Inverness resident Andrew M. Schultz died on Monday, June 18, at the age of 58 from complications related to small-cell lung cancer.

His death will inevitably be described by those who knew him as The Death of a Salesman, and Andrew would be the first to agree, as evidenced by his personalized license plates, AD SPACE.

Andrew’s specialty was selling newspaper classified advertising to automobile dealerships, which he did almost continually for more than 30 years.

Born in Manhattan, New York, on July 27, 1948, to Fran and Leon Schultz, he attended public schools in the Bronx, Plainview, and Long Island, as well as Hofstra University on Long Island for two years.

For two years he studied to become a chef only to switch courses and attend two more years of classes at the New York Institute of Photography.

Andrew moved to California in 1971. “I had been wanting to get out of New York. I felt trapped,” he explained in an interview last winter. I felt nothing was happening for me there.”

He arrived in Marin hoping to work as a photographer. Given his choice, he said during the interview, “I would have been a magazine photographer doing cover shots for magazines such as Glamour, Time, and US News and World Report, mainstream magazines.”

Many may have sent or received the composite postcard from Inverness with photos of downtown, a friendly pelican and the famous beached boatwreck. All those photos were taken by Andrew Schultz.

Another of Andrew’s favorite photo assignments has been the annual Disaster Council pancake breakfast at the Point Reyes Station firehouse. Andrew said he enjoyed capturing on film the pillars of the community stuffing their faces with pancakes.

In 1972, he recounted, “I went to work for The Funfinder as a photographer but quickly became a salesman. In those days, The Funfinder was an entertainment periodical the size of TV Guide, boasting a circulation of 20,000 in San Francisco and Marin counties.

When The Marin Independent Journal bought The Funfinder in 1975, Andrew went to work for The Independent Journal. “The most fun I’ve ever had was selling automotive classified when I moved from The Funfinder to The IJ,” he recalled. “It was one of the most interesting changes I made in my work life. It clicked, and I just loved it.

“With the majority of the people that I meet, I discovered that there are three stages. First, they don’t like me at all. Then it’s, ‘Let’s give this guy some time.’ Then, I really win them over. You always know when you’ve broken through to the customer.”

Andrew said he genuinely liked his customers. “About six times, dealers offered me jobs, but I didn’t want to sell cars. Whenever a dealership offered me a job selling their product, I knew I had them right where I wanted them… that they trusted me and we had built a strong professional relationship. Contrary to what most people think, business relationships are really personal relationships.”

Andrew worked at The Independent Journal until 1987, when he moved to Monterey County and began selling automotive classified adds for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “Nine months after I got there, I won salesman of the year,” he recalled with pride. I left Santa Cruz a month before the Loma Prieta earthquake. I had been living in Soquel, two to three miles away from the epicenter in Aptos.”

After moving back to Marin County, Andrew sold advertising at The Point Reyes Light for a year, at the Petaluma office of a free “pennysaver” owned by newspaper chain publisher Dean Lesher, at The Petaluma Argus Courier, The Cotati Times, The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, and Auto Trader in Petaluma.

Indeed, Andrew sold advertising space wherever he could find it, whether it was on cash register tapes or the community-access channel of Horizon Cable. In 1999 after public-utility deregulation, he even tried to sell electricity and was hopeful of signing up most of California’s schools. However, the company he was working for collapsed.

Many West Marin residents knew Andrew as an advertising salesman and operator of Horizon Cable’s community channel, Channel 47. As such, Andrew donated a good portion of his time to helping the local nonprofits with their fundraising.

West Marin had enjoyed good television reception until 1973 when Bay Area channels stopped transmitting from Mount San Bruno and began using the newly constructed Sutro Tower. TV signals to this stretch of coast were then blocked by Mount Tamalpais. Among those unhappy with the resulting poor reception was Andrew. The poor reception also prompted John Robbins, formerly of Inverness, to build the West Marin Cable system, starting in 1983; he sold it to Horizon Cable in 1991.

Robbins, who had employed Andrew part time, recalled in an interview last January, “The first time I met him, I was at the White House Pool building the cable system. He stops his car right on the corner of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and Balboa Avenue and wants to know when he’ll get hooked up.”

When Robbins was building the Stinson Beach part of the cable system, he hired Andrew to line up customers. “I let him go there and knock on doors.”

