Sebastopol CITY LIMITS Podcast

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 interviewDale: Chuck, it's good to see you. School just started this this week at Analy High School.First Week of School HighlightsChuck: 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 AssemblyChuck: 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 YearDale: 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 RolesDale: 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, coaching practice where educators coach one another to be their best selves for their students. And so I worked with Christy when she was a teacher around project-based learning and integrated curriculum. She and a colleague put on a pretty exciting collaborative sort of festival that was based around their two classes in food and involved the whole community.So that was pretty cool. It was a challenge because they didn't really have the same collaboration time prep period or students in common. And I was impressed with the innovative work that, that she was doing then was lucky enough to work with her at the county. And I'm super excited to have her here now.One thing that I think is important for us is that both Kirsten and Christi are bilingual and speak Spanish and English. And that's a real upgrade for our team. My Spanish is, I'm pretty good on the listening side, not so great on the speaking side. So they're both fully fluent and that will help a lot in terms of connecting better with our families and students and building relationships that we need to build.At this campus we have more students than ever who haven't necessarily grown up knowing each other. They don't necessarily come to this campus with connections to people here. And that puts a little more of the onus on us to develop those opportunities for them to really connect and find their place.Adapting to Student Needs Post-COVIDDale: One view of high school, you might say that it's "same as it ever was," or, people might think it doesn't change much. But year to year, there are changes, there are things happening. And it's important that it does change to address the needs of different set of students. You're still dealing with students that their academic life and home life was impacted pretty heavily by Covid. And there's some talk about the social and emotional needs for that. But how do you perceive the school adapting and changing to its students?Chuck: A lot of things I could point to. I guess I would first say that for those who feel like the high school is the same as it ever was, please come visit. And there are so many ways for folks to get involved. We would love to partner with folks to make some changes.First of all I think staff here is really dedicated to adapting to as you mentioned the new reality for a lot of students. I read a pretty interesting book this summer called The Anxious Generation. Have you read that?Dale: No, I haven't.Chuck: The author slips my mind, but the same guy who wrote "The Coddling of the American Mind."Dale: Jonathan Haidt.Chuck: Yeah. He makes a really compelling point about anxiety and the causes and also the impacts of that anxiety on our young people. Anybody in education right now will tell you that we're seeing a ton more of that. Some of that is post COVID. Think that's true, but I think there's more to it. A lot of it has to do with social media and cell phones and all that kind of thing. I do think we have to think a little bit differently about engaging our students and getting them to interact with each other and come out of their shells a little bit. Cell phones have provided all kinds of incredible tools, right? But I think they've also discouraged to a certain extent young people from fully engaging with each other. That is a challenge. I think it's something that we're thinking about.So I mentioned the sort of belonging and inclusion was one of the things we're really focusing on. It's partly in response to that. We have that, we have the consolidation, we have the fact that we have a number of students coming to us from out of our district.And so I think at this campus we have more students than ever who haven't necessarily grown up knowing each other. They don't necessarily come to this campus with connections to people here. And that puts a little more of the onus on us to develop those opportunities for them to really connect and find their place.So I would say, we have a number of things that we're working on there, starting with the adults on campus. Creating more opportunities for adults to collaborate together on behalf of students in common. So we're in a couple different ways, thinking about groupings of students that the adults on campus know very well or get to know very well.So for example, we're piloting with our special educators and English and science and math teachers, some pairings that that give folks a better opportunity to know students more deeply, to understand more about what's going on in their home lives and what their interests are and what their needs as learners are.That's also true with our paraeducators. They're going to be more closely aligned with partners in the special ed department. We're also piloting some pairings between elective and core curricular teachers in the same kind of a way. It's going to take some time to, to work out logistically, how to make that work at a big site like Analy, but we're at the very least going this year, piloting some of those groups so that students will have some coherence around things like classroom practices, policies, procedures, stuff like that.And then ideally, working more toward curriculum in common. Integrated experiences that are designed around student interests. So the kinds of things that, they want to do and be, they'll do more of their learning in their core subjects, through those kinds of subject areas.Dale: In many ways, it's about tapping into their motivation, right? Getting students engaged, motivated to learn, right? Rather than just, you have to do this.Chuck: And we want to respond to what they're interested in, and we really do want to be able to have solid answer to the perennial student question of, why do I need to know this? That shouldn't be a mystery for students or their families.Cell Phone and Bathroom PoliciesDale: You mentioned a couple of times cell phones. So there's a societal concern about the impact of cell phones on young people. When I talk to parents, they yeah, not sure, they struggle what to do with it themselves and their kids. What are you thinking about doing at Analy?Chuck: A couple of things I first want to give a shout out to our teachers of ninth graders. There's been a really lovely grassroots effort among the teachers to calibrate around classroom policy. So ninth grade teachers Jeannie Curtis, for example, or Rachel Ambrose, others have been talking about what do we want to do to bring some coherence to the experience of ninth graders about this?So we've actually had a policy on the books at Analy for a long time that says you don't use cell phones in class. And if they're visible, they get taken away. There's a progressive discipline policy. There's a warning, they get taken away, they get taken to the office, your parent has to come pick them up, that kind of thing.But it has been unevenly enforced, I think, in classrooms. Ninth grade teachers took it upon themselves to make agreements across the grade level that this is what we're going to do. I think most of our teachers are on board with that. Gianna, our vice principal I mentioned earlier at our staff meeting day on, was that just Monday?That was Monday. We really talked about some support for enforcement. I think it's difficult for a teacher to, remove a thousand dollar device from a student and be responsible for that. So we want to provide some support around that. And really empower teachers to say we're not doing this during class time.Dale: How do the students feel, do you think? Do they recognize that it's a problem and they want to cooperate?Chuck: I think there's mixed results there. Depends on who you talk to. I think there are many students who would support that and at the same time, I've also heard students say, for example, one of our practices here is that students trade in a cell phone for a bathroom pass. They're not supposed to be taking that with them. And I've heard some anxiety about that. What if something happens, what if there's an earthquake and I'm in the bathroom, what do I do? And I need to have my phone with me. And I think, that's a little aspect of some of that anxiety that we're talking about.I think many of us feel like those are kind of comfort devices and it's hard for us to think about going to the bathroom without a cell phone like my ancestors did, it's such a weird idea.Dale: Bathrooms are another thing. It's been a problem whether it's trashing bathrooms and policing bathrooms and all that. It's surprising, I think, to the outside world that this would be a problem. Have you found any ways to deal with that?Chuck: Yes. I'd say first of all, that the cell phone problem is connected to the bathroom problem.Dale: Really?Chuck: One learning for me as a new principal last year was that a lot of our early on in the year in particular, we had some repeated events of bathroom vandalism. And they turned out to be related to TikTok challenges. So if students aren't taking their cell phones to the bathroom, they didn't happen. So that's one of the ways in which the cell phone thing is connected to the bathroom thing. This year, we have a couple innovations in policy about how we're approaching bathrooms with a bunch of support from our campus supervisors, which are an incredibly important part of our team here.David Carey in particular has created an innovation that I think is going to help a ton. He's created essentially a spreadsheet, but it's usable on our phones as administrators and essentially it allows us to click a button and record bathroom checks. So, as a team, administrators and campus supervisors, we are now checking each of the bathrooms on campus hourly and recording when we do it creates an automatic log of that on the spreadsheet.We have surveillance cameras outside the bathrooms, of course, but if something happens, we can look at the film keyed to the time when something happened and we'll know within pretty tight windows. And we can see who's been going in and out of there.I think what that's gonna do is it's gonna allow us, at least early on in this school year to have conversations with folks. If there's paper towels that get shoved in the toilet or something like that to have conversations with students who were there during those times and say, we're not going to do that here and really have better tabs on what's going on.I think that's going to let us keep the bathrooms open and safe, which is what we want to do. The other aspect of the bathroom problem is really about vaping, and the fact that we have young people have access to these super addictive devices and have an addiction and that they need to tend to.And again, we have empowered the campus supervisors to sweep students out of there if they're congregating, even if, there's nothing in evidence. We do have vape detectors that sort of gives us some indication of what's happening where and, we're going to try to get.Students who need help, some help on our campus. We have I think a really effective and increasingly mature wellness center. We have a partnership with West County health that allows us to staff a wellness center with all kinds of professionals that can help young people with substance and other kinds of problems. If we can identify students who really need some help, they are a really important part of the support here for, not just punishing students, but really getting them what they need to not vape anymore. We hear it a lot from students who are actively trying to stop and literally cannot.So I'm excited about that and really expanding the kinds of referrals that we can make to students with different kinds of problems. The Wellness Center is a huge part of what we're able to do.Dale: All right. One more technology that I want to throw at you that is affecting the world, not just education, is AI. You directed me to some work that last year that the English department was doing using some tools and it was interesting to visit them and see that. Do you have any new thoughts on what, I guess for people that aren't into this it's easier than ever to answer a question, even a kind of analytical question of why did this happen?The kind of things teachers give out on tests or essays, right? It's easier to fabricate answers to those things than ever. Not just factual answers, but pretty well reasoned arguments. That really changes the relationship in some ways between students and teacher and assessment. How are you all thinking about that?Chuck: Yeah I think staff is thinking about that quite a bit. It's a little bit of a moving target, right? Because AI is developing so quickly. I think right on though, when you talk about assessment. So one of the first impacts I think it's going to have on us as educators is that we're going to have to get a little bit more creative with our assessments.That's not necessarily a bad thing. I think we could probably use a kick in the pants about that. So for a lot of folks on this campus, I think that's a welcome challenge. How can we create assessments that get at what students themselves really know and are able to do?But beyond that too ultimately AI is going to be part of what adults use in the context of their daily lives and work. And so what do we need to do to prepare our students to be fluent and adapted at doing that. And I think, maybe even more importantly, how do we ensure that all of our students equitably have access to what they need to know to, to be proficient.I do think it's something that we're going to have to figure out how to teach.Dale: There's an ethics around it that one has to work on. You can use it, but you just have to be honest to how you're using it and be transparent. A lot of the problems are when people are when they're saying they did something that, they really didn't do themselves. It's not their own work, which is plagiarism in some form or another.Chuck: Exactly.Dale: The rules haven't been written. It's an exciting time to figure that out, right?Chuck: Yeah, I agree. I agree.Addressing the Safeway ProblemDale: One issue that was persistent last year was the Safeway problem. And it relates to traffic. You really notice when Analy is in session. Traffic around town is very different when you guys are off. One of the challenges is the picking up kids, It's one of the reasons they start congregating over at Safeway. It's a convenient pickup spot for parents and others, but it's become a hangout that's had some problems over the last year.Chuck: Absolutely.Dale: And do you see any ways that'll change?Chuck: I think it did improve last year. We had a really productive conversation with management from Safeway and with the Sebastopol Police Department. Sebastopol Police have been a presence at Safeway, and certainly in the latter half of the year, they they were super helpful in terms of just being there and invisible, which I think had a positive impact. Safeway also added some some folks in their stores to monitor loss prevention and that kind of thing, which made a difference as well.It's important for folks to know that we can't just park there and come to Analy, which we're going to do our best to message to students and parents and make sure they know that even though it might seem like it, they're not an annex and you can't use their parking lot for the events and things like that.I do think things got a little bit better when one additional tool that we have that I'm super excited about because it actually just arrived today is a street-legal golf cart so that we can zip down there more frequently. Last year when I was able, I would go to Safeway after school and talk to students and other admin team members did as well.Dale: Just to be clear, it wasn't necessarily them congregating there was the problem, it was shoplifting and sometimes fights breaking out. Just to be clear, if anyone's listening to this, it was, kids peacefully congregating. It's not the issue per se, but when certain behaviors happened that it did become a problem.Dual Enrollment and JC ClassesDale: I know a question I wanted to ask you was there a policy change that students can now take classes at the JC? Was that a change?Chuck: The big change is that we have dual enrollment classes on this campus. We have what's called a CCAP agreement with the JC and I'm forgetting what it stands for, the acronym right now, but essentially what it has allowed is for some of our teachers to actually become JC employees and they're teaching actual JC classes on our campus.Students will get dual enrollment credit. They'll be enrolled at Analy, they'll be enrolled at the JC. And they'll leave here with actual JC credits.Dale: What's an example of a dual enrollment class or topic?Chuck: Right now we have two of our agriculture classes dual enrolled with the JC, and we're going to be expanding that in coming years.So in, one of the big changes in the past, we've had articulation agreements, so that would allow, for example a student to take a culinary class here, and then get preferential enrollment. They wouldn't have to take a prerequisite for a JC class, for example, because they already completed our class, or they could take a test and get credit for it if they passed the final exam in that course. So those were a sort of articulation agreements that we had in the past. Now we have an actual dual enrollment agreement in for some of our classes. It's a big innovation and I think it's.Dale: Does it allow an Analy student who maybe wants a different kind of class than what you offer or a higher level class say computer science or something. Does it allow them to Take a class at the JC or have that count towards their high school credits as well as college credits.Chuck: I think we've long had a policy that students could take classes that were not offered at Analy at the JC. In some cases, we now have board approval to authorize juniors and seniors to take classes if they have a reason, if there's something going on in their schedule, for example, they have something --trying to think of a good example.We had an equestrian, a student who was an accomplished equestrian and competing somewhere and there was a schedule problem. I think that student was allowed to take a course at the JC for credit but it's a process, right? We don't allow every student to do this. There are extenuating circumstances. We really do want to be as responsive to student needs as possible. For that to happen, students are going to have to demonstrate that there's a reason that's the best fit for them, and that's the thing that will best allow them to really realize their post secondary aspirations.So it's not something that we think many students are going to do, but previously it was just not possible for us with policy. I think the big news is really going to be with this dual enrollment possibility and the plans over the next few years to give students more opportunities to earn college credit.So for example, we have many new opportunities for students to get internships. We have a work experience course that's new to us, two full sections of it, where students will have placements in community organizations or local businesses that allow them to also enroll in JC courses that get them college credit.So I think over coming years we're going to make it possible for students to actually earn quite a few college credits before they leave Analy. The cool thing about that is, obviously, that that makes it so that the number of years their families have to pay for college will decrease, right?And they'll get a jump on transferring to a four year if they want to or that kind of thing.ConclusionDale: Chuck, thanks for your time today. I appreciate it. I know it's a busy first week and it's good to capture you with when-- there's nothing like the first week of schoolChuck: like the first week. Correct? Yeah, it's pretty fun. ItDale: Thanks again for joining me today and look forward to seeing you soon.Chuck: Thanks for having me, Dale. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

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 MoraschI 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

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 DEMAWhile 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 linkThe 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

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 - websiteTranscriptDale: 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 lot of paint. And when I first did that for the class, people were, they were gasped. They were like, Oh my God, you're wasting all that paint. And I'm like no. Watch what I do. And in the end, you'll see, it's just my God, you use it. Where'd all that paint go? You made this big, huge blob of paint on the palette and then, but somehow it got mastitized onto the canvas.And it all started to work. Dale: How did you get to Sebastopol? What brought you here? Ken: The route was New Jersey to San Francisco to San Rafael, to Petaluma to Sebastopol. At each point I actually got a little bit bigger studio space along the way to paint.In New Jersey it was just my bedroom. San Francisco was a whole closet that was big enough, almost big enough to be a bedroom in San Francisco. , San Rafael was part of a garage. Petaluma was my dining room, and then when I got to Sebastopol, I had enough room in my architectural office to have a little studio, and then now I actually built a studio, Dale: Are you part of a community of artists in the North Bay? Do you connect to local artists here, or do you just work on your own? Ken: That's a great, that really is a great question. I've really tried to be part of the art scene here, but to be honest with you, most people don't want me.It's landscapes, and it's certain things that certain groups, and the birds of a feather, and they're, that's where they-- I'm an outsider, and so as much as I try to get in, I have long ago just assumed like, Hey, look, this is just my thing. I just got to keep doing it.If there's a group of people that want to take me in great. If not, I'll just keep going. Dale: Outsider is an interesting term. That's an important part of who you are, maybe? Ken: I think so. I think so. In every art, some artists, I think they, they can paint things that are outside what is normal, what is considered normal, right? A portrait or a landscape. And there's some that will dabble in abstract art.And there's some that are pushing a little bit further than that. Maybe, whatever their medium is. To me, the further I can get away from that meant that I was much more confident that I could see myself or see my art in it, in the way that it wanted to be seen. Regardless of it, it didn't need any validation.It didn't need anybody to say, that's great or pat me on the back. It was going to be just like, we're going to explore this and see how far we get with it. Dale: So let's talk a little bit about your life as an architect. Do you still practice? Ken: Yes. I have to do that, pay the bills.Dale: What kind of work do you do there? Ken: Mostly residential. It's anything like decks to additions, bathroom remodels, but we do new houses too. When the fires happened, we did quite a few of the fire rebuilds. Dale: Does that feel different or similar to what you do as an artist?Ken: There's a lot of discipline in having to do architecture. From coordinating plans with owners to construction, the whole thing. That actually does come in handy when it comes to art. Because if you don't have that discipline in setting up shows, and making sure your pricing is together, it would be hard to just be an artist that just comes to it whenever.You'd be really hard pressed. You'd fall into that, oh, you're an artist category, right? You're like, oh, no one expects much. But when you're as disciplined or forced to be as disciplined in doing architecture, it's easy to segue and move that into another discipline. That really is, it would be a benefit to having those skill sets.Dale: You did an exhibit, which was maybe your art and architect hats on at the same time, the portable shelters that would be towed by a bicycle. That project was a few years ago, but talk a bit about that. Ken: In Healdsburg, there was a there were a group of homeless, people that a friend of mine who another artist up in Healdsburg asked me, Hey, look, I got this idea and you're an architect and you can design these things.So we went up and we met with a bunch of the homeless people that in Healdsburg. And so that's how it started. It was really fascinating because I did a show it at Paul Modder gallery as one of the unveilings of it. They invited homeless people, they invited the typical gallery collectors there, and everyone commingled, right?No one really could tell who was necessarily homeless or who wasn't. And, it was just something that being asked to do it, and then having the architecture background, and then built it myself. I actually built the prototype myself. And it worked. I thought it'd be like, this could be really cool.Unfortunately, within the county and the state, they really want to provide homes. They don't want to have these shelters all over the place. They want the homeless in, full time housing, heated spaces. It's an idea that really probably can only go as far as a prototype, I think.Maybe camping? I don't know. Maybe you might see that as portable camping. Dale: It's somewhere between a tent and a tiny house, right? Ken: It's a little bit hard to make it. I envision it out of... It might be like tent material. It could be something that was lightweight and portable.Maybe you could fold it up and it could be like a multi purpose, it could be something you sleep in. It could be something you drag. Dale: When I think of an architect, I think of that they work on projects, someone comes and actually design a house and you do that. Do you think about your art that way? Or is it just every day I just get up and paint? Or do you think like there's a thing I want to do out there and I'm building towards that? Or it's not just a painting, but some new idea that I'm working on. Ken: I think I do. I think in the big picture, there is a big, I don't know what it looks like, but there is this big edifice of some kind that has a bunch of my paintings that create this, whatever it is, it could be a building.I don't know what it is I'm exactly building. It's Noah's Ark. I gotta build this big thing. I guess there's going to be a whole bunch of animals that get brought into it for some purpose. I don't know. But there is a bigger picture, I think, but I don't know what that is. One of the things I do feel like I do I have faith in it, in and of itself. I feel like my role is to paint, and my goal is to show the work, and then the faith is that there will be people there or it's if you build it, they will come.Dale: How do you function as an outsider? I'm saying that more of the personality than describing your art, but in these sort of art worlds that are very stratified, they go on those clues of what status means, how does that feel? You're taking something that's very personal to you and putting it into an environment where you could almost say they don't always care very much about that the work itself. Ken: Part of my story I guess or the autobiography would be the underdog I think if there was any, if there .Was a current that really gave it the outsider, that edge, it would be the underdog, is that when you look at gallery or museum edifices, you envision it being populated by people of prestige and and a certain level of social, almost like a class stratus, right?For me, I enjoy being the underdog or I enjoy being the outsider because then I'm not encumbered by having those things. I can bring the work in if it's good work and it can be compared with other people who are also doing their best work and then you could look at them side by side and really evaluate it and then everything gets measured appropriately.And then you feel like-- take out the social strata and then look at it just for what was created and then gauge that or grade that based on what that artist had achieved.  So basically, the idea of having your artwork in a democratic situation, a lot of what the de Young is trying to do in a blind jurying process is to democratize who is actually getting into these shows.As an outsider artist or an underdog, I see myself as that's a great opportunity to be validated or weighed and measured against other people who are pursuing their own art in maybe the same way and all heading towards whatever goal that personal goal that they're trying to achieve.Dale: That's a good place to end. Why don't you just summarize the de Young dates again?Ken: The show runs to January 7th, I believe. It's the nine Bay Area counties surrounding basically San Francisco, so I'm really proud and humbled by being able to have a chance to I don't know, represent Sonoma County, but my little part of it. The industrial whimsy part of it. Dale: Congratulations to you Ken. And it's been a pleasure talking to you. Ken: You too, Dale. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

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 FarmDale:  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 did.There were some trees here that were historically interesting and so the idea was to keep them alive. And that meant cutting down oak trees, for instance. And it meant removing vast quantities of broom and poison oak and blackberries. I didn't do most of that work. Circuit Riders was engaged to do it.It was a war on poverty idea. LBJ. They had a headquarters up in Windsor. And they brought a crew down here, and they must have worked for weeks, and they took almost all of the, maybe some valuable plants, who knows. Lisa Bush was running it, and she was very well educated.Everybody was wondering, what's left? And a guy named Bob Hornback was rummaging around here, and he was a botanist and he has become a historical botanist. Very important character. But that's to explain the word curator.Jamie Self, who is the current curator, and has been for, what, three years now? Three years. Brought in a whole lot of new energy and new ideas. And he took it to the next level, which was to actually start propagating, maybe eventually even hybridizing. That meant you had to control the deer population. That meant fencing off a good section of the farm for that purpose. And that was a controversial thing. I think we all agree it was a good idea. So Jamie who had experience already with managing volunteers from Esalen Institute and who is a landscape contractor with all the tools and expertise that go with that.I was a landscape contractor too, but I'm from the dark ages. I did plans with a pen and a pencil. I did all my billing myself, with checks and invoices. Nowadays that's all happening online. Jamie's got that under control, but he's really brought a lot.Alex McLean was here for 10 years, and he did a lot; he was a building contractor. So he did a lot of repairs on this building, the cottage. He completely remodeled the nursery and turned it into a modern, productive facility.Aaron Sheffield turned out to have a talent for getting grants. If you have willing people and you have someone who can write grants and you put them together, stuff happens.That also was not true for most of my career here. Of course I started from zero. There were no paths. There was no electricity. There was no sprinkler system; there was nothing. We took it to the point where there was a new barn. That was built in '97 with help from the Pellini family. And they helped us get a tractor. And that meant we could put in better paths. And it went on from there. I would say that the farm is no longer what it was thought to be, which was a museum. It's now become a working facility that produces lots and lots of nursery plants. It's growing crops like potatoes and tomatoes and flowering plants.It has a tree nursery, where lots of trees are being grown. These are all on display this coming weekend on Saturday, the 16th. From 10 o'clock on? 10 to 2. So we're showing off this weekend. That's called the Press Fest. We're going to be displaying our antique apple press beautifully redone. It's a hand crank. Oh, kids love that. You get that flywheel going and it just practically drags you around in a circle . But there's an electric one too, and the Slow Food people operate that on weekends and produce a lot of juice. It's a great public service and it's another sideline for the farm. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

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.comPeter Loughran’s The Door to EverythingTranscriptMy 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 was a value-add. The other part of that is that certainly if it had gone on for another two or three days, it might have gotten awful. But nevertheless, we had plenty of food. We had great dinners together and really just enjoyed one another's company.Dale: That doesn't always come out in the press coverage, does it? And that's what I wanted to talk to you about, because I think it's, the art is just amazing there. And it's such a special location. And when you see all the lights and things going on at night, it really is beautiful.Any other pieces of art or things that you saw that you can describe, or that you enjoyed? Deborah: On Friday before the rains were announced, the rains were announced, we knew it was coming. And I just had to go out and see the 30-foot clitoris.It was so well done. The wind kicked up, the dust kicked up. I was hiding behind one of the legs of the clitoris with two rangers having great talks about such things. It made me wonder what city would have the nerve or the balls to install that in their city center because it was built for the public. It's amazing construction, beautifully done with a lot of information. I was just, wow. Wow.Peter: The interesting thing is that of all the pieces and there were a lot of magical ones, I would have to say that particular piece, and I was going to bring it up as well, stirred up more amazing conversations and and whatnot in our camp than any other piece out there in particular.That piece was at first, from my perspective, it's okay, what the hell is that? Wait, why does it look, what the heck are they trying to do? What kind of goofy thing is that? And then once you read it and you learn what it is, you're like, oh wait a minute.So no, that was definitely a very, conversation-provoking piece. It was great. Dale: I guess maybe the last question is -- did you get home, okay? Deborah: They postponed Burning the Man from Saturday to Monday, and then they burnt the Tower of Babel Monday night because thematically they had a more resonance than the temple on Tuesday. So I took my artwork down Tuesday afternoon, packed that into the truck just in time to walk over and see the the temple burn.That was amazing. I drove off the playa on Wednesday and then stayed a night in Sparks and then drove home on Thursday. That was all very easy. I didn't have any commitments. Dale: How many days were you on the playa? Deborah: Two weeks. Dale: That's a lot. Deborah: it's normal for me.Peter: Me too. Same. Dale: How was your getting out, Peter? Peter: So almost exactly the same as Debra is saying. I have a construction company that's very busy, but I have the infrastructure to be able to direct some things, make sure that everybody got taken care of. I wasn't planning to leave before Tuesday anyways. So getting out of there one day later wasn't really that big of a deal. We did drive all the way home. But, same as Deborah, we took our piece down on Tuesday. My piece was placed — I've never seen a piece placed this close to the temple before, and quite literally would have been like it was right on the perimeter of where the people would have been sitting. So it would have been, it would have been fun to have left it up and climb up on top of it or something for the temple burn. But we got it out of there a little bit earlier in the day and had a wonderful temple burn.And then the morning, my shipper showed up. He had actually come up to come to Burning Man like hours before the rain and he had gotten turned away. So he had come back home and he came up Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, we hooked him up on the trailer and we caravaned all the way home.Dale: Are you going back next year? Deborah: Of course! Peter: I'm inspired to build something. I'm not exactly sure. We had a lot of newbies in our world this year and watching them become inspired is another part of Burning Man that I really enjoy. There's a thing in the org of make no commitments until January. I won't say that I will for sure be there next year, but it's pretty likely that I will for sure be there next year. Dale: Thank you both of you for taking time to tell me about your experiences and your art. I'm glad to learn more about that and thank you very much for joining me today. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

