Editor’s Letter: Celebrating Black History and the True Love From our Pets

Marin Magazine edit letter collage

While February is usually reserved for romance, we have chosen to celebrate pets and wellness this month instead. Because as we all know — pets offer true unconditional love.

Frequent contributor Jeanne Cooper, a former travel editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, is focusing on her other passion in this issue: rescue animals, and dogs in particular. As a Facebook friend of hers I am constantly entertained by the adventures of Scallywag, a deaf Catahoula leopard dog, his hearing support dog Buddy Kai and their feline bestie Kalani. As the new president of the Hawaii Island Humane Society (yes, you can adopt a pup while on vacation, or just take one on a field trip), Jeanne was thrilled to take on an assignment focused on the topic, and by sheer coincidence, two of the five rescued humans featured have ties to Hawaii. I got a little teary reading the beautiful stories of these five touching canine-human bonds, and look forward to adopting a little fido soon too.

February is also synonymous with Black History Month, a topic we have championed for many years. Kirsten Jones Neff has earned awards for her articles on real estate redlining, Marin City’s history as well as its peaceful yet powerful reaction to George Floyd back in 2020. Her latest feature in this issue has been a long time coming. The Sausalito Marin City School District is in the spotlight once again for their desegregation efforts, and Neff talks to the people working hard behind the scenes to make it happen.

Speaking of behind the scenes, in Marin City, Felecia Gaston has been serving her beloved community since moving there in the ’80s. Besides offering a platform for young artists (various art forms) via her nonprofit, Performing Stars of Marin, she’s written books on Marin City’s history and a cookbook with recipes gathered from the community’s grandmothers. She also curated a traveling exhibit on the history of the community, highlighting how the ongoing redlining has impacted these families.

This month we are thrilled to collaborate with Gaston on for a showing of the 1968 BBC documentary called The Mood of America, which followed the aftermath of the voluntary desegregation plan in 1965. I watched it a couple months ago and was inspired by the then-principal Sidney Walton’s efforts to instill confidence and community within the student body. Just like today, some of it worked, some didn’t. Sixty years later, we are presenting this film along with a panel of speakers to discuss how the city’s efforts of late might succeed.

We are also getting excited about our upcoming 20th anniversary celebration on April 6, 3–6 p.m. at the Marin Art and Garden Center: you can get your tickets here. Hope to see you there!

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