Even after the cable system was built and sold to Horizon, Andrew continued in his spare time to sell advertising for its community-access channel, which was then Channel 11 and 13 and is now Channel 47. Only recently did he finally relinquish that responsibility to Horizon owner Susan Daniels.

“He’s a wonderful, pushy, in-your-face salesman, and he aims to leave you feeling good about the conversation,” Robbins said. “You always knew when Andrew was coming. His voice was a big as he was [6-foot, 3-inches and more than 250 pounds].”

“Sometimes I’m insensitive in realizing that I’m a very big guy,” Andrew acknowledged. “I’ve been told at times I’m disruptive… I’m definitely noticed. I’m good at parties, but I don’t care to go to them very often. I come home at night and the mask comes off.”

©Art Rogers/Point Reyes

Rather than socializing, “Andrew’s life revolved around his computer and movies,” Robbins noted. “At times, I am nearly a hermit,” Andrew confirmed.

“Yet I feel as if I have lots of good friends. I have loved many in my life. I have a hard time understanding jealous people. They don’t seem to realize that you can’t take love from others. Love is only given.”

Surviving Andrew are his brothers Billy, Nathan, and Barry Schultz. His father Leon Schultz died in 1990 and his mother Fran in 2000.

Andrew is also survived by his former partner, Daniel Medina. Andrew also leaves a long list of people he has loved and who have loved him, commenting several weeks ago, “They will all know who they are…”

At his request, Andrew will be cremated. Adobe Creek Funeral Home in Petaluma is handling arrangements. A memorial service will be held on Limantour Beach at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 23. Before he died, Andrew asked that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to Hospice by the Bay and West Marin Senior Services “please.”

Editor’s note: At Andrew Schultz’s request, several of us combined efforts to write this piece before he died.

A 2,000-square-foot art studio at 80 Blackberry Way in Inverness Park burned to the ground Friday afternoon. The owner, Sherburne Slack, whose home is next to the studio, told me while the fire was still burning that he had “no clue” as to what started it.

Slack noted he gone to the studio half an hour before the fire broke out and had seen nothing amiss.

There are no fire hydrants on Blackberry Way although there is one not far away at the foot of Balboa Avenue where tanker trunks refilled. Slack (above) has a 3,000-gallon tank at his house, from which both he and firefighters also drew water.

The studio was being used for sculpting and had previously been used for blowing glass, but none of the glass furnaces had been turned on in a year and a half, Slack said. The artist explained he had developed a bad back and could no longer handle the heavy lifting glass blowing requires.

Slack said he lost $50,000 to $60,000 (wholesale price) of art in the blaze. Slack’s art (left) has been exhibited worldwide. Some of it is currently in an exhibition in New York, he noted.

The artist said he had been working at a computer in his house and waiting for someone with a brush chipper when he heard noises and went outside expecting to see the chipper.

Instead he found smoke billowing from his multi-level studio less than a block from Balboa Avenue.

Slack (at right) said he immediately called the 911 emergency number but was kept on hold for six minutes.

Meanwhile neighbors called the Point Reyes Station firehouse directly, and one person drove into town to alert firefighters.

Firefighters were called out at 2:18 p.m. County firefighters from Point Reyes Station, Woodacre, and Tomales responded, as did the Inverness Volunteer Fire Department.

When firefighters arrived on the scene, a prime concern was preventing the blaze from spreading to a house next door owned by Bolinas School teacher Don Jolley.

Although the Jolley house (above) did not catch fire, heat from the blaze blew out windows facing the studio.

As of this posting, the county Fire Department was preparing to look for clues as to what started the fire.

Slack told me the studio was uninsured, adding that he does not have enough income to rebuild it. However, he said, the loss was just “stuff” and that it was more important that no one was hurt.

This vase from Sherburne Glass Studio is titled “Beauty” and contains “amethyst and gold ripple.”

The glass torso above, which also comes from the studio, is titled “Resurection.” Both pictures of Slack’s art were taken from sherb.com where more of his work can be seen.

SparselySageAndTimely.com extends a warm “Happy Birthday!” to restaurateur Pat Healy of Point Reyes Station (left), who topped 80 on Wednesday.

Pat operated the Station House Café for 30 years, during which time she turned the former hamburger shop into a restaurant praised in Gourmet and other food-and-drink publications.

Pat in June 2005 sold the café to its manager Sheryl Cahill (right), and as of this writing, Sheryl was planning a party with no-host bar for Pat this Thursday (March 29) from 5 to 8 p.m. in the Station House.

Also celebrating her 80th birthday is Missy Patterson of Point Reyes Station, who will turn 80 on Sunday. For 24 years, Missy has run the front office of The Point Reyes Light, where she is circulation manager.

While the job requires dealing with all manner of people, Missy is never overwhelmed, having raised 11 children of her own, the youngest of whom, Duncan, drowned in Papermill Creek while still in his teens.

More than once Missy regaled the old Light’s staff with an account of the time her former husband, Realtor Donald “Pat” Patterson, needed to stop by the Inverness home of Professor and Mrs. Seth Benson on business. The professor taught Zoology at UC Berkeley, and he and his wife (both now deceased) were part of the Zero Population Growth movement.

While the men discussed business, Mrs. Benson invited Missy to chat in the kitchen, quickly turning the conversation to ZPG. “And how many children do you have?” she asked Missy.

“Eleven,” Missy answered, and Mrs. Benson began shouting at her, “Out! Out of this house!” True to form, Missy left feeling amused rather than insulted.

She was my wonderful colleague for 21 years, and SparselySageAndTimely.com sends her a sincere Happy 80th Birthday wish too.

Missy’s real name, by the way, is Rosalie, but nobody around here calls here that. Which gets us to the nature of nicknames.

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Not long ago I hired Nick Whitney of Inverness Park, one of the members of Pacific Slope tree trimming services, to cut down two Monterey pines that had died near my parking area.

If the trees had fallen in a windstorm, the worst damage would probably have been to neighbor Toby Giacomini’s barbed-wire fence, but that was enough for me to want them out.

In addition, I wanted a large limb growing over my roof removed from another pine, so Nick sent over a crew consisting of Brian Arnold (seen above), Pepe Franco, and Nacho Franco.

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Brian and Pepe (seen above) have trimmed trees at my cabin previously, so I expected, and got, a good job from the crew. Not having to worry about their work, I found myself instead wondering about their names.

I had to do a bit of research, but it turns out Brian is an Irish name meaning “high” or “noble,” which should please him. After seeing Brian dangling from the top of a pine tree while avoiding large limbs falling from his chainsaw, both Gaelic meanings seemed appropriate.

The common Spanish nickname “Nacho” at right) was easy for me to check on. It’s merely a shortened form of “Ignacio,” sort of like “Robert” shortened to “Bob.”

In some recent years, the most common name of male babies born in the US was José, so it’s not surprising that many guys named José opt to use its nickname “Pepe.” Sort of like fellows named “John” using the nickname “Jack.”

But how in the world did “Pepe” become the nickname for “José?” When I finally found the answer, it surprised even my Spanish-speaking friends.

“José” derived from the old Spanish equivalents to Joseph: “Josepâ,” to “Josepe.” In Italian, the name would be “Giuseppe.” Because the final syllable of Josepe is stressed, it was a short step to “Pepe.” So, Joe, now we all know.

Former West Marin resident Dee Goodman now lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, which was founded by the Spanish in 1542.

This past week, an old friend, Mac Williams, and I traveled to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and ended up spending several days with a former West Marin resident now living there, Dolores (Dee) Goodman. Dee lives in one of the many colonias (small, semi-rural communities) that surround downtown and are part of the Allende municipality of 139,000 people.

For years, Dee lived in Nicasio and later operated Casa Mexicana bed-and-breakfast inn in Point Reyes Station. Her late husband John spent most of his career working for Marin County Mental Health but after his retirement was in continual demand as a stand-up bass player in San Francisco jazz bands. He was also one of the musicians to regularly play with guitarist Bart Hopkin at the Station House Café. If you ever saw him perform there, you’ll remember him even if you didn’t know his name; for when he was paired with Bart in the Station House, John, a tall black man, played the not-so-common pizzicato (plucked) cello, which was strung like a bass.

Dee, his widow, is now living with a working-class family in a colonia that at first glance might strike West Marin residents as a rural slum. The streets are unpaved and littered with trash. Despite high walls, which hide the residents, small homes and gardens, families keep dogs on the roof to ward off burglars.

But outward appearances can be deceiving, and Dee has managed to find a bit of paradise where I never would have expected it. Here is her story:

My husband John died of lung cancer in December 2000, and my loss was enormous. He was the love of my life. We had been together only 10 years, but those were worth a lifetime. He felt the same way about us.

I hadn’t readjusted well to the change and drifted emotionally, feeling lonely among my friends and family. After a year or so, I moved from Point Reyes Station to Petaluma to help my stepfather care for my mother during her terminal illness. My brother Dan lived with me in a manufactured home I had purchased in the same park as Mom and Bill.

With no children of my own, I had given some thought to long-term planning. Assisted-living residences were popping up all over, and they seemed a likely option for me. I calculated what assets I would have and what my fixed income would be and what type of place I would be able to afford so that I wouldn’t become a burden to my family. I was still relatively young, 60, so I wasn’t making any firm plans.

In December 2004, my friend Lana and I took what was supposed to be a two-week vacation to Puerto Vallarta; however, I had a feeling that I would not be returning to the US with Lana. I had, for some time, wanted to stay in Mexico for an extended time. (Two of my grandparents were born in Mexico but were forced to flee to Texas during the 1910 revolution, and I was brought up in Daly City.)

As it happened, I ended up in San Miguel de Allende, which is roughly in the geographical center of Mexico, about 200 miles northwest of Mexico City. San Miguel is a destination for many US and Canadian retirees; our dollars go twice as far here, and we can live more comfortably on our retirement income.

Imaginative, 60-year-old mural in one of San Miguel de Allende’s art schools.

Gringos have been coming to San Miguel for about 50 years. It started with a group who formed an art colony, and San Miguel now has numerous art schools, galleries etc. The gringo community does a lot for the locals: establishing libraries, scholarships and other helpful projects. And because they help with public matters, along with providing jobs and advancement opportunities, the expatriates are well received by the locals.

The Spanish-colonial downtown, with its park-like square, majestic cathedral, and narrow, cobbled streets, bustles with good restaurants, theatre, music festivals, and barely marked hotel entrances that open into courtyard gardens.

At an elevation of 6,000 feet, San Miguel de Allende has a desert landscape. During winter, middays are warm, and nights are cold. I like the climate.

When I first moved to San Miguel de Allende, I rented in the Los Frailes community at the edge of town. A woman in her 30s named Alicia Gonzalez was the housekeeper at the apartment, and a couple of times I drove her to her home in the Colonia Palmita de Landeta.

The first few times, I met her children in front of their house where they huddled shyly, laughing. They were very curious about me, this Señora Dolores from California. Around the third time I took Alicia to her house, her husband Antonio had just arrived home from work and told Alicia to invite me in. I was led to a front bedroom of their very modest house and was invited to sit on one of the beds.

The visit is still clear in my memory. I remember thinking, “What a beautiful family!” At the time, all five of the family’s children were living at home. (The oldest, Valentina, now 19, has since gone to live nearby with her husband Manuel and his family.)

Dining outdoors under a tarpaulin (from left): Ernesto, Claudia, Marco, Manuel, and Valentina. She and Manuel, who assembles furniture for a living, are expecting their first child in June.

I subsequently moved from Los Frailes to Calle Recreo in the central part of the San Miguel near Parque Juarez. Alicia and Valentina helped me pack and move. Valentina would spend some nights with me at Recreo, especially when I was sick with a cold or something. And they would all worry about my wellbeing, comfort, and safety.

Unfortunately, the Recreo apartment was intolerably hot, so I moved to a two-bedroom apartment on Calle Agua in the Colonia Atascadero closer to their house. The whole family helped me pack, move, and unpack, the five kids and Mom trekking up and down the path to move my stuff.

If they had their way, I would have just sat back and watched the move go on. After all, I am grande now. That’s when you’re older, like into your sixties (I’m now 66).

I did a bit of packing but not much moving. Picture the little one, Rosario, five years old, (seen here a year later with her mother Alicia) insisting she be allowed to help carry stuff to the car. Ernesto was eight; Marco, 10; Claudia, 12; and Valentina, 18.

Even before that move, Valentina began to tell her mother and me that I should move in with them, that they could make me a room. The seed was planted, and I didn’t even consider saying no when the Gonzalezes in 2005 invited me to live with them.

In October 2005, I bought a terreno (lot) next to the family for $10,000. In February 2006, I moved into my almost-completed casita, which was built by Antonio, an accomplished maestro albanil (construction worker), and a crew of four. Antonio is incredibly creative and meticulous, and I enjoyed seeing the building materials used here: basically brick, stone, rebar, and concrete. I was able to suggest what I would like to have done and then see it accomplished.

I had initially planned to have a large living area, one bedroom, and bathroom in my casita, but I convinced Alicia and Antonio to accept half the living-room space to make a bedroom for themselves. They had always had their bed in a common part of their house, in the kitchen or living area. We put up a wall to split my living room into their bedroom and a sitting room for me.

Surrounded by building materials for the completion of their dwellings, Dee dines on the Gonzalezes’ patio with Rosario, Antonio, and Alicia.

Antonio opened up a door in the wall of their house to my casita at their kitchen. I don’t have a kitchen; it’s our kitchen. Alicia is a marvelous cook and for me, eating with the family is better than going to my favorite Mexican restaurant every day.

I participate in the preparation of meals as much as I can and as much as they’ll let me. I’m learning more as time goes by. I also help with the marketing. We go to the plazita market every Saturday, and while Alicia shops for veggies, I shop for fruit: mangos, guayavas, dried Jamaica blossoms etc. I love it! It’s our tradition on shopping days to buy fresh carnitas, bolillos, tortillas, and salsa to eat when we get home.

The daily giving is as important as the receiving. I think the key is being able to share and actually being a member of the family unit, watching the kids get off to school and waiting for them to come home. It’s something I missed out on, not having had children, and it’s a blessing to have been given the opportunity now that I’m grande.

I’m referred to by the family as Tia (Aunt) Lolita and am usually addressed as Tia. The parents have given me a grandmother’s authority over the children and have instilled in them a kind respect for me. I love feeling a grandmotherly cariño (affection) for the kids.

Rosario and Ernesto, the youngest two, and I are particularly attached. Mi sombra (shadow), Ernesto, doesn’t let me leave the house alone. When I leave the house to walk Omar, my dog, Ernesto always accompanies me.

I think the kids were initially told by Mom and Dad to accompany me whenever I went out, and Ernesto (at right with his brother Marco) has taken charge. He says he’ll protect me from aggressive dogs and picks up rocks to throw in the event we run into any, which does happen. He’s my little angel.

I’m glad I said “yes” when the Gonzalez family invited me to live them. We’re a great match. All of us can’t believe our good fortune. I was able to make the move and provide my own space, but had I not been able to do that, had I been totally without financial means, they would have gladly made room for me in their home, and we would all be just as happy, I’m sure.

That’s the way it’s done in the Mexican culture and many other cultures of the world. Older folks don’t have to move someplace with strangers their own age and be cared for by other strangers. There is always room for them in a family member’s home and daily life, until their dying day. I’m still young enough to foresee more changes in my life, and this may not be my “journey’s end.” But it just may be, and that’s great.

Fallow deer in the Point Reyes National Seashore range from white to spotted to black. Naturally gentle, they are among the few deer that can be easily domesticated, and they are widely raised for meat. The fallow herd was periodically culled by the park until Don Neubacher became superintendent in 1994. He stopped the culling and now claims the herd is becoming too large and must be totally eliminated. (Photo by Janine Warner)

West Marin residents need to start paying attention to how much the administration of the Point Reyes National Seashore has come to reflect ideologically rigid policies of the Bush Administration Park Service, not to mention the Bush Administration’s belligerent approach to Homeland Security.

Combativeness, ideological zeal, and indifference to public opinion are the hallmarks of this approach. At the National Seashore, it is taking the form of:

A widely criticized program to slaughter the long-resident white and spotted deer from Asia, which much of the public finds enchanting, on grounds it would be cheaper to eliminate them than to control herd sizes with culling or contraception.

The only public hearing on the pogrom before the National Seashore administration last year approved it was so tightly controlled as to be meaningless. No general discussion, with public debate, was allowed. Supt. Don Neubacher assembled a panel of like-minded folks to present the administration’s point of view. Respected organizations that oppose slaughtering the deer, such as the Humane Society, were noticeably left off his panel.

These fallow deer (originally from the Near East) and axis deer (originally from India and Sri Lanka) have been a part of the Point Reyes ecosystem for 60 years, far longer than the Park Service. (Photo by Janine Warner)

Yet the Neubacher administration talks about the fallow deer as if the growth of its herd is out of control. No it isn’t. The Neubacher administration in 1994 merely stopped the park’s periodic culling.

The park administration in trying to rationalize the pogrom claims that because non-indigenous deer eat acorns and so do indigenous blacktail deer, the wellbeing of the blacktail is being threatened. The claim is typical of the pseudo-environmental malarkey we’ve come to expect from the Bush Interior Department that also claims opening up the Artic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling is environmentally necessary.

Blacktail deer are abundant throughout West Marin as this herd, including a doe who’s found one of my persimmons, bears witness.

There’s no shortage of blacktail deer in and around the park. Yes, a lot of them are dying on and off parkland here. And whose fault is that? Almost entirely motorists, many of whom are among two million visitors a year drawn to West Marin by the Point Reyes National Seashore.

National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher’s announced intention to close down the venerable Drake’s Bay Oyster Company when its lease expires in five years.

There may be ranches, not to mention a Coast Guard station, next door, but Neubacher claims the land around the oyster company’s waters is “potential wilderness” and that it would take an act of Congress to keep the oyster company open. If that’s true, and county officials are skeptical, then it’s Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey’s responsibility to take action in Congress.

Like the exotic deer, the oyster company has been on Point Reyes far longer than the park, which opened in 1965. Oyster growing has become part of the Drakes Estero ecoystem, and oysterman Kevin Lunny notes that because oysters filter water, the water is cleaner in his part of the estuary than where oyster growing has ended.

For many visitors to the National Seashore, buying oysters at the oyster company brings them far more pleasure than visitor centers, sandcastle contests, boarded-up ranch buildings, and the Morgan horse stable, not to denigrate any of them but merely to take note of the obvious.

I’ve never heard Lunny himself say this, but some ranchers on Point Reyes see Supt. Neubacher’s plans to close the oyster company as “payback time.”

They believe that Lunny, who is also a beef rancher, roused the superintendent’s ire two years ago when he helped organize the Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association so that ranchers in the park can collectively negotiate their leases with the National Seashore administration. Ranchers I’ve talked with say Neubacher (pictured) reacted bitterly to formation of their association.

One indication of the park administration’s attitude toward the association occurred a year ago when the National Seashore hired a “range ecologist.” No sooner had he arrived than he showed up at an association meeting to introduce himself, say he’d noticed some ranches had fences in need of repair, warned that he would give ranchers one notice to make repairs, and said if they didn’t then hop to it, he would seek to have their leases revoked. Dick Cheney couldn’t have said it better.

(Ironically the Jan. 30 San Francisco Chronicle described in detail the sorry state of Golden Gate National Recreation Area fencing at Crissy Beach. Neubacher administers, along with the National Seashore, part of the GGNRA but not the beach in San Francisco.)

One rancher, who doesn’t agree with the “payback” theory, instead believes the oyster grower’s problems began when Gordon Bennett, chairman of the Marin Unit of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the national Sierra Club, got Neubacher’s ear by becoming part of the park superintendent’s kitchen cabinet. *

With Congress stalling on reviving the Citizens Advisory Commission to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore, the park superintendent has been able to cherry pick whom he listens to. Sometimes the arrangement reminds me of our government’s unstated alliance with the Taliban during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

An environmental fundamentalist, Bennett is the loudest critic of Drakes Bay Oyster Company, which he considers equivalent to a 165-foot-high old Buddha in potentially Taliban-pure wilderness. The opposition of Bennett, who lives in Paradise Ranch Estates, to a popular oyster farm founded more than a century ago is perfectly in character.

A major stopover for birds migrating on the Pacific Flyway and a haven for harbor seals, seabirds, and long-legged wading birds, Bolinas Lagoon may completely fill with silt if its channel isn’t dredged and tidal circulation restored. The chairman of the Marin Unit of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club opposes the necessary dredging.

When the nonprofit Marine Mammal Center needed to upgrade its treatment facilities on the Marin Headlands or when people around Bolinas Lagoon hoped to dredge silt from its channel before the lagoon becomes a meadow, Bennett was always there to lend a criticism.

* The term “kitchen cabinet” in its political sense originated in the 1820s during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Jackson abandoned official cabinet meetings and instead took his advice from an informal, kitchen-table cabinet more to his liking. A number of these advisors, such as influential newspaper editors, were chosen because they had a pulpit for defending his policies.

Next week: Bringing the voice of democracy back to the Point Reyes National Seashore delayed by congressional Democrats’ distrust of Bush Administration.

Exotic rat at Point Reyes

This week I shot a rat. With my camera, that is. To be precise, I photographed a roof rat foraging under a flowerpot for stray birdseed. It was a lucky shot, for an instant after I snapped the picture, the rat was gone.

For 30 years, I have been aware of roof rats on this hill, for they have sometimes made themselves known in a particularly disruptive fashion.

It typically happens this way; every few years, a resident of Campolindo Drive turns on the dishwasher only to have soapy water spread across the kitchen floor. (If memory serves, it happened to my late neighbors Ben and Charlotte Glading twice, to my neighbors Dan and Mary Huntsman once, and to me twice.)

Inverness applicance repairman Dave Brast this week explained what’s been going on: “There’s one hose that drains a dishwasher, and usually it goes through a hole in the cabinet wall that separates the dishwasher nook from the space under the kitchen sink. If the sink drain goes through the wall under and behind the sink and if that hole is overly large for the drainpipe (thereby leaving a gap), a rodent can crawl from inside the wall through the gap into the under-sink space and then through the hole in the cabinet wall over to the dishwasher nook…”

(For roof rats to “enter homes and buildings,” The New York Times-owned website About.com notes, “they only need a hole the size of a quarter.”)

Brast further explained, “To do damage by gnawing through the dishwasher drain hose, the rodent can gnaw the portion of the hose under the sink or under or behind the dishwasher.

“I think the hose in the nook is the favorite target because there the rodent is completely protected from being disturbed by cats, dogs and humans….

“In the last few weeks I’ve had to repair two rat-gnawed dishwasher-drain hoses in Bolinas, one at the home of Aggie Murch and the other at the home of Charles and Veronique Fox. The two houses are on opposite sides of the road just a few hundred yards apart. The first gnawing was in the Murch house and days later in the Fox house.

“This made us wonder if it wasn’t the same rat doing the gnawing. After it gnawed through the first hose, it thought, “Well, no more to gnaw here at Murch’s. Guess I’ll mosey on over to Fox’s and see what there is to gnaw there…. Another dishwasher-hose gnawing I remember happened to Herb and Gina Kutchins’ [Inverness Park] dishwasher.”

Why do roof rats do this? “My understanding is that rodents gnaw because they have to,” Brast told me. “If they didn’t, the front teeth, which never stop growing, would get so long the animal wouldn’t be able to open its mouth wide enough to eat.” In short, it’s a dental procedure.

And there are more serious reasons for not wanting roof rats in our kitchens than periodically sudsy floors.

As reflected in their grating scientific name Rattus rattus, roof rats are notorious creatures. I’m reminded of Nabokov naming Lolita’s stepfather Humbert Humbert emphasize that rat’s ugly nature.

“The roof rat is an introduced species of rat [that is] native to southern Asia,” the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Science notes. (Florida has a particular problem with roof rats in citrus groves.) “It was brought to America on the first ships to reach the New World.”

“The rat is the same species that carried the bubonic plague around the world [killing half the people in Europe during the late 1340s] and is also the host for murine typhus” in the South.

Cats kill roof rat “pups” but seldom the adults. Charlie cat seen here fence sitting belongs to neighbors Jay Haas and Didi Thompson, whose dishwasher has thus far escaped rat damage. Whether Charlie should get the credit, however, is unclear.

Because roof rats (which like to gnaw their way into attics) are arboreal, traveling along branches, utility lines, and fence tops, they seldom fall prey to cats except when the pups are young and still dispersing, the University of Florida notes.

Traps are more effective in controlling roof rats.

Hawks, such as this redtail on my hill, and owls (especially barn owls) are even better, the University of Florida reports.

A female roof rat can have as many as five litters a year of up to eight pups each. And each generation is ready to begin reproducing in three to four months.

For the past two centuries, rats have been a fact of life on every continent but Antarctica.

The so-called Norway rats or “sewer rats” (Rattus norvegicus) are actually native to northern China. They reached Europe and the Americas from Asia much later than roof rats. The University of Michigan Museum of Zoology reports they were inadvertently carried on ships to Europe in the early 1700s and the New World in the 1770s.

In Asia, Rattus norvegicus was native to forests and brushy areas, the museum notes. Today, however, Norway rats find preferred habitat to be alongside the rapid expansion of the human population. Nearly every port city in the world has a substantial population of these rodents.

I happened to have been reporting for the old San Francisco Examiner back in 1982-83 when the City of San Francisco reconditioned its cable car tracks and, while it was at it, replaced antiquated sewer lines underneath.

A supervising engineer on the sewer project told me at the time that he and another employee had recently gone into a sewer tunnel under Market Street at the edge of the Financial District. The tunnel opened into a large chamber, he said, and as the two of them shone their flashlights around the tiered vault, they saw reflections from eyes of hundreds of rats. The two men beat a hasty retreat. A typical city, the engineer noted, has one rat for every human.

In case you have your own encounter with a representative of the genus rattus and wonder just what species you’re dealing with, the easiest way to distinguish between Norway rats and roof rats is by the length of their tails.

Norway rat tails are shorter than their bodies while the tail of a roof rat is noticeably longer than its body. Norway rats have bald ears. The ears of roof rats are furry. Norway rats are only slightly longer than roof rats; in fact the rattus rattus above would probably measure more than a foot from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail. In general, however, Norway rats are far heftier.

Hot spots at the rear of Manka’s restaurant continued to flare up for hours after the fire had been contained.

Winds that gusted to hurricane force toppled a tree onto Manka’s Inverness Lodge and Restaurant early Wednesday, breaking a gas line and starting a fire that gutted the 81-year-old wooden building.

Trapped. A guest who escaped unharmed with his possessions nonetheless found his car stuck for hours in Manka’s parking lot, hemmed in by Inverness and Marin County firetrucks.

The tree fell onto Guest Room 7 and went through it into Room 4 where it hit a hotwater heater and broke the gas line. All of those in the building escaped unharmed, including overnight guest Jake Gyllenhaal, who starred in the movie Brokeback Mountain, and his actress sister Maggie.

Daniel DeLong, chef and co-owner with his partner, Margaret Grade, later told The Independent Journal, “Jake was helping me pull things out of the fire.”

Inverness and county firefighters were called out at 2:43 a.m., and by the time the first firetrucks arrived, “it was going pretty good,” one Inverness fireman told me, so there was little that could be done except keep the fire from spreading. Firefighters did manage to save the original building on the property, a 106-year-old cottage.

Referring to the inn itself, the fireman remarked, “When it’s all wood, it isn’t easy to get inside and get [the fire] out.” This is a particular problem with historic buildings, he said, adding with a grimace, “It sucks.”

Heavy rain and Arctic wind (which gusted to 100 mph atop Mount Tamalpais, county firefighters were told) not only sent the tree crashing onto Manka’s, it did less severe damage throughout West Marin. Falling trees blacked out much of West Marin most of the night.

A tree that fell on a utility pole along the levee road in Point Reyes Station forced closure of the road for much of Wednesday.

Sections of Highway 1 between Point Reyes Station and Olema were flooded during the night.

Manka’s under its former owners, the Prokupeks, was known for decades as a Czech restaurant. Current owner Margaret Grade bought Manka’s in 1992, refurbished the building, and developed a cuisine around wild game, locally grown organic meat and produce, seafood and elegant desserts.

In recent years, Food and Wine magazine repeatedly rated Manka’s as among the top 50 hotel restaurants in America while The San Francisco Chronicle called it one of the top 100 restaurants in the nine-county Bay Area.

When Prince Charles and Camilla, the duchess of Cornwall, visited West Marin a year ago, they stayed in Manka’s. Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey later told The Independent Journal the prince told him they “had a good night’s sleep” and found Manka’s fare “really outstanding.”

Manka’s owner Margaret Grade (center) herself was one of the chefs, and several of those who worked with her were in tears Wednesday morning. However, when Margaret spotted me taking photos, she might just as easily have been the congenial hostess welcoming guests at the door.

“Good to see you, Dave,” she called to me. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“It’s good to see you too,” I responded, “but not under these circumstances.”

Only the front wall of Manka’s restaurant remained mostly standing. Sky can be seen through the windows of a guest room whose roof was consumed.

Despite the circumstances, however, Margaret remained the upbeat person I’d always known her to be, and before the fire was out, she had begun talking about rebuilding. Responding in kind, I asked her if she already had a contractor in mind.

Alluding to restaurant designer Pat Kuleto, who is restoring Nick’s Cove restaurant in Marshall after numerous permit hassles, Margaret joked, “I hope Kuleto has paved the way for us at the county.”

Then recalling how much work Manka’s needed when she bought the restaurant and inn in 1992, Margaret said to me with a laugh, “Look at what a disaster the place was. This takes us to a different level.”