Bible Belter

David Light

Da Funk: Jesus Seminar scholar Robert Funk is shaking up religious convention.

The Gospel according to Robert Funk

By Patrick Sullivan

ONCE UPON A TIME, Robert Funk was a teenage evangelist preaching to packed revival meetings. “I did that when I was starting out, sort of being a hotshot. I knew how to make people laugh, make them cry,” Funk recalls with a self-deprecating chuckle, voice tinged with regret. A lot has changed since those evangelical days.

Now, as he sits in his busy Santa Rosa offices, the bespectacled, white-haired Funk is preaching a new gospel … literally. The architect of a collaborative scholarly effort called the Jesus Seminar, Funk is the focus of a massive firestorm of controversy over the group’s radical reinterpretation of the heart of the New Testament.

Essentially, the Jesus Seminar places Jesus Christ under the scholarly microscope. The deeds and words of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels are collected and evaluated by experts from various fields in an effort to establish their historical authenticity. The results then have been published in the seminar’s 1995 bestseller The Five Gospels and in the newly released The Acts of Jesus (HarperSan Francisco; $35).

The shock waves generated by the final tallies have yet to quiet down. “We found that only 16 percent of the events we evaluated from the gospels were likely to be authentic,” says Funk, a distinguished biblical scholar.

Indeed, the portrait of Jesus that emerges from the two books is deeply at odds with Christian orthodoxy. Forget the miracles: Funk dismisses anything like the idea of Jesus walking on water or raising the dead. Even the cozy stable in Bethlehem is out; it seems Jesus was actually born in Nazareth. More seriously, the historical Jesus is portrayed by the Jesus Seminar as a charismatic iconoclast who attacked contemporary religious institutions and social mores with revolutionary zeal and biting humor.

Of course, scholarly challenges to religious doctrine are nothing new. Riven by uncertainty, fraying into fundamentalism, Christianity might seem to some to be an easy target. But Funk argues that the Jesus Seminar’s findings constitute an important new crisis for the faith.

“The rediscovery of who Jesus really was has powerful implications for the Christian tradition, for the institutions that grew out of this figure,” Funk says. “If we allow him to have something to say about those institutions, they’re going to suffer a new and sweeping reformation.”

THIS CONTROVERSIAL effort had its beginnings here in California in 1985, when Funk, troubled by religious doubts and hungry for truth, put out a call for scholars to come together to discuss biblical issues. He was pleasantly surprised to have 35 people show up to the first meeting.

“Nobody had ever inventoried all the words attributed to Jesus or collected all the stories told about him, so I wanted to do that first,” Funk says. “I guess I have the Tom Sawyer approach to painting fences. You have a big fence to paint, you get a bunch of people to help you paint it.”

The big question tackled by the Jesus Seminar concerned the origin of what we now accept as the standard accounts of the life of Jesus. The first written narrative gospel, the Gospel of Mark, wasn’t put down on paper until 50 years after the crucifixion. So how was information about these remarkable events transmitted across this half-century gap?

Circulated by word of mouth, subjected to reinterpretation and distortion, the discrete stories and sayings of Jesus were further shaped and augmented by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John when the evangelists turned the tales into coherent narratives.

“They were told and retold and passed around as single anecdotes,” Funk says. “The same thing happens in the transmission of jokes today. We hear them and retell them and change them a little every time.”

The scholars of the Jesus Seminar attempted to evaluate how much truth survived by watching for anachronisms, historical inaccuracies, and narrative impossibilities. They also asked medical experts to help explain accounts of miraculous healing and came up with some surprising theories, including the notion that Jesus may have exercised his powerful charisma to cure what we would today consider psychosomatic afflictions.

To people of faith unsettled by all of these revelations, Funk offers his compassion. For decades, he has struggled to hold on to his own deeply held religious beliefs, and he knows how troubling it can be to see them slipping away. While he still considers himself a Christian, he also knows that every day new scientific discoveries punch holes in the old framework of belief.

“I have a very deep sympathy for those people who are losing their faith,” says Funk. “The myths that we live by have deep emotional roots–they’re wrapped around our hearts.”

