Sun 29 May 2011

Words, pictures, and the press

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, History
[7] Comments

Photo by Dave Gretschman of The Los Angeles Times

Even though they didn’t win the award, they still made history. In March, television cameramen Mark Allan of Inverness Park (left) and his son Stephen of Memphis (right) were both nominated for a sports Emmy as a result of their work on Showtime network’s NFL Shots of the Year.

Despite the HBO program Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Cincinnati Bengals winning the Emmy when the awards were announced May 11, the joint nomination had still been quite an honor. “As far as I know,” Mark told me, “this is the first time a father and son have been nominated for a national Emmy in the same category, same program.”

This was Stephen’s second national nomination and the ninth for his father. Mark previously received an Emmy for HBO/NFL Films Inside the NFL in 1991 and has won 46 other national awards.

Tim Page on my deck photographing horse riders in a neighboring field.

Famed Vietnam War-photographer Tim Page paid a surprise visit to Mitchell cabin a week ago. A British citizen now living in Australia, Page’s 1988 book about the combat press in Saigon, Page After Page: Memoirs of a War-Torn Photographer, was made into a 1992 television series called Frankie’s House.

It’s a story about Page, photographer Sean Flynn (actor Errol Flynn’s son who disappeared while covering the war), photographer Dana Stone (who went also missing in action), UPI reporter Joseph Galloway, UPI photojournalist Steve Northrup, reporter Martin Stuart-Fox, and numerous other journalists.

Frankie’s House takes its name from a bar-brothel where they hung out, with drugs, sex, and rock’n roll providing a respite from the fighting.

Detail from one of Page’s iconic images of the Vietnam War.

Page was definitely a war-torn photographer, having been injured four times while covering the war.

In the last incident, Page lost a hunk of brain almost the size of an orange to shrapnel after a soldier running ahead of him stepped on a land mine.

Page had been a freelancer on assignment for Time-Life when injured, and I first met him 30 years ago when the old San Francisco Examiner had me cover a trial in which Page sued the corporation for compensation. He won the case but did not get much.

Page was in part the inspiration for the journalist played by Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, later worked with the Vietnam Veterans peace movement, and was a caregiver for wounded veterans.

Although he no longer covers combat, Page told me during his visit that he had recently worked for the UN in Afghanistan. Nothing bad happened to him, but with the threat of bombers ever present, Page said, just being stuck in a Kabul traffic jam was extremely unsettling.

And now for some writing tips. The late reporter George Dusheck of The San Francisco Chronicle and KQED’s Newsroom once pointed out to me that “the lion’s share,” which is often used to mean “the majority,” really means “all.” At least it did originally. Aesop, who coined the term in a fable, used it to refer to a lion that took all the spoils of a joint hunt.

Another confusion arises with the phrase “forlorn hope,” which we often use to mean a doomed cause. In fact, it started out as a Dutch expression verloren hoop, which means “lost troop.” It referred to the first wave of assault troops, who were considered expendable.

When the phrase was picked up in England, the words didn’t mean anything to the common people, so through a process known as folk etymology, they transformed it into forlorn hope, which at least sounded understandable.

Likewise, the town of Shotover in England had been named Chateau Vert (Green Chateau) by the Normans. But here too the foreign words meant nothing to the English common man, so thanks to the process of folk etymology, the name became Shotover.

Finally, I am indebted to the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins for an explanation of the phrase “funny bone.” According to the dictionary, “Actually, what causes the painful tingling sensation when you bump your funny bone is the impact not on any bone but on the ulnar nerve.

“However, the term funny bone has been part of the language for many a long year and is apparently here to stay. It results from a rather learned pun on the name for the bone running from the shoulder to the elbow, the humerus. Get it?”

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Mon 23 May 2011

Memorial for Jonathan Rowe who led creation of the commons in Point Reyes Station

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, History, Point Reyes Station
[2] Comments

Well over 100 people showed up Sunday at a memorial for Jonathan Rowe of Point Reyes Station, who co-founded the West Marin Commons project. Mr. Rowe died unexpectedly March 20 of a rare streptococcal sepsis infection at the age of 65. He leaves a wife, Mary Jean Espulgar-Rowe, and son, Joshua Espulgar-Rowe.

Jonathan Rowe could often be seen writing on an open-air table next to the coffee bar at Toby’s Feed Barn.

He had been a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly and YES! magazines and had been a staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor.

Mr. Rowe also contributed articles to Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, Readers Digest, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Point Reyes Light, The West Marin Citizen, and many other publications.

A 1967 graduate of Harvard University, Mr. Rowe also earned a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971. In the early 1970s, he was one of Ralph Nader’s “Raiders.”

He served on staffs in the House of Representatives and the Senate, where he was a long-time aide to US Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota). He also served on the staff of the Washington, DC, city council.

