Anita Venezia

Mona Lisa—Over 500 Years of Face Time

January 9, 2015 by Anita Venezia 1 Comment

The Mona Lisa, Leonardo Da Vinci’s iconic painting wasn’t always as famous as she is now. Prior to Vincenzo Peruggia ripping her off the wall in the Louvre in August 1911, she was just another pretty face.
My longtime affinity for Mona Lisa goes back to childhood; my mother always displayed her image, and my girlish heart soared when Nat King Cole crooned the Mona Lisa song from cafe jukeboxes. Imagine the thrill when I met Ray Evans who wrote the “Mona Lisa” song. Giddy as a schoolgirl, I asked about his 1950s megahit. “It’s my best money-maker; I still get royalties in my mailbox.” Evans told me and sang the first line. “Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa men have named you…”

When I further researched “the lady with the mystic smile” I learned how she had become the most famous painting on earth. According to my Facebook friend, art historian Professor Noah Charney, he writes about her mysterious back story in his book, The Thefts of Mona Lisa: On Stealing the World’s Most Famous Painting. Professor Charney founded ARCA— Association for Research into Crimes Against Art, a non-profit Rome-based think tank.

The 1911 heist of the Mona Lisa first appeared to have all the marks of an international theft ring, but the artwork was stolen by a nondescript disgruntled museum contractor, Vincenzo Peruggia, who co-workers nicknamed ‘macaroni’.

Peruggia, the unassuming thief from Dumenza in Northern Italy, went to Paris to find work, and was ironically contracted to the Louvre Museum to build a protective glass case for the Mona Lisa. The Louvre, without sufficient alarm systems, was finally beefing up security after Iberian head sculptures had been stolen in 1907 and sold to Picasso. The staff did maintenance on Mondays when the museum was closed.

The Salon Carre, where Mona Lisa was exhibited, also featured Titian, Raphael, Giorgione, Veronese, Tintoretto, Velasquez, Rubens, and Rembrandt masterworks. Peruggia targeted the Mona Lisa, (known as La Giaconda in Italy and La Jocunde in France) because he mistakenly perceived that Napoleon had plundered it along with other Italian treasures during his late 18th century Italian Campaign. Burning with patriotism and a dash of larceny, he believed Da Vinci’s painting should be returned to Italy. Though other Italian paintings were then more valuable, the Mona Lisa was accessible and portable.

Peruggia had spent the previous Sunday night hiding in an airless closet off the staircase while scheming to steal the masterpiece at daybreak. His intention was to return it to the Uffizi in Florence, perhaps with a reward, and hence be acclaimed a national hero.

About 7:30 the morning of 21st August 1911, the white-smocked worker calmly lifted the masterpiece from the protective wall cradle and carried the unwieldy frame to the staircase. There he removed the painted wood panel from the frame, wrapped it in his smock and pried the doorknob off an exit door. It did not open. By chance a worker arrived and unwittingly opened the door. Peruggia nonchalantly carried the treasure under his arm to a museum courtyard and out to the street where he discarded the incriminating doorknob.

Meanwhile, back at the museum, with only a skeleton crew in the low-security 50-acre museum, no one noticed the blank space on the wall until replicator artist Louis Beroud arrived to finish his own copy of La Jocunde. The place where once hung the masterpiece had four pegs in the wall; the painting was missing!

Monsieur Picquet, maintenance director, coolly replied that the painting may have been removed to photograph in better light as was the custom. The earthshattering impact of the daring theft would not be discovered until Tuesday when viewers arrived. Gendarmes rushed in, launched a dragnet around Paris, trains, trolleys and trawlers were stopped. Mon Dieu!

That fateful Monday morning when Vincenzo Peruggia had exited the Louvre unnoticed he hopped a trolley to his flat at 5 Rue de l’Hopital Saint Louis. Carrying the precious loot to his fourth storey room, he placed the Mona Lisa in a firewood cabinet behind his bed, and gloated.

The thief could never have imagined in his wildest dreams that he had succeeded in pulling off the biggest art heist in history, and singlehandedly made the Mona Lisa the world’s most recognizable work of art. Peruggia’s single act of valor, or skullduggery, was to bring fame to the once-incognito Mona Lisa and the then-estimated worth skyrocketed way beyond $5 million.

French detectives jumped on the case, interviewed museum staff, staged roadblocks, newspapers screamed banner headlines, and the frantic hoopla seemed over the top to many. Even though once acclaimed as the “embodiment of the eternal feminine” she was still so obscure that the Washington Post showed an incorrect image with the headline, “Priceless art treasure gone.” Mona who?

So Mona Lisa, once a 16th century nobody, suddenly became an overnight sensation leading to the now-iconic priceless masterpiece drawing over eight million viewers annually to the Louvre.

When news broke that the Louvre’s favourite girl had disappeared gendarmes searched the premises, interrogated workers, fingerprinted everyone. One un-smudged fingerprint was found on the glass cradle, but in 1911 there was an inadequate database. If Peruggia’s print was found he had worked on the display case anyway. The investigation hit a wall, reached a dead end, then the Titanic sank, the Great War loomed, news cycles switched, and the case turned cold.
THE SMILE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND QUIPS
Rumour has it that a police inspector interviewed Peruggia in his flat. During questioning he filled out forms pressing on the actual Mona Lisa panel sitting upside down on the very table where he sat. At least that’s what Peruggia’s daughter Celestina claimed.

The 20-pound painting is small, at only 30” x 21”x 1.5” it was easy to hide. It was not painted on canvas but on a white poplar panel. Peruggia built a wooden crate, placed the cloth-wrapped panel under the false bottom, filled it with clothes, shoes, tools and a mandolin, and secreted the coffin-like box under his bed safe as an unlaid egg.

So Leonardo Da Vinci’s celebrated Mona Lisa, who had already enjoyed over four centuries of public face time, was now demoted to languish in the dark box perhaps alongside a chamber pot under the handyman’s iron bed.

Two years later Peruggia carried the trunk on the train and returned to Italy. He had contacted a Florentine art dealer and offered to sell the precious La Giaconda to the Uffizi Gallery for a piddling 500,000 Lire. The handyman met the potential Uffizi buyers in his modest Tripoli-Italia Hotel room.

They watched as Peruggia removed clothes, shoes, mandolin, and then unceremoniously freed the beloved Mona Lisa from her sarcophagus. Close inspection convinced them the panel was truly Da Vinci’s masterpiece. They carried her to the Uffizi, hearts racing.

Later when the Carabinieri jailed him for grand larceny he was startled. Surely Italy would glorify his patriotism! Lawyers and psychiatrists worked for leniency for the man who claimed to be a patriot. Many Italians, perceiving Peruggia had rightfully returned their beloved Leonardo Da Vinci masterpiece, showered him with praise. Women sent sweet cakes to his cell. “Not so fast,” the law warned.

The Mona Lisa ‘capolavoro’ had never belonged to Italy; Da Vinci had sold it to Francis I, king of France in 1517 when he was court painter. La Giaconda had hung in Fontainebleau, Versailles, and on Emperor Napoleon’s bedroom wall before it went to the Louvre. Italy benefitted from the masterpiece’s brief sojourn, the first in four centuries. When La Giaconda appeared at the Uffizi in Florence it was viewed by over 30,000 people on the first day. Then the kidnapped Mona Lisa caught her last express train from Milano back to Paris.

Vincenzo Peruggia stood trial for the high-profile theft, was diagnosed as mentally deficient owing to the high lead content in paint that he mixed and breathed. Court records showed how his brain was affected by lead poisoning. The verdict was lenient for the ‘patriotic’ thief.

Peruggia served seven months in prison then joined the Italian army during the Great War. After the war he returned to Paris with his wife. Renowned for committing the most celebrated crime of all time, he died in Paris in obscurity on his 44th birthday 8th October 1925.

So the man who had brought recognition to La Giaconda was buried without fanfare, without a gravestone. His notoriety had dissipated, no one cared anymore. But Mona Lisa’s haunting mystique abounded, and the once-unknown Florentine girl with no eyebrows and enigmatic smile, had songs and numerous books written about her.

WHO WAS MONA LISA?
Her name was Lisa Gherardini. born on June 15th 1479. The Florentine girl married merchant Francesco de Giacondo at age 16. Between 1503 and 1507 Lisa sat for a commissioned portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Da Vinci was born April 15th 1452 near the village of Vinci and was schooled in Florence. In 1481 he worked for the Duchy of Sforza as military engineer in Milano where he painted the Last Supper in 1495.

In 1507 King Louis XII named him court painter and he moved to France. King Francois I bought the Mona Lisa in 1516, and when Leonardo died in 1519 the he purchased his entire estate.

Leonardo Da Vinci is celebrated for his body of works; paintings and codex writings made him a Renaissance rock star. Had he not left such detailed legacies he may have just blended in with other great 16th century artists, but his innovations forced him to the top of the artistic pile. The southpaw was not only painter, but engineer, inventor, sculptor, philosopher and all-round genius. Some theorize he invented the helicopter, Scuba gear, perfected siege projectiles and river fording machinery. Scholars theorize that if IQ tests existed Da Vinci would score higher than any other genius.

The introduction of Da Vinci’s sfumato technique gave his art a smoky quality not achieved by others including Michelangelo Buonorotti. He took years to finish a painting because he laid thinned paint with the finest hair brushes, layering in thin coats that toned to monochromatic colours. Lines, borders or heavy strokes evaporated, vanished to subtle graduations of transparency. Every work was a masterpiece.

So to steal one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterworks was the coups of all coups. Vincenzo Peruggia was the most daring rogue of the hour, more than just a common thief who courageously succeeded in the heist of a renowned painting from the world’s most prestigious art museum.

Two decades after the infamous heist the red-hot story still hadn’t died. A bizarre account in the Saturday Evening Post in 1932 has never been proven as either fact or fantasy. Writer Karl Dekker stated he met Argentine aristocrat Valfierno in a bar in Casablanca. Where else? The aristocrat confessed that he had hired master forger Yves Chaudron to paint six fakes of the Mona Lisa that he offered to six different American millionaires for $300,000 each.

Years after the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, supposedly by Valfierno’s own gang, he contacted the six unwary potential buyers offering them each the ‘original masterpiece’. The con man said a fake was returned to the Louvre in January 1914, and even if the museum experts had doubted its authenticity, they would not advertise their gross ineptitude. Each rogue connoisseur bought the story, aware of the mother of all heists, and champed at the bit to possess the forbidden work of art for their eyes only.

Though the magazine story purported the ruse to be fact, it was implausible that the simple-minded mastermind Vincenzo Peruggia was ever part of a crime ring.

The Mona Lisa was on the move again during World War II. Fearing the Nazis would plunder the high-value masterpiece; they sequestered it away from Paris by ambulance. Then in 1974, like a wandering Gypsy girl, Mona Lisa went on tour to Tokyo and Moscow.

Time has dulled memories; the incident has faded like the sfumato of a Da Vinci painting, but Peruggia’s family in Dumenza still believe he was a hero. His daughter Celestina and grandchildren Graziella and Silvio Peruggia speak of the daring Mona Lisa snatch with amazement, smile at his audacity. In-depth research has revealed that Vincenzo Peruggia was truly patriotic, albeit he also anticipated a large reward.

Yes, the lady with the mystic smile, and over five centuries of face time has definitely earned her fame. Over the years unstable viewers have thrown coffee cups and red paint at her protective bullet-proof case, but her smile endures. And now you know the rest of Mona Lisa’s story.

Patriarchs of Alta California: Sunol and Amador

December 8, 2014 by Anita Venezia 9 Comments

My curiosity was piqued recently when I pulled an antique leather-bound book from my library shelf. I had purchased the liturgical Latin Missale Romanum altar prayer book in the late 1960s as part of St Patrick’s and St. Joseph’s church libraries.
The weighty missal’s leather cover is gold-embossed: “IN MEMORIAM JOSEPHINE SUNOL –1906”. As I ran my fingers over the inscription I wondered if Josephine’s family may have donated the missal in memory of a Don Senor Antonio Sunol descendant. Research soon revealed that Josephine Sunol was indeed the granddaughter of Alta California land grantees; Jose Joaquin Bernal and Antonio Sunol for whom the town of Sunol is named.

Research connected the Sunol family to the original St. Joseph’s Church and San Jose historic archives revealed that Antonio Sunol had donated land and funded the building of St Joseph’s first church in 1835, then known as San Jose de Guadalupe. The historic landmark church, since rebuilt and renovated, was designated a cathedral basilica in 1997 by Pope John Paul.

With nothing tangible to go on, but the name Josephine Sunol, I soon discovered she was a St Joseph parishioner when she occupied her grandfather’s adobe in the 1880s at 243 Guadalupe Street, now Market Street. Old directories indicated other Sunol family members lived at 189 Delmas Street, a stone’s throw away.

The adobe on Guadalupe Street was once part of a Mexican land grant where the present Roberto-Sunol Adobe National Landmark stands at 770 Lincoln Avenue in Willow Glen. After renovation, San Jose Historian the Honorable Judge Paul Bernal guided its donation to California Pioneers of Santa Clara County.

When Josephine Sunol’s Guadalupe adobe home was demolished in the mid-20th century, the rancho land later became the sites of the Civic Auditorium, Centre for Performing Arts, and an office complex. As Josephine Sunol’s backstory unfolded, I discovered how she fit into San Jose’s early history, and her connection to Bernal, Sunol and Amador Mexican land grantees; Alta California pioneers of the post-New Spain era. Excitement soared as internet sleuthing got underway.

According to the 1860 San Jose Census, widower Antonio Sunol, 65-year old gentleman, lived at the 243 Guadalupe Street adobe with his children after he sold the Roberto-Sunol Adobe to a Dalmatian sea captain.

And an Alameda County 1880 census shows farmer Jose Narcisio Sunol, born 10 June 1835, and wife Rosario Palomares (daughter of Pacheco land grantee), had six children including 6-year old Josephine and Juanita, born 1874. They were twins!
When I found Josephine Sunol’s significant historic connection to my own book, I delved into the lives of her grandfathers, Don Senor Jose Joaquin Bernal and Don Senor Antonio Maria Sunol. Bernal, a soldier in the 1775 De Anza Expedition, was granted 64,000 acres in 1839 from San Jose to Santa Teresa north of Morgan Hill.

Sunol, Spaniard-turned-Californio, married Bernal’s daughter Dolores which added to his riches. He was a ranchero, orchardist, cattleman, mayor and philanthropist. And was brother-in-law to fellow ranchero Jose Maria Amador owner of Rancho San Ramon, who married 16-year old Magdalena Maria Trinidad Bernal in 1818 thus forging powerful alliances.
My in-depth sleuthing revealed that the largest landowners in Alta California; Bernal, Amador and Sunol were all intrinsically linked by their vast estates that spanned from Santa Teresa to the golden hills of San Ramon until statehood in 1850 when newcomer “Americanos” finagled the rules of land grant ownership.

