Conductor Mei-Ann Chen wows in Green Music Center performance

Had Taiwan-born conductor Mei-Ann Chen made any bigger a splash in her guest appearance with the Santa Rosa Symphony, vacuum trucks would have been summoned to Weill Hall.

Terrifically animated, precise, joyful - Chen delighted the audiences and captured the hearts of orchestra members already bracing for the departure in 2018 of Bruno Ferrandis, their celebrated French music director since ‘06.

“More than a few players implored her to throw her hat in the ring,” said clarinetist Mark Wardlaw.

Chen mentioned to some at the Green Music Center that she has some impending career options, as she’ll leave her post as music director of the Memphis Symphony in May.

Hey, anything could happen. Chen is a seriously rising star much in demand.

But Tim Beswick, the symphony’s director of artistic operations, allowed that Sonoma County’s enthralled response to Chen “did not go unnoticed by the search committee.”

AS A TEEN, the former Mary Orsborn, now Mary Beseda, earned work-experience credit by acting as a teller at Exchange Bank.

Seconds after she graduated from Santa Rosa High, the bank hired her on. That was in 1974.

Mary met and came to work closely with Dona Vercelli-Godwin, who’s been with Exchange Bank since 1969. They’re the dynamic duo and institutional memory in the Electronic Banking department.

When they retire this month, Mary and Dona will have put in a total of 89 years with the bank.

Their manager, Byron Webb, a bit emotionally tender just now, praised Mary as a force for good in the community who always put the customer first and who possesses a personality “that grabs you and pulls you in.”

Dona, he said, “is an old-school worker; she comes to work and she works.” But also, said Webb, she makes work more fun for everyone around her.

Exchange Bank, which last year turned 125, will continue on, somehow.

LOSING HIS TRUCK was bad enough for Ken Risling. But in the back of the white Ford pickup stolen Friday in downtown Petaluma was the electrician’s livelihood - all of his tools and gear.

He dutifully reported the theft to police, but then he did something that proved far more effective. He wrote about his lost work truck on Facebook.

There followed, he said, “a remarkable phenomenon that I was totally stunned by.”

Risling’s Facebook friends shared his post with people who shared it, and on and on. He soon was notified of several sightings of his truck.

And on Monday his phone rang: A school bus driver in Vallejo was standing in front of the stripped Ford. She’d learned of the theft from a Facebook post in where? Montana.

All of his tools are gone, but the thief left Risling, who’s also quite a musician, “a raincoat, a couple of CDs and my glasses case. I was glad about that.”

He was pretty much bursting with gratitude for all the help and concern when others offered to loan him a truck and tools, then opened a GoFundMe appeal that so far has brought him more than $4,200.

“I got a tell you,” Risling said. “I can’t stop myself from crying, just talking about it. It’s the most amazing thing.”

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