year-old woman and an actor in a Snoopy suit. Today, under the aegis of executive director Natasha Boas, it is poised for a high-level remodel with star architect Michael Maltzan and is showing the work of nationally known light and land artist James Turrell.

Furthermore, this museum–formerly the cultural hell of bored schoolchildren and lost tourists–has found itself a vision and commenced a years-long examination of the influence of the land upon art, and vice versa. With the bequest of the late Tom Golden, a fierce friend of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s, the SCM now also holds the world’s largest public collection of their art and will some day have the great pleasure of deciding how best to serve the public with Golden’s personal assortment of arcana and home in Freestone.

Rene di Rosa’s collection in the Napa Valley houses perhaps the most vibrant private installations of contemporary California art in the state. Opened to the public in 1997, the Di Rosa Preserve’s 54 acres offer hundreds of works by emerging, mid-career, and established artists. A thrill still goes through a reception crowd when someone hisses, “Rene’s here!” as he so often is, browsing MFA and local shows to find his next collectible favorite.

The Sonoma Valley Museum of Art came to life through the care of local patrons in 1998 and continues to pass strangely under media radar, even with stellar shows such as one-person exhibitions by Chester Arnold and–hey!–even Auguste Rodin. Currently exhibiting “Latin American Masterworks” on loan from the Rockefeller Foundation and others through Oct. 19, executive director Lia Transue oversees an upcoming transformation of this former furniture store’s facade as it moves trippingly into the future.

Back at the microfilm, I sadly see that Los Lobos and the Blasters once 0gigged at the Tropicana hotel for just $7 and I was too stupid to attend. An editorial wags that we should all just accept “the fact that we’ve gotten along just fine without the metric system thus far.” A cartoon parodies the Equal Rights Amendment–that silly, silly dream.

But I also recognize a gladness that I’m not forced to write female executive director this and woman painter that as I look briefly back over 25 years. Perhaps it’s just as well that women raised a ruckus but not an amendment. Has it allowed us to be incorporated as simply a people, executive and otherwise?

As the immediate beneficiary of all the fuss, I can’t tell. Ask your daughter.


1989.

Odds and Ends

From half-assed runners to little lost whales, we look back on 25 years of weirdness in the balmy North Bay

Throughout human history, whenever something unpredictable and amazing occurs–floods, infestations, social upheavals, art festivals–there are those among us who will quickly rise up to loudly whine, “When will things go back to normal again? Why can’t everything just return to normal?” They are the normalcy cheerleaders. They speak the word “normal” as if it were synonymous with “good,” “true,” “holy,” and “rock solid.” Well, let’s get it out in the open once and for all.

These people are assholes.

Because, let’s face it, normalcy is not normal.

Sure, we’ve gotten used to a certain amount of normalcy over the eons. As the Orderly Rigors of Civilization have had their predictable, state-sanctioned way with the world, human beings may indeed have acclimatized themselves to a certain amount of normalcy–but that doesn’t mean we like it.

Just look what happens whenever something weird happens, when, for example, a humpback whale swims up the Petaluma river or a bunch of psychology students start making multicolored prints of their buttocks at the local university, or gender crusader Joe Manthey tries to stop Take Your Daughter to School Day because he thinks it’s sexist. Whatever.

What’s the first thing we do when something like that happens? We tell everyone we see, don’t we? We call our mothers. We send out e-mails. “Did you hear about the whale? Did you hear about the multicolored butt prints?” We can’t stop talking about it.

And we know why, don’t we?

Weirdness, it seems, is important. Weirdness is more than just an occasional spice of life. Weirdness is life. We thrive on it. And fortunately for those of us who live in the North Bay, there has always been plenty of weirdness around to sustain our inherent human compulsion to celebrate the offbeat while telling normalcy to take a flipping hike. Just in the last quarter century, so many weird things have happened around here we’re surprised nobody’s ever published an article about it. Let’s correct that right now. Here then is a short review, in no particular order, of some of the North Bay’s weirdest events and occurrences from the last 25 years.

