Cookbooks

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Cookbooks

Shelf Life

Local chefs collect cookbooks for inspiration and guidance

By Marina Wolf

WHEN FAMILY or friends come over for the first time, their eyes inevitably go to my cookbooks. I don’t mind. If I did, I wouldn’t have lined all 200 of them up in a 7-foot-high bookcase in the living room. I’m proud of the books I’ve accumulated over the years, from my first, a battered copy of the Moosewood Cookbook, to my latest acquisition, a shiny new book on foie gras (that I will probably never use). And yet, when visitors gasp and make astonished noises, honesty and modesty compel me to say, “Some people have a lot more cookbooks than this, you know.”

People like Bea Beasley, for example, a Santa Rosa caterer whose collection has passed the 3,000 mark. “I don’t think there’s a bad cookbook,” she says in defense of her addiction. “You can learn from the worst books.”

Beasley’s collection might be considered a little extreme–most collections that size are in libraries or have cooking schools attached–but only in scale, not in the impulse.

The food world is full of people who turn to cookbooks to learn, to research, to be inspired.

If that sounds hifalutin, it’s not. While ordinary cooks tend to pick up a few books and follow the recipes slavishly, cookbooks are simply required business reading for most food professionals. Christina Brenner refers to her collection weekly at least. “I try to become aware of what’s out there through my students, when they look at chefs and magazines to pick up patterns,” says the Simi Winery chef and instructor at the California Culinary Academy. “But I need cookbooks to keep up with them and with my own menu development.”

Brenner bought her first books, La Technique and La Méthode by Jacques Pepin, when she suddenly found herself in business as a chef in 1977. “I needed to bring my skill level up as quickly as possible, but I couldn’t afford cooking school.”

Since then, of course, Brenner has gotten enough of her own experience, but she remembers those two tomes fondly as helping her onto the first step.

THESE DAYS consumers are going for the glossy, personality-driven titles that you might hear about first from the companion series on Saturday-morning PBS cooking shows. These books have lots of pictures, so they even read like a TV show. In contrast, most chefs will focus on information-filled items from well-known names, the classics of the genre: Robuchon, Trotter, Child. Chef John McReynolds of Cafe LaHaye in Sonoma stocks up on what might be considered the new American classics, by such chef-authors as Joyce Goldstein and Paula Wolfert. In reality, McReynolds visits his bookshelf, which he estimates holds well over 200 volumes, maybe a couple of times a month. But he’ll spend a whole afternoon just browsing, looking for touchstones, an ingredient or technique or idea.

It’s an immersion workshop with the authors, many of whom he knows only through their recipes. “In lieu of working with them, I can glean information from all of these chefs through their books,” says McReynolds.

Well chosen and in large enough quantities, cookbooks constitute an important reference source. Emily Schmidt, a private chef in Napa County, fields several calls a week from friends who are looking for culinary information and know that she has the materials to help. She also turns to her books to cross-reference.

“I can get five versions of a recipe to check it out and see which one works best,” she says.

Angie Lewis, co-owner of Chez Marie in Forestville, even turns her 1,800-volume library over to customers, encouraging single diners to browse the shelves for dinnertime reading. “I use cookbooks to answer questions a lot,” says Lewis.

“When customers ask what cassoulet is, and I have time, I’ll go get them a book and they can read about it for themselves.”

Lewis’ partner and the chef at the restaurant, Shirley Palmisano, hardly ever opens a cookbook, relying instead on Lewis to supply her with information, which Lewis is usually able to locate quickly, thanks to her self-designed shelving system.

Research questions aside, though, most chefs simply use their books to prime the pump. Gary Jenanyan, executive chef at the Robert Mondavi Winery, has been cooking professionally since 1971; at this point, he says, his cooking is mainly intuitive. But occasionally the well runs dry: “Sometimes I’m just brain-dead. I don’t know what to cook.”

At such moments, Jenanyan sits down with his 300 or 400 cookbooks. He has an additional source of inspiration in a set of cook booklets compiled from visiting chef participants in the winery’s Great Chefs program.

AS MANY TOMES as these chefs have, you’d think that their first books would have crumbled to dust or faded into oblivion by now.

After all, culinary arts have moved on, haven’t they?

But it takes only a little thought, and maybe a quick rummage, for most cookbook connoisseurs to remember their first books; often, they’re still using those books decades later.

Schmidt has kept several seminal books in active use, books that at first glance seem hopelessly out of date. She has the original Time-Life series of cookbooks; the 1954 edition of the Ladies Home Companion Cookbook that came as a freebie with a set of encyclopedias–the encyclopedias now are thick with dust, but she still uses the cookbook.

Then there is the Woman’s Day Encyclopedia from the ’60s.

Schmidt recently bought another copy of the latter for one of her daughters, who expressed her thanks in a manner that any cookbook fan can appreciate: “I thought I’d have to wait until you die to get a set like that.”

From the February 17-23, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Usual Suspects

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Usual Suspects

Pat Answers

Updates on Thurston, Gray, and Ziemann

By Janet Wells

KSRO-AM RADIO fired outspoken talk-show host Pat Thurston, prompting a protest this week at the station, as well as a flood of phone calls, faxes, and letters from curious and furious local listeners. Station managers Peggy Mulhall and Brian Hudson did not return calls to explain the personnel change, but a KSRO receptionist proffered that Thurston “left on her own.”

“That’s amazing,” Thurston says of the station’s spin. “I got canned. They wanted to say the parting was amicable, and I thought that was OK. But I wanted it clear that I didn’t walk out.”

After finishing Friday’s afternoon show, the often contentious Thurston says Hudson called her into his office and let her go, citing economics and inconsistent ratings. “It is cheaper to have a syndicated show,” says Thurston, a Sebastopol resident who hosted the show for more than two years. “But I wasn’t costing them that much.”

Thurston says she “took a huge pay cut” when her former employer, San Francisco’s KPIX, dropped its talk-show format and she took the $35,000-a-year position at KSRO, which is owned by Amaturo Broadcasting.

The real reason for her ouster, posits Thurston, stems from her aeration of hot-button North Coast issues like the county’s controversial vineyard expansion ordinance and the unsolved Judi Bari bombing case.

“I am outraged . . . that now, right before an election, they yanked her off the air,” says Linda McCabe, a board member for the Sonoma County chapter of the National Organization for Women, and a frequent caller and guest on Thurston’s show. “She raised a lot of issues other people are afraid to touch. She allowed people to get on the air and discuss.”

KSRO apparently does not intend to replace Thurston in a live-broadcast talk-show format, which prompted McCabe to organize protests this week at the station’s Santa Rosa offices. “I just want to embarrass the station and show citizens that [the station managers] don’t even care about their listeners,” she says.

“They are running canned shows that you can’t even call in to.”

Gray Day

SURVEY SAYS? The big thumbs down for Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Patricia Gray, who had filed a complaint charging that the results of a Sonoma County Bar Association judicial qualification survey results were fatally contaminated.

After withholding the results in the race between Gray and challenger Elliot Daum pending an investigation into the complaint, the bar association board voted Monday night to release the survey, in which 72 percent of the 166 attorney respondents gave Daum marks of “exceptionally well qualified” or “well qualified,” compared to 14 percent in those categories for Gray. Fifty percent of those surveyed said Gray is “not qualified,” compared to just 2 percent for Daum.

The survey may represent opinions of a fraction of the 1,348 attorneys who belong to the bar association, but several high-profile judges seem to agree with the results.

In an uprecedented departure from the usual tight ranks of the judiciary, sitting Judges Mark Tansil, Elaine Watters, Lawrence G. Antolini, and Cerena Wong have endorsed Daum, while Gray lists endorsements from Judges Laurence Sawyer, Allan Hardcastle, Robert Boyd, and Raymond Giordano. Judge Raima Ballinger is on Gray’s list, but apparently has withdrawn her support and is now backing Elliot.

Normally low-profile, the contest for Superior Court Office No. 2 has been the most contentious county race of the March primary. Daum says Gray is disqualified three times more often than any other judge, often because of rudeness to attorneys and litigants. Gray counters that Daum is running against her because he didn’t like the tough sentences she has given to some of his clients, including an armed robber who shot Coddingtown jewelry store owner Henri Pierre last year.

