I loved eating my way through October. With new restaurants popping up throughout the county, it’s been a fun month for Sebastopol sushi, Santa Rosa’s newest pizza, and Indian cuisine, plus a surprisingly great burger in Sonoma.
Click through the above gallery for five food-related news Biteclub is particularly excited about this month. Want Sonoma restaurant news straight in your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter.
Threats to life. Debilitating fear. Feelings of utter chaos and complete helplessness.
These were some of the emotions North Bay residents experienced during last October’s firestorm. These very same emotions also comprise the American Psychiatric Association’s definition for PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
To help fire survivors work through the complex set of emotions that invariably follow large scale disasters, a group of Sonoma County mental health professionals have banded together to form the Wildfire Mental Health Collaborative (WMHC).
The group aims to provide mental health services to survivors while at the same time studying what kinds of treatments work best in addressing the lasting effects of trauma. Ultimately, according to Debbie Mason, CEO of the Healthcare Foundation of Northern Sonoma County, data from this initiative could revolutionize the way communities and mental health providers respond to the lingering effects of natural disasters.
“If people don’t take care of their mental health, nothing else really matters,” she says. “Part of being ‘strong’ at a time like this is being strong enough to ask for help. The whole point of this initiative is to come together in a loving embrace to support each other in our healing.”
Mason’s organization is spearheading the initiative, along with participants from the National Association for Mental Illness Sonoma County, the Redwood Psychological Association, the Redwood Empire chapter of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists and independent psychologists and researchers. To date, the $1.3-million initiative comprises a variety of programs, each designed to address a different—and important—aspect of mental health.
The newest of these programs, Sonoma Rises, is an English-language app for fire survivors which debuted earlier this month. The app helps connect survivors with services across the region, and provides customized, evidence-informed tools to help cope with stress, heal from loss, prioritize self-care, connect with others, manage anger, and track moods using validated assessments over time. The app includes a special section geared for teens; a Spanish-language version is expected soon.
Dr. Adrienne Heinz, a clinical and research psychologist at the VA National Center for PTSD helped develop the app.
“We felt like an app was the perfect medium because people are on their phones all the time anyway,” Dr. Heinz explains. “Someone might have a stigma about going to see a therapist, but the same person wouldn’t think twice about interacting with doctors and other experts through an app.”
Another technology-oriented effort is the bilingual website mysonomastrong.com. The site provides resources for self-care and for finding free professional therapy in Sonoma County. It also offers tools for users to track moods, and it provides interactive suggestions for relaxing in moments of heightened stress.
In the eight weeks before launch (and with no promotion), the site attracted nearly 1,700 visitors. After a regional ad campaign began on the one-year anniversary of the fires, those numbers have increased exponentially.
Other WMHC initiatives have focused on different aspects of wellness.
In the area of mental health, WMHC affiliates have worked with the FEMA-supported California HOPE Program to set up two groups of fire survivors for ongoing (and free) weekly group counseling.
WMHC team members have also run workshops and webinars to train more than 300 mental health professionals in Skills for Psychological Recovery (SPR), a modular intervention therapy specifically designed to help survivors gain skills to manage distress and cope with post-disaster adversity.
Dr. Josef Ruzek, co-director of the Center for M Squared Health at Palo Alto University and an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, was part of the team that helped create the SPR protocols. He notes that these trainings are based on an understanding that disaster survivors will experience a broad range of reactions over differing periods of time.
“We want [therapists] to put patients in the best position to get through all of this,” says Dr. Ruzek.
Once providers complete the training, the WMHC encourages them to offer fire victim clients up to five therapy sessions for free. Dr. Christine Naber, a neuropsychologist in the Neurology department at Kaiser Santa Rosa and president of the Redwood Psychological Association, adds that a critical part of the SPR training is preparing therapists to offer clients “booster” sessions that correlate to milestone anniversaries or other potential triggers.
“Generally short-term treatment is effective, but when there’s trauma involved, people might need a longer-term approach,” says Dr. Naber. “That’s what makes an initiative like this so important.”
The WMHC initiative also addresses physical wellness through yoga. The program currently sponsors a dozen free yoga classes across Sonoma County, and has trained more than 60 yoga instructors in a special type of yoga designed to help people experiencing PTSD.
David Leal, a certified yoga instructor, lost his Coffey Park home in the Tubbs Fire. After the fire, he received “trauma-informed” yoga training through the WMHC initiative and describes this version of yoga as particularly meditative.
Leal says that by slowing everything down, participants are forced to relax their bodies and minds. There’s deep breathing. There’s self-massage. There’s lots of time to think.
