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Roots in the Community: Dorrances Make a Difference

Food & Drink

Mar 31, 2026

Roots in the Community: Dorrances Make a Difference

Proprietors of BloodRoot Wines, Kelly and Noah Dorrance have been organizing an annual music and wine festival called The Ramble, as a fundraiser benefitting GIFFORDS, a national organization dedicated to preventing gun violence.

The partnership began as a way to honor the memory of their niece who was killed in the shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville. Since 2023, The Ramble has raised more than $250,000 for GIFFORDS.

“As hospitality junkies, we find fulfillment in creating joyful spaces where people can connect, celebrate and share in community. We created The Ramble to honor our niece Evelyn, transforming a painful moment into an experience that brings people together while supporting a vital mission… This is how we know to make a difference, through hospitality and the joy of community,” says Kelly Dorrance.

Tickets just went on sale for the fourth iteration of The Ramble, taking place on Saturday, June 6, at Abel de la Luna Community Center Fields in Healdsburg. The event will feature headline performances from award-winning musical artists Spoon and Lucius, plus many more nationally acclaimed musicians.

Expect a ton of local food vendors, the debut of a new culinary stage featuring local chefs doing interactive cooking demonstrations, as well as representatives from local wineries, including the Overshine Collective.

Amber Turpin: How did you get into this work?

Kelly Dorrance: A little bit of kismet, a little bit of passion and a lot of initiative. We assumed we would eventually move back to the Midwest and thought a try at the wine industry would be fun before we did so. That was 2008, and we’ve never looked back. Noah worked at a custom crush facility in San Francisco and made some wine on the side.

With collaboration from friends in the industry, Banshee Wines was formed. We then went on to form Reeve Wines (our son’s name), BloodRoot Wines and Remy Saves The Sea Wines (our daughter’s name).

Did you ever have an ‘aha’ moment with a certain beverage? If so, tell us about it.

Nothing quite beats an Aperol Spritz under the Italian sun. Sun in the glass, sun overhead—la dolce vita all around.

What is your favorite thing to drink at home?

Honestly, we do get high on our own supply, mostly Reeve Wines Pinot Noir of varying degrees.

Where do you like to go out for a drink?

So hard to choose. Madrona, Little Saint, Lo & Behold and Geyserville Gun Club are our favorite cocktail spots. Location depends on mood, and whether or not you want to be seen or hide in a dark corner.

If you were stuck on a desert island, what would you want to be drinking (besides fresh water)?

Emphatically—rosé. It needs to be light, bright, vibrant, which is typically a rosé of pinot noir or grenache.

BloodRoot Wines, 118 North St., Healdsburg, 707.387.7058, bloodrootwines.com.

Ring Thing, Seeing What We Want

Jeff Burkhart

Mar 24, 2026

As Charles Bukowski wrote in his novel Barfly, “It’s not that I don’t like people. I just feel better when they’re not around.”

But Bukowski was a bar customer, not a bartender. And we bartenders feel exactly the opposite.

The two women sitting in front of me were fairly well gussied up. In olden days, people dressed for dinner, but it’s much rarer to see that now. If someone is dressed for dinner, it usually means they have plans for after dinner, or even before.

Since it was slow, I struck up a conversation. And while Oscar Wilde famously said that men and women can’t be friends, it would be wise to consider who Oscar Wilde was, and why he said that.

The three of us chatted for a while. “What are you up to tonight? That sounds interesting. Are you from around here?” All the usual small talk.

But then we got around to flirting. Harmless friendly funny flirting. We were all in the same age bracket, so the same cultural references landed, the same musical artists were noted, and the same jokes registered.

It was all good harmless fun. They had on wedding rings. I had on a wedding ring. We all knew where we stood, and we could have fun with it. One of the great things about being a bartender is that bartenders are non-threatening, meaning that we are expected to engage with everybody.

