Dar Williams

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Grace Notes

Dar Williams sings modern-day folk music for the suburbs

By Greg Cahill

“The scare for me growing up in the suburbs,” says singer/songwriter Dar Williams, “is that it’s so sterile that you don’t feel like you’re able to make mistakes, and all of the beauty of that fallibility is lost because you’re just watching your back all the time,”

Williams, the 29-year-old neo-folk phenomenon, doesn’t mince words. During a brief phone interview from her home in western Massachusetts, Williams is an open book, baring her soul and sharing her deepest feelings and innermost thoughts.

It is disarming, to say the least.

These days, Williams is making the leap from relative obscurity after two critically acclaimed CDs, 1995’s self-released The Honesty Room and the new Mortal City (Razor & Tie), a collection of mostly original songs dealing with displacement and the search for a home. The new disc was recorded in Williams’ bedroom and produced by Steven Miller, who has worked with Suzanne Vega, Jane Siberry, Marianne Faithfull, and Juliana Hatfield. Williams, who already has found a home among college radio’s coffeehouse crowd, is seeking new mainstream fans among listeners of the so-called Triple-A radio format. Her deeply personal, apolitical songs are peopled with lesbian lovers home for the holidays, college coeds in crisis, and young women coming of age.

After a two-month tour with folk legend Joan Baez, who recorded Williams’ “You’re Aging Well” on Baez’s 1995 comeback CD Ring Them Bells, Williams is catching her breath before hitting the road for a solo tour that will bring her to the Luther Burbank Center April 26 and eventually end in London.

But Williams doesn’t expect to land on the cover of People anytime soon. “I’m used to the folk audience being an underground group, and I think that’s pretty much how I’m going to stay,” she says. “People who keep their feelers out for less commercial stuff are going to be in the minority, and that’s just the way it’s going to be–and I prefer that anonymity.

“But by and large, people involved in alternative lifestyles will groove to alternative music in some form or another.”

Williams has been hailed as a continuation of such ’60s folkies as Baez, Paul Simon, and Judy Collins–closer akin to modern-day neo-folkies like Christina Lavin and Patti Larkin than the dust-bowl balladry of Woody Guthrie or some piney-wood Appalachian storyteller. It’s easy to envision Williams, a Wesleyan University grad dubbed by Ms. magazine as a “suburban griot,” lounging on the pink canopy bed of her parents’ Westchester County, N.Y, home, listening to Joni Mitchell’s Blue and pining over boyfriends and prom dates.

Indeed, life in the American ‘burbs informs her latest work. “My sense of the suburbs is that you have to fight for a sense of place; that it’s there, but that it’s so low on the list of priorities that you have to really search for it,” she says. “I mean, I’ve heard people say, ‘Of course, our suburban town had a strong sense of nature because we had a strong sports program.’ But I remember that our sports program was about triumph of brawn over brains, competition, peer pressure, subtle forms of misogyny, and workaholism–the idea that you always had to be busy doing something and that working on your studies wasn’t enough.

“As it stood, my sense of place was defined by social pressures and the desire to keep up.”

Williams, an ex-jockette who landed in a high school production of Godspell after suffering a sports injury, says that situation led to an “existential crisis,” albeit one that would pale compared to Courtney Love’s.

“My parents did something that was very right for squelching rebellion by making it seem ridiculous,” she explains. “I know kids who rebelled and their parents got really angry and they were grounded, paid the price, and went out and rebelled again. At our house, there was a horrible, painstaking process of trying to explain why I had done what I had done. I had no curfews, and an enormous amount of privacy and respect for what I did with my time, so there was this horrible trust that I would do everything right. I didn’t recognize until I was in college that I was being forced to conform to someone else’s stuff. Plus my sisters had done so much stuff ‘right’ that I always felt like the black sheep. I worked hard to look like I wasn’t too much of a mess-up.

“It’s funny because I realize now that if I had pushed the envelope, my parents had a great deal of unconditional love. But I didn’t test the waters because I was too embarrassed to pierce every part of my body or to drive a car into a tree or listen to really loud music.”

Any tattoos?

“No,” she adds with a girlish laugh. “But I’ll probably drop acid and get a big tattoo when I’m about 50.”

Dar Williams performs Friday, April 26, at 8 p.m. at the Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa, Tickets are $12.50. 546-3600.

From the April 18-24, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

Gay Christians

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Open Doors

Local churches reach out to gay Christians

By Bruce Robinson

“This is like the civil rights movement and the feminist movement,” says Dorothy Brooks, pastor of the First Congregational Church of Santa Rosa. “There’s a certain inevitability about it.” She’s talking about the declaration her congregation recently made to actively welcome “people of all sexual orientations,” a stance that they call becoming an “open and affirming church.”

By a vote of 93-10, church members adopted that position last winter, becoming the first mainstream Protestant congregation in Sonoma County to do so. “It took us three years of talking, studying, putting it forward,” Brooks says, “and it wasn’t easy.”

But, she adds, it was important. The church’s parent denomination, the national United Church of Christ, “has traditionally been a denomination that has been very concerned with justice,” she explains, one that is unwilling to “just abandon homosexuals to the kind of abuse they’ve been receiving.

“One of the reasons for going on record as welcoming gay and lesbian and bisexual Christians and seekers is that we have to counter the programming in their lives which has said, ‘You are worthless, you are a sinner, you are not acceptable to God and the church. You are lepers and pariahs and so on.’ Most homosexuals have had a lot of bad experience with respect to church. They don’t go, because they assume they’re not wanted.”

