MPS.1901.Astro

ARIES (March 21–April 19) No one has resisted the force of gravity with more focus than businessman Roger Babson (1875–1967). He wrote an essay entitled “Gravity: Our Enemy Number One,” and sought to develop anti-gravity technology. His Gravity Research Foundation gave awards to authentic scientists who advanced the understanding of gravity. If that organization still existed and offered prizes, I’m sure that researchers of the Aries persuasion would win them all in 2019. For your tribe, the coming months should feature lots of escapes from heaviness, including soaring flights and playful levity and lofty epiphanies.

TAURUS (April 20–May 20) The night parrots of Australia are so elusive that there was a nearly six-decade stretch when no human saw a single member of the species. But in 2013, after searching for 15 years, photographer John Young spotted one and recorded a 17-second video. Since then, more sightings have occurred. According to my astrological vision, your life in 2019 will feature experiences akin to the story of the night parrot’s reappearance. A major riddle will be at least partially solved. Hidden beauty will materialize. Long-secret phenomena will no longer be secret. A missing link will re-emerge.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20) Millions of years ago, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica and North and South America were smooshed together. Earth had a single land mass, the supercontinent Pangea. Stretching across its breadth was a colossal feature, the Central Pangean Mountains. Eventually, though, Europe and America split apart, making room for the Atlantic Ocean and dividing the Central Pangean range. Today, the Scottish Highlands and the Appalachian Mountains are thousands of miles apart, but once upon a time they were joined. In 2019, Gemini, I propose that you look for metaphorical equivalents in your own life. What disparate parts of your world had the same origin? What elements that are now divided used to be together? Reestablish their connection. Get them back in touch with each other. Be a specialist in cultivating unity.

CANCER (June 21–July 22) Twenty nineteen will be an excellent time to swim in unpolluted rivers, utter sacred oaths near beautiful fountains and enjoy leisurely saunas that help purify your mind and body. You are also likely to attract cosmic favor if you cry more than usual, seek experiences that enhance your emotional intelligence and ensure that your head respectfully consults with your heart before making decisions. Here’s another way to get on life’s good side: cultivate duties that consistently encourage you to act out of love and joy rather than out of guilt and obligation.

LEO (July 23–August 22) Here are four key questions I hope you’ll meditate on throughout 2019: 1. What is love? 2. What kind of love do you want to receive? 3. What kind of love do you want to give? 4. How could you transform yourself in order to give and receive more of the love you value most? To spur your efforts, I offer you these thoughts from teacher David R. Hawkins: “Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself and others.”

VIRGO (August 23–September 22) “Most living things begin in the absence of light,” writes Virgo author Nancy Holder. “The vine is rooted in the earth; the fawn takes form in the womb of the doe.” I’ll remind you that your original gestation also took place in the dark. And I foresee a metaphorically comparable process unfolding for you in 2019. You’ll undergo an incubation period that may feel cloaked and mysterious. That’s just as it should be: the best possible circumstances for the vital new part of your life that will be growing. So be patient. You’ll see the tangible results in 2020.

LIBRA (September 23–October 22) Many plants that modern Americans regard as weeds were regarded as tasty food by Native Americans. A prime example is the cattail, which grows wild in wetlands. Indigenous people ate the rootstock, stem, leaves and flower spike. I propose that we use this scenario to serve as a metaphor for some of your potential opportunities in 2019. Things you’ve regarded as useless or irrelevant or inconvenient could be revealed as assets. Be alert for the possibility of such shifts. Here’s advice from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”

SCORPIO (October 23–November 21) The slow, gradual, incremental approach will be your magic strategy in 2019. Being persistent and thorough as you take one step at a time will provide you with the power to accomplish wonders. Now and then, you may be tempted to seek dramatic breakthroughs or flashy leaps of faith; and there may indeed be one or two such events mixed in with your steady rhythms. But for the most part, your glory will come through tenacity. Now study this advice from mystic Meister Eckhart: “Wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it.”

SAGITTARIUS (November 22–December 21) Sagittarian polymath Piet Hein wrote a poem in which he named the central riddle of his existence. “A bit beyond perception’s reach, / I sometimes believe I see / That life is two locked boxes / Each containing the other’s key.” I propose that we adopt this scenario to symbolize one of the central riddles of your existence. I’ll go further and speculate that in 2019 one of those boxes will open as if through a magical fluke, without a need for the key. This mysterious blessing won’t really be a magical fluke, but rather a stroke of well-deserved and hard-earned luck that is the result of the work you’ve been doing to transform and improve yourself.

CAPRICORN (December 22–January 19) What themes and instruments do people least want to hear in a piece of music? Composer Dave Solder determined that the worst song ever made would contain bagpipes, cowboy music, tubas, advertising jingles, operatic rapping and children crooning about holidays. Then he collaborated with other musicians to record such a song. I suspect that as you head into 2019, it’ll be helpful to imagine a metaphorically comparable monstrosity: a fantastic mess that sums up all the influences you’d like to avoid. With that as a vivid symbol, you’ll hopefully be inspired to avoid allowing any of it to sneak into your life in the coming months.

AQUARIUS (January 20–February 18) In Canada, it’s illegal to pretend to practice witchcraft. It’s fine to actually do witchcraft, however. With that as our inspiration, I advise you to be rigorous about embodying your authentic self in 2019. Make sure you never lapse into merely imitating who you are or who you used to be. Don’t fall into the trap of caring more about your image than about your actual output. Focus on standing up for what you really mean rather than what you imagine people expect from you. The coming months will be a time when you can summon pure and authoritative expressions of your kaleidoscopic soul.

PISCES (February 19–March 20) In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin was a Founding Father who played a key role in getting the United States up and running. He wasn’t happy that the fledgling nation chose the bald eagle as its animal symbol. The supposedly majestic raptor is lazy, he wrote. It doesn’t hunt for its own food, but steals grub obtained by smaller birds of prey. Furthermore, bald eagles are cowardly, Franklin believed. Even sparrows may intimidate them. With that as our theme, Pisces, I invite you to select a proper creature to be your symbolic ally in 2019. Since you will be building a new system and establishing a fresh power base, you shouldn’t pick a critter that’s merely glamorous. Choose one that excites your ambition and animates your willpower.

Advice Goddess

Q: I know humans are typically your subject, but this is a relationship question, so I hope you’ll consider answering it. I have a new puppy (an eight-pound terrier mutt). I eventually want her to sleep in bed with me. However, she’s not toilet-trained yet, so I “crate” her at night in the laundry room (in a small dog cage). She cries all night. It’s heartbreaking. Please help!—Sleepless in Dogtown

A: We call dogs “man’s best friend” and treat them just like our human best friends—if at 11pm you say to your BFF, “Wow, wouldja look at the time,” gently remove the beer from her hand, and usher her to her cage in your laundry room.

Crate training, recommended by vets, breeders, and the American Kennel Club, involves confining a dog to a “den”—a cage or gated-off area—with her bed and her favorite toys to dismember. However, the crate is not supposed to be used for punishment—as a sort of Doggy San Quentin—but, say, for times you can’t watch her to keep her from using the $3,000 leather couch as a chew toy or the antique Persian rug as an opulently colored hand-knotted toilet.

The problem you’re experiencing in crating your dog at night comes out of doggy-human coevolution. Anthrozoologist John W. S. Bradshaw explains that over generations, we humans bred dogs to be emotionally dependent on us. Not surprisingly, dogs miss their owners, sometimes desperately, when they are separated from them—and other dogs don’t seem to fill the emotional void. In one of Bradshaw’s studies—of 40 Labrador retrievers and border collies—“well over 50 percent of the Labs and almost half of the collies showed some kind of separation distress” when left alone.

Fortunately, puppies can be trained to understand that picking up your car keys isn’t human-ese for “Goodbye forever!” Bradshaw’s advice in Dog Sense: “Pick up keys, go to door, praise dog.” Next: Pick up keys. Go out door. Come right back in. Praise dog.Go out for increasingly longer intervals, and “go back a stage” if the dog shows anxiety.

And good news for you: You probably don’t have to spoon with your dog to keep her from feeling separation distress at night. My tiny Chinese crested now sleeps (uh, snores like a cirrhotic old wino) on my pillow, resting her tiny snout on my neck. However, back before she had her bathroom business under control, I went through the crying-at-night-in-the-crate thing (actually a gated alcove by my office).

