The Scoop

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Rise Up!

By Bob Harris

EIGHT SEPARATISTS calling themselves “Soldiers of the Republic of Venice” recently stormed the bell tower in St. Mark’s Square and demanded that Venice secede from Italy. Noble? Maybe. Misguided? Definitely.

Obviously, everybody has a right to self-determination. But what self-governance actually means has changed drastically, thanks to a multitude of international trade agreements.

Here’s an example: The European Union doesn’t want to import American beef because they’re scared of the hormones we put in ours. You probably wouldn’t want to be force-fed escargots, so even if you enjoy munching on cow parts you can see their point. However, the World Trade Organization, which rules these matters since the GATT agreement, dictates that Europe either has to let the meat roll in or pay a quarter-billion-dollar penalty.

All their flags and anthems and armies didn’t give the Europeans a right to their own health standards.

As the boundaries between American states have become less significant in the last century, so will boundaries between nations in the next.

You can draw the map any way you want to; you’ll still buy the map with a Visa card.

Just to demonstrate, I’ll declare independence myself. Watch. I am now officially the Most Serene Republic of Bob. “Louie, Louie” is my national anthem, and I’m getting military aid from the State Department so I don’t overthrow myself.

I’m still gonna have to buy stuff.

The only power I have is over what I choose to buy, and now even that’s disappearing. (OK. I’m relinquishing statehood now, before the FBI storms me.)

If the folks in Venice really want to fight for independence, they’re gonna have to realize that the modern empire no longer arrives in tanks, but in drive-thrus. AK-47s and a flag by themselves probably won’t defeat 501s and a Coke.

The upside? No two countries that have McDonald’s have ever gone to war.

Of course, once you’re assimilated, “culture” is just the local language on the menu.

TWO MONTHS AGO, Bill Clinton ripped up his knee. Y’know, if he was in an HMO like a lot of folks, right about now his coverage would expire. He’d have to pay for his therapy out of his own pocket or at least give the Lincoln Bedroom to the head of Blue Cross.

The president, however, isn’t in managed care. He’s covered by the Pentagon, so he gets gyroscopic titanium crutches, stealth-technology blast-hardened knee braces, and X-rays from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Not surprisingly, he’s recovering in record time.

I’m genuinely glad he’s feeling better–it’s wrong to wish pain on anyone except talk-show host Jerry Springer –but the president should realize that if he worked downtown he’d have to ration his treatments and probably couldn’t climb steps by now.

And if he worked the grill up at Squat Burger he’d still be jerking shakes from a wheelchair.

Clinton’s health-care proposals a while back were a mess, but there are a lot of bright people with good ideas in the world. Maybe if the folks in Washington got the same coverage the rest of us get, they’d do something more about the declining quality of our health plans besides taking PAC money from insurers and balancing the budget by cutting Medicare.

At least that’s my knee-jerk reaction. (Loud, embarrassed coughing.) Sorry.

THE HOUSE JUDICIARY Committee is holding hearings on “judicial activism.” See, some congressmen have actually called for the impeachment of federal judges whose decisions they personally don’t like.

This is doubleplusungood. Our system of checks and balances exists precisely to prevent such partisan attacks on the judiciary. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay has actually said that “an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment.”

Hello? I guess Marbury vs. Madison was just some 19th-century boxing match, and the late Supreme Court Justice John Marshall was only a security guy in a men’s room.

You can’t simply yank judges around just because you disagree and expect the republic to stand.

Hey, I’m not so thrilled with Clarence Thomas. Forget ideology or Anita Hill. The American Bar Association, which researches the judicial experience of every candidate, concluded he was the least qualified nominee in 30 years. He simply never deserved the job. But the Senate confirmed him and the Constitution gives him a gavel, so I’d gladly hold his robe.

However, here comes Robert Bork–remember that goateed space-alien guy, the one who made his crooked bones by firing the Watergate special prosecutor on behalf of Nixon?–to propose a constitutional amendment allowing Supreme Court rulings to be overturned in Congress.

OK, sure, let’s punt judicial independence entirely. Why study the Jefferson presidency when we can emulate Cuba, Iran, and Uganda?

Trashing two centuries of constitutional law–now there’s “judicial activism” for you.

From the May 22-28, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team. © 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Wine Reviews

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Wine Reviews

Triple Play


Michael Amsler

Take Me Out to the Ballgame: Belvedere 1995 Chardonnay has a taste of ash that’s perfect for that post-game BBQ.

Three winners in the cheap-chard league

By Steve Bjerklie

LONG AGO, when tolerance and patience had not yet come into my life–this goes way, way back, to just before George Steinbrenner’s unlikely New York Yankees won the World Series last October and restored my faith in baseball–the idea of cheap chardonnay, like the split-finger fastball, seemed a perversion. Split-fingers ruin good pitching arms and elevate home-run totals to unnatural levels; cheap chard prostitutes an elegant grape. Why do this?

Money’s the reason, of course. Like ballplayers–or, more accurately, like ball-team owners–winemakers are seduced by the ching-ching of easy cash. God knows anyone can sell chardonnay these days. Selling water’s more difficult. Chardonnay outsells every other varietal by far, and the public’s taste for the pale gold seems to only be growing. Last March a new survey of restaurant wine sales showed chardonnay still occupying first place–just as it has for the last 10 years. Make no mistake: This is the Atlanta Braves of wine. It (and that accursed, racist “chop”) won’t ever go away.

But like the Braves, even value-priced chardonnay has its virtues. It sells big in restaurants because the varietal, in the right hands, is capable of producing flavorful, full-bodied wines without full-bodied price tags. As a food accompaniment it rarely disappoints, especially with seafood and poultry. True, some cheap chards are flavored with oak chips rather than aged in oak barrels (some, in fact, are “aged” in railroad tank cars), and most that are designated “California” contain poor-quality grapes from the overcooked vineyards of the Central Valley. But for eight or nine bucks you expect to go all the way?

Here are three cheap but sturdy chards from Sonoma County vintners and vineyards that left me damn impressed–and just a little more tolerant:

Lyeth 1994 Sonoma County Chardonnay

This chardonnay immediately reminds me of one of the great chardonnay values of all time, the “Clair de Lune” wines from Hacienda in Sonoma back when Steve Macrostie, who has since gone independent, was making Hacienda’s chards. Silvery white, nearly platinum in color, oaky and crisp on the tongue. With food, this Lyeth (like the old Haciendas) won’t clamor for your attention, which is both its charm and drawback: choose mildly sauced pastas or lightly dressed salads so the wine isn’t overwhelmed. Also, drink this wine cold; I noticed that its flavor declined as it warmed. Two and a half stars. $8.99 (on sale).

Il Cuore 1995 Sonoma County Chardonnay

Tart and juicy. Drier than the Lyeth, which means it’ll go better with cheese and cheese sauces. Two swallows, though, provoked me into a real craving for fresh crab and warm sourdough. And though I usually prefer cabernet sauvignon with caesar salad, this wine’s dry enough to sing harmony with the dressing and dance with the anchovy. Heavy but short-lived oak was my first impression; golden summer hills in late afternoon light was my second. Two stars. $9.50.

Belvedere 1995 Sonoma County Chardonnay

Your kid’s team goes 0-15 for the season, and you’re in charge of the picnic. While the coach explains that good pitching always beats good hitting, pour him or her a glass of this succor-giving wine. As burger smoke rises sadly from the grill and the glass of chard glints like a World Series ring in the sun, perhaps the coach (and you) will be reminded that it is, after all, only a game, and of course there’s always next year. I smell outfield in the nose and taste the ash of Mark McGwire’s bat in the flavor, with just a touch of horsehide in both. This wine is so good that one glass will have you taking batting practice, two glasses and you’re talking contracts, and three glasses will make you think you’re Babe Ruth. Three stars. $9.49.

From the May 22-28, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

World Music

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World Music

Global Beat


Every Picture Tells a Story: Kora master and griot Karunka Suso.

Photo by Daniel Laine



North Bay labels make strong showing
in world-music market

By Greg Cahill

WHEN PETER BUCK went searching for a hip hook on which to hang his latest side project–Tuatatara’s Breaking the Ethers (Epic)–the REM guitarist found the goods in the exotic marimba-driven gamelan sounds of Bali, which colors this darkly sumptuous instrumental recording.

It’s no surprise. In a year that has seen sagging CD sales among pop, rap, and rock acts, an unusually strong tide of global beat releases offers safe passage to weary music fans. Indeed, it’s fitting that Warner Brothers has just reissued a visually enhanced anniversary version of Paul Simon’s landmark Graceland, the 1987 disc that launched world music into the mainstream with its South African, Tex-Mex, and Cajun influences.

Ten years down the road, the far-flung sound of world music is still a welcome port of call.

Amid this renaissance, two tiny North Bay recording labels–the fledgling Rohnert Park­based Tinder Records and acclaimed mandolinist David Grisman’s San Rafael­based Acoustic Disc–recently issued several heart-stopping recordings that explore a variety of rich musical styles from around the globe.

Official page for Tinder Records.

Official page for Acoustic Disc label.

Official page for Ellipsis Arts label.

Official page for Rounder Records.

Enrique Coria’s evocative Latin Touch (Acoustic Disc) is a masterful link to the Rioplatense guitarists, hailing from the Rio de la Plata (“River of Silver”) region between Uruguay and Argentina. He lays claim to an unusually warm, mellifluous tone. In a series of acoustic solo, duet, and trio settings, Coria deftly moves through the works of Astor Piazzolla, Heiter Villa-Lobos, and other South American composers. Along the way, he ranges from sweet Gypsy-inflected melodies to Bach-influenced fugal arrangements of Brazilian folk motifs.

If you buy one world-music release this year, consider Coria.

Also from Acoustic Disc: Rudy Cipolla: Portrait of an American Original, a spirited tribute to the legendary, albeit obscure, 96-year-old mandolinist and world-music composer who wrote behind the counter of his San Francisco bookstore and didn’t record until age 83. It features the David Grisman Quintet, Evan Marshall, the Modern Mandolin Quartet, and the late Jim Boggio.

Meanwhile, the locally based Tinder Records offers an impressively diverse catalog, ranging from the raw, percussive field recordings of Eat the Dream: Moroccan Reveries and the delightfully romantic anthology The Soul of Cape Verde (featuring the amazing singer Cesaria Evora) to the buoyant French salsa of Fatal Mambo’s contagious Rumbagitation–a potent blend of flamenco, salsa, cumbia, and ska–and the powerful chants of Petru Guelfucci’s Corsica.

A small label with a lot of promise.


Cosmic Cowboy: Tuvan musician Kongar-ool Ondar.



On the East Coast, industry leader Ellipsis Arts is making huge waves with a series of gorgeously packaged (in stiff cardboard jackets and 64-page full-color booklets) and extensively annotated recordings from the four corners of the globe. Klezmer Music: A Marriage of Heaven & Earth traces the evolution of this Eastern European Jewish/Gypsy hybrid, from traditional wedding songs to the post-bop stylings of Naftule’s Dream. In a similar vein, Jali Kunda: Griots of West Africa & Beyond blends traditional African griot music (the roots of American blues) and contemporary collaborations, featuring avant-classical composer Philip Glass, jazzmen Pharoah Sanders and Bill Laswell, and kora master Foday Musa Suso.

Fans of Central Asian throat singing and polyphonic overtones (and you know who you are) shouldn’t miss Deep in the Heart of Tuva: Cowboy Music from the Wild East, a haunting collection from the recently opened Mongolian republic. The region, and its strangely powerful music, came centerstage in the ’80s (Folkways Records did release a hard-to-find sampler of crude Tuvan folk singing in the ’60s), thanks to the efforts of the late American physicist Richard Feynman, who died just before becoming eligible to realize a lifelong dream of traveling there.

This meticulously annotated recording comes with everything you need to know about slaughtering sheep according to the laws of Genghis Khan (don’t forget to say a prayer for its soul) and the numerous complex techniques that compose an other-worldly art that until recently was thought by Western musicologists to be impossible–namely, that one individual can sing a three-part harmony and a haunting melody.

No overdubs–just heaps of soul.

Also recommended: If I’d Been Born an Eagle (Shanachie) by Huun-Huur-Tu, a spellbinding ensemble of Tuvan throat singers.

For the socially and politically conscious, Divine Divas: A World of Women’s Voices (Rounder) offers a chance to savor 37 of the worlds most fascinating female singers while donating a few bucks to the United Nations Development Fund for Women. This three-CD companion to last year’s stunning Global Divas: Voices of Women from the World is a seamless survey of styles from Appalachia to Zimbabwe.

Musically, it’s, er, all over the map.

What’s amazing–besides punk-folkie Ani DeFranco’s reinvention of that gospel classic “Amazing Grace”–is the ease with which these tracks segue, from the rhythmically complex, Cuban sexteto-style bolero son of Colombia’s Toto la Momposina to the simple elegance of Navajo folk singer Sharon Burch to the dazzling West African soukous rave-up of Nayanka Bell, Tshala Muana, and Djanka Diabate.

There’s so much excitement, in fact, that you’ll want to settle down with the sexy Cuban stylings of Boleros (Corason) by Armando Garzon, the man the Cuban press has dubbed “the black angel with the velvet voice.”

Eat your heart out, Eddie Vedder.

