Southern Sonoma Country Life

Door2Door - Step Right In

Looking forward to this evening's launch of the latest creative community collaboration DOOR2DOOR by  dynamic West-Side neighbors behind Petaluma-based  ProjectHere.org.

"Somewhere between your home and your community there's a door. ProjectHERE is about opening it," writes chief instigator, Tyler Young.

As part of ProjectHere's door-2-door campaign, Petalumans were invited to submit a portrait of their front doors, picturing the people who pass through it everyday. from these photos ProjectHere team has created a photo montage tapestry that represents the welcoming spirit and rich cultural infrastructure of Petaluma today.

I submitted a last-minute photo electronically after capturing the boys in full evening wrestling mode by the front door. Seemed to capture the essence of the testosterone-powered boy-zone we call home at our place. I hope it went through. Expect to see extraordinary portraits of serenity and stylish refuge, rough and tumble family shots and all sorts of artistic poses amidst our uber-creative peers....

Reception takes place tonight (Friday September 19) at Aqus Cafe at Foundry Wharf from 6pm to 8pm, with music by fellow P-Town writer and singer/songwriter Jeff Troiano.

 

Tie a Silver Ribbon Round an Old Grape Vine

West Petaluma's Victoria neighborhood's resident garagistes Jeff Maddux (right) and Timo Rivetti (left) are toasting their matching silver ribbon amateur wine making awards announced today for this year's prestigious Sonoma County Harvest Fair.

Jeff scooped a highly sought-after silver for his spicy 2006 Cambridge Hills Syrah, and Timo's silver was awarded for his superb 2006 A Block Que Syra Syrah, artisan handcrafted from grapes grown on neighboring properties and nurtured alongside one another for the barreling process.

Congratulations, Jeff and Timo for all these endless hours of nurturing the vines and making wine magic in what must be the smallest wine shed in Sonoma County!

One case of Timo's 2006 Que Syrah raised considerable money in the live auction at the September 6 Petaluma Educational Foundation Bash. Along with a year's membership to the Petaluma Gap, a Petaluma Gap limited edition vineyard map and a tasting tour of the area's wineries for six, the lucky bidder will be joining the festivities for this year's crush on Cambridge Hills where another fine vintage for each of the garagistes will begin its annual cycle sometime this October.

If you'd like to get your hands on a case of Timo's silver medal winning 2006 Que Syra Syrah, keep your eyes peeled for an opportunity to bid on a case at the upcoming October 4th Carousel Fund which raises money for Petaluma families with critically ill children. 

 

Changing Balance of Global Economic Power

Today's tumultuous reports of financial disruption around the globe sent me on a clear course for some sane, sound perspective from our friends at the dependable BBC.

Yesterday's collapse of Lehman Bothers Brokerage and the sale of Merrill Lynch sent shock waves of financial disruption around the entire world, causing international money experts to focus on the shift in balance of economic power between the West and East.

Is this era of US economic dominance finally coming to a grinding, and historically grand finale? Shocked that North American banks were not reined in long ago? With consumer confidence in the tank, the mighty ripple of uncertainty is certainly making this uncomfortable for everyone elsewhere in the world.

According to the BBC, Japanese financial markets are on a mad dash to stash their monies in a far safer place than US held institutions. And elsewhere in Asia the decline in American spending on electronic goodies and gadgets has Chinese markets down sharply.

India still has the potential to make the US and UK financial markets green with envy, as the Indian economy is predicted to grow by seven to eight percent this year. Still, India has been propping up its economy of late due to the world's current financial turmoil.

In Britain, millions are struggling to stay afloat financially as the mortgage crisis domino effect continues to hit home.

The French are largely of the opinion that this isn’t going to cause a crash in France, but a drastic correction of the markets which have their epicenter in the US property sub-market.

Canadians, whose economic growth was coincidentally slower than that in the U.S., and other G8 countries, in the first six months of 2008 (Canada lost more jobs in July than in any month since 1991) are reportedly unfazed by the market crisis and looking at now as 'not a time for wild experiments and new taxes or grand new spending schemes'.

According to Canada's Conservative Leader Steven Harper: “Governments must be able to act with prudence during a difficult economic time.” Good advice. Who will be in the hot seat to take it on? Now that is the question.

In the meantime, I am off to pick up youngest son from his Fifth Grade class, map of the world tucked under my arm. "Bring your own posters and pictures to decorate the walls," said his enthusiastic new first-time teacher at the start of the semester. Perfect opportunity for not only a colorful, illustrated map of the United States to teach a national perspective to the bright young minds of a global tomorrow, a map of the world is now, more than ever an imperative teaching tool.

Maybe America has had its day as world power of the global playground. Maybe not. But let's at least start looking at our influence on the rest of the world when we have an impulse and an opportunity to be back on track for living large.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Email

Last summer's innovative Ghosts of Olompali living history event offered the opportunity to time travel back to the Gold Rush days of California, during which women's rights were at the forefront of this incredible period of American history.

Never before had the acceptance of women's rights been more critical as bold and empowered pioneers blazed unfathomable trails towards a bright new future for all. 

To think that the blood, sweat, tears and toil of this unrivaled era of American evolution could be washed down the drain by a daring Republican 'maverick's' ruthless nomination of an extremist Vice Presidential candidate, is not being taken lightly by the great, great granddaughters of the American West (and East).

Emails are shooting across the country with Winchester-rifle-precision, blasting into the inboxes of women of all generations, race and religious denomination.

The latest sent to me today most eloquently quotes Quinn Latimer and Lyra Kilston, of the Women Say No to Sarah Palin Campaign, which calls us all to immediate action:

"Perhaps like us, as American women, you share the fear of what Ms.Palin and her professed beliefs and proven record could lead to for ourselves and for our present or future daughters. To date, she is against sex education, birth control, the pro-choice platform, environmental protection, alternative energy development, freedom of speech (as mayor she wanted to ban books and attempted to fire the
librarian who stood against her), gun control, the separation of church and state, and polar bears. To say nothing of her complete lack of real preparation to become the second-most-powerful person on the planet."

"We want to clarify that we are not against Sarah Palin as a woman, a mother, or, for that matter, a parent of a pregnant teenager, but solely as a rash, incompetent, and all together devastating choice for Vice President. Ms. Palin's political views are in every way a slap in the face to the accomplishments that our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers so fiercely fought for, and that we've so
demonstrably benefited from."

"First and foremost, Ms. Palin does not represent us. She does not demonstrate or uphold our interests as American women. It is presumed that the inclusion of a woman on the Republican ticket could win over women voters. We want to disagree, publicly."

Send a short, succinct message about why you, as a woman living in this country, do not support this candidate as second-in-command for our nation. Include your name (last initial is fine), age, and place of residence. womensaynopalin@gmail.com. Responses will be posted on a national blog called "Women Against Sarah Palin." Palin as VP would be history in the un-making. Wave your banner online.

Out of the Closet

There are so many birthdays in my family in September that the calculated round of timely and appropriate gift buying, meticulous wrapping and air mailing at extortionate expense is the perfect dry-run for the fast-approaching holiday season.

I am tempted to implement a swift pact with international siblings and overseas grannies for a 2008 group effort at furnishing an entire African village with swine, goats and dairy cows.

For this afternoon's foray downtown to the various inviting boutiques and 'giftie' stores which have so far weathered the current, on-going economic storm failed to unearth a whole lot of anything worth buying that can fit in a bubbly envelope, at least.

I can't allow myself to buy for the sake of buying. No one wants a gift which merely adds to their own mounting 'regifting' stash. It's a shame to spend good money on a load of rubbish. And so I ended up in Copperfields, my favorite, hometown bookstore, where I never, ever leave empty handed, and nearly always score an author-signed hardback fairly bound to please. 

Coming home to rifle through my muddle of gift wrap and sticky tape supplies, I took a notion to narrow the aforementioned glut of 'regifting' potentials down to merely the prettiest of papers and tags. Taking a big, sturdy brown paper carrier bag (which I've probably had in the bottom of my closet for centuries), I threw caution to the wind of thrifty possibilities and dumped an enormous pile of baubles and bangles and bright shiny things I'd been keeping for a rainy day donation to an auction or a friend with debatable taste.

Because I really don't have any friends with debatable taste, the 'regifting' concept has been spared from flight. And I'm officially swearing off the hideous trend by piling it all into the back of my car for a bumper donation to Alphabet Soup.