The truth of that generalization hit home for Janet Sage, who with her husband, John, served on the committee that studied and eventually proposed the Open and Affirming covenant, because of the experience of her own gay son. “Here was our child, who grew up in the church and yet he didn’t feel welcome and loved in the church,” she recalls. “That isn’t right.”

Beyond her personal concerns, Janet says, “we also felt it was our social duty and our Christian spiritual duty to come forward and counteract all the hate that is spoken in this community.”

Brooks’ congregation joined about 180 other UCC churches in the United States that had also adopted Open and Affirming statements. But First Congregational was the second church in Santa Rosa to take such a stance.

When the Universalist Unitarian congregation adopted its statement as a “welcoming congregation” nearly four years ago, “it was quite uneventful,” says Pastor Dan O’Neal, who noted that his denomination as a whole is “at the forefront of recognizing sexual variation as like any other variation in the human population. That’s what nature does, just throws out a whole plethora of variations.”

His congregation is now “actively thinking about how to get the word out,” O’Neal says. “We actively want more people of differing sexual orientations.”

Meanwhile, a small handful of other congregations in Sonoma County, both UCC churches and other denominations, are beginning to have internal discussions about declaring themselves more open to homosexual members. Others bluntly refuse to consider the subject, and still others remain adamantly opposed.

One of these is the Oak Valley Baptist Church in Cloverdale. “The reason that I hold homosexuality as a sin is because the Bible teaches it is a sin,” says Pastor Roger Margerison, quoting chapter and verse. And while he embraces the directive to love the sinner but hate the sin, Margerison adds, “I believe the sin of homosexuality is so unnatural that a person can get to the point where their conscience doesn’t bother them anymore; then they become very vociferous about ‘there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality and the Bible’s wrong in that area, and you are all hateful bigots.’

“They have no desire to repent and be saved.”

That viewpoint is so fundamental to the Baptists that when congregations in Oakland, San Leandro, San Jose, and Berkeley decided to become Welcoming and Affirming Baptist Churches, they were promptly expelled from the denominations’ regional group last month. “The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teachings,” declared Robert Rasmussen, executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of the West.

Brooks gently espouses a more tolerant theology. “I see so clearly that the Gospel is about inclusivity,” she explains. “Jesus was always relating to people who were at the edge and not included, which is something we as Christians are commanded to do. The ‘welcome to stran-gers’ theme is there from Genesis on.”

The Open and Affirming stance of Brooks’ church is what attracted George Splane and his partner, Larry Trent, who have become active, visible members. “I wanted to go to a church where I could be myself and be known and not have to keep parts of myself locked up,” Splane says. He made his first visit alone and a little wary, but “found a very warm welcome. The people on the Open and Affirming Committee were thrilled to have an actual gay person walk into the church, because at that time they didn’t have any openly gay men attending.”

That welcome, adds Trent, was a distinctly new experience. “I have been to a number of churches around town, and I never felt that any of them made me feel like it was OK to tell anyone there I was gay.” At another local church he attended briefly, Larry says, “there were some other gay people there, but when I walked in that door, I didn’t feel like it was OK to say to someone that I’m a gay man, that I have a partner at home, and how do you feel if I bring him with me next Sunday? Whereas at this church, it was not long before they wanted to know when George was going to bring me with him.”

Overall, though, the Open and Affirming status has attracted more new members who are straight. One of them is Bob Cramer, a former Baptist who was not only ordained in that denomination, but worked as a national public relations man for the American Baptist Church. “I’m what the Bureau of Standards uses to define straight,” he booms, “but I’m cussed if I’ll be in a church that says I can’t teach what I believe. So I left.”

“There was a time when the church supported the oppression of women and blacks, using Scripture,” says Brooks, taking the long view. “And yet it is also Scripture that has helped liberate minority people and women and so on.”

That positive trend is now moving in a new direction, she adds, one that her church has joined and many more will follow. “It’s a countercultural thing that we’re doing, just as it was for the churches in the South to get involved in civil rights. There is a kind of rising tide that’s just going to keep on going; it’s not going to stop,” she smiles seriously.

“The churches that act like they’re safe from this controversy, they’re going to be affected by it, too.”

From the April 11-17, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

Comics

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Man & Supermen

Batman illustrator on the fine art of saving the world

By David Templeton

Like the superheroes they bring to life, comic-book artists tend to be a solitary lot. They work alone, occasionally in pairs, insisting on a privacy that renders them essentially anonymous. As with Batman or Superman or Captain America, the world may have memorized the color of their capes and the shape of their insignias, but few have learned the human face behind the hero.

And like such new-breed characters as Samaritan, Metaphysique, Winged Victory, and Kane, there is usually a depth of intellect operating below their carefully crafted super-surfaces: a roiling, boiling cauldron of self-examination and existential angst.

Consider illustrator Norm Breyfogle, the 36-year-old wunderkind (he published his first comic book, Tech Team, at the age of 17), known industrywide as the man responsible for Batman’s mighty and muscled redesign a decade ago, and as one of the creators of Marvel Comics’ inventive Prime series.