From the May 22-28, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Talking Pictures

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Talking Pictures

Stressed for Success


Mark Fellman

High Anxiety: Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino take a most excellent adventure.

Anxiety expert crashes Romy and Michele’s party

By David Templeton

Writer David Templeton specializes in taking interesting people to interesting movies in his ongoing quest for the ultimate post-film conversation. This week he sends author-therapist Robert Gerzon to see the sweetly goofy Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.

ACCORDING TO CERTAIN records at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, Robert Gerzon–graduating class of 1963–has been deceased for well over 30 years. This may explain why he’s never been invited to any high school reunions.

“It’s the best reason I’ve ever heard for not attending your reunion,” he admits. Gerzon is speaking, not from the grave but from Concord, Mass., where he’s very much alive, writing and building a therapy practice specializing in anxiety issues. It was only five years ago that he discovered his untimely death.

“I got this list back in the mail,” he explains, “and my name was way at the end, and I was listed as deceased. It was very funny, but also a little disturbing. “

And speaking of reunions, what’s with all these movies and plays about high school reunions? Now there are two movies: Grosse Pointe Blank–about a hit man attending his 10-year reunion as therapy–and the unexpectedly wise and sweet Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, the story of two underemployed, not-very-bright friends (Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow) who decide to attend their high school posing as successful businesswomen.

I asked Gerzon, whose accessible new book, Finding Serenity in the Age of Anxiety (Macmillan, 1997), will be released this month, to go see Romy and Michele, a film he’d been planning to avoid. Having seen the film, I felt Romy and friend could benefit from a good therapist.

“This is something that people go and talk to their therapists about,” he says, having confessed his pleasant surprise at the film’s good-natured sensitivity to the potential trauma of facing a roomful of fellow alumni.

“When people go to their high school reunions they think about those basic questions. ‘Who am I? What am I doing with my life? Am I good enough?’ This whole thing of ‘What are these people going to think of me?’

“We think it should be easy, but for some of us the reunion is a very anxious time.”

In his book, Gerzon separates anxiety, an “amorphous and ill-defined phenomenon,” into three specific flavors: “Toxic Anxiety” is worry, insomnia, butterflies in the stomach, which, if unresolved, can develop into obsessive-compulsive disorders and phobias. “Natural Anxiety” is “the good kind–intelligent anxiety that helps us plan for the future.” “Sacred Anxiety” is all the big-ticket stuff–existential, spiritual anxiety, anxiety about life, those ‘Who am I?’ issues.

So which type are Romy and Michele struggling with?

“Like most people,” he suggests, “they’re experiencing a mixture of all three. I do believe that Sacred Anxiety underlies all our other anxieties because it is the most fundamental. Romy and Michele were certainly dealing with that–the ‘what am I worth?’ stuff–but they had also clearly been enmeshed in [Toxic Anxiety] since high school, a time whenToxic Anxiety sort of runs the show.

“The movie illustrates how hard it is to sit down and really think about our lives. That’s what Romy and Michele were avoiding. But this big event just plunged them right into it.

“The reunion became a wonderful therapeutic moment,” Gerzon continues. “They took away the power that these people had had all their lives, and by so doing things started to change for them.”

Gerzon won’t be facing another reunion until, let’s see, 2003. Is he planning to attend that one?

“I’m probably ready–at the age of 51–to go to a high school reunion,” he jests. “Of course, everyone will be surprised I’m still alive. Maybe I can claim some sort of divine status,” he chuckles.

From the May 15-21, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Pepper Spray

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Pepper Spray

Canned Heat

Did police pepper spray kill
Dustin Harley Clark?

By Greg Cahill

Hot-wired to his crackling nervous system by cheap crank and two hits of low-grade blotter acid, Dustin Harley Clark could feel his demons closing in. It was shortly after 3 o’clock in the morning on Sept. 6 when neighbors in the Roseland district of Santa Rosa first phoned 911 to report a white, blonde-haired male stripping off his clothing, behaving bizarrely, and howling in the night.

Two patrol units from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department responded to the calls. Deputy Joe Quinn found Clark, 23, standing in the roadway on Tara Drive. Clark was wild-eyed, stark naked, screaming that he was God, and insisting that he was being chased by the devil. Strung out from a “hard run” of methamphetamines, Clark had complained a couple of days earlier to his sister–at whose house he was staying in the area–that he feared for his sanity. Shortly after midnight, Clark and a friend dropped a couple of hits of LSD.

It took just 20 minutes for Clark’s demons to emerge.

Squaring off on Tara Drive, Quinn ordered Clark to lie on the ground. According to police reports, Clark stopped in front of Quinn’s patrol car, flailing his arms and yelling incoherently. Clark lunged at the deputy then turned and ran. Quinn hopped in his car and gave case, followed closely by a K-9 unit driven by Deputy Dave Smith.

At the intersection of Schlee Way and Tara Drive, Clark stopped and turned to face the deputies. Once again Quinn ordered Clark to lie down. Instead, Clark sat on the pavement, his mind reeling from powerful hallucinatory drugs and adrenaline.

Quinn pulled a canister of pepper spray from his utility belt and ordered Clark to lie down as Smith let his leashed police dog out of the back seat of his patrol car. Clark saw the dog, panicked, shrieked, and pushed himself up off the ground. Quinn discharged the pepper spray, hitting Clark squarely in the face. Clark wiped the hot fluid from his eyes and charged Quinn in a rage, kneeing him in the right thigh.

Naked and drenched in sweat, Clark wiggled from Quinn’s grasp. He charged the police dog and turned again on Quinn, who struck a couple of “glancing blows” to the suspect with a service flashlight, hitting Clark on the right shoulder and left side of the head. Clark broke away and turned to face the deputies again. Smith unleashed his snarling dog, which bit Clark several times.

Finally, Quinn and Smith wrestled Clark to the ground, lying on top of him. Quinn put Clark in an “arm bar” restraint; Smith bent Clark’s legs back in a hog-tie position. Clark fought back violently and then suddenly calmed down. That’s when Quinn noticed that Clark’s face had turned blue as he went into cardiac arrest. Paramedics arrived within moments and attempted to resuscitate Clark, who already had slipped into a coma.

Six hours later, doctors at Memorial Hospital pronounced Clark dead.

Lingering Doubts

The Sheriff’s Department asked the Santa Rosa Police Department to investigate the case, a customary procedure when a law enforcement agency is involved in the death of a suspect. Since Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Ihde also acts as the county coroner, the SRPD contracted with the San Francisco medical examiner to perform the autopsy on Clark’s remains. The conclusion: methamphetamine poisoning.

Case closed.

