Richard Cullinen: Resolved

By MARIE THOMAS McNAUGHTON / Rohnert Park Correspondent

So five weeks into 2012, how are those New Year’s resolutions going? Gone with the wind? Too much time programming cozy indoor entertainment and not enough brisk walks to the gym?

You know you’re not alone, and you really do want to join the club that sticks to its plan for positive change.

Enter Richard Cullinen.

These days, most locals know Cullinen as the Cotati Accordion Festival’s low-key master of ceremonies, a job he has done for the past 15 years. Others recall him as a Cotati City Councilman in the 1990s, when he directed his energies to environmental issues.

Those with longer but possibly hazier memories may recollect when he arrived in 1973 for a party he says lasted 16 years.

Now 66, Cullinen is a substance-abuse counselor for the County of Sonoma who makes a point each January to plan for personal growth and public service. He now lives in Rohnert Park, but holds Cotati close.

“Every New Year, three friends and I get together and spend an entire day on resolutions, goals and projects for the coming year,” he said.

“We start by reviewing the previous year, generally and personally. We make sure to eat really well, feeding our bodies as well as our spirits. I make a black-eyed-pea dish called ‘Hopping John,’ a good-luck food from the South. Then, we reveal our lists for the coming year.”

The writing down and telling each other, says Cullinen, ensures that the resolutions are realized. “Otherwise, it’s too easy to get distracted from a mental list by everyday life.”

His annually renewed daily practices include:

• Cherish every single day.
• Show compassion and empathy for others.
• Practice tolerance and peace.
• Minimize stress.
• Arrive early.
• Avoid rushing.
• Set boundaries.
• Exercise.
• Always be available for my mom.

His overarching goal is to work toward “my completeness as a human being.”

As a semi-retiree, he says, “I’m having the time of my life. I’m in a creative phase, writing fiction and nonfiction.” He likes to think in movie scenes, creating spaces in which action can take place and transformation can occur.

Cullinen’s journey from one-time party animal to philosopher king was not easy.

“The hallmark of addiction is the dismantling of all the purposeful pieces of who we are as human beings,” he notes.

By the time he hit bottom in 1989, “I had abandoned all my aspirations and dreams. The few people connected to me – not by a bar stool but though the heart and the soul – knew I was dying physically, mentally, spiritually.”

For him, getting sober has meant not just practicing the principles of the recovery community but engaging in public service. He served two terms on City Council, leaving after eight years feeling depleted and mourning the death of the woman he lived with.

“The last 22 years are bonus years, because I was going to die,” Cullinen said. “Now I want to take advantage of every moment I have available to do good things for myself and others.”

In addition to 20 years of volunteering for the Accordion Festival, Cullinen is a director of Minimizing Occurrences of Violence in Everyday Society (MOVES), founded by Judge Arnold Rosenfield. The organization provides public education in the practice of nonviolence as the answer to society’s ills.

“We are coming up with solutions,” Cullinen avers, “and they are all about consensus building and conflict resolution.”

Since Cullinen’s days as Cotati council member and mayor, he said, issues facing the town haven’t changed much.

“Since the passage of Prop 13, cities have to mind the money very carefully. The loss of redevelopment funds is going to make this even harder. Commerce is critical, especially with 101 carrying visitors right on by.”

He remembers his second term as much harder than the first, “with attacks from what was really a small group of individuals.” In retrospect, he advises office holders, citizens and business people troubled by negative naysayers to think of it as part of being in public office, being engaged in life.

“I’ve changed a lot since 2000,” Cullinen said. “I have learned to listen closely to those I don’t agree with. During my years living in Rohnert Park, Jake Mackenzie has asked me to run for office, but my heart is with Cotati.”