DEAR VOICES: It's a book she's been writing in her head for the past 35 years. So says Lea Frey about the book she has written called Dear Voices, released this week. Composed of the actual letters exchanged between high school friends, Dear Voices covers the years 19442003.
Learning that one of their number had been imprisoned for armed robbery, the friends renewed their bonds to keep the letters coming. Letter writers sent copies to the others, scattered over the country. The years covered reflect what was going on politically and socially in the country.
The reader can trace the issues of those years as two of the group battle it out from opposing viewpoints. It's a story of the healing power of love, as the book's blurb puts it. Underlying that story is the story of a failed romance. Frey was the high school sweetheart of one of the others.
But she broke the engagement in 1948. That jilted member, evidently still smarting, shunned the project, but does write intermittently. Others include him in the exchanges, visit him and try to draw him into the fold—to no avail. He and Frey, however, ultimately reach a détente of sorts.
The book price is $19.95; it's available at Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. Fifty percent of the proceeds will go to Friends Outside, the organization for friends and family of those imprisoned. Certainly it's an apt choice for this book.
Frey is a retired German and French teacher at Fisher School and is the language coach for Opera San José. She is also a linchpin in the Los GatosSaratoga Community Concert series. Her earlier career was as a nurse. She is married to retired cardiologist William Frey and they have two sons.
Jeff DeMattos of Vasona Graphics designed the cover.
BOTTLING INVENTION: Saratogan J. Thomas Roebuck is a Silicon Valley design engineer/marketing manager who was a victim of the valley slump. But J.T. Roebuck is an inventive sort and turned to his hobby of winemaking to invent a bottling product for the small or home winemaker.
His company is called Vigneron Corporation: Beverage Management Solutions. Since more and more people hereabouts are making wine for home consumption, he should have a thriving market. His product automatically fills four or six bottles at a time, translating to 400800 an hour.
Being a winemaker himself, he couldn't find anything like his product on the market, so it looked like a clear field. He's been going to trade shows to launch the bottler since March, hooked up with dealers and has already sold 30.
The bottler is small enough to be demonstrated on a small table and works for small-scale wineries—those producing 10,000 bottles or less yearly. Roebuck's email is tomr@garlic.com and his website is www.vigneron-sp.com. Vigneron is French for "winegrower."
He spent a year in the Navy on the French Riviera, and his Italian grandfather made wine in the basement, including stomping grapes with his feet, so the inventor feels well steeped in the business of winemaking.
He's been making his own wine for 35 years. The invention would also work for small-scale olive oil, vinegar and syrup producers (anything noncarbonated), and those businesses may be his next major focus.
ART RESIDENCY: This fall, a consortium of seven artist residency programs will host one-month residencies for California visual artists, and Montalvo is one of them. The aim of the project, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, is to serve promising artists from under-represented communities.
Selected for Montalvo residency is Andaleeb Firdosy, who will take up residency from December '04 to January '05. The project is called Visions From the New California. Other host agencies are the Djerassi Arts Program, Woodside; Exploratorium, San Francisco; Headlands Center, Sausalito; and Kala Art Institute, Berkeley.
ADVENTURE RACING: Here's a new sport that combines the endurance aspects of triathlons with the exhilaration of extreme sports. It's called adventure racing and it involves mountain biking, hiking, paddling and sometimes rock climbing—all in one team event. Teams are composed of from one to four athletes.
The REI store at El Paseo de Saratoga holds clinics every Thursday at 7 p.m. in the summer to explain the rugged sport and to equip the enthusiasts.
SUMMER EXODUS: Why does everyone seem to exit Saratoga in the summer? I guess it's like climbing a mountain—because it's there. The opportunity is there, that is. Most Saratogans evidently have the desire and the wherewithal to travel whenever the spirit seizes them.
And, especially for those with school-age children, that opportunity presents itself best in the summer months.
SCA DEMO: An art demonstration will be held by Miss Grace (sorry, that's her full artist name) on Aug. 5 at 7 p.m. in the Saratoga Library. The meeting is sponsored by Saratoga Contemporary Artists and members will sketch along with Miss Grace. It's a two-part demo: she also appeared in July.
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By Mary Ann Cook