The Ass-to-Ass Run

It seems weird now, but then it was good, clean fun. Old-timers from Sonoma County may remember the Brass Ass. Actually, it was the Brass Asses, a pair of pizza places located in Cotati (near what is now Oliver’s Market) and Santa Rosa (in the Montgomery Village shopping center) way back in the ’70s and early ’80s. Some locals are still praying for a Brass Ass resurrection, almost 20 years after the last Ass shut its doors. The Ass is missed for several reasons, One, locals enjoyed saying “Brass Ass.” Two, the pizza–especially the meatball pizza–was to die for. But best of all was the Ass-to-Ass race, an annual marathon that began at the Cotati Ass, stretched over to the Santa Rosa Ass, and back again. An immensely popular event, it reveled in the sheer weird-ass outlandishness of its own name. Those lacking in motivation were permitted to participate in a shortened version of the run, called the Half-Ass, in which runners stopped for beer and pizza in Santa Rosa and never bothered to run back to the starting line. It was, as they say, a more innocent time, when folks were proud of their Asses, and didn’t mind saying so.

Pat Paulsen Declares (Again)

When longtime Sonoma County resident Pat Paulsen declared his candidacy for the 1996 presidential nomination, he became the first “politician” in history to run his campaign on the Internet. The joke, of course, was that Pat Paulsen, a straight-faced comedian who died of brain cancer the following year, had been running for president in just about every presidential election since 1968, when he announced his candidacy on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. For his first few tongue-in-cheek runs at the nomination, Paulsen always declared as a Republican but switched sides somewhere along the way, irritating the Democrats as much as he had once embarrassed the Republicans. The best thing about his final run for the ultimate office, was that, as an Internet candidate, he now stands as the front-runner for best web-produced political stunt. Web surfers who weren’t alive when Paulsen first started running didn’t realize the campaign was a joke. High school reports still frequently cite Pat Paulsen as a high tech political pioneer. Now that’s weird.

A Whale of a Tale in Petaluma

As Petaluma fisherman Doug Tucker once said, “I’ve seen some weird things in the Petaluma river. I’ve seen pink jellyfish. I’ve seen sea lions.” The weirdest thing he’s ever seen in the river however–aside from the occasional drunken yachtsman–was a whale. Call him Humphrey II, after Humphrey the famous humpback who’d gotten himself lost in the Sacramento River in 1985, becoming an instant celebrity. What Tucker and a whole bunch of other camera-toting fans saw was a juvenile gray whale that did indeed swim up the Petaluma River in May of 1994, stopping at the marina to cavort for a few days before being lured back down to the San Francisco Bay. Talk about the one that got away!

Knowing the Unknown

In the mid-1970s, eccentric artist Mickey McGowan established the Unknown Museum in Mill Valley, and with its mysterious towers of TV sets, stacks of discarded lunch boxes, and jars full of formaldehyde-preserved Snoopy dolls, the place instantly became a kind of weirdness central. The subject of numerous articles, books, and television news spots, the museum met its ironic fate in 1984, when the site McGowan had been renting was purchased by Smith and Hawken and became an upscale garden shop. The contents of the museum, now more unknown than ever, are still in storage in San Rafael and continue to accumulate, as McGowan dreams of resurrecting the museum at a new site, sometime in the future. We support such a move. The world could use a shot of that kind of creative weirdness.

Francis Ford Coppola Becomes a Winemaker

In the late 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola was at the height of his filmmaking powers, having transformed himself from a director of crap (Dementia 13, Terror, Finian’s Rainbow) into an artist, crafting four of the best, most important films of the decade (The Conversation, the first two Godfather films, and Apocalypse Now.) Over the last decade, he’s done it again, only more strangely, transforming himself–right here in wine country–from a filmmaking genius into . . . a pasta-sauce guru. OK, he became a winemaking guru before he broke into the pasta-sauce market, but it’s still weird. Those of us who enjoy wine, pasta sauce, and Coppola movies (I admit it! I even own Finian’s Rainbow!) hope that he melds the three into something new and beautiful soon.

Frank Riggs Pepper-Sprays Protesters

Oct. 15, 1997, a group of tree-bark-toting protesters stage a sit-in in the offices of then congressman Frank Riggs, whose hostility toward the environment and environmental protesters becomes national news when he directs police officers to torture the protesters–on film. Using Q-Tips, the officers methodically daub pepper spray into the eyes of the protesters, as they writhe and scream (the protesters, not the officers). In defending this action, which now stands as one of the strangest and most disturbing events to ever take place in a congressman’s office (on camera, anyway), Riggs could only repeat that the protesters were “frightening” and thus deserved what they got. Riggs was not reelected, which was hardly strange at all.

