Wine Country Corp.

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Wine Country Corp.

Liquid Gold


Michael Amsler

How the Mighty Have Fallen: The broken limbs of fallen vintage oaks, above, pierce the skyline at E&J Gallo’s Westside Road project.

One man’s view on the corporatization of Wine Country

By Shepherd Bliss

GEORGE DAVIS POINTS to a tall hill studded with majestic redwoods on the land adjoining his 35-acre Porter Creek Winery in Healdsburg. “E&J Gallo owns that hill and plans to cut it,” he laments, referring to the environmental exploits of the world’s largest winery. As he speaks, the afternoon stillness is broken by a deep rumble as a large land mover lumbers down the road toward the 500-acre project on Westside Road where Gallo aims to convert 174 acres of prime forest into steep-slope vineyards. “Their huge D-9s are the biggest thing you can transport on the roads,” Davis explains. “What Gallo is doing has been a disaster.

“See that pile down there,” he adds, pointing to a huge mound of splintered debris. “Those were once living oaks–now it’s like an oak Auschwitz.”

But despite the apparent environmental damage, Davis–as with many other local farmers–stops short of calling for more government regulation. He prefers voluntary guidelines and a hands-off approach to existing winery operations. “If we make too many regulations for hillside vineyards, only Gallo will have the money to afford them,” he says.

Instead, Davis–who helped organize Friends of the Twin Valley, a group that is challenging the Gallo project–advocates pressure from within the agriculture community. “There has been enough pressure that Gallo is attending [community] meetings on the matter,” he says. “We need to reward sustainable forestry practices and offer incentives to do the right thing.”

Davis favors hillside plantings properly done in pastures and other existing farmland to counter the loss of forests and wildlife habitat. “You get the best fruit off the hills–it is more concentrated,” Davis explains. “But we are losing critical areas where such animals as bobcats and pumas move through. We need riparian corridors that are not fenced, so that animals can get to the water. With extensively recontoured vineyards you get a cartoon landscape, rather than a natural one.”

Vineyards as Commodities

THERE’S GOLD in those hills!” an excited vineyard developer exclaims. Millennia of submersion under water, dense forestation, and favorable microclimates have created an environment in Sonoma County from which the wine industry can produce liquid gold. A modern-day gold rush digs to extract treasure from the region’s rolling hills and process it into premium wine.

Parts of those hills–like the Gallo property on Westside Road–look as if they have been bombed, thanks to the bulldozers and heavy-handed development practices. And heavy pesticide use often follows in their wake as vineyard managers fumigate the soil with the toxic methyl bromide. To complicate things, the fall vineyard rush and early rains carry eroded topsoil into nearby ditches, muddying local creeks and polluting the Russian River.

Hillside vineyards have become the key factor in Sonoma County agriculture, the region’s most prosperous industry. And they are a key target of local environmentalists who contend that steep-slope planting of vineyards is contributing to increasing environmental degradation of local lands and waterways, prompting a push by Sonoma County Conservation Action, the Sierra Club, and other groups for a countywide steep-slope ordinance.

But questions remain: How will this gold rush affect our land, plants, animals, other natural resources, agriculture, and residents? Short-term economic benefits may be derived by a few, but what will be the long-term costs and who will be the casualties?

To get the liquid gold, Gallo recontours slopes by removing the tops of hills, eliminating the steepest ridges. In the process, the clear-cutting of trees and other forest vegetation threatens animals and their habitats, weakens genetic and ecosystem diversity, erodes soil, muddies streams, and depletes the supply of renewable and non-renewable natural resources, such as water.

There has never been a greater demand for this valuable asset–land prices already have skyrocketed. “In 18 years of my business, I’ve never seen such a feeding frenzy,” admits John Statzer of the Cloverdale-based Agricultural Properties. Undeveloped vineyard property cost up to $30,000 an acre in 1996, up 45 percent from 1990. Now buyers pay as much as $50,000 an acre for planted vineyards. A well-worked acre of premium chardonnay grapes can generate a $15,000 annual harvest, though the average countywide is much lower, according to the Sonoma County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office. These days, Sonoma County vineyards and wineries have become hot investment properties.

But when vineyards become mere commodities to distant owners, accountability to the land, the environment, and the community suffers.

Only the wealthy can afford good farmland here. Most family farmers and younger people are being excluded as small, diversified family-owned farms are replaced by corporate-industrial agribusiness, many of whose owners and managers live outside the county.

As the owner of Kokopelli Farm, a small organic farm specializing in berries and free-range chicken eggs, this trend concerns me. Members of various local agricultural groups with which I work–the Community Supported Agriculture Alliance, Community Alliance with Family Farmers, and Sonoma County Farm Trails–are also worried.

Farmers in these groups tend to practice what is called sustainable agriculture. Simply defined, sustainable agriculture is economically viable, environmentally friendly, socially responsible, and long-term. The wine-grape monoculture nurtured by corporate wineries is not sustainable because it reduces biodiversity, thus increasing the possibility of disease. Wine is a notorious boom-and-bust product; the next crash is predicted to be as early as the year 2000.

Wine-grape monoculture damages Sonoma County’s environment by converting wildlands to croplands, and undermines agriculture by replacing diverse crops with a single crop. Sonoma County currently has the second highest number of registered organic farmers in California–525–only 15 of whom are grape growers. The rapid expansion of the thirsty $2 billion local wine industry will reduce the sources of homegrown food, as it did in Napa County.

The owners of Taylor Maid Farms near Occidental are among the small organic farmers concerned about the corporate wine industry. Taylor Maid farm manager Michael Presley observes, “Some people are planting vineyards who want the prestige and are hobbyists. They are investors rather than farmers. Or Kendall-Jackson buys 80 forested acres, clear-cuts it, and plants a vineyard. They are rewarded by getting cash from the wood and then from the grapes.

“Small organic farmers are threatened by the wine industry today.”

What can be done to preserve the land?

The Public Perception of Wine

THE WINERY INDUSTRY is perceived as an asset to Sonoma County and a good neighbor. It certainly has many fine qualities, which the industry articulates well–wine advertising jumped 23 percent in 1996 to $83.6 million in the United States. Wine contributes to the county’s economic health, to open space, and to the region’s identity as “wine country.” Romance and even a sacred mystique surround vineyards and wine.

But with the highly visible–and environmentally degrading–hillside vineyards, this carefully and expensively cultivated image is changing. As Gallo slashes rolling hills and as Kendall-Jackson axes heritage oaks, they cut into that romantic myth and reveal a dark, shadowy side of the wine story. The alluring image of the grape obscures the development problems of a rapidly expanding wine industry that has an insatiable appetite for premium wines.

In addition to visible vineyards and tasting centers, the wine industry also includes such manufacturing services as crushing, processing, bottling, labeling, storage, and shipping. The 1997 harvest was large, so 43 percent of wineries plan to expand production facilities, according to Mill Valley wine broker Joe Ciatti.

Hummingbird Hill Ranch’s Carrie Chase is one of those concerned with what she calls the “worship of the wine industry.” She thinks that “this is an appropriate time to discuss how the influx of vineyards is creating vast green deserts with absolutely no diversity of life. Even the dreaded subdivisions have birds, insects, and other wildlife.”

Grapes and wine are on a pedestal in Sonoma County; yet perhaps it is time to take them down and examine the industry carefully. Perhaps it’s time to go beyond grapes to explore how the burgeoning wine industry may influence Sonoma County’s future. After all, of the top 10 news stories for 1997 listed in the local daily, three involved the wine industry.

First, a little history. Grapevines have been cultivated in California since Spanish missionaries brought them in the late 1700s. Premium wine grapes were brought to Sonoma County from Europe in 1856 by the colorful Hungarian Count Agoston Haraszthy. In the beginning, wine was perceived largely as a dubious beverage made by immigrants in basements. That all changed when Napa’s premium-wine industry boomed in the late ’60s and transformed wine into a symbol of high culture. Suddenly winemakers were heralded as artists, and the owners of wineries were celebrated as a new class.

Owning a winery became a status symbol, like owning a second home, a boat, or a lake.

The temptation to plant grapes is strong for growers, since making money in agriculture is difficult. I investigated converting my boysenberry field on a gentle slope into a vineyard, but discovered that I get more for my specialty niche crop. If grapes had proven more lucrative, I might have become a grape grower.

I do enjoy good wine, especially from the smaller North Coast wineries. But as I watch the regimented grape rows displace our gentle hills, apple orchards, old barns, valley oaks, and redwoods, a host of negative feelings arise: sadness, indignation, disgust, and anger. Sonoma County, once rugged and diverse, is becoming more like neighboring Napa, making it difficult for family farmers and others to live and work here.

Where Are All the Farmers?

