Inside! “The Loft” Teen Center Is Born

Transcription

Spring 2009 40th Anniversar y
e
& Spring Classes Catalogu
The Journal of the San Geronimo Valley Community Center
“The Loft” Teen Center Is Born
By Patrick Byrd (and Friends)
When I was asked to provide an article about “The Loft” for the Spring edition of Stone Soup, one question plagued me.
How can I find the time to write an article designed to build excitement about the new teen center while simultaneously
paying tribute to the rich history of youth and teen programs that have enriched our Valley for years? The answer was clear,
I can’t. With a full plate of duties around the Community Center and a healthy side portion of responsibilities for ramping
up to the much anticipated Gym and Loft opening, I simply do not have time to research this Valley’s afterschool history
properly in order to pay it the respect that it is due. So, I followed the example of the rugged, pioneering forefathers who
settled this great land of ours. I asked for help. The effect was magical, my good friends and co-workers Susan Shannon,
Heather Richardson and Jennifer Justice all stepped in to help to represent for the Teen/Youth Programs. Susan has written
an informative piece on its history. Jenny’s piece will update us on what we have been doing this with the teens this year.
Heather does a bit of predicting, giving us a tantalizing glimpse into the next few months and the fun events planned. It
just goes to illustrate, once again, the awesomeness of my co-workers and the beauty and dedication of this community.
Valley teens attend the Bring the Noise event in San Francisco
on Martin Luther King Day.
This school year, we, the Loft Crew (Jenny, Patrick,
and Heather), have put on three exciting events. In late
September we had an after school field trip to the North
Gate Mall with 17 middle school students participating in some “retail therapy.” In recent weeks, the Loft
staff have been pleasantly surprised by the turnout and
excitement of our Valley teens at our two startup events
for The Loft. On the eve of the Inauguration of Barak
Obama, we were thrilled to see 20 Valley teens arrive to
attend the Bring the Noise event at the Herbst Theatre
in San Francisco. Over the next two hours, civil rights
workers and Bay Area teens spoke of their struggles with
race as our teens conscientiously sat and absorbed these
painful, yet inspiring stories. Not one teen texted, or used
their IPOD or chatted with their neighbor. This group
represented the Valley in a stellar manner and later communicated how much they enjoyed this event.
On December 13, we kicked off a Loft Meet and Greet
where the Community Center was flooded with excited teens. It was on this night that Valley teens enjoyed a great spaghetti dinner, cheered one another on in a talent show, participated in a focus group about what they wanted in their teen
center and won great prizes donated by local businesses. The buzz is up and the teens are interested, and, more importantly,
invested. It is a great feeling and great beginning of The Loft.
What’s In Store
As for the future, the Loft may not yet be up and running in the Gym, but our team is strong and in action! In the coming
months, the Loft will be hosting several super fun and exciting events, including “Scaryteen Movie Night” on March 20, a
trip to Cal Skate on May 23, and the “Loft Olympics” on June 6, as well as other movie nights and a girl’s night! As we get
closer to the opening day of the Loft facility, Patrick, Jenny and Heather are fine tuning the daily runnings of the Loft and
what each week will look like. We look forward to our Valley adults sharing their time and expertise, and offering classes
and workshops, so come share your ideas!!!
Inside!
(continued on page 2)
Performing Arts & Events Community News
Maurice Del Mue Galleries, Page 9
Live at the Center, Pages 10-11
St. Pat’s Talent Show, Page 10
Alice Di Micele, Earth Day, Page 11
40th Anniversary Spring Art Show, Page 11
Gallery Art Shows, Page 11
Valley Resource Center
Horizons, Page 4
Ready Set Go, Page 5
Senior Lunch, Page 4
Marin Women’s Study, Page 4
SGV Planning Group, Page 6
Reduced School Funding, Page 6
Spirit Rock, St. Cecilia’s, Gan HaLev,
Presbyterian Church, Page 7
LEAP Bookstock, Page 9
Lion’s Blood Drive, Page 16
Wilderness Way Art Shows, Page 16
San Geronimo Valley Community Center
PO Box 194, San Geronimo, CA 94963
The Usual
Community Comes
Through in Hard Times
by Joseph Piekutoski
When I was in my late teens I became
the consumate pessimist during the
Holiday season; a source of negativity at gatherings and the naysayer of
materialism. At this point I felt people
should be nice to each other all the
time and not just for a few months
out of the year. There was so much
goodness I refused to see.
In my earlier 20’s I gained some new
perspectives with the help from of the
community I lived in. Here I learned
that negativity, whether in a form of selfrighteousness or not, was negativity and
Holiday packages awaiting
affected me and all those around me. So
distribution.
much for the pouty artist image I had
refined earlier on in life. In this stage, I was the resurrected Scrooge. Over
just as much one way as I was the other before. The Golden Rule was my
mantra and I still did not get it. I felt to “do unto others” was an insurance
policy that would have people obligated to treat me well. One Christmas
I went all out, sending tons of handmade cards to everyone I knew. That
Christmas day no one called and I got few replies in general. The floor of
holiday spirit came out from underneath me and I sank into a self-absorbed
depression miserably lying on the couch despondent for hours. Kris, my
partner at the time, came in and dumped cold water all over me to thank
me for ruining her day. She was right; I need a slap to wake up to reality. In
my self-centeredness I over looked “as you would have them do unto you”;
somehow I missed that it has very little to do with the other person. The
reason one is good is that it feels good and feeds oneself with that goodness.
Once you start eating that fruit, more goodness is produced. The reward is
internal; when one searches the external world for the reward it is never as
juicy or fulfilling.
(continued on page 15)
Annual St. Patrick’s Day
Talent Show, Saturday,
March 14 at the
Woodacre Improvement
Club — see page 10.
Sol Bice performs with Tom Huebner
and Dottie Escue of “Tom Huebner
and the Real Deal” in 2008.
Rolling Stones, Page 2
Volunteer Profile: Frank Binney, Page 3
Milestones, Page 5
Fund Development Report, Page 8
Thank You, Donors, Page 8
Alphabet Soup, Page 12
Valley Kids Club, Page 13
Wilderness Calls, Page 14
ECR WSS
Postal Customer
Valley Environmental News, Page 14
Community Wellness, Page 14
Movie Muse, Page 15
Disaster Council, Page 16
Community Calendar, Page 20
Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Lagunitas, CA
Permit No. 1
Rolling Stones
“The Loft” (continued from page 1)
Where We’ve Been
By Dave Cort, Executive Director
Two thousand nine has gotten off to a rousing start. The
Obama inauguration potluck breakfast went beyond our
wildest expectations. I was stunned when close to 150 people packed the Valley Room by 8:30 am. We had Valley residents of all ages; babies with their parents, elementary school
students with their teachers, teens, adults, and seniors, a real
cross-section of the Valley. There were many people that I
knew and some people who came to the Community Center
for the first time. Local folks really wanted to experience the
inauguration with their community. Fortunately, we made
the internet connection at 7:00 am. We had a steady stream
until close to the end of the ceremony. The food was incredible. People baked delicious homemade muffins, tasty fruit salads, eggs — we had a real feast.
My hope is that all of this optimism continues and we’ll have an equally exciting celebration
in January of 2012.
Another first for the Community Center was a family ski trip to Sugar Bowl. We took
advantage of a teacher workday on a Monday to fill a charter bus from Marin Airporter with
snowboarders and skiers. We could not have picked a more perfect day for the adventure.
The day before our ski trip, it snowed over a foot at Sugar Bowl. As part of the ski adventure
we had a lot of families, one dad brought his 7 year old daughter who had never seen snow
before. She had a great time skiing, throwing snowballs, and other fun snow activities. The
highlight of my day was skiing with my son Daley and a group of 15 Middle School students
and their parents. The kids were really pushing the adults down the slopes. I maxed out my
52 year old body to keep up with them. My muscles were aching for 3 days after the trip and
I loved it. The ski trip was a complete success and we plan to do it again.
Along with these positive community activities, families in the Valley continue to face
many challenges. The increased food bank demand, which we experienced in November and
December, has continued into the New Year. Families for the first time, are coming to the
food bank and requesting scholarships for childcare and enrichment programs for their children. There are many individuals on unemployment, families with no health insurance, and
unpaid bills for rent, propane, and auto repairs piling up. There is increased homelessness in
West Marin. We participated in a County wide homeless count on January 22. Of the 60
people who we surveyed 20 were homeless (see below). Hard to believe.
The Community Center Board of Directors and staff are committed to supporting these
families by providing food, referrals to other agencies, and a caring hand.
Throughout this edition of Stone Soup there is lots of information about our Valley.
Check out the entire paper. To connect with me about the new Gym/Teen Center or any
other Community Center activities email [email protected] or call 488-8888 ext. #224.
FLASH AT PRESS TIME: The San Geronimo Valley Gym Committee, The Lagunitas
School District, and the Community Center have just received a generous grant of $100,000
from the Scorpio Rising Fund. This grant will provide the funds to bring phase 3 of the Gym and
Teen Center’s construction close to completion in the late spring or summer. Community donations
of money and volunteering are still warmly accepted. Please contact Dave Cort at [email protected]
or 488-8888 ext. #224. We deeply appreciate this significant grant from the Scorpio Rising Fund.
Marin County
2009 Point-in-Time Homeless Persons Count
Agency Name: Location of Count:
Date of Count: AGENCY SPECIFIC RESULTS
San Geronimo Valley
January 22, 2009
RESULTS
Number of surveys collected:
Total homeless (inclusive of all household members)
Precariously housed (inclusive of all household members)*
Housed**
57
36
24
26
Homeless
Number of Adults
Number of Children (under 18)
29
7
Where they are staying (Homeless)
Car/van/rv or other vehicle
3
Outdoors
2
Renting floor or closet space
2
House-sitting
3
Temporarily with family or friends
10
House or boat with no utilities
1
Top three stated reasons for Homelessness
Lost Job
No Income
Lack of affordable housing
* Precariously housed includes any surveyed person who identified that they were having difficulty paying for
housing and/or utilities and/or anyone living in doubled up accommodation.
**Housed: any person surveyed in secure housing.
Data contained in the report reflects Count surveys collected at the indicated agency stated above. Complete
count results are available on request.
Page 2 SGV Community Center Stone Soup
How we care and provide for our local
youth has always been at the top of the
priority list of our Valley population. The
ever-changing local demographics have
created and dissolved numerous playgroups, pre-schools and programs for all
ages of youth. The San Geronimo Valley
Community Center has been associated
with Childcare and Youth Programs for
several decades, but it was only in 2003
that the SGVCC took the afterschool
childcare programs under their umbrella.
Heather Richardson at December’s Loft Night
For many years prior to 2003, the SGVCC
Meet and Greet.
partnered with Community Alliance. After
school care was provided for elementary
grade kids at Children’s Circle, now Valley Kid’s Club, then held at the upper campus. The
early nineties brought the first incarnation of the Teen Center, then called the Niner’s Club,
as one had to be at least nine to participate. The Niner’s Club was held in a small garage-sized
building next to the Community Center. After a few years, The Niner’s Club moved into a
portable on the edge of the Lagunitas Campus. It was out of this newly named Teen Center
that the Beanfest and the Student Meeting were born.
The relationship between Community Alliance and the Community Center was a good working relationship and upheld solid youth programs. Yet, in 2003, just as the school season was
starting, Community Alliance unexpectedly shut their doors just after the start of the new
school year, leaving the Community Center holding the fate of the after school programs.
After a few emergency meetings, it was unanimously decided to oversee the operations of the
childcare programs. The staff hit the ground running, learning about licensing requirements
and how to implement the brass tacks of running such programs. The Teen Center and Valley
Kid’s Club were held in various locations over the years, working closely with the Lagunitas
School District to prevent loss of service. The successful and ever growing Summer Camps
emerged at this time, as well as many of the after school classes.
Now, six years later, the SGVCC has successfully honed the art and craft of childcare, and is in
the dawn of a new era, about to recreate itself again in the creation of The Loft, opening in the
new gym sometime in 2009.
So here we are standing firmly on the history of this Valley’s commitment to taking care of its
young people and using that foundation to build a new and hip space for teens present and
future. The Loft will undoubtedly be a fun, innovative and inspiring space enticing our community’s youth to dream, create and have fun.
40th Anniversary Issue
We are preparing our special 40th Anniversary issue
of Stone Soup to be published on about June 1. If you
have a Valley story or photo you’d like to share, we’d
love to include it. Drop it by the Center or email Dave
at [email protected].
Deadline for submissions is April 23.
Updating the Resource Guide
As most Valley residents know, the Community
Center publishes the San Geronimo Valley
Resource Guide at approximate five year intervals. The Guide contains valuable information
on most aspects of the San Geronimo Valley
— schools, open space and trails, history,
transportation, emergency procedures, etc., as
well as business listings and phone numbers of
Valley residents. The latest Resource Guide was
published three years ago, which means that
the next edition will be out in roughly two years. So, preliminary discussions regarding content, phone listings, and updating material will take place later this year.
If you are interested in having input and/or in working on the next edition, please contact: [email protected] You will be notified when the initial discussions take place.
Meanwhile, if you are new to the Valley, or lost your copy of the Guide, or simply want an
additional copy, please come by the Community Center and ask for one.
Making a Difference —
Frank Binney
On December 11, the Board of Directors of the San
Geronimo Valley Community Center gathered to honor
retiring member Frank Binney and to acknowledge his
many years of volunteer service to the Center. An active
and proactive member, Frank participated in many positive innovations and changes during his tenure, and served
as Treasurer. He will be missed at the Board meetings, but
we know we’ll be seeing a lot of Frank in his many volunteer capacities throughout the Valley and beyond.
“Don’t underestimate the power of people who join
together to accomplish amazing things.” With these
words, President Obama urged all Americans to make
Photo by Debra Amerson.
a difference in their communities by volunteering for
local projects and activities.
A San Geronimo Valley resident who is making this difference is Frank Binney. Moving to
the Valley in 1992, Frank quickly found many volunteer opportunities. Due to his love of nature
and equestrian skills, he became involved in a project counting the elk herd at Point Reyes
National Seashore, which he continues to do, as well as leading tours to see whales, elephant
seals, and plovers.