The memorial began in Toby’s Feed Barn where friends and community members paid tribute to the late journalist and economist. Elizabeth Barnet (left) and Gary Ruskin (right) acted as masters of ceremony. Barnet and Mr. Rowe co-founded West Marin Commons. Ruskin, who once shared an office with Mr. Rowe in Washington, spoke of the man’s major importance as an economist. He drew a round of applause when he suggested naming the new commons after Mr. Rowe. His son Joshua, a third grader at West Marin School, told about having Mr. Rowe for a father.

Joshua also circulated through the Feed Barn, unobtrusively keeping his classmates orderly. When some youngsters sitting high on a stack of hay bales became a little noisy, the eight year old climbed up to them and whispered, “Guys, you gotta get off the hay bales.”

Providing music for the occasion, Joyce Kouffman playing a bass led the crowd in singing This Little Light of Mine.

Mr. Rowe’s younger brother Matt Rowe and Charlie Morgan (right) both talked about Mr. Rowe’s obsession with the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

Morgan noted that Mr. Rowe and he were both programmers at KWMR community radio, with Morgan’s show being aired immediately after Mr. Rowe’s.

By invitation, Mr. Rowe would often stick around the studio after his show and take part in Morgan’s show, expanding upon comments he had made in the preceding show.

Morgan said he was always impressed by Mr. Rowe’s ability to calmly discuss controversial issues.

Others who spoke included: journalist Todd Oppenheimer, who described swimming in San Francisco Bay with Mr. Rowe; Sylvia Oliver, who like Mr. Rowe had worked in US Senator Byron Dorgan’s office; Emily Levine, who described giving an economics talk based almost entirely on a cover story by Mr. Rowe in The Atlantic Monthly; writer Russ Baker, who described Mr. Rowe as “my intellectual partner”; Nancy Bertelsen, who read her own poem; and Michael Cohen, who said that 40 years ago he had been Mr. Rowe’s yoga teacher and considered him part of “the company of the wise.”

Joshua told the crowd his father accompanied him when he walked to school and liked to tell jokes. He himself joked that the reason he liked walking with his father was just to hear the jokes.

After school, they went swimming or bicycle riding or played sports, he added. Joshua drew a laugh from the crowd when he described his father as “a good soccer player for his age.” Joshua noted that his father had catered to his fascination with trucks, and “I still remember when I was little he used to write stories about trucks.”

At the new commons, Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey reported that county supervisors had adjourned in memory of Mr. Rowe to honor his community work.

After the tributes in Toby’s Feed Barn, the crowd walked two blocks to the new West Marin Commons at Highway 1 and Fourth Street to hear more speakers, see the dedication of a large bench in Mr. Rowe’s honor, and enjoy a potluck luncheon.

Creating the massive bench was Rufus Blunk of Inverness (at microphone). He is the husband of Elizabeth Barnet, who with Mr. Rowe co-founded the West Marin Commons project.

When the crowd arrived, the bench was wrapped in the tarpaulins piled at the left. Once the bench was unveiled, people sprinkled it with pine needles and flower petals.

At different times, speakers’ words brought tears to many people’s eyes, but the overwhelming sentiment was how fortunate West Marin had been to have had Mr. Rowe helping guide community affairs for 15 years.

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Tue 17 May 2011

Goddamn winter’s back

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, Point Reyes Station
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A minister bought a parrot from a pet store, as the story goes, but after he took it home was dismayed to discover the bird had been taught to cuss a blue streak. The minister liked the bird but not the cussing, so every Sunday he would drape a cloth over the parrot’s cage to simulate night and prevent the critter from stirring.

The scheme did a pretty good job of keeping the Sabbath holy, but it broke down when a group of church ladies dropped by on a weekday to discuss the parish’s annual potluck dinner. As they arrived at his door, the minister quickly threw the cloth over the parrot’s cage, only to have the bird squawk as the ladies came into the room, “It’s been a damned short week.”

In the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s been a damned short spring, summer and fall. Winter weather is back before the end of the school year. On Sunday, snow fell on Mount Hamilton near San Jose. In West Marin, the story was not snow but rain.

On Monday night alone, 0.59 inches of rain fell in Point Reyes Station. Just down the road, Olema picked up 0.85 inches. Marin Municipal Water District this week reported that as of Sunday, its seven reservoirs were at 98 percent of capacity, compared with 87 percent at this date in an average year.

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I was sitting at the desk in my loft a week ago when a raccoon looked in my second-floor window, hoping to attract my attention so I would go downstairs and give it some peanuts. I immediately went out on my deck to take a photo of the raccoon on my roof but couldn’t see it in the dark. So I did what I could. I pointed my camera toward one end of the eaves, and was lucky enough to catch the raccoon illuminated by the flash.

