Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales » Healdsburg

Two Lives in a Small Town

Steve Cotler — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:22:53 +0000

The following, in Shonnie Brown’s “Neighbors” column, appeared in The Healdsburg Tribune, our local weekly, on February 9, 2012. [Most of the images were not in the original.]

* * * * *

Ann, born and raised in Casper, Wyoming, has the dubious distinction of attending high school with both Dick and Lynne Cheney and participating in student government with Dick. Dick, who Ann recalls as being “good looking” back then, wrote “I’ll be your friend forever” in Ann’s yearbook.

Ann attended a Catholic college in Denver and then got married — resulting in a breakup and three kids. She returned to college, putting herself through law school, and then became a New Jersey prosecutor. She moved to the Bay Area in 1984 and took the California Bar exam. The fact that her former firm had represented Johns Manville, a major defendant in asbestos litigation, rather directed the rest of her career in law.

Steve grew up in Oxnard, California, going to Harvard as an undergraduate and then to Harvard Business School. Early business credits include working on the Apollo Moon project for IBM and involvement in the creation of the first fax machine in 1970. In the early 1970s, events conspired for an entire self-reinvention (left brain to right), taking Steve (after a divorce and three kids) to Hollywood, where he moved in with his two single brothers, Lanny and Doug. All three worked zealously at screenwriting.

“We lived on tortillas, beans and ‘used vegetables’ way past their prime, earning a combined income of $4,000 per year writing scripts,” Steve tells me. “In 1979, Lanny wrote The Earthling, which starred William Holden and Ricky Schroder. In 1981 Lanny and I wrote the script for Backtrack with Jodie Foster and Dennis Hopper. Because Hopper rewrote and ruined so much of it, we took our names off, but then an Internet fan put our names back on. I can sure tell some stories about the amusing terrors of filmmaking.”

From 1986 to 1994 Steve worked once again out of the left side of his brain — as an investment banker in San Francisco — but he did take one last stab at filmmaking. While living in Marin, Lanny directed and Steve wrote, produced and acted in the movie, Heartwood, shot in Willits — starring Hilary Swank and Jason Robards. One night he attended the Marin Theater Company, not realizing that it was singles night. He was seated between two strange women. When one of them fell asleep, a conversation ensued with the other. So, he asked Ann for her number.

“I’ll give you a call, but it won’t be for several weeks because I have to go to Hollywood to work on my movie,” was Steve’s parting line. But he did return and eventually moved in with Ann in the city.

“When I convinced Ann to retire, we asked ourselves why we should continue living in San Francisco,” Steve recalls. “So we came up to Wine Country, explored everywhere, ultimately found Healdsburg and moved here in 2002.”

Their house, on University Street, has the ambience of an upscale Tahoe cabin. It is surrounded by giant redwoods, Douglas firs and walnut trees. Joe Puccinelli, former owner of B&B Lounge, once lived behind them, and Emma Gromo, wife of former Healdsburg grocer John Gromo, lived next door. Though the tax rolls show that their house was built in 1952, Emma told Steve and Ann that it was built shortly after she moved there in 1926. It’s a lovely spot, and to them a destination for their combined eight kids and 10 grandchildren.

“When we arrived in 2002, we had no idea what we’d do or who we’d meet,” Ann remarks. “But we are struck by the level of volunteerism in Healdsburg. Within four months I went to the museum and became a receptionist. Then Al Loebel snared me and I went on to be VP and then president of the Museum Board. Al didn’t know me, but thought I was ‘under-utilized.’

“I then discovered AAUW and became involved with the hiking group and with Tech Trek, an organization which sends seventh grade girls to a science and math camp at Stanford. Now I’m involved in finding houses for the home tour.”

Ann’s heart lies with PSST! (Public School Success Team) — a local, women-led organization committed to increasing the number of students graduating from the public school system. Steve tutored fifth and sixth graders through PSST! and Ann, a big sister to a wonderful seventh grade girl, says that she gets as much out of the relationship as she gives.

Both Steve and Ann are deeply committed to projects they love. Steve is actively involved in the Summer Science Program, a highly respected residential enrichment program in which selected high school students from around the world study college-level courses while they are tracking near-earth asteroids on two summer campuses.

“I attended the program in its second year in 1960 and it changed my life,” Steve tells me. “In 1999 another alumni and I rejuvenated the program. I gave a presentation to our local Rotary and they wanted to send a kid from Healdsburg. Even with the intense competition, local boys Dylan Scott and Raven Clayborn have both gone. My involvement, now as a trustee, has made my kids proud.”

