One Jump Ahead

Michael Amsler

Farsighted: Dr. Martin Griffin’s life’s work is simply to save the planet and our souls.

Marty Griffin’s land-ethic revolution

By Dylan Bennett

A S A PHYSICIAN in the 1950s, Marty Griffin should have been content to make money and enjoy his social standing in affluent Marin County. No one would have expected him to question–let alone counterattack–the advance of urban “progress” that promised to make Marin more like Los Angeles.

But Griffin’s consciousness had been imprinted as a child with a deep love of nature. In the 1920s, his family often vacationed along the natural beauty of the Russian River. A fateful Boy Scout outing in 1932 from his Oakland home to the Canyon Ranch on Bolinas Lagoon etched in his teenaged mind the beauty and wonder of birds nesting in tall trees. The Golden Gate Bridge was not yet built and the word ecology didn’t exist.

Nearly 30 years later, in 1961, Griffin learned of plans to build a freeway over the Marin Headlands to Bolinas. A luxury marina project threatened to fill in the lagoon and destroy the bird colony of Canyon Ranch. The idea of it outraged his sensibilities. And this time the boy was man, an intellectual warrior trained in zoology at Berkeley and medicine at Stanford.

He would join the fight.

Not only the effort led by Griffin and the Marin Audubon Society to preserve the Marin coast from urban development, but also the ongoing struggle over the Russian River are the subjects of Griffin’s new book, Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast: The Battles for Audubon Canyon Ranch, Point Reyes, & California’s Russian River (Sweetwater Springs Press; $29.95), due to be published in March.

The book is both a personal memoir of Griffin’s successful conservation efforts in the postwar era and an action manual for Sonoma County citizens to understand and influence the use of their own natural surroundings.

Griffin, now retired from his practice as an internist (and the former director of the Sonoma Developmental Center), is the owner of Hop Kiln Winery on Westside Road, co-founder of the Friends of the Russian River, and one of Sonoma County’s foremost conservationists. His tale reads like a folksy business thriller, with the future of the earth in the balance–a well-rounded lesson in ecology, politics, and activism, illustrated with over 200 photographs and original maps.

As the president of the Marin Audubon Society in 1961, Griffin hatched what he called a “plot” to save Marin. He purchased key properties in the path of the proposed west Marin freeway and marina and set them aside for permanent wildlife habitat.

It was a strategy that had worked before. In 1957, Griffin was tapped by Caroline Livermore, the wealthy, high-society woman who had formed the Marin Audubon Society to help prevent the landfill and marina development proposed for Richardson Bay off Tiburon. Griffin learned to flash the cash for strategic parcels selected specifically to block development.

Griffin’s first score on the coast was the Canyon Ranch itself, with a sale price of $400,000. But he closed the deal with only a $1,000 personal check, persuading the Marin Audubon Society to raise the rest of the money.

In this manner, a well-trained, would-be Establishment Man became a nature gangster–using the power of the almighty dollar to invert the purpose of private property and give the earth back to itself. “I was one jump ahead of the developers,” Griffin chuckles, seated in the living room of his peaceful west county home.

In all, Griffin bought some 30 strategic parcels of tidelands and uplands totaling more than 1,600 acres and costing upwards of $1.5 million. Some people simply donated their land. These efforts killed the proposed freeway and homes for 150,000 people once planned for west Marin.

W HEN GRIFFIN MOVED to the Russian River in 1975, he found yet another fight, this time over the same wildlife habitat he loved as a boy. “The Russian River was paradise,” writes Griffin, recalling childhood memories. “I thought it was the most inviting and sumptuous river I’d ever seen. The river was crystal clear and safe to drink, filtered through miles of gravel between us and the next upriver village, Geyserville.”

But by 1961 this was no longer the Russian River of his youth. Already paradise had fallen. The enemy was, and still is, Griffin argues, habitat destruction from agriculture, disastrous gravel-mining practices by unregulated mining corporations, and a county Board of Supervisors subservient to these interests.

