St. Monica's Catholic Church

St. Monica's Roman Catholic Church is on a very broad way going westwardly out of Willows. It has many a row of Italian cypress. Cupressus sempervirens is also called graveyard cypress. It is a mournful tree, common in cemeteries.

Common Grounds

Common Grounds is just north of the center of downtown in Willows. It has inside, outside, and upstairs seating. The position of choice is a plumb red cushion in a small room off the main room. Good place to hear elderly locals bluntly sum up the world as of any mid-morning and to consume heated sticky buns.

Willows

The town of Willows is located in the Sacramento Valley, off Interstate 5, about half way between Sacramento and Red Bluff. The town as a whole does not have the sense of humor that New Pine Creek has, or Pt. Arena. It does, however, have some pairings worthy of the weird.
Downtown, in one building, are The Ark and Holi Market, back to back, one facing west and the other east. Just north of downtown is a building that houses both the Car-Mar-Ray Association and Paratransit Services. There is the way the entrances to the sacred and the secular play with architectural traditions. And, then, scattered about are '76 Joy Street, the Law Offices of J. Mark Atlas, and the beauty salon Identite, with an acute accent over the final "e."

Watercolor Restaurant

Watercolor Restaurant is on Soda Bay Road on the south shore of Clear Lake in Lake County. It's a fine place for humans to observe fellow humans. A man discusses the breakup of his marriage, "What I did wrong, according to her, was leave, but the only thing I did right was get out of there." Later, on his way out, he said to the waitress, "You're the cutest thing I've seen around here." A woman on her cell phone said to her teenage daughter, "A beer has less alcohol than wine. Drink one beer and relax." A man among four men said, "I used to be a successful contractor. Now that they're putting me in jail (laughs), I wanted to have this going away party." The croissant raisin bread pudding is excellent, even in the absence of decaf. "We're all heavy hitters here," the waitress said.

Edgewater RV Park

Edgewater RV Park is on Soda Bay Road, on the south shore of Clear Lake, and is the choice RV Park among many on the lake. Its location at the foot of Mt. Konocti means cool and wet, and cool and wet supports a diversity of plants not found elsewhere on the lake. A pier out over the water allows unimpeded access to sunsets reflected in still waters.

Zephyr Zen

In Zephyr Zen in the town of Clearlake on the shores of Clear Lake in Lake County, is an alabaster statue of Buddha holding an alabaster statue of Mary, illustrative of the next stage in the development of American religion.

Steves Place

The yellow of Steves Place is hard to miss. It is in the town of Clearlake on Clear Lake in Lake County. The sign says Compassion Center, but it looks not all that welcoming. Another sign says, "Ring door bell: clerk will let you in." Steve is a big man with a rough voice, "We're a head shop, basically. We sell medical marihuana, and you have to have a prescript for that." Steve also sells bongs, clothes, sunglasses, and trinkets. A bible on the counter was open to II Samuel.

Silver Dollar Plaza

The Silver Dollar Plaza is a town unto itself. It on Highway 53, just past its intersection with Highway 29, on the edge of the historical downtown of Lower Lake. Its customers are few. The rent is probably low. Yet, and this is its redemption, it is the Alpha and the Omega. The Tree of Life is here, the tree that Adam and Eve rejected in favor of the Tree of Knowledge. Here's an opportunity to make up for their oversight. The New Jerusalem is here, too, so Revelation is just a few stores down from Genesis. On the way are hookahs and healing, good fellowship and wild tattoos.

Lucerne

California's Lucerne is on the north shore of Clear Lake in Lake County. Highway 120 runs right through it. In Harbor Park one of the staff of Lake County Parks said,"No, the county really got on the hydrilla problem and now is doing the same with the mussels that attach themselves to boats. There was a die-off of carp recently, and they had all of us out immediately to pick them up. It wasn't so bad, but you couldn't get the smell out of your nose for a week. The police now patrol the parks and the highways. We want to make this a nice place for people to come. Until I got this job with the county, I lived in Cobb, and I wouldn't come to the North Shore. That's the meth place, I would say. But not now. People used to say to me, 'Lake County! you've got all those druggies and convicts.' No more, we're sending them to you now."

In the park is a collection of artist shops and galleries, a cooperative effort between the county, the town, and local artists.

Mary Lou's is in the center of town and is the central attraction. It's full of bird houses made by the husband of the owner. A woman came in, ordered coffee, glared at the other customers, mumbled a hello in response to hellos, and went outside to sit in the cold. She pulled out a cigarette, sipped her coffee, ran her hand through her hair, rocked by and forth in a lean-back chair, and left.

A middle-aged woman came in. "Terri here?"
"No," responded the barista, a young man with a guitar, in his twenties. "She just left."
She sat down with her cappuccino. "I walked in this morning."
"You walked all the way from home?"
"Yes."
"You are looking good."
"Thank you, but I know better. I've been on this diet. I hate it. My doctor says 'Lose weight!' and I know he goes out behind his office and smokes. A bunch of us went out the other night and had fish. I hate fish, but it's supposed to be good for me."

"Yes, business is not good," the young man said. "All last summer it was like it was late fall. I've been here ten years, and I see business after business come in and go out. They last about one to two years. It's that way all over the lake."

An old man came in for espresso. He knew everyone.
A woman and her brain-damaged daughter came in for lunch. She, too, knew everyone.

Mystic Barrel

Mystic Barrel is in a small arcade off Highway 120 in the town of Nice on the shores of Clear Lake. It sells guns, knives, native spirits, mood rings, fairies and fairy dust.

