Howland finds ‘Lost On Me’

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Howland finds ‘Lost On Me’

Liam Howland Nelson releases first solo EP

By Jane Vick

Liam Howland Nelson…

Time was on his side. With the Covid lockdowns in full swing and a lifetime of musical experience percolating within him, Petaluma-based musician and producer Liam Neslon (aka Howland—a family name) found the perfect moment to craft his first solo EP.

The result, Lost On Me, released by Marin-based Unreachable Records, comes after decades spent recording other bands, a profession the musician says he naturally fell into.

“Helping other people achieve their musical dreams is rewarding in a different way,” says Nelson. “But it was something I sort of never meant to get into—it was something that happened. I mean, I started recording bands when I was 18.”

That early start in the studio led Nelson to develop a successful career in audio production, while also performing—from local shows at Petaluma’s Phoenix Theater as a kid to later touring the country with Santa Cruz-based act The Dying Californian. Throughout, the notion of producing solo work remained, though the moment wasn’t yet right.

Even while working at San Francisco’s Hyde Street Studios, famous for recording Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Dead Kennedys, and Crosby Stills and Nash, among others, Nelson “didn’t find the inspiration to do my own thing.”

Then came the Covid lockdowns of the past couple of years, and with his family close by “buzzing around in the background,” inspiration struck.

“Sitting in my little spot at home during the pandemic, I felt richly creative,” says Nelson. “I don’t know, maybe I was putting up barriers where they didn’t exist.”

Lost On Me, a five-track EP with additional musical contributions from Shannon Ferguson, Will Collins, David Noble and Hannah Jern Miller, made its way into the world. Think The Shins, LCD Soundsystem and a touch of The Strokes in the guitar work.

“Not Right Now,”the first track, kicks off strong with a bouncy, bobbing four count that had me out of my chair pretty quickly. “Coach,” the track from which Lost On Me derives its name, features strong vocals from Nelson. “Hang Around” has a breakdown starting at 2:47 that has me fully shooketh—it’s like a sample from an alien landing on top of a solid four count.

Throughout, Nelson’s many years as both an audio producer and a musician are evident. The layering is tight and the levels are perfect.

Though produced during the pandemic, this project was not pandemic-inspired. Nelson says that more than anything, this was an unexpected opportunity, an allotment of time that he made a pact with himself to utilize.

“I don’t know if I have any great insight into the album,” says Nelson with a wry smile. “I try to let it happen to me.”

And it did.

‘Lost On Me’ can be found on bandcamp.com[1] . Visit howlandtheband.com.

Sense and Senselessness – Confronting major issues requires societal reorientation

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Sense and Senselessness – Confronting major issues requires societal reorientation

I just received an email from our local Assemblymember, Marc Levine. He began by saying,

“This week, we saw another senseless act of gun violence.” He went on to pledge his ongoing commitment to the issue of gun control.

These acts of violence are no more “senseless” than paying “essential workers” sub-minimum wages while billionaires blast off into space. Or not having a universal healthcare system like every other “advanced” country. Or subsidizing fossil fuels and industrial farming instead of non-polluting energy and regenerative agriculture. Or building more prisons instead of ending poverty and building more schools. The list goes on and on. And we will never make progress on any of these “senseless problems” until we recognize that all of these social choices, while they may not make “sense,” make plenty of cents for those who gain wealth and power from these policy choices.

We, as a society, have made a choice to prioritize cents over sense. Or, rather, we have allowed this decision to be made and to stand as the basis of our social decision making.

And so, we are in a situation that makes no sense. Until we recognize, say it out-loud and change the basis of our decision making to prioritize sense over cents, all these acts of “senseless violence” will continue, despite the sincere efforts of people like our assemblymember. We cannot solve these problems without a fundamental reorientation of our priorities that will put people ahead of profits.

—Abraham Entin

Abraham Entin is a singer, songwriter and storyteller who dances at every opportunity. He resides in Sonoma County.

