Series of seven “intelligent, inspiring events for women” kicks off Oct. 28 at the Mill Valley Community Center covering a wide range of subjects, from toxic ingredients in cosmetics and breast cancer in Marin to the impact of digital technology on children.

Four years ago, a pair of Mill Valley moms who’d left corporate gigs to raise families got together to debut their dream project: a season-long speaker series of “intelligent, inspiring events for women” – namely smart, busy moms like themselves.

Jenny Terry and Tracy Barsotti’s project, Speak to Me, is now a five-year-old juggernaut, launching its 2014-15 season next month with seven events that span a wide array of topics and featuring some of the most well known experts in their respective fields.

Terry and Barsotti were friends before they each got married and had children, and reconnected as they spearheaded fundraising events for the Bay Area Discovery Museum. During their first season with Speak to Me, they were joined by Christina Forte, who’d left corporate America in 2009 to pursue her role as a mom and help launch the popular mom-focused media company Red Tricycle in the Bay Area. Terry serves as the CEO, while Forte is the chief marketing and business strategy officer.

Speak to Me's mission is “to create a forum for women to learn, explore new ideas, connect and feel empowered to make a difference in the world around them. We believe that the more informed and connected we are as women, the better we feel, and the stronger our families, schools, businesses and communities become.”

As in year’s past, Speak to Me’s events are designed around a specific theme of wide interest to women, with plenty of time built-in for mingling, nibbling and wine-tasting before and after the speakers. The Evening Series occurs at the Mill Valley Community Center, while the Lunch & Learn Series is at Piatti Restaurant.

Here’s the lineup:

Evening Series – Mill Valley Community Center, 6:30pm
Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message – Oct. 28, 2014
Tara Sophia Mohr | Author of Playing Big and 10 Rules For Brilliant Women, expert on women’s leadership and the implementation of practical skills to make real change in oneself and the world and creator of the acclaimed Playing Big leadership program for women.

Toxic Bodies: The Unhealthy Truth & What We Can Do To Protect Ourselves – Jan. 27, 2015
Ken Cook | President and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, a public interest research and advocacy organization focused on protecting human health and the environment and the creator of the online consumer database Skin Deep. Ken has been named one of Washington's Top Lobbyists and is considered one of the most influential 20th Century leaders and change-makers in the world.

Digital Generation: How Technology is Shaping Our Youth – Mar 10, 2015
Jim Steyer | CEO and Founder of Common Sense Media, nationally known author of several books including Talking Back to Facebook and The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media's Effect on Our Children. Jim is one of the most respected experts on issues related to children's media and education in the U.S.

Secret Lives of Women: Thriving At Every Stage of Life – Apr 28, 2015
Iris Krasnow | Journalism and Women's Studies Professor at American University and best-selling author of several books including Sex After...Women Share How Intimacy Changes as Life Changes, The Secret Lives of Wives, and Surrendering to Motherhood. Iris is an expert in the field of relationships, personal growth and “female generational angst" and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, on Oprah and several times on CNN.

Lunch & Learn Series – Piatti Restaurant, 11:30am
Breast Cancer in Marin: The Myths, the Facts, and the Science – Nov. 13, 2014
Leah Kelley, M.D. | Breast and Gynecologic Surgeon at Marin General Hospital, expert in state-of-the-art breast cancer and gynecological care, and honored as one of the “Top Doctors in Marin in 2014”.

Work and Flexibility: Why Women Will Lead the Way – Nov. 20, 2014
Katrina Alcorn | Writer, blogger, experience design consultant and author of Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink, a look at the juggle of work and family, parent burn out, and what’s wrong with work and how to fix it.
Stacey Brooks Delo | Founder, Maybrooks.com, “where smart moms help each other find flexible careers.” Journalist. Connector. Passionate believer in asking for what you need to strike the right balance for yourself in the workplace.

What's Happening to Me? Hormones & Other "Taboo" Topics – Apr 2, 2015
Jennifer K. Voss, MD | Chair of Department of OB/GYN at Marin General Hospital who has been honored as one of the“Top Doctors in Marin in 2014."
Sujatha D. Pathi, MD | Urogynecologist at Marin General Hospital, a leader in her field who has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and nationally recognized for her research in urogynecology.

The 411: Speak to Me tickets may be purchased individually or as a series of five events. Click here for more information. 

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On October 1, the nearly 4,500-square-foot space at 250 East Blithedale Ave. won’t house a printing shop for the first time in nearly 35 years. 

