Sebastopol CITY LIMITS Podcast

Dale Dougherty

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"Positive vibe" for start of Chuck Wade's second year as Analy principal
In this audio interview recorded last Friday, a day after school started, Chuck Wade, the principal of Analy High School, reflects on the first week of the new school year and changes from his first year as principal. He says that his job is both “exhilarating and exhausting” and one that Wade really loves doing. The assembly on the first day of school featured dance performances by students and included staff doing their own dance routine for students. Among his the challenges are student anxiety and the cellphone problem, which is connected to the bathroom problem, which is connected to the vaping problem...Key topics of discussion included a new focus on collaboration among teachers, the increase in student numbers, two new vice principals, and more work on belonging, inclusion, and safety. Wade addressed policies on cell phone use and efforts to stop bathroom vandalism, along with initiatives to stop vaping. Increasingly, there’s a role for the Wellness Center in helping students instead of just punishing them. Wade talks about continuing to watch the problems of students hanging out at Safeway after school. And the administration has a new tool, a street-legal golf cart for trips on and off campus. Additionally, Wade discussed introduction of dual enrollment classes with the Santa Rosa Junior College and community partnerships for student internships.I really do feel like the kind of thing we're trying to do in public education generally, and in a pluralist society but here specifically, it feels audacious and important. Even on the hardest days, I feel a little bit like, yeah, bring that on.Transcript of interviewDale: Chuck, it's good to see you. School just started this this week at Analy High School.First Week of School HighlightsChuck: Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been an exciting week. I can't believe it's already been the end of the first week. It went by super fast. We have more kids than we had last year, and it was actually a really a positive vibe, I would say, around campus. Super sweet. The quad is, one of my big reactions and surprises, is the quad is squeaky clean. I don't know what's going on. I've never seen it like that before.Dale: It's been trashed up a bit in the past.Chuck: No, after lunchtime, there'll be paper and wrappers and things like that. That kind of ebbs and flows throughout the school year. But this week it's been spotless. So I'm like, wow, okay, that's a good omen.Dale: What was your first day back to school like? What do you do?Back-to-School AssemblyChuck: We actually started with an assembly on the football field. So all 1, 476 or so students came down to the football field. We had a welcome message for them. They heard from the Associated Student Body President Paige Goodson and she spoke. And then we had three dance performances, essentially, for them. One by the Analy dance team, one by the cheerleading squad, and one by the staff.It's actually a tradition that started at El Molino that has been brought here and it's very sweet.Dale: Do you practice leading up to it?Chuck: Yeah. We do Jolene Johnson our dance director. Yeah, she choreographs something special for us every year and records a video and shares it with everybody and we have a couple different practice sessions and then and then we perform it for the students as a welcome back.Dale: Can you describe it? The song or the routine.Chuck: Yeah, I'm probably not the best person to describe the routine. Full disclosure I stood behind Lily Borgeson, who's another great dancer on staff and has a lot of ballet background. And I tried to do what she was doing and probably was not nearly as graceful.But it's a sweet, it's a sweet experience. I think it, allows students to see staff taking a little risk, trying some new things, going out on a limb. And that's what a lot of them are doing as well, coming to a big comprehensive high school, in the first couple of days trying to get acclimated with a whole bunch of new folks and make new friends and try new classes and all that kind of stuff.Think it's a really lovely way to, to welcome folks back.We're trying new things around belonging and inclusion on campus and then safety and culture, which are closely related.Principal's Reflections on First YearDale: So you've had your own summer time to think back on your first year as principal what stands out for you from last year? But more like things that you learned about the role, things that are important to you now going into your second year.Chuck: Wow. There are a lot of things to choose from there, Dale. I learned a lot. I think first and foremost, last year just learning sort of the scope of the job. Analy is-- it's many things to many people, right? It's super important to a lot of folks, and there is something happening here always, even this summer. It was super busy. The campus is well used, loved by students and the community. It's a, as I think you recognize, a central part of this community.And so I think just learning all of the important parts of the things that go on in the high school and my role, in, in supporting that, that rich life of this facility was a big task. I think I'm still learning some things but I do feel like I had just a crash course in all the things that this kind of a place can do and be for the students and the community at large which is exhilarating, sometimes exhausting.But it's quite something. I think that's one of the things that — one of the many things really that was awe inspiring about Analy and learning about Analy is just what an amazing place it is and the kinds of things that it can do for different folks and the kinds of meaning that it holds for different people in different ways.Last year, obviously my first time being principal here was frequently surprised. Oh that's a thing we've got going on this week and it requires this and this in terms of meetings and planning and preparation and permitting and, all the kinds of things that need to happen.Because a lot of those things were surprises for me. I had to scramble quite a bit. I anticipate at least a lot less scrambling this year. I'm super excited about that, that I'll know what's coming and I'll know at least a little bit better how to drive this big thing and do what needs, doing to make those really cool things happen.Dale: Is it fair to say you enjoyed yourself?Chuck: Yeah, I think that's true.Dale: Like you found something you really like doing?Chuck: It seems that way. Totally is true. I won't deny there were some days when that wasn't necessarily the first one that would come to mind but most days at the end of the day definitely. And even on the, on those other days, I have to say I've enjoyed that hard piece quite a bit too. I really do feel like the kind of thing we're trying to do, in public education generally, and in a pluralist society but here specifically it does feel audacious and important. Even on the hardest days, I feel a little bit like, yeah, bring that on.That's the hard work I want to do. So I enjoy that too, even when it's pretty taxing.New Vice Principals and Their RolesDale: What kind of changes have happened since last year? I think now you have a total of three vice principals. Two of them are new. Is that true?Chuck: That's correct. And so one additional vice principal, which is obviously a huge change for the admin team for how we will work to support students and staff. It's huge. I really am grateful to the board and the district and the whole community for figuring out a way to make that happen. I think it'll make us a lot more effective. We're trying new things around a couple big areas I'll mention are belonging and inclusion on campus and then sort of safety and culture kinds of things, which are closely related. Some of it is there's just some people power that we will have access to this year that we didn't last.And so already we're trying some new things around cell phones and bathrooms and those kinds of things in terms of policy and sort of procedure and how we implement those things and the ability of the administrative staff to keep on top of it.And I think that's important. Just on that very mundane practical level, we'll have a lot more time to dedicate to taking care of those things that can help the campus feel more safe and inclusive.Dale: Okay, would you introduce them briefly, just what their area of focus is?Chuck: Returning is Gianna and her full