Holy Joe's

Holy Joe's in historic Upper Lake shares a building with Mr. Hope Services, Virtuous Woman, and ads for Angel Intuitive Readingsand Awaken Colon Hydrotherapy. It is directly across from a Christian Bookstore and serves Spirit Up, Been Berry Blessed and other Enlighten Elixirs that Invigorate, Refresh, Restore, and Cleanse. The barista was a trucker and bookkeeper, until he lost his job. Now, besides making coffee, he is a reporter embedded in paintball wars. He really wants to be a writer. He likes to sit down with a blank page and write whatever comes into his head. He thinks humans are limited only by their own thoughts. "Why are there twelve months to a year, eighty years to a life?"

Library Park

On the shores of Clear Lake in Lakeport in Lake County is Library Park. Its rails and poles frame the stature of Mt. Konocti. Those in the know claim the no-longer-active volcano is hollow inside and inhabited by little people (perhaps cousins to the Lemurians inside Mt. Shasta) who give out vibes to all with proper antennas. Meanwhile limnologists at the University of California, Davis, occupied the Carnegie Library for many years and submitted their lacustrian findings to all the proper journals.

Keller-Williams Realty

In the window it says Keller-Williams Realty. On the marquee it says Team Lake County Real Estate Sales. This is in the town of Lakeport in Lake County in California. What is interesting about the place, what separates it from a typical real estate office, is its pitch. Not the sales pitch, but the pitch to convert you from your inauthentic present line of work to real estate agency-- it's a strike right down the heart of the religious plate.

Vacation Church

High on a hill overlooking the town of Lakeport in California's Lake County is a yellow building.
A woman came out and said, "I thought you were giving me a ticket."
"No, I am writing in my journal. I came to see what kind of church this is, and it is not."
"I know the man who owns it. He is now renting it out as a vacation rental. There is a huge space inside."
"I take it his name is not Jesus."

Lady of the Lake

Lady of the Lake Roman Catholic Church is on Highway 175 midway between Middletown and Kelseyville. You want to go when the caretaker is there. He was wonderful. He said, "It was built by the Italian Community up here. There's 75 come now, but in the summer it's 400. It's 10-15 degrees cooler here than Clear Lake. A prominent family needed a chapel for a Catholic wedding. So they built this church, then had the wedding elsewhere. We have the same priest as St. Joseph's in Middletown, but they have a quonset hut and folding chairs. Here there are pews and a steeple. I say that's a church." On the south wall are stations of the cross. In every arch in the north wall is a door. "We used to open all the doors in the summer, because the church couldn't contain all the people. Back then everyone came to church." Down the road from the church is Karisma Hair.

Bellezza

Bellezza in Kelseyville in Lake County, California, will fix you up from toe to soul: Pedicures, Manicures, Tanning, Massage, and Lotus Zen. Anything as long as it is therapeutic.

Divine Consignment

Divine Consignment, in Middletown, California, on Highway 29, will take Heavenly Goods from you, should you have a saintly disposition, and it will sell Heavenly Goods to you, should your soul need redecoration. In either case you will be doing good for goddess, for country, and for county. Be sure and park to the side of the store. Parking in front is revered, for that is where the gods pull in.

Middletown

Middletown got its name because it was half way between Saratoga in Napa County and Lower Lake in Lake County. The name still applies. Before the 2008 presidential election not a single Obama sign was visible from either of the main highways, 29 or 175. McCain posters were many. Yet, Middletown is one of the hotspots in Northern California for the New Age. Take, for example, Awaken and the Baptist Church adjacent to it. Both use water. Both seek access to the soul. But oh how different the technique. The first cleanses your colon. The second dunks you head-to-toe. A town that was in the middle of a map now is in the middle of a choice.

Art Deco Associated Pacific

Near the intersection of Highways 1 and 41 in the town of Morro Bay is the business of Associated Pacific, with Art Deco for a front and a Quonset Hut to hold the guts.

Harmony

Harmony has an art gallery. Harmony is an Art Gallery. Harmony has a chapel. Harmony is a Chapel. Nowhere is the union of art and religion more apparent.

Solid Rock Church

On the side of a hill in Cambria, California, just off of Highway 1, is the Solid Rock Church. It is situated between Nitt Witt Ridge and a Public Park[ing Lot]

Cambria Public Park

Nitt Witt Ridge sits high above the Public Park in Cambria, California. The Solid Rock Church sits not so high above the Park. On Sundays the Park is transmogrified into a parking lot for the Church. Restrooms in the Park are perfectly clean but full of cautionary signs.

Nitt Witt Ridge

Arthur Harold Beal was not a Nitt Witt, nor was he a Nit Wit. But he was a believer. He believed that all things recycle through toilets. Consequently, he placed a toilet at the entrance to his house, one on top of his house, and numerous ones inside his house, on the walls as well as on the floors. He was way ahead of his time. Nitt Witt Ridge is on a hill above the Solid Rock Church in Cambria, California.

Spirit Garden

Spirit Garden is a play on four stages. Spirit Garden is a liturgy at four altars. The four stages are the four altars. The drama enacted at Spirit Garden is the union of Art and Religion. The lead is played by a woman, who enters the Garden Gallery and speaks her most important part into a cell phone, "I got a recommendation to you from Michael, who says you're good. My mother thinks I need a soul retrieval, and she is willing to pay for it. I went to someone else, but I didn't like him." Spirit Garden is in Loma Vista on Highway 1 south of Big Sur.