Alma Anderson, 1936

Most Won’t Get Into This Oakland Club

At retirement community, four women celebrate life after 100.

Piedmonter/Bay Area News Group

By Courtenay Morgan Regis

Correspondent

Posted: 07/09/2010 12:00:00 AM PDT

Four women dressed in various shades of pink dined on cupcakes in the Friendship Room at Piedmont Gardens last week. Chiyoko Otagiri, Helen Chase, Molly Smith and Alma Emerson — residents of this retirement community just off Piedmont Avenue in Oakland — have much in common, the most remarkable being that they are all centenarians.

All four women were newlyweds during the Depression. They agreed that those years were rough, “But it’s just the way it was for everyone,” said Emerson with a shrug. While most came from large families, they have raised just six children among them. They are grandmothers, great grandmothers, and in Otagiri’s case, even a great-great grandmother. And having turned the corner on 100, even their children were born before television, computers and mobile technology.

The oldest member of this exclusive club, 105-year old Chiyoko Otagiri is the daughter of plum farmers who raised her in Hollister and Japan. “Back then, they said it was important to get a proper education at home,” Otagiri said of her 10 years in Japan. Her son, Jim, recalled the days his parents and older sisters were relocated to an internment camp in Topaz, Utah. The internment was shortened when Jim Otagiri was recruited to Boulder, Colo., to teach Japanese to naval intelligence officers. Widowed in 1977, Chiyoko Otagiri still enjoys gardening and preparing a traditional Japanese tea for visitors.

The newest resident being honored, Molly Smith, was born in 1908 in Petaluma and is known for her talents as a seamstress. She traveled to more than 16 countries while teaching elementary school in Oakland. One of her fondest memories of her travels is of riding shotgun with the fast taxi drivers in Italy. While no longer traveling internationally, Smith celebrated her 100th birthday by taking a hot-air balloon ride in Santa Rosa, memorable in part because the attendant squeezed her so hard that he broke her ribs.

Falls and illness can often precipitate a move into a residential community such as Piedmont Gardens, which offers three levels of care to its more than 300 residents.

A broken ankle brought Helen Chase to the retirement community in 2003 after living in the Piedmont area for most of her 101 years. Her favorite outing with her daughter Arlene is going to the In-N-Out Burger. A quiet woman, Chase brightens when describing the various sewing work she’s done over the years, including the needlepoint decorations of 12 dining room chairs.

“Piedmont Gardens fosters living fully as they age,” stated Executive Director Gayle Reynolds. “We offer a very intentional program called ‘Masterpiece Living’ that promotes physical fitness, dietary changes, spiritual connection and social relationships.

One of the most spry centenarians, Alma Emerson, celebrated her 100th last month. She takes full advantage of what the residential community offers, according to her daughter, Sandra. Emerson, who was born in Toronto, smiled when she heard this, and said, “There’s something for everyone here. I love you all!” She attends the symphony, walks Piedmont Avenue regularly and gardens. “I don’t like to sit down,” she said and added, “If I do, I pick up my knitting. There’s no reason to sit still.”

Emerson, like many of the other centenarians, can point to a history of longevity in her family. Her father and grandfather lived into their 90s and were mowing the lawn even then. Chase took care of her mother while in her 70s, until her mother died at age 92. Both women suggested that staying active and eating well allowed them to capitalize on good genes.

Their experience may be the best data available on women older than 100, at least according to Dorothy Rice, the president of the Residents Council at Piedmont Gardens. At the July 1 celebration, Rice, who was the former director of the National Center for Health Statistics said, “The life tables stop at age 100. Now, I’ll have to do something about that!”

And if the centenarians are any indication of what older women can do, Rice will make good on that promise.

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Students Run Oakland, a non-profit youth development program promoting health (physical fitness, mentoring and nutrition ed) among Oakland public school students, is hosting a screening of their documentary, Runners High.

The award-winning film follows low-income Oakland kids training for the L.A. Marathon. Some of us in the Touchstone Running Club are training for the upcoming Oakland Marathon and Half. Let’s all rally to support the next group of students who will be running with us on 28 March!

Check out the trailer below.

