Join Positive Images LGBTQIA+ Center and North Bay LGBTQI Families for a Social Saturday: Intergenerational Gathering on February 10th from 12-3pm at Guerneville Library!
All LGBTQIA+ youth, families, adults, and elders are welcome at Social Saturdays, which are a recurring series of monthly events taking place throughout Sonoma County where we are seeking to bring community across generations, particularly gender expansive youth, teens, and adults.
At our February gathering we invite you to come join us at the library for art activities, music, storytime readings and games. There will be a special storytime with Frida and Friends where they read a variety of stories of different genres in both English and Spanish!
********** Acompañe a Positive Images LGBTQIA + Center y North Bay LGBTQI Families para un sábado social: Reunión intergeneracional el 10 de Febrero 12-3p en la biblioteca de Guerneville!
Todes les jóvenes, familias, adultes y ancianes LGBTQIA + son bienvenides en esta reunión, que es parte de una serie recurrente de eventos mensuales que se llevan a cabo en todo el condado de Sonoma, donde buscamos reunir a nuestra comunidad a través de generaciones, particularmente jóvenes, adolescentes y adultes con género expansivo.
En nuestra reunión de Febrero los invitamos a que se unieran con nosotres en la biblioteca para actividades artísticas, música, lecturas de cuentos y juegos. Habrá unos cuentos especiales con Frida y sus amigues! Elles leerán una variedad de cuentos de diferentes géneros en inglés y en español!
Join the Sonoma County Library for eventsthroughout the month of February, from bilingual kids’ yoga to African music with Keenan Webster. All events are free and you don’t need a library card to attend; registration is required for select events. See some of our February events below!
All Ages
Join us at the Petaluma Regional Library on Saturday, February 17, at 10:30am to explore African music with Keenan Webster! Keenan demonstrates and entertains with instruments of the Mandinka and Mende-speaking peoples of West Africa. This event is co-sponsored with Petaluma Blacks for Community Development.
Kids
Body Percussion Learn how to make music on your body with different kinds of gentle claps, snaps, taps, and slaps! Led by Phoenix Song. For grades K-6. Available at two locations: Central Santa Rosa and Windsor.
Bilingual YogaYoga is a fun way to improve children’s physical and mental well-being. Classes are held in Spanish and English by instructor Sara Gagnon. For ages 4-11. Please bring your own yoga mat or towel, and pre-register online to receive a reminder email. Available at six libraries: Windsor, Guerneville, Rincon Valley, Northwest Santa Rosa, Cloverdale, and Roseland.
Teens
Free Your VoiceLearn how to release stress and increase joy, power, and connection through your voice in this playful workshop with Phoenix Song. No singing experience/ability required! For grades 7-12. Free your voice at two locations: Healdsburg and Windsor.
Bilingual Paint PartyFollow along with step-by-step instructions in Spanish and English to learn painting skills and practice new vocabulary. For grades 7-12. Advance registration required. Get your paint on at four libraries: Petaluma, Healdsburg, Rohnert Park-Cotati, and Cloverdale.
Adults
Welcome in the lunar new year with a virtual lecture presented by the Asian Art Museum. Join us on Saturday, February 17, at 11:00 am to explore the traditions and symbolism that enrich this celebration each year.
Charged Particles Jazz TrioEnjoy this trio’s funky Latin jazz repertoire, blending in elements of classical music and complex orchestration with freewheeling improvisation. At three libraries in February: Sonoma Valley, Guerneville, and Cloverdale.
Thank you for being a member of the Sonoma County Library community. Visit us online or in person at one of our branches. Be sure to check out open jobs at Sonoma County Library here. Questions? Please call your local library branch or click here to send us a message. Eventos de febrero Únete a la Biblioteca del Condado de Sonoma para eventosdurante todo el mes de febrero, desde yoga para niños bilingüe hasta música africana con Keenan Webster. Todos los eventos son gratuitos y no necesitas una tarjeta de la biblioteca para asistir; Se requiere inscripción para eventos seleccionados. ¡Conoce algunos de nuestros eventos de febrero a continuación!
Para todas las edades
¡Únete a nosotros en la Biblioteca Regional de Petaluma el sábado 17 de febrero a las 10:30 am para explorar la música africana con Keenan Webster! Keenan nos mostrará y entretendrá con instrumentos de los pueblos mandinga y mende de África Occidental. Este evento es co-patrocinado por Petaluma Blacks for Community Development.
