No score and seven years ago this Western Weekend, West Marin found itself on the alert for an intimidating presence it hadn’t faced since the time of the Civil War. On May 25, 2003, the first bear to roam these hills in more than 130 years was spotted at the hostel off Limantour Road in the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Awakened about 4:30 a.m., hostel manager Bob Baez and assistant manager Greg King found a medium-sized black bear rummaging through a compost bin and pulling trash out of a Dumpster. They watched for about five minutes until the bear wandered off into the brush.

Although Bear Valley in Olema took its name from the abundance of bears that once were found there, Marin County’s last black bears had been trapped and hunted to death by 1869.

In Occidental 40 miles to the north, however, a sloth of black bears had survived. (Odd as it sounds, ‘sloth’ really is the word for a group of bears.) National Seashore rangers assumed the bear at the hostel had wandered south from his sloth in Sonoma County.

This time of year is the mating season for bears, and rangers suspected he was a young male that had been forced to seek new territory when an older male drove him off.

Other reports came in of the bear raiding bird feeders and residential garbage bins around Inverness Park, but soon he headed south. On May 29 and 30, state park rangers spotted the bear on Mount Tamalpais.

He then showed up in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. On May 31, four campers at Kirby Cove near the Golden Gate Bridge watched as the bear rummaged through their campsite and dragged away food.

At 4:30 a.m. June 1, two long-time residents of the Zen Center in Muir Beach spotted the bear sitting atop a Dumpster. They hadn’t heard about the bear being in the area and could hardly believe what they were seeing.

Evidence of the bear was then found in Muir Woods National Monument, where a maintenance worker discovered several of the park’s 50-gallon garbage cans “destroyed beyond use,” the GGNRA reported.

Officials of the GGNRA, Marin Municipal Water District, and the California Department of Fish and Game began asking residents of areas where the bear had been spotted to store their garbage inside. If it became accustomed to foraging in household garbage, they warned, the bear could become dangerous and would have to be killed.

Fortunately, that did not happen. As mysteriously as it had arrived, the bear disappeared without a trace, and everyone agreed it had probably gone home to Occidental, which is known for hearty dining.

Black bears are fond of grasses, roots, berries, and insects. They also have an appetite for fish and mammals, including carrion, and are quick to develop a taste for human food and garbage. Or so say the experts.

Beat poet and literary critic Kenneth Rexroth (1905-82) of San Francisco back in the 1960s wrote a column called Classics Revisited for the now-defunct Saturday Review. In the spirit of Rexroth’s column, I myself would now like to revisit a modern classic.

In 1970, the poet W.H. Auden published A Certain World: a Commonplace Book. Auden (1907-73) was born and educated in England but in 1946 became a US citizen. Many people consider him one of the best poets of the last century.

Incredibly well read, Auden over the years collected telling quotations from numerous sources, and his commonplace book presents them arranged by topic in alphabetical order.

The poet said he compiled the book instead of writing his memoirs because “biographies of writers, whether written by others or themselves, are always superfluous and usually in bad taste…. [A writer’s] private life is, or should be, of no concern to anybody except himself, his family, and his friends.” Nonetheless, A Certain World is revealing as to what influenced, interested and amused Auden.

Some thoughts on money, for example:

“You will never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful fortune.” Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-84), English essayist and lexicographer

“Many priceless things can be bought.” Baroness Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916), Austrian writer

“Two evenings spent at La Scala, Milan, one of them standing up, the other sitting down. On the first evening, I was continually conscious of the existence of the spectators who were seated. On the second evening, I was completely unaware of the spectators who were standing up (and of those who were seated also).”  Simone Weil (1909-43), French philosopher and social activist, seen at right

“I am not sure just what the unpardonable sin is, but I believe it is a disposition to evade the payment of small bills.”  Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915), American writer and publisher

“If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.” Yiddish proverb

On forgiveness:

“Many promising reconciliations have broken down because, while both parties came prepared to forgive, neither party came prepared to be forgiven.” Charles Williams (1886-1945), British writer