THE CALIFORNIOS
Antonio Sunol, born in Barcelona in 1797 to afrancasado parents, (close ties to France) was educated in Bordeaux. After the Royal House of Bourbon fell, he joined Napoleon’s French Navy. Rumor has it that Sunol was present when Napoleon surrendered and was exiled to St Helena. Later Sunol sailed on the “Bordelaise” around Cape Horn to California. The 20-year old adventurer jumped ship at Yerba Buena, San Francisco, on 15th August 1817. The intrepid sailor made his way sixty miles on horseback to Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe, governed then by Sargente Luis Maria Peralta of the Spanish Army whose original adobe still stands at 184 West St John Street, San Jose.

Sunol, Spanish entrepreneur-trader, travelled over the valleys selling leather hides, tallow candles and precious lace. This may have been when Sunol crossed paths with Jose Maria Amador and wife Magdalena Bernal Amador. After rotating out of the Mexican Army in 1827, Amador was granted a 4,400-acre rancho that spanned from Mission San Jose to San Ramon Valley as far as the eye could see.

It was just a matter of time before Sunol too became owner of a large rancho. The 2,219-acre Rancho de los Coches on Los Gatos Creek in San Jose belonged to Mission Indian Roberto Balermino. Roberto owed Sunol $500 and paid the debt in 1847 by deeding his rancho and adobe.

Sunol purchased 500 horses, 5,000 sheep and 10,000 head of cattle. He sold hides, leather goods and saddles. He built a brick house adjacent to Roberto’s Adobe where he proudly flew three flags; Spanish, French and Mexican. He opened San Jose’s first mercantile store; sold calico, furs, brandy, wine, wool serapes and blankets, kerchiefs at $16 a dozen, and lariats. He cultivated wine grapes and a superabundance of peaches, pears, oranges and figs. He cooked meat and bread in the clay oven outside Roberto’s Adobe.

Don Antonio, an educated man, could read and write Spanish, French and English. Known for gracious hospitality, the gallant Spaniard held fiestas, caballeros played guitars, guests danced fandangos, people played monte card games, and ex-soldiers shared war stories about fighting Indians. Landowners Bernal and Amador were linked by their Mexican military service; Sargente Bernal was part of the 1776 De Anza Expedition and Pedro Amador, Jose Maria’s father, had been with Portola’s 1769 Overland Expedition who said upon retirement, “The only compensation I got for 18 years of service was 14 Indian arrows in my body.”

When Spain missionized Alta California with twenty-one religious and military outposts on Camino Real, soldiers manned them to support the priests’ work with the Indians. By the 1830s the missions were secularized and large ranchos were granted to ex-soldiers. Senor Amador married 16-year old Magdalena Bernal on May 28, 1818, and Sunol married her sister Maria de los Dolores Bernal at Santa Clara Mission Church on November 7, 1823.

Legend has it that weddings lasted three days. Young brides sat side-saddle in front of a family member, silk slippers golden braid-entwined, and rode in procession through tree-lined avenues to Santa Clara Mission Church. Serenade music escorted cavalcades of caparisoned horses for grooms and brides to unite their influential families in blissful marriages. These intra-family marriages forged enduring alliances between the Bernal, Amador and Sunol clans—the three most powerful ranchero families in the valley whose vast lands reached from south San Jose Santa Teresa to present-day Dublin and deep into the San Ramon Valley.

Amador outlived three wives and had 22 children. He married his beloved 16-year old Magdalena Bernal who died during childbirth after having 5 children by age 25. Jose Maria died June 12, 1883 and is buried at St Mary’s Catholic Cemetery in Gilroy; his tombstone stands a few yards from my own mother’s grave. With such a large family I deducted that Jose Maria Amador must have had many local descendants. I had to look no further than my own circle of friends. Fellow Friends of Blackhawk Museum, Jill Brennan, told me that her husband Bob possessed impeccable Amador descendants’ genealogies.

I met with longtime resident Robert John Brennan at his Danville home. His drafting table was strewn with pedigree charts, vintage photographs, and history books confirming his auspicious Amador roots. Bob Brennan is the great-great-grandson of Jose Maria Amador and Magdalena Bernal Amador, once owners of the historic San Ramon Mission Rancho and Mission El Valle de San Jose Rancho. “We are very proud of our heritage.” Bob said, showing me charts of the Hispano-Mexican pioneers and photographs of the Amador descendants.

Jose Maria Amador, whose name aptly translates to ‘gold lover’, had beaten the 1849 Gold Rush by mining in early 1848 with brother-in-law, presumed to be Antonio Sunol, who also wrote of finding gold near John Sutter’s sawmill. Amador returned from the camp (now Amador County) with 114 pounds of gold nuggets in coffee cans. He wrote that he shared the golden yield with Indians and family, and gave the rest to the church for chalices. Eureka!

SUNOL AND VALLE DE SAN JOSE
As Bernal descendants, Maria Dolores Bernal Sunol and Magdalena Bernal Amador inherited half of a 64,000-acre parcel around Mission San Jose. Antonio and Maria Dolores Sunol had several children; Jose Antonio, Jose Narcisio, Jose Dolores, Josepha, Antonia, Francisca, Incarnacion, and Paula who married Frenchman Pierre Sansevain, San Jose’s first vintner.

A glimpse into history tells of Hispano-Mexicans before California entered statehood in 1850. When gold was first discovered in 1848 near Sacramento on the American River banks near John Sutter’s sawmill, Sunol rushed there with Amador and some Indians. John Sutter had bought cattle from Sunol and paid the debt with a land parcel near Sacramento.
Sunol returned to San Jose with about $3 million worth of gold nuggets which he shared with Indians and split with family to play the monte card game.

The Gold Rush and subsequent Land Rush were historic turning points for Alta California. The Spanish had once forged frontiers from St Augustine, Florida all the way to San Francisco where un-scarred pristine lands were belted by forests of redwoods, heritage oaks, and alamo cottonwoods that ran along rivers. Rolling hills were ornamented by purple needle-grass, and luscious wild oats grew as tall as a bull’s horns, clusters of wild azalea, poppies, and thickets of huckleberry carpeted ravines where no men had yet tread. Wanderers and Ohlone Indians bivouacked on open plains or near rivers’ fording places where bears spooked their horses. Vaquero cowboys lassoed groaning cattle and rode herds in canadas through steep arroyos to faraway markets.

ALTA CALIFORNIA GAINS STATEHOOD IN 1850
After the Mexican-American War, over 100,000 Californios reluctantly yielded to statehood in 1850 becoming the Union’s 31st state. Gold Rush opportunities enticed the largest western-bound migration in human history. Westward wagon trains carried thousands of trekkers a day. Some eastern speculating interlopers became unlawful squatters, gunslingers, horse thieves, and cattle rustlers. Many grabbed rancho lands, panned rivers, built cabins on private property and dynamited outcrops.

New State laws allowed squatters to pre-empt the rancho lands that had not yet been confirmed under previous Mexican Land Grants. Most parcels had been allocated to ex-military servicemen with charts and the watertight integrity of a handshake. Jose Maria Amador sold off his land parcels in 1850 and, some say may have died a pauper after paying exorbitant legal fees. Many “American” interlopers sequestered parcels of Hispano-Mexican ranchos and wanton bandits forged their names into history.
Notorious cattle rustler and monte card dealer, Joaquin Murrieta from Mexico, was one of the most famous desperados. His gang raided mining camps, stole gold from prospectors and rancheros in the Sunol hills and Livermore Valley. Murrieta’s Well Winery on Mine Road in Livermore is named for the desperado who has since gained folk hero status. It is said that the bandit’s head, preserved in a jar of brandy, travelled around California and could be viewed for a dollar. And newcomer land grabbing squatters and interlopers made big trouble for rancheros. It was only a matter of time that disaster would strike the Sunol family.

While Sunol’s son, Jose Antonio was tending to 25,000 heads of cattle on the 48,000-acre El Valle de San Jose Rancho, 15 miles north of Pueblo de San Jose, now Niles-Fremont-Sunol, an argument broke out with squatter John Wilson. After Wilson had killed several animals, Jose Antonio approached on horseback, “If you want meat I will give you all the meat you can eat, just don’t kill our cattle.” Wilson aimed his rifle and shot Jose Antonio dead. It was March 7, 1855. Wilson escaped, was never brought to justice.

The murder of Sunol’s oldest son was a devastating blow to all ranchero families. Jose Narcisio, brother to Antonio, moved to the El Valle San Jose Rancho. He married Rosario Palomares in March 1858. These were Josephine Sunol’s parents.
There were other relatives with interesting stories. I found an online legal document stating that 19-year old Narcisio M. Sunol, born in 1853 two years before Jose Antonio’s murder, was admitted to Stockton Insane Asylum in 1872 by Cristobal Palomares (Rosario’s brother?) for reason of insanity. Could this asylum inmate, who died of consumption five years later, have been orphan son of Jose Antonio who was murdered by the squatter in 1855? The plot thickens.

Don Antonio Sunol, devastated by his son’s death, drew up a last will and testament naming his children and future heirs to his vast fortune, including not-yet-born granddaughter Josephine Sunol. His beloved wife Maria Dolores Bernal Sunol had died in 1845, and Antonio died on the Feast of St Joseph, March 19, 1865 at his Guadalupe Street adobe home.
The Spaniard of noble birth had not only mingled with Emperor Napoleon, but also with Bernal, Amador, John C. Fremont, Thomas O. Larkin, John Sutter, John Gilroy, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo of Petaluma, and Roberto Livermore all of whom left indelible marks on Northern California.

The near-forgotten legacies of Jose Maria Amador still lives through Amador County and San Ramon Valley that he named for his mother Ramona, and Antonio Sunol still lives through Sunol Valley and the historic town named for him. Sunolians value their small town atmosphere and strive to keep it intact. Sunol gained an odd sort of tongue-in-cheek fame when Bosco, a Re-pup-lican dog was elected town mayor on a lark in the 1990s. Communist China even commented on America’s canine democracy.

And today when irate I-680 commuters are idling on the highway from Silicon Valley to San Ramon, Senor Antonio Sunol’s memory comes alive all too vividly on the bottle-necked Sunol Grade.

Sunol Valley also shares some pre-Hollywood film history where it once attracted moviemakers to Niles Canyon. Curly-kop Mary Pickford posed near Warm Springs, and iconic Charlie Chaplin filmed “The Tramp” years before Hollywood became filmdom’s epicentre.

Today tourists visit Livermore Valley’s superb wine region and historic Niles Railroad Museum. Visitors ride the Niles Canyon Railway steam train that meanders through canyons where bands of Ohlone Tribes lived 5,000 years ago.
Today heritage oaks, sycamores and alamo cottonwoods spread dappled shade across rail tracks or reach for the sun. Lush valleys, yellow-crisp in summer, still echo where caballeros serenaded, and cattle once roamed along Canada de la Tasagera, now Camino Tassajara.

Slow trains carry riders from Niles, not only through the canyon, but back in time where once proud Hispano-Mexican pioneers, like Jason’s Argonauts, forged a forever history in California’s own El Dorado golden hills.
Again I touch the book’s embossed dedication; “In Memoriam Josephine Sunol—1906”. Now I know Josephine’s story. Her grandfathers, Jose Bernal and Don Antonio Sunol, together with Jose Maria Amador, forged history in the Santa Clara and San Ramon Valleys.

Josephine’s grandmother was Dolores Bernal Sunol; aunt was Magdalena Bernal Amador. And maybe unbeknownst to some readers until my ALIVE Magazine revelation, Bob Brennan is also Josephine Sunol’s distant cousin. And his great-great-great grandfather Jose Joaquin Bernal was a member of the De Anza Expedition.
Josephine’s grandparents, Antonio and Dolores Sunol, were godparents on July 26, 1825 to Jose Amador’s son Jose Antonio,

Brennan’s great grandfather, at Mission Santa Clara. And it was Josephine’s uncle Jose Antonio Sunol who died at Rancho El Valle de San Jose at the hands of a renegade squatter in 1855.

And now as I return my old mass book back to its place of honor on my library shelf, I know the rest of Josephine Sunol’s once-secret story.

The Spirit of the Old West Corralled at Blackhawk

October 9, 2014 by Anita Venezia 1 Comment

Danville’s Blackhawk Museum, which exhibits some of the world’s rarest classic automobiles, has acquired an extensive private collection of American West and Plains Indians historic artifacts for a new permanent exhibition titled, “SPIRIT OF THE OLD WEST,” to open in late fall.

This vast collection of Western and American Indian artifacts has remarkable historic importance. The all-encompassing collection is representative of Plains Indians and the Pioneering Settlers that will take viewers through a portal to the past of America’s Old West history.

Among the rarest objects in the Plains Indian collection are authentic mounts of a 19th century American eagle, a massive Plains buffalo, as well as bear and wolf specimens. Indian Tribes revere Mother Earth, nature, and animals, all of which have sacred significance in their animist cultures.

The extensive exhibit of American Indian and Settler artifacts will offer educational insight into the “Wild West’s” rich past and promises to be one of California’s most popular attractions for adults and school children. Museum docents will bring history alive for visitor tours, adding to the learning experience.

The Blackhawk Museum is presently accepting applications for interested volunteer docents, an integral part of the museum experience, who will share their knowledge on guided tours for children and adult visitors. After training, the docents will bring history to life by guiding tours and children’s hands-on activities to enhance the early California experience.

The multiple exhibits on display will explore how one culture waned while another thrived due to the momentous treks westward in search of land, riches, and a better life. The pioneers’ arduous westward journeys across America were to be one of the greatest migrations in human history as men, women, and children trekked through rivers and across unchartered wilds in unwieldy wagons.

“Excitement is building for the upcoming Spirit of the Old West exhibition, and has already generated great interest among educators,” David Behring said after making a recent presentation to the county’s school principals. “I envision field trips early next year”, Behring added about the exhibition space designed by the Pleasanton-based Dahlin Group.
Ken Behring, founder of the Blackhawk Automotive Museum in 1988, negotiated the acquisition of the “Fick Collection” assembled by Jerry Fick’s American Indian family over many generations. “There is no other American Indian collection of this scope in California; I made the decision to bring it to Blackhawk in less than a day,” stated Behring.

Among the premier collection of American Indian memorabilia in “The Spirit of the Old West” installation are rare 18th and mid-19th century feather headdresses. The iconic “eagle feather bonnets” are cultural treasures inherent to Native American cultures. The plumage tells that “feather bonnets” were only presented to the bravest warriors, and each feather represented a courageous deed.

THE CLASH OF CULTURES

The Plains Indians were made up of several indigenous tribes, their migrations spanning many Western states, and consisting of multiple sub-groups; Arapaho, Lakota, Crow, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Apache, Pawnee and others.
Among the artifacts of historic significance spanning several disciplines of their cultural identity are; eagle feather bonnets, buffalo horn headdresses, cradleboards, lances, war shields, feathers, porcupine quills, and bead-embellished buckskin garments, ceremonial pipes, bear claw necklaces, moccasins, tools, points, tomahawks and Indigenous Peoples’ stone tools dating to circa BC 8,000.