Trivia – 06/15/22

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Trivia – 06/15/22

1 How did Chileno Valley, located in the rolling hills of northern Marin and the region west of Petaluma, get its name?

2 What are the only animals that generally drink milk drawn from other animals? 

3 From 1954 to 1991, the USSR’s top security and intelligence agency was known by what three-letter name?

4 Tom Cruise’s latest film has produced the biggest box office revenues of any of his movies.  What’s the full title?

5 In English, it’s called the French Riviera, but in the French language, it’s called what?

6 What is the world’s most common blood type?

7 Ludwig Van Beethoven’s ONLY opera, written in 1816, had what faithful title?     

8a. What American airline company is named after a Greek letter?

8b. What Swiss watchmaking company is named after a Greek letter?

9 The Japanese drink called sake is made from what plant, fermented?

10 Which Asian countries have the flags shown?

BONUS QUESTION: Infant babies have about 300 of these, and adult humans have about 200 of them. What are they?

Want more trivia? Contact ho*****@********fe.com.

ANSWERS:

1 Chileno Valley was settled in the 1860s by immigrants from Chile, who grew hops. Thanks for the question to Dewey Livingston from Inverness, historian of Marin and Bay history.

2 Humans

3 KGB

4 Top Gun: Maverick

5 Cote D’Azur

6 Type O+, common in about 40% of the people.

7 Fidelio

8a. Delta       

8b. Omega

9 Rice

10 South Korea (with the yin-yang symbol) /Nepal (triangular)/ India (red, white and green parallel stripes)

BONUS ANSWER: Bones. Some infant bones fuse together to form the 206 bones that adults have.

Here, Kitty, Kitty! – ‘Wink’ slinks on stage at Main Stage West

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Here, Kitty, Kitty! – ‘Wink’ slinks on stage at Main Stage West

By Harry Duke 

Feline conspiracy theorists who believe that cats are plotting to take over the world might count playwright Jen Silverman as an ally to their cause with Wink, Silverman’s absurd look at the nature of human transformation… and a vengeful cat. Sebastopol’s Main Stage West has a production running through June 25.  

Sophie (Ilana Niernberger) is quite upset. She hasn’t seen her cat Wink in days, and her life seems to be collapsing around her. Her cold, passionless husband, Gregor (John Browning), seems not to care a whit. But in a session with his therapist, Dr. Franz (Michael Fontaine), Gregor confesses to offing the cat. He confesses to much more, but the good doctor thinks he just needs to repress what are obviously latent homosexual tendencies and go on vacation with his wife.

Sophie, in a separate therapeutic session with Dr. Franz (Why are they both seeing him? He’s horrible!), has a few admissions of her own. Once again, the good doctor suggests suppression, as well as housework and a vacation, as the solutions to her problems.

And then Wink shows up, significantly worse for wear and really, really pissed.  

Wink is played by Sam Coughlin in a masterful physical performance. Part Rum Tum Tugger, part Sweeney Todd, Coughlin’s Wink prowls the stage with all the familiar feline movements gleaned no doubt from watching hours of cat videos under the careful tutelage of director James Pelican.

Once you buy into a talking, preening cat with murder on his mind, the transformation of Sophie from uptight, middle-class housewife to scheming terrorist seems less absurd. Gregor and Dr. Franz go through their own transformations, but I’ll just leave it at that.

Silverman packs a lot into her script about the dichotomy of who we are under the skin versus who we present ourselves to be, and she does it in a show that runs a little over an hour. The cast is strong, and the show works well in the relatively small space. It features a nice David Lear-designed set representing two homes and a medical office, which happens to get trashed at each performance. 

Wink is a strange show. How strange? Well, it’s not quite Cats on acid, but it’s far enough out there to offend some, amuse others and confound the rest.

It’s not a purr-fect show, but it sure is different.

‘Wink’ runs through June 25 at Main Stage West, 104 N. Main St, Sebastopol. Thu-Sat at 8pm; Sun, 5pm. $20-$32. Proof of vaccination and masking required. 707.823.0177. mainstagewest.com

Wolf Within – Moonshot moviemaking

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Wolf Within – Moonshot moviemaking

By Daedalus Howell

It all began in a community college course circa 1993 when Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf met my contrarian attitude toward required reading.

I ached through a few chapters of the slender novel, which proved to be a valentine of sorts to its author’s shrink, Carl Jung (whom we can thank for archetypal psychology and a surname that will never cease being mispronounced).

The novel was ostensibly about a man having an existential crisis on the eve of his 50th birthday. (So, I guess, every man?) As it happens, I’m turning 50 this July, so naturally, Steppenwolf came to mind.

Out of morbid curiosity, I acquired a new edition of the book, mostly to confirm that I still hated it, and was happy to discover that…I do. Enough, in fact, I instantly wanted to lampoon it as a film and started screenwriting a modern parody: Steppenwolf 2.

I mentioned this to my wife and film producer, Kary, who offhandedly quipped, “You mean, like Teenwolf 2.”

Before I could answer, the worlds of B-grade horror comedy and literary middle-aged angst collided in my mind with such impact that a black hole temporarily formed in my brain, drawing every Gen X crisis and passing thought about werewolves I’d ever pondered into its intoxicating gravity.

There it was all along—the perfect cinematic expression of our inevitable transformation into middle age. The clues were obvious in retrospect—the hair I recently discovered growing out of my ears, the slight recession of the gum line around my canine teeth, the thunderous apnea-induced growls that yanked me from sleep and into the nightmare of my own consciousness and the crushing weight of my artistic ambitions. Not to mention my cyclothymic personality, enslaved, it seems, by the waxing and waning of the moon and its tidal influence on the oceans of wine I’ll find myself bobbing upon like a cork. I had to ask myself… Am I a werewolf?

Maybe metaphorically like Hesse, but really, I’m just getting older. Werewolfism is, however, a useful lens through which to examine issues of physical transformation (or body horror, depending) and the change that comes with age.

In the ’50s, movies like I Was a Teenage Werewolf used the subgenre as a puberty metaphor (ditto Teenwolf in the ’80s and yet again in the past decade), so why not use it on the other side of the age spectrum? And that, friends, is why I’m—having a midlife crisis? No—making a werewolf movie.

Change is good. But film is forever.

From ‘How to Cook a Werewolf: The Making of Wolftone and Other Indie Film Adventures’ by Daedalus Howell. More information at fmrl.com/wolftone.

Preserving Pride – Sonoma County Library and activists launch two new local LGBTQ+ archives

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Preserving Pride – Sonoma County Library and activists launch two new local LGBTQ+ archives

By Chelsea Kurnick

This month, Sonoma County Library launched “Here + Queer Sonoma County,” a project to build a digital community-sourced archive of local LGBTQ+ history. Anyone is invited to submit documents preserving memories of queer life and culture in the county.

“A photograph at Pride, a wedding announcement, a video at a protest, a love letter to a first crush; these are all evidence of resistance and persistence,” said Zayda Delgado, supervising librarian at the Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library.

Led by Delgado, the project is designed by librarians Terra Emerson, Stuart Wilkinson and Javier Morales, who wanted to fill a gap in Sonoma County Library’s collection.

“We have such a rich LGBTQ history here in Sonoma County. But when we look in the library’s digital collection, if you search terms like queer, LGBTQ, gay, lesbian, you find very little. Part of what inspired the idea of the project was realizing that while there is this very rich history here, it’s not really well documented, at least not in the library’s collection,” says Emerson, a teen services librarian.

While “Here + Queer” is the library’s first dedicated initiative to archive local queer and trans history, it is not the only archival work being done in the region. In 2007, a group of locals launched the “Lesbian Archives of Sonoma County” with a mission to document the involvement of lesbians in creating community for women in the county between 1965 and 1995. Another archive project, “LGBTQI+ LEGACY Sonoma County,” is just now launching, though it is the product of years of information- and ephemera-gathering by community activists who also curate the “Sonoma County LGBTQI History Timeline.” These projects focus on history up until the year 2000, whereas “Here + Queer” invites people to submit documents from any time, up to the present moment.

Delgado says, “Especially for communities that are marginalized—our BIPOC communities, our LGBTQ+ communities—our stories are more at risk of being silenced, erased. And so working with an organization like a public library to protect your story can give you a voice for the future.”

Archiving, Delgado says, creates an intergenerational relationship of empowerment in which people can deepen their understanding of themselves by learning about the advocacy, struggles and celebrations of the past.