Of course, not everyone accepts the Jesus Seminar’s findings. Critics argue that the portrayal of Jesus as an iconoclastic opponent of religious institutions is suspiciously close to exactly what the seminar might be expected to find–God in their own image. To that criticism, Funk replies with some heat. “Most people who criticize that way never stop to think that the same thing also applies to them,” he argues.

“The thing to do is to look at the actual evidence.”

But he also acknowledges that the uncertainty among religious scholars holds true even among his allies. No one is sure what Christianity will look like in the new millennium. “I know many of the theological leaders of the churches, and I know they’re at sea, as all of us are,” Funk says. “We’re about to cross a watershed of enormous significance. What’s on the other side is difficult to say.”

From the May 7-13, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Stand and Deliver

Michael Amsler

Syntax for sale: Open-mike poetry night at Actors’ Theatre.

Poetry night: An up-and-down world

By Marina Wolf

ALLITERATIVE swear words are fired from the stage like fusillades from an angry rifle. The 40-odd audience members, in attitudes ranging from beat nonchalance to literary ecstacy, absorb the spoken-word rant with easy aplomb. On stage, the young woman in the brown corduroy jacket is just warming up, hips rolling in time to her verbal jabs, a radiant mist of sweat emerging under the bright theater lights.

The new poetry slam night at Santa Rosa Actors’ Theatre, scheduled for the second Monday of each month, is going well. The leisurely open-mike period has set the tone as “rowdy casual,” and the shoot-from-the-hip energy of the poetry slam fits right in, pitting artists’ on-the-spot performances against each other for 10 bucks and the chance at advancing to the final “Grand Slam.”

Afterward, praise washes over the lobby like wine spilling out of a too-small paper cup.

Meanwhile, over in Sonoma, the butcher paper hangs thick and impenetrable over the windows of the former Tin Can Coffee Company. After more than two years of dispensing coffee and comfort to two groups of open-mike readers, the owner closed the doors and sold the space less than a couple of months ago to the local chain of Johnny’s Java.

Welcome to the world of open-mike readings: feast or famine, with no rhyme or reason. A couple of long- termers keep going, but a recent one-two punch of closure and relocation has shaken the followers of this noble institution, and suggests that it’s not as secure as could be.

Certainly if love of literature were enough, Gail D’Arcy would still be in business. She opened the Tin Can Coffee Company in 1996, and started the open-mike poetry reading first thing. She kept the coffee flowing, and even passed the hat. But the cost per square foot was too high. “You’ve got to have a situation where you can afford to do it … . In order to stay in business you have to break even,” she says. “The open mikes don’t do much to increase revenue.”

Revenue is invariably the reckoning point for new or low-traffic locations; noise is another, and almost as difficult to deal with. Writers are generally sensitive people, who want the attention of the audience on them, not the whooshing of the espresso machine. Owners just want to keep the business moving. The reading at Lucy’s Cafe in Sebastopol, which ran for three short months, came to an end over that very issue. As William Judd, the reading organizer, has it, the very first event was heavily punctuated by the workers doing dishes. He then suggested trying an after-hours session, but people not involved in the reading were still coming in. In the third session, Judd put his foot down and asked the servers to keep quiet, and the next week the owner called off the Sunday afternoon experiment, offering different times, all during working hours, or perhaps a rental fee, which Judd declined. (At press time Judd still had not found a replacement venue.)

Other cafes fare a little better. The Copperfield’s Cafe in Petaluma has had an open-mike reading hosted by Geri Di Giorno for about a year. Her involvement with the Petaluma Poetry Walk and other literary events pegs her as a prime candidate for facilitator fade–“I am looking for someone to take over the Copperfield’s reading,” she admits–but that the reading still happens is a testimony to her commitment in the face of indifference. “[Here] we are at the mercy of regular patrons and the machines,” she says ruefully. “We’re coming in to read poetry, and the owners are doing something to generate business.”