NAPA HARDLY has any farmers left,” laments a longtime Napa activist who asked to remain anonymous. “We have to import vegetables and basic foods, in spite of our rich agricultural land. Though wine begins with grapes, it is mainly a value-added product, so most of the money goes to those in the industrial parts of the operation.

“Who can afford to compete with luxury wines and to farm food here?”

When Napa’s gold rush began 30 years ago, that county still had numerous small farms where cattle, prunes, and walnuts competed successfully with grapes. In 1965 the Napa Valley had only about two dozen wineries. By l990 that number had grown to about 200, which is what the larger Sonoma County now boasts.

As long ago as 1989, the National Bank of the Redwoods reported, “Investor interest in Sonoma County vineyards is following a pattern set by Napa County 10 years ago. . . . Grapes represent 34 percent of Sonoma County’s agricultural production, while they represent 92 percent of Napa County’s total.”

Today wine grapes represent 45 percent of Sonoma County’s cash crops.

Sonoma County prides itself on a tradition of small, local, and independent grape growers and wineries committed to excellence. In contrast to Napa’s showy and luxurious wineries, ours have tended to be rustic, countrylike, and laid-back–Napa’s millionaires have been compared to Sonoma’s just plain folks. Yet this is changing rapidly as Sonoma County wines advance in the global economy and large national and multinational corporations buy existing wineries and plant new vineyards on environmentally sensitive hillsides.

Despite the change, many people still have the image of the little vineyard in the backyard. True, those small operations continue strong in Europe, with its ample regulations. But wine in the United States is more about agribusiness than farming. As Kenwood Vineyards president John Shella observes, “The wine industry in Sonoma County has changed from a sleepy, jug-wine business to a highly technical, capital-intensive premium-wine business.”

That change has come with a cost. Traditional winemaking uses nature as the guide. This legacy reigns stronger today in older European winemaking than in California’s corporate winemaking. The European tradition tends to feature smaller, family-owned wineries that emphasize quality and variety. “Wine is not just liquid in a bottle,” according to Yiannis Boutari, the man behind Greece’s oldest family-owned wine company.

“It is part of nature, like the skies and the rain and the earth.”


Michael Amsler

Winery owner and painter Lois Stopple-Davis captures the gentle rolling hill adjacent to her property. The hill, on Gallo property, is slated for radical “recontouring.”

Winemaker as Warrior

THE WINEMAKER is a warrior,” wrote patriarchs Ernest and Julio Gallo, beginning their autobiography with a line of Italian poetry.

Ernest Gallo apparently quotes this line frequently. One wonders what the Roman god of wine, the ecstatic Bacchus, would think to hear that his sons the Gallos served the war god Ares, turning into industrial masters, modern-day warriors excelling at wielding the weapons of our culture.

The world’s largest wine company buys 40 percent of California’s wine grapes, and bottles about a quarter of all wine produced in the United States. Its annual sales are estimated at over $1.5 billion. Gallo uses colossal earthmoving equipment, bought from the trans-Alaska pipeline builders, to move small mountains to plant vineyards. Since its 1996 purchase of the 1,530-acre Healdsburg ranch once owned by the late actor Fred McMurray, Gallo has owned more acres of Sonoma County vineyards than any other winery, totaling more than 3,500 acres.

Gallo offers no public tours or tastings and puts up no signs at its facilities. In December, local farmworkers took to the streets in Santa Rosa to protest Gallo’s continuing refusal to honor the United Farm Workers chapter that the workers voted 80-21 to join in l994.

Gundlach-Bundschu Winery, on the other hand, commissioned two Hispanic artists to paint a 120-foot mural as a tribute to Mexican farmworkers. And even the Glen Ellen Winery–owned by the huge Heublein beverage corporation–has held fundraisers for local Hispanic charities. Winemaker Lance Cutler comments, “There wouldn’t be a California wine industry without Hispanic workers. These people put their sweat in . . . and rarely get the credit they deserve.”

Complaints about Gallo often revolve around its development and labor practices. Yet Gallo’s farming practices are a modified organic regime, and they are leaders in dealing with soil erosion and the reuse of wastewater. Also to its credit, Gallo does seem to take a long-term view. However, since the l993 death of Julio Gallo, the company has retreated from organic farming. It once had 1,500 certified organic acres in Sonoma–now it has none.

Jess Jackson at Kendall-Jackson is Gallo’s main antagonist for premium Sonoma County wines. The former San Francisco trial lawyer shifted his battlefield from the courtroom to the grape field in the l980s. He is spending over $60 million to build new wineries in Sonoma, Napa, and Monterey counties. K-J owns over 2,000 acres in Sonoma County alone and about 10,000 acres in the whole state, as well as substantial holdings in Latin America and Europe. The company’s 1996 revenues of $240 million from its local vineyards were by far the highest of any winery in the county.

K-J tends to anger its neighbors, cutting native oaks in Windsor to put in a vineyard, building a huge new winery in Alexander Valley, and logging redwoods to plant a vineyard in the Occidental Hills. West County resident Laura Goldman, a K-J neighbor, complains, “Where I live outside Occidental is fast becoming a sprayed and sterile boutique vineyard heaven, and to hell with the neighborhood and the environment.”

According to one of his industry opponents, “Jess Jackson is a wine baron in the tradition of the 19th-century railroad barons.”

Wine Business Monthly editor Rich Cartiere describes Ernest Gallo and Jess Jackson as “very aggressive, very dominating business people.” George Davis, who has owned the small Porter Creek Winery since l978, laments, “The whole ethic in winemaking has changed.” Sonoma County’s wine industry has shifted at the top from being family-based operations of people who love working the land to big business run by people who love making money.

Yet the wine industry retains its benign image.

Among other wine-industry warriors now at work here is Dick Godwin, who was undersecretary of defense during the Reagan administration. Once Godwin sat in the Pentagon shaping our nation’s defense. Now he is CEO of the expanding Associated Vintage Group and shapes its offense, expanding its processing and bottling facilities while combatting the AVG’s neighbors in tiny Graton.

In a Business Journal interview, Godwin speaks about the military, fighting, and wine, concluding, “All industries are driven by money. Whether it’s defense or show biz or wine, you need money and there are ways of getting it.”

Actually, European models of winemaking are driven by values other than mere moneymaking, like love of the land and what some call “earth economics,” or “natural economics.” European vineyards tend to use fewer chemicals and to be more organic than U.S. vineyards.

But the big wineries are not the worst offenders in eroding the soil. Sonoma County independent vintner Kenneth Wilson faces civil fines up to $36 million for sediment that state regulators say washed from his vineyard in the rugged hills north of Cazadero into a tributary of the Gualala River. At press time, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Board was scheduled to decide on Jan. 21 on the amount of his fine.

The case has been under investigation for a year.

“Wilson’s project is the worst case of negligence I have ever seen. He obviously has a total lack of concern for the environment,” Fish and Game Warden Paul Maurer writes in a state report. Water runoff down the hillside left ditches six feet deep and eight feet wide on Wilson’s property.

Wilson’s defense? “It was an act of God.”

The Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office has filed a criminal complaint against Wilson, whom it found guilty in 1994 for his timber-harvest operation. In that case, Wilson paid a fine and was put on probation.

Still, some local wineries operate with values other than merely the bottom line. Those offering environmentally friendly wines grown without chemicals include Davis Bynum, Adler Fels, and Benziger. Among local wineries that have certified organic wines are Coturri and Sons, One World, Kenwood, Mark West, Wild Hog, Michael Brody, and Topolos.

Though Mendocino’s wine industry is much smaller, it has a more active organic component, having produced half the organic wine sold domestically at the beginning of the 1990s. “Approximately half of Mendocino’s grape growers are certified organic [farmers] or practice sustainable farming techniques,” according to a 1995 Wine Business Monthly article. And the leader among those vintners is Fetzer, owned by a behemoth that, contrary to the usual corporate image, is proving to be environmentally responsible.

Other grape growers make positive contributions to Sonoma County’s environment, including Marty and Joyce Griffin at Hop Kiln Winery, Bill and Sandra MacIver at Matanzas Creek Winery, and Terry and Carolyn Harrison at Sonoma Antique Apple Nursery. Sam Sebastiani at Viansa Winery is active in such conservation groups as Ducks Unlimited, which seeks to protect wetlands.

And last year, the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association began a program of giving away valley oak seedlings. They plan to give away 500 in January and hope to have 2,000 planted by 2006.

The Colonization of Sonoma County

RURAL AMERICA,” contends Kentucky farmer/writer Wendell Berry, “is in the power of an absentee economy once national and now increasingly international.”

Sonoma County residents have historically exercised substantial local control, thus preserving the county’s individuality and uniqueness. That “soul” is threatened by outside companies like Modesto-based E&J Gallo.

