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David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning drama “Proof” has a mix of pathos, humor and wonder, which keeps the edginess of this show presented by South Valley Civic Theatre. Cindy Powell directs with a strong hand, in-volving the audience, which makes for an intimate experience.

This is a very busy time of year for wineries of the South Valley. Grapes are being harvested to be crushed. Many local wineries invite visitors to see the crush process in action. So, consider this an opportune time to pay them a visit, do some winetasting and of course, pack a nice picnic lunch. This week, I feature an item for your picnic lunch served in what I feel is a revolutionary method.

Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve is the largest preserve in the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. At 18,670 acres, it encompasses the portion of the Santa Cruz Mountains from Lexington Reservoir above Los Gatos down to Mt. Umunhum where it shares a boundary with Almaden Quicksilver County Park. If you look toward the southwest from nearly anywhere in the South Bay, you are looking at Sierra Azul.

From time to time I catch a glimpse of my butt in a random mirror and think, “Hmm, I should work out.” Fortunately, I’m a fundamentally lazy person, so my workout mainly consists of thinking about working out. If you’re wondering—thinking about working out is not an effective way to shrink the size of your butt. Hey, never say I don’t add knowledge to the South Valley with this column, OK?

MORGAN HILL—San Jose Sharks forward Logan Couture wants to help bring Sierra LaMar home.

Though there were no parties or celebrations, I recently had an anniversary. And it was a somewhat unusual one for a journalist: 10 years with the same newspaper.

Although the thermometer belies the season, here in South Valley we hover on the threshold of fall. Pumpkins, autumn leaves and crisp, cool evenings shall soon overtake the sunny days of summer.

Think Hawaii and images of romance, blue skies and glorious weather float by the conjured thoughts. Midway across the warm Pacific lies a chain of islands called Hawaii, 2,000 miles of ocean from our mainland with no continental coast between. These small bits of land appear offered to the sky by water and pressed to the earth by stars. Here civilizations of Occident and Orient merge under the tropical influence of the Polynesian culture.

When my friend Barbara Gailey’s heart stopped four years ago, she told me that she saw angels. They were beautiful and she was tempted to go with them. But she wasn’t quite ready to leave this world yet, so fortunately, when her heart stopped, she was already at the hospital. Her pastor was there and prayed for her as it was happening, and doctors were able to revive her. 

September is California Wine Month and comes just in time to celebrate our brand new Wine Trail signage and another vintage year of grape-growing. The new wine trail signs give visitors a clue that they are entering wine country—with 20-some wineries between Morgan Hill and Gilroy. You can see all 70 of these signs along Watsonville Road and Butterfield and places in between, including a sign on U.S. 101 near Dunne Avenue. The highway sign is made from a mesh material to allow the wind to pass through and keep it upright no matter how hard the wind blows.