Sebastopol CITY LIMITS Podcast

Dale Dougherty
  • 5.0 (1)
  • News Commentary
  • Updated Biweekly

Conversations with folks from in and around Sebastopol, CA www.sebastopoltimes.com

  1. 08/23/2024

    "Positive vibe" for start of Chuck Wade's second year as Analy principal

    In this audio interview recorded last Friday, a day after school started, Chuck Wade, the principal of Analy High School, reflects on the first week of the new school year and changes from his first year as principal. He says that his job is both “exhilarating and exhausting” and one that Wade really loves doing. The assembly on the first day of school featured dance performances by students and included staff doing their own dance routine for students. Among his the challenges are student anxiety and the cellphone problem, which is connected to the bathroom problem, which is connected to the vaping problem... Key topics of discussion included a new focus on collaboration among teachers, the increase in student numbers, two new vice principals, and more work on belonging, inclusion, and safety. Wade addressed policies on cell phone use and efforts to stop bathroom vandalism, along with initiatives to stop vaping. Increasingly, there’s a role for the Wellness Center in helping students instead of just punishing them. Wade talks about continuing to watch the problems of students hanging out at Safeway after school. And the administration has a new tool, a street-legal golf cart for trips on and off campus. Additionally, Wade discussed introduction of dual enrollment classes with the Santa Rosa Junior College and community partnerships for student internships. I really do feel like the kind of thing we're trying to do in public education generally, and in a pluralist society but here specifically, it feels audacious and important. Even on the hardest days, I feel a little bit like, yeah, bring that on. Transcript of interview Dale: Chuck, it's good to see you. School just started this this week at Analy High School. First Week of School Highlights Chuck: Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been an exciting week. I can't believe it's already been the end of the first week. It went by super fast. We have more kids than we had last year, and it was actually a really a positive vibe, I would say, around campus. Super sweet. The quad is, one of my big reactions and surprises, is the quad is squeaky clean. I don't know what's going on. I've never seen it like that before. Dale: It's been trashed up a bit in the past. Chuck: No, after lunchtime, there'll be paper and wrappers and things like that. That kind of ebbs and flows throughout the school year. But this week it's been spotless. So I'm like, wow, okay, that's a good omen. Dale: What was your first day back to school like? What do you do? Back-to-School Assembly Chuck: We actually started with an assembly on the football field. So all 1, 476 or so students came down to the football field. We had a welcome message for them. They heard from the Associated Student Body President Paige Goodson and she spoke. And then we had three dance performances, essentially, for them. One by the Analy dance team, one by the cheerleading squad, and one by the staff. It's actually a tradition that started at El Molino that has been brought here and it's very sweet. Dale: Do you practice leading up to it? Chuck: Yeah. We do Jolene Johnson our dance director. Yeah, she choreographs something special for us every year and records a video and shares it with everybody and we have a couple different practice sessions and then and then we perform it for the students as a welcome back. Dale: Can you describe it? The song or the routine. Chuck: Yeah, I'm probably not the best person to describe the routine. Full disclosure I stood behind Lily Borgeson, who's another great dancer on staff and has a lot of ballet background. And I tried to do what she was doing and probably was not nearly as graceful. But it's a sweet, it's a sweet experience. I think it, allows students to see staff taking a little risk, trying some new things, going out on a limb. And that's what a lot of them are doing as well, coming to a big comprehensive high school, in the first couple of days trying to get acclimated with a whole bunch of new folks and make new friends and try new classes and all that kind of stuff. Think it's a really lovely way to, to welcome folks back. We're trying new things around belonging and inclusion on campus and then safety and culture, which are closely related. Principal's Reflections on First Year Dale: So you've had your own summer time to think back on your first year as principal what stands out for you from last year? But more like things that you learned about the role, things that are important to you now going into your second year. Chuck: Wow. There are a lot of things to choose from there, Dale. I learned a lot. I think first and foremost, last year just learning sort of the scope of the job. Analy is-- it's many things to many people, right? It's super important to a lot of folks, and there is something happening here always, even this summer. It was super busy. The campus is well used, loved by students and the community. It's a, as I think you recognize, a central part of this community. And so I think just learning all of the important parts of the things that go on in the high school and my role, in, in supporting that, that rich life of this facility was a big task. I think I'm still learning some things but I do feel like I had just a crash course in all the things that this kind of a place can do and be for the students and the community at large which is exhilarating, sometimes exhausting. But it's quite something. I think that's one of the things that — one of the many things really that was awe inspiring about Analy and learning about Analy is just what an amazing place it is and the kinds of things that it can do for different folks and the kinds of meaning that it holds for different people in different ways. Last year, obviously my first time being principal here was frequently surprised. Oh that's a thing we've got going on this week and it requires this and this in terms of meetings and planning and preparation and permitting and, all the kinds of things that need to happen. Because a lot of those things were surprises for me. I had to scramble quite a bit. I anticipate at least a lot less scrambling this year. I'm super excited about that, that I'll know what's coming and I'll know at least a little bit better how to drive this big thing and do what needs, doing to make those really cool things happen. Dale: Is it fair to say you enjoyed yourself? Chuck: Yeah, I think that's true. Dale: Like you found something you really like doing? Chuck: It seems that way. Totally is true. I won't deny there were some days when that wasn't necessarily the first one that would come to mind but most days at the end of the day definitely. And even on the, on those other days, I have to say I've enjoyed that hard piece quite a bit too. I really do feel like the kind of thing we're trying to do, in public education generally, and in a pluralist society but here specifically it does feel audacious and important. Even on the hardest days, I feel a little bit like, yeah, bring that on. That's the hard work I want to do. So I enjoy that too, even when it's pretty taxing. New Vice Principals and Their Roles Dale: What kind of changes have happened since last year? I think now you have a total of three vice principals. Two of them are new. Is that true? Chuck: That's correct. And so one additional vice principal, which is obviously a huge change for the admin team for how we will work to support students and staff. It's huge. I really am grateful to the board and the district and the whole community for figuring out a way to make that happen. I think it'll make us a lot more effective. We're trying new things around a couple big areas I'll mention are belonging and inclusion on campus and then sort of safety and culture kinds of things, which are closely related. Some of it is there's just some people power that we will have access to this year that we didn't last. And so already we're trying some new things around cell phones and bathrooms and those kinds of things in terms of policy and sort of procedure and how we implement those things and the ability of the administrative staff to keep on top of it. And I think that's important. Just on that very mundane practical level, we'll have a lot more time to dedicate to taking care of those things that can help the campus feel more safe and inclusive. Dale: Okay, would you introduce them briefly, just what their area of focus is? Chuck: Returning is Gianna and her full name is Gianna De Persiis Vona. She goes by Gianna, all the students know her as Gianna. So she's returning as vice principal. Joining us, we have Kirsten Sanft. Kirsten is not new to the district. In fact she worked for the consortium last year as a special educator and so she, she has that experience. She's an educator I've admired for a long time so I met her when she was principal at Cloverdale High School and when my role at the county office I worked with her up there. After that, she came here to West County and was the principal of the West County Middle School Charter. I had an opportunity to work with her there and then she went to Piner Olivet Charter and was a principal. So she's somebody I've known for it's gotta be 10 years or so now and, a very experienced administrator in this county, super student focused. I've always really admired that about Kirsten. In fact when I introduced her to staff last year, I was remembering that I actually took a picture of her office in Cloverdale when I first went up there and she had a just a piece of paper on her wall and it said "don't blame the students." It really struck me that was a cool thing for just a site administrator to remind themselves every day and be staring at across from the desk. That's a nice reminder. Then we have Christi Calson. Christy comes to us from the the county office where I was lucky enough to work with her. Once upon a time, I was Christi's coach. In education, we have, coachi

