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Book Events Alumni Presenters |
For those of you who wish to learn more about some of our former Book Event presenters, here is a list of the writers, illustrators and other literary illuminaries who have appeared at a Gallery Bookshop Book Event in 2005. Links to the Book Events guest speakers' websites will open in a separate window, so you may easily return to the Gallery Bookshop website. |
Kate Coleman
The Secret Wars of Judi Bari:
A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods, and the End of Earth First!Sunday, January 23, 2005, at 3 pm
In 1990, a car bomb in Oakland almost killed radical Earth First! leader Judy Bari, and injured her passenger Darryl Cherney. The FBI accused the pair of blowing themselves up by accident while transporting an explosive device as part of a violent campaign of "ecotage."
In The Secret Wars of Judi Bari investigative reporter Kate Coleman traces Bari's rise from college activist to popular leader of the fight to save the redwoods. Drawing on exclusive interviews with her friends, comrades and critics, Kate Coleman describes Bari's struggle for selfhood and struggle with people in her movement, and ultimately against the FBI and the state of California.
A legendary figure among Northern California activists, Judi Bari was a veteran of the Vietnam protests of the 1960's who moved to militant feminism and environmentalism after the war ended. By the mid-1980s she was involved in the eco-organization Earth First! and found herself leading the fight against the timber companies on the Northern California coast. Judi Bari's wars continued until her death from cancer five years after the explosion that changed her life forever.
In creating a dramatic portrait of a unique American life, Coleman takes the reader inside the sometimes bizarre world of the Earth First! movement and counter-culture of the North Coast. The result is an irresistible combination of biography and social history that no doubt will itself become a topic of widespread discussion in our area.
Kate Coleman is a veteran investigative reporter who has covered the Black Panther Party, the counter-culture, and California politics for the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, Salon, Mother Jones, and other publications.
Orders/Information: The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods, and the End of Earth First!
Encounter Books, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 1893554740
Charles Furey
Going Back: A Navy Airman in the Pacific WarSunday, February 13, 2005, at 3 pm
Like millions of other young Americans in the 1930s, Fort Bragg resident and local author Charles Furey grew up surrounded by the images and memories of the First World War, not knowing he was part of a generation soon to fight another great war.
Pearl Harbor changed everything. Charles enlisted in the Navy and for the next three years fought in a war that transformed him, the nation, and the world. His vividly rendered and highly readable memoir follows him from stateside training, service as crewman on a patrol bomber, recovery from a fiery plane crash, and finally a poignant homecoming.
Going Back includes harrowing accounts of air actions over the South Pacific, vividly portrayed characters, and a stunning evocation of this period of great national change. Readers will meet Lieutenant Morrison, whose small gesture helped forge an intense camaraderie among his bomber crew, and Murphy, the marine whose humor helped dull the pain of Furey's wounds.
From Chapter One: "It is late Monday afternoon. One hundred strong, we are arrayed in rough-fashioned, civilian attention awaiting our final physical examination. Balls-naked, toes planted on the painted lines that stretch across the smooth wood floor, I stand midway in the front line and sweat...."
Orders/Information: Going Back: A Navy Airman in the Pacific War
Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press paperback $16.95. ISBN 0803269137
Cynthia Wall
The Courage To Trust:
A Guide to Building Deep & Lasting RelationshipsSunday, March 6, 2005, at 3 pm
Cynthia Wall writes that secure, trusting relationships form the foundation for many of our more positive and rewarding experiences. But when individuals lose their capacity to trust others because of some painful past experience, their ability to function in our interconnected, social world is severely limited. Her new book proposes a series of strategies anyone can use to help learn how, when, and whom to trust.
With a clearer understanding of how and why their own personal trust pattern functions, readers will use the book's cognitive behavioral exercises to help rewrite negative messages of shame, betrayal, and hurt that often underlie unhealthy patterns of trust. The new skills the book teaches will help readers have faith in their instincts, develop healthy relationships, and let go of negative experiences that have made trusting frightening and difficult.
Cynthia Wall, LCSW, is a psychotherapist in private practice in Fort Bragg on the Mendocino Coast. She has presented seminars and workshops on personal growth for more than twenty years. She specializes in bereavement counseling and the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Each day, she works with couples and individuals to help them resolve issues of intimacy and trust and realize their dreams. She also is active in the community in hospice, the local Red Cross, and more.