Yet questions about Clark’s fatal run-in with police linger. Clark’s mother, denied compensation in October in her county claim, has retained Santa Rosa attorney Michael Fiumara to file a wrongful death lawsuit in the case. Though toxicology results show that both speed and LSD were present in Clark’s bloodstream, the circumstances surrounding his death closely fit the profile of those who stand a good chance of dying in custody after struggling with police and being pepper-sprayed.

In California, law enforcement personnel use pepper spray once an hour. Once a month–or in one out of every 600 cases–a person dies after being pepper-sprayed by the police. In most of the cases, the victims are obese (at five-foot-nine and 205 pounds, Clark was slightly heavy for his height), middle-aged, under the influence of speed or cocaine, and engaged in frenzied and often bizarre behavior. Some are experiencing a psychotic episode that has nothing to do with drugs. Often the victim is placed on his stomach and hog-tied by police. In almost every case, the victim has a heart attack. Usually the victim stops breathing just as he begins to calm down.

“We are finding that in a large percentage of these deaths individuals may have a significant amount of drugs in their system–cocaine, methamphetamine, whatever,” says John Crew, American Civil Liberties Union police procedures expert. “But the toxicology reports come back suggesting that the levels [of these drugs] aren’t at a point normally thought to be lethal. These are excited individuals suffering either from mental illness [or from drug-induced psychosis], so police come upon someone acting in a very bizarre fashion–sometimes even violently–and usually either naked or partially disrobed, an indication of increased body temperature often because of the drugs.

“In 100 percent of these cases police use the pepper spray and it doesn’t work.”

Hot Stuff

The active ingredient of pepper spray is oleoresin capsicum, or OC, an oily substance derived from the dried extracts of chili or cayenne pepper. The resin is blended with a water or oil and mixed with some form of alcohol base. It is injected into a canister and dispensed with the help of an inert gas in short bursts in the form of a stream or fog.

When a person is dosed with pepper spray, the eyes swell and close instantly; mucous membranes become inflamed; coughing, choking, or shortness of breath accompany the excruciating pain. It is reportedly much more potent than tear gas or Mace.

It also is a hot item in the growing law enforcement arsenal. Since the mid-’80s, the man most responsible for pitching pepper spray to the police is FBI Special Agent Thomas Ward, ex-chief of chemical weapons training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. He zealously urged federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to buy the stuff–especially the Cap-Stun brand–assuring them that it is 100 percent safe.

Last February, Ward abruptly resigned from the FBI and pleaded guilty to taking nearly $600,000 in payoffs from the company that made Cap-Stun.

Despite claims that pepper spray is safe, there never has been a comprehensive health study of its effects. The chemical is not regulated by any federal drug or consumer product agency. In California, one of the last states to approve the use of pepper spray, a Cal-EPA Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment survey into the possibly lethal effect of pepper spray has succumbed to budget cuts.

Yet, OEHHA Director Carol Henry already had seen enough preliminary data to inform state Attorney General Dan Lungren in August 1993 that her agency was “concerned that in each [in-custody death] incident, untoward reaction to [pepper spray] may be the contributing cause of death, or may have exacerbated underlying conditions such as pre-existing disease or drug use to cause cardiac or respiratory failure.”

Lungren did not heed her warning. Instead, three weeks later, he approved certification of pepper-spray products for civilian use.

No Guidelines

A 1995 ACLU report, “Pepper Spray Update: More Fatalities, More Questions,” examines 26 fatal cases between 1993 and 1995. It notes that state scientists have warned for several years that so little is known about the residual effects of pepper spray that medical examiners may not know what to look for during an autopsy, a real problem since there is no red flag indicating its role in a death.

The major manufacturer of pepper spray for California law enforcement has advised that police use just a single one-second burst of the chemical or no more than two half-second bursts. “Anything more than that, according to the manufacturer, is creating a health hazard,” says Crew.

While the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department has set guidelines for the use of pepper spray, those guidelines lack any details about the amount of the gas that may be administered. “There’s nothing specific [in the guidelines] about the length or burst,” says Sonoma County Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Dragos, who has provided chemical weapons training to deputies. “No set guidelines. A two- or three-second burst or a three- to five-second burst. … It hinges more on what you’re dealing with.

“If you’re fighting for your life, you may use half a canister.”

It’s impossible to know exactly how much pepper spray Quinn used on Clark, but police records obtained by the Sonoma County Independent show that the blast fired from his canister most likely exceeded the dosage recommended by manufacturers. In an interview with SRPD investigators, Quinn said he decided to use pepper spray because Clark appeared to be high on drugs and the deputy “didn’t want to go physical on him. … It was a good steady shot. It should have incapacitated him, but he just let out a scream, wiped his face, and got up.”

How dangerous is prolonged exposure to pepper spray? “You have people who die after they have been sprayed,” Steven Beazer, president of Advanced Technologies, a manufacturer of pepper spray devices, told the Los Angeles Times in 1995. “Does pepper-spray have a role in some of those deaths? I will say yes. It is going to have an effect.

“These are weapons,” he added. “Clearly this is not a breath freshener or an underarm deodorant.”

Changes Proposed

In San Francisco, where police are at the center of a couple of high-profile in-custody deaths involving pepper spray, District Attorney Terence Hallinan had enough questions about the weapon to ban its use by his investigators.

The ACLU has stopped short of calling for a ban on pepper spray. However, the organization has proposed model policies. For instance, those guidelines recommend that pepper spray not be used on excited, overweight individuals exhibiting signs of possible psychosis or drug abuse; and that officers should not place a subject who has been sprayed on his or her stomach or side for a period longer than needed to apply handcuffs.

“We have called for careful, strict policies controlling how the weapon is used and mandating how a suspect should be handled after pepper spray has been used,” Crew says. “We also are calling for a thorough study on the health ramifications of this weapon–health studies that have not been done. We recognize that it’s a challenge for law enforcement and that these individuals are the most difficult to bring under control.

“On the other hand, from an officer’s safety standpoint, if as we believe there is substantially less of a chance that pepper spray is going to be effective in these kinds of situations, then it’s in the officer’s best interest not to think it’s going to work.”

Reporter Paula Harris contributed to this article.

From the May 15-21, 1997 issue of theSonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

The Scoop

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Brave Changes

By Bob Harris

A WHILE BACK, I wrote that honoring baseball legend Jackie Robinson means more than just retiring his number. It means continuing to overcome racism, both in baseball and in real life.

Let’s begin.

Here’s a way to gradually build alternatives to team names like the Redskins, Indians, Braves, and Chiefs. (Yeah, it’s cosmetic, but ideas matter. Ask Rosa Parks.) I grew up as a Cleveland baseball fan, so that’s the team I’ll use as an example. The idea can work anywhere.

The Indians’ mascot is Chief Wahoo, a red Sambo that most Clevelanders honestly don’t realize is an embarrassment to a troubled town trying hard to present a sophisticated face. Regarding the logo, fans fall into three categories: (A) Those who love Wahoo. Most don’t mind that others disagree, but they dislike protests that distract from their enjoyment of the game. (B) Those who love the team but aren’t quite comfortable with the logo. They’d like to cheer for the Indians in a less offensive way. (C) Those for whom changing the mascot has become a priority. Demands from this last group to dump Chief Wahoo have so far created only animosity. That’s largely because protesters have so far offered nothing better than criticism.

That hardens everyone.

The solution? Create a positive alternative–one cool enough that people will eventually choose it voluntarily. Fans who prefer not to wear Wahoo can simply begin using a different name and logo on their own, one with real appeal to anyone who adores baseball history: the Cleveland Spiders. (Sure, it sounds a little goofy at first. Stay with me on this.)

Cleveland’s team wasn’t always called the Indians. In 1900, they were the Blues. They were the Broncos in 1902, and then the Naps until 1904. They weren’t the Indians until 1905–named after Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian who was a major star in 1897. Sockalexis played for the Cleveland Spiders.

The Spiders were the first major league franchise in Cleveland. In 1892, they also became the first to reach the playoffs, where they lost the championship to Boston. (That should feel familiar to any real Cleveland fan.)

Although they never won a title, the Spiders contended every year until 1898, when the owner pulled a fast one and shipped all the good players to his other team in St. Louis. (That feels really familiar.)

Baseball fans love nostalgia. In Cleveland, jackets and caps from the pennant years of 1954, 1948, and 1920 are considered stylish. So how much hipper can you get than the Spiders, who featured Cy Young in his prime and played at League Park, Cleveland’s equivalent to Ebbets Field or old Comiskey?

If Spiders merchandise retains the Indians’ color scheme, then everybody’s rooting for the same team here–just in his or her own way. And dialogue over the existing name will be vastly improved for everyone. Spiders shirts, caps, and jackets don’t yet exist. They should.

Here’s how:

First, somebody who cares prints up buttons, small pennants, bumper stickers, etc. and distributes them outside Jacobs Field for free, along with business cards providing an explanation and contact info for media and investors. A local radio station, magazine, or even sporting goods store can cover the cost with ads on the backs of the cards. When the Spiders idea gains some publicity and support, somebody with money will invest in the bigger stuff. (Maybe eventually the Indians themselves, if the demand is large enough.)

The Spiders name has a lot of other pluses–you can instantly imagine a cool mascot and a great logo–but that’s getting ahead of the game.

Personally, I’m rooting for Jim Thome, David Justice, and the rest of the Spiders from now on. It sounds strange at first, but come on, folks–there’s already a cemetery right across the street from Jacobs Field. Of course this team should be called the Spiders. Cleveland’s baseball team was named the same year Birth of a Nation became a blockbuster. Honoring the Klan isn’t acceptable anymore. Is Chief Wahoo? The Spiders alternative gives fans a way to change their minds at their own pace, in a way that honors the city and its team while embarrassing no one.

If the idea works, Cleveland’s–dare I say it?–brave example will show fans in Atlanta, Kansas City, Washington, and across the country how to come up with their own solutions to the problem of offensive pro and college mascots.

No matter where you live, similar alternative names, fitting each city’s history, surely exist. Let’s show the way.

Think globally, root locally.

From the May 15-21, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

The Playwright’s Festival

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The Playwright’s Festival

First Act


Michael Amsler

Play Right: Doug Stout believes that plays should rearrange your molecules.

Worth, wonder, and work

By Gretchen Giles

LONG BEFORE Plato’s shadow tales were first cast by firelight onto the cave wall, humankind had shared the very particular trait of wanting to act out the stories of their lives. Yet that most ancient of art forms–the play–is still enjoying the mighty flicker mightily.

In Sonoma County, the boards are creaking as new stages appear and older companies are reinvigorated. And while William Shakespeare and Neil Simon maintain a constant companionship with local audiences, the real news is in the upswell of original works written by local playwrights.

As the dramaturge for the Sonoma County Repertory and Main Street theaters, Doug Stout knows all about this. Stewarding Sonoma County Rep’s innovative monthly Monday Night Muse series of staged readings, Stout is constantly on the lookout for new work that can stand the competition in this July’s New Play Festival.

Worthy plays are often first tried at Monday Night Muse, with rehearsed actors reading directly from the script on a bare stage. Generally, Tuesday finds the playwright hunched over the keyboard, rewriting.

Working with a team of two other readers, Stout is busy culling his voluminous mail down to six or so plays, one of which will receive a fully costumed and set-designed treatment; the runners-up receiving staged readings.

Surely he knows what makes a play good.

“This is where it becomes real tricky,” Stout chuckles, seated in Sonoma County Rep’s office. “My preface is that if I give you a formula for how to select the best play or what makes a good play, someone will write a play violating that formula that will be better than anything in the formula.

“However,” he says, crossing his leg, “I would say that a play should have drive–immediately it should pull you and push you until the very end.

“‘Going to the theater ought to rearrange your molecules,'” Stout continues, quoting actress Glenn Close. “If it doesn’t rearrange your molecules, if you don’t feel some sense of worth or wonder–not necessarily both–when you leave the theater, then the play isn’t worth doing.”

That stern caveat aside, Stout shakes his head. “I’m a playwright, poet, novelist, and I’ve written many essays. Very few times in my life have I produced anything with great worth and wonder,” he laughs. “I wish it could happen more. Most of the plays we get don’t have those qualities.”

Writing is hard enough without having to actually make up words and put them in other people’s mouths. Well, perhaps not hard for everyone.

NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD actor Matt Farnsworth is seated on the hot patio of his parent’s Santa Rosa home. Inside, his smiling mother works at the dining room table, and outside lies a copy of Farnsworth’s The Pale Monkey-Dirt of Love. One flips idly through this story of anguished young love to see the words “fuck” and “syphilis” repeated hypnotically on a page. And Farnsworth’s mother is still smiling.

Actually, she’s got plenty to grin about, as this young playwright just had Pale Monkey-Dirt and another one-act play produced at his former school. An actor who appears with Main Street and Sonoma County Rep, Farnsworth appears to come easily to the playwright’s craft.

“There’s something with the language and how characters talk to each other that I find very appealing,” he says. “I guess in a sense it’s very limited, because you can’t explain everything or write out a paragraph about what this place looks like or what these people are feeling–they have to express it through what they’re saying. I think that’s what really drew me to it.”

Santa Rosa Junior College English instructor Bob Duxbury sits in a rehearsal studio, grinning at his own words as student actors wrap themselves around the dialogue of his one-act play Caltrans.

Slated to be performed May 19-20 with four student-penned plays at the campus’ Playwright’s Festival, Caltrans pokes ardent fun at the whole California thing.