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

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.TranscriptDale: 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 have a regional parks pass, we honor those. We don't charge on top of that. Dale: Good. Is there anything else we should touch upon? Carmen: Yes, I think we should, when you asked me what I was excited about, it's definitely the 50th, but it's also something new that we're doing this year, which is in terms of the layout, we've created Apple Alley. It used to be that the apple products were sprinkled throughout the whole fair and this year we decided -- right when you come through the entrance, you'll see Dutton Ranch with their organic apples that you can buy by the pound or the bag or the box and then all the way down the line all the way to Farm Trails Fritters, to North Coast Apple Juice and Applesauce. We'll have amazing apple products. So it's really front and center. Everything Gravenstein that you can appreciate because it's an amazing apple and it's a short season and this is the primary annual fundraiser for Farm Trails.So that's, part of the organizing mission of this event to raise funds for all the Farm Trails operations and initiatives throughout the year. And it's of course, to come together as a community and enjoy the park and and to honor the Gravenstein. Dale: Tell me just a little bit more about what Farm Trails does apart from the fair.Carmen: Sure. So Farm Trails, we are a membership organization. So we have almost 200 food and farm members. And it started back in 1973, like way before, obviously, internet and farmers markets. And these farmers got together and wanted, there were all these amazing farm stands around the county, and they wanted to facilitate direct sales.They were really pioneers of the modern go local movement and also agritourism. So they printed this mapping guide and showed where the farm stands were and what they had to offer. And so we still print the mapping guide. We've printed the 50th anniversary edition this year and distribute it widely. It's free to the public. Thirty years ago this fall, we started producing seasonal tours because the landscape was changing and farmers were going to farmers markets more and not staffing up their farm stands all the time, so they weren't broadly open to the public the way they used to be.So we produce Weekend Along the Farm Trails in the fall, and then in the spring, Blossoms, Bees and Barnyard babies. So the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the season in the spring, where our farmers invite the public, free to the public, free to our farmers, and we just kind of market and produce the event where you can get out on the farm trails and chart your own course. And you can meet the farmers directly. To me, the longer that I've been with Farm Trails, the more that I understand that agritourism, yes, it's about getting out in the country and enjoying the food and the animals and all of that, but it's also an education about what the true cost of well grown food is and what everything that goes into it. I think it has people understand our food system and how they fit into it better. I hope that they come away feeling awed and grateful, awed by and grateful for their farmers. Dale: When you were in your early 20s, did you ever think you'd be organizing events like the Apple Fair?Carmen: No, I was a middle school teacher. Those are many events that you organize, but then I moved to a intentional farming community outside of Asheville, North Carolina. And I got involved with organizing the Southeastern Permaculture Gathering. And I got to know my farmer neighbors really well. I was already into organic food, just for kind of health conscious reasons, but it just opened up a whole other level of connection and really wanting to support local farmers.When I moved out here I wanted to meet my farmers and I got connected to Farm Trails and the rest is history. It's like different interests of mine have converged with this, both with Farm Trails and the Gravenstein Apple Fair and I love the non-commercial aspect of it. I love the programming element where we have experts in the field teaching low tech ways to make cider from your own trees or to ferment vegetables from your garden, which is something that I got really into in my early part. I like bringing this homesteading kind of backyard elements.Dale: That's very nice to keep. It's nice to see them locally and pass that on to the next generation. Thank you, Carmen, for your time today. I know you've got a lot on your plate and I'm glad it worked out for us to talk. Carmen: Me too. I'm glad we got connected and it's good to see you and I hope I'll see you at the fair.  Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Last spring, Sara Gramm was named the new superintendent of Sebastopol Union School District, which includes Park Side (TK-4th) and Brook Haven (5th-8th) schools. She succeeds Linda Irving, who had been in the role for ten years. Sara has been Assistant Superintendent since 2017. Sara grew up going to Sebastopol schools including Brook Haven and Analy. She student-taught at Park Side and then was hired by Sebastopol Union as a teacher at Pinecrest. She has been working as an educator in the District for over twenty years and is now its superintendent.Sebastopol Times is a reader-supported publication. To support our work, please become a paid subscriber.NOTE: Sara and I talk about the impact of smart phones and other devices on the lives of students. While we don’t get much into the details, I’m interested in learning more from our readers who are parents raising children with ever-present media and communications devices. What limits do you set on their usage? How do you talk to them about their phones and social media? Do you have any advice you’d like to share? Please let me know by email - [email protected] - or in the comments below.TranscriptDale: Are you at the school?Sara: I am in the district office today. Dale: Now the district office is different than Park Side. Sara: The district office is on the backside of the block behind Park Side. But I'm still the site principal at Brook Haven, the middle school. Dale: I'm here with Sarah Gramm, and she is the new superintendent of Sebastopol Union School District, and that includes Park Side and Brook Haven and also the CASTLE program.  Dale: Where did you go to elementary school and what was that experience like for you? Sara: So I grew up here in Sebastopol. I went to Apple Blossom Elementary, and then in middle school, I transferred into town and went to Brook Haven. So I am the principal of the middle school that I graduated from.Our childhood was full of the activities and sports and parents who are volunteering and being on campus and coaching and all of that. And then I attended Analy, went to the San Rosa Junior College for two years, and then I transferred to Dominican University in San Rafael and got my bachelor's and my teaching credential from there.Dale: What was your first assignment as a teacher? Sara: So I started student teaching at Park Side in 1999, and I learned from some of the best teachers. I worked with Paula Martens and Karen Reese and Julia Aiello and Bonnie Bowen. Then I was hired right after I finished student teaching and I was hired for a third and fourth grade combination class at Pinecrest.So I taught there for several years before I moved back over to Park Side. So I've taught first through fifth grade and every combination of those grades. So I've been with the district for: this will be my 24th year. And with it during that time, we've seen so many changes.Dale: Yeah, I want to talk about those as we get into, but first you've been assistant superintendent since 2017. And so this is a natural promotion to become superintendent and the previous superintendent was Linda Irving, and she retired in July. What did you learn from Linda?Sara: Linda? We really lucked out in Sebastopol for the first, what my first 10 to 13 years, we had several superintendents. So a lot of interim superintendents. We didn't have a lot of continuity. And so Linda coming in for the last 10 years has really built us a fantastic foundation.We're really doing well right now. And it's really exciting to see what that continuity brought us because Linda is a great role model for being out in the community and making those community connections. And that's one of the things that we're working on right now is a partnership with the Center for the Arts.We did that during COVID as well to provide distance learning support for our students with the staff at the Center for the Arts. She's just always visible, her connection to Rotary, making sure she's been out and about, and really just singing the praises of Sebastopol Union, and I think her network, which is statewide, she's introduced me to, and that as well has really helped as a small school district, championing the things that we need as a small school district, which is different than a larger district. We wear many hats. We do all the jobs, whether it's crossing guard or lunch duty, or any of those things. But being able to see that in action with her, she always said she never wanted to give up being a principal and being with the kids, even in that superintendent role.And, I'm the same way. I didn't imagine that I would be at this point in my career right now. I just always assumed I'd be teacher. Site principal was great. This is a new challenge. Dale: So you're coming on with a whole new team. Can you tell us a little bit about the changes at Sebastopol Union?Sara: So we're excited to have Molly Bulwa continue. She's been the district vice principal for the past six years, and she's floated between the two campuses. She's taking the helm at Park Side. She grew up here in Sebastopol as well. She went to elementary school in Sebastopol and then high school at Analy.She's really excited to continue building community spirit at Park Side that Linda has started and just really make the connections with our families as they come in kindergarten, because we've really developed a pretty fantastic community. So she's excited to be here.Then we're bringing Rachel Lasek from Analy high school over as our vice principal and curriculum specialist. She actually is a graduate of Sebastopol Union School District and Analy as well. So she's very excited to be home and is looking forward to taking the charge with curriculum. We know, statewide, there was a huge drop in math abilities during COVID and her math expertise as being a math teacher at El Molino for years is really going to play nicely into that, rounding out our team. So we're looking forward to having her. Dale: Since you've been in the district for this long, it's not just the five years you've been assistant superintendent, but there's been a lot of change. You mentioned it earlier. What are the things to really point out. One of them is Pinecrest is gone, right? What happened to it? Is it a charter? Sara: We lease Pinecrest to Twin Hills District for their Sunridge Charter Program. The board really looked at wanting to make sure that it was being utilized by students and so they're making that happen in the long term lease there.So it's great to see that the campus is still being used. That was where I started my teaching, first teaching job, but we're happy that it's being used. Park Side will house our TK to 4th grade, just size wise, that's what fits. And then Brook Haven, we have 5th through 8th grade. Our 5th graders, even though they're on the middle school campus, they still operate in their self-contained classrooms like a typical 5th grade. And they get to then also be involved in our music program and things like that. So it's a wonderful addition. And it's a great stepping stone for them, I think, being comfortable moving into middle school, it's not such a big step. Dale: How else in other ways have the schools changed? Are they smaller than they used to be? Sara: Interestingly enough in the last couple of years, our enrollment is creeping back up again. We've definitely declined over the years, but at this point we're holding steady and growing, which is really exciting for us. Both schools. So we're not at capacity. It's like growing pains, right? We want more students and they're coming. We've got waiting lists in certain grade levels. It's been really exciting. It's a good problem to have.Dale: How have charter schools impacted Park Side and Brook Haven? Sara: So there is definitely, the thing I love about our school district is that we are the most diverse school district in the area. Whether that's socioeconomically or diversity wise, we are the most diverse and that definitely, I think, adds to-- it's a benefit to us. It's a benefit to our students. Does it make things harder as far as making sure we're meeting the needs of our students? Sure. In the real world situation, our demographics do look different. It's something that we're really proud of and the district has embraced.Dale: When you look at reading proficiency or math proficiency from what I can see from SCOE, it looks like about under 50% reading proficiency at Park Side and maybe a little better on math proficiency, what's behind that? Do you have a plan to change that? It's really such an issue if we find half the students not at grade level in reading and math. Sara: I think that the latest scores will show greater improvement than that. And so we continue to see improvement in all areas.One of the things that we've done, we were really on a great stretch right prior to COVID as far as utilizing data and having our teachers work in teams to really solidify plans for student achievement and we made huge gains in that year prior to COVID. So we know that it works and we know that the hard work of that, paid off.Dale: What is it that works? What do you mean? Sara: It's utilizing data to inform instruction. And so whether that's the different assessment tools that we're using to really hone in on where the holes are and what needs to be done, that's paid off, and allowing our teachers time to collaborate to be able to make those plans. Getting back from COVID and getting everybody back on track and getting used to being at school and redefining the importance of attendance, it has been huge. And so this last spring we did a lot of work kind of digging back into that assessment and the instruction and that'll continue this following year.We've worked with Dr. Catlin Tucker on engagement. So how to best differentiate instruction within the classroom and then use that for engagement. Those are the things that pay dividends but allowing our teachers the time it takes to really focus on that is important. That's a goal of ours, but we know we can do it. Wasn't a problem, like I said before, and so we have to allow them the time to work on that. Dale: I hear that coming back from COVID that there's kind of kids need to be newly socialized to being in a group again. Sara: Exactly. So all of the social emotional piece of learning is key and everything, whether it's the playground, whether it's the lines for lunch, all of those are learning opportunities.And so it's been really fun to see, I'd say this last year, things were much more normal. And we're looking forward to having built that consistency now and going forward. Dale: I'm wondering what, how do you advise parents to help their children in school? What kind of things do you tell them?Sara: Most of it is reading with your child. It's really taking every language opportunity that you can get when you're with your child, whether it's the grocery store and talking about the things that you run into. It's finding things that you like. It might not be a book. It might be a magazine. It might be a journal. Reading comes in many different forms and that's really important. But also we know that we have work to do in helping make sure that our families know how they can help their child. That's one of our things this year for Back to School Night at Brook Haven. Rather than having a traditional back to school night that families might go from classroom to hear about the teacher's syllabi, and things like that, is actually what you can do to help your child succeed.Whether that's checking Aeries for grades and Google Classroom and walking them through those steps because those are the pieces that are important. Being actively engaged and wanting to know what your student is doing so that they know that what they're doing at school is important. Dale: If you think back over the 20 years you've been an educator, children's lives are more complicated and parents lives are more complicated than they ever been. And one of the elements is technology. They are exposed to technology earlier. We used to talk about the TV growing up, but now it's really the iPad or the iPhone, the other devices. Probably not the biggest issue at Park Side, but I'm wondering, how do you talk to parents about kids' relationship to their phones, and we see a lot of challenging behaviors. Sara: It's tough. And it's tough to tell someone that they need to put their phone down as well because we're modeling what we're doing, with our own children all the time.We have partnered with the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office and the Sebastopol Police Department to do different education nights for parents, recognizing what's too much or what this means or what this can lead to. Or these apps or things that you think are harmless, what that might actually lead to and informing them, because I think a lot of people go about their day and they do what they do on their phone, but they're not necessarily paying attention to what's happening to the students.Dale: It was certainly easier to monitor TV usage when you had one TV and you could turn it off, or you say, go to your room and they don't have access to that. I heard a recent statistic that one of the issues kids are getting less sleep these days because they can take that phone into their room and they're doing whatever they do instead of sleeping.Sara: We see that a lot. It's a lot of, empowering parents to realize that they have the power and that they are paying for the phone and Dale: Creating limits, right? Sara: You have to set limits. Exactly. Dale: I'm glad I raised my kids, mostly before these things became everyday problems, but it is a real concern and I think both parents and the children are trying to figure that out.Sara: Trying to teach students how to check themselves as well, right? They're not always able to, or their parents might not be home at night to regulate them, but trying to get them to recognize where the downfalls can be. Dale: Good luck on that. Sara: If only their brains were fully formed.Dale: That's true, but it's even true at the high school and college levels, they have the most powerful technology in the history of mankind, and their brains aren't really adapted to understanding it. Let me ask you, what do you enjoy most about the first day of the school year, which is a couple weeks away?Sara: It's the students. It's seeing their smiles and they're being happy. It's been a tradition for the last few years. Our teachers are out front with huge welcoming signs for students, and seeing their faces as they get out of the cars. And this is middle school tween and teenagers.But when they know that where they're headed is a great place, they're excited. I just ran into former students that are now 30 year olds, and they're turning still commenting on things. So it's that the piece for me, which is why continuing this position as superintendent and principal is important because I can't give up the kid part.Dale: Good luck to you in your first year as superintendent and please let us know if there's anything you need or anything happening that we can share with the community. Sara: Thank you. We will.  ​ Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Region is celebrating its third birthday this month with a party from 2-4pm on Saturday July 22nd in their space at the Barlow. Region represents an innovative approach to wine tasting that promotes the best small, independent wineries in Sonoma County. They also now have three businesses: the shop in the Barlow, another space in San Luis Obispo and Sampl, a new wine-tasting product that can be shipped to those who can’t make it to wine country. Kerry Thedorf is a co-founder of Region and serves as the head of marketing, branding and winery relations. Her co-founder, Johan Eide, an engineer and patent lawyer, came up with the original idea for Region using automated machines for wine tasting. Kerry helped organize partnerships with small, independent wineries in our region, and they've done really well, helping to put Sebastopol on the map as a wine destination. Kerry joins me on the podcast. Full disclosure, my family winery, DRNK, run by Ryan and Katie Kunde, is a winery partner with Region. Region also kindly hosted our subscriber benefit for Sebastopol Times last fall, which you know, we should do again. Notes: * Kerry refers to AVA, which stands for American Viticultural Area and that refers to the specific geographic area that identifies the appellation of origin where grapes are grown. You can find a map of AVAs in Sonoma County, here. Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast are two of the AVAs in the region.* I have never heard of Albariño but I googled it — it’s a white wine grape from Spain.* More info: drinkregion.comSebastopol Times is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptDale: As a co-founder, how does it feel to reach three years with Region? It's like a toddler, right?Kerry: It feels like a little kid. It feels like we're beyond toddler stage. At the same time, it does. Yeah, I feel like it was yesterday. Now, it's 3 years. It's crazy. I will say the partnership with the Barlow has been amazing and just the location that we're in. We were supposed to open in March of 2020. That did not obviously happen. And every month after we were like, oh, my gosh, we have to open. We have to open. And then in July, we finally did open. I'm happy to say we did not lose any one of our winery partners. We were able to keep the doors open because the way the Barlow is set up and having the food options in the COVID time, we were categorized as a restaurant.When all the other wineries had to shut down and weren't serving their on-premise accounts either, because all the other restaurants were shut down, we were able to stay open. So at the very low part of it, we were a drive-by bottle shop, and Johan and I were delivering wine to doorsteps. It was one thing that lasted through the pandemic was alcohol, in many forms. So we quickly got past that, super excited. And once we got on the other side of that we were approached to open our second location in San Luis Obispo, which was not planned.I remember we (Johan and I) were installing the vinyl AVA custom map that we have in the tasting room and Circe from Piazza Hospitality came up to us and said, "you guys are doing an amazing thing here. The collaborative environment that you're providing for the wine industry and the approachability to the consumer that you're bringing to this wine growing region is phenomenal. I want to duplicate this, and I want you guys down in San Luis Obispo, and we have a space for you. Do you want to come look at it?"Johan and I were like sure. So we went down Thanksgiving weekend, and we did the same thing there (that we have in Sebastopol). So when we started up here, it was invitation only, it was the best of the best, small independently owned wineries in Sonoma County. Those that needed the outlet to shine, that needed a bigger voice to be heard in the wine growing region. And it really works in a collaborative effort. It's not competitive. When people hear, and I think it's changed now, but when you hear of collective tasting rooms, it's hard, right?As a consumer, you walk in and there's five people pulling at you. Try my wines, join my wine club, do this, 20% off of complimentary pours. It's very different in a collaborative setting because we focus on the AVA. That is our number one goal and all of the sub AVAs that are within Sonoma County.So when the wineries come in, their story can really shine because we're highlighting the terroir and the ground and where we live, and then their winemaking style can really shine. Sometimes we have 14 pinots on the wall, but you line them all up from Ryan at DRNK to Tim at Young Hagen who's 350 cases to Amy Chenoweth who does 150 cases to Mike Kobler and his single vineyard pinot right here in the Russian River. They're all so different. Customers can come in and they can explore that or, and we can teach them or they can just come in and try some wines and hang out. The Founding of Region.Dale: Where did the original concept come from? Kerry: So originally this was Johan's brainchild. He started out... Dale: Tell us about Johan. Kerry: So he's the original. He's the one that came to me with the idea and said, what do you think? And I said, yes. And he originally had a patent firm and went to school for engineering at Cal Poly. Hence why he lives down in SLO again. And he was actually going to put his business, his law firm in the Barlow and he wanted to subside some of the expenses.So he was looking at putting a retail shop in the front or whatever. He makes Pinot Noir with his dad right here in Sebastopol. Then his little engineer brain got ahold of these machines. Together we looked at the Silicon Valley Bank reports and tasting-room-visit decline but looking also at the collective tasting rooms and how those aren't working and just looking at the space that was available in the Barlow and what if we put 12 of the machines in 50 slots and we looked at all the data and he gave me the final pitch and I said, yes. The wine industry needs this and how can I be involved? I ended up being the first investor as well. So it was his brainchild. He thought of the machines. Then I tied in the space with the featured wineries and the rotation of it and how we still get the connection to the wineries because what had happened. Twelve years ago now when the machines had their heyday, the beer industry was really (on top of it). It was the wristbands; it was like little cords on the wristband that you tap on the machines to order beer. Some wine bars in the city were putting these in but they were also thinking it was a “set it and forget it.” Dale: So the machine is to automate the dispensing of the wine basically with a card or something like that.Kerry: You still had the three different types, so the taste, the half glass and the full glass. But where we found that they weren't being successful in these wine bars, they weren't a “set it and forget it.” Then also they were on preloaded cards. When a consumer comes in, they don't know how much they're going to spend on a wine. Like you can actually taste a good amount of wine for 20 bucks. But if you really get going and you get excited and you throw in a couple of half glasses and full glasses. That adds up pretty quick to $40 to $50. And so having an open line of credit was really a game changer for us.So one, having the open line of credit; two, approaching the wineries, having the partnership with the wineries that we do and knowing the owners and the winemakers on a first name basis really just makes the whole space and the energy much more approachable when customers come in. We have some customers come in that don't know what an appellation is. They have never heard of Albariño. They maybe only like red wine, but, mostly cab. They are all over the board. They've never heard of, what is Syrah? That's a grape.Then other people come in wanting to know the cooperage. They want to know the oak process. They want to know the fermentation. They want to know if it's an older vintage; they want library wines; organic wines. We get the gamut. So the space is really conducive to that.And again, it's not a competitive setting. It's really collaborative because we have such a wide range of all different types of wines, all different types of wineries and owners and winemakers. Dale: It does allow side by side comparisons of the nuances of different wines and all that. You can't really do that at a winery within their set of wines, but comparing one winery to another or see what profiles that you like. I think it's a unique offering for that.Looking Back on CovidDale: So when you got started during COVID, you're delayed opening for about five months. It's three years ago, but it seems a little bit like a fog; we were all in a fog. It took longer to get over that. It seems to me that only this summer are people really coming out in the way that they have previously. Kerry: And that's true. That's very true. I keep reminding our staff about that too, with sales and things like that because now there's more competition, like the competition's back, right?The concerts are in place and the Apple Blossom Fair happened and the big Napa concert happened and country in the summer and all these things. So people are back to the way it was. Now, there’s that's the hustle and bustle and we're seeing that. Where we were so fortunate, I will say that through the pandemic, the Barlow had the best foot traffic through the entire pandemic, just because of the way it's set up and what it offers here and our space. Health inspectors came out and inspected and we had the rollup doors completely open and a dedicated person at the machines wiping down the machines all the time.Everybody still wore their masks. So we were really fortunate in the location that we were in. We would have figured it out because we're that type, but had we been located anywhere else, it would have been — it would have been more challenging. But we set up the drive by deliveries and the pickup stations and the delivering six packs and three box bottles of wine with my mask on to doorsteps in Sonoma County for months.Tourism is backDale: I think you've also helped Sebastopol become a wine destination. It's not well known for that. It's known for its apples. But there are a lot of wineries in the area. Kerry: Oh, there's so many Dale: But sometimes the focus is a little bit north of us in Healdsburg and and or south of us in Sonoma. Kerry: Yeah, no, absolutely. It's been a great this is the first; the location just right off Highway 12 and it's funny what we've seen recent really recently is a lot of people are staying in Airbnbs and VRBOs from in town, all the way out to Bodega. And even if they're out in Bodega, they're still coming back to Sebastopol. They're still coming back and they're hanging out in the Barlow. They're going downtown. They're going to Ramen Gaijien. It's been interesting. You have the Sonoma County people that come out west and they hang out here, but there's the visitors that are coming into town; they're not going farther into Sonoma County. They're just hanging out in Sebastopol. And we've seen that a lot. It's been great. It's been fun. Sampl.Dale: So what's new? What are you working on? Kerry: Oh, gosh. We've been working on-- it's an e commerce product actually. And it's called Sampl. We're trying to take the experience that you get at Region and take it home with you and have people be able to experience maybe a part of it before they even come to Region, but a sample is essentially seven tastes of wine in a cylinder. We called it "Sampl." Without the E and it's still got the period just like Region does.And we focus on AVAs. So we can, in one package with seven different wines, we can take you to that wine growing region. We did two tests for Sonoma last year just to get packaging and shipping and compliance and all of the things to get it to be able to do it. And now we just officially launched nationwide June 1st with a Paso Robles kit. And the next one will be September 1st. Dale: So the idea is someone in the middle of the country who doesn't get to wine country can order a sample of wines from here and have something like a tasting experience where someone tells them about the wine. Kerry: So within the cylinder and we have a patent on the packaging and the tap on the top is a coaster with an NFC chip in it.So similar to an Apple Pay, you just tap your phone and it brings up the website. So again, we like to be casually educational at Region and in Sampl. So you can do it at your own pace. And there's no login. You completely do it on your own. It's very seamless. You tap the top of the coaster and it walks you through the set of wines that are in the kit. It gives you winemaker notes. It gives you video. It gives you recipes and then the chance to bottle upgrade purchases through the winery directly, or you can get more of the actual tubes and vials, which are a hundred milliliters. You can order more of those. So we just launched June 1st and we have about 1,000 subscriptions.It also is a quarterly subscription so it's like a Region, our Region club but it's all different AVAs. Like the next one we'll do Sonoma again because we can ship nationwide. And then we're going to do a small little really fun batch with Santa Barbara. And then we're going to do a fun holiday collection, which will be all of the AVAs that we've worked with. So San Luis Obispo County, Sonoma and Santa Barbara. Dale: What's happening Saturday?Kerry: Saturday is our three-year celebration. So we've done barbecued oysters on our anniversary every year. It is the wonderful Nelly's barbecued oysters. She was at my wedding. She catered for my wedding. I found her five years ago at Hannah winery and I was tasting with my dad and he's those are the best goddamn oysters I've ever had. And I tracked her down and I found her. She's at all the farmer's markets. She does a lot of the wineries. I found her and she's just this amazing, delightful woman, her and her husband.So we're doing barbecued oysters and street tacos. And some really fun raffles: some wine country experiences, the Boho tours with Osmosis Day Spa donated; Retrograde coffee donated. So we're going to have some fun raffles and packages and just invite people to come and visit the space.Dale: What's the time on that? Kerry: 2 to 4pm. Just to keep it a little bit manageable and have a good time. Dale: Thanks for letting me know about this and explaining what you're doing and good luck to your next year and I hope you have a good celebration on Saturday.Kerry: Awesome. Thank you for reaching out, Dale. I really appreciate it. It was good to talk to you. Photos provided by Region Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Sebastopol poet Raphael Block talks about his latest book of poetry, The Dreams We Share and shares several of his poems, including one about an old cat that sought out his attention. Described as an eco-poet, Block is moved by the Earth to speak in his own wonderful voice about what he sees and experiences all around him. “When I go outside, I'm literally moved by the earth. Physically. Emotionally. I would say spiritually too.” He makes note of what attracts his attention. “Sometimes it grows into a poem,” he says.Transcript Raphael BlockDale: I am joined by Raphael Block, a Sebastopol poet who has a new book out called The Dreams We Share. I will let you first introduce your wonderful voice.Raphael: I'm delighted to be here. Thank you. Dale: Explain your voice. Raphael: It's mostly a London accent. I spent most of my life there, though I was born in Israel on a kibbutz, which parents went out from England to help found it. In fact, I spent the first year of my life there, which included a baby house and before they moved to Haifa, the port city, which is the same latitude as San Francisco and has a large bay.When I first came to San Francisco on a visit in 1987, I felt immediately at home on a very visceral level because I could smell the pines as well as see the ocean. Perhaps I could share a poem about my childhood. Dale: Sure. Is that in the current book?Raphael: It's about third or fourth one in. It's called "I touch my childhood scents."I touch my childhood scents a sage leaf to roll and stuff into an acorn. We'd hollow by scooping into its soft flesh.  Close to it base, we'd pierce a hole for a stem and make a smoker's pipe.  A wind-snapped pine branch— I hold that sappy split near my nose and I'm back in the hills  of Haifa, the uncharted territory of my boyhood, sailing pine bark in puddles. And the little old man with missing teeth carrying a framework of sticks on his back bearing bagel rings, pretzels,  whole sunflower seeds wrapped in cellophane, whom we'd see on rare trips to town.  I am that acorn now. And the sage and pine? I’m still being drenched in their scents.  And the long gone bagel man? Perhaps from Poland or Russia? Perhaps, a concentration camp?  Who makes the time to ask as we buy their goods and hurry away? Dale: Very nice. How did you get to Sebastopol then? Raphael: We moved here 30 years ago before, my wife and three year old daughter. First West Marin, actually to the Inverness Point Reyes community and after five years there we were way out beyond Inverness. It was very beautiful, but it felt a little isolated as a community. And we were invited to come and live on a friend's property outside of Sebastopol. That's the short of it. Dale: Have you been writing poetry most of your life, or is it something that came in later in life?Raphael: It came in later. In fact, if you'd have asked me in my forties would you like to come to a poetry gig? I'd have looked at you as if you were asking me the strangest question in the world. It came as a gift. I was 50 when I started writing after my wife's passing. She had breast cancer --Deborah my, my dearest and she passed 21 years ago.I was fortunate to raise our daughter who was 11 years old at the time. Happily she lives close by now in Santa Rosa with her husband. And I'm very happy about that. Dale: That's an interesting thing of starting midlife in something very new. It's encouraging to maybe other people out there that think oh, I didn't do this as a kid. I didn't grow up doing this, but you can start something new. Raphael: Absolutely. In fact, I was raised on a science track. Poetry and the arts were not in my curriculum from age 13-14 in British schools. These things can happen anytime in life. Dale: So you describe yourself as a nature poet or an eco poet of sorts. How did that connection happen for you? Raphael: Every day, Dale, when I go outside, I'm literally moved by the earth. Physically. Emotionally. I would say spiritually too.Even going for a walk, it can change your mood. It changes mine entirely and I'm observing and being affected by everything around me. That's how most of the poetry happens for me. It's observation of little details and I make notes of whatever it is that attracts my attention in that way.Sometimes it grows into a poem, especially if it combines with some other inner experience. I'll give you an example if I may. Sure. I stepped into the garden a few days ago and I was about to actually go into town and jump into the car. I was on automatic. And a little voice said, "Hey, stop a minute. Take a couple of minutes. Just look at your garden." There was this black winged butterfly and it was really lustily beating its wings among the flowers. It took off. I could see an orange underside, landed again. I could see a kind of turquoise sheen on the wings. It was spectacular.So I just watched and later on I wrote down a few lines about it and then it resonated in me. It reminded me of an experience I had, which was my seven years ago, I had the most serious operation of my life for Crohn's Disease, which has been my companion since at least age 29. I remember I spent seven hours on the operating table and they removed most of my digestive system. So I'm very lucky to be alive. I'm very grateful. So I connected it with that experience where I had to, I felt I had a choice of which side of the threshold I could land, and I had to beat my wings pretty lustily during that time to remain here because I still had work to do as well as relationships with my daughter and so on. Dale: So then like a conscious choice you had to... Raphael: Yeah, I had to fight for life. So then if I added that to the poem. It's a prose poem at the moment. It's just at a early stage. It has to grow still. So it's observing something, which is a classical way of approaching art. People have done that all over the world for thousands of years. You just take in, listen. Watch. I would say that's the most important quality needed in relation to the Earth at the present time, if I dare generalize, is to listen to the earth.Dale: We find ourselves today spending a lot of time on digital devices. But those moments in nature, I guess need to be celebrated and recognized and encouraged. Raphael: I'm retired now, but even as a teacher, the less time I would spend on the screen, the better. I do spend a fair amount of time on email and other poetry related is absolutely grateful that I can type up my poems and then revise them easily.But every minute you can spend or I can spend outside is really richly rewarded. I've given up social media because I don't want a virtual reality. I'd rather see the real thing, even looking out the window is a treat for me. Dale: That's great. How about reading another poem?Raphael: Thank you. I'd like to share one, it's called “Her Unbroken Giving.” It's in the last section, I believe, which is called We the Healers. Her Unbroken Giving I. It'll happen unplanned, like the gopher burrow that diverts the waters rushing down the hillside from their appointed channels to a flat patch -- where pools now gather, sit, trickle through layers of silt, sandstone, and clay to the aquifer that feeds the well. II. When I was a child and someone hurt me my petals closed, my shell snapped shut, I burrowed underground. And what do I believe will coax this wounded Earth to show me Her face in all weathers. And what do I believe will coax our wounded Earth to show me Her face in all weathers.Dale: In June, you have an event coming up. Raphael: Two (events). One is a Novato library. It's part of the Marin Summer Traveling Show. That's on Saturday the 17th. 2-3pm. There'll be a bunch of poets, very good poets. That's quite fun. I haven't been there before.At the end of June, perhaps more locally for some people at least, is Cafe Frida on South A Street. Every three months, Ed Colletti hosts about eight poets. So I'll have about 10 minutes to share poems for my new book, and there'll be some other fabulous poets sharing their work. That's the last Sunday of June, the 25th from 1:00 to 3:00 PM. It's all up on my site, believe it or not, is my name: raphaelblock.com. Dale: I hear from other people, particularly poets that live in other parts of the country, that they don't all have the same kind of supportive community that we find here in Sonoma County. There are a lot of poets, but a lot of people that come together and connect with each other. Raphael: There are a lot of artists here too, of all kinds and that's a wonderful thing. I haven't lived in as an adult in other parts of the country but I've been very influenced when I had to retire for medical reasons, I started doing classes with Terry Ehret in Petaluma, one of our Sonoma County poet laureates, and she's edited all my books, all five of them.Through her classes and also she and her husband Don hosted an annual New Year's brunch with 40 poets, I've met a lot of people in the field. We also have a lot of small poetry critique groups, which are very supportive of each other's work. Dale: If you're thinking of getting into this to find your way into the community and connect with other people.Raphael: Yeah. There's actually Terry and Joanne Rosen produce a monthly Sonoma County literary update that's online, and that is a very rich network for anyone who wants to dip their toe in and see what's going on. Dale: I saw a poem in here, if I can pick one, it’s called “Old Cat.” Raphael: I also wanted to share that what I write about is what I see locally. So many of the poems are about local places. including the rocks overlooking Tomales Bay, Dusty Lane, which is off Furlong Road. It's just where I happen to walk the Laguna Ragle Park and that's where the poems happen. Old Cat Sitting on the deck, feet outstretched under a table, I feel fur rubbing against my toes, hear a low purr. It's become a ritual. She'll pause, slip ahead through the railing, or lie under my chair, and then return bend her ears, cheeks, whiskers, in this tug of love. For years I gave her the least attention I could get away with. She's older than I'll ever be, plays hungry, riaows, just to bring out my love. I stopped caring how much or how little, bend mostly to her will. Never understood her utter dependency until my own illness and surgery. Now I'm the old cat. Dale: That's very nice. You read a love poem at a wedding? Raphael: I sang it. It's also the name of the first section. It's called “A Fraction of Love.”A Fraction of LoveTough as a tree trunk yet soft as leaves of lamb's ear.  She won't shirk what's in front of her.  She's no smoother over or pleaser.  But a shade giver. Her crazy twists and turns will drive you dazed into her meadow. She might shower  you with flowers without excuse or pretense or strip you like a wild onion  until there are no layers of defense. She doesn't shrink or flinch from knotted discord  but undoes us all.  A fraction of love  gives life her sparkling dress.  A fraction of love can never be said. Can never be said.Dale: Thank you. Raphael: I consider them all gifts, all the poems. I don't claim I did them. It's taking too much credit because I discovered in my early thirties as I was a science kid that I got a chance to do life drawing. After an hour and a half with a live model, we'd look through the drawings as a class. I could never say consciously I did that. It came out of as a teacher, she expressed it. We were drawing, literally drawing out of the well, out of our own well, and so I love sharing them because they're gifts. Dale: Let's talk about the event at Sebastopol Center for the Arts.Raphael: That's planned for Sunday, August 6th. That's the first weekend in August. It will be a benefit for Sebastopol Center for the Arts, and I'm fortunate enough to be joined by two other really wonderful poets: current poet laureate Elizabeth Peron and Maya Khosla, former poet laureate, and all three of us come from our own perspective but we're all three engaged in what's broadly known as eco poetry. We write about the earth, and in Elizabeth's case, for instance, she has a suite of poems about the current Ukraine- Russia war. That's part of the earth too. There's nothing. The earth embraces us in all her aspects, despite our treatment of her.And it will be lovely there. There'll be a cellist playing as well. Her name is RutiCelli. And I'm greatly looking forward to the event.Dale: How about one of the more local poems you mentioned?Raphael: Yeah. Let's see.I, this is the last poem in the book, and it happened in my backyard. It's called "In the Land." There is a tremendous peace I feel. The Earth. That's present in the Earth as long as we tune into it in ourselves as well as in the Earth. And it's easy to miss that because we're in such a bustle and a hurry. At this point in my life, I'm not in such a hurry. I'm happy to to receive those blessings. In the LandThere's a peace in the land, a peace in the land. Morning fog and cloud dome the sky. Across the view fly a pair of Eurasian collared doves. In Glastonbury or Machu Picchu Mecca or Uluru/Ayers Rock, you'll find resonating in you a deep peace in the land. Cars pace the highway, a scrub jay pecks ripening apples. When you are in the temples of Kyoto or shrines of Shrinigar  or your own backyard, each time you open there's peace in the land.Dale: That's a really good. This is your last poem in the book. Tell people they can go to your website and find out about your book and how to buy your book. We mentioned several events. I'll put that in the listing here. Raphael: I'd also like to mention I do a monthly newsletter called Earth/Love. I interview people, mostly local people, for example, the last two issues were about these Ma Muse. Two wonderful singers and instrumentalists, Sarah Nutting and Karisha Longaker who live in Sebastopol and sing divinely. This coming month in June, I've interviewed a scientist at Bodega Marine Labs. It was my first visit there. Dale: Good. Raphael, thank you very much. It's good to hear you read and sing your poems in that lovely voice you have. Thank you very much. Raphael: Thank you, Dale.Raphael's new book, The Dreams We Share, can be bought directly from him on his website, raphaelblock.com, and at Many Rivers Books & Tea, 130 S. Main Street, Sebastopol. You can also order it from your local independent bookstore.SebARTS Benefit and Book Launch, Poems of Love and Landscape, Sunday August 6th. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Steve Griffith is a former elementary school teacher who moved to Forestville about 10 years ago. Wanting to do an event for the West County community, he proposed to the Russian River Rotary Club that they sponsor a Fix-it Fair at the El Molino campus in Forestville. They agreed and the Fair took place April 29.I talked to Steve before and after the event to learn more about how he organized the event developed as well as to talk about how we can and should repair more of what we own instead of just throwing it away. Steve was also proud to hold the event at the El Molino campus.Sebastopol Times is a reader-supported publication with hundreds of paid subscribers and thousands of free subscribers. Will you become a paid subscriber today?Transcript: Mr. Fix-itSteve: Moved to Forestville 10 years ago, coinciding with my retirement as a elementary school teacher in Daly City. We moved up here from San Francisco because my wife wanted to garden and farm, which she does in a mighty way and grows half the food we eat.I'm pretty much on track for sustainability in all manners and shapes and forms, but going way back to my days in elementary school teaching, I made it a mission of mine to develop what had been a non-existent recycling program at my school. I would take my second or third or fourth graders on field trips down to the landfill / recycling yard and display of recycling, right? And trying to make a fun game out of bringing no waste lunches. Okay, now, okay, open your lunch. What do you go? Oh man, you got that wrapped in plastic. I'm sorry. That's one demerit on that. So tried to get a hundred percent of no waste lunches while we were touring the landfill, et cetera.So I've always been interested in terms of education and youth and giving instruction and setting good examples.Now, prior to that teaching career, I had been a working musician and a carpenter- remodeler to make the money I didn't make playing music. I was always trending towards rehabbing and restoring, and fixing buildings, remodeling. Never new-- just was not interested. I took it to the point of buying a house at the CalTrans auction and moving it across town up in Eureka California and reestablishing it on a new lot, a Queen Anne Victorian. We paid $250 for it, but we had to move it and put it on a new lot. My friend and I worked on that house, learning a lot along the way for about, geez, a year and a half. It took us a long time. Then we sold it. So then I had some money in my pocket to move to San Francisco and not have to scuffle so much. And lo and behold, within an year of moving to San Francisco, I found another house that was a prime candidate for being moved because it was obviously slated for demolition.So I've always been interested in "fix, don't nix it."Dale: I wanted to know where the idea of a Fix-it Fair came from. Steve: I saw other events like Zero Waste Sonoma and a woman named Portia Sinnott collaborated on a Fix-it Day in Santa Rosa about a year ago -- sharpening service, clothes repair, bicycle repair and maintenance. Those were the three biggies that they had, and they had the bookmobile and a little clothing swap. People could bring what they didn't want and take what they do want. Tek Taylor sponsored the event in their parking lot. He's a very interesting guy. He's made a career out of repurposing and refashioning vinyl into gym bags and wallets and purses. What I love about him is that he takes decommissioned fire hose from Cal Fire. So you buy a belt made out of the hose that was used to fight the Tubbs fire. Dale: You got the idea that West County needed some event like this?Steve: I originally approached Russian River Rotary who is sponsoring this event. Their president came with me to that Fix-it day to see it. She was impressed and thought this is something our club could do. Dale: How do you describe this and who are you trying to get to come out?Steve: Everybody that has that thing in their house, in their yard, that they intend to get around to fixing. But they can't quite bring themselves to throw it out yet. So that's those people. For me and most people that might not view it this way on the surface, but it serves the purpose of keeping the working with hand tools a lot.The people that I'm trying to engage is anyone who in the back of their mind goes, yeah, somebody is still doing that by hand. It doesn't just come from Home Depot. Dale: We used to have in our small towns, people that did this regularly. Tailors and TV repair people and other kinds of shops that you could go and take your thing to and get it done by a professional. Steve: Absolutely. So in the absence of that being as prominent or easy to find now, I gotta tell you that I searched high and low and I made a bunch of inquiries to a bunch of places I could not find a leather repair person.Dale: This is a skill set that's gone missing. Also certainly those people may have aged out but we buy things and throw them away quite easily. We don't expect things to last very long. don't. Steve: It has become that way. Dale: There's people in the community that can help other people fix something, or tell you that it can't be fixed. So how did you find all these people in the community,?Steve: Three of them that are gonna be there at this event are my neighbors. One of them is a retired IT guy from El Molino High School, Mark Ballard. So I recruited him; he was a professional. The other two are what the word is successful "artisanal tinkerers."My next door neighbor is gonna be there for the small electric repairs, although he can take apart and reassemble a computer. He also installed his own on-demand hot water heater and so forth. The guy that is one of the two woodworkers at the wood repair station is another neighbor who makes his living mostly doing woodwork and this little side of concrete. If you saw the hobby horse he built out of layers of laminated wood for his granddaughter, you'd weep. It's just, wow. Labor of love is capital L in that case. There's Hillel Posner who I immediately made a connection with the first time we met. He's helped me with some woodwork that I'm not good at. So I recruited him and he was right from the get-go: oh, I'm in a 100%. I started with people that I know and that I trust. One of the metal repair guys is my daughter's classmate from El Molino High School, who's now 25 and a very accomplished metal worker, whether it's braising or bronzing or soldering or welding. The other metal worker could just as well be on the woodworker side. He's a contractor that helped me build my room addition and we've bonded over the years. Others came from Portia Sinnott recommending names and if they couldn't do it, I asked them who else they could recommend. I'm pretty fearless at asking for things. To be a good teacher, you better not be shy. Likewise, Sloane Pagal with Zero Waste Sonoma. It is just like the ripples of my inquiries. I just had to keep throwing the stone in the water.Dale: Like Antiques Roadshow, but bring something that you wanna have looked at and say you need to go talk to the metal guy, or that's an electrical problem. Go over there. Steve: That's right. Dale: it could be a vacuum. It could be a Steve: Musical amp. Table fan. Lamps. Lots of lamps. Dale: This is probably a great place to just watch other people do this and learn from them and maybe even get a chance to do some of it yourself.Steve: Someone will be there with their lamp and then they'll go: oh, huh. I could have brought that patio chair, or that sculpture that the wing of the dove fell off. I could have brought that.I really wanted a wide spectrum of the crafts and arts of skilled repair people up to and including the tech issues. So I'm hoping that I get to be sort of a proud ringmaster. Dale: This is at El Molino. Steve: Oh, that's a second major part. Oh yeah. Let's remind West County what a cool jewel of a school facility we still have here that is being criminally underused. Let me share an anecdote with you. Dale: Sure. Steve: My daughter's 25, pretty powerful person. We moved up here when she was transitioning from middle school to high school. We chose to buy and relocate very much with an eye towards really appreciating El Molino and the principal Doria Trombetta and the dance program. Part of why she's a powerful person is she was empowered by some really wonderful mentors who were not just dancers, but you know, personalities. She starts going to ElMo and at first she's a little dismissive of the hicks, really. But in the end, if you talk to her now, just the other night, she was talking about, listen, I gotta tell you boys, that for dating material, you gotta know how to do s**t. Up here, the boys know how to do s**t, whether it's hooking up the trailer to the hitch or fixing the flat tire, stereotypical, right? She really came to a broader appreciation. She thought she was pretty hot stuff in San Francisco and she was, right. She ended up being student body president at ElMo, besides being the rally commissioner and the dance captain and then just for to be on a team in her senior year with a complete full program of AP classes, she decided she was gonna be on the swim team for a semester, which meant getting up at 5:30am to go Ives pool. Elmo provided all that. Elmo was small school culture, big school opportunities. Okay, so now my daughter graduated with honors from Cal Berkeley. May 6th, she starts at Six Rivers National Forest. Fire crew, a certified wild land firefighter.She discovered in the course of something else, this interest in reducing, in her case it was doing GIS mapping of fuel loads for Sonoma County residents with property owners with three acres or more, and she discovered indigenous practices and the folly of suppression of fire at all costs. So she's putting her boots where her mind is. It's really something. Dale: The Fix-it Fair took place at El Molino on April 29th. A week after, I talked to Steve again.  How'd you think it went? Steve: I was pretty pleased with the turnout, both on the fixer side, the volunteer side, the community group side, and thank goodness the attendant public side.Dale: Good. Steve: I think there's lots of improvements or things that can be done for a repeat performance that would boost the entire proceedings. Starting with trying not to conflict, not scheduling, going head to head with with a) prom night and b) the Apple Blossom Fair. Those were two biggies. Dale: We have so many events that there are conflicts. Two years ago we didn't have any events at all. Steve: It's a lovely area to live in with those kinds of events happening, Dale: So I saw a lot of lamps. A lot of people walking in with different lamps, as you suggested. Did you see anything really unusual that was getting repaired? Steve: Let's see. There was a memorable interchange with a gentleman who had a collapsible tent that he and the wood workers and the metal workers could not help in the end get it either unfolded into its proper form or refolded into what it was supposed to be. There was a lot of items that were not in your standard categories. But I did enjoy seeing the lamps being walked across the site. I enjoyed seeing bicycles being wheeled in. Somebody had what looked like a big brass urn. My own watering can proved to be un- weldable. Darn it. Dale: Darn it. Steve: But we kept six sewers occupied. Dale: I ran into some people that had dropped off clothing. That's very nice. Steve: Absolutely. There was a nice wide variety. The tech issues booth was a little underutilized, especially there were two tech helpers. One of them specializes in Mac. He's the retired IT resource teacher from El Molino. He didn't have as much to do as his partner, the "Geek Girl." I ran into her three days ahead of the event at the local Forestville Sunshine Roasters coffee shop. I saw the side of her van completely emblazoned with the Geek Girl.I said, oh my goodness, I've gotta make this acquaintance. Asked her if she would be willing to participate or if she was free. She said, okay. Yeah, that sounds good.Dale: She told me she got about eight or nine referrals of work she couldn't do there. People wanted to talk to her later on. Steve: Oh, she had to send her boyfriend home to get a new supply of business cards. Next time we would like to emphasize individual fixers, being sure if that is what they're interested in to get other customers or business for their normal operations. Many of them are retired and aren't seeking that. But there's some that are. Dale: The Russian River Rotary was all there. They were really good helpers and talking to people. So you think you'll bring it back next year? Steve: There's heavy requests for that. The meeting of the Russian River Rotary the following Tuesday was all about trying to pick a date that wouldn't conflict with those items we just talked about.Thank goodness the wheel is invented and can be rolled much more easily next time. It was a lot of hours to corral and enlist and recruit and arrange all those we had. I just sent the note to my son. I added up. We had 24 different fixers spread out between nine booths about an equal number of volunteers including the Rotary and about 30 or more people at the information booths of the community groups. Added up to about 80 people putting this on. Dale: Hats off to the fixers particularly that were there. They gave up their time. As you said, many of them are retired community people that just, they didn't know what necessarily they would get out of this, but they gave to the communities their talents and that's great. Steve: It's true. We had some first timers for such an event. Frankly, the bike repair people and the sewing people, a lot of them are veterans, so to speak, of such an event. I love to see that.I'll tell you something that I pitched to the Rotary and that is why not go ahead and have a more hyperlocal Fix-it Fair in Guerneville. Let's do a formally Lower River gathering spot. Let's let the community groups at that event be all Forestville, Guerneville, Monte Rio Jenner-- I think I would like to see that.Dale: That's a good idea. This event could be done at different sizes or scale. It could be done lots of different ways. Steve: No, it's true.Dale: I just wanna credit you -- even if people didn't come and even if they just saw the signs there it helps plant in their brain that this can be done, that things can be repaired. And that's a really important message. Steve: I agree. It needs to be a widespread message, something that people see around more than just once. Yeah, absolutely. I know that Zero Waste Sonoma and Portia Sinnott are planning one in July, I believe, in Santa Rosa, maybe.  Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

My conversation with Kristen Madsen, director of Creative Sonoma, explores how arts organizations are adapting to life after the never-say-goodbye pandemic as well as the ongoing assessment of the role of the arts and arts education in our community. It continues a discussion about challenges facing the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, which we featured in a previous article. The challenges facing our local arts institution are similar to those faced by organizations throughout the county and nation due in part to Covid but also because our relationship to art itself keeps changing.Highlights* “We live in what's known as the Economic Development Department, and we like that because it means that somebody who put Creative Sonoma together recognized that we are the creative sector and it contributes to the economy.”* “I do think that the promise of technology turned into kind of a clashing realization that, oh, wait a minute. Now, there aren't the same kind of systems that you used to follow, particularly as an individual, to have a career in the arts that you used to.”* “Community art centers have so many roles to fill, and it's part of their strength and part of their challenge. Because they have to be many things to many people.” * “The one thing that I do think had a little bit of promise fulfilled is it does allow for what I'll call a middle class life as an artist in a way that didn't exactly exist before. You were either just struggling up and coming and stayed struggling forever. Or you were the far end of the hyper successful artist. But now you can have art making as part of your life and maybe other things too.”* “I think our community and all communities are redefining who we are in the post Covid, but also post George Floyd era and thinking about the definitions of who community is and how who wrote those definitions. That gives a community arts center really tremendous new horizons to play in.” * “In that timeframe (over the last year), as we talked to people, everybody was okay because of all of the state and federal supports that were coming to them. So we didn't see permanent closures at that point in time.”* “If you divide arts organizations into three categories: one is small, so say their annual budget is under a hundred thousand dollars, and then middle-size, it would be a hundred to maybe a million, and then above a million. So small, medium, and large. The smalls and the large survive a crisis with less trouble. It doesn't mean not a lot of trouble, but they survive.”* “Creative Sonoma started a new program last year and we're in now our second year. We have fellowships for individuals that are working in and or for communities of color.”Transcript Dale: Welcome to Kristen Madsen. And Kristen is the director of Creative Sonoma. Kristen. Welcome. Kristen: Thank you. Nice to talk to you too. Dale. Dale: Give us some background on yourself. Who are you and are you an arts person yourself? Kristen: I am now an eight year resident of Sonoma County. I came up here from Los Angeles where I was working for 20 years at the organization that produces the Grammy Awards, working on the music side of things, and also in the two non-profits that the Grammy established to help music people in crisis and also, to forward the issue of arts education, music education particularly. I started with the love of music because I started playing the piano when I was five years old, mainly because I idolized my older sisters who were having lessons already and I had to be like them. Dale: That's what happens sometimes. Kristen: Exactly. As it turns out, it stuck with me and not with them. But so music and art has been my career -- my life and my career, which has been great. Spot forward to wanting to not spend the rest of my life in Los Angeles and thinking about where might be a place that we discovered was more nourishing than punishing. And that's Sonoma County. And so we picked this place and then found out how we could get here.I got lucky enough to get hired to be the first director of Creative Sonoma eight years ago. It is a county agency. We live in what's known as the Economic Development Department, and we like that because it means that somebody who put Creative Sonoma together recognized that we are the creative sector and it contributes to the economy.So often arts and creativity get pushed to the side as sort of an add-on after the fact and seen a little bit more as an economic drain. But we know and consider ourselves fortunate to be recognized as a driver of the economy. So that's me and that's how I got here. Dale: The word "creatives" has become popular almost not really meaning artists as much as just almost sort of new kinds of work.Kristen: Yes, it is. What it reminds me because the word curate has also undergone that same kind of adoption from other folks and forces. And I mostly, I feel completely fine with that, especially when it's arts words, because I feel like when the broader world looks at what the arts are doing and says, oh, I love that's, try that on and see if it fits me. That in general is a positive for conversation about art and creativity. Dale: We do a lot of separating. You're creative, you go in that corner and you're science or something, and you go in that corner. Kristen: Exactly. Dale: Especially these days, the world of work needs both kind of their literacies or competencies.But traditionally, the people that are artists in our community are also trying to make a living at that. And that's become harder and harder, hasn't it? Kristen: Definitely has. It's a myth that I guess nobody believes anymore, which was that technology was really going to make it easier for artists and musicians. By the way, I'll use the word artist and art meaning, ecumenically all genres, all art forms, not just visual art. But I do think that the promise of technology turned into kind of a clashing realization that, oh, wait a minute. Now, there aren't the same kind of systems that you used to follow, particularly as an individual, to have a career in the arts that you used to. On one hand, that should mean, oh, good, open door. I don't have to go through these systems. But at the same time, all the supports that existed in those systems are now born on the shoulders of the individual artists themselves.So now you have to do all of that for yourself. And since there's very different or fewer filters between you and the general public, that also means that everything is available for everybody all the time, everywhere. It's overwhelming. I find myself, and I think artists too, you still have to find a trusted and respected filter of some sort. And for some people that's the New York Times, or an art critic somewhere, or a gallery owner or a musician, a playlist by someone that they like. Dale: It can also mean your local community where you live-- you're connected to other people who make art.Kristen: That's a really good point. The one thing that I do think had a little bit of promise fulfilled is it does allow for what I'll call a middle class life as an artist in a way that didn't exactly exist before. You were either just struggling up and coming and stayed struggling forever. Or you were the far end of the hyper successful artist.But now you can have art making as part of your life and maybe other things too. And do just regional schooling if you're a musician, for example, or regional sales. So you get beyond your immediate backyard. A little bit, but you don't have to be considered, national or international to be able to make enough money to make it worth it. So that again, that was a big generalization.There's lots of gaping challenges within what I said, but I do think that's possible. Dale: There's a traditional role, places like art centers in communities, which help to connect the public to art and to the artists. We're going to talk about the Sebastopol Arts Center as one of those. There's Mendocino, there's Petaluma. Most communities have something like that. That is that sort of curation role that you were talking about. But it's also just making sure art doesn't leave our consciousness on a daily basis.Kristen: I think that's right. Community art centers have so many roles to fill, and it's part of their strength and part of their challenge. Because they have to be many things to many people. They're not solely a concert series. They're not solely a gallery. They really are a gathering place to the comment that you were just saying.They do have a mission of how do we help the community recognize what we have here and who we are and help us define who we are based on what we see and do around art. They often have education classes for not just K-12, but adults, to perpetuate art making. That's a really big, important part of lots of our community art centers as well.And then, yes, exposure to art and what it means in our lives and what we want it to mean in our lives. And that's, again, it's the source of talent, but it's also the source of opportunity. In some ways because I think our community and all communities are redefining who we are in the post Covid, but also post George Floyd era and thinking about the definitions of who community is and how who wrote those definitions. That gives a community arts center really tremendous new horizons to play in. Dale: I guess what I wanted to get an understanding from you, cause you're probably tapped into this happening through lots of different organizations, what are the struggles and some of the solutions that people are grappling with?Kristen: It's a really important question and everyone's asking it and answering it in different ways. I think really the true answer is we're not really even yet sure. So a couple of general thoughts about it. One, we did a study. We fortunately had done a study as a nonprofit arts organization in Sonoma County in 2019, and so we had a baseline of who was out there and what were they doing, what's their budget size, and a little bit of the health. Then we did a check-in about a year into Covid. We thought at the time, oh, this'll be like our post Covid report. We thought we were at the end-- to just see how people were coping. That's when we saw the strategies that so many of our groups, including Sebastopol Center for the Arts, were taking to say, first of all, if you had space, what that meant and so many folks looking at how they could use that space in different ways for different community purposes. Sebastopol Center for the Arts did some of the most interesting and positive work in school pods of kids that were coming from underserved backgrounds that didn't have childcare at home, that kind of thing. And did really wonderful learning generally, but with an arts angle to it. So that was great. You saw people also pick up their skillsets in digital transmission of what it was that they do. Not just Zoom, but all kinds of digital technology to try to help people have access to the arts in different ways.In that timeframe, as we talked to people, everybody was okay because of all of the state and federal supports that were coming to them. So we didn't see permanent closures at that point in time. People were just hanging on and waiting and testing the waters and getting audiences that were coming from farther away than Sonoma County because they were doing it online.So then as the reopening began, there was this flush of enthusiasm. People could get together again. Some of our performing arts groups and museums and other institutions started really seeing this pent-up demand. People felt much more strongly about how they were doing both with attendance and tickets than they had expected and even somewhat in fundraising. Sonoma County knows this only too well; donor fatigue around crisis funding and emergency funding; on the heels of the fires and floods that we've had here, who knew how we would come out after now a pandemic? So now I feel like we're in another phase, which is a little bit of a settling phase, right? Now we're starting to see what I think are going to be closer to the real audience pattern. I think that's really the biggest challenge. To your comment, how do you support this work that you're doing? And for most of our groups, that means how do they get people to pay attention and open up their wallets?There are some national trends on that which are showing that museums are doing okay, and museums that are attached to anything that's outdoors better because people are still hanging on to wanting to be out and/or be active. But sitting in an enclosed space is still really a challenge.So performing arts, concerts, film, anything that brings you in a theater that you're just sitting down that just has not come back yet. And so now that's a couple years of that happening, and that might be not just a slow change. That might be a new normal, kind of a trend. I'll marry that to something else, which is obviously there prior to Covid was the way people consume, to use a marketing term, but consume art has really changed in the last decade. There's so much more interest and willingness, especially for younger generations, I will say, to consume your art on a screen than live. So I think those two things are combining full performing arts or gathering place art in a negative way to what the old pattern were.So to your question, What are people going to do?Dale: It's an interesting parallel in ways is the Covid isolation and social media isolation, and encountering that with people need to be in person with other people to see things, experience things. It'll be interesting to see how that comes back. Kristen: I think that's actually that's a really interesting point and deserves more exploration from people who are smarter than I am. But I'll also say I think that the the comment about needing to be together, I think everybody felt that and will still feel that, but I think we just interrupted our patterns so much.I've not gone to a movie theater since pre Covid. And by the way, I was slowing down on going to movie theaters before Covid. So that's where I think that's going to be an issue. So what will make it a different experience, and by the way, I don't know, is having, spending $20 in order to have food delivered to my chair and a recliner is the answer.One thing I do think that most of our arts groups can learn from and are trying to, is during Covid, they connected more one-to-one with their audiences. They had to and they had access, right? They had people on a Zoom call with their name right there.Maybe they, they had to have their email in order for them to sign up for the Zoom link, those kinds of things. But they began to communicate in more of a dialogue. One-to-one or one-to-few versus solely a quick broadcast communication out to the world, and who knew if anyone got it or would respond back.So there's something there that's of value. Dale: Some of that could be regarded as innovations, the teaching an art class via Zoom. I know just from friends and things that we grumbled about it in the beginning, but we got used to it and liked it. It was convenient and, you could maybe do more of it. So I hope throw that out completely. Kristen: I agree completely, and I'm sure you know this from also on the business side of things. You can do so many more meetings. We're a countywide agency. I can meet with people in a week's time via Zoom that I would never get to if I were going face to face to all those meetings.At that the same time, every meeting I have via Zoom, I recognize what is not occurring, which is a different kind of personal connection that you have with people when you're sitting across the table from them . Dale: Let me ask you just briefly, what do you think the government's role is in all of this?Different countries in Europe tends to fund the arts more, tends to be part of its public mission. Less so in the United States and particularly in times when we have a lot of need for social services and other things. Art is usually set aside a bit.Kristen: I don't think I'll surprise you when I tell you that I believe it's fundamental. I say believe it is 100% fundamental. There are things that will not occur if the government doesn't seed the ground with funding for it. I recognize more so I think after Covid than in any other time in my lifetime working in the arts that we force our artists and our arts organizations into feast and famine cycles. It's just cruel and unusual. We should not be doing that. When we need them, we want them right there. When a crisis occurs, what's the first thing that happens? People come together, they gather, they sing, they create roadside shrine, when there's been a tragedy. After 911, during Covid, the trumpeter is on the balconies.We gather together, and music and art express the things that we, normal humans don't have the ability to say all the time in words or want to say in words. We rely on our artists to do that for us. Now, it's like anything else. If you only turn to your generator when you need it and you haven't maintained it, your generator's not going to work for you.That's what we do to the art community all the time. And we also have done that through not putting enough attention to arts education. So we don't have kids who, maybe they're not all going to be an artist or a musician, but if they don't understand what art is, if they don't think in a creative way, if they don't appreciate it, they won't know what they're missing.We have this after Prop 13 and the property tax reform, which decimated arts in the school system for generations. Now we have kids that have come up that have not learned an instrument. That's going to be too late. I don't mean doomsday, but that's going to be harder for them.I'll shift my soapboxing a little bit here. There are a few places where I do think it's really critical for government, and one is arts education, so arts in the schools and making sure that every kid has access to it, and that plays out in a thousand ways. Dale: That's really an equity issue because kids in private schools get that, right?Kristen: 100%. Dale: In public schools, it gets cut out and there was past some funding in the last election for more arts. Kristen: There's a research that is a special gut punch I call it, around arts and equity, which is that kids from communities and families that are underserved kids, actually the impact for those kids -- if they have four years of arts intensive, immersive training is far and away farther than it is for kids that come from privilege. So the kids who need it the most and benefit the most from, get it the least.So yes, it is 100% equity issue. So I think that's a critical place. I think art in our public realm, art in public places. We talk all the time about Sonoma being a really artistic community full of artists. That's true. But what do we say about ourselves in terms of what is the art that our municipalities and our government say belongs in our public domain?And when when you go to a place where they've thought about this, and the zoning has taken good attention to it and the planners have paid attention to it and there's a percent for art ordinance-- you know it when you're there because you just look around and you see the evidence of it in the way the plazas are shaped and not just because there's a statue in the middle of a plaza.Cause that's, yes, that is public art, but there's so much more. What's the landscape environment, what's the architectural structure. When you really care about it, it changes the nature of a community and your community and the what your government reflects what your priorities are. So I do think those are two places. There's plenty of others. Dale: Maybe that's a good way of saying this. It's to some degree making art a priority is one of the challenges right now. And I think it's been nice to see with Sebastopol Center for the Arts that when you say we need help people come out and say "I didn't know you needed help. Let me step up and help." So I'm hoping making people aware of this, will cause them to not only recognize they value it, but they actually need to step up and support it. Kristen: I think we see that a lot. There's one other thing that I think is a factor to share, because I do think it plays into the Sebastopol Center for the Arts situation and some of our other groups in Sonoma County.Again, this is research pre Covid, but I think Covid essentially bore out the research, or maybe even that it exacerbated it. If you divide arts organizations into three categories: one is small, so say their annual budget is under a hundred thousand dollars. And then middle size, it would be a hundred to maybe a million, and then above a million. So small, medium, and large. The smalls and the large survive a crisis with less trouble. It doesn't mean not a lot of trouble, but they survive. The little guys survive cause they're used to doing everything, either all volunteer or with duct tape. That's how that they function. And the big guys, probably have access to some endowment funds and probably some institutional holdings and probably a different level of influence among board members who can give or help get. But if the folks that are in the center that have probably just enough assets, they might have a rent payment on a space or a mortgage. They may have some salaries for some staff. Maybe they have some assets that cost to store, et cetera. Those guys, that's really tough cause they're on the bubble of, paycheck to paycheck, donation to donation, for everything that they're doing. So in the pandemic, that's I think the group that we're going to see, the ones that ultimately do shut their doors, are the ones that had just kinda gotten over that threshold. They weren't all volunteer anymore, they were established, they were doing things, but not at a super successful level. Dale: Also with having to lay people off during Covid, it's hard to get restarted, to get the right people back, to make those activities successful again. Fundraising is really quite a challenge, isn't it?Kristen: No question. Dale: Yeah. Good. Just what positive things do you see coming up? Events or things that are happening in the county? Kristen: Whenever I say something, I start talking about particular organizations. I have to preface it by saying there's so many. And by the way Creative Sonoma loves all God's creative children in Sonoma County.Equally, we love you all Dale: As best you can. Yeah. Kristen: I'm really encouraged by, even though I just said it was, it's going to be hard performing. Do some really spectacular live music. The roster for the Healdsburg Jazz Festival is off the charts. They have the Grammy's best new artist who's just a spectacular jazz artist and a couple of other names that just dropped last week, which is great.Yo Yo Ma was just at the Green Music Center. The quality of really high level musicians is really great. Plus Luther Burbank Center doing Luther Locals, they're moving it outside. So that's every, I think it's one day of the week and it's local bands that are getting visibility. They started it during Covid and they were all on Zoom and now they're going to be live outside. So what a fun way to see some, really great musicians that are local and support our local team here. Because they really struggled, our local musicians definitely struggled during the pandemic.Love what's coming down the road at Museum of Sonoma County and actually out in the Sonoma Valley Museum. Then I'll tell you that we're having fun getting to know some new community members. I'm going to brag a little on Creative Sonoma, but we started a new program last year and we're in now our second year of fellowship for individuals that are working in and or for communities of color. The idea is that they'll get a grant to do new work, but there'll also be a cohort that will learn together and will give them training to try to help them understand the pathways to funding or understand how to market or understand things that they tell us they want to know in order to be better at what they do. Our goal is that we develop over time a new cadre of new arts leaders that are speaking with voices that have not been heard and haven't been seen, as easily, shall we say, for some of us. So if we can put a spotlight on that, I think that will be really great. Dale: Okay, Kristen, thank you for your time today and I appreciate learning about Creative Sonoma and your perspective on the art scene in Sonoma County.Kristen: You're welcome. It was such a pleasure. Thank you very much. Dale.  Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

