Occidental’s Ocean Song, 421 beloved acres of wild, coastal hilltop land, already has a long history of ecological stewardship. And it’s about to write its next verse.

In October 2019, LandPaths, a conservation- and community-focused, Sonoma County-based nonprofit, acquired Ocean Song from Andrew Beath of Malibu, with 240 acres protected by a “forever wild” conservation easement.

One last land purchase finalizing this summer will create an uninterrupted path from the ocean to Coleman Valley Ridge. What this means is that people will be able to hike an eight-mile trail from Shell Beach through Sonoma Coast State Park up to Willow Creek State Park, then through the last land purchase and into Ocean Song, where breathtaking and inspiring views of the Farallon Islands, Point Reyes, Tomales, Mount Tam and Mount Diablo await them.

Established in 1996, LandPaths historically assists public access to preserved lands and nature education, particularly for youth—values also held by Ocean Song, through its various incarnations. LandPaths plans to amplify the location’s iconic legacy of wilderness, agriculture and environmental education.

A ridgetop jewel, Ocean Song’s grasslands, creeks, oaks, redwoods and acres of garden and farmland inspire connectivity with nature.

“You can’t spend time at that place and leave as the same person,” says LandPaths’ Executive Director Craig Anderson. “Something happens when you’re there. The most important aspects of LandPaths’ ownership and stewardship of Ocean Song are: protecting that landscape; not diminishing its capacity as a natural-functioning wildland; and allowing that place to change the people that go there but not have us change that place.”

The property—a former cattle ranch—was purchased in 1975 by Pieter and Marya Myers, friends of Bill Wheeler, the owner of the adjoining Wheeler’s Ranch commune which was home to hundreds during the 1970s hippie days. The Myerses created an organic farm and one of the first local community-supported agriculture programs.

Within a few years a small community called Centre of the Pumpkin and a partnership with the Ananda Spiritual Community developed, giving the place its name: Ocean Song. In 1995, they sold the western parcel to Eco-Corps, which turned out to be a rogue Hare Krishna group that they broke ties with in 2000 by selling to Earthways Foundation, run by Beath.

In 1999, the Ocean Song Farm and Wilderness Center officially became a nonprofit, eventually offering diverse environmental education programs, a farm and public access. This included Coyote Camp, the beloved nature camp founded in 2005 by naturalists/educators Annie Klein and Avo Anderson, along with Dan Spach and Irina Skoerie.

The inspiration was Discovery Day Camp, a former children’s camp active at Ocean Song in the ’80s and ’90s. In turn, Coyote Camp inspired LandPaths’ Owl Camp, which began a few years later; and Camp Bohemia, instigated in 2017 on the nearby 1,000 acres Bohemian Ecological Preserve—also preserved by LandPaths.

“When Coyote Camp ended at Ocean Song in 2017, LandPaths asked us to create another camp at the Bohemian Ecological Preserve called Camp Bohemia,” Klein says.

Stacy Lippincott, Klein’s assistant director at Coyote Camp, subsequently took over as director after the first year. Ocean Song’s programs, including Coyote Camp, closed in 2017 due to a lack of a use permit. LandPaths will apply for the permit, which will open the property to the public and will restart the legacy of Ocean Song’s cherished education programs.

As the current Ocean Song Farm and Wilderness Board of Directors said in a statement, “LandPaths is well-positioned to continue and expand upon [the tradition of environmental education] and provide the stewardship, program management, and the volunteers needed for the land to reach its full potential as a public resource and model of ecological health and diversity. We look forward to the unfolding of our shared future vision.” This vision includes connecting protected land.

“Conservation has been protecting postage-stamp pieces of land here and there, instead of connecting them all together,” Anderson says. “We have to connect these pieces.” Two local families made anonymous donations enabling the purchase from Beath and Earthways Foundation for just over $3.1 million, and LandPaths is currently fundraising to buy the last piece of the public trail: Pieter and Marya Myers’ adjoining property. The Myerses couldn’t be more supportive.

“LandPaths is about connecting people to natural, open-space areas for the experience, education and inspiration,” says Pieter Myers. “It was just a match. We don’t have to tell LandPaths what to do; they’ve got it figured out really well. Craig is completely committed to getting kids on the land—that’s the main event.”

Collaboration empowers the overarching vision to connect Shell Beach to Coleman Valley Ridge. District 5 Supervisor Lynda Hopkins says, “Our community will benefit from the efforts of LandPaths and private owners to protect and preserve this gem in perpetuity.”

Last week, the North Bay’s largest print media company announced it had purchased the Sonoma County Gazette, a monthly news magazine which grew in circulation drastically over the past 20 years thanks to its owner’s community connections and hard work.

Sonoma Media Investments (SMI), a company founded by a handful of business executives and political power brokers in 2011, already owns The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the Petaluma Argus-Courier, the Sonoma Index-Tribune, the North Bay Business Journal, Sonoma Magazine and La Prensa.

With the purchase of the Gazette, the company will hold a near-monopoly on print media in Sonoma County.

The Gazette is very different from any of SMI’s current products and, in large part, a reflection of the business instincts and personality of Vesta Copestakes, the paper’s longtime owner, publisher, editor and designer.

“I’ve always felt that the Gazette is organic; a biological entity that has a life of its own … it doesn’t fit into a standard journalism format,” Copestakes wrote in a letter announcing the sale. “People tell me all the time that they feel it’s ‘our’ paper. Readers are the people who write the articles and columns. When I want to educate people on a topic, I find experts in their field willing to write what they know. It’s rare when a ‘real journalist’ writes for us.”

Disclosure: I worked part-time as a “real journalist” at the Gazette for about a year ending this August.

In an interview with the North Bay Bohemian, Copestakes said that, despite some concerns from readers and contributors that she sold the paper to the local media conglomerate, she believes SMI has the best of intentions. She says the Gazette interested SMI because of its strong connection to the community, something that the company’s other properties, which are mostly subscription-based, do not have.

Copestakes, who has been self-employed for the majority of her life, took over the Forestville Chamber of Commerce’s monthly newsletter in 2001. With Copestakes at the helm, the newsletter soon had a new voice. Copestakes says she first got attention by allowing readers to contribute articles to the newsletter in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

In 2003, Copestakes purchased the newsletter from the chamber of commerce. Since then, she has expanded the publication’s reach throughout the county and rebranded it as the Sonoma County Gazette.

Currently, Copestakes and her team distribute 35,000 copies of the 72-page paper to approximately 1,000 locations throughout the county each month. Because the paper features a wide range of articles by locals who are often unrepresented in other publications, it has a sizable following of fond readers.

Since purchasing the paper, Copestakes, who regularly logs 80-plus-hour work weeks, filled the roles of publisher, editor, designer, ad sales director and distribution manager. She led a team of 20-odd part-time contractors who helped with billing, design and distribution; in addition to numerous contributors around the county.

Copestakes says that on her 70th birthday, after several years of considering her options, she decided to sign an agreement with a brokerage firm to sell the paper. The sale, which will allow her to retire, was a birthday present to herself.

Copestakes says there were six interested parties, all told—including Gannett, one of the largest newspaper chains in the country. Ultimately, SMI was the only bidder with the proper combination of local connections and adequate financial and institutional backing, she says.

In a Press Democrat article about the purchase, representatives of SMI implied that they intend to keep Gazette‘s content largely the same while expanding the paper’s online presence.

“We will continue the fine tradition of local community content that Vesta [Copestakes] has nurtured for many years,” Darius Anderson, SMI’s lead investor, told the Press Democrat.

Copestakes, who will retain editorial control of the paper for the rest of the year, is very hopeful that the new owners will continue the paper in its current format.

“The whole thing feels really good,” she says. “And it’s a whole lot better than just letting the Gazette end after I retire.”

However, Teri Shore, North Bay regional director of the Greenbelt Alliance, a nonprofit that fights urban sprawl, is skeptical about whether the new owners will give as much space to certain political causes.

This month, Shore has a front-cover article in the Gazette about the future of the City of Sonoma’s Urban Growth Boundary, the invisible line around the city which restricts development. Shore says she will be “very surprised” if the paper continues to publish as many articles from environmental groups once SMI fully takes over.

“I hope it goes well, but I don’t have a lot of faith,” Shore said of the purchase.

Shore suspects the paper will become more partial to business interests, developers and other parties that often populate the pages of SMI publications.

Sonoma County and the North Bay have avoided the worst of the local-newspaper massacre that has swept the country in recent years.

Recent research from the University of North Carolina confirms what most everyone already suspected: across the country, local newspapers are closing at a rapid rate. A few massive chains own many of the survivors.

Since 2004, the number of journalists employed in the country has dropped by 45 percent and “between 1,300 and 1,400 communities that had newspapers of their own in 2004 now have no news coverage at all,” according to the UNC report.

That lack of local media will have long-lasting impacts on local politics across the country, the report states. And, with the start of a new decade, most industry analysts agree the situation is unlikely to get better anytime soon.

But, while there is good reason to be grateful to have a local newspaper at all, local ownership poses its own problems, particularly when media owners are deeply involved in politics.

When SMI took over the Press Democrat in late 2012, Anderson “repeatedly promised to steer clear of the newsroom, despite concern that his partnership of local ‘power brokers’ may try to turn Press Democrat journalists into their own PR machine,” according to an online report by the Pacific Media Workers Guild, the union which represents the Press Democrat’s journalists.

But, as the Bohemian reported last year, there is reason for concern about what does and doesn’t make it into SMI publications.

Anderson is CEO of Platinum Advisors, a lobbying firm with dozens of clients in Sacramento. However, SMI articles about Platinum Advisors’ clients, including, until last November, PG&E, do not mention that Anderson is a lobbyist.

The Society of Professional Journalists recommendation for such situations is simple: “Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts.”

It’s January—the month named for the Roman god Janus who was simultaneously able to face both the past and future. This is impressive to me since I can’t face either without Lexapro. Janus had it easy, though; he had two faces, which makes him the only god suitable for a sideline in politics.

The beginning of the year hasn’t always been January. It’s bobbed around a bit thanks to Julius Caesar who changed the names of some months and added some mystery months for good measure. Ergo, the erstwhile month of Quintillis. You would think that Caesar’s invention was a newfangled fifth month (“quint” being a numerical prefix for five and all) but surprise, it was a new seventh month. Because—why not? When Caesar died they changed it to July in his honor, apparently having missed his “Ides of March” memo.

Later, Pope Gregory did a partial rebrand of the calendar. In the Gregorian calendar, Janus is more of a middle month and Martius (now March) was first. In the “Gregorian Brady” edition of this factoid, a jealous Janus would thus lament “Martius, Martius, Martius.” And, yes, in a past life, I was the warm-up act at the Coliseum.

Calendar reform is a perennial topic in some circles (ironically, those circles never have dates). Among them is the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, which has the peculiar feature of every date always falling on the same day of the week. Besides ruining the Friday the 13th film franchise, Hanke-Henry would also lock your birthday down to the same day for eternity. A whole new kind of astrology would emerge. Monday people would be the worst. Friday and Saturday people would be permanently cool. Wednesday people would suggestively drop “Hump Day” comments to gin up their sex appeal.

When it comes to calendars, the only thing worse than a Roman overlord is a corporate overlord. Consider Kodak founder George Eastman, who, in 1928, mandated the use of a 13-month company calendar just to let his employees know who was boss. Based on the International Fixed Calendar devised by Moses B. Cotsworth 26 years prior, Kodak divided his year into 13 months of 28 days apiece. This leaves a couple of days each year not belonging to any month (they’re probably in a vault somewhere). He also added a bonus month between June and July he called “Sol,” thus continuing a bizarre trend amongst powerful men to shoehorn in a new seventh month.

Kodak’s calendar surely went out with radium watch hands, right? Wrong. Kodak used it in-house until 1989. Fortunately, powerful men are less likely to exhibit such random and arbitrary behaviors these days. Then again, it’s only January. I’ll make a note in my calendar to check back on the Fourth of Trump.

Though lawyering and judging rarely overlap, they do with Omar Figueroa—arguably the North Bay’s most flamboyant cannabis lawyer.

Last December, Figueroa served as a judge at the Emerald Cup. Is he worried about disbarment? Hell no!

“Judging was great fun,” he says.

It also added to the luster of his legend.

Born in Mexico and a graduate of Stanford and Yale, Figueroa initially made a name for himself as a criminal defense lawyer. Then, in 2018, after California began to regulate and tax cannabis, he reinvented himself as a business attorney. More recently, he focused his energy on the local hemp industry.

“Dairy farmers struggling financially, and even social conservatives, will cultivate hemp since it’s legal by federal law and because the local moratorium will be lifted,” Figueroa tells me over lunch at Fork Roadhouse on Bohemian Highway. He adds, “Judging cannabis at the Emerald Cup has to do with smelling, tasting and touching. Plus, you need stamina. It’s not for lightweights.”

For the annual competition, Figueroa traveled to a secret location in Mendocino County. There, he and a half-dozen other connoisseurs consumed and then debated the merits of the cannabis cartridges they sampled.

“The judges were like kids in a candy store,” Figueroa says. “They were also savvy smokers. After talking with them, I changed my mind and revised my ranking.”

After the New Year, Figueroa will join the board of the California Cannabis Tourism Association (CCTA) recently founded by Guerneville resident, Brian Applegarth. In 2020, CCTA will strive to legalize cannabis consumption at the same locations it’s sold. Right now that’s a no-no in Sonoma County.

Like a savvy judge before a hushed jury, Figueroa demolishes law-enforcement arguments against on-site consumption: there’s been no spike in cannabis-related DUIs and no “reefer madness” since legalization; because of easy access to Lyft or Uber, there’s no need for patrons to drive to dispensaries; and dispensaries can install air filters so no smoke escapes and inadvertently impacts innocent bystanders.

Lunch finished, Figueroa returns to the lessons he learned at the Emerald Cup.

“It was mind-expanding,” he says. “But I lost all enthusiasm for vape cartridges.”

Indeed, doctors urge medical marijuana patients and recreational users to avoid cartridges until scientists figure out the cause of Vaping-Associated Pulmonary Illness (VAPI). Last year, vaping harmed more than 1,000 people. Fifty people died.

No wonder Figueroa says, “I’ve switched to using flower in my Volcano.” That’s a sound judgment.

Jonah Raskin is the author of “Dark Day, Dark Night: A Marijuana Murder Mystery.”