I remember the days when almost every woman I knew in northern California poured over Alice Walker’s new age novel about women who love other women, and wore something purple.
Some were even inspired to come out as lesbians.
Walker has continued to write and publish ever since The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1982. Stephen Speilberg turned it into a movie and gave Walker international star power.
When I was teaching American literature in Europe in the mid-1980s, students wanted to know all about her. They would have benefited greatly by the journals she kept from 1965 to 2000 that have just been published under the title Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, 1965–2000 (Simon & Schuster; $32.50). They have been edited, though nothing significant seems to have been omitted.
Walker writes about her Jewish, civil rights lawyer husband Mel, her Black lovers, including the historian Robert Allen, and the singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman, plus her fractious relationship with her daughter, Rebecca Walker, an author in her own right.
In Gathering, readers have the opportunity to see Alice up close and personal, though they won’t know everything about her, up to the last minute. The book stops in 2000.
I’ve never met Walker, but I heard her deliver an inspiring speech to seniors at Mendocino High School, where she said, “Walk alone, be an outcast.” I also interviewed her by phone soon after U.S. troops went into Afghanistan. “We have all been called to awaken right now,” she told me, and helped to fuel the current woke phenomenon.
These days, Black women writers are all over best seller lists. Walker was one of the first to break out of the literary ghetto and appeal to both white and Black people. To do that, she worked exceedingly hard promoting herself. Not surprisingly, she writes in Gathering, “I want a year of not being Alice Walker.” In another journal entry from around the same time, she asks, “Why do I keep on trying to figure out what’s wrong with me?”
What seems to have made her relatively happy and even content with her lot in life, has been her time among back-to-the-landers. As she explained during the interview I conducted with her: “It’s so peaceful and rural, and I like my neighbors who are regular people. Mendocino County is a wonderful place to grow a garden and an idyllic place to write. In Boonville, I wrote The Color Purple.”
She added, “The Mendocino County I know and love is similar to the countryside in Georgia where I grew up.”
Still, it’s curious that a woman from a poor Black sharecropping family found herself in northern California, far from any big city literary marketplace. Predictably, Walker has never been entirely happy in Mendo. In Gathering, she writes about her weary, world-wide travels, the many expensive properties she buys in California and New York, and her “house complex.” I applaud her candor and her willingness to reveal her flaws, contradictions and frustrations with friends and lovers. “The nomadic life has got to stop,” she writes. Read Blossoms to find out if she has slowed down. Become a voyeur or pretend you’re reading a long gossip column in which the columnist strips herself naked—almost.
Jonah Raskin is the author of ‘Beat Blues: San Francisco, 1955.’
The new book from Greg Sarris, Becoming Story: A Journey Among Seasons, Places, Trees, and Ancestors, is a personal memoir of 13 essays in four sections, exploring connection to place, past, present and future.
I first encountered Sarris’ work in 1994, when I read his book of short stories, Grand Avenue. Sarris, an author, activist, producer and playwright, is also Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Like Sherman Alexie and Oakland author Tommy Orange, Sarris has portrayed Native American life in a non-romantic, realistic way in his past work. Becoming Story maintains this, but also takes on a more dreamlike quality, as Sarris evokes memories from his past and incorporates landscape, weaving them into a whole narrative.
“What’s important is how the stories evoke certain ethics and esthetics that predicate a culture and of people’s relationship to the land,” he says.
While Grand Avenue is fiction focused on intertwined Native American families and their dynamics and challenges in Santa Rosa, Becoming Story’s personal memoirs, evoked by moments with others in place, are all part of Sarris’ past and present story. The collection of essays begins with the seasons, entitled Frost, Iris, Osprey and Scar, and ends with The Last Woman From Petaluma. In between are essays about trees, ancestors and local places, including one about the charms (pun intended) of Tolay Park and another discussing the devastation of Sudden Oak Death in Sonoma and Marin’s Oak trees.
“My whole experience consists of what I experienced and know from the past, what I know and experience in the present, and how I might be imagining my experience in the future,” he explains, “The parameters of what constitutes our ethnicity, our identity, even the stories we read, is ultimately dialogical, consciously or not.”
The book began with work he had already published in newspapers and journals, which Sarris expanded into a narrative about places and people, the moments where they intersect and how they inform each other.
“Colonizing cultures too often bring their own story to the landscape that they encounter, rather than stories evolving as a result of a long relationship with the landscape itself,” he says.
Living a long time in one location, and generational memory can activate how a story is told as well as what is told.
“Our experience will always shape how we see things and read things around us,” he says, “If we are open, and if we are flexible, we will be able to hear the landscape and other stories for what they might suggest to us and the ways in which they may get us to rethink our own stories and our own experience in a place.”
