Getting to know Paul Encimer

This section includes both obituaries and memories. Honoring our loved ones who have died does not end immediately after their passing. We recognize that… so we’re extending our obituary section to include individuals who may have left a long time ago. If you want to remember someone who is gone, either recently or longer ago, please send a photo and your memories to [email protected].

 

 

Paul Encimer b.1/25/38 – d.1/23/21

In 1988 my wife Tanya and I were looking for land, our first step in pursuing our dream of a life with nature. On our way north from our home ground in the San Francisco Bay Area to Idaho, and back thru Seattle we soon realized we were Californians and we had better narrow our search. We had heard of Garberville from a family friend and stopped for a look.

Nearly all the information and skills we possessed had come from books and we were both avid used bookstore browsers from a young age. So of course the first place we went in town was a bookstore. The fact that a small rural town like Garberville had 2 bookstores seemed promising.

The Garberville area met the criteria we had in mind, off-grid land that was affordable, and not too remote. We discovered the land of our dreams in Piercy and made the move towards a new life in the Spring of 1989. We were quickly approaching 30 years old and had been informed by the social movements of the 60’s and 70’s – but as veterans of the urban doldrums of the 80’s we weren’t so much back-to-the-land pioneers as we were suburban refugees. Our political and philosophical interests and values had been stoked by the previous generation, but we had no knowledge of the local scene or the reason behind it’s burgeoning local economy. As we discovered our neighbors and heard their stories of the glory days of the previous decade the generation gap began to narrow.

Picking up periodicals like the Peacemaker, Star Route Journal, the New Settler Interview, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Lookout, The Country Activist, and the weekly Southern Humboldt Life and Times we learned about the community, and of course, we discovered KMUD radio when our primitive solar power system was established.

We regularly heard Paul on the Politically Correct Week in Review with Ruthanne Cecil and Bob Martell. And later Mary Anderson, Rick Cooper and Tom O’Neil. We got to know Paul and Kathy Epling shortly after their son Gabriel was born. Their bookstore was always a place of far-flung conversation – an encouraging connection and resource. We soon discovered that they lived on the same road in Piercy. And that we were neighbors!

We always stopped in for a book browse and talk during our supply runs, meeting others there, and hooking into the long running Piercy Foods buying club they facilitated monthly. Our relationship as family was firmly established a couple of years later, when they decided to relocate their bookstore from the small corner shop on a side street, in what was amongst the oldest buildings in town, into what had been until recently the Garberville Liquor Store across the street from the Post Office. The rent was more than they were used to for the larger space and by then they knew we were considering renting a space for our trade as journeymen Tattoo artists. We agreed to share the space and began several years as combination bookstore, and our Terra Nova Tattoo Studio, preserving a large wall as an Art Gallery space. This was a rich period of rising culture in Garberville. In opposition to Bush Sr.’s war in Iraq, we began a regular peace vigil that Paul would continue to hold through all the presidents and all the wars of the following decades. With faithful observance of his saints days: the birthdays of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi. The brief run of the Fire Starter newspaper Paul and Kathy published tackled those issues, as well as the political conflicts of the local scene. Paul always searching for solutions made an effort to organize the Sequoia Exchange Economy. While I designed the currency for this local time based economic model of exchange- which achieved at least a glimmer of hope for the potential of alternative economies.

Paul and Kathy In their previous location, near the Presbyterian church had been involved in the regular soup kitchen established with the help of Nurchia Silenco who become strong advocate for the care and well being of less fortunate folks, she would go on to attempt the creation of homeless shelter and resource center in what would later become Paul and Kathy’s last bookstore. They always had a “free box” that offered clothing, a never empty fruit bowl, and Paul sometimes referred to himself as “A Poverty Pimp”, a stance in line with his stubborn adherence to his early Catholicism and in accordance with his aims as an advocate for justice, Paul would become nonviolence trainer and mediator, but also organized and staffed weather emergency homeless shelters. Crediting Kathy with teaching him the strength of compassionate care for those around him, informed by her ability to connect human to human, unconditionally, regardless of station. Together their faith in humanity and compassion became a beacon in the community for those in need, As they welcomed contact and gained trust and understanding with people on the edge of society- often to the chagrin of the less tolerant or fearful.

Paul was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania to a working class family that would relocate to Southern California, following family members in search of economic opportunity. His life long commitment for peace and social change began in 1950. As 12 year old learning about the then recent horrors of both Auschwitz and Hiroshima. He described his “Holy Shit” moment: the visceral fear and revulsion when he realized the appalling potential for inhumanity that States could exert in the names of those they govern. He felt a basic obligation to act, not unlike a religious calling and vowed “I would never quit.”