On the other hand, there is Sally Spittles, owner of the Willow Wood Market Cafe. Spittles has been hosting, and often participating in, monthly open-mike readings in the back of her Graton market for over two years. Based on the few coffee cups and many water glasses that stood on her tables at the end of the most recent gathering, she probably takes in just enough money from her readers to pay for the coffee grounds. But it’s not a problem.

“The building is already there, the business is already there–all we have to do is open the doors,” she says. “We don’t make any money off of it, but I don’t have any employees working then, either. So it’s negative income, but it’s not a financial burden.”

EVEN GIVEN IDEAL open-mike conditions–strong coffee, a good sound system, rent paid through the end of the year–veterans of the literary scene know that open mikes have always come and gone. The Russian River Writers’ Guild has been hosting open mikes for years at locations all over Santa Rosa and the west county: Garbo’s in Guerneville, Copperfield’s in Sebastopol, Johnny Otis’ now defunct nightclub, Mudd’s Cafe, Higher Grounds.

Clearly, keeping the readings going in one place is a challenge.

“It doesn’t bring much money in,” says 20-year guild member and poet David Bromige, veteran of many a reading. “Or perhaps it disrupts things too much for the other patrons… . I think poetry is a profound disturbance, so it draws profoundly disturbed persons sometimes. Maybe the other patrons just get up and go to another cafe.”

Psychiatric assessments aside, Bromige has a point. Open-mike poetry is not toe-tapping jazz. People do not pack the house for unknown writers. To sustain a reading, the owner or proxy has to be committed to the concept, and have a certain amount of largesse to offer as a business entity. Because when the crunch of running a business hits, readings are often the first things to go.

But open mikes never seem to fade away entirely. Bromige has been approached about organizing something at Incredible Records in Sebastopol, just next door to Lucy’s Cafe. Over in Sonoma, even while the displaced readers from Tin Can mourn the loss of their space, writing-support groups at the Writers’ Center offer free-write, followed by open reading, for a very reasonable session fee.

And those with their ears to the track can always find open mikes at community events and festivals.

No matter where or how long.

From the May 7-13, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Born Again

Lee Ballard

Cultivating the spirit: Ex-LSD guru-turned-transformative psychologist Ralph Metzner, a Sonoma resident, has published an updated version of his classic The Unfolding Self.

Legendary psychotherapist Ralph Metzner produces new incarnation of his classic volume on transformation and rebirth

By David Templeton

THERE IS A FAMILIAR painting hanging over Ralph Metzner’s living room couch. Instantly recognizable as one of visionary artist Susan Boulet’s most famous works, its striking image of a handsome Native American shaman wearing the ceremonial skin and head of a large gray wolf–or is the shaman transforming into the wolf before our eyes?–has been reproduced on postcards, prints, and posters around the world, decorating the dormitories and wooded sanctuaries of countless free-thinking neo-pagans and metaphysical adventurers across the globe.

What sets Metzner’s copy apart from all the others is that his Boulet is not a print.

“It’s the original,” he shyly confesses, a slight shrug rising and falling as he leads a tour through his art-filled, comfortably rambling house near downtown Sonoma. It is congruous with Metzner’s status as a central figure of the transformative consciousness movement that he would become the keeper of a painting that is arguably one of the better-known symbols of an expanding cultural acceptance of traditional, multi-ethnic, decidedly mystical spiritual systems.

After all, Metzner is responsible to a great degree for the mid-’60s burst of consciousness that started it all in the first place.

Such praise appears to embarrass Metzner, perhaps the humblest–certainly the least publicized–of that once-notorious human potential trio of Harvard professors that also includes Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass. Now considered something of a psychedelic Holy Trinity, Metzner, Leary, and Alpert created a stir with their studies of LSD-induced spiritual experiences, and co-authored the classic book The Psychedelic Experience.

After leaving Harvard, each ventured his own way: Leary went underground, Alpert traveled to India, and Metzner, after years of practicing psychotherapy in a variety of settings during which he wrote numerous books–including the groundbreaking Opening to Inner Light in 1986–eventually settled in the Bay Area.

Metzner is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he has taught since 1975.

After years of working in relative solitude, Metzner has once again entered the public spotlight with the recent release of The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience (Origin Press; $14.95), an expanded and renamed edition of the long out-of-print Opening to Inner Light, which sold 10,000 copies in its original incarnation. Much has changed in the popular culture during the last 13 years. With the miraculous resurrection of Metzner’s sadly neglected book–an examination of 12 universal metaphors employed by the world’s many religions to describe the experience of spiritual transformation, with two new chapters and a spate of new illustrations–a whole new generation of scholars and seekers is suddenly taking notice of Metzner once again.

“I’m very happy,” Metzner succinctly states. “I’ve long wanted it be republished.”

RICH IN FOLKLORE and psychological insight, The Unfolding Self explores the obvious meanings and hidden meanings of those central metaphorical ideas we use to describe our most profound spiritual metamorphoses: stepping from darkness into light, for example, and the image of being set free from inner captivity, of dying and rebirth, of being cleansed in the heat of a purifying fire. The restored chapters treat the metaphors of integrating the inner wild animal, and unfolding the Tree of Life.

“The book is really about the idea of psycho-spiritual transformation,” Metzner summarizes, “and the way people experience it according to the classical traditions. The new chapters are the kind of ecological themes that have become much more central a part of my focus in the time since the book was written.”

A pivotal force in the book’s timely re-release is its publisher, Byron Belitsos of Origin Press. Something of a visionary himself, Belitsos is the founder of IntegralSpirit.com. An innovative web-magazine and on-line community dealing with issues of integral spirituality points of view, the site also sells books that deal with similar themes–several hundred thousand are listed–and is fast becoming known as an Amazon Book Service for the spiritual community.

Origin Press, Belitsos long-planned brainchild, has only just made its publishing debut, with the Metzner reissue as its first offering.

“Ralph is perfect for us, actually,” says Belitsos. “He’s brought a terrific amount of scientific thought and academic methodology to these very esoteric realms. People know Leary. They know Ram Dass. It’s time for Ralph Metzner to be known.

“I personally think he’ll end being considered the most important writer of the pack.”

Asked how he feels about being eternally grouped with–and compared to–Leary and Ram Dass, Metzner’s eyes light up. “I feel fine about it,” he smiles. “I was very close to them, I remained very close to Leary right up until his death, and I was with Ram Dass last night. We’re close friends. I feel very fortunate to have had two such great spirits, great beings, as my teachers, my friends, my mentors.”

Leary’s death of cancer, Metzner points out, and his publicly voiced intention of experiencing his own death as the ultimate trip, brought Leary a level of wide respect and admiration that he had been deprived of throughout his life. His fearless view of death as just another transformation may, in fact, have helped raise the nation’s consciousness in regard to its inability to deal with the notion of dying.

“Coming near to death is probably, from my experience, the trigger for the most profound kind of transformative experience,” Metzner softly remarks. “Whether it’s a near-death experience of the classical kind, where someone is in an accident and then moves out of their body, or through a loved one dying, either a child or a parent.”

Metzner has experienced such an event firsthand; his own son, Ari Krishna Metzner–to whom the book is dedicated–was killed in an accident in 1974.

“Sometimes,” he adds, “the transformation comes, as with Leary, in coming near to one’s own death in illness. People have been miraculously transformed through such experiences.”

Metzner’s work seems to suggest that there is a built-in desire to transform ourselves into better, or perhaps only different, human beings. “People do want transformative experiences,” he affirms. “We all desire personal growth and change. People go on vision quests in search of change. They involve themselves in various spiritual practices. It’s a very general, very human thing.

“[Healing specialist and author] Andrew Weil and others now say–and I agree with him–that healing is the natural capacity of the human organism, or any organism for that matter,” he muses, gazing up again at the painting of the shaman caught halfway between two versions of himself. “We are spiritual beings,” Metzner concludes.

“To seek a spiritual vision, to have a desire to experience spiritual healing, that is something that is inherent in every single individual.”

