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Cost of ER

Ongoing through April 10 – Healdsburg Center for the Arts presents “Full Circle: Pond Farm Revisited,” an exhibition of pottery by alumni of Pond Farm. 130 Plaza Street. www.healdsburgcenterforthearts.com.

“Mark Twain: Man in White,” by Michael Shelden, 484 pages, with illustrations. Twain’s final years were full of drama, deaths and voyages that are here described in loving detail and give us a full and sympathetic view of the friends and the times that surrounded him then. It is not surprising to find among them Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller and Henry Rogers, Head of Standard Oil, who helped Twain out of some of his more disastrous business ventures and remained a stalwart  companion until his own death. The narrative’s striking detail has been well documented by the archives of the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, where researchers continue to discover a trove of original material. A book to be enjoyed – check it out.

Missing package

“Dorothy Parker – What Fresh Hell Is This?” a biography by Marion Meade. 451 pages with index and illustrations. The question is one that Parker often used to answer her telephone. The subject of this biography is often irascible, willful and not easy to like; she became a leading voice in The New Yorker at its inception, followed by several years working in Hollywood, friends with Hemingway, Fitzgerald and the entire world of New York writers who gathered at the round table in the Algonquin Hotel. Her response to meeting Will Rogers was, “I always liked a man I never met.” Meade manages to portray her subject in a sympathetic manner and gives us a portrait full of the life that Parker always exhibited across the years. Check it out.

Stand-up Guy

Healdsburg’s voters have already spoken

In a provocative presentation to the Windsor/North County Democratic Club on June 23 progressive activist, Dale Axelrod, contended that the primary process was rigged by the Democratic Party establishment against Senator Bernie Sanders in a way that even Senator Sanders may not have fully considered.