Sonoma County is not the Central Valley. Our scale is small and our terrain is diverse. Respect for the county’s unique character is required to preserve its quality and beauty. Gallo and other large, outside corporate interests seem intent on turning Sonoma County’s rolling hills into the flat Central Valley.

As new and pending national and international financial partnerships focus on the county, major decisions about our natural resources will increasingly be made outside our borders, with little regard for local culture and the environment. The ownership and control of rural land is shifting out of the county to distant boardrooms.

“Voices of the countryside, voices appealing for respect for the land and for rural community, have simply not been heard in the centers of wealth, power, and knowledge,” farmer Berry asserts. “Limitless growth, limitless wealth, limitless power, limitless mechanization can enrich and empower the few [for a while], but they will sooner or later ruin us all.”

Sonoma County, I fear, is becoming a colony. This could lead to the “ruin” that often follows colonialism, where natural resources are plundered to benefit the colonizer.

“Buy Sonoma!” the slogan suggests. But increasingly that local winery may be owned by a Central Valley, East Coast, Texas, or European corporation. Sonoma grown, yes, but most of the benefit and profit leave the county.

Of the top 14 Sonoma County wineries in 1996 revenues, only one remains owned by a historic local wine family: Sebastiani. Only four are now locally owned by people with deep roots in Sonoma County: Jordan, Korbel, Geyser Peak, and Kenwood. The others are foreign-owned, owned by large corporations, based outside the county, or owned by recent arrivals. But the true owners and silent partners are sometimes carefully concealed. Discovering who owns Sonoma County wineries is important, though not always easy. Clos Du Bois is British owned; Piper Sonoma and Simi are French owned; Buena Vista and Robert Stemmler are German owned; Domaine St. George is Thai owned; and Gloria Ferrer and Marimar Torres are Spanish owned. Until recently, Chateau St. Jean was owned by a Japanese firm.

Several Australian wineries, including the giant Southcorp, are looking for winery acquisitions in the county.

The Swiss company Nestle owned Chateau Souverain and various wineries until 1996, when the most valuable winery and vineyard acquisition in U.S. history occurred. For $350 million, Texas Pacific Group and Silverado Partners bought Wine World Estate, which includes Chateau Souverain, Chateau St. Jean, the prestigious Beringer Vineyard in Napa, and several other wineries.

Schlitz owned Geyser Peak from l972 for a decade; in l989 the Australian company Penfolds, part of Southcorp, bought 50 percent of Geyser Peak, co-owning it with the local Trione family, which now is the sole owner.

Chevron Oil owned the Gauer Estates until recently.

Rodney Strong Vineyards was bought by a New York company in l986, which was then bought by the British giant Guinness in l988. More recently it was bought for $40 million by Klein Foods in Stockton.

Last year, Guinness and Grand Met, two British corporate giants, were planning to merge, but the French giant LVMH wanted to be part of the merger–they each own Sonoma County wineries. A triple merger would create the world’s largest alcohol beverage company.

According to wine-industry insiders Glen Martin and Jay Stuller, authors of Through the Grapevine (HarperCollins, 1994): “Recent trends indicate that in coming decades, only the big wineries and distributors will survive. The big fish are already eating the little fish; in a few years, only whales may remain.” Martin, former publicity coordinator at Robert Mondavi Winery, and Stuller of Chevron’s public affairs division, add: “In l992 Brown-Forman, the Kentucky whisky kingpin, bought Fetzer. The deal was good for the Fetzer family, but it didn’t bode well for smaller winery operations. The message was: Get big or get out.”

Among the giant food companies who have tried and not done so well in the North Coast wine industry are Coca-Cola, Pillsbury, and Beatrice. Among those who have done well are U.S. Tobacco, Nestle, and Seagram. According to insiders Martin and Stuller, “Seagram sells about 150 brands of wine worldwide, and after Gallo, had been the second largest marketer of wine in the United States, until the Canandaigua buyout of Taylor and Masson.”

Laments one independent vintner, “So many of the surviving wineries and labels in the future are going to be owned by the likes of Seagram, Heublein, and companies backed by Nestle and U.S. Tobacco.”

Another vintner concurs, “More and more small wineries are going to sell out to large corporations. The big liquor companies–the Brown-Formans, the Seagrams, the Canandaiguas, and such–will become bigger players.”

Global Threat

IN SONOMA, vineyard acreage of the top ten wineries and growers surged 104 percent over the last five to seven years,” according to the Wine Business Monthly. “Complex, multi-partnered property deals” by members of what is known as the “vineyard royalty” produced this doubling.

Kendall-Jackson “had virtually no Sonoma County acreage before 1990,” according to the article. By 1996, it was at the top of the Sonoma list (since displaced by Gallo) and sixth in the state. When wineries are bought by large corporations, they often retain their labels. K-J owns over a dozen premium estate vineyards, managed corporately as Artisans and Estates. During the 1990s, a few wineries have even gone to Wall Street to sell stock. K-J/Gallo court battles reveal an intense struggle for turf. The nationalization and internationalization of Sonoma County wine will change the county and will have unintended consequences.

For example, the recent deterioration in Asian financial markets reveal a gathering crisis in the global economy. Once-vibrant national economies have already been pulled down by that global crisis, which could shatter Sonoma County’s agricultural economy if it becomes a monoculture tied to the global economy.

The financial trend is toward monopolization. Family ownership of large wineries diminishes as they go to Wall Street and as conglomerates, holding companies, investment companies, and real estate investment trusts become involved in the wine industry.

How important is globalization? The year’s largest wine-industry trade conference, occurring this week in Sacramento, has adopted the theme “Vineyards and Vintners: A Global Perspective.” The Unified Symposium’s chair, Ed Weber of University of California Extension, comments: “Thinking of ourselves as the California, Oregon, or even American wine industry is too limiting. . . . We have no choice but to view this business globally.”

That may not be far-fetched. The Sonoma County Wineries Association and United Airlines recently announced a major marketing agreement that will increase the visibility of Sonoma County and its wines on United’s air flights. “There really is no limit to the potential in this relationship,” Linda Johnson, executive director of the Sonoma County Wineries Association, told the local daily.

This “no limits” approach is cause for concern because land and water, in fact, are finite, regardless of enthusiasm to the contrary.

“This is the largest marketing program that any association related to the wine industry has ever achieved,” boasts Jaimie Douglas, a wineries consultant. We used to call such largesse “Texas talk.” Douglas admits to selling the “Sonoma County lifestyle and image.”

But what do Sonoma citizens get from this aggressive selling of their community as a commodity? Fewer tree-covered hills and a muddier Russian River.

And we could become more of a tourist destination after United spreads Sonoma County wines across the friendly skies, but in the process our comfortable lifestyle and its environmental base will suffer, since grape monoculture reduces biodiversity and increases pesticides, pollution, and traffic. With most of our fiscal eggs in one basket, the county’s economy is more vulnerable to disease wiping out that crop, to changes in tastes, and to the inevitable boom-and-bust cycle of the wine industry.

Industrialists contend that globalization of markets and multinational corporations can help an economy. But they displace local economies. I prefer to buy locally, to decentralize, and to work regionally rather than globally. After all, how much character do more featureless vineyards add to our county? Are we really content to travel the route of Santa Monica, where I was born, and other Southern California as well as Silicon Valley communities that have lost their identity as they became a part of monotonous urban sprawl?

From the January 22-28, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Donna Larsen

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Donna Larsen

Primary Colors


Michael Amsler

Line of Vision: Painter and teacher Donna Larsen strives for color and balance in her minimalist abstract works.

Painter Donna Larsen is striving for a kinder, gentler canvas

By Gretchen Giles

T URNABOUT, after all, is fair play, and those artists who have had their work considered, weighed, accepted, or rejected by two prominent local art professionals now have a chance to learn what these powerful women see when they stand alone in their own studios looking at the expanse of a blank canvas in their other guise as painters.

Gay Shelton, director of the innovative California Museum of Art, and Donna Larsen, a full-time faculty member who teaches art and acts as director of the well-regarded Two Dog Gallery on the Santa Rosa Junior College campus, reveal these visions when they exhibit together as “Two Women Painters,” opening Jan. 23 at the Cultural Arts Council’s SoFo Gallery.

Larsen, found in her Healdsburg home during the end of the college’s winter break, anticipates response from her colleagues but doesn’t expect her beginning students to immediately grasp the long, abstract colorations of her work.

“They think it should be images that they can recognize,” she says, pouring out tea in the white light of her home studio. “They want cups and saucers and images that make sense in terms of daily life. I think that if I said to them, ‘I’m painting in metaphors, trying to paint something which is completely simple,’ they wouldn’t be sure what to make of that.”

Neither woman exhibits with much regularity in the county. As with most working people, finding the time to create is an artistic effort all of its own. Shelton ends her 10-hour work days by trading her power suits for sweats in order to paint at night in the cold garage under the Monte Rio home she shares with artist Alv Wilenius; Larsen arrives back from a full week in the classroom to a husband and a young son for evening and weekend painting that leaves little time to concentrate on simplicity and metaphors.

