By Bill Phillips

I wasn’t raised particularly religious as a youngster 70 or so years ago. I remember my maternal grandparents were members of the Rock Island Baptist Church in Port Arthur, Texas and my maternal grandfather, who was born in 1900, was a deacon of that church. He was very fervent. I was always amazed at his sonorous voice and more amazed later in life to learn that he had been a businessman with only a fourth-grade education.

I remember every summer or every other summer visiting those maternal grandparents and being made to go to church. It was a big production—up early, find church clothes, eat a good Texas breakfast (usually of grits, eggs, sweet and creamed coffee, thick bacon and homemade biscuits), then pile into my grandparents’ old Chevy and rush to church.

My maternal grandmother, whom we called Grandma, guided us inside the church while Granddad took his place among the church leaders. Once inside, seated in the regular pews, I remember fidgeting as sweat oozed down the back of my shirt and muttering “Too long! Too hot!” It was only around nine in the morning, but the Texas Gulf summer heat and humidity were already ridiculous.

I really don’t remember paying much attention in church proper, but I do remember Sunday school. There seemed to be a lot of activities to do and many stories about simple lessons on kindness to others. I also remember the feeling of freedom as we heard the last gospel hymn sung, and my brother and I ran out the front of the church to play loudly—very loudly—with the other kids.

My paternal grandparents were members of an African Methodist Episcopal church in Waco, Texas. I think it was St. Lukes’s, a very old, black church in Waco.

My paternal grandmother, who was born in 1898, was a teacher with a doctorate in education. She went to church every Sunday, but my college-educated paternal grandfather, a businessman, didn’t. In fact, I can’t ever remember him coming with us to church during those summer visits. He was more interested in his “church” of watching the baseball games on TV, tasting his cigars and occasionally sipping a honey-gold liquid he called “Kentucky tea,” from a small mason jar.

My paternal grandmother, whom we called “Gran,” didn’t insist that her grandchildren go to church every Sunday like my other grandparents did. Every once in a while, she would ask us to go, and we would, and she would show us off to her friends.

She was very joyful when going to church. I vividly remember the rather large-brimmed and colorful hats she wore then in all shades—vermillion, lavender and saffron. At the crown of each hat there was always some brilliant plumage that, in hindsight, may have been representative of a kind of communal consciousness memory of her mixed, Kiowa ancestry. She never spoke of the reason for the vibrant multi-colored feathers. Perhaps she just liked them.

The visits to her church were more pleasant for my brother and me, which I attribute mostly to the fact we were not “made” to go. She sweetened the deal by giving us both a half stick of Wrigley’s Double Mint gum each time we went. Hmm, that was so good! Our mouths watered as soon as we saw her reach into her large fancy church bag because we knew what was coming. I think it was because of this that my brother and I actually kept quiet and didn’t squirm.

Growing up, my parents primarily left it to my mother to dabble in religion and churches for us. We visited several churches as preteens and early teens, but we never had a regular church. Both my Mom and Dad were working: Dad as a professor and Mom doing classwork at medical school at night while holding down a job as a biochemist at a local pharmaceutical company during the day (and running our home).

It wasn’t until I went to college and began taking some introductory courses in philosophy and theology that I actually got curious about religion, God, spirituality and such things. After a particularly moving sermon at Andrew Rankin Chapel one Sunday morning at Howard University during my freshman year, I briefly considered becoming a minister and majoring in religion. Then I changed my mind and decided to become a historian, earning a law degree and eventually winding up as a career federal employee, eventually working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

My great spiritual “doubt” has been a foundation of my lifelong curiosity and investigation into religion and spirituality. During one of those later years in college, my interest in religion peaked so highly I started a history research project on the Temples of Lalibela, a series of eleven underground Ethiopian Orthodox Christian churches dating from the 13th century. Those “holes in the ground” were ancient, historic and holy worship places: churches!

While I was studying the Temples of Lalibela, I also was trying to learn Amharic, one of several official languages of Ethiopia. Eventually, I gave up that project and went on to study American and medieval history. Over time, my interest in religion became, let’s just say, less present.

As I grew older, my curiosity about religion re-emerged sharper, as probably happens with others. It dawned on me that the churches I experienced as a black child were powerful motivators and instigators in how I felt (and still feel) about the world and how I fit into it and how I might contribute to it. My early association with places of worship centered around smells, luminous colors, sounds, feelings, energy, mystery and historicity rather than doctrine. Of course there is a place for doctrine in religion, but for me a church is something different—and perhaps more—than doctrine.

A church can be a building, a quiet corner of a city, a hiking trail in the Sierras, or a lemon orchard like the one off Cherry Ridge Road in Sebastopol. It can even be a national monument. Sometimes, when I visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., I get that eerie, reverent, church-energy feeling as I stand there and look at Lincoln’s craggy, chiseled face.

The churches I mentioned—the Rock Island Baptist Church in Port Arthur, Texas; St. Luke’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in Waco, Texas; and the Andrew Rankin Chapel in Washington, D.C.—share the same smells, vibrancy, energy, deep mystery and joy despite their doctrinal differences. And occasionally, even today, thousands of miles aways from my early church experiences, I will get a strange, ethereal whiff of double mint gum when I visit a different church now.

I suspect that “listening with intention” has helped me see churches all around me. I learned from Gran that church was something penetrating and mysterious, buried beneath the accoutrements of daily life, that it was a place where the pulse of the Divine transcends the mundane world of doctrine to touch the universal world of love, curiosity, kindness, friends, relatives, and perhaps acceptance even of those we may not like. Church is all around us, and we are constantly “in” church. All we need to do to find that church is listen.

Bill Phillips lives in Sebastopol with his wife, Linda, and their dog, Cleopatra. The three of them are members of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sebastopol.

By Phil Lawrence

Mid-October 1976. I had lingered in Germany too long, ping-ponging back and forth from Munich to Cologne, hitchhiking in the cold under gray skies and chilling winds. Lost. My friends were beginning to question my sanity, and my clothes were wearing out. Trying to play street music under adverse weather conditions proved futile. A flu nearly wiped me out when I was in Munich. Only the kindness of two friends saved me—they allowed me to stay in their flat while I recovered. After that I had no direction.

I returned to Cologne, ostensibly to catch a ride to India in a Volkswagen bus with four friends, but when I arrived back in Cologne, the bus had mysteriously caught fire, and the trip was off. I was dumbfounded. My travel companions took me to see the burnt-out husk of the vehicle so I could see it with my own eyes, Doubting Thomas that I was. I took this as a sign. India was not meant to be, and in my similarly burnt-out condition, I probably never would have made it anyway.

Another plan was needed: Greece. Okay. Winter in Greece. Mild weather, sunny days, aquamarine waters, hospitable people. What could be better than Greece? Not as far as India. Still in the realm of Western Europe. All roads led to Rome, and from Rome one could make it to the east coast of the boot and catch a ferry to Patras on the west coast of Greece. Piece of devil's food cake, right? So on an overcast autumn day, I stood upon an entrance ramp to the nearest autobahn in Cologne and began my trek to Greece.

Many hours later—I have no idea how many hours—I had made it to the frontier of Switzerland. Yes, mid-October in the foothills of the Alps. Pretty cold, but I persevered. No turning back now. I caught a few short rides further into Switzerland, and before too long, I found myself in the Italian region of the country. But by now it was nighttime. Very cold and very dark. The road was no longer an autobahn: it had become a two-lane highway that ran through villages until it reached the Italian border. But now I was somewhere in the high mountains, standing in the dark on a frigid road in a small Italian-Alpine village. Very few vehicles passed by, and no one showed any inclination to stop and give me a ride.

As the cold crept into my bones, I began to fall into the Slough of Despond. What was I to do? I could not afford to sleep in an inn. After all, this was Switzerland, and Switzerland is one of the most expensive countries in Europe. The temperature was surely below freezing. I could see my breath. I had a pretty good sleeping bag and a small pup tent, but neither would be adequate for these temperatures. So, I did the only thing I knew how to do to cheer myself up.

It was too cold to play the guitar. My fingers would have frozen. Instead, I reached inside my guitar case for a blues harmonica. I began to play a simple, long, slow blues, wailing from deep inside. I explored this moaning sound until I felt my lungs expand and my body begin to warm. Then I found a slow rhythm and started to imitate the sound of a train leaving the station. I increased the tempo until I had a galloping beat. I danced as I played to stay warm, and I held my thumb out as an occasional pair of headlights wound past me. By this time, I was completely immersed in the blues. I felt a sense of hope rise within. I would survive. I was sure. I could breathe fire into the night. I may have been homeless and without purpose or direction, but I was married to my music, and she would somehow see me through this.

All this time, I had been standing before a two-story home in the roadside village. I heard a shout from a window above and behind me. An old woman beckoned to me. She leaned her head out the window and told me to come closer. She spoke Italian, but I could understand, having been to Italy some years before and having learned enough of the language to converse on an elementary level. She urged me to stay in the inn down the street. And she used hand signals to emphasize her point. Then she threw down a small bundle of paper. I went to pick it up. It was money. She said, “Take it. Stay in the inn.”

I counted the bills. It was close to $60 in American money. So I thanked her and walked down the village street to the inn she had mentioned. I knocked on the door and inquired the price of a room. The old woman had given me the exact amount necessary to spend a night in this bed and breakfast. So I paid. I was shown to a small room with a single bed. The bed had a thick feather blanket and thick feather pillows. The innkeeper gave me a hot water bottle to warm my feet. I curled under the covers and slept more deeply than I had ever slept before. And in the morning, I had a hot breakfast with coffee.

I left the inn and began to hitch again. In less than 10 minutes, with the help of daylight and a fresh attitude, I had a ride all the way to Italy.

But I shall never forget the kindness of the old Swiss Italian woman. I can’t say for sure if she was paying me to get out of her hair or out of pity or because she admired my music. Perhaps it was a bit of all three. But I’d like to think she liked the way I played the blues.

By Lesa Tanner

They come limping to the pool, a slow draggle of mostly older women, some with canes and walkers, many doing the bad knees/hips waddle. They’re called Shirley, Beverly, Marilyn, Barbara, Donna—names that signal their era. The occasional man joins in, usually accompanying a female partner who convinced him to come.

It’s all so cliché at a glance, a water aerobics class at the local community pool. The music will be oldies, the students will be soft suburban ladies, the instructors will repeat their favorite one liners. There is a class like this everywhere in America, but don’t dismiss this daily spectacle—look closer.

I came to the pool on doctor’s orders. After 40 years of cleaning houses five days a week, sore knees and achy legs were my constant companions. My pain was like a mallet pounding relentlessly on a metal vise, heavy and stiff, clamped tightly on my knee.

When I couldn’t stop crying in the car on my way home from yet another cleaning job, just trying to hold on until I could put up my feet and ice my knees, it was time for a medical intervention.

I started going to water aerobics to prepare for a full knee replacement on my left leg. I was finally able to stop working long enough to have the surgery and recover because my grandma died and left me some money. I went to the pool—a large public pool in Santa Rosa—with low expectations and a bit of reverse snobbery. Surely, I wouldn’t fit in with a bunch of retirees, housewives and other non-working people who could afford to come to play in a pool at 9 am on a weekday.

I bought a beach towel at Costco and packed it in an old canvas bag, along with some sunglasses and a brimmed cap, put on a 5-year-old skirted bathing suit, sprayed myself with sunscreen, covered up with a loose cotton dress, and went to the pool.

The instructor was wearing a long-sleeved top known as a rash guard, and her hat had a sequined dolphin hanging off the back. I noticed other class members also had sequined marine animals hanging from their caps too, in tribal unity. Virtually everyone had a hat of some sort, which, in an activity where people are only seen from their shoulders up, would soon become their defining characteristic. Sunglasses were mandatory to fight the glare from light bouncing off the water, and to provide a bit of privacy as we were often exercising face-to-face.

I hobbled down the ramp to the pool, holding the metal railing that led to the “handicapped” entry, fitting in very well indeed.

When the red-coated young lifeguard blew her whistle, I joined the parade into the water, sitting at the wide cement bench bordering the pool and swinging my legs over the side to the step below.

At a therapeutic 84 degrees, the water was cool, but not at all shocking in comparison to the spring air. I was wearing a float belt so I could do a no-impact workout in the deep water. I slowly walked through the shallow water, where most of the class would work out, and went under the lane line to the welcoming deep end. Past the next lane line were the lap swimmers, a different breed from those of us doing our heads-up workout. The lap swimmers wore tight suits, bathing caps and goggles, and were often slimmer and younger. We didn’t mingle.

“Pretty Woman,” by Roy Orbison, was playing through a speaker at the side of the pool. I leisurely paddled, enjoying weightlessness and the feel of water moving against my skin. I was aware of the music, the sunshine, the scattered conversations happening all around me, the gentle splashes, and the lessening of pain in my joints as I kicked my legs. Oh my god! Have I found nirvana? When was the last time I was in a pool? When was the last time I was comfortable in my body? I fought back tears as the instructor took us through an easy series of movements. Do I love the pool?

Class after class, I paid attention to the other people in the pool as I moved easily through the water. How often are we in such close proximity with strangers, let alone ones with visible bodies? I enjoyed being one of the first people in the water so I could watch people arriving.

I noticed how at ease the women were in their bodies here, how nonchalantly they took off their cover-ups and walked around poolside. I saw their menopause aprons, their bread dough thighs, their bra dented shoulders—all just like mine.

I saw how the water released everyone from the burden of gravity, letting them move with ease and grace. I understood that fat was an asset in the water, giving buoyancy and warmth, and allowing the muscles and bones, grown strong by carrying that weight around, to move freely, pushing against the water with a strength unacknowledged on land.

I witnessed the cliques that formed in the pool. One mean girl group of 80-somethings always walked laps back and forth in tight formation, ignoring the teacher’s directions. Their leader, known for her themed headgear (a bunny hat with floppy ears for Easter, a headband with American flags for Independence Day) would lead the way, a figurehead with a knit vest and shorts over her bathing suit. I once heard her say, “That bitch better not get in my way,” reminding me that age doesn’t always bring benevolence.

There are the matching-hats women, the Giants fans, and the floaters, who are seemingly there just to visit with each other and never work out. Most of us are just a mishmash, chatting occasionally with whomever happens to be beside us, and mostly following the teacher. We have no status, except for that core group of us that shows up even in the wet and cold of winter.

For 6 weeks after my surgery, I couldn’t go in the pool. My mental health suffered and finally returning was a balm to my soul. The pool had become my respite and my main source of happiness. In the pool, I felt unencumbered by my heavy body. For an hour in the water, my pain diminished, and my thoughts quieted. The rhythmic movement accompanied by upbeat music was all that mattered, a meditative focus on the now. I healed with every class.

Three years post-surgery, I am strong and limber. I am still fat, but I look like a swimmer, suntanned and graceful. I move with strength and purpose in the water and feel like an athlete. Out of the pool, my weight is cumbersome, and my remaining bad knee makes me wince, but in the water, I am agile. I can’t imagine running on land, but in the weightless deep of the pool, I can move continuously, quickly, forcefully.

I now work out at Ives Pool, with an entirely different community. The water fitness classes are more focused here, and the music is better. The water is cooler, but the people are warmer. I have found my new workout home, and the five mornings a week I spend here are what keep me going. I enjoy the familiar ritual of entering and leaving the pool each morning while commenting on the transition from air to water, and vice versa, and the communal joy we feel following our beloved instructor together.

This is what I’ve learned. The pool welcomes every body—the water supports everyone. You may live in a vessel that is unable (or unhappy) to work out in harsh gravity, and the gentle water of the pool will free you to move again. No one cares what your body looks like in a bathing suit. Put on a hat and sunglasses you like and get in the water.

Like me, you will love the pool.

By Dan Gurney

I’ve got a 13-foot traditional flat-bottom sailing skiff, that is black outside and varnished wood inside. She’s got a handsome loose-footed tanbark sprit sail fitted to spars of spruce and bamboo.

She is as pretty as her home waters, Tomales Bay. Strangers approach and offer compliments. “Beautiful boat,” they might say.

Coming closer, though, their smiles fade. Voices drop. She’s a tad scruffy.

Questions replace compliments. “You build it?”

I answer, “I helped build her. A friend built her, mostly. I painted her—gave her a practical workboat finish.”

I say that so they don’t need to. She may be scruffy, but I love my skiff. I can fix her. She’s elder-friendly, repairable, tattered, versatile, valued, and showing wear already.

Building a skiff was not my idea.

One of my sailing friends got the idea. My friends and I sail weekdays on Tomales Bay. We’re retired Sonoma County seniors: in order, oldest to youngest, Jerry, Dennis, me, Doug, and Daniel. Sailing is our social glue. We’ve sailed on Tomales Bay for decades.

In the spring I announced to them that I had decided to quit sailing my Banshee. My friends know that, according to me, the Banshee is the best singlehanded racing sailboat. And they know that medications have wasted my muscles and sapped my stamina so much that, despite working with a personal trainer, it’s not such a great idea for me to sail my Banshee on Tomales Bay.

My sailing friends had their own great ideas.

Doug said, “Don’t quit Tomales, Dan! Come motorboat with me.”

“Thanks, Doug,” I replied, “but I’m a sailor. I’m not ready for motorboats.”

Daniel suggested that I keep my beloved Banshee and use a small electric outboard motor. “Sail only when the wind is calm.”

“You need a sailboat designed for senior sailors,” Doug offered. “A rowing skiff with a small sail, maybe. Hard to find, though.”

Jerry knew a boat design that might work: a Jimmy Skiff II, easy to sail, row or motor, and available only as kits. Assembly requires skill, energy, time, tools, and a workshop—none of which I have.

Jerry, a retired woodworker, had everything I lacked: talent, skill, energy, experience, and tools, together with a spacious workshop. He’d even been thinking about getting himself a single-handed sailboat to use when it’s too calm to windsurf.

I wondered if Jerry might assemble a Jimmy Skiff kit in exchange for the Banshee that I no longer could sail.

Soon we met over tacos to talk. Jerry’s wife, Deb, cautioned me, “Jerry makes mistakes, but he always figures out how to fix them.”

“Uh-oh,” I thought. “I’m persnickety. We’ll drive each other nuts!”

Then I realized: “Life’s to live. Could this be a triple win? Jerry builds me a boat, I have a new home for my Banshee, and I can shed some of my persnicketiness.”

I ordered a Jimmy Skiff kit that evening.

A few weeks later, DHL dropped three huge cardboard boxes at my door. We hauled them to Jerry’s workshop. Weeks of work lay ahead.

That’s when Dennis forwarded us a Craigslist ad for a brand new, beautifully finished Jimmy Skiff for sale by its Rohnert Park builder. He was asking for about the same amount of money that I just forked over for the wood parts now awaiting assembly and spread out across the floor in Jerry’s workshop!

Someone bought that finished boat right away. I reminded myself that I didn’t want a boat that someone else built. I wanted to build a boat that I can work on and fix. I wanted to learn woodworking skills from Jerry and to build friendships along the way.

We got started. Jerry showed me how to use his router, orbital sander, drill press, and traditional hand tools. He taught me how to join the edges of wood panels by laying down watertight “fillets” (pronounced FILL-its) made of epoxy thickened with wood flour.

“You fillet like a pro, Dan,” Jerry said.

We swapped stories, jokes, tears, laughs, and goof-ups. We talked more than we worked.

Jerry got lots done. On hot days, I tired quickly and went home early. I was away with grandkids one week in August. My perfectionism often bothered both of us. Jerry was incredibly patient with me. Doug checked in on us from time to time to make sure we were getting along. We did. Jerry’s aloha spirit rubbed off on me.

The skiff named herself: Friendship. We were building Friendship. I learned to accept mistakes and do-overs, repairs and fixes. Jerry’s patience calmed me. In late August, my unfinished skiff came home to my garage for final assembly and paint. The same day, my Banshee moved to her new home at Jerry’s.

Seven weeks later in mid-October, Friendship was ready to launch. We had planned a launch party on my birthday, but fierce northwesterlies canceled those plans.

We launched the very next day. None of my friends were able to come.

It was raining lightly. There was no wind, no company.

“We really shouldn’t go out alone. What if your boat leaks?” my wife Sarah asked.

“It won’t leak,” I tried to hide my annoyance.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because Jerry and I didn’t build a leaky boat! Let’s go!”

We motored across the bay. In 20 minutes, we arrived at Duck Cove, which we had all to ourselves. We enjoyed, as best we could, a drizzly picnic.

After lunch I decided to unscrew both the inspection ports to prove that Friendship didn’t leak. The first tank was dry, just like I thought. But when I unscrewed the second inspection port, I saw gallons of saltwater inside.

My dismay was immeasurable. I could hardly breathe. “The starboard floatation tank is full of water!” I whispered. “She leaks. Badly!” I would have significant repairs to make.

Sarah asked, “Should we call the Coast Guard?” (We had a radio.)

I took a breath to collect myself. I remembered the bilge pump. “No. We got here. We can get back.”

The wind was calm. Deciding to save the electric motor in case we needed it, we hoisted the sail and set off. Sarah paddled, I pumped. Slowly we crossed the bay without needing a rescue.

When we got home, I couldn’t find words to tell Jerry about the leak.

So I phoned Doug who has built seven wooden boats. He listened carefully. “Calm down, Dan. We’ll fix the leak. Daggerboard trunk, probably. I’ll come over tomorrow morning with my toolbox. See you at 8 am.”

I needed to vent some more. So I called Daniel who built his SCAMP, a wooden sailboat.

Daniel sounded like Doug: “You can fix it. If you need help, call me.”

Still, I fretted into the wee hours. Sarah echoed Doug and Daniel, “It’s going to be okay. Your friends will help.”

At 8 am sharp, Doug arrived with power tools. He cut big holes in my brand new boat. He looked inside with his bright utility flashlight. “Thought so.” Doug said. “The daggerboard cassette. Needs fillets.”

“Needs fillets?” I thought. “I know fillets. Jerry taught me.”

I could finally fully exhale.

Repairs took me almost a month to complete. In his emails, Dennis encouraged us again and again: “It’s not rocket surgery.”

Finally, I could tell Jerry, “Friendship’s fixed. No leaks.”

Most of us made it to celebrate Friendship on Veteran’s Day.

My troubles did not end there. Three days later, on my next outing to Tomales, I left home without properly tying down my sailing rig. I lost it somewhere between Sebastopol and Tomales Bay. I drove the whole route (via the towns of Bloomfield and Tomales) thinking that I would find it: a big, black canvas bag ten feet long and shaped like a sausage. But no. Someone had already picked it up.

I gave up and joined my friends at Tomales Bay. To salvage the day, we launched our boats and crossed the bay to Indian Beach where we shared stories of trailering’s trials and tribulations.

The next day, Jerry came by my house with tools to help me work on Friendship. We talked about how great his Banshee is. He suggested I post signs along the roads offering a reward for my sail’s return. So I did. Nobody has answered.

“Learned my lesson.” I told Jerry, “I’ll tie down the next sail rig.”

Friendship will see me through the rest of my days on Tomales Bay. I’ll give her regular attention, make repairs, accept her imperfections and navigate the troubles she’ll bring.

