Follow Your Nose to Petaluma

#231, August 14, 2008

The Olympics brings back to mind my summer swimming days. Dad managed the High School pool and coached the Gilroy Gators, our local AAU swim team. I started competitive swimming at age 6; my brown hair would turn chlorine green every August. Dad and I once held Olympic hopes for me, but the best I could do was swimming the hundred yard fly in 1968 against Bay Area boy Mark Spitz in the North Coast sectional meet. My joke: Mark was out of the water and dried before I touched the wall.

The more vivid memories of my summers were the smells. I’m still transported back to the pool by the fragrance of Clorox and Comet. Suntan lotion, there’s a time machine! But above all, summer in Gilroy was the tomato cannery and the garlic processors. A great big Italian atmospherio. The blessed aroma of garlic was so intense that I could smell it while doing the freestyle (note to non-swimmers: nose breathing while swimming should be avoided.) I could also smell the garlic while breast stroking, especially if the car windows were open.

Smell is one of the reasons I love Petaluma. There’s the oceanic odor you get pedaling across the D Street bridge at a mid-winter high tide. Flowers in the spring, bay leaves, tarweed and hayseed in the fall. And summer… aaaaah, take a big hit of that good s**t! When I worked in Telecom Valley, the dairy-air was so ripe it penetrated the buildings. My co-workers and I wondered how it got so strong. One morning, on our way back from a dawn patrol at Salmon Creek, nasal passages freshly flushed with saline solution, we made the astonishing discovery: giant perfume atomizers! Really, it was a huge impact sprinkler, shooting burst after burst of brown-green liquid fifty yards over a pasture, across the Petaluma-bound breeze. I love it! Viva organic ag!

I read an article about a woman who lost her sense of smell. She learned, the hard way, how much we take this sense for granted, how dull and flat the world seemed without a working sniffer. The one benefit came, she said, when she visited the dump. My personal least favorite smell family is the hydrocarbons-- petro-diesel exhaust, roofing tar, and their kin.

So I’m not happy to read that there is an asphalt plant proposed for the Dutra Haystack Landing property, just across the river and upwind of Schollenberger Park and the Alman Marsh. 24 by 7 fuming, along with noise from the machinery and trucks and the glare of lights. The Dutra property is outside City limits, so the County is doing Environmental Review. River activist David Keller says good alternatives have been suggested for this important industrial use of the Petaluma River, including an enclosed plant on the old Pomeroy concrete site… but the County so far seems to have a hearing problem. If you think this idea stinks, call and write to Supervisor Mike Kerns (mkerns@sonoma-county.org) and to Steve Padovan of Sonoma County's Permit and Resource Dept. (spadovan@sonoma-county.org 707-565-1352) before noon next Thursday, August 21. A copy to our City Manager/Council wouldn’t hurt, either.

Let’s return to more pleasant topics, shall we? Like chocolate? I recently attended a chocolate class and tasting at Petaluma’s Viva Chocolat. I learned why chocolate is good for your cells as well as your soul, that it contains antioxidants known as flavanols. Learned that the “nose” of chocolate, like wine, comes from the interaction of many factors, including plant variety, growing conditions, fermentation techniques (yes, cocoa beans are fermented in their own pulpy outer shell!), roasting, and blending. That chocolate is categorized by the percentage of cocoa solids, with milk chocolates at the low end, bittersweet in the middle, and unsweetened cocoa at the top. That the Aztecs considered the pure cocoa liqueur “food of the gods”.

Viva Chocolat does fondue on Friday and Saturday evenings. Mmmm… Point your nose to downtown Petaluma for some sensible sensory indulgence.