Pres. Irwin introduced the speaker this way: Louisiana playwright Tennessee Williams once said that America only has three cities: New York, San Francisco and New Orleans; everywhere else is Cleveland, and today’s speaker, Douglas Nelson, has lived in all three, and recalled a Pink Floyd concert in Cleveland. (Douglas’ words, Irwin said.) He continued: Douglas was born in Baton Rouge and lived there and in New Orleans; after he’d finished his undergraduate degree in theatre at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, he moved to New York “so he could learn how to wait tables.” In 2006 he and his wife moved to San Francisco and, in 2013, to Moss Beach. On his Web site of bpnelson.com.douglas, he claims to a few careers: claims to have acted off-Broadway, worked at Wall Street, built a couple of businesses, written songs and recorded three albums, and cooked in a Michelin-rated restaurant. “It’ll be interesting to see if anything he says is true,” Irwin quipped, and the listeners laughed before applauding.
Douglas started by paraphrasing the Bard – “All the world’s a stage, all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts;” his acts being seven pages. The first, an infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms, then the whining schoolboy with a satchel and shining morning face creeping like a snail unwillingly to school, then the lover, sighing like a furnace with a wilful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow, then a soldier full of strange oaths and bearded like a pirate, jealous in honor and sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking a buckled reputation even in the cannon’s mouth. Then the justice with fair round belly and good capon line, with eyes sever and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances. And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts into the lean and slippered pantaloon, his youthful hose well-saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank; his big manly voice turning again to childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound. Last scene of all that ends this strange and eventful history: his second childishness, in weird oblivion, sans (“without,” in French) teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. Club members applauded.
Douglas continued, that he’d been crossing the fulcrum into moving into Act Three of life; the bearded pirate, justice, he’d had a few lives and it’s been interesting reinventing himself from time to time. His undergrad degree was in theatre; he has valued the arts, though it wasn’t until college that he thought he might be an artist because “I grew up with you guys,” a legacy Rotarian though he hadn’t been to a meeting in 50 years. His father was a Rotarian in Baton Rouge and he always liked that Tennessee Willims quote because it made him feel good about himself; he was from that neck of the woods, Louisiana guy, and liked mid-century dramatic theatre; Williams, Arthur Miller, “All My Sons” one of his favorites.
He said he was thinking what he might say and still didn’t really know, “but we’ll see how it goes.” He pondered what lessons he’d learned in life. Starting in New Orleans, he went to school in the French Quarter, near St. Louis Cathedral, the center of the quarter; he recalled going to the teacher in the second grade, to say that they had candy back there; the teacher looked squarely at him and said, “you know, if they’d given you some you would not have come up here.” He thought that that meant that all have sinned and fallen short of the mark and he wasn’t above that. He thought Jesus put it well: Just don’t be an asshole” though he was not sure what translation that was.
He added that he’d also learned something in New Orleans: the art of divination. He can take anyone and determine things about them without knowing them, like shoes “because you’ve got them on your feet.” Louisiana’s an interesting state, “kind of a red-headed stepchild, a weird state; Napoleonic code,” he said; he’s working on a real estate deal in Baron Rouge that is causing his family to “drive him up the wall:” Napoleonic codes drive him up the wall. It’s a quirky state, with Cajun and French influences; he grew up with a “different kind of Southern hospitality.” Food has always been important, the Creole arts of gumbo and stuff made with “the holy trinity” similar to the French mirepoix – carrots, onions and celery, diced up and put in with the bones to make stock. The Cajuns substitute bell peppers for carrots, hence “the holy trinity” as it is a Catholic state. That’s the base for gumbo; recently he found the source for crawfish tails so he’d been making crawfish etouffee with them. The Louisiana ethos, you’d heard the music, the culture is interesting; he’d heard a friend from Lafayette say that when you’re born in Louisiana you’re born into low-grade alcoholism. I’m like, low grade?
