Events

Steve Levenberg has been an active volunteer with Sebastopol World Friends for over twenty (20) years. He and his wife Patty have lived in Sebastopol for over twenty-five (25) years and they have hosted many students and adults from both Japan and Ukraine over those years. Both of their daughters traveled to Japan with the Sebastopol World Friends' middle school exchange and both Steve and Patty have traveled to Chyhyryn and Takeo.
Steve is a Family Physician who retired from Sutter Medical Group of the Redwoods in 2016. He grew up In Santa Rosa.

Patricia Deignan has been a part-time resident of Sebastopol since 2006, moving here full time in 2016 after working 28 years as an attorney for the City of San Jose. Upon retirement, she joined the Peace Corps, serving in Western Ukraine from 2017-2019, where she fell in love with the country, the culture, and especially, the Ukrainian people. Upon her return home, she sought out Sebastopol World Friends as a means to continuing her connection with Ukraine, as well as to learn about Japanese culture and to share the joy of world exploration with the Sebastopol community.

Patricia has also served as a host mom for a Ukrainian foreign exchange student and volunteers for various local organizations.

Photo by Frank Schulenburg-Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0; April 2019 at Durell Vineyard, Sonoma.

PETER COYOTE has performed as an actor for some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers, including: Barry Levinson, Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg, Martin Ritt, Steven Soderberg, Sidney Pollack and Jean Paul Rappeneau.

In 2000 he was the Co-Host of the Oscars with Billy Crystal.

He is a double Emmy-Award winning narrator of over 140 documentary films, including Ken Burns, National Parks, Prohibition, The West, the Dust Bowl and the acclaimed The Roosevelts, (for which he received his second Emmy nomination in July 2015), Vietnam, The History of Country Music, Ben Franklin, Ernest Hemingway and most recently The Holocaust and America..  Mr. Coyote has written 6 books including a memoir of the 1960’s counter-culture called Sleeping Where I Fall (Counterpoint Press) which received universally excellent reviews, appeared on three best-seller lists, sold five printings in hardback and was re-released with a new cover and afterword in May, 2009.  A chapter from that book, “Carla’s Story, won the 1993/94 Pushcart Prize for Excellence in non-fiction. His second book, The Rainman’s Third Cure: An Irregular Education, about mentors and the search for wisdom was released April 14, 2015 by Counterpoint Press, and in July it was second on the Marin County Best-Sellers list. His third book entitled Unmasking Your True Self: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Meet the Buddha is about a long-standing series of classes her runs using acting and Improvisation and Masks to induce temporary ego-free states, based on his work as a serious Zen Buddhist for over 40 years. In 2011 he was ordained a priest, and in 2015 “transmitted” by his teacher and is now an independent Zen teach with the authority to ordain priests himself.

From 1975 to 1983 he was a member and then Chairman of the California State Arts Council. During his Chairmanship and under his tenure, expenditures on the arts rose from 1 to 16 million dollars annually.

 He is and has been engaged in political and social causes since his early teens and his primary concerns are the environment, voting rights and security of elections, and the threat of nuclear weapons and energy production.

He has books being readied for production in 2023, Things As It Is: Vernacular Zen and Engaged with Things As It Is: A Buddhist perspective on Politics. He has recently and reluctantly accepted the limits of being 81 and has sold his beloved 1952 Dodge Power Wagon, rebuilt from the frame up.

World Polio Day is October 24 and Bob will give us some history and an update on how Rotary International is doing with their fight to eradicate polio throughout the world.

Join the Polio Plus Society Kennel Club - see flyer attached.

About the speaker:

Sidharth Madhavan is a USC-Buck Ph.D. fellow in the Newman Lab. https://www.buckinstitute.org/lab/newman-lab/ In 2019, he completed a B.S. in Clinical Neuroscience with honors at Virginia Tech. As an undergraduate, he researched structural and biochemical properties of tau proteins, specifically relating to clinical mutations affecting aggregation. As a Ph.D. fellow in the Newman Lab (2020), he will build on his background, investigating the propensity for small energetic metabolites to modulate proteostasis in Alzheimer’s disease. When he isn’t at the bench, Sid loves being outdoors. He has hiked most of the Appalachian Trail in southwest Virginia and enjoys the accessibility to backcountry hiking out west. Sid also enjoys running, cooking new recipes, falling asleep in his hammock, and teaching himself bluegrass flatpicking.

Sid will be speaking about the work he is currently doing at Buck and how it is impacting the field of aging research, along with the work Buck is doing as a whole and the impact Buck has on our community and the world. The title of his talk is: "The Science Behind Living Better Longer”. I am attaching his headshot to this email.

About The Buck Institute:

Novato’s Buck Institute is the largest independent scientific institute in the Bay Area. The Buck aims to end the threat of age-related diseases for this and future generations by bringing together the most capable and passionate scientists from a broad range of disciplines to identify and impede the ways in which we age. Its goal is to increase human health span, or the healthy years of life. Globally recognized as the pioneer and leader in efforts to target aging, the number one risk factor for serious diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, macular degeneration, heart disease, and diabetes, the Buck wants to help people live better longer. Learn more at: https://buckinstitute.org