The Odd Mondays Series
Monday May 3rd, 7:30 PM Noe Valley Ministry 1021 Sanchez St.

Margaret Kaufman: Poets from
The Sixteen Rivers Press anthology:
"The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed"


FREE ADMISSION
Teacher and Poet Margaret Kaufman will introduce poets whose work is included in the anthology,
“The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed.” Following that, Kaufman
will read from her most recent collection, “Inheritance.” Both books were published by Sixteen Rivers
Press in 2010.
Sixteen Rivers Press is a shared-work, nonprofit poetry collective dedicated to
providing an alternative publishing source for San Francisco Bay Area poets. Founded in 1999 by
seven writers, the press is named for the sixteen rivers that flow down from the Sierra into rivers that
feed into the Bay.

“What a splendid volume of poetry and what an incredible range of poets—including some of
the greats as well as the yet unknown—and what a rich and impressive array of topics, themes,
settings, and emotions! If you love poetry and poetics, you will be smitten over and over again by
this cornucopia, this amazing, diverse harvest.”
—Michael Krasny, Forum, KQED-FM, San Francisco

“One of the great pleasures of this anthology is that, at a certain moment, a group of early-twenty-
first-century poets made a selection of poems about the place that mattered to them, so that this
book is about the experience of place—and about being given the remembered expression of
the experience of place by others who have lived here. And that begins to be a culture.”
—Robert Hass, from the foreword

Margaret Kaufman

Margaret Kaufman, poet and fiction writer, is the author of five books of poetry, including letterpress
limited editions published by The Gefn Press (London), The Janus Press, (Vermont), and Protean Press
(San Francisco). A resident of Kentfield, California, Kaufman leads poetry workshops, teaches at the
Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco, and edits both fiction and poetry.


The Odd Mondays Series
Monday May 17th, 7:30 PM Noe Valley Ministry 1021 Sanchez St.
In the downstairs Fellowship Hall
Ramon & Judith Sender & the Noe Valley Ministry
present

Dr. Paul Linde reading and signing from his book:
"Danger to Self:  On the Front Line with an Emergency Psychiatrist"



Linde (Of Spirits and Madness), clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California–
San Francisco medical school, performs a remarkably successful balancing act by presenting both the
theory and practice of emergency room psychiatry in a compelling manner. He personalizes his cases
and demonstrates how essential the human dimension is in high-quality care. Using 10 fascinating
case studies from his 17-year career—with patients manifesting symptoms from suicidal behavior
to catatonia—Linde discusses the medical, legal, philosophical and ethical implications of treatment
options. He brings the reader along as he is forced to make almost immediate diagnoses and
determine courses of treatment, including incarceration, that have the potential to shape (or end)
these patients' lives.
It becomes abundantly clear that there are rarely simple, straightforward answers. Linde quotes a
professional bromide: [t]he only thing that two psychiatrists can agree on is that a third one is wrong.
He's a talented writer and a compassionate doctor who understands what works best for him and his
patients: "while my head works pretty well, my real strength as a physician comes from the heart."

From Linde’s perspective, a psychiatric emergency room doctor is more like a cowboy than a “
navel-gazing psychiatrist.” Judging from the likes of some of the folks he encounters on the job,
it indeed appears that such metaphors for psych ER work as wrangling, hog-tying, bull-riding, and herding
are more appropriate than, say, meditating. There is also the loneliness factor. While Linde acknowledges
the expertise of the San Francisco General Hospital psych ER team he works with, in the end, it is his call
whether a patient be admitted for additional assessment and/or treatment. It is his decision, that is, with
consideration for the latest laws governing involuntary confinement and whether or not the patient’s
insurer will cover treatment.

It is also his call whether to treat patients according to the current psychiatric trend or buck the system.
Taking into consideration everything from his phlegmatic attitude toward his patients’ antics to the ever-
evolving restrictions, political and financial, hamstringing his ability to do his job, Linde seems well suited
to life as a lonesome cowboy.


Dr. Linde is clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCSF School of Medicine,and has worked in several
high-intensity psychiatric settings over the years including San Francisco General Hospital Psychiatric
Emergency Department. His first book, Of Spirits and Madness: An American Psychiatrist in Africa,
was published by McGraw-Hill in 2002. Linde has also written for JAMA, the San Francisco Chronicle,
the San Jose Mercury News, and DoubleTake magazine. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with
his wife, two sons, and a rambunctious one-eyed dog.


The Odd Mondays Series
Monday May 31st, 7:30 PM Noe Valley Ministry 1021 Sanchez St.
In the downstairs Fellowship Hall
Ramon & Judith Sender & the Noe Valley Ministry
present

Peter Berg - Conversation and Author Reading


"Reader, you hold an important book in your hands. It’s a forty-year compendium of some of the profoundest ecosocial thinking to date concerning what are misnomered, meagerly, environmental problems. Here you will find the outlines of lifeways that could return our species to diverse, place-located, long haul biotic flourishing."
--Stephanie Mills, author of Tough Little Beauties and Whatever Happened to Ecology?

"It’s rare and wonderful to be able to see an idea grow from the cogitations of your friends to part of the framework of grand state policy. But such is the trajectory of bioregionalism, originally cooked up by cultural innovator and activist Peter Berg and conservation biologist Ray Dasmann, and now an accepted phrase in California state government agencies."
--Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecotopia, Ecology: A Pocket Guide, and Bring Back the Buffalo! A Sustainable Future for America's Great Plains.

Peter Berg (Director of Planet Drum Foundation) has been a continuing source of innovative ideas for ecological activists for nearly forty years. Both enlightening and surprising, his writings are a primary source for the history of ecological thinking. Berg has been called the "father of bioregionalism" and "a thorn in the side of the environmental movement." His perceptive analyses are always exciting, pushing the limits of the ordinary. From his base in San Francisco, Berg has been an influential voice in North and South America, Japan, Europe, and Australia.

Envisioning Sustainability begins in the late 1960's and guides the reader through the awakening
of both environmentalism and bioregionalism. The book discusses urban sustainability and
ecological policy with vision, candor, and humor. In this collection are seminal essays that defined
the bioregional movement and shaped the sustainability revolution including "More Than Just Saving
What's Left", "Growing a Life-Place Politics" and "A Metamorphosis for Cities: From Gray to Green"
as well as early ecstatic manifestos "Automated Rites of the Obsolete Future?", "Planetedge" and
"Borne-Native in the San Francisco Bay Region." The book concludes with Berg's dynamic exhortation
for eco-cultural consciousness at the 1996 conference Watershed: Writers, Nature and Community in
Washington D. C.