“I didn’t have the energy to do it all,” Larsen admits cheerfully. “I had to find a place with doing the work that was going to make it worthwhile for me, and I decided that I wasn’t going to exhibit as a gallery artist because it’s such pressure and I wasn’t sure that I could take that pressure.

“I have times,” she says slowly, “when everything I touch turns to sawdust, when I feel like ruminating, and I have other times when I paint a lot. I think that the most important thing for me was to accept that my life was going to be a life where I had children, and that I was going to be in the classroom because I like young people.

“I used to be a young person,” she laughs, “not anymore–but I like them. But then I wasn’t going to be able to maintain a relationship showing with a gallery. And I had to make a choice. And I think that the choice has been good for me, because I did get, in my own way, things done.”

Getting things done is paramount as an instructor, but Larsen sometimes wonders if her students understand the trade-offs of a fully adult working life.

“I think that it’s important to maintain an attitude of clarity toward your work if you are teaching students,” she says, “and I think that doing your work and having confidence in the art-making process is something that the students need to feel about you. But then,” she smiles, “they always ask you where your gallery is. They want you to be economically feasible; they want you to have all the signs of success–selling.

“I think that the work is important to me, but I’m not sure that it’s important to everyone else,” Larsen says honestly. “I hope that every once in a while, I do a painting that speaks to someone. I think that they are signposts along the road, and I’m not really interested in them after I’ve done them. I don’t really care about them. Once in a while, I’ll go back and look at a painting and think, ‘That’s still really true.’ That’s what I’m looking for more and more: for something that’s true and is a truth that doesn’t change.

“Doing the work can bring me joy, not disappointment, because the joy comes from making something that feels true, and not from whether or not someone likes it enough to buy it.”

LARSEN, who says that she made works that were “big and dark, angry,” when she was a young woman, puts her efforts into recording the truth in the most basic distillations of color, painting long cool canvases of hued blocks that intersect horizontally, fooling the eye and creating new colors all of their own.”What I’m interested in with these,” Larsen says, standing before a collection of five linked canvases that play blue and red off each other in a river’s unstoppable flow, “has to do with the amount of the color, the boundary where two things meet, and seeing if I can get a kind of shimmer at that point of energy. It makes the paintings difficult to look at. If you look at these, they will drive you completely nuts because this blue has more red in it than that blue, and it appears to have a more aggressive quality at this boundary than this blue has.

“I’m trying to balance in color; it all seems to be in the balance,” she muses. “I want these paintings not to be turbulent, but to be soothing in a way, reminders of the basic things in life. A mood, a time, and a kindness or gracefulness. I want my paintings to be about something larger.

“I want them to be about the way an ocean moves. The spaces,” Larsen smiles enigmatically, “between things.”

Two Women Painters opens with a reception on Friday, Jan. 23, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the SoFo Gallery, and runs through March 6. Larsen and Shelton speak about their work on Friday, Feb. 6, at 6 p.m. SoFo Gallery, 602 Wilson St., Santa Rosa. 579-ARTS.

From the January 22-28, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Death of a Salesman

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Death of a Salesman

Willy Won’t He?

Miller Time: Frank DeMartino and Rebecca Allington

Photo by Michael Amsler



‘Death of a Salesman’ suits the Players

By Daedalus Howell

ARTHUR MILLER’S plays are the red meat of the American theatrical diet–heavy, bloody, emotional carnage that is a staple for a plurality of theatergoers. To wit, the Santa Rosa Players’ production of Death of a Salesman (directed by Carl Hamilton) is an imminently faithful production of Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning eviction notice to the American Dream, served medium-well with a small side of bitter herbs.

Originally produced 50 years ago, Death of a Salesman is a touchstone to an era that accommodated sexism (quasi-macho references to “ruining” women take one right out of the play) and an erstwhile work ethic (few of the Lomans’ career objectives reflect present-day concerns). Consequently, the work has long ago graduated to period-piece status, a fact director Hamilton embraces successfully.

As Willy Loman, Frank DeMartino is a masterful student of character and is the Players’ capital talent. His Loman is a vital, pitiable, grave portrait of spiritual crash-landing that provides the gravity necessary to hold the other actors in consonant orbits. DeMartino is, as he should be, this production’s greatest endorsement, inhabiting Loman with alacrity and with corporeal and emotional perceptiveness.

As Loman’s laggard sons Bif and Happy, actors Chris Schloemp and Rick Codding deploy agreeable if occasionally antiseptic performances. Schloemp’s portrayal of the prodigal, malcontent ex-football star Bif is intermittently donnish and hot-blooded, admirably conjuring the mien of resignation without purging passion. Schloemp falters, however, when Miller’s script veers him near melodrama–e.g., exposing Loman’s suicide device (a silly little rubber hose used to access a nipple on the gas pipe) with the fervor of introducing inane mystery evidence in a courtroom farce: “All right, phony! Then let’s lay it on the line.”

Codding’s Happy is a jaunty, well-meaning wastrel plausibly stunted by the drama of his elder brother’s life. The fact that Codding and the alpine Schloemp bear absolutely no resemblance as siblings is absorbed by Codding’s spirited comic relief–though the ad hoc references to his paunch and relative lack of stature come precariously close to demeaning him.

David Herbst is refined and subtle as Charlie, Loman’s congenial next-door neighbor, and applies an able polish to the play’s signature requiem monologue (“He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine”). Talented Donovan Dutro, turns in an understated performance as Bernard, Bif’s brainy lackey, and is by turns an amusing flunky and foreboding foil.

Rebecca Allington’s Linda, a stand-by-her-men wife and mother, credibly transmits maternal concern, tough love, and warmth through Elija Gollander’s appropriately cold, Spartan set–a mélange of stone-hued furniture and floating, skewed window frames affecting the expressionistic appearance of a family-sized mausoleum.

Adding little to the show is the canned emotionality of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies, piped in for an obvious but benign pluck on the heartstrings. Totally malignant, however, is the deluge of music accompanying Loman’s climactic second-act monologue–a din that is an insult to both DeMartino and the audience.

Generally, the Santa Rosa Players perform widely known and accepted, commercially viable theater for a consistent and appreciative audience. On this score, Death of a Salesman will not disappoint. Nobody dast blame this show.

Death of a Salesman plays Friday-Saturday, Jan. 23-24, and Thursday-Saturday, Jan. 29-31, at 8 p.m. with matinees Jan. 24 and Feb. 1, at 2 p.m. Santa Rosa Players, Lincoln Arts Center, 709 Davis St. Tickets are $10-$12. 544-STAR.

From the January 22-28, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Irradiated Meat

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Atomic Cafe

By Hank Hoffman

T HE FOOD AND DRUG Administration approved a petition Dec. 2 to allow the exposure of meat to low doses of radiation to kill bacteria like the dangerous E. coli 0157:H7. But not everyone is crazy about the prospect of nuked burgers; at least one consumer advocacy group is vowing to fight the practice with boycotts.

Food irradiation is safe, says the FDA. But Food & Water, a Vermont-based environmental and nutrition advocacy group, hotly disagrees. Michael Colby, the group’s director, says they will target any food company that adopts the technology. Colby accuses the FDA of caving in to political pressure and criticizes another consumer advocate for not opposing irradiation strenuously enough. “Where’s the science? I think they’ve gone way out on a limb and approved the technology without scientific proof that it is safe,” he says.

Arthur Whitmore, an FDA spokesperson, disagrees. He says the agency looked at “hundreds of studies.” “We don’t think consumers should be afraid of irradiated product. We don’t find any safety problems with it at all,” declares Whitmore. Food irradiation has long been controversial. The technology, an outgrowth of the Cold War Atoms for Peace program, has been promoted by nuclear-power advocates and meat industry lobbyists and has strong supporters in the government.

In its most common form, food is exposed to low-dosage cobalt-60 radiation that kills microorganisms–both dangerous and benign–by disrupting their DNA structure. Irradiation is widely used to sterilize medical equipment as well as such consumer products as baby-bottle nipples and cotton swabs. Widescale irradiation of food, however, has long been stalled for lack of government approval, questions about safety, and consumer resistance.

Over the last decade, both the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have approved irradiation of dry herbs and spices, pork, poultry, fruits, and vegetables. But permission to irradiate red meat was lacking until FDA’s recent action. (Radiation is considered a food additive subject to FDA regulation because its use may change some characteristics of the food.) Approval for red meat has been considered crucial: While irradiation primarily extends shelf life on other products, with something like ground beef the destruction of bacteria can be marketed as a lifesaver.

Support for irradiation has escalated in the meat industry in the wake of contamination scandals like the recall of 25 million pounds of ground beef by Hudson Foods this past summer.