  2. 05/15/2024

    A Remarkable Student

    Karis Morasch is graduating from Analy High School in a couple of weeks. She is remarkable, high-achieving student who exceeds expectations, taking more AP classes than you knew existed, and an athlete who excels in track and field setting school records in the triple jump. She is also a thoughtful student leader and she was recognized at the WCUHSD board meeting on May 8 for serving as the elected student representative for two years. Yet, what's also remarkable about Karis are the unique events that shaped her four years as a high school student. Her freshman year during Covid was spent on Zoom at her home in Guerneville. Her sophomore year was spent at El Molino, which then closed that year. She was one of the students who were merged into consolidated high school under the name West County High, which eventually reverted back to Analy High School. She is one of the last group of students to have attended El Molino. Even as she looks back on the whole experience, she remains positive because she and her peers worked hard to build a new school community. “Some of my best friends in the entire world I never would have met if we hadn't gone through that consolidation.” I do the things that I do because I love them, not out of obligation. — Karis Morasch I caught Karis in her car for an interview via Zoom after she had just finished her last AP exam (Pre-calculus) and just before she went off to track practice. Karis will be going to UC Berkeley in the fall where she plans to study political science. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

  3. 04/23/2024

    Investigating DEMA

    This interview with Andrew Graham, a reporter for the Press Democrat, explores his year-long investigation into DEMA Management and Consulting, a for-profit company overseeing housing and medical services for the homeless in Sonoma County. DEMA’s contracts with the County’s Department of Health Services included two former hotels purchased with State funds under Project HomeKey: Elderberry Commons in Sebastopol (January 2021-March 2023) and Mickey Zane Place in Santa Rosa (from December 2020 to present). DEMA also manages the County’s Emergency Shelter Site (ESS), a tent camp that opened in the spring of 2023 on Administration Drive in Santa Rosa. Over a three-year period, the County paid DEMA over $26 million. After hearing from residents of the facilities managed by DEMA and talking to current or former DEMO employees, Graham began looking more deeply into DEMA. He obtained information on the contracts with the County and the invoices submitted by DEMA. His reporting unveiled problems with DEMA, which included a set of financial discrepancies, lack of documentation for the work of salaried employees, and other questions about medical services provided. In response to reporting, the County Auditor stepped in to do a limited review of the billing. Michelle Patino, the CEO of DEMA, threatened to sue the County and the Press Democrat while denying there was any problem. The County’s Auditor took many months to look into DEMA’s billing, in part because DEMA did not cooperate. Meanwhile, the Department of Health Services was looking into extending DEMA’s contract. The Auditor presented a report to the County Supervisors this spring and they deliberated over what to do in several private meetings. Last week, the Supervisors decided to the cut ties with DEMA. DEMA’s billing problems could mean that the County would have trouble getting reimbursed by FEMA for the amount it paid to DEMA. Here a timeline of Graham’s reporting on DEMA in the Press Democrat (behind paywall). * July 26. 2023. A Santa Rosa company earned more than $26 million through no-bid Sonoma County contracts. A Press Democrat investigation finds questions in its billing * July 28, 2023. Sonoma County auditors will review DEMA contracts in response to Press Democrat investigation * July 31, 2023. Sonoma County’s elected finance chief says DEMA audit will be thorough and independent * August 11, 2023. DEMA CEO denies wrongdoing as Sonoma County puts homeless housing sites out for competitive bids * September 10, 2023. Sonoma County Board of Supervisors prepares to award another $3.3 million to DEMA to manage 3 housing sites, as audit continues * November 24, 2023. Sonoma County plans to extend contract for homeless housing contractor DEMA even as company withholds records from auditors * January 31, 2024. Sonoma County extends contract with controversial homeless provider that is under financial investigation * March 8, 2024. Report from Sonoma County’s financial investigation into homeless services provider DEMA delayed again * March 27, 2024. ‘Every hour accounted for’: DEMA CEO responds to report questioning millions in billing * April 7, 2024. What to do about DEMA? Homeless services provider vexes Sonoma County officials * April 16, 2024. Sonoma County supervisors vote to sever ties with embattled homeless services contractor DEMA While DEMA is at the center of the story, the broader context is the role of oversight by the County of its patchwork of contractors who provide homeless services, especially as spending on homelessness has increased and the scope of work has become more complex over this period. Are the millions of dollars spent on homelessness programs producing results? A story in CalMatters says that California fails to track its homelessness spending or results, a new audit says. A statewide audit released (last) Tuesday called into question the state’s ability to track and analyze its spending on homelessness services. The article used the cities of San Diego and San Jose as examples. San Jose and San Diego each have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on homelessness in recent years. But neither could provide an exact accounting of how much was spent and where it went, according to the audit.  And both cities failed to consistently evaluate whether the homeless services nonprofits they contract with are effectively spending city funds. In San Diego, for example, a $1.6 million shelter contract didn’t specify how many people should be served, making it impossible to tell if that program has been successful. Even when the cities required performance metrics from their contractors, they sometimes failed to collect them.  — CalMatters link The need for extensive investigative reporting such as what Andrew Graham and the Press Democrat have done is essential if public officials and their contractors are to be held accountable for making progress on the homelessness problem. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

