The arts


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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flynn gives the newly learned Ukrainian pro-democracy gesture.

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

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

 

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It was almost as if Vladimir ‘Putrid’ expanded his war with Ukrane all the way to Point Reyes Station. Last week’s posting announced a show of Maddy Sobel’s art would open this week at the town library with part of the proceeds going to Ukranian causes. In addition Betty Grinshtein, who was born in Ukraine, would tell about her trip last summer from the Cowgirl Creamery to the Polish-Ukrainian border. For three months she provided travel logistics and aid to Ukrainian refugees fleeing into Poland by train.

Maddy Sobel (left) with Betty Grinshtein outside the library Thursday after their show was blacked out.

But just as the art show and talk were ready to begin, the lights went out throughout West Marin. PG&E said bad weather was probably the cause of the blackout but gave no details. In any case, the show and talk have been rescheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, March 16.

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Sleeping wildlife

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A raccoon last year took a nap on the front deck of Mitchell cabin.

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A fox sleeping on a picnic table on our deck.

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A blacktail buck half asleep uphill from the cabin.

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A blacktail fawn resting between two clumps of daffodils.

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A blacktail doe with a line of warts down her side.

The Maine Department of Inland Fish and Wildlife explains that these “deer fibromas are wart-like growths on deer that are typically caused by an infection with a species-specific papillomavirus. These manifest as firm, warty growths fixed to the skin of a deer…

“In most cases, fibromas will not negatively impact the health of infected deer, and fibromas are not known to be a significant source of deer mortality. These fleshy growths impact only the skin of the animal. In severe cases, fibromas around the eyes or mouth may impact a deer’s ability to see and to eat, and very large fibromas throughout the body may impede movement….

“Though similar diseases exist in other species, deer will not spread their fibromas to pets, livestock, or other species.” Or humans, so don’t worry.

 

 

 

The Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (right) in 1894 wrote his eight light-hearted humoresques, the best known of which is Humoresque G flat No. 7. You’ll recognize it the minute you hear it. The short composition, in turn, led to some unlikely associations six decades later.

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As it happens, toilets on most trains traditionally emptied onto the tracks below or onto their shoulder.  Some trains in the British Isles, in fact, still do. In the US, however, this unesthetic arrangement has been largely eliminated, so to speak.

Amtrak phased out its use of such toilets in the 1980s after waste from a Silver Meteor train on a bridge crossing the St. Johns River in Florida landed on a fisherman who filed a lawsuit.

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 Before then, railroad companies were more concerned with toilet waste landing in train stations during stops. In the 1950s, all this inspired a Canadian-American folksinger/songwriter, Oscar Brand (1920-2016), to write a comic song (click to hear) that relates romantic love with the need to use a toilet while on a train, as well as with the Union army’s Gen. William Techumseh Sherman. Brand (left) took the tune from Dvorak’s Humoresque No. 7.

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Passengers will please refrain

From flushing toilets while the train

Is in the station. Darling, I love you!

We encourage constipation

While the train is in the station

Moonlight always makes me think of you.

 

If you wish to pass some water,

kindly call the pullman porter,

He’ll place a vessel in the vestibule.

If the porter isn’t here,

Try the platform in the rear —

The one in front is likely to be full.

 

If the woman’s room be taken,

Never feel the least forsaken,

Never show a sign of sad defeat.

Try the men’s room in the hall,

And if some man has had the call,

He’ll courteously relinquish you his seat.

 

If these efforts all are vain,

Then simply break a window pane —

This novel method used by very few.

We go strolling through the park

Goosing statues in the dark,

If Sherman’s horse can take it, why can’t you?

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Amen, but can you safely goose a horse, let alone a statue of one?

Anti Status Quo

Back before the mural on the neighboring post office was painted over, I got to know Laure Reichek at Toby’s Coffee Bar in Point Reyes Station. She lives in Hicks Valley near the McEvoy olive ranch, and I first met her at seasonal parties there.