Gray’s complaint stemmed from an e-mail sent by Dan Schurman, executive director of the bar association, who used association time and equipment to invite 25 people–including 12 attorneys who also received the judicial survey–to an event he was hosting for Daum. The bar association does not endorse candidates, and Schurman sent a subsequent e-mail stating that the endorsement was his individual choice.

“The issue is the bar association credibility has been tainted. I don’t care about the [survey] results,” Gray says. “The same thing happened in the last race. I was still the top vote getter, even though I was rated at the bottom [of the survey].”

Diocese Debacle

FOR SANTA ROSA Catholics who feel ripped off and betrayed by the sex and finance scandal that toppled Bishop Patrick Ziemann and former diocese Vicar General Thomas Keys last year, Santa Rosa Police Chief Michael Dunbaugh has a bit of bad news: The diocese is the victim, not the parishioners or the schools who lost millions.

Dunbaugh has received calls from several parishioners fuming about the diocese’s misuse of funds donated for various church-related capital expenses. “The way the accounts were set up and the money donated, the church appears to be the victim,” Dunbaugh says. “Once I give you my money, because I’ve donated it, I’m going to trust, and the key word is trust, that you’re going to do right with it. If you don’t, you’ve certainly evaded my trust, but you may not have committed a crime.”

While Ziemann and Keys have both been accused of poor judgment and negligence, neither has been charged with criminal activity. Ziemann remains in seclusion at a treatment center in Pennsylvania, and Keys, who remains as pastor of Star of the Valley Church in Santa Rosa, has been unwilling to talk publicly about his role in the diocese’s finances. “The reality is that money depleted from deposited accounts were used for legitimate diocesan purposes. . . . There is no bogeyman stealing the money. Even lost investments are legitimate investments,” says San Francisco Archdiocese spokesman Maurice Healy. “People can continue to stay fixated or say, ‘We’re in this together. What we can do is to rebuild the diocese.’ ”

Sister Jane Kelly, a Ukiah nun whose revelations about Ziemann broke open the diocese scandal, has some advice of her own: “You make [Ziemann and Keys] come forward and explain all of this, how they spent the money and why they covered up sexual and fiscal misconduct of priests,” she says. “How can you forgive someone who won’t admit they did wrong?”

In the meantime, says Dunbaugh, parishioners can hold the church accountable by working closely with church leaders, and they can await the outcome of state and federal investigations into the diocese’s finances. “And,” he adds, “they can be very, very careful in any money they choose to donate.”

From the February 17-23, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘A Perfect Ganesh’

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‘A Perfect Ganesh’

A Perfect Ganesh.

Good God!

‘A Perfect Ganesh’ performs theatrical miracles

By Daedalus Howell

IT SETS UP like a blue routine in the Catskills: “Two WASPs are on an airplane going to India. On the wing, there’s this fat guy with an elephant’s head. . . .” But rest assured, Quicksilver II Theater Company’s production of Terrence McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh is a profoundly satisfying evening of theater.

Directed by Michael Fountaine, A Perfect Ganesh opens with middle-aged, upper-class housewives Katharine (Elly Lichenstein) and Margaret (Laura Jorgensen) en route to India for some spiritual housecleaning.

Years prior to their travels, Katharine’s grown son died in a gay-bashing incident–a horror with which the grieving mother feels karmically associated because of her failure to accept her son’s homosexuality. In a rather radical act of atonement, while in India, she intends to kiss a leper.

Meanwhile, catty Margaret has discovered a lump in her breast–a frightening secret that she privately agonizes over.

Present throughout the women’s pilgrimage is the sagacious and gleefully rotund Ganesha (Ross Foti), the shape-shifting, elephant-headed Hindu god who has jurisdiction over all the obstacles and boons that confound or foster one’s earthly endeavors.

From the bustle of airports, midair turbulence, and train compartments to riverside chats with the elephantine deity, director Fontaine reveals his startling ability to transport an audience with the simplest of theatrical effects (watch for Aloysha Klebe’s clever light design when a porter pantomimes opening the Venetian blinds) and deliver them straight into the emotional heart of a scene. He keeps emotions pitched and the gags funny in this taut triumph of a production.

Lichenstein outdoes herself as the amiable chatterbox Katharine, a charming travel enthusiast with more pluck than a string section on a pizzicato jag. Lichenstein proves particularly adept at depicting Katharine’s maternal pains and the self-loathing that belies her otherwise effervescent character (the actress takes a tack that is wonderfully reminiscent of Kate Hepburn). The queasy notion that her son’s violent death was the outward manifestation of her own intolerance looms, while subtle symbols like a stream of lost luggage (qua emotional baggage) suggest that recovery is imminent.

Jorgensen turns in a rich performance as the comically sanctimonious Margaret–one could comb Sunday schools up and down the Eastern seaboard and not find a bigger prig. Like Katharine, Margaret is also a collection of microscopic transformations eventually leading to a revelatory end, a process Jorgensen deploys with subtlety and grace.

Foti does a fine turn as the whimsical Ganesha, dispatching his deific duty without stepping into the schmaltzy tar pits that could ensnare a lesser actor. Owing to Ganesha’s elephant head, Foti must work from behind a large flesh-colored mask, the trunk of which would give porn legend John Holmes penis envy. That notwithstanding, Foti offers an expressive performance that is both humorous and enchanting.

Evidently a man of a thousand faces (or at least as many costume changes), actor David Abad portrays innumerable porters, a couple of dead sons, a benumbed husband, and sundry other ancillary but important characters who provide dramatic ballast throughout the production. Early on, Abad is hilarious as an airport ticket officer whose droll humor rattles old-maidish Margaret. Abad’s most interesting character by far, however, is a gay doctor dying of AIDS who befriends Katharine on the adjoining balcony of their Indian suite. Abad proves that there are no small roles.

Quicksilver II’s A Perfect Ganesh is wonderful, cathartic theater in the very capable hands of a very capable company. Indeed, it is a trip worth taking.

A Perfect Ganesh plays through March 4 at the Cinnabar Theater, 3333 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. Thursday, March 2, and Fridays-Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. $14. 763-8920.

From the February 17-23, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Art As Business

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Art As Business

Photograph by Rory Mcnamara

Paint It Green

The starving artist gives way to the artistic entrepreneur

VINCENT VAN GOGH died penniless and unappreciated–and we love him for it. Mozart wrote Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, and The Marriage of Figaro. Then he died, up to his wig in debts, buried in a mass grave. By the time painter Paul Gauguin shuffled off this mortal coil, he was all but destitute and raving mad, expiring of syphilis in Tahiti.

And we’re so glad he did.

Our culture is oddly attached to the idea of artists who suffer, especially when, having created work of transcendent beauty, the artist dies without so much as a crust of bread to his or her name. In La Bohème, the 1896 opera that all but canonized the noble “starving artist” (and on which the hit musical Rent was based), composer Giacomo Puccini romanticized the masochistic notion that to become a “true artist” one must endure immense suffering and ultimately die with nothing but the knowledge that you never sold out.

Half-baked or not, that 19th-century idea has persisted into our modern age.

“But it’s a myth that no longer has a place in the real world,” says Meg Hitchcock, 38, a painter and sketch artist of some note (she was recently singled out by San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker as one of the best artists in the Bay Area) and the owner of MeSH Art Gallery in Sebastopol.

“I think the suffering artist is a myth that’s fading away. When an artist does use that, it’s sort of an excuse,” she says. “It’s a copout. ‘Oh, I’m an artist and that’s why I’m suffering.’ You can be an artist and be successful.”

Indeed, Sonoma County is full of artists who are, to some degree, making a living at the business of art. And like it or not, the art world is big business. Each year, hundreds of millions of dollars trade hands between artists and collectors. Yet, ironically, there are still a great many artists who are stymied in their pursuit of a full-time art career solely because they haven’t developed the necessary business skills–or because they are too intimidated to take the leap.

