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Saratoga Sampler
Bookaholics travel through pages, take related trip
By Mary Ann Cook
BOOKAHOLICS: Here's another woman's book group with Saratogans and Los Gatans. There are some dozen members, and they call themselves the Bookaholics. Locals include Jean Lin and Anne Bossange of Saratoga and Kris Lamendola of Los Gatos. Founder is Shirley Johnson of Santa Clara.
A unique aspect of this group is it often takes field trips--related to the chosen book, of course. They were off to the Steinbeck Museum after consuming The Grapes of Wrath. And they headed to a special exhibit in Los Altos about Wallace Stegner after reading The Angle of Repose.
At an overnight at the beach one July, members discussed books about the Founding Fathers and relished the getaway together. The fact that they had read a number of books with a Southern setting led to the Bookaholics traveling to Charleston, S.C., And these book fanatics have an offshoot movie group. Moviegoers include significant others: first a movie, then dinner afterward to thrash out the film's merits or demerits.
Bookaholics are also politically active. All on the same page politically, they work together during elections, writing and calling elected officials, attending rallies.
Though together politically, they represent a wide variety of ages and occupations. Grandmothers and granddaughters are involved. Lawyers, doctors, businesswomen and teachers are on board, as well as retirees. And there are vast differences in genres selected each year.
They may choose a foreign writer in a foreign setting, fiction by a California writer about California, nonfiction, mystery, memoir--everything from light humor to the classics.
SKIPPING STAGE, NOT SLIPPERS: Dalia Rawson will be teaching, not dancing on stage with Ballet San Jose come September. Rawson, who married in February, has been fighting cancer, which is now in remission. However, the disease and the treatment have taken a toll. Add to this a cracked vertebrae.
So the ballerina was forced to retire from the stage. She'll be giving up her starring roles, but not ballet, as she helps others chart the course she carried off so successfully over the past 15 years.
There's a ballet mystique that says you only bow with knee to floor if royalty is in the audience or it's your final performance. In the last holiday performance of Nutcracker last December where she danced the Tsarina role, Rawson bowed knee to floor.
She didn't realize it until she saw films of that performance. But she had felt her dancing that night had been fully realized, a defining moment, her personal best, artistically and technically, the crowning moment of her years of work.
So, even though it had been an unconscious bow, it was a fitting climax to her stage career, she realized later. Now she'll be teaching others how to reach for their star.
AARDVARK ADVENTURES: Here's a children's book wherein your favorite child plays the key role. The company is called Aardvark Adventure Stories, the creation of Drew Freeman and Doug Hunley, who write and illustrate the stories, take myriad photos of your child, and incorporate them into the book.
Customers for the fledgling company have been as young as 3 months and as old as 70. The infant gurgled when she saw the results. "You wouldn't think anyone that young would have any reaction to its own likeness, but she did," says Freeman. The 70-year-old wanted to show her travel experiences to her grandchildren, graphically.
Los Gatan Shellie Cutting became an Aardvark fan when the operation came to New Beginnings, a preschool in Menlo Park where her daughter is enrolled. Cutting, who works in Menlo, bought the book The Truly Amazing Hats with her daughter Zoe as leading lady.
Zoe enjoyed showing it off so much that the dust jacket of the hardbound book was dilapidated and dog-eared after just a few days. At Aardvark the children choose the story they want and the direction it will take. One story line is a treasure hunt, and children select, via computer, the route the hunt follows. The personalized book company is based in Santa Cruz but reaches out to schools, churches and kids' groups throughout the Bay Area. The organization receives a percentage of the proceeds when Aardvark comes calling.
Freeman hatched the idea when out buying a children's book. He had always liked to write, thought to himself, "I could do that--make books come alive for kids by putting them front and center in adventures they create and star in." And thus did the Chief Aardvark evolve. The Aardvark phone is 831.818.8768.
HEAD OF REHAB: Eugene Riegle, formerly of Ohio, has been named the new administrator of the Rehabilitation Center of Community Hospital of Los Gatos. Riegle has more than 30 years in health care; his most recent position was CEO of Focus Healthcare of Ohio.
His experiences in rehabilitation services and professional strengths include managing operations, strategic planning, program and staff development and budget planning.
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