“No one ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.” Kin Hubbard (1886-1930), American humorist and journalist

On the human face:

“If the eyes are often the organ through which the intelligence shines, the nose is generally the organ which most readily publishes stupidity.” Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French novelist, seen at right

“Our notion of symmetry is derived from the human face. Hence, we demand symmetry horizontally and in breadth only, not vertically nor in depth.” Blaise Pascal (1623-62), French scientist and philosopher

“When indifferent, the eye takes stills, when interested, movies.” Malcolm de Chazal (1902-81), Mauritian writer and painter

“The wink was not our best invention.” Ralph Hodgson (1871-1962), English poet

On immaculate conception:

“Behind this ingenious doctrine lies, I cannot help suspecting, a not very savory wish to make the Mother of God an Honorary Gentile. As if we didn’t all know perfectly well that the Holy Ghost and Our Lady both speak British English, He with an Oxford, She with a Yiddish, accent.” Auden, seen below

A Certain World: a Commonplace Book is now 40 years old, but used copies are still available.

I’ve seen them listed for $5.65 hardbound, with copies in mint condition for $22.95. I paid more than that 30 years ago when I bought a paperback copy in a London bookstore.

In 1979-80, “Trailside Killer” David Carpenter murdered one woman and possibly three others on Mount Tamalpais, as well as three women and a man in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Most of the women were also raped.

Carpenter’s arrest came the following year after he murdered two women in Santa Cruz County. He was caught when the companion of one Santa Cruz victim survived despite being wounded and was able to give lawmen a description of the assailant.

For years, Carpenter has also been a suspect in several other slayings, and this week San Francisco police announced DNA evidence has now tied him to the 1979 murder of Mary Frances Bennett, 23, of San Francisco. She had apparently been jogging near the Palace of the Legion of Honor when attacked.

Police said she had been stabbed at least 25 times in her chest, back, and neck. Bennett’s “butchered” corpse was found under a thin layer of dirt and leaves.

In 1984, a jury in San Diego County convicted Carpenter of the Santa Cruz murders, and he was sentenced to be executed. In 1988, a second jury convicted him of the National Seashore murders and one murder on Mount Tamalpais.

After he was placed on death row in San Quentin where he remains today, Carpenter (left) contacted me out of the blue, and this ultimately led to my interviewing him in the prison. Photo by Christopher Springmann

At the time of the interview in 1985, Carpenter, then 55, had spent more than 22 years in custody.

Carpenter was first incarcerated at the age of 17 for allegedly having oral sex with a three-year-old girl. He denied the charge but spent three months in Napa State Hospital.

Three years later, in 1950, he was arrested on charges of raping a 17-year-old girl, but the charges were dropped. Ten years later, he was arrested a third time. A military policeman shot and wounded Carpenter when the officer found him using a hammer to beat a secretary who had rebuffed his sexual advances. He went to federal prison for nine years.

In 1969, ten months after his release, Carpenter sexually attacked two women in Santa Cruz County, stole a car, and drove to the Sierra. In Calaveras County, he robbed two women, kidnapping one of them. He would later be charged with rape in connection with the Calaveras attacks, but that charge was eventually dropped.

A few days after the Calaveras attacks, Carpenter was arrested in Modesto. Convicted of robbery and kidnapping in Calaveras County (where he escaped from jail briefly) and of rape in Santa Cruz County, Carpenter went to state prison for seven years.

When he got out in 1977, he was returned to federal prison for violating his parole with the Calaveras and Santa Cruz attacks. In 1979, Carpenter was placed in a halfway house in San Francisco while awaiting parole. Three months later, the first trailside murder occurred. Here are the murders to which he had been previously linked:

Edda Kane, 44, of Mill Valley was shot in the back of the head Aug. 19, 1979, while hiking on Mount Tamalpais.

Barbara Schwartz, 23, of Mill Valley was stabbed to death while hiking on Mount Tamalpais March 8, 1980.

Anna Mejivas, a friend of Carpenter, was found slain in Mount Tamalpais State Park on June 4, 1980.

Cynthia Moreland, 18, of Cotati and Richard Stowers, 19, of Two Rock were shot to death Oct. 11, 1980, off Sky Trail in the National Seashore.

Anne Alderson, 26, of San Rafael was jogging at the edge of Mount Tamalpais State Park Oct. 15, 1980, when she was killed with three bullets to the head. Alderson’s murder was the only one on Mount Tamalpais for which Carpenter was prosecuted.

Diana O’Connell, 22, of Queens, N.Y., and Shauna May, 23, of Pullman, Wash., were shot to death Nov. 28, 1980, also off Sky Trail in the park. Their bodies, along with those of Moreland and Stowers, were found the following day.

Ellen Hansen, 20, a UC Davis graduate student, was shot to death while hiking near Santa Cruz March 29, 1981. Her companion, Steven Haertle, was shot four times but survived.

Heather Skaggs, 20, of San Jose disappeared the day she was scheduled to go shopping with Carpenter, May 2, 1981. Her body with one gunshot wound to the head was found in Santa Cruz May 24.

As it happened, KQED television in 1985 taped a debate between Synanon attorney Phil Bourdette and me. After watching the debate from inside San Quentin, Carpenter wrote me at The Point Reyes Light, and we began a correspondence.

Before it ended, Carpenter was answering questions from The Light and its readers. How common is homosexual rape of inmates by inmates? Most rapes occur in large jails operated by counties, not in state prisons, Carpenter answered.

With so much money being spent on prisons, how well is it used? “Pre-1976-77, everybody was under an indeterminate sentence, and you had to earn your way out of prison,” Carpenter replied. “There was very little trouble in the prison system  because the men knew they had to keep their noses clean to have any chance at parole.

“Back then most of the work that was done in prison was done by the inmates themselves. Rehabilitation is dead in this state….. Virtually all of the jobs that were done by the prisoners and cost the taxpayers practically nothing are now all being done by civilian personnel at a very high cost to taxpayers.”

When I managed to schedule an interview with Carpenter in San Quentin, I was intrigued by the prospect but didn’t know what to expect. Would he seem to be a monster, a sadist? Carpenter instead seemed rather charming.

While admitting “my record sucks,” Carpenter stammered that he was not responsible for the trailside murders. Carpenter’s stuttering was, in fact, so severe I felt an immediate sympathy.

Carpenter acknowledged experimenting with pot after he got out of prison in 1979, so I asked if marijuana gave him any relief from his stuttering. “Alas,” he replied, “it really didn’t do anything for me speechwise. My stuttering stayed the same, but my attitude toward my stuttering changed. The more I smoked, the less I cared or let it bother me.”

Years later in conversation with a former member of the San Quentin staff, I speculated that Carpenter’s stuttering was so disarming it may have made sympathetic women more vulnerable to an attack.

The former staffer, in turn, said he suspected that Carpenter murdered his rape victims because a middle-aged, bald man with an extreme stutter would be easy to identify. That does make sense.

A loaded milk truck belonging to Straus Family Creamery of Marshall overturned along Highway 1 just north of Nicks Cove today. The Highway Patrol reported the accident happened at 8:50 a.m.

The 270-degree rollover occurred when the long tanker-truck, which was southbound, encountered a northbound vehicle on a tight curve, members of the county fire department and Straus family told me. The truck came to a stop with a pair of its dual rear wheels off the pavement, the firefighter said.

The truck was still upright when the driver got out, but it then rolled over, the firefighter added. No one was hurt in the accident.

The property on which the truck landed is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and a small amount of milk spilled out of the tanker’s hatch.

In a serendipitous irony, however, the spilled milk didn’t go very far, let alone down to Tomales Bay a short distance below the curve.

Straus Creamery uses rice hulls for bedding in the cows’ stalls, and in 2003, a truck heading to the dairy ranch ran off the same curve and spilled a load of hulls. The decision at the time was to leave the hulls on the ground since they weren’t doing any harm.

