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August 28, 2018
 This
month Peter was a guest on the radio show
"The Mystical
Positivist" which is broadcast on KOWS-LP FM
107.3 in Occidental, CA. You can listen to what Peter
had to say via a podcast
at this link.
California
resident Matteo Troncone spent years collecting the
footage for "Arrangiarsi (Pizza and the Art of
Living)", a documentary which made its debut at last
year’s Mill Valley Film Festival. The movie screens
Thursday at the Sebastiani Theatre at 7 p.m., with
complimentary wine and authentic Neapolitan pizza served
at 6:30. Peter, who mentored the filmmaker throughout
his process, will join Troncone onstage for Q&A after
the show. Tickets to the screening are $20 in
advance, available at www.sebastianitheatre.com.
"The ideas in the film
felt familiar to Peter. He really relates to the idea of
arrangiarsi," Troncone said.
Napa
Valley Museum Yountville continues its popular "In
Conversation" series of speaking events with
"Compassionate Action," a discussion of how to turn our
individual compassion into positive action for the
benefit of others, our world and ourselves. Coyote will
join his friend, vintner and humanitarian Dick Grace,
for a frank and lively exchange of ideas about
channeling frustration into renewed energy, turning
anger into empathy, and how to avoid feeling overwhelmed
by the scope of the challenges facing us by making small
steps individually, or as part of a larger movement, to
build the foundation for lasting change.
 Coyote
and Grace are longtime collaborators in compassion who
have travelled and participated in philanthropic
projects together in China, Mongolia, Tibet and Nepal.
Coyote, an ordained Zen Priest, comes at compassion from
a more structured approach based on extensive study and
rigorous practice. Grace, by contrast, although also a
Buddhist, relies more on instinct and emotion. Says
Coyote: "I think Dick’s practice is a total immersion in
compassion." The two share a profound commitment to
kindness, to being present, and to carrying their
spiritual commitments forward into concrete positive
action. Says Grace: "A lot of Buddhists spend their time
sitting on cushions staring at flames, but what you do
with your life is much more important. Too many of us
keep our spirituality as an abstract thing rather than
living it." Through this "Compassionate Action" event,
these two men will share their experiences and insights
on lives lived with a commitment to compassion, and
answer questions from those seeking to do the same.
The event will take place
in the Main Gallery on Friday, September 21 from 6 to
8:30 pm. Admission is $20 for Museum Members and $35 for
Non-Members. Capacity is strictly limited. Tickets are
available via the Museum’s website (www.napavalleymuseum.org)
and at the direct ticket link: www.eventbrite.com.
Proceeds from the evening benefit the Museum’s arts and
education programs.
 "THE
MAYO CLINIC: FAITH - HOPE - SCIENCE" is a new
two-hour documentary executive-produced by Ken Burns and
directed by Burns, Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren
Ewers, narrated by Peter and featuring the voices of Tom
Hanks, Sam Waterston, Kevin Conway, Blythe Danner, Josh
Lucas, Carolyn McCormick and Gene Jones. The film tells
the story of William Worrall Mayo, an English immigrant
who began practicing medicine with his sons Will and
Charlie in the late 1800s in Rochester, Minnesota. When
a deadly tornado tore through their small community in
1883, the Mayos took charge of recovery efforts,
enlisting the help of the nearby Sisters of Saint
Francis to care for patients. Afterwards, Mother Alfred
Moes, the leader of the convent, told Dr. Mayo she had a
vision from God that instructed her to build a hospital,
with him as its director. She believed it would become
"world renowned for its medical arts."
Blending historical
narrative with contemporary patient stories, this
documentary is a timely look at how one institution has
met the changing demands of healthcare for 150 years—and
what that can teach us about facing the challenges of
patient care today. It will premiere Tuesday, September
25, 2018.
August 10, 2018
In
the summer of 1967, San Francisco’s first all-female
rock band burst onto the scene. But despite their
success during the Summer of Love, no record label ever
signed The Ace of Cups. 50 years later, they’re
coming out with their debut album on November 8th. Album
guests include legendary players and long-time friends
of the band, including Peter singing "As the Rain".
Flashback! Here's a very young and
handsome Coyote strumming his guitar.
June 17, 2018
On
June 10, 2018, the Press Democrat published an excellent
article on Peter called "Peter Coyote on a Life Lived
Aloud". You can read it
at this link. Included were these wonderful photos
of Peter at his home in Sebastopol, CA.
May 31, 2018
 Peter
has a couple more documentaries to add to his long list
of voice-overs. The first one is called "25 Steps"
directed by Steffan Tubbs. The film tells an amazing
story of two WWII Stalag POWs who meet for the first
time 70 years later. It will have its premiere on June 6
in Centenniel, Colorado. Peter will also narrate an
upcoming documentary about former San Francisco
mayor and Pacific alumnus George Moscone '53.
Director Nat Katzman told the press, "Peter brings to
the project a wealth of experience as the narrator of
some of the most significiant documentaries in
television history." The project is being produced by
Pacific and will highlight the life and political career
of Moscone, who strongly advocated for the rights and
protections for all people, regardless of color, gender,
race, nationality, sexual orientation or age. The
progressiveness of his San Francisco mayoral campaign
helped give the city its contemporary identity.
April 14, 2018
On
March 5 I posted a youtube link to Peter's talk - "Lifting
the Fog of Fake News" at the Commonweal Gallery in
Bolinas, CA. You can now access that speech via
this podcast.
April 10, 2018
 WGN
America Picks Up Canadian Mystery Drama with Peter
Coyote! WGN America has announced that it has
secured the U.S. rights to the crime series "The
Disappearance". The six-part mystery series,
directed by Peter Stebbings, was created and written by
Normand Daneau and Geneviève Simard. Peter plays a
retired judge plunged into despair when his beloved
10-year-old grandchild goes missing. The script for the
series had to pass his "must
surprise me in the first ten pages" test. It did. He
also liked that it was a limited run series. Filming
took place in Montreal in November 2016 and was aired on
Canadian televsion last year. The release date is still
TBD.
In an interview, Peter told the press that the scenario
is one he can relate to as a father. He said, "I think
for any parent, it must be the top of their list of
phobias to imagine their child being kidnapped. My
mother told me that I grew up in a town where Charles
Lindbergh’s child was kidnapped seven years earlier, and
she told me my father stalked the house with a pistol
every night after I was born because he was so afraid of
kidnappers. You can imagine if a child is kidnapped, you
are unable to protect them from whatever. Your
imagination will run crazy. I think that is why it is
such an enduring theme. The characters are beautifully
etched. They are complicated and the actors are all
phenomenal. A mix of American, Canadian and Australian
actors - they are all spot on."
Here are more publicity shots from the series:
 Upcoming
event! In Conversation: Clemantine Wamariya & Peter
Coyote. Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when
more than 800,000 people were murdered in her home
country of Rwanda. Raw, urgent, yet disarmingly
beautiful, her book, "The Girl Who Smiled Beads",
captures the true costs and aftershocks of war. Join
author Clemantine Wamariya and Peter Coyote in
conversation about this important and timely topic. This
event will be held on May 12 at Copperfield's Books in
Sebastopol, CA from 7:00 - 8:30 PM.
 The
world premiere of the documentary "Olompali",
narrated by Peter, will be held on May 6, 2018 at the
DocLands Film Festival. Written by Greg Gibbs and McCoy,
the 83-minute film will be shown at the Sequoia
Theater in Mill Valley at 4:30 PM. The synopsis reads:
"Nearly 100,000 youth migrated to San Francisco during
1967’s Summer of Love to turn on, tune in, and drop out.
A short time later, a group of kindred spirits calling
itself the 'Chosen Family' built a satellite base camp
30 miles to the north on a pastoral piece of land once
home to Coastal Miwok. Like so many utopian experiments,
this one included highs—all kinds of them—and lows,
tragic ones. Social currents passed through the Olompali
commune in ocean waves: clothing was optional, authority
disdained, and weed widely distributed. Peter Coyote
narrates this warmly reflective story, which crosses
paths with the Grateful Dead, Hells Angels, the Diggers,
and a guru given the title 'father.' It also drops in
key chords from the era’s soundtrack. Resisting
judgment, and powered by the perspective of the
commune’s children, Olompali celebrates the 'hippie'
spirit and one man’s effort to invent a new world in
Novato."
March 5, 2018
On
February 24, 2018, Peter gave a talk on "Lifting the
Fog of Fake News" at the Commonweal Gallery in
Bolinas, CA. You can watch the event at this
youtube link.
The following is a review of Peter's
talk:
On Saturday at Commonweal the New
School presented Peter Coyote in conversation with Steve
Heilig. The subject was fake news and the talk began by
citing the recent Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam
War which Coyote narrated.
During the war the trumped-up boy
counts on the nightly news were a glaring example of
governmental lying - fake news. Coyote went on to trace
the tragic decline of our political system from Reagan
to the present day.
He proposed four steps to stop fake news and fix our
broken political system:
1. All news must have an agreed
upon basis in fact
2. People pay for the electoral process
3. Eliminate gerrymandering of election districts
that are balkanizing our country
4. End non-person corporations spending their booty
to influence elections.
At the end of Coyote's talk, there
was a question and answer period. Most of the questions
were actually comments that echoed our current sad state
of affairs.
I had prepared a more philisophical question and when
called upon asked, "We've lost our moral compass. Do you
think it's the fault of technology?"
Coyote's face changed as he heard the phrase "moral
compass". He spoke with an open heart about his practice
of Zen and the way he set his own moral compass. Before
my eyes, Peter Coyote, the famous actor/author/activist
transformed from an angry leftist into a humble Zen
Buddhist monk (he has taken vows).
"I'd rather make a sandwich for a hungry guy than make a
speech on world hunger," he said. "The truth of it is
what you do do every day. How do you treat every person
you come into contact with? Do you practice being
universally kind? Do you pretend you don't have shadows
and all the evil in the world is on them?"
"That's the moral compass. The moral compass is to
understand that there's an invisible, pregnant energy in
the universe that creates everything. It throws up human
beings and solar systems and hummingbirds and dolphins
and we're all made of the same stuff."
"So the salient question is 'How did you come to believe
that way? It's so different than my experience.' But if
I talk to you that way, you know I'm not judging you,
and we can have a conversation. We can become friends
with differences."
I expected more depressing news about fake news, but
instead received a teaching about "engaged Buddhism". It
was a beautiful transmission of truth in the Big Room at
Commonweal. A slogan from the 60's popped into my mind:
"Make love, not war."
We can become friends with differences.
Thank you, Mr. Coyote.
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