by Woody Weingarten, Bay City News

(L-R) Cove Elementary fifth grader Nora Zalewski speaks with an Áegis Living Corte Madera resident in Corte Madera, Calif., on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (Kristy Dell via Bay City News)

“BINGO! OH, YEAH!” 

That could have been anyone yelling at a bingo palace, but this time it was a resident senior at Áegis Living Center in Corte Madera.

In the Marin County assisted living memory care facility, the game’s not all about winning; it’s the basis of a learning exercise.

Kids from Kristy Dell’s fifth grade class at Cove Elementary School, on field trips, have been teaching the gray-hairs how to play, how to follow the rules and still enjoy the game, while they, in turn, learn how to really talk with old-timers and how to learn from them.

Dell’s brainchild, the project also led her charges to read poetry and share artwork with their elders, make greeting cards for them, present a Constitutional play and follow up with a song, and teach and fold origami.

(L-R) Elementary student Ben Dell explains how origami works to an Áegis Living Corte Madera resident in Corte Madera, Calif., on Monday, June 1, 2026. (Kristy Dell via Bay City News)

All this took place during six different visits last year, and Dell can’t wait for the next semester, which starts in August at the East Corte Madera school. Although she believes that a good mix already was provided her 41-student, double-sized class (in which she supervises two other teachers), she’s convinced that the variety of activities can be increased.

“And I’d like the class to get more of the residents’ stories,” she says. “This year, my first of doing it, it was very kid-heavy, and I’d like to make it more resident-heavy.”

Dell’s son, Ben, was in the pilot program. “There was no greater joy than seeing the seniors light up upon seeing us,” he says.

Classmate Marlowe Uchrin echoes the positivity: “I loved going to Áegis because it was a great way to talk with people in our community and learn about the people around me. Looking back on elementary school will be a memory that will stay with me for a long time.”

On the senior side, Nancy Morrow reports that “what I liked best was how honest the kids were, and how willing they were to share their ideas with older people. I thought they were terrific.”

And Susan Perdiue says “the best thing about the fifth graders coming here was that they were very open, friendly, and polite. They were well prepared, and it was clear that were having fun, too.”

Dell had accurately warned the students upfront that “singing a song or playing bingo may not be as easy as you think it is — some seniors may be grumpy, not hear well, or not move around well, and you may have to make space for wheelchairs, walkers and canes, and learn to remain in what might be an uncomfortable situation.”

She had the kids role-play to see how it would work, how their behavior could have a big impact on other people, and how they could develop leadership skills. She also hoped to weave in what she believed was being lost these days — a sense of morals and ethics.

She wasn’t sure, of course, that her intergenerational idea would work. “You can talk to the kids about something like kindness, conflict resolution, empathy, or good communication skills, but until you put their feet to the fire, you don’t know if they really learn those things.”

Áegis, which sits on East Paradise Drive, also offers residents the following, according to its website, www.aegisliving.com — chef-prepared meals, a full-service salon, a private theater, a library, daily on-site licensed nurses, pet-friendly apartments, and transportation to shops and restaurants, medical appointments, and the Moraga Country Club.”

Still, Dell admits she wasn’t 100% comfortable during the kids’ first visit. That’s because “although half were all smiles, some were curmudgeonly about having kids in their space. By the end, though, everyone wanted to know when we were coming back.”

Kristy Dell teaches class at Cove Elementary School in Corte Madera on Thursday, May 7, 2026. (Angela Roche via Bay City News)

One senior who’d been hesitant at first, she remembers, “cried when one of the kids gave him a drawing of a car from the 1930s and, not assuming his age, said, ‘Maybe your parents drove this car.’”

The kids, who also led a holiday toy drive in conjunction with the Central Marin Fire Department, sidestepped potential minor problems.

Dell and they had decided together that they should do Q&A sessions so residents could throw un-censored questions at them. But one asked, “What was the last time you got into trouble and how?” The kids were cautious enough not to reveal any dark secrets and instead “answered about having an extra scoop of ice cream, not brushing their teeth, or not practicing their instrument for 15 minutes.”

Dell “didn’t think to warn them not to bring up politics. The facility has a social chair who asked a political question that was a little tricky, and all bandwagoned against Trump.