  4. 10/04/2023

    Ken Berman's Industrial Whimsy

    Sebastopol artist Ken Berman’s painting, “Temporary Restraining Order,” was selected for a new juried Open ‘23 show at SF's de Young Museum, which is open now and runs through the January 7th. Berman is a bit of an outlier among Sonoma County artists; he doesn’t do landscapes or seascapes. Instead, as a young man growing up in Pennsvylvania and New Jersey, Berman was inspired by steel mills and railroads as well as Rube Goldberg and Salvador Dali to look at the surface of the world around us and see inside it to find something in the complexity of its details. He calls his art “industrial whimsy.” In this conversation, Ken and I talk about his background as an architect and an artist. He sees himself as an outsider, a self-taught artist who learned what he wanted to do by doing it, painting day after day. He says: “I feel like my role is to paint and my goal is to show the work, and then (I have) the faith that there will be people there (to see it.)” Having his painting selected for the show at the de Young Museum provides Berman with “higher level validation” for the work he does. Links * Ken Berman Art - website * Red Maple Architects and Designers - website Transcript Dale: I'm with Ken Berman. Ken, just as an opener, if you had a neighbor come up to you, one you don't know, and he said tell me about yourself. How would you introduce yourself? Ken: I'd have to probably start off with being a student in architecture, because most people can relate to that. Either they went to school and they drafted things or, so that's where it really all began when at 18 I went to Lehigh University, which was across the river from Bethlehem Steel. So a lot of the iconography, a lot of the industrial, that's where it originated. I actually had an apartment on the railroad tracks. So I heard the coal cars coming in to feed the furnaces, the blast furnaces. And this is when Bethlehem Steel was still operational. What it became, almost had a life force that I was responding to, or I am still responding to.  Dale: That's interesting. Would you tell them you're an artist?  Ken: That's how I would segue into, yes, I'm an artist. So that they understood where the foundation came from. The prelude to it was that it wasn't just, I came to, geez, I just had this in my head. I was going to paint industrial whimsy is what I've been calling it lately. It actually, it originated in architecture. It originated in steel mills and it's just evolved as as I've gotten older.  Dale: You're included in an exhibition at de Young Museum. Tell us about that.  Ken: Basically it's I guess they call it triennial. So every three years they've been trying to do and open up this competition to artists within the nine Bay Area counties. This year, yeah, I was lucky enough to put in my entry and it was accepted. So they had the opening for the artists a couple days ago and the official opening will be tomorrow.  Dale: That's Saturday September 30th? And how long will that run?  Ken: Until the first week of January in 2024. So it's a really good, it's a long -- you can come to the museum, I think is free on Saturdays. Dale: So what does that mean to you as an artist to be accepted into kind of an institution like that?  Ken: You need, I think every artist, you need some level of validation. Yes, we can all paint in our studios, but there's always that desire that I got to show it to somebody, it doesn't matter by your parents, friends, maybe some people do Art Trails or Art at the Source and they open up their studios, but once, once you graduate for certain things, then you go I need more than that. I need some validation at a higher level. And so this was great. It gave us for 7, 000 plus artists, an opportunity to get something validated that maybe they've been working on for a couple of years. Or like me, this has been a 20 plus year excursion into the world of industrial whimsy,  Dale: Talk about the origins. You describe yourself as self taught. You didn't go to art school. You went to architecture school, but you didn't go to art school. So this was something you developed somewhat on the side and has become a pretty important part of your life, right?  Ken: I actually had a really interesting thing happen when I was in graduate school. I went to NJIT. I went to Lehigh for my undergraduate and I went to NJIT, which is a New Jersey Institute of Technology. And I was invited to go to a book signing for an artist. His name was Robert Rauschenberg. And Robert Rauschenberg is Jasper Johns, Warhol-- he's at that level. I didn't know who he was. I went to architecture school. And so I didn't really know who these artists were, but I met him and I talked to him. How do you know you're an artist? And he said you're an artist if you wake up every morning and you want to make, you want to create whatever your art is. And I thought, Oh geez, that's all it is. That's pretty easy. That set the bar pretty low. I really enjoy painting and creating things. So I guess I'm an artist. So that was the prelude into being included into, I guess, the artist category. Dale: It's a interesting label where some people aren't sure whether they fit being an artist, right? Or whether it applies to them or when in their life it might apply to them or how much they have to do that. He gave you inspiration to just... start thinking of yourself as an artist, right?  Ken: I think so, because if he was that willing to basically just, that's how I describe it. It's just that doesn't really set the bar that hard. I don't need to go get an advanced degree. I don't need a bachelor's degree in it. I could just start right now and start playing around with paints and I had that artistic license to do it. For any artist, it's a program that you never graduate from, right? You're never out of school. Dale: That's actually a good thing. How did you Find what you wanted to paint. Subject matter. You mentioned the Bethlehem Steel thing that being formative for you, but did you start with that right away, trying to work in that direction? Ken: Not really. I started, I was much more of a colorist. I played with a lot of color. I really liked that. Then I was really into Surrealism when I first started. So Dolly and I still am. I think there's a, that's where the whimsy comes in. That's where a little bit of more of the idiosyncratic kind of things come in.  It can't just be me replicating machines because that's not really what I'm trying to do. Take a picture of that. To me, there's these intangibles and there's connections that get made or reconnections get made. Something happens and there's a cause and effect. And so sometimes when I start a painting, I might start off and I think it's going to be something else and it just transforms and becomes its own thing. I've just learned to let that storyline guide me.  Dale: Your work would be hard to describe just in words, don't you think? Ken: That's why people, they try to group you. Okay, you're the machine guy or you're this. And I think the descriptions really limit what the reality of the visual, what the paintings could be. Because each person-- that when I've done more shows, some people love it, some people don't really like it. But there isn't anybody that just goes what did I, what was I looking at here? I don't quite, you got to tell me the story. You got to explain at least a little bit because, how'd you get there? Or, each individual painting, what the symbolism might be.  Dale: I saw something you wrote, you're really interested in the complexity of the world around us, which includes all this technology and machines and things even more so today. When we think of fine art, it kind of filters that out. We want something, what we think is beautiful and it might be a landscape, it might be a portrait or things, but this technological machine is all around us.  Ken: Think about what we're using right now. For us, it's just a medium like any other medium. We could be painting a painting, it would just take us forever to communicate. But to me it's a medium. It's a way of me addressing, like you said, the complexities of the world. Sometimes I'll come up with a painting title, like the one that got into the show is Temporary Restraining Order, right?  Dale: That's a great title. Terrible in a way, but.  Ken: Exactly.  Dale: It's a great title.  Ken: You think about what the pretense like what happened, what, why, was it really bad or, weird. And in a lot of ways it was just watching the TV show Suits, which is on TV right now and just how the attorneys kept manipulating situations and that's what I do with the machine. It's not, it's just a series of complexities and a series of decisions that you make. And then within that one painting, it's about holding it up. It's temporary restraint. Just, we got to hold that moment in a lot of ways.  Dale: Do you teach art?  Ken: I've been asked to give classes and the one class I did do, it was funny. I bored most of the people in the first 15 minutes. So they all left. But the funny part of it is that the 10 people that were left, I started to give them demonstrations. The people that had left early would come back when I did Art Trails, and they said, we missed it. We left too early. You got to show us what you showed everybody else. And I almost felt yeah, you should have stayed a little longer. . But I have taught a little bit.  Dale: Yeah. It's interesting. I think people do want to know how sometimes, just to watch people work and do the thing itself. Ken: When I first started mixing paint, that's what most artists you're going to-- you have a little dab, a little tube of paint, especially oil paint, which is what I use. And you put a little dab on a palette and then you paint from there. I basically take a whole wad of paint and goop it onto a palette and then I move it around with like basically cake-making or cake-baking tools. So I move a