Coming of age, his foray into higher education took him to the Jesuit University of Santa Clara, where the future Governor Jerry Brown was an upper class-man at the time. With his sense of history, literature, philosophy, reason and justice honed by the Jesuits. His first job was as classical music DJ at the college radio station.

He returned to Southern California and idly pursued a major in Philosophy at UCLA, immersed in the cultural milieu of writers, thinkers, and artists he found inspiration to write, and worked with friends in experimental film making and publishing – developed periodicals, Which began with an organizing tool to build a local chapter of the War Resisters League he called it Resistance, taking the term from WWII resistance movements, as he and his cohorts imagined The US Government an occupying empire. Paul had declared himself a conscientious objector in 1957. Though he had participated in ROTC training for four years in school, he achieved no status or skill, and by his sophomore year had openly mocked the military, and became a pacifist. Drafted in 1961 he dedicated himself to resistance and was prosecuted. At odds with the hierarchy and dogma of his Catholic training, he found no honest way to claim the traditional religious justification for conscientious objection. Despite his Lawyers best advice in his defense Paul declared himself a “Pious Atheist” awakening a latent Gnosticism that was inevitable to one consumed with a diligent examination of reason. The judge was not amused by his plea, but he was acquitted, dodging both the draft and prison. As a dedicated WRL draft counselor in small rented offices with others and out of his bookstore, he advised at least 1,000 men how to avoid conscription, and more importantly, why.

He had found the joys of spending his days surrounded by books, early, and made a habit of collecting them during his university days at Santa Clara. His life long career as bookseller began with a chance meeting with a man who once lived at his Aunts Bordering house who ran a Westwood used bookstore. What started with conversations about Orwell rambled into long talks on literature and philosophy with his book trade guru Kirby Hyre, a man “who read the books he sold.” He took Paul on as “apprentice.” Working below the minimum wage of $.75, he made $.60 an hour working 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, and all the books he could read. and later entered into a partnership with Kirby in an Inglewood store. He pursued the life of a book merchant, writer, ‘zine publisher, draft counselor, and non-violent activist, Reveling in the freewheeling subculture and freedom of communal housing in the Venice community.

His publication Saint John’s Bread reflected all his interests with a combination of entertaining stories and opinion and comic absurdity, he contributed to a friends long running Light Times and worked with his peers The 7 Mighty Anvils as Dr. Confusion, creating together to distribute regular editions of the Saint John’s Bread Wednesday Messenger and Paranoid Flash Illuminator. These works explored imagined and esoteric spirituality, and current politics, they experimented with early psychedelia, poetry, fiction and surrealistic discordia with multi-hued paper printed cheaply on aging mimeograph machines. A creative impulse that would become the ‘zine movement embraced by young sub-cultures everywhere. He was one of the early ordained ministers of the Universal Life Church in full agreement with it’s free wheeling take on spiritual practice, and always recalled the motto he saw etched at it’s founders enclave during an early gathering: “There is no hope, without dope.” Paul slipped easily into what became known as a Hippy lifestyle, but politically he considered himself one of Abby Hoffman’s Yippies- Just under the wire at the fabled 30 year old cut-off.

At one point he considered a bookstore partnership with his friend Leigh Pfeffer, a brother in books, who became his brother in-law, but Paul wanted to expand his horizons, and Leigh was content to stay planted in what would become a long established bookstore in Santa Monica. Paul and his partner Victoria Serra, a former nun in training, had a three year sojourn with a peace activist community in Duluth Minnesota. With his devout partner, pacifist roots and radical California politics they were taken to be a defrocked priest and nun by the community they joined. Paul had been contributing to WIN magazine (Workers In Nonviolence) and Staff, a spin-off of the LA Free Press created by disgruntled staff members, both were distributed nationally, and known in Duluth, so he was welcomed as a movement luminary and immediately found success contributing to a flagging underground journal, and was then drafted by his community to help Publish and distribute a “movement” newspaper: Wild Curraents, using material distributed in packets monthly by the nationwide Liberation News Service to supplement his opinion pieces and contributors local stories. Paul would hit the streets with 200 issues and sell them for a quarter to make his monthly rent.

Paul’s food activism began in LA, when he and his sister Elaine, exploring natural food diets, would travel across town to the Arrowhead Mills to purchase bulk flours and grains. While in Duluth, Paul and Victoria helped develop the Whole Foods Conspiracy Co-op, an operation that Paul hustled into an actual retail establishment with the food aid development programs made available at the time, when managed by Victoria, she doubled their monthly income. the co-op thrived, leaving a legacy that became “The natural food store” in the area. The Whole Foods CO-OP in Duluth still thrives in multiple locations today.

