From the four-day Kiddo! Carnival and the MV Historical Society's Walks Into History to the Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighters’ Association’s Pancake Breakfast, a memorial ceremony for fallen soldiers at Lytton Square and the parade itself, Memorial Day weekend in Mill Valley had something for everybody. Check out the sights and sounds below!!

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Jerry Harrison, the longtime Mill Valley resident, Talking Heads co-founder and chairman of equity crowdfunding startup RedCrow, is headlining a benefit concert to support Notes4Hopes, an organization whose mission is "to bring people and live music together to raise funds and awareness for a more integrative approach to treating and preventing breast cancer."

The show, set for Friday, May 31 at the Throckmorton Theatre, also features Grammy award-winning members from Train, Sugar Ray, and Pawnshop Kings, as well as Luce. Bridge Startups and Harrison's RedCrow, the equity crowdfunding platform he co-founded with former Morgan Stanley financial advisor and fellow Mill Valley resident Brian Smith, are sponsoring the event.

The 411: Talking Heads' co-founder Jerry Harrison headlines a benefit concert for Notes4Hopes at the Throckmorton Theatre. TIX $50, VIP for $125. MORE INFO.

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The O'Hanlon Center for the Arts celebrates its 50th anniversary on Saturday, June 8, and as it welcomes the community to tour its gorgeous space, it'll have a new addition to showcase: a Best in Show trophy from the organizers of the Mill Valley Memorial Day Parade on May 27, when the center's arts-centric entry won over the crowd and the judges.

The free event features tours of the grounds, visits with an array of sculptures and the works of its founders, Ann and Dick O'Hanlon as well as live music and refreshments. Guests will also have a chance to visit artists' studios, explore the center's visual history and have refreshments and listen to live music on the center's new deck. 

​The 411: The O'Hanlon Center for the Arts celebrates its 50th anniversary on Saturday, June 8, from 10am-4pm. Free. MORE INFO.

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Makers Market's shop at the Mill Valley Lumber Yard's slate of monthly (second Saturday) Outdoor Markets continues June, spanning most of the MVLY property and encompassing more than 20 independent creators, artists and makers. Those makers and artisans will be showcasing their wares, including jewelry, handbags, ceramics, glassware, soaps, succulents, candles and more throughout the property. 

There will also be live music throughout the day from Ian Acredolo as well as kids crafts and a DIY pillow painting station. and Maker's Market's shop will be serving up complimentary wine and bites, with the usual range of activities throughout MVLY, including henna, crafts for the kids and cornhole.

NOTE: Help the environment and take advantage of the easy transit, pedestrian and bike access to the Lumber Yard, with 60 bike parking spaces onsite. If you need to drive, don’t park in front of neighbors homes as there is ample median public parking in the surrounding area.

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The Mill Valley City Council this week unanimously approved a switch to dual-stream recycling services, backing a proposal by Mill Valley Refuse Service that its officials say has been driven by dwindling options for responsible, cost-effective disposal of paper, cardboard, plastic and glass materials.

"This is the future – we've got to be more responsible with our recyclables," Mayor Jim Wickham said at the May 20th hearing.

"We all need to look at our recyclables as a product to make new stuff, so that the better shape we send it in the better quality of product we'll get back," added Councilwoman Stephanie Moulton-Peters. "The current situation is broken – it doesn't work throughout the country. This is a very good effort to go back to what we were doing years ago. People can change their habits."

The proposal, if approved by the eight jurisdictions MVRS serves in southern Marin, is to have all residential customers – businesses and condominium and apartment complexes will exempt for now – receive second recycling bins. One bin will hold paper and cardboard, and the other will hold all other recyclables. The bins will be picked up curbside in alternating weeks.