Duxbury’s efforts include a play about the inequities of Prop. 187 that was recently given a live performance on KPFA (94.1 FM). “I try to write about political things, but I got so much resistance from my classes while I was writing [that play],” he sighs. “Young Americans want everything filtered through the guise of relationships.”

Noting that Caltrans is being mounted for only about $15, Duxbury is enthused about the democratic nature of live performance, an element that keeps play-writing interesting for him. “There are an awful lot of gaps out there in American society that theater can address,” he says. “People don’t read, but people will sit still to be read at.”

Marc Bojanowski and Nichola Penney both have plays in the Playwright’s Festival. How do they feel about their craft? “I despise it,” answers Bojanowski softly. “At the same time, I don’t think that it’s something that I’ll ever be able to stop doing.”

The Playwright’s Festival features five original one-act plays Monday-Tuesday, May 19-20. Burbank Auditorium, SRJC, 1501 Mendocino Ave. 8 to 10 p.m. Admission is free. Call 527-4418 for details.

From the May 15-21, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Free Range Chicken

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Free Range Chicken

Fowl Play

Hunt and Peck: Rocky’s birds range free, but they’re almost the only ones.

Ruffling feathers over labels

By Steve Bjerklie

PASSED IN 1906 on the heels of the national outrage following publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the Federal Meat Inspection Act was given a parallel act for poultry in 1957, and was itself revised in 1967. But when it comes to the words natural, organic, and free range–in fact, even fresh and frozen–the federal law is and always was toothless. It doesn’t guarantee a thing.

Just ask Allen Shainsky, Petaluma’s inventor of “Rocky the Range Chicken.” “Free range,” he says with a combination of bitterness and irony, “doesn’t mean anything.”

You’d never know it from Shainsky’s poultry. Thousands of birds meander in one of Petaluma Poultry Processors’ chicken houses like cocktail guests waiting for something interesting to happen. On occasion, if the time and temperature are right, a bird will lead a march outdoors for a bit of sun. The birds look fat and happy–the very definition of “free range.”

Indeed they are. Shainsky’s chickens, sold under the “Rocky the Range Chicken” label were the first to be designated “free range” back in 1986. But while Shainsky has continued to define the parameters of the term at his company, he’s seen other poultry companies use “free range” strictly as a marketing gimmick. Legally, the phrase means nothing. There is no law or regulation defining “free range.”

That’s not the worst of it. “Free range” has come to mean in the consumer mind any bird allowed to roam uncaged. After all, isn’t that why they’re juicier? But all chickens raised for meat are allowed to roam freely; only egg-layers are typically kept in cages. True, only Rocky chickens and a few others have regular access to the out-of-doors, but most consumers don’t know that nearly all commercially raised turkeys also have access to the outside, including the Butterballs scorned by foodies as the very definition of a “chemical bird.”

Another myth: if a package of chicken in a supermarket’s cooler is labeled “fresh,” that means it isn’t frozen, right? Wrong. A campaign by California poultry companies that persuaded the state government three years ago to ban the use of “fresh” on chicken shipped rock-hard frozen from out of state was eventually nullified in court on grounds of federal pre-emption. A “fresh” chicken can still be stiff as steel.

Another misnomer: poultry labeled “hormone-free.” Of course. Hormones have been illegal for all poultry since passage of the original poultry inspection act 40 years ago. Yes, Rocky the Range Chicken is quite hormone-free–and so is Foster Farms chicken, Safeway chicken, Tyson chicken, and all the rest. What sets Rocky apart is that this foodstuff is also antibiotic-free, unusual in the industry.

“Natural” is another meaningless term. USDA’s legal definition of “natural” for federally inspected meat and poultry products (which is all meat and poultry destined for interstate commerce) is “no artificial ingredients, and only minimally processed.”

That covers just about all fresh meat and poultry, and so Foster’s, Tyson’s, and Safeway’s chickens qualify for this word, too–not to mention fresh steaks from anywhere. Heck, by USDA’s standards a Burger King Whopper is natural.

“‘We raise our animals without antibiotics or hormones, which is how I define ‘natural,’ but USDA seems to think it has no labeling jurisdiction over animal production. So consumers are confused, and I don’t blame them,” says Mel Coleman, founder of Coleman Natural Products, the pioneer processor of natural meat and by far the largest-volume processor of natural meat.

“I feel just like Mel,” says Shainsky. “Conventional chicken can use ‘natural,’ and that’s totally ridiculous. Right now anyone can say almost anything on a label about their chicken. They’re just hoodwinking the public.”

But while Shainsky at this point can only fume when he sees “free range” or “natural” on a poultry label from a company he knows provides little or no outside access (“I mean, in Pennsylvania they’ve got snow on the ground from November to May; no chicken’s going to go outside in that!”), the federal government may soon clear up the wording on that tricky term “organic” — for which the Feds have no set standard, not even for fruits and vegetables.

The Organic Food Act of 1990 set into motion the process of developing a national standard for the word; the proposal now rests on the desk of Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman and at the Office of Management and Budget.

Meanwhile, fat and happy chickens continue to make their home on Rocky’s range nearby in Petaluma. In the poultry houses, they walk in and out of the shadows like a convention of carnival barkers. The battle over what words legally describe them seems to concern the murmuring convention not in the least.

Steve Bjerklie was editor of Meat & Poultry magazine for 15 years.

From the May 15-21, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team. © 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Swing Time

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Swing Time

Cocktail Notion


Jitterbugs: These young whippersnappers really cut a rug.

Photo by Chris Gardner



Ballroom dancing, vintage fashions, cocktails– are we becoming civilized again?

By Christian M. Chensvold

THE FEDORA SITS on my head with a supercilious tilt. My shoes are black and white two-tones visible from a block away. A pair of polka-dot suspenders holds up my check trousers. Ruby answers the door, her beaming face framed by bangs cut straight across her brow, her hair cut in a Louise Brooks­styled bob. Her painted lips are a deep luscious red. A vintage dress strewn with flowers hugs her shapely figure, and her dainty purse is covered with beads whose shine has grown dull with the passing of time.

We look happily at each other. We look like our grandparents.

An hour later, my jacket off and sleeves rolled up, we’re on the dance floor stomping out an East Coast swing at the Moonlight Restaurant and Bar in downtown Santa Rosa. Tiny James and the Swing Kings are pounding out their mixture of uptown swing at a blitzkrieg pace.

A pair of pretty young women join us, improvising dance moves and giggling at the roomful of staring eyes. But the spark catches fire, and suddenly the joint is jumpin’. A half dozen more–all in their 20s–crowd themselves into the minuscule dancing space. They appear to have no idea what they’re doing, twirling and spinning to clashing rhythms in a fit of dancing discord. But they’re swing dancing, and if their feet aren’t in the right place, at least their hearts are.

SCIENCE PREACHES that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So after years of barbaric fashions, melody-deprived alt-rock, and the swilling of beer, numerous young people are paving a gilded path back to sartorial elegance, swing music, and that great American institution–the cocktail. From Manhattan nightclubs to Bimbo’s 365 Club, Cafe du Nord, and the Essex Supper Club in San Francisco, everywhere there is a fog bank of cigar smoke, a deluge of martinis, and a stampede of ballroom dancing. Dubbed the “Swing Scene,” “Lounge,” and “Cocktail Culture,” retro is back with a vengeance.

Times change, and for now the pendulum swings.

Ever since Tony Bennett performed on “MTV Unplugged” in 1995, Generation Xers have slowly trickled into stores seeking out music that was once a target of mockery. Swing, says Karl Byrn, music manager at Copperfield’s Annex in Santa Rosa, is “the alternative to alternative. It catches people falling through the cracks. It has a kitschiness to it, and it’s part of a scene, which gives it more appeal than classic jazz.”

Twentysomethings are more likely to buy new bands rehashing the old than Miles Davis, says Byrn. He cites the Squirrel Nut Zippers, who play June 12 at the Luther Burbank Center, as an “immensely popular” example. The North Carolina­based band offers an intense form of danceable jazz played by musicians just out of a 12-step program for punk rockers. Byrn has also noticed a growing interest in tango music, fueled in part by Madonna’s retro role in Evita.

Though several years old in the Bay Area, the swing scene is just getting on its feet in Sonoma County. Dedicated ballroom dancers have always been here, but now what was once seen only in the dance hall can be glimpsed in the nightclub: people engaged in the intimate union of partner dancing.

One by one terpsichore neophytes under 40 are signing up for classes and showing off their moves whenever a jazz or blues band plays a local club.

More tips on swingin’ fashions, dances, and drinks.

JAMES SANDERS, aka Tiny James, really is tiny–at least in years. The 26-year-old Santa Rosa guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter is one of many young whippersnappers fed up with what he sees as the artificiality and insincerity of contemporary music. Sanders believes that most postmodern pop has no soul, and has opted instead to pay homage to such jazzy musical forefathers as Count Basie and Benny Goodman. The Swing Kings play primarily in San Francisco at the Hi-Ball Lounge, Coconut Grove, and other venues where swing sycophants put on the ritz and show off their dance moves, though you can occasionally catch them at the Moonlight or Petaluma’s Mystic Theater. Sanders quietly laments that swing hasn’t caught on as much in the county, citing a lack of familiarity with the music and a shortage of venues as the reason.

After a quick break at the Moonlight, the Swing Kings jump into another set. Sanders’ white shoes kick in the air as he gives his guitar strings a vigorous massage, while trumpet player Kendall Holstein waits patiently for his solo, decked out in a fedora, vest, and pocket watch.

MEANWHILE, over at Santa Rosa’s Finley Hall, the dance floor is bathed in an atmospheric darkness dappled with colored lights and the sparkling scintillations of the silver ball that hangs from the ceiling like a shiny moon. On stage the DJ, a hierophant on a stereo altar, cues the tunes. The whole effect is painfully disco.

The dancing, however, is strictly ballroom. It is the third Friday of the month and about 100 people spanning three generations have gathered for this city-sponsored dance. On the stereo, Dion and the Belmonts are crooning “The Wanderer” while couples follow along with a lively West Coast swing. Dress is stylish but not formal, and there is no drinking. Here it’s dancing for dancing’s sake.

Ruby and I arrive in the middle of a cha-cha and rush to the floor to finish the number. Latin music always seems to create the most excitement at a ballroom dance, as if a warm tropical breeze were wafting from the speakers along with the music.

As a rumba begins to softly throb its Cuban rhythm, 29-year-old Peter Zimmerman sits beside the dance floor watching the action with a curious fascination. Dressed in jeans and a plain cotton pullover, but sporting brown wing-tip shoes, Zimmerman has dropped by with a group of 20-something friends, some of whom can dance. However, Zimmerman is a wallflower: having bought the shoes, he doesn’t know a single step. But he wants to learn–badly. “I think it’s essential for courting a woman,” he says.

“This is a lost art,” he shakes his head. “To lead a woman–wow, that’s a beautiful thing.”


Michael Amsler

Glitter Ball: Ryan Noble and Jessica Capitani wend their way around the floor at the Finley Center’s monthly do.

ALL THIS is a world away from the postmodern nightclub scene, where techno music blares at deafening decibels while the horny and overperfumed writhe to a pornophonic beat. Here dancers have little or no physical contact with each other and neither succeed nor fail at standard steps because, of course, there aren’t any. Instead, men and women bump and grind like isolated molecules in a kind of kinetic solipsism, and the result is chaos.

Some say that once you’ve tasted ballroom, you’ll never go back, but there is a subtle strain of melancholy beneath retro’s return. For a culture to be in the throes of the past presupposes the belief that to take another step forward–to embrace the new millennium–is to fall into an abyss.

And so we stumble backward through the decades as if searching for something we’ve lost, like Orpheus plunging the underworld to recover his beloved Eurydice.

Could American have reached a point where the only sentiment left is nostalgia?

A Zeitgeist haunts the attic of our collective unconscious, where all our old things lie heavy with dust. Dad’s hi-fi is there, along with Sinatra on vinyl. Mom’s prom dress rests in an old trunk, along with pictures of grandma and grandpa when they were courting, dressed to the nines and dancing the jitterbug.

We dust off these old things to amuse ourselves, our sentiments vacillating between irony and fond remembrance.

Cocktail culture has been called a return to the phallic order, the revitalization of rituals that remind us of a time when life was more predictable because men and women knew what was expected of them. The swinging club where a guy in a suit buys a martini for a doll in a dress is romanticized as a social sphere where for a few hours everything is all right in the world. And when the guy leads his doll to the dance floor, the two retreat into a life- and love-affirming sanctuary far from the bombastic invective, the thrust and parry of blame, and the numbing shell-shock of our contemporary gender wars.

It’s after midnight. The night is over, and the music is but a memory. My date and I linger on her doorstep. After an awkward moment I kiss her on the cheek. Then I whistle my way back to the car. She blows me a kiss before closing the front door.

And I laugh when I realize that not only do we look like our grandparents, we are acting like them.

From the May 15-21, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?

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Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?

Buddha Boy


The Eightfold Path Less Traveled: ‘Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?’ is spiritually uplifting.

Zen and the art of filmmaking

By Greg Cahill

ALPHA WAVE ALERT! South Korean filmmaker Bae Yong-Kyun’s stunning 1989 film Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? is rife with Zen Buddhist doctrine, haunting visual allegories, and mystical imagery. No sex. No chase scenes. No explosions. No gratuitous violence. Just a subtle lesson about the meaning of life.

Its cryptic title, taken from an ancient Zen koan, or riddle, is a starting point for cinematic truth-seekers prepared to receive the magnificently photographed–and often glacially slow–scenes that serve as the primer for the elusive Zen mode of perception. The film–which screens May 8-10 at the Sonoma Film Institute–breaks down preconceptions about life and religion and flirts with the higher reaches of the mind in a way one never would have thought possible from gradations of light and color flickering on a silver screen.

It is widely regarded as one of the most visually stunning films ever made.

“I am convinced that Zen offers the possibility of discovering the reality of things and the foundations of the soul with only intuition, which is possible when we have cleared all the accumulated concepts from our consciousness,” says filmmaker Bae Yong-Kyun, who wrote, directed, produced, photographed, and edited this impressive work.

Welcome to nirvana with a box of ju-ju bees.

Bodhi-Dharma is a cinematic triumph that has earned un certain regard at the Cannes Film Festival and the coveted Golden Leopard at the Lorcarno Film Festival, the first-ever international directors’ award in the 70-year history of Korean filmmaking.

The film’s minimal plot tells the story of an aging monk, Hye Gok (Yi Pan Yong); his adolescent student, Ki Bong (Sin Won Sop); and an orphaned child, Hae Jin (Huang Hae Jin), representing the three ages of man. They live together in a remote Zen monastery on Mount Chonan in South Korea. Several of the film’s most striking scenes involve Ki Bong’s rites of passage and his difficult childhood spiritual journey.

The poetic shots of misty meadows, darkened forests, and translucent rock pools evoke the splendor of Ansel Adams’ pastoral photographs and create a seductive bond between the viewer and the film’s stark natural settings and gentle Zen beliefs.

And Yong-Kyun shows a real gift for understatement.

At one point, Ki Bong conducts the ritualistic cremation of his teacher, scattering the ashes in a mountain pool flecked with colorful autumn leaves. The fallen ashes dust his arms and clothes, cling to floating leaves, and intermingle with reflections of overhanging foliage.

It’s a mystical moment in which all things seem to unite. The scene underscores the Zen tenet of harmonious existence with the world. It also serves as a simple, yet powerful, metaphor about life, death, suffering, and transformation. Bernardo Bertolucci wasn’t half as effective as this with 1995’s laughable Little Buddha, starring the gawkish Keanu Reeves as a young truth-seeker.

Clearly, Yong-Kyun has earned his kudos.

“Again and again, the film finds visual analogues for the oneness of the universe and the enlightenment to be found through the renunciation of earthly desires,” the New York Times marveled. “In gazing into the physical world with a fixity, clarity, and depth rarely found in the cinema, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? goes about as far as a film can go in conjuring a meditative state.”

The result is a state of bliss unparalleled in the film world.

Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? screens Thursday, May 8, through Saturday, May 10, at 7:30 p.m. Sonoma Film Institute, Sonoma State University, Darwin Hall, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. Tickets are $2.50-$4.

From the May 8-14, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

The Scoop

Rise Up! By Bob Harris EIGHT SEPARATISTS calling themselves "Soldiers of the Republic of Venice" recently stormed the bell tower in St. Mark's Square and demanded that Venice secede from Italy. Noble? Maybe. Misguided? Definitely. Obviously, everybody has a right to self-determination. But what self-governance actually means has changed drastically,...
Read more

Wine Reviews

Triple PlayMichael AmslerTake Me Out to the Ballgame: Belvedere 1995 Chardonnay has a taste of ash that's perfect for that post-game BBQ.Three winners in the cheap-chard leagueBy Steve BjerklieLONG AGO, when tolerance and patience had not yet come into my life--this goes way, way back, to just before George Steinbrenner's unlikely New York Yankees won the World Series last...
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World Music

Global BeatEvery Picture Tells a Story: Kora master and griot Karunka Suso.Photo by Daniel LaineNorth Bay labels make strong showing in world-music marketBy Greg CahillWHEN PETER BUCK went searching for a hip hook on which to hang his latest side project--Tuatatara's Breaking the Ethers (Epic)--the REM guitarist found the goods in the exotic marimba-driven gamelan sounds of Bali, which...
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Talking Pictures

Stressed for SuccessMark FellmanHigh Anxiety: Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino take a most excellent adventure.Anxiety expert crashes Romy and Michele's partyBy David TempletonWriter David Templeton specializes in taking interesting people to interesting movies in his ongoing quest for the ultimate post-film conversation. This week he sends author-therapist Robert Gerzon to see the sweetly goofy Romy and Michele's High...
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Pepper Spray

Canned HeatDid police pepper spray killDustin Harley Clark?By Greg CahillHot-wired to his crackling nervous system by cheap crank and two hits of low-grade blotter acid, Dustin Harley Clark could feel his demons closing in. It was shortly after 3 o'clock in the morning on Sept. 6 when neighbors in the Roseland district of Santa Rosa first phoned 911 to...
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The Scoop

Brave ChangesBy Bob HarrisA WHILE BACK, I wrote that honoring baseball legend Jackie Robinson means more than just retiring his number. It means continuing to overcome racism, both in baseball and in real life. Let's begin. Here's a way to gradually build alternatives to team names like the Redskins,...
Read more

The Playwright’s Festival

First ActMichael AmslerPlay Right: Doug Stout believes that plays should rearrange your molecules.Worth, wonder, and work By Gretchen GilesLONG BEFORE Plato's shadow tales were first cast by firelight onto the cave wall, humankind had shared the very particular trait of wanting to act out the stories of their lives. Yet that most ancient of art forms--the play--is still...
Read more

Free Range Chicken

Fowl Play Hunt and Peck: Rocky's birds range free, but they're almost the only ones. Ruffling feathers over labels By Steve Bjerklie PASSED IN 1906 on the heels of the national outrage following publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the Federal Meat Inspection Act was given a parallel act...
Read more

Swing Time

Cocktail NotionJitterbugs: These young whippersnappers really cut a rug.Photo by Chris GardnerBallroom dancing, vintage fashions, cocktails-- are we becoming civilized again?By Christian M. ChensvoldTHE FEDORA SITS on my head with a supercilious tilt. My shoes are black and white two-tones visible from a block away. A pair of polka-dot suspenders holds up my check trousers. Ruby answers the...
Read more

Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?

Buddha Boy The Eightfold Path Less Traveled: 'Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?' is spiritually uplifting.Zen and the art of filmmaking By Greg CahillALPHA WAVE ALERT! South Korean filmmaker Bae Yong-Kyun's stunning 1989 film Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? is rife with Zen Buddhist doctrine, haunting visual allegories, and mystical imagery. No sex. No chase...
Read more
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