This multi-award-winning Sonoma County artist is as likely to mention chakras and the work of philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Alan Watts (references to those gentlemen are spread throughout his work) as he is to defend the cultural significance of Beavis & Butthead. In fact, after talking to him on the phone for a few minutes, one can more easily envision Breyfogle as a best-selling, New Age writer than a guy who draws spandex-clad mutants making sounds like “Pok! Whak! Buddabuddabudda!”

And he’s a private person. In keeping with the reclusive example set by his pencil-and-ink creations, Breyfogle routinely swears reporters to secrecy before inviting them to his home tucked in amid the east county wineries. Upon arrival, however, one is treated with the utmost graciousness. “Would you like a Honey Bunny?” offers Barb, Breyfogle’s longtime compan-ion, taking a quick break from Easter treat-making. Faithful readers of Breyfogle’s six-part, mind-bending comic-book series Metaphysique (Malibu, 1995), which he wrote as well as illustrated, may recognize Barb from each book’s “Prelude,” in which the writer muses about his own metaphysical quests for truth, and thanks his partner for putting up with his “personal foibles.”

Breyfogle leads the way to his tiny upstairs studio. On the table are pencil-sketched pages of his current project, a comic book featuring Robin, Batman’s sidekick. “This one is listed as a ‘Back to School Special,'” Breyfogle laughs, “But I don’t know what that means. Maybe they’re going to offer a pack of crayons with it.”

He explains the illustration process. Working from a playlike script, written by a member of Marvel’s stable of writers, he designs each panel to match the action described, leaving the dialogue boxes and balloons empty. Upon completion, the entire stack of sketches is sent to an “inker,” who darkens the lines and adds the dialogue, and then to another artist who will color in the pages to Breyfogle’s specifications.

So he hopes, anyway. “My last Prime book, a crossover with Captain America, was colored all wrong,” he says, beckoning me to follow him across down the hall. “I’m happy with the way I did it, and I’m happy with the story, but when it came out, the coloring just wasn’t the way I indicated. Would you mind taking off your shoes?”

We enter a carpeted room only slightly bigger than Breyfogle’s studio. Dominated by a massage table (Barb is a professional massage therapist), the room also features a wall-mounted fountain, shaped like the head of a lion, and a couple of chairs that have somehow been squeezed in for us.

There are those, I mention, who assume that a grown man who spends his time drawing comic books must either be deeply in touch with his inner child or else be some kind of social reprobate who never figured out how to grow up. “The ‘inner child’ part is very generous,” Breyfogle laughs, taking a seat. “I think I’m all of those things, along with most of the other artists I know. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, what else does our culture offer us? This is a job. We are in an era of extreme special-ization in the workplace, and drawing comics is just another specialty.”

What about the age-old criticism that comic books, especially gory ones, are a subversive factor on the youth of America? “Subversive, how?” he asks. “Being subversive can be seen as a good thing, if there are parts of society that need subverting.

“Comics are gory, but I don’t know how subversive that is. The gore is really just an advertising feature to draw teenagers. They’re drawn to gore because they’re not allowed to see sex. But they can see the bloody stuff, so they take it.

“Another famous criticism of superhero comics is that they glorify power,” he continues. “I do think about that one a lot. These books are telling children that the ones that will win are the powerful ones. If the really graphic stuff isn’t backed up with a moral story, I think there is a danger there.”

He ponders this a moment more. “The entertainment industry, of which comics are a small, small part, cannot be blamed for all of the ills of society,” he says, laughing. “Only about half of them. But you have to look at the whole Western industrial military complex. What has that been doing to the human consciousness for the last 100 years? Then evaluate how much comic books and TV and Beavis & Butthead are responsible for that. Even if Beavis & Butthead is the trigger, it’s not the gunpowder.

“I actually like that show,” he says, tangentially. “It took me a while to catch on. Now, whenever I watch it, I think deeply about society in general and where we’re going.”

Sort of a ‘There but for the Grace of God go we” kind of thing? “No!” he counters, playfully. “More like, ‘In spite of the Grace of God, that’s where we’re going.’ I don’t know. It’s hard to say how things are going and how close we are to any kind of apocalypse or cultural breakdown, but it does seem as if things are coming to a head.

“Then again,” he laughs, “Things always seem like that. Some days, I can almost be persuaded that things are getting better. There’s the World Wide Web. The planet actually has a nervous system now. We finally have ground on which we can all stand and take a view of the world together. Instead of things coming to a head, maybe all that’s happening is that we’re discovering the depths of our cultural differences.”

The storm before the calm? “Sure.”

And if he’s wrong, what? Will Breyfogle stay up in his studio drawing superheroes till the end comes? “I’ll have to,” he shrugs. “It’s what I do best.”

From the April 11-17, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

Magnolia Fades

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Last Call

Magnolia’s owner calls it quits

By Greg Cahill

“A girl who called herself a Gypsy came in one time and dropped off this tape,” says Scott Goree, leaning against the bar at Magnolia’s–his Santa Rosa nightclub–encircled by memorabilia hanging on the walls. Goree, his long salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a ponytail, pauses to listen to the plaintive strains of the Gypsy violin reverberating through the darkened room. “I asked, ‘How will I get hold of you in case I want you to play?’ She said, ‘Well, I just travel around, but I figured that if someday I’m traveling through town you might like to hire me.’

“It was a pretty interesting encounter,” he adds with a laugh.

Unless that wandering minstrel swings through town before the end of the month, she will have missed her chance to perform at the county’s oldest continuously operating nightclub. After 10 years in business, Goree is closing the doors of his Railroad Square venue at the end of this month. In May, it will reopen under new ownership as a Latin dance club operated by the owners of the Puerto Vallarta restaurant in Santa Rosa.