From the May 7-13, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Spring Gleaning

A potpourri of reads by local authors

SHOP LOCALLY and read whatever you like, but don’t pass over a chance to support local authors whenever possible. This season has something for everyone, from Bruce Henderson’s gripping true-life whodunnit Trace Evidence to a exhaustive travel guide for diehard tequila lovers. Enjoy. Synopses by Mary Bishop, Steve Bjerklie, Shelley Lawrence, Patrick Sullivan, David Templeton, and Marina Wolf.

Shoshana Alexander
Women’s Ventures, Women’s Visions
(Crossing Press; $14.95)

“MMM, GIRL, you oughta be sellin’ this!” Every woman who’s ever heard this enthusiastic comment, or something like it, has also heard the scared little rejoinder in her head two seconds later: I don’t know how. But there is no shortage of role models for would-be women business owners, as this Sebastopol author points out in her introduction to Women’s Ventures: we’re just lacking the old-girl network. This inspiring collection of first-person narratives from 29 women entrepreneurs offers a much needed link in that fledgling web. The stories come from a wide range of informants, from a new-mother caretaker in Atlanta, Ga., to award-winning TV producer Marcy Carsey. In this small book is information on financing, advertising, employing, living, all the more engaging because it doesn’t feel like advice, but quiet, friendly sharing of personal truth.
M.W.

Edwin C. Anderson Jr.
The Promise That Was America
(Self-Published; $21.95)

SANTA ROSA attorney Edwin Anderson here reveals the historical successes and failures of America. By delving into the lives of specific characters that range from George Washington to Lyndon Johnson and Robert NcNamara, Anderson invites us to reflect upon the past as well as the present and future. His book encourages us to take a serious look at ourselves and the way our country has evolved.
S.L.

James A. Autry and Stephen Mitchell
Real Power: Business Lessons from the Tao Te Ching
(Riverhead Books; $23.95)

THE FACT THAT “Dow” and “Tao” are pronounced exactly the same in English may or may not be the reason why Sonoma resident Stephen Mitchell, famed for making Genesis, Job, and Rilke accessible, and James Autry, a former Fortune 500 company executive, teamed up to find the pearls of business advice buried within Lao-tzu’s text of ancient Chinese wisdom, the Tao Te Ching. But no matter. This graceful, spare book (200 pages) elegantly describes how Lao-tzu’s sage advice reveal good business sense. “Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness?” may not appear to have application in the boardroom or on the trading floor, but the authors find it: “People who are driven by crisis are letting circumstances define their lives instead of allowing all things to arise in the space in which work is performed.” Many such ancient/modern pearls are to be found here.
S.B.

George Bowering, Angela Bowering, David Bromige, and Michael Matthews
Piccolo Mondo
(Coach House Press; $35)

YOU CAN TAKE the boy out of Canada, but you can’t take Canada out of the boy, as Sonoma County transplant David Bromige proves in his collaborative coming-of-age novel set in 1961 Vancouver, B.C. In this semi-stream-of-consciousness production, four college students become ensnared in a web of Canadian government intrigue … ha-ha, Canadian intrigue, that’s an oxymoron, right? Well, if a brilliant flash of light at the edge of the night sky doesn’t grab you, check out Piccolo Mondo in its entirety at the Coach House Press website at www.chbooks.com/home.html. Remember to leave a tip.
M.W.

Lance Cutler The Tequila Lover’s Guide to Mexico: Everything There Is to Know About Tequila … Including How to Get There
(Wine Patrol Press; $16.95)

PART TRAVEL book and part love letter, this guide is a highly personal, brightly written romp through the land of the blue agave, the mythic plant from which all tequila blessings flow. Lance Cutler, a Sonoma-based author with a legendary wine cellar, uses the same wine-appreciation skills he’s honed for years as he takes his wife from one tequila distillery to another, pointing out nifty technical and historical facts, as well as giving tips on how to find the often-remote distilleries themselves, and where to find a bite to eat once you get there.
D.T.

