Smith: Windsor’s Jerry Lynch may take his Army buddy wine-sniffing

Ernie Cardoza picked up his phone in Taunton, Massachusetts, and told me “Jeopardy” was about to start. I needed to talk fast.

I told the retired teacher I heard he’s making his first-ever trip to California this week for a visit with Windsor’s Jerry Lynch. They haven’t seen each other since they served in Korea in the early 1950s.

I asked Cardoza why he’s making the trip now.

“I’m 87,” he said. “If I don’t do it now, I never will.”

Both he and Lynch, who’s also 87 and is retired from PG&E, can’t wait for their reunion Monday. The two draftees had completely lost touch for more than 60 years when a friend of Lynch searched the internet for vets who’d served with the 75th Field Artillery Battalion in Korea and found Cardoza. The ex-war buddies reconnected over the phone and arranged for this week’s visit.

Lynch and his wife, Barbara, plan to take Cardoza to Bodega Bay and other spots of interest. It was bittersweet for Cardoza to learn from the Lynches that wine and vineyards and wineries are a big deal out here.

“On doctor’s orders, for the last 31 years I’ve been a teetotaler,” Cardoza said. He shared that at the VFW hall there in Taunton the guys who tend bar let him sniff the glasses.

If you’ve got a tasting room and these reunited vets show up, please treat ’em to a taste and a whiff.

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WHEN’S A HOSPITAL like a museum?

When there’s art on display that’s a worth a special visit.

That’s the case now at Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital. An employee art show rises well above what you might expect.

Among the surprises on the second floor of the Mountain View wing: the glasswork by women’s services manager Teri Spooner and the photographs of Japan by John Cambre of the finance department.

Then there’s “The Bro-Show.” It’s an astonishing array of 21 graphite and white chalk portraits of behind-the-scenes Sutter staffers by the hospital’s chief artist-in-residence, Thomas “Mas” Giansante.

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PLASTIC IS UGLY, deadly, in the oceans and elsewhere in the earth’s ecosystems.

But the plastic on walls at Sebastopol’s library is glorious.

Santa Rosa artist Paula Strother deplores the catastrophic effects of global plastics pollution, so she does what she can to avoid, reuse and avoid discarding plastic.

“It’s been kind of a passion,” she said.

That passion inspired the 17-piece exhibit she has up in the Forum Room of the Sebastopol Regional Library. Every element of every piece is made of plastic.

Bags, mostly. And straws. Bottles. Shipping material. You name it.

Strother, who has a studio at Fulton Crossing, did a lovely job of painting, weaving, melding and transforming potentially ruinous trash into art.

Her Sebastopol show will be up until Oct. 18.

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SPEAKING OF PLASTIC that should be reused, did you know it’s possible to return to PD carriers that bags that your papers arrive in?

Dava Amador of our circulation department says subscribers may phone 575-7500 and alert the PD that they will leave the bags where the paper is dropped. Or, the bags can be taken to the PD buildings in Rohnert Park or Santa Rosa.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.