The Culture of the Old West will be contextualized in the heart of the museum exhibits that will include all aspects of the human presence in the West; Early Reservations of Plains Indians 1860-1910; Cowboys; Homesteading Settlers/Pioneers; Cavalry/Military firearms and weaponry; Trappers and Wagon Trains.

To guarantee attention to the historic synergy between Indians and Settler Pioneers, the new installation will ricochet between both cultures by featuring sections dedicated to American Indians and the Migrating Settlers. On the left side of the 27,000 square foot upper gallery, the American Indians will be thematically featured with an authentic tipi and accoutrements.

On the right side a covered wagon, “Prairie Schooner” will highlight the chronology of the Pioneers’ westward expansion and focus on the intrepid determination of people seeking opportunity and a new life.

The exhibition will highlight historic objects affirming the region’s tumultuous history, and the First Peoples’ forced dispersion into scattered reservations, and mythologized Wild West folklore.

No amount of storytelling or Hollywood movies could ever convey the sheer drama of what actually happened, portray stark hardships, or tell of the families’ anguish on the westbound wagon trains who buried their children along the way. When we hear the docents’ tours and see authentic artifacts that belonged to those very people we may better imagine their stories as we travel to the past.

And many more stories will be told through the collection of 19th century photographs that portray Plains Indians, the pristine mountains, and untrammeled wilderness of the American West as it was before the settlements, and before the scars of mining and farming.

Historic themes of the ever-migrating and intrepid tribes on our ancient landscape, and the subsequent interaction during the westward expansion of heroic cowboys, pioneers, and cavalry legends will evolve to a visually-rich and tangible 21st century experience at the Blackhawk Museum.

To anchor the history of American Indians and the Old West, a 140 foot long centerpiece of three-dimensional topographical dioramas will visually portray their life in miniature and enhance the 18th to 20th century experience. Momentous events will highlight America’s Western history, including the turning point of Custer’s Last Stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn, the discovery of gold, and the impact of the transcontinental railroads.

BLACKHAWK AND DANVILLE HISTORY

Ken Behring not only founded the Blackhawk Museum, but also developed the world-class Blackhawk residential community over 40 years ago. With forward-looking vision and strong philanthropic ideals, he strove to add to the historical culture of the San Ramon Valley.

Behring spearheads the construction of thirty Natural History Museums in China to promote them as places of learning. He built the Blackhawk Museum to showcase a world-class auto collection, and partnering with the Smithsonian, also featured art, science, and history. “I like to stress leadership qualities; societies cannot survive without it. The American Indian Chiefs were great leaders too, their people revered them,” Ken Behring made his point by referring to the words of Crazy Horse, Sioux Chief; “A very great vision is needed, he who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.”

The Behring Family believes in philanthropic leadership and with close affiliation to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, succeeded in bringing President Abraham Lincoln’s iconic top hat to the Museum. Behring’s leadership radiates across our nation; the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History is named to honor the philanthropy of the Kenneth E. Behring family.

In 1975 when Behring bought approximately 5000 acres of prime Danville land to develop Blackhawk, he donated a large parcel to Regional Open Space and Mount Diablo State Park with the objective of preserving the rich history of the San Ramon Valley.

In keeping with his philanthropic works, Behring founded the Wheelchair Foundation and has nearly met his lofty goal of donating one million wheelchairs to people in need of mobility all over the world.

San Ramon Valley bustled in mid-19th century, the catalyst being the Gold Rush when Easterners flocked here by the thousands. When news radiated that rich gold deposits were in the California hills; first came the wagon trains, and then came the trains. Intrepid families came in search of riches and a new life, and thus begun the evolution of the American West.

Trekkers from Eastern cities or ghost towns like Deadwood, Dakota settled in California; bankers and bakers, frontiersmen, buckaroos, vaqueros, gunslingers, gunfighters, trappers and cowboys. When wagon trains encountered the Indians along the way, cultures clashed and the harmony of the plains was disrupted forever. We will learn how the cultures clashed, the ways of the Wild West, and how it really was way back then.

Ken Behring and family have brought “The Spirit of the Old West” to the Blackhawk Museum to share with historians, teachers, children, and those who yearn to take a long glance back into Wild, Wild West history.
We may not hear all the thrilling stories of the pioneers, gold seekers, gunslingers, or American Indians, nor encounter the ghosts of Billy the Kid, General Custer, Wild Bill Hickok, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, or Kit Carson, but we may learn about such American Indians who compare to Chiefs Joseph, Cochise, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo or Black Hawk.

America’s “Spirit of the Old West” will come alive with the historic exhibition of antique artifacts and memorabilia at the Blackhawk Museum featuring American Plains Indians, settlers, cowboys, and gold seekers who became linked to the land and built the Wild, Wild West thus earning a major role in California’s mystery, myth, and history.

Info: Blackhawk Museum, 3700 Blackhawk Plaza Centre, Danville California. 94506 925.736.2280. www.blackhawkmuseum.org/ email: info@blackhawkmuseum.org

Starmaker: Hollywood Talent Agent

September 14, 2014 by Anita Venezia 2 Comments

Budd Burton Moss is an old school Hollywood talent agent and part of a family dynasty that made magic in the Motion Picture industry. His father Louis B. Moss was a film editor at Fox, later becoming 20th Century Fox when it merged with Darryl F. Zanuck’s 20th Century Pictures. During Hollywood’s Golden Age, Budd’s mother’s brother Sam Zimbalist, produced films for MGM Studios, many acclaimed as the best films of all time.

Zimbalist was good friends with power couples Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, and Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Moss recalls being at his uncle Sam’s house on weekends and hearing the actors read scripts aloud and playing tennis or swimming in the pool.

Budd Moss and his brother David were born in the shadows of Hollywood Boulevard. Being products of Los Angeles when the Motion Picture Industry rode the uncontested magic carpet, they can very well understand the intricacies of the Hollywood scene better than most newcomers.

Budd Burton Moss and I connected on Face Book as I knew his brother David in Spain. He commented upon reading my recent ALIVE Magazine D-Day article that he was co-producing a film, Mother of Normandy, about Simone Renaud who lived in Sainte Mere-Eglise. It was where many paratroopers in the 101st and 82nd Airborne Division died when they dropped behind enemy lines during the 1944 Invasion of Normandy.

Hollywood über-agent Moss has chronicled his experiences in a memoir; …And All I got was Ten Percent—What it’s Like to be a Famous Hollywood Agent. His close friend Larry King wrote the book’s introduction which guarantees to entertain film aficionados with titillating insider accounts of Hollywood and revelations of once-guarded secrets.

Moss paints a rich portrait of Hollywood before the monolithic studios fell to indie mavericks. He opens his book with the account of his daily business breakfasts in Nate and Al’s Deli in Beverley Hills where film industry veterans kibbutz about the good old days. “Who’d you sign?”

Budd Burton Moss had the right connections; a direct pipeline to studio heads and those who decided which scripts to deep-six and which to produce for the silver screen. Sam Zimbalist, iconic movie mogul and MGM head honcho, had offices in the Thalberg Building on the studio lot. Zimbalist expected his nephew Buddy to segue into film producing, but he wanted to act in films, not produce them.

And Moss dreamed of becoming a matador. It had all started as a pubescent when he became smitten by Rita Hayworth in the bullfighting saga Blood and Sand. Imbued with desire for the beautiful femme fatale, he decided to become an actor and a matador. Moss may not have been a match for Anthony Quinn or Tyrone Power, but he gave it his best shot and later they became friends.

Unbeknownst to the rooky Buddy Moss, he was later to become Rita Hayworth’s agent and close friend, and his youthful dream was fulfilled when they traveled to Europe together.

VANISHING HOLLYWOOD

While Budd Moss was at college as a Theatre Arts major, he took a job at Duke’s Union 76 across from MGM Studios. The teenager serviced the cars of the stars and at day’s end delivered the shiny gassed up motor cars to Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, June Allyson, Esther Williams, and Judy Garland et al. One can only imagine them flipping the teenager a two-bit tip, and Buddy catching the silver coin in the air with an adoring smile. “MGM had more stars than heaven,” he says sentimentally.

Moss recalls the early days when cowboys rode horses down Hollywood Boulevard in the hope of getting parts in Roy Rogers or Gene Autry movies, and the Indians who came down from Cahuenga Pass and sold beads from spread-out blankets on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. He recalls being awestruck when meeting Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, the latter becoming his client, and others he catapulted to stardom. Moss reminisces how his parents packed him and David in their Model A sedan and drove from West LA into Hollywood for Saturday double features, then hung out on the Hollywood Hotel verandah where Rudy Valentino and Mary Pickford once may have passed.

High school buddies were Linda Darnell’s brother Calvin, Academy Award winner Joel (Katz) Grey, and Bobby Blake who gained fame as the killer in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

After the garage gig Moss bussed tables at Fox Studios restaurant where he met Marilyn Monroe, Ty Power, Bette Grable, and Henry Fonda and got close to the beauty of his dreams, Rita Hayworth lunching with Studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck.

Budd’s odd jobs lead to film work, and was ecstatic when he got his SAG extra’s card. He reported to Central Casting and got a dance number gig in It’s a Wonderful Life, with Jimmy Stewart, and later a part in Blackboard Jungle, with Sidney Poitier. “Not bad for my first films,” said Budd.

To hone his acting skills, Budd did summer stock along with other neophytes James Coburn, Hugh O’Brian, Robert Vaughn. And at “The Rack” bar he drank with a lanky guy who had just gotten out of the service and earned his way as a carpenter and pool digger. That shy guy went far in Hollywood; Clint Eastwood was to become one of the world’s leading Box Office draws of all time.

When his father, Lou Moss, left Fox, he and wife Shirley (Zimbalist) opened a restaurant. The Matador Bar decorated with Manolete bullfight posters, with a definitive macho ambiance, was the dwelling of pure California cool, where Tony Quinn, Lloyd (Bud) Bridges, Robert Taylor and Gilbert Roland rubbed elbows with bullfighters and other Hollywood icons.

When Budd wasn’t running the busy bar of the family restaurant, he worked in films. He recalls his entire body being burnished with brown make-up for bit parts in the 1954 epic, The Egyptian, with Edmund Purdom. “I was killed several times in one day.”

During the Korean War Moss enlisted in the Air Force and was stationed at Parks Air Force Base, now called Camp Parks in Dublin, California. It was just a matter of time before he was recruited to Special Services Units to produce plays and entertain the troops.

Ironically it was there he first met USO entertainer Barbara Eden, whom he later signed to star in I Dream of Jeannie. He returned to LA after the Air Force stint and to a life of incredible excitement.

Tony Quinn introduced him to the actress Ruth Roman, a beautiful older woman whose marriage was rocky. As fate would have it, he and Ruth fell madly in love. Ruth was a seasoned actress having starred in Hitchcock’s Stranger on a Train, and had dated Ronnie Reagan when they were contract players at Warner Bros. The rest of their love story reads like the script of a Hollywood melodrama.

Ruth Roman had to wind up filming final scenes with Akim Tamiroff in France. To return stateside she and her three-year old son Dickie boarded a luxury liner in Cannes for the transatlantic crossing. That July of 1956, as the “S.S. Andrea Doria” liner was passing the Nantucket coast and edging towards New York in thick fog, her midriff was gored by the liner “M.S. Stockholm” en route to Sweden.

Over fifty people died in the collision, half the starboard-side lifeboats went down on impact. Rescue ships, including the “Ile de France,” rushed from New York harbor; planes flew overhead capturing the disaster on film, and darkness made rescue difficult. The ship sank to the bottom of the sea within hours. Ruth Roman’s son was lost. Lifeboats were lowered. She was taken ashore still frantically searching for her boy. She called Budd Moss in LA.

Finally her son was located on the “Stockholm” and taken to the hotel. Budd Moss booked a flight from California, arrived in New York at her hotel the next day. They needed to be together; romance flourished. They stayed in New York negotiating her role in the play Two for the Seesaw. They later moved to her Rockingham Road house in Brentwood and spoke of marriage. They sailed to Panama and married in a storied ceremony worthy of a full chapter.

Roman’s work took them to Spain until 1958 when she starred with Richard Burton in Bitter Victory. Madrid was then the filming epicenter of several sword-and-sandal epics and was teaming with LA Studio executives and Hollywood stars.

Being avid aficionados, Budd and Ruth hung out at the flamenco Corral de Moreria and mingled with the bullfighting crowd. They were friendly with toreros Luis Miguel Dominguin and his brother-in-law Antonio Ordonez. Dominguin, not only gained fame in the bullring, but also as Ava Gardner’s paramour. Hemingway was in town too writing about the dueling toreros in The Dangerous Summer for Life Magazine, believed to be his last work.

TEN PERCENT STARMAKER

After their sojourn in Spain, Budd Moss launched his career as a talent agent and joined Marty Baum’s agency in 1959 in LA. He built an impressive repertoire of clients; Rita Hayworth (Gilda), Cyd Charisse (Singin’ in the Rain), Robert Vaughn (Man from U.N.C.LE.), Karl Malden, and June Allyson. In 1992 Burton Moss Agency merged with boutique Shapiro-Lichtman Literary Agency bringing with him client MPAA president Jack Valenti whose novel, Protect and Defend, soared to bestseller.

Over the span of his illustrious career, Moss had placed Dyan Cannon in Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice; Sally ‘Hot Lips’ Kellerman in M*A*S*H; Tom Bosely in Happy Days; nose-wiggling Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched; and Mia Farrow in Peyton Place.

The business took much of Budd’s time away from Ruth Roman and the marriage became strained. Perceiving that he may be having an affair, and knowing that Budd valued his $500 Harry Cherry custom-tailored suits, she cut them to ribbons and burnt them in the fireplace. After six tumultuous years the marriage went south.

Budd concentrated on his business as a premier Hollywood Motion Picture and Television agent with General Artists Corporation and represented some of Hollywood’s most bankable clients. When he suggested Mia Farrow for Peyton Place he was also instrumental in setting her up with future husband Frank Sinatra.

Moss worked with then-actor Aaron Spelling’s wife, Carolyn Jones, Morticia in the Addams Family. While Moss represented Jones at GAC he placed her in a poignant role in Dr. Kildare in 1963. Her marriage to Spelling was heading for the rocks and Budd and Carolyn started dating. They became engaged and celebrated with an Addams Family-themed party. After she went on tour, they grew apart.

Years later as head of Burton Moss Management he suggested Melvin Belli to Coppolla for the part of Vito Corleone in The Godfather but was beaten out by Marlon Brando.