Steve recorded in 2002 a CD of children’s songs. He sang, and Grammy Award-winning younger brother, Doug, did the music. The album (My ‘Magination) has, according to Steve, the kind of music that parents don’t get tired of.

Steve’s current passion is Cheesie Mack. Ronald Cheesie Mack is Steve’s 11-year-old self who is writing a series of three books for Random House. Cheesie Mack is Not a Genius or Anything came out last year. It’s really Steve’s way of making science fun by “stealth intelligence.” Cheesie is funny and smart and loves to follow his curiosity in a way that teaches without preaching. Kids write to Cheesie online and often ask, “Who the heck is Steve Cotler?”

“I’m having a ball going around the country promoting the book,” Steve says. “It’s written for 21st century Internet savvy kids. I read only two pages when I visit a classroom and then I fill up a blackboard with what kids have learned about Cheesie and his pal Georgie. My goal is to teach a love of reading and learning and to support kids in being smart.”

At the end of our interview, Steve tells me: “Both Ann and I went through cancer in 2009 and really appreciate where we live and the time we have.” Then he adds, “My mission now is to do good deeds.”

“I would say it a bit more modestly,” Ann suggests.

“Well, I can’t help it if my nickname in college was ‘irrepressible,”" Steve tells us.

* * * * *

Shonnie Brown is a local author and memoirist who is interested in fostering connections between people and their community. Shonnie writes personal and family histories through her business, Sonoma LifeStories, and is also a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She can be reached by e-mail at shonnie@sonic.net or on the web at www.sonomalifestories.com.

Teaching Contract Bridge to Intelligent Women

Steve Cotler — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 22:16:58 +0000

I learned contract bridge at 13 and played through grad school. Then came almost 40 years without a bid. But for the last year or so, I’ve been teaching bridge to a group of women. It has been a particularly satisfying endeavor for two reasons: 1) they are members of AAUW—American Association of University Women—and quite intelligent; and 2) the process enables me to recapture what I once knew and long since sequestered in remote memory recesses.

My weekly practice is to prepare a few hands that teach specific lessons and go over them pedagogically after each is played. For the rest of the Monday afternoon, the women deal and play rubber bridge, and I kibitz. This week they dealt and played the following:

Were I South, I suspect I would have bid the hand exactly she did. After West doubled, here’s what would’ve gone through my mind:

• One loser in clubs
• One loser in diamonds
• And since my partner made a free bid of 2 spades, she has a strong five- or a six-card suit, so probably just one loser in spades. In fact, if North’s spades set up, I may be able to toss my diamond loser. Four clubs looks solid.

West had never doubled before. With great excitement, she led her diamond queen…and I needn’t go through the carnage. South went down five…smiling!

Should she have escaped to four spades? It would’ve likely gone down only two. Would East/West have countered with a doable five hearts?

* * * * *

(I’m going to categorize this under Sports…because South was such a good one!)

Curious Readers

Steve Cotler — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:55:49 +0000

During the past school year, I tutored math and language arts in a local fifth-grade class, so when Public School Success Team (PSST), the homegrown non-profit that ran the tutoring program, decided to encourage a continuing flow of student enthusiasm over the summer, I volunteered to lead a course. Conducted al fresco in my backyard, it consisted of six weekly sessions in close textual analysis. I called it Curious Readers.

My plan was to use accessible poetry and short-short flash fiction to stimulate thought. I began with:

In these sessions we will discover that some things we read are like icebergs. But when I say that, do I mean that these written works are frozen and floating? Of course not. What I mean is that, like an iceberg, there’s more than meets the eye. And if a writer refers to a “lonely cloud,” does he mean that the cloud feels some kind of emotion?

We started easy. I gave them Humpty Dumpty to read and asked, “Who was Humpty? And did he fall or was he pushed?” None of the participants—six to ten came each week—had any experience in this sort of intellectual challenge. Many of my questions (and that’s all I did…ask questions) got I-don’t-know’s, to which I responded, “I don’t know is the ONLY wrong answer.”

It only took one week for the students’ responses to become almost uniformly interesting and enthusiastic. Hands were shooting up. Over the next several weeks we did Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Percy Shelley, and many others. A sample of their comments about a one-sentence story by Bruce Holland Rogers illustrates their intellectual insertion into the process. (I have changed the students’ names.)

He left the village of his birth, crossed the mountains, crossed the seas,
saw great cities, learned a few words in a dozen tongues, met the high
and the low, and returned after years of wandering to the village of his
birth where for the rest of his life he suffered nostalgia for his village as
it had been when he left.

Q: Why did he leave his village?
…Santiago: To get a job.
…Cesar: To travel, and the mountains means challenges, and it wasn’t easy.
Q: Why does the writer mention that he “crossed the sea”?
…Corazon: Because that means he went very far away.
Q: He left a village and “saw great cities.” Why mention that?
…Corazon: Cities and villages are very different.
…Ariela: A village is small. A city is big…like Denver.
…Cesar: Or across the sea…like Paris.
Q: What makes a city great?
…Corazon: Restaurants, hotels, landmarks, different languages.
…Ariela: National parks.
…Cesar: Size, museums.
Q: What does it mean that he “learned a few words in a dozen tongues”?
…Cesar: He went to lots of places and learned the same words in different languages.
…Coco: It’s a big job to learn how to talk the language.
Q: Who were the “high and low”?
…Cameron: Royalty and servants.
…Ariela: People of different size.
Q: He “returned after years of wandering.” So what?
…Arcadia: He visited lots of places.
…Santiago: He was walking around everywhere.
…Cesar: But when he got back the village had changed.
Q: He “suffered nostalgia.” Why?
…Ariela: Because his village changed, and he liked the way it used to be. He missed the good old times.
Q: Was his journey a success or a failure?
…Leon: Both. Might have fun when he went to the other places, and when he came back the village had changed, and he liked it better the way it was.

Basho (1644–1694)

After reading and discussing haiku written by Basho in the fifth week, the final session was devoted to analyzing haiku written by the students. Here’s Arcadia’s poem and the discussion that followed:

My small wings
I am forbidden to fly
I’m a flightless bird

…Cesar: Forbidden is the most interesting word in the poem. It means you can’t fly…not that you are not able, but someone or something has stopped it.
…Leon: It’s forbidden because there is a hunter out there, and it has been prevented.
Q: Why does this bird have small wings?
…Cesar: We had a cockatoo and had its feathers clipped. Maybe that.
…Coco: It could be deformed. But that would not mean forbidden. It would mean unable.
…Arelia: Maybe this is about a person who thinks of herself as a bird.
…Leon: I think it’s about a young girl who is not allowed to leave her house and go out with boyfriends.

The candle is lit. PSST’s goal is to get these kids to graduate from high school. They have promised each a $2,000 college scholarship if they do and gotten a commitment (with a certificate suitable for framing) from Sonoma State University guaranteeing admission if they graduate and meet the minimum entrance requirements. If the kids, the large majority of whom are children of Hispanic immigrants, succeed (and PSST will work with them continuously through middle school and high school), almost all of them will be the first in their family to go to college.

Paying forward.

Enhanced Geothermal Energy and Man-Made Earthquakes

Steve Cotler — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:29:10 +0000

Drill down just a few miles into the earth’s crust, and the temperature will rise substantially. This heat comes from three sources: emissions from radioactive minerals, the compressive force of gravity, and to a lesser extent, solar energy absorbed at the earth’s surface. Although such energy is not truly renewable (radioactive elements do eventually decay to energy-flat states), within any reasonable estimate of mankind’s tenancy on this planet, geothermal power is essentially limitless.

There are several techniques for transducing this energy from underground heat to in-the-grid electricity. One of these, a technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), is currently being tested by Sausalito-based AltaRock Energy only 12 beeline miles from my home in Northern California. One would think this would be big news in Wine Country, but except for a 2008 mention of seed funding by google.org and several high-profile venture capital firms, this potentially earth-shaking (remember that adjective!) demonstration project has gone unmentioned in my local paper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. But on June 23, 2009, NYT journalist James Glanz wrote a long article suggesting that AltaRock’s EGS experiment might cause earthquakes. It was reprinted four days later in the New York Times-owned Press Democrat along with a side story about earthquakes in Anderson Springs, the tiny Lake County hamlet closest to the drilling site.

Glanz based his warning on a 2006 earthquake caused by an EGS project in Basel, Switzerland, but he did not go unchallenged. Green Momentum, a specialized media company that focuses on providing independent news coverage events and developments affecting the “cleantech” industry, immediately opined that Glanz’s article “was certainly alarmist, if not genuinely alarming.”

As a survivor of the eight-year Bush/Cheney “cone of silence,” I am suspicious of PR Kool-Aid, but given the publicly available information about EGS in both Switzerland and California, it appears that there are many differences between the EGS processes tested by Geothermal Explorers International. Ltd. in Basel and the AltaRock test just underway near Anderson Springs.

