This week in the Pacific Sun, our cover story features the massive coho restoration project underway at Lagunitas Creek. On top of that, we’ve got a piece on Novato’s new Boba Nosh, where bubble tea gets a healthy spin, a Spotlight on Tiburon, featuring the upcoming Tiburon Taps Beer Festival and an interview with blues guitar prodigy and platinum-selling artist Kenny Wayne Shepherd. All that and more on stands and online today!
The lovable Sundance hit comedy Patti Cake$ proves John Waters’ law that “hating fat people is the last acceptable prejudice.” It’s a relatively wise feel-gooder. The more extravagant claims made for this comedy include “authenticity.” Diverting as it is, it’s shaped in the familiar Sundancian fashion—uplifting with a happy ending. Let’s put it plainly—as was once said of the homogenized tons o’ fun rap group the Fat Boys, at times, Patti Cake$ has the street authority of a “Don’t Walk” sign.
It’s about unlikely stardom, sought by the obese, 23-year-old Patti Dombrowski (Danielle Macdonald). She gets her multi-generational extended family together into the oddest group since the Bremen Town Musicians. She stays with grandma (the ever-ready Cathy Moriarty), a gravel-voiced wheelchair-rider, ready to join her late husband in the grave. Her semi-estranged mom (the terrific Bridget Everett of Lady Dynamite) is, like almost every comedienne before her, tremendous when she plays a bitter dream-crusher. The big woman reveals her own embarrassing yearnings via a karaoke performance of “These Dreams” by Heart.
There’s someone who recognizes Patti’s star qualities: Her pal and No. 1 fan Hareesh (Siddharth Dhananjay). If there’s such a thing as a ‘friend zone,’ such as unappealing guys complain about, there’s also a sidekick zone. Hareesh never really emerges from it.
The fairy tale has a rough background—suburban Jersey at its skeeviest. When the characters want anything from powerful marijuana to a credible recording studio, they need to drive to Newark for it. Odd how things out in Jersey look cheaper when they try to get fancier.
We can admire Patti’s dreams. We finally see her serious chops when she does a battle rap outside of a gas station. She holds her own against a dickwielding rapper, a neighborhood muscle-kid (McCaul Lombardi).
This is a sweet movie, but it’ll gall viewers who believe that fighting the viciousness of the world with troubling art is a duty—it’s not just a stage you get over, as if you were a rebellious kid who finally learned to clean up and be nice.
Self-taught blues guitar prodigy and platinum-selling artist Kenny Wayne Shepherd began playing music in earnest after seeing Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1984, at the age of seven. “It was a life-changing experience,” Shepherd says. “That was the day the fire was lit inside of me.”
Already steeped in his father’s massive music collection, Shepherd made it his mission at that young age to play and positively affect people through music the way that Vaughan affected him. Over the last 25 years, he’s done exactly that with signature songs like “Blue on Black” and acclaimed blues albums under his name and with the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band.
Shepherd kicks his music into high gear with the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band’s latest album, Lay It On Down, noted for a farther-reaching rock and Americana sound than most of his previous work.
“All the different genres you hear throughout the record is all stuff I grew up listening to,” Shepherd says. “[Blues are] my first love, but all of these genres are closely related. It’s natural for that stuff to find its way into my music.”
Currently on a massive tour in support of Lay It On Down, Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band performs in the North Bay next month as part of the Russian River Jazz & Blues Festival.
“The mindset is bringing something positive to the people through music,” Shepherd says. “Regardless of the political climate or whatever nonsense is going on in the world today, everybody has their own personal things that they’re dealing with, and music is universally something that helps people heal one way or another through difficult times.”
Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band, Sunday, Sept. 10, Russian River Jazz & Blues Festival, Johnson’s Beach, Guerneville; $55-$110 single day; $90-$190 weekend pass; russianriverfestivals.com.
Many of us equate boba or bubble tea with a cloyingly sweet concoction of artificially flavored milky tea filled with large, hard tapioca balls and lots of sugar. But if partners Monica Pa and Liz Greenberg have their way, their newly opened Boba Nosh in the Novato Fair Shopping Center will dramatically change the way that we think about bubble tea.
Pa, a longtime Novato resident (originally from Taiwan) who raised her family here and teaches Mandarin to students of all ages, wanted to introduce a “better” version of the popular Taiwanese tea drink. She personally sourced traditional black and green teas from all over the country for her special offerings at Boba Nosh.