The river’s many creeks funnel erosion through damming, agriculture, and steep-slope vineyards. This “apocalyptic erosion problem … could eventually destroy the viability of the salmon fishery and the wine-grape industry and, all the while, continue endangering drinking-water supplies,” Griffin says. In his book, Griffin shows how Sonoma County risks a drinking-water disaster, uncontrollable flooding from channelized streams and unchecked urban growth, and the death of the river.

The remedy he suggests is a “land ethic revolution” to gain political control at the county level and establish effective land-use and slow-growth population strategies. His “plot” to save Sonoma County is a prescription for mass rail transit, accountable public agencies, and a comprehensive hands-off policy for the Russian River. Finally, Griffin says plainly, the county needs a new planning department “led by the nation’s finest ecologically trained planning staff and backed by alert citizen planners.”

“Unless we face the challenge squarely and recognize that the cumulative impact of mediocre water- and land-use planning forced on our counties by land speculators, co-opted politicians, and the like is blighting our land and our economic future, we will continue to see a steady decline in the health of our families and communities, and in the quality of our lives,” says Griffin forcefully. “The world of wildlife–egrets and salmon, songbirds and frogs–is a reliable indicator. We must heed its warnings.”

Cynics and pessimists might say these ideas are idealistic and unlikely. But with this insightful book, the residents of Sonoma County have their wake-up call–Griffin has “belled the cat,” as he likes to say–and whether they join the fight is up to them.

Dr. Griffin holds a slide show and lecture on Monday, Feb. 23, at 7:30 p.m. SRJC Petaluma Center, Mahoney Library, 680 Sonoma Mtn. Pkwy. Free. 527-4372.

From the February 19-25, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Eye Candy

Jim Malucci

Go Ahead and ‘Jump’: Braces, freckles, and dark skin aren’t fashion liabilities in the world of ‘Jump’ magazine, one of the new rags devoted to the emerging “real girl” market of teens. ‘Jump’ ain’t bad, but it’s not as good as several indie publications.

New mags put the real back into girls’ reality

By Liza Featherstone

TRYING TO SEDUCE as many underage girls as possible, corporate publishing has adopted the buzzword “real” as its come-on of the moment. Rightly sensing that there is a vacuum in the teen magazine market–the fastest-growing segment of the population has, like, nothing to read–publishers have dreamed up Jump, Teen People, Twist, and Glossy. Teen People, which hit the newsstands this month, promises “real teens, real style.” Jump‘s slogan is “For girls who dare to be real.” It makes sense that realness should become a market niche–existing teen magazines like Seventeen and YM being so decidedly unreal.

But how much realer is this new crop? Reality is a place where bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and girls have a political, intellectual, and creative life of their own. Despite their pretenses, commercial teen magazines’ reality bureaus are still pretty short-staffed.

Teen People deserves some credit for putting out a model-free magazine. Only a third of Teen People is devoted to fashion and beauty, and it has refreshingly little advice about how to find a boyfriend. Teen People also nods to the not-so-girly girls with profiles of girl sport climbers and in-line street skaters. But it’s a sad commentary on the state of the glossies that these achievements are even worth mentioning, since Teen People is clearly nothing more than a way to hook future People readers on celebrity worship.

Jump, just a few issues old, from fitness-oriented Weider Publishing, is a refreshing paean to the active girl–“stylin’ snowboarders” and girl hockey players fill its pages; nail polishes recommended are quick-drying (which assumes you have something better to do than sit around and fan your nails). Jump clearly has feminist intentions, but at points reads like a ’90s Cosmo: Pressure to be skinny is replaced by pressure to be “buff,” and a plea to girls not to worry about being model-perfect is written by a boy. The message is clear: It’s OK that boys and magazines still have the last word on what makes you sexy.