(R-L) Elementary student Marlowe Uchrin sits with an Áegis Living Corte Madera resident during a round of BINGO in Corte Madera, Calif., on Monday, June 1, 2026. (Kristy Dell via Bay City News)

That, she added, “also led to a discussion when we got back to class and did a debriefing about never making assumptions about other people’s beliefs about politics, religion, or anything else — and watching out for regurgitating what your parents or older siblings say, or what you overhear from anyone else.”

Dell’s excitement about how her program worked is easily summed up. “Everything went smoothly, and my overall take was that the kids were thrilled because a lot of them overcame fears, a lot pushed themselves out of their comfort zones, and a lot got to see the instant gratification of what can come from their kindness, their words, or their action.”

She, too, learned from the intergenerational sessions — “that there’s still good in the world, post-Covid, despite the news being the way it is. The kids found a way they could help, be vulnerable and kind, and see that those actions will pay back ten-fold when it might initially feel cheesy or be something they don’t want to do.

“And I learned that I can foster that.”

Snapshots of Grossinger family are featured in documentary. Screenshot from We Met at Grossinger’s.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

People with a mere two drops of cultural Jewish blood trickling through their veins are still likely to enjoy a new film centering on the heyday of the Catskill Mountains, We Met at Grossinger’s.

The historical documentary also focuses on family (the Grossinger’s and everyone else’s), and on kosher food and vacations and corny jokes.

And anti-Semitism.

Not to mention Jackie Robinson, Barney Ross, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mel Brooks, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and name changing.

Plus a taboggan slide, all-you-can-eat food orgies, and Woodstock.

The nostalgic documentary virtually guarantees that viewers — non-Jews included — can smile at its homey (haimish) tales and “Jewish vibe,” and maybe even once or twice tear up.

But it’s also likely to frustrate, with Borscht Belt stars like Joel Grey being interviewed too rarely live — and segments with five living members of the Grossinger family not being labeled enough so it’s tough to grok who’s narrating at any given moment.

The keyword in We Met at Grossinger’s could be excess — excess menu choices, excess sports and dancing and other activities, excess passive entertainment, excess exhaustion, even excess sex.

All salted with joy, however.

The 1¾-hour doc begins with the notion of the upstate New York resort hotel starting as a place for immigrant Jews and their children — who’d suffered from deprivation abroad and were still banned from many, many venues in the United States — to escape from discrimination and the intolerable summer heat of New York City.

We Met at Grossinger’s pulls no punches, referring to signs like “No Jews or dogs allowed,” in golf and country clubs and so many other venues.

The film talks of the family beginning with a boarding house with seven rooms that took in $81 a week, then building a nest egg that allowed purchase of a bigger structure down the road. Ultimately, Grossinger’s rested on 1,000 acres on a lake.

The growth spurts jumpstarted other Borscht Belt folks building “everything included” complexes that at the area’s peak in the ‘50s included 537 other hotels.

The hotel’s first turning point, the film indicates, comes when co-founder Jennie Grossinger invites Barney Ross, in effect, to be a “boxer in residence.” Another milestone follows shortly thereafter when she invites Major League Baseball’s black race barrier-buster Jackie Robinson to the facility.

Later in the documentary, directed by Paula Eiselt, Robinson shows up for television’s first interracial hug in the episode of the groundbreaking Ralph Edwards’ reality show, “This Is Your Life,” that was a tribute to her.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (left) is a house guest of Jennie Grossinger. Screenshot from We Met at Grossinger’s.

In its mid-section, We Met at Grossinger’s details the story of its main character, Jennie, overachiever/hotel hostess who’d left school after the sixth grade to help her family get enough to eat.

Also spotlighted are Jennie’s immigrant mother, Malka, who is surprisingly progressive for an Orthodox Jew; and her daughter Elaine, who readily admits she was long angry with her mom because the elder Grossinger had dumped her into the lap of a governess while Jennie made love to a hotel.

Often and at length.

Ironically, perhaps, the women form a trifecta of successive empowerment that ran one of the biggest cold-beet-soup and entertainment centers in the mountains.

Actor Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher are among the thousands who married at Grossinger’s resort. Screenshot from We Met at Grossinger’s.