Greenberg, a chemical engineer by trade with formal pastry training, worked long and hard on perfecting recipes, which she proudly touts as egg-, nut-, soy- and gluten-free. Together the two women have created an exciting and original concept that may take a bit of educating—especially for the younger kids who have only ever known the hyper-sweetened version of bubble tea.
Here’s how it works—think of the experience as bubble tea deconstructed. Customers select their base beverage (black or green tea, or decaf coffee), add beads of tapioca if desired, and then select a juice concentrate; there’s even a fresh fruit option. Sweeteners and milk can be added, and simple syrup, blue agave and sugar are available—but customers are in charge of how much.
I sampled a peach and passionfruit version with tapioca. The flavors were bright and tasted of their true flavors. But it was the beads of tapioca—toothsome and just the right size—that completely won me over; I wanted more. I skipped the sweetener and enjoyed the tangy, refreshing bite that the cool beverage offered on a hot summer day.
Boba Nosh, 942 Diablo Ave., Novato; 415/761-9469; bobanosh.com.
The heavy equipment operators were in full rumbling flower on a recent morning in West Marin, spread out in the now-cleared underbrush and bush along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard where it intersects with Platform Bridge Road, scraping out the earth, digging giant troughs, piling up the dirt, planting trees—what the heck’s going on?
What’s going on is an ambitious effort to restore floodplain habitat along Lagunitas Creek, so that the coho salmon and steelhead might have a fighting chance at a true rebound from a recent and oft-told story that speaks of anemic and alarmingly low numbers of the coho especially, an endangered species under state and federal law.
The two-year, $1.1 million project now underway, a multi-agency endeavor that will be completed by fall of 2018, will eventually touch 10 separate pieces along the storied Lagunitas, which, as the local joke goes, belches forth hops-heavy beer along its banks even as it supports one of the hardiest populations of coho salmon in the state of California.
The project’s major imperative is to create new floodplains for the coho and steelhead alongside the currently not-so-roaring Lagunitas, now in its sultry summer flow and with many of its residents out in the ocean.
The driving idea behind the project is to enhance the winter carrying capacity of the Lagunitas so that when the coho return from their summer vacation at sea, they’ve got plenty of floodplain opportunities for nooking up.
This is a big, sprawling project that loops in bureaucrats from the state and the county, and which is being undertaken this year largely on land owned by the National Park Service.
The log-jam for a greater restoration yield of the hammered coho fishery, says Gregory Andrew, fishery program manager with the Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD), is the lack of sufficient winter habitat for coho returning from sea.
Now workers are busy creating new floodplain channels that run alongside Lagunitas Creek proper, “to provide more physical habitat for the salmon,” says Andrew, “so they can grow as big and fat and happy as they can—it’s not just about the numbers, it’s about the size and health of the fish that come out of here.
The Lagunitas is something of a regional crown jewel for coho restoration efforts, hosting “one of the best coho populations in the state of California,” says Andrew as he lays out the raw numbers: Between 500 and 800 coho return to the Lagunitas each winter, which isn’t a great number, but is better than any creek in the state and even outclasses the mighty Russian River to the north. One critical piece of the Lagunitas is that when it spills out into Tomales Bay, there’s no sandbar blocking the salmon’s route to the ocean.
The Lagunitas is a 20-mile jewel of a creek with about 50 miles of tributary-creek action that spins off of it, says Andrew, and the health of the creek is enhanced through some built-in protections: The MMWD owns the upper part of the Lagunitas Creek Watershed; the creek runs through Samuel P. Taylor State Park before hitting the federal National Park Service land in way-West Marin, where we are today, and where Andrew is giving a tour of the extensive and dusty work-zones.
The general recent history of the coho populations in the Lagunitas, and California generally, sees their number plummet in the 1980s; regulatory efforts helped push the numbers back up to some level of respectability around 2004-05; but by 2008, the coho numbers had plummeted again, and fish-surveyors found that an alarmingly low 100 coho had returned to winter-up in Lagunita.
After the 2008 debacle, the MMWD, whose agency-hand in these efforts stems from its role as watershed manager for Marin County, worked with other agencies to embark on more limited restoration efforts in the creek, “and there is some evidence that the work we’ve done has made a difference. Now with this big project, we’re hoping that it will have a profound effect” on future winter stocks. He’d love to see that 500-800 number spike up to a rate-of-return more in the 2,500 fish-per-year range. Anecdotally and unscientifically, Andrew says historical numbers were probably more in the 5,000 fish-per-year return range.