Twist, a bimonthly just launched by Bauer Publishing, fails at realness even more dismally. It does try to boost girls’ body images: “Do our bellies really need busting?” is an eloquent plea for self-acceptance, and the magazine commendably names “Anti-Waifs” as a “Trend We Love … Finally!” But check out their wussy examples–Jewel, Jennifer Aniston, Neve Campbell–no Janeane Garofalo or, hello, Kate Winslet. Is it too utopian to hope that actresses with real meat on their bones could be presented as sexy icons in a commercial teen magazine? Aggravating as these body problems are, Twist‘s assault on girls’ minds is even worse. We know only one thing for certain about a girl who picks up a magazine: She doesn’t spend every single minute of her life watching TV. So what else does Twist recommend she read? Books that might as well be TV shows because they are: the Party of Five, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Moesha , and X-Files book series. Then there’s Glossy, a Web magazine newly launched in print, which doesn’t remotely aspire to realness. It makes YM look like the Seneca Falls Declaration.

SO, ULTIMATELY, what’s a girl to read? Luckily, there are a number of alternatives to these mind-numbing infomercials: independently published magazines written by and for teenage girls. These magazines are not only more feminist than their glossy counterparts, they’re far smarter, more racially diverse, and yes, more real.

Rochester, N.Y.-based Blue Jean, an ad-free bimonthly, offers, to use its own words, an “alternative to the fashion and beauty magazines targetting young women.” Ani DiFranco graces the cover of the January/February “Women We Love” issue with gritty style–not your father’s Esquire‘s “Women We Love.” Blue Jean also loves Third Wave activist Rebecca Walker, soccer star Mia Hamm, teen novelist Jean Crowell, and Hard Candy nail polish entrepreneur Dineh Mohajer; and features interviews with both Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott and Rosa Parks. To subscribe to this gently funkified Ms. for girls, send $29 (for the next six issues) to 7353 Pittsford-Victor Road, Suite 201-203, Victor, NY 14564-9790 (or call 1-888-4BLUJEAN and pay by credit card).

TEEN VOICES, a national quarterly, takes on issues from teen pregnancy and body mutilation to “Snowboarding on the Cheap!” Articles ask: Was the court decision in the Boston Latin affirmative action case fair? Are cartoons sexist? Do animals have rights? How do you get over shyness? Should you get a tattoo? Teen Voices has a fine mix of politics, personal stuff, book and record reviews, fiction, and poetry. To subscribe, send $20 to P.O. Box 120-027, Boston, MA 02112-0027.

Hues, a feisty, multicultural quarterly, has a high-quality, attractive, innovative layout. A recent issue features “Get on the Bus!,” an account of Philadelphia’s little-covered Million Woman March; “Making It Big,” a profile of a successful and gorgeous 190-pound model who’s outspoken in her criticism of the fashion industry; and a cultural dialogue between two young Indian women about arranged marriage. Hues was recently acquired by New Moon publishing, the creator of the younger girls’ magazine New Moon; it will go bimonthly next year. To get the next six issues, send $19.99 to P.O. Box 3587, Duluth, MN 55803-3587.

Reluctant Hero is a Canadian quarterly with some serious feminist analysis–“Birds do it, bees do it, boys sure do. Why is it so taboo for girls to have a libido?” Reluctant Hero also explores cliques, sexual harassment, and peer mediation, and asks that timeless question that you will probably never see in a commercial teen magazine: “Why Are Girls So Mean?” For more info, e-mail re*****@*ol.com or call 416/656-8047. To subscribe, send $19.26 to 189 Lonsmount Drive, Toronto, Ont., M5P 2476.

Though Jump, Teen People , and Twist are a step in the right direction, girls themselves can do so much better. It’s too soon to say for sure how many readers the mainstream newcomers have attracted, but Teen People is reportedly selling like Titanic. The independents don’t attract Gap ads, and, at least in Blue Jean‘s case, wouldn’t even if they could; they need support. Let’s hope the talent behind this girls’ alternative press gets the encouragement it deserves to keep on keeping it real.