Writer of the book's foreword is Sue Patton Theole, a licensed psychotherapist and the author of The Courage to Be Yourself, The Woman's Book of Courage, and The Courage to Be a Stepmother.
Orders/Information: The Courage To Trust: A Guide to Building Deep & Lasting Relationships
New Harbinger Publications, $14.95, ISBN 1572243805
Jay Feldman
When the Mississippi Ran Backwards:
Empire, Intrigue, Murder & the New Madrid EarthquakesSunday, April 3, 2005, at 3 pm
Former Mendocino resident writer Jay Feldman discussed his new book When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes.
"Jay Feldman has produced a fascinating work of social history, meticulously researched, elegantly written, and awesomely original in its conception. He finds the convulsions of the natural world reverberating on slavery, war, and Indian resistance, and tells the story with verve and style." Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States".
Although it deals with events that happened almost two hundred years ago, When the Missisippi Ran Backwards is replete with issues and themes that continue to divide and trouble our nation: expansion, conquest, violence, corruption, greed, race relations, and environmental degradation. The new phenomenon of the United States being polarized over political issues is actually not so new. From the start there have been difficult issues that have threatened to divide us.
Jay Feldman's work has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times, and Gourmet. He is also has written for television (the highly acclaimed series "Brooklyn Bridge"), film, and the stage.
On December 15, 1811, two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews murdered a slave in cold blood and put his body parts into a roaring fire. The evidence would have been destroyed but for a rare act of God -- or, as some believed, of the Indian chief Tecumseh.
That same day, the Mississippi River's first steamboat, piloted by Nicholas Roosevelt, powered itself toward New Orleans on its maiden voyage. The sky grew hazy and red, and jolts of electricity flashed in the air.
Tecumseh had warned reluctant warrior-tribes that he would stamp his feet and bring down their houses. Sure enough, between December 16, 1811, and late April 1812, a catastrophic series of earthquakes shook the Mississippi River Valley. Of the more than 2,000 tremors that rumbled across the land during this time, three would have measured nearly or greater than 8.0 on the not-yet-devised Richter Scale.
Centered in Missouri, the New Madrid earthquakes were felt as far away as Canada, New York, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. A million and a half square miles were affected as the earth's surface remained in a state of constant motion for nearly four months. Towns were destroyed, an eighteen-mile-long by five-mile-wide lake was created, and even the Mississippi River temporarily ran backwards.
The quakes uncovered Jefferson's nephews' cruelty and changed the course of the War of 1812 as well as the future of the new republic. Jay Feldman expertly weaves together the story of the slave murder, the steamboat, Tecumseh, and the war, and brings a forgotten period back to vivid life.
Tecumseh's widely believed prophecy, seemingly fulfilled, hastened an unprecedented alliance among southern and northern tribes, who joined the British in a disastrous fight against the U.S. government. By the end of the war, the continental United States was secure against Britain, France, and Spain; the Indians had lost many lives and much land; and Jefferson's nephews were exposed as murderers. The steamboat, which survived the earthquake, was sunk.
Jay Feldman paints a vivid picture of how these powerful earthquakes made an impact on every aspect of frontier life, and why similar catastrophic quakes are guaranteed to recur.
Visit Jay's website at http://www.jfeldman.com/
Orders/Information: When the Mississippi Ran Backward: Empire, Intrigue, Murder & the New Madrid Earthquakes
Simon & Schuster/Free Press, hardcover. $27.00. ISBN 0743242785
Four Poets
Barbara Elovic, Victoria Hallerman, Cathleen Micheaels, Susan SindallSunday, May 22, 2005, at 3 pm
Heliotrope (< l. & ger.) 1. a name given to plants of which the flowers turn so as to follow the sun. 2. a green variety of quartz with spots or veins of red jasper. 3. a new journal, a perennial bed of eclectic, exciting poems. Heliotrope editors and contributors Barbara Elovic, Victoria Hallerman, Cathleen Micheaels, and Susan Sindall read from their current works.
Heliotrope sponsored the nationwide tour of these four poets, funded by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.
