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THE MAYOR WON’T RUN, APPLICATION PERIOD IS EXTENDED ONLY ONE INCUMBENT, THREE OPEN CITY COUNCIL SEATS By Christian Kallen
The city council’s three open seats now presents a wider opportunity for at least two new council members come December, as Mayor Ozzy Jimenez has opted not to seek election to the seat to which he was appointed two years ago.
PHOENIX Out of ashes comes a better idea, say filmmakers.
OUT Mayor Ozzy Jimenez Jimenez had been reluctant to discuss his plans with the press or public, though it was rumored that members of the council knew he was not running. He did not mention the topic during his mayor’s comments at the Aug. 1 City Council meeting, though it was widely expected he would do so. He announced instead that he and his longtime partner were engaged to be wed. The news drew a warm reception from the council and public; when Jimenez was appointed he was only the second openly gay council member and first person of color to serve on the council since 1992. But people were wondering when he’d make clear his intentions, in the election at least. Finally the announcement came on his Facebook page on Sunday, Aug. 7. “I’m choosing not to seek re election and I’m looking forward to completing my full term ➝ Mayor, 3
Fires of Change ‘EMBERS OF AWAKENING’ HOPES TO SPARK ACTION ON FIRE RESILIENCY By Christian Kallen
Images of the Tubbs Fire devastation that swept across Sonoma County just under five years ago, in October 2017, invariably trigger reminders of just how sudden and complete the disaster was. That’s understandably how Embers of Awakening begins, but that is not where it ends: the subtitle is From Firestorms to Climate Healing, and the award-winning new documentary journeys steadily toward outlining the changes that people need make in the way they live—and the possibility that the coming generations are ready to make them. “I was made aware of
this movie by one of our Healdsburg Rotary Club members who saw it at the Alexander Valley Film Festival,” said Norman Fujita, Healdsburg Rotary’s environmental director. “She thought this film would be important to show in our community.” International and district Rotary heads—both women—have emphasized environmental challenges for each club. “The challenge for August is ‘Drought and Fire Prevention.’ Our club has taken on this challenge by planning to show the documentary film Embers of Awakening,” Fujita said. Fujita contacted Phyllis Rosenfield of Petaluma, the director and producer of the 75-minute film which just finished production this year. Rosenfield, a climate activist and former Healdsburg elementary school teacher, serves as executive director of Listening For A Change,
a Santa Rosa nonprofit focused on education, oral history and social communication. Embers of Awakening, her first full film, received a big boost early in its production when Peter Coyote agreed to lend his voice to the all-important preview—which is used to encourage sponsors— and then to the finished film itself. That alone gives it a gravitas worthy of its subject, and the cinematography by Jeff den Broeder and editing by Shirley Thompson, who worked remotely from Hawaii, contribute to its weight. “We’d like to make a film that motivates people to understand what happens to real people, a real community, and what can be done” in the wake of fire disaster, Rosenfield told Tommie Dell Smith of Cloverdale, who co-produced the Oscar-winning documentary Broken Rainbow in 1984. When Smith came on as
Embers of Awakening’s co-producer, she gave the project the momentum it needed, and the 114-minute film was completed in April of this year. Aside from news footage, found mostly in the first part of the movie, the film is built around a series of interviews with fire survivors, fire ecology specialists, social activists and farmworkers. They all contribute to the wide net cast in telling the story of fire’s impact, and what can be done in recovery. “As a homeowner you can do everything right, and you still may lose your home,” says Jeff Kane, a Humboldt State associate professor of fire ecology. Such after-the-fact obvious steps as clearing understory through prescribed burns, or landscape thinning with goat herds, as well as the defensiblespace solution, all fall by the wayside when you consider that houses are just fuel in a firestorm,
one of the witnesses says. That crucial zone is called the “wildlandurban interface” or WUI, where human development meets undeveloped grasslands or forests. Its frail stability is clearly demonstrated by news footage of the 1964 Hanly Fire, which burned across the Mayacamas into Santa Rosa in almost the exact same footprint as the 2017 Tubbs Fire. One difference: the Tubbs Fire moved across the same landscape eight times faster than the Hanly, said Lisa Micheli of the Pepperwood Preserve. The Preserve was 95 percent burned in 2017. Inexplicably, a couple of decades later residential development thrived in the burn path of the 1964 fire, so in one sad sense the sacrifice of Fountaingrove 57 years later seems preordained. Yet when we drive
REGIONAL PIZZA GROUP MOMBO’S BRINGS EAST COAST PIZZA TO HEALDSBURG
Pizzando, La Pizza, Vera, Campo Fino and Round Table, to say nothing of the in-store pizza oven at Big John’s—fine purveyors all. But there’s something different about Mombo’s. It’s a venerable Sonoma County brand, with longstanding locations on Mendocino Ave near Santa Rosa Junior College and in Sebastopol. Its history is colorful, too, stretching at least back to the Santa Cruz beachside community of Capitola, the surfside town where it all began, with the Janis Joplin-influenced name Pizza My Heart. That’s the Mombo’s legend, as personified by founder Fred Poulos. His peripatetic life seems as if lived in a wider pursuit of perfection of the culinary
POPULAR SRJC EATERY OPENS THIRD LOCATION IN WINE COUNTRY By Christian Kallen
ANYWAY YOU SLICE IT: Whole pies, and fractions thereof.
It would be unfair to several Healdsburg restaurants to say “At last, there’s pizza!” just because Mombo’s finally opened up in the Vineyard Plaza, where several previous pizzerias rose and fell over the years. After all, we have
➝ Fires of Change, 2
➝ Pizza, 6