On Memorial Day for every year that Alan Murakami can remember, his family went down to the National Golden Gate Cemetery in San Bruno to lay flowers beside the grave of Peter Masuoka, his uncle. During Covid, Alan decided he had the time to write about his uncle and his Japanese-American family. Peter, who grew up in Sebastopol, died in France fighting for his country in the 442nd Battalion in World War II, all the while his family was held in an internment camp in Colorado. Alan’s grandfather was a first-generation Japanese-American, known as Issei. Alan’s mother and her brothers, including Peter, were second generation, known as Nisei. As a member of the third generation, Alan had filled a shoe box with scraps of paper where he had jotted down what members of his family had said about Peter. He started with the shoebox and began trying to piece together the life of the uncle he never knew. Peter Matsuoka’s story and the Matsuoka-Murakami’s family story are an important part of the history of Sonoma County, which some of us might not know so well.To order a copy of Alan’s book, you can contact him at [email protected]. Sebastopol Times is a reader-supported publication. To support our work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today.TranscriptDale: Today I am joined by author Alan K. Murakami, who has written a book subtitled, "The Uncle I Never Knew." It's a memoir, almost a family memoir. It's titled, Peter Masuoka, which is the name of his uncle. First of all, welcome. Nice to have you here. Alan: Thank you. Thank you.Dale: Give me a little bit about yourself.Alan: I grew up in West Sonoma County. And I'm the third generation of Masuoka - Murakami. I went to the local schools here, El Molino which my parents and Pete, they went to Analy as well as my sons. So I guess I was the black sheep. After going to school and UC Davis, I came back to Sonoma County to be near my folks. So I've been lucky to both grew up in this area, work in this area, and to be able to write a book in this area. Dale: How did your family come to locate itself in this area, in the outskirts of Sebastopol?Alan: Let's see. My grandfather, Pete's dad, Harry Masuoka, came over from Japan. He was born in Okayama, and he came over in, I think, 1906, to San Francisco. So he experienced the great earthquake then so that was kinda a welcome thing for him. He heard good things about the agricultural possibilities here in Sonoma County and he predominantly lived in Sebastopol. Dale: It's not unlike Italian immigrants coming to Sonoma County. They were Japanese immigrants and, but they end up really starting with an apple orchard, right?Alan: Yes. Starting growing apples and at that time it was really big to pick the apples and dry them. There were some very famous apple dryers, I believe, the Barlow that we have downtown. That was a family that did a lot of apple drying. My folks, they used to go pick apples and help dry 'em, pack 'em. It was quite a big industry. Dale: Why did you decide to write this book about your uncle? Alan: When Covid hit, I found myself during the shelter-in-place thinking, I got some time on my hands. Why don't I pull out this old shoebox that I had stuck notes from family get-togethers like reunions and weddings, and when people would talk about Pete, I would jot it down on a napkin or the program and I just saved them. I guess I felt like I was a family historian to some degree. I said I know about my other uncles because I met them, but I don't know a great deal about Pete.I've heard stories, right? But I really wanted to get to know the individual. So I sat down and started to write; this was about three years ago. It's been a profound journey doing this, full of these encounters that have really touched my soul. In general, the story kind of told itself which was very, very comforting and very rewarding. . Dale: To get into that story a little bit, Peter has what I might consider an ordinary life growing up here in Sebastopol.Alan: It was hard writing this because there wasn't a lot of information about Pete. And so I really had to try to gather information from those that are still around that I could talk to, like my mom, his sister.I knew that he was born in Sonoma and this was back in the 1920s. He went to the local schools and the family lived just off of Hurlbut, so it was close to Analy. I can imagine him walking to school. I learned that he was a very good athlete as well as he was successful at academics.He was the first Japanese American to receive the American Legion Award as a senior. That was quite an honor. The athletics was interesting because I was able to learn from my mom and also my Aunt Ginger Masouka, Pete was a left-handed individual. At the time in public education, everyone was taught to write right-handed. So that's why my mom says that's why Pete's handwriting is so illegible.I think he was a very humble person. I don't think if he was around today, he would talk about his achievements. He went to the JC and played football and tried rugby there. One of those profound moments was when I was helping my mom declutter one of her backrooms. I saw in the back these two old scrapbooks and this person by the name of Jack Acorn had made them. They were full of the SRJC, the junior college football team records and pictures of the players. There was a picture of Pete. I go mom, how'd you get this? She goes, I don't know. I learned that he continued to play on the grid iron there, and did fairly well. As a side, I looked up Jack Acorn on the internet thinking, gee, it'd be great to get these back to the Acorn family. And I was able to. I was able to get in touch with his son Michael, and he lived in Petaluma as had his Dad. We had a nice chat and with his permission I donated those books, the scrapbooks to the Junior College Historical Society,Dale: That's great. Now, your family was also members of the Emmanji Temple in Sebastopol. Alan: Yeah. Yeah. There were ties to Buddhist church there. Though a lot of the Japanese Americans were Buddhist, our family gravitated more to Christianity. In fact, in the camp, internment camp, that's where my mom really became convinced that Christianity was her calling. I don't know what Pete would say. Dale: I was fascinated by the temple, that its origins were at from a World's Fair in San Francisco. Alan: The local community people, they heard about this building and they basically made a plea, can we please buy this and have it shipped out to Sebastopol? And then it was resurrected. Dale: You mentioned it already, World War II happens, and this is part of where, the ordinary life that Peter had becomes extraordinary. Your whole family is deeply affected by this. Alan: My parents, the Masuokas, they lived in Sebastopol and right after the attack at Pearl Harbor, the President of the United States signed an Executive Order to have all Japanese Americans on the West Coast to be basically rounded up and put into internment camps. Some people call them prison camps. Some people call them concentration camps. I like to make a distinction that these concentration camps were very different to what happened in Germany and the concentration camps there.That said, my parents were told you have to move. You have to go. And what's amazing about is how fast this happened. Many Japanese Americans were given maybe a week, maybe two, to sell everything, to close their businesses. They didn't know where to go, that's just amazing.So they basically could take only what they could carry, like a small suitcase. I asked myself, what do you pack? You don't know where you're going, so you don't know if you're gonna bring clothes for snow. The desert. So do you bring your books? You just basically bring your bare essentials?The folks here in Sonoma County, they were told in order to attend to the Santa Rosa Railroad station, the depot there. So they got there. A funny little story is that mom's good friend Barbara Bertoli, and they're still close, Barbara's mom, I think she worked or was associated with some sort of a Red Cross agency. My mom always remembered this. When the Masuokas got to the train station, she saw Barbara's mom and she had sandwiches for people. Many places in the West Coast, emotions were very high, right? And in many places where the Japanese lived, there was a lot of resentment; there was a lot of hatred, anger; there was violence.Here in Sonoma County, in general, the people treated the Japanese Americans, I think with really a kind heart. For example, they would help some of the Japanese Americans take care of their things while they were gone, pay their property taxes so they wouldn't lose their property. So, it really speaks well to the folks here in Sonoma County..Dale: You described this, but first generation and second generation Japanese. Was it your grandparents were first generation, Issei and Nisei are second generation. Is that right? Alan: That's right. Dale: The point of that is you are American citizens. It really is sad that they did not recognize your status as citizens and your rights as citizens. Alan: Exactly. True. In fact my dad, Jim Murakami, in the book, I talked a little bit about some of his pretty traumatic experiences he had when he was going to Analy and about racial injustices.After the war, he became an advocate for civil rights, specifically the Japanese-American Civil Rights. He first became a president of the local Japanese-American Citizens League. Then he climbed the ranks, culminating in being president of the National Japanese American Citizens League. He was a very humble person. He probably would give me the eye if he was here and heard me talking about him. I'm proud to say that he, along with many others, were instrumental in getting reparations and redress passed through the US Congress for Japanese Americans who were unjustly put into camps.Dale: How long was that period? Alan: Yeah, they were in camp in 1942. And again, they didn't know where they were gonna go. They first went to assembly centers.The Sonoma County bunch were directed to the Merced Assembly Center where they stayed for a couple of months, I wanna say, because the US Army and the US government, they said, okay, you folks have to move. But they didn't have really a great plan on what to do, so they were still building the camps. So after the camps were basically almost completed, then they were shipped by train from Merced to Colorado (to the Amache Japanese Internment Camp.)Dale: You mentioned in the book, the different weather each time they moved. It was warmer in Merced than it was Sonoma County. Then it was colder in Colorado than it was in Sonoma County. Alan: That's so true. I have a great picture in the book. It's one of my favorite ones of my mom and her parents in Colorado. It was like a photo op because they weren't allowed to have cameras in camp, so I'm not sure how those (photos) came to be. But different families stood in front of this huge snowman. It must be about 12-14 feet tall. My mom's dressed in a dress, and it just signifies that's all she packed was this dress to be in the Colorado snow. Later after things got settled down in camp, they had rhythms. They were finally able to order clothing from like Montgomery Wards, I think it was, or Sears, and they finally were able to get boots and Woolies and that sort of thing. Dale: Peter. is at the JC , as we were last talking about him here. He goes with the family to the internment camp, is that correct? Alan: Yes, he does. Dale: But then he enlists in the army, is that right? Alan: Yes. He enlists in the army when in camp, which I can't imagine. Here you are in this place, you're told by your government with the connotation that you're disloyal: we don't trust you. Then the Army, knowing they need more young men to fight in Europe and Japan, comes to you and says, will you join us? So Pete did. I asked my mom this. I said were there any misgivings that Pete had? She said, no, unequivocally, no. She said her father, Harry, and all of the brothers wanted to prove they were loyal Americans. And so Pete enlisted. Dale: That was about 1943. Alan: Yes. Dale: What happens to him from that point on?Alan: He enters the army and he goes to Camp Shelby in Mississippi where he does his basic training. He's there for maybe a little over a year. Here's where I don't have a lot of records. What I've been able to ascertain is he was trained to be in headquarters company, which was doing things like clerical, but also they had some artillery training.Pete was ultimately assigned to his artillery unit. While there (at Camp Shelby), he had opportunities to go visit other places on when he was on leave. He actually was able to come back to Amache. He had one leave to go there. I don't mention this in the book. I have a picture of him in camp with his uniform and he's turned away. But he is smiling and he is holding a flag and his mom's in the picture. What my mom tells me is that this was a propaganda photo taken by Paramount showing that the camp was wonderful, that everyone was happy. So that was a little aside. Then, after basic, he was assigned to the very famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was a segregated unit, except for the officers who were Caucasians. So he was with that very famous unit, which was the most highly decorated unit ever in military history for its size. They had that many casualties and awards and such. He and his brother were both in the 442. Eventually Pete shipped out to go to Italy. That's where the 442 met up with the 100th battalion, which was from Hawaii. Pete fought in the campaigns in Italy first, and saw battle there. After that, then they were ordered to go into France. Dale: Occupied France, right? Alan: Yeah. I can't even imagine because many of the Nisei did not talk about the horrors of war, what they experienced. But it was very horrific. I just can't even imagine what they went through. When Pete was over in France, there were these huge battles that they were fighting with the Germans and the Germans had been there for over a couple years, so they were entrenched. They knew where to be in order to inflict the most casualties.The US Army had many tough battles to move toward Germany. Hitler was very adamant: you folks have to stop these armies or if they cross this one mountain range (Vosges), then we will lose the war. So they were very motivated to stop the Army advances. As the days went by, the 442 was making progress along with the 100th.Then there was this one battle that is very important and it was called the Rescue of the Lost Battalion. There was this one US group that was cut off from friendly lines and they were surrounded by the Germans and the US Army sent different rescue groups over and over again. They couldn't get through. The Texans were just being cut off and it did not look good. So finally they ordered the 442. We got to send these guys in; they seem to be able to get it done. I'm not saying that the other units didn't, but 442 had had successes and so they advanced over and over again and finally they were able to rescue this lost battalion.As a side note, I mentioned, the Barlow family. Tom Barlow went to Analy and this is in the book. I'm not sure how Tom got assigned to this Texas Battalion but he was one of those that was in that group that was rescued. I can only wonder, I wish I could ask Pete, did you see Tom. What a moment, right?The 442 experienced so many casualties during that mission. This was in November 1944. Pete survived that horrific battle. Then this one day, he was assigned to a mission but he did that mission in the morning, came back and he was tired. All these guys were just exhausted. One of the leaders said, okay, we need another group to go out and get some of the wounded. Lens Murakami was supposed to go and he said, I don't feel well, and I might make note his last name is Murakami. No relation.Being the volunteer that he is or was, Peter says: I'll go. I have a picture of that day where he is standing next to a Jeep with Lens Murakami, this other individual, and on the back of it says November 3rd. I'll get back to that important piece. Pete raises his hand, volunteers, and goes out to rescue these soldiers.As he's doing that, a mortar round comes down and Pete orders his men to go to the left and he dives to the right. He's killed by this mortar round. So, on the back of that photograph, I asked my mom, was this taken the day that Pete died? It was. So after he was killed, his buddies back at the camp were told. They went out and said we're not leaving Pete behind. We're gonna go and get his body. They took a vehicle and got Pete and brought him back Dale: He was originally buried in France.Alan: Yes, he was. In Épinal, France was where he was first laid. After the war, the US Army asked his mom, would you like him to stay there? Or we can bring Pete home. She elected to have him come back to California. He's currently at the National Golden Gate Cemetery in San Bruno. Every Memorial Day we go and see Pete, and we take flowers.Dale: That's how your book opens. It was a annual ritual for your family to go down there on Memorial Day, wasn't it? Alan: Yes, we do. We've been doing it since I can remember. . Dale: So you grew up wondering who he was? Alan: Yes, I always heard bits and pieces, but I didn't know who was this individual. I ascertained that he was a quiet individual, modest. Out of all of the Masuoka boys, he was the only one in Boy Scouts. That was a revelation to me. He liked to go on dates and and he was engaged. What was another very profound experience when writing this and being on this journey of writing was I learned about his fiance and her name was Holly. This person named Marsha Onamia Evans contacted me out of the blue and said, hi, I'm Holly's niece. She said, “Holly passed (around March of 2022) and I have some possessions that I think you, the Masuokas would like to have.”So we met and Marsha hands over this trinket. It's this little gold locket and when you open it, it has a picture of Pete and a picture of Holly inside. It was so amazing because even though they were engaged to be married in camp they decided to break off the engagement.I tried to ascertain why was that? I learned from my mom that Pete had asked his dad, Harry: I'm thinking of marrying Holly. My grandpa says to Pete: “you might wanna consider that because you know you're going off to war, and if something happens, she's going to be a widow.” So he says: “you're right. I think maybe we should wait.” I asked Marsha what was Holly's thinking? And Marsha shared with me that Holly was a very private person. Very quiet. Didn't say a lot. But what she gathered was that Holly thought: I'm really the person that's taking care of my parents, (her parents) and so I don't think I can commit to married life right now.After they broke it off and Pete died, Holly never married. That signifies that she loved Pete so much and so she never committed to another relationship. She still kept those mementos too. Dale: Did they meet at the camp?Alan: Good question. They met at, I think, he was in Analy and she was going to another high school. So they met before Pearl Harbor. So they had a relationship and dated and then they were both in camp, both families were at Amache.Dale: Were people in camp until the end of the war?Alan: Yes. They were there until the end of the war and then after the war the Japanese and Chinese Americans were told, okay you can go home. They go, okay. I think they were given like $20-25 each or something like that. So you go, okay, I'm here for year or two, and I go home. What does that look like? Some people didn't have homes to go to because they lost them. Again, here in Sonoma County many were able to return and they had their farms and businesses to return to. They had to start over to some degree. Interesting aside is my grandfather Harry had some close connections to many of the Caucasian families here in Sebastopol. He was invited to come before a lot of the folks, and he ran a hostel, and when the families came back over, he would well help those families to have a place to stay while they got their things in order.Feelings again were running pretty high even after the war. One family, the Muritas, when they came back, a couple days after, someone fired gunshots toward their house. Mr. Murita contacted my grandfather to ask, what do I do?Harry said, go to the Chief of Police in Sebastopol. They didn't have a car yet, so they had to walk into town and the chief was very helpful and supportive. So it wasn't an easy go, but I think it was easier than other communities in California. Dale: Alan, would you read a segment from your book? Alan: Sure. It was hard for me to choose what to read. So I just thought about chapter five, where he's spending time at Analy and at the junior college. So here's a piece.My Aunt Ginger shared that when she was beginning to date her future husband, Pete's brother, Frank, that Frank once said something to her that was mesmerizing and profound. He said, with a tear in his eye, no one can come up to be an equal to Pete Masuoka. He's the greatest football player I've ever seen.Margaret added that h e was a good athlete and a pretty not bad quarterback. And during those games at Analy, the high school radio announcer would sometime describe Pete's great plays by saying, "and that Pete Mazooka threw a great pass." The next day, mom at Analy would get teased at school and friends would smile and say, Margie, who is this, Pete Mazooka? Dale: Good. Thank you, Alan, for telling us about Peter Masuoka. Alan: You're welcome, Dale. Thank you. To order a copy of this book, contact Alan at [email protected]. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Micah and Michelle Sawyer join me to talk about fentanyl, a drug that’s become more widely available illegally in Sonoma County and elsewhere across the country. The Sawyers lost their 22-year old son, Micah, Jr to a fentanyl overdose in 2019. Since then, they have been letting others know about how prevalent fentanyl is, how addictive and deadly it is and how having drug Narcan widely available can prevent fentanyl overdose deaths. Micah and Michelle were named Locals Who Make a Difference by the City of Sebastopol in October 2021. They were also recognized by the KPIX Jefferson Award in January 2023. Links:* Micah’s Hugs* Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office Fentanyl information resourceTranscriptDale: Fentanyl is a dangerous and deadly drug. It is a synthetic opioid originally prescribed legally as a painkiller, but increasingly this drug has been easier to get illicitly and fentanyl is also mixed into all kinds of drugs in pill and powder form, so that many users are unaware that they are taking it. Most drugs, authorities say, that anyone can buy illegally, will have fentanyl in them. The question is how much.Last year, according to the Sonoma County District Attorney's office, there were 63 fentanyl overdose deaths in Sonoma County through November. Fentanyl overdoses take the lives of habitual drug users, but they are also taking the lives of people who are experimenting with drugs maybe for the first time.And that's why the DA's office has put up billboards around Sonoma County saying one pill can kill. Narcan is a nasal spray that can be administered to anyone experiencing a fentanyl overdose and it can save their life. My guests today are Micah and Michelle Sawyer of Sebastopol, who lost their son to a Fentanyl overdose in 2019. Micah Jr. was just 22 years old. The Sawyers created the nonprofit Micah's Hugs to focus efforts on awareness of the dangers of Fentanyl and to help prevent fentanyl overdose deaths by making Narcan more widely available. Micah: My name is Micah Sawyer and I'm here with my wife Michelle Sawyer. And we started a nonprofit, Micah's Hugs almost three years ago, after we lost my son to a fentanyl overdose, after struggling for a while with an addiction problem. And we're just really looking for a way to try to do something to help with this pretty major problem that we saw firsthand and struggled through firsthand, and are still struggling through firsthand, but trying to help other people in any way we can. I'm just looking for ways that we can fit in where it feels like there's need. Dale: Michelle you've been involved you probably have a lot of day-to-day responsibility for this, right? Michelle: Yeah. I'm kinda the behind the scenes person. Micah is our spokesperson. I helped get the nonprofit started and try to work with grants and get a lot of the funding and do a lot of the clerical work. Micah: She's so far gotten over half a million dollars worth of grants for purchasing the Narcan that we distribute out in the community, so it's really great.Dale: We read about fentanyl in the newspaper. We read about drugs. To some degree, you might think that doesn't happen here in Sebastopol, that doesn't happen to kids going to Analy. It doesn't happen to kids going to Santa Rosa High School, but that's not true, Micah: No. Unfortunately, there's been some pretty big problems with it at Analy and pretty locally, a lot of it with pills and the fake prescription pills that contain fentanyl, going around the schools. I feel it's like there's outbreaks that happen here and there, and the problem goes up and down and up and down, but it's a big problem. And we know numerous kids from Analy that have passed away because of fentanyl overdoses. Dale: How do they get involved in this? I guess some parents might think, like marijuana's the thing that's really accessible today. But geez, this is a different level of drug. Micah: Yeah, it's a very different level of drug. And Micah didn't get involved through an injury, but a lot of kids actually do, maybe through a sports injury where they get on painkillers to start with and then get addicted to those painkillers and then have a hard time coming off of them.And that's a big reason why kids are buying these fake prescription pills because they think they're the same painkillers that they've been getting from their doctors, but they're actually fake. They look like the real thing. They're pressed, like the real thing. There was actually a bust in Sebastopol from some people that were pressing them right here in Sebastopol and making them, manufacturing them and then selling them to the kids in the community.So it's pretty local and it doesn't take a giant manufacturing thing. Dale: So do the kids buy them thinking they're addressing a pain problem? Or something else. Micah: I think they get started as a pain problem when they start taking them and then once they realize they become hooked, addicted to them, both physically and mentally, and then they can't get them from their doctor anymore. So they continue looking for that same thing to feed their addiction. My son didn't actually get started through a pain thing. I think he was just experimenting and looking for some sort-- the fentanyl is really a painkiller and it's a physical painkiller, but it's also a mental painkiller.So especially when kids are going through hard times and feeling a lot of the struggles that we all felt as teenagers, it's a way to cope with the pain and take away that pain that they're feeling. Yeah, my son started a little different than the other kids that started with pain pills, he did tell me at one time that he tried heroin for the first time at 14.Dale: And you didn't know that at the time? Micah: No, I didn't know that until after he graduated high school. Dale: So you could say that there, there's locally manufactured fentanyl here. It comes from other parts of the state and world, but how is it being distributed?Micah: When I was starting to look into a lot when my son was struggling with his addiction and he had a lot of friends that were addicts and they were all desperately looking for their next fix, and they all really helped each other.So I really learned a lot and came to this conclusion that I didn't find this really big drug dealer preying on my son. But what I found was a whole bunch of struggling young men and kids that were all in their minds, they were looking out for each other, trying to help each other get what they needed to get through their fix.And they would all look for different sources here and there, and they'd pop up all over the place. They'd find somebody has a stash over here and they'd drive somewhere and bring back whatever they found for their friends to help them with it or wherever it happened to be. It's starting to now actually become pretty big to just be able to order them through the mail.The fentanyl is so potent and so powerful. You can buy a tiny, little envelope package that has a thousand doses in that and it can just be sent through the mail. Michelle: There's also even a larger problem right now than that because there's that's lot of people are doing party drugs and they don't even know that fentanyl is in there. So like the coke and meth addicts are passing away, overdosing, because they don't realize it's in there. That's actually the biggest craze going on right now. Like the line, the one pill can kill. Not knowing it's in there is even scarier.Micah: We're finding out recently there's been a whole bunch of these new pills going around that have fentanyl, but they're colored so they look like little candies and know they're being distributed out to the kids. These colored little pills that seem fun to play with. Dale: Talk about Micah Jr. a bit, which I think is important because whether it's Analy or other schools, you say we know the kids that do drugs and they look like this and they, act like this. Micah wasn't one of those kids.Micah: And that's an important message for us, we've been trying to get out to reduce that stigma for people to realize that you huge portion of the people that are struggling are not the people you think they are, the people that you would point to.Him and I were super active in all sorts of sports activities, hunting, fishing, motorcycle riding, and we did everything together. Scuba diving was a passion for him. Then he got super into football. He was captain of the football team for two years. He was the strongest kid on the football team. He held the record for the most weights lifted in whatever weightlifting competition they were in. And during that time, he was super popular and everybody thought he was just going places and he was most likely to succeed in some ways, sort of an idea that people thought about him and everybody looked up to him and they didn't realize what a struggle he was going through.And I think it was he tried hard to live up to that idea that people had about him, and I think that was a struggle too. He managed to maintain what he was doing through high school, but after high school it just became harder and harder, and his struggles became harder and he started to slip into irresponsible habits and you started to see that something was going on. It wasn't until after high school that I realized that he was struggling with some sort of addiction and tried to find ways to help him.  It's really hard to set a date as to when he became an addict, but I think, he really started experimenting with things in high school and then, at what point does experimenting become much more of a problem, become substance abuse, become full blown addiction sort of a thing. I know through high school that he was experimenting with different substances and starting to struggle and then it was a slow decline from there, from where, like I said, you started to notice habits that weren't great and then he started to notice habits that were really bad.And then for a while he ended up just living in his truck and not really being able to function very well. There was a period of about seven months in the end where he had kicked the habit and was doing really well. He did get a job and he was living with his mom, and that's at the period, at the end of that seven months where he had a relapse.Most of the time that he was using, he was actually smoking black tar heroin. He had a phobia for needles, so he never injected anything. And then in the end, when he finally died, it was from smoking black tar heroin that was laced with fentanyl. I still don't know whether he knew there was fentanyl in it at that time.I believe most of the addicts were trying to avoid fentanyl, but it was getting laced into things. Today it's really almost impossible to find heroin on the streets, and the opioid addicts now are doing straight fentanyl, and they know that it's fentanyl and that's what they want to be doing. So it's changed quite a bit since Micah passed away.Dale: And what makes it so deadly? Micah: One is its addictiveness. It's super addictive. So people get hooked pretty fast. But also the potency of it. It's so strong. I think it's hard to regulate in doses that somebody's taking.If people were getting a pharmaceutical dose that was perfectly regulated every time, I think that the deaths at least would go way, way down. Maybe not the addiction, but the deaths. And so I've read stories about fentanyl on the streets that's ranged from 8% pure fentanyl to 95% pure fentanyl.So somebody's used to taking something that's 8% pure fentanyl, and then the next batch they get is 95% pure and they take the same dose. It's gonna, it's gonna kill them. Dale: Partially in response to Micah's death-- I saw something on your website.-- you wanted to tell his story. You wanted other kids like him to learn from him.Micah: Yeah, absolutely. Dale: And so what did you start to do?Micah: The very first thing I did is actually we started getting fentanyl test strips and we started getting them out into the community. One of Micah's best friends and his ex-girlfriend went missing and we made a mission to find them and it took us a while and we finally found them in a homeless tent encampment in Oakland.And they were struggling quite a bit and we made this call that we would go down and get fentanyl test strips and give it out to people in their tent encampment. And they told us right away, and this was the first time we learned of, and we were shocked by the fact that they said we know we're doing fentanyl and it's all straight fentanyl, so we don't really need your, your test strips, so thank you. So we just started looking to how we could help and where we could help. And then I started thinking about when Micah was struggling, I was buying Narcan, which is the drug that brings somebody back from an opioid overdose. And I used to pay $150 a box for it.And what I realized looking out in the communities of people that were addicts or parents of people that were struggling is many of them didn't know about it. Many of them didn't have it on hand or couldn't afford to pay the money for it. So we really thought that was a great place to try to get this introduced into our community.And that's where Michelle started looking into grants that were available and ended up getting a grant. I think our first grant was for 1800 boxes. There's two doses in the box, so that's 3,600 doses of Narcan. That was our first grant that we started distributing. That really seemed to be where things were missing.And a lot of people didn't know about it. A lot of people didn't realize how much it could help and what it could do. We watched a documentary recently was about safe injection sites, and they said that nobody has ever died at a safe injection site. They've overdosed many times. Because they have Narcan, because they have oxygen and they know what to do if somebody overdoses, they never end up dying. Dale: And so your strategy has been to set up distribution of Narcan. Where are you putting it? Michelle: I think any place we can find. A lot of the firehouses offer their locations. So we've been trying to go throughout the county, just hitting different locations.And there's once a month at the library here locally in Sebastopol, they're doing like a community day. And so we've been invited there and we'll be back there next week. And so we'll have a little booth there. So if people wanna come get Narcan, they can. We have people actually reached out to us, wanting it.And so I've even mailed some to people, but Narcan really should be in everyone's hands, always in the past they said everyone should be CPR certified or trained. I think they should be combined with it, everybody should have box of Narcan.It's a nasal spray, so it's just a little click of a button in your nose and it's usually can take anywhere from a minute or two minutes to take effect. And there have been people that have had to take almost 12 doses because they've been so heavily drugged and in the state of overdose.We train people how to use it and we, we always say call 911 because once you bring them back, they could re-overdose because there's so much in their system. They need medical attention as well.Micah: Unfortunately, even the fire departments around here have been struggling to get enough. So we've actually been giving some out to the fire departments here, and Michelle started actually working with the local fire department to teach them how to write their own grant so they can get grants of their own to get it for free. So we're now trying to, fundraise to pay for it. Michelle: The local brewery here in Sebastopol, they asked us to come and train their staff because especially for the party users that don't know, they might have fentanyl in their party product or whatever they're using.We think a lot of bars and servers, they should all be trained and have actually Narcan on site. We've heard of a lot of people go and have a few drinks and then they might do some party drugs and overdose in the bathroom. Dale: It makes me think that this is not just a teen, young adult thing. You're seeing it in the broader population. Michelle: Absolutely. Yeah. Especially now that it's being involved in the party drugs. Micah: For sure. Michelle: Another age group is from the middle schoolers between 12 to 15 year olds is hitting high right now. A lot of it is because of the colored different drugs that look like candies and they're experimenting. But I know locally, even at Santa Rosa Middle School, they've had a couple kids overdose and actually pass, unfortunately. So it's really important to make sure the education at middle school is out there. Dale: Do you do talks to schools or kids in assemblies about this? Michelle: We're starting to get involved in it, but it's a little gray area with some schools because they're still learning about it. They don't understand If there's any legal actions or anything with it. So they're they're a little nervous about it, but we have been invited to a couple schools. We even had a parent of an Analy high school student. The kids wanted the training, so we went over for a day and spent a day with about 15 high schoolers and educated them and answered questions they had. Micah: And part of the education we do is that Narcan is completely inert if you're not having an overdose. So there are no negative side effects. And if you make the mistake of giving it somebody who's not actually overdosing, it does nothing. So I think the more people learn that there's really no risks involved and there's no dangers, the more they accept it, but they're a little bit standoffish at first, if you're talking to their kids. Michelle: And there's good Samaritan laws that protect you from it. So you're completely protected if you try, if you do and there's that little small chance that some someone does have an effect to it, you are protected. And so that's important to get out that message out there.We've been trying to get a lot of people to be trained and like businesses and establishments and they're worried about the liability and they don't wanna have the product on hand. There's even another age category that hasn't been thought about and it's elderly people.And we actually had an elderly lady come to our one of our trainings with her husband and she says, I'm on quite a few different pain medications. I want my husband to be trained on Narcan because what if I just mess up and take double the amount I was supposed to in one day just for age and forgetfulness.Micah: And Narcan will work on any opioid with both, natural and synthetic. So heroin and morphine and most of the painkiller pills that are low opioids. Dale: What are your goals? What do you wanna do now or in the future?Micah: What we're trying to do now is just get as much awareness as we can out into the community, really train people and teach people and get them to accept that Narcan is a very important tool to have. And the fentanyl test strips as well we're trying to get out to the community and teach people how to use them, cause there are some dangers of not using them properly. And then long-term goals, we're all over the place, but we do have big ideas and big thoughts. You wanna talk about some of that? Michelle: One thing is the rehab facilities around here are limited and most people do like Micah Jr was in for 30 days and normally you're just detoxing them at 30 days.So your frame of mind really isn't in a great space. So we'd like to actually have a place where you could even detox, or detox and rehab for anywhere from three months to a year or even longer. And even have on the facility to retrain people so that they could go out in the world and learn different trades and everything. Like maybe even, construction or culinary and different things like that. So as they're rehabbing, they're also working and then they could transition into outside of the rehab into real world. Micah: You like to have something that's a little bit more flexible and understands that not everybody's for the typical, abstinence only or AA type of program. And not everybody fits into those programs. And I'm not putting them down because they have their place and they're great for some people, but not for everybody. Dale: I talked to the local homeless outreach coordinator in Sebastopol and she was saying it was difficult to get someone to go into drug rehabilitation, but even when she'd get them to agree to go, that doesn't mean there's an opening in a facility.Micah: I've talked to somebody recently that's struggling and they said they went to a rehab place and looking for help and they said you're not bad enough off yet to need our help. Wait till you're in the gutter and then come into full blown rehab.We really feel there needs to be more help for people that are in the middle somewhere that aren't like ready to go sign up to live in rehab, full blown, and but are looking for something. Michelle: Another big problem is a lot of people at homeless especially have animals because that's like their only friend and most places won't accept animals. We'd actually like to be out on property where we have even ranch animals and they could even maybe, possibly have their, their companion with them. That's so important to a lot of the people wanting treatment. Micah: There's been a lot of success in some prison programs where they're bringing people out, working with animals. We've seen programs on horse training and dog training and stuff like that really give people a purpose. And so bringing something like that into sort of a rehabilitation situation seems like they could really work well too.Dale: One last question? What kind of role does the police have in our community around, around this? Michelle: That's our next venture, is we wanna really reach out to see how we can work further with them and also educate some of the law enforcement, because I think there's some, they're still a little more old school and they're not quite up to date with actually Narcan and there's a lot of, some judgment with people. Micah: Michelle actually got a speeding ticket a while ago, which was fine; she deserved the speeding ticket, but the police officer that gave her the ticket saw a box of Narcan in the car and he said: "is there a reason why you have that?"She explained, who we were and what we did. And then when he came back, she said, is there a problem that I had this? And he looked at her and he said there's only one type of person that would've that in their car, like judging her as an addict. And my first response was mad that he was judging her as an addict.And my second response was even if she is an addict, shouldn't he be encouraging her to have the safe things that she needs to have as an addict and not putting her down for it. Michelle: Yeah, and it wasn't Sebastopol police officers, no. Dale: That's good. Micah: But definitely thought it would be really good to start trying to maybe even. We may even work with Sebastopol police a little bit. That was a possibility that came up with somebody that we were talking with, but train police officers to try to help them understand more about it. Dale: Thank you for your time today. I'd love to help you in any way I can. It's marvelous what you're doing and so important. Micah: Great. Thank you. I think, you just, you're doing something like this and bringing some attention to what we're doing. It's wonderful. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

This episode, a conversation with David Mark-Raymond, covers a lot of ground. It’s about community service and the way that individuals get involved in service clubs like Rotary to do things locally and internationally. It’s about David’s personal story; he was once a teacher and then a realtor; he’s been a longtime member of Sunrise Rotary; and a few years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer and beat the odds, which led him to retire and focus even more on community service. It’s also about how a small circle of folks including David who helped bring two Ukrainian refugee families from Germany to homes in Sonoma County. So, consider this a conversation about the ways that people like David, along with many others, accomplish a lot by working together in and for our community.David and his wife, Susan, are members of the Lone Pine Ukrainian Family Aid (LPUFA) group, led by John Namkung (I interviewed John last Fall). LPUFA also includes Gina Blaber, Gary Moe and Betty Beavers. The two friends, both named Iryna, lived in Chernihiv in the Ukraine, which is close to the border with Russia. After living as a refugees in Germany, they moved to Sonoma County last year with their families.TranscriptDale: I'm joined on this episode by David Mark Raymond. David, I hope we're gonna talk about community service. David is a leader in this in my view, and has lots of experience in the Rotary and different groups. So we're gonna dive into that today. But first of all, welcome David. David: Thank you very much. Nice to see you Dale. Dale: Nice to have you here. So give me a bit of, what's your background and work history. How would you describe yourself? David: Yeah, as an interesting character, yes, I do keep on ending up in leadership roles, but I'm only one of many. So my background might help to set the context for who I am.I was raised in the army. My parents who were both disabled in World War II, they ended up with injuries that continued and were eventually a hundred percent service connected disability from their experiences. One in the Pacific, the other in in Europe, and they met in rehab at the end of the war, and everybody was getting married. They did too. Then these poor unfortunates went on to have four children.It was a difficult upbringing. As my dad was fortunate they kept him in the army, which is a whole story in and of itself. But they both continue. My father's injuries were mostly psychological. My mother's were both psychological and physical. And so it prepared me for people who are different, people who have to find their own way through lives and it's not given them and work and believing that everybody has value.So it set the context for the rest of my life. Dale: My, and where was that physically? What location were you? David: First in Seattle, Washington at a small military base there then in Fort Belvoir in Virginia, which placed us close to Walter Reed Army Hospital because my dad would periodically need to be Hospitalized for his depression.So he would go in and they would patch him back together again, put him back out and wind him up and he'd go again. And that was how it all happened. I realized early on that I was not in a normal family. And as every family takes on a different role, mine appeared to be caregiver and steering and helping us to be as integrated with the community as we could be. I started off as a volunteer working with individuals who had handicapping conditions developmental disabilities, mental retardation, cerebral policy, epilepsy, autism. So as a teenager I did that with a volunteer group, and that was my social group, were the folk that I had collected and helped to organize around integrating folk with special needs into the world. And a humble brag, as there was nobody around who wanted as an adult to work with that population, or not very many people-- there were more remunerative things to do-- I gave up my idea of being a school teacher and began working with folk with special needs as things went along. Very quickly I became a director and an administrator, and then ran a series of nonprofits and taught in them and worked in them for the Junior College, for private concerns. And I just made a career outta running those things. I was an executive director and really enjoyed that, probably 20 years.Dale: In this area?David: Yes. In Sonoma County for the most part, a little bit in Vermont. Then at one point I had always wanted to be a school teacher. And so when I was turning 40, I realized, gosh, if I don't do it now, I never will.I had led progressively larger organizations. My last one I employed, I don't know, 125 people. And wanted to do something else so, I got a teaching credential. Taught sixth one year full-time. And that was all I did full-time. And then I taught kindergarten at Apple Blossom School in Sebastopol, two days a week and opened up a real estate practice which went on for the next, I don't know, 26, 27 years now.Real estate is essentially done -- it's social work with income. So I was able to support my family. I was very fortunate and that went really well for me.During that time, I continued to do a variety of things. In fact, I think when I first met you, I was president of a group that formed an educational foundation and was benefiting the basketball city schools. And I continued to keep my hand in doing things consulting, but I taught and because that wasn't going to be a long-term thing, real estate really took over for me. Dale: Over the last year or so you retired. Is that right? David: Some people won't see this as a blessing, but in reality it is. Having been raised under very modest circumstances, neither of my parents graduated from high school. I was the first person in my family to go to college, much less graduate from it. I got a master's degree in business from McLaren School of Business that augmented the work that I did as an administrator and helped me to be effective. In 2019, I had the good fortune of getting diagnosed with cancer. I had lymphoma and went for the standard treatment. And unfortunately the standard treatment was not effective for my particular cancer. Lymphoma's an umbrella and everybody's version of it is different. Mine was fast, aggressive, and I was told to, let's just say I, I was told to put my affairs in order because very few who had my characteristics would make it.Eventually they sent me to Stanford and put me through things that you don't want to hear about. But I got a lot of rounds of chemotherapy and ended up with a stem cell transplant. While I am down there at Stanford, I start thinking about my life, wouldn't one? And and I did have one big regret.I wasn't upset about the cancer so much. I was afraid that I had over saved from my retirement cuz I'm frugal and I worked hard and I saved money. I'm like, Hey, I'm not gonna get to use this. Great, Susan will get to use it. Susan's my wife. But maybe that wasn't gonna turn out so well and I really had to stop for the first time in my life, I had enough time to really stop, back up and think about what's important to me.And I realized that while I enjoyed working and it was great, I didn't need to anymore. I kept working because I always need something to do. I'm sort of a restless fellow. And I thought, so if you don't need the money, but you're still working and you still wanna work, how about if you work for free?Why don't you reverse? So I had been involved with Rotary since 1997 and here we are 23 years later. I've been involved with Rotary. I'm doing other things, projects all the time, and I love that. And I said, why don't you just reverse. I still am licensed to sell real estate, but I don't actually do it. I consult, so I help people with problem properties. General planning about should they buy, should they sell, should they help their kids? How will that all work? What does it line up like? Lot lines, septic systems, all the things of country properties and in town , and people in other places, but consulting is highly efficient. So I talk with them. Then I get somebody else who's going to actually write the contracts, sign things, put people in the cars, take them places, show them, counsel them, and do things like that. And I sit on the side available. I still have useful knowledge. So it's worked out quite well. That amounts to a little bit less than the amount of time that I used to spend on service to the community. So now I full-time pretty much work for Rotary, work for other service organizations and attempt to organize good things in our community because why would I not wanna do that? I work about as much as I did. It's not like I don't have a personal life. I do. But and always did, but this is working great for me. Dale: All right. So I wanted to dive into the kind of things you're doing. For someone who doesn't know Rotary, tell us about it. Why do you belong? What do you do? What's the overall goal of it?David: I joined it because I wanted an organized way that I could work in the community and do good things with a ready-made set of people. In the past, I used to pull people together and others would too, or I would join their ideas. But I joined Rotary thinking that I was going to have a bunch of people that I could entice to do good things.Actually it's turned out quite well. I've joined Rotary and they lead me to a lot of wonderful things I never contemplated would be possible for me. Rotary was founded in 1906 by a fellow named Paul Harris, who was looking for basically a circle of friends to connect with. He was a Vermont grown and bred fellow who became an attorney in Chicago and was not really enjoying his life there. So he built a little network of people and they started working together. Before 10 years were out, the idea caught fire and they not only were all over the United States, but in many other countries in the world. Rotary currently is about 1.4 million people worldwide; some clubs as small as six and some clubs as big as 300. They're all over the United States, pretty much well in more countries than actually participate in the UN currently. So that's how big it is. Rotary is neat because it's all volunteer with a very few, very thin paid staff in Evanston, Illinois, and a couple of other headquarters throughout the world.But we do projects together internationally. We do projects together locally. We put money into a large foundation both in terms of immediate money to use for disaster relief, to use for projects in areas of focus. Someone can go to rotary.org and have a peak at the sorts of things that Rotary does. I think they would be inspired. It really juiced me and got me going on things that I didn't realize were gonna be possible for me. Dale: Interesting. Practically speaking, in Sebastopol, aren't there two different rotary groups? David: There are. There's the older club meets on Fridays at noon. I had been invited to join it lots of times, but I would not join it because, and I used to go there when I ran nonprofits to get them to help me with things. And they were beautiful. I met with all of the service clubs, the Lions, the Kiwanis, all of them during those times. So that club had reached the point where it was so large that they felt it was unwieldy and they felt an opportunity might be there to start a club that would meet at another time of day on a different day.So in 1997 a fellow named Bruce Campbell got the got the okay to splinter off a little bit of that club and start a new one with new members. When I heard that they were gonna meet on Wednesday morning, 7:30, that's much more like me. I can't go to lunch on Friday and then expect to work afterwards. I joined that club and have been a member ever since.Dale: That's Sunrise. David: That's the Sunrise Rotary. Dale: You've been involved with John Namkung, who I've interviewed and I'll link to an interview with John, who's a fascinating person as well, helping to bring Ukrainian families to the area and settle them here. Can you talk about that? David: I think people should look at that link. It's wonderful. But John is a fellow that I've known for many years and he reached out to his circle of friends after he had seen online the beginning of the devastation in Ukraine.He decided he was going to go there; he was gonna volunteer and he was going to help people who had gotten to the Ukrainian border shuttle into Poland and get onto other destinations, allowing them to be refugees. And the story of how that evolves to a Ukrainian family being here has everything to do with John and is too great a story to summarize here.John, with one of the families that he met there, he realized that they were in need of different housing than they could find in Europe. Most of Europe, there was no room there. People are in dorms and all sorts of places. It's wonderful what Europe has done, but he felt, and I agree, that there's an opportunity for the United States to also help in those regards.This is everybody's problem. So he started talking with folks and he came around to my Rotary club and targeted me specifically because I do a lot of organizing for Rotary. He reached out to uh-- he was an administrator in Education. By profession. So he reached out to my wife and all of those retired social workers and psychologists and teachers that he had worked with when he ran the special education local area plan here in Sonoma County called the SELPA. It helps out with special education in all districts. He reached out to me and to others and said, do you think we can do this? Folks started meeting about it and said, maybe. That's a little scary. And we set a goal for ourselves that we needed enough money to be able to sustain a family, I think it was, three months and then we would fundraise and take chances. But this was failure is not an option, sort of proposition. How would that be if we brought them here and found out we couldn't really quite fundraise and then said to them Hey folks sorry, we can't keep you. But we had some lucky strokes.My older brother has a condition that has required that he be in a long-term care placement. And that opened up his house. We were able to secure his house at a very attractive rate and we could commit to two years. That is the length of time that one's gonna stay. So the family came under a refugee program that was opened by the Biden administration and it is called United States for Ukraine. It permitted sponsorship and also some good provisions.So John continues to be at the helm of our organization and and we've done a variety of fundraisers. I was able to reach out through Rotary and got support from eight clubs, basically paying that modest rent and all the utilities. A Rotarian gave them a car and a local shop agreed to do all the maintenance that would be required.And folk have helped in all sorts of ways, getting that house ready helping them to integrate into schools. And it's, there is a nonprofit associated, but we're just a loose little organization of people that figure out ways to make it tenable for this family. Dale: And originally the mother couldn't drive, didn't have a license and had not driven and you had people coming to take her and her children or to school or to shopping or whatever. She's managed to get her license and and and is doing well. David: And has work.Dale: Yes. And she has work now. But that integration is, it's a longer term commitment than just bringing someone here and saying, you've got a house. David: It's schools. It's English as a second language. It's services for all of the supports that are needed to establish a family here.There were a lot of different helps needed, and by the way, late breaking news. So this is a family -- the father, husband is in Ukraine and is part of the civil defense there. So this is grandmother, his mother and then a mother and two daughters, one in middle school, one in elementary school. They arrived here with the middle school daughter having some useful English. But that was all, and they have been doing amazingly, and that's due in large support to the school psychologists who helped, a large contingent of folk who are willing to do a variety of things and respond.We developed a list of folk who said, yeah, you can reach out to me and if I can help, I will. And that evolved. So the service Rotary helped out, the Lions organization, another brand of service club, as wonderful organization, if there was no rotary in town, I wouldn't start a Rotary. I would join the Lions or the KIwanis or the others. And it continues to this day. There was another family. Actually the first family knew this family. They were from the same town, 20 miles from the border with Russia and overrun in the first couple of weeks of the war.This family was living in a studio in Germany, and employment wasn't possible and they there was no kitchen in the place they lived. And it was problematic. Just let me say that. Problematic. So they said, Hey, what do you think? Can you guys sponsor this second family?Just having raised and done all the things we did, we went, oh, that's scary. Only if we can find a discounted or free rent. Let's reach out. And you yourself, Dale responded with a place to live. And a lot of support. And you actually became the sponsor for this family, you and Nancy. Lovely that you did that. Yeah. We call 'em the two Dale: possible, the two arenas. Originally they were calls and they're best friends. They knew each other. They're from Char I think you say it, in the Ukraine. This second family, the husband was with them. They have two boys, one who's now at Anally and one who's at Parkside. The the older boy speaks English pretty well. David: Yes he does. Dale: The other three are learning English as they go. I wanna come back to John because John has the kind of patience and diligence that is necessary to push a lot of this along. He figures out how to take care of what organizations they need to connect to for medical, for going to DMV and getting licenses, all these kinds of things. And he's certainly applied the things that he learned with the first family to the second family.John has done a remarkable job and you and others have been such a big support behind him. It's ongoing and that's what I find impressive. It's easy to give money sometimes and walk away and go on to your life, but you guys are meeting every other week to discuss the family's needs and how to meet them and how to help them here. And it will take a long time for them to integrate. But I think it's remarkable what you're doing.David: I think it's remarkable too, and they are entirely worth it. They're wonderful people. Very intelligent, very caring, very grateful and people who are worthy of support - certainly everybody's worthy. But yeah, these two families are just wonderful. And they're as self-sufficient as they can be. Dale: I wanna point out that there are other Ukrainian families in Sonoma County. David and I had a version of this conversation at my house a couple weeks ago where we brought them together about 30 people or so. But there's a set of twins and their father living here and there's another group Sebastopol World Friends that has been involved, and a lot of different folks. David: There are two families in Sebastopol, two families in Santa Rosa and one family in Cloverdale, a family in St. Helena. Each is making their way in different ways. I can say that the small ad hoc group is a little bit different format than you typically would see most of the others. It was an individual with substance who said, I can open a house for you and I can do these things.Yesterday our group had a meeting as we do regularly to, to process and see how everything's doing. And Dale , you might enjoy that I shared at that meeting that when I grow up I wanna be more like John because he is very organized. He uses the skills that he used to run a very large organization at SELPA, and he uses them well to marshal this group.He's doing things that he's never done before. He's never been a fundraiser. But golf tournament, concert , direct solicitations. This week, they will be meeting with Nina Gerber at the studio where she's going to record a Ukrainian anthem and the local Ukrainian families are going to be singing her backup. And they're good singers. It's gonna be lovely. I think it's going on an album. Dale: One other thing that caught my eye in January, the Biden administration announced the Welcome Corps. It was a program in which I'm quoting from New York Times as "private citizens will now also take on logistic and financial responsibility for helping thousands of refugees transition to life in the United States."And it's a kind of a new approach for the government to take, but I remember talking to John when I read the article saying, John, you're already doing this. And John's someone who's been involved with refugee nonprofit organizations and he said to me, this is, yeah, this citizen effort is a very different thing.And I think it's really important. And one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you today was just to tell people more about this. It's this feeling that there's a lot more we can do. But like you say with Rotary, if you have to do it all by yourself, it's really hard. If you can find other people and organize together and do it incrementally, you can really do things that others just can't do. David: I hearken back to Dwight Eisenhower. And what Dwight Eisenhower said to the American people, he said, the government will never be enough. And I agree with that. The government will do what it can and should do what it can to ensure health and safety of all of us and do what it can to make our world a better place. But it's never gonna do it all.This is our opportunity to do this and this isn't new. The Afghan crisis that is just a few years back. Some of those Afghanis, eight families that I'm aware of are in Sonoma County and finding their own way too. But this is interesting that the government would say, Yes, do this and you can sponsor, but our government is also doing something else that I think is pretty exciting.They opened up opportunities for us to secure aid to families with dependent children. Uh, Is a boon in terms of economics. They give a small modicum and then these folk don't end up really on the public dole. When you get aid to families with dependent children here in California, that qualifies you for CalFresh and that also qualifies you for Medi-Cal. The big, most expensive items are taken care of, if you can take care of some of the other things, that public-private partnership is most effective.Now, our family is here on a two-year visa. It's a refugee visa. I do not know what will happen next. Dale: Many of them fled the Ukraine thinking this is a short war. This problem would be over in weeks, months. We're coming on the, one year anniversary of the Ukraine war. They don't know when they'll be able to go back if they choose to do so. This, at least feels to them, a lot more secure and a place to raise their kids safely.David: Close to 4 million people at this point have fled Ukraine and dispersed to wherever they could go. There wasn't a lot of, there weren't a lot of vacant rooms there already. So I think it's lovely that Americans are participating and let's remember that America is, has always been, a land of immigrants. Dale: Okay. David. Thank you so much today for talking to me and sharing your own personal story, but also the ways that community service happens through local clubs and even small groups like John's. I think it's very important that people understand this is available for them to participate. But thank you again for your work. David: One more thing.Something that is adventing for your listeners who are in Sebastopol that might be interested. Very often service clubs like Rotary and Lions and Kiwanis and VFW, the Active 20-30s clubs, Masons-- we've kept in our silos, competing fundraisers, competing for volunteers to join us. And in the last two years, we came to the table with each other, made it a round table with support in large part from Diana Rich and some other folk at the city to talk and say different organizations have their purpose. Different organizations are mostly brands. And if we work together, we can be effective and do more things. So the current work is to channel service, not necessarily by saying, Hey, come join our club, or that club, or this club, or that. But to rather say, service organizations are relevant and make things happen in our community.They're well connected. I'm sure everybody in your audience knows several people who are involved with any given organization. So we are looking now to eventually evolve our membership but more importantly to involve people in volunteerism of a great variety of sorts. There are opportunities for local work, for international work. And if you're interested in service, then all of those service organizations are basically an app to help you integrate in the community, connect your business to others who are high minded and well connected, or to work on in retirement, whatever you like. You don't have to join, you can just do things with us.Dale: That's great. Okay. Thank you David, and appreciate your time today. David: Thank you, Dale. I'm glad to spend it with you.  Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Janet Webb recently shared her experience of the 6.4 earthquake that happened on December 20th in Ferndale. Skip Jirrels, head of Sebastopol Ready, which organizes MYN, invited Janet who lives in Sebastopol to speak at a meeting of the MYN group about what happened and what lessons she learned from the emergency. “I didn't do as well as I would've hoped,” she said candidly. This podcast is based on a lightly edited recording of MYN meeting of January 12th. Links for more info:* Sebastopol Ready is a program funded by the City of Sebastopol through the Sebastopol Fire Department.* About MYN — Map Your Neighborhood which is now called Meet Your Neighbors encourages people to work together to plan for emergencies and prepare to handle issues locally. You can sign up to learn more about the program and get involved in organizing your neighborhood.* Eight Steps of the MYN program. * Two types of radios are mentioned and recommended by MYN: FRS (Family Radio Service) are inexpensive walkie-talkie handheld radios for communication in your immediate area; GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service) require a license and have a greater range; FRS and GMRS radios can talk to each other on the same channels.Transcript:On December 20th, 2022, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit Ferndale in the middle of the night. Janet Webb, a Sebastopol resident was in Ferndale and she was jolted awake. As you'll hear, Janet's experience was quite ordinary. She and her family were not injured, but they were shaken and they had to figure out what to do without lights and heat and limited cell service. It is not unlike the experience of many in our area during the January rainstorms, except for the aftershocks. Janet is involved locally in MYN, which stands for map your neighborhood or meet your neighbors, but it's a project of Sebastopol Ready and it's concerned with preparing citizens to help themselves and each other during an emergency. Janet had been trained in what to do, but she still felt she didn't know what to do when the time came. The head of Sebastopol Ready, Skip Jirrels, invited Janet to talk to the MYN group at a recent meeting. This episode is based on a recording of that session. Janet: Okay. Hello everyone. I want to start by describing the earthquake itself and its aftermath. I believe that there's some patterns that are followed that you may or may not be aware of.And I want to talk to you about my actions as they relate to the nine steps in our MYN program. What I did wrong. I did a bunch of things wrong. I admit right away. I did things right. I had questions and felt that there were lessons learned that might be worth sharing with you. I hope so. As a way of a background, there are three tectonic plates that meet just off of Humboldt County Coast, and they stretch north into Canada. It's the North American plate, the Gorda and the Cascadia. And so it's a very active seismic area because these three keep bumping into one another.And Ferndale has a history of frequent earthquakes. Some are quite large. They've sustained major damage over the years. Our house, we have a second home there. Our house is in the downtown area. It's by the cemetery. It was built in 1885. So it's been through a lot of tremblors over its lifetime and we have felt many small earthquakes. We've had to rush up there to check on the place after a, a significant one.But this one we happened to be there in town doing Christmas things, and this is the worst earthquake we'd ever experienced. It was a 6.4 magnitude and it struck at 2:34 AM and most folks were asleep and we were awoken by a severe jolting. The bed was jumping around. There was a very loud noise, and it lasted a long time. We guessed 30 seconds, but I have no way of verifying the length, but it just seemed to go on and on.The electricity went out immediately, and that was soon followed by sirens. Miraculously I think it's a miracle-- my flashlight was still on the nightstand, but I could not find my glasses. I did find them on the rug amongst all the things that had fallen over, fallen onto the floor.Nobody in the our family were injured. We were just frightened. We managed to remain calm. So my son and I walked around from room to room. We went with our flashlights, looking at everything that had fallen on the floors and slid across the counters. They tumbled over, they hadn't broken. Pictures were dangling. The TV was on the floor, but the things I had secured by museum putty, all remained upright. So that did work. We went outside onto the porch and it was pitch dark. It was a cold, dark, low drippy fog of a night. It was really a miserable circumstance. We could see neighbors with flashlights going from room to room but no one else was on the street. We could not, we did not see any wires down.And so it was pretty early on in the process that I thought about if I was in Sebastopol, I'd be putting an okay sign up and going to the gathering site. And it wasn't a nice warm, sunny afternoon, so it would not have been pleasant to have done that. In the morning we walked downtown, we'd walked down Main Street looking in the windows, the shop windows, and all the damage. And the merchants appeared like they were in shock. I'm sure they were. They'd taken such a terrible hit. One store owner came out as we were looking at her smashed window display, saying everything inside was broken. And she did sell a lot of glassware, I'm sure it was horrible.There were windows that were in shards on the sidewalk. The refrigerator unit doors in the grocery store, it shattered some, not all of 'em, but a lot of 'em. And they, they had even, it was early in the day, they already had a "cash only" sign up. So we learned from passerbys that Fern Bridge, which is a bridge built in 1911. It's a historic treasured uh, entrance into our town. And, but that it had buckled which just, it seemed unbelievable. And the only one other road that to get out of town that was a landslide on it. So we were isolated. The power was out all over Humboldt County. These are things we learned were just from people walking on the street that we stopped and talked to.A major transformer had blown, somehow something had happened to it. The epicenter was between Ferndale and Rio Dell, so it was only six miles from us. There were many aftershocks. They just seemed to keep coming. And I was in shock, I felt. So our daughter was able to reach us early in the morning.Luckily before cell service ended, we received some texts and people checking on us, including some from our mid Lynch road group, which I was grateful for, but we could not call out. And our texts failed to send and wasn't long before there was nothing at all. And we were not able to get a radio station. We could just get music. I had the call numbers of the local radio station. They were just playing music. It was, it seemed crazy that way. The myshake.com app, it only posted the initial quake and if there was a warning signal, we didn't hear it, in all the noise that Mother Earth was making. It did not post any of the aftershocks. And some of them were quite strong. Let's see, our water was safe to drink. The propane tank was not leaking, but we had no heat because of the thermostats weren't working and it was bitter cold. We were glad we had filled up the gas tank earlier in our trip because there were no gas stations operating.And I don't know how many times I dived under the kitchen table and hearing the sound of dishes clanking in the cupboards. So all this happened on at the winter solstice, the day before the winter solstice. It was the shortest, coldest, drearious day followed by the longest darkest night and a night that seemed to go on forever.We had three lanterns, which we had always felt were adequate, but it turned out, they gave out very poor light. We had one that was a cranking one, and about every 15 minutes we had to crank it up again. So that was getting tiresome. We were reluctant to put out candles because we thought they might fall over and I was able to heat up some leftovers. But we have a little dog, a chihuahua, and he kept walking around in circles and I'm sure he was feeling aftershocks and it seemed all during the night, he was walking all over the bed and we were feeling the bed moving around. It was very difficult sleeping. So the next day it seemed like everyone went from shock to sadness. There was a very sorrowful mood around the town. It was Christmas season, is the best time for the merchants. That's when they make most of their money. And now you cannot even get into the town and their products were destroyed and wanting to leave their own areas, let alone come there to Christmas shop if they could get there.We learned through the newspapers that there was widespread damage, especially in Rio Del, which was our neighboring town. Their water system had failed. So the main pipe had broken away from the tank. We heard there were two deaths, and these were with people who had needed medical assistance and the EMTs did not get there in time.The slide was clear. So we knew we could leave for home that day and we were ready to get out of town, believe me. We got a cell phone signal from the top of Cemetery Hill and let people know, acknowledge some of the people who had reached out to us. So we were okay and we'd be coming home.So then we had to button down the house, knowing full well there was going to be a lot of aftershocks and we were being warn that they could be really significant. And so we unplugged as many appliances as we could. We unplugged lamps and the television, laid the TV and the lamps on the floor.We cleaned off most of the surfaces. There was no point letting them fall off again. We placed precious breakables onto the rug, or a lot of them were just there on the rug already. Barricaded things onto the couches and the beds, and rolled things up in towels. We just did the best we could to protect as much as we could because we did not know when we would be able to return.I had a method of tying our cupboard doors together. The doors that we have two opening outward and there's knobs. And I tied them with shoelaces and I've always done that. And that held, kept dishes from falling out. Now in our China cupboards, I could see through the glass doors that things were broken, but I just left them as they were.There was not much else I could do. So that being said, we left around noon and hoped for the best. And we've not been able to return. The storms make the road treacherous and there's widespread flooding on the Eel River. But what I thought a lot about our map your neighborhood program and the nine steps and how I fit into following these nine steps.So I'm going to run through them all and tell you what I did and didn't do. Take care of loved ones first. None of us were hurt, but we were frightened and it was very unnerving, especially the aftershocks and the rattling sound and the sirens and the deep darkness. It was very uncomfortable.I think we were all in shock and our brains were not registering the checklist of what we should be doing, frankly, in spite of all the training I've had and all the teachings I have done. Marion has called it Your Brain Going to Mush. Meet Mush Brain because I didn't do so well, as well as I would've hoped.Number two, dress for safety. We stayed in our pajamas. And our gloves, our sturdy shoes, emergency radios were nowhere near the bed. We had no hardhats up there or headlamps or reflective vests and no bags under the bed. So all that I have here in Sebastopol but we did not-- totally neglected doing that up there.Number three, check the gas. This, I still cannot believe that this happened. We did not check the propane tank until the morning. And luckily there was no leak, but that could have been a big problem. I could see the pilot lights were on, but anyway, failed there. Number four, shut off water at the main house, and we did not do that. We have city water there, was running clear. Water company serviceman drove by that I hailed, and he said the water was fine to drink. They had no problems with it, unlike in Rio Dell. We have an electric water heater. It's strapped to the wall, so it didn't go anywhere. But what was I found so interesting is that the water in it remained warm the 33 hours that we were there without electricity.So we were able to wash. I found that curious. That stayed warm. A neighbor lady said her water heater broke and flooded her basement. So broken water heaters. I did hear about an another person who had a broken water heater. Now, number five, that is place your help or okay sign in a window. We did not do that because there was nobody checking to see if anyone nearby was okay. The volunteer fire department and the police department totally had their hands full, actively helping the 911 calls. I did not see interaction among the neighbors. It was only the few times that I walked the dog that I talked to anybody and found out some things.I think our acquaintances just may not have known we were in town. The tractor parade had ended. We would normally would've left. But I did not, I could not call him, I didn't call him, I didn't try to drive across town, so no one checked on me, but I didn't check on anyone else. Let's see. Bring the fire extinguisher to the curb. That didn't even cross my mind. The neighbor lady across the street said that their wood burning stove broke away from the flue and slid across the floor and there was still burning embers in the stove, because that's their only source of heat. They always have wood, that wood burning stove going. So thank heaven that didn't catch on fire. There were no fires in the vicinity that I was aware of. Seven, go to the gathering site. There was no gathering site to go to. And I had thought about this really early on, about how I would have to go down Lynch Road to our gathering site. And as leader there was no, not going but it really, in all honesty, seemed like a really unpleasant thing to do in the wee hours of the morning. It was so dark and cold and wet. But I had to wonder, I started wondering how many in our group would actually go there. So we've made this serious commitment that may not be followed through on by everyone.So number eight, form teams. So some of this is redundant, I'll go over. It doesn't hurt to go over it either. Team one would stay at the gathering site and ours is a carport to monitor the radio coming in from those checking on the neighbors emergency alert system on our hub that we have and keep everybody informed. And team two, the people checking on the neighbors might need an ambulance. Or find a tree or wires down and team one would need to relay for help. So our group, mid Lynch Road group only has FRS radios. We have five operators. But frankly, we all failed the test that we had over the weekend where none of us could lock onto Channel 17. So we, this need for GMRS radio is very strong and will happen soon.But it was so weird that in Ferndale we couldn't even get a radio station. I did go to the market and get a Eureka Time Standard and the press Democrat had a lot. It seemed like other people knew more happening than we did. But since there really was no cell phone service, how would we contact out of the area relatives and whatnot. I don't know. So another observation is that team two would go from house to house looking for the signs and checking gas leak, and responded back. Frankly, again, in all honesty, I always assumed it would be the men folk who would do that. But we only have one male radio operator, so some of us gals would have to go along with them.It just seemed more efficient for them to have a copy of the maps and the people living in it on a clipboard in some waterproof sleeve or something. So we could just be at the gathering site and teams are formed, we can hand to them. All of us have maps, but something as convenient of having them on the clipboard to walk around and check it off is we just don't have, and we have new neighbors now, so the map needs updating.So with team three would go to the care center. Now the care center, our care center is the house that is the carport goes along with. Someone might need to get an injured person to the care center for first aid. So knowing some first aid or knowing first aid comes in, but the children and the elderly or disabled are supposed to go to the care center, but they just might not be able to do that. I know my husband's disabled. He could not walk there. And the parents might want tostay with their children at home rather than go down the street. It all has to do with the timing, when or what else is happening but it's so unknown.So I think we need to take a closer look at the demographics of our neighborhood because when we started, people were obviously a lot younger and there were very few children, and now we got kids all over the place and a lot of seniors. So number nine is the teams go back to the gathering site and keep everybody informed, et cetera.In conclusion, I want to say a little bit about Ferndale. It's a small, and it's a very tight knit community, and it's earthquake prone. So all these people have been through this so many times. So the procedures are most likely already loosely in place to help each other. But I want to have conversations with my friends about what is that? What do you do during and in the aftermath? There's sure some automatic things. They have --what was referred to by the fire chief, that the locals have what they call a lived experience, that they have a knowledge of what to do and when to do it. They just know and they know that after the initial event, that's just the beginning, that aftershocks are going to happen.They have continued to be happening in the three and four Richter scale range. And just our New Year's Day, there was a 5.4 quake that shook and it shook the area differently, where a different end of town was damaged than had been initially. So they seem to keep coming. To initiate a map your neighborhood program there, it would take longtime residents and key residents to start it. There's movers and shakers, especially the old families that live there; it would have to come from that type of a group to get every-- it just seems really like a daunting task, but when I go there, I'm going to be sharing what it is we do here and maybe someone will listen and want to know more.We have not been able to go up there since because of the storms. And there's widespread flooding on the Eel River. So these dairy people have besides getting hit with this earthquake are flooded and they're moving their cattle to the fairgrounds or somewhere else safe. There's lots of problems there in that area, an area I love dearly. So thank you for listening. Great. Skip: Thanks, Janet. Wow, that's a great, that's a great report. Quite the experience. Questions to, I have a lot of things written down but questions from you all right away about the information, not just about Ferndale, but a lot of really good comments about MYN and functionality of MYN and whether it might work or not.Janet: Kenyan.Kenyan: Yeah. I was wondering how, so did you say that cell service as far as calling, went out immediate? Janet: Fairly, yes. We could not call out and I don't know how people were able to call in or if it, maybe it was sporadic and they just hit it at the right time. Kenyan: And then you could receive texts for some period of time. Then did that stop after a number of hours? Janet: I don't know if I said that PG&E did text, that the power would be out to late the following afternoon. So some were getting in, but everything I tried to send out failed. Skip: Are there questions?Member: I have a question. With an earthquake that severe, were you worried about the house falling off the foundation? I've done a lot of home inspections and stuff. How do you know it was safe or how did you feel it was safe to stay in? Janet: As I mentioned, the house had been through so many earthquakes and that I think pre previous owners had beefed up the attachments to the foundation. And we didn't feel or notice any slippage. And it seemed like of those homes that did slide off the foundation in Rio Dell, they were not as well constructed. And that town has tends to have a poor, poorer economic base and poorly constructed homes on it. I'm not surprised that happened there.Skip: So I've got a couple of questions if nobody else does. One of which, Janet, is that you said that you had some lanterns, one of which were the crank type. but they, and all of them gave off poor light. Janet: On one of 'em, we changed the battery and it helped, but the cranking things, we were like, oh, look at this. We just have to crank it. Our arms were getting tired, we were cranking it so much, passing it around from one to another to cranking that darn thing, Skip: I can understand. It's really true. You only get a little bit of light or a little bit of radio if that's what you're listening to if you have the crank type. I bring that up because I have some smaller lights, and different kinds of lights that are actually quite powerful and I feel like they really do fill up a space with light.So I was curious about that. So the battery ones, if you were able to change the batteries it did at least improve the light that they were putting out. Janet: Yes. Skip: Because you did mention, I believe, nicely worded also, a cold night. And pretty darn dark. I don't think you said pretty darn dark, but it was dark.Janet: It was very dark. Had there been no cloud cover the constellations and the Milky Way would've been marvelous. Skip: Going to a gathering site or checking on your neighbors, you've said, I think a couple of different times, just in the moment, just didn't really seem to make sense, or in hindsight it didn't really seem to make sense for you to do that in the moment because of this cold, dark, damp.Janet: We're only up there for short periods of time once a month. And even though we've been there a long time, we're not locals. We never have been, we're just outsiders. Always have been considered outsiders because of that. And no it would've been very uncomfortable to have gone around knocking at barn doors. And as I said, no one came to seem interested in what we were doing. Skip: I think that's a really important point, and I want tocome back to that. Pam. Pam: Thank you. I think you're just about to go there, Skip and say this, but Janet, don't be so rough on yourself. You weren't in a neighborhood where everyone had met one another. And I think this, that this gives fabulous credence and substance to all that we're doing the planning and even if everything doesn't go seamless and perfect and beautifully, just the fact that many of us in our own neighborhoods have reached out and we've touched base.And even if it's a little herky jerky and, maybe not as smooth as we'd like it to be, I think it's great that we've done as much as we have. I think there's in terms of the lessons learned. Yeah. Geez. Keeping stuff charged, keeping the gas tanks topped off, like you did fortunately. Keeping lanterns, water, all that stuff that we do. Goodness gracious. I just am sorry you had to go through such a cold, dark, long night. I wish you had a wood burning stove. Skip: Like one of the things you mentioned was that you felt like that you were personally in shock. I understand that you're a mature person and you've been through things in your life, but in those moments that you really felt like you, you were in shock and I think that's an important point for all of us to be aware of. Any idea, did that go away slowly? Did it not go away at all, or what happened that sense? Janet: I wouldn't have named it being in shock at the time. That was more of a of, in hindsight and also reading local reports, how everyone's traumatized by it and so forth.As the aftershocks went on and I kept jumping under the kitchen table, I was getting more and more nervous about it all. But I think shock part was, is that I didn't do all the things that I probably should have done. Just really didn't, honestly, didn't cross my mind. Skip: There's lots of good reason and I agree with Pam about trying not to be hard on yourself, but Mercy, you had your hand up and you were. Mercy: This is really good information, Janet, because a lot of the things that I have envisioned of, thinking through, don't include cold, dark nights. The idea of going to meet in the dark when no one has light, it's like plan B kind of needs to be thought about. What I was thinking when you were speaking is, it's all the more reason that having more people have the FRS radios because then that's not dependent on other networks. It's local. You're able to check in on people without having to leave your home. I've never used that as an encouragement to have more people in our group get, get with that part of the program, but I'm going to. Skip: So I think, one of things, and Mercy, I think you're addressing it too is almost not why but when is it that we would think to check in on another?And part of that, when in my mind anyway is revolves around, do I know them? , am I familiar with them? Do they, have I established any significance with that particular person? And if I haven't, no harm, no foul that I haven't. But if I have, would I be more inclined to make a connection with that person?Would I be more inclined to check on them? Would they be more inclined to check on me? I think that's a sort of like at the root of MYN is that sense of familiarity is supposed to help during those first moments, as they talk about it on the DVD, the first 60 min, the golden 60 Minutes. Like what happens in the first hour. So I think this is all just really important and helpful information. Anybody else have thoughts or questions? Mary Lou? Mary Lou: I find that interesting, but I also personally realize that with these last storms, our power went out and everybody's power that I know of went out and and here I'm thinking that we are all prepared for whatever and all of our batteries were not good, so we turned our lights on and there was no batteries. Now we do have a backup generator here because we're in a part of the county where, as you say, we're not a top priority to be reinstated with power. And we knew with all the wind that we would be without power.But the interesting part about knowing who your neighbors are and connecting with them, there's a woman who lives right next door to us who's elderly on a walker and has never participated once in any of our Meet Your Neighbor meetings. Hasn't wanted to do it, and so I didn't think about her, basically. When our power went out, when it was nasty and the wind was going and she is over there by herself. Just right next door. And the next morning, here she is knocking on our door at seven o'clock in the morning with her walker, saying, how long do you think our power's going to be out? I'm freezing. I haven't had a cup of coffee. She wasn't in any kind of shock. She was actually pretty forward about it. It was saying, when's this going to stop? And she said, I have a generator. I don't know how to turn it on. And of course we suggested one, she stay in our house and make her a cup of coffee and if she needed to take a shower, but she didn't want to do that.So then we offered to get her generator running for, and she didn't want to do that. And she doesn't want to come to the meetings. So what I learned is one, she's going to need help. Two, she isn't going to want anybody to be involved with helping her. And three, she's not going to be prepared. So what do you do with that?Skip: Great question. Anybody have an answer for that or a thought on that? What do you do with that situation? Renee, go ahead. Renee: I just have an idea. I'm wondering if she were really in danger or in really dire need, she might change her mind, then she might want your help if she was really scared. She wasn't really scared, she was feeling lost a little bit. Not really scared.Mary Lou: And I agree with that. But the problem was with that is I asked her about her phone because she was going to walk back to her house and I said, Okay, here's our number. Give me your phone and we'll put it on a-- just press the button and go. And she said, oh it's out of battery. I almost never use it.The point is unless we forced ourselves into her house, we're not going to know because I suspect she hardly ever has her phone charging. Maybe this will change her. Maybe I can talk to her over the fence sort of thing and say, look, this could be dangerous for you.But she's pretty independent and thinks, oh no, it's not going to hurt me. Then she's toddling down the street in the rain and wind with her walker. Anyway, it was an interesting interlude, but I still don't have an answer to it. Skip: I'd like to say also that maybe when something's not happening, the over the fence thing, Mary Lou, that really makes a lot of sense is try to talk when it's not an issue. These are the conundrums that we have to deal with in the neighborhoods where we want to try to do things with people, but we have the people that don't want to participate.Collectively the neighborhood needs to be able to decide what should we do about this situation? At least engage enough so that we know that we've said and done what we can. Because when the time comes, it's a damn emergency. A lot of the rules and regulations go out the window and you do the thing that you know that you need to do to take care of people, so then maybe it turns out to be a little bit of a different situation. So Janet, thank you so much. And if you go to Ferndale and talk to them about MYN. I'd be really interested to know how that conversation goes. And if there was any opportunity for me to come and talk to any of the people there about something similar to MYN, I'd be more than glad to do it. Janet: Thank you. I assure you that next time I go to church in the after church social hour, that's what we're going to, I'm going to bring up the subject and thank you, Skip, for making that offer.. Skip: Thanks, Janet. Really glad you're safe and thanks for bringing that information. Dale: What can we learn from that Ferndale earthquake? Well, as best you can be prepared and expect the unexpected. Sebastopol Times is a reader-supported publication without advertising. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Note (January 17): After publishing this interview, I learned that Jennifer will be leaving WCCS to take a job working in senior housing. In  the summer of 2021, those who lived in RVs parked on Morris Street near the Barlow had become a problem that the city had to deal with. The conditions were becoming hazardous for those who lived there, with debris accumulating on the street. One RV caught on fire. Reports of criminal activity increased as did complaints from merchants and citizens. The City Council agreed to fund an Outreach Coordinator through West County Community Services and that job went to Jennifer Lake. For 18 months, she has been talking with the homeless (or “unhoused” the term preferred by activists), understanding their issues and educating them about what services are available. She also talks to the community, interfacing with citizens, city staff, and the police department.Jennifer Lake just might just have the hardest job in town. A homeless survivor herself, who found a career in social services working with vulnerable people, she is a go-between, a coach, an educator working with the chronically homeless. Morris Street was cleared of RVs in October 2021, the subject now of a lawsuit. Elderberry Commons and the Horizon Shine RV Park were established and have been able to provide permanent or temporary housing. But they are now full and there are about 24 homeless who are “living in the rough” — in vehicles, tents and doorways. Jennifer works with them, meeting them in person and checking in with them by phone. She does research and talks to service providers at shelters, mental health and drug treatment. She also works with the community who are concerned about the homeless and fearful of them. She hopes for more dialogue between both sides to reduce tensions. Working with the homeless is a slow, uncertain process. “You chip away at it,” says Lake. Nonetheless, Lake believes good progress was made in 2022 in dealing with the homeless in Sebastopol, helping the majority of them find housing. The contract with the City of Sebastopol that funds Lake’s job will be up for review and possible renewal in the summer.The Homeless Point in Time Count for 2022, conducted by volunteers working with the Sonoma County Community Development Commission, reported that there were 2,893 homeless in the county. (Link) The report found 127 in West County; 78 in Sebastopol and 49 in the unincorporated areas. The total numbers in West County were down from 327 in the previous count for 2020. The 2023 Homeless Point in Time Count will take place on Friday, January 27th from approximately 5:00am to 10:00am. TranscriptDale: I'm joined today by Jennifer Lake who is an outreach coordinator for West County Community Services. We'll learn more about what she does and what she sees in her role interfacing with the homeless in Sebastopol.Welcome Jennifer. Nice to have you. Jennifer: It's nice to be here. Dale: Good. Give me some background on you. Where'd you grow up? How'd you get here if you didn't grow up here in Sebastopol and what you do? Jennifer: I actually did not grow up in Sonoma County at all. I moved here when my son. was a newborn. So that would've been about 31 years ago. And I lived in Santa Rosa for most of those years. Raised my kids there. About four or five years ago, we moved out to West County, out to Monte Rio to-- it was part of my financial plan. Rent our house and we'll move to a smaller place. The kids are grown, that kind of thing. Pay off our debt and then do something else. And so that's how I ended up in West County. And I've been doing social service work for this county my whole career.Since I was 29 years old, I've been working with our communities most vulnerable populations, whether it be survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. And then it was substance abuse treatment centers. And then homeless families. And then, most recently, in the last eight years, it's been with chronically homeless individuals at other agencies I've been with. Then Covid happened and then I was home for 18 months, and then I started to work for West County Community Services in July of ’21. So I've been here about 18 months. So that is my introduction to Sebastopol. West County then contracted with the City of Sebastopol, so I work under a contract for the City.And my role is really just to help address the issues that are associated with the homeless population-- to address the issues, try to help people figure out where they want to go, how do they want to get housed, what are their barriers, things like that.Dale: Can you give me an idea of what a typical day looks like for you?Jennifer: A typical day. At first I had an agenda and I would come with certain places I was going to go because the beginning of my position here was really focused on Morris Street. The largest population of homeless in Sebastopol were there and every day I would just go out to Morris Street. At first you've got to figure out what time is the best time to be there. And then I just go and I just talk to people. In the beginning, I talked to everybody, so it took my whole day to talk to this person, that person. And sometimes they would have needs that would take up time. And so I was constantly working.I felt like I was working a lot. As we've expanded and dealt with Morris and got some solutions for people, got some people off the street, my typical day today is that a lot of what I do is on the phone now. I do a lot of research, so I go out, I have about 24 individuals that I check in with all the time, who are not in the RV park. They're either sleeping outside or in a tent somewhere or an RV. These are people that are sleeping outside in the rough.Dale: About 24 of them. Jennifer: About 24 of them. And the 24 doesn't mean that I'm intensively working with them. I serve one or two people at a time in terms of longer term solutions. And it depends on who's willing, because they're not all willing to, they're all on. There's a continuum of where they're at, where the mindset is.It's just worked out that I'm usually helping one or two people in a more intense way, like giving them rides to social services or giving them rides to Social Security office, or helping with applications for financial assistance or food assistance or brainstorming where they can live or what their barrier, if they have a barrier, say they have, they need some mental health treatment or they need to get connected to medical or mental health.So all those things are assessed as we go along. Dale: Did someone tell you that there's a homeless person somewhere and you have to go talk to them? Jennifer: Yeah. More now, as time has gone by, people have become aware of me. Specifically, in the last maybe month and a half, I did a presentation at the library.And after that, it's starting to pick up a little where the community members call me and refer somebody. Sometimes they tell me about people I'm already working with, and I just listen. Maybe I get some more intel that helps me help them further sometimes, but most of the time I worked with the people that they're calling about.And what I think is great about that is because we were able to build this bridge between the community and the unhoused in a way that they feel comfortable calling me. And I deal with that. And everybody feels they found a solution to whatever it is that was bothering them.The community member had their thing and then unhoused. It minimized any of that heated conversations or stress or trauma. Dale: Before you were in that position or that position existed, how did these situations get handled? By the police mostly? Jennifer: I was really hired to help with Morris Street and help educate both community and the unhoused living in the Laguna and on Morris Street about health and safety codes and how they were violating them and why it wasn't a good thing.For instance, one of the concerns was the biohazards -- the debris and things like that-- and how unsafe that is for your health and wellbeing. So I spent my first month and -- they were going to do a sweep-- so I spent my first month and a half walking around and talking to people about the hazards and the danger that the risk that they put themselves in when they don't dispose of biohazard safely or they live in areas where there's debris everywhere that's not healthy and how it affects them and how it long term affects the community.It didn't seem like very long before we were able to clear that part of it up. That's what I did. I was educating people, letting them know about the sweep. Dale: Was that the summer of, what, 2021? Jennifer: Yeah, it was, we did the sweep in October, I believe it was the end of September, 1st of October.Dale: A year ago. Jennifer: It was an immersion program for an outreach worker because they had all this-- active site pretty much when I started. So that's how I met everybody. So now knowing everybody, I was able to put a focus on the community and help them understand the situation a little. Clear up some myths and things like that about homeless folks.Dale: Like what are some of those myths? Jennifer: Just it's just the same stereotypical view of a homeless person. They're not all on drugs. They're not all mentally ill, and that's the first go-to. And so it causes all this stress. What I mean about myths is that the average community does not really understand what it takes to be homeless. People don't choose to be homeless. Sometimes they're homeless. There are people who have been homeless and now across the county, not just Sebastopol who were homeless because of the fires.They just didn't have renter's insurance or didn't have whatever. And so they bought an RV. They thought that'd be the thing to do. They ended up on a Morris Street. There was a couple on Morris Street. Sometimes they live paycheck to paycheck.They didn't have the the job that they wanted, or they got laid off during Covid or ....Covid caused a lot of unemployment for some of them too. And so that's when they started to grow. So the stereotype is really that if you let these unhoused into my neighborhood, then they're going to bring with them the site that you saw on Morris -- the debris and the criminal activities and things like that.Okay, so here's the thing. There's a lot of hater things that happen when the people do not -- people NIMBYs, not in my backyard, do not want the homeless encampment in their neighborhood, right?So there's a lot of tension that gets built and it was building up down there, down Morris Street and it builds up in Rohnert Park, in Santa Rosa. And that's when you get all these news stories and people involved and where they're saying, you know what? They're blaming them for being homeless. Just get a job. What's your problem? Have you ever lived on the street? If you did, then you would know. That's an ignorant statement. How do I get a job when I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to feed myself today? How do I get a job when I have nowhere to put my head and it's pouring down rain, and it's freezing weather. You want me, you think I can just get a job. How do I maintain a job if I have nowhere to shower so I can show up at a job? People say things out of that tension that I think we've been able to --- I am so incredibly impressed with the Sebastopol's ability to be compassionate. I've worked with law enforcement my whole career in one capacity or another, and they literally care in Sebastopol. You want them to just get themselves together, follow a few simple rules, which I spent a lot of time educating them on, and not lecturing, but saying, Hey do you know that you can get really sick if you don't make sure this is cleaned up? Things like that. And I think that what Sebastopol did with opening up the RV village to take some of them over there. And then me housing a couple few that I can along the way. And then meeting all of them. I literally know pretty much all the homeless in Sebastopol at this point.Dale: When you say you know all of them, what should we know about them? Not necessarily individually, and what kind of help they need? Jennifer: It's not like what you should, what the community should know about them. It's what the community needs to know is what they can do to support their continued healing and moving up and forward. My whole goal has been to go out and meet people, build relationships with this community, build relationships with the city's staff, law enforcement and public works, and reach out, provide outreach to the community in some way, whether that be a volunteer project or presentations or working with Safe Parking, the other program where you park and you're sleeping in your car there. But through all of that, and then going to the different churches, so through all of that, extend myself into the community so I can begin to educate them on, just, when people say things like they just get a job then that's my opportunity to say, they would, but they need these four things in order to even feel like they can get a job. It's not easy to be surviving your own life and then showing up to do a job, like a regular nine to five job because you're too stressed out.You're in trauma land and you make mistakes and then the experience is even worse, which throws you back down into your trauma. My goal was, and I understanding that myself, I have been in their shoes at one point in my life, 30 years ago, and that's how I got into this work in the first place was that I was homeless with my family and I turned it into a career.I came into this job thinking the only thing I want to do, my only main objective is to try to figure out what it is that keeps them from being housed and help them to address that. It's worked pretty much. I think we counted in the homeless count about 124. I think it's about 124, and 78 of those people were housed or off the streets of Sebastopol after a year or after these 18 months. And now I've got two going into housing hopefully in the next couple of months. So what we're doing is working, people are becoming interested. I don't have to seek out people anymore. They come and they look for me. They're calling me, the unhoused and the community, to help each other, which I think is a real bonus. When I got here, everybody was not. Because the community was upset, rightfully because, the things right there by the businesses was really not attractive.And then the unhoused were upset because they were feeling the pressure. You know what I mean? So it was like a tension thing. And now I feel like it's really gotten to a manageable level. Dale: So you would say that in a year, just in the calendar year 2022, we've made pretty good progress? Jennifer: Oh, absolutely. I know we have. That's something I can definitely say. We literally got I think 78 out of 124 people off the streets. Doesn't mean they haven't come back or they won't come back, or that they got permanent housing, but they got off the streets and they were either in shelters or with friends or moved on to family in another state or or they got permanently housed. There's a few of those too. And that is significant because the numbers aren't generally that high, but the reason it's that high is because of the RV village; they consider that temporarily housed. So we took the majority of the homeless from Sebastopol into the village, and then I'm working with all the people that are outside of that right now. So that's, so once that was done then, now I worked with all the people that are living outside and not in the village. So they don't have anywhere to go. They're sleeping outside. Dale: Just more recently, we had below freezing temperatures. This week we have torrential rain. What can you do for folks during these times? And the there was a warming center set up. Jennifer: It's the responsibility of the cities, the municipalities across our country to care in emergency situations like that-- to call the emergency and to set those things up. I don't set them up. What I do to support the effort. It was actually not me that set up the warming center. It was Diana Rich from the city council and I worked with her to figure out how we would do it. And so that's one answer. In freezing cold weather, I think the standard in the county is three consecutive days at 32 degrees is when it's considered a crisis. You open warming centers, which is when you see everybody opening them.The rain is not as unless it's raining and freezing, they probably wouldn't open an emergency center or it's flooding. So I was waiting yesterday to see if anybody would say we needed to do that, but I haven't heard it with the rain. Dale: So one that might be a myth, but I think one of the things people say is as soon as you start providing services to the homeless, you just get more homeless. Jennifer: It depends on the services that you provide. A good example of that would be the homeless people are looking for resources and support and obviously they need it. So if you have approved a space for RV's to park, for instance, and they find out in other cities that they can park there, but they're not allowed; they're changing laws in other cities and so they can't park there.Then that's when they start coming. Oh, they can park over in Sebastopol. We'll move there. There has to be something that draws them here. So when in the beginning when I got some fund that wanted to fund registrations for folks. Dale: Right. Jennifer: There was 13 RVs when I was here, but by the time everyone across this little county here, closer cities, heard that I was doing registrations, it grew from 13 to 37. So that's when everything was getting really tense. So they heard that and I kept sending people away. If you haven't been here more than two weeks you just might as well leave. And people did leave, because they were only there for me to help them with their registration.We should do that differently next time we do that for sure. But that's what I mean though, something draws them to here. So now what people come here for, or like in this city, they would come here for if they had an RV, they're calling to find out if they can get into the RV village now. It's full. It's going to be full for a while and when it's not full, there's people on the waiting list. So you see they don't just show up randomly. People are not flocking into Sebastopol right now. It doesn't mean that I don't serve new people every week because I do.But generally they're passing through and I'm helping them relocate. And that's the other thing that's important about what I've been doing is when I meet new folks that have not been here, that they literally just got here and they cruising through because they're going to Alaska or something like that.I'm talking to them about their trip and what brings them here and are you planning on moving here? Like I'm asking them questions because I've gained some trust with them so they answer them. They're more truthful. And I've been able to help people move on to where their destination was, or get their repair fixed so that they can go back to wherever they were staying or their back, RV, rent, whatever it is, so that they don't end up on the streets of Sebastopol because they have nowhere to go.Dale: Are people that you help aware of the services that are available to them? You talked about connecting them to services. Do they know that they could be helped?Jennifer: Some of them do, some of them don't. Dale: Okay. Jennifer: And some of them are afraid to take help. Like they, they don't get Social Security. They're old enough to get Social Security, but they don't because they're afraid to go down there and apply. They don't want their name or stuff in the system, stuff like that. Mental health or stress conditions like that. So I spend a lot of time, I like to say, pulling them out of the trees, but I spend a lot of time just talking to them, reframing how they're seeing this support service that they're being offered. They gather this information as they've been working, living on the streets and stuff. So sometimes they have inaccurate information about the service itself. Dale: Yeah, I can imagine. Jennifer: There are some that are very challenging to get to take services at all. Dale: So talk about that. That's interesting that some people just don't want to be helped .Jennifer: It's a fear thing though. It's not that they don't want to be helped because I, because I did this little experiment, like if I asked everyone, so if I had some keys right now to this cottage in Sebastopol, cause everybody wants to stay here. Who's been here? They don't want to leave. And I said, so if I had these keys to this cottage would you take it or not?Because a lot of them say, oh, I don't even, I don't even think you could house me because, I've been doing this for 20 years and I don't think I would want to be in a house. I'm like, what if I had keys to a cottage? And if there was no strings attached. It was just yours. You could just move in, take over. Would you take it?And most of them say yes, those hardcore ones, they're like, Nope, no, probably not. I'll probably go in there for a minute and then I give you back your keys. But those are the ones that are generally they're fearful of. They've they go out and they apply for things or they apply for things in their past, or they were married in the past, or they had kids in the past and they difficult situations where they were on AIDS. So there's all kinds of reasons why they just don't want to apply for things or they don't want to take access to certain services. And so it's just a lot of conversation about--. For instance, people don't want to take shelter and the reason they don't want to take shelters is because of the rules, but it's not always generally because of the rules. That's just their go-to. You just spend a little more time asking them questions about is it really the rules? Because I worked at every shelter in this county and I can tell you what each environment looks like, it feels like. In fact, I wouldn't want to refer you to this one because you're this kind of person.Those are the types of conversations that I'm having. And then eventually they'll take it, but sometimes it took me 10 months to get somebody to take shelter this recently. Ten months of the 18 I've been here and they finally took shelter. Dale: And how long would that shelter work for them. Was that a temporary?Jennifer: About a weekDale: About a week. Jennifer: And then they were back because they don't want to leave Sebastopol and Sebastopol doesn't have a shelter. If Sebastopol had a shelter, I think some of those folks that I'm referring to that don't want to utilize services would probably use it, but they just feel like they shouldn't have to leave.They lived here their whole lives, this couple lived here their whole lives, and they became homeless for different reasons. They don't want to leave and they'll go for temp and I just say, Hey, just it's a temporary break. Go take a break. So you can map out your strategy on how you're going to get through.It's just education. I really see this role as a coaching/education kind of thing for people that are willing to hear you out. I've gotten people to go into treatment, to go to detox, just by having these conversations. It's not like I did the work.I don't do any work for them. They do it themselves. I link them to services. And then if they needed me to sit with them while they filled it out or something like that or talk, go with them while they go to court-- look, I'll do those things, but I will not do the work. Dale: So while it's a generalization we make about mental illness and drugs, yeah. It is a, nonetheless this population oh, it's a high suffers from that. Jennifer: High percentage. I'm not trying to minimize it, believe me, because it's really frustrating sometimes. But it's not, it's just such a general, even though the high percentage of them do face those issues and concerns, there is help out there for them.That's what the county's mobile health team, health and mental health wellbeing teams that they have, it's called, I M D T is what it is called. They bring social workers and they have more resources to connect them to treatment or get them into a situation where they can be assessed for medications and things like that.But it's so those things are so challenging to access sometimes because you have to have everybody's buy-in, including the client. For instance, if I say I want to go to treatment, I just have to go. I need to go. When you're working with somebody who's an addict and they say they want to go, you pretty much want to move quickly because they're going to change their mind.It's really hard to access the county services in that kind of situation because you get first they got to come here and then they got to see this person. By that time you've lost him. Dale: While you're working in Sebastopol, are most of the services that you're trying to plug them into-- the county's responsible for them rather than the city?Jennifer: A lot. Yeah, pretty much most of them because there's services in Sebastopol that cover food and clothing. West County has the West County Homeless Health Center out there in Guerneville.So they come in into this area. So there's services here, but when it comes to housing somebody, I think that West County Community Services is it. I don't know of anybody else who's doing housing in Sebastopol.Dale: But drug treatment?Jennifer: Drug treatment is hard because number one, the county doesn't have enough beds for all the people that are on drugs in our community. So even if you get them ready for, if somebody says they want to take treatment, unless the county's been involved and they've been working with this person on mental health issues to begin with.it's really hard to get a bed immediately. And I think if anybody could have the magic answer, it would be save certain beds. I know four people who are ready to go right now, and it's not always, they don't always need to go straight to detox because that would be the immediate right there.When I ran the Safe House program for the YMCA, I had two beds set aside. They were never filled by anybody other than imminent danger. So if somebody called and they had to flee their home right then and there, there was always at least a bed, one bed.  I don't know if the treatment centers do that. I do a lot of research and, for the most part, treatment centers are really, they're full, just like the shelters. Everybody's full. And with the fentanyl epidemic in our country and in our county they're really full. So I don't know what the answer is to that. I love the coordinated entry process, only for this reason, is that it's highlighting what the actual real need is for treatments, for treatment options. Without that, there was no prioritization.And oh, you want to go to treatment? It was willy nilly. The coordinated effort, they said, oh, they need treatment first before they can get this. So they're trying to assess what they have to manage before they get housed. So that's been very helpful. Dale: The other was the criminal activity associated with homeless. That people, citizens complain about that on Morris Street and then they're moved up to the Horizon Shine and people complain about that activity. It's hard to know. Does the activity move up there? Jennifer: Yeah I know what you mean, the activity. Okay. So on Morris Street, there was no program, there was no structure. It wasn't like you moved into Park Village, for instance. The West County runs the Park Village. It's a contained environment. There's a property manager and there's people running it. You sign a lease and you do all these things to make sure that there's order amongst us. There wasn't that there, so there was things that went on that were just inappropriate or the business owners were taking the brunt of that for a very long time. I could totally see both sides of this. And then the new neighborhood where they moved, they were worried that this was going to happen in their neighborhood and it was going to come to them. And there's still a level of that because people are afraid of it. Nobody wants that kind of thing in their neighborhood.What has happened though is they've done a really good job of putting together the RV Village and they have a program there. They sign these documents that say they're going to follow these rules and they're going to keep the noise down and they're going to not harass neighbors and all that, whatever the rules are. They have some order and structure there, and that's all that's really needed. I think everybody needs a little bit of structure, whether they think they do or not. I have watched them. They're still dealing with issues and things like that need to be addressed so they can get housed. But I've watched them progress to where I think the neighbors have even felt that it's not as bad as they thought it would be.Dale: Apart from those two the Elderberry Commons and the Horizon Shine, are most of our homeless in vehicles?Jennifer: 50 50. I see there's people that sleep in door wells and there's people that sleep over by the post office. They're just people that sleep without a tent or anything. And I would say that there's probably. It's probably more of those than there are in cars. A lot of the people that I've met around, just in both here and around the county who sleep in cars are under the radar. They register their cars. They have a job. They do all the things. They just don't have a place to live. They sleep in their car. And they move around all the time.So they can hide from me even. This isn't that big of a city. And so when I'm looking for them, because we're working on stuff and they don't want to do it, I can't find them. They don't even tell me where they park. That's how much under the radar a lot of these folks that sleep in their cars are.And so when I find them, I offer them safe parking at Community Church because at least there they don't have to be so under the radar and I can start to work with them more and get them housed. Because ultimately that is what they want. They want to be able to get off the streets. And there are people who have slept in their car for 4 or 5, 6, 7 years.There was one couple that was in their car for 15 years by the time we housed them. And they were the first ones that I housed when I first got the job. So it was very cool. But interestingly enough, they didn't think that it was going to work for them. They had all kinds of reasons. They were naysayers. No I can't do that. I've done that. I've tried that. I've done it. Dale: And did it work for them? Jennifer: It did work for them, but I had to spend, I don't know, some month or so just reframing that and saying you don't know, things change. Like that kind of stuff. Just talking to them over and over again about. Dale: You mentioned coaching earlier. Jennifer: I feel like that's what it is. Dale: And I guess the hard part of your job is that it takes a while. Jennifer: Not for all of them. Dale: Gain their trust and be able to communicate and find the services they need and help them move along. It's not always progressive in its movement; it goes back and forth sometimes. Jennifer: Yeah. And that's what the community sees. They see this person coming in their neighborhood. They want to know why he is there. And they call and I go help them. I've already met the person I know. So we can go and we handle it and we get them to move on. But what they don't realize, what the community doesn't realize is that some of these folks that they're calling about, I've been working with them for 3, 4, 5 months. They're this close to taking services or this close to doing whatever it is they need to do to get an income so they can even think about renting a room. The community wouldn't know that. Nobody can know that. I'm not running around telling people's business. Dale: Do you have colleagues in other cities that you're able to of share information about the kinds of services that are offered or what helps people in general and learn more about then just say Sebastopol's view of it?Jennifer: Absolutely. There's a lot of that. We do trainings and there's a lot of collaboration between each other. In terms of services, like if I meet, I'm doing a lot of research right now, so if you've been around doing it for a while, you might not be doing research because you know it all, right. But I'm finding all the new changes and so I go around and I share that and I send it out to people, my colleagues at West County.So we're always networking together. In terms of trainings, there's specific trainings that we get and that we share, and usually it's spearheaded by either your agency or the Continuum of Care. Sonoma County Community Development Commission. So they send out, there's a training on housing first. Everybody should go to housing first, which is the model that Sonoma County has adopted. Then, you can sign up for this training and go to the training. So we all share that information with each other. I think we're pretty good as a county in that way. Dale: How about cities along the river like Guerneville? How are they experiencing homelessness differently than Sebastopol? Do they have comparative numbers? Jennifer: Oh yeah. I think Guerneville might even have more than the city. I don't know what Greenville's population is. I wish I did. But I would say that the home, the number of homelesses in and I could get this information for you actually, if we looked at the homeless count that they did. Dale: When was that done?Jennifer: It's done every January. They're gearing up to do it again for this year. You can go onto Sonoma County Community Development Commission.Dale: What's the Continuum of Care that you're saying? What is that? Jennifer: Oh, it's a meeting. It's just a meeting that they have. It's like the bureaucracy meeting, like the political meeting that they have, where they disperse funds and I sat on that meeting forever but the Sonoma County Community Development Commission is the agency that you. You can go on the website and they have the homeless count up there. Dale: I guess to summarize, there's been some good progress made. But this isn't something that you win at. You have to keep doing. And doing it. Jennifer: You, is it something that I win? Dale: You don't solve the problem. Oh, it doesn't go away. Jennifer: You chip away at it. I don't believe that we will end homelessness. You're, there will always be people who choose to live on the streets. So I know that the county and the government and there's all these initiatives to end homelessness and everyone would like that, including me.But I've talked to so many people that like this, the one gentleman says: I'm not going to, I've been out here too. I wouldn't even take housing from you. He's consistent with that statement and he's a really nice person and he's active in what he does around Sebastopol, everybody likes him. I don't know that he would take housing.So for instance, I don't see that we'll end homelessness, but I think that we are making great progress. At least in Sebastopol. I can only speak for Sebastopol. I'm not looking at the numbers elsewhere. Dale: Good. Thank you for your time today. I really appreciate getting some of this and and just. I'm interested in educating us, myself, about how do we help? How do we not help?Jennifer: I would love to prepare a presentation or something because there's so many things that we do as a community that would be very helpful and it would also be rewarding for both. Just having a dialogue. I think the biggest thing about the myths -- the bias that people have against the community, against the homeless, against law enforcement, it all comes from fear. If there was more dialogue between those folks, like there's a push to get homeless folks onto committees and be part of the decision-making process, even going to city council meetings for public comment or something like that. There's also through the Sonoma County Development Commission, they're starting one where they're encouraging survivors of homelessness or currently homeless to join a committee where they advise people on how they're spending their money or building programs or what have you.And I was very happy to see that. Anytime that we can dialogue amongst each other instead of attack, blaming, shaming, or instead of reacting, anytime we can just sit down and have a conversation, we're not reacting is only going to make it better. And I've seen that happen.I've seen people talking more to each other. There's less tension, like when you go to the Barlow because there's still a few homeless around there. So there's less tension. Only maybe it comes up every now and then, like from one community member instead a group of them, like NIMBYs, and I think that it has to do with the dialogue that we've been having. They've been having town meetings, the warming space center that Diana Rich, coordinated and all of that we put on. I was able to recruit, give people to get in there. There was nothing to worry about.The Community Center opened their doors and this is a community center that was right next to all of the action that was happening down there. And offered their gym for this warming center. It was perfectly run. There was no problem whatsoever. Granted there was only six to 10 people there at any given time. But still I feel like that's gotten better as well. And I think it's dialogue. Dale: More dialogue, more understanding. Jennifer: Understanding that most of the reasons why we're reacting is because we're fearful. Community members are fearful that their businesses are impacted as they should be. They already went through Covid, and then the homeless are fearful that they're going to get ticketed every five minutes because they were getting ticketed every five minutes. But instead of just punishing this way, If we could just sit down at a round table, say: listen, I'm sick of this and I'm sick of this. What's the solution? And you have the chief and whoever the decision makers are up there. And then you come up with something that everybody agrees to, which in my opinion was, what we've done here in Sebastopol. I think it's a good model. Dale: Again, thank you for your time today. Part of it is just making this a human problem. Jennifer: That's a better way of saying it. Thank you. It is a human problem.​ Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Stephen Zollman joins Dale Dougherty to talk about running for City Council, getting the most votes in the election and then being sworn on December 6th. He talks about his work as a public defender in San Francisco and as a family law lawyer in Sonoma County. His decision to run for office was motivated by a desire to see more diverse voices in elected office and also to be one of those who can represent more diverse voices. He credits his winning the election to having a strong team supporting him. He is proud of his DIY campaign signs, a decision that was driven by necessity as well as environmental reasons. He’d like others to realize that they don’t need a lot of money to run for office. Zollman is also proud to be a member of the Green Party. He had no idea how well he’d do in the election but getting the most votes was something of a surprise. He says it feels truly humbling to serve in the City Councile and follow in the footsteps of the three retiring City Council members. As a member of the Library board in the past, Zollman talks about plans for eventually expanding the library, which have been in the works for a while but are dependent on priority setting by the Sonoma County Library system. He believes Sebastopol can become a more diverse community by creating more opportunities for its youth, which could start with helping them find jobs and internships in local businesses. He dispels a rumor that has circulated during the election that he is involved in the lawsuit against the city for its limitations on where the homeless can park or camp. He sees that maintaining city services while balancing the budget will be the big challenge of the new council. This conversation took place on Tuesday afternoon December 20, 2022.TranscriptDale: I'd like to welcome Steven Zollman to Sebastopol City Limits, a podcast for Sebastopol Times. Steven is a new member of the city council in Sebastopol, and he was the leading vote getter in the recent election for the city council. Congratulations, Steven.Stephen: Thank you. Thank you very much. And I'm honored to be here. Dale: Tell me a little bit, where'd you grow up? Stephen: Grew up in the Midwest. Yeah, a little bit on the outside of Chicago and Northwest Indiana. Dale: And what brought you to California?Stephen: Oh, a lot of different reasons. Health concerns of a friend and just wanting to experience something new and different. And California's certainly new and different. San Francisco Bay area is definitely new and different for sure. Dale: And and you lived in San Francisco for a while and you worked there, you became an attorney.Stephen: Yeah, definitely became an attorney in San Francisco. Was very fortunate to be a public defender there for almost 12 years. Dale: How was that? That's a tough job. Stephen: Yes, it's tough, but it's also very fulfilling. I was very fortunate to represent our youth and their families for eight and a half of those 12 years, and it was very rewarding when you're able to advocate and secure services for very marginalized youth, mostly BIPOC youth, and see them grow as a result of receiving the services and receive services instead of what traditionally is seen as punishment. Their brains are still developing and they're still learning. And as a community that was a very powerful thing. So I'm very fortunate to have been a part of that process.Dale: Finding alternate routes for them instead of going to jail or other places. You've been doing some of that work up in Sonoma County. Stephen: As far as with representing youth, it's more in the family law arena. Courts will appoint attorneys to represent youth in high conflict divorce matters where the courts need to have an independent observation of what is in the youth's best interest.So that's when attorneys like myself get appointed to let the court know what from that attorney's perspective, what is in the child's best interest. And so that's some of the work that I've done up here.Dale: Does that touch on things like foster care and other? Stephen: It definitely can. There can be a lot of crossover within the different systems. When families are very stressed out and very traumatized, it may not always bring out the best of them especially when it's relating to their children. So they might have interactions with various systems and wherever they're at, that's where we go in order to figure out from their perspective what they're able to offer their children and how they can prioritize their best interests above everything else that's going on.Dale: Has Covid presented a particularly tough period of and challenges? Stephen: It definitely has. If there were gaps in services, which there has always been gaps in services in these various systems, COVID has definitely hit the most marginalized even harder when they're barely able to keep housing and as a result, they're barely able to keep in contact with their service providers. It's very challenging. But we do the best we can with what resources there are . . Dale: What motivated you to run for office in Sebastopol? Stephen: There were a lot of different reasons. One, I wanted to see that there were a lot of diverse voices running and hopefully representing diverse voices within our community.I had always thought about running, and when it got closer and closer, I was like maybe now is the time to step in. And I felt very fortunate to be able to have a platform to run on. Some of the issues that I care about and I feel very honored that apparently it resonated with a few folks anyway.And even the messages that I was trying to put out there that may not have resonated with everyone, hopefully there'll be enough room to still have dialogue about those issues. Maybe that's where it'll end, which is just dialogue. But even if it ends with that, it's still worth it just to have dialogue on those issues, to see where we're at compared to other cities and quite honestly other states and other countries. Dale: What did you learn that you didn't expect or what surprised you? Stephen: I think it was just like I had been part of other uh, campaigns before but hitting the ground running and realizing the fact that there are so many moving pieces and that they all need to be operational at the same time.As far as like getting the message out there and then the signs, and then the letters, and then the endorsements, and it was like, it was a lot. But I felt very fortunate the fact that I had a very tremendous campaign team and with all that and support from a lot of different corners.It all turned out and I just feel very honored that a lot of people dug deep and they listened to the messages and they read various things and the cast support, and now all I have to do is just fulfill that and and make sure that they feel like when they cast their vote that they cast their vote for the right person.Dale: I do think when you mentioned your team that uh, building an effective team behind you to get them multiplying your impact out there must have been very important. Stephen: Yes, absolutely. Woody, June, Tim, I've got my campaign finance person and multiple other people from different segments of the community.It just would not have been possible right, without them. Because they have their connections and it was a lot of word of mouth. And I think the signs actually, quite honestly, I mean it was a combination of Woody and June and wanting to make sure we were taking signs that were going to be headed towards the dump and we gave them one more life.And the paint was all from the recycling bin anyway. And it got all one more life, again. They were unique and I think they stood out.Dale: Was that your idea?Stephen: No, it's, I think it was just born out of practicality, the fact that we didn't have money and we wanted to be mindful of the environment. It just was a way also as it turned out for us to stand apart and it just showed the fact that we are grassroots and they looked very grassroots from the very beginning. Dale: You raised the least amount of money of the candidates. I think should be a message to get out there to other people thinking of running for office that you can do it without having the bank behind you. Stephen: I hope it does and I hope it does for other diverse candidates. And diversity other than just race and ethnicity and gender, I mean from socioeconomic status because I'm not, I'm certainly not rolling in dough. And I'm hoping that it sends a message that other people that are still working can still consider running and still keep their employment because that's what I think this job is supposed to be. It's supposed to be about giving back, but also still being able to earn a livelihood while you still do it. It's not supposed to be one or the other to attract diverse candidates that will be leaders for our city. Dale: How did you first get involved in politics? Stephen: Oh, from a young age? I don't know. I think it was probably having grown up in the Midwest where you just didn't see a lot of diversity and then figuring out the fact that I was gay, where it was an area where I was not safe to be gay. And you learn that early on. And then you bond with a lot of other people where it was not safe for them to be their full true self. And you just figure out it's like, this does not seem quite right. So what are we gonna do and how are we gonna build mass? And how are we gonna correct the situation?And the only way you're gonna do it is to think strategically and build alliances and move equity forward. Dale: Good. How did you get involved with the Green Party? Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. And I was very honored in the fact that people have a lot of choices but the Green Party and the 10 pillars, it's just like that basically is it for me? If you really value the environment, it's like, it's all there. And I'm hoping that I'm not an anomaly. From what I've heard in this Sebastopol area, there were quite a few green party people and at one point there was a majority of them on the council.So I'm hoping that it's just brings to life again, where it's yes, we can really, truly honor our environment and whatever we do, we have to honor our planet. And give thanks for that. The rest of it can get filled in between the lines there.Dale: When did it hit you that you'd won? Like when did you think this is really happening now? Stephen: I don't know. It was very like, wow. When the initial results came out, I was like, wow. It was like I looked and quite honestly, I didn't really know a whole lot. I clicked on and I was like, wow. Second.I was like, wow, that's very humbling. And then as it went on, I just remained second. I was like, wow, that's very humbling. And then all of a sudden it was like, it rolled around. I was like, wow. First. I'm like, that probably won't last long. And then it just trickled in. I was like, wow, okay. I guess this is really gonna happen.Yeah, it was pretty exciting. Dale: You were sworn in like last week? Stephen: December 6th. Yeah. Dale: How did that feel? Stephen: Truly humbling. I'll tell you, when you raise your right hand, it's just... The whole night was very humbling to listen to three people who had dedicated substantial chunks of their life, saying thank you and receiving thanks, it was very humbling.And then to be sworn in after them was very humbling and it was a very humbling night. I have to say. So I hope that, us newer people can fill the shoes of our predecessors. I hope so. Dale: So what's it like coming up to speed on all of these things? You probably have had a lot of meetings with city staff and such.Stephen: It's definitely a lot to, definitely a lot to learn. As far as like kind of the mechanics, I'm happy to say that's just like the little bit of time that I spent two years that I spent as our appointee to the library commission, as far as the procedure part of it, definitely seemed very familiar.But as far as just a refresher on the substances, which is the Brown Act and all of that, I was very appreciative of the staff to get up to speed and we're getting more training. Dale: Pretty soon there are committee choices coming up and things like that. Stephen: Indeed. Dale: Tip us off on what you are interested in Stephen: I'm hoping that it's not gonna be too much of a surprise. You are already asked me about like the Green Party affiliation. The environment is very important to me. So those that are tied into the environment I'm definitely gonna form my hat in the ring. Those that are healthcare related given my master's in health law I'm definitely gonna be interested in those. Quite honestly, I'd be humble to represent being a liaison to any of our nonprofits. I've served on a number of our local boards here. I'm hoping the library related ones, since I'm still on the Lantern board would be a natural transition. But it's gonna be up to the process.Dale: Let me just ask you, because you brought up the library. What's the status of maybe, building a new library or what, whatever's going on there.Stephen: I am proud to say the fact that it's just like that the library's administration now has a whole fundraising scheme and they are prioritizing certain buildings and I think that they made a very good choice with the Roseland library because for one, there many years that Roseland had a very substandard, to say the least library for its BIPOC community. And they are prioritizing getting a new permanent- they have a newer interim- branch, keying all the capital campaign fundraising for a newer permanent branch for that library. And then they're going to have a master plan, and I'm pretty sure that Sebastopol, our branch will be high up there given the amount of services that it provides on an annual basis that we will be one of those buildings because clearly our services outmatch the square footage of the building. And I really do like the approach, the fact that they're gonna do it on an equitable basis, based upon need, and it'll be done on a system line basis. And they're gonna be doing the capital fundraising and it's gonna be due to a lot of our own efforts locally as well, because the system can only raise so much money.So according to the JPA, we too are going to be needing to step up within the confines of Sebastopol to also do some heavy lifting on our own to see that we get a bigger library as well. Dale: Is there a specific plan? Stephen: The Lantern library nonprofit board itself has come up with, over the years, a scheme. We had an engineer come out and it seemed like it was not going to be sustainable to have a second floor built up, but it would be sustainable to build out into the parking lot area. Patrick Slayter and Sarah Gurney actually, couple years now, were out in the parking lot area talking about how there could be an expansion to work with the Senior Center, to have like a connection between those buildings. If there were any sort of parking lot infringement that you could dig underneath the existing parking lot to make up for that parking lot, spots that would be taken away. It seemed very exciting and I think very doable.I think we have a plan to because I think for a lot of the families that have children that, they have various conditions that they can't necessarily control how their behavior is, and to have them come into the library and exhibit that behavior, it might be very disturbing to other people, but they still have a right to use the library space.So to be able to make accommodations for those type of disabilities is an important thing to take into consideration. Dale: Sebastopol doesn't have historically a very diverse population. And then you have issues where housing, particularly affordable housing has trouble getting going. If you're a believer in diversity, what can we do to help create a more diverse Sebastopol? Stephen: Yeah, I think that is always the question, and I think it starts with our youth. During the campaign I consistently stressed the fact that we have diversity within our own confines between the hours of 8 and 2:30 and then they leave. I oftentimes wonder why that is. And why it is that we can't find ways to engage them, our youth from both schools, quite honestly. And I think that there are ways that we can. I was in some meeting where, there was talk about having internships not necessarily paid, but as far as being able to earn credit to be able to work with our businesses, our downtown businesses, to be able to utilize the skills that our youth have, that our shop owners may not have, to be able to create a win-win situation.And as far as like affordable housing, that library plan that Patrick Slayter and Sarah Gurney had, that sort of reconfiguration of that square block that's city owned, part of that could also encompass like affordable housing in order to make it possible for those teams that are now going to graduate and especially diverse teens. Then maybe they could segue from the skills that they developed working with our small business owners to help their businesses. Then they could segue into a job, then they'll segue into affordable housing. Then we could actually keep that diversity and then mentor them so that we would have more diverse candidates when we're talking years down the road and elections down the road.So diversity is definitely important and was very fortunate to have council member Diana Rich invite me to an assembly at Analy. Our youth just had one talking about diversity and inclusion and reached out to them and they know that if they're a youth that are interested, I'd be definitely delighted to work with them, to give them experience, to know what it's like to work with an elected and to share whatever I can and empower them to let them know it is possible. Dale: The other side is the schools are suffering from declining enrollment. And to the degree that Sebastopol can welcome families here, diverse families particularly, to take root here, we have a need for more kids in our schools and people shopping downtown and all that kind of thing. Stephen: Absolutely. Dale: Let me ask you. A rumor that went around, it relates to the homeless, that you are part of a lawsuit against the city.Stephen: Oh, yes. And that was part of the thing too. It's just I don't know, things that sort of get floated around by candidates and I'm, but Dale: I heard it. After the election. I gotta ask you this.Stephen: Yeah it it definitely is not true. What the part of it, it is true is that for a brief amount of time, I did work for CRLA, that they were my employer.But the lawsuit that has now been brought against the city, that definitely came much after the time that I've stopped working for CRLA. Dale: CRLA is what? Stephen: California Rural Legal Assistance. They are one of the entities that has now brought suit against the city along with the ACLU et cetera.And yes, that all came about much after I left, so I had no idea that was coming. Don't have any idea of what the contents of their suit is about. So no, the things that get floated around on nextdoor cetera.I could definitively say that no, I'm definitely not a part of any suit that's now pending against the city. Dale: Can I ask you, do you think you are the first gay council member that we've had? Stephen: No, definitely not. Okay. Definitely not.That was the reason why I didn't, make it a primary part of the campaign. I mentioned it a few different times in different circles, but it's because now we're coming into 2023, being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, it's like it should not be that big a thing when it comes to diversity. I didn't really want to make that a big solo feature of the campaign. Definitely not the first. Dale: Looking forward to 2023, there's definitely the fire department issue. What are some of the things that you're looking at that you're you're gonna have to be dealing with? One is the budget, obviously? Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely the budget. Because I think we all want various services and either initial services or more services, et cetera. But the bottom line is we've been running in a direction that Probably should not be running in. And then, yes, there are constant needs that we need to fill and those are pretty set. Yes the situation with our fire um, And I'm quite honestly glad, as I said during the campaign, that there's been an independent consulting group that's been retained. And I'm quite honestly looking forward to the report. And once the report is put out there, I'm looking forward to continued feedback from the community about how it all.Dale: That report was promised in November originally. When is it supposed to come? Stephen: I have heard various stages where it might be coming out towards the middle end of January is what I've been hearing. Could be wrong, so. Dale: The budget is going to be one of the real challenges for the new council members. The other is potentially, as you mentioned, the kind of loss of experience in the collective body. Stephen: One of the good things that somebody pointed out the fact that now that they're off council, I think it was Omar Figueroa last December 6th said that it's just like that they are now resources. So we can tap them. And so I think that it's like all of us are in good standing with them. So I think that's just like that which one of us wouldn't tap their collective knowledge from the years gone by. Dale: Not to mention that new blood is a good thing in itself. Things that may not have happened in the past can be looked at again. I wanna wish you well in your term, as it begins. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. Stephen: Thank you. And thank you for having me. And thank you for all that you continue to do for the community.Dale: Thank you.  Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Music promoter and event producer Cloud Moss produced the Sebastopol Celtic Festival for 16 years (1995-2011) and the Kate Wolf Music Festival for 24 years (1996-2021). In this interview, we talk about:* how Brad became Cloud in the 1970’s because he brought news to a couple who lived on top of a mountain in Mendocino.* his youth in the San Fernando Valley where he played sports and imagined that he would become a poetry professor.* his wandering through Europe after high school before moving to Boonville in Mendocino and then eventually attending Sonoma State.* his first experiences organizing events took place on Star Mountain at the Wheeler Ranch off Coleman Valley Road.* how the Sebastopol Celtic Festival, which grew out of his working at Copperfield’s Music, was a response to the flood that closed the Sebastopol Community Center in the mid-1990’s.* how the editor of the Sebastopol Times and News, Rollie Atkinson, prompted him to do a benefit for KRCB, which became the Kate Wolf Music Festival to honor the memory of the local musician who once worked at the newspaper.* his admiration for Kim Caruso (now Camp) who ran the Sebastopol Community Center during this period and met every challenge they faced together.* his observation that it is easier to start something new than to manage to keep it true for many years.Cloud Moss made Sebastopol area (and Laytonville) a destination for live music at the festivals he brought to life. TranscriptCloud: Chris is a wonderful storyteller, harp player, penny whistle, bodhrán. He's been concentrating on the harp lately. He's also a harp maker. Uh, it’s a great pleasure to bring him back. Would you please welcome Chris Caswell?Chris: So I've gotta tune this. I haven't tuned it yet. Um, but it only takes about 15, 17 minutes. So, uh, enjoy yourselves. Uh, I actually like tuning. I don't get tired of it, which is actually a good thing considering what I play.Dale: Welcome to Sebastopol City Limits. I'm Dale Dougherty. That was the opening night of 2009 Sebastopol Celtic Festival with Cloud Moss introducing harpist Chris Caswell. My guest is Cloud Moss. He's the event producer and music promoter who organized the Sebastopol Celtic Festival and the Kate Wolf Music Festival. We'll learn how those incredible music events started But first I want to share the story of how Cloud Moss got his name. Cloud: My given name is Brad and Moss is my last name. The name Cloud was bestowed upon me by a Welsh gypsy who --this is back in 1970, I think. Maybe 1978. I think somewhere around there. I used to live on a thousand acre parcel, five miles outside of Boonville. And on part of that parcel up above, I was down closer to the road and there used to be more traffic through the house and part of the property where I live.So we used to be more involved with people coming and going. Up above was somebody I knew named Jackson Crazy Wolf. He was a Welshman and his wife, Osha, they lived on top of the mountain where it used to be a place called Compost College. Compost College was used by Mendocino, no, excuse me, the College of the Redwoods as an adjunct to teach people gardening.There was a big wikiup and so forth. It was abandoned and Crazy Wolf and Osha lived up there. They'd come and go between there and the coast, Mendocino, where I first met them, I used to hike up there quite a bit and talk to them and he always used to call me "bro". And also I traveled quite a bit and because my name was Brad in a lot of different languages in different countries, it sounded to people like "bread".So I was called anything from "pan" in Mexico to "lechem" in Israel, to "brød" in Denmark. Everywhere I went, in that language, I was called bread. So anyway one day Crazy Wolf said to me and he lived very much like a Native American to the point where he once killed a buck barehanded by grabbing its antler and breaking its neck. Anyway we were standing, the three of us in a garden. There were cumulus nimbus clouds going by with all the shapes that you could see. And he said, " if we don't get a name for you, we're just, you're just gonna be 'bro'. Then he stuck out his palm and he looked at his wife, Osha, and he said: "You know what? I got it. He's just like those passing clouds up there. He always brings us the news and tells us what's going on down closer to town and so forth. And he's just like all those changing clouds up there. We're gonna call him Passing Cloud." And I, after too many jokes about PC and passing gas, people just started calling me Cloud.Dale: That's a wonderful story. Cloud: And it stuck and I was Cloud Moss. I think one of the biggest kicks I got out of this over the years two, one, when I first started becoming a promoter and dealing with national acts and call agents and they say, yeah, can I say who's calling?I'd say Cloud Moss and they'd go -- they couldn't get it. I had to really get my foot in the door to get to talk to people who were dealing with national acts, but when they found out, I was very detailed, that changed. But the funniest thing that ever happened was-- do you recall when we used to have the morning show on Channel 50 around here for many years? They wanted to interview me one year for the Celtic Festival, so they had me go over to Montgomery High School early in the morning. We used to have the games as well during that time, in the early days. So I got a woman caber tosser who came out and she was wearing a kilt and so forth. And she was in the background doing the caber toss. And I had to be there an hour early. And the guy who was interviewing me was the weatherman. And it was a one of those vans with the remote antenna and so forth, and he kept walking around practicing my name for the whole hour.He kept walking around in between when he was on the set going: Cloud Moss. We get on live. He gets on live, he goes, I'm here with the director of the Sebastopol Celtic Music Festival, Clod Mouse.For years we used to make buttons for the Celtic Festival that everybody used to wear. And they made me a button that said C L O D M O U S E. Dale: Let's start somewhat at the beginning. Where did you grow up? Cloud: I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, a place called Sun Valley, not Idaho . And I used to cruise Van Nuys Boulevard as a kid in the high school. Dale: Were you a musician growing up?Cloud: I was not, although I had musical components, people in my family. I had a couple of concert master violinists and so forth. But I was not myself a musician. I was more of a athlete and a history buff. Dale: Really? Cloud: And I did creative writing. Actually, when I was younger, what I wanted to do was, I wanted to become a poetry professor.Dale: Really? Cloud: Yeah. They actually had a poetry class in my high school. Always really enjoyed poetry. I enjoyed history and like I say, I was rather athletic. And back in the day when we were all younger. Dale: And what was your sport? Cloud: I played baseball for about seven years or eight years as a youngster, but in high school I played some basketball and I also was on the swim team until I got very sick of swimming and chlorine. Dale: So how does your path take you to what you end up doing? How did you make the connections between that as a high school kid to getting involved as a producer of events and such? Cloud: I worked in high school, saved my money. Two days outta high school, I flew with a friend to Switzerland on an open-ended trip, I think it was. Anyway, he went for three months and I ended up staying for a year and a half. I lived around Europe and the Middle East and I just traveled around and got odd jobs and things like that.I was accepted while I was gone to Sonoma State and Santa Barbara as a philosophy major and a religious studies major in the two different schools. I decided not to come back. At the time I felt like I was learning more just being on the road and taking care of myself. And I didn't go to school for about nine years. Actually I started really playing, when I lived up in Mendocino County outside of Boonville and I first started drumming and I actually practiced a lot on oil drums. Used them like congas. Not a great thing for one's body. But I ended up studying at Ali Akbar Khan School of Music in Marin. I studied tabla, I studied darbuka doumbek.I also went to Sonoma State. I studied silver flute, open hole flute. I naturally progressed to being able to play rhythm and then learned from some great masters and then for some particular reason. I grew up in a family that loved music. I just was not, I was not a musician and nobody immediately around me was.I became a dance accompanist at Sonoma State. So I worked in the dance department. What happened was, I developed chronic tendonitis because I was playing so much and I had developed some bad habits. It's important actually to keep breathing I discovered, especially when you're using your body a lot, and I did not. So I was very good. I was intricate, but I was not doing things that were smart in terms of the long run. So I got chronic tendonitis. I didn't wanna leave the world of talented musicians and craftspeople that I was around.And the first event I actually did, I don't remember the year, it was quite a long time ago. I lived up on Star Mountain for nine years, which is on top of Coleman Valley Road, just west of Wheeler Ranch. And it used to be owned by Moses Moon, who has since passed, and Moses used to run the Gate of Horn in Chicago, a famous folk club. I did, at the Veterans Hall, which is now the Center of the Arts, I put together a weekend festival. The beneficiary was C.A.R.E., the outfit C.A.R.E for a mother's clinic in Mali for nursing mothers and so forth. So it was an African-themed festival, and that got my feet a little wet on it.I threw events and parties and things like that out at the Ranch. Every once in a while you fall into something that you realize you've got a knack for. So I tended to have a knack for it. And then when I guess when my kids were young, very young, I'd say about 32 years ago or 33 years, I got a job. One of my jobs, I had few different jobs, was working at Copperfield's and I helped develop their music section at the bookstore. And then when they opened up Copperfield's Music, I, along with Al, who -- he managed, I assistant managed; we ran Copperfield's Music. I put together at the time a very extensive Celtic music section that I curated because I was steeped quite a bit also in Celtic music and Indian. Oddly enough, Indian music brought me to Celtic music. I really appreciated not only the musicality of it, but I appreciated the pathos, the ballads and things of that nature. So I had people coming from far and wide coming to just see this particular selection if they were into Celtic music. Dale: That was on Main Street, wasn't it?Cloud: It was right next door to Copperfield's on the north side. And so what happened was I'm trying to think what happened. There was the flood.The flood in 90 --the festival started in 95-- I guess it was 94, 95, somewhere in there, there was the the flood and the Community Center had taken about five feet of water and mud. They had just put in a new floor, wood floor. It was completely destroyed. And on top of it, the City Council at the time pulled the funds that they had usually earmarked for the center.And Kim Caruso was the head of the center. And I met with her. I had a good friend at the time, Steve Blamires, who was Scottish and Chris Caswell. And between the three of us, we were just chatting one day and Al who was working at Copperfield's Music and we were joking about Woodstock. I wonder how Woodstock started and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that led to us deciding why don't we try to throw a Celtic festival? I had a meeting with Kim, Steve and I did, and asked if she would be interested, and we would do it completely as a benefit for the community center.So the timing was very apropo to... Dale: They had a need.Cloud: Yeah, there was a need. And then I had what coincided with that was because I had this extensive Celtic collection at the Copperfield's Music, one of the people who was a distributor was also trying to get gigs for the Old Blind Dogs out of Scotland.And this was in March and it was during the time where in San Francisco there used to be this, the San Francisco Irish Music Festival in Fort Mason. And so they were looking for some extra gigs. So as a favor, I said I would do it and it was not something I was even thinking of doing at the time.But I said I would do it. We threw an event at Jasper's. Chip Dunbar did the sound for me. And we had, I don't know, 150 people or something that we just, we were surprised. We packed a bunch of people in. Then after that Patrick Ball, if you remember, Patrick, Celtic Harp player lived around here for many years. Patrick took me down to Berkeley to the Old Freight and Salvage. He said I want you to see this Irish fiddler named Martin Hayes. And I went and saw Martin Hayes at the time was playing with Randall Bayes on guitar. Not, that was right before he played with Dennis Cahill.And I went down and Martin and I, we went to a bar afterwards and I started chatting with Martin. I said, would you be interested in coming to Sebastopol for a Celtic festival? He was interested. I contacted the Old Blind Dogs. I said, would you be interested? They were interested. And so the Celtic Festival was born at the end of September, and then to juice everything up, at the end of August, I was asked again by the same person who had asked me to help put a concert together for the Old Blind Dogs to put together a concert for a group called After Hours that came out of Ireland and England. I put that together and there were so many people that came to that.I think we were somewhere around 220 and Bill De Carli, who was running the bar back then and still is around here, Bill looked at me and said, "Cloud, you've gotta stop letting people in." They were literally climbing the front window of Jasper's. So it was hugely successful.Dale: Was that a surprise to you? Cloud: Yeah. Yeah, it was. And we did the Celtic Festival, which was a huge success, on all levels; the participants, the performers, the funds that were raised for the community center. I then talked to Kim and I made an arrangement with Kim to do concerts at the community center. The arrangement was a mutually beneficial one where I gave half of all proceeds to the community center, that would be in the black. In return, they helped cover insurance and would stand behind if there were losses. It just turned out that the first dozen events that I put on were all amazingly in the black. Some of them were hugely in the black because the January after the first Celtic Festival, I brought Arlo Guthrie to town for two nights in a row, and that was sold out off the charts at the community center. And again, people were just over the moon that Arlo Guthrie was in Sebastopol. Dale: Sebastopol did not have a reputation as a music destination before then, did it? Cloud: No. The first years that I was doing this, the common comment or complaint locally, just geographically, which would include Santa Rosa, was that people felt they had to go down to the Bay Area to enjoy the quality of music or entertainment or opera or anything that they wanted. They had to go there. Of course that's dramatically changed over the years, but that was the landscape that I was working with at the time. And so we were off and running basically. And then because there were so many fortunate successes in these first concerts, one day Rollie Atkinson walked down from Sebastopol Times and News, which was stationed just down the street in those days. And Rollie would come into the music store regularly anyway, and he chided me. He said why don't you do something for KRCB? They need something and you've been doing this other stuff. And it's been very successful.And at the time, Chris Caswell and I had a show together on KRCB, which we had for some years called Pacific Gale. But so Rollie, he's the one that got the ball rolling for me to start thinking about, okay, what could I do for KRCB?And that's where the Kate Wolf Music Festival came from, which was originally going to be a one day, one time only-- it was called Kate Wolf Retrospective, which was a benefit strictly for KRCB. And what I did was Chris talked to his folks and we went out and did it on their property. Mm-hmm which used to have the Red, White, and Bluegrass festivals around July 4th for about five years. So they had an amphitheater on a slope with a kind of a decaying stage. We fixed it all up, put money into it. Put money into the electrical. And we put this together. I got a lot of Kate's old friends. I called Utah Phillips. I called Don Coffin, who was one of Kate's husbands. And the the head of the Wildwood Flower, her original band, and I called Nina Gerber and they said, okay, yeah, if you got this idea and you can run with it. Get the logistics straight, we'll be in on it. Again, that was beyond expectation.Dale: What year was that? Cloud: That was 96. So just Celtic Festival started 95. September. Kate Wolf Music Festival started 96. June. Dale: Why Kate Wolf? Did you have a connection to her? Cloud: I knew Kate Wolf. I would not claim to have been a good friend of Kate Wolf but I was an acquaintance. Dale: And she lived here in town? Cloud: Actually, yeah. What was interesting is that Kate also used to work at Sebastopol Times and News. So that was part of, I think, part of what happened in my thinking. Rollie and I talked and Kate used to work there, but also Kate used to do things around the county. For example, like out in Bodega, put a festival together, get a flatbed truck, make that the stage, get people together. And she used to bring community together through music. I just started talking to people and the idea came from, at that time, the Sonoma County Folk Festival, which had been going, I believe about 10 years, was on its last breath. Kate helped start it. And also I should say that when we lived at Star Mountain, Lori and I sponsored -- I guess I could say this-- we sponsored a peyote circle for Kate to heal her with the Native Americans and Robert Greenway and so forth, and a teepee when she was sick with leukemia, so we helped do that.So there was a memory and a connection there. We did not partake in it because we had, our Shauna, was a baby at that point. We just set it up. Anyway I talked to people and realized the folk festival was on its last legs, and nobody had ever done anything to honor Kate's memory specifically.So I thought, okay, let's try this. Also Chris Caswell, he played with Kate. He used to play with Robin Williamson from the Incredible String Band, and they wrote the song Pacheco, which was connected with Redtail Hawk. So that's how that started. And it spent five years at Caswell Vineyards until they wanted to put more vineyards in where we parked cars. And then I had to find another spot. Wavy Gravy, who was Kate's personal clown and good friend when she was going through her leukemia, really encouraged me. I looked everywhere from Oakland, it turned out all the way up to Laytonville and Wavy insisted I go up to the ranch, the hog farm and Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville.He said Kate would love it here. She rode in the rodeo days parade up there. Please come and check it out. So I came and checked it out with my longtime sound man, Mike Bendenelli. Met Bob Barsotti, who was used to be Bill Graham's right hand man who lived up there. And the rest, as they say, is history.We hit it off, moved the festival up there. Bob and I eventually became partners and we retired it this year and the Celtic Festival was retired-- was that retired back in 10 or 11? Yeah. And that was retired not by choice, at least my choice. It was retired by a incoming new board and a new director at the time, and they decided they wanted to go in a different direction.So that was pulled like a month after the last festival without much input. And the Kate Wolf Music Festival after a two year hiatus with COVID, we decided we wanted to go out on our own terms while we still had the opportunity and we threw our farewell festival. Dale: That was last year? Cloud: Yeah. Dale: So those are pretty good days. Those were great festivals to have here. Cloud: We're very fortunate. I have a lot of good memories and now that I'm basically retired, I can actually put my mind to enjoying some of those memories. I have a library full of board tapes and lots of friends through the years and hopefully we'll still get to see a bunch of them with some very artistic friends.And I'm hopeful that there will be new, younger people bringing on things that community will embrace that will also be community builders. Dale: People are really interested in getting out, attending live events again. And hearing music. Cloud: We were fortunate. I think we were a little bit of an anomaly this last year. I know a lot of events did struggle, but we sold out four months in advance and had a clamor of hundreds, trying to get tickets. But to be honest with you, we attribute that mostly to the fact that we had announced it was our farewell festival. We had built 24 years worth of people coming to the festival and loving it and they didn't want to miss the last one. So a lot of people came out of the woodwork. I don't think if it were the farewell festival, we would've had that kinda turnout. Dale: What kind of advice would you give to the next generation of producers or organizers?Cloud: Just grab whatever's valuable and run in the other direction. Dale: But let me guess that you probably got into it not knowing fully what it would take to do it all. And you had to figure it out as you went. Cloud: It would be a very hard sell to people if they knew what they were up against and if they understood the limitations of the economics of doing this, either how stressful it can be doing it with very few people; trying to pull off all of the different jobs that it entails; how strenuous that is in terms of hours and focus; or how difficult it is to keep the economics as solvent as you want year after year. If you have a big crew that needs to be consistently paid and given recognition and raises and so forth along the way.And the fact that expenses in the fields of play, which are performers and travel costs and infrastructure costs, those don't tend to go down. Those tend to go up. What I discovered is it's easier to come up with a new idea and put that idea into practice initially. What's much harder is to stay true to that idea and ethos and keep it going. Keep the main crux and kernel of what you were doing solid and have it continue to grow and grow and last over time. It's a different thing to manage than it is to create. What I've always said to people that want to get into it is make sure that you, yourself and anybody around you that is going to be involved, is willing to come through on the downside, not just the upside.Because, in my experience, when people get together and are discussing putting things together, whether it's a board or a committee or whatever it is, everybody likes to talk about just how great it's gonna be, just how wonderful the idea is, and how it's gonna be solid and so forth. And I'm more of a realist, and experience has borne that out for me.It's not as simple as just saying: isn't this a wonderful idea? We're just gonna have success. You have to look at all ends of it. And then you have to be around people who are willing to come forth if it doesn't go the way you want. And then if it doesn't go the way you want, you really wanna do this?Kim and I certainly had our setbacks, but what I discovered working together with Kim is when we had our setbacks, we just tightened our belts and... I could not have done what I had done without having the symbiotic relationship that I had with Kim. I owe a great deal to her innovativeness, her ability to get so many people in the community, just wanting to help out, wanting to be part of everything. She was very infectious that way. She was full of positive energy, full of sticktuitiveness and get it done. And like I say, if you ran into some brick walls or some pitfalls, Kim was the first one to get up and say, okay, we're just gonna work harder and get through it.I have nothing but a lot of admiration for Kim and she's still a good friend to this day.Dale: The interesting thing about events is especially, the people who attend them they are very happy when it all goes well. They have no idea what it takes to put them on and the people like you that work behind the scenes are invisible to them, but they make all the difference in the world both to the performers and to the guests that are there. Cloud: And to me a truly successful event has to do with all components. That means that the venue, the community, the backers, the attendees, the performers, the volunteers, the staff, you wanna have everybody coming to you with smiles on their faces and feeling positive.If any one or two of those are not happy, then the success isn't truly successful in my eyes. So that's why it takes a lot of work to make sure you're touching all the bases properly. Dale: Let's leave it at that. That's a good place to get to. I appreciate all the work you've done over the years. Cloud: Back at you.Photos: courtesy Cloud MossOpening music credit: Chris Caswell at the 2009 Sebastopol Celtic FestivalClosing music: Dervish and Vasen together doing Josefin’s Waltz, provided by Cloud Moss. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