“Anything that’s going to calm the breath cycle so that the body’s parasympathetic nervous system can kick back in and relax and release the tension,” says Leal. “People don’t realize how important that is.”
The WMHC group’s goal is to train a total of 500 mental health professionals in SPR; there are a number of workshops left to teach. Yoga training will continue through the winter as well; WMHC officials would like to train 100 yoga instructors by early next year.
Long term, WMHC leadership hopes their efforts will help to establish new data on how people grapple with mental health in the wake of natural disasters. Central to this effort will be reports that patients administer themselves—they’ll answer brief questionnaires about their well-being before and after each session.
Researchers from Stanford and other institutions will then review the responses for possible future application of the data in the field. Eventually, this data could be used to respond to natural disasters in other cities all over the world.
Mason, from the Healthcare Foundation, says she and her colleagues will judge the success of the initiative by how many people it helps. At the same time, she adds, the potential for an even larger impact is undeniable.
“Between the connectivity, peer-to-peer teaching, and networking we’ve seen with this effort, the possibilities for what we can learn and how we can change our responses to natural disasters are pretty incredible,” she says. “We did this to take care of our little community. In the process, we just might end up changing the national conversation about the best way to approach post-disaster mental health.”
The WMHC initiative is aimed for anyone who feels that they need help and coping skills since the fires. Sonoma County residents who are looking for wildfire mental health support services, such as individual or group counseling, trauma-informed yoga, or other support services, may visit mysonomastrong.com; or call or text NAMI (confidentially) at 1-866-960-6264.
To support these services, please contact the Healthcare Foundation at (707) 473-0583 or info@healthcarefoundation.net.
After three years of renovations, and thanks to nearly $1 million raised by private donors, the House of Happy Walls museum reopens in November at Jack London State Historic Park. With 22 modernized and interactive exhibits, the museum will bring to life the many inspiring adventures of famed author Jack London and his wife Charmian, who were both trailblazers, humanitarians, innovators and so much more.
An extensive renovation was long overdue, as most of the museum’s exhibits hadn’t been updated since the 1960s.
“They lacked that state-of-the art quality, the new technology that appeals to younger audiences and essentially, it had a 1960s, old-fashioned look and feel,” said Tjiska Van Wyk, Executive Director of Jack London State Historic Park. “The exhibits were not organized to tell the story of the Londons in a way that inspired people or helped them understand that there was a lot more to Jack London than his books.”
The first floor of House of Happy Walls 2.0 is dedicated to the life and times of Jack London — one exhibit, for instance, focuses on his documentary photography of the Korean War, poverty in East London, the 1906 earthquake and more — while the second floor is all about Charmian.
“We believe her story is as remarkable as his,” said Van Wyk. “At the turn of the century, she was really breaking the mold. She did not buy into societal expectations of women at that time. She was the epitome of the progressive women.”
As an example, the “Charmian the Trailblazer” exhibit delves into her progressive push for women to ride their horse astride, rather than sidesaddle. Deemed appropriate for ladies, Charmian believed riding sidesaddle was also incredibly uncomfortable and unproductive. At the center of the exhibit is a moving saddle, which visitors can ride astride and imagine they’re Charmian.
Jack London’s words about his Sonoma County Beauty Ranch come alive in this centennial tribute to the American writer. (Video by Joshua Dylan Mellars)
The Grand Reopening Weekend, scheduled for November 10-11, is jam-packed with free, family-friendly activities such as storytelling, kite flying, face painting, horse-drawn carriage rides, a community picnic, fencing demonstration and arts-and-crafts.
Admission to House of Happy Walls will always be complimentary with the $10 park entrance fee, but for an extra cost on opening weekend, guests can sign up for a horseback ride through the heart of wine country, a tour of Beauty Ranch with a tasting of wines made from grapes exclusively grown within the park, and a special tour of the Wolf House, London’s dream mansion that burned down in 1913, before the couple was able to move in.
“We want visitors to come to this museum, learn about their story and be inspired by it to live their life to the fullest. Jack London was a true rags to riches story. He was born in near poverty, had little education, yet he broke away from that and became the highest paid author of his time. He was the first person to start an animal rights campaign; he was probably the first organic farmer in California,” said Van Wyk.
“We want people to see all of that and go, ‘I can do that. I’m going to pursue my dream. I’m going to make something happen that I didn’t think I could do.'”
Though Sonoma’s spirits industry started small — very small — more than a decade ago, the openings of several gin, vodka, and whiskey tasting rooms from Petaluma to Healdsburg are claiming a larger share of attention for distillers in Wine Country.
These craft distilleries are making their mark on the industry with foraged botanicals, organic and non-GMO ingredients, and a sense of terroir that rivals any local wine.
We’ve sussed out some of our favorites, all of which have tasting rooms and are owned by local families — whom you’re likely to find right behind the bar.
Click through the above gallery for details, and call ahead for opening hours and to book appointments and tours.
Nick Gast and Andie Buffkin didn’t expect they’d get just one use out of their 1959 Vespa Ape espresso cart before it was consumed by fire. Nor could they have known that by being slow to store their other prized possession — a 1964 Vespa gelato cart — after an early-October event, they saved it from certain destruction.
The Ape (AH-pay, meaning “bee” in Italian), namesake of their fledgling catering company Cafe Apae (they added the ‘a’ to avoid confusion with the simian), which serves espresso and gelato at private events from vintage Italian scooters, was stored in a barn at Glen Ellen’s Gordenker Ranch, near the epicenter of last year’s devastating Nuns fire. The other Vespa should’ve been there too, had Buffkin returned it instead of attending a concert in San Francisco.
“At 12:30 a.m. we got a call that Glen Ellen was on fire, and that if we wanted anything we should go to the shop and take it out,” says Buffkin, 27. But she and Gast, 33, never made it that far. The couple, who live in Sonoma town (Gast is a native), soon received a second call telling them to stay away. It was too dangerous.
Within a few days, they knew for sure: the ultra-rare Ape, custom-built by Gast and a friend, had been badly burned.
The couple had been itching to book it at weddings, parties, corporate gatherings, and other private events across the Bay Area since launching the business in May, but had found the gelato cart in greater demand all summer.
The changing of the seasons held promise; then came the fire. Fortunately, Gast and Buffkin had in their back pocket a beat-up 1957 Lambretta Lambro, another rare Italian mini-truck. Gast soon restored it and pressed it into service this spring as the Ape’s replacement. Now business is rolling again, and both carts are busier. Someday, Gast says, a twice-restored 1959 Ape may even join the fleet.
The 8th annual Napa Valley Film Festival kicks off November 7 for five days of film, food and of course, wine. More than 100 independent films will be screened with a host of tastings, chef demos, winemaker dinners and fabulous parties sprinkled in between. With so much to see and do, we’ve narrowed down the top five reasons you’ll want to attend this year, plus five must-see films. Click through the above gallery for details, including photos from previous years’ festivals.
It’s not every day you find yourself nose to nose with a live camel. If you do, here are a couple of facts: They are incredibly intimidating creatures with enormous feet and a fairly dry sense of humor. Also a fact: They have soft fur and they enjoy people taking selfies with them.
How do I know? There were two of them at the “Indiana Jordan and the Lost City of Cab” Halloween event on Saturday, Oct. 20 at Jordan Winery in Healdsburg.
Now in its tenth year, winery owner John Jordan’s annual Halloween parties have always been one of the best harvest Bacchanalia for the wine trade. They’re legendary. And did we mention the live camels? Apparently, that’s not the craziest thing to ever walk into one of these events.
Since 2008, the private Alexander Valley fete has hosted hundreds of costumed revelers from around the country for an over-the-top evening that marks the end(ish) of harvest. John Jordan also loves a good costume party. This year’s theme took its inspiration from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the original Indiana Jones movie, set among the pyramids of Egypt. Previous themes have included Star Wars, glampires, dark fairytales and pirates. It’s a highly coveted ticket.
Last year’s Halloween bash was canceled due to the October fires, so the 2018 gathering took on special significance for Jordan.
“Last year, life as we knew it for thousands of people had changed, and we didn’t feel like celebrating. This year, Halloween at Jordan is back,” said Jordan in a video introduction for the event. Jordan’s Foundation is contributing funds to Rebuilding Our Community (ROC) Sonoma, a nonprofit organization working with fire survivors who have a long road to recovery.
Instead of creating a regular invitation for Indiana Jordan and the Lost City of Cab event, Jordan spent three months making a 12-minute parody film of Raiders of the Lost Ark for guests. The professionally-produced short was developed, shot and edited by the in-house marketing team and includes mummies, skeletons, dancing Pharaohs, Jordan defying flying corks of doom and a version of the unforgettable plane scene. Jordan’s version includes golf carts, bad German accents, a vintage motorcycle, a very large gun, some very large bottles of wine and a very large man with a bad skull cap. The video ends with Jordan flying his yellow Piper J-3 Cub airplane over the Sonoma vineyards. Yes, that happened.
