RoundUp: Best of Show
Vivien Hillgrove wins at doc fest, Bodega Highway road work, spring veggies starts, and local artist Jerrold Ballaine at SRJC
Ol’ Blue Eyes
Rachel Adair Dawson shares her land off Mill Station Road with a peacock that goes by the name of Frank Sinatra VI, and he is known for putting on quite a show.
Vivien’s Wild Ride wins SDFF’s ‘Best Feature Film'
The “Best Feature Film” award at the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival went to “Vivien’s Wild Ride,” written, directed and produced by Vivien Hillgrove. This deeply moving autobiographical story follows Vivien, a film and sound editor, as she starts losing her eyesight due to macular degeneration and begins looking back on her life growing up and working in San Francisco. Vivien and and her partner, Karen, bought several acres in Sonoma County and created Mom’s Head Farm. She writes about the film:
Vivien's Wild Ride explores three aspects of my life journey: working on commercial features alongside other pioneering women sound editors during the heyday of San Francisco Bay Area filmmaking; the experience of being an unwed mother and being forced to relinquish my baby for adoption; and losing my sight after decades of working as an editor and how this forced me to reinvent myself as a disabled artist.
The Earle Baum Center of the Blind off Occidental Road plays a role in the film.
In the Q&A after Friday’s screening of her film, she said a question that she thinks most people want to know is how do you edit a film when you are going blind. Her answer was: “Very slowly. The film was seven years in the making.” She also said that she worked with great people to produce the film including Eric M. Ivey, who was a co-editor. The film is expertly crafted as well as visually fresh and playful, even depicting how her eyesight was changing.
You have one more chance to see Vivien’s Wild Ride, as part of the Jury Awards screening today April 12 at 12:30pm at the Rialto. This is the kind of personal film that deserves a large, appreciative audience.
Learn more at https://vivienswildride.com/
The Best Short Film award went to “Leaving the Point” by Michael Fearon and Nadia Boctor. The film is about the conflict between environmentalists who closed down the ranches from operating on Point Reyes National Seashore and the people who lived and worked on ranches there. Environmentalists and lawmakers made a closed-door deal that gave the families sixteen months to move out. Fearon said before Friday’s screening that the last day for people to move out was just two days ago.
Roadside construction
Caltrans crews have been busy on Bodega Highway near the Sebastopol Memorial Lawn, restricting traffic to one-way. They are putting in a bike path and sidewalk as part of the Caltrans-funded ‘Bodega Avenue Bike Lanes and Rehabilitation’ project.
In one section, they cut into the cemetery’s hillside to widen the road, and construct a retaining wall. Workers were pouring concrete last week the day before the rains came. Sebastopol Memorial Lawn owner Steve Lang donated the long, 2-foot-wide strip of the cemetery property that runs along Bodega Avenue to the street widening.
Badger Ranch’s Veggie Startup
Sarah Taube opened the Badger Ranch farm stand this week, selling veggie starts now through the end of May. Located on Hwy 116 at the intersection of Bloomfield Road, the farm stand will be open 11 am to 5 pm, Thursday through Sunday.
Sarah says that this is the fifth or sixth year that she has been offering veggie starts for sale at the location of Grow Gardens nursery, which was run by her mom, Carol Mitchel.
Sarah said she starts her plants from seed in February so that they are big enough by April. You can find a complete list of their starts on their Instagram page, linked below. For a home gardener, even one who grows their own plants from seed, being able to buy one or two unusual plants allows you to experiment with new varieties.
She has an extensive variety of peppers, and most of them are really hot. One exception is a very sweet heirloom pepper from the Ukraine, the Lesya Purple Pepper.
The recommended planting date for this area to avoid frost is early May 1. Sarah expects that most people can plant now, given the warmer weather and various microclimates. “Most areas in Sebastopol should be fine,” she said.
Sebastopol artist Jerrold Ballaine at SRJC Library
The Frank P. Doyle Library at Santa Rosa Junior College is currently showing “Jerrold Ballaine: Land and Sea,” an exhibition of paintings by longtime Sebastopol resident Jerrold “Jerry” Ballaine. The exhibition will be on display from March 23 to Dec. 11, 2026, on the second floor of the Doyle Library.
There will be a public reception for this exhibit on Friday, April 17, 2026, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. in the Doyle Library. The event offers a unique opportunity to meet Ballaine, whose career spans decades and reflects one of the most diverse and sustained artistic practices in Northern California.
As curator Scott Lipanovich noted, “Jerry taught at Berkeley for more than 30 years. During those decades, he shared studio space with, among other art world luminaries, Joan Brown and Manuel Neri. He had a close relationship with his mentor, Richard Diebenkorn. Jerry was at the center of a groundbreaking era in all the visual arts.”
The Big Picture
It’s been a week of dramatic skies. Sebastopol Times reader Sally Anderson caught this beautiful moment while she was out walking. “I was doing my usual walk from home to swim at Ives. What a sublime sight!”
Thank you Dale for another amazing and interesting edition! So great to know what is going on…plant starts to film festival to highway construction. So varied!