The Bell Clock is an art project by Jim Wheaton that sits, for now, in his backyard in downtown Sebastopol. Jim sought to create the same kind of feeling with sound that church bells create in town, but he wanted to hear bells playing secular music instead of sacred hymns. He wondered, though, would his art project run up against the town’s noise ordinance? In this episode, I talk to Jim about his project which makes a claim on public space for sound. He talks about the playlist that he has programmed for the Bell Clock and we hear samples of the tunes in the podcast. I also talk briefly to Jim about the Chimera Arts and Makerspace, which he is involved with in Sebastopol.For more information on Jim’s Bell Clock project, see his project website. Here’s a short video of the Bell Clock in action, playing “Here Comes the Sun". I spotted the Bell Clock, not knowing what it was, in July and featured it here. I made the connection with Jim then, but he said he wasn’t ready to reveal the clock until now. Secular Bells with Jim WheatonTranscriptDale: Welcome to Sebastopol City Limits. I'm Dale Dougherty. I am here with Jim Wheaton who has an unusual art project he's been working on.Jim: I created this project. I call it the Bell Clock. Somehow it doesn't trip off my tongue as easy as I want it to, sometimes. I keep saying bell tower sometimes. The idea behind it-- I'm an audio guy and I am a musician, and I listen to sound sometimes in the environment and try to hear them as music, and I live downtown and I have a hot tub. On Sunday mornings I go out in tub and I hear church bells, which I love the sound of church bells and I think it's way better than trucks and motorcycles and happy to hear them.One time I think I recognized one of the hymns that was being played and I looked it up. I looked at the words and I said it was something about "Jesus being the only way" or something, which is fine, but I got to thinking about how that public space that we are all in where we can hear the sounds, the churches seem to have monopoly on that kind of sound, or at least on the playlist that they use. Dale: You mean monopoly in terms of permission to... Jim: That's what I wanted to look into. And I thought, Hey, wouldn't it be cool? I'm a Buddhist or an atheist in some sense, but I'm not ashamed of that.And to me, if I could hear John Lennon's Imagine played on church bells or bells, maybe not church bells, I would find that interesting in the sphere of First Amendment and the public space, that would be some sort of balance that I would appreciate without being too obnoxious. So I looked into what would it take? At first I thought I'd put a speaker on my roof and be gorilla broadcasting, but I didn't really wanna do it in front of all my neighbors. And then I also looked up the noise ordinance in Sebastopol and it is rather interesting. It's rather severe.It says you are not allowed to have sounds emanating off your property louder than 55 decibels or 65, I think if you're in an industrial zone. That's not very loud. But there were exceptions and the exceptions were for natural phenomena. You're not responsible if your tree falls and makes a big noise.But “any bell or chime from any building clock, church or school.” There were no definitions of church or school. It's pretty common sense and/or building clock. So I decided, okay, I'm gonna put a clock onto my speaker and then it becomes a building clock because it's a clock on top of a building and it could be moved around.So I built this portable unit. It's got a big 20-inch speaker and a 20-inch clock below it and a little house, and it looks like a cupola. And my idea was to broadcast sounds on a regular basis into the public sphere. Dale: And is it operating? Jim: It is. It's run pretty well for the past eight months now.I have it on top of my office. I have a little office downtown across the street from Grateful Bagel, this little garage in the back. It is facing the mortuary and into that parking lot of Hop Monk. Dale: If you walk to the trail as I was once, I came across it and I thought, what is this old clock? And I had this story made up in my head that it somehow was a remnant of the train station. Jim: So it requires power and internet. It's got a little computer in it and I have a fail-safe mechanism. There's a power strip that goes off at a certain time of day, so it can't suddenly go on and blare out in the middle of the night.It's been pretty reliable. But the hands have been the hardest thing, the little hands on the clock. It's a very tiny mechanism in it, but I think the ones I have in there now are working well. So it has been on a schedule and it plays every day, Monday through Friday, and it plays the Big Ben Church Bell sound at noon, and that every hour on the hour, one through five, it makes a single bell sound.And then at once a day, right now at 4:20, it plays a song or a part of a song. And currently the playlist includes: * John Lennon's Imagine, * All You Need Is Love by the Beatles, * Get up. Stand up by Bob Marley and the Wailers, * Here Comes The Sun, which is sometimes ironically inappropriate these days.And I'm trying to remember the last one I have in there. But I've had to record these sounds myself. I have a list of other things I want to record and maybe on certain holidays have a sound. Dale: So you're not just playing recorded music? Jim: I am. I am playing recorded music. Dale: In the sense of commercial, like you're not playing the commercial version of the Beatles song. Jim: I have a synthesizer that generates bell sounds and I bought a Glockenspiel, and sometimes I record the Glockenspiel, and sometimes, I synthesize up a thing. I work in the music rights field too, and there is a publishing rights issue, but I feel pretty safe in the bounds of the Fair Use clause, which says if you're doing something that's art or parody, I don't believe I would owe royalties to John Lennon's estate for this use? If it came down to that and I had to pay a subscription to use the catalog, maybe I do that just as part of the exercise of understanding. Most of the church music is in the public domain, so they don't have to worry about that.Dale: Very nice. How would you like people to respond to your art? Jim: I would like to move the bell clock to a more populated space. Perhaps there is a business owner downtown facing the plaza that would be willing to have it up on their roof for a year as a installation and art project, and generate comments perhaps. Most of the people right around me, I've talked to, and they like it they don't want it to leave. They've gotten used to hearing a bell sound on the hour, and they just know, it doesn't take over the mental space too much. And I would never want it to devolve into a--- I guess that's my biggest fear is by pushing the envelope a little bit, somebody else would do it and somebody else would do it. Maybe we'll have different speakers on different buildings. Playing, competing stuff. I guess that would be the worst outcome. But the best outcome would be it's a single one in the public space. And the playlist that I get to generate is perhaps user generated or people can make requests.Maybe I play happy birthday once a day at some time, cuz it's everybody's birthday somewhere. Something like that. Dale: I think what's intriguing is sound can be a public space in a way. And your sense that the old notion of a village playing the church tower bells was not only an indication of time, but it was a connection to the people that lived in the town that they shared.Jim: Yeah. If you were a member of the religion, it was a call to prayer. Usually was you. It was time to remember your version of God. I picked 4:20 as the time of day knowing its reference to the cannabis world. But to me, that is an honoring of the moment that if you do partake in that, I want to honor also and to have different sounds.I'd like to do more sounds of sort of civil rights and other music that can remind people in the public space to think about this thing. And it'd be great if it was related to the day of the year or the month or a particular holiday. You could certainly have something on Martin Luther King Day that was just special for that day, for example.Dale: That's terrific. While I have you, just for people listening, you're involved with Chimera as well and Chimera's done pretty well coming out of Covid, hasn't it? Jim: Not only did we survive Covid, the Chimera Arts and Makerspace, we call it Downtown Sebastopol but we just unbeknownst to everybody, including me, we missed it. We had our 10 year anniversary of being a nonprofit. We have managed to survive and thrive with a small community of volunteers for a long time. And we do that by offering classes to the public. And if you wanna use our tools, you can become a monthly member. And those are our sources of income and we seem to be able to just keep on going.Dale: That's great.Jim: We're going to combine forces with the Sebastopol Area Time Bank and have a repair cafe at our space on January 28th. So we'll be putting the word out about that. Dale: All right, Jim, thanks for talking to me today about the bell clock, which you don't mind if we call it the bell tower. Jim: Yep.Dale: You don't have any sounds to play right now, do you?Jim: I might. Let's see. Dale: Send us .out with a tune Jim: Here we go. Let's try this one. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