Designated as an Environmental Steward, Frank also became involved in the Marin Open
Space District, as well the San Geronimo Valley Planning Group, of which he served as President
and Treasurer during the very difficult era of the French Ranch debates. During the 1990s,
Frank joined the San Geronimo Valley Senior Housing Association (now San Geronimo Valley
Affordable Housing Association) which was responsible for building six affordable homes for
seniors in Forest Knolls, and which is trying to expand affordable housing in the Valley. In addition to the Community Center Board, Frank has served with distinction on the Board of the
San Geronimo Land Trust, and is the current President of the Lions Club. He remains actively
involved with the San Geronimo Horseman’s Association.
Asked with awe why he does all of these things, Frank responded: ”I feel that I am doing
something meaningful, that I am making a difference.” Thank you, Frank Binney, for all that
you do. You have made a tremendous difference for all of us living in the Valley.
VOLUNTEERS
We would like to thank the special people who add so much. Volunteers make an important
contribution to the Center’s success! We appreciate all of your hard work! We apologize if anyone was accidentally left off the list. Please let us know and we will add your name!
Christin Anderson
Dave Anderson
Kristi Arroyo
Manny Arroyo
Cathy Bailey
Amy Baker
John Beckerley
Emily Bender
Paul Berensmeier
Roman Brockley
Lia Byrd
Tim Cain
Nikki Calmell
Julie Chasen
San Geronimo Valley/
Nicasio 4-H Club
Paul Cohen
Daley Cort
Howie Cort
Janet Cort
Sadie Cort
Sarah Desaussure
Julie Egger
Guardino Family
Dwayne Foster
Cheryl Fromholzer
David Glaubinger
Kathleen Glaubinger
Susan Goldsborough
Cullen Gray
Leslie Gray
Olivia Gray
Lilah Greenberg
Rich Greenberg
Zoe Harris
Jesse Hicks
Katherine Howard
Alex Hughes
Chloe Hult
Sarah Illberg
Jack Irving
Kyle Isaacs
Judy Jessop
Maddie Julin
Mika Kakin
Laurie Klien
Margaret Krauss
Rick Krebs
Danya Lebell
Skye LePonto
Justice Levine
Alexander McQuilkin
Michael McQuilkin
Will McQuilkin
Diana Muhic
Linda Nave
Maya Normandi
Traver Normandi
Barbara Olney
Anny Owen
Dave Parle
Sally Parle
Kelly Pennypacker
Sally Pennypacker
Emma Purkey
Sean Queens
Molly Rea
Cian Richardson
Sam Rippee
Nancy Roen
Devi Rose
Jasmine Sagebiel
Sam Salin
Sierra Salin
Rosemary Sharp
Terry Shea
Nichole Snebold
Jessie Strassen
Sean Sullivan
Hana Wimberely
Pnina Zoharah
Become an SGVCC volunteer!
Thousands of people enjoy the services provided at San Geronimo Valley Community Center
and we need volunteers to help us keep our programs running smoothly. We love working
with youth and adults who have community service hours as well as others who like to volunteer on a one-time or ongoing basis. Below is a list of some of the volunteer opportunities
that we provide. If you have any other questions about volunteer opportunities at the Center,
please call 488-8888 and just ask. We always could use a hand around the center whether it’s
light maintenance, organization duties or just lending a hand with daily activities.
Food Bank
We can use a hand on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month. At 10:30 we receive our
food deliveries. This opportunity requires heavy lifting and a good back.
Facilities
We always need a little help keeping the Center beautiful! There are landscaping, light carpentry, and general maintenance needs that are always cropping up.
SEE AN EVENT YOU ESPECIALLY LIKE?
We are always looking for people to help with events. We need community hosts to email your
network (personally invite 10 friends to come), we need volunteers to set up chairs, design
and/or hand out flyers, sell cookies, run sound, etc., etc. If you see an event you are especially
excited about and want to get involved, we would love to hear from you!
MEET NEW PEOPLE FOR A GOOD CAUSE
The Arts & Events department is looking for friendly, outgoing people who like to meet new people
and go to events — to hand out flyers about the Community Center’s upcoming events. This is a
great way to get out in the community, attend interesting events, and meet new, exciting people. All
ages and types of people are welcome to participate. Let us know what kinds of events you like to
attend. Hannah has met hundreds of interesting people flyering and met her spouse while ushering!
STROLL IN POINT REYES STATION AND WEST MARIN FOR A GOOD CAUSE
We are looking for people who like to walk and enjoy window shopping or actual shopping
to help us get our event posters up in store windows in Marin. Let us know the neighborhood
you enjoy and get some exercise, find cool finds and meet interesting shop-owners and workers
while helping the Community Center and independent artists!
Edie Robinson Award
The Edie Robinson Community Service Award Committee would like to invite the San Geronimo
Valley community to participate in the selection of the 2008 and 2009 recipients of the Edie
Robinson Community Service Award. This is an opportunity for individuals and organizations to
honor a hard working SGV volunteer that has contributed their time selflessly and consistently.
The Edie Robinson Community Service Award was created in 1999 as a way of permanently honoring Edie’s many years of community service, and honoring residents who make outstanding long
term contributions to life in the San Geronimo Valley. The Award recognizes positive achievement,
devotion, and community building. Every second year, the Edie Robinson Community Service
Award Committee initiates a broad community nomination and decision process, to choose two
recipients, one for the current year and one for the year just ended.
Your nominations must be submitted to the ERCSA Committee by March 16, including a letter stating why your organization would like to honor this person. An award ceremony hosted
by the San Geronimo Valley Healthy Community Collaborative will take place in early June.
Please address your nomination letter to Diane Matthew, ERCSA Committee, P.O. Box 468,
Lagunitas, CA 94938.
Facility Rentals Available
For gatherings large and small, consider holding your next event
at the Community Center!
◆◆ Option A: Four-hour minimum rental of Valley Room, West Room, Lobby and
Kitchen starting at $250.
◆◆ Option B: Individual room rentals $30/hr, $25 each additional hour.
For more information, contact Patrick at 488-8888, #250, or [email protected].
Community Center Wish List
Why not help your favorite local nonprofit bloom with a tax deductible contribution of one of
these greatly needed items!
The After School Programs:
Our kids would greatly appreciate these items which would enrich their time with us!
• Basketballs, soccer balls, kick balls — in excellent condition, please!
The Office:
• Copy paper is always welcome, recycled if you can • Pens • Tape • Pencils
• Feng Shui consultant or organizer • Volunteers, web designers, events planners, special guest
hosts! • Air Purifier with ultraviolet capacity
The Arts/Events Department:
• A Power Amplifier • A-frame signs • Monitors • Wireless mic
The Kitchen:
• Strong volunteers to help move food at the Food Bank second and fourth Thursdays each month
• Teachers for a one-time cooking class!
• Food Bank Volunteers, skilled and unskilled.
The Loft
• Pool Table • Event Volunteers • Foosball Table
Don’t forget that donations of food are always welcome at the Food Bank, so organize a food
drive at your church, community or youth group today, and we’ll specially thank you in the
next issue of Stone Soup!
If you would like to help the Center by donating any of these items or becoming a volunteer,
please call Patrick at 488-8888, ext. #250 or email [email protected] look forward to
thanking you in the next issue of Stone Soup!
SGV Community Center Stone Soup Page 3
ValleyResource
Horizons
Center
by Suzanne Sadowsky
Director, Valley Resource Center
Is 60 Really the New 40?
If 60 is the new 40, that makes me 53. And now that I’m
in the eighth decade of my life, I find myself thinking more
and more about the process of aging.
Not too long ago, my niece, Nina — my brother’s daughter — asked me to send her something to put into an album
that she was putting together for her Dad’s 80th birthday.
My brother, Edward Sadowsky, a former New York City
Councilman who lives in Long Island City, turned 80 on
February 6. Her request got me looking for old pictures and thinking about the times of our lives,
the decades of the mid-twentieth century when we were growing up in Brooklyn.
This is part of the letter that I wrote to Ed for the album:
“When I was born on November 30, 1935, you were about the same age as my little
[granddaughter] Sadie is now. It was in the middle of the Great Depression and that summer, the Nuremberg Race Laws had been passed in Germany. Those were pretty scary
times, and while I was oblivious to them until some years later, the issues, the politics, and
the economic strife must have been a constant presence in our household....”
I found some old photos which I sent along to Nina as well. This picture of
me and my brother was probably taken in the summer of 1939. Another of the
old photos that I found was a picture of Ed and me and our parents taken on the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial during a family trip to Washington, D.C. in the
summer of 1940. The United States had not yet entered the war that was raging
in Europe and it was a year and a half before the bombing of Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941, just a week after my 6th birthday.
Those were our early years and that was my reality and now we are in
our later years with many decades of stories and pictures in-between.
So, is 60 really the new 40? I have to say, the answer is yes, no, and
maybe. When I talk with some of my oldest friends — the baby-boomers who are in their 60s
and those of us in our 70s, 80’s...and 90s — we find ourselves agreeing that we are nowhere
near as “old” as old people were when we were young. Maybe we’re kidding ourselves. We
think of ourselves as being stronger, more active, more youthful, less conservative, more tolerant and healthier than our parents’ generation at that age. Perhaps younger people today
don’t see us that way, but that’s how we see ourselves. We really can’t believe that we are “old”
because our thinking and our attitudes are young and we seem to be more in tune with people 20 and 30 years younger than ourselves than our parents were at our age. We use computers, surf the net, and enjoy “hanging out” with friends, near and far, on Facebook.
I lost two good friends this past year, one who was 75 and the other was 84, one
suffered from Parkinson’s for more than a decade and the other had Hepatitis-C, but both
lived engaged lives, despite their disabilities, until a few months before they passed away
when the ravages of their illnesses caught hold.
I have a friend in her 90s who has made a startling and complete recovery from a broken
hip that she suffered when she fell from a step stool last summer. She’s now up and walking on
her own again, watched the Super Bowl, reads the newspapers every day, watches CNN and reads
the New Yorker magazine every week. But on the other hand I have another friend in his early 60s
who has some disabilities that sometimes immobilize him.
Aging most definitely can have its challenges — but every stage of life has challenges.
Many of us over 60 have chronic illnesses, physical disabilities, arthritis, poorer hearing.
Many of us don’t have the physical strength that we used to, we tire more easily, yet sleep
poorly. Many of us need to take a variety of prescription medications for high blood
pressure, high cholesterol or other indicators that our bodies are just not functioning quite
as well as they did when we were in our 20s and 30s.
Quite a number of older people in our community are facing economic challenges — more
so now that the economy has plummeted and people have watched their nest eggs or annuities diminish. The lack of affordable housing has resulted in more of us having to move in with
friends or relatives on a temporary (or perhaps permanent) basis. Some of us have had our children and their families move away because they could not find affordable work force housing in
the Valley. Many of us can no longer drive, which here in the Valley makes for loneliness and isolation. Many need to depend on others to take them places for medical appointments, groceries,
to church or synagogue, or to a movie or other social and recreational activities.
When I think about aging, I think about all the words, expressions (and stereotypes) that we
have to describe this particular time of life and what they bring up: old, elder, sage, crone, senior
citizen, hag, elderly, mature, crotchety, aged, old and gray, getting on, not getting any younger,
one foot in the grave, and older than dirt (an expression I learned from my former husband).
Most of these make it seem that getting old is something that we don’t want to look forward to.
But to my mind, not only is getting old a lot better than the alternative, it can also be a very fruitful time of life — a time of ripening, when the fruit on the vine turns sweet.
Because of declining attendance, in mid January the County discontinued the lunch program which ran for several decades at the Woodacre Improvement Club. I am delighted that
we can now have the Thursday Lunch here at the Community Center. (See box below.) Our
hope is that this more central location and new programs will attract more people. We want
our Thursday Lunch to be a time when this new generation of wise women and men can come
together, not only to share a meal, but to share their stories, their dreams and memories, their
history, and their wisdom, with one another — and with younger people who are interested
in knowing what life was like way back then in the 20th Century. We’ll have music, speakers,
health screenings, and other things that we decide to have to make this new program a vital
part of the Community Center’s programs and services.
Let’s Do Lunch
Last month the Community Center began hosting a weekly luncheon program for seniors. The
lunches are free for anyone 60 years of age and over; there is a suggested voluntary donation of $2
per person. Guests who are under 60 are welcome to come at a cost of $6 per meal.
The lunch program is on Thursdays from 12:00–2:00 pm. At some of the lunches the
Community Center is planning to offer entertainment, speakers, health screenings, information on community events and resources, board games or other activities along with the
meals. Reservations for lunch are needed a week in advance.
We’re excited about this new program to serve people in the Valley.
For more information, to make lunch reservations, or to volunteer to help with the Senior
Lunch program, please call Suzanne Sadowsky at 488-8888, ext. #251 or e-mail her at
[email protected].
Marin Women’s Study —
Breast Cancer Research
Enrollment Ending Soon — Help to Increase West Marin Participation!
The Marin Women’s Study (MWS), the local breast cancer research project being conducted
by Marin County Department of Health & Human Services (MCDHHS) in partnership with
many local agencies and researchers, will be ending enrollment by late spring 2009. This study was
launched in November 2006 and to date has 14,000 Marin County women enrolled and has collected 5000 saliva samples. This is an amazing accomplishment and we are so grateful to all the women
who have participated by filling out the questionnaire at the time of their mammogram and donating
a saliva sample. The goal is to enroll 20,000 women so we still have a ways to go. Participation rates
vary across the different towns in Marin, and West Marin towns have had a lower participation rate
than other areas in Marin. We want the women of West Marin to be part of the study so that the
results of this important research will include your experiences!!! When you make an appointment
for a mammogram you will receive the MWS packet in the mail. If you do not receive this, call us
at 415-507-4077 to have one mailed to you. If you have had a mammogram in the last year and did
not complete the questionnaire it is not too late! If you want to fill out the questionnaire, call us and
we will send you the MWS questionnaire packet.
For more information: (415) 507-4077; www.marinwomensstudy.org
Food Bank
Emergency food distribution is offered two days a week, year round to needy Valley families.
Staffed by local volunteers, the Food Bank is supported by the Marin Community Food Bank
and by generous donations from local Valley people and service organizations. Information is
provided on nutrition and healthy eating, and, when available, fresh surplus produce from the
School-Community Garden is offered to Food Bank clients.
The Community Center Food Bank is open Monday from 9: 00 am – 5:00 pm and Thursday
afternoons from 2:00–5:00 pm.