When milk began leaking from the overturned tanker-truck today, it was immediately absorbed by the old rice hulls. Here a cleanup worker shovels more hulls under the leak.

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.

Today being Thanksgiving, let’s talk turkey. As it happens, there are a number of turkeys to talk about.

Well over 100 people from all walks of life showed up this afternoon at the Dance Palace for the West Marin Community Resource Center’s annual Thanksgiving dinner.

Volunteers served guests buffet style. Along with the traditional turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, salad, yams, and green vegetables, there was tofu for vegetarians. The pies, apple, pumpkin, and berry, as always were delicious.

So many folks attended the dinner that the line of people waiting to be served sometimes stretched all the way around the room. And yet there was enough food left over that any guests who wanted to, such as I, could take some home.

Of course, the word turkey has many meanings, one of them being an inept public display (e.g. that play was a real turkey). Some turkeys in this sense of the word are really bad while some are basically just a misstep. The following fall in the latter category.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to work for a prison guard? The headline above from the Nov. 15 San Francisco Chronicle suggests an answer.

The turkey at right, also from the Nov. 15 Chronicle, might suggest that two agents from the FBI or other covert agency are getting involved in a fisheries issue.

As a former headline writer, I should note in fairness to The Chronicle that it’s all too easy to accidentally come up with a “head” that has a double meaning.

It comes about because of the need to pack as much information as possible into limited space.

That is why when I edited The Point Reyes Light, the paper routinely used “flap” in headlines to mean dispute, “rap” to mean criticize, “confab” to mean meeting, and “supes” to mean the Board of Supervisors.

In 2003, a sheriff’s deputy in Stinson Beach shot a motorist three times at the end of a high-speed chase, but all that would fit in the headline was “thrice,” so that’s what we used. This prompted a letter from a reader who commented on how quaint West Marin is when a deputy here can shoot a man “thrice.”

I can also recall once writing a headline along the lines of “Feds announce big deer hunt in park.” Luckily, one of my staff saw the head before the paper went to the printer and asked, “Big deer go hunting in the park?”

Perhaps my favorite Chronicle headline of recent was in the Nov. 17 issue. The turkey at left immediately made me wonder if the story were about Richmond.

From what I read, spending time behind bars is considered a rite of passage among hundreds of young gang members there.

The story was actually about residents of economically depressed Thomson, Ill., wanting Thomson Correctional Center used as the new prison for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

And then there are actual turkeys, which are called that only because of a confusion involving the country of Turkey. When the British were introduced to the North American wild turkey, they confused it with guinea fowl, an African bird that was being imported by way of Turkey.

By coincidence, I read in Al Jazeera today that Turkey and Armenia are on the verge of reestablishing diplomatic relations. That would be something to be thankful for.

In 1994, Turkey sided with Azerbaijan in a conflict with Armenia over the disputed Caucasian territory of Nagorno Karabakh, leading Turkey to close its border with Armenia.

More enmity by far, however, stems from the 1915-25 genocide when Turks exterminated up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians (more than half their population) and marched many others across the desert into Syria. This Armenian Holocaust, as it often called, reduced the number of Armenians in the country to between 60,000 and 70,000 today.

“Remember the starving Armenians,” my mother used to say when I didn’t eat every vegetable on my plate at Thanksgiving dinner.

If a segment of Connections had been devoted to popular culture, it could not have found a better example than this story, which begins on stage and ends in soccer.

For those of you who don’t remember Connections, which was first aired on Public Television in 1979, the series was hosted by the British science-historian James Burke. His premise was that developments in one area of science and technology often lead to developments in seemingly unrelated areas.

Burke, for example, once showed how improved trade in the ancient world led to the understanding of magnetism during the 16th century, which in turn led to the discovery of electricity in the 17th century and ultimately the development of radar and nuclear weapons in the 20th century.

The connections now fascinating me are far less significant than Burke’s but at least as convoluted, and probably more fun.

To demonstrate my series of connections, I’m including several video links, probably too many to watch to conclusion.

In 1909, a Hungarian named Ferenc Molnar (right) wrote a grim play called Liliom about an out-of-work carousel barker who unsuccessfully turns to crime and then kills himself, causing great suffering for his wife and unborn daughter.

In the end, he is consigned to Hell.

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Bizarrely, two producers during World War II asked Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein (left) to turn the play into a Broadway musical.

Although skeptical, Rodgers and Hammerstein agreed to take on the project but relocated the story from Budapest to a New England fishing village and gave it a happier ending.

The result was Carousel, which opened in 1945. Time magazine would later call it the best musical of the 20th century.

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In 1956, Carousel was made into a film starring Gordon MacRae as Billy the barker and Shirley Jones as his wife Julie.

The musical contained several memorable songs, the most powerful of which is You’ll Never Walk Alone. Julie’s aunt sings it to her when Billy dies, and the song is reprised in the finale during his daughter Louise’s graduation from high school.

In the final scene, Billy has returned to earth, having been told he can’t enter heaven until he salves the pain he caused Julie and Louise. Louise in particular has been shunned by other villagers because of her father’s misdeeds, leaving her isolated during graduation.

Although invisible to others, Billy appears to Louise during the ceremonies and boosts her self-confidence, which leads Louise and Julie to take part in singing You’ll Never Walk Alone:

“When you walk through a storm/ Hold your head up high/ And don’t be afraid of the dark./ At the end of the storm/ Is a golden sky/ And the sweet silver song of a lark.

“Walk on through the wind,/ Walk on through the rain,/ Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown./ Walk on, walk on/ With hope in your heart/ And you’ll never walk alone,/ You’ll never walk alone.”

Because of the song’s inspirational message and its being sung during the musical’s graduation scene, schools throughout the United States soon began singing it at graduation.

On YouTube, one can watch the song being performed during the graduation exercises of various schools, ranging from UCLA to BYU.

Singers from Frank Sinatra, to Doris Day, to Elvis Presley recorded it. One of the most-striking, and perhaps surprising, renditions comes from Manila where it is performed by the beautiful Filipina singer Kyla (left).

But the rendition that gave You’ll Never Walk Alone a connection no one could have foreseen came from Liverpool, England, where a band called Gerry and the Pacemakers recorded it in 1963. Their version immediately topped the British pop music charts.

Today Gerry Marsden (right) and the Pacemakers are remembered, if at all, in the United States for their 1965 hit Ferry Cross the Mersey.

Nonetheless, the group was right behind their fellow Liverpudlians, the Beatles, in leading the British Invasion of American pop music after 1964.

Now here is where a bit of sociology comes into play. Liverpool is ethnically diverse and in the early 1960s had enough nightspots to employ hundreds of bands.

Because the city is a major port on the Mersey Estuary, the style of music played by the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and other Liverpudlian bands came to be known as Merseybeat.

However, Liverpool was also an industrial city in decline (left), and in the early 1960s, the main thing its popular culture had going besides music was its professional soccer team (or football club, as they say in other parts of the world).

In 1959, a working-class manager named Bill Shankly had taken over the club when it was at the bottom of the English Football Association’s second division and its facilities were decrepit. By the end of six years under Shankly, who was admired by fans and players alike, the Liverpool Football Club was the best in England.

With the formerly forlorn football club generating so much pride and expectation among Liverpudlians, it was perhaps appropriate You’ll Never Walk Alone became the “Liverpool Anthem” for the fans. Not just any version, of course, but specifically the Gerry and the Pacemakers’ Merseybeat rendition.**

Before every match, a Gerry and the Pacemakers’ recording of You’ll Never Walk Alone is played on the stadium PA system while Liverpool fans by the tens of thousands sing along and wave banners.

The anthem so impressed fans elsewhere that soon other football clubs adopted You’ll Never Walk Alone as their anthem too. Again, not just any version but specifically the Gerry and the Pacemakers’ Merseybeat version.