I felt like the second coming of Cruella de Vil. Then I remembered something about dogs: they have a sense of smell on the level of superhero powers. Maybe my dog didn’t have to be in bed; maybe near bed would do. I snagged a big see-through plastic container (maybe four feet long and three feet high) that my neighbors were tossing out. At bedtime, I put it next to my bed and put my dog in it with her bed and a pee pad. She turned around three times, curled up and went to sleep—after giving me a look I’m pretty sure said, “Hey, next time you’re gonna throw me in ‘the hole,’ gimme some notice, and I’ll menace the mailman with a sharpened Nylabone.”

Q: I keep seeing men pushing dogs in baby strollers and carrying dogs as women do. What’s going on? An epidemic of sissified men? If I ever did this, I’d hope my family would have me committed.—Disturbed

A: Thankfully, the Centers for Disease Control lists no reports of an outbreak of Pomeranians poking their little heads out of man purses. However, you’re right; dog strollers are increasingly becoming a thing. As for why this is, think Field of Dreams: “If you build it”—and sell it at Petco, people will buy it so they won’t have to leave their old, tired and/or disabled doggy home alone.

As for what pushing a doggybuggy says about a man, anthropologists and zoologists would call this a “costly signal.” This is an extravagant or risky trait or behavior that comes with a substantial price—which suggests that the quality being displayed is for real. An example of this is conspicuous waste—signaling vast wealth by using $100 bills as birdcage liners. Accordingly, it takes a man with masculinity to burn to not fear putting off all those women who previously announced to their friends, “We want sensitive men!—though not, you know, ‘put their Shih Tzu in a baby stroller’ sensitive.”

Final Cut

Top ten films of 2018: Roma, Active Measures, Black KkKlansman, Black Panther, Cold War, First Reformed, The Other Side of the Wind, Sorry to Bother You, Support the Girls, Suspiria.

Runners up: Active Measures, Blindspotting, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Leave No Trace, Shirkers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, First Man.

Snap your fingers, like Thanos, and half of all existing motion pictures turn into a shower of disintegrating pixels. Imposing scarcity is a tragic task, but it had to be done to make room for more tent poles. Just ask the FilmStruck proprietors, who made so much vanish so that deserving stockholders might affix ermine mud flaps to their Porsche Cayennes.

The process needs no empurpled Josh Brolin, though. The decay-prone qualities of an all-digital media are bad enough—as opposed to 35mm, which can survive decades in a frozen dump. Preserving all this digital cinema is going to be a technical challenge for anyone watching a hundred years from now. (Of course, you could be like that now-infamous professor who opined in the Washington Post that the loss of FilmStruck just cleared the deck of a lot of moldy old films enshrining racism and sexism, so why not dump it and make room for something new.)

But the contradiction of supposedly having everything at hand—we certainly don’t—is aggravating. So much of the lineup on streaming services is “for us to know and for you to find out,” a self-fulfilling forecast of “content” unwatched.

Happily, Roma, did create a buzz through the old way of word of mouth. And all honor for exhibitors such as 3Below, taking a gamble that people would want to see a real movie in a real theater even while it played on Netflix.

Yet some of these names will be unfamiliar. The documentary Active Measures took the spot reserved for Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Tender and moving as that profile of Mr. Rogers was, you ought to give primacy to the kind of documentary filmmaking that could get a reporter killed. The analysis of Putin skullduggery was as menacing as supervillainy in any Marvel epic.

Black KkKlansman and Black Panther are forever linked by titles. The first is a New York film school-style attack on a wild tale, based on a true story the way a cube of bouillon is based on an ox. It’s a reminder of how much infuriating fun Spike Lee can be—there’s still a point on that Spike. And there isn’t a white American alive who should miss Harry Belafonte’s lecture on the weight of cinema. As for Black Panther, it just may be another Wizard of Oz someday.

Cold War opens in January, an ironical black and white romance of missed connections amid the Soviet days. It has the lyricism of the best of Nabokov.

First Reformed’s somber tone and the mussy ending is a challenge, but Paul Schrader’s mystical cinephilia deserves all the honors its getting.

