Want to support at least LEARNING about global warming in Sonoma County?

Get thee to the Rialto Theater in Santa Rosa on June 9^th or shortly thereafter and by buying a ticket to Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth; yes, the one about climate crisis that President Bush says he won't see, you can encourage more theaters to run the film. You might even call our Petaluma Cinema West and request they show the film in one of the 4 "art" theaters in the building. Sends a message that we ought to spend some time thinking about the future wellbeing of our planet as well as our present entertainment.

My favorite expert on global warming, scientist and New Yorker writer, Elizabeth Kolbert in her book, Field Notes from a Catastrope, and in the current online Q&A at the New Yorker site says men have known about global warming for up to 150 years but still don't know how exactly it will affect us. Already is awful for ice farmers without ice (they can't get to the fish) in Greenland and we may come to have seas a few FEET higher than they are, covering much of Florida and a fair bit of San Francisco not to mention bringing the level of water up the Petaluma River (spelled slough).

We don't even have the predictions about how our water table will likely rise by the end of our next City General Plan (20 years), but I've left a message in search of a map at the Natural Resource Defense League's D.C. office where their SF office thinks this sort of map resides. At least I'm attempting to make sense of this immense amount of new information, I tell myself.

Of course, its all speculation, not the warming but the effect of it - like when I worked at Charles Schwab as we approached the millennium and all the top attorneys (the guys I worked for) were holed up in a hotel overnight during Y2K because so much of their business is online and so many computer chips were thought to be indelibly flawed with "frozen" dating that wouldn't allow for a change to a new millennium. Even really smart people were getting all apocalyptic. I want to get real about global warming, so I need more info.

In times of scary and extremely scary thoughts, I always remember my Mom's phrase, undoubtedly stolen from Anon or one of those-She'd say "the worst things that ever happened never did" and I'd relax a little.

When puzzled by technology, I ask my son, Jon, the brilliant UCSC student, former Petaluma High theater guy. Jon thinks the current top three fixes for global warming are a huge umbrella in the stratosphere that reflects the suns' rays away from earth, artificial clouds to do the same or injection of carbon dioxide under the earth's crust and the ocean. All these sound quite ominous but worst case scenario is too tough to look at; many otherwise sober scientists are talking end of the world, according to Kolbert. She asserts climate change cannot be reversed, only slowed - and we're moving in the opposite direction. And some folks believe the CIA is sending up unmarked planes with chemical streams to test the artificial cloud idea, instead dropping heavy and toxic metals on old people and those with impaired immune systems, making them ill. Whew!

So what does a Petaluma person DO to help? Well, you can choose to do a lot or a little. A lot would be the work of a Ned Orrett, Petaluma environmental engineer who created a water reclamation system with his partner, Grayson James, that would make 70% or so of Petaluma's commercial water reuseable for other purposes in town. A lot of work would also be that of Ann Hancock, coordinator of the Sonoma County Climate Protection Campaign whose efforts have resulted in a commitment of nearly all Sonoma cities to greatly reduce greenhouse gases by 2015.

Author Paul Hawken says there are 130,000 non-profits worldwide working on sustainability issues. "This is the largest movement in history," Hawken asserts. Lynn Twist, director of the Hunger Project for ten years, said at a Sustainable World Coalition Symposium I attended a week ago, that we have to find each other and commit to working together. Hunter Lovins of Rocky Mountain Institute fame, told us at the Symposium to "say what you want" publicly so I started my list-

Top of my list (I steal a lot from the Dalai Lama): "May all beings be happy. May all beings be well," the Metta Sutra. Yea, that's good. So how help that along? Speaking the truth at City Council during public speaking time is a good thing, writing letters to editors and friends and infinite other ways you can to work for sustainable living and a just world - and those two do go together.

My sister, Meg Madden, organized a rally with her Music in the Schools Today (MUST) in SF for funding for the Arts in California last night. I said I'd go, of course. Thought I would get cold at a rally outside San Francisco City Hall but the Rally was inside on the Rotunda steps and a newlyl refurbished and lovely side room - and it was terrific fun! Artsy people, musicians, kids wandering about, mostly musical kids.

Wonderful thing happened, too. Supporters of arts in the schools (did you know CA is dead LAST in funding for the arts? How do we expect to be competitive with other countries?) were amazed to learn that their request for $100 million from Arnold was upped just a trifle to...drum roll...$160million! Wow! That ought to keep a lot more elementary and high school kids in school and on their way to careers other than juvenile hall.

This rally was just plain sweet. Berkeley Youth Orchestra, Alexander String Quartet, a group of young women jazz singers doing 4 of my very favorite songs to sing...Summertime from Porgy and Bess, It had to be you, bringing back Diane Keaton in a Woody Allen movie (Annie Hall?). I sang along unabashedly and because I knew I was far enough away they couldn't hear me!