Wes Craven Is Dissed by Santa Rosa

Why do the end credits of the movie Scream contain a potent put-down of Santa Rosa? It’s all because, back when Wes Craven first came to Sonoma County to film his now-classic horror-comedy, the Santa Rosa School Board gave him permission to film at the Santa Rosa High School but then backed out when they decided the final script was too gory to be deemed acceptable. After a whole lot of noise, public debate, and a couple of threatened lawsuits, Craven moved his shoot to the town of Sonoma, where the community center took over the all important role of scene of the crime. Well, one of the scenes, anyway. The crime was that Santa Rosa, once again, received national attention for being even stupider than the average Hollywood movie.

Gun Nut at the Bohemian Grove

It’s hard to say which part is weirder: a heavily armed man in a scary skull mask infiltrating the Bohemian Grove grounds in search of Satanic, baby-sacrificing captains of industry or his choosing to do so when anybody could have told him that the place was pretty much empty, with said captains of industry–who hold a mysterious annual hobnob at the Grove every year–having been gone for months at the time of the infiltration. In January 2002, the self-proclaimed Phantom Patriot (aka Richard McCaslin from Austin, Texas) was arrested after discovering that no humans of any kind were being sacrificed in Satan-worshipping rituals, as he’d been convinced of by watching some underground videotapes obtained on the Internet. Actually, there were hardly any humans in the grove at all–only caretakers and evidently relaxed security people–as the annual meeting had taken place in July. We still don’t know what kind of weirdness takes place at the Grove during those meetings, but now we do know the kind of wackos who buy underground tapes off the Internet. And we know they fit right in, here in the ever unpredictable North Bay.

From the September 4-10, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Jim Standard

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Jim Standard

Photograph by Michael Amsler

Prism Play: The prisms used in Jim Standard’s imaginative sculptures were once meant for U.S. tanks.

Midnight Rainbows

Sebastopol artist Jim Standard has transformed surplus military optics into indescribable, candle-powered pieces of prismatic art

“I’ve been amazed by glass forever.”

Jim Standard, hunkered down on the floor of his compact Sebastopol cottage with his back propped up against a piece furniture, is gazing across the room into the multisided reflection of a Spectral Generator.

That’s right, a Spectral Generator. That’s one name, anyway–“And kind of a fun name, isn’t it?” he says–for the captivating sculptural glass and wood creations that Standard has invited me over, at midnight, to experience. More on Spectral Generators in a moment. Right now, Standard is rhapsodizing on his favorite subject: glass.

As he speaks, he holds a tone of voice that most people employ to describe a new lover or to confess a recent religious conversion. There is nothing new or recent about Standard’s love affair with glass, however. A master craftsman with over 30 years experience creating intricate glassworks of uncommon beauty, Standard’s affection for glass is the real deal.

“Glass is beautiful,” he explains, “capable of reflecting images, refracting light, magnifying and distorting and casting light beams. It’s easy to see why glass is used in churches and other holy places.”

Until recently, Standard had been devoting his energies and talents to large-scale projects, specializing in intricate beveled-glass mosaics using his own boundary-hopping artistic innovations, coupled with the leaded-glass techniques he learned during an intense four-year apprenticeship in the early ’70s, under master glassworker Joel Zimmer.

Standard’s most spectacular creations, which can easily run into the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, can be found in the form of spectacular Escher-inspired glass entryways and windows in Napa Valley wineries and libraries; as vast multifaceted prism windows in countless homes and businesses throughout Northern California; and as elaborate skylights–designed to portray Jungian-Pythagoran mandalas–in a spiritual retreat center in New Mexico.

Standard takes special pride in all of his installations, describing each in enthusiastic detail. Of them all, the one he feels particularly close to is the aforementioned skylight mandala, commissioned in 1992 by the late philanthropist Patricia Hewett, who envisioned the skylights as the signature piece of the vast spiritual retreat complex the Mandala Center, built on 20,000 acres in the high desert of New Mexico.

“[Hewett] challenged me to design a second window that would stand as a ‘a blazing hope and vision for the future of humanity’–those were her words,” says Standard. The result was a pair of circular, beveled glass windows, 5 feet across, each constructed with over a hundred separate pieces of hand-cut glass with 24-carat gold lining. The most complex of the two, named The Nine Stages of Man, is based on a threefold spiral, and contains a double-headed sunflower in the center with nine sunflowers emanating out from that.

While designing and crafting the extraordinarily detailed pieces, Standard immersed himself in studies of Jung and Pythagoras, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islamic pattern theory. “That project was a collision of art and physics and math,” he says. “When people visit the center and see the glass mandala at the top of that tower, [they] tend to ask for a pillow so they can lie down and stare up at the windows and go inside them.” As his eyes sweep across the Spectral Generators, he adds, “Sort of like what people do with these, only on a different scale.”

So then, what exactly are Spectral Generators?

Part candleholder, part sculpture, and part . . . well, part whatever you want them to be, Standard’s creations sound like some sort of weird-ass contraption from the movie Ghostbusters–something really big!–but are actually rather small, intimate-scale art pieces resembling a science-fair project as imagined by the dream team of Escher, Dali, and Leonardo da Vinci. On beautiful, polished-wood trays made of red oak, with edges made from either white oak, walnut, maple, Spanish cedar, or hickory, Standard arranges a number of 8-inch-long glass prisms, a surplus batch originally manufactured as optical lenses for the periscopes in U.S. military tanks.

The prisms are embedded in resin. When a votive candle is placed between the prisms and lit, the result is a candle flame reflected eight or more times, generating a remarkable amount of light as it bounces back and forth among the reflective glass, casting spectral shadows and rainbow images onto the wall, the ceiling, all around the room. At the moment, in Standard’s darkened room, there are 10 of the things going–each lit with a candle apiece–generating as much light as a hundred candles.

“If you get down lower, you get the prism effect,” Standard says, dropping down to gaze more closely into one of the pieces. “There’s just one candle in that one, but you get a bunch of little ghost candles in the background when you move a little, and the ghosts, if you pay attention, change colors, from red to green to blue to yellow–the whole spectrum. I’m getting some really hot stuff going on in that one over there.”

The jump from large-scale permanent installations to such small portable pieces is a natural combination of practicality and personal growth. After years working in relative solitude, Standard is relishing the one-on-one contact with people as he hand-sells the Spectral Generators (each going for between $125 and $160, depending on the number of prisms it contains). Then again, in today’s economy, he hasn’t been seeing as much large-scale work as he did 10 years ago, so the smaller pieces make good economic sense.

Not that Standard planned any of this.

It was over a year ago that he acquired the prisms after getting a tip from a friend that a large shipment of decommissioned prisms was available. “They were intended for use as periscope lenses,” Standard says, “made for the U.S. government, designed to go around the inside of the turrets in tanks. These were surplus, left over when the government changed tank specifications.”

For several months, Standard didn’t know quite what to do with them. He worked some of them into occasional window commissions and used several of them in a series of kitchen cabinets he was hired to design windows for, working the prisms in around the grape and grape-leaf elements in the cabinet doors.

“The prisms make a beautiful abstract element,” he says, “that catches light and throws prism light around the kitchen, multiplies the light, catches your eye and sparkles. They’re a lot like diamonds.”

One evening a few months ago, says Standard, “I was playing around, and I stood a bunch of them up like little funhouse mirrors. There was this candle there, so I stood some of them up around the candle, and I started seeing there were all these candle images–like 10 or 12 images per candle!” For the next few days, he experimented with different methods for mounting the prisms, finally settling on a base of casting resin, which gives the effect of a tray of water from which the prisms rise, and suggested an alternate name for the pieces: Rainbows on the Water.

“I like that name, too,” he laughs.

Since starting to build the pieces, of which he has enough prisms to make about 150, Standard has not been able to keep them in the house. “The minute somebody sees one,” he says in genuine wonder, “they want one. People have been taking them home to use on their altars, as centerpieces on their table, as gifts for their girlfriends.

“It’s difficult to define or describe how they move you,” he says, “but it’s impossible to deny that they do move you. Each one touches something in us. Maybe it’s taking something that was used in a mode of destruction–battle vehicles, things that dominate and crush and destroy–and from that domination we now have something meant for rejuvenation and contemplation and meditation and healing. I don’t know.

“What I do know is that whenever somebody sees one,” Standard smiles, his face aglow in the light of all those candles, “The first thing they say is, ‘Wow! How beautiful is that!'”

