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Seen (and Heard) in Sonoma.
Below is the beginning of items of interest that caught my attention while driving and walking. Check back as I am certain to add to this list often and much, as the first few weeks of running around and gathering the goods to get my apartment in order and starting my wine work, life outside the center of my body has been a bit of a blur. But now I am just able to return to normal speed, slower than those days in New York but not Sicily slow where you are standing still or moving backward. Enjoy.
Current Activity.
Nice Woodstock. Scattered throughout Santa Rosa are near-life size, ceramic Peanuts characters. (Think the "Cow Parade" that has been herding worldwide.) These characters in question look like huge, bobble-head dolls. Quite scary actually to turn the corner and be confronted with a smiling C. Brown or be blasted by the periodic smoke machines that are present where Pigpen loiters. However, the citizens of Sonoma County can neither claim birth rights to the dearly departed comic strip scribe, Charles M. Schulz, nor that the Peanuts strip was actually set in Sonoma. (Schulz was born in Minneapolis and it hasn't snowed here since the Ice Age so that rules out a Happy Christmas for Charlie Brown). However, Schulz lived in Sonoma for 40 years and a Peanuts' Museum officially opened in Santa Rosa in 2002, two years after Schulz death and three years after the official, last strip he sketched. There is also a small airport named in his honor for Red Baron flights on "dark and stormy nights." A current exhibition at the museum details the role of "kites" in Peanuts' comics. Admission is $8 for adults. $5 for students and children. There is hardly ever a line.
Mystery Guest. Thanks for Coming. Didn't really get a chance to talk to you. One day, the planet formerly known as Pluto showed up at a party. He was short and round, almost bowling ball size. He rolled in, made one slow circle around the room and then a group of telescopic, white lab coats decided to kick him out. If you haven't heard by now, everything you learned in your science textbooks is wrong. Well, at least about the Solar System. Last month, 2,500 scientists met in Prague to demote Pluto to secondary status. According to the scientists, Pluto is only 1,400 miles in diameter - that's the driving distance between New York and Witchita, not bigger than a continent, pwwt. Pluto orbits the sun every 248 years. Human years, orbit years, dog years - that's a lot, but not fast enough. And when sunbathing, Pluto flips over every three days - sunbathing is so yesterday; wine country travel is the zeitgeist of the moment. Bye, Pluto. "I have a slight tear in my eye today, yes; but at the end of the day we have to describe the Solar System as it really is, not as we would like it to be," said Professor Iwan Williams, chair of the IAU panel that has been working over recent months to define the term "planet". (BBC News) Note: Pluto was not 'seen' in Sonoma, neither will it be 'heard' crying until the NASA probe visits in 2015 to break the news.
Brushfire Scary Tale. According to a local arborist (i.e. a tree expert) cigarette butts start the majority of Highway brushfires. Not kids with magnifying glasses on burning hot days in areas of little or no water. Mental note: while speeding, after finishing cigarette, place cigarette between middle finger and thumb, flick cigarette in direction of opposing fuel tanks, especially those that are open, explosions in left-center lanes are much easier to manage than wispy wild fires.
Handyvan. A handicap van service for the citizens of Calistoga (Napa). Population 5,190. Number of handicapped individuals in Calistoga, unknown. Handicap persons seen on the service in question, zero.
Previously.
There was a Mexican man standing on the corner. Paper-white, painter's pants and shirt and a train conductor's hat, also white. He was deeply dark skinned. Leather-hide tan. Weathered and worked like the inside of a baseball mitt. And he was excited in an infomercial workout video kind of way. In his hands he held a big, yellow arrow that had black lettering. The sign was about four-feet long and he moved it from waist to overhead. The sign read, New Homes for Sale. I passed him at noon and then at 3 p.m. He was still moving his arms. On the second pass I slowed and swerved to get a closer look, he was real. The houses were still for sale. And I am sure he is happy with the California Assembly who just boosted the minimum wage to $8/hr - this increase will happen over 16 months and become the highest minimum wage in the country. For the sake of this guy, I hope the housing market doesn't crash. Good luck.