Throughout the flick, as might be expected, there are talking heads interspersed with short film and TV clips, photo album family shots, gag-lines, and name-dropping, name-dropping, name-dropping.

Factual tidbits can be amusing when we learn that Jenny’s yummy rye bread made its way onto supermarket racks, and that she compiled a Grossinger’s cookbook even though she has no time to cook.

We stop, too, for a moment to linger at Dirty Dancing, which used Grossinger’s as the inspiration for its location.

We also are fed references to more modern times — including the Covid-19 pandemic and Israel’s plight in the Middle East.

We Met at Grossinger’s, which is sold out for tomorrow’s screening in the 46th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (at the Jewish Community Center San Francisco), will be shown again, as the fest’s Closing Night feature, at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland, on Saturday, Aug. 1.

The film uses words well to create a mood. It sums things up with these phrases, “We have made this country a better place, we have actually made this country a funnier place.”

Then it proffers the slightly schmaltzy, feel-good idea that Jewish history has “lots of dark moments, but the Borscht Belt was anything but.”

The title is a bit misleading, of course. We Met at Grossinger’s sounds like a run-of-the-mill rom-com — implying, let’s say, an actress like Jennifer Grey, after a botched abortion, runs off with a testosterone-heavy Patrick Swayze — when, in truth, the doc covers an entire short-lived universe at a time when The American Dream was a good deal more accessible than now.

Woody Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.comand https://vitalitypress.com. His books include Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer, aimed at male caregivers; MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of his newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that he co-authored with his then 8-year-old granddaughter.

The front yard of Tam House 1 in San Anselmo, Calif., on Thursday, June 25, 2026. Tam House is a non-profit cooperative living facility in downtown San Anselmo, California, that provides affordable, shared housing for independent seniors aged 62 and over. (Suellen Lamorte via Bay City News)

By WOODY WEINGARTEN, Bay City News

Affordability is shaping up to be the buzzword for this year’s midterm elections, and housing is the central issue.

The solution to achieving widespread affordability is complex, certainly. But in upscale San Anselmo, Tam House offers a seemingly simple answer — lodging 21 single seniors in private rooms and communal spaces in two homes.

Low-income residents pay rents of only $1,130 (private bath) or $1,050 (bath shared with one other person).

Tam House, a nonprofit linked to the Ross Valley Ecumenical Housing Association (RVEHA), apparently achieves the “high quality affordable housing” that’s always been its goal. Because of that, it regularly draws kudos from its residents.

Peter Penhallow, a 72-year-old, has lived in Tam House 1 with 10 others for 3½ years. His attitude is upbeat. “I’m lucky to have a roof over my head at a reasonable price in a familial community in the town that I grew up in,” he reports.

Suellen Lamorte can see Tam 1 from her nearby home. She, too, as might be expected of a five-year member of the board, is a cheerleader. “I am honored to be a part of Tam House, which is unique and a good model that works so well it could be copied by communities all across the country. Seeing it just makes me happy.”

Tam House — which restricts itself to folks 63 or older willing to share chores such as washing dishes, sweeping floors, or light gardening — is subsidized by grants from a multitude of civic organizations.

And tradespeople sometimes give discounts to known residents, “because everyone seems to like the basic idea,” says Lamorte.

The facility is not assisted living, however, which means — she says — “that residents have to take care of all their daily functions alone and are mobile.”

Hal Russek, house manager for both buildings, explains that “generally, we are looking for people on fixed income, but whose funding is adequate so they can pay rent at this low rate.”

The maximum annual income for a working person is $65,000.

No smoking is allowed but shared-living benefits include Comcast on flat-screen TVs in the two living rooms and access to wi-fi and a newspaper. Tam 1 has an upright piano.

A few current residents have cars and drive, and a handful do work (one, for example, is a crossing guard, another is employed by a dog-grooming place).

“Generally, people who come in are a few years short of or over 70,” says Russek, who makes sure to point out that “we no longer require funds from local, state or federal subsidies. Tam House should be able to sustain itself for generations to come.”

To be accepted, prospective residents need credit and criminal background checks; once in, each person is expected to get along with the others and be considerate. “One man was a dangerous hoarder whose place wasn’t safe. He was asked to move,” notes Lamorte, a retired teacher who has also volunteered for Marin Villages and Age and Disability Friendly San Anselmo.