The screening will take place at 400 Hawthorne Ave., in the Bechtel Room, of Samuel Merritt University near the Alta Bates/Summit Medical Center (aka “Pill Hill”) off Broadway in Oakland. It will be followed by a student/mentor panel for Q&A. Tickets are $25 and go to support Students Run Oakland. You can buy tix at the door or by emailing Christine Chapon [ christinechapon AT yahoo DOT com].

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The Montclarion (Contra Costa County Times, Bay Area News Group)

December 2009

Words and Images by COURTENAY MORGAN REDIS

RABAT, Morocco  It was September in Morocco, and Ramadan was in full swing when I met up with Moroccan marathoner Abderrahim Goumri. He was preparing for the 2008 ING New York City Marathon, where he had finished second the previous year.

Abderrahim Goumri training in Rabat (c) Courtenay Morgan Redis

During Ramadan, Muslim runners tune up their spiritual lives by dedicating themselves to a month of inner reflection, devotion to God, and even greater discipline than usual. Observance throws off the finely tuned rhythm of the elite athlete’s life, which is why Goumri’s training was more laid back than one might expect six weeks before a major marathon.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up.

We ran in the late afternoon sun through a small eucalyptus and ironwood forest about half a mile from the Atlantic Coast in Temara, a beachside community eight miles outside of the capital in Rabat. The top athletes, like Goumri and Mohammed Amyn — both two-time Olympians — live a short jog from the beach, the forest and from each other, training, eating, going to movies and living as an extended family.

Sixty minutes into our first “easy run,” as they called it, a desperate mantra reverberated in my head: I need water, I need water, I really need water. 
I last drank and ate just past midnight. I learned on subsequent nights to follow the wisdom of Amyn and his family, whom I was staying with, and set my alarm for 4 a.m. to eat the light, suhoor meal before going back to sleep and resuming the daytime fast from all food and drink.

(c) Courtenay Morgan Redis

In addition to fasting, Ramadan days are spent praying the Qur’an and moving slowly toward that 5 p.m. run knowing you’ll feel sluggish and depleted before you’ve even laced up your shoes. After sunset, the sweet reward of a post-run shower and the breaking of the fast with the iftar meal feels even more satisfying, having run on empty.

Even running as a group, training during Ramadan is a solitary endeavor. During my two weeks with them, Goumri, Amyn and El Hassan Lahssini (a 2004 Olympic marathoner), ran mostly in silence, but chatted quietly while stretching in the sand as the skies turned pink and blue above us. Runners become even more introspective than usual, and at times struggle with the weariness.

Hassan said that during these runs, when he felt tired, “I say to myself, ‘It’s natural, it will be better tomorrow.’ I know myself, and I just run easy so that tomorrow I have a good day.”

They often met up at 10 p.m. for their second workout. Between the two, they ate dates, cheese, fresh fruit, bread and harira (a Moroccan soup-staple of lamb, chickpeas and lentils) with family and friends. They went to the mosque for prayer. While the women visited in each other’s homes, I was invited to join the men at seaside cafés to drink sweet mint tea or robust espresso.

Not surprisingly, they ran stronger in their second session. Another meal followed and then we all caught some sleep before waking briefly for the pre-dawn snack.

His pockets weren’t always so heavy, especially in the early days in Norway when he was making French fries to pay the bills.

The son of a mason, Goumri was born in 1976, the second of eight children. Raised in the countryside outside of Safi, he loved soccer and excelled at handball. He discovered his running talent by accident when he won a 1500m school race as a 16-year-old.

The Fédération Royale Marocaine d’Athlétisme (FRMA) recruited him to train with the national team’s regional youth academy and three years later, in 1995, they sent him to England for his first international test: the World Junior Cross Country Championships.

His respectable, but not top-notch, 25th-place result delayed the FRMA’s appointing him to the larger national team. His choices were to quit or train without the financial support of the government.

With just enough Moroccan dirham to buy a plane ticket and nothing to lose, he flew to Norway. He’d heard that a race with a decent prize purse in the 5,000m and 10,000m was waiting.

“I was from the countryside, I had trouble even buying clothes — and I decided to go,” he says. “But at the race they told me, ‘There is no 5,000, no 10,000, only a half marathon and a marathon. And the money is only in the marathon.’”

Totally unprepared for the distance, Goumri astonishingly won his first marathon at age 21, finishing in a time of 2:30:54. Alas, it was 54 seconds too slow to earn the prize purse.

With no cash to fly home, he headed to Oslo, where a Moroccan soccer club was practicing. The guys there helped him find work “cutting potatoes into pommes frites, you know, French fries,” he recalls of his humble beginning as a professional runner.

On the soccer pitch he met Khalid Skah, the 10,000m champion at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Skah introduced Goumri to his running club, IL i BUL.

With access to the European track circuit and in the company of accomplished athletes, Goumri thrived for three years in Norway, where he was a four-time Norwegian champion in the 1500m, 3,000m, 5,000m and cross country distances.

“It was always snowing, beginning in January,” he says about his time in Norway. “It was hard, sometimes 20 below zero.” As he earned money, he took trips home — for warmth, and to feel less isolated.

A predominantly Muslim country with Spain just a (bumpy) half-hour ferry ride across the Strait of Gibraltar, and with a pervasive French influence reminiscent of its colonial past, the Kingdom of Morocco straddles its European, African and Islamic identities in ways that impact all aspects of society — including food, music, language and sports.

Mohammed Amyn, Moroccan Olympian in 10,000 meters, prays during Ramadan. (c) Courtenay Morgan Redis

Compared to its rivals in eastern Africa, the massive continent’s northwest corner could not be more different when it comes to the development of its athletes, relying less on raw talent from localized areas, and more on the deliberate enhancement of athletes from all over the country.

While most great Kenyan runners have risen from the mountains above the Rift Valley, and many Ethiopian Olympians grew up at elevation in Bekoji near Asela, there is no real epicenter of running in Morocco. And unlike Kenya and Ethiopia, where children run for transportation, in Morocco running serves as play for children and fitness for adults, similar to Western societies.

In classic Moroccan fashion, King Hassan II searched for a way to compete in European sporting circles but within the limits of his smaller, African economy. Beginning in the 1970s, he instituted Morocco’s national training program to better develop running talent — as opposed to soccer players — since the small investment in infrastructure made it the most economically feasible sport to facilitate.

In this country of 34 million, public schools set the stage for national recruiters to do their handpicking of young prodigies via centralized sport programs, a la Nadia Comăneci and the cultivation of athletes in Romania, Russia, China and elsewhere.

Today, FRMA staff still travel throughout the country to scout potential talent among its youth by administering tests for speed, strength, endurance, agility, biomechanics and overall physiology. The top achievers then enter systematic programs at a local, and then national level, to further hone their talent.

Goumri, Amyn, Hassan, Olympic champ and world record-holder Hicham El Guerrouj, world marathon champ Jaouad Gharib — they all started out this way.

Goumri and Lel at the 2007 NYC Marathon. (c) Courtenay Morgan Redis

Come November, Goumri arrived on my home turf — New York City — intending to go another round with Martin Lel of Kenya, who had beaten him in each of their three previous match-ups. Then, with the defending champion breaking his ankle just before the race, it seemed this might be Goumri’s year to break the tape. 
As it turned out, Goumri led for most of the nail-biting race, but, with 800 meters to go, 2006 winner, Marilson Gomes dos Santos of Brazil, surged and Goumri couldn’t respond. Gomes won in 2:08:43 with Goumri left 24 seconds behind.

Ironically, while Ramadan didn’t hamper his performance as it had in 2007, where the fast ended only weeks before Goumri hit the streets of New York, poor hydration still played a part on race day 2008. 
”I didn’t drink much,” Goumri said after the race. “I miss three stations of my water bottle. I lose a lot of sugar running in the cold and my body didn’t respond in the last kilometer.”

The difference between first and second translated to $70,000.

“Running is not just for money, but for your body and mind,” Goumri said over coffee following the race. “Sometimes you are not good in your head, but you go for training and you feel good. You think clearly again.”

Goumri’s take-home of $95,000 wasn’t bad for a day’s work considering, he said, he needs only about $1,500 a month to live comfortably in Morocco.

After years of successful racing in Norway, Goumri received a call from the FRMA in 2001, this time to offer him a spot on the national team. The offer represented free housing, food, chiropractic, massage, a salary and good weather. He moved back to Morocco permanently.

In the next few years, running the 5,000m and 10,000m, he notched top-20 performances at worlds (indoor, outdoor, cross country) and the Olympics in Athens. Goumri kept climbing he distance ladder and eventually made another run for the marathon in London in 2007.