  5. 09/15/2023

    Steve Fowler on the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm

    Press Fest is this Saturday at the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm from 10 to 2pm. You’ll be able to use an antique apple press or a more modern electric one to make delicious juice from local apples. This week, I had the opportunity to talk to Steve Fowler who was curator at the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm from 1989 until 2010. Fowler is the one person who knows as much about the farm’s past as well as its present as a historical museum and active farm. For this conversation, we sat in the cottage at a large table. I pressed record and really just listened to Steve talk. He has a wonderful deep voice, which has also served him well in various roles as an actor. He’s been part of the Cemetery Walk for 15 years, playing local notables such as Jasper O’Farrell and Willard Libby. (We’ll cover the Cemetery Walk next week.). See Steve and others involved in the farm at Press Fest on Saturday. Transcript: Steve Fowler on the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm Dale:  From 1989 until 2010, Steve Fowler was the curator at the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm in Sebastopol. We met this week at the cottage on the farm and sat around a large table surrounded by all kinds of Burbank memorabilia. I pressed record and really just listened to Steve talk about Luther Burbank, the experiment farm, and the efforts to save the farm and continue its work in the present. Steve: I'm Steve Fowler. I'm a landscape gardener by trade. I'm retired since 2010. And when I retired, I gave up the job of curator of the Burbank Farm, a position I'd had since 1989. I had an intimate knowledge of just about every square foot of the Burbank Experiment Farm in Sebastopol.  Dale: How big is the farm today? Steve: I'm going to say two and a half acres. It expanded and contracted depending on negotiations with the city and also with the Burbank Heights Corporation that did senior housing next door. And at first was very resentful of the farm. Don Dowd and I didn't see eye to eye in those days because I was the representative of the farm and the only person who was ever over here, at first. I've seen a lot of water go under the bridge, so to speak.  Dale: What was the size of the experiment farm in Luther Burbank's day?  Steve: It was 15 acres. We always say 15 acres. And if you look behind you, you'll see a map that represents those 15 acres. There was a time when he owned part of what is now the cemetery and the story is that he gave it up because there were too many gophers. He was trying to grow gladiolus up there and they were just killing him.  That's an original map. It shows the, literally, tens of thousands of plants that were here at that time. It was completely fenced because Burbank did not want anybody messing around over here. There was no plant patent law, and his experiments could be easily stolen, particularly when they got to the point where they were about ready to be introduced. It's also said that he searched the pockets of his employees to make sure they weren't carrying any seeds or twigs. Horticulture is so portable because of the fact that you can make cuttings from just about anything and of course seeds are almost invisible. He charged, and we have right here a ticket, $10 for a quarter of an hour if you wanted to come visit him here at the farm. And in those days... I think that ticket is dated 1916. That's funny to say that. It's such a bygone century. But in 1916, ten bucks would buy you a suit of clothes, I'm sure. Maybe pay the rent on an apartment for a month or something like that. It was a lot. It was prohibitive and that was the idea. Because he really wanted to be left alone over here. If he wanted to show off, he would do it over in Santa Rosa at his house, he had a nice house, he had a glass greenhouse, a wife.  Two wives, actually. One was a big mistake. She hated town; she thought he was an important person and they would ride around town in a gilded chariot or something. He was just gone all the time. He was working 14 hours a day and just cared about his plants. So that didn't last, but he did marry his assistant, Elizabeth toward the end of his life, and that was apparently a love match. A very deep love match. Dale: When did Burbank stop coming to the farm? Steve: He stopped coming here, I think, in about 1924-25. He died in 1926. But he had stopped working at the farm for a couple of years. I think he was even trying to sell the place. I don't think he did because his wife, Elizabeth, installed an apple orchard after he died. So large parts of what he had done was was destroyed. But there was this one little section where the cottage we were sitting in was, and there was a barn, and there was a sort of, it wasn't suitable, maybe suitable for apartments, and there were lots of gnarly old trees. Some local historians, activists, and Mel Davis, who was then the city manager contrived to create a condition in the use permit that this be set aside. That was the late 70s. I'm not sure of the exact times of all those maneuverings.  After he died, there was still tremendous interest in the farm. The Kyle family moved into this house and actually remodeled it so that they could raise their girls here. I think there were a couple of Kyle daughters and at least one son. They all lived here, but the well had gone dry in 1906 when the earthquake struck and the house was knocked off its foundations and had to be rebuilt. So this is the second version of this cottage and it dates to the 1908, something like that. Also Stanford University was interested and then there was a nursery in Missouri, Starks nursery that bought all of it, the rights to all of his plants. They had someone living here who was working here, whose job was to find experiments that still had some promise, and then remove them to their nursery in Missouri, where they would rename them, or name them, and then sell them to the public. Unfortunately, the microclimates in Missouri were so different that most of it didn't make the cut.  Luther never had much of a relationship with the scientific community. Because he didn't work with the same principles that, for instance, Mendel or the geneticists of the time. He worked from instinct. I think he had parapsychological abilities. I'm sure he did, as a matter of fact, but I can't prove it. It's the sort of thing. How could he go down a line of plants, kick over every one except the one that he thought had promise? And this would be years before that plant turned into the Shasta Daisy, or the Santa Rosa Plum, or whatever. The plants talked to him, or he talked to them. He understood and he had an extraordinary ability.  And he never drank or smoked, so his senses were sharp. I wish I had his senses. Because the sense of smell is completely gone from my body. Years of cigarette smoking took care of that, and my eyes are going. My ears are still okay, but... Plants don't actually make much noise, you but but he had to, he was very sensitive to them. Yeah, so he could bypass all the stages that scientists have to go through in order to establish-- Mendel, he didn't even know about Mendel, actually. Mendel had done his work, but he believed in the idea of inherited characteristics. So he believed that a plant could acquire characteristics during its lifetime that could be handed on to the offspring independently of the sexual reproduction. Now, of course that isn't true, but what we know now is that he was able to activate genes in the plant pool that otherwise would never be expressed by the exquisite care that he gave the plants. When a plant was given that kind of care, just like a person, they began to express things in their flowers and their growth that otherwise would never appear. That was the acquired characteristic that seemed like a genetic impossibility. But it was really a matter of just treatment, how the plant was treated. Lamarck. It was called the Lamarckian Fallacy. And so there's a lot more truth to it we know now than it was given credit for at the time. The historical society was incorporated as a non profit specifically to take on the farm project. Renee Felciano. By the time that I got on board in 78, I think it was already, the farm was certainly preserved. And some work had been done. A landscape plan had been prepared by EcoView, an outfit out of Napa. But the fact of the matter was that there was no money to install, to do anything. The city didn't wanna spend any money and the Burbank Heights people disliked the idea because they still owned the property and they were liable for anything that happened over here in the way of an accident. They could see suits coming at 'em from right and left. So that's why they opposed the whole development of the farm at that time.  There was an architect oh, God, John Banks? I have an old brain. It takes a while to churn out names. Yeah, but he and Renee were a team. They started a program that that gave awards and did surveys of historic buildings that were being either properly maintained or remodeled in an appropriate fashion, in keeping with the original style. Which is this cottage. The wallpaper, the doors, all the brass handles, everything is historically accurate. John Hughes. I knew that name would come to me. So many of these people are not with us anymore. John Hughes is not. Renee Felciano just died a couple years ago. It became important, in order to preserve the farm from future development, that it be recognized by the historic American Building Survey. And that's on the wall over there in brass. This is officially recognized as historical, meaning that it cannot be sold.  Dale: Talk about some of the things that are happening on the farm now. You have a new fenced- in area. Steve: That has everything to do with our new curator, we call him a curator. And that's a holdover from the idea that this place is a museum. A curator is someone who cares for historical or for museum artifacts. In my day, that's all I d