Jack Fritscher
The Geography of Women: A Romantic Comedy
(Palm Drive Publishing; $9.95)

ERA IS AURA in lesbian-themed fiction, or at least it should be. A good piece of lesbian period fiction will make prevailing political and moral attitudes perfectly clear, but not overwhelming. By that standard, at least, The Geography of Women is a success, melding nuclear-age normalcy with small-town eccentrism. At their juncture in southern Illinois lives Laydia Spain O’Hara (say it out loud), a spunky tomboy. (Is there any other kind?) Fritscher has a talent for well-turned folk phrasing, no matter which way the character leans (Fritscher writes primarily gay male themes). And though the basic plot bears a striking resemblance to Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes, one is willing to forgive in the face of such exuberance.
M.W.

Kendall Haven
Bedtime Stories
(Storystreet; $5.95)

“AAHH, okey-dokey, boys, aahhh, a story, ummm … ” starts out Jimmy and Jason’s dorky dad each night. The twins are convinced that their father is quite possibly the nerdiest man alive, telling bedtime stories comparable to his status as such. But … was it possible that their dad’s stories could maybe … come true? As the stories get progressively spookier, join Jimmy, Jason, their dad, and their elementaryschool mates as local storyteller Kendall Haven–who has performed for more than 2 million children and 800,000 adults in 40 states–takes you through a walk of weirdness.
S.L.

Kendall Haven
Stepping Stones to Science: True Tales and Awesome Activities
Great Moments in Science: Experiments and Readers’ Theatre
(Libraries Unlimited; $22.50, $24)

AN ELEMENTARY-school teacher’s dream, Kendall Haven’s Stepping Stones to Science provides a fun, hands-on way for second- through fifth-graders to learn about science. Covering topics from physics to electricity to evolution, Haven’s storybook/workbook begins each section with an amusing anecdote, which is followed up with an experiment that can be performed by the students. Each section also includes “Topics to Talk About,” a short list of items that teachers can use to spark discussions among their students. All in all, a practical and entertaining way to break into the world of science. Haven’s Great Moments in Science is an intelligent sequel to Stepping Stones to Science. Aimed at students from grades 4 to 9, the book is a series of skits that can be acted out by students using thespian outlines of the glories of scientific stuff like genetics, rocketry, and chemistry, to begin with.

Haven’s skits provide a way for middle-school students to learn about science without feeling bored or patronized, and the books provide a helpful teacher’s guide to aid discussions.
S.L.

Bruce Henderson
Trace Evidence
(Simon & Schuster; $25)

CHILLING FICTION is what it reads like, but with a deft and compelling voice, Sebastopol author Bruce Henderson–best known for his bestseller And the Sea Will Tell–unravels a true-crime drama. Trace Evidence is the story of serial killer Ray Biondi, who stalked his prey along lonely highways of the West. By abducting, sexually assaulting, and strangling his victims in one jurisdiction and dumping their bodies in another, he created an investigative quagmire for detectives. Drawing on hours of exclusive interviews with key investigators and others–including the killer’s wife, who never spoke to authorities– Henderson bores into the psychological complexities of his characters with meticulous accuracy. The eerie case revealed here clearly illustrates how the disparate elements of rage, repression, and family dysfunction combine to create a killer. Trace Evidence is composed with Hitchcocksian precision. It’s stark, sharp, disturbing, and will haunt you for days.
M.B.

Christine Hunsicker, editor
A Dog’s World
(Traveler’s Tales; $12.95)

DO YOU FEEL like a class-A deserter as the Pathetic Puppy Eyes turn on you while you head out the door to, say, Bangladesh? Here is a collection of true stories that tell what happens when dog owners succumb to The Look, avoiding the subsequent guilt, and take their dogs along for the ride (or flight, as the case may be). This addition to the “Travelers’ Tales” series is an actual guidebook that provides maps to foreign lands in a series of heartwarming anecdotes involving dog-lovers (among them such noted authors as John Steinbeck, James Herriot, and Pico Iyer) and the dogs they love.
S.L.