Ultimately, story reflects who we are and who we want to become. Do we anticipate our place in a landscape that sustains life or in a place that destroys life?
“All that we know and all that we are about are stories,” Sarris says. He then asks, “Will those stories suggest and reinforce a sustainable respectful relationship with the landscape, or will they suggest and shape a harmful disconnected relationship with the landscape and world in which we live? That is the question.”
The new poetry book from Sixteen Rivers Press, Plagios (Plagiarisms) Volume Two by Mexican poet Ulalume González de León, couldn’t have come at a better time.
During National Poetry Month, emerging from the pandemic, and grappling with war in Ukraine, González de León’s poems are more timely than ever. They discuss the relationship between the living and dead, in addition to her reworked texts, which she called “plagiarisms.”
This volume is the second in a three-volume set of the works of González de León in Spanish and English. The dual language book, wonderful for Spanish and English speakers, is the only English translation of this poet’s body of work.
González de León, born in Uruguay in 1928, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Mexico and became a Mexican citizen in 1948. She was part of a movement of women writers whose work experimented with personal identity and language itself.
This second volume, like the first, was translated from Spanish into English by local trio Terry Ehret, Nancy Morales and John Johnson. The first volume in both languages of her work came at the beginning of the pandemic, and this second one comes as we begin to emerge. Notably, the translation process for volume two was almost entirely on Zoom.
Ehret, poet laureate of Sonoma County from 2004 to 2006, says, “Our usual process of bringing our individual translations to a group meeting to hash out a version we could all agree to benefitted from the give and take of an in-person conversation—not to mention good food and glass of wine.”
Fortunately, when the pandemic began, they could meet online.
“Zoom allowed us the opportunity to continue to translate. Still, we experienced the obstacles of working from home within a new medium,” explains Morales. “Defining a work rhythm and how to inform our translation with so many competing factors became real. This project felt simultaneously bright and grim. Bright because we were making art, and grim because it was so charged and uncertain.”
Entirely new worlds emerge when we read writers that communicate in other languages besides English. And the world of González de León is worth the immersion.
Volume two contains work that Diego Alcázar Díaz says, “holds an essential part of Ulalume González de León’s literary project: reworking of texts and themes that at first do not seem poetic, but become so as they are masterfully crafted by that duende which Rosario Castellanos said characterizes Ulalume’s work.”
Duende is a Spanish term meaning a heightened state of emotion manifesting into authentic actions. Ehret describes the challenge and pleasure of translating the work with regard to duende.
“One of the best ways to read these poems is with the original text she was borrowing in hand, just to see the playfulness and duende at work,” says Ehret.
Johnson agrees, “Ulalume’s poetry reminds us over and over that we live in a world of others, among the words of others, and that we are all participants in the act of meaning-making, which is above all a pleasure.”
Purchase the book at Amazon or sixteenrivers.org. An online reading is at 7pm, Tuesday, April 12 (RSVP required at bit.ly/read-plagios) featuring the poetry of González de León read by translators Ehret and Morales, with guest poet-translator William O’Daly.
It’s no secret that Congress is polarized. Rarely does an issue receive strong bipartisan support. That’s why it’s so striking that four out of five voters agree that we must do more to safeguard our democracy from presidential corruption.
No president, regardless of party, should be able to exploit weaknesses in our political system for their personal gain. That’s where the Protecting Our Democracy Act comes in. If passed, it would prevent future abuse of presidential power and corruption, increase transparency and ensure presidents of either party can be held accountable.
If the average person used their office for personal gain, they’d go to jail. If the average person could pardon themselves, there would be no rule of law. Therefore, no president should be above the law. It’s time we put safeguards in place to prevent a corrupt president of any party from abusing the power of their office.
Joelle St. James
San Rafael
Power Play
Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree that no president, regardless of party, should be able to obstruct and undermine the will of the American people or exploit weaknesses in our political system for personal gain.
That’s where the Protecting Our Democracy Act comes in. If passed, it would prevent future abuse of presidential power and corruption, increase transparency and ensure presidents of either party can be held accountable.
Strengthening the guardrails on presidential power is just common sense. If the average person used their office for personal gain, they’d go to jail. If the average person could pardon themselves, there would be no rule of law.
No president should be above the law. That’s why I’m urging Congress to pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act. We must prevent future presidents of any party from abusing the power of their office.
“It’s been kind of hard being a trans person lately,” said Jennifer Rihl, her words met by a light chuckle from audience members.
A small crowd is gathered on the patio outside Brew Coffee & Beer House in downtown Santa Rosa. Most, like Rihl, are familiar faces, members of Sonoma County’s tight-knit but often overlooked queer community. On March 31, they gathered to acknowledge and celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility with an evening of live performances, heartfelt speeches and what soon becomes a tense game of Jenga.
Held annually since 2009, the day is a celebration of the shared strength, resilience and courage of the transgender community. It was founded by Rachel Crandall-Crocker, a Michigan-based transgender activist, who had become tired and disillusioned by the representation of transgender people in the news and popular media.
“I wanted a day when, rather than talking about those who passed away, we could talk about those of us who were alive,” Crandall-Crocker wrote in a 2021 essay. “And I wanted a day that would bring together trans people from all over the world.”
Rihl, who spent 36 years in the closet before transitioning over the course of several years, says that visibility is something that fills her with an immense sense of confidence and self-love.
“[Visibility] gives me pride because even in the face of adversity, I’m still happy,” she says. “I spent 36 years hiding, you know, being in the background. Not anymore. I like living out loud.”
“There’s something uplifting about stepping into the world every day as the person that you actually are,” she says. “Most [cisgender, heterosexual] people don’t really understand that feeling. They don’t understand the years of torment that so many trans people go through.”
However, this year’s Transgender Day of Visibility isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Last year was the deadliest on record for the transgender community, with at least 57 reported deaths—and in the last three months, state lawmakers around the country have introduced an alarming number of anti-LGBTQ and anti-transgender bills.
According to data from the American Civil Liberties Union and LGBTQ advocacy group Freedom for All Americans, more than 240 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed by state lawmakers in the last three months, with half of them targeting transgender people and youths. By comparison, only 41 anti-LGBTQ bills were proposed in the entirety of 2018—a nearly 400% increase in anti-LGBTQ legislation in the last four years.
Emerson Robles-Tuttle (L) speaks at a Transgender Day of Visibility event at Santa Rosa’s Brew Coffee & Beer House. Joya Calvino (R) provides ASL interpretation.
“The fact that we are seeing a lot of retaliation for us being loud, and being ourselves and being openly proud of who we are—I think that it was inevitable that that was going to come through,” Emerson Robles-Tuttle, a youth advocate with LGBTQ Connection, says. “There is strength in visibility, but there can also be harm.”
“There’s a lot of reasons why many trans people choose not to be visible. There’s safety risks to that,” says Orlando O’Shea, one of the founding committee members of TransLife Sonoma. “The more visible we become, the more of a backlash there is.”
Events like Transgender Day of Visibility, says O’Shea, are a reminder that no matter the adversity they face, the transgender community is not going anywhere.
“I always see it as kind of a revolutionary act to be visible,” he says. “[Visibility is] saying we’re here; we won’t be erased.”
Specifically, how the age-old cycles of nature collide with the cycles of American politics.
On the surface, Dunaway’s book, which recently won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, chronicles the unlikely role of a Sonoma County activist in a decades-long campaign to protect a breathtaking piece of Alaskan wilderness from oil drilling.
In 1980, Congress established the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a 19-million acre region in northeastern Alaska. In the establishing legislation, lawmakers designated a 1.5 million-acre coastal region, formally known as the 1002 area, as open for oil drilling in the future pending Congressional approval. Ever since the ANWR was created, there has been a fight over opening the 1002 area for drilling.
The political fight in Washington, DC rises and falls every few years. Meanwhile, almost like clockwork, tens of thousands of Porcupine caribou converge on the 1002 area once a year to give birth to their calves.
Studies show that oil drilling in the calving grounds could have terrible impacts on the caribou and numerous other Arctic animals.
But that’s not all. Drilling would also endanger the Gwich’in, Native people whose territory overlaps with the Wildlife Refuge. The Gwich’in culture, which, needless to say, long predates the oil interests intent on expanding into the 1002 area, is tightly connected to the caribou. For countless generations, Gwich’in have hunted caribou for meat and other uses. If the calving grounds were ever developed, it would impact the caribou, numerous other animals and the Gwich’in Nation.
Lenny Kohm, the focus of Defending the Arctic Refuge, entered the political fight in the late 1980s.
Kohm, a jazz drummer turned photographer and activist, shot most of the images used in an influential slideshow presentation designed to convince Americans of the importance of protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. At the time the slideshow was created, Kohm lived on The Art Farm, an artist cooperative outside of the city of Sonoma.
After tiring of life as a touring musician, Kohm became radicalized on a trip to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. When he returned to California, he was determined to find out how to help save the refuge from oil drilling.
As part of this effort, Kohm helped produce a slide show presentation, titled The Last Great Wilderness, with a group named the Sonoma Coalition for the Arctic Refuge. The show was presented using two synchronized slide projectors, fading between images in time with voiceovers and songs. Over the next decade, Kohm, other environmental activists and members of the Gwich’in nation presented TheLast Great Wilderness hundreds of times in towns and cities throughout the country in an effort to influence politics from the ground up, at a time when national environmental organizations were prioritizing Washington lobbyists.