I’ll take care of Friendship and Friendship will take care of me—with a little help from our friends.

By Saba Khalid

“It’s a cult,” I tell him, the words heavy between us. “You, sir, are in a cult!”

I wait, holding his head between my hands and looking straight into his eyes. I watch his face for any sign of denial or agreement. “We are in a cult,” I pronounce each word slowly.

He looks amused, one of those almost-smiles edging his lips. “What’s so cultish about this place?” he says, looking around us from the park bench at the Sebastopol Farmers’ Market.

“Because it’s not real,” I shoot back, my voice rising with passion.

“Real is what you make out of it in your head,” he counters calmly.

I explode. “No, real is poverty, war, hunger, discrimination, homelessness. Real is sadness, corrupt governments, and growing miserable, diseased and old. Real is corporate or indentured slavery, traffic problems, climate disasters.”

He gestures around us, “All of it exists here too, maybe in lesser degrees.”

“You mean here in Hipsterville, where every corner is a setup for Instagram?” I ask.

“Not every corner,” he smiles. “Have you seen your closet?”

“Right, you actually think Sebastopol is real! Are you kidding me? This town could be sponsored by organic coffee and vintage flannels. Under every rock is a beanie-wearing writer and hand-knitted scarf-wearing musician.”

“You’re a beanie-wearing writer,” he laughs, tugging at my Goodwill hat.

“I think our neighbor’s chickens have their own therapist,” I said.

“Oh, you mean the intergenerational ancestral trauma from escaping the coop?” he suggested.

“And Flora—your friend—told me her dog whispered in a dream that they/them wanted to go vegan!” I accused.

“There’s been some compelling research suggesting—” he began.

“No,” I cut him off. “And the other day, when I was biking, I saw a guy just lying there in the sun with his dog, sleeping, right in the middle of the day.”

He feigns a gasp. “The indignity!”

“Who has that kind of time? To just sleep through the day?” I scoff. “Only in a cult, right?”

“Of course, you were out there biking, being a productive member of society,” he teases. “Not for enjoyment, right? That would be too… ‘Sebastopol.’”

“I keep it real, dawg,” I mutter, pretending not to see the irony.

For a moment, I fall quiet. Because the part I hate the most is how much I envy it here.

The stupid 20-something guy on his skateboard, walking his dog, and pushing a baby in a pram. The mothers with wavy hair and their calm babies at oak barrel tables. The older couples walking hand in hand like joy is still legal for them. It’s everything I never had — and everything that makes me feel like I don’t belong.

These were the first things I learned about Sebastopol.

But not the first things I learned about him.

Because I didn’t come here by accident. I came because of him.

Months before this farmers’ market rant, I stepped off the Sonoma County Airporter at the Rohnert Park hotel — my suitcase heavy, my heart heavier — expecting yet another Bumble date. A last date before flying back home to Pakistan. A symbolic “Goodbye, America” moment.

But there he was: tall, 15-years older, wearing a faded national park T-shirt and holding red roses like a man who had both sincerity and a plan. His old Tacoma truck looked like it survived several road trips and hiking adventures. He smiled at me as if I were the ending he didn’t know he was working toward.

He drove me into Sebastopol, fog rolling over the fields like this place had hired its own cinematographer. I had never seen anything like it — handmade signs, apple orchards, a witch store.

“What is this place?” I whispered.

He said, “Home,” with a confidence I mistook for an invitation.

We hiked the next day, through trees older than our entire family histories combined. He stopped at a tree growing around a large stone lodged deep in its trunk. The bark had folded itself carefully around the rock.

“Look,” he said. “The tree adapted to the stone.”

“Or the tree had poor boundaries,” I replied.

But I remembered it.

And that was the beginning of everything.

We fell in love the way things fall here — slowly, with way too much intention. I came back from Pakistan for him and for a life that felt like a soft gravitational pull. I learned his German ways: waking at 6 am sharp, no snooze, wearing the same national park shirts, mending sweaters, reading every user manual before turning on an appliance. Bicycling to Santa Rosa through the Joe Rodota Trail and splitting a burrito every now and then at Papas and Pollo as a treat.

And in our small bed in Bloomfield we curled into every night, in that no-frills, sustainable, Costco-stocked life of his, I began to see myself more clearly. I complained about privilege, but I had grown up in Pakistan in a three-bedroom upstairs house of my parents’ that I never paid a cent for, with cooks, drivers, gardeners, guards — people whose labor made my ease possible. I never ate leftovers. I never washed a dish. I never scrubbed a sink. Domestic life was something others performed around me like quiet choreography.

At first, his simplicity felt charming — adorable, even. Then, slowly, the charm turned into overwhelm. I realized how accustomed I was to being carried by invisible hands. How much privilege I dragged behind me, even as I cast myself as the perpetual outsider, the brown woman navigating a white town.

And the truth is: I tried to hate him for how easily he belonged in Sebastopol. I tried to hate the way doors opened for him, the way smiles came first for him. But hating him only made me see myself more clearly. I hated his belonging because of race, but I had a belonging in me — a lifelong cushioning — that he had fought his entire life to have.

Because this man — this stone I kept pushing against — had left his childhood home at 14. Fourteen! While I was being driven to school by a chauffeur, he was navigating life without a safety net. And just when he finally learned how to survive Germany, he packed up and moved again — to the U.S., to start from zero a second time. He self-taught himself programming languages the way some people teach themselves guitar chords: patiently, obsessively, alone. He bought three acres of neglected land from an alcoholic in Sebastopol, a house with a literal hole in the floor of the house, and rebuilt everything himself — the barn, the ceilings, the floors, year by year, screw by screw, weathering storms, floods, breakages, setbacks.

I didn’t know any of it. I just arrived when everything was done — when the house was beautiful, the land green, the barn standing, the life arranged. I mistook the finished product for something that had always been there, instead of something he had carved from absolute nothing.

He was the stone. Strong because he had to be. Stable because flexibility wasn’t a luxury he’d been born with.

And I was the tree — swaying easily because life had always caught me before I hit the ground. The bending I’d mistaken for resilience was really privilege.

The stillness I resented in him was really survival.

We walked again to that redwood last week. I couldn’t locate the tree that grew into the stone.

Maybe the tree broke the stone.

Maybe the stone broke the tree.

Maybe they couldn’t coexist.

He stood beside me, quiet, hands in his pockets.

“We could still figure it out,” I said softly, surprising myself.

Not him alone.

Not me alone.

Both of us, shifting just enough to create a shape that doesn’t require bruising.

He didn’t answer. He rarely does at first. His silence is a kind of thinking.

I walked ahead on the trail, letting the forest close behind me. Letting anyone who hears this story assume the simplest ending, that I left. That the tree finally stepped back from the stone.

Maybe I did.
Maybe I didn’t.
Maybe we’re both waiting to see if the other is capable of even the smallest movement.

All I know is this:

A tree can live with a stone.
A stone can steady a tree.
But only if both agree that growth is worth the effort.

And maybe, if we ever listen to each other, the two can find a way to grow side by side, not out of sacrifice, but out of choice.

Saba Khalid is a Pakistani immigrant and a conflicted lover of two chaotic homelands: Karachi and Sebastopol. She worships trees, dogs, long trails, and complicated men. She writes to survive the whiplash of living between a city that never sleeps and a town that sometimes sleeps in the middle of the day.

By Dan Kerbein

“Are you in a newspaper office or a railroad station?!” the person on the other end of the line hollered so I could hear him over the noise of the train passing about 20 feet from the front door.

“A little of both,” I replied, both of us chuckling because almost as long as there had been a Sebastopol Times office, there had also been a train down Main Street. And everyone in the newspaper’s circulation area knew that at this time of the day, all conversation would be virtually drowned out by the din of a diesel engine and clanging wheels.

That was in 1978, and one thing I now know is this: If you can get used to a train rolling up the main traffic artery of your town every day, you can get used to just about anything.

You can also get used to seeing them replaced by quiet walking trails.

I was 27 back when I was working for the original Sebastopol Times, and I was partly annoyed by the train but also fond of it, amused by this reminder that Sebastopol was still a country town at heart, not a city. The apple industry had long been in a slow decline, but you could always get a bushel of Gravensteins every August, and anyone you asked could advise you on making apple pie. It’s still like that to this day, except maybe for the pie part.

Ah, nostalgia. But what about that traffic issue, with drivers having to steer clear of an iron behemoth. What kind of moron would lay out the Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railway to do that? Well, to be fair, there weren’t any cars on the road yet in 1904 when the rails were completed. In those days when someone said, “I’ve got to go see a man about a horse,” they either meant that literally or were fixing to visit the outhouse. That’s right, there was no indoor plumbing back then either. Or telephones. Or electrical wiring in Sebastopol homes.

But there was electricity in a massive untamed form, powering factories and transit systems, and that’s what moved crops and people quickly to destinations only dreamed of before.

The train down Main was also the Santa Rosa trolley, with wires sparking over the cars just like in San Francisco. Massive transformers located in what is now Hopmonk supplied them with a constant flow of 600 watts. Locals were impressed by that, especially in Forestville, where you could end your train ride with a stay at the Electric Hotel.

Every local farm benefitted from having a train bring the day’s harvest to market. Pick the fruit at dawn, get it sold before noon. The P&SR transferred its freight and passengers to steamers in Petaluma, which could take them to San Francisco, Oakland, or Napa. All of this (along with its loamy Gold Ridge soil) made Sebastopol the apple capital of California.

By the time I was sweating over deadlines and old-fashioned air conditioning at the Sebastopol Times, the train was down to running only once a day. The phase of history I described earlier, of peak new technology and peak production, lasted until the 1960s. It was destined to give way to the Interstate Highway System. Now apples get trucked in from Washington state, and Gravensteins are a fine gourmet specialty.

I respect what the P&SR Railway accomplished and what it took to build it. It has its place in the march of progress, and its descendant, the SMART train, has spared me many an hour of staring at a freeway of brake lights.

Having said that, I must admit I enjoy the trails a whole lot more than I enjoyed that hobbling old diesel train. But how can I not get at least a little nostalgic when I think about it?

By Evy Royer

We had finally made it to the “lake” that the camp counselor had been talking about on the 10-minute walk, which felt more like 10 hours to my 9-year-old self. The whole time, I was attached to the hip of my closest friend at the time, Erika. We were at Camp CYO, and we were in a group with about 12 other girls. Our first impression on all of the other campers was that we were sisters. So, we had not exactly become friends with anyone else so far. The lake was much smaller than any of us expected, more like a pond than a lake.

We walked in a line to a small dock covered with canoes and life jackets. The two counselors told us to sit down on the same benches and take out our lunches. So we all did, grabbing our brown paper bags and pulling out our lunch. I opened it to find the same thing I had eaten for the whole week, a peanut butter and honey sandwich.

The camp counselors sat down and began to tell us a story. There was an alligator in the lake. It was a blind albino alligator with little to no teeth. They had a long story, which I don’t remember, to explain how they got an alligator and why it had no teeth and all the questions we had. Although I don’t remember the story that well, I do remember how stupid it was; nothing about it made any sense. I remember they said the alligator only ate weird food and had some silly name. We had loads of questions. What is its favorite food? What does it like to do for fun? Questions 9-year-olds would ask. The one question we did not have is whether the story they were telling was real. Every one of us believed it fully. There was no doubt in our minds that there was a tame, blind, albino alligator with no teeth in the small pond at Camp CYO.