Ready Set Go:
Early Childhood Wellness Health Days
Programs Events, Resources,
Classes for Families with
Children Ages 0-5
By Alex Cusick
First 5 Valley School Readiness Program — Building Community for Families
with Children Ages 0 – 5
Once again the Valley School Readiness program has had a very busy winter! We had our second
Health Day during Toys and Joys sign ups. It was very successful with 70 families with children
under 5 attending and 27 adult flu vaccines given and 6 pediatric flu vaccines given. In December
we had a fun cookie decorating party for Dads and their children. In January, Kid Power provided a
very resourceful workshop for parents and their children on how to be safe. And in February, we had
our annual Generations Valentine’s Tea Party for grandparents and children 5 and under. We also had
our third Health Day in conjunction with the new Senior Luncheons.
New families continue to come to our Tuesdays and Thursdays playgroups, and friendships
between kids and parents alike are forming! That is so special in these trying times! Please
remember to ask our Family Advocates, Heather and Jenny, if you need any community
resource referrals or information – such as cheaper health insurance, dentists, doctors, food
bank, WIC, classes, workshops, county services, etc. They are a wealth of knowledge!
Below are some of the events happening in the School Readiness Program this Spring (All events and
activities are FREE. For more information call 488-8888 #209 or email [email protected] ):
Ongoing
Valley Rainbow Playgroup
Valley Rainbow Playgroup is for families and caregivers with children 0-5 years old. Free play,
art projects, parachute play, books, music and FUN!!! Please come and meet your Valley neighbors and have your children socialize and have fun! Look for email announcements and flyers
for special events at Playgroup this Spring such as Arts and Crafts Day, Music Together Day,
and special cooking events!
Tuesdays and Thursday 10:00 am – Noon
Room 9
FLAGship Bus
The Marin Literacy Program’s F.L.A.G.ship (bus) is at the San Geronimo Valley Community
Center’s parking lot. This wonderful resource is for families with children from 0 to 5 years.
FREE storytimes, games, puppets, puzzles, music and lot of other fun school readiness activities
are presented to the children — YES, this is for ALL AGES through 5! Brochures about adult
and child health and education issues are available. All the services are free to participants.
Every other Wednesday 12:30 – 2:00 pm
SGVCC Parking Lot
March
Keeping the Romance Alive Parent Ed — For Women Only!
New babies, young kids, schedules, jobs, stress, economy, etc. etc. etc. — where is the
romance? How do we keep it alive and well? Dr. Leah Millheiser Jern will give us moms helpful tips on keeping the home fires burning. A candid workshop on discussing all your burning
questions for women only!
TBA
Room 10
2008 & 2009 Babies of the Valley Blessing Party
Calling ALL babies born in Nicasio and San Geronimo Valley in 2008
and 2009 to a special “Spring Blessing Party.” Activities include a special
blessing, family photos, group photos, informational tables, a baby signlanguage class, a special art project, FREE food and FREE give-a-ways!
Bilingual and free! Come meet other moms and dads and learn more
about our wonderful baby community!!! Babies in the belly welcome too!!
Sunday, March 28
Room 9 and outside
April/May
Parents Night Out
Lane Arye with daughter Nika at 2008 Baby
Blessing Party.
The San Geronimo Valley Community Center’s First 5 & Valley Kids
Club are offering a night out in April and May. Go out! Stay in! Eat & Be Merry! Without
Your Children!!! Drop your kids off in room 9 for Dinner, a Movie, Art and Games and a
“Make your own Treat” evening. For more information, please call Julie @ 488-0688;
[email protected] or Alex @ [email protected].
Friday, April 3 and Saturday, May 9 from 6:30 – 10:30 pm
$20 for one child, and $15 for each additional sibling.
Clothing, Toys, and Used Sports Equipment SWAP
Bring all those old clothes, gently used toys, and used kids’ sports equipment to our HUGE
Spring SWAP! You may even find something to take home too!!
Saturday, April 18, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Outside Room 9
(Continued next column)
We are very lucky to collaborate with Coastal Health Alliance for special Health and Wellness
Days. A Nurse Practioner will be providing specific ages and stages information, be available to
answer questions and concerns, and give FREE screenings and immunizations.
4th Health Day Date and Time TBD 10:00 am – Noon
Room 9 and 10
Summer Bridge
If you have a child who is entering
Kindergarten in Fall 2009 in the Lagunitas
School District or Nicasio School, they are
invited to participate in our wonderful FREE
5 week pre-kindergarten summer program.
This is a great opportunity for the child to
gain school readiness emotionally, socially, and
physically (free health screenings provided)
before entering Kindergarten. For more information call 488-8888 #209.
Dates of the Program: June 29 – July 31,
Monday – Friday 9:00 am – Noon
Milestones
If you know of any significant celebrations, births, deaths, achievements, etc., please forward them to
[email protected] for publication in Stone Soup.
Congratulations to Andrew Giacomini who was honored as 2008 San Geronimo Valley Citizen
of the Year in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the Valley Gym Committee. This annual
Valley award is presented by the San Geronimo Valley Lions Club to a Valley resident whose
volunteer efforts have made a significant difference in the quality of life in our community.
Congratulations to Reuben Raffael, of Woodacre, who was included in a huge art exhibit in
Washington, D. C., with a giant poster that features Obama as a film-star-like “coming attraction.” He also printed commemorative Obama stickers sold at the exhibit “Manifest Hope:
DC.” Reuben persuaded his mother, artist Judy North of San Geronimo, to participate. She
contributed a large portrait painting of Barack and Michelle Obama.
Congratulations to educator and artist Connie Smith Siegel, of Woodacre, who recently published two books describing new approaches to learning in the visual arts, Spirit of Drawing
and Spirit of Color — Sensory Meditation Guides to Creative Expression.
Congratulations to Sarah Couvillon, of Forest Knolls who gave birth to Delilah Rose
Couvillon, on November 4, 2008 — Election Day! Her water broke in the early morning and
she went to the Community Center to vote while in labor. She gave birth in her home at right
around the time the election was decided.
Congratulations to Fred L. Berensmeier, Lagunitas artist, who will have a 50-year retrospective of his prints, collages and drawings in April at the Community Center. Reception will be
April 19, 4:00 – 7:00 pm.
Congratulations to Carol Normandi and Leisha Ayre of Woodacre whose group, Beyond
Hunger, co-founded with Laurelee Roark, has just celebrated its 20th Anniversary. Beyond
Hunger provides support groups for individuals with eating disorders, uses a non-diet
approach and addresses the cultural and psychological issues that underlie eating disorders and
related behavior. The group is showing a film America the Beautiful: Is America Obsessed with
Beauty? on March 12 at the Rafael Film Center.
Deepest sympathies to all friends and family of Kim Gale. Jeremy Kimball “Kim” Gale is now
at peace. For decades Kim volunteered to create the Community Center’s Holiday Art Festival
signs. Professionally, Kim worked as a graphic artist at the Bay Guardian. Kim was a long time
resident of Forest Knolls where he enjoyed visiting and dancing at Spec McAullife’s Bar and
the Papermill Creek Saloon. Kim was an avid fisherman and loved telling stories and being
surrounded by friends and family. Our condolences go out to Tasha, Chris, Ari, and Skylar
Pemberton and the entire Berardi Clan.
Deepest sympathies to all friends of Cheryl Little Deer. She passed on Sunday, January 25, in Lake
County. Many in the Valley knew her as a lively friend in West Marin, folk musician, and fierce
animal and human rights advocate. Locally, she raised and schooled her children, Django and Julia,
who died tragically several years ago. As anyone who met her even briefly will recall, Little Deer was a
feisty, outspoken, lively breath of fresh air. She will be buried in a family plot in Olema.
The Community Center received this e-mail from the Lawson-Hunt family which we take
pleasure in sharing with you.
Dear Suzanne, Dave, Hannah, Larry, Heather, Patrick, Joseph and everyone else who works so hard
at our community center.
Thank you for your continued efforts to help people make their lives better, you are a wonderfully compassionate group. Kelly and I are proud to support the center’s efforts. We believe in the
goals of the SGVCC and just wanted to send out our thanks for this sometimes thankless job.
By the way, the Inauguration Event yesterday was a huge hit, the doors were bursting, Wyatt
and I were thrilled to be part of that event. What a great idea to have the space for everyone to
gather and rejoice.
Happy Day
Kelly, Kelly Johnny, Summer and Wyatt
Making the Last Place Last
or
The Revitalization of the
Planning Group
But a fall meeting updating the community about the 1,000,000 gallon water tank
threatening a Woodacre ridgetop got people
energized. This evolved into memberships.
New members and committees reaffirmed
protecting our ridges, our rural character
and open space which motivated and guided
us in the 1970s but now the membership
wants to include addressing escalating environmental problems created by past actions.
by Jean Berensmeier
In mid-2008, there was no Steering Committee to oversee the Planning
Group, and no members, despite the fact that three committees were functioning very well. A few people suggested dissolving. Instead. . .
A work list includes:
Six months later, the Planning Group has 180 voting members and 9 Steering
Committee members with representatives from each village which hasn’t happened in seven years!
◆◆ The drought — water conservation —
desalination
The revitalization of the PG couldn’t come at a better time. New energy
and new members are reminiscent of the early 1970’s. At that time, our job
was to replace the adopted 1961 Master Plan for 20,000 people and 5,000
homes covering every ridge, hill and meadow down to the creeks and an enormous freeway. But with our supervisors’ support the ad hoc SGV Planning
Group worked five years, wore out two planners and created the Valley¹s first
Community Plan approved in 1977. It had three basic elements.
◆◆ Trails and Open Space
◆◆ Salmon Enhancement Plan — Creeks
◆◆ Wood smoke
◆◆ Development issues
◆◆ Wildfire — Vegetation Management —
Sudden Oak Death
◆◆ Septic issues
◆◆ Community Plan update
◆◆ A boundary line around each village.
◆◆ Web Site — email communication
◆◆ Restricted development outside of the villages to 1 house per 20 acres.
◆◆ Allowed no building on ridge tops.
But we quickly learned that the Plan could be manipulated, even ignored
so, in 1980, we became a watchdogging nonprofit organization. In 1997, we
amended the Plan to include information that described our watershed, the
plants, wildlife and endangered species in ways we couldn¹t have imagined in
1972. Unfortunately, the politics of this time caused ups and downs. A steady
decline reached the low point in 2008.
Valley Environmental Artists in front of Spirit Rock — symbol of the
Valley. (Photo by Paul Berensmeier.)
This is the last place.
There is nowhere else to go.
— Lew Welch
Reduced School Funding in California:
A Community Forum
By Steve Rebscher, Lagunitas School
Board of Trustees
Almost every day the newspaper brings more bad economic news for California’s schools.
With the most recent state budget, the financial health of our public schools seems at best to
be uncertain. Because the Lagunitas School District is so closely integrated in our community
it is important that everyone have the opportunity to understand how upcoming reductions in
funding might affect our schools and how we can continue to fulfill our mission of providing
high quality education through our unique programs. To this end, a financial update will be
presented during each monthly school board meeting (for the date, time and complete agenda
of each meeting, see our school website at http://lagunitas.marin.k12.ca.us). In addition, a
community forum was held January 27 to present what is currently known about pending
reductions and to solicit ideas of how we, as a community, can best minimize those impacts.
District superintendent Larry Enos led off the forum with a summary of anticipated
changes in school funding. It is now clear that all schools in California will see significant
reductions in revenue next year and quite probably in the current year. Because we are one of
the few districts in the state that receive funding directly from property tax revenue (a “basic
aid” district) we are protected from some, but not all, of these reductions. Unfortunately, being
a “basic aid” district also has some drawbacks during a widespread recession. Most notably, our
projected property tax growth is less than half of what it has been the past several years. To our
benefit, the district has set aside a reserve fund that far exceeds the minimal required level. The
careful use of this reserve will help to minimize the effects of short-term funding cuts.
During the second half of the forum we asked the question: How can we minimize the
effects of these reductions? Four groups of 8-12 parents, staff and concerned community
members met to discuss how our district’s priorities can best guide our decisions to meet
these challenges. Several immediate strategies to reduce expenditures were suggested by the
administration. These included freezing hiring, reducing substitute costs whenever possible,
and reallocation of general fund expenses to more restricted sources to release general funds
for other needs. The smaller discussion groups reiterated that our highest priorities should be
to protect the individuality of the four programs, to use our staff as efficiently as possible, to
work together to create new revenues and to take a long-term view of the changes we consider
in response to this relatively short-term challenge. Solutions generated in the small group
discussions included; increasing efficiency in the assignment of staff through job sharing, greater use of parents in the classroom, changing the configuration of grades 5-6 in elementary and
middle school programs; renting unused space in campus buildings and fields; temporary savings in staff cost through across the board reductions as opposed to layoffs; sharing enrichment
staff across programs; exploring ways to reduce transportation costs for special needs children;
renewing our effort to increase fundraising through cohesive district-wide strategies; offering
retirement incentives to staff and ensuring the renewal of our local parcel tax.
These ideas represent just a few of the many thoughtful suggestions discussed. We want
to thank each of you who participated in this forum. During the upcoming weeks these ideas,
and undoubtedly other creative solutions, will be developed further to create a strategy to deal
with our immediate financial obstacles. Your continued participation will help to direct this
process in ways that put our children first and maintain our educational priorities.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
The New Young Adult Program at Spirit Rock
By Heather Sundberg
There have always been young adults practicing at Spirit Rock. Like so many others, I started
my practice here in my late teens, attending Monday Night Classes with Jack Kornfield, and
eventually signing up for retreats. It’s a wonderful place to learn the benefits of meditation and
to develop mindfulness and compassion for myself and for others.
As our community ages, the question of the next generation in dharma is taking on increased
importance. Who will be the next generation at Spirit Rock and how will we support their
growth both in practice and in taking leadership roles?
The newly created Young Adult Program at Spirit Rock is answering these questions. Special
rates at selected retreats and day-long programs and scholarships can help young adults check
out Spirit Rock without burning a hole in their wallet. A new website with lots of information on how to get started at Spirit Rock and how to connect with local sitting groups can put
young adults in touch with people they can relate to.
And Spirit Rock is looking at how to involve young adults in building this program so it will meet
their unique interests and needs. If you’re interested in learning more about Spirit Rock’s young
adult program or know someone who is, visit www.spiritrock.org. A link to the young adult web
page is currently being featured on the Spirit Rock home page. There’s lots of great information to
help you connect.
St. Cecilia’s / St. Mary's
Rev. Cyril O’Sullivan
Upcoming Events:
We are all pilgrims sharing the path of discovery within communities. The recession hits everyone.