Colby, irradiation’s most vocal critic, fears acceptance of the procedure will bring not only nuclear proliferation, but also environmental and worker safety problems. The process, he says, causes nutritional loss and effects chemical changes that introduce carcinogens into the foods. Instead of the government exposing meat to radiation at the end of the production process, Colby wants it to force meat producers to clean up the rest of their processes. “[Irradiation] is another step into an industrial food supply, an increasingly corporatized and monopolistic food supply that inevitably wreaks havoc on health, safety, and community control,” says Colby.

Food & Water has kept irradiation proponents in the meat industry on the defensive with emotionally charged ad campaigns targeting companies that express interest in the process. Colby promises more of the same: “If we see signs of support, we will target them with all the force and vim and vigor we can muster.” F&W already is launching a campaign against Monfort Meat after its corporate parent, Con Agra, endorsed the FDA decision.

Conspicuously not joining Colby at the barricades is Michael Jacobson, director of the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest. Jacobson says he opposes irradiation, but he earns Colby’s ire for refusing to rule it out as a “last resort” if other technologies fail. “That’s what industry is always looking for–some consumer advocate they can get to soft-pedal their opposition,” says Colby. He notes that a recent editorial in the industry trade magazine Meat & Poultry counseled “industry leaders” to “enlist the aid” of the CSPI to “present credible and compelling arguments why irradiation must be a part” of the effort to ensure safe meat.

“We’re in touch with many of the victims–parents of children who have died–and we believe it’s extraordinarily important to prevent food poisoning,” says Jacobson, adding that there are “plenty of other processes” that focus on cleanliness and should be used to create a safe food supply before irradiation.

While he agrees with irradiation proponents that the nutritional losses and chemical changes to meat are not significant, Jacobson says “the process is inherently a risky one. We’re concerned about the risks to workers and the environment if you’re building hundreds of radiation facilities around the country,” Jacobson says. “It’s almost inevitable that accidents will happen.”

John Masefield, chairman and CEO of Isomedix–the company that petitioned the FDA to approve red meat irradiation–says fears about safety and proliferation are misplaced. F&W has cited 1974 incidents at Isomedix’s New Jersey plant–radioactive water being flushed down a toilet and a worker receiving a near-lethal radiation dose–as reasons why safety assurances can’t be trusted.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also proposed a “substantial civil penalty” against the company in 1987 for “serious violations of safety requirements.”

“Most of the incidents you hear from Food & Water and others who play fast and loose with the truth date back 15 to 30 years,” says Masefield. The 1987 incident was an “administrative violation” that did not threaten worker safety, according to Masefield. “The process is so safe that the NRC doesn’t require an environmental impact statement when you establish a site,” says Masefield.

Yet unanswered questions that remain following the FDA’s decision include: Will irradiation be done at meat processing plants or off-site? How will the USDA and the NRC coordinate oversight? And, most important, will consumers buy irradiated meat?

From the January 22-28, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Food & Moods

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Food & Moods

Food Swings

When it comes to mental attitude, you truly are what you eat

By David Templeton

IMAGINE THAT IT’S lunchtime, sometime in the distant future. You check your schedule. There’s a 2 o’clock meeting with the representatives of the Earth-Mars business alliance. “Hmmmm,” you think, “that’s a high-pressure crowd of folks. Could be stressful. I need to prepare.” So you reach into your portable Mood Alteration Fix-It Kit and search around for the right combination of amino acids. You select a nice tab of tryptophan and a good tyrosine-and-magnesium chaser.

As you let the substances dissolve on your tongue, you know that you’ll be relaxed, energetic, and upbeat in two hours or so, just as soon as the chemicals cause your brain to produce the desired neurotransmitters into your body.

“Ah, what a brave new world,” you contentedly sigh, “that has such amino-based mood enhancers in it.”

Does this scenario seem appealing, if less than appetizing? Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to safely and appropriately alter your mood according to the needs and demands of your schedule, your workday, your life?

Well, get in line at the checkout stand, because the future is now. Mood-altering substances are available as close as your nearest grocery store, need no prescription, and–in most cases–actually taste good.

They go by the name of “food.”

T HOUGH THE FOOD/MOOD connection is technically not new–folkloristic remedies for everything from a low sex drive to forgetfulness to depression have almost always been connected to the eating of certain foods. It is only in the last 20 years that brain researchers have determined what the connection is, and how it can be used to put us all in a better frame of mind.

What is most surprising is that this bold, functional new science is taking so long to work its way into–and have an effect on–our mainstream culture, a culture that is seemingly obsessed with finding the next great feel-good fix.

“I do think that is happening,” insists Santa Rosa nutritionist Kate LeTourneaux-Platt, whose own clients often are introduced to so-called amino therapy, with astoundingly positive results. “The notion that what you eat affects how you feel is spreading. But it’s spreading very slowly.”

It was Dr. Julius Axelrod, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1970, who got things rolling with his discovery of neurotransmitters, powerful nerve chemicals that operate in the brain. Neurotransmitters are made up of either amino acids–the building blocks of protein that are obtained through eating food–or a fatlike substance known as choline. The neurotransmitters relay messages from one nerve cell, or neuron, to another, essentially leaping the gap between each neuron. Without neurotransmitters, communication would shut down, and nothing in our body would function.

At least 40 different neurotransmitters have been identified, regulating nerve functions such as memory, appetite, movement, wake/sleep cycles, and mood. Though many of these are manufactured naturally within our bodies, there are four neurotransmitters that are made directly from food components. These are serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine.

The amino acids in different foods cause different neurotransmitters to be released, causing subtle–and sometimes not-so-subtle–shifts in our mood, performance, behavior, and energy level.

In short, we really are what we eat.

“A high percentage of first-time clients come in saying, ‘I want to look better,'” says LeTourneaux-Platt. “So we start there. But my ideal client is the one who comes in saying, ‘I want to feel better and be healthy.’ Biochemically, we haven’t changed since Neolithic times. What our bodies want and need are pretty much the same. It’s our hectic lifestyles that have changed, and using what we know now about the effects of food on our mood, we can make incredible shifts toward lowering our stress levels and feeling good again.”

Though any radical changes in diet should always be planned with a skilled dietitian or doctor (one who knows the client’s individual needs and possible allergies to certain foods), with a little guidance and newfound knowledge, almost anyone can experience the even-keeled solace and positive outlook that come from a well-planned selection of foods.

Whole grain breads, containing the aforementioned amino acid tryptophan, help boost levels of serotonin, the soothing, mood-elevating brain chemical that just happens to be the one that Prozac stimulates. Turkey, tuna, and chicken are rich in tyrosine, a booster of the chemicals dopamine and norepinephrine, promoting improved levels of attention, motivation, and reaction time. The vitamin C in oranges and grapefruit helps raise your brain’s levels of norepinephrine as well, reducing irritability while increasing your energy. When capsaicin, that hot stuff in chili peppers, burns nerve endings in the mouth, the brain receives pain signals; so it secretes through the body those wonderful natural painkillers called endorphins, giving us a gratifying, morphinelike rush.

And everyone knows that chocolate affects the same part of our brain that is tickled when we experience feelings of love; this is due to chocolate causing the release of the comforting chemical phenylethylamine, along with the serenity-causing neurotransmitter serotonin.

THOUGH IT’S NOT quite as straightforward as it sounds–some amino acids counter the effects of others if taken together, and individual health considerations occasionally come into play–the positive benefits of a balanced diet have been proven to go far beyond the conventional issues of fitness and body shape.

“A person who is feeling blue or feeling sad and doesn’t know why can certainly be helped by appropriate changes in their diet,” affirms Petaluma nutritionist Najine Shariat. “But if someone is eating in order to feel good, there is a danger of slipping into disordered eating, snacking on things like high-fat carbohydrate foods, that could make the mood even worse. It takes a bit of education, but diet is an excellent way to improve one’s mood.”

Mood enhancement is only the beginning. There are increasing reports that the food you eat can possibly even make you rich.

InnerNet Research Inc., in Mobile, Ala., is a non-profit organization of business people and doctors who caused a stir among the business community with their self-published report, Food, Mood and Money: The Powerful Link Between Diet, Boldness and Wealth (rev., exp. ed., 1997, available by calling 800/513-1984).

The basic premise of their report is this: Since mood determines your level of success–positive people with bold, fearless personalities and the self-confidence to tackle difficult situations tend to go farther in life than those struggling with what they’ve come to call “negative inner states”–and since your diet can radically improve your mood, financial success will be the result of a strategically planned diet.

“My own business [selling anti-terrorist devices such as flak jackets and X-ray machines] has increased by a factor of 10 since I changed the way I ate,” says Helmut Julinot, one of the authors, taking his turn answering phones that haven’t stopped ringing since the all-volunteer group established their award-winning Internet site (http://www.defend-net.com/fearless-food) to promote their findings.