Geothermal energy has great potential for helping to solve our long-term energy problem. Producing energy from geothermal sources is mostly clean (geothermal sources do tend to release greenhouse gases trapped deep within the earth, but these emissions are usually much smaller than those of fossil fuels) and power plants can be situated almost anywhere. The heat is onmipresent…just below the top layer of the crust. MIT chemical engineering professor Jefferson Tester calculates that the US’s total annual energy consumption is 100 exajoules. It doesn’t matter if that number is incomprehensible. Prof. Tester estimates that the geothermal resource for the whole country is about 14,000,000 exajoules. In oilman talk, that’s a lot of reserves.

Luther Burbank early geothermal investor

Healdsburg, the Sonoma County town in which I live, gets 43% of its electricity from geothermal sources (Q3 2009 report), almost entirely from The Geysers, the most productive geothermal energy site in the United States. The Geysers Development Company began selling electricity to Healdsburg in 1926 (world-renown botanist/horticulturalist Luther Burbank, a Sonoma County transplant, was one of the original investors), but as oil came down rapidly in price in the mid 30s, energy generation at The Geysers ceased to be profitable, and operations ceased. The first modern plant went online in 1960, with generation peaking in the ’80s at about 1,500 megawatts, enough energy to power about 1.5 million homes. Because this high level of production began to diminish available underground heat at The Geysers, output was purposely decreased to about 800 megawatts in order to stretch the site’s useful life.

Each day, Calpine Energy and the state-run Northern California Power Agency pump 11 million gallons of treated wastewater through a 41-mile underground pipeline from Sonoma County seat Santa Rosa and inject it into the extremely hot, permeable rock below. The water boils, creating high pressure steam that rises to the surface where it turns turbine generators, producing enough electricity to power most of the North Bay.

Geology of The Geysers

The geology of The Geysers is special. The caprock there is thinner than average, and the sub-surface rock is riddled with cracks, making the water-to-steam process relatively straightforward. AltaRock’s EGS technology, however, does not require fissured rock. This is an advantage: there are many, many more sites that sit above hot, solid rock than above hot, fractured rock. At Anderson Springs—which is near, but not in The Geysers field—AltaRock will drill deeply and inject water at very high pressure, thus cracking the extremely hot, solid rock, and producing electricity with the resultant steam. When the steam condenses, the water will be reinjected into the hot rocks below.

So what is the New York Times article worried about?

In 2001, Geothermal Explorers, a Swiss company, undertook an EGS project dubbed Deep Heat Mining Basel. In December 2006, at a depth of just over 5,000 meters (3.1 miles), full-scale injection of water triggered a 3.4 magnitude earthquake, big enough to rattle both the local windows and its citizenry. Geothermal Explorers immediately and voluntarily shut the project down. Glanz’s report suggests that the AltaRock experiment could engender similar man-made temblors in Lake County.

Anderson Springs knows about earthquakes. The number of earthquakes with magnitude greater than 2.0 has increased dramatically over the last several decades. (See chart below.) Not surprisingly, some residents have mobilized, forming the Anderson Springs Community Alliance. Its mission is to raise “public awareness about numerous significant environmental impacts affecting the community due to ongoing geothermal development.”

AltaRock gave a detailed response to Glanz’s article on its website:

• We took extraordinary care in choosing our site at the Geysers to avoid siting on a major fault. The Basel Project drilled into a significant fault.
• Smaller faults mean smaller events, and the faults in the Geysers area are significantly smaller than at Basel.
• The geology of the Geysers is very different – seismic studies predict events at the Geysers likely to be imperceptible at the surface.
• Events of similar magnitude to Basel occur frequently in California.
• Basel produced an event with a magnitude which is more than 10 times the size of the maximum event estimated for our project..
• We have installed monitoring and control procedures and designed pressure relief mechanisms to minimize any impact.
• We are employing proprietary technologies to ensure a safe and well-controlled project.
• We have actively involved and informed the community.

Getting energy from geothermal sources is important…and controversial. Is it worth the risk of more earthquakes? Is the risk real?

There will be more in subsequent posts.

Vive le Musée!

Steve Cotler — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:19:56 +0000

Passersby were forced to walk in the street as the Tour de Healdsburg cycled (without forward movement) on the sidewalk outside Costeaux French Bakery in a vigorous and joyful celebration of Bastille Day.

Riding for the unheralded Le Musée Historique team (Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society) were locals Chris Baldenhofer (former B&B owner), Bob Rawlins (retired submarine captain), and Kent Mitchell (ex-mayor), all Museum Board members. They mounted the stationary bikes immediately after a team of young men—all in professional cycling outfits—rode into first place with a combined distance of 2.5 miles in three minutes. Undaunted that their combined age was nearly 140 years greater than the leaders, the Musée threesome pedaled furiously and continuously.