  6. 09/12/2023

    The Local Art at Burning Man

    Burning Man, the desert festival of radical inclusion, is also an amazing art festival by day and by night. My guests on this episode are two local art-makers, Deborah Colotti and Peter Loughran, who brought their own art to Burning Man this year. They returned home last week in good spirits after two weeks on the Playa. Both of them have been going to Burning Man for many years, and they are used to its harsh conditions and unpredictable weather. Moreover, they find the beauty in the whole experience - being there is part of the art of Burning Man, too. Deborah Colotti’s “S**t$torm” Artist website: www.dcolotti.com Peter Loughran’s The Door to Everything Transcript My guests today are Debra Colotti and Peter Loughran, both Sebastopol artists who recently returned from Burning Man. Deborah, just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do and your art.  Deborah: My name is Deborah Colotti. I've been in Sonoma County since 1980. I've been traveling around the world studying art in India and Japan and Austria, and I settled in Sonoma County because Sonoma State had this wonderful art department, and I've been making sculpture. That's my primary medium. And I work a lot with textiles. For Burning Man, I've been trying to make really big things that collapse into really small trailers. I don't rent any big trucks or equipment and my own private work that's not for Burning Man, I work much smaller and fine details but I'm interested in social, cultural issues in particular so that my work usually touches on those topics. Dale: And my other guest is Peter Loughran. Peter, tell us about yourself.  Peter: Yeah. Hi, my name is Peter Loughran and I am a general building contractor in Sonoma County for the better part of the last, oh, 12 years and Northern California for about the last 40 years. I lived out on the coast for a number of years, etc. I've been to Burning Man-- let's see, 18 times. My first year being 1995. I have consistently been involved in projects or spearheaded projects pretty much every burn that I've been to and have provided various different art pieces over the years. Dale: Debra, going back to you, was this the first piece you brought to Burning Man?  Deborah: No. I first went in 2008. To check it out, I went by myself and didn't join a camp, didn't know all the layout of Burning Man, but I went there, I saw the conditions, I went home and started my first art piece. I think this is my 10th or 11th art installation and then sometimes I build for two years and I take a year off and just go to enjoy and not have the responsibility of maintaining an artwork. Because it is a lot of work.  Dale: Can you describe your piece that you built for this year? Deborah: So this year I brought a piece called S**t$torm and the second "S" in s**t,  Dale: it's appropriate.  Deborah: Yes. The second “S” in “S**t$torm” is a dollar sign. And so I made one tunnel that was 90 feet long shaped in the US dollar sign, but it was a giant turd. And you walked, you walked into the mouth, went through the esophagus, the stomach, and crawled out an elasticized anus. In the stomach area, I took 200 table napkins and wrote vocabulary, history, all related to digestion, ways to say "bowel movement," which turns out there's many in English and stuff about microplastics and the environment, and so it had many layers of fun and seriousness. And it all fits in a little tiny garden trailer. Dale: Wow. So how long did it take you to set it up once you got there?  Deborah: Oh, too long. My crew every year tells me to get simpler.  Dale: Peter, what did you propose this year? And was it your first build? It sounds like you've been there a number of times. So you've been a part of other builds.  Peter: Oh, no. I've either been the lead or I've also, I brought my own pieces. In the 90s, I built a giant theme camp on the Esplanade and was involved in several art pieces in conjunction with what I was doing personally. And more recently I built a piece in 2019 called the "Stairway to Nothing." And then last year I was asked to be the lead on a piece that was called Unbound, a library in transition, which was also a very interesting piece to be involved with. And then this year I wasn't originally intending to work on a theme, but it developed into a theme. And this year I brought "The Doorway to Everything." It was a smaller piece and it was thought provoking and very interesting and I'm getting a lot of feedback that I pulled that off. Dale: What does it look like?  Peter: It's too bad I can't just flash you a picture right now. But nevertheless, it was a door, the actual door itself was eight feet tall by four feet wide and it was wrapped in looked like these large cubes. I don't know how to, how else to say it. And I built it in such a manner that it appeared as though nothing was really connected to one another. And so it had kind of these spaces. I don't know how to say it, but it it was called “The Doorway to Everything.” It was a collaboration of many of my different friends. And I basically themed each area.  The theme (of Burning Man) this year was Animalia, so there were animals and nature on the exterior, and then as you approached it, one side of the door was themed space; the other side was themed time and then above was themed love, and each one of my friends took on each of those themes and did a piece for it. And then on each side of the door as you walk through, was loosely themed science and religion, but it also had music and some poetry and some other elements to it as well.  Dale: Both of you, you don't know each other from Sebastopol, did you see each other's art there? Did you happen to run into S**t$torm, Peter, or Deborah, did you run into "the Door to Everything"?  Deborah: Maybe if I saw a picture, I would recognize it.  Peter: I really wish that I would have run into Deborah's piece. It sounds if not humorous, very very interesting.  Dale: What did you see people doing with your piece? What, any surprises, Deborah?  Deborah: Surprises. I had all these table napkins with text, books and sayings and so there was a lot. It took safety pins and your fingers get numb after a while out there on the playa. I would enlist people who came in to the structure to, hey, could you help me for five minutes? Could you hang this napkin up? And some people stayed. They hang one, and some people stayed for an hour and hung many. Because it was a shelter, it had a roof and walls, people often escaped in there, whether it was for the dust, the wind, the rain. Because I was there handing out these napkins to be installed, I had great interactions with people. And, my piece has a lot of humor. But that was great. I love that.  Dale: Peter, did you have any surprising interactions with people?  Peter: Surprising is a good word, but it was more about gratifying. There were a lot of reactions. A common artist experience is not knowing if anybody's going to like your piece at times. And so it was really, it was really gratifying to see people gaining different elements from it. As I said, there were all these different elements in my piece. I hope that there would be something interesting to everyone, right? There would be this or that little thing that rang a bell in some form or another. I would say that the most satisfying thing that occurred on the playa was after the rains, I hadn't been able to light the piece for two days. After the rains, before the man burn, we went out and we lit the piece. This couple rode up on one-wheels and they came up to me and they said, “this piece moved us so much that we decided to get married here.” They got married on the piece and that was, obviously, very gratifying because it meant that much to somebody.  Dale: That's a wonderful story.  It was an unusual year at Burning Man. I didn't go, but I read the reports and everything. How did each of you do during the rain and the experience of Burning Man? Did it feel at least up until those points did it feel like a regular Burning Man and then then you had some challenges? Deborah: Last year was rough. It was hot, it was dusty, it was extreme. Half my crew left either ill or something, dehydrated or injured. So this year was quite mild. It was mid 80s, low 90s to start and a little rain. And then the rain came. I loved it. It changed the whole tempo of the event because instead of people riding their bicycles off to a party a mile away, you stayed in place, you hung more with your neighbors, there was time to read and catch up on things. And so I didn't venture off my mats or my flooring outside for a day and a half. And then it was fine to walk, and we all had food, we all had water, there was no panic. We got it together. It was great. I loved it. After the rain, everything was cleaned, all my fabrics, all my piece were cleaned, and it was washed, and I came home with the least dust ever.  Peter: I second everything that Deborah said. Things were clean and went like in ways that you never experienced. The other thing was that for me a great deal of part of my experience is about the extremes. So last year while it was extremely uncomfortable, dusty, hot, and all of that, I felt a lot of camaraderie with my crew, having built a rather large piece through all of that and everything. So that was part of my inspiration. It seems each year there's something that inspires me to come back the next year. And that was the same for the rain. It tested everybody's limits and in my world, almost everybody stood up to it and, just made the best out of the circumstances. I think I'm mirroring what Deborah said in that people got an opportunity to get a lot more intimate with people because we were locked down. And we were able to develop friendships in a way that we probably wouldn't have if we'd have all been riding off on our bikes and marauding around town or whatever. From my experience, it w