The global recycling dilemma kicked of in January 2018 when China, long the world's dumping ground for recycling, enacted its “National Sword” policy, banning the import of most plastics and other materials headed for its recycling processors, which had handled nearly half of the world’s recyclable waste for the past quarter century. The move was an effort to halt a deluge of soiled and contaminated materials that was overwhelming Chinese processing facilities and leaving the country with yet another environmental problem — and this one not of its own making.

In the 16 months since that move, which essentially shut down what had been the industry’s biggest market, China’s plastics imports have plummeted by 99 percent, leading to a major global shift in where and how materials tossed in the recycling bin are being processed. That seismic shift has left waste management companies throughout the United States and beyond search for ways to dispose of all that recycling, with some ending up in landfills, incinerators, or likely littering the environment as rising costs to haul away recyclable materials increasingly render the practice unprofitable.

The end result has been skyrocketing costs. According to Mill Valley Refuse Service officials, the company saw recycling revenue shrink to zero in April 2017, and saw its per-ton fees to dispose of it elsewhere go from $4 two years ago to $59 to $72 to $83 today.

"Our efforts to find a better deal at various processing plants in the Bay Area failed," says MVRS Principal Jim Iavarone. "Some plants closed their doors, while others refused to take on new customers. MVRS now dumps its single-stream recycling material at a transfer point at the Redwood Landfill in Novato, where it is loaded into semi-trucks and sent to a processing plant in San Jose."

The company has identified disposing its recycled materials at Marin Sanitary Service in San Rafael, but that facility primarily processes dual-stream material, with paper put into one cart and all other recyclables into a separate cart. To test the willingness of customers to adapt to a dual-stream system, MVRS conducted a pilot project from September 2018 to December 2018. It released the results of that project in this report.

While MVRS can't force jurisdictions to shift to dual-stream recycling, it hopes the move will be unanimous. "It’s really hard to imagine not making it unanimous one way or the other," Iavarone told the Marin IJ. 

Councilmembers, two of whom were included in the pilot project, said the shift "was a pain" but ultimately the right thing to do. They urged Iavarone and City officials to leverage every communication tool available to get the word out about the need for the switch.

The 411: The Mill Valley City Council unanimously backed a proposal to switch to dual-stream recycling. MORE INFO & STAFF REPORT. WATCH THE HEARING ONLINE HERE.

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Ross Cobb has long been a household name in the Sonoma County wine landscape, heralded as a talented, “inspired producer of new world Pinot Noir” whose “wines are truly ones to watch for as they show serious terroir with amazing viscosity and range.”

But while his name carries weight and prestige, Cobb says he’s still just a “a Mill Valley skateboarder who got coasting tickets from (former MVPD Captain and current Mill Valley Mayor Jim) Wickham,” he says with a laugh of the citations doled out to skateboarders coasting without a brake around the time the Depot Plaza was first created in the early 1980s.

“I have no ego,” Cobb says. “When people meet me, they often say, ‘that’s not what I was expecting.’ But while I’m very proud of our wines and our vineyard, I’ll always be very down to earth.”

Cobb is bringing this endearing mix of revered reputation and down to earth charm back to his hometown on Sunday, June 2, as his Cobb Wines are getting the star treatment at Chris Wanner’s West Coast Wine • Cheese at 31 Sunnyside Ave. for the official after-party for the 38th Annual Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting on Sunday, June 2. The after party begins at 4pm, immediately following the WBGFT, which runs from 1-4pm in the Downtown Plaza.

“I’m really excited to come back to Mill Valley and see lots of old friends and make some new ones,” says Cobb, who is bringing a Cobb Wines riesling, chardonnay and three pinot noirs to the event. Attendees with wristbands from the WBGFT receive discounted pricing on current releases and some library gems from Ross' past, both by the glass and bottle in the shop and and by bottle for retail purchases to take home.

Born at Marin General in 1970, Cobb attended Old Mill and Park elementary schools, then Mill Valley Middle and Tam High, where he graduated in 1988. His family lived on Blithedale Terrace and later on Locust Ave., just above the old Prune Music and Brothers Tavern.

In the late 1980s, Cobb’s parents David and Diane bought a property in west Occidental in Sonoma County on which they hoped to build a house and plant a vineyard. They sold their Mill Valley home son after Cobb graduated from Tam and moved up there, planting their first Coastlands Vineyard grapes and building a small home there in 1989.

After high school, Cobb pursued environmental studies and sustainable agriculture at UC Santa Cruz, working in the family vineyard during summers and weekends. The family sold their grapes to a few top wineries, and that remained their primary goal. But Cobb realized that the hilltop the vineyard was on, which is very similar to Bolinas Ridge, faced conditions that would yield very little crop at times.

“So why don’t we make wine to buffer us in the low-yielding years?” Cobb asked.

The family made home wine through 1999, and by 2001, Cobb convinced his parents to take an acre and a half block of the vineyard to make Cobb Wines.

Cobb’s first job out of college was at Ferrari-Carano Vineyards and Winery in Dry Creek Valley, where he set up a soils lab to further explore his interest in soil mapping and the microbiology of soils. He moved onto Williams Selyem for two years, which was using Coastland grapes, and then to Flowers Vineyard & Winery as assistant winemaker, where he struck a deal to make 1,000 cases of his own label, staying for nine years.

“It was around then that realized how deeply I wanted to make the best wines possible—beautiful wines,” he says. “To do this, I dedicated myself to learning everything I possibly could about Pinot Noir viticulture and winemaking.”

​During his tenure at Flowers, Cobb and his father founded Cobb Wines, crafting 130 cases of their inaugural Coastlands Vineyard Pinot Noir in 2001. The evolution of Cobb Wines has been powered by a constant search for learning, fueled by travel, which he’s been doing since he was a kid, including a stint living in Saudi Arabia for his father’s work. Cobb’s been to the Burgundy region of France 12 times – including eight times in eight years – as well as to Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal and many more countries.

Cobb says that no matter how long he’s been making wine, he’ll forever remain open to new ideas. “You don’t know what you don’t know,” he says. That’s why traveling is so great. It’s so fun in general but it also constantly opens up your mind.”

“A lot of it was just learning how to make wine and answer the question, ‘what is a wine,’” says Cobb, who's been living at Coastlands for the past six years, overseeing the vineyard, along with his wife and daughter. “That sounds strange, but it’s more than just fruit and mouth and feel and age-ability and scores. It’s something to drink and enjoy, not just something to analyze and score. It should be something to drink and enjoy, but in subtle terms.”

Cobb says he's thrilled to share that sensibility with the people of his home town. 

"I still have a lot of friends there, friends I used to go to the old Sweetwater with," says Cobb, who worked at the former Mill Valley Coffee Roastery and the Sequoia Theatre.

​And in a dose of of Mill Valley trivia, Cobb and his father David, who has since moved back to Marin, started the Southern Marin Lacrosse Club, now one of the largest sports organizations in all of southern Marin, in 1985-86. David Cobb had played lacrosse in high school and college on the east coast and founded the team across Tam and Redwood high schools, as well as some players from San Francisco.

“He wanted to me to get off my skateboard,” Cobbs jokes.

Cobb says he wouldn’t mind bumping into Wickham at the event.

“I still have that ticket,” he says. “And I know the mayor!”

The 411: Ross Cobb brings his Cobb Wines are getting the star treatment at Chris Wanner’s West Coast Wine • Cheese on Sunnyside Ave. for the official after-party for the 38th Annual Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting on Sunday, June 2. The after party begins at 4pm, immediately following the WBGFT, which runs from 1-4pm in the Downtown Plaza. Attendees with wristbands from the WBGFT receive discounted pricing on current releases and some library gems from Ross' past, both by the glass and bottle in the shop and and by bottle for retail purchases to take home. MORE INFO.