name is Gianna De Persiis Vona. She goes by Gianna, all the students know her as Gianna. So she's returning as vice principal. Joining us, we have Kirsten Sanft. Kirsten is not new to the district. In fact she worked for the consortium last year as a special educator and so she, she has that experience. She's an educator I've admired for a long time so I met her when she was principal at Cloverdale High School and when my role at the county office I worked with her up there. After that, she came here to West County and was the principal of the West County Middle School Charter. I had an opportunity to work with her there and then she went to Piner Olivet Charter and was a principal. So she's somebody I've known for it's gotta be 10 years or so now and, a very experienced administrator in this county, super student focused.I've always really admired that about Kirsten. In fact when I introduced her to staff last year, I was remembering that I actually took a picture of her office in Cloverdale when I first went up there and she had a just a piece of paper on her wall and it said "don't blame the students." It really struck me that was a cool thing for just a site administrator to remind themselves every day and be staring at across from the desk. That's a nice reminder.Then we have Christi Calson. Christy comes to us from the the county office where I was lucky enough to work with her.Once upon a time, I was Christi's coach. In education, we have, coaching practice where educators coach one another to be their best selves for their students. And so I worked with Christy when she was a teacher around project-based learning and integrated curriculum. She and a colleague put on a pretty exciting collaborative sort of festival that was based around their two classes in food and involved the whole community.So that was pretty cool. It was a challenge because they didn't really have the same collaboration time prep period or students in common. And I was impressed with the innovative work that, that she was doing then was lucky enough to work with her at the county. And I'm super excited to have her here now.One thing that I think is important for us is that both Kirsten and Christi are bilingual and speak Spanish and English. And that's a real upgrade for our team. My Spanish is, I'm pretty good on the listening side, not so great on the speaking side. So they're both fully fluent and that will help a lot in terms of connecting better with our families and students and building relationships that we need to build.At this campus we have more students than ever who haven't necessarily grown up knowing each other. They don't necessarily come to this campus with connections to people here. And that puts a little more of the onus on us to develop those opportunities for them to really connect and find their place.Adapting to Student Needs Post-COVIDDale: One view of high school, you might say that it's "same as it ever was," or, people might think it doesn't change much. But year to year, there are changes, there are things happening. And it's important that it does change to address the needs of different set of students. You're still dealing with students that their academic life and home life was impacted pretty heavily by Covid. And there's some talk about the social and emotional needs for that. But how do you perceive the school adapting and changing to its students?Chuck: A lot of things I could point to. I guess I would first say that for those who feel like the high school is the same as it ever was, please come visit. And there are so many ways for folks to get involved. We would love to partner with folks to make some changes.First of all I think staff here is really dedicated to adapting to as you mentioned the new reality for a lot of students. I read a pretty interesting book this summer called The Anxious Generation. Have you read that?Dale: No, I haven't.Chuck: The author slips my mind, but the same guy who wrote "The Coddling of the American Mind."Dale: Jonathan Haidt.Chuck: Yeah. He makes a really compelling point about anxiety and the causes and also the impacts of that anxiety on our young people. Anybody in education right now will tell you that we're seeing a ton more of that. Some of that is post COVID. Think that's true, but I think there's more to it. A lot of it has to do with social media and cell phones and all that kind of thing. I do think we have to think a little bit differently about engaging our students and getting them to interact with each other and come out of their shells a little bit. Cell phones have provided all kinds of incredible tools, right? But I think they've also discouraged to a certain extent young people from fully engaging with each other. That is a challenge. I think it's something that we're thinking about.So I mentioned the sort of belonging and inclusion was one of the things we're really focusing on. It's partly in response to that. We have that, we have the consolidation, we have the fact that we have a number of students coming to us from out of our district.And so I think at this campus we have more students than ever who haven't necessarily grown up knowing each other. They don't necessarily come to this campus with connections to people here. And that puts a little more of the onus on us to develop those opportunities for them to really connect and find their place.So I would say, we have a number of things that we're working on there, starting with the adults on campus. Creating more opportunities for adults to collaborate together on behalf of students in common. So we're in a couple different ways, thinking about groupings of students that the adults on campus know very well or get to know very well.So for example, we're piloting with our special educators and English and science and math teachers, some pairings that that give folks a better opportunity to know students more deeply, to understand more about what's going on in their home lives and what their interests are and what their needs as learners are.That's also true with our paraeducators. They're going to be more closely aligned with partners in the special ed department. We're also piloting some pairings between elective and core curricular teachers in the same kind of a way. It's going to take some time to, to work out logistically, how to make that work at a big site like Analy, but we're at the very least going this year, piloting some of those groups so that students will have some coherence around things like classroom practices, policies, procedures, stuff like that.And then ideally, working more toward curriculum in common. Integrated experiences that are designed around student interests. So the kinds of things that, they want to do and be, they'll do more of their learning in their core subjects, through those kinds of subject areas.Dale: In many ways, it's about tapping into their motivation, right? Getting students engaged, motivated to learn, right? Rather than just, you have to do this.Chuck: And we want to respond to what they're interested in, and we really do want to be able to have solid answer to the perennial student question of, why do I need to know this? That shouldn't be a mystery for students or their families.Cell Phone and Bathroom PoliciesDale: You mentioned a couple of times cell phones. So there's a societal concern about the impact of cell phones on young people. When I talk to parents, they yeah, not sure, they struggle what to do with it themselves and their kids. What are you thinking about doing at Analy?Chuck: A couple of things I first want to give a shout out to our teachers of ninth graders. There's been a really lovely grassroots effort among the teachers to calibrate around classroom policy. So ninth grade teachers Jeannie Curtis, for example, or Rachel Ambrose, others have been talking about what do we want to do to bring some coherence to the experience of ninth graders about this?So we've actually had a policy on the books at Analy for a long time that says you don't use cell phones in class. And if they're visible, they get taken away. There's a progressive discipline policy. There's a warning, they get taken away, they get taken to the office, your parent has to come pick them up, that kind of thing.But it has been unevenly enforced, I think, in classrooms. Ninth grade teachers took it upon themselves to make agreements across the grade level that this is what we're going to do. I think most of our teachers are on board with that. Gianna, our vice principal I mentioned earlier at our staff meeting day on, was that just Monday?That