Chris Smith: Penngrove expert on ISIS, Dow Jones prediction and crab cakes

Brian Fishman graduated from Petaluma High in 1997 and as a young man seeking a role in public policy moved to D.C. on the 10th of September, 2001. We know what happened the next day.

Not long after the terrorist attacks, Brian joined the staff of North Coast Rep. Lynn Woolsey, managing issues of foreign policy for her.

In ’05, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point recruited him to conduct research for its Combating Terrorism Center and teach cadets about terrorist threats.

A year later, Brian authored one of the first papers on the birth of the Islamic State of Iraq - a copy of it was found in the Pakistani house where Osama bin Laden was killed.

More recently, Brian took the syllabus he’d created for his West Point classes and deepened and broadened it into a book: “The Master Plan: ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory.”

He’s being invited to talk about the book everywhere, and at 7 p.m. Feb. 10, will discuss it at Copperfield’s in Petaluma. He said “The Master Plan” challenges the perception that the Islamic State emerged suddenly and concludes it will not be defeated quickly.

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ANDY LOPEZ FILM: When Sonoma County Deputy Sheriff Erick Gelhaus shot and killed Andy Lopez as the 13-year-old carried a toy replica of an assault-type rifle in the fall of 2013, Petaluma filmmaker Ron Rogers set to work.

He and a team created by his Blue Coast Films began to gather interviews, video and other materials for a documentary. Three years into the production of “Andy,” Rogers prepares to premiere a 3½-minute trailer at a public fundraising event in Santa Rosa on Sunday.

Rogers will request a $25 donation from guests at the 4 to 6 p.m. event at Worth Our Weight, the culinary apprentice cafe in Santa Rosa. He said proceeds will help cover editing and other post-production costs.

Light appetizers will be served at the trailer premiere at WOW, and there will be a Q&A with Rogers and others involved in making the film.

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UP AND UP: Santa Rosa business/community champion Chuck Bartley recalled on Wednesday the predict-a-thon that members of the Downtown Rotary Club played in 1967.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was inching just then toward 1,000. It seems to Bartley that some Rotarians forecast that it would eventually reach 12,000, maybe 14,000.

Guffaws followed the prediction by Leonard Talbot, the Santa Rosa-born stockbroker who would become renowned far and wide for continuing to work happily and full time right up to his death in 1994 at the age of 95.

Friend Bartley said Talbot declared to the Rotary Club 50 years ago that the Dow would reach 20,000. And look here.

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AFTER THE CRAB: As crab-feed season peaks, you may be playing eeny, meeny, miny, mo to pick one.

Student-athletes at Rancho Cotate High would be thrilled for you to consider this:

The feed that the school’s athletics boosters will host at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Rohnert Park Community Center - tickets at Eventbrite.com - boasts not only pasta and Caesar salad, but an auction of cakes that the students lovingly baked. It may rock our perception of the term crab cakes.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.