The start of an expected two weeks of storms is wreaking a bit of havoc in West Marin. In Point Reyes Station, a total of 6.76 inches fell Sunday through Wednesday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Highway 1 experienced light-to-moderate flooding (above) in several spots just south of town.

Flooding was worse on numerous other sections of roadway in East and West Marin. On Wednesday, Tomasini Creek flooded Mesa Road, just north of the erstwhile Red Barn in Point Reyes Station. Walker Creek flooded Highway, south of Tomales. The highway was also flooded near Point Reyes Vineyards north of Point Reyes Station.

That left residents of Marshall, who were caught between two flooded sections of Highway 1, unable to drive very far north or south for a day.

Out of fear that school buses could be blocked by flooding, Shoreline School District on Tuesday canceled classes at Tomales High but, oddly, not at nearby Tomales Elementary. On Wednesday, Shoreline canceled classes at all its schools except Tomales High. Bolinas-Stinson School District also canceled classes on Wednesday.

Around 7 a.m. Tuesday, a tree fell across Lucas Valley Road in Nicasio, blocking both lanes and bringing down powerlines. Countywide, the storm blacked out more than 1,000 homes and businesses during the day. More blackouts occurred Wednesday, and 500 homes and businesses were still without power at the end of the day.

Early Monday morning, a mudslide in the Sausalito area blocked two lanes of the Highway 101 freeway for a couple of hours. On Tuesday morning, another slide briefly closed one lane of Highway 1 south of Stinson Beach.

Ranchers and water districts here greatly need the rain, which was well below normal last fall. “In both rainfall and storage, we are now 90 percent of normal for this time of year,” Paul Helliker, general manager of Marin Municipal Water District, told The Marin Independent Journal today. “It’s good news.”

The National Weather Service had predicted today would be the height of the storm, and at day’s end, Weather Underground reported that more than 3 inches of rain had fallen in Point Reyes Station. The Independent Journal meanwhile reported that part of Nicasio had received 3 inches of ice and hail.

Atop coastal peaks, gusts reached 70 mph. On the Beaufort Scale, that’s just 3 mph short of hurricane force.

A near miss: Around 2 p.m. today I drove downtown to pick up my mail, and when I returned to my cabin half an hour later, I found a 35-foot-high pine had fallen where I park my car. No doubt high winds and saturated soil were to blame.

From the looks of things, my car wouldn’t have been totally crushed by the falling tree, but it would have been damaged. For once I was glad I wasn’t there when the news happened.

Christmas week was a roller coaster ride for me. Amid all the merriment, I hit a young buck a week ago while driving on Lucas Valley Road. The deer was fatally injured when it jumped in front of my car just as I passed. It’s an old story.

The only other deer I’ve ever hit was a fawn 30 years ago, and both times I’ve been saddened by the animals’ misfortune. This time, however, I also felt a bit sorry for myself. The collision did more than $400 damage to a headlight.

I hadn’t planned on having a Christmas tree this year, but one literally dropped from the sky and landed close to my front door. On Christmas Eve, I found a nicely shaped tip of a pine branch on the ground. It had probably been gnawed off by a squirrel high in a tree that’s near my front steps.

‘What the heck?’ I thought and stuck it in a stand almost as big as the “tree” itself. My little Tannenbaum had room for only a few ornaments, but that was fine. And when I took a picture of it, the camera’s flash serendipitously created a Star of Bethlehem on a window behind the tree.

Overheard at a party: A couple of modest means invited me to a boisterous celebration where one of the guests brought an uninvited man. After listening to the man hold forth about a recent trip to Europe and an upcoming return trip to Hawaii, the hostess sarcastically commented she wasn’t as “rich” as he.

“I’m not rich. I’m broke,” the man replied indignantly. “That’s just my lifestyle.” I wondered if his lifestyle might account for his being broke.

Early last week, I received a Christmas card from an older woman who once owned a business in Point Reyes Station. As of last fall, she was in an assisted-living facility over the hill.

The card, however, had been sent from the Cooperstown Medical Center. “I’m in Cooperstown, North Dakota,” she wrote, “but now I forget why.” It was a poignant admission, and I wish her well.

The day after Christmas is a public holiday in much of Northern Europe (where it coincides with St. Stephen’s Day) and in most of the English-speaking world other than the United States. Boxing Day, as it is called in English, originated in a tradition from the Middle Ages, perhaps from the days of ancient Rome, of giving gifts to household servants and the needy on a certain date.

Some people have theorized that the English name for the celebration originated in the practice of churches opening their alms boxes the day after Christmas and distributing the contents to the needy.

“What did you do for Boxing Day?” I wrote one cousin. “I spent mine celebrating Kwanzaa.” Also occurring the day after Christmas is the start of Kwanzaa, a week-long celebration of African culture. The celebration was launched 43 years ago by Black Power activist Ron Karenga.

The name comes from matunda ya kwanza, which is Swahili for first fruits of the harvest. The celebration, which has been commemorated with two postage stamps, has been becoming somewhat more mainstream, with a few million US citizens of diverse races and religions now observing it.

So I hope you enjoyed a happy Chanukah, or a jolly Winter Solstice, or a merry Christmas, or a beatific Boxing Day, or a convivial start to Kwanzaa, or all of the above. If you didn’t, there’s still New Year’s Eve to come, so get out there and party.

Former Point Reyes Light reporter Ivan Gale married Annalene MacLew Sept. 5 in Johannasburg, South Africa, and he is now briefly back in West Marin introducing her to friends and relatives.

Family gathering (back row from left): Ivan Gale, Annalene Gale née MacLew, Mike Gale, Sally Gale, Amy Culver née Gale holding daughter Izzy, Rohan Gordon, Katie Gordon née Gale. Front row: Brent Culver and daughter Sarah Culver.

After he left my newsroom in 2004, Ivan earned two master’s degrees at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. When he finished his second year at Columbia, Ivan was hired by The Gulf News, an English-language newspaper in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

A year ago, Ivan was hired away by a new daily newspaper, The National, in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.

As it happens, Annalene works for Etihad Airways, which is based in Abu Dhabi.

The Gale ranch house in Chileno Valley.

Mike and Sally talk with Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey (right) during a party Saturday for Ivan and Annalene.

Ivan is the son of Chileno Valley ranchers Mike and Sally Gale, and on Saturday a throng of ranchers, artists, local officials, journalists, relatives, and other friends showed up at Gale Ranch to wish the newlyweds well.

Of course, not everything at Gale Ranch has been warm and cozy of late. Today Mike told me it was so cold in Chileno Valley during the night that the cattle had frost on them this morning.

By noon, however, the day was sunny and getting warmer. At least Annalene can now understand the old West Marin expression, “If you don’t like the weather here, just stick around a few minutes, and it’ll be different.”

As for the rest of you, happy holidays and try to stay warm.

Seen on many vehicles in East and West Marin these days are bumper stickers that joke, “Fairfax, Mayberry on Acid.” The one above was photographed in Point Reyes Station. Neither the joke nor the bumper sticker is new, but helping popularize them was a brief video with that title, which was entered in the 2007 Fairfax Short Documentary Film Challenge.

Fairfax (pop. 7,000) is, of course, a swinging little place with its own head shop and a cannabis buyers’ club located next to the Little League ballfield. The documentary included some shots of baseball players, but its focus was on older members of the counterculture.

But unlike these aging bohos, most motorists I’ve seen with the bumper sticker have been young adults, and I question whether many of them are actually familiar with the Andy Griffith Show, which was set in the fictional town of Mayberry, N.C.

The show aired from 1960 to 1968, and its sequel, Mayberry R.F.D. (Rural Free Delivery), aired from 1968 to 1971. Perhaps some younger folks have seen reruns.

The original Andy Griffith Show, in which he played a widowed sheriff in Mayberry, included Ron Howard as his son Opie (center), Frances Bavier as Aunt Bea, his spinster aunt and housekeeper (upper left), and Don Knotts as Barney Fife, his well-intentioned but bumbling deputy (lower right).

The one-stoplight town of Mayberry had no major crime, just a little moonshining and the like, along with an occasional wrongdoer showing up from elsewhere.

The sheriff often spent as much time going to The Fishin’ Hole as in upholding the law. (Those of you old enough to have ever seen the show need merely to click on the preceding link, and it should act like a taste of Proust’s madeleine.)

All this got me wondering: what in the world would the Andy Griffith Show have been like if the colorful characters of quaint little Mayberry were supposedly high on LSD?

As for Mayberry itself, the town is, after all, the creation of a 1960s sitcom about a couple of officers. “Fairfax, Mayberry on Acid” therefore raises the question: what if police in Fairfax were to drop acid? Is this how they might see the world? Or does the bumper sticker suggest this is how they already do?

Postal worker Kathy Runnion was sorting mail in the Point Reyes Station Post Office Thursday morning when she looked out a back window and saw something move on a roof at Toby’s Feed Barn next door.

Kathy in her off hours heads Planned Feralhood, which catches and spays or neuters Point Reyes Station’s feral cats. She tries to find a home for most of them; only those who have been wild too long to domesticate are returned to the street, at least unable to reproduce.

At first glance Kathy assumed what she was seeing was a feral cat that hangs out at Toby’s, but then she realized it was a gray fox. Fortunately she knew how to respond in situations such as this: she called me.

I rushed downtown with my camera and hustled into the post office. Just as Kathy was showing me where to look, a second fox appeared on the roof.

The roof is over a small wing of Toby’s that houses the garden room, and the foxes were roughly eight feet off the ground. Kathy had seen one fox hop onto the roof and told me it had first climbed through racks of pipe in the Building Supply Center lumberyard.

After casually looking around, the foxes in their winter coats curled up with each other apparently to warm themselves from the night.

This is hardly the first time foxes have taken an interest in downtown Point Reyes Station. In the early 1990s, there were so many foxes in town I’d see one trotting across a street around twilight every week or two.

Foxes frequented the gap between the Palace Market and the Building Supply Center. One evening in 1992 when I published The Point Reyes Light and Don Schinske was my partner, he was surprised to see a fox cross Mesa Road right in front of the office.

At my cabin, foxes would take shortcuts across the deck at night.

Unfortunately, outbreaks of canine distemper in 1994 and of an unidentified virus in 1996 killed off many of West Marin’s foxes and raccoons, and their populations remained low for the next few years.

By now, raccoons are back in full force, and it is not uncommon to see a fox along a West Marin road at night.

Foxes are again taking shortcuts across my deck, and last June I was lucky enough to photograph this one in his summer coat just outside the window.

What I fear is that fox and raccoon populations will again become so dense that distemper or something like it can easily spread among them, decimating their numbers.

Proliferation interrupted by periodic die-offs may be nature’s way of keeping the number of foxes and raccoons in check, but if so, it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “vicious cycle.”

Years ago I read that more than half the citizens of Great Britain had spoken with Queen Elizabeth in their dreams. The only US leader I ever spoke with in mine was presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy, and that happened exactly once more than 40 years ago.

So I was quite surprised Friday morning when I awoke from a dream in which I’d been pleasantly chatting with Vladimir Putin.

Not only that, the Russian prime minister and I were bunking together in some sort of camp where he was receiving advanced training in providing his own security.

I have no recollection as to why I was there.

Putin asked my opinion regarding what type of crime he should be concerned about in the area around the camp, and I suggested muggings and the like.

In retrospect, it was an odd question coming from from a former KGB agent.

Odder yet were some of the measures Putin took to safeguard himself.

When we first moved into our quarters, he used a disinfectant to scrub down the entire bathroom we would share.

The dream prompted me to check some biographies of Putin, and one of the more striking discoveries I made is how little his look has changed since boyhood.

He had already developed his cold, half-lidded gaze before he was out of school.

Interesting aside: Although Putin’s father was active in the Communist Party and a devout atheist, Putin’s mother had him secretly christened in the Russian Orthodox Church and regularly slipped away with him to attend services. For much of his life, Putin has worn a cross around his neck.

None of this, however, explained what was going on in my life that caused me to encounter Putin in my dream. The only nighttime occurrence out of the ordinary had been coyotes howling outside my window every single night for several days. And then it occurred to me: that might be it.

When a coyote showed up in my field Saturday afternoon, I photographed it and immediately noticed how similar its gaze was to Putin’s.

As it happened, the Nov. 16 New Yorker carried a lengthy article on dreams and how to cure recurring nightmares. In England as late as the 19th century, nightmares were often considered demonic in one way or another, correspondent Margaret Talbot writes.

Many cultures have believed (several still do) that highly attractive demons can afflict sleeping people by engaging them in sex to the point of exhaustion. In the English-speaking world, a female demon who seduced a man in his sleep was a succubus while a male demon who seduced a woman in hers was an incubus.

“The image of the nightmare as an incubus [or succubus],  a demon hovering over, or straddling, a recumbent figure, invoked both the helplessness of the sleeper and his or her vulnerability to rapacious sex,” Talbot explains.

A few months ago I heard an old recording of Dancing in the Street by the Motown group Martha and the Vandellas.

Curious as to when the song was recorded, I went online and found it was 1964. More interesting, however, was the origin of the name Vandella.

It turns out Martha Reeves took the “Van” part from Van Dyke Street, which was in her Detroit neighborhood, and “della” from singer Della Reese, whom she admired. No doubt unknown to Martha at the time, it also turns out some people in Ethiopia to this very day worry about a type of succubi called vandella.

As for me, I’d rather have some beautiful demon than Vladimir Putin show up while I’m asleep, despite the risk of exhaustion.

On the other hand, I’d rather bunk with Putin than a coyote.

Marin Municipal Water District in 1961 built Seeger Dam on Nicasio Creek, creating Nicasio Reservoir. The reservoir covered the old Nicasio Valley Road (center), which was replaced by the new alignment at far left.

This year’s falling water level has revealed many sections of the old road, such as its bridge over Nicasio Creek (above).

Here and there the road’s centerline can again be seen.

On its west side, the reservoir covered the remains of James Black’s ranch house built in the 1840s.

Black, for whom Black Mountain is named, once owned the site of Point Reyes Station.

More significantly, the creation of Nicasio Reservoir inundated the Tomasini and McIsaac ranches while its dam put an end to salmon runs in Nicasio Creek.

Although the salmon are gone, large-mouth bass, crappie, catfish and carp normally thrive in the reservoir and draw numerous fishermen to its shores. This year’s receding water level, however, has left many fish trapped in shallow pools where they make easy pickings for a variety of predators. The shells of freshwater clams can also be seen everywhere.

Last Wednesday two houseguests, new-media consultants Janine Warner and Dave LaFontaine of Los Angeles, and I walked across part of the reservoir’s dry bottom.

Our route took us along the old Nicasio Valley Road.

We had barely gotten started when I was surprised to see numerous dead carp lying on the dried mud of the reservoir’s bottom. Many were almost two feet long.

Even more surprising was finding five dead deer spread out along our route.

Some carcasses had obviously been there a while, but some still had a bit of meat on their bones.

None was close to the present Nicasio Valley Road, making me wonder how they had died.

At one point, Janine asked me to pose for a photograph beside a railing of the old bridge. As I walked toward it, however, I suddenly sank in mud up to my ankles.

Nor could I easily free myself. When I tried to step backward, one shoe came off in the mud.

Perhaps that’s what happened to some of these deer, I mused. Maybe they were being chased by a predator, such as a coyote, when they unluckily tried to cross deep mud and became bogged down.

On Sunday I mentioned this hypothesis to Kathy Runnion, who lives near the reservoir, and she told me a large number of coyotes are currently in the area. That doesn’t prove anything, of course, but as Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evens commented, “It’s fun to speculate.”

The falling reservoir has not yet seemed to affect the flocks of Canada geese that feed there. The geese, however, require a certain amount of water, and if the reservoir were to go completely dry as it did in 1976-77, they’d have to take off.

The intersection of Nicasio Valley Road and the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road at the northeast corner of the reservoir is known as Four Corners. (A ranch road creates the fourth corner.)

Near Four Corners on a knoll overlooking the reservoir is a stand of cypress trees. They are all that remains of the schoolyard for the former Pacheco School. The one-room school was built in 1895 and closed in 1938.

Pacheo graduate Don McIsaac of Tocaloma five years ago recalled, “It had kids from first to eighth grades. The most students I can remember at a time was 14. The least I can remember was five: three Gallaghers and two McIsaacs.

“None of us can remember what happened to that school [building].”

As I walked along the old road Wednesday looking at Pacheco School’s cypress trees, I found myself thinking wistfully about all that’s been lost.

I realized that not many people these days know about the former school. The Tomasini and McIsaac families survived the loss of their ranches. Carp are considered “trash fish.” The clams are non-native. Deer regularly die in traffic around the reservoir anyway. And the water is needed by neighbors as close as the San Geronimo Valley.

Yet with so much loss thereabouts, both current and historic, it was probably inevitable that walking across the dry eastern reaches of Nicasio Reservoir last Wedneday afternoon felt like walking through a graveyard.

Most long-time residents of West Marin know his story. For 22 years beginning in 1971, John Francis of Point Reyes Station refused to ride in motorized vehicles (largely as a reaction to a humongous oil spill at the Golden Gate).

And for the first 17 of those years, he also maintained a vow of silence. His not talking caused him to listen more and kept him out of arguments over his not riding in motorized vehicles, he told listeners at the Dance Palace Sunday.

John received standing ovations Sunday after two farewell shows of storytelling, acting, and banjo playing.

Notwithstanding the audiences’ enthusiasm, there was a bittersweet quality to the shows. Although West Marin has been his home base for 40 years, John, his wife Mattie, and their sons Sam and Luke, will move to Cape May, New Jersey in a couple of weeks.

(The family will live in his parents’ old home and expect to benefit from New Jersey’s healthcare costs being much lower than California’s.)

Even when John was on the road from 1983 to 1995, a group he founded in 1982, Planetwalker, remained based in West Marin. On its website, Planetwalker describes itself as “a non-profit educational organization dedicated to raising environmental consciousness and promoting earth stewardship.”

While on the road, John walked to Missoula, Montana, where he earned a master’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana. He then walked east to Madison, Wisconsin, where he earned a doctorate in Land Resources with a focus on oil-spill damage.

In the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, John headed a Coast Guard team writing the congressionally mandated Oil Spill Act of 1989. Once done with that, he sailed to Antigua, stayed a year working as an environmental advisor to the island’s British governor, and then sailed further south to Venezuela.

Along with his many other talents, John is a first-rate artist. His book “Planetwalker: How to Change Your World One Step at a Time” is illustrated with his sketches.

After he had walked the length of Venezuela, John’s life changed significantly. At the Venezuela-Brazilian border, he resumed riding in motorized vehicles. “Walking had become a prison for me,” he later explained.

Nonetheless, he walked across the Amazon from Venezuela, through Brazil, to Bolivia, where he caught malaria and just about died. However thanks to Al Gore, the UN had designated John a “goodwill ambassador” and provided him with a transmitter so he could send daily messages to schoolchildren around the world. John used the transmitter to send out a distress signal.