BIOGRAPHIES:
Barbara Elovic:
Ms. Elovic has published poems in many journals including Poetry, MSS, Threepenny Review, and Exquisite Corpse. Her poems have also appeared in several anthologies, including Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry Since 1975 (Scribner's) and Lights in Many Windows (Milkweed, 1997). A chapbook, Time Out, was published in 1996 . Recent poems appear in the new book To Genesis from 5 Spice Press, a book of poems that are retellings of some of the better- and lesser-known stories from the first book of the Old Testament.
Victoria Hallerman:
Ms. Hallerman's The Aerialist has won the Bright Hill Poetry Award and will be published by Bright Hill Press in Summer, 2005. She was the 2004 winner of the Red Hen Press L.A. Review Prize. Her work has been published in Poetry, The Nation, The Indiana Review, Global City Review, Pivot, and Runes, among others. She has published three chapbooks with Firm Ground Press, and her honors include: Discovery/The Nation, Pushcart Prize, and First Runner Up, Sarabande Kathryn Morton Prize, 2004. She is currently on self-imposed sabbatical from her career as a literacy staff-developer in public school education.
Cathleen Micheaels:
Ms. Micheaels has been involved in arts education and education reform for over 20 years, a career that has taken her from California to New York City and back, working with public institutions and non-profit organizations to support the arts as an essential part of schools and communities. Ms. Micheaels was a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop where she also apprenticed in letterpress printing, papermaking and bookbinding at The Windhover Press. She has had poems published in Heliotrope, Swamp Root, Southern Poetry Review, the Iowa Journal of Literary Studies and the chapbook, Before the Frost, published by Plum Island Press. Ms. Micheaels is the co-founder of The Teachers' Workshop which offers resources and strategies in the arts to support teaching and learning across the whole school community. She lives in Elk and San Francisco
Susan Sindall:
Ms Sindall's poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Thirteenth Moon, and Salamander, among others. She has taught poetry for Teachers and Writers Collaborative and Young Audiences, and serves as Staff Liaison for Friends in the House at Poets House in New York City. A chapbook, Graces, was published in 1997.
George Lakoff
Don't think of an Elephant
Moral Politics
Metaphors We Live BySunday, May 29, 2005, at 1 pm
Author, linguist and activist George Lakoff held an informal book signing, providing a rare opportunity to greet this distinguished writer in person for some one-on-one discussion.
Orders/Information:Don't Think of An Elephant
Chelsea Green. Paperback. ISBN 1931498717 Price: $10.00.
Moral Politics, 2nd ed.
University of Chicago Press. Paperback. ISBN 0226468011 Price: $14.00.
Metaphors We Live By
University of Chicago Press. Paperback. ISBN 0226468011 Price: $14.00.
Pam Houston
Sight Hound
Cowboys Are My WeaknessSunday, June 5, 2005, at 3 pm
With wit and dead-on candor, Pam Houston in Sight Hound unfolds a story that illuminates the intangible covenant between loved ones. Here, dogs and humans are simply equal creatures, looking to connect and holding on for dear life when they do.
Sight Hound is the story of a woman, Rae, and her dog, Dante, a wolfhound who teaches "his human" that love is stronger than fear (the dog has always known this). Dante is the catalyst for change in other characters as well, and they step forward with their narratives: Rae's house-tender; her therapist; two veterinarians; and an anxiety-ridden actor, Howard, who turns out to be as stalwart as Dante himself.
As the "seer" who hunts by sight rather than smell, Dante has some things to add, as does Rose, another dog who lives at Rae's heels, and Stanley the cat. Among and above these myriad voices, Rae voices her own challenges.
From Library Journal: "'It's funny how love is both harder, and easier, without language,'" says Dante, one of the narrators in this new book from Houston (Cowboys Are My Weakness). Dante, who quotes Buddha and Lao-tzu, has been fighting a losing battle with cancer, and now he wants to teach Rae, his owner, how to hope, love, and live in a world without him. Dante is an Irish wolfhound and one of the wisest creatures ever to grace the pages of a novel."