In these parts, there’s no pressure from extractors or vineyards or over-weaning real-estate development or pressure to log the land, and not much in the way of riparian pressures that can engender more of a “coho-versus pinot” dynamic in Sonoma and Napa county waterways.
The Marin project is broken into 10 distinct bits, and half of the work will be completed by October; the other half is on the docks for next summer and fall. The work needs to be undertaken when the rain isn’t falling (if the rain should happen to fall at all).
The biggest unplanned-for exigency in the project, says Andrew after a pause, was in protecting other endangered or protected species in and along Lagunitas Creek, even as workers set out to protect the coho.
He notes that there are bats, rare freshwater shrimp, spotted salamanders and owls, that all had to be herded or otherwise encouraged to move on while workers brought in the backhoes and front-loaders to create a 1,000 foot floodplain channel along Platform Bridge Road, on what’s called Site 10, and in other work-zones to come.
The idea behind the project, says Andrew, is to mimic nature in re-animating the historic creek-side floodplains “without causing anything that was unintended. It’s a highly sensitive spot,” he says. “The watershed hosts a lot of species. We want to enhance the habitat, but don’t want to mess up what’s there already. It’s a challenge—there’s all sorts of critters.”
Andrew says he hopes for a mild-to-average winter this year so as not to undo the work that’s been undertaken. Massive deluges could conspire to wipe out or otherwise damage the new floodplain channels and also the numerous log-jam structures that have been strategically built to encourage water flow into the newly-created floodplain troughs.
Today in the dog days of August, the creek is lolling along at a very slow-moving 8-cubic-feet per second. That number, says Andrew will typically spike to around 2,000 feet per second in the winter.
But during the heaviest of the heavy weather from the rain-soaked winter of 2016-17, upwards of 8,000 to 10,000 cubic feet of liquid love coursed through Lagunitas Creek channel per second. That’s not especially amenable to coho salmon looking for shelter from the proverbial storms.
The idea of the floodplain channels, Andrew says, is to give the coho a refuge from the ripping currents of winter. As an added bonus, the nooky little floodplains also give the salmon a place to hide from predators, in this case a healthy population of voraciously cute river otters who apparently don’t mind a fast-flowing creek.
A backhoe groans and dragonflies flit around Site 10 as Andrew explains the scope and arc of the project, which involves a score of workers on site and numerous agencies of the county, state and federal variety. Here, workers have planted willow stumps along the now-dry floodplain channel, which will provide future shade. They’ve bermed-off the Lagunitas itself from the ground-scraping enterprise which has brought the adjacent land to a grade at or below that of the creek itself. When the rains come, the creek will find its own level and will naturally breach into the floodplain.
Andrew says to check with him in a few years for the answer to a question he couldn’t answer on this hot and dusty August afternoon: What sorts of beneficial unintended consequences might a project such as this engender? For now, he says as he points to the long and sandy trough that runs along the creek, dotted with yellow flags to indicate the way forward: “Coho and steelhead love this kind of habitat.”
It’s hard to find an enemy of coho restoration efforts underway throughout the state, but there’s an undercurrent inquiry I’ve picked up in reporting on the California salmon fisheries which says: Given the bleak numbers and return on investment, is it worth all this time and money to save a few fish? Is there an argument that says it’s high-time to throw in the towel and admit defeat?
Um, no.
Andrew insists on the urgent need and the popularity of such projects as he highlights that “people across the board want to see the coho and steelhead populations do well,” and that includes the cattle ranches that are all over this part of West Marin.
As we tour the sites, Andrew repeatedly cites the “public trust value” of preserving and enhancing the coho populations, now supplanted by a vigorous state program that’s seeing lots of coho spring forth from hatcheries and wind up in state creeks and rivers.
The MMWD has been counting fish for decades in the waterways that fall under its management rubric, says Andrew as we take a quick drive from Site 10 to Site 3, on the south side of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and which runs along the sublime Cross Marin Trail. Here workers scramble with chainsaws to square up a water-shunt piling, and a small bucket-loader is filling in a temporary diversionary channel as the work on this site is completed.
Workers have created the big wooden shunt-the-water structure, and once they’re done with Site 3 they’ll move to Site 4, where this complex and fascinating dance of restoration will continue.
First they’ll have to remove any fish from that part of the creek, and relocate them while the work is undertaken. That process may include giving the coho and steelhead a little shock to their system, with the “zapper,” so state workers from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife can scoop them up without harming them. They will also use seine nets to corral the fish.
Does shocking the fish represent cruelty to coho? Well, would you rather be extinct or a little shocked?
Andrew goes to great lengths to assure a reporter that this is a normal and routine aspect of fish-surveying. We have a shared laugh: It’s not like they’re chucking hand grenades into the creek, that’s the “old school” way of counting fish.
Matt Erickson is an environmental scientist and watershed planner with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and he’s onsite today checking out the ongoing work at Site 3, where workers have created a little ox-bow-like diversionary flow while they install a massive wood-works to shunt water into the creek and hence, into the new floodplain downstream.
The dance of coho restoration is an intricate and interlocking enterprise where the utter fragility of the species (and its creek-to-ocean journey) is met with brute-force heavy equipment and chainsaws in order to provide some buffer to that fragility.
Another dance is the interaction that goes on in any of these projects, between numerous agencies that have a stake in the restoration—including, for example the State Water Board, which has all sorts of regulations around the allowable “total maximum daily load” of sedimentation in the creek.
As we linger around Site 3, I ask Erickson and Andrew—respectively, the state and the county point-persons on the job—“Who is the overall godhead here? Who’s in charge?”
They both laugh and immediately point their finger at the other. As we continue with the tour, Erickson digs in on the question and runs with the “dance of restoration” concept as he notes that here we are, on National Park Service land where a big project requiring many permits and construction contracts is underway.
As a practical matter, county project manager Andrew is the on-the-ground guy who coordinates and manages the privately-contracted work crews.
Toward the end of a media tour he communicates with the job foreman and engineer under contract at Covello Construction Management Plus, a heavy equipment operator with corporate headquarters in Walnut Creek and an office in Santa Rosa, about where machine operators can and can’t run their loaders over the next few days as the work shifts from Site 3 to Site 4.
Erickson has a broader charge to oversee the permitting processes and provide state oversight to the project, especially given the sensitive and endangered status of the coho. His job, he says, is to protect and enhance the coho’s numbers, despite the difficulties and cost. “It’s not in our DNA to give up and quit” on the coho, says Erickson. Twenty years ago he was working for the state as an ocean-salmon fish regulator. Now he’s on the other end of the creek trying to save a crippled fishery from outright extinction.
The good news, says Andrew, is that with proper management and a steadfast commitment from civic leaders, “the coho population can rebound from very low numbers.”
Fishing is not permitted in the Lagunitas at any time. But, and ironically enough, the world-record steelhead trout was caught in the Lagunitas, when you could still fish it decades ago, Erickson says. That was a 26-pound fish. A big fish.
In this day and age, there’s no shortage of beer festivals—local or all-out national, for the casual beer lover or for the hardcore expert. But the Tiburon Taps Beer Festival, coming up on Saturday, September 23, has a feature that many others can envy—breathtaking vistas of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay. Just like craft beer, the views never get old.
Thrown every fall by The Ranch, through the Tiburon-Belvedere Joint Recreation Committee, the festival is a one-day extravaganza that welcomes numerous breweries, cideries, and even coffee roasters from the Bay Area and beyond, with its roster reaching as far as Europe; this year, there’s representation from the U.K., courtesy of Auchentoshan, a single malt whiskey brand.
“The festival began when I ran into my old friend and co-worker Cathleen Andreucci, the director of The Ranch, at a Starbucks,” recalls Jessica Hotchkiss, the youth recreation supervisor and the festival’s chair. “She said she wanted to throw a beer festival and would I be interested in doing that. I said yes, and the rest is history!”
Going into its fourth year, the festival brings together more than 30 vendors, from the highly regarded Magnolia Brewing Company in San Francisco, to smaller, nevertheless intriguing ones with names like the Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka and Adobe Creek Brewing in Novato. All will be offering samples alongside complimentary food stalls and entertainment. For a venture that started as a chat at a Starbucks branch, the festival has definitely outgrown its humble beginning.
“I have years of event planning experience, but this event is by far the largest I’ve ever run” says Hotchkiss. “Each year I learn more, and we can make the event a more enjoyable experience for the customer.”
Last year, she says, the festival was sold out, with more than 1,300 attendees. Hotchkiss is responsible for “begging every brewery in Northern California to attend our event,” and with the abundance of beer events in the area to keep makers busy, the mission isn’t as easy as it may seem. “It takes me around six months to fill our brewery and beverage roster,” she confesses.