Michele Anna Jordan
California Home Cooking: American Cooking in the California Style
(Harvard Common Press; $16.95)

FROM ALMONDS to zinfandel, Michele Anna Jordan takes her reader through a dazzling repertoire of over 400 recipes that are genuinely imbued with a taste of California. Jordan writes so passionately on the topic of California cuisine that it’s impossible not to get excited about her ninth cookbook. More than just a straight-ahead cookbook, it includes such vignettes as “Okie Burritos” and “Banana Flowers” that educate us about California’s history in a most palatable way. Jordan breathes such life and personality into her recipes that she’ll have even the novice cook running to the stove after page three. Reminding us of farmhouses and ranchos, and emphasizing casual contemporary fare, California Home Cooking wholeheartedly celebrates, just as we are so apt to do, the pleasures of the table.
S.L.

David E. Manley
A Root of Jesse
(Strawberry Hill Press; $14.95)

FROM THE PEN of Sonoma author David Manley comes this globe-trotting, autobiographical tale of three generations of family life. Drawing on memories and old letters, the author carefully charts his family’s unusual journey from life as missionaries in early 20th-century India to relocation in the rural Sonoma County of the 1940s. Along the way, Manley offers vivid snapshots of his grandfather, a fiercely proud German missionary with relentless evangelical zeal; his mother, a beautiful flapper dramatically out of place in colonial India; and World War II-era Healdsburg at a time when “Los Angeles seemed as distant as New York City.”
P.S.

Lloyd Pedersen
The Vintage
(Joyce and Co.; $26)

THE NORTHERN California wine country plays host to this first novel by Sebastopol author Lloyd Pedersen. The Vintage follows the stormy fortunes of the proud but bitterly divided Morello wine dynasty as the family grapples with passion, politics, and intrigue after the end of Prohibition. The retired author draws on his decades of experience working with the U.S. Treasury Department as an inspector in the wine industry to add to this sprawling epic. Perhaps not surprisingly, a government agent figures prominently in the novel, as he squares off against the family’s unscrupulous patriarch, Uncle Louie.
P.S.

Rayford Clayton Reddell
Miniature Roses
(Chronicle Books; $14.95)

RAY REDDELL brings his love of miniature roses to light with this charming book. An expert caretaker of his more than 8,000 personal rosebushes, Petaluman Reddell certainly knows his stuff when he advises his reader on planting techniques, the different possibilities of fertilizers, what to do when disease strikes your babies. Artfully illustrated by the award-winning photographs of Saxon Holt, Miniature Roses will have the reader wondering how it was possible to go all of those years without knowing how to properly tend such species as “Hot Tamale,” “Party Girl,” and “King Tut.”
D.T.

Patricia Lynn Reilly
Be Full of Yourself! The Journey from Self-Criticism to Self-Celebration
(Open Window Creations; $15)

THE COVER of Patricia Lynn Reilly’s nifty new book Be Full of Yourself! is elegantly simple, yet potent: a bright red apple posed against an ascending backdrop of rich, mysterious blue. It makes you hungry just looking at it, but what does it mean? When you examine the pages inside, you suddenly get the point: This is none other than Eve’s apple, womankind’s first great no-no in a long history of opportunities for knowledge and empowerment that have been denied to Eve’s sisters down through the ages. Based on Reilly’s celebrated traveling workshops called “The Journey from Self-Criticism to Self-Celebration,” the book is an examination and dismantling of the question most often asked by women in the workshops: “What is wrong with me?” The author of the best-selling A God Who Looks Like Me guides readers into the heart of this disempowering question, and out the other side with a bold, glorious answer that may end up changing brave women’s lives forever. Take a bite. We dare you.
D.T.

Sara Spaulding-Phillips and Trish McLean
Sacred Beginnings: Honoring the Goddess Within
(Imagin Publishing; $11.95)

QUESTIONS FOR a writer: What does it mean to toss a crown of flowers over the edge of a volcano? How does it feel to follow one’s thoughts and longings into the fiery abyss? Sara Spaulding-Phillips, a Santa Rosa writing teacher, visited Hawaii with an eagerly emotive group of writers. The group meditated and wrote in starts and leaps along the lines of Natalie Goldberg’s topic-based exercises, and the results of their journey are included in this book. If you’ve ever done this kind of writing work, you’ll have some idea of what lies within: lines that sear like lava, lyrics that taste of ashes, all written from a burning core of desire.
M.W.

From the May 7-13, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.