Although alcohol is permitted, “inappropriate, intoxicated behavior is cause for termination,” the Tam House website proclaims ­— as are bullying, verbal threats, and violence, the last being a cause for action right on the spot.

Rent includes five dinners a week, Monday through Friday, freshly cooked by affable Martin (pronounced Mar-teen) Michael. Although no special diets are accommodated, health-conscious menus vary considerably. Examples include eggplant parmesan with orzo and green salads; cashew chicken with jasmine rice; salmon with avocado, brown rice, and veggies; pasta with artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes; roast lamb; beef stew; and chicken enchiladas with rice and beans.

Food, the Tam House Mission Statement says, is also “on hand for residents to prepare their own breakfasts.”

Tam House has no wait list, “but if you would like to be informed when a place opens up, just send us your email [to tamanager@comcast.net] and we will let you know,” says Lamorte, who had been San Anselmo’s representative on the Marin County Commission on Aging.

Physically, Lamorte adds, “Tam 1 is on Tamalpais Avenue, right downtown, and Tam 2 is on the corner of Woodland and Cedar, so each is within walking distance of the other as well as the library, parks, coffee shops, and restaurants.”

Tam 1 opened in 1982, Tam 2 in 2007. Both sit on quiet, tree-lined, residential streets.

It took the four organizational founders — Ross Valley Rotary Club, First Presbyterian Church of San Anselmo, and St. Anselmo Catholic Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, both in Ross — several years of exploration and study before they could incorporate RVEHA in 1977.

Lamorte notes that no ceiling exists on how long an individual can stay, so it’s not surprising that the two Tam House buildings have become the site of “lots of friendships.”

No romances have been leaked to the press.

Screenshot from Hollywood Does Abortion documentary shows protest outside clinic.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

Hollywood Does Abortion is all about Tinseltown not wanting to do them. Or eventually caving and depicting the issue through a right-of-center lens.

The one-hour, 39-minute documentary traces a controversial topic that’s appeared more and more frequently over the decades on bigger home screens and smaller movie-house surfaces. From troubled pre-Roe vs. Wade days through today’s troubled post-Dobbs times. Political progress and retreat.

It features what feels like hundreds of quick cuts — clip after clip from flicks and telecasts and newscasts, plus tons of heads that won’t stop talking. Producers and writers and analysts and you-name-its.

Virtually every position on the subject is explored a bit, so a viewer can’t escape learning something unlearned before.

The dense panorama begins with Norman Lear’s TV heroine Maude shoving history forward by contemplating an abortion, and the public backlash that series generated; it ends with a monotone thought-balloon that we should all be tolerant and try to make the world a little better; and detours along the way for gossip and a peek at Marilyn Monroe’s abortion or miscarriage or whatever that momentary headline-grabbing, national trauma was.

The film — which was executive produced by Rachel Bloom, who will be honored July 18 at with the Freedom of Expression Award at the 46th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival — is interesting but not compelling. That may be due to its being somewhat choppy (fragmented, if you will) and mostly chronological.

Bloom, activist and co-creator and acting star of the CW musical/comedy/drama series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, probably couldn’t care less what critics say about Hollywood Does Abortion because, after having helped spearhead the pet project, it’s now out there, at festivals at least, and from her standpoint, the more publicity, the better.

But the doc isn’t unlike a high-school class in gender politics, emphasizing multiple historic pivots as if they were tiny subheads.

Showing dramatized pre-surgical exam is screenshot from Hollywood Does Abortion.

It flits, for example, from Dirty Dancing and its branding abortion as dangerous, whether illegal or not; to Evangelicals getting heavily involved politically; to Operation Rescue with its attacks on abortion clinics and doctors; to the era of folks again wanting the procedure to disappear under the rug and be safe, legal, and rare; to a tribute to Grey’s Anatomy and how consistent the TV series has been regarding a sensitive coverage of the subject; to the not unexpected reversal of Roe; to the evolution of abortion via a welcomed pill; to the rise of streaming and its shedding of pressures from corporate bigwigs and advertisers.