Orders/Information:
Sight Hound
WW Norton hardcover $23.95. ISBN 0393058174
Cowboys Are My Weakness
WW Norton paperback $13.95. ISBN 0393326357
Daniel Imhoff
Paper or Plastic:
Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged WorldSunday, June 19, 2005, at 3 pm
The deceptively simple supermarket choice echoed in the title symbolizes the dilemma of a society on a collision course with the planet's life-support systems. Do we clearcut forests, process pulp, and bleach it with chlorine to make paper bags? Or do we make a pact with demon hydrocarbon, refining ancient sunlight into handy plastics? About half the total volume of America's municipal solid waste is packaging -- at least 300 pounds per person each year -- and the "upstream" costs in energy and resources used to make packaging are even more alarming. In this fascinating look at the world of packaging, writer Daniel Imhoff and photographer/designer Roberto Carra give consumers, product designers, and policymakers the information we need to take steps toward a more sustainable future. They delve into the histories and life cycles of packaging materials and look at the countless ways that packaged goods shape our culture. Using case studies, they explore the positive trends that are changing packaging, including producer responsibility and "take-back" laws being enacted in Europe; the eco-design movement; plant-based plastics; labeling to disclose the ecological and social impacts of products; and producing and consuming locally and in bulk versus the wasteful global exchange of single-serving containers. Carra's remarkable color photographs illustrate both the important functions of packaging and its many unintended consequences around the globe.
Despite recent advances, the packaging problem keeps growing, Imhoff warns. Real solutions must incorporate new (or rediscovered) ways of producing, distributing, packaging, consuming, reusing, and reprocessing products and materials. As consumers, there's much we can do, and Paper or Plastic offers a checklist for consumer action, along with resources for information on products, programs, and policy options. It's one book that is truly worth the recycled paper it's printed on.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Daniel Imhoff is Executive Director of Watershed Media, a nonprofit communications agency located in Northern California. He and photographer/designer Roberto Carra have collaborated on four previous books, including Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World and Farming with the Wild: Enchancing Biodiversity on Farms and Ranchers. Dan is a past board member of Mendocino County Public Broadcasting (KZYX&Z) and active in many environmental issues.
Orders/Information:
Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World
Sierra Club Books (dist. by UCAL Press). $16.95. ISBN 1-57805-117-7
Building with Vision: Optimizing and Finding Alternatives to Wood
with introduction by Sim Van der Ryn. $22.00 ISBN 0-9709500-0-4
Farming with the Wild: Enchancing Biodiversity on Farms and Ranchers
Sierra Club Books, 2003
Christy Campbell
The Botanist & the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the WorldSunday, June 26, 2005, at 3 pm
Those who drink wine, those who make it, and readers who like a good story all gathered to enjoy meeting British journalist Christy Campbell at the Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino on Sunday, June 26 at 3 pm.
Campbell is the author of The Botanist & the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World, a scientific detective story whose villain eluded scientists and almost destroyed the future of the world's wine. This is a gripping account of a 19th century plague. It's a tale complete with a stealthy yet hideous alien invader and a stubbornly ignorant public.
From these elements Campbell spins "a vinous tale to make the blood run cold... an unlikely, thoroughly enjoyable cliffhanger" (Kirkus Reviews).
In 1864, France's wine industry was in mid-bloom and on the verge of facing a modern crisis: an ecological disaster brought on by global trade. Samples of American grapevines carried Phylloxera vastatrix, a tiny aphid to which they were resistant. In France, the aphid devastated the country's vineyards, millions of acres. Campbell's tale identifies the very beginning of the disaster, when vines in a single vineyard in the south of France began losing leaves in mid-summer; the rapidly spreading loss of vines and livelihoods; the search for the cause, full of mistakes and dead ends; the search for the cure, equally flub-filled and driven by superstition; and finally the transatlantic solution.
Colorful quotes and cliffhanger situations enliven the text. California wine lovers will enjoy the chapter on our own encounter with this deadly bug.
Among the enthusiastic reviews for The Botanist & the Vintner is this comment from Booklist: "Connoisseurs of good writing and good wine will love this book."
Orders/Information:
The Botanist & the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World
Algonquin. Hardcover. $24.95. ISBN 156512460x
Blair Tindall
Mozart in the Jungle
Sex, Drugs, and Classical MusicSunday, July 17, 2005, at 3 pm
Scandal in the Orchestra PitFrom her debut recital at Carnegie Recital Hall to the Broadway pits of "Les Miserables" and "Miss Saigon," Blair Tindall has played with some of the biggest names in classical music for twenty-five years. Now in Mozart in the Jungle, Tindall exposes the scandalous rock and roll lifestyles of the musicians, conductors, and administrators who inhabit the insular world of classical music.
Tindall's memoir takes readers around the globe, from performances in Vienna's Staatsoper, Rio's Teatro Colon and a remote Brazilian rainforest, then on to New York City, where she and her musician colleagues live in the squalor of a decrepit West Side tenement.
A metaphor for the classical music business: The building has fallen from glory, its elaborate stone carving chipped, windows patched with cardboard, and its elegant dÈcor plastered over by a greedy landlord and her predatory handyman. Outsiders have never looked farther than the ornate facade -- until now.
Inside, music transforms a schoolteacher into a beautiful diva, and sustains a renowned pianist who endures two heart transplants to perform with the stars who pay him a pittance. An American goddess of the arts struggles to fulfill a dream, her ominous future mirrored by an older musician whose fantasies drain away in her lonely apartment upstairs. A stunning cellist becomes an AIDS-infected crack addict and prostitute; a Metropolitan Opera violinist is jailed for selling cocaine; and an African-American virtuoso becomes so lost inside the elitist white arts world that he smashes his $185,000 eighteenth-century French violin into splinters.
Weaving memoir with investigative arts journalism, Tindall shatters rhetoric about the arts in the United States. This is a real-life tale from a musician whose career paralleled America's late twentieth-century culture boom. As Mozart in the Jungle races to its dramatic conclusion, Tindall reveals music as a simple, spiritual gift accessible to all.
Visit Blair's website at http://www.mozartinthejungle.com/
Orders/Information:
Mozart in the Jungle
Atlantic Monthly Press. Hardcover. $24.00. ISBN 0871138905. Publication date: July 2005
Mark Bittner
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph HillSunday, August 7, 2005, at 3 pm
Mark Bittner, author of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, along with filmmaker Judy Irving, spoke at Gallery Bookshop.
This is the inspiring story of how one man found his life's work and true love among a gang of wild parrots roosting in one of America's most picturesque urban settings --- San Francisco. When documentary filmmaker Judy Irving captures the story, Mark Bittner's life truly takes flight.
Like a lot of young people in the 1970s, Mark Bittner took the path of the "dharma bum." When the counterculture faded, Mark held on, seeking shelter in the nooks and crannies of San Francisco's North Beach. While living on the eastern slope of Telegraph Hill, he made a magical discovery: a flock of wild parrots. In this unforgettable story, Bittner recounts how he became fascinated by the birds and patiently developed friendships with them that would last more than six years.
"A fascinating love story with wings." --"Boston Herald
"A charming memoir. For devoted birders everywhere." --"Reader's Digest, Editor's Choice
"An inspirational saga of one man finding his life's meaning in the most serendipitous way." --"San Jose Mercury News
"Instructive, surprising, sweet." --Gary Snyder, author of "Turtle Island and "Mountains and Rivers Without End
Visit the Wild Parrots website at http://www.pelicanmedia.org/wildparrots.html
Orders/Information:
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Random House. Paperback. $12.95. ISBN 140008170X.
Jean Hegland
WindfallsSunday, August 28, 2005, at 3 pm
Northern California author Jean Hegland visited Gallery Bookshop to discuss her lush, compelling and epic novel, Windfalls.
This is a passionate story of motherhood -- both tender and tough -- that takes an unflinching look at the many choices facing every woman. Young and pregnant, Cerise and Anna make very different decisions about their lives. While teenage Cerise struggles to support herself and her young daughter, Anna finishes college, marries, and later gives birth to two daughters of her own. After the birth of her second child, a tragic accident tears Cerise's life apart, and she loses her already tenuous position in society. As Windfalls progresses, Cerise and Anna seem destined to approach each other, their stories dramatically interwoven. When finally their lives intersect, each woman emerges stronger, inspired by what she sees in the other, changed by what she learns.
Jean Hegland's debut novel Into the Forest was "beautifully written...impeccably authentic" (Kirkus Reviews). In its successor, she delves even deeper into the human heart, taking an unflinching look at the choices facing every woman. A remarkable book from an accomplished writer, Windfalls is hard to put down and impossible to forget.
Jean Hegland's novels have been chosen by local book groups. She also is well known locally for her participation in the Mendocino Coast Writers's Workshop in Fort Bragg.