Ethically, how should we think what is happening to actual people and the budgets of hard pressed
families? What is the moral response to these hard times? The Government has bailouts, stimulus
packages, regulatory oversight. Recession causes poverty, incomes decline, job losses, investment
losses, retirement plans scuttled, not a mind considering personal anxieties, marital strains, etc.
Dealing with a recession is not the work of single organizations, but the local community, family,
extended families, businesses, offering a helping hand to hurting neighbors, as our ancestors lived in
tribal communities.
Lent and Easter Liturgical Schedule
Communal Penance Service, March 12, 7:15 pm, St. Cecilia’s.
Palm Sunday, April 5, St. Cecilia’s 9:30 am, St. Mary’s 11:15 am.
Holy Thursday, April 9, St. Cecilia’s 7:15 pm.
Good Friday, April 10, St. Mary’s 5:30 pm.
Holy Saturday Vigil, April 11, St. Cecilia’s 7:00 pm.
Easter Sunday, April 12, St. Cecilia’s 9:30 am, St. Mary’s 11:15 am.
St. Patrick’s Day Parish Celebration, March 7, St. Cecilia Parish Hall, 6:00 – 9:30 pm
Gan HaLev, The Jewish Congregation
of the San Geronimo Valley
GanHalev, the Jewish Congregation of the San Geronimo Valley, is now in our 16th year
of sharing education, tradition, and communal celebration. We are unaffiliated with any
organized branch of Judaism, but borrow from the beauty of each while mixing in our own
Valley haimishness. Everyone is invited to learn more about us, come to our events, send your
children to our Sunday School, and to visit our webiste, ganhalev.org. You can even leave us a
message at 488-4524.
Among our celebrations we are looking forward to this spring and summer are our annual
Purim Party, which will be Saturday, March 7, 5:00 pm at the Community Center; a Model
Passover Seder on Sunday, April 5, beginning at 10:00 am at the Community Center; and a
combined Sunday School commencement and Lag B’Omer festivity at Samuel P. Taylor State
Park on Sunday, May 17.
The Purim Party will feature great food, delicious hamentaschen, and both a Wine
Auction and a Kids Electronics Auction. Don’t miss the fun!
We’ll also be offering Adult Education classes, led by Rabbi Dan Kohn, on selected
Sunday mornings, as well as monthly pot luck Shabbats at congregants’ homes. Please call
488-4524 for more information.
Gan HaLev supports many local and regional non-profits both through our work
implementing the Marin Community Foundation’s Faith Initiative Grant and by direct donations. Some of our recent recipients include Valley Toys and Joys, the San Geronimo Valley
Community Center Food Bank, West Marin Senior Services, and the Dance Palace.
San Geronimo Community
Presbyterian Church
By Reverend Dr. John G. Scott, Pastor
Easter Celebrations at Presbyterian Church
The peak of the Christian liturgical year is Easter, the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. It is the centerpiece of Christian faith and also its biggest stumbling block, because it
is a matter of faith and acceptance, by its nature, offensive and impossible to prove scientifically. We can’t replay the videotapes of the original Easter; we can only hear it retold, and then
imagine its implications for a basically pagan world. We make the proclamation (that Christ is
alive), even though we don’t totally understand it.
Easter is not about coloring eggs, or cute little bunnies in the spring landscape. It is about
God’s ultimate confrontation of evil and the founding of a new community based on resurrection: the Church. Celebrate this mystery with us on April 12 at 6:30 am, outdoors, along with
folks from St. Cecilia’s Church, or at 11:00 am.
Fund Development Report
The San Geronimo Valley Community Center’s annual donor campaign takes place each
year from November 1st through January. The generous individuals, families, and businesses listed on this page of Stone Soup made a contribution in this time period. In a very
challenging financial year we are proud to report that our community members supported
the Center at the highest level in our history. The number of contributors were up and our
returning donors were able to sustain their contribution at the same or a higher level as the
previous year. For this we are extremely grateful. These funds enable the Center to offer the
level of programming that you are seeing throughout this issue of Stone Soup. Supporters
who contribute at the level of $500 or more become members of our Community Center
Council of Major Donors. Please contact me if you would like to learn more about the
Council, you would like to donate an auto or real estate, or you would like to discuss a gift
to a special program at the Community Center.
You can contact me at [email protected] or at 488-8888 ext.#224.
Sincerely,
Dave Cort
THANK YOU!
Individual Donors
Susan & Armon Allison
Debra Amerson
Kristina & Manny Arroyo
Kathleen & John Beckerley
Gregory Bentley & Nancy Carlyle
Lee & Jean Berensmeier
Geoffrey Bernstein & Laura Lambe
David Berry & Kamala Geroux-Berry
Tim & Patty Blain
Bill & Patty Blanton
Christina Blomberg
Dawn & Dana Boardman
Jeff & Antia Bogart
Charles Bookoff & Susan Stein
Virginia Boone
Edna Brennan
Martin & Mary Ann Brenner
Nancy K. Brown
Tim & Gay Feldberg Cain
Pat Carlone
Terry Carlson
Thomas & Beth Carmody
John Carroll & Monique Paltrineri
Michael & Shelly Chadwick
Judith Champagne & Richard Debrito
Blake & Mary Chapman
Torri & Gary Chappell
Lynn & Alan Charne
Jeanine Chavin
Laurie Chorna
Denise Durling & John Colwell
Lyda Cort & Andy Stadler
Dave & Howie Cort
Anthony Costa
John Costain & Gail Weinheimer
Marian Cremin & Albert DeSilver
Francine Cunnie
Craig & Pao-Pao Curran
Anne Darragh & David Ford
George & Lois Davison
Maxine & Tom DeFelice
Anne Rosalie Delaney
Marc Detraz
Ernest & Debra DiBenedetto
Susan & Darol Dick
Margret Donahue
Harold & Katherine Drady
Naomi Draper, Feldenkreis
Dossie Easton
Walter & Barbara Echo
Peter Edwards
Christopher & Krysten Elbers
Steve & Karen Evans
A. Farley
Saul & Gloria Feldman
Jeffrey Felix
Bernard & Barbara Felling
Jane Bland
Sandra & Daniel Fitting
Gerald & Geraldine Fleming
Paul Flowerman & Georgiana Hernandez
Ellen Floyd
Mary Frank, Universal Green Marketing
Leslie Franklin
Cheryl Fromholzer
Ashley Fullerton, Grass Roots Landscaping
Stephanie Furniss & Marshall Johnson
Teryl George
Andrew & Susi Giacomini
David Goldman & Lisa Cort
Susan & William Goldsborough
Susan Goldsborough
Burton Greene
James Griffiths & Muniera Kadrie
Jenny Groat
Sherrie & Gary Grossi
Janet & Richard Grossman
Carolyn Grossman
Charles Hahn
Nanette & Brent Harris
Richard & Carol Helzberg
Pic Hill
Anne Hillsley
Jim Hobart & Susan Evans
Barbara Hoefle & Debra Amerson
Don & Shirley Holmlund
Margaret Hosmer & Jeff Hennier
Elizabeth Huning
Gael Hunt
Sally Hutchinson & Larry Enos
Elizabeth Imholz & Owen Clapp
Alex Kadrie & Janath Berry-Kadrie
John Kaufman & Katie Rasmussen
Henry & Kathleen Kelman
Steve & Jean Kinsey
Patricia & George Kiska
Linda Klein & David Fisher
Larry & Laurie Klein
David Knepler & Karen Koenig
Mary Anne Kolanoski
Jack & Liana Kornfield
Marshall Krause
Margaret & Kit Krauss
Marsha Krebs
Charles Kuhn & Carol Johnson
Mary & Wilfred LaFranchi
Susan Lahr
Susan Landes
Kelly Lawson & Kelly Hunt-Miceli
Sarah Leach & Kenneth Drexler
Donald & Susan Leonard
Don Leonard
Stephen & Mimi Lewis
Christopher Lind-White, M.D.
Abby Lipman & Bill Painter
Richard Lohman
Kathleen Lowenthal
Denise Lussier
Jonathan Mahrer & Deborah Genzer
Laurel Marinelli
Laura Marks
Jeanne Marlow
Ian & Diane Matthew
Mary McCaffrey
Joyce McClain
Peter McConnell
Brian McLachlan & Amanda Smith
Lynette McLamb & Todd Steiner
Martha McNeil
Marty & Bud Meade
James Miller
Christine & Eric Morey
Carol & Guido Mori-Prange
Tori Muckerman
Margaret Murphy
Janet Myers
David Nakagawa
Annette Lynch & Brian Neill
Allan Newman & Donna McGuinn
Jennifer & Dana Noland
Carol & Jim Normandi
Margaret Ann O’Brien
Aidan O’Sullivan, The Construction
Connection
EA Ohanneson
Koorosh Ostowari & Florence Schneider
Darrell V. Parker
Helen Patterson
Mark Phillips & Roberta Seifert
Scott & Diane Phillips
Lynnel Powell
Gary & Kimberly Purdue
Cindy & Jim Purkey
C. Delos Putz
Shanna & Andrew Rader
Margaret Rathmann & John Putnamwick
James & Jane Rawlinson
Steve & Carol Rebscher
Lynn & R.H. Reeser
Donna Renaud & Mary Newman
Helen Richfield & Russell Hendlin
John C. Rodgers
Nancy Roen
Edo Rosenberg
Suzanne Sadowsky
Daisy & Richard Sagebiel
Margaret Sapinosa
John G. Scott
Ethel Seiderman
Micki & Marty Seltzer
Richard & Ann Seramin
Joe & Rose Mary Sharp
Anastasia Sheldon & Jay Philip Trimble
Joy Sheppard
Laura Sherman
Dave Shore
Robert Shoup & Elizabeth Montague
Susan Simpson & Lee Johnson
Cynthia Sirkin
J. Gregory & Maureen Young Smith
Peter Smith & Jennifer Troutner
John Smithyman
Lynn Smoles
Alan & Page Spain
James Staley, Good Buy Sweet Prints
W.H. Stevens & Erin Lyons
Sean Sullivan & Kathryn Callaway
Mary & Steven Swig
Adrienne Terrass & Aldo L. Tarigo, Jr.
Todd Tash & Karen Wilson
Aneice Taylor
William Teufel
Dennis & Jody Thompson
Patricia Lynn Thorndike
Nancy Tingley
June Tolbert
Marcus Uzilevsky
Thomas & Amy Valens
Ted Van Midde, III, Van Midde & Son
Concrete
Gus Varetakis & Janice Hilsman
Barbara & David Walkup
Joseph & Geraldine Walsh
Bonnie & Victor Warren
Constance C. Washburn
Carol Whitmire, Consulting
Carole Williams
Robin & Michael Williams
Royden & Kathryn Winchester
David Winter & Veronica Painter
Charles & Judy Wirtz
Susan & Philip Witt
Siu-Mei Wong
Helen Zucker
Business Sponsors
Allstar Organics, Marty Jacobson & Janet
Brown
Bogos (Paul) Torikian & Christina Torikian
Melissa Bradley Real Estate
Veronica Buros-Kleinberg, Untraditional Pet
Portraits
City Spirit Natural Pages
Crosse Landscaping
Dahlia’s Tax Service
DataLode, Inc
Leona George-Davidson, Business Support
Double Rainbow Ice Cream
Dovetail Decision Consultants, Stephanie
OBrien
Evergreen Tree Service, Jeffrey H. Smith
Friends of Steve Kinsey
Good Earth Natural Foods
Heritage Landscapes, Janet Gross
Lagunitas Grocery, Hanna & Maura Anki
Lila Friday and Associates
David & Veronica Litvak, D&V Enterprises
Lucasfilm Foundation
Dave Shore, Marin Financial Advisors
McPhail Fuel Company
Mill Valley Middle School
Mill Valley Services
Nonpareil Construction
Open Classroom
Pennypacker Drake Home Building, Inc.
Schwab Charitable Fund
Serenity Knolls
San Geronimo Valley Lions Club
St. Cecilia’s CYO
Universal Green Marketing, LLC
Wordsworth
Jeffrey A. Bjork, Private Mortgage Banker,
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage
Current Grantors
Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation
Burkhart Fund
Community Development Block Grant
Community Fund
Endurance Fund
Freitas Foundation
Marin Arts Council
Marin Community Foundation
Marin County Department of Health and
Human Services
Marin First 5 - Children and Families
Commission
Parent Services Project
Presbyterian Church USA
Presbyterian Hunger Project
Tamalpais Bank
Hilda Thompson Fund
United Way of the Bay Area
West Marin Community Resource Center
The Maurice Del Mue
Galleries
By Larry Rippee
Visual Arts Coordinator
The first thing any visitor to the San Geronimo Valley Community Center is apt to see on
entering the Center’s lobby is a striking, fully restored mural painted by renowned California
artist, Maurice Del Mue.
This year the Center is celebrating its 40th anniversary. To commemorate this event and
honor Del Mue’s mural, the SGVCC Board has elected to formally name the Center’s exhibit
spaces the Maurice Del Mue Galleries.
Del Mue painted the idyllic scene of a boy and two girls in a fanciful rural, faintly West
Marin setting, in 1934 under the direction of the Works Progress Administration (WPA was
the Roosevelt administration’s agency to provide “economic relief ” {that is to say— jobs} to the
legions of unemployed during the Great Depression).
This classic mural languished for years, diminished by time, accumulated dirt and grime
and the scraps and scratches inflicted by decades of students and visitors passing through the
hallway of the former Lagunitas School.
In 1969, when the Community Center was established in the space vacated by the
Lagunitas School, Del Mue’s mural was already 35 years old.
In 2004 a community effort instigated by Richard Lang, Judith Selby Lang, Susan
Lahr and other members of the community resulted in enough funding to afford a top-notch
professional restoration.
Since the mural’s rebirth, it has become the focal piece of the Center and perhaps its most
distinctive feature.
Upon returning to San Francisco, Del Mue began establishing his reputation as a landscape artist and exhibited extensively. He joined forces with Piazonni and other San Francisco
artists to form the California Society of Artists as a countermeasure to the more conservative
policies of the San Francisco Art Association.
Unlike many of his fine art colleagues, Del Mue took a day job. Del Mue worked as a
newspaper staff artist at various times for the San Francisco Evening Post, San Francisco Call and
San Francisco Chronicle. Del Mue would put in tough 10 hour days as a staff artist then go
home, take a nap, and spend several more hours painting.
Later, he branched out into the then new field of billboard art, working for the Foster &
Kleiser Billboard Company. He’s credited for designing the product imagery associated with
Hills Brothers Coffee, Southern Pacific Railroad, Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, and Schillings
Coffee. (Del Mue’s move into commercial art caused a bit of a stir among local art lovers. One
art appreciator called Del Mue’s conversion to billboard artist “…an AWFUL blow to art !”).