Food and hospitality have been big for him: it comes from a Louisiana thing. He said he was from the South but never of the South. June 4, 1990, he got on a train in Charlottesville, having just done a set strike of Romeo and Juliet; and he took the predawn train from Charlottesville to Penn Station. Around 10:40 in the morning he walked 10 blocks to Theatre Row on 42nd Street for his first class in the summer between his junior and senior year of college. He said he’d been to – visited – New York before, but now he was going to live there, just for the summer. And he said he was home – home -- and it was awesome. It was the center of the universe! “It’s life, it’s culture! It’s pizza by the slice!” (Except for John’s; they don’t do slices.) But he said it was worth it, and those sitting around agreed.
Before this revolution of culinary magnificence we’re living in now, where you can get wood-fired pizzas, they were doing that, for a generation or two. Now, you can get them in San Francisco or probably here in town.
He went to New York, was studying off-Broadway, doing a show --“home” -- he finished college and came right back, and “home” – it chewed me up and spit me out, and it was still home. “I loved the life there,” he said.
One of the limiting factors in his acting career was that --- one of the things that you do when you’re an actor is, you do bus-and-truck tours, you go to the hinterlands and you perform the thing that was on Broadway two years ago, just like we do in San Francisco. “I made this weird decision – I wanted to be in New York more than I wanted to act. I was waiting tables, I started tending, and that tending turned into a knack for building quantification models, and I gravitated toward Wall Street and there was good money there.” So I’m an actor, I said I’d do anything, so (it was) like a highly-paid deadend job for me. It was never a career, and that was fun.
In 2006, my wife, who’d been working for our church in New York – the Presbyterian Church – got poached by a church in San Francisco, and she was a minister there for a few years, so we moved to San Francisco. We never thought we’d leave New York – it was the center of the universe, so why would you leave – so we looked at San Francisco, and we thought, there’s something there, there’s life there, there’s culture there, there’s things that we liked about New York, and one step to slow down a little bit in life; and I continued to build models for the corporate world – the day job – But I also picked up a guitar and a pen, and started writing songs, performing songs --- When I got married, I picked up two things that people traditionally give up when they get serious about life, when they get married – The year that I got married I picked up a guitar and a motorcycle, and I conned my wife into taking motorcycle lessons with me, just so that she would have a rational fear, not an irrational fear, of what it is, but I thought I knew her well enough; she ended up riding herself.
When we lived in New York, we ended up doing several 5,000-mile trips -- Nova Scotia, Louisiana, coast of Georgia – The year we moved to San Francisco and we got a car. In New York you don’t really need a car, and we didn’t do any long trips any more. But I still rode everywhere.
The year that we moved to San Francisco, (he asked for a time signal and was told that he’d get a signal when he had five minutes left), he recorded his first album in Brooklyn and was going to mix it here, and the lesson he learned there was about preparation and perfection. The producer told him about the value of preparation: Before you get to the studio, rehearse every note backwards and forwards, and know them backwards and forwards. And when you get to the studio door, forget everything and just play. I thought that was cool. Stuck with me. I don’t always prepare that well, but the value of the preparation, and the value of letting the preparation go – it’s that weird perfectionism, if I don’t get it right then – (big sigh) failure.
I’ve since done a couple more albums. We moved to Moss Beach in 2013. We got a house that hadn’t been lived in in 20 years; it was a beach house for somebody, a family in San Francisco, unlivable; we fixed up the carriage house and lived there for a few years while we totally redid the main house.
Anybody here from the building department? (Everyone laughed.) It’s been a challenge.
I started a few businesses because I enjoyed recording music, I enjoy the collaborative arts. I enjoy the performing arts, you know, acting, music, the collaboration. I wrote a song. What does the lead guitar player have in mind for this? What does the bass player have in mind for this? Collaboration. There’s life there.
I built my house with other artists. And it looks like it. It’s great. But it’s funky, and it’s quirky and it’s weird. But it works! Hasn’t fallen down yet, in 10 years. Uhhhm –
Started a business in San Francisco, a mobile recording studio. I got to record bands in New York, we went back to Greenwich Village, to an annual festival at NYU, couple years in a row. A few years in a row we went over to Austin, South by Southwest; I got to record some name people; kinda cool.