His friendship with Melvin Belli, King of Torts, lead to his getting married to his present wife Carolyn on the verandah of Belli’s San Francisco penthouse with Sidney Poitier as best man. Moss’ page-turner memoirs reveal Hollywood backstories like when he clinched a $10,000 per week guest spot for

Shelly Winters on the Ben Casey TV series. She had just won an Oscar for her performance in Diary of Anne Frank and was a hot property. At her Chateau Marmont suite she vehemently stated she was worth more than 10K a week and the über-agent had to handle the fading star with kid gloves.

Budd reminisces about Hollywood’s Golden Era and writes about his beloved uncle, Sam Zimbalist who died in November 1958 during the filming of the epic masterpiece Ben Hur in Rome. Zimbalist had produced some of Hollywood’s best films; Tortilla Flat, King Solomon’s Mines, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and Quo Vadis.

Sam Zimbalist died of a heart attack hours after filming the iconic chariot race scene in Ben Hur at Rome’s Cinecitta Studios. He was in stressful negotiations to secure five million dollars more for the MGM picture. Ironically he died immediately after the intense chariot race scene when Charlton Heston drives four white horses against nemesis Stephen Boyd’s four black stallions and he becomes impaled by the wheel spikes. Sam Zimbalist won a posthumous Best Picture Oscar for Ben Hur with a record-breaking total of eleven Oscars. The film epic is acclaimed as one of the best films of all time.

In Budd Burton Moss’ memoirs, he paints a cinematic picture with words cutting to the core of Hollywood’s Golden Era—an era that is no more. The once-monolithic movie-making industry has yielded to multi-million dollar productions, CG-enhanced mega films, and low-budget indies that appeal to a different kind of audience—a youth-oriented audience that yearns for fast-paced action. Moss tells it like it was. And it was great.

Gone are the days that Hollywood had a terra firma sense of place. Now “Hollywood” is a mythical Xanadu, an ephemeral Shangri-La fantasy that can be anywhere on earth, even in our dreams. Movie deals are different now; androgynous terms have broken the mysterious myth of movies. Gone are the days that hedonistic star makers longed to rendezvous with ingénue starlets over three-martini lunches and when, but a forbidden kiss, was a powerful aphrodisiac.

…And All I Got Was Ten Percent! By Budd Burton Moss, is available as an e-book available on Amazon.com

Bohemian Grove

August 10, 2014 by Anita Venezia 1 Comment

The Bohemian Club of San Francisco is one of the Bay Area’s best-kept secrets, and is considered to be one of the premier private men-only clubs in America. It boasts an elite membership, past and present, of some of the nation’s foremost power brokers, policy-makers, and several generations of Fortune 500 leaders.

Within the sanctuary of the exclusive club, men of both patrilineal wealth and big business self-achieved titans enjoy the camaraderie of friendship and success. The Club is unabashedly a personal retreat for the elite socio-economic and well-connected men in American society who can relax in the milieu of like-minded men.

This gentlemen’s club with an old-world atmosphere of interlocking business and the arts, and imbued with the spirit of gentry and civility, attracted the Crockers, Spreckles and Hearsts, as well as railroad, shipping and city builders. It has not deviated from its original mission to attract the most powerful and influential men of the moment.
At any given time there is a fifteen-year waiting list of about 20,000 sponsored applications in the pipeline to be vetted by a committee prior to acceptance. And with an initiation fee of $25,000, and about $600 in monthly dues, it doesn’t even faze the eager male aspirants.

An invitation to join the Bohemian Club is often a validation of one’s success and standing in society, by other men of influence who are part of the powerful network. As one of the world’s most exclusive men-only clubs, it is also one of the most maligned by its detractors. Why, you may ask? It’s because the private men’s club membership attracts some of the most influential leaders, moneyed power brokers, and decision-makers in America with a global reach.

The Bohemian Club was founded in 1872 in San Francisco by a group of Chronicle journalists with a mission to forge bonds by blending business and the arts; literature, art, music and drama. Membership swelled to include businesses, industry, banking, building, and national media, providing an art colony of sorts for writers, artists, poets, actors and like-minded intellectuals who craved artistic culture and camaraderie in the post-gold rush frontier days.

The 19th century co-founders, Daniel O’Conner and Henry “Harry” Edwards, chose the term “Bohemian” that typified free-thinking avant-garde and art-focused intellectuals, and the word best described their objectives to promote a devotion to the Seven Arts.

The present membership roster is secret; however, past members were involved in the public domain, and reads like the Who’s Who in global politics, government, military, finance, utilities, industry, science, national media, and the arts.

Post launch-period Bohemians in non-chronological order: William Keith of the Barbizon School, was a member, as were poet George Sterling, Jack London, Samuel Clemons (aka Mark Twain), and Bret Harte. One of only four females to ever have been granted honorary membership in the male-only club was Jack London’s mentor, poetess Ina Coolbrith, the club’s librarian.

Other esteemed members include: Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Henry Ford, Henry Kissinger, Ike Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George H. Bush, and every Republican president as well as many Democrat presidents. Academia is also well represented in the club by several university scientists, presidents and trustees. Political affiliation is not a membership prerequisite. Liberal Walter Cronkite was a member, as is Paul Pelosi.

Guest speakers at the elite club cover diverse subjects. Chris Matthews and Conan O’Brien were recent presenters, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was a regular, and Peter Ueberroth and General Stanley McChrystal have been Lakeside guest lecturers. Other members include newspaper barons William R. Hearst I and III, Earl Warren, S.D. Bechtel and son Riley Bechtel, James Lockheed, Alan Sproul, Ralph Bailey of DuPont, David Packard, William Casey Jr., Colin Powell, the Rockefellers, Google’s Eric Schmidt and astronauts, and the late Robert Mondavi and Tony Snow, and many International Press Club members.

To retain their ‘Bohemian’ allegiance to the arts, about ten percent qualify for membership in the artistic and entertainment realm: Tennessee Ernie Ford, George Shearing, Clint Eastwood, Herman Wouk (The Caine Mutiny), Grateful Dead rockers Mickey Hart and Bob Weir, and Jimmy Buffett. Past guests included Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and many big bands, jazzmen, and concert pianists.

WEAVING SPIDERS COME NOT HERE

The San Francisco-based club on Taylor Street owns the Bohemian Grove, a 2,700-acre retreat nestled in the giant redwood forests 75 miles north of The City. The ‘Grovers’ convene annually to celebrate High-Jinx in June, the other a mid-summer two week “Encampment” fest where the elite 2000+ men camp in the woods in rustic bunkhouses.

As part of merriment in the woods, Bohemians enjoy gourmet dining, fine wines and gallons of booze in clearings under canopies of heritage redwoods. Untoward activities or ungentlemanly behavior at the safe sanctum is unacceptable. On occasion an offending member has been escorted to the gate.

The club prohibits the discussion of business dealings and the use the encampment as a forum to solicit clients or promote ventures, as dictated by their motto “Weaving spiders come not here.” It is impossible to monitor private conversations or any clandestine planning in the bunkhouses and dining rooms, but it is presumed the venue has spawned a slew of schemes and strategies down the global pike.

One such historic scheme that occurred in September 1942 in the Bohemian Grove is well documented: the Manhattan Project. Ernest O. Lawrence, Donald Cooksey and Robert Oppenheimer discussed the project at the Grove’s river clubhouse with scientists and the military top brass. This historic rendezvous is a source of great pride for the club, as the development of the atomic bomb was to end World War II in 1945.

One wonders what other plans affecting the outcomes of elections, world banking, and expansionism may have been hatched at the Grove since 1872 by men of power, men who control the money, and the men who virtually rule the world.

The remote wilderness-meeting place is innocuous, serene and pristine where great men gather in the backwoods to bond and forge friendships. The encampments in forest clearings are about 118 rustic camps and each having private clubhouses, dining rooms, decks, bars and sleeping quarters. Camp compounds are collectively owned, often patrilineal, who are responsible for annual dues, upkeep, steward-valets, and share in responsibility for the comfort, welfare and supplies of the residents and guests.

Members are invited to join and must adhere to strict rules: no tipping, cameras, cell phones, tape recorders, radios, pets or firearms. At no time are autographs to be requested. Each camp is considered private with an atmosphere of civility, and owner Bohemians invite other members to enter.

The hundred plus individual camps are identified by names: Mandalay regularly houses presidents; Hill Billies the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Hillside has the Military Generals; and Cave Man houses the Think Tank, banking and defense sect. These rustic bunkhouses are where some of the world’s wealthiest, most influential and powerful men enjoy fellowship in the forest. Directors and CEOs of many of the nation’s 800 corporations have Club representation.

To keep everyone happy, fed and watered, the club employs over 500 seasonal workers. Top chefs and crew run their own butcher shop, bakery, pantry and catering service, working night and day to prepare the best gourmet food and serve the finest of wines to as many as 1500 raucous revelers seated 26 to a table in the al fresco Dining Circle.

The Bohemian Grove retreat is a fun-filled event with “walkie-talkie” nature walks, lectures, live concerts and theatrical performances under the watchful eye of a 40-foot moss-covered owl totem shrine behind the lakeside stage. The seating encircles an open air auditorium-like theatre shaded by redwoods for lakeside lectures, plays and concerts.

The annual kick-off to encourage the Bohemian revelers to discard all outside cares is the ‘Cremation of Care’ ceremony whereby an effigy is set alight on a small barge in the lake like Beau Geste’s Viking funeral. This century-old ceremony, imbedded in tradition, has brought ire from detractors as being a human sacrifice ala ancient Druid practices in the forests of Anglesey.

SECURITY AND INFILTRATION

Each encampment season protesters demonstrate outside the compound Bohemian Avenue gates. The activists oppose everything that the Bohemian Club stands for, and as long as print media gives ink, and television gives airplay, the activists will continue to bombard the gates. The Monte Rio annual events attract the wrath of sundry activists: environmentalists, anti-war protesters, occupiers maligning the One Percent, feminists, and other causes du jour that inflame the agitators that relentlessly dog the club.

One of the most vocal groups is the redwood environmentalists who accuse the private club of cutting heritage ancient trees to harvest 500,000 board feet of lumber. The club maintains that the felled trees were not ancient redwoods, but trees under the timber management program. The Bohemian Grove management insists their private land tree-cutting programs follow federal guidelines and remains in harmony with nature.

The Bohemian Grove is fully contained during encampment events with doctors and staff in a medical centre and it maintains its own fire department.

As the Bohemian Grove property is off-limits to non-members and the public, the private men-only membership, has drawn condemnation from detractors. Maximum security at the grove is of utmost importance, as some of the world’s most high-profile leaders, military generals, captains of industry, oil companies, and CEOs attend the events. The high-value members and guests are collectively vulnerable to infiltration, sabotage and possible targets of terrorist danger.

Trespassers are apprehended, photographed, fingerprinted and added to their database. Members’ guests are screened, vetted and wear laminated identification tags at all times. Security is tight; guards travel on golf carts and are immediately alerted to security breaches. They do not take trespassing lightly and do not allow casual non-guests at any time. Tours are not permitted. Member’s families may visit at non-event periods and only during daylight hours.

Some reporters and activists have admitted to trespassing, and their stretched stories have caused getting a valid interview almost impossible. Any form of publicity about the Bohemian Club is shunned and denied.

The Internet is ablaze with the intrigue of conspiracy theories, “eyewitness” accounts of activities, illuminati-style mind-control, clear-cutting heritage redwoods, and accusing members of ritualistic atrocities, including Druid-like sacrifice and devil worship in the commune. Many are even outraged that some men are guilty of micturition—peeing in the forest!

It is understandable that the compound, where some of the world’s most influential power brokers gather each summer, has the nation’s best post 9/11 security, employing ex-CIA and FBI agents to guard the perimeters of the vast property, a monumental challenge to say the least.

Though the redwood forest property spans 2,700 acres, only 109 acres are cleared for Grove activities in buildings, bunkhouses, dining hall, and al fresco dining arenas. The rest of the forest that borders the Russian River is preserved for the glory of the grove.

The rest of the acreage is wild, where one imagines that shafts of light pierce the canopies, lichen and tree moss clump on bark, and deer and wildlife roam among sword ferns in the perennial wetness of dappled shade. Fog hangs on the redwoods’ crown giving watery life to the untrammeled forest floor where light filters like clerestory windows of a cathedral, and where the giant trees have survived for over three millennia, giving a misty Arthurian mystery to the wilderness.

During my investigations I could not locate a website or email address. Media packets seem to be unavailable, and activities are not advertised by the club. I have written the facts to the best of my ability and have reported fairly without sensationalizing. Most information is gleaned from old news reports and the Internet. Much information was extrapolated from a 160-page dissertation on socio-economics, purportedly sanctioned by the Bohemian Club, by a sociologist’s study on American clubdom, consensus building, and the bonding of elite men in society.

About 20,000 membership applicants will wait fifteen years or so to be vetted and hopefully accepted. If they meet the stringent requirements, they will become ‘Bohemians’ in one of the world’s most exclusive clubs. And with a heavy initiation fee of 25 grand and 600 smackers a month, they will have entered the rare stratosphere of America’s socio-economic elite, and be privileged to rub shoulders, and raise the cup, with the highest echelons of the nation’s most powerful band of brothers who make our world go around.

Trafficking Humans

July 6, 2014 by Anita Venezia Leave a Comment

Slavery was abolished in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, however, modern-day slavery continues in the form of Human Trafficking.

The practice of enslaving humans of all races has blighted the world throughout recorded history. In the Book of Exodus Moses led Israelites from Egypt to escape slavery and in BC 73 the slave Spartacus was crucified for revolting against Romans.

In this modern age of humanitarian advancement and enlightenment, we may presume we have finally banned all slavery practices. Not so. Shockingly the endemic practice of trading humans for monetary gain is global. Men, women and children are still being trafficked around the world, enslaving people against their will for the sex trades or forced labor.

The U.S. State Department defines the essential elements of the Trafficking Persons crime; “Persons taken through recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or the receipt of persons by means of threats, use of force, abduction or fraud, deception, coercion, abuse of power, receiving payment for having control of a person for sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, servitude or the removal of organs…”

The ugly face of modern-day slavery is so globally pervasive that it is almost invisible to most observers. Human Trafficking follows gun running and drug dealing with estimated profits of over $32 billion a year. Trading subjugated humans by the merchants of misery is the world’s most abhorrent offence perpetrated by predatory individuals, gangs or international organized crime. This repugnant crime against humanity is a ticking time-bomb simmering to a boil that has become too big for any one government to crush as the global demand exceeds the supply.

Perpetrators who trade in human beings for the sex or labor markets may lurk for unsuspecting victims in a range of venues; four-star hotels, bus depots, inner city slums, or remote villages. The profiteering ring leaders look for the perfect storm in victims; desperation, opportunity and promised rewards. The perpetrators may emerge as well-dressed men, unkempt street procurers, motherly-type boss ladies, crime boss foot soldiers, money launderers, enforcers, pimps, document forgers, “employment recruiters” or other sundry manipulators of men, women and children.

Most legitimate agricultural ventures, apparel factories and other manufacturers adhere to acceptable labor and pay standards in workplaces, and are not the subjects of discussion in this article. This piece only addresses those persons who use force or slave labor in agriculture or underground sweat shop environments, many of whom don’t abide by labor laws, and who underpay and abuse workers.

Hundreds of thousands of slave workers are estimated to toil in field and factory labor in Africa, Asia and Pacific Island countries; the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

Most often desperately poor people turn to job recruiters, the liaison between factory owner and the workforce. Recruiters are known to troll towns and villages, procure willing laborers with promises of good pay, and then transport them in trucks. Many migrant workers are taken by force, shanghaied if you will. Some are never paid; others earn less than a living wage. Recruiters take large commissions off the top.

Trans-national procurers force migrants to travel to foreign regions with pre-paid fares. Upon arrival their passports, work permits and return tickets are confiscated, and thus the factory or field workers are trapped in the spiral of debt bondage with earnings held hostage to keep the workers working.

Many of the trapped migrants may labor long hours in rogue apparel factories in Indonesia and Bangladesh, slaving from dawn to dusk under appalling conditions in airless crowded workshops with barred windows, without benefits or labor rights, and may be paid about 93 cents to $1 a day. Some workers may never even get paid if they don’t reach daily targets and are forced to work through the night to make quotas.

Some workers are too intimidated to report the abuse of contractors, field bosses and managers, and most often the bribed corrupt authorities do nothing anyway. If workers run away they become trapped in a foreign place without legal documents and no wherewithal to return home. Destitute women and children are most likely to dovetail into the spiraling vortex of sex trades thus becoming part of a tragic diaspora with no happy endings.

Recruited workers for rogue factories and field labor may often be shipped to other regions to break family ties. Some non-profit organizations report that many slave laborers sleep in closets on factory premises, eat one meal a day, and labor long hours to pay off transport debts. A small factory workshop with forced quotas can produce about 15,000 garments daily with about 300 cutters and sewers.

Rogue factories’ low cost production of goods attracts some international apparel buyers who may not be aware of the labor abuse. Many government bureaucrats with elastic ethics may even ignore the reports of slavery and rampant unlawful practices in agriculture, garment and footwear manufacture. The rogue employers tend to own the worker’s time, not necessary the person per se.

Many name-brand manufacturers outsource labor to countries like Indonesia resulting in well-made products and low production costs. Advocates have exposed the practices of no-wage/low-wage labor as well as atrocious working conditions. The culture of slavery in Asia has endured for centuries with accepted practices disguised as versions of indentured servitude and forced labor.

Modern Jakarta in Indonesia, formerly Batavia in the 17th and 18th centuries, was then Dutch territory from where trading companies transported a half million slaves to their colonies and the West Indies. Over three centuries later, the country’s abject poverty still drives predatory practices of targeting men, women and children to fill the burgeoning sex trade or labor trades with no-pay/low-pay enslaved workers.

Many countries came late to the table to abolish slavery; the United States 1865; Mexico freed their last slaves in 1829; Morocco 1922; and Afghanistan in 1923. Niger abolished slavery in 1960 but laws were not enforced until 2003. Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962 and United Arab Emirates followed in 1963. Mauritania, a nation south of Morocco, forbade slave trade as recent as 1981, but outlawed practices continue.

Traditional slavery and hereditary servitude still exist in parts of Ghana, Benin, Togo, and the oil-rich nation of Nigeria where men, women and children are still being sold into slavery. We see it on the news.

Such human abduction atrocities in Nigeria made recent headlines when schoolgirls were taken. Abducted children are sold for as little as $12, some bring as much as $70 apiece on a good day. Boys are sold to fields or mines or as child soldiers to rag-tag renegade groups. Girls are traded for domestic servitude, child brides, or are taken to sex dens. The tribal practice of shrine slavery, Trokosi, is the taking of virgin girls as payment for a family’s religious atonement.

Once stolen children pass through the gates of human trafficking they are forced into lives of servitude with no possible escape. Most are never found. If they run away they are shot. Villagers are helpless as they witness heavily armed traders drive overland Toyota Hilux trucks and motorcycles hunting for humans.

Global slavery practices that once poisoned the past are now poisoning the present. This unspeakable scenario is not thriller fiction, this is fact. Many of us may have been naïve about these abhorrent slavery practices until the heavily-tweeted abduction of 276 mostly Christian Nigerian school girls shocked the world’s sensibilities. This horrific act has driven home the fact that the wretched practice of forced slavery still exists.

Human Trafficking has a dark underbelly in the crime world of trans-national perpetrators with multilayers of subjugated people being traded and merchandised. The lucrative venture attracts criminals in over 127 countries, estimated to bring profits of over $32 to $50 billion annually. Several Human Rights organizations offer startling statistics; about 27 million people are bought and sold of whom 80% are women and children. The International Labor Organization estimates that forced labor markets of $132 billion per year involve money laundering, and unpaid wages have reached over $21 billion.

After the global sex trade markets, the most common industries where trafficked children are forced to work against their will are small workshops and agriculture. Children harvest the Uzbekistan cotton fields, work in apparel “sweat shops”, and brickmaking, palm oil, cocoa, tea and coffee harvesting, and gold and mineral mining. The regions where most trafficked persons are forced into labor are Asia and Sub-Sahara Africa. Many trafficked workers are no-pay/low-pay young children.

CHILD SLAVE LABOR
The economies that prefer child slave labor to bolster profit margins are varied, and may embrace high revenues over the morality theory. Many agricultural ventures appear to be upright for-profit businesses, but among the worst child-labor offenders are the vast cocoa fields on the Ivory Coast of West Africa and South America. In Pakistan and India over 300,000 children are held in debt bondage slaving for loom masters in the carpet weaving industry. These children have no childhoods.

The “employers” prefer the nimble fingers of malleable young children who labor in the shadows of seemingly legitimate industries to harvest cotton, palm oil fruits, and cocoa crops or weave intricate carpets on looms. The child cocoa harvesters work from sunup to sunset in the tropical heat of day, often with little food. The agile boys climb barefoot up cacao trees, slash off pods with sharp machetes, remove the beans, and carry sack loads on their backs. Africa’s West Coast yields about 70% of the world’s cocoa, and about 200,000 boys, as young as seven, slave in the fields.

Hershey’s Chocolate Company, Nestlé, and Ferrero Chocolates are the three main buyers. They have pledged to monitor the growers’ unpalatable labor practices and help eradicate agrarian child slave labor by 2020. Chocolate wrappers bear caveats; “Fair Trade Certified” to imply ethically-sourced products.

The most delectable chocolates may very well have been brought to us by the slave labor of little children’s hands and who ironically may never have tasted a piece of chocolate. Think about it. Our most common purchases may have been tinged by the use of slave labor from the field production to finished products. Imagine if you will that child cotton pickers worked in fields from dawn to dusk; weavers and dyers may have slogged for pennies a day; and cutters and sewers may have worked in airless ‘sweat shops’ in Bangladesh. The nimble hands of young children may have brought us crisp cotton shirts, luscious chocolates, Oriental carpets and high-end running shoes.

Our insatiable appetites for cheap goods swell the profit margins of middle-men who in turn sell to big brand buyers. Have consumers ever considered the cheap goods we buy may have been facilitated by slave labor? No we haven’t.
Some consumers pledge to buy American-made goods, but even labels boasting “Made in America” are actually manufactured by foreign guest workers in U.S. Commonwealth Mariana Islands, north of Guam. Americans never add a single stitch to the $2 billion industry.

So as we consumers peer through the window of rogue labor conditions, we see a trending paradigm shift in the way we spend our money. Billionaire Ralph Lauren, who designs, markets and licenses multi-million dollar ultra-preppy-chic brands, has no hand in the actual manufacturing, but nevertheless only buys outsourced goods.
Their company’s new policies are to buy from only fair trade factories. Other low-priced merchandisers may follow suit by observing the multiple tiers of the supply chain from field to finished product to consumer. If the big brand-boys make enough noise it may lead to profound changes in the international slave labor markets—but then again maybe not. Economics are about profit margins.

Following the money trails sometimes reveal the possibilities of labor law offenders. We tend to buy products with competitive prices—we learn that in Economics 101—hence international corporations outsource production for low-cost manpower. What really happens behind the heavy curtains of commerce?

A case in point is the competitive Palm Oil Industries that produce the ubiquitous ingredient contained in over 50% of all supermarket products. Palm oil is used in bio-fuels, soaps, creams, cosmetics, salad oils, bakery goods, and purchased by manufacturing giants; Unilever, Nestle, General Mills, Kraft and Cargill of California.

Malaysia grows half of the world’s palm oil trees, and with Indonesia, Thailand and Nigeria grows 85% of the world’s supply. The profit-driven market yields 47 million tons and brings over $40 billion a year. More than a million acres of palm oil tree groves now blanket acreage where old-growth rain forests once were. Palm oil industries are considered among the world’s worst eco-villains.

As the palm oil groves produce palm fruits year-round it is work intensive with a labor force of tens of thousands. Recruiters most often import cheap-labor migrant workers, and upon arrival confiscate passports and work permits. Workers pay for transport, food and lodging out of wages. The disgruntled trouble-makers may even be sold into other markets.

Ugly backstories emerge. Most of the 100,000 migrant workers never leave the dense groves; they labor, live and shop at company stores. Thousands of children work in the tropical sun without protective goggles or gloves while spraying toxic chemicals and pesticides. There are rampant abuses of child labor exploitation but the often stateless children fall through the cracks of weak government oversight. Few complain for fear of beatings and reprisal. There is no escape.

People movers may be among the world’s worst traffickers in forced labor. Over 300,000 domestics from Ethiopia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka work in Lebanon, and many more throughout Middle Eastern nations. In many cases passports and documents are confiscated, and work arrangements may be structured as debt bondage leading to exploitation. Some enslaved workers are even sold to European sex traffickers. Others just disappear with no trace.

THE RED MARKET
The trafficking of humans for forced labour is just one of the nightmares facing displaced victims; the other is their possible captivity to be sold into the sex trade. Atrocities suffered by hostages can be one part of the nightmarish equation—but the horrifically macabre buying and selling of humans, especially children and teenagers, for their high-value vital organs, assaults all humanitarian senses.

The most spine-chilling breeds of human traffickers deal in the illegal practices of harvesting human organs for financial gain. Medical technology and pharmaceutical breakthroughs perfected the practice of organ transplants in the 1970s, and it was a matter of time that the illicit market would prove lucrative for the body snatchers.
The most precious of commodities, hearts, lungs, kidneys and tissue from abducted people bring billions of dollars a year. Those who are kidnapped specifically for their organs do not travel far; they are harbored in makeshift clinics close to where they were taken. They are the ‘disappeared ones’.

The taking of human organs for transplants is illegal in all nations except Iran who forbid selling to foreigners. The miracle pharmaceuticals that once saved lives by preventing foreign organ rejection have now spawned predatory organ harvesting practices. The Red Market theft of human organs brings over $1.2 billion a year.
India is the world’s biggest kidney trading centre. Nephrologists pay donors only $600 each and make big money on organ tourism. China harvests organs from the executed prisoners and in Europe a kidney brings $100K, and Rent-a-Womb industries thrive.

Ethical dilemmas often face surgeons when transplanting human organs. As much as 42% of “donor” organs may be yielded from illegal Red Market industries. In the U.S. most organs are donated through the Anatomical Gift Act of 1968, whereby the potential donor bequeaths organs legally.

There are horror stories of organ theft. Trials after the Kosovo-Serbian war accuse a human organ harvesting ring of ex-soldiers and “Frankenstein” doctors of taking prisoners’ organs in makeshift clinics. Human Rights’ Watch Groups report the perpetrators were charging customers in Turkey and Saudi Arabia $45K per body.
The “Yellow House” case tells of a farmhouse in Albania where organ robbers performed surgeries. Many refugees and war prisoners were said to have checked in and never checked out. Surgical tools were later discovered in a nearby river. The gruesome case reads like a chiller thriller but the macabre atrocities really happened.
The harvesting of human organs smacks of science fiction drama. One can visualize Rod Serling offering the Twilight Zone’s iconic tease; “Imagine if you will that living people are abducted to be robbed of their vital organs…” Fade to black.

THE RED WINDOW PROJECT
There are several child advocate organizations that help stolen children and young adults to re-enter the workforce. They are the David fighting the Goliath of the $32 billion industry of 27 million victims of human trafficking.
Though UNICEF and the Polaris Project have a global presence to counteract this overwhelming marketplace, there will never be enough funding to dismantle such far-reaching global ventures. Some organizations realize they can’t solve the entire problem, but with one step at a time to rescue a handful of victims, they may have the ability to empower but a few to escape the churning wheel of forced servitude. These and other organizations are no match to dismantle the vast network, but at least they have a presence to advocate for the victims.

One such organization that has a finger on the virtual pulse of human trafficking is the Red Window Project in Livermore. Mark Fisher heads the project, and with limited funds, concentrates efforts on Cebo City in the Philippines with faith-based focus on preparing young people for the job market.
Human Trafficking still exists in California with porous border points that facilitate the illegal moving and selling of the most vulnerable victims. Assembly Bill 22 is California’s first law that sets higher criminal penalties for Human Trafficking. It is not known how many people are trafficked locally, or how many traffickers are apprehended and sentenced. But each step in the right direction attacks the job at hand gradually, if only saving a single drop in the vast bucket of human trafficking.

Director Fisher of the Red Window Project made a recent presentation to the Blackhawk Museum Guild and explained their modest mission. His group helps the most vulnerable victims of human trafficking; women and children. He spelled out how his staff and the International Justice Mission concentrate on the needy youth in Cebo City, the Philippines.

The crux of their organization’s mission is to focus on victims of modern slavery, one step at a time. Their staff prepares students to graduate high school and provides job training and career counseling to apply for jobs.
The mission and dedication of the Red Window Project is to rescue at-risk youth and plan their education with scholarships. Some of the rescued girls had been sold into slavery by traffickers, many others are the sole providers of siblings, but most of them will find a bright future with the help of those who are dedicated to raising awareness about the modern day slavery one person at a time.

D-DAY –The Day that Changed the War

May 8, 2014 by Anita Venezia 4 Comments

On D-Day, seventy years ago, the Invasion of Normandy changed the course of the World War. The daring surgical strike against German-Occupied France was the catalyst that deterred Adolf Hitler’s forces from further entrapping Europe in deadly quicksand of possible all-out defeat.

The Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and by 1944 already occupied several European nations. The continent was still reeling from the Great War that had ended in 1918—a mere two decades earlier.

To deter Britain’s anticipated attacks from the sea, German forces constructed fortifications along the Western Front known as “The Atlantic Wall.” The Nazi Military Machine secured 2,400 miles of coastline facing Britain from the Bay of Biscay to Arctic Ocean, in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Norway, with a force of 300,000 troops.

They constructed the coastal Atlantic Wall with millions of tons of cement and steel barricades, fortified with observation towers, encampment bunkers, pillboxes, gunnery emplacements, machine gun nests and impenetrable fortifications to repel attacks. Some subterranean hideouts had sleeping quarters and mess halls as well as defense weaponry. Along the French coast, many bunkers were camouflaged caves carved into cliffs while others were disguised as quaint cottages with Mansard roofs, dummy doors and phony lace curtains.

The Nazis had spent two years constructing the Atlantic Wall with a quarter million foreign conscripted slave laborers, POWs and workers from French Colonies in Asia. They were ill-fed and worked to death.
The Allies had to break through the near-impregnable coastal wall to defeat the Third Reich’s tyranny.

The prelude to the Normandy land battle was the vital air support of a 24,000-strong force, supplied by a trinity of nations; Britain, Canada and the United States. The RAF (Royal Air Force) and U.S. Army Air Force flew continual air assaults to pulverize and disable the Nazi fortifications. And on the night of June’s first full moon the bombardment of Nazi military installations was guided by ribbons of moonlight in nearby rivers.

The targeted air bombardments on fifty-miles of coastline weakened the Atlantic Wall for the dawn landings of thousands of men. American GIs, along with British and Canadian units, were to be dispatched from an armada of over 5,000 ships to LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks) and amphibious crafts.

The D-Day Invasion of Normandy was the largest such operation ever executed in world history, with simultaneous surgical assaults from all sides by air, land and sea. Allied Ground Forces stormed five targeted beaches at first light, knowing full well they were entering the Jaws of Death, and knowing when they set foot on the shores they would take hits from 88 mm artillery, mortars, rocket launchers, howitzers, machine gun fire, flame throwers, snipers and deadly land mines.

Demolition crews were among the first to rush beaches to neutralize mines; many blown to pieces before the sun came up. Cruisers, destroyers and troopships took mortar fire. Over 5000 sitting duck ships, vision cut by burning oil, loaded with supplies, tanks, Jeeps and trucks, were in the enemy’s scopes.

Vehicles landed, traversing the mined sands, soldiers following behind, stepping in the wheel ruts, others rushing to shelter in the dunes, Rangers rappelling cliffs. Smoke, fire, noise, explosions; mayhem was everywhere. Men lay dead or dying, Medics rushed and radios blared. Demo crews set charges to detonate mines; they took the biggest hits.
Coastal shorelines were mined and strewn with lethal steel obstacles to capsize landing craft and kill intruders; tetrahedral spikes, half-buried mines, mined spikes, and dragons’ teeth tank deterrents. Allies needed good vision to breech the shores at first light.

The trinity of Allied Forces in Operation Overlord were to land on five different beaches, codenamed Utah, Omaha, (U.S.) Gold, Juno (Britain) and Sword (Canada). Britain’s launch points were Falmouth, Slapton, Portsmouth and New Haven.

The Allied beach raiders were delivered to channel waters by 5000 Naval and Merchant Navy ships carrying 195,000 men to be dispersed into amphibian vessels to the shores. Even though logistics of such an operation must have been nightmarish, the operation worked like clockwork.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the operation, in retrospect, was the military’s most daring General. He understood the forces’ penetration of the Atlantic Wall would depend upon favorable weather and tides, and yet the death toll would be still be horrendous. Eisenhower knew the danger the invasion posed. He understood that Operation Overlord could fail—and fail badly—and was aware that tens of thousands of Allied Forces could perish. But the warrior extraordinaire had raw guts, stamina, courage, and was a brilliant military strategist. He had the fortitude to take the chance, and through sheer military genius, changed the course of history.

General Eisenhower had arrived in Britain in January 1944 to set about planning the proposed invasion. He butted heads with Britain’s top military echelons including Prime Minister Winston Churchill. His strategic design for Victory in Europe was laid out with all possible scenarios. Planners knew weather and tides were to be a determining factor, and that they had to wait until conditions were viable for thousands of warships to cross the rough English Channel. The weather had a mind of its own, as winds could turn within hours.

Members of the Supreme High Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) consulted Britain’s best military meteorologists. Countdown to victory commenced early June, 1944. There was no precedent for such a mighty invasion with the largest armada ever assembled in military history. The 1942 Invasion of Sicily had enabled Allied Forces, under Patton and Montgomery, to traverse to Northern Italy, and now they were poised to penetrate the Atlantic Wall.
So, a full moon night Tuesday 6th day of June was targeted to enter a new phase in world history. The Invasion of Normandy was to be the event that turned the currents of war, leading to the greatest eventual victory the earth would ever see.

The Bravest of Men
Allied troops waiting in the south of England for orders were chomping at the bit, ready for action. Training sessions warned of the danger of even talking about the upcoming invasion. Allied troops were sequestered in fenced camps weeks before D-Day—not allowed to communicate with family or girlfriends by phone, cable or mail. Coastal residents were relocated ten miles away from all southern shorelines.

The mission of the jumpers in the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne “Band of Brothers” was to parachute behind enemy lines and destroy exit roads and bridges to thwart the enemy’s retreat. For weeks they had studied aerial reconnaissance photographs, topographical maps, and mock-up models of the Normandy terrain for night jumps.

By the time the jumpers parachuted from planes and gliders behind enemy lines, they had memorized layouts of the white cliffs jutting into Etretat Bay, contours of each beach, patchworks of Bocage region green fields with thickets and hedgerows, and the roads and bridges they had to sabotage. Allied troops knew not to bomb historic landmarks or the fabled Le Mont Saint Michel, the medieval abbey near Caen that loomed high on a rock island.

Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Force provided air support by bombing the targeted region day and night, to soften up the enemy and penetrate the formidable Atlantic Wall. RAF Hurricane and Spitfire planes were on alert at Dover Base to fly missions on a minute’s notice. Many pilots were killed or captured; thousands never returned.

The Supreme Commander confirmed day and hour; wheels were set in motion for nearly 200,000 Allied troops to reach Normandy beaches before daybreak. One can imagine the orders; dismantle mined obstacles, assault German strongholds, clear out weapon and machine gun nests, neutralize the enemy, fight like hell and complete the mission.

The operation at hand lasted many days. Twenty percent of the Allied troops died and thousands were maimed before they forged north to Paris.

The build up to Operation Overlord was Top Secret; only a handful of inner circle planners had “For Your Eyes Only” access. British Agencies were ordered to disseminate false stories through Intelligence outlets and leak fictitious names and dummy armies. Faux info leaked that Allied Forces were poised to attack Pas-de-Calais on France’s northern shores in July. Spies and double-agents picked up phony information and German forces further reinforced the northern Atlantic Wall other than the actual targeted regions.

Knowing that Luftwaffe spy planes were reconnoitering British coasts, they constructed false military bases, and phantom forces were assigned to mighty General Patton. Set decorators from Shepperton Film Studios built Hollywood-style, faux, one-dimensional barracks, dummy planes and rubber blowup-trucks; the façade described as “The Eye of the Needle.”

An already-dead military man, “The Man Who Never Was,” disguised as an intelligence officer, was dropped into the sea from the air with false documents outlining an imminent attack on different shores. Germans retrieved the corpse washed ashore and presumed they had recovered valid, secret Intelligence. They were still buoyed with power after ousting the British Expeditionary Forces four years earlier in Dunkirk.

So, the Nazis were unprepared for the mighty Normandy raiders; unprepared that such brave warriors would knock down their monumental wall, and were totally unprepared that their elite forces would be decimated.

Dunkirk
Almost four years prior to D-day, in mid-1940, Nazi behemoth Panzer tanks had pushed 338,000 soldiers of British Expeditionary Forces, including 100,000 Frenchmen, towards the English Channel. They were trapped in Dunkirk Harbour on the far Western Front, backs to the wall, with no escape route but the cruel sea.

Britain’s War Office alerted “everything that could float,” to rescue the trapped men from impending massacre. Big ships and small boats rushed all night from Dover to Dunkirk, navigating the 50-mile channel through watery mine fields.

Known as Operation Dynamo, lifesavers participated in the makeshift flotilla; a cruiser, 39 destroyers, yachts, ferries, trawlers, tugboats, gunboats, sail boats, motor boats, fishing boats, rowboats and lifeboats navigated the choppy channel. Indefatigable rescuers ferried soldiers to offshore transit ships, dodging strafers for nine solid days until the last man was out of Dunkirk.

Luftwaffe planes and surface vessels continually bombed rescue vessels in all-out attack as they rowed soldiers from the harbor. Sixty-eight thousand died, and 861 boats were sunk, but they never stopped the valiant rescue effort.
The Legend of the Little Boats is one of the war’s most beloved stories. Every rescuer, British and French, was honored with the Saint George’s Cross flag that they proudly flew above their humble barks, telling of their bravery at Dunkirk.

Germans did not succeed in killing them all, nor did they break the inimitable British spirit, but they commandeered the abandoned tanks, trucks, fuel tanks, ammunition and artillery weaponry; in all, a treasure trove of British engineering secrets.

On the home front, exhausted from Blitzkrieg bombings, and with the Dunkirk near-massacre in mind, troops waited to proceed. Britain was poised to attack with over 150,000 Canadians, and 1.5 million American Servicemen and women stationed in England.

General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, was assisted by six others, including General Omar Bradley and Sir Bernard Montgomery. They confided the invasion plans to King George VI just before departure. Prime Minister Churchill said that General Eisenhower was the most powerful man in history.

The General knew every order of battle, every minute detail of each division’s time schedules, and knew that many must die on that fateful day to save others from Hitler’s horrific tyranny.
It would be years before the world would be stunned by the war’s death toll at about 50 million, and General Eisenhower could not know at that point of battle, that over 405,000 United States Military personnel would die before the war ended in 1945.

Bitter Victory
There were thousands of behind-the-scenes strange stories that affected the war. One such bizarre incident was a perceived Intelligence breach that caused alarm. An incredible coincidence nearly deep-sixed the entire operation five weeks before the invasion. An unassuming physics teacher, Leonard Dawe, a puzzle compiler, submitted five weekly crossword puzzles to London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. Clues included the top secret code-words used for the Normandy Invasion; Utah, Omaha, Neptune, Overlord, and Mulberry—code for artificial harbor tide breakers.
Military officials were convinced a spy was supplying Intel to the enemy. Scotland Yard picked up the puzzle compiler. After interrogation they concluded it was all just an incredible coincidence. The operation proceeded as planned.

Such stories make up the war’s tapestry. Prime Minister Winston Churchill warrants mention; already a seasoned warrior from the South African Boer War and WWI. He was crusty, adamant, and steadfast; a man of raw courage. He also gave the most astounding “blood, guts, and spirit” speeches in Parliament. Churchill’s “our darkest hour” speech will live forever.

Churchill’s biting telegrams and letters to President Roosevelt, begging for ships, are legendary. His threats to the then neutral America as being in the Nazis’ gun sights were bloodcurdling. Pearl Harbor attacks by the Japanese in 1941 slammed the Americans into the wartime European Theatre. The “Yanks” jumped in with guns ablaze and saved Britain.

When France, Britain’s ally, capitulated to Axis Powers, Churchill feared the Germans would take the fleet of French warships. He gave the admiral an ultimatum; scuttle all French naval ships or the British would blow them to smithereens. When the French declined, Churchill ordered Royal Navy warships from Gibraltar to bombard the cruisers and destroyers with deadly firepower. British warships blasted them with 14-inch guns sinking them into the sea off French Algeria. The collateral damage was over a thousand French sailors.

Parliament applauded Churchill’s resolve to beat Germany, and when Roosevelt realized the warrior was serious about winning the war, he sent warships and supplies to Britain’s aid.

When one of history’s most important forecasts promised good weather; spring tides and a full moon—they set Operation Overlord for Tuesday, 6th of June. To alert French Resistance fighters of the imminent invasion, BBC radio broadcast lines from Verlaine’s poem, “Wound my Heart with Monotonous Langour.” The Resistance partisans, crucial to the invasion’s success, were ready for the Allied night jumpers and started blowing up trains, rails, roads and bridges.

It can only be imagined how operation logisticians must have anguished about the 5000 ships carrying planes, weapons, minesweepers, amphibians, pontoons, LCTs, 150,000 jeeps, trucks, tanks, planes, food and medicine. And brilliant military innovation supported the logistics of transporting hundreds of thousands of men crossing the choppy channel to target the beaches at first light.

We have seen the blood and guts movies and have read historic reports. We know about D-Day—or do we? We may never understand what those brave young men were thinking. We may never know how calmly they faced potential death, and we will never understand, even upon entering the Jaws of Death, they were able to remain steadfast, on to glory.

Could those courageous men of the Allied Forces have known on that grey morning that within hours of storming the beaches that twenty percent of them would lay dead on the sands?

While films such as The Longest Day, and Saving Private Ryan, and scores of British, J. Arthur Rank films, tell vividly of the horror, no movie can hope to explain the thoughts of those young, brave men, on that fateful morn.
To confuse the enemy and jam radar, Allies parachuted dummies and tinfoil chaff, and bombarded installations the night before. And on the morning of June 6, 1944, air support planes struck the coast with 11,000 sorties targeting railroad junctions, gun positions, and troop concentrations.

Californians 1st Lt. Anthony Pavone and 2nd Lt. Archie Maltbie were among the raiding pilots on that fateful day.
Pavone, a longtime family friend, recounted his personal account to my daughter Antonia. Anthony Pavone, 94, was a 1st Lt. in the Army Air Force, one of the D-Day pilots. His reaction to that day; “There were a lot of ships and boats out there—we were up in the altitude, couldn’t see the people getting killed—I assumed they were—it’s so far behind me, I don’t remember…I flew over and bombed the Germans ahead of the landing forces.” Asked what he had learned from the war he responded wisely; “War doesn’t pay…”

Archie “Lin” Maltbie, 90, was a fighter pilot flying P-47 Thunderbolts with 365th Fighter Group of Ninth Air Force—the “Hell Hawks” 388th Squadron. He signed up at 19, sailed on Queen Mary and was stationed in England three weeks before D-Day.

Archie tells of cross-channel missions on D-Day; strafing and bombing in the morning, again that afternoon to hit inland and coastal gun positions. “We were up before dawn, got briefed on our mission…skies were full of U.S. planes. On D-Day morning, thousands of ships were down there, so close you could walk from one to another like stepping stones. We saw red in the water. Blood tinted the beaches. I recall shell bursts, tracer bullets flying—it was rough down there. After D-Day we flew from French soil on leveled fields.”

