Chris Smith: Middletown awaits the rinse cycle

A masterpiece of a mobile laundromat has been completed in Santa Rosa by benefactors eager to get it to or near Middletown, hook it up to power and water, and open it for free to Valley fire victims.

“Everything works and it’s ready to go,” said Brett Gayner, who found a need in the Lake County fire zone and seeks to fill it with an eight-washer, eight-dryer laundromat created within a 38-foot truck trailer.

Where Gayner and his helpers will park what he’s calling the Mobile Washing Station isn’t yet known. He said on Monday that Lake County officials are thinking it may go into the parking lot of Middletown’s Twin Pine Casino & Hotel.

“I just want to get it up there so people can use it,” he said.

SNOOPY IN JAPAN: Vicariously, I’m at this moment enjoying Tokyo with Craig Schulz and the few family members and friends who are there with him for today’s Japanese opening of “The Peanuts Movie.”

Imagine the ride that it’s been for Craig to have conceived the storyline eight years ago, to have poured himself utterly into the making of the animated film that would honor the life’s work of his father, Charles Schulz, and to now be traveling far and wide to premieres of the finished product.

The movie “has really touched a nerve, I think,” Craig said before leaving Santa Rosa for Japan.

Evidently it has. Reviews have been strong and this past weekend the film took in about another $24 million at U.S. theaters, pushing its gross after less than two weeks to an estimated $82.5 million.

THREE BUSES will carry local folks and a forest of cardboard redwood trees to Saturday’s Climate Mobilization march and rally in Oakland.

This demonstration and others like it are timed to apply popular pressure for substantive action at the international summit on climate change that’s set to begin in Paris on Nov. 30, and that French President Francois Hollande has said will go on despite Friday’s deadly terrorist attacks.

Three organizations - 350 Sonoma County, Sonoma County Conservation Action and the Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club - are arranging for bus transportation to Saturday’s pre-summit rally in Oakland.

Students from SRJC and SSU will pay only $5 for round-trip passage and others will pay as little as $20. More details are up at 350sonomacounty.org.

About the paper trees: Students at Sebastopol’s REACH charter school have led the creation of decorated triangles of recycled cardboard that carry messages about the beauty of Sonoma County and the imperative to reverse global warming.

Many of the tree-shaped pieces of art will be assembled into likenesses of redwoods and carried in Saturday’s march. And on Dec. 12, they’ll be placed into a mosaic of a huge redwood and photographed from the air.

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