Mill Valley Services, the print shop owned by Lagunitas resident Dave Semling for the past 25 years, and the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Business of the Year in 1998 – is shutting down on Tuesday, September 30. The space was home to Mill Valley Printing for nearly a decade before Semling bought it after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

“It was a business that was just too far under water,” Semling says of the reason to shut down. “We’ve had an unbelievably great run here for the first 20 years. We have been so fortunate here in this community – we’ve worked with some of the greatest people you could possibly wish for.”

The property at the corner of East Blithedale and Sycamore avenues, which also includes Tony Tutto Pizza and a warehouse leased by SummerHouse, was sold in 2013 to San Francisco-based Worldco Company, a real estate firm run by Tony and Alvin Chan. Through MacCracken Architects, the new owners have proposed to redevelop the property, demolishing the 1,000-square-foot building that houses Tony Tutto Pizza and remodeling the 9,300-square-foot structure that contains Mill Valley Services and the SummerHouse space. 

The Planning Commission held study sessions on the proposal in November 2013 and again in March 2014. It is expected to hold a public hearing on the proposal in the coming months.

Semling says Mill Valley Services had been struggling financially for many years, first with the economic recession that began in 2008, which saw his business dip by at least 25 percent.

And then the rapid pace at which the printing business has been changing over the past decade made it difficult to take advantage of the economic recovery that followed, Semling says. He says he spent more than $1 million on digital printing equipment over the past five years, taking out lines of credit and using credit cards in the hopes that the business could survive. "But we just kept losing money," he says.

The industry’s technological changes have made it such that a business like his could buy the latest innovative printing equipment and see it become nearly obsolete just a few years later.

Couple that with national Internet-based competitors who can easily compete on price with local and regional independent businesses like his, and Semling says he was looking at a Sisyphean task.

He’s spent the past few weeks readying the transition, helping his nine employees figure out their next steps and having digital files transferred to Strahm Communications in San Rafael, a larger outfit that has already brought on one Semling’s employees.

“The printing businesses that are becoming something to everybody – those are the ones that will survive,” Semling says.

In addition to smoothing the transition as much as possible for employees and his longtime clients, the 75-year-old Semling has been planning for the next chapter of life with his wife Janet. They have to sell their home in Lagunitas in order to pay for their retirement.

“We have less objects around us, but our family is very close, so we’ll be fine,” Semling says, noting that two of his three daughters live in the area.

Ever-evolving business an the heart of Tam Junction begins celebration with an art show on Saturday in San Francisco and a series of local anniversary events on the way.


Proof Lab, the surf and skate shop that has grown into the multi-faceted community epicenter of Tam Junction and is celebrating its 10-year anniversary with an art show in San Francisco Saturday and a series of events this fall, came from decidedly humble beginnings.

Mill Valley native Nate McCarthy and San Anselmo native Will Hutchinson, friends who’d met while working at Marin Surf Sports in Tam Junction, decided to open their own surf shop in a tiny 600-square-foot space in the small Poplar Plaza shopping center near the 7-Eleven on Shoreline Highway. The pair had driven a truck to southern California, bought as much surfing equipment and apparel that they could afford, and filled the tiny shop to the brim (see photos above).

Ten years on, the Mill Valley residents have built a mini-empire whose scale is overshadowed only by its variety and its clear vision for how to build community. Across 15,000 square feet at the corner of Shoreline Hwy. and Almonte Blvd., Proof Lab and its partners and subtenants have taken what was once a tiny surf shop and turned it into a hub that includes the Proof Lab surf and skate shop, the Proof Lab Station outdoor apparel shop, an indoor skate park, the Mill Valley Potter’s Studio, music lessons, a biodiesel station, the Little Art Studio and the CNL Native Plant Nursery, not to mention Equator Coffees at Proof Lab, whose arrival in 2013 made the space even more of a gathering spot.

“There was a lot of interest and motivation to make something good and different (in 2004), but the definition of that has changed over time as our intentions and our understanding of the world has changed – it’s been a process,” Hutchinson says.

“It’s all been about the same thing – great retail, building community, and connecting people with the arts and outdoors – but that has gone in a lot of different directions depending on what we’ve gotten into and what space has become available,” he adds.

Proof Lab’s biggest leap came in 2011. Although their business was growing at a healthily steady clip, the longstanding availability of a 10,000-square-foot warehouse that had previously been occupied by Webster Gears became enticing.

“It was a huge risk,” Hutchinson says. “The idea had been to take a leap and absorb some more space and hope the business catches up to that and then exceeds it. But this was a huge move – it was a re-invention.”

That changed everything.

It allowed Proof Lab to move the traditional surf and skate shop into the new space and add the skate park, rooms for music lessons and significantly more storage for inventory. And it allowed to put what is now Proof Lab Station – and outdoor apparel shop that features brands like Patagonia, Filson and Pendleton – in the former gas station space right on Shoreline.

Soon thereafter, the pair leased another 3,000 square feet in a partnership with the dog kennel and grooming business AlphaDog. Launching with a pumpkin patch around Halloween 2011, the venture became the GROW Art & Garden Center, testing a variety of community-oriented ideas. They eventually coalesced into three independent subtenants – Mill Valley Potter’s Studio, Little Art Studio and the CNL Native Plant Nursery.

Two years later, with Equator Coffees & Teas looking to expand their well-established wholesale business with some retail cafes, co-owner Helen Russell and Hutchinson connected on the long-vacant space on the streetfront side of the property. Equator has taken Proof Lab’s distinct sense of community to another level, Hutchinson says.

"Our partnership with Proof Lab has exceeded our expectations - Will and Nate have built a very special business that focuses on the local community, our shared values of making an impact and connection has made for a very special collaboration," Russell says.

The ability of McCarthy and Hutchinson to evolve their business, and their moves over the past three years in particular, have drawn rave reviews, including from both their landlord and their subtenants.

“I love them both to death,” says George Kim, whose family owns the entire property that includes Proof Lab and its partners and subtenants, about McCarthy and Hutchinson. “I love the way they approach business. They’re very community oriented – just great guys. And every year it seems there’s something new that they want to do – it’s a great story.”

For the latest new thing, Proof Lab has looked beyond their space in Tam Junction, building an outdoor public skate park in Marin City. They're in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign to pay for it, with Proof Lab matching its $5,000 goal. "It could be a really good thing for Southern Marin as we don't have a good public skate park right now," Hutchinson says. 

Jhaya Warmington, an artist and art teacher, met Hutchinson and McCarthy through friends, and jumped at the chance to open Little Art Studio for children as young as 18 months.

“It was a wonderful opportunity,” Warmington says. “To be able to an art program like this in the community when rents are so high is really difficult. But they’ve been so supportive, and they’ve really been mentors for those of us who’ve started these businesses but didn’t understand how to run a business in the beginning.”

For Hutchinson, there was never a blueprint for what the brand and the property would become. Instincts and a bit of serendipity have certainly helped.

“Our interests and our thinking has changed over time,” he says. “When we started all this, we weren’t thinking about biodiesel and ceramics and music lessons and coffee. But none of it’s a surprise either. It all makes sense now and it all feels right.”

The 411: On Saturday, Sept. 27 at 6pm, Proof Lab kicks off its 10-year Anniversary Celebration with a 'Living in Transition' Art Show at Ian Ross Gallery, 466 Brannan St., San Francisco. The show features a host of artists that have worked with Proof Lab directly over the years or indirectly through one of the brands the shop carries, including locals like Zio Ziegler and Mike Shine. The show runs through Oct. 15. Click here for more info.

The Mill Valley Public Library’s Centennial Celebration in 2011 had a pair of notable outcomes: recognition for one of Mill Valley’s hallmark institutions and its ability to evolve in the digital age, and a shot of fundraising adrenaline for the once-disparate organizations dedicated to supporting that institution.

At the Mill Valley Library Foundation’s Beyond the Book Bash Saturday night at the Throckmorton Theatre, the celebration continued with a group of star-studded group of talent from literary, comedic and musical arts. And library supporters’ ability to raise money showed no signs of slowing down.

Foundation officials reported Tuesday that the event raised another $124,000 to support Library programs and services, and that the foundation has raised more than $1 million for an endowment and financial support of programs such as First Fridays and After Hours events; children and teen programming and digital entertainment. 

"Programs like these make the library more relevant than ever," City Librarian Anji Brenner said.

“We want to blow your mind about what a library can be in a community,” MVLF board chair Andy Mercy told the crowd of more than 200 people. “Tonight is a celebration of your thirst for knowledge and the library’s ability to quench that thirst.”

