One of my favorite parts of my job as editor the Bohemian is working with artists and photographers to create each week’s cover. The cover almost always relates to our feature story and is designed to be eye-grabbing from up to 10 feet away and make readers say, “hey, that looks interesting. I better pick that up and read it.”

For our fall literature issue last month, I wanted an artist to illustrate the winning entry in our annual fiction contest, “The God’s Eye” by Jeff Cox. I reached out to Brooklyn illustrator extraordinaire Danny Hellman. He’s inked work for dozens of magazines and newspapers. I sent him the winning story, an Agatha Christie-esque story about a stolen jewel, and asked him render a scene. I thought the illustration he sent me was spot-on. It showed a woman on her knees looking for the missing jewel while a sinister man with a gun loomed in a doorway behind her. A big eyeball floated between them. (Spoiler alert if you haven’t read the story: the thief stashed the jewel in the empty socket behind his glass eye, hence the floating eyeball on the cover). But that’s not what a few readers saw.

I got angry calls and letters complaining that the image was “sexist,” “salacious” and “detestable.” One writer said the image portrayed an impending rape. Does a woman on the floor automatically signify sex or rape? Could there be another connotation? Not in the mind of these readers. Sexist and disgusting. Case closed. Never mind they didn’t actually read the short story to which the illustration referred.

Alternative weeklies are known for publishing some pretty provocative stuff and by that measure I think the cover was rather tame. I’ve seen more sex and violence on the cover of magazines in the supermarket checkout line.

Violence against women is real and is not something I take lightly. The cover image drew on the tradition of pulp fiction and was intended to be visually striking, but puzzling enough to get readers to open the paper to find out what was going on. What is she doing on the ground? What’s up with that eyeball? To readers who were offended and saw nothing but sex and violence, consider the possibility that your interpretation was wrong.

There’s still a ways to go, but Sebastopol philanthropist-businessman and out-front Palm Drive Hospital booster Dan Smith says to keep an eye out for April 6, 2015.

That’s the “projected opening date” of the now-shuttered West County hospital, says Smith, who has been working with the Santa Rosa pulmonologist Dr. James K. Gude on a board-approved plan to try and reopen the hospital as a financially viable, sustainable business with an emphasis on specialty services. The beloved hospital went bankrupt and closed in late April.

In the intervening months, Gude has spearheaded an effort that would reopen Palm Drive and make the facility a “center of excellence for certain kinds of services that would draw people from places outside of West County,” says Smith. The reopen plan offers limited in-patient beds, acute-care services and an emergency room—but under the aegis of “a specialty service building that’s also a hospital,” says Smith.

So far, Gude and Smith have lined up commitments from a neurologist, a urologist and a specialist in minimally invasive spine surgeries, all from other area health outlets, says Smith. “They are part of the plan, and they have made commitments that they would bring their practices here,” says Smith. “That’s all happening because we have Dr. James Gude.”

The plan has gotten “positive” feedback from the Palm Drive Health Care District board of directors, says Smith, though “there are still people who are trying to understand whether it can be financially feasible, and that’s a process we’re still in the middle of. The issue is: How much start-up capital do we need? We’re restarting a business with 200 employees from zero.
That’s a complex problem—and we’ll need $9 million to $12 million to get started.”

Board Vice President Marsha Lustig is one of those people. She’s “very hopeful and hope that’s what happens,” insofar as the proposed April reopen, but says she’s still are waiting for the financials. “Some financials,” she says. “We haven’t seen any!”

They’re coming next week, says Smith. He expects that the facility would need about $1 million annually for plant upkeep and maintenance—“It’s well within the district’s ability to find funding for that.”

The proposed April reopening, Smith says, is moving right ahead. “We’re putting all the pieces together to meet that goal,” says Smith, who is pushing a fundraising effort that aims to raise $9.2 million. “In the last week we received commitments for $1 million. It’s going extremely well, even better than I had anticipated.”