Stroll by my favorite thrift store later this week and you'll likely see my loot, baring its soul for a dollar a piece.

According to Wikipedia: "Regifting is the act of taking a gift that has been received and giving it to somebody else, sometimes in the guise of a new gift."

The term apparently originated on an episode of the NBC Sitcom, Seinfield, called 'The Label Maker'.  Several rules of regifting etiquette include rewrapping the gift, not using the gift before regifting it, and not giving the gift back to the original gift-giver. Well hello!

Should you be a fan of this thrifty practice, Money Management International has reportedly named the Thursday before Christmas "National Regifting Day." Another variant introduced in Seinfield is that of degifting - which refers to the act of demanding a gift back from the receiver. Somehow I am not surprised that one didn't take off.

Frontier Mom's Literary Blacklist Hoax or Red Alert?

Really, I was planning to steer clear of slapping too many political posts on my normally chirpy little blog about the foibles of family life here in lovely, liberal wine country.

But how could I possibly not pass along the rumoured hit-list of the type of American and world literature that Sarah Palin reportedly might have tried to have banned from the Wasilla, Alaska Library:

Judy Blume, Madeleine L'Engle, Maurice Sendak, Roald Dahl, Mark Twain, Shakespeare for heaven's sake. And that's just in the kids section. Burgess, Faulkner, Geoffrey Chaucer (highlight of my high school English lit classes), Heller, Miller, Steinbeck, DH Lawrence... a mind-bloggling list of immense works of literary art.

Whatever your own, personal religious or political beliefs, how could you possibly go for an attack on literature? Keep these sorts of classics off your own book shelves, Sara, by all means, but don't you dare try to have them removed from the libraries of America. This is becoming insane.

Take a long, slow look at this list, hoax or not, for these are perfect examples of the titles most likely to have been in Palin's mind, and then tell me that she was an appropriate choice for McCain.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L¹Engle

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Blubber by Judy Blume

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Carrie by Stephen King

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Christine by Stephen King

Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Cujo by Stephen King

Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen

Daddy¹s Roommate by Michael Willhoite

Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Decameron by Boccaccio

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Fallen Angels by Walter Myers

Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland

Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Forever by Judy Blume

Grendel by John Champlin Gardner

Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer¹s Stone by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Have to Go by Robert Munsch

Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman

How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Impressions edited by Jack Booth

In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

It¹s Okay if You Don¹t Love Me by Norma Klein

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Lady Chatterley¹s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

My House by Nikki Giovanni

My Friend Flicka by Mary O¹Hara

Night Chills by Dean Koontz

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer

One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

One Flew Over The Cuckoo¹s Nest by Ken Kesey

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Ordinary People by Judith Guest

Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women¹s Health Collective

Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl

Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz

Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

Separate Peace by John Knowles

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

The Bastard by John Jakes

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Devil¹s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth

The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson

The Handmaid¹s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder

The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks

The Living Bible by William C. Bower

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman

The Pigman by Paul Zindel

The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders

The Shining by Stephen King

The Witches by Roald Dahl

The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder

Then Again, Maybe I Won¹t by Judy Blume

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Webster¹s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial

Staff Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

Far From the Madding Crowd

Just a thought - but one I have been mulling over increasingly these past few months. Should politics not improve the American Dream in the coming year, many friends and acquaintances have viewed their desires to consider a small island alternative.

This really has me thinking, given the dual nationality and all, maybe there's a second (guest) home on the horizon? One in which I could accommodate all my American pals who would prefer an alternative non-political lifestyle for six months at a time.

Then again, I did grow up in a very small town and don't think I'd do a very great job as lady mayor of my own tiny continent of ex-pat Americans.

It would therefore, have to be a communal experience, something like the Israeli Kibbutz system. I am sure if we all make a pact to finally get rid of those aging SUVS, tricky timeshares and other such outdated toys we could muster up enough monies for an international retreat.

Wiggle Room

 

I've been dying to share this post with you but had to wait for the latest live creature delivery by priority mail to capture the essence of the ultimate in backyard composting - the wonderful, wiggly,  Worm Factory vermicomposter in action!

An easy and effective way to convert a whole host of kitchen waste such as dried leaves, old tea bags, junk mail, veggie peelings, egg shells into nutrient-rich compost for vegetable gardens, planters and flower beds, the worm factory recycling system breaks down and converts once living material into super food for plants.

An on-going process in nature's food chain, the fine and otherwise smelly art of composting is all the more attractive and ultimately doable thanks to the diligent labor of several thousand red wiggler worms.

Amazing to watch the microorganisms generated by these industrious red wigglers process up to 5 pounds of food waste and junk mail (no staples) each week.

Charged with vermicomposter management is youngest member of Rivetti clan, who came across the worm factory at the Sonoma County Fair this summer.

Awaiting his postal delivery of live red wigglers, our young backyard farmer has developed an innate natural affinity to his Italian grandfather's lifelong habit of 'waste-not-want-not' in whipping off any and all ground espresso, potato and banana skins, rotten tomatoes, paper towels and newspapers.

Pretty neat. In more ways than one!

 Worm composting is all the rage in the greenest of SoCo restaurants and cafes, with enormous amounts of biodegradable industrial kitchen waste turning into nutrient-rich compost for putting right back on chef's organic veggie gardens.

 

Comcast Cares Program Boosts PTA Coffers Big Time

It was one big announcement after another at Valley Vista Elementary School's Back to School Night, in West Petaluma.

For not only is there a brand new Principle in place (Mrs Emily Blecher, third from right) after an exhaustive four-month search for that special someone able and qualified to spearhead such a unique, community-minded school, but the PTA truly does have something to celebrate on it's inaugural 2008/2009 back-to-school meeting this week.

Comcast Cares Program not only installed a fabulous new Kindergarten structure this Summer, and with the help of dozens of Valley Vista family volunteers sprucing up the school grounds and teaching garden, but a surprise dollar for dollar matching donation of a whopping $69,330 was awarded tonight to an astonished and extremely grateful PTA to bolster additional school support programs (after the twenty something thousand cost of the play structure has been deducted) and academic/cultural/arts enrichment.

This is an outstanding example of how the corporate world can make a massive impact on the lives of a community such as West Petaluma's Valley Vista fortunate students and families.Sixty nine thousand dollars is an enormous windfall for a PTA facing tough economic times for traditional parent/student fundraising programs.

Chasing Fall

These past few days of misty mornings and drizzly daytime temperatures have been a welcome respite from the burning hundred plus degree heat that we have been experiencing here in Northern California for somewhat more of an Indian Summer than we are typically used to.

Though I do remember bursts of intense heat for weeks on end in Septembers past when I would routinely don the garb of a sixteenth century wench to welcome more appropriately dressed visiting 20th Century media attending Renaissance Pleasure Faires out at beautiful, long-lost Black Point Forest.

Underskirts, overskirts, a voluminous cotton blouson, one bone crushing bodice, straw hat and a mile and a half of outdoor entertainment to traverse with culture-shocked reporters in tow. Now those were the days!

The very smell of Eucalyptus trees transforms me back to the early nineties out at Black Point, those last few halcyon years of the ultimate harvest celebrations.

As soon as there's even the slightest hint of Fall in the air I feel an almost palpable relief that the Summer struggle for productivity in searing heat has finally passed.

Working from my (non air-conditioned spare-the-air) home office these days is a good deal different from the years I spent as PR on location at the Renaissance Pleasure Faires in Northern and Southern Cal. Though, thankfully, the native Oaks in Helen Putnam Park frame my home office window, which looks out onto the vine-studded hill and up into the edge of the park. This keeps me connected to the subtle Sonoma County seasons which may not be so noticeable to those from more extreme climates, but keep us grounded in this part of the country.

Hunting for pumpkins in the local markets this week, we are clearly on the brink of harvest produce arriving on supermarket shelves in full force. I'm dying to make my favorite pumpkin-chocolate tart and will have to resort to whatever I can lay my hands on, ingredient wise. Will be sure to blog the recipe once I've tracked down the goods....

Renaissance Pleasure Faire Fall, 1991 - Frances and Rocco! Where else could a young working Mom take baby to work and have him baptized in full Elizabethan gown & bonnet? Now in his senior year at High School, this bonny wee lad is still partial to theatrics, though the bonnet has long since bitten the dust!