“As we’re seeing pushback against LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, it’s important to see progression over time and the ebbs and flows of history. There’s an impact in seeing documents and learning, like, this person was fighting for this or seeing pictures of love that show you that people were trying to celebrate their lives [despite the oppression they faced],” she says.

Tina Dungan, a local LGBTQ+ archivist who grew up in Sonoma County, shares Delgado’s sense that preserving one’s history is particularly important in the face of oppression. Dungan and Shad Reinstein started the “LGBTQI History Timeline of Sonoma County” in 2018, during Donald Trump’s presidency, which she describes as the beginning of a pretty scary time for gay, lesbian and transgender people.

In the first year of his presidency, the Trump administration removed all mentions of LGBTQ+ people from White House web pages, removed questions about sexual orientation from the U.S. Census and other national surveys, reinstated a ban that would prohibit transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, and signed an executive order that allowed for employers and federal agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and to have discretion to deny them services.

“Things were looking really grim, and we felt like it was really, really important to get that history safely housed to be accessible. A lot of us are getting old and not remembering things anymore, so it was a perfect chance to start working on [archiving],” Dungan says.

Since 2018, Dungan has taught a free course on the timeline through SRJC’s Older Adults Program. Through this work, she connected with other community historians, to teach on facets of local history she wasn’t as knowledgeable about, particularly around pushing LGBTQ+ advocacy into the mainstream. Dungan brought in Magi Fedorka and Adam Richmond to educate about their work in the activist group Forward Together and the Sonoma County Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club. In 1987, Forward Together began five years of advocacy, pressing for the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to adopt a resolution observing Pride Week, which finally passed in 1992.

Through teaching the timeline course, Dungan and her collaborators have gathered a trove of ephemera for which they would like to find a permanent home. Although the search is ongoing, the group is already accepting submissions to grow their collection, calling the archival project “LGBTQI+ LEGACY Sonoma County.” “The Lesbian Archives,” which is primarily a video oral history project, ultimately housed their collection at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. For “LGBTQI+ LEGACY,” Dungan is hopeful about the possibility of finding a home within Sonoma County.

“The fact that the Sonoma County Library has so many queer people working in it now is really exciting,” she says.

Delgado and Dungan feel shared enthusiasm about one another’s projects and agree that they’re complementary. “Here + Queer” will be the county’s first digital archive of LGBTQ+ history and is the only archive collecting work that extends to the present. Community members can submit documents to the library’s database online and, eventually, will be able to access the digital collections online, too. For well over a decade, many documents have been created and housed digitally—on cameras, smartphones and computers. This makes submitting to a digital archive particularly easy. To support the digital archiving of physical objects, the library is planning on hosting special events with scanning days.

Emerson says, “One of the goals of the project is to bridge the gap between the older generations and the younger generations of queer community members. We hope the archive will show the through line of how our older community members have shaped the lived reality of our teens, and for teens today to understand that their activism will continue to shape the lived reality of future generations.”

Dungan believes “Here + Queer” will introduce many younger people to the importance of history. She says that when you’re young and in the moment, you aren’t necessarily thinking about how people will—or won’t—be able to find your work later.

“We didn’t put dates on the flyers we made. When you’re young, you don’t worry about stuff like that. The fact that Zayda and the library are getting it together now is really great because they’ll be able to remember more and they’ll be able to save things that might not otherwise get saved,” Dungan says.

‘Here + Queer Sonoma County’ is accepting submissions at sonomalibrary.org/queersonoma-en.

To inquire about submitting to the ‘LGBTQI+ LEGACY Sonoma County’ archive, contact le********@***il.com.

Tina Dungan teaches ‘LGBTQI History: A Sonoma County Timeline,’ a free course on Zoom through SRJC’s Older Adults Program, on Wednesdays from 1:30-3pm. For more information, contact cd*****@*******sa.edu.

‘The Lesbian Archives of Sonoma County’ collection can be accessed at the GLBT Historical Society archives. To learn more, visit www.glbthistory.org/archives-about-visitor-info.

