Valley People 10/17/2024

RANDAL SCOTT FRASER

Randal Scott Fraser took a walk to the wild side and left this world on October 12, 2024.

He lived a life that touched many hearts and made a lot of people feel cared for, protected and safe. His wry wit and humor has been passed on to his kids. And his creativity as well. He loved me. He loved me well. He was a man of honor. He stood by his word. He had a weak stomach and could not deal well with puke or shit, Literally or figuratively. Our door is open, please call or text to give us a heads up. Burial and memorial details to follow. Tip a cup.

---

---

6-19-1968 - 10-12-2024

Burial Tuesday 10-15-2024 1 PM

Evergreen Cemetary, Boonville

Memorial Sunday noon, 10-20-2024

Redwood Grove, Fairgrounds, Boonville

Keemwun keemle

(Saffron Fraser, Philo)

COLUMBUS DAY, THE LOCAL ANGLE.

Joe Cervetto, a San Francisco businessman who spent many happy hours at his Boonville place on Redwood Ridge, was best known for his enthusiastic portrayals of Christopher Columbus in the city’s annual Columbus Day celebration.

Cervetto developed an early interest in his fellow Genoese, Christopher Columbus, becoming an authority on the life and times of “The Greatest Navigator” and, in 1958, assumed the role of portraying his idol in San Francisco's Columbus Day Parade — a role he played with gusto for the next 30 years, wading ashore at Aquatic Park in annual re-enactments of the big event.

ELIZABETH JENSEN

Thank You to Nancy Serna’s family & support, Alberto Espinoza and Oscar Bautista, for getting a heads start on our wood chip project! One play area done, only one more to go!

Please, join us at the park this Saturday, October 12, 10am-2pm to help distribute the rest of the chips under our new playground equipment. Bring shovels, buckets, wheelbarrows and rakes to help us get the wood chips in place for all the kids to enjoy!

Thank you again for all the community support. It Takes A Valley!

ANNUAL CHESTNUT GATHERING

The 41st annual chestnut gathering at the Zeni Ranch will be Saturday November 2nd from 10 am to 4 pm.

Potluck dinner this year! Bring something to add to the table along with your own eating supplies.

Dogs on leashes ok, but you're responsible for your pet.

Chestnuts are $4.00 a pound if you pick, or $7.00 if already picked. No credit card service.

Call or text Jane Zeni 707-684-6892

Fresh raw chestnut honey, T-shirts and our popular nut sacks will be available, and other farm products.

OLD TIMERS will remember Bicycle Man who sporadically appeared in Anderson Valley through the 1970s pushing his antique bicycle laden with what we assumed were all his worldly possessions. Some parents deployed Bicycle Man to scare their children into good behavior. “Better stop that or I'll call Bicycle Man.”

UP AND DOWN 128 he went, a semi-familiar warm weather sight. I don’t recall him asking for rides or any other form of assistance. Of indeterminate years, Bicycle Man was a self sufficient unit, a kind of throwback hobo. Brad Wylie wrote a story about him, I believe; maybe Brad will dig it up for us as the interesting little piece of valley history it is.

BICYCLE MAN was such a familiar sight for the several years he appeared in the Valley that we came to expect to see him, if not expect to chat with the famously non-communicative pedestrian.

ABOUT the same time a Russian hermit lived in a tree stump at Hendy Woods. I thought maybe Bicycle Man was on the road to visit his compatriot, but who knew? The Russian could be quite garrulous, although it was impossible to follow the bouncing ball of his life’s narrative, which had to have been a fascinating one. From Russia to a redwood tree in the Anderson Valley of California? There's a life trajectory for you!

SURELY you've noticed that the people who pick and prune the grapes tend to go unmentioned in the endless hype of the labor-dependent wine industry. The people who own the vineyards are called “grape growers” as if they aren’t really bankers, lawyers, stockbrokers, or fourth generation trust funders, not a true son of the soil among them, but seldom a word about the people who make their vanity possible.

“THE WINERY brought in 48 tons of zinfandel…” As if the whole show simply happened. Or the wine shills use the simple “it,” as in, “It has crushed more than 2,000 tons of chardonnay.” Sure it has. It being the farmworkers, it being Mexicans, it being Mexicans forced off their own little plots of land south of the border by the liberals, Clinton in particular, via NAFTA.

THEN THERE'S this one: “Winemakers watched sugar levels rise and flavors mature, and they made that critical call to bring in the crop.”

THE WINEMAKERS called the Mexicans, and the Mexicans came, at least the ones who weren’t in the hills working a much more lucrative plant. “It'll be coming in hot and heavy the next two weeks, maybe three weeks…” followed by, “The clusters that arrived at the crusher…”

EMPHASIZING the need to get the grapes off the vines, and pronto, we'll get a “grower” saying, “All the wine guys are getting the idea right now that they better get on it.”

