Golda Foundation

The Golda Foundation was created in 2001 by Robert W. Yarra (Bobby Yarra) to support projects by a variety of people; among them poets, writers, painters, sculptors, and performers.

Photo Vali & Fanny © Michele Burgevin

Publications

  • Gregory Gave Me the World

    Robert Yarra

    This chapbook is an intimate look at Robert Yarra’s friendship with Corso. Various anecdotes and tales from travels together in Europe and time spent in the USA from NYC to San Francisco.
    32 pages, with private color pics.

    View a sample

    Buy Gregory Gave Me the World for $15. This price includes postage within the United States. Order with the Buy Now button.

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  • El Sol

    Rosemary Manno (2023)

    The late poet Rosemary Manno moved to San Francisco in 1983. She grew up in Buffalo, New York and lived in Paris whenever possible. Most winters she would travel to her beloved Mexico with artist/musician Roger Strobel. They shared a home life in North Beach for many years.

    Rosemary was a poet, artist, lover of foreign tongues, the natural world, and revolutionary struggle. Her work has appeared in numerous chapbooks, magazines, and anthologies.

    View a sample

    El Sol is a posthumous collection of poems that Rosemary and editor Tate Swindell worked on during the final years of her life. Faced with a terminal diagnosis of brain cancer, her poems deal with the fragility of life with an uncompromising and unwavering fierceness that embodies the true spirit of Rosemary Manno.

    You can find information on how to order El Sol below, but first, on November 11, 2023 @ 5pm there will be a book release in Specs in San Francisco!

    Buy El Sol for $21. This price includes postage within the United States. Order with the Buy Now button.

    For orders outside the US, or to order multiple items, please use the Order Now button.


  • Animal Loves of My Life

    Gianni Menichetti (2023)

    In his book, VALI MYERS—A MEMOIR, Gianni writes:

    The stories of this strange Valley of ‘Il Porto,’ where Vali lived and where I still live today, have been mostly preserved by oral tradition. There is nothing reliable about the stories in a true historical sense, but there are some interesting popular legends. I learned them from certain old folks I have known since my first year of living here, 1971.

    Artist and poet Gianni Menichetti can be counted as one of ‘certain old folks’ himself now, one who knows and remembers so much, still living in the wild ‘Valley’ above the town of Positano with his family of animals. Over the years Gianni has preserved many beautiful animal legacies in both writings and in drawings, and this book contains some of his most treasured stories from the great vault of his memory.

    © Joanna Pallaris

    Gianni Menichetti was born near Siena, Italy, in 1952. Since 1971 he has lived in the Wildlife Oasis of ‘Il Porto,’ a sanctuary of rare and savage beauty, the ‘kingdom by the sea’ of legendary Australian artist Vali Myers, whose extraordinary existence he shared for three decades. By her side, he dedicated himself to the protection of this wild place and to the care of countless animal creatures. Over the last twenty years, on his own, he has continued his promise to the Valley of Il Porto and its many animal inhabitants, and this book, edited by Romy Ashby, tells the stories of some of his favorites among them, illustrated with photographs and drawings.

    “Since 1971 Gianni Menichetti has lived in the Valley by the sea in Positano, many of those years as consort to the mythic Australian artist Vali Myers, and for many years alone. First graced by Vali’s Saint Francis of Assisi gift of animal communication, Gianni has been nursemaid, midwife, caretaker, protector, and friend to hundreds of animals who have lived in peace in the beautiful wild Valley on the Amalfi Coast. In Animal Loves of My Life Gianni treats us to an intimate meeting with the unique animal friends from his and Vali’s life. This is a soothing book for harrowing times that will confer its magic on you forever.”

    Penny Arcade NYC

    Buy Animal Loves of My Life at the special discount price offered by Golda:

    Buy Animal Loves of My Life for $30. This price includes postage within the United States. Order with the Buy Now button.

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  • Vali Myers, A Memoir

    Gianni Menichetti

    A legend in her own time, Australian artist Vali Myers was the premiere dancer with the Melbourne Modern Ballet at the age of seventeen. Leaving home in 1950, she spent years in Paris, where the Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken photographed her and some of the other young people hanging out in the cafes. Those photos became the book, Love on the Left Bank. During that period she befriended George Plimpton, who published an article about her, along with some of her drawings, in The Paris Review.

    In 1958, Vali and her then-husband Rudi Rappold made a home for themselves in the wild Valley of Il Porto in Positano, Italy, where she would live for the next forty years, working on her exquisite drawings and looking after a large menagerie of animals. After much effort, she succeeded in having the Valley designated a protected wildlife oasis. When she returned to Australia in 1993 for the first time since she’d left, she found herself welcomed as a national treasure. In this memoir by her long-time companion Gianni Menichetti, Vali’s life and life’s work are brought into beautiful, clear focus with wit, candor, and affection.

    Buy Vali Myers, A Memoir for $34. This price includes postage within the United States. Order with the Buy Now button.

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