Kat Look – Maker Kat Warren

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Kat Look – Maker Kat Warren

By Jane Vick

Happy Wednesday all! How has everyone been? I have spent this week writing about stars and poppy fields, reading poetry, and sitting in traffic on the Bay Bridge. I’ve seen light sparking on teal water and considered weightlessness. I’ve had several interesting dreams, none of which I can remember, and my Chinese Money Plant is in exceptionally good health.

To this week’s ‘Look’!

Artist Kat Warren is a glimmering star in the Sonoma County sky—I’m star-minded at the moment, it seems—and this week I was able to take a peek inside the mind that produces such unique and eye-catching creations as pictured above. Warren makes everything, from clothes to pieces of writing to paintings. Their work, by coincidence much like my introduction, is rooted in dreamscape.

“I learn from plants and I learn from stars. I’m constantly striving to find ways to relay the expansiveness of different realms and aliveness of the world around us,” said Warren.

Along with loving plants, the stars and the alchemical qualities of art, Warren’s favorite foods are peaches and apricots. If they could be an animal, they’d be a pigeon, specifically because of their ability to tap into the magnetic field due to iron crystals in their beaks and their sense of community and relationships with humans. Tesla’s beloved white pigeon comes to mind. Warren’s love affair with Sonoma County is ongoing, but the wildflowers in spring have them deeply enamored. When I asked them what they thought the county needed, they answered with a Howard Zinn quote: 

“What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Find Kat Warren in a Bodega Bay flower field, or on Instagram:  @tell_your_angel_mine_says_hi.

See you next week!

Love,

Jane

Jane Vick is an artist and writer based in Oakland. She splits her time between Europe, New York and New Mexico. View her work and contact her at janevick.com.

Letters

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Letters

Boudin Ouster

I am saddened by the recall defeat of Chesa Boudin. Though his defeat was almost certain, the people of San Francisco have lost a sincere and good-hearted member of their government. And government officials with real courage and principles like Boudin are rare and hard to find in these days of mass conformity, political confusion, and the deep and cynical divide that is now our reality as a nation.

I hope that other people who feel a real commitment to making creative and positive changes in San Francisco and in our nation as a whole do not give up hope that real progress is possible. Because it is always true that to act with a new vision for a more human society is always met by the fears and doubts of the vast majority of people.

We human beings have been living in such misery for so many thousands of years that anyone who truly stands for real change—for a path out of the darkness that is our life—seems almost crazy, a little too eccentric for us to trust. Yet it is such brave people throughout history who have been of real help in pointing toward our liberation.

Rama Kumar

Fairfax

Teachable Moment

I would like to personally thank Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio for signing legislation to make it easier for school employees to carry firearms on campuses in that state. We all know that the more weapons, and fewer doors that are available, the safer our kids will be in schools. In fact, there is a flood of teachers moving from California and other states to Ohio to take advantage of this progressive concept. One can barely imagine the possibilities.

Craig Corsini

San Rafael

Home Movies – Building your own, personal film library

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Home Movies – Building your own, personal film library

By Christian Chensvold

This week in June of 1988, I graduated from Santa Rosa High School, and the following morning set off on my first solo road trip bound for the netherworld of Los Angeles. I was gone for five days and remember only two things.

I spent the first day in Santa Barbara, and decided to save money by sleeping on the beach. The sand tortured my back, while sand fleas tortured the rest of me, and the sound of the waves nearly drove me insane. I finally gave up at 4am, and there, on a dark and desolate Highway 101, I remember looking up at the stars shining over the sea and feeling some eerie sense of destiny, as if I were on a hero’s journey to discover some important piece in the puzzle of my life. Looking back all these years later, it’s clear what I discovered on my trip, because it’s the only other thing I remember.

I found a movie.

Wandering around Hollywood two days later, I found a one-screen movie theater showing Alan Rudolph’s The Moderns, which is set in the Paris art world of the 1920s. It’s a quirky gem with a fantastic cast—it’s also a favorite of more than one person affiliated with this newspaper—and I came out of the theater with the movie poster, the vinyl album and a heady high on movie magic. Already suspecting that my soul belonged to the past, The Moderns gave a 1.21-gigawatt bolt to my inner time machine, and I’ve watched it numerous times ever since, always finding something fresh in it, especially in the wake of growing maturity and the slings and arrows of life’s twists and turns.  