“As far as the business side of being an artist goes,” says Gay Shelton of the Sonoma Museum of Modern Art, “I think there is a certain love-hate thing that goes on with artists, a resentment at even having to deal with the business end of things. They find it distasteful and inconvenient.

“But,” she says, “I also think that might be changing.”

For years, most major art schools unintentionally assisted in the propagation of the starving-artist image by avoiding the subject of business skills. They would offer plenty of instruction on the intricacies of color blending and composition and perspective, while never encouraging young artists to develop such mundane abilities as negotiating with a buyer, preparing a portfolio or presentation slides, or even setting up a good filing system.

In the last several years, however, a subtle shift has been taking place. Many schools now offer artists at least a few business-skills classes. There are dozens of guidebooks on the market that are designed to aid emerging artists who dream of dropping their day job in favor of full-time creativity.

Numerous organizations, from museums and galleries to community arts councils, have begun offering nuts-and-bolts business assistance to emerging artists. This assistance ranges from classes–such as the Sebastopol Center for the Arts’ occasional “How to Make Money with Your Art” and the Cultural Arts Council’s “Taking Care of Business”–to open forums where young painters and photographers can pick the brains of established artists.

Artist Robert Fitzgerald of Petaluma has taken the leap by signing onto a high-profile program called “Taking the Leap.” The nine-month course–which costs its hand-picked students $2,700–is the brainchild of artist/author Cay Lang, whose bestselling book, also called Taking the Leap, is considered a kind of bible for emerging artists hungry for solid business information. In return for the hefty tuition, the Taking the Leap program offers students intensive schooling on the ins and outs of the art biz.

“This is the age of marketing. If you don’t know how to market, you’re dead,” says Fitzgerald, 53, a painter and photographer who works as a bookseller to pay the bills. Since beginning the once-a-week program, which takes place in San Leandro, Fitzgerald says he’s experienced a growing sense of purpose and self-confidence.

“I know what to do now,” he says. “I know how to approach a gallery owner. I know how to present my work to a collector. Before, I was always a bit intimidated. I always said, ‘If I only knew how to do the business part of this, I could make it.’ It all appeared so daunting. ‘I don’t have a portfolio, I don’t know what to say.’ Now I know, and it makes a big difference.

“I’m an emerging artist,” he says, finally more than comfortable with the term. “I’m emerging from my artistic cocoon, spreading my wings and ready to fly.”

UNFORTUNATELY, after a few nasty falls, some artists give up trying to put wings on their careers.

“A lot of people don’t know the basics, so they make costly mistakes,” says Barbara Harris, executive director of the Sonoma Cultural Arts Council. “People don’t know that, as an artist, you don’t just walk into a gallery and introduce yourself. You call ahead and request an appointment. There is an etiquette, like in any other business. We have such a wealth of resources here in Sonoma County, artists need to make use of them.”

For instance, she encourages artists to attend other artists’ exhibitions and to compete in countywide shows, which give them an opportunity to meet one another and swap valuable tips.

“There are plenty of established artists who are more than willing to share their experience,” she says. “It’s terrible to fail when you don’t have to.”

“For a new artist who’s never done this before, it’s quite a learning experience,” acknowledges Linda Galletta, executive director of the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. “It’s very difficult. It takes a huge combination of skills.

“As an artist,” she says, “you are producing a product, and you are competing for the discretionary dollar with other kinds of entertainment and with other artists. Not only do your artistic skills need to be impeccable; you have to have strong marketing and promotion skills as well.”

Of course, it’s possible to overdo it.

“You don’t necessarily have to become a superslick business person,” says Shelton, herself an artist. “In fact, there’s always a danger of becoming too marketing oriented, too slick and businesslike. Some people lose sight of themselves as artists, and that can be a turnoff.

“I recommend a balance. An artist really just needs to learn basic, obvious things, like returning phone calls right away and being polite to potential buyers. Those things will go a long way toward building your career. In the end, you’re only as good as your art.”

Lang also recognizes the importance of separating the business side of being an artist from the art side of being an artist. She discourages artists from changing their styles or subject matter in order to make it more marketable–a point she stresses in her books and classes.

“In the Taking the Leap program,” Fitzgerald says, “we’re reminded that when we step into our studios, we are 100 percent artists. We leave the trained marketer on the other side of the door.”

From the February 17-23, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Proposition 22

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By Marina Wolf

IN THE OFFICIAL state voter’s pamphlet, the outline of Proposition 22 seems ridiculously short. It is, as its proponents delight in pointing out, just 14 words: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

“The religious right was very smart in choosing those 14 words,” says Maddy Hirshfield, spokeswoman for the Sonoma County No on Proposition 22 campaign and the only openly gay person ever to run for the Board of Supervisors. “You can’t read between the lines. You have to read between the words, and boy, is there a lot of room in there.”

Prop. 22–also known as the Limit of Marriage Initiative or the Knight Initiative, after its sponsoring legislator, state Sen. Pete Knight, R-Palmdale–is California’s version of amendments and ballot measures that have flooded the country in the past few years, in response to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. That act eliminated states’ constitutional obligation to recognize other states’ legal contracts with regard to same-sex marriages. In other words, states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

Since then, 30 states have passed some version of Prop. 22; if the latest polls are accurate, and stay that way (surveys show the usually liberal Bay Area almost evenly split on the issue with many undecided), California may be the next.

Though no state currently recognizes same-sex marriages, the question is far from academic. Hawaii came close last year, and the Vermont Supreme Court last month ruled that the state must either legalize same-sex marriage or find an exact equivalent in some kind of domestic-partnership program.

Not surprisingly, morality and religion are playing a key part on both sides of Prop. 22. The religious right has been quick to respond to what it perceives as a threat to the traditional institution of marriage, and the Church of Latter-Day Saints–with its large, loyal, and easily mobilized membership base–has led the charge. Though donations from individual members cannot be tracked, some estimates say the funds coaxed from California Mormons total at least half of the $5 million raised so far in support of the proposition. Meanwhile, a coalition of moderate and liberal-leaning churches sent a letter on Dec. 23 to leaders of the LDS church leadership, urging them to reconsider their “extraordinary efforts” on behalf of Prop. 22.

But even if the Mormons were to back out entirely, the No on Knight campaign is still facing substantial resistance from otherwise liberal voters. Even in Sonoma County, voters are showing some reluctance to oppose Prop. 22. “Marriage is such a touchy issue, even people who are otherwise totally supportive are not into same-sex marriage,” Hirshfield says. “But when we start educating, when we talk about fairness, people get it.”

From the February 17-23, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Proposition 22 and the Mormon Faith

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Proposition 22 and the Mormon Faith

Conditional Love

In the face of the Knight Initiative, an ex-Mormon daughter struggles with faith and family

By Marina Wolf

MY OLDER BROTHER, Danny, and I have always respected each other. Through the storms of adolescence we frequently managed to be civil, and even as we grew into adulthood, our lives sharply diverging, the relationship bloomed.

It must be that respect and love that sends me to church with him and the family whenever we visit. It’s only twice a year, a small sacrifice to make at the altar of family feeling. No doubt it pleases them to think that, however sinful my life may be in their eyes, at least I’m still exposed to the saving principles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Of course, there’s not a chance I’ll ever go back, not after 15 years, including eight and a half years spent with the woman I love. But still, at these church services that resonate in my reluctant soul, I wallow in a weird sort of nostalgia manqué, nostalgia for something that never was, but might have been. Watching the young Mormon women proudly herding their children down the aisle, I think: This could have been my life, too.

My family would love for that to be my life. Instead of struggling with what to tell the kids about “Aunt Lidia,” my brother could invite me and my husband to dinner with his friends. Instead of casting bewildered sideways glances at my longtime lover, my mother could occasionally mention me in the family newsletter. But they know enough of my tongue and temper not to argue with my “choices.”

In grateful exchange, I go with them to church once in a while.

This Sunday, I sit between my mother and my younger sister during the women’s meeting, which is being taught by the ward representative for Proposition 22, the California ballot measure that would prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states. The ward rep’s daughters take turns reading official church statements about the dire threat that same-sex marriage poses to the family and our country; then the floor is opened for comment.

It is unnerving to listen to these women talk about “perverts,” oblivious to my presence. I feel like an escapee, huddled in the bushes outside the prison while the searchlights sear the darkness around me. Surely they will find me out. But they don’t. The discussion swirls around me unabated, while I take discreet notes to steady my nerves and my mother flips aimlessly through her scriptures.

One woman relates reading in her psychology textbook about a woman who left her family for another woman. “That’s when I understood how serious this issue is,” she says, her eyes earnest and wide. “How could she choose someone else over her children?”

The teacher nods her head. “We can’t afford to be complacent about Prop. 22,” she says. “We want it to pass.”

“You can’t say that,” hisses one of her daughters from her seat; the church–which has encouraged members to donate to the Knight campaign–is being intently scrutinized, from within and without, for any overt political activity in church buildings. But the teacher barely pauses. “It’s going to be a knock-down, drag-out fight,” she continues, telling the story of the prophet in the Book of Mormon who scrawled slogans on a banner and marched through the streets for God. She’s good, she’s got a lot of charisma. She has the room in the palm of her hand.

Most of the room, at any rate.

At the end of the lesson, neither my mother nor my sister says “Amen.”

The Knight Initiative: The supporters and detractors of Proposition 22.

THEY PROBABLY weren’t the only ones present feeling a little uneasy, if we go on anecdotal evidence, acceptable assumptions, and basic math. With a worldwide membership approaching 11 million, and between 3 and 10 percent being gay, there could be anywhere from 333,000 to 1.1 million gay men and lesbians in the LDS church. In addition to their parents and grandparents, gay persons from Mormon backgrounds usually have siblings and a large extended family. (Besides my six brothers and sisters, I have, on my mom’s side alone, four sets of aunts and uncles, who produced a total of 22 cousins.)

As the numbers go up, the picture becomes clear: LDS policy on “the homosexuality issue” affects more than just gays in the church.

“The church leaders have a tendency to formulate policies, and . . . then they turn away and don’t want to talk about it anymore. They do not see the wreckage that’s going on,” said Kathryn Steffensen in a recent interview with KUED, a Utah public television station, for a documentary on gay and lesbian Mormons. Steffensen is a founding member of Family Fellowship, a support group for families with gay members. She gets to witness the damage firsthand, families who come to them traumatized and fearful for their children’s salvation.

Others who are in a unique position to see the “wreckage” are bishops and stake presidents (the local lay leaders in the Mormon church). These men don’t establish policy; they simply implement it according to their biases and abilities.

The local leaders are usually the deciding factor in a family’s experience with gay issues.

Some are sympathetic. One Central Valley bishop, who had a gay brother himself, was able to speak to my older brother heart to heart about the balancing act he needed to do. In Southern California, literally in the shadow of the Santa Monica temple, the stake president started a monthly meeting of fellowship for gays and lesbians and their families; it ran for seven years before being closed down by the church authorities.

Other local leaders can be much less supportive. Jake, a Central Coast gay man who remains a member after four years of church discipline, remembers his former stake president as a compassionate man: “He was doing what he thought was right.”

Among the right actions the stake president took when Jake came to him in torment in 1985 was to tell Jake’s parents about their son’s homosexuality, without his consent.

MARYANNE RECALLS what happened when she and her husband told one of their former bishops about their gay son: “He said that if he had a gay son he would ban him from our family, and that if he had a gay person move in on his block he would move.”

Though Maryanne and her husband knew that their feelings of acceptance were correct, they were still disheartened by the bishop’s response. In true Mormon fashion, Maryanne went to the temple and had a revelation. “I was off in the corner in very deep prayer when a voice and a presence came in front of me and said, ‘Love your children.’ I looked up and didn’t see anyone, so I bowed my head again in prayer, and the voice said, very firmly and louder, ‘Love your children.’ ”

And so she and her husband did, turning their energies to the local chapters of Affirmation and Family Fellowship, which began as a study group for six confused parents in 1993 and has since grown to include 1,300 households on a mailing list.

Many in Family Fellowship who have reached acceptance of their gay relatives view the challenges they’ve faced not as a tragedy, but as a journey leading them to greater understanding and togetherness as a family. The Watts family, for example, has suffered through two gay children leaving the church, one voluntarily and one through an especially harsh and rapid excommunication.

But their mother, Mildred Watts (or Millie, as her fans call her affectionately), says the suffering has only brought them together.

“I have just been stunned by how solid and united our family has been,” said Mildred in an interview for the KUED documentary. “We have friends in Family Fellowship who can’t even get their families together for Christmas. If the gay sibling’s going to be there, then the others don’t want to come. . . .

“I’m just grateful that all our kids have been so good.”

TRULY, sometimes our families can surprise us. When I sent my coming-out letter to the family newsletter, the first surprise was that the letter got in at all. Then one cousin wrote in and said not to assume that they would all have problems with my sexuality. My parents, who could barely look me in the eye in the months after I came out, now send Christmas packages addressed to both me and my lover.

My grandparents have demonstrated the strangest contrasts of all. The week before my commitment ceremony, I got a letter from my grandfather, who was blind and mostly paralyzed from a series of strokes, but still managed to dictate a denunciation to my grandmother. Meanwhile, my grandmother, a quietly devout woman, had photocopied the announcement of our ceremony and sent it out with the family newsletter, with an apology that the photocopy “wasn’t as nice as the original.”

A few years ago, I took my partner to visit them in southern Utah. While Grandpa dozed in the back bedroom, Grandma shyly showed us around the lodgelike house. “You could sleep upstairs, it’s quieter, but the beds are small and they aren’t that comfortable. Or you could sleep in here,” she continued as she led us to a room off the main room. “It’s a lot more comfortable. I’ll leave it up to you.”

Grandma trotted off to fix lunch as we stared at the king-sized bed.

None of this necessarily means that my family has really accepted me or my life. It’s just that they want to keep the family together. Mormon emphasis on family feeling makes the threat of its dissolution that much more disturbing. To make matters worse, those family ties are meant to carry on to the afterlife, which means that cutting them because of deliberate sin, as homosexuality is perceived in the church, often feels like a final farewell.

ADVICE FROM CHURCH authorities isn’t much help to families struggling with this situation. I don’t know what else my mother’s bishop told her when she went to him about me, but the thing that stuck out in her mind was the need to beg me to take my name off the records of the church. If I did not, she said, it would affect her standing in the afterlife, as a parent who had been remiss in raising me.

Other potential sources of support are equally confusing. One article in the September 1999 issue of the church magazine Ensign recommends moderating response to the news: “Keep in mind that this is the same person you have always known: a child of God. Be grateful that this individual is willing to share his or her burden with you.” But further down the page, the author highlights the real challenge of the situation: “While maintaining a loving concern for the person, reiterate the Lord’s position that homosexual relations are sinful, and don’t lose sight of this gospel truth.”

Love the sinner, hate the sin, in other words.

As in other conservative religions, estrangement and outright disownment over a family member’s homosexuality are not unheard of in Mormon circles. But mostly families just end up not talking about it. Lori, from the Bay Area, came out 10 years ago and hasn’t talked with her family much about it since. They live on the other side of the country, and when they do visit, the subject is more or less closed.

“They’re not angry. They’ve just put up some barriers; that’s how they function,” she says. “It’s not a close relationship, and it’s not an honest one.

“And that’s upsetting.”

IF FAMILIES often put up barriers between themselves and their gay members, the wall between the family and the larger community of the church can be nearly impenetrable. “I found it virtually impossible to attend church. I never knew when a song, or a word, or the sight of a loving friend would bring uncontrollable tears,” writes one woman in the Family Fellowship newsletter, Reunion. “Many times, I rushed from the church building engulfed in unspeakable sorrow and grief. I knew that once the tears started, they would never quit, and I knew at the time that I could not share the feelings of my heart with anyone.”

Another newsletter contributor wrote bitterly of her spiritual exile. “Unfortunately, my comfort has not come from my church associations. In fact, they have been a tremendous sorrow because I have always expected them to be my greatest support. Instead, I have felt abandoned.”