The rains on Monday night were accompanied by high winds, which blew over my garbage container before Redwood Empire Disposal could empty it, so raccoons volunteered to do the emptying themselves. I discovered the mess Tuesday morning when I went to the bottom of my driveway to pick up the morning Chronicle.

My timing was fortuitous. No sooner had I put all the garbage back in its container than the garbage truck came along. If I’d waited another five minutes to retrieve my newspaper, I would have been stuck with a full container of garbage and not enough room for another week’s worth.

Before the recent rains started, the fields around Mitchell cabin had been getting pretty dry, which raised fire-safety concerns, so my friend Terry Gray of Inverness Park agreed to take a Weed Whacker to the grass immediately around the house on Monday.

But it turned out to be an exercise in futility. While Terry was cutting grass, a drizzle started, and it soon turned into rain, which drove Terry indoors. Not a lot of fire danger for the moment, we concluded.

My oldest stepdaughter Anika Zappa Monterroso (left) and Lynn Axelrod at Nicks Cove in January. On Saturday, Anika, 24, received a bachelor of science degree in Retail Merchandising from the University of Minnesota’s College of Design.

One project that did get finished before the rains began was digging up and cutting down thistles. My lady friend Lynn Axelrod and I spent four days doing this, both on my property and on four neighbors’ properties. (Their thistle problems can quickly become my thistle problems.) In all, we filled 19 contractor’s bags with thistles, enough to keep outgoing green-waste containers full for the next three months.

Anika, who grew up in Guatemala, worked her way through college at Best Buy stores in the Minneapolis area. With her in my dining room two years ago is Janine Warner of Los Angeles. Janine was a reporter at The Point Reyes Light when I owned the newspaper, was later the editor of all online editions of The Miami Herald, was subsequently on the faculty of USC, and now works as an internet consultant and author.

Janine, who is scheduled to visit here next week with her husband Dave LaFontaine, has written more than a dozen books, many of them in the computers for Dummies series, and has sold more than 500,000 copies.

As a former college English instructor, it occurs to me that Herman Melville in contrast sold only 3,000 copies of Moby Dick during his lifetime and earned a mere $556 from the novel. Most of his other books sold 1,200 copies or less. Melville’s writings while he was alive brought in just over $10,000, and at one point he was forced to declare bankruptcy. When he died in 1891 at the age of 72, he was a mostly forgotten author.

Obviously, what’s selling in the publishing world has changed drastically in the past century. Ironically, it appears that books geared to readers who consider print media passé are now among the best sellers.

Perhaps if Melville had written Harpooning for Dummies, he would have had a larger following during his lifetime. “Whenever it is a damp, drizzly, November in my soul,” to borrow a phrase from old Herman, I long for May, but this year come May, we’re instead getting another dose of November.

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Wed 11 May 2011

This blog turns 300

Posted by DavidMitchell under Dave Mitchell, History, West Marin nature, Wildlife
[4] Comments

This is the 300th posting on SparselySageAndTimely.com, and my friend Dave LaFontaine of Los Angeles has urged me to write something commemorating the occasion.

The first posting went online back on Nov. 28, 2006, and at least one per week has followed ever since.

Usually it’s been fun although on a few slow weeks I’ve felt like The Desperate Man (at right), a self-portrait by Gustave Corbet (1819-1877).

As was explained in the first posting, keeping a log on the web (i.e. a blog) is a bit like keeping a log on a ship. It includes both a journal of one’s trip through life and reports on significant events along the way. How a web log came to be called a blog, by the way, reflects the whimsy that has long characterized those who gambol on the World Wide Web of the Internet.

A blogger named Jorn Barger coined the term in a Dec. 17, 1997, entry on his site, jokingly turning “web log” into “we blog.” And who is Jorn Barger? Wikipedia reports he is editor of “Robot Wisdom,” has taught at Northwestern, and once lived at The Farm (Stephen Gaskin’s commune in Tennessee).

Some weeks my topics were obvious: major storms, the November 2007 oil spill along the coast, community celebrations, and the deaths of prominent people. Some postings, such as those recounting West Marin history, required a bit of research.

West Marin’s animal life, both wild and domestic, has been a constant of this blog. Here two horses in a field next to mine enjoyed a sunny day last weekend.

Naturally, so to speak, some wildlife adventures chronicled here probably aren’t as fascinating to all readers as they are to me. This past week I’ve been delighted that a new possum (seen here) has begun visiting my cabin in the evening. It’s younger than the one that had been coming around, and both are more skittish than the possum a couple of years ago that would let me pet her as she snacked on peanuts.

Regular readers know I am particularly intrigued when seemingly unrelated events turn out to be connected. My favorite such posting told how a grim, 1909 Hungarian play called Lliom led to the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, which in 1963 led to Gerry and the Pacemakers’ rhythmic recording of You’ll Never Walk Alone, with that rendition then becoming a worldwide professional soccer anthem.