Speaking of cinephilia, the completed Other Side of the Wind shows the limberness of late-period Orson Welles. What else might be resurrected?

In Sorry to Bother You, Boots Riley uses comedy to cut up racism, matching the vigor, ferment and outlandishness seen in last-century counterculture satire, from the Firesign Theater to Lindsay Anderson’s Candide story O Lucky Man! (1973).

Viva Support the Girls, one of the best yet least known on this list. Andrew Bujalski’s study of a titties-and-beer bar in suburban Texas honors the ingenuity of a sharp middle manager (an endearing Regina King) intervening between the friendly young imbeciles she employs and her swine of a boss.

Luca Guadagnino’s deeply frightening 1970s-set Suspiria remake is my idea of a solstice movie, since a season of darkness is perfect for tales of death and night and blood. More on its satanic powers later when Amazon decides to “drop” it for streaming (the word is significant, somehow—it can mean either “bestow” or “get rid of”).

Play It Back

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It was quite a year. After a devastating end to 2017 in neighboring Sonoma and Napa counties, 2018 was a year of healing and rebuilding in the North Bay, and music and art played a vital part in keeping spirits high. Looking back on the concerts, album releases and other musical adventures in Marin, it’s clear that the scene is strong as ever and getting stronger. Here, we revisit some highlights of the year in music.

In the wake of 2017’s disaster, Mill Valley musician and producer Scott Mickelson was one of the first to spearhead a musical fire relief project; collaborating with Bay Area songwriters to record a benefit compilation album, After the Fire: Vol. 1.

“My wife and I have been enjoying Napa and Sonoma since 1987; that was always our go-to place. It hit me hard, the thought that it won’t ever be the same in our lifetime,” said Mickelson last March when the album was released and raised thousands of dollars for relief. Last month, Mickelson started producing a new benefit compilation, this time for the Blanket the Homeless organization, that’s due to be completed by springtime.

Another major musical fundraiser in Marin last year was the annual Sound Summit festival, held atop Mount Tamalpais State Park by Roots & Branches Conservancy, who have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mount Tam conservation efforts. Last year’s Summit featured headliners like Herbie Hancock, Grace Potter and Bob Weir, who also headlined last September’s Sweetwater in the Sun Festival in Novato, a new showcase of the Mill Valley music hall’s roster of talent. Joining Weir (co-owner of the Sweetwater Music Hall) onstage at Sweetwater in the Sun’s headlining jam session were longtime North Bay stars like guitarist Steve Kimock (Zero), drummer Jay Lane and bassist Robin Sylvester (RatDog).

“We’re excited to showcase what we do inside our venue,” said Sweetwater Music Hall general manager and talent buyer Aaron Kayce in advance of last year’s festival, which celebrated Sweetwater’s long history in Marin’s music scene.

Last year was also a memorable one for Marin record stores, as San Rafael’s Red Devil Records turned 20 years old, and Mill Valley Music marked 10 years of business. With vinyl records sales numbers higher now than they’ve been in over 20 years, Red Devil Records owner Barry Lazarus summed up vinyl’s popularity in two ways: it sounds better and it looks better.

“Marin County has such a rich musical history, there are just endless record collectors [here],” Lazarus said last year. “The age range of customers in my store is from 10 to 80 years old, and the flow doesn’t stop.”

Let’s keep the flow going in 2019.

An open letter to Broadway’s latest craze

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Dear Evan Hansen,

I attended the opening-night performance of the San Francisco run of your national tour at the Curran. I’ve heard a lot about your show—the six Tonys and the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. I know this show has touched a nerve with many people and, after seeing it, I understand why. Yet I left the theater feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Your story of a friendless high school student (Ben Levi Ross) with an unspecified behavioral condition who finds himself trapped in a lie of his own creation about a fellow student’s death has a lot to say. It speaks to the lonely, the different and the heartbroken via some beautiful songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“You Will Be Found”), and your tale of the desperate need for human connection in a technologically oppressive world is filled with terrific performances.

Steven Levenson’s book speaks many truths as well. I have experienced first-hand the phenomenon of what happens at a public school when students are faced with the unexpected death of a classmate, how some latch on to a person they never knew and create a relationship that never existed.

Where I find the story less than truthful, however, is in dealing with the issue of your condition and the underlying message of the myth of a “good lie.”

