Smith: Eat, spend and lift up Nepal at Sebastopol benefit

Rajesh Moktan receives precious little good news from his former village in the ravaged Sindhupalchowk district of Nepal.

Most of the homes were destroyed in the magnitude 7.8 earthquake April 25 and this week’s magnitude 7.3 aftershock. Many people have died or been hurt, and much of the livestock relied upon for life’s necessities has been lost.

Moktan invites us to a benefit dinner from 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday at his Sebastopol restaurant, Himalayan Tandoori and Curry House, at 969 Gravenstein Highway S. He’ll charge $20 for the buffet and send the money to people in Sindhupalchowk whose lives may depend on it.

Here’s another way to help: This weekend, Regan Masi and the crew at Master Cleaners on Petaluma Hill Road will host a special sale of about 350 rugs, most made by Nepali artisans.

“Many of the weavers have lost their homes,” Masi said. He vows to share the sale the sale proceeds with weavers needing to get back to work in Nepal.

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IT WAS 1936 when a 2-year-old firecracker named Dixie Reed moved into her room in the ranch house her father, Robert, built on Santa Rosa’s Summerfield Road. She lived there only until age 16.

Still sizzling at 80, Dixie Reed Mulvey stepped Wednesday through the door of her long-ago home, now the Bennett Valley Montessori School. The Sacramento resident had come with kid sister, Roberta Tilden.

They hoped just to look around, for old time’s sake. The school’s owner, Jeannine Hextrum, welcomed them in like family.

“The front porch looks the same,” Mulvey declared. She also recognized the kitchen tile, and she looked to no avail for the bullet hole in the ceiling produced by a cousin’s mistaken assumption that the rifle he was cleaning was unloaded.

Mulvey remembered the Beach Dairy across Summerfield and neighbor J.J. Coney, owner of what was then Annadel Farms. She lit up at the memories of living on the edge Santa Rosa all those years ago.

“It was beautiful,” said the visitor. “Absolutely beautiful.”

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JASPER O’FARRELL was a genuine San Francisco/Sonoma County character who enlivens a new book by local author and historian Frank Baumgardner.

The book is, “Blood Will Tell: Divvying up Early California from Col. Juan Bautista de Anza to Jasper O’Farrell.”

Frank’s eager to talk about it from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday at the Copperfield’s Books on Petaluma’s Kentucky Street.

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MARY POPPINS sings her way into hearts in Rohnert Park, where the musical enchants the Spreckels Theatre.

Special features include London sets cleverly and effectively projected onto seven screens on the stage, and the sterling, starring performance by Heather Buck, who also aced the Julie Andrews role in the 2013 Mill Valley Mountain Play production of “The Sound of Music.”

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD