Chris Smith: Goose offers Lake County denizens 120,000 pennies for their thoughts

In Lucerne, on the northeast shore of Clear Lake, a great and glistening Canada goose has folks stopping their cars to snap photos and let the kids stare in open-mouthed awe.

The visitor is Penny the Goose, a sculpture from Burning Man that’s gilded with about 120,000 individually placed U.S. and Canadian pennies. She stands next to a community medical clinic now serving clients of Hilltop Recovery Services, which lost an alcohol-and-drugs treatment home to the Valley fire.

“I absolutely love her,” said admirer of the goose Dee Wilson, who works for Hilltop. “She’s an amazing piece of work.”

The addiction program’s director, Dr. Bob Gardner, came upon Penny the Goose last fall at the American River Music Festival. He met creators Robert and Lisa Ferguson of the East Bay, who’d earlier shown the goose, 12 feet tall and 22 feet from wingtip to wingtip, at the Burning Man gathering in the northern Nevada desert.

The devastation from the Valley fire was then fresh. Dr. Gardner asked the Fergusons if they’d consider bringing Penny to Lake County to lift residents’ spirits and let them know they haven’t been forgotten.

Robert Ferguson said Monday he and Lisa were pleased to take Penny to Lucerne, and to leave her until about April.

“We’re just happy that she’s landed somewhere that she’s able to be seen by people who appreciate her,” he said.

Dr. Gardner savors seeing locals and passersby react at the sight of the goose. He believes she’s inspiring both to people working to free themselves of addiction and to people struggling back from the fire.

He said, “If you look at a penny individually, it’s not really that special. But if you put them all together, like people working together, you get a far more impressive result.”

THANKS MR. HARMAN: Care to know what 87-year-old, long-retired schoolteacher Ed Harman did this past weekend?

He and wife, Bernice, drove from Santa Rosa to Corte Madera to rendezvous with someone he’d taught as a fourth-grader in Walnut Creek 31 years ago.

Alison Haijun thought about Mr. Harman for decades before she looked him up on the Internet. She found a story I wrote in 2014 about how he voluntarily labors to combat absenteeism in Sonoma County high schools by offering students food and other incentives to come to class.

Late last year, Alison phoned Ed to say hello and tell him he was the best, most encouraging teacher she ever had. She asked if they might get together.

On Sunday, Ed and Bernice drove to Marin and met Alison, her husband and their three children, all preschoolers.

Today Alison has a great job with a cosmetics company. Aware of Ed’s volunteer mission, she brought him a load of products for him to give to girls as come-to-class incentives.

Ed took along an old photo of Alison’s fourth-grade class. In it, little Alison wears a ribbon in her hair.

The old teacher and his wife couldn’t help but notice the ribbons in her daughters’ hair.

HARMONY IS KEY, especially so, for a pair of musicians who’ll perform Saturday at the Petaluma Historical Museum.

Check out bnaiisrael.net and you’ll see that Michael Hunter Ochs is a celebrated Jewish songwriter and producer, and musical partner Alaa Alshaham is a Palestinian recording artist from the West Bank.

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