However, the Bolivian government initially showed no interest in saving him, he said Sunday. John credited Mattie with getting the White House to bring about his rescue.

Throughout Sunday’s show, John kept returning to a skit in which he was weak and delirious from the malaria. In the final scene, he imagined seeing enormous mosquitoes, which turned out to be dragonflies, which ultimately turned out to be the helicopters that had come to save him.

It was a wonderful performance, and John’s impersonations of his mother and father were masterful and humorous while his candid stories about race were telling.

In one frightening incident on a back road north of Jenner, a white bigot stuck a gun to John’s head and in racist language told him blacks were not welcome in the area.

After the man had left, John realized he had recognized the face: “It was death.” John took the experience as a reminder of life’s fragility and the need to fully appreciate the present.

John also told of a droll observation at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington. A member of the staff told John his colleagues had been expecting a team leader who hadn’t ridden in motorized vehicles for 18 years and who had just resumed talking after 17 years of silence. What caught them by surprise, the staff member added, was John’s being black.

West Marin will definitely miss John, but he promises to return from time to time. For one thing, he’s now walking, a couple of states at a time, back across the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. So far, he’s walked across New Jersey and into Ohio.

Also on Sunday, photographer Art Rogers of Point Reyes Station (left) and painter Thomas Wood of Nicasio concluded a month-long exhibition, Silver and Oil, at the Pelican Gallery in Point Reyes Station.

The exhibition of “landscape photography and paintings” repeatedly juxtaposed photos and paintings of the same scene, such as these two views of Black Mountain from the east. This was the second year in a row that the Rogers and Wood have mounted a joint exhibit.

Meanwhile, photographers Richard Blair and his wife Kathleen Goodwin held a party in their Inverness Park studio a week ago to celebrate publication of their new book, Visions of Marin.

The couple previously produced California Trip and the highly successful Point Reyes Visions coffee-table books.

Visions of Marin, as the book’s publicity notes, “includes local histories of Marin towns, beautiful images of Marin’s parks and natural wonders, as well as agriculture, outdoor sports from horse riding to bocce, Sausalito’s sailing community and ethereal landscapes.”

More than 200 people showed up Sunday at Toby’s Feed Barn for a fundraising party to help pay the medical expenses of Linda Petersen, the injured ad manager of The West Marin Citizen.

Linda received numerous severe injuries when she fell asleep at the wheel in Inverness June 13 and struck a utility pole. Although she has Kaiser Permanente medical insurance through her work, Kaiser is refusing to cover all her hospitalization costs.

From left: Gwen van der Wal (Linda’s daughter-in-law), Linda, David van der Wal (Linda’s son), Alexis Zayas (companion of Saskia van der Wal), and Saskia (Linda’s daughter). David and Alexis manned the wine, beer and soda table.

Giovanni and June Di Morente brought most members of their popular El Radio Fantastique to the fundraiser.

It was a good weekend for Giovanni (at right) and June (above at microphone). Earlier in the weekend, they’d dazzled audiences with El Radio Fantastique performances at the Dance Palace.

More than one person who heard them referred to the group as world class.

The Hog Island Howlers managed to navigate a perilous passage through sound equipment and a pumpkin-bound shoreline.

Osteria Stellina, the Station House Café, the Farmhouse Restaurant-Point Reyes Seashore Lodge, and Café Reyes donated food and drinks. So did the Bovine Bakery, Brickmaiden Bread, the Marshall Storer/Tomales Bay Oyster Company, Chileno Valley Ranch, Marin Sun Farms, KT’s Kitchen, the Palace Market, the Mainstreet Moms, and the Tomales Delicatessen.

Susan Hayes Handwovens organized an impressive array of gifts for a raffle.

The audience for the music overflowed two sections of folding chairs and onto the Hay Barn’s stacks of bales.