After a couple of shaky years, the final nail in the proverbial coffin came in January when the Santa Rosa City Council voted to ban live nude performances. That action stopped Goree, a 47-year-old Penngrove resident, from presenting the California Hardbodies, the Petaluma-based troupe of scantily clad female hot-oil wrestlers. “I could make more in three or four nights of California Hardbodies and Monday Night Football than I could the rest of the month put together,” says Goree. “I knew that if they were going to deny me the right to do that, then I probably wasn’t going to survive anyway.”

Last month, a federal court in San Francisco temporarily set aside the ban and ordered the city attorney to explain why the ordinance–which exempts nude performances at theaters–should apply only to local nightclubs. Meanwhile, the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission has informed Goree that it plans to suspend his license for hosting Hardbodies shows that occurred before the ordinance was passed.

The ABC report, filed by three undercover Santa Rosa police officers, alleges that Hardbodies performers “simulated having sex with the air and floor.” ABC regulations strictly forbid the simulation of sex. Goree contends that the local police “sat on the report” until after the Hardbodies lawsuit was filed and then passed it along to the ABC.

A couple of weeks ago, state officials told Goree they planned to suspend his liquor license for up to 60 days–the kiss of death for the struggling nightclub. “That made me decide to sell under duress,” says Goree, who rarely had police called to his establishment to break up fights and never had a previous ABC warning. “It’s obvious that something’s askew politically.”

This week, Goree reluctantly signed a waiver admitting that he had allowed the Hardbodies to perform lewd acts. An appeal would have taken up to two years to be heard. “If I contested the charges, I’d have to pay legal costs and wouldn’t have been able to sell the club,” he says. “And then I’d have the Santa Rosa Police Department and the ABC breathing down my neck.”

A former restauranteur and music publicist, Goree became a partner at Magnolia’s in 1987, seven years after the club first opened. In recent years, the venue has hosted a wide array of big-name rock, blues, and Cajun acts. It also became a vibrant showcase for rising local talent. “Things are always changing in this business and they change very fast,” Goree says. “Since I’ve been here, the Daily Planet [now the Funhouse] has changed hands four times, Joe Frogger’s has changed hands three times. Pierce Street Annex went by in a flash. Bleacher’s has changed hands three or four times. Café This came and went.

“It seems like nightclubs in Santa Rosa have a life span of two years or so.”

Goree recently sought unsuccessfully to purchase the Inn of the Beginning with Jerry Schwartz, owner of Jerome’s Barbecue in Petaluma, and may yet re-emerge in the local club scene. “We’re still looking for another venue, but it’s not easy to find the ideal place.”

Meanwhile, Goree has withstood the many trials and tribulations that rocked the nightclub industry in the past decade: tougher drunken driving laws, annual state liquor tax increases, the burgeoning home video market, MTV, and the “cocooning” phenomenon, to name a few. “Anybody who wants to own a business looks for the potential to expand. One thing about this business is that it’s generally a constricted business–everything that happens socially or legally constricts your ability to do business,” he laments. “It’s just the opposite of what any intelligent businessman looks for. My theory is that you have to have a screw loose and have to love it in order to do it.”

Why has he done it all these years?

“I have a screw loose,” he adds with a laugh.

From the April 11-17, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

Mangia Bene

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Molte Bene

Mangia Bene pulls off low-key miracles with cost-effective style

By Christina Waters

With its sunny wall treatment in fashionably Tuscan gold tones, braids of garlic punctuating the two facing dining rooms, and its attractive young wait staff powering gorgeous dishes from kitchen to patron, Mangia Bene knows what it’s up to. It succeeds brilliantly in two key areas: boldly flavored, well-made dishes and a menu that keeps things short and sweet. In other words, Mangia Bene doesn’t try to offer everything under the sun, Tuscan or otherwise. It does what it knows and does it well.

Uncomplicatedly pretty–stylish banquettes lining the walls, oversized dried floral arrangements, olive oil on the tables, big heavy flatware–Mangia Bene specializes in freshly made individual pizzas, pastas, and salads, all of which are served in full-figured portions.

One recent rainy afternoon, I fell in love with a gooey, Romano pizza ($6.75), slathered with lots of fontina and mozzarella cheese and dotted with chunks of sun-dried tomatoes and coarsely chopped basil. Kalamata olives, very tangy Kalamata olives, poked through all the creamy cheeses. The pleasant crust–a bit unchallenging for someone looking for a seriously chewy pizza experience–was light with just a hint of fresh yeasty flavor. A house salad offered an overly aggressive tarragon balsamic vinaigrette on pretty mixed lettuces and radicchio ($4.25).

Another meal showed off the full range of Mangia Bene’s culinary charms, starting with a Caesar salad ($5.50) packed with intense anchovy flavor, plenty of garlic and a lemony mayonnaise-fortified dressing.

My companion meanwhile was so taken with his bowl of excellent Tuscan style minestrone ($3.50) that he was reluctant to share. One taste of the Caesar salad persuaded him to trade. Which was fine, since the minestrone turned out to be a spectacular dish. An undertone of herbs balanced all the ingredients, and echoed the excellent herb-laced house focaccia.

