Black Sparrow Press

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By the Book

By Gretchen Giles

THIS IS A STORY too good to miss retelling. In 1966, Los Angeles resident John Martin–then a 35-year-old manager of an office supply company–came across the poetry of Charles Bukowski, a hard-drinking postal employee whose work had appeared in small literary magazines. Stunned by the immediacy and honesty of Bukowski’s work, Martin drove out to the writer’s home. Bukowski, by his own later admission, was on his “ninth or 10th beer of the morning.” He answered the door and admitted Martin, who asked if the poet had any work he might read. Bukowski jerked a thumb towards the closet. Opening the closet door, Martin was stunned as a waist-high pile of onion-skin manuscripts fell to his feet.

Refusing Bukowski’s offer of a beer (much to the poet’s displeasure), Martin settled down to read. Finally he looked up and offered Bukowski $100 a month for the rest of his life if he would quit his postal job and become a full-time writer. For Bukowski–whose low-rent life was immortalized in the self-scripted 1987 film Barfly with actors Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway–and whose actual rent was only $37 a month, this was one easy decision.

Three weeks later, Martin received a manuscript in the mail. It was Bukowski’s first novel, Postoffice. Selling his collection of D. H. Lawrence first editions for $50,000, Martin founded Black Sparrow Press–the internationally recognized literary house that built Bukowski; the prestigious independent publishing house that Bukowski built. Postoffice has since had 35 printings, with 26 other of the author’s titles to follow.

Now nearly three years after his death at age 73, Bukowski remains one of Black Sparrow’s most profitable writers. “His sales are better than ever,” Martin says from the small, residentially located Santa Rosa office that he shares with three employees and nine cats. “Not only that, but we had a kind of agreement where I, with his knowledge, put aside every year a certain amount of material, and I have enough for at least three or four more books.

“We’ve done two since he died,” Martin continues. “We did a book of letters and a book called Betting on the Muse, which is a big 400-page book of stories and poems. I’ve got at least 1,000 poems that have never been published, plus I’ve got maybe 20 or 30 more stories that have never been published. We’re just doing a new book right now, called Bone Palace Ballet. He thought of the world as kind of a bone palace, beautiful on the outside, but filled with failure and the remains of those who had gone before on the inside.

“But it is a ballet. It shouldn’t be thought of as anything different than what it is,” says Martin of his good friend’s life and work. “He was a great writer; I think that he was the Walt Whitman of our time.”

A tall man in his mid-60s with just-greying red hair, Martin is in a position to make such pronouncements. Staunchly devoted to the complexities of the type of literary prose, poetry, and essay writing that engages the mind but rarely the pocketbook, he publishes only 10 new titles a year, in addition to reprinting such Black Sparrow authors as Wanda Coleman, John Fantes, Robert Kelly, and Diane Wakoski. Huge publishing conglomerates like Random House and others are known to refer authors whose work is thought too brainy for the masses to Black Sparrow.

Martin has even published such better-known names as prolific author Joyce Carol Oates (before she was seduced away to a larger company by much larger royalty numbers), and Morocco-based fiction master Paul Bowles.

“I like to feel that when we did [The Collected Stories of Paul Bowles] in ’78, it started the revival,” says Martin. This resurgence led to Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1990 adaptation of Bowles’ shattering The Sheltering Sky, starring John Malkovich and Debra Winger, in which the author makes a cameo appearance.

“Nobody wanted him,” Martin says incredulously. “He was completely out of print. The last thing that had been in print was a book called A Time of Friendship, and I just saw the opportunity to do all of his stories up to that time in one volume. And a few years later we did another book called Midnight Mass, which was all the stories he had done since, and that’s it. He hasn’t written much since.” Martin, who is able to have very personal relationships with each of his authors owing to his stubborn insistence on keeping his company small, concludes simply, “Paul is 86, going on 87, and I don’t think he’s writing anymore.”

Fiercely independent, Martin has never subsisted on grants or endowments, struggling instead on a path that he has carved for himself without bowing to literary fads or endowments of the strings-attached variety. “Northwestern University puts out a magazine called Triquarterly,” Martin says of his strategy, “and in 1978 or ’80 they put out a big, thick issue that was actually a list and a little history of every independent literary press in the country, about 300 presses. Ten years later, the only one still in existence is Black Sparrow, because those people were living on grants.

“I just never would have put my whole life into this with the idea that I couldn’t get along unless someone else supported me,” he says with ardor. “With Black Sparrow, every book has always paid for the next book. I’ve never lost money on a book, I’ve always sold enough copies, and so,” he shrugs, “I’m around now.”

In addition the quality of the writing it imprints, Black Sparrow–which moved from its Santa Barbara origins to Santa Rosa in 1986–is known for the quality of the books themselves. Pick up one of the creamy, high-quality soft-backs and the design, heft, and feel of the paper alone seduce you to begin turning the pages.

All are designed by Martin’s wife, Barbara, who became so displeased with the graphic quality of the company’s first five books–designed as they were in those early days by the printer with whom Martin had contracted–that, without any training of her own, she took over the press’ look. Today, that look is lauded by design magazines internationally.

“I’m convinced that a lot the books that we sell are due to their appearance,” Martin says with satisfaction. “My wife doesn’t seem to be losing it all; the books are much more beautiful now even than they were 10 to 15 years ago.”

Keeping it small, keeping it personal, keeping it in the family. These are the ingredients for Black Sparrow’s success. These, and the fact that Martin–who until the Unabomber changed post office rules, hand-stamped each book shipment he sent, proclaiming postage metering “too impersonal”–himself reads each of the 1,500 or so manuscripts that come his way every year.

“I pick the books, and I can, with confidence, read and pick 10 books a year,” he says of his decision to keep the press output restricted to reprints and a handful of new titles, eschewing calendars and other folderol. “I couldn’t read and pick 20. Every two weeks I’d have to finish up with a book, and you have to read 10 to pick one. We get so many manuscripts unsolicited a year, but let’s face it: If you were a ballet master, and somebody came in and said, ‘I want to dance with your company,’ and you said ‘OK’ and put on a record, how long would it take you to know whether or not you wanted them to dance with your company?” he chuckles.

“So, you can look at a manuscript and read in it for five minutes or so and know whether you want to go on with it. There are a lot of people writing out there, it’s just awful.”

Awful?

“I mean the writing is awful,” he hastens to add. “It’s not awful that they’re writing. It’s the writing: it’s so lame and pretentious . . . ” He trails off and starts again. “I care much less about the quality of the writing than what the writer is saying, what their books reveals.

“There have been great writers who were not masters of the form. Theodore Dreiser was a great, great writer, but nobody would accuse him of being a great stylist. On the other hand, someone like [novelist] Ronald Firbank is a great stylist, but who would accuse him of being a great writer? Nobody. So, I’m much more interested in a writer who’s really got a vision about something.

“[Ezra] Pound said that there are innovators, masters, and imitators. It’s very true. Your innovator, who’s really doing something for the first time, his writing maybe is more careless and loose and flowing and could be criticized on the basis of form, but he’s the greatest of all. He’s the Beethoven. And then the masters come in and they take what this guy’s made possible, and they really perfect the craft. And they’re great too: the Bachs and the Mozarts.

“And then you’ve got the imitators, and some of them are wonderful too. I mean, is there anything better written than Time magazine?” he laughs. “I mean, the writing in Time magazine is wonderful. If you could get a genius who could write like that, my God! But what does it mean? There’s no vision behind it, it means nothing.”

Vision is something Martin knows well, having had the great good fortune to recognize an innovator when he read one.

“Until I meet Bukowski, I had no idea of becoming a publisher,” he says thoughtfully. “I thought that [managing the office supply company] was what I would be doing for the rest of my life. But when I met Bukowski, and realized that here was this unknown, unpublished genius, I knew that I had the business acumen–if I didn’t try to go too fast–to try to build up a publishing company of my own. So I started it just to publish him and did it for a year and a half, keeping my other job because I had a wife and a child, and then broke loose to do it full time.

“Here I am,” he chuckles, “30 years later.”

From the February 27-March 5, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

Mystery Meat

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No-Brainer

By Steve Bjerklie

NINETY-ONE years ago, journalist Upton Sinclair caused a sensation when he reported, in his muckraking novel The Jungle, that meatpackers in Chicago routinely added rats, dung, nails, borax, tubercular spittle, and human fingers to meat products. Now the government admits that other items not generally considered meat–namely, spinal cord and bone marrow–have been part of the meat supply for years. A field inspector described the meat product processed by advanced meat recovery (AMR) machinery as “blood, bone marrow, and muscle gumbo.”

But new research indicates that bits of brain might also be ground up in meat that’s used as pet food. You think mad cows might be a problem? Try mad cats. That’s at least one documented result of serving brains infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy–BSE, or “mad cow disease”–to kitty in the form of cooked cat food. Mad cats, in fact, have been a problem in the United Kingdom for several years.

The government’s reaction to its own data? “We do not have any public health concerns,” stated Thomas Billy, administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, at a press briefing last week, even though consumption of nerve tissue such as spinal cord and brain is thought to be the primary way human beings contract an always fatal variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from BSE-infected cattle.

A year ago, the British government finally admitted what it had heretofore denied: 10 human deaths so far in Great Britain are attributable to nerve tissue consumption. The ensuing furor almost destroyed the British beef industry. Billy was quick to point out that no mad cows have ever been found in the United States, and the importation of cattle from Great Britain was banned in 1989, but recently the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, following Britain’s lead and hoping to negate the chief way BSE spreads in livestock, proposed a ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feeds.

One consumer spokesperson suggested that the government, which seemed to miss The Jungle‘s primary aim of eliminating horrid working conditions in meat plants, is quite concerned if one cow eats the nerve tissue of another, but now shows only a mild worry if that same nerve tissue winds up on the dinner plates or in the baby food of human beings.

A study conducted by the FSIS found that 58 percent of samples of deboned beef contained marrow and spinal cord, a violation of federal inspection regulations. All of the samples had been deboned on AMR equipment, which forces recoverable meat off of bones by high pressure. The technology has been used widely over the past five years, though last year England and France both banned AMR systems owing to similar findings of marrow and spinal cord.

Billy said at the briefing that he does not know how many U.S. plants use the technology; estimates ranges as high as 75 percent of high-volume beef slaughterhouses processing carcass bones through AMR systems. The resulting deboned meat–or “gumbo,” if you will–is used as an ingredient in sausages, baby food, and some fast-food hamburgers (at least two fast-food chains, McDonald’s and Burger King, specify they will not accept AMR meat).

Despite Billy’s lack of public-health concerns, his agency will quickly institute new visual-inspection procedures to limit marrow and spinal cord from entering the food supply, but will stop short of banning the automatic deboning of neck bones and vertebrae, the sources of spinal cord.

Meanwhile, Dr. Nathan Bauer and his colleagues at Texas A&M University published an abstract last September in The Journal of Veterinary Pathology reporting the bad news on brains: namely, that in a random testing of some 220 lungs of slaughtered cows, seven contained “macroscopically visible pieces of brain tissue,” grey matter that might carry BSE. In other words, brain bits can lead to mad cats. And maybe mad humans, too.

The cattle’s brains get into their lungs from the method by which all cattle are slaughtered in all U.S. beef packing plants: Each animal is “stunned” by means of a bolt of air shot into the brain; moments later the throat of the comatose cow, bull, or steer is slit and the animal dies by loss of blood (which the Humane Slaughter Act deems the safest, most humane, and microbiologically cleanest way to kill a large animal).

Dr. Bauer’s research shows that in the few seconds between stunning and bleeding, pieces of the brain, which is often splattered inside the skull by the “stun gun,” can enter the bloodstream and work their way into the organs. While the problem may be localized to pet food–cattle lungs are not considered by the USDA to be fit for human consumption (though they are eaten in other parts of the world, including Europe)–mad cats and dogs in the house are no picnic.

And though there is yet no proof of it, Bauer’s research suggests that close human contact with mad pets might also prove to be a vector for transfer of spongiform diseases.

All of this leaves consumer organizations wary and angry. They’ve complained about mechanically deboned meat and AMR-processed products for years, claiming that bone particles and marrow are present in deboned meat without any label notification to consumers. But the discovery of bits of spinal cord in AMR meat and pieces of brain in organ meat destined for pet food brings up the very real, very deadly specter of BSE.

“At a minimum, this is a truth-in-labeling issue,” comments Robert Hahn, director of legal affairs for Public Voice for Food & Health Policy, a major consumer-lobbying group. “Consumers do not want to unwittingly eat bone marrow and spinal cord in their ground beef. And with regard to spinal tissue, we believe there is also a potential health issue.” He adds, “As far as we know, BSE does not exist in U.S. cattle. Still, because there are no guarantees, we believe the only prudent course is to exclude cow brain and spinal cord from the food supply.”

Prudent.

Definitely a no-brainer.

From the February 27-March 5, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

Heirloom Seeds

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Seeding the Future

By Christina Waters

THE MOST GLAMOROUS menus showcase heirloom produce. Farmers markets overflow with exotic shapes and colors. From the pages of small catalogs sprout seeds with names like Rainbow Inca corn, Appaloosa beans, Red Alpine fraises des bois, Zapotec pleated tomatoes. Nothing, it seems, is sexier than planting non-mainstream seeds, seeds that have eluded the Disneyfication of our everyday life and that offer an abundance of alternatives to one-brand-fits-all gardening.

In the simple act of planting an old-fashioned, non-hybridized seed, the gardener simultaneously blows a kiss to the past and guarantees the future. Preservation and proliferation are the twin agendas of the current heirloom/native seed movement. Preservation, in that the very way of life associated with old-fashioned flora is brought forward along with the flavors and fragrances that might have charmed our great-great-grandmothers.

Proliferation, in that by continuing that legacy, and sending it speeding on toward our own grandchildren, we maintain the diversity of the world’s herbs and plants–a diversity that also carries with it abundant phytochemical solutions to environmental, medical, even spiritual diseases we’ve only begun to imagine.

The Irish potato famine of the 1840s perfectly illustrates the implications of a dwindling bio-gene pool. In a classic case of putting all its eggs in one basket, Ireland had planted its meager soil with a single variety of potato. Replicating a single set of genes, this was monocropping on a disastrous scale, When a virus came along to which these genes were susceptible, there were no alternative potato crops remaining to feed the country.

Since all the potatoes were the same–homogenous, rather than biodiverse–they all succumbed to the plague. And those who couldn’t emigrate starved to death. One biologist has likened this scenario to that of a thief discovering that a single key can unlock every door in the mansion. And many feel that it’s high time to change the locks.

Tending the earth’s edible future reached its most poignant moment–certainly its most courageous–during the Nazis’ World War II Siege of Leningrad. The site of the world’s largest seed bank–at which Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov and his army of ethnobotanists had stockpiled an astonishing 200,000 species–Leningrad endured 900 days of attack during which over half a million people starved to death.

Surrounded by harvested seed crops, the collectors martyred themselves rather than consume the botanical future.

And when Allied soldiers finally entered the besieged facility, they found the emaciated bodies of the botanists lying next to full, untouched sacks of potatoes, corn, and wheat–a priceless genetic legacy for which they paid with their lives.

The heightened consciousness about old-fashioned plant varieties blossomed along with the back-to-the-land movement of the ’70s, and experts locate the exact moment in 1975 when Kent and Diane Whealy, armed with a legacy of antique Bavarian seeds from Diane’s grandfather, began tracking down other “heirloom” (European-derived) varieties that had been passed down from generation to generation.

The Whealys’ personal quest evolved into Seed Savers Exchange, a network linking seed collectors and their odd pockets of cultural heritage all over the country. Today, this grassroots preservation movement maintains a living bank at its Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa–140 acres containing nearly 13,000 rare vegetables and an orchard of 700 old-time apples (a modest fraction of some 7,000 apple varieties existing in this country at the turn of the century).

The Whealys’ seeds have found their way into farms and gardens, like the Fetzer Vineyards Garden Project, formerly tended by local gardener Jeff Dawson. He now directs the two and a half­acre demonstration organic garden at the Kendall Jackson Winery’s California Coast Wine Center at the site of the old Chateau de Baun in Santa Rosa. The garden includes several themed plots dedicated to heirloom fruits, vegetables, and herbs used in a variety of ethnic cuisines. It features 100 varieties of tomatoes, 50 different chili peppers, and 25 types of eggplants.

In addition, Dawson is laying plans for a seed-saving garden to insure the survival of rare and endangered fruits and vegetables. “This will create a gardening Mecca in Sonoma County,” he explains.

Going to Seed

Water from the Rio Grande irrigates the 30-acre Seeds of Change garden an hour north of Santa Fe, N.M. By dawn’s virgin light, the land seems to levitate with fertility, its multitextural patchwork of plantings glowing with rich greens, reds, and yellow. Terraces of chamomile and basil work their way up toward the renovated ranch house where Seeds of Change Director of Agriculture Howard Shapiro and wife, Nancy, live. An allée of cottonwoods bears testimony to ranches long gone, shading aromatic beds of compost, whose sweet smell permeates the morning air.

Seeds of Change was founded in 1989 by a group of eco-visionaries–direct descendants of the homegrown, hippie movement. Run from Santa Fe corporate headquarters, the company fills millions of seed packets each year with 100 percent certified organically grown, open-pollinated seed produced at 26 affiliated farms.

