MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – An introductory class on sculpting with concrete will be offered as part of the Restore Project at the Middletown Art Center on Saturday, Oct. 6, from 1 to 5 p.m.

Artist Emily Scheibal will guide participants through the process of forming vessels out of quick-setting concrete. Line, shape, form and texture will take on new meaning.

Students will create their own vessels as simply or as ornately as they wish as Scheibal demonstrates her techniques using quick-set concrete over existing forms. Additional elements will be covered such as pigment, binders, and armatures.

Adults and children age 12 and up of all levels of art making experience, from newbies to professionals are invited to attend this fun and inspiring class for just $5. MAC will provide concrete and forms.

Participants are encouraged to bring their own rubber dish gloves. Extra items such as durable scissors and large bowls or buckets to mix concrete are appreciated (stainless steel, enameled, or rubber bowls, plastic buckets).

Instructor Emily Scheibal’s work can be seen at www.emilyscheibal.com and at www.quinterrastudio.com.

Please register in advance for all Restore classes at www.middletownartcenter.org/restore, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 707-809-8118. Space is limited and reservations are required.

The Restore project provides Lake County residents with low-cost art classes and the opportunity to learn or refine skills in a variety of materials techniques. Classes take place most Saturdays through May 2019.

Fall and winter classes include clay, woodworking, metalworking, felting, concrete, dry point, block printing and more. Late winter and spring classes will focus on personal and collaborative projects, studio time, mentoring and guidance to create personal and group work.

“While folks can join for just one class, we encourage participants to come to a series of classes to collaborate in project design and creation of a new Art Walk on Rabbit Hill. This concrete class will be particularly useful in thinking about what we can do as a community there,” explained MAC Program Director Lisa Kaplan.

“We’ll also be working towards personal projects for the EcoArts Sculpture Walk at Trailside Park, which we will reopen in June,” said Kaplan. “Both Rabbit Hill and Trailside Park were burned in the Valley fire and we are excited to revitalize those outdoor public spaces.”

A public call for work for the Sculpture Walk will be posted in January. Entries will be juried.

On Saturday, Oct. 13, also from 1 to 5 p.m., acclaimed Lake County poet Georgina Marie will return to MAC to lead the Writers Workshop.

Writing and printmaking workshops will contribute to MAC’s second chapbook of writings and images, as well as work for readings or exhibition.

The first chapbook, “Resilience – a community reframes disaster through art,” is available for purchase at MAC or on the MAC website. Learn more about RESTORE scheduling at www.middletownartcenter.org.

The Restore project was made possible with support from the California Arts Council, a state agency, with additional support from local organizations, businesses and individuals.

Visit www.ca.arts.gov to learn more about the California Arts Council’s important work in communities and schools throughout California.

Middletown Art Center is located at 21456 State Highway 175 at the junction of Highway 29. Be a part of the growing arts scene in South Lake County by becoming a MAC member, by joining MAC this Saturday and participating in Restore, or by attending one of the many arts and cultural events or classes at MAC.

Visit www.middletownartcenter.org or “Like” Middletown Art Center on Facebook to stay up-to-date with what’s happening at MAC.

MENDOCINO, Calif. – A dramatic new documentary about wildland fires and how we can make our communities fire safe will debut this weekend in Mendocino County.

“Wilder than Wild” will be screened at Preston Hall, 44867 Main St. next to the Presbyterian Church, in Mendocino.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with the film beginning at 7 p.m.

Admission is free.

The hour-long documentary reveals how fuel buildup and climate change have exposed Western wild-lands to large, high intensity wildfires, while greenhouse gases released from these fires accelerate climate change.

This vicious cycle jeopardizes our forests and affects us all with extreme weather and more wildfires, some of which are now entering highly populated wildland/urban areas.

A sequence in “Wilder than Wild” shows how the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa and the Redwood Valley fire, which began on Oct. 8, 2017, caused the destruction of 4,658 homes and killed 44. It shows how the "fires of the future" can include urban areas.

"Things are changing," said one firefighter, "If we don't change, we're going to see even more homes annihilated in these types of fires."

Following the screening there will be a panel discussion with Mendocino Fire Chief Ed O’Brien, Fire Captain Eric Chisholm and Mary Mayeda, who heads the Mendocino Fire Safe Council.

The moderator is the event’s organizer filmmaker Jim Culp.

For further information call 707-937-3755, or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The GenX Cinema series presents the 1985 horror film, “Fright Night,” starring Chris Sarandon and Roddy McDowell, on Wednesday, Oct. 10, at 7 p.m. at the Soper Reese Theatre in Lakeport.

Entry is by donation.

A playful, loving homage to the golden age of horror, yet completely its own beastly fun ride of frights and thrills.

The tale, about a ”normal” man living next to a vampire, neatly parodies Alfred Hitchcock and John Hughes movies, and writer/director Tom Holland litters his rattling story with as many laughs as jolts.

The film is rated R with run time of 1 hour 34 minutes, and is sponsored by Blair Drywall and Painting.

The Soper Reese Theatre is located at 275 S. Main St., Lakeport, 707-263-0577, www.soperreesetheatre.com.

A poem is an object carefully assembled of words, a "thing" that readers must reckon with just as they'd reckon with any other object.

The title poem of Adrian Koesters' new book, Three Days with the Long Moon, published by BrickHouse Books, sets out a number of disparate elements, then observes: "…this pen making / a thing of them."

So it's the "pen" in the hand of the poet that assembles the singular "thing" from the details. And that's how a poem comes to be.

This poet lives in Omaha and was one of our very able assistants on this column.

Three Days with the Long Moon

That field nag, old-penny
swayback. Low hawk, to
ducks in train to a quad of geese,
in case. Last night, the long

moon lay it seemed a tissue
of snow, but then dawn told
that wasn't so. Late morning, now,
the fire, the hearth, eggs

sitting for the mute plate
and fork, this pen making
a thing of them. Two more nights—
waterfowl safe and noisy

in the dusk, the low rails
running flank to the river
at midnight—find what they'll
make of that river, this moon.

American Life in Poetry does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. It is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2017 by Adrian Koesters, "Three Days with the Long Moon," from Three Days with the Long Moon, (BrickHouse Books, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Adrian Koesters and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2018 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS (Rated PG)

An interesting situation is at hand with director Eli Roth, a master with horror films, as the one at the helm of delivering a presumable kids’ movie with “The House with a Clock in Its Walls.”

Don’t be surprised then if “The House,” with elements of Harry Potter sorcery but scarier, might be a little too forbidding for really young children too easily frightened by creepy animated dummies and menacing jack-o’-lanterns.

Recently orphaned 10-year-old Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) is a focal character sent to live with his oddball uncle in a creaky old mansion that holds a secret revealed by the film’s title.

The stage is set when Lewis arrives one night and Uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) is wearing a kimono and holding forth with such eccentricity that one wouldn’t blame Lewis for taking the next bus back to wherever he came from.

The weirdness of the gothic mansion is that, while every room seems to be overwhelmed with ticking clocks and creepy artifacts, hidden within the walls somewhere is a ticking doomsday clock ready to be triggered by a supernatural power.

Enrolling at a new school, Lewis is ostracized for being a geeky misfit so lacking in athletic ability that no one chooses him for their intramural basketball team until he later comes into his own with some magic power.

As a naturally curious child, Lewis unearths some of the mansion’s secrets. The discovery explains why his uncle spends so much time verbally sparring and bantering with next door neighbor, Mrs. Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett).

The mansion’s previous owner is the evil wizard Isaac (Kyle MacLachlan), whose remains in the local cemetery is set free by sorcery only to wreak havoc that propels the elements of true horror.

At this point, we learn that Lewis’ uncle is a warlock and Mrs. Zimmerman, his cohort, is a witch, albeit they seem benevolent as their desire is to stop Isaac from setting off the doomsday clock.

Lewis begins to master the dark arts and finds this might be a good way to handle school bullies when he’s not busy using supernatural powers on the home front.

In the end, the inevitable Armageddon is staged inside the mansion with Lewis, his uncle and Mrs. Zimmerman fighting with vigor to repel the evil force of Isaac.