Before long, there were matches where the fans of opposing teams were singing the same anthem in unison.

In time, the song’s popularity as a football anthem spread to clubs in the non-English-speaking world. Belgian football fans from Brugge now struggle to sing along in English with Gerry and the Pacemakers. Fans of Tokyo’s football club sing a pretty fair approximation.

How have Liverpool fans reacted? One Liverpudlian posted a complaint on a Japanese video: “Why does every team steal our song? It’s ours, no argument. Gerry and the Pacemakers, who sung it originally, are from Liverpool, and they said in an interview they made it for Bill Shankly.”

Of course, Gerry and the Pacemakers, like Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Kyla, and hundreds of school choirs, took the song from Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein who, in turn, got the story from Liliom by Frenec Molnar.

All the same, it is intriguing how a Merseybeat band in recording a song from a 1945 Broadway musical, based on a 1909 play, ended up creating a football anthem that today is sung around the world.

While in Sausalito Sunday, I watched as a sailboat race and a blimp glided over San Francisco Bay on the afternoon breezes.

The lettering on the side of the blimp was difficult to read at a distance until I photographed the air ship, using a zoom lens. And even after studying the photograph, I wasn’t sure what was being promoted.

What was I to make of “23andMe.com personal genetics”? Or the slogan on the blimp’s nose: “Join the Research Revolution”?

So I checked online. Turns out 23andMe.com is selling $399 “at-home DNA tests.” You supposedly can learn about everything from your risks of inherited ailments to your maternal and paternal ancestry, along with where on the globe where your strain of DNA is usually found.

Back in 1903, the remains of a man who had died approximately 9,000 years ago were found in Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. For much of the next 93 years, “Cheddar Man,” as the remains came to be known, resided quietly in London’s Natural History Museum.

In 1944, however, the significance of DNA came to be understood, and in 1996, a researcher from Oxford University used one of Cheddar Man’s molars to check the old guy’s DNA. The researcher then had the bright idea to take DNA samples from 20 residents in the village of Cheddar, which is not far from the cave.

Apparently some families in southwest England really stay put, not just for generations but for millennia. Two Cheddar schoolchildren had exact DNA matches with Cheddar Man, and a teacher had a close match.

While many traits may be inherited from our ancestors via DNA, others can be passed down in unexpected ways. Here’s an example of a domestic accident that has affected four generations of my extended family.

My mother Edith Mitchell, née Vokes, born in 1906, sits on the lap of her mother Harriet Vokes, née Wheeler, in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada.

When my grandmother was a girl in Canada back around 1880, she was slicing food in the kitchen one day when the knife slipped and cut deeply into a finger.

Bleeding profusely, she had to be rushed to a doctor.

The injury was sufficiently traumatic that when my mother (left) grew old enough to help in the kitchen, Grandmother repeatedly described the accident in warning my mother to be careful with kitchen knives.

I never met grandmother Vokes. She died in 1925, more than 18 years before I was born.

Mom emigrated to the United States in 1930, and my parents were living half a block from the Marina Green in San Francisco when I was born in 1943. As a result, many of my parents’ early photos of me were shot beside San Francisco Bay.

When I grew old enough to start helping Mom in the kitchen, she was so fixated on the danger of kitchen knives that she told me over and over how her own mother had injured herself by not cutting correctly.

The warning was drummed into my head to where even today at 65, whenever I slice food, I remember a finger’s getting cut, despite its happening 130 years ago in a foreign country to a person I never met.

When my stepdaughter Shaili Zappa, 16, was visiting from Guatemala last month, I told her this story and she was intrigued. (Photo of Shaili and me by Ana Gonzalez)

On Sunday, Shaili emailed me from Central America: “Every time I chop carrots, I remember the story!”

Think about it. A girl in Canada cut a finger with a kitchen knife during the 19th century, and although we are now in the 21st century, her direct and indirect descendants in the United States and Guatemala continue to wince. To my mind, that’s as remarkable as DNA.

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.