The past few years have been euphemistically referred to as “challenging times,” and I’ve tried to share my own coping strategies with cover stories in this paper on escapism and using the teachings of ancient wisdom to create your own reality. And here I am with another, arguing the case for cutting the cord on your streaming services and building your own Library of Alexandria of your top-100 films of all time, and just watching those.

Think about it: could you really name more than a hundred movies that have made a lasting imprint on your soul, that have made you the person you are today, that have been so many foundation stones in the castle of the imagination that you’ve been slowly building over the course of your life? Browsing ourselves into exhaustion in a chaotic netherworld of infinite possibilities suggests a paucity of self-awareness, as if we really don’t really know ourselves at all.

One hundred movies seems like enough great stories for one lifetime.

* * *

They say you never get over your first love, and upon close inspection I’d venture that most of the films I watch again and again are from one of the three early stages of life. To childhood belong things like The Sound of Music and the Star Wars and the Indiana Jones movies, while to adolescence belong the Back to the Future series and Romancing the Stone. Then, beginning with The Moderns, to young adulthood belongs the realm of world-building, of classic and foreign films and historic escapism, with Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula and Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence right at the top. So either I simply like revisiting old favorites, or movies from the past 25 years just aren’t as good as they used to be. If it’s the latter, why torture ourselves with perpetual disappointment?

Science has shed light on the matter with the Baskin-Robbins theory of happiness, which goes like this. If you stop someone on a hot summer’s day and offer them some ice cream, they invariably reply, “I’d love some ice cream!” They make their choice from the three you offer—vanilla, chocolate and strawberry—and slide into a cheerful mood that might last all day. But give people 31 flavors to choose from, and it turns out they aren’t all that happy with the ice cream they serendipitously stumbled upon. That’s because a specific part of the brain gets activated: the place associated with the emotional response known as regret. Choosing the wrong ice cream—or movie to watch—descends to the mind’s realm of roads not taken, haunted by the refrain, “If only…..”

Before realizing what I was doing, I began by eliminating streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. I began to notice that when faced with endless choices all lined up for me, I invariably clicked on something that looked like it might be interesting, watched it for 15 minutes, and then tried something else, leaving my recently-viewed list with five times as many abandoned films than ones that I actually finished, let alone enjoyed. Then there was the home-page interface itself, which I grew to regard as a kind of casino designed by the devil. I began opting for two well chosen DVDs per week in an effort to make movie-watching special again. But things really took a turn when I bought a $5 VHS player at the thrift store, and loaded up on 25 cent videotapes.

According to our esteemed editor and filmmaker Daedalus Howell, video comes at your eyes in a series of waves. This probably explains why the old tapes seemed more engrossing than contemporary Blu-ray flicks shot digitally, without even being output on film, let alone transferred from film to video. These misty videotapes seemed to unfold more like dreams, just as classic storytelling from Old Hollywood is shot and edited in a way that feels like turning pages in a picture book, with your imagination as co-author of what you’re experiencing. Research has shown that modern fast-cut, shaky-camera filmmaking bypasses the imaginative part of the brain while stimulating the visual cortex, the part used for something like watching a dazzling but meaningless fireworks display. If all the entertainment one consumes is made this way, then you’re quite literally making yourself stupider by dulling the most important faculty you have.

* * *

If you can still get pleasure—in fact, increasing pleasure—from watching certain films over and over again, what does that tell us about human nature, and why we put up with so much self-enforced mediocrity? And not only in the stories we watch—the ancients had myths revealing timeless truths, we have “entertainment” that makes a profit—but in our lives themselves. I feel like asking my late grandma why she saved the good tableware for special occasions, instead of eating off her finest finery every day? Good God, grandma, carpe diem. What if you were hit by a bus tomorrow, awoke at the pearly gates hoping for entry, and Saint Peter’s first question is: “You based your life on things you knew were second-rate, and you expect to get into heaven?”

Halfway through writing this little meditation, I purchased a copy of The Moderns, and I  look forward to putting it on the shelf along with the 99 other films comprising the story of one man’s life at the cinema and what he learned about himself. I think the next one will be Visconti’s 1963 epic, The Leopard, starring Burt Lancaster as an Italian prince watching the world transform around him, yet unable to change his spots.

