Gaye LeBaron: Some odds and the occasional end

Editor’s note: We are honored to publish this column, one of about 8,500 written by the legendary Gaye LeBaron, on today’s Page A1. Please see a special message from her friends at The Press Democrat and Sonoma Media Investments on Page A11 in Sunday’s Press Democrat print edition.

Full disclosure: I am cleaning my desk. I have a pile of odds and ends to share, coming from several directions. You all know the drill. It’s one of those things that just has to be done. And the time is right.

Here’s a handful of scribbled notes about how fortunate the classical music community is to have Francesco Lecce-Chong leading the Santa Rosa Symphony. That’s timely.

Looking back, it’s still surprising he took the job here when it was offered in 2017. It was love him at first sight from the audiences. But for him, it was definitely a bumpy start.

His first concert of his audition series was Saturday, Oct. 7, and it went off without a hitch — unless you count the baton that slipped from his hand in the midst of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and broke in half when it hit the floor. He didn’t miss a beat.

(Later, the orchestra would have the two baton pieces framed and presented to him as a memento of his Santa Rosa debut.)

The next day things got worse. Did you check the dates above? The Sunday concert was rudely interrupted by the devastating wildfires we called Tubbs and Nuns burning out of control, destroying 5,300 homes and threatening whole towns and communities.

Francesco weathered the firestorm and accepted the job. And, in turn, he has offered us many surprises since. He met the season-stopping pandemic of ’20-21 with an innovative plan to keep musicians working and audiences involved with filmed concerts by smaller orchestras and musicians safe behind Plexiglas shields at distances from each other that created something of a challenge.

But it worked. Boy, did it work. Those of us who feared we’d lose our season completely could pour a cup of coffee (or a glass of wine) and sit in front of the computer — or the TV, if we had a fancy one — and lose ourselves almost as thoroughly as if we were in our regular seats at the Green.

It was an emergency measure, a new way of listening. It worked then. And it worked this month when the Saturday (and only) concert that went off as planned was offered on YouTube a week later.

But meanwhile, back at the Green Center on Sunday, our clever young maestro was being tested again. And nothing would be more indicative of his dedication than the eleventh-hour “rescue” of Sunday and the revised Monday programs. They weren’t Beethoven as advertised. There was no orchestra. But there was plenty of good music. And good fun.

One would expect, when a conductor learns just four hours before a concert that one of his horn players has been exposed to COVID-19, that he might sigh, curse the fates, cancel everything and go home. But that is not Francesco’s style.

Sunday afternoon was to be the second in the trio of concerts that featured the remarkable (and, as we would learn, personable) Russian American pianist Olga Kern playing Beethoven. The Saturday-night concert had been met with considerable enthusiasm, and no less was expected from the Sunday and Monday audiences.

No one would have been surprised if the COVID-19 exposures (there was soon another in the strings section) had resulted in nothing more than cancellations. After more than a year of grim news and lockdown, cancellations have become, well, routine.

Ah, but we have Francesco!

To borrow a phrase from other January events, he didn’t just punt, he scored two touchdowns.

The savior of the hastily assembled Sunday concert was pianist Kern, who sat down at her Steinway and held her audience captive, playing one “old favorite” after another, rising only to announce “my next encore” amid audience applause.

Monday night’s program was just as Francesco predicted in a late-Sunday conversation with The Press Democrat’s music critic, Diane Peterson. It would be, he said, “just three … friends making music on the stage.”

He made a scaled-down substitute for a promised program sound like a treat. And it was.

Just three performers — Kern, Francesco and harpist Chloe Tula, Francesco’s very talented wife, whose participation in the hurry-up was her Sonoma County debut.

Is there some kind of award for musical valor? If so, I have some nominations.

***

WHILE THE hardworking volunteers we call “cemetarians” are making great strides with accessibility and signage at Santa Rosa’s ancient and honored Rural Cemetery, that even older burial ground on a wooded knoll just to the north of Mark West Springs Road is raising fair questions about preservation.

You may remember Carol Eber, the great-great-granddaughter of the 1840s land grant owner Mark West. Her historical mission to preserve the 170-year-old burying ground of her pioneer ancestors is ready for official action.

Carol has “found” her family, at considerable expense, with cadaver dogs and coffin hardware detection surveys. She’s now on course to protect the site, an honor it has never been accorded.

What set her on this path was, once again, that old devil Tubbs fire of 2017, which destroyed the 90-year-old house on that knoll, built half a century or more after the last burial.

The family that had lived 30 years in that house had found West’s headstone on the property and kept it in their garden. When the fire took their home, they sold the land to a neighboring owner and took the headstone to the Sonoma County Museum. Carol saw it there, recalled stories of the family graves her mother had been told 40 years ago and began the complicated process of locating the graves, some 150 years old and older.

Now, with proof in hand, she is asking officials and organizations (including the Landmarks Commission, the current and past presidents of the county Historical Society and Genealogy Society) for preservation and protection of the site and for designation as a historical landmark. How much can one determined woman accomplish in the name of local history? With Carol and the rest of Mark West’s descendants, we wait to see.

***

SONOMA, the birthplace of the Bear Republic, would seem to be a shoo-in as the most historic town in Sonoma County. But uptown, metropolitan Freestone is definitely in contention.

This tiny town at the south end of Bohemian Highway (population 32, according to the website) has been awarded yet another historic landmark. My morning newspaper reported earlier this month that the Freestone Store has earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

It’s the second such honor for Freestone. The first honor was bestowed in 1979 when the Freestone Hotel, originally the Hinds Hotel, was placed on the National Register because it was a stop on the first railroad in Sonoma County.

Big honors for a tiny country store and a small hotel. I guess that’s appropriate. The railroad was a narrow-gauge.

***

AMY’S KITCHEN, our hometown healthy food company, offered opposite ways to view commercial success last week. On the same day that there was a page-one story of charges filed against the Santa Rosa-based company claiming work hazards, my New Yorker magazine arrived with the back-page crossword puzzle asking for a four-letter word meaning a “vegetarian frozen food company.”

Amy’s proved to be the right fit in that puzzle spot. How it does with the Teamsters union charges is for OSHA to decide.

***

FINALLY, and you can take that literally, this is my last column. As you can see, it’s just bits and pieces, pretty much the kind of thing I’ve done for this newspaper since the 1950s.

I want to be very clear. I haven’t been fired. I’m not sick. I’m not leaving town. I have just run my course and it’s time to make room for others.

I could easily have filled the whole column, the page even, with every good thought I have about Press Democrat readers and what they have given me through the years.

But I choose no fuss, no muss. Up there at the top of this piece, I said that it would be odds and ends. This is the end part.

I’ve “retired” before — 21 years ago, to be exact — and now, well, I’m doing it again.

It’s been a remarkable ride. Thanks to all.