From the February 19-25, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Starr Gazer

Michael Amsler

Brush with Greatness: Although cartoonist Dale Messick, 92, can no longer ride it herself, she keeps her gleaming Harley-Davidson motorcycle at the ready in her garage. Sometimes a fellow cyclist will motor her around perched on it.

Brenda Starr’s Dale Messick is a firecracker

By Daedalus Howell

I’M A HALF-ASSED celebrity–everyone knows Brenda Starr but nobody knows me,” laughs cartoonist Dale Messick. “I still get fan letters after all these years–five or 10 a week. They all want a sketch and an autograph because people collect these things. People collect anything. That’s why I never take my [dental] bridge out–they might collect bridges!”

Messick is the creator of intrepid, fire-haired comic-strip news reporter Brenda Starr–an enduring conflux of stouthearted vixen, über-frau, and svelte, impeccably coiffed career woman with a penchant for breaking news and difficult men.

In June, Starr will be 57 years old, but thanks to the disparity of cartoon years vs. human years, she looks little older than she did when she tumbled full-grown from Messick’s imagination. Likewise, her spry and delightful creator appears only a fraction of her 92 years.

In her characteristic deadpan, Messick downplays her accomplishment.

“The only remarkable thing that I think I did was that I was married twice, divorced twice, had a horrible automobile accident that almost killed me, had a baby, and in 43 years never missed a deadline.”

A Hoosier born in South Bend, Ind., just days before San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, cartoonist Messick has resided in Sonoma County near her daughter and granddaughter since the death of her husband several years ago. The walls of her Oakmont home are strewn with awards, plaques, and photographs of conventions at which she was honored. The Redwood Chapter of the California Writers Club recently named her an honorary member, and in April the National Cartoonists Society will present her its version of the Oscar.

Displayed on a far wall of her art studio is a poster-sized blowup of the postage stamp the U.S. Post Office issued to commemorate her comic strip. Of the dozens of early cartoonists so honored, Messick is the only one still alive and the only woman.

Raised by artistically inclined parents in a cultural region that little valued artistic expression, let alone that of a precocious child, Messick grew up markedly different from her childhood contemporaries. Profoundly near-sighted, the young Messick couldn’t see the looming face of the classroom clock, slowing her mastery of time-telling at an age when such skills are an important social factor (queries about the time of day still cause her a flash of anxiety). Worse yet, her spelling was atrocious, and she was left-handed at a time when that would earn one a beating.

MESSICK’S ABILITY to draw became an obvious refuge, and the talent she nurtured throughout her school years eventually garnered her a position designing greeting cards at a Chicago publishing house when in her early 20s. Later, in 1933, she migrated to New York and earned a staggering Depression era salary of $50 a week, nearly half of which she sent back to her family in Indiana.

“I had $30 a week to live it up,” remembers Messick of her windfall. “You could walk down 42nd Street and have bacon and eggs and toast and coffee and hash brown potatoes and orange juice–the works–for 25 cents.”

In the late ’30s, comic books began to swell in popularity as the appeal of dime novels and “weird fiction” pulps began to evaporate. Recognizing a possible market threat to their Sunday comics pages, large metropolitan newspapers produced ancillary comic-based publications to safeguard their readerships. To this end, the monolithic Chicago Tribune–the universal appeal of its Dick Tracy and Terry and the Pirates strips notwithstanding–began devising a booklet that required eight new strips.

“This friend of mine in New York gave me the tip about it,” says Messick, who had altered her given name of “Dalia” to the more sexually ambiguous “Dale” in order to thwart the male-chauvinist editors she routinely encountered. “If I sent in my stuff and they knew I was a woman, they wouldn’t even look at it. So, [as Dale] I wrote up a story and sent it in to them. They accepted my comic and gave it the center page. Out of eight unknown cartoonists, I was the only one who survived. That was my big break,” she recounts. “I went into the Chicago Tribune-New York News syndicate and I was the only woman. . . . I never was really accepted.”

A LTHOUGH SCIENTISTS have never bothered to note the event in the annals of astronomical history, on June 30, 1940, a Starr was born. The early Brenda was very much a mirror of her creator’s inspiration–the screen siren Rita Hayworth. Like Hayworth, Brenda was feisty, dauntless, unabashedly sexy, and, as Messick laughingly reports, “had this gorgeous red hair that could go through any sort of adventure and look great.”

In equal parts a soap opera and action-adventure serial, Brenda Starr was immediately embraced by a readership comprised of both sexes, whose tastes seldom went coed in a comic strip. Some male fans, misapprehending Messick’s gender owing to her unisexual pseudonym, even asked the cartoonist for jocular tokens of fraternity.

Says Messick, “I used to get fan letters from guys who requested a ‘daring picture’ of Brenda. Well, you know what they wanted–I had made Brenda very sexy. I’d send them a little sketch of Brenda Starr going over Niagara falls in a barrel and say, ‘I hope this is daring enough.'”

Brenda Starr joined the profusely male pantheon of comic heroes during an era that spanned the Depression, World War II, and the I Like Ike and I Love Lucy-goosiness of the ’50s. Her prosperity was, in part, a product of World War II’s strong female workforce. Like the affable Rosie the Riveter caricature, Brenda Starr was an exemplar of girl power–a white-collar analogue of the buxom factory gal.

In this atmosphere of patriotism and sisterhood, the strip flourished (after all, Brenda Starr did her part for the war effort) and compounded the early success it achieved in the 18 months before Pearl Harbor.

By the time the war ended and women workers were ousted by returning GIs who subsequently knocked them up with the Baby Boom, Brenda Starr was securely fastened to the pages of daily newspapers as far-flung as Australia, ultimately boasting a worldwide readership of 60 million.

“I’ll read strips from 20 or 30 years ago and get hooked. I wrote it, I drew it, and I forgot it. I still say that I have better stories in there than they have on television today,” avers Messick, who has maintained a collection of her entire Brenda Starr oeuvre–15,000 strips in all. “Probably after I’m dead and gone they will discover that and use my stories.”

Hollywood, however, has already heeded Messick’s counsel and in the late ’80s brought a lackluster cinematic version of Brenda Starr to the screen under the aegis of Princess Di’s Starr-crossed beau, film producer Doti Fayed. In a tragic fit of poor casting, Fayed insisted his then-paramour Brooke Shields become Suddenly Brenda.

“She really wasn’t the Brenda Starr type at all,” Messick says of Shields’ performance. “Let me tell you, the movie was so bad it never even won the ‘Worst Movie of the Year Award.’ Don’t see it, it’s awful.”

After 43 years of meeting strenuous deadlines (her strips were drawn six weeks before publication), Messick retired in her late 70s. Brenda Starr continues to be drawn by other artists for the Chicago Tribune-New York News syndicate–an endeavor Messick does not begrudge, though she has no compunction about voicing her criticism.

“Now it doesn’t look like Brenda at all,” Messick contends. “She looks more like she works at a bank. No glamour, no curves, no fashion–but it’s still going pretty good.”

Since her retirement, Messick has developed new strips, including a weekly one-panel series for the Oakmont Gardens Magazine dubbed Granny Glamour. The comic features a saucy senior full of such punchy, homespun aphorisms as “You’re in when your foxy grandpa’s pacemaker opens the garage door.”

“This is all I know,” Messick says simply. “All my life I’ve been creating and drawing. I don’t have much time left–I’m living on borrowed time–so with the few years I have left, I want to do what I want to do and that’s to work in my studio.”

As Granny Glamour says, “When you quit and just sit, that’s it.”

From the February 19-25, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Winter Reads

Short takes for long nights

We’re almost as blessed with prolific authors as we are with rain in this county (seeing the rain as a blessing has become an important psychic stave at this point). And indeed, psychic staves, healing, and travels of all types emerge from the shelves as the themes for this winter of our content as we curl up to journey, learn, and feel better with the help of local Sonoma County writers. Synopsis by Gretchen Giles and Marina Wolf.