In this conversation, we talk to a local political consultant, Dennis Rosatti, about the election results, which are still coming in. Dennis lives in Sebastopol but did not work for any of the City Council or School Board candidates in Sebastopol in this year’s elections. He shares his observations on the City Council election, addressing what seemed to matter in a close race and touching on voter turnout, the role of under voting (voting for less than three candidates) or bullet-voting, the value of endorsements as well as door-to-door canvasing. We started recording this session at 1:30pm on Friday and at 1:31pm, a new batch of 40,000 votes showed up on the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters website, which Dennis had been expecting. Even with fresh vote totals, the ranking of the candidates for City Council did not change. Only 407 votes separate first from last, and 232 votes separate third and fourth place. The winners of the school board races in Sebastopol did not change with the additional votes. According to Dennis, in his communication with the Registrar’s office, about 20,000 votes remain to be counted. These results are not final or official but we are getting closer and closer to the end of a close race. When you see that small a margin of victory and defeat, it tells me that things aren't clear, in terms of where folks are at and where the city's going.TranscriptThis transcript is lightly edited for clarity.Dale: I'm joined today by my colleague Laura Hagar Rush. And we are talking to Dennis Rosatti of Rosatti Consulting about the election. As we started our conversation today, a new batch of votes came in, showing up on the county registrar site, so we'll be talking about that. But welcome, Denny. Thanks for talking to us. Dennis: Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me to talk. Dale: Could you just give us, in a nutshell, your background and the type of work you do?Dennis: Sure. I do political consulting and public affairs work in Sonoma County in the north. I've been doing this as a full-time gig for about eight years. Started my business about 12 years ago. And prior to that I was the executive director for Sonoma County Conservation Action. And so I cut my teeth on politics in the county. And I did that work for about 15 years in Sonoma County at the grassroots level. Dale: Just to be explicit, were you involved in managing any of the campaigns in the Sebastopol City Council or the school board? Dennis: I was not, no. I did not work on any campaigns directly in Sebastopol or West County this cycle. I did have a couple campaigns in Windsor. I had a school board campaign in Piner Olivet Union school district. And a couple other campaigns around the North Bay, but not in Sebastopol.Dale: Why don't you just tell us about this recent update of votes.Dennis: We finally got another 40,000 votes that came in from the county registrar of voters from their last update this past Tuesday, which was the 15th. We were told there was about 60,000 votes left to count approximately. It appears that they added about another 40,000 to the tally. So that tells me we've got a diminishing number left obviously, and usually the ones that are left at this point are ones that come in the mail.In other words, they've received them after election day, but they are postmarked by election day. And/or they are provisionals where folks had a spoiled ballot, they screwed up on their ballot and had to get a new one. They late same-day registered and voted provisionally. Those ballots are always the most difficult for them to verify and they take the most time with them in order to make sure that the sanctity of our process is kept intact. Dale: So what do the current numbers tell us? Anything different? Anything's changed since the Tuesday. Dennis: As far as I can tell now without diving too deep in, as you said literally this came out 10 minutes ago. It appears that we have a similar trend to what we've been seeing. And we haven't had any movement amongst our candidates here in the city of Sebastopol. In terms of positioning, we've still got Steven Zollman, who is in the lead with 1,843 votes; Jill McLewis in second place at 1800, and then Sandra Maurer at 1744 votes.And those are the top three that would advance if this were the final. And then we have two (candidates) trailing, and that would be Oliver Dick at 1,512 votes and Dennis Colthurst with 1,436 volts. The gap has gotten a little bit bigger between the top and the bottom. We've got 331 votes separating them currently. (Correction: it is 407).And then the gap, perhaps the more relevant gap here, because it doesn't really matter what place you're in as long as you're top three — the gap between third place and fourth place is about 232 votes. If you look at the votes from 2018, which is the most recent non-presidential city council election, those votes tallied in at 2478 for third place and 2869 for first place. However, you had a situation where the voter turnout was 83%. This is the election right after Trump got elected. Typically you see a dip in the non-presidential years in terms of voter turnout. And in fact we did see a dip, but it was not a very big dip. 83.5% is a very high voter turnout for any election let alone a gubernatorial. The presidential years by comparison, we see typically in Sonoma County, 90 to 93%. We're one of the top in the state always. Us, Marin County and Alpine County. Interestingly enough, there's only about 300 voters in Alpine County. But they all vote. Dale: So what's the turnout for this year looking like? Dennis: Right now we're sitting at 60% with this current update. And when you add in about another 20,000 votes, if that's what's out there, which is what the registrar voters are telling us you're going to end up around 65% countywide. Sebastopol will track a little better than that, as we always do. But I don't expect it to be more than a few percentage points higher. Dale: So it's a bit down from the last two elections then, right? Dennis: Yeah. I can see these numbers climbing another hundred or 200 votes overall, but I don't think we're gonna get to 2,600, in other words, on any of our people that were running.I think there's a number of reasons for that. One is, again, it's a lower turnout election in general, so you're going to have lower votes. Two, you have five people running that were relatively speaking unknowns in the city politics. I don't mean that in a disparaging way toward the candidates at all.It's just they haven't been on a ballot for the city council before. They're newcomers. We had three long-tenured city council members choose not to run this cycle, which left these three open spots and we had five people run that had different levels of service given to the city, the community, but not necessarily name placement on the ballot.I believe the only person who did have that was Dennis Colthurst, who was on the Palm Drive Board, and he is currently in last place. I personally, and I'm sure many of us might ask the question, does that association with Palm Drive actually hurt him more than help him? Given what happened with Palm Drive, it's no longer really a functioning agency and we're still paying property taxes there. Dale: It does say people might remember those things.Laura: And his campaign played it down. Dale: There was some discussion about under voting that that there was a strategy to encourage people to only vote for candidates in two out of the three rather than three. And of course this is in the context of a group running as a block Oliver Dick, Jill McLewis and Dennis Colthurst.Dennis: I can't think of any in recent history that ran quite as unified as those three had. I can't think of any examples in that regard. I know that oftentimes allegiances happen and there's common supporters and you often see certain signs together in certain properties and other signs for the other opposition in other properties.But I don't recall such a coordinated campaign. I'm an outsider looking into this thing, but I am in the business and the direct mail that was sent out by the three that ran as a slate. We got three different pieces from, McLewis, Colthurst and Dick. And it appeared to me that the graphic design was done by the same person or the same firm. Very similar characteristics. All had little vote by November 8th, little stars in the corners of the mail. The backside had the same kind of spacing and layout design. For the most part, the message was very similar, if not exactly the same on the pieces in terms of the top three to five issues that they listed. Some very subtle differences, but for the most part, looked the same.They were all sent from the same presorted first class mail, and they all came out of the same outfit. So it appeared that they were running pretty coordinated. I think maybe you had some pushback from voters in Sebastopol. Maybe they didn't like that. Hard to say, exactly, given there's not that big of a spread between any one candidate or the other. But the two that appeared to be advancing, that were on the other side, Zollman and Maurer did not have the same looking materials, same look and feel to their materials.They did have a few common endorsements with the Sierra Club and with Sebastopol Tomorrow. But besides that, they seemed to not have a whole lot of the same strategy and planning. As far as under voting goes or withholding the third vote. Again, I don't know if you can really tell by the numbers that happened but I did hear that kind of buzz around town partly as a knee-jerk reaction, I think, to the slate, and folks being concerned about the slate getting in and all of a sudden having majority on the council. But I would guess that a lot of folks chose to place their third vote and maybe they chose the woman, and that's why you see Jill. Maybe they liked her profile more than the other two. Laura: What I've noticed talking to progressive political watchers is there was a lot of talk that like, yay, the strategy for encouraging people to vote for two people was what won this game. And they pointed to, I think it's, was it a roughly 1500? -- that's a rough number under votes. But then we looked back at some earlier elections and noticed that there was even more under voting, say in the Diana Rich election. And to me that kind of blew that particular theory out of the water. Sounded nice. Dennis: Yeah. In that election in 2020, Diana had a 2578 vote margin whereas the nearest competitor Neysa Hinton had 2129 and then Evert Fernandez had 2074.So they're about four to 500 votes below her vote total. It would appear that perhaps some people just bullet voted. That's what they call it in the political world, bullet voting. But it's also hard to say because there was another person in that, two more people in that race as well. But you do have someone who has a lot more votes than the other two. So when they're five and they're all so close together, I don't know that you can actually say from a political science standpoint that there's evidence of under voting.Dale: The other thing we've heard from people is they felt they didn't get a lot of information about the candidates. One, they were new, so they didn't have a track record. When they made comments in public, it was pretty neutral.So is this a contest that's more defined by personality, who you like or who you feel comfortable with than it is about issues? Dennis: Interestingly enough, and I'll point out that the slate of three had some comments and quotes that indicated to me that they intentionally did not go after community based organization endorsements, whereas the other two did.I would always advise a person running for city council to take the time to educate yourself on the issues facing the city and the people that are involved in those issues and the organizations involved in those issues, and make a really concentrated effort to reach out to those affinity organizations and those issue interest groups to find out what their issues are, what are the things they're concerned about and court them to help you get elected.Both Steven and Sandra did those endorsement interviews and went through some of those processes. Those organizations then communicated out to their members and the folks that they know that live within the jurisdiction. And, I think that's worth at least a 100 to 200 votes probably in a very close election. Dale: So endorsements matter. Dennis: In a race like this, I think endorsements matter, partly because you have one side saying, we're not gonna do that. And that's a strategy oftentimes used by folks that know they're not going to get endorsements.So they just say, we're above all that, or whatever. But then you have candidates making comments to your newspaper that I read with some distaste that said, I don't have the time to spend doing that. And to me that's part of the job. You gotta go out there and learn what you're going to be legislating and governing. So for me, as a voter, and I'm only one person, but I look to those types of things. (Endorsements) are not the only thing that helps me make my decision. I also look for folks to come around and knock on my door or to go to an event to see people speak in public or to forums. The only person I saw come to my neighborhood was Sandra.I do believe the three folks had a meet and greet at one of my neighbor's houses, but I was not able to make it. But I know Sandra did knock on my door and I had a conversation with her when I was out gardening in the front yard one morning, on a Saturday morning.Dale: So another observation — we looked at the campaign spending. It's not complete yet, but the last time we looked at it, it's fairly low amounts raised overall. Under $10,000 for each candidate. The block each got $4,700 from the Barlow. Interestingly, Zollman is probably the last on that list in terms of how much he raised, and he's the top vote getter. That's contrary to most political formulas. Dennis: Often it's not how much money you spend, it's how you spend it and having enough money to run a decent race, to get yourself some signs and some name visibility is important.Deficits of finances in a town the size of ours, a jurisdiction the size of Sebastopol, can be overcome by a ground game and actually going out and talking to voters and earning the votes. Dale: I did hear that all the candidates were doing that, but they might not have all had the same coverage.Dennis: Sure. I may have missed some at home. Usually they leave something behind when they stop by though. Laura: So I'm interested in how you think this election, what did it say about the power dynamics within Sebastopol? There's the whole question of the the old guard versus the new guard. There was a lot of discussion about that, but it seemed hard to tell who was who in this game under those definitions. Dennis: Maybe you can describe, could you explain a little more what you're ... Laura: Absolutely. So was this just old Sebastopol versus new Sebastopol, that sort of demographic split that we're used to in town or were we seeing something else?Dennis: Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure who old and new is anymore. We are the oldest voting jurisdiction in Sonoma County by our population. We have more folks over the age of 65 than any other city by percentage of population.So you know, that new guard that you might be referring to that came in the nineties or so I think is part of the old guard, right? Dale: There's the old old guard and there's the old guard, and then there's the new guard Dennis: I know some of the names and some of the personalities. I'm not sure I want to invoke them here in this forum. But I have a lot of respect for folks on both sides of that spectrum, and I think it's important to have a healthy debate in our town. I personally, when I see the vote spread here being only 332 votes, I think it was that we said that they're separated by, when you see that small a margin of victory and defeat, it tells me that things aren't clear, in terms of where folks are at and where the city's going. I think you had candidates searching for issues. I think the city's been in a pretty good place in general.Of course, we have issues just like any other place with housing, with homelessness, cost of living, our fire department is a big issue. I thought that would actually play more than it did in the election. It was brought up and it was discussed, but it seemed like every candidate had pretty much the same or a similar answer to that one. And I thought it would be a little more of a heavy issue. But anyways, my point was I think, things have been in a fairly good place by a council that's been pretty attentive to the needs of the citizens and the residents. You had a vacuum of folks of leadership, of folks stepping out.I was hearing from people up until literally the day to file that they were considering putting their hat in the ring. But there was a lot of hesitation because what does this mean? “What does it do? I haven't been involved before.” I think we're gonna see some folks in the next couple of campaign cycles up here that might be new names, new faces, maybe a little younger that might be interested.As far as the differences between that old school and the new school, if you will, I'm not so sure they're so far apart right now.Dale: But as much as Sebastopol could have a progressive and a conservative swing, there did feel like one group was running with a more conservative stance. Dennis: The three were the more conservative and the two were the more liberal progressive. The two that were more progressive went out and got the Sierra Club endorsement and Sebastopol Tomorrow. I know one of them had Sonoma County Conservation Action; the other one had a Democratic party and the North Bay Labor Council, and those folks communicated to their organizations and their people, and I think that swung it. Dale: The other race that went on, and I don't know if you looked at it much, but it was the. West County Union High School district race, which is given some of the history here, it's a pretty contentious race. Ramirez's won handily over the incumbent 56% to 43%. Dennis: I'm just looking at that now from the new update. Laura: And we should point out course that Dennis' wife was on the board. He's married to Kelly Noe. So you have the inside view of this?Dennis: I do. And I perhaps have a view that's not totally able to be separated from my bias. You're gonna have a low turnout in that election too, in general, compared to the last couple cycles. Dale: Really. Dennis: Debbie Ramirez was elected to the Sebastopol Union School Board in the past. I think more than once. I could be wrong about that. She's got a lot of network here in town. I saw a lot of yard signs out there for her. I saw evidence that she was doing text banking, directly reaching out to voters in that way. I didn't see mail from either candidate, direct mail. I do know that the Forestville, Lower River and El Molino sections of the district have been very unhappy with the board in general.I didn't see a whole lot of campaign from Patrick, the opponent or the appointed incumbent, if you will. I did see some signs out there of his, I heard a bunch of them had gotten stolen. I didn't see a whole lot of other campaign activity from him, so I don't know..Dale: Okay. Did any of these candidates do anything interesting online to campaign. You mentioned text banking. (Like phone banks only using SMS texts) Dennis: Debbie did text banking. I didn't see a whole lot to be honest. I saw a few folks made Facebook pages which is a standard thing to do, right? And very basic websites.But I didn't see a whole lot of online advertising, digital ads from any of the city council candidates or the school board. I did see some endorsement posts and what I would call memes created by endorsers, with testimonials and stuff like that from some of the candidates. I didn't even see a whole lot of that, to be honest.Laura: I'm wondering if you saw anything in these elections locally that echoed what we've been seeing on the national level in terms of tone. Dennis: The votes are gonna be fake and that sort of thing. Laura: That would be one thing. Sort of personal attacks. That would be another thing. Okay. I admit I have a dog in this particular fight. Denigration of the press. That would be another thing. Dennis: Yeah, I didn't see a whole lot of that locally myself. I'll tell you, my race in Windsor that I worked in, there was a lot of very negative campaigning going on by the opposition to my two candidates. Maureen Merrill and Gina Fortino Dixon were my two candidates. My candidates insisted on keeping a positive campaign and not going below the belt. And unfortunately the people we were running against had some supporters who were just very vicious and they basically owned the Facebook and the Nextdoor and the social media sites and it was difficult to undo. Laura: The role of Nextdoor is interesting. What was your feeling locally here in Sebastopol from what you saw?Dennis: From a consultant's perspective, I'm not a fan of NextDoor when it comes to campaigning. Laura: Uhhuh.Dennis: And that's mostly because there's really no controls there. Anyone can say whatever they want. When they make a title of a post, it just stays there forever and every time someone comments, it just keeps popping up and popping up. So you could get some real bad information happening, which is something that we did see in Windsor.And it just persists out there because there's no real mechanism to control it or to reel it in. You also get a lot in my experience, which is unfortunately becoming deeper now with NextDoor in elections having run a bunch of ballot measure campaigns recently in West Sonoma County, you get a lot of folks from cross jurisdictions. NextDoor doesn't stop at the city limit.So to get people from other jurisdictions that happen to be included in that neighborhood group, opining on things that have no bearing on their lives really. So it's very interesting and there's a lot of uninformed opinion out there as well.I think it does play somewhat of a role, but it does tend be a bit of an echo chamber. Cause you've got 10 or 15 people on one thread and maybe 20 or 30 or 50 other people seeing the thread that's going on.Dale: There's some core group of people that are really fighting over this and they're carrying that campaign over lots of places, but most people aren't paying attention.Dennis: And it's the truth. It's sadly it's the state we live in our state of affairs. So to bring up the national issue, I think where that comes into play actually, Laura, is that it distracts people from what's in front of them, which is their local elections. It turns them off or it makes them feel a little more jaded. That division at the national level between the Republicans and the Democrats, I think does trickle down a bit to the local level because it makes us all less eager or less likely perhaps to be willing to engage with each other on a local level because we know that we have disagreements on that national level.Whereas people that disagree about who's running for president, let's put Trump aside even though we can't do that, but let's put that aside — people can still agree on: Hey, we need to fix our park, or Hey, we need to, pave our streets. Allow some more housing to be built because our kids need a place to live. Or, we have people here that can't afford to live here. How do we create some more affordable housing? We can come together on some of those things and say, let's figure out how to do this, right? We need to, we have to be able to exist here. When you start getting into the bigger meta issues, if you will, that's when things start to come off. And I think we do see a little bit of the deleterious effect downstream at the local level from the national situation.We also live in a bubble here in Sonoma County in general and Sebastopol, we're in the bubble of the bubble. I think even our conservative neighbors and friends often find distaste with the vitriolic kind of craziness on the national level. Dale: Thank you for your time today. I really appreciate your thoughts and insights into the election. We'll say it's not over yet, but it is very close to the finish line. Dennis: Yeah. We're getting a lot closer with 20,000 votes left countywide. You could see a change here in Sebastopol in the top three, but I think it's getting less likely.Thank you very much for inviting me to come on. I'm happy to talk anytime.Dale: Appreciate it. Thanks.  Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Lewis Buchner is running in an uncontested race for trustee from the Fifth District of the West County Union High School District. The Fifth District represents the downtown area of Sebastopol. Originally from New Jersey, Lewis has lived in San Francisco and the East Bay but moved to Sebastopol about eight years ago to live in the residence his parents had owned in Sebastopol. He is a woodworker and with his wife, Amy, run a small design-build shop called Myra Studio in town. He has a fourteen year old daughter who is an Analy freshman. He wrote in his candidate statement that one of his priorities is diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).I want to bring to the Board increased leadership in training teachers, staff, andstudents about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. I believe that there are no bad people causing this problem; only a lack of knowledge and skills. Everyone suffers when these issues are not addressed; the kids who are being bullied, the kids who are bullying, and the school community as a whole.The WSCUHSD board has three uncontested races: Shawn Chernila for Area 1; Jeanne Fernandez for Area 4 and Lewis Buchner for Area 5. Incumbent Patrick Nagle is running against Debbie Ramirez for the At-Large seat. The terms for the new board members will begin December 14.TranscriptLewis BuchnerDale: Welcome to Sebastopol City Limits, and my guest today is Lewis Buchner, and Lewis is running in the fifth district for the West Sonoma County Union High School District. It's an uncontested race. Welcome Lewis. In some ways anyone willing to run for school board needs to be applauded. Thank you. Lewis: You're welcome. Sometimes I wonder what I'm getting myself into. Dale: Is this the first time you've run for an elected office?Lewis: I've done a fair amount of board work and non-profit work, but this is the first time I've ever been in an elected office. Yes. Dale: Let's start with just learning a little bit about you. Where'd you grow up?Lewis: I grew up in New Jersey, right on the edge of rural and suburban New Jersey when there were still open forest and fields and places and creeks and places that kids could disappear for days at a time. Dale: More central? Lewis: North Central, yeah. Morris County. Dale: Okay. Morris County is a beautiful old place, isn't it? Yeah. Lewis: So I grew up there and then I moved to San Francisco to finish college and never left. And then, oh, maybe 15 years or more after that, my after my parents retired, they ended up moving to Sebastopol. I was living in San Francisco. They had colleagues and friends who had moved to Santa Rosa.Dale: In the seventies or later in the eighties? Lewis: They moved in the eighties. Yeah. And so we're now blessed with living in the house that was theirs and I've done a lot of work on it, but one of the best things about it was we inherited amazing neighbors. My parents were well loved by pretty much everybody on the street and so we just walked in. I mean, I knew them anyway because we were here visiting but actually living here was like this kind of instant neighborhood camaraderie, which I'm extremely grateful for.Dale: That's wonderful. So when did you move up here full time. Lewis: About eight years ago from San Francisco and the East Bay. Dale: Now tell us a little bit about your, you have an interesting job, I think. And had you started that in San Francisco and other places and you've brought it up here. Lewis: My dad was a furniture designer, a mid-century modern furniture designer, and he had a small furniture manufacturing business in New Jersey until he sold it and then taught furniture design for another 20 years.So I grew up around shops and tools and machinery and when I was three years old, I could probably tell the difference from a router and a plainer noise coming through the walls. I studied filmmaking in college and whenever I couldn't get a job doing documentary camera work, I would go work in a cabinet shop because it's what I knew.And I worked for about, almost about a year and a half for a wood pattern shop, which was making wood patterns for metal casting, which is very interesting, very precise. Everything's curved, everything's angled. So that was great training. And then I started my own little cabinet business in my twenties, and that grew from two people to four people to 12 people, to eventually a 60,000 square foot shop with 50 employees in South San Francisco, doing really high end architectural woodworking, so corporate lobbies. And we did a big job at San Francisco International Terminal and San Francisco Public Library. Many boardrooms and fancy wood interiors for wealthy corporations. So I did that for quite a while, always with an interest in sustainability. Worked a lot around sourcing wood from sustainable sources, and I was involved in the beginnings of the FSC, the Forest Stewardship Council, which is a certification program for wood, that it comes from a good source that to this day is the most credible of those systems.And now my wife Amy and I have a very small business. Amy's a fabulous interior designer. And I have a small shop with three employees and I'm having a ball. Going from 50 to three makes everything feels very easy. And I have a wonderful crew. And I'd say half the time Amy and I collaborate, and half the time she has design projects that we don't work on and we have woodworking projects that she doesn't design.But right now we're doing a lovely restaurant in Petaluma that she designed it and we're doing all the woodwork. Called Luma. It's the old Dempsey space, right? On the river. Dale: Working with Jasmine. Yeah. Lewis: Wow. You know Jazz?Dale: I do. She's a friend of my daughters. My daughter has the Bagel Mill in Petaluma.And they're good friends. They both have kids. Lewis: Little tiny kids then. She's lovely and we love her. And she's also the next door neighbor of my daughter who lives in Petaluma.  Dale: And so you, you have an older daughter and Lewis: And I have a 14 year old stepdaughter. Amy's biological child who's my stepdaughter, who lives with us, and she's at Analy. She's a freshman in Analy, which if you pull on that thread, that's why I'm here. Dale: I wondered how that conversation might have gone between you and your daughter that you were gonna get involved in the school board. Lewis: Oh, she thinks it's really cool because she knows why I'm doing it.Dale: Good. Let's get to that. That's the interesting part here. Why do you leave your workshop and go sit in board meetings.Lewis: Yeah. Really. A couple things. I think the background piece of that is I've always felt like it was important to have some kind of nonprofit or something. Think globally, act locally. And so I've always felt it was important to have something that I did that was not just about me, my work, my family. Yeah. So whether that's been being on boards of some environmental organizations or trade associations, or US Green Building Council, which I'm on now. So I've always had that and I've been a little bit discouraged to be honest with you about climate change and environmental issues and feeling less like I can really make a big difference. Whereas 20 years ago, I felt like I really could change how wood was sourced. And it made me think, where can I really make a difference? Not 5% of our plastic is being recycled. It's things like that just feel daunting. My daughter, my 14 year old who's biracial, had some really tough interactions in middle school where she was called the N-word and kids were just throwing around lots of racial slurs, not really understanding what they even meant, and the school really didn't know how to deal with it. And I have to say, these are teachers who I really like and have tremendous respect for, and administrators, principal and superintendent who are really good people, so this is not a matter of people being bad; it's a matter of people not having training.And so I started thinking about what do we do? What do we do to try to make the school system better trained to help kids get along better and understand racial issues. And then, started learning more about Analy and the problems that Analy has had over 10 years now. Really probably long time before that, but 10 years ago there was a federal lawsuit and there were some big issues. And so I started reading up on that and realizing that a lot of those things had never been fully addressed. And so then if you say the kids need training, the teachers need training.The teachers are hired by the principals; the principals are hired by the superintendent, and the superintendent reports to the board. If the board isn't setting a tone of a priority about certain things, it's just not gonna happen. And for better or for worse, I decided to throw my hat in the ringReally the truth is that it's an uncontested elections, though I'm not even on the ballot. Dale: Oh, you're not on the ballot? Lewis: No, like it or not, I'm in. That's not my only issue that where I feel like I can lend a hand. I have a moderate amount of financial experience and, I've been treasurer of a number of organizations and, so I think I can maybe of some help looking at finances and just governance. I've run some businesses and I've been on a bunch of boards and I think good, fair, open-minded governance is a skill. Dale: As is communication. As is communication. Lewis: Yeah. Yeah. Dale: That's actually interesting, your way in on this. Both, it's real to you.It's not just some choice of a subject. It's meaningful to you and your family. Lewis: Diversity, equity, and inclusion training is really important, but I also. Feel that there's with all these kinds of things, it's very real and it's very important, but it also can go overboard.So I don't want to be over woke. Yeah. I don't wanna be insensitive to the fact how different people think and live. And so I'm trying to help us find a really reasonable middle path to really address these issues. Get something done, but to realize that it's gonna take time, it's gonna be difficult, and people's patterns don't change easily. We don't wanna, we don't wanna swing the pendulum too far in either direction. Dale: That's good. The budget has been a focus for a lot, maybe some improve improvements lately, but they can only do with what they revenue they have coming in.Lewis: Yeah, for sure. Dale: How many seats on the board change over through this election? Lewis: Three. Dale: Three, . ILewis: Ran uncontested Shawn Chernila ran uncontested, and then the at large seat Patrick Nagle versus Debbie Ramirez is contested. Okay. That's the one that's on the ballot.Dale: So one contested race and two uncontested, and I think Shawn is from district one, is it? Lewis: He's Guerneville guy. Dale: Is there anything else that people should know about you or about this school board? Lewis: Relevant to what we started talking about earlier about whether the El Molino campus can become a maker space and provide some of those functions. I would love to see a way of healing the rift between the communities. And I believe that it actually ties right back into the concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion.In this case, it's not so much a skin color issue, but it's a class issue. I've heard El Molino people and even some old alumni talk about being called "River Rats," and that it just reminds me of slurs that my daughter's dealing with on the campus. So it's the same. Yeah. And and the fact that the name changed and then changed back and some of that, to me, I don't know the whole story and I will learn more and I will be open minded about it, but I think that there's some healing that needs to take place. We are one community. The kids are doing a better job. The kids have done, from what I can tell, much better job of going, Hey, we're all in the same school together. This is cool. There's more kids we can flirt with, hang out with play sports with, do stuff with.There's more class offerings. The kids are doing better at it, but we need to heal what's underneath with the older generations. So I think the more we can make use of that campus, I think there's a transportation issue that I really wanna learn more about. But part of it is, it's hard to get kids back and forth.What if we had a couple electric buses that went that did a shuttle three times a day? You could take morning classes at the Analy campus and afternoon classes at the El Molino campus once a week. I don't know. I'm spitballing, but yeah, that's good. I think there's some ways, So that would address DEI..It addresses the healing that needs to take place between the communities and it would address enrollment. We can do better with enrollment. We've pissed off a lot of people that don't want to send their kids to Analy and that can be corrected. And partly through healing some of the these wounds and partly through having a wider diversity of classes that we can offer kids. We can be a specialty school and a traditional academic school and attract kids to both, and we can have them work across that boundary. I think a lot of this, I'm gonna have some certain rude awakenings about pie in the sky ideas, but I think there's some work that can be done to-- it's about healing really. And that will address revenue. We'll address funding, we'll address enrollment. A lot of the outcomes that we want have a root Dale: in this another word is culture, right? Lewis: Yes.Dale: And of creating a civic culture, a learning culture, a respectful culture. It's not just about having an academic culture or a athletic culture. It's having these things that, that. People support each other and and our kids need that today more than ever. Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. Dale: Lewis, thank you for spending time talking to me and for hopefully other people get to know you a bit. That kind of healing that you're talking about is a difficult thing. Almost, I'd say reconciling budgets might be easier than that, but it's a worthy goal to come in and look at that. Cause I think it's a lot of also listening to people and people listening to each other. Sadly during Covid, because of the isolation of people and things like Zoom and everything else, we really need to get back to talking to real people in person. And understanding that we have a lot in common. Lewis: People don't feel heard. Or, or seen. Dale: Yeah. I wish you well and you won't be seen on the ballot but you'll be seen. When does your term then start? In January. Lewis: January. Dale: Okay. I wish you the best of luck. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