After we were all finished with our lunches, we would throw the bags in the trash and follow the counselors to the dock. It was an old dock. It sat on the dark blue water, swaying with the small waves. There was a pile of red canoes and life jackets piled on top of each other. As we made our way onto the dock one by one, stepping on it would cause a loud creek and a sway. We stood on the dock watching as the two counselors grasped each end of the canoe and placed it in the water. They took the first group of girls and attached their life vests. Each of the girls got a small paddle and, one by one, hopped in the boat. Then the counselors called for the next group of three, until it was just me, Erika, and another girl. As we got our life vests on and got in the boat one at a time, the counselors told us to look for the alligator as it would be swimming around.

We paddled around the pond, searching for the alligator. You could not go 5 minutes without hearing a voice screaming, “I saw its tail!” Everyone would quickly paddle toward the area, stick their heads out and stare at the water. Erika was at the front of the boat, while I stayed back. I was searching on the left side of the canoe, waiting to see it pass by.

Just then, Erika yelled, “I saw it! It swam down!” I quickly hopped to the right side and instantly stuck my head off the side searching for it. Just then, I saw it

Who knows what I actually saw. Maybe a log, a fish, or a branch? Or maybe it was not anything at all, but I was convinced. I had seen an alligator swim down in the water, I quickly told my boat, and for the rest of the time on the lake, we were chasing the sounds of the girls saying they saw it. On the trail back to the cabins, all any of us could talk about was the alligator and where we saw it and what we saw. We were so proud of ourselves at that moment. We were so excited that it was almost all we could talk about for the rest of the day at camp.

When it was finally time to go home after a long day. My mom picked both me and Erika up and drove us to her house first. We talked about our day, all the games we played, all the hikes we went on and all that. She did not seem impressed by the alligator, but I brushed it off. Once Erika was dropped off, I continued telling her about my day, circling back to the lake and the alligator. This time, though, my mom told me, “You really don’t believe that there is an alligator in the pond, do you?”

What kind of question was that? Of course, there was an alligator! Right? At that moment, I really thought. It would not make much sense, would it? I stopped my story and realized it was all a lie. Looking back on this day, I remember the innocence we all had. Sometimes I miss it. If you were to tell me that story now, I would not believe you for a second. Sometimes I wish I could believe there was a blind albino alligator with no teeth in the pond and just be a kid.

By Gale O’Brien

I sat very still so I wouldn’t make creases in my new organdy dress. Its skirt was pale yellow, thin as parchment, perfectly pressed by my mother earlier this Sunday morning. Now, we were waiting for my father to come home; it was ten minutes past our planned departure time. My little sister peeked out the curtains. I willed the hands on the kitchen clock to stay still. My mother rattled the dishes, keeping her hands busy. I worried that wrinkles were being pressed into the back of my dress as I sat on it. I stood up.

My father had gone out to circulate a petition to install streetlights in our neighborhood. At 10:30 am, he was to drive us to church, where my Sunday School class would perform the Christmas story for the congregation. We had practiced for several Sundays, and I had memorized my verse perfectly. It was the weekend before Christmas.

“When is he coming home?” I whined plaintively to my mother.

The hands on the clock moved forward.

“Why isn’t he here?”

It was five minutes to eleven when I heard the click of the door.

I rushed to my father, “Daddy, we have to go! We’re late, we’re late!”

I could see by his face that he’d forgotten. He looked helplessly at my mother.

“There’s still time to get there,” my mother said.

We dashed to the car. My heart was beating rapidly, my breathing fast. I wrung my hands.

“They’ll wait for you,” my mother said.

I practiced my verse silently: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”

We arrived at the modern, white Presbyterian church and entered. My class was descending from the pulpit! Too late! I ran down the aisle to my teacher and threw my arms around her, my face buried in her soft belly, sobbing. She stroked my hair.

“I’m sorry, Gale. We waited as long as we could.”

My class took the last row in the pews. My family sat a few rows in front. Through my tears, I saw the choir, clad in white flowing gowns, entering the choir loft like angels. “Joy to the World,” they sang. But there was no joy in my small world that day; my father had forgotten about me. I hated his silly streetlights. I hoped that the measure failed and that our streets would stay very dark at night.

As time passes, disappointments fade; maturity brings broader perspectives, and I grew to appreciate and to admire my father’s devotion to giving to the community. A chemical engineer by profession, he felt a call to community service. He gave of his time so our entire neighborhood could benefit. Eventually, streetlights illuminated our street. Through his efforts, we were annexed into the city of Long Beach, which allowed us the privilege of other city services.

My father’s greatest accomplishment was working against the realtors who had instigated the “white flight” in Compton for their own financial gain. My father was disheartened at the fear tactics that the realtors used and led an effort to halt them in their tracks as they sought to move south into our neighborhood. He gained agreement among our integrated neighborhood that we would stand firm and not sell, no matter how much we were pressured.

My father’s volunteerism became an example I followed throughout my life. His dedication to community service was passed on to me via osmosis, just as his blue eyes and chin dimple were passed on by his physical DNA.

Fresh out of college, I joined VISTA, where I worked in an impoverished neighborhood in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to create a camp for underprivileged children. After VISTA, I became a teacher, working with children with severe motor and sensory disabilities.

One of my favorite volunteer projects was working with The Portrait Project, where volunteer photographers, hair stylists, and make-up artists work together to create quality portraits for homeless people in the Bay Area. The project sets up a temporary photo studio with an assortment of fine clothing that homeless individuals can choose to wear if they like. There was an atmosphere of excitement that was contagious, and I found myself wanting to take the best portraits possible. As person after person stepped into the light, I could instantly see their posture straighten, their heads lift a little higher, sincere smiles. One gentleman—early fifties, wearing a stylish tweed blazer, dark hair brushed back and shining—posed with a big smile, displaying his missing teeth. As I handed him his photos, his smile returned, and he said, “I am going to send these to my mother in Idaho, so she can see that I’m doing good.”

I’m retired now, and I presently volunteer at Jack London State Historic Park. On the short list to be closed due to state budget cuts, it is now supported mainly by volunteer power.

A line in The Prayer of St. Francis says, “It is in giving that we receive.” Martin Luther King Jr. challenged, “What are you doing for others?”

By example, my father taught me the joy of service. Although life may toss many disappointments into our lap, we can find true joy in service to others. The minute hand of our life keeps moving forward at a steady rate, no matter how hard we try to slow it down. Giving our time to serve others is the most precious gift we can give. Serving others brings joy to the world. Good will toward men. This is where we find peace on earth. And isn’t that the true message of Christmas?

By Jamie Stapleton

A year ago, I made a slightly judgy comment about Disney adults at a holiday dinner. I don’t remember the words, but I remember the vibe. Polite chuckles. Mild superiority. The quiet satisfaction of believing I had taste. The moment meant nothing. Until it didn’t.

The truth is, I never disliked Disney. I always liked it. I just believed there were cooler places to vacation. Disney lived in a separate category. Fun, but not aspirational. Not the kind of trip you led with if you wanted to sound interesting. Last year, we were deep in our cultured era. Europe. Wine. Conversations with a family traveling Switzerland for a month with their kids. They radiated that effortless nomadic confidence that makes you briefly reconsider your life choices.

Disney wasn’t beneath us. It just felt like its lack of exoticness didn't justify its cost.

Then January arrived, and we had to decide whether we were actually doing this Disney World trip we’d talked about for years or letting it fade into “someday.” I booked a call with a Disney travel advisor, mostly out of curiosity. I was direct.

“We love travel. I love planning travel. Disney is expensive. Convince me,” I said.

I told her we didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars just to be waiting in long lines the whole trip. If we were doing Disney, it needed to be strategic. Efficient. Worth it. She explained how, for a fee, she builds touring plans, manages reservations, and turns a Disney trip into a well-run operation. I was convinced. I needed to make this magic happen for my kids. We booked the Polynesian early—it’s one of the original Walt Disney World hotels—and we felt very decisive. At the time, I didn’t realize that was the first step down a much deeper rabbit hole.

In February, I blew out my knee playing basketball with my daughter. One surgery turned into two. Weeks stuck in bed. Too much time. Too little momentum. I worked through recovery, but I was restless. I’m a joy seeker by nature. I need something to build. Something that feels productive and fun, and Disney planning became that thing. I fell hard. Strategy videos. Queue optimization. Touring logic. Dining reservation warfare. The Disney planning ecosystem is vast, detailed and unapologetically intense.

I was a cat falling into a well of catnip. I love an efficiently planned anything, but there was more to it than that. Around the same time, I had started pulling back from constant news consumption. I was tired of carrying the weight of things I couldn’t fix. Disney was joyful. Disney was something I could do and control. Then one afternoon, I watched a video of Happily Ever After, the popular fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom. Just a video. On my phone. And I teared up. That was the moment I thought, “Huh, that’s new.”

We took the trip. It was a trip of a lifetime. My kids loved it. The whole family loved it. Expertly planned, amazing memories. At various moments during the trip, my daughter gave me a look that said, “This feels slightly out of character for you.”

My husband now, lovingly, refers to me as a Disney adult. What surprised me wasn’t that I fell hard into Disney. It was that I stopped needing to justify it. I had let go of an unnecessary filter. I had ranked Disney lower in a hierarchy of what counted as interesting travel, and once I dropped that, the experience opened up.

Disney adults aren’t hurting anyone. They aren’t unserious. They aren’t avoiding reality. They’re choosing joy in a world that rarely offers it freely. I’m not declaring this some grand healing experience. I’m still figuring it out. But something softened when I stopped needing my interests to prove something.

The final irony is that this journey nudged me toward becoming a travel advisor. It clarified the kind of trips I want to help people plan: thoughtful, well-designed, joyful on purpose. I still love Europe. I still love discovering places that feel tucked away and interesting. I just stopped pretending that liking Disney somehow cancels that out.

So did I become a Disney adult? Probably. And I'm embracing it and not shying away from it.

By Natalie Johnson

In February’s Valentine’s Day issue, I shared with the Sebastopol Times an encapsulation of the love story my husband and I share. A high school crush, musical friendship, and 28-year hiatus was followed by a spontaneous reconnection from 3,000 miles away. Our impulsive marriage last summer changed both our lives in breathtaking ways.

Today, we both live in a state of near continuous gratitude. My offering now is a brief history of how this grace came to be. It’s accompanied by a photo of Andy, my husband, walking casually toward the camera, having followed a path up a modest slope beside a green meadow. I am a few steps behind, on his right side, where I have paused to look back down the hill. This photo, taken on Nov. 3, may look like a couple just enjoying a walk in the park, but it actually captures a convergence of many miracles into one beautiful moment.

Andy was born with cancer. Doctors at St. Jude’s saved his life with chemotherapy during infancy—the first miracle in our story. Unfortunately, this experimental 1976 cancer treatment thinned his heart wall significantly, and he has been slowly progressing into heart failure ever since. When we met as teenagers, he had just learned of this lifelong side effect, and it wasn’t slowing him down. He drummed barefoot for hours at a time. (I played bass.) He was doing one-hundred-mile bike rides at age 40, just before it really started to catch up with him.

When we reconnected after nearly 30 years last May (another miracle!), he had multiple implanted devices keeping him alive, including one that actually pumped his blood. He wore a battery pack continuously to keep this life-supporting machine humming.

He was loving his life, and we were loving each other, but no more bike rides. We soaked up the back porch and the hummingbirds, and we carefully hunted out walks that were relatively flat—no easy task in Northern California. On good days, Andy could slowly walk a bit of slope, even a small hill if he was motivated, stopping to catch his breath every 15 feet or so. He might sleep for 14 hours the next day. By September, when he’d been on the transplant list for seven months, he would sometimes get short of breath putting on his shoes.

Sometime in the first week of October, a dear soul—someone’s son, brother, father, someone young and healthy, someone to whom Andy will forever be karmically connected—experienced an unexpected tragedy. Through that individual’s and their family’s unimaginable generosity, they were kept alive on life support until all the grateful recipients of their donated organs could be in place, ready to receive these lifesaving gifts. I recognize how much harder this gift can make that time of grief, having to wait, putting life and time and the inevitable great loss into someone else’s hands. I know I haven’t yet fully explored all of the gratitude and emotion that comes with this particular miracle, a miracle of choice. I only know it comes streaming down my face every time I think about it.

On Thursday, Oct. 9, Andy’s heart and all the machines attached to it, were removed from his body. In my sleepy meditation during the surgery, at about 2:30 am, I saw Andy in the hospital hallway, pulling on his sweater.

With his sweet half-smile, he said, “It’s time for me to go.”

“Wait!” I said, panicked, “They’re giving you a new one! Wait for it. Please.”

The donor’s healthy heart was expertly placed in his body by surgeons and their many nurses and assistants at UCSF. Which miracle is this?! I’ve lost count.

And surgeons! Oh, my goodness, after 12 hours in the operating room through the middle of the night, that young resident surgeon (one of at least three who performed the surgery), came into the ICU to tell me how well it all went. My husband was lying there with a breathing tube, 14 IV drips, and countless other drains and tubes all working exactly the way they were supposed to, with a new heart beating in his chest. I looked at the surgeon with awe and amazement that anyone would choose this as their life path—so freakin’ courageous! The ICU nurse who received him from the operating room? A goddess. Whenever I feel like I’ve had an exhausting day or my job feels harder than I want it to, I will think of them. They choose to do this. Every day.

The weeks that followed have been intense and blessed in more ways than I can share here. The number of medications and appointments and procedures is only exceeded by the friends from near and far who have surrounded us with divine love—miracles all!

Recovering from a surgery of this magnitude is long and effortful, and the new heart can take time to warm up and start functioning at full capacity. When we were discharged 16 days after surgery, the instruction was for Andy to try to take three 8-minute walks per day. They were hard. Despite the new heart, he was still short of breath and exhausted, and he was always cold.

Each day, we tried to get out to Golden Gate Park, just a few blocks from his cousin’s graciously donated apartment where we’d been staying with his mom, Cathy. We’d bring camping chairs and sit in the sun, walk a little bit, watch the dogs.

On the day of the photo, Andy, Cathy and I pulled up to the field shown in this picture. I thought we’d take a short stroll in the sun and head home.

“I want to try to walk around it,” Andy said.

So we started out. I carried a little camping stool that could be quickly unfurled if he needed to sit down.

This picture marks the moment when I looked back and noticed the hill we had just climbed. Without stopping to catch his breath, without pausing, without even noticing what we were doing, we were just out for a walk. This was the moment right before I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Look behind you. Look what you just did.”

It was the moment right before we looked at each other, both realizing what these miracles added up to. Or, more to the point, that we can’t know what they might add up to, but that we…blessedly…have the rest of our lives to find out.

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By Tom Meyskens

The roots of the Meyskens Christmas sleigh tradition date back to 1974. My first wife, Betty Lou, and I had moved to Sebastopol in December 1973. The following year, we built a house on a half-acre on Jean Drive at the south end of the city limits. My father, Frank, and I did quite a bit of work on the house to make it more than the $25,000 that the Farmers Home Administration allowed. Our home was finished in late 1974.

My dad and mom came up to visit before Christmas 1974 to pick out a Christmas tree and to go look at Christmas lights. Our son Ian was two-and-a-half years old, and our daughter Anya was just one. We visited a shirttail relation, Tony and Peg Leone, on Robinson Road in town. Tony had built a homemade sleigh, reindeer and Santa display. We have photos of our kids sitting in the sleigh.

My dad went back to Tony’s the next week and took photos and measurements. He said he was going to make two copies out of plywood for their home and ours. We have sleigh photos from Christmas 1975 at my parents’ house in Terra Linda, and they kept that tradition going until my parents sold their house in 1997.

We put up our sleigh and reindeer on the roof of our hillside home on Jean Drive in 1975. It could be seen from Lynch Road nearby. A few storms over the years damaged the display, but I kept repairing it and putting it up every year. Betty and I were divorced in 1988, and we sold that house in 1992.

My second wife, Linda, and I married in 1989, and we live on Danmar Drive at the north end of Sebastopol. We put the sleigh, four reindeer and a cutout of Santa up on our carport roof next to the chimney. It has been there for the month of December for 33 years.

By 1997, when my parents moved to Santa Rosa, both original Christmas displays were in pretty sorry shape. Some reindeer had missing legs and antlers, and the years had faded the colors. Storms had blown mine off the roof a few times. After my parents moved from San Rafael to the Country Mobile Home Park, we combined the two Christmas displays with the best parts and kept the tradition going in Sebastopol.

My mom, Louise, died in 2000. My dad had cancer that took one of his eyes and a stroke that left him with only about 10 percent of his vision in the other eye. Even with that handicap, he said, “Let’s make three new copies of the display!”—one for us, one for my daughter Anya’s Sebastopol home, and one for our family friends, Steve and Leah in Santa Rosa.

Steve and I set out to build the displays, and my dad agreed to paint all the pieces. It took almost a year to complete. At one time, my dad had 48 reindeer legs, 12 reindeer bodies, 12 reindeer antlers, three sleighs and three Santa Claus cut-outs hanging in his small carport in the mobile home park. His neighbors were amazed he could still paint, despite being functionally blind.

That Christmas, in 2003, the displays were completed and installed at all of our homes. For a few years, we had a progressive dinner at each of our houses so we could get photos together in front of our displays. A year later, our daughter Chandra’s boyfriend, Phil, built another copy of the display for their Florence Avenue home.

Over the past 19 years, there was a theft of a reindeer from Steve and Leah’s display and a theft of the sleigh from Chandra’s front yard. When Chandra and Phil broke up, he took off with the reindeer and Santa Claus, never to be seen again. Anya divorced a few years later and the sleigh was left in storage, though she did put up some of the reindeer. Steve fashioned a replacement reindeer out of extra reindeer body parts I had. Steve and Leah still put up their display every year.

We have not missed a year here on Danmar Drive next to the Sebastopol Community Church. The reindeer were blown off the roof twice during storms, all of the antlers have broken except one, and my reindeer have a few broken legs. However, under the cover of dark December nights, my display still looks as good as new, though it is in sorry shape if you look close.

My son Eli and family moved to Sebastopol in January 2022. They are big on Christmas and holiday displays. This year they have some of the reindeer in their display on Cleveland Avenue here in Sebastopol.

My daughter Anya and her son also moved back to town a few years ago. This year, they have a skeleton Santa sitting in her Sleigh along with a cutout likeness of her dog, Domino, with a Santa hat on.

Last year, we sent out photos of our sleigh to extended family. Many of them want a retro plywood Santa, sleigh and reindeer for their homes. They are tired of blow-up Christmas displays. I have this feeling a new generation of the Christmas sleigh tradition may be in the offing, and reindeer body parts may be drying in my carport in the coming years. Maybe a high-tech sleigh version that would better fit the new century! I wonder what AI would recommend?

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By Hanne Jensen

When I left Denmark in the seventies, I vowed to leave the old culture and customs behind. But for more than half a century, I have kept two Danish Christmas traditions going. The first is a raucous Yule lunch fueled by Aquavit in the spirit of the Vikings, and the second is an intimate family Christmas Eve’s dinner. That night, we light candles on the tree, as Scandinavians have done for centuries and sing the old songs, celebrating the return of the light.

For the first Yule lunch in California, we crammed two dozen friends into our tiny cabin in San Rafael, all sitting on the floor, attempting to maneuver the herring on the black bread with knife and fork, everyone dutifully following my strict instructions of etiquette. Over the years, tables have been put together in apartments, in corridors, in living rooms, small shot glasses ready for the guest of honor, the bottle of Aquavit. The party always began in proper fashion only to descend into loud singing, dancing on top of the tables, kissing under the mistletoe, and first timers crawling around on the floor looking for toes to lick or sleeping off the alcohol in the corners of the room.

In my youth, these parties were famous, and getting an invitation sought after. Before the party inevitably dissolved into chaos, there were strict rules to follow. First, the herrings and smoked fish were brought out, then the meat balls, roast and salami with all the trimmings, and then the cheeses and desserts. Each dish was accompanied with a shot of Aquavit and proclamations of good wishes for everyone. By the time we reached the sweets, no one cared about protocol. In Denmark, the Yule lunch is celebrated many times during December—within families, in offices, in small towns and big companies. These gatherings always have an air of gossip and regrets clinging to them, as the Danes, fueled by Aquavit, let go of their inhibitions, only to have to face their co-workers or partners the next day.

Christmas Eve is another story. The dinner is always duck stuffed with apple and prunes, pork roast, red cabbage, potatoes browned in sugar, followed by a rice pudding made with cream and almonds, as traditional a meal as the turkey for Thanksgiving. The dessert hides a whole almond and whoever finds it, wins a marzipan pig. After dinner, we light the many candles on the tree and make a circle holding hands. First, we sing the hymns and then the rowdier songs, our steps quickening with the escalating pace, until the grand finale when we run outside, shouting, “Nu er det Jul Igen, nu er det jul Igen”, which my family has translated to “Nude hooligans going to Alaska.” [The actual translation is a more prosaic, “Now it is Christmas again.”] After the candles are extinguished, we finally sit down to share our presents.

There were years when my little sister or my parents traveled from Denmark to join us for Christmas Eve. They all passed away at a young age, and I started to notice a melancholy that I couldn’t shake while cooking the many dishes for the night. Now more than ever, I wanted to give my family and our closest friends the experience of a magical Danish Christmas, but when everyone arrived promptly at 6 pm, I was often exhausted and emotional. It took several years before I realized that while I was preparing the traditional feast for the evening, I was feeling terribly lonely and lost. The rest of my American friends were celebrating Christmas Day, and my insistence on following the Danish traditions to the letter made me cranky and nostalgic. One year, I had simply had it. Why would I continue a tradition that left me so emotionally drained? We could be sitting on a beach in Hawaii instead. Maybe it was time to let go of my own expectations.

By this time, my three children were young adults. They did not hesitate. “We will do it, mom,” they announced. “We will take care of everything.” This declaration put new life into our family Christmas traditions. A decade later, all I have to do is give advice and make my special gravy. They have taken the dinner to another level. The duck and pork are from local Sonoma farms, and all the ingredients are organic. They love the old-fashioned ways and don’t want to change a thing.

And the crazy Yule lunch? That has transformed into a neighborhood holiday party, the meatballs and smoked fish mixed in with dishes from around the world in true California style. We still have a symbolic shot of Aquavit for the sake of the good old days, but most of our neighbors have a glass of wine instead.

We now have a live spruce that is brought inside the day before Christmas. We still decorate with real candles, making sure that we have buckets of water ready. We work together all day on the dinner, and the kids take turns creating the most extravagant marzipan pig. After dinner, we light the candles and make the circle around the spruce while singing the old songs, all printed in handmade books. The gifts are thoughtful and homemade. It is an evening we all look forward to, just being together as a family.

I recently talked with my 92-year-old aunt, the only relative left in Denmark, and I told her about our Christmas Eve. She laughed and then told me that no one in Denmark has had candles on their tree for decades. I only smiled. Some customs will endure as long as I live.

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[Editor’s Note: This is the first of several personal essays we’ll be running this holiday season. Fifty people sent in essays this year for the Sebastopol Times Personal Essay Contest. We chose 13 of them, which we’ll run between now and January 4. Happy Holidays!]

By Sara Alexander

On the NPR radio news one recent morning, the Moscow Correspondent described what it would take to preserve a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine: “There would have to be Peacekeepers on site, which would require assembling a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ forces.”

I liked the idea of a “Coalition of the Willing,” which was a new phrase to my ears. While wondering who those “willing forces” might be, I realized that is what I want from Santa for Christmas: an end to the war in Ukraine and the war between Israel and Gaza, and all the other wars in countries whose names I can barely remember.

I have dreamt of world peace since I was a mere 11 years old. I remember standing in the living room of our home in suburban Detroit and writing an anti-war poem that won me a dictionary with my name embossed in gold. When I was a freshman studying art at the University of Michigan in 1965, I started wondering what it was in human nature that made it so hard for us anti-Vietnam War protestors to get along with each other. Many years later I became a group and family therapist. I learned how to help people see and negotiate their (often quite extreme) differences. But I lost touch with my youthful outrage, my ambition to become a peace negotiator. These days I mostly just “fight the good fight” to manage my own smallish life, economic survival, and personal relationships.

I need to admit that I’ve given up doing anything meaningful about world peace, but I am willing to work myself silly baking at the holidays. What’s up with that?

I have an annual tradition of exhausting myself producing a rather spectacular (at least in my own opinion) assortment of favorite cookies: the ones I most like to eat and the ones my friends report that they like best. I pack them artfully in cellophane bags, which I tie with gaudy and preferably glittery ribbons, salvaged from multiple forays into multiple thrift-store holiday sales. I arrange them in adorable holiday themed tins, accumulated during those same forays. Then I deliver them to nearby friends and ship to loved ones far away. I manage to do this with a determination, fervor and physical stamina that I don’t quite understand.

For the first 40 years, I did this largely with one dear generous friend, Sandie B., a hard-working fellow therapist who also loves baking cookies and gifting them to friends and family. As we are getting older, getting all of the ingredients into the bowl and standing for hours in the kitchen has become much harder—much like hiking and stairs and remembering names has become harder. Our current production speed is about one third of what it once was.

So to complete this gathering, baking, wrapping and delivering marathon, I am now forced to assemble a “coalition of the willing.” I need many more days to get to the finish line, and I need more helpers.

Last year a plea on my neighborhood e-list scored a delightful and efficient young woman who was great fun to bake with and would not let me pay her in money, only in cookies. But then, much to my disappointment, she moved away. This year I got a little help from friends, but then wisely cajoled my housekeeper, Stella, into helping me bake one Sunday, which quickly extended into all of Monday. She is a great worker, and I loved getting to know her better, and she loved both the cookies and the contagion of the holiday spirit. By Tuesday, the cookies for those far away were in the mail. By Wednesday, I could barely talk, walk or stand.

Through this haze of exhaustion and my puzzlement at my own persistence, I enjoy the fact that, once again, I have managed to bake and assemble bags of fig-date anise swirls; apricot sage cornmeal cookies; Italian ricciarelli dotted with candied cherries; salted chocolate shortbread crusted in Demerara sugar; and my own variation on Pfefferneuse, infused with extra doses of seven spices and laced with a Campari sugar glaze, edible gold leaf and crushed pink peppercorns. The Pfefferneuse this year are almost too pretty to eat, and so delicious that I almost hate giving them away. I do like one with my morning coffee in these dark, dog days of winter.

I simply could not have done any of this without my ‘coalition of the willing’ helpers. I know that this won’t bring me, or anybody else, any bit closer to Peace on Earth. But I know it brings some joy to some people I know and love. And some to me.

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When I was a kid, my parents took me to the Santa Monica Pier amusement park. All of the rides were awesome, the ones that seem so lame today.

I was on the grandest of all the rides when my baseball cap flew off my head. I imagined then that the hat was long gone, that it rose to the stratosphere or had been snatched by a seagull or sunk into the ocean. Then, seconds later, on a different part of the roller coaster, the hat landed on my head. I grabbed onto it and shrieked and knew that God had touched me.

Mysteriously, my life has continued without stoppage from the moment I was born until that miracle until now. With the exception of deep sleep and when I was put under for my wisdom teeth removal, I have been around for the whole thing. Most of it I cannot recall, but a lot of it I can.

Another memory sticks out. I have a fire hat on, and I’m running around my preschool. I fall and climb and tower over and laugh and roll along the carpet until I find myself standing alone, watching everything unfold as a spectator. I remember pondering whether other people were anything like me—if they too had a mind that thought things—or if I was basically the only human. How lucky would I be to be the only person! I remember thinking.

Memories like these dance in my mind like GIFs. They last only a few seconds until I snap back into the present, they begin again, or another memory comes to mind.

The other night, when, for the first time in a surprisingly long time, it felt like I had completed all of the tasks I needed to, I sat down, crossed my legs, and tried to retrieve as many memories as I could from my childhood, or from my teenage years or adulthood.

The moments came to me like popcorn: at the beginning there were a few, then they all started popping. Food fight, circle time, gym class, the mall, soccer practice, road trip—the list goes on and on.

My trove of memories only grows as the days and years pass. Like the universe, it goes from infinite to even more infinite.

Someone once told me that every time you look back on a memory, the memory changes. You remember something that didn't happen, you forget something else. Given this truth (which, let's face it, is probably true), cynics would say that memories are no better than dreams. The strictest of meditators would say “there is no there there.” But, I would respond, in memory is something that really happened, something I know for certain I actually got the thrill of experiencing. Something that is just as much a part of me as a finger.

I am not after any kind of secret when I look back on past Ezra. I am after this thrill, along with another feeling, one of helpless spontaneity. In my memories, my past self always seems to have known exactly which way was the right one to turn, even though this definitely did not always seem like the case at the time. As I write this I am at peace, and so everything seems mystically preordained. Everything happened for a good reason. There was no wasted time, no reason for despair. The truth for now is that all is (somehow) innocent.

As I go through everyday life, driving or in line at a store, I often find myself smiling or laughing as I think about some silly or beautiful thing that happened once. The memories press on my mind like a masseuse’s knuckles on a sore shoulder. Sometimes, I am moved so much by my recollections that I am brought to tears. I am grateful for what now I cannot have but at one point was mine—as inconceivable as that loss so often seems.

My memories make up a precious place that only I get to inhabit. Here, I can walk slow and stay awhile, for there is no matter, no substance.

Asking questions is pointless. There are no answers. I get to hang around, and that's enough.

Happy New Year! Yesterday we published the last of our reader-submitted personal essays. Today, the final day of the winter holiday, we’ll publish two final essays—one by Laura and one by Ezra. We’ll be back in the news business tomorrow with an in-depth Q&A with Sebastopol’s new mayor Stephen Zollman.

There is a coyote living on our street. That’s not so unusual. I live in Forestville, and you can hear coyotes most nights—sometimes charmingly in the distance and sometimes right up close under my window, their yipping and howling so wild and weird that it gives me goosebumps.

But that’s the thing—coyotes are mostly heard and not seen. I think of them as denizens of the night, and though they’re not strictly nocturnal, they are generally more active after sunset.

Not this guy. (For the purpose of this story I’m going to call the coyote a him, because that’s how I think of him.)

I see our neighborhood coyote almost every day, moseying down the street at noon, skulking around in our front yard, and literally sunbathing most afternoons in the middle of the road a few doors down. (Luckily we live on a small, not-very-busy street.)

The coyote has a sad backstory. My neighbors and I first saw him late in the summer as a small puppy in the company of his mother and sibling. And then, for unknown reasons, his mother disappeared, and there were just the two pups, shy and skittish and seemingly far too young to make it on their own. I called Wildlife Rescue, but they said coyotes in general, even pups, were just too fast to catch.

The next time I saw the pair, his sibling was limping badly. It looked like it had a broken back leg. As soon as they saw me, they ducked into one of the thick stands of blackberry bramble that line our road.

The next time I saw the little coyote—about a week later—he was alone.

It was one of those brutally hot September days—yellow and parched. The blackberries, which a month before had been fat, blue-black and juicy, were now dry and shriveled, and the air seemed to crackle.

And there he was again, walking gingerly in the dry grass. He looked disconsolate—though that might just be me projecting. Do coyotes feel despair?

I wondered if I should put out water for him. I know you’re not supposed to feed wild animals. “A fed bear is a dead bear,” as they say. But water?

I knocked on a neighbor’s door—the house nearest to where I usually saw the coyote— and asked what she thought. She said that her backyard wasn’t fenced and that they had several small ponds. She’d seen him in her backyard and so assumed he could get water there whenever he wanted.

Over the next few weeks, when I saw him, he seemed increasingly ill—mangy, thin and frail—and I figured it wouldn’t be long before he joined his sibling.

Then he disappeared, and I assumed with a sigh that that was that.

But it wasn’t.

After a few weeks, he reappeared in his usual haunts, looking healthier and more energetic.

And this is when I noticed the change in his behavior. One of our housemates reported that he’d seen the coyote when he was gardening in our backyard and that it had come right up to the wire fence—not ten feet from him—and watched him while he worked.

Week by week, the little coyote grew sleeker, less mangy, and less skittish.

He looks less like a puppy now and more like a teenager.

Even though it’s winter, he still loves lying in the road on sunny days, but now when a car comes by, he doesn’t dart off into the brush like he used to. Now he just steps off to the side of the road and waits there. Once he loped right up to my moving car.

When it rains, he disappears completely. I don’t know where he goes. But the moment the sun comes out, he’s back.

One day, I stopped my car, rolled down my window and took several pictures of him. He was standing about 12 feet away in a neighbor’s yard. I looked at him, and he stood his ground and looked right back—not aggressively, but speculatively.

This is not normal coyote behavior.

Talking about this over dinner with our housemates, we’ve decided that the reason for his recovery and his new ease with humans is that someone in the neighborhood is feeding him.

Our housemate, Cosette, a winemaker with a background in the hard sciences, said darkly, “Someone is going to get bit.”

A lot of people walk on our street—mothers with small children and people with dogs, some of the dogs so tiny they look—putting myself in the place of the coyote—like a nice midday snack.

Cosette suggested hazing the coyote—yelling and waving our arms and driving him away whenever we see him—so he learns to be frightened of people.

“That’s the only way it’s going to survive,” she said.

I think she’s right, and while I’m trying to get up the heart to do that, I haven’t managed it yet.

He seems so small and alone—and now he’s stuck in this liminal place between the human and the wild world.

And, of course, day by day, he’s getting bigger, which means he may soon cease being an object of pity and instead become something to fear.

Disney notwithstanding, wild animals aren’t meant to be our friends, and when we try to make them into our friends, it rarely works out. My Aunt Charlene, who owned a cattle ranch in eastern Nevada—the first place I heard coyotes singing—once took in a fawn whose mother had been hit by a car. She fed it and, when it was young, it followed her around the ranch yard as she did her chores. But as it grew and sprouted antlers, it became aggressive—chasing the ranch hands and even my aunt as she carried groceries in from the car—and eventually her husband took out his rifle and shot it.

Maybe the same thing will happen to the coyote on our street or maybe he will just disappear back into the wild, which, this being Forestville, is just a few blocks away.

Until then, we are watching him and he is watching us, and it is unclear at this point, which of us is going to blink first.

The Sebastopol Times has been taking a break from news over the holidays. This is the final essay we’ll be publishing from our first-ever Personal Essay contest.

By Colin Foulke

To qualify as a Red Cross lifeguard in California, you must meet these minimum requirements: be at least 15, swim 300 yards without stopping, tread water for two minutes, and retrieve a 10-pound brick from the bottom of the pool. As a 6’5”, 37-year-old lifelong swimmer, I far exceeded these requirements. And yet, I found myself in a classroom surrounded by pubescent teenagers silently judging me: What went so wrong in your life that you’re here? While I endured and even enjoyed their judgment, the truth differed. It wasn’t what had gone so wrong in my life, but what had gone so right that I became a lifeguard in my late 30s.