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Marin Oriental Rug House, the longtime Tam Junction staple whose promotional signs often amused neighbors and passers-by is now Roja Home, the second location in Mill Valley for Roja Rugs. 

The only thing that has been as much of a fixture as the eye-catching building at 256 Shoreline Hwy. that contained the Marin Oriental Rug House were the attention-grabbing "Going Out of Business"-style signs.

But longtime owner Max Safavi has leased the massive, more than 6,000-square-foot space to the Borak family, a team of brothers who opened the Roja Rugs shop at 59 Throckmorton Avenue in downtown Mill Valley in 2018. They subsequently renovated the space in the heart of Tam Junction and have turned it into a showroom for both rugs and furniture. 

"We are completely different ownership, and we are delighted to transform and modernize the space and fill it with a wide range of rugs and furniture," says Sahap Borak.

The family is hosting a Grand Opening for Roja Home May 24-26 with music, snacks and refreshments.

Borak says his family owned a rug whole sale business in Burlingame for many years before shifting gears to retail in Mill Valley. 

"We've always had great feelings for Mill Valley," he says. "This town really has  a lot character and people really appreciate art here – it's a great fit for us."

Safavi says he's delighted for the landmark building's next chapter. "We've had many, many years of business in Mill Valley and are grateful to the thousands of customers we've had over the years," he says. "It's time for the next chapter."

The 411: Roja Rugs has leased the former Marin Oriental Rug House and transformed it into Roja Home, a rug and furniture showroom. The owners host a Grand Opening party May 24-26 with music, snacks and refreshments. 256 Shoreline Hwy. 415.888.8294. MORE INFO.

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Well into its second decade in business, Mill Valley resident Jesse Roselin's Tutor Corps, which provides tutoring in all K-12 subjects, continues to grow and evolve. The company has launched Pacific Preparatory, an in-home, K-12 private school that promises an engaging one-on-one academic experience with flexible curriculum and scheduling.

"I am really pleased to offer more individualized services to students in Mill Valley," Roselin says. "We offer one-on-one education aligned with each student’s unique learning profile. Instruction is available in-home or online, and we value engaging curriculum, flexibility, and a holistic approach to support the individual needs of our students."

Roselin says the vision for the school centers on academic programming that inspires "a love of learning, confidence and self-advocacy."

"Our goal is always to accommodate each and every child by dynamically adjusting our curriculum and teaching to engage all types of students in the learning process," he adds.

The school follows a traditional academic calendar but allows students to jump into the programming at any point during the calendar year. Roselin notes that Pacific Preparatory enrolls a variety of learners, from those who are “gifted,” students with learning differences, those who are hospitalized, and others "who are between brick and mortar schools," as well as competitive dancers, actors, artists, and athletes.

The new school is the latest in Tutor Corps' ever-burgeoning roster of academic programs. Roselin launched Tutor Corps in 2002, expanding it to Mill Valley in 2008. Roselin's tutors work day-to-day out of their own homes and visit students in their own homes for tutoring sessions, an easier setup for many parents than driving kids to a location.

Roselin has also deepened his roots in the 94941, moving from San Francisco to Mill Valley with his family five years ago. Tutor Corps's 20 teachers in southern Marin now tutor more than 25 students in Mill Valley.

One of the outgrowths of those deeper roots has been the ability to leverage the Tutor Corps Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit, to support student scholarships, community service grants and awards for teachers. In recent months, the foundation has issued grants to support a "Humanity is Kindness" program run by four 6th grade girls at Mill Valley Middle School. The student's goal was to help as many of the homeless population in Marin as possible by operating clothing drives and food drives and, in turn, learning about social justice and how to effectively fundraise. 

Tutor Corps funded an 11th grade Tam High student's The LEAP Dance Program, which supports the Marin Performing Stars after school program in Marin City, Sausalito and San Rafael, allowing girls to create a performance that allowed their families "to see their children in a new light." The foundation also supported a Tam High eleventh grader's Music Together project, which promoted "inclusion, connection and acceptance between the special education students and greater student body through the camaraderie of making music."