was Monday. We really talked about some support for enforcement. I think it's difficult for a teacher to, remove a thousand dollar device from a student and be responsible for that. So we want to provide some support around that. And really empower teachers to say we're not doing this during class time.Dale: How do the students feel, do you think? Do they recognize that it's a problem and they want to cooperate?Chuck: I think there's mixed results there. Depends on who you talk to. I think there are many students who would support that and at the same time, I've also heard students say, for example, one of our practices here is that students trade in a cell phone for a bathroom pass. They're not supposed to be taking that with them. And I've heard some anxiety about that. What if something happens, what if there's an earthquake and I'm in the bathroom, what do I do? And I need to have my phone with me. And I think, that's a little aspect of some of that anxiety that we're talking about.I think many of us feel like those are kind of comfort devices and it's hard for us to think about going to the bathroom without a cell phone like my ancestors did, it's such a weird idea.Dale: Bathrooms are another thing. It's been a problem whether it's trashing bathrooms and policing bathrooms and all that. It's surprising, I think, to the outside world that this would be a problem. Have you found any ways to deal with that?Chuck: Yes. I'd say first of all, that the cell phone problem is connected to the bathroom problem.Dale: Really?Chuck: One learning for me as a new principal last year was that a lot of our early on in the year in particular, we had some repeated events of bathroom vandalism. And they turned out to be related to TikTok challenges. So if students aren't taking their cell phones to the bathroom, they didn't happen. So that's one of the ways in which the cell phone thing is connected to the bathroom thing. This year, we have a couple innovations in policy about how we're approaching bathrooms with a bunch of support from our campus supervisors, which are an incredibly important part of our team here.David Carey in particular has created an innovation that I think is going to help a ton. He's created essentially a spreadsheet, but it's usable on our phones as administrators and essentially it allows us to click a button and record bathroom checks. So, as a team, administrators and campus supervisors, we are now checking each of the bathrooms on campus hourly and recording when we do it creates an automatic log of that on the spreadsheet.We have surveillance cameras outside the bathrooms, of course, but if something happens, we can look at the film keyed to the time when something happened and we'll know within pretty tight windows. And we can see who's been going in and out of there.I think what that's gonna do is it's gonna allow us, at least early on in this school year to have conversations with folks. If there's paper towels that get shoved in the toilet or something like that to have conversations with students who were there during those times and say, we're not going to do that here and really have better tabs on what's going on.I think that's going to let us keep the bathrooms open and safe, which is what we want to do. The other aspect of the bathroom problem is really about vaping, and the fact that we have young people have access to these super addictive devices and have an addiction and that they need to tend to.And again, we have empowered the campus supervisors to sweep students out of there if they're congregating, even if, there's nothing in evidence. We do have vape detectors that sort of gives us some indication of what's happening where and, we're going to try to get.Students who need help, some help on our campus. We have I think a really effective and increasingly mature wellness center. We have a partnership with West County health that allows us to staff a wellness center with all kinds of professionals that can help young people with substance and other kinds of problems. If we can identify students who really need some help, they are a really important part of the support here for, not just punishing students, but really getting them what they need to not vape anymore. We hear it a lot from students who are actively trying to stop and literally cannot.So I'm excited about that and really expanding the kinds of referrals that we can make to students with different kinds of problems. The Wellness Center is a huge part of what we're able to do.Dale: All right. One more technology that I want to throw at you that is affecting the world, not just education, is AI. You directed me to some work that last year that the English department was doing using some tools and it was interesting to visit them and see that. Do you have any new thoughts on what, I guess for people that aren't into this it's easier than ever to answer a question, even a kind of analytical question of why did this happen?The kind of things teachers give out on tests or essays, right? It's easier to fabricate answers to those things than ever. Not just factual answers, but pretty well reasoned arguments. That really changes the relationship in some ways between students and teacher and assessment. How are you all thinking about that?Chuck: Yeah I think staff is thinking about that quite a bit. It's a little bit of a moving target, right? Because AI is developing so quickly. I think right on though, when you talk about assessment. So one of the first impacts I think it's going to have on us as educators is that we're going to have to get a little bit more creative with our assessments.That's not necessarily a bad thing. I think we could probably use a kick in the pants about that. So for a lot of folks on this campus, I think that's a welcome challenge. How can we create assessments that get at what students themselves really know and are able to do?But beyond that too ultimately AI is going to be part of what adults use in the context of their daily lives and work. And so what do we need to do to prepare our students to be fluent and adapted at doing that. And I think, maybe even more importantly, how do we ensure that all of our students equitably have access to what they need to know to, to be proficient.I do think it's something that we're going to have to figure out how to teach.Dale: There's an ethics around it that one has to work on. You can use it, but you just have to be honest to how you're using it and be transparent. A lot of the problems are when people are when they're saying they did something that, they really didn't do themselves. It's not their own work, which is plagiarism in some form or another.Chuck: Exactly.Dale: The rules haven't been written. It's an exciting time to figure that out, right?Chuck: Yeah, I agree. I agree.Addressing the Safeway ProblemDale: One issue that was persistent last year was the Safeway problem. And it relates to traffic. You really notice when Analy is in session. Traffic around town is very different when you guys are off. One of the challenges is the picking up kids, It's one of the reasons they start congregating over at Safeway. It's a convenient pickup spot for parents and others, but it's become a hangout that's had some problems over the last year.Chuck: Absolutely.Dale: And do you see any ways that'll change?Chuck: I think it did improve last year. We had a really productive conversation with management from Safeway and with the Sebastopol Police Department. Sebastopol Police have been a presence at Safeway, and certainly in the latter half of the year, they they were super helpful in terms of just being there and invisible, which I think had a positive impact. Safeway also added some some folks in their stores to monitor loss prevention and that kind of thing, which made a difference as well.It's important for folks to know that we can't just park there and come to Analy, which we're going to do our best to message to students and parents and make sure they know that even though it might seem like it, they're not an annex and you can't use their parking lot for the events and things like that.I do think things got a little bit better when one additional tool that we have that I'm super excited about because it actually just arrived today is a street-legal golf cart so that we can zip down there more frequently. Last year when I was able, I would go to Safeway after school and talk to students and other admin team members did as well.Dale: Just to be clear, it wasn't necessarily them congregating there was the problem, it was shoplifting and sometimes fights breaking out. Just to be clear, if anyone's listening to this, it was, kids peacefully congregating. It's not the issue per se, but when certain behaviors happened that it did become a problem.Dual Enrollment and JC ClassesDale: I know a question I wanted to ask you was there a policy change that students can now take classes at the JC? Was that a change?Chuck: The big change is that we have dual enrollment classes on this campus. We have what's called a CCAP agreement with the JC and I'm forgetting what it stands for, the acronym right now, but essentially what it has allowed is for some of our teachers to actually become JC employees and they're teaching actual JC classes on our campus.Students will get dual enrollment credit. They'll be enrolled at Analy, they'll be enrolled at the JC. And they'll leave here with actual JC credits.Dale: What's an example of a dual enrollment class or topic?Chuck: Right now we have two of our agriculture classes dual enrolled with the JC, and we're going to be expanding that in coming years.So in, one of the big changes in the past, we've had articulation agreements, so that would allow, for example a student to take a culinary class here, and then get preferential enrollment. They wouldn't have to take a prerequisite for a JC class, for example, because they already completed our class, or they could take a test and get credit for it if they passed the final exam in that course. So those were a sort of articulation agreements that we had in the past. Now we have an actual dual enrollment agreement in for some of our classes. It's a big innovation and I think it's.Dale: Does it allow an Analy student who maybe wants a different kind of class than what you offer or a higher level class say computer science or something. Does it allow them to Take a class at the JC or have that count towards their high school credits as well as college credits.Chuck: I think we've long had a policy that students could take classes that were not offered at Analy at the JC. In some cases, we now have board approval to authorize juniors and seniors to take classes if they have a reason, if there's something going on in their schedule, for example, they have something --trying to think of a good example.We had an equestrian, a student who was an accomplished equestrian and competing somewhere and there was a schedule problem. I think that student was allowed to take a course at the JC for credit but it's a process, right? We don't allow every student to do this. There are extenuating circumstances. We really do want to be as responsive to student needs as possible. For that to happen, students are going to have to demonstrate that there's a reason that's the best fit for them, and that's the thing that will best allow them to really realize their post secondary aspirations.So it's not something that we think many students are going to do, but previously it was just not possible for us with policy. I think the big news is really going to be with this dual enrollment possibility and the plans over the next few years to give students more opportunities to earn college credit.So for example, we have many new opportunities for students to get internships. We have a work experience course that's new to us, two full sections of it, where students will have placements in community organizations or local businesses that allow them to also enroll in JC courses that get them college credit.So I think over coming years we're going to make it possible for students to actually earn quite a few college credits before they leave Analy. The cool thing about that is, obviously, that that makes it so that the number of years their families have to pay for college will decrease, right?And they'll get a jump on transferring to a four year if they want to or that kind of thing.ConclusionDale: Chuck, thanks for your time today. I appreciate it. I know it's a busy first week and it's good to capture you with when-- there's nothing like the first week of schoolChuck: like the first week. Correct? Yeah, it's pretty fun. ItDale: Thanks again for joining me today and look forward to seeing you soon.Chuck: Thanks for having me, Dale. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe
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A Remarkable Student
Karis Morasch is graduating from Analy High School in a couple of weeks. She is remarkable, high-achieving student who exceeds expectations, taking more AP classes than you knew existed, and an athlete who excels in track and field setting school records in the triple jump. She is also a thoughtful student leader and she was recognized at the WCUHSD board meeting on May 8 for serving as the elected student representative for two years. Yet, what's also remarkable about Karis are the unique events that shaped her four years as a high school student. Her freshman year during Covid was spent on Zoom at her home in Guerneville. Her sophomore year was spent at El Molino, which then closed that year. She was one of the students who were merged into consolidated high school under the name West County High, which eventually reverted back to Analy High School. She is one of the last group of students to have attended El Molino. Even as she looks back on the whole experience, she remains positive because she and her peers worked hard to build a new school community. “Some of my best friends in the entire world I never would have met if we hadn't gone through that consolidation.” I do the things that I do because I love them, not out of obligation.— Karis MoraschI caught Karis in her car for an interview via Zoom after she had just finished her last AP exam (Pre-calculus) and just before she went off to track practice.Karis will be going to UC Berkeley in the fall where she plans to study political science. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe
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Investigating DEMA
This interview with Andrew Graham, a reporter for the Press Democrat, explores his year-long investigation into DEMA Management and Consulting, a for-profit company overseeing housing and medical services for the homeless in Sonoma County. DEMA’s contracts with the County’s Department of Health Services included two former hotels purchased with State funds under Project HomeKey: Elderberry Commons in Sebastopol (January 2021-March 2023) and Mickey Zane Place in Santa Rosa (from December 2020 to present). DEMA also manages the County’s Emergency Shelter Site (ESS), a tent camp that opened in the spring of 2023 on Administration Drive in Santa Rosa. Over a three-year period, the County paid DEMA over $26 million.After hearing from residents of the facilities managed by DEMA and talking to current or former DEMO employees, Graham began looking more deeply into DEMA. He obtained information on the contracts with the County and the invoices submitted by DEMA. His reporting unveiled problems with DEMA, which included a set of financial discrepancies, lack of documentation for the work of salaried employees, and other questions about medical services provided. In response to reporting, the County Auditor stepped in to do a limited review of the billing. Michelle Patino, the CEO of DEMA, threatened to sue the County and the Press Democrat while denying there was any problem. The County’s Auditor took many months to look into DEMA’s billing, in part because DEMA did not cooperate. Meanwhile, the Department of Health Services was looking into extending DEMA’s contract. The Auditor presented a report to the County Supervisors this spring and they deliberated over what to do in several private meetings. Last week, the Supervisors decided to the cut ties with DEMA. DEMA’s billing problems could mean that the County would have trouble getting reimbursed by FEMA for the amount it paid to DEMA.Here a timeline of Graham’s reporting on DEMA in the Press Democrat (behind paywall).* July 26. 2023. A Santa Rosa company earned more than $26 million through no-bid Sonoma County contracts. A Press Democrat investigation finds questions in its billing* July 28, 2023. Sonoma County auditors will review DEMA contracts in response to Press Democrat investigation* July 31, 2023. Sonoma County’s elected finance chief says DEMA audit will be thorough and independent* August 11, 2023. DEMA CEO denies wrongdoing as Sonoma County puts homeless housing sites out for competitive bids* September 10, 2023. Sonoma County Board of Supervisors prepares to award another $3.3 million to DEMA to manage 3 housing sites, as audit continues* November 24, 2023. Sonoma County plans to extend contract for homeless housing contractor DEMA even as company withholds records from auditors* January 31, 2024. Sonoma County extends contract with controversial homeless provider that is under financial investigation* March 8, 2024. Report from Sonoma County’s financial investigation into homeless services provider DEMA delayed again* March 27, 2024. ‘Every hour accounted for’: DEMA CEO responds to report questioning millions in billing* April 7, 2024. What to do about DEMA? Homeless services provider vexes Sonoma County officials* April 16, 2024. Sonoma County supervisors vote to sever ties with embattled homeless services contractor DEMAWhile DEMA is at the center of the story, the broader context is the role of oversight by the County of its patchwork of contractors who provide homeless services, especially as spending on homelessness has increased and the scope of work has become more complex over this period. Are the millions of dollars spent on homelessness programs producing results? A story in CalMatters says that California fails to track its homelessness spending or results, a new audit says. A statewide audit released (last) Tuesday called into question the state’s ability to track and analyze its spending on homelessness services. The article used the cities of San Diego and San Jose as examples.San Jose and San Diego each have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on homelessness in recent years. But neither could provide an exact accounting of how much was spent and where it went, according to the audit. And both cities failed to consistently evaluate whether the homeless services nonprofits they contract with are effectively spending city funds. In San Diego, for example, a $1.6 million shelter contract didn’t specify how many people should be served, making it impossible to tell if that program has been successful. Even when the cities required performance metrics from their contractors, they sometimes failed to collect them. — CalMatters linkThe need for extensive investigative reporting such as what Andrew Graham and the Press Democrat have done is essential if public officials and their contractors are to be held accountable for making progress on the homelessness problem. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe
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Ken Berman's Industrial Whimsy
Sebastopol artist Ken Berman’s painting, “Temporary Restraining Order,” was selected for a new juried Open ‘23 show at SF's de Young Museum, which is open now and runs through the January 7th. Berman is a bit of an outlier among Sonoma County artists; he doesn’t do landscapes or seascapes. Instead, as a young man growing up in Pennsvylvania and New Jersey, Berman was inspired by steel mills and railroads as well as Rube Goldberg and Salvador Dali to look at the surface of the world around us and see inside it to find something in the complexity of its details. He calls his art “industrial whimsy.”In this conversation, Ken and I talk about his background as an architect and an artist. He sees himself as an outsider, a self-taught artist who learned what he wanted to do by doing it, painting day after day. He says: “I feel like my role is to paint and my goal is to show the work, and then (I have) the faith that there will be people there (to see it.)” Having his painting selected for the show at the de Young Museum provides Berman with “higher level validation” for the work he does. Links* Ken Berman Art - website* Red Maple Architects and Designers - websiteTranscriptDale: I'm with Ken Berman. Ken, just as an opener, if you had a neighbor come up to you, one you don't know, and he said tell me about yourself. How would you introduce yourself?Ken: I'd have to probably start off with being a student in architecture, because most people can relate to that. Either they went to school and they drafted things or, so that's where it really all began when at 18 I went to Lehigh University, which was across the river from Bethlehem Steel.So a lot of the iconography, a lot of the industrial, that's where it originated. I actually had an apartment on the railroad tracks. So I heard the coal cars coming in to feed the furnaces, the blast furnaces. And this is when Bethlehem Steel was still operational.What it became, almost had a life force that I was responding to, or I am still responding to. Dale: That's interesting. Would you tell them you're an artist? Ken: That's how I would segue into, yes, I'm an artist. So that they understood where the foundation came from. The prelude to it was that it wasn't just, I came to, geez, I just had this in my head.I was going to paint industrial whimsy is what I've been calling it lately. It actually, it originated in architecture. It originated in steel mills and it's just evolved as as I've gotten older. Dale: You're included in an exhibition at de Young Museum. Tell us about that. Ken: Basically it's I guess they call it triennial. So every three years they've been trying to do and open up this competition to artists within the nine Bay Area counties. This year, yeah, I was lucky enough to put in my entry and it was accepted.So they had the opening for the artists a couple days ago and the official opening will be tomorrow. Dale: That's Saturday September 30th? And how long will that run? Ken: Until the first week of January in 2024. So it's a really good, it's a long -- you can come to the museum, I think is free on Saturdays.Dale: So what does that mean to you as an artist to be accepted into kind of an institution like that? Ken: You need, I think every artist, you need some level of validation. Yes, we can all paint in our studios, but there's always that desire that I got to show it to somebody, it doesn't matter by your parents, friends, maybe some people do Art Trails or Art at the Source and they open up their studios, but once, once you graduate for certain things, then you go I need more than that. I need some validation at a higher level. And so this was great. It gave us for 7, 000 plus artists, an opportunity to get something validated that maybe they've been working on for a couple of years.Or like me, this has been a 20 plus year excursion into the world of industrial whimsy, Dale: Talk about the origins. You describe yourself as self taught. You didn't go to art school. You went to architecture school, but you didn't go to art school. So this was something you developed somewhat on the side and has become a pretty important part of your life, right? Ken: I actually had a really interesting thing happen when I was in graduate school. I went to NJIT. I went to Lehigh for my undergraduate and I went to NJIT, which is a New Jersey Institute of Technology.And I was invited to go to a book signing for an artist. His name was Robert Rauschenberg. And Robert Rauschenberg is Jasper Johns, Warhol-- he's at that level. I didn't know who he was. I went to architecture school. And so I didn't really know who these artists were, but I met him and I talked to him.How do you know you're an artist? And he said you're an artist if you wake up every morning and you want to make, you want to create whatever your art is. And I thought, Oh geez, that's all it is. That's pretty easy. That set the bar pretty low. I really enjoy painting and creating things. So I guess I'm an artist.So that was the prelude into being included into, I guess, the artist category.Dale: It's a interesting label where some people aren't sure whether they fit being an artist, right? Or whether it applies to them or when in their life it might apply to them or how much they have to do that.He gave you inspiration to just... start thinking of yourself as an artist, right? Ken: I think so, because if he was that willing to basically just, that's how I describe it. It's just that doesn't really set the bar that hard. I don't need to go get an advanced degree. I don't need a bachelor's degree in it. I could just start right now and start playing around with paints and I had that artistic license to do it. For any artist, it's a program that you never graduate from, right? You're never out of school.Dale: That's actually a good thing. How did you Find what you wanted to paint. Subject matter. You mentioned the Bethlehem Steel thing that being formative for you, but did you start with that right away, trying to work in that direction?Ken: Not really. I started, I was much more of a colorist. I played with a lot of color. I really liked that. Then I was really into Surrealism when I first started. So Dolly and I still am. I think