Unbeknownst to most, COVID-19 caused a national lifeguard shortage. With pools closed, many lifeguards let their certifications lapse. Our little town of Sebastopol felt that squeeze as the summer of ‘22 approached. Like so many, I had struggled with work-life balance during the pandemic. A few hours a week as a lifeguard at Ives Pool seemed like a way to shift the scales back toward balance. I could carve out time in my work week and step away from career pressures for a few hours to be surrounded by community, chlorine, and sunshine. I joked that I was doing it for my country, but the truth was—I needed this.

What surprised me most about lifeguarding wasn’t the training—it was how rarely I’ve needed to use it. There have been no dramatic rescues, no slow-motion Baywatch moments. Other than the usual bee stings and bandaids, there thankfully has been little need for my formal training. I guard lives every day, but I’ve yet to save one. When people hear I’m a lifeguard, they always ask about rescues. Truthfully, there haven’t been any. Instead, I joke that my specialty is preventative lifeguarding—stopping problems before they happen. Joking aside, it’s an effective way to guard lives. Just ask my kids.

Most days, I’m surrounded by, interacting with, and supporting the vibrant community that swirls through the pool. I give advice about snorkels, how to generate a good catch during backstroke, or even how best to shoot a water polo ball. Questions abound—where’s the lost and found? How much for a punch pass? Does the water really turn red if you pee in it? Summer camps, underwater hockey, aqua aerobics, and the like, all fall under my supervision. I have, and will, remind them all to please walk. WALK!

It took time for me to understand my role as a lifeguard. Yes, my training is important, and I am prepared to respond to an array of emergencies. However, my actual role, which I fulfill most often, is that of community supporter.

If you were at the pool on any given day, you too could be witness to all this. It’s a lovely place full of joy, laughter, and learning, with the occasional miscommunication kerfuffle about circle swimming (for the record, it’s always counterclockwise). But when you’ve been at the pool as long as I have, and you look for it, really look for it, there’s so much more happening. Comedies and tragedies, meet-cutes and myths, legends and tall tales—all unfolding simultaneously right before your eyes.

While swimming is a sport that exposes its user physically, it exposes them emotionally as well. The bravery it takes to step out of the locker room in that new bathing suit, the confidence it takes to join the fast lane for the first time, the fear that’s overcome to touch the bottom of the deep end while your friends are watching. Witnessing someone’s first swim after top surgery was a private triumph made public—a moment of courage, pride, and self-reclamation that radiated with every stroke. Watching a once-graceful butterfly stroke slowed by illness, now propelled by sheer determination rather than ease—a testament to resilience. A child refugee’s first swim since escaping their war-torn country—a profound moment of humanity, revealed in splashes and laughter.

So many challenges are faced, and overcome, just by showing up. Embarrassment in being an adult who never learned to swim, overcoming being fat-shamed as a youth, feeling self-conscious that you’re not as young as you once were. Showing up and putting on the suit is often the hardest part. The traverse from the locker room to the water’s edge is where the battles are fought. It’s the walk of vulnerability, where self-doubt is met with the courage to show up. There is no place to hide in the clear waters, a beautiful brutality to it. The pool holds all these stories in its depths.

The relief that swimmers feel when they get out shows me again and again, the pool is the real hero. With every lap, every flip turn, and every quiet moment of floating, the pool gives something back. A hard swim is an investment in a good night’s sleep. The pool holds the space—a calm, warm rectangle of water where anxiety is reduced, flexibility regained, and frustration dispelled. At 800 times denser than air, the water hugs all, with no judgment, prejudices, or expectations. And while everyone has opinions about the pool’s temperature, not one has ever complained about how it felt once they were enveloped. What was there before the embrace of the water is no longer. All that angst, anxiety, and pent-up frustration about the state of the world, gets washed off. All these feelings, big and small, tender or tough, are left in the pool. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that while I guard the lives, it’s the pool that truly saves them.

Legally, we have to fill out paperwork when there is any incident at the pool, from stubbed toes to heart palpitations. Somewhere there’s a filing cabinet with a folder for these reports. But if we documented every life the pool saved, the cabinet would overflow with stories of courage, resilience, and transformation. My report would be in that stack too—grief and loss, heartaches and heartbreaks, sobriety, divorce, injuries, and birthday parties, all left in those waters. Every time the pool held me, cradled me and supported me as I pulled my emotions through the water, it reminded me of one simple truth: the pool doesn’t just save lives—it transforms them. I know this to be true because the pool transformed mine.

I still lifeguard once a week and swim a fair bit. My kids join me for water polo, and my butterfly has yet to revert to caterpillar. I regularly dive to the depths to clean the filters of all the things that actually end up in the pool (you don’t want to know). I field the questions, give the tips, and help the kiddos get their goggles on the right way. I do these things because I’m in service to the pool and the community it supports.

I’ve thought of those teenagers from my training class over the years and have since realized what went so right in my life: when I became a lifeguard, I was old enough to notice what a teenage version of me would have missed entirely. While I’m always watching the water like I was trained, my gaze often shifts to the little wins, the private victories, and the quiet transformations that could be so easily overlooked.

Sure, it’s a job, and I get paid. But somehow, it’s me who still feels indebted. See you at the pool.

Colin Foulke is a father, an artisan, school board trustee, and one day a week, a lifeguard.

By Dan Gurney

More than 40 years ago—I wasn’t yet 30 years old—and long before anyone called Sebastopol “Peacetown,” I learned that a valve in my heart, the aorta, would someday have to be replaced.

Twenty-three years ago my Dad had had his own aorta trouble when my kids were in high school. I was worried for him and visited him in the hospital right after he had his surgery. I thought about canceling a college tour for my daughter. His doctors told me that he'd be fine. Dad wanted us to go ahead with our tour of Southern California colleges and check in with him on our way back to Sebastopol. So we took our tour. I got a call in L.A. that Dad died in the hospital while trying to recover from his surgery.

I delayed my own aorta surgery for as long as I dared. More than 10 years went by as I got sicker and sicker. My world shrank. One by one, I began to give up my favorite outdoor pleasures: road cycling, long hikes, short hikes, sailing, paddling, walks in the neighborhood. Eventually I got so out of shape that it was a workout just walking from the back door of Copperfield’s to my car in the parking lot behind the library.

Ten years ago, in the late fall of 2014, doctors told me that I had to make a choice: heart surgery or death. It was time, and I knew it. In December, they opened my chest and sewed into my heart an aorta taken from a cow (or a steer, I’m not sure).

Recovery was slow at first. I learned how to play the piano. My teacher turned out to be a 40-year-old pianist working at Stanroy's in Santa Rosa, who had been one of my first kindergarten students from back in the 1980s. I play almost every night before going to bed. I play for fun by ear and end with a lullaby. It’s a pure pleasure for me, an escape from 2024. My wife thinks I’m pretty good, and that’s good enough for me!

As the months went by, I got stronger and fitter than I thought possible. I can hike, even in the Sierras. At 64 years of age, I discovered for the first time in my life what it feels like to go hiking and have my legs get tired before my heart. I can take long bike rides. I sail on sporty little sailboats designed for younger sailors. My wife and I can enjoy our favorite activities: paddling, bicycling, hiking, sailing, and camping. We travel to see our kids and grandkids in Philadelphia, New York, and Austin.

I got to wondering if I might have 15 more years to live. Could I live to 80? To 90? To 103? I began to think I might almost live happily ever after.

Then early this year, my doctors told me that I have advanced prostate cancer. They cannot cure it, but they can treat it and slow it down some. Cancer treatments can have some lousy side effects. I shall refrain from discussing most of them, but let me describe the one that happens to bother me the most right now: chronic and severe hot flashes and chills. I’m frequently either uncomfortably cold and shivering, or uncomfortably hot and sweating. Women who complain about hot flashes now have my tardy and heartfelt sympathy.

Cancer has many downsides, but there are upsides, too. Cancer whets my appetite for being alive. Living fully, living authentically feels more urgent. I am still here. I am hungrier than ever to find meaning in every moment.

When I realized how little time I might have left, I could not imagine wishing I had spent another moment of that precious time online, on social media, or watching videos. So goodbye Netflix, Amazon Prime, and all the rest of it. I never got much into social media.

I go outdoors in my garden, my yard, our neighborhood and in nature. Nature’s wonders delight and amaze me. Things seem bright, colorful, vivid, tasty, aromatic, interesting, beautiful, mysterious.

Cancer motivates me to assess my human relationships and repair and deepen the significant ones, notably with my siblings. Each of us five siblings endured our own unique combination of adverse childhood experiences. I’m grateful I’ve had the chance to work on the repairs. I mend and build relationships with my friends and family using tools like the cellphone as a telephone to call and talk, sending in-the-mail cards and letters (many handwritten in cursive), and visiting people in person. I walk around town on errands. I read real books borrowed from the library.

I’ve told some of my closest friends about my cancer, and that I love them and why. First and foremost, my wife and my best friend forever. We’ve been together 54 years. I am still learning how wonderful she is. I’m sad that I'll likely make her a widow. She reminds me that there’s no guarantee that I get to go first. That’s wise and sobering, right there.

I love our kids and grandkids. They warm my heart. When I see close members of my family, happy tears spill from my eyes. I love my best friend from childhood, and I've told him so.

Having to die someday is something we have in common with every living being, human and otherwise. Remembering our shared mortality helps crack open and heal our broken hearts. When I feel sad, I remind myself that my death is nothing new: my death was assured the day I was born.

Someday, too soon, my life will be over. I have to be fine with that. Mostly I am fine with it. Sometimes not so fine with it. I’m human.

But I am grateful that I have had the chance and the ability to enjoy the natural world, and to tell loved ones: I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!

My body shall remain earthbound, a green burial in Sebastopol’s Pleasant Hill Cemetery, wrapped in a cotton shroud. The underground mycelial network, our wood-wide web, will begin to recycle the molecules and atoms that lived together as my body when the last breath escaped. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorous, calcium, iron, plus a few others will come apart and rearrange themselves to make marvelous, wonderful new living beings, flowers, grasses, trees, and—who knows—maybe even some magic mushrooms! And I will rest in Peacetown...happily ever after.

Dan Gurney retired after teaching kindergarten for 33 years just outside of Sebastopol. He has five grandchildren who amaze, amuse, and delight him.

The Sebastopol Times is taking a break from news over the holidays. We got 24 submissions to our personal essay contest. This is one of several essays we will be publishing between now and New Year’s.

By Evan Clark

When I was a kid, I purchased a discounted castle set from my elementary school friend who was growing out of LEGO and now liked Minecraft. I built the set according to its instructions, and everything was gravy. Then I got bored and swapped the heads, helmets, torsos, legs, and weapons of all the good guys and bad guys. It’s been a while since combinatorics, but given 12 mini-figures (three head varieties, four helmet varieties, five torso varieties, five leg varieties, seven weapon varieties), I could make 2,100 permutations of castle soldier.

Several months later, I was carrying the castle one day to show my parents a particular battle scenario I had cooked up, and my clumsy fingers dropped it on the floor. It naturally shattered into hundreds of component pieces, the 12 Frankensteined figures finally making their escape under cabinets and tables. I was heartbroken. My carefully curated castle had been destroyed! Worse yet, I had thrown away the instructions weeks earlier with the foolish confidence that my fortifications would never need rebuilding.

This particular castle set has 664 pieces. I began rebuilding the castle to the best of my memory, using the pieces I could find from that bin. Eventually, I ended up with a similar castle that had a smaller surface area but with taller, more imposing walls and more defensible crenellations. The 12 mini-figures now had a new arena, one generated from my prepubescent mind into one of the 664 available permutations.