And then Mickey Hart, former drummer of Grateful Dead and more and a long-time supporter of MUST, brought out a whole bunch of drums and I was compelled to walk over and pick one up. Hoping I could hold my own - and I did along with maybe 30-40 others pros and rank amateurs like me. Terrific vibrations rippled across the drum skin whether or not I was playing at the moment...The drumming rose and drifted, speeded up and slowed down, became phrenetic and then became lullaby...And all the while I kept up. And all the while Mickey led us in a kind of drum trance, drum ballet? A couple women danced around us, too; enticing us to dig deeper into the rythmn and delight of drumming..

Won't soon forget the rush - and now am looking for Petaluma drumming...some women friends have been meeting and I know I'll join them and probably start a few more drumming evenings in motion...

Just got a MacBook Pro (no; you CAN'T follow me around till I'm sleepy and take it home with you), transferring the best of my files from a humungous pc to a 17" silver box weighing just under 6lbs and leaving behind the rest of my files/mind-flakes like yesterday's newspapers-

The new Machine makes me feel like I can climb veritable mountains with my mind! I know its just me using it-But I promised myself so very much-the novel, the short stories, the new projects so vital they will change history-This laptop baby was made just for dreaming schemers like me-So much to accomplish; so many directions to go in - all at once-

Communications is my game and I love it still. Had an auspicious beginning in pr years ago. My First Ever (witness the pr-speak!) release told the tale of a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud painted with a history of San Francisco by my then-boyfriend, Ken Jennings. Owned by famed promoters, Peter Marino and Davy Rosenberg, their whole scene was unbelievable! These guys lived in a house with a Sisteen Chapel-like ceiling over their huge round bed, had one of the 3 replicas of King Tut's Throne in the universe in their drawing room and a piano from their dear friend, Liberace. An Evening Magazine camera crew followed the Rolls around one entire day with me in the back! Whew! What an auspicious pr beginning-But Marino and Rosenberg only got in Herb Caen's column when they crashed the Rolls on Doyle Drive. What a waste of a Rolls, lamented Caen-PR seemed quite a powerful tool - for vanity as well as getting good things done.

But I digress from, where was I? The Power of the pseudo power of Technology and Media-We believe we are taller, more beautiful, wiser by owning cool stuff and connecting to cool places and people-The neurotic Brenda in Six Feet Under bought a laptop to live her dream of writing a novel but finds herself allowing raunchy sexual encounters as "research" for her book-Well, THAT sort of research is definitely OUT-So what kind do I seek? Wikipedia and Google are beginners land-With a little added Daily Kos, Blogspot and MySpace, I may be on to something!

So here I am with my New Thing: my new great light, silver friend and terrifying enemy. I always seem to find that scary part to a thing. Like my Mom, when old, as she lost ability to talk telling us with fearful eyes that the inventors of the atom bomb "thought they were doing a good thing." (Inferring we should do something to stop the impending evil accompanying the BOMB!) Thanks, Mom; any ideas on how?

So today I notice two girls at the store I visit multi-times a day (Jungle Vibes), are carrying iPods and my friend, Strange de Petaluma, was telling me of 3 teens walking home from school this week in Oakland, walking down railroad tracks listening to their iPods - and they got killed by a train! Couldn't hear the damn roar of the engine!

So what dangers lie ahead for me with this new café/workhorse Mac? I'll let you know what works. Today not much does. Our Home Theater conked out; possibly worse, my big old clunky PC no longer has DSL-and the Mac went to sleep and wouldn't wake up again!!! That's what we're all afraid of, I guess-P.S. My partner, Wayne, took the Mac battery out, crashing the Machine, replaced it and it was wide awake again! Wonders never cease-

Just blew in from the Windy City, town where I was born and now returned for a family reunion. The Windy City is, as the song from Calamity Jane goes, mighty pretty, but 'tis true - they ain't got what we got. We're intimate and peaceful; they're HUGE and DANGEROUS. Still, there are some things our little city could learn from this BIG city. Public Art is one for sure.

Public art is a big deal in Chicago. There are huge famous bronzes in many locales along and near Lake Michigan and the incredibly beautiful Buckingham Fountain, which spouts 50 feet in the air easily and is colored with lights at night. Amazing! And one entryway to the miles-long Lincoln Park is guarded by now-green Indian chieftains with full headdress astride powerful wild metal mustangs. Wow! I've loved those since I was little. Am thinking Petaluma could use a few bronzes to inspire us and future Petalumans.

You probably know the Petaluma Arts Council got its request past City Council and developers put forth 1% of their fees to the city for public art. That's a chunk! So the thought of a few bronzes and a couple of fountains is - possible.

After revisiting Chicago's famous artwork, including the Chicago Art Institute, where our parents met and studied sculpture and painting with a strong Baus Haus influence, I'm thinking Petaluma could follow suit to a certain extent. How about one wonderful sculpture of the Olompali Indians, the Miwoks who settled here a mere 6,000 years ago?

And then the more recent residents, the farmers who made Petaluma famous as an egg and cow town and even more recent all the horse ranchers who have just brought in or raised slightly more horses than we have cows? So we're now an equestrian capital? Yes; and I'm looking for my next ride-