Glasses of red wines from the MG listing–long on Italian varietals and locally made vintages–kept us company during our meal. A glass of Geyser Peak Merlot Alexander Valley 1994 ($5.25) started off well enough–lots of smokiness, a hint of cherries–but failed to unfold much further. A Sangiovese-Cabernet Col-Di-Sasso Tuscany 1994 ($4.50) proved more interesting, long on velvet and plum, the perfect foil for our entrées.

An asparagus and seafood pasta ($7.50) made the biggest hit of the day, and a shared order of poached salmon salad ($6.95) wasn’t far behind. Huge quantities of sweet prawns, fresh mahi mahi, and salmon studded the central tangle of perfectly cooked angel hair pasta. The entire dish had been bathed–but not drowned–with a light sauce of fresh tomatoes. Sounds simple, but this irresistible dish showed off the kitchen’s expertise. The pasta was simply the way you want pasta to be: laced with a few morsels of something wonderful–in this case fresh seafood and young, spring asparagus–and then slathered with the comforting essence of tomatoes. Destination pasta, without question.

Finishing things off with a slab of streusel-topped sour cream apple pie that tasted quite homemade, we headed happily out to walk off our meal by foraging through the Plaza’s many antique emporia.

Mangia Bene:
241 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg; 433-2340Hours: Lunch, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.; limited menu, 3-5 p.m. Dinner, 5-10 p.m., Sunday-Thursday; till 11 p.m., Friday-Saturday
Food: Generously Italian
Wine list: Mostly Italian varietals and local wines
Service: Helpful, attentive
Ambiance: Contempo bistro
Price: Inexpensive to moderate

From the April 11-17, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

Summer Camp

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Camp Classics

One parent’s desperate attempt to beat the summertime blues

By David Templeton

Monday morning. I drop the kids off at the local Spring Break Day Camp that I almost waited too long to sign them up for, then race over to the coffee place for a quick latte on the way to work. Hovering near the espresso machine are three other parents from my kids’ school. They are chatting in hushed voices, looking about as stressed-out as I feel.

“Where are yours this week?” one woman asks, referring, I presume, to my children. We all compare notes: Boys & Girls Club, YMCA, Park & Rec, Grandma’s House. “What about, um, Summer Vacation?” someone asks nervously. Those two horrible words hang in the air like an unpleasant odor.

Summer Vacation.

That financially precarious, emotionally strenuous, three-month-long annual scheduling problem “We’d better not wait till the last minute,” I suggest, trying to sound as if I do not always wait till the last minute. We depart, with those words following me like some aggressively hungry cat. I cannot escape them.

“Fine!” I say to myself during my lunch break. I’ll set something up now. Let’s see. Maybe something different this year. Perhaps an overnight camp if it’s not too expensive. Maybe some special classes sprinkled across a steady diet of activity-filled day camps.

I already know about the YMCA. Five locations throughout the county: Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Occidental, Sebastopol, and Sonoma. Crafts, swimming, sports, field trips. Basic cost: between $200 and $232 per two-week session. I check my little red phone book for the number. There it is, listed under Emergency Services. 545-YMCA. I make a mental note to call them for a brochure. Right under the Y is the number for the Boys & Girl’s Clubs, all five branches. I make a quick call to the Petaluma branch (769-5322) to find out if their summer-long drop-in program is still happening. It sure is. Swimming, sports, crafts, field trips, all for an economical $85 for a summer-long pass or $5 per day. The Santa Rosa branch will be offering formal two-week sessions with different themes.

Cool.

So what else is out there? I pull open a drawer to reveal a stack of brochures that I’ve been collecting. I pick up the big, thick one first. The Excel program at Sonoma State University will be offering some amazing classes during their intellectually stimulating annual summer session. Designed for advanced students in grades 4 to 10, these classes are so intensive they require a note from the student’s teacher or proof of involvement in the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program.

“Classes,” it reads, “range from airplanes to Shakespeare, microscopes to jewelry, chemistry to clay, researching, performing, and surfing the Net.” I leaf through the booklet. Pre-medicine for Kids. Crash and Burn Chemistry. Adventures in Space. Kids Talk Radio Production. My oldest kid would like Check Mate, wherein medieval Europe is experienced through the characters on a chessboard.

Cool.

Most Excel classes are three hours long, Monday through Friday. Each class lasts one week, and there are morning and afternoon sessions. Prices average around $100 per class. I draw a big circle around the phone number (664-2394) and add a giant arrow. I write “Definite Possibility” next to the arrow.

What else have I got?

It takes up only one week’s worth of summer, but Petaluma Sings! Children’s Chorus is offering a day camp for singers the week of July 29. Under the direction of Melinda Worth, who directs the Petaluma Women’s Chorus, this camp will focus on vocal technique, ensemble singing, solo singing, music theory, and music reading. Open to kids ages 7-15, the camp will operate from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will culminate in an informal public concert. After a quick call (778-7961), I learn that a placement appointment is required before the camp begins, to determine the appropriate level for each melodious camper.

What about good old-fashioned run-around-in-the-woods kinds of camps?

The Nature Camp at the Westerbeke Ranch is a series of one and two-week camps that run in succession beginning July 1. I call up Diana Rhoten, camp director (996-4026), and ask her to describe the program in words I could use to sell it to the kids.

“It’s more fun than most kids can handle,” she laughs. “We have a ‘Hike till You Puke’ philosophy. Most kids go home exhausted.”

“Early bedtimes,” I think to myself, moving this brochure to the top of the stack. The camp features nature studies, swimming, hiking, pottery, a ropes course, and one overnighter; ages 5-12 are invited; and the cost is $325 for the two-week session, with discounts for siblings. “It’s a real cool camp,” Rhoten adds.

I make a note of that.

Now wasn’t there some sports camp I got a flyer about? Here it is. The University of Sports Camps is offering a variety of summer day camps, with special emphasis on basketball. Held in various places around the county, the one-week sessions are co-ed, with the exception of the Girls Fundamental Basketball Camp held at Healdsburg High School, and are open to kids in grades 3 through 11. Most sessions run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and cost around $150 a session. Operated by the Cotati-based University of Sports (585-2302), the camps are designed to be intensive, but not too intensive, with an emphasis on teamwork and esteem building. A camper/coach ratio of 8 to 1 looks good, too.

Oops. Lunch is almost over. I’d better decide right now.

But wait. Didn’t I hear about some weird summer camp out at the Coast Guard base in Two Rock? Better check that one out, first. And, hey, isn’t there an Art Camp at the Rohnert Park Community Center? And baseball, theater, soccer, cooking, and cartoon camps at the Sebastopol Community Center (823-1511)? Maybe we’ll do a few of each, but we’ll never hit them all.

Anyway. Summer Vacation is still nine whole weeks away. There’s plenty of time, right?

From the April 11-17, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

News Briefs

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News Briefs

Junkyards Targeted

PETALUMA The San Francisco BayKeeper, an environmental watchdog group, announced April 4 that four local junkyards are included in a Bay Area-wide campaign to stop pollution of rainwater. “If the kinds of oil slicks that we have seen running off of these 20 junkyards [throughout the Bay Area] were coming off an oil barge, that barge would be gone and the public would be demanding huge fines,” said San Francisco BayKeeper Mike Lozeau. “Junkyards can no longer operate like they did 30 years ago before there was a Clean Water Act.” He contends that junkyards are dumping oil, battery acid, antifreeze, heavy metals, and “other nasty contaminants with impunity” onto uncontained dirt lots and into adjacent creeks, storm drains, and the bay. The organization has sent notices of intent to file a lawsuit to four local junkyards: C&W Auto Wreckers, Al Stack’s, and California Crush (all in Petaluma or bordering the Petaluma River); and Penngrove Auto and Truck Dismantling. The BayKeeper group is giving the owners of those businesses 60 days to meet federal environmental regulations or else address the alleged violations in court.

Uplands Grant Approved

SANTA ROSA Over the objections of members of a local Pomo Indian tribe, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors on Tues-day approved a $900,000 grant to be used toward the purchase and preservation of the eight-acre Palm Terrace parcel in Sebastopol. In a series of ironic twists, Native Americans claimed they had been excluded from the conservation effort and objected to a plan to build a cultural center, but supervisors said it would be a shame to allow 18 luxury homes at the site.

Fishing Rules to Change

SAN FRANCISCO Rather than cutting the number of Chinook salmon that can legally be caught by sport and commercial fishermen this year, federal fishery regulators are considering an option that would increase the minimum-size limits instead. The Pacific Fishery Management Council had considered cutting the season in half to protect the depleted runs of the endangered species. Requiring legal catches to be larger fish–26 inches instead of 20 for sport fishermen and 28 instead of 26 inches for commercial boats–would re-duce the total harvest by about 30 percent, while protecting younger breeding stock. A final decision is due from the federal Commerce Department by the end of the month.

Higher SSU Fees Sought

ROHNERT PARK The cost of college is about to ratchet upward once again, if students and university trustees agree to the increase. Sonoma State Univer-sity leaders have proposed raising student fees $300 a year to $2,300, with the additional funds expected to raise about $2 million annually. The money would be used to pay for books, lab equipment, and part-time faculty. The proposal is expected to win easy endorsement from university trustees next month, but may face an uphill battle to win student approval in the fall. Student fees have already doubled over the past five years, and Sonoma State has the highest fees of any campus in the California state university system.

KFTY Changes Hands

SANTA ROSA The $7.8 million sale of television station KFTY (TV-50), announced last July, was finally consummated last week. That makes the only commercial television station in the North Bay a part of Ackerley Com-munications, a Seattle-based media company that also owns TV stations in Salinas, Bakersfield, Colorado Springs, and Syracuse, N.Y., along with a pair of Washington (state) radio stations and the Seattle Supersonics professional basketball team. The finalization of new ownership was observed on the air with the introduction of a new station logo. General Manager John Burgess says KFTY plans to add “several more reporters” to its news staff and another 30-minute newscast at a time slot yet to be determined. No other immediate staff or programming changes are planned.