What is it that led you to seek therapeutic help? Is your awkwardness a manifestation of that condition? If it is, why is the audience amused by it? Do they find your behavior cute? Funny? Is your pain being played for laughs? Is that why your lying is excused? The more I thought about this, the more troubled I became.

And what of your lie? Is the fact that everyone seems to come out of the situation unscathed, or even better off, a classic case of the ends justifying the means? Is that the message with which the playwright really wants to leave us?

We live in perilous times, Evan. Truth is a precious commodity that is in too short supply these days. Let’s not lose sight of that via eye-popping stagecraft and soaring ballads.

Sincerely,

Me

‘Dear Evan Hansen’ runs through Dec. 30 at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. Dates and times vary. $25–$325. 415.358.1220. sfcurran.com.

Hero & Zero

Hero
Calling all heroes. We need your help to bring Marin’s foster children back to our community. Sadly, many of our most vulnerable youth are uprooted and placed in care outside of the county, sometimes even several hundred miles away, all because of a shortage of foster parents here. You could make a profound difference in a young person’s life by opening your heart and home to one of these children.
At any given time, Marin averages 80 kids in the foster-care system. Right now, 23 youngsters live outside our area and 19 are girls. In fact, teenage girls are five times more likely to end up placed outside of the county than other children.
The Marin County Recruitment Collaborative and Marin Health and Human Services (HHS) stress the importance of bringing these youngsters back to the county while their biological families work toward reuniting. These children come into the foster-care system through no fault of their own.
“They all need and deserve a safe, loving and consistent place to live where they can thrive and mature,” says Marin HHS child welfare worker Leslie Fields.
Fostering a child allows you to share your unique skills and interest with a child. The experience will change a kid’s life, as well as your own.
To learn more about the foster program, join Marin HHS at an upcoming monthly orientation. The next session takes place on Thursday, Jan. 17, from 7–8:30pm, at the Marin Health and Wellness Campus, 3250 Kerner Boulevard, Room 107, in San Rafael.
A social worker and an experienced foster parent facilitate the meeting and discuss the application process, required training and available support. Visit fosterourfuturemarin.org or call 415.473.2200 for additional orientation dates and information.
Got a Hero or a Zero? Please send submissions to ni***************@ya***.com. Toss roses, hurl stones with more Heroes and Zeroes at pacificsun.com.

Hero & Zero

Hero

Calling all heroes. We need your help to bring Marin’s foster children back to our community. Sadly, many of our most vulnerable youth are uprooted and placed in care outside of the county, sometimes even several hundred miles away, all because of a shortage of foster parents here. You could make a profound difference in a young person’s life by opening your heart and home to one of these children.

At any given time, Marin averages 80 kids in the foster-care system. Right now, 23 youngsters live outside our area and 19 are girls. In fact, teenage girls are five times more likely to end up placed outside of the county than other children.

The Marin County Recruitment Collaborative and Marin Health and Human Services (HHS) stress the importance of bringing these youngsters back to the county while their biological families work toward reuniting. These children come into the foster-care system through no fault of their own.

“They all need and deserve a safe, loving and consistent place to live where they can thrive and mature,” says Marin HHS child welfare worker Leslie Fields.

Fostering a child allows you to share your unique skills and interest with a child. The experience will change a kid’s life, as well as your own.

To learn more about the foster program, join Marin HHS at an upcoming monthly orientation. The next session takes place on Thursday, Jan. 17, from 7–8:30pm, at the Marin Health and Wellness Campus, 3250 Kerner Boulevard, Room 107, in San Rafael.

A social worker and an experienced foster parent facilitate the meeting and discuss the application process, required training and available support. Visit fosterourfuturemarin.org or call 415.473.2200 for additional orientation dates and information.

Got a Hero or a Zero? Please send submissions to ni***************@ya***.com. Toss roses, hurl stones with more Heroes and Zeroes at pacificsun.com.

Under the Sea

The problem with using Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces as a template for a movie is that you can’t use every one of those heroes; you have to make a choice. Is your hero Hercules or King Arthur?

