Sebastopol City Council honors Jim Corbett
At the city council meeting on Tuesday, Mayor Jill McLewis read a proclamation honoring Jim Corbett for his efforts to establish Sebastopol as Peacetown USA. “I hereby proclaim Sept. 15, 2026, to be Jim Corbett/Mr. Music Day in the City of Sebastopol, in honor of Mr. Corbett’s many, many years of bringing music to the children and community of Sebastopol and for establishing our city as the home of Peacetown USA.”
Supporters of Peacetown applauded, grateful to Jim and for the recognition he was receiving. Thanking the mayor and city council, Jim said that “it was incredible to be honored by your hometown for doing the stuff I absolutely love to do.” He added, “On Wednesday night in the summer, I’m the guy that has the most fun because I see the joy that it’s brought to our town.”
Corbett was also recognized for his many music programs in schools over the years and the Love Choir, but this honor recognized him as the founder of Peacetown.
“The Peacetown Summer Concert Series just started on a whim. We started with four concerts at the park. It was so wonderful doing it in Ives Park, and it filled up the front little part. I said, "I'm not gonna be happy till the whole place is full." If you were there this year at all, you saw we actually had probably 2,000 people in the park.”
Peacetown has become a uniquely Sebastopol summer event, a series of outdoor concerts that has brought new life and energy to Ives Park, which really is the town’s Central Park.
Corbett said, at Peacetown, “people show up with their good vibe, and that love vibe is absolutely contagious, so everybody's feeling really good. It really is a love fest. It just shows how if we concentrate on the positive stuff that's happening and be kind, be happy, be grateful — life can be really sweet. This is a beautiful place to be.”
Corbett concluded by saying to the Council and everyone in the audience: “You are all caretakers of Peacetown now.” Congratulations, Jim.
A cartoonist at The Legacy
Twenty-one-year-old Eva Trujillo worked for two years as a volunteer at The Legacy, Sebastopol’s second-hand crafts store that benefits the Senior Center, before they hired her to do their social media. “Then it turned into me running the newsletter and doing the volunteer portraits,” she said.
Trujillo has been cartooning for several years.
“It started out when I was a little kid, but in high school I started working on a comic”— she’s being modest; it’s really more like a graphic novel — “and so I’ve been working on that for a few years, and then I’ve done some zines and comic strip stuff, also for the newsletter. I took “Intro to Cartooning” with Brett Grunig at Santa Rosa Junior College, and he made us do a bunch of comic strip stuff, and it was very fun.”
We look forward to seeing more of her work in our pages in the future.
Gala Fundraiser for SebArts
The Sebastopol Center for the Arts held its third North Star Gala and had a “sold-out” crowd of enthusiastic supporters of the arts. Executive Director Serafina Palendech was on hand, traveling back from Amsterdam, where she is pursuing a master’s program in Museum Studies, Arts & Heritage. Palendech thanked Creative Director Michelle Feileacan for stepping into the role of day-to-day management while she’s been away.
SebArts presented three awards during the program.
The Guiding Light Award went to Sally Baker, a long-serving and dedicated SebArts board president, artist and retired art teacher.
The Shooting Star Award went to Kim Winter, artist and Volunteer of the Year. Kim worked so many hours as a volunteer in the gallery that she was given her own key. She was presented with a key sculpture in honor of her volunteer work.
The North Star Award went to Spencer Sherman, Principle of Abacus Wealth Partners, Lead Sponsor of the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival. Sherman said that Sebastopol was “a big small town” because it had a strong cultural organization like SebArts.
Ruby Baylis, a young artist, also spoke about how she took classes at SebARTS and she created a piece that sold in the gallery.
Correction and Clarification
In yesterday’s article, we said that the idea for the Sebastopol Commons began with Councilmember Stephen Zollman. Turns out the idea had been kicking around in the community for quite a while. “It arose from years of work done by Fred Engbarth (SEB's Library Commissioner), Mary Lou Schmidt (Gravenstein Coalition), Councilmember Zollman and me,” said former Sebastopol City Councilmember Sarah Gurney. “Fred was particularly diligent in researching the concept and its impact on communities, once implemented. Through Stephen, we applied to Council for the wider-ranging Committee and called it ‘Building The Commons.’”
Maker Faire’s 20th Anniversary
While it’s not an event that takes place in Sebastopol, Maker Faire’s roots are in Sebastopol. Twenty years ago, I (Dale) and my team, who worked at O’Reilly, conceived of and planned this family-friendly tech festival to celebrate all the things people make and encourage everyone to become a maker.
The first event was down in San Mateo in 2006. Twenty years later, Maker Faire still brings makers together, but the venue is the historic naval shipyard at Mare Island in Vallejo on September 25-27. It’s a fantastic place along the waterfront, where the Napa River flows into the Bay with several historic ships docked there.
Maker Faire is for anybody who is curious. It offers a wide range of interactive tech, art installations, playful and fun performances and plenty of ever-smarter robots. There are lots of hands-on activities and workshops. What sets it apart is its creative spirit and the generosity of the community that comes together to share their work.
On Friday, students from the Academy of Innovative Arts in Forestville will be coming along with thousands of other Bay Area students to participate on Field Trip Friday.
The magic happens up close as you interact with makers and their projects.
Loren Crotty of Sebastopol will be in our Dark Room with the 35-foot animatronic, inflatable cuttlefish and Flash the Tortoise.
You can buy tickets and preview the schedule, sign up for workshops and meet the makers on the Maker Faire website.