This pattern would repeat for me: I’d get a new set, build it as intended, get bored, screw around, and inevitably break it, either by accident or purposefully to extract a desired part. Then the remainder would be completely disassembled and homogenized with the other pieces in the bin. After that, in order to build something, I would dig deep in the bin to find small pieces or pluck larger plates and bricks off the top. Later, I got a sorting container with 25 drawers and would spend hours developing a viable sorting system that encompassed most bricks and left few outliers (why have a miscellaneous drawer when you’ve already got the bin?). This improved my creative output tremendously.

It’s been a few years since I built LEGO. I think the last set I bought was this dinosaur skeleton set in 2020, notable for its low price per piece. (910 pieces for $60 is extraordinary value.) I kept the dinosaurs mostly intact since I moved out of my childhood home, but they were integrated into a hulking behemoth of a COVID creation (see below) where I challenged myself to use every single piece in the bin. I failed, by the way, in case you might've been wondering.

What’s the moral here? Maybe it’s that change is inevitable. (Is it that obvious I’ve recently read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower?) Maybe it’s that if you’ve got a bin of pieces that you don’t particularly like, it might suit you to build them in a certain permutation rather than another. Maybe it’s that if there’s a piece of yourself or your ambient surroundings that you don’t like, you really should swap it out, try moving it somewhere else, or exchange it for someone else’s that suits you better. Maybe all it takes is for one piece to move.

Evan Clark is a Georgist, an environmentalist, and a YIMBY technophile.

By Bill Phillips

I really don’t think many people know where Pine Bluff is or what it means. For me it is a place of occasional warm and pleasant memories, particularly the lazy, lush early summer days, lying on the velvety grass covering the football field of the Golden Lions. Decades later, I remember the vivid azure and puffy white clouds drifting very, very slowly across the sky.

That playing field was soothing peaceful and enticing as the innocence of our youth transfixed by the natural beauty of things. Although four or five 9- and 10-year-olds don’t articulate such thoughts, we experienced them, and those feelings and enjoyment remain part of what Pine Bluff means to me today.

Having said that, there’s bitter with the sweet. The small and insular community of black Americans affiliated with the Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal (AM&N) College there were too often enveloped in fear and uncertainty.

In those days, Pine Bluff was an agricultural community of about 40,000 white and black souls. It was a segregated community, and I never remember seeing us doing anything together. Everything was segregated: restaurants, water fountains, bathrooms, movie theaters, and schools were segregated. Little black boys and girls did not associate or play with little white boys and girls. White folks had the country club, we had AM&N, a small historically black college, serving an isolated black community

There was a foul-smelling paper mill in town. Sometimes the smell of the mill made you gag. Black folks were used to it, as the smell blew over AM&N. When the smell was particularly disgusting, we looked at one another and said, “The Mill”— a phrase sheltering a host of physical and psychological insults. Nothing deterred us from what we wanted to do. There was order in our lives, and the stink was part of it.

There was a segregated swimming pool at Johnson’s Park that was great fun. I almost drowned there one day horsing around with my friends. I was proud I could dive to the bottom of the the deep end and hold my breath longer than everybody else. This day, my air ran out bolting towards the surface and the tangle of too many kids above me, blocked my way to the air. I experienced the shock of real fear and isolation on that day. Perhaps this was my first inkling of what I understood much later in life as “impermanence”—the shock of knowing I could die.

Then out of the warbled sunlight overhead, a sudden arm grabbed me by the shoulder and dragged me to the surface. The arm belonged to my friend’s older brother, Buddy. I cried then. When I finally stopped, somehow, I knew that everything was different.

Of course, in 1959 all the black kids played ball on the campus of AM&N. We all knew Jackie Robinson had broken the color line in professional baseball but knew too through our fathers’ conversations that there were great black players in the game before Robinson. We’d heard of Larry Dobey or Bumpsey Green, and the legendary black players like Moses Fleetwood Walker and Bud Fowler from the 1880s were still discussed— players so good white folks banned them from the game.

There was plenty of joy, but behind it, behind the ambitions, excitements, and mysteries of our normal childhoods, there was always a faint stench of fear in that segregated community. It was usually unclear or pieced together from snatches of conversation we accidentally overheard in the hushed, rapid whispers of our parents and their friends. New words like “segregation” or “the whites” bubbled up from the ordinary chatter kids ignored. We knew about white people. You had to know, but “the whites” was something different, something fearful that made the grownups nervous. That made us nervous. There were other ‘nervous’ words like “integration,” and “The Governor.” We sensed the fear most clearly when our parents took us to the local Five and Dime Kresge’s store in Pine Bluff.

Whenever we had errands in town, Momma was adamant about our using the bathroom before going into town. We could beg all we wanted, but she would not stop for an ice cream or hot dog or even a glass of water. There was something about her alertness that agitated my own fear so, when she was like that, we just minded. When we entered the store, Momma’s grip tightened, and my brother and I checked each other, unsure of what that meant. I tried to wiggle a little, but she didn’t loosen her grip. “I don’t want you to get lost,” she said.

What was she talkin’ about? How could we get lost in a store? But you didn’t ever want to get sideways with Momma. We had no inkling about her fear and heightened alertness, but we knew it had something to do with sharing physical space with white folks.

Even in those situations, we were still kids, and our thoughts invariably migrated back to the innocence and safety of the clover-carpeted campus, or the solid double I had smacked the day before.

There were a few black businesses in “our” part of Pine Bluff where she relaxed, particularly the barber shop where many of the black folks and their children went for haircuts and, frankly, to be in a safe space and be ourselves. We could be loud and laugh and play checkers — aggressive and friendly games with a lot of hollerin’! There was a black woman’s “beauty parlor,” where my mom and other black women got their hair cut and trimmed and did something called a “perm,” which I still don’t understand. It was well into the 21st century before I learned that my dad, in addition to being a professor and department chairman at the black college, was an officer of the local NAACP Chapter and engaged with colleagues and black civil rights litigator Wiley Austin Branton, in challenging the City of Pine Bluff’s refusal to implement the new desegregation laws created after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education overruled the old “separate but equal” justification for segregation in 1954.

It required six decades before I grasped my dad’s objective understanding of the dangers of living in a racist city as a large black man. As a 6’2”, 180-pound former basketball player at Langston College and a WW II Pacific Theater Navy veteran with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, he was an affront to white notions of “his place.” He was escorting his two male children in the town where he was aggressively challenging the racism of the white community — its lynchings, extra-judicial murders of black men, women and children — commonplace at that time. The archives of Tuskegee Institute recorded over 200 lynchings of black people in Arkansas between 1882 and 1968. Innocence...a fleeting sense indeed!

In spite of all that, it’s also true that the seed of a real American patriotism was planted in my heart in that segregated town.

As a second grader at J.C. Corbin Elementary School*, I remember the immaculately dressed Black children standing rigidly at attention as Ms. Dotson signaled us to begin reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Color me impressionable, but I still remember each word and how I felt reciting and believing those words. We recited from memory with energy and gusto! (A part of that gusto could be related to the common knowledge that Ms. Dotson enforced her discipline with an 18-inch wooden ruler.) We placed our hands over our hearts and said the words clearly, not comprehending everything they meant, but buoyed by some barely recognized feeling of aspiration. This jewel shone deeply buried in the cauldron of hostility, racism and barely concealed hatred bubbling over just beyond the protective shelter of AM&N College.

So when I describe the gentle warm summer breeze to you and the wafting sweetness of recently cut grass and when I recall the softness of the field of clover, the contradiction never has to be explained to a black person. There was fear in the town, certainly, but due to the courage of our parents and elders, due to the support of that small insular black community surrounding AM&N College, there was joy, fun, and for children at least, there was an irrepressible hopefulness — nourished by our parents’ determination to protect our innocence from the dark knowledge of white people they were forced to negotiate daily to survive.

Today, I’m deeply grateful to our black parents who managed to keep us innocent for as long as they did. What a wonder they could protect that sense of security in my memories—at a cost I can only imagine. My gratitude to them remains boundless!

Bill Phillips, a lifelong student of Ki Aikido, enjoys living in Sebastopol with his wife Linda, two adult sons and dog.

* The school was named after Joseph Carter Corbin, abolitionist, educator, and the founder of AM&N, which is now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

The Sebastopol Times is taking a break from news over the holidays. We got 24 submissions to our personal essay contest. This is one of several essays we are publishing between now and New Year’s.

By Debbie Matteri

In my early twenties, I rented a funky, one-bedroom cottage behind a family home on Hearn Avenue in Santa Rosa. It was the 1970s, and the owner of the property had turned the garage into a bedroom, covering the cement floor with a multi-colored shag carpet. There was only one small window in the bedroom, and fake wood paneling on the walls made the room even darker.

The kitchen was tiny but doable. The bathroom had a shower with floor-to-ceiling, black-and-white 4x4 tiles with just enough space to turn around. I learned quickly not to drop the soap because I’d have to get out of the shower to bend over and pick it up.

The cottage was clean and functional, and I made it my home by hanging ruffled, muslin, tie-back curtains over every window. I set my grandmother’s Singer sewing machine beneath the small bedroom window and placed my ceramic jersey cow cookie jar in the nook of the built-in kitchen hutch.

But what really drew me to the cottage was the outdoor space. It was large enough for me to plant my very first garden. I grew up on a dairy ranch on Petaluma Hill Road, and my cottage was about five miles away from that beautiful 325-acre ranch. As I began to get the soil ready for planting, I asked my father for some cow manure. To my surprise, he drove his John Deer tractor with the plow attached and the front loader scoop filled with manure all the way over to my cottage on Hearn Avenue. He drove into the backyard, dumped the manure in a heap, spread it around with the scoop, and tilled the soil. The garden area grew bigger than the cottage itself.

I wonder what the other drivers thought that day, seeing a farmer wearing a blue sweatshirt, calf-high rubber boots, and a knit stocking cap, driving a tractor down the center of a two-lane road, chewing on a piece of alfalfa and slowing down traffic. Lord knows if they were behind him, they would have gotten more than just a whiff of that load of cow manure raised up in the scoop. To my family, that odor was the smell of money, because selling cows’ milk to Safeway fed us and sustained our family financially for as long as I can remember.

I had a loving and caring dad, and he had multiple ways of showing his love. Delivering the manure and tilling the soil for his daughter’s first garden was just one of the ways he showed his love. He was a man who would drive his tractor anywhere to help someone out.

The last time I saw Dad driving down the middle of the road was in 2006. I was headed over to visit him, and I saw his four-wheeler coming down the center of Petaluma Hill Road. Memory loss was playing tricks on his mind, and I imagine he was back in his younger years, seeing all those Holstein cows that needed to be rounded up for the second milking of the day. That had to be what he was thinking because Petaluma Hill Road was no longer a quiet country road, nor were there any cows left to milk. Some of those 325 acres had been sold to the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, and later became part of Taylor Mountain Regional Park.

That afternoon was the first time I remember lying to my father. I pulled into the circular driveway of the family home and patiently waited for him to park his four-wheeler in the field. I got out of the car to greet him as if nothing unusual had happened. He headed inside to take a nap, another routine he had done for years—nap and eat lunch before the next milking.

I waited for him to fall asleep, and then I walked out into that field and removed the keys from the ignition. When he later asked what had happened to the keys, I felt my heart sink.

“Dad, I don’t know, they must have fallen out of your pocket in the field or gotten lost somewhere.”

Maybe that was my way of loving him back.

Debbie Matteri loves spending time in nature, deepening her friendships and having her 20-pound cat, Soma, fall asleep on her lap.