LeBaron: The perfect name for Chanate development

“Heaven on the Hill!” What a great name for a resort and casino!

Just kidding, of course. But there are those among us (old but still here) who remember when that “Heaven” tag was used by local physicians to describe the new hospital on Chanate Road built with government funds in the Depression decade of the 1930s.

While the new owner’s recent casino suggestion has all the earmarks of a trial balloon and shouldn’t be the focus of preliminary discussions, the government funding start and the suggested casino finish does serve as a crude measure of how fast the world turns. Just sayin’.

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MEANWHILE life goes on around here in smaller slices. Let me tell you about my squirrel. It lives across the street in a very tall tree in the neighbors’ front yard. But it has spent the late summer months on my modest “estate,” digging up the pansies in my porch pots as fast as I could plant them.

It was stashing a winter supply of walnuts from the big, old tree in the next block, which is a leftover from the orchard that was here before Codding came along.

We were at odds for two months, maybe more, that squirrel and I.

I tried many things — cayenne pepper, an entire 5 oz. bottle of Tabasco. He didn’t even stop to sneeze. So, I moved up to an $11 spray can of something that promised to “repel squirrels and chipmunks.” It was described as a “Pleasant to Use formula,” even though the first active ingredient was “Putrescent Whole Egg Solids.”

Now, if you are unfamiliar with that first word, you should know that it is used to describe “the process of decay.” In short, it means “rotten.” My mask didn’t help. And I pitied the poor mail carrier. But it didn’t stop the squirrel.

I think it liked it.

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CHRISTMAS is coming and — yes, Virginia, the Asawa fountain IS coming back to the Square. And it IS coming back in bronze. We just have to keep the faith until midsummer, although there is no firm date, mind you, because we’re talkin’ government here and even at the city level, the wheels of the gods grind slowly.

The fountain designed by Ruth Asawa was commissioned and installed in Santa Rosa’s half-and-half central square in the 1980s, when she was only a “well-known San Francisco sculptor” and not yet the world-famous artist with works in the Guggenheim and the Whitney, a special room in San Francisco’s de Young Museum and an art school that bears her name,

It “centered” the town, much as the courthouse had done for the first half of the 20th century. For the next 30-plus years, until the square was made whole again, water trickled over the bas-relief friezes that tell the stories of Sonoma County’s past.

Asawa had designed them to be cast in bronze but the city, to her disappointment — to the disappointment of all who were familiar her San Francisco bronze fountains — decided on concrete, which some said relegated the town to a much lower level in the ranks of art appreciation.

When the decision to close the square to traffic and redesign it was made, the fountain was taken apart and the concrete panels were put in storage with the promise they would come back at a chosen spot on the Third Street side.

It is now going on five years since completion. A common question (apart from “Who the heck chose those new-this-year black, white and bright red bollards on the east and west sides?”) is: “When’s Ruth’s fountain coming back?”

As Asawa’s artistic ranking has increased exponentially and books have been written about her (notably author Marilyn Chase’s “Everything She Touched, The Life of Ruth Asawa,” in 2020) and there is a “Forever” postage stamp showing her smaller works, the frequency of the questions has increased.

News that one of the concrete panels had cracked in storage was glum, but what followed was joyous. The fountain is not only on the council agenda this month, but it is on the shortlist for enough funding to recast the panels — in bronze!

Tara Thompson, the City’s Arts & Culture manager, tells us that bronzing of the story panels is underway at a Berkeley foundry that specializes in such projects. And I am hearing that Asawa’s family is pleased and helpful.

Six months, says Tara, who has remained steadfastly hopeful through it all, and we should see, the start of construction. And maybe the water will flow by fall. Certainly (it says here …) before the end of the year — if the hills don’t burn and the creeks don’t rise — someone from Asawa’s proud Bay Area family will come turn the spigot and the waters will flow, making that new bronze shine on the fountain that tells our story.

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MEANWHILE there are people — mostly short people — ice skating in the Square. They look like they are having fun. Even the ones who fall down. And they may not be cold because the day I saw them was somewhere in the upper 60s and many didn’t even have a sweater on. And that isn’t really ice they are skating on. Brave new world.

It’s nothing like Santa Rosa’s iconic Snoopy’s Home Ice on West Steele Lane which is frozen solid enough that the figure skaters’ blades kick up little puffs of frost as they practice their figure eights.

But it looks like fun, and it must be kind of a kick to skate right square in the middle of town with cars going by on all sides and lots going on in around them. A nice Christmassy touch.

It could be the start of a tradition because you just never know what new idea will take hold and last for most of a century. It was the winter of 1941 — Dec. 4, to be precise — that a surprising number of ice skaters for a town where it rarely even snowed got together to plan a ski trip. Turned out it was the start of something bigger and longer and quite successful.

The 16 “snow bunnies” who met at Grace Brothers Brewhouse included the last “regulars” at the town’s first ice rink, a no-frills facility built by Grace Bros., Santa Rosa’s historic brewery to keep the brewery’s ice plant — Union Ice Company — operative during Prohibition and, later, in the 1930s, to ward off competition from a proposed and much-fancier “Ice Palace” elsewhere in town.

(The GB ice rink and its amazing hockey team is another story for another day.)

That meeting in ’41 was the first organized ski trip from here to Donner Pass and the true beginning of the Santa Rosa Ski Club, now 60 members strong, with another 20 who participate regularly,

The first years were rocky. (Go back and check that anniversary date again.) But by the ‘50s there were enough members for organized trips. And enough to build a proper club lodge in Truckee — just in time to rent bunks to spectators arriving for the 1960 Winter Olympics at the upscale ski resort then known as Squaw Valley.

So how will these dedicated skiers celebrate 80 years this week of shooshing when there isn’t enough snow to shoosh?

They’ll have a warm, cozy theater party Saturday at the Summerfield Cinemas to view the late Warren Miller’s 72nd ski film then adjourn to Russian River Brewing Co. to toast the skaters and skiers and brewers and beer drinkers who started it all.

The toast, fittingly, will be with Russian River’s tribute label for Grace Brothers, a happy beer called — as was one of GB’s many labels — “Happy Hops.”