Irene Thomas
Olaf Palm: A Life in ArtSunday, October 16, 2005, at 3 pm
Irene Thomas, local author and publisher of Olaf Palm: A Life in Art, spoke at the Gallery Bookshop on the history of local artist Olaf Palm and the development of this commemorative tribute to his life and work.
Olaf Palm (1935-2000) was a painter in oils with a far-flung reputation and a loyal local following. A realist, trained in the traditional techniques of the Dutch and Flemish masters, Palm's subjects ranged from political protest, to still lifes, to portraiture, highly inventive character genres, and travel subjects. Having come of age in the Santa Clara valley and made his home for more than thirty years along the Mendocino Coast, he was the quintessential Northern California artist, a serious chronicler of his life and times and those who shared both with him.
Over the many years of his career his art covered an amazing variety of subjects. Thomas calls him a "kind of California Old Master," who went in his own painterly direction at a time when the art world was preoccuupied with Abstract Expression. It is time, she maintains, that his genius is discovered, or by some, rediscovered.
In this gorgeous, richly illustrated paperback edition (144 pages, 180 full color images), Thomas has collected for the first time a substantial body of Palm's work in one place. Readers will be pleased and surprised at the range of subjects, and reminded of -- or introduced to -- Palm's consummate skills. Some paintings will be familiar; others reproduced here are from private collections and have never been seen in public.
Irene D. Thomas worked on this project for two years, planning publication to coincide with the five year anniversary of Olaf Palm's death. She has interesting stories to share about how this book came together, about the challenges of self-publishing, and the adventures she had in tracking down examples of Palm's work and making choices among them. Her text, much of it quoted from Palm's own journals and letters, is highly entertaining and contains information not commonly known about this extraordinary California artist.
Visit the Olaf Palm website at http://www.olafpalm.com/
Orders/Information: Olaf Palm: A Life In Art
Redwood Springs Press, paperback $45.00. ISBN 0972569510
Compiled by
Erik & Marcia Schmidt
Blazing Splendor:
The Memoirs of Tulku Urgyen RinpocheSunday, October 30, 2005, at 3 pm
The authors and friends visited Gallery Bookshop to present and discuss this interesting new book and the beliefs and ideas of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche.
Tulku Urgyen (1920-1996) was born into a family that included some of the most influential and fascinating figures in Tibetan history. Recognized as the reincarnation of a highly respected Buddhist teacher, while still young he was installed as the head of a monastery. Inspired by his illustrious relatives and the tales of the great masters of the past, he longed for a simple life on retreat. He eventually freed himself of his inherited duties and began a life of wandering and adventure.
In the ensuing years he spent his time alternating retreat and travelling throughout Tibet, meeting and befriending many remarkable characters along the way. Tulku Urgyen became a teacher to many current high-profile Buddhists including Sogyal Rinpoche, Joseph Goldstein and Lama Sury Das.
The invasion of Tibet by the Chinese Red Army cast a foreboding shadow across his path, propelling his eventual escape into exile.
The cultural and spiritual heritage of Tibet have become increasingly popular throughout the world. Celebrities and politicians seek photo-ops with the Dalai Lama. Movies about Tibet can easily be found on video shelves. The most rigorous of scientists have begun to employ new technologies to plumb the mysteries of the meditative mind. Yet, beyond the maroon robes and exotic artwork, the culture and philosophy of Tibet remain largely an enigma. Tulku Urgyen pulls back the veil in the intimate and enlightening pages of his memoir Blazing Splendor.
The greater part of his memoirs are dedicated to providing personal and often quite intimate glimpses into the inspiring lives of many of the incredible individuals he met throughout his quite extraordinary life. With humility, grace and refreshing candor he shares stories and teachings he heard from those closest to him. His memoir is a rare testament and stunningly honest portrayal of a sadly vanishing world.