there's a, that's where the whimsy comes in. That's where a little bit of more of the idiosyncratic kind of things come in. It can't just be me replicating machines because that's not really what I'm trying to do. Take a picture of that. To me, there's these intangibles and there's connections that get made or reconnections get made. Something happens and there's a cause and effect.And so sometimes when I start a painting, I might start off and I think it's going to be something else and it just transforms and becomes its own thing. I've just learned to let that storyline guide me. Dale: Your work would be hard to describe just in words, don't you think?Ken: That's why people, they try to group you. Okay, you're the machine guy or you're this. And I think the descriptions really limit what the reality of the visual, what the paintings could be. Because each person-- that when I've done more shows, some people love it, some people don't really like it.But there isn't anybody that just goes what did I, what was I looking at here? I don't quite, you got to tell me the story. You got to explain at least a little bit because, how'd you get there? Or, each individual painting, what the symbolism might be. Dale: I saw something you wrote, you're really interested in the complexity of the world around us, which includes all this technology and machines and things even more so today.When we think of fine art, it kind of filters that out. We want something, what we think is beautiful and it might be a landscape, it might be a portrait or things, but this technological machine is all around us. Ken: Think about what we're using right now.For us, it's just a medium like any other medium. We could be painting a painting, it would just take us forever to communicate. But to me it's a medium. It's a way of me addressing, like you said, the complexities of the world. Sometimes I'll come up with a painting title, like the one that got into the show is Temporary Restraining Order, right? Dale: That's a great title. Terrible in a way, but. Ken: Exactly. Dale: It's a great title. Ken: You think about what the pretense like what happened, what, why, was it really bad or, weird. And in a lot of ways it was just watching the TV show Suits, which is on TV right now and just how the attorneys kept manipulating situations and that's what I do with the machine.It's not, it's just a series of complexities and a series of decisions that you make. And then within that one painting, it's about holding it up. It's temporary restraint. Just, we got to hold that moment in a lot of ways. Dale: Do you teach art? Ken: I've been asked to give classes and the one class I did do, it was funny. I bored most of the people in the first 15 minutes. So they all left. But the funny part of it is that the 10 people that were left, I started to give them demonstrations. The people that had left early would come back when I did Art Trails, and they said, we missed it. We left too early. You got to show us what you showed everybody else. And I almost felt yeah, you should have stayed a little longer. . But I have taught a little bit. Dale: Yeah. It's interesting. I think people do want to know how sometimes, just to watch people work and do the thing itself.Ken: When I first started mixing paint, that's what most artists you're going to-- you have a little dab, a little tube of paint, especially oil paint, which is what I use. And you put a little dab on a palette and then you paint from there. I basically take a whole wad of paint and goop it onto a palette and then I move it around with like basically cake-making or cake-baking tools.So I move a lot of paint. And when I first did that for the class, people were, they were gasped. They were like, Oh my God, you're wasting all that paint. And I'm like no. Watch what I do. And in the end, you'll see, it's just my God, you use it. Where'd all that paint go? You made this big, huge blob of paint on the palette and then, but somehow it got mastitized onto the canvas.And it all started to work. Dale: How did you get to Sebastopol? What brought you here? Ken: The route was New Jersey to San Francisco to San Rafael, to Petaluma to Sebastopol. At each point I actually got a little bit bigger studio space along the way to paint.In New Jersey it was just my bedroom. San Francisco was a whole closet that was big enough, almost big enough to be a bedroom in San Francisco. , San Rafael was part of a garage. Petaluma was my dining room, and then when I got to Sebastopol, I had enough room in my architectural office to have a little studio, and then now I actually built a studio, Dale: Are you part of a community of artists in the North Bay? Do you connect to local artists here, or do you just work on your own? Ken: That's a great, that really is a great question. I've really tried to be part of the art scene here, but to be honest with you, most people don't want me.It's landscapes, and it's certain things that certain groups, and the birds of a feather, and they're, that's where they-- I'm an outsider, and so as much as I try to get in, I have long ago just assumed like, Hey, look, this is just my thing. I just got to keep doing it.If there's a group of people that want to take me in great. If not, I'll just keep going. Dale: Outsider is an interesting term. That's an important part of who you are, maybe? Ken: I think so. I think so. In every art, some artists, I think they, they can paint things that are outside what is normal, what is considered normal, right? A portrait or a landscape. And there's some that will dabble in abstract art.And there's some that are pushing a little bit further than that. Maybe, whatever their medium is. To me, the further I can get away from that meant that I was much more confident that I could see myself or see my art in it, in the way that it wanted to be seen. Regardless of it, it didn't need any validation.It didn't need anybody to say, that's great or pat me on the back. It was going to be just like, we're going to explore this and see how far we get with it. Dale: So let's talk a little bit about your life as an architect. Do you still practice? Ken: Yes. I have to do that, pay the bills.Dale: What kind of work do you do there? Ken: Mostly residential. It's anything like decks to additions, bathroom remodels, but we do new houses too. When the fires happened, we did quite a few of the fire rebuilds. Dale: Does that feel different or similar to what you do as an artist?Ken: There's a lot of discipline in having to do architecture. From coordinating plans with owners to construction, the whole thing. That actually does come in handy when it comes to art. Because if you don't have that discipline in setting up shows, and making sure your pricing is together, it would be hard to just be an artist that just comes to it whenever.You'd be really hard pressed. You'd fall into that, oh, you're an artist category, right? You're like, oh, no one expects much. But when you're as disciplined or forced to be as disciplined in doing architecture, it's easy to segue and move that into another discipline. That really is, it would be a benefit to having those skill sets.Dale: You did an exhibit, which was maybe your art and architect hats on at the same time, the portable shelters that would be towed by a bicycle. That project was a few years ago, but talk a bit about that. Ken: In Healdsburg, there was a there were a group of homeless, people that a friend of mine who another artist up in Healdsburg asked me, Hey, look, I got this idea and you're an architect and you can design these things.So we went up and we met with a bunch of the homeless people that in Healdsburg. And so that's how it started. It was really fascinating because I did a show it at Paul Modder gallery as one of the unveilings of it. They invited homeless people, they invited the typical gallery collectors there, and everyone commingled, right?No one really could tell who was necessarily homeless or who wasn't. And, it was just something that being asked to do it, and then having the architecture background, and then built it myself. I actually built the prototype myself. And it worked. I thought it'd be like, this could be really cool.Unfortunately, within the county and the state, they really want to provide homes. They don't want to have these shelters all over the place. They want the homeless in, full time housing, heated spaces. It's an idea that really probably can only go as far as a prototype, I think.Maybe camping? I don't know. Maybe you might see that as portable camping. Dale: It's somewhere between