DRIVE-IN SUMMER The Lark Drive-In Theater

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DRIVE-IN SUMMER The Lark Drive-In Theater

Larkspur

Drive-In Movies

Is there anything more Americana summer vibe than a classic drive-in movie? The Lark Drive-In has summer movies covered. Located in The Village at Corte Madera, the Lark Drive-In was originally founded during Covid to keep community connection alive. It quickly became clear that this was not a temporary solution, and it’s now a full feature of the theater, with screenings all summer long. See classics like The Sandlot, Back to the Future and The Karate Kid in old-school summer style. Don’t forget the popcorn! The next showing is Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Friday, June 17, at the Lark Drive-In, 1557 Redwood Hwy, Corte Madera. The parking lot opens at 8pm; show begins at approximately 9pm. Tickets are $17 for a drive-in one person per car, and $30 for two or more people per car. Tickets must be purchased beforehand, and late arrivals may be denied entry. www.larktheater.net

Healdsburg

Jazz and Poetry

The best combination since milk and coffee is to spend an evening in Healdsburg serenaded by the vibrant tones of Oakland tenor saxophonist Howard Wiley and his quartet. They bring a pulsing energy of jazz, gospel and funk infused music to the 24th Annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival. Renowned for his improvisation skills, Wiley has performed with such names as Lauryn Hill and Jason Moran. His star-studded quartet includes Marcus Phillips, Dante “Taz” Robertson and LJ Holoman, whose recording accolades encompass music with Mary J Blige, 50 Cent, Busta Rhymes, Nas and The Game. Opening the evening is the City of San Francisco’s 8th poet laureate, Tongo Eisen-Martin, a poet, movement worker and educator who was short-listed for a Griffin International Poetry Prize in 2018. This evening of the Healdsburg Jazz Festival will be held at The Elephant Room, 177 Healdsburg Ave, Healdsburg. 9:30pm. Tickets are $30. www.healdsburgjazz.org

Santa Rosa

Bubbles and Play

Regardless of age, everyone loves a bubble! The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County knows it, and that’s why they’re celebrating their eight-year birthday with a Bubbly Birthday Bash. This might be one of the most exciting events of summer—it’s literally everything bubbles! The museum has been transformed into a bubbly wonderland with big and small, round and square—think soap bubbles, bubble wrap and bubble-related activities we’ve all yet to imagine. It’s a bubble extravaganza! The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County was founded in 2005 and is built upon principles found through early childhood research. It was designed to provide hands-on engagement and learning through joyful play to children and their caretakers. The Birthday Bubble Bash is Saturday, June 18 at the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County, 1835 W. Steele La., Santa Rosa. 10am-2pm. Admission is $14 and free for members. www.cmosc.org

Kenwood

Forest Bathing

Spend some time practicing Shinrin-yoku, the Japanese art of forest bathing, in a celebration of the first California State Parks Week, June 14-18, presented by the California State Parks, Save the Redwoods League, Parks California and the California State Parks Foundation. This inaugural event celebrates and honors California’s 279 state parks and the people who care for and enjoy them. Shinrin-yoku promotes balance, tranquility and a restored vitality through presence and heightened sensory perception and awareness. This walk is led by a certified Association of Nature and Forest Therapy practitioner, and is the first of many. Find peace in the forest this Thursday June 16, at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, 2605 Adobe Canyon Rd., Kenwood. 10:30am-12:30pm. $20 or free with a ParkRx pass. Registration is required. www.sugarloafpark.org

—Jane Vick

Howland finds ‘Lost On Me’

Liam Howland Nelson releases first solo EP By Jane Vick Liam Howland Nelson… Time was on his side. With the Covid lockdowns in full swing and a lifetime of musical experience percolating within him, Petaluma-based musician and producer Liam Neslon (aka Howland—a family name) found the perfect moment to craft his first solo EP. The result, Lost On Me, released by Marin-based Unreachable...
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Sense and Senselessness – Confronting major issues requires societal reorientation