Orders/Information:
Blazing Splendor: The Memoirs of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
North Atlantic Books. Paperback $19.95 ISBN 9627341568
David Skibbins
Eight of SwordsSunday, November 13, 2005, at 3 pm
Warren Ritter, who is the main character in Skibben's quirky novel, writes:
David Skibbins. Look at this guy: shifty eyes, thin lips, obviously a criminal type. You can't trust David Skibbins. I should know! Look what happened to me. I tell him about reading Tarot cards on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. I toss in a couple of stories about being a bomb throwing radical in the Sixties. And, 'cause he's interested, I told him about the kidnapping. So what does he do?David Skibbins and Warren Ritter visited the Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino on Sunday, November 13, at 3 pm.Plus he got it wrong. Ask my therapist. I'm not half as manic-depressive as he makes me out to be. And my hacker girlfriend Sally would tell you I'm a lot more charming. So don't believe everything you read in Eight of Swords!
I have to admit Eight of Swords is a pretty good book, in spite of his fabrications. It won St. Martin's Best Traditional Mystery contest in 2004. That's pretty cool. Look at what Julia Spencer-Fleming said about it, and she won a ton of awards. Julia: "David Skibbins' award-winning debut delivers atmosphere, suspense and humanity at a breakneck pace. His sleuth -- an "on the lam," tarot-reading, motorcycle-riding, aikido-wielding manic-depressive refugee from the '60s Weather Underground -- is a true American original. Hop aboard this rollicking new series as Easy Rider meets The Fugitive. I love that girl!
I'll leave you with this (it's what my favorite radio personality, Jennifer Stone, always says) "Go easy, and if you can't go easy, go as easy as you can." Later.
Warren Ritter
Visit David Skibbins' website at http://www.davidskibbins.com.
Howard Wheatley Allen
Howard Wheatley Allen: Sculptor to Emperors, Presidents & KingsSunday, November 27, 2005, at 3 pm
Internationally recognized local sculptor Howard Wheatley Allen visited the Gallery Bookshop on Sunday, November 27 to celebrate his new book, Howard Wheatley Allen: Sculptor to Emperors, Presidents & Kings.
This beautifully made hard cover book depicts Allen's beautiful works of art. From his early wood sculptures (Quail Family in 1971) to his most recent bronzes (Mud Hen in 2003), the photos are nearly as appealing as the sculptures themselves.
The book includes an interview with Wheatley Allen by journalist Patricia Lawrence as well as photos and letters to Allen from Heads of State.
H. Wheatley Allen has achieved international acclaim with his bronze sculptures of birds. His work, chosen for its strength, grace and symbolic content, has found its way into public, private, and corporate collections around the world. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton are among those who have presented Allen's sculptures as gifts to heads of state.
A California native, Wheatley Allen was born in San Francisco. His love of birds comes from his early exposure to their natural habitats in the marshes and estuaries of Marin County. He began carving as a young boy and sold his first bird at the age of nine.
After graduation from Dartmouth College and serving in the Navy, Allen returned to his art full time. For many years he worked only in wood, but as his international success grew, he began casting his birds in bronze.
He lives and works in Mendocino and in Oakland, California.
From a 1999 article by Ken Karlstad published in the Mendocino Art Center's A&E Magazine:
"What on earth do you give an emperor or a king? How do you honor a world leader in a way that fosters peace and good will? Give something of great intrinsic value that will be cherished for generations, of course. But what? Give something that is intensely beautiful to elevate the spirit, something with a lasting symbolism that transcends barriers of language and geopolitics---art, to be sure. For three U.S. presidents, the answer has been a Mendocino sculptor's compelling bronze creations. Wheatley Allen's elegant birds have migrated to sixteen countries to honor world leaders including Presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Ronald Reagan, Emperors Hirohito and Akihito of Japan, and Premier Zhao Ziyang of China.
"He exudes deep feelings for the natural world, and his lifetime of work with organizations for environmental protection and preservation give insight into a man of integrity who actually does what he believes. Wheat has served as a board member of the Save the Redwoods League for many years. Always a raconteur, he shares stories, humbly passing on his sheer amazement at the higher purposes that have engaged his sculptures, which were created simply out of his love and knowledge of birds."
Wheatley Allen's home on the www: http://www.wheatleyallen.com/
Full text of the A&E article is here: http://www.mcn.org/A/mendoart/ae/199903/wheatley.html
Orders/Information:
Howard Wheatley Allen: Sculptor to Emperors, Presidents & Kings
Hardcover, $24.95 GBS ISBN code 00072 All copies signed by author.
PO Box 270
Main & Kasten Streets, Mendocino, CA 95460
707-937-BOOK (2665)
Email: Info@gallerybookshop.com
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