Just before the death of her mother, Ellen, in 2002, Vivien Straus had a revelation about her life’s purpose: “I’m meant to mix farming and comedy. “
When Straus shared this plan with his mother, she won his approval. “This is my attempt at the moment,” Straus said, referring to his new solo exhibition, “After I die, I have to feed everyone. “
She will provide the exhibit over several weekends at Straus Home Ranch in Marshall, West Marin. His first solo exhibition, “E-i-E-i-Oy!: In Bed with the Farmer’s Daughter”, was presented 8 years ago.
Straus knew he wanted to share the story of the bigger-than-life woman his mother was, especially since it wasn’t special just for Straus. His activism has impacted many others outside the Straus family.
In 1980, when she learned that developers were threatening to build houses and a complex on the coast of West Marino, she and a few others who were determined to maintain agricultural land came together to form the Marin Farmland Trust.
According to his obituary in the New York Times, there are 1000 such land trusts across the country, many of which are in the pioneering MALT model.
“When someone dies, you have to sit with them,” Straus said. “Over the years, I had written a lot of scenes because ridiculous things happened when my mother died. But I didn’t know how to string them together in combination or what I was looking to say. I needed to find a point of view.
The Covid lockdown gave him time to put more paintings on the show.
One question Straus set out to answer in “After I’m Dead” is what motivated his mother to become an activist.
“I realize that other people want to have struggled a little bit in their lives to have that hobby to do something,” Straus said.
Ellen Straus was born in Amsterdam in 1927. A circle of relatives fled the Netherlands before the 1940 Nazi invasion and found a safe haven in the United States. Straus attended Bard College but gave up her dream of studying medicine to marry William Straus, a German Jew. immigrant. The couple established the first biological dairy west of the Mississippi.
Founding MALT, her daughter said, “She found out she had been kicked out of a position she enjoyed, and she’s not going to sit back and let her take that position again,” Straus said of her mother. “I enjoyed life on the farm. It’s everything you’ve ever dreamed of, and you won’t have to move again.
Straus said his parents didn’t communicate much about his life before the war or about his escapades by the hair. Although they never said it explicitly, Straus believes his silence is rooted in guilt.
“I think they felt guilty for going out and not being in the camps,” he said. , he made her determined, and when he saw anti-Semitism or racism, he pushed her to become who she was.
Straus said his parents had been victims of anti-Semitism all their lives; it didn’t end when they left Europe. When her mother first came to the United States, she was considered attractive because of her Dutch accent, but that replaced once her classmates, and even some teachers, knew she was Jewish.
Straus said there was an unstated sense that his family, like the only Jews in West Marino at the time, did not belong, not only because they were Jewish, but also because their parents were educated.
In addition to founding MALT, his mother was active in a wide variety of causes and rarely said no when asked to join a board, Straus recalls. first in the region to grow shiitake mushrooms and dreamed of bringing peace to the Middle East. “She wasn’t actually boring,” Straus said.
The exhibit looks at how Ellen Straus’ circle of relatives received her visas to come to the United States, the plight of her protracted circle of relatives in Amsterdam, the anti-Semitism she faced and the racism she witnessed in the United States, and her death from cancer. .
It is about the bond that mother and daughter share.
“You know a lot of other people in your life, and I know I can say that what I had with her is unique,” Straus said. his mother. I’m lucky. “
Straus, now 65, began acting in elementary school and moved to Los Angeles years ago to pursue an acting career, landing small roles in some big Hollywood movies, adding 1996’s “Peggie Sue Got Married,” directed by Francis Ford Coppola. 3 siblings, and while his older brother, Albert, runs Straus Family Creamery, Straus has remained active in the industry, creating The California Cheese Trail online page and map. She and her younger brother, Michael, run Straus Home Ranch, their former circle. of the house of the relatives, as a place of celebration of weddings and retreats. There the sample is located. There will be food trucks on site, some evening exhibits. Ticket holders can picnic on the grounds before mornings.
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Ellen Straus’ death, but it was the closing rather than this anniversary that made her daughter perceive it was time to put an end to the paintings that had been simmering for so long, with her conclusion: “I needed #$% or get out of the pot.
Alix Wall is editor-in-chief of J. She is also the founder of Illuminoshi: The Not-So-Secret Society of Bay Area Jewish Food Professionals and is the writer/producer of an ongoing documentary “The Lonely Child. “