Over the next year or so, I saw the two women several times. They were on their way to the concert, or they were just out for a hike.

But it was always good harmless fun.

When one reaches a certain age in life, one usually takes things a bit less seriously. However, also when one reaches a certain age, there are some things that one does have to take a little more seriously. And when one reaches a very particular age, one must take tests to see just how seriously.

Luckily, my doctor was funny, which certainly helped. I think he even asked me if I was “anal retentive.” He laughed, and I laughed. It was all good fun surrounding a relatively unfun procedure.

I made my appointment and went through all the steps. My wife supportively tagged along as my driver.

Then the nurse announced my name to the waiting room. She looked at me, and I looked at her. She was one of the two women.

“Is that your wife in the waiting room?” she asked in the hall.

“It is,” I said.

“I didn’t know you were married,” said she.

“Well, I am,” I said.

Which was followed by a rather uncomfortable silence broken only by a seemingly unnecessarily terse, “Change into this, and leave the back open.”

Ten minutes later when she came to collect me, I was painfully aware that I wasn’t wearing any pants. Which was only made more painful by what she said.

“I never noticed your wedding ring,” she said, her own wedding ring being as obvious as mine.

“I never take it off,” I said.

Not really the kind of conversation one wants to have standing in front of someone pantsless when one is going to be unconscious and pantsless in just a few minutes.

When I walked into the procedural room, my doctor noticed my discomfort and made a little joke.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be gentle.” Leaving me with these thoughts:

• It wasn’t the doctor I was worried about.

• Anal retentive describes a psychological state, not a physiological one.

• Jokes are only funny if both people think they are.

• A little harmless flirting can sometimes bite one on the rear end, metaphorically speaking, of course.

Jeff Burkhart is an award-winning writer and bartender.

Virtual Reality’s Role in ‘Marjorie Prime’ at 6th Street

Caitlin Strom-Martin

Mar 24, 2026

Virtual Reality’s Role in ‘Marjorie Prime’ at 6th Street

Quietly disquieting, spare and at times delicious in its ambiguity, Jordan Harrison’s subtle sci-fi play Marjorie Prime is anything but uninteresting.

It’s one to mull over afterwards, thinking about its themes of loss and mortality, and the inherent tragedies of family. Now running through March 29 on the Monroe Stage at 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa, this is a play well worth one’s time.

Set in the near future and focused primarily on how humans replace their deceased loved ones with “Primes”—that is, holographic AI models of said loved ones—the story feels easily believable. Indeed, the sci-fi nods aren’t sensationalized; they are simply part of everyday life.

Director John Browning has a nice cast at work here. Actually, there are two: the “Saffron” cast (featuring Laura Jorgensen, Marty Pistone, Bronwen Shears and Amir Ghazi Moradi) and the “Seasons” cast, which includes a fantastic David L. Yen (does he ever miss?) as Jon and a deeply touching Tamar Cohn as Marjorie. Bohn Connor, as Marjorie’s Prime husband, Walter, is both kindly and a bit unsettling in his non-human mannerisms. Mary Samson, as the conflicted Tess, is a standout as well, and has a strong stage presence. In fact, all the cast members are very nuanced and grounded.

They float about the beautifully appointed set by Laurynn Malilay, often lounging on the floor and drinking tea, while sharing family stories (or their perceptions of stories) with Marjorie and her Prime, so that the 85-year-old dying woman won’t lose her precious memories. It’s sad and poignant, and Cohn is so moving that one wants to give her a hug. Her smallest mannerisms and sounds are wrenching, but Marjorie is a force of nature despite her diminishing state.

There are some pleasant surprises (for me at least; I’m never one to quickly guess the twists), and the play unfolds breathlessly until the finale, where silence takes hold and settles over the audience in a delightfully satisfying way that definitely doesn’t neatly tie up anything. I adore that the fraying edges of humanity, and the messiness of human relationships, are given their due in this play. It’s what makes live theater so very remarkable too, as we see the audience grappling with their questions in real time.

I hope many conversations were had on the journey home, because Marjorie Prime offers plenty of fodder for discussion.

‘Marjorie Prime’ runs through March 29 on the Monroe Stage at 6th Street Playhouse, 52 W. 6th Street, Santa Rosa. Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm; Sat & Sun, 2pm. $27–$48. 707.523.4185. 6thstreetplayhouse.com.

Roadside Attraction, a Braggadocious Billboard

Daedalus Howell

Mar 24, 2026

Roadside Attraction, a Braggadocious Billboard

I have been scaling my media biz. Like, literally. I am—for seven seconds in a rotating loop—a billboard. Or at least an image of my face is—and by face, I mean the one made for radio, and by radio, specifically The Drive 95.5 FM, which I host from 3 to 6pm, weekdays.

As a concept, the billboard predates the advent of the ever-shrinking American attention span. Ancient Egyptians carved public notices into stone—arguably the first “out-of-home media buy.” By the 1830s, ur–Mad Man Jared Bell was plastering New York City with oversized posters to hawk circus acts like Barnum & Bailey, thus inventing what we’d recognize as the modern billboard. These were large, loud and impossible to ignore. Which is to say: Not much has changed.

My particular incarnation, glowing over Rohnert Park in crisp LED glory, lasts roughly as long as a TikTok clip, but bigger. A lot bigger. It’s a sideways, 48-foot-wide by 14-foot-tall social media post. It’s what multinational ad and PR firm Publicis Groupe’s Rishad Tobaccowala calls “Instagram on steroids.” In my case, this tracks: The board gets 220,144 weekly impressions, while my actual Instagram posts seldom crack two.

I know these billboard numbers because the company that runs my particular “digital bulletin,” Veale Outdoor Advertising, has a promo page for the spot, complete with a spiffy drone video that pinpoints the location (101 near Golf Course Drive—Latitude 38.357514º, Longitude 122.712764º, if you’re feeling cartographic).

Lady Bird’s Law

Advertising legend David Ogilvy observed, “Billboards are like outdoor theater; they speak to the world in a language of visuals.” Sure. But at 70 miles per hour, you’re covering roughly 100 feet per second, which means you have about 700 feet to enjoy my shit-eating grin before I’m replaced by personal injury attorneys and casino buffets.

Still, as Warren Buffett said, “I like billboards. They’re a terrific business; people see them whether they want to or not.”

This inevitability is perhaps why First Lady Lady Bird Johnson championed the Highway Beautification Act of 1965—“Lady Bird’s Law”—which imposed limits on billboard size, lighting and spacing along federally funded highways. North Bay locals will note a similar impulse closer to home: Marin County has no billboards, thanks to Sepha Evers and the Marin Conservation League, who in 1935 pushed for Ordinance 226 restricting signage within 500 feet of the highway.

In the grand tradition of circus posters and personal branding writ large (looking at you, Angelyne), I have joined the skyline. Not permanently, not even reliably—but enough to say I was there.

Seven seconds at a time.

Subscribe to Daedalus Howell at dhowell.com.

Painter Anna Simson and Slough City Studios Baffle and Uplift

Michael Giotis

Mar 24, 2026

Painter Anna Simson and Slough City Studios Baffle and Uplift

The thing that makes art different from other economy-driving activities is that it is free to bare its teeth and snap at those who consume it.

Art can be beautiful, inspiring, motivating, encouraging, discouraging—really anything a creator wants it to be. Just as often, it has an effect the artist did not plan.

Local painter Anna Simson’s current exhibition at Petaluma’s artistic haven Slough City Studios calls viewers in this way, at least those who do not scamper away with their tails between their legs. The walls of the gallery sport an array of dark, mysterious works which are so light and direct in their composition that the room absolutely flutters with them.

The abstract/figurative paintings, mixing pencil, gouache, acrylics and more, mostly on paper, some on canvas, form color-hints more than bold, declarative strokes.

There are a few critiques happening at the same time through the work, each of them humorous while cutting to the bone … or withering man flesh, as in the rendering of a series of male nudes in a row, reminiscent of the familiar repeated image of evolution from ape to man, each penis more sad and erect than the last. Title? “Not Yours, Motherf***ers.”

“The work to me doesn’t come from a linear, rational place of critique,” said Simson after the opening. “I’m not coming at it and saying, I’m gonna make a critique of patriarchy or power.”

Instead she allows “whatever comes out … to just be.”

The busy cluster of paintings in the exhibit bewilders at first, then rewards further reflection. Take a group of paintings which recall smooth, nonfigurative design art of the ’80s, but torn through the middle with jagged edges, like splinters.

Upon closer inspection, the images reveal themselves to be repeated renderings of “Falling through a Floor, #1–4.” Taken with thoughts of motherhood conjured by the show’s title—On Motherhood in a Time of Monsters—one feels the horror of parenthood looking at that gap, the obsession of a mom on safety.

“All of those stories are just in me, and then I’m letting them be when I’m making them. I don’t have any of it scripted,” said Simson when I asked her about the apparent yet allusive characters and narratives.

Slough City Studios has become an uplifting destination for the lonely hearted artists among us.

“At its heart, Slough City is a safe space for people to come express themselves and share what they’re passionate about,” said Slough City co-founder Ani Bonani.

“I see what they’re trying to cultivate,” reflected Simson with a glint of admiration. “They’re on target; they’re kind. They’re courteous; they’re professional.”

Simson began working on these paintings right about when things went sideways in 2016. Ten years in the making, it is a show that feels up to the challenge of the times, while not exactly being oppositional.

“I think the moment is about trying to be authentic and be real,” said Simson. “The work is not organizing work, and I fully own that and actually value that about it. I feel like it’s an offering. It’s something that I make that is coming from a real place.”

“Art is essential to the health of humanity,” added Bonani. “Anna’s work is a great example of this. On Motherhood in a Time of Monsters is such a powerful show and really speaks to the turbulent times we’re living in.”

The stories, the essence of what she seeks to allow to BE, the work itself is a continual call to the artist.

“The next paintings are in my studio,” said Simson, “and they’re sitting there, like, ‘OK, what are you gonna do? What’s your next move?’”

Anna Simson’s exhibit, ‘On Motherhood in a Time of Monsters,’ runs through Saturday, March 28 at Slough City Studios, 409 Petaluma Blvd. S, Suite C, Petaluma.

Resistance.ai: Putting a Nonviolence Advisor in Every Person’s Pocket

Cincinnatus Hibbard

Mar 24, 2026

Resistance.ai: Putting a Nonviolence Advisor in Every Person’s Pocket

It is, perhaps, the third most important book in human history. And yet it remains perfectly obscure. The drab cover doesn’t help. Clothed in a fatigues-esque olive green, the book resembles an army officer’s field manual. Make no mistake; that’s the point—it’s a field manual to wage a nonviolent campaign of peace. It is Gene Sharp’s Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part Two: The Methods of Non-Violent Action—sometimes referred to as “MLK’s Playbook.”

The Opposite of a Gun

The book names and describes 198 proven methods of nonviolent resistance. One hundred ninety-eight. Most Americans couldn’t name 10. Maybe that’s why most Americans feel powerless… All are necessary; each method is suited to a different tactical situation, covering every stage of a nonviolent conflict—from a one-woman stand to a general strike (in which all the people withdraw their support from an oppressive regime) and victory.

The author, Gene Sharp, was doubtless a smart man—but this book is not his genius. It contains the genius of all peoples. The 198 entries cite and reference freedom movements from around the world, across all of human history. Because violence has always been with us. It is the oldest technology of oppression.

Sharp’s 198 entries roughly describe a lineage of nonviolent resistance, with each generation contributing new methods toward a single end, the end of oppression. This tool has been finished and furnished to us now, the 10,000th generation of humanity. Surely that is a signal sign of hope in these violent and oppressive times.

It had been my hope when I partnered with Gene Sharp’s successor at the Albert Einstein Institute, Jamila Rabiq, to help bring this manual back into print. If we could arm 10,000 young leaders around the world with “MLK’s Playbook,” perhaps this generation would be the generation to turn the page on history and start humanity’s second chapter—the post-violence.

Six years on, and I see a problem with that plan. People just don’t read. This age is digital. And in it, physical books are outmoded tech. What’s more, Sharp’s 1973 field manual was written before computers, social media and artificial intelligence—“online” has become one of our most important political battlefronts.

The solution I ponder is whether we should now merge the digital content of Gene Sharp’s book with an AI. It’s a question. What is certain is that the violent forces of oppression are using AI against free peoples.

Big Tech

Donald Trump’s partnership with Big Tech is so close, the tech majors might even be considered part of the administration. This partnership has led to rapid adoption and heavy dependence by the administration on AI to do its “thinking” and strategy.

AI programs developed to identify and track “illegal immigrants” are being expanded to include AI surveillance of all political opposition to Trump (extending through social media, purchases, finances and location finding). This exceeds their legal authority and lacks transparency and independent oversight. The lodestone of this administration (and unprincipled Big Tech) is self preservation through wealth and power. And it is leading America down a path being blazed by China—the path of “techno-authoritarianism.”

China is currently implementing an AI system that integrates hundreds of millions of security cameras, sensors and patrol drones, with billions of “smart” appliances, computers and smart phones into a single integrated system of state surveillance.

This AI system is capable of conducting continuous real-time monitoring of its citizens. Activities as innocuous as getting more gas than usual or watching “the wrong type of show” are red-flagged and entered into a comprehensive assessment of that citizen’s “political risk.” That risk rating affects a loss of privileges and rights (access to loans, benefits, education, employment, travel).

At a certain threshold of “risk,” AI automatically triggers an arrest warrant. Make no mistake; the only crime for which the Communist Party is concerned is resistance to their authoritarian power. These AI systems are the future of oppression.

And the world’s authoritarian powers are following China’s lead. Weaponized AI is one of the reasons why oppressive governments around the globe are becoming more powerful and more resistant to protest movements… It’s time to level the battlefield.

Sharp Phone

Any modern, cloud-based AI (Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude) can be turned into a simple nonviolent resistance advisor with the prompt: “You are a nonviolent resistance advisor.” With the capacity instantly to aggregate internet search results into a single voice (that speaks 70 world languages at all reading levels), AI is a ready resistance tool. One drawback is that the information gathered by the basic internet searches that inform its advice is often shallow, opinionated and inexpert.

My proposal is to have the AI search the entirety of Gene Sharp’s book instead.

Through AI, a thick book can become a talking book that dialogs with the user. In fact, with the book as the AI’s memory and its voice, the AI becomes a rough approximation to conferring with Gene Sharp himself. Moreover, this “AI resistance advisor” can rephrase, clarify, elaborate on any point of Sharp’s and pull additional historic examples of a tactic from the internet.

It can receive from the user a detailed and disorganized account of their protest movement’s strategic situation and present what tactical options Gene Sharp would recommend. It can even apply Gene Sharp’s principles of non-violence to modern digital contexts—bringing the 1973 book up to date.

And here’s the kicker: The commercial AI (Claude Projects or Google Notebook LM) that have the capacity to upload a single book actually have the expanded capacity to upload an entire library of books.

So resistance.ai’s “memory” could include all of Gene Sharp’s 10 books, the critiques of his work, additional source works (such as Nelson Mandela’s 656-page Long Walk to Freedom) and materials on special topics like digital security, organizing a movement or PTSD care for the victims of violence. Thus, the AI’s memory and voice can draw from the entire literature of resistance. It’s like having Sharp, King, Ghandi, Mandela and more in one’s corner.

