“Run Home” by Max Heiges is installed at the south end of Geyserville. (John Burgess / The Press Democrat)

By DEBORAH MITCHEL SERVAL / Geyserville Correspondent

Maxwell Heiges may be living in Brooklyn, but in his heart he is always running home to Geyserville.

He transformed that daydream of years past, with help from the Voigt Sculpture Foundation, into “Run Home,” a 26-feet-tall, 750-pound pink stick figure with a box-shaped head.

Heiges’ sculpture now stands at the south end of Geyserville on Sculpture Row.

Heiges, 25, was born in San Francisco and raised in Mill Valley, but he spent weekends and vacations in Geyserville. Whenever his parents moved, Geyserville was the home he ran to.

Now that Victoria and Larry Heiges live in Geyserville full time, it has truly become Max’s home even though he now lives in Brooklyn.

Heiges said art has always been a part of his family home, with his mother encouraging him to to make an art mess.

“Mom has always kept the artist pot stirring for me,” he said. “There was always a project going on at home, lots of mosaic and sculpture.

“Art has always been around. I would just look over my mom’s shoulder, and there it would be.”

At school, Heiges’ time was split between art and sports.

“Tamalpais Elementary School teachers just let me make a mess and use all my creativity,” he said.

During high school at the Marin School of the Arts, his obsession was creating realistic paintings, taking pages from National Geographic and copying them in oils. Yet high school football was what got him to Dartmouth College in Hanover, N. H.

Photo by Rick Tang

At Novato High, he also served as football captain and lettered in track, lacrosse and baseball.

“To me, college was all about football, the coach and the team,” he said. “I was not intending on majoring in studio art, but that is where I found a place for myself.”

While majoring in studio art, Heiges played quarterback for the Dartmouth team. After graduating in 2010, he received a yearlong fellowship to work in the school’s art department.

During that time, he had free access to the studio and acted as the shop manager. He got to experience what it was like to create when not on a deadline.

“I could make all the things I wanted to make with all the resources I needed,” he said. “Resources are everything. Without my mother as a resource, the Running Man would not have happened.”

An artist-in-residence at Dartmouth offered Heiges a job in his New York studio, cleaning, stretching canvas, mixing paint and doing other basic studio upkeep.

He now spends part of most days in New York cleaning up for that artist and others. He pays the rent on his one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn with an evening job with a catering company, and has turned the living room into an art studio.

“Now I am trying not to say yes to all the lucrative catering jobs so I will have more time for my own art,” he said.

The “Run Home” is a character idea in graffiti terms, Heiges explained. “I saw the Running Man as my signature, including the home plate shape of his head.”

Rather than say more about its meaning, he said he would rather leave that to each person viewing it.

“Run Home” went through three stages of development on the Voigt Foundation property in Geyserville. “Judy Voigt sees things in special ways and is such a special lady,” Heiges said.

The first 3-foot model now resides at his parents’ Geyserville home. The second 6-foot version is part of the Voigt Foundation Collection, and the final 26-foot piece is on Sculpture Row, at the edge of town on Geyserville Avenue.

“There’s been a huge increase in people raising chickens in the last few years,” says Nick Rupiper. He’s a man who really knows his way around a chicken, known to many in Sonoma Valley as simply “the chicken guy.”

Topics covered will include selecting breeds, egg laying, hatching and raising baby chicks, shelter, health and nutrition. There will be chickens in residence in the coop for a hands-on experience.
Tickets include a free wine tasting at Preston Winery on the day of the class. Part of the proceeds will be donated to local youth.

Backyard Chicken Workshop, Sunday 19 May 10:30 a.m., Preston Farm & Winery, 49282 W. Dry Creek Road, 433-3372.

Program for teens and up.

Shama Viola at Isis Oasis

Shama Viola from the Damanhur Spiritual Community in Italy will be at Isis Oasis, 20889 Geyserville Avenue, teaching a one day course in decoding the signs of what life and the universe is offering you.

The class will be Wednesday 29 May, 10-3 p.m.

The Federation Of Damanhur, often called simply Damanhur, is a commune, ecovillage, and spiritual community situated in the Piedmont region of northern Italy about 30 miles (50 km) north of the city of Turin.

It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the Chiusella Valley, bordering on the Gran Paradiso National Park.

The community has its own constitution and currency, the Credito.

Learn to answer your questions and to support yourself  in making conscious and appropriate decisions in your life.

Shama Viola will be teaching with Bral Talej.

Bral Talej is an original divination system that uses a deck of 111 cards with ancestral symbols of Damanhur’s “Sacred Language”.

Shama Viola will also host a premier showing of Dreams of Damanhur on Tuesday 28 May and a discussion following the movie.

Community of Damanhur

Dreams of Damanhur, a film about the community of Damanhur will show one night only 8 p.m. Tuesday 28 May at Isis Oasis.

Shama Viola from the Damanhur Spiritual Community will lead a discussion and talk after the movie.

A Geyserville man whose criminal history includes convictions for rape, sexual battery and child molestation was arrested for suspected indecent exposure this week after Mendocino County authorities tracked him down through a vehicle left near an Eel River swimming hole where the incident occurred.

Frank Pastori, 93, was born and raised on the Pastori Winery that he still runs. Pastori took over the business from his father in 1941.
(Christopher Chung/ The Press Democrat)

By DEBORAH MITCHEL SERVAL / Geyserville Correspondent

At 93, Frank Pastori drinks his own wine most days, half a glass with dinner.

Originally the Pastori address was Route A Box 48 also known as Old Redwood Highway. Almost a century later, Frank Pastori, 23189 Geyserville Ave., lives an eighth of a mile away from his birthplace.

The journey of a lifetime lived along the Old Redwood Highway.

Since 1914 the Pastori family has been growing grapes and making wine on the property. It was homesteaded by Constante Pastori, who left Lombardo, Italy, in 1912 with his brother on a freighter bound for America. Shoveling coal in the bowels of the ship, neither brother knew that the cargo was olive oil. Constante’s brother got off the ship in New York bound for Argentina. They parted with a wave and a hearty goodbye, never to meet again.

That was a sign of the times, Frank says. You just moved on to your new life, and left the old one behind.

Frank Pastori, 93, was born and raised on the Pastori Winery that he still runs. Pastori took over the business from his father in 1941.

Shoveling coal all the way to San Francisco, Constante Pastori got off the ship and found a little Italy right down the street. He soon headed north to work at Italian Swiss Colony in Geyserville. He lived in Signa Ridge, then Asti, while logging on the Louie B Ranch. He worked with a man who said, “If you send money to Carrara, Italy, for my sister, she will become your wife.”

Constante Pastori and Erminia Domenicelli married at St. Peter & Paul Church in San Francisco and honeymooned for one day before heading back to work.

“My parents bought this ranch in 1914, and immediately planted grapes,” says Frank. They sold the wine in bulk to Italian Swiss Colony and Petri Wine Company, reserving some to fill jugs for locals when they stopped by.

“He once sold 16,000 tons, two rail road cars, to a guy in New York named Aquino,” Frank says. “No one thought my dad would get paid, but he did. That’s how it worked back then.”

Prohibition stopped everything in 1920, the year he was born. “I was the last child. My older sister Emma and brother Amrico have both since passed on.”

They pulled out every other grape vine and planted fruit trees, mostly prunes, and sold the remaining grapes to Welch’s for grape juice. Pastori doesn’t remember suffering during the time, since everything the family needed came off the farm.

“We had cows, goats, made our own butter and us kids hunted. Anything that moved we killed and my mother cooked up,” he says with a smile. “We were not as affected as others. We grew most everything and did a fair bit of bartering.”

By 1938 they were back in the wine business.

Frank Pastori, 93, drives around his Pastori Winery vineyards in Geyserville.

At 19, Frank was at  the Canyon School dance with his cousin and saw the prettiest girl in the world, Edith Buchignani. Frank thought she was too pretty to be a local girl. As it turned out, she was born and raised in Dry Creek. Soon after, Edith sent him a valentine that Frank still has squirreled away with other family mementos in a bedroom drawer. Franks valentine to Edith sits in a frame in the family living room.

They were married a few years later at St. John’s Church in Healdsburg and  honeymooned from San Diego to Catalina Island. Their first home was in Healdsburg, renting a “brand spankin’ new home” for $22 a month from Simi, who had the Lucca Barber Shop.