Para niños
Percusión corporal¡Aprende a hacer música en tu cuerpo con diferentes tipos de ejercicios tactiles como aplausos y chasquidos gentiles! Dirigido por Phoenix Song. Para los grados K-6. Disponible en las bibliotecas Central Santa Rosa y Windsor.
Yoga para niños bilingüeYoga es una forma divertida de mejorar el bienestar físico y mental de los niños. Las clases serán en español e inglés por la instructora Sara Gagnon. Para edades 4-11. Por favor trae tu propia toalla o un tapete de yoga, y regístrate en línea para recibir un recordatorio por correo electrónico. Disponible en las bibliotecas de Windsor, Guerneville, Rincon Valley, Northwest, Cloverdale, y Roseland.
Para jóvenes
Libera tu vozAprende a liberar el estrés y aumentar tu felicidad, poder y sentido de conexión a través de tu voz en este taller divertido con Phoenix Song. ¡No necesitas tener experiencia ni habilidad para cantar! Para los grados 7-12. Libera tu voz en las bibliotecas de Healdsburg y Windsor.
Fiesta de pintura bilingüe para jóvenesSigue las instrucciones paso a paso en español e inglés para aprender habilidades de pintura y practicar vocabulario nuevo. Para los grados 7-12. Se requiere inscripción previa. En las bibliotecas de Petaluma, Healdsburg, Rohnert Park-Cotati y Cloverdale.
Para adultos
Dale la bienvenida al año nuevo lunar con una conferencia virtual presentada por el Museo de Arte Asiático. Acompáñanos el sábado 17 de febrero a las 11:00 ampara explorar las tradiciones y el simbolismo que enriquecen esta celebración cada año.
Trío de jazz Charged Particles Disfruta del repertorio lleno de ritmo de jazz latino de este trío, que mezcla elementos de música clásica y orquestación compleja con improvisación libre. En las bibliotecas de Sonoma Valley, Guerneville y Cloverdale durante el mes de febrero.
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, is demanding to know if the right-wing group known as the Fellowship Foundation, a.k.a. the Family, is supporting Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act.
The act, passed last year, provides for a sentence of life in prison for consensual same-sex relations and the death penalty in certain circumstances. It also requires that citizens report anyone they suspect has violated the law. It replaces a similar law that was passed a decade ago, although without the death penalty provision, and was struck down by Uganda’s highest court, not because of its content but because of the manner in which it was adopted. The new law is being challenged in court as well.
The Fellowship Foundation, while based in the U.S., has been cozy with anti-LGBTQ+ African leaders for years, but there is particular concern about its work in Uganda. “Since the passage of [Uganda’s] first Anti-Homosexuality Act a decade ago, there have been numerous reports linking both bills, their authors, and the larger movement to further criminalize LGBTQI+ people in Uganda to the Fellowship Foundation/the Family, and its associates,” Pocan wrote in his letter, released Tuesday and addressed to the foundation’s president, Katherine Crane.
“At Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast in 2023, which the Fellowship Foundation helped support — including by flying in Rep. Tim Walberg to speak — speakers called LGBTQI+ advocates ‘a force from the bottom of Hell,’ said they would ‘destroy’ ‘the forces of LGBTQ,’and spoke in support of the Anti-Homosexuality Act,” Pocan continued. “In addition, Rep. Walberg told the participants to ‘stand firm’ in response to international pressure against Uganda, though he later said his statement was not in support of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, as imposing the death penalty against LGBTQI+ people is antithetical to Christian values. President Museveni later said at the breakfast that there are Americans who ‘think like us,’ illustrating how proponents of the Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda point to certain Americans’ statements to justify their own support for this draconian law.”
Walberg is a Republican member of the U.S. House from Michigan. Pocan, a gay man, is a Democratic member from Wisconsin.
Pocan noted that there have also been concerns about the foundation’s U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, which has caused that to split into two events.
Pocan asked Crane to provide information on the foundation’s communications with Ugandan officials regarding the Anti-Homosexuality Act; whether the foundation supports or opposes the law and, if it opposes the measure, if it will publicly announce its opposition to it and other bills that criminalize LGBTQ+ people, especially those that impose the death penalty; the foundation’s financial support for advocacy activities in Uganda and what other countries the foundation provides similar support in; and if members of the new National Prayer Breakfast board are affiliated with the foundation.
He asked for replies no later than February 28.
Another U.S.-based nonprofit, Family Watch International, has been accused of ties to the Ugandan law and other aanti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Africa as well.
The emerging field of psychedelic medicine has deep roots in the North Bay, and one of the most promising new treatments, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP), is now available in Sebastopol. Liminal Medicine offers treatment with Ketamine, the only psychedelic medicine currently legal for clinical use, in a queer- and woman-owned space that is open and welcoming to people of all identities.
Ketamine is one of the first truly new treatments for depression to come along in decades, and has been called “a paradigm shift, that now we can achieve rapid antidepressant effects… [ketamine is] something radically different,” by Dr. Carlos Zarate, chief of the experimental therapeutics and pathophysiology branch at the National Institute of Mental Health.
Liminal Medicine is at the forefront of making this treatment available locally. The team at Liminal has been working together in this field for years, and their Sebastopol clinic was recently reorganized and re-opened under the ownership of Dr. Suegee Tamar-Mattis, a local leader in transgender medicine and intersex human rights, and Celeste Monnette, LCSW, a strong LGBTQI ally. “After founding the TranSonoma clinic in 2008, and working for years in the intersex and LGBTQ communities, I was inspired to learn about the potential of psychedelic medicine to heal the trauma that so many in our communities feel,” says Dr. Suegee. “With KAP, we see many of our clients experiencing rapid change and deep healing of these wounds. I am especially excited about our group offerings, which build community and connection while lowering costs.”
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) pairs ketamine treatment with psychotherapy under the care of specially-trained physicians and licensed therapists to treat chronic depression, trauma, PTSD, suicidal ideation, anxiety (including anxiety related to life-threatening illness), panic disorders, and other conditions. Celeste Monnette, LCSW, who has been offering KAP since 2018 and now serves as Liminal’s Clinical Director, says: “When people are in pain and seeking help, it is especially important to have providers you can trust to hear your story and see the real you. We have clients from across the spectrum – all genders, sexualities, races, religious and cultural and class backgrounds. Our youngest client was 13 and our oldest so far was 84. Our goal is to support each of them with compassion while giving new hope for healing.”
About Liminal Medicine: Liminal Medicine is a psychedelic medicine clinic located in Sebastopol, CA. Our approach is informed by the best in scientific and medical knowledge, a deep reverence for the spiritual, transcendent, or mystical experiences psychedelic medicines can bring, and a profound respect for the inner healer that resides in all of us.
Cheryl King hosts an original spin on Valentine’s Day – Blue Valentines. This celebration of love and its opposite will feature stories of love gone wrong (and right). Join us for comedy, burlesque, song and dance routines, and magic as we celebrate couplehood and singlehood. Featuring new comedy routines from the mind of Cheryl King, plus new sexy routines from Malia Abayon, Titus Androgynous, The Phoenix Dancers, singer/songwriter Karenna Slade, and The Forbidden Magician. Adult-oriented material, for those 18+. Parental guidance is suggested. Tickets $20 in advance, $25 at the door
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Tickets
Ticket typeAdvanceSale endsFeb 10, 6:30 PMSale ends: Feb 10, 6:30 PMMore infoBuy online & save $__! For events with a dance floor, seating is limited: Advance tickets guarantee entry, but not necessarily a chair. Doors open one hour before the start of the event, and general seats are first-come-first-serve. Members have access to a number of reserved Member-Only seats up until the start of the event. Contact the box office if you have a mobility need or other specific seating accommodation requirement. (All sales are final)
Sonoma County queer musician Anne Carol Mitchell, also known by the artist name Brightdarkdawn, is producing a two-hour immersive music concert that uses songs, video, audience participation, and storytelling to raise awareness about the preservation of Sonoma County night skies in an age of artificial light. I’ll Show You the Night ispresented by the Arlene Francis Center for Spirit, Art, and Politics in Santa Rosa on Saturday, January 27 at 6:30pm. The concert is a celebration of the natural darkness, queer identities at the intersection of art and ecology, and a new album by Brightdarkdawn. The concert brings into focus questions of collective belonging to the natural world through the lenses of music, audience-participatory poetry, and actual telescopes courtesy of the Robert Ferguson Observatory (RFO). RFO will also provide opportunities for the audience to further engage with the Sonoma County night skies by taking classes or attending star parties. The event comes at an important moment in Sonoma County conservation work where the voices of artists are needed to make the emotional connections in engaging people when data and statistics fall short.