Those families who are “outed” as having a gay or lesbian relative, or who decide to reveal the fact of their own accord, can find themselves facing a social network that is damaged beyond repair.

At this point, a Mormon family can deal with the challenge in one of three ways: fight, flee, or flounder in the miserable status quo.

Many do choose to remain in the church and fight. The Wattses write letters to the church authorities several times a year. Maryanne and her husband regularly speak out in meetings. In politically charged times, this is a difficult decision. Church officials say that no one will be subject to discipline for opposing the church’s position on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but a look at the chronology of church involvement in the Knight Initiative reveals that the pressure is on.

Dave Combe, a former Mormon who collects this information via online reports from members, believes that members are justified in their fear of retribution.

For instance, one member, not even in California, made a comment in a priesthood meeting and was released as the priesthood instructor. Another member was initially denied a temple recommend (a document from the local church leader attesting to her worthiness) because she “associated with apostates”–that is, she hung out with her gay brother. (The ruling was overturned by the stake president.)

Other families end up leaving the church because the conflict is simply too much. Gary and Mildred Watts write of this often in their letters to church authorities. “The continuing characterization by our ecclesiastical leaders of our gay children as ‘evil,’ as ‘being of the devil,’ and as ‘perpetrators of the unraveling of the fabric of human society’ is painful,” they wrote in one letter from 1995. “For some it severely tries their loyalty to our church, which heretofore has occupied a significant role in all our lives.”

Says Maryanne, “A lot of parents drift from the church when their children come out. We meet them all the time. They’ve drifted away from the church because they can’t deal with the church thinking they’re not going to be an eternal family.”

Lavina Fielding Anderson agrees: “This is the family church. We invented it, we have a monopoly on it. They have invested themselves and their marriage, in the hopes that their children will have the same kind of happiness, that they will replicate this family pattern, here in mortality and in the next life.”

Anderson collects anecdotes of spiritual abuse for the Mormon Alliance and has talked with many gays and their families in the course of her work. To her mind, the church’s actions in this and other political campaigns about gay issues definitely border on spiritual abuse, in that they can seriously damage members’ relationship with the church and with God.

“Some people are able to sort out the message that they’re getting from the church and say, ‘That’s not the message I’m getting from God,’ and still feel validated in their spiritual journey.

But many people can’t make that distinction, so to save themselves, they have to walk away from the church.

“But they end up walking away from God, too.”

EVEN IF MORMONS with gay relatives do manage to stay in the church, says Anderson, they can never go home again to the church that had formerly been the rock of their faith. “They may still look as though they’re in the mainstream, they may still be in the same row in church,” she says, “but they’re hearing the message with different ears.”

When the dissonance is too much to take, some members are choosing to have their names formally removed from the records of the church. Kathy Worthington, who left the LDS church 30 years ago over its refusal to grant black males priesthood privileges, now serves as an unofficial counselor for others wanting to leave the church.

Usually, says Worthington, she gets one or two requests a year; since the church came out with its announcements in May, she has received 116 photocopies of letters, from both gays and straights, that have requested removal of names.

USUALLY the distancing on both sides is more subtle. Mark has a brother who came out as gay, and while the whole family is completely comfortable with that, says Mark, they can never be themselves with the family of the church, especially with homosexuality being such a hot topic in church these days. “When we share our beliefs, it makes [the other members] uncomfortable to be around us, and it makes us uncomfortable to be around them as well, because we can’t really talk about that issue.”

This is the silent middle, the gray area where members don’t know exactly what to do, but can’t shake the feeling that what the church is asking them to do just isn’t right. It’s a difficult place to be in a church where things are either right or wrong, God or Satan. Those caught in between feel the pressure.

“I’m a strong member of the Mormon church, and I’m not trying to find fault with the church leaders,” says Mark. He then sighs nervously. “I’m not trying to make it a big issue. But with the whole Knight Initiative becoming very popular with the first presidency [the top leaders of the church], I definitely feel that they’re forcing me to choose between the church and my brother.”

I don’t understand how my own brother holds these two mutually opposing concepts and thought patterns–gay sister, gay-hating church–in his head without exploding, but he does. Of all the Wolf kids, we’ve always been closest–in age, geography, and feeling–and that hasn’t really changed. If we lived any closer, I’m sure he would probably have my lover and me baby-sit about twice a week.

But at the same time, he will be contributing to Prop. 22.

I ask him about it one Sunday evening, the day of that awkward women’s meeting in my brother’s ward. I shouldn’t ask if I’m not ready to hear the answer, but there it is. Might even do some precinct walking, he says. That hurts. He speaks so easily about this, about voting for it. What’s worse, he prays for me. Even though I have been with my lover as long as he has been married, he hopes that I will change.

I ask whether he gets sad thinking about me, and the silence is horrible, ringing and eternal. His eyes are red and watery as he gazes out the kitchen window into the black night. “A little,” he finally says. I stare at him, paralyzed by confusion. I want to shake him and hug him, cry and shout, beg him not to worry about me in the afterlife. “I’m a good person!” I want to say. “Your god will let me in!”

But he won’t believe me anyway, and I can’t bear to beg. So I just sit and look away from his tears and think about the choices we both have made in order to sit at the same table.

IT IS ONE THING to go to church out of family obligation. It is quite another to be drawn to it out of my own soul-felt need.

The desire to go back to church had been building in me for months, ever since I started writing this article. Mormons might call it the still small voice, the prompting of the Holy Spirit. I couldn’t call it that, but I also couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to go. I wanted to put a face on the “homosexual menace,” maybe plant a seed of understanding.

But more than that, I wanted to finally speak my truth in front of a Mormon congregation.

Fast-and-testimony meetings are supposedly held for this exact purpose. On the first Sunday of every month, members fast all day and then have the opportunity at church to stand up and bear witness to their beliefs. This almost always has to do with the truth of the gospel as it was revealed to church founder Joseph Smith and all the Mormon prophets since. But every once in a while someone will get up at this spiritual open mike and say something unexpected.

That was my intention when I set out a couple Sundays ago to a local ward’s testimony meeting. I half-expected some burly guys in dark suits to drag me away from the podium, but the room was utterly still as I unfolded a slightly sweaty paper and read from it, my throat rough and dry in the oppressive air.

I talked briefly of my family and how they had a hard time matching me with the picture that is painted in church of deviants and destroyers of the family. I ended my statement with these words:

“I don’t know exactly what has been discussed in this chapel, or amongst yourselves in the lobby, but if it’s anything like in my family’s home wards, then some thoughtless and hurtful things have probably been said. Like many Mormons with gay relatives or friends, my family is afraid or embarrassed to speak up, which means they suffer in silence.

“On behalf of them and others like them, I beg you: do not cause further pain in a situation that is already hard enough. Be sensitive when you speak of homosexual issues. You do not know who among you has a gay friend or relative, or who is gay themselves.

“Harsh words on this subject, especially in a church environment, are cruel, and cruelty toward other human beings can never be Christian.

“If you are able to think before you speak, you can also think before you vote. If you don’t know any gay people, think of me and my family. There are many people whose lives and hearts are affected by your actions. I wouldn’t dream of arguing morality or politics with anyone here. I can’t dictate how others should act in matters of conscience or love.

“But I know one thing, and I came here today to testify to its truth: nothing is as simple as it seems.

“In a matter that is portrayed as ‘us vs. them,’ some of them can be us.”

I COULDN’T FIGURE out what to say at the end, so I just stared at my paper for a few seconds and then stepped down. Not being a religious person anymore, I didn’t want to say, “In the name of Jesus Christ,” and I sure didn’t want to say “amen” and have no one say it afterward.

The church member who stood up after me thanked me for reminding him to love unconditionally. And at the end of the meeting, I was thronged by people wanting to shake my hand and thank me for coming.

One older woman said, “I’m so glad you came today. I used to live next to two gay men, and they were the most wonderful people. They were the souls of charity. I think it’s wonderful that you came and spoke today.”

Several people invited me to come back, and I said thank you. What could I say? “Didn’t you hear me? I’ve been with my lover for eight and a half years. Why would I want to come to a church where so many people are against civil recognition for our relationship?”

No. I didn’t say that. But I wanted to.

