Who could spend three years riding a bicycle completely around the globe without bringing home a wealth of stories. Certainly not Rick Gunn. One of the extended high points of his 25,811 mile trip was cycling along the historic silk road through central Asia, which Gunn enjoyed in the company of a fellow rider he met along the way.

Rick Gunn will present his multi-media Soulcycler program this week at the following North Bay venues

Wednesday, Sept. 8, Sonoma Veterans Hall, Sonoma, 7 pm

Thursday, Sept, 9, Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa, 7 pm

Friday, Sept. 10, Marin Civic Center Showcase Theater, 7:30 pm. Ticket information for all shows here. Watch a preview below.

When a local ownership group came forward to purchase the Point Reyes Light from its contentious and unpopular out-of-town owner, they expected an era of peace in publishing would follow. But that wasn’t what happened.

There are numerous details about the failed newspaper negotiations that are told differently by the two sides: who approached whom about a possible deal? Was it to be a sale or a merger?  And, perhaps most vehemently, which side was first to breach the non-disclosure agreement that was part of those talks. The owners of the Point Reyes Light charge it was Joel Hack, when he published his June 17^th EXTRA edition of the West Marin Citizen.  Hack contends it was the other guys’ attorney.

Western Marin County is one of those rare regions still served by two local newspapers. And their current feud isn’t really something new, observes Mark Dowie (right) , the vice chairman of the recently formed Marin Media Institute, which now owns the Pt. Reyes Light.

David Mitchell, the owner/publisher of the Point Reyes Light during its Pulitzer-winning days, offers a more thorough account of the dispute between the current owners of the two West Marin papers in his cleverly titled blog, Sparsely Sage and Timely.

Thirty-four years after Christo’s  Running Fence snaked across the North Bay’s coastal landscape into the Pacific, the unique and short-lived artwork is still fondly recalled by most of those who played a part in its creation.

The large and unexpected projects envisioned and executed by Christo and Jeanne-Claude may not fit some conventional definitions of art, says documentary filmmaker Wolfram Hissen, but they certainly strike a chord with a huge number of people.

Some of the friendships that developed during the Running Fence project proved to be deep and enduring, Hissen discovered, despite the broad differences between the artists and the ranchers.

After the Running Fence was taken down, each landowner got to keep the materials that had been part of it. Some used the poles and  hardware in other construction projects, while the thousands of yards of while canvass was generally harder to reuse. One exception ot that was this jacket, made by Amelia Bruhn, and shown at the 33 year anniversary gathering in 2009 that became a substantial part of Wolfram Hissen's new documentary. See the trailer for the film below:

In addition to the showing tonight in Occidental, The Running Fence Revisited will also be screened on the evenings of June 24 and 25 at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa.