Luminarias, homelessness and heart

I worked at the Healdsburg Library for over 25 years before I retired last year. Something I always wanted to try with the library was to bring world class literary talent to Healdsburg.
My reasoning is that really big name authors come to San Francisco on book tours, and you can lure these authors up here with a promise of a wine country get-away.
We cannot afford the $10,000 speaking fee spectacularly successful authors normally charge, but we can get them a comped bed and breakfast stay (Thank you, Lucy Lewand and Camellia Inn) and a great audience, a chance to kick back and enjoy the surroundings before going on to Cleveland and Detroit.
Now, since I retired I have been trying to make this a reality. Together with Ted Calvert and the Healdsburg Literary Guild, and with Cindy Daniel’s and Doug Lipton’s magnificent SHED with its great upstairs grange event space, we have made the dream real.
Coming up on Thursday, Jan. 28, Healdsburg Literary Guild and SHED presents the first in a series called Luminarias, where literary luminaries get local. Our first author is Frances Dinkelspiel, whose new book, “Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California,” combines true crime, large swaths of California wine history and lifestyles of the rich and wine-obsessed.
The show features a talk by Frances, a glass of wine (more on that in a bit), question and answer, a chance to buy the book and have the author inscribe it for you, and hors d’oeuvres; and it’s all only $10.
Google SHED and Dinkelspiel or use the web address healdsburgshed.com/events/an-evening-of-literature-and-wine/ to buy online or call 508-6202 to purchase admission. That glass of wine will be from Carol Shelton wines, and there is a tie-in with the book. The book swirls around the crime of arson in the 2005 Vallejo wine warehouse fire that burned $250 million worth of wine.
Some of the wine lost was 1875 Port and Angelica made by author Dinkelspiel’s ancestor from Rancho Cucamonga grapes. You’ll be able to taste Carol Shelton’s fabulous contemporary “Monga Zin” from the same area. Other forthcoming Luminarias shows are Latino author and poet, Gary Soto, on April 14, and California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia, on May 19.
It seems a little jarring to shift from nice literary events to homelessness, but that’s life in the big little city that Healdsburg has become. With all our destination resort status, fabulous restaurants and luxurious hotels, we have 300 homeless within a couple of miles of our plaza. Rollie Atkinson, the publisher of this newspaper wrote a thoughtful editorial about the homeless count coming up on January 29.
I will be helping on the annual homeless count this year. I took part last year. I was paired with a homeless woman who took me to the encampments in the culverts, behind the stores, under the freeways, by the railroad tracks, along the river, beside the frontage roads.
We went around in the pre-dawn and looked at the tents and sleeping bags, the detritus of living in the open, and the people, huddled and sprawled, sleeping quietly or snoring slack-jawed, or staring back wide awake.
I work with North Sonoma County Services, partnering with the city to provide transitional housing, taking people from homeless and helpless to functioning and housed. We lost the use of the Spare Room, the emergency overnight shelter. I am working to re-establish it, and it will be a struggle, because nobody wants a homeless shelter near them. But Healdsburg has a heart and we have some good prospects. Stay tuned.
— Bo Simons is a Healdsburg resident