The 1940s brought lots of changes. Frank took over from his dad and started to bottle Pasto

Frank’s first valentine to Edith

ri wine for sale. Money was tight, so Frank leased vineyards from the Nervo (now Trione) Winery on the south end of Geyserville, using its crush facility in exchange for 60 percent of the sales.

One year stretched to 14, with Edith holding down the Pastori vineyard and managing everything from hiring the pickers to tallying the tub counts during harvest. They were in the business together from the very beginning and had long since moved back onto a house on the north end of the family property.

In 1950, when the ranch got skinnier as a result of Highway 101 construction, they had their house moved across the road and shared it until Edith’s passing in 2011. Their daughter Sharon, 66, went off to college and never came back to Geyserville. She lives in Oakland with her husband Paul and their two sons, and has been bringing the boys to Geyserville since they were little to share in the harvest. So far neither has shown interest in joining the family business.

With half the ranch in Cloverdale and half in Geyserville, Frank straddles the line. “Now if I lived on the north end, I would vote in Cloverdale,” he said, “but I vote in Geyserville.”

Frank continues to manage the vineyards and make the wine he sells from the wine tasting room at the front of his property. He sells port, zinfandel, merlot, burgundy, cabernet, claret for making vinegar and wine vinegar, all for under $10 a bottle, cash or check only.

Customers know to call before they come (857-3418 or 217-1447) or look for Frank’s white truck. If it’s parked by the house and they knock on the door, he’ll meet them at the winery for a taste and a conversation. “We catch up on the world,” Frank says.

How long he continues the business is anybody’s guess. Frank has 10,000 gallons in of bulk wine that can be bottled as needed or sold in bulk, he says with a sly smile. In the meantime, he is content to run the ranch he was born on and welcome the customers who find their way to the winery.

“When you live on a main road, the world comes to you.”

Read about key stops along those early day Sonoma County roads in the special May 12 issue of Towns:

Santa Rosa’s Cloverleaf Ranch

Windsor’s roadhouse with a reputation and Mark West market

Cotati’s Inn of the Beginning

Cloverdale’s barnside medical advertisement

Petaluma’s Poehlmann Hatchery and Cinnabar Theater

Penngrove’s ‘Electric Hatchery’

Kenwood’s railroad depot

Guerneville’s former Murphy’s Guest Ranch

Stewarts Point to Point Reyes Station: The winding legacy of Highway 1

The Sonoma County Astronomical Society meets at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 8, at Proctor Terrace Elementary, 1711 Bryden Lane, with Dr. Lynn Cominsky of SSU delivering a talk about the NuStar X-Ray telescope and how it can be used to study the universe.

And Robert Ferguson Observatory in Sugarloaf State Park has public solar viewing at noon and a public star party at 9 p.m., $3, free under 18, plus $8 parking. It’s located at 2605 Adobe Canyon Road near Kenwood. Get directions HERE.

What to look for in May skies

Thursday, May 2 – Last Quarter Moon

Friday, May 10, 8:30 p.m. – 1.2% Crescent Moon

Saturday and Sunday, May 11-12, 8:30 p.m. – Crescent Moon near Jupiter

Friday, May 17 – First Quarter Moon

Wednesday, May 22 – Moon very near Spica at 2 a.m., Mercury in west at 9 p.m. through June 23

Thursday, May 23 – Moon near Saturn at 2 a.m.

Friday-Monday, May 24-27 – Large tides

Friday, May 24 – Full “Flower Moon” at 9:30 p.m.

Sunday, May 26 – Venus, Mercury and Jupiter form a triangle between the horn tips of Tarurus the bull at 9 p.m.

Friday, May 31 – Last Quarter Moon at noon

By CLARK MASON

Geyserville and nearby Alexander Valley are in line for road and bridge improvements leading to River Rock Casino.

What began as a weekend family service project has blossomed into an important community resource. The mobile library promotes literacy and love of reading by giving away high quality books to people throughout the region.  On a mission of outreach, Glen Weaver and his family especially seek out children and senior citizens living in rural and low-income areas.

Visit the Bookmobile’s Facebook page and post about your Geyserville experience,  http://freebookmobile.org