In the Courts

SANTA ROSA Visiting Superior Court Judge William Skillman ruled April 5 that John Patrick McGuire–the local leader of the so-called Freemen movement–is mentally competent to stand trial on felony charges that he illegally possessed firearms and ammunition, and that McGuire threatened the lives of two Sonoma County Superior Court judges. McGuire, who has been defending himself, now says he wants flamboyant celebrity attorney Gerry Spence–best known for wearing buckskins in court and defending Imelda Marcos against corruption and fraud–to represent him. The trial is set for May 13. McGuire, indicted last week along with several Freemen protesters in Montana, also faces additional federal charges. . . . In a separate action, Superior Court Judge Cerena Wong on April 5 reinstated 11 felony counts of sexual molestation against Father Gary Timmons, the ex-Santa Rosa priest accused of sexual abuse involving several boys in his care. Timmons–who also faces additional similar charges in Sonoma, Mendocino, and Humboldt counties–pleaded not guilty to the reinstated charges, which had been dismissed earlier this year because they fall outside the six-year statute of limitations used to determine admissibility of evidence. Sonoma County District Attorney Mike Mullins believes the older charges will hold up under an expanded statute, which is expected to be ruled upon this summer by the California Supreme Court. A preliminary hearing is set for May 17. Timmons also will stand trial Aug. 19 on more recent felony charges that he molested three boys during an overnight camping trip to Bodega Bay. . . . Sean Ihde, the 24-year-old son of Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Ihde, has received a six-month suspended sentence for probation violations stemming from his conviction last year for possession of methamphetamines and spousal abuse. Ihde has been ordered to serve at a residential drug treatment program in Napa.

From the April 11-17, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

Usual Suspects

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Usual Suspects

The Race Is On

In what is expected to be one of the most closely watched congressional races in the country, Rep. Frank Riggs, R-Windsor, swept through the North Coast last Thursday on his first campaign swing since the March 26 primary election. The conservative incumbent eased his re-election into cruising speed with a visit to the Potter Valley volunteer center that was handling the search for then-missing Mendocino County teen Raina Bo Shirley (Riggs supports tough bipartisan federal laws to stamp out the kind of illegal meth labs that may have contributed to the girl’s disappearance, though he didn’t discuss the bill at that stop). He then addressed the Santa Rosa Kiwanis Club, telling the crowd that he is not lockstep with House Speaker Newt Gingrich and pointing out that he had voted in favor of raising the minimum wage in defiance of the Republican majority. Later that afternoon, Riggs got a chance to unwind at a low-key $30-a-head fundraiser at the beautiful Villa Pompeii Winery. Riggs, dressed in a gray business suit and keeping tabs on business over a cellular phone, sipped white wine and charmed a small gathering with a genuinely touching story about his young daughter’s recent encounter with Sen. Bob Dole and President Bill Clinton in the hallway just before Clinton delivered his most recent State of the Union speech. . . . In coming months, Riggs will need all the charm he can muster when he crosses paths with challenger Michela Alioto, 27. Riggs already has tried to make her youth and relative inexperience a factor, but Alioto has promised to make her youthfulness a positive factor. . . . Meanwhile, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, may have a fairly easy go of holding off a challenge by Marin Republican businessman Duane Hughes in the 6th Congressional District race. And Democratic Party insiders say that Riggs has angered folks by “raiding” that district for campaign contributions and promising to get federal highway funds to add lanes to Highway 101–an unpopular notion among most voters in Marin and Sonoma counties. As a result, some Marin Democrats are planning to work in Riggs’ district to help Alioto.

Agree to Disagree

Measure A passed last month, giving Santa Rosa police officers and firefighters binding arbitration in future contract negotiations, but the two opposing sides from the election continue to disagree on most aspects of the measure. City Manager Ken Blackman says he believes the initiative applies to all employees of the police and fire departments, while union representatives say clerical and support staff are not covered. Blackman also fears that arbitration will be used to resolve disputes over technical contract details, such as “how certain fringe benefits are calculated, or how overtime or premium pay is determined. You could have half a dozen items,” he said. Not likely, says John Noble, head of the bargaining unit for the Police Officers Association, noting that the union would have to pay its own costs for attorneys and auditors should a dispute go to arbitration, a cost that Blackman estimates at $100,000 on the city’s side. Firefighters are currently in the middle of a three-year contract, but the police officers’ five-year pact runs out this summer. Their new agreement will be the first to be negotiated under the terms of Measure A, but the officers don’t expect to have to use their new tool. After the strong show of support they got from voters March 26, Noble says, “I don’t believe we’re going to go into arbitration with this contract.” The ballot measure–which passed by 53 percent–was initiated by public safety personnel. It gives them the right to bring in a third party to resolve differences over wages, benefits, and grievance procedures.

From the April 11-17, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

The Restaurateurs

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Alice in Wonderland

The mama-san of California cuisine thanks heaven for the day Bob Cannard got interested in the earth

By Christina Waters

It was really my dad who organized the search,” says Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters of the events that brought Bob Cannard to her kitchen. “My father got a list of all the organic farms that were within one hour of the doors of the restaurant. After visiting 10 farms, he narrowed it down to three, and we chose Bob. My father thought Bob was just crazy enough to get along with us,” she laughs. “We met and that was the beginning of this long, nine-year relationship.”

Cannard is one of over a dozen area growers who fuel the kitchen of California cuisine’s birthplace. “He’s really the only one that we have this particular kind of relationship with,” Waters explains. “We suggest things to plant, we feedback information, we have a dialogue. And we take our compost up, and vegetables back down here–we think of it as our farm, in a way.”

The Sonoma farmer is special, Waters thinks, “because he believes in the food the way that we believe in it–that this food has energy and life in it. He wants things to be consumed within hours of when they’re picked. And we do, too.”

And Cannard woos Waters with special touches. “He’ll send us fig leaves and grape leaves sometimes. Or he’ll send cherries still on the branch. You can’t ever get that,” she says admiringly. “This positive thing can also be a negative thing. Sometimes the produce is irregular–they’re covered with dirt, or they’re entangled. But you accept that as well, because you suddenly get something like little tiny watercress you can’t get anywhere else.