That thirst was quenched Saturday night from every angle, with local comedian Mark Pitta keeping the night moving swiftly with joke-laden segues, including light jabs at City Hall: “I almost didn’t make it here tonight on Miller Avenue; man, someday they might give us drivers our own lane!” and book sales in the digital age: “The title of my new book is ‘Add to Cart.’”

The night’s entertainment included:

• Tam High student Emma Weinswig reading her poem “26 Seconds,” which juxtaposed the rate of high school dropouts in the U.S. and the struggles of children in places like Afghanistan, where the Taliban “scare dreamers into silence.”
• A reading by local author Holly Payne from her new book Damascena: The Tale of Roses and Rumi that took the audience to Turkey in 1270. Payne brought the unparalleled poet Mevlana Rumi to life, unraveling the mystery surrounding a legendary orphaned girl who discovers her gift of turning roses into oil.
• Tam Valley actor, author and ubiquitous documentary narrator (including Ken Burns’ The Roosevelts) Peter Coyote gave a wildly entertaining reading about a youthful jaunt through Mexico from his latest book, The Rainman’s Third Cure, a spiritual memoir that will be published by Counterpoint Press in spring 2015. 
• In a hilarious chat with Pitta, legendary comedian and political humor pioneer Mort Sahl spoke about Last Man Standing: The Life and Passion of Mort Sahl, author James Curtis’ impending biopgraphy, with Sahl drawing raucous laughter with lines like: “There are many wives to chase down and they’ll tell him, ‘Every minute with him was pure hell,’” and “It wasn’t a very puritanical life, but it was a whole lot of fun.”
• Joined by piano, drums and Beyond the Book Bash producer Tom Corwin on bass, longtime Santana singer Tony Lindsay gave a spirited performance, while New Tork Times best-selling author Tom Barbash delivered a reading from "The Break," a story about a newly single mother who in interferes in her son's love life over his Christmas vacation from college – part of Stay Up With Me, his 2013 collection of stories that explore the myriad ways we try to connect with one another and with the sometimes cruel world around us. 

But while the readings, the music and the performances were stellar, it was the tributes to the library itself that stood out.

• "Hi I’m Mark and I have a Library Card," Pitta quipped at the evening's outset.
  
• "The Mill Valley Library is showing the way in how to stay relevant in the digital age," Corwin said.
  
• "Our library is a ridiculopusly beautiful place," Barbash said.
  
• "I’m so excited to see all these people out here for this secret leftist institution, the library, paid for by your tax dollars – how discreet," Coyote joked.

"For thousands of years the library has been a vital repository for knowledge and books, a place to explore and touch the physical world," Mercy said. "In Mill Valley, we are blessed also by a place of beauty that nurtures contemplation and collaboration. Tonight's event celebrates that legacy and the innovation that keeps it relevant in today's changing world."

Click here for more information of the 31-year-old Mill Valley Library Foundation.

For the past three weeks and through mid-October, one film has the distinction of being played in theaters across Marin before hundreds of screenings and events in advance of and during the 37th Mill Valley Film Festival.

That distinction belongs to the festival’s trailer, which was conceived by San Rafael resident and Pixar visual effects editor David Tanaka as the idea that “one can find calm amidst all of the noise that surrounds us,” according to Mill Valley filmmaker Gary Yost, who shot every frame of the trailer and applied his much-heralded time-lapse photography talents to create the trailer, which shows the main character finds peace as a sea of people whizz by him in his jaunt from the Depot Bookstore & Café to the Cinearts @ Sequoia Theatre for the opening night of MVFF37.

“Movies and the collective enjoyment of movies is more than just mere entertainment,” Tanaka says. “It is instead a shared experience that enriches all of us, for we choose to laugh, cry, experience it together.”

The trailer shows the main character, played by Mill Valley composer and producer Ron Alan Cohen, finishing his coffee at the Depot and heading to the theater at “a normal, leisurely pace, but everyone around him is moving a mile a minute," Tanaka says.

To do so, Cohen and the sea of people whizzing about him were filmed entirely separately, Tanaka says, and visual effects supervisors Jamie Clay and Mike Macklin used a process called rotoscoping to combine, frame by frame, the two camera passes.

“The camera movement (on Cohen) was purposely slowed down greatly so that when you later speed it up to match the first recorded camera movement, the extras are moving at an unnaturally high and jittery rate of activity,” Tanaka says. “You then have your desired effect – mild mannered patron in a sea of frenetic coffee drinkers!”