James Wan’s Aquaman, based on the DC Comics character, plays as though a half-dozen movies were compressed into it. It’s all three Lord of the Rings underwater, with a grand finale giant fish war that’s like the largest tureen of bouillabaisse ever cooked. Plus it’s a Tomb Raider movie, and a “finding your royal destiny” movie. Among these moments, it’s also what it started out being—a superhero movie with the titular good guy battling the terrestrial arch-villain Black Manta, played by the bigly Yahya Abdul-Mateen II wearing a giant football-shaped helmet.

Who is this Aquaman, anyway? Early on, the half-Atlantean, half-human Arthur (played by the unimpeachably massive and likable Jason Momoa) rescues a Russian sub from some sadistic pirates. “Aquaman!” the rescued cry, and the muscly hero greets them in Russian. He’s known at once, a hero who knows all men’s tongues. Why then, at other times, does Arthur the Aquaman appear to be a beer-chugging lunk, too dumb to know Pinocchio was a book before it was a movie?

Despite Arthur’s dislike of his snobby ancestral home, magenta-haired princess Mera (Amber Heard) begs him to come to the lower depths in order to dissuade his half-brother King Orm (Patrick Wilson) from coming up here and finishing off every last one of us polluting landlubbers once and for all. Interestingly, Wilson looks a bit like Aquaman from the Silver Age comic books, blonde and bland. In his struggle, Aquaman is helped by his childhood mentor (Willem Dafoe), who himself resembles the watery hero’s across-the-street rival, the Submariner.

Nothing wrong with the production design but, just like when you’re scuba-diving, turbulence interferes with visibility. It’s hard to get a good look at the submerged colossal statues and temples—there is an old-town district in Atlantis, we learn. The citizens ride 20-foot seahorses, champing at their bits. A highlight is an attack of humanoid angler fish with saber teeth. Occasionally, you’re allowed to see the attractions, the iridescent suits of scaly armor with nautilus-shaped shoulder guards and, appropriate to the fishy theme, codpieces. A gigantic octopus beats war drums at a gladiator match, one of the regularly scheduled fight scenes with the digitally simulated battlers seen from all angles of a gyroscopic camera.

As a director, Wan has an unforgivable impatience with romance and contemplative moments. If the old-time directors sometimes fired a starter pistol to get a quick reaction from slowpoke actors, he improves on that by firing a rocket through the middle of any quieter scene.

Incidentally, when Mera and Aquaman arrive in the Sahara, the soundtrack plays Pitbull’s “Ocean to Ocean,” which sample’s Toto’s “Africa.” Could have been worse—remember Donovan’s “Atlantis”?

‘Aquaman’ is playing in wide release in the North Bay.

Picture Marin County

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For our holiday issue, longtime Bohemian and Pacific Sun contributor Rory McNamara takes us on a short tour of the county, captured through his lens. We’ve got a few of his photos and two from friend Sierra Salin, a San Rafael native who’s lived in Fairfax for 25 years. In an artist’s statement, Salin says he is never without a camera close at hand and mainly takes pictures of street scenes and local landscapes, which he publishes on social media.

Rory met Sierra at the Old Sleeping Lady cafe in Fairfax almost a decade ago. The cafe closed last year but Barton’s Bagels (645 San Anselmo Ave., San Anselmo) is still open—and Salin’s got a show of recent photos on the wall at Barton’s.

About The Artist

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Llewellyn Ludlow is an artist from Mill Valley who currently lives in the wild kingdom of Bolinas. A stripped-down version of his sublimely hilarious re-imagining of Mt. Tam and Mill Valley as a Tahoe-like ski town (above) is our cover illustration this week. It’s a Marin Winter Wonderland!

Ludlow’s art is available around West Marin—prints of his Mill Valley ski mecca for sale can be found at Proof Lab, the Depot Bookstore, Two Neat and Ohana Bowls Acai Cafe in Greenbrae. LLbro.com is his website; prints can be ordered there too.

He’s led an interesting life: At an early age Llewellyn fell into a tide pool at Stinson Beach, and when his parents snatched him out of the water, he had a look in his eyes that told his father Lynn, “Neptune had claimed him, and only lent him back to us for a little while.”

A longtime surfer and artist, Llewellyn paints both familiar scenes of West Marin and of the ocean he loves. His paintings decorate many a Marin home, and his mural at Proof Lab Station in Tam Valley is a beloved iconic landmark that gives color to the area.