To contact Jim Standard for an appointment, call 707.547.9317. To learn more about his work, visit www.sonic.net/~prizmag/index.html or www.prizmagic.com.

From the September 4-10, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Jazz on the River

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Jazz on the River

Photograph by Kwaku Alston

Breezin’ Through Town: George Benson performs on Saturday at Jazz on the River.

Birds of a Feather

Russell Malone and Benny Green swing into Jazz on the River

By Greg Cahill

I started playing guitar in church at age four,” says Russell Malone of the toy plastic guitar his mother purchased for him as a child. “Even then I was aware of the different types of reactions that you can get out of people. When people hear music, you see them cry, you see them clap their hands. That’s some pretty heavy stuff, and even at that age I was aware of the different emotions that you can trigger with your music.

“That’s one of those things that made me want to be a musician–to make people feel good, to make people happy.”

Malone has made a name for himself with lush, melodic guitar lines and has been hailed as a Wes Montgomery for the new millennium–though that comparison probably would make this modest jazz guitarist wince. Still, the comparison is not without some merit. Malone has four solo albums under his belt and a résumé that includes stints with Ray Brown, Harry Connick Jr., and Diana Krall. Of late, he is best known as one-half of a dynamic jazz duo rounded out by pianist Benny Green, a Berkeley-raised prodigy who as a teen played in veteran saxophonist Joe Henderson’s band.

The duo swings into Jazz on the River this weekend for a pair of dates on the intimate Wine Garden Stage on Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville.

“The first time I saw Benny Green in the flesh was in 1989. He was playing with Art Blakey,” Malone says. “I’d known about Benny and admired him as a musician. He sounded beautiful. So I kept my eyes and ears on him.”

The two musicians continued to cross paths on the road. Malone contacted Green to perform on his 1991 debut as a bandleader. Green wasn’t available, but Malone didn’t lose faith.

“I just knew that at some point we’d play together,” he says.

That opportunity arose in 1995. During a tour of Canada, Malone was doing a stint as the guitarist in Krall’s band; the Benny Green Trio was the opening act.

“Bennie and I would get together in his hotel room and hang out and talk,” Malone says. “I’d bring my guitar over and he had this little electric keyboard. We’d just sit and play. I told him, ‘Man, this feels pretty darned good. We should probably investigate this a little further.’ He agreed.”

What is it that Malone likes about Green?

“He’s a genuine guy and he plays his ass off. He’s complete piano player; he plays the whole piano,” says Malone. “He’s a perfectionist, and he’s very serious about his instrument. Benny Green will find a piano to practice on, I don’t care where we are. We could be on Mars–that man will find a piano to practice on. He’s that dedicated.”

As time passed, Green and Malone recorded three sessions together with Green as bandleader: 1997’s Kaleidoscope, 1999’s These Are Soulful Days, and 2000’s terrific Naturally. Yet, remarkably, they never managed to fulfill their wish to perform in concert as a duo.

That all changed in 2001 when Green and Malone made their first appearance together at the massive North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland. “We had started talking about those times when we’d gotten together in his hotel room, and decided we should reinvestigate this thing. We called our managers, and everyone got their ducks in a row,” Malone recalls. “We got together for about 15 minutes backstage before the festival gig and talked about tunes and just went out there and played.”

The results were stunning, and festival-goers witnessed the birth of a great new jazz duo. On this year’s widely acclaimed Jazz at the Bistro, recorded over two nights at a St. Louis nightclub and on which the musicians share equal billing, the duo really comes into its own.

“Live jazz doesn’t get much better than this disc,” music critic Ken Dryden opined.

How does Malone account for their chemistry?

“When you have that trust,” he says, “anything can take place.”

Benny Green and Russell Malone perform Saturday, Sept. 6, and Sunday, Sept. 7, at Jazz on the River at Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville. Saturday’s lineup also includes George Benson, Stanley Clarke, Ledisi, Bobby Hutcherson with the Cedar Walton Quartet, and Lavay Smith and Her Red-Hot Skillet Lickers. On Sunday, the headliners are Al Jarreau, Norman Brown, Brian Culbertson, Joyce Cooling, and Orquesta la Moderna Tradición. Tickets at the gate are $52.50 each day; a two-day pass is $100. 510.655.9471.

From the September 4-10, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

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