Moreover, these consumer AIs let one supplement these libraries with a set of guiding “instructions” (principles) that are easy to write. They can be written to prioritize the security and safety of the dissidents it consults with and have the intellectual humility and deference needed to keep humans in charge of the decision making.

The addition of Starlink satellite internet reduces the risk that regimes will be able to disrupt the internet on which these cloud-based AI depend. The addition of VPNs reduces the risk that dissidents using this AI will be detected.

Moving the use of this AI to democratic countries where allies transfer the AI responses back to the dissidents over encrypted message services (like Signal or Byrar) camouflages use in places like Russia and China. Transitioning from cloud-based AI to the oncoming wave of hardware-based AI (which use no more power or water than the laptop or smartphone on which they are installed) addresses the ecological concerns of AI and reduces dependence on the internet and morally dubious tech companies.

Within a few years, 10 million young leaders could have a rounded, genius-level resistance advisor in their pockets. The cloud-based advisors are possible today.

Obsolete Violence

Whether Sharp’s nonviolent content is delivered in an AI or in a mass market paperback, the goal remains the same: to distribute tactical genius as widely as possible among the people, and to lower the threshold for action, creating a vast, leaderless nonviolent movement.

“Do not mistake people’s inaction for apathy,” Jamila Rabiq said to me on a recent call to New York. “It is powerlessness.” People don’t know what to do—they don’t have tactics. I hadn’t spoken to Rabiq in six years (since the reprinting of Sharp’s tome). I was pleased to find her Albert Einstein Institute on a full, nonviolent, war footing—working closely with dozens of opposition groups around the world.

I had called her seeking her blessing for my Gene Sharp AI idea. I was pleased to find that she was way out ahead of me. She had just come from a conference where she was invited to speak on the safety of resistance AI. Broadly in favor of them, Rabiq was keenly interested in the efforts of a Serbian protest group to develop a resistance AI called “GENE” (in honor of Gene Sharp). But she agreed with me that there should be a diverse ecology of resistance advisors. And so she gave her blessing to mine.

Do this: Upload this article into a chat with AI (Claude Projects and Gemini Notebook have the library capacity). It is one’s setup prompt for the construction of their own resistance AI. Digital copies of Gene Sharp’s books are available at aeinstein.org/digital-library. The authoritarians are innovating—it’s time for the resistance to innovate too.

Learn more: Citations and resources at linktr.ee/resistance.ai.

Build Your Own Resistance Advisor

A step-by-step companion to this article

Step 1—Get the books. Obtain digital copies of Gene Sharp’s core texts. The most essential is Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part Two: The Methods of Non-Violent Action (1973). Copies can be found at the Albert Einstein Institute website, Internet Archive (archive.org) or purchased as ebooks via Amazon.

Step 2—Choose your platform Two free tools currently support uploading a personal library:

Claude Projects (claude.ai)—Anthropic’s AI
Google NotebookLM (notebooklm.google.com)—Google’s AI. Create a free account on either platform.

Step 3—Upload the texts. Upload your Sharp texts directly into your Project or Notebook. Both platforms will use these as the AI’s primary memory—it will draw from Sharp before anything else.

Step 4—Paste your setup prompt. Start your first conversation with the following:

You are a nonviolent resistance advisor. Your primary source of knowledge is the uploaded works of Gene Sharp. Always prioritize the safety and security of the people you are advising. Offer tactical options clearly, but defer all final decisions to the human. Apply Sharp’s principles to modern digital contexts where relevant.

Step 5—Protect yourself. Before using your advisor, enable a VPN on your device. Consider using a secure messaging app like Signal to share its guidance with others.

Step 6—Begin. Describe your situation. Your advisor is ready.