"We are very focused on supporting the local education community," Roselin says. "We are Kiddo Business Partners, Schools Rule Silver Sponsors, and support the Tam High Foundation as well."

In addition to community service grants, Tutor Corps also regularly awards Teacher of the Year Awards as well as tutoring scholarships, providing one-on-one tutoring for the academic year, with one scholarship recently going to an eighth grader at Mill Valley Middle School. The Scholarship funds one-on-one tutoring for the academic year. 

The 411: Tutor Corps has launched Pacific Preparatory, a K-12, in-home private school. MORE INFO.

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​Is Mill Valley taking the threat of climate change-fueled wildfire seriously?

Hundreds of local residents took a positive step toward answering that question this month, turning out to the CineArts Sequoia theater in downtown Mill Valley for a screening of a documentary on the inferno that struck Concow, Paradise, Magalia and Chico in Butte County in November 2018. The "Camp Fire Documentary" was a two-fold fundraiser: to support Camp Fire victims, as well as the efforts of FIRESafe Marin, a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing wildland fire hazards and improving fire-safety awareness in Marin, in this case specifically in the form of a goat grazing program to reduce fire fuel.

The event, hosted by FIRESafeMarin and Mill Valley Fire Dept., with support from the Rotary Club of Mill Valley and several individual donors and sponsors, featured a screening of the 50-minute film from Golden Eagle Films that chronicles a small part of the story one county experienced during its darkest day. Butte County filmmaker Nancy Hamilton's film is first-person account that draws on cell phone footage from more than three dozen individuals and first responders that encountered the fire.

​"With this event, we both invested in our community's efforts to reduce wildfire hazards in Marin County through FIRESafe Marin and supported the organizations that are supporting Camp Fire survivors," Mill Valley Fire Department Chief Tom Welch says.

The screening was followed by a panel discussion including Welch and Mill Valley Mayor Jim Wickham, as well as the Camp Fire's Deputy Incident Commander; Camp Fire survivors, as well as Stephen Murray, a 31-year resident of Paradise and a father of two young children who single-handedly rescued more than 60 senior citizens from a burning mobile home community during the fire.

The 411: FIRESafe Marin, Mill Valley Fire Dept., with support from the Rotary Club of Mill Valley, hosted a screening of the Camp Fire Documentary on May 14 at the CineArts Sequoia theater in Mill Valley. It raised more than $20,000 to support survivors of the Camp Fire, and to support FIRESafe Marin's fledgling goat grazing program to reduce wildfire hazards in Marin. MORE INFO.

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Chabad Mill Valley, the local chapter of one of the largest Hasidic groups and Jewish religious organizations in the world, has been in Mill Valley for more than 17 years.

Chabad Mill Valley founders Rabbi Hillel and Chana Scop, who saw a 20-year dream become reality when they opened Brooklyn, a Project of Chabad Mill Valley, in late October in the space formerly occupied by True Botanicals in the downtown strip of shops on Miller Ave. near the Depot Plaza, have another reason to celebrate.

They're hosting a Shavuot Party on Sunday, June 9 at 11am in honor of the holiday celebrating the giving of the ten commandments at Mt. Sinai. Scop says there will be a bagels, lox and cream cheese brunch, as well as an ice cream bar, fun kids activities and her own decadent cheesecake.

"This event is going to be insanely delicious and fun," says Chana Scop. "Bring a friend and let's celebrate together!"

The 411: Brooklyn, a Project of Chabad Mill Valley hosts a Shavuot Party on Sunday, June 9 at 11am. MORE INFO.

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Can a musical style that reached its peak in popularity between in 1919 still have relevance 100 years later?