The Vice Mayor of the Sebastopol City Council, Neysa Hinton, speaks her mind even if it might not be completely politic to do so. She knows her own voice and it is a strong one. A working mother, who has worked in radio and now in an assisted living facility, she has juggled a career and her duties as an elected official.Neysa talks about growing up in Sebastopol but also in Jerome, Idaho where she got started in working in radio. She moved back to Sonoma County and continued to work in radio here and in San Francisco. In 2016, she ran for the City Council and was elected and she was re-elected in 2020. When she started out as a new city council member, she did not feel entirely welcome. She dealt with a pecking order established by more senior members who had many years of experience in local government. She acknowledges the learning curve that she had to go through, which will be much the same for the newly elected council members. She discusses the future of the Sebastopol Fire Department, a complex and contentious issue that will be decided by the new council following an outside consultant’s report. In addition, we talk about the City Manager retiring and how Sebastopol has been lucky to have its leadership serve for a long time. At an assisted living facility in Marin, Neysa had first-hand experience dealing with a vulnerable population during Covid. She reflects on some of what happened during Covid positively and negatively and she hopes that it made us more aware of our neighborhoods and our neighbors. Finally, she will not endorse any local candidate running for office but she hopes to welcome them and work with whomever is elected in November. Sebastopol Times is a reader-supported publication without advertising. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber today.TranscriptThis transcript was lightly edited.Dale: I'm joined today by Neysa Hinton who is the Vice Mayor of the Sebastopol City Council, one of two members of the council that will continue on into the next year. Welcome.Neysa: Good morning. Yeah. Here we are on a beautiful Tuesday morning at nine o'clock. And we have City Council tonight. Her BackgroundDale: I'd like to start just getting to know a little bit of your background. I think you grew up in the area. Neysa: I am actually fourth generation here. My mom graduated from Analy and I grew up outside city limits towards Freestone. My first K through second was at Harmony School District, and then we moved closer to Twin Hills School District. So I went to Twin Hills through seventh grade. After that we left the state for a number of years, and I lived in a variety of different states and went to a variety of different schools.I came back to Sebastopol. I went to Analy most of my junior year for just a semester and a quarter, and then I finished my senior year up in Jerome, Idaho. I went to junior college there at College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls. And that's the start of what ended up being a 25 year media career.I started as a copywriter for the radio station and the female on-air voice. And during college I did AM news and overnights. So all total three and a half years. But I was missing California and as a young adult, I saw my life here. And so I moved back in 1985 and got a job at a local radio station and went to work in Sonoma County radio.And shortly thereafter, when I saved up enough money to put the deposit down, I moved to Sebastopol inside city limits, and I lived for many years over on Nelson Way in Sebastopol there across from like Burbank Heights.Dale: What did you learn and like about radio? Neysa: Like a lot of young people at that stage, it was really exciting once I got in. I was a huge radio listener as a teenager. I was one of the people that would call up and win the records. And I didn't really understand how it worked and I wouldn't have got the job had I not registered as a new student with my counselor and they had a posting of somebody that could type with good English grades for a copywriter. And frankly, I thought I was applying for a job at a newspaper. I always saw myself at that point being a school teacher. Probably English and and speech and debate. I was very involved in my speech team in my senior year in high school and competed on a circuit. So honestly, once I got in the radio station, I was just like: Wow, this is a really fun job.I worked for KSRO and KREO at the time and I became the first female local sales manager in Sonoma County radio. It didn't pay very much. I was broke all the time, and so I had to waitress to augment my love job, which a lot of people in the business do to get started. Then three and a half years in, I thought about other careers. I did actually apply to be an international stewardess at the time, crazy with Pan Am. But radio just kept popping up for me and I just ended up just staying in that career. And then in my mid twenties I converted to sales when I came to California because that was the job I could get. And then I just had some success at it. I worked really hard and in my mid twenties I was promoted by a new ownership group that came in.I worked for KSRO and KREO at the time and I became the first female local sales manager in Sonoma County radio. And that was a huge honor. Frankly, I left when I had my first child and she was born in 1993. I was a stay-at-home mom for one year and and did that and then went back to work for another radio group in Sonoma County where I was for another 12 years.So long runs with the radio groups. I'm a loyal person. I really like working with the team and once I get to know the team, I usually stick around. Dale: It was also an industry undergoing a lot of change during those years too, wasn't it? Neysa: So when I got here in 1985, the FCC rules changed and you could own an AM and an FM, and so that was the first consolidation. I went to work for little KREO and then we were bought by the old guard KSRO and we did a transfer in November of '85, and KSRO at the time was owned by Evert Person who owned the Press Democrat. So we had an owner that owned the newspaper in town, the oldest radio station KSRO in town, and then the number one top 40 FM.It was just a lot of change. You have to be flexible. You got new owners, he sold and then we were always moving. And at the end of the day, you put your head down and you do your job. . . Running for OfficeDale: Do you remember when it occurred to you to run for office or when you started thinking about doing that?Neysa: I was raised to volunteer. My mother had us always involved in everything. We worked and we volunteered. That's just how I spent my childhood. I became a Rotarian, one of the first women in 1990 to be a Rotarian here in Sebastopol.I think we should celebrate everyone who puts their neck out there to run a campaign, because it is scary. And then I could do that and still work my job. And so I did that for 20 years. And in between all that while working, I was raising kids. So I was always like a team mom at baseball. I helped start the Farmers' Market in 1990 also. That's before I had children. So I was always involved and then I ended up taking a media job in San Francisco because the Press Democrat was once again selling.So I went to work for KGO in San Francisco. And so I was in the city trying to figure out, okay, can I stay in Sebastopol? I had to follow the job. That happens a lot in media. I had to quit Rotary, which was a hole in my life. I wasn't connected to my community.And then I got involved helping as a volunteer in the supervisor's race in 2016 and I learned a lot. I had never really been involved in politics. I walked houses. I hung signs, campaign signs. We did parades, which I was used to from radio, and then all of a sudden there were two open seats that July -- it became obvious that there were going to be two open seats. Two council members in Sebastopol were stepping down and I learned that the best time to run is when there's not an incumbent in the race -- open seats.That's when it dawned on me, Hey, I can do this. The meetings are in the evening. I still worked out of town. And so that's where I decided to throw my hat in the ring. Dale: What year was that? Neysa: 2016. At the time, I was also dismayed about in that year the Supervisor's race included Lynda Hopkins, our current supervisor and Noreen Evans, and I believe at that time it was one of the most expensive Supervisor's race the county had seen. I think they combined raised over $800,000. So I also was like, wow, that's a lot of money to run a campaign and is that what you have to raise to be elected?So I was curious about that. And so for me that year, I ran a campaign where I wouldn't accept more than $250 from any donor. We don't have any campaign limits currently in Sebastopol, and we didn't at the time. [correction: the limit is now $4700]. But that was important to me. I wanted to run a grassroots campaign and I did and I got elected.Dale: But you did get some donations larger than $250 come in, right? Neysa: So a funny thing I was running my own campaign and trying to figure it all out and I had a website where you could, you could I think they used Stripe, they called it, and people could go in and put in their donation, it just goes automatically to your bank.I didn't set the limits within the campaign. On the website it said don't donate more than $250, but, of course, who pays attention to the fine print, right? So all of a sudden I got $3,000 and I was like, Oh my gosh, I think I only raised that year, like $3,500. And I was like, Ah, where'd that come from?And I actually had to file official paperwork. I had to go back to the donor and say, you didn't read the fine print. I'm only taking $250, so I'm giving you back $2750. And the donor's okay, no politician has ever given me back money. Really? Who are you? And then I had to file it with the State. But I will say in this latest campaign, I wasn't quite as stringent, so I took personally up to a thousand dollars and I did get a couple, maybe one or two of those. Same thing, set a personal limit.I do understand that it's expensive to run a campaign and you can't do any good until you're elected, right? At the end of the day you don't want to be beholden to anyone, but you also got to get elected. Dale: So how did you build supporters? You're working in San Francisco. While you grew up here, you haven't necessarily been in the same place the whole time. It's one of those questions, yes, I could run, but who will vote for me? Neysa: That's the scariest part. I think we should celebrate everyone who puts kind of their neck out there to like run a campaign, because it is scary. But for me it feels --I've lived in this town, I've lived in my current home and then I lived on Nelson previous since basically 1987. So I've been in town and people knew me through my kids, right? Cuz my kids both went to local schools. So Parkside, Pine Crest, Brookhaven, Analy, and I knew parents. I was very involved in obviously Rotary. I've done Learn to Swim. So you really just start to tell your story. Some people recognize you with a name like Neysa, it's hard to get, but then once you get it, there's not very many of us. Dale: Is that a name your mom came up with?Neysa: It's like a old history. I was raised Catholic. It's associated technically with St. Agnes, where my mom got the name.Dale: Interesting. Neysa: I was born in the sixties. I think she wanted to be traditional without being traditional. But the main thing is I walked almost all the houses myself. So every day when the light was good after work, I'd walk the houses with hangers and talk to people. And then I think I did. I might have done, I don't know. No, I don't think the first election I did mail. The second election I raised more money and I did a mail piece. But I mainly just walked, showed up at every event, every debate and just said, This is who I am, kind of thing.Dale: And you got elected. Neysa: And I got elected. Dale: And what was the margin? Neysa: Oh, it was a big margin. It was I'm just trying to think. I think it was like I got elected by 29%, but to be fair, a lot of getting elected and getting elected by a big margin is also who you're running against.To be fair, a lot of getting elected and getting elected by a big margin is also who you're running against.I was elected with Michael Carnacchi, who ran a non campaign and then at the time, Craig Litwin, who's very experienced, but he decided to run after the ballot was finalized, so he ran as a write-in candidate that year. So, I had a write-in candidate, who had been mayor and had been on the council and had name recognition, but write-in is really difficult, even if you're very polished. And he was doing direct mail and all kinds of stuff. And then Michael was like, I'm not doing anything. I'm not doing signs. I'm not doing anything. I'm not walking. He didn't even walk. He just wrote a ballot statement that he thought he could get elected off and he did. Dale: How many candidates? Just those three? Neysa: There was one more guy, and I'm trying to remember his name, but he was a younger guy, also didn't run a campaign. Okay. So I think there were four that year. Then I had a much more heated race this last time because I had two very strong candidates in the chair of our board of our planning commission Evert Fernandez, and, or am I saying that right? Who didn't get elected. And then also Diana Rich, who started early, ran a really intense campaign with a lot of things that resonated with people.Dale: So it does seem like if you work hard at it, it pays off, right? Neysa: Yeah. If you work hard at it --they always say that signs don't win an election. I'm an advertising background. Signs are name recognition. You're not gonna vote for somebody by a sign, but you are gonna know they're in the race, right? Versus you look at the ballot and you're like, Oh, I never heard of that guy, or gal or whatever. Working hard to win does make a difference because the average person -- there's so many news sources this day, like how are people getting their news? So if they don't know about you, if they can't Google your name and read your positions, for example.And I do think voters vote differently, like the old school is, like the Press Democrat endorsements mean something. The young school, like my two kids are in their twenties now, they're Googling. They're like, Okay, let me read about her online. The older crowd, I think is looking at who's your endorsements?Okay. If this guy, if these people have endorsed you, it's saying something. So you know, the voters and of course we know the more invested you are, so generally 35 plus are generally the voters, the younger twenties are, It's hard to get voting from that segment. Dale: Sadly. Neysa: Sadly. But I think I always voted in every election, but of course I worked in media, so I was more informed and interested.Taking Office Dale: So you take office and you become a city council member and first-time office holder. What was that experience like? Neysa: There's people that are very welcoming and there's people that want to try to educate you on their views. I think it depended for me, my own council, they already had three incumbents and there were two of us new. And they didn't really, I mean, they probably favored me frankly over Michael. He had a harder time. I think you automatically have a relationship with the person you're come in with, right? Because you're both the newbies like trying to figure it out.And I generally get along with everyone. I can always find a common ground, like we have something in common. And I tend to focus on that just as a, I don't know, call it my sales background or just my optimistic viewpoint. I always feel like I have something that I can like about everybody.It was really difficult as a new council member.But it was really difficult as a new council member because you learn really quickly that a lot of all the committees, the good committees are taken by in Sebastopol by the incumbents, the people already sitting. And there is a point there, as they would tell me when you look at politics in general, it's the senior members that hold all the committee seats in all our government. It's not that rookies coming in that get to become the chairman or something. They would say basically we have the knowledge from having been here so many years, and we've already been sitting on, let's say, the Clean Power Committee. So we've already been through the chair, the vice chair. It's really important to keep people who are experienced in that realm on those committees.And also there's a pecking order on those committees, right? So you're a new council member on those committees. You're not getting the chair or the vice chair position. So there's a pecking order that I think as a new council member I found very frustrating, to be fair. But now I'm the oldest council member at six years.So I'm kinda like, okay, I can see that position. We can't throw it all up in the air with nobody with any experience or historical knowledge. I compare it to a new job. When you think you know what it's gonna be like and you walk on, but of course it's completely different. And then the longer you do the job, the better you get at it.So I just think it's a balance. And with this big change, which is the biggest change I think Sebastopol council has seen in years with three new people that can swing the council because three to two vote wins. I think it's really important to work as a team. I really want to welcome anyone. If the voters choose them, then as far as I'm concerned, they're on the team and we have to work together to make it happen.And I don't wanna be like, Oh, I've been there the longest. I'm in charge. I'm not really that person. But I also feel as the senior member of the council, I want to take the lead to make sure everybody feels included. And if somebody's got a committee they want, I want to say, Okay, give me the reasons why, you know, and what makes you gonna be a good member and let's try to place people where qualifications kind of fit, versus sometimes people want the more important committees, right? Dale: But there was a learning curve for you in... Neysa: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Dale: And they'll have a learning curve as well. Neysa: It's funny because I was a top vote getter, one of the council members that I served with, she goes, just cuz you're the top vote getter doesn't mean you get to be Vice Mayor.And I said, Oh, okay. I didn't expect to be vice mayor on year one. And then I heard it's happened once in the past, but it really didn't go well. And I was like, Okay, yeah, no, I think I've got a lot to learn, right? I'm not gonna jump on in and say, hey. But it is possible. I just am like, okay let's just work together and see what everybody's goals are.And I think it would be important. We didn't do it last year, I think as a council, but we might have in previous years; we set a work plan in the beginning and we get everybody's what's their most important issues so that we can prioritize the work of the council for the year.And I think that's gonna be really important with three new members to set that up. Three New Members Will Be Elected in NovemberDale: Do you think there'll be a new direction for the city council with the three new members? Like you talk about priorities you perhaps have your own, but they'll come in with their own. Neysa: They're running on campaign issues, many of them, I wouldn't say all of them, but many of them are running on-- we don't like decisions the previous council made or is planning to make, I'll just say. I'm like, Okay, that's fair. They always say something motivates people to run.They're not just, they're they're running on something and they have an idea. And I was telling somebody the other day you can run on an idea, but technically you're not supposed to make up your decision until you hear all the agenda item, all the background. You are informed.Many council members do their own research a little bit. They go walk out. If we've got especially a planning decision to make, we'll go visit the property and look at it before we get on in the meeting. And then you're, you really need to hear from the public. I've told people like that, that have called me to lobby for their position on votes.And I'm like, Okay, I hear you. But I had to say to some people you understand, I can't tell you how I'm gonna vote. I can't make my decision up because you have to do it in the public forum and with full transparency. And we have to hear everything and all from everyone and all the public has the right to speak.And then we make a best educated, like what we think we should. So you can run on a subject, but you really can't make up your mind or make a promise. It's my understanding of the law. The Future of the Fire DepartmentDale: And can we take the fire department as an example of a very contentious issue that has come up in this term, won't get resolved probably till the next term. I wanted to raise up, not so much what's your decision on it, but it's an example of a pretty emotional issue. Neysa: And this part will be, this part of your interview will be watched by many, No doubt. Yeah. It's a super big issue. Dale: Yeah. But how do you deal with that? Just that where there could be a rational way of thinking about this. There could be an emotional way of thinking. Both are legitimate in the sense of how people feel. But how do you deal with that as a council member?It's a super big issue…people are gonna be voting for candidates based on this issue. Neysa: The most recent in Sebastopol history issues that I think are similar because this is a big decision are saving our hospital. That was a huge issue. Private people tried to save it, we taxed it. In the end, we couldn't. And then the high schools right. Super emotional issue. Consolidation. Still not really settled. Probably school board members are going to be decided on that issue, I suspect. And now we've got fire department, right? And people are gonna be voting for candidates based on this issue. There's no doubt about it. I was on the original subcommittee to look at long-term planning for the fire department.A lot of people don't realize that I served for a year on that committee with Una Glass and then when Diana Rich got elected and we changed up our committees, then now Diana Rich and Patrick Slater are serving on that committee. So there have been two committees to study the issue. A lot of people don't like that we hire consultants, but we wanted, it's such a big issue, we wanted to hire a neutral party consultant. I think they're called Matrix. They came highly recommended. They are not from the area. But that means they're not, don't have a bias in the game. And yes, that cost us $40,000.I really don't like hiring consultants, but I think that's money well spent to get some outside advice. They've interviewed a variety of city staff and firemen and everybody, and we're gonna get that report, I think after the election, interesting enough. I think it's on target to be launched or delivered in second meeting of November. It's a big issue because we're gonna have to pay more no matter what we do. I think that if we were to consolidate with Gold Ridge, we would have to bring our tax base up to match theirs, so that all the tax is the same. Or if we hire a new chief and we run our own department, we're going to probably have to-- the fire department's been underfunded for years because we don't have enough money to fund a full police department and a full fire department and run our city. We just don't have the tax revenue and a lot of people are like, I went to the debate and I'm, they're like, Oh yeah, we need to get more tax revenue.Generally how you get more tax revenue is hotels, big ticket sales tax, like car dealers that we used to have. There's no car dealers anymore. And chain stores within city limits, which we don't have. So to get more tax revenue, hopefully Hotel Sebastopol will open up and that will help our tax base.We need to attract more business, which is why the council has been investing in Relaunch Sebastopol, and prior to that Craig Litwin's consulting company through Covid. So unless we go to the tax payers of Sebastopol and say, Okay, you gotta pay more, and I gotta see the numbers before I can really make a decision. Like how much more if we keep our own fire department? How much more is it with Gold Ridge? Fire departments all over the county are consolidating. Look at Sonoma Fire. They took in Bodega Bay and Forestville and so consolidation is a fact of life. And I think the issue is now because we have a retiring chief that's been there 30 plus years.And so do we make promises to a new chief and bring in a new chief? So it's like a long range decision. And the other thing is the firemen are like you didn't ask us, but the firemen make stipends. And those stipends are substantial. They're not like my $300 a month stipend.I can't vote on an issue where I have financial interest. I find it interesting because I think frankly, and the fire department isn't gonna like me saying this, especially in an interview, but if you have financial interest over a certain amount, I don't think you should be able to vote or have a real opinion because how do you separate your financial interest, which as an elected official, I'm forced to do, I have to do it, from this is what I think is best for the fire department. I got a letter delivered to my house and it's signed, if I put dollar signs of stipends next to those names, there's financial interest. When it all opens up, it's gonna be, Oh, I mean, the people running.Yes, I want to save the fire department. I love Sebastopol Fire. I go to the pancake breakfasts. I have for years. I threw one of my kids' birthday parties that I bought at a charity in the firehouse. I love firemen. My, my nephew is a firemen. It's not about that and that makes it really difficult. Because it's just people hear: What do you mean we're not gonna have a fire department? And I'm like yeah, it's a bigger issue. Dale: It's interesting. I think you're pointing back to history of the Palm Drive and the El Molino-Analy things are examples of very difficult decisions that became very emotional and certainly in the case of Palm Drive led to some bad decisions there because we wanted to save something that wasn't gonna work. Neysa: I'm really interested in this report. I'm the one who called, and a lot of people forget this, you can look at my history or the Press Democrat, I'm the one who called for more time. The firemen said they wanted more time. I'm the council member who called for more time, and I think it was on a split vote, a three to two back in June or May. It's not a decision that I want to rush. I called for more time. We already had money for a consultant. I think there was a recommendation to move forward on consolidation.I said I wanted to see that consultant's report. I don't want to make a wrong decision and I can't do it out of emotion. I'm elected to make sure to study the issue. That's why the voters vote for me and the average person doesn't have that much time to study it and follow all the meetings and everything, and that's why we're in office. It's not a easy decision, but more time, more facts I think will guide us to the right decision. The City Manager RetiringDale: The city manager is retiring. Larry McLaughlin, right? . He's been there a long time. That is someone that you'll have to replace in this new term. Is that right? Neysa: Yep. The great part about the City of Sebastopol since I've been involved six years is that we had all these long-term department heads that have been with the city a really long time.Dale: Do you think his retiring is related to the fire issues or other kind of things that are happening in town?Neysa: No. Like anybody's retirement, there's right signs. The city council hires a new city manager. Would it have been best to have a brand new city manager hired, like now when we're about to have three new council people that maybe would've made a different choice?Or is it better to hire somebody with the new council and the city manager reports to those people? So I think that the timing-- Larry's been around a long time. He wants to relax and I don't blame him. He's going to do his practice. We are the last city that has a city manager, city attorney, I think, in Sonoma County.And so I would like personally to see Larry maybe maybe stick around and help us with some issues. Depends on who-- it really depends on the new council and what their feelings are going to be. And it also depends, it's really hard to find great employees. So depending on when we do our search, who we get sometimes that will guide the decision, okay, we thought we were hiring a brand new person and blah, blah, blah.We also have our assistant city manager, Mary Gurley, who I think has no intention to take that position because she's been with the city a really long time too. But I'm, again, these are all questions. Sure. He just announced. Nobody intends to do anything with that until we seat a new council.Dale: But it is a piece that with three incumbent council members resigning or not going forward and then the city manager, there's a lot of change. Neysa: For sure, there's a lot of change. It's easy to look at it and see is it related. But there's no smoking gun here. I think it's just a matter of timing.The great part about the City of Sebastopol since I've been involved six years is that we had all these long-term department heads that have been with the city a really long time. Flip side of that is those department heads were close to retirement. So you know, Bill Braga, Larry. When you've served and you've got a pension and you're getting like, maybe they wanna quit and go garden.I don't blame them. And then Covid, I think has, impacted the bustling city hall with all the employees coming to work. You know that's a fun thing if you like to come to an office every day, to look forward to. And we've all been sidelined for three years. City Hall is like a ghost town when I walk in there. There's three employees at one time because a lot of people are still working a lot on Zoom and so that probably has a lot to do with it too. Let's face it. Covid has changed a lot of things and the way people look at life of Oh, okay, maybe I should do some fun now. Coming Out of CovidDale: We're not technically post covid, but we're getting there. Do you see positive changes happening this year or things that didn't happen during Covid beginning to happen in town? Neysa: Yeah, I think that just as a general rule of thumb, and you know, I run assisted livings for the elderly, so I never had a time off from Covid.I was frontline worker in the heat of it frankly. And where people couldn't come into those facilities for a period to even see their families, that was a lot. But I think as a kind of general rule of thumb, it's been really hard on our youth. Been really hard on parents. I can't imagine homeschooling my own kids.I would just -- that is not me. It's not because I couldn't, it's because I don't need that much kid time, or, they wouldn't listen to me very well. But so I think that it's been really rough for a lot of people and our youth in particular that didn't get the things they looked forward to, like their high school years or their preschool years or whatever.And then I think it's also been really isolating for the seniors. But on the flip side, the city really came out and supported. I can think about when we did that restaurant drive. Eat local, go get to-go food. We supported Sebastopol World Friends. We picked up our food and then we all went on Zoom and we like ate, sampled our food from the different restaurants and they had their celebration. So I think it brought us back to our roots, frankly. And it brought us back to, okay, we can get this done. I was a delivery angel for at least six or eight months for Ceres during that period because I was vaccinated early and stuff. I hadn't been able to do that like my whole life, but I had wanted to.So I think it really brought us back into also our neighborhoods, like helping neighbors. We're all home or a lot of people were waving across the fence. And I think now that we're coming out of it, the parklets were great. People were like, Wow, we can walk around more, so that was encouraged. We can bike, all those things were encouraged to slow down a little bit and appreciate our hometown. On the other side, we know the negative of that. The real estate market has just gone through the roof because I think all these city dwellers came up and discovered us and they've drove up our real estate prices a little bit.On one hand there are new neighbors, but on the other hand unfortunately for affordable housing, which is a huge thing for me, I ran on it in 16. I'm looking at developments that's happening on that front. And we really need to stay focused on that game. Because otherwise we're gonna price all our own people out of the neighborhood.HousingDale: What is it? Wood acre or...Neysa: Woodmark. Dale: Woodmark. What's the status of that? Neysa: So I'm conflicted out. I mentioned that my first little condo home was on Nelson, and that is a financial interest for me because I still have that as a small rental.So I'm conflicted out on that project and so literally I cannot even attend the council meeting. I can follow it as much as the public, but to be honest, because I'm conflicted out, I really don't follow it that much. I do think they're moving forward. I do know there's a state law that is pro low income housing that's allowing them, even though the neighbors are not fans, to continue that development and I think they're just trying to finalize how many units and all that. It seemed like a lot of units originally proposed for that property, in my opinion, just hearing the numbers and when you hear big numbers like that in this little town, people are like, What? But I don't really know much about the project at all. Dale: It's interesting. The other side of this is we do need more housing. We need more families moving here. That's one of the issues in schools is declining enrollments. Neysa: Sure. That's been an issue for the entire time of West County.It's hard to have these outer areas and then have, as teacher salaries go up, which I support, and schools everything, costs more. Busing. Busing is super expensive now. And the old days of riding the school bus like I did every day, are, unless you really live far from school, parents, I always had to drive my kids across town to school.No buses exist, obviously in town. Declining enrollment it's only going in one direction. Yeah, we need families, but I don't know that we'll ever get back to the level of like going the other direction. It's just, it is what it is.Welcome New Council MembersDale: Is there anything we didn't touch on that you want to bring up?. Neysa: No, I just, I welcome the new council members. Change I think is good. Dale: You're not endorsing anyone, right? Neysa: No. I guess I should mention that. I don't accept endorsements and don't give endorsements. That has been another campaign policy. I've gotten in a little heat on that. So I accept endorsements from outside, right? But I don't wanna endorse within my own city, so that's school members and city council people. I don't want to choose one over the other because I do think it narrows the field if all the incumbents are endorsing one person.I really want more people to run for office, as a general role of thumb. We need diversity. We need more than just retired people. We need young people. We need a council, in my mind, should look like the community looks and different viewpoints and different backgrounds being represented so that we can all expand and think in a broader sense.So yeah, I don't endorse and I don't accept endorsements. In my last election, that might have been why I had a tight race. But that's been my position. Dale: Good. Thank you very much and great talking to you today. Neysa: Very nice to talk to you. Thank you.  Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Paul Fritz is an architect in Sebastopol and a member of the CORE Project. He has been an advocate for parklets as a way for people to reoccupy the public spaces devoted to cars. During Covid, parklets became an answer to indoor use restrictions and cities everywhere were approving them. Paul did a lot of the leg work to obtain permits to bring parklets to Sebastopol over two years ago. All three of Sebastopol’s parklets require a temporary permit from Caltrans, who owns the right-of-way on these major roadways. Caltrans extended those permits but decided earlier in the year that they would expire December 31, 2022. They did set up a process with an annual fee and guidelines for applying for a permanent permit. The decision to move forward and apply for permanent permit for the parklets in Sebastopol was brought before the City Council earlier this month, and they decided to move forward and apply only for one permit for the South Main Street parklet in front of Retrograde Coffee and Sunshine Cafe. The City Council’s decision on Sebastopol’s parklets is covered in this companion article:Paul is frustrated by the City Council’s decision to not move forward with Depot Street Parklet in front of Screamin’ Mimi’s. He is not optimistic that the space will continue to be used as a public space for people. Paul has written about the three parklets on his blog: here.TranscriptPaul Fritz on Sebastopol's ParkletsDale: Welcome to Sebastopol City Limits. I'm Dale Dougherty and I'm joined today by Paul Fritz. And Paul has been involved in Parklets in Sebastopol, and perhaps other places.But Paul, give us a little bit of background on you. You're an architect. Paul: Yeah, so I'm an architect. I have a practice in Sebastopol. Office is right downtown on Main Street. And I've had my own office for about 12 and a half years now. I've been in my current location. It's formerly originally in my house, and I've been in this office for about seven and a half years, I think. And I was a member of the CORE Project, which has been a group of business owners in Sebastopol that got together about 11 or 12 years ago. Couple architects, couple graphic designers, a landscape architect, and we've been trying to do a variety of things to improve the vibrancy and vitality of downtown Sebastopol.The CORE Project also has been involved in this kind of parklet issue. Parklets started in San Francisco in the early two thousands. Dale: We hear the word park and it's double meaning there of a parking space and a park. Paul: The original parklet was started by this group in San Francisco, and they just went out and put some like astro turf down in a parking space and a couple of chairs and occupied it for a day and they just kept feeding the meter. It was a metered parking space and they just started doing this. They established what they called Park(ing) Day, which is I think the third Friday of September every year since. And this has become a global phenomenon where people just go and occupy a parking space for a day.And the CORE Project did a few of those events in 2013 or 2014 or something. We had a couple different locations where we did the kind of little parklets. The whole concept is so much of the public space in our communities is devoted exclusively to cars, and it was just an idea to make people think about that fact that so much of our public land space is just all exclusively for cars. So this is a way to think about maybe reoccupying those spaces for people and they really took off pretty strong in San Francisco. The city instituted a policy and have a whole kind of department within their planning department devoted to parklets.And so they've been doing them for a number of years and typically they were sponsored by a business. Business will come to the city and say, I would like to create a parklet. And they would be responsible for the design and construction. They get a permit from the city, and the parklet was to be public space.It wasn't allocated to any one specific business. It was just expansion on the sidewalk with some seating so people could, get food to go, have a place to eat it, meet up with friends, go to a cafe, bring their coffee out. Dale: That was the testing of parklets and they've spread to lots of other cities.Paul: Yeah, lots of other cities started adopting parklet standards and around the country and around the world. And generally they've been very well received in their communities. And this group, the CORE Project that I've been involved with, was pushing the city and we actually had the person who ran the San Francisco's program up to do a talk one night. After that we pushed the city to adopt a parklet ordinance, which the city did in, maybe 2015. I can't remember exactly when. And basically the ordinance said, the city's supportive of this. If you want to do one, follow San Francisco's kind of guidelines.San Francisco got a whole kind of packet developed of how you do a parklet. That is something the city of Sebastopol adopted, and one of the caveats was you have to get an encroachment permit either from the city, if it's a city street, or from Caltrans, if it's a Caltrans street, which most of our downtown is Caltran streets.And so the CORE Project in 2017 did a one-day event where we put up three parklets. We did one kind of in front of Retrograde, one by the Gypsy and the Cookie Company. And then we also have blocked off Depot Street as it extended, across Petaluma Avenue and that spot in front of Screamin' Mimi's and create it. It was a one day event. We had volunteers construct these kind of parklets and they operated for a day. We got an encroachment permit from Caltrans to do this event. So we, went through the proper channels and Caltrans required drawings of what it was and locations and all that. We got a one-day encroachment permit from Caltrans to do that.Dale: Were there any fees associated with Caltrans? Paul: I don't believe there were any fees to apply. The application has to come from the city. The CORE Project put the application together and the city was the official submitter. Not any just random organization or business could apply to Caltrans.It had to be a city or a local nonprofit organization, like the Chamber of Commerce for example, applies for an encroachment permit from Caltrans to do the parade when we have the Apple Blossom Parade. So they have to get a permit from Caltrans and the Chamber of Commerce, I think is the applicant for that.Dale: So there's a history of doing this, and then we come up to Covid. Paul: And then once Covid hit and restaurants and businesses couldn't have anyone inside, all across the country, and again, all across the world people started allowing parklets to happen much more easily.Just as a way to hurry up and to help the businesses so people could have outdoor dining or cafes and things like that. So there was a big push to make that happen. And again, the CORE Project was trying to push the city to do it, and it took some time. Again, I think partly, the city was intimidated by the Caltrans issue.And so I finally jumped in and said, Look, I'll do some research and someone must have done this already on Caltrans right-of-way. And I found out that in the city of Saratoga, They had already done this and they, I think, Saratoga installed theirs months after the pandemic started. So July of 2020 Saratoga had installed them, so I contact them. I think it was maybe August. And I talked to the city engineer and said, how did you get this through Caltrans? What was your process? And he said, it's pretty straightforward. We just put up these plastic K-rails, which are the barriers you see along highways when they do construction projects. So we put up some K-rails and we built a little ramp. We built some ramps so you could get off the curb, down onto the paving to make them accessible. That was Caltrans. It has to be accessible and it has to be safe. So that was the kind of quick and easy solution. So I said if they approved it in Saratoga, they should approve it in Sebastopol.So I worked with the city engineer and I actually put together the application, did some drawings and talked to businesses about locations. We got the location in front of Screamin' Mimi's and created the one in front of Retrograde and Sunshine Cafe. And then People's Music, the owner of People's Music was really interested.Again, that process with Caltrans was very simple. Dale: Did Caltrans pass a broad approval that there's a temporary period for parklets? Paul: Because of Covid, Caltrans said, we will allow parklets, on the Caltrans right-of-ways. They had a process that you had to fill an application; you had to provide a drawing; you had to provide photographs. It was pretty straightforward. It took me a couple hours to put this together. And Caltrans approved it within two days. They were very...Dale: It was quick. Paul: Really pretty quick once it happened. Dale: When did they get installed in Sebastopol? Paul: So in Sebastopol, they were installed in November, Mid-November.So the city decided to get the concrete K-rails, and installed them in mid-November, and then the businesses agreed to furnish them and put seating and things in them. And they then got Earth Tone Construction to donate some materials and a group of volunteers to build the platforms.So the ones in front of the People's Music and the one in front of Sunshine Cafe and Retrograde have platforms, so we didn't have to do the ramps down to the street level to keep them accessible. The one at Depot Street was accessible just because there was already a curb cut there for a ramp to get down to the crosswalk.So if you're a disabled person, you go into the crosswalk and then you can get into the park. So again, we had to amend our application to build a platform. And Caltrans again was very easy to deal with at that point. And then we said, some of the businesses wanted to put heat lamps and things like that. And Caltran all along the way, Caltrans is like yeah, that's fine. You can put furniture in it.Dale: So almost two years we've had them running and sometime earlier this year, they said these were temporary permits. Yeah. You're gonna have to apply for permanent parklets and you have to do that by the end of the year. Paul: Yeah. We've had a couple of permit extensions. They had set time period and we've got a couple of extensions and the current extension is expiring on December 31st of this year.And they said that there will be no more extensions, so if you want to continue the parklets, you have to apply to make them permanent. And so that's where we currently are. Earlier this year, in February, the City Council directed staff to apply for another extension because the current extension was about over.So they directed the city engineer to apply for another extension, and that's the one we have currently till December 31st. And we also discussed making them permanent and at that time they agreed that the parklet in front of Sunshine and Retrograde could be made permanent. And they directed staff to kind of work with Caltrans to find out what that process is to make a permanent parklet.But the other two locations, they did not decide to make them permanent at that time. And so last week's City Council meeting was another discussion, of kind of an update from staff. Okay, here's the process from Caltrans. Caltrans told us what they want. This is what we have to do. And we had a further conversation about, what about the other locations?And there's still some hesitation about the other locations from the full Council. They did not agree to make any of the other locations permanent, but they did confirm that the Retrograde/ Sunshine Cafe location could be permanent. Dale: Right. Now to some degree People's Music is closed, so there isn't a strong advocate for that anymore.It's Depot Street, the area in front of Screamin' Mimi's, is at once the most popular of the parklets, but maybe the most problematic just because of its location and it's the intersection of two busy streets. And the space itself, it isn't really just a parking space.Paul: Yeah, it's more than just a parkland. Cause it's not just in the parking zone, it almost has become like a little mini plaza, and and again, many cities around the world have been doing similar things. They're reassessing again, how much land is devoted to cars.And big cities and small cities are finding spaces like the Depot Street extension and saying is this really useful for our transportation network? And when it's not, they say, What can we do? And so many of them are taking steps to take these sort of, not particularly functional, from an auto transportation standpoint, entering them into something for actual human beings.Dale: It was a problematic area before that it had a parklet. Paul: That's always been problematic; it's a difficult intersection and it has a very strange geometry and it's Dale: a triangle. Paul: Personally, when I look at it, and I haven't talked to the police department about this or anything to see what the accident statistics are. But I would think that from a traffic circulation standpoint, it's actually a bit safer because, if you imagine traveling west on Depot Street to get to this, place that's now been blocked off, you have to cross two lanes of Petaluma Avenue while there's not even of a full block to the south are people turning right from Sebastopol Avenue onto Petaluma. It's very difficult to get across as a car. And I think blocking that section off then cars just have to turn right onto Petaluma and go around. Dale: So the other side is Screamin' Mimi's did not open. It still has not opened inside.Paul: Yes. Dale: And its customers have used this parklet. Paul: Yes. Dale: And as many of the people said in the meeting, it's actually been a symbol of people being outdoors. So you pass through town and you see people outdoors eating and that makes people feel good. Paul: Yeah. And I've heard kind of these types of spaces, referred to as like front porches for a community.Yeah. It's really when you think about hanging out on your front porch and you see your neighbors walk by and they stop and you chat with 'em, and it's a very social kind of environment. Personally as an architect and kind of someone that's interested in urbanism and making good places for people like this is what our community needs more of, these kind of outdoor places where people see each other and be seen. Human beings are very social. We like to see where other human beings are. Dale: Would you say that the City Council, they did not agree to apply for a permanent permit for the Depot Street. Paul: Correct.Dale: But they seemed interested in figuring it out, with a commitment to that, meaning Mayor Slater said it's a pocket park. Could we obtain this from Caltrans? Paul: Yeah. And I think there at that City Council meeting again, the city engineer, which is not a city staff person, that's a consulting firm, they were tasked with working with Caltrans to see what it would take to get Caltrans to give this piece of land back to the city.And there have been prior conversations with Caltrans about this, and my understanding is those conversations, Caltrans has said, yeah, this really isn't doing anything for the Caltrans Transportation Network. We don't really have any need for this. So I think the chances are good, the Caltrans will relinquish this. Dale: But there seems to be some fear of Caltrans. Paul: Caltran is a behemoth of an organization and they have their ways and they're not always the most progressive or creative. But I think that there are elements in Caltrans that do understand the value of spaces like this and the importance of these places. And I think, our task is to find those people that can be supportive. I've talked to other people, people in other places who have Caltrans right-of-ways, and I know the city of Calistoga is trying to make their parklets permanent. They also have the main street of downtown Calistoga is a Caltrans right-of-way and they got a temporary permit for parklets. And so they're trying to make those permanent. I did contact the engineer in Saratoga to find out if they were making theirs permanent, and he said, no, they are not. They're, gonna take them down. And I've talked to people in bigger cities, the guy that runs the program in Oakland and asked them if they've, ever had to deal with Caltrans and they haven't. And unfortunately the bigger cities have plenty of other streets that aren't Caltrans right-of-ways that they can do this on. They don't have to worry about Caltrans. But I'm sure there's many small towns across California that would benefit from this if they could do it easily. Dale: Let's review some of the problems that were raised about, particularly the Depot Street one. I think there's a general fiscal responsibility thing that the City Council saying, we approved money for the Retrograde parklet, but we didn't approve money for this.We would have to revisit that. Yeah. So that's one of the problems. There was an an accident, a car came through there in June. But there were some changes made to it as a result of that. There are liability concerns and that the city would be liable for any accident that happens within these spaces.Paul: To speak to those, so the cost issue, and I've been trying to communicate this to the city, during this whole kind of, or for years we've been doing this. Like I said, originally in San Francisco, the business wanted a parklet, they were responsible for doing it.They didn't get money from the city.Dale: Right. Paul: The city was not building parklets. The businesses were building parklets, and I know the business owners that are involved in the parklets now are all accepting of-- they're willing to contribute some money towards doing this. I think the city doesn't need to take this on fully as a city funded project. I think the businesses are willing to contribute. I know there are grants for this kind of thing, and there's lots of organizations around the country that have grants for, they call it placemaking grants, to create spaces for people and communities like this.So I think that's an opportunity. Given the popularity of these parklets, there's a change.org petition with over a thousand signatures. I think there's an opportunity for crowdfunding.Dale: The owner of Retrograde said she'd be willing to cover some of the fees involved. Paul: So one Caltrans requirements, which is incredibly bogus in my mind. And I think this needs a lot of pushback, is that Caltrans is requiring $6,000 a year as a lease payment for a parklet. Which if you think about, we don't pay Caltrans anything right now to lease the sidewalks or to lease the parking spaces or the driving lanes.But now we want to convert a little bit of parking space to a place for people and now we have to pay for it. That doesn't make any sense. So again, I'm hoping we can find the right person in Caltrans who understands that doesn't make any sense and it's actually somewhat pathetical the Caltrans,, they have a push to make complete streets and things, more places for people and safer for people. And this is not aligned with that by charging this fee. Dale: How about the safety issue? Paul: Yeah, in terms of the safety issue, yes, there was that accident and the car to come to the park lot. Fortunately, no one was injured. Soon after that, the city kind of reconfigured those K-rails, they put up K-rails on that side where the car came through. Now, it would be very difficult for another car to get through something like that. You see this around the plaza. The plaza is separated from the parking spaces by those big concrete bollards. So in a permanent situation, that is certainly possible. The safety of the people in the parklet would need, or the plaza, whatever we're calling it at that point would need to be taken into consideration. But there are certainly design techniques that could prevent and --you can't prevent any kind of everything. But I think there's ways to make them very safe. And, to be honest, before the park lot was installed, there was, and that was just a street; a car ran into Mimi's into the building, so cars hit buildings sometimes too. Dale: But does the city's liability, that's a question if there had been injuries in that accident. Paul: I think the city manager spoke to this at the City Council meeting that the city does have liability insurance. It does cover the parklets. The city is part of sort of self-insurance program with many of other cities in the county. And we've talked about this in our meetings and our insurance meetings and Yeah, all these cities have parklets and they are all insured. When you're walking down the street and a car went off the street, hits you on the sidewalk, the city has some liability for all these kind public spaces. Dale: So another area of problems are that have to do with how they in a sense, serve a business. Certainly this Depot Street serves the interests of Screamin' Mimi's. There are disgruntled business owners not wanting the parklets to continue. Seems it's a problem to deal with. Yeah. But. I guess just to add the flavor that Caltrans is specific about these parklets not being used like as extra seating for a restaurant.Paul: Yes. And that, again, like the origins of the parklet were that this is public space. This is not serving anyone's individual business. During the pandemic, a lot of people, especially parklet people who have been parklet proponents for a long time are starting to shift their thinking a little bit on that, on that point, because they've seen how when a restaurant is allowed to have outdoor seating, it just really adds to the vibrancy of a place. And again, it makes a place more active. And webinars and talks that I've heard in the past two years, people are like, maybe actually, probably is okay for some of these parklets to be used for a more specific business.Maybe not all of them should be, related to a business, but it's okay for. Probably some of them and cities would've to figure out what's the right ratio or whatever. But from my standpoint, as I've been thinking about this, because I heard that comment at the meeting and I've been thinking about it and I think we have some really great examples of, I actually think it's really important to have an activating sort of business near a parklet.If you think about the places where the parklets are very popular, this Depot Street is super popular. People hang out there all the time. Many of them are Screamin' Mimi's patrons. But as the owners of Screamin' Mimis have said, they go through the garbage and they see Acre pizza boxes and they see Retrograde coffee cups and other, waste products from other businesses. So other people use it for other purposes. Clearly it is a benefit to the patrons of Screamin' Mimi's. Dale: While those people are their customers, they're the ones that are choosing to go there. They want hang out there. They like that space. Paul: Yeah. And I think, Mimi's is planning to reopen their interior, I think, next month. They have to close down for a period of time to reconfigure everything. So they're gonna close down for a few days in October. So they can reopen their interior space.So it'll be interesting to see if people choose to be inside or outside, once that happens. But again, if you think of the three kind of current parklets we have, and especially now that People's Music is closed, that one's hardly ever used. When People's Music was open, they would sometimes have musicians come and play in the parklet, and that would attract people, and that was great.Just having a parklet next to a retail business doesn't always assure that it's going to have people occupying it. Whereas having one next to a place like Screamin' Mimi's or Sunshine Cafe, those get activated because those are activating types of uses. You can also look to just caddy corner across the intersection from Screamin' Mimi's. There's that kind of big plaza space in front of CVS. No one ever hangs out there, but you're not gonna go to CVS and buy your shampoo or pick up your prescription and then sit outside. Just not a use that encourages that kind of activation. You're not gonna tell your friend, hey, let's meet at CVS. Dale: I think that's a good point though. There's kind of symbiosis between a good business and a public space where the people want to hang out. Paul: And I think that the Barlow is a great example of that. There's a variety of outdoor spaces. Many of them are related to specific business, but there's a lot of outdoor space that's not related.Dale: Common space. Paul: There's a lot of common space in the Barlow, but those again, there are typically near businesses that have an activating use. There's the kind of food court area, that's places where people, the little grassy area where kids are playing all the time. There's a variety of spaces there that are public, shared spaces in addition to the more private restaurant-specific spaces.And, downtown has no space really like that. We don't have... we have the plaza and the plaza gets activated when there's an event like the farmer's market, right? And a lot of people go to the plaza and hang out there. But short of having an event like that, not a lot of people hang out in the plaza. I've heard comments about this Depot Street once. People go to Mimis, they can just go to the plaza and hang out, and it's just a different thing. It's not, again, there's no real reason to be in the plaza. It's not a super inviting space. It's surrounded by cars and it's, again, there's no activating use for the plaza.And I think that's an important thing to consider as we think about, these types of spaces moving forward. Dale: So where do you think things ended up from the City Council and what are your thoughts about moving it forward? Paul: To be honest, I'm not super optimistic. I just feel I don't know. I was hoping for more enthusiasm from the City Council about this. There was definitely a direction to, the Retrograde/Sunshine location to make that permanent. But it is going to be a bit of a process with Caltrans. There's the $6,000 lease issue to work out. I don't think it's going to be difficult to get a design approved by Caltrans, but I don't know. To be perfectly honest, I've been trying to get this implemented for a long time. I feel like the city, for whatever reason continues to drag their feet on this issue. There just doesn't seem to be a real push, a real drive or real passion, unfortunately. I feel very passionate about it.I've been trying to get this done. Again, we don't have a city engineer. We have a, this consulting engineer and that was one of the issues. We've allocated money for them to do this, but not allocated money for them, to do this. It becomes a kind of budgetary issue because we don't just have a city engineer we can turn to and say, here, just get this done. You're the city engineer and this is a priority. We wanna make this happen. I'm just not confident that the kind of players involved from the city's side of things care enough about it to get it done. And two of the strongest proponents of the parklets are Sarah and Pat, I would say. And they're not gonna be there in a couple months. Again, like I'm not super optimistic at this point. The temporary permit expires at the end of the year and I don't have a lot of confidence that we're going to be able to get a permit before that happens.So I have a feeling these will all be removed and at that point I think it's gonna be really hard to get another one installed. It's gonna even be more, more difficult really. Unfortunately, and I wish I was more optimistic about it, and I'm generally very optimistic person, but a real struggle. Three of the council candidates did speak at the meeting and they all seemed hesitant as well about the issue of parklets. So I think without a strong champion on the council, I'm not super optimistic at this point, which is unfortunate because I think Main Street could really use it.And as a, as a Sebastopol resident, I live in town. I work in town, I love them. I love when I drive into town from Santa Rosa and I see so many people hanging out in that Depot Street location. And when I turned south on South Main, there was a bunch of people eating at Sunshine Cafe. It's this is the kind of place I wanna live. I wanna see people and I want it to be active and vibrant. And without the parklets, I think we'd be really losing a lot of that vibrancy. And Main Street, to be quite honest, is struggling. There's quite a few vacancies and even some of the businesses are there not what I would say, like high end, high visibility, high traffic producing businesses. .Again, we have a perfect example, kind of case study, between the Barlow and Main Street. And I know the fear of Main Street merchants when the Barlow was a concept was it's gonna take the thunder from downtown and it has. I think largely because they have space for people. It's a people oriented place.People feel comfortable walking around. Lots of places for people to sit and downtown just doesn't have the same vibe. And I think it's gonna struggle and it's gonna struggle more if we get rid of the parklets. The parklets are a draw and like I said, it's the front porch and it's like a welcome to Sebastopol and visitors coming through and see people, they're like, oh, this looks like a fun place, I wanna stay. . And without that, I think we'll miss them if they go away. Dale: Thank you Paul. This is a really good background on the parklets. And I hope it's not over. Thanks for sharing your insights and the work you've done to date on.Paul: Thank, thanks for asking. I appreciate the time and I was a little frustrated at the City Council meeting cuz I've been doing this for years. I've been really advocating, pushing this and I got two minutes to talk and it was hard to get all of my-- as you can see, if you just talk to a half an hour, I could talk a long time about this.Dale: There's something wrong about the way meetings are organized. You should almost have a workshop. Paul: Yeah. Dale: To work on solving the issues. Really should be almost moved off to get a group of people that are really stakeholders in this and see if you can come up with a way to solve it.Paul: No, I very much agree with that. And then to be perfectly honest, I was very frustrated. I did the application for these temporary parklets. I've been pushing for this for years. I really, not to toot my own horn, but I really made this happen. And I didn't even know about the meeting until a week before. Like when it was on the staff report and I got the staff's meeting agenda for the city council meeting, I had no heads up, Hey Paul, this is coming. You might wanna be involved or whatever.Dale: A number of people seemed to raise process issues that that how they collected the information and the timing of the meeting and things like that too.Paul: None of the parklet advocates, the business advocates were contacted ahead of this meeting. But yet there were three letters of opposition in the staff report, which seems at least, I don't know if it's intentional, but it doesn't have good optics. I guess I'll sayDale: Thanks a lot Paul.Paul: Thanks Dale. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Since John Namkung retired as an administrator of special education services in Sonoma County, he’s been involved in several humanitarian missions abroad. Earlier this year, John went to Poland, weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine had created a flow of refugees out of Ukraine. He helped at the border for two weeks transporting families by car for three hours to Kraków where they might then go to other parts of Europe. One of the families he met shared their contact information with him, and later on, he offered to sponsor them, the Stetsenko-Kulyk family — a grandmother, mother and two daughters — and bring them to Sonoma County to live. John has organized a local group to help provide support for this family — the Lone Pine Ukrainian Family Aid, named after his neighborhood in Sebastopol. I talked to John about how that all happened in this episode of the podcast.This Saturday, there’s a Ukrainian music concert that serves as a fundraiser for the family as well as for additional relief efforts in Ukraine. Here is some information on the benefit concert. Details here. A golf tournament is also planned for October as a fundraiser. Details here.TranscriptDale: Welcome to Sebastopol City Limits. I'm Dale Dougherty, and I'm joined today by John Namkung, who's been involved in Ukrainian relief efforts. We're gonna learn more about a fundraiser happening this month and other activities. John, welcome to the podcast. John: Thanks. Thanks for having me.Appreciate it. Dale: Hey, give us a little background about who you are. John: Okay. I've lived in Sebastopol for 30 years. My career is mainly in the area of special education. I was a teacher and then I was an administrator in Santa Rosa city schools and out of Sonoma County of Education where I was administrator, directed special education programs throughout the county. I retired in 2009 and since then I've been involved in numerous volunteer activities, trying to keep busy. Dale: Tell us about this event that's coming up, when it is and why people should go to it. John: So next Saturday on September the 24th from 2:00 to 4:00 PM, there's going to be a Ukrainian music and dance concert put on by a group from the Bay Area.Numerous Ukrainian musicians and dancers and folk music and so on. It's a really good opportunity for people up here in the North Bay to experience Ukrainian arts and culture. We rarely get a chance to see that up here. We're doing a fundraiser for two things. One is the organization that's putting it on is raising funds to send to Ukraine for relief efforts. And then also I'm involved in sponsoring and supporting a Ukrainian family that came here to the United States on August the 11th. And I'm sure we'll talk about that more, but yeah.Dale: I'll put some links below to information about how to get tickets and find out more about the event.Let's go back to earlier in the year, you made a trip to the Ukraine, or to Poland actually. John: Back in the end of March I decided to go to Poland, try and help the Ukrainian refugees and do what I can. Like many of your listeners we all saw the images of the millions of mostly Ukrainian women and children escaping from the war and going to other parts of Europe.And I was compelled to go there and do what I could to help the situation. And I'd actually gone to Northern Greece back in 2016 when the Syrian refugees were migrating to Western Europe. And so I had some experience working with refugees. Then 2019, I went back and helped at a refugee camp for a population of Yazidi refugees from Iraq.So when this happened, when the war broke out in Ukraine, I had some experience as far as going overseas and working refugee camps and so on. I just felt like I had to do something. I couldn't sit around, watch the suffering that was going on. So I went to Poland in March.Dale: Did you need permission to do this or did you just go? Or did you work with an organization? John: So I looked for an organization that I could hook up with once I got there because in 2016, when I went to Northern Greece, I just went on my own and once I got there, I looked for a group to join, which is okay, but it's not the best way to use your time.So I found an organization here in the United States called Type of Wood Charities, a small nonprofit group in Idaho. What they were doing, they're transporting refugees at the border of Poland and Ukraine and transporting these families to other parts of Poland mainly to Kraków, a city in Poland.And so I contacted them and asked if they needed any volunteers and they said, yes. So with that I bought my ticket and made my reservations and went there and then hooked up with them once I got there. Dale: Talk about what you did, actually. John: I was at the border of the two countries. There were several refugee centers. As soon as the Ukrainians crossed the border into Poland, they were bused to these large refugee reception centers where they were processed and had a chance to rest and get some food and before moving on. What we would do is announce that we were available to transport families. And so I would wait at the refugee reception center and we would announce that I had a car. I had a rental car, this SUV and room for four passengers and then wait for a family to come looking for a ride. And once that occurred and I would take them in my car. It was about a three-hour drive from the border to Kraków.My hotel was at the border. So that meant, it's a six hour round trip for me. Each day I would take a family into Kraków and then I would have to drive back to my hotel. It's about 320 to 350 miles a day of driving. I particularly liked this experience because I got to know these families over a period of three hours and got to talk with them either through a translator or if they spoke English. I really got to make a connection with them.As opposed to previous experiences. I would maybe serve food in a food line, which was all very important, but you never get a chance to connect with people. And so this was a really good experience. Dale: And they were particularly vulnerable. They've just crossed the border.They're getting a little help, but how do they know where to go? John: Some of them already knew they had friends or relatives in a certain country. But many of them didn't. They would end up in these refugee reception centers and just stay there for days or weeks so they could figure out a plan of where to go.And others just went randomly into Poland, Moldova and Hungary for a place to stay. So yeah, they were very vulnerable once they crossed the border. The other issue that was very important is human trafficking. When the war started, because these were mostly women and children. Very few men could leave Ukraine. These human traffickers would come out in force and offer rides and a place to stay, et cetera. And unfortunately there were women and children who were, who were kidnapped and taken by human traffickers. So when you think of what they already went through with the trauma of war and leaving their home and family and then being preyed upon that was a major issue, major concern. And fortunately the Polish government where I was took this seriously and they put into place controls where if a driver wanted to take someone, if I wanted to take a family, I'd have to give them my passport and my driver's license of the car, etc. When we left the reception center the police would check that information to make sure that there's a right number of people and who was in the car, et cetera.And so that helped alleviate some of the concerns. Not totally, of course. But yeah, things were very difficult, I think, for these families once they crossed the border. I'm sure they were very elated and grateful that they were safe, that they were out of harm's way. But at the same time, if you can imagine not knowing where you're going and how you're gonna get there. And all these other fears and ... Dale: I've had opportunity to talk to some Ukrainian refugees and they didn't know how long they would be out of their country whether this would be quick or, as it's turned out, it's taken months, I think we just passed a couple hundred days in this war.John: Yeah, exactly. That was one issue. And then later on, after I came back to the states the flow of refugees leaving Poland into other countries I slowed down considerably because certain parts of the country were liberated and no longer in danger. And most of the fighting is occurring in the east.And in the south, as so other parts of Kyiv the capital and Lviv, and some of these other cities currently are relatively safe. And so a number of refugees have returned to Ukraine because of their situation. In fact, there, I think there are probably more people returning than leaving now.So yeah, it all depends on the situation with the war. Dale: Now you met this family that you were working with that they were one of the groups that you transported from the border? John: They were the second family that I met and I was particularly struck by the fact that there three generations of females. There's a grandmother, a mother, and two daughters.And I'd like to kid around and say that they had a dog and the dog is also female. So very brave, courageous, strong females to do what they're doing. And so I met them at the border and I transferred them to Kraków. As I said goodbye to them, they're going to Germany the next day, I said keep in touch. Let me know if you make it to Germany. Okay. Et cetera. And so the mother Iryna gave me her Facebook identification. Facebook messenger name. And I just took it down and not knowing if I will ever see them. Actually thinking that I'd never see them again.All the other families that I transported over those two weeks I never got their contact information. So when I returned to the States, President Biden started this program called Uniting for Ukraine, which allowed 100,000 Ukrainians to come to the United States for up to two years, as long as they're sponsored by an American, someone in the United States.So I decided to do that because I wanted to keep helping in some way the Ukrainians. In the application for this Uniting for Ukraine, you have to specify the name of a Ukrainian. You can't just say I want to be a sponsor. So the people that I knew were Iryna and her family, because I had the contact information.So I texted her and asked, would you be interested in coming to the United States? And they were actually on their way to Canada. But she decided to come to the United States, I think partly because she knew me. She had met me and I think had a certain level of trust.Initially, I think she said she was a little nervous cause she only met me once and but she felt that I could be trusted. And so she said, yes. And then that started the whole paperwork process, Dale: Right. So you had to fill out forms for humanitarian parole.Yes. It actually happened fairly quickly though. John: I was actually shocked knowing something about government bureaucracy. And I know other refugee groups have had just a long wait, a year or more to be vetted to come to the United States. So I submitted my application to be a sponsor and was approved within three days, which I just felt that was amazing.And then they had to submit their application from their end, identifying me as a sponsor. And it took them two days to be approved. So the whole process in terms of the paperwork happened over a period of five days. There were a lot of other delays that had nothing to do with the paperwork, but before they could actually arrive here. But as far as the sponsoring part of it was relatively quick and smooth.And I know, there might be some listeners out there who are maybe interested in becoming a sponsor. And I said, people contact me and I'm happy to give advice and suggestions. If anyone's interested on how to do this quickly and efficiently. Dale: Once you did that paperwork then you had to schedule their arrival in the United States or plan that process.John: And the thing that took a long time like three months or so, part of it was I had to raise enough funds to sponsor and support this family for up to two years. Living in Sonoma county is not inexpensive. Housing, et cetera is very expensive. So I started a group of my neighbors here who were in the part of Sebastopol off Lone Pine Road. We called ourselves the Lone Pine Ukrainian Family Aid group. Just a handful of people decided we're going to raise funds. We're going to support this family.And gradually this group expanded beyond our Lone Pine area. Other friends and neighbors and pretty soon, and through email groups and GoFundMe groups, we probably had 125 to 150 people respond with either donations or offers of housing, transportation, food, furniture, you name it. People just came out of the woodwork.And so we had made a goal that we're not going to bring the family over until we'd raised a certain amount of initial funds, which is about $50,000. So we didn't want to just bring them over and then figure out how to support them. So that took a while. Numerous fundraisers and pleas for donations, et cetera, until we got to that point where we could safely, confidently say to them, okay, we're ready to buy your airplane tickets and have you come over.Dale: When you say sponsor a family, it's really a fiscal sponsorship, right? John: It is. I feel responsible for them. But on the other hand we're close to meeting our goal of having enough money for them for up to two years to support them. They're also eligible for government benefits. In California, they have CalWORKS, which is cash assistance for families who have children and also CalFRESH, which is also known as food stamps. Fortunately under this Uniting for Ukraine program, they're eligible for benefits just like anyone else.And so that's helping a lot as far as funding their living expenses. And then we're raising funds for all the other incidental stuff to help them. Dale: But you found a home for them. John: Yeah. One of the members of our group, his brother had to go into a memory care facility due to Alzheimer's. And so all of a sudden there was this home in Rohnert Park that was available --fully furnished, furniture, linens, towels, all the kitchen appliances, utensils. So we were really very fortunate that we didn't have to go looking out for furniture and all the other things. Already came with the house.And there's three bedrooms, two baths. 2000 square feet in a very nice neighborhood. We're paying way below market rate rental for this house. And so that was a major obstacle that we were able to overcome pretty quickly, once we knew that we had a house available for them. Dale: They arrived August 11th? John: Yes. Dale: But they were missing a important family member weren't they? John: Yeah, Fara the dog. What happened was we purchased tickets for them to fly out of Dublin, Ireland, and the reason we had them go from Germany to Ireland was because the United States has a US customs and border protection office there right at the airport. So in a sense, you go through the customs before you get on the plane, as opposed to normally you go through customs when you land. And the mother-in-law, the grandmother didn't have international passport.She had a domestic, like an identification passport. And so we were very concerned whether she would be allowed to enter the United States. And I had received some assurances from customs that if you go through Dublin, Ireland they will let people through there. That way we know that once they're past the customs in Ireland, they're home free as opposed to flying into San Francisco, not knowing whether you're going to be allowed. So anyway we had purchased tickets for them to go through Ireland and about a week or two before they left, I checked with the airlines and, to my surprise, found out that dogs were not allowed into Ireland. Because there was some issue with rabies and Ireland was not allowing dogs into the country.So we were stuck with $5,000 airplane tickets that we couldn't change or cancel without huge penalties. So we came up with a novel idea of sending my wife to Frankfurt, to Germany, to get the dog and for her to bring the dog back. She didn't have any issues with her passport and customs.So she went over there and met the family. Unfortunately the family missed their first flight due to customs people in Frankfurt. So they had to stay four days extra in Frankfurt because that was the earliest they could get on another fight to come to the US. And that turned out to be a blessing in disguise because my wife got to bond with the dog and bond with the family. I won't go into the whole story. It took them three, four times to get out of Europe into the United States. In the meantime, my wife brought the dog back first. Dale: The dog got to the United States before the family.John: And the dog was able to come to the airport to meet the family when they arrived in San Francisco. So that was the whole story in and of itself of trying to get the dog here. But of course the dog is very important to them. They were not about to leave the dog behind. Dale: So they've been here about a month. How are they doing? How's the family doing? They've adjusted really well. Thanks to so many people, Dale, I can't tell you how many people have just come out and just offered to help in so many ways, whether it's transporting children to school. One woman actually donated a car, which we took a possession of yesterday.Another person you probably know Kate from K Tech Automotive repair in Sebastopol has agreed to provide free maintenance on the car. Just things like that. People have donated bicycles so the kids can ride to school, et cetera. So the adjustment has been pretty smooth, thanks to all these people that have come forward to help.Very much a community effort. John: I couldn't have done it. My wife and I couldn't have done it on her own. No way. So it is definitely a total community effort. Dale: Saturday, you have this event in Rohnert Park at one of the schools there, and it's music and a celebration of Ukrainian heritage. And it is also a fundraiser. John: It's Saturday the 24th, two to four o'clock at Lawrence Jones Middle School, which happens to be the middle school that the older daughter goes to school at. I'm a bit concerned right now because advanced sales for the tickets are very low. It's probably in the thirties right now. The theater seats 200.So we're trying to get as many people there to show up, to support not only the family and the relief efforts, but to be exposed to Ukrainian culture and music and so on, which would be very important. There's actually something else in October you have coming up too. Isn't there? I wll just mention it in passing. We have a golf tournament at the Foxtail Golf Club in Rohnert Park. This is a total fundraiser to help support this family. We're going to have a silent auction and a live auction and a dinner for people who don't play golf or want to a golf that can come to the dinner and the auction.We've got fantastic auction items. For example, my brother donated 49er helmets that have been signed by Joe Montana and Dwight Clark, that Dwight Clark inscribed diagram the catch, which is the famous play that started the 49ers dynasty. So those two helmets which are authentic helmets are available as an auction item for people who might be interested in collecting those kinds of things. Joan Baez has donated a painting, a print of President Zelensky. So there are things like that, that people are interested in auctions come out and support the family. Dale: Thank you very much. At any of these events they'll meet you. If anyone wants to find other ways to get involved, they can learn that. John, thank you for what you and your wife are doing and the whole Lone Pine area and beyond that, of organizing this relief program.Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.  Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Joan Churchill, the Executive Director of the Sebastopol Area Senior Center, joins me to talk about the programs and activities for seniors as well as some of the issues that impact seniors in our community — even who identifies as a senior these days.Before we dive into the interview, I want to highlight a few news items from our conversation. * The Harvest Cafe inside the Center re-opens today for lunch from 11am to 1pm Monday through Friday. Member and non-members are both welcome. Takeout is also available.* On Thursday, the Senior Center is holding an open house from 4 to 6pm.* On September 17, there’s a fundraiser called “Aged to Perfection” with dinner at Blue Ridge Kitchen and music by “Pride and Joy” from San Francisco.More information can found at Sebastopol Area Senior Center. TranscriptJoan: I've been talking about the new old and the old old. There's a whole bunch of us who don't think we're old. And we're so fortunate to have good health and be running around. And it's like the senior center is in some ways a place for older teenagers.Then there are a group of what we might consider the older, old people who have developed vulnerabilities and need some support.Dale: I'm Dale Dougherty, and I'm joined today by Joan Churchill, who is the Executive Director of the Sebastopol Area Senior Center. Welcome Joan.Joan: Hi, Dale. So nice to be with you today.Dale: I looked up a little bit of bio on you and you actually have a kind of an interesting start to your life, don't you? As a young person.Joan: Yeah it's not traditional middle class. That's for certain, it was below working class and crawling out to be who I wanted to be.Dale: You grew up in the east coast, right?Joan: Grew up in the east coast in a old mill town, French Canadian, Catholic heritage. My grandmas and grandpas all came from Canada and I moved to Maine when I was 17. And I was a fish out of water in a city, which is why I just adore living in small communities and rural communities.Dale: How did you get out to California?Joan: When you lived on the east coast in the 1960s, California is the promised land. I have a sister who's two years older than me and she dreamt ever since she was a little girl of moving to California and she did back in 1980. So I used to visit her all the time and couldn't believe that there was this land where jade plants grow in parks and just a different world. And gosh, probably 20 years ago I read Charles Schultz 's biography and found out about Sebastopol and it was next door to where my sister lives in Santa Rosa. And I tried to bicycle so many times to the town and actually did once. And I never wanted to leave Sebastopol but of course I had a job and a family back on the east coast, but here I am now.Dale: Oh, that's wonderful. So you're relatively new to the Sebastopol Area Senior Center. Is that right?Joan: Yes, I've been on for less than a month. Mentored wonderfully by our last Executive Director, Katie Davis. And we are a tiny organization, but a powerhouse, the senior center has been around since 1969 and it was a different world back then.The property was given to the city by people who had passed and they had to keep it as some sort of services for senior citizens. So that's how it started. And it had gone through many different ways of doing that throughout the years. Around 2000, the organization decided to make a bigger stand.They renovated the building with almost $2 million of funds that they themselves raised and enlarged the building at the same time and change the name. It used to be known as Burbank Senior Center or something like that. And now it's the Sebastopol Area Senior Center. We're toying with -- there's a lot of baby boomers who don't consider themselves senior citizens, no matter how old or young they are.Yes. We are toying and we're probably gonna have a survey to find out what's the best name for us now. Because we want people to know that we are here on behalf of making sure that people who consider themselves older, retired, semi-retired, whatever. There's a place for them and a place for their caregivers and friends.Our board is in the midst of a strategic plan and they're really focused on inclusion, including intergenerational and the research on how people from different generations and people from different socioeconomic blending can have the opportunity to mentor young people, especially so that they can open doors and just, so those are the types of things we're really interested in forwarding.Dale: That's a wonderful direction. It's something that cities should offer is that we have ways to meet people outside our own age, background, status, whatever it is you want to use there and bringing together especially old and young coming together in new ways.Joan: Yeah, I completely agree. One really exciting thing that's happening on Monday is we are reopening our Harvest Cafe. Right now it's only gonna be open from 11 am to 1 pm Monday through Fridays. Right now it's planned to be for two weeks, it's the same menu. There's three different things on the menu.It includes an soup or salad, then the main thing and then dessert. It's very affordable. People who are members can join and partake and people who aren't members can come on in. And it's also takeout. And we do this, as many senior centers do around the country is to have a place that is fairly affordable, especially for people on fixed incomes, to socialize and meet new friends.Oftentimes when people aren't in the workplace anymore, they really don't know how to go out and make friends if you will or just have a place to go where they know they can do this and it's not gonna break their bank account. So we are tremendously excited. We have a wonderful chef, Terri Condon, who rejoined our organization and we are really into the most high quality foods that we can possibly provide. And it's just gonna be a really fun thing.Dale: Is this something this senior center did before and is coming back or is this new?Joan: During our history, we've likely always had meals, but they were provided by different entities. Since right before COVID we were providing lunches ourselves and then during COVID we brought lunches to people that we knew were vulnerable, which is what a wonderful thing to do. And then we started up again and found that we had such demand.We didn't have enough space and we didn't have enough tools. So our board, I think it was over $300,000 worth of renovations that we just did so that we have a really high end commercial kitchen. More space so that we can have more people coming. So really excited and it opens up Monday and a soft open. And then once we make sure everything's perfect, we're gonna have a nice op grand opening for that.Dale: That's great. You have to send me a menu.Joan: It's going to be great and very yummy.Dale: If you don't know where the senior center is located, you could go to the library and cross the parking lot and hit the senior center.Joan: Absolutely. It's a lovely blue, light blue building. It's so homey looking on the front, we have a great garden that we're gonna be retooling at some point, but it's lovely as it is.Another thing that's happening next Thursday, the 25th is we are having an open house from 4 to 6 pm and everyone's invited. We just ask that people give us a ring and RSVP. So we know how many people will be with us. And it's an opportunity. All our staff will be there. Most of our board members will be there to hear about all of the great programs that we have. But I am going to, if you ask, tell you about some of them at the same time.Dale: Let me ask a question before you dive into that. What's the relationship to the city?Joan: There is a relationship to the city, so the city owns the property and has since 1969, even though we've done tremendous renovations on it. They are wonderful landlords. They rent us the property for a dollar a year so that we just have to pay all of the operational costs of the building to keep it affordable.If there's something wrong with the painting or the exterior stuff, they take care of that, which is really great. And they give us a small gift every year to help us with operations too.Dale: Mostly you depend on outside donations to support you.Joan: Oh, absolutely. yes, but one thing, and I'm so glad you're talking about something like that. It's perfect for what I was gonna say. We were gifted, we and the city, the property, as I mentioned in 1969 and approximately well, 25 years ago, which we can do the math in a minute. We were gifted another great thing.And that was a donation from someone who visited Sebastopol, but their house was someplace else in California. Apparently it was this great big three story home. And the woman was a seamstress and she was also apparently a pack rat in terms of, she loved the fabrics and the bobbins and everything that goes with sewing and her house was completely full. When she passed, her executors didn't know what to do with the stuff. Somehow they came to us. We started a store. It's called The Legacy. We've been operating it for 25 years. And right now it provides us with about 40% of the revenue that we have, and we're almost up to a million dollars.It is absolutely amazing. My understanding is it's the go-to place for people in the North Bay. If they wanna find the best kinds of fabric wall, things for craftspeople buttons. Apparently we have, we have buttons that no one else has in the world, you know? So people who are artisans, they come and find us.That's open Monday through Saturday because we're a largely volunteer oriented. We're closed on Sundays, but it's a wonderful way to serve the community in many ways and to support our center.Dale: Now you were going to talk about some of the programs.Joan: Yeah. We also offer a lot of classes and courses and things like that. We run Tai Chi classes for people who are doing sitting Tai Chi. We do some yoga classes. We did a lot of these on zoom over COVID and some of them were keeping like that because it really allows people who it's just too hard for them to move their bodies over, but they can participate if they're still doing Zoom.So we're trying to do as many of that as we can based on demand. So we'd really like people to tell us what they want and what they prefer. We're doing this program called SAIL (Stay Active and Independent for Life) but what it is to help people with balance and it's led by a physical therapist and it offers education and skills development so that people can strengthen from where they are.We're going to be in September, offering some screening, some free screenings with a whole bunch of different health professionals. . So if someone is worried about either their parent or themselves with the risk of falling, we can help them in terms of, do they need immediately referrals to doctors for something that they don't even know they have yet, or, would our program be the best for them or whatever kind of level of care might be helpful for them.We we do anything that someone says we'd like to do with class and you have space in a room. I'm gonna just click right now and see what our current offerings are for that. For this month, we've got collage journaling, watercolor, bridge, gentle yoga, sitting Tai Chi, the balance classes.We have introduction to cannabis on here.It's all on our website, but, and it's constantly changing, but the things that people want to do, like Tai Chi and yoga and things like that they're typically always on. It's just a nice way for people to keep learning about things and doing something for their health.Dale: Let's talk about health for a bit. COVID obviously impacted everybody but the elderly in our community were the most vulnerable to COVID. That must have changed a lot of what the senior center could do over the last two years?Joan: Yes. They actually had to close, take that terrible pregnant pause in March and April of 2020. And this place from my understanding came back booming in offering meals and Zoom classes.And of course our website for people who are comfortable using a website was a real help in showing all the resources and referrals. That's another thing that we do is we help to open doors for people when they have a need for something. And our reception still in a big spacey room with as much ventilation, so people could still call us, but it was a different time. We right now require people to be vaccinated, to come into our place. And I'm actually looking at that right now because I just read that the rates of transmitting COVID are pretty much the same regardless, but what you get if you are vaccinated is incredibly lower.So it's such a thing. And you'll probably keep things just as they are for the longest time, but we don't wanna put a barrier up to people accessing.Dale: Do you find people are coming back to the senior center?Joan: Oh yes. Oh yes. Half our members bring masks and wear their masks. And half of them don't. We don't require that they wear a mask because we don't have to, but we love that they do, because we know that they're trying to take care of themselves. We're gonna start really making sure that all of our spaces have just the best ventilation that we possibly can afford. Do that extra thing as the weather changes and we might have doors closed more. We just wanna make sure everything is as safe as possible. It's great to have people back and great to see smiling faces. Again, that was one thing that was hard to see for the last two years.Dale: COVID isolated all of us in different ways and it's really great to be connecting.Joan: Yep. Yeah. And supposedly the things that I've read. And my mentor with that is Mary Piper, a psychologist, talks about shared trauma and that it's not necessarily one to one counseling that people need. It's exactly what you just mentioned.It's people getting together and laughing and being together and then getting their basic needs met. But once that's met, it's being together and being able to talk about things. And that is often equally beneficial to the group of people who are traumatized by something.And, so it's everything that we can do to bring people together in a safe place is what we wanna do.Dale: Yeah, that's great. Something that also applies, I think you mentioned it, but it's almost an unexpected thing growing up, getting older is that is elder care taking care of your parents or taking care of other people in the community that are older almost in the way you had to take care of your children.Joan: Exactly.Dale: But different. Time consuming. Frustrating sometimes. And there aren't often easy answers. That's something that must cross through the senior center a bit.Joan: Oh, it does incredibly. And I've been talking about the new old and the old, old. There's a whole bunch of us who don't think we're old. And we're so fortunate to have good health and be running around. And it's like the senior center is in some ways a place for older teenagers. Some people don't have jobs anymore or they have part-time jobs or whatever, but they really wanna have fun. They don't have all this kid obligations and things like that.So it's a time to really express. And then there are a group of what we might consider the older, old people who have developed vulnerabilities and need some support. And many those folks, cuz they've lived to be much long, older that are also could be considered senior citizens.It is a pickle and we really hope it doesn't matter if you're 40 years old and your parent is facing some vulnerabilities. We wanna be one of the calls that you can make. We don't have social workers, but we do have incredible amount of resources to help people get on their way. And if they've found dead ends, they could call us back and we could see what else we can do. There are organizations that do have case managers and for when people need that level of support and stuff like that.Dale: There is a level, especially among the elderly. Sometimes they just don't know who to call.Joan: Or they're afraid of asking the wrong question or that people aren't going to be nice to them. And I think what senior centers probably throughout the country, but ours especially is that we are so welcoming and friendly.You make a phone call to us. You're gonna get nice, happy people. They will answer every question that you have to the best of their ability. I think that's the great thing about senior centers is that they're welcoming. That's what they want to do is to help.Dale: And you mentioned that a focus on inclusivity too, and bringing, the diverse threads in our community together.Joan: So we are really excited about that and we are starting to make connections with different entities and organizations. And when I think of having young people help. Right now, we have some volunteers who are helping older people learn how to use their Macintosh or their cell phones, but I can't wait till we can get a whole corral of young people.They might be 10 years old and teaching someone, or they might be 14 years old. We don't know yet. But really helping to teach. On the other end, that person who's doesn't know anything about a Mac may know everything there is about fixing engines and that might be something that other person's interested in or making really great cookies or something.So that's that cross collaborative...Dale: Another side is even knowing the community and its history, right?Joan: It's the the living history project, but we don't want to say because I would think, oh, you would ask questions and they would write, they would tell you and you'd be writing notes or using a microphone.But the young people know all the different tools. I do not know what they are and they will be able to tell us how they might do it. It might be through art. It might be through some kinds of technology things that I don't know the names of yet. It could be in so many different ways.In preparing to work in Sebastopol, I read a couple books on the history and the Gravenstein apples, and this was a different world.So people who are 70, eighties, in their nineties, really saw a different world. People who are sixty saw a different world than what is on Main Street. I think that would be so wonderful. And then they can show us how to hook these up to everyone else's websites, yeah. So I'm really looking forward to that.Dale: It, it does remind us of the pace of change.I know you're new to the position, but what are some of the goals you might have for the senior center, things that you wanna make your mark on it and help it go forward. Recognizing also some of the needs it must address.Joan: Now I, my guess is, and this is completely a guess because I've always worked in areas that had significant poverty or people who were just on fixed incomes without any other assets to help them along. My guess, is people here hide their limited income much more than they might someplace else, because there is a vibrant community of people and restaurants and every, you know, this place is geared, this part of California is geared to people who have a lot of disposable income. So my guess that's just my guess and I could be wrong, but I don't think I am and we just need to find those folks so that we can make sure that they have as much support as that we can, we meaning the community of "We's" and all of systems can help them.Dale: That's a very thoughtful response. With inflation and the cost of living going up so high. And they can't do much about that. That's a very difficult position to be in.Joan: The other thing is because I'm fairly new to California, in this part of California and it's just making sure, and it might just be learning for me that the elders, if we have to quickly leave our homes. Yeah, because of a smoke or fire event. I just need to be convinced that we know where every single person lives and that they can get out of their houses.Dale: Yeah. I've written about it and involved a little bit myself. There's something called meet your neighbors, MYN. Some other things. And I just to give anyone listening here a little bit, it's in your neighborhood who those people are that might need assistance. During evacuation or because power goes out , you might not know them very well or haven't interacted with them, or they could have had a change in health that you aren't aware of. And if anyone was here, a lot of people were here during the fires, they come down the street and they shout time to leave. They don't check that you leave. They don't see who stays behind.Joan: And you've made a point with people's conditions changing, people can have a fall and they were healthy and strong and now they're not quite that way anymore.Dale: So that's why you don't see them on the street anymore.Joan: So I think you're right to reach out to your neighbors now while there's no smoke around and just see how people are doing. I know when I moved here and worked In Healdsburg, our finance officer lost her home in Ukiah, the same date as the 2017 and her neighbor to the north and to the south of her did not make it out of their road. And, if they had these preventative programs, like they started immediately, would that have been different? Who knows? No one will ever know, when I hear what you were saying and what Sebastopol has done. It just reinforces for me to have that conversation, see how people are doing before.Dale: Is there anything else coming up that you wanna talk about? You have something in September.Joan: We have our biggest fundraiser in September. It's called, I love the name. It's called "Aged to Perfection.". And this time we're having a really great band. Pride and Joy. They're out of San Francisco and I guess they're tremendously well regarded. We're gonna be at one of the venues at the Barlow. And we are going to have a wonderful catered meal and there'll be opportunities to be able to win a raffle or win somehow a bid.I think maybe it's a bid for a whole bunch of wine that is not on the market. It's just a way to support our organization so we can do all the great things that we're doing. And, with just hopes for the future that we'll be even more dynamic than we have been, which has been pretty darn dynamic.Dale: Good. Joan, thank you for your time today. I learned a lot about the senior center and I hope others did as well. And I wish you luck in your continuing journey to, to lead the organization.Joan: Thank you. It's been such a pleasure, Dale. Thank you so much. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