I just received an email from our local Assemblymember, Marc Levine. He began by saying, “This week, we saw another senseless act of gun violence.” He went on to pledge his ongoing commitment to the issue of gun control. These acts of violence are no more “senseless” than paying “essential workers” sub-minimum wages while billionaires blast off into space. Or not...
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Trivia – 06/15/22

1 How did Chileno Valley, located in the rolling hills of northern Marin and the region west of Petaluma, get its name? 2 What are the only animals that generally drink milk drawn from other animals?  3 From 1954 to 1991, the USSR's top security and intelligence agency was known by what three-letter name? 4 Tom Cruise’s latest film has produced the...
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Here, Kitty, Kitty! – ‘Wink’ slinks on stage at Main Stage West

Lauren Heney CAT PEOPLE John Browning and Ilana Niernberger play a couple divided by a cat with murder on his mind in a local production of Jen Silverman’s ‘Wink.’
By Harry Duke  Feline conspiracy theorists who believe that cats are plotting to take over the world might count playwright Jen Silverman as an ally to their cause with Wink, Silverman’s absurd look at the nature of human transformation… and a vengeful cat. Sebastopol’s Main Stage West has a production running through June 25.   Sophie (Ilana Niernberger) is quite upset. She...
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Wolf Within – Moonshot moviemaking

Photo courtesy of Universal Studios BITE ME Lon Chaney, Jr. as 'The Wolfman'
By Daedalus Howell It all began in a community college course circa 1993 when Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf met my contrarian attitude toward required reading. I ached through a few chapters of the slender novel, which proved to be a valentine of sorts to its author’s shrink, Carl Jung (whom we can thank for archetypal psychology and a surname that will never...
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Preserving Pride – Sonoma County Library and activists launch two new local LGBTQ+ archives

Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Library PRIDE Librarian Zayda Delgado poses at Sonoma County Pride 2022 with the ‘Here + Queer’ logo. Delgado is the lead librarian designing the archival project.
By Chelsea Kurnick This month, Sonoma County Library launched “Here + Queer Sonoma County,” a project to build a digital community-sourced archive of local LGBTQ+ history. Anyone is invited to submit documents preserving memories of queer life and culture in the county. “A photograph at Pride, a wedding announcement, a video at a protest, a love letter to a first crush;...
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Kat Look – Maker Kat Warren

Image provided by Kat Warren STRAWBERRY This sweet, crochet bag is one of Kat Warren’s many delightful art pieces.
By Jane Vick Happy Wednesday all! How has everyone been? I have spent this week writing about stars and poppy fields, reading poetry, and sitting in traffic on the Bay Bridge. I’ve seen light sparking on teal water and considered weightlessness. I’ve had several interesting dreams, none of which I can remember, and my Chinese Money Plant is in exceptionally...
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Letters

Boudin Ouster I am saddened by the recall defeat of Chesa Boudin. Though his defeat was almost certain, the people of San Francisco have lost a sincere and good-hearted member of their government. And government officials with real courage and principles like Boudin are rare and hard to find in these days of mass conformity, political confusion, and the deep...
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Home Movies – Building your own, personal film library

"Here I am…arguing the case for cutting the cord on your streaming services and building your own Library of Alexandria of your top-100 films of all time, and just watching those." Photo courtesy of Alive Films/Nelson Entertainment CLOSE SHAVE John Lone and Linda Fiorentino star in ‘The Moderns.’
By Christian Chensvold This week in June of 1988, I graduated from Santa Rosa High School, and the following morning set off on my first solo road trip bound for the netherworld of Los Angeles. I was gone for five days and remember only two things. I spent the first day in Santa Barbara, and decided to save money by sleeping...
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DRIVE-IN SUMMER The Lark Drive-In Theater

Photo provided by Stephanie Clarke DRIVE-IN SUMMER The Lark Drive-In Theater in The Village at Corte Madera has a cinema classic for everyone this summer.
Larkspur Drive-In Movies Is there anything more Americana summer vibe than a classic drive-in movie? The Lark Drive-In has summer movies covered. Located in The Village at Corte Madera, the Lark Drive-In was originally founded during Covid to keep community connection alive. It quickly became clear that this was not a temporary solution, and it’s now a full feature of the...
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