Welcomed by the camels, along with Jordan and his staff, this year’s invitees included 375 mummies, pharaohs, Cleopatras, archeological adventurers, belly dancers, camel riders, black cats, at least one gold cobra, The Bangles and some people in very confusing costumes who may or may not have understood the theme of the party, according to organizers.
Guests are mostly wine industry and hospitality professionals hailing from around the country who are fans of the Alexander Valley vineyard’s top-shelf cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and Champagne (a joint project with Champagne AR Lenoble in France).
Festivities throughout the night included a professionally-overseen archery range, a dance floor in the barrel room, mountains of food (including raw oysters and caviar), a fair number of scantily-clothed people painted gold and Jordan himself appearing in several different costumes. Restraint isn’t really a thing at a John Jordan soiree.
“I love this event,” said Jordan late in the evening, as sleepy princesses, warriors and the undead made their way toward shuttles. Unless they were invited to the after party. But that’s a whole different story.
You can contribute to Jordan’s $25,000 ROC fund, simply by watching this video before November 1, 2018. Every video view means a $1 donation to Rebuilding Our Community Sonoma County, said Jordan spokesperson Lisa Mattson.
Note: No camels were mistreated during the evening and had very patient professional handlers. Okay, the one-humped camels had to deal with some very irritating people who wanted to ride them, but that was quickly shut down. In truth, the camels seemed pretty bored with the whole thing.
Also, I don’t go to a ton of parties (this was my first year at Jordan) but the chance to wear a belly dancing outfit (thanks, Janina) and a ton of gold glitter was hard to say no to.
On the anniversary of the firestorm, Sonoma Magazine shines a light on those who fought through our region’s darkest hours. During the month of October, we’ll introduce you to some of our neighbors who sought to make a positive difference.
Out of the ashes, heroes emerged: firefighters, paramedics and police officers; friends and strangers. Chefs cooked and distributed food. Neighbors took us into their homes and shared clothes, housewares and compassion. Caped crusaders entertained children in shelters. Mental health professionals gave counseling. Artists sought to make sense of the catastrophe, console and inspire.
Piece by piece, kindness by kindness, shingle by shingle, we came together to help our community on that long road back to normalcy. This is a part of the story we should remember as vividly as the fires themselves—the sense of hope borne out of acts of compassion.
Peter Lang, 77, Santa Rosa, Owner Safari West
“I didn’t realize there was a fire until one of our employees came to our home, woke us up, and got us moving. The sky was aglow. There was no question we had to get out of there. As I drove out of our driveway, I passed through a wall of flames. By the time I got down to Safari West, our staff had woken up our overnight guests and had them corralled in a safe area. Once I saw they were OK, I tended to the animals. I drove around to find out where things were most imperiled. It happened to be down by our service entrance—the cheetah and hyena enclosures. The tall grass inside each was burning. I went in and put out the fires. As soon as I put out the fire in one area, the animals would run over to that area, then I’d go put out the fire somewhere else. They kept hotfooting around until I got the fires out. Later, as the fire was coming down a hillside, a small group of animals called nyala were trapped and forced into a corner. The only way for me to save them was to climb an 8-foot-tall fence and scare them out. The fence was getting warm when I climbed it. That was a challenge. We lost our entire family compound in the fire—four homes and two barns. We had just completed it. I realized it was burning as I was hosing down the hyena area; I looked up to the ridge and saw nothing but smoke and flames. I was sad but knew all the stuff up there could be replaced. The critters couldn’t. I’m proud to say that we didn’t lose any animals.”
Pat Kerrigan, 62, Kenwood, News Director KSRO
“When the fires came I was evacuated from Kenwood and went straight to the radio station. It never occurred to me to do anything different; I could see this was going to be a big story. I got there a few minutes before midnight and went on the air 15 minutes after that. I was on the air for the next 12 or 14 hours. At first, we had nothing but the Nixle alerts. Then my producer got in touch with people of importance from the fire department and CalFire. He kept handing me scribbled pieces of paper that told me who was going to be on the air next. That was the extent of the communication that took place over the first five or six hours. As day broke, it was an evolution of shock and bewilderment. We were getting a sense of what was happening, and it was just unbelievable to all of us. In the days that followed, I just assumed my home was gone. The fire was literally across the street when I left. I wasn’t going to ask anybody I was talking to if they could stop by my house. I was on the air Tuesday morning with a fireman in Kenwood and at the end of the interview, he said, ‘By the way, Pat, I’m standing in front of your house and you’re OK.’ That was emotional for a moment. Then I had to get back to work. I didn’t have a sense of how important our broadcasts were to the community until about three weeks later, when I participated in a day of remembrance at Santa Rosa Junior College. People were so thankful, so appreciative. It was nice to hear that. But I was just doing my job.”