a tent and a tiny house, right? Ken: It's a little bit hard to make it. I envision it out of... It might be like tent material. It could be something that was lightweight and portable.Maybe you could fold it up and it could be like a multi purpose, it could be something you sleep in. It could be something you drag. Dale: When I think of an architect, I think of that they work on projects, someone comes and actually design a house and you do that. Do you think about your art that way? Or is it just every day I just get up and paint? Or do you think like there's a thing I want to do out there and I'm building towards that? Or it's not just a painting, but some new idea that I'm working on. Ken: I think I do. I think in the big picture, there is a big, I don't know what it looks like, but there is this big edifice of some kind that has a bunch of my paintings that create this, whatever it is, it could be a building.I don't know what it is I'm exactly building. It's Noah's Ark. I gotta build this big thing. I guess there's going to be a whole bunch of animals that get brought into it for some purpose. I don't know. But there is a bigger picture, I think, but I don't know what that is. One of the things I do feel like I do I have faith in it, in and of itself. I feel like my role is to paint, and my goal is to show the work, and then the faith is that there will be people there or it's if you build it, they will come.Dale: How do you function as an outsider? I'm saying that more of the personality than describing your art, but in these sort of art worlds that are very stratified, they go on those clues of what status means, how does that feel? You're taking something that's very personal to you and putting it into an environment where you could almost say they don't always care very much about that the work itself. Ken: Part of my story I guess or the autobiography would be the underdog I think if there was any, if there .Was a current that really gave it the outsider, that edge, it would be the underdog, is that when you look at gallery or museum edifices, you envision it being populated by people of prestige and and a certain level of social, almost like a class stratus, right?For me, I enjoy being the underdog or I enjoy being the outsider because then I'm not encumbered by having those things. I can bring the work in if it's good work and it can be compared with other people who are also doing their best work and then you could look at them side by side and really evaluate it and then everything gets measured appropriately.And then you feel like-- take out the social strata and then look at it just for what was created and then gauge that or grade that based on what that artist had achieved. So basically, the idea of having your artwork in a democratic situation, a lot of what the de Young is trying to do in a blind jurying process is to democratize who is actually getting into these shows.As an outsider artist or an underdog, I see myself as that's a great opportunity to be validated or weighed and measured against other people who are pursuing their own art in maybe the same way and all heading towards whatever goal that personal goal that they're trying to achieve.Dale: That's a good place to end. Why don't you just summarize the de Young dates again?Ken: The show runs to January 7th, I believe. It's the nine Bay Area counties surrounding basically San Francisco, so I'm really proud and humbled by being able to have a chance to I don't know, represent Sonoma County, but my little part of it. The industrial whimsy part of it. Dale: Congratulations to you Ken. And it's been a pleasure talking to you. Ken: You too, Dale. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe
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Steve Fowler on the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm
Press Fest is this Saturday at the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm from 10 to 2pm. You’ll be able to use an antique apple press or a more modern electric one to make delicious juice from local apples. This week, I had the opportunity to talk to Steve Fowler who was curator at the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm from 1989 until 2010.Fowler is the one person who knows as much about the farm’s past as well as its present as a historical museum and active farm. For this conversation, we sat in the cottage at a large table. I pressed record and really just listened to Steve talk. He has a wonderful deep voice, which has also served him well in various roles as an actor. He’s been part of the Cemetery Walk for 15 years, playing local notables such as Jasper O’Farrell and Willard Libby. (We’ll cover the Cemetery Walk next week.). See Steve and others involved in the farm at Press Fest on Saturday.Transcript: Steve Fowler on the Luther Burbank Experiment FarmDale: From 1989 until 2010, Steve Fowler was the curator at the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm in Sebastopol. We met this week at the cottage on the farm and sat around a large table surrounded by all kinds of Burbank memorabilia. I pressed record and really just listened to Steve talk about Luther Burbank, the experiment farm, and the efforts to save the farm and continue its work in the present.Steve: I'm Steve Fowler. I'm a landscape gardener by trade. I'm retired since 2010. And when I retired, I gave up the job of curator of the Burbank Farm, a position I'd had since 1989.I had an intimate knowledge of just about every square foot of the Burbank Experiment Farm in Sebastopol. Dale: How big is the farm today?Steve: I'm going to say two and a half acres. It expanded and contracted depending on negotiations with the city and also with the Burbank Heights Corporation that did senior housing next door.And at first was very resentful of the farm. Don Dowd and I didn't see eye to eye in those days because I was the representative of the farm and the only person who was ever over here, at first. I've seen a lot of water go under the bridge, so to speak. Dale: What was the size of the experiment farm in Luther Burbank's day? Steve: It was 15 acres. We always say 15 acres. And if you look behind you, you'll see a map that represents those 15 acres. There was a time when he owned part of what is now the cemetery and the story is that he gave it up because there were too many gophers. He was trying to grow gladiolus up there and they were just killing him. That's an original map. It shows the, literally, tens of thousands of plants that were here at that time. It was completely fenced because Burbank did not want anybody messing around over here. There was no plant patent law, and his experiments could be easily stolen, particularly when they got to the point where they were about ready to be introduced. It's also said that he searched the pockets of his employees to make sure they weren't carrying any seeds or twigs. Horticulture is so portable because of the fact that you can make cuttings from just about anything and of course seeds are almost invisible.He charged, and we have right here a ticket, $10 for a quarter of an hour if you wanted to come visit him here at the farm. And in those days... I think that ticket is dated 1916. That's funny to say that. It's such a bygone century. But in 1916, ten bucks would buy you a suit of clothes, I'm sure.Maybe pay the rent on an apartment for a month or something like that. It was a lot. It was prohibitive and that was the idea. Because he really wanted to be left alone over here. If he wanted to show off, he would do it over in Santa Rosa at his house, he had a nice house, he had a glass greenhouse, a wife. Two wives, actually. One was a big mistake. She hated town; she thought he was an important person and they would ride around town in a gilded chariot or something. He was just gone all the time. He was working 14 hours a day and just cared about his plants.So that didn't last, but he did marry his assistant, Elizabeth toward the end of his life, and that was apparently a love match. A very deep love match.Dale: When did Burbank stop coming to the farm?Steve: He stopped coming here, I think, in about 1924-25. He died in 1926. But he had stopped working at the farm for a couple of years. I think he was even trying to sell the place. I don't think he did because his wife, Elizabeth, installed an apple orchard after he died.So large parts of what he had done was was destroyed. But there was this one little section where the cottage we were sitting in was, and there was a barn, and there was a sort of, it wasn't suitable, maybe suitable for apartments, and there were lots of gnarly old trees. Some local historians, activists, and Mel Davis, who was then the city manager contrived to create a condition in the use permit that this be set aside.That was the late 70s. I'm not sure of the exact times of all those maneuverings. After he died, there was still tremendous interest in the farm. The Kyle family moved into this house and actually remodeled it so that they could raise their girls here. I think there were a couple of Kyle daughters and at least one son. They all lived here, but the well had gone dry in 1906 when the earthquake struck and the house was knocked off its foundations and had to be rebuilt.So this is the second version of this cottage and it dates to the 1908, something like that. Also Stanford University was interested and then there was a nursery in Missouri, Starks nursery that bought all of it, the rights to all of his plants. They had someone living here who was working here, whose job was to find experiments that still had some promise, and then remove them to their nursery in Missouri, where they would rename them, or name them, and then sell them to the public. Unfortunately, the microclimates in Missouri were so different that most of it didn't make the cut. Luther never had much of a relationship with the scientific community. Because he didn't work with the same principles that, for instance, Mendel or the geneticists of the time.He worked from instinct. I think he had parapsychological abilities. I'm sure he did, as a matter of fact, but I can't prove it. It's the sort of thing. How could he go down a line of plants, kick over every one except the one that he thought had promise? And this would be years before that plant turned into the Shasta Daisy, or the Santa Rosa Plum, or whatever. The plants talked to him, or he talked to them. He understood and he had an extraordinary ability. And he never drank or smoked, so his senses were sharp. I wish I had his senses. Because the sense of smell is completely gone from my body. Years of cigarette smoking took care of that, and my eyes are going. My ears are still okay, but... Plants don't actually make much noise, you but but he had to, he was very sensitive to them. Yeah, so he could bypass all the stages that scientists have to go through in order to establish-- Mendel, he didn't even know about Mendel, actually. Mendel had done his work, but he believed in the idea of inherited characteristics. So he believed that a plant could acquire characteristics during its lifetime that could be handed on to the offspring independently of the sexual reproduction.Now, of course that isn't true, but what we know now is that he was able to activate genes in the plant pool that otherwise would never be expressed by the exquisite care that he gave the plants. When a plant was given that kind of care, just like a person, they began to express things in their flowers and their growth that otherwise would never appear.That was the acquired characteristic that seemed like a genetic impossibility. But it was really a matter of just treatment, how the plant was treated. Lamarck. It was called the Lamarckian Fallacy. And so there's a lot more truth to it we know now than it was given credit for at the time.The historical society was incorporated as a non profit specifically to take on the farm project. Renee Felciano. By the time that I got on board in 78, I think it was already, the farm was certainly preserved. And some work had been done. A landscape plan had been prepared by EcoView, an outfit out of Napa.But the fact of the matter was that there was no money to install, to do anything. The city didn't wanna spend any money and the Burbank Heights people disliked the idea because they still owned the property and they were liable for anything that happened over here in the way of an accident. They could see suits coming at 'em from right and left. So that's why they opposed the whole development of the farm at that time. There was an architect oh, God, John Banks? I have an old brain. It takes a while to churn out names. Yeah, but he and Renee were a team. They started a program that that gave awards and did surveys of historic buildings that were being either properly maintained or remodeled in an appropriate fashion, in keeping with the original style.Which is this cottage. The wallpaper, the doors, all the brass handles, everything is historically accurate. John Hughes. I knew that name would come to me. So many of these people are not with us anymore. John Hughes is not. Renee Felciano just died a couple years ago. It became important, in order to preserve the farm from future development, that it be recognized by the historic American Building Survey. And that's on the wall over there in brass. This is officially recognized as historical, meaning that it cannot be sold. Dale: Talk about some of the things that are happening on the farm now. You have a new fenced- in area.Steve: That has everything to do with our new curator, we call him a curator. And that's a holdover from the idea that this place is a museum. A curator is someone who cares for historical or for museum artifacts. In my day, that's all I did.There were some trees here that were historically interesting and so the idea was to keep them alive. And that meant cutting down oak trees, for instance. And it meant removing vast quantities of broom and poison oak and blackberries. I didn't do most of that work. Circuit Riders was engaged to do it.It was a war on poverty idea. LBJ. They had a headquarters up in Windsor. And they brought a crew down here, and they must have worked for weeks, and they took almost all of the, maybe some valuable plants, who knows. Lisa Bush was running it, and she was very well educated.Everybody was wondering, what's left? And a guy named Bob Hornback was rummaging around here, and he was a botanist and he has become a historical botanist. Very important character. But that's to explain the word curator.Jamie Self, who is the current curator, and has been for, what, three years now? Three years. Brought in a whole lot of new energy and new ideas. And he took it to the next level, which was to actually start propagating, maybe eventually even hybridizing. That meant you had to control the deer population. That meant fencing off a good section of the farm for that purpose. And that was a controversial thing. I think we all agree it was a good idea. So Jamie who had experience already with managing volunteers from Esalen Institute and who is a landscape contractor with all the tools and expertise that go with that.I was a landscape contractor too, but I'm from the dark ages. I did plans with a pen and a pencil. I did all my billing myself, with checks and invoices. Nowadays that's all happening online. Jamie's got that under control, but he's really brought a lot.Alex McLean was here for 10 years, and he did a lot; he was a building contractor. So he did a lot of repairs on this building, the cottage. He completely remodeled the nursery and turned it into a modern, productive facility.Aaron Sheffield turned out to have a talent for getting grants. If you have willing people and you have someone who can write grants and you put them together, stuff happens.That also was not true for most of my career here. Of course I started from zero. There were no paths. There was no electricity. There was no sprinkler system; there was nothing. We took it to the point where there was a new barn. That was built in '97 with help from the Pellini family. And they helped us get a tractor. And that meant we could put in better paths. And it went on from there. I would say that the farm is no longer what it was thought to be, which was a museum. It's now become a working facility that produces lots and lots of nursery plants. It's growing crops like potatoes and tomatoes and flowering plants.It has a tree nursery, where lots of trees are being grown. These are all on display this coming weekend on Saturday, the 16th. From 10 o'clock on? 10 to 2. So we're showing off this weekend. That's called the Press Fest. We're going to be displaying our antique apple press beautifully redone. It's a hand crank. Oh, kids love that. You get that flywheel going and it just practically drags you around in a circle . But there's an electric one too, and the Slow Food people operate that on weekends and produce a lot of juice. It's a great public service and it's another sideline for the farm. Get full access to Sebastopol Times at www.sebastopoltimes.com/subscribe
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