Team Musée: Baldenhofer, Mitchell, Rawlins

At the finish, Bob Rawlins’ sprint brought him to 0.8 miles, nearly matching the average of the pros. There was great surprise when Baldenhofer’s and Mitchell’s distances were tallied: 0.4 and 0.3 did not appear to match their spirited and unflagging efforts. This concern was validated when the next team’s riders registered zeroes on the same bikes. In the confusion, neither Baldenhofer nor Mitchell were offered re-rides, so their clearly shortened distances remained unchanged. Later discussions with one judge indicated that correct distances for Baldenhofer and Mitchell—at least double their recorded distances—would have placed Le Musée Historique’s gray-haired team solidly in second place.

There was no report from the Museum squad’s trainer regarding the condition of the team on the following day.

Mount St. Helena

Steve Cotler — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:08:06 +0000

Aristotle

I have, in my dotage, become a Peripatetic (derived from Greek… literally “ones walking around”). The Peripatetic School was founded by Aristotle in 335 BC, so I am far from a charter member, but as with philosophy, striding about—especially to high places—affords one a wider view of the world.

Yesterday, as a pre-Valentines Day gift, my wife Ann asked me to accompany her and four other members of the local AAUW (American Association of University Women) chapter on a hike to the top of Mount St. Helena, at 4,343 feet, the highest point in Napa County.

Ann & friends atop Mount St. Helena

Do not confuse our modest peak with Washington’s Mount St. Helens, which on May 18, 1980, reduced its height from 9,677 feet to 8,365 feet in an impressive volcanic explosion. Our hillock is also of volcanic origin, but of much more modest pretentions; seismologists predict no imminent upsurge. Also note that unlike the capital of Montana, pronounced “HELL-en-ah” as if it were the gateway to Hades, our Wine Country prominence is spoken “heh-LEEN-ah,” which hints of cassis and finishes with a velour-like coating of the tongue.

We began the ascent at 10 a.m. The air was clear and pleasant. Ever gallant, and remembering a Boy Scout always lets the slower hikers go first, I trailed the five women, all older than I, as we worked our way up the switchbacks. Soon, noticing that the oldest, a 4’11″, 75-year-old Ohio State Buckeye, was bounding upward from rock to rock with abandon that indicated knees far more forgiving than my own, I gave up gallantry, and adopted the pirate’s creed (“Every Man for Himself!”)…which, since I was the only man, granted me carte blanche. Spotting a steeply vertical shortcut, I scrambled, slipped, and scratched my way up the hillside from switchback #11 to switchback #12 and was relaxing on a rock (hiding my heavy breathing) as the hapless women came around the bend. They were unimpressed. One even muttered, “Cheater.”

Halfway up the mountain, we turned a corner and went from calm air to a strong, cold, noisy wind—a dramatic demonstration of leeward versus windward. The layers we had shed on the way up went back on.

Upward, dauntless peripatetics! Excelsior!

1912 remounting of the 1841 plaque

At the top, we stood under numerous, unsightly communications towers that thrummed in the chill wind and next to a plaque commemorating an 1841 surveying team, including Russians from Ft. Ross and Mexican land grant families (photograph courtesy of Healdsburg Museum & Historical Society).

Hiking 5.1 miles while climbing just over 2,000 feet computes to a 7.4% incline. As we ate lunch, I wondered silently (the women were chatting amiably about birds, trees, and grandchildren) if Aristotle, in his many peregrinations up and down Grecian knolls ever calculated the inverse relationship between age and incline aptitude.

With both the air and our noses running clear, we saw far in the distance:

–to the west, range after range of low hills, with the Pacific shrouded somewhere beyond them,
–to the south, the skyline of San Francisco and the Bay Bridge, Marin County’s Mt. Tamalpais and Mt. Diablo near Walnut Creek,
–to the east, Lake Berryessa and by their snow tops, a hint of the Sierras, and
–to the north, what might have been a thin dream of Mt. Lassen.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Mount St. Helena is in Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, so named because Stevenson (1850-1894) honeymooned in a cabin on the flanks of this mountain in 1880 and, enchanted with the area, wrote this description in Silverado Squatters:

A broad, cool wind streamed pauselessly down the valley, laden with perfume. Up at the top stood Mount Saint Helena, a bulk of mountain, bare atop, with tree-fringed spurs, and radiating warmth. Once we saw it framed in a grove of tall and exquisitely graceful white oaks, in line and colour a finished composition.

…more on Stevenson’s charming travelogue in my next post.