Archie had already shot down enemy planes, and that August, flying at 300 mph, gunned a German ME 109. The Messerschmitt’s exploding debris blew to his canopy disabling the P-47. He baled-out, seconds before it blew up.
Maltbie parachuted, landed in a woodsy area near the River Seine, infested with Germans. Armed with a silk map and French phrase book, he was taken in by a family with the French Underground. He gave up his uniform, got a Basque passport and blended in. During German farmhouse inspections he pretended to be mute thus securing his faux Basque identity.

Lt. Col. (Ret.) Archie Maltbie, a retired pharmacist lives in San Jose, has two sons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He wrote the foreword for a recently-published military history book, “Thunderbolts of the Hell Hawks,” authored by John Crump and Roy Sutherland. The coffee table book, rich with photos, is illustrated by Don Barnes.

And there was the late Capt. “Zim” Zimmer, pilot in 319th Bombardment Group, who bombed Italian train depots and Po River bridges to support Allied ground troops advancing north after the Invasion of Sicily.
In June 1945 he wrote; “This is how we were hit. Formation came over the coast, climbing from about 11,000 ft. [We] lost the leader in clouds at 16,000. Other wing ship was still there. Lead had disappeared. Not far ahead was the lead box…the other wing ship and I were only ones left. Kline thinks we were hit by flak—banged through ship and radio. Number two engine failed; we feathered it. I thought I could make formation and salvoed bombs to lighten load. We got ripped from stem to stern, losing altitude and speed. I tried to get power, just made the 180 when we got hit again. Landry fell behind my seat, yelled he was hit. Number three was throwing gales of oil—we were doing 110 at 9,000 ft. I couldn’t hold on. I called “abandon ship!” [We} went out the bomb bay—there must have been 7 Luftwaffe ME-109s concentrating on us! I caught a glimpse of my ship in my chute…pieces flew in the air…so long, Zim…”
Captain Zimmer landed in a field north of Pisa, was rescued by the Agostini family, and later taken as POW. After the war he reunited with the Italian family. Zim and Kay had twelve children. They lived on our street.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Theatre, Navy man Bruno Costa, San Ramon resident, was a sonar-radar technician on a destroyer for three years. They torpedoed Penang-based German U-862 subs trolling Pacific waters. “We dropped depth charges on German submarines; we sank about nine. August ’45 I was in Okinawa when they dropped the bomb. I saw a lot of action—it was the best time of my life.”

These mentioned service members have lived to tell their stories—granted the right numbers in the lottery of life. So it is with respect and gratitude that we thank all military personnel for their service, and honor heroic men and women who bravely fought many battles in the war of wars to bring victory to Europe and the Pacific.

Bravo and Godspeed, Bands of Brothers all. May your contrails of conquest endure as a testament to your courage, and forever remind us of your valor and sacrifices as you soar unforgotten on the edge of the skies.

Water – Waste Not Want Not

April 2, 2014 by Anita Venezia Leave a Comment

Have you ever imagined that one day you may turn on the water faucet and nothing came out? Imagine if you had no water at all in your house, as if the water main was turned off for extended periods—maybe months. This scenario is a stark and possible reality. I know. I have lived through an African drought.

During my childhood, the seaside bungalow where my family lived in a remote area near Zululand, had not a single drop of running water. The water was not rationed—there was none to ration. The only water supply for bungalows then was from the rainwater that funneled from the sloped roofs into canvas water tanks attached to house sidings.

There was no such thing as bottled water; that luxury would come about much later. If we needed household water, we turned on the outside spigot, filled a pot, and then boiled the precious liquid before using it. Most seasons, we had abundant tropical downpours and water was plentiful, but no rain meant there wasn’t any water until another rainstorm.

During one summer, disaster struck. Someone slit the canvas water tank during the night; the receptacle had emptied. The nearest ‘fresh’ water was in a brackish lagoon that flowed into the Indian Ocean. Tropical broad-leafed trees met the sandy shores where venomous boomslange snakes lived; we saw the tracks. My mother and I retrieved buckets of river-sea water from the brownish tropical lagoon—home to crocodiles.

The memory of having no fresh water for such long periods has been the single-most cause of my being a life-long “water conserver.”

Now California is in drought mode. Governor Jerry Brown recently asked us to cut back water usage by 20%. A few recent rainstorms have helped somewhat, but reservoir levels are still low.

So what have I gleaned about the national and global water situation to prepare this piece? There are drought conditions in many parts of the Middle East, Africa, Australia as well as our Western states. Droughts and floods have been cyclical for millennia; nature just works that way. I learned that it may get worse in California if more rains do not come this season; one of the driest winter cycles in recent memory.

We may not experience the immediate effects of drought, but the ripple effect ripples far and wide. Many businesses have already cut water usage; ski resorts had a paltry season, and the drop in revenues have affected rentals, restaurants and seasonal workers. Snow pack runoffs will not sufficiently fill reservoirs.

As always, agriculture will suffer. Fields will dry, rivers may not flow, field hands will lose work, and produce prices will soar. The cattlemen are thinning herds and cutting back. Feed is scarce and expensive. If the drought continues and seasonal rains fail to come, parks, golf courses, sports fields and lawns will suffer, and withering gardens may have to go “native.”

Recycled grey water is already being used by carwash companies, ground irrigation, and light industry, and water restrictions have caused severe cut backs. The cost of water may rise.

Consumers in California are far from having household and potable water regulated, but experts warn that in the future there may be supply problems. The answer to high usage and dwindling fresh water supplies from rainfall may be mitigated by the process of desalination.

The desalination and reverse osmosis procedures to purify sea water have already been used for some time in such places as U.S. aircraft carriers, ships and submarines that use nuclear power to convert sea water to drinking water. An aircraft carrier desalinates as many as 400,000 gallons of salt water per day.

California is moving in the desalination direction to stave off possible water shortages. A huge desalination plant will be completed in 2016 in Carlsbad, projected to provide 7% of San Diego County’s fresh water supply. Poseidon Resources Corporation states that they have already gone through all regulatory procedures, and their new $1billion facility will process about fifty million gallons per day. Interior regions far away from coastal cities cannot gain from such desalination facilities as the transportation of desalinated fresh water to the inland is not cost effective.

Lockheed Corporation, on the cutting edge of weaponry production, and one of the nation’s largest government contractors, is developing salt water filters made of grapheme, similar to pencil lead. The nanometer filtration technology will be used to filter and remove microscopic salt particles and residue from sea water, and thus create top quality drinking water.

WATER AS A WEAPON

Countries systematically deprived of fresh water supplies may perish. Water, more than any other commodity, is the lifeblood of nations. There are countries today that are in desperate need of potable water, and with continual drought periods, will gradually face decline. Many African nations, Middle Eastern countries, and Australia have all borne the devastating results of the lack of rain. The poorest nations don’t have the finances or wherewithal to build monolithic dams to capture the rains in reservoirs, and many governments take drastic measures.

Zimbabwe, with a track record of government corruption, has withstood severe water woes. Water is rationed; absolutely no water flows through any pipes or comes out of any faucets, period. The pipes that usually flow with fresh water from municipal reservoirs are as dry as savannah bones. So how do Zimbabweans survive without water? They find ways.

There is a surge of water poachers and illegal H2O dealers that have sprung up overnight. Scavengers sneak to reservoirs or lakeshores at night and carry water in tricked-out trucks with huge water tanks and commercial barrels, and sell water of questionable quality, at 20 litres for $4.00.

One such town, Chitungwiza, with a population of two million, has had short water supplies during the long ration period. Some rural residents have their water turned on only once a week and have resorted to drinking acrid water from illegal boreholes; others walk to streams or lakes with buckets. Four thousand people died recently of cholera from drinking polluted, non-treated river or lake water. Parasitic and contaminated waters cause cholera, typhoid and bilharzia.

Some people have built tanks on the sides of huts and houses to harvest meagre rainwater roof runoffs. Farmers, even those who paid water bills, have been evicted from their land. The corrupt government claims there is no money to purify lake water for the poor areas. Yes, water can be used as a weapon.

There is another drought on another continent wreaking havoc in the outback. Over the past few decades, droughts have hit Australia hard. Half million head of sheep and cattle perished for the want of water. Restrictions of water and hosepipe uses have been enforced with heavy fines, and watering gardens has been verboten.

China is dry too. Last summer, a shattering heat wave caused the enforcement of water rationing in China’s central and eastern regions. A ton of fish perished at fish farms near Shanghai in 30 ponds that overheated, raising the water temperatures beyond what the fish could bear. The fish literally boiled in shallow ponds.

Parts of the Middle East, Yemen and Jordan are in drought mode; the latter being the world’s fourth driest water-poor nation. Many of these countries have the added burden of an influx of millions of refugees from war-torn Syria who live in transit camps. UNICEF reports that the need for millions of gallons of extra water adds strain on already-limited supplies. It costs money for fuel and labor to transport water.

According to a United States Intel report, water has become a global security issue. Competition for the power grab of dwindling water supplies could likely result in instability and potential state failures of America’s closest allies. With limited and non-sustainable water supplies food stockpiles would diminish. Water could potentially cost more than milk or the finest wines. Food could not be produced, livestock would die of thirst, and clean and affordable water would not be available to nourish nations.

This is not 1984 or Brave New World fiction; this is a stark reality of the possible future scenarios as we see the world population burgeon to over seven billion. Asia, the most densely populated region on earth, is blessed with water during monsoon seasons.

The destruction of a nation’s water supplies could deep-six the population within weeks. Weapons transportation and military manpower functions with water. The greatest weapon would be the strangulation or contamination of water supplies, and Governments could monitor water usage during droughts, and may even resort to detouring supplies from perceived enemy territory.

These situations are among the harshest scenarios, but experts foresee that this may not be so farfetched. We truly live in a thirsty world—both for land and man.

WATER USAGE

The State of California is encouraging conservation. The Sierra snowpack is meagre, reservoirs are shrinking, and concentrated mitigation may prevent future shortages. The town of Willits has already imposed a 150 gallon per day limit on residents, and reservoirs and aqueducts are scrutinized.

Golf courses use a whopping 360,000 gallons per day, and if the drought continues there may be restrictions on water recreation, and other consumers. In dry and desert regions, xeriscaping and succulent landscaping is recommended.

Visualize, if you will, your own daily water use in gallons. Imagine that each gallon you use is filled in virtual gallon containers stacked in your kitchen. Approximate usage, shower: 7 gals per minute; bath, 30 gals; running faucet, 3 gals per minute; washing machine, 50 gals per load; dishwasher, 15 gals; toilet, 6 gals per flush; brushing teeth/washing hands with running water, 3 gals per minute.

Not including garden or landscape watering, give or take a gallon or two, we use in excess of 150 gallons per day per person. Now imagine you have collected 150 one-gallon containers. In one month you will have filled 4,500 jugs. Multiply this by number of people in the household—this drives home the reality.

Buying bottled water on a regular basis adds to the problem. It takes, not only energy, but three liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water. Forty one billion litres of bottled water is consumed globally per year, and some is not even purified; much of it comes from faucets hooked to municipal water supplies.

Plus it takes energy and water to manufacture the light-weight plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a form of polyester made from fossil fuels. It takes unknown gallons of fuel to transport cases of bottled water, and untold gallons of water and fuel to convey and crush the spent receptacles into recycled cubes.

Keep in mind that plain old tap water costs about $2 per 1,000 gallons. So what do we actually pay for the convenience of buying bottled water? When we stop at the gas station we are shocked that gasoline is about $4 a gallon, but think nothing of paying $2 for a liter of ice-cold bottled water. At just under 4 liters to a gallon, we are paying $8 for a gallon of water—twice the price of gasoline. Think about it.

Shadow Dogs—Faithful Lifesavers

March 1, 2014 by Anita Venezia Leave a Comment

When a 13-year girl died last year from a peanut allergy after eating a snack at a children’s camp near Sacramento, my heart broke for the family. By the time her father, a doctor, gave her the epinephrine shot, it was already too late. The child went into anaphylactic shock and died within minutes.

I knew about allergies to this lowly legume, knew that children couldn’t take peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in school lunches, and knew about severe allergic reactions, but until I researched the subject did not understand the extent of the problem. Peanuts and tree nuts can cause fatalities, not only with direct contact, but with cross-contact, or even the culprit being airborne.

I learned that peanut allergies can send someone into sudden anaphylactic shock, restrict the airways, and in some cases, cause death within minutes. This severe reaction mostly affects people between 14 and 24, and also young children. As many as 500 cases a year are reported; about 150 of those affected will die. Strict avoidance of either ingesting or being around peanuts, and its by-products is advised. If inadvertently indigested, the allergic person must be given an epinephrine injection immediately.

There seemed to be no way to alert anyone that peanuts were in certain foods or even near the allergic person, and even the most vigilant parents could be caught off guard.

I did not know about the lifesaving medical detection dogs, also called peanut sniffer dogs until shopping in a big box store. I saw a young girl with a dog wearing a red vest indicating it was a service dog. Out of curiosity I asked the child if I could pet the Labrador which immediately wedged itself between the girl and me as I approached.

“He’s my peanut dog…” she explained, and told me of her allergy.

I had not heard of ‘peanut dogs’. I soon found out the working sniffer dogs alert children with serious allergies when peanuts, or derivatives, are nearby. This allergy is also caused by peanut by-products; peanut butter, peanut oil, or even a smidgen on an unseen mousetrap. Medical detection dogs sniff out the culprits and save lives.

Dogs have 1000 times more powerful olfactory senses than humans, able to discern multiple odors within a single object. I knew about the narcotic sniffers from the Danville Police Department when I wrote about the K-9 Unit and the Patrol Belgian Malinois dogs, but knew nothing of peanut dogs.

To get the scoop from one of the nation’s best service dog trainers, I called Sharon Perry in Texas. Sharon has trained Narcotic sniffer dogs since 2000, and was the first person to train allergy alert peanut dogs in 2005.

Sharon Perry took an early retirement from her job in chemical engineering, and started her own K9Motel; Southern Star Ranch Boarding and Canine Training Centre in Florence, Texas. She said it takes about nine months to train a medical detection canine, and concentrates on only three dogs at a time.

Once the dog is trained and tested, it then takes another two weeks or so to work with the parent handlers to build trust and understanding with the peanut dog. After the allergy sufferer meets the dog, it becomes the child’s shadow, they become as if one.

Perry said the difficult part of the training is to find the perfect sniffer dog, mostly Labrador Retrievers or Lab mixes. The bomb and narcotic German Shepherds or Belgian Malinois dogs must have high-energy focus, be aggressive and feisty, and are tested to meet standards to be deployed to the military and K-9 Police Patrols. In other words, the shadow dogs need to be calm, obedient, and accurate, and devoted to taking joy in their job.

“It can take four months to find perfect peanut hunter dogs, before training even starts. I choose them for their calm temperament and ability to learn. I’ll drive 800 miles or so to pick up the perfect dogs,” Sharon Perry said.