Made a small fortune in the music industry. If you don’t know how to do that, it’s a very simple method: start with a large fortune, and stop when it gets small. (This was greeted by a lot of laughter.)
Music stuff industry: My most recent business I closed down about a year ago, Moss Beach Kombucha, just behind the airport (I don’t know if I got that right); I had a shop back there. Ten years ago – I was doing a lot of cooking. My wife and I went to Grace Cathedral for church, and they have a program where they cook (with?) wine, and I’m from Louisiana, I like to think of myself as a cook. So I was doing the cheffing, the menu creation; everybody comes, and you chop, you -- It was kind of fun, being the ringleader in the kitchen. I did that for a few years. But I hit a spot where I wasn’t working. And I thought, Y’know, I’m loving cooking, I’m curious about what I don’t know. I’m going to go to culinary school. So I took a couple of years off, went to culinary school, and when I finished, I thought okay, this midlife crisis has to come to an end; what do you want to do? And I didn’t want to stand on my feet for 18 hours a day; I was already making kombucha, and people said,I’d pay for that; and I thought, okay, I’ll let you. It was a trend for a while; it lived on the merit of the quality of the stuff, and the trend, not on my business acumen.
So I’m in two businesses, that survived on whatever talent I had. But talent’s not enough. I’ve always looked at folks who could actually do the meat and potatoes of business; as much alien from me as I am from them. The stuff of marketing. The stuff of sales. The stuff of strategic partnerships. Mmm …
Anyway, I rode a trend. It got pretty big. Bigger than I expected; all over the Northwest. And when Safeway and Whole Foods made a decision (***) two years ago, to remove me and a lot of my other peers from the shelf, I thought, okay, it’s time to move on. And I’m having (something) with people for a long time. Don’t know if you got that part, but I’m an alcoholic and I go to these meetings that are kind of anonymous, so I won’t tell you what the … (didn’t get that) But in that fellowship we sponsor people; start conversations about how they got there, and I was having dinner with an old sponsee of mine, and I’m thinking, okay, I’m 55 years old, I’ve got no marketable skills, I’m a good sponsor, I’m going to start charging you people. (laughter) Okay, I’m glad you caught that as a joke. Not everybody does.
But it bounced, and I thought, I can mentor people in a totally different world, and the mountain I’ve been climbing for the last year or so has been coaching. My coaching. I’ve wondered at times whether I’ll go into ministry, I’ve wondered at times whether I would go into therapy; my wife went into ministry. I tend to value regulation; traditional means, you have to go to an accredited school to get licensed for those things, and I’m in this career that has no rules; if you’re a coach you have to say you’re a coach and I have my own biases about that, that I’ve had to let go of. But what I’ve found is, just contribute! Just contribute. And it’s been fun.
So what I’ve been working on lately is a new art form, in service of this coaching career that I’ve got going. I‘ve got an Internet company that helps SEO for my Web site, and we haven’t really started yet because for me to really take the value of what they have to give I have to give something more than hey, this guy’s a good guy. A token of credibility. And they said, you should have a book. Don’t worry, we can have somebody ghost write it for you. And I thought, do you have any idea who I think I am? (laughter) I’m writing a book!
So, I’ve written a play. I’ve written a few albums. New art form: Man, it’s the same, but man, is it different. The scope is so much bigger. A song is just a poem with music, with a beat. Pulling together some interesting stuff: I’ve written it two-and-a-half times, it’s all fresh, but I’m getting there. It’s fun.
I love food. Think I’ve mentioned that. Louisiana, we have food. New York, there’s delis, there’s pizza, there’s everything. But I think Anthony Bourdain made a suggestion: When you go to New York, you can get the best of everything. But there’s one thing in New York that’s New York: and that’s deli. Now, there’s decent delis elsewhere, House of Bagels on Geary Street, they’re okay; but it’s not Ess-a-Bagel, my favorite, I think it’s 21st and First Avenue. San Francisco, you’re got sourdough, things that are local. I’m about to go on a trip; my wife has a birthday this year that ends in zero. Her brothers live in Greenville, South Carolina and I want to throw her a party. I don’t want to go to Greenville because it’s boring; so we’re renting a house in Ashville, North Carolina and she’s going to fly over there. I’m going to ride the motorcycle because I have not had a long trip in over 20 years. I’ll do about 10,000 miles this time.
And as I go around, I’ll plan my menu. What’s really cool is, can I hit Albuquerque during hatch season – I don’t know when hatch peppers come out, but different places have different things – in the fall, someone said – and he considered, canned or dry?
Kevin, speaking well of Douglas’ encouragement of contributing, told him that 15 kids would be inoculated against polio in his name. The marble draw was held; Clark won but drew a green marble.
CLUB MEETING, March 6, 2025
Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay President Irwin Cohen noted, as he rang the bell, that we were starting early because there were a lot of announcements. The Thursday, March 6 meeting at the Half Moon Bay Library was called to order at 12:08 p.m. Doug Mallon, husband of Rotarian Stacy Trevenon and club visitor that day, led the Pledge of Allegiance. John Evans gave the thought for the day: “You can’t always do good, but you can always be kind.” Agreement and applause followed that.
Visiting Rotarians and guests of Rotarians, and announcement by Rotarians, were recognized next: Susan Kealey’s partner Dennis Fisher; Doug Mallon; Warren Barmore noted that he had been a visiting Rotarian at one time and wanted to share a flag from “far, far away” meaning England where he had gone on a two-week vacation and during which he had visited a dinner meeting of the Rotary Club of London “the first Rotary club, as they tout, in the UK,” (1911), and he brought greetings from that club President Candy Liu. That meeting was right around the corner from his hotel and near Hyde Park; he had brought them a Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay flag though they didn’t know exactly where HMB was. Warren went on to say that that club was not large though it had a huge Rotaract club. The meeting drew about 30 people; that day’s speaker was from Linked In and he discussed using Linked In and AI. He said he was more concerned about going to a Rotary club meeting in Paris since he didn’t speak or understand the language. Susan Kealey spoke of our club’s creek-cleaning project, and noted that one of the things we wanted to do was the creek here in town. For that we need a contact with the Sheriff’s department, to make sure that we are safe and working properly with the people who live there; she asked that anyone who had such contact information to let her know. Ginger Minoletti asked if everyone was familiar with Coastside Gives coming up in May for local nonprofits and in which we all are participating on our own or by reaching out to contacts such as Rotarians from other clubs or around the world. All we need is for someone to click on the Web site, the QR code, and donate $25-$50. If enough people do that, we will reach our goal of $10,000. That will go toward Rotary’s goal of supporting mental health for youth; we can be coordinating with the Boys and Girls Club and the new program they have. This is an exciting time, Ginger said, and a chance to see the local nonprofits talk about what they do and how they do it. Also, she emphasized that we need a few new members; and urged current members to invite someone for lunch and to hear our “exciting” speakers. Just invited someone to share a lunch.
Noting that around asking for money, Warren said he had “no shame” in doing so. He spoke of our Rotary foundation, TRF, to which we give annually. Our club is at almost 70 percent Every Rotarian Every Year and we want to get to 100 percent and we have a limited amount of time – till June -- to hit that number.
Nancy Wolfberg said that, speaking for Charise McHugh around Life Skills, we are short several people needed for Life Skills on Monday, April 7 and Tuesday, April 8. On 8:30 on the seventh we need two people and at 11:15 we need one – this is at Half Moon Bay High School – and on Tuesday we need two people at 8:30 and one at 11:15. She invited us to see her to be part of that. See her after the meeting.
Doug Mallon, speaking for his wife Stacy who was taking meeting notes, said they too went to a club meeting in a far-off land: Woodland Hills, CA, down in the San Fernando Valley. It was their second visit to that club. That time, Doug and Stacy gave them a Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay flag, but they did not have one to give us. The president of that club, Sandy Rosenholz, said that they would send Half Moon Bay a club mug and, in lieu of a flag, gave them a book that he had gotten when he attended PETS. That was “Challenges are Inevitable; Defeat is Optional” by Roger Crawford (a star baseball player at Canton McKinley High School in Ohio) who was a motivational speaker at that PETS. This gentleman had been born with two fingers extending from his left forearm, another finger from the right one, his left leg shorter than his right and two toes on what in his book he described as “a useless foot,” a twisted knee and no stability. He mentions in his book that the doctor at the time told his parents that he did not believe the baby would ever walk. His book is filled with motivational quotes which begin each chapter – including lines from popular songs by well-known artists. He went on to become an elite athlete.
