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Phil Ochs, one of the best and best known topical folk singers of the 1960s, has since been largely forgotten. A new documentary film is out to revive his music and introduce him to another generation.
Documentarian Kenneth Bowser spent more than seven years compiling the interviews, performance footage, and other elements that went into Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune. Even now, he's amazed by some of the things he was able to include.
For Phil's daughter, Meegan Lee Ochs, working with Bowser offered some insight into her late father's career arc.
Meegan Ochs never lived with her father as a girl, but she cherishes her memories of the times they spent together. And she has come to regard his last visit with her as a touchstone for her path to adulthood.
Doris Murphy, who became a matriarch to the entire town of Occidental, passed away earlier this week, just a few days after her 101st birthday. The North Bay Report visited with her just before her centennial a year ago, which was marked by big birthday bash at the Occident Center for the Arts. Today, we repeat that report.
When Joe Murphy first brought Doris from San Francisco to Occidental, he showed her the 18 acres of redwood-sheathed ridgetop he had purchased nearby. For more than two years thereafter, Doris recalls, their weekends were spent traveling to the remote property and constructing the solid green and white house with its large stone fireplace, where she has lived fulltime since about 1960.
Doris was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, but hitch-hiked south to San Francisco after graduating from Reed College in 1938. There she met Joe Murphy, the influential leader of the Hod Carriers Local 38 union, and a high-profile organizer for the International Workers of the World. But Doris insists that meeting Joe did not inspire her to change her politics.
This picture of Doris and Joe Murphy adorns the cover of Love and Labor, the lively autobiography she wrote at the age of 96.
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat published a lenghty obituary for Doris Murphy earlier this week, as well as a lively profile about her and her autobiography, when the book was published in 2007.
Education and experience are pluses in the job marketplace, but they aren't necessarily enough to offset discrimination. And that can come in some unexpected ways, as an unemployed pastor in Petaluma has discovered.
Rev. Mark AlmlieAlthough it was hardly his plan, Rev. Mark Almlie says he is quite prepared to be the public face of the discrimination issue he has raised within his church.
Since he lost his position in Santa Rosa in April 2009, a job he had held for the previous six years, Almlie has had to move back in with his mother in Petaluma. He says that was certainly unexpected, but it has had an upside, too.
A record-breaking financial gift to Sonoma State University will enable the completion of the concert hall at the new Green Music Center, whichis now officially due to open in September of next year.
Joan and Sandy Weill inside the Green Music Center
Sanford "Sandy" Weill said he and his wife, Joan, first learned of the Green Center project through casual conversation, but they were eager to find out more.
In addition to the terraced lawn seating that will extend outside the back of the classical concert hall, the outdoor portion of the Green Center will also include a tented stage for rock concerts and other, louder events, with seating for 10,000. It will be located at the far right in this hawk's-eye image of the grounds. SSU's Susan Kashack says it will fill a need that was identified when the campus hosted a concert by Eagles several years ago.
The Weils previously made news locally when their purchase of a $31 million estate near Sonoma last fall, in what is bellieved to be the single largest real estate deal in Sonoma County.
Political and legal challenges to the federal health care reform law may be getting more attention, but millions of Americans are already feeling the effects of the bill. More of them are here in California than anywhere else.
Ron PollackOne of the most immediately popular aspects of the Affordable Care Act is the one that prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage for children based on a pre-existing condition. Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA, notes that this provision will be expanded in another two years.
Will the health care bill still be in effect then? Pollack sees all the current attacks on the measure as being about partisan politics, with little direct concern for the actual provisions of the law itself.
The political process that ultimately gave us the Affordable Care Act quickly turned away from early calls for a single-payer national health policy. Pollack says its unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, but there is a little space left in the law for individual states to attempt some experiments on their own.
Clikck here to see the Families USA state-by-state table of health care act benefits already in effect.