In 1924, Maurice and Valentine moved to Forest Knolls and bought a small house on
Resaca Road. For many years, Del Mue commuted from Forest Knolls to Foster & Kleiser in
San Francisco and, of course, continued to paint. He retired in 1941 as a commercial artist.
Maurice and Valentine never had children but showered affection on their dogs. They supplied
ample quantities of birdseed for the visiting birds and overall seemed to cherish their life in the
Valley. Valentine died in 1942. Maurice Del Mue died on January 24, 1955.
Throughout his long career, he was a member of the Society of Marin Artists, San
Francisco Art Association, American Artists Professional League, and the Bohemian Club. He
exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, San Francisco Museum of Art Inaugural (1935),
Golden Gate International Exposition (1939), Hotel Oakland, The Bohemian Club, and Mark
Hopkins Art Institute and countless galleries. He won a Silver Medal at the Panama-Pacific
International Exposition in 1915.
Yet with all of his accomplishments, Del Mue took considerable pride in his school murals. He
once said “In my murals I have tried to create for the students an understanding of nature close at
hand in beautiful Marin County and to help them attain a better art appreciation.”
Thomas Wood, artist and grand-nephew of Del Mue, wrote that the Center’s mural was
close to Del Mue’s heart. “It was his gift to the children. He said he liked the idea that it was
at the eye-level of the kids, and he knew that they would go by it everyday and look at it, and
that pleased him.”
Seventy-five years later children still have the opportunity to stop and experience the
artist’s mural.
Del Mue’s desire to foster appreciation for art and the natural treasures of Marin (for both
children and adults) is deeply shared by the San Geronimo Valley Community Center. It is the
Center’s desire to underscore those shared values with the naming of the Maurice Del Mue Galleries.
LEAP Bookstock
One of Five
Maurice Del Mue in Paris circa 1894.
The SGVCC’s WPA mural is one of at least five created by the artist during the 1930’s.
Unfortunately, there is a high attrition rate for public art — especially murals. Del Mue seems
particularly unlucky in this respect. He painted a series of murals for the steamer ship the S.S.
Golden Gate in the 1920’s. During World War II the ship was enlisted into service as a troop
carrier and was sunk off the coast of North Africa. Less dramatically but just as final is the
disappearance of a WPA mural at Hamilton Air Force Base and another at College of Marin (a
causality of a remodeling project).
The only other Del Mue mural that is known to have survived is “The Golden Hills of
Marin” at Tamalpais High School. Currently, the Tam Art Restoration Project is endeavoring
to raise the funds for its restoration.
Only the Center’s Del Mue mural is fully restored.
About the Artist
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Maurice Del Mue was a well respected
California artist who spent most of his life in San Francisco and Marin.
Maurice’s parents were French and Swiss immigrants living in San Francisco in the early
1870s. When his mother was pregnant with Maurice, she chose to return to France to give
birth, not entirely trusting of San Francisco doctors or medical practices. Maurice was born in
Paris on November 24, 1875 and came to San Francisco for the first time at the age of 5.
He grew up in the city and attended the California School of Design (now the San
Francisco Art Institute) studying under Arthur Matthews and becoming acquainted with
other young art students of the time, such as Maynard Dixon, Xavier Martinez and Gottardo
Piazzoni. (Piazonni later married Maurice’s sister, Beatrice).
In 1894, Del Mue and Piazonni set off for Paris to continue their art studies at the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts. During his stay in France, Del Mue met his future wife, Valentine. They
married in Oakland in 1898.
Remember the movie that was shot on location a couple of
years ago at the Papermill Creek Saloon in Forest Knolls, on
the Nicasio Square and other spots in West Marin? The name
of the movie is Touching Home, which stars Ed Harris, was
written, produced, and directed by locals Logan and Noah
Miller. The Miller Brothers have now written a book called
Either You’re In or You’re In the Way. When identical twin
brothers, Logan and Noah Miller’s homeless father died alone
in a jail cell, they vowed come hell or high water that their
film, Touching Home, would be made as a dedication to their
love for him. Their book, Either You’re In or You’re In the Way
is the amazing story of how, without a dime to their names
nor a single meaningful contact in Hollywood, they managed
to write, produce, act, and direct a feature film in under a
year starring four-time Academy Award-nominated actor Ed
Harris (and a cast and crew with 11 Academy Awards and 26 nominations). Their incredible and
comic gonzo story is a fast paced, thrill ride of heartbreak and redemption.
Valley residents can now preorder a copy of this book from Book Passage. By doing this you
will get this amazing book and 2 tickets to the movie, which is being shown at AT&T Park on
June 6. Book Passage will also make a donation to the Lagunitas School District through its
LEAP Foundation. Here are the details.
Preorder by going to www.bookpassage.com Be sure to print out your email confirmation
after ordering. This will be your ticket for admission to BOOKSTOCK 2009 at AT&T Park
on June 6 at 7:00 pm! Book Passage is proud to sponsor this exciting community-wide event!
For LEAP to receive their contribution put in the School Code LAG 09 and $5.40 from each
book sale will be donated.
Bring your preorder receipt to BOOKSTOCK and get two admissions to the stadium!
Children 12 & under free.
Music, Art, & Movie Festival, Special advanced screening of Touching Home (the movie that
inspired the book). Book signing by the Miller Brothers with 4-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris
in attendance, beer & wine garden, delicious food, great summer fun, and family-friendly
event, supporting The Giants Community Fund.
Live! At the Center
Hannah Doress,
Arts & Events Coordinator & Larry Rippee,
Dear Community Friends,
I’ve been proud to be associated with this community and our Community Center over
the last few months during the economic crisis. We have seen the demand for our emergency services nearly double and all of us have felt the impact of the times in our homes
and communities. At the Community Center, we have been amazed at the outpouring of
support and are so appreciative of everyone who has come forward to help. Here in the Arts
and Events program we are gratified that you continue to direct your entertainment dollars
where they can do the most good — for you, for the arts and for our neighbors who need
help. Over the last few months we saw great crowds of supporters at the Holiday Arts Faire,
Zulu Spear, the surprise show with Trace Bundy and Cullen Gray, and the return of Swami
Beyondananda.
As always we are pulling every string and looking far and wide to find exciting shows for
you and so I’m delighted to be able to announce that Oregon-based folk groove singer
Alice Di Micele has agreed to join us for what will be an amazing Earth Day themed show.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing this incredible indie performer who has inspired
raves from folks like Bonnie Raitt and shared the stage with folks like Arlo Guthrie, Joan
Baez and Michael Franti, you won’t want to miss this! Di Micele is also strongly influenced by
Odetta, Stevie Wonder, Abbey Lincoln, and the Valley’s own Kate Wolf.
Plus let our local kids blow your mind with their enormous talent and the diversity of their
acts (and raise needed funds for afterschool program scholarships — more scholarship support is needed than ever before) at the annual St. Pat’s show. And don’t miss everyone’s
favorite hilarious MC, Jasper Thelin. No joke, some of our most talented youth are already
practicing and putting together their acts — join the fun by filling out the form on page 16.
You can have a convenient and fun night with the kids and raise more funds for scholarships
by joining us for dinner again this year ahead of the show.
In visual arts, we were thrilled to see our emphasis on including more group shows continue
this February with the show celebrating Connie Smith Siegel’s new books Spirit of Drawing
and Spirit of Color and we are eagerly awaiting the fun with the upcoming Wilderness Way
show in April and legendary Spring Art Show this May.
Having been involved in community building in many places and having had the privilege
to work here since 2005, I continue to be amazed at the extraordinary community center
that has been built here over the last 40 years. As we celebrate the big birthday this year,
let’s pat ourselves on the back for creating and sustaining a truly stand-out full-service center
where world-class entertainment walks hand in hand with feeding our community and so
much more.
See you there!
Hannah Doress, Events Programmer
P.S. Don’t miss the exciting news about our galleries on page 9!
The popular Trace Bundy show in January is a perfect example of why it’s great to be on
our email list. When last minute opportunities like this come up, you’ll be the first to
know it’s happening. You’ll also get the detailed information you need to make a decision
about whether the act is likely to be a new favorite or if it’s not for you.
For really popular events you have a chance to get your tickets before the general public
is alerted — and advance tickets are always discounted. Even though we are frequently
covered by the local media, we can’t be in the paper every time, so please subscribe and
be in the loop for all our shows. If you want to join our events list, email arts@sgvcc.
org. If you want to join This Week at the Center where you get information about all the
programs, activities, classes and events at the Community Center, please go to
http://www.sgvcc.org/ and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.
Groups are VIPs at our events.
Plan ahead and get your group’s tickets now before
they sell out! Groups of 6 or more get preferred seating — just call Hannah at 488-8888 #253 to make
arrangements.
Visual Arts Coordinator
St. Patrick’s Day Youth Talent Show
Saturday, March 14, Woodacre Improvement Club
Benefit for Community Center After School Program Scholarships
MC extraordinaire: Jasper Thelin! The funny man from The Original Action Pack, Drake H.S.,
and Camp Winnarainbow! Mr. Thelin possesses the magic powers that make this event fun for all
and a great environment for young performers to thrive.
5:00 pm Dinner: Make it easy for you and the kids with a delicious,
sociable & affordable dinner for purchase starting at 5:00 pm — get great
seats and chow down!
6:00 —7:30 pm: (approximately) Younger Kids amaze even their parents!
It’s a great experience for the younger set to feel the love and try out their
nascent and more developed talents. Don’t miss this chance to watch our
amazing younger kids.
7:45 pm: (approximately) Older Kids knock your socks off with rip
roarin’ fun!
Abraham Bender-Doress
The second half is where it gets really hilarious and some of our emerging and established stars get to shine. Get those autographs now and
you can say you saw them when!
Cyrus Thelin & Mia
Terziev.
So, let’s keep this a community where EVERYONE can play and learn
together! This fundraiser benefits Community Center After School
Program Scholarships as well as being great arts education experience
and just ten tons of fun for youth. So as always please purchase tickets
for all talent and all attendees. If you can afford an additional donation, every penny counts and we will receive it gratefully.
Tickets: $35 Family of 3 or more; $15 adult; $12 senior; $8 youth. Financial hardship? Please call
ahead to make arrangements.
Talent: register by March 9
Required rehearsal for new acts and
optional rehearsal for returning performers
on Thursday, March 12 from 3:00–5:00
pm. Lip-syching acts not permitted. Past
shows have included comedy, bands,
short plays, dance, a cappella and more!
Remember — planning and rehearsals are
part of the learning and fun — so encourage your kids to start early to rehearse and
they will feel so much more confident
Honors Chorus.
when it’s their turn on stage.
Parents: please volunteer to make this event a success! We need help with set up, break down, selling food,
baking desserts, stage help and more. Call Hannah at 488-8888 #253 or email [email protected].
Please see registration form page 16.
Don’t be disappointed, order your tickets in advance
For convenient, secure online purchase go to
www.sgvcc.org/artsevents/centerevents.html
You may also write a check to “SGVCC” and mail it to Hannah
Doress, SGVCC Events, Box 194, San Geronimo, CA 94963.
Please include your full name, phone number, and the name of
the event you want to attend. You may also stop by the Community
Center to drop off your cash or check payment.
2009 Gallery Art Shows
Valley Room — Enter through Lobby
West Room — Adjoining Valley Room
MARCH
Valley Room
Koorosh Ostowari
West Room
Cala Larioni
Opening reception Sunday, March 8, 4:00–7:00 pm
APRIL
Valley Room
West Room
Wilderness Way presents Fred L. Berensmeier 50 year Retrospective Wilderness Way presents Fred L. Berensmeier 50 year Retrospective
Please note the reception will be held on Sunday, April 19, 4:00–7:00 pm
MAY
Valley Room
West Room
19th Annual Spring Art Show
Reception Friday, May 8, 6:30–9:00 pm (Donors preview 5:30)
The Spring Art Show runs May 8 – May 17
Earth Day Celebration with
Alice Di Micele Band & special guests TBA
Friday, April 24, 8:00 pm
Adults — Advance $15; Door $18
Youth to 19 — Advance $8; Door $10
70 and up — Advance $12; Door $15
From Oregon on tour comes this astounding indie
act with a profoundly green message. Alice Di
Micele sings about many environmental issues from
salmon to forest activism and is known for such
popular anthems as “Defend the Earth.” She has had Photo by Marcus Scott.
a prodigious independent musical career selling over
25,000 CDs and sharing the stage with folks like Bonnie Raitt, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie,
Janis Ian, David Grisman, Steve Winwood and Michael Franti. She has also performed with
Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzman, multi-instrumentalist Joe Craven and many more.
The first thing you’ll notice about Alice Di Micele is her voice. With a five-octave range that is
intense, sensual, rich and soulful, Di Micele has been known to turn a noisy bar silent within a
few notes. Her warm presence and humor disarm and create a rare intimacy between audience
and performer. Whether singing a jazzy-folk number, belting a sassy blues, or rocking out on one
of her trademark rhythmic earthy grooves, Alice is a vocalist that moves people. A head-turning
guitarist as well, whether playing solo or with a band her acoustic guitar conjures percussive polyrhythms, bass lines, and melodies that perfectly frame her vocals. Find out more about this
inspiring artist at: http://www.alicedimicele.com.
Advance tickets are highly recommended for this show! Please go to http://www.sgvcc.org/artsevents/centerevents.html and secure your seats — and your discounted advance tickets — today.
The Community Center’s 40th Anniversary
Spring Art Show Reception!
Friday, May 8
Sneak Preview for Community Center donors! We invite you to
make a donation of $35 or above by 5/1/09 so we can send you
an invitation to join us for a special tasting menu and drinks,
and great company from others like you who keep our community
creative and strong. Attendees at this reception will also have the
first chance to buy the artwork.
Philip Wadsworth.
6:30 pm Public Reception — Free, Fun and Fabulous!
Everyone, please save the date for our community’s ultimate visual arts
event of the year! The San Geronimo Valley Community Center’s 40th
Anniversary Year Spring Art Show. People always rave about how they
can’t believe the show isn’t juried, but we all know that there are more
talented artists per capita in the San Geronimo Valley than anywhere outside of New York! And that’s not counting the amazing talent in Nicasio!
Featuring stellar work in many media and styles from both established and
emerging artists, this beloved annual event is not to be missed. The reception party has been a seams-busting, not-to-miss social event for years, so
Marty Meade.
get it in your calendar now and don’t miss the fun. Spread the word: there’s
great art and a great party at the Community Center on Friday, May 8!
The Spring Art Show runs from Friday, May 8 to Sunday, May 17.
Call Visual Arts Coordinator Larry Rippee at 488-8888 #252 for more information or to volunteer.
Attention All San Geronimo
Valley
& Nicasio Artists!
Friday, May 8 through Sunday, May 17, 2009
Opening Reception for Artists & Friends
Friday, May 8, 2009 from 6:30–9:00 pm
Who:
What:
How:
Up to 100 artists who reside or work in the San Geronimo Valley
and Nicasio.
All media — 4'x4' maximum size. One piece per artist.
Wall pieces must be wired, ready to hang. Provide your own
pedestal for floor pieces.
• Mail entry form below and $25 fee with check payable
to SGVCC.
• Each artist must perform 2 hours of gallery sitting and/or other
volunteer duties.
• Hors d’ oeuvres for the opening reception are requested from
each artist.
• Each artist to send out 20 postcard invitations available
at the Center.
Application Deadline: Friday, April 3, 2009. Please respect this deadline.
Only the first 100 entries will be accepted for the show.
Artist Group Photo Shoot (for publicity purposes)
Saturday, April 4 at noon in front of Community Center.
All participating artists welcome.
Bring your art on Sign-Up day: Thursday, May 7 from 8-10 am
Questions: Call Larry Rippee, Visual Arts Coordinator, at 488-8888 #252.
(Keep top portion for your records.)
Spring Art Show Entry Form
Please print! Deadline Friday, April 3, 2009
Name:___________________________________________________________
PO Box:___________Town:____________________________Zip:___________
Phone:___________________________E-Mail:__________________________
Title of Piece:______________________________________________________
Size:___________________________Medium:___________________________
Selling Price:_______________________(20% goes to the Community Center)
es! I realize that the success of the show depends on volunteers. In addition to mailing invitations
Y
& providing reception hors d’ oeuvres, I will: (Check your choice):
❒
Gallery Sitting Preference (2 hr shifts) : Sat–Sun 12–6 or M-T-W-Th-Fri 9–11
Day/Date _______________________ Time________________________
❒
❒
❒
❒
❒
Sign in Art: Thursday, May 7 from 8–10 am
Sign out Art: Sunday, May 17 from 5–6:30 pm
Help with Reception: Friday, May 8 from 5:30–9 pm
Telephone Artists
Help with Posters & Postcard Distribution
Mail this entry form and your $25 entry fee by Friday, April 3, to:
SGVCC Spring Art Show, Box 194, San Geronimo, CA 94963
I wish to make an additional contribution of $__________ to support the SGVCC arts
program.
Alphabet Soup
by Sara Tolchin
Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the
unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. — Carl Sandburg
Poetry is what gets lost in translation. — Robert Frost
Collecting
How a distorted form of Buddhism almost saved
my mother’s life
By Rachel L.B
The painted red doors of my youth
Coming home through them
After playing in snowy sunlight all day
Tumbling in
Making up a bed
Giving the torturer a place to sleep
Calming her.
Stroking her iron head.
Showing her how I
Tend to her wounds.
When she wakes up
She is a little less crazed
Her arms reach out for less and less murder
In the springtime, she is cracked open
The horror of seeing her own face.
Its true form reflected in water
Back then, what else could I do?
While she waded in the pond
Covered in slime and stuck in her girdle
While she waded…what else could I do?
I fashioned my body into her bowl
My heart into her food.
By Rachel Levy-b
You Don’t Have to be Mary Oliver to Write a
Poem About Geese
In Mother Teresa’s Prayer,
She asks her Jesus for deliverance
From the desire to be loved, extolled.
From the fear of being slandered or forgotten.
This is my church, I come here to worship
at the feet of redwoods and squirrels and monarch butterflies,
at the hem of the soft blue cloak of the sky.
Remember the stories of how she moved?
Like a blue flame
Through the streets of Calcutta.
The glowing embers of love’s disciples at her feet.
Carrying the virus.
The doubt that had infected her courage.
Collecting lost, broken pieces of the Christ.
The dusty mass.
The frame of a being.
Gathering this one into her freedom
Into her care.
The holding preceded by a recognition.
The one who is the long lost friend.
The one who she could have mothered.
The one who could have mothered her.
At a still point in time
The entire family is seen in the dying woman’s face.
A clanless, tribeless whole
Abiding in the ordinary divinity of the heart.
Freed from the trap
Of love needing love’s proof.
By Sara Tolchin
I am sharing Nicasio Reservoir today
with a flock of Aleutian geese.
Now they have fed on the opposite shore,
too tall for their age, ungainly,
they slip into the water and glide serenely
across the lake. Beneath the surface
their webbed feet are working hard
but in the world above water
their bodies glide unconcernedly along.
If I were Mary Oliver, I might write a poem
about what a droll metaphor they are
for my poor, mud-speckled, stony-shored reservoir
of a life; about how they mirror
all my breathless paddling, the trying to keep up,
while here, in the world above water
I glide towards the distant reeds,
all poise and ease and sleek feathers,
eyes forward, barely a ripple.
Time collapsing into itself
By Rachel Levy-b
Rum-soaked, crème-filled, layered
Sponge cake with nothing
Extra on top.
Except the lit wax candles
In the shape of twin fours.
Standing squarely side by side.
Like a deadline met.
This time, you decide
Not to blow or make a wish.
You just watch as the cheap wax
Burns quickly and morphs
Into a reclining figure eight.
A snake eating its own tail
And loving it.
We welcome submissions of poetry or short prose pieces for upcoming issues. Please send your work to [email protected], or P.O. Box 17, San Geronimo
94963. The deadline for the Summer Issue is April 15,
2009. Thank you!
Here’s the New Happenings at the Valley Kid’s Club…
Monday: Sports Play & Games with Daley Cort
SGVCC Summer Day Camp
We are so excited to have Daley Cort here with us as a new member of the Valley Kid’s Club staff
on Mondays. Daley grew up here in the Valley and is a recent graduate of Dominican University
with a teaching credential. While in school, Daley played on the soccer, basketball and golf teams
and has coached kids as well. So get ready, get out there and come PLAY with us!
Camp dates
Tuesday: Melissa VonSchwanenfluegel’s Cookery
Local Seasonal Foods for Kids
Food & nutrition is a passion for Melissa VonSchwanenfluegel. Many of you already know
Melissa (a.k.a Lydia & Stella’s mom). Melissa can be found everyday in our school kitchens
preparing and serving our wonderful school lunches, as well as working with Josh Traub cooking Pizza From the Ground Up in the school garden. Melissa will be joining the Valley Kid’s
Club staff on Tuesdays to integrate a new menu for the VKC. The kids will come to understand the importance of eating seasonal, local foods for their health, the health of their environment, local economy and most importantly, TASTE! We will be getting a weekly produce
box supplied by local farms to inspire our culinary adventures.
Riddles for Spring
It seems hard to believe that summer is just around the corner, but we are already half way
through the school year and our Summer Day Camp staff has started preparation and planning for the fun to come. Hope to see you there!
Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
June 29 – July 3
July 6 – July10
July 13 – July 17
July 20 – July 24
July 27 – July 31
Pre-reg. due dates
June 15
June 22
June 29
July 6
July 13
Please call Julie Young at the Valley Kid’s Club 488-0688
[email protected]
Super Hard Maze
HOW FAST CAN YOU SOLVE IT?
I can be found where anything cannot; dead men eat me all the time, but if a living man eats
me, he will die.
What am I?
I build up castles. I tear down mountains. I make some men blind, I help others to see.
What am I?
I am not alive, but I grow; I do not have lungs, but I need air; I don’t have a mouth, but
water kills me.
What am I?
For the solutions to these riddles, visit www.sgvcc.org
News from In-School
by Susan Shannon, San Geronimo Valley
In-School Services
The school-linked programs sponsored by the San Geronimo Valley Community Center
are all alive and well, bearing positive fruit even in these troubled times. At the time of this
writing, Lagunitas Middle School Students are gearing up for their 3rd Annual All-Marin
Middle School Dance, this year on Valentine’s Day, at the Fairfax Pavilion. The dance
was an amazing success. Over 300 middle school students from the entire County participated. Sponsoring these dances has become a tradition in the community-minded Student
Meeting, Lagunitas’s version of Student Government. The theme of this dance is “Lagunitas
Gives Back.” Aside from inviting all Marin middle-school students, the students will have
on display info and donation boxes for the many local and global organizations they have
donated to over the years, including The Humane Society, Playpumps International, Camp
Sunburst, and the San Geronimo Valley Community Gym. The Student Meeting is going
strong in its eighth year.
Optical Illusions
Rectangles or diamonds? Or both?
How many black dots are there?
Hosting dances has been just one kind of the many fundraisers the kids have held over the
years. After the dance, several of our students will begin participating in the YMCA Youth
Court, learning the benefits of Restorative Justice and Peer Support. The Student Meeting
meets every Wednesday in Room 10 from 1:00 – 2:00 pm. If any of you are interested in
attending, you are welcome!
The Emotional Literacy Classes are also thriving in the Middle School. The SGV
Community Center’s involvement with Emotional Literacy is rooted back to the Healthy
Start grant received in the mid-nineties. The current configuration of classes is in its fifth
year now. This year, thanks to support and participation from the Middle School staff,
students in grades 6 to 8 meet Wednesday mornings for an extended period with trained
facilitators and explore the useful and necessary toolbox of social and emotional health and
balance. Games, song, dance, drama, art and positive imagery are only some of the fun,
deep and varied methods used in the groups. In the world we live in now, we can at least
rest assured that our students are developing a very solid and healthy self image, thanks to
the parents, devoted Middle School Staff, and talented EL facilitators. For that we are lucky!
Wilderness Calls
Valley
by Paul Berensmeier
First Flute Steps
We walked into Roy’s Redwoods together . . . softly . . . respectfully . . . two men
from opposite sides of the nation, brought together by the Singing Salmon Flute
Circle. Each step a prayer . . . our first flute steps together. Early golden-red sunlight
reflects down from giant redwoods . . . illuminating our path, showing us the way.
Walking silently, we head for the enormous magical redwood ring the children call
“The Fairy Ring.” We carefully finger cedar sticks. . . .
Sitting within the ancient redwood ring, we respectfully carve and sand our flutes. The soft, aromatic
quietude is thick . . . it feels ancient . . . as if we are somehow connected to the Miwok Indians who made
instruments with their hands under these same trees over a thousand years ago.
Eddie works his flute with gentle, skilled hands. His respect for this task, creating his instrument
in the right way, is evident as he ceremoniously lifts the wood to his lips. I get this image that his
ancestors are watching. . . .
He blows his first breath through the flute . . . it awakens . . . the notes waft softly, encompassing me . . .
I look up and see the song dancing among the many mighty branches. Then the musical melody covers the
old ring like a warm fur blanket in winter. I’m so taken by the oneness of this sound . . . in this sacred place.
I walk a short distance into the forest . . . listening to this old native sound from a distance. The sound mysteriously blends, then merges with the ancient giants . . . and I realize that we are no longer individuals but
have become one . . . playing this instrument of the trees . . . playing this song of the redwoods.
We strongly encourage you to take “your first flute steps.” We did! Here’s how . . . the Singing Salmon
Flute Circle, sponsored by Wilderness Way (WW), is donating its time and talents to put on a “Special Flute
Night,” April 20 at the Community Center (7:00 pm). This special event is in conjunction with WW’s artist
in residence, Fred Berensmeier’s, retrospective art show, which includes many kokopelli images.
Come listen to our unique repertoire on an amazing range of flutes, view Paul’s special flute collection
(flutes from 9” to 36” long!), and try out one of our “starter flutes.” See related article in this issue titled
“Kokopauli Callings (Special Flute Night)” for more details. Please come and share this magical instrument
with us and help support Wilderness Way (100% of proceeds go to this Environmental Education organization teaching at Lagunitas School). Email Paul at [email protected]
Community Wellness
Christin Anderson, M.S.
USF Wellness
By Debra Amerson
During the Apollo missions in the 1970’s, we heard
“Houston, we’ve got a problem.” Fast-forward 30 years at
the edge of the Nicascio Reservoir, and that term becomes
“Marin, we’ve got a problem!”
Unfortunately, our county and possibly our whole state are most likely headed towards mandatory rationing. Most California residents in the 1970s learned to use water sparingly, while
people like myself from the East Coast never dealt with drought. I’ve learned a lot living in
California for the past 19 years, and in 2002, Plantris Productions, my interior landscape
company now called deeper greeN, became Marin’s first certified green business, after taking environmental measures to save energy and water that go above and beyond existing
standards. As a businesswoman, going green was a no brainer. I can sleep at night knowing
that my business conserves resources, protects environmental and public health, and increases
the bottom line through efficient green operations. Below, I’ll share practical and inexpensive
ideas for saving water inside your home.
Let’s begin with your showerheads
Low flow showerheads save a tremendous amount of water while providing a comfortable shower with different spray options. Fairfax Lumber sells nice looking low flow
shower heads ranging from $5-$56.00 depending on the model.
In a recent conversation Robert Wilson of RT Wilson Plumbing said that each of us
wastes approximately1-3 gallons of water every time we shower—with or without low
flow showerheads. How? Well… after turning the water on, it takes nearly a minute or
more for the shower water to heat up and if you are like most Americans, you let that
water flow down the drain. Can you spell wasteful? Giggle… Admit it, we all do it and
we can do better—yes we can! Robert Wilson recommends capturing that cold water in
a bucket to use for flushing the toilet. I like the idea of watering your plants.
MMWD Toilet Rebates
Switching out your older toilets with new low flow toilets will
cut your water consumption by approximately one gallon per
flush. The savings add up, keeping more $ in your wallet. If
you’ve never changed out your toilets before, MMWD offers
each household two, $250 rebates if you install a specified toilet
on their rebate list. Plumbing installation costs extra and most
plumbers will haul away your old toilets for recycling.
Sleep Deprivation – Symptoms and Effects and What
To Do About It
Understanding sleep disorder, or insomnia, is the first step to alleviating the problem. Sometimes insomnia itself is a symptom of another problem. The most common symptoms of sleep disorder are:
1. Trouble falling asleep
2. Failure to sleep through the night
3. Waking up earlier than usual
4. Daytime sleepiness
5. Decreased alertness or concentration
6. Irritability
7. Memory problems
There are numerous causes for sleep deprivation. For example, sleep hygiene — What are you
doing before you go to bed? Are you watching disturbing T.V., sitting at your computer and overstimulating your sympathetic nervous system? Are you sleeping in a room where noise, pets, light or
temperature are not conducive to full relaxation? Are you drinking caffeine-filled sodas, coffee, and
other beverages during your day?
Optimal sleep hygiene includes an active day followed by a hot shower or bath, perhaps a cup of
camomile tea, some relaxing reading, a cool room without pets frequently disturbing the sleeper. Of
course going to bed early enough to get at least 7 hours of undisturbed sleep can be helpful. Alcohol
can make you sleepy but can also wake you up, dehydrate you and make for disturbed sleep. Stress
can also be a sleep interference.
Teen Sleep Deprivation — A Serious Problem
Studies show that teens who are still growing require 9 to10 hours of sleep. Often demands from school
activities and social life leave many teenagers sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation is often fatal. Some 55% of
all car crashes in which drivers fell asleep involve people under 26, according to the National Institute Sleep
Disorder Research Center. Many experts believe that starting school later would have a very positive affect on
attendance and performance. There is also new research on sleep deprivation and the incidence of diabetes.
Besides good sleep hygiene and going to bed early enough, there are other options.
First off, if you have had trouble sleeping for more than a month or have had an other sleep disturbance
that is causing you to be deprived of sleep such as sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy, or frequent
sleep walking, you need to see a sleep disorder specialist. There may be underlying disorders.
You could contact the UCSF Sleep Disorder Clinic at 415-885-7886. www.mountzion.ucsfmedicalcenter.org/sleep_center. You can try the Good Sleep Hygiene Program or meet with your primary
care physician to discuss your symptoms and possible causes.
Environmental
News
Try this handy trick to lower your water usage—on the cheap!
Ok, not everyone can afford to change out your old toilets so here’s another way to
benefit by saving water. First, remove the top off the toilet tank, flush and empty the
tank. Before it refills, place one large unopened bottled water positioned vertically
inside the tank. When your toilet refills it now “thinks” that your tank is smaller and
adds less water than before, and acts like a low flow toilet. Cool eh?
What’s a flapper?
That’s the rubber plug connected to a little chain located inside and under the lid of your
toilet. They often erode from constant submersion in the chemicals in our water. Toilets that
constantly run are very annoying and they may have a bad flapper, which wastes OUR precious water and YOUR precious money. Flappers are available at most home stores and are
easy to replace.
These are simple meaningful ways we can do our part to save water…good luck all!
Please people… don’t dump your old meds in the pooper!
News reports have surfaced revealing chilling stories of public drinking water contaminated by seizure medications, anti-depressants, tranquilizers and other pharmaceuticals
flushed down the toilet. Yikes, scary stuff. I was told that certain pharmacies would
take back and recycle your old meds. It’s worthwhile to check around to find one, if
needed. I dispose of expired herbal remedies, vitamins and prescription drugs in my
compost pile. However, I completely bury the meds in tree mulch. The mulch attracts
mushroom mycelium to form. That’s the white stringy stuff you find under wood chips
and under forest debris. According Fungi Perfecti, www.fungiperfecti.com, fungified
wood chips actually reduce and eliminate diesel, motor oil, herbicides, pesticides, and
other pollutants, creating new un-contaminated compost.
Please don’t flush clumping cat litter down your toilet, even if the box says it’s ok.
First, why would you want to add sand to a perfectly good working toilet? Second, cat
poop contains dangerous bacteria that flow into our streams, bay and to the ocean. Did
you know that cat poop bacteria flushed into Monterey Bay is killing large numbers of
sea otters! Sad but true. It’s better to dump your indoor cat box and place the poop in
the garbage — cat poop should never go into your compost.
Debra Amerson leads deeper greeN, an interior landscape and decorative arts firm located in
Forest Knolls. For more information please call (415) 267-7606 visit www.deepergreen.org
or email [email protected].
Movie Muse
By Peter Oppenheimer
International Film Festival of Kerala, 2008
Though certainly one of the most entertaining art forms, cinema is called
to a higher purpose, beyond mere entertainment. Cinema, at its best, calls
upon us to reach beyond ourselves, to empathize with the feelings of others, who through both sympathy and identity turn out to be aspects of
our own greater self, flashing before us. When sages, prophets and mystics
speak of spiritual transformation, it is exactly this shifting of the center of
our I-consciousness from the individual personality and its personal narrative to the spiritual center
of all life everywhere. People move along this spiritual continuum as we move from selfish self-concern to that of family, neighbor, community, nation and eventually the entire planet.
Good cinema moves us along this path. It gets us “out of ourselves” and trains us to
identify with others and to enlarge ourselves in the process of learning to understand how differently life may appear and savor to others. Conversely, when made purely from self-serving
motives and in an exploitative manner, cinema can have the opposite effect of alienating us
from others who are demonized, stereotyped, or disrespected, and of numbing us to the real
pain of others by either trivializing or glorifying violence and abuse.
It seems that the selection committee for the 13th annual
International Film Festival of Kerala, held this past December, must
have had this loftier purpose in mind. The overall effect of the 185
films screened (from 53 different countries) was of a broadening of
understanding across national, religious, racial, cultural, class and gender
boundaries and an enlargement of the identities of each of the more
than 8000 “delegates” attending the festival. To become a delegate one
needed only register by paying the equivalent of a $6 registration fee, which then entitled one to an 8
day all-access pass to all 8 venues, each of which presented 5 showings per day. A truly dazzling and
dizzying experience.
It takes a kind of fierce dedication and the focus of an obsession to sit through 30 films in
8 days, as did this reporter. But the rewards are manifold. This year (my 7th consecutive IFFK)
for the first time fully half of the films I saw rated a B+ or better.
The only director to place two films in my Top Ten was Idrissa Ouedraogo from Burkina
Faso, whose work was represented by 4 films in the “Contemporary Masters” package. The
two I saw and loved were Yaaba (Grandmother) and Tilai (The Law). Both take place in a
traditional though contemporary African village where old ways clash with the modern, and
time-honored chains of authority clash with the hearts’ desires of individuals. Idrissa shows
great understanding and sympathy for those on both sides of this cultural divide.
In Yaaba, an old woman is branded by her village as a “witch” and banished to eke out
a meager life for herself on the outskirts. Bila is a young boy with a fondness for the woman,
adopting her as a grandmother, seeking her out, offering companionship, joking with her,
bringing gifts and defending her against other boys his age who pelt her with stones. Bila’s best
friend is a slightly older female cousin, Nopoko. They are always looking out and standing up
for each other, sharing each other’s chores, while all the time teasing each other.
Building on his already compassionate nature, Yaaba teaches Bila to refrain from judging others, even those who seem to be breaking some tribal or moral code. This open-hearted
acceptance runs through the movie like a stream and theme. That and a questioning of the
cultural belief that adults always know more than children, and men more than women.
Things take a dramatic turn when Nopoko comes down with tetanus from a knife wound while
protecting Bila in a fight with a group of boys who had ganged up on him. Yaaba may be the only one
who can save Nopoko’s life, but still the villagers want no part of her. What is to be their fate?
In spite of my bias in favor of the low-key, independent and populace cinema of Africa,
Asia and Latin America featured at IFFK, I am awarding this year’s Best of Fest (rather of the
30 I saw) to a French film entitled The Class (Entre Le Mur), which also so happened to win
the grand prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.
The Class is a breathtakingly tenacious and intimate look at one year in the life of an ethnically
diverse, inner city, middle school classroom in Paris. To say these kids are a handful is an understatement, and their teacher Mr. Marin, played by the author on whose autobiographical novel the film is
based, makes his job harder (though certainly more fruitful) by refusing to clamp down hard or stifle
the intense energy with which these kids are continually coming at him.
The film opens in the teacher’s lounge on the day before school
starts, as schedules are handed out and new teachers are warned which
kids are likely to create problems (most of them). This is the first film
I’ve seen capture the noise and chaos of a room full of adolescents
bursting with ideas, hormones and interests, most of which seem to
have little to do with the subject at hand. With the tenacity of a warrior and the equanimity of a monk, Mr. Marin is determined to have a
positive impact on those in his charge.
In one typical scene the teacher is engaging one student who is refusing to write her name on her paper on the grounds that he knows her
handwriting, while other students are protesting that the exercise is “corny,” still others are surreptitiously texting on their phones, unauthorized cookies are being shared around, several kids are talking
and laughing, while in another corner a boy is performing tricks with his pen.
Further adding to the challenge is that this one class is made up of students with a wide variety
of languages, cultural backgrounds, skill levels, attention spans, impulse control, respect for others,
motivation and fields and degrees of interest. Mr. Marin takes great pains to include everybody and
to acknowledge and incorporate into his lessons even their most confrontational and off-subject outbursts. Without allowing the class to ever quite become a free-for-all, an atmosphere is created which,
in effect, is free for all.
Mr. Marin is neither a pushover nor a saint. Kids who display grievous disrespect are sent
to the principal, though he later goes to bat for those same students during their disciplinary
hearings. And, in fact, it is an ill considered and cutting outburst by Mr. Marin that creates
the classroom crisis, which builds to the film’s climax as the school year draws to an end.
The Class is a marvelous movie — as true to life as it is exhilarating and perplexing, as
open-hearted, well-intentioned, courageous and complex as is its protagonist, and as full of
energy, angst and joie de vivre as are the kids who constitute its class.
Rounding out my Top Three is At Five in the Afternoon, the fourth feature by the bold and
beautiful Iranian director Samira Makmalbaf, who made her stunning directorial debut with the
powerfully touching The Apple in 1998 at the age of 17. Samira was present at this year’s IFFK as
a member of the international jury, and I was reduced to the level of a paparazzi trying to capture
her lovely image with my camera. At Five in the Afternoon is the first film to be made in Kabul,
Afghanistan, after the collapse of the Taliban regime, and its subject is the still fragile and oppressed,
though tough and resolute, aspirational dreams of a young woman named Nogreh, who harbors the
outrageously blasphemous ambition to one day become the president of Afghanistan.
The film opens with the haunting ghostlike image of a woman walking the streets hidden
under the full cover of a burka. She seems somehow there, but not there. The form of a person is
suggested, and yet totally unavailable for self-disclosure or interaction. She joins a crowd of similarly
cloaked women in a courtyard, chanting from some scripture to the effect that women should refrain
from dancing and revealing their charms and that men should avert their eyes and control their lust.
Coming out from this prayer meeting, the woman removes her burka, revealing western dress,
puts on some white pumps and with a smile hurries off to join a newly reconstituted primary school
for girls, where hundreds of teenage girls are engaged in lively discussion of many subjects and issues.
The girls are called together and the headmistress begins with the request, “Please stand up if
you want to be a doctor….lawyer….teacher….” Each time dozens stand. When she half-jokingly
says “president,” only two stand. (Interestingly during the open casting call for the female lead, this
same question was put to a large group of young Afghan women. The only one who stood up was
eventually cast to play the lead role of Nogreh in the film.) There follows a spirited debate among all
the girls present as to why or why not such a thing as a woman president could ever be possible in
Afghanistan. The movie would be worth seeing for this scene alone.
But there is so much more. Nogreh is living with her orthodox father in a camp for refugees from war torn areas of the country. The refugees are living packed into makeshift shelters
such as bombed out ruins and even in the fuselage of a downed fighter jet plane. The film has
an extremely fresh and vital feeling to it. There are several unanticipated plot developments
and surprising encounters and relationships, such as the one between Nogreh and a French
soldier, neither of whom speak the other’s language.
A hallmark of this film, as in all of Samira Makmalbaf’s films, is the sympathy with which all
characters are treated, even the more conservative and old-fashioned ones who would place obstacles
in Nogreh’s path toward independence and self-expression. There are many stirring and haunting
images which pack an emotional wallop. I did not want this movie to end. Ultimately the film soars
both as the depiction of a young woman aspiring for spiritual and social goals and of a city in ruins
made majestic by the grit and grace of the people surviving in it.
And finally for your eventual theatrical or DVD enjoyment, my personal IFFK 13 Top Ten:
1. The Class — France
2. At Five in the Afternoon — Iran
3. Yaaba (Grandmother) — Burkina Faso
4. Salt of this Sea — Palestine
5. Hafez — Iran
6. The Yellow House — Algeria
7. Laila’s Birthday — Palestine
8. Shine a Light — U.S.A.
9. Bad Habits — Mexico
10. Tilai (The Law) — Burkina Faso
F
Community Comes Through In Hard Times (continued from page 1)
This has been my second run though the Holiday season here at the Community Center. The first
time through I did not know what to expect. The outpouring of generosity from our Valley was
emotionally overwhelming. Going into this year, I must admit, there was trepidation and fear. We
have been and continue to experience a 15% increase in visits to the food pantry. The word on the
street is “Recession” and at every meeting I attend there is talk of budget cuts. The programs that
help make our Holiday program abundant and successful were indicating their resources were being
stretched. It looked as if the perfect storm was brewing. Ah, me of little faith!
Dave, myself and the rest of the Community Center staff started to put out the word of
impending doom that faced us and Valley residents if this scenario played out. We were not
the only agency in the county facing shrinking funds and increased demand. Some of the local
newspapers had feature articles on the difficulties that the food pantries were facing. The word
went out. We had asked — now we needed to see if we would receive.
There was never really any reason to doubt. I do not know why there are times I forget this.
Time and time again when I wonder how this, that, or the other thing is going to get done at
the Food Pantry, something happens to make it all OK. A couple of volunteers just show up,
another agency steps forward to offer a hand, the paper bags just appear, and many other little
reminders that show me all is well.
Then the floodgates opened! We had help on all levels pouring over us like cold water that opened
my eyes again to the deeper meaning of community. There was an opening of the hearts in the Valley
that surpassed any and all needs, whether imagined or real. People pulled together to help their
neighbors and others they did not even know. Community members gave what they had to give;
donating their time, money, resources, and food. Yes, we needed the material things to pull this off
and these things were deeply appreciated. Because of these gifts we were able to provide assistance
to over 500 families and 1840 individuals — a 25% increase over last year. The gifts that got me
through were the gifts that were not the material ones. It was the sense of joy people exuded through
their giving. The feeling of communal oneness that we were all in this together. The acceptance and
compassion of the human plight in which we all share. Mostly, it is that soft undercurrent feeling of
some kind of higher love; the sense of caring without concern for recognition, when giving is the gift,
when all humanity is embraced with humility.
I feel blessed to be able to be able to use some of my skills to be of service to this Community,
to be able to live some of the lessons I have learned in life, and to able be to give something
back for the sake of giving. I feel honored to part of the Valley Tribe.
SAN GERONIMO VALLEY COMMUNITY CENTER
Presents
St. Patrick’s Day Youth Talent Show
Saturday, March 14, 2009 — Starts at 5:00 pm
Woodacre Improvement Club
Jasper Thelin — Master of Ceremonies
TALENT SHOW REGISTRATION: DEADLINE FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 2009
If you miss the deadline you may not be in the show or you may not be in the show’s program. Please
register on time.
San Geronimo Valley
Disaster Council Update
By Basha Quilici, Community Disaster
Coordinator
The San Geronimo Valley Disaster Council, in existence since 1974, is looking for
additional members to fill the following positions:
◆◆ Animal Rescue: encourage homeowners and barns to have a plan, and assist
in creating teams for animal rescue operations.
A REHEARSAL WILL BE HELD: PAST PERFORMERS ARE WELCOME, NEW PERFORMERS
MUST ATTEND UNLESS OTHER ARRANGEMENTS ARE MADE BY CALLING 488-8888 #253.
Rehearsal: Thursday, March 12, 2009 from 3:00 – 5:00 pm, Community Center West Room
◆◆ Damage Assessment: receive training and be a part of community teams.
ACTS THAT CONSIST PRIMARILY OF LIP SYNCING TO A CD OR TAPE DO NOT QUALIFY
◆◆ Logistics Controller: Annually inventory the emergency container and shelter
supplies, open and man the emergency container during a disaster.
NAME OF PERFORMER____________________________________________ AGE ________
◆◆ Medical: Organize medical response and maintain lists of medical and dental
professionals.
NAME OF PARENT(s) ___________________________________________________________
PO BOX________________________ TOWN_______________________ ZIP______________
DAY PHONE #________________________ EVENING PHONE #_______________________
EMAIL OF PARENT _____________________________________________________________
NAME OF ACT/SHOWBAND ____________________________________________________
WHAT WILL YOU DO? _________________________________________________________
NAMES OF ALL PERSONS IN ACT_________________________________________________
(add paper if needed) _____________________________________________________________
TECH NEEDS (MIKES, EQUIPMENT, ETC.)_______________________________________
Please bring your own props and remember to take them home with you afterwards!
TIME LENGTH OF ACT (maximum 3 minutes)___________________________________
PARENTS/ADULTS/TEENS: CAN YOU VOLUNTEER? YES____________ NO____________
Performers and their families will need to purchase tickets to participate.
Thank you for helping to raise money for youth program scholarships by performing in
and attending the benefit with your friends and family!
If you can’t afford tickets please call 488-8888 #253 to make arrangements in advance.
YOU MAY CONVENIENTLY PURCHASE TICKETS TO THIS POPULAR EVENT IN ADVANCE:
Your tickets will be held at the door; you will not have to wait in the ticket sales line.
# OF ADULT TICKETS:
_______ x $15
= ____________
# OF SENIOR TICKETS:
_______ x $12
= ____________
# OF KID TICKETS (UNDER 12):
_______ x $8
= ____________
# OF FAMILY (OF 3 OR MORE) TICKETS:
_______ x $35
= ____________
ADDITIONAL TAX-DEDUCTABLE GIFT FOR YOUTH PROGRAMS= _____________
TOTAL ENCLOSED (CHECKS PAYABLE TO “SGVCC”)
= ____________
Or just order your tickets online! Go to www.sgvcc.org/artsevents/centerevents.html
Hannah Doress, Arts & Events Coordinator
Questions? Call 488-8888 #253
Mail or drop to:
PO Box 194, San Geronimo, CA 94963
Family Ski Trip
◆◆ Liaison to Valley businesses and organizations: attend meetings and represent
the Disaster Council, and update agreements with businesses.
◆◆ Search and Rescue: Organize Valley CERT trained individuals.
◆◆ Shelter Operations: receive training and be added to a phone tree for volunteering time at a shelter during a disaster.
On behalf of the San Geronimo Valley Disaster Council I wish to thank Aniece
Taylor for being the Personnel and Volunteer Coordinator. Aniece has served on
the Council since approximately 1986, finding it a way to give back to the community after having received so much community assistance in building her home
after a terrible disaster. Her home has served as the location for our monthly meetings all these years and we appreciate her hospitality.
The Disaster Council now meets at the Woodacre Fire Station the last Wednesday
of the month at 6:30 pm.
Please contact Basha Quilici for further information on volunteering your time at
488-9533 or [email protected].
Valley Lions Club
Blood Drive
Become a Hero and save lives. The Bay Area is desperately in need of blood donations. Please help by donating blood at the San Geronimo Golf Course, 5800 Sir
Francis Drake Blvd., San Geronimo, Saturday, March
28, 10:00 am – 2:00 pm. Fact: 4.5 million Americans
would die each year without life saving blood transfusions. Each donation saves three lives. Receive a free
dish of Double Rainbow Ice Cream for your donation.
For information call 488-4862.
Wilderness Way
Environmental Art shows
Valley artists are invited to check out the small, cozy Carol Rayley Gallery in the
San Geronimo Library. If interested in exhibiting environmental art, leave a message at 488-9034.
EXHIBIT SCHEDULE
The Community Center in late January hosted its first
ever Family Ski Trip to Sugar Bowl. All 55 participants
experienced a fantastic day skiing, snowboarding, and
the beauty of the Sierras. We had a nice mix of adults,
teens, and children. Some of the kids got to play in the
snow for the first time in their lives. We plan to offer
more fun family trips like this in the future.
Thank you to Sugar Bowl Ski Resort, Marin Airporter
and the Bay Area Male Involvement Network who provided support for this
great winter experience.
San Geronimo Valley
Lion Bruce Wick happily
donates his blood at the
SGV Golf Course.
March – April
Laurence Brauer and Barbara Swift Brauer
Medium: Photography and Poetry
By bringing together our individual media--photography for one, poetry
for the other-- within a single frame, we express our common love for wildness. Sight and sound only two of the countless ways of interpreting the
redemptive power of the natural world.
May – June
Gaetano De Felice
Medium: Archival Pigment Canvas
Gaetano’s art work consists of photography, scans, original drawings and
archival Ultra Chrome inks on archival canvas resulting in prints with an
unsurpassed color rendition.Michael has discovered the painterly and
jewel-like possibilities of digital photography that reflect his connection to
the environment.
Credits
Stone Soup is printed four times a year and reflects the diverse cultural
interests of the Community Center and the Valley. Though it is a publication of the San Geronimo Valley Community Center, it is meant as
a journal for everyone in or around the Valley. We are interested in your
input. If you have any comments, ideas for articles or columns, news,
art, stories, poetry, photography, or information for the Milestones column, please forward them to: The Stone Soup Editorial Committee c/o
San Geronimo Valley Community Center, 6350 Sir Francis Drake Blvd.
P.O. Box 194, San Geronimo, CA 94963. Phone 415-488-8888 •
Fax: 488-9398 • email: [email protected], or visit www.sgvcc.org.
Stone Soup does not exercise editorial control on the content of
submissions by organizations, byline columnists, or display ads. We
reserve the right to refuse to publish ads or submissions.
Editorial Committee: Barbara & Larry Brauer, Dave Cort,
Don Holmlund
Proofreading: Dave Cort, Hannah Doress, Pranava Levine, Larry
Rippee, Suzanne Sadowsky
Production: Wordsworth
Printing: Marin Sun
Ads: Larry Rippee
Center Board of Directors:
Debra Amerson, President
Liza Crosse
Anne McClain, Vice President Don Holmlund
Georgiana Hernandez, Treasurer Dahlia Kamesar
Barbara Swift Brauer, Secretary Jim Griffiths
Noel Bartholomew
Jerome Rubin
Marian H. Cremin, LCSW
Jean Berensmeier, Founder
Community
Calendar
March
Tue Sat
Sat
Thur
Sat
Sat
Sat
Sat Sun
3/3 6:30 - 8:30 pm
3/7 5:00 pm
3/7 6 – 9:30 pm
3/12 7:15 pm
3/14 5:00 pm
3/21 6:30 pm
3/285:30 pm
3/28 10 am – 2 pm
3/29 10 am – noon
Keeping the Romance Alive Parent Ed Purim Party
St. Patrick’s Day Parish Celebration, Communal Penance Service
St. Patrick’s Day Talent Show
Scartyteen Movie Night
Open Classroom Dinner/Dance
Lions Blood Drive
Babies of the Valley Blessing Party
Room 10
Comm Center
St. Cecilia’s
St. Cecilia’s.
WIC
Comm Center
Multipurpose Rm
SGV Golf Course
Room 9
April
Fri 4/3 Sat 4/4
Sun 4/5 Sun 4/5
Thur 4/9 Fri 410 Sat 4/11 Sun 4/12 Sun 4/12 Sat 4.18
Sun 4/20 Fri 4/24
6:30–10:30 pm
First 5/VKC Parents’ Night Out
6:00 pm
8th Grade Spaghetti Dinner Fundraiser
9:30 am
Palm Sunday
11:15 am.
10:00 am
Passover Seder 7:15 pm
Holy Thursday
5:30 pm
Good Friday 7:00 pm.
Holy Saturday Vigil 6:30 am
Easter Sunrise Services
9:30 am
Easter Sunday 11:15 am
10 am – 1 pm
Clothing, Toys, Sports Equipment Swap
7:30 pm
Kokopauli Callings. 8:00 pm
Alice Di Micele Band
Room 9
WIC
St. Cecilia’s
St. Mary’s
Comm Center
St. Cecilia’s.
St. Mary’s.
St. Cecilia’s
Presby Church
St. Cecilia’s
St. Mary’s
Room 9
Comm Cente
Comm Center
May
Sat Sat Fri
Sun
5/2 5:30 pm
5/9 6:30–10:30 pm
5/8 6:30 pm
5/17
Sat
5/23TBA
June
Sat 6/6 TBA Mon 6/8 5:00 pm
Adult
Classes
at the
Center
LEAP Valley Visions
First 5/VKC Parents’ Night Out
Spring Art Show Reception
Gan HaLev Sunday School commencement/
Lag B’Omer festivity
Teen Cal Skate Loft Olympics
Healthy Community Collaborative BBQ
Edie Robinson Awards
DAY
Mondays
Mondays
Mondays
1st & 3rd Mondays
Tuesdays Tuesdays
Wednesdays
Wednesdays
Wednesdays
Thursdays Thursdays
Thursdays Fridays
Dickson Ranch
Room 9
Comm. Center
Samuel P. Taylor
Comm Center
Comm Center
Comm Center
CLASS
Gentle Yoga
Stretch, Strengthen & Relax
Total Body Sculpting Core Exercises
Singing Salmon Flute Circle
Pilates Poets Anonymous
Morning T'ai Chi Class
Stretch, Strengthen & Relax
Gentle Yoga
T’ai Chi Chuan
Total Body Sculpting Core Exercises
Argentine Tango Fundamentals
Pilates Community Center Staff Directory
and Phone Extensions
488-8888 (be sure to press # before dialing the ext.)
Dave Cort, Center Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #224
[email protected]
Suzanne Sadowsky, Associate Director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #251
[email protected]
Hannah Doress, Event Programmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #253
[email protected]
Larry Rippee, Visual Arts Coordinator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #252
[email protected]
Susan Shannon, Com. Center Youth Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #210
[email protected]
Julie Young, Com. Center Youth Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #210
[email protected]
Patrick Byrd, Com. Center Youth Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #250
[email protected]
Lynn Charne, VAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #214
[email protected]
Alison Pringle, VAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #214
[email protected]
Alex Cusick, School Readiness, First 5 Marin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #209
[email protected]
Heather Richardson, Family Advocate, First 5 Marin. . . . . . . . . . . #209
Jennifer B. Justice, Family Advocate, First 5 Marin. . . . . . . . . . . . . #209
Josh Traub, School Garden Coordinator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #350
Joseph Piekutoski, Nutrition Coordinator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #254
[email protected]
Regular Meetings
and Events
Community Center Board mtg.
Healthy Comm. Collaborative
Lions Club Dinner
4-H Meeting
Nutrition Advisory Council
School Board mtg.
Lag. Ed. Foundation (LEAP) mtg.
F.L.A.G.ship Bookmobile
Serenity Knolls After Care mtg.
WIC Board Meeting
Rainbow Playgroup
Rainbow Playgroup
Family Cooking Nights
Artists' Receptions
2nd Thursday
2nd Wednesday
4th Thursday
2nd Wednesday
4th Thursday
3rd Tuesday
1st Monday
2nd/4thWednesday
Every Tuesday
3rd Tuesday
Every Tuesday Every Thursday TBA
2nd Sunday
6:00 pm
3:30 pm
7–9 pm
6:30 pm
3:30 pm
6:00 pm
7:00 pm
12:30 pm
7:00 pm
7:00 pm
10–noon
10–noon
4:00 pm
Com Center
Com Center
TBA
Com Center
Com Center
Lag. School
Lag. School
Com Center
Com Center
WIC
Room 9
Room 9
Com Center
Com Center
Note: Kate's Café has been discontinued until futher notice.
SGVCC Website
The San Geronimo Valley Community Center’s weekly listing of events
and activities is posted on our regularly updated website. Visit us at:
www.sgvcc.org. Email us at [email protected] to join our email list.
TIME
TEACHER
CONTACT START DATE
9:00–10:15 am
Florence Schneider
488-4869 x 2 Ongoing
11:30 am–12:30 pm Cindy Davis
306-1941
Ongoing
6:30 pm
Suzanne Shelly
Ongoing
7:00–9:00 pm
Paul & Tina Berensmeier 488-1964
Ongoing
9:00–10:00 am
Pranava Levine
482-8689
Ongoing
6:30–8:30 pm
488-9033
Ongoing
8:30–9:30 am
Kenn Chase
488-4213
Ongoing
11:30 am–12:30 pm Cindy Davis
306-1941
Ongoing
6:30–7:45 pm
Florence Schneider
488-4869 x 2 Ongoing
8:30–9:30 am
Jacob Barnett 488-4458
Ongoing
6:30 pm
Suzanne Shelly
Ongoing
6:00–8:00 pm
Janet Lott
272-4811
Ongoing
9:00–10:00 am
Pranava Levine
482-8689
Ongoing

Inside! “The Loft” Teen Center Is Born

Transcription

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