Many of the themes evoked in the slideshow still ring true today. The presentation reflects on climate change, America’s endless drive for resource extraction at home and abroad, the sense of powerlessness felt by those trying to resist these expansionary forces and the wisdom of Indigenous cultures.
The state of environmentalism in the 1980s makes the show an intriguing and important historical relic.
At the time, mainstream American environmentalists often used narratives largely focused on the need to maintain the Refuge as a pristine piece of nature, untouched by humans. The Sonoma Coalition’s slideshow and other advocacy efforts helped to center the centuries-old relationship between the Gwich’in and the Porcupine caribou in the debate over drilling in the refuge.
“Instead of trying to salvage a ‘sample of the pioneer frontier,’ a central myth of frontier colonialism, Lenny and the Gwich’in spokespeople framed refuge protection in terms of Indigenous cultural survival,” Dunaway writes.
Of course, not all credit should go to Kohm for this shift or the successes of the broader anti-drilling campaign. Before and after Kohm picked up the cause, the Gwich’in engaged in their own advocacy efforts, and the debate around Arctic drilling may have come to focus on Indigenous rights even if Kohm had not appeared. Still, Indigenous people quoted by Dunaway credit Kohm and the slideshow with playing a meaningful role in the effort to prevent drilling in the Arctic Refuge in partnership with Gwich’in advocates.
“Lenny was not a savior single-handedly rescuing the Arctic. He knew that true power came only from organizing and mobilizing collective voices,” Dunaway writes.
Gwich’in leader Sarah James speaks at a 2005 anti-drilling rally in Washington DC. Courtesy of Subhankar Banerjee.
In recent years, many American environmental organizations have shifted focus to environmental equity and Indigenous rights, rather than focusing on preserving pristine wilderness.
Meanwhile, the debate over drilling in the 1002 area continues to crop up in the national discourse every few years. In 2017, Republicans successfully passed legislation to open the contested area to drilling as part of the $1.5 trillion tax cut package. Celebrating the victory, Trump bragged that he had accomplished what several of his Republican predecessors had aspired to accomplish during their time in office.
Over the next few years, the Trump administration cut one corner after another in their effort to auction off the oil rights before the end of Trump’s first term.
On Jan. 6, 2021, the auction occurred. But, from the perspective of the oil-backers, it was an unmistakable dud. The sale raised only $14.4 million in revenue for taxpayers from three bidders, in an auction Republicans promised would bring in roughly $1 billion.
The prevailing theory seems to be that changes in the energy markets combined with sustained pressure from activists on business interests and politicians, helped to cool the economic interest which drilling backers hyped for decades. Is that the end of the story?
Not quite. As always, the cycle of American politics continues. After Russia invaded Ukraine, there were once again calls, citing National Security, to increase oil drilling domestically, including in the Arctic Refuge.
Joe Biden’s administration opposes drilling in the 1002 area, but has approved drilling permits on other public lands at an astounding rate.
Once again, a quote from The Last Great Wilderness seems relevant: “Will we be more secure when we’ve developed our last oil field? When through our addiction to the use of fossil fuels, we’ve added more to the dangerous global warming trend?”
Last November, I needed a video editor to produce lecture videos for an online course. So I did what one does these days. I posted the job on a global hiring platform and found Sofia, who had the visual sophistication and technical skill I needed. I gave no thought whatsoever to her location: Kyiv, Ukraine.
In January, as the headlines began to blare, I thought I’d better acknowledge the situation there. I lightly asked how the mood was. “It can’t be easy having 150,000 Russian troops staring down at you,” I wrote. She responded that people are indeed tense, but she just tries not to think about it. I didn’t mention it further, not wanting to make her think about it.
Then, on the Monday before the invasion, it seemed time to check in again. This time, she wrote of good days and bad days and trying not to panic. She had taken a survival skills course and was stocking up on food and medicine.
The next morning, I wanted to do something to cheer her up. I had just been to a screening of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights accompanied by the Oakland Symphony, so I found a clip on YouTube of the boxing scene and sent it to her, hoping it was an appropriate choice. She wrote back an enthusiastic “Thank you! Just what I needed! Hilarious!” I commented that Chaplin was way ahead of his time with his lampooning of hyper-masculinity. “Exactly!” she replied.