From the February 17-23, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

The Clash

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The Clash

London Calling. Now the band is back in the spotlight.

Clash Culture

Seminal British politico-punkers still a force to be reckoned with

By Greg Cahill

“HEY, THAT’S Will Smith!” our 11-year-old house guest exclaimed a couple of weeks ago, a perplexed look on his face. Well, he was half right. Actually the song blasting from the stereo was “Rock the Casbah,” the original 1982 hit by the Clash that rapper Smith drew on for his recent end-of-the-century party jam “Will 2 K.”

The Clash are back. Not only do their beats echo on MTV and Top 40 radio, thanks to Smith, but their entire catalog once again is in print (11 newly remastered and restored CDs, including both the U.S. and U.K. versions of the band’s 1977 eponymous debut, were released three weeks ago on the Epic/Legacy label); a live CD, From Here to Eternity, featuring concert dates recorded between 1978 and 1982, hit the racks in October; and the band is the subject of a worshipful video documentary now airing on VH-1.

Indeed, the Clash–vocalists/guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon, and drummer Topper Headon–are in the air. For instance, Strummer and his current band, the Mescaleros, have crafted a contemporary version of the street-smart Clash sound on the recently released Rock Art & the X-Ray Style (Hellcat). And the band was cited prominently in “100 Years of Attitude,” an article in the January issue of the British music magazine Mojo (which holds a heavy reverence for ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s bands), in which big-name rockers voiced their views on the most influential musical events of the last century.

In the article, agitprop star Billy Bragg cited the day when the Clash’s White Riot Tour stormed into London in the midst of 1977’s punk rebellion. “This was the moment punk started to go into national consciousness,” Bragg noted. “. . . [The] Clash was a revelation. . . . I went in there a rock ‘n’ roll fan and came out a dyed-in-the-wool Clash fan. That moment changed my whole perception of how you make music, why you make music, and how to deal with the world.”

Emerging at the dawn of the punk era, the band, with its high-energy (often reggae-tinged) grooves, radical stance, and working-class themes, touched a nerve with young fans disenchanted by disco, discouraged by post-Vietnam War apathy, and disaffected by an economic slowdown that soon would spawn the shallow Americanism of the Reagan administration.

While most of the Western world was being lulled into a mind-numbing coma by ABBA, Donna Summer, and the Bee Gees, the Clash provided a snarling soundtrack for Britain’s civil unrest, denouncing police brutality and aligning themselves with the Marxist rebels in Nicaragua–all set to a highly danceable mix of modern rock and Third World beats.

WEANED on middle-class values, squirreled away in the art schools of London, and living on the dole and in squalid squats, the four musicians grew out of a band called the 101ers and a mutual respect for energetic rock ‘n’ roll. The early songs swung from the freewheeling adolescent spirit of “Janie Jones” to the street-fighting anthem “White Riot.”

CBS Records considered the debut LP too crude for American release.

The 1979 breakthrough LP London Calling, which included the classic-rock staple “Train in Vain,” showed the band’s maturing songwriting. The apocalyptic title track served as a call to arms for the punk generation, extolling the death of the counterculture (“phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust”) and evoking defiance in the face of possible nuclear destruction.

At its best, the album also underscored the band’s emerging and sophisticated pastiche of roots rock, Motownesque pop, ska, reggae (the band teamed up with reggae mixmaster Mikey Dread), and even jazz.

The band’s growing disdain for power gained fervor with 1980’s Sandinista!, an ambitious, yet uneven, three-LP set that boasted some of the band’s best (“The Magnificent Seven,” “The Call Up”) and worst (the calypso-inspired “Let’s Go Crazy”).

By the time the Clash released their final album, 1982’s Combat Rock (produced by pop maven Glynis Johns), the band’s sound had been honed into a steely sharp razor. The album hit the Top 10 and spawned “Rock the Casbah” (an indictment of Iran’s ban on Western rock).

That year, the band split up (owing to drugs or political differences, depending on whom you believe), with Strummer moving on to a solo career (he wrote the theme song for Sid & Nancy and pursued film acting) and Jones heading up the landmark Big Audio Dynamite, which pioneered a rock-reggae-house-hip-hop hybrid years ahead of its time.

Before the latest round of reissues, the band in 1988 was anthologized on the two-CD set The Story of the Clash, Vol. 1, and in 1991 received the box-set treatment with the oddly titled Clash on Broadway. Two of the best representations of the band’s oeuvre remain The Clash: The Singles and Super Black Market Clash, a collection of remixes that sound remarkably contemporary and capture the raw power of one of the punk era’s best bands.

The band left a legacy that few of their contemporaries could match. “Across more than 10 years of listening to [the Clash single] ‘Complete Control,’ ” music critic Greil Marcus opined in 1988 (in an essay reprinted in 1993’s Ranters & Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-92), “one reaction has always come first: disbelief. Disbelief that mere human beings could create such a sound, and disbelief that the world could remain the same when it’s over.”

From the February 17-23, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Joe Diffie

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Joe Diffie gets serious on latest CD

By Alan Sculley

One could say that when it came to his career, Joe Diffie quit joking around with his latest CD, “A Night To Remember.” It’s a statement that applies, first of all, to his music itself. In recent years, Diffie had enjoyed chart success with a string of light-hearted novelty-type tunes, such as “Honky Tonk Attitude,” “John Deere Green,” “Third Rock From the Sun,” and “Bigger than The Beatles.” He became well enough known for such material that he gained the nickname Joe Dittie.

But lately, the string of chart-topping hits has dried up and Diffie’s record sales had stalled. Diffie was getting indications that radio was ready for a new direction.

“With me there seems to be some sort of resisting force that all of a sudden for some reason decided they weren’t going to play songs of mine that were funny songs, and I was getting a lot of comments from radio people to my radio people saying ‘Joe’s got a great voice. We want to hear him sing songs that aren’t ditties and stuff,'” Diffie said. “I got a lot of that kind of information fed back to me.”

On a broader level, Diffie got more serious about his career–and his lifestyle–prior to making “A Night To Remember,” and made several significant changes.

He decided to begin managing his own career and he committed himself to a more healthy lifestyle by quitting smoking and adopting an exercise routine that has seen him shed some 40 pounds. He also switched producers, bringing in Don Cook and Lonnie Wilson to work on “A Night To Remember.”

All three decisions had specific benefits for Diffie.

In taking over his own management, Diffie feels he has improved his partnership with his record label, Epic, and others involved in his career–a situation he hopes will pay off with better record promotion and more sales.

“I just felt like it was time,” Diffie said of managing his career. “I just wanted a fresh everything, and it just seemed kind of crazy to me to pay out huge sums of money to somebody to do something I was perfectly capable of doing with a little more effort. So that was one of the main reasons, obviously. The other was I just wanted to be more involved in my career. I just felt like I was out of touch with folks, the folks at my label. I’d go over there and it was like I was the stepchild or something, almost. I don’t know how to explain that, I mean, they were all nice enough. I could just feel this little wall there.

“So it’s been nice to be the one that they call and talk to and get a direct answer from me and I get direct answers from them and it just, it’s a real connected kind of feeling.”

Putting aside cigarettes and following a regular exercise routine that includes daily time on a stationary bike or treadmill had a direct effect on Diffie’s ability to perform on stage and in the studio.

“I guess I was in denial that it was affecting me, that the smoking was affecting me,” he said. “Then when I quit, all of a sudden I’m able to do songs in my set list I had to drop out before because they had notes I couldn’t handle night after night. So what a thrill it’s been. I have a lot more stamina and I’ve got a lot more high end range back that I started to lose a little bit.”

As for the switch in producers, Diffie admits that Cook’s track record was a factor in his decision.

“Well Don Cook, of course, has been so successful with Brooks and Dunn, Alabama and a bunch of other people. And he just, he’s a real good song person,” Diffie said, praising Cook’s ability to recognize material that was ideally suited to the singer.