This is the cover of her last book, which came out two years ago.

As noted in a posting here at that time, Laure was born in Paris in 1930 and in 1951 moved to the US with her husband. He was an American veteran she met after the war when both were studying in Paris. 

Laure at 19 in Paris.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laure’s latest book of poetry in part reflects the trauma of having seen World War II and fascism closehand as a child. Anti Status Quo is a collection of mostly grim ironies.

A week ago, she and I reconnected at Toby’s where she presented me with the book. Here are a couple of biting poems from it:

Of Thee I Weep

Can a man, woman, or child

walk anywhere on this planet?

 

Our planet?

 

It depends

whether he/she has

the money.

 

Money

 

to buy required papers

to cross artificial borders

of nation-states.

With money

you are welcome

to go anywhere.

 

Without money

you are allowed

when needed.

 

Without money

the beacon of light

will lead you to prisons

and the doors

will be locked.

 

While the poor

walk over mountains, deserts,

drown in rivers,

the rich will fly

in comfort through the air.

 

Oh, Liberty

of thee I weep.

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If They’re Poor

It’s their fault

for not choosing their parents well.

Instead of their labor to sell

they should have chosen oil wells

or football teams—

very profitable and clean.

My friends own pipelines

and the oil companies,

but I control the armies,

the press, the judiciary.

I’m the emperor of the

twenty-first century,

your thought content and context

your past present and future,

your freedom is the one I own.
I’m rich because I made the right choice.

If they’re poor, that’s their problem—

not mine.

 

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Laure in Paris, 2019

This collection of her poems and her book Autrefois to Today are available at <reichek.org/Laure> (upper case L).

For the second September in a row, the art gallery at Toby’s Feed Barn is featuring an exhibit by the superb landscape artist Thomas Wood of Nicasio. The show closes Sept. 27.

“My paintings are meditations on nature,” Wood commented last year, and once again all the works on display are landscapes.

 

San Geronimo Valley Road.

 

 

 

 

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Rush Creek near Novato.      Sold for $3,200

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Wood has been represented in dozens of exhibits, the artist’s background is impressive, including the surprising fact that his painting California Hills was on display in the US embassy in Belize from 2005 to 2008, as I’ve noted here before.

 

 

 

Thomas Wood at Toby’s last year. <twoodart.com>

 

 

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Lucas Valley

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Limantour Wetlands

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North Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore

The public is at least as impressed as I by Woods’ artwork. In the exhibition’s first three or four days, paintings were selling for hundreds and even thousands of dollars.

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Landscape painter Thomas Wood is in the midst of a four-Saturday show at his small studio on the square in Nicasio. The show will wind up from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, May 25, and anyone who hasn’t seen it yet really ought to take a ride to Nicasio.

“My paintings are meditations on nature,” Wood comments, and indeed all the works on display are landscapes (with a bit of the Petaluma River thrown in). Morning, the painting at the upper left, portrays the morning fog in the trees.

 

Wood <twoodart.com> has taken part in more than 150 exhibits. Works by Wood and Point Reyes Station photographer Art Rogers were shown together at West Marin galleries in 2008 and 2009. Last year he held a well-received show in Toby’s Feed Barn Gallery and sold a number of paintings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Petaluma River in downtown Petaluma.

Redwoods.

The marsh at Schooner Bay.

Nicasio Reservoir changing hues. On our way home from Wood’s exhibit, my wife Lynn Axelrod Mitchell, and I stopped beside Nicasio Reservoir to try to figure out what is making a cove look light blue. It couldn’t be art. Could it be chemistry? (Lynn, by the way, shot all the photos in this posting on her Iphone because the battery in my Nikon was dead.) The shoreline at left is lined with foam, so I called Marin Municipal Water District, which owns the reservoir, to find out if it knew of anything dangerous in the water.

Update: I got a call back Tuesday morning and was told what looks light blue is probably some form of algae, which also occurs at Bon Tempe Reservoir. District staff, however, took water samples to confirm that the reservoir was safe.

 

 

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The great American writer Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) is remembered especially for four novels: You Can’t Go Home Again, Of Time and the River, The Web and the Rock, and Look Homeward, Angel, which is my favorite. Although it’s a work of fiction, the book’s protagonist, Eugene Gant, is largely a stand-in for Wolfe himself. The author sets the stage for Look Homeward, Angel with an introductory poem:

. . . A stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces.

Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.

Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

Thomas Wolfe as a young, 6-foot, 6-inch, pipe smoker.

What brings all this to mind is remembering that a couple of decades ago when I was between marriages, I briefly tried answering ads published by online dating sites. As it happened, one woman I began exchanging emails with wrote that she is a fan of poetry and asked that I send her my favorite poem. Without hesitation I sent her Thomas Wolfe’s existential poem and was surprised by her response, which amounted to: “If that’s your favorite poem, you sound too grim for me. Goodbye.”

Apparently I disqualified myself by being a Wolfe man.

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Among those performing with drummer Michael Aragon Sunday was Rob Fordyce, guitarist for the band Fuzzy Slippers.

It was a musical event to remember. Sunday afternoon, Jon Fernandez of Inverness and his wife Patsy Krebs rode with Lynn and me to San Rafael to be guests at a wonderful jazz reawakening.

Although he’d become widely respected in the Bay Area jazz scene, drummer Michael Aragon, 77, retired two years ago for health reasons. By then, his quartet had played the Friday night gig at Sausalito’s No Name Bar for 36 years. Jon and I, sometimes accompanied by Lynn, attended most Fridays in the last five years.

Last weekend, Aragon hosted a jazz party at the San Rafael Yacht Club, and a number of fellow musicians, along with fans from his Sausalito days, showed up.

‘Twas a convivial gathering in which the afternoon’s performers mingled with the guests. From left: keyboardist KC Filson, brothers Gene and Joe Handy, and caterer Diane Johnson, who showed up with a scrumptious array of hors d’oeuvres.

The San Rafael Yacht Club with its beautiful location on the San Rafael Canal has been around since 1938, but I was unfamiliar with it before Sunday’s party.

During a break, Aragon chats with Ray E. Smith, who with his partner Vivian, for years showed up at the No Name most Friday evenings to hear Aragon’s quartet. Also taking part in this discussion are Patsy Krebs and her husband Jon. Sitting next to me is Mary Crowley, founder and executive director of the Ocean Voyages Institute, which was all over the news a year ago. “The [institute’s] first mission brought back an impressive 103 tons of plastic debris after 48 days at sea, setting a record for the largest open-ocean cleanup to date,” the North American Marine Environment Protection Association glowingly reported at the time. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod Mitchell)

Conga drum player Luis Carbone helped arrange for the party to be held at the Yacht Club and contributed a savory pot of chicken adobo to the hors d’oeuvres table.

Aragon is already talking about having another party at the Yacht Club. As evidenced by the enthusiasm of Sunday’s crowd, many of us would like to see it become his regular venue now that he’s performing again.

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A West Marin author last month released a fascinating bookAutrefois to Today. Autrefois is French for “In the Old Days.” The book consists of a series of stories from the life of Laure Reichek née Guyot, who lives along the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road near McEvoy Ranch.

The cover photo shows Laure at Toby’s Coffee Bar, where I first got to know her. That was before the mural on the wall of the neighboring post office was painted over. An anonymous tourist snapped this photo and gave it to Toby’s Feed Barn owner Chris Giacomini, who gave it to Laure.

Laure was born in Paris in 1930 and in 1951 moved to the US with her husband. He was an American veteran she met after the war when both were studying in Paris.

Laure at 19 in Paris.