As I walk through the gardens with intern Christian Petrovich, my senses are bombarded with the brilliance of orange Mars tomatoes weighing their stalks down to the ground. Scores of multicolored native corns burst skyward in dense squares of open-pollinated yearning. Nearby, a graceful thicket of sorghum forms a living “room” within which chilies are sheltered from stray, unwanted pollen. Our boots quickly cake with mud from last night’s rain as we circumnavigate clusters of 30 different chilies, miniature forests of onions, dense hedgerows of sweet clover, tomatillos, and sweetpeas. Beehives punctuate the green, and a band of guinea fowl from a neighbor’s ranch wander with gusto, lustily consuming grasshoppers as they roam.

“These are really trial gardens,” explains Shapiro, who joined the company as an investor four years ago and assumed leadership in early 1995. The garden I’m looking at, however astonishing in its fecundity–with gigantic “teddy bear” sunflowers and lavish stands of pastel zinnia–is one of two research plots. Most of the actual seed growing for the company takes place at far-flung organic gardens all over the country. One third of the total acreage is dedicated to composting crops–the perfecting of soil is never-ending.

Future Think

“A seed is not just a seed,” says Kenny Ausubel, former head of Seeds for Change, surrounded by the piñon pines and junipers of his land near Santa Fe. “It represents all the knowledge that went into it–how the people planted it, what songs they sang, what prayers they offered.”

An eco-strategist for Odwalla juice company working with native American farmers on restorative agriculture, Ausubel recalls that the founding of Seeds of Change was a specific effort to link preservation with a business operation. “We hoped that perhaps we could have a mission-driven company that would actually act as an economic force,” he says. “If we don’t create jobs around sustainable practices, we’re not really going to have the impact we need to have.” Ausubel says he recognized early on that a mere scattering of companies couldn’t hope to save the world. “That’s for sure,” he grins wistfully.

“What is most important is the vision,” he contends, looking out at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains looming in the horizon. “We’re dealing with a lot of people who are simply not even aware that there is a problem, that we are losing genetic diversity. It’s not that they’re in denial–they don’t even know.”

It’s taken the planet millions of years to slowly assemble and evolve its intricate, cellular opera and there are still at least 50,000 known edible plants left on earth. Yet only three of those–rice, corn, and wheat–account for half of everything we eat. Ausubel, who left Seeds of Change a couple of years ago, after agreeing not to discuss the details of that dissolution, is convinced that kinship and diversity are the key to all environmental models.

“Everything is related–from microbes to mammals, there’s much more that’s shared than is different,” Ausubel contends. A healthy ecosystem is diverse. “When you remove the diversity, the system falters and starts to break down.”

He loves to cite the example of the Idaho producer who grows for McDonald’s corporation the exact same blight-prone russet that caused the Irish potato famine. “It’s the McDonald’s criterion of potato selection–a strain is bred and grown because it makes perfect four-inch French fries,” Ausubel chuckles. “And that’s the mentality that unfortunately is driving most of the world.”

Why should people bother preserving and growing old seeds? “This is something people have done for a long, long time,” says Ausubel, still passionately convinced that individuals can make a difference. “You realize when you look at one of these seeds that somebody, somewhere down the line, held onto this, even though it was really difficult–and they had faith.

“And by their simple act of faith and caring they can change the world.”

For a free list of heirloom tomatoes available through mail order, send an SASE to Grand View Farms, 2255 Green Hill Road, Sebastopol, CA 95472.

From the February 27-March 5, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

Giant Gourds

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Thinkin’ Big

By Dylan Bennett

TO BE HAPPY with himself, Kenwood butcher Tom Geney needs to gain at least another 50 pounds this summer. He’ll need lots of food, drink, and careful attention to lying around. Topping the scales at only 147 pounds last year, Geney hopes to break the 200-pound mark this fall. Even then, he’ll only be a little guy in the art of growing giant pumpkins, the largest vegetables on earth.

“I should get serious,” says Geney, 56, who carefully tills his pumpkin beds with compost and turkey manure, and plies his plants with copious plant food, water, and steer manure “tea.”

Serious indeed are a couple dozen giant pumpkin fanatics in Sonoma County, who pursue the Big One with unsettling obsession and compete for high honors at the Harvest Fair. To be the giant pumpkin king, a gardener must now get well past 500 pounds. But that’s nothing. Last year, someone in New York State grew a record-breaking 1,060-pound pumpkin.

“That’s the biggest vegetable grown on the face of earth at anytime in history. That’s incredible,” gushes Ulysses van der Kamp, who grows the great orbs on Sonoma Mountain. His biggest gourd last year was about 300 pounds, says van der Kamp, who won first place for most unusual pumpkin–it was square because he grew it in a box.

“It’s an addiction,” states van der Kamp flatly. “It’s unbelievable. Some pumpkins on the East Coast grow over 20 pounds a day. You can literally almost watch them grow. I’d like to get over 500 this year, but then so would everybody.”

If Geney needs to get serious, then van der Kamp is already there. He recently spent $800 on Mango Mulch at Grab-N-Grow, the garden soil company on Llano Road near Sebastopol. And he’s open to help from higher powers. “We live right next to the Zen Center, so we get all the positive vibes coming over. I’ve thought about having the roshi come up and bless my pumpkins.

“Everybody thinks I’m nuts.”

In early May, pumpkin growers plant seeds of the Pacific Giant or Great Atlantic variety. Then they commit themselves to a long summer of watering, feeding, weeding, pruning, and pest and rodent control. The main vines are buried, forcing them to lay extensive roots. The prize winners are selected for success as mere blossoms by virtue of their stamen count and proximity to the main root. Each vine is allowed to grow three or four gourds to about the size of a baseball before all but the fastest-growing are culled.

Then the lead squash is tapped for glory.

“The bottom line is you need to start with good seed, and the pumpkin can’t do without for a day of its life. You can’t let it starve for a moment. Whatever goes wrong takes away from the pumpkin,” says van der Kamp, now in his fourth pumpkin-growing season. At 30, van der Kamp is the baby of the giant-pumpkin-growing community.

Speaking of great pumpkin patches, appropriately it was van der Kamp’s job as a chef at Charles Schulze’s Redwood Empire Ice Arena that led him to his pumpkin-growing mentor Ian Allison. Van der Kamp, charged with finding a giant pumpkin for the ice arena’s Halloween-themed Great Pumpkin Patch, contacted Allison, who has a full-blown case of pumpkin fever.

Allison, 72, a retired Santa Rosa business executive, is a 10-time Sonoma County Harvest Fair winner for biggest pumpkin entry during the 1980s. He has a simple explanation for the excitement around these big, sluggish veggies: “It’s competitive,” he explains. “Like horseracing, it gets in your blood.” But for Allison, it’s deeper than that. He’s the president of a non-profit outfit called Seed Corps that promotes gardening to children, and pumpkins are a big part of that effort.

TV star Eddie Albert of Green Acres fame is Allison’s partner in this garden plot.

“The easiest thing to grow is a pumpkin,” says Allison at his lush experimental gardens on Mount Taylor, overlooking Bennett Valley.

“If a kid grows a pumpkin, pretty soon he’s going to be growing a garden. And if he’s growing a garden, he’s growing good healthy food. And if you teach a man to grow food, then you teach him to eat for the rest of his life. That’s our bible on this thing.”

But even pumpkins have their predators. Allison says his crop last year was destroyed by “bacterium wilt,” a disease carried by the 12-spotted cucumber beetle. During the winter he grew a thick cover crop to purify the soil. And last year someone stole van der Kamp’s biggest pumpkin before he could weigh it. “It must have taken two or three guys,” he calculates. Most big pumpkins, however, are destined for happy endings. A youngster correctly guessed the weight of Geney’s big pumpkin last year at the supermarket where Geney works and triumphantly carted the great sphere home to carve a heavy-duty jack o’ lantern.

Allison says many of the fat fruit are donated to schools and hospitals.

Clearly, the popularity of growing giant pumpkins flourishes on the connection between the plant world and the human impulse toward rejuvenation, reincarnation, and reproduction. Geney started his first pumpkin to celebrate the birth of his granddaughter and to start a tradition of big pumpkins for the child each Halloween. Allison is on no small crusade to connect people to the earth in an age that grows ever more synthetic.

“It’s the closest a guy can come to having a baby,” says van der Kamp, comparing nine months of pumpkin care to nine months of labor. “You don’t just plant seeds and walk away.”

From the February 27-March 5, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

Santa Rosa Media Access

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WTV Eye

By Paula Harris

LAURIE CIRIVELLO wears a dream catcher necklace and her footsteps echo as she guides visitors through the construction site that this spring will blossom into Santa Rosa’s new public-access TV station. The building is still just a wooden-beamed skeleton, but Cirivello, new executive director of the Santa Rosa Community Media Access Center (the non-profit group set up to oversee the station’s operation), already envisions the facility in full swing. “Here is the Green Room; here is the built-in storage for tape archives; and this is the hot-line studio,” she says, pointing to each room like a proud new homeowner with dinner guests in tow.

The 6,000-square-foot facility will boast offices, a control room (with windows to the hall, for studio tours), a live hot-line studio (which Cirivello describes as “talk radio for TV”), editing suites, and a spacious, three-camera studio.

Public access essentially provides equipment and studio facilities to anyone who wishes to produce and air a TV show, and Cirivello, 36, an amiable woman with long black hair, is hoping the dream that has brought her and her family to Santa Rosa from Ohio will pan out into substantial community involvement.

A former executive director of an established public-access center in Columbus, Cirivello says she wouldn’t have moved her family 2,500 miles across the country if Santa Rosa’s diverse and outspoken community didn’t present one of the best chances for public-access TV success.

“People here are working harder [to get the project under way] than any other community I’ve seen,” she says. “There’s great promise, enthusiasm, and anticipation.”

The facility is situated on the south corner of the Santa Rosa High School campus. The high school district contributed the site in exchange for 18 hours a week of services (such as equipment use) provided to local high school students.

The media center, which is part of the extension of Post-Newsweek Cable’s franchise, has been planned for about four years. The 15-year franchise was renegotiated last February. The center has an annual operating budget of $465,000, comprised of a $150,000 yearly grant from Post-Newsweek and $315,000 from the city. Start-up costs for the non-profit project are $1.2 million.

Cirivello, who works with three other paid employees, has a 5-year contract with the city. She says 80 percent of the annual operating budget goes toward salaries. Eventually, there will be 10 full-time and four part-time employees, with a heavy reliance on interns and volunteers.

An 11-member board of directors (expanding soon to 12) is in place. Three seats are designated for representatives of Santa Rosa Junior College, the city of Santa Rosa, and the Santa Rosa High School District, respectively. Construction on the Santa Rosa facility should be complete in April, and the new channels, devoted to non-commercial educational, government, and public-access programming, are shooting for a May 1 on-air debut. There will be two channels initially, eventually expanding to seven.

“This is a community building tool, and my job is to remove as many barriers to media access as possible,” says Cirivello, whose duties include training and scheduling and promoting programming. “The media can be such an inaccessible tool to folks, yet it’s the way we receive most of our information. Our aim is to reflect the local community, and we’re using TV to do that.”

In neighboring Petaluma, local residents got a sneak preview on Feb. 19 of a similar new TV studio, run by Petaluma Community Access on the campus of Casa Grande High School. Its grand opening will be held April 12, from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Many of the Petaluma and Santa Rosa community TV advocates worked closely together to win the right to increase public access in their respective cable franchises.

In the past, Post-Newsweek has offered only a minimal public-access service as part of the original franchise agreement. Programs made by community members shared airtime on Channel 3 with such local programming as commercially sponsored local sports. But the service garnered a poor response.

Alex Torres, public-access coordinator for Post-Newsweek Cable, says limited publicity and antiquated equipment resulted in little interest by members of the public to produce community TV shows. “There was a three-hour class in which people had to deal with a mess of wires and equipment, with quirks and problems, that was tricky to learn. That discouraged all but the most serious people,” he explains. “Only about one in every five who’d come in actually put their program on the air.”

Torres adds that Post-Newsweek has had to broadcast infomercials on Channel 3 just to fill the empty airspace. Another hindrance has been substandard production values, such as audio and lighting, which made for painful viewing. “The audience so often consisted of just the people who made the show,” Torres says. “And a lot of people actually programmed the channel out of their remote controls.”

According to Torres, the new TV station–with its up-to-date, user-friendly equipment, training on how to polish productions, and general encouragement–will herald a new era of local public access. “I hope people embrace it and use it,” he says.

Once persons are in equipment use, instruction is free, and they can check out video equipment and reserve an editing suite or use the studio. Trainers will be on hand to supervise and troubleshoot. The public-access organization won’t censor programming, and producers who submit shows will sign an agreement claiming full legal responsibility for the content.

“We are a conduit, not a gatekeeper,” says Cirivello. “I’m not going to hold anyone’s hand if someone calls the DA and they’re arrested for putting on something they shouldn’t have.”

Producers will be encouraged to schedule their program for the most appropriate audience. Cirivello adds that she hopes some shows will foster community debate and critics will tape rebuttals.”

The media center will also provide coverage of local community meetings, SRJC telecourses, and election results.

John Gosch, general manager at Post-Newsweek, says the cable company will retain Channel 3, and the new community-access programs will be broadcast on Channel 54 and another as yet undecided channel.

High-tech fiber-optic links for all channels are expected to be in place within the next 18 months.

From the February 27-March 5, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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© 1997 Metrosa, Inc.

The Scoop

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Sick Joke

By Bob Harris

THE AMERICAN BAR Association just voted overwhelmingly to support a moratorium on executions until the death penalty can be administered with fairness, due process, and minimum risk that innocent people will die.

That day will never come.

There are 3,100 people on death row. Virtually all are poor. Most are minorities. Many are mentally ill or minors. Some are innocent. Azikiwe Kambule is a 17-year-old South African boy, convicted of a murder in which he was essentially a bystander. He had no criminal record or history of violence and cooperated completely with the police. Mississippi intends to execute him.

The only other countries that execute minors are Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. The United States executes more minors than all those other nations combined. The six governments that lead the world in executing their own people are China, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Florida, and Texas.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights recently noted that Maurice Andrews, Robert Brecheen, Willie Clisby, Anthony Joe Larette, Mario Marquez, and Luis Mata were all on death row in spite of mental incapacity. The commission also noted that Larry Griffin, Nicholas Ingraham, Jesse Jacobs, Gregory Resnover, and Dennis Waldon Stockton were very likely innocent.

All 11 have now been executed.

If you must kill someone, be white. Being black quadruples your risk of a death sentence. And make sure you kill a black person. Kill a white, and you’re twice as likely to be executed.

The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection and due process for all. The death penalty is a sick joke on the Constitution.

There is no credible evidence that executions deter crime. Crime correlates far better to population density, wealth inequity, and the concentration of young males than to law enforcement factors. Capital punishment also costs two or three times more than life without parole. Few defendants plead guilty to a capital charge, so most every capital trial becomes a jury trial.

We’re wasting tens of millions of dollars. Secure prisons already exist: in California, not one prisoner sentenced to life without parole has been released since the option was created in 1977. Allowed to live, inmates can be put to work, with the proceeds benefitting the victim’s family. Given this sentencing option, 70 percent of Americans prefer it. Besides, if the accused is later exonerated, the jail door can open.

You can’t raise the dead.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Ever witness an execution? They’re plenty cruel and unusual. Hangings often slowly strangle the victim, who can remain conscious for much of the process. Electrocutions can take up to 10 minutes, as can the gas chamber. Some lethal injections have taken more than 20 minutes. (And yes, they really do swab your arm with alcohol first, just so you don’t die with an infection.) No other Western industrialized nation does this to its own people.

It gets worse.

Your habeus corpus rights are supposed to be your federal guarantee that local officials respect the Constitution. If a state court jails you wrongly, you have–or had, sorry–the right to appeal the legality of your conviction in federal court.

How often is this necessary? In the last 20 years, nearly half of the state court decisions in capital cases have been overturned. State judges are often elected, which means justice becomes secondary to looking strong for the voters.

Willingness to kill is not equivalent to moral strength.

In a similar display, in 1996 Congress passed, the president signed, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the “Antiterrorism and Death Penalty Act,” which imposed an unprecedented one-year time limit on habeus corpus appeals.

And what happens if your proof of innocence emerges after the first year has passed? Simple: you die. In Leonel Herrera vs. Collins, the Court has held that the Constitution does not protect state prisoners from execution, even given new evidence of innocence. Chief Justice William Rehnquist actually wrote that “entertaining claims of actual innocence” would have a “disruptive effect . . . on the need for finality.”

In other words, your actual guilt or innocence just doesn’t matter that much. Leonel Herrera, who was probably innocent, was executed shortly thereafter.

Capital punishment is quickly transforming the Bill of Rights itself into a Dead Man Walking. The ABA has taken an important step in acknowledging that the death penalty doesn’t work.

The next step is to accept that it never will.

From the February 27-March 5, 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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Peak Experience

By David Templeton

Writer David Templeton takes interesting people to interesting movies in his ongoing quest for the ultimate post-film conversation. This time out, he takes naturalist/poet Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses) to see the noisy volcano movie Dante’s Peak.

So here we are, three quarters of the way through Dante’s Peak, when I notice that my guest–author Diane Ackerman–is rigid with tension, fully absorbed by the fiery mayhem on screen. She is literally on the very edge of her seat. Suddenly aware of my gaze, she laughs.

“All right, it’s a ridiculous film,” she whispers, “but it is exciting.”

Dante’s Peak is about the rude demolition of a pretty little town, buried by its own tourist attraction: a big, scary volcano. The swashbuckling heroes (Linda Hamilton and Pierce Brosnan) get to do many brave things; they outrun a lava flow, dodge falling boulders, pilot a disintegrating boat over a lake of acid. It’s all very thrilling, very life-or-death, very glamorous.

“As someone who has been in real life-or-death situations, though,” Ackerman comments as we sit down to dinner after the show, “I can tell you that being on the verge of death loses its glamour very quickly.”

Ackerman’s globetrotting exploits–including one near-deadly mishap atop a real volcano–have been chronicled in a number of best-selling books, most notably A Natural History of the Senses, and The Moon by Whale Light.

In her newest book, A Slender Thread: Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis, Ackerman describes adventures of a more intimate kind, detailing her experiences as a crisis-line counselor. Alternating between descriptions of heartbreaking late-night phone calls and Ackerman’s own observations on crisis and survival, this surprisingly moving work is notable for its compelling sense of compassion and the sharpness of its many insights. Ackerman’s lushly descriptive prose–she is also an accomplished poet–only contributes to her public image as a daring adventuress braving the world with all senses wide open.

“I’m not really that brave,” she laughs, “though I understand that there are some people who do need to test the edges of their mortality, to come close to death in order to feel alive. I love life too much to want to risk it. But I try not to let fear stand between me and knowledge.”

Case in point: her volcano.

When asked to describe the experience, she sets down her fork and says, “Fortunately, I did not think–even for a fleeting second–of my volcano while I was watching this movie.” She pauses briefly, then tells the story.

“It was on the very remote Japanese island of Torishima, 600 kilometers south of Tokyo, where the short-tailed albatross nests. The albatross are endangered, and I wanted to see them. The entire island is an active volcano.

“Once you manage to land there, you first have to climb 10 stories of rock to get to the base camp. Then you have to hike across the volcano. The ground was hot under foot, steaming. The soles of my shoes were warm. There were dancing vapors and djinns everyplace. Once I got across that exhaling part of the volcano, I came to a castle of rock. In order to see the birds I had to rope-climb a 400-foot cliff.

“Well, I held onto the rope,” she explains, “but I swung open partway down and came back hard against the rocks, seriously breaking three ribs. It was very difficult to climb after that, difficult to breathe, hard to get off the island.” Smiling, she adds, “But I did see the birds.

“You know, in the beginning, when you set out on these wonderful expeditions,” she continues, “you don’t appreciate how fragile life is, don’t know what you can get away with and what you can’t get away with in the wild. But you learn. You do become more careful.” She smiles, shakes the memory away, and resumes her meal.

“I should say that even during the crisis-line work–maybe especially–there are times when I am afraid,” she says. “When you feel that you are holding on to somebody’s life with the tips of your fingers–just through sound. Of course you’re afraid. It’s terrifying. And it’s exhilarating when you feel that you may have helped. One of the real discoveries that I’ve made over the last few years is that there are armies of the day and armies of the night in cities all across America, of big-hearted people who feel a calling to help perfect strangers who are in trouble. That human beings can rise to that level of altruism is heartening.

“It’s intriguing to me that when you study nature you learn that nature neither gives nor expects mercy. But human beings really do hold ourselves accountable in a way that other animals don’t.

“We really are compassionate beasts, resplendent beasts,” Ackerman says, almost singing the words. “Of all the creatures on Earth that I have seen, humans are by far my favorite.”

Web exclusive to the February 27-March 5, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

SRJC President

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Dirty Linen


on SRJC president

By Bruce Robinson

BOB AGRELLA’S dirty laundry is going to be quite well aired in this county by the time this whole process is over with,” Santa Rosa attorney Jim Bertoli declares. Last week, Bertoli filed a $2 million lawsuit against Santa Rosa Junior College and Agrella, its president. That suit charges that last year Agrella and the SRJC board of trustees illegally fired Sylvia Wasson, a foreign-languages instructor, who is accused of writing a series of unsigned letters that sharply criticize Agrella and his administration.

Wasson, a 22-year employee at the junior college, was abruptly dismissed Jan. 14, with a terse sendoff that asserted the six anonymous documents contained statements about Agrella “that are false and defamatory and which had the purpose or effect of undermining his leadership . . . and brought discredit to the College District.”

The letters, which began appearing in August 1995, accuse Agrella of abusing the rights of district employees, precipitating an unprecedented number of lawsuits and costly settlements, restricting free speech on campus, and imposing a climate of fear and intimidation. Several also make reference to the president’s alleged extramarital affair with a staff member, allege racism in his dealings with specific college employees, and charge that Agrella is hypersensitive to criticism and aggressive in his efforts to suppress it.

“The charges that I am the author of six anonymous mailings critical of Robert Agrella are false and slanderous,” Wasson indignantly told the SRJC board of trustees Feb. 4. “All letters I have ever written to this administration I proudly signed.”

Wasson’s detailed statement was a public rebuttal to an accusatory process that had, until that point, been very private. SRJC legal counsel Bob Henry says the investigation into the origins of the “hit pieces” began April 1 after the fourth letter appeared.

“By June 1996, a certified document examiner, who had reviewed all the letters received as of that date, determined that the author could be identified, and was, in fact, an employee of the district,” Henry wrote in a statement that was released at the Feb. 4 college board meeting. The examiner, Patricia Fisher of Oakland, also apparently linked Wasson to the letters through an analysis of the handwriting on some of their envelopes.

Bertoli contends the surreptitious investigation itself violated Wasson’s constitutional and contractual rights of due process. “They failed to give her a hearing of any kind,” he protests. Before a disciplinary action is taken, the district “must give notice of proposed charges, and documentation, and a right to respond. They didn’t do any of that.”

Henry says the district tried to “pursue this matter in the strictest confidence to protect the employee’s rights and privacy.” But in this and other recent employment disputes at SRJC, aggrieved workers charge that the district is twisting confidentiality to the employees’ disadvantage.

“The principle of confidentiality relating to personnel matters, intended to protect an employee, has the contrary effect if administrative power is abused and due process is not observed,” wrote Carol Montoya, an SRJC Spanish instructor, in a statement of support for her colleague. “Confidentiality then serves to conceal abuse and violation.”

THIS IS THE SECOND time Wasson has been involved in a dispute with Agrella. As an administrator at SRJC’s Petaluma Center, Wasson went to the president–on the advice of the campus police–in the fall of 1993 with complaints about her boss, Associate Dean Henry Bell. Wasson told Agrella she was unhappy about having to cover for Bell, who, according to her lawsuit, “would be absent without leave for days participating in bridge tournaments on school time.”

The administration responded by asking Wasson to file sexual harassment charges against Bell, which she refused to do because she deemed it inappropriate. When she again met with Agrella, “he said to me, ‘Without your statement, I have nothing to hold against him.’ I believe that I was supposed to do the dirty work and get [Bell] fired,” Wasson says.

Wasson was fired for the first time then, but after threatening legal action and public embarrassment, she was reinstated and allowed to “retreat” to a teaching position, provided that she refrain from discussing the matter. Bell later negotiated his own departure, reportedly at a cost to the district of two years’ salary and benefits, a total of $160,000 or more.

But Wasson found herself trapped in a professional gulag. “Robert Agrella refused to give me letters of reference, which meant I had no way of pursuing my career elsewhere in any academic institution,” she says stoically, “but I also could not rise within this institution because of the stigma put upon me.”

Through it all, Wasson adds, she has maintained excellent evaluations, including one round that was completed just days before her dismissal.

A crucial question in Wasson’s case centers on whether the disputed letters are protected under the constitutional right to freedom of speech. Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Sawyer is due to rule on that on April 16.

The district has secured a consulting legal opinion that the critical letters were not protected by the First Amendment and that the district could properly take action against their author. The key, Henry says, is a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled “that critical speech, even on a topic of general public concern, did not outweigh the public employer’s interest in avoiding a disruption of the workforce.”

Bertoli and Wasson scoff at the suggestion that SRJC has been disrupted by the letters, but Henry says they have been sent far beyond the campus, to school accreditation officials and conferences of junior college administrators, causing extensive “harm to the name of the district.”

But does that harm result from the letters or the actions of the president whom the letters describe? Former SRJC President Roy Mikalson shocked the college community when he appeared unexpectedly at the Feb. 4 board meeting to point an accusing finger at Agrella and voice his support for Wasson.

Mikalson, who retired in 1990 after 19 years as president, says Agrella “likes to be right and he doesn’t like people who criticize. I think it’s generally felt on the campus that if you do disagree with him, you might have a problem.

“I was very disappointed with the board,” he continues. “They have to sort this thing out some way, because, boy, it’s headed in the wrong direction.”

As to the impact all the internal disputes have had on outside perceptions of SRJC, “I think we still have the reputation,” Mikalson says, “but it’s wavering a little.”

From the February 20-26, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

Downtown Santa Rosa

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Downtown Santa Rosa

Santa Rosa Stew


Janet Orsi

‘I don’t know who could be more sensitive to downtown businesses than I am. We listen, we hear, we are being as responsive as we possibly can.’
—Santa Rosa Mayor, Sharon Wright

Are too many cooks spoiling the recipe to save Sonoma County’s biggest downtown?

By Janet Wells

AT FIRST glance, downtown Santa Rosa seems like a pleasant place to spend some time and money. Stores, restaurants, fountains, crosswalks of tidy paving stones, benches, places to get stuff copied, lots of caffeine outlets. But stay awhile and try to catch the gotta-be-here buzz. Good luck.

At times, downtown appears to have a palpable anxiety that drives people away.

The twinkly lights along Fourth Street are festive at night–and cast a symbolic shadow on the unlit neighboring streets. During the day, restaurants are lively and crowded, offering an uncomfortable counterpoint to the plethora of empty storefronts. Railroad Square–the old part of town–has historic buildings, a renovated rail depot, and a pretty green slice of park that causes a lot of handwringing since it’s the preferred hangout for the homeless.

In the summertime, the Thursday Night Market attracts a big crowd to Fourth Street, although that hasn’t crossed over to the other six nights and three seasons. Groups of youth congregating around nearby Courthouse Square–unswayed by the classical music booming from the treetops, part of the city’s plan to discourage loitering–find downtown sidewalks perfect for lively socializing, driving lone pedestrians to the other side of the street.

Years ago, the city spent millions to split the square into two spiffy parks. Now the most populous element in the grassy areas are the signs prohibiting just about everything.

Everyone agrees that Santa Rosa, the county’s largest city, has the makings of a great downtown. So why all the long faces? Countless individuals, civic groups, business organizations, and city committees over the years have tried to push downtown to the pinnacle of its supposed potential. The result? A spruced-up commercial zone without a heart.

Santa Rosa’s downtown–bordered by Railroad Square on the west, Sonoma Avenue on the south, College Avenue on the north, and Brookwood Avenue on the east–is bizarrely bisected by Highway 101, one of the busiest freeways in the state, and Santa Rosa Plaza, an imposing shopping mall that sprawls over five city blocks. And just a mile to the south lies the bustling Marketplace, a year-old mall that gave many downtown shop owners the fits.

Now downtown has a 12 percent vacancy rate for both office and retail properties–down from an estimated 25 percent last year, but still more than twice the rate considered healthy. Those numbers aren’t the worst ever, but they’re far from rosy. Palo Alto, by comparison, hasn’t had over a 2 percent vacancy rate in its downtown for more than 10 years.

But what does a downtown really matter, anyway? If the market dictates that stores go out of business, so be it, right? People have plenty of alternatives in Santa Rosa for playing, shopping, and working.

Consider first, though, the sobering fact that sales tax revenue is Santa Rosa’s biggest single source of income, comprising 32 percent of the city’s $62.4 million general fund. Last year, downtown businesses, including Santa Rosa Plaza, contributed almost $2 million of that sales tax chunk to city coffers. Then consider that a downtown is a barometer for the rest of the city.

“Downtown is something that every resident of Santa Rosa should be concerned about,” says Santa Rosa City Councilwoman Noreen Evans. “Downtown is the heart and center of our city. It represents the character of our city. What’s happening downtown has an effect on the city, economically, socially, and culturally.”

Many voices contribute to the cacophony of opinion concerning downtown’s future. What will it take for downtown to thrive? Easier parking? More boutiques, movie theaters, night clubs, and restaurants? Better architecture? More office workers? Business tax incentives? Zoning changes? An arts center? Sidewalk cafes?

Maybe all of the above. It mostly boils down to–surprise, surprise–money and politics. Some people have high hopes for the city’s recently appointed Downtown Partnership Commission. Others say the commission is a city mouthpiece comprised of the same old political cronies. And with recently voter-approved urban growth boundaries curbing outward expansion, greenbelt advocates say this is the perfect time to boost downtown foot traffic and shopping with pedestrian-friendly planning and low- and middle-income apartments over storefronts.

Indeed, one wild card in turning downtown Santa Rosa into the county’s crown jewel could be titled “How Badly Do You Want It and Why?” Many downtowns boasting successful revitalization have had a cadre of people at the helm, people with not just a financial or political interest in such a project, but a personal stake in helping effect a civic transformation. However, Santa Rosa may have too many cooks in the kitchen.

When it comes to downtown revitalization, the city does not lack for people with ideas, passion, and commitment, but will they ever be able to agree on a recipe for success?

The City Official

Novice Councilwoman Evans made downtown the centerpiece of her November election campaign. An attorney who works downtown and is a regular at the local shops and cafes, Evans says she wants to help create “a place where people say, ‘That’s my town. This is where I go to hear music. This is where I go to hang out and buy my fresh produce on the weekend.'”

That warm fuzzy notion is far removed from the present. In one recent count of six square blocks of the downtown’s core, there were 19 empty storefronts. Check out the dearth of people on the streets–particularly at night and on weekends–and the picture is even bleaker.

“Downtown is in a really sensitive state of flux. . . . The market is de-emphasizing retail,” says Evans. “Downtown can go in one of two ways. We can put in the time and effort to fill up storefronts or continue seeing decline and decay.”

Evans is acutely aware of the politics involved in such an endeavor. She was appointed to the Planning Commission in 1993, when the city was in the midst of a major brouhaha over the proposed Marketplace, which boasts big-draw discount stores like Costco, Target, and Office Depot.

Greg Rogers, Santa Rosa’s financial planning manager, insists that, despite dire predictions, downtown businesses have not suffered because of the Marketplace, which provided “pure straight growth” and added more than the $500,000 in sales tax revenue last year to the city’s coffers.

Ask any downtown merchant about the Marketplace and they won’t jump for joy.

Evans considers it a tradeoff, at best. “It did bring new jobs, retail, and tax dollars. But it is not without negative impacts on downtown,” she says.

Consider these figures: Last year, total taxable sales at the Plaza reached $190 million; downtown businesses rang up $45 million in 1996; and in just one quarter, from May to August, the Marketplace racked up a hefty $35 million in sales.

Evans doesn’t believe that the Marketplace takes business directly away from downtown merchants, though it certainly doesn’t help fill those empty stores. After all, a single, small downtown business probably isn’t going to attract much enthusiasm from city hall as a candidate for fee waivers or other incentives.

“It takes a city that’s willing to say no to certain types of development in certain places and areas,” Evans says, “and that hasn’t happened.”

Is the City Council ready to do that now? “I don’t know,” she adds.

For now, Evans is focused on a downtown project that’s less politically charged than big-money development decisions: Santa Rosa Creek restoration. “That creek goes right under city hall,” she observes. “There used to be good steelhead fishing in Santa Rosa, and there’s a fish ladder under city hall. We’ve had this crazy idea to tear up city hall and get the creek back to the light.”

While that plan is a little extreme, there is a $5.6 million pot from the city’s redevelopment agency and the Prince Family Trust to create a pedestrian/bicycle path along the creek and restore the creek’s natural ecosystem between Santa Rosa Avenue and Railroad Avenue, site of a planned convention center.

But creek restoration is just the beginning of Evans’ enthusiasm for revamping downtown. “Have you talked to anyone about all the other stuff going on? Trains stopping at Railroad Square? The convention center? A multiscreen theater? Reuniting Courthouse Square?” she asks. Downtown needs projects like these, she insists, along with cultural activities, affordable housing, and restaurants to attract “people on the street 24 hours a day with money in their pockets ready to spend.”

The Merchant

Downtown stationer Dave Madigan likes to call himself a troublemaker. He certainly minces no words in assigning blame for downtown’s woes. “I blame [Mayor] Sharon Wright,” he says bluntly. “I don’t think she has the downtown’s interest at heart. I think taking care of her political friends and allies has been her No. 1 goal.”

Wright–who works for the Chamber of Commerce, consults for the building trade-oriented Sonoma County Alliance, and chaired the former Downtown Development Association for seven years–is baffled at the idea that she doesn’t fairly represent the downtown community. “I’ve been in business or had an office in downtown since 1981. I don’t know who could be more sensitive to downtown businesses than I am,” she says. “We listen, we hear, we are being as responsive as we possibly can.”

Madigan doesn’t buy it. “I’ve taken a lot of flak for blaming bad changes on the city itself, on the City Council. They haven’t cared. Their only interest is in tax money. I’ve tried to work with the City Council over the years and nothing ever happens.”

The Madigan family stationery store at Fifth Street and Mendocino Avenue has been a downtown fixture for 41 years. And 35-year-old Madigan grew up downtown. “I’ve been here since I was small enough that the cash register used to hit me in the head when it opened,” he laughs.

Madigan doesn’t do much business with the city–“I had someone buy forms the other day, the first time I’ve had [a city staffer] in this store in 10 years”–and has been unimpressed with the city’s attempts to turn downtown into a showpiece. The city renovated Fourth Street a few years ago, “but forgot about Fifth Street, Third Street, Mendocino Avenue,” he says.

Last summer, Madigan organized the Downtown Business Association, a group of unaffiliated merchants, after feeling frustrated by the myriad official committees that have been formed downtown. And don’t confuse Madigan’s group with the Downtown Partnership Commission, a 17-member group appointed by the City Council in December and the latest downtown organization to incur Madigan’s ire.

“We have too many of the people [in these groups] being reused over and over, favorites of the City Council,” Madigan says. “The city set up that group so it wouldn’t have to deal with groups like mine. The Downtown Partnership Commission won’t rock the boat. They will rubber-stamp whatever the city wants.”

What is it that Madigan wants and feels he isn’t getting? Parking.

“A parking ticket fee is $15 for an expired meter or $20 on Fourth Street for going over the time limit. That’s outrageous when I can go to Coddingtown or the Plaza and park free all day,” he fumes. “If you come downtown for a $3 sandwich and get slapped with a parking ticket, where are customers going to go [in the future]?”

Parking in downtown Santa Rosa is a dream compared to downtown parking in many cities. Santa Rosa’s five city garages–with 3,000 spaces–allow 90 minutes of free parking, and many of the 1,175 street meters take nickels and dimes as well as quarters. Some lots even allow 10-hour parking. Try to find that in San Francisco.

Still, most communities in the county offer limited, free downtown parking, while Santa Rosa garners more in parking fees than tax revenue from its downtown. Revenue from city garages, meters, and permits was $1.6 million last year, along with an additional $712,000 in parking citations. By comparison, retail tax revenue from downtown businesses (not including Santa Rosa Plaza) was about $453,000 during that period.

So which is more of a priority to the city? “If [Santa Rosa’s city parking and transit management officials] think they can get away with it, they will write everybody’s grandmother a parking ticket,” Madigan answers.

One of Madigan’s first goals for the Downtown Business Association was to have parking meters removed. The city nixed that idea, so now he’d like to see a “kinder, gentler ticket policy,” with $10 as the maximum citation.

In October, the DBA surveyed 600 downtown businesses and merchants and found that most want cheaper parking for customers, an 11 p.m. curfew for teens, and fee waivers for major projects. Another key goal of Madigan’s group is to avoid having to pay any kind of mandatory fees or assessments to be part of a downtown group. All downtown merchants used to pay up to $2,000 to the Downtown Development Association for parking assessment, promotions, and security. That group disbanded in 1993 in disarray after local businesses complained that they weren’t getting enough for their money.

Madigan is wary that the Downtown Partnership Commission will resurrect mandatory fees for group marketing and promotions. “I know how to do that for my business. Why should I pay someone else?” Madigan asks. “If [the Downtown Partnership Commission] tries to shove it down our throats, we’ll just give them the finger.”

The Commission Member

Santa Rosa Plaza manager Chris Facas has been on a lot of downtown committees. By his admission, most have failed to accomplish much. “There were a lot of incarnations of groups, all with good intentions, none of which were ever recognized by the city,” Facas says. “You can do some projects, but you can’t get a good comprehensive outlook unless you have the city’s involvement.”

Facas has just been chosen head of the new Downtown Partnership Commission, which, he ways, “truly represents downtown.” There are a number of people who would argue with Facas about who exactly represents whom, but the commission certainly has some heavy hitters on it, including Mayor Wright, Councilwoman Evans, and San Francisco developer Tom Robertson, who has an ownership interest in about 85,000 square feet of downtown property, including the refurbished Rosenberg Building that houses Barnes & Noble Bookstore.

The group’s mission is to carry out recommendations from previous downtown studies. While the commission faces all-too-familiar issues, the intent this time is different, assures Facas. “The furthest thing from anyone’s mind is to come forth with another plan or another document,” he says. “This group’s function is to make real change, to make these things happen.”

Facas would like to see the downtown area become “the cultural mecca of the county.” That goal is shared by Robertson, whose San Francisco North Properties owns a partnership in the Fifth Street building that houses the Sonoma County Repertory Theatre and Massés Billiards.

Robertson, widely regarded as the single most influential person in the future of the downtown and a proponent of a strong downtown cultural element, declined to be interviewed in depth for this story. He has said in the past, however, that he considers downtown Santa Rosa to be an undervalued gem.

“The downtown is vibrant, but not anywhere near where it could be,” Facas says. “That means the incentives aren’t out there for it to happen.” Facas sees an incentive program, such as fee waivers or zoning restrictions, as a crucial step in encouraging businesses to locate downtown.

Facas also believes it is time to revisit the idea of a local merchants’ association. “Marketing the center [of the city] and themselves and events is what makes people come out,” he says. “Money for that will have to come from the downtown merchants.”

That news should send Madigan’s blood pressure soaring.

Facas is in an interesting position as a commission member who also happens to manage a shopping mall that not only creates a barrier between downtown’s two sections, but also competes with downtown businesses. The relationship between the mall and downtown businesses certainly isn’t synergistic, although that’s the ultimate goal. The elephantine Plaza, with free parking for 3,200 cars and a byzantine maze of entrances and exits, creates a barrier to through traffic.

Optimists who see the Plaza as a link between downtown and Railroad Square have never tried to get from one to the other after the mall closed. The Plaza, opened in 1980, hulks over Third Street–the only walkway between the two sections of downtown–creating a subterranean pathway that is dank, dark, and scary. Meanwhile, ideas such as lighting, murals, signage, and sidewalk handrails to encourage (not to mention protect) pedestrians have yet to be implemented, and even a low-cost trolley bus that transits the two areas goes largely unused.

“I probably have less to gain, from a business angle, from a vibrant downtown than downtown businesses do,” says Facas. “But I come here every day. I virtually live in the downtown area. That’s the main reason to be involved. I see the potential it has.”


Janet Orsi

‘The city’s vitality–Sonoma County’s vitality to a large extent–is dependent upon downtown. Those businesses that move in and don’t find a niche don’t survive. You have enough failures in an area over time and it gets a bad reputation.’
—Bob Marshall

The Gadfly

When Bob Marshall retired, he and his wife wanted to move to a small apartment in downtown Santa Rosa. “I wanted an urban environment where we could have one car between us and I could walk out in the morning to buy coffee and a bagel.”

The search for housing didn’t turn up anything affordable, but it did pique his interest in downtown revitalization. “I go to all the meetings. I’m a gadfly,” says the genial Marshall. “I’ve done a ton of reading over the years.”

Marshall agrees with urban theorists Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford and their criticisms of 1950s and 1960s downtown planning as being people-unfriendly. “It’s impossible to walk across the street. That’s really where we went wrong with downtown,” he says. “The freeway bisects it. There’s a mall plunked down in the middle.”

For Marshall, the building vacancies and lack of foot traffic are downtown’s biggest detractors. “[Courthouse] Square is very underutilized,” he says. “It should be the center of our town, a place to sit if there’s an art fair or a concert in the afternoon. As it is, the noise of the tires going by on the cobblestones, bumpity-bumpity-bump, even throws the musicians off. The center court in the shopping mall is replacing the town center.

“The city’s vitality–Sonoma County’s vitality to a large extent–is dependent upon downtown,” he continues. “Those businesses that move in and don’t find a niche don’t survive. You have enough failures in an area over time and it gets a bad reputation.”

But downtown isn’t a lost cause, adds Marshall. “The old hulk of a Rosenberg department store that once represented urban blight is now refurbished and one of the good places downtown.”

With corporate giant Barnes & Noble taking over the Rosenberg Building at Fourth and D streets, downtown now has three major bookstores in close proximity. Instead of taking business from the smaller, independently owned bookstores, Marshall believes, Barnes & Noble has increased the customer base of its competition.

“These stores attract a good cross section of people, and support a couple of good coffee shops, too,” he says. “Those three stores, plus the record shops, are not competitive with suburban malls. Crown Superstore [a chain retail book seller] is starving in the Marketplace, [as far as I can see]. You can roll a bowling ball down those aisles.”

People go to the Marketplace not for a shopping experience or leisure, but to buy. And buy they do in record amounts for Santa Rosa. Marshall suggests that those tax revenues from the Marketplace that exceed original estimates be used as incentive subsidies for turning downtown into a niche of hospitality and entertainment.

“Let’s enjoy the revenues and use some as seed money to relocate certain businesses downtown,” he says. “That will bring a lot of people.”

The Urban Designer

Laura Hall doesn’t live or work downtown. But that’s where her heart is. “I studied public open spaces in school. I love talking about plazas,” says the urban designer with Carlile, Macy, Mitchell & Heryford.

Hall is a member of the Coalition to Restore Courthouse Square, a group that is working to redesign the old square–split in two in the late ’60s–and block the cobblestoned stretch of Santa Rosa Avenue that runs through the middle. “Santa Rosa is in dire need of having a heart that is not bisected,” Hall says. “Twenty years ago we started carving up downtowns for cars. That was the model of the time. Everyone did it all over the country.

“People don’t want to admit that they made a big mistake by bisecting the square,” she adds. “A lot of money went into the design and existing configuration of the square, and it’s really easy to get defensive when you’ve spent a lot of money.”

Downtown’s real foe isn’t parking or competition from malls or even vacancies, she continues. Those are just symptoms of downtown design that, in places, goes “way beyond pedestrian-unfriendly to pedestrian-terrifying.”

“It’s about architecture and whether buildings work, about spaces divided up correctly to invite pedestrians,” she says. “People are fooling themselves if they think downtown will work with Courthouse Square the way it is. It’s two big dead spaces. It draws energy out.”

The coalition’s report on reunification design, cost estimates, and traffic impacts is due in March. Preliminary estimates put the project cost at about $1.8 million, says coalition chair Terry Price. He emphasizes that the group plans to fund the project with private sources and public grants, rather than any kind of tax assessment for downtown businesses.

He adds that preliminary traffic studies show that the impact of blocking Santa Rosa Avenue, one of the busiest arteries through downtown, is significantly less than many business owners fear. “The amount of time increase we’re talking about at an intersection is a matter of seconds, ” Price says, adding that some slowdown in traffic is desirable. “We want downtown to be a place people go to, not speed through.”

Right now, groups of kids are about the only people hanging out in Courthouse Square and on downtown sidewalks, a trend some shoppers and merchants find disconcerting. “A lot of people find it hard to walk in front of 30 young people. They don’t like to feel that conspicuous. But it’s easy to use kids as scapegoats,” says Hall. “When any one group takes over a spot, there’s something wrong with it.

“You want a cross section.”

Courthouse Square, which has “no clear path of navigation,” makes people feel uncomfortable, she adds. The coalition’s design calls for a more traditional town square, tree-lined, with diagonal walkways. “The square won’t solve all the problems, but it will be an opportunity for pedestrians, for more people on foot,” she says. “People are yearning for these kinds of spaces.”

Downtown itself is a business, and “businesses tend to have a life cycle of about 50 years,” says Santa Rosa Economic Development Specialist Lyn DeLeau. “Our downtown has lasted 150 years, and the reason it has–not to put too much of a Pollyanish spin on it–is because people are looking at it again and again, keeping up with a changing economy and competition.”

The problem now, she says, is the lack of a “unified voice of downtown [merchants and residents] to come to the council and say, ‘These are the kinds of things we need.'”

Clearly, downtown revitalization is a quagmire of ideas, opinions, criticisms, and emotions. But common themes do emerge. One refrain? Every person interviewed for this story interrupted their litany of downtown ills to point out that Santa Rosa has a good downtown. Such a statement can sound plaintive, defensive, and well, lame, in light of the statistics and the lack of bustle on the streets.

But for the optimist, perhaps it’s a rallying cry, the starting point of consensus, and a long-awaited sign that all these chefs just might succeed in coming together to cook up a great downtown.

From the February 20-26, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

The Scoop

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0

Dark Star

By Bob Harris

I JUST SAW Star Wars again. It’s big fun. But don’t take the kids just yet. You know by now that George Lucas’ stock for this stew was Joseph Campbell purée, which laser-blasted into the collective unconscious by drawing on cultural archetypes and recycling every old story we’ve ever loved.

However, Lucas also played (accidentally, let’s presume) on some old prejudices that surely resonate at least as intensely.

For starters, the Rebellion is whiter than the Texaco letterhead. Sure, there’s a token malt-liquor-ad black, played by (who else?) Billy Dee Williams, but not until the sequel. Apparently, in a universe where arms, legs, and antennae sprout interchangeably, human skin doesn’t even tan–not even on a desert planet with two blazing suns.

Chewbacca, however, is a perfect sidekick. Ignore the hair and here’s a stereotypical “good” black–frighteningly large and strong, prone to violence, and not too bright; but loyal, subordinate, and happy to do the heavy lifting.

When blond-haired, blue-eyed Luke gets the idea to rescue Leia by pretending to escort a prisoner, it’s only natural that the cuffs belong on the big guy.

Notably, none of the various latex-headed mutants display any redeeming qualities, jabbering strangely and toiling in unimportant poverty. Great–Lucas even stereotypes the Third World.

And what’s the deal with C3PO’s sexuality? OK, laugh. But think about it. Even though it–it–is a genderless robot, “he’s” treated by everyone as male, albeit sexless. Why does that resonate? Simple. We’ve seen this character before.

What’s the stereotype of gay men? Let’s see: effete, low in self-esteem, afraid of a physical fight, duplicitous out of self-interest, obsessive over their companions, and conscious of appearances. C3PO exactly. Try not to laugh when the droids fool the Storm Troopers by hiding in a closet.

It’s a man’s world. Other than Luke’s aunt–who cooks for the menfolk twice before getting incinerated–we’ve got exactly one female here. Per stereotype, Leia (cute pun, guys) contributes nil beyond pleading for help (via the droids) and throwing a hissy fit and leading everybody into a garbage bin.

She’s really just a prize for the Phallic Ones.

In the climactic Death Star assault, when the Rebellion needs every pilot they can find, the only job for a girl is to sit home and hope one of the P.O.s will save them all. C3PO stays behind, too; we already know why he can’t be a pilot.

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan and Darth literally cockfight over who’s the master, slapping long hard cylinders held with both hands. Puh-leeze.

What the hell does Han Solo smuggle? Since mobsters like Jabba would gladly kill over his stash, it sure ain’t tamales. Drugs? Guns? Naked Ewok pictures? No one cares–as long as Han serves the Rebellion.

Excuse me, but that’s precisely the rationale the CIA has used with drug smugglers in Nicaragua, Laos, Afghanistan, and everywhere else. Nice ethics to teach your kids.

Han–a career criminal–kills Greedo unnecessarily, although the 2.0 version has been altered so that the bounty hunter fires first. And Han chickens out of the final dogfight, showing up only to sucker-punch one peon bad guy after everyone with any real cajones has already exploded in a fiery ball of Industrial Light and Magic. This is a hero?

Ultimately, what kind of “democracy” is the Rebellion fighting for? Cursory mentions of a republic are made, but we’ve also got Princesses, Lords, and Jedi Knights. OK, so a constitutional monarchy? Not if we can trust our own eyes: The Princess considers herself entitled to command Luke and Han, simply by birthright; Obi-Wan’s occult powers allow him to gleefully command “weak minds” against their own will–a manifestly fascist goal; the rebel alliance salutes Luke and Han with a faceless, boot-clicking military phalanx every bit as robotic as the Empire; etc.

Lucas’ vision is unrelentingly royalist. Carrie Fisher even tries a dinner-theater British accent in quieter scenes, dropping it when the action picks up.

More tellingly, Luke’s destiny is to become a Jedi, just like his father. So greatness is genetic–a truly dangerous idea. I seem to recall a few million people dying the last time folks bought that one.

Bottom line? Aside from constant sexual and race stereotypes, political amorality, and authoritarian faith in the divine right of kings, Star Wars is just terrific.

The Scoop is archived at www.goodthink.com

From the February 20-26, 1997 issue of the Sonoma County Independent

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

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Seeding the FutureBy Christina WatersTHE MOST GLAMOROUS menus showcase heirloom produce. Farmers markets overflow with exotic shapes and colors. From the pages of small catalogs sprout seeds with names like Rainbow Inca corn, Appaloosa beans, Red Alpine fraises des bois, Zapotec pleated tomatoes. Nothing, it seems, is sexier than planting non-mainstream seeds, seeds that have eluded the Disneyfication of...
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Dark Star By Bob HarrisI JUST SAW Star Wars again. It's big fun. But don't take the kids just yet. You know by now that George Lucas' stock for this stew was Joseph Campbell purée, which laser-blasted into the collective unconscious by drawing on cultural archetypes and recycling every old story we've ever loved.However, Lucas also played (accidentally, let's...
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