The Messenger is a film about war that doesn’t take sides, according to director Oren Moverman, but seeks instead to personalize the losses experienced by the families of the servicemen and women who don’t return.

Oren Moverman (right), writer-director of The Messenger, says there is no political agenda behind it, other than a desire to raise awareness about the human costs and consequences of modern warfare.

The Messenger has drawn generally good reviews, but Moverman is even more pleased that coverage of it has also included his central themes about the people it portrays.

In his private life, actor Woody Harrelson (below right)  is well know for his progressive politics. But in the film, Moverman says Harrelson was entirely in sync with the director’s apolitical stance.

View the trailer for The Messenger below, or go here for a sampling of reviews of the film.

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The most powerful earthquakes in American history didn’t happen in California or Alaska, but almost 200 years ago in Missouri.

As Santa Rosa novelist Sally Watson set out to research the details and circumstances surrounding the New Madrid Earthquakes, she found an important source and ally at the town museum there.

Reports vary on the number of houses destroyed in the initial quakes, Watson says, as do the accounts of the number of people who fled afterward.

  A more contemporary view of the New Madrid Fault

The winner of the latest “Clo the Cow” billboard slogan contest drew from Dirty Harry to get a happy diary.

Clo the Cow will be featured on the billboard with the winning slogan, of course, but Clover-Stornetta president Marcus Benedetti says the cartoon cow is more than just a pretty face.

Daniel Judd celebrates his contest victory, sharing a high five with Clo the Cow as girlfriend Andrea Duszynski looks on.

The Sonoma County Peace and Justice Center is celebrating 25 years of activism this weekend, while also preparing to carry on their efforts as long as they are needed.

While much of the energy of the peace center activists was directed toward national concerns, founding member Shirley McGovern recalls that they were also able to respond to local situations in their immediate community, which she found especially gratifying.

As the Peace And Justice Center moves into its next quarter century, Susan Lamont is looking forward to the convergence of activism between environmentalists and social justice advocates.

The Peace and Justice Center will celebrate its first 25 years on Saturday, November 14th at the. Sebastopol Veterans Memorial Building, 282 High Street in Sebastopol. The event begins at 4:30 with wine, appetizers and music during a silent auction featuring art, services, jewelry, food, wine and more. Dinner will take place around 6:15.

The evening will include featured speaker, Medea Benjamin founder of Global Exchange and CodePink The cost with reservations is $35 ; $40 at the door, if room is available.

It is our time as a community to celebrate all the work we have engaged in for 25 years: the journey we have walked with the poor, the wars we have opposed, the solidarity with the marginalized, and the support for the immigrants. It is an opportunity for our peace and justice community to come together to celebrate all our years of growing together and making a difference in our county, our nation and our world.

The story of German factory owner Oskar Schindler and the hundreds of Jews he shielded from the Nazis has been a successful novel and an award-winning film. Now his actual history is coming to the  Petaluma Museum.

The images below are part of the Leopold Pfeffferberg-Page collection, which he donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993, explains Senior Historian Peter Black.  There is also a summary of Schindler's story, provided by the Museum, at the bottom of this page.

Oskar Schindler (third from left) at a party with local SS officials on his 34th birthday. Schindler attempted to use his connections with German officials to obtain information that might protect his Jewish employees. Krakow, Poland, April 28, 1942. —Leopold Page Photographic Collection, courtesy of  U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

At Yad Vashem, the Israeli national institution of Holocaust commemoration, Oskar Schindler stands next to the tree planted in honor of his rescue efforts. Jerusalem, Israel, 1970.
—Leopold Page Photographic Collection, courtesy of  U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Leopold Pfeffferberg was one of the men on Schindler’s famous list, and was also instrumental in interesting writer Thomas Keneally in Schindler’s story. Keneally’s book, originally published as Schindler’s Ark, was a fictionalized account of his story which  won the Booker prize in 1982. But Holocaust Museum historian Peter Black points out there is now a formal biography of the man, too.

In 1939, the year Germany invaded Poland and launched World War II, Oskar Schindler was living in Moravia, Czechoslovakia, a region with a high ethnic German population. He joined the Nazi party on February 10, 1939. He assumed responsibility for a formerly Jewish-owned factory in Poland and eventually established a second under his ownership. The new factory became a haven for its approximately 900 Jewish workers for much of the war.

Although he amassed a fortune exploiting their labor and trading on the black market, he protected them by insisting they be housed at his factory rather than the local labor camp, Plaszów, which was run by a sadistic SS commandant Amon Leopold Göth. In late summer 1944 as the German war effort was collapsing, Schindler, through negotiations and bribes from his wartime profits, secured permission from German Army and SS officers to move his workers and other endangered Jews to Brünnlitz, near his hometown of Zwittau, where he had been assigned to oversee a new munitions factory. Its workers were placed on “Schindler’s List” and were transported to the factory where they remained in relative safety throughout the remainder of the war.

Asked in 1964 why he had intervened on behalf of the Jews, Schindler replied, “The persecution of the Jews in the General Government in Polish territory gradually worsened in its cruelty. In 1939 and 1940 they were forced to wear the Star of David and were herded together and confined in ghettos. In 1941 and 1942 this unadulterated sadism was fully revealed. And then a thinking man, who had overcome his inner cowardice, simply had to help. There was no other choice.”