“He is an extraordinary person,” Waters continues. “He’s eccentric and he has his own opinions about how things should be or not be and sometimes those don’t jibe with people.”

What does jibe are Cannard’s results, of which Alice Waters has some favorites: “These radicchios I’m unpacking right now. All different varieties, so many colors. They look like flowers and they make the most beautiful salad I’ve ever seen. And he does fantastic turnips, just fantastic turnips. Great carrots. Wonderful broccoli. I never liked broccoli until I had Bob’s. I wish we had a restaurant right next door to him.”

From the April 4-10, 1996 issue of Metro Santa Cruz

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

The Students

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Way Beyond Organic

By Christina Waters

I wouldnÕt touch describing him with a 10-foot pole,” laughs Christine Williams, a Healdsburg gardener who studied under Bob Cannard at Santa Rosa Junior College. “He really is hard to pin down.” Williams found Cannard a charming instructor (“Women really have to watch his charismatic power,” she notes), as well as a gifted teacher who had the information she needed to improve her gardens and orchards, and grow food with vitality. “In the process of being out on his farm, to which he generously gave me free access, I picked food for a friend who was in recovery for lymphatic cancer. Over six months of picking, I was able to watch the growth and what he does as a farmer–that was more of an education than anything. I’m just beginning to realize how lucky I was.”

Cannard’s approach, of listening to the crops, is nature’s approach, Williams believes. “He truly does draw from nature, rather than impute. He’s not a shaman, he’s observant and connected. I’d call him more of a Luther Burbank, because he truly does get his information directly from the soil, from the plants.”

In Williams’ assessment, “He really and truly is beyond organic–almost a healer who grows, and teaches people to grow, their own medicine. And he’s been doing it for so long that he’s almost flippant about it.”

From the April 4-10, 1996 issue of Metro Santa Cruz

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

Dar Williams

Grace NotesDar Williams sings modern-day folk music for the suburbsBy Greg Cahill"The scare for me growing up in the suburbs," says singer/songwriter Dar Williams, "is that it's so sterile that you don't feel like you're able to make mistakes, and all of the beauty of that fallibility is lost because you're just watching your back all the time," Williams,...
Read more

Gay Christians

Open DoorsLocal churches reach out to gay ChristiansBy Bruce Robinson"This is like the civil rights movement and the feminist movement," says Dorothy Brooks, pastor of the First Congregational Church of Santa Rosa. "There's a certain inevitability about it." She's talking about the declaration her congregation recently made to actively welcome "people of all sexual orientations," a stance that they...
Read more

Comics

Man & SupermenBatman illustrator on the fine art of saving the worldBy David TempletonLike the superheroes they bring to life, comic-book artists tend to be a solitary lot. They work alone, occasionally in pairs, insisting on a privacy that renders them essentially anonymous. As with Batman or Superman or Captain America, the world may have memorized the color of...
Read more

Magnolia Fades

Last CallMagnolia's owner calls it quitsBy Greg Cahill"A girl who called herself a Gypsy came in one time and dropped off this tape," says Scott Goree, leaning against the bar at Magnolia's--his Santa Rosa nightclub--encircled by memorabilia hanging on the walls. Goree, his long salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a ponytail, pauses to listen to the plaintive strains of...
Read more

Mangia Bene

Molte BeneMangia Bene pulls off low-key miracles with cost-effective styleBy Christina WatersWith its sunny wall treatment in fashionably Tuscan gold tones, braids of garlic punctuating the two facing dining rooms, and its attractive young wait staff powering gorgeous dishes from kitchen to patron, Mangia Bene knows what it's up to. It succeeds brilliantly in two key areas: boldly flavored,...
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Summer Camp

Camp ClassicsOne parent's desperate attempt to beat the summertime blues By David TempletonMonday morning. I drop the kids off at the local Spring Break Day Camp that I almost waited too long to sign them up for, then race over to the coffee place for a quick latte on the way to work. Hovering near the espresso machine are...
Read more

News Briefs

News BriefsJunkyards TargetedPETALUMA The San Francisco BayKeeper, an environmental watchdog group, announced April 4 that four local junkyards are included in a Bay Area-wide campaign to stop pollution of rainwater. "If the kinds of oil slicks that we have seen running off of these 20 junkyards were coming off an oil barge, that barge would be gone...
Read more

Usual Suspects

Usual SuspectsThe Race Is OnIn what is expected to be one of the most closely watched congressional races in the country, Rep. Frank Riggs, R-Windsor, swept through the North Coast last Thursday on his first campaign swing since the March 26 primary election. The conservative incumbent eased his re-election into cruising speed with a visit to the Potter Valley...
Read more

The Restaurateurs

Alice in WonderlandThe mama-san of California cuisine thanks heaven for the day Bob Cannard got interested in the earthBy Christina WatersIt was really my dad who organized the search," says Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters of the events that brought Bob Cannard to her kitchen. "My father got a list of all the organic farms that were within one...
Read more

The Students

Way Beyond OrganicBy Christina WatersI wouldnÕt touch describing him with a 10-foot pole," laughs Christine Williams, a Healdsburg gardener who studied under Bob Cannard at Santa Rosa Junior College. "He really is hard to pin down." Williams found Cannard a charming instructor ("Women really have to watch his charismatic power," she notes), as well as a gifted teacher who...
Read more
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