By their third Minnesota winter, the cold had became too burdensome and after a brief stay in Minneapolis they returned to California. Heading North they landing in Willits during the days of United Stand the momentous activism around building codes and owner built homes being red tagged for destruction. Paul who owned no land or home at the time, said he wasn’t really appreciated there, being too radically inclined for the narrowly focused housing rights group. Searching for a more land based lifestyle Paul and Victoria made their way to Whale Gulch Enjoying the ambiance of the remote like minded community where they discovered their lack of practical homestead skills. But the skill they did have was ethical organizing, seeing the multitude of food buying clubs west of town taking deliveries, they advocated for a confederation of sorts and helped organize the Ruby Valley CO-OP “twenty people put in $500. And we bought the building.” A former tavern, eventually moving across the road. With food supplied by the co-op warehouse in Arcata. Eventually Paul would organize ‘Piercy Foods’ a decades old floating bulk food operation that has survived through the mergers and acquisition of 3 distributors, ever larger and monopolistic, proving the need and value of autonomous food supplies.

Following their retreat to a rental in Garberville their ongoing association with The Peacemakers,- led them to an Arcata gathering of this pacifist community of war-tax resistance and support, and non-violent action. with their publication Peacemaker they had organized and publicized workshops, gatherings and actions nation wide since 1948. Paul went to this gathering to pursue an interest in land trusts that had been advocated by the Peacemaker editor Peggy Weingard, a nurse working at the Redwoods Rural Clinic interested in establishing a local land trust, a place for gathering, creating a land base for the local Peacemaker community, as was happening else where around the country. Paul had inherited a modest nest egg when his mother passed away, and with Victoria invested in the land Peggy and her partner Peter had acquired- 20 acres in Piercy, and made a more determined effort at homesteading, Victoria would eventually take over as lead editor of Peacemaker. With Peggy helping and Paul began typing the dense columns of copy, and helped to articulate the organizations quest for gender equality. Eventually their land partners would leave Paul and Victoria both the land and the publication of Peacemaker. They found a willing helper in Kathy Epling who was working at John McClellan’s Orange Cat Goes To Market bookstore with Victoria, and Kathy invested in Peggy’s share of the land while continuing to live in town.

Paul established his Second Growth Books down the hill in the now burned down Piercy market/bakery building in part to have the electricity to utilize his IBM Selectric typewriter, with it’s multiple changeable font balls, a state-of-the-art must have for the bare bones self-publishing of the era. Victoria, whose faith and focus was a grounding influence for Paul during their 13 years together eventually committed to a deeper faith and joined he monastic community of Our Lady of the Redwoods, a branch of Cistercian nuns in Whitethorn.

Paul and Kathy with a young Ann Constantino began the original Star Root Journal, with Mary Anderson and others, which later became Mary Andervidual’s Star Route Journal, which included covers, additional art, and layout by my wife Tanya in it’s final year of production.

Kathy took on Victoria’s Peacemaker production tasks, and they continued production monthly for 10 years. she relocated to the Piercy land with her and John’s young son Garth, Paul and Kathy’s baby daughter Laurel would follow. And later their son Gabriel. Kathy operated Tiger Lily Books n a charmingly eclectic and personal mail-order book catalog that focused on parents and children and became increasingly devoted to the shady forest garden she nurtured. Paul’s Sister Elaine, long in search of a rural sustainable lifestyle came to Piercy when an adjoining parcel of land became available, joined later by her son Alex, and his partner Kendra.

Paul moved his store into a small shop in the Briceland road building in Redway where the fledgling Chataqua natural food store was also getting under way. Helping some small publications with typography on his trusty machine, Pauls activism ran deep, from his early draft resistance, the movement radicalized him-organized draft card burnings, and increasingly critical analysis of the systems that empowered the waging of war became too much for even some of his WRL colleagues. In 1967 he participated in the infamous Century City action that erupted into a violent police riot when activists staged a permitted march to a fund raising dinner for President Lyndon Johnson that ended in an impromptu sit-in demanding an end to the Vietnam war.

Locally, early on, he supported the movement to stop herbicide spraying and prevent nickel and cobalt mining operations on Red Mountain. As a fervent advocate of collectives, affinity groups, consensus building, and non-violence – He was involved in the Citizens Observation Group and Civil liberties Monitoring Project. His Anti-Nuclear work with the Acorn Alliance would see him arrested more than once, but it was the movement to save the Sinkyone and his appreciation of the International Indian Treaty Council which awakened in him a renewed reverence for the land he now called home.