Nancy Bruning and Helen Thomas
Ayurveda: The A-Z Guide to Healing Techniques from Ancient India
Dell Publishing; $5.99

PUTTING THE ENTIRE discipline of Ayurveda into a book the size of a kitchen sponge may be a little like making flashcards for heart surgery, but Santa Rosa chiropractor Helen Thomas does her best, creating a book that works for either beginners or serious practitioners.

The potential for a “medicine cabinet” approach looms large in A-Z guides to health such as this, but Thomas and co-author Nancy Brunin avoid it, for the most part. The different elements of the discipline are covered adequately–though one must acknowledge the difficulty of reading three- or four-column charts crammed into such a small-format book–and the pages of symptomology and remedies that fill the rest of the book offer understandable holistic regimens for over 60 health and beauty problems.–M.W.

Judy Reynolds Dumm
The Flying Ferry Boat: An Amazing San Francisco Adventure
Peak Experience Arts & Publishing; $8.99

I HAVE YET TO WITNESS a staging of the Three Little Pigs that rivals my dad’s, which showed weekly in our back hallway for years and ended with the wolf flying not up the chimney but being flushed down the toilet (way-cool sound effects). Rich oral traditions like this are rapidly fading in our high-gloss, high-tech age of pop-up dinosaurs and beeping video games. But then along comes Santa Rosan Judy Dumm’s lovingly polished piece of interactive storytelling to keep the flame alive.

Dumm has certainly retained that seat-of-the-pants “and then what happened, Grandma?” sense in her rollicking Bay Area travelogue of 10-year-old Donald. The Flying Ferry Boat could and should inspire families to come up with their own lists of special places and activities, and spin a private web of adventure.–M.W.

Ida Rae Egli, editor
No Rooms of Their Own: Women Writers of Early California, 1849-1869
Heyday Press; $14.95

THERE’S NOT A LOT of room for women in the grand drama of early California: scruffy-bearded miners get most of the lines. But with the second edition of her capacious anthology, SRJC professor Ida Rae Egli offers other characters for our consideration: female explorers sifting through words, not gravel, for their own sort of gold.

The plainly elegant biographical introductions testify to the hard lots of these 15 writers, in a conscious echoing of Virginia Woolf’s theme. Whether they suffered from moving or from being moved aside, women wordsmiths of that time and place struggled mightily to participate in the exploding West Coast culture, with the “sagebrush realism” that fed a hundred publications in the Bay Area and beyond. More than a century later, Egli’s skillful collection of these women’s best efforts has become a priceless inheritance for anyone looking to dig deeper into our region’s literary past.–M.W.

Michael Goddart
Spiritual Revolution: A Seeker’s Guide
DeVorss & Co; $12.95

BROKEN INTO 52 short-read capsules, Santa Rosa writer Michael Goddart’s Spiritual Revolution takes from the teachings of religious leaders and saints the world over and distills their words into easy-to-read simplicities that, frankly, are perfect for the bathroom shelf.–G.G.

Richard Strozzi Heckler
Holding the Center: Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion
Frog Ltd.; $12.95

UNLIKE THE AUTHORS of many self-improvement and fitness books, Petaluma psychologist and aikido master Richard Heckler can write. What a pleasure to read the elegantly constructed sentences with which he delineates his transformation through martial arts from a schoolyard bully to a conscious seeker. Informed by his experiences as a man, a father, a horse trainer, a psychologist, and–with his wife–the co-director of Petaluma’s Rancho Strozzi Institute, Heckler argues that community is all around us–we need simply to learn how to see and tap into it. His method is through the somatic style of bodywork, but his writing illuminates the many possibilities of the mind and soul.–G.G.