Hollywood Does Abortion, which has no explosions or car chases or, indeed, any action whatsoever, sidetracks momentarily into the evolution of gay relationships on screen, and to a dozen other headline topics. That’s its biggest flaw, trying too hard to do too much.

But there’s so much content — content that appears to change every second and a half — that pro-abortion activists can find plenty to love. And to hate.

Ditto, anti-abortionists.

Either way, it’s an immersive, mildly intriguing under-two-hour mental road-trip from that Maude show in the fall of 1972 to now.

Picturing happy post-birth, on screenshot from Hollywood Does Abortion, shows how Tinseltown and TV skirt controversial issue.

Nuns, shown here as convent chorus in Sister Act, provide cover for Deloris Van Cartier, who’s fleeing murderous gangsters. Photo by Eric Chazankin.

By WOODY WEINGARTEN

After an astoundingly exciting, fast, feel-good first half of Sister Act, the 21 performers at the 6th St. Playhouse in Santa Rosa couldn’t quite transcend the slightly slower pace in Act II that the script prescribed.

But that was the only visible flaw in the 2½-hour production. In fact, almost every element of the musical-comedy was superlative:

• The smoothly movable set, designed by Laurynn Malilty, was of Broadway quality, better than any seen in the Bay Area in years. Depiction of the inside of a convent was pinpoint perfect, down to the tiniest detail, and all the other backdrops were equally well thought out and constructed.

• Deloris Van Cartier, the role made famous by Whoopi Goldberg in the 1992 Sister Act film as she became a fake nun while hiding from murderous gangsters, is exquisitely filled by Majesty Scott. She’s a quadruple threat who’s obviously mastered singing, acting, comedy, and dancing.

• Costumes co-designed by Barbara Page and Carolyn Bartlett, sensationally ranged from quietly spiritual to in-your-face glitzy. All of them add to a theatergoer’s amusement.

• Tracy Hinman skillfully depicted the Mother Superior, wearing her emotions — from disdain to a loving acceptance — on the sleeves of her habit.

• Choreography by Jorey Cantu guaranteed smiles on the faces of audience members. It featured tons of snappy hand movements and even a low-kicking nun’s chorus line.

• Chase Thompson was amazingly rubber-legged and rubber-armed while dancing as T.J., a thug. It was impossible to not laugh at — and appreciate — his exaggerated, comedic body movements.

• Most folks weren’t likely to leave the Santa Rosa theater singing any of the unfamiliar songs (music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Glenn Slater), despite some of the 19 musical numbers being incredibly bouncy or remarkably melancholy. The eclectic score nevertheless successfully moved the storyline by Bill and Cheri Steinkellner along, silly and predictable as it was.

Majesty Scott portrays hiding lounge singer Deloris Van Cartier. Photo by Eric Chazankin.

• Chorus members were mostly cheery, a contagion that spread throughout the packed audience, and soloists were so strong the crowd reacted with frequent wild applause and occasional screeching. Especially memorable were Andrew Cedeno singing “I Could Be That Guy” as Eddie Souther; Isiah Carter as Curtis Jackson, mobster chieftain (‘When I Find My Baby’); and Hannah Passanisi as Sister Mary Robert (‘The Life I Never Led’) — plus, of course, Majesty Scott as Deloris (the title tune) and Tracy Hinman as Mother Superior (‘Haven’t Got a Prayer”).

• The eight-member band in the pit, led by music director and keyboardist Ginger Beavers, played at just the right level so the sound didn’t overshadow any of the individual singers.

• Director Megan Bartlett, along with stage manager Celina Kegerreis, tracked everything at once during rehearsals, then shattered the chaos by helping each performer be precisely where he/she/they were supposed to be.

Put all those positive talking points together and what do you end up with? An exceptional show that fulfills its promise to entertain and let theatergoers have fun, all the while managing to ignore the constant Breaking News.

Sister Act will run through June 27 at the 6th St. Playhouse, 52 W. 6th St., Santa Rosa. Tickets: $31.95 to $55.95. Info: (707) 523-4185 or boxoffice@6thstreetplayhouse.com.

Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.comand https://vitalitypress.com. His books include Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer, aimed at male caregivers; MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of his newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that he co-authored with his then 8-year-old granddaughter.