Co-sponsors of the fundraiser include: Point Reyes Books, West Marin Senior Services, The West Marin Citizen, Toby’s Feed Barn, the Community Event Library, and individual friends of Linda.

Sam Sajjapan, who works at the Palace Market, played a Thai instrument called a kan. With him on a drum is Joy Webber.

Lawrence Loeffler of Santa Rosa stayed busy all afternoon barbecuing sausages from Marin Sun Farms and hamburgers from Chileno Valley Ranch. Both ranches produce organic meat.

Nick Giacomini (left in photo) who performed with Matt Love revealed to the throng that Matt had just gotten engaged while in Hawaii.

Also providing notable performances were: Harmony Grisman and Joyce Kaufman, Todd Plummer and Friends, Peter Asmus and Space Debris.

Mainstreet Moms, a group of politically progressive women, baked numerous sweets. I personally kept going back for the shortbread with a chocolate topping.

Using “Anastacio’s Famous BBQ Oyster Sauce,” Anastacio Gonzalez barbecued 300 oysters, mostly donated by the Marshall Store/Tomales Bay Oyster Company. Here his daughter Paula Gonzalez (at right) jokes with ticket-taker John Tornes of Tomales (center).

Anastacio concocted the sauce 37 years ago and has used it to barbecue oysters in restaurants and at special events around the Tomales Bay area ever since. In July, he began selling bottles of the sauce.

The event raised more than $3,000, Linda told me today, approximately enough to pay the medical bills she has received.

As vital as the money is to Linda, the outpouring of friendship and community support was what was on her mind after the event ended. She and I agreed this experience again confirmed what a good community we have in West Marin.

Friends of Linda Petersen, the injured ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, will sponsor a major fundraiser from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18, to help pay her medical bills. It’s being billed as a “CommUNITY FUN-Raising Event.”

Linda suffered 11 broken ribs, a tear in her diaphragm, a collapsed lung, a broken neck, two fractured vertebrae, a broken wrist, a shattered femur, a fractured kneecap, and two broken ankles when she fell asleep at the wheel June 13 in Inverness and hit a utility pole. Her popular Havanese dog Sebastian died in the crash.

The event at Toby’s Feed Barn will include performances by: Peter Asmus and Space Debris, Hog Island Howlers, Matt Love and Friends, Todd Plummer and Friends, Johnny and June of El Radio Fantastique, Agnes Burkleo, and Joyce Kaufman with Harmony Grisman.

Linda spent three months in hospitals, more than half of that wearing a medical halo screwed into her skull to immobilize her head and neck. Although she has Kaiser Permanente medical insurance through her job, Kaiser is refusing to pay for all her time in a convalescent hospital.

Emceeing Sunday’s event will be radio personalities Amanda Eichstaedt and Charlie Morgan of KWMR.

The fundraiser for Linda, who calls herself “a foodie,” will appropriately bring joy to both gourmets and gourmands.

One gastronomical celebrity on hand will be Anastacio Gonzalez (right), who will barbecue oysters with his “Famous BBQ Oyster Sauce.” The sauce is now being bottled, with retail sales having begun last July. Tomales Bay Oyster Company/the Marshall Store is donating oysters for the fundraiser.

There will be fare from notable dining spots such as Osteria Stellina, the Station House Café, the Farmhouse Restaurant-Point Reyes Seashore Lodge, and Café Reyes. Other notables donating food will be: the Bovine Bakery, Brickmaiden Bread, Chileno Valley Ranch, Marin Sun Farms, KT’s Kitchen, the Palace Market, the Mainstreet Moms, and the Tomales Delicatessen.

Susan Hayes Handwovens is organizing a raffle.

Co-sponsors of the fundraiser include: Point Reyes Books, West Marin Senior Services, The West Marin Citizen, Toby’s Feed Barn, the Community Event Library, and individual friends of Linda.