Daffodils at the Ely Stage Stop and Country Museum in Kelseyville, Calif. Courtesy photo. KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – The regular monthly Ely Stage Stop Fiddlers' Jam, with lively music, will be held on Sunday, April 7, from noon to 2 p.m. in the barn at the Ely.
Food and beverages will be available for sale.
This month's raffle basket theme is “April showers bring may flowers.” Included with the basket is a beautiful bouquet from Flowers by Traci of Kelseyville and a gift certificate from Kelseyville Lumber, also of Kelseyville.
Hundreds of daffodils are blooming. Come early and enjoy the bright yellow blooms that are scattered over the Museum property, from the house to the barn.
The Ely Stage Stop & Country Museum is located at 9921 Soda Bay Road, between Kit's Corner on Highway 29 and the Riviera. The gates are open every weekend from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Look for the museum flag.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Rural Arts Initiative, or LCRAI, and Lake County Land Trust invite Lake County students aged kindergarten through 12th grades to enter the “Explore Lake County Nature” photo contest.
Photos must be taken in Lake County.
Cash prizes will be awarded in three categories: kindergarten through fifth, sixth through eighth and ninth through 12th.
Prizes are $100 for first place, $75 for second place and $50 for third place.
Contest winners will earn their classroom free art supplies in the amount of their prize.
Get out those cameras, cell phones and tablets and head outside. Submit photographs at www.LCRAI.org/contest.
Submissions must be received by April 26.
All photos will be printed by LCRAI and displayed at the Land Trust’s Art and Nature Day Celebration on Saturday, May 4, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Rodman Preserve and Nature Center, 3560 Westlake Road, Lakeport. Winners will be announced at 1 p.m.
This free event will include fun art and nature activities for children and grownups of all ages.
The Lake County Rural Arts Initiative is working with Lake County schools and community partners to bring arts to our children and help fund the expanded arts program the schools want and need; utilizing art teachers, local artists and combining the arts with more traditional subjects.
Art education increases test scores across every subject area, lowers dropout rates and closes the achievement gap regardless of socioeconomic status.
Most importantly, is it the basis for developing the No. 1 attribute sought by today’s and future employers, innovation and creativity.
Visit www.LCRAI.org for more information on Lake County Rural Arts Initiative, its programs, projects, contests and opportunities to get involved.
Ted Kooser. Photo credit: UNL Publications and Photography. Is it worse to live in a city where you can't see a big storm coming until it's right on top of you, or to be out on the plains where you can see it coming for almost too long?
I like this long look at an approaching and then passing storm by Max Garland, who lives in Wisconsin. It's from his fine book, The Word We Used For It, from the University of Wisconsin Press.
Happiness
The storm was headed in our direction— big loom of gray like the absolute West leaned over us. Reports of damage in the neighboring counties—a silo unfurled and took wing, a house trailer twisted loose. On the Doppler screen the storm looked alive, yellow and green at the fringes, with a fierce red heart trending to violet. Sirens swept over to scare it away, like songbirds grow strident, circle and bluff at the sight of an owl. When the rain came in sheets, I regretted my sins. When lightning cracked the red pine's half-rotted heart, I wished the world more joy in general. When the worst was over and the grass lay flat, but alive, and the sky was a waning bruise, I thought of that silo, how it wasn't mine, and all that grain cast back into the world's wind, maybe some of it still flying.
Jordan Peele, the writer and director behind the surprise hit thriller “Get Out,” follows up with his sophomore outing in the unnerving “Us,” an identity crisis story steeped in bloody horror and plot twists.
Having first established himself as a comedian teamed with Keegan-Michael Key, Peele is uniquely positioned to weave comedic elements for bright spots of levity into work that might otherwise be too mind-bending.
Nevertheless, Peele is seemingly obsessed with symbolism, some of which takes time to be revealed as meaningful. After all, you may ask yourself what’s up with all the white rabbits in cages stacked high in an underground room?
Significant imagery takes hold in the opening flashback to 1986 when advertising for the Hands Across America event to fight poverty flashes on a television screen, which makes sense only later on.
This 1986 prologue finds young African-American girl Adelaide (Madison Curry) vacationing with her parents in Santa Cruz, where the summer fun of the boardwalk amusement park beckons.
Wandering off the beach into a hall of mirrors funhouse named “Find Yourself,” Adelaide gets lost and during a frantic search for an exit comes face to face with another young girl that looks like an evil twin.
In the present day, Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o), along with her husband Gabe (Winston Duke), teen daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and young son Jason (Evan Alex), return to her summer childhood vacation home on a lake near Santa Cruz.
When Gabe insists that the family take an outing to the same Santa Cruz beach to join their friends Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) and Josh (Tim Heidecker), Adelaide is filled with dread as the childhood trauma of seeing her scary doppelganger has not faded.
Later that night, a power outage leads to the discovery of the ominous presence of two adults and two children standing voiceless in the Wilson’s driveway, not responding to Gabe’s repeated inquiries about their intentions.
What happens next is a home invasion where the four intruders turn out to be nearly identical to each Wilson family member, all of them mute except for Adelaide’s double who speaks with a hoarse voice barely rising above an ominous whisper.
The scissor-wielding “shadow” figures are dressed in red jumpsuits which suggest an allegorical reference to prisoners heretofore tethered in the thousands of miles of underground tunnels in America noted in the title card in the film’s opening credits.
Of course, things become weirdly violent and chilling as the strange creatures pull no punches to stake their claim to the world aboveground. Only death awaits those unwilling or unable to fight back or flee.
Flight from danger for the Wilson family is fraught with intense terror and suspense, but escape from the imposters is not any easier than the encounters with evil in typical slasher films.
“Us” packs an interesting punch of audacious horror but any serious thought about the sociopolitical context Jordan Peele leads to passionate debate.
2019 TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW
The TCM Classic Film Festival’s website is now complete with its scheduling for its tenth anniversary return to Hollywood from April 11th to the 14th for a movie lover’s orgy of cinematic pleasures.
Most appropriate for this year’s theme entitled “Follow Your Heart: Love at the Movies,” the opening night presentation is the 30th anniversary of “When Harry Met Sally…,” with stars Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal and director Rob Reiner participating in a discussion.
Should opening night tickets not be available, “Dark Passage,” the third film starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall together, is a great alternative. Wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, Bogart escapes to clear his name with the help of Bacall.
As if it’s not difficult enough to choose a film on the first night, the original “Ocean’s 11,” which captured the essence of “cool” in this 1960 heist film that brought together The Rat Pack, with Frank Sinatra masterminding an ingenious plan to rob five Las Vegas casinos.
The Rat Pack members, also including Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, may be long gone, but Angie Dickinson, having played the spouse to Danny Ocean, is still around to participate in a discussion.
Dickinson is also on hand for a presentation of Don Siegel’s direction of the 1964 version of “The Killers,” notable for the fact she was the femme fatale slapped around by Ronald Reagan, the perennial good guy, in his last and only film in which he played a vicious mob boss.
Fans of the “Star Wars” franchise should rejoice in the Saturday viewing of the 1977 original “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope” in an IMAX presentation. Many would argue that this is the ultimate masterpiece of science-fiction.
TCM unearths the gems of a bygone era. “Blood Money” is the ultimate pre-Code film, with a leading lady who’s a masochistic kleptomaniac, jokes about hemorrhoids, and wall-to-wall civic corruption.
No matter the genre or the era, the Film Festival has offerings that appeal to a wide range of taste.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Northern California quintet, SonoMusette, recaptures the moody, melancholic sound and spirit of mid 20th-century Paris in a concert at the Soper Reese Theatre on Sunday, April 14, at 2 p.m.
French chanteuse, musette accordion, gypsy-jazz guitar, upright bass, and drum kit combine to revive the enchanting songs of the Parisian Café era.
This music has retained its power to charm and transport listeners, and SonoMusette taps that nostalgia with artistry in both vocals and instrumentation.
Inspired by the great performers of the era, such as Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, and Django Reinhardt, along with contemporary artists such as Zaz, SonoMusette brings bal-musette to the “moderne” era.
Tickets are $20, open seating, and are now on sale online at www.soperreesetheatre.com; at the theater box office at 275 So. Main St., Lakeport up to two hours before show time on the day of the performance; and at The Travel Center, 1265 So. Main St., Lakeport, Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm.
Restore Project participants Mary Daly and Stan Archacki at work on the Vertical Pathways project. Photo by the Middletown Art Center staff.
MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Middletown Art Center studio classroom is bustling with creative activity most days of the week.
From the ongoing Restore Project, to Woodland Community College classes in drawing and art appreciation, to homeschool classes in art and drumming.
This Sunday, March 31, from 1 to 5 p.m., the Restore Project’s focus is on the collaborative art piece “Vertical Pathways for Rabbit Hill,” a working title.
Taught by sculptor Emily Sheibal, the class involves woodworking and additive sculpting in concrete using hardware cloth and burlap.
“I am overjoyed to see the Rabbit Hill project coming to fruition after a series of classes and collaborative brainstorming with Restore Project participants”, said Sheibal. “Members of our community have been given an opportunity to take ownership and contribute to local revitalization after the 2015 fires. They are collectively giving back hope through art.”
Adults of all ages and children age 11 up are encouraged to participate in this unique opportunity to collaboratively create and engage with the natural environment.
The cost is $5 per session. There is no requirement to attend every class and no previous art making experience is necessary.
Vertical Pathways is comprised of "totem pole" like sculptures. Participants are invited to select a fallen tree to carve and add form and shape to.
The “poles” will be installed in an undulating serpentine fashion to create a rhythmic visual pathway on the hillside. The “pathway” will provide a sense of protection, and visual contrast and harmony, while honoring remaining trees and offering additional habitat for birds and pollinators.
Earlier this year Restore participants who attended a field trip to Rabbit Hill with Lake County Land Trust members were inspired by both the totem like quality of remaining burned trees on the hillside and by stories they were told about the flutes that the former Rabbit Hill owners, “Huck” and “Skee” Hamann used to teach neighborhood children how to make and play.
In the 1970s the Hamanns donated the property to the Madrone Audubon Society. Rabbit Hill was transferred to the Lake County Land Trust after its inception in the 1990s. This project is a partnership between MAC and the Land Trust.
Additional Restore sessions focused on Vertical Pathways will be held April 14 and 28 with other creative and installation activities announced during April and May. Community members interested in helping with landscaping and installation can email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call MAC at 707-809-8118.
Restore classes in sculpture, mixed media, printmaking or creative writing are offered most weekends through May from 1 to 5 p.m.
Upcoming classes include block printmaking with John Jennings on April 6, 3D Mixed Media with Laura Kennedy on April 7. Pre-registration is required for all classes at www.middletownartcenter.org/restore as space is limited.
The Restore project was made possible with support from the California Arts Council, a state agency, with additional support from the Lake County Land Trust and other local organizations, businesses, and individuals.
Visit www.ca.arts.gov to learn more about the California Arts Council’s work in communities and schools throughout California. Learn more about the Lake County Land Trust at www.lakecountylandtrust.org.
The MAC Gallery currently features “Living Color” and vibrant exhibit open to the public Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Fridays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Be a part of the growing arts and cultural scene in South Lake County by becoming a MAC member, by participating in Restore classes, or by attending one of the many events or classes at MAC.
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