His apprehension of the war on nature on behalf of a lifestyle divorced from nature made him an eco-warrior, called to act in defense of the Sally Bell Grove and to demand a legal right for nature to exist to “…reshape the system until there are stewardship’s and trustees everywhere on the land who can protect the earth for its own sake, knowing that it can sustain us as it did the Indians…[sic- circa ’84]” A quest for the mythical Ecotopia which he pointed out was with the addition of ecological awareness was akin to the ancient Greek perception of democracy – a conscious self rule that addresses local social, political, and economic processes. Ever the propagandist Paul lugged Fifty pounds of video equipment into the grove “so the whole world was watching when we stopped the logging.”

Typically, The equipment would fail. Despite Paul’s intellect, a firm grasp on the practical realties of the physical world often were elusive. Following the freedom of the vehicle free days, back when hitchhiking was king and you could still wave down a Greyhound bus for a ride into town, Paul managed to always have a cheap, or donated car, Kathy never did drive. Once I was trouble shooting his 70’s bomber with its trunk full of water. I suggested we check the air filter, and opening the housing we discovered there was none. Another time I quickly corrected his use as jack-stands made of stacks of Reader’s Digest condensed novel collections, in hardback, which simultaneously illustrated a cavalier attitude towards mass, gravity and safety, and, his disdain of the pablum of literary roughage those books represented.

Paul was a founding member of Southern Humboldt Working Together which help launch numerous non-profits. He was involved in sustaining the boogies at the old Fireman’s Hall that would blossom into The Mateel Community Center, and he became part of its loyal opposition – on behalf of its mission of community when commercialization of the organization loomed. Based on a deep commitment to process, he believed that progress involved finding new forms of community and governance, that it required discussion and intentionality to develop concrete plans to proactively create the transition from hierarchical profit driven models that sustainable and equitable institutions require. He with others formed The Bridge a space dedicated to community building.

He was instrumental in organizing the non-profit Southern Humboldt Recycling Center as a collective, a form of management no one was used to, or understood fully, working there when they won the contract with the county to operate the waste transfer station. He was a founding broadcaster at Redwood Community Radio – KMUD, from it’s first low-power broadcasts, doing talk, punk, rock, classical and jazz, and poetry joined by Kathy, and as engineer, shepherding a very young Garth Epling’s presentations of vintage Old time Radio drama and comedy into a long career as volunteer engineer at the station. Here too he advocated for fairness and equality in non-profit governance when conflicts arose. Recognizing and reminding others that community radio was not a business, but a natural cooperative of producers and consumers.

Over the years the bookstore run by Kathy, Paul and their kids moved, first to Maple lane in Garberville, to Sprowel Creek road, and back to Redway into the Redwood Drive building that had once been the early location of Redwood Rural Health Center, which Kathy passionately supported from the beginning becoming a long time board member.

Paul’s activism was newly empowered by his frontline experience of organizing a contingent of Southern Humboldt activists to participate in the momentous protests, marches, sit-ins and police clashes at World Trade Organization conference in Seattle at the end of 1999, and then to the Los Angeles Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2000. And then closer to the Piercy Land – on the front lines in efforts to Save Hartsook, McCoy Creek, and Richardson Grove.

In the run-up to the presidential election of 2000 Greenfuse was created, a monthly tabloid compilation of news, analysis, opinion, poetry, and personal story telling – local and international. The mission of the Greenfuse was to focus on peace, justice, and humane and ecological social change. I created the masthead and wrote regular opinion pieces, submitting drawings and scribbles that set a graphic tone that Kathy amplified with internet image searches. Originally conceived as a project to promote the surge of interest in green politics, specifically the California Green Party, which for the first time seemed like a viable option- with the candidacy of Ralph Nader for president, and Peter Camejo in three runs for State Governer. Paul got involved in State wide organizing as a delegate for the Emerald Region, organizing locally, and attending plebiscite meetings with state wide delegates. While at first thrilled by the experience he eventually was disillusioned with his involvement, as he once again realized the hierarchy that controls any operation too easily become entrenched in internal politics, in-fighting and self interest at the expense of its mission.