  7. 08/25/2023

    Revitalizing the Farmers Market - Barbara Hom

    It’s easy to take the Sebastopol Farmers Market for granted after 30 years. For some, it’s a Sunday morning ritual to stroll through the market and get whatever is in season. Since the pandemic in particular, some might have gotten out of habit of going regularly to the Farmers Market. Barbara Hom, the new market manager of the Sebastopol Farmers Market is doing all that she can to get you to come back. She also wants to attract young families who are new to the area. Barbara once was the general manager of the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena and she continues to work as a chef at local wineries. As some farmers have stopped farming or retired, Barbara is also working to identify new farmers such as Leslie Wiser of Radical Family Farms who specializes in Asian vegetables, which Barbara particularly likes. She recognizes that farmers work hard and struggle to make a living and that there are those who struggle to afford the fresh produce at a farmers market and need assistance. She was recruited to run the Sebastopol Farmers Market and revitalize it after Covid. (The longtime manager of the Sebastopol Farmers Market, Paula Downing, passed away recently. See her obituary here.) She admits that she’s had a big learning curve and faced a lot challenges. Barbara’s main goal is to keep “the energy of farmers market” running year-round (“rain or shine”). She’s invited guest chefs to come to the market and added more international foods. She’s introduced pony rides and a petting zoo. On the Plaza stage, she has booked a diverse range of musicians throughout the year. Barbara wants to get people coming back regularly the Sebastopol Farmers Market to once again support local farmers and food makers. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