Preston Addison, 48, Cloverdale, Co-Owner, Karma Dog Construction
“We live in a pretty remote part of Cloverdale, near Pocket Canyon. Once we knew there were fires in the area, if there was a reasonable way I could keep fires from burning homes I was going to do it. My initial task was to go door-to-door on Highland Ranch Road to make sure everyone was out. We have neighbors who live far enough off the road that they didn’t hear sirens. One of our neighbors can’t walk. In some cases, my son and I went into people’s homes and woke them up from their beds. Thankfully we managed to get to everyone. Next, I joined a group to help with containment. A few of our neighbors own Alden Ranch, and that’s right where the fire was. A bunch of us used some bulldozers to cut a fire line around the ranch, all the way down to the river. We have a property owner here who has a personal fire engine and we got that working, too. With shovels and bulldozers and our private fire engine, we went up on the hill, put out hotspots, and held the fire line. We made a second stand on the east side of the ranch. A group of about 15 of us managed to keep it under control until reinforcements from CalFire came in Wednesday afternoon. We slept in shifts. And when we weren’t fighting the fire, my brother and I were helping clear trees and making fire lines around other properties in case the fire jumped. The last thing we did was set up a generator at a well to keep water flowing to the ranch. That ended up being important. A few days later we went back to the well and everything around it had burned.”
Myriah Volk, 43, Sebastopol, Founder and Executive Director Shoes 4 Kidz
“I started my nonprofit to get one good and new pair of athletic shoes for every child who needs them back in 2015. Almost all the kids I was helping in the beginning were lower-income kids. After the fires, after so many people had lost everything, I knew there had to be a way we could help. I put a call out on Facebook for a cargo van and borrowed a van from a friend. Then I created a mobile shoe store. I called it the Shoe Mobile. I put in racks and loaded the van with everything we had in stock at the time. I set it up across from Piner High School at an event they were having for fire victims. I set out shoes on tables in front of the van so people could see we were handing out new items. It worked just like a regular shoe store. People would come over, see a shoe they liked, and ask me if we had it in their size. I had players from the Piner High School football team in the van checking inventory. More than 200 pairs went out that day alone. After that I stopped at shelters and distributed more shoes there. If we didn’t have the sizes people needed, I took down their information, found the shoes and tracked them down. Recently, after the one-year anniversary, I went back to those same people again with more. It has meant everything to me to be able to help people in this time of crisis. It is confirmation for me that what I am doing is the right thing.”
Shoes 4 Kidz is still collecting donations; to get involved, visit the organization’s website or send an email.
Allyson Weekes, 39, Sonoma, Co-Owner Bohemian Highway Travel Company
“My husband is from New Zealand and we always knew we wanted to experience living there. Our Sonoma house went on the market two days before the fires. The house was close to Glen Ellen, therefore really close to the fire lines. We were evacuated for about 10 days, but our house was spared. We decided to stick to our plan and we left two months after the fires. We sold everything to a fire victim—all our furniture and the house. The only things we kept were our cars, some clothes, and boxes of family photos. We were gone a total of six months. Although we had an amazing time in New Zealand we kept close tabs on what was happening here and felt like we left our community at a pivotal time. It felt like we were cheating on our community. We couldn’t negate what these fires did to solidify that Sonoma was really our place. The way the community came together to help one another was something that left a lasting impression on us. We came back in May and rented a house near the plaza in Sonoma. Since then we have put all our energy into this tour company to focus on small businesses around the region that were impacted. In a sense, it is our way of participating and helping with the rebuild efforts. Today people call upon us for a local’s perspective on where to go and what to see and we are happy to show them the parts of Sonoma we know and love. We have relationships with wineries, makers, artisans, growers and producers. We are grateful we can support tourism and inspire others to see what makes this area wonderful. We’re happy to be home.”
Don’t put all your effort into dressing the turkey. Prep your own look for whatever type of Thanksgiving you’re having, whether it’s a family daytime drama (I mean, dinner) or a formal Friendsgiving. It just takes a few pieces to create feast-friendly style that’s even easier than pie.
It’s not the time to deck the halls quite yet, but if you want to adorn them in vintage ornaments, you’d better start early. Most local thrift and vintage stores carry holiday decor this time of year, but often sell out as soon as it’s stocked. Upcoming, are a few special sales in Sonoma. Get out that calendar page, and mark a few dates because your vintage shopping adventures await.