“Analy” returns this week as the name of the high school in Sebastopol that serves West County, which served as its name last year. Students will be back at Analy on Thursday. Chris Meredith is the new Superintendent for West Sonoma County Union High School District. Most recently, Chris was the Director of Human Resources for Windsor Unified School District. He has a lot of challenges in this new job. I caught up with Chris to talk about his priorities, turning things around in the District after several difficult years as well as his relationship with students and teachers. Chris is nothing if not enthusiastic and optimistic about the new school year. He’s looking forward to seeing students on campus later this week.Transcript Dale: Welcome to Sebastopol City Limits. My guest today is the new superintendent of West County High School Union District.Something like some set of words like that. But Chris Meredith welcome.Chris: Thank you, Dale. It's West Sonoma County Union High School District.Dale: Thank you. And what is the main high school's name this year?Chris: The comprehensive high school in our district will be moving back to the Analy name. So Analy High School.Dale: And when does school start?Chris: School starts Thursday on the 11th.Dale: Wow.Before we get into some of your background, tell me, what do you remember your first day of high school?Chris: I went to high school as a freshman at Fairmont Senior High School in West Virginia. I grew up in Marin and Sonoma County and dealt with a lot of family adversity. And I went to 11 schools in 12 years, including three different high schools. So it was a shock coming from California, just the cultural differences. So it was a challenge for sure.Then sophomore year, I went to talk about polar opposites in Southern California. Sophomore year, I went to University High School in Irvine. Over 4,000 students from West Virginia to Orange County was a little bit different.Dale: You were a teacher and a principal in Cloverdale, is that right?Chris: I taught for 12 years in Santa Rosa city schools. I taught at Piner and Ridgeway. I taught PE and business. I was also a football coach. I spent a little time as an adjunct instructor at the JC, coached a little football there. And then my first administrative position was vice principal with Roseland Collegiate Prep on the Ursuline campus, a 7-12 charter school, college prep.I did that for two years before becoming the principal at Cloverdale High School, where I served for four years and then just one year at the Windsor district office as the director of HR.Dale: Okay, great. I have to ask you this question. Why would you want this job?Chris: Great questionDale: They've really had a real struggle here and some really tough issues to deal with the last couple years.Chris: Sure. I've always watched this district from afar. I've got some close friends in the community and some of them are teachers. One of them in particular is a really close friend of mine.It's an all high school district, which I think is really unique because my experience is all high school with the exception of the two years I spent as the vice principal within Roseland, where I had the 7-8. It's a passion of mine. Obviously spending seven years as a teacher at Ridgeway High School, I saw an opportunity to support not only a comprehensive model, but a continuation model.And it's a small community. It's a small district, and I know that they've been through some turmoil and I know they needed steady leadership. And to be honest, I've always thought of this district as a dream district for me. And I didn't expect to become a superintendent so soon. When this position came open, I just I had to explore it.I felt as though. It was the right time, because who knows when this district would have another superintendent vacancy. And I figured with what, I didn't know, having little time at the district office much, like when I became the principal at Cloverdale High School, I would learn and just get to know people, immerse myself in the community. And things would work itself out. When I took over in Cloverdale, they were, their culture and their climate was at a low point and we rebuilt that school. We built relationships and we had a lot of success in a short amount of time. So I don't shy away from a challenge and I'm here to help.Dale: I think it's fair to say that a lot of people would say it's been at a low point and it's time to start getting to a high point. What are your priorities coming in?Chris: Yeah, I think some of the glaring priorities, are the reestablishing of positive culture and rebuilding relationships through what was the consolidation and how that affected everybody in our community and then obviously addressing some of our racial discrimination issues and then taking a look at our budget and making sure that we balance it out.And our fiduciary responsibilities are aligned with our program and our staffing ratios. And so I think we have some work to do there. And then just looking at how this unification study will play out and really getting to know people in this community, everybody from, People within our district to, students and families, alumni, but also our feeder districts.We have the largest draw of any high school in Sonoma County. And so I've gotta get out and get to know those superintendents and the people at those campuses and the families that send their students to those campuses because ultimately we want those students to come to Analy. And so I think through a process of rounding and really getting to know people that's gonna be, in addition to some of those district priorities, my priorities for this year, really get to know this district, get to know this community and build authentic relationships.Dale: The part of the community that feels upset, to use that word, is really around El Molino . And from talking to people, it may not actually be just what happened, it was how it happened. Abrupt not really good messaging about what they're doing. Whatever you decide to do in that area, the families there still feel kind of pain from that.There's a lot of healing that needs to be done, and really just validating people's feelings, and honoring the traditions that evolved over the years is all I can control today.And we'll see what happens moving forward. But, I've already started to do that and having conversations with people and hearing their concerns, giving them the space to express how they felt about the processes and then reflect. I wasn't a part of the district during that time. And so I can go back and watch board meetings and make sure that, our messaging is as clear as we can be.And the transparency is there early, early and often.That's good. So one of the things people don't necessarily fully understand that I've learned is that, the board's decision was to merge two comprehensive high schools so that there was one in the district.Chris: Correct.And that splitting resources, at least economically was difficult to have a student body of 600 and a student body of 1200. Is that basically fair?Yeah. It's expensive to run two comprehensive high schools and the district's been experiencing declining enrollment. So from what I've learned, that was a part of that process and what was considered.Structural deficit was pretty severe at that time.Dale: Let's talk about that. A phrase that comes up a lot in board meetings .A structural deficit. What do we mean by that?Chris: Essentially, just in layman terms, is that your expenditures are exceeding your revenues.Dale: And it's fixed in a way that it's not taking care of itself.Chris: Sure. Because we're funded on the local control funding formula, which is a per student average daily allowance. And so through declining enrollment and the way that formula is set up and structured, we get X amount of dollars.And obviously the declining enrollment reduces the amount of per student ADA that we receive as a district.Dale: Is declining enrollment the future? Just steady decline here, or is there things that can be done -- I've seen projections of 10 years that, and not just Sonoma county, in other districts, the LA county, things like that.Chris: I think cost of living plays a big part of that, in the state of our economy and families are looking for more affordable places to raise. Families. And so I think it's also really highlighting and marketing your programs and making sure that you really take input from the community and you're building something that, has options for all different learners.And I think that's one of the reasons why districts reflect constantly to look at what students they're losing, why are they losing them? And so I have a plan in place for any interdistrict transfer, I'm gonna be meeting with those families. I want to collect data. I wanna collect information.I wanna build relationships so I can learn why we're losing certain students. And develop a plan to make sure that we can keep our students. And I think part of that is going back to connecting with the feeder schools and really getting to know people out in those communities and look at barriers, barriers to attending our comprehensive high school. And how can we remove those barriers and provide more opportunities?Dale: One of the obvious ones is the kids that live pretty far out on the coast and they have a long bus ride to school. The Fort Ross area and others. Is that something you're gonna look at?Chris: Absolutely. And we have a hundred million campus in Forestville, the former El Molino campus. And right now it houses Laguna, which is primarily set up as a continuation high school, but I think there's opportunities to build potentially an alternative school, through learning what types of program and opportunities our students out that way are interested in and provide an opportunity to learn in a different way and really promote engagement for students through a unique program that we could build together.Dale: Someone one said to me that, in some ways educationally Sebastopol and this county are conservative. They kind of like what they have, but there is some impetus for change now. I feel that,. I don't know if you do, but things you don't just continue things the way they've been. You need to respond to the kind of environment you're in, the changes you have, and businesses have to do that. Schools have to do that.Chris: It's that evolution. And if you don't stay ahead of it and you don't prepare for it and plan for it, you're gonna be behind the eight ball. So I really wanna look, I wanna be forward thinking with whatever we do.I think that, obviously it's expensive to run a comprehensive high school. Providing a structure for an alternative diploma track that provides students with more hands-on learning experiences, project-based learning, maker concepts and industry concepts, and linking it back to some of the things at the comprehensive high school with CTE programs and more opportunities to learn beyond the classroom.So that's the key is getting students out with mentors and internships and work-based learning opportunities so they can explore what life might look like for them outside of high school.Dale: Let's talk about the students for a minute. They've been in a tough position. There's COVID shutting down schools. There's the merging of the two schools. There was racial discrimination issues on campus that were raised. And students expressed at times a difficulty to feel heard by the administration. How do you create a culture where students feel they belong and that it cares for them and they care for it.Chris: That's a great question. I think it starts by listening to your students. We're all here for our students and if we don't listen to them and ask them questions and help them inform our decisions, we're leaving 'em out of the picture.And so I think that's where it starts. I'll be meeting with a group of our student activists. I'll be present on our campuses. I really enjoy talking to high school kids and helping them achieve their goals. And so I think that's where it starts, Dale, is listening to our students and empowering their voice.Dale (2): How about teachers? We're reading about a shortage of teachers nationwide. Is that something that's impacting West County?Chris: It's definitely impacting West County and I'm hopeful due to the tentative agreement we put in place and where we restructured the teachers' salary, we're very competitive, if not the most competitive public high school in Sonoma County with our teaching salaries and our benefit contributions. So I think attracting and retaining good quality teachers is a priority. It's getting more difficult to do as there's less teachers embarking on this educational journey and getting into the field.So I think it's really putting support pieces in place, providing a structure where good educators and learners can grow and then continuing to reflect about our practices and our culture. And I think that's how we're gonna retain our really good teachers and attract new teachers as well.Dale: You mentioned the district organization plan that was put out before the board. And I guess the board of trustees will be meeting about that in August. So we don't quite know the next stage.Chris: It may be in September because the important aspect of this is to engage the leaders of all the districts that are involved in a unification study. I think that's an important aspect. It's this isn't a decision that we are making. We advocated for the study, but I think this is a whole West County region initiative that needs to be looked at. So we wanna make sure that we take a thoughtful approach. And I know that our school board, they're connecting with other school board members to discuss priorities and that's where I also will engage and discuss what this could look like with the other superintendents and school leaders in our feeder schools.Dale: You have so many districts, so manyChris: right.Dale: Different ways of carving up both geography and schools. I guess the only comment there is I, there's such an opportunity and need to collaborate regardless of what that structure looks like.That students arrive to Analy well prepared for that experience. And that level of preparation is consistent out in Guerneville as it is in Gravenstein.Chris: Absolutely. Important issues there.Dale: Chris tell me what your Thursday's gonna be like when the school opens? What time do you have to get there?Chris: Oh, I'll probably arrive early before the students, do some stuff here in the office. And then I plan to be out and about welcoming kids and meeting teachers. And I wanna spend some time on both campuses. So I'm looking forward to it. I spent a year as a director of human resources in the district office, so I need my kid fix. I miss being around the students.Dale: That's a great thing.Chris: You asked me. That's one of the reasons I really am excited to be here is, I get to be around high school students. That's the population that we serve primarily with the exception of the special ed consortium, where we do have some of the younger grade levels. Making sure high school kids have an outstanding experience starts on Thursday.Dale: Okay. And how's the football team gonna be?Chris: I talked to Dan yesterday. He thinks they're gonna be pretty good.Dale: All right. Thanks a lot.Chris: Thanks Dale. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Horizon Shine was put forth as a name by a homeless person on Morris Street and everyone in the planning session liked it. It’s now the name of the village community on North Gravenstein Avenue built by Sonoma Applied Village Services (SAVS) and opened in February 2022. About 20 RVs and 30 individuals were relocated from Morris Street to Horizon Shine Village where they have access to showers, a daily hot meal, and case workers who can help them figure out how to get what they need. The effort, which came about through a partnership between SAVS and the Sebastopol City Council, was funded by donations as well as grants from County Board of Supervisors and the State of California. In this episode, we talk with Adrienne Lauby, the President of Sonoma Applied Village Service and Hector Gutierrez who is the Village Project Manager. Sebastopol Times is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Transcript Adrienne: The bottom line of everything I do is the feeling that housing is a human right. And that's in the international declaration of rights, but it's also just reality.We live in the rich country. Sonoma County is a rich county. It's ridiculous that we have 2,000 people with nowhere to sleep at night. I think it's a human right. And I hope other people will understand that and just be as appalled as me. That's all.Dale: I'm joined today by Adrienne Lauby and Hector Gutierrez from Sonoma Applied Village Services. SAVS is the acronym and they manage the Horizon Shine on Gravenstein Avenue.And we're gonna learn more about them and what managing that means. Actually we'll start with you, Adrienne. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background and how you got into this?Adrienne: Sure. So I'm right now, the board president of SAVS and I've been doing homeless work for about eight years.I got into this through a long history of trying to do change in the world, starting with feminism in the seventies and going through a disability movement. I wanted to do local work and because of Occupy Santa Rosa, I realized that there was an overlap between disability and homelessness. And so I started trying like a lot of us -- do something, help. Oh my gosh, this shouldn't happen like it is.Why do we have 2000 people on the street in Santa Rosa, not in Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, So, gathered up my courage to go meet homeless people and started developing a team. We worked with this group called homeless action for and then eventually we realized that all of our good ideas were not gonna be put into play unless we ourselves did them.So we started SAVS in 2018 as a nonprofit, and that allowed us to get some government funding, which is what we've done and eventually to open up Horizon Shine here in Sebastopol.Dale: Great. Thank you. Hector, how about you?Hector: Actually I'm new to that homeless cause only because I just been here in the Santa Rosa area about a year and a half ago. I moved up here from Los Angeles area. I work mostly city government for last 30 years and retired from that particular job. And then I moved up here with my wife. She's originally from this area. And how I got involved with SAVS, I had applied for a position, a project manager, and mostly that would be construction after discussing with Adrienne what the project was and what was the goal? I find it very interesting. I think it's a great idea. I think it's a humane type of thing that I wanted to be involved with. I wanted to help the community.I wanted to help the cause of what this is program was trying to achieve. So with that being said I took the job so that I can be part of this particular project and the rest is history. I've been there for, going almost in a year. We completed the village in Sebastopol and we're moving on to other projects in the future. It's so new, but I'm really enjoying the work that I'm doing.Dale: What do we know about the homeless situation in Sonoma County from your perspective? What have you learned that you could share with us?Adrienne: I think the biggest thing I've learned is to keep the generalities outside of the world. People have lots of generalities about homeless people, starting from the most stigmatizing, like they're all mentally ill, they're all losers, they're all drunks and addicts to the kindest ones. They're all wonderful, giving, loving people who just lost a job. And the truth is there are 3000 homeless people in Sonoma County and they are very particular people with particular histories, just like anyone else.What we do know is that there's an increase of elderly people in their seventies and even eighties. And these are people who have generally had a work life and retired and then had some level of tragedy or unusual circumstances hit them. But I think because of the economy, rich getting richer, the poor getting poor, it's just more of those folks. Which is they're all heartbreaking. We also see a lot and I'm saying the things that I think might surprise people. So we see a lot, I said about disability. And people would say yes, mentally ill. We closed the mental institution. So of course there's a lot of mentally ill people, but actually there's also a lot of physically ill people.We meet people, an amazing number of people to me who have cancer and are going through cancer treatments, people in wheelchairs with mobility problems, people with breathing problems. We also find, I would call them economic refugees who had been priced out of the housing market because of maybe they just didn't expect it to be so hard to rent an apartment, but also people who've lost jobs and people who lost housing because of the Tubbs fires. So climate change and economics definitely affected us. 2000 of those people live outside. A thousand of the 3000 are in some sort of facility: shelters, group homes, whatever. But that 2000 really literally have nowhere to stay every night. About a third of them, and this will probably surprise people, do have a vehicle they live in, which makes sense because if you were to lose your home, the first place you'd go is whatever vehicle you have.And also people get given like an RV. Oh, I have this one. I'm not using it anymore. Or my brother-in-law has a crapped out one in their backyard. You can have it, just take it out of the backyard. So we have what the police call "caravans" of homeless vehicles. This has worked out well for SAVS because it's easy. Like they already have a kitchen, they already have a bathroom. They already have a place to live. And it's a matter of just giving them a place that's safe and legal because the biggest problem is two things. One is keeping your RV registered and smogged and all those things that cost a lot and which you don't really need cuz you're living in them. You're not traveling in them. And then the police, because you're only allowed to be on the street at certain number of days, depending on where it is. And so they get harassed by the cops like, "oh, you have to leave. You have to leave. Yeah. I saw you over on there last week, but you're here this week. You gotta go somewhere else."And so it's constant stress. Where are you gonna be? And of course, this is all magnified when people are living in tents, same thing happens. They get neighbors (who) call and then, "okay, you gotta leave. You gotta leave." We just kept saying, and they keep saying. Where are we gonna go? Where are we gonna go? So the mission of SAVS is to give them a place to go. And we have our one village in Sebastopol. We're hoping to do a new one that will be Latino focused because they are overrepresented in the homeless population. We'll have more to say about that later in the year.Dale: Is the RV home site kind of a model that you're gonna build on?Adrienne: I mean our goal we call it tiny villages and we say, whatever is a village. It could be a village of tents. It could be a village of little, one mini homes that are just a bedroom with no, any kind of facility. And then common rooms to help or or RVs and trailers.Dale: So how did you get involved in Sebastopol then?Adrienne: So we came because of Morris Street, essentially. We got to know people who were concerned about Sebastopol. And we have outreach workers who go around the county and just give people little food or whatever.And pretty soon we saw here's a community. And the good thing about a community like this is that you can find them, because everyone else is getting moved around. So we started coming to Morris Street more often. We did a project where we tried to help people get their --we had a fund and we tried to help 'em get registered. Legalized. So they weren't in trouble. And that means we met them. And then we met some of the council people who were also interested in trying to do it, and we put a proposal in and it went nowhere. And then at some point, there was this magic moment where the council said, we really wanna do something here. And we said, we really wanna do something here. And there was some money. And that was, I think the critical piece that the county system threw into it. and that's how we started to start Horizon Shine.Dale: So they identified some property. And then Hector, were you involved in having to construct that facility?Hector: Yes, that was my primary role was to construct the property once or the village that we call. Once we got all the permits and all the approvals from city council and everyone involved. I was yes responsible for building the infrastructure for it, managing all that.Dale: How long did it take to get permitted and everything?Hector: I think because of all the work that Adrienne and the rest of the board has been doing with city council, they were aware of all this this particular project and everything that we have discussed, how it was gonna take place. I We actually showed them the design and what we had in mind. So permitting was very quickly, they were ready to help us. So whenAdrienne: I gotta interrupt here, cuz this is the kind of legal issue, we were sued by some neighbors, and they said we didn't go through the permitting process correctly. The judge threw them out basically, but we didn't actually go through permitting because we were permitted automatically because of some regulations and rules that the planning department did.So again, the city of Sebastopol really worked with us.Dale: Hector, can you talk about what did you have to, you obviously had to put up fencing, but what else?Hector: Yeah, so the fencing was put up actually by the owner of the property and I just managed the construction of it.And then after that, we had to bring in power, work with PG&E on that. Also we had to have that particular property does not have potable water service from the city. So we had to plumb the actual site, but then we are using tanks with the pump. And so it's all internal. So I had to have the plumbers come in and build the infrastructure for all the plumbing, water faucets. We have a sink, we have portable showers. So we have connection to the portable showers as well. And then we also had to put up cameras for security and we also have wifi for the office and wifi for the residents-- two separate systems so they can connect to the wifi.I just recently built a dog run that it was a donation by a member of the community, but I was involved overseeing that particular project. So anything that has to do with actually any kind of construction per se, that's what I'm involved with.Dale: Were there any, did you create any shared areas as such as like communal eating?Hector: We have a community tent, so it's like a common area where people can come and that's where we have our meetings. That's where we have our like tables and chairs for people to eat once the food gets delivered in the evenings. And it's a place to gather, community gathering.We have porta potties, obviously, and trash pickup service, where we have trash cans throughout the property. Fire department have come through and, done inspection for us as far as we have to have fire roads for emergencies within the property. So that's all been taken care of and that's all that had to be planned to build it like that.Dale: Adrienne, could you talk a bit about moving people in. You had to convince people, I think initially to go but were they willing and what did they think when they moved there..Adrienne: There was one other thing I wanted to add in here about setting it up. We are not on city property. People often think we are, but we are on a private property, which is owned by another nonprofit St. Vincent DePaul of Sonoma County.Dale: They bought what used to be Natural gas or propane (distributor).Adrienne: They brought a property that wasn't at all being used and now it is. They've been great partners.Getting people interested, it was actually a little uphill. The concept that they might be behind a fence, the concept that there might be a rule, that there might be some rules about visitors.We said that the owners of the vehicles could come and that if they wanted to live with someone else, which many of them did either in a couple or as friends, that was okay. But they couldn't just have people staying in their unit. That was really distressing to some people because they were taking friends off the street and saying, yeah, you could sleep here tonight.Some of them many nights. Almost all nights. These kinds of rules and then. These are people who are not used to having rules and they've seen rules really be used against them. So yeah, there was a fair amount of like fear, I would say.And we just kept meeting with them. Like we kept meeting with the neighbors and saying, this is what it's gonna be. And here's the advantages. And when it came right down to it, the fact that they would not be under police control every day and having to deal with the police all the time. And that they weren't, I didn't have to come up with a thousand dollars to get their back registration done.These were convincing. So in the end, I think everybody moved that was there. And then there, there was just the physical part of moving them and I gotta give a big bow to Hector because the police had actually started to really enforce. And so we thought we had a couple weeks to move everyone in.We could do it step by step. It turned out to be a few days really. And Hector had to set up exactly where each one would go and figure out, who was friends with whom, but also how the physical --cuz these trailers are different sizes. So how they all fit on the property and then which ones needed to be towed and who could tow them.It was a lot at the same time we were doing our intake, which is a big physical document that everyone had to sign and give a lot of information and get their ID photographed. So there was, let's just say it was "fun fun in the sun sun sun.".Dale: Actually someone knowing them and what they're doing is one hand a kind thing, but it's a threatening thing to them as well.Adrienne: And it made a huge difference. The Sebastopol advocates that had originally started working with us and in that we were there a lot. We knew 'em as people and we knew they had relationships. We had some idea what relationships they had with each other. All of that. I think made this whole thing actually work.We had a community and we moved it into a better spot to have a community.Dale: So Hector, you have this, I think difficult role, trying to balance care and safety and all these other things, right?Hector: Yes. Originally, we had an idea of what we wanted things to be. And I come from a background of project management of people and projects, large projects. That particular project, it was not overwhelming. I just had an idea of what we needed to do. There's all kinds of different things that come up every day, as far as how to make things happen because they changed and things like that.But overall it was it was just something that we had to, take our time and think it through before we start doing things because Adrienne mentioned, we unfortunately had to, at the very beginning, we had to get some people up the street in a hurry, like within a couple days if not less.So we have to figure out how to get 'em in the village and place them in a place where we still have major construction taking place. But to answer your question, I think everything everything was planned out well, so everything just we had good vendors and it had a lot of good help from some other residents within the village that would help me do some of the daily, everyday activities that we needed to do there to get things ready. So yeah, I think it went pretty well.I was there on site every day, mainly that was because of the construction. Most of the construction's already completed. So it's now being managed by an actual property manager, site manager there.Dale: And you also have case workers that visit and get to know and help the people that live at the village navigate some of their issues.Adrienne: That's correct. I think I wanna talk about our model, which is to say these people are adults. They've had lives. They are not criminals. They are not children. We know they need to have some say in how they live and what their circumstances are. So we started out right away to have a village council and we're in moving into our second phase of trying to have a village council.It wasn't greatly successful, but we've always felt it's not just us. It's a team, but we do have hired staff. We have our village managers, Hector was saying, but we also have case workers and their job is to take people one by one and say, what do you need? What will help you move on in your life?And the goal of course, is to get people into permanent housing that they are stable enough to stay in. Yeah, we have three. Three case managers now plus a, an onsite manager and a village manager. And we also hire our own security during the day. We have 24/ 7 security and a commercial security company that does it at night.Dale: If the expectation is that you would get some of these people into permanent housing, would you fill their spots with others to that?Adrienne: Oh yeah. Okay. Absolutely.Dale: And there are others.Adrienne: Oh, there are.Dale: Do you have a waiting list?Adrienne: We do. And I should say right off the top that right now we're limited to people who live in Sebastopol or have had that kind of thing in their background.The city is enforcing people some new regulations, so people are getting kicked out, but if they've been in Sebastopol for a period of time and they're eligible when we finish and get everybody in Sebastopol taken care of, then we'll consider doing something wider. Maybe we'll take on GratonDale: There's a model here that you're talking about that could apply to lots of small cities and others that need to deal with this problem more effectively than they have.Adrienne: I hope so. And think we're seeing it some, there's a new facility in Guerneville opening soon. There's another tiny village in Petaluma now that's being run by COTS and they all have different models. Rohnert Park is gonna be opening a tiny village of little houses. I think our model of having people self manage is unique and I think it's more cheap and more useful and more humane.So I'm hoping that will spread as well whether we do the managing or someone else does it.Dale: Can you talk about interactions with the community in general? When we talk about the police doing enforcement of Morris, that's driven by citizen complaints, that's driven by business complaints and everything else.So there's a level of anxiety about having homeless in a community. But it's also reality. It sounded like you had churches helping you and other organizations that that really wanna help, wanna be part of solving the problem.Adrienne: Yeah, overall Sebastopol has been very welcoming.There was a group of people who sued us to shut us down. And there was a lot of fear and a lot of concern and especially in the immediate neighborhood but a lot of that is just as, as we opened and it became real. For instance, the bank across the street told us that at one point there were people coming in there every day and saying, I'm sorry, I won't be able to bank with you anymore cuz that homeless thing is gonna be across the street and I won't feel safe and I'm not coming in here. And they were getting that all the time and then we opened and nobody has not come in there. Nobody is continuing to complain. So that's the good news. And I think Hector could, should answer this also, cuz he is our business liaison and we're very concerned about the businesses and getting along with them.Hector: So as Adrienne mentioned, I am the liaison with the merchants in that immediate area. So I made sure that, when we first moved in there, I introduced myself and I told them what my role was. And given my phone number and information in case they ever have any problems with any persons that they feel might part of our village to gimme a call. I did ask for videos or pictures of the incident so that I can have some proof, but oddly enough, I would say that 95% of the time. None of the incidents that I, cause I, when people, the customers call me the merchants, call me, I'll go meet them in person and go through their videos, send pictures and stuff. For the most part, 95% of them, they are not residents of our village.So it's just part of, the unhoused situation within Sebastopol and the county in general. But yes it's been it's been going well.There's also a group that deals with the actual residents community and we meet like once a month on zoom and, oddly enough, all concerns that people had originally when we were going through get approval for this and to make it happen, people were outspoken about all the dangers that they fear, but oddly enough, none of them have really come into fruition.And also people just don't show up to those meetings. I don't think they feel like they're, they're, it's a big deal. It's a big problem. Like they thought it would be so little by little. It's just the group of people that show up to these meetings are smaller. And also there's for the most part, they're they're positive about things they're, surprised, originally I was surprised of that response, but for the most part, people in the community, both merchants and the private residents have been very supportive. Not too many complaints.Dale: Can you talk about how this is all funded? Both from your organization and, the specific project? The mix of different funding sources.Adrienne: Yeah, thank you. Gives me a chance to say thanks to our donors, because we love people who just give us some money with no strings attached.Right now we have a challenge grant for vehicle repair because people have the vehicles, their cars, they use to drive around and some of them need help. So we had a $2,500 challenge grant. And we're slowly but surely meeting that challenge. So soon, we'll have that fund ready, but this is a big,Dale: can I ask, where do you go to contribute to that fund?Adrienne: Our website, Sonomavillages.org. Okay, thank you. That's very helpful.But the it's a big project. It costs a lot of money to have staff and to do the kind of infrastructure that Hector put us through. The money comes from this County of Sonoma. Basically it's the Board of Supervisors gave us some money, an agency group called Community Development Commission through their group, which is called the Continuum of Care. They're the ones that funded the major portion of it all. Some of it, most of it, I would say comes from the State of California money ultimately .Dale: And the city?Adrienne: The city actually has not had to put any money into it. They were given a grant by the Board of Supervisors to help with some of our expenses so they had $80,000, but it just was a pass through. No taxpayer money at this point.Dale: Hopefully that is assuring to some folks that, that raise that question. But let me ask is you mentioned donations? Is there that you need that or the village needs that people might be able to contribute in some way, mention just car repair or...Adrienne: let me just say yes. Yes. . Bottom line is these are poor people. The one thing we mostly don't need is clothes because they've been able to get those through thrift stores or whatever.But lots of other things. We do provide a meal every day and two of those days are done by a volunteer. So we could certainly use help with that. If people are interested in cooking meals. Money is nice because then we have the ability to just help people with their individual needs, which we usually don't have the money to do ourselves.Yeah. But if people have in kind kinds of donations, like you said, car repairs I'm sure there's many others. If I would just think about it. We also have a volunteer program and we do have three or four really active volunteers.They're there. So they see what needs to be done, but they put together a women's group, for instance and the person to talk to is Cynthia Poten. And you can reach her by her first name, [email protected]: All right, so that's for volunteers.Adrienne: Yeah.Dale: You have a great website that's very informative if anybody wants to follow up. It really is great that you are able to get funding from a lot of different sources to make this happen.Adrienne: Yeah. We feel very lucky and privileged and our board is terrific. They're a working board. So the guy who does the website. We put a little money into it, but mostly it's been his blood, sweat and tears.Dale: That's great. Good. Thank you. Hector and Adrienne for your time today.Thanks again for being with me today.Adrienne: Thank you. My pleasure.Dale: Thank you very much.Thank you.Photos: Courtesy of SAVSAlso: Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

There’s a new school in town. Well, not exactly. It’s a set of ideas about how to improve the old school. While the Analy/El Molino merger, and the resulting battle over the name of West County High School, would make anyone wary of promising change within the education system, Nicole Wilkinson, an Analy alumnae and teacher, gave a brilliant presentation at a school board meeting in January 2022 about the “New School Model.” It was well received by the board. However, at the same board meeting, Superintendent Toni Beal, a supporter of the New School Model, was dismissed. Leadership changes at West County High created the impression that work on this model was paused, but Nicole insists that she has been moving ahead this spring, working with a cohort of teachers. She’s building support for the new school model, even as the details and leadership are being worked out on a 3-5 year implementation plan. The new school model started with a grant from the CTE Foundation, and West County High School was selected along with Elsie Allen and Casa Grande in Sonoma County. What’s new is less about curriculum change and more about mindset shift, which includes culture and community. It seeks to create a better, more engaging educational experience for students and teachers, while helping to align the school with the Sonoma County “portrait of a graduate” and develop 21st Century skills. TranscriptNicole: What we see in the data is that kids are not engaged and they're not engaged everywhere. It's not just in West County, but it is true in West County. And there's a lot of reasons for that. One of them that I focused on this year is that the instruction does not meet the 21st Century needs of kids. And that's not because we're not working hard and trying our best.Dale: Nicole Wilkinson is an educator working on something quite new for the West County High School District. Let me start by asking Nicole to introduce herself and give us a background on who she is.Nicole: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. My name's Nicole Wilkinson and I am an Analy alumnae. I went to Holy Names University and studied criminology, became a probation officer with that degree and was immediately dissatisfied. It felt reactive, not proactive.So I jumped into education as an intern teacher, which is nuts thinking back on it. I started off my teaching career teaching social science, PE and yoga to seventh and eighth graders at West County Charter Middle School, a project the West Sonoma County High School District tried to launch in Forestville.We spent two years trying to create a design thinking experience for middle school students. And it was a challenge. There wasn't enough funding to support the needs. Students had really high ACES scores, the adverse childhood experiences, and it just wasn't a sustainable school, but it was an invaluable experience as an educator to learn how to do everything on a small staff.So when that school folded, I was lucky enough to secure a job back at my alma mater at Analy and I taught World History and Dev Econ for a year before then I hopped over.Dale: What was your name as a teacher then? That it was a little different.Nicole: It was a little different.I'm known on the streets as Miss Ochoa. It is my preferred name. The kids, they know now that I've been married since, but is that still your name? Yes, please. Still always call me that. So that's how I am known around here.Dale: The thing I really want to get to here is to talk about something I heard is happening. It's called the New School Model and you've taken it by the horns and are running with it. So tell me, when did this develop, this New School Model as an idea? It's actually a grant that you're working on. So how did that come about.Nicole: It came about in Spring 2020, I believe, the CTE Foundation had an idea.They had historically funded sections and various things for Sonoma County students, but emphasis on career technical education. And they wanted to explore what it would take to use their funding sources to support an entirely new school approach. So this is the idea. They went and they --what's the word recruited some schools and West Sonoma County was lucky enough to be a part of that conversation. And our then superintendent Toni Beale said yes. And we went through an interview process. She asked me to join her, Shawna Ferdinandson, our principal, and Allie Green, the principal at Laguna.We sat before the CTE Foundation and talked about what our dreams are. They asked us to identify where we're dissatisfied and what we want to do about that. So we sat for interviews. Those are recorded, which I think are wonderful artifacts now, just to see you see where it's evolved. And we were accepted into the grant with, along with Casa Grande and Elsie Allen.So the three of those high schools are involved in a new school model, whole school transformation supported over several years by the CTE Foundation with the ultimate goal of building the capacity from within so that there are these new school environments, but they're sustained by the districts themselves over time.Dale: So when did that grant get approved?Nicole: When did it get approved?Dale: When did you start working on this?Nicole: I started working on it not last year. When was it? I started really working on it a year and a half ago. Wow. I have to look back and it's been a significant amount of time.So this year, that we're ending we're spring right now. This was supposed to be the end of our planning year. I believe that the CTE Foundation is working with us to acknowledge all of the flux and shifts that has happened this year and that we're starting. There will be something different at school next year, and I'm happy to talk about that. But the rollout is going to be over three to five years.Dale: In January you presented this to the West County School Board. Can you summarize what you presented to them?Nicole: So at the school board meeting I wanted to both be specific, provide enough room for this to be co-created by our community and by our students, really. So what I presented in January was a two-pronged vision. One to take our portrait of a graduate outcome and bring them off of a poster, but into practice so that we make good on the promise to our young people. That by the time they are graduating from Analy High School, they will have had an opportunity to develop their skills of collaboration, communication, resilience, balance, et cetera. Making good on the promise of the portrait is number one. And as a by-product of that creating core values as a teaching staff and as a community and taking those skills that we want to teach students and embodying them as adults.And then the second to shift the conversation to college or career to college and career. I think Analy has a reputation of being a college prep type school. It's not documented, but that's what people think when they think of Analy. And from where I sit, unless somebody is independently wealthy, you'll still after college will need a career..So shifting the conversation to college and career, that career technical education is not for those kids or some kids that want to work with their hands, but all students should have the opportunity to work with their hands and see where their core academics are applied in the real world. So those two sort of mindset shifts, like how do we take these skills that our local community said they want our graduates to embody? How do we make good on that promise? Create a system. So there are our core values. So, the portrait and then college and career.Dale: Let me play it back to you a little bit. So in the past, things like CTE were sometimes considered a separate track for students, often students that didn't succeed on the academic track. In some ways, I believe my experience of the maker movement leads me to think, there's bringing together, a convergence of those different tracks that the practical or applied skills that you might learn in a CTE can easily combine with some of the academic programs that are more conceptual or knowledge based.The skills and the tools that are being used today in the workplace are very accessible to students to be able to be used in say high school, but we don't introduce them to those tools. So I have a vision anyway of CTE that is a little bit different than the traditional, because I visited Analy when it had an automotive program or it had just a workshop, still has the workshop and may have a what's left of an automotive program.But they don't have a lot of vision behind that. They might take that class, but it doesn't necessarily connect to a bigger thing for them. And the CTE foundation, my understanding, is supporting this is asking for what kind of schools could integrate these things better.I guess the last point I would add to that is when we look at a student body of West County, the college prep model seems to apply to a relatively small percentage of those students, so what are we doing for the rest of them? Is the question to be asked. Would you agree with that?Nicole: Yes. And the phrase that comes to mind as you're speaking is rising tide raises all boats. Back to the school board presentation, what I attempted to do was pull different sources of data to make the argument of what you just said-- that we have a ton of room for growth because we have solid AP programs.We know that if there is a student that comes to us and that is their goal, and they have the skills already, that they'll be successful, but that other huge portion. So our Youth Truth data puts us in the second percentile in terms of college and career readiness. It's really bad. And that's not because we have really bad college and career staff.We have amazing staff, but there's one college and career coordinator. Now this year as part of the new school model and K12 strong workforce is the grant that I'm working under, we've got a work-based learning coordinator, full-time. That's pretty new in Sonoma County. So we're making these small shifts, but we're in the second percentile.It's going to take a huge systemic leap in order to raise those numbers. It can't just be one or two people on campus who are in charge of college and career. To your point, it has to be integrated pathways or projects. Students have to be able to work with their communication skills and their English class and apply that to numbers and math and to see what they can create through an interdisciplinary lens.Dale: What was the reaction of the school board to your presentation? I've watched it and I'll link to it in the notes that if you want to watch Nicole's presentation, which really was terrific.Nicole: The reaction was incredibly positive. I was very surprised. We fired the superintendent moments before that presentation.So I really had no idea what to expect, but I remember the phrase of what can we do to help this go faster. And I've really remembered that. And I have that card in my back pocket. We're going to need, at every level of our system, we will need to be doing things differently in order to get a different outcome.Dale: I think that's really encouraging to hear that the school board is behind this and not resisting it. So that's a good thing, but there's been a lot of changes happening. I had heard from CTE Foundation that the work seemed to be paused, which would imply it been hindered by some of those changes. But in talking to you, I've gotten a sense that you're pushing ahead.Nicole: Most definitely. I have never stopped. And I think it makes sense when I put on some empathy for the CTE Foundation and they think about their funders and they need to be confident that every level of our system is on board, meaning the new superintendent and our school board. Are we still into this? And since that, the pause going around, I think we have addressed that issue and our new superintendent is enthusiastically in support of this work.Dale: That's good to hear. But you've already started working with faculty, haven't you?Nicole: Yep. It's very exciting. So at the school board presentation, I committed to making two next steps, one being to design a phased-in approach to transformational coaching and two to get folks from the K12 strong workforce grant, mainly CTE teachers and the work they started coordinator to communicate with the new school model committee.So that there was a cross-pollination of ideas and enthusiasm, frankly. I think small groups of teachers get discouraged. Yeah, I'm drinking this Kool-Aid but I don't think anyone else here has. No, really there are more folks here that want to see something different and fresh, but we can't just assume that can happen overnight, which is why the phased in approach to transformational coaching has been so important and what we've focused on.Dale: Stop there for just a sec. Transformational coaching?Nicole: Transformational coaching is. How do I say there are three? There are three B's that I think about when I am embodying a transformational coach. So I think about Behaviors, Beliefs, and ways of Being. The job of a transformational coach is to listen for teachers talking about students and to ask thoughtful, provocative questions that get at to their underlying beliefs about what's possible for certain student groups, for themselves, for education in general. So what do I unconsciously believe about my role in the system? That's one major area we're listening for. So a transformational coach mainly listens. Then they ask thoughtful questions. Behaviors is what does a teacher literally do --they stand at the door and greet their students, look them in the eye and say their names every morning.Is there a behavior that's getting in the way of who they want to be in the classroom? Things that are more literal, but a lot of coaching and that's not transformational coaching focuses solely on the behaviors. So could you have delivered that lesson a little differently? It's transactional at that point, because then I'll comply. Perhaps I'll change my behavior, but my belief about why that is didn't get addressed. And then the way of being, which is the most abstract is my body language. And I'm getting real Sebastopol, but like my vibe, the way I hold space in front of young people and to have a transformational coach to be able to reflect a person's way of being back to them is it's to me the most important part.And the key ingredient to transformational coaching is trust. Number one, one, we have to get permission to coach. So you can't coach somebody in disguise. It can't be a conversation in a staff room where I'm secretly listening to beliefs and trying to to insert a suggestion in disguise. Trust has to be forefront.And the teacher has to consent. Yes. I want to be coached. And the coach has to communicate that what is said here never leaves here. So I had very clear boundaries with the administrators that I work with when I'm embodying a transformational coach on a site. A principal knows not to ask me to report on what I just learned and talked about in that meeting.And that allows the teacher to feel like they can really trust me because we have agreed that this stays between us. And I think that's why we can get at beliefs and ways of being and move past just behaviors.Dale: So let's flip this around and say what does this mean for the students and their learning?Nicole: So my favorite way to think about how transformational coaching impacts students is that if we don't address the social, emotional and learning needs of educators, the experience of school will never be different for students. My number one goal-- reason --for doing the work I do is to radically and quickly change the experience of school for students. I am personally dissatisfied with what we offer.Dale: Not only from your experience as a former student, but also as a teacher.Nicole: And one without the other wouldn't do. It's the shared experience that's created this certainty. I have certainty that what we are providing does not meet the needs of 21st century learners in this community, in this economy. It's just not going to do it.Dale: And I have to make the unwelcome observation that school often doesn't seem to actually focus enough on the student and their learning. That there's a bunch of other things that are very important for the school to do, but the prioritization of the student experience sometimes is quite low.Nicole: Yeah. I think that students will tell you that and there is Youth Truth data to support it. And the reality is that the humans, the adults that show up to school had every intention in the morning to see kids, to inspire them, to empower them. And our systems are oppressive and they don't allow the well-intentioned educators to do what it is they want to do.Dale: I want you to just clarify one thing, Youth Truth, you mentioned it twice would you explain what that is?Nicole: Yes. So Youth Truth is a national organization. They are in the business of vetted surveys for students. So the student perception of school. We have in West County, we have two years worth of Youth Truth data. And in Sonoma County, we have two years of aggregated Youth Truth data, and it is such a gift that we know. And I'm sorry, not just students. So there is a student survey, a staff survey, and a parent community survey. So each of those three stakeholders are involved in the Youth Truth survey, and it is a massive amount of data to sift through, but it is ripe with clues.I think data is as good as your curiosity behind it, right? There's no piece of data. That's gonna be like, yep, that's going to make school better. It's going to be this drops in a bucket over time that gets us to an outcome that we can live with that we're proud of. But Youth Truth is essentially getting at core domains, such as belonging, college and career readiness, engagement, academic rigor. And what we see in the data is that kids are not engaged and they're not engaged everywhere. It's not just in West County, but it is true in West County. And there's a lot of reasons for that. One of them that I focused on this year is that the instruction does not meet the 21st century needs of kids. And that's not because we're not working hard and trying our best. It's because we don't have access to professional development.So teachers aren't able, there's no time. The system, the oppressive system does not allow for them to have access to regular and predictable professional development. And our district is in a budget crisis.So the idea that we're going to pay outside consultants to come in and professional develop us is not in a reality, which is why transformational coaching is number one on our list. What would it look like to build the capacity of our own, to hold space for our own, to slowly make the shift towards teaching these skills, these portrait skills.Dale: It's interesting. That's a theme I've seen elsewhere, but it's really developing the capacity. As you say, to do this among the people as opposed to bringing in some outside solution or that there's some ed tech solution that suddenly changes the game. They're not very good or effective agents of change within a system.Nicole: A prime example recently is Edmentum. Our district has invested in Edmentum. It is just that you said ed tech. It's canned curriculum. I taught summer school my first year and I tried to do one of the Edmentum units. It was too boring. Like I couldn't keep my attention. So that's a solution that our students have access to, but...Dale: This is also another important point that I think ed tech misunderstood. That it's almost a, too much of a focus on curriculum and not interaction not engagement.Yeah. You have to understand things. There's words and texts and all of that, but it's as much the students themselves interacting as it is a teacher interacting with the students that makes real learning happen .Nicole: Absolutely. I think that's a place for transformational coaching here is the ability through conversation to help teachers like lower their shoulders is what's coming up in my head. There's been historically such an emphasis on content standards. Got to get to this, got to get to this, but at what cost? Because if we're moving so quickly to get to this end point, but we've lost 60% of the student interest, then what is the purpose of that?Dale: But deeper. I think I want to ask you, we've seen just at the transition of Analy West County, the problems that come from trying to change something, at particularly a well-established high school that has a legacy that people have a fondness for --all good things, but sometimes we get a little bit sentimental, I think, in terms of how good our schools are. The Youth Truth data may help us see that, but there are other things happening to schools today. One is budgets. The other is declining enrollments. It's not just a demographic thing.It's that students are choosing other options and they have more ability to do that. If you were talking to someone who says, West County High is just fine the way it is. Let's just say that's a parent in the community. And I'm going to represent, it's a parent of an A student who is going on to a four-year college. How do you talk to that person about why these changes are needed for the school, but also would it impact their students?Nicole: First, I would love for that conversation to happen. And in this sort of way of just speaking, not shouting, not getting excited, but just saying, Hey, for my kid, it seems to be working out, what is all the fuss about?I think my response back might be something to the effect of well rising tide raises all boats. And second, what about a strengths-based approach? What if we approach this, looking for the areas in our system that are really working that not only students say works for them, families say, we have the data to prove it.And I would agree that some of our AP classes and all of our AP classes, I have no problem with any of our AP offerings, that they're strong and they have been historically strong. So there would be no effort in dismantling those programs. In fact it would be helpful to build it up. We've got an awesome AP research course that Trish Maxon has started up..There's incredible work happening there. There's other bright spots. Our students are a bright spot, especially in this last year. They're so honest. And the things that when I was a student at Analy, I would laugh off --microaggressions, racial microaggressions. I used to laugh at them almost every day and it hurt me inside, but I didn't have the words to say. Students today, they don't laugh. And they say, in fact, that's an inappropriate. That's a bright spot, building on the students' ability to advocate for themselves. So let's ask them, what do you want? What could be better?Dale: Actually, I think that's a key to unlocking this problem of people who think it's fine is have you asked the students. It's a useful exercise to ask your son or daughter, because if you can handle the truth as the saying goes, they may tell you a lot more.Nicole: Yeah. And one example that I think is relevant is I've had the opportunity to coach a variety of teachers on this campus this year towards various goals, mostly around work-based learning as an instructional strategy. So an attempt at connecting industry with what we're teaching kids.And there's one teacher in particular who had this student that just got under their skin. There's that kid, I always call him "Johnny in the Corner." And three quarters through the year, this teacher, and I decided to co-create a list of empathy interview questions for that student related to the student's behavior that was preventing this teacher from doing what it is they wanted to do. And so sat with this student for an hour and ask these open-ended questions under the guise of confidentiality. What you say here won't leave here. " What's learned here, leaves here. What's said here stays here" is my favorite phrase.This student shared that they act out when they're bored. That all of the behaviors that are so hard to manage are linked to feeling under-stimulated. The student also shared that his dad had a stroke months earlier and had not shared that with any of his teachers. And just struck me that this sort of like charismatic, outgoing student was holding all of that inside.And so to your point, every student on this campus has feedback for us. And to what degree can we be open minded enough to hear it and acknowledge that it myself, I get defensive. When I hear something we're working so hard and you're still dissatisfied, but if we can truly hear it from a place that it's not a criticism, it's just their experience.I think we might build on the momentum that change is necessary, the only constant is change and that there is a large majority of our students who are being underdeveloped, underserved and have a bunch of genius that we haven't tapped into.Dale: I think that's a wonderful phrase. Really, it is a question of development. I feel that you know, looking at. at schools that there are some that seem to get a lot of development, a lot of advantage, but many of those already came into that school with some of that advantage, wherever it came from.And often you have to ask what are you doing for the students that you might consider poor performers? How can you develop them? I should rather use the word learners. How do you help them become good learners? So that beyond high school, they're continuing to learn whether that's at college or in the workplace or somewhere else there.This is the fundamental 21st century skill is to learn things that you don't know about. I believe that's the essential CTE component.Because what happens to these students that are graduating today in 20 years, there'll be new things out there that they won't have learned in high school or college. Everybody has a cell phone and they're using a more powerful computer than ever. And they're good at it. The question is how that becomes a tool for their own use to be productive, to be creative, to do lots of things. And that's where I feel like school hasn't connected to the world we live in.Nicole: Yeah, it makes me think of the restorative practices phrase of doing with. I think there's the doing for the more permissive than the doing to the more punitive. But when we do with, we can to your point, every kid is walking around with a little computer in their hand. And it's seen often as a barrier for engagement like the kids, they won't get off their phone.They won't get off their phone. Like, how might we think about doing with, to your point, like these powerful computers that they are addicted to? Can we create the conditions where they're actually now the tool, the learning tool instead of the distraction?Dale: And that they're the ones generating the questions, not the teachers The, I guess the other reflection.West County has had a hard year for the faculty, for the students, the board and everybody there. This is one of these really positive things. I hope the school community could gather around and support making school better for the next generation of kids. The kids are in middle school today. The kids are in elementary school. It's a huge opportunity. And not to just move it a little bit or, get a few kids in a new program. And I think this is what is so nice about the opportunity you have here to really rethink and rebuild the kind of school it is not just to offer a certain program for some kids in that school. These are very different thingsNicole: Very different. And the bright spots from this year. And I think a tough year is an understatement of the universe, right? It's been an extraordinary year and our teachers and our staff and our administrative team they've stepped up. They're heroic and every single day it was something else that was unbelievable. They are incredible. And even with all of that happening January of this year, Omicron, and all of the stuff happening in our local community, 20 of our staff members took this art of coaching professional development and walked away with enthusiasm for this. They thought, oh yeah, this is the kind of foundational support that me and my peers are going to need, if we're going to do what you just said, a radically transformed school. Because we can come with all these ideas, right? The ideas are out there. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, but to come to a staff and say, okay, this is what we're going to do now. A few years ago, it was universal design for learning (UDL). That's what we're doing now.And that's fine, but there where's the support? How is that going to be sustained two days of training isn't sufficient. There needs to be regular and predictable support for teachers, or they will, they're not able to stretch any further. Everything's on their back already.If there's nothing, there's no room. The support needs to be in place before we try anything big.Dale: That's like the other thing you're getting at too. To really build this model. You're talking about building the culture and the community for that model. That is a long-term thing. You can't throw a few switches or do a class or a training.This is exciting. I wish you a lot of help and support in getting this done. Let me ask you one last question, though.What is the potential impact on Laguna or El Molino with the new school model?Nicole: So unable to speak to the facility. The facility is just way out of my sphere of influence, but what I think is possible, what I think is possible for Laguna is to slowly with the staff, with the community shift toward the truly alternative education.And again, this is like a superintendent needs to be able to put their stamp of approval on this. But my dream would be for there to be no longer a place where the bad kids go, but a truly alternative option with wraparound services. For the students that need it the most and that be not a downgrade, not a lesser education, not credit recovery, not packets, not worksheets, but true learning in a way that meets the needs of those students.And without, taking 20 steps ahead, I look around our comprehensive high school and I see students are lost, they're falling through the cracks. And that's not because anyone here isn't doing their job, they're doing their job and then some. It's just a massive group of students who have a variety of needs.Dale: I wish you the best in pushing this forward. I would love to find people in the community that want to help you from outside the system, because I think it's going to take that, people that want. to put their efforts into something positive. Changing public education for students-- I mean that almost has to start on a community basis. Start here. It really could be a a way to bring the community together around West County and fill it full of creative, young people as it is already. But that I think there's opportunity here.Nicole: So do I, and I have a call to action for any community member that's listening. If you love your job and would love to engage with students who are learning the skills that you use in your day to day, we have our work-based learning coordinator. Her name is Stacy Fortin.If you just go on our website search "Stacy Fortin," and then you'll find her email. Her job is to build an industry list of partners, community partners that is available to teachers. So that when teachers are designing projects, units, and then they're going to teach poetry that they might then call on Stacy to find in our list of industry partners, do we have a poet in our community?So instead of the teacher standing in the front saying, this is our project, that we have an authentic community member talking to kids about what it's like to actually do this in the real world or providing feedback for projects. So if you're a community member and you love your job, email Stacy, so that you can get them engaged in a work-based learning experience and let's build this.Dale: Good. That's great. So thank you, Nicole for telling us about the new school model.Nicole: Thank you. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe

Our guest on this episode is the Executive Director of Zero Waste Sonoma, Leslie Lukacs. The goal of Zero Waste Sonoma broadly speaking is to reduce the amount of waste generated in Sonoma County through programs to promote reuse, recycling and composting. Zero Waste Sonoma recently received a $1 million State grant to open CRV redemption centers. Leslie explains the background on the new CRV redemption center in Sebastopol, and how it will eventually become an automated system. We talk about what happens to the things we place street side  in our blue recycling bins. She explains how “wish-cycling” leads people to throw things in the blue bins that can’t be recycled.Leslie explains that what is recycled goes to a facility in Santa Rosa where it is sorted by hand and machine and then bundled and shipped.  Most things, excluding paper, are recycled domestically, and mostly in California. She talks about disposing of hazardous waste at a facility they operate. It’s free to dispose of chemicals, batteries, solvents, etc. Electronics collection events happens at different locations on a weekly basis throughout the county.I asked Leslie if the amount of trash that we produced has increased or decreased?  She replied that on average, each person generate four pounds of trash per day, but it down from around seven pounds per person. Yet people do continue to throw away things that are recyclable or compostable.  Her agency conducts waste characterization studies every five years to study what people are throwing away that ends up in the landfill. A new study was recently completed with results out soon.New state legislation now requires that all households and businesses keep compostable materials out of the landfill. Interestingly, the rationale behind this legislation has less to do with waste diversion as much as addressing climate change. As green waste breaks down, it creates methane gas, a greenhouse gas. Landfills are one of the biggest producers of methane in our state.Sonoma County currently does not have its own compost facility, and we truck organic waste outside the county.  There are plans to create a compost facility.  Landfills have a limited lifespan and the one in Sonoma County is expected to last only 22 more years. Once it closes, waste would have to hauled outside the county.So really zero waste is also about looking upstream. How do we not create the waste in the first place? And then downstream, what are the materials that are best for reuse or recycling. Finally, Leslie leaves us with a book recommendation, “Zero Waste Home” by Bea Thomas. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe