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Betty Grinshtein, a Ukrainian immigrant as a child now living in Point Reyes Station, on Thursday in the town library, told about conditions in her former country and showed photos from her refugee-relief trip to the Ukraine and Poland last year.. She said she wants to go back. Pictured with her is an aunt still living in Ukraine. Her aunt holds up the three-finger (with thumb and little finger pressed together) pro-democracy gesture used in Ukrainian greetings.

Thursday’s gathering also featured artist Maddy Sobel’s illustrations. Seen with her is Flynn Nichols, known for dancing and chanting in the street downtown. Maddy contributed part of the proceeds from the sale of her works to a couple of Ukrainian-relief organizations.

The talk and art reception had been rescheduled after a power outage two weeks ago blacked everyone out just as the event was starting. It was well worth another date.

Meanwhile back in Europe, the International Criminal Court Friday issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine. He’s accused of responsibility for the abduction of children, who have been transferred from occupied areas to Russia.

“The moral condemnation will likely stain the Russian leader for the rest of his life,” according to the Associated Press, “and in the more immediate future whenever he seeks to attend an international summit in a nation bound to arrest him.

“The court also issued a warrant for the arrest of Maria Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation.” The AP last October reported on her involvement in the abduction of Ukrainian orphans.

Flynn gives the newly learned Ukrainian pro-democracy gesture.

“Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia doesn’t recognize the ICC and considers its decisions ‘legally void,'” the AP reported. “He called the court’s move ‘outrageous and unacceptable.’”

It’s a fight that’s being closely watched here half a world away.

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People with a variety of talents are called polymaths. An extemely talented polymath, for example, was Leonardo da Vinci. The High Renaissance scientist was also renowned as a painter, philosopher and sculptor.

Maddy Sobel in a self-illustration

She’s no Leonardo, but Madelyn Sobel of Point Reyes Station is definitely a polymath. Maddy, as she is known, holds a BA in Fine Arts from the Pasadena Art Center College of Design. Her studies focused on illustration. Over the years, her illustrations have been published as editorial cartoons, printed in posters, used to illustrate children’s books and much more.

Around Point Reyes Station, however, she’s best known for “Maddy’s Jammin” with its sandwich board sign in front of her home on Highway 1 downhill from West Marin School. In the kitchen of her home, she cooks at all hours, making raspberry jam, orange marmalade, apricot jam, and many more which she sells from her house and downtown.

In addition, she is a social activist, and a show of her art will open for a month at 6 p.m.  Thursday, March 2, in the Point Reyes Library with a portion of the sales of her art to be donated to Ukainian causes.

Another polymath activist from West Marin will also be on hand opening night.

Betty Grinshtein, who has been assistant cheesemaker at the Cowgirl Creamery, was born in Lviv, Ukraine, which is at the Polish border. Along with English and Ukrainian, Betty speaks Polish and Russian, and at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, she will tell of spending three months last year providing travel logistics and distributing aid to Ukrainian refugees fleeing into Poland by train.

Betty Grinshtein

“I’m back in West Marin,” Grinshtein comments. “However, my heart is still in Ukraine and Poland,” and she is still helping raise funds for an NGO called the Karkiv and Przemal Project (KHARP) “so they can continue to assist the refugees and the vulnerable Ukrainian population unable to evacuate from Eastern Ukraine.”

The two polymaths’ talk and art show at the Point Reyes Library next week will no doubt be fascinating.

Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times,” wrote Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities. He could have been describing my past week. On the good side…

I’m now in my 80th year. Wednesday was my 79th birthday, and my wife Lynn arranged for a birthday party at Rancho Nicasio. What fun!

From left: Maddy Sobel, Austin King, the birthday boy and Lynn. (Photo by Kathy Runnion)

Our lunch was held on a deck under sunny skies, and our  food, which ranged from fish and chips to bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches, was tasty and plentiful.

The next day would be Thanksgiving, and Lynn would be roasting a turkey, so Lynn and I invited Austin to join us. Austin, who had been living in Point Reyes Station, has now found an attractive apartment in Larkspur. However, since he doesn’t have a car, we suggested he spend the night at Mitchell cabin.

Which he did, along with his loveable dog Gypsy. I’ve seen few dogs more obedient to their master than Gypsy is to Austin. His command, “Stop Gypsy! Come here!” was usually enough to get her to turn around and return to him, even when she was starting to chase deer or raccoons.

Austin and Gypsy on the deck at Mitchell cabin.

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But then came Friday. Lynn and I drove Austin and Gypsy back to Larkspur. After admiring his new apartment, we headed home. Within five minutes, I was driving through San Anselmo where we decided to stop for coffee. 

Finding a parking spot on a narrow street was difficult. When we did, Lynn got out to give me directions into it. Unfortunately there was a utility pole immediately next to the curb, and the right-side mirror of my Lexus clipped the pole. With my mangled mirror hanging down, I attempted to drive forward and stop, but my foot missed the brake pedal and hit the accelerator.

The resulting debacle shocked me. My car shot across the narrow street and slammed into an unoccupied parked car. The parked car suffered a badly dented left side behind the driver’s door but remained driveable. My car was not, for my left front tire was pushed back against its wheel well.

Nor would the debacles end there. After a taxi brought Lynn and me home, I felt mighty glum, so I decided to try cheering myself up with an ice cream sandwich.

Unfortunately when I  took a bite out of the sandwich, I heard a dull pop. Feeling something hard in my mouth, I spit out two front teeth.

Could anything else go wrong that day, I worried until I fell asleep.

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For a small town, Point Reyes Station (pop. 848 at last count) has long had a lively art scene with galleries, artists selling their work on the streets and even creating art there. Here are three examples of the town’s highly diversified art community.

Christine DeCamp selling her art in front of the Point Reyes Station post office last Saturday. She has also sold from a studio. Until the pandemic slowed businesses down, many of us also knew her as a server at the Station House Café. Here are three more of her paintings:

Our Lady of the Mountain

Mountain Goddess…/ sheltering all creatures/ within her domain. Her/ interior is the mysterious/prima materia or the/beginnings of ‘all is/ possible’. The magical/ deer are symbolic of/ rebirth and rejuvenation.

copyright 2012 Christine DeCamp

Wild Spirit Wisdom

Clyde

Clyde the rider Crow with/ Blue eyes that SEE. He is/ being carried by Navajo spirit/ horse who embodies SEEING/ and brings forth living springs/ with each step. Can you hear/ the drums? A magical journey

copyright 2011  Christine DeCamp

Maddy’s Jammin’ with its balloon-adorned sign has for years been a familiar sight along Highway 1 a half block downhill from West Marin School. Before this year, Maddy Sobel also sold her jams in front of the post office on weekends and, like Christine, also sold her art there.

The Animal Kingdom, Mammals. Maddy, standing in front of one of her large paintings, which is hanging in her living room, shows off a jar of her blackberry jam. These days, she has to sell her art mostly from home.

Hang in There exemplifies Maddy’s often-whimsical style.

Timmy the Tiny Turtle

Another artist with a creative imagination is Billy Hobbs. Almost all his art these days reflects Greek mythology, Hindu scripture or Native American history. This drawing is titled ‘Lakota Burial.’

Billy’s Saber-toothed Tortuga is eye-catching even before revealing its subtleties.

Billy is still working on his drawing ‘Condor.’ The artist is homeless and sleeps in my second car, which I park downtown on Mesa Road for him. To comply with the law, I have to move the car every three days. My car meanwhile has also become the studio where Billy does his drawing.

Billy, 62, has been homeless for seven years following the breakup of a 25-year marriage. Several organizations are supposedly trying to find permanent shelter for him but have been looking for more than a year. I first got to know him pre-pandemic when he’d frequently do his drawing while sitting on a bench outside the post office. In those days, I typically had my morning mocha at one of Toby’s Coffee Bar’s nearby picnic tables.

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A Cal Fire helicopter on Thursday crosses Inverness Ridge to drop water on a containment line for the Woodward Fire in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Smoke from back-burns rises through the forest.

The Woodward Fire, which was started by a lightning strike Aug. 18, was 85 percent contained by this evening after having grown to more than 4,800 acres. Part of the containment has included setting back-burns along Limantour Road. Full containment is expected by Tuesday.

Smoke from the fire has at times made the air in much of West Marin unhealthy, and smoke from hot spots may last for months, the Park Service has warned.

Vidas Negras Importan

The Black Lives Matter movement is sometimes getting overshadowed by the chaos at just a very few of the hundreds of protests around the country. In these isolated cases, looters and vandals have taken advantage of there being crowds in downtown areas. On at least one occasion, however, a covert white supremacist damaged property during a protest to discredit the protesters. Despite all this, only 7 percent of all the protests nationwide have had such problems, The Washington Post reported this past week.

In an effort to refocus public attention on what the movement is really all about stopping the unwarranted killing of Black people by overly aggressive police officers in several cities, I came up with a sign in Spanish. Its intent is to show that criticism of the killings transcends the Black and Anglo Saxon communities.

Maddy Sobel, who often sell jams and jellies in front of the Point Reyes Station post office, is also an artist, and she illustrated one of my signs. Her thought is that if I make some copies of her illustration, she can give them to kids to color with crayons. Sounds good to me. I gave another copy to Toby’s Coffee Bar, and you can see it displayed there without illustration.

Bumping elbows but not shaking hands. From left: Phil Jennings, yours truly, and Gordon Jones

Before the pandemic and sheltering in place, I went to the No Name Bar in Sausalito to listen to live jazz every Friday night. Sunday afternoon, two friends from the No Name dropped by for an outdoor visit. I gave them both copies of the sign, and Jones was so enthusiastic he said he may have it imprinted on t-shirts.

My own family’s efforts to get justice for Black people date from before the Civil War. My great-grandfather Luke Parsons was a member of John Brown’s Army but did not take part in the debacle at Harper’s Ferry. Instead he went on to command a Union Army company of Native Americans fighting in the Oklahoma Territory.

My late father was a Republican who supported the NAACP. I formally joined the movement in the spring of 1968 while I was teaching high school in Leesburg, Florida. At the time, Willis V. McCall was the sheriff of Lake County, Florida, where Leesburg is located. He had come to be called the worst sheriff in the US and in private bragged he’d “killed more n-ggers” than any other man.

When McCall came up for reelection in 1968, a well-regarded Leesburg police officer ran against him, and I signed up to canvass voters in Black neighborhoods for the challenger. Unfortunately, McCall again won but was defeated four years later after yet another cruelty: a mentally impaired Black man was kicked to death in the Lake County jail.

Civil rights activist Julian Bond (center) in 1970 with members of an Upper Iowa University group, the Brotherhood, who had invited him to speak on campus. While he was studying at Morehouse College in the early 1960s, Bond had established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a.k.a. SNCC (pronounced “Snick”).

In the fall of 1968 I began teaching English and journalism at Upper Iowa University and the next semester became a faculty advisor to the new Black student union. As the group explained in a flyer: “The Brotherhood was founded and chartered in February 1969. It is an organized group open to anyone interested in furthering their knowledge of Black culture…

“Under the able leadership of our past president, Rick Weber, and the helpful assistance of our advisors, Mr. Mitchell and Mr. [Robert] Schenck, the Brotherhood has enriched campus life by promoting various social functions, such as the annual Black Night.” Besides that variety show, the Brotherhood has sponsored “an inter-racial forum, and a play, A Raisin in the Sun. Our biggest accomplishment was, of course, acquisition of a Black Cultural House.”

Half a century later, I still recall advising the Brotherhood as one of my most informative experiences.