Readers too seem to like following these connections.

My April 19 posting What does the Easter Bunny have to do with Jesus’ resurrection? drew readers by the hundreds.

The posting told how Gregory the Great (at right), who was pope from 590 to 604, unintentionally brought about the Easter Bunny’s becoming associated with Jesus’ resurrection.

Some 877 people dropped by here this past Easter, 308 on Easter Day alone, to read the story. I was struck by the fact that 270 of those visitors found their way here via Google.

While we’re on the topic of Google, are any of you old enough to remember the 1923 hit tune Barney Google? “Barney Google, with his googley eyes./ Barney Google had a wife three times his size./ She sued Barney for divorce/ Now he’s living with his horse.

“Barney Google, with his googley eyes./ Barney Google, with his googley eyes./ Barney Google, has a girl that loves the guys./ Only friends can get a squeeze./ That girl has no enemies./ Barney Google, with his googley eyes.”

Nor should we forget the comic strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, which is still going strong after 92 years.

Doesn’t all this make you wonder about the origin of the corporate name Google? In fact, it comes from a misspelling of “googol,” which refers to the number one followed by 100 zeros. Nonetheless, the verb “to google” (use the Google search engine) is now included in major dictionaries. But I digress….

This being spring (witness the iris on my deck), I’ll end with a poem composed for this commemorative posting.

With thanks to T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Matthew Arnold, William Butler Yeats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Frost for their contributions:

West of Eden

The hollow men/ Headpiece filled with straw./ Starving hysterical naked,/ dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.

Who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs/ Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world./ Half a league, half a league,/ Half a league onward,/ All in the valley of Death/ Rode the six hundred./ To die, to sleep.

Do not go gentle into that good night,/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light./ I have promises to keep/ And miles to go before I sleep.

 

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Tue 3 May 2011

Charge ahead! or pay cash

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, Wildlife
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“What do you think of that Osama deal?” a guy passing through Point Reyes Station asked a couple of us in the barbershop Tuesday. I was a bit surprised by how he phrased the question but said the death of Osama bin Laden should over time make the world a safer place.

“It might have been a big deal if it had happened in 2002 or 2003,” the traveler said. “Now it’s a matter of: ‘So bin Laden’s dead, how ’bout those Giants?'”

The other two of us saw the death as more momentous, insisting that bin Laden (at left) was a ruthless fanatic who would have continued to order terrorist attacks were he still around to lead al Qaeda.

However, neither of us thought bin Laden’s death would put an end to all terrorism.

Probably most Americans are relieved that the mastermind of 9/11 has finally been brought to justice. Governments of several Muslim countries have also expressed approval of the raid that killed him. The the man on the street in much of the Muslim world, however, is as indifferent as the traveler in the barbershop to bin Laden’s demise.

In the Middle East, bin Laden and al Qaeda have been overshadowed by rebellions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. Bin Laden had become a relic from a bygone era.

So the stranger was unquestionably right about one thing: during the 40 minutes that justice was catching up with Osama bin Laden, billions of other people were going about their lives as always. To most people, change is inevitable except from a vending machine.

On my hillside, Sunday was the start of the thistle-pulling season, but thanks to a fortnight of prickly eradication a year ago, there are far fewer thistles in my field this year. Little did my girlfriend Lynn and I know that as we labored, President Obama was preparing to announce that the biggest prick of all had been eradicated halfway around the world in an Abbottabad, Pakistan, mansion.

He was a meglomaniac who liked to blow things up and who had inherited millions of dollars by the time he was 14. Despite advocating asceticism for others, Osama bin Laden was found living in luxury with three wives, a stash of pornographic magazines and videos in his bedroom, and hundreds of marijuana plants growing in rows among cabbages and potatoes just outside his walls.

He died when shot in the eye and chest during an incredibly precise, 40-minute raid by Navy SEALs. (If you’ve ever wondered about the acronym, it stands for Sea, Air, and Land Navy Special Warfare Unit.)

When I published The Point Reyes Light, I editorialized in favor of the US going after bin Laden in Afghanistan and against our going after Saddam Hussein in Iraq. During the buildup to the Iraq War, I tried to warn then-President George W. Bush, but did he listen? Noooo. Presidents are notorious for ignoring small-town editors, and as I predicted, we ended up in a war from which we still cannot extricate ourselves.

“You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.” Winston Churchill

 

Eradicating thistles was a bit tricky Sunday because many were hidden by unusually tall grass, the result of a wet winter. Here a fawn and a doe are barely visible as they graze below my deck.

Far from the turmoil in the Middle East, evenings around my cabin are still filled with foxes, raccoons, and the occasional possum. Here a gray fox carefully approaches a raccoon eating peanuts outside my kitchen door. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” Groucho Marx

The raccoon isn’t happy to have the fox share its dinner, but it would rather go on eating than waste time fighting over the bounty. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Watching two competing species learn to accommodate each other started me musing. Bin Laden with all his money and religious fanaticism was less civilized than a pair of wild animals. Merely attending a mosque hadn’t made him a true Muslim any more than standing in a garage would have made him a car.

The possum at right, like all the other animals in this posting, were photographed around my cabin during the past week.

Caught by surprise in Inverness Park. On Monday I stopped by Perry’s Delicatessen to buy a couple of pouches of Captain Black pipe tobacco.

“I always buy it here rather than over the hill because I want to patronize a local merchant,” I told owner Dan Thompson, only to have him correct my pronunciation. “You pat-row-nize merchants,” he said. “You don’t pay-trow-nize them.”

Regularly buying from a merchant is obviously different from condescending to him, but it had never before occurred to me that the pronunciation changed with the meaning. Might the difference be a matter of British versus American English? One point for the deli owner, as well as West Marin wildlife. Zero for bin Laden, as well as thistles.

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Sun 24 Apr 2011

Daughter dies in Nevada County

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News
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Seeva Marie Cherms, 42, daughter of Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park, was found dead in her Grass Valley home Friday. She had apparently died three or four days earlier.

Ms. Cherms had spent considerable time in West Marin, visiting and working with her mother in housecleaning jobs. She lived here twice.

Seeva Cherms, with her chihuahua named Barely on her lap, working on the unsuccessful Hemp and Health Initiative, which would have decriminalized marijuana growing, transportation, and recreational use.

She was perhaps best known for her political work on California’s 2008 Hemp and Health Initiative, which she took part in writing, along with and the late pot activist Jack Herer.

For part of her childhood, Ms. Cherms lived in Venice Beach, where at the age of 12 she became an avid listener when Herer publicly preached his doctrine of marijuana, Ms. Sturdivant said. Because of her involvement in marijuana politics and her 30-year acquaintanceship with Herer, “she always wanted to write a book,” her mother added.

Ms. Cherms leaves a brother Anthony Owens of Oakland; two daughters, Haley, 23, who is married, and Summer Raine, 13; and her husband Steven Cherms, all of Oroville.

Born in Sacramento on June 6, 1968, Ms. Cherms had an often-difficult life. Her father was killed in Mexico shortly after her birth, Ms. Sturdivant said.

In 2005, Ms. Cherms and her husband Steven were violently mugged by gang members in Sacramento. Mr. Cherms lost part of his vision while she received a broken jaw and suffered emotional trauma. The culprits were identified, and the following year, several members of the gang were sentenced to prison, one for more than 22 years, Ms. Sturdivant added.

“I’m just numb,” Ms. Sturdivant said on Saturday. “At least Seeva is in peace, so I have some kind of comfort. But knowing I will never see that beautiful smile or hear her laugh, when she brightened up any room, breaks my heart.”

Ms. Cherms’ West Marin friends and relatives will hold a memorial for her in Point Reyes Station in the near future. Ms. Sturdivant said nothing else is needed but people’s prayers.

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Tue 19 Apr 2011

What does the Easter Bunny have to do with Jesus’ resurrection?

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, History
[8] Comments

Easter will be celebrated on Sunday, making this an appropriate time to ask: do you know where the word comes from? Easter is never mentioned in the Bible. In fact, Easter as we know it originated in the pagan world.

This story begins with Gregory the Great (at right), who was pope from 590 to 604.

At the time, England was populated by pagan Anglo-Saxons, and this prompted Pope Gregory to send a mission to England to convert them to Catholicism.

The conversions would be easier, Pope Gregory wrote Archbishop Mellitus, if those being converted were allowed to retain their pagan traditions. They would simply be told that their rituals, in fact, honored the Christian God.

Missionaries should accommodate the Anglo-Saxons in this way, as the pope put it, “to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God.”

Among the “gratifications” permitted were Easter festivities, which had been a pagan celebration of spring. Because the actual date of Jesus’ death is unknown, the missionaries could tell the Anglo-Saxons that their spring celebration should go on as always but to understand it was really all about Jesus’ resurrection.

This redirecting of traditions was so successful that the church then used it to convert pagans in the Netherlands and Germany.

The Venerable Bede is responsible for our knowing the origin of the word Easter.

A Christian scholar, the Venerable Bede (672-735), a century later wrote that Easter took its name from Eostre, also known as Eastre. Eostre (at right) was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe.

Similarly, some of the Teutonic names for the goddess of dawn and fertility were Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, and Eastur.

These names were derived from an old Germanic word for spring, “eastre.”

