Jan Hoyman owns the Jan Hoyman Pottery Studio at 323 North Main Street in Ukiah. She was born in Oshkosh Wisconsin, then moved to Goshen Indiana, the heart of Mennonite Amish country. First daughter, second child of five. Attended Indiana University, took some art classes in college, became “enamored with clay” but decided she had to go to California in 1976 because “the Beach Boys were singing about it all the time.”
Posts published by “Dave Smith”
I was born in western Pennsylvania, in McKeesport, a steel mill town outside of Pittsburgh. I was the youngest seven kids and my dad was in the ice business, delivering ice to homes and businesses for their “ice boxes”. That was a business clearly headed for obsolescence. Shortly after I was born, he sold the ice business and bought a Mobile gas station.
Bruce Anderson is editor and publisher of this newspaper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser (the AVA) in Boonville. Despite his protests about being interviewed for his own paper, he finally agreed to be part of this series.
Christie is the owner of the Gallery Book Shop in Mendocino (gallerybookshop.com). She grew up in Woodenville, outside Seattle, Washington, and lived in that area until she moved here with her family to Mendocino County in 1998.
Charles Martin and his wife, Catherine, ran a small, organic/biodynamic farm for many years near the coast in Comptche, supplying their neighbors and local restaurants including Cafe Beaujolais. They also operated a nonprofit health foundation. They co-founded the Ecology Action/Golden Rule Bio-Intensive Intern/Apprentice training program with John Jeavons, and Charles was active as Vice-President and Farm Reviewer for the Mendocino Renegade eco-label program of the Mendocino Organic Network. They now live in active retirement near Willits, California.
Margaret Fox, proprietor of the legendary Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino for over 20 years, and author of two cookbooks, is now the Culinary Director of the Harvest Markets in Fort Bragg and Mendocino. Here is her story.
Since early in High School, I have been involved with a variety of social issues. However, prior to moving to Mendocino County in 1999 those efforts were limited to non-working hours. My first full-time job was as a communications technician for AT&T in the Bay Area. Twelve years, and lots of experience later, I left AT&T as a Manager of State Government Affairs for California to become the second member of a consultancy firm that focused on working in telecommunications reform and regulation on a more national level. During that time I moved to Mendocino County.
I grew up near Cleveland, Ohio in Seven Hills and received my Journalism Degree from Bowling Green University in Ohio, worked for the Plain Dealer as a reporter, but didn’t want to live in Cleveland, so I moved out here during the seventies and worked at the Santa Rosa New Herald, a weekly now gone… then the Cloverdale Reveille, which is still around… then the Mendocino Grapevine which some people remember.
I grew up in Santa Cruz. My dad was in mid-level management at a disk manufacturer in Scotts Valley. We lived in a suburban neighborhood that was fortunately across the road from Henry Cowell Redwood State Park near Felton, which I really treasure. Most everything I understand about our relationship with ecosystems I learned from the redwood forest. My mom was a stay-at-home mom for a big part of my child, an incredibly sharp, intelligent person who went back to school when she was in her 40s and got an advanced math degree. Now she’s a community college instructor. So I had a caring and intellectually-oriented mom who had a big influence on me.