Published: Monday, January 24, 2011 at 6:50 p.m.Last Modified: Monday, January 24, 2011 at 6:50 p.m.
Shirlee Zane had plenty enough material to have spoken at her departed husband’s funeral Sunday only about his humor, parlor-game and ping pong mastery, taste for adventure, intellectual curiosity and love of his children and grandkids.
But the Sonoma County supervisor paused amid describing Peter Kingston and her family’s sorrow at having lost him. She took a breath and said, “I want to say something about that loss that needs to be said.”
“We need to learn to talk about suicide,” Zane told the great crowd in the Jackson Theater at Sonoma Country Day School. “We cannot be ashamed of the pain in our lives.”
She could have glossed over the depression her husband struggled with recently but she chose to bring it into the light. By encouraging the rest of us to reach out to someone in great pain, or to seek someone’s help if the pain is our own, her tribute to Peter’s life just may save others.
BACK TO THE MUSIC: Walter Collins was running United Way of the Wine Country until, one day last summer, he wasn’t. Now comes news that he has returned to his roots.
Before Collins came to Sonoma County and the United Way in 2006, he’d worked six years as director of the Redlands Symphony Orchestra. Before that he’d done marketing for the Riverside Philharmonic.
Collins now is the executive director of California Symphony, which is based in Walnut Creek and is Contra Costa County’s one professional orchestra. May they long make beautiful music together.
DARK, DISTURBING THINGS are rumored to take place beneath the redwood canopy and behind the security gates of the Bohemian Grove, outside of Monte Rio.
Ritual sacrifice, sinister plots by fat cats gorging on even more power and wealth, recreational peeing on trees. TV sleuth Brad Meltzer think it’s time to get to the bottom of what really goes on at the exclusive mid-summer encampment.
He and his “Brad Meltzer’s Decoded” team will report on their Bohemian Grove probe in Thursday night’s episode of the History Channel program. Mary Moore of Camp Meeker, just up the road from the grove, will watch.
For decades, Mary protested outside the grove and she still urges Americans to pay more attention to the men inside, and that the public should be told whatever politicians say in speeches there.
Author/showman Meltzer months ago dispatched to Mary’s house a video crew that for hours shot and interviewed her about the Grove.
“I don’t know what to expect” from Thursday’s program, she said. “It’s a Hollywood thing, which is why I’m not staking my life on it.”
Among the allegations previously investigated by “Decoded”: That the Statue of Liberty is tattooed with weird symbols placed by a secret society bent on world domination, and that early humans were coached along by aliens.
Looks to me that the Decoders poke around, wear stern looks as they interview “experts” and conclude that, hey, stranger things have happened.
OUR DAUGHTER DODGE? Forgive new parents Junaida Semmler and Jacob Vedder for toying with giving their daughter a car name.
Junaida’s contractions suddenly quickened Sunday evening. As the couple pulled into the lot at Santa Rosa’s Kaiser hospital in their Dodge Durango, the baby was coming.
Jacob parked at the curb and went screaming into the Emergency Department. Then several Kaiser staffers, including Dr. Hilary Bartels, ran to the Durango.
The baby was born there in the passenger’s seat. The first-time parents later agreed “Durango” doesn’t work even as a middle name.
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Tags: bohemian, country, depression, grove, humor, life, light, sonoma