Sunday E-dition: Hitting the green arrow
By Sasha Paulsen
NAPA, Calif. — I’ve decided that the new Napa Bookmine is the place to go to meet everyone. It opened in June in Register Square, built on the site of the demolished Napa Valley Register building. Every time I’m there I run into someone I know, and recently, having coffee with a friend and chatting with people stopping by to say hello, I realized we were sitting close to what used to be the entrance to the Register, where I worked for so many years before the 2014 earthquake shut it down.
Bookmine, filled with light, a coffee bar and splendid shelves of books, is certainly more attractive and comfortable than the old barn of a newsroom. But it has that same energy, a place driven by curiosity and conversations. People used to come in and out of the Register all day long, dropping off announcements of pancake breakfasts and yard sales, picking up extra copies of the day’s paper because their grandson was in it, sharing a tip, voicing a complaint, and sometimes bringing in cookies to say thanks for one thing or another. Everyone loved the cookies.
Beyond the front desk a huge room with one window was filled with people. Reporters, editors, photographers, copyeditors and page designers were on one side of the extremely ugly mustard-yellow file cabinets that separated editorial from advertising. The ad staff’s desks were always neater than those of the journalists. They had matching desk sets and plants that weren’t dead from a lack of water. The journalists’ desks were piled with mail, books, newspapers, cups of cold coffee and oddities: painted coconuts, ex-president bobble heads, souvenirs from Sonoma.
Beyond this, doors led to the pressroom. If the Register building often felt like the busily pumping heart of a town, the pressroom was the heart of the paper. You have to be a little crazy to choose to be a journalist; the pay is dreadful and so are the hours. But every time I watched the presses run I’d think, “This is our work shooting out into the world; this is why we do it.” And it was fun.
“I remember coming here with kids on a field trip,” a longtime friend, teacher and home daycare provider recalled. “It was so exciting. The kids would see what everyone was doing and then we’d go back into the pressroom.” The adults had to watch carefully to be sure no one gave in to the temptation to touch the giant presses, but everyone loved it. John Hawkley, in charge of the press team, would give her end rolls of paper for art projects. She collected stacks of old newspapers, too, for papier-maché art. “It’s all changed now, isn’t it?” she asked.
It has been three months now since I left the Register, and still people want to talk about the paper — sometimes to reminisce, sometimes to complain but mostly to ask, “What is happening to local news?”
The short answer is: I don’t know.
Another friend, this one from the East Coast, likes to joke that the slogan of Napa should be: “Change, I’m against it.” Yet it’s unavoidable and seems to be accelerating, and I have to admit, even as an old Napan, it’s not all bad.
When Tim Carl burst onto the scene with his new idea — this Napa Valley Features publication — he was searching for a new way to tell stories. Both the process and the product are unlike the old days of newspapers, but at its core the mission remains the same. And even without the roar of the presses, there’s still nothing else like it. And as Carl continues to pull in many of my former colleagues, sacked as corporate cutbacks walloped the paper, I’ve noticed we are saying to each other in amazement, “This is fun.” We’d almost forgotten that part.
The purpose of this Sunday commentary is to look at what stories appeared last week and to give a look at what is coming up. But here, I have to apologize. How Carl created Napa Valley Features still confounds me, but it somehow involves uploading stories to one platform and then transferring them to another platform before they magically make their way into readers’ email inboxes.
It only works, however, if, at a critical junction, you hit a green arrow to make the story appear. A green arrow is a positive symbol, which could represent things moving forward. But I, being a person who started writing on typewriters, adjust at a creeping pace to new technologies, which is to say I invariably forget to hit the green arrow. And if you don’t hit the green arrow, it disappears and you never know (some of us, that is) if you hit it or not.
So this week, instead of searching for the documents that tell what stories ran and what are planned, I would like to include a story that didn’t run because I forgot to hit the green arrow. For this I am extremely sorry because as things continue to change in our valley, Music in the Vineyards is one event that endures, filling August with music.
Music in the Vineyards – and in the caves and barrel rooms
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — Award-winning musicians from around the world will convene in Napa Valley wineries, barrel rooms and wine caves for Music in the Vineyards’ 29th annual chamber music festival from July 28 to Aug. 20.
For the first time in its history, the festival features four weeks of concerts on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, expanding its offerings and providing more community-outreach events, including the return of the popular "Not-So-Silent Cinema” and an interactive performance during which the audience will be invited to play along.
For the 29th season three string quartets — Calidore (week one), Catalyst (weeks two and three) and Telegraph (week four) — will be in residence, performing as quartets and in collaboration with other musicians throughout the festival.
Another season highlight includes the premiere of a new work, co-commissioned by Music in the Vineyards, a quintet for piano and strings by the appropriately named California composer John Wineglass. The live premiere, along with works by Mozart and Brahms, was Saturday at Silverado Vineyards.
“Our overall theme this season will focus on how vastly different — and fascinating — the sources of inspiration are for composers,” said artistic director Michael Adams. “For example, ‘Breathing Statues’ by British composer Anna Clyne is inspired by certain string quartets of Beethoven, whose themes appear throughout. Several works were inspired either from grief or the rejection of unrequited love.”
On Saturday, Aug. 5, at 5 p.m. the festival will host its first interactive community concert at the First Presbyterian Church in Napa. Designed for pure fun and audience participation, “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” by tango master Astor Piazzolla will take center stage, and the event will conclude with a group performance of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.” Concert attendees are encouraged to download music ahead of time and bring their instruments for the amateur play-along.
San Francisco’s Telegraph Quartet returns to provide the soundtrack for a reprise of the “Not-So-Silent Cinema” on Saturday, Aug. 19, at the Jarvis Conservatory at noon and the St. Helena Performing Arts Center at 5 p.m. Aiming to re-create the cinema experience of 100 years ago, before recorded sound was integrated into filmmaking in the 1920s, these community concerts feature two classic silent films with original music by Stephen Prutsman performed live by festival musicians. The main attraction is a 1927 Buster Keaton classic, “College,” which will be preceded by “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” a silent horror film considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema. Tickets for these concerts are $10 and $20.
As part of its commitment to community engagement, Music in the Vineyards will also feature its 2023 Fellowship String Quartet, the Lírios Quartet. Formed at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Lírios comprises four emerging artists who have come together under the mentorship of the Takács Quartet. The quartet will be in residence for the entire Music in the Vineyards festival, performing alongside the seasoned musicians and at children’s clubs, senior centers and all around the valley.
Visit here for full festival details, including concert programs, free open rehearsals, a lecture series and other special events. For more information, call (707) 258-5559 or e-mail info@musicinthevineyards.org.
Sasha Paulsen is a journalist and novelist who lives in Napa.
I LOVE this post- both segments. I can only imagine myself forgetting to push the green arrow. And, I loved reading about visits to the old pressroom by school children. My grandfather spent his life as a newspaper publisher and I have very visceral memories of watching the presses- the noise and the smell of the ink. I am now 77, so that was more than 70 years ago. Thank you for that sweet memory. And, thank you for publishing the information about the Music Festival. You really make me wish I still lived in the Valley, as do so many of the Napa Valley Features articles. I am grateful to Tim Carl and all of the contributors, and I LOVED reading that many of you are finding fun you might have forgotten... wonderful.
I remember walking down the alley in St. Helena that ran next to the Star Building. On a Wednesday night you could peek in the side door at the press room and watch the St. Helena Star be printed. Next year in September is the 150th anniversary of the first edition of the Star. Let's hope it makes it. "Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end."