On Wednesday, I saw the U.S. intelligence reports predicting a 4am invasion, 6pm Pacific time. I posted a message to Sofia saying, “I imagine it’s not easy to concentrate on work at this point. But then I think maybe work affords you needed distraction. Just let me know how you’re doing.” I kept an eye on the news while Sofia slept, and at 7pm, the first reports appeared. Before I went to bed, I messaged again, “I’m so sorry this is happening. Please know that many people around the world are feeling anguish on your behalf.” In the morning, I found her reply, “Woke up at the sound of explosion today… ” I asked if she had time for a Zoom call. She said yes.
“Is it quiet where you are now?” I asked. “Yes,” she said, “we haven’t heard any explosions since about noon.” It was 7pm her time. A couple of days earlier, she, her sister and her husband had gone to her parents’ just outside of Kyiv. I told her we are seeing images of explosions and tanks crossing the border, but we aren’t seeing anything about the Ukrainian military yet. How are they doing? “They are excited,” she said. “They’ve been waiting for months. But our government already reported that a Russian unit surrendered. They don’t want this war.”
I asked if she wanted to try to keep working. She said yes. “Except it’s hard because so often you forget what you’re doing.” I told her I understand. I was living in New York when 9/11 happened. I remember well the inability to concentrate. I let her know that whatever she can manage is fine. We agreed we would keep communicating on Telegram, her preferred messaging app.
Since then, I have messaged her every morning and evening, sending tranquil or upbeat photos and saying encouraging words. She responds with deep appreciation, giving updates and sharing memes going around.
The second day, she reported that she and her husband went back to their apartment in the southern part of Kyiv to get some things but decided to stay to volunteer with making first aid kits and giving blood. Then they discovered the advantage of having air raid sirens to warn them and an underground parking garage in which to go. “In suburbs,” she wrote, “you’re always worried that something will fly in your house at any moment.”
I sent her a photo of my front deck, with blue and yellow balloons tied to the railing. She sent me back an animated gif of a cuddly dinosaur with hearts shooting out of it.
Then she reported a day of looking for food for the volunteer center and spending two and a half hours on line at the grocery store. She apologized for not finishing the edit revision. I said, “Please don’t apologize for not doing work! I will assume nothing is getting done until you tell me you have the bandwidth to focus again.”
She sent me a photo of a two-person tent on the concrete floor of a brightly lit parking garage. “This is our sleeping arrangement for tonight,” she wrote. I sent a photo of a California beach. “Beautiful!” she replied. Then she teased me about how cold it is in San Francisco, because I had told her earlier that people here start complaining when it hits 50 degrees. I checked the temperature in Kyiv that night: 35 degrees.
I told her I had seen so many stories of people saying, “Go fuck yourself!” I had the feeling that had become Ukraine’s rallying cry. She sent me the YouTube video of the radio communication between the Russian warship and the Snake Island border guards that started it all. I couldn’t stop laughing at the in-your-face audaciousness of the Ukrainians.
I told her I watched the documentary, “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” and was amazed at the bravery, dignity and integrity of the Ukrainian people. She wrote back that her sister is in the film. I told her I stopped it at one point because I thought I saw someone who looked like her. She sent me a gif of Dwight from “The Office” saying, “It’s true.”
I expressed my frustration that the Russian people aren’t out in force enough yet to protest this war. She wrote me back a long explanation of Russia’s oppression of Ukraine, going back to the Soviets making them second class citizens, calling them Nazis, killing their intellectuals and making Ukrainian the language of rural and illiterate people, when in fact Kyiv is 665 years older than Moscow. I said, “Oh, I see, Putin is exploiting that history of prejudice.” “Exactly!” she replied.
Meanwhile, the edit revisions kept coming, despite my insistence that I don’t expect anything from her. When she finished part 7, I said, “Now please stop working!” I sent her a $300 advance and told her she can work it off when peace is restored. She wrote that it brought tears to her eyes, but she’d already started part 8, so she’ll just finish it first. Then she wrote, “Again air raid sirens. Have to go.”
I have been careful not to ask questions, not wanting to make even the slightest demand of her. But I had little sense of her daily life, and my anguish was growing. Friday, I asked for another Zoom call. She came on barely visible and apologized for having no light on. They hadn’t covered their windows yet. Only her face could be seen by the glow of her computer screen. I was glad I had a white wall behind me to help light her up. It was 6pm, her time.
She told me she and her husband are still in Kyiv, but they are mostly staying with her sister, whose apartment is in the same building but on a lower floor. They feel safer there, closer to the parking garage when the sirens blare. Her mother is with them, too. Her father has gone to join the citizen defense forces. Her husband is a developer, so has been working with the cyber forces.
Sofia has been volunteering for the Creative Forces of Ukraine, making anti-disinformation videos aimed at Russian citizens, to expose the truth of the war. But the work requires sorting through endless footage of violence and destruction. She can only do so much at one time. And it’s hard not to get distracted by scrolling the news. I told her I understand, I’m having the same problem.