Fortunately for the fantastic music – and unfortunately for the continued relevance of many of its themes, the struggle in racism in particular – the Throckmorton Theatre has delivered a blockbuster production of Ragtime, the musical based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow. The production of Ragtime, which runs through May 26, tells the story of three groups in the United States in the early 20th century: African Americans, represented by Harlem musician Coalhouse Walker Jr., upper-class suburbanites and Eastern European immigrants.

Throckmorton founder Lucy Mercer says that acclaimed director Amy Marie Haven, the Throckmorton's director of theater programs, and choreographer Stacey Printz "tackle this big musical machine with palpable heart, taking all the right moments to pause and reflect before powering up again."

Award-winning Bay Area conductor and music director David Möschler satisfies the full breadth of the Ragtime musical’s voice, conducting a full 21-piece orchestra, which is accompanied by an all-star cast of theatre professionals, including Jordan Best, David Schiller, Gary Stanford Jr. and Melissa Momboisse.

Mercer told the Marin IJ that she felt it was important for the Throckmorton to stage Ragtime, which opened on Broadway in 1998, because it has a startling resonance in today’s polarized political climate on issues of race, gender and, most saliently, immigration. Mercer says she believes that for audiences, a smaller space like the Throckmorton can sometimes make for a more engaging experience than seeing the same show in a big theater or concert hall.

“In some ways, when you have a small house, you have an intimacy that you don’t have with big productions in a large space,” she told the IJ. “Right now, my focus is getting people to see this show. The actors and the production team deserve an audience. And if you don’t see it, then you don’t know what we’re trying to do, and what we’re capable of.”

The 411: The Throckmorton Theatre's Ragtime The Musical opened May 10 and runs weekends through May 26. Shows are Fridays & Saturdays 7:30pm and Sundays at 2:30pm. MORE INFO & TIX.

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Even for those who generally avoid news reports about recycling, the subject has been nearly impossible to ignore lately.

Now it's time for the Mill Valley City Council to decide if they're willing to have residents and businesses make a change in how they organize their recycling to address what has become a global dilemma, as  Mill Valley Refuse Service proposes shifting to so-called "dual-stream" recycling at a hearing on May 20.

The saga began in January 2018, when China, long the world's dumping ground for recycling, enacted its “National Sword” policy, banning the import of most plastics and other materials headed for its recycling processors, which had handled nearly half of the world’s recyclable waste for the past quarter century. The move was an effort to halt a deluge of soiled and contaminated materials that was overwhelming Chinese processing facilities and leaving the country with yet another environmental problem — and this one not of its own making.

In the 16 months since that move, which essentially shut down what had been the industry’s biggest market, China’s plastics imports have plummeted by 99 percent, leading to a major global shift in where and how materials tossed in the recycling bin are being processed. That seismic shift has left waste management companies throughout the United States and beyond search for ways to dispose of all that recycling, with some ending up in landfills, incinerators, or likely littering the environment as rising costs to haul away recyclable materials increasingly render the practice unprofitable.

The end result has been skyrocketing costs. According to Mill Valley Refuse Service officials, the primary waste hauler for Southern Marin, the company saw recycling revenue shrink to zero in April 2017, and saw its per-ton fees to dispose of it elsewhere go from $4 two years ago to $59 to $72 to $83 today.

"Our efforts to find a better deal at various processing plants in the Bay Area failed," says MVRS Principal Jim Iavarone. "Some plants closed their doors, while others refused to take on new customers. MVRS now dumps its single-stream recycling material at a transfer point at the Redwood Landfill in Novato, where it is loaded into semi-trucks and sent to a processing plant in San Jose."

The company has identified disposing its recycled materials at Marin Sanitary Service in San Rafael, but that facility primarily processes dual-stream material, with paper put into one cart and all other recyclables into a separate cart. To test the willingness of customers to adapt to a dual-stream system, MVRS conducted a pilot project from September 2018 to December 2018. It released the results of that project in this report.

While MVRS can't force jurisdictions to shift to dual-stream recycling, it hopes the move will be unanimous. "It’s really hard to imagine not making it unanimous one way or the other," Iavarone told the Marin IJ. We have too many routes that cross jurisdictional lines. A route in Mill Valley also goes into Homestead and Almonte at times, and routes in Tiburon cross into Belvedere.”

If all eight jurisdictions the company services agree to switch, customers will be given second recycling bins. One bin will hold paper and cardboard, and the other will hold all other recyclables. The bins will be picked up curbside in alternating weeks.

The 411: The Mill Valley City Council considers a proposal to switch to dual-stream recycling. MORE INFO & STAFF REPORT. WATCH THE HEARING ONLINE HERE.

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​The biggest weekend in Mill Valley is almost here.

Starting May 24 with the four-day Kiddo! Carnival, the weekend kicks into high gear on May 27 with the Mill Valley Volunteer Firefighters’ Association’s Pancake Breakfast from 7-11am, followed by a ceremony at 9:30am at Lytton Square, the tree-laden island that splits the road between Miller and Corte Madera avenues into two and is named for Lytton Barber, Mill Valley’s first WWI casualty.

The ceremony honors soldiers from Mill Valley who died during war, and is followed by the Mill Valley Memorial Day Parade, which begins at 10:30am at Old Mill School, runs down Throckmorton Ave., right on Miller Ave. and ends just before Tam High near Camino Alto.

"It's about teaching our children to remember and honoring the sacrifice’s made by our friends, sons, daughters, fathers and mothers what they gave, so we could be free," parade organizer Larry "the Hat" Lautzker says. "Our intention this year is very simple: let’s all play with our friends, neighbors and fellow merchants. Break out the Red White and Blue, build wondrous floats, great window displays and show our kids and country how creativity and working together help to create amazing results."

The Mill Valley Memorial Day Parade was first produced in 1980. It was organized by Paul Moe of Brocket Construction, who still handles staging for the parade's current iteration. The "I Love a Parade Committee" was formed in 1992 by Joe Leis, followed by local architect Billy Budd and assisted by Lautzker, who has been the head of the committee since 2002. 

Lautzker says 1992 was the first year of dogs marching with more than 200 dogs of all sizes and breeds. "The Grand Marshall that first year was Clarence Clemons from Bruce Springsteen's band, Celebrity Judges included Jerry Garcia, Mimi Farina and Joel Bartlett," he says. "Rock Stars on Harley's with portable amps playing our national anthem. All of this has continued and the parade has grown in size and public participation."

Now there are more than 60 different entries in the parade each year and trophies are awarded for Best Car, Best Float, Best Dog, Best Music, Best Novelty, Best Business, Best Community Spirit and Best Overall.   

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The Enjoy Mill Valley Guide is all grown up.

The Guide, which has been hitting nearly 40,000 mailboxes within the June issue of Marin Magazine for the past five years, did so again this week. But the 2019-20 edition has more of everything – a larger format, more year-spanning content and, to be honest, even more inspiration for you to eat, drink, gather and have fun in Mill Valley.

First up, look at that gorgeous cover by Mill Valley resident Spence Snyder!

The theme of this EMV Guide is sustainability across myriad parts of our community. You’ll find a ton of great content inside, from our feature on MV Mayor and lifelong local resident Jim Wickham (pg. 6) & our sustainability-minded Must Haves (pg. 12) to our year-spanning events calendar (pg. 20) and a spotlight on the favorite recipes from some great  local chefs and restaurateurs (pg. 27). There are also sustainability tips from Ambatalia’s Molly de Vries & a spotlight on artists using recycled materials (pg. 36), photos of fantastic local shop dogs and disaster preparedness tips from Fire Chief Tom Welch (pg. 38).
​
Thanks to the indefatigable Susan Lopes for spearheading this project, to The Image Flow for the fantastic photos and all of the sponsors and advertisers who helped us bring this Guide to fruition. Lastly, tell us what you think of this Guide at info@millvalley.org. Now go out and do fun things in Mill Valley!  –Jim Welte

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From the outsider’s view, Hunter Cressman’s life was flourishing.

