THE BOONVILLE SALOON enjoyed a great holiday season, and proprietors Lisa and Marsha were particularly happy with their New Year celebrants. They said the bar was full of well-behaved people and they remain grateful to the handful of loyal patrons who stayed to help clean up the confetti. And everyone is still buzzing about the impromptu fireworks display in the center of town sponsored by persons wishing to remain anonymous, but one old timer said it was “amazing.” Lauren’s also had a great turnout, many merrymakers attending for the big dance featuring the always popular Dean Titus and the Coyote Cowboys. The Buckhorn Pub should be open down the street soon, putting another big boom in booming Boomsville. (—B. McEwen)
BOONVILLE's New Year was announced by mistimed fusillades occurring either minutes before or minutes after midnight when minor explosions, random strings of firecrackers, gunshots, even a few revving chainsaw and jubilant motorbike motors rent the chill but celebratory winter night.
KEN HURST is on the mend from a terrible fall off an orchard ladder a week ago. He's resting at his Greenwood Road home from where he reported on Saturday, “I'm still weak and sore, and I have trouble lifting one arm because the muscles are weak, but I was able to get over to Ukiah to see True Grit.” Ken liked it, probably because he's a Rooster Cogburn kind of guy himself.
TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis is a much better novel than it has ever been as a movie, and the latest movie is pretty good, especially Jeff Bridges as Rooster. Another movie that's pretty good but better as its original novel is Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell. Just sayin' here; don't take it personal, but it's a shame that all most people know about these brilliantly original works of the writer's art are the movie versions of them.
BRUCE PATTERSON, author of Walking Tractor, will be signing copies and reading from his new memoir, Turned Round in my Boots, this Friday night, 6:30, Gallery Books, Mendocino.
LORETTA HOUCK of Laughing Dog Books in Boonville writes: “Beginning January 19, Laughing Dog Books will be open 6 days a week, 10-6; closed Tuesdays.”
JACOB GOWAN, a defensive lineman on Stanford's top-ranked football team, was suited up for Monday night's Orange Bowl game in Miami. Hope to have more on Jacob's big adventure for next week's paper, but just as I sat down to watch the game myself I got interrupted and never did back to it. Stanford won, and won big, but that's all I know as of Tuesday. Jacob, the son of Don and Sharon Gowan, grew up in the Anderson Valley where he played his first football for coach Dan Kuny.
LOGO TEVESEAU'S former college team, TCU, won this year's Rose Bowl game by squeezing past Wisconsin, 21-19. Logo lives in Boonville and works for LifeWorks Group Home when he isn't functioning as a fitness trainer at Mendocino College. Logo's brother, Martin, is with the New York Jets. Both Mr. T's are graduates of Anderson Valley High School.
A MOUNTAIN LION is eating through the sheep of the upper Holmes Ranch, and Gene Herr speculates it may be a female teaching its young how to do it. A single lion, however ravenous, Gene said Monday, wouldn't kill three sheep in one night as this one has. The two extras seem to have been hunted down for demonstration purposes.
FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER SOUTH at Anderson Valley High School will hold an Open House next Tuesday evening Jan. 11th from 5-6:30PM. Everyone is invited. The Resource Center is next door to the Career Center Classroom at 18200 Mt. View Road in Boonville. Come and find out all the resources available to you and your family absolutely free. Browse our booths while enjoying healthy treats including veggie wraps and vegetarian sushi. Representatives from the AV Health Center, Big Brothers & Big Sisters, the Teen Center and Teen Teachers, Migrant Education and A.O.D.P Prevention plus representatives from our Family Resource Center North will be on hand to answer questions and make brief presentations. Child Care will be available next door in the Career Center Classroom. Questions? Call 895-2146.
A TWO-PART story in the SF Chronicles of January 2nd and 3rd lament “Small-town emergency as doctors age with no successors, rural areas face dire shortage.” Which is the story but it goes on for two thousand more words. We get color photos of some Ukiah medicos and, in Monday's story, a shot of Dr. Mark Apfel of the Anderson Valley Health Center chatting with John Lewallen, presently confined to a wheelchair.
Monday 4:16pm notice sent out to oversight committee for a Wed meeting at 5:30 pm, Bill Sterling is clearly putting in some heavy overtime to make sure there's no oversight of the $15.25 million our captive school district has finagled the voters into approving for school construction.
AMONG the Chron's “10 Memorable Bottles” of the year, we find Anderson Valley Brut Rose, concocted at Roederer, Philo, is described by Jon Bonne as “Filled with scents of ripe butterscotch, dried roses, wild strawberry, heather, and unfiltered whim-whams, it was just old enough to have taken on a mellow pastry-dough sweetness, yet bright enough to burst with all the energy of the urique raton that gives this drink its unusual pale yellow color.”
A LOT OF PEOPLE complain to me about this or that aspect of local school management — the financial trickery involving pay cuts for everyone but the bosses, the odd contract extensions, the in-house hiring, the nepotism, and all the rest of it. Here's my return message: Get three like-minded people and run for the school board as a slate, then fire the administrators you want to see gone. School administrators are easy to off. All you have to do is get three of five school board trustees to agree NOT to renew the guy's contract when it comes due. The school people tend to vote as a bloc, though, which means you have to convince people who are not dependent on The Fear Factory for their pay checks that if ever an apparatus needed change, it's this one.
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