Since ancient times, spring has been seen as a time of fertility, so it was not surprising that among the pagan symbols of the season were rabbits (because large litters are born in early spring) and decorated eggs (because wild birds lay eggs in spring).

Bizarrely, these pagan symbols became so intertwined that Easter Bunnies ended up distributing Easter Eggs.

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And so it was that in this roundabout way Pope Gregory I unintentionally helped bring about a goofy bunny’s becoming associated with….

 

The resurrection of Jesus, who is seen appearing to Mary Magdalene as she weeps outside his tomb.

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Mon 11 Apr 2011

West Marin update

Posted by DavidMitchell under History, Point Reyes Station
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Former West Marin resident John Francis returned to Point Reyes Station Saturday to give a talk in Toby’s Feed Barn on what a 17-year vow of silence taught him about listening.

For 22 years, John also refused to ride in motorized vehicles (largely as a reaction to a humongous oil spill at the Golden Gate).

During that time, John walked across the United States. Along the way, he earned a master’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana and a doctorate in Land Resources, with a specialty in oil spills, from the University of Wisconsin.

John subsequently walked across the Amazon and down the west coast of South America to the tip of Argentina. He also walked around Antarctica a bit and north through Patagonia.

John, who now lives in Cape May, NJ, strums his banjo on all his treks, even while hiking from one Indian village to another in the jungles of the Amazon.

Not surprisingly, he starts all his talks with banjo music.

Traveling one step at a time gave John the opportunity to observe the environment of plants and animals, as well as humans.

The insight he gained led him to create in 1982 an educational nonprofit called Planetwalk. His adventures have also resulted in a book titled Planetwalker, which was published by The National Geographic in 2008. Sales of the book during Friday’s talk benefited the Planetwalk organization.

Beside B Street downhill from Café Reyes in Point Reyes Station

Last week’s posting on West Marin history noted that this wooden structure mostly hidden by foliage was once the base for a water tower.

Photo by M. B. Boissevain courtesy of the Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History.

On Monday, historian Dewey Livingston of Inverness sent over this photo from 1930 so you can get an idea of what the water tower once looked like. In the foreground are 4-H Achievement Day participants.

A barn dance in Toby’s Feed Barn March 2 helped raise funds for a commons in Point Reyes Station, as well as the Latino Photography Project. The commons project had been championed by Jonathan Rowe, who died unexpectedly March 20 at the age of 65.

During a break in the dancing, Mr. Rowe’s son Joshua Espulgar-Rowe read a statement about his father, describing his life and thanking those who showed up for the event.

It would be a difficult for anybody to publicly read a memorial to a parent yet Joshua carried himself as a man despite being only eight years old.

Joshua’s mother Mary Jean Espulgar-Rowe, who was born in the Philippines, was not on hand. Elizabeth Barnet, who co-founded the commons project with Mr. Rowe, has been acting as the family’s liaison to the community and sat nearby while Joshua spoke.

Contributions to support Jonathan’s family or help pay for Joshua’s college education (please note which) can be sent to a newly established account, 5561290361, at Wells Fargo Bank, 11400 Highway 1, Point Reyes Station CA 94956. Make checks payable to Mary Jean Espulgar-Rowe. Tax-deductible contributions in memory of Jonathan may be sent to West Marin Commons/Town Commons Project. The address is the West Marin Fund, Box 127, Point Reyes Station CA 94956.

A memorial for Mr. Rowe is planned for 11 a.m. Sunday, May 22, at the Town Commons in Point Reyes Station. A parallel memorial, organized by Jonathan’s friends at On the Commons, will take place in Minneapolis on the same day.

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Wed 6 Apr 2011

Tales from West Marin’s forgotten past

Posted by DavidMitchell under History
[2] Comments

Several of us read our contributions to the latest volume of the West Marin Review during a party Sunday at the Bolinas Museum, and on our way back to Point Reyes Station, I told my girlfriend Lynn Axelrod about the time in 1853 when William Tecumseh Sherman was shipwrecked near Bolinas twice in a single day.

Lynn had never heard the story, which made me realize there is undoubtedly a lot of West Marin history that today’s residents are unaware of.

Take the story of Sherman (at left), for example.

Most of us know of Sherman as the major general in the Union Army who led a “March to the Sea” in 1857, leaving a swath of destruction across Georgia.

Just four years earlier, however, Sherman was named manager of the San Francisco branch of a St. Louis bank and bought passage on a ship to get here.

But the ship overshot the Golden Gate in heavy fog and wrecked on Bolinas’ Duxbury Reef. The passengers and crew all survived, and Sherman set off on foot to report the wreck. When he came upon a logging camp, he was told that steamers, mostly carrying lumber and farm products, departed daily from Bolinas for San Francisco.

Sherman got a ride on a steamer, only to have waves swamp it while it was crossing the Golden Gate. Fortunately for Sherman, he was rescued by a passing boat from his second shipwreck in one day.