“Before, I was struggling to make sales, while spending a fortune on motivational tapes and books and things,” Julinot says. “I could occasionally psych myself up into a heightened mood, but it was forced and fake. You can only go so far whipping yourself and saying, ‘I must! I must!’ Success is not all mental. It’s physical as well.”

By selecting a balanced diet of foods specifically chosen for their particular amino acids, Julinot and associates transformed their attitudes and, they claim, their fortunes.

“Last year my company made almost $2 million,” says Julinot. “I feel braver now. I do the chancier, bolder things that are necessary in business.

“People can’t believe it,” he laughs. “That all this good can come from knowing what foods cause what moods. It’s a very subtle thing, but it makes a tremendous difference.”

From the January 22-28, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

The Scoop

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Best Moves

By Bob Harris

YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD about the ads former ABC newsman David Brinkley did for Archer Daniels Midland, the giant grain and energy company that calls itself the “Supermarket to the World.” (By the way, that slogan is apparently supposed to be a good thing, although it sounds a lot more to me like “Don’t screw with us; we’ve got all the food.”)

The ads were a big controversy because they showed the former host of ABC’s Sunday morning talkfest chatting up the virtues of ADM from a studio set that looked a lot like his old one. The ads were intended to air during the old program, which means if you’re a casual viewer, you might not have realized you were looking at a commercial.

That’s bad, obviously, as no shortage of other jabbermeisters rushed to point out. Real newsmen aren’t supposed to be lining their pockets by pretending a paid commercial announcement is actually objective reporting. So ABC dropped the ads. Good for them.

But what nobody’s pointing out here is that David Brinkley wasn’t really doing anything new. Fact is, ADM has been a major sponsor of all the Sunday morning talk shows, including Brinkley’s, for years. And somehow, coincidentally, ADM gets a surprisingly wide berth.

For example, when ABC’s experts talk about welfare, Cokie and Sam somehow rarely mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies that ADM sucks up every year. And when the two Georges yammer about questionable financial arrangements with politicians, somehow they rarely get around to that condo in Florida that Bob Dole got through his connections with ADM.

It’s bad enough they’ve got all the food. Nobody ought to own the Supermarket of Ideas as well.

PAT ROBERTSON is actually opposing the death penalty? Something truly weird must be going on. Yup. In Texas, there’s this Karla Faye Tucker woman on Death Row. She’s the foxy-looking, Bible-thumping, artery-slashing double-murder babe who wants clemency because she recently found God and stuff, which means now she can help her fellow out-of-control axe murderers sort of, uh, get a grip on things.

Besides axe handles.

Karla Faye was on 20/20, Larry King Live, and a bunch of other TV shows last week. Why? Not because she might be innocent. Nope. She confessed. And it’s not because many folks down there are rethinking capital punishment. She’s in Texas, remember, where they executed more people last year than in all other states combined. Besides, the Cowboys had a lousy season.

People need something to do.

The only reason anyone gives a ding-dang about this woman is because she’s really cute, which gives the TV cameras something to point at. Don’t kid yourself. If she looked like Shaquille O’Neal in drag, she’d probably be dead already. Or suppose she converted–not to Christianity, but to Islam. We’re not having this conversation.

But now there’s this dewy-eyed, full-lipped, tawny-haired, Deuteronomy-reciting, pin-up-looking chick, and suddenly even Pat Robertson is willing to forgive the small matter of those two handcrafted vein-rippings she indulged in a while back.

Folks, justice is supposed to be blind. If it ain’t, it ain’t justice.

And until we figure out how to do that, I don’t see how anybody can support executing one group of people and not another–as if any human soul is more or less redeemable because of the container it came in.

This ain’t pleasant to admit, but in our prisons, people often live or die depending on the color of their skin. There are people on death row right this minute for whom redemption isn’t even a question, because evidence of their actual innocence exists.

Seems to me that if you oppose the death penalty for Karla Faye Tucker, you may just have to oppose the death penalty, period.

From the January 22-28, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Talking Pictures

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Talking Pictures

Wag the Mob


Phil Caruso

War Game: Dustin Hoffman plays a Hollywood producer who produces a war.

Activist David Harris wants you to be in the know

By David Templeton

In his ongoing quest for the ultimate post-film conversation, David Templeton met with controversial political author David Harris to see the dark-humored White House satire Wag the Dog.

FOR A MAN TOUTED AS both a larger-than-life superhero of the 1960s anti-war movement and as a brazenly demonic scourge against all that is red, white, and blue, David Harris comes off as a pretty normal guy. No horns or halo are readily apparent; he checks his watch a lot (so he won’t be late picking up his kids from school); he drinks decaf espresso. Yet few people have inspired as much saintly praise and hissing vilification as the man now sitting at a mall’s food-court table, having just seen Wag the Dog, Barry Levinson’s offbeat satire about savvy spin doctors (Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman) who fake a war in order to re-elect a sleazy president.

For his part, Harris has experienced enough spin for a lifetime. His book Dreams Die Hard (St. Martin’s Press, 1982) is considered a classic exploration of disillusioned idealism, and 1996’s double-whammy of Our War: What We Did in Vietnam and What It Did to Us (Timeless Books) and The Last Stand: The War Between Wall Street and Main Street over California’s Ancient Redwoods (Sierra Club Books) are still stirring up lively public discussions.

But despite a decades-long career as a journalist and author, Harris will probably always be best known as the draft-resister–once married to singer Joan Baez–whose much-televised refusal to go to Vietnam landed him in prison, galvanizing a nationwide movement against then-President Lyndon B. Johnson and the ever-escalating war. He is currently working on a book about another masterful government spin job, the audacious U.S. invasion of Panama.

“It’s a little like whistling on the deck of the Titanic, this movie,” Harris says of Wag the Dog, grinning amiably while leaning backward in his chair. “On one hand, it’s a shallow, slight little comedy, but it’s about precisely the thing that is killing us as a culture, the greatest threat to American democracy: our growing inability to claim and recognize reality, our inability to distinguish the truth from the spin.

“We’ve become a galvanic-response culture,” he continues. “If I can go on television and make your palms sweat within the first 15 seconds of my appearance, I can become the president of the United States. If I can’t, I can’t, and it doesn’t matter how smart or wise I am.

“The only weapons we have against that kind of stuff is our own capacity for perspective and self-examination, to take and examine our own response to it. And yet we are losing that ability more and more every day.”

Harris points out that the movie’s central idea–that a national emergency such as the film’s make-believe war against Albania can be whipped up and spoon-fed to a gullible populace–is nothing new.

“Go back to the Spanish-American War,” he says. “In those pre-electronic days, William Randolph Hearst started that war in order to sell papers. It’s only a half-step from there to what happened in this film.

“In fact,” he continues, “there was an incident at the beginning of the Vietnam War that was more or less manufactured. In late 1964, early 1965, after the Tonkin Gulf resolution, we made the decision to upgrade from an adviser’s war to a combat war. The Tonkin Gulf incident began it, but that incident–a supposed attack on American destroyers by North Vietnamese patrol boats–never happened. There was no attack. It was a mistake made by a confused radar operator that was capitalized on by Johnson, who was looking for a place to put his foot down. The missiles that the radar supposedly saw turned out to be the destroyer’s own wake–classic condition for radar confusion.”

Harris, leaning forward now, is warming up to the story.

“The military told Johnson to sit tight until they could find out if anything had really occurred or not,” he relates, “but Johnson said, ‘Fuck it.’ He commenced bombing raids on North Vietnam that night.

“They never bothered to figure out what really happened until after the whole goddamn war was over 10 years later,” he concludes.

“At that point, the government was just beginning to learn how to control the press,” Harris says. “By the time you get to the Gulf War, there is no independent press. The press are all waiting in some building for a guy from the government to tell them what’s going on and to distribute a video of a bomb going down a smokestack in Baghdad.”

Harris pauses. He sips his coffee, checks his watch, shrugs, and says, “The one optimistic thing about all these developments is that it still takes a lot of work and effort to make us want to go to war. It’s not natural for us to put ourselves through that, to go out and die in battle. In order to get us into that position, there has to be an extraordinary situation. You have to train people and manipulate images.

“Unfortunately, it is getting easier to do that. It’s the great irony of the information age that while huge amounts of information have now flooded into the culture through electronic media and the Internet, our grasp of the truth has gotten weaker and weaker and weaker.

“But you know what I think?”

He leans closer.

“Ultimately, it’s not the government’s job to tell the truth,” he states. “It’s not the media’s job. It’s our job.” He waves his arms to include himself and everyone else milling about the mall.

“It’s our job,” Harris repeats, “to be people who are sophisticated enough to sort out what the truth is instead of just lapping up whatever is the most comfortable story to believe.