Jonathan London
Illustrated by Frank Remkiewicz
Froggy’s First Kiss
Viking; $14.99

PROLIFIC CHILDREN’S author Jonathan London is at it again, adding to his Froggy oeuvre with this latest tale of the little green guy whose first crush on Frogilina makes his stomach feel as if he’s eaten caterpillars for breakfast and whose uninvited surprise kiss makes him the laughingstock of the school bus. Because this is Froggy, and because this is the wise London, Froggy’s crush isn’t important; the idea of love is. Rather than exploring the burgeoning of a second-grader’s feelings with mockery, Froggy’s First Kiss ends with Froggy loving and being loved by his parents–people who only laugh when you kiss them if you’ve just eaten lots of messy peanut butter from a spoon.–G.G.

Ralph Metzner
The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience
Origin Press; $14.95

HIS PSYCHEDELIC DAYS at Harvard with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) may be past, but consciousness scholar Ralph Metzner, a resident of Sonoma, has continued on in the 35 years since, researching psycho-spiritual phenomena and delving into the experiential possibilities of transformation. Metzner’s newest release, the second edition of his 1987 pioneering work, Opening to Inner Light, pulls together the results of his search into a satisfying encyclopedia of epiphany and inner change.

Metzner’s work lends coherence and literacy to a topic that can sometimes flounder in a sea of warm and fuzzies. He identifies 12 key metaphors for inner transformation–such as “captivity to liberation,” “purification by inner fire,” and “death and rebirth”–and then presents in succinct detail the religious, literary, and artistic traditions that support the metaphors. It’s almost an index to innermost shifts, the ones that are so hard to talk about, that wake us with visions in the middle of the night. For effing the ineffable, there is no substitute.–M.W.

Sukie Miller with Suzanne Lipsett
After Death: Mapping the Journey
Simon & Schuster; $23

THIS BOOK IS OF especially poignant significance to those who knew and loved Sonoma County writer Suzanne Lipsett, the amender and organizer of psychologist Sukie Miller’s examination of afterlife “experiences.” Published posthumously after Lipsett’s death from cancer last year, After Death postulates that the end of the body’s life is the beginning of a four-part journey of an entirely different stripe. Working from a multicultural perspective that draws on traditions and beliefs the world round, Miller posits the familiar map that when the soul leaves the body, it enters a waiting place in which the “traveler” is transformed from corporeal being to spirit. In the second phase, the spirit is judged based on the acts of the previous life, and then forwarded to the third phase, the realm of possibilities. Here, according to Miller, “the traveler enjoys–or endures–the fruits of judgement.” Finally, the soul is either sent back to earth to reincarnate or escapes to the universal wheel of life, ceasing to inhabit a body. Complete with ending appendices that a terminally ill person may use to envision his or her own journey, After Death is certain to be of interest and comfort to those on both sides of the bier.–G.G.

James Sean and Tim O’Reilly, editors
The Road Within: True Stories of Transformation
O’Reilly & Associates; $17.95

SEBASTOPOL’S O’REILLY & Associates are much beloved by computer freaks and genuises alike for their entertaining and illuminating computing guides. They are also adored for their Travelers’ Tales series of journeying guides. Now the O’Reilly brothers band together to collect and edit this series of tales about inner journeys, with voices ranging from author Annie Dillard to religion scholar Huston Smith. Based on actual travels in actual foreign lands, these short essays illuminate the transformation of the soul on foreign soil.–G.G.

Karl Ashley Smith
Haiku Cottage: Designing the Eloquent Small Home
Futura Bold Books; $12

SANTA ROSA ARCHITECT Ashley Smith uses the three tenets of the 17-syllable haiku form of Japanese poetry to inform his philosophy of home planning, building, and use. Springing from the notions of wordlessness, the infusion of nature, and the importance of creating a sense of time and place, Smith’s book shows the floor plans and designs for seven different “Haiku Cottages.” Part philosophical polemic on living with grace and ease and part self-promoting guide to his own aesthetic, Haiku Cottage offers another way of living with your home.–G.G.

From the February 19-25, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.