“I wanted Don mainly because of his reputation and his success. And the other reason, with Lonnie, Lonnie and I are dear friends. He’s played drums on all my records and we’ve written a bunch of songs together and done many, many demos, spent hours and hours singing and messing around at his home studio. He’s just a real dear friend of mine so we just ended up, the other side of that story is Don had been wanting Lonnie to become involved in production. Lonnie had played on most of the stuff he produced, so it was just a good opportunity all the way around.”

It’s a bit early to know if the changes will put Diffie’s career back on it’s early trajectory–Diffie’s first two CDs, A Thousand Winding Roads (1990) and Regular Joe (1992) spawned six straight number one hits (including the heartfelt ballads “Home” and “Ships That Don’t Come In”). But the Duncan, Oklahoma native’s album sales and radio play have slowed since then.

On a musical level, though, the verdict is in. Diffie’s efforts have produced one of the most musically satisfying albums of his career. “A Night To Remember” offers an engaging mix of mid-tempo and ballad material (such as the title track and “Better Off Gone”) and melodic rockers such as “You Can’t Go Home” and “It’s Always Something.”

Throughout the CD, the material leans toward traditional sounds, with ballads like “Don’t Our Love Look Natural” and “I’m The Only Thing I’ll Hold Against You” being particularly old school in their approach.

Every song on “A Night To Remember” centers on romance in some respect–and for the most part, the subject matter rises above the cliches that often inhabit love songs.

The title song, for instance, starts out sounding like the story of a newly unattached man’s declaration to live it up in the wake of his romantic freedom. Instead, as the full-bodied ballad unfolds, the character stays at home, pulls out photos of his ex-lover and spends the evening reliving the life he lost. Another lyrical gem is “Are We Even Yet,” which offers a pointed look at the competition between a bickering couple.

Such subjects did not find their way onto the new CD by accident. In trying to decide what direction to take his music, Diffie had an eye on the kind of material he felt gave him the best opportunity to reach fans old and new.

“We had a myriad of song meetings where we tried to solve all the issues facing country radio and our listenership, who’s listening to it and who’s buying the records and who’s playing the records and what demographics,” Diffie said. “You get into all those kinds of discussions and the conclusion we came up with was the majority of people who are actually physically buying records are probably young females. So we tried to find songs that were dealing with stuff that interests that kind of demographic, while I’m trying to be true to me and myself.

“The number one factor was we wanted to find songs that dealt with love,” Diffie, 40, revealed. “And even the songs that talked about a lost love situation, at least had the guy, or the character in the song, being remorseful that he messed up and he lost his love, or there was a light at the end of the tunnel. So that was kind of our driving force behind when we were selecting songs.”

The romantic fare is a bit ironic for Diffie, who recently became engaged to Theresa Crump, a 30-year-old who was working as a secretary in Orlando, Florida, when she met Diffie. It will be the third marriage for Diffie, who has four children from his previous marriages.

“There was a golf tournament one day and a little impromptu kind of jam concert the night before at this little club in Orlando,” said Diffie, explaining how he Crump. “She knew a bunch of folks, she’s a big country fan, so she had gotten to know a lot of people at the radio station there was there and I just met her and started talking to her. The next thing I know we exchanged numbers and the next thing I know, here we are.”

This positive turn in his romantic life, however, had nothing to do with the thematic direction Diffie’s music took on A Night To Remember.

“I met Theresa after I pretty much had all the songs together and had begun recording it,” Diffie said. “So that didn’t really factor into this particular project, but I’m sure it will in the future.”

Joe Diffie performs Wednesday, Feb. 16, at 8 p.m. at the Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. For ticket info, call 546-3600.

From the February 10-16, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Planned Communities

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Planned Communities

One alternative: Michael Black, an architect by trade, helped initiate Two Acre Wood, an intentional housing development that opened last August in Sebastopol. The project, says Black, is based on sound humanistic principles.

A Different Path

Intentional communities gain a foothold

By Yosha Bourgea

MICHAEL BLACK is not a guru, but he looks like one. From the Taj Mahal gleam of his bare scalp to his attentive gaze and calm, well-considered speech, his appearance evokes a sense of harmony that is reflected everywhere in his self-designed home near downtown Sebastopol.

A wide arch above a counter defines the boundary between kitchen and living room without the presence of a wall. Around the perimeter of the main space, a row of small, square windows above eye level brings in daylight without sacrificing privacy.

Behind the house, a redwood deck leads out to a hot tub. And from the front door, a paved footpath leading down a slope connects to the other homes in the new intentional community of Two Acre Wood.

The only flaw in this otherwise serene picture is one that Black, an architect, did not design. Just a few yards up the hill, on the other side of a low fence that marks the edge of the lot, a row of identical beige houses rises like a wall above the oak trees. This is Stefenoni Court, a conventional housing subdivision that dominates the western horizon.

The tenants of Two Acre Wood began moving in last August, and already the community has seen the death of a dog and the birth of a child. Despite a storm of protest from neighbors concerned about the impact of traffic on their quiet road, Black, the initiator and designer of Two Acre Wood, succeeded in persuading the Sebastopol City Council to approve the zoning for the site.

Now the community of 25 adults and nine children is working to establish positive relationships, both internally and in the greater neighborhood. There also are plans, Black says, to plant vines along the western fence to block the view of the subdivision next door.

But there’s no concealing the fact that, like all intentional communities, Two Acre Wood is still an exception–an island in a sea of tract housing.

THE ORIGINS of the term “intentional community” can be traced to circa 1950, according to the website of the Fellowship for Intentional Community. Definitions are as abundant and diverse as the people who live in places like Two Acre Wood, or Monan’s Rill in eastern Santa Rosa, or the Sowing Circle west of Occidental.

While most agree that an intentional community consists of a group of people sharing land or housing in a cooperative spirit, there are myriad ways that such a group can be structured. From private would-be utopias and religious enclaves to public-service-oriented groups and co-housing developments, the movement toward intentional community is growing.

The FIC website lists almost 100 such communities in California alone–and those are only the ones that requested to be on the list.

The site estimates that there are several thousand others throughout the country.

For those unfamiliar with contemporary intentional communities, the image of a hippie-laden commune is often the first to come to mind. Communitarians do tend to be left of center politically, and some have roots in the counterculture of the ’60s and ’70s; Black’s wife, Alexandra Hart, was a founding member of the controversial Morningstar Ranch in Graton. But the raucous, laissez-faire ambiance of such places has proven difficult to sustain, particularly from a financial standpoint.

The rallying cry at the now-defunct Wheeler Ranch commune was “No Rules!” But today, few of the people who can afford to invest in home ownership in Sonoma County would be willing to chant that particular mantra.

ALTHOUGH A SHARED ethos is central to most intentional communities, another factor drawing many people to consider participation is the economic advantage of community living. “What you tend to see more of around this area is highly enlightened real estate deals,” says Mary DeDanan, one of a group of people working to establish a small intentional community near Jenner.

“If you look at what median housing goes for versus what we’re offering, it’s pretty affordable.”

Prospective members of Wild Iris Ranch, must pay a $1,000 nonrefundable “earnest money” fee to show the seriousness of their commitment to join. That fee is part of the down payment, which is $15,000 for a single member and $20,000 for a couple. At buy-in, the membership is $105,000 (including the down payment), with monthly mortgage payments expected to average $900.

Compare that to the conventional market, where the median resale price last year hovered around $255,000 for a house or $140,000 for a condominium, and intentional community starts looking like a pretty smart idea. Of course, not everyone would be comfortable with the cozy living situation at Wild Iris Ranch.

“We’re taking the housemate concept to the nth degree,” DeDanan says. “A lot of people don’t want that.”

To comply with rural zoning laws, which allow just one house plus a granny unit per 40 acres, DeDanan and fellow core-group members Marcin Whitman and Chris Carpenter are designing a community that is a hybrid of co-housing and shared housing.

In addition to a single-bedroom granny unit that is already finished, the group plans to build a large structure, incorporating three to four separate bedrooms, around a common living space. Because the building will have only one kitchen, it can be legally defined as a single house.

“People want their own little piece of property,” DeDanan says. “[But] the individualistic model, with 50 little houses each with their own washer and dryer . . . the planet can’t sustain this kind of stuff.”