The fun of “The House” may hinge on the enjoyment of the odd combination of fantasy, horror and oddball humor.



‘MAGNUM P.I.’ ON CBS NETWORK

The long-running “Magnum, P.I.,” starring Tom Selleck in the titular role, made its mark in the 1980s as one of the most popular private investigator series on the CBS television network.

Now after several decades have passed, CBS is rebooting the series appropriately enough with a younger cast of the same primary characters, with a sense of familiarity delivered in a fresh milieu.

The new “Magnum P.I.” stars Jay Hernandez as Thomas Sullivan Magnum, a former Navy intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan. Now living in Hawaii, Magnum is joined by war buddies Rick (Zachary Knighton) and chopper pilot TC (Stephen Hill) in a series of adventures.

Similar to the original series, Magnum, wearing Hawaiian shirts and a Detroit Tigers cap, lives at the estate of unseen millionaire Robin Masters as a security consultant while dabbling in private eye work on the side.

It may be hard to master the charm of Tom Selleck but Hernandez is off to a good start in the first episode made available for preview. Even though the role of Higgins now goes to a female (Patricia Weeks), the new Magnum’s charisma may hit a few snags with her.

Juliet Higgins, an attractive former British MI 6 agent, referred to as the “major domo,” will clash with Magnum on everything from his use of the estate’s red Ferrari to his freewheeling ways.

The first episode begins with a preposterous rescue mission in North Korea but quickly settles into the venue of Oahu where Magnum and his buddies try to solve the mystery of another friend from the war who is kidnapped and viciously tortured and beaten to death.

A familiar detective series trope is trotted out when Honolulu police detective Katsumoto (Tim Kang) threatens Magnum with obstruction if he meddles in a homicide investigation. You can guess how this will play out.

Magnum’s ethnicity hardly warrants a mention until during an ocean dive when Magnum banters with Rick and tells him that Rick should worry because sharks prefer white meat.

“Magnum P.I.” has great Hawaiian scenery, plenty of action and casual sense of humor that serves Magnum and his buddies well. It could follow in the successful footsteps of the updated version of the “Hawaii Five-O” series.

During the summer press tour, executive producer Peter Lenkov reported that talks were engaged with Tom Selleck and that “we went to him first to get his blessing.” I’ll take that as an endorsement for a new series that is worth a look.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Talented regional mandolin players will be featured in this weekend’s special Lake County Symphony’s Chamber Orchestra Baroque concert.

The concert will take place at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 30, at the Soper Reese Theatre.

David “Gus” Garelick and Gail Sharpsteen are founding members of the Gravenstein Mandolin Ensemble, in Sebastopol.

For the past 11 years, this group has been performing mandolin music from around the world: Classical music from the Baroque Era, Choro music from Brazil, Klezmer music from Eastern Europe, Italian music, Spanish music, and much more.

Gus Garelick originally learned mandolin from his Russian relatives, and quickly discovered the rich tradition of mandolin music, from the folk music of Russia and Eastern Europe to American Bluegrass, Brazilian Choro, Italian Ballo Liscio music, and classical works by Vivaldi, Mozart and Beethoven.

He was a member of the Berkeley Mandolin Ensemble in the 1980s, where he first performed the Vivaldi Mandolin Concerto. Years later, upon moving to Sonoma County, he was delighted to find people willing to form a new mandolin ensemble. He also plays violin in the Lake County Symphony.

Gail Sharpsteen learned to play the mandolin when she inherited her grandfather’s 1923 Gibson in the 1980’s.

She also learned to play the mandocello, and more recently the mandola, and plays all three instruments (but not at the same time!) with the Gravenstein Mandolin Ensemble.

Sharpsteen’s primary instrument is the violoncello and she is active in chamber music and theater music in Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties.

She has played in the cello section of the Lake County Symphony for the past four years.

The special concert has open seating and a lower admission fee of $10 (under 18 are free) and is not part of the Symphony’s main concert season.

The Soper Reese Theatre is located at 275 S. Main St., Lakeport.

Debra Fredrickson is a volunteer with the Lake County Symphony.