Page 40 - Sonoma County Gazette Sept 2017

When I first started writing this column, in 2014, I didn’t really understand how much it would affect my life. It seemed like
a fun thing to do while I was in high school, and a potential
good resume point down the road. It has turned out to be those things, and so much more. I have written this column in good times and
bad, and it has become almost a lighthouse. It helps me parcel off time and
set goals for the coming month. I rely on the column as a place in which to share milestones, and for providing me with a reason to remember to look up what’s happening in Occidental. Going to high school in Santa Rosa has left me slightly disconnected from Occidental, but the column has always brought me home. Writing for you all is what I did to be here, even when I spent my days elsewhere. I will sorely miss writing this column, as I will miss Occidental herself.
Hey! Labor Day! Time to pack in one more epic summer blowout party! Stock up the cooler with some brews and brats, slather one last round of sunscreen and find a suitable body of water to polish off one last Grisham novel (or other suitable glossy airport paperback). Summer is a beautiful thing, and this one is saying goodbye.
By the time this is in your hands, I will have boarded my plane and flown across the country to Boston. I will be met by Devin, the boy who I have dated since the beginning of high school, since just before I started this column. I will be headed towards college at Northeastern University, where I will be studying Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE for short), in hopes that
I will someday be able to use my training in these three major disciplines to improve the world we all share. I will look for an opportunity to write another column, or something like it when I get there.
Did that opening arouse a faint bittersweet tang for you? If so, you’re not alone. I write this on an overcast Sunday afternoon, regretting the things I left undone this weekend. It’s always an endless list, and the alarm will ring at oh dark thirty tomorrow morning to augur another work week. Letting go is sad, and I’ve done a share of it this summer. Two very good friends of mine moved to other states this summer, including Steve Garred, my bass player and musical partner in crime these last fourteen years. I wish them both well, and I will miss them. If you’re a bass player with not enough music in your life, hit me up. One door closes and another opens, and all that.
I want to take this opportunity to extend some public thanks. Thank you to Vesta, who has put up with me sending her columns at all hours of the day, and all manners of late. Your kindness and understanding has not been unnoticed or unappreciated. Thank you for providing me with this opportunity. Thank you to all the staff and teachers at Harmony Union School District, especially Ms. McBride. I look back with fondness at my time under your care. Thank
you to the Occidental Center for the Arts, for providing low-cost and free
art to the people of Occidental, and for indulging my 8th grade idea to have
a student art show. Thank you to the Occidental Community Council, who have given me a platform more than once to help in ways I thought were meaningful, and also providing me with the opportunity to be an elf once a year. Thank you to Denny Rosatti, who has helped me get many jobs, and shared his adorable daughters with me. Tell them I say hi, and that I love them! Your mentorship and kindness has been invaluable. Thank you to the Sonoma County Junior Commission on the Status of Women, who, over the years, have given me such hope and done so much good work. I love you all, members past and future, and especially Tracy Cunha, Regina De La Cruz, and all the adult commissioners who served as mentors for us. I can never thank you all enough. Thank you to all the people who have read this column. Thank you to Wildflour Bread, who’s kind employees have welcomed me into their family. Also, thank you to the patrons of Wildflour Bread who tip generously. And last but not least, thank you, of course, to my family. You have made my life a joy. I love you all.
The long-awaited updates to the kiosk in front of The Union Hotel have been completed! They will be unveiled to the public at 6:00 pm on Friday, September 8th. Walk down from the Farmer’s market and take a gander, if you can. The kiosk update features the history of the North Pacific Coast Railroad, a rail line that used to run through Occidental. The kiosk is part of a larger Heritage Trail Project undertaken by Eco Ring and The Occidental Community Council with partial funding from a Sonoma County Historical Commission Grant. Additional signage and projects will be undertaken soon! Stop by the unveiling to learn more.
40 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 9/17
I’m not going to turn this into a downer column. Letting go is important, and it opens us up to new friends, new experiences, new growth. Life is made up of cycles. That’s true for Camp Meeker too. Camp Meeker has been around since the Boss Meeker opened some sawmills in 1866, a year after the Civil War, more than 150 years ago. There were boom times: the railroad days from 1877 to the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, when the Russian River resorts were kind of a big deal. Then the bridge opened, and people had (at least after WW2) cars and therefore choices. Then there was the Haight Ashbury diaspora of the late sixties, when some of the hippies escaped the snakepit that neighborhood had become by the Summer of Love to set up camp in our little forest jewel and in the nearby communes. For a time Bohemia bloomed as luminaries like Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia and Nick Gravenites partied, played music, and (in Nick’s case anyway) put down roots.
And with that, the REAL NEWS:
Nah, you don’t want that. Let’s just keep making our art and our music and writing our Great American Novels in blessed obscurity and noble poverty. It’s really much better that way.
Do you see the thread here? Bust follows boom. The railroad was abandoned. The hippies (those who stayed) grew up and got jobs and morphed ever so gently into regular working stiffhood. Camp Meeker got quiet. The creek was returned to the salmon so they could return to it. Life moves on.
So what’s next for Camp Meeker? Will there be another boom? Yes. It won’t be a railroad, and it won’t be Janis Joplin. The world has changed, and the next Janis Joplin is probably working at Starbucks. No, this one will be quieter.
It will be the one where the artistic and musical talent that crowds Camp Meeker’s narrow streets is catalyzed by...something. An inflection point in the collective unconscious, or perhaps a seismic shift in the zeitgeist. At which point some tastemaker will happen along at just the right moment. They will call it the “Camp Meeker Scene”.
Jerry’s Occidental Towing’s 16th Annual “U-Bet-Ja” Pot-Luck Block Party is on Sunday, September 3rd, from 2:00 pm - 10:00 pm (that’s Labor Day weekend). There will be live music, BBQ and beer at the Jerry’s. If you don’t know where it is, just go down the Old Road until it ends and you hear the party. I’d advise walking from town or parking at the Camp Meeker Post Office and crossing Bohemian Highway carefully.
If you aren’t a BBQ and beer kind of person, then you might be interested to hear that Saint Phillip’s Church is offering Kids Religious Education Classes starting on September 10th. I’m kidding, religion and beer aren’t antithetical
to one another, but it seemed like a good transition line. Anyhow, visit stphilipstteresa.org for more information.
Yeah...no. Probably not. But who wants all that anyway? Fame is a white hot spotlight that burns everything it touches. See under: Ashbury, Haight. I can’t really imagine tour buses navigating the corner of Van Ness and Grandview anyway. And those music and art critics can be vicious! They’d call us trite and derivative.
All right, I guess I got a little carried away. I’ll be back next month with some more news. So, please, go out there and make some for me.
There are only two more opportunities this year to visit Sturgeons Mill
in Occidental! Remember them? I wrote a whole column about them a few months ago! The next opportunity is September 16th and 17th and the last is October 14th and 15th. If you haven’t done this before, it makes a great and educational outing. Kids love it!
My final reminder (ever??) is that applications for the Occidental Holiday Crafts Faire are due by September 15th. Get your application online today at Occidental-CA-org.