Mendocino County women to be honored: 39th Annual Women’s History Gala Celebration March 5
The Mendocino Women’s Political Coalition (MWPC) with AAUW-Ukiah presents the 39th Annual Women’s History Gala Celebration on Sunday, March 5, at the Saturday Afternoon Clubhouse,107 S. Oak St., Ukiah.
Everyone is encouraged to arrive at noon to enjoy refreshments and to bid on the Silent Auction items to raise funds to support the work of MWPC. The program will begin at 12:30 p.m..
This program will be dedicated to Mary Norbert Korte (1934-2022), a poet who left her life as a Catholic nun in the ’60s to dedicate her life to her dual passions, beat poetry and the preservation of the redwood forest. She spent five decades living in a cabin among the trees she sought to protect and typing her poems on a manual typewriter.
Her decades of fighting led to victory, the preservation of more than 400 acres of old-growth forest. Ukiah Poet Laureate Emerita Linda Noel will read one of
Korte’s poems from her new book, “Jumping Into the American River: New and Selected Poems,” published by Argus Books/ TKS.
Three Mendocino County women who embody the 2023 National Women’s History Month theme, “Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories,” have been selected as honorees. Representing diverse backgrounds and each making her mark in a different field are: Dot Brovarney, Fort Bragg; Sarah Reith, Ukiah; and Ellen Weed, Ukiah. Through their inspiring speeches, the 2023 honorees will encourage women and girls to chart their own paths in making our history visible.
After living in Ukiah for many years, Dot Brovarney recently moved to Fort Bragg. A dedicated historian, Brovarney has committed her life to telling stories. She researched and published “The Sweet Life: Cherry Stories from Butler Ranch,” and she was guest curator and developed an exhibit of Carl Purdy for the Grace Hudson Museum.
Brovarney says, “I am fascinated by the everchanging relationship between people and the land. I live in a rural region of Northern California that still retains open spaces and wildlife habitats, aided by conservation efforts, both private and public. Intimacy with the land continues to inspire my creative work.”
When Dot Brovarney tells our story in “Mendocino Refuge: Lake Leonard and Reeves Canyon,” the “our” deepens and widens to reveal the depth and breadth of a vast interconnecting web of one place over recorded time. Brovarney pursued the truth of one place over recorded time, respecting the veracity and power of cultures of the oral tradition as well as written historical records and scientific documentation.
Sarah Reith was born into a circus family in San Francisco and ran away to join the Army as soon as she turned 18. She was a parachute rigger at the jump school in Fort Benning, Georgia, where one of her incidental duties was jumping out of an airplane ahead of a class of airborne students so the instructors could check the wind conditions.
She used her GI Bill to earn a BA in creative writing at Mills College for Women. Her worklife included being a bike messenger and a barista before going back to school in Germany, where she earned her MA in German Literature in the shadow of a medieval castle. She is currently working as a reporter in Mendocino County and writing her second novel.
Reith joined KZYX as a community news reporter in 2017. In 2018-2019, she worked with local theater maven Kate Magruder and reporter Laura Hamburg on “Promise of Paradise: Back to the Land Oral Histories of Mendocino County.” The half-hour programs aired weekly on KZYX for a year. You can find Sarah Reith’s byline at KZYX, KMED, Redheaded Blackbelt, and Mendo-Fever. She covers local politics, the environment, law enforcement, and the arts in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties
Born in New York City, Ellen Weed attended her first acting class at age 8 and performed on N.Y. television the next year. She was accepted by NYC’s prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater with a full scholarship through graduation. Weed was then hired by Summer Stock theater in Aurora, Illinois, where among other shows she performed lead roles in “Barefoot in the Park” and “Romeo and Juliet.” She joined the Chicago company of the stage comedy “Room Service” which won the Chicago Critics Award for Best Comedy. In Chicago she also acted in a number of movies.
After moving to Mendocino County in 1971, Ellen Weed moved to Ukiah in 1977. In 1978 she was among the founders of the Ukiah Players Theatre, where she directed, taught, and performed and was also the artistic director. She has taught and directed Theater Arts for MCOE, Ukiah Unified School District, Mendocino College, and Dominican
College. Weed was honored by her peers with a statewide award as Mentor Teacher.
Ellen Weed has been recognizing deep personal human issues and creating storytelling as a means of healing and inspiration. When the Redwood Complex Fire struck, Weed organized the Fire Survivors Ensemble with participants describing their escapes and losses. “Coming Up for Air” was another group she formed to help participants share their stories of disastrous Covid. Groups of women of all ages were guided in writing and performing pieces of their lives in the “First Personal Plural” monologues that were presented over a number of years with growing numbers of participants. Weed’s most recent Narrative Theater class at Mendocino College was “Death and Dying,” an examination of laws, rituals, personal stories and self-written obituaries.
Everybody is invited to attend this Women’s History Gala Celebration. Music and First Nation presentations will also be included in the program. Gala tickets are $10 at the door. Further information: mcclurelynda48@gmail.com