“That’s the only antidote to what will otherwise destroy us.”

From the January 15-21, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Hash House Harriers

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Hash House Harriers

Running Joke


Robert Scheer

The Pause that Refreshes: Hashers take a beer break after a grueling run.

Hash House Harriers: A raucous drinking club with a running problem

By Dylan Bennett

THE RUN IS OVER. Two-by-Four, a big blond man in his 40s, chugs beer from the inside of his new Nike running shoes, the brew dribbling down his face as his Adam’s apple works overtime to dispatch the cold suds. Illuminated by car headlights, two dozen funny-looking joggers stand in a circle around him in the chill winter rain rhythmically chanting: “Down, down-down, down, down-down, down.”

Suddenly Two-by-Four stops drinking. The former defensive end for the University of Nebraska reaches inside a shoe and removes a beer-soaked dirty sock. He takes another slurp. The crowd shrieks with appreciation.

It’s been a strange afternoon high in the hills above Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve just north of Guerneville. I’m witnessing the Down-Down ceremony of the Sonoma County Winers, the local chapter of the Hash House Harriers, an international sporting phenomenon that combines cross-country running with motivated beer drinking and untold silliness.

Basically a jogging event in which “hashers” follow a country trail marked by occasional handfuls of ordinary white baking flour, a hashing route includes plenty of false leads and dead ends that the runners cooperatively navigate. A bunch of wacky rules prescribe ridiculous behavior, lewd nicknames, and profane–sometimes revolting–drinking songs.

A self-described “drinking club with a running problem,” the harriers trace their origins to a handful of accountants who worked for the British colonial administration in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in the 1930s. Today, according to one of the 98 websites found on the Internet, over 100,000 fun-seeking hashers belong to over 6,000 chapters worldwide in 135 countries, including Antarctica. In the Bay Area, hashes occurs on a weekly basis.

The name Hash House Harriers refers not to the sticky distillation of cannabis, but rather to the quarters where the Brits dined on such notoriously mundane food as hash, a hodge-podge dish of ground meat and potatoes. The so-called rules of hashing are simple: One person, known as the “hare,” sets the trail prior to the event with handfuls of flour every few hundred yards. The faster participants, known as the Front Running Bastards, or FRBs, determine the correct path by exploring and eliminating numerous false leads. The FRBs then leave instructive arrows for their slower compatriots. The hashers shout and whistle among themselves as well, so all find their way.

The trail begins to end at the Turkey/Eagle Split. If you’re tuckered out, follow the Turkey arrow and be dubbed a Short-Cutting Bastard. If you’re determined, follow the Eagle arrow. Near the end there’s a Beer Check. After everyone finishes, the Down-Down ceremony is capped by a rowdy meal at a local chow house.

Certainly one of the world’s most unusual forms of exercise, hashing is even somewhat less sensical than those polar bear club swimmers who paddle around in freezing water. But I can’t argue with the results. An hour after penetrating the forest, I find myself intentionally running just two steps behind a voluptuous, drunken, six-foot female Stanford University genetics researcher nicknamed “Nasty Ditch.” Clad in pink spandex, this biochemistry Ph.D. easily ranks as the most interesting running partner I’ve ever had.

My fleet-footed unrequited romance begins in a parking lot on this gray December afternoon in the misty jungle of the Armstrong redwoods. Thanks to the crummy weather, the turnout for the hash looks like a bust until a small caravan from Santa Cruz arrives. Six drunks–including Nasty Ditch and Two-by-Four–and a designated driver tumble from a giant Chevrolet van and proudly display a keg of good beer on ice.

Reluctantly accepting the responsibility of participatory journalism, I bum a Camel from Two-by-Four and knock back some microbrew. Thirsts quenched, and after a round of goofy warm-up songs led by a 65-year-old woman named “Art Tits,” our unruly mob of two dozen brave souls scramble up the steep path into the redwoods.

On this particular hash, the trail markings have been poorly set or washed away by the rain. Even veteran hashers like Zydeco, Tuna Taco, and One Night Stand grow discouraged and head back for an early beer. About three miles into the hash, only Nasty Ditch and I have persevered to find the Turkey/Eagle Split and to take the high road.

I feel like Robert Mitchum in the movie Anzio. Everybody’s dead but us.

“Why do you like hashing?” I ask Nasty Ditch. We are ascending a hellishly steep hill deep in the woods. The severe mountain forest view of the Sonoma Coast gives birth to itself below us. My legs threaten to cramp up from the trauma. My brain flashes oxygen debt. “How else would I come to such a beautiful place?” answers Nasty Ditch.

“You could be an enterprising hiker, do some research, and come here alone,” I suggest.

“It wouldn’t be the same,” says Nasty Ditch.

Indeed not. Nasty Ditch denies it, but hashing is clearly a release from the confining logic of the current epoch. Among the hashers whom I pepper with unabashedly normal questions, I find several engineers, a scientist, a nurse, and an Annapolis-trained former naval officer. For them, hashing is a license to thrive in an absurd, drunken, uninhibited world that wiggles in stark contrast to the rules of science and good society.

“I like opera. I like ballet. I like to hash. I’m a Buddhist, and I like to keep fit,” said Nylon Pussy, a proper, middle-aged South African-born woman standing with a beer in the parking lot. “Hashing is just another dimension to life. There’s the overt side to it, but below all that there are quite interesting people who are nice to talk to, and who are genuinely funny.”

Hashing is not for the thin-skinned. The event overflows with loaded sexual terminology. Yet the sport boasts built-in equality. The duty to run down false leads counterbalances the swiftness of the FRBs. Nasty Ditch says she’s seen the fastest and slowest hashers finish practically at the same time.

“I like the lack of political correctness about hashing,” says Nylon Pussy. “It’s refreshingly funny.”

And for all the crude–really nasty–carnal drinking songs pirated from the rugby tradition, Nasty Ditch claims hashers tend to be tolerant, open-minded folks who distance themselves from any participants espousing hateful doctrines.

Trotting along the alpine jungle paths, watching for clumps of flour, I freely let hashing conjure up my favorite socially incorrect running fantasy: At 30-something I’m playing “army” again. Nasty Ditch and I have just blown up an Evil Fascist Base Camp. We’re running for our lives from the pursuing enemy soldiers.

Alone on a mountainside with this nubile genetic engineer, I ask her what any curious, red-blooded, heterosexual American male would ask:

“So, can you clone me from a skin sample?”

“No,” she puffs, “but I know people who can.”

Darkness falls as we descend the mountain path. I’m a commando. I’m a mailman on Machu Picchu. I’m the messenger at the battle of Marathon. I’m a virgin hasher alone in the woods with a beautiful woman. Whatever I am, this wacky event has got me out of the house on a crummy day in a natural paradise.

Back at the parking lot, the keg drains sure and true. We drink cold beer in the rain. Everybody’s here: Zydeco, Nylon Pussy, Likes to Lick, One Night Stand, Seven Veils, Tuna Taco, Cyclops, Two-by-Four, and, of course, my beloved Nasty Ditch. The harriers are singing:

“He ought to be thoroughly pissed on/ He ought to be publicly shot/ He ought to be tied to a urinal/ And left there to fester and rot./ Drink it down, down, down-down, down, down-down, down, down-down, down, down-down/ Him, him, Fuck him!”

Any newcomers (the Newbies), the trail-setting Hare, and even the reporter-at-large must stand within the ceremonious Down-Down circle and drink to this irreverent serenade. Nasty Ditch and I must drink together for the official sin of finishing “Dead Fucking Last.”

And for the offense of wearing new shoes, the musical mob ritualistically condemns Two-by-Four, the globe-trotting hashing maniac, to slurp pale ale from his soiled virgin Nikes. Socks and all.

The Winers Hash House Harriers grab teddy bears and don pink nighties Jan. 24 in Cloverdale. 894-4711.

From the January 15-21, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Rev. Horton Heat

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Rev. Horton Heat

Hot Rocks


Phil Caruso

Sound Salvation: The Rev. Horton Heat, center, walks on the dark side.

The psychobilly gospel according to the Rev. Horton Heat

By Greg Cahill

JIM HEATH–aka the Rev. Horton Heat–lies on a messy bed at the Hyatt in West Hollywood watching a TV special about the drug habits of the rich and infamous, in this case Three Dog Night singer/songwriter Chuck Negron, who spent a $30 million fortune on a heroin habit that led him from pop icon to homeless junkie.

The message: L.A. was his ruin.

“That’s gotta be the world’s largest addiction, I guess,” Heath chuckles malevolently.

Heath–a hell raiser and self-confessed problem drinker–knows a thing or two about bad habits and the pitfalls of the City of Fallen Angels. Given to dark moods and even darker tunes, this post-punk rockabilly guitarist/singer/songwriter is known for live shows that are best described as a hayride through hell, traversing a sordid gin-soaked terrain littered with cheap women, fast cars, drugs, and more than its share of libations.

Offstage, the Texas-born Heath, 39, and his sidekicks–bassist Jimbo Wallace and drummer Scott Churilla–have been known to live up to their rowdy rock ‘n’ roll image. Last year, for instance, the band taped a red-hot segment at Tramp’s in New York City for HBO’s prestigious alt-rock showcase Reverb. Moments after the cameras went off, the owner tossed the band out on the street.

“We run into our share of trouble on the road,” Heath laments.

Heath is no stranger either to trouble or to the road. Growing up in the gawdawful climate of Corpus Christi–where the eponymous body of Christ is polluted by smoky refinery stacks, bordertown racism, oppressive heat, and clouds of flying pests–he cut his teeth playing ’70s rock covers at local dance halls. But it was his introduction to the blues, especially the gritty working-class songs of Howlin’ Wolf and Little Walter and the finger-pickin’ style of country legend Merle Travis, that influenced his roots-oriented high-octane guitar attack.

That talent–and the ability to deftly plumb traditional country, rockabilly, surf, punk, and lounge music–garnered a spot on the influential Seattle-based Sub Pop label, eventually leading to a major label deal. The band’s most recent disc, Martini Time (Interscope), has its share of psychobilly classics, including “Cowboy Love,” an ode to gay cowboy bars.

The band used to play the blues club circuit, but bailed out of that scene a few years back. “I decided I wanted to play the loud, crazy, beer-sloshing rock ‘n’ roll shows,” says Heath. “You know, the little polite applause and the swing dancers at the blues club, those were fine, but it wasn’t as exciting as playing rock.”

THE REV. HORTON HEAT moved to punk and alt-rock clubs. The response was immediate. “We didn’t make as much money at those shows,” he says, “but the fans we made are the type of fans that buy CDs and helped the band grow.”

While crowds know the joy of the butt-kickin’ Rev. Horton Heat show, critics have been reluctant at times to warm up to this campy trio, who have taken over the coveted psychobilly crown once worn by the kinky Cramps.

“Well, considering how many crappy bands get into that crappy Spin magazine, yeah, I think it would be good for the world if the Rev. Horton Heat had a gold record,” says Heath, firing a round at his favorite target. “Yeah. I want that. Uh-huh.”

Which brings us to the subject of music critics in general. “Nothing against you, but I have a big problem with music critics,” he continues. “For example, we first started touring all over America and were in every region by 1990, and the No. 1 question that I got asked on those tours was ‘So what is this rockabilly thing?’ Now they all know about it, but none of them knew diddly until they started talking to the Rev. Horton Heat.”

Along with the punkier sensibility came a chance to exploit the darker side of life, though often with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Musically, Heath will tell you that his sound results from his fondness for the flat-five interval and its “crazy dissonance.” But it’s in the tough lyrics that the dark side really thrives. “I like love songs a whole lot–I really like schmaltzy love songs,” he protests. “I’ve never really written any, though, because I like them to have a darker tone.

“Let’s just say that if life was so sweet and fun it wouldn’t be so interesting. Like on Real TV, they don’t show people getting married; they show footage of people crashing on motorcycles and stuff. Besides, love is never really easy,” he concludes. “You can’t just write happy songs. It’s gotta have some darkness to it, otherwise there’s no light. In other words, there’s no hope in a song that’s just about hope. It’s gotta show the consequences of hope failed to show the beauty of hope realized.

“Life is just like music–tension and release.”

The Rev. Horton Heat performs Sunday, Jan. 18, at 9 p.m. at the Mystic Theater, 21 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. Let’s Go Bowling opens. Tickets are $15. 765-6665.

From the January 15-21, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Spins

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Go Ask Rahsaan

By Greg Cahill

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
Dog Years in the Fourth Ring
(32 Jazz)

JOHN COLTRANE’S Live at the Village Vanguard: The Complete Sessions (GRP/Impulse!) may have been the big winner in the race to sell jazz-reissue box sets over the holiday season, but local stores moved more than a few of this three-CD gem, thanks to word-of-mouth acclaim by die-hard free-bop jazz buffs.

Producer Joel Dorn–the man responsible for many of the great Rhino/Atlantic reissues over the past couple of years–has pulled together an awesome set of rare tracks from one of the jazz world’s most underappreciated innovators.

Kirk, an Ornette Coleman free-jazz disciple who was blinded shortly after birth, died in 1975 at age 41.

In his Jazz: America’s Classical Music (Prentice-Hall, 1984), Marin jazz writer and educator Grover Sales hailed Kirk as “a complete original … one of the most fertile imaginations ever to grace the world of jazz.”

Before his untimely death, Kirk mastered a technique that he called “splitting of the lobes,” in which this remarkable reedman sometimes played three saxes simultaneously, separately fingering the melody and two-part harmonies.

At first scorned as gimmicky, this difficult style is now recognized by jazz authorities as a legitimate progression in the jazz world.

One thing is clear: Kirk–technically brilliant and rhythmically fearless–embraced an all-inclusive historical concept that encompassed New Orleans second-line struts, Kansas City Swing, and avant-garde free jazz, sometimes in a single tune.

“You never knew what was going to happen,” recalls Kirk pianist Hilton Ruiz. “It was all part of the performance. It was amazing, not like just playing a gig, but an experience.”

Listening to these alternately soulful ballads and bold experimental works is still spellbinding. On the first two discs, Kirk swings, swoops, squeaks, and squawks his way through 19 previously unreleased tracks, all recorded live (and, believe me, it’s a marvel that there were no overdubs).

The collection is a special treat since Kirk, who seldom recorded cover songs, can be heard improvising his way through such pieces as Burt Bacharach’s “I Say a Little Prayer,” Miles Davis’ “Freddie Freeloader,” Lester Young’s “Lester Leaps In,” and John Coltrane’s classic “Giant Steps.”

The third CD–the rarely heard 1971 Atlantic album Natural Black Inventions–is a free-jazz wonderland and one rabbit hole you won’t want to avoid.


Peter Case
Full Service, No Waiting
(Vanguard)

THE POP WORLD is full of faux folkies–Jewel, Shawn Colvin–and I wouldn’t give you a busted guitar pick for the lot of ’em. Singer/songwriter Peter Case, on the other hand, gets little respect, even though he sort of helped invent this whole damned unplugged, acoustic-oriented folk-with-a-punk-sensibility thing. Listen up, children.

Case cofounded the West Coast band the Nerves, along with Paul Collins (who later formed the legendary Beat). In 1978, Case formed the power-pop band the Plimsouls, an early college radio fave. The Plimsouls landed two major label deals, never sold diddlysquat, but got a cameo in the teen flick Valley Girl.

Now it’s 1984, and Case is a born-again Christian and married to quirky Texas singer/songwriter Victoria Williams, with whom he forms the Incredibly Strung Out Band. Cut to 1989: Case has a new divorce and a critically acclaimed eponymous album. Three years later, he records Six Pack of Love with David Lindley, Jim Keltner, and Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo–hey, the guy’s got serious roots credentials.

In 1994, he teams up with ex-Plimsoul Eddie Munoz, and the following year they knock out a great live folk-blues collection.

So is that any reason to buy Full Service, No Waiting, Case’s first album in four years? Hell no, fool–it’s a comfy, folksy, honey-child-sitting-next-to-me-in-a-’58-Ford-pickup sort of disc–a bit mystical, a little world-weary, but none the worse for the wear.

Buy it.
Sal Hepatica

From the January 15-21, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

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Willy Won't He?Miller Time: Frank DeMartino and Rebecca AllingtonPhoto by Michael Amsler'Death of a Salesman' suits the PlayersBy Daedalus HowellARTHUR MILLER'S plays are the red meat of the American theatrical diet--heavy, bloody, emotional carnage that is a staple for a plurality of theatergoers. To wit, the Santa Rosa Players' production of Death of a Salesman (directed by Carl Hamilton)...
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Running JokeRobert ScheerThe Pause that Refreshes: Hashers take a beer break after a grueling run. Hash House Harriers: A raucous drinking club with a running problemBy Dylan BennettTHE RUN IS OVER. Two-by-Four, a big blond man in his 40s, chugs beer from the inside of his new Nike running shoes, the brew dribbling down his face as his Adam's...
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Hot RocksPhil CarusoSound Salvation: The Rev. Horton Heat, center, walks on the dark side.The psychobilly gospel according to the Rev. Horton HeatBy Greg CahillJIM HEATH--aka the Rev. Horton Heat--lies on a messy bed at the Hyatt in West Hollywood watching a TV special about the drug habits of the rich and infamous, in this case Three Dog Night singer/songwriter...
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Spins

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Read more
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