Michael Black agrees. “We’re founded on humanistic and ecological principles,” he says. “We live closer, more modestly, to not use up the surface of the planet for housing.

“We should not live isolated lives.”

IRONICALLY, many intentional communities find it necessary to isolate themselves from mainstream society in some way, if only to preserve their sense of integrity. Some are cautious about revealing their location or welcoming visitors who are not familiar with the priorities of the group. Concern over the possible impact of this article on a precarious relationship with neighbors also led one community member to request “vague” descriptions.

Monan’s Rill, one of the most firmly established intentional communities in Sonoma County, has survived (and thrived) for a quarter of a century by protecting the privacy of its residents.

“When we first came here 25 years ago we were a little overwhelmed, and we tried not to have too much notice paid to us,” says Russ Jorgensen, one of the founding members.

“Now that we’re a mature group and more stable, we don’t mind having visitors when we can be helpful.”

Still, when an unknown reporter requests a visit, Jorgensen says he’ll need to talk it over with the other residents at a general meeting before he can give a definite answer. Like many intentional communities, Monan’s Rill governs by consensus, a process that is less impersonal but more time-consuming than majority rule.

The need of the community to deliberate openly is crucial, an outsider’s deadline notwithstanding.

“There’s a stance of using consensus that is inherent in co-housing,” says Black of Two-Acre Wood. “It’s not about the power of the majority.”

A common problem within intentional communities concerns the division between private and public space, and the balance between individual freedom and community standards. As a new community, Two Acre Wood is just beginning to address some of these issues. Some residents, Black says, consider their front porches private space and use them for storage. Others see this as a disruption of the neighborhood’s unified look. But as with any other conflict, a resolution will come when all the neighbors sit in a circle, speaking honestly to one another and listening with respect.

“Consensus is the glue that holds us together,” Black says.

New College of Santa Rosa (99 Sixth St.) will host “Finding and Financing an Intentional Community,” a forum introducing the skills needed to start a co-housing project, on Saturday, Feb. 12, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The cost is $100. Call 568-0112. Meanwhile, a new co-housing group is enlisting participants for a planned community in downtown Cotati. For details, call Geof Syphers at 510/891-0446.

From the February 10-16, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Botanica Erotica

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Botanica Erotica

Evangelists of eroticism: Dae Williams and Diana DeLuca.

Natural Urges

Founders of Botanica Erotica preach healing power of pleasure

DIANA DELUCA and Dae Williams are on a mission from God. Or Goddess. Or both, depending on one’s point of view. Their calling–and to hear the Sebastopol women talk, it’s clear that this is a calling–is to spread the simple but unexpected message that pleasure heals. “We’re telling people,” says Williams, “that pleasure is good, that when you are experiencing pleasure, it heals your body–and it also heals the planet.”

“A lot of people need to be given permission to enjoy their bodies,” says DeLuca, who adds a potent, practical piece of advice that she is glad to share with others.

“If your mouth waters,” she says, “or if your nipples get hard, know that it’s your body telling you, ‘This is good!’

“Of course,” she adds with a matter-of-fact smile, “this goes for men as well as women.”

DeLuca (a local teacher, writer, and herbalist) and Williams (a licensed aesthetician and co-owner, with her sister Gina Williams and Andrea Spanzo, of Sebastopol’s happily hedonistic Sensuality Shoppe boutique) are the brains and spirits behind Botanica Erotica, a one-of-a-kind line of all-natural, handcrafted, mostly edible, aphrodisiac balms and lotions intended to enhance the sensual experience of our own and others’ bodies.

These “erotic botanicals” bear enticingly playful names like Bawdy Budder (edible spreads that come in a choice of flavors, including dark chocolate, white chocolate-almond-orange, and chocolate-tangerine) and Love Balm (exotically flavored lovemaking “lubricants” made from natural coconut oil and other organic ingredients). Along with such intriguingly titled offerings as Lust Dust, Love Licks, and Aphrodisiac Love Elixirs, the Botanica Erotica products–based on recipes that DeLuca has been sharing for years now in her phenomenally popular herbal sensuality workshops–have officially been on the market since 1998, granting grateful consumers’ previously unanswered wish for healthful erotic delights.

“A lot of folks really care about what they put into their bodies, and they care about what they put on their bodies,” explains Williams, sitting with DeLuca in the resplendent surroundings of the Sensuality Shoppe, one of several Bay Area stores that now carry Botanica Erotica products. “Women would tell us, ‘You know, we grow our own vegetables. We buy all-organic foods. We only want good yummy things for all bodies–but there’s nothing out there with all-natural erotic products.’ And it was true. I wanted to create an alternative to that.”

At that point, Williams was already successfully blending and marketing a line of all-natural face- and body-care products under the name Rejuvenescence, later changed to Sensuous Beauty. A fortuitous crossing of paths occurred, and she joined forces with DeLuca, who, it turns out, taught a workshop in the early ’90s that was Williams’ first inspiration to go into the organic beauty-product business.

Working in a large, festively decorated space out in the country (“Imagine the most awesome restaurant kitchen you’ve ever seen,” suggests Williams), the dynamic duo manufacture and package all the products with their own hands–and those of a growing sisterhood of gleefully hedonistic helpers.

“Concocting is always fun,” says DeLuca. “To say that we enjoy our work is an understatement.”

As proof of the dynamic duo’s spiritual intentions, every jar and bottle of Botanica Erotica comes inscribed with the phrase “Pleasure Heals.”

Buy the Book: Botanica Erotica founder Diana DeLuca’s book, Botanica Erotica: Arousing Body, Mind, and Spirit.

WHILE MANY of the products arise from experimentation and “happy accidents,” and some are based on, as Williams puts it, “yummy things we started making for ourselves and our loved ones,” a number of Botanica Erotica products evolve from suggestions offered by customers. Among the most popular of these is the Nether Petal Pomade, a “sacred” moisturizer otherwise known as Yoni Lip Balm.

“It can serve as a lubricant, but we already had lubricants,” says Williams.

The Beautiful Breast Balm, one of Williams’ own creations, is another invention that seems to be flying off shelves, tapping further into that need for sensual anointments. “It’s not just some lotion to slap on your body before you throw on your clothes,” Williams says. “There’s intention there. You warm your hands and massage it into your breasts, and you have to be conscious about that. It’s about loving your body.”

“Then there’s our Pleasuring Cream for Men,” DeLuca offers.

“I can’t tell you what a big deal that product is,” Williams says with a grin. “It’s like giving permission to men to masturbate. Men pick this up and look at it and go, ‘Wow!’ They see it’s out in the open, it’s being honored. ‘I can have my own little jar of cream just for that purpose?’ It’s about giving permission to pleasure yourself.

“Let’s face it, it’s a pretty natural instinct.”

And natural instincts are what DeLuca and Williams are all about. As the proprietors of Botanica Erotica, they’ve become reigning evangelists of eroticism, the high priestesses of pleasure, the patron saints of sensuality–and they love it.

“What better way could you have for being in the world,” preaches DeLuca, “than to have a lot of pleasure and to create a lot of pleasure for other people, so it comes right back around to you and you get to have even more pleasure.”

Adds Williams, “It’s a really good business to be in.”

And business is good.

AFTER BUILDING a significant local base of clientele through word of mouth and a handful of product placements in natural-food and beauty stores, Williams and DeLuca recently floated a few high-profile test cruises into the turbulent waters of national advertising, taking out a display ad in Herb Companion magazine. The response, according to Williams, was overwhelming.

“We heard from women all over the country, including places like Texas and Alabama,” she says with a laugh. “Then, after sending out the orders, we began to get these amazing calls. Women from all over saying, ‘The most beautiful thing is happening. I’m falling in love with myself just by putting this stuff on.’ ”

“They’ll say, ‘My husband and I sat down and went through the whole catalog, and we’ve decided on these two. What do you think?’ ” relates DeLuca, happily. “And you know they spent an hour together just letting themselves become all tantalized.”

Says Williams, “Every time we send one of our little packages across the country, we say, ‘Well, the scale’s going to tip a little bit more in this direction. Here comes another person over to the pleasure side.’ ”

From the February 10-16, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

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