  8. 08/09/2023

    Gravensteins Galore! The Apple Fair at 50

    Sebastopol Times is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber today. Carmen Snyder is the executive director of Sonoma County Farm Trails and the producer of the Gravenstein Apple Fair at Ragle Park this weekend (August 12 & 13). In my conversation with Carmen, we talk about the Apple Fair at 50; it’s hardly news that the Gravenstein is still “the star of the show.” We talk about how the Fair has become a zero-waste event, how volunteers known as the Apple Corps play such a vital role, and the value of agritourism in connecting people to farmers and the production of food. The very first Apple Fair was held in 1973 on the grounds of the Enmanji Buddhist Temple. The clipping below is from the Sebastopol Times of August 9, 1973 shows. Interestingly, in the summer of 1973, the City Council was in the process of choosing Ragle Park as the site of a new regional park over a site at the Laguna. In her tenth year producing the fair, Carmen talks about Apple Alley where you can buy Gravensteins, as well as products made with the apples, as well as the musicians who will playing under the majestic oak trees. Transcript Dale: I'm happy to have Carmen Snyder join us on Sebastopol City Limits. Carmen is the executive director of Farm Trails and you've been there since 2012 is that right?  Carmen: I have. I have been the executive director of Farm Trails and the producer of the Gravenstein Apple Fair since the fall of 2012. Dale: Wow. Ten years. That's great. It's the 50th anniversary of the Gravenstein Apple Fair, which ages all of us. We'll ask a little bit about that. The basic information though, the Gravenstein Apple Fair is coming up August 12th and 13th at Ragle Park in Sebastopol. My first question, are the Gravensteins going to cooperate and be ripe for the fair?  Carmen: Yes, they are.  Dale: Are they? You've made that happen. That's the chief job, isn't it?  Carmen: The Gravenstein is certainly the star of the show. I have been getting inquiries of people, being a little bit nervous. It's a later harvest this year, but I have been assured that we will have Gravensteins galore. And I actually saw in the flesh, my first Gravensteins today. I have them in hand.  Dale: That's great. There's nothing like a fresh Gravenstein so people can look forward to that. What are you most excited about for the fair?  Carmen: I'm really excited about this milestone of the 50th anniversary. We're really going with it with the golden anniversary theme. We have a costume contest for Sunday afternoon. We're encouraging and inviting all ages to come bedazzled and sparkly and gold. I'm actually exactly as old as the fair and it's been so fun to go back through the archives and to do the flashbacks through each of the decades. I actually saw for the first time yesterday, a picture of the very first Gravenstein Apple Fair at Enmanji and the Apple installations that people used to do. And so it feels really special to commemorate this anniversary and to not only look at the past, but also we feel happy that we've made it this far, that we've continued to produce this beloved community event.  We've got some interesting panel discussions happening. Clark Wolfe always moderates panelists conversations at Life on the Farm, and on Saturday, it's going to be looking at the last 50 years of food and farming and agriculture in Sonoma County. Then Sunday is going to be focusing on the young farmers and the new farmers that are farming. So I think it's a really interesting intersection and inflection point to be looking back and also looking forward at the same time to be just sitting happily right here knowing that Farm Trails has been up to this for five decades. Dale: And that is the agricultural heritage, but it's still a living thing today, right?  Carmen: Oh, absolutely. Part of the magic of the fair is that there's some nostalgia and kind of the vintage elements, the old fashioned things that you just don't see very often, like shearing and goat milking demos and ag games and pie eating contests and pie baking contests and the things that have been part of the roots of the fair for so long. And. I do feel like the fair really has a modern sensibility too. For instance, we are being recognized quite a lot as a leader in zero waste for large events. Last year for 14, 000 people, the fair only produced three cubic yards of waste for the landfill, that's like the back of a pickup truck. I am very excited about the, we have an amazing team working on this and it takes a lot of people ... Dale: What are some of the things you do to create a zero waste event?  Carmen: Sure. One of the first things we do is it's garbage in, garbage out. So it all starts at the source. So we have very strict requirements for our food vendors or anybody who's serving or sampling any food. They have to comply with our requirements. We have a partnership with WorldCentric and we're able to offer discounted, truly compostable serviceware to them, or they can bring their own. So we have a lot of control over what's being served at the fair and therefore what's being discarded at the fair. Then the second piece of the equation is to have staffed --we call them greening stations or there really are zero waste stations. So when we are setting up on site, we remove all the trash cans that are at the park. So there's not an option to just throw something in a trash can. We have these staffed ecostations, and they have various receptacles, and our volunteers guide people through the process. Say that you have gotten a fabulous BLT sandwich from Black Piglet and you've got some crumbs left or crust. The first thing you would do is scrape it into the pig food bin. Any food that's fit for pigs is first goes to the pig food and the volunteers talk you through this and how to sort your discards. We invested last year in real silverware, which we loaned to the food vendors, and then it comes back to us and we wash it in a commercial kitchen. So then you have a place to drop your silverware. Your plate is fully, or your boat or whatever, your bowl is fully compostable. So the compost doesn't look like the compost in your, backyard because the food has been scraped off. So it's just really a lot of dense paper. There might be some recycling because we do allow vendors to sell like lemonade or tea out of number two plastic cups that can be recycled but not the cups that say compostable because that's not compostable in our local facility. So we're really strict about that. There might be some cans. Lastly is the trash that goes to the landfill and really most of the trash, the actual trash that gets created is like plastic wrap from the food vendors, like from bulk packaging. But it's very little trash. It's a lot of pig food.  Dale: That's good. Carmen: And we also invested in glassware. So all of the alcoholic beverages that are served throughout the fair-- the beer, wine, and craft cider, you can bring your own cup, or you can purchase a glass at cost. So we're not trying to make any profit off of it, but we're not serving plastics at any of our drink stations. Dale: I asked you what you're excited about, but what are you most worried about, given it's the days till the event?  Carmen: There's always the unexpected that you can't plan for. Like one times our porta potty showed up and they didn't have any toilet paper in them and that was like, Oh my gosh. So I guess I'm worried about the unknown, the things that are beyond your control. And I sure hope we don't have a scorcher. We have invested this year in a lot of shade structures. Last year was really warm. And so I'm. I guess I'm worried about that too. Like I'd love to have the temperature be in the 80s. That would just be grand. We've got lots of drinking water.  Dale: You're also a music festival and my take from last year is that people really enjoyed just sitting down and listening to music under the oak trees there. Carmen: Oh, it's such a good music lineup. Yeah.  Dale: So any highlights?  Carmen: The headliners on Saturday are Rainbow Girls followed by the Sam Chase and the Untraditional. And the headliners on Sunday are Royal Jelly Jive and Poor Man's Whiskey. And we also have The Crux, we have La Agencia. We have Erica Ambren and the Eclectic Soul Project. We've got Reckless Strangers, Wild Catahoulas, Cajun, Equishola. The Love Choir always starts off on Sunday morning. I feel like I'm forget somebody. Dale: It's all right. It's all on your website. People can find that.  Carmen: Certainly yes, it's all on the website. Dale: The other element, I think what makes the fair run is volunteers, right? You have a lot of volunteers.  Carmen: It takes so many volunteers. Our planning team is called the Apple Corps and we meet every month of the year and now we're meeting much more frequently. And that's about 40 people that are actively involved in the planning and really dedicated to this event, which is just super inspiring to me to see how much our community contributes. Then the weekend of the fair we have over 500 volunteer shifts. There are a lot of moving pieces, and it really does take a big crew to have it run smoothly.  Dale: Are you expecting more people than last year ?  Carmen: I think that we'll have about the same.  Dale: You had a good crowd there last year.  Carmen: We're pretty steady at 14 to 15,000.  Dale: Now, you've lost a parking lot, right?  Carmen: That one is usually a pristine soccer field, and we don't park on that. That's the valet bike parking spot usually. So we are bumping the bike parking to the adjacent lot. We do have parking on site is limited and premium. And we do charge $10 cash for that. We also have two free shuttles that are running all the time from the satellite locations at O'Reilly Media on 116 and Holy Ghost Hall on Mill Station. You can bike. If you're local, great idea to bike or walk. And of course, if you

See All (31)

About

Conversations with folks from in and around Sebastopol, CA www.sebastopoltimes.com

Information

  • Creator
    Dale Dougherty
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2024
  • Episodes
    31
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Dale Dougherty & Laura Hagar Rush
  • Show Website
    Sebastopol CITY LIMITS Podcast