In his debut in a major marathon, Goumri astonished the world. The novice beat then world record-holder Paul Tergat, 2006 London winner Felix Limo and countryman Gharib, taking second in 2:07:44, just 3 seconds behind Martin Lel.

Since, the 33-year-old Goumri has become as well known for his near misses as for his success.

Currently coached by Abdelkader El Mouaziz, past champion in both London and New York, Goumri finished runner-up again in New York City later in 2007, again behind Lel. In London in 2008, Goumri set a new PR and Moroccan national record of 2:05.30, but finished third, with Lel taking the win and Sammy Wanjiru sandwiched between them.

Come summer, Beijing looked deceptively promising. While his teammate Gharib took silver in the men’s marathon, Goumri finished a disappointing 20th, suffering, he said, from the heat and a scorching early pace that saw Wanjiru and Gharib smash the Olympic record.

Last year Goumri became engaged to a Moroccan woman who is currently living in France with her family. He jokes that his fiancée, Salka Lachbichi, may give up waiting for him to be done with his next big race — first it was London, then Beijing, then New York, then London again.

“I keep saying, ‘Wait, just wait!’ She’s living in France, I live in Morocco,” he says of their trans-Mediterranean relationship. “Her family is there, mine is here. If I have time [for the wedding], she doesn’t, and when she has time, I don’t. I hope we can find a week to have the wedding in May or by the summer.”

“Would she be traveling to London in April to watch him race?” I asked during my visit last year.

“She says maybe she will come,” he paused, considering his words like an already well-trained husband. “But, really, it is better for me to be alone. I am very anxious before a big race and if you talk to me a few days before, I have bad character. Really, do not come around me!”

Lachbichi gave Goumri his space in London, where a day of ideal temperatures was overshadowed by a blistering first half split of 1:01:35. “Sixty-one is too fast and after 30K I cramped, I was tired,” Goumri said by phone after the race. “We were all tired, it was fast for everybody. It’s not the way to break a world record.” He finished a disappointing sixth (2:08:25), more than 3 minutes behind Wanjiru and Beijing bronze-medalist Ethiopian Tsegaye Kebede.

Hoping to save his legs for New York City in November, Goumri planned to peak in the fall but the federation selected him for the IAAF World Championships in Berlin in August. Given his bonking in the final 800m in New York in 2007, Goumri was reluctant to run 26.2 miles during Ramadan, which coincided with worlds this year.

Heading to Berlin, Goumri felt his chances of medaling were slim. Perhaps that’s why he invited his fiancée to meet him there.

Of the four Moroccans chosen to race the marathon distance in Berlin, only two finished; Goumri dropped out after the first 25K and Gharib didn’t make it to the starting line because of an injury sustained in London in April.

Was it the Ramadan fast that contributed to the Moroccan’s poor showing? “Only small part. Really, it’s summer,” Goumri said after the race. “All the [global championships] are in the summertime and that is not a good time for a marathon,” due to both the climate and the plan to peak in fall, not summer.

Heading into autumn with a 2009 season of underachievement, Goumri and his teammates had to redeem their year, and the plan is to divide and conquer. Goumri did his part, taking second at Chicago with a patient, come-from-behind strategy; Gharib is slated to run New York City in November.

Speaking from his family’s home in Safi during Ramadan this year, just a couple of weeks after Berlin, Goumri suggested maybe he should break from racing until next spring, and get married to Lachbichi. “Now I am 33. It’s more than two years that I don’t take a good rest. After Ramadan, when she comes back from France and me from Safi, then maybe it’s time … ” He drifted off, not ready to promise a wedding date nor deny he’d run another marathon this year.

During Ramadan, all plans seem distant, and even discussing them feels like too much effort. For now, he is simply fasting and jogging easy before sunset. The rest, he says, will come in time.

National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. (c) Courtenay Morgan Redis

New England Holocaust Memorial (c) Courtenay Morgan Redis

It’s been a few years since I visited Boston’s Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, Paul Revere’s House, Old North Church and the Copps Hill Burial Grounds. I first visited the cemetery as a grade-schooler on a field trip from New York. We made etchings by rubbing butcher paper on the centuries-old tombstones, and I remember being in awe thinking of the families who had stood where I knelt, burying their loved ones.

Death has brushed close many times since that first encounter: I’ve lost friends to the ravages of AIDS and the painful march of cancer. All four grandparents have died, two of them while very much a part of my daily life. I’ve stood helplessly by as friends have buried husbands and sons, and just a few months ago photographed my cousin’s burial with full military honors (color guard, playing of Taps, 21-gun salute) at Arlington National Cemetery.

(c) Courtenay Morgan Redis

I do not fear death, although I have a strong, albeit futile, sense of how I’d like to pass, knowing from all that I’ve seen how unlikely it is that I’ll get control over that outcome. I do, however, fear allowing my life to pass without making a mark on the world. This burning desire to have a positive impact (less than leaving a legacy, as motivates some) has been recently fueled by a less-than fulfilling work life and by reading too many books about those who have done so much. Three Cups of Tea, Mountains Beyond Mountains, even Into the Wild with it’s less than inspiring ending have intensified my sense that life is passing too quickly and I must hurry and make something of it all.

It was in this frame of mind that I happened upon the New England Holocaust Memorial just after exiting the T at the Haymarket stop. Traveling as I was the day before 9/11, and being a New Yorker, I suppose it’s not surprising that when I approached the tall glass towers of the memorial I immediately thought it must be a tribute to the terrorist attack of 2001.

Even the steam vents blowing up smoke in the midday heat and humidity made me think of Ground Zero. But as soon as I entered the memorial by stepping on the black granite stone path, across carvings of names like “Auschwitz,” I realized I was entering sacred ground and the recollection of terror of another era.

Six glass towers, each 54-feet tall, bear six-million numbers to recall those tattooed onto the arms of those who died in the Nazi death camps.

Personal statements by survivors and witnesses also testify to the horror of what took place. I’ve included one here, to the right, and a photo of it below.

Writing in my notebook as I rode the subway to the airport, my simple response was this:

Glass standing tall, reflecting the financial towers nearby. I start to walk through, wondering why there is steam coming up from the ground, through the grates in each section. Poor planning? Warmth for winter tourists? Reminds me of Ground Zero.

Looking more closely I see digits etched into the glass. In white. Then words, a memory, etched in black. A woman remembers seeing her sister shot and killed. Faces of other visitors, like me, with tears in their eyes are also reflected on top of the words, on top of the numbers, on top of the reflected buildings all in this tall glass.

New England Holocaust Memorial (c) Courtenay Morgan Redis

No, it’s not a memorial for the World Trade Centers collapse eight years ago.

Those memorials, breathing the grief that is still so fresh, will be re-visited tomorrow, Friday, 9/11/09.

No, it’s a reminder of the six-million who died during the Holocaust many decades before. And the grief of that memory suddenly feels as personal, as close, as the loss of DJ and Marian, Tommy and Hazel, Carl and Pop and Aunch and Corrado and so many in my life.

May I take life and run, fly, L I V E fully. Anything less is tragic and wasteful. Forgive me. Inspire me.

August 12, 2009

By David Howard and illustrated with my photographs taken while doing a marketing job for Rock Wall Wines, the subject of the article.

Kent and Shauna Rosenblum's Rock Wall Wine Company

No doubt you’re already familiar with Alameda’s Rosenblum’s Cellars, now owned by the food and drinks giant Diageo Beverages. And you’ve likely heard of Rock Wall Winery, the Rosenblum family’s latest winemaking adventure less than a mile away at Alameda Point. And you may have heard of the cross-investment between Rock Wall Winery investors and Angela’s Bistro, at the corner of Oak and Central Avenue in Alameda. But you may not know that diners at the bistro enjoy fresh herbs and vegetables grown at Rock Wall by sustainable, environmentally friendly gardening practices.

Shauna Rosenblum, the daughter of Kent Rosenblum, who founded Alameda’s Rosenblum Cellars, is the winemaker at Rock Wall. She has a Masters of Fine Arts degree (2008) in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an undergraduate degree in fine arts (Ceramics, 2006) from the California College of the Arts.

But Shauna, now in her mid-twenties, grew up around winemaking, stepping on her first grapes at the age of six, and learned the art of winemaking from her father. (Alameda parents and young adults dismayed by the decline in state funding for California postsecondary schools should take note – apprenticeship opportunities abound at Alameda Point, from winemaking to distilled spirits production to shipbuilding to blacksmithing.)

Rock Wall’s first Alameda Point vintage was declared in 2007, although the grapes were crushed off-site. Their 2008 vintage, to be released this September at an open house event, was the first to be both crushed and vinted at Alameda Point. Buying grapes through multi-year contracts from growers around California, Rock Wall now produces fourteen wines, including two sparkling wines, in a tremendous converted aircraft hangar.

2009 represents another first for Rock Wall, whose investors, who are also invested in Angela’s Bistro, use space at the winery to plant a sustainable-practice, environmentally-friendly herb and vegetable garden, with the harvest served in the bistro’s dining room. I recently sat down with Saboor Safari, the Chef and owner of Angela’s Bistro, and Roy Creekmore, a local chef, food writer and Rock Wall investor, to talk about it.

Creekmore and Safari told me that the garden was the brainchild of Kent Rosenblum, fellow-investor Bill Williford and Saboor himself. Rock Wall has plenty of vacant, flat, former-airport tarmac around the hangar they lease at Alameda Point and it seemed like a good use of the space. Other fellow Angela’s investors volunteer their time, and spare parts (see below) to maintain the garden.

The contaminants in the ground from decades of Navy use, and the acres of concrete apron preclude them from directly planting a garden in the ground, so they are re-using “macrobins” – containers used to hold the grapes after harvest – for raised-bed gardening. They acquire older fiberglass and wooden bins from growers and wine-makers that would otherwise be thrown out, and for nine months of the year, Rock Wall’s own “good” bins are idle, waiting for harvest season, so those bins are put to work in the garden too.

Any bins that leak are double-tiered and lined with wheat cloth so that water is collected on a leak-proof bottom bin and re-cycled to the top, where the plants are. (In winemaking, macrobins are sometimes used in the maceration process for red wine, so if they leak, they aren’t of any use to a typical winery.) They are using about thirty bins now, and have room for probably a couple hundred more. Fresh water used to soak and seal new wooden wine barrels and which might be discarded at other wineries is collected and used for the garden. They practice rainwater harvesting by collecting run-off from the roof of the hangar, and they’ve just installed a drip-irrigation system, re-cycling old valves and parts that they had in their garages.

If they can figure out how to do it in a raised-bed, they want to start composting winemaking offal such as discarded skins, seeds and stems, and the un-usable part of the plants they grow such as the stalks from fava bean plants. Creekmore explained:

“Ultimately, you become a soil person. You start off thinking about the harvest, what you want out of gardening. Then, you start focusing on the plants – good plants make a good harvest. Ultimately, you figure out it’s about the soil. If the soil is healthy, the first two will follow.”

As best they can, they avoid using pesticides, opting instead for ladybugs, beneficial nematodes and manual pest removal. And ants. The pesky, pervasive Argentine ant that loves to invade California homes when the temperature soars? “Ten times more beneficial for gardening than earthworms,” asserts Creekmore. “Ants are very healthy for the soil. They create air pockets in the soil, which is good, and they contribute organic matter to the soil as well.” I pressed the point of their motivations for setting up the garden. Are they trying to be some sort of Bay-area beacon of sustainable gardening? Are they enviro-gardening activists? Not at all. Safari told me “I just want the freshest herbs and vegetables for my restaurant. Normally I shop at five different farmers markets for my produce.” The day I met with them at Angela’s, Safari had just returned from Alameda Point with fresh tomatoes, onions and herbs.

Creekmore told me that they started planting in late winter of this year, buying their plants from Iris Watson of Alameda’s Thomsen’s Garden Center. Northern California’s mild weather allows year-round planting, but “we’re trying to find our way” with regards to Alameda Point’s microclimate, which, at the western tip of Alameda, gets a lot of wind off the bay. Herbs like rosemary, mint, thyme and basil, and vegetables like tomatoes do well at Alameda Point, he told me, and they’ve been able to produce some peppers. On a tour of the garden, I saw some good-sized pumpkins as well. Watson had them plant legumes first, which they didn’t harvest but instead mowed into the soil for the nitrogen content. From mid-August through October, they will be planting winter crops such as beets, chard, kale and other root vegetables. Watson is coaching them on companion planting (some plants get along swimmingly in the garden, drawing beneficial insects) and crop rotation (don’t plant tomatoes in the same soil year after year.) About the only downside is that they can’t grow figs, citrus or other fruiting trees due to fish and wildlife restrictions at Alameda Point against trees of height.

All tours of the Rock Wall winery get a tour of the garden as well, and, looking forward into the fall and winter, Creekmore said that he’d like to start doing tours with the local schools for the 2009-2010 school season. Safari told me that he’s not aggressively promoting the use of local home-grown produce in his restaurant, but his servers will mention it to customers and he still buys produce from other sources. It may take a couple of seasons to figure out what crops can consistently be produced at Alameda Point for the restaurant.

According to Creekmore, they’re looking into how they might barter wine for consultation services to help maintain and expand the garden. They should have plenty of it – Rock Wall is on track this year to produce around 5,000 cases of wine and they are considering a national distribution deal to extend their sales reach beyond the San Francisco Bay area. And they’re in the process of passing a winemaking tradition from one generation to the next.

On this 4th of July

Some words from the poem, “The New Colossus,” written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 speak to Lady Liberty’s intended message of hope for people seeking freedom:

Large sheets of glass trace the line of a skyscraper ever upwards, offering a heroic backdrop to the work of a big-city window washer.

Sam Paino remembers working that line, but has spent most of his past thirty years closer to the ground than to the sky. After serving in Korea he sold shoes before buying the window washing route he still works today. He’s earned enough to buy a pleasant home on Staten Island and to put his two daughters through college and graduate school.

The sole employee of Fieldstone Cleaning, Sam works an often invisible trade along the streets of Queens. Throughout his mornings, he stops for “coffee or bullshit” with long-time customers who have become his closest friends.

Cancer took twelve long years to drain the life out of his wife, Yolanda, who passed away in the middle of the year I photographed him. In her absence, Sam leaves home before 4AM to get on with life rather than linger in the silence left behind.

Brooke Miller (USA) and Ina Tutenberg (GER) at the start line of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California Women's Criterium in Santa Rosa on Sunday, 15 February 2009.

The New York Times

February 16, 2009

Women’s Pro Teams Struggle for Recognition

BY JULIET MACUR

Courtenay Morgan Redis contributed reporting.

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — Five hours before the Tour of California’s caravan of bikes, vans and team cars headed into this city Sunday for the finish of Stage 1, a group of women’s cyclists prepared for its own race here.

Those women grabbed their bikes from atop their team van as rain fell sideways. They changed into their cycling clothes in a parking lot, first pulling on skirts so they could remain decent while slipping into their shorts.

They held a team meeting inside a van, squeezing inside the cluttered space stuffed with helmets, handlebars, drink packets and luggage.

As simple and as spartan as most of the women’s teams here, Team TIBCO, a professional cycling team based in California’s Silicon Valley, readied itself for the Tour of California’s women’s criterium, an hourlong race through downtown.

Emilia Fahlin of Team Columbia-Highroad later won the race, several hours before Rock Racing’s Francisco Mancebo finished first in Stage 1 of the men’s race to take the leader’s jersey from Fabian Cancellara, who had dropped out with a fever. Levi Leipheimer, the two-time defending champion, was in second place over all, 1 minute 2 seconds off the lead, and David Zabriskie was third, 1:03 back. Lance Armstrong was fifth, 1:05 back.

The men’s and women’s races each took place in chilly, wet weather, but that might have been the only similarity.

“You could look at the men’s teams and their entourages and fancy equipment and get pretty jealous,” said Brooke Miller, the women’s defending champion, who finished 15th after an equipment malfunction. “But this is just the usual for women’s cycling. The truth is, there’s a big disparity between the women and the men. We’re very, very different.”

Among women’s cycling teams, which often struggle for sponsorship and recognition, Team TIBCO separates itself for another reason: 6 of its 13 riders have postgraduate degrees.

The 32-year-old Miller, the team leader, has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. On her Web site, she describes herself as “a nerd and a jock — a rare combination of unadulterated dork who exercises their body into a fine-tuned machine.” For fun, she dabbles in software development.

Amber Rais, 27, is a former swimmer at Stanford, where she earned a master’s degree in oceanography. She has since started her own environmental consulting firm. Alison Rosenthal, 32, a rider on TIBCO’s development team, works 80-hour weeks as the manager of mobile business development for Facebook. She has an M.B.A. from Stanford.

“Our dinner conversations are probably not very normal compared to the ones other teams have,” said Lauren Tamayo, who finished second to Fahlin on Sunday. “Brooke wrote her thesis on banana slugs, so we get a lot of information about mating habits of banana slugs. You know, just the usual stuff you talk about around the table.” (Miller clarified that the topic of her doctoral thesis was “sexual conflict in banana slugs.”)

But the women find time to talk about cycling, too. Most have goals of making the Olympics. Miller has devoted herself to training. She lives in a friend’s dining room, draping a bed sheet across the room for privacy. She said the salary she draws from cycling was so low it was basically, “You eat what you kill.”

“Our lives are pretty balanced compared to the men,” said Miller, who received a four-year volleyball scholarship from the University of California at Berkeley, where she received a bachelor’s degree in integrative biology.

“People often ask why women’s cycling isn’t bigger,” she said. “I say it’s just because we don’t get enough opportunity to show what we could do.”

Bob Stapleton, the owner of Team Columbia-Highroad, has long been a champion of women’s cycling in the United States. He and his wife, Tess, have supported a women’s team since 2002; it has evolved into Team Columbia, which won 68 of 130 races last season — more than any other women’s program.

Stapleton stood in the driving rain Sunday, water dripping from his hat. His men’s team was already on the road, heading from Davis to Santa Rosa, but Stapleton declined to follow the men’s race. He cheered the women instead.

In his women’s team, he sees a perfect opportunity for marketing and sponsorships. Still, he says, he has had to underwrite his women’s team from its inception. He estimated that the salaries for members of the women’s team ranged from “a jersey and a bike” to about $100,000 a year. Men’s salaries are from $45,000 to more than $2.5 million.

“For me, the women are the best part of the sport because they do it because they love it, not for the money,” he said. “It’s not complicated and it’s not filled with big shots or big egos. We just need more exposure.”

Linda Jackson, the team director for Team TIBCO, started her cycling team in 2005 to give women the opportunity to follow in her footsteps.

Jackson, who has an M.B.A. from Stanford, began cycling when she was in her 30s and working as an investment banker. She said she would train in the morning, then rush to the office, driving there in her sweaty cycling gear. While in traffic, she would change into her business suit, nylons and all, and try to apply her makeup without poking out an eye. Once at work, she would sneak to a nearby gym to shower. After lunch, she sometimes rented a booth in a tanning salon for 20 minutes, just to nap.

At 35, she quit the job to train for the Olympics. It was worth it. She made the Canadian cycling team for the 1996 Games.

“When I’m 80 or 90 years old, am I going to remember some I.P.O. or M. & A. deal? No, I’m going to remember the Olympics,” she said. “I’m trying to help these women have the same chance.”

Jackson is now trying to secure enough sponsorship money — hundreds of thousands of dollars — to send the team to European races. That would put them in the pool to make the 2012 or 2016 Games, she said.

Ali Rosenthal heads to a Facebook executive meeting

Rosenthal, the Facebook executive, is considering training full time for the next Olympics. For now, she fits in her training at 4:45 a.m., before heading to work.

“I like the balance in my life,” she said.

But sometimes it can be hectic.

An hour after the race ended, she waited for a car that was scheduled to take her to the airport. She was headed to Barcelona for a weeklong business trip.

Notes

Lance Armstrong woke up to bad news Sunday, before the 107-mile first stage of the Tour of California. His time-trial bike was stolen from a trailer that was parked behind his hotel in Sacramento. Three other time-trial bikes, used by his Astana teammates, were also taken. The Sacramento police are investigating the theft.

“There is only one like it in the world, therefore hard to pawn it off,” Armstrong wrote on his Twitter feed, before offering a reward for the distinctive yellow-and-black bike with a Livestrong logo. He posted a photo of the bike on his Twitter page.

Later, he seemed to shrug off the loss. If the bike is not recovered before Friday, the day of the race’s second time trial, he said he would use his backup bike. Armstrong said he has ridden that bike even more than the bike now gone.

“Bikes are replaceable and I suspect that bike will come back,” he said after the race. “There’s no way to keep a bike like that to yourself. What are you going to do, burn it?”