The Olema Valley, north from Bolinas, is also rich in forgotten history. Just south of Olema Cemetery, for example, the remains of the ancient stagecoach road that once connected Bolinas and Olema can be seen under a stand of oak and bay trees on the east side of Highway 1 where it winds up a hill.

A bit to the south, the stagecoach road can be found on the west side of Highway 1 across from the boarded-up Randall House. Before writing these tales Tuesday, I doubled checked my facts with historian Dewey Livingston of Inverness, and he noted that people often confuse parts the stagecoach road with trails.

Travelers get off the North Shore Railroad train at right in Point Reyes Station.

Point Reyes Station is obviously rich in relics of days gone by, but there is much that goes unrecognized. The town was born when a narrow-gauge railroad from Sausalito to Cazadero opened in 1875. What started as a whistlestop in a cow pasture owned by Mary Burdell became a town subdivided by her husband Galen, a dentist.

Soon there was a depot on the main street, but it was turned 180 degrees when tracks east of town were converted to standard gauge in 1920. The narrow gauge up the coast shut down in 1930, and the standard gauge east of town closed in 1933.

The line had never been profitable, and the Great Depression, along with the advent of competition from trucks, brought about the end of West Marin’s railroad era. The former Point Reyes Station depot is now the town’s post office.

One curiosity from those days is the north wall of the Cheda Building, which once contained a warehouse for the Grandi Company general store nextdoor. The narrow-gauge tracks on the main street had a sidetrack leading to the back of the building. Unlike cars, trains cannot make right-angle turns, so the north wall (the side of the building where the Point Reyes Jeweler is today) was built with a slight curve to accommodate the radius of narrow-gauge tracks.

Diagonally across the Cheda Building is Café Reyes; next to B Street downhill from the café, an ancient, wooden structure is barely visible through the foliage. In the railroad era, this was the base for a water tower.

Photo by Pete Mohn

Perhaps the greatest curiosity is at the north end of the main street where the sidewalk in front of Cabaline Saddle Shop, the Bovine Bakery, and Viewpoints Gallery is higher than the adjoining sidewalk.

Back in the days of the narrow-gauge trains, the building housing these businesses was another general store, the Point Reyes Emporium. The train tracks went up the main street, which was not yet paved, meaning that in wet weather, workers transporting cargo from a boxcar to the store had to slog through mud.

Their solution was to build a sidewalk as high as the floor of a narrow-gauge boxcar. When a train stopped in front of the Point Reyes Emporium, workers stuck sawhorses in the mud, laid planks on top of them, and then had a level, dry passage from the floor of the boxcar to the door of the store.

On June 14, 1846, American settlers living in California declared their independence from Mexico in what came to be known as the Bear Flag Revolt. At the time, all of West Marin was divided into Mexican land grants except the land around Tomales.

However, a tavern owner named Juan Padilla soon stepped forward and claimed that the last Mexican governor of California, Pio Pico (at right), had signed papers just two days before the revolt, giving Padilla the so-called Bolsa de Tomales as a land grant.

His claim was suspect, and settlers living around Tomales immediately protested. The land was sold and resold half a dozen times in the next few years while more and more settlers took up residence on it.

During a series of court hearings, the settlers claimed that Pico’s signature was forged, that the land grant was back dated, and that Padilla never lived on the land, a requirement for a land grant.

Despite the claims, a judge in 1857 ruled against the settlers, who were infuriated. A town meeting was held, but the only resident calm enough to offer sage advice was a carpenter named William Vanderbilt. The settlers then agreed Vanderbilt should represent them in an appeal of the judge’s decision.

Not being an attorney, Vanderbilt went to Sacramento in 1862 and spent several months learning land-use law. He then traveled to Washington, DC, and in 1863 pled the settlers’ case before the US Supreme Court. He won the case and returned to Tomales, which celebrated with a “Barbecue in Honor of the Triumph of Truth and Justice over Fraud and Falsehood.”

In 1864, Congress put the matter permanently to rest, passing legislation that guaranteed the settlers their property rights.

All this is in the history books. You can look it up.

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Thu 31 Mar 2011

When everything goes wrong

Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, Marin County, Point Reyes Station
[4] Comments

The debacles began on Feb. 22 when I bought $3.67 worth of Asian chicken wings from the deli counter of the San Anselmo Safeway store. I thought the spicy wings would make a good snack on my way back over the hill to West Marin.

The fried wings seemed tender enough, but when I bit into one, I felt a sharp pain in my lower jaw. I checked and discovered the wing had been sitting in the warming tray so long that the bottom side had become rock hard. Biting into it was like biting into a pebble.