After idyllic years at Park School, Mill Valley Middle and Tam High, the Mill Valley native garnered a degree in mechanical engineering from Loyola Marymount University and impulsively took a “leap into the unknown” and moved to New York City. He landed a job at David Yurman Jewelry Co., the nearly 40-year-old designer jewelry firm that spawned from its founders’ artistic pursuits in sculpting and painting.

Cressman did quite well, working with Yurman’s design team and managing product lines, determining the manufacturability of new designs and mechanizing the assembly process. But while his professional accomplishments grew, Cressman says he knew all was not as well as it seemed.

“On the outside, I was doing pretty well, but on the inside I was feeling totally all over the place and out of sorts, and it had been that way since college,” he says. “There was this internal stress that was eating me from the inside out, and I leaned on alcohol and cigarettes. I realized, ‘this is not going in the right direction. I needed to course correct.”

That course correction was spurred by the first friend Cressman made in New York City, a Vedic meditation teacher who espoused the benefits of finding ways to slow down.

“He was just a regular guy and not some monk,” he says. “That helped me see the benefits with an open mind and think, ‘maybe I have a chance to realize this for myself.’”

​With a bit a of lingering skepticism but a strong desire to calm his self-described “overly analytical engineering brain,” Cressman did a four-day course in Vedic meditation and learned the techniques. It worked quickly, he says, and his insomnia and depression subsided completely. He was practicing meditation twice a day.

“After a few weeks, I was sleeping like a baby and happy for no particular reason, walking down Broadway,” he says. “My mind was calm without all the chatter and distraction, with the chaos of New York around me. That really motivated me to keep it going – to be in that sort of peak mind flow state felt really good. And it got better the more I did it.”

That fevered enthusiasm for his personal meditation practice triggered a strong desire to share it with others, a quest that only grew over time. Five years ago, he moved to the Himalayas in India for a 12-week intensive training program under the guidance of world renowned master teachers. He began teaching Vedic meditation soon after through his The Modern Mind practice.

Cressman describes Vedic Meditation as different from other forms of meditation, which generally involve concentration (focusing the mind through effort) or contemplation (thinking about the meaning of something) – both of which keep the mind active. Instead, Vedic Meditation is an effortless technique that naturally and spontaneously de-excites the mind and body.

“You get to sit comfortably with your back supported, close the eyes, and silently use a specific sound (or personalized mantra) to settle into a state of deep physical and mental rest,” he says. “To anyone watching, it simply looks like resting.”

Cressman’s practice, working with individuals and consulting with startups seeking to incorporate well-being into their mission, flourished in New York and provided opportunities to regularly come back to the Bay Area for conferences and other events.

Earlier this year, he decided to come home.

“It’s been amazing to be back in Mill Valley,” he says.

​While Cressman continues to grow his practice, he also earned his two-year degree in the science of Vaastu design, which comes from the same body of knowledge in India as meditation, yoga and ayurvedic medicine but instead focuses on physical structures and “bringing about a specific energetic effect within a space,” he says.

Part of the program through the American University of Mayonic Science & Technology is virtual via reading and writing assignments, and the rest of hands-on, with trips to India to tour temples to see Vaastu design in practice and to “meet some of the families who are keeping that knowledge intact and alive.”

“It’s about knowing that you can follow these design principles and bring about an experience of upliftment and well being where you feel at peace and calm and happy from the architecture itself,” Cressman says. “It’s very exciting and I’ll be consulting on building projects locally and giving lectures as well.”

​The 411: Hunter Cressman's The Modern Mind specializes in Vedic meditation for both individuals, groups and organizations. MORE INFO.

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