Sunday Roundup: More peace, more love and a little bit of snark
A Peacetown idyll, a pirate in the council chambers, Overheard Moms, and farewell to Sara Peyton
At the Peacetown revival
Last Wednesday night was everything Peacetown was meant to be — a kind of midsummer revival meeting with great music.
Before the main act came on stage, Jim Corbett, the spiritual leader of Peacetown, sang the Peacetown anthem. Then he encouraged the crowd to quiet down and take several slow, deep breaths and feel the warm air of the evening. Arms were raised in the crowd, and some of them swayed side to side. “Your heart is what makes Peacetown Peacetown,” he said as a benediction.
Jim played a tune on a "High Spirit" Native American flute. “As I always do, I’m just opening up to Spirit and following guidance for the notes to play,” he said, adding “I felt a deep connection, so it came out sweet.”
Then hats — small, plastic buckets actually — were passed by volunteers to collect donations for the service, I mean, performance.
Soon after, Mitch Polzak, a striking performer dressed in a crisp, black outfit with red bow tie, took the stage, and said what an honor it was to be back at Peacetown after performing here last year. He was the itinerant preacher come to town for this one night only, come to do his preaching with a big electric guitar and play from the gospel of Rockabilly, Honky Tonk, Surf, Bluegrass, Western Swing, and Cajun music. The man can play.
Mitch Pulzak and The Royal Deuces filled the night with a big, infectious sound, playing some of the best songs you ever heard. Right away, people crowded the stage, and they began dancing, all of them completely forgetting everything else in their lives but this moment. One might even suppose some healing took place.
The big tent was full, one might say of Ives Park, and all present wanted more of this uplifting music on such a wonderful summer night.
Afterwards, Jim told me: “The whole night was magical. Somehow the combination of the stately redwoods, great music, and beer and wine, set the table for a Divine Connection. The Love Vibe is totally contagious.”
A Humble Pirate of the Municipal Seas
The most entertaining moment at the June 2 Sebastopol City Council meeting was when SSU Math Professor and frequent commenter Kyle Falbo, dressed as a pirate, handed out pirate hats to all the council members, then proceeded to congratulate them for what he considers the city’s pirate-like behavior with its water and sewer funds. Here’s his whole comment, which was delivered in full pirate brogue:
Ahoy, councilmembers! I come before you not as a mere ratepayer, but as a humble pirate of the municipal seas, here to congratulate city management on some truly legendary plunder. For more than 20 years, the cost allocation plan lay untouched like a dusty treasure map, and yet somehow the Enterprise Funds kept surrendering their gold to the General Fund. Arrghhh, that takes vision, that takes nerve, that takes a crew willing to look at water and sewer rate payers and say ‘There be treasure below deck!’
Now some landlubbers may point to the Grand Jury report with its talk of overallocations, deferred maintenance, and millions moved from water to sewer, but I say, why trouble ourselves with the Grand Jury? Pirates recognize only maritime law, and under maritime law, whoever grabs the treasure first gets to call it cost recovery. Let us not forget the prior feats of piracy: ratepayers hit with massive increases, attorney fees sailing through the fog, engineering charges drifting like ghost ships, a sewer loan charged to the mass, and no proper time-tracking to tell which sailor was actually working on water or sewer or polishing the captain’s boots.
And now, before fully hearing from the finance subcommittee, the council already charted a course in May. Bold move. Why wait for the lookout when the ship is already aimed at the reef? So I urge ye, either hoist the black flag proudly and admit the Enterprise Funds are being used as stolen treasure, or change course, track the time, direct-bill the work, reconcile the past, answer the grand jury, and stop asking ratepayers to keep filling the chest while the city pretends it’s not piracy.
Whether you agreed with Kyle’s perspective or not, it was hard not to smile at this performance. (Councilmembers Carter and Maurer seemed quietly amused; the others sat stony-faced.)You can watch the whole performance here at the 1:23:00 time mark.
Overheard Moms takes on Sebastopol
Tech strategist, comedian, and mom Megan Neal started her Instagram account “Overheard Moms” in the summer of 2025. Since then, she’s been skewering Mom culture in mostly wealthy enclaves up and down California. This week, she finally got around to Sebastopol.
Her Instagram and Facebook accounts consist of skits, starring herself as moms from various cities, and real-world California mom quotes, reported by sources around the state. According to a profile of Neal in the San Francisco Standard, “The latter includes an Atherton mom wondering if she can get by with just two nannies, or a Los Gatos mom picking up her boys from a playdate with a Niners coach.”
I gotta admit, she nailed the demographics of Sebastopol in her “Sebastopol Mommy & Me Group” skit: there’s the hippy-groovy mom (“We spend the weekend melting crayons and coloring on dried leaves”); the farm mom with her children Paisley and Stetson; the gay/non-binary mom (“I identify as the non-birthing parent”); the tech mom who moved here during the pandemic but finds the schools here less academically competitive than those in the Bay Area.
We asked her how she honed in so precisely on Sebastopol’s mom vibe:
“I mostly connect with locals to really understand the town,” said Neal, who lived in the Bay Area for 10 years before moving to Orange County. “What makes it uniquely Sebastopol? What are the different kinds of moms you’ll find in the area, small businesses to highlight, community events, what are people saying in the local Facebook group, what’s the best thing on the menu at that one restaurant…It has been so much fun to learn about Sebastopol, and I have several pages worth of notes still, so I’m sure an Overheard Sebastopol Moms series is coming soon.”
Find her on Instagram and Facebook.
Farewell to writer, mother and friend Sara Peyton
Local writer Sara Peyton spoke with the voice of her adopted Northern California as well as to the joys and challenges of her generation. A gifted journalist and essayist whose work appeared throughout Sonoma County media, she was a vibrant member of the North Bay literary community, a book reviewer and spirited conversationalist who could strum the uku…
Looking for more love?
If you’re looking for more love in Sebastopol, you could do worse than attend the weekly sing-in by the Love Choir (and impresario Jim Corbett) at the downtown Gazebo every Monday this summer from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. I had driven by this happy affair several times on my way home from work, and this week, I decided to stop and take some photos—and naturally, I got pulled into the action, and I got to choose a song for the group to sing. (Corbett offered me the mike, but I demurred.) Predicting correctly that this was a group of Joan Baez aficionados, I suggested, “Where have all the flowers gone?” And that’s what we sang in the middle of town as commuters whirled by and the sun disappeared into a fog bank in the west. Just the close of another day in Sebastopol.
Correction
Our story on the Forestville Water District had the wrong figure for the number of ratepayers in the district. Our writer Lucy Hardcastle wrote that there were 500 ratepayers. I thought that sounded like too few, so I looked it up on the District’s website and, per the available information, updated that to 3,000. Turns out Lucy was closer to the truth. Forestville Water District Board member Steve Griffith called in a correction. He said there were roughly 1,000 ratepayers in the Forestville Water District.
I always appreciate Kyle’s comments. This one was entertaining, and he still made some good points!
Kyle is inspired! We await the Seb Council's response.