After the nine-month preparation period, and thorough testing, the dog is ready for its new home and will shadow the child twenty four hours a day. The cost for a lifesaving canine is about $15,000.00; a small price to pay to save a child’s life and have peace of mind for an extra layer of security,

After the dog’s new handler has gone through the onsite two-week training to learn to work with the service dog, it then becomes a bond of trust between child and the shadow dog. It is not often an easy task initially to establish the trust. Perry explained.

“One eight-year old boy had never eaten in a restaurant for fear of being served something with peanuts. He was scared; he knew how dangerous it was. We took the boy and his new dog to a restaurant; they ordered manicotti. The boy finally put some in his mouth after the dog checked the food. It was the first time he had eaten outside his mother’s kitchen. I explained to the boy that he had to trust the dog.”

The child and his dog become one; they go on planes, trains, busses, cars, and the dog accompanies the child to school daily. The dog is not a plaything or pet, it is a vested working service dog with impeccable manners to provide independence for the child with allergies.

Many children with peanut allergies only travel in their family’s own vehicle, rarely visit other’s homes, and are often home-schooled. But when they do attend regular school the children are advised to let the service dog stay calm and sit under the desk.

After explanation to the other students that the shadow dog is working, soon no one even notices the animal. The alert dog faithfully remains close to his ward protecting him from the hypersensitivity of peanuts or other pre-determined allergens night and day. The medical detection dog is a hero; the medical detection dog saves lives; the medical detection dog is always obedient and can be taken everywhere.

PEANUTS

Peanuts do not grow on trees, they are not really nuts at all; they are legumes, like lentils, beans, and soybeans that grow on low-growing hypogaea bush-like plants. Pod seeds drop from tendrils and the peanuts mature underground.

China is the world’s largest peanut producer, introduced by Portuguese traders in the 17^th century. South Africa, India, Nigeria and Indonesia grow peanuts. The U.S.A. produces only 7% of the world’s peanut crops in Georgia and Texas.

The peanut was already known in pre-Columbian cultures in Paraguay and Bolivia, and archaeologists have found evidence of the oldest specimens in 7000 year-old ruins dating to circa BC 5000.

Peanuts are everywhere, even in the most unexpected places such as animal feed until the 1930s. Since the turn of the last century peanuts have been in Cracker Jack and other nut-studded candies; Babe Ruth and Mars Bars. Peanut butter is a high-protein mainstay of summer camps and school lunches.

Many ethnic foods contain peanuts; Asian, Indonesian, African, Middle Eastern and South American. Peanuts, oils and by-products are found in candies, chocolates, ice cream, vegetarian foods, chili, eggrolls, enchiladas, hot chocolate, pancakes, medicines, cosmetics, soaps, dyes, varnish, paints, polish, solvents, lotions, salad dressing, nitroglycerin, plastics, glue, fuel, bird-feed, wall-board, compost and fertilizer. Peanut flour is in gluten-free products, peanut powder, pastries, breads, pancakes, desserts, cooking oils and canned goods. We may never be aware of where the peanut lurks.

Peanuts are susceptible to underground contamination during growth and storage, leading to infection by the mold Aspergillus flavus releasing the carcinogenic substance aflatoxin. We voraciously consume peanuts on the presumption that all peanuts are tested for this mold.

We ask, what could have caused the recent rash of allergies? Could there hypothetically be problems with peanut crops handling? Could there hypothetically be a problem with the inspections? What standards are set in place for imported peanuts? How much of the imported peanuts withstand stringent testing? How much is allowed through without being declined?

The mystery to be solved is why there has been a tripling of allergy related cases, an 18% increase from 1997 to 2007? What changes took place during that specific ten-year span?

There are no confirmed treatments to cure allergic reactions to peanuts according to F.A.R.E.—Food Allergy Research and Education. About 10 – 20% of kids outgrow the allergies. But in the meantime, will parents continue to take chances?

According to some hypotheses; the banning of peanut products in schools, public places, and some homes, may mean that the gradual desensitization of an entire generation may be the culprit. Parents are advised to gradually introduce peanuts, or peanut products to children age three or over. The operative word is gradually.

Some researchers state that children who are over-protected from germs and dirt by hand-sanitizers and over-washing, called the “hygiene hypothesis” may add to the situation by inhibiting their natural immunity.

Others hypothesize that imported peanuts with different harvesting practices, oven-drying methods, processing and storage, may present the problems heretofore unknown. Some researchers hypothesize the theory that peanuts that are roasted may cause the peanut allergen Ara h2 to become a stronger inhibitor of the digestive enzyme trypsin. We may never know the true culprit for the rash of so many allergies.

In the meantime, parents who have a child with known peanut allergies may consider introducing the shadow dog into the child’s life to guarantee that no peanuts or by-products ever get close. The shadow dog is not only a working canine, but a faithful pet, and a tried and true solution to accidental ingestion.

I recall now with a deeper understanding why the shadow dog in the store put itself between me and its ward. It was sniffing me out in case I had peanuts in my pocket or residue on my hands, and that’s why the faithful Labrador created a gentle wall of defense.

Enquiries: www.southern-star-ranch.com

Checkmate!

February 1, 2014 by Anita Venezia Leave a Comment

Napoleon Bonaparte, said to be the greatest general of all time, must have mentally recoiled when he was forced to yield victory to The Turk in a high profile chess game.

The French General had already marched his victorious legions and cavalries across Europe, and had won over the hearts and minds of many nations. The conqueror was yet to experience the Russian defeat in 1812 and Battle of Waterloo against the Duke of Wellington in 1815. But now Bonaparte tasted bitter defeat against The Turk, perhaps a prelude of what was yet to come.

So, with his multitudinous battles won, intricate warfare tactics memorized to perfection and the world’s veneration as the greatest military strategist who ever lived, Commander Napoleon presumed he could outplay The Turk at a game of chess. Poised to win, he mentally strategized to his endgame, but it was The Turk who checkmated him and took the glory on that memorable day in 1809.

It may not have been so devastating to Napoleon’s ego that the general had forfeited a sure win to a chess grandmaster, but the superb military strategist had lost the game to an automaton—a mechanical machine!

The automaton known as The Turk, debuted in 1770; the brainchild of an Austrian inventor named Wolfgang von Kempelen. He designed and created the mechanical device on to impress the empress of Austria-Hungary, Maria Theresa, and her Royal Court. The automaton was in the form of pipe-smoking man, dressed in a robe and turban, seated behind a credenza on which sat a chessboard. Inside the credenza was a series of intricate clockwork gears, cogs, rods, magnets, pantographs and peg boards.

The Turk, as it became known, made brilliant chess moves against all challengers, including Bonaparte, and won nearly every game it played, leaving onlookers and challengers alike, awe-struck. While Kempelen declined to allow anyone to physically touch or examine the automaton to discover whatever secret might exist as to how it worked, he went to great lengths to “show” that the device was, indeed, a true automaton, acting “independently of outside manipulation.” He would open two front and two rear doors, first one side and then the other, exposing the inner workings of the device, and would illuminate those workings by holding a lighted candle behind them in order to prove that it was, in fact, a machine.

The Turk attracted attention throughout Europe and even in the new nation of the United States of America, as even Benjamin Franklin, a known chess devotee, reportedly played The Turk (and lost the game) in about 1783. The Turk, the mechanical automated chess player, continued to challenge world class chess masters and notable world figures, for over eight decades in salons and on stages of two continents, until the machine was lost to a fire in a dark corner of the Philadelphia Museum.*

A MODERN-DAY TURK

It would not be until over a century later when a Man vs Machine game would again gain attention. The Soviet grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, lost to a chess-playing machine in 1997.

IBM built a mainframe computer named “Deep Blue” that played a series of tournament games with grandmasters. When the world champion Kasparov eventually yielded defeat to Deep Blue, it was rumored that the moves may have been manipulated off-site by Bobby Fischer. It was not true.

CHESS HISTORY

Circa the 6^th century AD, the board game ‘Chaturanga’ emerged in India. It is thought that the game of chess, that required moves on alphanumerical positions, with 64 squares of alternating tones, evolved therefrom. The revolutionary board game was perfected by Indian mathematicians, and a fable tells that one such man Sessa, challenged the mighty king.

When the ruler of the kingdom asked how he could repay the mathematician, he answered. “Lord, place one single grain of rice on the first square, and double the quantity of each square as you proceed to the final 64^th square, continue to double the rice kernels as you go.” Fair enough, thought the king.

The king of the vast domain was no match for the shrewd mathematician, Sessa, who understood the incremental succession as each square doubled the amount of rice through exponential sequences. Halfway through the process of counting the grains of rice in the kingdom’s massive granary, the grain master realized there was no more rice.

By the time the 64th square of the chess board would have been virtually heaped with rice, it would have been two billion times as much as on the first square. If half the board of only 32 squares, half of the total 64, was completed by doubling the amount of rice on each of the squares, it would exceed today’s estimated annual global rice production.

The moral fable of the king’s rice granary tells of exponential progression problems with the use of a commodity, such as rice or wheat, and a chess board, and how the Indian mathematician, rich with the rice, became the new ruler of the entire kingdom.

The earliest game boards would have been red and black, and the chess pieces were carved of ivory; elephants, chariots, horsemen and foot soldiers. Chess would have been played as a game of military strategy in simulated battle, with intricate field maneuvers that may have foreseen disaster.

Some evidence points that the game may be thousands of years old. It is thought that small carved objects, found at Indus Valley archaeological sites in India, may be circa BC 2000. Silk Road Traders carried the chess game to Persia, Mongolia, Siberia, Byzantium Turkey, and Ethiopia; later Muslim invaders introduced it to Iberia.

The lead chess piece ‘Raja’ changed to ‘Shah’ in Persia, meaning king. In the Middle Ages the board pieces evolved to King, Queen, Bishop, Knight. The Knights Templar played chess, and every good knight was expected to know how to play. By the 13^th century chess was played for money; the gambling lasting for days.

In the 17^th century, Giochino Greco was the first professional chess player. He wrote the book on tactical traps, checkmating patterns, and is said to have perfected the endgame. When tournament games required time limits, the hourglass was used. In the 1980s, when a player contemplated one move for nearly three hours, games were timed with digital clocks.

In Marostica, a medieval town in Italy’s Veneto, a human chess game is played in September of every even-numbered year in the middle of the piazza. Human chess pieces, dressed in full medieval regalia, with caparisoned horses, move on the marble board in the town square as plays are called.

And, chess boards can be some of the highest priced luxury items; made of precious metals and imbedded with diamonds, emeralds, rubies and pearls. Two such chess sets sold; one for half a million dollars, the other for more than $9 million.

In the 1970s, chess championships were heralded as international events. One such tournament propelled the ancient game of chess to the world stage; grandmaster of the West, Bobby Fischer, crushed the Soviet Bloc grandmaster Boris Spassky during the Cold War.

BOBBY FISCHER

Bobby Fischer, one of the world’s greatest chess players, was a child prodigy; said to have had an IQ of 187, head and shoulders above Einstein’s 160. He joined the Manhattan Chess Club at 12, was champion by 13, and grandmaster before 15. He learned by playing games against himself.

At 16 Bobby Fischer published his first book on chess. At 20, he won 63-64 championships; the only player to achieve a perfect score of 11/11 in the history of tournament play. From the age of 23, Bobby Fischer won every chess tournament for the rest of his life.

The undefeated boyishly handsome grandmaster was a rock star. The grandmaster was enormously rich. The grandmaster challenged the world’s greatest chess players, but the grandmaster was becoming eccentric, cynical, rude, hateful, demanding, bad-tempered, socially inept, and ferociously Un-American. He joined a religious cult.

Fischer, even though his parents were Jewish, became a raging anti-Semite, spewing hatred against Jews and America at news conferences; his vile remarks stunning listeners over international airwaves. After 9/11, he praised the terrorists, and even wrote a letter to Osama Bin Laden calling for the destruction of the United States. Fischer had dipped into moral oblivion.

But the Golden Boy was once great; the masterful maverick’s name was on the lips of every American and Russian alike, when he flew to Reykjavik, Iceland in 1972 for a veritable chess mano-a-mano in the much-publicized “Cold War Confrontation.” It was the nail-biting event of the century; Fischer versus the Soviet Boris Spassky, the undefeated grandmaster. Fischer won.

Years later in 1992, grandmaster Bobby Fischer accepted a rematch invitation to compete in the former Yugoslavia, then under U.N. embargo. The State Department warned him not to go. He earned a huge purse of which the IRS wanted a large chunk. Fischer refused to pay up, and chose not to return to the States. The State Department revoked his passport for tax evasion and he became a fugitive. He lived in Hungary, Germany, Iceland and the Far East.

Fischer’s hatred and anti-Semitism may be explained because Bobby Fischer’s physician mother conceived him out-of-wedlock; a social stigma at that time. In the 1950s, an FBI probe revealed Regina Fischer’s anti-American and Communist activism. Another probe by journalists in 2002 revealed that Bobby Fischer’s putative birth father was Hungarian physicist Paul Nemeny, not the man to whom his mother was married.

Fischer’s rabid anti-Semitism is inexplicable as both his parents were Jewish. His mother was a Swiss-born wartime refugee, and avowed Communist who lived in Russia before New York. Bobby’s birth father occasionally visited his son, but never admitted paternity, and sent periodic child support payments.

Bobby was an introverted lonely child, spending much time alone with his sister in their Brooklyn apartment. The boy discovered the challenge of chess when he bought a set at the drug store under his apartment building. His mother placed an ad in a newspaper seeking “someone to play chess with her son.” The man who taught the boy wonder the game, mentored him to success, and became his only father figure was later publicly maligned by Fischer “as a Jew snake.”

After winning the world title as grandmaster, the once-unstoppable chess prodigy slid into the depths of self-destruction and obscurity when the egomaniacal fugitive spewed unbridled hate for Jews and Israel, and denying the Holocaust. He ranted at a news conference in Iceland when seeking asylum. While belittling his former tutor and mentor with anti-Semitic vile comments, reporters walked away disgusted.

Even though the once- brilliant Bobby Fischer was grandmaster of strategy, and able to foresee results of his endgame, his last days on earth, and post death events, could not have been planned worse.

Bobby Fischer died of renal failure in January 2008 as a lonely, bitter man. His estate was valued at $2 million. His nephews, the executors, paid the owed taxes to the IRS. A bitter fight ensued as to who would inherit the remaining money.

A young girl in Japan, claiming to be his daughter, won the right to have Bobby Fischer’s body exhumed. DNA testing proved she was not his child. His Japanese wife claimed the rest of the money and sued the estate.

Officials returned the once-heralded grandmaster’s body to the ice-covered ground in a remote graveyard on the shadow less island overlooking the vast barren Icelandic tundra. The near-forgotten grandmaster genius, who had taken the chess world by storm, now rests in an Artic windswept treeless place, under a lone stone grave marker incised with the once-iconic name; Robert James Fischer—1943-2008.

*You can learn more about The Turk in the book, The Turk, by Tom Standage