Introduction
By Mitch Mendosa

Thank you for purchasing Voices of the Valley, Volume V! It is through sales of books and compact disc sets that we are able to pay for the printing of subsequent volumes. As I write this, it's hard for me to refrain from becoming a little sentimental. I feel so fortunate to have been involved in what has turned out to be such a successful endeavor.

In 1997, when the Voices of the Valley project began, I would not have imagined that I would see five volumes published. What began as a small project that seven seventh graders and I designed has blossomed into a high school class where annual volumes are published. Students are learning an incredible amount about their community while vastly improving their academic and social skills.
I am very thankful to the many people who have shared their stories with us over the years. I feel so lucky to have been present for every recording and recall wonderful stories told in each of them. Through these interviews, I've gained a new understanding of Anderson Valley. In an attempt to replicate this experience for everyone who reads our books, the students have transcribed, with very few exceptions, the interviews just as they were spoken.

Many people who have been recorded are surprised to see how their spoken words look as text. We try to explain our reasons for this. The people in our Voices of the Valley books are community treasures. Each of them is unique, possessing individual characteristics that come alive during conversations with the students. By transcribing these conversations exactly as they occurred, including any deviations from Standard English grammar, we're almost able to hear them speak as we read the text.

As I stated in my introduction to Volume I, my uncle, Bill Mendosa, was interviewed in 1976 for a book entitled Mendocino Remembered. Transcribing techniques, similar to the ones we've adopted where the conversation is typed verbatim, were used to document my family history. As years pass since his death, it becomes harder and harder to recall my uncle's voice. However, immediately upon reading his interview, typed exactly word-for-word as he spoke, I can hear his voice in my mind. My childhood memories of him instantly come flooding back including our top-secret missions to sneak into his yard to raid his berry bushes. (Odds are he knew exactly what we were up to).

I like to think of Voices of the Valley as the preservation of a slice in time. I truly hope that friends and family of the people we've interviewed will someday use our volumes to recall fond memories as well. Technological advancements have allowed us to include segments of the recorded conversations on the compact disc affixed to the back cover of this, and all of our books. This will assure that, years down the road when my students are elders, the participants' voices will still be audible for all to enjoy. There's a limit to the amount of audio that we can fit on a CD though, so imagination is still needed to recall how a whole conversation sounded.
One of my concerns is that there are hurt feelings of people we've interviewed later in the project, or people we have yet to interview. I feel obliged to explain the selection process. Voices of the Valley is first and foremost an educational endeavor. In order to create the ideal learning environment, a great amount of student decision making is required. If I were to make all of the major decisions, then Voices of the Valley would be my project instead of theirs. As it is, the students feel complete ownership of this publication and were very dedicated to the process of completing it. This atmosphere of diligence is required for students to learn the very challenging skills involved in publishing a book and compact disc. These skills will greatly benefit them in college and in the workplace. Listen to the audio segues on the accompanying CD to hear them talk about their project experiences.

The selection of who will be in their book is one of many of the decisions that they make. We, as a group, gather many names of potential interview subjects from many sources. We list them, describe the elders' attributes, then debate (argue really) for quite awhile before whittling the list down to a manageable number. So, the simple lack of an argumentative student advocate could be the reason why we haven't interviewed someone whom you might think we should.

I am very grateful to Maria Goodwin, who has taken on the editing process scrupulously. She has guided our student editors in their work, and has listened to and read every line in order to assure accuracy. I am also very appreciative of the dedicated students who were able to see this project as much more than an elective class. They exhibited the degree of ownership in this volume that is critical in order to publish work of this magnitude in the course of one school year.

A new addition to the Voices of the Valley work is our documentary project. Mary Aigner, Russ Emal, and I are helping students use our interview archive as the foundation for a series of documentaries that will air on KZYX & KZYZ next fall. They will also be housed on a web site so people everywhere can access them for many years to come.
I hope you enjoy Voices of the Valley, Volume V as much as we've enjoyed creating it. I feel honored to be a part of the documentation of a place as special as Anderson Valley..

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