First off, I'll admit I'm an old softie who chimed "Me, too!" every time my late lawyer friend Everett Shapiro said he cries at card tricks and supermarket openings.
But I was made teary eyed several times, and more than once felt by gut clench, as I watched a preview of the Jan. 29 episode of CBS' "Undercover Boss." It has disguised Kendall-Jackson President Rick Tigner of Santa Rosa chatting up and drawing out employees who have no idea who he is.
There's a lot of heart and pathos in the show. And see if you don't chafe and writhe along with Tigner as Rene, a K-J truck driver with a mouth and an attitude, unloads on his masquerading boss.
INSPIRED BY POLLY: Rebecca Louise Miller, an actress/playwright who grew up in Santa Rosa and for a time attended school with the late Polly Klaas, will pry herself from Brooklyn next month to pay a visit home.
Rebecca is scheduled to be at Sebastopol's Main Stage West and Ensemble Theatre Collective on the weekend of Feb. 18 to talk about her play, "Fault Lines."
Much of her inspiration to write it flowed from the 1993 abduction and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Polly lived in Petaluma when a monster named Richard Allen Davis crept into her home, but earlier her family had resided in Santa Rosa.
Rebecca and she had been classmates at Hidden Valley School. The shock of Polly's slaying stayed with Rebecca as she went on to graduate from Santa Rosa High's Artquest, then Brown University and the O'Neill National Theater Institute.
Her "Fault Lines" will be staged 10 times in Sebastopol between Feb. 10 and 25.
It's the fictitious story of Jessica, a victims' rights activist who returns to Sonoma County to memorialize a friend kidnapped and killed 20 years earlier. Jessica becomes holed up with two childhood girlfriends, one who'd also been a friend of the murdered girl, and the other "a counterculture, pill-popping alcoholic."
When the play opened off Broadway in 2009, critic Michael Roderick called it "a new gem of a show" that "could be this generation's &‘Crimes of the Heart.'"
Polly should have celebrated her 31st birthday Jan. 3.
KEEP UP WITH GARY: Sonoma County eye surgeon Gary Barth has arrived in Nepal and begun Facebook posting about his journey to train and assist the world's most prolific cataract surgeon.
Gary trekked to a hospital in a forest to help complete Dr. Bidya Pant's training in cornea transplant surgery. The remarkable doc restores the vision of many hundreds of poor Indians and Nepalis each week through cataract surgery, and his visitor from Santa Rosa is helping him to offer cornea transplants as well.
Find Gary on Facebook and you'll see that he shot a nice photo of Dr. Pant with the nine refrigerated human corneas he brought with him.
Apparently the humanitarian trip is to a good start, though Gary's wife, interior designer Kevin White, lost her corkscrew to a security scanner in New Delhi.
Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.
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