As a child, the author saw the disaster of World War II at close range. In one story, she tells of German bombing forcing her to move to the countryside and change schools. The French had previously erected the Maginot Line of fortifications to block any German invasion, but in 1940, the Germans went around it and went on to seize Paris. As a nine year old, Laure saw the French retreat.

“First we saw French officers in cars driving south, the foot soldiers, those who had gone to war with flowers in their guns to fight the war to end all wars…. Now the French army was walking it did not know where, heads down, eyes vacant, hungry, dirty, stinking, dragging itself like mangy dogs, begging for food and water, hugging walls in case of enemy air attacks. We watched as stunned as they.”

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The French army retreating in what they called La route (the rout).

“One day, as I was taking food in a small metal pail from my grandparents’ house to my great-grandmother’s for her pet,” just stale bread soaked in hot water we poured over the plates before washing them, just to give the bread a little taste” it was snatched from my hands by a hungry soldier. I kept saying, ‘But it’s for the dog!’ and the soldier replied, ‘But I’m hungry too.’ I was shocked and shaken.

Laure’s grandfather, Dr. Guyot, with two pets and two hunting dogs.

Laure’s parents were poor and lived on a barge moored along the Seine. It had no electricity, running water, heat, or sewer, and when she was 11 days old, she went to live with her grandparents, whom she treated as her real parents.

She liked her grandparents but also tells of being violently abused at the age of 10. Her grandparents had arranged for her to receive private tutoring in Latin and when Laure missed one tutorial session, she claimed to have lost track of the time. Her grandfather didn’t believe her.

“Grandpa was furious. His voice was angry, loud, uncontrolled…. Before I knew what to think, he was hitting me in the face. The left side of my face hit the doorknob several times. He would not stop. After my initial surprise at the depth of his anger, my head began to hurt, and I could feel blood running down my face and into my collar.

“I must have been screaming for Grandma, and Suzanne, the maid, appeared yelling, ‘Stop, stop, you’re going to kill her!’ I just stood there, crying in my pain….I thought perhaps I would die. Wished I would…. When he finally stopped, his anger exhausted, all he said was, ‘Take her to surgery.'”

Laure ended up with a bandage around her head, but instead of apologizing for his assault, her Grandpa told her to now go to the tutor and apologize for missing her Latin lesson. Laure was “speechless…but I dared not disobey Grandpa.” It was a lesson learned the hard way.

Laure as seen in a May 5, 2019, posting here. (Photo taken in 2018 by Marna Clarke)

One of her amazing stories tells of a pair of well-liked twins who ran a saddlery and who both became infatuated with a Madame Pitault when she brought them her horse’s reins for repair. “They must have felt thunderstruck, as in front of perfection, looking at an apparition. That was it. Instantly. Forever. Unfortunately, for both of them at the same time.

“We know nothing of Madame Pitault’s reaction, whether she was aware of the earthquake she had just created in those men’s lives. We know nothing of the twins’ suffering, their discussions, if they had any.

‘What we know is that a week later, a customer, finding the store open but empty, went upstairs and found the twins hanging side-by-side from the rafters of the attic where their father had hung himself 20 years earlier…. Since the twins had been respected for their hard labor, exemplary lifestyle, good humor, and the quality of their work, not to mention the curious circumstances of their death, every able-bodied person in the town of 2,000 went to their funeral.”

Laure as a happy 81 year old in 2011.

As Laure notes in the ending of her book, she has been “actively involved in the creation of a senior center, a homeless shelter, and an organization to help immigrant working women. I have worked as a volunteer in public schools as a mentor and volunteered in a restaurant as a prep cook. I have tended the land on which I live and formed relationships with animals. Lucky me.”

And lucky me for having just read Autrefois to Today. (Publisher: Equity Foundation, Berkeley CA)

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

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

Our Lady of the Mountain

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

copyright 2012 Christine DeCamp

Wild Spirit Wisdom

 

Clyde

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

copyright 2011  Christine DeCamp

 

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

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

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

Timmy the Tiny Turtle

 

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

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

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

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

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