The technique of blending time-lapse and real-time footage is still a rarity in video production, and Yost used eMotimo Robotic Cameras and custom software to allow him to move the camera exactly the same way in the real-time and high-speed time-lapse passes.

The trailer ends with a shooting star amidst a star-laden sky above Mount Tam, the mountain that has been the hallmark of much of Yost’s work, from his widely lauded film "The Invisible Peak" to his viral video time lapse from the Mount Tamalpais fire lookout, with a bevy of films throughout the 94941 in between.

"The Invisible Peak" screens at MVFF37 on Oct. 4 at 3:30 p.m. at the Smith Rafael Film Center. Click here for more info.

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More than 600 people turned out for the Zero Breast Cancer's 12th Annual Dipsea Hike on Saturday, Sept, 13 in Old Mill Park, raising nearly $70,000 in the process. 

The San Rafael-based nonprofit organization, which focuses on research, prevention and education, has been hosting the event since 2002, seeking to both heighten awareness of the benefits of physical activity in reducing breast cancer as well as raise mont for continued research. The event has raised more than $300,000 in support of ZBC’s research and educational programs and more than 3,100 people have participated.

The Dipsea Hike for Zero Breast Cancer is an all ages noncompetitive 6-mile course starting at the Dipsea steps in Mill Valley. This year’s honorary event chair, inspirational speaker and lead hiker was Astronaut Yvonne Cagle, who graduated from Novato High in 1977. Dr. Cagle Yvonne Cagle was a member of the Astronaut Class of 1996. 

Zero Breast Cancer was founded in 1995 and is a community based organization dedicated to prevention and finding the causes of breast cancer through local participation in the scientific research process. They focus on identifying environmental factors and the role they play in breast cancer at all stages of life and across generations. To find out more about Zero Breast Cancer’s work, visit zerobreastcancer.org

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We're reviving a fun little feature from a past life: Posting interesting photos from around town and asking you to guess the exact location. The first correct answer submitted in our Comments section below gets a prize, to be picked up at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce!
Let's start with a pretty easy one, and a window into Mill Valley's rich entrepreneurial history:

Where in Mill Valley am I? Let us know below in the Comments!

The Mill Valley Library Foundation has made supporting the Library an increasingly entertaining exercise.

The foundation's annual Beyond the Book Bash, set for Saturday, Sept. 20 at the Throckmorton Theatre, features an entertainment program from some of the most well known and multi-talented people in Marin, with comedian Mark Pitta serving as emcee. They include:

• Mill Valley’s own actor, director and screenwriter Peter Coyote
• Internationally published Discover Great New Writers author Holly Payne
• New York Times bestselling writer Tom Barbash
  
• Legendary comedian Mort Sahl
  
• Grammy-winning musician and Santana frontman Tony Lindsay

"The event, for all involved, isn't just about the library," Foundation board member Lynn Brinton said. "It's about our community and how we seek to connect and support the arts. This event raises money so that we can continue to support the arts at the library, as a place to meet and share not only literary arts but music, theatre, and much more."

The Beyond the Book Bash has consistently provided a unique opportunity to see Marin's most talented artists on one stage, often performing new works for this event exclusively. Participants over the years have included Annie Lamott, Joyce Maynard, Maria Muldaur, Tim Hockenberry, The Kitchen Sisters, Jason Roberts, Liss Fain Dance, teen slam poet Billy Butler, Mac Barnett, Chinaka Hodge, Glen David Gold and James Nash.

Proceeds from the event help ensure that the Mill Valley Library "continues to offer the highest-quality programs, technology, and services and remains one of the most celebrated community treasures in Marin," according to the Foundation. 

Foundation officials said they expect to gross more than $100,000 from this year's event. The Foundation has raised more than $250,000 for the Library over the past four years.

The event kicks off at 7pm with a cocktail buffet featuring local food purveyors and specialty beverage makers, and the show begins at 8pm. 

The 411: Tickets are $150 per person. Go here for more info and to buy tickets.

One month after the passing of Robin Williams, the legendary comedian and actor and longtime Mill Valley fixture, hundreds of cyclists gathered at Blackie's Pasture on Sunday morning to begin "Robin's Ride," a jaunt around the famed Paradise Loop ride that Williams loved to do himself for years. The event was organized by the Marin County Bicycle Coalition and featured brief speeches by Coalition Director Jim Elias and famed American cyclist and commentator Bob Roll. Even organizers seems taken aback by the massive turnout.

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