I asked if she’s still sleeping in the parking garage. “Yes! Of course!” she said. I said it must be cold. “Oh yes, it’s very cold.” Do you have a good sleeping bag? “Yes, but I sent it to the military forces. We have another that we sleep on top of and then put blankets over us.” “Really, it’s not so bad,” she said. “We have hot water, heat and electricity.”
I joked that I want her to teach me how to say, “Go fuck yourself!” in Ukrainian. “Oh no, no, no,” she said. “These are very bad words. These are Russian words. Very aggressive. Ukrainian swear words are not like that. They are lighter and a bit funny.” I imagined Ukrainians, in a fit of pique, yelling Shakespearian insults at each other.
I told her I keep thinking Ukraine has such a beautiful flag, so bright and cheery and with an elegant simplicity. She told me it represents wheat fields and blue sky.
I am awed by the visual poetry. And I can’t help noticing a pattern: a bright, cheery flag; light, funny swear words; a comedian-as-president.
As we prepared to part, she said the call had cheered her. We had a long silence. I said, “God bless,” and felt tears welling up. She said, “Thank you.” Another long silence. Finally, we parted. The bubble we briefly shared, giving her an illusion of relief and me a hint of war, was split, sending us back to our respective realities.
I follow the news closely, then carefully word each message to avoid any unintentional display of American cluelessness. Even still, on Friday night I had a slip when I was in Oakland and saw a Ukrainian art piece projected on the side of a building, captioned with the words, “Art bombed by Putin” and “Boycott Russia.” I sent her a photo of it and said, “Maybe you’re familiar with this artist?”
The next morning, I found her reply, “This is Maria Prymachenko!” She pointed out that the name appears in the lower right corner (duh!) and included a link to the Wikipedia page. I wrote, “Please excuse my ignorance about Ukrainian art!” and dutifully studied up on this 20th century artist, of whom Picasso once said, “I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.”
Looking for a Bay Area rally to lend my presence to, I read that at the Ferry Building in San Francisco on Sunday, a group of artists would be replicating one of Prymachenko’s most famous works, “A Dove Has Spread Her Wings and Asks for Peace.” I worried that it might be hard to find, feeling slightly desperate to get a photo for Sofia, perhaps to amend for my ignorance. But coming onto the plaza, the rally was easily apparent.
Walking closer, I came around the tower and made my way through the crowd. Suddenly, stretching in front of me on the concrete was a burst of flowers framing the white and blue spread of a serene and pleading dove.
At 10pm that night (8am Monday in Kyiv) I sent the photos off to Sofia. I woke up the next morning to a dancing cherry with this message: “This is so cool! [smiley face] This amazing support really gives hope. [smiley face with hearts] Thank you for sharing this!”
As of the last census, 23% of Marinites were 65 or older, and in that bastion of youth, Sonoma County, it’s about 21%.
If you find yourself in that count, read on.
I came up with this better mousetrap because it is my nature to get the most payoff from the least effort; i.e., I’m lazy.
We’re old, or at least old-ish, and we’d all like to feel younger. We live here, so we accept the conventional Marinoma path to the fountain. We exercise, we do yoga, we try to get enough sleep, maybe close our iPads before 8 p.m. We’re quasi vegans, seafood eating (except for octopus, after we saw that “Teacher” movie), locavores (except for Fiji water) and we just downloaded the Kindle version of “Meditate While Driving.” That’s a lot of effort, and I know I’m risking deportation here, but does the morning backache, never seeing “SNL” live and that unfulfilled craving for a T-bone actually make you feel younger?
Well, I have a faster, cheaper, eat all the ice cream you want, answer. Talk younger. Here’s what I mean.
Delete any words or phrases that capitulate to your biological age, such as:
Starting a sentence with “At my age…” or ending a sentence with “if I live that long.”
The term “organ recital” to describe your latest symptoms.
Jokes like; “A colonoscopy is just a prostate exam that commits.”
Words like replacement, memory, great-grandchildren, Eisenhower or better mousetrap.
Add in words and phrases that will make your teenage relatives cringe and give you that look. This admittedly takes a little practice. Try this:
At the dinner table, casually mention that there’s this guy at the gym that’s straight up fire and you might have caught feelings for him. What would people say if they thought we were shipping, you wonder. All you know is that if he ever ghosts you, it’ll be, like, the 13th reason.
Try it. Nothing to lose, but a decade or two.
David Bickart lives in Marin County. To have your topical essay considered for publication, write to us at op*****@******an.com.
With Sheriff Mark Essick declining to run for a second term, Sonoma County voters will go to the polls June 7 to choose one of three candidates for the post.
If none of the candidates receives more than 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff during the November election. The winner will take office Jan. 2, 2023.
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office is the largest law enforcement agency in the county, policing all of the unincorporated areas, the towns of Windsor and Sonoma, and managing the county jails. The sheriff’s office also provides courtroom security at the Sonoma County Superior Court and operates the county’s search and rescue program.
The agency employs 728 full and part-time staff. Among the 424 full-time sworn deputies and detention officers, only 66 are female. This year, the agency’s budget is $211 million. Since 2014, the county has paid $10.4 million to settle lawsuits brought against the sheriff’s department, plus millions more in attorney’s fees.
Dave Edmonds, the first candidate alphabetically, retired from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office in 2013 as the senior captain after 32 years in the agency. In retirement, Edmonds founded, and currently directs, two law enforcement teaching nonprofits. He is also the contributing editor and content director for the national magazine, American Police Beat.
Edmond’s most prominent endorsements come from Sonoma County Supervisor Susan Gorin, Windsor Town Councilmember Debora Fudge and former Petaluma City Councilmember Matt Maguire.
Eddie Engram began his law enforcement career as a correctional officer with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department. He joined Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office in 2002, where he currently oversees the county jail as assistant sheriff.
Engram has been endorsed by two retired Sonoma County sheriffs, current Sheriff Mark Essick, several local law enforcement unions, the Sonoma County Farm Bureau and a variety of politicians, including Sonoma County Supervisors James Gore and David Rabbitt.
Carl Tennenbaum retired from the San Francisco Police Department as a sergeant after 32 years of service. In retirement, Tennenbaum has volunteered with Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) and worked to create community responder (mental health professionals) programs nationwide.
Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, Rohnert Park Mayor Jackie Elward and Santa Rosa Vice Mayor Natalie Rogers are among those supporting Tennenbaum’s campaign.
Kevin Burke, a fourth candidate who received the endorsement of the Sonoma County Democratic Party, dropped out of the race in mid-March, citing health issues.
With the June primary quickly approaching, the Bohemian asked each candidate the same six questions to get an understanding of where they stand on the issues which Sonoma County’s next sheriff will face. Their answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Scott Davidson/Flickr
Why do you want to be sheriff?
Edmonds:
I believe that I can turn the sheriff’s department around and make it a model agency, not only for the county or the state, but beyond. Under Essick, I saw the sheriff’s office’s performance and reputation getting worse. Then my friend, John Mutz (who ran for sheriff in 2016), contacted me and asked me to run for sheriff. John introduced me to people who have a real interest in change at the sheriff’s office.
Engram:
I think that right now is a critical time for the sheriff’s department. First in terms of our relationship with the community and second because our agency is going through a transition where it is important that the next generation of leaders is the right generation of leaders. I think I am the person best suited to determine who those leaders are. Also, we are at a unique turning point in law enforcement. Several new laws have been passed in the last couple of years, and it is important that the next leader be well-versed in those changes.
Tennenbaum:
I want to bring change to Sonoma County law enforcement. I have been a resident for 10 years, and I have seen some problems with the sheriff’s office, and a little bit of division between the sheriff’s office and the community they serve. I want to bring my common sense community-based law enforcement sensibilities to Sonoma County, improve those relationships and make the sheriff’s office more community oriented.
How would you deal with a deputy who uses excessive force?
Edmonds:
I am concerned about what I have been reading, that the sheriff’s office has a bit of a cowboy culture. The public would be surprised at how little force-on-force training the officers receive. I want to bring in more law enforcement training so situations don’t escalate. I want to create a countywide peace officer training facility, where all of our officers fulfill their annual state mandated training together. Through merging our training budgets and resources, every one of the officers will get more and better training to make all of them optimally fit, optimally well and optimally ready to safely handle our county’s most dangerous encounters.
This will include a lot of force-on-force training that they do not get now. Doing this actually inoculates our peace officers to this type of stress so they don’t get fight or flight responses. This allows them much better chances to de-escalate, remain calm and peaceably solve volatile situations.
Engram:
I would make it clear that the use of excessive force is not accepted. The next thing is the recognition that force is not always the first option. I would implement training in de-escalation, not only every couple of years, but on a continuing quarterly basis. I would set the expectation that excessive force is not to be tolerated and discipline officers when they violate the use of force policy. Additionally, I would not hire individuals from other departments with a history of excessive force or other problematic behaviors.
Tennenbaum:
I would start with looking at the type of individuals we hire. How we hire now does not truly reflect the community we serve in diversity or gender equity. The training would de-emphasize the use of force and emphasize verbal skills. The current department policies come from a national corporation. They are vague and ambiguous and leave room for deputies to misbehave. I would implement policies that are clear and concise and leave no doubt.