The depiction of Mt. Tamalpais as a snowy ski mountain was a project that took him over two years to complete. “I wanted to spark the imagination of those who, like me, look up at Mt. Tam and wonder what it would be like as a premier ski mountain.”

He sent along an artist’s statement too:

“To explore the vast world of imagination, sight and sound, and to give something back to a planet that has given so much.

“My objective is to bring awareness of the earth’s beauty through unique perspectives, color combinations and a truly direct connection with our planet.

“Art to me is as important as life; life breathes art.

“Often caught up in our daily lives, we sometimes forget how much beauty and design the earth holds. We, the product of this divine art, should never let go of this pure source.

“My art is constantly reaching for this rich mixture of earth and imagination.

“As a living embodiment of this synthesis composed of mostly water, I feel especially drawn to the ocean. I love to carve my personal signature across the waves by surfing. Painting the ocean and earth to me is no different.”

MPS.1901.Astro

ARIES (March 21–April 19) No one has resisted the force of gravity with more focus than businessman Roger Babson (1875–1967). He wrote an essay entitled “Gravity: Our Enemy Number One,” and sought to develop anti-gravity technology. His Gravity Research Foundation gave awards to authentic scientists who advanced the understanding of gravity. If that organization still existed and offered prizes,...

Advice Goddess

Q: I know humans are typically your subject, but this is a relationship question, so I hope you’ll consider answering it. I have a new puppy (an eight-pound terrier mutt). I eventually want her to sleep in bed with me. However, she’s not toilet-trained yet, so I “crate” her at night in the laundry room (in a small dog...

Final Cut

Top ten films of 2018: Roma, Active Measures, Black KkKlansman, Black Panther, Cold War, First Reformed, The Other Side of the Wind, Sorry to Bother You, Support the Girls, Suspiria. Runners up: Active Measures, Blindspotting, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Leave No Trace, Shirkers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, First Man. Snap your fingers, like Thanos, and half of all existing...

Play It Back

It was quite a year. After a devastating end to 2017 in neighboring Sonoma and Napa counties, 2018 was a year of healing and rebuilding in the North Bay, and music and art played a vital part in keeping spirits high. Looking back on the concerts, album releases and other musical adventures in Marin, it’s clear that the scene...

An open letter to Broadway’s latest craze

Dear Evan Hansen, I attended the opening-night performance of the San Francisco run of your national tour at the Curran. I’ve heard a lot about your show—the six Tonys and the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. I know this show has touched a nerve with many people and, after seeing it, I understand why. Yet I left the theater...

Hero & Zero

Hero Calling all heroes. We need your help to bring Marin’s foster children back to our community. Sadly, many of our most vulnerable youth are uprooted and placed in care outside of the county, sometimes even several hundred miles away, all because of a shortage of foster parents here. You could make a profound difference in a young person’s life...

Hero & Zero

Hero Calling all heroes. We need your help to bring Marin’s foster children back to our community. Sadly, many of our most vulnerable youth are uprooted and placed in care outside of the county, sometimes even several hundred miles away, all because of a shortage of foster parents here. You could make a profound difference in a young person’s life...

Under the Sea

The problem with using Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces as a template for a movie is that you can’t use every one of those heroes; you have to make a choice. Is your hero Hercules or King Arthur? James Wan’s Aquaman, based on the DC Comics character, plays as though a half-dozen movies were compressed into it. It’s...

Picture Marin County

For our holiday issue, longtime Bohemian and Pacific Sun contributor Rory McNamara takes us on a short tour of the county, captured through his lens. We’ve got a few of his photos and two from friend Sierra Salin, a San Rafael native who’s lived in Fairfax for 25 years. In an artist’s statement, Salin says he is never without...

About The Artist

Llewellyn Ludlow is an artist from Mill Valley who currently lives in the wild kingdom of Bolinas. A stripped-down version of his sublimely hilarious re-imagining of Mt. Tam and Mill Valley as a Tahoe-like ski town (above) is our cover illustration this week. It’s a Marin Winter Wonderland! Ludlow’s art is available around West Marin—prints of his Mill Valley ski...
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