Kathy had already divined that a regular newspaper dedicated solely to party politics was not going to be a thriving organ of expression. In her evolving role as editor-in-chief she was determined to set a more personal, literary and creative direction for the paper, making politics personal, through the new medium of internet blogs she added personal experiences of war and injustice from around the world to our local paper. As a regular crew of contributors and supporters evolved Kathy continued to refer to the publishers as the ‘Waking Dogs Collective’ because, as she observed- waking dogs never lie – a term she originated with the short lived Fire Starter. “The collective” was a loose collection of truth tellers and heartfelt activist involved in creating the content and Paul, as he had before, acting as publisher. He became expert at the duties of ad sales, production and distribution of the paper, often along with fellow contributor Tom O’Neil as driver- or with the family in tow. The “mechanicals” were pasted-up with typography from a computer printer and Xerox copies using rubber cement or glue sticks during late night deadline crunches before driving them to a small web press in Willits and later a press in Healdsburg, which increased the circulation area. They waited for the paper to be printed then made a day long ride back leaving fresh papers in their wake. Eventually the printer would balk at the old-school paper layouts but continued to print from them after they were converted to digital files. The cycle of production and distribution went on nearly monthly for years, something none of us had anticipated. Supported by local advertisers, more as underwriters and well-wishers, as well as an occasional generous donation the always free Greenfuse was delivered to cafes, restaurants, Laundry mats and stores from Healdsburg to Arcata and Blue Lake and down the coast to Caspar.

Production continued as the bookstore moved back to Garberville on the north end of Redwood drive. In this period of rapid change to the local economy Paul and Kathy’s bookstore became a catalyst for compassionate community, offering food to the hungry, water for the thirsty, mail drops and phone charging for the houseless, and advice and concern for the seasonal migrations of wanderers, seekers, dispossessed, and desperate, from everywhere, young and old. The optics of this did not comfort the business community, and advocating for the rights of the poor and dispossessed became a calling. They organized CHILL – Community Help In Living Locally to address the needs of people in transition, and even attempted to organize a cannabis workers union. Ever a communitarian, Paul loved meetings and agendas and as a public intellectual engaged vociferously when his sense of justice required strong advocacy as The Peoples Whistle. As an organizer he considered leaving a meeting with a contact list and an action plan a win for progress. Though committed to nonviolence he would never shirk conflict in the fervent pursuit of justice and equality.

After Kathy’s untimely death in 2015. Followed by the death in 2017 of their adult Down’s syndrome son Gabriel, and a period of reflection, Paul was evicted from his storefront. In part due to his passionate defense of those deemed undesirable by the business community and his service in acknowledgment of their needs. He was critical of the burgeoning redevelopment and gentrification of Garberville and appalled by the community tolerance for vigilante actions on the streets and in homeless camps leading him to attempt developing a respite/resource center- imagining more than simply providing temporary shelter. This concept was still-born by community ill will. This and the relentless abatement abuses of county government helped inspire an effort to recall supervisor Estelle Fenell. He helped draft supervisor candidate Sean DeVries, and the eventual four candidate race led to a run-off election that realized his goal of unseating the incumbent in 2020.

During the winter of 2017 Paul and I had resumed production of the Greenfuse – this time with the advantage of digital layout which I was learning. We were now able to email PDF files directly to the printer and have it ready for pick-up the next day. Of course this would not eliminate the requisite late night deadlines that ran into pre dawn. For Paul this was the fun part, the more people present the better for a bit of high-minded chaos- crafting the last wry headline, and witty observations about how well we wove the theme, proofreading while nodding out from fatigue, before an all day drive to pick-up and distribute. It all spelled Newspaper! to him. We continued with renewed fervor during the Trump Era until the Pandemic closed opportunities for distribution, Summer fires raged and Paul’s health began to flag.

Paul was surprised at how fast his organs conspired to lay him low. He had always fantasized of falling as a martyr perched on the ramparts in defense of human rights and peace. Giving his all for a cause like a true Satyagrahi Warrior.

Instead he spent his last days in quiet conversation, empowered by discussions of his past accomplishments and motivations, revered by those who knew him. He wove an imagined path of continuity of purpose- The Universal Life University using books as a foundation to reawaken the original forms of liberal education, a self directed study that could declare it’s own proficiency and purpose and help create community through the exploration of ideas. Hoping that he could encourage the maintenance of the rich stock that made up his extensive book collection he declared that books transcended commodification and that the value of books should be held as a commonwealth library to be shared by all.

As his health quickly declined his biggest wish was that he could avoid hospitalization and be left to die a natural death. Garth, Laurel and her partner Eric willingly took on the task of bravely shepherding his final journey.

Paul will be missed by many and the greatest tribute to him will be to continue his daily commitment and advocacy for peace, justice, and cooperation into the next generation.

-Joshua Golden