This year, her efforts have yielded some interesting participants. “We are very excited to introduce new local Marin County brewers, Indian Valley Brewing, Rugged Coast Brewing and Adobe Creek Brewing,” Hotchkiss says. “Another big addition is Ballast Point Brewing & Spirits out of San Diego. I truly appreciate all of the brewers that attend our event, as they are donating their time and beverages.”
The vendors are not the only ones donating—the festival is largely run by volunteers, and ticket sales help raise funds, Hotchkiss says, “so that we can offer scholarships for members of the community to participate in our programs.” The Ranch offers fitness, language, technology and art classes for adults, sports activities and classes for youth and a variety of speciality summer camps.
The festivities, all included in the $45 ticket ($20 for a designated driver), include a concert from cover band Neon Velvet, the food—which one can munch on endlessly, lawn games and the Best Brew contest (past winners include Baeltane Brewing Company in 2014 for The Frog that Ate the World Double IPA, Benoit-Casper Brewing Company in 2015 for Golden Pear Ale and Anderson Valley Brewing Company in 2016 for Summer Solstice Seasonal Ale).
And, front and center, there are the aforementioned stunning views. “I’d have to say our location is the best in the bay,” Hotchkiss says. “Shoreline Park is on the water, with views of the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge.”
Hotchkiss reminds all attendees that with the location comes another perk: “The Blue & Gold [Fleet] ferry terminal is located at the entry, and is an amazingly safe way to travel to the event.” It’s a detail that will come in handy after all of that sun-bathed craft beer cornucopia.
Tiburon Taps Beer Festival, Sept. 23, 1-4pm, Shoreline Park, 311 Paradise Dr., Tiburon; 415/435.4355; tiburontaps.org.
Hero: Two women recently battled to bring a man back to life after he experienced cardiac failure during a tennis lesson at the Mt. Tam Racquet Club in Larkspur. Former Stanford nurse Suzanne Dolan and her friend Melissa Lasky were on the next court when the victim dropped to the ground. Suzanne ran to him and assessed that he was unconscious with no pulse. While she started chest compressions, she instructed Melissa to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The man came back to life and then drifted away again; however, when paramedics arrived minutes later, he was alive. After a stint in Marin General’s ICU, he’s recovering at home and enjoyed a heartfelt reunion with Suzanne and Melissa this week. We hear that both women will receive an award from the city of Larkspur. Bravo.
Zero: Long-time Pacific Sun reader and letters to the editor writer Tony Good reports that he was asleep on a balcony on Fourth Street in downtown San Rafael last week when an unknown assailant attacked him. The next morning, after his friends saw him and told him that he needed medical attention, he walked to the bus stop to wait for the bus to Marin General. He looked bad enough that a passerby insisted on calling an ambulance. They were rightfully concerned. Good sustained several injuries from the atrocious assault, including three facial fractures, a cut near his eye that required stitches and a sprained hand. The merciless Zero who committed this crime is the worst kind of monster, for Good is homeless and disabled. We wish him a quick recovery.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Welcome to Swami Moonflower’s Psychic Hygiene Hints. Ready for some mystical cleansing? Hint No. 1: To remove stains on your attitude, use a blend of chardonnay wine, tears from a cathartic crying session and dew collected before dawn. Hint No. 2: To eliminate glitches in your love life, polish your erogenous zones with pomegranate juice while you visualize the goddess kissing your cheek. No. 3: To get rid of splotches on your halo, place angel food cake on your head for two minutes, then bury the cake in holy ground while chanting, “It’s not my fault! My evil twin’s a jerk!” No. 4: To banish the imaginary monkey on your back, whip your shoulders with a long silk ribbon until the monkey runs away. No. 5: To purge negative money karma, burn a dollar bill in the flame of a green candle.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): A reader named Kameel Hawa writes that he “prefers pleasure to leisure and leisure to luxury.” That list of priorities would be excellent for you to adopt during the coming weeks. My analysis of the astrological omens suggests that you will be the recipient of extra amounts of permission, relief, approval and ease. I won’t be surprised if you come into possession of a fresh X-factor or wild card. In my opinion, to seek luxury would be a banal waste of such precious blessings. You’ll get more health-giving benefits that will last longer if you cultivate simple enjoyments and restorative tranquility.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The coming weeks will be an excellent time to cruise past the houses where you grew up, the schools you used to attend, the hotspots where you and your old friends hung out and the places where you first worked and had sex. In fact, I recommend a grand tour of your past. If you can’t literally visit the locations where you came of age, simply visualize them in detail. In your imagination, take a leisurely excursion through your life story. Why do I advise this exercise? Because you can help activate your future potentials by reconnecting with your roots.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): One of my favorite Cancerian artists is Penny Arcade, a New York performance artist, actress and playwright. In this horoscope, I offer a testimonial in which she articulates the spirit you’d be wise to cultivate in the coming weeks. She says, “I am the person I know best, inside out, the one who best understands my motivations, my struggles, my triumphs. Despite occasionally betraying my best interests to keep the peace, to achieve goals, or for the sake of beloved friendships, I astound myself by my appetite for life, my unwavering curiosity into the human condition, my distrust of the status quo, my poetic soul and abiding love of beauty, my strength of character in the face of unfairness, and my optimism despite defeats and loss.”
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The Witwatersrand is a series of cliffs in South Africa. It encompasses 217 square miles. From this area, which is a tiny fraction of the Earth’s total land surface, humans have extracted 50 percent of all of the gold ever mined. I regard this fact as an apt metaphor for you to meditate on in the next 12 months, Leo. If you’re alert, you will find your soul’s equivalent of Witwatersrand. What I mean is that you’ll have a golden opportunity to discover emotional and spiritual riches that will nurture your soul as it has rarely been nurtured.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): What I wish for you is a toasty coolness. I pray that you will claim a messy gift. I want you to experience an empowering surrender and a calming climax. I very much hope, Virgo, that you will finally see an obvious secret, capitalize on some unruly wisdom and take an epic trip to an intimate turning point. I trust that you’ll find a barrier that draws people together instead of keeping them apart. These wonders may sound paradoxical, and yet they’re quite possible and exactly what you need.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Psychologist James Hansell stated his opinion of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud: “He was wrong about so many things. But he was wrong in such interesting ways. He pioneered a whole new way of looking at things.” That description should provide good raw material for you to consider as you play with your approach to life in the coming weeks, Libra. Being right won’t be half as important as being willing to gaze at the world from upside-down, inside-out perspectives. So I urge you to put the emphasis on formulating experimental hypotheses, not on proving definitive theories. Be willing to ask naive questions and make educated guesses and escape your own certainties.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): You’re entering a phase of your astrological cycle when you’ll be likely to receive gifts at a higher rate than usual. Some gifts could be big, complex and catalytic, though others may be subtle, cryptic or even covert. While some may be useful, others could be problematic. So I want to make sure you know how important it is to be discerning about these offerings. You probably shouldn’t blindly accept all of them. For instance, don’t rashly accept a “blessing” that would indebt or obligate you to someone in ways that feel uncomfortable.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): You are currently under the influence of astrological conditions that have led to dramatic boosts of self-esteem in laboratory rats. To test the theory that this experimental evidence can be applied to humans, I authorize you to act like a charismatic egomaniac in the coming weeks. JUST KIDDING! I lied about the lab rats. And I lied about you having the authorization to act like an egomaniac. But here are the true facts: The astrological omens suggest that you can and should be a lyrical swaggerer and a sensitive swashbuckler.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I invite you to eliminate all of the following activities from your repertoire in the next three weeks: Squabbling, hassling, feuding, confronting, scuffling, skirmishing, sparring and brawling. Why is this my main message to you? Because the astrological omens tell me that everything important you need to accomplish will come from waging an intense crusade of peace, love and understanding. The bickering and grappling stuff won’t help you achieve success even a little—and would probably undermine it.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Stockbrokers in Pakistan grew desperate when the Karachi Stock Exchange went into a tailspin. In an effort to reverse the negative trend, they performed a ritual sacrifice of 10 goats in a parking lot. But their “magic” failed. Stocks continued to fade. Much later they recovered, but not in a timely manner that would suggest the sacrifice worked. I urge you to avoid their approach to fixing problems, especially now. Reliance on superstition and wishful thinking is guaranteed to keep you stuck. On the other hand, I’m happy to inform you that the coming weeks will be a highly favorable time to use disciplined research and rigorous logic to solve dilemmas.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In the coming days, maybe you could work some lines from the Biblical “Song of Solomon” into your intimate exchanges. The moment is ripe for such extravagance. Can you imagine saying things like, “Your lips are honey,” or “You are a fountain in the garden, a well of living waters”? In my opinion, it wouldn’t even be too extreme for you to murmur, “May I find the scent of your breath like apricots, and your whispers like spiced wine flowing smoothly to welcome my caresses.” If those sentiments seem too flowery, you could pluck gems from Pablo Neruda’s love sonnets. How about this one: “I want to do with you what spring does to the cherry trees.” Here’s another: “I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty.”
Homework: Each of us has a secret ignorance. What’s yours? What will you do about it? Testify at Freewillastrology.com.
Q: My husband has a great body, but since we got married two years ago, he has completely stopped working out. One reason I was initially so attracted to him was that he was in great shape. I go to Pilates four times a week. How do I motivate him to go back to the gym?—Toned
A: If your husband’s starting to see definition in his legs, it shouldn’t be from rolling over and falling asleep on the remote.
As for how to get him back into workout mode, consider what psychologists Edward Deci and Richard M. Ryan have learned in studying motivation. They break it down into two categories—intrinsic and extrinsic, fancy terms for internal and external. The extrinsic kind is outside pressure to do something—like nagging from the wife to start going to the gym instead of just driving by the place and waving.
Extrinsic pressure tends to motivate defiance rather than compliance—which is to say that it’s remarkably effective at bringing out the “terrible twos” in a 46-year-old man. Intrinsic motivation, however, is the kind that Deci and Ryan find leads to lasting change. This is motivation that comes from within a person, meaning that it’s in tune with who they are and what they want for themselves—like abs of steel instead of … wait, there are abs in there?
So, the challenge here is not how to make your husband work out, but how to get him to start wanting what you want. You’re allowed to make requests of the person you’re married to, so ask him to try something for you—go to the gym … for just three weeks. Reassure him that you still find him hot, but explain that you really, really find him hot when it looks like you could chip a tooth on one of his biceps.
The three-week stint—beyond getting him back in the habit of going to the gym—should lead to some positive changes in his body, giving him a sense of accomplishment. Because Deci and Ryan find that feelings of “competence” are an integral part of intrinsic motivation, there’s a good chance that he’ll feel motivated to keep working out—instead of trying to get by on making those weightlifter grunts every time he changes the channel.
Q: I’m trying to get over a breakup, and one of my best friends, in an attempt to help me move on, keeps saying, “He doesn’t want you!” I get that (and I do need to move on), but hearing that makes me feel unlovable and even more depressed. I am seeing what went wrong; I should have believed him when he told me at the very beginning that he was “terrified of relationships.” I’m sure it’s frustrating for her to see me in pain, but I’m just not ready to get back out there. What do I tell her so she stops making me feel worse?—Still Sad
A: Misery sometimes wishes company would shut its big flapping trap.
Of course, your friend means well. She just wants Pain and its BFF, Suffering, to bugger off already. However, like most people, she probably doesn’t understand that the sadness you’re experiencing isn’t just a crappy feeling. Like all emotions, it has a job to do. In fact, sadness is a tool, just like a hammer.
Psychiatrist and evolutionary psychologist Randolph Nesse explains that “happiness and sadness usually follow experiences of gain or loss,” helping us by “influencing future behavior” in ways that increase our chances of passing along our genes (including surviving long enough to manage that).
Happiness, for example, urges us, “Do that again and you’ll see even more of me!” Sadness, on the other hand, warns us, “Do that again, missy, and I’ll drag you right back to Boohoosville.” Nesse writes that “those people who don’t experience much sadness … are predicted to engage again in the same behaviors that previously led to loss.”
Thank your friend for trying to make you feel better, but tell her that what you need from her is not tough love but the kind that involves hugs, Kleenex and maybe a snack. Explain the utility of sadness—and how you’re using it as a tool to understand the past and act more wisely in the future. In other words, you aren’t stalling in moving on; you’re learning—and not just how long you have to cry before the neighbors start going to work in rowboats and the government sends in the National Guard with sandbags and a year’s supply of Cheetos.
This week in the Pacific Sun, you’ll find our annual Fall Arts Guide, which lists all of the fun arts and culture events happening in the North Bay from September through November. On top of that, we’ve got a story about riding a SMART train, a piece on the Kona Ice truck serving up shave ice and raising money for local schools, a preview of ‘FairyWorlds!’, a take on Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and a story about film dubbing. All that and more on stands and online today!
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