When the pain stayed with me, I went to my dentist, who took an x-ray and confirmed the tooth had fractured at the gum line. He removed the top half of the tooth and referred me to an oral surgeon to remove the root and start me on the way to getting a new tooth implanted. That will take about seven months and cost about $4,500, I was told.

On March 16, the oral surgeon removed the root and sent me home with a mouth full of gauze. The surgeon’s office is in Novato, and I decided to drive home by way of San Rafael. As I was passing the sound barrier just north of downtown, however, the engine on my Acura suddenly died. I managed to coast into the slow lane and turned on my blinkers.

My car had just enough momentum to reach the Heatherton Avenue offramp but not enough to make it around the corner at the bottom. Fortunately, a San Rafael policeman came along and used his patrolcar to push my Acura around the corner to a safe spot.

AAA then towed the car to Easy Automotive a few blocks away, but it was already closed for the day.

Unable to reach my girlfriend Lynn Axelrod by phone, I rented a car and drove home.

The next day Easy Auto called to say rainwater had gotten into the computer that controls the engine, and that, in turn, had also ruined the fuel pump.

Heavy storms are annual events in West Marin. Flooding from a storm three years ago blocked my drive down Mesa Road in Point Reyes Station.

Replacing the fuel pump was not a problem, but my 1992 Acura is so old replacement computers are not available from the dealership, and it took a week of calling around to find a wrecking yard that had one. For awhile I feared I might have to replace the entire car.

The repairs cost $1,600, and when they were done, I was still stuck with the problem of water getting to my engine. To solve that, I called Teeters & Schacht in Novato, a shop that specializes in such work, and the owner told me to bring in the car.

On Wednesday, I headed off to Novato but didn’t get beyond the bottom of my driveway. Something felt wrong, and when I stopped to check, a brand-new tire was flat. Fortunately, Greenbridge Auto in Point Reyes Station was able to fix it relatively quickly, and I resumed my trip.

After I left my car in Novato (with a $500 estimate for repairs), Lynn drove me home where I discovered that my computer was in its death throws. Steve Bowers, a computer techie from Inverness, made repeated attempts to revive it, and finally we agreed I needed a new computer.

Computer technician Steve Bowers installing my new iMac.

That required another trip over the hill, where I spent $1,600 at Best Buy for a new iMac. Yesterday evening, Steve began installing its software and transferring backup files from an external hard drive. He came back today to install more and is scheduled to return yet again to finish the job.

Meanwhile, my car is still in the shop. Including the cost of a computer technician, I’m spending more than $8,500 to get things back to normal. And, worst of all, my posting is late this week. My only hope is that Safeway will reimburse me for my dental work. The store manager said I will be “made whole” but was startled when I told him that will take more than $4,000. I’ll keep you posted on the outcome.

While all this has been going on, we residents of Campolindo Drive have gotten into a scrap with our garbage company, Redwood Empire Disposal. The garbage trucks have been doing so much damage to the turnaround at the end of our private road it looks like Libyan tanks have been maneuvering on the pavement.

Each week one or two large garbage trucks lays waste to the asphalt while turning around at the end of Campolindo Drive. In what seems like extortion to me, Redwood Empire Disposal is threatening to cut off garbage pickups along the road unless residents agree to let the damage continue while promising not to sue.

When one neighbor complained, Redwood wrote all of us, “Our trucks are quite heavy, and the maneuvering of the tires does sometimes cause damage to the roads.”

The company acknowledged, “Redwood Empire Disposal does have small garbage trucks. However, these trucks are reserved for use on county-maintained roads that are too small to handle our regular trucks…

“If possible, we will offer private roads the service of the smaller truck for a special service fee. Unfortunately, at this time we do not have a small truck available to service your private road.” Assuming Redwood someday gets around to buying another garbage truck, doesn’t this sound like protection money? Pay a special fee or we’ll damage your road!

Redwood concludes by saying that unless all eight homeowners along Campolindo Drive sign letters saying they won’t sue the company for the damage it has caused and is causing, it won’t pick up our garbage, unless we haul it to Highway 1.

Not only would that be a long haul for most of us, it could result in a line of 24 garbage bins along a section of highway that has no shoulder. In West Marin, it’s common to see recently emptied garbage bins that have blown over. In this case, they could easily be blown into a traffic lane of Highway 1. The situation would be neither safe nor sightly, and Redwood Empire’s financial liability for any traffic accidents its row of bins causes could be hundreds of times greater than the cost of fixing its damage to our road.

Since the Marin County Board of Supervisors franchises Redwood Empire to pick up garbage around here, we’re waiting to see if our supervisor, Steve Kinsey, will help us out. I doubt residents along Campolindo Drive are alone in having this problem with Redwood Empire Disposal. I’ll keep you posted about this too.

All this could get a person down, so the trick is to appreciate its absurdity. Write a wry posting or entertain the crowd at the Old Western Saloon.

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