Measure P, a ballot measure meant to expand and strengthen the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach (IOLERO), was approved by voters in November 2020. It is currently in the courts, following a legal challenge from local law enforcement unions questioning the way the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors added Measure P to the ballot. If elected, how would you manage the implementation of Measure P?
Edmonds:
Yes, I support the provisions of Measure P. Once it is ready to be implemented, I will implement it fully. The director of IOLERO will be a department head at the same level as me. I would welcome the director of IOLERO to sit in on interviews with staff. I think their assessment of the sheriff’s internal affairs investigations are right on. I ran internal affairs for a couple of years and I fired deputies who didn’t deserve the job.
Engram:
I don’t think the sheriff can pick and choose what to implement from Measure P. It is the law. However, when everything is said and done, what the court determines to be legal will be implemented in its entirety. It is the law, and there is an expectation that the sheriff would follow the law.
Tennenbaum:
I am the only candidate for sheriff who worked actively to support the Measure P campaign. If I am elected sheriff, the tenets and the perimeters of Measure P will be part of the organization’s philosophy.
How would you bring more diversity into the department?
Edmonds:
I would have us go into minority communities and share with them the employment opportunities they might not be considering right now. And I would make the sheriff’s department a place where good people of diversity want to be. There is a nation-wide initiative called 30 by 30 intended to bring more female officers into law enforcement. That means hiring 30% female officers by 2030. Santa Rosa Police Chief Ray Navarro has signed onto that. The day I’m sworn in, I would sign that commitment and pursue achieving it.
Engram:
My plan is to address it in several ways. One is to recruit more heavily from our detention division, which is more diverse. The second is to recruit entry-level deputies, focusing on qualified diverse applicants. The third is to recruit from outside the county, where it is more diverse. Historically, we have relied on lateral recruitment from other departments. As a result, we have taken the existing demographic, and we use that demographic to fill our ranks. I am also looking at the possibility of creating a police athletic league to engage with youth. Also important is the willingness of top-level staff to be engaged in the community, both at community events and in a day-to-day way, even when we’re not invited.
Tennenbaum:
I would implement a very proactive and aggressive recruitment ambassador program. I would have female deputies and employees go out and recruit. What are the standards for hiring? Nationally there is an old-fashioned, maybe outdated, militaristic model of the ideal police. It narrows down the pool. We need to update the standards. I will look for people from the community who have the experience, and who represent the diversity of the community, to fill high-level positions.
How could deputies better connect with the public, given the enormous size of the unincorporated county?
Edmonds:
The Russian River zone is 400 square miles with a minimum staffing of two deputies. I have worked that zone. The rural deputies need to get out of their cars and walk the areas that have some population and say hi to the people. I did it out there. I would institute a “Walk your Neighborhood” program. You put door hangers on the homes in the neighborhoods announcing the dates and times deputies will be walking around the neighborhood. Then you fill out a report on how it went and whom you met. You walk the neighborhoods with community members. I would read all the reports.
Engram:
We can put on or attend events that are being held. The pandemic has shown us that technology has given us greater ability to engage with people, to meet with people and hear their concerns. We’ve seen that using technology is effective.
Tennenbaum:
Deputies need to take an active role in community activities and attend meetings. It is not practical to walk some areas, but, where it is practical, deputies should walk those neighborhoods and let people know, “this is your deputy.” In other areas, we could use social media. Either way, the deputies assigned to those areas need to make themselves known. They need to be accessible. To make sure their information is out there. To make sure everybody in those zones knows how to get in touch with the deputies. To become part of the community.
Is there anything else you want to tell our readers?
Edmonds:
I have a big bold vision to make the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office into all that it can be and all that it should be. It needs somebody who knows it from the inside. Somebody not beholding to the present way of doing things there.
Engram:
My qualifications stand out. I have worked in the sheriff’s department for 20 years, in both the law enforcement division and the detention division. Also, there is the historic nature of my campaign. I am the first African American to run for sheriff in Sonoma County. If I am elected, I would be the second African American sheriff in the state. It’s important, but it doesn’t define me.
Tennenbaum:
In the 1990s and early 2000s, I was the administrative assistant to the chief of police in San Francisco. I never crafted a budget, but I know how it works. I know how to relate to deputies because I did the work. I know what they’re facing. There should be no secrets in law enforcement. What are you afraid people are going to see? Policies are written to address liability after the fact. They don’t prevent bad conduct. I am the outsider. I’m the guy with the fresh pair of eyes, who sees the low morale at the sheriff’s office. I have no allegiance to the current sheriff or his underlings or his designated heir.
Find more information, visit the candidates’ websites:
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