Holding up the book, Doug said that “This is in lieu of a flag,” and anyone who wishes to borrow it can see Stacy. She added that his story of overcoming challenges that he was born with and that all of us encounter as we go about life, which overcoming them is something he speaks about in his book and which she would be “happy to loan” to anyone in our club who would like to read it. Club members were invited to contact her if they wish.
Incoming Half Moon Bay club president Kevin O’Brien said that he was off the next day to the weekend-long (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) PETS – “President-Elect Training Seminar” – and though he had been club president once before and “you can be sure they’re going to train me again.” Laughter ensured. He went on to note that it was time to start thinking about Lobsterfest, though it was early now (the event is scheduled for Aug. 23), and for it we will need “all hands on deck” and now we can start thinking about who we can invite to it. We’d like everyone to invite at least two people, other than Rotarians. And also, think about donation items for the auction. Again, Kevin said, one thing that is planned again is the wine pull; a lot of money was made before at the wine pull, when wine was donated and sold at $25 a bottle. Last year, Shirley Kellicutt came through with a lot of wine and hopefully will do so again this year. He added that he saw Shirley, with her walker, at the tour of the local medical clinic. “She still wants to be part of the club,” Kevin said.
He went on to note that the District Assembly is March 22. It’s one thing that the club pays for, so it doesn’t cost Rotarians anything to go. It starts at 8:30 a.m. that morning, and we don’t have to be there that early; in the afternoon there are “great, great sessions,” on all the different aspects of Rotary, and he recommended that we attend.
The Rotary International convention is in Calgary in June and it is still possible to sign up for it. Kevin and Debbie are going and looking forward to it. He’d lived there when in third grade. And, we’re distributing dictionaries now. He’s in charge of getting them distributed at Hatch School and he will follow up with the date for that. He reminded us that it’s fun to do and how the kids light up when they get their dictionaries. The labels are all in them now, and he asked anyone who would like to go with him to Hatch, to let him know. It only takes about 45 minutes, and is a lot of fun. Stacy said she’d like to go, and at least two other Rotarians volunteered. Ginger noted that if you miss the District Assembly in the morning, you’ll miss the opportunity to cheer on our own incoming President Kevin and our own incoming District Governor Mitone. So, 8:30 to 9 is a good time to arrive. Kevin noted that there’s food there. It is at Redwood High School in Larkspur. Paul Wrubel and Heather Bodmann volunteered for dictionary duty.
John Evans noted that we are going to have an outbound youth exchange student for the first time since before Covid: Kenji Hokum (I didn’t get the name distinctly). He recalled that before Covid we sent a student to Chile and she’d gotten stuck there. That year we’d had students from France and Laura from Brazil. Kenji is in the “daunting” process of completing paperwork (the State Department has gotten bigger.) Which means we will also have an inbound student of high school age, whose choices of countries were Italy, France and Spain. Mark Freeman who is our district rep, does a good job. Kenji will be 19 in September, graduating this year, which makes him an outbound student and puts him in another category. John clarified that we will have an inbound high-school-age student and he will keep us posted when we know more about who that is. In answer to a question, John clarified that according to Rotary youth exchange, exchange students are of high school age. Outbound means that someone sponsored by our club is going on exchange. The inbound student will be from one of those three countries.
He also gave an update on Louise: recently he and Larkin had been shopping in Palo Alto and went to a French café for soup and foamy coffee. He sent photos of it to the students from France, and immediately Louise sent back a photo of her and Ev, a student in Pacifica that our current district governor hosted. He asked Louise how her job at Louis Vuitton was, and she wrote back that she loved her job, got along well with her boss, loved the company and being in Paris, and that her office was right next to the Louvre!!