MEXICANS. “I don’t know your feelings on this, but…” And so commences many a diatribe about “illegals” and, in this area anyway, how “the Mexicans are taking over.” There are, to put it mildly, tensions, and by god if we can’t add to them, who will? But seriously, it seems from here that the schools, as this fragmented community’s central institution, ought to carefully and clearly explain why and who gets into its programs, because the perception among the more excitable Anglos is that the schools “cater” to Mexicans, which is a tough perception to change when the student body is largely Spanish-speaking and an even tougher one when the reality is that the Anderson Valley contains many more Spanish-speaking young people than it does white English-speaking young people.

THE PERCEPTION, for once, is the reality. That reality is not going to change any time soon. But I remember a time not that long ago when parents avoided the Boonville schools because they thought the schools in Ukiah or Mendocino were better. Or offered programs more in line with what these parents thought their children needed. Or offered a student body more class-compatible with the student body desired by the young person’s parents for their young person.

BUT INSTRUCTION in Boonville is comparable to quality of instruction in Mendocino and Ukiah and, as a cursory glance at American culture establishes, the best art produced in this country has come from people who mostly educated themselves, if art is the standard you judge things by — and name a better one. These days, unless you’re born rich and get yourself one a them high-priced schoolin’s, education remains pretty much an existential affair. The schools are good at teaching the basics of reading and math, but as soon as the hormones kick in you’re on your own, educationally speaking.

BACK to The ReConquesta, if that’s still the subject of today’s sermon, San Francisco’s affluent parents, for instance, like white and Asian parents everywhere in the country, avoid public schools with large Black and/or Hispanic enrollments. Frisco’s schools are totally balkanized along racial lines. If the city's white and Asian parents can afford it, they opt out of the public schools altogether for private schools because, and this is what they all say privately, they fear their kid will be on the receiving end of violence, and they think that the public schools are overly tolerant of the aberrant, unruly behavior of students the public schools have to try to educate by law.

A FRIEND of mine just got his daughter into University High School in SF, a strong secondary school much favored by the city’s professionals. Daughter had attended the city’s public schools up through the 8th grade. She is fluent in Spanish and an A student. She was one of only a few white kids at both her elementary and junior high schools, which are located in the Mission District. “Now, at least,” her mother says, “she’ll be in a school where the kids won’t make fun of her for being a good student. She’ll finally be a nerd in a school of nerds.” Which isn’t evading the public high schools for race reasons, but hostility for the educational process is another prevalent reason for parents avoiding the public schools.

HERE in Mendo County, ambitious parents have been fleeing the public schools for years, but Boonville High School has sent white and Hispanic students to competitive colleges for years, a fact Boonville High School has every reason to be proud of without mentioning that it seldom graduates a young person who can’t read or write at least a little, a claim lots of high schools can’t honestly make.

MORE SIGNS that books are fading in the minds of the curent generation. A friend told us recently that when her husband died recently she tried to donate her husband’s extensive specialty collection of books gathered over a lifetime to the applicable department head at Mendo college. Response. Sorry, we don’t want them. Nobody reads books. Everybody uses Google. Second sign: The County vehicle formerly known as the “bookmobile” is now called “Library Outreach,” books apparently being archaic. (Mark Scaramella)

GARY LEVENSON-PALMER:

Philo-Greenwood Rd. The appliance and tires near Hendy Woods. The trash at about mile market 13/ west of Signal Ridge. I took as much of the trash that would fit in my car. Hopefully someone will pick up the rest of the pile of trash. The County will probably have to deal with the two truck tires and the dumped appliance. Let's keep our county roads clean!

RON PARKER:

Greenwood Elk Mendocino County.

Locomotive is Shay 5 also numbered 139 parked on the Y-Bridge at Salsig pointed toward town over divide and Elk Creek. Upstream Alder Creek and Later Location of Manzanita is to right down Alder Creek and Camp 11 is over photographer's left shoulder. Note hand rail on trestle.

PARTNERS GALLERY: THE MIDNIGHT PAINTINGS

by Virginia Sharkey

Oct 10 – Nov 4 Second Saturday Meet the Artist Oct 12, 5-7pm At Partners Gallery in October Virginia Sharkey is showing a series of large acrylic works.It was in a dark temporary studio that Sharkey was inspired to make these paintings, with their echo of a midnight sky and the vastness of outer space. Forms coalesce and evolve; lines serve as vectors carrying an energy unfolding and disappearing in a quest towards Eros, mystery, and the challenge of conveying the intimate and infinite; the quest toward the jewel hidden within life itself. The exhibit is on view from October 10 to November 4. Second Saturday Meet the Artist, October 12, 5-7pm Gallery hours are Thursday through Monday, 11-5pm The gallery is located at 45062 Ukiah St in Mendocino. www.partnersgallery.com