“This concert is a collaboration with local and Bay Area based queer artists/allies and Robert Ferguson Observatory exploring our belonging to and relationship with the night,” said Mitchell. “We look at the concert as a gift to the community–a space to feel our relatedness to the cosmos and an intimacy with the cycles of nature. As an artist who engages in both music and ecological work, this concert is a moment when the environmental and artistic circles I work in can inform and inspire one another.”
Mitchell has been writing music about the natural world as an inquiry into connection to nature since 2014 with polished lyrics and well-crafted acoustic guitar work in the vein of Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell. Anne Carol Mitchell brings a nature-based storytelling approach to her songwriting and occupies a space on the fringes as a queer artist giving voice to the more-than-human world as a call for justice. In I’ll Show You the Night, Mitchell is celebrating the release of her fourth solo album of original music (the first under the name Brightdarkdawn).
Music artists Sindhu Natarajan, a South Indian classically trained singer from Livermore, and Maya McNeil, Scottish-American singer and songwriter who works in both Scottish Gaelic music and original folk songwriting, will share music and stories about the night and darkness from their traditions and perspectives offering striking lenses through which to view the night sky. The event hosts, SJ Cook and Jason Wyman, will invite and engage the audience into poetic-play, queering, blurring and reveling in the spaces where the lines between darkness and light commune.
Sindhu Natarajan is an accomplished vocalist, composer, and Bharatanatyam dancer. She began her Carnatic vocal training under her aunt, Smt. Vasanthi Kannan, and grandfather, the late Sri P.V. Natarajan. She is currently under the guidance of her other aunt, Smt. Raji Gopalakrishnan. Sindhu has given many Carnatic concerts, as well as provided vocal support for numerous South Asian dance performances across the United States. In addition to performing, Sindhu is a passionate composer who creates music that blends her Carnatic roots with other genres. She has also studied Bharatanatyam under Smt. Mythili Kumar, Artistic Director of Abhinaya Dance Company in San Jose.
I am Jason Michael Wyman, also known as Queerly Complex, born upon the Land of 10,000 Lakes on what I am coming to know as Turtle Island, who has settled on Yelamu, which is also called San Francisco. My name means healer, or so I’ve been told since a young child, and I did not believe it until my father and I mended ourselves and one other as he died of mantle cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma across a screen and a country over all of 2020. What I’ve come to understand as the significance of my name is that healer does not mean healed or (even) healing. Rather, it is a positionality within the cosmos that allows one’s self to change and be changed by all that unfolds. It is to be curious and listen and then create.
Maya McNeil’s music echo locates story and melody from the ethers round the heart.McNeil performs original and traditional (Gaelic) songs from a well of times past and writes songs for the shape of the future. They are a recording artist and healing arts practitioner currently orbiting through life, work, and curious mischief around the San Francisco Bay Area.
SJ Cook aka Frankie Velvet they /them/she /her: Frankie is an artist, writer, holistic practitioner, and lover of life among other things. They tell stories and channel feelings through movement, music, and poetry. Their art is one of bending, blending, and expanding gender through evoking sensuality, passion, play, ceremony, connection and fun. They also foster events for other lgbtqia folx to come forward in their brilliance and shine, be heard and seen, such as annual autumn variety shows and is an organizer of Petaluma’s annual Pride festival.
Brightdarkdawn is a project of songwriter/composer Anne Carol Mitchell, a queer woman living in Sebastopol, California, cultivating food and community with her partner and ornery orange tuxedo tabby. Anne is a graduate of the UC Climate Stewards certification course and is currently enrolled in the California Naturalist program at Pepperwood Preserve.
Anne Carol Mitchell is a composer and songwriter who crafts music with the aim of awakening care and healing for the living earth. Her music is reminiscent of folk traditions in the vein of Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. Anne’s songwriting reveals and celebrates the storied existence of the Earth in all its beauty, vulnerability, resiliency, and ferocity. Anne has toured throughout the western states and shared the stage and studio with notable artists including Ani DiFranco, Jimmy Horn (Mr. December), Judy Grahn (a woman is talking to death), Peter Jaques (Brass Menažeri), as well as others. https://brightdarkdawn.com/