Public Art Fenced In. The Plaza (or square) in Healdsburg is under construction. At first it didn't such a fact, because my eye was drawn between the diamond square chain link to a statue in the mini-park that was clothed in bubble wrap and strangled with 'caution' tape. I originally thought this could be some abstract public art exhibit, but a few steps later I read, The Healdsburg Plaza is under construction. Sorry for the inconvenience. The Tuesday night local farmer's market will be moving to 221 Blah Blah Street. Are you kidding? If this was New York, the Post No Bills would be billboards themselves. Cigarette butts scattered around homeless cardboard homes and concrete dust would cover the graffiti-clad particle board keeping the vagrants out. But thanks anyway, I need some tomatoes.
Hollywood, Not Here. I was late for work. Thirty seconds late. But my boss is an easy-going, Easy Rider type. It would have been somewhat acceptable to be an hour and thirty-five minutes late, the actual running time of "Easy Rider." But what caused me to be late keeps me laughing to the minute. My office, or I should say, the winery, is on Hopper Avenue. I missed the right turn, early in the morning and drove to the next intersection to turn around. The name of that intersection - Dennis Road. No one here finds that funny. It's not me, it's you.
A Mexican standing on a corner, Part 2. A short, fat Mexican woman with a straw-woven hat that you would see in National Geographic photo shoot of clusters of Asians working a rice patty was standing on a corner. The hat was pulled down to her thick black brow and the bottoms of large headphones circled her ears like Princess Leia hair. She was rocking out and using her prop, a big yellow, arrow with black letters that read, New Homes for Sale, as a cheerleader would twirl a baton. What happy Aztec herb is being force fed to these people?
The Asian-Mexican half-breed. I was enjoying a beer and a burger at a bar near the apartment watching the Kick-off of the College Football season. In walks an Asian-Mexican. Asian-Mexican, Mexican-Asian, I was uncertain of the dominant gene. I returned to the sports pages of Santa Rosa's The Press Democrat. Maybe he was an Asian with a Mexican aesthetic. A red-lipstick tattoo tilted on his neck tried to fit in somewhere, maybe in the local Santa Rosa dive bar culture or at a lowrider event where pretty girls in bikini's hold signs signaling the start of hip-hopping Chevy station wagons. Congrats kid, you won - something.
College Football Kick-off Dive Bar, Part 2. Muscle man in a black muscle t-shirt, black tattoos shoulder to shoulder. Thick greasy hair sitting heavy over a blackened, once white sun visor detailed with thin, month-old, wavy lines of salty sweat. The man stood legs akimbo in acid wash jeans and played Golden Tee. He was in his thirties and he was screaming at the breaks in the computer generated greens. And when he prepared for his drive, he locked his legs in the ground, knees slightly bent and smashed his hand hard, picking up a little plastic divot before sending the track ball into a spinning oblivion. Three holes down and he was already off the leaderboard. Hyping himself up, like he was preparing for a bench press, he set up on the 4th Tee and gave it a huff and caught a puffy callous on his muscled hand between the track ball and the plastic ring that it sits in. Not certain how it happened, but blood sprayed on the arcade screen and he screamed, grabbed his right hand at the wrist and gave the Golden Tee a swift kick. A gentleman's game, I thought.
A few moments later he was sitting at the bar, clutching a towel full of ice cubes, stealing glances over his flexed shoulder and bitching at the beast that would set him back a few days in the gym. One of his friends strolled in and found him sitting at the bar chewing tobacco. Cigarettes, loose from the pack were scattered around a pint glass with remnants of a curiously bloody cocktail. He used the glass to spit his Kodiak tobacco. "Are you chewing and smoking at the same time," his friend asked before touching the subject of the bloody towel in his hand. "Always," he responded. "Easier to chew when riding." I learned this was not the first time the man has seen blood today. "Took the Hog for 100 miles today. I was pissing blood when I was done." Check please.
Urban Tree Farm. Sonoma County, Vineyards "R" Us, or so I thought. I drove past a sign that read, Urban Tree Farm. It wasn't as self-explanatory as I had thought it would be. I slowed and pulled over, squinted out the windshield and read the fine print. We Sell Urban Trees. OK.
Post - September'06
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