‘After I’m Dead’: A tribute to a remarkable woman

by Ike Allen June 29, 2022June 29, 2022

This fall, Vivien Straus will perform a one-woman play she wrote about her mother, MALT co-founder Ellen Straus, in the family’s historic barn. The last time the barn hosted a performance was in 1971, when the 14-year-old Vivien directed a 4-H skit titled “The Scooby Dooby Washtub Band.” (Denise Rocco-Zilber)

She fled Amsterdam as the Nazis invaded, followed a fellow Jewish refugee to his idyllic coastal ranch and went on to shape West Marin’s agricultural landscape by co-founding the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. Ellen Straus, who died in 2002, had a life as idiosyncratic and influential as she was g

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